God Touched - 01

by John Conroe

  A line of emotions paraded across her face as she thought about my question. Sadness, anger and fierce resolve were the biggest, mixed with a glimmer of pride and, oddly enough, joy. After a moment's reflection she spoke in a quiet voice. “I have always...valued Vadim's instruction. He was skilled in a wide variety of disciplines, was patient and always made my training interesting, which helped with the...life, such as it was, that I had while I waited for you,” she looked me in the eye and continued. “You see, I always knew on some level, that something...someone was coming. It's what kept me going.”

  She leaned forward slowly and gave me a kiss on my blood covered lips. “But -- ” her voice took on a hard tone, “He chose to attack that which is dearest to me. Bad move.”

  Her voice was cold as arctic ice. Bad move indeed.

  “I'm sorry about your father,” I said.

  She snorted. “Anton contributed DNA to me, but he was never, in any sense of the word, my father! And Fedor was old, snotty and condescending. I think Oh-Kwah-lee --” she looked at me to check her pronunciation, which I nodded at, “-- made a most excellent mess of him!”

  She looked back at Vadim's remains for a moment and then continued. “I will miss his instruction, though.”

  I'm not real good with emotional stuff, my family being just Gramps and myself, so I was at a loss of what to say. Senka saved me by stepping back over to our location and fixing me in her gaze.

  “I trust Officer that you will allow us to handle this mess,” she said.

  I hadn't thought about the aftermath and my responsibilities as a police officer until she said that.

  On the one hand, I was sworn to uphold the laws of the city, the state and the country. On the other, Roma had made it clear that the leaders of the human society preferred that the supernaturals police themselves to the greatest extent possible. So the dead vampires were a no-brainer. The Hancers that Tatiana had chopped her way through had been human though. That was harder to sort out. But then I reasoned that Hance was a supernaturally derived drug and the Hance addicts had become part of the supernatural world. The fact that Anton had controlled them lent this line of reasoning greater support.

  At the end of this elegant line of bullshit rationalization was the awareness that human courts and law enforcement were, at present, completely incapable of dealing with the shadowy world of vampires, demons and weres. To a degree it was like trying to impose human laws on the natural world. Trying a pack of timber wolves for coyote killing in a human court of law wasn't any more ridiculous than pressing charges on a vampire for killing a werewolf. In fact, from my limited experience with Special Situations and the D.O.A.A. unit, they were more like monitors than law enforcement. A vampire or were that came to the attention of human authorities for killing humans would be treated like a dangerous wild animal or rabid dog; hunted down and killed. And there most likely existed a federal black ops unit that wanted specimens for weapons research. My own work hunting demons had no basis in human law. So I looked back up at Senka after the several moments it took me to process this train of thought and gave her a nod. I got the impression that she was curious about my internal resolution of this dilemma, but she just smiled and turned to my girl and said, “You and Lydia need to take Chris to Dr. Singh and make sure whatever was pumped into him is gone. And clean him up, he's a bloody mess.” she said in her cultured Oxford accent. Then she was gone, back to organizing a cleanup that I didn't want to know about.

  Lydia wouldn't let me in her car, her new car, until I put on one of the cleaning crews’ white tyvex coveralls. I sat in the back seat, looking like a lean Michelin Tire man and examined the links of the handcuffs that Tanya had removed from my wrists. She had simply pulled the hardened steel bracelets apart like taffey until they tore. I was interested in the laser clean cuts that Okwari's claw had made through the steel links. Bear claws are like meat hooks, with no real inner edge to cut with, yet his claw had sliced the tough metal like a chef's knife would cut a cucumber, better even. I was going to have Chet analyze the cuts. Any information I could get would help in figuring out my giant invisible friend. A thought occurred to me and I voiced the question to the vampire ladies in the front seat.

  “I'm kinda foggy about how I ended up with Fedor and company. What happened at the club – “ I looked at my watch, “-- three hours ago?” I asked.

  Tanya turned to look back at me as she answered, her blue eyes glowing from the dark front seat.

  “Vadim hustled you and the demon's body off the dance floor and into the back, or so we thought. We think he must have just kept going right out the fire door and then met Anton before going to the shipping yard.”

  “And Fedor delayed us from heading back to check on you, by saying we had to bow out first to keep the club patrons believing it was all an act,” Lydia added. “ Your fight was a huge hit by the way. I'll be surprised if it doesn't get mentioned in a half dozen of this morning’s newspapers.”

  I yawned as it was now past two AM and long past my normal bedtime. Tanya was still watching me, concern written across her face. “I'm just tired.” I said. She shook her head. “I've only known you for a week and I've almost lost you a half dozen times.”

  I didn't have a good answer so I just shrugged.

  “I'll try to be more careful.”

  Lydia laughed and Tanya smiled a little.

  “Honestly, though, I've gotta think with the demise of Fedor and the others, that things will possible calm down,” I said.

  “Regardless, you will be more careful, because you will be training with me!” Tatiana said.

  I gulped, remembering her brutal treatment of Vadim and the Hancers. As much as I enjoyed bedroom wrestling with her, training at her level promised to be painful.

