I dragged myself inside before night actually fell and hobbled over to the basic lab equipment I kept in the back room. I’d collected it by hook and by crook, at auctions and bankruptcy sales, sometimes through rare grants or prize money. Some of it, I was pretty sure, had fallen off a truck on its way somewhere else. As I fiddled with the glassware and tried to order my thoughts, my attention drifted to those intractable problems that didn’t yet have a solution. Part of me still didn’t want to believe that Dragomir was a vampire. Surely predators of that caliber didn’t exist in the wild. How had humanity survived so long with vampires among us?
But like Dragomir said, if vampires killed or turned us all, they lost an important food source. Their ideal food source, apparently. Maybe animal blood didn’t provide the same nutrients or just didn’t taste as good. I made a face. Sometimes knowing ‘why’ wasn’t helpful at all, and it could contaminate one’s objectivity. I’d just chalk what Dragomir said up to the circle of life and food scarcity and the natural order reasserting itself.
Or maybe vampires fell into the category of parasites, feeding off the human population. They could themselves be the virus circulating through humanity and culling the weak away. If Dragomir wanted me to believe that vampires evolved into a more advanced predator from some hominid, then perhaps vampiric predation contributed to human evolution as well by making us stronger and faster and less susceptible to their attacks. I made a note to ask about how frequently human fledglings died during whatever change occurred, in order to isolate any characteristics or environmental factors that increased the chance of survival. If vampires were a virus, surely antibodies developed.
I paused. If human blood was preferable to animal blood, then some aspect of human blood made it more enjoyable. Could the degree of enjoyable be affected by diet, the presence or absence of mind-altering substances, the antigens or Rh factor, age, or ethnic background? If so, that created an opportunity to create vampire-repellant or even poisonous blood that killed upon biting. Fascinating. I could potentially expedite the human evolution of defensive measures against vampiric attack.
I searched for clean slides and the microscope I’d gotten for my fifth birthday – a clunky, massive metal thing that was more useful for smashing spiders than it was for reviewing samples. But the familiarity almost always calmed me.
Defensive measures would have to wait until I was certain all the vampire blood cleared my own system, or until I had enough in my system to understand the interaction to devise some experiments. I didn’t even want to think about the difficulty of obtaining a variety of blood samples to test the hypotheses. Getting caught ordering bags of blood was the last thing I needed.
My hands trembled as I found a sterile scalpel and cut into the soft part of my arm to get a few drops of blood onto the slides. I didn’t have UV bulbs to test the destructive effects on my samples, but at least I could see whether the cells looked abnormal under the microscope. It took several weeks to fully replace blood cells throughout the body, so something should have shown up on the slides.
The cabin creaked and settled as a wind blew up outside, and the whispers that filtered through the drafty windows brought the scent of snow. It was far too early for a deep freeze but that didn’t mean we were safe from frost. My hands shook enough it took three tries to prep the slides and fit them into the clips on the microscope. I breathed deep before I looked down at them, no longer certain whether I wanted to see abnormalities or not.
If I did, it was all true and Dragomir was a vampire and I’d taken the deal to help him in exchange for finding Jamie. If I didn’t… then I had major hallucinations or some kind of psychotic break and deeper issues that needed the kind of therapy one completed in a straightjacket and not in a friendly office.
I increased the strength of the magnification and fiddled with the focus. The cells looked normal initially, though as I focused and moved the slides, outliers appeared. Deformed. Abnormal and aggressive as they invaded healthy cells, even defending against white cells.
I straightened and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. Just because I had vampire blood mixed in mine didn’t mean I’d become a vampire. Dragomir said so. I should have smacked my head on the desk at my own stupidity, believing what a vampire told me. Although he lost a valuable asset if I turned into something like him – I wouldn’t be walking in the light either, which would really hamper my research.
Slowly limping around the room on my crutches didn’t do me much good, even though pacing usually helped me think. My back ached along with my side from leaning over the unwieldy microscope. But I circled back to the makeshift lab bench half a dozen times, making more slides, peering through the lenses, searching for abnormalities. Every slide showed the same thing every time I looked at it. The same abnormalities acting in the same manner toward healthy cells. It didn’t matter where I took the blood from.
The evidence supported the idea that Dragomir was a vampire and his blood still mixed with mine.
So there it was.
