Psalm of Vampires Chapter 18
Unrequited Love
I put my phone away when Dr. Chua called me to the gurney. I can’t tell you how glad I had been when he responded to my text saying he was in his lab. I also remembered, miraculously, that Dr. Chua was once a surgeon for a non-profit charity. I say miraculously because when Moreland had shown me his bio after the Wurdulac attack on Jerrold Mountain, I had only briefly scanned it.
“You couldn’t have found a more traumatic way to collect Longtooth’s DNA?” asked Dr. Chua as he showed me the bandages on Owens’ newly mended neck. I wondered if some of Owens’ sarcastic blood had somehow splattered onto Chua. “This ability to bring people along for the ride,” he added. “This seems to defy the laws of science as best I can tell.”
“What can I say, doc? I’m a vampire.”
“Ah. And you think that makes you a supernatural being not governed by science?” he asked. “I respectfully disagree.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t going to argue with a potential savior. I asked, “Is he going to be alright?”
“Yes, but another few minutes would have been too many.” Owens was returning to consciousness. “You were bleeding like, how would Americans say it — a mo-fo,” Dr. Chua said to Owens when Owens blinked a couple of times. “You owe this man a great debt.”
Owens looked at me. “Fucks’s sake,” he said.
Dr. Chua looked at me. “That’s kind of his go-to,” I said.
Owens started smiling. “Is this the guy?”
I nodded.
“Ha, I got the DNA, right?” he asked, feeling his neck.
“Owens,” I said, “Don’t act like you masterminded this.”
“Hell no. But we got it, right, Mourning?”
“We got it. You got it, Owens.” I had handed my bloody knife with its own DNA sample to Dr. Chua when I appeared in front of him at his lab with Owens. But I didn’t tell this to Owens. I wanted him to have his moment. And I was still thinking about how it seemed like Longtooth disappeared into the wall. I would have loved to hear Chua’s scientific explanation for that.
Owens got serious again. “We saw a lot of death today, Atticus.” Why do people always call me Atticus when things get dicey?
“Yeah, things are getting busy on the social media front,” I said. “One dude in a private helicopter tried to buzz by Jerrold Mountain to see what’s going on but he got chased away by a Wurdulac.” I laughed at that, but it wasn’t a ha-ha laugh.
Owens groaned like someone was torturing him. “You’re a regular doctor, too?” asked Owens, looking at Dr. Chua.
“I was a surgeon for Médecins Sans Frontières after serving in the army as a medic and surgeon. I wanted to be a pediatrician. But you’ve met Bennie and Philip,” he said while looking at me. “Changed my mind when they were children.” It was the first time I heard humor from Dr. Chua. But maybe he wasn’t trying to be funny. He turned his attention back to Owens. “You were bit on the back of the neck. This Mister Longtooth missed your carotid artery by a lot. Perhaps on purpose. I ran some blood tests. Nothing abnormal yet.”
“Yet?” asked Owens.
“Yet,” affirmed Dr. Chua.
“You think maybe he was trying to infect Owens?” I asked. “If he’s trying to do it through a bite, he’d have to be carrying whatever it is he’s trying to infect him with.”
“Correct,” said Dr. Chua. “Could be Mister Longtooth is immune to whatever he’s trying to deliver. Can’t be too careful. Need to finish testing. It will take some time.”
“I hate to say this, but the first thing you might want to check for is bubonic plague,” I suggested.
“Shut the fuck up, Mourning. I got enough problems. Well, I appreciate all you’ve done doc, but I ain’t staying laid up here for some time,” said Owens.
“Of course not,” said Dr. Chua.
“Mourning, what was all that electricity shit or whatever that was happening at the warehouse?” asked Owens.
“I don’t know. Radio silence from Jerrold Mountain. Not even Moreland is answering my texts.”
“Daphne?”
“Same.”
“Well, that’s a concern.”
“Understated,” I said. “I need to get back there and see what’s up.”
“It looked like a trap,” said Owens. “Like the local villagers had developed that thing, whatever it was, a long time ago and were ready for the Wurdulac.”
“It reminded me of a Tesla coil or something, but it seemed to attract the Wurdulac,” I said.
“It was like the big ugly things were piling in, drawn by a magnet,” added Owens.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was weird.” I didn’t know what made me more uncomfortable: the fact that the town’s vampires seemed prepped for a Wurdulac attack or that Vance didn’t tell me about some missing history the town had with them.
