Chapter Two
As if it wasn’t bad enough that she had woken up from that dream, it had to be a Thursday, too. A fucking Thursday.
On Thursdays she had to give blood.
Reyna shucked the covers off of her legs and stalked to the adjoining bathroom.
She still didn’t consider it her room. She hoped that she would never think of it like that.
It might have a jetted tub, waterfall shower, an enormous bed, and a library to make any bookworm jealous, but that didn’t make it anything other than what it was—a prison cell.
She may have everything she could ever need, but she had nothing she actually wanted. No access to the outside world. No news of Beckham. No news of her brothers, not that she’d dare ask. The last thing she wanted was to bring attention to them.
And, of course, she didn’t have her freedom.
Beckham had offered that to her with a ten-million-dollar check in a brown leather folder. She hadn’t taken it, because she’d thought it was a trap. A way for Beckham to keep her indebted to him for life. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
She knew what real freedom looked like. It wasn’t that check, and it certainly wasn’t a well-maintained prison cell, no matter what the dickbag who had imprisoned her thought.
Reyna turned on the shower and peeled the sweaty layers off her body while she waited for it to heat up. She stuck the clothes in a chute and grabbed another white T-shirt and a pair of loose cotton shorts, which she dropped on a stool before entering the steaming shower.
Her closet was nothing compared to what it had been at Beckham’s apartment. At first, she’d resented the silk and satin and lace. All the little unmentionables. The mile-high heels she’d only just begun to get used to.
No one cared for her to dress up now. She was just a blood bag.
An actual fucking blood bag to the most powerful vampire in the world—William Harrington, the president and CEO of Visage Incorporated and Beckham’s boss.
He was the ruthless ruler who had brought vampires out of the darkness.
After the economy had collapsed, Visage had emerged as if they were a benevolent organization dedicated to helping humanity.
What they’d actually done was instate the blood type cure.
It wasn’t so much a cure for vampirism as a bandage over the real issue: vampires who drank blood from a human who matched their blood type became less animalistic.
Instead of bloodthirsty monsters lurking in dark alleys, they became bloodthirsty monsters in two-thousand-dollar suits, taking over the world.
The newspapers proclaimed that Visage had brought the world back from the brink. They registered the vampires. They paid humans—blood escorts—to allow vampires to drink from them. Killed two birds with one stone.
Except Reyna knew that Harrington would never be satisfied with his current status. He would never rest until all the power was his to control. But first he needed a match, which was where she came in.
Harrington had kidnapped her for her specific and very rare blood type: Rh null negative. She had none of the Rh antigens that were found in 99.9% of people in the world. A true universal donor. And unluckily, she matched Harrington.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d convinced her only friend in the city, Everett, to betray her.
She didn’t even know if he had ever been her friend or if he had been conning her from the beginning.
She’d been so naive. Worst of all, she had no idea what Harrington had told Beckham, or whether he’d been left without answers about why she’d disappeared.
And knowing her blood type made everything feel worse. That she wasn’t officially a match for Beckham. That as a true universal donor she shouldn’t have made him turn into a monster. Terrifyingly, anyone could drink from her. So had he only lost control because of…her?
She slammed her hand onto the tile wall. She hated thinking about this. But the shower was her only solace, one of the few places without cameras. She couldn’t appear helpless anywhere else.
Even waking up with screams irritated her.
It ruined the mask she had carefully constructed these long eight weeks.
She needed to get a grip. That dream had gotten to her.
It wasn’t the first she’d had, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was certainly the most vivid one so far.
It made her ache for him, and she couldn’t do that anywhere else.
Beckham belonged in a compartmentalized shelf in her brain where he could keep her alive and make her stronger but didn’t interfere with the person she had to be to survive.
With new resolve, she got out of the shower, dressed, and slicked her still-wet hair back into a ponytail. Time to get this day over with.
When she walked back into the one-room cell, the human nurse was already waiting for her. She was a white woman with nondescript features—dark hair, dark eyes, wan expression.
“Miss Reyna,” the woman said.
She wore the crisp white Visage nurse uniform. That uniform had made Reyna cringe the first time she saw one, at the Visage hospital all those months ago on her first day as a blood escort. The only color on the outfit was the bloodred V logo. The sight still made her feel sick.
“I’m ready.”
“You should eat first. You know that you get dizzy if you don’t eat breakfast,” she admonished.
Reyna wanted to snap at her to stop mothering her.
Her mother had died just over a dozen years ago, when Reyna was eight years old.
Her deadbeat uncle had taken her and her brothers in for three years before the economy had gone to hell in a handbasket.
Then it was ten years alone with her brothers before desperation had pushed her straight to Visage.
But she didn’t voice any of her thoughts. She kept her face blank. “Sure.”
She sat down and ate the food that had been carefully selected for optimal nutrition. A perfectly balanced diet and a healthy amount of exercise was forced down her throat. No one cared how much iron she pumped; there was no chance of her overpowering a vampire.
“Ready,” she said, pushing the tray aside.
“Don’t forget your water.”
Reyna snatched it off the table as she headed to the door. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Of course,” the woman said with a bland smile.
She’d been the same nurse twice a week for eight weeks. Not a single change in all that time. Reyna didn’t know a thing about her. They spent an hour together every Monday and Thursday for one of the most unpleasant experiences of her life, and she didn’t even know the woman’s name.
The door to the room slid open silently, and Reyna held her breath. Every time it opened, she envisioned herself slipping out and running away undetected. It was a pipe dream. Still she clung to it.
She followed the nurse out of the bedroom and took a right down the hallway.
When she’d first arrived, she’d tried the exact thing she still fantasized about.
She’d made it three feet before a shock wave ran up her arm and she fell forward flat on her face.
Some hugely muscled vampire had picked her up with one arm and deposited her back in her cell.
He’d laughed as he told her about the device they’d implanted into her arm to prevent escape, then shut the door in her face. As if it wasn’t enough to have vampires guarding her. They had an invasive thing put into her arm.
So, no running away for her.
When they arrived, the hospital room was white and sterile. The sight of it still made Reyna shake with fear. Needles. This room meant needles.
Reyna knew intuitively that it was stupid to still be afraid of needles at this point.
Two IVs twice a week to draw blood and two needles twice a week for infusions for eight weeks equaled thirty-two needles.
She shuddered as she sank into the plush chair that had replaced the hospital-style bed she’d woken up in.
Thirty-two needles in fifty-six days, and she still felt like crawling under the table at the thought.
She’d pleaded with Beckham to bite her, but needles made her want to vomit.
The nurse gestured to the chair. Instead, Reyna 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 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.
“There we have it,” the nurse assured her.
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.