Page 113 of Sinner's Salvation

She pondered that for a few seconds. “Agreed,” she finally said.

She lifted her head and pinned Marek and Taft with a tired look. “I am eight hundred years old.”

Both men stopped eating.

“What?” Marek said, his eyes nearly bugging out.

“How?” Taft asked.

“It’s not magic, gentlemen,” she said, with a wan smile. “We didn’t know the mechanism or method or reason ourselves until the nineteen seventies. We have an autoimmune disorder caused by our body’s reaction to a very specific viral infection. No mumbo jumbo, no invisible force, no hocus pocus involved. We don’t age, don’t get sick, and if we’re injured, we heal at a miraculous rate. We still don’t have acompleteunderstanding of the change our bodies go through, despite the years of research dedicated to the question. We do know we can’t go back to beingnormal.”

“Those are some huge benefits.” Taft said, watching her with a speculative expression on his face. “How many of you are there?”

“The number of people in the world for whom this autoimmune disease is possible is extremely small. There are currently less than two hundred of us alive in the world. Our numbers have been dropping quickly due to infighting and too many potential candidates dying.”

“It’s really not...magic?” Taft asked.

“No.” She smiled briefly, a sad, tired smile. “Though we thought it was at first. Magic or a gift from God. That kind of thinking led to...nothing good. Believing you’re special, favored, or better than everyone else turned us into despots and worse.” She paused to swallow hard. She looked like she had so much to say, all of it bad. “It’s a horrible disease.”

“Horrible?” Marek asked. “Why horrible?”

“Because of what happens to us, the disease has other side effects.”

She held up a finger. “We don’t sleep. That alone caused quite a few to commit suicide after only a few years. Most of us have learned to how to enter a deep meditative state that manages to provide the rest we need, but it isn’t quite the same.”

She held up a second finger. “We can’t eat real food. Our digestive tracts don’t work the same anymore. The only way to obtain nutrients is to drink the blood of alivingperson. No feeding from a corpse or sipping on a unit of blood from a blood bank.”

She held up a third finger. “The human mind was never designed to live as long as we do. A lot of us have developed significant mental illnesses and disorders. Paranoia, obsessive compulsive disorder, psychotic breaks, severe PTSD, and others.” She winced. “There are a handful of us that require significant assistance to remain alive. In the past, those suffering from the worst issues, often died of starvation. It took a very long time.”

She held up a fourth finger. “We are sterile, both men and women. The only way to expand our numbers is to infect someone with the same virus we fell ill with and hope they survive and develop the same autoimmune response that changes them. And as I said, only a tiny number of people in the whole world have the right genetics for that to happen.”

“So, you’re saying there’s no way to create an army of super soldiers?” Taft asked.

“Correct.”

He looked disappointed.

“You don’t want a lot of us around, Mr. Taft,” she said to him. “We’re controlling, short-tempered, and most of us are more than a little insane. We have treaties in place with every one of us across the world to prevent what the Italians did from happening.”

“They did it anyway,” Marek said.

“Yes. Their mental health deteriorated until they weren’t rational, then acted accordingly.”

“Do you usually police yourselves?” Taft asked.

“Yes, but that’s gotten harder as technology has gotten more sophisticated.”

“So, incidents like today’s aren’t common?” Taft asked.

Anna’s smile was cold. “No, or our secret would have been out a lot earlier than now.”

“What did happen with Ledger?” Taft asked. He held up a hand to stop her from speaking right away. “I already know what happened from our side of things. I’d like to hear it from your perspective.”

Anna told him, leaving out a few details that were none of his business, like the existence of the safe room and secret staircase in the hotel.

“Shit,” Taft muttered, when she was done. “Both Ledgers are fucking idiots.”

“He’s no worse or better than any other power-hungry donkey butt,” Anna said.

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