Secrets [5] Echoes: Part One (5 page)

“Thanks, Mike,” I said into my lap, not really sure he’d keep to that once the time came. “That means a lot to me.”

“I’m your best bud, Ar. I’ll
always
support you.” He stood half way and kissed my cheek. “And, on another note, I expect to see some of these new skills at training tomorrow.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can come up with.”

“Okay,” he said softly, patting my arm. “Well, I gotta go. I’ll see you in the Round Room later.”

“Yep. See ya.”

***

A whipping breeze scaled the rolling hillsides around Loslilian, plucking loose leaves from the trees and leaving them carelessly in swirling clusters around the cream bricks of the manor. The days had grown so cold these last few weeks that I’d taken to wearing sweaters outside while, inside, every fireplace in every room was roaring with hot orange flames, the constant burning of wood leaving an almost permanent but very cosy musk over the landscape. I walked slower now across the countryside than usual, enjoying the homely smell of approaching winter, but the thoughts of pumpkins and the scent of cinnamon cakes being prepared by staff fit jaggedly with my childhood memories of October. It would be well into a crisp, warm spring in Australia right now, with the golden sun brightening the beaches, and the sweet, plastic scent of sunscreen filling the air. I’d be shopping for a new swimsuit today if I were back home. Instead, I was a ball of wool, trying but failing to keep my scarf in place as the icy gusts kidnapped the ends and raked them outward with my hair.

As far out as the eye could see, the once lush Enchanted Forest had been scaled down to creaky branches and such a sad state of undress that, when I walked in the forest at dawn, even
I
felt kind of naked. Which is why I chose to spend time at the lab this morning instead.

I watched its red rooftop rise on the head of straight, cream bricks over the hilltop as I trudged downward, smiling coyly to myself at its grandeur. In issuing this building as the lab—a twenty-minute walk through a grassy meadow from the manor—I knew, and everyone else knew, it’d been David’s intention to put Jason out of sight. But Jase and his unlimited budget had outdone themselves. No one would ever have known it was once a stable. The horse crap and mouldy hay had been swept aside for an entirely new interior, complete with a sterile room, a morgue for all the bodies he tested on
—or rather, failed on—and even observation rooms. I wasn’t sure exactly what kinds of experiments he planned to perform and why those observation rooms needed soundproof glass and steel doors but, at his core, he was a vampire and I expected a certain level of sadism and poor medical ethics from his kind. I knew not to ask, because I knew I wouldn't like the answer. Still, the morgue had me concerned.

“Ara?” Jase called, catching up at a run.

I stopped and waited for him, fighting off my hair as the breeze parted it at the back and wrapped it around my face like a pair of stringy hands. “Hey, Jase.”

“Hey.” He stopped beside me. “You here to see those results from last week’s test?”

“Mm-hm.” I nodded. “You got them back from the Manhattan lab yet?”

He nodded, his lips split wide with excitement. “And you won’t believe it, Ara. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. I’ve gone as far as to seal your records—classified them Top Secret.”

“Why?”

“Come on.” He grabbed my hand and dragged me along. “I’ll show you.”

***

We passed through a narrow hall between the two observation rooms and entered the wide, open space of the greater lab. A giant steel wall cordoned off the morgue at the back where, through the open door, I could just make out foot ends of seven or so gurneys lined up ready for bodies, and the control panel for a giant freezer that I knew already housed a few dead humans. The only light in this windowless space was the glow from a wall of computers, blinking and flashing with information to my right, and the flicker of flames under test tubes being heated on a giant table in the centre of the room. The whole lab had that real mad-scientist feel to it, infused with million-dollar modern technology and sleek, clean surfaces. I thought of it as “Frankenstein meets modern science”. It was the dream lab of anyone in Jason’s field, he’d told me. But even as he’d said that, I’d noticed something oddly regretful under his smile.

He led me to the big wall of computers and pulled out a chair, offering me a seat, then leaned over the keyboard and focused hard on the smaller screen right in front of him, his face glowing blue.

“Shouldn’t we turn on the lights?”

“Nope,” he said, typing away. “That experiment in the corner needs a dim room.”

“Should I ask why?”

He turned his head and grinned at me. “Only if you want a lengthy explanation.”

I laughed. “Right. I’ll take silent wondering, thanks.”

He loaded up my test results and sat on the chair beside me, sliding back a little too far, then pulling himself closer again with a steady hand under the desk. “Go ahead. Check it out.”

I leaned in and peered at the graphs and numbers on the screen. “What am I looking at?”

“Your results, Ara.” He pulled himself closer to the keyboard again and started typing. “Your electrical readings are off the chart. They’re some kind of crazy mix of static and … I don’t even know. It’s just a mess. But you, and those tiny little hands of yours, are more powerful than we’ve realised.”

“And you made me heat up water while we were
in
it?”

He winced. “Had I seen these, I might've thought twice about that.”

I sat back, slapping my brow.

“Anyway, you might not understand these numbers, but look at this—” He typed again at a-hundred-words-per-second, and a video came up on screen. “Remember when I filmed that training session last week—when you shot Falcon?”

“Yeah.”

“Check this out.” He offered the screen, and I watched the replay, seeing Falcon’s body shake as it absorbed the energy from my hands, lifting off the ground a second later to fly back and hit the wall.

“Okay, so, we should upload this to the Internet. It’s very cool, but I don't get what I’m supposed to be seeing.”

