Dragomir’s lips parted as he deliberately inhaled, tasting the air, and his eyes flashed dark as night. A strange sensation slid through me and the panic faded. His head tilted. I started to breathe but a vague sense of unease remained. It was Dragomir. Probably not an immediate threat, but still dangerous.
Irritation crossed his expression and he released me. “I do not like your mind. It is very busy.”
I jerked and shook off the haze. “What the hell did you do?”
“Mesmerism,” he said. The vampire scanned the electrical box, then flipped two switches over. “It is better for the meal. Prevents an adrenaline surge.”
“Oh,” I said weakly. Mesmerism? He could hypnotize victims? That deserved some investigation, particularly figuring out how to prevent his influence. I’d never hear the end of it if I showed my face in public wearing a foil hat. I braced myself against the side of the cabin as I evaluated whether I’d actually shit my pants, and concentrated on breathing and getting my heart-rate down from the stratosphere. “Does… what’s wrong with adrenaline?”
“Tastes terrible.” Dragomir surveyed the deep tracks left by the flatbed and forklifts. “The delivery met your expectations?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks. With the adrenaline, what do you mean about the taste? Do a lot of things change the taste? Does anything make blood less effective as a nutritional source? Is it a nutritional source, or do you not require nutrients?”
His nostrils flared. The vampire’s attention strayed toward the front of the cabin. “Of a sort.”
And he walked away.
I shook my head more, retrieved the flashlight, and hobbled after him. It’d be days until that adrenaline surge left my system. Holy shit. Maybe I could get him to wear a bell and insist that it helped in deflecting sunlight. At least I’d hear him coming.
He was Not Amused.
I caught up near the porch and collapsed onto the stair before my knees gave out completely. “What’s up, buddy? I just fired up the lab to get started when the power crashed. I’ll have to experiment to see what can be on at the same time, and maybe tweak the generator tomorrow morning. I don’t have any progress to show you.”
His attention remained on the dirt yard and the tree line that swung closer around the other side of the cabin. “There are many footprints here.”
Weird that Dragomir noticed the same as Archer, when I hadn’t seen a damn one of them. I could track animal prints through the woods without any issue at all, but apparently I didn’t notice shit in my own yard. “Yeah, there were about six guys unloading the equipment today.”
His lips thinned when he looked back at me, and his eyes turned that eerie silver yet again. “A man stayed overnight. Who was he?”
Why did I feel like a kid who’d been caught sneaking her boyfriend into the house under her parents’ noses? Dragomir was not the morality police, despite having been a Crusader at some point. If he only joined up for power and money, then he didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to sin. “He’s in town working on a documentary. He wanted to talk about cryptids, and when we were done it was too late for him to drive back to town, so he slept on the couch.”
The silver eyes narrowed. Shadows gathered around him until he looked part of the night itself. “He distracted you.”
“No, not really.” But I hesitated, because Archer’s existence distracted me from the rest of the natural world. “It was just one conversation. And I didn’t have anything to work on last night.”
“I intended to show you something last night, but his presence precluded that.” He backed up as I shoved to my feet.
“What? What did you find?” I struggled to keep up as he melted into the trees. “God damn it, Dragomir, what did you find?”
“Do not let anything distract you. Find a solution for me and everything else will be resolved.”
“What did you find?”
But he disappeared in a whisper like a blown-out candle, and left me staring at nothing. My heart pounded faster as I searched desperately for a sign of where he’d gone, even though catching up would be impossible. Had he found Jamie? A sign of something else? What the fuck did Dragomir have in his back pocket to hold over me?
I didn’t believe that he’d just turned around when he saw Archer through the windows, which explained the figure that Archer saw. Dragomir could have mesmerized him and sent him on his way, or left a message for me elsewhere. My jaw ached from clenching. I yelled in pure aggravation and threw the flashlight against the porch, then collapsed back onto the step with my head in my hands.
Far away, a lone wolf howled in response.