Better Off Undead: The Bloodhound Files Read online

  She rolls her eyes. “Nuh-uh. He did it because he’s afraid of you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s why he didn’t take you hostage or kill you. He’s got feelings for you that he can’t handle, so he hits you and runs away.”

  “Xandra, please—he’s a hardened criminal, not a ten-year-old boy.”

  She gives me a pitying look. “They’re all boys, Jace. Anyway, this just proves what I’ve been saying all along—Uncle Pete’s still in there.”

  I study her for a second before answering. Dr. Pete was Xandra’s favorite uncle—she used to volunteer at the anthrocanine shelter where he worked part-time. I know she misses him, even more than Leo or me, but I don’t know if it’s kinder to encourage her hopes or kill them.

  I go with what I know. “Xandra, Dr. Pete’s gone. The process didn’t take. All that’s left is Tair, and he’s an escaped convict on the run. I don’t think this is going to end well.”

  “No,” she says, softly but firmly. “That’s not true. He interrupted the spell halfway through, right? So it might have half worked.”

  I don’t know enough about magic to argue. “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t change the facts.”

  “You’ll see, Jace. I know it.” She speaks with the unshakable conviction of the young, the confidence of a child combined with a teenager’s assured immortality. Well, she may not live forever, but she’s probably good for another three centuries, anyway. I hope she’s right.

  But I don’t think she is.

  I get a text from Cassius in my car, telling me to get back to the office ASAP. I wonder if Tair’s been sighted, or maybe even captured, but I doubt it. He’s too wily for that.

  As I drive, I think about what Xandra told me. He’s got feelings for you. Just the world seen through a teenager’s romanticism? Women’s intuition? Or had Dr. Pete said something to her? Maybe it was even a thrope thing, the way he smelled when I was around. Pheromones.

  I wonder how I smelled when Dr. Pete was around.

  It’s the middle of the night when I pull into the underground parking for the NSA building and head upstairs. That means the middle of the working day here; there are agents everywhere, drinking hot cups of blood cut with cappuccino, rustling through paperwork, rushing from one office to another clutching files or evidence folders. I nod at people as I stride down the length of the office, and get nods in return. I don’t have a lot of close friends here—Gretch, Eisfanger, and Cassius are about it—but I’m grudgingly accepted by most. I do my job and I do it well, which cuts you a lot of slack no matter what world you’re on.

  But they still snicker and call me the Bloodhound behind my back. Human hearing may not be as good as a pire’s or a thrope’s, but that doesn’t mean we’re oblivious. I wonder what they’ll call me a month from now.

  Maybe it won’t change, I think as I knock on Cassius’s door. I’ll still be a professional tracker. I’ll still work for a pire with a history of dating humans. And I sure as hell won’t be any less bitchy.

  Cassius tells me to come in, and I do. He’s sitting at his desk, holding the notes I saw Damon scribbling earlier. There’s a massive and ancient-looking leather-bound book in front of him, unopened.

  I walk up to the desk but don’t take a seat. “I see you’ve heard from Eisfanger. What’s the verdict?”

  He puts down the notes and leans back. “I have a proposition for you, concerning your condition. It’s dangerous. It may not work, and the consequences of failure are unpredictable—but I felt I had to at least offer you the option.”

  “The option of what, exactly?”

  He studies me carefully for a moment before answering.

  “The option,” he says, “of letting me drink your blood.”

  SIX

  I stare at him. I blink. Nothing happens, so I try it a few more times.

  “That,” I finally say, “hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “No, I didn’t think that—”

  “Wait, let me get this straight. And by that, I mean so totally and completely level you could build a skyscraper on it and balance an egg at the top. You’re not talking about a quick aperitif, right? Not let’s-just-decant-a-few-drops-into-a-thimble-and-see-what-she-tastes-like, right?”

  “No, that’s not what I—”

  “Good, because—while I can understand your curiosity—a girl’s really got to maintain a little mystery, and I think having my boss know the flavor of my hemoglobin is crossing the line.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting any—”

  “On the other end of the scale, I really, really, really hope you’re not talking about turning me into a Big Gulp. Because I’m pretty sure I would taste like coffee and probably keep you from sleeping for a few years.”

  “Jace, will you please—”

  “And bitter. Did I mention the bitter? Me getting bitten, you get the bitter. The biter gets the bitter.”

  I’m babbling. I’m babbling because I don’t want to have this conversation and I’m pretty sure I know what’s next and I don’t want to hear it.

  “Jace, hear me out.”

  “I—no, you—you want to turn me into a vampire!”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Want to? God, no.”

  “Well, good, because—wait, what?”

  “Have you around forever?” He shakes his head. “I’ve done some bad things, but even I don’t deserve that.”

  Now I’m glaring. “Very funny.”

  “At least it got you to stop talking. Are you ready to listen, or do I have to wait through another ten minutes of stand-up?”

  “All right, all right.” I sink into a chair. “What’s your proposal?”

  “First of all, you know that there’s no such thing as a pire thrope, don’t you?”