At that precise moment, a flash lit the room. Moreland appeared, holding Daphne close to her chest. I looked at her with not a small amount of awe.
“Hey, if you can do it, I can do it,” Moreland said, but not happily.
“You’re kidding me,” I smiled. Daphne, looking like she had survived a mud-soaked avalanche, peeled herself off Moreland and plunged herself into my chest.
“Somebody needs to rewrite some physics books,” said Dr. Chua.
“By you can do it, I guess you mean bring someone along?” I asked.
“I do,” said Moreland. Unlike me, she wasn’t smiling. She looked weary. Her spandex warrior outfit was torn in several places and covered with, I assumed, many types of blood. Her face was creased with dirt and grime. Daphne’s hair was filthy as I held her. “I got her out of there, but it was the best I could do, Jade.”
“Charly?” I said, alarmed.
“I dunno. Maybe he found a way off the mountain.”
“Raygun?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
That shook me, but I had more questions. “The new kids?” I implored, my heart racing. “Vance? Van?”
I’ve never seen Moreland cry. She broke into a cascade of tears that made up for a thousand years of not crying, covering her face in her hands, tears splashing through her fingers like water breaking through the wall of a dam split open by Thor’s hammer. The new kids were, in a sense, her babies. She regained her composure enough to squeeze out the words, “I lost them all, Jade.”
Owens sat up so quickly I was sure he’d tear an abdominal.
“No, Mr. Owens,” said Dr. Chua.
Owens ignored him. “No way,” said Owens.
Moreland nodded. “Those things.” She stopped, unable to continue. Dr. Chua handed her an opened bottle half full of water, probably his, which she took, and which somehow helped. “They’re just all over the place now. They’ve taken over the town. Nobody’s left there, Jade. Not a human. Not a vampire. Nobody. Just these ugly things wandering around and… feeding.”
The concept of all my housemates, my proteges, fellow influencers, streamers, gamers, and general social vagabonds, all dead, was at this point something I couldn’t process. I looked at Moreland in stunned silence. A part of me wanted to blame her for turning them into targets when she turned them, but it was a much smaller part than you’d expect. I was blaming myself because it was my family the Wurdulac were after at the estate. I was the last piece to the Wurdulac’s destruction of my family’s dynasty. I was the reason Moreland felt the need to turn the influencers in the first place. And I was the reason the influencers were on that mountain.
I couldn’t process any of this. I grabbed a chair facing Owen’s gurney, turned it away from Owens, and sat down. I didn’t want to look at anyone, so I buried my head in my hands. The lifespan of humans is so short that I normally don’t think much of their deaths. It’s a flicker of time within my lifespan no matter what happens. But this felt different. Whether as humans or vampires, the influencers were gone, and it was my fault, not Moreland’s.
“I thought we had the upper hand there in the rubber factory or whatever the hell that place was,” said Moreland. “Then they started coming through that door. There were so many of them. I killed a dozen, at least. But they kept coming. They were like insects. Even more than what we saw, Jade. They started appearing out of nowhere in the building. Like, just, I don’t know. Like I did just now in front of you. But then it got worse. People were getting mauled by… nothing. I’d see faded images of those big ass arms and claws, but they were sort of translucent, like ghosts. And they’d come out of nowhere. I looked for you, and you were gone, and I thought maybe you came here. Or somewhere near here. Lucky I’ve been to Singapore, too, or I’d not be able to be here, you know?”
I nodded. I stood up, feeling faint for the first time in a hundred years. “I know. Come here.” She approached and I gave her a hug. “I know. Fate is a funny thing.” Fate had sent her to Singapore all those years ago, not to kill my wife and child, but to come to me now. Quantum mechanics, in full view. Some would say God. But not my people, and not me, not now.
I looked down at Daphne, who was clearly in shock. Dr. Chua said, gently, “She needs some help. Perhaps a sedative.”
I nodded.
Moreland continued. “Didn’t know what happened to you. Couldn’t care, either. No time. After I saw Vance and Van go down, I flashed to the mountain.” That’s what she called her version of teleporting. I guess she had seen me play League of Legends more than she’d ever admit, because that’s what the gamers called it, too. “That place was getting hammered just as bad. Daphne was facing off against three of them. She was one of the lucky ones. Those things were a… it was like a swarm of locusts. Daphne took a shot, got one right in the eyeball. I jumped on top of her. About thirty seconds ago.” Moreland’s chest was heaving.
