“Remarkable. ”
“It’s rare but not unheard of. It…” I stopped, not sure I wanted to tell him any more details. If I told him babies were only born with active lycanthropy when the mothers experienced physical trauma, what would he do with that information? To me it was just a known fact, but in this man’s hands I could picture a dozen pregnant werewolf mothers being abused in God knows how many ways, trying to turn their babies into wolves. “It’s rare,” I concluded.
Now that my mind had gone down this new track I didn’t want to tell him anything. If he knew how I’d been created, what was to stop him from bringing in those pregnant werewolf mothers and force-feeding them vampire blood?
I was suddenly dizzy.
What if that was his ultimate goal? Not research or scientific understanding, but reproduction? Did he want to study me so he could learn how to make more of me? I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea of a mass-produced army of vampire/werewolf hybrids.
For one thing, they’d be a pretty ridiculous army. Couldn’t go out in sunlight, couldn’t shift without the presence of a pack, basically…strong but not stronger than vampires. All of the weaknesses, only half of the perks. Story of my life.
Why would anyone want more of me?
Maybe if I could make him understand the negatives outweighed the positives, he wouldn’t want to do it. But if he hadn’t yet conceived of the idea, would I be giving it to him?
Or worse yet—for me anyway—would I be handing him a list of all the best ways to hurt me?
My plate became the most fascinating thing in the room again.
“I can’t give you more blood today, I hope you can understand why. ” Why did he have to sound like Mr. Nice Guy all the time? It made it difficult for me to think of him as a villain. And he was a villain.
There weren’t a lot of heroes in my life, but I’d met more than enough bad guys to recognize one when I saw them.
“Wh
ere did you study?” I asked.
“University of Vienna for my undergraduate. Stalingrad for my Master’s. ” Stalingrad. He’d been in Russia when it was still the Soviet Union. That made me feel very, very young. “My PhD was received in Berlin. ” So he really was a doctor.
“What was your specialty?”
“I started with research on the mutations caused by nuclear fallout, spent a great deal of time investigating the Chernobyl meltdown. People said the children born from radiation poisoning were monsters, but they were not. Just…different. ”
My wine was teasing me, coaxing me to drink it. I needed something to keep me from going stark raving mad in here, but I knew alcohol would only hinder me. I had to stay sharp.
“How did you make the leap from deformed babies to vampires and werewolves?”
“Is it not a natural progression to look at what humanity deems monstrous and wonder what is a real monster? I wondered what it was about ugliness or cruelty that would make someone call another human a monster. So I began to search for the real monsters. It wasn’t difficult, not when you really look. Especially in cities like Moscow or Berlin. Big cities always have what you need, as long as you know which rocks to turn over. ”
“What about Paris?”
He went still, his smile shriveling up faster than a deflated balloon. “I didn’t mention Paris. ”
“No, but you lived there, didn’t you?”
His silence was all the answer I needed.
“You had someone there to help you find your monsters. Didn’t you?” I’d been thinking a lot about Peyton while I’d been locked up, playing out the ways he’d have known The Doctor and how he would have been able to convince a man like this to take me. My capture had been a risky one, not just picking up a single wolf or vampire in the night. I’d had protection.
“That’s enough. ”
“I know. You’re not the only one who can see other people’s secrets, Doctor. ”
He got to his feet slowly and came around the table so he was standing behind me. I knew I’d made a mistake the moment his hands rested on my shoulders. I shouldn’t have played the Peyton card, shouldn’t have let him know what I knew.
His fingers grazed the sharp points of my collarbones, pressing into the skin, making me aware of how little protection there was between the surface and the bone.
“Put your hands on the table, please. ”