henri dunn 01 - immortality cure (9 page)

Neha took the baggies and held them up to her eyes. She read the labels and shivered. “You say the person stuck was a vampire?”

I nodded.

“Then it doesn’t make sense. If this is V-504, and it looks like it is, he should not have erupted into boils and died.”

No shit
, I thought. The Cure had burned the magic out of me, it was true, but it hadn’t done anything to me that remotely resembled what had happened to Thomas. But then, it wasn’t like I equaled a sufficient sample size.

“That’s why I need you to test the serum. See if it was poisoned somehow.” I shrugged. “Or maybe it doesn’t work, and I got really fucking lucky.” That thought was pretty nauseating. Neha bristled.

“That’s not how it fails,” she said.

“How do you know?” I demanded.

She chewed her lip for a moment and then sighed, as if giving in to some inevitability. “Come with me.” My stomach roiled; I didn’t like it when Neha was cryptic. She turned and went deeper into the apartment, past a kitchen and down a hall. I followed her into a small office.

A computer desk was against the window, with a behemoth of a desktop underneath it and several monitors and a keyboard on top. Against the side wall sat a second desk that was covered in paperwork. She pulled up a second chair and then sat at the keyboard and booted up the computer. Its fans whirred to life.

“What is it?” I asked while it booted.

“I need to show you something. But you need to promise not to get mad.”

I gave her my best “you’ve got to be kidding me” look. “I’m already mad at you, Neha. You ruined my life.”

“Madder,” she corrected.

The computer finally booted and she clicked around, entering passwords, until she reached the right file folder. She clicked a video and it expanded onto the second monitor to play.

The video screen displayed the words “Subject B,” and then the black dissolved to reveal a man at a table in a small, nondescript room. He was a vampire. His pallor and the odd brightness in his eyes alone might have given it away, but he showed his fangs. He signed a stack of papers and slid them across the table. There was a date and time stamp on the video. This had been recorded last December, in the middle of the night.

He said something, but the sound was muted or absent. Neha appeared in the frame, moving behind the guy in a lab coat, wearing glasses, her hair longer than it was now. The man rolled up his sleeve, revealing more bone-white skin. Neha jammed the needle into his arm.

I winced, bile rising in my throat. I remembered the prick of the needle and the sharp, hot pain that accompanied the injection. That moment of sheer helplessness as the poison permeated my veins is burned into my mind. And then came the sickness. The actual process was horrible and disgusting, my body purging the vampirism like some kind of bad seafood, but that moment of horror where I knew I was going to die and could do nothing to save myself, that was the worst part.

On-screen, something flickered in the man’s eyes, maybe a moment of regret. His expression was more doubtful than horrified. He shifted in his chair and kept glancing down at his arm. And then he swallowed. And swallowed again. He tried to speak, but without an audio track it was impossible to say if he succeeded. He bent over and vomited. On the video, Neha handed him a bucket.

In real life, Neha hit fast-forward and zoomed through hours of video of the vampire being violently ill. She hit play again just after he shuffled back in from the bathroom offscreen, looking gaunt, his cheeks sunken and his eyes bloodshot. He stared into the camera and mouthed something.

“He asked if it was supposed to hurt,” Neha told me. Her tone was clinical, but there was a shine in her eyes that betrayed a hint of emotion. Regret? Hard to say.

“This was before you jabbed me with the needle,” I said, appalled. She had known it would hurt like hell, and she’d still stuck me against my will.

“It was before I perfected the formula. Watch.”

I did.

I shouldn’t have. I should have told her that I didn’t give a damn what her shitty science had done to this poor creature willing to play lab rat. But I couldn’t look away, either.

He vomited again, on the table this time, but it was all froth and foam. No blood, no bile. And then he just died. Such small words for such a major thing, but there it was. One moment he looked miserable, and the next his expression turned neutral and the life went out of him. He collapsed onto the table, his face landing in the mess of pink froth.

In the video, Neha stepped back into frame. She took a pulse on his wrist and let it drop. The video faded to black and the screen flashed the words “Subject B.” Time elapsed from injection to organ failure: 3 hrs 2 min 43 seconds.

