J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 1-4 - J. R. Ward [34]
At first it didn’t make sense to him. There was oxygen in blood. That was why it was red after leaving the lungs. The discrepancy had led him to some fascinating discoveries about vampire pulmonary function, but had ultimately gotten him no closer to his objective.
He’d tried drawing the blood and channeling it immediately into an airtight container. This most obvious solution didn’t work. The disintegration occurred anyway, just at a decelerated pace. This had suggested there was another factor at work, something inherent in the corporal environment that was missing when the blood was removed from the body. He’d tried isolating samples in warmth, in cold. In suspensions of saline or human plasma.
Frustration had kept his mind burning through the permutations of his experiments. He ran more tests and tried different approaches. Retried. Walked away from the project. Came back to it.
Decades passed. And more decades.
And then personal tragedy gave him a very intimate reason to solve the problem. Following the deaths in childbirth of his shellan and infant son a little over two years ago, he’d become obsessed and had started from scratch.
His own need to feed was the driver.
He usually needed to drink only every six months, because his bloodline was strong. After his beautiful Evangaline’s death, he’d waited as long as he could, until he had taken to his bed with the pain of the hunger. When he’d finally asked for help, he’d hated the fact that he wanted to live badly enough to drink from another female. And he’d allowed himself to consider the feeding only because he’d been convinced that it wouldn’t be as it had been with Evangaline. Surely he wouldn’t betray her memory by taking pleasure in someone else’s blood.
There were so many whom he had helped that it wasn’t hard to find a female willing to offer herself. He’d chosen a friend who was unmated and had hoped he’d be able to keep his sadness and humiliation to himself.
It had turned out to be a nightmare. He’d held back for so long that as soon as he’d smelled blood, the predator in him had come out. He’d attacked his friend and drunk so hard, he’d had to stitch up her wrist afterward.
He’d nearly bitten her hand off.
His actions flew in the face of his notions of himself. He’d always been a gentleman, a scholar, a healer. A male not subject to the base desires of his race.
But then, he’d always been well fed.
And the terrible truth was, he’d relished the taste of that blood. The smooth, warm flow down his throat, the roaring strength that came afterward.
He’d felt pleasure. And he’d only wanted more.
The shame had made him retch. And he’d vowed never to drink of another’s vein again.
It was a promise he’d kept, though as a result he’d grown weak, so weak that focusing his mind was like herding a fog bank. His starvation was a constant ache in his belly. And his body, craving sustenance that food couldn’t give it, had cannibalized itself to keep him alive. He’d lost so much weight his clothes hung off of him like bags, his face turning haggard and gray.
But the state he was in had shown him the way.
The solution was obvious.
You had to feed that which was hungry.
An airtight process coupled with a sufficient quantity of human blood and he had his living cells.
Under the microscope, he watched as the vampire cells, larger and more irregularly shaped compared to the human ones, slowly consumed what he had given them. The human count was decreasing in the sample, and when it was extinguished he was willing to bet the viability of the vampire component would dwindle down to nothing.
All he had to do was conduct a clinical trial. He would extract a pint from a female, mix with