Bound by Night(79)

The Martins would not destroy Bastien the way they’d destroyed Terese.
 
 
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For the seventh day in a row, Nicole was sitting in the library with Bastien. She’d only seen Riker once, when he’d come to her chambers to check on Bastien’s progress, which, with one exception, had been amazing.
The boy had come out of his shell enough to speak with everyone who spoke to him first, although he was noticeably more reserved with males. He still loved hanging out at the lab, but he eagerly went with Nicole to the library, and Morena had been able to get him to tour the entire compound. He’d been especially interested in the game room, and he seemed to have a particular talent for darts and an unholy love for Xbox games.
The exception to his progress had been Riker.
Bastien hadn’t wanted to talk about him, let alone see him. Morena, used to working with children, had made a suggestion that Nicole was going to put to use today. She just hoped Bastien would be open to talk.
And that he wouldn’t disappear under stress, which, he said, was the only time it happened.
And what a bizarre thing that was. Nicole had never heard of a vampire who could make himself invisible, and no one else Nicole had spoken to had, either. No one but Myne.
There are legends, he’d said. Legends of the first vampires, who had different gifts from those the rest of us have.
Some are rare, like the midwife gift. Others are only alive in stories. Like traveling through portals or turning invisible.
Looked like that one wasn’t a legend, and if that didn’t stick in her science-minded craw. Riker said that Terese hadn’t possessed the ability, and what little they knew about the male who had sired Bastien came only from the files she’d stolen, and they didn’t mention a tendency to disappear into thin air.
Daedalus had known about Bastien’s talent, though, which explained why they’d kept him for as long as they had. When she’d gone through the files, she’d learned that over the last twenty-two years, the insane breeder vampire had sired thirty offspring with twenty different females, including one child by his own daughter from a previous breeding.
With the exception of Bastien, the children had been raised in human households and were occasionally brought into labs for testing. Two had been “euthanized” and dissected. Apparently, Daedalus had been trying to build a breeding program for years, which would allow them to genetically engineer vampires who would be docile yet efficient in human service.
It would also allow them to breed their own endless supply of test subjects, donors for medical applications, and whatever else their sick minds decided to do with them. No more quotas, no more millions spent to purchase vampires on the legal auction market or to pay poachers to procure wild vampires illegally.#p#分页标题#e#
The whole thing nauseated her. How could she have let all of that happen? How could she have taken the reins of a company before she learned the ins and outs of every single project?
You thought you had time. You trusted your parents to found a reputable company, and you trusted your brother to run it until you were ready.
Okay, so maybe all of that was true, and maybe she could actually make herself believe it. But where she really stumbled was the absolutely mind-numbing idea that if she hadn’t met Riker, she either wouldn’t have learned about all of this or she wouldn’t have been as  horrified as she was now.
She definitely would have stopped Daedalus, at least to the extent that she could. No doubt the board would have done exactly what they—Chuck, in particular—had already done, by finding an excuse to both discredit and get rid of her.
She felt a tap on her shoulder and looked up to see Bastien join her at the table after his foray into the small library’s history section.
“I found a book about vampires and Native Americans,” he said. “Morena and Grant told me the first vampires were from Native American tribes.”
“It’s true,” she said. “All of the oldest born vampires have Native American blood running through their veins. MoonBound’s chief is full-blooded Cherokee, and Myne is full-blooded Nez Perce.”
“Do I have Native American blood?”
Yes, he did. According to his file, the male who sired him was a mix of two of the twelve tribes that had been affected by the virus first: Crow and Nez
Perce. But obviously, the truth wasn’t an option, at least, not right now. Someday Riker might tell Bastien about his real father, but it definitely wasn’t her place to do it.
“I don’t know about your mother.”
He looked down at the book. “Oh.”
“But you know, you can ask Riker about it.”