Hunting Daylight (9781101619032) (9 page)

From outside, the PA system crackled, and then Lenny’s nasal voice blasted. “Briefing in the mess pavilion at eighteen hundred.”

Insects boiled in the warm, dusky air as Jude and
Hamilton walked to the meeting. A few spotlights had been shattered, and glass littered the path.

“This camp is falling to pieces and Lenny knows it,” Hamilton said.

“Or he doesn’t care,” Jude said.

They sat down at a table in the back of the pavilion. The other scientists were already seated, looking grim and hollow-eyed, as if they’d wandered into a funeral home. Jude didn’t see Parnell or Walpole, but he wasn’t surprised. When Lenny strode in, two men began whispering in French.

“You guys need to chill,” Lenny said. He folded his arms and walked between the tables. “Let me explain what’s going on. Then I’ll try to answer your questions.”

A dark-haired scientist stood up. He appeared to be in his midthirties, a wiry chap with elongated ears and a pixie face. “Why are the bats so large?” he asked.

“Survival of the fittest,” Lenny said. “The bats gradually adapted to their environment. We found antelope and wildebeest bones in a cave—baby bones. They dated back four thousand years. The large bats were, and still are, supreme hunters. When they were still evolving, the smaller ones died off.”

“Got an update on the death toll?” Hamilton said.

A blush spilled across Lenny’s cheeks, bleeding into his port-wine stain. “If you don’t let me finish talking, I’ll add you to the list.”

Hamilton’s lips clamped shut. Jude inched down in his chair and forced himself to breathe slowly.

Lenny moved to the front of the pavilion. “We’re in
an unmapped region of the Birougou,” he said. “There’s extreme biodiversity out here. The bacteria and viruses are just as unusual. The bats you saw this morning are unique. They carry an atypical DNA virus.”

A man with auburn hair and a narrow fox-face raised his hand. “Have we been exposed to it?”

“No.” Lenny grinned, showing his incisors. “No need to worry about this one. You’re immune. Now. But three thousand years ago, you would have gotten infected. That’s what happened to the Lolutu tribe who lived here a few thousand years ago. The Lolutu got infected with the virus—either they got bitten or they may have eaten the bats. The virus caused a change in the Lolutu’s stem cells. A change that inhibited aging and boosted immunity. The Lolutu also lost the need to ingest food and developed a craving for blood.”

Jude sat up a little straighter. Was Lenny saying that a virus had turned the Lolutu into vampires? Didn’t he know that immortality wasn’t a contagious virus?

Lenny paused dramatically. “The Lolutu were the first vampires.”

“Bullshit,” Hamilton said.

A man at Jude’s table got to his feet. His small face was overpowered by a beard that grizzled out like a Brillo pad. “Vampirism is
not
a virus,” he cried.

The other scientists sprang from their chairs and began shouting.

Lenny raised his hands. “Shut the fuck up so I can talk,” he yelled. “Or the bats will be the least of your problems.”

The group fell silent and returned to their seats.

“A few weeks ago we tested a bat,” Lenny said. “It had high levels of monoclonal antibodies.”

“Who cares?” The man with the pixie face shrugged.

“You should,” Lenny said. “In our main lab, we injected vampire rats with monoclonal antibodies. This allowed the rats to endure sunlight for up to two hours. No burning. No blindness. No side effects.”

Jude fixed his attention on Lenny, trying to look attentive, but perspiration rolled down his spine, dampening the back of his shirt. He remembered that long-ago day when Vivi was born and the doctors were fretting over her high monoclonal antibody levels. He pressed his fist against his churning stomach.

“The bats are dangerous,” Lenny said. “But you guys are witnessing an epic moment in vampirism. We are hunting daylight. Al-Dîn will find a way for us to walk in the sun. But to do this, we need to collect—and test—some big motherfucking bats. We plan to bio-engineer their monoclonal antibodies and make a serum. A twelve-hour injectable drug. One that will block photosensitivity. It won’t be a cure. But vampires can inject themselves as needed.”

Lenny glanced around the room. “Any questions?”

