31. Truth Telling
Chapter 31
Truth Telling
Penthouse suite—A short time later
T he blood sample Cerissa placed in the refrigerator could stay there, or she could test the vial. She caught sight of Henry’s silhouette again and decided there was no time like the present. She left a note by the room’s phone, telling him where she’d gone, and grabbed the single tube and his ruined shirt. Flashing to the Enclave lab was safest—no one from the Hill would accidentally see her there.
She went into full scientist mode. Assays for each poison a vampire was susceptible to proved negative. She ran tests for aqueous silver and certain narcotics—although narcotics wouldn’t cause bleeding, they might temporarily incapacitate a vampire until their accelerated healing took care of the problem.
The failure to clot bothered her the most. Silver would keep a wound from healing, otherwise, she’d never read of a vampire bleeding out.
So she ran additional tests to check red blood cell count, coagulation tests for clotting ability, tests for defective platelet function, and a look under the microscope to see whether he had any damaged or abnormal blood cells—that is, for a vampire.
The coagulation tests showed bleeding like she would expect in someone who took blood thinners, like heparin or warfarin. If the attacker had injected him with a high-dose anticoagulant, the medication might have triggered a bleeding problem, but it was too late to check for injection sites. By now, any such mark would have healed. So she ran assays for heparin and warfarin. Nothing.
She noted the results and stared at them. A reduction in the naturally occurring clotting factor could also cause bleeding. She smacked her forehead with her hand. To avoid having to add chemicals to clone blood, she’d removed the clotting factor. Could that be it?
The chemical solutions that were added to donor blood to stop it from clotting—preservatives and anticoagulants—were what resulted in the aftertaste most vampires hated. Those additives didn’t wipe out the naturally occurring clotting factor, but they kept the donor blood from clotting in the bag, and apparently vampire physiology could counteract those chemicals without issue.
She’d removed the clotting factor from clone blood so clots wouldn’t form in the bag, producing a superior-tasting product. But in doing so, had she removed a nutritional component they needed, one their own bodies couldn’t produce? She’d never thought to research whether vampire physiology was missing the clotting factor—not with the way vampires healed.
Mulling over the question, she made another connection—tonight’s bleeding had slowed as soon as he drank the donor blood.
Could modified clone blood be responsible for creating the problem? Henry had been on a steady diet of clone blood for weeks because she’d been able to quadruple production. After construction of her Biologics Research Lab finished in July, she’d expanded operations and designed a streamlined harvesting process, which meant they harvested a few pints from each clone daily, and packaged the blood for sale to the vampire communities. She had no problem keeping Henry fully stocked, and a month ago, he’d reduced his order of expired donor blood to zero.
She’d have to warn Henry, Rolf, and Tig about the danger of solely relying on clone blood for their nutrition.
There was one more test she wanted to run. The swab of Henry’s knuckles. An hour later, her V-DNA analysis revealed it was only Henry’s blood.
She then retrieved his bloody shirt—she’d left it drying in her upstairs bathroom—and spread it on the lab table. Painstakingly testing every spot for the attacker’s blood seemed futile, since they had no suspect to compare her results against, and Henry had bled so profusely his shirt looked like it had been tie-dyed using rust. The odds of finding someone else’s V-DNA weren’t great.
The need to ensure his wellbeing nagged at her. She’d left him alone long enough. Returning to the hotel, she searched the unoccupied rooms and discovered Henry still wasn’t back. With a sigh, she sent a group text warning them about the risks behind an exclusive diet of clone blood. She then changed into comfortable sweatpants and a t-shirt, piled the pillows against the headboard, and lay back on the bed. Turning on the television, she picked a comedy movie, hoping to lighten her mood. When she heard Henry enter through the door of the suite, she stayed where she was, curling her fingers in the blankets and holding herself in place.
Let him come to me when he’s ready.
It wasn’t too long before he entered the bedroom. He sat on the bed next to her but said nothing. She turned off the movie. “Hi, Quique.”
He took her hand and kissed the palm, then deliberately guided her fingers, wrapping them around his left wrist, directly over where she’d implanted the crystal a year ago. The full impact of his emotions washed through her. Fear, loss, sadness—all tasted like burnt rubber on her lips, and the way his shoulders slumped spoke of defeat.
“There was another vampire on the ship, and I never knew. I let my guard down. I allowed myself to be distracted.”
“Henry, the attack wasn’t your fault.” She hadn’t missed the guilt in his words. “There are threats around us daily—”
“They could have killed me. They could have hurt you.”
She gave up trying to argue against his feelings. His over-developed sense of responsibility was just part of whom she’d married. “We should call Tig and report the attack.”
Henry’s feelings of shame shot through the crystal connection. “She doesn’t need to know anything. It’s outside her jurisdiction.”
“But it could be the person who threatened you, Evelina, and Mikhail. Or it could be the person who killed Petar.”
He wrinkled his forehead, his eyes averted and unfocused. “Why would they follow me on the cruise and wait for the last day to attack? No, your theory makes no sense.”
“What makes no sense is failing to report the attack to Tig. The more information she has, the better able she is to defend the Hill.” Cerissa stroked his cheek, hoping to persuade him without pushing too hard. “You have nothing to be ashamed about. You defended yourself and made it back to me alive.”
