"No aliens. At least, not unless the extraterrestrial bacteria theory is proven to hold any water." Matt shook his head and wiped his eyes. "And what we're doing is an experiment, but not one in positive thinking. I figured that if this was a catastrophic evolutionary event, we'd have to do something to survive. My colleagues, before I lost contact with them, were trying to figure out ways to destroy the vampires. Weapons systems using flamethrowers, concentrated UV light, that kind of thing.
"But this is larger than that. There are more of them than there are of us. Last reports indicated that two-thirds of the world's population is gone. That there are pockets of survivors, on submarines and cruise ships and at holy sites around the globe."
"I heard that too," I said. "My friend's husband was in the military. He said that there were people safe in very unusual places."
"Right. Mount Fuji, mosques, synagogues, Jerusalem. But this is a global catastrophe. There simply aren't enough of us to fight them. Not anymore."
Alex's jaw hardened. "We can't just wait for them to kill us. Lie down and die."
"No. No, we can't. And we can't win. Which is why I proposed that we adapt." Matt steepled his fingers in front of himself. "I watched the vampires. I knew that they were afraid of sunlight, of fire. But not artificial light. I knew that there had to be something about natural light that bothered them. I observed that they only are interested in fresh flesh, whether from humans or animals. Meat that's starting to rot is of no interest to them. There are particular bacteria that multiply in room-temperature meat. If you leave a chicken out for a couple of days, it will start to glow in the dark. Faintly. People have been noticing this since the time of the Civil War, when wounded soldiers had glowing wounds when there was no antiseptic. "
"Bizarre," Alex said.
"Those bacteria thrive on oxygen, though. And doctors during the Civil War observed that wounds that glowed healed better than those that didn't-the bacteria removed dead tissue. And I noticed that the vampires hate foxfire. It's a fungus, but it's still producing natural light."
I nodded. "We sometimes use it to light haylofts in the winter."
"I found a little bit of it in some rotted wood at the park. I smeared it out on the street, beyond the gate, and watched with binoculars from a nearby house. They wouldn't cross that line."
"That's really . . . really cool," Alex said.
"Bioluminescence is cool stuff. Cold light is created when you have three things: something called a luciferin, a luciferase, and oxygen. They react together to create cold light."
I frowned. "Lucifer?"
"It's Latin for 'light-bearer'-a chemical not affected by heat. And a luciferase is an enzyme destroyed by heat. It's a catalyst. Add oxygen, and . . . there's glow.
"I study bioluminescent algae. Scientists have had a lot of success in recent years with altering the DNA of various creatures to make them bioluminescent. Injecting jellyfish proteins into cat and mice ova, for example."
"I've seen that," Alex said. "It's been all over the Internet. Glow-in-the-dark kittens."
"Right. It's not too terribly useful. But it got me thinking . . . what if we could do that to people? Would that help protect us from vampires?" Matt rubbed his temple. "I've been around and around the issues of faith. Frankly, I'm not qualified to assess that.
"But the cold light-that's something I could understand. I took the gene from the algae I'm studying and introduced it to my body."
"How does that work? Isn't genetic manipulation usually done in vitro?"
"I used a virus. A variant of the common cold was handy, and I don't have access to much else here. I have a decent lab set up, but not anything I can use to do anything more delicate than the crude gene-splicing I did. It was a gamble, and the results were . . . imperfect."
"What do you mean?"
"The virus takes over the body the way a virus usually does. Only this is more painful. There's a lot of algal junk I wasn't able to isolate. I was pretty sure I'd done myself in. And Cora called me an idiot. But within a few days, I started to recover. And I could see cold light spreading throughout my body.
"Once I felt strong enough, I went outside after dark. The others didn't want me to do it, but I had to know if it worked or if I'd just screwed up my body with a bunch of genetic garbage.
"I held my breath. A vampire approached me. He called me Lucifer. He tried to grab me, but my skin on his . . . it burned him. He went away, searching for better prey." Matt fiddled with the spoon in his mug. His coffee must have long since grown tepid. "The others at Water's Edge tried it, one by one. And nobody's died yet. I have no idea what the long-term effects are on abnormal cell growth, reproduction, aging. It could be a long-term poison."
"But it's a short-term defense," Alex said.
"Exactly. We became something other-'Homo luciferus.' And it is, for what I can do, the least of the evils."
***
"I'm not sure about that."
"About what?"
Alex and I walked along a paved path to the dock, Fenrir at our heels. The sun shone in a cold blue sky. A small beach with pale sand spread out on our right, and the dock was on a poured concrete foundation, reaching out into the lake. Small boats were moored at a pier to the west, bobbing against the steel gray waves. A solitary gray heron fished along the edge of the dock. Seagulls spun in the air overhead, keeping low against the wind. Keene walked Horace along the edge of the beach, likely more for our peace of mind than any benefit to the horse. The flagpole rope slapped against the pole in a regular rhythm, like a clock ticking away the seconds.
"About what they're doing to themselves being the least of the evils," I said.
Waves crashed against the dock, and I pulled my coat closer around me. We paused at a bench that had been bolted to the concrete and sat down, facing north. An island with dark trees was just ahead of us. To the far west, I could see a spidery industrial apparatus that extended out into the lake. Judy had said that was part of a marble quarry from the next town over.
"You think of it as evil?" Alex asked. He leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. "I'm thinking that this looks like the best thing since sliced bread."