What's Done in the Dark, page 33
From the glint in his eyes, he knew how much Archer stole my attention.
I pushed to my feet and faced the vampire. “You are the priority. I have some theories. I still think one of the porphyrias is the best direction to start with, and…”
Dragomir’s pupils went vertical as he watched me. “It is not porphyria.”
“There are six different kinds,” I said. “Did you test for all of them?”
His expression soured enough that guessing his answer didn’t take a genius.
I took a deep breath and focused on what my heart told me. Jamie was alive. I just had to find him. Which meant helping Dragomir above all others, even if Archer was the more comfortable ally. Or maybe not, based on his willingness to run into the middle of a pack of werewolves with nothing more than a couple of guns. He wasn’t getting a MacArthur Grant any time soon but at least he was cute and had a good sense of humor.
But he would have to wait. I calmed my racing heart and double-checked that the bear bag contained the remnants of Jamie’s things.
I was closer to finding Jamie than I’d ever been. I just had to stay focused.
Chapter 60
He carried me like a bag of apples all the way back to the cabin, dropping me on the porch in the same fashion as I’d landed at his lair, but I didn’t bother to stand up. I sat there on the battered steps and worked on breathing. Maybe flying to Nepal wasn’t a realistic dream.
Dragomir surveyed the outside of the cabin after adjusting his tie and smoothing his hair back. “About the blood.”
I jerked with the conversational whiplash and stared at him until some of my memory came back. I’d asked about the declining efficacy of his blood while making the cast of his face.
The vampire didn’t blink. “You are not near the dose required to turn you. The blood loses potency as it ages. It retains the characteristics of newer blood yet at a lower level. I will give you more of my blood to make you work faster.”
Although I probably shouldn’t have trusted him to tell me the truth about how close I got to changing. Another dose of fresh blood would also give me more data to track energy rates, focus, and dexterity based on the age and amount of blood consumed. It was just another experiment. Just another way to gain insight into vampire characteristics and weaknesses.
Dragomir meandered into the cabin to pick up the mask and gloves still on the table. “It has been some time since anyone requested drinking from me. Prepare yourself.”
“Prepare myself?” My shoulders tensed as I followed him. “What do you mean?” I retrieved a coffee mug from the counter and held it out. “I meant some power cocoa, not… something else.”
He removed his jacket and hung it carefully on the back of a chair, then undid his cuff link. Rolled his sleeve up a precise three folds. His shoulders filled out the shirt more like Archer than I could have anticipated. Dragomir arched an eyebrow as he looked at me. His voice dropped into a near-purr. “Fresh is so much better, Ada. You will be stronger, faster, almost telepathic if you drink directly from me.”
My skin crawled. Just the thought of touching him gave me the willies. I couldn’t conceive of actually putting my mouth on his wrist and… And yet I remembered that first intense high, and I believed him.
My chest rose and fell faster as I struggled to breathe.
“You only need to swallow a mouthful,” he said. “For that, the kiss is required.”
The kiss. I recoiled. “You don’t mean…”
Dragomir stalked toward me. “Of course not. Some day, perhaps, I will feed from your throat, but for now, you will feed from me.”
It was for Jamie. I would drink a gallon of vampire blood — of any blood, any substance — if it meant getting Jamie back home safely. Probably. I might need a guarantee before taking the first gulp.
I finally had a lead on Jamie’s last location and a place to start aligning other clues. Delaying that research by sleeping was unacceptable. I steeled my courage, hiked up my big girl pants, and stepped closer to the impassive vampire. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
He inclined his head very slightly and held up his wrist. I looked from it to his face, then back at the pale blue veins running underneath the translucent skin. “You want me to bite you? Seriously?”
“No.” Dragomir dug a sharp nail into his wrist until blood surged and dripped to the floor. “Drink.”
“Dude.” I took a step back. “You can’t be serious —”
“Drink.”
