“No,” I insisted, a rumbling growl creeping into my voice. “We are not guinea pigs. We’re human b—well, we’re people! You can’t just torture us and claim it’s for science like that’s a get-out-of-war-crimes-free card.”
“Mrs. Jameson-Nightengale was very clear that she wanted comprehensive tests,” he said, staring at me with blue, derpy eyes that had gone cold and calculating, like he was trying to figure out how long he could keep me down on the lab floor without anyone noticing. “She said she wanted results, damn the consequences.”
My eyes narrowed, and I picked up on the tiniest twitch of a vein near Dr. Hudson’s temple. No. He was lying. That couldn’t be true. And the twitchy vascular system was his tell. Jane wouldn’t risk Ben like that. And while she wasn’t pulling for permanent custody of me, I knew she wouldn’t set me up to be tortured. She wasn’t that cold.
Quicker than I’d ever moved before, I stepped around Ben and moved very close to Dr. Hudson. I snagged the stake from the medical tray and pressed the point to his throat. My voice reached a low, gravelly octave I’d never heard come out of my mouth. “You. Will. Not. Spray. Him. With. That.”
“You’re a little off the mark,” Dr. Hudson told me, just a little smugly, as he glanced down at the stake. “I know you probably haven’t taken anatomy, but you’re going to have to move it a little lower. That won’t kill me.”
“But it will keep you from whistling for a while,” I shot back, pressing just a bit harder.
Dr. Hudson’s nostrils flared, but he placed the silver canister back on the tray. “Righty-o, we’ll just move along.”
“No, we’re done,” Ben told him, grabbing my uninjured arm and pulling me toward the door. “We won’t submit to any more tests without Jane being here. This is insane.”
“Oh, I don’t think we have to worry Jane about this,” Dr. Hudson chirped. “After all, we do need to know how you handle sunlight.”
We turned to see Dr. Hudson quickly slide on a pair of heavy rubber gloves and one of those masks that welders use. Another lab vamp-lackey, whom I recognized as Dr. Gennaro through his own welder’s mask, walked briskly through the lab’s rear door, holding a weird lantern with a purplish lens.
“What is that?” Ben asked as I grabbed the doorknob and rattled it. The hallway door had locked behind me. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? When it wouldn’t budge, I resorted to yanking on the doorknob to try to force it off the frame. I threw my weight against it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Help!” I screamed. “Help!”
“This is a UV lamp,” Dr. Hudson told us in his “professor teetering on the edge of a complete nervous breakdown” voice. “Think of it as a suntan in a box.”
Ben and I locked gazes and threw ourselves across the room at lightning speed. Ben swiped the stake from my hand somewhere near the bed, which I didn’t appreciate, because it left me weaponless. He launched himself at Dr. Hudson but overshot with his super-strong legs and smacked against the wall. The hit apparently dazed him, because on his next try, Dr. Gennaro stepped between them and knocked the stake aside.
Ben threw him to the tiled floor, but Dr. Gennaro swept his legs out from under him. Ben’s head hit the floor with a thud. The stake clattered to the floor and slid under the bed. I picked up the nearest heavy object—a bedpan—and swung it at Dr. Hudson’s head. But I missed, because Dr. Gennaro kicked the backs of my knees, folding my legs under me, and I flopped to the floor like a fish.
Ben groaned. “My head.”
“This is embarrassing,” I told him. “We have to learn how to fight.”
I chucked the bedpan at Dr. Hudson, but he easily sidestepped it, because unwieldy metal objects are really hard to throw, even with vampire agility. My back hurt too much from the collision with the tile to do much more than fling my leg up and drop my foot down heavily on Dr. Gennaro’s crotch. He curled up in agony on the floor, which made me a little happier.
In a voice I’m sure he thought was soothing, Dr. Hudson said, “Now, we’re only going to expose you to a low setting for five seconds. The skin damage should be minimal.”
He turned on the lantern. The lab was filled with warm, bright light. I ducked my head under my shirt and braced myself for the heat, for the pain. I heard Ben let loose a short yelp and felt his arms wrap around me, the cloth of my shirt trapped between my face and his chest. I closed my eyes, buried my face against him, and waited to turn to ash.
