by Larissa Ione
Jesus. It was worse than she’d thought. “Haven’t you made any progress at all?”
“A little.” Leather squeaked as Eidolon leaned back in his chair. “We’ve discovered a half-dozen wargs who were exposed but didn’t contract the infection. The R-XR is trying to determine what makes them immune.”
The U.S. Army’s paranormal unit was involved now? And Eidolon was working with them? She’d known that their brother Shade’s mate, Runa, used to be a member, and that Runa’s brother Arik still was, but holy crap—it just didn’t feel right for the government to be involved in any way with Underworld General.
Especially not a military unit that killed, captured, and experimented on demons.
Then again, UG had several strong ties to The Aegis, a civilian demon-slaying organization—hell, Eidolon was even mated to an Aegis Guardian—and so far, the association had benefitted both UG and The Aegis.
“So I’m here, why? Are you in need of assassination services, or what?” She threw that out just to get a reaction from her uptight, always-in-control brother, but to her surprise, it was Con who made the noise.
“You’re here because wargs are dying, and it’s your fault,” he growled, a hint of an odd British-ish accent tweaking his words. It happened when he got all pissy, and it was strangely… hot.
But she still didn’t like him, and she wrenched her head around to peg him with a glare. Which might have been a good plan if he hadn’t looked so damned good in his black paramedic uniform, which set off his deeply tanned skin and sun-streaked blond hair so beautifully. Toss in those shimmering silver eyes, and there was no glaring at him. Only admiring.
“Why are you even here?” she snapped, more irritated by her reaction to him than anything. “I didn’t think the disease affected dhampires.”
“I’m on the Warg Council. I’m keeping them informed.”
“Well, good for you.”
Eidolon cleared his throat imperiously. “Actually, you’re both here for a reason. Sin, it’s time that we put some serious effort into working with your gift. We’ve got to determine a way to use it to treat the disease.”
“We tried that before. My ‘gift’ kills. It doesn’t cure.” Her “gift” was something she’d really like to give right back to her Seminus father. Too bad he was dead.
“Yeah, well, technically, you shouldn’t exist, so I’m not ready to write off the impossible.”
Oh, she loved the reminders about how she was a freak of nature, the only female Seminus demon to ever have been born. A Smurfette, as Wraith liked to call her.
“So what’s your plan?”
“Can you use your gift to determine what kind of disease resides inside a body? If you touch someone who is ill, can you tell what they are sick with?”
“Sort of. I can feel the arrangement of the virus or bacteria or whatever. And once I learn it, I can replicate that specific disease.” She shot Conall a smirk. “Khileshi cockfire is a favorite.”
Wraith laughed. Conall paled. Eidolon looked at her like she was responsible for every case of the excruciating, dick-shriveling venereal disease he’d ever treated. The guy was so freaking uptight he probably starched his freaking underwear.
“As disturbing as that is,” Eidolon said flatly, “it’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
There was a tap at the door, and Lore strode past Wraith, who was still playing doorjamb sentinel. Lore held a folder in his leather-gloved hand, and Sin didn’t think she’d ever get used to seeing her twin brother in scrubs. “I read the R-XR’s initial report on the immune wargs, and something jumped out at me. The wargs who didn’t catch SF after being exposed were born wargs. So I examined the bodies in our morgue and ran some tests. I know not every warg that’s been infected has come through the hospital, but the ones who have? Turned wargs.”
Sin frowned. “SF?”
“Sin Fever,” Wraith chimed in a little too enthusiastically.
Sin Fever? They’d named the fucking disease after her? Bastards.
E flipped excitedly through the folder Lore gave him. “Just when I thought we’d never find a link between the victims. I’ll call the R-XR and let them know. Excellent work, Lore.”
Despite the grim subject matter, Sin couldn’t help but be thrilled that her brother, who had, as an assassin, known nothing but killing and loneliness until just weeks ago, was now mated, happy, and working in the hospital—the morgue, where his death-touch couldn’t accidentally kill anyone.
