Page 27 of The Unraveling

Victor drags both hands down his face and shares a long look with Julian. Julian’s lips twitch as they part, but Dr. Smith clearing his throat keeps him silent.

“Take a sample from yourself, Julian, and mix it with Bradley’s blood,” Dr. Smith orders evenly.

“What will that prove?” Despite his furrowed brow, he snatches a clean syringe from a drawer and pivots to Bradley’s body.

Dr. Smith draws away from the microscope and glances Victor up and down before drumming his fingers on the counter. Turning to Dr. Watson—who squats next to Bradley—he says, “Something . . . hopefully. We don’t exactly have a full lab here for anything more formal.”

Julian slips the needle into Bradley’s vein, then fills a small beaker with whatever’s left in his depleted body that hasn’t leaked onto the hardwood or been harvested by Victor already.

Dark thoughts—ones I never needed to think of before—swirl in my mind. What do we do with Bradley’s body? Despite having no heart, his body won’t behave like a human corpse. For the rare patients who didn’t survive the transformation, they behaved as dead humans. And Victor, with the help of a coroner who he and Dr. Smith keep on payroll, merely takes the body away as a victim of their own terminal illness.

It’s not suspicious to be a doctor for terminal patients—no matter how fringe—and periodically have one die beneath your roof. Especially when a failed transformation leaves no nefarious evidence behind.

But Bradley? Dealing with him would bring nothing but suspicion. The earth won’t take him back if we bury him. He won’t rot—his blood won’t even sour! He’ll have to be burned to ash to disappear, and we can’t exactly drag him into the backyard tonight and leave him exposed for the next sunrise. We can’t have a body bonfire billowing from the garden.

My heart free-falls into my stomach. What if Victor and I die? The rules of our immortality have been changing, so what of that? Will we rot? I shiver with the thought of maggots crawling through my black curls and over my torn, ashen skin as it shrinks taut against my bones.

“I can tell from your face that you’re thinking terrible thoughts,” Daisy whispers as her arms further compress me. “Cut it out. You’ll be fine.”

I blink hard, and the macabre images melt away, replaced by the sight of Dr. Watson carefully transferring a portion of Bradley’s blood into a vial of his own—pausing to scribble a note—before popping it into the vortex mixer on another counter.

“What do we do?” I plead with Dr. Smith as he finally turns away from the microscope and slips a different slide—perhaps one with my blood—into place.

He doesn’t answer as he studies it for a few beats before shaking his head and scrawling something in the notebook.

“We need blood transfusions,” Victor tells me, voice hollow. “That’s what I’d recommend for humans, but . . .” He chokes on the rest of his words, hand pressing against his chest as he coughs and sputters until blood sprays against his lips in cherry-colored splotches. He swiftly licks them back and clears his throat.

My eyes widen, lips parting wordlessly as I robotically turn my head to Dr. Smith in hopes he’ll explain.

Dr. Smith leans against the counter, one hand on each side of the microscope, then looks at Victor. “I’m taking you both on as patients. I’ll give you my blood to help soften the blow of whatever this is. At least until we can figure out how to cure it—stop it.”

A sharp sound of surprise leaves Dr. Watson, tone accusatory as he says, “Enable their cannibalism? How will that cure them? Should we just start giving cigarettes to lung cancer patients in hopes it will cure them too? What insane logic.”

Slowly, Dr. Smith shakes his head. “Given the circumstances . . . I’m not sure it would qualify as cannibalism, as you are so keen on calling it.”

The implication strikes like a dagger, and I grip Daisy as the room twirls red.

“I’m not human,” I hear myself say, though my lips are numb. “I’m a vampire.”

I would accept every derogatory connotation about mine and Victor’s cannibalism if it meant we’re vampires to qualify as such.

“You should be, yes,” Dr. Smith murmurs. “But ‌your entire system is . . .” He bobs his head side to side as he chooses his words, then settles on, “Going mad.”

Either way, I know immortal blood will help us feel so much better—just like it did when I was human and sick.

“And if it makes them sicker?” Julian snaps. “If you speed up their body’s”—he glances at me—“sickness? Then what?”

Dr. Smith straightens and crosses his arms, shifting between his feet with a few timed breaths before he counts on his fingers while saying, “I know multiple things for certain. One: vampires do not get sick. The transformation completely cures the human body before it makes immortal changes. Two: their symptoms, coupled with what I saw on those slides. Three: vampire blood soothes and strengthens. It doesn’t need to heal like venom to help. And four: I don’t know what the bloody hell has happened.” He holds his hands at his sides in defeat. “So let’s follow the laws as we know them until something changes the rest of them, too.”

Julian scans Victor’s equipment, scrutinizing the closed cabinets like he believes whatever else Victor has will still be insufficient. “I’ll check the interaction between my blood and Bradley’s before you do anything that might kill them faster.”

Though I ache for the relief I know moves slowly through John’s veins, neither he nor Victor say a word in protest.

Instead, Victor gives me a flat, apologetic smile before saying, “This will be a while. Why not go upstairs with Daisy?”

Relief floods me, knowing the whirring of machines and impending bickering will only deepen my anxiety.

Chapter 10