feel no desire when she can’t hear.”
“I’d consider it an honor to hear you play.”
Kurt scrutinized Joe for a moment. “Very well, Doctor.”
Joe sank down into the leather armchair. “Please, call me, Joe.”
Kurt settled down onto the bench. “Anything you’d particularly like to hear, Doctor?”
So, Kurt wasn’t about to lessen the professional distance. Joe had the feeling it would always remain so. “I wouldn’t presume.”
Kurt’s eyes focused on the distant wall. “I’ll play what Mia likes.”
He sat in silence for a moment then started to play. Joe recognized the piece from a CD in his office. Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat Major. It started out softly, delicately building, outwardly innocuous as a rippling brook but with potential torrents carefully contained. Kurt’s slight figure became powerful as his hands moved over the keys, drawing out all the dark passion of the music. Amazing that one of these things could create such beauty.
When Kurt finished Joe was speechless, moved by the music. Kurt turned on the bench, huge eyes glittering silently, brushing back a tawny curl from his pale forehead. They regarded each other, the man and the vampire, one male animal and the other. Did Kurt have any idea of the suggestive things Mia said? And what did she say to Kurt on that cream-colored perfumed stationery? Intimate missives.
Adversaries, without any say in the matter. Was this why Lydia sent him in with them, to play them off against each other on purpose? And if so, why?
Surprisingly, it was Kurt who broke the silence, almost shyly, “Does she like the flowers?”
Joe didn’t know what to say, so he told the barest truth, hoping Kurt wouldn’t see it entire. “She hasn’t said anything.”
Kurt’s face went still. Joe quickly changed the subject. “I’m no expert but you’re extraordinarily gifted.”
Kurt shrugged, the smallest of smiles warming his face. Was he actually blushing?
“You might have been a great musician. I mean you are. You could have been famous if… ”
Kurt became horrifyingly still, a marble figure carved into a tomb, or was it a predator about to spring? “If this hadn’t happened to me?”
“Could you always play like this? Or is it enhanced by the mutation?”
“No more questions!” Kurt suddenly snapped. “Leave me now.”
Joe paused for a moment then spoke humbly, “Thank you Kurt.”
“For what?”
“The music.”
“The music? Yes. The music— you’re welcome,” Kurt replied in a vague staccato, staring hard at Joe’s face. “This is very difficult for her, to be caged, like an animal, after all we’ve been through. I’m gravely concerned.”
Joe wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. Was this a warning of some kind?
“This isn’t what she promised.”
Joe stood up, running his hands over his exhausted eyes. “I should go now.”
Kurt’s face relaxed subtly. He moistened his full bottom lip slightly. “I don’t hold you responsible, Doctor. Forgive me if I was brusque.”
“I’d be handling it a lot worse if I were you.”
The vampire laughed a small laugh, like an intake of breath. Joe smiled and stifled the bizarre urge to pat him on the head paternally, and turned uneasily to let himself out of the cell.
SIX
* * * *
Joe sat in his office, overlooking the symbols he’d jotted down from Kurt’s letter when Jean surprised him by touching his shoulder. “Runes, Joe?”
He looked up into her ocean-blue eyes. “Ruins?”
“Runes, stupid.” She wrinkled her freckle-dusted nose. “Viking runes, used by the Norse, they carved them on these huge stones all over Europe. They’re sometimes used for divination. My brother was into stuff like that.”
“Divination?”
“Prophesy, fortunetelling.”
Joe reached over, closed the office door and swung his chair around to face her. “Jean, don’t tell anyone, but I’m carrying letters between Mia and Kurt.”
She laughed. “How romantic of you. Here are the reports from pathology and medical.”
“Finally. See you later?”
She smiled and nodded as she made her way out.
Joe was astonished by the test results. Cells that never died, only divided and re-divided, constantly rejuvenating. Deadly viruses, Ebola, HIV, and virulent bacteria like bubonic plague were devoured by a few drops of their blood. The cell cultures went on that way for one week or so, but unless fed fresh human blood cells they became erratic, dying rapidly. When exposed to ultraviolet light, they broke down in minutes, the cells unstable, and detiorating into rotting jelly.
More wonders appeared before his eyes. Chromosomal anomalies in all twenty-three pairs, as if someone had snipped out offending genetic threads and replaced them. But what was responsible for this tailoring? So far the agent was unidentified.
Human? So it