Immortal Becoming (16 page)

Moira was the biggest surprise. Turned out Nin and Enlil were the only known Elven twins ever. No one had ever heard of Hulven twins. Nin and Enlil had a few anomalies because of their twin bond, which were still being studied and documented. They were very interested in finding out the effects of being twins on Marja and Moira.

Although it had only been a few hours, Shane felt that Jess had talked forever. He knew she was full of questions herself, but she seemed to have resigned herself to waiting for the answers. Except one.

“What is a bloodmate?” It was the same question she had started with.

Everyone looked to Shane. He’d remained mostly silent this entire time. Jess wrapped her arms around his neck, her beautiful eyes pleading with him. “Please tell me.” Not like he could deny her anything

Shane looked to Gil. “Go on up ta your old room,” Gil instructed. “We’ll have some food sent up in a bit.”

Nodding his thanks, Shane stood, still carrying Jess covered by the blanket. He couldn’t bear to be distant enough for her to walk on her own two feet. Heading toward the stairs, he wondered if Jess realized the cause of his silence. His dentes had not retracted in all the time they had been with her family. He smiled at the implications of Jess’s family. She would never be alone in the world again, plus they were a powerful lot. She may not understand that value yet. He knew she was the prodigal daughter, and those people would lay down their lives for her.

Chapter Thirteen

Moira woke feeling less then herself. Even after several hours of sleep, she could feel the stress of the last few days deep in her bones. Her body’s reaction to stress or exhaustion was to produce more iron. She’d certainly had her share of stress of late. Jess going off-grid had not helped. There was also the constant internal battle she waged to keep any unpleasant emotions bottled up tight. The inability to emotionally release came at a price.

Since her Becoming she not only needed the CPT and diet control, she also needed to be bled. That was a benefit to her daughter’s needs as well. Jorie had never known a moment of iron weakness, a battle that Moira had watched Marja go through. Drinking a glass of the iron-inhibiting drink, she hooked the IV to her arm and lay down, letting gravity drain her excess iron into the waiting bag. Her memories took her back to that time.

Their mother, Marjorie, was covered in weeping boils and was racked with a cough, her throat swollen up. So was much of the village they lived in.

Right after that, Moira and Marja developed different maladies. Neither of the girls had boils or a cough at all. Moira couldn’t stop bleeding from her eyes, nose, mouth, ears, even in her urine and vaginally. Marja seemed to be wasting away, dehydrating to dust. Dumb luck or divine intervention saved them. Moira got Marja a drink of water, and a few drops of her blood fell into the water. Marja became stronger after drinking it.

Luckily Marja had been able to taste a difference in the water. Between the two of them they figured out what it was. The first time Moira had pricked her finger and Marja had sucked on it had felt sacrilegious to them. Their mother had always told them that they were devil’s spawn, born of sin. Blah blah blah. Moira sharing her blood with Marja had saved both their lives.

Just before their mother had died, she’d given the girls the diaries she had stolen from their father and shared how she’d come to possess them. None of them could read. It wasn’t until years later that they realized it was more than illiteracy that kept them from reading the diaries.

Their mother had told them about being a servant within a lord’s castle. The castle lord was admired, respected, even loved. A member of the household staff, Marjorie became infatuated and sought his attention. One night she found him clutching a book to his chest. There were several more just like it on the floor scattered around him: his mother’s diaries, he’d told her. Marjorie had offered him comfort and ended up doing far more than that.

She swore he turned into a devil when he joined with her and drank blood from her. The next day when he spoke to her, his words made her feel like he had climbed into her brain. He’d told Marjorie that it was a dream, that it had never happened, that she was to forget.

In fear she told no one, played along, acted as if she remembered nothing, until she realized she was pregnant. Marjorie stole the diaries and fled to a distant relative’s land in Italy. Centuries later, Moira still resided on the very land she was born on.

After the death of their mother, Marja and Moira found themselves dependent upon each other at fifteen years old. With no family to speak for them, they were forced to leave their family’s land in Italy or risk being forced into a guardianship or, worse, a marriage by the village leaders.

They mostly lived and learned in military camps following the way many other women had survived in those times. Following the army troops, they nursed, cooked, and did laundry, always maintaining one personification, never exposing themselves as twins. Eventually they came to the attention of a very alert French artillery officer who took them under his wing, groomed them and turned them into a female spy team.

They helped Napoleon stage a coup that made him First Consul, then secretly supported and pushed buttons, using the skills learned from him, they vanished the day before his coronation as Emperor. Moira still used some of the same skills acquired during that time in her life.

It took them over a century to transcribe the diaries their mother had stolen for them from Ancient Babylonian to English. It was only then that they were able to understand some of what they were, and from where they came.

At twenty-five they’d gone through the Becoming together, falling into the change on the same day. Neither of them had gotten all the Volaticus traits that Hulven usually got. As twins they’d split the traits, probably the pain too, though they were unaware of the differences at the time. The Becoming stimulated Moira’s reproduction, and she suffered her first estrus. She was fertile for a two-week period every twenty-five to thirty years. It would take even longer now that she had given birth to Jorie.

She could never understand how animals survived the rut, and estrus for Elven and Hulven was similar. The hurting, aching, swollen, weeping between her thighs took on a life of its own. During the first one she had suffered through, when she and Marja were Becoming at the same time, the agony had blended into all of the changes she was going through, and it did not take on the same urgency. After that, well, thankfully human males could not fertilize the Elven egg ovulated in estrus, not that she would have cared at that point.

If she had been a normal Hulven, she might have inadvertently gotten pregnant with a human fetus. In fact Marja had been the one to have human ovulation. Moira was able to satisfy her estrus needs using human men without the risk of pregnancy. She used the men and a large amount of alcoholic beverages. It was a great day when science created better narcotics, enabling her to knock herself out.

