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“T hanks, Gene.” I take the coffee from him and keep scrolling through the most recent blood’s imaging.

“Happy to help.” He peers at the cells. “Those look prickly.”

“They are.” It’s the only thing that’s consistent with every sample we’ve received. The same blood cell shape. But some samples have antibodies, some don’t. None have white blood cells. All have high, though differing, amounts of fibrin.

The roar of the generator keeps a low hum of white noise going through the building. Power went out yesterday and hasn’t been back on since. No one knows anything, and we’re set to keep working as long as we can.

“Too much tiny stuff. Above my pay grade.” He shakes his head and stands straight. “But I’m glad you know what you’re looking at.”

I can’t fully agree with him, so I just nod and sip my coffee as he heads for his work station. His limp is better now, and I actually think he’s happier here than he ever was at the university.

“Got that data for you.” Gretchen rolls up.

“You’ll have to let me borrow that.” I tip my coffee cup toward her t-shirt.

“This old thing?” she scoffs playfully, then pulls her Iron Maiden t-shirt taut so I can see the entire design. “Vintage. From one of their tours. My dad had a thing for old bands.”

“More like antique. I love it.”

“Thanks.” She rolls closer and lowers her voice. “Um, so do you want to tell me why you’re destroying our tough-to-come-by samples one cell at a time instead of doing other things with them?”

Shit . I feel like I just jumped into a vat of ice-cold water. I suppose I should’ve seen this question coming. I thought I’d been stealthy, but I’m surrounded by genius-level scientists. Of course someone noticed what I’ve been up to.

Evie peeks over her monitor at us. That’s when I realize everyone else is listening in. I thought they’d be busy enough with cure work that I’d be in the clear to veer off the path.

“Way to ease into it, Gretch,” Evie mutters under her breath.

I do my best to compose myself, then answer as nonchalantly as I can manage. “I just want to see what makes them tick. That’s all.”

“By attacking them?” she asks, suspicion in her tone.

“Yep.” I try to keep a poker face. “I know it seems counterintuitive, but Evie said something a while back about not seeing the forest for the trees. I figured I should try a different approach.” I could tell them that I’m trying to find a way other than sun to kill every last vampire on earth, but I don’t think it would go over well. Also, it would get them killed, so no, I can’t tell them what I’m actually up to.

“Mmhmm.” Gretchen isn’t convinced. “So, what have you learned?”

I could give her a laundry list of findings. The cells are practically invincible. I can’t kill them with alcohol, Clorox, or peroxide. Acid disfigures them, but then they slowly retake their previous form. In my notes, I refer to them as ‘zombie cells.’ “I’m still testing. I’ll let you know once I have anything definitive.”

“Okay.” Gretchen rolls back and forth, wobbling uncertainly. “We were just curious.”

“ You were curious. I’m skeptical,” Aang monotones from his desk. “Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, and stop destroying the samples. Okay, boss?” His tone makes it clear that ‘boss’ is a not-so-veiled stand-in for ‘bitch.’

“Sure.” I don’t mention the smaller vial of blood in my pocket. The one I’m taking to my room for my own experiments—ones they would never agree to.

“Glad we cleared that up.” Aang stretches and yawns. “Calling it a day. I’ll find the cure tomorrow.”

“You’ve said that for the past three months,” Wyatt says.

Aang shrugs. “Maybe tomorrow it’ll be true.”

* * *

I eye the clock on the microwave. It’s almost midnight, and Valen hasn’t come yet. He usually shows up and broods for a while at sunset then leaves. We haven’t talked about what happened a week ago. I don’t want to. I’m pretending it never happened. He also hasn’t passed me any messages for the new soldier who’s taken Gage’s position downstairs. I suppose he isn’t one of Juno’s spies, or maybe the secret intel has all dried up.

“Come on.” I stand and pace to get rid of my nerves. He should’ve been here by now, and I have things I need to do. Things I don’t want him knowing about. Hell, if anyone found out about this, I might be up for a psych eval. “Shit.” I stop in the hallway and stare at the elevator. After five minutes of willing him to materialize, glare at me, and then get the hell out, I give up and return to the kitchen. Dragging out the supplies I stashed under the island, I organize everything after I disinfect the counter for the third time.

