The Salvatore Saga. Volume one

18.

Dr Morrisey was in a blissful state. It had worked. The subject had developed a new immune system, and all of the subject's samples contained werewolf genes. Now, all that remained was to wait and see what this serum actually did. He had never known exactly how the werewolf turned; there was, of course, a scientific side to it, namely the fragmentation of genetic material into the target's tissues by biting it, but then he could not measure how the werewolf got its wolf side.

The wolf was its own creature, and the werewolf was usually two creatures in one body. Although magic and werewolves and all those sorts of things were more or less known to humans, magic and all things supernatural could not yet be measured. Yet Dr. Morrissey was sure that he was getting a whole new knowledge of omega every day, and maybe he could learn to measure how a werewolf got its wolf. Perhaps he could develop some weapon against that wolf side when he did, making werewolves only human.

He had learned a great deal from the three werewolves on the ship; they had been studied very long and very carefully, so he had learned a lot of new things. He was always ready to learn about his enemies; omega would be his secret weapon. The other two targets had not survived but died shortly after the serum was administered because their DNA was incompatible, and the retrovirus destroyed the cells instead of triggering a cascade reaction as had happened with omega.

Now would be the time to see what would become of it. Would it become some sort of human/wolf hybrid, or an actual werewolf, or something else entirely? Oh, that Dr. Morrisey was waiting every day to see what new thing he would learn about omega.

Bran was worried about Adam. Since they had returned a few months ago, he hadn't heard anything from Adam. Adam didn't answer him when he spoke to him with this in mind, but he didn't need to pay too much attention because Charles had backed him up the whole time they had been captives, but there were still crises in the werewolf world.

He had told Charles what happened on the ship but didn't tell him that he had let Mimi go. Bran sat by the fire and looked into the flame, recalling the whole captivity and going over it carefully in his mind; no, he found nothing but the end result; it was the only way, and what he did to Mimi, he did out of Mercy.

Then he began to find newspaper articles about strange fires in various institutions, whose purpose nobody knew. The plants were old factories, and something fishy was always going on. The police had no suspects or even suspected arson, but something about them made Bran wonder.

Then Bran decided to call Nicholas and ask him if he knew anything about it.

"Nick, it's Bran. I could have talked to you in your mind, too, but I thought I'd call. Have you heard about this weird thing where old factories and abandoned plants have weird fires? Since I haven't heard of Adam, I'm worried now that Hauptmann isn't doing anything stupid."

Nicholas answered: "Adam doesn't do stupid things. We are behind these attacks; well done, isn't it? Adam is very good at finding these medical secret research sites, a few at least. Then we interrogate a few people there, and we help with that. Vampire compulsions, you see, and then the facility goes Kaboom. And if someone investigates, then there will be a wider investigation as these facilities are supposed to be empty, and they're not. We haven't found very many where there are victims or subjects, but Adam has already found three places with your samples. They were destroyed, of course."

Nicholas added: " Those plants are not easy to find, and Hauptmann doesn't want to talk to you, so until then...".

He hung up. Bran sighed, put the phone down, and mentally stated that there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. Adam and the vampires would do what they would do, and it wasn't exactly about werewolves right now when Adam wasn't doing it in public.

He realized that Adam was mad at him for Mimi when Adam needed to be mad at someone for that. Bran had been the closest victim, perhaps because he could move on and write off Mimi as lost while Adam had feelings at stake about Mimi from the beginning, and Bran wondered if he should have tried to get Adam to be less attached to Mimi. But Adam's care and closeness had been important to Mimi and to Adam himself.

Adam was on a mission, and ever since he had started this job, his determination had only grown. He had seen dead victims, skinny, suffering, tortured, and for some reason, Mimi always haunted his mind. After Mercy had died, Adam had been depressed for a long time. It hadn't helped that Mercy had moved on to another level, there had been so much shit, but Mercy had been his mate. When that mating bond broke between them, Adam had felt like his soul had exploded, but time had healed that wound, and he had then learned to use women as a little entertainment at parties, just sex, no emotions, just pressure release.

But then Mimi happened. Even though Mimi was weak and he nursed her like a child, he felt a connection with her, a connection he never thought he would feel again. And then he had to leave her to die.

Adam had tried to research Dr Morrisey and Dr Kendrick, but he hadn't found any of them. He didn't know what this doctor had intended to do with Mimi and what had been done to Mimi. How long had it been until Mimi had died? Adam had thought about asking Mercy if she knew if Mimi was already dead, but then that information would take away hope, and Adam didn't want to think about it because he would only then wonder how Mimi had died. No, it was better this way. He sighed and prepared to look for the next target. This would be his job for as long as he could stand it. He would never forget Mimi.

Adam, Nicholas, and Elias had heard that there were several torture facilities in Alaska and Canada. Adam was full of rage, the kind of rage that was hard to control, a consuming rage. He hadn't felt such rage even since Mercy had died and then moved on to another level.

Mimi had somehow slipped under his skin on the ship, and the thought of dying alone and tortured kept the flame of rage alive. It was the same with vampires. For them, the family had once been the most important thing. But one of the sisters took a cure and turned human to spend the rest of her life with Nicholas' adopted son, and the other sister lost her wife and child and went mad that their only existing brother, who had abandoned his entire family, was living who knows where with his witch wife.

The last brother, well, he was gay and had found a boyfriend, a husband, and had also taken a cure and was already an older man. He had asked their witch sister to make him permanently human and grow old. Nick and Elias saw this as weak.

They had many very important people in their time, and it just didn't suit everyone to turn vampire, so they had to see the brevity of human life, but some of these people had left their mark on them even centuries later. They never wanted to know the name of their victim if they got to kill him; it was easier to think of them as just food, a meal, and not as people or persons. Sure, they had done really bad things and didn't always respect human life, but sometimes it was just those individuals like Mimi.

But the centuries had taught them the most important lesson: they were not human. They were vampires, which was the hardest lesson to learn at first because they wanted to hold on to their humanity, but victim after victim, humanity slowly began to fall away. Something else took its place. Maybe a distant echo of what they once were.

They arrived at the Canadian/Alaskan border and went first to New Foundland to destroy or investigate a facility. The facility was abandoned, no use... It was almost a full moon, though, and Adam wanted him and Nicholas to run like wolves for a few nights and catch what they could.

Nicholas got a call, however, that his crazy sister was causing trouble again, and he and Elias had to leave. Some instinct told Adam to stay at the cottage and spend a few nights as a wolf. Adam had once had a pack at Mercy's time. Around the time of Mercy's death, however, he turned his pack over to Beta Darryl and left Washington. He had led one herd in Chicago, but it had then merged with another herd, and Adam had concentrated on his business. He had always been there to help Bran with any problems he might have.