The Source (19 page)

He takes the seat next to me and looks at the wound on
my hand without touching me.  Trying for distraction I say, “Have you made much
progress?”

“Hhhmmm...?” he groans as he continues to watch me.

Catching myself in mid-eye-roll, I say, “Bree happened
to mention that they were close in completing their project work.”

He looks up at me.  Bingo.  That got his attention.  “Close? 
And why would she even mention that?  Was she taunting you?”

“No, she said it when she not-so-subtly told Tucker to
get back to work.”

He raises his left eyebrow. “Tucker was in the
restroom with you?”

I shake my head. “No, I ran into him as I was getting
my Coke.”

“That’s convenient,” he says with a sneer.

I give him my best “really?” look.  “I know he told
you about what had happened before, but he hasn’t done anything since.”

He shrugs one shoulder, “Is that because he has
learned the error of his ways or because I said something to him?”

“Oh, right.  You should get credit for his behavior,”
I grimace sarcastically.

Looking down at my hand he says, “Never underestimate
the power of the vampire threat.”

I turn my hand over so he can’t see the cut. “Don’t
worry.  I won’t be forgetting that any time soon.  What are you doing here
anyway?”

“Did you hurt your head, too?  I work here, remember?”

“No,” I start, “why aren’t you continuing to work,
especially since the other team is close?  Instead you’re sitting here watching
me bandage my hand.”

He looks back up into my eyes, “What can I say?  Your
blood is intoxicating.”

I take a slow, deep breath as I can feel the heat of
embarrassment sprinkled with excitement inch up my neck, over my jaw and invade
my pleasantly round cheeks.  Looking away from him I quickly apply the
anti-bacterial ointment and tape the bandage securely to my slightly perspiring
skin.  I pack the supplies up and begin to turn in my seat only to nearly
collide with Rick as he leans in closer to me without me realizing it.  He is
still looking at my bandaged hand.    I cover my wounded hand with the other as
I move to look into his face.  “Rick?”  Clearing my throat I stammer. “The show
is over.”

He looks up at me with a rather peaceful smile on his
face. “And a fantastic show it was.”

I hold his gaze for a few moments, not really knowing
what to do with that tidbit of information.  Rick slowly reaches up and
lightly traces his fingertips down my cheek.  I am slightly conscious that
I am more comfortable, no longer feeling embarrassed.  He slowly glides
his fingertips over my chin, just below my lip. I feel as warm and nurtured as
I would be swaddled in a huge afghan crocheted by granny Burcham.  I blink
while shaking my head as if I am ridding myself of a dusting of personal
comfort. 

 Rick is leaning back in his chair, a slight
smile on his face.  I close my eyes as my temperature elevates, and not in
a good way.  “I thought I told you to never do that to me again?”  I
open my eyes and he is leaning forward again, inches away from me. 
Instead of shrinking back, I try to maintain my posture because I don’t want
him to think that I am still scared of him.  If he said that I didn’t have
to be, then I’m going to call him on it.

 He nods, “I know.  I would apologize, but
it would be a lie.”

 I scowl, “What the hell?  So, you would do
that whenever you want to?  How dare you?  What was that you said
about feeding off a human against their will was like rape?”  I cross my
arms over my stomach, my body not knowing whether to be angry, throw up or
both.

 Smiling, he slowly shakes his head. “No. 
If that were the case, it would have happened more often already.  I only
did it because there is absolutely no reason why you should be embarrassed by my
reaction to you or your blood.  It’s natural for me to have urges and I
try to express that in the least harmful way possible.  I just don’t want
you to feel badly about it.”

 I softly chuckle. “Natural for you?  So it
could be any human bleeding and your reaction would be the same?  You must
go around invading people’s will all of the time.”

 He laughs as he lightly places his hand on my
arm, hovering ever-so-slightly below my breasts.  “It’s natural for me to
have the reaction to anyone, but I wouldn’t concern myself with that person’s
feelings unless I cared about them.”

