Chapter 20
Kate woke with a sharp breath, bolting upright in the darkness. The sheets twisted around her legs as her heart hammered a frantic, terrified rhythm against her ribs. Beside her, Devon was awake instantly, his hand on her back, a steadying warmth against her cold skin.
“Kate? What is it?” His voice was a low murmur, pulling her from the dregs of the vision.
“Nothing,” she lied, her voice sounding rough and low. “Just a bad dream.”
Sterile white surfaces, the shine of a needle, racks of blood bags. And Aleksander’s face, wearing a cold, smug smile that felt more real than the darkness of their room.
It was more than just a dream.
“It didn’t feel like nothing,” Devon pressed gently, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on her back. “You were shaking.”
Kate wrapped her arms around herself. How could she explain it?
How could she describe the horrible feeling without sounding crazy?
She was still new to this world, her mind a delicate mix of trauma and growing strength.
What if this wasn’t a vision, but just a memory of her own violation, distorted and replayed by a damaged mind?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, the words clipped. “It was just a nightmare. Please, Devon. Let it go.”
He was silent for a long moment, and she could feel his concern, his frustration. But he respected her wish. “Alright,” he said softly, and drew her back against his chest, holding her until the frantic beating of her heart finally slowed.
The vision, however, did not let her go.
It haunted her all night, a splinter of dread in her mind.
She tried to distract herself through her art, but the stark white page of her sketch pad felt like a lab wall.
The sharp lines of her sketches turned into the shine of a hypodermic needle.
She found herself staring into space for long minutes, the image of Aleksander’s triumphant smirk burning behind her eyes.
A silent, frantic debate raged in her head.
It was real. You have to tell someone.
But a colder, more insidious voice would answer back.
What if it’s just PTSD? You’ll cause a panic; they’ll think you’re a broken little Pet who can’t tell dreams from reality.
The fear of being seen as weak or damaged after fighting so hard to be strong kept her silent.
She noticed the worried looks Devon gave her. He started to ask a question but stopped, respecting the space she needed. This only made her feel more alone, trapped by a terrible secret she wasn’t even sure was real.
Later that night, the main hall buzzed with quiet conversation as the compound’s residents gathered for their nightly meal. The atmosphere felt relaxed, which was a sharp contrast to the anxiety knotting in Kate’s stomach.
She sat with Devon, toying with the edge of her chalice. The rich, metallic smell of the blood did nothing to spark her appetite. Each sip felt like a game of Russian roulette.
Across the table, Luc raised his goblet with a flourish.
“To another night of proving the old ways wrong,” he declared, ever the young revolutionary. He tipped the chalice to his lips.
In that moment, the day’s growing anxiety turned into a full-blown nightmare. The vision replayed in Kate’s head: Aleksander in medical scrubs, a syringe in his hand, injecting a dark, thick fluid into a blood bag.
“No!”
The word tore from her throat, a raw cry born from instinct.
Before her mind could even grasp what was happening, her body was already in motion.
She lunged across the table, her arm moving quickly, and knocked the silver chalice from Luc’s hand.
It soared through the air, sending a splash of red across the stone floor before landing with a clatter in the shocked silence.
Luc stared at her, his face a mixture of shock and fury. “What the hell, Kate?”
All eyes were on her. The day’s frantic, internal debate was over, decided by an instinct she didn’t know she possessed.
“I… I don’t know,” she stammered, looking at the dark stain spreading on the floor. “I saw… I think it’s poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” Luc scoffed, though a flicker of uncertainty crossed his face. “Kate, this is from a secure shipment. It’s been screened.”
“My vision…” she began, the words tumbling out now that the dam of her silence had broken. “I saw him. Aleksander. He was contaminating the bags.”
Devon was at her side in an instant, his hand on her back. He looked from her terrified face to the spilled blood.
“Sophia,” he said, his voice low and urgent.
Sophia was already moving into action. She met Kate’s eyes, and in them, Kate saw not doubt, but a terrifying, immediate belief.
“Get me a sample of that blood. Now,” she commanded Thomas. “And seal the rest of the shipment. No one else drinks. Not a drop.”
The command sent a ripple of alarm through the hall.
Sophia’s small lab was a stark, sterile space that now suddenly felt like the most important room in the world. With Devon at her side, Kate watched as Sophia and Thomas worked with quiet, frantic efficiency, placing a sample under a high-powered microscope.
“It felt so real,” Kate whispered, her hands trembling. “But what if I was wrong? What if I caused all of this panic for nothing?”
“You were not wrong to act,” Devon said, his voice a steady anchor in her storm of self-doubt. “Trusting your instincts is never wrong.”
As Sophia adjusted the lens, a shrill beep came from the lab’s internal comms system. Thomas got up to answer it.
“This is Thomas.” He listened, and then his face went pale. “When? How many?” He looked up at Sophia, his eyes wide with horror.
“It’s Antoine. He and two others from the west wing collapsed about five minutes ago. They’re running a high fever, their veins are blackening.”
An icy dread washed over Kate. “They must have had their rations earlier,” she breathed.
Before Sophia could respond, the comm beeped again. Another report. Another vampire down.
