Chapter Twenty-Four
Breen woke into instant, full-body awareness. There was a twinging pain in his right leg, an IV needle in his arm, several small, round sticky pads on his chest, and he could smell rubbing alcohol.
He licked his lips in an instinctive gesture of hunger. He needed more of Charlize. He’d fed on her right before being wheeled into surgery, but by the time she’d arrived at his side and offered him her wrist, his brain was the consistency of a gooey omelet, his hearing obstructed by a high frequency whine, and his stomach long ago dropped into his colon. He only dimly recalled feeding on her—his lack of being dead right now was the only reason he knew for sure he had—and he needed more. For health’s sake, but also so he could enjoy her.
The sound of breathing caught his attention.
He lifted his eyelids open and turned his head to check out his roommate. Too many wounded meant Breen couldn’t have a private room, even as a community warrior, but still. What a bummer to be saddled with Skunk Streak.
The blinds on the window by the man’s bed were slanted low, letting in only a little light. The light was dim. Evening time in Ţărână.
Breen squinted, but, no, it wasn’t an illusion.
Pettrila Nichita stood next to Skunk Streak’s bed, her hands clasped at her waist and her posture erect. She was the type of woman who always appeared ready for a White House dinner, her clothes and hair flawless. At one hundred and sixty years old, she was in her Elder Phase, her black hair streaked with some gray. Her figure was still slender as a young woman’s, though.
She stared at her sleeping brother for many long minutes.
When she turned to leave, Breen closed his eyes. And slept again.
* * *
Nicolae had no awareness of time passing. He just woke in a hospital bed, woolly-headed and partially sedated, a tube running out of his arm that was attached to a fluid-filled bag, and a monitor silently streaming information about him with neon-green, bouncing lines.
What was he doing on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy?
It didn’t make sense for him to be on television, but where else could he be? This was clearly a hospital room, everything spotless white—sheets and painted walls—and as a vampire, he would never end up in a real hospital in Transylvania. And no room in the manor house looked like this.
Maybe he wasn’t on TV. Maybe he was dead, and this was a strange antechamber to heaven. His knife wound had been severe, after all, and Laurenţiu only knew the rudiments of medical care. Doubtful Laurenţiu had been able to save Nicolae, and even if he had, Nicolae would be suffering far more pain than he was now. He was without energy, true, but he should be feeling like his belly had been triple-trampled by a team of oxen, not merely this dull ache.
Footsteps approached.
He turned his head, and his tired brain sloshed inside the bowl of his skull.
Two doctors in long white coats entered his room. More Grey’s Anatomy.
One doctor was the man who’d attended them on the bus. The other was the scary lady who yelled at them in the garage and stood up to Chief.
Chief had accused this woman of being human. She was, but also…not. Nicolae was catching a whiff of Dragon coming off her, although stronger than usual. Plus she had the light-colored hair of the Dragon breed—a color that was proving to be common around here.
Why would Vârcolac be mingling with Dragons, though? This was very non-Grey’s Anatomy.
The bus doctor pulled a clipboard out of a slot at the end of Nicolae’s bed, saying, “Still no improvement,” to the scary one. “For either of them.”
Either? Nicolae turned his head, more carefully this time, toward the other side of the room. Lying in a bed near a window was Vasile, also hooked up to a tube and a monitor.
Dark night. His brother looked terrible, his flesh washed out, his features sunken in, and his lips dry and cracked from his high blood-need.
“<How do you feel?>” Nicolae croaked.
Vasile didn’t glance over. He probably didn’t want to move his head, either. “<Like a goat’s butt.>”
“Their blood won’t clot,” Bus Doctor continued to Scary Doctor, “and their pressure is still down.”
Scary Doctor accepted the clipboard and read papers on it. “I think they’re hemophiliacs, Jess.”
Bus Doctor nodded. “They do show signs of it, but Vârcolac don’t contract hemophilia, so it has to be something else. We’re just missing it.”