 His fingertips lightly slide over my arm before
he pats my knee.  “Come on, let’s get back to work,” he says.

 I watch him walk back to the whiteboard as I
take a moment to regroup my jumbled nerves.  He cares about me.  What
type of caring, exactly?  Friendly?  Brotherly?  Or is it the
type of care that is given to Kobe beef so that we can have a better cut of
steak?  I definitely don’t want to be considered anyone’s delicacy, at
least not in a food sense. 

Now I’m hungry.  Dammit.

 I join him at the whiteboard as he is writing
more notes.  “Okay, so what do you have so far?”  I ask.

 “Well it seems that we’re actually dealing with
dehydration, at least in part.  Now we need to brainstorm on all of the
possible variables that contribute to the state of dehydration.  The
tricky part is that just because it causes dehydration in a human, doesn’t mean
that it will do so in a vampire.”

 I tap my fingers against my lips, scanning his
notes as thoughts seesaw through my head.

I slowly walk over to the whiteboard, pick up a marker
and begin to quickly make notes down the left side of the board.  When I’m
done, I turn back toward Rick. “Okay, in a human we know that dehydration is
most often caused by a combination of water loss and not enough water taken
in.  But vampires don’t even drink water.”

It isn’t exactly a question but Rick responds, “We get
some water through the blood we drink.  That’s apparently all the water we
need.”

I nod slowly as I tap the end of the marker against my
lips, scanning my notes on the whiteboard.  “That might suggest that vampires
need a lower threshold of water to remain hydrated.” I look at him, “I say
think because it really depends on how much blood you actually drink.”

Rick’s lips twitch as he tries not to smile.
“Definitely more than 8 glasses a day.”

I close my eyes for a moment as my tongue rises in the
back of my throat to block the coming bile.  I give him my best smile. “Okay,
so vampires seemingly drink enough to parallel how much water humans need.  So
that leaves loss of water.”

I point to each option as I ready myself to mark off
the ones that we don’t need to test.  “Diarrhea?” I ask.

Rick walks over to the whiteboard, a few feet by my
side.  “Not an issue.”

I raise an eyebrow, “What if you eat human food that
doesn’t agree with you?”

“I guess it’s possible.  But most vampires just don’t
bother, so it’s not really an issue.”

I “humph” then mark it off the list.  “What about
vomiting?”

“We do vomit, but not from sickness.  It’s usually
because of either gorging ourselves or being hit too hard in the stomach.”

Another one marked off the list.  “Sweat?”

He nods, “Yes, we do sweat.  Either from strenuous
activity or heat.  And like humans, some of us sweat more than others.”

“Deodorant?”

Rick looks at me, grinning. “I didn’t realize that
deodorant caused dehydration.”

I shake my head as I wriggle my nose. “No, do you use
deodorant?  Or do vampires sweat all over the place without any care for body
odor?  That would definitely lend credence to the stereotype of vampires
smelling like the dead.”  I unsuccessfully stifle a giggle.

“Maybe some, just like humans.  Believe me, there are
some humans whose lack of deodorant consideration is so extreme that I couldn’t
even bring myself to bite them if I were starving.”

I laugh as he smiles at me.  Composing myself I say,
“Okay, so just like humans, many vampires do use deodorant but there are still
some that are stinky.”  I move on to the next option. “What about diabetes?”

Rick shakes his head, “I’ve never heard of it with
vampires.  I guess if we only drank from sugar or carb addicts, it might come
up, but I doubt it.”

I mark it off the list, “Burns?  I don’t really have
to ask that because that’s a no-brainer.”

He nods without commenting.

“Inability to drink fluids?”

He puts his hand on his hip, his face scrunched in
concentration.  The silence grows for several moments.  He finally says, “I
cannot think of an instance where a vampire would not be able to drink blood, unless
there was torture involved.  There are some vampires who for whatever crazy
reason abstain from drinking blood altogether.  They would be more susceptible
to dehydration, but more than those types die because of sun exposure.”

