“It’s happened many times,” she said. “And I can tell you exactly what takes place. The vampire, having been taken captive in some sheltered place by day, wakes up at sundown to destroy his captors and lay waste their jail or their laboratory or their morgue. If he or she is too weak to do that, then the captors are generally spellbound and befuddled into releasing the victim, and retribution soon follows with all photographic or medical evidence immolated along with the witnesses. Sometimes other blood drinkers come to help free the captive. Sometimes an entire lab facility goes up in flames and almost everyone on the premises is killed. I documented at least two dozen accounts that fit this pattern. Every single one had a series of official ‘rational’ explanations of what happened attached to it, with marginalized survivors ridiculed and ultimately ignored. Some survivors have wound up in mental hospitals. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

“And so you work now with Fareed.”

“I have a place here,” she said with a gentle smile. “I’m respected here for what I know. You could say I’ve been reborn. Oh, you cannot imagine the little fool I was that night when I saw you on the stage, so certain I was going to take the medical world by storm with all those pictures.”

“What did you want to happen? I mean what did you want to happen to us?”

“I wanted to be believed, first and foremost, and then I wanted you to be studied! The very thing that Fareed’s doing here. There is no rhyme or reason to what is actually studied ‘out there.’ ” She gestured as if the mortal world were on the other side of the wall. “Doesn’t matter anymore to me,” she added. “I work for Fareed.”

I laughed under my breath.

The warm natural erotic feeling was long gone. What I wanted to do now again, of course, was drain every drop of blood out of her precious, adorable, curvaceous, hot little body. But I settled for kissing her, snuggling up to her, and pressing my lips against her warm throat, listening to that thunder of blood in the artery.

“They’ve promised to bring you over, haven’t they?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “They’re honorable. That’s more than I can say for my colleagues in American medicine.” She turned to me, drawing close enough to kiss me quickly one more time on the cheek. I didn’t stop her. Her fingers went up to my face and she touched my eyelids.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for these priceless moments. Oh, I know you didn’t do this for me. You did it for them. But thank you.”