The Bloodline War (15 page)

She spied the first older folks she’d yet to see in the town when they passed Aunt Ælsi’s. Several clusters of gray-haired men and women were sipping cappuccinos and lattes at small tables and laughing. One group of women was engaged in a lively game of canasta. A lady dressed in a frilly apron with her grayish-blonde hair swirled into an extravagant French knot, strode back and forth from the counter to the tables, clearly the owner and Grande Dame of the place.

“That’s Ælsi, Kasson’s mom,” Vinz provided from off to her right. “Your future mother-in-law if you play your cards right.” He chuckled.

She didn’t join in. She was too busy trying not to fall further down the rabbit hole into this surreal Alice in Wonderland experience. How could everything and everyone look so damned normal, for Pete’s sake? These people thought they were “vampires.” Shouldn’t they look like Trekkie conventioneers or squint-eyed after-hours clubbers? Shouldn’t the town be some sort of cross between Transylvania and the movie
Blade Runner
?

Not
Pleasantville
.

One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small
….

At the end of Main Street the road forked, the right fork expanding into a gigantic cavern. The left continued into a dimly lit tunnel, making it impossible to see what was further down. An exit, maybe? One of her guardsmen probably had a key card on him right now.

They headed to the right, strolling past an aluminum-sided diner with pink awnings, a grocery store with a banner of happy faces strung in the window, and a schoolhouse that could’ve been peeled right off the screen of a
Little House on the Prairie
episode. Jesus, just…
über
weird. She didn’t know how she’d ever manage to describe this place to the police and capture its true essence:
yes, officer, just try to imagine a bunch of Dracula wannabes living on the Good Ship Lollipop
.

Go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall
….

The hospital came into view, and
wow
. It was a beautiful four story building, glass-fronted on the upper stories, with a pristine white façade and arched portico on the bottom floor. She couldn’t believe how many impressive buildings she was finding inside a
cave
. Further up the road, she glimpsed the beginnings of a residential neighborhood, brightly painted houses lined up in a neat row, each with a cheery white picket fence and a lawn of AstroTurf.

Okay, whoa
. Somehow they’d switched to the set of the 1950’s
Leave it to Beaver
sitcom.

And any minute the Mad Hatter was going to jump out and invite her to tea.

No, just a young boy riding by on a Big Wheel. Dear God, she was going to weep from the sheer insanity of it all.

And if you’ve just had some kind of mushroom and your mind is moving slow…
.

Once inside the hospital, Jaċken led her to a lab while the other five warriors took up positions at various points in the building. For the most part, the laboratory was furnished like any other she’d spent too many hours in over the course of her career: incubator, centrifuges, microscopes, autoclave…. Ah, but here, too, the concept of normal failed her. There were also several newfangled models of apparatus she’d never seen before. How on earth was there a piece of lab equipment she didn’t recognize?

When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead, and the White Knight is talking backwards and the Red Queen’s ‘off with her head’
….

Dr. Jess was standing near a metal cabinet, his lab coat bleached to near sun-blinding whiteness. He was talking to two other people: another lab-coated fellow and a cute brunette. He broke off as she entered to come welcome her. “Dr. Parthen!” He gave her hand a warm shake and smiled broadly, all big, toothy grin now that he didn’t have to hide his fangs. “What a delight to have you here finally.”

She returned his smile with a crooked one of her own. She hadn’t expected him to be so genuinely happy to see her. “I appreciate your gallant reception, doctor, especially in light of the fact that I threatened to cut your throat the last time we were together.”

“Oh, pish posh!” Blushing charmingly, Jess brushed that aside with a wave of his hand. “That’s already long forgotten and forgiven. You were in a stressful situation.” He cleared his throat. “Still are, I imagine. Come, I’m excited to give you a tour of the facility and show you some of our methods and machines.” He first introduced her to the other two people in the lab, his assistant, Mekhel, and the brunette, Syrian. He then went on to outline his plans for their time together. She only half-listened to him, her attention craning toward a conversation that’d started up between Syrian and Jaċken.

“…missed your appointment yesterday,” Syrian was saying. “Can you come see me now?”

“I’m working,” Jaċken snapped at her, ever the gentleman.