  Lydia’s green eyes sparkled with amusement in the rearview mirror as she watched my reaction.

  Chapter 20

  Lydia parked in front of Dr. Singh’s house/office and we hustled into the entrance to the lower level. The doctor and his creepy assistant met us at the door, alerted to our arrival by Tanya’s cell call from the car. The assistant led me to a bathroom with shower, tersely directing me to leave my destroyed clothes in a black garbage bag and leaving me a set of blue hospital scrubs to wear. With one last sidelong glance at me, she left me to get cleaned up.

  Dr. Singh’s water pressure was excellent and the steaming hot water sluiced away Fedor’s blood and gore. The fact that the shower floor was equipped with an industrial sized drain that would have been at home in a car wash or slaughter house was a little disturbing. I didn’t want to think of the number of other gruesome cleanups this bathroom had seen.

  When I emerged twenty minutes later, my skin red from the harsh scrubbing I had put myself through, Assistant spooky was waiting to lead me to the Doctor’s exam room. Dr. Singh and the girls were there discussing the night’s events. A plastic zip lock baggie, with a used syringe inside was on one of the countertops, an oily black residue remaining in the mostly empty tube. “So Chris, how are you feeling?”

  “A little cleaner.”

  He smiled briefly. “I was wondering more about your physical well-being.”

  “Well, I still feel a little woozy from whatever the demon shot me up with and I’m not up to full power aura wise. But overall, I feel pretty good. Hungry, though.”

  Lydia rolled her eyes, Tanya smiled and the Doctor nodded.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a pizza from a late night establishment. I will need to do a complete workup on the contents of the hypodermic, but I feel confident in theorizing that it is demon blood.”

  “Demon blood?” I questioned.

  “Yes, I’ve had the opportunity to analyze the body of the demon you neutralized at Tatiana’s residence the other day. The body’s blood was drastically changed by the demon’s habitation. I think it would have a pretty nasty effect on your abilities. In fact, I believe demon blood is the other ingredient in the production of the Hance drug
.”

  Dr. Singh had begun an examination of me while he talked, checking my blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and other basic factors. He made notes on a clipboard, and then handed it to the assistant who typed it into a laptop computer.

  “Chris, how’s your appetite been lately?”

  “Strong, but less than it was. Maybe two thirds of what it was.”

  He nodded. “I would expect it to slow considerably as your body completes more of the transformation.”

  “Ah, what transformation?” I asked

  “Well, let’s back up and start with the process by which vampires are created,” he said.

  Lydia and Tanya both leaned forward, obviously very interested in the topic.

  “When a human is Turned, the process is very specific, if deceptively simple. Over the course of several days, the human is progressively drained of more and more blood, while also drinking more and more of the vampire’s own blood. This has the effect of exposing all of the cells in the body to larger amounts of the virus that all vampires carry.”

  “Virus?” I asked.

  “Yes, Chris. Both vampirism and lycanthropy are caused by viruses. The virus carries new bits of DNA that permanently change the host. In both cases the change actually happens at the mitochondrial level, not the nucleus level. You know what mitochondria are right?” he asked.

  I remembered my high school biology pretty well.

  “Yeah, the powerhouses of the cell, right? Production of ATP, which is…wait…adenosine triphosphate!” I said, a little smugly.

  “That’s what they’re best known for. They also perform quite a few other jobs as well. Steroid and various protein production, involvement in the aging process, cellular differentiation, and cellular signaling, among others. The mitochondrion has its own DNA, which is inherited from the mother’s egg cell. The vampire virus, we call it V- squared, adds new DNA to the mitochondrial DNA. The resulting proteins provide the enhanced sensory, strength, speed, reflexes and anti-aging benefits. They also allow the body to use blood as its only food source. The last is a major mutation of the ATP cycle.”

  He paused to see if I was keeping up.

  “The Lycanthrope virus, or LV, is similar but more aggressive, which is why only a single bite is needed to fully infect someone. And both viruses have about a sixty to seventy percent infection rate. With V-squared, the other thirty to forty percent die. With LV, they just heal up normally and go on being human. Got it so far?”

  “Yeah, I guess. So the Hance protein is a bad copy of just one of the V-squared proteins that an infected mitochondrion would produce?” I asked.

  “That’s correct, Chris. A V-squared mitochondrion kicks out a smorgasbord of proteins that are beneficial to the host.”

  “And regular humans that imbibe vampire blood, orally, get a mix of proteins but they are short lived?” I guessed.

  “Yes. But the virus is not as hardy as the LV and it is destroyed by the body’s immune response. That’s why a candidate is exposed to ever greater quantities of the virus while their total blood supply is being drained down, which reduces the immune response. By the end of the cycle, the candidate is flooded with virus in a weak body and the change is initiated. Once V- squared is fully established, the human is now a vampire. As time goes on, the virus continues to spread and strengthen and change its host.”

  “But what about being undead and all that?” I asked.