  I did—in fact, I’d had it graphically proven to me when Aristotle Stoker exposed a human captive to both thrope and pire blood at the same time. It would have killed him even if the rising sun and injection of colloidal silver hadn’t. “I’d forgotten about that. So if you can’t turn me into a pire, what are you suggesting?”

  He leans back in his chair and opens the tome in front of him to a bookmarked page. “I’m suggesting we try anyway.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Both lycanthropy and vampirism are transmitted through a sorcerous virus. Usually the thrope virus is passed on through a bite, but it also lives on the surface of their claws. The version that lives on claws, though, differs slightly from the one that lives on teeth.”

  For the first time, I see the barest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. “So it’s not as virulent?”

  “Actually, it’s more virulent.”

  “Ah.” That light isn’t an approaching train, it’s a lowflying 747.

  “No, that’s a good thing. Because the virus is hardier, it’s harder to kill. Attack it on a biological level and it will fight back, possibly even survive.”

  I’m starting to see where this is going. “You want to declare war on it. And use little pire viruses as your soldiers.”

  “In essence. Normally, when two such viruses fight it out, the sorcerous aspect causes a kind of equilibrium that makes it impossible for either one to win. The body’s resources are co-opted and consumed by both sides until the host is destroyed—a long and painful process.”

  “Yeah, this is sounding better and better all the time.”

  “But it’s possible to change that equation. To bolster the body’s immune system mystically, while blocking viral access to its resources. Letting the battlefield survive, while forcing the two armies to fight to the death.”

  I think about that for a moment. It makes sense, in a goofy, pseudo-biological way. “So it’s a case of last virus standing. But either way, I still wind up undead or furry.”

  “Those are two possible outcomes, yes, but there are two more. If the two viruses battle each other to a standstill, your own mystically enforced immune system might be strong enough to elim
inate both of them.”

  “Huh. The old let’s-you-and-him-fight strategy. Let them kick the snot out of each other and then step in and nail them both.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “You could die.” He looks me in the eye as he says this, not sugarcoating it or hesitating. I appreciate that a great deal—it shows me how much he respects me. “Your system might not be able to handle the mystic charge. It could burn your immune system out like an overloaded electrical circuit.”

  “Let’s say I do this. How is it going to happen? Do I get an inoculation? Is a shot glass full of blood somewhere in the picture? Am I going to have to be strapped to a hospital bed for thirty-six hours while I hallucinate and talk to giant rabbits named Harvey?”

  And now, strangely enough, he looks a little uncomfortable. “You won’t have to drink anything, or be injected. But in order for this to work, you can’t simply be exposed to the pire virus. It will have to be directed, guided, kept from rampaging freely throughout your body. To further the military analogy, there has to be a general in charge of the viral troops.”

  I frown. “I’m guessing that would require a shaman, right? A pire shaman.”

  “Yes. But as far as I know, this is an untried method; there are no shamans, pire or otherwise, experienced in what we’re going to attempt. The best we can do is use a pire well versed in certain control techniques. One who knows how to maintain a mystic connection between himself and the person he’s bitten, one who can suppress or enhance the progress of the virus as he chooses.” He pauses. “There aren’t many such pires in the world. The techniques I’m talking about take a long, long time to master.” He’s looked away while he was talking, but now his eyes search out mine again. There’s a question in them he doesn’t have to ask out loud.

  “Uh-huh. The general being you, which is why you asked about drinking my blood. I’m guessing there’s nobody else that can do this?”

  He shakes his head slowly, never taking his eyes off mine. “Not that I trust. Not that you would, either.”

  “This … directing you’d have to do. How, exactly?”

  “I would have to introduce the virus directly into your bloodstream.”

  “You’d have to bite me.”

  “Yes.”

  Well, the phrase has entered my mind more than once when dealing with Cassius, but I’ve never said it out loud. Something tells me it’s an insult that never really caught on here. “And then there would be the drinking. How much?”

  Now he looks even more uncomfortable. Who would have thought discussing bloodsucking with a centuries-old pire would be like talking about sex with a nun?

  “Not very. The length of physical contact is more important to establish a proper connection—there would have to be several, ah, sessions. I would restrain myself from taking more than a few ounces each time, and each session would last several minutes.”

  There’s something he’s not telling me, I can see it in his eyes. “Okay. Where?”

  And now he looks truly miserable. “The site of the original thrope wound would be best.”

  “Actually, I just meant where would this procedure take place. But now that you’ve brought it up …” I study him carefully. I really shouldn’t be enjoying this, but you take life’s little pleasures where you can. “So. The inside of my thigh?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than once. For several minutes at a time.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Your lips pressed to my skin.”

  He doesn’t say a thing. But he doesn’t look away, either, and I realize that the conversation has slid away from me teasing him and into something else. Suddenly I’m the one who’s uncomfortable.

  “It would be dangerous,” he says.

  “It … sounds like it.”

  “I’d understand if you weren’t willing to risk it.”

  “Come on. You know I have more guts than brains.”

  “I know no such thing. You have both, and plenty of them.”

  “Yeah, yeah …” I mutter.

