Beauty and the Beast (12 page)

My entire professional life has been devoted to the study of the Tandins. They are my dearest and most beloved friends. Even though my findings cannot be revealed at this time to an ignorant destructive world, I am praying that enlightenment will one day dawn, and that my research will be met with appreciation for the good that could be done with it.

My ancestors are from Romania, and my family has a long tradition of studying the sciences. I myself am a medical doctor, but because of my family’s relationship with the Tandins, I chose to do genetic research instead of practicing medicine. My family helped to smuggle many of the Tandins limng in the tunnels and caves under New York City, from Romania, on ships they booked passage on nearly two hundred years ago. Geologists and archaeologists in my family had discovered the tunnels and caves while exploring here, and they knew they would make a safer home for our Tandin friends still limng in

Romania.

In Romania these people were often mistaken for vampires or werewolves because of their appearance. This made them targets for an unenlightened public bent on their destruction. They did have some human friends, though, and my family was privileged to be among those. In Romania, these people were called “Leo Tandrul Ins,” the Romanian words for “Gentle Lion Man. ” They shortened this to “Tandins” when they came to America. In Romania the Tandins would have been hunted to extinction. Since the word “Tandin” has absolutely no meaning in Romanian, they effectively left behind the country that had been more than unkind to them, as well as their language.

My research into their genetic makeup has revealed that the Tandins’ DNA is human with additional markers. They are simply an evolutionary leap forward with enhanced strength, speed, and endurance. They also have an advanced immune system and are rarely ill. These people are highly intelligent with superior mind control. The Tandins employ both telepathic and empathic powers which have developed to an advanced degree over the centuries. They even possess the ability to heal those within their community group with their combined mental strength.

The Tandins are very cultured and gentle but fiercely protective of anyone within their circle of family and friends. When provoked, their vocal cords can emit a terrifying roar that is as fierce sounding as any wild lion. They have often

found that roar to be enough to frighten enemies away without resorting to violence. Their senses are equally heightened. They possess powerful eyesight, especially in the dark, similar to felines, keen hearing, and a sense of smell equivalent to canines. Unlike wild cats or even normal humans, though, they require very little sleep. Their appearance, including extra body and facial hair on the men, enlarged canine teeth in both the upper and lower jaws of the men, and daintier elongated canine fangs only in the upper jaws of the women, along with majestic lionlike facial features and flowing manes of head hair, makes it impossible for the Tandins to blend in with regular humans.

In order to keep these wonderful people safe from the world above, I had a secret entrance to the tunnels installed by the Tandins in this basement. That has been my doorway to their world. Somehow, though, their world has been breached by great evil, and I am the one responsible for the tragedy that has occurred. It breaks my heart to chronicle these events. Unfortunately, it is all I can do. I cannot bring my sons to justice for what they have done without bringing further danger into the Tandins’ world. All I can do to take responsibility for my part in this is to explain what has happened. Maybe someday someone else can help to make things right.

On one of my trips to visit my family in Romania, I found Gabriel and Adrian living in deplorable conditions with a drunken and abusive father. Gabriel was 7 and

Adrian was 17. I stopped this horrible man in the act of beating the boys right out in the streets. He accepted a large sum of money I paid him to turn the brothers over to me. I then brought them here with me to America, legally adopted them, and took care of and educated them. In spite of all of the love and attention I lavished on them, they both turned out completely evil. I guess they had just been too heavily influenced by their biological father before I found them.

Somehow Adrian became aware of the research I was doing. I still don’t know how. He became obsessed with kidnapping the offspring of the Tandins and then controlling these advanced people for his own power-hungry purposes. I kept the location of the Tandins’ home a secret, so he had to watch and wait for his opportunity, and somehow he managed to find one. What is even more heartbreaking is that he dragged his little brother, Gabriel, along with him into this diabolical plot.

On January 12
^th
, when Gabriel was ten and Adrian was twenty, events occurred which shook the Tandins’ world to the core, and they devastated me. Adrian, even at his young age, had managed to use his generous allowance to build up a criminal empire. He took Gabriel and the thugs he hired and attempted to capture Loren, a normal human who married a Tandin named Gaylin, together with their baby Vincent, at Loren’s parents’ home in the city above.

