Gabriel sighed again and looked forward. We approached a ‘T’ in the hallway and he turned the group to the right. Behind us, I could hear Jacen and Jordan silently following. They listened, but didn’t interrupt their master. I had no idea what they felt about the matter. Starla seemed…bored. She had released herself from Gabriel’s side and was examining her nails again buffing out a spot with her thumb while we continued down yet another long hallway.
Gabriel glanced over at Teren with the corner of his eye. “Well, you all seemed to have everything under control.” His eyes flicked over to me, and then my stomach. “Until you started knocking over every vampire nest you could find.” His eyes went back to Teren’s, his eyebrows raised. “Annoying our brethren, is not a good way to remain unnoticed, or alive.”
Teren looked down at the floor for a second before raising his eyes back to Gabriel, an almost defiant look on his face. “I had no choice. I didn’t know how else to find you.”
Gabriel smirked at the look on his face and then nodded. We finally approached the end of the hall. Looking behind us, behind Jacen and Jordan, I could see that the hallway we’d been walking down wasn’t a straight one, it had angled some, and I could no longer see much of where we’d been. That thought didn’t exactly please me.
Twisting back to the front, I took in the set of double doors before us. The handles were gold, with a gold inlay around the trim, highlighting a red octagonal pattern set into each panel. Teren swallowed as Gabriel smiled and pulled down the handle. I wasn’t sure what we were walking into, but I was sure it held the answers we were looking for. I clutched Teren’s arm, attaching to his side.
Gabriel swung open the door and we looked into a room that was set up like…well, a laboratory. Confused, Teren and I entered the odd-for-a-mansion room. It was straight out of a horror movie and I even found myself looking around for the mad scientist. All I found was Gabriel, walking up to some steaming beakers and sniffing them. Smiling, he turned down a burner under one. Jordan walked into the room and joined Gabriel’s side, examining a batch of some pinkish fluid resting in vials under a heat lamp. He seemed to eye the room with the casual air of someone who came down here a lot. Jordan probably assisted the ancient mixed…in whatever they were doing down here.
Jacen stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. Instantly, I felt the difference. Teren and I glanced at each other and I could tell he sensed it to – this room was soundproof. And not just any sort of soundproof, this room was vampire-soundproof. That was saying something. As the background noise of people rustling, low conversations, objects moving, and keyboards clacking, instantly silenced, my nerves spiked a bit. The smell of chemicals, steam, propane, and the faint sweetness of blood in the air, suddenly seemed cloying.
Gabriel looked up from a pot of liquid to look at me, hearing my reaction. “Don’t fret, child. I find that the silence helps me think.” He smiled, looking tired again. “Sometimes, a little quiet is nice.”
I nodded and tried to relax my body, exhaling slowly. Jacen looked around the room after closing the door. He did not look like he came down here very often, and his eyes were interested, but obviously confused. He didn’t know what this stuff was, anymore than I did. Starla seemed to have a better idea.
She walked up to Gabriel and sat on a stool in front of him. Lifting her arm, she exposed the inside of her elbow to him. Teren and I walked up to them, still confused. Gabriel held his hand out to Jordan, who handed him a pink vial. The stuff vaguely looked familiar to me, but I wasn’t sure why. We watched in silent awe as Gabriel stuck a syringe in the vial, extracted a small amount, and then injected it into Starla’s arm. She flinched a little, but didn’t seem overly concerned about the matter.
My mouth dropped open again, but it was Teren who spoke. “What was that?” There was a strange edge of apprehension to his voice.
