Chapter 8Her mistake was in forgetting she wasn’t dealing with men.
In Danny, she recognized the desperate need to dissociate that she saw in so many of her terminal patients. Anger at being sick. Frustration with the inability to do anything about it. Fear at the very real possibilities that stretched out before him if his illness continued to go unchecked. It made him human, even when he gazed at her with hungry silver eyes and dripping fangs. She didn’t see the monster. She saw the scared teenager, and she answered the instinct to assuage any terror she could, real or imaginary, heedless of the bite that was then inevitable.
Dec was the same, but different. Dec entered her awareness with the force of a man who knew what he was, who wore that knowledge like a badge of honor without for
