Page 36 of The Unraveling

“For what?” Dr. Smith asks as he huffs and stands back from the microscope where he’s been staring silently at Julian’s blood for so long it’s like he was waiting for whatever he saw to change.

Dr. Watson now lies lifelessly beneath the red sheet covering both him and Bradley. I stare at the shape of their bodies, trying to pinpoint why John’s request for clarification feels so strange.

“Blood,” Victor grumbles.

Dr. Smith flips a full page and continues with notes on the back.

Without a thought, I automatically slide my wrist across Victor’s lap and remember why that’s unhelpful when his hot sigh wafts against my sore flesh.

The fact my blood is useless to him now makes my heart ache. How the days of gorging myself on human blood so he can feast from my vein might be over.

My lips quiver with a frown as I draw my arm back and hug myself. Victor sucks his teeth and wraps his arms around me. But when his stomach growls like a demanding beast, I lean away from him and gape in horror.

Hanging his head, he mutters, “I think I’m hungry as well. It’s hard to tell. I mainly feel like . . . like shit.”

A shrill laugh escapes me at the thought of eating food as I look to Dr. Smith to gauge his reaction, but the only change from his blank, unblinking expression is the hard swallow that works its way down his throat.

“What did you see on the slides earlier?” I demand, shivering with a chill wafting through me. “What’s wrong with our blood?”

As Dr. Smith’s lips part, his cellphone rings in his pocket, and he vanishes from the room so fast he must be escaping my question. I twist to Victor with begging eyes.

He tries to disguise the terror glimmering within his own, but his words come restrained and airy as he chokes out, “What I saw . . .” He shakes his head. “It makes little sense.” His next words falter before he mashes his lips taut.

Daisy staggers into the room, her knee buckling before she recovers and hastens across the bloodied floor to sit at my side.

“I wish I could hear the conversation,” Victor mumbles, gaze trained toward the doorway where Dr. Smith’s low voice is muffled from down the hall. “I should be able to hear it perfectly.”

We sit in silence, like each of us is straining to hear a word, until Dr. Smith is standing in the mouth of the study with his phone gripped in his hand.

“We’ve been instructed not to touch Bradley or Julian’s bodies and leave the samples we’ve already taken and the heart in the freezer undisturbed,” Dr. Smith announces.

Victor lifts his head and rubs his eyes. He clears his throat. “On whose orders?”

John stares at Victor for a loaded beat before uttering, “The king’s. He’s sending men from the castle to retrieve everything, and I’m to continue detailed and frequent notes on both your conditions.”

The king? I dig through my mind, trying to recall if I’ve ever known of any immortal ones, since surely John doesn’t mean any human man. My hope soars. If anyone knows how to cure this poison, it must be him.

It takes Victor a moment for Dr. Smith’s words to settle, choked noises slipping past his lips until he finally says, “Fuck—From . . . From Romania? Can they even get here before Julian starts to rot?”

Dr. Smith crosses his arms, but nods. “They’re coming immediately. At least as much as they can while avoiding the sun for now, until sunset. And what Daisy said was right . . .” He draws in a deep breath. “It’s still possible he could wake up. A small possibility, but from all the information I’ve gathered, you two were in the same state Julian is in.”

I gasp, jaw lowering as my eyes widen on Victor. Gripping his arm, I say, “My love, your discovery has the king’s attention.”

His lips merely form a tight line, and he frowns.

“Your contribution,” Dr. Smith clarifies.

“Then they know what this is?” Victor says, a thread of hope weaving through his words. “With certainty?”

Scratching his head like he needs to mimic a human action just for his hands to have something to do, John says, “Yes, but unfortunately, there’s nothing they can do. There is no cure. This technically . . . is the cure. For vampirism.”

“A misnomer!” Victor spits as he reels.

Dr. Smith releases an ironic chuckle. “Yes, that’s what the man on the phone said once he called me after word worked its way through the grapevine. I suppose something like this really lights up the lines.”

“What did he say it is?” Victor demands incredulously.

“As far as they understand it, it’s akin to a defensive ability. Like a poisonous frog, yet this exists only in a vampire’s blood. It’s incredibly rare, and they don’t know what triggers it. It attacks the very core of the vampire: their DNA. What’s left after the attack is a being that may as well be human—or whatever’s left of one. With vampirism building on human DNA, it’s not a clean split. There’s damage, which you’re both experiencing right now. Still, there aren’t enough cases for them to fully understand it.” He sighs. “As far as King Viorel knows, Bradley is the first named vampire on record born with this in almost two hundred years—the first body they’ll secure. Most cases they know of are from anonymous cure blood that has been passed between hands and used, mainly nefariously.”