18. A Bloody Mystery
Chapter eighteen
A Bloody Mystery
Julian
I n all my years, I had never tasted anything as exquisite as Nicolette.
She was rain after a drought—earthy, life-giving, sublime. One drop of her blood on my tongue and I felt something I had not felt since before the night I had become this . . . thing. This creature who now drank in his beautiful bride the way he might savor a rare vintage.
I took in her every nuance as my mouth moved over hers, as our tongues tangled in a dance I had no right to enjoy.
Her pulse thrummed everywhere—against my lips, beneath my hands as my fingers pressed into the warm flesh of her legs.
Her body yielded to me in a way it never had before, and it undid me.
It tore through the last shreds of restraint I’d been clinging to.
I wanted to savor her.
To claim her.
To drown in her.
My hunger roared, silencing every noble intention I had ever held. It was inevitable that I would lose myself. And her.
But then—something impossible happened.
With every drop of her blood, the monster in me . . . quieted. The frenzy eased. The darkness receded inch by inch.
And somehow, I found the will to stop.
Nicolette gazed up at me, wide-eyed and trembling. Her lip still bleeding. She looked like an animal caught in a trap—terrified, braced for the killing blow.
I’d never felt so ashamed. To think about what I had just done to her. To know because of what I was, she had given in to me and no doubt detested herself and me for it.
But then something shifted in her expression. The fear and loathing drained away, replaced by something far more startling.
“Julian,” she breathed, wiping at her lip, staining her fingers crimson. “Your eyes. They’re blue. The prettiest blue I have ever seen.”
“Impossible.” I stared at her fingers, the urge to taste them ever present, but somehow I was able to control myself. “My eyes only turn blue after the plasma treatment.” After feeding, they always bled into that ghastly shade of red I despised. But I didn’t wish to mention it.
She sat up—seemingly unconcerned that she was still in the arms of a creature who had nearly lost control—and stared at me as though witnessing a miracle.
“Julian, I’m telling the truth. How do you feel? You look more like yourself.”
Oddly, I felt as though I’d taken the plasma treatment. Not entirely—but close. “I feel as if the edge has been taken off.”
“Is this what usually happens when you drink blood?” she asked, sounding for all the world like she was conducting a routine physical.
“Not at all.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what true satiation felt like—the fleeting satisfaction, the crushing loathing that followed, the intrusive thoughts of finding my next willing victim . . . or the next criminal whose sins I might use to justify consuming. None of that would help her now.
“Then what happened? I don’t understand,” she said, bewildered yet fascinated.
Neither did I. But there were more pressing concerns than solving the mystery of my physiology—at least in this moment. Not that this turn of events didn’t intrigue me. It most certainly did. But . . .
“Nicolette, I cannot apologize enough for what just happened. I never meant to hurt you. I was wrong to think I could control myself around you in that state. Your blood has always called to me. I should have known better. Please forgive me. And I beg you—administer the plasma treatment now. This is far too dangerous an exercise.”
“My mom used to say the best science—the best discoveries—are always the most dangerous.”
She hopped off my lap with a gleam in her eye that puzzled me. Now she was frightening me. “I need a sample of your blood and mine, right now.”
“Nicolette, no. My humanity is not worth risking your life.”
I should never have asked her to attempt any of this. I was a bastard for it, and I knew I would never forgive myself.
“Julian, this is now about more than just curing you. Something strange is going on. Don’t you want to know why my blood is acting like the plasma treatment? I know I do. And . . .” She hesitated.
“What is it?”
“It was the first time I truly understood why you don’t want to be a vampire.
” Her voice softened, almost reluctantly.
“I could tell you had no control over yourself and that you hated it. I hated it too—how all I wanted to do was let you have every part of me. There was no talking myself out of it. Honestly, every part of me was cheering it on. That’s . . . frightening.”
I took her hand, ashamed. “Nicolette, I will never forgive myself for making you feel that way.”
“I know.” She squeezed my fingers. “I saw it in your eyes. You were as scared as I was. You don’t deserve to be out of control of yourself. No one does.”
Her words struck deeper than she could have known. “I apologize if being married to me feels as though you aren’t in control. That was never my intention.”
“Well, at least you’re a good cook and you don’t have morning breath,” she teased.
It did nothing to ease my guilt. If anything, it sharpened it. But I couldn’t let her go—at least not now. She was in more danger than ever before. And I had this foreboding feeling about the effect her blood had on me.
She tugged on my hand, urging me to rise. “Come on, let’s figure this out. Together,” she added.
She had no idea how dangerous that word was for me—“together.” Still, I stood and followed her to the kitchen table, though dread coiled in my gut. What if I lost control again? What if this time I couldn’t stop? What if her blood’s effect had been nothing more than a fleeting anomaly?
But she was right—we needed to understand what had just happened.
Nicolette urged me into a chair while she grabbed a fresh draw kit and vials, dabbing at her bleeding lip with the back of her hand. Her courage never ceased to astonish me.
“I can heal your lip, if you trust me to.”
She paused, tilting her head. “How?”
I revealed my fangs—as she called them.
She shuddered immediately.
“Relax,” I said gently, hoping to reassure her. I released a single drop of what one might call “venom” onto my fingertip. In small doses, it could heal.
Nicolette tilted her head, studying the process and the drop of shimmering liquid on my finger.
“Don’t even think about analyzing it,” I warned her playfully—though I meant every word. If humans ever discovered what we were capable of, they would hunt us without mercy.
She grinned. “Fine. Heal me.” She leaned toward me.
Gently—carefully—fighting the instinct to consume her again, I brushed my finger against her wound. Her eyes widened, silently begging me not to let her lose control of herself again.
“That tingles,” she whispered. “You’re not turning me part vampire, are you?”
