"Kaelen!" I screamed, the sound tearing raw and desperate from my throat.
The interior of the armored limousine was a vacuum of sound, completely insulated against the chaotic wail of sirens we had just left behind at the Rossi Estate. But inside the cabin, the silence was shattered by the horrifying, wet rattle of Kaelen's failing lungs.
He was completely unresponsive. His massive frame slumped heavily against the black leather seat, his head lolling to the side. The flawless, alabaster skin that usually radiated a terrifying, cryogenic cold was now covered in a slick, unnatural sweat, turning a sickening, mottled grey.
I scrambled across the seat, my heavy oxblood Valentino gown tangling around my legs. I grabbed his broad shoulders, pulling him flat against the leather bench.
"Renzo!" I shouted at the thick, bulletproof partition separating us from the driver. I pounded my fist against the glass. "Renzo, open the comms!"
The intercom crackled instantly. "Boss?"
"It's Seraphina!" I yelled, my fingers frantically unbuttoning Kaelen's ruined, blood-stained tuxedo shirt. "He's down! He caught one of the silver bolts in the ballroom!"
"Silver is a nuisance to the Boss, Doctor," Renzo's voice filtered through the speaker, tight but trying to remain calm. "His cellular regeneration will push it out. He just needs a minute."
"It's not just silver!" I screamed, ripping the crisp white fabric open to expose his chest. "The bolt was laced! They weaponized the oxidized blood from the lab! He's going into catastrophic necrotic shock!"
I grabbed Kaelen's right arm. The sight made my medical brain short-circuit with pure horror.
The flesh of his palm, where he had caught the crossbow bolt, was completely necrotic. The tissue was literally rotting away into a thick, bubbling black sludge. But worse than the localized tissue death were the veins. Thick, pitch-black, corrupted veins were aggressively spiderwebbing up his muscular forearm, traveling dangerously fast past his elbow, making a direct, lethal path toward his heart.
"Step on it, Renzo!" I ordered, my voice cracking. "Get us to the estate lab right now, or he is going to die in the back of this car!"
The heavy limousine violently accelerated, throwing me hard against the seat.
I didn't have my surgical kit. I didn't have oxygen, IV fluids, or heavy-metal binding catalysts. I was a trauma surgeon armed with nothing but a designer dress and a crystal decanter of whiskey.
I looked at the black veins creeping up Kaelen's bicep. The rotting, oxidized vampire blood was acting like a hyper-aggressive venom, destroying his immortal cells from the inside out. If that black sludge reached his heart, not even the Dragon could survive it.
I had to slow the circulation. I had to stop the venom from spreading.
I didn't hesitate. I reached up to my throat and grabbed the heavy platinum choker Kaelen had locked around my neck just hours ago. The massive ruby dug into my skin as I yanked violently. The platinum clasp cut into my fingers, but I pulled with every ounce of adrenaline-fueled strength I possessed until the metal snapped.
I tossed the priceless diamonds onto the floorboards. I grabbed Kaelen's massive, heavy bicep, wrapping the broken platinum chain tightly around his arm, just inches below his shoulder joint.
I pulled it brutally tight, creating a crude, agonizing tourniquet.
Kaelen's body violently convulsed against the leather seat, a guttural, choked hiss escaping his lips, but his eyes remained clouded and unfocused.
"I know it hurts," I whispered, my hands slick with his cold, sweat-dampened skin as I tied the platinum into a knot. "Stay with me, Kaelen. Don't you dare leave me alone with them."
I pressed my ear against his bare chest, right over his sternum.
Thump.
Silence stretched for ten agonizing seconds.
Thump.
His ancient heart was failing. The corrupted blood was fighting the tourniquet, slowly but inevitably seeping past the pressure point.
The limousine violently swerved, the heavy tires screeching as we tore up the winding, gravel path of the Screaming Woods. The iron gates of the Vane Estate didn't even have time to fully open; Renzo smashed the armored grille of the car directly through them, tearing the metal off the hinges.
The car slammed to a halt at the front steps.
The door was ripped open from the outside. Renzo stood there, his usual calm demeanor entirely shattered, a submachine gun slung across his back.
"Help me get him up!" I barked, grabbing Kaelen's left arm.
Renzo didn't hesitate. He hauled his massive Boss out of the car. Together, we dragged the unconscious, dying King up the stone steps, across the cavernous foyer, and practically carried him down the winding corridors of the West Wing.
