“So, now you’re a teacher.” Lincoln’s words were casual as he looked around the classroom in the Atherby camp. This wasn’t a class for teenagers, of course. They would learn at the space station school up… up in the sun. And wow did that thought keep coming out of nowhere to wallop him with how ridiculous it sounded. Seriously, a school inside the sun. He’d thought they were kidding when first explaining it. Hell, it took several times to convince him both that they were completely serious and that it was safe. Or at least as safe as it could possibly be. In any case, it would be very hard for any of their many enemies to find them up there, he supposed.
But no, this school was for children, an elementary school, essentially. This particular classroom held about twenty desks, all facing a projection screen at the front of the room, with the teacher’s desk and table to the left, perpendicular to the student’s desks.
Sariel was there, standing by the table with a cup of coffee. She gave a slight smile to his words before taking another cup and offering it to him. “Morning, and it seems that way. My… my brother and husband seem to think that I have a way with children. Personally, I’m pretty sure they’ve decided that surrounding me with kids all day stops me from getting into trouble, though that seems a dangerous assumption.”
Taking the coffee with a chuckle before sipping it, Lincoln nodded. “Well, from what I’ve heard, I can’t say that getting you to take a vacation from all the danger is a bad idea. And it sounds as though you like teaching children as much as they like to learn from you.” He offered her a wink before adding, “I might’ve spoken to a few of them about how their first day went.”
“I’m glad they gave you a good review then.” Sariel watched the man for a moment before curiously asking, “And how are you doing with Felicity and Tabbris away at their own school?”
“About as well as you’re doing with Tabbris and both of your other children away as well, I expect,” Lincoln pointed out before adding a quiet, “You always think you’ll get used to it.”
“Some days are going to be better than others,” Sariel murmured into her coffee before looking up to him. “You just take it as it comes. And make sure they call you and visit on weekends.”
“Oh, believe me, they’re both in trouble if they don’t come on the weekends,” Lincoln assured her with a snort, glancing that way. “I’ll find a way to get up there and embarrass the hell out of them.”
“Consider me your escort in that case,” Sariel replied with a soft chuckle of her own. “We can embarrass all four of them together. I’m sure they’ll get the point about visiting pretty quick.”
Lincoln gave a nod of agreement. “It’s a plan. Not that I expect them to actually be embarrassed or anything about coming back here. More like…” He trailed off, considering his words for a moment.
“More like they’ll get too busy with whatever mysteries and adventures and… problems are occupying them at the moment,” Sariel finished in a voice that showed she’d had the same understanding for quite awhile. “And let time get away from them while they focus on that.”
“Exactly,” Lincoln confirmed, shaking his head with an added, “Making them take a break, making them come here and spend time not… not involved in any of that, it’s important.”
Sariel agreed quietly, her eyes glancing away. “Our children are very good at finding trouble. All four of them. But at least they have each other, and the rest of their friends. Which is good, considering I’m fairly certain this year is going to be even more complicated than the last one, even if that seems impossible now.”
Lincoln was silent for a few long seconds, looking toward some of the children’s drawings on the wall. A smile touched his face before it trembled just a little. “Felicity’s birthday is coming up soon. She’ll be an adult, as far as human government is concerned. She’s…” He trailed off, fist tightening at his side before he punched a blank part of the wall with an explosive sigh. Fist still against the wall, he lowered his head, voice quiet. “It’s supposed to be a celebration. She’s supposed to be happy, starting her life, being a young adult. She’s not supposed to be afraid of what’s going to happen when her birthday comes. That son of a bitch, that evil… arrogant… monster did this on purpose.”
Sariel nodded, stepping closer to put her hand on the man’s back. “Of course he did. He wants to scare her, to scare all of us. This way she spent a year worrying about what’s happening to her mom, and what could happen to herself. She’s spent a year with this in the back of her mind, always there and waiting for her to dwell on. And now the birthday is getting closer and it’s even bigger. Soon it will be all she can think about. Even if she tries to distract herself.”
Lincoln exhaled, his voice quiet. “I keep asking myself if he’s going to attack on her birthday, or sometime afterward. The deal, as I understand it, just says that he has to leave her alone until her birthday.”
“He could go either way,” Sariel replied. “He’s dramatic enough to go for the day of, just to prove he can beat everyone else even with a year of advanced warning. But he’s also pragmatic enough to wait and make us use all our energy protecting her for several weeks until we think the danger is over. You’re right, the deal just says until her birthday. Technically, he could wait until she’s thirty and then make his move. It’s impossible to keep someone under that much protection for their entire lives, especially someone like Felicity. And he knows it.”
Giving a soft, humorless chuckle, Lincoln turned to look at her. “You’re not exactly making me feel any better about this, you know.”