A natural Hulven like Jess had to deal with both reproductive cycles, ovulating monthly and falling into estrus every twenty-five years or so. If a human fertilized her monthly ovulation, she would have a human child; if fertilized by an Elven, she would give birth to a Hulven. Only during estrus could an Elven young be conceived. Like Jorie.

Moira couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to have a human child and watch that child age and die, or watch that child’s children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren all age and die while Moira stayed young and healthy.

Hulven and Elven carried the capacity for immortality. Granted, she’d heard that the passage of time and yearly aging means different things to Elven. Hell, they could take long naps, lie dormant, and hibernate, in effect, with a heartbeat only once a month. They required so little oxygen; they could absorb it through the skin. She’d never heard whether Hulven had inherited that particular ability, but she couldn’t do it.

Hulven were a relatively new race within the Volaticus species and discovered only three thousand years ago. According to Napoleon, Elven had not always been accepting of them, either, treating them as abominations, denying their part of creation, leaving them to the mercy of humans and the barbaric way they treat that which they don’t understand. Their acceptance took many centuries combined with the amazing forward-thinking of people like her grandmother, Etana, and the intervention of the Oracles.

Then came the inevitable, those who wanted to use the other species to boost their own agenda. The rogues who figured out that Hulven and the Heredity bloodlines could produce baby Hulven’s nearly as fast as human reproduction. A human ovulation and Elven fertilization, shaken not stirred, and voila: You have an army. The implications terrified her.

The things she’d heard about the cages breeding females were kept in, sounded like underground concentration camps. The children were raised in a cult-type environment. The males were all soldiers to some level. She believed the rogues were capable of killing the females. Giving the children a Jonestown massacre suicide “punch.” Sending the males on kamikaze missions. If brainwashed completely, intelligent people will die or kill for you simply because they don’t know anything different, good or bad.

Moira set down her empty glass and removed the IV from her arm, she heard the front door slam shut, followed by the singsong voice of her daughter. “Mmooooooooom.”

“I’m right here, Jorie.” Jorie bounced into the room, and Moira reached out to ruffle her curls. “Why are you yelling?”

“I have the coolest idea on how to double the greenhouse produce using the same space.” She was rocking onto her toes between her steps as she followed Moira into the kitchen. “It is so genius!”

“Let’s hear it,” Moira said, laughing at her daughter’s enthusiasm. Jorie’s ideas generally had merit. She had an even better grasp of agriculture than Moira. Etana’s diaries had defined many farming techniques, and the original bio-structure they lived on was based almost entirely on her grandmother’s farm-layout designs. Maybe that is where she and ultimately Jorie came to be in tune with the best way to work the land to keep the things they grew healthy. Using nature’s way to the best advantage rather than manipulating Earth’s gifts with hormones, herbicides, and pesticides. Where was Jess? Why hadn’t she returned yet?

“Are you listening?” Jorie drew her attention back to task, cutting up veggies and fruit for smoothies.

“Sorry, Jorie. I am concerned about Jess’s absence.” Jorie’s brows wrinkled in a very grown-up look of concern. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Her Jeep’s still parked at the Ryu.” Jorie offered up the information before moving right back into her concept. “So if we stack hydroponics of low-growing plants …” The rest of what Jorie was saying trailed off. Moira couldn’t help her distraction.

Jorie sighed loudly, bringing Moira’s attention back to her. “Go see if you can figure out what’s up. I’ll finish the smoothies.” Jorie of all people was used to Moira’s one-track mind. She was convinced it was what made Moira brilliant, but Moira felt bad that it also made her less available to her daughter.

Nodding, Moira turned and left the room without looking back, heading to her office. What could Jess still be doing at the Ryu at 8:30 p.m.? Granted, it wasn’t unheard of for her to work late; it was actually pretty common. So why wouldn’t the foreboding feeling go away? She didn’t have any psychic ability, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have instincts. Ever since Jess’s vanishing act, she hadn’t been able to shake that feeling.

Her eyes were drawn to the two alerts flashing on her main screen. The first was information and a reminder for the interview she’d set up for later that morning. With a mouse click she started a reader download to see what her Trojan had picked up from the potential support-group candidate’s computer. One of many safety precautions, during the interviews she monitored the candidate’s computer remotely the entire time, every process, every keystroke. It was how she was able to synchronize the random changing IP algorithmic patterns to maintain the communication. Sara and her other group leaders had an automatic system. Moira handled it manually, changing the IPs at random times.

The other alert was the motion sensors from the parking lot of the Ryu—no surprise since people came and went all afternoon. Just to be safe, she split the lot screen, setting half the screen to show current time. The other she set to show reverse time lapse at a increased speed with auto stops on motion trip points. That would mean watching for potentially hours to bring herself up to the time she’d stopped watching yesterday. At least she would know if Jess had left at all during the day, returning to park in the same spot.

Jorie came in, handing her a smoothie. “That screen started flashing and beeping right after you went to bed.” She pointed at the Ryu parking screen.

“Did the Jeep leave?” she asked, taking the frosty drink.

“No, I would have came and got you if she’d left,” Jorie stated. “I didn’t see anyone on the screen. I silenced it. Hope that was okay.”

The screen slowed to normal speed; the time showed 7:15 p.m. Aymee’s car came on the screen, parking a few places down from Jess. Aymee got out of the car backward, walked backward, and put her keys into her purse.

Moira increased the speed to fast again. “I appreciate that. I should have silenced it before I went to bed. I usually do during business hours, otherwise neither of us would ever get any rest.” She kept her voice light, knowing her worry was seeping over to her daughter through the one-sided bond Jorie had with her. She really tried to keep herself calm at all times to make things easier on her daughter. Jorie felt Moira’s emotions almost as strongly as Marja had.