by T M Linville
“Oh,” Shay nodded then smiled.
After about three hours, McGoo finally unhooked Lily from the machine. She was lightheaded when she stood up. Shay braced herself against Lily so she wouldn’t fall.
“Take it easy,” Erica told them.
Lily only nodded and walked out. She was afraid that she had just killed a man. She wasn’t sure why Jack thought it would work but she had to assume that he had his reasons.
“Jack,” Alexa said, “I’ll be back tomorrow to see how things are going.”
“When will we know something,” Erica asked Jack.
“When he wakes up or when he stops breathing,” Jack answered.
“That’s kind of grim, isn’t it,” she asked.
Jack only shrugged his shoulders. That was the truth of it. There was no halfway from this point forward. Either Mark would wake up a vampire, or he would die trying to become one.
Three days passed and Mark was still changing. His fists would clutch and his body would tense every few minutes. The pain was excruciating. Every vampire knew what it felt like to change from a human into a vampire. Except, of course, Lily.
“Seems ironic that the one vampire that never had to make the change is the one vampire that may end up being the only one that can change them. It would save us from extinction,” Vincent told Jack.
“For her sake, I hope you’re right,” Jack said.
Three hours into the fifth day Mark opened his eyes.
Jack called Lily immediately.
“Lily, it worked. Five days and three hours,” was all he said.
Lily was nearly in tears when Shay noticed something was wrong.
“What is it?” Shay asked.
“Mark’s awake.”
“Now what,” Shay asked.
“Now, he gets to learn how to be a vampire.”
Lily, Shay and Onyx rode the elevator down to the lab where Mark was being kept. Mark was a big man and should he go into a rage, he could cause a lot of damage within the coven. So he would stay in the sub-basement behind heavy doors and large wolves until it was known that he could control his hunger and his temper. It was common practice for all new vampires. He would be there for a few days although it usually took three to four weeks for the new vamps to learn how to fully control their teeth and claws. Hunger and temper control depended on the individual.
When Lily walked into Mark’s room he ran straight at her. Onyx and two wolves were on their feet in a flash and blocked his path. Mark stopped cold in his tracks and held up his hands, palms out.
“I just want to hug her, I promise,” he said.
Raven and Venom walked back to their place on each side of the door. But Onyx wouldn’t move from in front of Lily and Shay.
“It’s OK, Onyx,” Lily said and patted him on the shoulder.
He looked at Lily then Mark and then stepped aside. Mark gave Lily a hug so tight that it almost hurt.
“Mark, I can’t breathe,” Lily gasped.
“Oh, sorry,” he said and let go. “Thank you, Lily.”
Lily only smiled and looked over to Jack.
“What?” Jack asked when he realized Lily was looking at him.
“How did you know?” Lily asked.
“You have strong blood, Lily. Pure blood. But we still want to figure out how to make the transformation period shorter. Mark, here, is a young, strong man and had been told what the change was like all his life. He knew almost what to expect. Shay, for example, probably wouldn’t last five days. The transformation used to take two to three days. That’s what Vincent and Alexa experienced. I was a little weaker than them, older, and it took a little longer. But you never forget the pain of the change. No matter how long ago it happened. You’re lucky, Lily, you’ll never have to go through that,” Jack rambled on as he was known for doing. “Your blood cut the time in half from what it had been. Shay I would like to test your blood some more. I still can’t quite pin-point what is so special about it and why it healed Lily.”
“OK, Doc,” Shay said, trying to interrupt his rant. “Do you want it now?”
“Sure,” he said smiling. “Let’s go to my lab.”
Lily, Shay and Onyx followed McGoo down the hall. He took some more of Shay’s blood and took more of Lily’s since she was already there.
On the other side of the city, the sun was setting low in the sky. Long shadows and bright sun made it hard to see toward the west. But Titian, Rader and Arius were on Eric’s trail. The three vampire trackers were told by Vincent to find Eric and bring him back to the coven. Vincent was serious this time and Alexa wasn’t stopping him. He was done with Eric’s games. The trackers had seen Eric duck into an alleyway up ahead wearing a black hoodie and black pants. When the trackers reached the alley, Eric was ready for them.
Five vampire friends of Eric’s, all wearing the same clothes as Eric, came out of the shadows cast by the tall buildings. Eric gave a signal and his friends attacked the trackers. Steel rebar and chains swung in every direction. They were outnumbered, so the only thing the trackers could do, was run. But Eric had one more trick up his sleeve. He sent two wolves after the trackers. Two of them were able to escape the much faster wolves, but Arius was caught. The wolves ripped him to pieces before Rader and Titian had a chance to get back to him.
The trackers phoned the news to Vincent. He was furious.
“If you get the chance, kill him,” Vincent told them.
Eric listened to the phone call hidden between two parked cars. He knew he was on the assassins’ list now.
Back at the coven, Jack was back in the lab testing blood. He was looking at a sample of Shay’s blood when he had decided to walk away for a day and let his mind clear. He had been looking at these same samples for hours. He was at a loss. Under the electron microscope, he had thought he caught a glimpse of the virus in Shay’s blood. He searched the image again but saw no virus. He gathered up the samples to throw them in the trash when one of the corners pricked his finger. The surprise caused him to drop all of them on the counter. The tiny glass slides broke as they landed and the blood mixed together.