Scary Doctor looked up from the clipboard. “Have they been feeding adequately?”
“Yes,” Bus Doctor answered. “But on the donors they brought with them, and I suspect the blood of those women is weak. They don’t give off a scent.”
Scary Doctor’s brows rose. “No scent? At all?”
“They smell like Vârcolac, but otherwise, they only exude the minimum to indicate they’re female.”
“That’s odd.”
“Very,” Bus Doctor agreed. “I took a blood sample of one of the women earlier to see what I could determine.” He checked the time on a wall clock. “The results should be ready by now.” He picked up a phone tacked to the wall by the door and spoke into it. “Hadley, could you bring me the latest blood test results I ordered from Mekhel? I’m in Room 210. Thank you.” He hung up.
Nicolae scraped his tongue across his lips. All this talk of feeding and blood was making his mouth go dry as newly sheared wool. He needed to feed again. Very much. He’d even put up with the leather-like flesh on Eugenia’s throat right now, he felt so empty. He coughed once, then somehow managed to speak around all the glue in his mouth. “May I feed?”
Surprise flashed across Scary Doctor’s features. Her brows rose again, soaring higher. “You speak English?” She put the clipboard away and moved to the side of his bed.
His heart did a funny skip when she came close. Her face was very pretty, especially compared to the coarse, blunt features of the un-women he was used to being around. Maybe he shouldn’t think of her as scary anymore. “Some,” he answered. “Understand lots.”
“Well, okay.” She smiled warmly. “I’m Dr. Toni Parthen, Nicolae. Dr. Jess and I are trying to figure out why you and your brother aren’t improving.”
Yes, he’d heard their conversation.
“In the past,” she asked, “have you and Vasile ever had trouble getting better?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Both.”
“Both of you have had trouble?” This answer seemed to please her. “All right. That’s helpful to know. Do you have a medical condition that would account for your difficulties?”
Medical condition? He didn’t know. The only condition he and Vasile had was…something he wasn’t going to say. He and Vasile didn’t need to be shunned by a new set of people. Nicolae was no kind of fool to bring that down on them.
In answer to his silence, Dr. Parthen rephrased her question with simpler words. “Do you two have a special illness?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
This answer didn’t please Dr. Parthen. She sank back on her heels and expelled a thick breath.
Footsteps approached from down the hall, then someone else entered the room. A feminine voice spoke. “Here are the blood test results you—”
Woof! Air detonated out of Nicolae’s lungs as an aroma barreled into his brain that he’d never smelled before. Something compelling, captivating, hypnotic. Something that filled him with urgent impulses: to claim, to protect, to possess, to attack, to shelter, to devour. Things he must do. His teeth slammed together, his fangs shivering in their sockets. What the ungodly hell was happening to him?
“Thank you, Hadley.” Dr. Jess accepted a sheet of paper from the newly arrived woman.
Nicolae stared wide-eyed at this light-haired woman called Hadley. Her… She was the one doing these strange things to him.
Stars in the sky, she was so beautiful, she belonged in a story book, with her fairy-shaped blue eyes, full pink lips, and soft and dewy flesh. She all but sparkled. And, stranger still, the sight of her body—especially where the front of her shirt pushed outward—was rousing a foreign place inside his mind, awakening pleasure where before there had only been…nothing.
Who on earth was this woman? She gave off a Dragon scent, yes, but also that compelling aroma of hers, an ethereal barrage of sensations. The kind of scent that made a man into a man.
Be the greatest protector, the most skilled hunter, the strongest in moral character.
But more. Much more.
Realize untapped strength, revel in drives of the utmost power, fulfill a primitive sense of the self. It urged him to scale impossibly high mountains, start wars, murder friends. Kill anything for her.