I held my breath and thought of Jamie. It would be worth it. It had to be worth finding him. I pinched my nose and gingerly leaned down to taste the blood. I gagged and tried to retreat, tried to back up. I’d changed my mind. Meth would be better, maybe crack. Anything but the dark sludge that crossed my lips. Dragomir shoved his wrist at my mouth. The cool skin made my skin crawl as it touched my lips again, but his hand at the back of my head prevented me from fleeing. I wanted to with every desperate beat of my heart and clutched his arm to pull it away.
The blood filled my mouth in a sticky, coppery rush. It coated my teeth as it oozed down my throat. Swallowing made me cringe. I closed my eyes and endured, swallowed again. And then... then it didn’t taste that bad. No longer thick and viscous like sewage but lighter and smoother. Almost... edible. Bearable.
My eyes snapped open and I threw Dragomir’s arm away as I flung myself backward. I fell hard and wiped my mouth. Goosebumps covered me and vomit crawled up my throat. But the only thing grosser than gulping down blood like a madwoman was the thought of barfing it all back up. Breathing through my nose helped a little bit, though the smug vampire standing over me didn’t make me feel any better.
Neither did the errant thought that maybe, toward the end, I’d enjoyed the taste.
I shuddered.
Dragomir’s wrist had already healed by the time he rolled his sleeve down and meticulously buttoned the cuff. “You enjoyed that more than you expected.”
I gagged and barely held down what I’d swallowed. “That’s not the word for it.”
He made a thoughtful noise, still watching me with vertical-pupiled eyes. “And yet you didn’t just swallow my blood. You drew it from my wrist.”
“I just wanted it over with.” The lie didn’t choke me up as much as the blood, at least. “When does it kick in?”
“Give it a few minutes,” he said. “It works faster when given intravenously, of course. The blood must be absorbed into your system.”
The almost-familiar feel of his thoughts brushed against mine and communicated his amusement and enjoyment of my predicament. I sat there on the floor, staring at him, and wished for a tinfoil hat. A swirl of thoughts crowded my brain until I almost lost the pertinent questions. “How do you know when it’s too much?”
He shrugged as he wandered into the kitchen to hold up a metal spoon, frowning at his lack of reflection. “I will sense it when you get close. That is the only way to know for certain. Like calls to like. I have enough... experience with such things to know you remain well below the threshold for fledging.”
“Fledging?”
“Turning, as you called it.”
My stomach started to settle finally, and I lay back so I could stare at the ceiling as it blurred and rotated above me. My vision cleared until I saw cobwebs in the rafters and the fine strands connecting the thumb-sized spider to the wooden beams. The sound of my own heartbeat pounded against my ribs and then scattered through the room to collide with the furniture. I tasted every element of the blood still coating my teeth, down to the iron and plasma. “This is... intense.”
Ugh. He’d been right. Fresh was better. It didn’t even compare to the super cocoa.
He made that thoughtful noise, and his pupils remained vertical. Predatory. “The effect will not last forever, although this will get you through the next week. Provided you have made progress in that time, I will feed you again.”
“The more of your blood I have,” I started, then hesitated. Bad news didn’t get better with age, after all, and I needed to be informed before I accidentally became a vampire through greed and shyness. “Does it connect us? You — hear me, when I speak and you’re probably miles away. And just now... I felt like you were in my head.”
I waited for his ridicule but instead Dragomir’s eyes flashed silver and the sharp teeth descended to press against his lower lip. Which gave him a lisp that nearly distracted me from the unbearable truth he spilled. “Yes. If we were to part ways now, I would still be able to find you a year or more from now. I have tasted your blood and you have tasted mine. There is always a connection with that sort of exchange.”
Which would have been great to know before all the crazy shit started happening, even though I hadn’t been in a position to refuse the blood transfusion.
My stomach turned over as I sat up. The hum of the refrigerator pounded against my eardrums from across the room and the squeaking of a fan in the back bedroom nearly had me cringing. Everything was so loud, so bright.