Sariel offered him a faint smile. “I’m sorry. It’s important that you fully understand the seriousness of the situation. But it’s also important that you know that you and Felicity are not alone in this. There are a lot of very good, strong people working on it. Fossor is incredibly dangerous, but he is not some omnipotent enemy. Haiden and I consider both of you family. And I can never make up for what happened with Joselyn and her other children, but I won’t stop trying to help.”
“Deveron’s still not really talking to you, is he?” Lincoln waited until she shook her head before continuing. “I can’t really say that I’d feel any different in his position, given everything. I know you didn’t mean for Ruthers to take it the way he did, but it was still taken from your suggestion.”
Sariel nodded, her eyes still showing the deep guilt that was there. Yet it was the sort of guilt that spurred action and change rather than self-loathing and pity. She had made the choices that she made in the past. Many had been wrong, others had been right. She couldn’t change them. All she could do was make future choices that would lead to better paths. Those who were angry with her, and who might be angry forever, had every reason and right to be. She would never fault them for that.
Finally, the woman shook those thoughts away before turning to walk to the other side of the room. “In any case, I imagine you’re wondering why I asked you to come and visit so early this morning?” Her tone had taken on a sort of forced casualness that made it clear she had something important to talk to him about.
“As far as the hour goes, I presume that whatever it is needed to happen before classes,” Lincoln replied, considering the woman for a moment before walking that way as well.
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“It’s not desperately pressing,” Sariel admitted while reaching out to touch a rune on the wall. “It could have waited until later. But I do think we need to talk about it, and I’ve been putting it off for awhile until I was certain. Or at least as certain as I can be without direct testing.” Under her touch, the rune glowed before a doorway appeared on the wall, revealing stairs leading down.
“Is this supposed to feel ominous?” Lincoln asked, only half-joking as he looked to the stairs.
Sariel offered him a reassuring smile. “Not ominous. As I said, it’s not an emergency. Nor is it… a problem, exactly. Come, it’s better if I show you while explaining.” With that, she moved through the doorway and started down the stairs, to one of her private magical science labs.
The room itself was long and mostly rectangular, aside from a half-circle bit at the far end. There were testing stations along both long walls, and a large metal table in the middle covered in scrolls, notebooks, vials of different-colored liquids that glowed brightly, and various crystals.
“This is about that sample I gave you awhile ago, isn’t it? And the other ones you asked for,” Lincoln realized, following the woman over to the table. Sitting there at the end was what looked like a table lamp, except instead of a bulb, a large magnifying glass was attached to it. Runes covered the surface of the ‘lamp’ part.
“It’s related, yes,” Sariel confirmed while pulling on the magnifying glass part. It came out, attached to a stiff cord that left the lens in whatever position it was when released. Holding it thoughtfully, she hesitated before looking over at him. “You know that I was looking over your samples just to make sure there wouldn’t be a problem with you bonding with Tabbris. And to see just how compatible you are so that… so that we could try to make it work the first time.”
“See, when you say it like that,” Lincoln murmured, “my first instinct is that there’s some kind of problem.” He met her gaze. “Yet, before we came down here, you said it wasn’t exactly a problem. So I’m going to guess that it’s more of a… should we call it a complication?”
“That’s a good word for it,” the woman agreed. “Here, take a look through this.” She adjusted the position of the enchanted magnifying glass to face the table, beckoning him over while carefully moving a glass slide into position under it. “This is a magically prepared bit of your blood. I’ve set it up to mimic the bonding process as if it was still part of you.”
Lincoln gave her a brief, curious look at that before stepping over and looking down through the large lens. It was bigger than his head, magnifying the view up onto its surface to make the whole thing very easy to see. The slide with his blood was there, as Sariel reached over with an eyedropper, explaining, “This is werewolf blood.”
Watching, Lincoln held his questions as the woman released a couple drops of the werewolf blood onto the glass slide of his own. Over the next few seconds, the blood mixed, Sariel explaining, “The enchantment will speed up the process. What you’re seeing is what would normally take place over a few days.”
The blood mixed thoroughly, his own sample seeming to latch onto and pull the werewolf blood into it. For a moment, Lincoln saw nothing different, his mouth opening to ask what he was supposed to be looking at. Then he stopped, as the blood samples abruptly separated once more, the werewolf sample being pushed out of his own. “Errr, I don’t think…”
“That’s not supposed to happen,” Sariel confirmed. “Not after a few days, not after a few months, not ever. Not with an ordinary, average human, that is. What you’re looking at is an extremely rare condition that we’ve only seen a few times before.”
Frowning and certainly, Lincoln raised his gaze from the blood samples to look at her. “What does it mean? I can’t bond properly?”
