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  “Yes, and I’d like to show all of you.” Her eyes shifted to the gun in Walker’s hands and pressed flush against Ronnie’s chest.

  Walker looked down at his gun as if just realizing he was still holding it, and then he lifted his gaze back to Ronnie. “I’m not okay with this,” he said, his voice a low rumble.

  “And I am?” Ronnie shook her head, and her expression said very plainly that she thought he was an idiot. “You think that I’m okay with being the very creature I’ve feared my entire life? You think I’m okay with attacking people to drink their blood and entrancing them to survive and being the weakest, most pathetic vampire because I can’t do either of those things? You think I’m okay with losing my hair and looking like death?” she shrieked.

  Walker’s mouth opened and closed without uttering a word.

  Ronnie let go of the gun. “I’m not any more okay with this than you are, but I can’t just wiggle my nose and fix it. I can’t do anything except live with it, assuming I get to keep living,” she said, eyeing Walker’s trigger finger.

  Walker didn’t move; not even his thumb hovering over the safety so much as twitched. And then he put up his gun.

  I sighed in relief, releasing the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “All right, doc, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Chapter 7

  I stared at the charts and figures that Dr. Chunn had created, obviously painstakingly and thoroughly, and I tried not to let the disappointment show in my expression. Seven days wasn’t a lot of time to produce scientific results under normal conditions, and there was nothing normal about conducting experiments inside a morgue on a caged, unclassified creature while New York City was being slaughtered into the Stone Age. She didn’t have a mail system to send samples to specialized labs or a team of scientists at her back to delegate work to anymore. Everyone else either had evacuated, was missing, or was dead. All Dr. Chunn had at her disposal was her equipment here at the morgue—which was substantial, considering the size of her facility—a dead Damned and my live brother as lab rats; and an unofficial, unqualified team of two: my partner from the Sun Accord, Meredith Drake, and Supervisory Special Agent Harold Rowens.

  At least Meredith could help run and monitor the software, providing valuable technical skill in support of Dr. Chunn’s efforts, but I couldn’t say the same of Rowens. He was sharp and skilled in his own right, but he belonged in the field, not the lab. Despite my assumptions, however, he stood next to Dr. Chunn, his shoulder holster strapped over an apron and wearing protective eyeglasses, looking surprisingly in his element.

  I resisted teasing Rowens, for which I was proud, and hugging Meredith, which made me depressed as hell. Her furtive, frightened glances grated against my heart, but my self-control could only withstand so much. I indicated the rows, columns, and charts of printed results between us with a wave of my hand and gave up on tact. “This isn’t anything we didn’t already know, and we’re out of time. We need real answers,” I said.

  Meredith frowned, but when she would have normally defended her work, she remained silent, cutting me with the hesitation in her eyes.

  Dr. Chunn crossed her arms. “We might have known that the Damned’s scales were impenetrable except by the Day Reapers and their maker, but now we know why.” She jabbed a finger at one of many stacks of statistics and findings I didn’t need to decipher to know we were screwed. “It’s more than just the Day Reapers’ silver talons, although silver is enough to penetrate Nathan’s scales, because he was created before the Leveling. The Damned that Jillian created while in full possession of Dominic’s Master powers are resistant to silver, yet they are still susceptible to injury by a Day Reaper. An enzyme in Day Reaper blood prevents the Damned’s injuries from healing after the silver penetrates their scales. That’s why the silver trackers penetrated their scales but were expelled from their bodies. And it’s why the silver tracker coated in your blood penetrated their scales and didn’t get expelled; an enzyme in your blood prevented the wound from healing. If we can replicate the enzyme, we can build weapons that not only penetrate their scales but do some real damage—without having to bleed you dry.”

  I shook my head. “Your findings are nothing but theories unless we can test them.”

  Dr. Chunn stared at me and smiled.

  I sighed. “Fine, let’s say you draw my blood and create a synthetic enzyme that you apply to weapons to kill the Damned. Which Damned do you plan to prove your theory on?” I asked. “You can’t just shoot Nathan.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Walker grumbled.

