Authors: Maya DeLeina
“You know, you may have been the one behind the theory of our supplements, but I am the scientist who had to develop the synthetic counters for the serums all the while having my mate. Are you saying I didn’t bond long enough with Catrin during our claim ritual?” Eilian’s tone was sharp and stern. “Or maybe, you think my interest in my mate is overshadowed by my love for science!”
Steffan stopped dead in his tracks and turned around.
“What is it, Steffan?” Eilian asked.
Steffan remained still, fixed on the long tunnel behind him.
“You forgot something back at the lab or something?”
“No. I…I thought I saw something,” Steffan explained.
“Like?”
“I don’t know. Something white caught the corner of my eye.” Steffan’s voice was full of confusion.
“Well, there’s nothing there,” Eilian said as he evaluated the space.
Steffan sighed, turned around, and continued down the corridor. He turned around for one brief second to do a last assessment of the area.
Nothing was there.
By all accounts, he and Eilian were alone in the tunnel passage.
Steffan raised the cage that surrounded the elevator car. He picked up a mechanism attached to a long silver coil and pushed the red button that sent the car upward at a slow pace.
“Eilian, about your earlier ranting, relax. All I meant is what I know about myself. I wouldn’t have my mind on anything else but her. That’s all.” As they ascended in the elevator car, Steffan sighed. “By the way, I will have to tell Ryan today that the house will not be his.”
“Oh yeah, that’ll go over really great.”
“I’m going to let him pick the spot he wants to build a new home on and will let him design it how he wants. That should appease him, and I won’t have to worry about him getting into it with the owner who inherited the property. I’ll call Richard later this evening.”
“Yummy. Richard always had a good taste.” Eilian licked his lips.
“Indeed. But he’s also growing old. On our next feed with him, remind me to add something extra to his enthrallment. I believe his daughter is mulling over the prospect of taking over his development business. I never had the pleasure of tasting her, but I’m sure it’s equally as exquisite.”
The freight elevator stopped.
Steffan lifted the cage, and he and Eilian stepped out. Steffan pushed a button on the wall, powering down the grid that supplied the electricity to the underground passages.
Slowly, mechanisms embedded in the house began to move with precision.
A pocket door slid out of the wall and covered the opening. The power grid recessed into the wall, and another apparatus slid through the wood paneling and covered the power system. The china cabinet ascended from out of the wood flooring and settled into the center of the wall that masked the underground passage entrance.
With the single push of a button, the room was carefully returned to its formal dining room setting.
Eilian turned around to enter the home’s three-story foyer. Drops of black blood covered the marble floor. Bloodied fingerprints smeared across the entrance door, the doorknob, walls, and the roman shade that sealed off the window.
“Steffan, looks like you have something roaming in your house—something that tried to get out.”
Steffan came up behind Eilian to assess the damage his recovering patient had left behind. “I gave him his first injection of Defender before sunrise.” He looked up at the grand staircase and the catwalk that extended through the length of the foyer.
No blood. No damage.
He scanned the remaining areas of the foyer. “Well, he is not back upstairs where he should be.” Steffan sighed and pointed to the blood-smeared wall that led to his great room.
The great room’s floor-to-ceiling windows that flanked the entire length of the house were darkened with blackout Roman shades. The ceiling soared three stories high. In the middle of the room, a natural rock formation rose from the wooden floor.
There, on the rock, sat a naked man with his hands folded in his lap. A black robe lay next to him on the rock.
“Ryan, you need your rest. It’s only 11:00 a.m. Why are you up?” Steffan said slowly as if talking to a child.
“I got hungry. I think I drank too much of the supply you gave me.” Ryan was shaking. He hugged his legs as he pulled his knees into his chest.
“Why do you say that? What are you feeling?” Steffan probed.
“I feel terrible. My body hurts, and I feel as if I am going to faint.”
“And why then are you naked?” Eilian reached for the robe as he spoke and handed it to Ryan, motioning him to put it back on.
Ryan rubbed his arm with one hand. “My skin…I felt so hot, so I took off my robe and sat on the cold rock.”
“And you feel better now?” Steffan asked.
“A little.”
“You tried to open the door and window, didn’t you?” Steffan continued.
“Yes,” he admitted with a look of defeat. “I was curious. The house was so dark that I assumed it was—”
Steffan interrupted. “Never assume anything. The shades are on a timer that black out the house and protect you. They will rise once it is safe.”
“Why didn’t I burn then? You said that we burn in the sunlight.” Ryan stood up, exposing himself to Eilian and Steffan as he slipped his robe back over his shoulders. Ryan’s body was chiseled and well defined, but next to Steffan, he was still slight in his stature.
Eilian and Steffan chuckled lightly like school boys at the sight of Ryan’s naked body.
“I just started you on Defender,” Steffan managed to get out as he smiled, trying desperately to hold back his laughter.
