Liz and I raised our eyebrows at each other as the phone went silent on Joseph’s end. Whatever the news was, it must have been big. Now, we’d just have to wait to hear if it was also good.
31
The following night, Liz came over to our place so that she and Robert could go to the local blood bank and replenish their supply.
Since Robert had always acted as Liz’s unofficial mentor into vampirism, she followed his replenishment schedule for blood, which was about every three months. Robert typically had his own blood delivered to the house, but the epidemic had left Liz’s nerves feeling frazzled. He was accompanying her to the bank more as moral support than anything else. I was staying behind at the house because I had no need for what they were shopping for, and I was feeling bloated and queasy. Just the thought of being around all that blood made me want to hurl.
Robert and Liz were just about to walk out the door when her phone rang. “It’s Joseph,” she said. This time, thankfully, she told him he was on speaker before he had a chance to get dirty.
“I have news,” he said.
She quipped, “Well, hello to you, too.”
“This is serious,” he butt in, sounding frantic. “What are you doing?”
“Robert and I were just about to go to the blood bank?—”
“No! Don’t do that! Whatever you do, donotbuy or drink any new blood. Have you had any yet?”
Liz shook her head, though Joseph obviously couldn’t see her. “No, I’ve only been drinking from my supply at home.”
“What about you, Robert?”
“Same. What’s going on, Joseph?”
“Listen, I have other calls to make, but I wanted to call you first with the news.” Byyou, I assumed Joseph meant Liz, so it was a lucky coincidence that Robert was also present. “There is no vampire epidemic. It’s thehumanswho are infected, not vampires.”
Our mouths dropped open collectively.
“A couple nights ago, one of our scientists was out shopping when he had an epiphany,” Joseph continued. “A woman in line in front of him was talking on her phone, and she said something like, ‘I’m only human and I make mistakes.’ It got him thinking. What if we’ve been focused on the wrong species? What if it was somethinghumans were given that’s causing vampires to change? We’ve been so busy concentrating on vampire symptoms that we’ve overlooked humans.”
I asked, “So, it’s some kind of, what, airborne virus? I didn’t think you guys could get sick with human diseases.”
“Normally we can’t, but this virus is in their blood?—”
“Which vampires are drinking,” Liz finished for him.
“Right,” Joseph concurred.
Blood. Of course. It made sense. Vampires drank from the infected humans, and then they were infected. But . . . “How are the humans getting infected, though?”
Joseph said, “You’re not going to like this part, Olivia.”
“I don’t like any of it,” I grumbled. I couldn’t help feeling like the epidemic was all my fault.
As if to validate my thoughts, Joseph said, “Well, this part especially. It’s in the water humans are drinking—the virus. As we suspected, Richard and Maxine used your blood to recreate Leopold’s serum, though theirs is like a supercharged version of it designed for humans. They sent their cronies out to the farthest corners of the world to taint water supplies. They couldn’t cover every aqueduct in every city in every country, but they still were able to cause significant damage because of their strategic mapping.”
“Does the virus hurt humans?” Robert asked, studying me with worry.
“Not at all. The Nolans have no problem with humans, so the only ones hurt are vampires who drink from humans who’ve consumed the tainted water. Also, if a vampire drinks from a human who used to be vampire—a Reborn, I mean—then they also become human.”
“Richard and Maxine must be talking now, if you’ve learned all this,” I said.
“Aye, but it took some persuasion,” Joseph said. “We only needed to find the right weakness.”
“Which was?” Liz asked.
“Them. They were willing to personally endure pain and die for their cause, but they couldn’t bear to watch each other suffer.”
