"I feel much better, thank you."
"Did you see anything when you took my blood?"
"I saw history. I saw... I don't know if I can believe what I saw."
"You can." She nodded. "I was there."
Looking down, he held out his hands, examining the changes her blood had already wrought. "What's this?"
"A gift, perhaps. I hope."
"If Kumarin was as you are, made by your father, why is he so pale? His eyes red? Is your father like Kumarin, or like you?"
"He is like Kumarin, but once, he was like me. When he was very young, he refused the blood of humans. It was a story he told me to convince me to feed, instead, it only convinced me that we didn't have to be monsters."
"Thank you for the hope that I don't have to be a monster."
"You don't."
"That's what I tell myself, but when the blood bags and the deer aren't sating that hunger, and it gnaws at my insides, I wonder how long my humanity will hold on."
She made a decision then and there. "You don't have to find out. I'll supply you. You should find that what you took will keep you sated for a few days. As you age, as your body acclimates to my blood, it will keep you sated for weeks. You may even be able to phase out to only animal blood."
"You don't have to do that."
"I do, though. You see, it's my fault Evgeni Kumarin is what he is. If there's a small thing I can do to help right any of the wrongs he's inflicted on the world, I'll do it. You should be able to store my blood as you did the human. The great thing about vamp blood is that it won't lose its potency like animal and human blood."
"This is almost too good to be true," David said.
"I believe that after enough time passes, that you will be like me. But if not, I can feed you always."
"No wonder they want you back so badly." He shook his head. "You could change them all. They'd drain you dry." There was a tone of what sounded like awe in his voice.
"Some would. Perhaps my father would even let them to teach me a lesson in obedience."
"Woolven won't let that happen. Parker won't let that happen," David reassured her.
"You know, this thing with Parker and I, it was an accident. A mistake."
"Some of the best things are. We all end up places we never thought we would. My daughter came to Aphelion with revenge in her heart. She was going to bring down Woolven Industries, and specifically Blake. She believed that he was the one who killed me." He gave her a lopsided grin. "My fault entirely, of course."
"How so?" She cocked her head to the side.
"I was trying to warn her. Trying to get her to go to Blake for answers and protection, but I was dying. I only managed to write his name before I died."
"Werewolves are pretty hard to take down."
"Randi didn't care. I think, at one point, she had a silver nitrate laser pointed at his head. She could've incinerated him--"
"Where would she get a thing like that?"
"Oh, that's what I do here at Woolven. I make weapons to fight supernatural wars. I work in medicine, too."
"What do you have to kill vampires?"
"Are you sure you want to know?" David asked her kindly.
"Definitely. Asakku are harder to kill than most and I would be devastated if anything happened to these people because of me."
"And you see that, right? That we're all people, no matter what other labels are on us? Vampire. Werewolf. Dragon. We all love. We all know loss and sorrow. We all bleed, but sometimes in a different way. Still, some things remain the same."
"The vampire nations are all pretty big on the we all bleed thing." She rolled her eyes. "The blood is the life and all that. It's not just a silly tagline."
David laughed. "Yeah, I figured that. Well, come here." He led her over to a steel cabinet that had fingerprint and iris identification. "I have the usual UV bombs, bullets, and the like. But this is special." He pulled out a small glowing vial.
"What is it?”
“It’s a cure."
"What?" She stepped back, not wanting to get too close.
He held it out to her. "You can touch it. It's perfectly safe."
Belle held out a shaking hand and the vial was cool in her palm, but it was akin to holding a snake.
"I should clarify. It's not any kind of cure that will reverse the vampiric process. It does, however, stop it in its tracks. It's made of irradiated werewolf venom."
Her fingers went to her throat where Parker had bitten her. "But we heal from that." She pressed her lips together. "If it's not--"
"There are actually cellular differences in werewolf venom depending on the intent of the wolf. It's like human tears. Tears wept for joy have a different physical construction than tears wept for sadness or pain. They're a lot like snowflakes, beautiful, actually. But what you're holding in your hand is from a werewolf in his warrior form. Do you know what that looks like?"