Nothing.
I pulled down my shirt and found that we were intact. We were both absolutely fine. Our cheeks weren’t even pink. Gennaro, however, had lost a sleeve in his scuffle with Ben, and his bared arm was covered in small, shallow blisters. Also, his carefully slicked-back hair seemed to be smoking.
“That was a bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?” Dr. Hudson asked dryly as he lifted his welder’s mask.
“No, I don’t think that it was an overreaction,” I said, scrambling to my feet and helping Ben up. “But I still think you’re a dick.”
I moved closer, sort of pacing back and forth, as if I could find a way to sneak around Dr. Hudson.
Meanwhile, he was inspecting my face and hands with that sinister, gleeful expression. “No visible damage or distress. Pupils normal. But that could be a result of your interference, pulling your clothes over your face to protect yourself—not very helpful, I might add. I think we’ll prepare for five seconds at medium intensity.”
“What?” I cried as Dr. Hudson pulled his facial protection back into place.
A lot of things happened at once.
Dr. Gennaro shouted, “No!” And started smoking.
Ben scrambled under the bed—to find the stake, I guessed.
I grabbed the small fire extinguisher mounted on the wall and whacked the butt against the doorknob. But it didn’t budge. That was one very strong doorknob.
“Ben!”
“I can’t reach the stake!” Ben yelled.
I turned on Dr. Hudson, raising the fire extinguisher above my head. I didn’t want to brain the good doctor, but I didn’t feel he’d left me much choice. And he looked completely unconcerned about the fact that I was holding this giant can over his head. He was adjusting the knobs on the lamp like it was a camera and he was getting ready to take my picture. I was much more comfortable pointing a stake at his throat. I should not have let Ben take the stake from me like some horror movie “last girl.” If the sunlamp didn’t evaporate me, I would start carrying a spare stake in my sock or something.
Just then, there was a loud thump from the hallway and a woman’s voice shouting curse words.
Dr. Hudson’s head whipped toward the sound. Ben took advantage of his distraction and kicked out at the lamp of horrors, knocking it against the wall and smashing it.
Dr. Hudson frowned at Ben. “Well, that was rude.”
The door flew open, and Jane came storming into the lab. Seeing my bloodstained shirt and Ben’s whole “recently wrassled with an overcoiffed lab rat” look, she shot a poisonous glare Dr. Hudson’s way. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m running some standard tests,” Dr. Hudson said, all casual-like. Because that’s what you’d expect of a sociopath who thinks evaporating someone in the name of research is OK.
“He wanted to try staking us,” Ben said, climbing to his feet. “Just to see what would happen.”
And because I was more than a little irritated with this whistling scientific tool, I held up my injured arm. “He burned me with silver, Jane. He burned me real bad.”
“What?” Jane exclaimed, holding my arm up to take a closer look at the new, shiny pink skin. She sent another filthy glare at Dr. Hudson. “Are you insane? How could you?”
“You asked me to find the limits of the kids’ abilities.”
Jane swept the instruments off the tray and sent most of them bo
uncing off the wall. “Did I really have to specifically tell you that meant ‘without stabbing or burning them’?”
Dr. Hudson didn’t reply, but given his expression, I would say yes.
“My methods might be a little invasive, but we can’t stop now. We were just getting to the interesting bits. For all her additional strengths, Miss Keene has an acute anaphylactic reaction to even a weak concentration of silver. And Mr. Overby had a reaction to just a light secondhand misting. Their reaction to UV rays remains a question, because certain parties continue to interfere with the testing.”
“Yes, pardon the hell out of us for not standing still while you try to give us a certain-death suntan,” Ben shot back. “What makes you think you have the right to do something like that?”
Dr. Hudson whirled on Ben, practically screaming at us. “These tests fall under the purview of my position as chief science office with this Council office! I decide which protocols are reasonable and the level of acceptable consequences. Not you. You are the test subjects. You are expected to participate in these experiments cheerfully.”
