extensive interviews with the oldest of the lot—Daniel and Treva—
and I discovered some very interesting trends.”
Rafael wasn’t sure he really wanted to hear a report on the doctor’s
research. But Dr. Greene seemed determined to ramble on about it, so
he asked, “What kinds of interesting trends?”
“Neither of them remember being Made. The process has been
totally blanked from their memories. Also, although I know they must
have killed at some point to stay alive, neither of them remember any
such incidents. In fact, they were hard-pressed to remember their last
meal.”
Against his better judgment, Rafael found himself becoming curious.
“Why’s that?”
“The human mind is a fascinating thing, particularly with regard to
memory. Now, I’m no psychiatrist, but I did a great deal of research
pertaining to this project. I wanted to be sure I had some idea of what
might be going on in these kids’ heads before I subjected them to any
other potential trauma. Anyway, it appears a child’s memory functions
differently from an adult’s. It’s more likely to close out traumas, to
block them off. The mind of a typical underage vampire has basically
been wiped of anything traumatic or distasteful, to protect the child’s
psyche.”
“So they don’t even know they’re vampires?” The concept jolted
him. No wonder Dr. Greene was being so careful. There was a great
deal more to this than just changing the physiology of the Children’s
blood.
“In a sense, no, they don’t know,” the doctor replied. Intellectually,
maybe. Superficially. But not viscerally. You see, it doesn’t matter
how long they’ve been alive, their physical brain development has been
frozen in time. For five hundred years, Daniel has had the brain of a
ten-year-old boy, his synapse growth arrested by the fact of his transformation.”
“Much like I’m stuck in the brain of a seventeen-year-old,” Rafael
said, with a lopsided smile. “Perpetually horny.” At the doctor’s laugh,
he added, “Not a lot of my blood goes to my brain, I can tell you that.”
“Well, that’s a common affliction for men of all ages.” The doctor
had hung the IV bag from a stand and was preparing other appara-
tus—needles and tubes and such that made Rafael uneasy.
“So exactly how does all this work?”
“That’s a good question.”
“Doc, this does not inspire confidence.”
The doctor grinned. “I have a general idea. How much do you
want explained?”
“As much as you like. I’m relatively intelligent for a horny seven-
teen-year-old.”
“Okay.” Dr. Greene was silent for a moment, frowning thoughtfully.
“About two hundred and fifty years ago, Julian ran across a Native
American shaman. Of a Sioux vintage, as I recall. Generations
before, a vampire had given the tribe’s holy man an herb, with instructions
to pass it on to any vampire they might encounter in the future, as
he himself lacked the willpower to use it to its full potential. The current
shaman gave the herb to Julian and told him to smoke it. The stuff
made it possible for Julian to abstain from human blood. And abstinence
changed him—changed his blood, his feeding, everything. Now
he can eat some human food and walk in the sunlight for long periods,
and he has little need for sleep. He can feed on human energy, much as
Lucien and Ialdaboth do, but without diminishing that energy in the
process.”
Most of it had sounded pretty weird, if not impossible, but that last
bit rang a bell. “Hey,” Rafael exclaimed. “That sounds a little like the
litany. In a way.”
“Yes. Which is why Julian wanted that information from you. To
tell him about himself.”
“So what does this have to do with me?”
The doctor took off his glasses, wiping them carefully on his shirttail
as he resumed his narrative. “The next thing we ran into was Nicholas.
He had been made by Vivian, who’d spent the last century or two
feeding primarily on cancer victims. We were able to use Julian’s blood
in combination with Nick’s to cure Dina, Nick’s girlfriend, who was
dying of cancer.”
Rafael laced his fingers together, trying to twiddle his thumbs.
“And this relates to me how?” He didn’t want to seem impatient or
ungrateful, but he was having a hard time figuring out how these pieces
might fit together.
Dr. Greene smiled a little, as if amused at his impatience. “Well,
inquiring minds want to know, so I started mixing little bits of this blood
and that blood and ended up with a blood that, when mixed with blood
out of a vampire’s veins, brings it to life.” He lifted the bag on the IV
stand. “This is one of the components from Nick’s blood. It’ll cause
your blood to remain alive instead of dying within twenty-four hours, as
it normally does.”
Rafael frowned. “That’s why we feed every day? To replace the
blood that dies?”
“Right.”
“Do most vampires know this, or am I especially ignorant?”
“Most vampires don’t take the time to think about it. When Julian
happened upon those herbs, he didn’t know they kept his blood alive,
but that was why he no longer had to feed. And when he transformed,
that ability became a part of his physiology—something he could pass
on to others under certain conditions.” The doctor picked up a needle
and opened the sterile packaging. “The combination I’m going to use
on you doesn’t work on cancerous cells, but it does work on the blood
samples I took from the Children, and on the sample I took from you.”
