Dark Stranger Immortal (The Children of the Gods #3)(5)

Kian chuckled. “Only you could think of telling a story like that. I was expecting guts and gore, and here you go, talking about little kids and puke.”

He caressed her cheek tenderly. “My sweet Syssi.” He bent to kiss the top of her head.

“But it worked, didn’t it?” She smirked.

“Yep, only partially, but it will do. Let’s go.” He took her hand and led her toward the lab.

Whatever it was that had him all twisted up before seemed to have ebbed, and Kian was once again affectionate and easygoing with her. She wondered if their kiss in the elevator had been responsible for Kian’s mood change.

Yeah, that was probably it.

Smiling up at him, she asked, “You know the saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”

“What about it?”

She joggled her brows. “In your case, it’s not the stomach.”

“I have a newsflash for you, baby…” Kian snorted. “Unless a guy is gay or impotent or otherwise compromised, I don’t care who he is; sex would always trump a full stomach.” Pulling her tightly against his side, he gave a little squeeze.

As they walked into the lab, Bridget was tying a rubber tube around Michael’s bicep. Sitting on one of the metal tables, Michael winced and turned his head away. “I hate needles, can you make it quick, Doctor?”

“Don’t be a big baby. You’re just like my son. Watching gory horror movies that make me cover my eyes and ears is fine, but a drop of his own blood makes him faint.” Bridget plunged the needle in one swift move.

Syssi sat on the table beside him. “Hi, Michael, how are you feeling?”

She took his right hand to distract him from what was going on with his left.

“Nauseous… faint…” he admitted with a grimace.

“I mean, how are you feeling after the match, anything hurt?” She kept talking, drawing his attention to herself and away from the needle and the number of glass vials Bridget was filling with his blood.

“Oh, that? Nah, it’s all good. That venom is a miracle drug. Most of the bruises were gone in a couple of hours, and the pains and aches even before that. I wish I had the stuff after football practice or games, or when…”

As he kept talking, Bridget finished filling the vials. “All done, big boy, you can hop down now.” She removed the tourniquet and pressed a gauze square to the crook of his arm, attaching it with an adhesive tape. “Want a lollypop?”

“Sure, I’d love one. What flavors you got?”

“Cherry, apple, and caramel.”

“I’ll take the apple. Is it sour?”

“I don’t know…” She smiled. “Here you go.” She handed him two apple-flavored lollypops.

“It’s your turn, young lady. How is your relationship with needles?”

Bridget finished sticking labels on the tubes she had filled with Michael’s blood and pulled out a new tourniquet to tie around Syssi’s bicep.

“Don’t love them, don’t hate them… I’m not squeamish.” Syssi held out her arm.

Michael walked over to where Kian was leaning against another lab table and eased back beside him. Sucking on his pop, he offered Kian his spare one. “Want a pop?”

“No, I’m good, kid. Keep it for later.”

“So, Doctor Bridget, what exactly are you going to do with all that blood?” Michael asked, waving the pop in the direction of the test-tube rack.

“Well, I’m going to run a bunch of tests. Genetic tests mostly. First I’m going to check your mitochondrial DNA to establish your matrilineal descent and make sure you and Syssi are not from the same line, or ours. Then I’m going to be checking for anything and everything that might give me a clue.

Unfortunately, the knowledge rescued from the cataclysm did not include medicine or genetics, so we are just as clueless as mortals on those subjects.”

She sighed, placing another ampule of Syssi’s blood in the rack.

Alarmed by the possibility, Syssi glanced at Kian. By the grim expression on his face, so was he. “Is there a chance we might be of the same line as you guys?” she asked.

“It’s a very remote chance. Annani was an only daughter to her mother, who was also an only daughter. The gods started mating with mortals only after Annani’s mother came of age and not before. So as far as we know, there weren’t any other descendants from that line besides Annani. But we need to make sure. We take the taboos very seriously. In-line mating might have disastrous genetic implications that we couldn’t even fathom. As promiscuous as the gods were, there must have been a good reason for such a strong taboo.”

“Well, let’s hope for the best. I’m positive you’ll find Michael and I are from two completely different lines…” Syssi smiled, trying to reassure Kian, or maybe herself.

“Yes, I certainly hope so.” Bridget finished with the last test tube.

“Hope springs eternal for the young and naive. Personally, I hate the bitch,” Kian spat as he pushed away from the table. “In my experience, hope is often groundless. Fairy tales have happy endings—real life seldom does.”

He lifted Syssi off the table as if the one-foot jump down could be hazardous to her health, or perhaps just used it as an excuse to hold her tightly for a moment.