Page 10 of Grim’s Delight (The New Protectorate Syndicate #1)

FOUR

She didn’t turn her phone back on for over a week.

At first it was because that was the only way to avoid facing what she knew she had to do, which was find a way to cut off Felix for good. She hadn’t been able to work out how to do it before, but she also hadn’t tried that hard. Now she had real incentive: heartbreak.

The only problem was that she didn’t have the energy to make good on any of her ideas. So she simply avoided it altogether. It wasn’t like she needed her phone, anyway. Work wasn’t happening, and she’d already decided that she had to quit.

Finding another job that would work with her school schedule would be a pain in her ass, but it was beyond time to get out of the vampire world. She should’ve done it when Felix started stalking her. She should’ve done it the first time she’d been asked to mop up blood.

She sure as shit would do it after being impaled.

Unfortunately, she barely had the energy to job hunt on her tablet. Dahlia chalked it up to the strain healing put on the body, as well as a mix of shock and the ridiculous heartbreak she didn’t want to acknowledge. She slept a lot and ate very little.

At first, she just lacked an appetite. That wasn’t unusual, given the stress of everything.

Cecilia plied her with homemade pasta and cheese puffs and burritos from their favorite place, but none of it sounded good.

All she could manage was white rice, cheese, and the protein shakes she stashed in the back of her tiny fridge for busy days.

Things devolved slowly.

Her minimal appetite devolved into outright disgust at the foods she normally loved. Even her lifeline of white rice and soy sauce betrayed her. She began throwing everything up almost as soon as it hit her stomach.

A dull but persistent headache dogged her. It got a lot worse whenever she dared turn the lights on too bright. It wasn’t so bad, since she was used to a more or less nocturnal lifestyle, but the pain seemed to increase every day.

Then shakes came. And the fever. And the full-body cramping.

“I can’t believe I caught the fucking flu on top of everything else,” she moaned to Cecilia after puking up the only thing she’d managed to eat that day.

Holding her hair back for her, Cecilia fretted, “I really think you should go back to the hospital. This isn’t normal. You’re barely keeping water down now.”

She’d shuddered at the idea. Not because she hated hospitals or anything, but because the idea of stepping outside her apartment was… uncomfortable.

It wasn’t just that she was absolutely certain Felix would have someone watching it, but an instinct that had grown louder and more vicious every day. She couldn’t stand the idea of being exposed. All she wanted to do was cover all her windows and hide under her bed.

So she shook off her friend’s concern, praying that whatever bug she’d caught would pass.

But it didn’t. One week bled into two.

Cecilia told her that the bar was open again — sans rooftop lounge — and management had been asking if she was coming back.

Devon had sent her a ridiculous bouquet, which sat rotting on her tiny kitchen counter.

Whether he hoped to get her to return to work or it was just another ploy to get her to pay attention to him, she didn’t know or care.

She hadn’t even bothered to read the card.

It didn’t matter. Work didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

She couldn’t think past the pain in her head and jaw. Food was a distant memory, mostly accompanied by the burn of stomach acid.

Sometimes she thought of Felix, whether he’d given up yet, but mostly she didn’t. She slept for a long time. Too long.

When she woke after a nearly eighteen hour stretch of black, dreamless sleep to find two of her teeth coming loose, panic finally set it.

Swaddled in her favorite blanket, head down, and sunglasses on despite the fact that it was an overcast day, Dahlia allowed Cecilia to escort her back to the emergency room.

Solbourne General was a busy hospital that served every type of being living in the city. They handled all sorts of crises every day, most of which were far more serious than whatever illness had sunk its teeth in her.

So it came as something of a surprise when the nurse in charge took one look at her and immediately whisked her away.

The lights in her room had to be dimmed before she could bear to take off her glasses, but it didn’t do much good when a nurse shined a pen light into her eyes.

Dahlia puked her guts up onto the shiny floor.

She didn’t remember all that much after that. There was a pinch of an IV in her hand, then a flurry of activity as an increasing number of healers, doctors, and nurses moved in and out. They all appeared too busy to talk to her, which was fine. She was too miserable for speech.

She did start to feel a bit like a spectacle, though, when the third cluster of nurses stopped by her door. They whispered to each other and offered her strange, excited smiles before they hustled off.

She wasn’t sure what they put in her IV, but she started feeling a little better. The real improvement came, however, after her blood tests finished.

Her doctor came in with a tablet tucked under one arm and a plain silver bottle in the other. He smiled benignly at her from beneath the shadow of his glasses.

“Well, we just got the results in,” he announced, sounding unsettlingly excited. She wished she’d been assigned a healer instead. They at least had warmth to them, but there were a lot more non-magical doctors around, so she couldn’t be choosy.

“I’ll need to run a couple more tests, but you are absolutely healthy.”

Dahlia looked up at him balefully from the hospital bed.

Her stomach had caved in. Her skin was plastered with a film of cold sweat and the reek of illness.

Every time she ran her tongue along her upper teeth, they wiggled.

And when she dared to touch the roof of her mouth, it felt like a hot lump of lava was about to explode from her soft palate.

Healthy was the last thing she felt.

