Blood Match

by K. A. Linde

  The nurse gestured to the chair. But Reyna first walked to the chessboard against the wall. William Harrington liked chess and their board was still up from Monday when she had last given blood. She’d resented the fact that he wanted her to play chess with him but it was better than hearing him talk. So she played. And lost…regularly.

  Knight to C6. She captured another pawn. How ironic.

  “Are you ready?” the nurse asked.

  Reyna sighed and went to sit down in the chair. “As I’ll ever be.”

  “You know I’m quite skilled at this. There’s no reason to be afraid.”

  Reyna nearly laughed, but the nurse was holding the IV needle in her hand and if Reyna opened her mouth, she might actually throw up. She turned her face away. A tourniquet, a swab of alcohol, and a prick. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the sensation to be over.

  Bam! Needle number one accomplished.

  The second was always worse though.

  Harrington didn’t drink directly from her. Reyna had never asked why, because she didn’t want him to change his mind. Donating blood was preferable to him sinking his fangs into her. A hundred and fifty percent better. Even with the needles.

  But since he wasn’t biting her, she had to be hooked up to a second IV that passed some form of vamp saliva into her system. She’d dubbed it vamp venom. Though there was some fancy technical term that she didn’t remember.

  She hadn’t had to ask why she needed the venom though. Harrington loved the sound of his own voice and on the occasions where he graced her with his presence, he told her all about how the venom activated red blood cell regeneration and blah blah blah. Normal humans regenerate a pint of blood every fifty-six days. So, today would have been the first day that she could give blood again after Beckham had drank from her eight weeks ago. With the vampire venom, usually from a bite, she regenerated a pint of blood every three to four days.

  She truly hated science right about now.

  The second IV went in without a hitch. Reyna braced herself. She had about ten minutes before the diluted venom would activate in her blood, making her as high as a kite. Nothing as strong as the bite from Beckham, but it still hit her like a freight train before ebbing off.

  “Measure your breathing. This should be over soon,” the nurse said.

  Then the door clicked and Reyna’s eyes shot to the sliding door as it whizzed open. In walked her nightmare—Harrington.

  “Ah, my little queen,” Harrington said in a chipper voice.

  Reyna remained blank-faced at the stupid nickname. Reyna. Reign. Queen. Get it? So fucking original.

  The days that Harrington showed up were the worst. The absolute worst.

  “I heard that we had another nightmare,” he said, settling into the seat next to the chessboard. His eyes were on the game but he spoke to her. “Want to talk about it?”

  Ah, therapy. Just what the doctor ordered. Of course all she wanted to do was spill her deep dark secrets to a murdering psychopathic dictator.

  “I forgot where I was,” she lied. It was her default answer.

  He laughed and moved a piece into position. “It’s about time you remember where you are. So forgetful.”

  His voice was light, but when she glanced up into his dark eyes, she saw the wicked evil underneath. The reason Harrington was on top was because he was both ruthless and a genius businessman. It was hard to forget it when he looked at her like that.

  It didn’t help anything that her blood had changed him. Gone was the frail, sickly man she had first met. Harrington had had to walk with a cane he was so thin, pasty, and weak. Now he stood tall, back straight, eyes taking in the room. He still carried the cane, but she knew he didn’t need it.

  “Now, on to why I’m here,” Harrington said. “I wanted to check in on my favorite resident.” Read: prisoner. “See how you’re doing and that you’re adjusting well to the new diet. Latest dietary factors are key.”

  “It’s fine,” she answered as blandly as possible.

  Harrington started rambling on about the dietary articles he was reading coming out of the scientific community and how diet affected blood supply. Reyna only had a few more minutes before the venom kicked in and she wouldn’t have to hear him anymore. It was in those moments that she wished suicide were an option.

  If she didn’t value her own survival, then she would have found a way to end her life long ago. It would have made sense. Ending Harrington’s blood supply meant endangering him. It meant hurting Visage. But when it had come down to it, she hadn’t been able to do it. Though if he said one more thing about fucking acai berries, she might reconsider smashing her brain in with a free weight.

  “Reyna, you seem absent today,” Harrington said. It was a warning.

  “Drugs are kicking in,” she said instead of the truth.

  “You still have another minute by my count.” His eyes jumped up to the nurse.

  “Seventy-four seconds,” the nurse confirmed.

  Reyna shot her a look that said Whose side are you on? But it was a stupid question. The nurse worked for Visage. That’s whose side she was on.

  “We have just over a minute for you to explain to me where your head is.”

  “Not caring about my diet,” she got out. So close to forgetting everything. So close.

  “And why not? I think it’s very important that you—”

  “Stop,” Reyna told him. “Just stop it.”

  He arched an eyebrow. She should have seen the warning in it. But she was beyond that. Between the dream and her isolation and the needles, she was losing it. She couldn’t hold it together today. She couldn’t sit here and have this murdering jackass lecture her on proper nutrition. He probably hadn’t eaten real food in a couple hundred years!

  “What is this?” he asked, gesturing to her as if she were a strange specimen he couldn’t figure out.

