AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And you’re damn lucky he is.”
“Or what would happen? Would you kill me in revenge?”
I clenched my fists at my sides. “Feeling the way I do right now? All bets are off.”
He raised a brow. “Then who would help you with your unfortunate little problem, Jill? There’s no one else alive who has as much knowledge as I do when it comes to parachemistry.”
“I guess I’d just have to figure it out. Because if Declan had just died because of what your research, when it’s clear to me that it was purely for vengeance...” I hissed out a breath.“I would have taken his stake and plunged it into your throat myself.”
There was a time, not so long ago, that if I’d tried to land a line like that it would have received a look of amusement, not wariness. Not today though.
Dr. Reynolds grimaced. “I thought you were a nice girl, Jill.”
“Maybe once. Not any longer.”
“I am a man of science. Everything I do is for the greater good.”
“Funny, that looked more like straight-up vengeance than science to me.”
“I lost my wife because of your dhampyr lover. Do you blame me?”
“Yes. I blame you.” I sent a look toward the door. “Wait until Jackson hears about what you just did to his friend. He’s going to be furious.”
Before the doctor could reply to that, I heard a cell phone start to ring. Lawrence winced and fished into the pocket of his lab coat.
“Bad timing, I know,” he said. “But I really have to take this.”
The doctor gestured that it was all right, and Lawrence took the call.
“Yes?” he said. “Yes, that’s right. Tell me what you’ve learned.”
The vampire made me nervous, but he wasn’t my first priority. Declan was. Dr. Reynolds had used a huge dose of the tranquilizer on him. The dhampyr was strong both mentally and physically, easily the strongest man I’d ever known, but he was completely out of it right now.
His eyepatch had shifted, so I gently put it back into place before I traced my finger lightly along the scar that started on his forehead and ran down past his patch to his jawline. The scar he’d gotten the day he’d lost his eye.
It was a reminder of how much he’d had to endure in his life. So much blood and pain and loss. Declan Reyes protected me ninety-nine percent of the time since the day we met. Now I would protect him for the remaining one percent. Whatever it took.
“Declan,” I whispered as I stroked his forehead. “Please wake up.”
His eyelid fluttered but didn’t open.
“You’re still alive,” I told him, just in case he needed the reminder. “My blood didn’t kill you. I’m guessing it hurt like hell, though, and I’m so sorry for that. The moment you wake up, we’re getting the hell out of here.”
“Jill, it’s time we got started,” Dr. Reynolds said.
I glared at him. “With what?”
“With the samples of your blood to keep in reserve.”
The audacity of his request after what he’d just pulled nearly made me laugh in his face. “After what you just did to Declan? Go fuck yourself.”
His jaw tightened. “I see now that I shouldn’t have allowed my personal feelings to get in the way of my work.”
“You figured that out all by yourself? Amazing. Congrats, on that. But, sorry, I’m not really in the right frame of mind to be all that cooperative today. All I want to know is if Declan’s going to survive this.”
“If he’s survived this long after being injected with your blood, I believe he has a good chance to recover from my experiment. The Nightshade appears to fatally affect only full vampires, not dhampyrs.”
His voice held a noticeable edge of disappointment that only pissed me off more than I already was.
