Accidental Sire (Half-Moon Hollow #6)

It seemed that despite not being able to participate in this week’s class discussion, I had to turn in my topic points anyway. And oddly enough, I found that doing my homework was sort of comforting. It was routine, normal. I could pretend I was still just a regular human girl, with normal friends and a normal sleep routine and enzymes that could process solid foods.

Aw, hell. I forgot about that. I would never eat food again. No more burritos. No more pizza. No more cheeseburgers. Actually, it was probably a good thing I was turned, because that diet was probably going to kill me within the next ten years. Also, I’d died before my eating habits and declining metabolism collided. But damn it, my last meal was fruit kabobs and crackers. If I’d known I’d never taste chocolate again, I would have maybe lived my last few human hours differently. Like at a Dairy Queen.

Pouting, I was about halfway through my assignment, noting that shark hunter Quinn’s obsessive fatalism, much like Ahab’s, doomed him from the first scene. Neither character would have had anything resembling a life after he destroyed his aquatic enemy, so it was for the best that they were both dragged down—

“Ow!” I yelped, rubbing at the spot on my temple where I’d been hit with one of those juggling Hacky Sacks. “What the hell?”

I turned around to find Jane standing in my doorway.

“Really? We’re throwing things at my head now?”

“I’m tired of trying to sidestep startled, punch-happy new vampires,” Jane told me. “The med team is here. I thought that you and Ben would be more comfortable if they collected samples here instead of making you go down to the Council lab.”

“You were wrong.”

Jane sucked a deep breath through her nostrils, as if she was officially out of effs to give. “This is not optional, Meagan. We need people who are much smarter than me to look at your various cells and explain why you’re able to do things that no vampire is able to do.”

“Ben just woke up. He barely made it through his first feeding. Shouldn’t we let him get on his feet before you start probing him?” I pouted for a second. “On second thought, he was kind of rude when he woke up—probe him all you want.”

“Charming. I was lucky to hold them off this long,” she said. “Even luckier arguing for you to stay with me instead of in a Council holding cell. Now, I know this is not how you wanted to spend your evening, but damn it, I’ve had a really long night, and it’s not even ten yet. I just can’t spend any more time explaining to newborns why they need to do what’s best for them. So please, please, just be a damn grown-up and get downstairs so you can drool into a tube.”

I sighed, slapping my laptop shut. “Awesome.”

Jane faked enthusiasm for my own fake enthusiasm. “Thank you for your cooperation.”



Jane was not kidding when she said a team was waiting for us. There were at least a dozen lab-coated vampires bustling around the first floor of the house, setting up equipment and making notes on their clipboards. Gabriel was following them around, snatching endangered knickknacks out of the way and frowning a lot. Georgie seemed more interested in whether she could swipe their shiny, sharp medical instruments. And since that meant that I could not be poked or prodded with those shiny, sharp medical instruments, I was on board.

Ben was waiting in the parlor, looking pissed off and nervous. He’d changed into a SEC Sweet Sixteen T-shirt and jeans and was nibbling at his thumbnail. The head scientist, whose name tag read “Dr. Hudson,” motioned for us to sit on the couch. And then he handed me a pamphlet entitled “So You’re About to Be Probed by the Council.”

“I was just kidding about the probing!” I cried. “What exactly are they going to probe?”

Ben was silent, staring straight ahead and gnawing his thumbnail while he bounced his knee at a pace so quick I could hardly see it. I reached out my hand, and despite the audible smack as his kneecap hit my palm, it didn’t hurt. I pressed his foot to the floor.

“It’s going to be OK. Jane wouldn’t let them hurt you.”

Ben shot a confused look my way, but he dropped it the moment Dr. Hudson cleared his throat to get our attention. He was a gangly man with dark blond hair who had been turned in his late thirties. I got the impression he was trying to come across as a kindly country doctor, with his plaid shirt and pleasant smile, but mostly he looked overeager and off-putting. He wasn’t McDreamy. He was McDerpy.

And he was right up in my face, making an uncomfortable amount of eye contact.

“Fascinating,” he said, in an almost reverential voice. “Just fascinating. I can’t tell you how excited I am to take cheek swabs from you.”

I shrank back in my seat, because the word “swab” made me super-uncomfortable. “Thank you?”

“What are you going to do to us?” Ben asked.

“Now, now, no reason to be alarmed,” he said, patting Ben’s knee, which Ben did not seem to enjoy. “We’re just here to do what you might call a basic vampire physical, if vampires required such a thing. We’ll use this to determine how you might be different. Now, for starters, Mrs. Jameson-Nightengale reports some anomalies in your anatomy and circadian rhythms.”

“Is that a nice way of saying we’re freaks?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not the case, my dear,” he assured me. “Now, could you please drop your fangs for me?”

“We haven’t really learned to do that on our own yet,” I said.

Ben shook his head in agreement.

“No problemo,” the doctor said, grinning as he pulled what looked like a plastic-encased bloody sock out of his coat pocket. He opened the plastic bag and waved it under our noses. It smelled stale but not entirely unappetizing, which was pretty gross if I thought too hard about it. It also smelled familiar, and it looked familiar . . .

“Is that my sock?” I asked.

“Yes, it was entered into evidence as part of the rather fetching ensemble you were wearing when you were turned.”

I wasn’t sure what was creepiest, the fact that they’d kept my sock, the fact that Dr. Hudson thought it would be appetizing to me, or the fact that he thought my sock was “fetching.” There were so many issues there.

But sadly enough, my fangs did drop at the scent of my then-human blood. And Ben’s did, too, making him slap his hand over his mouth like a high school sophomore putting a notebook over his crotch. Dr. Hudson’s cobalt-blue eyes went wide, and his grin ratcheted up a few more creep notches. He put his hands under my jaw, and I yelped at the frigid temperature of his skin.

“Sorry,” he said, though he sounded anything but, as he tilted my head this way and that. “Well, looky here. Two distinct fangs on each side. Absolute beauties.”

He stroked a thumb along my double canines in a manner that made me distinctly uncomfortable. He leaned closer. “And has anyone told you that your breath has an odd sulfurous quality to it? It’s intriguing.”

I clamped my lips shut and leaned away, even as he moved closer. “Actually, Ben mentioned that my breath smelled good right before I bit him. But Jane said that my bite mark smelled funny, like old bong water.”