Chapter Twenty-Four
Hours later Jessie’s mind, once so cluttered with worry after worry for Joshua, sadness about her father, and miserable longing for her mother, now cleared. Her thoughts were focused, centered, but not wholly optimistic.
The feeling that something might happen, something might be waiting for her loomed. It was not an unfamiliar feeling. She’d had this exact feeling for many years while she cared for her father and then raised Joshie alone.
But now they were both gone so this worry should have gone with them. She could not put her finger on what the worry was, but she would not ruin the moment focusing on something not wonderful. Not this time.
She lay in Ricard’s arms, her head resting on his chest. Her body was tired, possibly, she considered, from Ricard’s bite. “That’s some bite you’ve got, Ricard.”
“Are you sore here?” His hand touched her neck.
“No.”
He’d fed from her when they made love, and the sensation of his mouth on her neck as he entered her body was so intense she almost couldn’t remember the experience.
An overwhelming wave of pleasure unleashed and her mind and body spiraled upward.
“Here?” He rolled them to the side, pulling the sheet down from her body, and lowering his mouth to her breast. “I tried to be very gentle,” he mumbled against her skin. “But you are irresistible.”
She laughed. “Were you showing off?” She’d have made some attempt to wiggle away, but every single muscle had turned to goo.
The first orgasm would have been plenty, the following six were beyond any woman’s wildest dreams.
He kissed her mouth, then shook his head, wearing the most wickedly sexy grin she’d ever seen. “This is how it will be every night. One of the many benefits to being mates.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks flushed. “I’m going to need a gym membership to keep up.”
Once again he shook his head and pulled her beneath him. “You’ll get your workout right here.”
It was a couple hours later before they entered the lab, having had one more sprint through the bed sheets, a shower, and breakfast for Jessie. But when they finally arrived, the lab looked very different.
The animals had been cordoned off, some lay curled up in their crates. The room had gone from the wild kingdom to a true science lab. Across each table were several tubes and beakers, some bubbling from the Bunsen burners working below them.
Scales and microscopes sat on every table. Hundreds of slides were stacked in small boxes. The white boards were covered with equations, theories, and hypotheses.
Four people debated a topic so fiercely that voices rose above the sounds of the bubbling and hissing lab equipment and the loudly snoring Labrador lying on a bed under a corner desk.
“Don’t tell me no. It has to be,” a very pretty blonde woman said.
“Lawrie, you’re being—”
“What? What am I being, Reade?” The woman glared up at the man.
Serge and the other man looked at each other. Neither seemed brave enough to say a word.
“You’re being difficult, thick-headed, and a little bit crazy. That’s what you’re being.” The man said the words with conviction, though Jessie did not miss the fact he stepped back from the woman when he spoke.
“What did you say?” The blonde prowled toward him. “Do you want to say that again?”
Jessie stepped back, not having any desire to get within ten feet of another fight. Ricard’s arm snaked around her waist and he dipped his head to her ear. “Do not worry, love. They do this all the time. Lawrie and Reade are mates. They’ll never hurt each other.”
“Though, I do have to watch out for her. She has a very mean right hook and a wicked undercut.” The man lurched forward, grabbed the woman by her wrist and spun her around to dip backward before planting a kiss on her lips. “And an even deadlier kiss.”
“You couldn’t tell me we had company?” She pulled herself up and turned toward Jessie. “I’m Lawrie Tyrone. You must be Jessica.” Walking toward them, she extended her hand. “We’ve heard so much about you, and I’ve been studying your blood samples and Joshua’s. I feel like we already know each other.”
“Tyrone? Lawrence’s missing daughter?” Dead was more the assumed adjective.
Until her father’s dying day he talked about little Lawrie Tyrone and Lawrence and how they’d both perished in the suspicious Panthera fire that destroyed Central City.
Lawrie nodded. “I’m so very sorry about your brother and your parents.”
Jessie shook her hand. “You’re not dead.”
“No, not quite.” Lawrie smiled.
“Thankfully so.” Reade appeared at her side. “Reade Hayes, the mad scientist’s mate.”
“I am not a mad scientist. That was Uncle Raymond’s job. I’m the daring niece who, with the help of her capable colleagues will take that bastard’s legacy down.” She grinned.
In disbelief Jessie stared at the beautiful, young woman she had long believed to be dead.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Reade said.
“You do!” Jessie stepped backward and nearly knocked Ricard over. “Is that because we’re mated? I thought no one would do that.”
“Oh, no. That’s just a phrase. I don’t actually know what you’re thinking. I was joking.” Reade put his hands up in a surrender motion. “I meant more like you’re probably thinking what any normal person would think. She does not have any ego issues—even after having been locked away from the world for twenty years and treated like she was useless.”
Reade looked at Ricard. “I am not doing anything untoward to your mate. You know that, right?”
“Yes, of course. But she’s still learning this new life.” Ricard kissed Jessie’s cheek. “No one can read your mind. Only when you are compelled to answer questions or tell us something will your thoughts be shared, and again, that will only happen in relation to understanding what happened to Joshua and you.”
The flare of his angst at the idea was nearly controlled, a far improvement.
“Good evening, Jessie. I don’t suppose you remember me. We haven’t seen each other in many years,” the older man standing beside Serge said.
His face was scarred and he moved slowly with an awkward lumber that belied a serious leg and back injury. She recalled her parents talking about what had happened to him during the fire.
“Yes, yes, I do remember you, Mr. Pontes.” Jessie crossed the room to keep him from attempting to come to her. “It’s been so long since our last encounter, since before Dad died.” She hugged the man who’d many times been to her house with his family for dinner.
