A Shade of Vampire 31: A Twist of Fates by Bella Forrest Read Free Book Online

while you were away with Ibrahim…” He ran a hand over his face, grimacing, as though it were painful to just spit out the answer.
    “What?” I urged. “Tell me!”
    Dr. Finnegan sighed. “You will need to solve a mystery…”

Ben
    W hen the scientist revealed the fifth ingredient, I could hardly believe my ears… and yet, deep down, it made sense. It made perfect sense. All the other ingredients were apparently derived from Aviary. It was only logical that the last one would be too.
    The thought had occurred to me before how the Hawks were natural-born enemies of the Elders—whom the Bloodless were merely a walking mutation of. And how fatefully in line it would be that, if a cure truly existed to combat the Elder-originated infection, it would be found in the Hawks’ realm.
    “For every evil born, another is born to counter it…”
    Those were words once spoken by Kiev many years ago, and recounted to me by my mother. They were true. The universe provided us with a natural balance for everything. Fire and water. Earth and sky… Lilith and Kiev.
    The fifth ingredient was Hawk blood. But not just any Hawk’s blood…
    The scientist’s explanation took us through some history of the IBSI’s scientific advancements, their methods proving even more shocking than I had thought.
    Her story began with Frans Sanderson—the same scientist whose home we had visited in Bermuda before stumbling across the gate to Aviary, and who had been assassinated by Atticus.
    Frans had been one of the IBSI’s most trusted, leading scientists. He’d been an expert in many fields of science, though he specialized in botany. For years he’d been commissioned by the IBSI to spend time in Aviary examining its natural resources—which were abundant—to see if we on Earth could derive any benefit from them.
    Well, he’d ended up discovering more than the IBSI—or specifically Atticus—had bargained for.
    With the epidemic of Bloodless plaguing the human world, he’d somehow latched on to the same train of thought that I recently had: that if there was any cure for the Bloodless, it was to be found in Aviary. Thus, although he was supposed to be doing other research work for the IBSI in Aviary, he’d focused his attention on searching for a possible cure. He’d never told his authorities about this, but rather planned to present the results of his findings to them if he was successful in developing the cure.
    As fate would have it, around the same time that Frans was conducting his research and experimentations, a different division of the IBSI’s scientists—those of the organization’s lab in Canada, the same lab that my wife had been taken to when the IBSI kidnapped her—had been experimenting deeply with genetics. They were in full swing seeking ways to enhance the human body. Although Dr. Finnegan was not aware of River’s specific kidnapping case, she confirmed that the eggs of half-bloods had been collected, and these played a big part in the experiments that went on during that period. Why? Because half-bloods, at the time, were the closest one could get to being supernatural while still being partially human. That was the reason the IBSI had found them so interesting—the way human genes could co-exist with supernaturals’—and why they had taken River in to study her.
    When they cut her open, without a doubt, they’d removed some of her eggs… which left me wondering if that process had indeed damaged her, and was one of the reasons we’d had such a hard time conceiving a child. Bastards.
    “Independent of Frans’ research,” Dr. Finnegan went on, “this Canadian group were specifically honing in on mixing Hawk and vampire genes. They were curious as to how these two opposing species would meld. They had managed to capture a number of Hawks and, using the half-blood eggs they had harvested, they began trying to create the specimens… Only five of which were successful.”
    “S-Successful,” I