henri dunn 01 - immortality cure by tori centanni

for greasy breakfast sandwiches. That was the kind of food that, despite my knowing it was mostly fat and salt, was so hard for me to resist. There had been nothing like it when I was mortal before, and once I got over the weirdness of solid food and the flavor of cooked meat, breakfast sandwiches were the food I craved most. I ate my sausage-egg biscuit with another black coffee. Aidan scarfed down three bacon-and-egg English muffins and an order of hash browns.
    “Don’t they feed you in Castle Dracula?” I asked.
    Aidan rolled his eyes. “I eat a lot of Pop Tarts. You know how vampires get about meat.”
    I smiled. To vampiric senses, animal meat smelled rotten and old. The smell of it cooking was pretty vile. I had never been sure why. Maybe because fire is so deadly, so the smell of burning flesh curls the nostrils.
    Of course, that attitude made life hard for humans who shacked up with vampires. Cooking was revolting to their undead paramours, so they were less likely to do it, and it became that much easier to stick to a diet of string cheese and crackers, with a side of drugs, alcohol, and vampire blood. Yet another reason humans and vampires would never be truly compatible. The only couple I’d ever seen make it work long-term were Lark and Thomas. That thought made the grease in my stomach churn uneasily, and I crumpled my wrapper while trying very hard not to picture the pus-filled boils on Thomas’s dying form.
    Lark and Thomas had loved each other for two decades before Thomas was turned, and he’d borne no animosity toward Lark for doing the deed that I’d ever seen. He may not have been keen on murder, but that didn’t mean he regretted being a vampire. I couldn’t picture him wanting the Cure and going back to mundane mortality, and all the problems it had brought Lark and Thomas as couple. No matter what his murderer thought they’d been doing, they hadn’t been trying to do him a favor.
    Instead of voicing these thoughts, I continued on the path of small talk.
    “Isn’t the Factory big enough to handle some minor cooking for the mortal residents?” I asked.
    “Sure, if you want to do it yourself, in the daytime, and deal with the bitching. Trust me, it’s easier to eat out whenever possible.”
    I believed it. No one whines like a vampire forced to deal with some minor unpleasantness. You’d think immortality would toughen people up, but oddly the opposite tends to be true.
    Ray had lived in an apartment complex in Bellevue, not far from Factoria Mall. The building was brown with orange accents. It was too boxy for my taste. I parked in a visitor’s parking space and then pulled a Mariners baseball cap out of my backseat, handing it to Aidan, who looked at it like it was a poisonous snake.
    “Cover your hair. Blue is too memorable.”
    “Where are we?” he asked, but he put the hat on.
    “Remember the body I had your master incinerate?” Aidan rolled his eyes at the word “master.” “This is where he lived.”
    I hit the elevator call button with my elbow and inside, I put on a pair of latex gloves. Then I handed a pair to Aidan. “Put these on.”
    He didn’t argue. “And why are we here?”
    “His lab was robbed the night he was killed, and the killer took several vials of the Cure, which means his murder is probably connected to Thomas’s.”
    Ray’s apartment was a little more horror movie fanboy than I’d expected. His walls were covered in posters for werewolf movies. A life-size cutout of a werewolf was propped up in the nook that contained his bedroom and bathroom doors. He had an entire shelf of DVDs that were all werewolf-related media and an entire bookshelf full of titles like Full Moon and Wolf Walker . I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a werewolf-shaped pillow on his bed.
    I probably should have expected the unchecked werewolf fanaticism. After all, what kind of person wants to bring a horror movie monster to life? One who’s completely, utterly