Nicolae shook his head. Maybe to deny these thoughts. Maybe to clear his head. It felt like he was going mad. He rasped out a sound to Vasile. “<Are you smelling this woman? Is she doing things to you?>” The moment he asked the question, fury boiled up inside him. He grabbed the bedsheets in fists that he would use to pummel his brother should the pile of pig shit dare to smell this woman the way Nicolae did.
He blinked a few times. Would he do that?
The Hadley woman cast a glance his way—no doubt feeling his gawping stare—and smiled. It was a fake smile, tight and brief, no more than civilly polite, and it still undid him. A pulse of raw sensation went through his penis. He fast-inhaled a couple of breaths. Never had he felt anything like that in his penis.
It was fantastic.
Dr. Jess showed Dr. Parthen the paper Hadley had given him. “Look at this. Those donor women don’t have hormones.”
“You’re kidding? How have these men lived on blood like that?” Dr. Parthen accepted the paper, read it, then glanced up at him. “How often do you feed, Nicolae?”
“One, two times day.”
“A day?” Dr. Parthen made a tsking sound. “No wonder those donor women look so glazed. They’re completely drugged out on fiinţă.”
Dr. Jess put his hands in his coat pockets. “I think we should have the Lazăr brothers feed on our donors. A healthy dose of hormone-rich blood could only help improve their condition.”
Hadley offered to fetch one. “I saw Zerenity downstairs a few minutes ago. I’ll get her for you.” She started for the door, and as she went, she walked close to Dr. Jess…too close.
Nicolae’s spine went so rigid, the stitches on his gut tugged painfully. Too close! Snarling, he bared his fangs and lunged at Dr. Jess, seizing the man by the coat collar. The tube ripped out of his arm and whipcorded strings of blood around.
Hadley yelped and stumbled backward.
Nicolae felt his pupils heat as the rings around his irises began to spin violently. He cranked back a fist, aiming at—
Dr. Jess seized him by the shoulders and pushed him back down on the mattress. “It’s all right, young man. Calm down. I won’t get near your woman again.”
Hadley squeaked, “His woman?”
Dr. Jess glanced over his shoulder at Hadley. “He’s reacting to you.” Turning back around, Dr. Jess pried Nicolae’s fingers loose, then pressed a bandage over Nicolae’s seeping wrist.
Flushing, Hadley shoved some hair off her face. “I…I have to go get Zerenity.” She left.
She left.
Everything was wrong and bad now. Nicolae’s knuckles ached, his jaw burned, his spine throbbed; he was fisting the sheets too tight, clenching his teeth too hard, holding his body too stiff.
“His belly wound is bleeding again,” Dr. Parthen remarked.
Dr. Jess glanced down.
Dr. Parthen exhaled. “Something is still bothering me about these brothers, Jess. All the other injured men have improved from feeding off their own donors.” She pulled out the clipboard again and fastened the blood test results onto it with the other papers. “Every hematologist bone in my body is telling me the Lazăr brothers are hemophiliacs.” She looked at Nicolae. “Do any of the other men speak English?”
“Bujor,” he answered. “Some.”
Dr. Parthen dropped the clipboard back in its slot. “I’m going to talk to him.”
Nicolae frowned. What?
Dr. Jess worked at reattaching the tube to Nicolae’s arm. “I believe the young man Bujor is two doors down on this side of the hall.”
Nodding, Dr. Parthen strode out the door.
Nicolae’s dry throat closed over. Why had he said anything to her? He flopped his head to the side of his pillow so he could peer at his brother. “<She’s going to speak to Bujor. He’ll tell her about us.>”
Vasile exchanged a look with him, a quick look, but long enough for Nicolae to see the dark blot of unease there.
After Dr. Jess re-secured the arm tube, he re-bandaged Nicolae’s stomach, then made notations on the clipboard papers.
Dr. Parthen returned, striding inside with sure steps.
Hadley came in just behind her.
Dr. Parthen drew up to Nicolae’s bed and leaned over him. There was a bright look in her eyes.
He swallowed hard.
Dr. Parthen grinned triumphantly. “You’re part human.”