Then I wash my hands again and pull on some gloves.

“Really doing this,” I mutter to myself and peel open the sanitized scalpel’s packaging.

Once everything’s ready, I sit down and lay my arm along the cold stone. During my efforts to destroy the vampire cells, I finally saw a way to truly test the blood’s possibilities. I went back to the original experiment—when Valen used his own blood to heal Juno. That’s what we’re missing. The direct interaction between the two living bloods in situ . In other words, I need a human volunteer. Optimally, I’d have two live subjects—most likely rats. But, as it stands, I have the not-so-live vampire sample and me.

“You can do this.” I’m not a particularly good hype man, but I do my best to swab down the back of my forearm despite the slight shake in my hands. I’ve taken as many precautions as possible. The rest of the vial has already been examined by the entire team downstairs. There’s no virus, not even antibodies in this one. It’s clean—as clean as unknown origin blood can be. But will it work?

I stare at my skin for a while, working up my nerve. How many times have I cut into flesh, hellbent on saving function or removing foreign bodies? Plenty. But I’ve never done anything remotely like this to myself. I have to suck it up. This is nothing. A tiny sacrifice. One I’m more than willing to make.

“Don’t be a twat,” I tough-talk myself, the scalpel hovering over my skin.

With a light stroke, I cut myself open, the sting minimal. A thin line of blood wells up, but I know it isn’t deep enough. “You can do this.” I slash along my arm again, deeper this time, no hesitation. The sting increases to an ache, the sharp blade making easy work of my dermal layers. I don’t cut to the bone, but I’ve done a decent amount of damage. My blood flows easily now, dripping onto the counter beneath.

Is it enough? I peer at the wound, more blood leaking from the two-inch gash. Maybe I cut too much. I don’t think so. I’m afraid to cut deeper, especially when I don’t know if the blood will work to heal it. I still have to be able to use my hands if this goes south.

I grab the vial and thumb the top off. This is it. This could be the answer to the plague. I inhale, then lean over, watching closely as I tip the vial sideways.

“Stop!” Valen’s voice booms in my ear, and the next moment I’m on my ass, the vial smashed against the wall on the far side of the room.

Dazed, I look up at him. “What the fuck?”

His gaze goes to my arm, his fangs lengthening.

“Shit!” I yelp and scoot back, my blood streaking across the tiles beneath me.

“What do you think you’re doing?” His eyes have gone dark, and he moves with me, stepping toward me as I scurry away.

When my back hits the wall, he crouches in front of me.

I shrink away, primal fear setting off alarms at the base of my skull.

“Foolish, Doctor. So fucking foolish.” He stands abruptly and turns to the counter, gripping it with his hands as he leans over. “Fuck!” he roars.

I suck in a shaking breath, then jerk when he appears in front of me again.

“Talk me through this.” He drops to his knees and piles my medical supplies beside me.

“What?” I can’t concentrate on anything except his fangs. They’re terrifyingly long. It would be so easy for him to hurt me. To kill me.

“Focus. Tell me how to fix this.” He gingerly takes my wrist and pulls my arm out taut. Closing his eyes, he breathes out slow and hard. His fangs slowly retract, and when he opens his eyes, they’re blue again. “You’re bleeding all over the place. Tell me what to do.”

“I need the sample to?—”

“Absolutely not.” He bares his fangs at me.

“Then this was for nothing!” I gesture at my arm.

“Agreed!” he snaps. Again, he takes a deep breath and lets it out. More calmly, he says again, “Tell me what to do to fix this.” He reaches for some gauze, uncertainty in his movement.

“No, that won’t do.” I cast a forlorn glance to the smashed sample. There’s no saving it now anyway. It’s tainted beyond use. “I’ll just have to sew it. I cut too deep.” The ache is heavier now, pulsing up my arm with dull, insistent pain. “Unless you’re offering your blood to fix me up?”

He gives me a stony look.

“I suppose that’s a ‘no.’ Here. I’ll work better under the light.” I hold out my good hand.

He takes it and pulls me up, then scoops the supplies and lays them out on the counter.

“This.” I grab more alcohol wipes and hand him one. “And this.” I flip open my sewing kit.