The flurry of stimuli filled in the spaces between my thoughts until fireworks went off between my ears. Dragomir’s upper lip curled and he retreated to the door. “I dislike your mental noise. Try to control yourself.”
“Maybe I like my brain noise,” I muttered. And I did. It felt like I’d reached a higher level of executive functioning. Any time I settled on a problem, time folded and the universe spat out the answer in a blaze of lightning. Perfection. “How will I know if it’s too much? If I’m — fledging?”
Dragomir paused near the window, surveying the yard. “You will know. It begins with — thirst. A thirst that develops into hunger, and you will crave red meat. You will grow tired and lethargic, and sensitive to bright light – you will sunburn easily even in minimal daylight. It can take a long while or a short turn. Everyone is different. Some give in to the first death, and others… resist, some for a very long time. It is far more painful, but they are stronger for it.”
“Tell me you won’t let that happen to me,” I said. I tried to fix him with a stern glare, but instead my voice dropped to a whisper and desperation stole my better sense.
He looked back to study me. “Would you prefer to die, if you believe the change is upon you? Or would you like to fledge and evaluate the new reality yourself before deciding between death or perpetual youth and freedom?”
I didn’t answer. As the silence stretched and I couldn’t force any words out of my mouth, Dragomir smiled with half his mouth, looking more like a shark than any sort of hominid. “Perhaps you should think about that, Ada, before we get much further.”
Then he disappeared and left me standing in the middle of my living room, listening to the rustle and click of the spider working on her web.
Chapter 61
I had several missed calls and messages from Archer but didn’t dare respond while in the first intense flare of energy. I redesigned several experiments for the vampire’s blood based on what I reviewed of the data from Archer’s group, and reviewed what happened in the woods earlier in the day for any indicators of the initial werewolf’s approach. A roll of acetate spread over a map on the kitchen table let me copy over all the data points I’d gathered for the Jamie search, and the moment the library in town opened, I wiggled past the startled librarian and headed for the back room.
Their map collection far exceeded my own. I aligned my acetate to the same topographic map in the library, and spread both out on the table so I could overlay more detailed maps in the right location. Contour lines and geo-coords would pinpoint exactly where Dragomir found Jamie’s things abandoned. Once I knew where that was, I could evaluate that location in relation to Jamie’s original hike, identify trails that used to be in the vicinity, maybe even plot the evidence I’d found of cryptids in that part of the park.
I froze, leaning over the table, as I stared down at the green and brown smudges and thin black lines stacking up on top of each other. A bolt of inspiration crashed into me. What if Jamie found the Ozark Howler? He’d been close, or so he claimed, and went out in a hurry after one of his trail cameras captured something. I scanned the acetate until I found those dots and ticks, done in bright orange, and started aligning them around the new map with the details around the found items.
My heart already felt like a hummingbird flapping under my ribs, but I could have sworn it sped up even more. Approaching stroke levels, no doubt. I gnawed my lower lip and fidgeted with the pen. The Ozark Howler… could it have been the thing that warned away the werewolves? Or was that what tore up Jamie’s gear and left his boot behind?
I shook my head, thoughts flowing too quickly as I considered and discarded half a dozen hypotheses. My ribs tweaked as I turned too quickly to search for a survey map from the 70s, before the Park Service wanted to re-wild the area, and reminded me of the previous day’s exertions fighting werewolves. The vampire blood dulled all but a few bruises, but it was a small price to pay for the superhuman senses that connected me to the entire universe.
Which alerted me to the soft friction of shoes on the industrial carpet just outside the map room. I didn’t turn but sound and scent and taste told me Archer approached. Alone, relaxed, wearing mostly cotton. I held my breath. Was that how Dragomir sensed the world all the time? How was it possible that he found my head too noisy, if all of that banged around inside his skull all the time? My brain had to be way less cluttered.
I blinked and straightened. “What?”
“I said ‘good morning,’” Archer said. He moved to the table next to me and studied the map. “I left you a couple of messages but didn’t hear back.”
