“Something’s wrong,” John said without preamble.
Richart frowned. “What?”
“You need to talk Mom into seeing that doctor you mentioned.”
“Dr. Lipton? I already tried once. Jenna said doctors can’t do anything for the flu unless they catch it in the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, that it just needs to run its course.”
“This isn’t the flu. It’s been two weeks.”
Richart nodded. “Dr. Lipton mentioned that some of her colleagues who came down with it took a couple of weeks to recover, that it was quite a nasty strain.” Richart hadn’t been sick in over two centuries, so he relied on Dr. Lipton and Jenna to apprise him of how these things usually went.
“I’m telling you,” John insisted, “this isn’t the flu. It’s something else.”
“How can you be so sure?” Jenna seemed sure.
“Because Mom doesn’t get the flu.”
“She’s never had it before?” Wasn’t the flu fairly common among humans?
“I’m saying she doesn’t get sick. Period.”
Alarm bells sounded. “Ever?”
“Ever. She’s never even had a cold. Not that I can remember.”
Jenna sure as hell hadn’t told him that. “She had food poisoning a month ago.”
“I’m not convinced that’s what that was.” John looked away, jaw clenching and unclenching. “Look, I like you, Richart, and I don’t want there to be any tension between us for Mom’s sake, but I have to ask. . . . Have you been biting her?”
“No.” Hell, no. She had already been bitten once by the vampire who had attacked her that first night. Any more bites and she would have become more susceptible to . . .
Merde.
“I’m just asking because I know you said vampirism is caused by a virus and that frequent exposure . . .” He stared at Richart. “What? What is it? Your eyes are glowing.”
Was it possible? Could she have been bitten again without him realizing it?
When? He was always there when she reached and left work. And any shopping she needed to do she did during daylight hours.
“Have any of your mother’s friends or work colleagues dropped by after dark?”
“No.”
“Have you brought any friends home?”
“My study group takes turns meeting at each other’s places. They’ve been over here a few times.”
“At night? After Jenna got home from work, while I was still out hunting?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Cursing, Richart practically tore the door off its hinges in his hurry to get inside.
Clad in a T-shirt and striped pajama bottoms, Jenna looked up, pallid face brightening, when he burst into her bedroom. “Hi.” Her smile faded as he sat beside her on the bed. “What’s wrong?”
“Just give me a moment.” Leaning in close, Richart buried his face in her neck just above her carotid artery. He drew in a deep breath. Held it. Found her scent. But not the scent he feared most.
“Richart?” Concern crept into her voice.
As John entered the room, Richart leaned back and palmed one of his daggers. “I need you to trust me, sweetheart.”
“Okay,” she answered, winning his heart all over again.
Taking her hand, he pressed the tip of the dagger to her palm and applied just enough pressure to produce a tiny nick. A single bead of blood welled.
Richart raised her hand until it almost touched his nose, again drawing in a deep breath.
And there it was. The virus.
A growl rumbled deep in his throat.
She frowned. “Richart?”
“You’re infected.”
John took a step forward.
Jenna stared up at Richart, fever blazing in her eyes. “Infected with what?”
“The vampiric virus.”
“No. I told you. It’s the flu.”
“I can smell it, Jenna. You’re infected.”
Her face grew paler. “That’s not possible. You’ve never bitten me. I haven’t blacked out. And you’ve been watching over me at the store.”
He would figure it out later, after he took her to the network doctors. If she was this sick already . . .
He swallowed. It may be too late to prevent a transformation.
Rising, he wrapped the blankets around her and scooped her up into his arms.
John stepped forward. “Wherever you’re going, I’m going with you.”
Though teleporting two at a time would sap his energy, Richart didn’t argue. “Grab my shoulder.”
A second later they stood in Dr. Lipton’s office.
Weakness struck. He staggered to the right, bumping into John.
John tightened his grip and helped Richart remain upright. “You okay, man?”
Leaning over her desk, Dr. Melanie Lipton jumped and spun around. “Richart. Hi. What—?”
“Jenna’s infected.”
Melanie paled. “What?”
“He thinks I’m infected,” Jenna corrected. “I think it’s the flu.”
Melanie met Richart’s grim gaze and motioned for them to follow her. “Let’s go to the infirmary.”
Chapter Six
Jenna did everything she could to convince herself that Richart was wrong, that it was just a bad case of the flu. Hadn’t Debbie even come down with it? And Jed in Lawn and Garden? Harry in Automotive?
But it was hard to ignore the looks Richart and Dr. Lipton kept exchanging. Looks that said Jenna was screwed.
“It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Jenna,” Dr. Lipton said as Richart lowered her to an exam table. “Richart talks about you all the time.”
“Nice to meet you, too. This is my son, John.”
“Good to meet you, John.”
“Nice to meet you,” he murmured.
“Richart,” Dr. Lipton said, “you and John go wait out in the hallway so your hovering won’t distract me.” She winked at Jenna. “Plus, if Richart isn’t in the room, I can share all kinds of embarrassing stories about him with you.”
