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I snorted at the idea.
It was a dangerous game to play to let dark magic into the shifter world. Vampires were made up of demon magic and a sad excuse for a second chance, but there were good ones, too. Like with everything, there were those who wanted to change the way things had once been, to do differently when they’d been given a new lease on life.
Lazlo was a good guy. He’d been there for me when I needed him. I could trust him, and having a vampire in my inner circle was what gave me the idea of reaching out and get more of them on board.
Like Jerry. Although, Jerry was nothing like Lazlo. I couldn’t stand the asshole.
He was an asshole I had to work with if I wanted to get this shit done, though. Sometimes, you did what you had to do. If I sacked Jerry, it would piss off the vampires, and I needed them on my side. I was trying to look at the bigger picture, and the vampires actually liked that son of a bitch.
I pushed into the lab. Liv was there alone with two vampires who worked with blood often. Who better to work with blood than the creatures who couldn’t survive without it?
Jerry was nowhere to be found. Damned if he would lift a finger to do any work. Why do it when someone else could be ordered to do it?
“What do we have?” I asked, walking to them where they stood huddled together over the new machine.
The machine tested blood samples, pinpointed the disorder, and suggested a cure, which we were in the process of making. It had taken decades of research to figure something out that we could use with positive results on human blood. I hoped that it wouldn’t take another couple of decades to fix the shit up for enchanted blood, too. We were close, though, judging by the paperwork we had already.
“We’re running the numbers now,” Liv said. She glanced up at me, her dark eyes wide and shimmering with excitement. She was invested in this. She cared. This wasn’t just a means to an end for her.
She wore a white coat, and her dark hair was up in a messy bun with fly away strands around her face. I fought the urge to tuck it behind her ear.
“What sample did you use?” I asked, picking up a clipboard.
“Oh, uh…” one of the vampires said. “The sample we had… well… the thing is—”
“Spit it out,” I growled at him. Bumbling fool.
“We dropped it,” the other vampire said and pointed to the floor, where a patch of dried blood still had shards of the test tube glass in it.
“And you don’t have another one?” I asked.
“Well, no. We had this sent over from—”
“What did you use, then?” I asked with a frown.
“I volunteered,” Liv said. “We didn’t want to waste time by putting the whole thing on hold, so we drew some of my blood, and it’s in the machine right now.”
I blinked at her. “What?”
“I didn’t think it would be such a big deal, I—”
Before she could finish her sentence, I grabbed the closest vampire by the throat. He offered a strained cry and clawed at my hands. I was stronger than him—a lot fucking stronger.
“She’s not a guinea pig,” I growled. “She’s running point on this project, and you just effectively took yourboss’sblood.”
“It’s okay, Colter, I volunteered,” Liv cried out. Her large eyes darted back and forth between my snarl and the vampire’s panicked face. Her lips were parted, and her pulse jumped wildly in her neck—I could smell the scent of her panic.
I planted the vampire on wobbly legs on the floor, and he backed away from me, fear on his face.
What was wrong with me? I’d acted on impulse. The idea that she’d been used for their purposes made me see red.
What the hell did I see red over a woman for?
“Coffee,” I snapped to the vampire, who tried to pull himself together.
I needed him to get out of my sight.
He got the message and nodded, hurrying out of the lab. An awkward silence filled the lab when he left, and Liv glanced away, refusing to make eye contact with me.
