Cronin's Key II (13 page)

Cronin sat down beside Alec and handed him his coffee. “We were only gone for half a minute.”

“I didn’t feel it,” Alec murmured.

“You were sleeping deeply,” Cronin replied.

“Cronin didn’t fare so well,” Jodis said. “Even half a minute of your absence clawed at him.”

Alec leaned into him, almost subconsciously, and pressed his lips to Cronin’s shoulder in a silent apology for not being there. “You guys have been busy, though. What have we learned?”

“We can’t find any reference to stone reacting to a human,” Jodis said.

“Didn’t you say there were masons, people who control stone?” Alec sipped his coffee.

“
Vampires
who can control stone,” Eiji corrected. “Not humans, except you. Anyway, you didn’t control those statues. They reacted to your presence.”

“Which is also unprecedented,” Cronin said quietly. “As far as we can tell.”

“It has to be something to do with my blood, right?” Alec asked. He looked out the window to see it was getting dark, then glanced at his watch. “I’ve crossed so many time zones in the last twenty-four hours, I don’t even know what day it is anymore. I need to call Doctor Benavides.”

Cronin didn’t even have to look at anything. Like he had a world clock in his head, he said, “It is almost 6:00 p.m. here, almost 4:00 a.m. in New York.”

“So I can call in a few hours?” Alec asked. So much had happened since he’d had blood taken, it felt like a week not barely two days. Then he remembered something. “Eiji, you said you couldn’t see my ancestors. Have you read my Dad yet? Maybe he can show you something more?”

Eiji gave a nod. “Yes, when he awoke earlier, with the same results. I can see three generations back, then something blurs out. It is the same as yours. From what I can see”—he put his hand up and drew a vertical line in the air which Alec deduced was how he saw DNA in his head—“it goes straight, then on your paternal great-great grandmother’s side, it blurs.” He opened his hand as though the DNA in his mind’s eye vanished into nothing.

Alec didn’t know what to make of it. “My great-great grandmother?”

“Yes. My great grandmother,” Kole added with a shrug. “I never knew her. She died in childbirth having my grandfather, or so the family tree says. It wasn’t too uncommon back in those days.”

Alec shook his head vehemently and put his half-finished coffee on the side table. “It can’t be a coincidence.” He thought about what it all could mean and looked at Cronin. “Tell me, how does the whole incubus thing work?”

Cronin blinked in surprise, and when Alec looked at the others, he found all the vampires staring at him. “Incubus?”

“Well, it would explain a few things, yes?” Alec pressed on. “What if my great-great grandmother was impregnated by a vampire? The birth killed her, and the baby is born human but with special blood.”

“I don’t know,” Jodis started to say, as though it was too farfetched a notion.

Alec shook his head, even more convinced he was right. “You know, I’ve seen mummified vampires come back to life, I’ve seen terracotta statues move, and let’s not forget the terracotta horse that screamed, right? Because for me, that’s right up there with the evil sounds and horrid smell of rancid mummies on my will-have-nightmares-about-that-shit list. So really, the possibility that I’m a direct descendant of a vampire is probably the least-weirdest shit that’s happened to me.”

Cronin took Alec’s hand and squeezed it. “Alec, in theory, it is feasible.”

“But?”

“The child conceived by an incubus, if it survives gestation, is born a vampire,” Cronin said quietly. “Your grandfathers were not.”

“What if it was genetically redundant until me?” Alec asked. “What if the genes had to wait until my parents were the right genetic combination?” Then he stopped, because something else crept into his consciousness. A thought—no, a realization—that made his blood run cold.

“Alec, what is it?” Cronin asked, concerned.

“My mother,” he whispered. He looked at Kole. “Her death wasn’t random. Those two vampires, who were in my room when I was newborn, weren’t there to kill me, or take me, or whatever we assumed they were there for. They were there to kill my mother. She’s the missing link.”

Kole shook his head. His face was pale. “Alec, what are you saying?”

“Our blood is special,” Alec said, his voice gathered momentum. “We’ve always known that. It’s what we were told by your grandfather and his father, yes?”

Kole nodded.

