“You talk about them as though they’re sentient.” He glared at the cabinet, the hackles raised at the back of his neck.
“I think they are, at least semi-sentient. Something lingers of their creators, along with something of the souls of the victims that were sacrificed in their creation.” She sat at the desk and opened the lowest drawer, which was unlocked. He could see it contained files labeled in a neat hand. She pulled out a few notebooks and closed the drawer. “This is the distillation of the last few centuries of work I’ve done on trying to find a way to halt the progression of Vampyrism.”
He regarded her with a keen gaze. “And halting the progression of the disease is more preferable than finding a cure, because a cure would make you human again?”
“Theoretically. Unfortunately too much of this is still theoretical, because there really is no known cure. And there are serious issues and questions should a ‘cure’ ever be found.” She handed the notebooks to him.
He opened the top notebook to look at the first page. It was written in the same neat hand that had created the file labels. “I would want to know how a cure would be tested,” he remarked. “And where, and on whom.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps a big medical facility with a focus on research might take it on, like Johns Hopkins University. There might be enough Vampyres who are unhappy enough that they would be willing to take some risks, but there has been no code of ethics developed for clinical trials because there’s nothing that has been successfully developed enough to test.”
“What are the other issues that need considering?” he asked.
She regarded him for a moment, as if collecting her thoughts. Then she said, “What are the consequences of a potential cure? Could a ‘cured’ Vampyre be turned again, and if so, what would be the results? Or would it be irreversible for a Vampyre, like Vampyrism is now for humans? Would a Vampyre simply revert back to being human? What would be the state of their health when they reverted? Would they become as they were before? Some Vampyres were terminally ill from other diseases before they were turned. Or would there be other complications such as, for example, advanced or accelerated aging, or a compromised immune system? And would those complications increase in severity according to the age of the Vampyre involved?”
He shook his head. “In those scenarios, the cure would quite literally kill you.”
“Yes.” Carling gathered her long dark hair together and twisted it into a long rope that she wound into a knot. She pinned the knot into place with two pencils from the desk, her movements fast and economical.
Rune’s gaze lingered on the heavy sable-colored twist of hair lying on Carling’s elegant neck. He wanted to see her pin her hair up again, and he fought a sudden puerile urge to pluck out the pencils. Her hair would spill down that hourglass back, the silken ends splashing like midnight water against the womanly swell of her trim, shapely ass. She would give him that quick annoyed look of hers, or maybe she would be angrier. Maybe she would try to slap him again, and he would catch her wrist and yank her to him . . .
Arousal sank sharpened claws into him and dug in deep. His body hardened and he turned away to hide it.
Walking over to the French doors, he opened the top notebook and flipped through it then took a quick look at the others. There were perhaps two hundred and fifty pages, all told, which was concise, given the amount of time and effort she had put into the research. She had called it a “distillation,” which would have meant at some point she had gone through it all and stripped out everything extraneous.
He went back to the first notebook and read a few lines. He tapped a finger on the page and murmured, “This is not light reading.”
“I could summarize verbally for you,” said Carling. “But I don’t recommend it.”
He didn’t want to listen to any verbal summary before he’d had a chance to look at the details of her research and come to his own conclusions, but he was curious about her reasoning, so he asked, “Why not?”
She gave him a bitter smile. “I no longer trust my mind and neither should you.”
The pain in her dark eyes was terrible. He noted the stiff way she held herself and knew better than to offer a physical gesture of comfort. He took a deep breath and let it out slow and easy. “Fair enough,” he said after a moment. “Do you want me to read it here?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. Her gaze flickered and fell away. She looked out the window at the small courtyard. “We have the island to ourselves. You may read wherever you are comfortable.”
“All right.” He willed her to let her rigid spine relax, for the pain to ease away. More to distract her than from any real sense of hunger, he said, “Got any more of that chicken you cook for the dog?”
Rune was just too . . . something.
In the kitchen, Carling shoved several large pieces of cooking flesh around in the skillet and glared at them. For the second time that day, the warm scent and sizzling sounds of browning chicken filled the air.
He was too what? What were the words that should go next?
She glanced over her shoulder at him. Just by sitting at the massive country-style table in the industrial-sized kitchen, he made the room and furniture look almost normal. With those long legs and wide shoulders, that lean torso and his typical quick strong, confident stride, he dominated every room he entered.
He was definitely too large. Check.
His head was bent over the first notebook. He rested his forehead on the heel of one hand as he read. His shoulder-long hair had dried from his morning swim. The careless tousled length made her want to get her hairbrush and smooth the tangles out. His tanned, chiseled features were intent. The sharp high blades of his cheekbones were balanced by the strong straight nose, a strong lean chin that had something of a stubborn bent to it, and that elegant cut mouth of his that was so wise in sensuality.
Well, he was obviously too handsome. He was the rock star of the Wyr, famed throughout not only the Elder Races but also the human society for his good looks, so all right, goddammit, check.
Fine lines framed the corners of his eyes and that sinful mouth. She thought of how those lips felt as they hardened over hers, how he had speared into her with the hot thrust of his tongue. She let her eyes drift shut as arousal pierced her body with an intensity that brought along with it a new wave of shock. Just the memory of that one kiss shook her to her foundations.
Yes okay, he was far too sexy and charismatic for his or anybody else’s own good, so check. Carling had always found it ludicrous, even infuriating, how so many otherwise sensible and intelligent-seeming females apparently lost their minds whenever they came near him, and no matter how he affected her, she was by gods not ever going to become one of the vacuous hordes. She would jump off the nearest cliff first.
She sighed. Actually that would be a pretty meaningless gesture. Even though she was now at the end stages of the disease, it would still take more than just a simple dive off a cliff to kill her.
The cooking chicken snapped and popped, and a splatter of grease hit her cheek. The sting was negligible compared to the searing agony of the sun, but it was enough to catch her attention. Her eyes flew open. The small burn had already healed by the time she wiped the spot of oil away with her thumb. She poked at the chicken with the . . . the implement—spatula, damn it!—and flipped the pieces so the other side could brown.
Back to Rune.
He was too quiet. He moved with a cat’s sinuous predatory grace. Added to that, he was fast enough to make her heart freeze if it hadn’t already stopped beating. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and sucked on it as she thought.