The Hunted (32 page)

The sceptical look crossed my face again. ‘You just made that crap up.’

‘No, I did not,’ George said, sounding offended. ‘It’s all in the transcripts. That is exactly what she said to Olivier.’

I rolled my eyes and flopped backwards into the sofa. ‘Whatever.’

‘It’s true, Elena,’ he said softly. ‘She insisted that an angel had come to her while she was sleeping the night before, and told her that her child was special and should be protected at all costs.’

‘And you believe that?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know what to believe. I’m just telling you the events of that night.’

‘Do the IMI believe that?’

He shrugged. ‘Some of them do.’

I snorted lightly. ‘Sounds like a load of bullshit to me.’

Susan huffed and George cocked an eyebrow, his lips
tightening into a hard set line. ‘Must you use that language all of the time?’

I frowned. ‘I must. It sums up the proper inflection of my innermost sentiments in just two easy syllables.’

Lucas sat forward and grinned. ‘Yep, sounds like bullshit to me.’

‘Lucas!’ Susan shrieked. ‘Watch your tongue.’

Lucas and I rolled our eyes at each other, but quickly pretended to rub at some imaginary eye injury before Susan caught us dismissing her so openly. George’s loud throat clearing sobered us up.

I took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, George,’ I said, thinking once again of my birth. ‘Please, continue with the story.’

George gave us a reproachful look before proceeding. ‘After Elena had made Olivier swear to protect you, she started to fade fast. He wasn’t sure if it was blood loss or her imminent death that was making her say such strange things, but she just kept repeating the same thing over and over again: “Please don’t be like him, please don’t drink of the blood”.’

‘Please don’t be like him,’ I repeated. ‘Do you think she was referring to my father?’

‘Precisely,’ George breathed. ‘It was the one aspect of her ramblings that Olivier seemed to understand with absolute clarity.’ He paused and looked at me with sorrowful eyes. ‘She died soon after that.’

I paused a moment to take in the manner and truth of my mother’s death. Knowing the details of how and when she had passed seemed to make it easier for me to accept that she was gone, even though deep down, long ago, I had known that her life force was no longer tied to mine.

‘Are you alright, Elena?’ Susan asked me, leaning across the coffee table and patting the top of my hand.

I instinctively shrugged away from her. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look fine,’ Lucas said.

‘Did you get a medical degree in the last five minutes that I didn’t know about?’

He screwed up his face at me and then turned away, folding his hands over his chest again.

‘Do you want us to go on?’ Susan asked quietly, trying to reach out to me again.

I slid back further into the sofa, kicking my shoes off and curling my legs up underneath me so she couldn’t invade my personal space again. I knew none of this was her fault, but I wasn’t in the mood to be touched right now. I had to deal with this information in my own way.

I took a breath. ‘Just keep going, George. You still haven’t explained what about my blood is so significant or how I survived my mother’s death.’

‘Very well.’ He paused. ‘Upon your mother’s death, Olivier knew right away that he had to get you out of your mother’s womb before you died along with her. Until there was incontrovertible proof that you were a Vampiric child, he had to assume that you were human and that your mother’s ramblings were due to blood loss or shock.’

‘But he didn’t believe for a second that I was an ordinary baby, did he?’

He shook his head. ‘He wanted to believe that your mother was slightly crazed and that you were human, but the evidence that you were in fact a child of the Vampires soon became all too compelling.’

‘How so?’

He faltered slightly as he began to speak ‘Olivier tried to cut you free from your mother’s womb, but he couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘We don’t know how and we don’t know why—perhaps it had something to do with whomever was watching over you or something you personally were capable of—but as soon the blade struck your mother’s flesh, you sealed yourself off inside her womb. All of her skin from top to toe turned into something resembling the strength of stone and was completely impenetrable by any weapon, effectively encasing you within her like a tomb.’

‘So not even silver affected me?’

‘No, not even silver. That was when Olivier realised that not only were you not a regular human baby, but you weren’t even a regular Vampiric one either. So he ran into the town to locate the other two Protectors to seek their guidance in the matter.’

‘Wait. What do you mean that I wasn’t a typical vampire child?’

‘You know this, Elena—vampiric children are born human and only develop their powers after they have turned. As far as the records indicate, they don’t seal themselves off inside their human mothers and wait for gestation to complete.’

I stared at him, a little too wide eyed. ‘So what are you saying then? I’m a freak?’

He shook his head and smiled grimly. ‘You’re not a freak, Elena. You’re …’ The words escaped him and he fell silent. He went to speak again and then stopped, looking at me with heavy set eyes.

‘Olivier found the other two Protectors back in town,’ Susan carried on quietly. ‘He brought them back to Elena’s body and explained to them everything that had happened. They all knew this was not a case for the human hospitals, so they helped Olivier carry the body back to his house and contacted the IMI immediately. Within twenty four hours another five Protectors from headquarters arrived on the island to review the case.’

‘And, in the meantime, I just stayed holed up inside my mother’s dead body?’

