Then a forty-something woman appeared in my limited line of sight, all but a few wisps of her ash blonde hair concealed by a medical cap. Her features were schooled into a polite mask, and her pale green gaze held the clinical detachment physicians everywhere had perfected.

Don’t bother trying mind control, she thought at me. I’m inoculated.

I tried it anyway. What did I have to lose? “Release me,” I said, putting all of my lagging power into my voice and gaze.

She didn’t even blink. “You only learn the hard way, don’t you?” she said out loud.

“Always,” I replied tightly. “Where’s my husband?”

A diffident shrug that landed her right after Madigan on my hit list. “The dead vampire? In the freezer.” With the rest of them, her thoughts finished.

I closed my eyes, a wave of grief crushing me beneath its weight. When I opened them, the female doctor had disappeared. I tested my restraints by applying pressure one limb at a time. Nothing. Then I tried heaving against them with everything I had, all at once.

Not even a budge. Madigan had spared no expense setting up a vampire-proof examination table.

“Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system,” the doctor’s voice said dryly, “how about some food?”

She returned to my line of sight, dangling a plasma bag with a long tube above me. I gave her fingers a brief, calculated look. Too far away to bite off. Clearly, I wasn’t her first captive.

Since I felt weaker than a baby vampire at sunrise, I caught the end of the tube between my lips and took a long sip. Then I grimaced.

“Wrong brand,” I said, spitting the tube out.

For the first time, the blonde showed a flicker of genuine emotion. Surprise. “You were drained almost dry to extract the silver in you. How can you refuse to eat based on mere blood type preference?”

She was right; I was so hungry that I ached, but for me, this wasn’t food.

“It’s not the type, it’s the source. I don’t drink human blood.”

Her forehead creased, deepening the fine lines already visible. “But you’re a vampire.”

“I’ll just call you Dr. Obvious,” I muttered.

At that, her expression cleared back into its serene clinical mask. “You’re not my first problem child. If you refuse the blood orally, it will be injected into you. Director Madigan has ordered extensive lab work once you’re rehydrated.”

I bet he had. “I’m sure Madigan told you I was a special case, but he doesn’t know as much as he thinks. Like the fact that I drink vampire blood, not human.”

I’d cracked that icily pleasant exterior again. Her eyes widened, and she parted her lips as though she were about to argue. Then she pursed them closed, nodding.