“Wait,” Sin said. “How can you tell the difference between turned and born werewolves?”
“Born wargs usually have a birthmark somewhere on their bodies, but we can’t always go by that.” Before Sin could ask why, Eidolon finished. “Outcasts are required to have them removed, and some turned wargs have them artificially applied, so we have to perform genetic testing to determine if they’re born or turned.”
Huh. Who would have thunk it? “So, what was it you wanted with me?”
Eidolon looked up from the paperwork, and the circles under his eyes seemed to have lightened a little. “About that… see, that’s why I called Con to this meeting.”
Bracing his muscular forearms on his knees, Con leaned forward in his chair. When he spoke, his fangs flashed as fiercely as his eyes. “What are you saying?”
“Your weekly blood tests for SF have been coming back negative,” Eidolon said. “Until yesterday.”
“What? I have the disease?” Con exploded out of his chair, but Eidolon held up his hands in a stay-calm motion.
“Not exactly. It’s in your blood. Your body isn’t attacking it, nor is it attacking you, and you aren’t producing antibodies. But when we introduced Sin’s blood to the mix in the lab, your white blood cells and hers joined forces to attack the virus.”
Sin’s skin prickled with foreboding. Eidolon was dancing around something. “Skip the buildup and backstory. Bottom line, what do you want from us?”
“I need Con to feed from you,” he said with uncharacteristic awkwardness. “And I need it to happen now.”
I need Con to feed from you.
Con cursed softly. “As much as I’d like to help you out, Doc, I can’t do what you’re asking.” Yeah, he’d tasted Sin’s blood before—and it had been damned good—but that was exactly why he couldn’t do it again. He’d been addicted to a female’s blood before, and he would never allow it to happen again.
“I get that she’s not your favorite person—”
“He said he can’t do it,” Lore interrupted. “Let it go.”
Eidolon tapped a pencil on his desk, the dull thud of the eraser on wood punctuating his words. “Unfortunately, there’s no ‘let it go’ option. This might be our only shot at an immediate solution.”
“I don’t understand,” Sin said. “What do you mean, a solution?”
Eidolon spun one of the papers around to show Sin and Con where he’d scrawled a lengthy column of numbers. “I can’t inject the amount of Sin’s blood required to destroy the virus into Conall without killing him. He needs to ingest it. As a dhampire, he has a double-chambered stomach, the second chamber working the way a vampire’s works—to deliver a victim’s blood almost directly into the vampire’s bloodstream. So if my calculations are correct, a normal feeding will allow him to take in enough blood to start attacking the virus. Once that’s done—”
“I can monitor his blood to learn how the virus is killed and then use my power to try to destroy it myself,” Sin finished.
“Exactly.” Eidolon grinned. “You really should be working here instead of as an assassin.”
At some point, Sin had produced a throwing knife and was now flipping it between her fingers, and Con had a feeling the speed directly related to her level of agitation. The sucker was whirling like a helicopter blade. “Bite me.”
Eidolon gestured to Conall. “That’ll be his job.”
“No,” Con said grimly. “It won’t. There has to be another way.”
“I agree.
” Sin rose to her feet, her blue-black hair swishing angrily around her waist. “I don’t let anyone fang me.”
You let me, you little liar. Hot, little liar. Man, Con wanted to call her out on exactly how she’d let him, but at least two of her brothers in the room were a little on the overprotective side, and the other didn’t need an excuse to kill things. Come to think of it, none of them needed an excuse.
Neither did Con.
“If there was any other way,” Eidolon said, “I’d find it. But there’s not.” He wadded up a sheet of paper and tossed it at the overflowing garbage can in the corner. “You have the virus—it’s just not attacking you, and I don’t know why yet. It’s a slightly different strain from what’s attacking the wargs… it’s adapted to your species, but it might be trying to mutate into something that can attack you, which is why we need to eliminate it as soon as possible. As for the wargs… that’s what was so weird about the blood samples the R-XR took. It was as if the uninfected wargs were a different species and unable to catch the virus.”