Syrian released a measured sigh. “I moved around several others to fit you in today because I knew you’d be overdue. Look, you’re wearing your sunglasses.” No response. “I can only take one man a day, Jaċken, so you really shouldn’t be messing with my schedule like this.”

“…brand new MRI machine,” Jess was gushing, “upstairs in the….”

“Chrissake,” Jaċken grumbled. He pressed the “speak” button on his headset. “Vinz, you copy? Yeah, I need to step away for about five minutes. Take up position at the lab door for me.”

Toni felt the brand of Jaċken’s eyes land on her for a moment, then he spun on his heel and stalked off with Syrian. Next, Mekhel left, off to gather supplies, and then Dr. Jess was handing her a white lab coat of her own.

“Shall we begin now?” the doctor asked pleasantly. “I want to show you how the Sigmund-phase works.”

“Yes, of course.” She shrugged on the coat, and followed Jess over to a work station, intrigued by what a Sigmund-phase was and how it…“Who was that woman?” Okay, maybe she was
more
intrigued by that right now. “That, um, Syrian?” And what was she planning on doing with Jaċken?
I can only take one man a day
….

“Ah, yes. Syrian Popovici’s one of our blood donors.” Dr. Jess pulled over a small red machine that had four tubes on the top of it and a valve on the side. “Jaċken has gone off to feed.”

Soooooo, Jaċken was engaging in a little bite-the-neck with that cute brunette was he? She almost snorted. Right, a euphemism for sex if she’d ever heard one. Because, really, she didn’t know what the men and women did around here when they played vampire, but she’d bet it got hot and heavy pretty quickly. Bodies would inevitably press close with all that neck nibbling, breasts rubbing against a thickly muscled chest, legs entangling, and—

Her stomach clenched suddenly as an image of Jaċken making love to that woman hurtled into her mind: his powerful body moving rhythmically over her, buttocks flexing taut at each rise and fall of his hips, muscles in his back and shoulders undulating with every…. The tightness in her belly sharpened into a feeling that would’ve been jealousy had such an emotion been possible with a man like Jaċken.

“The blood donors are a valued group of widowed spouses in Ţărână,” Dr. Jess continued to explain. “They are both men and women who’ve volunteered to let unmated Vârcolac feed on them. It’s a much-needed service, seeing as our genetic predicament has left us with so many singles who need to feed but can’t form a bond.”

That sounded rather antiseptic, not at all like a tightly knit cult. “Vârcolac aren’t allowed to get close to one another?”

Jess smiled. “Oh, Vârcolac become very close, my dear, but in this case you misunderstand the term ‘bond
.’
When an unmated Vârcolac feeds on and then makes love to a mate of equal unmated status, he physically bonds to her. Actual
biological
changes occur within him.” Jess started cleaning the red machine with an alcohol wipe, even though the thing already looked immaculate. “After that, he can only feed on his mate’s blood; he’s dependent on it. His wife in turn will be rendered infertile to any male other than her husband.”

Wow, she had no idea the community was so strict. “I guess it’s ’till death do you part’ for real around here, huh?”

Jess chuckled. “Very much so.” He pushed a pipe cleaner into the machine’s valve and swished it around. “This blood-bond is
permanent
, Dr. Parthen. There can be no going back once you’ve chosen your mate. You need to be clear about that.”

Toni smiled archly. “I’ll make sure to remember.” Aw, shucks, and here she’d had her heart set on hooking up with two. “I overhead Syrian mention that she can only take one man a day yet the other, uh, ‘dragon’ women said that their husbands only…um,” God, she hated talking like this, “‘feed’ on them every three days so they won’t get addicted.”

“The donors are addicted.”

She blinked. “Oh.” She paused, waiting for more. Apparently, that was all Dr. Jess had to say about that. “Are donors always widows?”

“Yes.” Jess tossed the pipe cleaner into a trashcan and grabbed another, going to work on the valve again. “Widows were already bonded to someone else in the past, you see, so their blood is resistant to further bonding.”

She tugged out a wet wipe and used it to sterilize her hands, a move which Dr. Jess seemed to appreciate. “And…the same goes for sex?” She glanced at the door through which Jaċken had disappeared. “Only with a donor?”