Gabriel handed the empty syringe to Jordan, patting Starla’s arm as she hopped off the stool. Not directly answering Teren, he said, “When my heart was still beating, my human wife and I had three children.” He smiled, looking at the floor for a moment. “The two girls grew up, had children of their own, converted, and then left my care.” His reminiscent smile evaporated and he raised his eyes to Teren’s. “My son…” He swallowed and I could clearly see the ancient sadness bubbling in him. “He didn’t survive the conversion. The hunger consumed him…”
He sighed and looked down. I swallowed and clutched Teren’s arm tighter. I peeked up as Teren looked back at me, his jaw tight. He’d nearly been consumed by that hunger too. Picking up a full vial, Gabriel began shifting it back and forth in his hand, the liquid inside sloshing from one side to the other. “After my wife passed, I spent the next five hundred years, trying to find a way to stop the conversion.”
His eyes left the liquid to look back to Teren. “To stop the human side of our kind from prematurely dying. To let the vampire have a choice in when and where, they go through their conversion. I want them to have children when they want to, to have a heartbeat as long as they want to, to enjoy humanity as long as they want to. I want to give our kind a choice - to be reborn as an undead creature, or live and die a purely human life. A choice my son…never had.”
Teren took an excited step forward, and I could tell he was itching with the restraint to not scream questions at this man. Gabriel held the vial up to him as he took another step forward. Teren released my hand and grabbed the vial, holding it like it was somehow sacred. Gabriel continued, while Teren and I looked confused. “I concocted this. It’s a derivative of our mixed blood.” In a whisper, he said, “Among other things, it slows the vampiric blood inside us, eases the strain placed on the human heart, allowing it to beat for much longer than normal.”
Teren’s eyes snapped up. “Does it work?”
Gabriel glanced over at Starla, now standing beside him. “I haven’t been able to test it on as many living-mixed as I’d like, but Starla here has been taking it for the past six months or so.” She grinned at Gabriel’s affectionate look and leaned back on her hip.
I frowned. “But she’s only twenty two. You won’t really know if it works on her for years.” Starla frowned at me bursting her prideful bubble.
Gabriel smiled, but didn’t answer me. He turned to Jordan and in a not audible for human level, said, “Bring Samuel here.”
Jordan nodded and blurred from the room. Teren and I watched him leave, our brows still scrunched. Finally Teren shook his head. “This…may save her?” His eyes were watering; there was so much hope in them.
Gabriel sighed. “To be honest, I don’t know. The treatment doesn’t take for everyone.” He raised an eyebrow at me as my shoulders slumped. “But, then again, you lived through a vampire attack.” He smiled widely, pointing at the telltale scar on my neck. “The fact that you are not dead and gone is quite astounding, my dear.”
I smiled wryly as Teren and I exchanged a brief glance. Teren smiled softly just as the door to the lab opened again. Amid the rush of noises reentering the room, I heard a definite heartbeat adding to mine and Starla’s. Curious, I looked over. My jaw dropped straight down to the floor. Tall and dark Jordan was walking into the room with a man who was clearly older, approaching his forties, if not already there. The smell of the man, foreign, yet with a familiar note that I was coming to associate with partial vampires, filled me, and I stared at him in awe.
Teren gaped at him as well, walking over to see him more closely, his head cocked, like the sound of his still beating heart was mystifying. And it sort of was. I’d been so used to twenty-something mixed, that the sight of a graying haired man, his fangs extended to show us what he was, was stunning.
Teren twisted back to Gabriel, his smile glorious. “It works,” he breathed.
Gabriel smiled and nodded at Samuel, indicating the stool. Samuel obediently walked over, lifting his arm in the same way Starla did. As Jordan prepared a second vial, Gabriel nodded at Teren. “In the ones that take to it, it h
as worked exceedingly well.”
He frowned, his lips twisting in displeasure as he injected the fluid into Samuel’s arm. “The first batch I created…did not.” He was silent for a second and then he fixed his face into a more clinical expression, as he explained. “Conversions are an interesting process in mixed. In pure vampires, it happens when they are created. When a mixed is born, the element that completes the transformation from living to undead, stays dormant. But eventually, the strain of our free-flowing blood is too much, and somewhere between twenty-one and twenty-six, depending on the family history of the vampire, an event is triggered, and that element activates. The blood then accelerates to a point where the vampire’s human body can no longer handle it. The heart burns out, the human side dies and the vampiric blood takes over, reanimating the creature.”