I nod once then mark it off the list.  “Okay, that
means that vomiting and burns are left as possible factors.”

“Unless there’s something unique to vampires that
causes dehydration.”

I lay the marker down and cross my arms.  “How do we
find that out when there hasn’t been much research done on vampires much less
on this specific topic?”

Rick raises his eyebrows and cocks his head. “Thalia?”

I drop my arms to my side. “You can’t be serious.”

“What other choice do we have?  Like you said, there’s
no research on this.  We’ve already done experiments on her, so why not
continue until we get the information we need?”

Breathing deeply I nod my head in reluctant
agreement.  “So what’s your suggestion?”

There is a knock on the door.  We turn to see Allison
walk through the door.

“Good early morning,” she announces cheerfully without
cracking a smile. “Everyone is meeting in the conference room in 15 minutes.
One of the research teams has come up with a solution and they will be
presenting their findings to everyone, along with a demonstration.”

She looks at me then at Rick as she smiles briefly.
“See you in the conference room. Please be prompt as Mr. Caulfield wants no
delays.”

Allison briskly exits the suite, closing the door
firmly behind her.

It is like all of the oxygen left the room with her. I
don’t realize that I am holding my breath, or maybe I have forgotten to
breathe, until Rick touches my shoulder. I jump at the brief contact and look
at him, eyes wide and rimmed with the sadness of defeat.

“What do we do now?” I ask him.

He tilts his head to the side and shrugs, “We go see
what they have come up with, challenge them where we can, suggest something
better if what we’ve been working on seems more viable,” he pauses, “and be
happy that someone has found a solution to this problem, if indeed they are
successful.”

I stare at nothing in particular while still facing
him. “How did you get so professionally mature?”

The corner of his mouth upturns. “Oh, about seventy-seven
years of practice. Give or take a few months.” He reaches out and takes my
hand, lightly squeezing as if to infuse me with the strength I will need to
walk into the conference room with my head held high.

I really don’t need it. I can feign strength when I
need to, which is often. I can get along much better in my career by acting
like an accepting professional when deep inside I want to rage against the fact
that someone beat me to the punch or outsmarted me. Accepting defeat with grace
is the most common artificial behavior that “successful” people develop. I
learned very quickly that the great secret to surviving in a competitive
workforce is to act like a team player when I’m actually plotting the downfall
of all my nemeses. Everyone does it, we just don’t talk about it...it’s not the
professional thing to do.

I squeeze Rick’s hand and give a small smile. Get
ready for one hell of a performance. Meryl Streep would be proud.

Rick and I sit toward the front of the conference
room, but far enough away from the front that whoever will be presenting will
not see the glimmer of wetness in my eyes. I can act, but damn this is hard.
Fifty thousand dollars gone. Facing the rest of my life paying off student
loans for an education that brought me here so I could
not
win fifty
thousand dollars. There seems to be a cruel irony there, but I would wait until
later to wax philosophical on my bad luck.

Mr. Caulfield steps up to the podium that has been set
up for the occasion. I close my eyes as he begins to introduce the winning
research team.

“Good morning, everyone. I’m quite excited to be
standing before you to see the results of one of the teams that has developed a
solution to the criminal element within the vampire community. To tell us more
about their work and provide a brief demonstration, I introduce Drs. Bree Vinh
and Abhilash Krishnamurthy.”

Everyone applauds as Bree and Abe take the stage. I
slowly clap my hands together as I look over to Rick, who doesn’t return my
gaze. Before I turn away I catch Tucker’s eye. He purses his lips and tilts his
head at me before turning to face the stage. I look down at the floor, blinking
to relieve the welling in the corner of my eyes before I turn to see Bree
smiling at the audience. Abe is standing quietly by her side. Of course she will
be the one to speak, power-hungry fame whore. Whoops. Must not think such
things as it can cause my facade to crack. The corners of my mouth twitch as I
try not to smile at the thoughts swirling in my head.