Chapter 27

A surgeof adrenaline wipes away all traces of my earlier sleepiness. Kain said if more people die, I would follow—and now two have died on my watch.

Moving so fast he almost blurs, Kain rips open his wrist with his teeth and forces blood into Albina's mouth.

Nothing happens.

Actually, that's not true. Something happens, but not to Albina—to me. I stare hypnotically at the blood as Kain checks Albina's pulse again, curses, and blurs out of the room.

Stumbling out of the bedroom, I locate the kitchen and heave half-digested bananas into the sink.

Where did Kain go? What should I do? Questions swirl through my mind, but not a single answer. I grope for a glass, pour some probably contaminated tap water into it, and gulp it down.

With yet another dead body on my watch, I'm unlikely to live long enough to get sick.

On every level possible, I feel horrible. I'm shaking, my mouth and throat are on fire, and I crave sleep the way a man craves water in a desert.

The walls around me close in.

I'm having trouble breathing.

Did I just discover another dead body? Did I really witness Hekima being eaten?

Could the sleep deprivation be giving me hallucinations?

I reach for the vial of diluted vampire blood. Am I craving this? Seeing Kain's blood pour out of his body didn't gross me out as it should have. It fascinated me. Is that the first stage of addiction? Some later stage?

Then again, if I don't want to collapse and fall asleep this very second, I need to do something.

I can try severely limiting my dose. I pour a droplet of the watered blood into my glass and fill it again with water. Pocketing the vial, I dip my finger into the glass and flick off most of the moisture. It doesn't get more diluted than this.

I lick the finger.

The pleasure is as intense as the last time, maybe even more so. I moan and smash my forehead into the refrigerator.

I can barely feel the pain.

Pucking puck, something's trickling down my forehead.

I swipe at it and stare at the red liquid staining my fingers. Blood. Unlike before, my wounds aren't healing. I guess my medicine was too diluted for that particular effect.

Worse still, I feel almost as sleep deprived as before.

Kain barges into the apartment with a disheveled Isis in tow.

Of course—when his blood didn't work, he went to get a healer.

Isis narrows her sleepy eyes at me and points a finger at my forehead, shooting it with golden energy.

The healing warmth feels good, but not as intensely as vampire blood.

I touch my forehead.

The wound is closed.

"Don't bother with her," Kain growls. "Your patient's in there." He drags her into the bedroom.

I follow them in just as Isis hits Albina with a beam of golden energy, which she maintains as she checks the dead woman's vitals.

The beam stops.

"I'm sorry," she says in a sleep-raspy voice. "She was beyond healing."

Kain slams a fist into the wall, burying his arm to the elbow.

Isis pulls a blanket over the body. "We should have Roger—or better yet, a human forensic expert—take a look."

Roger. That name sounds familiar. Wasn't he the one who'd made a sleeping drug for Leal?

Isis catches my gaze. "I take it you don't know who did this?"

I shake my head, and Kain gives me such a murderous glare I fully expect him to drain my blood—or worse—right here and now.

"The werewolf. Eduardo." I try to keep my voice even. "Did he have a relationship with her?" I glance at the corpse.

Jaw tight, Kain shakes his head.

"He wasn't in his room earlier," I remind him. "Maybe this is where he was."

"Take care of this," Kain barks at Isis and strides out so quickly I have to run to keep up.

By the time we get back to the werewolf's apartment, I'm wheezing for breath.

"He'd better be there," Kain growls.

We barge into the bedroom and find the large man in his bed, snoring like a geriatric dog.

Kain nods at the bed. "Do your job," he tells me in a low, hard voice.

"He's not in REM sleep," I whisper. "We've got to wait."

His voice rises in volume. "I'm running out of patience. Two more Councilors dead. If I were you, I'd make myself useful forthwith."

Puck. I guess this isn't a good time to tell him about the dreamwalker's notes where he talked about the difficulty of entering werewolf dreams.

Wait a second. How could I forget? The black windows in Nina's dream. They're—

"There," Kain says, quieter this time. "Look at his eyelids."

He's right. The werewolf has entered REM sleep—a record, considering he wasn't in bed only a few minutes ago.

Faking confidence, I sidle up to the prone figure and touch his muscled neck.