It took an hour and two bathtubs full of water to start feeling normal again. When I could finally peel an eye open, I debated getting a little dab of vampire blood to see if it worked as a topical treatment.
It did not.
So I took another shower.
The whole time, I went back to the altercation with the werewolves and that mysterious figure who’d looked right at me and right through me. Could it have been the sasquatch who tried to eat Hopper? It was his territory, after all, so maybe he took exception to other beasts hunting so near to where he lived. Maybe he intended to fight the werewolves after Archer’s team weakened them.
I hadn’t gotten a bad feeling about the figure, just... something different. I didn’t feel hunted like I had when the wild man attacked me or when Dragomir crept up behind me. That time… the mysterious figure watched out for me. Warned me. Saved me, maybe, by telling those werewolves to get the hell out of there.
My chest ached as I paced in the living room, or tried to. Hauling that stupid cast around pushed me past my patience and I searched for the multi-tool with the saw. Hopper took one look at me – and one sniff – when I got home and promptly fled into the trees, taking his trout with him. Ungrateful beast.
I’d idealized the cryptids I searched for. It was plain enough. I’d failed to keep all outcomes in mind and my own assumptions blinded me to reality. Not all cryptids presented a benefit to humanity. Some were natural predators within their environment. The only reason they survived was because they remained undiscovered. Exposure wouldn’t mean protection and benign interest, even if it made me famous and helped find Jamie. It meant more humans trampling through the habitat and exposing themselves to danger. Not just searching for evidence of my brother, but being bitten and killed or turning into werewolves themselves. Maybe ending up in Dragomir’s fangs. One or two well-publicized attacks by werewolves and the whole Army landed in Chilhowee to destroy the threat. Everything else in the mountains, including the people, would suffer the consequences.
I bit my lip as I started sawing away at the cast, starting at my foot. Did that mean I had to turn my efforts to protecting and concealing cryptids instead of sharing them with the world? Walking away from the last ten years of my life and everything that took me away from a traditional research career in chemistry? Unease moved through me. Surely it was possible to protect what deserved protecting while increasing education and awareness, while containing what threatened humanity and the rest of the environment.
Right?
I didn’t have much time to ponder. When I got about halfway up my calf with the saw, the air stirred and whispered and I knew Dragomir arrived.
He drifted into the kitchen, unaffected by my revocation of his invitation only a day or so earlier, and frowned at the mess I made on the floor sawing at the plaster. “What are you doing?”
“Getting rid of this so I can walk better.” I jerked my chin at a chair. “Sit. I can get you started and then finish this.”
“Get started.” It didn’t sound like a question, but since he didn’t move, I figured he wanted an answer.
“Like I said, I’m going to make a silicone mask to protect you. We need to make a cast of your face first.”
His eyes narrowed and the debate continued in his head as I mixed up the plaster of Paris and set out the other supplies. Dragomir folded his arms. “I dislike this option. I expected something more sophisticated.”
“This is only a temporary solution,” I said. I put a towel down and folded my arms right back at him. “So plant yourself for a second and we can get this over with.”
He grumped and growled about it, but he sat and tolerated me smearing Vaseline on his eyebrows and lashes so they wouldn’t be yanked out by the plaster, even though part of me wanted to rip the hair off his face just to see whether it grew back. When I handed him a straw, Dragomir rolled his eyes. “I do not breathe, Ada.”
“Good to know.” I tilted his head back and covered him with plaster. As I waited for it to set, I made molds of his hands as well.
His thoughts echoed inside my skull and made it clear he wanted to know what the second objective was. I cleared my throat and poked the plaster on his face to test the hardness. My words came slowly as I considered the implications of what I was about to ask. “I tried using some of your blood earlier, the stuff in the bags, to get a bit of energy and it didn’t work as well. At first it lasted for days, now it’s just a day. Today it wasn’t much more than a couple of hours.”
I didn’t know what question I wanted to ask, but enough of them swirled around in my head that Dragomir must have understood. The mask hid his expression and voice, though, and when none of his spidery thoughts ghosted through my brain, I figured I’d have to wait. It was just as well. A few extra minutes allowed the butterflies rampaging through my guts to dissipate until I no longer felt like throwing up.
I couldn’t think about all the work piling up as I waited for the generator to arrive. I was weeks behind already on researching and experimenting on what caused Dragomir’s vampiric condition, and every day lost meant weeks of him searching for Jamie lost.
By the time his plaster set, I had the cast all the way off and wrinkled my nose at the gross leg underneath. I pried the mask off Dragomir gingerly and set it aside, then freed his hands from their plaster prisons.
The vampire made a face and blinked at the dust left on his skin. He wordlessly took a wet towel and wiped the dust and goop and Vaseline off, then worked his jaw and bared his fangs, testing them out. “That was unpleasant. We will not do that again.”
“Whatever you say, big guy.” I retrieved some of the test masks and gloves from where I stored them in the lab room, frowning down at them. “Although I thought you were able to just stand in one place for decades at a time. A couple of minutes in plaster bothered you that much?”