I set aside the remaining doubts and breathed in the certainty that he was a vampire. The realization settled in and my world view slowly adjusted to make room for what I might have called magic just a few days earlier. Various conclusions and truths I’d held for some time shifted and expanded to account for Dragomir and what his existence suggested. If vampires existed, so could any of the mythical creatures that stalked popular culture. It took my breath away as I sat and stared at the microscope from across the room. That was it. That was my proof that cryptids and things humans could not conceive of as real actually existed and walked among us. I couldn’t share the proof with anyone, unfortunately, but at least I knew, all the way to my bones, that I’d been right all along.
Vampires existed and brought strengths to my search that no one else offered. The detectives could keep looking – however much they actually were – and someone else might stumble across something useful, but I wasn’t holding my breath anymore.
New resolve filled me as I cleaned up the slides and carefully stored away my microscope. I always liked having a plan, knowing the way forward and the next steps. I needed to make progress and figure out what to show Dragomir sooner rather than later.
I limped to my bedroom so I could put on heavier clothes, just in case the wind kicked up and brought real snow, and hobbled back to the porch after picking up my laptop. I peered out at the trees that surrounded three sides of the cabin, but nothing stirred in the darkness.
Archer’s team offered an interesting alternative to relying solely on Dragomir or the detectives. Who were they really, though, and who did they work for? Who funded them and would benefit from my cooperation in their project? Did it mean a documentary and serious exploration of cryptozoology, or were they just looking for a typical train-wreck reality tv dumpster fire? What if they asked to see the physical evidence I’d collected and tested? If they wanted more research, would they pay for lab time and supplies? How quickly would I lose control once they got involved?
Too many questions flurried around me.
They’d already done some research, though, and begun filming. They looked like serious people, businesslike and professional. I couldn’t see Archer attaching himself to a ghost-hunting show or something equally ridiculous, so maybe they meant it to be a documentary. They could approach the problem from a different angle than I had, and could potentially bring in new data to add to my own. What other information would they include in the show, other than mine?
Maybe they’d uncover something I’d missed, and if they’d tracked cryptids in other locations, their professional connections could be exploited to expand my network as well. I pondered whether the risk of being around Archer and his team outweighed the potential benefit of them finding Jamie before Dragomir did, thus freeing me from my arrangement with the vampire and eliminating that lingering moral issue that tugged at the back of my mind. I’d already slipped once and joked about vampires and werewolves. What if they actually believed me and drew Dragomir’s attention?
I frowned as I eased into the shaky Adirondack chair I’d occupied when Archer dropped me off, and opened my laptop to search for UV-resistant clothing and materials. A protective physical barrier of some kind would give Dragomir limited protection but could be implemented faster than any sort of medical or genetic intervention. That might be the only way to show him progress inside a week, as he demanded.
I also opened a file for brainstorming and potential courses of action, noting down every wild idea and consideration. I needed to up my game in biomedical research, particularly genetic sequencing and isolation, cloning and genetic engineering, polymerase chain reactions, and countless other techniques. Hematology was a must, given the role blood played in the problem, and microbiology, infectious diseases, theories on vaccinations…
Dermatology and dentistry would also come into play, no doubt. Cardiology, maybe, even though his heart didn’t beat. Neurology to account for his ability to reason and function without oxygenation and electrical signals via the nerves. I needed an autoclave and mass spectrometer, a biomedical closet, centrifuges, hematology analyzers, coagulation analyzers, incubators, samples and growth media, antibodies, more glassware, better microscopes, some kind of protective gear and an actual eyewash station and emergency shower to avoid contamination. The list grew and grew until I gave up trying to calculate how much it would cost. I could potentially purchase time in the university lab, if my truck would make the drive, although they usually had uncomfortable questions on why, precisely, a non-medical doctor wanted to sequence genes and possibly clone something. Besides, that created the potential that someone else would look at the vampire blood samples and identify the extent of the abnormalities and attempt to conduct their own research. I groaned and rubbed my temples but got lost down the rabbit hole of a new intellectual challenge.
My fingers stiffened in the cold and I debated whether to get up and get a blanket. I wanted the fresh air outside and the feeling of the sky opening up overhead after so long in Dragomir’s cave and the sterile hospital, even if it made my toes ache. The chill just reminded me that I’d survived.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Maybe I wasn’t smarter than Archer after all.