I looked at Owens. “When they were circling the mountain, then leaving…” I said.
“Scouting,” said Owens.
“What? They run out of bats?” I complained.
“It was the same thing at the mountain as it was at Vance and Van’s RV park,” said Moreland. “I saw at least two come out of nowhere. Your girl here was the last man standing.”
“You’re sure they got everyone else? How did Daphne survive, and the vampires didn’t?” I kissed Daphne’s forehead. “Don’t take that the wrong way,” I whispered loudly enough to Daphne for others to hear. But she didn’t say anything. She had no reaction. She was comatose with eyes wide open.
“I don’t know for sure,” said Moreland. “But if you saw the place you’d know. I don’t know how any of the villagers or your friends could have got out of there.”
“Couldn’t they have done what you do?” I asked.
Moreland was still fighting the tears. “I saw bodies all over the place. Pieces of bodies, I should say. I recognized some of them. They didn’t have time to practice how to do it, you know?” she sobbed.
“But I saw you teaching some of them, Moreland. Some of them got away. I promise you.”
Moreland laughed but it wasn’t the kind of laugh you utter when you’re happy. “This hurts, Jade.”
“Yeah, I know. Look. You lost some of your babies. I won’t sugarcoat that.” I was having a hard time concealing my emotions, too, but Moreland was a mess. I had never seen her act anything like this. She had been a statue of discipline in all the time I’d known her. “But not all of ‘em. Some of them did what I did. They thought, ‘Where would I rather be than here?’ And they got away. No doubt.” I was fighting back tears, too. If I had seen what she had seen, it would have been a losing battle. I loved those people.
“I hate optimists,” she said. I knew that. I also knew that my optimism was one of the things that drew her to me. I had long ago mastered the dark art of not overdoing it.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?” asked Moreland.
“For her,” I glanced down at the stricken Daphne. My take on life: When people feel like they’ve failed, point out what they’ve done right.
“She sure is scrappy,” said Moreland, a small smile trying to escape her misery.
I said, “All those times I wondered, ‘Why did Moreland have to show up in Singapore, of all the places in the world, those centuries ago?’ Asked myself a million times. Now I know why. It was so you could bring Daphne to me in this moment. I’ll never forget this, Moreland. And I’m a fool for all the shit I gave you all those years.”
“Is that an apology?” she choked through the endless production of what had suddenly become the most prolific tear ducts in the world.
“I hope much more than that.”
“I didn’t kill them,” she said, wiping her eyes. “If I had known someone you cared about was there…”
“I know. I mean, I know now. And I’m a dick.”
Dr. Chua was tending to Owens, who was watching our reconciliation with fascination. Owens was sublimely silent. I could have kissed him for that. For once, he was keeping his mouth shut.
“I don’t think any got away,” Daphne finally stuttered. When I looked at her, she didn’t look back. She stared straight ahead. “They were everywhere. I…” She stopped speaking. Then: “Where am I?”
“You’re safe,” I said. “In Singapore.”
“I am?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“What if they come here?” She was rightfully frightened.
“They won’t, sweetie,” I said. “They can’t travel the way Moreland can.”
“How do we know?” she asked, still staring straight ahead, not blinking her eyes.
“We don’t know much, but we know that, I think,” said Moreland.
“Okay,” said Daphne. “Who’s he?” Finally, her eyes turned. She was looking at Dr. Chua.
Owens told her the story of why we were there.
“Shit,” was all she could command from her voice when he finished. She took her phone out but shook her head. “No service. They’re here, Jade!” Her lips shuddered.
“No, no, you just need to set up your phone for the cell service here,” I said. She wasn’t on vacation, or she would have thought of that herself. I showed her how, then her phone flickered a thousand alerts.
She sat down on a hard plastic chair next to Owens.
“Sure you wanna be lookin’ at those right now?” asked Owens. She didn’t respond as she scrolled through her alerts. “Whatchyou seein’ there, girl?” he tried again.
“Everyone knows,” she said. “I mean, it’s all over the news. The military is scrambling jets. Umm, a Georgia state patrol copter is down in Cobb County. Oh, no, umm, two in Cobb, three in Gwinnett. Shit, guys, two national guard F-16s are down in Marietta County.”
“How the hell can a Wurdulac take down an F-16?” asked Owens.
“Any video footage of Jerrold Mountain?” I asked.
“You into snuff films now?” asked Owens.