No one responded.

“Meeting adjourned,” Lenny said.

Hamilton touched Jude’s shoulder. “Are you all right, buddy? You look sick.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“I got to get going,” Hamilton said. “We’re digging near the river tonight. I’d run away, but Tatiana is sending her Congo cyborgs.”

It was full dark when Jude walked back to his tent. He couldn’t explain why, but it felt bigger without Hamilton’s effusive personality, filled with menacing shadows and echoes. But Jude needed solitude. He opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle of AB. He lay down on his cot, uncapped the bottle, and took a sip.

His daughter’s blood had high levels of monoclonal antibodies. And so did the bats that Al-Dîn was studying. If these antibodies held the key to day-walking, and if this knowledge was made public, then his child would be hunted—and experimented on.

I’ve got to leave this camp
, he thought.
I want to go home and protect my family.

A rustling noise came from the flap, and Tatiana walked into the tent, holding a lantern. “Do you have time for a private briefing, Dr. Barrett? Or may I call you Jude?”

“Jude’s fine.” He put down his bottle and started to rise from the cot.

“No, you’re fine. Stay there.”

She set down the lantern and walked to his cot. Her gaze moved to Jude’s desk and stopped on the photograph of Caro and Vivi. “Is that your wife?”

Jude nodded.

“And your child, too?”

“Yes.”

“It’s unusual for vampires to reproduce. How did you manage it?”

His pulse roared in his ears. He leaned forward and turned the picture away from Tatiana. “What’s the story on the bats?”

“Don’t worry about them,” she said. “Lenny and I have everything under control.”

“May I ask how?”

She perched on the edge of his cot, her gaze lingering on his face. “Sorry, Jude. I don’t mean to stare. But your left iris is beautiful. All those brown specks in the blue. Are you just as unique as your eye color?”

“No.”

“I think you are.” She smiled, and her hand brushed over his trousers.

He shifted his leg away from her. “Can we get on with the briefing?”

“After
we
get it on.” She crawled across the cot and wedged her hand against his crotch. “I’m attracted to you, Jude. Do you feel it, too?”

Yes, he felt it. But he didn’t want to. His chest burned, as if a scorching wire were twisting through him. He pushed her away. “You need to leave. Now.”

“What if I don’t?”

“I’m married.”

“So?” She rubbed the heel of her hand between his legs, moving back and forth, tugging his zipper a little lower.

“Don’t.” He scooted toward the edge of the cot and pulled up his zipper.

“Come on, Jude. It’ll get your mind off your worries.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Right. Lighten up and have fun. Or you’ll end up like Dr. Walpole. A raving lunatic.”

“So, how often do the bats attack the camp?” Jude asked.

“Often. Sometimes they hit us in daylight.”

Before he could respond, she lunged, pinning him against the mattress, stroking between his thighs, pushing against him with the flat of her hand.

“Your body wants me,” she said.

“No.” He tried to push her off, but she gripped him tighter.

Sensations rushed through his lower extremities, and he felt himself slide toward an edge, clear and flat as a sheet of glass. He sucked in air, and then his breath came out in a rush, blowing against her blond curls.

Stop. Her. Now.
He grasped her hand and flung it away.

“What is your problem?” she said.

“I don’t want this. I have a wife.”

“She won’t know.” Tatiana reached for him.

He caught her wrist. “But
I
will.”

She stared at him a long moment, then twisted away. “You’ll be in Gabon for a month—with me. Remember, what happens in the rain forest, stays in the rain forest.”

After she left, Jude reached into his backpack. He pulled out Caro’s blue ribbon and touched it to his nose, breathing in her smell. Long before they were even born, their lives-to-be had intersected. His father, Sir John Fleming Dalgliesh Barrett, had been a prankster during his days at Eton, and his partner in crime had been Nigel Clifford, Caro’s uncle. A stunt at St. George’s Chapel had brought the Windsor guards rushing down, and the boys’ fathers had been summoned from a cocktail party at the House of Lords.

