Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

Annie’s face had lit for a moment, hope burning distrust from her expression like sunshine through mist, and he’d felt cold and ill, felt like he’d stood in the shadows far too long.

James studied the framed photo on his desk of him and Heather—both in white lab coats, grinning and holding microscopes. Heather was thirteen, skinny and just filling out, her long, red hair in a thick braid to her waist, her smile wide and happy, uninhibited.

Another photo showed him and Heather in grease-stained jeans and tees, posing in front of the classic Mustang they’d rebuilt together. Tendrils of dark red hair fluttered in front of Heather’s smudged face as she squinted in the sunshine, her smile, at fifteen, a little more reserved.

Indebted to her father’s quick thinking, a grateful daughter just might put aside an investigation into a cold case best left undisturbed.

Of course, if Prejean had transformed Heather into someone other than the girl in the photos on his desk, someone no longer 100 percent human, then the merciful thing, and the thing Heather herself would want, would be to remain silent and allow nature in the form of Caterina Cortini to take its course.

But before that happened, he needed to find out the truth. And there was one person who would know—if anyone did—what Prejean might’ve done to Heather while saving her life.

Placing the mug back on the warmer, James swiveled in his seat and turned on the computer. While the Dell ran through its startup, he composed in his mind the message he would send.

Has my daughter’s humanity been compromised?

Damascus, OR

March 22

DR. ROBERT WELLS FILLED a final syringe with a fatal dose of atropine, then tucked it out of sight on the lintel above the bedroom door. He’d hidden other syringes throughout the house in drawers, cupboards, under furniture, even under his wife’s pillow.

All fatal doses, yes—for mortals. If the assassins were vampire, the atropine dose would either knock them to the floor for an unplanned snooze or, depending on age, slow them down enough to afford him a slim chance at escape.

Wells suspected it was just a matter of rapidly passing time before the Bureau— no, let’s be accurate, the Shadow Branch puppeteering the Bureau heads —sent someone to kill him. All because of Bronlee’s theft.

Unless he acted first.

“How long, do you think?” Gloria asked, her voice dry and paper thin.

“They could already be on the way. Or it could be weeks.” Stepping away from the door, Wells returned to his wife’s hospital-style bed and adjusted the flow rate on her morphine drip. “It is the government, after all,” he added with a wry smile.

Gloria’s eyes shuttered closed and the lines pain had chiseled beside her mouth eased. A sigh escaped her lips, a soft sound, almost wistful. “No time to waste,” she whispered. “Send Alexander to Seattle.”

“Those plans are underway, honey. Don’t worry.”

The room smelled of ammonia and bleach, but all the disinfectants in the world couldn’t hide the lingering stink of decay.

Of failure.

Wells went to the window and cracked it open. Cool air fragrant and sweet with pine and early tulips breezed into the room. He sat on the bed beside his wife and wrapped his hands around hers, tried to rub warmth back into her fingers.

She was only fifty-seven years old, but cancer and chemo had stolen all youth from her, erased all traces of the woman he’d carried, laughing and tipsy on champagne, across the threshold of their first house thirty-five years ago.

Gloria’s head turned to one side and her lips parted. Her breathing deepened, slowed, as the morphine stole her away like Hades carrying Persephone into the underworld.

His throat tightened. Gloria was now the cancer’s bride and he couldn’t rescue her, no matter how much he tried, no matter how much he yearned, no matter how much he sacrificed. The battle had been lost. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her cold fingers.

If he continued to prolong her suffering, then his love for her had warped into something small and selfish. If he truly loved her, he’d release her.

Truth was rarely kind. And rarely what you hoped for.

All he needed to do was increase her morphine until she went with grace to the great below. Simple and easily done.

Wells remained hunched on the bed, Gloria’s fingers against his lips. He would wait until she was awake again so he could speak to her, tell her good night one last time.

His iPhone beeped. Kissing Gloria’s fingers once more, he laid her hand across her blanketed waist. He pulled the iPhone from the pocket of his sweater and clicked open a red-flagged message in his e-mail inbox.

What he read trip-hammered his pulse and reignited hope.

James Wallace of the FBI’s Portland forensics division, a man Wells knew only by reputation, had a problem.

My daughter claims that Dante Prejean saved her life. But he didn’t feed her his blood, didn’t turn her. He breathed blue fire and music into her. I don’t claim to understand that. I don’t even claim to know if such a thing is possible. But, if it is, what are the long-term effects? Has her humanity been compromised?

Wells texted: Good question. I’ll look into it. Study her medical records. Maybe it was a hallucination caused by pain and blood loss.

Thank you .

Have you mentioned this to anyone else? Anyone at all?

No, of course not. I only contacted you because you’ve studied Prejean .

Good. Keep quiet about this and I’ll get back to you ….

Wells slipped the iPhone back into his pocket feeling champagne giddy.

First the security cam footage. Now this.

Right after the incident at the center, Wells had been contacted and interrogated about Johanna, Bad Seed, and S. He’d also been asked, almost offhandedly, if Johanna had been working on a project that included vampire genetic material. He’d replied that he hadn’t been involved with Johanna’s work since he’d retired.

At the time, he had wondered what had prompted that question, but now, after viewing the pilfered footage Bronlee had mailed to him and seeing the puddle of liquid on the floor that had once been a living being, Wells suspected he knew.

The cleanup team and their handlers believed they’d found a spilled experiment. It had never occurred to them that they’d found the woman they sought. Or, rather, all that remained of her.

Johanna wasn’t missing, no. She’d never left the center.

S had made sure of that.

Poor Johanna had had no idea—right up until the end—of what S truly was. Of what their little night-bred beauty had become. Or what he was capable of.

Truth be told, neither had Wells. Until the disk from Bronlee had arrived in the mail.

S had kept a secret from them both.

But Wells had kept one as well. From Johanna. From the Bureau. From S.

A secret he planned to unveil very soon.

Leaning over, Wells kissed his wife’s pale cheek, then straightened and stood. He padded out of the room, leaving Gloria in Morpheus’s narcotic embrace.

If S could unmake one woman and heal another, Wells felt confident the boy could cure Gloria. All he needed to do was bend a god—a young and damaged god, one he’d delivered himself—to his will.