Chapter 12 #2
“What do I tell Alistair? Can we help him?”
“If your code can find out where he is, Gideon and I will go back him and this Jim guy up,” Andrew says. I look up at Gideon, who nods.
“We’ll dump Jim somewhere safe and get Alistair back here without anyone following,” he assures me. “We’re going to need all hands on deck to figure this shit out.”
“Okay, gimme a sec.” I turn my attention to texting. The location part of the code is the trickiest, and I want to make sure I don’t fuck it up.
“While you two are doing that, I’m going to get back to tracing the signatures from the weaves today,” David says. “We need to confirm who’s behind all this if we’re going to figure out exactly what they’re doing.”
Alistair texts me back almost right away. “He’s going to meet you at the cinema complex at the mall in Eastside. Cinema six.”
“Good choice,” Andrew approves. “That place is huge, and it’s got three or four entrances. Ready, Gideon?”
“Sure.” Gideon kisses the top of my head and then stands up and heads for the door as if he didn’t just metaphorically throw a live grenade into the room.
Andrew just smirks and follows him out, but Elinor shrieks, “What the fuck was that?”
The door closes.
Those remaining turn to me.
I shrug, my face on fire. “It’s nothing.” So much for discretion. I mean, I know he was pissed about that, though I’m still not sure why, but I didn’t think he’d just throw me under the bus and leave.
“I’m sorry,” Lily says slowly, “did you just say that Gideon Bailey showing you affection was nothing ? Perhaps you’re unaware that Gideon doesn’t show affection, ever.” She’s grinning widely. “I’m pretty sure this is not nothing. In fact… I’d go as far as to say it’s something.”
“I love you, but I will hurt you if you don’t shut up,” I tell her. “I can do that now. I have super cool shifter skills.”
She just laughs.
“Stop trying to change the subject,” David says, coming to sit on the coffee table right in front of me. “Is something happening with you and Gideon?”
I cast a desperate look at Percy. “We really all should get to work.”
“Of course,” he agrees, “as soon as you tell us what’s going on.” He smiles that gentle smile of his, but mischief lurks in his eyes.
I sigh. “Fine. Gideon and I hooked up. I asked him to be discreet, which pissed him off for some reason, and he’s clearly exercised his revenge by siccing you lot on me.”
“You asked him to be discreet?”
“And you don’t know why he’s pissed off?”
“Oh, my sweet summer child.” That’s Elinor. She reaches out to pat my arm. “You’ve hurt his feelings. I know that’s hard to believe, because there are many people who don’t think Gideon has feelings, but it’s true.”
I… what?
I look between them, at the varying expressions of indulgence and sympathy.
“But… we agreed to do it again.” My face is on fire. “I just said I didn’t want to be the subject of office gossip. Why would his feelings be hurt?”
Aidan laughs. “I don’t know Gideon all that well, but my guess is that he doesn’t care if people gossip about the two of you because he likes you.”
Likes me? Like… likes me, likes me?
Whoa.
Lily’s still grinning at me. “I love this for you! Gideon can be rough around the edges, but he’s such a good man. And really, I don’t know why any of us are surprised. He’s been nicer to you over the past few weeks than he is to anyone.”
David makes a surprised agreeing noise. “You’re right. It’s hard to tell, because Gideon’s idea of nice isn’t like most people’s, but I bet if this hadn’t all happened, we would have ended up seeing an office romance slowly bloom.”
I shake my head. “I… need to think about this. And talk to Gideon, I think.” Because if he’s interested in more than just a fuck…
I push down the excited hope. I hadn’t realized until now that I wanted more than sex and friendship from him.
“Okay,” Percy says firmly. “Now it’s time to work. We can gossip about Sam and Gideon when all the kidnapped couples are safely home.”
We’ve only been slogging through the data, looking for patterns or things we’ve missed or anything that could give us a hint who we’re looking for, where they are, and exactly what they’re doing, for about twenty-five minutes when David says, “Fuck yeah!”
Elinor chokes on her coffee, coughing and hacking and gasping for breath.
Not to be mean, but I’m so, so glad it’s not me doing it for once.
I pound her on the back until she can breathe almost normally.
I can’t blame her for reacting that way, though—David hardly ever swears. It really has an impact when he does.
“You found something?” Percy asks, getting up and going to hover behind David.
