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“You can deny me access to your boyfriends, but you don’t speak for all the vampires in St. Louis.”
“You keep thinking that, Dr. Boden,” I said.
Ethan had finally found a parking space. It was going to be a tight fit for the SUV, but there was no way we were waiting for another spot to open up. “I’ll be right up, Doctor, so we can talk in person.”
“I look forward to explaining the science behind this new treatment to you.” He still hadn’t asked for my name, and I was going to wait until I could flash my badge to tell him.
22
Dr. Christopher Bodendidn’t disappoint. He was white, though if Echo and I were white, then it seemed the wrong word for his skin tone. He had an olive complexion like he’d tan darkly if he tried. But whatever I thought, he had that white male arrogance of someone who had been tall, in shape, all his life. Plus good at getting great grades, so he also thought he was brilliant, and maybe he was, but he relied on his charm, too. His short brown hair was cut and styled so that it flattered but did not distract from his square, manly jaw or the clear blue gaze of his twinkling eyes. They twinkled because he was smiling at me. The smile managed to be both boyishly good-looking and slightly condescending, as if once he’d aimed the smile at someone they would agree to his every wish and be happy to do so, but I wasn’t his usual audience.
“So let me test my understanding, Doctor. You want to use an experimental substance that you created in a lab so recently that there have been no human trials at all.”
“Vampire trials,” he corrected me. We were having the conversation in the little curtained area around Wicked and Truth’s beds on wheels. Our vampire attacker was only a few spaces down with a uniformed officer standing outside the curtained area. He was out cold just like Wicked and Truth. Echo and Fortune had let thedoctor give our attacker the new medicine first to see how it worked; only then did they let the doctor use it on our guys.
“Vampires are humans suffering from a disease, or didn’t you read the new paper about vampire brain activity mirroring that of coma patients? Proving that vampires don’t actually die, we just didn’t have the technology to detect the super-low brain activity.”
“Of course I read the paper.”
“Then you know the conclusions drawn from it.”
The smile drooped. “Yes, it supported, even vindicated my own theories. I believe that vampire biology will be the answer to ending aging in humans.”
“So you’re not trying to heal vampires.”
“That wasn’t the main aim of my study, but if we can help vampires heal wounds that they couldn’t normally heal and help humans age more like vampires, it’s a win-win.” He smiled, very pleased with himself.
“But you’ve only healed vampire skin in a petri dish in the lab, right?”
“Well, yes, but the results were very promising. I can offer your boyfriends a chance to be back to normal, to heal burn damage, which is impossible for them, or for shapeshifters.”
“What happens if you put the new ointment or whatever you’re calling it onto their wounds and it doesn’t work?”
“Then they’re no worse off then they were before,” he said.
“You have no idea what your invention will do to Wicked and Truth,” Fortune said.
“That is not entirely accurate,” he said, “but what are your other choices? You either allow me to try and heal them or they are forced to stay disfigured and crippled.”
“We have more options,” Kaazim said as he stepped closer to me.
“There are no other options,” the doctor said.
“We are graced with powers that you cannot comprehend.”
“What does that even mean?” Dr. Boden asked.
“It means no, Doctor,” I said.
“We are not going to give them over to you for experiments that are meant to benefit humans instead of us,” Echo said.
“What do you mean, ‘us’?”
Echo stood there slender and pale; her eyes were always big and beautiful, but with the eyeliner and makeup they were impossibly large. They dominated her face so that it was hard to notice its delicate oval shape, but once you did she was breathtaking. Literally I stood there and stared at her for a second, her beauty and her nearness freezing me in place so I could just stare.
She was the first woman I’d fallen in love with, or started to fall in love with, but she had asked for space. She had been fine with Fortune and her being part of our poly group, when it was just sex and a bid to be closer to the inner circle of power, that is, Jean-Claude and me. What she hadn’t expected was love. It hadn’t been Fortune who started to return my feelings, it had been Echo, and for whatever reason that had frightened her. So she’d asked for space in the poly group, and we’d all honored her request, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. I’d complied mainly by staying away from her, because if I wasn’t careful I stared at her like a lovestruck teenager.
She was head of security at Danse Macabre, so as long as I didn’t visit the dance club I didn’t run into her much. Tonight, Claudia and the other heads of security had chosen Echo and Fortune to help guard us, and I figured I could cope for one night.
