but he heals human-slow."
"How hurt is he?"
"About as hurt as you were, but not healing as fast."
Graham came to stand beside Requiem. He was still in the red shirt and dark pants, but somehow it didn't bug me now. Graham would answer questions better than Requiem. He also seemed to be himself, while the vampire was being weird even for him.
I started to ask how fast I was healing, but I wanted to know about Peter before I asked questions about me. I felt amazingly well. "I'm going to ask this again, and I want a straight answer. How hurt is Peter?"
Graham sighed. "He got a lot of stitches - like the-doctor-lost-count stitches. He's going to be fine, honest, but he's going to have some manly scars."
"Shit," I said.
"Tell her the rest," Requiem said.
I glared at Graham. "Yeah, tell me the rest."
"I was getting to it." He flashed an unfriendly look at the vampire. Requiem gave a small nod, almost a bow, and moved back from the bed.
"Then get to it, Graham," I said.
"The doctors are offering him the chance for the new antilycanthropy therapy."
"You mean the inoculation they offer?"
"No, something brand new." He said "brand new" as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.
"How new?"
"St. Louis is one of only a handful of cities that are experimenting with it."
"They can't experiment on an underage kid."
"Underage?" He made it a question. "I thought Peter was eighteen."
Shit, I thought. Apparently Peter Black was holding up as a secret identity. "Yeah, I mean, shit, fine."
"If he's eighteen, then he can give permission for it." Graham gave me a funny look as he said it, as if he wanted to ask why I didn't believe Peter was eighteen, or maybe he didn't either.
"Give permission for what exactly?" I asked.
"They're offering him a vaccine."
"Like I said, Graham, they've been offering a vaccine against lycanthropy for years.
"Not the one that they used to offer in college. Not since that bad batch turned a lot of nice upper-class college students into monsters about ten years back." He said it without referencing Richard - who had been one of those college students. I wondered if Graham didn't know. Not my place to share, so I let it go.
"The vaccine's a dead organism now, not live and kicking," I said.
"Did you get it?" he asked.
I had to smile. "No."
"Most people won't volunteer for it," he said.
"Yeah, there's a bill wandering around Washington, D.C., right now to force inoculation against lycanthropy on teenagers. They claim it's safe now."
"Yeah, they claim." Graham's face said how much he believed in the "claim."
I shook my head, moved a little too much in the bed, and found that my stomach gave a twinge. However healed I was, it wasn't perfect yet. I took in a deep breath, let it out, and forced myself not to move around so much. There, that was better. "But Peter has already been attacked. The inoculation is only effective before an attack."
"They want to give him a live shot."
"What?" I said, and it was almost a yell.
"Yeah," Graham said.
"But that will give him whatever lycanthropy is in the shot."
"Not if he's already got tiger lycanthropy," Graham said.
"What?"
"Apparently, they had some people who were attacked by more than one beast in a single night. The two different strains canceled each other out. They came up clean and completely human."
"But it's not dead certain that he'll get tiger lycanthropy," I said.
"No, most of the feline strains are harder to catch than canine."
"You can't even reliably test for cat-based lycanthropy for at least seventy-two hours. If they give him this shot and he's not going to be a tiger, then he will be whatever the shot is," I said.
"And therein lies the problem," Graham said.
"Therein," Requiem said, his voice softly mocking.
Graham flashed him another unfriendly look. "I try to improve my vocabulary and you make fun of me; what kind of encouragement is that?"
Requiem gave a full bow, graceful, with one hand sweeping outward. That hand always seemed to cry out for a hat with a plume, as if the gesture was only half finished without the right clothing. He stood. "I beg pardon, Graham, for you are quite right. I do wish to encourage you in your improvements. It was churlish of me, and I apologize."
"Why is it that when you apologize, you never seem to mean it?" Graham asked.
"Back to the main problem, boys," I said. "What's happening with Peter?"
"Ted Forrester, federal marshal" - he said it