My shadows I understand. I’ve trained them for centuries. They answered the command I gave.
The canister answered a command I didn’t give.
The cup was a hairline crack. The table was a fracture. The ridge in Thessivane traveled six feet across a stone floor. Each time, the force was close. Contained.
This ripped a mounted canister off a wall and sent it down a hallway at combat speed. From across the room. Withoutcontact. A threat identified. A weapon selected. Deployed at combat velocity while my hands were still at my sides.
Six centuries of discipline. Six centuries of choosing every action before executing it. And now something inside me is choosing faster than I can.
I close my hands. Open them. The shaking subsides. The shadows settle back beneath my skin.
The lab door opens.
Two men stand in the frame. Sullivan, silver hair catching the fluorescent light from inside the lab. And behind him, a man in a lab coat over a rumpled shirt, reading glasses pushed to his forehead.
Carson’s eyes drop to the three bodies on the floor. They climb to the buckled stairwell door.
“These are the people I warned you about,” Sullivan says to Carson. Then to me: “I told him someone was coming. I didn’t tell him what you are.”
I look at Carson. He looks at me.
“What are you?”
“Vampire,” Sullivan says from behind him. “So am I. So are the three on the floor.”
Carson stares at Sullivan. At me. At the hallway behind me.
“Vampires.”
“Yes.”
He leans against the door frame. His hand grips the edge. Five seconds.
Then his chin lifts.
“Why are you in my building?”
“Because those three were here first,” I say. “Your blood filtration research. It threatens someone powerful. Someone who’s built a monopoly on clean blood by capitalizing on the same contamination crisis you’ve been trying to solve. Yourwork makes his monopoly worthless. He sent a team to make sure it never leaves this lab.”
Carson’s jaw tightens. His hands close at his sides. He looks at the bodies on the floor for a long time. When he looks back at me, his eyes are steady.
“My wife died because the blood supply was contaminated,” he says. “I’ve spent five years trying to fix that.”
“You can’t stay here,” Sullivan says. “They’ll send more. We have a secure facility with a lab. We can protect you and your research.”
Carson looks at the hallway. Three bodies. A buckled door. He pulls the reading glasses down from his forehead. Puts them on.
“The man who built this monopoly,” Carson says. “He’s the reason the contamination got worse?”
“He made it worse deliberately. To increase demand for his supply.”
Carson’s expression hardens.
“Then I’m not just fixing the blood supply. I’m dismantling his business model.” He turns toward the lab. “Give me two minutes to pack my drives.”
He packs one bag. Laptop. Three external drives. A framed photograph he lifts from the shelf beside his workstation and places face-down in the bag without looking at.
He stops at the filtration prototype on the far bench. Runs his hand along the housing.
