They had been sitting beside each other in silence for thirty minutes. He needed to forget the despicable taste in his mouth, and she needed to wait for her blood to return.
"So, it's good right?" Jane broke the silence.
"Good, until you contaminate it." He turned to the side to look at her. "What was that? A product from Ms.Kelsey's lab?"
"Yes." Jane didn't like where this conversation was leading, because…
"Why do I get the bad batch?" His voice was low and breathy, a side effect of the hard gagging.
"I grabbed the wrong bottle," she replied, quickly moving her eyes away from his puppy-dog expression. That face was her weakness. If he had yelled at her, she wouldn't have to bear this guilt.
There was no mistake; when her fingers glided through the pristine tag, she knew it was the one with the disgusting taste. That was the only one that the tape hadn't chipped yet.
"I will switch to another one next time, taste A. That's the one Rose always uses."
"Rose is Rose. I'm Peter." His voice was soft, but it carried an unusual seriousness that Jane couldn't ignore. "And I don't want to make you my subordinate. I want to make you my business partner."
"Explain further," Jane said. She pushed herself up to sit properly next to him.
"I want to turn your blood into a type of drug and sell it. I will give you 20,000$ for each deal." He stared at her expressionless face and added, "Tax included."
Jane wasn't even thinking about the taxes. In fact, she never knew she had to pay for that. She was actually in shock hearing the number, and calculating how much money she could make before she turned into a vampire.
"Reduce it to 15,000$. And I want your venom in exchange. Make it into pills too." She wanted something easy to consume. Drinking it directly made her feel like she was eating his saliva.
"You mean these?"
Peter pulled out a ziplog bag, the same careless packaging she'd seen him giving to his friends earlier.
"These are sold for 15,000$ per pill. I can give it to you at 5,000$, making your rate 10,000$."
That was a 70% sale. If there was anything Jane had learned throughout her life, it was not to be too greedy.
"Agreed. And I will only do this for 3 months."
Peter tilted his head, his fingers tapping on the armrest. It was a shame. But he could always push the market price higher in that final month to make up for the short timeline.
"Deal. 10,000$ per pill, including the venom." Peter said.
He stood up and walked over to the desk to pull out a blank piece of paper. Together, they drafted the temporary terms and calculations. Peter said he would have them printed and legalized the next day, somehow.
450 to 600 milliliters taken per month, or more. All Jane asked for was that he kept her alive. With that amount of blood, she could produce at least 18 pills. That's 180,000$ a month!
Damn! She should have met him sooner.
"All right. Looking forward to working with you."
She stood up. Her joy was so blatant it made Peter smile, too, at the scenery of money running into his own pockets.
"You don't need to rest?" he asked. "The bed here is quite fine."
"Nope. Got somewhere else to go."
"Take a room card before you leave." Peter said, pointing towards the drawers next to the entrance and fell on the bed.
"Thanks."
***
Jane squatted down behind the wall behind a tree. She had been here for 1 hour, or more. It had been her least favourite thing to do, waiting for Ryan to show up.
Jane idly grabbed a stick and drew some crisscrossing lines on the ground. They were messy since the artist didn't dare to look down. The last time she did, he was gone. She could definitely see how he managed to escape from those vampires.
There! His white head was impossible to miss, especially at midnight. It absorbed the surrounding lights and glowed like a blob of algae under the ocean.
Jane stood up. Her shoes were put behind to reduce the chances of getting caught. Not only was he fast, his ears also worked terrifyingly well.
She followed him to a big house near the edge of the forest. Inside was a giant cage padded with cushion, a large armchair, a kitchen, and a desk. Basically, everything one might need, except for a bed. Jane slowly realized this could be Count Lucien's pet house. That cage was definitely meant for his cheetah.
But what was Ryan doing here?
He stood in the middle of the room, hand resting near his neck. Jane was watching attentively, when suddenly, he glanced directly in her direction.
That was close! Jane held her breath, freezing behind the chair. She waited until the silence fully returned before peeking an eye out. There was no one in the room.
Jane frustratedly crawled out of her hiding place. This was the closest she had ever gotten to him, and he still escaped. But where? The only escape was the entrance and he clearly didn't go that way. It was like he evaporated into thin air.
She stomped on the floorboards, searching for a hollow underground tunnel, but the solid impact against the soles of her feet told her otherwise.
Then, something caught Jane's eyes. A small cluster of dust particles floating in a hexagon shape. They weren't particularly small, and weren't exactly white, more like pastel crystals with strange shapes.
She turned around. Hanging right behind her was a slit in the middle of the air, and from it, those crystal particles drifted out, one after another.
Jane felt a strange resistance as her hand hovered above it. But her curiosity won and she dipped her hands inside.
Instantly, a blinding light flooded her vision, forcing her eyes shut. She opened them again, only to be greeted by another stagnant white room. From the floor to the ceiling, everything was the blinding color of snow, with some thin black line mapping out the tiles.
At the end of the room, stood Ryan.
His eyes locked on her, his hand holding a beautiful carved gun. If Jane hadn't seen the pile of corpses underneath his feet, she would have thought he was about to shoot her.
