"Yes. But at the last minute, she offered to bring me over."
Dina stared at him. He"d been a cancer patient, too? She wanted to ask him about it, but Julian"s questions moved the discussion on.
"Vivian, have you brought over any of your other mercy killings?"
"Not for a long time, though I offered it to most of them.
The majority were elderly and didn"t find the possibility attractive."
Julian leaned back in his perch on top of the desk, considering. "Dr. Greene, do you think Nicholas" compulsion could be a result of this pattern? That he was drawn to take Dina"s blood because of her condition?"
Dr. Greene considered. "It"s possible. In which case, perhaps the compulsion exists because he holds some latent ability to heal, and that"s why those victims always come back."
"But-" Nicholas broke in, then hesitated. "Afterwards, if I take them again-it"s hideous."
"There"s an element missing." Julian jumped decisively down from the desk. "Dr. Greene, I want you to run another series of experiments. I"ll tell you what I want, but we need to do this quickly and thoroughly. Dina"s life depends on it. Dina, Nicholas and Vivian, I need a blood sample from all of you."
"You heard what he said. He as much as admitted it."
Dina clasped her arms around her knees. She was so tired...
"I can"t believe this. It"s crazy." Vampires, real vampires, drinking blood and turning people-turning her-into walking zombies. It wasn"t real life. It was some nutty horror movie.
"What did they do to you, Lor, to make you believe it?"
"Not "they." Julian just dragged me along for the ride."
She shook her head. "I saw his throat slit open to the bone, and he got up and walked away. I saw-" She stopped. "I had no choice but to believe, Dina. Neither will you by the time this is 94 over."
"So I"ll either believe or die?"
Lorelei studied her, her dark blue eyes suddenly wide and moist. "Why didn"t you tell me?"
Dina shook her head. "It"s not like we were soul-deep friends or anything. We were business a.s.sociates more than anything else. I"m sure we both have a lot of secrets."
"But if you were that sick-"
"I wasn"t "that sick," Lor. I was dying. I still am. As soon as someone decides this craziness is over, I"ll go back to the doctor, and they"ll probably cut more pieces off me and radiate me some more and pump more chemicals into me, until I get sick of it or until there"s nothing left." Her voice broke, and she stopped, biting hard on her lower lip, wrapping her arms around herself, feeling the artificial softness under her arms where the softness had once been natural. "Or maybe I won"t go back to the doctor at all. Maybe I"ll just let it run its course. Let Vivian kill me. Do you think she could get it right?"
Her laughter was strained and false, but Lorelei answered it with a sympathetic smile. "You won"t be going anywhere for a day or two," she said. "Let"s make the best of it." She stood.
"Let"s go see William. Julian can"t stand him, but I think he"s a hoot."
Outside, night was wearing down. Nicholas knew because his new room-his house arrest room-had a window.
It was a small window, high on the wall across from the bed. Closed, locked, and covered with a tinfoil screen, it let very little of the outside world in. But it was enough.
A human wouldn"t have noticed the changes in the quality of the dark that leaked around the edges of the screen. It still looked like nighttime-dark, deep and velvety, tinged with star- and moonshine. But to Nicholas it was edged with a threat of gray that hadn"t been there an hour before. Dawn approached on slow, soft feet.
It presented no threat to him. Even if it were full daylight outside, not enough light could come through the screen to hurt him. But the implication of the window didn"t escape him. If 5 there was a covered window, it could be made into an uncovered window. And then he would die.
Outside, footsteps echoed. Nicholas looked up, as he had every other time he"d heard footsteps in the hallway. For the past several hours, they"d tapped past from time to time, always moving on. This time they stopped. Someone knocked.
"Nicholas." Julian"s voice. There was no anger in it.
Nicholas looked up at the window. "Come in."
Julian did, his booted feet nearly silent on the wooden floor.
"Dr. Greene has completed the tests." He stopped a few feet away and clasped his hands behind his back. Nicholas suddenly felt like a three-year-old. In vampire terms, that was exactly what he was. A three-year-old vampire being addressed and possibly chastised or sentenced by an eight-hundred-year-old Senior.
"What were the results?" He could barely bring himself to ask the question, afraid the slightest offense might cause Julian to take away the tinfoil screen.
But Julian showed no anger, his voice pleasant as he said, "We can save her. You and I, together."
He swallowed. "What"s the catch?"
"You might have to die."
He had little choice but to see Dina. Julian saw to that. And Lorelei, blue-eyed and meddling and surrounded with an aura unlike anything he"d ever encountered, went with him.
"She"ll need me there," she informed him in a brittle voice.
"When she starts to believe, she"ll need me. And I don"t trust you, you bloodsucking b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
He tried not to take offense, but couldn"t help wondering how Julian put up with her. She certainly had no qualms about speaking her mind.
He hadn"t seen Dina since the night before, when they"d dragged him off under "house arrest." Seeing her now as she sat on the bed in her small, windowless room, was like being slapped across the face. So small and gray, her face drawn and the bruises on her throat nearly black. He"d seen that before, a few days before death. 96 Under Lorelei"s narrow, disapproving gaze, he sat next to her. "How are you?" he asked gently.
"I"m tired." She rubbed her face. A blue bruise rose beneath her fingers, faded slowly. "They tell me I"m dying. I mean, faster than I was dying before."
"I"m sorry."
"Sorry they told me that awful lie?" The words should have held eager hope, but were instead laced with sarcastic desperation.
"No. Sorry I did it."
"Then you admit it?"
He shrugged, resigned. "I have to. I can"t lie anymore."
He pa.s.sed a glance to Lorelei. "Particularly not here where they"ll kill me for it."
