I lay unmoving, still as the dead. My war was just beginning, and the first mission was upon me. I needed to solve the riddle of my jailer, or whatever she was to me. I couldn’t see her, but I listened to her breathing, the pencil scratching on paper, making notes with methodical precision.

  My body was still a ruin, but not as bad as it had been. The pain was still there, but I held it in check through an effort of will. The Thirst was a howling wind in my mind, a roaring furnace, demanding to be fed.

  The Instinct was coiled, ready to strike, searching for angles, waiting for an opportunity to take the lifeblood from our captor or anyone else who presented themselves. My new companions, the gnawing need and predator urge, were held in check by the Cold Iron fortress of discipline. The lingering effects of the drugs made it possible. I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

  She hadn’t killed me yet. She’d put me under, given me time to mend, even cleaned my wounds. My hand still throbbed in agony, but it was a whisper next to the crippling pain I’d felt when receiving the wound. My throat was still a ruin, but I thought I could use it. Her calling me her “patient” was especially telling. She was no killer. It went counter to her training as a healer. I’d worked with enough chirurgeons to know that. That knowledge would be the basis of my opening gambit.

  “You’re quite clever,” I said, rasping the words out. I focused on sounding steady, level, and reasonable. I needed her to engage with me. “What else have you observed?”

  The steady breathing behind me paused momentarily, then resumed. The clicking of hard, leather-soled shoes came closer, in the same gait I’d noticed before. It was her. Good.

  Dr. Adelaide Foss circled the table, coming into view. She was dressed differently, but still in utilitarian clothing suitable for a lady of her standing. She held a small leather-bound journal and a pencil. She wore a pensive expression, curiosity in her eyes. The wire-rimmed spectacles cast reflections from the lantern light. Her pale blue eyes bored into me with that same chilling intensity.

  “Your blood pressure and pulse are non-existent.” She marked something down in her book, presumably my lack of reaction. “Your body temperature has reached equilibrium with the ambient temperature of the room, in a similar way to a reptile.” She looked down at her notes, turned the page, and continued. “Despite massive tissue damage and a previously obstructed airway, you are conscious and alert. You are a paradox and an impossibility. You’re a living, thinking, seemingly dreaming corpse.”

  “What’s that make you? A heretic? A witch?” I shot back, probably too quickly. I needed to make this woman my ally, but her stating the plain truth was an affront. “This lab, those charts; what are they?” I nodded toward the diagrams and anatomy drawings on the wall.

  Her face shifted briefly. Annoyance, perhaps pride, flickered there. “Science is a method of discovery, used by the learned to understand the world around us. It is heresy only to those who fear the truth or seek to live in ignorance,” she said, her voice rising slightly. She’d had this argument before. There was familiarity in her cadence. “As to the idea of witchcraft, I’m not prepared to make any conclusions. You are an example of what can be discovered through observation and truth-seeking. You are walking, talking truth.”

  “How did you find me?” I asked plainly. This woman spoke like someone practiced in rhetoric, and I knew I’d get nowhere if I didn’t cut to the quick.

  “It was a simple matter. I make it a practice to speak with Mr. Abernathy, the town’s undertaker. We’re neighbors, and I like to keep tabs on the happenings of Cinder Creek,” she said, making another note in her journal. “One of the men from the mill informed him that a homestead had been seen ablaze, and that he should go to recover the bodies for burial.”

  “Do you go running ahead every time someone dies?”

  “No, only in certain circumstances. The men from the mill work for Vane, who leaves a specific pattern in his wake.”

  “What do you want from me, Doctor?” I asked when it became evident she wouldn’t elaborate. I tugged at the straps holding my arms, trying to gesture with my hands. They didn’t budge. The Doctor had buckled me down tight.

  “Until very recently, I would have had a different answer,” she said, sighing and tucking the journal into a hidden pocket on her dress. “I would have wanted you only as a specimen. I would have removed your organs to catalogue and diagram. I would have tested and analyzed your blood. When I could test nothing else about you, I would have incinerated your remains and rid the earth of you.” Her eyes held a familiar, cold calculation. Every movement betrayed a long history of similar sins. I finally recognized her.

  “What changed?” I asked plainly.

  “Simply put, you aren’t a ravening animal like others I’ve seen. I watched you while you slept and listened to your murmurings. You fought the drugs, trying to regain control by focusing. In your delirium, you spoke of discipline, leadership, and what I could only describe as love for your men,” she said in a softer voice. Her eyes went distant, as though remembering something, then focused again.