In the very early years, before the fire, there had been many family functions at Panthera or at homes of Panthera employees. Jessie had played with the Pontes children. In fact, she still had old pictures of herself and Joshua with Joao’s children and Lawrie.
“I’m sorry about Joshua, and your parents.” He kissed her cheek. “All of them were great losses.”
Jessie nodded, unable to answer. Finally, she had a connection to her past, one that had positive meaning. Mr. Pontes knew them and remembered the ones she loved.
“We have all suffered at the hands of Raymond Tyrone.” He touched her cheek. “My Aurelia is now a vampire, made so to save her life from Tyrone’s experiment.”
“Pretty Aurelia. I saw her yesterday and couldn’t figure out how I knew her.” Jessie shook her head, now making the connection from earlier. “How could I forget?”
“You haven’t exactly had the easiest couple nights,” Ricard said.
“Ah, she told me. She’s happy to have a ‘blast from the past.’” He chuckled. “My daughter. Still pretty. But not human.” He shrugged. “This is the hand life has dealt us. Tyrone is the reason we must push forward to find a cure.”
Jessie turned to find Lawrie. “What have you learned from studying Joshua’s blood?”
“Well, very interesting. We had thought Joshua might be an experiment. You know with all the diseases they told you he had it was easy to assume they kept giving him different forms of the serum to see if they could find the right formula.” Lawrie walked to the white board where someone had circled a calculation repeatedly. “But I’m convinced they were giving him serums to stop whatever was happening.”
Ricard entered the lab from his office, wearing his lab coat and carrying one for Jessie. “I believe they had given him the initial dose of serum in utero.”
“Ah, but some of us think it was even before then,” Reade said and pointed to another equation.
Lawrie narrowed an eye at him.
“Are you shaking your head because you don’t believe your uncle would do something so heinous or because it wasn’t your idea?” Reade narrowed his eyes toward Lawrie.
Jessie noted the pair’s eyes. They were the most dazzling blue and matched perfectly. She’d never seen anything like them and couldn’t believe she was seeing two sets of them.
“I have no doubts of the depths Raymond went to be the most heinous human standing. However, I find it a challenge to conceive of what that means,” Lawrie said.
Slipping her hands into the lab coat, Jessie studied the equations on the board. She considered all that she remembered of Joshua’s early years and what her mother told her of the birth.
“He was silent when he was born, not one cry, not for several days.” Jessie approached the board with the list of symptoms for each member of her family.
She wrote down all the things she remembered her mother telling her about when she was pregnant. The fatigue, excruciating abdominal pain, the way the baby did not move, and the intense cravings for meat.
“I remember her snapping at Dad for cooking the meat too much.” The thought that her mother might have craved blood during her pregnancy was revolting.
Mr. Pontes hobbled closer. “I have some information that…” He scratched his chin and sighed. “It’s sensitive and will be uncomfortable, but may be pertinent.” Patting Jessie on the back, he reached for another marker.
In perfectly neat penmanship he wrote, insatiable libido prior to pregnancy. “Your father reported being exhausted and incapable of…”
Jessie closed her eyes and shook her head. “Let’s not add any more detail around that. Maybe we can just know she wanted to make a baby.” She tried not to think of her parents in this concept. Some things a girl simply did not need to know.
“Ah-ha,” both Lawrie and Reade said, grabbed markers, furiously scribbling information on the board. They moved in the exact same way.
That’s when Jessie began wondering if mates took on each other’s traits. She glanced over at Ricard.
“There’s a reason they’re like that.” Ricard poured a cup of coffee, added a splash of cream, and half a teaspoon of sugar. “For the record I’m not reading your mind either, but I did notice the look of confusion on your face.” He handed the coffee to Jessie. “Lawrie has been bound to Reade since she was a small infant who accidentally got into her father’s supply of vampire blood. During that accidental access she consumed Reade’s blood. My theory is that because she was so young and all her formative years were ahead of her, the blood caused her to change.”
“How do you know I’m the one who changed? The answer is you don’t,” Lawrie said, still feverishly writing.
“We do because I’m more than a hundred years older than you,” Reade said, also writing.
“Done.” She put down her marker seconds before Reade. “Try to keep up old man.”
“I let you win, like I do every night.”
“Right.” Lawrie shook her head. “What we do know is that up to this point, and even as we speak, people continue to fall pray to Panthera’s Revenant Juice. Rollins continues to infect people, but no one survives, thus he is not getting the desired outcome.”
“A manmade vampire army,” Reade said.
“Exactly.” Lawrie drew an arrow from the calculation marked A down to B. “However, Uncle Raymond was smarter or more devious than we thought. He had a second experiment running the entire time.”
“This one was a long term plan.” Reade walked to the board across the room where Ricard had earlier written out several equations and a theory about gestational infections. “Ricard, we think you’re dead on with this. Tyrone infected Joshua’s mother, manipulated her hormones to increase her drive to procreate, and then set his long-term goal in motion.”
Lawrie turned toward Serge. “What did you say last night about the sample from Joshua? You believed some component of it matched the ones taken from Aurelia the night after her transformation, right?”
“Yes, it seems Joshua’s cells were in a state of transforming. He was experiencing the metamorphosis from human to vampire at a very slow rate.” Serge pulled a series of slides from a box near a microscope, securing one in place to be viewed. “Where we change overnight, Joshua was taking decades to mature.”
“But how is it possible?” Jessie could not conceive of how something so complex, so hideous could have occurred to her mother and brother.
“That’s exactly what we need to understand,” Lawrie said.