Dina only laughed. "Whatever."
"You"re not angry?"
"I would be. I"d be killing you with my bare hands if any shred of me actually believed this bulls.h.i.t." She flopped back on the bed, eyes closed. The bones of her face strained against her gray, tired skin. "If I"m dying, it"s because my body finally decided to give up. It"s been fighting cancer for five years, and if that"s the decision it"s made, I can"t blame it. But you a vampire who"s turned me into a zombie? Bull and s.h.i.t."
"Dina-" Lorelei started.
She sat up rapidly, and her face went bone-white for a frightening moment. She didn"t seem to notice. "Lor, I don"t know what that freak Julian told you, or what he did to you to make you believe it, but if you could get your sense back, you"d know it"s just a bunch of psychos who make up stories to justify a really sick obsession."
Nicholas looked at Dina-really looked-in a way he hadn"t looked at a woman in a long time. What had attracted him to her in the first place? Had it been the blood compulsion that had grown and grown until he could no longer ignore it? Or was it something else?
She looked so small and frail right now, the color gone from her face, her eyes wide and stark, bruises rising and fading on her skin as she moved. And it made his heart ache. 7 If he made her remember, made her believe, she"d hate him. If he let her believe he was innocent, just playing along with the others" games, she"d die, perhaps as early as tomorrow.
His heart hurt.
He took her chin gently in one hand, watching the bluing of her skin beneath even that soft touch, and turned her face toward him. He could see the tracery of veins beneath her skin. This close, he could smell the death of her blood, sweet and cloying.
"Dina, I want you to understand something. I care about you. I don"t want you to die."
She shook her head, a soft smile curving her mouth. "You can"t stop it."
"But I can."
She opened her mouth to speak, but he said, "No," vibrating the word with compulsion. It wasn"t great compulsion-young as he was, he couldn"t muster much-but it closed her mouth, because she was a human and weak, with her blood dying within her. He bent toward her, his breath caressing the line of her jaw, then his mouth touched the bruises on her throat. He sensed Lorelei"s movement, her tension and her small jump forward, but he only kissed Dina"s throat, his lips soft and his teeth retracted.
Then, with all the compulsion in his power, he whispered, "Remember."
She stiffened next to him, convulsed as her eyes went blank.
Her mind retreated into memory. He felt it when she went.
Went with her. Lived the moment of betrayal as she"d experienced it, when the man she"d thought she trusted had slammed her into the wall and killed her. Lived his own memory at the same time, tasting her blood in his mouth, feeling it leaving her body in torrents, feeling her horror as she realized her heart was slowing, would stop, would end.
She jerked away from him, her eyes back to the present.
"No."
So white. She was so white, even the shadows under her eyes turning white as she stared at him, the truth returning to her.
"No." 98 She scrambled away, and suddenly Lorelei was there, her arms around Dina, her body between her and Nicholas.
"Get out," Lorelei said. "Get out now."
He backed away, reluctant.
"Get out now!"
Lorelei"s eyes flashed blue. As if a hand had pushed him backward out the door, Nicholas went.
Dina sagged against Lorelei, the tears finally going dry. It seemed she"d been crying for hours. Maybe she had. Her body ached, and she"d never felt so tired, not even after her cancer treatments. Everything about her body felt wrong, from the way her skin no longer seemed to fit to the way the prosthetics in her bra no longer wanted to stay in place. In a sudden fit of anger, she reached into her shirt and yanked out the bra and subst.i.tute b.r.e.a.s.t.s, throwing them across the room.
A moment later, she realized what she"d done and looked at Lorelei. Her friend stared at the bra, the prosthetics falling out of it, swallowed, then looked back at Dina.
"You have to decide what to do," Lorelei said gently.
"I can"t believe this is real."
Lorelei smiled wryly. "I know how you feel. It was the same way with Julian."
"But Julian didn"t try to kill you."
"Even so, he came awfully close to it."
Dina shook her head. "I don"t understand any of this."
"You"re not alone. Strange things are afoot here, believe me." She took a long breath, drawing Dina close again, cradling her. "I don"t want to sit here and watch you die."
"I could have done it alone, if it weren"t for Nicholas."
"Hey." Lorelei"s voice chastised softly. "I"d be back home and my life would still be normal if it weren"t for Nicholas. He started all of this when he did what he did to you. He nearly killed me, too, you know."
Her voice had hardened at the last, and the brittle iciness in her eyes surprised Dina.
"I don"t want to hate him," Dina said. "I don"t think... I don"t think he"d hurt me now." 9 "I want to rip his heart out with my bare hands," Lorelei said, the iciness gone now, the words spoken like average conversation. "But if he can save your life, I say we let him."
"And if it kills me?"
"Then you"re no worse off than you were before. And based on my experience, dying at his hands would be much more pleasant than dying the way you are now. Or dying of cancer, for that matter." She smiled a little. "They make it like s.e.x."
Dina closed her eyes. So tired. She wondered if she could open her eyes again, then did, and looked at her hands. "This came from Julian, this idea about healing me. Do you trust him?"
"Yes."
She nodded. "I guess that"s all I need, then."
Dr. Greene touched a b.u.t.ton, displaying the last slide in his presentation.
"After exposure to blood samples from both of you, Dina"s damaged blood reaches this stage after approximately thirty minutes."
Nicholas looked at the slide, frowning. Nearly half the broken, damaged cells from the previous slides had transformed into plump, red, healthy cells.
"How precise are the ratios you"ve quoted, Doctor?"
The doctor looked at him, but briefly, his attention quickly returning to the slide. "They"re precise."