“Why Russian?” The curiosity in her tone was a far cry from the nosiness of most who questioned him whenever they had a chance.
“They believed it would be the one I picked up easiest, as my paternal and animal DNA came from Russia.”
“Really?” Drowsy interest filled her voice. “Where did your paternal genetics actually come from?”
Stygian grinned. “Attila the Hun. Straight from the source. When his burial site was found, they recovered enough DNA to actually track his descendents. They used some of that DNA to create my genetics.”
“Attila the Hun?” Surprise filled her voice now. “Damn. I think I’m impressed now.” She was actually laughing at him, and he couldn’t help but grin.
“And your maternal genetics?” she queried then, her tone suggestive, teasing. “This one has got to be good.”
No doubt she already knew, or had at least read the partial history that could have been attained if certain records had been hacked.
Moving the pillows more comfortably behind him, he lifted her against his chest until she sat comfortably against him, the sheet and quilt pulled to her br**sts now.
“Her name was Nera,” he answered. “The Genetics Council chose her for her ties to one of the greatest voodoo priestesses to have been born in the Caribbean, and she was rumored to have been quite powerful herself. They kept her twenty years but only managed to impregnate her twice. Just after her daughter was born, she disappeared from her cells and was never seen again.”
“She escaped then?” Surprise colored her voice.
Stygian glanced down at her, his lips lifting in a slight grin. “Who the hell knows. One minute she was showing up on their monitors and in the next breath she was nowhere to be found in her cell. Her infant daughter, barely six weeks old, disappeared as well. They spent years searching for them, but each time a team was sent to the area where she had originally been abducted from, every soldier and Breed sent after her disappeared.”
Damn, he was proud of her. However she had managed to escape, she’d done a damned good job of it.
“Where was she abducted from?”
“She was born in Haiti, but raised in the Jamaican rain forests. She was seventeen when she was abducted because of her rumored genetic ties to both an ancient priest and priestess of the religion. But rumors at the labs say she was so powerful herself that she nearly walked out of the labs with me when I was an infant. After that, she was isolated with limited contact while they continued to attempt to impregnate her. It took twenty years before she conceived again. Each time she was impregnated with an embryo that wasn’t from her eggs, her body immediately rejected it. Finally, they once again tried using her ova. She conceived a girl, gave birth and six weeks later just disappeared.”
“Did you ever search for her?” Liza asked then, a hint of forlorn melancholy in her voice now.
“Once,” he admitted. “I spent nearly two months in one of the darkest jungles I swear I ever entered. One night, I awoke to find myself surrounded by six of the biggest, baddest-looking jungle warriors I swear a man or Breed could encounter. The biggest moved to the fire I’d made before sleeping, sat down and proceeded to explain the threat I represented to Nera and her daughter. And despite her fondness for me, and her concern, she couldn’t allow me to venture farther. Then, four dead Coyote soldiers were tossed into the camp from the darkness. Their throats were slit; I hadn’t even known they were following me. I left the next morning and left her in peace.”
“How sad.” Regret for him filled her, and Stygian realized he’d never sensed sympathy or an understanding of his loss from anyone else in his life.
“Not so sad,” he told her, realizing that himself. “I found my own peace. She and my sister are alive and protected. That was what mattered to me.”
“You didn’t feel that her daughter was more important than her son?” She lifted against him, the outrage suddenly pouring from her touching him in ways he had no idea how to express.
“I was a grown man,” he pointed out. “I was twenty when she and my sister left the labs. The child would barely have been ten by then. Her safety was more important.”
“To have to choose to let a child go must have been heartbreaking.” There was the slightest edge of an emotion in her voice that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“I was a grown man,” he repeated. “I understood her choice.”
“And she never contacted you after that?”
He let his gaze rove over her, taking in the sheet that barely covered her br**sts, the long, dark blond hair that fell around her face and shoulders, a few heavy strands falling over her br**sts, before he answered with a small smile. “No. And I didn’t expect her to.”
He could feel her sadness reaching him. It wasn’t pity, something he wouldn’t have tolerated; rather, it was a sincere sorrow that such a choice had been demanded.
“I’ve watched all the documentaries on the Breeds,” she said softly. “The scientists and soldiers were monsters in their treatment. To take something so essential as parents and family and make a crime of wanting or needing them was inhumane.”
“That was the point,” he reminded her. “We were led to believe we weren’t human, Liza. That emotions, family, love, they were all things we had no capacity to feel, let alone ache for or hunger for. As though they could force us to be as unemotional and uncaring as the robots they wanted us to be.”
It was no longer enraging.
At one time, talk of those dark, horrifying years would have led him quickly down a path of rage that would inevitably lead to snarling fury.
To allow such emotions to rip through him now would mean releasing the hold he had on the gentle warmth that filled his arms at the moment. It simply wasn’t worth it. They were now days long gone, and if the Breeds were diligent, if Stygian was extremely careful, then they were days he would never be forced to repeat.