by V M Black
“You can wait outside,” I said with all the authority I could put into my voice.
Seeing Dorian’s hesitation, I added, “Look, you can see that the room is empty. There’s only one door. And the doctor will be along in just a few minutes.”
Dorian and Clarissa exchanged coded looks, as if there was something that I didn’t know that they weren’t ready to tell me yet. After a moment, Clarissa seemed to surrender, giving a small shrug.
“Your cognate,” she said, and she waved the screen of her device before taking station just outside the door.
Dorian gave a tight nod. “I will be just outside. If you need anything at all—call for me.”
I swallowed and nodded back, stepping all the way into the room and shutting the door. I hoped I wasn’t being reckless, but I couldn’t make decisions based on what I didn’t know.
The doctor—or nurse practitioner, as it turned out—asked a few questions about my sexual activity and health history and wrote a birth control prescription. Flanked by my two guards, I filled it at the pharmacy, and before Dorian could read the label, I shoved the paper bag into the Kate Spade purse I was carrying, which looked like a rather attractive chartreuse doily.
Dorian showed no interest in the appointment or my prescription. I’d thought he would say something, do something. After all his talk about how I belonged to him, forever, I’d thought that getting between me and my doctors would be a matter of course.
He didn’t seem to care. And that made me feel both petty, for thinking that it would matter to him, and disturbed, because it was obvious that Dorian was preoccupied, and whatever it was that made my trip seem trivial couldn’t be good news for me.
For her part, Clarissa, if anything, appeared amused by the entire excursion, but it was amusement with a cutting edge, an air of barely contained violence that made me shy away any time her judging gaze slid across me. I had the sense that she regarded me like a particularly valuable puppy that needed to be taken out for a walk, if there were a slight possibility that such a walk could end in a bloodbath.
The SUV picked us up at the curb in front of the Health Clinic. A delicious smell hit me when the driver opened the door, and I discovered that he’d gone by an Italian restaurant for carryout during my appointment.
“Help yourself,” Dorian said as the SUV pulled away.
I looked inside and frowned. There was only one entrée inside.
“What about you?” I asked, looking at them in turn.
Clarissa chuckled. “She really is new, isn’t she? We’re not hungry. We only need one meal a day—though we often eat two, if only for the amusement of it.”
“Right,” I said, flushing. Dorian had already explained that he needed less food than a human. I’d just forgotten about it.
But my embarrassment and the reminder of their alien nature, however disquieting, couldn’t affect my appetite. I dug in, the lasagna quickly disappeared, and I packed my trash back into the bag and put it between my feet. Having meals appear on cue was a perk I felt like I could get used to.
Neither of the vampires seemed interested in small talk—and with perfect honesty, I admitted to myself that the less that Clarissa said, the happier I was.
Squeezed between the agnates, I pulled out my phone, its familiar weight reassuring in my hand. Reflexively, I went into my messages. Hannah, Ross, Sarah, and Geoff had all left me texts since finals, along with the flood of generic “Merry Christmas!” wishes from half the people in my contact list.
With a pang of guilt, I realized I hadn’t even had a chance to read them since I woke up in Dorian Thorne’s house two days before. I busied myself with replying to my friends, tapping out banal comments and adding reassurances that I was doing much better to those who knew about my cancer.
It felt strange, like I was writing as myself from an alternate life.
Glancing up at the rearview mirror as we took the exit off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, I realized that the Escalade wasn’t alone. At least two other vehicles had been behind us since we left College Park—and any doubt I had that we were being followed was dispelled when they made the second turn behind us.
“Do you know about those other cars?” I asked Dorian. “The blue sedan and the gray minivan?”
Dorian flashed a brief shadow of a smile. “They’re ours,” he said.
“Good work, those men. Very subtle. Let’s hope the Kyrioi don’t have the observational skills of a twenty-year-old cognate,” Clarissa grumbled.
Dorian simply shrugged as the SUV stopped in front of an unfamiliar medical center. The driver opened the door, and I scrambled out after Dorian.
