henri dunn 01 - immortality cure (8 page)

The mortal doctor handed me another bag. It was a vial. A familiar vial. It looked extremely similar to the vial of Serum V-504 Neha had jammed into my shoulder to turn me human. The label had a date and batch number, but nothing that said V-504 or V-anything. It did have Neha’s initials—N.H.—scrawled in her familiar hand. It might have been a vial of the Cure. It might have been something else. I’d have to ask Neha to be sure. But it definitely came from her lab.

“That was found on the ground near him,” Lark said. “I picked it up because I thought it might be the poison.”

I shook my head, blood thrumming in my ears. “This can’t be right.” I’d been injected with the same stuff and had been fine, relatively speaking. Cazimir was studying me, watching my reaction. Probably listening to my rapid-fire heartbeat. “It has to be some mistake. This must have been something else.”

Thomas made a gurgling noise, and more of the bloody pink foam came bubbling out of his mouth, running over the boils on his chin. And then Thomas stopped moving. His eyes were still wide and red, but the life went out of them. Lark moved toward him, but Cazimir stepped in front of her and held out an arm, barring her from getting close to Thomas’s body.

“He’s gone,” Cazimir whispered.

Lark shook her head, braids swishing in the air. Sobs racked her broad shoulders, and Caz gestured to one of the other immortals, who helped Lark out of the door. Then he touched the mortal doctor on the shoulder. The doc took out a phone and started making calls, walking to the far side of the room for the illusion of privacy. From the sound of things, he was arranging an autopsy.

“This is insane,” I said. “The Cure shouldn’t do anything like this.”

“Perhaps not.” Cazimir glanced at the body with disgust, then walked me out of the room, Aidan following quietly on our heels. The hall was now empty, the crowd dispersed, probably ushered away. “It is more imperative than ever that you get me whatever remains of this Cure, and any research you can salvage from the dead scientist.”

“Caz, I can’t just—”

“Thomas is dead, Henri,” Cazimir said, as if I hadn’t just witnessed his horrible end myself. That alone was going to give me nightmares for years to come. “Justice must be served, and as it stands now, you are the only suspect.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. “Me? Why on earth would I do anything to hurt Thomas? I barely knew the guy. Who were his enemies? Or who stands to gain from Thomas no longer being a vampire? Those are the suspects!”

Cazimir closed his eyes like he had a massive headache and then opened them. “You might stand to gain from another like yourself being Cured,” Cazimir pointed out. That made my blood run cold because he was right. One ex-vampire was a Blood Traitor who could be held up as an example. I could be punished and castigated to prevent anyone else from trying to follow suit. Half a dozen ex-vampires was another story. If there were more like me, I’d cease to be such a pariah.

“I would never—”

“I believe you,” he said, cutting me off. I never thought I’d be happy to have Cazimir on my side. “But you are the one who brought the scientist’s body here.
You
are the one Lark suspects.”

I shivered, and not from the cold air in the hall. Vampire justice is pretty brutal. If even a handful of vampires believed I killed Thomas, or worse, that I posed a threat to the rest of them, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill me in the nastiest way possible. And Lark, being a vampire rather than a former vampire, was the person they’d listen to. Her word against mine meant only her word mattered.

“So what am I supposed to do? Run away before someone can lock me in your dungeon?” It was mostly a joke, because if Lark really did blame me for Thomas’s death, no amount of distance would help me escape her wrath, but my question was partly serious.

“Find the person responsible,” Cazimir said, as if it were as easy as that. “Get the remainder of the Cure and anything that might help create an antidote. And do it fast. Now that a vampire is dead, I cannot necessarily control the timeline. There will be calls for justice, and your head is on the block, Henri.”

Cazimir turned away from me and nodded at Aidan, who’d been lurking nearby awaiting orders. Then, wrapping his cape around himself, he proceeded down the hallway. Aidan started to follow but hesitated.

“If
that
”—Aidan nodded toward the room where Thomas had expired, swallowing uneasily—“was the result of the Cure, why did it work on you and not him?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Whoever stuck him with the needle must have added something deadly to the mix. Or maybe it wasn’t the Cure at all.”