I watched, fascinated, as he finished injecting Samuel and handed the empty syringe to Jordan. He glanced at our curious faces. “You see, the process of conversion isn’t just the human side dying, it’s also the vampiric side awakening. Kill a mixed vampire before that trait has a chance to awaken, and you kill the vampire as surely as you would kill a human. That genetic marker in the blood is the key to vampirism.” He sighed and shook his head. “The first batch I created accidentally triggered that dormant element in the blood – revved it up and burnt out the heart within hours, jump-starting the process, regardless of the vampire’s age.” He shrugged and looked very sad as Samuel rubbed the injection site on his arm. “I accidentally converted quite a few vampires, much too soon.” He shook his head sadly and I gasped audibly.
He flicked his eyes up to mine, seemingly concerned at my alarmed reaction. “I stopped. Once I realized what it was doing, that it was never going to work, I destroyed all of the samples, locked up my research. Don’t worry, I adjusted the formula considerably.” His eyes took on a look of a scientist as he said that, emotionally detached from what he’d done. Of course, he probably didn’t understand the extent of what he’d actually done.
Teren gasped as well as he looked back at me. Locking eyes, we understood each other. Teren looked back at Gabriel. “I think you may have missed some.” His voice was rough, hard with anger.
Gabriel blinked at hearing it. My eyes watered as I found Teren’s hand. That man who’d kidnapped us had injected Teren with something that had killed him. It had revved up his blood and given him a heart attack. He’d claimed it as his own creation at the time, but it hadn’t been. Somehow, he’d gotten a hold of Gabriel’s samples and had tried to pawn it off as his own. I always suspected that the bastard hadn’t been smart enough to come up with something like that. But I couldn’t believe a mixed had come up with it. I wondered if Gabriel knew that a hunter had been out there, killing other mixed with his creation. By the startlement on his face as Teren described what had happened to him, I didn’t think he knew. As Samuel stood from the stool, he heavily sat down into it.
“That’s not possible…the only person who could have…” His voice trailed off as he left that thought unfinished.
Slight anger still in his voice, Teren cocked his head. “Who?”
Gabriel, still looking stunned, shook his head and looked back up at Teren. His face regaining his ancient composer, he smiled. “A family matter. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, but I will take it from here.” Standing up, he cast a significant look back at Jordan, who nodded once and left the room. I had the feeling that someone was in a world of trouble.
Bringing his eyes back to Teren, he calmly asked. “Has the hunter been dealt with?”
Teren smiled with an edge of his mouth. He nodded slightly. “He didn’t survive…my conversion.” I knew for a fact that that knowledge actually greatly bothered Teren, but he wasn’t about to show a hint of weakness amongst this house of supernaturally strong creatures.
Gabriel raised an eyebrow and smiled at Teren. “Well, I can’t say I’m sorry about that.”
Teren raised his eyebrows, looking like he’d just mentally assembled some puzzle pieces together in his head. “He must have come to California for you.” Gabriel gave him a curious expression and Teren shook his head. “The hunter left journals. They actually helped lead us to vampires. I think your nest was referenced in them. I think he was here for you, but he made a pit stop, when he stumbled across me.”
Gabriel stared at Teren for long moments. “Interesting. It would seem that our lives started entwining before today.” He frowned and shook his head. “I am terribly sorry for what happened to the both of you.” He nodded at Teren, solemnly. “Because of you, he can no longer use my creation to harm anyone else. You have my gratitude for that.”
He looked down, regret filling his ancient eyes. “As you were a mixed that had not converted yet, I was going to come out to your ranch, to offer you the shot, if you were interested.” He peeked up at a shocked Teren. “I was obviously…too late.” He shrugged. “When I had the time to come visit with you, word got back to me that you’d already converted. I didn’t think anything of the circumstances surrounding your conversion. I regretted that I’d lost the chance to study you, but I moved on to other prospects.” He stood and extended a hand to Teren. “You have my deepest apologies that I was in any way involved in your…unfortunate situation.”
