Page 83 of The Vanishing
“And the other feeds the female surrogate throughout the pregnancy, right?”
“Yes, but through medical extraction so that the bond remains undamaged.” Haruka leans down to place his coffee cup on the oak table in front of them. “In this way, the genetic makeup of the offspring is richly grounded in the requesting couple’s lineage. That is why the surrogate should be as innocuous as possible. If her bloodline were older than mine, her biology would be dominant over mine within the child. If she were first-gen or second-gen, the child would be imbalanced. It is the same with female couplings. Although while one can serve as carrier to the growing child, the male surrogate sample should still be as benign as possible.”
Nino sits back against the couch and folds his arms. Haruka’s eyes flicker down, taking in the contoured definition in his honeyed bicep. “So we’d need an unbonded purebred female with a semi-old bloodline,” Nino says. “That may not be easy.”
“Finding an organic match is difficult, but not impossible. We have much time, and we… we could repeat the process as often as we wanted, so there’s no rush. Do you truly wish to do this with me? To grow our family someday?”
Nino reaches down and grasps his hand, then looks into his eyes. “I already told you,yes. I want to do everything with you—if you wanted to swim with sharks, I’d probably do that, too.” Nino leans in and places a quick kiss on his mouth, but Haruka blinks, bewildered.
“Th—that won’t be necessary.”
Laughing, Nino stands, grabbing Haruka’s lukewarm coffee cup from his grasp. “I’ll reheat this,” he says, walking toward the kitchen. He looks over his shoulder, grinning. “I think we should start giving each other privacy with our thoughts again. It just feels like the healthy thing to do?”
Haruka slides down into the couch, frowning. “But I enjoy knowing your mind. You are generally easy for me to read and—”
“Boundaries, please. We can do it sometimes, but not always. I can talk now, so back to normal?”
“Fine…” Still slouching, Haruka shifts his face toward the window again, allowing the bright morning light to wash over his skin. The heat of it matches the quiet sensation flooding his heart and body.
For the first time in a very long while, he allows himself to imagine the prospect of a cozy nest humming with small creatures—or at least one? A boy or a girl, maybe with warm, honeyed skin and innocent amber eyes.
September
Thirty-Nine
“Lajos is dead.”
Nino balks, blinking with the phone to his ear. “What?”
“Well,” the detective says, “he’salmostdead. But he’s dead to me, so…”
“You can’t just declare that someone is dead when they’re not.”
“Meh. He’s on his way. He’s still refusing to feed with the first-gen blood we’re offering him. We’ve had him locked up in here since June. That’s three months he’s gone without feeding. He’s just lying in the cell bed. He doesn’t bother moving and his pulse is weak. There’s no reason for him to do this. But if he’d rather die than drink blood that’s, quote, ‘beneath him,’ then I say go right on ahead and die. One less racist, classist bastard in the world.”
“Jesus.” Nino frowns, rubbing his fingers into the top of his head.
“Anyway, I wishI was calling to tell you that, but the reason I’m actually calling is because we found your nerd sex book.Lore and Lust.”
A little spark of glee races up Nino’s spine. Haruka will be happy to hear this news. “That’s great! Where was it?”
“We lingered in Socotra for a while after the two of you scampered off—ended up going back to the house and down underneath again. One of the vamps in that purebred army fired at us with their rainbow-colored laser beam. It ended up leaving my deputy with an awful gash in his upper arm. When we were there with the two of you, those lights seemed like kid’s toys—some kind of cute joke. In reality that shit wasreallydangerous. We were able to calm them down, though. We asked about the book and someone brought it to us. Also convinced ten more vampires to leave that place. All in all it was a successful trip.”
“That was brave of you to go back down there unarmed,” Nino says.
“I’m a brave chick, what can I say? I estimate it’ll take us at least six months to get all the refugees properly documented before they choose their next, more permanent realm. We’re going to have therapists come in and work with them during that time.”
“That sounds smart.” Nino nods. “We’re still planning the rehabilitation program on our end, but we have a list of international realm leaders we’d like to bring into this project.”
“Perfect. I’ll keep you updated on our progress here, and I’ll have the book shipped out soon. How do you feel about having the female couple and young guy discharged early as a test run? If any weird shit goes down, you two could certainly handle it… being freakishly strong and all.”
“Ah… maybe? I’ll have to talk to Haru about it first. Can we get back to you?”
“Of course—let me know. And thanks for all your help. We couldn’t have found them without you.”
As Nino finishes his phone call, he hears voices approaching. Asao and Junichi turn the corner into the narrow hallway just as he’s hanging up the receiver. “You’re back early. How was yakitori?”
“Busy,” Junichi grumbles. “I would rather not go on Friday nights, but the old coot insists. Then he ‘forgets’ his wallet.”
