Free The Vampire Gene by Jenny Doe Page B

I think I must. My attorney will deliver the divorce papers to you tomorrow. And if you breathe a word to anyone about iron metabolisers, not only will they think you insane, but I will ensure that you are penniles s too. The children stay with me." She paused, as if she had run out of things to say. "Now, leave."
    He glared at her and ground his teeth for a few seconds, while the vein on his forehead pulsed, and then he turned abruptly and stalked out. Julia sighed again and sat down. Marcus smiled reassuringly at her, his eyes shining with admiration and what could have been hope. I was pleased for him.
    "I was meaning to tell you about that," Rebecca spoke hesitantly. "I think I may have electrocuted that James person." She stopped, reluctant to go on.
    "What do you mean?" Marcus asked eagerly, his attention focusing suddenly on Rebecca.
    "I was very angry with him, and I reached out to grab his wrist and I felt a fizzing sensation and then he collapsed and started twitching. His wrist had a burn in the shape of a handprint around it. My handprint..."
    Marcus was nodding rapidly, and speaking even faster. "It's possible. You could use the strong emotion generated by neurons firing in your brain, which is basically electricity anyway, and you could amplify it somehow, and conduct it through your tissues, which contain loads of iron, which as you all know, conducts electricity..."
    "Breathe, Marcus," Fergus said dryly.
    Marcus ignored him. "We need to do a few experiments, just to see what she's capable of."
    Rebecca looked worried. I decided to put a stop to the inexorable force of Marcus' quest for knowledge.
    "No, Marcus." He looked at me, bewildered.
    "Why?" he wanted to know. "We need to know what she can do."
    "He's right," Rebecca interjected. "I'd also like to know. Probably more than everyone here."
    "Not more than Marcus," chuckled Fergus.
    I shrugged. "OK then. As long as she's happy with it. And nothing risky," I added. I knew what it was like to be under my brother's microscope, and I remembered participating in several experiments myself. "Or painful."
    "Slightly painful?" Marcus asked hopefully.
    "No!" Fergus and I spoke at the same time. Julia burst out laughing.
    "I'll keep an eye on him," she promised us. "We will design the experiments together, and Rebecca will be fine."
    I saw the relief on Rebecca's face, and thanked Julia.
    "I feel I should tell you about Jack," she started, then paused, and looked around the table at us, her gaze resting briefly on her sons. "Simon."
    "Mum?" he looked up from his second helping of lunch.
    "I don't have to tell you that what we say here needs to be kept secret," she smiled at him.
    "Always, Mum. I might be a vamp one day too, you know."
    "I could test you if you wanted," suggested Marcus. "I have most of my portable equipment here, and I have a mini lab set up at our place in Aberdeenshire. I could run your DNA through the analyser and we could look to see if you have two sets of the gene, or just one. You could know tomorrow."
    "Really? Cool!"
    "We need to fetch some stuff from the estate anyway," said Fergus. "There are a few firearms that our father had stashed away that we could probably use, and I have some surveillance and communication equipment we will definitely need. And our coats," he said, and exchanged a glance with me and Marcus.
    "About Jack," I interrupted, frowning slightly at the two planners.
    "Sorry," they chorused. Julia cleared her throat quietly, and started speaking, hesitantly at first but then with greater confidence.
    "Jack, as you probably know by now, is my brother. We were born towards the end of the rule of George the Third, Jack first, and then me three years later. We had two younger sisters, Anne and Lizzy. " She stopped suddenly, as if just mentioning their names was painful, but then she swallowed convulsively and continued.
    " Jack was always pushing the boundaries of vampirism. He was a lot like our father that way. My father had