“No, we just left there,” said Moreland. “There can’t be yet.”
“Then why are they scrambling jets?” I asked.
“WallaceCam,” said Daphne. “Raygun managed to release him before… I mean, I didn’t see him release him, but, well, says here that there is video from WallaceCam but the social media sites are taking it down as soon as it shows up so I can’t find any. It’s a BBC news story. It says, ‘A video service run by local streamers is showing heavy casualties, but authorities are disputing reports that the casualties are being caused by giant winged humanoid creatures.’”
“Check Reddit,” I said. “They hardly ever take shit down.”
“I don’t want to,” said Daphne, a tear crawling out of the corner of one eye.
“Okay,” I said.
“Tell me again how a damn Wurdulac can take down an F-16 fighter jet because I did not hear you explain it the first time I asked,” said Owens.
“Kamikaze?” asked Moreland. “Fly straight into the engine?”
“Both engines?” asked Owens. Moreland shrugged.
“If it happened, it’s a trick they won’t be able to repeat,” said Dr. Chua. We all looked at him. He shrugged. “I saw Top Gun. But I also know for a fact that American fighter pilots are the best in the world. They won’t let a slow-moving animal get near them again.”
“They will if those slow-moving animals are invisible,” I said.
Dr. Chua raised one eyebrow. “They’ll figure something out,” he said. He was probably right. But first, those in command of fighter pilots would have to reckon with what they were dealing with. That might take some time. Cloaked kamikaze Wurdulacs weren’t exactly part of standard training missions.
“What else?” Owens asked Daphne, who had returned her eyes to her phone.
“Mostly just a lot of disbelief and arguing,” she answered. “Oh, wait. There’s a shelter-in-place order for all of Georgia.”
“Lotta good that’ll do anybody,” said Owens.
“It’s probably safe now for you to phone home,” I said to Owens.
“I might just do that,” Owens responded. “I should check on my partner. He’s a good man, Mourning. You’d like him.”
“I got that sense. It’s you I can’t stand.” I walked over and patted him on the shoulder.
“Yeah,” said Owens. “Hey, hand me my phone,” he said to me. It was on a nearby white plastic table. “And help me off this damn gurney,” he added.
“I thought you tossed your phone,” I said.
“Burner phone,” responded Owens.
I grabbed his burner phone, then his elbow, and walked him over to what I now considered The Office — the place where Bennie, Philip, and I had met with Dr. Chua. I helped ease Owens down onto the couch.
“Oh, my, that does feel good,” said Owens as I helped him sit. The others followed us.
“Any dizziness when you stood up?” I asked.
“Nope. That son of a bitch Longtooth is even more of a bastard than I thought, though,” he said after gingerly touching the back of his bandaged neck.
“He’s building an army, Owens,” I said. “Now I know why he likes that damn movie so much.”
“Movie? What movie?”
“Lord of the Rings. His model is the orc army. He’s building a damn orc army. A flying one. And here I thought he loved that movie because of the elves.”
“Forgive me if I sound opportunistic,” said Dr. Chua, “But I have wished to experiment with DNA modification for some time. It is very difficult to obtain government approval on such things.”
“You think we can do something with it to stop these things?”
“If Mister Longtooth can alter DNA on the fly, Dr. Chua can,” he said.
I sat on the couch next to Owens. Daphne surprised me by sitting on my lap, wrapping her hands around my neck, then leaning into my shoulder with her forehead. She started whimpering a little. I couldn’t imagine what she must have gone through just moments ago. Not because I hadn’t seen terrible things, but because I knew she hadn’t. Until the last few days. I stroked the back of her hair for lack of any other brilliant ideas.
She was wearing a pair of snug dark brown leather pants with angled zippers on each side. I’d never seen them before. She was still wearing an ammo vest over her tank top. It pained me to think of this angel as a hardened soldier, but that’s what she was becoming. Sadly, I wondered for a moment if she considered herself a victim of vampire lore not far from her favorite character in Baldur’s Gate, Astarion.
Daphne lifted her head, wiped her eyes with a soiled napkin that had been on a nearby table, and looked at me, then Owens. “I’ve had enough of this fucker,” she said. “Moreland, can you turn me?”
Moreland shook her head. She got down on one knee next to us. “I don’t think I can go through something like this again. I don’t think I could bear anything happening to you.” If you had told me a month ago that Moreland would say this to a human, I would have laughed uncontrollably, then posted it onto my Instagram account, even if it meant outing her as a vampire.
