Page 46 of Midnight Coven

SAVIOR

“We’re goingto put you under,” the voice droned.

It came from a human, but it didn’t sound human. It sounded more like a machine than most A.I. voices. It might have been an A.I., like the other machines in the room, but Nick was staring right up into its face.

“You won’t feel anything––” the droning tech continued, reading from the same script.

“Bullshit,” Nick muttered, unable to help himself.

“––But there might be some mental discomfort,” the voice went on, undaunted. “We do this to gauge the violence of your reactions under the onslaught of certain stimuli. We do it to gauge––”

“Whether or not I’m a vampire?” Nick muttered angrily. “You could just ask me, you know. I’m a vampire.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t help this process detective. Cooperate, and it will go quicker––”

“No, it won’t,” Nick said.

He couldn’t help it that time, either.

He was naked, lying on a metal table, electrodes covering his skin.

Needles pierced his flesh. Up and down his arms. In his chest. At his temples. A longer one went into his abdomen, withdrawing the blood that remained in his system.

Some of those needles made sense.

Some of them just flat-out didn’t.

Either way, for the first time in maybe ten hours, Nick was glad as fuck he hadn’t fed from Wynter recently. He knew part of this “physical” was to find out what he’d been eating recently, and how much. If he’d killed all of those humans on the Upper East Side, even if he’d had help, he would be absolutely bloated with human blood.

As it was, St. Maarten had already determined that Nick metabolized seer blood differently. Some property in seer blood caused it to break down more quickly once it left the host, something to do with their living light.

Whatever the exact science of it, full-blooded seer blood like Wynter’s broke down much more quickly inside a vampire than human blood did. It broke down something like three to four times faster than human blood.

Five times as fast as most non-human animal blood.

That also meant a vampire got hungrier faster after eating from a seer.

It meant they shouldn’t consume primarily seer blood, or they were likely to kill the hosts, just out of an inability to keep it in their system long enough.

It also explained why Nick craved that blood connection with Wynter so intensely, and a lot more quickly than he maybe should have.

Lara St. Maarten, after conducting her studies on the different blood types when combined with vampire blood, theorized to Nick it was likely why vampires tended to drink too much from their seer partners in the past, and often accidentally killed them. It provided a pretty solid biological rationale for outlawing seer and vampire sex pairings, too.

She warned Nick to always supplement his wife’s blood with human blood bags, at least three to four per day, so he wouldn’t accidentally drain too much of her, too.

Nick had done that anyway, just out of an excess of caution.

Still, it was good to know he wasn’t just a greedy asshole.

According to St. Maarten, there was an actual, biological component behind his lack of self-control. He just couldn’t let himself forget that.

He watched them pull blood from his abdomen, and gritted his teeth.

He knew they wouldn’t find anything.

He also knew if lawyer, Nora King, was any good, she would make an official request for the “processing” data herself. Alibi or no, it would lend credence to her argument that Nick wasn’t their guy, that he couldn’t have been their guy.

His blood count would be low.

---