“Being blinded is altogether unpleasant regardless of one’s age.”
I held up the mask, leaving the blood request for later. Maybe he’d be in a better mood once he saw the way he could walk in the day immediately. “Right. Well, give this bad boy a go.”
He looked about as excited as a box of rocks. He picked it up between two fingers. “This is… unappealing.”
“Right back ‘atcha, brother.” But I agreed; the mask looked like a chicken cutlet pounded flat and cut into a face-shape. “Say hello to your new face, at least until I get yours made.”
His upper lip curled as he examined it.
I set out the matching gloves so he could judge those as well. “I can probably put a fake beard on the mask, maybe a mustache if you’re feeling fancy.”
The vampire squeezed and tested the springy silicone. “This is what you came up with?”
“It’s the first stage,” I said. “You can go outside in the sun with this if you’ve got the proper clothing and some sunglasses.”
“You’ve tested it?”
I held up the unplugged UV lamp and enjoyed his slight flinch. “Oh yeah. Try on the gloves and I can show you.”
He did as I asked, though he leaned back when I flicked on the light and aimed it at his hand. I’d sunburned my hands a couple of times testing the thickness of gloves and masks, but I ignored that. It didn’t mean anything.
When the light eased up his fingers and nothing smoked or spontaneously combusted, Dragomir whispered under his breath. The strange language drifted by, almost-familiar but still foreign. He turned the gloved hand over, moving it fully under the lamp, and stared at the eerie flesh tones of the silicone. I’d modeled the color after my own skin but against the visible flesh of his wrist, the pale silicone turned downright ruddy.
“It works,” he murmured. He put on the other glove and I assisted with peeling the mask off the stand to pull it over his head. The material stretched and stuck until Dragomir growled in irritation.
Eventually I got it adjusted properly so the holes for his eyes lined up. I hadn’t bothered with nostrils, since he didn’t need to breathe, but a thin slice in the mouth gave him room to speak. I shuddered when I finally looked at what I’d created: he looked more hideous and unnatural — a thousand times worse than his regular face and demeanor.
But it gave me a chance to channel my inner Dr. Frankenstein and cry, “It’s aaaaaaaliiiiiive!”
Plus it got me a step closer to finding Jamie.
Dragomir’s eyes narrowed but he didn’t comment.
I handed him some sunglasses to put on. “You want to take it for a test drive? We’ll have to use the lamp but it’s good enough.”
The vampire put his hands under the lamp once more to verify the material worked. Then he looked at me from the depths of the silicone. “Know that I have found more evidence of your brother’s journey. If I die, it dies with me. You will never find it on your own.”
The movement of his real lips, disjointed from the fake ones, gave me distinct Hannibal Lector vibes. “Yeah, I know. It’ll work. Put the glasses on, otherwise you’ll lose your eyes.”
He did as I said, though it clearly rankled him, and stood there as I moved the UV light up his chest to test against the extensive flaps I’d included on the mask to cover his neck and shoulders. He wouldn’t be going out half-dressed, but I figured some extra protection wouldn’t hurt. When the light hit his chin and he hadn’t combusted, Dragomir whispered faster under his breath. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said he prayed.
The full beam of light covered the top half of his body. I grinned at a job well done despite Dragomir’s eerie inhumanity and him digging new depths in the uncanny valley.
I’d Deus vult’ed the shit out of all of it.
The vampire smiled under the mask, but the silicone didn’t smile with him. I stood back, just in case I yakked and the splatter required a new mask. I didn’t have quite enough silicone to make another one, though I’d ordered the supplies. No telling how many of those things Dragomir would go through in the course of... Well, in the course of biting into throats and sucking down gallons of blood.
I helped him peel off the mask and return it to the head-shaped stand. “So there we go. Progress. What’s the evidence you found? Where is it?”
The vampire made a thoughtful noise, then gestured at the mask. “Put hair on it so it looks more natural.”
“Brother, it’ll take a hell of a lot more to make it look natural.” I folded my arms over my chest. “You didn’t say it had to be aesthetically pleasing. I did what you asked. This is step one, and it’s a damn sight closer to you frolicking in daylight than anything else you’ve got, right?”
His mouth turned down.
“I’ll get into the genetic and endocrine causes of the photosensitivity as soon as the generator gets here and I can actually work in the lab. But I deserve to know what you found.” My heart pounded. I didn’t want to hope, so Jamie remained alive in some state somewhere in the world. Him showing me bones or physical evidence was not the answer I wanted to find.
The muscles in his jaw jumped. I might have heard his teeth cracking, but everything about him sounded like grinding bones so it was hard to tell. Those flat, dead eyes narrowed once more, then he tilted his head at the door. “Very well. Let’s go.”
“Let’s go? Go where?”
“To see this evidence,” he said. “You stupid moron” remained unsaid, though my cheeks flushed all the same.
I took a deep breath and pushed that irritation down. For Jamie, I’d do whatever it took. Including having to put up with someone who’d had an eternity of practice being an asshole.