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 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 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. 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 in 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 twenty-five instead of twenty-three pairs.”

“How could that happen?” Gabriel now was 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 kept 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 lives. 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 nonhuman component she has in her would be genetic, I need to get a medical history on her parents.”