Accidental Sire(49)

"For science," I said, blowing out a long breath. I gave him a little smile.

Dr. Hudson took the cap off the canister and spritzed the faintly grayish liquid against my forearm. At first, it just felt cool, like being hit with regular water.

"Nothing," I said, jerking my shoulders. "Maybe we're immune to-oh, holy crap balls!"

The skin of my arm puffed up like bubble wrap, peeling and turning an angry red. I hissed as the damage spread, growing from the size of a quarter to the width of my palm in seconds. The room filled with the smell of singed toast. The silver was dissolving my skin like wet tissue, and I was terrified that I would eventually see bone.

"Fascinating," Dr. Hudson said, craning his neck to see how far the damage spread. "Just fascinating."

This was not the response I hoped for.

"What the hell?" Ben yelled, his own hands smoking lightly from the microscopic mist of silver that had drifted over his skin. "Rinse it off now!"

"Oh, of course," Dr. Hudson said, though he sounded vaguely annoyed.

The doctor took a bottle of distilled water, held my arm over a basin, and rinsed away the silver. It didn't help. The burn continued to spread up my arm to my bicep, eating away at my skin. It was more tolerable than having my sternum crushed by a Frisbee weight but only by a little bit.

"It's not stopping!"

"Screw this." Ben reached into the refrigerator unit by the supply cabinet and pulled out a bag of donor blood. He grabbed Dr. Hudson by the collar of his lab coat. Dr. Hudson showed little to no reaction, jotting down his notes as Ben dragged him around. "Is this clean?" Ben demanded. "You haven't screwed around with it? No silver or garlic or LSD or anything?"

Dr. Hudson shook his head. Ben tore off the top of the plastic bag and poured it into my mouth, splashing whatever missed my mouth down the front of my shirt. The burn stopped spreading, but it still stung like a bitch. Ben reached into the fridge and took out another unit of donor blood.

"Hold on, that's AB negative, very rare!" Dr. Hudson cried. "And it's my lunch!"

"Shut up!" Ben snapped, while I bit into the plastic directly this time and sucked down the blood like Satan's Capri Sun, made of pure deliciousness, deep and rich, chocolaty with undertones of cherry. AB negative was officially my favorite blood type. Also, my arm was no longer burning, which was lovely.


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I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, watching as the skin slowly smoothed out and reverted to an angry pink. It went nicely with the bright, bloody smear on the back of my hand.

"One more?" Ben asked, holding my arm in his hands, examining it.

I glanced down at my skin, which was now smooth and unblemished and a regular human color. A pale human but human. I shook my head. "I'm OK now. Thanks."

I glanced down at Ben's hands, which had stopped smoking but still looked stippled and red. Ben released my arm and stepped between Dr. Hudson and me.

"Well, I guess we can mark down yes for an allergy to silver," Dr. Hudson said, smiling brightly. "Honestly, your sensitivity to silver is astounding. I've never seen anything like it."

"You're a dick," I told Dr. Hudson as Ben handed me a wet cloth to clean my face.

Dr. Hudson jerked his shoulders and continued scribbling.

"You're telling me that was a weak solution?" Ben growled.

"One percent concentration," Dr. Hudson told him, showing me the label on the canister. "Most vampires wouldn't have had a reaction like that. Look."

He held out his own arm and pressed the button on the atomizer.

"Don't!" I cried. And then I remembered the pain in my forearm and shrugged. "Never mind, Dr. Hudson. Go ahead."

The silver spray dripped off his skin, and while it did turn just a little pink, Dr. Hudson didn't have nearly the same damage. He smiled and waved his intact limb at me, as if his lack of burns should somehow make me feel better. Clearly, this was a weird "neo-vamp" symptom that didn't affect regular vampires. But what if Ben was somehow even more sensitive to silver than I was? What if Dr. Hudson sprayed him and Ben lost his arm?

"See?" Dr. Hudson chuckled, wiping the silver off with a wet wipe. "Easy peasy."

"You're not spraying Ben with that," I told him very sternly. "He had a reaction just from the blowback from spraying me. Let's assume we both have the same reaction."

"But you were correct. You could have very different levels of response," Dr. Hudson protested. "We need to collect complete data."