“Oh, God,” Kate whispered.
“There, I see it,” Sophia said, her voice grim. She stepped back from the microscope, her face cold with anger. “The blood is full of it. An aggressive cellular agent which mimics leukemia, and is designed to target our specific physiology.”
Devon stared at the screen displaying the microscopic image: healthy blood cells being swarmed and devoured by grotesque, cancerous growths.
The truth crashed down on them. This was a targeted, biological assault.
“He timed it,” Devon realized with dread. “The shipment arrived this afternoon. If you hadn’t stopped Luc…”
“…the entire compound would be incapacitated within the hour,” Sophia finished, her knuckles white. “We would have been sitting ducks.”
Aleksander had planned to cripple their entire force and then walk in to slaughter them at his leisure.
“We need to treat the sick,” Thomas said as he strode across to a secure refrigerator with their emergency supply of clean blood. “Direct transfusions can reduce the effects, but we need to act quickly.”
“Do it,” Sophia commanded with a steady voice. “Turn the main hall into a triage center. Devon, go to the command center, I want a full security lock down and a report on all perimeter activity. Now.”
She looked at Kate. “You’re with me. I need to know exactly what you saw.”
A frantic energy now replaced the calm of the evening. The main hall was already changing. Tables were pushed aside to make room for cots, and the first sick people were being carried in.
Kate saw Antoine. His skin was pale and clammy, and dark, spiderweb-thin veins spread up his neck. He was convulsing, a low groan of pain escaping his lips.
Thomas directed two other vampires who were carrying medical equipment. “IV lines, now! We need to flush their systems. Start a transfusion with the clean supply, one unit every ten minutes. We have to dilute the toxin before it causes permanent cell damage.”
He inserted a line into Antoine’s arm with practiced ease, and a bag of deep, rich, untainted blood began to drip into the dying immortal.
Sophia kept moving and led Kate to the command center. The walls had monitors that showed security feeds and sensor readings. Devon was already there, calm and authoritative.
“Full lock down is in place. Do we have an update on the perimeter?”
Liliana answered from her station, her eyes scanning the security feeds. “Quiet, too quiet. The usual thermal signatures from street traffic are gone.”
“Search for cloaked heat signatures,” Sophia said. “Check the rooftops and alleyways across from us. They’re out there.”
Liliana quickly swept her fingers across her console. A few seconds later, a new image appeared on the main screen. The view of the Haussmann-style apartment building across the street, now overlaid with a dozen faint, man-shaped thermal blooms.
They were motionless, hidden behind chimneys and on darkened balconies, their body temperatures unnaturally low. Waiting.
“Gods,” Devon breathed. “They were waiting for us to fall ill. They were going to walk right in.”
“No, they weren’t,” Liliana said, her voice tight with concentration. “Our defences are automated. Even if every one of us was down, they couldn’t get through the main gate without the lock down being manually disengaged from the inside.”
A cold dread, heavier and more sickening than anything Kate had felt before, settled in the room.
“There must be a mole,” she whispered.
Sophia’s eyes narrowed. “Liliana, report any internal system access in the last hour.”
Liliana’s console beeped, a sharp sound in the tense silence. Her face went pale.
“There’s an active login at the secondary security junction in sub-level three. It’s Sergei’s access code. He’s disabling the gate’s defence grid.”
Devon’s face was a mask of thunderous fury. Sergei. A quiet, unassuming creature who had been with the compound for nearly a century. No one would have ever suspected him.
“He’s not going to finish,” Sophia spoke, her voice lethally calm.
She, Devon, and two guards were moving before she even finished the sentence, a silent, deadly hunting party streaking through the corridors.
They found Sergei in a small, cramped service tunnel, his back to them as he worked at an open control panel, rerouting power. He was so focused on the task at hand that he didn’t hear them until Sophia spoke his name.
“Sergei.”
He froze, then turned slowly, his face a portrait of tragic resignation. He wasn’t a monster; he was just a broken man.
“They have my great-granddaughter,” he said, his voice cracking. “My last living human relative. They sent me a video… Aleksander said he’d let her live if I just opened the gate when the sickness took hold.”
“And you believed him?” Devon snarled.
“I had to,” Sergei whispered. “I had to have hope.”
Sophia’s expression was one of profound sadness, but her voice was steel. “You would have condemned us all for a false hope.”
She nodded to the guards. They took Sergei into custody, his shoulders slumped in utter defeat.
Back in the command center, the full, horrifying picture of Aleksander’s plan was clear. It wasn’t just a poisoning. It was a three-pronged attack: A biological agent to incapacitate them, a mole to disable their defences from within, and an army waiting at the gates to slaughter the survivors.
Kate’s earlier doubt became a painful memory; she hadn’t been paranoid; she had been their only warning.
“He underestimated you,” Devon said, wrapping his arm around her protectively. “Thought you would hesitate and doubt yourself. He never counted on you acting on pure instinct.”
Kate looked at the monitors and understood that her connection to Aleksander had just saved them all. But the attack had also been a brutal reminder that he could reach them anywhere.
Kate knew this was far from over. It was just the beginning.