Blood from Stone, chapter 5

Chapter 5

The door swung shut silently behind her, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her posture slumped forward a bit and she rolled her neck from side to side, trying to work out some of the tension that knotted her muscles.

“Hello?” She called out tentatively, coming to stop at what could only be a reception desk. She waited for a moment, letting her eyes wander around the room. The walls were covered in posters of various things, most of them anatomical or spewing some cookie cutter advice.

Feeling blue? Be sure to get plenty of sunshine, rest, and drink water!

Liliana groaned, moving past the desk to hunt for the doctor. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a distant male voice shout to her, “Be with you in just a sec!”

“How far back does this damned room go?” she grumbled to herself, crossing her arms and going to stand back by the desk.

The owner of the voice appeared from behind a door that was partway down the strangely lengthy hallway. He was completely disarming as he approached her, with fashionably long brunet hair and a pair of glasses that were almost too large for his face. He smiled at her, and pleasant crinkles appeared at the corners of his green eyes. “You must be Liliana,” he said, extending his hand to her.

“Doctor Daniel, I presume,” she returned good naturedly, shaking his hand. He had a firm grip, and his hand was pleasantly warm.

“Just Daniel, please. No need for formalities. Leon filled me in on the… situation. Not to make you feel like a lab rat, but I have to say that I’m absolutely fascinated by your reaction to vampire venom, Liliana.” He withdrew a pen and small pad of paper from one of the pockets on the front of his lab coat.

After scribbling something down, he took her hand in his again. He tilted it from one side to the other, observing her slightly swollen knuckles. He gently pressed on the joint directly above her middle finger and she winced. Daniel whistled softly. “You are one tough cookie. Did you know you have a brawler’s fracture in the neck of this metacarpal?”

Liliana grinned sheepishly. “Hitting a vampire in the jaw is right up there with punching a wall, huh?”

“I’d like to do an x-ray to see how severe the break is, but we can do that later. For now, I need to take a tiny sample of blood to test your hematocrit, your blood count. If your hemoglobin isn’t at a certain level, we’ll have to wait a while to be able to draw a good amount from you.”

He continued to lightly run his fingers over her injured hand, poking and prodding in a way that she found strangely soothing. It was refreshing to be around someone who wasn’t ready to make her into a takeout meal. Emerald eyes rose to meet hers from what suddenly felt like an intimate distance away. “You seem to have relaxed a fair bit from how stiff you were when you walked in here.”

She shrugged, not calling attention to the involuntary color that blossomed in her cheeks. “Unless you’re secretly a cannibal, you’re the first person who hasn’t tried to eat me today.” Liliana couldn’t hold back the nervous bark of laughter that crawled from her lips. “Side note, I’m not a big fan of needles.”

“We all have our little quirks, Liliana. Come sit over here, and we’ll get things started.”

She sank into the padded chair and put her elbows on the arm rests, resisting the urge to grip them as tightly as possible. She removed the sheaths that perfectly hugged her forearms, the cool air hitting her suddenly bare skin raising goosebumps. With a sigh, she set the weapons in her lap, half wishing she could just cut herself open with them and let the blood pour into a bowl. At least then she wouldn’t have to watch it slowly spiral up the tube and into the bag. Her stomach churned at the thought of it.

Daniel withdrew something from a nearby fridge, approaching her and arranging her hand purposefully atop the arm rest. He set an ice pack on the back of her purpled knuckles and she closed her eyes, leaning her head back and inhaling deeply. The cold wore away at the throbbing in her hand, stilling it to pleasant numbness. There was a sharp sting on her pointer finger of the opposite hand, and she felt the doctor lightly squeezing her fingertip to get what he needed from it.

When she felt the all too familiar pad of a bandage pressed to it, she knew it was safe to open her eyes. She watched him add a few drops of something to the small vial, placing it in a centrifuge. “This won’t take long. Then we can figure out if you’re giving a pint today, or if I’m just going to splint that finger of yours.”

Liliana nodded, and he wasn’t kidding. It took very little time. The sample was separated into three layers, and Daniel’s face was blank with concentration as he studied it. “Interesting,” he murmured, taking some notes on the pad again. “You want the good news, or the bad news?”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Bad news first.”

“You can definitely donate a pint. Your erythrocyte levels are only a tiny bit high. Considering how much the twins likely drew from you last night, this is… highly irregular.” More scribbling. “I’ll run some other tests on the sample I’ve already taken, later. For now, let’s get you hooked up so you can get on with your day.”

Swallowing hard, Liliana nodded. “I recognize that expression. No need to worry,” Daniel reassured her. “I’ll have as much of everything out of your direct line of vision as possible. Once the needle’s in place, it’ll only take about ten minutes to fill a bag. Then you can have some snacks and head on out.”

The almost imperceptible sound of wheels on the tile caused her to turn her face away from the small tray of tools. She clenched her fist around a foam ball when he asked her to, trying to ignore the way he gently tapped and prodded at her veins after tying what felt like a giant rubber band around her arm. At the sensation of the cold swipe of an alcohol pad across her inner arm, she shut her eyes, purposely letting out a slow breath. “Little pinch, Liliana.”

The temporary sting was insignificant compared to the blazing inferno of sensation that had razed her insides when the twins sank fang into her. Liliana chuckled humorlessly. She was starting to feel like a badass. If each successive pain she experienced led her to feel smaller pains less… She’d be invincible before she knew it.

“Do your best to just relax, and it’ll be done before you know it.” His voice lulled her further, the whole experience suddenly nowhere near as horrific as she’d been expecting.