“Did these doctors send you patients, too?” I asked, looking up at the building.
Dorian fell into step beside me as I walked the short distance to the clinic door. “They still do. I’m not the only agnate who is participating in my research, Cora.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling suddenly stupid. Of course there were others. Otherwise, what was the point? I hadn’t thought about that possibility. I’d been far too wrapped up in my own personal drama.
“But we could always count on him to keep all the best ones for himself,” Clarissa said cheerfully behind us.
“We were hardly in competition,” Dorian returned. “And I don’t recall you complaining about any of the men you were sent.”
Men who were now dead. I hugged myself as Dorian held the door open for me to enter. I stepped past him into the waiting room.
Men who would have been dead anyway, I reminded myself. Dorian only offered his test to people with terminal illnesses and a very short time to live. And I knew from my own experience that he told them the odds and gave them a choice—and even insisted that they make the choice two weeks after their screening came back positive so that they had a chance to think rationally about their decision, away from all agnatic influence.
Just as he had with me.
And if they took his offer, it was because, like me, they thought the gamble was worth it.
They’d been wrong. I’d been right. That was the only difference between us. Still, Clarissa’s offhand reference to causing the deaths of who-knows-how-many people chilled me.
I signed in at the desk and was soon called back, repeating the weight, blood pressure, temperature routine before being shown to an exam room. This time, Dorian made no move to follow me, even though he seemed even more tense than before.
“Tell me if I’m being stupid, Dorian,” I said in the doorway. “My life’s not worth keeping you out of this room.”
He blinked at me as if I’d taken him off guard—What, you don’t expect common sense from a cognate?—and cast a glance at Clarissa. She consulted the device and shrugged.
“It looks clear.”
His shoulders eased slightly. “You will be fine, Cora. It’s paranoia, nothing more.”
I looked from one to the other. “Okay, then,” I said.
Almost as soon as the door was shut, Dr. Robeson rapped and came in. Not having to wait was apparently another prerogative of Dorian’s cognate.
Dr. Robeson’s expression was avid as she entered and pulled her stethoscope from around her neck.
“I’m so happy to see you, Cora. You survived,” she said. “You were cured.”
“The first,” I agreed stiffly.
I didn’t know what to say to her anymore. I’d trusted her—trusted her with my treatment, trusted her with my life. Her referral to Dorian had saved me, but it still felt like a betrayal. She was his creature, contaminated by his control, not the impartial medical expert I had counted upon.
“This really is...remarkable.” She stretched the collar of my shirt to put the cold end of the stethoscope against my chest, then spent a minute pressing it against various points of my back to listen to my lungs. She took my wrist in her hand, holding her fingers against it to take my pulse even though it had already been registered with my blood pressure.
She started to drop my hand, then spied the
scarlet tear-drop on the inside on my wrist and turned it so that she could examine it more carefully in the light.
“Remarkable,” she repeated. “Do you know what this is?”
“Yes,” I said, pulling my arm away. “You understand it? Really understand it? You know what he is?”
“And what you are now. It must be a terrific shock. But you must also be aware of the many benefits—”
I cut her off. “Yes. I am. But I didn’t choose this. Not really. It chose me.”
“You didn’t choose cancer, either. Of all the unwanted things in the world, you could do far worse,” she pointed out.
“I really am cured, then?” I asked. I knew I was, but I didn’t trust my own mind anymore. Not when Dorian’s mere presence could make me believe anything at all.
“There are only two outcomes, Cora, cured or dead.” Dr. Robeson took my hand again and pushed up my sleeve. Before I could react, she palmed something from the tray on the rolling table next to her and made a quick flicking motion along my lower arm.
I yelped in pain as the blood welled up from the nick she’d just made. She set the scalpel back on the tray and swiftly took up a small gauze pad, wiping it across my skin.
The cut was already sealed, only a pale line revealing that there had ever been a wound.
