“Is it Jack? The blood rage? Baldwin?”
“Yes. No. In a way.” Matthew drove his hands through his hair and whirled around to avoid her keen gaze. “Baldwin knows that Jack killed those warmbloods in Europe. He knows that Jack is the vampire murderer.”
“Surely this isn’t the first time a vampire’s thirst for blood had resulted in unexpected deaths,”
Diana said, trying to defuse the situation.
“This time it’s different.” There was no easy way to say it. “Baldwin ordered me to kill Jack.”
“No. I forbid it.” Diana’s words echoed, and a wind kicked up from the east. She whirled around, and Matthew caught her. She struggled in his grip, sending a gray-and-brown twist of air howling around his feet.
“Don’t walk away from me.” He wasn’t sure he could control himself if she did. “You must listen to reason.”
“No.” Still she tried to avoid him. “You can’t give up on him. Jack won’t always have blood rage.
You’re going to find a cure.”
“Blood rage has no cure.” Matthew would have given his life to change that fact.
“What?” Diana’s shock was evident.
“We’ve been running the new DNA samples. For the first time, we’re able to chart a multigenerational pedigree that extends beyond Marcus. Chris and Miriam traced the blood-rage gene from Ysabeau through me and Andrew down to Jack.” Matthew had Diana’s complete attention now.
“Blood rage is a developmental anomaly,” he continued. “There’s a genetic component, but the blood-rage gene appears to be triggered by something in our noncoding DNA. Jack and I have that something. Maman, Marcus, and Andrew don’t.”
“I don’t understand,” Diana whispered.
“During my rebirth something already in my noncoding, human DNA reacted to the new genetic information flooding my system,” Matthew said patiently. “We know that vampire genes are brutal— they push aside what’s human in order to dominate the newly modified cells. But they don’t replace everything. If they did, my genome and Ysabeau’s would be identical. Instead I am her child—a combination of the genetic ingredients I inherited from my human parents as well as what I inherited from her.”
“So you had blood rage before Ysabeau made you vampire?” Diana was understandably confused.
“No. But I possessed the triggers the blood-rage gene needed to express itself,” Matthew said.
“Marcus has identified specific noncoding DNA that he believes plays a role.”
“In what he calls junk DNA?” Diana asked.
Matthew nodded.
“Then a cure is still possible,” she insisted. “In a few years—”
“No, mon coeur.” He couldn’t allow her hopes to rise. “The more we understand the blood-rage gene and learn about the noncoding genes, the better the treatment might become, but this is not a disease we can cure. Our only hope is to prevent it and, God willing, lessen its symptoms.”
“Until you do, you can teach Jack how to control it.” Diana’s face remained set in stubborn lines.
“There’s no need to kill him.”
“Jack’s symptoms are far worse than mine. The genetic factors that appear to trigger the disease are present at much higher levels in him.” Matthew blinked back the blood tears that he could feel forming.
“He won’t suffer any pain or fear. I promise you.”
“But you will. You say I pay a price for dealing with matters of life and death? So do you. Jack will be gone, but you will live on, hating yourself,” Diana said. “Think of what Philippe’s death has cost you.”
Matthew could think of little else. He had killed other creatures since his father’s death, but only to settle his own scores. Until tonight the last de Clermont sire to command him to kill had been Philippe.
And the death Philippe had ordered was his own.
“Jack is suffering, Diana. This would mean an end to it.” Matthew used the same words Philippe had to convince his wife to admit the inevitable.
“For him maybe. Not for us.” Diana’s hand strayed to the round swell of her belly. “The twins could have blood rage. Will you kill them, too?”
She waited for him to deny it, to tell her that she was insane to even think of such a thing. But he didn’t.
“When the Congregation discovers what Jack has done—and it’s only a matter of time before they do—they will kill him. And they won’t care how frightened he is or how much pain they cause. Baldwin will try to kill Jack before it comes to that, to keep the Congregation out of the family business. If he tries to run, Jack could fall into Benjamin’s hands. If he does, Benjamin will exact a terrible revenge for Jack’s betrayal. Death would be a