“You mean like how horses don’t catch measles from humans,” Sin said, and Eidolon nodded.
“Exactly. I still don’t know what would make born wargs so different from turneds.” The frustration in Eidolon’s voice was echoed in his expression as he turned to Con. “And you, even with your vampire status, you’re somehow more closely related to turned wargs than born ones.”
A tremor of unease went through Con. That was just one of the dhampire race’s dirty little secrets, but it was one he was going to have to share with the doctor. Anything to help get this damned epidemic stopped. Well, not anything. He’d leave out the minor details. Though he supposed he didn’t owe his people the courtesy of keeping their secrets, since they’d all but exiled him. Oh, they kept track of him because, ultimately, he was too valuable to completely throw away, but he’d shamed them, and they were happy to punish him for it.
“Dhampires aren’t exactly born this way.”
Eidolon scowled. “What do you mean?”
Con leaned forward and braced his forearms on his thighs. “I mean that when we hit our late teens, our fangs come in, we start craving blood… and then we get sick. On the first night of the full moon after our fangs have fully developed, we have to be bitten by a warg or we’ll die.”
“Interesting,” Eidolon murmured. “So dhampires are basically turned werewolves who drink blood. Guess that explains why you ended up with a form of the virus, but there’s something else to consider.”
Con didn’t like his tone. Not at all. “What else?”
Eidolon paused as though searching his brain for the right words, and Con’s gut hollowed out. “The virus inside you isn’t likely to want to only attack you. It wants out.”
“So what you’re saying,” Con ground out, “is that I’m a carrier. I could have infected people.”
“Unfortunately, yes. The disease seems to be transmitted via both direct and indirect contact, as well as by air, but as an asymptomatic carrier, you might transmit it differently. I tested your saliva, and it’s definitely present. We need to run tests to be sure, but since Luc hasn’t come down with the virus, you probably aren’t breathing it out or passing it on by casual touch. But you need to avoid intimate contact with werewolves and other dhampires.”
Oh, bloody hell. How many females had Con fed from and slept with in the last month? His mind raced as he counted and eliminated those who weren’t werewolves. Only one had been a warg… a turned warg. And ironically, a female who he’d avoided sleeping with for years because he cared about her, and she deserved better than a one-off with him.
Shit. “Hold on, Doc.” Con dug his cell from his pocket, dialed, and Yasashiku, a member of the Warg Council, answered on the second ring.
“Con. You’re missing the meeting. Valko’s about to have a freaking puppy. Where are you?”
“I’m at work. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Moving toward a corner, he lowered his voice. “Have you heard from Nashiki lately?”
Yasashiku’s silence made Con suddenly, achingly, aware of the pounding sound of his heartbeat in his ears. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?” Don’t say it. Don’t. Fucking. Say it.
“She caught the virus,” Yas said, his faint Japanese accent thickening with emotion. “She died last night.”
Con didn’t even reply. Numbly, he closed the phone. He’d done his share of killing in his thousand years of life, some of it justified, some not. But there was something truly obscene about killing someone with pleasure. Especially because, years ago, he’d saved Nashiki’s life after she’d been attacked by a pride of lion-shifters, and though he didn’t normally keep in contact with his patients, she’d been special, bubbly and bright, one of the few people he’d met in his life who never let anything get them down.
So he’d saved her… only to kill her.
Sure, there was no proof that he had given the virus to the gorgeous, honey-skinned warg, who hadn’t deserved how he’d screwed her while fantasizing about Sin, let alone how he’d given her a disease that had turned her organs to mush. No proof at all, but the timing was right, given the time frame from onset to death.
Crimson washed over his vision as both nausea that he’d killed an innocent female and anger that the person ultimately responsible was right there in the room with him collided. This had to end, and at this point, the risks of repeated feedings from Sin were the least of his concerns.