“What? Oh, very funny. I was a frightened by what happened, all right? And the rock was cold!” Ryan barked. He looked down at his endowment, which seemed to have shrunk from its normal state. “It is glorious under normal circumstances, I assure you.”
Eilian and Steffan burst into uncontrollable laughter at Ryan’s candid remark.
“Hmm, drahaus,
” whispered Eilian to Steffan in a very heavy accent.
“Whatever. What? Are you guys like…hung? Is that it?” Ryan said as he watched the two men exchange comments in their native language.
Eilian and Steffan looked at each other in sheer amazement at what Ryan just asked. “I assure you, I am not about to pull it out and have some perverted measuring contest in my living room,” Steffan scoffed as he headed to a corner of the room.
“Ryan, Steffan can’t pull it out right now for you to see his glorious beast because it would knock you right off that rock there!”
Steffan retrieved his violin from its case and steadied his chin on the instrument. “You, knock it off,” he said calmly as he pointed his bow in Eilian’s direction.
“I’m just asking. I get it, you’re foreigners. So who knows what your countrymen are like. For me, I’m above average by my family standards,” Ryan said as he tied his robe tight around his waist. “Where are you guys from anyway?”
“Eilian and I are from South Wales,” Steffan said plainly as he started to perform one of his original compositions. The song was an unhurried blend of complementary notes in the key of E minor.
The melody was haunting and mesmerizing.
With his eyes still locked on Steffan, Ryan climbed down from the rock and walked over to the seating area where Eilian was situated.
“And who is Ambrose?” Ryan asked as he tugged tighter on the loops of his robe tie.
“It’s not a person,” Eilian stated. “When Steffan started the development, he put a little of his humor in the name. Ambrose means
‘immortal
’ in Greek mythology.”
“Cool. And your names, they’re not usual either. Do they have meaning as well?”
“Vampires sometimes do not retain much of their human life after their turning.” Eilian glanced at Steffan.
With caution-filled eyes, Steffan silently glanced back at Eilian as he continued playing his violin. Ryan’s state was fragile as he was in the infancy stage. He didn’t need to know everything about his inherent blackness right at this moment.
“It’s really different for each person. For Steffan and me, we couldn’t recall our names. So our maker, Idris, gave us names to match our destiny. He could sense what the future held for someone.”
Steffan chimed in as he took a momentary break from his music. “Actually, Idris followed in his mother’s footsteps. She gave all of the children in their family Welsh names. Idris’s father was Greek and couldn’t pronounce most of the names. When Eilian and I started this family, we took the tradition of Idris’s mother, to bestow family members with Welsh names and his father’s Greek heritage to designate our community in which we live. It’s all to pay tribute to Idris.”
“I was named Eilian. Eilian derives from the word
eilio
, meaning
second chance
. This was also the name of a saint who is said to have performed miraculous cures. Steffan means the chosen, the crowned king. Interesting, isn’t it?”
“Very interesting. I guess I was lucky and remembered my name, so I’ll stick with good old’ Ryan. I was told that my name means king as well, go figure.”
Eilian and Steffan looked at each other for a brief moment, evaluating each other’s unspoken thoughts.
Steffan returned to his music, this time, playing an upbeat concerto.
Ryan rubbed his skin through the robe. “So, he said that he started me on that Defender thing earlier. What is that?”
“Defender is the marketed name for sds360,” Eilian quickly responded. “Spectrum Defense System. You are on the 360-minute, six-hour serum. We are still trying to figure out the chemical balances needed in the serum to extend the coverage. You feel light-headed and tired right now because your body’s energy has been expended. It was trying to coat you with a protective barrier when it sensed you were near a natural light source. You will need several injections before you first enter sunlight. Your body needs time to recognize the compounds. They need time to safely merge and train your blood cells without expelling all of your strength.”
“Whoa, how does this work?”
“When we are turned, our human blood mixes with that of our vampire maker. Agglutination occurs and—” explained Eilian.
“Agglutination?” Ryan interrupted.
Eilian used his hands to help with the description. “The mixing of the two different blood types, human and vampiric, causes clumping of the blood in the human body. Once this happens, the blood stream cannot deliver oxygen to the tissues and the human body dies. This is when the vampiric blood takes over, fully regenerating the shell that remains. But not all of the human cells are ever destroyed. With each turning, the ancient vampire blood properties are entwined with what remains of a human. The Defender finds the human-based properties left in the blood stream, attaches to their cells, and replaces compounds that were destroyed in the turning.”
“No shit!” Ryan shook his head in disbelief. “What exactly does Defender contain for it to work?”
Eilian was prepared with his long, drawn out scientific explanation, but this was Ryan he was speaking to. A simple statement poured from Eilian’s lips, “Basically, Defender is made up of the chemical properties of melanin. It’s like this. When a human gets sunburned, it’s because they were exposed to excessive light and the body wasn’t able to produce enough melanin, a film of pigment, to protect the skin. Now, when we’re exposed to light, we simply burn, because vampire cells don’t produce melanin.”