“There’s no fucking way that’s right,” she croaked, wishing she had the strength to throw the IV bag at the doctor’s smug little face.

The doctor crossed the room. Using some button on the floor, he propped up the head of her bed, forcing her into a sitting position. “I know you feel awful right now, but that’s perfectly normal. Here, drink this. It should help immensely.”

Dahlia shied away from the warm bottle he tried to put in her hand. A little white straw poked out from the top and spun in a jaunty circle as he forced her fingers around it.

“I can’t keep anything down,” she explained for the tenth time. “Not even water anymore. I can’t drink this.”

“I promise you, you can.” The doctor watched her closely, his expression intent. “Just try one sip. If you really can’t keep it down, we can try something else. But I need you to taste it.”

Grimacing, Dahlia forced herself to put the straw between her lips. She was fully prepared to throw up again — hopefully on the doctor’s clogs — but that didn’t happen.

Glorious, incredible, life-saving flavor burst across her tongue. Rich like toffee, salty like her favorite chips, as perfectly balanced as the luxury coffee she couldn’t afford — she’d never tasted anything like it.

She’d never been so hungry in her life. In an instant, Dahlia became a feral animal. She hunched over the bottle and sucked hard, draining every last drop in a matter of seconds. Bliss was a haze in her mind, blocking out all the pain and discomfort of the last two weeks.

Fullness, perfect and without the churn of bile she’d become used to, settled her stomach at last.

Slumping against the bed, she pressed the empty bottle against her sweaty cheek and breathed, “Oh gods, what was that?”

The doctor let out a strange sort of chuffing sound.

His wide smile was lit by the cold glow of his tablet’s screen as he rapidly typed something on the glass.

“Incredible. Absolutely incredible. They talk about this in med school, but you never really think you’ll see one — especially in this territory. The odds are astronomical.”

“What are you talking about?”

The doctor glanced up from his screen. “That, Miss McKnight, was synthblood.”

She was pretty sure her brain short-circuited. It had to, because he couldn’t have said that. She was just so used to the word that she heard it everywhere.

“Huh?”

He nodded glibly. “The transition is always difficult, but it’s made a lot worse if you don’t get proper nutrition in time. No wonder you got so bad. You were starving, and every time you tried to eat regular food, it was like putting regular gasoline in a diesel engine.”

Gasoline in a… What the fuck is he talking about? No one uses gas anymore.

The doctor tapped his screen with a little too much enthusiasm. “But we caught it, so you’ll make a full recovery! We just need to get you on a regular synth diet and perform a minor out-patient procedure. You should start seeing an improvement immediately.”

It was like she sat at the bottom of a pool. Every word he said reached her, but they were all distorted. None of them made any sense.

She looked down at the bottle in her limp hand, too confused to be disgusted. “Why would I need to be on a synth diet? Only vampires drink synth.”

“Well… yes,” the doctor replied, finally lowering his tablet to really look at her.

He cleared his throat. Rolling his shoulders back a bit, he said, “Miss McKnight, I saw on your chart that you were recently admitted to the ER for a puncture to your shoulder, concussion, and other mild injuries. Were you at any time during the incident that caused those wounds exposed to a vampire’s blood? ”

The image of the jagged piece of metal pinning her and Mr. Bowan together flashed in her mind. And afterward, when his men pulled it loose, blood had rained down on her in an awful splash. She’d been covered from her from chin to belly button.

Dahlia nodded slowly. “A bit, yes.”

Appearing to need a second to collect himself, the doctor turned his back to find one of those odd little rolling stools medical professionals liked so much. He dragged it across the floor and perched on the cushion before continuing.

“It’s rare — really rare — but the vampirism virus can be transferred accidentally if enough blood is exchanged.”

She gave the doctor a blank stare. “That’s not possible.”

“I’m afraid it is,” he replied, not sounding particularly regretful or sympathetic. “Our tests confirmed you’ve been infected and are in the last stage of transition. All that’s left is for your incisors to fall out.”

His words were starting to come through clearer. That was bad. She didn’t want that. Clarity meant reality, and she was starting to suspect that reality wasn’t something she could face.

Dahlia’s sweaty fingers clutched the bottle hard enough to dent the cheap aluminum. Her vision swam. “My— my teeth are going to fall out?”

“It’s totally normal! Your fangs should come in within a couple hours or so.

They’re already in there, pushing against the old nerves.

That’s what’s causing you so much pain.” He patted his knees in the way people did when they were about to leave.

“Of course, there’s no need to wait for nature to take its course there.

The process can be quite painful. We’ll do it for you here with a local anesthetic. You should be good to go.”

Standing up, he ignored the way she’d begun to hyperventilate and walked to the door. “There are a few more tests I need to run, and you should come in for a check-up next week, but otherwise you should be back to normal very soon.”

“Normal?” Her voice came out choked, like the word was a bunch of broken glass in her throat. “How can I be normal when I’m— when?—”

“You’re a vampire?” The doctor cracked the door open, but he didn’t leave right away. Keeping his hand on the knob, he turned to give her a close-lipped smile. “This isn’t the end of your life, Miss McKnight. It’s the start of a new one. Try not to worry too much. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”