henri dunn 01 - immortality cure (2 page)

Twenty minutes later, I was done with my sidework and ready to go. I kicked off my black work heels and put on sneakers. The relief was instantaneous. Seriously, how did feet get so sore? Wasn’t that their job, to hold you up? I shoved my heels into my work locker, grabbed my purse, and headed out the back door.

Le Poisson sat on a hill overlooking Lake Union. My car was parked a block away in a pay-to-park lot that overcharged, but it was better than being late when I couldn’t find a spot on the street. Our lot was reserved for customers, the chef, the manager, and whoever was lucky enough to be employee of the month (hint: not me). I was walking up the street toward the lot when someone got out of a parked SUV and came toward me.

I snarled. The woman put her hands up in the air. My breath caught in my throat.

The woman was Neha Holkar. She wasn’t wearing the lab coat I was so used to seeing her in, but the clothes she usually wore beneath it—a blue blouse and black slacks—were familiar. She was a little taller than me and more slender. Her black hair was short and wavy. It had been long the last time I’d seen her, and she hadn’t had such dark circles under her eyes. But it was Neha all right: the woman who’d stolen my immortality.

“
Y
OU REALLY THINK
I won’t kill you because I lack fangs?” I asked. Neha winced but stood her ground. Credit where credit is due: she’d never had trouble controlling her fear. Human hearts and primal brains tend to shout “Danger!” but with practice, people can learn to rein in the impulse to flee. And Neha had had a lot of practice.

“I don’t think you’ll do it here, a block from your place of employment.” Her voice sounded steady.

“After what you did to me, why do you think there’s anything on this planet that will keep me from tearing out your heart and eating it?”

I had to admit that was a little over the top. So when Neha laughed, I couldn’t really blame her. But I was glad to hear that her laugh was shaky. It was a chink in her confident armor. I couldn’t hear her rapid-fire heartbeat anymore, but it was reassuring to know that despite the cartoonish nature of my threat, she was still a little bit scared of me.

She met my eyes and the smile dropped off her face. She cleared her throat. “I saved you.” Quiet, unsure.

“You damned me!”

She winced again. Good. I wanted to hit her over the head until she understood the pain I was in. Neha and I had been friends—or I’d thought we were. She was a bit of a wildcard but, hey, so was I.

Neha’s girlfriend, Kate, had been turned into a vampire by more or less random happenstance (wrong place, wrong time … or right place, right time, depending on your point of view). Like a lot of people turned under duress, she hadn’t taken to it well. Neha had built an entire illegal laboratory on the back of synthesized party drugs to search for a Cure. But she hadn’t found one quickly enough, and Kate had lost patience. She’d lost the will to keep existing as a monster and thrown herself into the sunlight, ending it all. Neha had been wrecked, but she hadn’t stopped her quest. And for some stupid reason, I’d helped. I’d donated my preternatural blood. I’d listened to her theories and come up with my own.

And then, about six months ago, she’d jabbed a needle in my arm and injected me with her Cure.

It worked. Suddenly I was human again. A twenty-three-year-old woman with dirty-blond hair, a short stature, and a series of fake identities going back over ninety years.

My vampire cohorts, horrified at the sight of me human again, demanded answers. They quickly decided I was a traitor, and I was lucky to get away from them with my life, such as it was. They refused to turn me back, afraid my blood was tainted with the Cure and would ruin them, too. I was cast out as a Blood Traitor and left to my own devices.

And now, Neha wanted me to thank her. Her girlfriend may have wanted a Cure, but I had been happy as a vampire. I liked being a vampire. I killed bad guys or didn’t kill at all. I was powerful and strong and immortal.

Now I was just another human with an achy mortal body, waiting tables and trying to make rent.

I took a deep breath and, resisting the urge to physically lash out, stepped around Neha. If she was waiting for a thank-you card and a fruit basket, she had a long wait ahead of her. There had been nights I’d come damn close to burning her lab to the ground.

