God Touched - 01 (31 page)

“I'm kinda foggy about how I ended up with Fedor and company.  What happened at the club – “  I looked at my watch, “-- three hours ago?” I asked.

Tanya turned to look back at me as she answered, her blue eyes glowing from the dark front seat.

“Vadim hustled you and the demon's body off the dance floor and into the back, or so we thought.  We think he must have just kept going right out the fire door and then met Anton before going to the shipping yard.”

“And Fedor delayed us from heading back to check on you, by saying we had to bow out first to keep the club patrons believing it
was all an act,”  Lydia added. “
Your fight was a huge hit by the way.  I'll be surprised if it doesn't get mentioned in a half dozen of this morning’s newspapers.”

I yawned as it was now past two AM and long past my normal bedtime.  Tanya was still watching me, concern written across her face.  “I'm just tired.” I said.  She shook her head. “I've only known you for a week and I've almost lost you a half dozen times.”

I didn't have a good answer so I just shrugged.

“I'll try to be more careful.”

Lydia laughed and Tanya smiled a little.

“Honestly, though, I've gotta think with the demise of Fedor and the others, that things will possible calm down,” I said.

“Regardless, you
will
be more careful, because you will be training with
me
!” Tatiana said.

I gulped, remembering her brutal treatment of Vadim and the Hancers.  As much as I enjoyed bedroom wrestling with her, training at her level promised to be painful.

Lydia’s green eyes sparkled with amusement in the rearview mirror as she watched my reaction.

Chapter 20

    
Lydia parked in front of Dr. Singh’s house/office and we hustled into the entrance to the lower level.  The doctor and his creepy assistant met us at the door, alerted to our arrival by Tanya’s cell call from the car.  The assistant led me to a bathroom with shower, tersely directing me to leave my destroyed clothes in a black garbage bag and leaving me a set of blue hospital scrubs to wear.  With one last sidelong glance at me, she left me to get cleaned up. 

Dr. Singh’s water pressure was excellent and the steaming hot water sluiced away Fedor’s blood and gore.  The fact that the shower floor was equipped with an industrial sized drain that would have been at home in a car wash or slaughter house was a little disturbing.  I didn’t want to think of the number of other gruesome cleanups this bathroom had seen.

     When I emerged twenty minutes later, my skin red from the harsh scrubbing I had put myself through, Assistant spooky was waiting to lead me to the Doctor’s exam room.  Dr. Singh and the girls were there discussing the night’s event
s.  A plastic zip lock baggie,
with a used syringe inside was on one of the countertops, an oily black residue remaining in the mostly empty tube.  “So Chris, how are you feeling?”

“A little cleaner.”

He smiled briefly.  “I was wondering more about your physical
well-being
.”

“Well, I still feel a little woozy from whatever the demon shot me up with and I’m not up to full power aura wise.  But overall, I feel pretty good.  Hungry, though.”

Lydia rolled her eyes, Tanya smiled and the Doctor nodded.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a pizza from a late night establishment.  I will need to do a complete workup on the contents of the hypodermic, but I feel confident in theorizing that it is demon blood.”

“Demon blood?”  I questioned.

“Yes, I’ve had the opportunity to analyze the body of the demon you neutralized at Tatiana’s residence the other day.  The body’s blood was drastically changed by the demon’s habitation.  I think it would have a pretty nasty effect on your abilities.  In fact, I believe demon blood is the other ingredient in the production of the Hance drug.”

Dr. Singh had begun a
n
examination of me while he talked, checking my blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and other basic factors.  He made notes on a clipboard, and then handed it to the assistant who typed it into a laptop computer.

“Chris, how’s your appetite been lately?”

“Strong, but less than it was.  Maybe two thirds of what it was.”

He nodded.  “I would expect it to slow considerably as your body completes more of the transformation.”

“Ah, what transformation?” I asked

“Well, let’s back up and start with the process by which vampires are created,” he said.

Lydia and Tanya both leaned forward, obviously very interested in the topic.

“When a human is Turned, the process is very specific, if deceptively simple.  Over the course of several days, the human is progressively drained of more and more blood, while also drinking more and more of the vampire’s own blood.  This has the effect of exposing
all of the cells in the body to
larger amounts of the virus that all vampires carry.”

“Virus?”  I asked.

“Yes, Chris.  Both vampirism and lycanthropy are caused by viruses.  The virus carries new bits of DNA that permanently change the host.  In both cases the change actually happens at the mitochondrial level, not the nucleus level.  You know what mitochondria are right?” he asked.

I remembered my high school biology pretty well. 

“Yeah, the powerhouses of the cell, right? Production of ATP, which is…wait…adenosine triphosphate!” I said, a little smugly.

“That’s what they’re best known for.  They also perform quite a few other jobs as well.  Steroid and various protein production, involvement in the aging process, cellular differentiation, and cellular signaling, among others.  The mitochondrion has its own DNA, which is inherited from the mother’s egg cell.  The vampire virus, we call it V- squared, adds new DNA to the mitochondrial DNA.  The resulting proteins provide the enhanced sensory, strength, speed, reflexes and
anti-aging
benefits.  They also allow the body to use blood as its only food source.  The last is a major mutation of the ATP cycle.”

He paused to see if I was keeping up.

“The Lycanthrope virus, or LV, is similar but more aggressive, which is why only a single bite is needed to fully infect someone.  And both viruses have about a sixty to seventy percent infection rate.  With V-squared, the other thirty to forty percent die.  With LV, they just heal up normally and go on being human.  Got it so far?”

