Gabriel's Mate by Folsom, Tina (read this if .txt) 📕

less than twenty-four hours away, and if he couldn’t control his urges then, the same thing would happen again.

He promised himself not to collect payment for her meal next time she fed from him. It was better not to tempt fate and to instead remove as much temptation as possible. Just having her feed from him again would cost him every ounce of control he had. An incident like the one that had happened in the study could not be repeated. Not while his body looked like it did.

Soon after his phone call to the witch he reached Drake’s practice and was led into his office by his Barbie doll receptionist.

“How is Dr. Johnson?” Drake asked the minute he entered the room, seemingly not at all surprised to see Gabriel.

It took him a fraction of a second to realize who Drake meant by Dr.

Johnson. Gabriel didn’t see her as a doctor. He just saw her as Maya.

“She fed from me.”

Drake only raised an eyebrow. “I figured that much.”

Gabriel straightened. “Excuse me?”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “She told me she was craving your blood. She was fighting it.”

Gabriel glared at him. “And you didn’t tell me?” He felt fury rise in his chest. Drake had let her suffer when Gabriel could have taken care of the problem had he only known? He took two steps toward Drake.

“Doctor patient confidentiality.”

“Fuck doctor patient confidentiality!” Gabriel yelled and grabbed the doctor by his white coat. “You listen to me now. Anything, and I mean anything, that concerns Maya, concerns me. Whatever you know about her, you’ll tell me. Do you get that?”

Drake shrugged out of Gabriel’s hold. “What is she to you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“It is,” the doctor disagreed. “Are you going to help her through this when things get tough? Are you?”

“I helped her through this, haven’t I?” Gabriel shot back.

“You’ve seen nothing yet.”

“The worst is over. She’s gone through the change and now that she’s accepted her need to feed from me, I don’t see what other problems there could be.” Gabriel didn’t like scaremongers. If the doctor thought he could raise his fee by making up some bogus ailments, he’d soon be at the receiving end of Gabriel’s unrelenting fist.

“No, I don’t know either what problems there’ll be. But I know for sure there will be problems.” He wiped sweat off his brow. “I have reason to believe that Maya is not entirely human.”

Gabriel snorted. “Of course she’s not human. She’s a vampire.”

Drake shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. She wasn’t entirely human before she was turned.”

It took several seconds for Gabriel for the information to sink in.

“Not human?”

Drake pointed to the chairs and they both sat down. “I doubt she has any idea.”

“You examined her?” The idea that the doctor might have touched her when he’d gone into the study with her made Gabriel’s stomach twist.

“No. She gave me access to her medical records. I looked at all tests she’s ever had in her entire life, and I’m telling you, something is off.”

Good – the doctor hadn’t touched her. It made him feel better. “Off – like how?”

“She’s been having these attacks of fever ever since she’s turned thirteen. At least once a year, sometimes twice. The doctors can’t explain it. They wrote it off to influenza or an infection. But the frequency, it disturbs me.”

Gabriel shrugged his shoulders. Humans were just more vulnerable to all kinds of things. There was nothing odd about it. “What else?”

“She had a genetic test done during her residency – part of a trial she took part to make extra money,” he explained. “The results are worrying.”

“Spit it out,” Gabriel ordered.

“The test showed two extra pairs of chromosomes. A total of thirty chromosomes instead of twenty-six.”

“How could that happen?” Gabriel was now glad for the lonely days that had forced him to find things to occupy his time with. He’d long ago taken to watching programs on the Discovery Channel and therefore had a rudimentary understanding of medical issues.

“The notes on the test say that they think the sample was contaminated and they excluded it from the clinical trial. But Dr.

Johnson, Maya,” he corrected himself, “she left the test results in her medical record. She must have wondered if it caused her fevers.”

“Isn’t it possible that the lab who did the test was correct in saying there was contamination? It could happen so easily. You must know better than I how easily things get contaminated. Human error is always possible.” Gabriel didn’t want to accept that there was something wrong with Maya. She had enough to deal with already.

“That’s what I thought too, but -“

“Do you think that the reason she doesn’t want to drink human blood is connected to this chromosome issue?”

Drake nodded. “It’s a distinct possibility. Frankly, I’ve never heard of a vampire who didn’t drink human blood. It’s true that some vampires drink each other’s blood, but in general that’s merely a part of their sex life. Blood-bonded couples do it, but not at the exclusion of human blood.” Suddenly the doctor looked straight at him. “I hope you’re drinking enough blood while she’s feeding from you. You have to keep your strength.”

“Don’t worry about me. I feed as much as my body tells me to.”

“How much is she taking from you?” Drake gave him a curious look.

“As much as she needs.” And for his liking, her feeding had been far too short. He would have liked to enjoy the sensation for much longer.

“Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing. At least this will buy us some time until I can figure out what’s wrong with her. As I said, I have a hunch that I need to look into. I have to get some information on her parents. Since whatever non-human component she has in her would be genetic, I need to get a medical history on her parents.”

Gabriel nodded. “I’ll get you their names and addresses. But you’ll probably have to steal the