Especially since all of the risk would be Sin’s.
“Con?” Wraith’s deep voice was a mere buzz among the other noise in Con’s head. “Dude. You okay? You look like you’re about to take a header.”
“Then I’d better feed.” Conall’s voice was cold as he swung around to Sin. “And it looks like you’re lunch.”
Two
This was such bullshit.
Sin got that this might be the answer to the epidemic, but Con didn’t have to look at her like she was a juicy steak. He could at least try to be as repulsed as she was.
“Sit.” Con’s voice had deepened to a compelling, husky rasp that nearly had her complying with his demand like a well-trained dog.
“We’re going to do it here?”
He cocked a sandy eyebrow. “You’d rather do it in a patient room? Or maybe a supply closet would be more to your liking?”
Oh, the bastard. They were not going to a patient room, where a bed would make it way too easy to do more than the blood thing, and the supply closet remark was a jab at the first—and last—place they’d been together.
She sank down into a chair. “Fine. Get it over with.”
“How sweet,” Wraith said. “You sound like an old married couple.”
She flipped him off as Con turned to her brothers. “Could we get some privacy?”
“No.” Sin jabbed a finger at Eidolon. “You. Stay.” Mainly, she was being a bitch, but also, the little flutter in her belly at the thought of being alone again with Con was a dangerous sign that she shouldn’t be alone with him.
Lore stepped forward. “I’ll stay.”
“It’s okay, bro,” she said. The last thing she needed was Lore’s hovering. He’d been doing it for thirty years, and he seemed to be having a hard time breaking the habit. “This will be strictly a clinical procedure. Eidolon can oversee it.” Clinical? That was a joke and a half, because she knew having Con’s fangs slide into her flesh would be pleasurable no matter how much she wanted to deny it.
For a long moment, Sin was sure Lore would argue. Fists clenched, he stood there glowering, his dermoire writhing angrily. Like hers, it was a faded imitation of their purebred brothers’ markings, but it still behaved the same way, appearing to move during periods of high emotion. He finally nodded and, after shooting Con a look of scathing brotherly warning, took off.
She made a shooing motion at Wraith. “You, too. Scram.”
“Smurfy.” Wraith took off, whistling the theme to The Smurfs as he went.
>
“We don’t need Eidolon,” Con said. “I’ve been doing this for a thousand years. I know when to stop.”
Sin wasn’t worried about being drained, but she wasn’t about to admit that her real fear was that without a chaperone, she’d end up doing a lot more than playing Happy Meal. Fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything, because Eidolon got that stern expression on his face, closed the door, and propped a shoulder against it, long legs crossed casually at the ankles. He wasn’t about to budge, and Con must have come to the same conclusion because he muttered something under his breath and sank to his knees beside her.
With him kneeling, they were at eye level, and she gulped dryly when he locked gazes with her.
“Give me your wrist,” he said, and when she hesitated, his cold smile was at odds with the heat roaring off his body. “You’d prefer the throat? Or groin? Sure, it’d go faster that way, but I didn’t think you’d want that much intimacy.” His eyes sparked with amusement, mocking her.
She thrust her left arm at him. “Damn skippy, I don’t.”
He took her wrist gingerly, as if the mere thought of touching her disgusted him. And maybe it did on some level. But she’d never met a vampire who didn’t admit to getting at least a little revved while feeding.
A whisper of pain came with the penetration of his fangs, followed by sparks of pleasure so intense she had to bite back a moan.
“Sin,” Eidolon said softly, “you’ll need to monitor the virus levels in his blood now and then. You should get a baseline now.”
Yes, a baseline. Anything to wrench her attention away from how good it felt to have Con’s lips on her, his teeth in her. Concentrating, she fired up her gift until the dermoire on her arm began to glow, and then she gripped Con’s shoulder. Beneath her fingers, his muscles bunched as though in protest, but her succubus senses picked up signs of increased arousal: the sound of his heart rate jacking up, the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the rise in the temperature of his skin.