Page 54 of Blood and Buttercups

“What about me…” I look at the cabinet behind him, focusing on a knot in the hickory. “Do I freak you out?”

“No.”

“I’m basically a baby monster.”

His smile grows. “A baby monster?”

“You know, larva stage.”

“That’s a unique way to look at it. Disturbing, and most certainly inaccurate, but unique.”

“I’m gross.”

“There’s nothing even remotely gross about you.”

I wish I believed him.

“For the record, diabetics don’t freak me out either,” he says. “Or people who need medicine to control their blood pressure.”

“It’s not the same, and you know it.”

“Your body now needs the combination of proteins found in blood in order to function correctly. It’s a supplement. Like a vitamin.”

“Yeah, okay. But before modern medicine got involved, vampires ate people, right?”

“The final stage of Vampiria B causes madness. To make matters worse, vampires’ bodies crave the proteins, and their heightened sense of smell detects them in living creatures. If they enter a starved state, whether by accident or choice, they become almost rabid. They lose their ability to think rationally, and things go badly.”

“Like…super hangry.”

Noah chuckles. “Exactly.”

“So, Ethan is basically insane?”

That doesn’t make me feel better. Not at all.

“We’ve developed medication to ease the symptoms, and as long as they stay on it and supplement their diet with prescription or animal blood, they’re mostly okay.”

“Why do you say it like they’re not okay?”

“Vampires are notorious for going off their medication. They’ll be feeling good, and…” He shakes his head, annoyed.

“You think Ethan went off his medication?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“The pamphlets didn’t go into detail on exactly how a vampire passes the virus.”

“That’s because we don’t want vampires creating more vampires.”

“Does it happen every time they bite someone? Like, let’s say they get peckish on a hike, and they forgot to bring their bottle of synthetic O positive, so they snack on a hiker. Will that hiker automatically become a vampire?”

“It’s like any disease. You can be exposed and not pick it up, depending on your immune system. But nine times out of ten, yes. Vampiria B passes from the vampire’s saliva into the victim’s bloodstream.”

I fidget on my barstool.

“What is it?” he asks.

I don’t want to ask him—Ishouldn’task him.

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