  “At that stage, lab experimentation would no longer be applicable,” Dr. Chunn smoothly interrupted. “We would field test, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, shaking my head. “I’d be more willing to open a vein for your experiments if I hadn’t witnessed your hospitality firsthand.” I glanced at Nathan standing docilely in his cage and shook my head. “Excuse me if I refuse to willingly walk into captivity for the cause.”

  Nathan grabbed the bars suddenly and shook the cage violently. “I am not an animal!” he screamed in his best Charlton Heston impersonation.

  Which was, admittedly, spot-on.

  The Planet of the Apes reference was lost on most everyone. Walker, Greta, and Rowens all pulled their guns. Ronnie flinched back violently, equally terrified of both Nathan and the firepower. Dominic blinked noncommittally. I stared at my little brother—not so little anymore, but just as exasperating—and shook my head.

  But Meredith, bless her, Meredith knew better. She burst out laughing.

  Dr. Chunn eyed all of us as if she’d prefer to cage everyone, not just for scientific purposes.

  Nathan lifted his hands innocently, and we watched as the boils and open sores on his palms healed. No matter the science, and no matter my enhanced senses, which could actually see the healing process—Nathan’s newfound abilities still shook me to my very core.

  A thought escaped from the deep, dark box inside myself where I stuffed, locked, and hid the memories and emotions I was too chicken to examine. Typically, I was a seasoned pro at self-preservation, and that box stayed airtight, but witnessing Nathan’s antics and abilities, seeing him caged like the animal he claimed he wasn’t, had weakened its seal, and I thought, Thank God Mom and Dad aren’t alive to witness this.

  For the first time in over five years, I felt something other than horror, denial, and rage at the thought of my parents’ passing, but this feeling, something akin to morbid gratefulness, wasn’t much of an improvement.

  Rowens glanced at Meredith speculatively. “Did we miss the punchline?”

  Meredith nodded, wiping her eyes. “Yes, you did.”

  Dr. Chunn settled her gaze, once again, on me. “I’m not caging you. I didn’t even want to cage Nathan. I just need a sample of your blood.”

  “And yet there he is, caged,” I reminded her.

  “It made Walker feel better,” she said, sighing. “It’s perfunctory anyway. He can escape at any time.”

  Everyone’s gaze, which had once been focused on Nathan, shifted instantly and simultaneous to Dr. Chunn.

  “He can what?” Walker asked, his voice a low rumble.

  Nathan rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, fuck it.” I conceded, feeling more pressure from the unstable hostility in the room than anything else. “Yes, you can have a sample of my blood. Happy?”

  “Ecstatic,” Dr. Chunn said, unsmiling.

  “In all your findings,” Ronnie began, her voice fluttering nervously, “have you come across anything pertaining to the Damned’s eating habits? Why do they specifically crave aortic blood as opposed to blood in general?”

  “Yes, actually, I have a theory about that as well,” Dr. Chunn said, but I had a sinking suspicion she had a theory about everything—which did not necessarily indicate she had answers about anything.
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br />   “Why do their eating habits matter to you?” Walker asked sharply.

  Ronnie shrank back. “If Dr. Chunn can determine why the Damned crave aortic blood, maybe she can figure out why I crave blood, but can’t stomach it. Maybe—” Ronnie glanced at the crowd around her and curled in on herself. “I know we have a lot to worry about, and the Damned come first. But I was just hoping…I mean, it’s just that I’m—”

  “You’re starving,” Dominic interjected plainly. “I’m sure that Dr. Chunn can apply her findings to you as well. You are not alone anymore, Ronnie,” Dominic said kindly. He placed his arm gently around her shoulders, and somehow, she seemed bolstered by the weight. “We will figure this out together, and you will heal.” He glanced at me. “We will all heal, and we will all survive.”

  Walker glared at Dominic, the expression on his face somehow both possessive and disgusted. “She was never alone.”

  Dominic raised an eyebrow. “Does she have the look of someone who has been well cared for?”