“Works how?”
“It produces the appropriate transformation—turns a finite supply
of harvested blood, like what you normally keep in your veins, into self-
perpetuating red cells like a normal human’s. Wakes up your bone
marrow—all sorts of neat things.”
Rafael watched as the doctor slid the needle into a vein at the
bend of his elbow, then taped it down and connected it to an IV tube.
“So we start with this,” Dr. Greene said. “We put this bit of Nick’s
blood into you and see what happens.”
“Excuse me—‘see what happens?’ I thought you knew what
you were doing?”
“I do.” Dr. Greene adjusted the IV bag, twisting the valve to start
the bag’s contents moving down the long, clear tube. It was red, but not
quite blood-red. It had more of a bluish tinge than pure blood would
have had. “I’m just not sure how intensive the exposure has to be. If
introducing this element into your blood isn’t enough to convert all of it,
then I’ve got a dialysis machine in the other room we can use. We can
run all your blood through the machine, wake it up with Nick’s blood,
and put it back into you.”
“Why not just do that first?”
“Again, I’m trying to reduce the trauma as much as possible. If
this works for you, it’ll work for the Children and we won’t have to
&nbs
p; subject them to that.” He picked up his chart and wrote in it. “I don’t
worry as much about subjecting you to such things.”
“Gee, thanks.” Rafael settled his head on the pillow. “You got
anything to read?”
An hour later, unhappy with the results from the straight IV, the
doctor rolled Rafael’s hospital bed down the hall to the dialysis machine.
Within a few minutes, Rafael understood why they’d tried the
other procedure first. The dialysis machine was painful, invasive, and
almost enough to make him give up the idea altogether.
But it worked. Dr. Greene took samples of the processed blood
from time to time, scribbled in his chart, and made pleased grunting
sounds.
The first round of dialysis lasted five hours. Then Dr. Greene
showed up with another IV bag. This time the contents were a milky
white, the bag only half full.
“One more go,” he said, and Rafael groaned.
“We can’t go back now. If I don’t do this stage, you’ll be dead in
a week.”
“Go ahead,” said Rafael. “I signed up for the whole thing.”
Dr. Greene nodded. “Good man.”
Rafael grimaced. “I guess it’s a good thing we’ve got a long night
to work with.”
The second time was worse. He couldn’t concentrate well enough
to read anymore, so he just closed his eyes and tried to think happy
thoughts. Mostly about Sasha.
Sasha lingered in the hallway outside Rafael’s room. She’d been
avoiding seeing him most of the evening, but as midnight approached,
her curiosity got the better of her.
At least, she kept telling herself it was curiosity. She wanted to
know if Rafael was all right. Just out of concern for a friend. Nothing
more than that.
When Dr. Greene emerged from the room, a frown on his face,
her heart jumped up to choke her. Involuntarily, she took a step forward.
“Is he all right?”
The doctor looked up at her, still frowning. It seemed to take him
a moment to orient himself. “He’s fine,” he finally said. “It’s just proving
a bit more difficult than I’d hoped.” He paused. “More painful for
him.”
“He’ll be all right, though?”
“Yes. He’s got another couple of hours on the dialysis machine,
then I’ll monitor him through the rest of the night, and all day tomorrow.”
“Will he sleep tomorrow?” She knew the doctor understood the
real question, the one she didn’t want to ask. Will he be a vampire
tomorrow?
The doctor smiled a little. “He may sleep. He may not. He may
have to go through one more night of vampiric Sleep, just to heal. Or he
may sleep naturally. I’m really not certain.”
“Because you’ve never done this before.” Her voice came out
more bitter than she’d intended.
“No, I haven’t done this before. But Rafael knows that, and so do
you.” He frowned again, the expression directed this time at her rather
than at his own thoughts. “I understand why you chose not to do this,
but why do you resent his decision so much?”
She tilted her chin haughtily. “I don’t think that’s any of your damned
business.”
“No, it probably isn’t.” He glanced at his watch. “Do you want
me to let you know when he’s finished? He’d probably like to see
you.”
“No.” Taking a backward step, she added, “Thanks.” Then she
turned and hurried down the hallway.
When the doctor finally unhooked him from the dialysis machine,
Rafael was so exhausted from the constant pain, and so relieved at its
absence, that he immediately fell asleep.
Must be daytime, he thought as he drifted away, but it felt different.
He had a feeling his body knew something his mind didn’t. His
body remembered this kind of sleep. His mind had mostly set those
memories aside over the past four years.