Was that as sickening as it just sounded?

‘Regrettably, yes.’

‘That’s sick,’ Lucas murmured.

Susan shot him a look, but I was inclined to agree with him.

‘How long was I left inside her?’

Susan’s brow furrowed slightly. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers before answering the question. ‘You stayed like that for a further two days until her blood supply was completely drained.’

Ugh, I think I’m going to be sick …

‘Elena, are you alright?’

‘Not really.’ I put my hand over my mouth and swallowed back a mouthful of rising bile.

‘Do you want me to stop?’

I shook my head. I just needed a minute to get my composure back.

George looked at me speculatively. ‘We can stop, Elena. We can just pretend we never had this conversation and go about our day. There are some things that are just better left unsaid.’ He looked at Lucas again with a strange expression on his face and then glanced back at me, his eyes unfocused and his face deadpan.

‘This isn’t one of them,’ I countered. ‘Tell me what happened next.’

Susan sunk back into the sofa again and allowed George to take the reins. Her eyes watched me constantly, concerned. George’s face remained set into a tight mask of indecision. He finally shook off the silence, took one determined look at my face and hurriedly continued. ‘Two days passed, each Protector taking shifts to watch over your dead mother’s body while they wondered just exactly what was growing inside her womb. Constant monitoring by IMI doctors didn’t give any answers as to why you’d be different from any other child. It wasn’t until the two days had passed and your mother’s skin started to return to normal again that they fully realised just exactly what they were dealing with.’

I swallowed another rising lump in my throat. ‘Do I really want to hear this?’

He stopped and looked straight at me. ‘Elena, it was then that you tore your way out of your mother’s womb.’

Oh my god, this time I am going to be sick.

I got up and grabbed at a waste bin beside the sofa and hurled up the entire contents of my breakfast into it. Lucas jumped out of the way, covering his nose. Susan hopped up and pulled my hair out of my face, patting me gently on the back in sympathy.

I retched again and again until there was nothing left to give, my stomach now completely raw and empty of any sustenance.

What was I? A vânâtor?

‘George, look at her! We shouldn’t have told her!’

I held a hand up in the air to stop her protestations, not yet ready to talk.

I stood up, placing the bin over in the far corner of the room and as far away from everyone’s nostrils as possible. I sat back down on the sofa and retrieved a water bottle from my backpack and had a long, steady drink of water. The wetness of the partially cool fluid soothed my raw throat.

Wow, what a day. First algebra, then vampires, and after that a quick forte into levitation before settling into
P.S— you’re a freak.

I motioned with a couple of impatient flicks of my hand for Susan to sit back down again. She was flittering around me uselessly, and right then, all I truly needed for comfort was an explanation as to why I wasn’t normal.

George looked hesitant as he glanced a couple of times at Lucas and Susan. All Susan had to offer in return was a few protests asking him not to frighten me any further, and Lucas, well he was staring at me like I was standing naked in the middle of a public shopping centre. If he opened his eyes any wider in shock, they were bound to fall out.

‘George’ I said sternly, trying to ignore the gaping goldfish beside me. ‘Finish it, so I know once and for all just exactly what it is that I am.’

He sighed wearily and then nodded. ‘Like I said, you tore your way out of her womb. As you know this is not the usual thing for a human or Vampiric baby to do. But a vânâtor, on the other hand, births itself by tearing its way out of the womb, just as you did. There’s still no explanation for the hardening of the skin or the fact that you came out in human form, not as a wolf.’

‘So The Protectors thought I was a vânâtor?’

‘Not exactly. You couldn’t have been a full vânâtor because your mother had a regular pregnancy, a trait more typical of both humans and vampires. But that did not stop every Protector in that room being extremely wary of you. By your entry into the world, they half-expected to see a wolf or something like it. But you were nothing that anyone expected—you were human.’

‘So did the IMI learn why I was born in such an unusual manner?’

He nodded. ‘In a way. There are still so many unknowns when it comes to you, Elena. Particularly given that we aren’t sure what will happen to you on the night of your turning. But we do have some answers. For one, the doctors took some blood from you to study after you were born and the results were certainly interesting.’

‘What were the results?’ Lucas and I said in unison.

Lucas looked at me and smiled uneasily. I hated that I could now see fear spreading across his features. He’d never looked at me like that before.

‘Do you know anything about human chromosomes?’ George said.

‘A little.’ I couldn’t say much more than that. Biology, genetics and science-based studies were right up there on my list of hated subjects.

‘Well then just to give you an idea, there are twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in each human being. In these chromosomes there are genes that determine everything from your physical appearance, athletic ability, mental capacity, so on and so forth. In a vampire there are twenty-four, the extra chromosome appearing during the transformation process. This is what gives them speed, agility, strength and above all, heightened senses. In your blood there was also twenty-four, an unlikely occurrence given that even a born vampire is still human to begin with and only later develop the gene mutation, but you, you had the extra chromosome right off the bat. It was blended perfectly into your body.’