“Yeah, I’ve got the names of the three sorcerers who created those weaves in Sam—”
Lily cheers, scrambling out of her seat to go see, and Aidan starts to ask something, but David waves for them both to be quiet.
“— and they’re all known associates of the Coalition for Community Advancement.”
“Who are our main suspects in this case.” Suddenly dizzy at the thought that we might be getting somewhere, I lean back in my chair.
“Yep. I’ve also managed to wrangle some more information about the purpose of the weaves. It’s fascinating, really—completely obscene and chilling, but amazing work.”
“Before you give us a quick rundown,” Percy interrupts, “is what you’ve found sufficient for us to raid all known CCA compounds?”
David nods. “Yes.”
The community doesn’t require warrants in the same way the human world does—the lucifer’s authority is generally enough—but some of these cults have very wealthy and influential members who are good at kicking up a fuss if they get raided too often, so usually it has to wait until there’s a really good reason and a decent amount of evidence.
Percy doesn’t have to worry about reelection, but he does depend on wealthy members of the community to support charities and welfare projects for those less fortunate.
“Okay.” Percy pulls out his phone and taps at the screen for a few moments, uses his thumb to authenticate something, then turns back to us. “I’ve given the order. The teams are preparing, and we’ll need to join them, but give me an overview first.”
Oh fuck, oh wow, oh shit, there’s going to be raids tonight. We might actually find the missing couples!
“It was done in vitro,” David begins, looking me right in the eyes.
“Sorry, Sam. From what I can see, the weaves started out a lot more basic but developed as you did. That’s how they were able to bond so completely with you.
Our own research on fertility tells us that when a member of the community and a human become pregnant, the fetus does initially retain some human DNA.
That changes slowly over the second trimester, and by the third, there’s none left. ”
“That’s the magic stepping in to ensure continuation of community species?” I say. I know this part, but it still comes out sounding like a question.
David nods. “Exactly. These weaves are incredibly complex, and they seem to have… for want of a better word, ‘captured’ the human DNA before the magic could remove it. This part is a little unclear to me, since we don’t know exactly how the magic does this, or even exactly what it does—whether it switches human DNA out with community, or changes it, or what.
It seems to me that the CCA might know more about this than we do, which means… ” He trails off and looks at Percy.
“They’ve been doing more experimentation on fetuses,” the lucifer says grimly.
David spreads his hands. “It’s just a guess, but I can’t see how else they’d know.
Our information comes from noninvasive research.
To find out more, they’d need to be taking samples from and performing experiments on fetuses in weeks thirteen to twenty-eight, which is something we’ve never really done because of the risk to the pregnancy. ”
Lily sighs and shakes her head. “Okay. So the CCA potentially understands what the magic does to ensure that babies aren’t born human, and they’ve used that knowledge to warp the process?”
“As far as I can see, yes. Rather than the human DNA being discarded or switched out, it’s captured by the weave and used as a disguise of sorts—but not really. Maybe more like a suppressant? Sam’s shifter DNA was forced into dormancy and he appeared fully human.”
“To what end?” Aidan asks intently. “I know the CCA advocates for community dominance over humans. What’s the benefit of turning our babies into humans?”
“I can’t be certain until the samples Dr. Sims took are tested, but my guess is that Sam’s fertility while he appeared human was at human level. Despite his underlying shifter DNA, that humanity would breed through to the next generation. Or at least that was the aim.”
I blink. “Wait. You’re saying that if I’d somehow impregnated someone while I thought I was human, the baby would have been born human, even if the mother was part of the community?”
“I think that’s what they were hoping to achieve. I don’t know if they were successful.”
Aidan shakes his head. “Maybe I’m being stupid, but that doesn’t make sense to me. Why are they breeding humans if they want to eradicate them?”
“They’re playing a long game.” David sighs.
“Again, I’m only guessing, but my take would be that what they did to Sam was only phase one.
Phase two would be taking samples from Sam and others who were part of their program last time around and refining the weaves so they don’t affect all parts of DNA—just fertility.
They would have done that while they were waiting for their subjects—sorry, Sam—to grow up enough to start reproducing.
Samples from the next generation would show whether the weaves succeeded in producing human children.
I’m going to say they did, which means—”
“Fuck,” Aidan interrupts, his eyes wide.