Accidental Sire(47)

I glanced at the clock and wondered if it was too early in the workday to get another one of Sammy's delicious coffee concoctions. The calendar app on my computer rang out a little ding of alarm to remind me that McDerpy-Dr. Hudson, I had to remember to call him Dr. Hudson-had asked me to report to the R&D floor at one A.M. to go over my cheek-swab test results. I definitely didn't have time for coffee. But if Dr. Hudson broke out another swab, I swear, I was having two bloody macchiatos.

I shut down my computer and followed the Council's strict security procedures, pushing my file cart into Jane's office and double-locking the door. I walked to the elevator and realized that this was the first time I'd been allowed to use it on my own. I could use it to go to the top floor, walk out onto the street. Maybe go somewhere (gasp) completely unsupervised. And for just one second, my hand hovered over the "Ground Level" button. But alas, I couldn't do it. Jane trusted me. She'd trusted me enough to leave me unattended in the office. I couldn't pay her back by pulling a Shawshank.

Sighing over my own lame-ass integrity, I hit the button marked "R&D Subfloor." I stepped out of the open doors, shivering at the lower subterranean temperatures. The R&D subfloor looked more like a hospital than an office. Slick gray tile, bare white walls, extremely unflattering fluorescent lighting. The hall was completely empty, no reception desk, no helpful medical minion to point me in the right direction. And all of the doors were shut tight.

Frowning, I walked past several doors marked "Hematology," "Dermatology," and "NO." I wasn't sure what "NO" was all about, but I'm sure it wasn't good. It did sound like something Jane would put up on a door, though. And that made me smile.

I closed my eyes and tried to listen for any signs of "life" on the floor. But I didn't hear one heartbeat, not one breath. Clearly, this was a vampire-only floor, which actually made me a bit more comfortable. At least I didn't have to worry about my bloodlust. At the far end of the hallway, I heard the faintest murmur of conversation.

I followed it until I found Dr. Hudson waiting in what looked like any exam room in any doctor's office in America-more gray tile, more white walls, jars upon jars of swabs and cotton balls. Ben was sitting on the end of a hospital bed, looking pretty uncomfortable. That probably had to do with Dr. Hudson and his gleeful expression as he polished a scary array of shiny medical instruments. Or possibly the fact that Dr. Hudson was wearing red suspenders and a red-and-white plaid shirt that looked like it was made from a picnic blanket. 

I don't know if the shirt-suspenders combo was his way of trying to make us feel at ease, but combined with the fact that he was somehow simultaneously grinning and whistling, it was anything but comforting. And then he saw me walking through the door, and the grinning and whistling increased. How could whistling be so sinister?

"Miss Keene!" he exclaimed. "Welcome, welcome! I was just explaining to young Mr. Overby that we've found all kinds of interesting tidbits in your test results, enough to warrant considerably more testing."

"More testing?" I would say I tried not to whine when I said it, but that would be a lie.

"Righty-o!" he exclaimed.

"Like what?" I asked, edging toward Ben. Because while I was not necessarily on awesome terms with my childe, I definitely felt more comfortable with him and his lack of shiny sharp objects.

Dr. Hudson's smile ratcheted up that much further. I was honestly worried that at some point the two corners of his mouth were going to touch behind his head. "For starters, your iron and hemoglobin counts are far above a normal vampire's. Your DNA shows an alarming number of extra genes thrown into the mix, which may explain some of your more interesting traits." He stared at me intently.

"Alarming?" Ben asked.

Dr. Hudson was doing this weird little shoulder-shimmy-nod thing that made him look like a psychotic bobblehead. "It's fascinating, just fascinating, like a puzzle. I just want to take you apart, see what makes you tick, and put you back together."

Ben and I stared at him, silent and horrified, both imperceptibly inching farther away from him. Dr. Hudson didn't seem to realize he'd just said something incredibly creepy and moved from staring at me to rolling a covered medical tray to the bedside.

I cleared my throat. "What kind of DNA?"

Dr. Hudson winked at me. "Oh, a whole cocktail of goodies-animal, vegetable, and mineral."

What sort of undead uber-nerd had sired this guy, and how could I ask him to take Dr. Hudson back? Like to a cellular level? And what did he mean by-what kind of minerals had DNA? What the hell were we?