  “She looked a sight better when I was the one caring for her!”

  Ronnie deflated under the sharp prick of Walker’s words.

  I turned away from the strange and convoluted emotions between Walker and Ronnie to focus on the facts, which were confusing enough without distraction. “Please, continue Doc. You were about to explain why you think the Damned crave aortic blood.”

  Dr. Chunn pointed to a stack of papers on the far side of the lab bench. Rowens alternately eyed the stack of papers and Nathan, compliant behind bars. With only one hand, he had to choose: put up his gun and pass Dr. Chunn the papers or ignore her and continue aiming his gun at a calm, caged man. After a moment of hesitation, he put up the gun with a heavy sigh and passed the indicated stack of files to Dr. Chunn. Their fingers brushed as the file changed hands, and Dr. Chunn blushed a bright, tomato red from the chaste touch. Rowens’s expression was lecherous, but he didn’t say or do anything beyond that little finger caress. I tried to ignore the fact that I could smell the mingling scent of their arousal and the realization that, because of my heightened senses, I would be fastidiously ignoring personal insight into people’s desires and emotions for the rest of my life.

  “Doc?” I prompted.

  “Oxygen deficiency!” Dr. Chunn blurted. She cleared her throat and tried again. “It seems that Nathan has an oxygen deficiency.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Nathan has an oxygen deficiency, so he craves human blood,” I said doubtfully.

  Dr. Chunn shook her head. “He drinks human blood because he’s a vampire. He craves aortic, oxygen-rich blood because he has an oxygen deficiency. People who suffer from an oxygen deficiency typically experience irritability, irrational behavior, memory loss, depression, dizziness, muscle aches and pains, circulation problems, and fatigue. Give a twelve-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound, muscle-bound, bloodthirsty creature those symptoms, and you have the Damned.”

  I held up my hand. “If a human—say, Meredith—had an oxygen deficiency, she would get dizzy and depressed and feel achy.” I gave Dr. Chunn a look. “The Damned are slaughtering people.”

  “Meredith isn’t predatorial. She doesn’t drink blood as a main food source, nor does she have the ability to smell, hear, or taste the oxygen in aortic blood. Meredith with an oxygen deficiency isn’t dangerous. Give a vampire an oxygen deficiency—”

  “—and you get humans with missing hearts,” Greta finished morosely.

  Dr. Chunn nodded. “Exactly.”

  “So if we treat their oxygen deficiency, the Damned will stop craving human hearts?” I asked, but I couldn’t keep my eyes from settling on Nathan.

  “There’s no fixing this,” Nathan said. “This is who I am now. You saved me the best you could, the best that was possible, but there’s no going back to the way I was before being transformed.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “You heard Dr. Chunn: you crave aortic blood because of an oxygen deficiency. It’s something that can be treated.”

  “She didn’t say that. You said that.”

  “He craves human blood because Jillian escaped,” Dominic said flatly. “If we kill Jillian, his maker, we seal the transformation like we should have weeks ago.”

  Dr. Chunn shook her head. “Killing his ‘maker’ to ‘seal the transformation’ isn’t a real thing.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “What is it?”

  She shrugged. “Folklore?”

  Dominic narrowed his eyes. “I’ve done it before. I transformed Jillian from being Damned to a vampire. She no longer craved human hearts because I sealed the transformation by killing her maker.”

  Dr. Chunn was still shaking her head. “Correlation does not imply causation.”

  “English, Susanna,” Rowens reminded her.

  She sighed. “Just because Dominic killed Jillian’s maker and then Jillian was suddenly no longer Damned does not mean that killing her maker necessarily caused that to happen.”

  Dominic crossed his arms. “The simplest explanation is usually the right one.”

  “I eat a carrot, and an hour later, I become violently ill: did the carrot cause my illness?” Dr. Chunn asked.

  Dominic rolled his eyes. “That isn’t at all akin to—”

  “Maybe I ate improperly cooked chicken a few hours earlier,” Dr. Chunn continued, speaking up over Dominic’s exasperation. “Or maybe I contracted an illness from a germ. Or maybe I’m pregnant. Assuming the carrot caused my illness is not only presumptive, but dangerous, because I might stop eating carrots instead of cooking my chicken more thoroughly.”

