“I had a teacher like you once,” Matthew said coldly. “He drove me insane.”
“And I have students like you. They don’t last long in my lab.” Chris leaned across the table. “I take it that not every vampire on the planet has your condition. Have you determined exactly how blood rage is inherited, and why some contract it and some don’t?”
“Not entirely,” Matthew admitted. “It’s a bit more complicated with vampires, considering we have three parents.”
“You need to pick up the pace, my friend. Diana is pregnant. With twins.“ Chris looked at me pointedly. “I assume you’ve drawn up full genetic profiles for the two of you and made predictions for inheritance patterns among your offspring, including but not limited to blood rage?”
“I’ve been in the sixteenth century for the best part of a year.” Matthew really disliked being questioned. “I lacked the opportunity.”
“High time we started, then,” Chris remarked blandly.
“Matthew was working on something.” I looked to Matthew for confirmation. “Remember? I found that paper covered with X’s and O’s.”
“X’s and O’s? Lord God Almighty.” This seemed to confirm Chris’s worst fears. “You tell me you have three parents, but you remain married to a Mendelian inheritance model. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re as old as dirt and knew Darwin.”
“I met Mendel once, too,” Matthew said crisply, sounding like an irritated professor himself.
“Besides, blood rage may be a Mendelian trait. We can’t rule that out.”
“Highly unlikely,” Chris said. “And not just because of this three-parent problem—which I’ll have to consider in more detail. It must create havoc in the data.”
“Explain.” Matthew tented his fingers in front of his face.
“I have to give an overview of non-Mendelian inheritance to a fellow of All Souls?” Chris’s eyebrows rose. “Somebody needs to look at the appointment policies at Oxford University.”
“Do you understand a word they’re saying?” Sarah whispered.
“One in three,” I said apologetically.
“I mean gene conversion. Infectious heredity. Genomic imprinting. Mosaicism.” Chris ticked them off on his finger. “Ring any bells, Professor Clairmont, or would you like me to continue with the lecture I give to my undergraduates?”
“Isn’t mosaicism a form of chimerism?” It was the only word I’d recognized.
Chris nodded at me approvingly.
“I’m a chimera—if that helps.”
“Diana,” Matthew growled.
“Chris is my best friend, Matthew,” I said. “And if he’s going to help you determine how blood rage effects vampire-witch reproduction—not to mention find a cure for the disease—he needs to know everything. That includes my genetic test results, by the way.”
“That information can be deadly in the wrong hands,” Matthew said.
“Matthew is right,” Chris agreed.
“I’m so glad you think so.” Matthew’s words dripped acid.
“Don’t patronize me, Clairmont. I know the dangers of human-subject research. I’m a black man from Alabama and grew up in the shadow of Tuskegee.” Chris turned to me. “Don’t hand over your genetic information to anybody outside this room—even if they’re wearing a white coat. Especially if they’re wearing a white coat, come to think of it.”
“Thanks for your input, Christopher,” Matthew said stiffly. “I’ll be sure to pass your ideas on to the rest of my team.”
“So what are we going to do about all this?” Fernando asked. “There may not have been any urgency before, but now . . .” He looked to Matthew for guidance.
“The Bad Seed’s breeding program changes everything,” Chris proclaimed before Matthew could speak. “First we have to figure out if blood rage really is what makes conception possible or if it’s a combination of factors. And we need to know the likelihood of Diana’s children contracting the disease.
We’ll need the witch and the vampire genetic maps for that.”
“You’ll need my DNA, too,” I said quietly. “Not all witches can reproduce.”
“Do you need to be a good witch? A bad witch?” Chris’s silly jokes usually made me smile, but not tonight.
“You need to be a weaver,” I replied. “You’re going to need to sequence my genome in particular and compare it to that of other witches. And you’ll need to do the same for Matthew and vampires who don’t have blood rage. We have to understand blood rage well enough to cure it, or Benjamin and his children will continue to be a threat.”
“Okay, then.” Chris slapped his thighs. “We need a lab. And help. Plenty of data and computer time, too. I can put my people on this.”
“Absolutely not.” Matthew shot to his feet. “I have a lab, too. Miriam has been working on the problems of blood rage and the creature genomes