“Yeah, I guess. So the Hance protein is a bad copy of just one of the V-squared proteins that an infected mitochondrion would produce?” I asked.

“That’s correct, Chris. A V-squared mitochondrion kicks out a smorgasbord of proteins that are beneficial to the host.”

“And regular humans that imbibe vampire blood, orally, get a mix of proteins but they are short lived?” I guessed.

“Yes.  But the virus is not as hardy as the LV and it is destroyed by the body’s immune response.  That’s why a candidate is exposed to ever greater quantities of the virus while their total blood supply is being drained down, which reduces the immune response.  By the end of the cycle, the candidate is flooded with virus in a weak body and the change is initiated. Once V- squared is fully established, the human is now a vampire.  As time goes on, the virus continues to spread and strengthen and change its host.”

“But what about being
undead
and all that?” I asked.

“Just human terms to attempt to describe the enormous differences in body function.  You see, Chris, vampire hearts do beat, just differently, at different times.  As changeover is made, a new vampire’s heartbeat will accelerate way past human normal.  This has the effect of pressurizing the vampire circulatory system.  Our veins and arteries are much stronger and have greater elasticity.  Once pumped to high pressure, the heart stops normal functions and starts to operate so slowly that heartbeats don’t register as such.  Blood is moved one chamber at a time.  Because of the complete change in blood metabolism we don’t need fast moving blood.  It’s complicated, involves particle physics and we could discuss it all night but know this, vampires hearts do function.  Just differently.”  he said.

I scratched my head, taking it all in.

“But the Weres still eat regular food, how does that work?”  I asked.

“LV is a much different virus and while it also affects the mitochondria, it does so differently.  How much do you know about particle physics, Chris?” he asked.

I shook my head.  “Not much.  You’re talking atoms, protons, and neutrons, right?”

“Oh, much, much more.  There are far more interesting ones, like quarks, gluons, neutrinos, Higgs Bosun particles and things like dark matter and dark energy.  It’s a fascinating science and has direct application to the study of the so-called
supernaturals
. Trying to explain how vampires can survive, thrive and exceed human potential on a diet of blood doesn’t work until you can bring in other types of matter and energy. Very simply, vampire mitochondria harness additional energy from sources that current science would have difficulty measuring.  It also works to explain how a one hundred and seventy-five pound man can transform into a three hundred pound werewolf, which on the face of it defies the Law of Conservation of Mass.  However, mass is matter and matter is made up of partic
les, and the particles of
matter are subject to change.”  He shook his head in frustration.

“It’s okay Doc.  That actually makes sense to me.  So you’re saying that the changes in the mitochondria allow vamps and weres to utilize particles and energy that normal humans can’t.”  He nodded, so I continued. “That also helps give me a basis for demons and Damnedthings phasing between dimensions and changing from
spirit
to solid.”

“Yes, exactly.  Quantum physics has multiple dimension theories like String theory and others.  Which bring
s us to you, my unique friend,”
he smiled.

“Okay, let me have it Doc, what makes me such a freak?”

All three of the winced at my casual
self-description
.

“Chris, when I studied your blood samples, I, knowing what I know about V-squared and LV, focused on your mitochondria.  And I found they were different.  Changed.”

“You mean by Tanya’s blood?” I asked.

“Well yes, but they were different to begin with.  As if you, or your mother had been exposed to one of the viruses or a similar virus before.”

“My mother?” I asked.

“Remember, mitochondria are inherited from the mother.  So yours came from her.  Before you finished your shower, I was asking the girls what they knew about your mother and they told me about your Russian grandfather and the German camp. What more do you know about him?” he asked.

“Not a great deal.  He was a child when he went into the camp and was only nineteen or twenty when he was rescued and met my grandmother.  He wouldn’t speak about it, and we never asked.  They lived in Florida at the time my family was killed.  I visited them a few times and they came to New York a couple of times, but other than that it was letters and phone calls.”

“Do you know what the name of the camp was?”

I shook my head and answered. “He never said, but I know it wasn’t one of the
well-known
camps.  It was somewhere in the Bavarian
Alps
I think.  Small and secret.”

I shrugged.

He looked thoughtful.   “Well, anyway.  Your mitochondria were already different.  Which may be why you have your unique abilities with demons. When you drank Tanya’s blood, the tiny amount of virus, which would normally be wiped out, was somehow able to effect additional changes. Each additional dose of blood just continued the changes.  Most of your current mitochondria look almost like they came from a vampire, but with a few of the characteristics of an LV modified mitochondrion as well. So you are producing your own set of vampire like proteins, your metabolism is fast like a Were’s, your red blood cell production is crazy high, your immune system is all kinds of enhanced.  The changes continue to spread and we will have to monitor the effects.  But you seem to be some kind of altogether new supernatural.”

We all just looked at him.  I couldn’t think of anything to say.  Tanya spoke first.

“What about his aging process?” she asked.

“That part of his mitochondria seems to be just like a vampire’s,” he replied.

“So wait, I won’t age?”  I asked.

“I would say not.  Can’t tell anything for certain, but that’s my best guess. You seem to have many of the benefits that a young vampire would have.  Notice I didn’t say a new vampire, because you have already progressed beyond that point.  Probably due to Tanya’s blood being the source of your changes.”

“Okay, how does that work?” Lydia asked.

“Well, Tanya also inherited her mitochondria from her mother Galina.  As best we can determine, Tanya was conceived the same night both Galina and Anton were changed.  Their reproductive systems hadn’t been shut down yet.  So the embryonic Tanya was chock full of virus from conception.  Her blood carries enormously high quantities of very strong virus.  So you were accelerated, so to speak.”