Teren and I looked at each other. If Gabriel had offered Teren the shot, and it had worked on him, we would have had all the time in the world to conceive our children. Even now, Teren’s heart could have been beating. I let that thought tumble through me, then tumble out of me. What-ifs were all well and good, but it hadn’t happened like that, and Teren was what he was now, and we were fine with it. My hand idly rubbed my stomach. We’d even managed the conception part just fine. Now, we just needed to make it to the birthing part.
Gabriel turned and then started packing several vials into a leather briefcase. He filled another one and then handed them both to Jacen, who looked happy at finally having an important task to do. Starla sighed and started twirling empty vials on the counter. Gabriel grinned at his “daughter” and then indicated the vial still in Teren’s hand. “I’ve provided enough to get her through the pregnancy. Give her 4cc a day, every day. Don’t give her more than that, don’t give her less, and don’t miss a day. It has to be exact, for it to work.”
Teren stared at the vial, then his hand clenched around it. “How will we know if it’s going to work on her?”
Gabriel stared at the ground, before looking back up. “Unfortunately, some things from the first batch still carried over.” Teren and I looked at each other confused. Gabriel sighed, then explained. “If it is not going to work on her, it will almost immediately awaken the dormant trait within the vampiric blood, and her heart will stop, much like yours did. But while your body took hours to die after your shot, on her newly-exposed-to-the-blood body, it will happen fast. If her heart does not give out within several minutes of the first dose…you’ll know it works.”
Teren’s mouth dropped and he stared over at me. I felt my chest stop breathing as my face paled. So that was it, all or nothing.
Gabriel’s voice snapped us out of our stupor. “I’m sorry there is not a gentler way. I’m assuming she’s close to conversion? You seemed desperate to find me.”
Teren nodded, still numbly staring at me. “We have no choice, I guess.” His eyes watered and I nodded at him. Yes, we had no choice. My heart would give out if we did nothing. If there was a chance to prolong that until after the birth, to save the children, we had to take it.
Looking back at Gabriel, Teren whispered, “If it doesn’t work, and she starts the conversion…will she finish it. Will she survive? Is my mixed blood enough to fully change her?”
Gabriel looked at Teren for long seconds. I thought I could see the debate in his eyes, maybe judging whether being honest with Teren, would drive him over the edge. Finally, and without ever removing his eyes from Teren, he spoke to Starla, spinning on the stool in her boredom. “Starla, please help Jacen load the
vials into your car.”
Starla straightened and pouted, her perfectly painted lips disgruntled. “My car? Do I have to drive them back, Father? They live so far away…and do have any idea how annoyingly lovey-dovey they are?”
Gabriel looked at her from the corner of his eye and I heard Jacen suppressing a laugh. Starla immediately looked down and replied with, “Yes, Father.”
She and Jacen twisted to leave the room, Starla smacking him across the back as Jacen snorted once. “Shut it, Jace,” she muttered as she opened the door to leave. The sounds of the house rushed back in on me, and I swear, somewhere in the house, I heard what sounded like a muffled cry.
Samuel also seemed to hear that. “Father, I should get back to…that other situation.”
Gabriel looked over at Samuel, who was eyeing us cautiously. I wasn’t quite sure what situation he was referring to. Maybe Jordan had found the culprit already. Gabriel nodded at Samuel. “Please, make sure the vampires stay back. Zane needs it, not them. He is the one completing his conversion tonight.” Samuel nodded, and then left through the open door, closing it behind him.
Once again encased in silence, I forgot our original conversation, and curiously asked, “You have someone here, converting?” I turned back to Gabriel, stepping forward to grab Teren’s hand.
Conversion Book Two: Bloodlines Page 44