Children of the Goddesses (completed)

For you, my Sweetheart

Lem’s POV

            The bio-research unit of Lady Lae’s vampire army was the best kept secret of her arsenal. Even her own sons, the Royals, had no idea about what we were tasked to research and our findings. Not only were they unaware of our work, Lady Lae’s paranoia was so over the top that she had tasked our unit with researching the capabilities of her own sons centuries ago without letting them know nor allowing any of them to learn about the true extent of their powers. The true power of the Royals was one of the first things that I was taught after I was assigned to the unit. All new recruits would spend a year learning about the important discoveries made by the unit over the centuries and in our second year, we were taught the methodologies for the research that we would be conducting from our third year and beyond. 

            With knowledge came power, which was also why all vampires assigned to the bio-research unit were orphans. It was the easiest way for Lady Lae to ensure that we couldn’t be made use of by anyone within the vampire army against her. At the same time, our unit was completely isolated from the rest of the army, located in the fortress of Lady Lae in Canada, just across the border from the State of Maine. Life in the bio-research was also very comfortable compared to what we were accustomed to at base camp. Everyone had their own studio apartments in the fortress with blackout blinds and we had weekends off for our own leisure time. We were even paid with human money so that we were able to go to human towns for entertainment. The only thing that we were not allowed to do was to have s*x with any females other than the ones that had been procured for us by the unit responsible for the Expansion Missions. 

            Despite the semblance of freedom and perks that we enjoyed, none of us were naive enough to believe that the perks came without strings attached. All vampires in the bio-research bore the mark of Lady Lae which she had branded personally with witch fire onto our chests when we first joined the unit. With this mark, she was able to ensure that anyone foolish enough to escape or sell information to others were punished duly, and at least during my time in the unit, few had dared to break the rules. This mark, however, was not enough to deter those among the Royals who were hungry for more power. There was no lack of overtures from Royals to vampires in the bio-research unit to sell information to them and this was also how I came to know King Demitri. 

            Even before the final preparations for the Battle at Wallace Bay, our unit was tasked with the genetic sequencing of daywalkers to understand how the magic of the sunstone was enabling daywalkers to be invulnerable to sunlight. From prior research, we already knew that in everyone’s DNA, there was a pair of chromosomes determining  if a person was human, werewolf, witch or vampire. The two chromosomes were the Moon and Sun chromosomes. The former was known commonly as the magic gene and was the dominant chromosome, which were more likely to be passed on from fathers to sons and mothers to daughters. This discovery was especially important because it explained the genetics of half breeds, and formed the foundation of our research on the daywalkers. 

            Besides the First Witch and witch-werewolf hybrids like the prophesied Luna from the Gold Moon Pack, all witches descended from a witch mother and human father, making them half-breeds. Witch mothers passed on the Moon chromosomes to their daughters almost without exceptions and throughout history, there were very few known documented cases of daughters of witches born with two Sun chromosomes, or in layman terms, without magic. On the other hand, all sons of witches were born with two Sun chromosomes like any normal human. During the transformation ritual on a new moon night, the witch mothers of the vampires-to-bes would have to drive a stake through the hearts of their 16 year old sons with their own hands as a sacrifice before using the harvested magic of the new moon in the moonstone to revive her sons. The magic drawn from the new moon night not only gave the dead a second life but also mutated one Sun chromosome into a Moon chromosome. The mutation created powerful creatures, named vampires by Lady Lae’s own mother, who was the first witch to have conducted this ritual. With the mutated chromosome, vampires became supernatural beings with the ability to move quickly and powerful vampires were able to move at the speed of light. Most importantly for the power hungry witches who created us, the mutation also gave vampires the ability to kill werewolves with the poison in our fangs.  

            The mutation also allowed the Royals to father half-breed vampires with humans but as the law of nature dictated, male babies would inherit one mutated Moon chromosome and a Sun chromosome from their fathers and mothers respectively, while female babies were more likely to inherit the remaining Sun chromosome from their father and a Sun chromosome from their human mother. Female vampires were therefore very rare and for most female babies born of a vampire and human, the only fate awaiting them was death. That was the second life changing lesson for me when Laila and I were both seven, when her newborn sister was snatched from the arms of her mother and sent to her death, simply because a human baby would not grow up to become a useful weapon for Lady Lae. As I watched Laila’s mother, the only motherly figure in my life after my own mother had died giving birth to me, wasted away slowly day by day, grieving the death of her newborn and blaming herself for not being able to protect her, I swore to myself that I would work hard to become so powerful that I would be able to protect my loved ones. 