“Then turn me. I can’t fight these things as a human,” said Daphne.
“Seems like you’ve done okay so far,” said Owens.
Moreland nodded in agreement.
“I’d be dead if you hadn’t brought me here. I don’t want to have to count on something like that again,” she said, looking into Moreland’s eyes.
“You don’t want to live forever, trust me,” I said.
Her head and voice both snapped my way. “It’s not forever. You told me that.” Her voice became scolding and irritated. “You don’t want me with you for more than a few years? Is that it? Am I just a plaything to you? Toss this dead human body aside and find another toy?” I didn’t say anything. It was so far from the truth that I didn’t have words. “Huh?” she demanded. Still nothing. I was tongue-tied. Besides, I wanted to cry. And I hate crying. “Fuck you, Jade,” she said. She jumped off my lap and her thundering feet carried her away in a rage I’d never seen in her.
“Well,” Moreland said after she stomped off, “At least you know how she feels about you.”
“I’ve known,” I said.
“Bullshit,” said Moreland, reaching for her sheath. “Go to her, you fucking clown. Before I rip your face off with this sword you love so much.”
“I can help,” said Dr. Chua. “It is very illegal, but no need for biting if this is truly what she wants.”
There were so many things I didn’t want for Daphne through this kind of life. Near immortality isn’t something to cherish, believe it or not. Nor is the occasional need for a feeding frenzy when you haven’t fed for weeks. Nor is the constant need for human blood. I had already delivered those arguments to Daphne. She didn’t need to hear them again. And the timing for such arguments couldn’t possibly be worse.
I now realized, which meant Daphne did, too, that if Moreland turned her, I’d have to make a final choice between her and my wife — assuming I was able to ever find Resila. I knew that Daphne would follow through on her offer to help me find my family no matter what kind of biological state she lived in, but her current emotion was very real, as was mine. We were in love with each other. If I found my wife, who I hadn’t seen in centuries, and Daphne became a vampire, the choice was easy. I realized, as I stared back at Moreland’s punishing glare, that I had made my choice long before this moment. That the choice had always been easy.
“Shit,” I said as I stood up.
“Shit? Am I hearing that?” said Owens, “It’s the only thing you’ve ever done right.”
I didn’t follow Daphne. Instead, I stood for a few moments.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Moreland.
“For the opportunity to add some dramatic effect,” I said. “I need to give her time to find the elevators and go outside. She’ll want some air. I’ll meet her outside.”
“Nice touch,” said Moreland in a fog of sarcasm only I would have detected.
Owens shook his head and said, “Get your chicken shit ass out there.”
“Dr. Chua, you said you can help her?” I asked.
“I believe I can give her what she wants, without the unpleasant side effects,” he said. “Your vampirism is not governed by one gene, but by hundreds, at least. Of course, we don’t know why you require human blood to sustain yourselves. This must be learned. But other aspects of your biology can be delivered to her. Perhaps without the need for, forgive the description, a parasitic component.”
Owens said, “I’m no scientist, but it seems to me that if you don’t give her every component of what makes these things tick, you risk killing her faster than giving a rat a dose of poison. I mean, that’s basic chemistry, right? Things gotta be just so. Coca-Cola ain’t great cuz it’s got sugar and a lil’ ginger.”
“Oh, now you think vampires are great?” I asked.
“No, Coke, is. I’m sayin’ that you don’t want to change the formula.”
“I’m fully aware of that, Doctor Owens,” said Dr. Chua, with a sarcastic emphasis on doctor. “However. It will take time to study everything properly. Your friend seems to be in a hurry.”
“She can wait,” I said, although I was pretty sure Daphne wouldn’t appreciate me speaking for her. The other consideration was something Moreland had said — that when she turned a human, all its DNA was affected. I didn’t see how Chua could replicate that.
“It is most curious,” said Dr. Chua.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The need for human blood. Tell me. What happens when you are unable to acquire it?”
“We weaken. Get tired easily. Become dehydrated, no matter how much water we drink. It’s worse than my understanding of a bad hangover. Eventually, we lose consciousness. That’s only happened to me once. I got an IV, luckily.”
“And the type of blood. It does not matter?”
“No.”
“A very basic violation of human physiological principles,” said Dr. Chua. “Hmmm. Your bodies must consume the nutrients and discard the rest. Perhaps you have an extra organ?”
Moreland and I looked at each other. Moreland said, “A small organ attached to our stomach.”