  “Just human terms to attempt to describe the enormous differences in body function. You see, Chris, vampire hearts do beat, just differently, at different times. As changeover is made, a new vampire’s heartbeat will accelerate way past human normal. This has the effect of pressurizing the vampire circulatory system. Our veins and arteries are much stronger and have greater elasticity. Once pumped to high pressure, the heart stops normal functions and starts to operate so slowly that heartbeats don’t register as such. Blood is moved one chamber at a time. Because of the complete change in blood metabolism we don’t need fast moving blood. It’s complicated, involves particle physics and we could discuss it all night but know this, vampires hearts do function. Just differently.” he said.

  I scratched my head, taking it all in.

  “But the Weres still eat regular food, how does that work?” I asked.

  “LV is a much different virus and while it also affects the mitochondria, it does so differently. How much do you know about particle physics, Chris?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Not much. You’re talking atoms, protons, and neutrons, right?”

  “Oh, much, much more. There are far more interesting ones, like quarks, gluons, neutrinos, Higgs Bosun particles and things like dark matter and dark energy. It’s a fascinating science and has direct application to the study of the so-called supernaturals. Trying to explain how vampires can survive, thrive and exceed human potential on a diet of blood doesn’t work until you can bring in other types of matter and energy. Very simply, vampire mitochondria harness additional energy from sources that current science would have difficulty measuring. It also works to explain how a one hundred and seventy-five pound man can transform into a three hundred pound werewolf, which on the face of it defies the Law of Conservation of Mass. However, mass is matter and matter is made up of particles, and the particles of matter are subject to change.” He shook his head in frustration.

  “It’s okay Doc. That actually makes sense to me. So you’re saying that the changes in the mitochondria allow vamps and weres to utilize particles and energy that normal humans can’t.” He nodded, so I continued. “That also helps give me a basis for demons and Damnedthings phasing between dimensions and changing from spirit to solid.”

  “Yes, exactly. Quantum physics has multiple dimension theories like String theory and others. Which brings us to you, my unique friend,” he smiled.

  “Okay, let me have it Doc, what makes me such a freak?”

  All three of the winced at my casual self-description.

  “Chris, when I studied your blood samples, I, knowing what I know about V-squared and LV, focused on your mitochondria. And I found they were different. Changed.”

  “You mean by Tanya’s blood?” I asked.

  “Well yes, but they were different to begin with. As if you, or your mother had been exposed to one of the viruses or a similar virus before.”

  “My mother?” I asked.

  “Remember, mitochondria are inherited from the mother. So yours came from her. Before you finished your shower, I was asking the girls what they knew about your mother and they told me about your Russian grandfather and the German camp. What more do you know about him?” he asked.

  “Not a great deal. He was a child when he went into the camp and was only nineteen or twenty when he was rescued and met my grandmother. He wouldn’t speak about it, and we never asked. They lived in Florida at the time my family was killed. I visited them a few times and they came to New York a couple of times, but other than that it was letters and phone calls.”

  “Do you know what the name of the camp was?”

  I shook my head and answered. “He never said, but I know it wasn’t one of the well-known camps. It was somewhere in the Bavarian Alps I think. Small and secret.”

  I shrugged.

  He looked thoughtful. “Well, anyway. Your mitochondria were already different. Which may be why you have your unique abilities with demons. When you drank Tanya’s blood, the tiny amount of virus, which would normally be wiped out, was somehow able to effect additional changes. Each additional dose of blood just continued the changes. Most of your current mitochondria look almost like they came from a vampire, but with a few of the characteristics of an LV modified mitochondrion as well. So you are producing your own set of vampire like proteins, your metabolism is fast like a Were’s, your red blood cell production is crazy high, your immune system is all kinds of enhanced. The changes continue to spread and we will have to monitor the effects. But you seem to be some kind of altogether new supern
atural.”

  We all just looked at him. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Tanya spoke first.

  “What about his aging process?” she asked.

  “That part of his mitochondria seems to be just like a vampire’s,” he replied.

  “So wait, I won’t age?” I asked.

  “I would say not. Can’t tell anything for certain, but that’s my best guess. You seem to have many of the benefits that a young vampire would have. Notice I didn’t say a new vampire, because you have already progressed beyond that point. Probably due to Tanya’s blood being the source of your changes.”

  “Okay, how does that work?” Lydia asked.

  “Well, Tanya also inherited her mitochondria from her mother Galina. As best we can determine, Tanya was conceived the same night both Galina and Anton were changed. Their reproductive systems hadn’t been shut down yet. So the embryonic Tanya was chock full of virus from conception. Her blood carries enormously high quantities of very strong virus. So you were accelerated, so to speak.”

  “What about Chris’s reproductive system?” Lydia asked.

  “Hey, why do you want to know about that?” I asked, feeling oddly uncomfortable.

  “Hush Junior, and let the grownups talk.” Lydia said.

  Dr. Singh smiled at this exchange and then spoke. “That part seems to be more like the LV virus. Weres reproduce normally, in addition to infecting others. Although, their fertility rates are very, very low. That is somewhat in keeping with other apex predators. Too many bears, wolves and tigers means no more prey animals, so they produce few young.” he said.

  “Lydia, why is that important?” I pressed.

  She gave a little shrug. “Just curious.”