"You didn't give me a specific time."
"No, but most fledglings would sleep until 9 or 10 p.m. You woke with the sunset."
"So did you."
"I've been doing this for six centuries. You've been doing it for eight months." He finally looks up, studying me. "Your body is adapting faster than it should. Interesting."
I'm not sure if that's a compliment or just an observation.
He gestures to the maps. "Come here. Tell me what you see."
I move around the desk to stand beside him. The maps show Atlanta and the surrounding areas, marked with different colored pushpins and notations in his precise handwriting.
Red pins cluster in certain areas. Blue pins are more spread out. Green pins form a perimeter around specific neighborhoods.
"Are the red pins vampire territories?" I ask.
"Close. Red pins are locations where contaminated blood sources have been identified. Blue pins are our verified clean donor locations. Green pins are neutral zones, areas where neither I nor Konstantin have established control."
I study the pattern more carefully. The red pins are concentrated in areas I recognize, downtown, certain suburbs, and college neighborhoods.
"The contamination is worse in areas with younger populations," I say slowly. "College students. Young professionals. People more likely to be taking pharmaceuticals or using recreational drugs."
"Correct. Which is why our donor base skews older and more rural. But that creates its own problems."
He pulls up a spreadsheet on a tablet. "We currently serve thirty vampires, including my inner circle. Each vampire needs to feed approximately twice a week. That's sixty feedings weekly, or about 240 per month. Each donor can safely provide blood onceevery two weeks. "So we need a minimum of one hundred twenty donors just to maintain current operations."
"And you have exactly that?"
"We aim for more when possible. Buffer for emergencies, donor turnover, and geographic distribution. Right now we're running tight. Some vampires can't travel to central locations easily, so we need donors spread across territories." He pulls up another map. "This is where it gets complicated."
This map shows territories marked with names. Konstantin's territory covers a significant portion of the city, east and south. Maximus's territory is northwest and central. There are smaller territories marked with other names I don't recognize.
"Several vampire lords control territories across Atlanta," Maximus explains. "Konstantin and I are the strongest, but we're not the only players. Dmitri, Vivienne, Chen, Okonkwo, and Santos all have their own domains, their own agendas. And there are smaller territories held by minor lords who've allied with one of us or maintain careful neutrality."
"And Konstantin wants your territory."
"He wants the entire city. But he's strategic enough to know a direct assault on my territory would be costly. So instead, he's trying to undermine the blood network. Force vampires who depend on me to either turn to him or starve."
I study the maps, the data, the careful notations. "You're playing a long game."
"The only game worth playing. Quick victories fade. Sustainable systems endure." He looks at me directly. "Which brings me to today's test. I need you to solve a problem."
He clears the desk and pulls up a new map, this one showing a neighborhood I don't recognize.
"Three weeks ago, five vampires in this area started showing signs of contamination. All of them had been feeding from ournetwork, from donors we'd vetted as clean. This shouldn't be possible."
"Someone compromised the donors."
"That's the obvious answer. But when we investigated, the donors checked out. Clean blood, no new medications, no drug use. And yet five vampires got sick."
He hands me a file folder. "This contains everything we know about those five vampires, the donors they were assigned to, and the timeline of contamination. I want you to figure out what happened."
I take the folder and move to the couch, spreading out the documents. Maximus returns to his work, leaving me to puzzle through the information.
The five vampires are all relatively young for vampires, between fifty and one hundred years old. All of them fed from the same rotation of donors over the three-week period. The donors' medical records show nothing unusual.
But something catches my attention. One donor, a man named Jack Mercer, appears in all five vampires' feeding schedules. Not unusual by itself, but the timing is specific. All five vampires fed from blood bags sourced from Mercer's last donation. Same batch. Same contamination.