Gone was the Mr. Rogers of scary vampire medicine, replaced by a very cranky man in a picnic shirt who did not like having his authority questioned. But honestly, this version of Dr. Hudson was less creepy than the McDerpy persona.
Ben didn’t have a chance to respond, even with his superspeed. Jane drew up to her full considerable height and got right up in Dr. Hudson’s business. “And as your local Council representative and your boss, I approve all of your experiments. And your budget. And whether you get a Christmas bonus or not. And I’m telling you right now that you are not to do any sort of tests on my wards, Meagan Keene and Benjamin Overby, without my consent and supervision. Do you understand me?”
Dr. Hudson’s jaw set in a stubborn line, but he said, “Yes.”
“You don’t approach them. You don’t contact them. You don’t even look in their direction without written permission. And if you do, I will use every person in Dick Cheney’s contacts list to make sure you spend the rest of your unnaturally long life scrubbing out expired blood-storage units at the Red Cross. Get me?”
Dr. Hudson nodded. Hell, I knew I would have agreed to anything Jane asked me to do. I’d never heard her sound so scary.
“I need verbal confirmation that you understand completely, Dr. Hudson,” Jane barked in the scariest, most authoritative voice I’d heard her use yet.
Dr. Hudson seethed. “Yes.”
Jane’s smile was downright frosty. “Excellent.” She turned to Ben and me. “Come on, kids, let’s get you home. Gabriel’s making dinner, which means it’s safe to drink.” She hooked an arm around each of us and gently pushed us out of the lab. She looked over her shoulder. “You are skating on very thin ice, Dr. Hudson.”
The moment we cleared the door, she nodded silently—but very emphatically—toward the elevator. Then she popped her head back into the lab and said, “And for God’s sake, clean up Gennaro and get some blood in him. He’s smelling up this whole level.”
Ben held the elevator door open until Jane was safely inside. She slapped the button for the ground level and waited for the doors to slide closed, then threw her arms around Ben. “Are you OK?”
He nodded, relaxing into her arms a little, like he’d finally dropped his fight-or-flight response. “I won’t lie. It was scary as hell. But we’re OK. Meagan managed to get a few good shots in. I was basically useless, which is humiliating.”
“Not true,” I began, letting loose a surprised “Oof” when Jane let Ben go and wrapped me in the tightest embrace I’d had in years. I froze, my arms sticking out at weird Frankenstein angles. It was like I’d temporarily forgotten how hugs worked. It took an embarrassing number of seconds for my brain to communicate to my arms to unclench them and let them drape around Jane’s back. And then I did this strange, awkward little pat thing, because I honestly didn’t know what else to do.
“Ben did just fine. I mean, we both need vampire self-defense lessons something awful, because our fight skills are embarrassing. But he did get blood into me when I was burned. He showed quick thinking.”
I decided not to mention the whole “I had the stake, but you snatched it out of my hand” thing. It seemed like a dick move. And behind Jane’s back, Ben gave me a surprised, warm smile that made my knees go all wobbly.
“I’m sure you were both appropriately badass.”
“This is above my pay grade, I’m sure, but can I make some sort of formal suggestion that you fire Dr. Hudson?” I asked. “I think he’s crossed the line from scientist to full-on lulu. I don’t like the idea of coming to work every day and knowing he’s in the building.”
“He’s got a pretty ironclad contract with the Council. I can’t fire him unless he disobeys my direct orders, which is why I was so careful with my wording just now.” Jane finally stepped back, examining my arms and my still-slightly-bloody chin. “I can’t believe he did this. I thought my introductory ‘I’m your new boss’ memo made my stance on living and/or undead experimentation pretty clear when I took over the job.”
“Must have been one hell of a memo,” Ben muttered.
“It was twenty-three pages long,” Jane said, preening just a little bit, as the elevator dinged and opened on the lobby level. Gigi was waiting there with my purse and Ben’s messenger bag. And of course, she did not look like she’d just gotten into a bloody wrestling match with evil nerds. Wearing a super-cute combination of skinny jeans and a boyfriend jacket, she looked like she’d just stepped out of Girls Who Would Make a Better Girlfriend Than You Magazine.