"The lab!" I shouted, kicking the heavy steel doors open.
We hauled Kaelen onto the primary stainless-steel surgical table in the center of the room. He was completely dead weight.
"Renzo, I need you to hold him down," I ordered, sprinting toward the glass medical cabinets. "When I release this tourniquet, the localized pain is going to be apocalyptic. If he thrashes, I'll sever his brachial artery."
Renzo nodded, his face pale as he leaned his entire body weight over Kaelen's chest, pinning his uninjured arm and torso to the steel.
I grabbed my heavy leather surgical roll. I didn't bother with modern, fragile scalpels. I pulled out the 19th-century, bone-handled blade Kaelen had forced me to use in the basement yesterday. I grabbed a pair of solid silver retractors and a large metal basin.
I ran back to the table and positioned myself over his rotting right arm.
"He needs the cure," I muttered to myself, my eyes darting toward the glass silo of black sludge in the corner of the room, and then to the small petri dish where my own blood had neutralized the rot just an hour ago.
But I couldn't inject my blood into his veins yet. The necrotic tissue in his hand was acting as a continuous source of the poison. I had to cut the rot out first. I had to debride the wound.
"Hold him," I warned Renzo.
I grabbed the platinum choker cutting into Kaelen's bicep and violently yanked it loose.
The black, corrupted blood instantly surged forward.
Kaelen's eyes flew wide open. They weren't emerald. They weren't pitch black. They were a toxic, blinding, bleeding yellow.
He let out a roar that shook the heavy medical equipment on the shelves. It wasn't the roar of a Mafia Don; it was the apocalyptic, agonizing scream of a mythological beast being burned alive.
He violently bucked upward, nearly throwing Renzo off the table entirely. The steel table groaned under the supernatural force of his thrashing.
"Hold him, damn it!" I screamed, gripping the bone-handled scalpel tightly in my shaking hand.
I didn't use anesthesia. I couldn't. His altered metabolism would burn through the lidocaine before I even made the first incision, and I didn't have the time to synthesize a proper dose.
I drove the heavy surgical blade directly into the necrotic, bubbling black flesh of his palm.
Kaelen roared again, his left hand clenching so hard the stainless steel edge of the surgical table actually warped and dented under his grip. His yellow eyes locked onto me, wide with manic, unadulterated agony and feral fury.
"Lenore!" he screamed, his voice a distorted, demonic echo that made the blood freeze in my veins.
He wasn't seeing me. The pain and the poison had completely shattered his mind. He was hallucinating. He was back in 1452.
"I'm not Lenore!" I shouted over his screams, using the silver retractors to pull the rotting flesh apart. "I'm Seraphina! And I am saving your life!"
I worked with frantic, brutal precision. I carved away chunks of the black, oxidized tissue, dropping the corrupted, sizzling flesh into the metal basin. It smelled like sulfur and rotting copper. I dug deep into the muscle of his hand, chasing the black, spiderwebbing veins, slicing them open to drain the toxic sludge before it could travel further up his arm.
Blood sprayed across my face, coating the expensive silk bodice of my dress in a horrific, sticky layer of crimson and black.
For ten agonizing minutes, the lab was filled with nothing but the sickening sound of tearing flesh and Kaelen's ragged, guttural screams of pain.
Finally, I hit healthy, pale muscle. The black sludge stopped flowing, replaced by the slow, sluggish seep of his own cold, red blood.
I dropped the bloody scalpel into the basin with a loud clatter. My chest was heaving, my hands shaking so violently I could barely hold the silver forceps.
Kaelen had stopped thrashing. He lay pinned beneath Renzo, his chest rising and falling in shallow, erratic gasps. The toxic yellow was slowly bleeding out of his eyes, leaving behind a dull, exhausted, muddy green.
"Is it gone?" Renzo gasped, his own face drenched in sweat from the sheer physical effort of holding the monster down.
"The localized necrotic tissue is gone," I said, my voice trembling as I grabbed a sterile bandage and tightly wrapped Kaelen's mangled hand. "But the oxidized poison is already in his circulatory system. His heart rate is dropping. His cellular regeneration has completely stalled. The silver and the rot are winning."
"So what do we do?" Renzo demanded, stepping back from the table.