Sariel’s head shook. “Not exactly. You seem to be what we call a Chimera-blood. It means that any sort of bonding won’t fully… stick. The first time you bond with someone, it will… unlock your bonding ability. You’ll have everything from that person, such as Tabbris, as if you’d become a true Natural Heretic. But it will fade over time, depending on how much is used to bond with, anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Once it fades, you’ll go back to being the way you are now. Except… except after that first time, coming into physical contact with any bodily fluid, even through your skin, will trigger the temporary bonding process. Your body will absorb the fluid automatically and provide you with the same abilities as if you were a Natural Heretic of that being.”
Rocking backward on his heels, Lincoln stared at her, mouth working a couple times. “I… does this have anything to do with Calafia weakening the Bystander Effect before?”
Sariel’s head shook. “I don’t believe so. As I said, it’s an extraordinarily rare condition. As far as I know, it’s only come up a few times that the Seosten are aware of. I’m sure there are others in different groups we never had enough access to. But still, not many. That’s why I’ve been taking my time examining all of this and getting some advice from Apollo. I wanted to be completely certain it was real and not a contaminated sample.”
Lincoln nodded slowly. “That’s why you had me give you a couple more. I thought you were just being overly cautious because of Tabbris. I… I have no idea how… or why… why I’d be like this. As far as I know, the family on my side is normal. Back through a couple great-grandparents, anyway.”
“There doesn’t necessarily have to be anything special in your background,” Sariel informed him. “It’s some kind of random mutation, possibly caused by something, but we don’t know. I actually haven’t had much chance to study someone like you. That fell more under Cahethal’s purview, the one your people knew as Demeter. She’s still with Eden’s Garden, the counterpart to Jophiel. Or they were counterparts, until Elisabet disappeared. Now, I don’t know.”
Realizing she had gotten off on a tangent, the woman shook herself. “The point is, I’d like to do some more direct tests with you, if you don’t mind. But… but I think that even if you can’t permanently bond with her, Tabbris would still…”
“It’s still important that she be the first,” Lincoln agreed. “We’ve been talking about it a lot. And yeah, even if I can’t be bonded to her permanently, I still want it to be her. That way she’ll always be the one who unlocked it. That’s something. And I… hold on.” He frowned again. “What about Felicity? She’s my daughter, will this… condition… I mean, does she…”
“It’s rare enough that it doesn’t seem to be automatically passed to children,” Sariel assured him. “It’s been over a year now since Felicity was bonded, I’d say she’s normal in that respect. It’s possible something may pop up in the future, and I’ll run some tests to be sure, or at least as sure as I can be. But I would be very surprised to see anything at all in her case. Quite honestly, if it was going to happen, it almost certainly would have already. As I said, though, we can run some tests the next time she comes down.”
“Good.” Lincoln stared through the magnifying glass at his blood. “How sure are you about it having nothing to do with my family?”
Sariel’s head shook. “Not that certain at all, to be honest. It doesn’t seem to be automatically passed on or anything, as I said. We’ve seen parents with it and then it doesn’t pop up again at all throughout any of their descendants for over a thousand years. From what I know of Cahethal’s studies, it’s just as I said, a completely random mutation that, if passed on, is extremely recessive. There could possibly be something in your background, but I would have to know a lot more before making any kind of educated guess.”
Lincoln thought for a moment. “I should talk to my parents. As far as they’re concerned, Felicity and I are in a deep cover witness protection program. I keep telling them we can’t talk about it and they keep guessing which of the bad guys I reported on in LA decided to come after us. So it’s been a bit awkward. They’ll probably be even more curious if I start asking about our family history, but maybe I can convince them that it’s just to take my mind off things. I think Dad might have some old journals or something. If this is from something in my bloodline, there might be something in there.”
“Anything might help,” Sariel agreed, “especially considering I very much doubt Cahethal will exactly jump to share any of her research notes. No matter how nicely I ask.” She had a slightly bemused expression while adding, “Although, it might be worth it to see the look on her face if I did.”
Lincoln chuckled softly. “I don’t know her, but I still think I might pay for that.” He sobered quickly, however, adding, “Anyway, yeah, run any tests you need to on both Felicity and me. Whatever causes this condition, I’d rather it not take us by surprise.”
With a nod, Sariel gently teased, “I take it that means you won’t have a problem donating more blood?” She had already summoned a vial to one hand, wiggling it at him.
Sighing, Lincoln began to roll up his sleeve. “You know, I lived with a vampire for months and she never tried to get my blood.”
Sariel shrugged at that, replying, “Maybe she would have if she knew what a rare genetic treat it is.”
The look on his face was worth it.