“It adds acidity to our stomach, and helps extract the nutrients from the blood,” I said.
“Ah. That makes some sense. And when you turn a human,” he said, speaking to Moreland. “That organ then develops?”
“Yes,” said Moreland. “Not as much or efficiently as it probably should. The first generation of newly turned vampires are somewhat weakened because of it, or so I’ve been told. We also secrete anticoagulants when we bite. I don’t know, you know, where those come from.”
“A vampire corpse would be quite useful to me,” said Dr. Chua.
Owens interjected with, “I volunteer this Mourning cat.” He stared a hole through me. “Quit lollygaggin’. Go to your girl, man!”
Dr. Chua ignored him. “Perhaps if you find Mister Longtooth, you can keep him relatively intact for me to examine?”
“Uh, sure,” I said. “We can try.”
“Hmm,” continued Dr. Chua. “Since your arrival, the bathroom has acquired a strong urine smell. If your urine is like vampire bat urine, which is highly concentrated, I now understand why we’ve had to double our janitorial efforts in recent days.” With anyone else, I would have taken that as an insult. With Chua, it was just science.
Owens was grinning widely, a first in our shared history.
I just stared at Dr. Chua without reply.
“My point in bringing this up is that I believe I may find some clues in a urine sample,” he continued. “This high concentration of urine serves to help you conserve water. Blood has high levels of water, of course. Whatever causes the high concentration of urine helps your body extract nutrients from the blood. If you could provide me a urine sample, I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure, why not?” I said. “Owens, open your mouth and I’ll drop a sample that you can hold onto for the good doctor.” Luckily, I was able to dodge further discussion because I knew by now that Daphne would have found her way outside, so I said, “I’m outta here. We can address this later.”
“You really don’t need to squint your eyes like that,” said Moreland, laughing. “You look like a doofus. Just thinking about where you want to go is enough. And trust the process.”
At that, I was gone.
When I appeared in front of Daphne outside the building, she was startled, but not surprised, if that makes any sense. “Neat trick,” she said. “Wish I could do it.” She glared at me, but I knew that glare. It was her, “Come play with me if you dare,” glare. This is not the same as a “come hither” look. It’s more of a “come hither if you’ve got the balls” look.
She folded her arms across her chest. My move.
“You do know that you haven’t kissed me on the lips since you discovered I was a vampire, right?” I asked. I wasn’t expecting to say this. But it’s what came out: “I’m not sure you’re the one who should worry about being discarded.”
She unfolded her arms, approached me, then grabbed my shirt and pulled me down and planted her lips against mine. I swear I discovered new avenues within her luscious lips and mouth that I had never found, just in that one moment, as her tongue treated mine like a dancing pole. “I told you,” she said when she was finished; although, a moment like this doesn’t truly finish until the bed sheets are soaked. “It kinda freaked me out.”
“I don’t want you for a few years,” I said. “I don’t want you for a few decades. Or a few centuries.”
She tugged on my shirt and leaned her head against my chest. “Me neither. That’s why we’ve got to do this.”
“Dr. Chua says he may have a way. Where you don’t need to feed like I do.”
“I want what you are,” she said.
“No. You don’t. Please, at least let’s see what he can find out.”
“Okay. But won’t it take, like, forever, until he can figure it out?”
“If you don’t want to wait, Moreland is always only one bite away. She’s been through a lot, though, so give her time to breathe no matter what you decide. For her, what just happened is like giving birth to twelve babies and losing them all.”
“I want your baby, Jade. Can Dr. Chua’s way give us that?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t even sure Moreland’s way could give her that, but this didn’t seem like the time to say it.
“It’s a deal breaker if he can’t,” she said.
My entire life has been a systemic attack of unrequited love. I loved my wife, but there had never been any longing for her. We had met and mated. Simple. Those for whom over the centuries I have ever had longing were unreachable or impossible within any grand concept of love or romance. Daphne ended a thousand years of romantic depression with one angry stalk out of a building, one kiss, and one declaration that she wanted my child.
“Okay,” I said.
We walked back into the building without saying much more. Some things shouldn’t be analyzed. We walked across the grand marble floor of Dr. Chua’s grand building, almost right into the glare of the surly guard sitting at his round desk of make-believe power. This time, he would not be the governor of the gateway. I embraced Daphne with a grand hug, and just before we flashed away, I gave the stern guard a wink.
Thanks for reading!
