henri dunn 01 - immortality cure Read Free

there.”
    Neha smiled faintly. “Thank you, Henri.”
    “Don’t thank me yet. I might kill you after all and set fire to the lab to destroy the evidence.”
    Neha ignored the comment and headed back to her SUV. I headed to my own car, unwilling to ride with her or rely on her for a ride back.

CHAPTER 2
    N eha’s lab was located in a shopping center on the Eastside, next to a dry cleaner, a legal pot shop, and a mini-mart. According to the signs on the windows—which had heavy shades behind them—the lab was the office for a timeshare sales company that had closed down years ago. Neha had shuttered the windows and put a “For Lease” sign in the window with a number and realtor’s name. The number was forwarded to a special cell phone, and any inquirers were told the property was currently in negotiations with a prospective renter and to call back a few months if the space was still empty. Given its odd location between residential streets and the inflated fake rent prices Neha would quote, most people never called back.
    Neha and Ray used the back door and worked extremely odd hours, but the other patrons in the strip mall thought she was a real estate agent and therefore had a reason to be there. It was a pretty good system. That it had held up for almost three years was miraculous. Neha knew her time at the lab was limited and that before long she’d have to move. She and Ray were saving money from their party drugs to buy a big house to work out of. Or that had been the plan, when Ray was still among the living.
    Driving there took about a half hour, and I didn’t bother to follow Neha’s SUV. I knew the way. I parked on the street, rather in the lot, like Neha had done. She got out of her car when I pulled up, and we walked to the back door in silence.
    There was a security door with a standard dead bolt, and beyond that, an inner door with a key card reader. Neha swiped her card and pressed her fingerprint into a small attached scanner. The light on the card reader turned green and the door clicked open.
    The minute it did, I smelled the fetid, sweet scent of decay. Neha gagged and covered her mouth before pushing the door the rest of the way open. We stepped inside, Neha closing both doors behind us before turning on the lights.
    Ray was slumped back in his desk chair, arms out to the sides. His throat had been slit. On top of the scent of decay, there was a strongly metallic smell. Splotches of dark red and brown covered his desk and part of the floor. Blood had stained his yellow t-shirt and pooled beneath his chair. His skin, pale in life, was now sort of grayish and loose on his face, as if the skin were too big for his frame.
    Neha turned on a vent and the fan whirred to life. She was doing her best not to look at Ray.
    “When did you find him?” I asked.
    “Today. He was still here—alive—when I left on Saturday night, around eleven p.m. He’s wearing the same clothes, so I assume he didn’t leave.”
    It was Monday night now, which meant he’d probably been dead for two days.
    Neha’s desk was behind Ray’s. A counter full of lab equipment—some of it identifiable, like microscopes, some of it foreign to me—lined the side wall. The mini-fridge kept under the counter had been pulled out, toppled over, its door left open. It was empty.
    I stepped closer to Ray’s body. I wasn’t a coroner, and if I had to deal with corpses, it was usually within hours after their death, not days. Ray was in bad shape. I looked at the wound in his neck. His throat had been slit open with a blade, and from what I could see with my limited mortal vision, it was a smooth cut, which indicated it was a single swift cut rather than several lacerations. Dark flecks of blood had dried around the wound. A slashed throat didn’t rule out vampires, but it did make it unlikely.
    Most vampires are practical creatures: you don’t survive on the fringes of society if you’re not smart about how you get your blood.