  My heart sank. She had been listening to me while I was in a drug-induced stupor. Revealing those innermost thoughts was foolish; having them taken from me was a violation. My eyes must have hardened at that moment because her demeanor changed. She stepped a little closer and touched my arm briefly.

  “That changed my calculations,” she explained. “It means that you’re something greater than I had hoped to find. You might be a person, still. You may very well be the weapon I’ve been searching for.”

  “Those days are done. I’m no man’s weapon, nor woman, for that matter.”

  “Then what are you?” she shot back, voice sharpening again. “You’re a night-haunting predator of pure, focused rage. What did you call it? The Cold Iron? Don’t you want to get the ones who did this to you? Vane? Julien?”

  I stared hard, holding my anger in check. How dare she? She didn’t know the first goddamn thing about me… Or perhaps she did. Was she right? Is that all I was now?

  Strike. The Instinct urged, feeling the currents of my fury. No, I wouldn’t ruin this. The gambit was working. She wanted to use me, yes, but that would be better than this.

  “You know them,” I said. I wasn’t asking.

  “I know of them but do not know them personally,” she clarified. “I know their kind and believe I’ve encountered their kin. Unless I’m mistaken, you’ve been afflicted with the curse of vampirism, specifically the bloodline of the Crimson Sage Charter.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  She looked at me as though that should hold significance; a man playing his trump card. It meant nothing to me, so she continued. “It’s the official name for the West Coast ‘venture’ of the Rex Noctis; the ancient Cabal that rules the Old World. Vane is a renegade elder, seeking to branch off, it would seem. Julien, his ‘broodmate’ as they would say, is the more dangerous of the two. While Vane is a force of nature, Julien is a tactician.”

  “How do you know this? You said you don’t know them,” I demanded, the Thirst rising, gnawing at me, smelling her closeness. Focus, I commanded myself. The gambit is playing out.

  “I have been studying things others would rather not acknowledge for most of my life. I was once a member of an organization whose members study and track various paranormal phenomena around the world.” She removed the journal from her pocket and traced the symbol on the cover: a compass with different symbols in place of the cardinal directions. She held her finger near the scalpel in the northern position. “I was a Master Physiologist, Third Degree, of the Ordo Vesalius, but no more.”

  Much like her revelation about the Crimson Sage, none of that meant anything to me. Her demeanor said more than her words; her admission was something that she believed would be scandalous, particularly the bit about no longer being a member. There was pain there. I’d seen it far too often to miss.

  “We are, or they are, I should say, a secret society of scientists, physicians, and alchemists. We have found that most things in the world that are ascribed to superstition can be explained if one is willing to broaden one’s horizons. Everything in this world can be observed, classified, studied, and understood.”

  She stepped away, pacing. Her hand idly turned the pencil. “I was considered gifted by my colleagues. My work on blood-borne anomalies and afflictions was groundbreaking, particularly for a physician of my age. I rose quickly and was invited to study in Zurich, where I was given access to ancient archives. My work was becoming accepted as fact among Vesalians. Shortly after returning to Boston, I learned what ‘understanding’ truly meant to the order’s leadership cadre.”

  Her voice changed, gaining a malicious edge. “Captain, my family was afflicted,” she let her words hang in the air. I nodded in understanding. Family was off limits by my way of reckoning. “It is a condition unlike yours; something different. Related to the lunar cycles. A malady I’ve never been able to cure.” She clenched her fist on the pencil, nearly snapping it, then exhaled, calming herself.

  “Your Ordo, did it to them?” I asked, the strange word obtuse on my tongue.

  Her jaw tightened. She didn't nod, but she didn't correct me either. “To the Ordo Vesalius, this was the final stage of my advancement within the order. I had attained my Third Degree, and it was time to become a leader in the Lodge.” She stopped with her back to me, trying to steady herself. “As part of the initiation and ascension rite, I was presented with a ‘specimen’ to dissect before the Lodge. They had strapped my elder brother to a table like that one. They handed me a scalpel and told me to prove my loyalty to science above sentiment.”

