Addict (Hunter #2)(52)

“Alexander and I both tried,” Henri confirmed. “We attempted both an oral and a topical application of blood. Neither worked. Forcing the patient to actually ingest the blood made things significantly worse.”

“I’ve never heard of a shifter being allergic to vampire blood.” I’d never heard of anyone being allergic to vamp blood. It was a universal curative. “Maybe it’s because Alex’s blood is evil.”

Hugo laughed sharply. “She has a point. I’ve been trying to figure out a legal way to execute that bloke for years. I didn’t like the way he was studying our Hunter last night, Henri. He never took his eyes off her.”

“Bah,” Henri said as he put the scalpel to a point under the corpse’s left shoulder blade. “Kelsey can take him.” He cocked a brow as he pointedly stared over at Casey. “Are you sure you can handle this?”

He did not ask the same question of me. I’d actually been the one doing the gutting before, so the aftereffects didn’t bug me.

Casey snorted and waved off the question. “Do you have any idea how many episodes of CSI I’ve seen? This doesn’t bother me at all. I’m a vampire. Dead bodies are my stock-in-trade.”

Henri shook his head and began his Y incision. He started across the chest, clean cutting to the sternum and then back up the right side of the torso. He made the leg of the Y down to the pubic bone. Gently, he opened the cavity to expose the sternum. “Casey, pass me the bone saw, please.”

But Casey was on the floor at my feet.

“He’s out,” I announced, picking up the small circular saw and handing it to the doc. “Never saw a vamp pass out before.”

“Such a pain in my ass. Shove him out of the way,” Henri yelled over the whine of the saw.

I leaned toward Hugo. “Have you ever heard of any substance that causes an allergic reaction in a shifter?”

“Silver, of course,” Hugo said as Henri pulled open the sternum. “Wolfsbane in a werewolf.”

“This wasn’t silver.” Henri gently cut the heart out. He held the organ in his hand. It looked perfectly normal for a disgusting body part. “The heart is perfect. Silver would have caused it to enlarge at the very least. The rest of the organs look fine, except for the bowels, of course. Marcus did a number on those.”

Hugo and Henri worked together as though they had done this a hundred times before. Henri pulled the organs out. Hugo weighed and measured them. I was handed a clipboard and dutifully wrote down the numbers that made up the end of Alan Kent’s life. Everything was perfectly normal, I was assured. Until we got to his brain…

Henri peeled his scalp back and we went through another round of whirring saw sounds before he was able to lift a portion of the skull out.

“Schijt,” Henri breathed as he got his first look at Alan’s brain.

“Shit is right, Henri.” Hugo’s face was a mask of perfectly genteel horror. “That’s the entire prefrontal cortex.”

I peered over. Even as a layman, I knew something was terribly wrong. There was a huge dark spot on the front of the brain. It appeared black against the gray of the rest of the brain matter. “That’s bad, right?”

“Yes, Kelsey.” Henri gently touched the brain. A black puss oozed out. “This drug has completely ruined the impulse center of his brain. He had no control over his own actions. If there are others out there like this, we’re in deep trouble.”

I sighed because it was going to be another long day. Casey came out of his stupor.

“Is it over?” Casey asked, his eyes wide. He managed to get to his feet.

“Not by a long shot, buddy,” I promised. The day was only starting. “Henri, I’m going to need a sandwich.”

Casey groaned as he caught sight of the exposed skull. He slithered back to the floor.

Yep, a really long day.





Chapter Eleven



I managed to down two turkey sandwiches, three teeny tiny chocolate chip cookies, and a Dr. Pepper before the next crisis required my attention. Apparently, with only Kim and a small human staff, they weren’t prepared for my appetite. I could have made my way back to my own apartment, but I was feeling lazy. Casey skulked into the small kitchen and slumped down in the seat across from me.

“Are you done fainting?” I asked. He was still pretty pale, even for a vamp.

“I didn’t faint,” Casey complained. “I…I…shit, I fainted. I totally lost it. What the hell kind of vampire am I if I can’t handle one tiny autopsy?”

I poked around the kitchen to see if I could spy anything else even vaguely appetizing. Kim Jacobs was big on salads. There was lots of green stuff in her fridge and not one single slab of meat. “You’ll get used to it.”

“How many have you seen?”

“That one,” I replied. “But I’ve probably killed way more people than you have.”

Casey looked innocent and na?ve all of the sudden. “I haven’t killed anyone. All the girls I feed off of get paid by Henri. You don’t think I’d have to kill someone if Henri, you know, got sick of dealing with my shit?”

“I think they’d probably make arrangements.” I remembered what it felt like to find out life wasn’t what I thought it would be. “And I suspect Henri will show you a whole lot of patience.”