I stared, even as the video ended and the player disappeared from the screen.

“So you see,” Neha said, “when a vampire dies from the serum, it’s nothing like you described. I’m convinced I’ll find those vials filled with something else.”

I turned my gaze slowly from the screen to Neha, disbelieving. She had a haunted look in her eyes, but she’d had that since Kate’s death. “That was filmed before you jabbed me,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course I did tests before I injected you, Henri.”

The floor dropped out from under me and my stomach clenched. My head spun. I had to work very hard to keep my tone even. “If you had willing vampire test subjects, why the fuck did you stick me with your serum?”

Neha blinked at me. “I found two willing vampires and they died,” she said. “I tweaked the formula. I knew it would work the third time. I needed to prove it.”

“So why didn’t you ask? I could have found you another Weeper—”

“I wanted to save you, Henri,” she said. “I realize now I made an error. But I thought … ” She shook her head. “I was projecting Kate’s feelings onto you. I was still trying to save her through you. It was a regrettable mistake.”

“A regrettable mistake?” My voice rose a few decibels and Neha winced. “You killed me.”

“I killed the vampire in you. And here you are: living, breathing. Your hair grows. Your heart beats without the blood of someone else. I didn’t kill you, Henri. I made you live again. Hate me for it if you must, but I did you a favor.”

I couldn’t even formulate a reply to that, let alone a clever one. She was out of the room before I could rebound from the shock of her words.

“Is that what you think you did?” I demanded as I followed her down the hall.

“I know it’s what I did. Objectively speaking, you are human once more, no longer a monster. You cannot argue with that.”

I opened my mouth because I was pretty sure I could argue the sky was chartreuse if I had time to prepare, but she was technically correct. Although the way she said “monster” made me uneasy, like she felt vampires were lesser somehow.

“I showed you that video only to prove that even when the serum fails, it doesn’t do what you described. So I’ll test the vials you gave me, but you can be sure it wasn’t Serum V-504 that the vampire was given.”

I didn’t have anything else to say to her. I was still processing the whole “had access to willing lab rats and still stuck me with her serum” thing and the more it sank in, the angrier I got.

“Just test it,” I said, my words straining on the verge of a scream. I had to get out of there before I did something I’d regret. I headed for the door but then stopped, realizing that I still needed something from Neha.

I turned and folded my arms across my chest. “I need Ray’s address. I’m going to check his place for any clues as to who may have killed him.” If I could solve his murder, it would give me a place to look for Thomas’s killer. I wasn’t a detective, but I’d lived a long time and I’d seen enough episodes of
Murder She Wrote
to know that when you run out of leads, you look deeper into the victim’s life.

“What kind of clues?” Neha asked.

“Guess we’ll find out.”

Neha opened a drawer in the kitchen and dug out a set of keys on a blue chain. She held them out to me. “Ray’s keys. I used to feed his rats when he left town.”

“Rats?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Feel free to look around. Guy didn’t have any family. I guess I’ll have to deal with all of his shit, too. How do I manage that without getting the cops involved?”

“Not my problem.” But I considered it, weighing the keys in my hand. She could report him missing. But that would lead to questions about how she knew him. I figured it was better for her to stay off his radar. “He won’t be the first person to skip town and abandon his apartment. His landlord will have to deal with it.”

I, however, would have to be careful not to make an impression on any of his neighbors. When his landlord realized he was missing, I didn’t want anyone giving out a description of me as someone seen going into or coming out of his apartment. But since it was only midmonth, it’d be a couple of weeks before anyone asked questions as to why his rent wasn’t getting paid, or so I hoped.

“But his files,” Neha said. One-track mind.

“Were mostly digital, yeah? I’ll take anything I think might lead to you. I could use blackmail material.” I snarled, but the effect was probably lost without my fangs.

“Let me know what you find.”

“You, too,” I said, meaning the vials of supposed Cure. “And don’t take too long. I have a bunch of angry vampires breathing down my neck, and if they become my problem, I’ll make sure they know who the real architect of the Cure is.”