“Shit,” Jack spat.
He almost just swept the mess into the trash can when he wondered what they would look like under the microscope. He took a dropper from the drawer, plunged a little of the mixed samples then dabbed it onto a few slides then slid them into the electron microscope. He had to look twice at what he was seeing. The blood wasn’t attacking each other. He knew this couldn’t be right. But maybe the blood didn’t mix after all.
Normally, when human blood and vampire blood are mixed, the vampire blood will quickly begin to overtake the human blood. The virus begins to basically ‘eat’ the red blood cells of the human blood. Once fed, they begin to multiply into mostly stem cells. It’s the stem cells that immediately begin to heal humans that have been given blood, but not enough to overtake their own and start the change. But this wasn’t happening. He pulled another couple of slides out of the drawer and went to get fresh samples. He put a drop of Shay’s blood then three drops of Lily’s blood. In the electron microscope, he saw the same thing. They weren’t fighting one another. He couldn’t understand why. What was so different about Shay’s blood? Lily’s blood should be attacking.
Jack had another idea. He went to his refrigerator and searched through his samples until he found human blood. Not feeder blood, but blood from a regular human. He put a drop on a slide and looked. It looked like Shay’s blood. Except for the extra white blood cells. He removed the slide and placed a drop of Lily’s blood with it. Under the microscope is was doing what it should, only faster than McGoo was used to seeing.
Then he had a thought. He took a fresh slide, put a drop of human blood then a drop of Shay’s blood. Nothing. He thought for a moment. He took the slide with human and Shay’s blood and dropped on a sample of Lily’s blood.
Jack looked at the slide, then looked at the slide again. Under the microscope he could see the virus begin
to consume the human blood. But in this sample, the vampire blood also began to merge with the white blood cells.
“What the hell?” Jack mumbled.
He made another sample. Human blood, Shay’s blood, Lily’s blood. Same result. Then he dropped each onto the slide but left them separated. Once under the microscope he used a needle to combine Shay’s blood with the human blood. Nothing. Then he added in Lily’s blood.
McGoo watched as the vampire blood began eat the red blood cells of the human blood. Which was normal. But he also watched as the vampire blood merged with the white blood cells, but it appeared to only be happening on the end with Shay’s blood. He watched as the merged white blood cells split. They were never consumed by the vampire blood.
“Holy shit!” McGoo yelled. “Her blood is already at the halfway point! No need to be remade into completely new cells. It simply picks up where it left off.”
Jack thought about the gravity of his discovery. He determined that with Shay’s blood added first, it would cause the change to happen faster. The added white blood cells in Shay’s blood had a special purpose. To initiate the change and speed the process. He tested the three blood types again and again. If Shay’s blood was added to human blood, it skipped a step in the process. He couldn’t wait to test it on a human.
Jack went directly to Vincent and told him what he had found.
“This is it, Vince! This is the answer we didn’t even know we were looking for,” Jack began. “Shay’s blood is the catalyst we’ve needed all along. I didn’t even know it existed! But her blood is like a missing piece in the bloodlines. It’s not completely human but it’s not vampire. It’s like pre-vampire blood. It’s almost like it prepares the human blood for transformation.”
“How?” Vince asked.
“How what?”
“How is Shay’s blood different? What is she?”
“She’s a regular human, Vince. Her blood is just special.”
“How do you know that?” Vince questioned.
“I’ve examined her from head to toe. She’s human,” Jack continued. “Lily’s blood cuts the change down to just over five days. With Shay’s blood, we may be able to get that down to two to three days. Almost any human could survive that.”
“But what about Shay?” Vince asked. “What happens when Lily wants to change Shay? You know that day is coming.”
Jack took a deep breath and thought for a moment. “Well, we can’t change Shay. If she becomes a vampire she loses the special blood. Then what? Maybe… Maybe I can synthesize her blood. Maybe I can replicate the special white blood cells. But they look the same. Maybe they’re all the special cell.”
Jack continued to ramble on, “If I could isolate the special cells maybe I can get them to divide on their own. Create a synthetic plasma and use white blood cells from humans or even feeders.”
He continued talking as he left Vincent’s apartment. He was still talking, to himself, when he rode the elevator all the way from the penthouse to the sub-basement. Brian, the feeder and Eric’s personal lackey, got on the elevator at the fifty second floor. McGoo acknowledged that he gotten on but didn’t stop talking. Brian listened as they rode.
“What makes Shay’s blood special?” Jack asked rhetorically. “The white blood cells. The white blood cells could be harvested and made to replicate themselves maybe with the help of an outside source, like the vampire virus. If I can isolate the white blood cells, introduce the virus and let the virus reproduce the cells. But would the new cells contain DNA from the virus? Probably. Would that interfere with the changing process? Would it still shorten the process to less than five days?”
The elevator door opened at the lobby level and Brian stepped out. He immediately called Eric.
“What?” Eric snapped.
“Eric, I just heard that Shay’s blood is special. It will change humans to vampires in less than five days,” Brian told him.