And what was this? She thought Ryan was in some sort of rebellious student group who hated vampires. Not whatever this was!
"How did you get in?" he asked, jumping down from the pile of bodies and walking toward her, gun still in hand.
That didn't seem like a friendly question.
"I don't know," she answered, her eyes moving rapidly, searching for an escape.
Right before Ryan could reach her, something else moved faster.
Jane immediately dodged. A shadowy, black creature jumped at her. It had no real facial features, only a pair of glowing red eyes tracking every move she made.
Then, it bit her. Long, sharp fangs crawled out of where she supposed its mouth.
She pushed its head away, but her hand went right through it. Its body disgenerated into fine black dust and reformed back into a solid mass.
This is wrong.
Ryan stopped staring. He switched to a sword as he joined the battle. The moment the blade touched the creature's body, Jane heard the sound of meat sizzling.
The heavy weight was lifted. Ryan stood between her and the monster, blocking its path with his sword.
"Grab the dagger," he told her.
In a moment between life and death, any embarrassment was thrown out the window. She shoved her hand in his pocket and pulled the knife out. They stood back-to-back, but the creature only cared about getting to her.
"Stab its neck!" she heard his scream. Then, it bit her again. Jane pinned its head tight to her neck. She raised the dagger in the air and pushed it deep into its nape.
The thing dissolved into black ash. And for a split second before it disappeared, Jane saw a pair of human eyes.
"What was that?" She sat down heavily on the ground. Being bitten twice in the same night wasn't exactly something she expected.
"A defence system," he said, sitting beside her. "You triggered a … another turn."
A defense system that attacked its own people. and she also noticed the difference between the thing that just attacked her, and the corpses over there. What he killed were solid bodies, not a shape-shifting shadow.
"So, are you a vampire hunter?" she asked.
It made perfect sense. Who else would carry a wet towel, soaked with ethanol to class. And always sleepy, and strong enough to stay unclaimed by the vampires. It didn't explain why his hair was white though.
"Don't call me that," he corrected her. "I'm in an organization working against vampires." They were also magicians, but he didn't want to fuel her imagination any further.
Exactly the definition of a professional vampire hunter, Jane thought. But she didn't say anything, she had a favour to ask.
"Can you teach me how to fight, then?" she asked desperately. "I don't need much, just three, no, one lesson of basic skills. I will help you do your homework."
Despite Jane's enthusiasm, he only stared at her with a blank face, and replied in an even colder voice: "You don't need fighting lessons. You killed Ryan Hastings."
Like thunder right by her ear. It had been a long time since she heard that name, came out of a mouth that she could never have imagined.
Her face went as white as the room. Ryan, killed. The name and the words kept echoing in her head.
She wanted to say she didn't, that she was just a girl who could barely kill a bug, but it was true. Her hand had been contaminated, and she was tired trying to wash it away.
"I did it out of defense," she said simply. It was a relief to admit what she had done. So at ease, that if he called the vampire police on her, she might confess.
Then, she remembered what she had seen on the TV. The peeing in a drain inside the room, the scary inmates, the gang fights, — those things snapped Jane back to her senses.
"How do you know?" she asked, her voice tightening. He might not sell her out, but this meant she left a trace for someone else to find.
"The rumor. And that you never call my name." He lied without even blinking.
"Is that so," Jane mumbled to herself. "I guess I need to fix that habit."
Ryan looked down on the body sitting on the floor, he wanted to say something nice, but what came out of his mouth was a deportation order.
"When are you going out? It's late now."
"Oh, right. Where's the door?" She stood up and dusted off the black ash. The only door visible was the one she saw behind him, at the end of the room.
"How do you get in then?" He asked the same question again.
It seemed like she could never go out without answering him.
"I don't know, really. There was a slit in the air. I touched it and found myself here."
Ryan stood still. He had planned to open the portal for her, but she somehow got in herself. Combined with the new kind of defense system, he might have to check with the engineers to fix the malfunctions.
"Quick question. How do you guys build a portal inside this school?" Inside the lion's den too, literally.
"It was here even before this academy," he answered, looking down on her.
Jane felt stupid under his gaze. But at least she knew, his organization was ancient, too.
He pulled off his necklace, the one with the bullet pendant, and placed it where she imagined a door would be.
The portal opened. She felt like she should thank him, but for what exactly. He didn't help her, but she should say sorry for stalking him
"Bye. And sorry, and thanks." for keeping my secret.
Ryan stared in her direction until her body was completely consumed by the lights. Behind him, the floor opened up, and the corpses fell down.
On the wall was a digital board. With a few taps on the glass, a small compartment opened, a sealed vial of blood was pushed out.
Her blood. Extracted by the strange thing.
There were many ways to get it, but the elders needed it fresh and preserved.
Took him longer than he expected, mostly because she wasn't as brave as he'd thought. Giving up immediately if his eyes accidentally glanced at where she was hiding, or got distracted by the smallest rustle of leaves. He had to remind himself not to scare her away and be slower multiple times.
But finally, it was done.
Ryan walked to the end of the room where a different door was waiting. And with a push, he disappeared into another world.