He caught her fingers and raised them to his lips. “Perhaps.”
“We can discuss this later.” Using her other hand, she loosened the button at his collar. “Right now, I want to see how you’re healing.”
“I am vampire,” he scoffed, clasping his hand over hers and blocking her from unbuttoning his shirt. “The wound will heal without your help.”
“Please?”
“I do not need to be babied by you.”
She released his shirt, gliding her hand to his face to stroke his cheek again. “I have news to share. I’ll tell you while I examine both sets of wounds.” She tilted her head to the side, giving him an adoring look he rarely resisted. “Please?”
He harrumphed but unbuttoned the shirt. “I can feel the flesh is healing well.”
She gently traced her fingers over the two furrows that had crusted over and closed. They were almost healed. “Is the muscle still sore?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
She morphed into vampire form and bit her wrist.
He grabbed her arm to stop her. “Why did you do that?”
“I want to heal the wound faster.”
“Rolf already applied his blood.”
“A little more might help.”
“But we have never tested the healing power of your blood in that form. I do not know if it will work. Besides…” He hesitated and looked away from her. “What if there are side effects we don’t know about yet? Perhaps we should test its healing power when we aren’t on our honeymoon?”
He’d already sipped her vampire blood a few nights ago and nothing bad happened. But she accepted the excuse. Through the crystal, his shame, his sense of powerlessness, and his fear of being perceived weak slid into her mind again, and her heart ached for him.
“Okay.” She reached for her purse and got out the vampire blood salve. She spread some along the ridges of the wound on his neck. It would help with both sensitivity and soreness. “And your leg?”
“It will heal.”
She sighed. “Please let me see that wound.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You will not relent until you’ve doctored both wounds again, even though your actions are unnecessary.” He rolled over onto his stomach on the bed.
She brushed off the sand stuck to his calf. Hmm . That bite was not as far along in the healing process, though much further along than if he’d been human. He shouldn’t have gone into the water with open wounds, but scolding him would prove Ari right, so she applied some of the salve without comment. The puncture wounds closed a bit more.
See? Ari was wrong. She could learn.
“Now, you have something to tell me?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.” She screwed the cap back on the jar of salve. “I don’t think you were poisoned. I think a sole diet of clone blood can cause excessive bleeding.”
He flipped onto his back and sat up. “Truly?”
“You didn’t see my text message?”
“No. I left my phone here, charging.”
“Your blood is having trouble clotting. I flashed to my lab and tested the blood sample Antonio drew. I didn’t detect a foreign anticoagulant. So my working theory is that you need a mixed diet—clone blood and mortal donor blood, the latter of which provides the clotting factor. I’m sorry.”
He pulled her onto his lap, hugging her close. “You have nothing to be sorry about. Clone blood is still a boon, even if I must drink donor blood to supplement my diet. A small price for the freedom you’ve given us.”
“If you say so.” She didn’t exactly agree, but accepted his appreciation with a nod. “Oh, and I brought some donor bags back with me. You and Rolf can share.”
He laid his forehead against her shoulder. The way he did so told her there was more. She waited for him to speak.
“It is likely we’ll see Jill at the beach party. You need to be wary around her. I don’t trust her. I never have, of course, but before I locked her in, she propositioned me.”
Fire burned through Cerissa. “She what?”
“She offered to have sex with me.”
“Why would she try to seduce you? After we helped her, why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. I feel bad—”
“You have nothing to feel bad about. That’s on her, not you.”
“Yes, I know. I turned her down. Forcefully. But I can’t help thinking the situation was my fault, that I’d done or said something to make her think I’d be receptive to her proposition.”
“I don’t believe that.”
He nodded. “I spoke with Father Matt about what happened, and he shared some details with me about her. Details that explain why she acted in such a way. It’s not entirely her failing. She is a product of her childhood.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We have seen the syndrome before, vampires who are locked in the same patterns of their mortal lives, reliving—or attempting to relive—the same events over and over, hoping they will come out differently.”
“The same patterns? You think because the predator—Fred—turned her, that she…what?”
“I think she responds to men in authority positions with sexual overtures, because of her maker—a predator—but also because her father, or another adult male during her childhood, sexually abused her. It was what Father Matt didn’t say, what he held back, that led me to that belief.”
“That’s terrible,” Cerissa said. “I can’t imagine how mortals can do that to their own children.”
“I know, cari?a . But I think that is the source of Jill’s pattern. I forced her to stop live feeding. I should have anticipated a rebellion—I just didn’t expect it to take that form.”
“How could you have?”
“I could have asked Father Matt how she might rebel. I could have thought through the consequences of forcing her to change her feeding behavior.”
“Which is why you needed space to talk with him alone.”
Henry stroked her hair. “Yes. I had to…process her behavior…before sharing what happened.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Cerissa took in a deep, shuddering breath, struggling with her emotions. She hated Jill for propositioning her husband, yet felt empathy for the woman over the abuse she’d suffered. “I wish there was something we could do for her.”
“Refusing to participate in her games is the only thing we can do. When she is ready, she knows where to find help. Ironically, she turned and abandoned a man who could have helped her break the pattern.”
She brushed her fingertips over his lips. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know. But be careful around her. For your own sake, do not be alone with her.”