"How can you eat around that thing, boss?" Toni asked, horrified.
"I'm starving. Whatcha got, Iggy?" Dusty said around a mouth full of vegetables. He looked at the slight Natural with dark hair and eyes who happened to have a doctorate in every type of science he could name. She'd spent the past four hundred years in college, gleefully learning more and more and working out of the lab he'd funded for her.
"This isn't normal," she started.
"What is it, first of all?" Dusty asked, eyes going from his dinner to the mangled creature on the table in front of them.
"It's … it was a pig," she said. "Do you want to see it?"
"No."
"Okay. Pigs have some features similar to a human's that make them good test beds for the type of science stuff I do. Specifically, a virus or bug passed to a pig is considered a huge threat in the medical community, because pigs can pass their diseases onto humans. Am I speaking simply enough, Dusty, or do I need to dumb it down more?"
"You're good," Dusty answered with a faint smile.
"So, it looks like Talon's goons took our pig and injected it with something to turn it into a vamp."
"A vampire pig?" Toni asked with a laugh.
"More or less. But it's not the vamp-pig that's the most interesting part. I found pieces of DNA on its teeth. It bit another animal before they killed it."
"And?" Dusty prompted at her silence.
"Don't you see? If they were successful in turning a normal pig into a vamp-pig, and that vamp-pig could in turn bite say, a human or another animal, and transfer the vamp bug, then you've potentially got a new tool you can use to transform the human population into vamps."
"You mean cats and dogs could be used to turn their masters into vamps?" Dusty asked.
"Exactly! It's pretty clever. If it worked-- and I don't know if it did-- you'd see something like the black plague in Europe, only it wouldn't kill people, just turn them into vamps," Iggy said.
"I wouldn't call that clever," Toni said in a hushed tone. "Diabolical, maybe."
Dusty considered her before gazing back at the mutilated creature on top of the stainless steel lab counter. "You up for a field trip?" he asked. "You can cut apart any suspected vamp-pigs you find."
"When do you want me to go?" she asked, fidgeting.
"Pack your shit. You're going now."
She looked unsettled at the idea of leaving her lab and looked around, as if trying to figure out what to take. She hurried into the back room.