He wipes his hands and sits beside me, his gaze glued to my arm. The blood is still welling. “A towel,” I tell him.

He’s gone and back in an absurdly short amount of time and hands me a towel. I cushion my arm on it and get to work.

“Keep it clear for me.” I hand him a fresh wipe. “I can sew it, but I’ll need your help with the knot.”

He nods, still taking deep breaths. His free hand is clenched in a fist, the knuckles gone white.

We work for a few minutes in silence, my fingers moving with practiced ease through the motions. He swipes the blood away gently when I pull too tightly. I grit my teeth against the pain and keep going, only hesitating to poke the needle through on a few passes.

“You’ve done this a lot.” He sits back, his gaze still fixed on my bloody arm.

“Once the plague spread, I stopped teaching and spent my days and nights working at the hospital triage.” I flinch when I hit a particularly painful nerve. “We saw all sorts of cases. When the world went to shit, people still had accidents, still got hurt the old-fashioned ways. There was the plague, and then there was everything else. I was on the front lines for people needing care. So, yeah, I’ve done my fair share of stitches.” I hold up the thread. “Can you pull this taut so I can finish up?”

He pinches the suture thread between his thumb and forefinger as I use the needle to weave it into a tight knot. “That’s it.” I relax against the chair back and inspect my work. “Not bad for a one-handed job.”

“Will it scar?” he asks.

“Definitely.” I reach for the gauze.

“Allow me.” He grabs it and unrolls some, them places it over the wound. “Like this?”

“Yes.” Emotions I don’t want to feel try to surface as I watch him carefully tend to my wound. Why is he doing this? Is it a tactic?

“Tape.” I point.

He gives the bandage the tightest edges I’ve ever seen, the tape perfectly cut to make a rectangle. “What else?” he asks.

“That’s it.” I glance at the blood splatter on the wall. “Now you can explain to me why the hell you ruined my experiment.”

He meets my gaze. “I took you for an intelligent woman, Doctor.”

“I took you for a bloodthirsty monster. Oh wait, I’m right about that,” I fire back. “How did you even know what I was doing?” A chill crawls down my spine at the thought of him watching me. I’ve scoured this place looking for cameras or listening devices and came up empty, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t here. He’s said as much.

“I told you. Vampires have a keen sense of smell, especially when it comes to humans. Mine is even keener when it comes to you.”

My mouth drops open when I realize what he’s getting at. “Are you saying you could smell my blood?”

He gives me a wolfish smile. “From the ground floor.”

“That’s … gross.”

“As you like it,” he says airily.

“Why did you stop me?” Maybe this is a chance to get some information from him. “What would’ve happened?”

His face goes stern. “You can’t mix your blood with the samples I give you. It’s not safe.”

“Why not?”

He simply stares back at me with that cold expression.

“If you won’t tell me, I’ll just try again.” I shrug.

“You will not .” His tone is sharp.

“You can’t be here all the time,” I taunt. “Don’t you have to report back to Gregor?”

“Doctor.” The word is a growl. “You must listen to me.”

“I’m listening. So tell. Me. Why,” I say pointedly. Then I have a thought. “Is it because of the different bloodlines?”

His eyes narrow.

“It is!” I crow. “There are three, aren’t there? Dragonis—Hey!” I scream when he lifts me off my feet and takes my arm, pulling me down the hall. “What the hell? Let go!” I struggle to get out of his grasp, but he holds tight, my efforts not even making him break stride.

He passes the elevator, then shoves through the door to the stairs.

“Valen, let go!” I yell as he tosses me over his shoulder and descends the stairs, then pushes through a door and enters another set of rooms. “Put me down!”

He drops me into an armchair and leans over me, hemming me in. “Don’t ever say those things. Not in your apartment, not anywhere in this building. Do you understand?”

“What? Why?”

His voice is low. “If Gregor finds out that you have this information, he will kill you all. Fuck!” He gnashes his teeth, the fangs lengthening. “It was the captain, wasn’t it?” The chair groans as he crushes the fabric and wood in his grip. “He put you in danger.”

“He was trying to help me. He told me?—”

“He was trying to help himself !” he snarls and turns his head, as if he can see the object of his ire through these walls and whatever miles are between them.

