One month later
"I can't believe how fast we're moving." I stared down at the spectrometer and glanced over at Serena, the goblin who’d been assisting me in the lab. "I'm really worried. What if this new version causes even more effects? We can't test any of this new version of the treatment before we give someone a shot. We're flying blind and hoping for the best."
The dreams last night had been bad. This plague, burning through the goblins and shifters outside of Dream. Then it changed and started affecting humans, with a nasty one-two punch of dementia and crippling arthritis, even in the young.
I’d woken up just after I’d seen my friend Roma catch it in the dream, shaking and sweating. It had taken an hour to calm down.
The worst part was my dreams often came true. And I would do anything to keep this from happening to our world.
The virus didn’t affect animals in any way I could find, and it hadn’t jumped to humans yet. The treatment I’d come up with did cure it but at a cost.
When Noah, our first trial subject, had continued to have problems with exhaustion and getting enough calories into him, I’d backpedaled from the plan of giving it to all the afflicted goblins immediately. Bran and Rey had argued with me, and we’d ended with a compromise- the worst affected got a dose, and were monitored closely, while I worked on a new version. We were on version three now, since I found out the second had worse side effects than the first on the three people who’d tried it.
I wished we could test on something other than…I couldn’t call them human, but this kind of protocol bothered me a lot and went against all my training.
Serena crossed her arms and said firmly, "We can't stop now. We can't let the sick suffer for one minute longer than they have."
She was right. I’d seen what they suffered in my dreams, I’d felt it when I dreamed I caught it.
This was the reason I’d withdrawn from work and friends after my last contract ended; I couldn’t handle seeing the illnesses I was trying to prevent. The time away hadn’t helped much, but now that I’d met Bran’s and Rey’s people, I knew what to call them other than monsters.
It was a lesson on how appearances meant nothing when it came to ability. I’d learned that lesson again while working with Serena, who no one could mistake for a human.
She'd been professional, and sure, she'd not had nearly the training I had, but she'd picked everything up I'd given her, not missed a single thing I'd thrown at her. She was brilliant. "If we test on a shifter, this might go differently than it has with goblins. There are so many variables."
"The shifters will have to force their infected to volunteer. Once they're infected, they go kind of feral. It's not the most ethical way to do testing, but there won't be much choice." She shrugged. "But the vampires on this side of Dream and all the trolls should be much more compliant. Plus, the demons and the Nephilim."
Wait. Vampires? Vampires?
We were going to try to cure the undead.
I turned to ask her about vampires, which nobody had ever mentioned before, not even one time, but Serena looked over my shoulder. "They did it."
She picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV, turning up the volume.
Whirling around, I sucked in a deep breath as a video of Reynard leading the police to an underground lair. "The man, Reynard Jones, was able to find the hiding place and rescue the child. The police believe the man Mr. Jones detained is responsible for at least six other kidnappings and murders, if not more."
When the video transitioned to the next thing, Serena turned down the TV and set the remote down.
"The first step is done," I whispered. "Reynard is the poster boy for supernatural creatures."
Serena and I hooted and hollered around the lab for a moment, then I sucked in a deep breath. "Okay. This is great news, but we can't stop. We have work to do."
I went back to my computer as it beeped that I had a new email. Andromeda had forwarded me an email. After dinner last night, we'd discussed how she and Cathy had met wonderful men through the supernatural dating service. She'd promised to forward me the email so I could contact the woman who ran the service.
I mean, heck. They’d been lucky, why not me?