Chapter 32

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1887

The street was busy as Christian made his way along Fourth Street. Philadelphia had grown so much since his family had originally moved there, over a hundred and fifty years ago. It was hard to believe it was the same place now. Almost a million people lived there now, which was so difficult for Christian to comprehend. Electric lights and other new inventions had brought Philadelphia into the modern age. The possibilities were endless, and he was ahead of the game.

Working in his lab on Logan Circle by day, he spent most of his evenings assisting Samuel, Morris and several others in hunting down bloodsuckers. Since the establishment of the headquarters Jordan Findley had spoken to him about nearly forty years ago, they’d taken to calling themselves LIGHTS. Originally, this change was due to the building of the training building, which the Findleys--Jordan and his wife Janette, who was now the Hunter Leader--had named the Lincoln International Guardian and Hunter Training Station after Abraham Lincoln, a Vampire Hunter who also happened to be president of the United States during a Civil War Christian had largely ignored. He’d had enough of such barbarism during the Revolution. Now, twenty years after the end of the war, and Lincoln’s unfortunate assassination, the nation was booming with new advancements coming faster than the citizenry could keep up.

Christian and the others who had been working on the silver bullet and weaponry had made great strides, though they weren’t quite where they wanted to be yet. Many LIGHTS team members still weren’t comfortable firing guns. It was a work in progress, and Christian was confident they’d have precisely what they needed in order to ensure Guardians felt safe, and Hunters weren’t likely to shoot and kill their teammates, within a few years. As for the other items he’d been working on, they’d developed a process for transmitting messages across great distances utilizing electric signals. In order for this specific technology to work, they would need to put large towers in place, which was proving most difficult. They’d have to determine where best to place them, acquire the land, build the towers, and not let anyone know about it. In the meantime, Christian was experimenting with the use of radio towers and radio signals. There was no way to secure the transmissions at present, though, and he was concerned that someone might pick up the frequencies. More tests and studies needed to be done. He was considering inventing a special language that only LIGHTS members would know how to speak.

Jordan’s vision of flying machines was still a ways off as well, but with the invention of the motor coach, Christian had a whole new field of opportunity to play with. He could certainly see these vehicles coming in handy in the near future, particularly if they were able to scale them so that several team members could ride to a location together. The speed was another factor he was looking forward to improving over the years. Jordan had recently purchased a Bentz-Patent Motorwagon for him to run his experiments on, and he was finding the machine quite fascinating. He was sure he’d be able to modify the engine in a way to make it more useful to the team, given the proper amount of time and necessary equipment.

Another advancement by team members was the invention of an injection that allowed a new recruit to Transform more quickly. Christian had been studying the elements within the blood that allowed the children of Guardians and Hunters to Transform once they reached the age of seventeen. He’d done quite a bit of studying the information discovered by the Swiss physicist, Friedrich Miescher and several others that led him to look at the double helix within the body's molecules. When Christian and other LIGHTS team members had made the discovery that there were specific elements within these molecules in Hunters and Guardians that were not there in regular humans, it allowed them to isolate those elements and experiment on them. The study was led by Dr. Levi Morrow, a brilliant scientist who’d come up with a way to speed the process of Transformation. Though it was still painful for most and could take a few days, it was much better than the natural process most of them went through that could be excruciating and last for several months, even a year. Christian’s Transformation hadn’t been too uncomfortable, but he knew he was one of the lucky ones, and he was fascinated with Dr. Morrow’s study. He’d had the opportunity to work with the scientist a bit while he was based in New York City, but recently he’d taken his study south to the island of Roatan where a group of Guardians had retired years ago to live in peace and relative quiet since they had put in their fair share of Vampire hunting. Those that didn’t want to ask a Hunter to kill them had little choice but to try to find a place that made them happy, and even though Christian had yet to visit the island, from what he’d heard, it was quite lovely.

His mind was all over the place as he made the trip home. Lighting up a cigarette, he blew out a puff of smoke and let his mind wander. The nicotine did nothing to him, but he found it relaxing to go through the motions, as if a cigarette could affect him the same way it did a human.

He couldn’t help but think of Brandy. She entered his mind several times a day, still, after all of these years. Since her death, he’d searched high and low for another woman that made him feel half of what she’d sparked in him, but there was no one. He’d dated woman after woman only to determine, usually after a first date or a roll in the hay, that she wasn’t for him.

Despite all of that, he still found it quite trying to attempt to talk to women. Most of the ones he went out with, he approached at saloons after he’d had a few drinks. Alcohol did nothing to him, but it made him feel better. It did help if the woman was drunk. Often, he’d say something awkward and ridiculous, such as a comment about her anatomy. Depending upon her level of intoxication, the woman was liable to either slap him or take him up on his proposition. Rarely did anything outside of those two choices happen.

Since that approach to speaking to women didn’t work for those he worked with, he often found himself tongue tied around his female coworkers. He tried to avoid them when possible. The idea of a device that could record them, sort of like a camera, but with moving pictures, was a puzzle he was still working on. He knew of a Frenchman, Louis Le Prince, who was working on such a device, and the idea excited him. Perhaps someday he’d be able to record himself with women and then play it back so that he could see what he’d done right and what he needed to work on.

Seeing the home he shared with his mother just up the street, he finished up his cigarette and then stamped it out. She hated that he smoked and wished he’d never taken up the “disgusting habit.” He’d mentioned that she didn’t seem to mind Father’s pipe, but she said that was different, and it wasn’t as if she could tell Peter what to do. Christian had reminded her that he was a grown man and should also be allowed to do what he liked in his own home, but she insisted that she was still his mother, and he would obey her. So… the cigarettes stayed outside. She still complained that his clothing smelled like smoke, but that didn’t deter him from lighting up several times a day, so long as he wasn’t in the lab and around flammable liquids.

He climbed the front steps quickly, ready to be done with his day. There was no hunt scheduled for that night, so as long as nothing came up, Samuel wouldn’t be bothering him. He could sit in his chair, listen to the radio, and read a book. He had a new one about air density he was looking forward to digging into.