Chapter Twenty-Six
Three nights later, in a room packed with more vampires than Jessie could have imagined, she sat between Ricard and Alice, waiting for the nightly briefing.
There was an excitement in the air she’d never felt, and having never been in this situation she couldn’t tell if it was simply the combined effects of being with so many vampires in such close quarters or if there was something getting them all riled up.
She noted the attire of most everyone in the room. They appeared suited for battle, wearing either black leather or black and gray fatigues, and carrying weaponry Jessie had never seen.
There were silver-bladed knives, long swords, automatic handguns and rifles, and belts of ammunition all strapped, slung or otherwise stashed with each warrior.
“What’s happening?” Jessie whispered to Ricard.
“After Serge explains what we’ve learned from your memories, Matt’s notes, and our experiments, most of The Guard will deploy into Central City with the intent to destroy every revenant they encounter. There will be no prisoners and no survivors from the Panthera experiments when the night is over.”
“Let’s get started,” Serge said, bringing the rowdy group to order and causing a near perfect silence to fall. “For those of you who have not met the newest member to our group, I’m pleased to introduce Jessica Stevens, Matt and Patricia’s daughter. It has been with Jessica’s generous sharing of her memories and her parents’ notes that we have been able to uncover the information to be shared this evening.”
Jessie felt several sets of eyes focus on her, which was so unnerving, she shivered, glancing up at Ricard.
“Apologies, love. But you will become accustomed to being with so many of us.” He squeezed her hand.
“Yeah. You totally get used to it and then you don’t even notice them,” Alice agreed, but added in a much louder voice, “Of course, if they were gentlemen, and a lady, they’d tone it down.”
With that the heavy vibe of vampire lightened.
“Thanks,” Jessie said.
“No problem,” Alice said, jerking her chin at a spiky blond-haired vampire across the room. Then she pointed with two fingers toward her eyes before jabbing them at him.
He smirked, then nodded at Jessie. “Hello Jessica.”
“Just ignore Garrison,” Alice said. “He’s a shit.”
“I can hear you,” the spiky-haired vampire said.
“Yeah, I know,” Alice said.
Serge cleared his throat. “As I was saying we’ve been able to unravel part of Raymond Tyrone’s web of deceit using information provided by the Stevens family.”
The lights dimmed against the wall and two slides, marked Patricia Stevens appeared. One, dated two years before Jessie’s birth and one, dated weeks before Patricia’s death.
“If not for Jessica, I’d have never known what powerful information we possessed,” Serge said.
These slides had been among thousands catalogued in The Guard’s laboratory. Before he left Panthera Matt had hidden them among the slides used to study cancer research and given them to Serge for safe keeping. After one of the memory retrieval sessions with Rafe the crew scoured the archives to find them.
Jessie’s heart raced as she observed the difference in the cells. Over the last few days she’d spent hours studying the slides with the scientists and learning what her mother had been forced to endure as an incubator to create Joshua.
“Patricia was infected with the vampire carcinosanguine cell. This is the cell that makes us what we are. It kills all human cells until the only cells left to exist are other carcinosanguine cells. At which point the mutating stops and the suspended life endures.” Serge used a laser pointer to show the normal human cell, then the cell being attacked and overtaken by the carcinosanguine cell, and finally the mature carcinosanguine cell.
“This process as it occurs for a human transforming to vampire takes roughly twenty-four hours, and as most of us know, is an agonizing experience.” Serge clicked a button, making the slide on the screen change. “For Patricia, this experience did not simply last one full cycle of the sun, but rather she endured its continued effects for not less than four years.”
The tenor in the room chilled as though everyone’s hearts stopped beating. Jessie felt a hand on her back and turned to see a giant, well-muscled vampire wearing sunglasses sitting behind her.
“I’m sorry about your mom. She was a great lady.”
Jessie watched him nod and struggle to swallow. She understood saying the words had taken great effort. “Thank you.”
“That’s Oz,” Alice leaned in and whispered. “I’m pretty sure everyone feels the same.”
“Patricia was used as an incubator for another, more powerful incubator.” At this point a picture of Joshua appeared on the screen. “Tyrone caused her body to maintain a pregnancy of a child he had helped to mutate from a healthy baby into a superbly strong carcinosanguine being, though not a true vampire.”
Audible gasps sounded and a few statements of “you’ve got to be kidding” and “how is it possible?” were said.
“That’s a great question,” Serge said, bringing up another slide. “We continue to research the answer to how Patricia was able to survive as long as she did in this condition. For certain we should assume in Tyrone’s absence Rollins will try this again on another woman of childbearing years, which will mean he will have another incubator like Joshua.”
The idea of another person suffering like either her mother or brother was gut wrenching. Jessie couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else living with all that Joshua had experienced in his short lifetime.
“From our research we suspect Joshua was not the source of revenant juice, but rather used as a filtration system prior to injecting the juice into the revenants we’ve seen to date,” Serge stated.
“Wait a minute.” A vampire across the room stood. “Are you implying that whatever was used to create those revenants passed through Joshua, but didn’t come from him? Where did it come from?”
Jessie saw the worried expression on Lawrie’s face when she looked at Reade. Reade looked at the Barones with the same anxiety flashing in his eyes. Both Gabe and Rafe flinched, their mates leaning in closer to them.
Serge flicked the slides, bringing up three more they’d compared countless times. “The original serum, infecting both Patricia and Joshua came from within our ranks.”