Richart narrowed his eyes in warning, then kissed Jenna. “We’ll be right outside if you need us.”
Jenna smiled and nodded.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Dr. Lipton shook her head. “That man is so in love with you.”
“I love him, too.”
Dr. Lipton’s gaze sharpened as she donned a pair of latex gloves. “Enough to transform for him?”
“I thought I couldn’t do that safely.”
“If he’s right and you’ve been infected, you may not have a choice. How many times has he bitten you?” There was no mistaking her disapproval.
“That’s just it. He hasn’t.”
Her brow furrowed. “Ever?”
“Ever. A vampire bit me once a couple of months ago. He caught me leaving my job and Richart stopped him. But Richart has been there every night since and made sure the vampire didn’t return. I can’t be transformed by just one bite, right?”
“Not unless he drained you almost to the point of death, then infused you with his own blood.”
“Richart said he didn’t do that; so it must be the flu.”
Dr. Lipton didn’t seem convinced. “Let’s start with your symptoms.”
Jenna rattled them off and answered questions about severity, onset, and the like as Dr. Lipton took her temperature and engaged in various and assorted poking and prodding.
She was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way with brown hair, brown eyes, and a trim figure encased in jeans, a T-shirt, and a lab coat.
“I’m going to level with you, Jenna,” she said finally. “I think Richart’s right. I’ll run a blood test to be sure, but I already know what it’s going to tell me.”
Jenna broke out in a cold sweat as fear rippled through her. “I’m becoming a vampire?”
“Yes.”
She would suffer progressive brain damage and go insane.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Lipton offered wit
h genuine remorse. “There really isn’t any sugarcoating this. I can’t even give you hope that you might be a gifted one. Nearly all gifted ones have black hair and brown eyes. A few, like me, have brown hair. But never red.”
“I’m a brunette. I dye my hair.”
Dr. Lipton studied her. “Have you noticed any special gifts or abilities? Know the phone is going to ring before it does?”
“No.”
“Know what someone else is feeling? Hear their thoughts?”
“No. I don’t have any special abilities, Dr. Lipton.”
“Melanie.”
“I’m screwed, aren’t I, Melanie?”
She sighed. “Yes. As I said, I’ll run some tests to be sure. See how far the infection has progressed. Take a look at your DNA and see if it bears the extra memo groups that would identify you as a gifted one and protect you from the brain damage. But I’m not very hopeful.”
“I can’t believe this.” Her mind raced as nightmare images unfolded before her. John having to watch his mother descend into madness. Jenna having to leave to ensure she wouldn’t harm him. Richart watching and waiting for her to reach the point of no return, then taking her life.
What would it do to him to watch her turn into one of the monsters he hunted? Would she have to leave him, too?
Richart paced back and forth in front of the door to the infirmary.
John stood nearby, looking up and down the hallway, taking in the multitude of guards armed with automatic weapons. Half a dozen stood sentinel near two doors a little farther down.
Dragging his eyes away, John turned to Richart. “What’s in there? What are they protecting?”
“They aren’t protecting what’s in there. They’re protecting everyone out here. Those doors lead to vampires’ apartments.”
John’s eyes widened. “Vampires live here?”
“A couple do, yes. They surrendered instead of following the example of their brethren and fighting to the death. They’ve been working with Dr. Lipton and the other doctors in hopes of finding a cure for the virus or some treatment that might prevent the brain damage it causes in humans.”
“How’s that going?”
Richart shook his head and lied. “I don’t know.” They had been searching for a cure for thousands of years with no success.
John swallowed. “If Mom becomes a vampire, is she going to go crazy and want to hurt people?”
Richart nodded, throat too thick to speak.
Face grim, John resumed his perusal of the hallway. “What is this place?”
“Network headquarters, the hub of the East Coast division of the human network that aids us.”
“Why are there no windows?”
“Because we’re five stories underground.”
Minutes passed.
“I don’t understand how Mom could be infected if you didn’t bite her.”
“I’ve been thinking on that.” Fulminating over it more like. “It has to be a member of your study group.”
John’s head whipped around. “What?”
“It can’t be anyone at her job. When bitten, she would’ve blacked out and not made it home. She would’ve woken up on the floor in the store’s back room or her car or somewhere she shouldn’t be and realized she’d lost time, that she couldn’t remember how she had gotten there.”
“Wouldn’t the same be true if one of my study partners had bitten her?”
“Not if he did it while she was sleeping. If he came over on a night I wasn’t there and she went to bed early or napped until I finished hunting, he could’ve asked to use your bathroom, snuck into her bedroom, and fed from her without her ever knowing she had been bitten.”
“Shit!”
“I’m guessing you had a study session right before she contracted food poisoning? She always bears your study partners’ scents from brushing shoulders with them and the like. The punctures heal swiftly and the effects of the GHB-like chemical she would’ve been exposed to don’t last long, so I wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss.”
“We thought it was the fast food the group ordered in. . . . Shit! This is my fault?”
