I used a rolling desk chair to slide between Jamie’s room and mine to come up with a schematic for where everything was. I didn’t want to waste time running from room to room because I couldn’t remember where the mass spectrometer ended up.
And I finally got to hug the damn thing. I’d tried while the guys hooked it up and they looked at me funny when I stroked the machine and whispered how much I loved it. I grinned and patted the mass spec again, and gave a little love to everything else in the room, too. For the first time since I’d left the hospital and faced how much work I had to do for Dragomir, hope outweighed the sheer overwhelming pile of impossibilities.
With all those machines, I could actually run the experiments I needed and sequence genes, even edit them, explore whatever mechanisms caused Dragomir’s conditions, and get traction on where to examine next. It felt possible that I could actually uncover a cure for the sunlight allergy. Maybe I could cure vampirism itself, or create a vaccine. If it was a virus, then surely it could be prevented. The long-term effects that Dragomir already experienced probably couldn’t be reversed, but why not confirm that?
Of course, that assumed Dragomir wanted to reverse his condition. Maybe the vampire liked being a vampire or was psychopathic enough he actually enjoyed it.
The only question was, did the psychopathy predate the vampirism or was it a consequence of it? Perhaps psychopaths accepted a vampiric life more readily than someone without a personality disorder. I noted the potential research area. I’d need access to more vampires, though, and someone with expertise in diagnosing psychopathy. Maybe a psychiatrist who’d worked with serial killers and cannibals.
Blech. I shivered and set that aside for later. I didn’t like the icky meat-based sciences. Chem-bio, bioengineering, quantum chemistry… that was all micro enough you missed the fact that the cells came from real bodies that breathed and ate and shit and fucked and then died. Maybe not in that order.
I shook my head and rolled back to my room to assess the bench and ventilation hood. A plumber could probably put in the water line and drain for an eyewash station and emergency shower, but Dragomir hadn’t coughed up any cash for basic structural changes to accommodate the lab. Not to mention the amount my electric and water bills would skyrocket when I actually started using the stuff.
The sun had just sunk behind the trees by the time I had a good schematic of where everything was. And then it was time to fire it up. I grinned and would have bounced on my toes if not for that damn cast. My insides shivered in anticipation like a little kid waking up too early for Christmas. I felt it all the way to my bones. This was the start of something big. Something extraordinary. Groundbreaking and Earth-shattering.
Maybe finally satisfactory enough for a goddamn Nobel Prize.
I flipped on the bench lights and ventilation, then loaded up the autoclave to start sterilizing a load of instruments and fancy-ass glassware Dragomir sent. The vampire went for the Bentley options when I’d expected a Pinto. I mentally revised up the number of things I’d put on the next list, starting with a metal lab outside of my house so the autoclave didn’t burn the cabin down around me.
Although a portable biolab in my front yard might raise some eyebrows around town, even for the local looney Bigfoot hunter. I set that aside for another day, and sidled up to the fluorescent microscope and the photography equipment hooked up to it. Time to fire that bad boy up and see what it could show me. I got a bag of blood from the fridge and prepped a couple of slides, then held my breath as I flipped switches and got the cameras ready. I angled a lamp into a good position to view the slide, and turned it on.
Everything went black.
I froze, looking around in the darkness. As I reminded myself to breathe normally, a hint of greyish light wavered under the curtains. I exhaled. Power outage. Of course.
I shook my head, chalking the panic up to Archer talking about monster wolves around the cabin and a shadow figure hanging out. Superstitious nonsense. The new equipment overloaded the ancient circuits and blew the fuse, and hopefully didn’t short anything out permanently. Would that be just peachy.
I felt my way to the door, only banging my cast against a couple of things after my vision sort of adjusted, and hobbled to the kitchen to retrieve a flashlight and fresh batteries. Then it was just a matter of making my way outside to the junction box and braving the intensifying darkness and putting my back to whatever might have been out there hunting me.
Shivers worked down my spine until I hesitated in the doorway. It was stupid. I knew it was stupid. There wasn’t anything out there; I’d just let a silly story take over my imagination and drive all rational thought out my ears. Although…
Dragomir was out there. The wild man was out there still. It was a fact that there was something dangerous out there. Who knew whether the wild man could track me back to the cabin? Dragomir sure as hell knew where I was, although I was somewhat more certain he wouldn’t rush up behind me and drain me before snapping my neck.
I shook my head and picked up the shotgun, just in case, before sliding out into the near-dark under the waxing moon. The generator hadn’t kicked on, which also deserved investigation. Not that I wanted to do that in the dark with the heebie-jeebies lingering and imagination in overdrive.
Outside smelled crisp and piney with a hint of snow in the air. A chill slid through me as I stepped off the porch and headed to the side of the cabin where the electrical box waited. The last time I had to reset the breakers, a huge spiderweb full of egg sacs covered every inch of the thing. At the time the thing looked like one of those face-sized Huntsman spiders from Australia, but in the daylight the next morning, it was more the size of my palm.
I huffed under my breath. Procrastination was not getting the power back on any sooner, and it would get damn cold in the cabin, not to mention I could lose anything edible still in my fridge and freezer. Not to mention Dragomir’s blood. I swept the flashlight beam all around, searching for any lights reflecting at me, then held my breath and brushed off the latch for the electrical box.
The hinges protested in a long, drawn-out squeal as I hauled the door open. The flashlight would have helped a ton if the labels still retained any of their descriptions, but those had faded into ghostly blurs. Just wonderful. My miraculous brain sluggishly went through my memory palace, searching for the last time I’d seen the labels. Before I could decide, a stick snapped behind me.
My heart dropped and stopped at the same time. I spun, throwing the flashlight down so I could raise the shotgun, and slammed into something utterly immovable. It knocked the breath out of me. When I would have fallen, a cold white hand caught my arm and kept me upright.
I found myself staring up at an indifferent mask, foreign and terrifying, with reflective silver eyes. Every hair on my body stood on end. I lost the ability to move and the feeling in my limbs. Gulping for air didn’t help inflate my lungs. My vision darkened even more until all I saw were those mercury pools of hunger.