I head down the hallway, peering into each meeting room as I pass until I find the one I need. I knock on the open door.
“Hi. Uh, you wanted to see me?”
Percy smiles at me from across the table. “Yes. Thanks for coming, Noah.”
I enter the room and make for an empty seat at the table—coincidentally, beside Sam, who’s taken me under his wing whether I want to be there or not. And I can’t tell him to back off, because his boyfriend is fucking terrifying, even for a demon. The only time Gideon smiles is at Sam—the rest of the time, his face makes my balls shrivel back into my body. So yeah, not going to hurt his boyfriend’s feelings and risk his wrath.
David, one of the other members of the senior team, looks toward the door. “Where’s Andrew?”
“Talking about cookies.” I can’t quite keep the disdain from my voice, and I bite my lip. These people all like Andrew.
Alistair growls. “He better not be telling the story about the time he tried to poison us! That low-down son of a bitch.”
Well, Alistair might not like Andrew. Come to think of it, they do bicker a lot.
Suddenly I like Alistair a whole lot more.
“I’ll go get him,” David mutters, but he’s grinning as he leaves the room.
Sam leans in. “Everything okay? You seem tense.”
That makes me tense up even more. There’s no real privacy amongst the community—half the time they can smell what you’ve been doing or your feelings. Or sense them in some weird way. I didn’t even know that tension had a smell until I met these people.
I force a smile, because even if Sam is overbearing sometimes, he’s the reason I’m here and not still trapped in the lab complex—plus, his heart’s in the right place.
And Gideon is sitting on his other side, listening.
“I’m good,” I murmur. “Just, ah, some office politics downstairs.”
He frowns, but I’m saved from having to say anything else when David comes back, followed by Andrew. They close the door and take their seats, and suddenly all eyes are on me.
“Noah, we’ve been talking about your situation, and I want to thank you again for all the information you’ve provided for us. I know your time at the compound was traumatic for you, and I wish it had never happened, but the bits and pieces you picked up while you were there have been invaluable.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just nod awkwardly. These people freed me from the underground lab complex and gave me a job and a home. Telling them what I overheard while I was trapped there seems like a small price to pay.
Percy smiles his gentle smile that makes me feel like I should want to be a better person and continues. “We also appreciate having your permission to review the test results and other information that was in the file Dr. Tish and his team had compiled.”
I shrug, still feeling awkward. “None of the information in it would have made sense to me, and I wanted to understand what… I wanted to understand.”
Because I don’t. I don’t understand. Even though it’s been explained to me several times, I can’t quite grasp it.
The CCA wanted to enslave humanity.
To do that, they needed to improve the fertility level of the various community species so humans wouldn’t outnumber them. Community fertility is substantially lower than human.
They used sorcery to modify half-human, half-other fetuses in utero.
Then, two decades later, they took egg and sperm samples from those modified people to create the next generation—my generation—and see if we were born human.
Apparently, that’s what all the testing was for: to see if any of my/our community genes had survived. The way it’s been told to me, if a person has any community blood at all, it will dominate. So if your six-times-great-grandfather was a demon, you will be a demon, even if his partner was human and all his descendants procreated with humans.
Which means the fact that I have a vampire grandfather but am completely, entirely, one hundred percent human violates the natural order of things. The way the world works, I should be a vampire.
I don’t know how I feel about that. I hate everything that’s been done to me, and I definitely don’t like the idea of being the result of an experiment, but I was raised human. The thought that I should have been—should be?—a vampire is… creepy.
This whole situation is just fucked-up.
On the plus side, the CCA has been all but disbanded. Most of the players are in prison awaiting trial. Their bases have been raided, all property and data files seized, funds frozen. The only ones still on the run are Dr. Tish and some of his senior sorcerer scientists.
Not gonna lie. That fucking terrifies me.
I trusted that man for most of my life. Then I found out he’s a monster—and not because he’s a sorcerer. And now that I’m free and have the chance to pick up the pieces of my life… he’s still out there.
There hasn’t been a peep from him, so nobody knows where he is and what he’s doing. Sam keeps assuring me that they’ll get him, that Tish has nowhere to go. And even if he did, he doesn’t know I’m alive. But I still wake up at night terrified he’s going to find me.
Sam pats my knee reassuringly, which means he’s somehow guessed that my mood has changed. Probably by scent. I really hate this lack of privacy.
“Now that we know more about the research Tish and the CCA were doing, we’re confident that you’re going to be fine, Noah. Obviously you’ve undergone trauma, but physically, there should be no repercussions. And if you find yourself concerned about anything, any changes, CSG will handle your medical care. You have only to reach out to us.”
My gut freezes. “That sounds like you don’t expect me to be around,” I say carefully. I don’t want to be here long-term, true, but I haven’t quite figured out what normal is going to be for me. I’m not ready to leave my safety net—especially not while Tish is still on the loose.
Percy immediately shakes his head. “Not at all. You’ve been doing a great job here at CSG, and if you want to stay, we’d be happy to help you gain some formal qualifications and look at career progression.” The look he gives me says pretty clearly that he knows that’s not what I want. “We just want to make sure you understand that no matter what decisions you make, CSG will provide care for you if there are any repercussions from what the CCA has done.”
Well. That’s… nice of them. After all, Sam didn’t do his human-to-shifter transition until he was nearly forty. Percy says there’s no chance of that with me, that he could see Sam was supposed to be a shifter but that I look completely human.
Still, you never know.
“Thank you. I appreciate that. Though I hope I never need it.” Does this really have to be a group meeting? I’m uncomfortable having the others sit in if we’re going to talk about my future medical needs—and my future in general.
Smiling still, Percy says, “Which leads me to the point of this meeting. We’ve talked about the fact that the magic has been paying very close attention to you since you came here. The fact that you can feel it is very unusual.”
I barely hold in a snort. The first time I ever felt existential magic, the force that basically runs the universe, was the day Sam was brought to the labs. It was the weirdest thing, but the second I started sneaking around the lab where he was, trying to eavesdrop on the techs, I felt… something. Like water against my skin, but less resistant. It creeped me out. Since then, it’s been with me almost all the time. It was Percy who told me what it was—as the lucifer, he has a connection with it. He made an offhand comment about how the magic seemed to like me, as it was wrapping me up in the metaphysical equivalent of a hug, and when I stupidly said, “Oh, so that’s what it is,” everyone got all excited. Apparently, humans don’t feel magic that easily. It takes training and effort. So they thought maybe my community DNA would eventually dominate after all.