that the Bad Seed was as crazy as a shit-house rat. He is your son.” Chris’s eyes narrowed. “According to him you both share this blood-rage thing. That means you’re both a danger to Diana.”
“I knew he was unstable, yes. And his name is Benjamin.” Matthew chose not to respond to the second half of Chris’s remarks.
“Unstable? The man is a fucking psychopath. He’s trying to engineer a master race of vampire witches. So why isn’t the Bad—Benjamin locked up? That way he couldn’t kidnap and rape his way onto the roster of scientific madmen alongside Sims, Verschuer, Mengele, and Stanley.”
“Let’s go to the kitchen.” I urged them both in the direction of the stairs.
“After you,” Matthew murmured, putting his hand on the small of my back. Relieved by his easy acquiescence, I began my descent.
There was a thud, a muffled curse.
Chris was pinned against the door, Matthew’s hand wrapped around his windpipe.
“Based on the profanity that’s come out of your mouth in the past twenty-four hours, I can only conclude that you think of Diana as one of the guys.” Matthew gave me a warning look when I backed up to intervene. “She’s not. She’s my wife. I would appreciate it if you limited your vulgarity in her presence. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.” Chris looked at him with loathing.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Matthew was at my side in a flash, his hand once more on the dip in my spine where the shadowy firedrake had appeared. “Watch the stairs, mon coeur,” he murmured.
When we reached the ground floor, I sneaked a backward glance at Chris. He was studying Matthew as though he were a strange new life-form—which I suppose he was. My heart sank. Matthew might have won the first few battles, but the war between my best friend and my husband was far from over.
By the time Sarah joined us in the kitchen, her hair exuded the scents of tobacco and the hop vine that was planted against the porch railings. I waved my hand in front of my nose—cigarette smoke was one of the few things that still triggered nausea this late in my pregnancy—and made coffee. When it was ready, I poured the pot’s steaming contents into mugs for Sarah, Chris, and Fernando. Matthew and I stuck to ordinary water. Chris was the first to break the silence.
“So, Matthew, you and Dr. Shephard have been studying vampire genetics for decades in an effort to understand blood rage.”
“Matthew knew Darwin. He’s been studying creature origins and evolution for more than a few decades.” I wasn’t going to tell Chris how much more, but I didn’t want him to be blindsided by Matthew’s age, as I had been.
“We have. My son has been working with us.” Matthew gave me a quelling look.
“Yes, I saw that,” Chris said, a muscle ticking in his cheek. “Not something I’d boast about, myself.”
“Not Benjamin. My other son, Marcus Whitmore.”
“Marcus Whitmore.” Chris made an amused sound. “Covering all the bases, I see. You handle the evolutionary biology and neuroscience, Miriam Shephard is an expert on population genetics, and Marcus Whitmore is known for his study of functional morphology and efforts to debunk phenotypic plasticity. That’s a hell of a research team you’ve assembled, Clairmont.”
“I’m very fortunate,” Matthew said mildly.
“Wait a minute.” Chris looked at Matthew in amazement. “Evolutionary biology. Evolutionary physiology. Population genetics. Figuring out how blood rage is transmitted isn’t your only research objective. You’re trying to diagram evolutionary descent. You’re working on the Tree of Life—and not just the human branches.”
“Is that what the tree in the fireplace is called?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t think so.” Matthew patted her hand.
“Evolution. I’ll be damned.” Chris pushed away from the island. “So have you discovered the common ancestor for humans and you guys?” He waved in our direction. “If by ‘you guys’ you mean creatures—daemons, vampires, and witches—then no.” Matthew’s brow arched.
“Okay. What are the crucial genetic differences separating us?”
“Vampires and witches have an extra chromosome pair,” Matthew explained. “Daemons have a single extra chromosome.”
“You’ve got a genetic map for these creature chromosomes?”
“Yes,” Matthew said.
“Then you’ve probably been working on this little project since before 1990, just to keep up with the humans.”
“That’s right,” Matthew said. “And I’ve been working since 1968 on how blood rage is inherited, if you must know.”
“Of course. You adapted Donahue’s use of family pedigrees to determine gene transmission between generations.” Chris nodded. “Good call. How far along are you with sequencing? Have you located the blood-rage gene?”