"He didn't want to ask the question, but he did. "How does the disease progress, symptom-wise?" It was the most perilous question, and he knew he'd moved into those waters by the speculative look she gave him. He kept a quizzical expression, as if he asked purely for curiosity's sake. "It starts with a need to sleep longer. The vampire is more sensi- tive to the daylight and affected even when screened from it. As it advances, there are sudden spells of weakness that can cause faint- ing, vomiting of blood. You'll remember Lord Richard talked about that with his friend Antonio. " She sighed. "They start to lose the ability to control and guard their thoughts from a human servant. Andrev marked a volunteer human test subject so Brian could monitor the rate at which his abil- ity to block his thoughts degraded. A vampire typically is a vacuum- packed can. Nothing will escape his mind if he doesn't wish it. But a sick vampire will start to slip, revealing thoughts to those connected to his mind. Often he doesn't realize he's revealing them. As we know, in a healthy vampire, even if he's upset about something, shutting down the path is as easy as closing a book for you and me. " She demonstrated with the novel in her lap. Cold dread gathered in his lower belly as Jacob remembered the night Lyssa's mind had projected an image of Rex, her late husband, torturing her. It was an image she'd obviously not intended Jacob to see. She'd reacted violently when she'd discovered him in her mind uninvited. His forearm still occasionally ached from the break she'd infl icted, despite the healing powers that came with the second and third marks. "Because the attacks are so severe and abrupt in the first stages, " Debra continued, "it's remarkable how completely an affected vam- pire regains strength and self-possession between them, as if nothing at all is wrong. Then suddenly the vampire doesn't recover the same way anymore. At that point, he'll start failing drastically. The time between the episodes will be harder to predict. They can happen daily, sometimes even more frequently.
We call that Stage Three. Mood swings will be so sharp they can occur midsentence. " Given his lady's personality, Jacob reflected with grim amuse- ment, it might take some effort to detect an abnormal mood swing. "When the physical attacks come quickly on the heels of the emotional, the vampire has entered the final stage. It will be more rapid than any of the previous stages. In the fourth, impaired judg- ment will become significantly noticeable. There will be hallucina- tions, distorted reality, paranoia. Even bouts with suicidal thoughts, melancholy. Extreme emotional dependency. Neediness, " she clari- fied. "Wouldn't that be normal for someone dying? Needing to feel a connection to someone, to feel they're not facing death all alone?" She raised a shoulder. "Yes, but it's unusual for vampires, even under great stress. Being predators, they don't gracefully depend on others. " They also typically didn't face the overwhelming emotional drain and fear that could come with the inexorable progress of a terminal disease. However, considering he needed Debra's help, he held that layman's thought to himself. "Stages Three and Four are so close together and the symptoms can overlap so much, depending on the vampire, we debated whether to separate them. When the vampire starts losing control of the mind, there will be cycles of intense aggression, anger, followed by a total lassitude. Some have no interest in blood. They'd essentially starve themselves, but at that point they're very close to the end. One symptom unique to Stage Four is some kind of flesh-eating reaction which starts burning away their skin. It eats its way inward until there's nothing left to hold in the organs, the blood. It's as if they're turning to dust in slow motion, until the heart collapses, a self stak- ing, so to speak. Then it's over. Stage Four can occur and be over in less than a couple days. Sometimes hours. " When Jacob spoke, he considered his even tone a major accom- plishment, based on the visual overlay Debra had just put on his la- dy's body. Her lovely face. "How close do you think you are to a cure?"
"That's the million-dollar question for any disease, isn't it?" She pushed her hair back from her forehead. "It could be today, tomor- row, twenty years from now. We're more likely to find ways to pre- vent it, slow it, treat it, before we find a way to eradicate it. Like cancer. Though I'll say Brian's very excited about the connection between the servant and master. What they know in Tuscaloosa will be critical, how it meshes with his research. " "Have you found ways to slow it down, treat it?" Regret crossed her face. "So far, no. Just the basic techniques of pain management we use on humans, which have some limited suc- cess with vampires. As I said, having a full servant can help prolong the life of the infected vampire. While taking the one annual kill all vampires need in a timely manner helps, increasing the number of full kills in a year doesn't seem to have any appreciable effect. That's a good thing, of course, because you know some of the vampires would have used it as an excuse to up the annual quota, like a pre- ventive vitamin supplement. " She managed a grim smile. "And unfortunately, we haven't figured out a way to test humans for the dormant virus. We don't even know how vampire hunters isolated it, or if they even have. It's more likely they found the blood source of an infected vampire and are using that human's blood as a host to make up their vials. If they do, they could conceivably wipe out a significant number of vampires. Some of our best trackers are looking to find that research subject. " "No wonder you're concerned, " Jacob murmured. "Yes. It's one thing if the disease is contracted by an incautious vampire. Entirely different if the hunters choose to pursue a far more insidious and subtle method of hunting our Masters and Mistresses. That's why finding a cure is more important in this instance than prevention, though limiting blood donors to one's own servant and a carefully picked annual kill is the safest bet for the latter. We've had some reports that it's only an isolated cell of hunters trying this out right now. The majority of them still seem to have a fortunate aver- sion to it because of its similarity to a biological weapon. We all know how those can backfire. " Reaching out, she touched his hand. "The best thing you can do is to be very careful with your extracurricular bedsport, Jacob. You never have any idea who is watching Lady Lyssa, and she's very pow- erful.
Someone could drug you, inject you . . . " "I won't be with any other women. " Then, because the exception to the rule sat before him now, he added uncomfortably, "Unless she commands it. " "Oh. So your Mistress requires fidelity. That's interesting, consid- ering how old she is. " "No, she hasn't commanded it. Not specifically. " Debra cocked her head, considered him. "You're giving me that pitying look you just said you get from older servants, " Jacob observed darkly. "You're right. It's very pa- tronizing. And annoying. " "Do you know why I'm reading this?" With a faint smile, she lifted the romance novel. "Part of it is escapism. Part of it is to re- mind me what my relationship with my Master isn't. The bond be- tween servant and vampire is unique. Not family, not spouses, not lovers. The excess sex drive vampires have can force us into a decep- tive intimacy. We convince ourselves we're lovers, probably because the reality is beyond our ken and we don't know how to classify it. Since we can't reconcile the feeling with the reality, we use sex to Band-Aid it. " She tapped the top of the book again. "If you allow yourself to believe it's something different from what it is, you've fooled yourself in a way that will only bring you heartbreak. In the worst cases it'll result in bitterness. They'll drive that lesson home again and again, twisting the knife. " At his speculative look, she nodded. "The first time I assumed more about our relationship than there was, Brian invited a vampire home from the lab and took her to his bed. He commanded me to prepare them a meal. Made me stand there holding the tray while he put whipped cream on her breasts and licked it off. " She glanced away, obviously embarrassed by the revealing picture. "Later that same day . . . He took me. He hadn't even cleaned himself, so I could smell her. It was a lesson to show me the two acts had no relation to one another. Mind to mind, a vampire feels a closer bond to his or her servant than with anyone else.