“He said he can’t do it,” Lore growled. “Let it go, E.”
Eidolon shook his head. “Unfortunately, there’s no let it go option. This might be our only shot at a fast solution.”
“I don’t understand.” At some point, Sin had produced a throwing knife and was now flipping it between her fingers, and Con had a feeling the speed directly related to her level of agitation. The sucker was flipping fast. “What do you mean, a solution?”
Eidolon tapped his finger on one of the papers on his desk, where he’d scrawled a lengthy column of numbers. “I can’t inject the amount of your blood we need to destroy the virus into Conall without killing him. He needs to ingest it. As a dhampire, he has a double-chambered stomach to deliver blood almost directly into the bloodstream. So if my calculations are correct, a normal feeding will allow him to take in enough blood to start attacking the virus. Once that’s done—”
“I can use my gift to learn the composition of his blood and replicate it inside someone who is diseased,” Sin said.
“Exactly.” Eidolon grinned. “Told you that you should be working here instead of as an assassin.”
“Bite me,” she snapped.
Eidolon gestured to Conall. “That’ll be his job.”
“No,” Con said grimly. “It won’t. It’s not that I don’t want to help. But there has to be another way.”
“I agree.” Sin came to her feet, her blue-black hair swishing angrily around her waist. “I don’t let anyone fang me.”
You let me, you little liar. Hot little liar. Man, Con wanted to call her out on that, but at least two of her brothers in the room were a little on the overprotective side, and the other didn’t need an excuse to kill things.
“Look,” Eidolon said. “If there was any other way, I’d find it. But there’s not. And there’s something else to consider.”
Con didn’t like his tone. Not at all. “What else?”
“You.” Eidolon paused as though searching his brain for the right words, and Con’s gut hollowed out. “The virus is inside you, alive and replicating like crazy. It wants out.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Con rasped. “I’m a fucking carrier. I could have infected people.”
“Unfortunately, yes. The disease seems to be transmitted via both direct and indirect contact, as well as by air, but as an asymptomatic carrier, you might transmit it differently. We need to run tests to be sure, but since Luc hasn’t come down with the virus, it’s not likely that you’re breathing it out or passing it on by casual touch. But you need to avoid intimate contact.”
Oh, holy fuck. How many females had Con fed from and slept with in the last month? His mind raced as he counted and eliminated those who weren’t werewolves. Only one had been a warg… but had she been born that way, or turned?
Con had a call to make. “Hold on, Doc.” He dug his cell from his pocket, dialed, and tried to keep his pulse rate at a reasonable level. Yasashiku, a member of the Warg Council, answered on the second ring.
“Con. You’re missing the meeting. Valko’s about to pop a vein. Where are you?”
“I’m at work. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Moving toward a corner, he lowered his voice. “Have you heard from Latisha lately?”
The sudden silence made the pulse in Con’s ears pound even louder. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?” Don’t say it. Don’t. Fucking. Say it.
“She caught the virus,” Yas said, his faint Japanese accent thickening with emotion. “She was… she died last night.”
Con didn’t even reply. Numbly, he closed the phone. He’d done his share of killing in his thousand years of life, some of it justified, some not. But there was something truly obscene about killing someone with pleasure.
Sure, there was no proof that he had given the virus to the ginger-haired warg. No proof at all, but the timing was right, given the timeframe from onset to death.
Crimson washed over his vision as both nausea that he’d killed an innocent female, and anger that the person ultimately responsible was right there in the room with him, collided. This had to end.
Especially since all of the risk would be Sin’s.
“Con?” Wraith’s deep voice was a mere buzz amongst the other noise in Con’s head. “Dude. You okay? You look like you’re about to take a header.”
“Then I guess I’d better feed.” Conall’s voice was as cold as the center of his chest as he swung around to Sin. “And it looks like you’re lunch.”
THE DISH
Where authors give you the inside scoop!
From the desk of Larissa Ione
Dear Reader,
“Family” is a word that means something different to everyone. Your family might consist of those who were born into it, or it might be made up of the people (or pets) you choose to bring into the fold. Your family members might be tight, or they might be estranged. Maybe they fight a lot, or maybe they get along beautifully. Often, family dynamics exist in a delicate balance.