“We’re talking about your DNA, Bennett. It seems you possess the marker for the Black Death,” Max said, pointing to the paper. “It means that one of your ancestors contracted that ghastly disease and then somehow survived. Whatever it did to their genome was passed from generation to generation, leaving that marker behind.”

“So?”

“May I cut in?” Landon said.

“Yes, of course,” Max said, waving his hand. “Go ahead.”

Landon inched to the edge of his seat. “Once Dr. Izzo discovered the marker in your readout, he tested every available vampire in Napoleon’s coven. None of them possessed it, and he hypothesized that since it was so rare and daywalkers appear to be equally as rare, it could very well be the reason you can withstand the sun’s rays and the rest of us can’t.”

“But you’re just guessing,” Bennett said, picking up the paper. “This could mean nothing, and even if you were right—”

“He is,” Max said. “My scientists believed the same thing; however, instead of testing the DNA of those who couldn’t walk in the sun, they tested the blood of those who could. I reached out to Hector, and at the risk of showing my hand, it took a series of very long and extremely tedious conversations until I learned where he’d buried the bodies of those two daywalkers Napoleon and Simeon had tortured to death. Believe it or not, Hector put them in the family plot alongside his parents.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Hector has his moments,” Max said, smirking. “Anyway, I sent a team of scientists to Barcelona to dig up the remains, and once they ran the tests, they discovered each of those men had the same marker as you do.”

“Okay, so we’ll get back to the fact you didn’t tell me a few decades ago you were trying to discover what made me tick,” Bennett said, giving Max a dirty look. “But even if this is the answer, so what? It’s not like you could just shoot someone up with the bubonic plague, for Christ’s sake. The immunity would be inherited, not instant.”

Landon whipped his head toward Bennett so quickly, the movement caught Max’s attention. He tapped on his desk to draw Landon’s eyes back to him and smiled. “Bennett is quite intelligent.”