1 Chapter 1

1: Mostly He Missed It

September 2016

The sun was rising. He could smell it in the air—crossed wires, blown fuses, burning ozone—and it left a bitter taste in his throat. At that point there wasn’t a single beam of light in the sky, not even a brightening of the horizon, but it was most definitely coming; he could feel it worming into his pores, lifting hair, rolling alongside every thump of his sluggish blood. Above him the bats entertained as they always did, circling like performers on soundless wings with their ‘fingers’ extended to ply the wind into workable currents. Below him sat a fat rat, gorging appreciatively on the leftovers of the dinner he had left for it. Bones crunched and splintered beneath its furiously working teeth, but although it ate with fervor it never took its beady black eyes off its provider. It knew that in a moment the tall, slim man could decide he was still hungry and there would be no reprieve for the rat if that was his choice. While quick, the rat could never be quick enough to outrun the man. Not this one.

The man had no interest in the rat, though. His hunger, for food anyway, had been satiated. Now he stood and watched the dark skies for the shine of what he could smell approaching, musing on another hunger entirely: the one for justice. For vengeance. For it too was coming, as sure as the sunlight. That he could control; wouldcontrol. And maybe, someday, he’d find a way to control the sun as well. Because by all rights and dues he hated the sun the second-most of all the things in life. He hated the way it burned his eyes, the way it bubbled his skin, the way it forced him to see everything in blacks and grays—he hated the way it had stolen the very color from his life.

The greedy bitch. The choosy, picky, human-loving bitch. The brilliant, burning, vampire-hating bitch.

He hated it. Except…as much as the hate…he missed it. He missed feeling it, seeing it, closing his eyes, and warming his skin with it…

But that was a truth he would not speak of, even to himself.

The wind rose in swirls, up the side of the building and into the night sky, carrying the scent of pine needles and gathering leaves. He ignored the odor of blood that moved off the roof and into the air and gave his attention to the curve of blue that seemed to grow with the rising wind. It was time to seek the kind of darkness that sunlight could not find. He could spend more time watching tomorrow. It was hard to believe after so many years of cursing the way time moved so slowly that it suddenly seemed there would never be enoughtime. So many plans to make. So many things to do.

But the days were getting shorter and the nights were getting longer. Things were moving in his favor.

The rat startled as fabric twirled above it, not sensing the movement before it had already come and gone. Then it turned back to the litter of the departed man’s meal and continued to eat.

* * * *

A bright glow spotlighted the place where Matthew Dietrich worked. Other than that solitary bulb (and even its glare had been tightened down to a six-inch radius), the only lighting in the room was the strip of blue fluorescents that ran above the counter and under the row of glass and metal cupboards. It was enough for Matthew. Though his optometrist wouldn’t condone the activity in the least, especially since his most recent eyeglass prescription had been increased in severity yet again, Matthew believed it helped him focus. In the daylight hours it would be impossible to do as every single light in the facility would be on, the sunlight would be streaming in through the windows, and although his crew was small in comparison to some of the other teams at the Genetics Development and Biological Connectivity Group (aka the GDBCG), none of his team members had his preference for ruining his vision for the sake of his concentration. Some, he knew, wouldn’t be caught dead in any of the labs while it was dark and quiet. He’d never quite figured out why, but he was only a resident. Maybe in a few months—less, really, if he kept putting in the hours he was putting in these days—when he finally got offered the staff position he coveted so terribly much, maybe then he’d know what made the doctors and the administration staff cast nervous glances over their shoulders when they walked down certain hallways or passed some of the doorways.

Staff and administrators aside, he’d learned very quickly that the executive staff didn’t give a single hoot about when one came to work or whether one worked alone. As long as the work got done, as long as the results were definitive and stunning, he could have told them that he wanted to work in the basement underneath a tarp with Beethoven’s Fifthplaying on loop for all they’d care; and stunning work was not something Matthew ever had to struggle to achieve. He had to work hard, yes, but he didn’t have to struggle. He’d been born with the need to dig into things and he didn’t stop until he’d wrung everything he could out of a topic. So while he hadn’t had the highest MCAT score in the state, he had been in the top five. Nor had he been top of his class when he’d graduated UCLA. He had, however, been second. During his internship at the DGSOM, while he’d still been debating between joining a family practice or specializing (not that he’d really debated too hard, to his father’s great disdain) he’d been told that he was one of the most vibrantly talented young men that his professor had ever had the pleasure to teach.