I realize I’ve never seen murder in another person’s eyes. I see it now, and it’s a look I won’t forget.

“What’s the harm in me knowing?” I say far more meekly than I intend.

He snaps his attention back to me. “The more you know about my kind, the more of a danger you are to Gregor. He doesn’t allow threats to live.”

“I don’t understand.” I’ve been studying his kind for weeks, months now.

He eases up on the chair, but he doesn’t move away. He’s still close, so close I can smell his sandalwood and soap scent with the slightest hint of smoke, feel his breath against my cheek. “I have to get you back. They’ll know you’re gone.” He stands and runs both hands through his hair. “A mistake.”

“Tell me why I can’t use the blood.”

He stands silently for a while, considering me. Then, slowly, he says. “There are three bloodlines—Dragonis, Corvidion, and Tantun. All three great vampire houses. The blood in that vial was Tantun. If you’d mixed it with your own, you would’ve lost your arm, maybe even died.”

“No, that’s not possible.” I stand and cradle my aching arm. “I checked the sample. There was nothing in it that could harm me.”

“You checked it with your science, yes?” he scoffs.

“Well, yeah. What do you mean?”

“I mean that there are things in this world that can’t be seen under a microscope.”

Now it’s my turn to scoff. “There was nothing harmful in that blood.”

“If you’d put it on your wound, the Tantun venom would’ve poisoned you. Never try that again.”

I try to pick through the bits of information he gives me to find the truth. “If Tantun blood is poison… You’re Dragonis. Not Tantun or Corvidion. Does that mean all Dragonis blood heals?”

“No.” He takes my good arm more gently this time and leads me toward the door. “You have to go.”

“No!” I dig in my heels. “Tell me more. Tell me what you did to me—what you’re doing to me,” I correct myself.

He stops, his stony gaze finding mine. “What did you just say?”

“You’ve been controlling me. Making me want …” The pure ire in his eyes makes my words evaporate.

Then his glare turns to a taunting smirk. “You think I’m controlling you ?” He laughs, the sound raw and harsh. “From the moment I saw you, you’ve been in every fucking thought, every moment. I can’t escape you, and I sure as hell can’t control you, no matter how much I wish I could.”

My mouth hangs open. None of this makes sense. “I don’t unders?—”

“Shh.” He holds up a finger.

“I’m not leaving until you?—”

He grabs me and slaps one hand over my mouth, the other going around my waist as he pulls my back to his front. “Don’t breathe,” he whispers into my ear.

Something scratches at his door.

I go still, my fight evaporating as he slowly walks backwards with me pinned against him.

“Master?” A slithering voice from the hallway.

He backs into a darkened room and releases me. “Not a fucking sound,” he breathes. Then he walks away.

I hear the door open as Valen barks, “What?”

“The girl. We’ve lost her.” The voice is more of a hiss, and it sounds as if it’s two people speaking at once.

I put my hand to my mouth and press myself against the wall by the bedroom door.

“Check the lab.”

“We looked?—”

“Look again! If you can’t find her, I will make you both an example of my displeasure. It seems you have no need of your eyes, so I’ll start there.” Valen’s cold voice sends a surge of fear through me. That’s when I realize how different he is with me. Not soft. Barely cordial. But not viciously cruel like this.

“Yes, Master.”

The door slams.

Valen reappears and takes my hand, a stark look in his eyes. “You have to go. Now.” He leads me to the door, then out and up the stairs.

Once we’re back in my apartment, he walks ahead of me and swipes the medical supplies off my kitchen counter in a violent blur.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yell and rush past him.

He catches me by my neck, his touch soft despite the fire in his movements.

He opens his mouth in a snarl, his fangs long and deadly. My heart drops into my stomach, and I claw at his wrist to free myself.

He shakes me as easily as a child with a doll. “Do your job, Doctor. No more games or foolish experiments. You’re wasting our time.” He pulls me closer to him, his eyes boring into me. “If you fail us, I’ll see to it that your head is on a pike beside your sister during the next presidential address.” He shoves me back, and I plop onto the couch as he storms from my apartment.

Silence returns, and I’m alone, my entire body shaking as I fight back the terror that threatens to consume me. When the adrenaline finally fades, I’m left to wonder which one is the act—Valen’s care or his violence.