Decades later, after Jude had begun studying the longevity gene, he’d corresponded with Nigel Clifford, and their letters had eventually led him to Caro—the old chap
had been looking for a way to explain vampirism, and he’d brought Jude and Caro together.

He shut his eyes, remembering the first time he saw her. She was running out of her flat in London, her blond corkscrew curls flying around her. A jolt of sexual energy had almost knocked him to the pavement. He’d followed her to Heathrow Airport, blatantly ignoring the Barretts’ family motto: “Be Skeptical.”

Oh, what a mess he’d been in those days. Tidy and precise, his pencils lined up in a row. Shy and bumbling. More skilled at introducing a gene into bacteria than inviting a woman to the cinema. But he’d fallen headlong in love with Caro. He couldn’t stop touching her, looking at her, smelling her. The scientific part of his brain had wondered if she’d emanated an addictive substance. Whatever it was, he wanted more.

From the beginning, they’d shared a strong, sensual connection, but they’d fit together in other ways. She’d been an historian, so they’d shared a love of academia, but unlike him, she wasn’t pedantic. Her idea of a romantic date was an evening at the Bodleian Library. She was smart, funny, audacious, straightforward, and tender. She knew when to be ladylike and when to be risqué. Yet she could also be proper and bawdy all at once—that was thrilling. When they were together, Jude stood a little taller, feeling dashing and brave for the first time.

Just when the broken pieces inside him had begun to realign, he’d learned about her hybrid genes. He remembered how stunned he’d felt. Adrenaline had pumped through his veins, and a huge neon sign began flashing inside his head:
fight or flight
.

He’d picked flight. As he walked away from Caro that night, he decided to return to Dalgliesh, his family’s home in York. His stepmother had turned it into a tourist attraction, and she always pointed out that the manor was built around a hawthorne tree. To this day it thrived in the cellar gift shop. That was when he knew that he couldn’t leave Caro. If a tree could grow in the dark, then love was just as durable. Just as miraculous.

Jude awoke shortly before daylight, when Hamilton crept into their tent. Rain was hammering against the canvas roof. A few minutes later, Jude drifted back to sleep, and the next time he opened his eyes, it was still raining.

He rubbed his eyes and sat up. “What time is it?”

“A little after dusk,” Hamilton said, tossing Jude a jacket with a hood. “Let’s get something to eat.”

Rain blew sideways, sweeping across the path, as Jude and Hamilton headed toward the mess pavilion. The air was overheated, thick and impenetrable. Jude pursed his lips with each breath, as if he were sucking oxygen through a wet carpet. As he moved down the path, he noticed that the spotlights had not been repaired and trash lay in heaps. Some tents had been flattened.

“What happened?” Jude said, tugging his hood over his head.

“They ran,” Hamilton said. “A Swedish microbiologist and a primate expert.”

“When?”

“You slept through the commotion,” Hamilton said. “They got shot.”

They stepped into the pavilion. Lenny stood up front with an armed Congolese soldier. “We’re rationing the blood,” he called. “You only get one pint a day. So make it last.”

Tatiana walked up, her face streaked with water, her hair flat and dripping. “You guys need to come with me,” she said, pointing at Jude and Hamilton.

“Where to?” Hamilton said.

“I’ve got some equipment at the old camp,” she said, giving the men halogen lanterns. “I need you to help me bring it back.”

She strode toward the
bai
, oblivious to the rain. A big-shouldered Congolese soldier walked behind her.

“Old camp?” Hamilton said, turning to Jude. “How many are there?”

“Maybe we should run for it now,” Jude said.

“Bad idea.” Hamilton ducked his head, and rain cascaded off his thick, springy hair. “She’s packing a Glock. And her guard is armed. We could get killed.”

They followed her across the wide clearing. Rain blew in visible sheets, the drops hitting Jude’s arms like pebbles. They hiked into the foothills of the Chaillu Massif and climbed onto a rocky plateau. Tatiana’s lantern moved ahead, a bright smudge in the downpour. She pointed to a dark cleft in the rocks. “There’s a cave over there,” she yelled. “Let’s get out of the rain.”