It was an empty threat—mostly—but nothing motivates like the terror of having your throat ripped out.

Neha took the threat in stride. “Good night, Henri,” she said and shut the door. I heard the bolt click and the chain lock slide into place.

CHAPTER 9

M
y apartment was small, dark, and cold, which was exactly how I liked it. Some vampires love light and fill their homes with lamps and strings of Christmas lights and so many candles it’s a fire hazard. I was never one of them, and while my renewed humanity came with a greater appreciation of the sun itself, I kept my living spaces dark. I had a single overhead lamp in my kitchen-slash-living-room. I opened the door and flicked it on. It emitted enough low-wattage light to illuminate the room in a soft, diffused glow.

I froze. Someone was sitting in my old easy chair by the window, the dim light reflecting off bone-white skin, the face cast in shadow by a mop of dark hair. My heart did another hummingbird impression and ice slid down my spine. I swallowed, trying to force myself to calm down. All my instincts said that instead of closing my door and locking the bolt, I should fling it wide open and run very far away.

“Sean,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. Seeing him now, beautiful and deadly, made me want to cry for so many reasons I couldn’t even begin to sort and separate them.

He sucked in a breath. “So it’s true,” he said, awed as he took in my mortal appearance.

“Unfortunately,” I said. “But then you knew that, or you would have come sooner.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice. I’d feared seeing him and letting him see me like this, weak and human, but his absence had been worse. I just hadn’t let myself acknowledge how much worse until this moment. Apathy cuts deeper than anything.

Silence hung between us. I opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Riesling. I uncorked it and filled a wineglass, and then shook the bottle in his direction. He shook his head no. Vampires can drink wine and coffee and other liquids, but most don’t like to unless it’s for the sake of keeping up appearances. A glass of wine at a party, half a cup of coffee so as not to be suspicious at a coffee shop, that kind of thing. I’ve known vampires who try their damnedest to get drunk, usually ones who used the stuff as a crutch in their mortal lives. It doesn’t work. The vampire metabolism will power through any liquid it consumes other than blood and burn out the effects of drugs like caffeine and alcohol before they can have any real effect. Vampires might drink coffee out of habit, but it’s not going to help them stay alert.

“I hear you killed a man,” Sean said, gesturing for me to have a seat like it was his apartment instead of mine. I sat.

“You heard wrong,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Am I not allowed to check on my own?” Sean asked, his voice soft and low. His eyes glowed and his face was a perfect marble mask.

“You didn’t bother to check on me when you heard, because I know damn well how fast news of my transformation traveled, and this is the first I’ve seen of you.”

“That doesn’t mean I wasn’t concerned,” Sean said. He let out a long sigh and tapped his long, spindly fingers on the arms of the Lazy Boy. “You were my favorite, you know.”

I smiled, unable to suppress a flicker of warmth at the words. Sean, my sire. Sean, who’d rescued me from a mortal life of mundanity, who’d made me into the elegant, vicious creature I used to be. Sadness bloomed in my middle. Sean and I had a fraught relationship, but there had always been love underneath the ocean of chaos. But now … now everything was broken. “Who’s your favorite now?” I asked.

He smiled enough to show fangs. Fear warred with desire at the sight of them and my hand went to my throat automatically. “You took a body to the Factory,” he said instead of answering my question. Matter-of-fact. His blue eyes watched me with cool indifference. “What kind of mess are you getting yourself into now?”

I laughed, but it came out high and mirthless, tinged with bitterness that raced through my veins. I swallowed a mouthful of wine before speaking. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve kind of been in a mess for the last six months.”

He waved a hand, the gesture gracefully smooth in the way only vampires can manage, like they’re swimming through the air. “You are where you began, Henrietta. Life often comes full circle.”

I scoffed. “You don’t think I wanted this, do you?”

Sean considered in maddeningly still silence for a few moments. “I have never pretended to understand what it is you want.”

“This was done to me again my will.”

He tilted his head. My heart continued to drum at high speeds. “Was it really? I was told you were working with the scientist who did it.”