Page 9 of Don't Bite the Botanist
That demonic, soulless creature.
Anytime he closed his eyes, it was all he saw, so he didn’t imagine sleep would be coming anytime soon. After the doctor quietly left his room, Ethan reached for his cell phone that had finally charged enough he could check his messages, of which there were many.
Not surprising after three months in a coma.
Fuck.When the doctor first mentioned how long he’d been out, he was still so fixated on the vampire aspect that it didn’t fully register. But the enormity of his situation was starting to hit him.
He had no idea what his life even looked like now. Did he have a job? Would he be able to work at a different VieTek lab and continue his research? Hell, did he even have an apartment to go home to?
The answer to that last question came from listening to his handful of voice messages. And the rest came from his very full email inbox.
He groaned and slammed the infuriating device back on the nightstand. Between the messages from his now former landlord and the emails from his VieTek manager, Ethan had more or less no life waiting for him. No home. No job. No best friend.
No problem,he thought.That all just means I can focus on what really matters.
Hunting down the vampire he knew was still out there somewhere needed to be his sole priority anyway. He would never be able to relax until he could see for himself that it was dead-dead.
Closing his eyes, Ethan braced himself for the image of the monster to invade his mind once more so he could search his memories for any possible clues, but the black-haired female he found himself thinking about wasn’t a vampire. She was a counselor. A sexy, friendly,humancounselor.
Try as he might, he couldn’t shake the image of her smiling at him. She was probably just doing her job—being nice and all that jazz—but for some reason, he didn’t fully believe that. The way she’d looked at him was more than if he was any other patient on her roster. And even if she was just a distraction from what he needed to be concentrating on, maybe he could allow himself a brief reprieve from the darkness.
A little self-indulgence couldn’t hurt, Ethan thought as his hand slid under the sheets to palm himself. Making a plan to hunt down the vampire could wait until tomorrow.
He just needed a quick confirmation that his cock still worked, and thoughts of Tressa would more than help in that endeavor.
Chapter seven
Tressa
“You’re fucked, Tress,” Baylin said, having made no effort to conceal his raucous laughter after she finished recounting her meeting with Ethan.
Tressa glared at the phone in her hand even though her pseudo cousin couldn’t see her face. “Thanks for that enlightening input, Bay. You maybe want to turn the volume down before you start in with your helpful observations?”
The grating sound of the screaming death metal her cousin was so fond of cut off, and she heard him take a swig of what was likely a disgustingly over-caffeinated energy drink before he responded.
“I gotta say, I thought Saiden’s predicament was good, but damn. This is even more entertaining.”
Tressa groaned and leaned back in the painfully uncomfortable chair in the hospital’s waiting area. You’d think people worrying about their loved ones deserved some semblance of comfort, but apparently, the Good Samaritan Hospital didn’t agree.
“While I appreciate that assessment,” she told him without bothering to hide her sarcasm under her usual playful tone, “I’d like toknow why you didn’t tell any of us you were monitoring the victim of a vampire attack? I assumed you were just getting lax in your old age and missed this one.”
“Eh,” he replied dismissively. “Marquin knew, but I didn’t think it was necessary to involve the rest of you until I had more information. I monitor the fallout after a lot of vampire attacks, Tress, but it’s rare for anyone to survive unless Saiden is right there to intervene. And from what I’ve read about your Ethan in the hospital records, he shouldn’t be alive either. Let alone awake. I wrote him off as a lost cause months ago.”
Tressa noticed a young teary-eyed couple a few chairs away regarding her with curiosity, so she shifted a few seats over and lowered her voice. “It was the Spark. I think it woke him up. Fuck, Bay, what if I never touched him this morning? Would he have died before I even knew he existed? For Lilith’s sake, I’ve been to this hospital four times in the past three months and never realized my mate was in a coma just down the hall. Why do you think fate is pushing us together now?”
“Beats me,” Baylin replied, and she could hear him run a hand through his thick russet hair. “But Saiden’s experience with his mate was less than smooth as well, so maybe that’s just how it works. Maybe Lilith wants to prove your mate bond can overcome any obstacle.”
She groaned again, then gave an apologetic look to the couple still staring at her from across the room. Dropping her voice to barely above a whisper since Baylin’s supernatural hearing would pick it up fine, she said, “So Lilith decided to give me a mate who nearly died at the hands of a vampire? I still need to figure out exactly how much trouble I’m in fighting that potential prejudice, and I also need to know why he was attacked in the first place. Rogues don’t break into pharmaceutical labs for a random evening snack, then burn down the building to hide the evidence.”
“No, they don’t,” Baylin mused, and the sound of his fingers flying over a keyboard trickled through the phone. “I’ve been looking into what they were researching. They had to be targeted for a reason, but I can’t crack the company’s firewall.”
“What?” she gasped, only partially mocking him. “Baylin, are you telling me you’ve encountered a website youcan’thack into?”
Tressa hadn’t known her easy-going cousin was even capable of the growl he let out.
“Bite me, Tress,” he snapped. “I’ve been a little… distracted lately.”
Tressa frowned and adjusted her position in the chair, making another futile attempt to get comfortable. “With what? You barely leave the compound, and I didn’t think Saiden had an active case right now since we finished up this morning.”
