"One hundred twenty donors. How many vampires does that support?"
"Thirty, if we're running at full capacity. The inner circle takes priority, of course. The rest goes to vampires in the city who've proven trustworthy and can afford our services."
"Afford?"
"Clean blood isn't free. Most of our donors are compensated generously. It's expensive to maintain them, health insurance, regular medical checkups, premium payments. We pass those costs along."
She pulls up a database on her computer, showing profiles of donors. Names, blood types, medical histories, and feeding schedules.
"How do you recruit them?" I ask, studying the screen.
"Various ways. Some are people who need money and are willing to sell their blood. Some are enthusiasts. Humans who findvampires fascinating and want to be part of that world. We screen them carefully with medical and psychological evaluations. Can't have donors who are unstable or trying to use access to vampires for their own agenda."
I notice something in one of the profiles. "What does 'voluntary-conditional' mean?"
Elena's expression shifts slightly. "That means they agreed to donate, but with certain… requirements."
"What kind of requirements?"
She's quiet for a moment, clearly weighing how much to tell me. "Some donors are people who got into trouble. Financial debts they can't pay, legal issues that make employment impossible, and people who need to disappear for their own safety. Maximus offers them a deal: donate blood regularly, and he makes their problems disappear. They're not forced, technically. But their options are limited."
I feel something cold settle in my stomach. "That's coercion."
"That's survival. These people would be dead or in prison otherwise. Instead, they're alive, healthy, and compensated. Is it morally gray? Yes. But the alternative is vampires hunting randomly, killing people, exposing us all."
She's not wrong. But it still sits uncomfortably.
"How many donors are 'voluntary-conditional'?" I ask.
"About fifteen percent. The rest are genuinely voluntary, people who want the money and understand the risks."
I study the profiles more carefully. Ages ranging from twenty-one to fifty-five. Various backgrounds. Some are listed as "high-risk" with notes about monitoring for contamination.
"What happens if a donor becomes contaminated?" I ask.
"We remove them from the rotation immediately. Pay them a severance and cut all ties. We can't risk anyone drinking contaminated blood; you saw what happens."
Michael. The feral vampire from last night.
"Can contamination be reversed?" I ask.
"We're researching it. Maximus has been funding medical studies for years. So far, limited success. If we catch it early enough, sometimes. But once someone goes fully feral…" She shakes her head. "We haven't found a way back from that."
We spend the next hour going through procedures. How donors are scheduled to avoid over-tapping any single person. How blood is tested before storage. How payments are processed through shell companies to maintain anonymity.
It's sophisticated. Careful. The kind of system that takes decades to build and constant vigilance to maintain.
"Why do you do this?" I ask Elena. "You're human. You could work anywhere. Why manage a blood supply for vampires?"
She considers the question carefully. "I was a phlebotomist and blood bank technician. Worked at the hospital for six years. Eight years ago, my younger brother was killed by a vampire. Drained and left in an alley in Midtown. The police wrote it off as a mugging gone wrong, but I knew better. I had to identify his body. The puncture wounds on his neck weren't from any needle I'd ever seen, and no mugger drains a body of that much blood. I make puncture wounds for a living. I know what they're supposed to look like."
Her voice is steady, but there's old pain beneath it. "I started investigating on my own. Used my access at the hospital to pull records on similar cases. Found a pattern of victims going back years, all with the same type of wounds, all in the same neighborhoods. I started staking out those areas at night. Asked questions I shouldn't have been asking." She pauses. "Turns out, when a human starts poking around vampire hunting grounds, word travels fast. One of Konstantin's people found me before I ever found him. He was going to kill me to keep me quiet.
"Maximus stopped him. Saved my life. Then he made me an offer: he'd been running a blood network for decades, but it was becoming too large for him to manage alone. The contamination crisis was starting to accelerate. He needed someone who understood blood banking, medical screening, donor health, someone who could professionalize the operation and scale it properly. Someone who had reason to want this to work."
She pulls up historical records, newspaper clippings about unsolved murders, patterns of disappearances. "I'd spent my entire career managing blood supplies. This was the same work, just… different clientele. And it meant my brother's death could lead to something that prevented other deaths."
"So you have the skills and the motivation," I say quietly.