“Wait,” she said, and I stopped. I don’t know why I stopped. Maybe because there was a plea in her tone; because some part of me still thought of her as a friend; because when someone tells you to wait, it’s habit to wait. “I need help.”

I almost laughed in her face, but something in her voice made me turn around. “You have the balls to ask me for a favor?”

“Ray’s dead.”

That brought me up short. Ray was her partner in crime, or more accurately, her partner in what they lovingly and jokingly referred to as their “mad science.” His goal was to see if he could synthesize a drug that mimicked the symptoms of lycanthropy, a project I did not exactly agree with or endorse. Werewolves weren’t real as far as I knew, and I was not on Team Let’s Make Werewolves Happen. He was a little unhinged, and a little too in love with the supernatural, but he was always polite and sort of in awe of me, the way a lot of humans who learn about vampires are.

I didn’t love the guy, but he wasn’t the most annoying mortal I dealt with on a regular basis, and I’d never wished him dead (unless he started to make progress on his werewolf serum—then I’d have to reconsider).

“How?” It was the only logical question.

Neha let out a shuddering breath. “He was murdered. I don’t … I’m not sure what to do. I was hoping you’d help.”

“Help how?” I asked, incredulous. Neha had turned me human. That meant all of my superpowers were gone.

“I don’t know, Henri,” she said. She sounded so defeated it might have broken my heart if I had one. “He’s dead and I’m scared, and I don’t even know what to do with the body. I can’t call the cops.” She lifted her hands and dropped them again. “The lab is a mess.”

“Wait, he was murdered inside your lab?”

Neha nodded.

I let out a breath. “If I were still a vampire, I could help you dispose of the body. But since I lack supernatural strength and speed … ”

“I don’t know where else to turn.” She hesitated and then added, “What’s left of the Cure is missing, too. I had five vials, but the killer took it all.”

If I were smart, I’d have told her to fuck off. I didn’t owe her anything until she found me an antidote for this Cure of hers, and maybe not even then. Besides, I’d already given her almost everything, and she’d taken everything else I had.

But while I could chalk Ray’s death up to someone wanting his designer drugs, the fact that the Immortality Cure was out in the world made me itchy. I may not have been on happy terms with my brethren, but that didn’t mean I wanted vampires getting humanized against their will. “What else did they take?”

“I haven’t done a full inventory yet. Hard to focus when there’s a decaying corpse next to you. They took most of what was in the small storage fridge. Lots of Lemondrop. They probably think they’re all party drugs.” Neha shifted on her heels. “Please. I have no idea what to do with a body. Do this for me so I can keep my lab and try to concoct an antidote for you. It’s the only way you’re ever getting a serum to reverse the effects of Serum V-504.”

I shuddered at the name. So innocuous. So innocent sounding. It was named for the date Kate and Neha had met: May 4th. It would have been sweet if she hadn’t used it against the one vampire in the world who had tried to help Kate. Whatever vampire had turned her had been conspicuously absent, although I suspected that was more because Kate refused to go near them than anything else. She wouldn’t even tell me his name.

“You really think you can make an antidote?” I asked, gauging Neha’s reaction.

She nodded fiercely.

Part of me had a hard time believing there was a scientific solution to my problem, even if science had caused it. The serum had burned out whatever magic had made me immortal, but that didn’t mean immortality could be synthesized. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be. And even if it were possible, I had my doubts about how much effort Neha would put into finding one. Vampirism had destroyed the love of her life, and Neha couldn’t see it as anything other than a plague that needed to be eradicated. She might have owed me an antidote, but that didn’t mean she’d ever come through with one.

My best chance was to get a vampire to turn me back. Wait until I could convince them I wasn’t a traitor and my blood wasn’t tainted.

Or...

