Cauterize

Colt, a disgraced scientist, finds a chance for redemption in a secret laboratory deep beneath Cedar Island. There's just one problem: his partner is a hemomancer, one of the vile blood-using sorcerers that caused the Red Death. Odds are good that this assignment is a death scentence. But if Colt wants his career back, that means learning to tolerate Naya and her hemomancy. But how can a human and a hemomancer be expected to get along, especially when their work involves the very virus that caused the Red Death? An urban fantasy short story set in the Into Vermilion universe. This and more stories like it can be found in Bartholomew Lander's short story collection All Bleeds Through: Ten Stories of Hemomancy and the World it Shaped.