“No. Well, I mean, yes, we’d need to do clinical trials and get all kinds of approvals to get permission to treat patients. But it’s incredible. Do you realize what this could mean? Imagine if these things could attack cancer like that. Or freeze the aging process?”
“It’s dangerous because if my kind discover you’re working on this, they will stop you.”
“What?” Cara asked, face draining of color.
“If your world finds out about us, they will never allow our existence to continue. Not as it does. And worse, if they find out our blood is a super cure to fix all their problems, they’ll use us. Shove us in cages and siphon our blood when they need more.”
Cara lowered her eyes. “It wouldn’t have to be like that.”
“It would,” I snapped. “You’re toying with things you can’t even begin to understand. And there are already extremely dangerous, powerful forces trying to convince the rest of my kind that humans should be our servants. Something like this might push vampires to their side who weren’t sure yet.”
“Sounds like boyfriend having bad day,” Anya said, laughing deeply. “If my boyfriend mad like that, I make him happy. You know,” she added, twirling her finger as she tried to find the right word. “In pants. I touch his—”
“Thanks, Anya,” Cara said. “We’re fine, though.”
“Can we talk in private?” I asked.
Cara followed me upstairs where we didn’t have Anya eavesdropping. “I think you’re being selfish. So what if it puts me in danger?”
“What do you mean ‘so what’? Bennigan would kill you if he knew you were working on something like this.”
“Last time I checked, Bennigan wanted to kill me anyway, right? I might as well try to do something honorable if he’s going to want to kill me either way.”
I gritted my teeth. “It’s not that simple. I can’t let you risk it.”
“You can’t stop me,” she said, eyes blazing with defiance. “This is more important than me or you.”
“No. It’s not. I swore I’d get you through this in one piece. I’m not going to let you risk your life.”
“Maybe you forgot what it’s like to be human, Lucian.” Her tone was harsh, and I immediately felt the sinking sensation of knowing I’d crossed the line. “But humans have to deal with pain, sickness, diseases, and losing the people we love. And we have to know there might eventually be a cure for all those things, but that it didn’t come in time to help us. I could change that for all those people with this.”
My nostrils flared. “You’re not thinking carefully. How will you save anyone if you’re dead?”
“That’s what my big, selfish bodyguard is good for. Isn’t it?”
She gave me a little shove to emphasize her point. I caught her wrist, locking my eyes on hers.
“I need to know you’re safe, Cara,” I said through clenched teeth.
“And I need to do what is important to me. This is what matters most to me, and you can’t change my mind about it.”
She was breathing heavy and I could see her pulse pounding beneath the warm softness of her neck. Cara was watching me from behind thick eyelashes, her full lips parted slightly. She was so beautiful it hurt.
I was about to say something when the phone she’d given me buzzed in my pocket. I picked it up and saw an image had been texted to me from Alaric. He and Vlad were flashing peace signs with their fingers from what looked like a rooftop view of the building just outside Anya’s. Then I noticed a black car parked in front. Bennigan, Jezabel, and Leah were getting out with weapons in their hands.
Shit. I’d gotten complacent. I’d started thinking Bennigan was waiting for me to slip up and leave her alone, but apparently, he was tired of waiting for an opportunity and was hoping to make one.
“We need to go,” I said.
“Where?”
“Out, quickly.”
I briefly considered trying to hunker down in Anya’s basement, but we’d have a better chance on the street than we would trapped inside this house.
“What’s happening?” Cara asked.
“Bennigan.”
29
Cara
Lucian took me by the hand and pulled me outside into the street. It was dusk, and there was a healthy amount of foot traffic. But when I looked to my left, I saw Bennigan in a heavy-shouldered fur coat that dragged behind him on the pavement and flared out. In the dark, the profile made it look like a high collar and a cape—almost like the picture of a vampire from some old movie in the 1800s. At least if I ignored the gun in his hand. On either side of him, Jezabel and Leah were following with guns in their hands, too.
There were mostly college aged kids out on the street at this hour, and they were used to seeing enough strange things that Bennigan and his women were only drawing an occasional curious glance.