Page 34 of Dragon Slayer

8

SHOW ME

Mia brushed Brando with long strokes of the body brush, flicking her wrist at the end, little puffs of dust rising up toward the sunlight spilling through the stall window. He huffed contentedly and leaned into the pressure. His coat gleamed, penny-bright, his new autumn hair coming in darker than his washed-out summer coat.

Grooming a horse was the most soothing activity of which she knew. But she couldn’t stem the tide of worry for Val. Alone with only Brando’s warm presence and her own thoughts for company, she couldn’t stop replaying their last interaction, wondering if she’d finally managed to push him away for good, too overcome by pain and misery to say the kind things he so obviously needed to hear.

But even worse was the thought that he wasn’t coming to visit because he couldn’t. Early on in their relationship, the first time she brought him to the barn and he spent all day there, he’d fritzed out for a while, and been tired in the evening, telling her it had taken too much energy to maintain an astral projection for that long.

Maybe he was tired.

Or maybe, a dire voice whispered in the back of her mind, something had happened to him.

She lifted the brush and started another stroke–

“Mia.” A ragged gasp behind her. A pained, choked voice.

She dropped the brush and whirled, bumping back into Brando as she lost her balance.

Val stood at the open stall door, in his tattered prison clothes, his hair wild and greasy. His eyesglowed, dilated and feverish.

“Oh my God–” Mia started.

“Mia,” Val said again, his voice raw, like he’d been screaming. “Listen to me. I don’t know how long I’ll have, but I have to–” He paused to catch his breath, panting. “I have to tell you this. I can’t…”

“It’s okay. Take your time.”

“No, I can’t! There is no time!”

“Val.” Her heart raced; she felt its sharp tattoo under every inch of skin. “What’s going on?”

He gulped a few more breaths, and then drew upright, a valiant effort to compose himself. “Your father’s drug. You haven’t agreed to take it yet, have you?”

“No. But why–”

“Don’t. You can’t. There’s a good chance it will kill you.”

“What?”

He closed his eyes a moment, sighing. “Christ, I should have told you all this from the start.” When he looked at her again, he said, “Forgive me, darling. You’ll hate me after this, for keeping things from you, but I had to know first. I had to be sure.”

“Sure of what?” He was scaring her now.

“That you aren’t like him. That you’re genuine.”

She felt like she’d been slapped. Offended, shocked, worried, a whole tangle of things. “Val, what the hell–”

“I know your father. He’s the one keeping me prisoner these days.”

Mia…

Couldn’t process it.

It hit her like a wave. Over her head, all around her, filling her lungs. It didn’t feel like she took a breath for a full minute, and when she finally did, it was a gasp.

That coincidence, the one that had worried her weeks ago…it wasn’t a coincidence after all.

“Your father,” Val went on, tone resigned, heavy, “is the biologist in charge at the Ingraham Institute of Medical Technology. His drug isn’t a drug at all; it’s a serum he’s made out of vampire blood. My blood, and my brother’s. He bought me from my last captors, and then he finally found Vlad in Romania and dug him up. The drug works – on some people. But it isn’t a true turning, and without being turned, some of the recipients…well…it doesn’t go well. They die. Painfully.”

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