  “I concede your point,” Dominic said. “But it’s still possible that it was the carrot.”

  “Not likely,” Dr. Chunn said stubbornly.

  I shook my head. “When we transformed Nathan, we mimicked everything based on Dominic’s experience with Jillian. His master drained him and fed him non-Damned blood. Everything was the same, except that we didn’t kill his maker to seal the transformation.”

  Dr. Chunn laughed. “There are so many differences between Jillian’s transformation and Nathan’s that they don’t even compare: the locations were different; the masters were different; the blood you used to transform him back was different. You made a valiant attempt to fully transform him back into a night blood, but there’s simply too many differing factors to determine exactly which one, if it was even only one, that caused him to retain his oxygen deficiency, not to mention his heightened senses and the ability to shift between forms at will. Given enough time and resources, I might be able to isolate the necessary factors, but—”

  “Time isn’t exactly something we have in spades,” Greta grumbled.

  “Neither are resources,” Rowens added.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Are we on a timeline?”

  “We’re on a ticking time bomb,” Rowens said grimly. “The military already attempted and failed a covert mission to take out the Damned without realizing what they were really up against. Afterward, they bombed the bridges and collapsed the tunnels to isolate the city from the mainland.”

  I blinked. “They what?”

  “They’ve completely cut off any means of escaping New York City except by air. I was able to get word to my superiors that innocent people are still here, but…” Rowens shrugged, the muscles of his residual limb twitching slightly. “Really, it’s just a matter of time.”

  “Which is why my time will be more efficiently spent determining how to create a synthetic version of the Day Reaper enzyme,” Dr. Chunn said.

  Greta raised her eyebrows. “Can you do that?”

  Dr. Chunn pursed her lips, warily looking over the stacks of statistics and results. “Can I afford not to try?”

  “What do you need to get it done?” I asked, and then smiled just as warily. “Besides my blood.”

  “May I point out that until yo
ur body bathes in direct sunlight, you are not technically a fully transformed Day Reaper?” Dominic interjected.

  “My blood had the enzyme even when I was a night blood,” I reminded him.

  Dr. Chunn waved away my point. “Fully transformed or not, samples from two different Day Reapers to confirm my results would be ideal,” Dr. Chunn confirmed, as if we could just run an errand to the nearest supermarket to pick one up.

  Ronnie frowned at Dominic. “The Day Reapers aren’t exactly our friends right now,” she reminded him. “When they find out that you transformed Cassidy, they’ll want your head on a pike.”

  “In general, you are correct; the Day Reapers will not approve of my actions,” Dominic said. “But one specific Day Reaper will understand. Bex is our ally, and I think she will help us if I ask nicely.”

  Ronnie made a noise between a snort and a low whine.

  Dominic eyed her askance. “Please, speak.”

  “Sorry. I just don’t share your confidence where Bex is concerned,” she admitted. “She’s never been my ally. She abandoned me.”

  Dominic eyed Ronnie thoughtfully before returning his attention to Dr. Chunn. “You will take Ronnie’s blood as well, and test it for deficiencies.”

  Ronnie’s expression brightened.

  Dr. Chunn blinked. “Bulimia isn’t a blood deficiency. It’s a mental-health disorder.”

  “No, I—” Ronnie began.

  “Admitting you have a problem is the first step,” Walker said softly.

  “No, you don’t understand. I was anorexic. I didn’t throw up my food; I hardly ate.” Ronnie swallowed, and even that small movement sounded painful. “I had a problem, I know that, but this is different. This is a new problem, and it’s killing me.”

  Dominic leveled his eyes on Dr. Chunn. “You will take and test her blood and determine what is wrong with her.”

  Dr. Chunn rolled her eyes. “Sure, I’ll just squeeze that in between creating a synthetic vampire enzyme and discovering the cure for vampire oxygen deficiency.”