Page 63 of The Monster and the Last Blood Match

“Where are we?”

“I think this is office space,” Everett said. “Let’s find a room to wait this out.”

“My guard is going to be freaking out,” she said.

Everett shrugged. “Isn’t it a little freeing?” He smiled back at her, and she couldn’t stop from laughing. She had been afraid running through the crowd, and now she released all her nerves.

“Yeah. It kind of is.” She pushed open the first door. “How about this one?”

She stepped in the first room and fumbled for the light. Her mouth dropped open.

“What the hell?”

Chapter Twenty

“Whoa,” Everett said, following her into the room.

“What is all of this?” Reyna mused aloud.

The room was stark white and as clean as the Visage hospital she had first been tested in. One wall was full of gray containers stacked waist-high, filled with packets of blood. The other wall had blood hooked up to some kind of strange system. A blood packet dripped into another packet and then into a third packet from the ceiling to the floor. The room hummed softly with the machinery directing the operations.

“I heard rumors of this, but I didn’t think it was true,” he whispered.

“Thought what was true?”

He turned to look at Reyna with a drawn expression on his face. “Black-market blood banks.”

Her mouth dropped open. “That’s a thing?”

She lifted her camera back out of the bag. She would surely never remember what this room looked like exactly if she didn’t take a picture. She wouldn’t post them. Not knowing that people were watching her images now. She would keep these for herself.

“A rumor. I didn’t think it was possible that they would be doing this.”

“They who?” she asked, suddenly scared. She pulled her camera down to look at him.

“Anyone. Visage has a monopoly on blood for vampires. These people must be against them to have all this blood. This could be an Elle operation.”

Reyna paled. “Then we should leave. I don’t want to be part of anything, even if by accident. Someone could be watching.”

Her eyes searched the room for some kind of recording device, but it was difficult to see anything through the rows of blood drips. She didn’t like being here, anyway. It gave her the creeps. Blood meant needles.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” she said.

“All right. Let’s find our way back out.”

Reyna stashed her camera again, and they backtracked into the hallway. A man in a white coat and two women in scrubs came out of an adjoining room.

“Hey,” the man yelled. “You two aren’t supposed to be here.”

“Sorry, we got turned around,” Everett said, trying to be placating.

“Security!”

“Let’s go.” Everett grabbed her arm again and dashed down the stairs.

A man followed after them, down the first flight of stairs, and then a second. She was panting by the time they reached street level and Everett shouldered open the door. She was disoriented when the door deposited them out on the streets. Where were they? They were supposed to be back in the warehouse.

But she didn’t have time to think. She just followed Everett. The guy behind them did not look happy that they had accidentally broken into the blood bank. She didn’t know if Everett knew where he was running to or if he was winding them through the backstreets aimlessly until they lost the guy. But eventually, he yanked her hard into a tiny alcove and covered her mouth with his hand.

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