“I got nothing other than seeing her bite you. Dad’s right. She’s hiding something that she doesn’t want us to know.”
Maybe whatever it was had something to do with the caller. “I need to go. Can you let me know when she wakes up?”
“Considering she has your blood in her system, she might be out for a while.”
“She didn’t take that much.” Then again, when it came to the vampire world, anything was possible.
“Don’t try to figure it out,” Jo said. “And let’s not forget, Tripp’s blood can put people to sleep too.”
She had a point. When Webb’s plane had gone down over the Alaskan mountains five years ago with no sign of him for months, Jo wanted to drink Tripp’s blood so she could stay asleep for longer than three hours and dream. My sister could see glimpses of the future when she dreamed.
She grabbed my hand. “Sam, I want what’s best for you, and I get it. Layla is a beautiful woman, and I want you to find a soulmate. It’s not that she’s human as much as her family is a problem we don’t need.”
All the talk about Layla made my hunger for blood rear up. I was surprised that I hadn’t gulped down a case of it after being in an enclosed space with a human, and one who was settling into my psyche at that. Layla was taking up too much of my headspace. I couldn’t think straight.
Time to change the subject. “Harley mentioned you were looking for me earlier.”
Jo produced a hair clip from her lab coat pocket and twisted her hair up on top of her head. Since we’d become vampires, my sister had grown into a stunning woman. She was smart, caring, intelligent, confident, and the best sister a brother could have. Gone were the high school days when I’d had to fight off foster dads or bullies. Jo Mason could fight her own battles. She didn’t need me anymore. I would still massacre anyone who dared to hurt her.
“Yeah. I’ve been tracing our DNA and doing some extensive research on Mom’s side. But it can wait.”
Jo was fascinated with genetics, how the human body functioned, and our vampire DNA. Her penchant for the sciences ran in the family. Our dead uncle Patrick had been a well-known geneticist, but he’d used his expertise against us, extracting our DNA to develop a serum to alter the DNA of humans into vampires. Case in point: that was how Ben had become a half-breed.
Dr. Vieira stuck his head out of Layla’s room. “Jo, can I see you for a minute?”
“Be right there,” Jo returned. “We’ll talk later.”
I pushed through the double doors, and after two flights of stairs, I was walking into Webb’s cluttered office. Stacks of books, folders, and papers were scattered around on tables, his desk, and even on a loveseat in a lounging area of sorts, tucked into one corner adjacent to the door.
Webb looked up from his laptop while Tripp lowered his phone to his lap.
I sat in the chair next to Tripp in front of Webb’s metal desk. “I think she was talking to Dowell.” I held up her phone. “I’ll get Sawyer to break into it. Maybe he can pinpoint a location on Dowell.”
“Or Roman,” Webb said.
“Maybe, but I caught the tail end of the man’s voice as I walked into her room. It wasn’t Roman,” I said.
Tripp crossed one leg over the other. “Sawyer found that our computer system was hacked. He traced the location of the hacker. We have Ben checking it out now.”
Webb sat back in his leather captain’s chair and studied me. “What’s happened to Layla?”
“The better question is what did you do to her?” Tripp asked.
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Why does everyone think I did something to her?”
“Did you?” Webb asked.
My problem wasn’t Webb and Tripp but with my father. He would have a cow when he learned Layla had bitten me. I could block him, but it was no use. He would smell her on me.
I understood the magnitude of what Layla’s family could bring down on us—war and anarchy. Yet I wasn’t sure I could stay away from her. I had a dire need to protect her all of a sudden, and it wasn’t my libido at play but a strong metaphysical force.
The minute I was in the same room with her, nothing mattered around me. No one could pry me from her. My brain shut down cold. I felt like an invisible rope was binding us together. Maybe it was the empath in me feeling what she was feeling, and she wanted me. That had to be it.
Layla’s phone trilled, pulling me from my thoughts.
The three of us looked at the phone like it was a bomb about to go off.
I tapped on the answer button, then speaker, and set it on the edge of the desk.