“How do you know that?”
“I just heard Jack talking in the elevator.”
“Talking to who,” Eric asked.
“Whom,” Brian corrected.
“Whatever,” Eric quipped.
“He was talking to himself.”
“Shay huh? Find out more and get back to me,” Eric told then hung up before Brian could say anything else.
Brian forgot about what he was doing and went to the sub-basement. He and Jack had always gotten along in the past, maybe he could get McGoo to tell him more. He rode the elevator down to the sub-basement and walked through the white tiled hallways. It was bright and reminded Brian of an old hospital. He walked past the lab that Mark was in and stopped. The doors were open and Mark was sitting on a hospital bed. He was looking at his hands with stern concentration. Veins protruded from Mark’s forehead as he tried to expose his claws. Brian also saw the two wolves inside the door. Brian figured out quickly that Mark was being guarded because he was a new vampire. Brian also knew that there hadn’t been a new vampire in the coven in over twenty years. The last was in Atlanta and it had been a miracle he even survived.
Brian walked into McGoo’s lab and knocked on the opened door to get his attention.
“Hello, McGoo,” he said.
“Hi Brian, what can I do for you?”
“Just wondering what was going on down here. Rumor has it there’s a new vampire.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Jack replied but offered no more information.
“Is there anything I can help you with down here?” Brian asked.
“No, but thank you,” McGoo said, looking back into his microscope.
Brian figured that he wouldn’t press the issue. So he decided he’d go talk to the new vampire. He walked to Mark’s room and knocked on the open door. Mark looked up from his hand and smiled.
“You’re human,” Mark said smiling, “I can smell that you’re human.”
The wolves stood when Mark stood.
Venom walked over to Brian and sniffed. He then turned around and went to his spot beside the opened door.
“How are you adjusting to being a vampire?” Brian asked.
Mark looked down at his hand and the vein in his forehead popped out again. The tips of his claws protruded from under his fingernails then disappeared.
“I’m getting there,” Mark smiled. “It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
“I bet,” Brain said halfheartedly. “When did Vincent change you?”
“He didn’t,” Mark answered.
Brian was confused. The only vampire that had ever changed anyone into a vampire in his lifetime, was Vincent. Brian had been with the coven for over a century, and he only knew of a few humans that had been changed. He also knew a lot that had died trying.
“It wasn’t Vincent’s blood that changed you?” Brian asked.
“No,” Mark said without offering anything else.
“Whose blood was used? Dr. McGregor’s?”
“Nope.”
“Whose blood did they use?”
“Lily’s,” Mark said without looking up from his hands. He had put both in his lap and was still trying to expose his claws.
Brian was shocked. Lily’s blood was strong enough to make vampires. He thought of all of the possibilities for Eric. He would rule the Underground. Being able to make vampires would make Eric a god in the circles he ran in. Mark pulled his phone out of his pocket and was calling Eric before he was even out the door but there was no signal in the basement. So when he reached the lobby he tried again.
“What now, Brian?” Eric groaned.
“Eric, Lily’s blood can make vampires. There’s a new vampire in McGoo’s lab right now and he’s not even a few days old. And there’s no way it could’ve taken more than six days to change him, because I was down here a week ago.”
“Wait slow down,” Eric said. “It sounded like you said Lily can make vampires.”
“That’s right,” Brian nearly yelled, then looked around to make sure no one was listeni
ng.
Eric didn’t need to hear anymore. Lily could make vampires. Which meant that if he had Lily, he could make vampires. He could raise the numbers of the vampire population in the Underground. No longer would it depend on an Elder. He could make anyone a vampire. He was rolling around the enormity of this discovery.
Eric went straight to the Underground from his new apartment in the city. On the way, he made a number of phone calls to his vampire friends. He found a storefront that led him down. When he arrived at Ellen’s Fight House, some of his friends were already waiting for him.
“Gather around boys!” He announced. “How would you like to rule the vampires?”
The Underground vs The Coven
McGoo was busy trying to recreate Shay’s blood in his lab. He had isolated the white blood cells from Shay’s blood and was scanning them with an electron microscope to see what, if anything, was different from normal human white blood cells. At a magnification of one thousand times, he finally noticed the tiny red dots on Shay’s cells. The normal white blood cell usually looks a little like a bumpy white snowball. On Shay’s, there were the occasional tiny red dots on the surface of the cell.
After days of studying the blood, McGoo finally figured out that the specialized white blood cells didn’t attack the vampire virus. It was as if the virus had already turned off the search and destroy order for the cell. It was only the vampire virus that the cell ignored. It acted normal toward all other contaminants that McGoo introduced.
So was Shay exposed to the vampire virus? How? And how did she manage to rid her body of it? McGoo wondered.
How was Shay’s blood already prepared to be turned into a vampire? She wasn’t a vampire nor had she any traits of a vampire. It was as if someone attempted to change her and then somehow stopped. She’s not a vampire and she’s not dead. So how did this happen? McGoo had to talk to Shay.
He rode the elevator to the fifty sixth floor and knocked on Shay’s door. Lily’s door opened.
“McGoo?” Lily called from behind him.