“I would never do that to you. I would never wish this life on you.” But God help me, I was beginning to wish for a life with her.
She ran her fingers over her now-healed lip. “That’s amazing. Freaky, but amazing.”
I stared at the smear of her blood left on my fingertip. The internal struggle—whether to partake of it—raged through me like a storm.
“It’s yours if you want it,” she offered.
“I couldn’t. Shouldn’t,” I reasoned.
“Let’s call it a fair trade. Besides, I’m going to need you to drink my blood again.”
“Hell, Nicolette,” I groaned.
“I know we’re playing with fire. But I’m beginning to think it’s the only way we won’t get burned.”
She turned back to her work, and I—weak fool that I was—let myself taste the drop of her blood still on my finger. Just a drop, and it was intoxicating. Stabilizing. Healing in a way I didn’t understand.
“Roll up your sleeve,” Nicolette said, already snapping the tourniquet between her fingers.
I didn’t dare get in her way. I watched in wonder as she worked—efficient, focused, utterly fearless.
She drew my blood, then her own. She labeled each vial with quick, practiced strokes before placing them in the centrifuge.
She monitored my vitals, my eyes, the tremor in my hands.
She wanted to see my irises return to the cold black of hunger.
And I let her.
Somehow, I found the strength not to harm her. Not until she could get another sample. Not until we understood why her blood had quieted the monster in me.
And when she had taken her samples, she offered me two vials of her blood.
I partook of them the way I might savor an expensive bourbon.
But she was better than any alcohol that had ever touched my lips.
She made me feel like myself in ways I couldn’t explain—ways not even the plasma treatment had ever managed.
She smiled when my eyes shifted. “Azure,” she called it.
“I have to know what this means,” she exclaimed.
With more excitement than I’d ever seen from her, she began retrieving the separated blood from the vials and preparing slides for the microscope.
She worked tirelessly, pausing only long enough to administer the plasma treatment through an IV.
She barely touched the food I brought her as she studied slide after slide, jotting down her notes by hand, her focus absolute.
Late into the night, she finally gave a small cheer as I paced behind her, trying to glean anything I could from her writings.
“Julian, your blood is interacting with mine in a way that suggests metabolic suppression. Something in my plasma has a high binding affinity for whatever mutation you carry. I can’t identify the molecule here—I need the lab for that—but I can see its footprint.
Something in my blood is doing . . . something impossible. We need to go to the lab right now.”
I fell into the chair beside her, stunned by this revelation.
I wasn’t a doctor or a scientist—I always left that arena to Cyrus—but I knew enough to know bloody well that we were standing on the edge of something that could never leave this room.
Not even my family could know. Nicolette was already in too much danger.
And if what she was telling me about her blood was true, her life would be in constant peril.
“Nicolette, I don’t know if we should risk it. Let’s wait until after our ‘honeymoon.’ It would look too suspicious if we left after making such a point about staying in.”
“This can’t wait.” Her voice trembled with conviction. “I have a feeling my mom knew about this and this is why she died.”
“What are you talking about?”
She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. I could see the battle raging inside her—the weight of a promise, the fear of breaking it, the terror of what it might mean if she didn’t. After several long moments, she opened her eyes and locked on to mine.
“Julian, what I’m about to tell you . . . I swore to my mother I would tell no one. But I feel like I have no choice. And you must swear to me that you will tell no one. Not Cyrus, not your parents, not Amos. This stays between us.”
It was an easy choice for me. Far easier than I ever dreamed. “I swear.”
“I can’t believe I have to trust my husband,” she said, chagrined.
“It’s awful. I’m sorry, darling.”
I took her trembling hand—still dusted with dried latex and flecks of blood—and held it between my own.
She hemmed and hawed, blowing out long, shaky breaths.
“I told you my mother called me right before she died. What I didn’t tell you is what she said.
She kept apologizing, saying there was something she should have told me but didn’t because she was afraid to.
She said she was working on something. Something I had to finish.
She told me to take her laptop and not tell anyone about it. Not even my father.”
“What’s on her laptop?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been able to break into her protected files. I’ve tried and tried.”
“What makes you think what’s on that laptop is related to how your blood reacts to mine?”
“Because . . .” She paused, her expression softening with memory.
“I remember a summer when I was home from school. My mom was showing me some new techniques in the lab. We used my blood, which wasn’t unusual—we used each other’s blood all the time when I was growing up.
I practically lived in the lab with her. ”
A small smile tugged at her lips. “But this one time was different. She was analyzing my blood, and there was this moment when she got excited. Like . . . big-discovery excited. But when I asked her about it, all she said was, You have beautiful blood, Nicolette .”
“Do you think she used your blood to discover the plasma therapy for porphyria?”
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “She discovered that a few years before this. And I know what protein she isolated for that discovery, and I’ve never seen it react this way. This is different.”
She thought for a moment, chewing on her lip. “But what I don’t understand is how and why she knew what she was looking at. How long had she known about your world? Or maybe she saw something different from what I’m seeing here. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.”
“I don’t believe you are.”
The truth settled over me like a weight. “We need to break into your mother’s files. And we must never tell anyone. I don’t know where this will lead, but I fear for your life more than ever.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“I suppose we’d better take a field trip to the lab. I’ll have to think up some plausible excuse.” The sooner we knew what we were dealing with, the better.
“We can just say we’re fulfilling a fantasy of mine,” she quipped, cheeks flushing. “You know, to keep up with the whole honeymoon thing and pretending we are madly in love.”
It . . . wasn’t an awful excuse.
“Shall we go make your fantasies come true?”
“Uh . . .” she cleared her throat, flustered. “Like a major-scientific-discovery fantasy?”
“I suppose we will settle for that.” I kissed her forehead and lingered, wishing it could be so much more. That we could be more.