“And if it is because we’re descendants of an incubus, we have vampire blood, but we’re human. What if my mother was the same? What if her bloodline was the same, a descendant of vampire? As a single bloodline, it’s nothing too extraordinary: we heal fast, we think fast, we have a photographic memory, but when two vampire bloodlines cross,” Alec said with a smile. He knew he was right. He’d never been so sure. “What we have, is a—”

“Human key,” Cronin finished.

Alec nodded. “Yes. When two vampire bloodlines cross, we have exactly that. We have me.”

Alec used every avenue he could think of, short of hacking into the NYPD computer system, to trace his mother’s family tree. Not that criminal histories would be much use from police records, but after genealogy sites came up empty, he needed to search outside the box.

All the while Eiji kept his hand on Alec’s arm—much to the disdain of Cronin—to see if he could channel into his maternal readings.

He found nothing past the third generation. It was as though his genetic slate had been wiped clean. He found nothing.

Alec had read and reread the family tree book Cronin had asked Kole to bring with him, and there in his mother’s cursive handwriting, were the names of his mother, her mother, and her mother. Then nothing.

And those names brought up nothing.

“They were Scottish born,” Alec said, thinking aloud. “Can we try old church records of the area, or census data?” He quickly typed in a search for census dates in Scotland. “There was a census in 1901. If we cross reference names—”

His words were cut off when his father, obviously upset, walked out of the room. With a heavy sigh, Alec pushed the laptop away and followed him. He found him in the small kitchenette starting to fix himself a pot of tea. “Dad?”

Kole left the teapot and shook his head. “I know it might explain something, Alec. But to what end? It doesn’t change anything.”

“Because then I’ll know,” Alec said. “Something isn’t right in my makeup, Dad. Something that makes my blood special, something that affects Cronin. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Kole faced his son. “Of course it does. But it doesn’t bring her back.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Alec said quietly. “But it could save my life. Or Cronin’s. And that’s something I can’t
not
do, Dad. If it could save Cronin, then I
have
to.”

Alec looked up to find Cronin standing in the doorway. He walked in slowly, giving Alec a small smile. “Your father is right,” Cronin said, taking Alec’s hand. “It changes nothing. Alec, I think your theory on joined vampire bloodlines has credence. It’s absurd and fantastical, but no more so than anything else we’ve encountered. It does explain a lot, and as much as we try to search for answers, there will be none. There’s never been a human key before, so to unearth memories of your mother will only serve to upset your father.”

Alec sighed again and looked to the floor. “Okay. I know. Sorry, Dad.”

Kole gave him a sad smile. “’S’okay Alec. But thank you, Cronin.”

“Here!” Eiji said, suddenly appearing in the kitchen with an old, old book open in his hand. “In the ninth century, there was a record of a small child in Jakarta who had no past line or future line when touched by a reader—” Eiji paused, and looked to Alec and Kole to explain. “—like me. I am called a reader. This child had no past, no future. His mother claimed to have been seduced and impregnated by an incubus!”

“His mother lived?” Cronin asked.

“Well,” Eiji made a face, “she survived the birth, yes. But they killed them both right then. They didn’t like the unknown apparently, but it was documented.”

“So you think my theory of my blood being descended of vampires could be correct?” Alec asked him.

Eiji shrugged and his smile became a grin. “I do.”

“It doesn’t explain why your mother was killed though,” Cronin said quietly.

“Maybe she knew. Maybe she was in on it somehow,” Alec offered. He looked at his father and tamped down any excitement. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s not important now if she knew or not. Dad’s right; it won’t bring her back.”

Frowning, Kole shook his head. “If she knew anything, she never said.”

Alec sighed and let his head fall back. “Well, I need to research what will give me answers. Eleanor mentioned five segments in a stone that Genghis had. I need to figure out what the hell that is.”

“Uh, maybe I could help with that,” Jacques said. “I studied world histories at university.”

“University?” Alec asked. He didn’t know vampires went to college.

Jacques smiled at him. “When I was human, I attended la Sorbonne in the 1920s.” He seemed to blush a little. “I am skilled at tactical defense, yes. That’s why I was asked to watch over Kole, but world histories are my passion.”

Alec grinned back at the French vampire. “Eleanor,” Alec said, knowing wherever she was in the house, she would hear. “Can you please explain to Jacques what you saw about the stone plate?”