“Stars, no. Donors and their clients never make love. It’s true,” Jess added when she gave him a dubious look. “In fact, they
can’t
. Vampires aren’t physically capable of performing sexually until they’re bonded.”

“So they have to—” She stilled in the process of snapping on a pair of latex gloves. “Wait. Holy crap. No sex. Are you telling me all the single men and women in this community are
virgins
?”

Another chuckle rippled out of Dr. Jess. “My goodness, it’s not a disease.”

“No, no, of course not, it’s just….”
I don’t believe it
. “For one, the men in this town exude more masculinity and sex appeal than an entire squad of Navy SEALS.”

Jess slanted a look at her. “Can’t a man be both? Sexually appealing
and
a virgin?”

She shrugged. Frankly? Not to her mind, no. She just couldn’t imagine some girl not getting her mitts on a guy who was as hot as the ones around here.

Jess threw away the second pipe cleaner. “The concept of male virginity is only strange to you humans. For us, it’s quite ordinary. It’s the norm.”

The norm, right
. She almost laughed; she could just imagine how
that
Classified Ad had run.

Have you seen ‘Interview with a Vampire’ more than ten times? Would you like to escape the harsh realities of life without drinking the Kool Aid? Well, then, join our club! (those who’ve already experienced hot monkey love need not apply).

“From what I’ve seen,” she said, “the men around here act just as horny as any other guy.” An image flashed into her mind of Dev, naked in his bedroom, eyes smoldering. “Hell,
more
.”

“Of course they do, and it makes sense if you consider how many years the single men and women have had to suppress their urges and live in a state of deprivation.” Jess opened a drawer and pulled out a couple of syringes. “They can’t even masturbate.”

Oooo-kay. That was kind of TMI.

Mekhel re-entered the lab with a rack of blood-filled test tubes. “I have the samples, doctors,” he announced with a smile.

Jess clasped his hands together. “Excellent. All right, Dr. Parthen, I’m going to show you how to use the Sigmund-phase now, and you’ll see how to create a Vârcolac blood graph.” He started to neatly cuff up his left sleeve. “We’ll also experiment with the blood graphs stored in the hospital computer. Everyone in the community has one on file.”

“Mmm
,
yes,” she murmured, making all of the correct
I’m listening
noises as out of the tail of her vision she saw Jaċken return to the lab door. He exchanged a few words with Vinz, then took the man’s post.

“When you draw my blood,” Jess instructed as he handed her a syringe and an alcohol swab. “I want you to keep the sample in your possession at all times. That way you can be certain I don’t add anything to it or make a switch of some sort.”

“Right.” She absently slipped the plastic cap off the hypodermic needle and pretended to listen to Dr. Jess’s further explanations. Surreptitiously, she let her gaze wander over Jaċken, checking out the column of corded muscles in his neck, the mounds of twin biceps bulging out from his short-sleeved T-shirt, and the way his crisscrossed knife-holster emphasized the breadth of his back. She lifted her gaze to his profile, and took a deep breath. He really had an incredibly chiseled face when a girl let herself see past how disagreeable his expression was much of the time. Cult fanatic or not, the man really was a damned hot bastard.

As if feeling her stare, Jaċken swiveled his head in her direction, his sunglasses no longer hugging his stony face. She almost startled when his eyes met hers.
So impossibly dark
…. They locked gazes and held, remaining bound in a game of stare-down long enough for crickets to chirp and tumbleweeds to roll by.

She pulled her eyes away at last, her lashes lowered, heat flushing her cheeks.

She’d never understood the male obsession with virginity. How it was that the moment a guy found out a girl was a virgin, the first thing he wanted to do was take it.

She turned to Dr. Jess with the syringe and tried to keep her hands from trembling.

Now she did.

Chapter Sixteen

Garwald’s Pub looked like any bar directly out of Good Ol’ Boy Americana: sawdust and peanut shells on the floor, dimly lit green-shaded lamps suspended over mauve vinyl upholstered booths, and tall cushioned barstools at a long, shiny bar. Coors and Budweiser neon signs blinked from the wooden walls, hanging next to hubcaps and license plates, and some fishing paraphernalia. The requisite pool table was in the back, lorded over by a huge elk head on the wall.