Free Mercy's Danger: Montgomery's Vampires Trilogy (Book #2) (Montgomery's Vampires Series) by Sloan Archer

antibodies would attack the donor’s blood cells. An acute whatchamacallit . . .” I rubbed my forehead. “I know, an acute hemolytic reaction .”
    “Very good,” Shelia beamed. “And, yes, you’re right. Your blood rejected vampire blood. Initially.”
    I figured Shelia would be less impressed if I informed her that I’d gleaned my medical knowledge from viewing reruns of House , so I didn’t mention it. “Does vampire blood look much different under a microscope?”
    “Vampire blood is entirely different from human blood mainly because it’s . . . well, dead . The color and consistency are peculiar, too.” She looked at Leopold and Robert. “I can see why you guys are so careful about giving out samples of your blood. Anyone with basic chemistry knowledge could easily detect that your blood is unusual.”
    “Okay, so Mercy’s blood rejected the vampire blood,” Robert prompted.
    “That’s right,” Shelia confirmed. “But here’s where things get kind of screwy. Like I said, Mercy’s blood did initially reject vampire blood. However—and there’s no real scientific way to state this—her blood then took on the vampire blood, filtered it, and then the two samples separated again on their own. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it, and I’ve studied everything from infectious diseases to sickle cell anemia.”
    “And what happened after the samples separated?” Leopold asked.
    “The newly-separated sample—the sample that was once vampire—had become human.”
    “So . . . what you’re saying is that my blood turns vampires back into human?” I summarized. “It filters the vampire enzymes or whatever out of their blood?”
    “In summary. But here’s an odd thing,” Shelia said. “I tested Mercy’s blood against Liz and Marlena’s. I tested Robert’s blood as well, but I’ll get to that later. Anyway, the reaction times varied. Marlena’s blood responded the very instant I mixed it with Mercy’s. The whole process—filtering and then separating—took less then ten seconds. Liz’s blood, however, was sluggish on the uptake. I left it overnight, and only then did it begin to show signs of a change. But it was a very, very, very minuscule change. I honestly wouldn’t have noticed any change in Liz’s blood had I not been looking for it. I ran the tests three times total to be certain. I’m not sure why the reaction times varied so vastly, but they did in every test.”
    “Should we consider how long it’s taken Robert to change?” I asked.
    “Let me think about that,” Shelia said, drumming her fingers on her chin. “Hmm . . . Could the change correlate with vampire age? Perhaps the blood of younger vampires takes more time to react. Liz is a fairly young vampire.” Being the person present in the morgue when Liz had awakened as vampire, Shelia knew this as fact.
    “She is,” Robert agreed. “And a lot younger than Marlena.”
    “Marlena is a lot older than you as well, Robert,” Leopold interjected. “She’s ancient.”
    “How old is Marlena?” Shelia asked Leopold.
    “About a thousand fifty. Maybe a little older.”
    “You mean . . . A thousand and fifty . . . years?” Shelia gulped.
    “Yes,” Leopold said, but his tone implied So? “That’s nothing, love. I just celebrated my two thousandth birthday. I’m a few years older than that—sixty-seven to be precise—but I only celebrate my birthday every century.”
    “Wow. Okay,” Shelia muttered. “Of course, I’m speculating about the age thing. It would be pretty difficult to come up with a workable theory with such a small sample pool, though it clearly doesn’t relate to the sex of a vampire. Liz and Marlena are both females.”
    “You tested my blood, Shelia. What happened?” Robert asked.
    “Your blood reacted to Liz and Marlena’s the same way Mercy’s did.”
    Leopold frowned. “You mean it filtered the vampirism out of their blood?”
    Shelia nodded. “Yes. I also tested