  “This is a human being. An actual human being. I’m not your science project. I’m not even your blood bag. I am a human. I live and breathe and feel and right now I’m feeling pretty pissed. I have a full minute before I get high and I’d like to get high in peace without you fucking ruining everything with your stupid fucking speeches.”

  “Reyna,” he growled low.

  But she wasn’t finished. Once she was unleashed, she couldn’t seem to rein it back in. “And you know what, I can’t seem to care about anything. Definitely not about you and your goddamn diet! Or this fucking place or this fucking prison cell. I’m concentrating on surviving. On dealing with these fucking needles and not wanting to smash your fucking face in.”

  “Turn it off,” Harrington snapped at the nurse.

  The edge to his voice and the lethal cut of his eyes said that she’d gone too far.

  The whirr of the machines died all around her. The venom that had been only seconds from flooding her system and letting her forget for even just a minute was gone. She both hated and loved those minutes of reprieve.

  Harrington stood, towering over her, and she shrank back into her seat. She didn’t want to be frightened, but she knew a predator when she saw one. His physical presence was demanding enough but it was the sadistic brain behind that mask that terrified her. That made her literally quake in her seat.

  He reached forward and without preamble ripped out both of her IVs.

  Chapter 3

  Reyna screamed.

  From the pain and the shock and the needles that had been in her arms…and the blood. She gagged at the sight of it.

  Harrington’s hand closed over her throat as he pushed her roughly back against the chair. Her eyes locked onto his and she remembered exactly who was standing over her. Exactly how much she had fucked up.

  “You are not invincible here, Reyna. You are not actually a queen of this domain. You are here at my whim and you will find t
hat if you do not cooperate, your life could become much more unpleasant. Do you understand?”

  She choked out a garbled, “Yes.”

  He removed the pressure from her throat and she coughed and sputtered as air filled her lungs again. That was going to leave a bruise.

  Harrington swiped a finger over one of her open wounds then brought it to his lips, tasting her openly. For a clinical man who saw a scientific process in all their interactions and treated her more like a treasured pet than anything, she had never seen him so…feral. It was the only way to put it. Even when she had been furious and screamed and cried in the beginning, he had sat calmly by and watched it all as if it were a television show. Some melodrama he could dissect later.

  But this was the monster behind the façade. His true nature. The vampire.

  “You may be a very rare match, Reyna, but that does not mean you are irreplaceable. Right this moment, the Blood Census is registering people all over this nation. The city is already complete and soon it will cover the world,” he said menacingly. “I will find more of you yet.”

  Harrington sneered down at the wounds he’d created. “Clean her up.”

  The nurse hurried forward to clean and bandage the wounds. She elevated Reyna’s arms to help clotting, but Reyna ignored her, still staring after Harrington. He’d moved to the sink and was sterilizing his hands as if that one drop of blood he’d gotten on his finger was contagious in some way. He was adamant in his cleanliness. Obsessive-compulsive even.

  Her arms throbbed. She couldn’t believe she’d lost her cool. This meant that she’d probably need to have another IV at a later date to get the venom to replenish the blood. Reyna had to close her eyes at that thought. She couldn’t handle this another time. She couldn’t handle being here another day. She was clinging to survival. Today felt like the first day she was finally cracking under the weight of it all.

  “Let’s go,” Harrington said.

  “Go?” Reyna asked, opening her dark eyes to stare up at him.

  “Yes. Now. I have something to show you.”

  Reyna stood on shaky legs. She hated to admit that she was frightened. To let Harrington see her fear. But it was all over her. Oozing out of her pores and filling the room.

  She straightened her spine and forced herself to walk toward him. She might fear him, but she wouldn’t cower. He wanted her fear. And she only had her defiance left to hold on to.

  “I’m ready,” she said with all the power still left in her body.

  Harrington nodded and then opened the sliding door. She took one last look over her shoulder at the nurse. Her face was a mask, but Reyna saw the terror mirrored in her eyes too. It was reassuring in a way she hadn’t expected. The woman wasn’t immovable. Maybe she didn’t want to be working here any more than Reyna had.

  Reyna had decided to work for Visage out of necessity. Her brothers had been working doubles at the factory in the Warehouse District an hour outside of the city. She couldn’t get a job without a college degree and she couldn’t go to college because they didn’t have any money. So, she had been just another helpless mouth to feed. In desperation, she had joined Visage to help her brothers.

  When she had started, she’d expected it to be more like…well, this. Prison. Degrading humiliating work that she should be ashamed of. Instead, she’d gotten Beckham.

  She closed her eyes for a second against the name as it crushed her heart. No, she couldn’t think about him right now.

  She needed to be on. Harrington was offering her an opportunity. He just didn’t know it yet.

  With her head held high, Reyna exited the sterile room and followed on Harrington’s heels. She marked every turn that they made through the winding corridors. She had no clue where she was exactly. Having only seen two rooms in the entire facility, she couldn’t have even told you that it was this sprawling. But the space must have been the size of several large warehouses. What the hell did he keep here?

  Besides her, of course.