While everyone else stood around the living room, Eleanor sat on the sofa, and used her hands to describe the stone plate she’d seen in her vision. “A large dinner-plate-sized stone disc, two inches thick,” she said. “It’s quartered into four segments, but there’s a circle in the center, which is the fifth section. It’s in a room that’s well guarded. Whatever it is, it’s important to him.”

Jacques nodded. “Yes, there are four mythological symbols of China,” he said. “They each represent an element. The azure dragon is wood, the white tiger is metal, the black tortoise is water, and the vermilion bird is fire.”

“But this has five sections,” Alec reminded him.

Jacques nodded toward the whiteboard. “May I?”

“Please.”

On the board, Jacques drew a circle and quartered it, quickly writing in each of the four symbols. Within the circle he drew a center circle, much like a bull’s-eye on a dartboard, and pointed to it. “This central element touches all symbols. It is the most powerful. Each symbol also represents the seasons, of which we know there are only four. Given that, over the last centuries in Chinese culture, there has been much debate over the fifth symbol and some claim it does not exist.”

The room was deathly quiet. All eyes were on Jacques. Jodis spoke first. “What’s the fifth symbol?”

Alec knew without a doubt what the fifth symbol was. He just
knew
. He answered. “Stone.”

Jacques nodded. “Yes. Stone or earth. Central, touching all other elements, garnering all powers.”

Eiji nodded, looking at Cronin. “It would explain why you could transfer all powers from those around you after you drank Alec’s blood,” Eiji said. “And why our powers could conduct through him.”

Cronin started to growl. His jaw set hard and his black eyes glinted. “I don’t like it. There are too many forces at play here. There is too much we cannot control.”

Alec slid his hands around Cronin’s neck and pulled him against him. “But answers are good. I don’t mind, as long as we know what we’re up against. And as long as we go into this together. We’ll be okay.”

“Eleanor,” Jodis asked. “Has anything changed?”

The old woman vampire sat still for a moment then swayed her head. Her milky eyes moved and flickered, seeing things that only she could see. “No changes. Alec will still be unwell. Whatever happens there affects only him. It is very difficult to see.” She made a pained face. “There’s a cloaker trying to hide it from me. I’m sure of it.”

Cronin growled a little louder and pulled back and turned from Alec. “Eiji, you and I could leap there right now and take them out.”

Alec grabbed Cronin’s shirt and pulled him back around, suddenly very angry. “Hey. Together, remember? As in partners. What’s to say they don’t have a seer just like Eleanor, and they know you’re coming? They could give you both a little welcoming party with a stake to the fucking heart.”

Cronin blinked, clearly taken aback by Alec’s tone. “I was—”

Alec’s grip tightened on Cronin’s shirt and he growled. “Well you can just fucking stop it. We go together. Always.”

Cronin pressed himself against Alec, growling a deep rumbling sound. His eyes drilled into Alec’s. His fangs gleamed at the corners of his mouth. Alec felt instant desire pool in his belly.

“Ugh,” Eiji groaned. “Please, you two. Enough with the sexual tension!”

“Take it somewhere else,” Eleanor chimed in, ruffling her shirt collar as though she was suddenly hot.

Alec smiled despite his thrumming blood. He gnashed his very human teeth and pretended to bite Cronin’s neck. Alec heard Eleanor say, “One hour, Cronin,” and suddenly he found himself on his back in a strange bed.

Cronin knelt over him, all domineering and growling. “Don’t ever bite a vampire on the neck,” Cronin said, his voice low and gruff.

Alec grinned and threw Cronin off, pinning him down for a change. Cronin seemed surprised by Alec’s burst of strength. His dark eyes went wide, and his growl ripped through the air.

Alec held Cronin’s arms to the bed, their faces barely an inch apart. “Where are we?”

“Penthouse suite, Armani Milano,” Cronin answered in a purr. “It’s vacant and locked.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before,” Alec whispered, his lips touching Cronin’s.

Smiling, Cronin rocked his hips. “You know I’ve done no such thing.”

Alec ground against him, hard, spreading Cronin’s thighs wider. He’d never felt so powerful, so dominant and possessive. “You don’t talk about going anywhere with anyone else,” Alec growled at him and let go of one of Cronin’s arms so he could turn his head, exposing Cronin’s neck. “And if I want to bite your neck, I fucking will.”