“It’s the vampire’s fault. Not yours.”
“How do we figure out who it is?”
“We’ll take care of that after your mother is . . . better.”
After she finished turning. After she became a vampire.
There wasn’t going to be a better for her—not long-term—and Richart felt a part of himself die at the knowledge.
The elevator at the end of the hallway pinged. A moment later, the doors slid apart and a blond male about five foot eleven exited. The guards all greeted him with respect as he strolled toward Richart.
Richart didn’t even try to hide the hostility he felt toward him.
“I hear we have a visitor,” Chris Reordon said.
Richart took a menacing step forward. “Stay the hell away from her, Reordon.”
“What is it with you immortals?” he demanded with a scowl. “You keep trying to hide your mortal girlfriends from me even though you know I’m just trying to protect you. It’s my job.”
“And we all know how ruthless you can be in carrying out your job. I won’t have you strong-arming and intimidating her. And don’t ask Dr. Lipton her name because if you issue a single threat I’ll cast aside concerns about Seth’s wrath and—”
“I don’t have to ask her name. I already know it.”
“What?”
“Jenna McBride. Thirty-seven years old. Widowed mother of John.”
“How do you know that?”
“After you outed yourself, teleporting to her living room—and I can’t tell you what a brilliant move that was—I tagged you with a tracking device and followed you to her apartment. After that, the rest was easy.”
“If you give her even one moment of unease—”
“Ask me why it was so easy.”
Richart frowned. “What?”
“Ask me why the rest was easy.”
“I don’t have to. Everyone knows you’re good at what you do. It’s why you’re the highest ranking mortal on the East Coast.”
Chris smiled. “I am good, aren’t I?”
Richart grunted.
“But I didn’t even have to try with this one, because we already had Jenna on file. She’s a gifted one.”
The world went still.
“She came to our attention during her pregnancy,” Chris went on. “Her boyfriend’s parents insisted on a paternity test to prove John’s father really was his father before the two married. DNA samples were taken from both Jenna and Bobby.”
“And hers was different,” Richart murmured. “More advanced.”
“Much more advanced. Call-in-the-media-it’s-a-fucking-miracle advanced. Just like yours. We had to run damage control, alter medical records and quite a few memories. We’ve been keeping tabs on her ever since.”
“But she doesn’t have any special abilities.”
“She doesn’t get sick,” John said.
Chris nodded. “Exactly. You’re a gifted one, too, you know.”
John’s eyebrows flew up. “I am?”
Chris nodded. “You guessed something was wrong with your mother before Richart did, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a gifted one in Virginia who is uniquely accurate at diagnosing patients without running any tests. Considering how well you’re doing in school, I’m guessing you’ll be the same. You and your mother are probably descended from healers.”
“How do you know I’m doing well in school?”
“As I said, we keep tabs on all gifted ones who come to our attention, often orchestrating things to keep them close in case another incident should arise.” He looked at Richart. “Don’t tell the other immortals that. If they knew just how many gifted ones we’ve guided to this area, they’d try to turn the network into a dating service. And I can’t do my job with that kind of drama surrounding me.”
&nb
sp; Richart’s heart began to pound. Elation flooded him, along with relief so great it practically lifted his feet off the floor. Spinning around, he burst through the door to the infirmary.
Still seated on the exam table, Jenna jumped.
Dr. Lipton smiled. “I heard. Congratulations.”
“Congratulations on what?” Jenna asked, fear and despair battling for dominance in her eyes. Dr. Lipton hadn’t softened her prognosis, and Jenna was clearly doing her damnedest to hold it together.
“You’re a gifted one.” Richart closed the distance between them and swept her into his arms.
She wrapped her arms around him and held him close. “No, I’m not. I can’t be. I don’t have any special abilities.”
“John said you never get sick.”
“I got food poisoning last month.”
“That wasn’t food poisoning. That was the virus beginning to go to work on you.”
“But—”
“Sweetheart”—Richart leaned back and grinned down at her—“you’re a gifted one. This is good news.”
“I just don’t see not-getting-sick as an ability. It isn’t something I do. Not willfully.”
“You’re likely descended from healers,” Richart explained. “Healers have remarkable regenerative capabilities. Remember how swiftly my wounds healed after Sheldon transfused me?”
“Yes.”
“Healers can do that even before their transformation. It’s what enables them to heal others. But the more their DNA has been diluted with ordinary human DNA over the millennia, the weaker their abilities. Were you born a hundred or even fifty years ago, you might have been able to heal with your hands. Instead, your body can fight off any illness to which you’re exposed, save the vampiric virus, and probably recovers from injuries abnormally fast.”
She was quiet for a moment. “I did recover from childbirth quickly. But . . . you’re sure about this? How do you know I’m not just really healthy? Dr. Lipton hasn’t done any blood tests yet.”
He told her about the revelations that had arisen from the paternity test years ago.
Her lips began to tilt up. “So I’m not going to go insane?”
“No.”
She threw her arms around him and squeezed him tight, then leaned back. “But I am transforming.”
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