“Look now,” he said with a grin, typing something else.

The video slowed, and I practically put my nose to the screen, squinting like an old lady reading fine-print.

“See this?” He pointed to a very thin blue line of light coming from my hand—wispy and branch-like.

“Yeah.”

“Now, look here.” His finger moved off to the far left of the screen—to where one of my knights stood watching, laughing—and the same kind of spark was there, emanating off his head.

“What the…?” I leaned closer. “How did the spark get there?”

“Simple. He’s a vampire, Ara, not a Lilithian.”

“So?”

“So … do you know how light
ning grounds itself?”

“Um
… I think I remember something from primary school.”

He laughed and sat back, folding his arms. “Well, there are many different types of lightning: cloud-to-ground, ground-to-cloud, intracloud
; heaps, right?”

I nodded.

“But, basically, all lightning is essentially the same thing—just an electrostatic discharge. It’s the conditions that affect the
way
it discharges, and how we, essentially, see it appear in our atmosphere.”

“Okay.”

“So,” he started, using his hands to demonstrate as much as his words. “Imagine a negative build up of energy shooting from the base of a cloud, taking off through space and time in what we call a stepped leader—which is basically like a branch of negative protons rushing toward the earth. You following?”

I nodded.

“Before it gets there, though, objects on the ground sense the electric field and respond with their own positively charged streamers—” He made a separating motion between his hands as if pulling a string of invisible clay up from the ground. “When the stepped leader meets those streamers, or in layman’s terms, the negative and the positive meet, this violent charge of electricity can then drain toward the earth, right, creating a massive flash of light that we call lightning.”

“Okay.”

“But, it began as a negative charge looking for a place to ground itself,” he said with hinting eyes.

“So …
I’m
the negative charge?”

“Right,” he continued. “When you use your power
this
way—” He tapped the screen. “That’s exactly what you are. And it really got my brain ticking,” he said, now tapping his head, leaning forward eagerly. “See, I think the reason you can sense vampires and the reason you can make them feel like their hearts beat is because that’s exactly what you’re for.”

“Huh?”

“Why doesn’t the streamer rise off a Lilithian—or objects on the ground?”

“Because they’re not compatible?” I asked, the uncertainty moving my shoulders upward.

“Precisely. You’re not designed to shoot them. You’re a whole different kind of negative energy to the vampire’s positive. Like nothing we can measure with today’s technology. But I liken your power a little to Anvil Crawlers at this point. My theory may change.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, wondering where he was going with this. “So, you’re saying I was born to shoot vamps.”

“Something like that.”

“What am I then, some kind of vampire hunter?”

“No. Even better. I think I was right.” He wagged his finger at me, as if some vital piece of the puzzle was about to come together. “I think your light is the key to turning vampires back to humans.”

“How?”

“That’s … that’s the part I haven’t figured out yet. But,” he added with another flick of his finger. “I may have a theory. It’s a long-shot, but I’ll need venom for it—
your
venom.”

“Why?” I pressed my thumb to my fang.

“Because I think that, while Lilithians you personally create can kill a vampire, only
your
venom can really do what I think it can do.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re not going to tell me until your theory’s complete, are you?”

He shook his head, grinning impishly.

“Okay, so you need me to sign off on a supply of my venom?”

“If you could.”

“Sure. Where’s the paperwork?”

He handed me the rolled-up sheets by the keyboard.

I grabbed a pen from the pencil pot but paused over the dotted line. “Jase?”

“Yeah.”

“What was with the shipment of human men I saw walking in here the other day?” I looked over at the observation room; the curtains were drawn but the lights were on. “Did you kill them?”

“No.” He pulled up a chair and sat down again. “I … need them.”

“What for?”

“I’m going to turn them all into vampires and try to cure them.”

“What?” I put the pen down. “Then what’s my venom for? To kill them if you fail?”

“No. It’s for the cure.”

“Jase?”

“Look, don’t make me explain it now—it’ll ruin the surprise if I’m right. Just—” He took my hand. “Trust me?”

“And what if it doesn’t work?” I motioned to the observation room. “What if you can’t turn them back, or if you kill them in the process?”

“Well, if I can’t turn them back, I
will
kill them.”

“Jase, you can’t—”

“Relax, Ara, no one will miss them.”

I stood up, shoving the wheelie chair back way too far. “Why, because they’re homeless or something?”

“No, no, Ara, of course not.” He jumped up, too, reassuring me with a steady pair of hands to my arms. “They’re criminals—convicted
and
sentenced criminals.”

“So, what, you just plucked them from the prison?”

“No.” He looked over his shoulder. “I snatched them
after
they’d done their time.”

“Jase, that’s not fair. They—”

“They’re convicted child sex offenders, Ara,” he said dully, and I shut up. “I figure I’m doing the world a favour.”

“Oh … okay.” My lips sat slightly apart, my head moving in a nod. “Well, in that case, go ahead and kill them. But
…”

“But?”

“What if we succeed? What if we actually turn them human again? You won’t just put them back out there in society, will you?”

“No. I’ll snap their necks,” he said with a casual shrug. “Or, better yet, feed them to the Damned.”

“Now
that
is poetic justice.” I grinned and grabbed the pen to sign that venom order. “There is just one thing, though.”

“Which is?”

I put the pen down again and turned to face Jason, propping my hands on my hips. “How do you turn them into vampires?”

“How?” he repeated as if he wasn’t sure about my question.