“What the hell,” I snarled, yanking my arm back as she released me.
“That is the most definitive test I know,” she said calmly. “If you want your lymphocytes to be checked, I can do that, but we both already know the answer.”
“I do want them checked,” I said stubbornly.
“Very well, then.” She dug in the top drawer and came up with a blood collection kit.
I straightened my arm at her order, and she pulled the rubberized tourniquet strap tight around it.
“What do I do now?” I said. “I just wanted my old life back. Not this.”
I didn’t want to confide in Dr. Robeson—I didn’t trust her, not anymore—but I had to talk to someone who wouldn’t think I was crazy, and she was a better candidate than someone like Worth who worked every day under Dorian’s roof.
She slipped the needle into my vein and popped the collection bottle into place as she pulled the tourniquet loose with the other hand.
“You do what every cancer survivor does who has lost something precious to them. You mourn what’s gone. And you embrace your new future.” She looked suddenly old, and I knew that she was thinking that my future would be much longer than hers.
Yeah. If no one killed me first.
Putting the collection tube aside and pulling out the needle, she continued, “I’ve been in oncology for a long time, and there are hundreds of patients in Johns Hopkins right now who would give up a great deal more than what you have to gain another year, even another month. They’ve lost breasts, limbs, organs—even had pieces of their brains cut out—just for the chance at a cure. And what have you lost, really?”
I thought of everything Dorian Thorne offered me—agelessness, health, wealth, and not least of all, himself. Who wouldn’t want that?
No one, of course. The answer was simple. No one would turn that offer down—because no one could.
What I’d lost couldn’t be measured, like a hand or an eye. I’d lost my freedom. Myself. I’d given it away, and I’d keep giving it away until I died. Which might be much sooner than Dr. Robeson believed.
“I’ll send this out for the tests,” Dr. Robeson said. “You can check your results online, as usual.”
With a sick feeling in my stomach, I recognized a slight light of envy in her eyes as she looked me over. She wished she was in my place. Knowing the devil’s bargain I’d taken, she still wished that she had the bond.
She patted my shoulder before stopping at the door. “Congratulations, Cora. Even without the test, I can tell you right now that you have nothing to be concerned about.”
Nothing, I thought. Nothing at all.
Chapter Nine
“I’d like to get some stuff from my apartment,” I said as the SUV rolled away from the curb. “If it’s safe, I mean.”
The clothes Worth had picked out for me were far more stylish and flattering than anything I owned, but they weren’t mine. I wanted my own comb, my own toothbrush. My own shampoo.
Dorian and Clarissa exchanged another look. I was beyond sick of it.
“Look, why don’t you two just tell me what the hell is going on?” I snapped. “Why do you think I might get attacked in empty rooms, and why is Clarissa staring at that whatever-it-is for?”
There was a ringing silence for a long moment, and finally, Dorian said, “Djinn can be slippery. They fool human eyes more easily than agnatic senses, but a good measure of caution is always wise when we deal with them. Clarissa’s tool helps us detect if there is one about, even if we don’t see it.”
“They’re not normally social creatures—unlike agnates,” Clarissa said, and I couldn’t tell whether she was being sarcastic about the last bit. “But one of them could very well take offense at the, uh, neutralization of the other djinn last night. And when someone hires one assassin, there’s good reason to believe that he might hire more.”
“So is it safe for me to go to my apartment?” I asked. “Or not? Just tell me. I’m not going to pitch a fit if I can’t get my way.”
“It should be safe,” Clarissa said. “It should be as safe as it ever is for any cognate, now.”
“And how safe is that?” I pressed.
“Untouchable,” she said simply. “No one should dare to harm a hair on your head. Follow you, yes. Spy on you? Absolutely, especially after Dorian’s invitation yesterday. But if you should step out in front of a speeding truck, it’s their duty to try to save you, even if they’re Dorian’s sworn enemies.”
“So what’s all this about, then?” I made a motion to include her and the other cars that were following discreetly behind.
