Blood Legacy Origin of Species (35 page)

“So where do we go from here?” Ryan asked.

And so Lia rolled over onto her side facing Ryan, also propping herself onto her elbow. She began outlining her plan, telling Ryan the exact timing of her next phase shift. Ryan thought it a very good plan with one exception. She looked down at her current battered condition.

“You are going to have to do far more than this to make it convincing,” Ryan said, assessing the brutal injuries she had already sustained. “Kusunoki will recognize this as little more than foreplay.”

“That is some character flaw you have,” Lia commented, then spent a few hours following Ryan’s suggestion.

Later, when it was time for Ryan to leave, Lia settled before her vanity. Her skin was already changing, growing smoother, less like leather and more supple like the silky skin of a snake. The scales reflected the light beautifully like tiny prisms. She stared at her reflection in the mirror.

“Will the rest of my appearance change?”

Ryan stood with some difficulty. Lia had done her job well.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Ryan said. “And although your wishes on the matter are more important than mine, I hope your appearance doesn’t change at all.”

Lia turned from her reflection in surprise, and Ryan said her parting words.

“I think you are perfect the way you are.”

And now Lia stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her skin had continued to change, growing even more smooth and supple, and now it was a joy to inhabit. It had become so like real skin, albeit still more snake-like than human, that she now wore clothing to hide the returning detail of her features. It was sensitive to touch and sensation, and Lia was experiencing things she had not felt in over a millennium. The contact of the clothing alone was blissful.

Her horns remained, and the coloration of her skin was still the greenish hue that shifted so beautifully in the light. And as Lia examined her features, she realized that she agreed with Ryan.

She hoped her appearance would not change, either.

EPILOGUE II

TRA’E’ELA GAZED AT THE security holograph before her. Her personal servant, one of the few who actually knew who she really was, had wisely confiscated it and brought it to her attention. She did not think anyone else had seen it and it was her intent to destroy it as soon as she was finished with it.

And yet she could not help but watch it again. It was such an intriguing exchange, the powerful matriarch and the seething inferno that Ryan Alexander had become, the former clearly dominating the latter. It was an overhead shot from the hall entrance. The girl stood facing the camera, impatient but unmoving beneath the older woman’s gentle taunting. The conversation itself was interesting, with Ryan clearly admitting she believed Abigail to be her superior, although nothing that Tra’e’ela sensed confirmed this fact.

“You are such a clever girl,” came the words from the recording, “it is why your grandmother loves you so.”

Tra’e’ela paused the recording. There was that reference again, to the girl’s grandmother. After the boy Drake had mentioned this relative, Tra’e’ela had again searched through all known records to determine who this person might be. Yet nothing came to light. Victor Alexander had been successfully genetically transformed as an adult, but there was no information regarding his childhood or parentage.

This occupied Tra’e’ela’s thoughts for a few moments, then she returned to the holograph. That was only one aspect of the incident that was intriguing, and not even the one that was of greatest interest. Of most interest was the way the recording ended. Tra’e’ela watched it for perhaps the tenth time, reversed it, then watched it again.

It could have been chance or pure coincidence, but the more she viewed it, the more undeniable it became. The elegant older woman leaned forward, kissed Ryan on the cheek, then whispered in her ear.

“But unfortunately for you, you will not remember most of this conversation twenty minutes from now.”

Abigail then turned and walked toward the camera, moving with preternatural grace. And as she approached the entrance, she glanced up, looking directly into the recording device she could not possibly have seen or known was there, looking directly into the lens knowingly and with disturbing accuracy, looking directly, it seemed, at Tra’e’ela herself at this very moment, and right before she disappeared…

She smiled.

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