He dreamed. He’d been told vampires dreamed from time to time,
but he hadn’t dreamed at all since he’d been Turned. The dreams
made no sense, but he watched them with that strange, half-aware-
ness that came with all ventures into the dream-world. It unnerved him
at first, enough so that he felt the discomfort in his dream-state.
Then the colors started, and he could do nothing but sit back and
enjoy the show.
He didn’t recall ever having dreamt this vividly before. It was as
if he were making up for the years lost. The dreams had little substance,
but they shimmered with vibrancy, with streaks and flags of
almost indescribable color. It was like being inside a kaleidoscope.
It seemed to go on forever, but eventually he did wake up. With a
gasp of surprise, he sat bolt upright in the hospital bed. In a chair by the
wall, Dr. Greene jerked awake.
Rafael smiled sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right.” The doctor straightened, rubbing the back of his
neck. “How do you feel?”
“Okay.” He stretched his arms out wide, folded them against his
chest. “A little achy in the joints, maybe, but otherwise fine.”
The doctor, as usual, went for a needle. “I want one more sample,
just to see how things look.”
Patiently, Rafael sat through the blood draw. With any luck, maybe
this would be the last one. Dr. Greene took only a small amount of
blood, then took it to the table at the back of the room, where he put
some on a slide and slid it under the microscope.
“Looks good,” he said after a moment. Turning to give Rafael a
grin, he added, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was mine.”
A sudden flood of emotion caught Rafael by surprise. He blinked
a few times. He didn’t know if he was about to laugh or cry, but he
knew there would be tears involved.
“You okay?” the doctor asked.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his face. “No. I mean—I just can’t believe
it’s real.”
“It’ll take some time to get used to the idea, I’m sure.” The doctor
put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Are you hungry?”
“Not really.” Then it occurred to him—he didn’t have to fight his
hunger anymore. He could be hungry. He could go eat a cheeseburger
and French fries instead of ripping someone’s throat open.
The tears rimmed his lids, hot and heavy. There was no stopping
them. They slid down his face, but he swallowed the thick sob that
tried to follow them. Dr. Greene moved his hand along his back, turning
his friendly touch into a half-embrace. “I’ve got some chicken soup in
my room. Want some?”
The sob came up then. There was no stopping it. Around it, Rafael
managed, “Yes. Oh, my God, yes.”
In the hallway, Sasha saw the doctor escort Rafael down the hall.
Rafael was crying—or rather, trying not to, dashing tears from his
face. They walked away from her and never saw her.
Rafael looked different. His skin was pinker, and she could smell
his blood even from here. Living blood. The kind she could feed on.
She wheeled and ran the other way, all the way up, through the
corridors, into the last few hours of darkness.
Five
Dr. Greene had leftover pizza, too, and Rafael, not thinking of the
possible consequences, chose that over the chicken soup.
“Maybe not the best idea,” the doctor commented, but as Rafael
had already stuffed half a slice down his throat, it was too late to do
anything about it.
The flavors were incredible. He hadn’t tasted anything in four
years. Tomatoes, pepperoni, bread, cheese, garlic . . . he had just enough
time to be swept up in the incredible richness before the pizza came
back up.
He heaved it into Dr. Greene’s toilet, then rinsed out his mouth
and washed his face. When he returned to the small kitchenette, the
doctor was holding up a can of chicken noodle soup.
“Are you ready to listen to your doctor now?” he said.
Rafael winced. “Yeah, I guess so.”
So he had chicken soup. As he sipped the broth he found the
same kind of intensity of flavor he’d found in the pizza, even though the
soup was bland and unexciting. At least it would have been to a mortal.
To his reawakened taste buds it had layers and depths he’d never
imagined. Colors, even. He tried a noodle and the starchy thickness
lingered on his tongue, too heavy for now. He left the rest of the noodles
in the bowl.
The broth stayed down, though it was iffy for a time. He drank
water with it, suddenly discovering he was unbelievably thirsty. One
careful sip at a time, he drank nearly a quart of Evian out of Dr. Greene’s
fridge.
“Don’t give any of the kids pizza,” Rafael suggested.
“Yeah,” said the doctor. “You should have thought of that.”
“Yeah, I guess I should have.” He finished off his last water bottle,
looking longingly at the pizza. “Maybe tomorrow. It tasted damned
good for about five seconds, there.”
“Maybe rice tomorrow,” said the doctor. “I don’t think pizza would
be a good idea for at least a week.”
The quirk of his eyebrow told Rafael that a week was probably a
generous estimate. “Well, hell, what’s the point of being mortal if you
can’t eat pizza?”
Dr. Greene smiled. “It’s two hours until daylight. Care to go for a
walk?”
Again, Rafael found his throat full of unexpected tears. “Yes.
Knights, Katriena - Vampire Apocalypse Book II.txt Page 13