“Paranoia,” Dorian broke in. “But I would not have survived as long as I have without it.”
“They shouldn’t have attacked you the first time,” Clarissa said to me. “But that was merely...bad form. Not practically unheard of, like it is now.”
“Bad form,” I repeated. I didn’t consider killing people to be bad form.
“Once you are properly introduced, I will pull the escort,” Dorian said.
“Until then, you’ll have a bigger entourage than Michael Jackson,” Clarissa added brightly. “But he’s dead, isn’t he? Well, someone else famous, then.”
“So my apartment?” I pressed.
“Should be fine,” Clarissa said. “Really, Dorian, you think scaring her like this is worth it?”
I just looked at Dorian.
Finally, he nodded. “It should be fine.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “Let’s get my things.”
Dorian gave the order to the driver, and we drove to campus in silence.
As the Escalade approached the entrance to my apartment building, I spotted my Gramma’s Ford Focus in the parking lot. I craned my neck around, looking for signs of damage, but it appeared to be in perfect repair. As if nothing had happened at all. And there was the SUV behind it in the almost-empty lot, its bumper in perfect condition even though I had slammed a djinn’s body against it the day before.
“My people work quickly,” Dorian said, catching the direction of my gaze.
“No kidding.”
Clarissa was frowning at her screen. “Looks like we have company.”
“Where?” Dorian’s attention snapped to her instantly.
But Clarissa had already unbuckled, and her hand was on the door handle. “Oh, I’ve been waiting for the chance to play with my little toys! See you in a moment.”
She flashed a bright, perfect smile as she slid the sunglasses over her eyes. Then, far faster than any human could move, she was gone out of the still-moving Escalade.
I watched out of the window as she sprinted toward the corner of the apartment buildi
ng, closing the distance in the time that it took me to draw a breath. She pulled an ugly-looking object out of her belt as she ran, holding it in front of her like a weapon as she slapped something at her waist.
Suddenly, she seemed to flicker, as if she were only half there, her motions jerky like an old film movie played too slowly. There were spaces between her motions, and in one of those spaces, she swung around, the object held up at something I couldn’t see. A sudden light shot from it, and a crackling kind of bang, and suddenly, she was clinging to a man with one arm wrapped around his neck and the other with the weapon pointed at his temple.
She gave a blood-curdling whoop, her face split in a grin.
Others came sprinting from across the parking lot, spilling out of the blue sedan and the gray minivan. More vampires, moving at inhuman speeds. A cord or rope appeared from somewhere, and one of the agnates quickly, roughly bound the man’s hands.
Clarissa stepped away then, pulled out the screen she’d been consulting earlier, and called, “That’s it! All clear!”
Our SUV reached the curb, and Dorian didn’t wait for the driver to circle around. He pushed the door open and landed on the sidewalk.
“Come, Cora,” he ordered.
Right. A man had just appeared out of nowhere, and people had been trying to kill me just yesterday. Why wouldn’t I want to come out?
Despite that thought, I didn’t think Dorian was going to get me killed, so I unbuckled, hooked my purse over my shoulder, and scooted over. At the doorway, Dorian scooped me up unceremoniously—and ran.
The scream got caught in my throat, and I managed only a strangled kind of gasp. The pavement blurred under his feet only a few feet below my body. My hands spasmed around his shoulders in sheer terror at the speed that shouldn’t have been possible outside of a car.
He stopped in front of the other agnates and set my feet gently on the ground. I had to order myself to unclench my hands to regain my own balance. Every time I thought I knew where I was with him or in his world, he did something that turned my brains inside out.
“Next time, a little warning, please,” I managed.
Dorian didn’t answer. I didn’t even think he had noticed my reaction. All his attention was on the disheveled man in the center of the circle of agnates, who was reeling about and tugging ineffectually at the bonds that pinned his wrists. I had an instinctive pity for the paunchy man, ringed by the tall, powerful, beautiful predators. He seemed so absurd, so ordinary and pitiful.