The Tandins here in America have a mixed community

of Tandins and normal humans with whom they live symbiotically. It is quite common for them to intermarry. In this case, Gaylin and his younger brother, Tanimus, both Tandins, married human identical twin sisters, Loren and Letha. At the time this crime occurred, Tanimus and Letha didn’t have any children. Gaylin and Loren had fraternal twins, a baby boy named Vincent and a baby girl named Elisia. The babies were about five months old and very tiny but very smart. They had already begun to talk.

Loren had taken Vincent into the home’s solarium to look at the flowers, and Gaylin had Vincent’s twin sister, Elisia, in another part of the house. Gaylin’s telepathic connection to Loren alerted him to the danger she was in when the men broke in and attempted to kidnap her with the baby. Gaylin gave Elisia to his sister-in-law, Letha, and then he ran through the house to save his wife and son. When Gaylin attacked the men, they were momentarily distracted, so Loren escaped from their grasp and ran out into the city with Vincent. Before the men shot and killed Gaylin, he contacted his brother, Tanimus, by telepathy and passed Loren’s thoughts to him, so he could look for Loren and Vincent. Tanimus was still in the tunnels on his way to the house.

Tanimus was unable to save either Gaylin or Loren. When he got to his brother, Gaylin was already dead. By the time he found Loren, she had been strangled to death by Adrian, because she wouldn’t reveal where she had put Vincent. She had shown Tanimus by telepathy where she

had left Vincent, and Tanimus assures me that he found someone telepathically to rescue the baby, but Vincent is lost to his family. Tanimus also told me that they don’t dare try to retrieve Vincent or it could endanger both the baby and the people who have him. Tanimus is sure that Vincent is safe with the people he is with. The Tandins have since closed down the home where the security breach occurred.

Tanimus did say that he became very concerned about his nephew’s welfare when he felt him become sick and he wondered if he would have to risk going to him. Vincent’s telepathic link with his parents had been suddenly severed by their violent deaths and the baby became gravely ill as a result of that loss. However, Vincent soon made an empathic connection with his new family and recovered. Tanimus is aware of where he is and that he is safe, so he feels it is better for Vincent and his new family to not interfere, especially with Adrian continuing his maniacal search for Vincent.

I can’t understand how an act of kindness could go so terribly wrong. My family had three identical heirloom opal rings, set in twenty-four carat gold, passed down for generations through my family. In fact, they are now five-hundred-fifty years old. They are each inscribed inside with the Latin words, “Verum mos paro vos solvo.” The English translation is “The truth will set you free.” They were appropriate for a family of scientists and scholars. I wear one, and I gave the other two to my adoptive sons,

and they have made a mockery of them with their diabolical behavior.

Four years after Vincent was lost and his parents killed, Gabriel followed in his brother’s misguided footsteps and became a killer himself. I should have at least tried to interfere when I noticed his obsessive behavior toward my housekeeper’s daughter. However, she was sixteen and Gabriel was only fourteen. I thought that she would rebuff him, and it would pass. Once again, I was very naive in my thinking. I have no doubt that she seduced him, but afterwards he strangled her to death. His excuse was that she was so perfect, that he had to kill her to keep her perfect and to prove how much he loved her. Clearly he is insane. I have had him committed to Summer Meadows Psychiatric Hospital in Queens. I only hope that their treatment program might help him.

Diana rechecked all of the journals on the desk, but it was clear this was the last entry Dr. Vlas ever made to the volumes in this room. Now the other journals she had perused made more sense. They had numerous references to a “Tandin” or the “Tandins,” but she had just thought that “Tandin” was a family surname, not a new species of people. “Vincent isn’t alone! He needs to know

this. What happened to you, Dr. Vlas?” She thought.

Diana was jolted out of her thoughts when she heard the floorboards overhead creaking and then the sound of footsteps on the stairs over the office door. She quickly turned out the light and sat in darkness until someone opened the door and turned on the light in the office.

Then she realized that the picture of Alice with the white rabbit was more than just the remote sensor holder. It was just a picture to those in the office, but for her it was also a window through which she could see everything going on in the office outside the secret room.