It was nothing like her conditioning as a preteen, when her blood was regularly siphoned off to familiarize her with the feelings of weakness, shaky limbs, and foggy vision that came with blood loss. She’d never been given orange juice and cookies after they took a bag from her, though. Her reward was usually a bottle of water and an extra round of sparring with her stepbrothers. The plus side was that her insomnia was never an issue on those nights. She slept like the dead. She almost missed it.

She felt the press of a cotton ball on her arm, the stringy adhesive backing of medical tape following it. Figuring it was safe to open her eyes, she sighed softly, feeling a bit sleepy. “Done already?” She made a fist and flexed her forearm experimentally, feeling the familiar ache and heat as her body rushed to replenish what she’d just lost. The tape that wrapped around her wound was a neon green so bright it would glow under a blacklight.

“If you’re worried about blown out veins, no need. I’m a trained professional, not a zealot like the man who raised you.” His words were filled with a venom that stung her.

Liliana let out a startled titter. “You sound like you actually know the man, Daniel.”

The doctor shook his head, his brow furrowed as he lifted the ice pack from her hand. “I don’t, but I know his type. After hearing what little the boys have learned of your previous living arrangements, I’m honestly surprised you came to us in one piece.” He lifted her hand in his, fingers almost unpleasantly hot against her chilled flesh as he experimentally shifted her digits one by one.

“The boys?” She quipped, unable to hide her smirk. “You’re what, maybe forty? I guess that would make you a little older than Draven, at least.”

Daniel laughed, a sound that was oddly musical and reminiscent of the tinkling of bells. He took off his glasses and met her gaze, the emerald of his irises a deeper green than before. The color drained from her face at the vertical, serpentine pupils that widened almost imperceptibly in the presence of her unease. “I’ll take that as a compliment, but I’ve been around since before Daddy Winterbourne decided to create a lineage all of his own.” He closed his eyes briefly, long lashes resting on his cheeks, and his irises returned to looking human. But now she knew that nothing in this place was to be instantly trusted or believed. Glasses perched back atop his nose, there was a crinkling at the corner of his eyes when he smiled.

“Do I even want to ask what you are? Is anyone else in this place human?”

“After seeing the way your levels rose back up after losing over a pint of blood last evening, I think the real question you have is ‘Am I even human?’ You’ve got me curious, honestly. As to my species, all you need to know is that I’m friendly, despite my true appearance.”

No longer being stared down like a mouse on a dinner plate, Liliana felt emboldened. “Are you keeping up the façade for my sake alone?” He lifted his shoulders half-heartedly. Thoughts racing, she swallowed hard. “You’re obviously a healer, so don’t waste your precious energy trying to look harmless on my behalf, Doc. I’m surrounded by vampires who want me as their main course.”

She lifted gunmetal grey eyes to stare into his. “Go on. Let it drop. I’m ready, this time.”

Lips pursed in consternation, he did just that. The vibrant jewel-like irises were shot through with flecks of gold that were nearly hypnotic. “You… are an interesting creature yourself, Liliana.” There was an edge of something regional in his voice, a lilting roll that reminded her of an Irish brogue.

She inhaled heavily through her nostrils, doing her best to stuff down the urge to scurry away from the soft gaze of the male before her, studying her curiously. “I’ve got a date with Leon in his library. If we’re good, I’m gonna go take care of whatever he needs. But you and I… I’d like to have a chat with you at some point in the future, Daniel.”

He stood and stepped back, realizing he’d unintentionally cornered her. “By all means.” He led her back to the front desk, pausing to grab a fresh sugar cookie for her that was half as big as a dinner plate. He poured her a glass of orange juice and set it before her, a perplexed quirk at the corner of his lips. It seemed that the reptilian doctor couldn’t decide if he should smile, or frown.

She pounded the juice in one long swallow, taking the cookie with a grin. “A girl could almost get used to this.” Liliana strapped the sheaths back onto her arms, taking a second to touch the hilts of the knives, their worn metal surface a comfort beneath her fingertips.

“As you should, Liliana. We may be able to do another draw sooner than the sixteen weeks I’d anticipated. Your blood volume seems to return to normal at an accelerated rate. I’d say we’ll give it three or four weeks and check again.” Already starting to devour the glittering, warm, gooey cookie, Liliana merely nodded as she chewed. His expression softened at her enthusiastic consumption of the confectionary. “Until then, take care. I’ll be in touch. And if you need anything, you know where to find me.”

She nodded again, covering her mouth and replying a muffled “Fank you!” Liliana took off at a trot, her energy already starting to return to her.

Daniel watched her go, his brow furrowed again in wonderment. When she disappeared from sight around a corner, he shook his head with a chuckle. “Those boys are in for one hell of a ride, with a girl like that around,” he said to himself.

He sat down at the desk, taking his glasses off and beginning to pore over the stack of papers before him. It was the closest thing to medical records he had for Liliana: perfunctory documents her zealot caregiver had kept as she grew from a toddler into the young woman he’d just met. After reading through the pile several times, he’d seen her height and weight change as she grew, and the records of broken bones and how rapidly they began to heal as she approached puberty.

Her first menstrual cycle was in the records, and the extremely regular nature of it from the first time it had struck her. Daniel wondered at why a father figure would be concerned with such a thing, then he recalled Leon mentioning that Liliana’s family unit was in possession of the ancient grimoires that had very little to do with the condition of a modern vampire-bloddukke relationship. A humorless smirk stole across his features. Joke was on her old man. No way in hell was Liliana Gunnstein still a virgin.