Or maybe it was, and I had just gotten very, very lucky. The thought that Neha’s reckless actions could very well have led to my own horrible demise inflamed my fury.

Aidan chewed his lip for a minute. He was looking a little green. “I guess.” He glanced back at the open doors, where the noxious odor from the pus was still drifting out. “I thought what happened to you was bad, but this is a whole new level of fucked up.”

Then Aidan ran to catch up with Cazimir.

I was left holding the bags with the vial and syringe. There was a metaphor in there somewhere. I shoved both in my purse.

And then, a thought struck me.

Disgust and curiosity warred inside me, but even as they battled it out, I was already heading back inside the room. The doctor was still standing near a window. He was smoking a cigarette, and he glanced over as I entered, caught in the act.

“I thought it might help the smell,” he said. He started to extinguish it. I waved a hand.

“Smoke away,” I said. “I don’t plan on being mortal long enough to develop lung disease.”

The doctor coughed and then took another drag. “What are you doing in here?” he asked, more curious than threatening.

“Thomas was a friend,” I lied. “I was hoping to get a moment alone. To … you know.”

The doctor nodded, took a final drag on his smoke, and then ground it out on the bottom of his shoe. Classy. He left the room but, I noticed, did not shut the door.

Well, better than nothing.

“Hey, Thomas,” I said softly, in case Dr. Smoky was eavesdropping. “Who’d have guessed we’d end up here, huh?”

I had not really known Thomas. I knew Lark somewhat better, and though she and I had never been close, we’d been a strained kind of family since we shared a sire. In a way, that made Thomas family, too.

I was sorry he was dead.

I was even more sorry that the only power left to me involved tasting blood, because the last thing I wanted to do was stick anything from his bloated, marred corpse into my mouth. I pulled the pocketknife out of my purse and took a deep breath. Then I bent down and jammed the knife into the biggest patch of unmarred skin I could find, which was smaller than a dime. I shoved my finger into the small wound until it was coated with sticky red and then popped it into my mouth, dropping the knife back into my purse in case anyone walked in.

Images blazed into my mind. Lark, radiant and smiling, next to him in a crowded place. A band onstage, a pulsing crowd full of hammering hearts around the room. Thomas had liked that hum of life, had liked the way their blood called to him. He liked ignoring his urges and letting the song sing through his veins instead. And then there was a sharp pain, quick and then gone, and a joke, and then an itch. His hand closed over the syringe and yanked it out. Lark’s face was full of confusion and they made a joke. But pain started to radiate out from the wound. He felt flushed, hot. Strange. Like a mortal with a fever.

The impression stopped there. Unlike with Ray, it was not his last moments that I saw. But maybe they were the last ones that had mattered to Thomas and that was why it was those moments the blood showed me.

“I’m sorry it ended this way,” I told him and I meant it.

I popped a mint in my mouth to chase away the slightly rotten copper taste of his blood and then I hurriedly made my way toward the exit.

CHAPTER 7

D
ownstairs, Lark was standing apart from the group of vampires, a purple wrap hugging her broad shoulders like an emergency blanket. Grief and agony seemed to cloud around her. I wanted to offer her condolences, but she cut her eyes at me. Lark was tall and stunning, her brown skin paled by immortality but not the sickly bone white of lighter-skinned people given the Blood.

She stared at me with unbridled hatred. My heart pushed its way into my throat, blocking the bile that was crawling up my esophagus.

I turned and marched toward the front door, where one of Cazimir’s security team nodded at me in greeting and opened the door for me. Outside, it was cool for a July night, and humid, too. Flecks of almost-rain but not-quite-fog hung in the night air. I shivered, wishing I’d grabbed a sweatshirt out of my car. It had crawled up to ninety this afternoon, but tonight the wind howled through the streets, foreboding a summer storm.

The door opened and shut behind me and I whirled, heart slamming into my ribs when I saw Lark standing there, watching me, still as a statue. I folded my arms over my white work blouse and stared back, but you can’t win a staring contest with an immortal.

After a long, frigid moment she spoke: “Thomas was my everything. Now he’s gone.”

