A Stone-Kissed Sea (Elemental World Book 4) by Elizabeth Hunter

Author:Elizabeth Hunter [Hunter, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: E. Hunter
Published: 2016-12-06T06:00:00+00:00

❖

Makeda was still trying to figure out the trial protocols for Dr. McTierney two nights later. She wondered if she shared Kato’s assertion with the Irish physician whether he’d be more amenable to her requests.

Just so you know, Dr. McTierney, I’ve been told by a former emperor that I could possibly rule the earth, so you should probably just send me daily reports and not bitch about it.

That might not work as well as she hoped.

Makeda had spoken to Brenden McTierney on the satellite phone the previous night and was reasonably content with his competency. She also warned him she’d expect nightly updates once the trials were underway, even though the doctor balked at that amount of oversight. She was micromanaging, but he’d just have to live with it. She’d never run trials from a distance before. It was infuriating on several levels.

Lucien strode into the lab carrying a handful of papers. “I think I’ve figured something out.”

She glanced at him and quickly glanced away. The normally aloof vampire had kept up his steady and affectionate behavior, leaving Makeda wondering what had come over her former antagonist and when whatever switch he’d flipped would flip back. She wasn’t accustomed to Lucien’s affection, and in the absence of her normal support system, she didn’t want to become dependent on it. That couldn’t lead to anything good.

“What did you figure out?” Makeda asked, keeping her eyes trained on her calculations.

“I’ve figured out where the virus originates.”

“In the marrow,” she said. “We knew that.”

“I mean before that.”

She looked up. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a virus. It doesn’t spontaneously generate, it’s transmitted. Replicated. But it’s the only virus in history that seems to affect vampires,” he said. “Why?”

“I… don’t know. You’re the vampire-biology expert. I assumed you had—”

“Immunity.” Lucien pulled up a stool and sat on it, so close she could feel his amnis crackling with excitement. “And we do. We have centuries of it. Every antibody our sires and their sires ever had. But we have nothing to fight off this virus because it looks like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

“Because it’s a mutation.”

“Of what?”

She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t think of anything. She’d looked at the virus’s structure but not that closely. She’d been more focused on how it was replicating, not its origins. “The Elixir causes it.”

“It causes the mutation,” Lucien said. “Unlocks it. But where did the virus originate?”

“There are no new viruses,” Makeda said. “There are variations of older viruses or those that have lain dormant or those we haven’t discovered yet.”

“But we did stumble across it, Makeda. My mother and her friends unlocked it hundreds of years ago.”

“And they eradicated it when Kato went mad,” she said. “You’ve told me this story before. It was rediscovered in the early part of this century by a vampire bent on world domination. Or destruction, depending on who you ask. And it’s been spreading since.”

“To every vampire it touches. Every human. No matter their genetics or geography.”

“So?” Makeda frowned. “Lucien, you have to know that we’re all genetically similar.

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