  How did he do that? A second ago I was tormenting him and now he’s got me on the defensive, feebly warding off compliments like an awkward schoolgirl. Sometimes I forget just how old and good at manipulation he is. In fact, him spending a year or two maneuvering me into a position where I ask him to drink my blood isn’t hard to believe at all—but not too far in that direction is also an alley with a big neon sign that reads PARANOIA LANE, and the entrance is a lot easier to find than the exit. Occupational hazard when you’re a government spook, even worse on a world filled with the supernatural.

  “I’m going to need some time to think about this.”

  “Of course. But don’t wait too long; the closer the full moon gets, the more of a foothold the lycanthropic virus gains. You have four nights to decide.”

  “Great. So the longer I take, the worse my chances get. That’s a terrific formula for good decision making.”

  “There’s another possibility that may make it easier. Kill the thrope who infected you before your first transformation, and the virus will die, too.”

  He says it flatly, intending to shock me. It does.

  “Kill Doc—kill Tair?”

  “Yes. There’s a temporary mystic link between certain breeds of thrope and someone they’ve bitten. Unfortunately, it’s one-way—”

  “I know, I know. Eisfanger filled me in.”

  “You can’t use it directly to locate him, but we could set a trap.”

  “Why would he bother?”

  “He’s fascinated by you, Jace. Surely you’ve noticed.”

  I shake my head. “He’s a horndog, that’s all. I doubt he’d come within twenty miles of me now that he’s on the run.”

  Cassius doesn’t look convinced. “All the same, I want Charlie to stick close.”

  “He will, once he cools off.”

  Cassius picks up his phone. “He’ll do it now.”

  Cassius doesn’t want me to leave the NSA building until Charlie comes in. I can’t stand the thought of waiting in Cassius’s office—not with the offer he just made pulsing in my brain—so I go down to the staff cafeteria.

  There’s not a lot I can eat there—it’s mainly meat, meat, and more meat, with an extensive blood bar—but I get some frozen yogurt and a cup of tea. I’m usually more of a coffee drinker, but I can be flexible.

  Just how flexible is the question on the table.

  I spot Gretch sitting at a table for two by herself, sipping her own cup of tea. I find myself really needing to talk, but a conversation with her right now could be like walking into a blizzard. One where all the snowflakes are made out of sharpened steel.

  She sees me, though, and waves me over. I square my shoulders, both mentally and physically, and join her.

  She looks me over coolly, then smiles. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m … a little shaky,” I admit.

  “You must be.” Now I can hear genuine concern in her voice. “I’m sorry, Jace, truly I am. I forget sometimes.”

  “Forget what?”

  “That you’re not invincible. None of us is, really, though we supernatural races have a distinct physical advantage. But you—you simply ignore that fact, most of the time. Except when someone else is at risk. Then you become much more cautious. Usually.”

  “I’m really, really sorry about Anna, Gretch.”

  She shakes her head gently. “No, I overreacted. You did exactly what was necessary in order to keep her safe, and I owe you an apology. Consider this it.”

  “So we’re good?”

  “I am. What about you?”

  “Freaking the hell out, actually …” I tell her about Cassius’s plan.

  “Hmmm. Interesting.” She stares into space, thinking.

  “Is it doable?”

  “Of course it’s doable—Cassius wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise. But the risks are considerable.”

&nbs
p; “Believe me, I’m considering. And you can help me—with some of it, anyway.”

  “What do you need?”

  I hesitate, not really sure how to put it. “Well—what’s it like, being a pire?”

  A slight frown creases her face. I imagine that after over a hundred years of undead existence, it’s a little like asking a fish what it’s like being wet. “That’s a very broad set of parameters, Jace. Can you narrow it down a little?”

  “Okay, okay.” I concentrate, feeling like a little kid asking a grown-up about the birds and bees; I have the absurd urge to say, Mommy, where does hemoglobin come from? “Temperature. I’ve noticed pires seem pretty well immune to the cold, and they definitely don’t sweat. What’s that like?”

  “More or less exactly like you just described. I can feel slightly cool, and I can feel slightly warm, but only when exposed to extremes. Most of the time, I don’t notice the temperature at all.”

  Well, that was helpful. Not her fault, though. “How about your senses? They’re sharper, right?”

  “Than yours, certainly. To me, of course, they seem perfectly normal. I could get you some hard data on comparative acuity between hemovore and human sight and hearing, though the others are more difficult to quantify—”

  “No, no, that’s not really what I’m after.” I think harder. “You weren’t born a pire. What do you remember the most, when you changed?”

  “When I died, you mean? Hmm. I haven’t thought about that in decades … I believe it was the lightness of everything.”

  That wasn’t what I expected. “What do you mean?”

  “Pires are much stronger than human beings. When you first arise, it’s as if the pull of gravity has become no more than a gentle tug. I found myself astonished that every step I took didn’t catapult me into the air.”

  “What about—you know, switching over to a liquid diet?”

  “Well, it wasn’t an overwhelming desire, more like simply needing a drink. Any squeamishness I had vanished. I remember thinking how odd it was that something salty could also prove so satisfying at quenching my thirst.”

  “Did you feel any different? Were you still you?”