I unfolded my arms and put my hands up in front of me. “I know. I’m sorry for your loss.”

She fixed me with a look that could turn someone to stone. “You caused his death. You should have picked another to infect with your poison.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said softly, keeping my voice low. Lark could strike out like a snake and crush my throat in her fingers before I had time to react. And right now, she was definitely hurt and angry enough to kill first, ask questions later. “Someone stole it. The lab was robbed after the scientist was killed.”

She lifted her chin. The effect was full of regal power and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. She did not speak.

“Trust me. I wouldn’t wish
this
”—I gestured to my human body—“on any of us.”

Her mask cracked and something softer—grief mixed with pity, I thought—slipped through. But then the mask slammed down again. “Whatever poison you pushed into Thomas’s veins has killed him. For that crime, I’ll see you tortured before you’re killed.” But she wasn’t sure. If she was, she’d have killed me right then and there. I tried to be relieved, but my heart insisted on pounding until I was out of range.

“I didn’t do it. But whoever did is still out there. I’m going to find them, okay?” She didn’t move or respond. “Did you see anyone suspicious? Anyone looking at you and Thomas weirdly at the concert?”

Lark’s mask again slipped, thrown off by the question. She considered and then shook her head. “No. Everything was normal until … ” The words caught in her throat. “Until it wasn’t.”

“I’m very sorry,” I said.

“You should be,” she said, not cruel or angry. Just matter-of-fact. “You handed that mad scientist samples of your blood. You made it possible for him to make his poison.” I winced like I’d been slapped. “I will see justice served, Henrietta, and that justice will be your skull on my dressing table.”

Before I could protest or say anything in my defense, Lark turned and swept back inside the building, the door slamming in my face.

CHAPTER 8

I
parked in front of Neha’s apartment building. After Kate’s passing, she’d moved into a smaller apartment closer to her secret lab. It was one of those sprawling complexes with different buildings, none of which had more than two stories. Her apartment was on the first floor in a back corner of the complex, next to a fence that separated it from a neighboring complex.

I grabbed the plastic bags with the vials of god knew what, slung my purse over my shoulder, and marched up to her door. Her windows were dark. There was no way that showing up in the middle of the night was anything but a dick move, but I had no time to waste. I rang the doorbell. After a few minutes, I rang it again.

Neha came to the door looking frazzled, but she was still wearing slacks and a blouse instead of sleepwear. Her hair was sticking up in several different directions and kind of matted on one side, like she’d slept on it funny. She looked like she’d passed out at her computer or in front of the television. Her eyes widened when she saw it was me.

“How did you find me?” she demanded, anger making her more alert.

I sighed, a little melodramatically. I guess Cazimir’s theatrics were starting to rub off on me. “I used to be a vampire, remember? I followed you home after you moved to make sure I knew where you could be found should it become necessary.”

Neha threw up her hands. “What do you want, Henri?”

I held out the baggies. “A vampire I know was injected with a vial full of something from your lab tonight,” I said. Neha lifted an eyebrow, her scientific sensibilities winning out over any irritation. “I need to know if this actually Serum V-504 and if it’s tainted with anything.”

She held out a hand for the baggies. “Someone tried to Cure another?” She sounded way too hopeful for my liking.

“He’s dead,” I said.

That brought her up short.

I gave her the short version of what had happened to Thomas, her face twisting in confusion and horror as I described the pustules and boils.

“It does look like my serum, and it’s got the orange cap. Ray and I had a color-coded system. Perhaps he had an allergic reaction,” Neha said. She looked down at the vial through the plastic and frowned again. “Although I swore I’d labeled them better than this.”

“Vampires don’t have allergies,” I countered.

“Is there any way I can examine the body?”

“Someone else is doing an autopsy,” I said. I doubted I’d convince anyone to let me bring a mysterious mortal near the body, and anyhow, it was dangerous. The vampires all seemed to think Ray had been the one who’d invented the Cure and turned me human, and Ray was dead. It was safer for Neha not to challenge that assumption. “I need you to check those”—I indicated the plastic baggies—“as soon as possible. If there’s anything funky in the vial or syringe, I need to know immediately.”