She watched the two men walk toward the desk and her, and she thought, “So, it’s one of Joe’s cockroaches!” The younger man was Steve Palmer, one of her escorts from that morning. He was the one who had asked her if she had found anything. The other man looked like an older version of Gabriel, with thin angular features and cold dead eyes. He was also wearing one of the opal rings. “This must be Adrian. He looks even more evil than Gabriel did, if that’s possible, and a lot more dangerous because he probably isn’t insane!” Diana thought.

Adrian spoke in a commanding tone, “Now, give me the report on Diana Bennett.”

Steve Palmer answered him. “She told us she didn’t find anything, but I don’t know where she is now. She isn’t at her apartment, and she’s not at the diner where we left her. She’s not one to give up easily on an assignment.

I have a feeling shell keep snooping around.”

Diana was troubled by what she was hearing and thought, “That means they have my apartment under surveillance. I’m not going to be able to use the manhole entrance to Father’s world behind my building until this is all over with.”

“Keep your people on her. Let me know as soon as you know where she is, and I want to know about everything she does.” Adrian then dismissed Steve Palmer and told him to send Jonathan Pope in to see him. Adrian walked around the desk and sat down in the chair. After a few minutes the man who had kidnapped Diana, blindfolded her, and had then taken her to Gabriel to see Vincent’s sick child came into the room. He was quite tall with a burly build, but was also an insipid, soft looking man with dark-brown hair, a carefully trimmed mustache, and manicured hands. Diana couldn’t imagine that he had ever done even five minutes worth of manual labor in his life.

Diana thought, “I see Adrian is putting the band back together again.”

Jonathan Pope stepped up to the desk and asked,

“You wanted to see me, Sir?”

Adrian responded drily, “Sit down, Pope. I want to go over the events the way my brother related them to me, and make sure that is what really happened here. Gabriel was brilliant, but he was also nuts! He was my brother, though.”

Jonathan Pope sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. “What did Gabriel tell you, Sir?”

Adrian began, “He told me that he accidentally stumbled upon a chance to complete a project I started thirty-five years ago. Our old man was a research geneticist who was studying creatures living under New York City. They were advanced humans with incredible abilities, but they didn’t look human. To my father they were family. To me they were an opportunity.

“Gabriel said he had to take steps when an investigative lawyer in the District Attorney’s office in Manhattan managed to gain access to one of his lawyer’s little-black-notebooks which had sensitive information in it. He had control of the former District Attorney and ordered him to have this woman kidnapped, so he could find out what she knew and how far that knowledge had gone. He had a doctor on his payroll shooting her full of truth serum to no avail. She wouldn’t reveal anything.

“Gabriel went on to tell me that it turned out that this woman was pregnant, and the doctor feared that she would lose her baby if he continued shooting her full of drugs. Gabriel didn’t care about that until the baby’s father came and attempted to rescue her. Gabriel told me he couldn’t believe his good fortune in getting his hands on the mate of the very baby we tried to capture thirty-five years ago. After that, he didn’t care at all about what she knew; he just wanted her child. I can’t believe Gabriel was foolish enough to send Snow to try to kill the baby’s father. Frankly, I’m surprised that Snow was willing to try

that. Snow was always resentful of Gabriel’s madness after what happened when I sent him to collect Gabriel from the insane asylum in Queens that my father sent him to.”

Pope spoke up at that point. “What happened, Sir?”

Adrian continued his story. “It took me an entire year to figure out who I could bribe at that psychiatric facility, so Gabriel was fifteen when I finally got him out of there and had Snow bring him home. What does Gabriel do as soon as he gets home? He strangles our father to death in his sleep! That made a whole new mess to clean up. I gave Snow our father’s opal ring and a large sum of money to help us cover up what happened, but something went wrong with that plan. Snow ended up being charged with our father’s murder. He was sentenced and put into prison. Snow was a skilled assassin, and it was really ironic that he ended up being convicted of the one murder he didn’t commit! Anyway, it took me more than two years to come up with a technicality to have his conviction overturned, and he never forgave Gabriel for being crazy enough to kill the old man. That is the one murder we have committed that I almost feel sorry about. I wouldn’t have hurt the old man. We never could have become this powerful if he hadn’t taken us away from that drunken devil in Romania!