Page 68 of The Doctor's Wolf: Part Two
There was a moment in which Gordon couldfeelAdler wanting to just keep going, maybe use his teeth on the man again.But he didn’t.He stopped.He let the bloodied wolf breathe, let him live.
“Gordon!” Maxim yelled from somewhere inside the apartment.
Adler cast his blue wolf eyes down and looked back at Gordon.
Go.I can deal with this one.
“You won’t, uh…”
A pause, then,No.I’m still a police detective, not a vigilante.Go help Maxim.The scent of blood is really strong.
Gordon nodded.He walked past Adler, and almost as if on instinct, Gordon ran his fingers through his mate’s black fur.
“I’m okay,” he told Adler.“Put pressure on that werewolf’s wound.”He went into the apartment.
From the looks of the interior, this would have made a nice home for an eccentric professor.There was a lot of polished, wooden furniture, the kind you’d mostly find at antique stores or auctions.There were old volumes on shelves and busts and sculptures.Gordon noticed one of Asclepios, but didn’t linger.
He found a back door, the kind servants would have used back in the day, and predictably, it opened to a less fancy staircase in the back.
There, even Gordon could smell the blood.
The scene in front of him was confusing.There was a half-dressed vampire and a naked human, and a hunter between them.
Maxim was bent over the human.Against a wall on the stairs below them, the vampire lay, a fine blade in the back of his neck and his wrists bound with a massive set of cuffs.The blade, Gordon realized, had severed his spinal cord, an injury a vampire could heal from but one that would incapacitate him for a while.Most confusingly though, the vampire’s head was still attached to his shoulders.
Gordon ran down the stairs toward Maxim and the young man.“Oh, fuck.”Gordon saw the traces of blood around the man’s mouth and took in his pale skin.“This looks like hypovolemic shock, and I’m guessing that one tried to turn him?”To his own shock, Gordon recognized the limp vampire from a lecture he’d given decades ago, one Gordon had heard and disliked, even then.“He’s the professor.”
“He is.And he did attempt a turning,” Maxim said, lips a thin line.“From what I can sense, the blood is taking.”
“Oh, fuck.”
The young man’s eyes were unfocused, and he was pale enough to be on Gordon’s table, almost.
“Indeed.He cannot have consented.Not like this.”
Gordon had an inkling of what Maxim was saying.Many had come to the morgue after they had been hurt in unspeakable ways.This young man, his black hair sweaty and sticking to his forehead, wore just a thin bathrobe that had fallen open.
The bite marks—vampire teeth, wolf teeth, bruises around them—already told Gordon enough.The bruises on his thighs spoke in even clearer tones.
“He…” Gordon cleared his throat.“He must have been fed on extensively.Is he that kid we are looking for?”
“He had more color in the photos from his social media accounts, but yes.His name is Raven.His roommate said he would forget to eat when he found a book he really loved, would read through the night until he’d made it to the last page.”
Gordon looked at the hunter, who looked at the human who was turning.Maxim had a strange, detached expression on his face.
Gordon reached out but pulled his hand back before he could touch Maxim.“You know there’s a protocol for this sort of situation.You know we’re supposed to let the turn happen and see if it was enough.Those are the rules the Forum made.”
Maxim looked at Gordon, eyes not those of the teasing, rhyming, ever-annoying vampire, but of the hunter.Of one who had seen more, had maybe seen too much.He knew every aspect of his craft, his burden, his duty.
“I know, and I don’t care,” he said, and slow as the sun to break through the iron clasp of a cloudy sky, he drew a blade over his own wrist, parted the skin until his own blood flowed over, and pushed the wound against the turning human’s mouth, gently, but firmly.
“Maxim—”
“I know, Gordon.If he doesn’t want this life, I’ll end it for him, but he needs to be given a choice, a real one.At least in death, he needs to be given a choice.”
“The turn might have brought him over.Even with what little blood he had, he might have survived.”Gordon spoke quietly.
“Tell me you really believe that, Gordon.Tell me you really think this poor child wouldn’t have wound up on your table a few hours from now, after agony, after pain he didn’t deserve.”
