For the American military to take such an interest in a group of bodies found in a barely known set of German caves was a clear indication that they considered the Colorado deaths to be connected. More significantly, it meant that they had recognized the nature of the deaths.
He allowed joy to suffuse him. Then it is true. They have indeed encountered our forefathers in the Pegasus Galaxy who have fed upon their kind!
The Watcher inclined her head in agreement. The Great Battle is almost upon us. When it is done, we will be rewarded. The abominations will be forever purged from the bloodline, while the sons and daughters of Adam learn their true destiny.
Chapter twenty-two
"Have a seat up here. This won't take long." The nurse patted the bed and handed Rebecca a Q-tip. "Just run this along the inside of your cheek, and then we'll do the blood draw."
Rebecca didn't bother telling him that she knew the procedure as well as he did. She'd ordered the test on others more times than she could count. Not because she'd needed the results to determine guilt or innocence-at least not of the crime under investigation-but because judges and juries needed physical evidence, something they could understand with the recognized five senses.
Pulling the stick from her mouth, she watched the young lieutenant, built like a linebacker but with a cherubic face made for Hollywood, drop the evidence that would incriminate her into a tube. He offered her a brief but genuine smile and took the tube away to someplace presumably less austere than the SGC's examination room.
The results were foregone; of that Rebecca had no doubt. She carried within her considerably more than the ATA gene. It was probably too much to hope that the escalating situation at hand would be resolved before Dr. Lam's biomedical staff ran the genetic assay. Of course, they'd more than likely end up running it twice, since the first result would prompt a double-take worthy of the Three Stooges.
The lieutenant returned carrying the collection of instruments he needed to take a standard blood sample-or maybe six standard blood samples. He set the tray down and placed a squeeze ball in her hand. "Regular blood donor, I take it?" he asked politely, tapping the veins in the crook of her elbow.
The tiny puncture scars were a dead giveaway. "Yeah." Which triggered a gut-wrenching thought. Was the Wraith ret rovirus only transmittable through the generations'? Or was it, like HIV and other retroviruses, stealthily capable of infecting a new host who'd been unfortunate enough to need a blood transfusion'? All these years she'd thought she was doing a good deed…
No doubt that was one of the many leads the medical staff was already investigating. She put it out of her mind and let her thoughts turn, as they so often had these past few days, to the past.
It had been easy enough to dismiss her childhood memories as ninety percent suggestion blended with years of work on one cult-oriented investigation after another. Certainly the FBI had never found any reason to suspect Rebecca's parents of having been part of Ninlil's loyal cadre of cambion. For one thing, the Bureau had been unaware of the Ninlil `cult's' existence until Rebecca herself had dug up a few references and written a report so spartan that it barely ranked as a memo. And the Bureau's meticulous background checks generally didn't flag a person as suspect simply because they'd been orphaned under circumstances that the county coroner had ruled `accidental.'
Rebecca had been only five years old when she'd gone to live with-or, more accurately, Social Services had dumped her on the front doorstep of-her only living relative, a widowed great-aunt related in some tenuous way by marriage. The Bible-thumping old biddy had promptly declared Rebecca demon spawn, because her parents had healed others by the laying on of hands, which her aunt had labeled as a way to steal their souls. That conviction had been augmented by daily lashings with a barber's strap, hours of Old Testament readings, and weekly dousings in holy water. By the age of ten, Rebecca had performed so many prostrations before the altar, begging for absolution for her wickedness, that she'd become personally acquainted with every threadbare stitch in the local church's miserable carpet.
The situation had only worsened when Rebecca had begun to give voice to her observations of the people around her. It had never occurred to her that her gift for identifying what motivated people, what secrets they hid, what pain they suppressed or diverted into their own pathological behavior, might be considered unusual. A few fights at school and even more trips to the principal's office for what her teachers had described as `spying' on their personal lives, plus the additional Sunday evening prostrations, had eventually taught her to hide her insights.
That was, until her old aunt, having scrimped every nickel and dime to send Rebecca to college, had died satisfied that she'd saved her niece from the fires of damnation. By then Rebecca had categorized her `talent' as just a knack, a lucky attribute of birth, like an artist's skill or musical genius. Her ability to climb inside the minds of others and understand what made them tick could serve her well in life.
A sharp prick drew her attention to her arm and resulted in a mumbled apology from the lieutenant, who genuinely disliked inflicting pain, even if only minor. She smiled her reassurance at him and watched the first vial fill. It was a familiar process, one she'd begun in college. Donating blood was such a small and simple way to contribute to society, something her parents had instilled in her: People will need your help, Rebecca. It was the clearest lesson she could remember receiving from them.
College had exposed her to a wider world, a place where she'd begun to understand that her skills could help people and that others like her existed. Profilers, they were called and, far from being evil, they quietly went about protecting those who could not protect themselves from human monsters.
Rebecca had been a superlative student, her achievements noticed by peers and professors alike, and she'd published several papers on serial killers and cults long before graduating. Working with the FBI had given her a world where she'd been respected rather than vilified for her talents, and so she'd found a home at last. Her aunt would have been pleased to see her take on such a righteous cause, a latter-day crusade against Satan's minions.
In truth, the old lady could never have comprehended that Rebecca's initial research into cults had begun as a need to piece together some of the fragments of her lost childhood. Contrary to her aunt's lectures, Rebecca's memories assured her that her parents had not been demonic monsters who'd brought a fiery death upon themselves by practicing their `witchcraft', but rather genuinely compassionate people who'd treated her and all those around them with love and kindness. During those first bleak weeks after their funeral, Rebecca had held a tight grip on those memories and on her mother's promise that she would grow up to be someone very special, someone who would one day not merely help people but `save the whole world.'
Maturity and a few undergrad courses in psychology had eroded those fragile recollections until Rebecca came to regard them as no more significant than any mother's hopes and dreams. The warmth of the memory, though, had never faded.
A siren blared in the corridor outside. "That's a regularly scheduled gate departure," the lieutenant assured her, the needle steady in his hand. "Happens several times a day around here."