“Hey, Jane, why did you need—? Oh. My. God. What happened to you?” Gigi’s perfectly glossed mouth dropped open in shock. “Meagan, are you OK?”
“No, no, I am not,” I told her, in a voice I meant to be much friendlier, but I was pretty much done with everything at this point.
What I did not expect was for Gigi to step into the elevator, hit the emergency stop button, and wrap her arms around me. Was it Ninja-Hug Meagan in the Elevator Day? Did I miss a note on Jane’s calendar? I couldn’t quite relax the Frankenstein arms, but I did give her a sort of flipper pat on her shoulder.
“Whatever it was, don’t let it scare you away, OK?” she said, leveling those big blue eyes at me. “We need more nonpsychos working in this office.”
I snorted. “Thanks.”
Ben was staring at the two of us with a strange, conflicted expression on his face.
“Ben, not the time,” Jane told him, shaking her head.
“What?” Ben exclaimed. “My ex-girlfriend is in close contact with my . . . sire lady person friend. These thoughts can’t be helped.”
“Try harder,” Jane scolded.
“Oh, Ben!” Gigi scowled, slapping at his arm.
Meanwhile, my jaw dropped as I stared at Ben’s “sorry not sorry” face.
“OK, well, Ben, you are done for the night. I’ve shut your computer down and clocked you out,” Gigi said, handing him his bag. “Jane, I’ve shut you and Meagan down for the night, as you requested in your cryptic and completely misspelled text—which makes way more sense now. Meagan, it seems that we’re still hugging with one arm.”
“I didn’t know whether to say something or not,” I told her. “As Ben’s sire lady person friend.”
Ben groaned.
“Good luck with that,” Gigi said, jerking her head toward him, making me snicker.
“I have Jane to take over the weirdest of the siring duties,” I said with a shrug.
Gigi’s dark brows rose. “No, I mean, you and Ben—”
“Thank you, Gigi. I think we’re abusing the emergency stop function at this point,” Jane interjected. “We’re going home for the night. If anyone asks, you didn’t see us.”
Gigi gave a little salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
If Gigi wasn’t
careful, I was going to end up liking her. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
8
Don’t be offended when your childe clings to remembrances of his or her former life. It’s not a criticism of your siring. It’s proof that you chose the right sort of human to bring over to the “dark side.”
—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire
I thought Gabriel would try to make the house somber and soothing, like a spa, to make us feel better after the hellacious night we’d had. But we drove down the River Oaks driveway to find the whole house lit up. Bright, jazzy music was floating out of the kitchen. And Georgie was bouncing on her toes in the foyer, looking like Satan’s favorite pixie.
Gabriel came strolling out of the kitchen, wearing an apron that read “Bite the Cook,” with three steins full of blood in hand.
“Please don’t hug me,” I told him.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Gabriel deadpanned. “Jane said you might need a little TLC. This is a mix of donor blood and pulverized marrow—don’t ask what kind. It’s guaranteed to help heal up any of the injuries you might have sustained tonight.”
Jane accepted her mug with a kiss from her hubby. “I get one, too?”
“Yes, because Gabriel worries that you work too many hours and don’t feed properly,” Georgie informed her.
“She’s not wrong,” Gabriel said, ruffling Georgie’s hair. Georgie scowled and rubbed a hand over her head, but she sidled just a step closer to him. “This is just the appetizer course. Go upstairs and wash up. We’ll sit at the table in a few minutes.”
I downed my entire stein of blood while jogging up the stairs to my bedroom. Georgie hounded me, skipping up the banister with no apparent fear of falling. She hopped off at the landing and followed at my heels. Finally, I turned around and stopped her in her tracks.
“What’s up, Georgie?”
“There’s a package on your bed,” Georgie informed me. “It’s from Ophelia. It arrived after you left for work. I can’t tell what’s in it, and it’s driving me slightly mad.”