I looked down at Kaelen. His flawless face was a mask of sheer agony. His eyes were half-closed, drifting into a coma; he likely wouldn't wake up from it.
If I tell them, I thought, the cold realization settling in my bones. If I show Renzo what my blood can do, I will never just be a doctor again. I will be the cure. I will be the most valuable, hunted object in the supernatural world.
I looked at the monstrous King bleeding out on my table.
"Renzo," I said, my voice dropping to a clinical, authoritative deadpan. "I need you to leave the lab."
Renzo blinked, entirely confused. "What? Doc, I can't leave him—"
"You are a liability right now," I lied smoothly, projecting absolute confidence. "I have to synthesize a heavy-metal binding catalyst using highly volatile compounds. If you distract me, the mixture will oxidize and blow this room to pieces. Get out. Lock the door behind you. Guard the hallway. If Silas's men breach the estate, do not let them in here."
Renzo looked at Kaelen, then back at me. The absolute authority in my tone won.
"You save him, Doc," Renzo warned, his voice thick with loyalty. "Or none of us survive the night."
He turned and sprinted out of the lab. The heavy steel doors hissed shut, the biometric locks engaging with a heavy clank.
I was entirely alone with the dying Dragon.
I didn't waste a second. I didn't go to the chemical cabinets. I didn't reach for the synthetic polypeptides or the bovine blood.
I grabbed a clean, heavy-gauge syringe from the tray.
I didn't swab my arm with iodine. I didn't use a tourniquet. I simply shoved the thick needle directly into the prominent blue vein in the crook of my own left elbow.
I gritted my teeth against the sharp sting and pulled the plunger back.
The plastic barrel rapidly filled with fifty cubic centimeters of my own hot, bright red blood. The blood that Kaelen's venom had fundamentally altered. The blood that carried the cure to the rotting disease ravaging his kind.
I pulled the needle out, pressing a piece of gauze against my arm to stop the bleeding.
I walked over to Kaelen's head. He was completely unresponsive now. His skin was the color of wet ash. His breathing had virtually stopped.
"You told me tonight that my neck belonged exclusively to you," I whispered, leaning down until my lips were inches from his cold ear. "You told me you were a carnivore. Let's see if you were telling the truth."
I didn't use an IV line. I didn't look for a vein in his arm.
I positioned the heavy-gauge needle directly over the thick, pulsing jugular vein in the side of Kaelen's neck.
I drove the steel deep into his flesh and slammed the plunger down, injecting fifty CCs of my pure, unaltered blood straight into his failing circulatory system.
I pulled the needle out and took a step back, my heart hammering against my ribs.
For five agonizing seconds, absolutely nothing happened.
And then, Kaelen Vane's eyes snapped open.
They weren't green. They weren't yellow. They were entirely, utterly pitch black.
He didn't scream this time. He inhaled. A massive, violently deep intake of air expanded his broad chest impossibly wide. The sickly, ashen grey color of his skin instantly vanished, replaced by a terrifying, vibrant flush of health. The dark, spiderwebbing veins on his neck and arm rapidly receded, dissolving into nothingness as my blood aggressively hunted and destroyed the oxidized rot inside him.
He sat up on the steel surgical table so fast the movement was a literal blur.
He didn't look at his mangled, bandaged hand. He didn't look around the lab.
His demonic, pitch-black eyes locked entirely, exclusively onto me.
He could smell it. He could smell the fresh puncture wound on my arm. He could feel the intoxicating, narcotic rush of my blood currently rewriting his DNA, pulling him back from the brink of absolute death.
He slowly slid off the metal table. He stood at his full, terrifying height. He didn't look weak. He looked like an ancient god of war who had just been handed the keys to the apocalypse.
"Seraphina," Kaelen rumbled.
It wasn't a word. It was a dark, possessive, feral purr that vibrated the fillings in my teeth.
He took a slow, deliberate step toward me.
"Kaelen," I warned, backing away, my spine hitting the edge of the workstation. "You were dying. I had to..."
He took another step, closing the distance between us entirely. He boxed me in, planting his massive hands on the steel counter on either side of my hips.
He leaned down, burying his face directly into the curve of my neck, inhaling the scent of my pulse with a shuddering, violent gasp.
"You didn't just cure me, Doctor," Kaelen whispered against my skin, his fangs grazing the exact spot the ruby choker used to cover. "You just turned yourself into my absolute, unbreakable addiction."