I realized that if I had a vial of the Cure in my possession, I could find some rogue vampire who might do me the favor in exchange for it. For every ten vampires who are happy being monsters, there’s always one sad sack who misses the sunrise. But in order to have that bargaining chip to strike a deal, I needed Neha’s lab to be operational, or at least I needed a vial of V-504. Which meant I needed Neha not to be in jail for murder, with all of her stuff confiscated as evidence.

“Fine,” I said reluctantly. So much for pajamas and cabernet. “I’ll follow you there.”

Neha smiled faintly. “Thank you, Henri.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I might kill you after all and set fire to the lab to destroy the evidence.”

Neha ignored the comment and headed back to her SUV. I headed to my own car, unwilling to ride with her or rely on her for a ride back.

CHAPTER 2

N
eha’s lab was located in a shopping center on the Eastside, next to a dry cleaner, a legal pot shop, and a mini-mart. According to the signs on the windows—which had heavy shades behind them—the lab was the office for a timeshare sales company that had closed down years ago. Neha had shuttered the windows and put a “For Lease” sign in the window with a number and realtor’s name. The number was forwarded to a special cell phone, and any inquirers were told the property was currently in negotiations with a prospective renter and to call back a few months if the space was still empty. Given its odd location between residential streets and the inflated fake rent prices Neha would quote, most people never called back.

Neha and Ray used the back door and worked extremely odd hours, but the other patrons in the strip mall thought she was a real estate agent and therefore had a reason to be there. It was a pretty good system. That it had held up for almost three years was miraculous. Neha knew her time at the lab was limited and that before long she’d have to move. She and Ray were saving money from their party drugs to buy a big house to work out of. Or that had been the plan, when Ray was still among the living.

Driving there took about a half hour, and I didn’t bother to follow Neha’s SUV. I knew the way. I parked on the street, rather in the lot, like Neha had done. She got out of her car when I pulled up, and we walked to the back door in silence.

There was a security door with a standard dead bolt, and beyond that, an inner door with a key card reader. Neha swiped her card and pressed her fingerprint into a small attached scanner. The light on the card reader turned green and the door clicked open.

The minute it did, I smelled the fetid, sweet scent of decay. Neha gagged and covered her mouth before pushing the door the rest of the way open. We stepped inside, Neha closing both doors behind us before turning on the lights.

Ray was slumped back in his desk chair, arms out to the sides. His throat had been slit. On top of the scent of decay, there was a strongly metallic smell. Splotches of dark red and brown covered his desk and part of the floor. Blood had stained his yellow t-shirt and pooled beneath his chair. His skin, pale in life, was now sort of grayish and loose on his face, as if the skin were too big for his frame.

Neha turned on a vent and the fan whirred to life. She was doing her best not to look at Ray.

“When did you find him?” I asked.

“Today. He was still here—alive—when I left on Saturday night, around eleven p.m. He’s wearing the same clothes, so I assume he didn’t leave.”

It was Monday night now, which meant he’d probably been dead for two days.

Neha’s desk was behind Ray’s. A counter full of lab equipment—some of it identifiable, like microscopes, some of it foreign to me—lined the side wall. The mini-fridge kept under the counter had been pulled out, toppled over, its door left open. It was empty.

I stepped closer to Ray’s body. I wasn’t a coroner, and if I had to deal with corpses, it was usually within hours after their death, not days. Ray was in bad shape. I looked at the wound in his neck. His throat had been slit open with a blade, and from what I could see with my limited mortal vision, it was a smooth cut, which indicated it was a single swift cut rather than several lacerations. Dark flecks of blood had dried around the wound. A slashed throat didn’t rule out vampires, but it did make it unlikely.

Most vampires are practical creatures: you don’t survive on the fringes of society if you’re not smart about how you get your blood. Which means wasting blood is generally a no-no. Leaving behind bodies is definitely on the “don’t” list. It was possible a vampire had gotten in and killed Ray with a knife, but that scenario had its problems. The wasted blood, sure, but also the locks.