Eliana by Evey Brett Read Free Book Online Page A

father’s care and not allowed to communicate with him at all.
    While Kon talked, Dane paged through the file and couldn’t help but wonder how much denial Kon was in. He idolized his father, but Dane hadn’t seen anything yet pointing to Viktor having any redeemable qualities. Even though much of the file was in German, Dane recognized arrest warrants and criminal profiles. Kon didn’t seem to see them.
    The papers also included school records, military records, and handwritten anecdotes of Viktor’s early years as a Warden in the Berlin and Vienna enclaves, mentioning his growing interest in cambions and the creation of them. There was a typed translation of a letter—the original handwritten in German—from Karl von Rainer, a civilian geneticist recruited by Viktor to find a way to manufacture cambions who lacked the usual sexual drive. Karl had succeeded with his own child, Lukas, but had sabotaged the formulas after finding out Viktor wanted to use the cambions to further the Nazi cause. Altering the serum had inadvertently led to the deaths of dozens of cambions while Viktor tried and failed to recreate Karl’s experiment. More notes followed regarding Viktor’s escape to Barcelona, where he’d continued his research.
    “He did good work,” Kon said. “It’s because of him we know so much about cambions and how they function.”
    Because he killed so many cambions first . Dane didn’t dare say such a thing aloud. It was almost as if Kon had regressed twenty years and become his father’s naïve captive once more.
    “That’s my room.” Kon pointed to a new collection of pictures. The entire house had been documented, including the room Kon had lived in for a few months. “We sat on that couch. My father read to me in English so I could learn.”
    Dane took a closer look at the picture of the bookshelf. None of the titles were those he’d consider appropriate to a fourteen-year-old boy. They were all subversive political texts which extolled the virtues of eugenics and racial dominance. Dane drove a fist against his mouth to keep from voicing his disgust. He didn’t want to send Kon over the edge by saying the wrong thing, but he wondered how Kon could possibly think fondly of a childhood as little more than his father’s guinea pig.
    More disturbing were the photographs of Viktor’s laboratory dated last month. Vials, microscopes, piles of books and papers. Computers. Calculators. A whiteboard covered with diagrams and explanations in German. On the far wall were rows of reports on clipboards, each with a portrait of its subject.
    The next item in the folder was Kon’s file, topped with a picture of him at fourteen, wide-eyed and innocent. “Aw. You were a cute kid,” Dane said.
    Kon read over his shoulder while Dane flipped through the English translation. Dane’s heart became leaden the further he read the neatly typed pages. There was the exact date and time Viktor had lain with the incubus, complete with notes on physical reactions to the creature, which remade itself to resemble Viktor’s greatest sexual fantasy. Exactly twenty-four hours later came Kon’s moment of conception when the incubus had lain with an unnamed woman.
    “I’ll never know who my mother was.” Kon’s voice was hollow. “Probably some poor whore who agreed to play along in exchange for food and shelter.”
    Dane had no reply. He continued reading pages listing the drugs Kon’s mother had been given in an attempt to change Kon into the perfect cambion—one with Sensitivity and an ability to manipulate energy but without a demon that needed to feed on sexual energy. Next—on May 2, 1958, at 4:53 p.m.—came Kon’s birth and the specialized, drugged formula he’d been given as an infant.
    He read on, sickened by the reduction of Kon’s life. It was a wonder he wasn’t deformed or crazy from all the experiments his father had performed. On paper he was reduced to growth statistics and various other