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anything. Not anything corporeal, at least.
    Before I’d recovered from the pain of the first inoculation, Harding injected the second. I wanted to curl up in a ball but didn’t, settling to squeeze my eyes shut and count backward in my head to deal with the pain.
    Ten. The second injection combated hypernecrosis—mutations in the musculoskeletal system resulting in necros straight out of the B-movie horror flicks Jude loved. Nine. Hypernecrotics glowed in earthier tones, in umbers, greens, and blues. Some were smart. Eight. Some were fast. Seven . Quick enough to chase down a car. Six . Some could shear a man in half with their claws. Five. Most were incredibly difficult to kill.
    I didn’t make it to one before the doctor stuck me a third time. The third antinecrotic eliminated vampirism, given only as a precaution since the eighties. The last North American vampire had been staked in 1984, and the condition was extinct in most First World countries.
    Extinct, I suppose, unless I counted the Drakes. (Which I didn’t.) During the development of the H-threes in the 1950s, Stoker researchers infected a group of prison inmates with vampirism, then subjected them to an unfinished antinecrotic serum. Those who survived the test emerged with mutated DNA, an array of extra-normal abilities, and a big, festering bone to pick with the Helsing Corps. The International Council on Necrotic Warfare wanted the men destroyed, as did the United States government and the United Nations. But like any hardheaded Helsing, my great-grandfather went and hired the men, which he nicknamed his “Drakes.”
    When the Drakes drew on their abilities, pale blue ghostlight radiated from their irises. I’d seen light feathering in Jude’s eyes whenever he touched someone skin on skin or when he read blood, and it freaked me out each time. It meant Jude’s psychic abilities weren’t human abilities.
    Harding checked my bandage. “How’s the pain?”
    “Nothing morphine wouldn’t help,” I said, wrinkling my nose. Harding chuckled.
    “Nice try. Do you have any other symptoms?” He motioned at the nurse, who handed over a retinal scanner. “Ones not associated with the H-threes? Headache, nausea, you know the list.”
    I opened my eyes for the scanner. “My stomach feels like a bag of ice, all cold and rocky.”
    He scanned me. Red.
    “Find me another scanner, this one’s defunct,” he said to the nurse. “In the meantime, Miss Helsing, may I examine your abdomen?”
    “Sure, whatever,” I said. He peeled back my shirt far enough to expose the tips of my rib cage. Cool air breathed on my skin, gooseflesh rippling in its wake.
    Harding pushed the chromoglasses higher on his nose. “What is that…” He prodded a cold, hard lump in my flesh. I pushed up to my elbows. The doctor’s hand blocked my view of my abdomen, so I swept it aside. Blinked.
    A network of violet-blue, ghostlit veins fisted inside my skin, twitching like a brainless paramecium.
    Harding glanced at me, his lenses staring me down like gun barrels. “What is it?”
    “I … I…” The words locked up in my throat. Ghostlight. Beneath my skin.
    Impossible .
    Harding’s radio crackled with several 1065s—more infected reapers—but I couldn’t look away from the thing on my stomach. The doctor stepped into the hall with his cell phone, giving me instructions to sit tight. The nurse returned and scanned me a third time.
    Red.
    Red.
    Red .
    I slid off the gurney, tugging my shirt into place and crossing myself. “Miss Helsing?” the nurse asked. I ignored her, not wanting to be rude or anything, but I needed to focus. The leftover dull ache from the H-threes still lingered, but I walked it off.
    I paced the width of the room, back and forth, my thoughts whirling. The light had to be cosmic backwash from the smoke I’d been force-fed. Ghosts were made up of pure energy—they didn’t possess the physical properties necessary to infect someone, not even with