  Harrington didn’t say anything as he slowed to a stop in front of a giant steel door. One hand was behind his back as he swung that insufferable cane in a circle. His suit was crisp and presentable. He had taken some care with his appearance today. She wondered if that meant there was an event going on. What could be happening in the outside world to have him pay attention to himself? Not that he was a slob by any stretch of the imagination, but he wasn’t a pampered sort either.

  “Here we are,” he said, clomping the cane down noisily. “This is a special ward. I like to keep interesting projects here.”

  Interesting. Projects. Oh no. This wasn’t going to be good.

  “Would you like to see my project?”

  Reyna stood frozen, because of course she didn’t want to see his project. But he expected her to say no. So she couldn’t.

  He laughed when he saw the indecision written on her face. “Ah, my little queen, it’s not a trick question.” Her nickname was back in the building. “Let’s take a look.”

  Harrington entered a fifteen-digit code in a blur then put his eye to a retinal scanner, pressed his fingerprint onto a pad, and had to be identified with facial recognition software before the door opened. Talk about secure.

  A long hallway was revealed and lights flickered on one at a time down the row. Reyna stepped in after Harrington and the door closed behind them. He stepped up to the first door on the right and typed in a different sequence. The wall that had been standing before them suddenly turned into a window. She couldn’t help it; she gasped.

  “Tinted one-way glass,” Harrington explained. “We can see in, but she can’t see out.”

  “She?” Reyna whispered.

  “Meet B,” Harrington said.

  Reyna’s eyes lifted and she saw the woman in the room. She was tall, very tall for a woman. Her hair was short and black, chopped haphazardly with no care for appearance. She had on a black bodysuit that showed off her fit body. She was standing in the corner, staring at the ceiling. Like actually staring at it. Her hands were at her sides and she seemed to be talking to herself.

  “Is something wrong with her?”

  “Why don’t we find out?” he asked with that cruel smile of his.

  “Oh no…I don’t think…”

  But he was already walking to the door and pressing a button. “B.”

  The woman’s head snapped forward. Her dark eyes were otherworldly. They didn’t scream fear me like Harrington’s did. They screamed unpredictable and insane.

  B took three calm steps to put herself in front of the window. She bared her teeth, revealing the sharp fangs. Then she spoke back. “The sky is green today.”

  “You can’t see the sky, B,” Harrington told her.

  “The work will burn with you in it. Roses are red and violets are bleeding. Death and destruction taste like your whispers.”

  Reyna’s eyebrows rose dramatically. What the hell had Harrington done to this woman?

  “I brought you a friend,” Harrington told her.

  “A tasty morsel. A pet pet pet. Sometimes the doorknob sings show tunes. Tell it to stop.” Then her eyes glazed over and she covered her ears. “Stop! Tell it to stop!”

  “Oh my God,” Reyna whispered.

  “God, has nothing to do with it.” Then Harrington pushed the door open, dragging Reyna behind him into the room. She froze in terror. Harrington wouldn’t let her get hurt, right? He needed her. He needed her blood. She was valuable.

  But then he shoved her forward so she came nearly face-to-face with B. Fear bit into her stomach, making her queasy. Holy shit, he couldn’t do this. He wasn’t this crazy, was he?

  B sniffed the air all around Reyna, assessing her. Then she slowly circled Reyna like an animal. Prowled her food as if she were a lion on the savannah about to take down her prey. Reyna stood very still. Sh
e didn’t even breathe. Her lungs constricted as worry creased between her eyebrows and sweat beaded on her brow.

  “You smell familiar,” B said. “Have we met before?”

  “No,” Reyna whispered on an exhale. She couldn’t believe she’d even gotten the word out. She was face-to-face with an insane vampire. If she thought she had fears before…they were nothing compared to being circled by this erratic, unpredictable predator.

  “Oh yes, we’ve met. Underground and up on high. Beneath and within and deep under your skin.” B got real close and ran her nose up Reyna’s arm. She shivered in fear. “You smell wrong.”

  Reyna swallowed hard. She had never been told that. Usually vampires told her she smelled amazing like the nectar of the gods. She didn’t want to smell wrong to this creature. She wanted to get as far away as possible. She didn’t need to be bitten to have flight or fight kick in.

  “Toy?” B asked Harrington.

  Reyna’s eyes rounded as she turned to face Harrington. He smirked at her as if to say This is what your life could be. Reyna shuddered. Dear God, no. She didn’t mask the fear. She let it seep out of her in waves. She couldn’t live this life. This couldn’t be her. Oh God, there was worse. There was much worse than the life she had been leading.

  “Would you like her as a toy?” Harrington asked.

  B reached out and encircled both of Reyna’s arms. She tore the medical tape and gauze off of Reyna’s arm. Reyna cried out as her wounds were opened once more. Fuck, she didn’t want to bleed in front of his monster. Her blood made other vampires go crazy. What would it do to the already insane? She knew she didn’t want to find out.

  B inspected the wound clinically. “She’s broken. You brought me a broken toy.”

  “B,” Harrington said.

  “She’s broken in here too,” B said, thrusting her hand at Reyna’s heart. It landed with a soft thump. Reyna grunted and tried to shy away from the creature. “Shattered and empty. Worms and maggots. Festering blistering aching.” She tilted her head and then giggled. “Destroyed.”