            When the results of our aptitude test were released, I qualified for both the bio-research and medic unit, and was given the choice to be assigned to one of them. My heart yearned to become a medic, just like my late father and I wanted to do it to honor his memory but I knew that if Dad were alive and had the same choice, he would choose an assignment that could give him enough power to protect his loved ones. In his farewell letter to me, a letter which all combat troops prepared before going on a mission and given to their families if they were killed in action, he expressed his regret for not being able to procure the medical supplies required to keep Mum alive after my birth. She had died from fatal loss of blood, something that was completely preventable if only Dad and Laila’s Father had enough power within the vampire army. I didn’t blame them for not being able to protect our families but I swore to myself that I would not become like them. I would not watch helplessly as life ebbs away from the love of my life, neither would I watch defeatedly as Lady Lae’s daughters come to take my human daughter away to be killed. 

            On the cold winter night as the transport ferrying us to the bio-research unit drove down the path leaving the base camp, my heart ached knowing that I was leaving the little girl chasing the transport tearfully behind. The girl who held my heart in her hands and shone like a bright beacon in the dark world that we lived in. The girl who hardened my resolve to become stronger and more powerful, so that one day, I could give her everything that her heart desired and more. She was my motivation when the pressure to produce results became unbearable and she was my solace when we were punished cruelly for not producing results in time. She gave meaning to my existence and when we were ordered to restart research on female vampires three years ago after the fall of the Werewolf Council, I was grateful to whatever Goddesses that were out there, for putting me in the bio-research unit. 

            The rumor that female vampires couldn’t give birth to anything other than stillborns was far from the truth. In fact, I read in our archives that in the early days, the mother of Lady Lae had procured male humans for female vampires to mate with to supply her with more vampires. However, the babies produced from this union turned out to be all human and were killed, while their mothers were told that they were stillborn or died shortly after birth. After two generations of mating produced only human babies, the mother of Lady Lae ordered the mating program for female vampires to halt on the pretext that female vampires couldn’t give birth to viable babies. Everyone who knew the truth, including witches who were involved in the delivery process were killed, and the only record of this ever happening was in our unit for research purposes. For reasons unknown to us, Lady Lae ordered us to research this and conduct a thorough DNA investigation of a few handpicked female vampires.

            To our surprise, we found out that even though female vampires carried one Moon and one Sun chromosomes like male vampires, their Moon chromosome wasn’t a completely mutated chromosome. Instead, it resembled the Moon chromosome of witches and werewolves closely, and showed almost no signs of dark magic. Even stranger was the way that these two chromosomes were expressed. At first, we were not sure but after the first daywalker was created, we were able to conclude that the Sun chromosome in female vampires wasn’t dominant but it had somehow purified the mutated Moon chromosome and also prevented the Moon chromosome to be passed on to offsprings. This should have been impossible because the Moon chromosome, as the dominant chromosome, should determine the expression of the gene. We saw the exact same behavior in our research on daywalkers. All daywalkers were male vampires with one mutated Moon chromosome and one Sun chromosome. After the ritual turning them into daywalkers, the Sun chromosome was somehow able to affect the way that the gene was expressed, enabling the daywalkers to be unaffected by the sun, something that the mutated Moon chromosome prevented. 

            Before we were able to conclude our research, Lady Lae made a decision to gather all female vampires so that we could experiment her theory on them. After reading our reports, Lady Lae assumed that female vampires were somehow able to harness some magic from the sun naturally. She mentioned to our head researcher that the Sun chromosome in the daywalkers must have changed after the ritual due to the magic from the sun transferred into them as part of the ritual. This was the reason that they were able to be unharmed by the sun and the magic from the sun must also have made them stronger, faster and the poison in their fangs more deadly. How this was possible baffled all of us as centuries of research data showed that the sun contained no magic, at least not the kind that the moon did. 

            For me, the last straw that broke the camel’s back was when Lady Lae ordered our team to begin experimenting on the female vampires right after she had won the battle against the werewolves and witches. Her disregard for our lives was not news for me but this time, her plans were aimed at hurting the one person who could still make me feel warmth in this cold, dark world. Without hesitation, I destroyed the archives of our unit and all data related to our research on female vampires and daywalkers the moment Lady Lae marched out to war, taking all witches and vampires not from the bio-research unit with her. The witch fire burned into the early morning hours, turning every piece of information and everyone in my unit who could be a threat to my sweetheart into ashes and dust.