“Knocked out early last night,” I said, forcing a smile. My knees weakened when I got a good look at him, got a good lungful of the enchanting cedar and linen scent that clung to him. I could practically hear his beard growing and the blood pumping in his veins in the silence of the library.
His healthy, living veins. The rich, red blood full of oxygen and iron, circulating so close to the skin…
I shook myself and retreated a few steps under the guise of pulling another map. Sure, I wanted to devour Archer in those perfect jeans and with those mouth-watering lips just begging to be kissed… I was almost eighty percent certain it wasn’t “devour” like Dragomir would have meant, no matter how his blood sounded as it whooshed through his heart.
Maybe seventy-five percent.
Definitely no lower than sixty.
I put a copy of a much older map from the 19th Century down and worked on aligning it with the newer maps. With the right information and motivation, maybe I could direct Archer and his team to search the area around where Dragomir found Jamie’s things. The Ozark Howler was probably in the area, so it wasn’t like I’d take them away from hunting dangerous cryptids. That assumed the werewolves wouldn’t follow them into the area and kill the Howler, too.
Archer leaned his hip on the table and eyed me. “You okay, Ada? You look a little… high strung.”
“Over-rested, I think.” My right eyelid twitched. “And over-caffeinated. Why aren’t you wandering in the woods looking for wolves?”
He suspected something, but at least he looked bemused more than intense. I faced the friendly, flirty Archer, not the one that wanted to stay professional and interrogate me after finding blood in my fridge and a waterhound in my bathroom. I’d chased Hopper around the cabin for a solid hour to redirect some of the energy, until the waterhound flopped under my bed and refused to move.
Archer nodded slowly, head tilted. “Yeah, you look a little over-caffeinated. I’m waiting for the data to download from the infrared cameras that we set up yesterday before we plan what to do next. And I wanted to check on you. You were pretty shaken up yesterday. Are you sure you’re okay?”
The bracelet I’d made from Jamie’s broken laces, braided with some of my own, snagged on the edge of the acetate, reminding me of my brother and the true objective. Whatever Archer brought to the table, whatever promise I’d seen in his eyes and felt in the overwhelming intensity of his kiss… that was just a flash in the pan.
No matter how much he talked about going on adventures around the globe and working together in a huge amazing lab with tons of people feeding me samples and evidence. If I recommended solutions to the problems created by cryptid-human interaction, maybe they would implement them. Whoever “they” were, anyway. But that wasn’t a dream I could have. Not yet.
“I’m good,” I said. I cleared my throat and refused to look at him. He was far too observant and would probably note my dilated pupils, twitching eyelid, and the heat building in my cheeks. “Thanks for asking. I just need to focus on finding my brother.”
Archer nodded, glancing at some of the maps. He picked up the 19th Century one and studied the smudged lines and strange markings. “Of course. This afternoon we’re going to go through the video from yesterday and identify the next place to start searching. The werewolves prefer the same sort of environment that sustains human life, so anywhere they’ve hunkered down would also be suitable for your brother. You can join us for lunch, then…”
He went on, those mesmerizing eyes raking over me again and again, searching for something. I felt his attention like a caress and closed my eyes, wanting to lean into him. Kissing him with all my senses heightened would be heavenly. Transcendental. Really fucking hot.
But Dragomir made clear how he felt about Archer and his team distracting me with werewolf and cryptid searches. If the vampire found more evidence of Jamie’s location, he could hold it hostage if he saw me still working with Archer. Dragomir might even find Jamie and not tell me. I steeled myself as I met Archer’s gaze and pushed away regret that it couldn’t go further, at least not now.
“And from what Isidro said about the cameras, something transited the same area at a much slower pace after we departed. Humanoid in shape, bipedal. Not hairy enough for a werewolf, but too hairy for a man.” Archer shook his head and sat, leaning back, as I kept buzzing around the table rolling up maps. “With your experience in that part of the park, it’ll be…”