  My guts twisted and sank. Micah’s face returned, haunted by the sick crunch of bone. Her severity made sense now; her coldness was a shield. She had been through her own hell. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “I refused,” she said, barely audible. “They cast me out as an oath breaker, and burned my research, or so they thought. I fled before they could exact any greater punishment on me,” she paused, looking me in the eye. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but flames were kindling. “They have named me an ‘Unworthy Fugitive.’ I came to this god-forsaken place to hide and continue my real work. I want to find a cure for my family members. The ones that escaped, but I am in danger, even on the frontier. I believe the order has used their shadowy network of contacts to sell me out to Crimson Sage, among other Cabals. They want to let the monsters do their work for them, and it’s only a matter of time before the information makes its way out west.”

  She stepped closer, locking eyes with me. “And then you turned up on my doorstep. A Crimson Sage Vampire, created by renegades, right here, just after the Order consecrated a new Lodge in San Francisco. Much too close for my liking.”

  Her face drew closer to mine. “I cannot fight them in a pitched battle, Captain. Vane, Julien, and certainly not the Ordo Vesalius, if they learn of my presence. I am a scientist. Waging war is not my way…” She touched my arm again, her voice no longer heated but purposely even. “But you do. You are a weapon. You understand warfare. Though you are afflicted, your discipline and moral fortitude seem to have held the worst of it back. You will be my scalpel, and we will remove the corruption that dwells here.”

  It all clicked into place for me then. This wasn’t a prison; this was a recruiter’s office. I reassessed the situation strategically. This woman, this dangerous, amoral heretic, was offering to free me, offering to help me take vengeance, because it aligned with her own ends. This was a deal with the devil, but I was already damned.

  Nothing ever came for free. “What’s your price?” I rasped.

  “Research, and your cooperation,” she said, all business again. “I want to study you. I want to understand the properties of your blood, every change it makes to you, and to catalogue every ‘side effect’ it may have. I want to know everything. In return, I will give you sanctuary, information, and the necessary tools to fight this war.”

  “Vane,” I said.

  “And Julien as well,” she countered. “They are the mission. I will be your logistics officer, and you will be you, the Captain. Do we have an agreement?”

  A mission, logistics, and a soldier. She was speaking to me in a language I understood. It felt manipulative, but I had little choice. She didn’t either. If she was telling the truth, it was only a matter of time before the Vampires or agents of her former order came for her. She was living on a timer, and I was a lucky break. A weapon that had fallen into her lap.

  “We have an accord,” I said.

  Dr. Foss nodded in agreement, a curt, business-like movement. “Excellent.” She crossed the room and opened a cabinet. The thought came to me that she was getting more drugs, but she returned, not with a syringe, but a large clay jug and a small vial of powder. “This should counteract the last of the sedatives. I doubt it would have worked if you were at full strength, but we don’t have time to test that theory,” she said, indicating the powder. “When you are free of the lethargy, you will be afflicted by the curse more acutely than you are now. To that end, I have procured ‘rations’ from the town butcher, in the hopes that our negotiations would be fruitful,” she said, holding up the jug.

  She uncorked the jug and poured the powder in. The heavy coppery smell of blood shocked me. The Instinct roared, urging me forward. My stomach turned at the thought of it, but I knew I wanted it; an addict craving his vice. It was the most beautiful smell in the world at that moment.

  Dr. Foss watched my reaction with detached interest. “According to recorded accounts, this will be unpleasant, but it will sustain you. Records on this topic are sparse.”

  She loosened the first strap while watching me keenly. Something glinted in her other hand, held back, mostly out of view: a glass syringe, filled with a glinting silvery fluid.

  Silver. Danger. The Cleansing Metal. The Instinct recoiled, a shrieking void in my mind. My new biology recognized the threat before my eyes did; a primal, cellular revulsion to the alchemical opposite of my blood.

  She was wary and taking precautions. We’d both made deals with dangerous people, and it would be foolish to give full trust immediately.

  The first strap fell away, then another. My mind was already racing. The Thirst was sandpaper dryness in my throat. I looked at the jug, and then at the Doctor. I needed to stay disciplined. Stay resolved. I’d honor the pact, so long as she did.

  “I’ll be your scalpel, Doctor,” I said, my voice rough and gravelly. I sat up and swung my legs off the side of the cold steel table. The room spun, and I leaned to the side, almost falling. I caught myself and slid off the table, unsteady but upright. The doctor stood before me, a diminutive person by comparison.

  Kill. Feed. The Instinct snapped, urging me forward. I focused my will, and pushed back the monster inside.

  “First,” I said, meeting her gaze, “I need my saber and pistol from that cabin.”