Page 12

Sebastián

I closed the diary with a snap.

I’d kept these leather-bound volumes for centuries, though the earlier ones had faded to ink-stained fragments of lives I could barely remember living.

At least for now, Flynn’s presence would provide the perfect excuse.

I’d placed him in room 208, a few doors down from mine.

It was one of my favourites. The corner suite boasted original Victorian features—ornate ceiling roses, a marble fireplace, and tall sash windows that always caught the evening sun.

I’d seen dozens of architectural styles come and go, but this craftsmanship held a particular charm.

Perhaps because it reminded me of… something . The memory slipped away like smoke.

What was Flynn doing in there? Had he managed to find sleep in his new surroundings? Perhaps I should knock, just to check if he needed anything—

No.

Best to leave him be. The poor soul had endured enough upheaval for one day without me hovering like some gothic horror at his door.

I leant back in my chair, the memory of Flynn’s earlier gratitude washing over me. The way he’d gazed up at me, those fatally blue eyes filled with such trust. “Thank you,” he’d said, quiet and sincere and bloody hell—my dead heart had actually skipped.

And now, the image refused to leave me in peace.

My phone buzzed.

Kit

5 mins away for Flynn duty. I hope you’re not still working, boss.

Right. Time to focus on getting to Greaves. I quickly tidied room 210, my office come diary room, and stepped into the corridor—

Thump.

A warm body collided with mine. A startled squeak pierced the air as Flynn stumbled backwards. Pure instinct had me reaching out, my hands finding his waist to steady him.

“S-sorry!” Flynn gasped.

My fingers brushed against bare skin where his pyjama top had ridden up. The flannel hung loose on his frame, red chequered pattern stark against his pale complexion. That strip of exposed flesh felt like fire under my touch—gloriously warm, impossibly soft.

I snatched my hand back as if burned. “Do you need something?”

Flynn shifted from foot to foot, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Actually… I’m a bit hungry. Haven’t eaten since—” His stomach growled, finishing the sentence for him.

Bloody hell. Food. Of course he needed food.

“Ah.” Heat crept up my neck. “I should have thought—” I barely paid attention to my team’s mealtime routines, and as for my own…

“It’s fine, really.” Flynn offered a small smile.

“I’ll remind you where the kitchen is. The others always keep food there.” The others. I tensed—would Flynn pick up on my odd phrasing? This would probably be an ideal time to mention my own eating habits, and well, the whole undead vampire thing.

But something seized my vocal cords.

I could have pretended to myself that I didn’t understand why I kept silent. But that would’ve been a lie .

I didn’t want Flynn Carter to see me as a monster. Not when he looked at me with such raw, unguarded trust—like I was some kind of saviour who could piece him back together.

The truth about what I was would surely shatter that illusion.

I’d just keep it going for a tiny bit longer, until Flynn felt safer with us.

As we walked to the kitchen, Flynn hummed a soft tune to himself—possibly some sort of sea shanty—seeming fairly content in what must have been very strange circumstances.

I delivered him to the door, explaining that he should help himself to anything he could find in the spacious hotel kitchen.

When I bid him farewell, I had to drag my feet away, fighting the odd urge to stay with him, to make sure he found food. To watch him eat.

Because that wouldn’t be creepy at all.

The basement’s cold air distracted me from my thoughts. From Felix’s side room, three monitors glowed blue, displaying CCTV feeds as he scanned footage near Wilde Card, hunting for any trace of “Damien.”

“Go home, Felix,” I said, spooking him—he near enough jumped out of his desk chair.

“Five minutes,” Felix promised.

“Kit is taking over from me in a moment. You don’t want him to catch you here.”

Felix grimaced and began meticulously reorganising his workspace, though there was hardly anything out of place. His fingers twitched as he aligned his keyboard perfectly parallel to the edge of the desk. I’d once opened a drawer to find a collection of USB drives arranged by size and colour.

During my very first meeting with Felix, he’d nearly had a panic attack. I’d cornered him on the street after he’d hacked into our apparently mediocre system. A year later, though still skittish, his genius had transformed Killigrew Street’s digital security.

His mother—the first female CEO of Korean quantum computing giant QuByte—thought he worked IT support.

Dr Ch?ng had expected her son to follow her meteoric rise, not waste away at a help desk.

According to Felix, family dinners were just thinly veiled career interventions, full of comments about wasted opportunities at her company.

If only she knew how brilliant her son was—how he’d crafted the most sophisticated security system in London.

Or so Rory and Kit reassured me, anyway. I hadn’t a single clue about it all.

“I’ve set up automated AI tracking,” Felix muttered, more to his keyboard than to me. “If anyone matching Damien’s description shows up on any CCTV…” His voice trailed off as he noticed a cable slightly out of place.

“Go home, Felix,” I said again, before I strode towards the bookcase that dominated the far wall.

My fingers found the brass spine of The Picture of Dorian Gray —which always gave me a chuckle—and pulled it forward.

With a soft click, the entire bookcase swung outward to reveal the gleaming security door behind it.

“But it’s always behind the bookcase,” Kit had protested when I’d installed it three years ago. “It’s like something from a shit B-movie.”

“Precisely why no one will expect it,” I’d replied.

I typed the sixteen-digit code into the keypad. The door slid open with a hydraulic hiss, revealing Kit’s broad frame on the other side.

“You’re late.” Kit folded his arms.

“By two minutes.”

“Still late.”

“I was ordering Felix home.”

As expected, Kit’s expression softened. I descended the narrow stairs into the tunnel network.

LED strips cast clinical white light along the passage.

Strange to think of London churning above—the buses, the revellers, the constant pulse of the city—while I walked these silent corridors.

I’d known them as war bunkers once, and before that…

Well, the city had always held secrets beneath its streets.

The tunnels now connected Killigrew Street to various points across London. Tonight’s exit lay a quarter-mile ahead .

My footsteps echoed off concrete walls. Kit had lectured me about structural integrity when I’d first shown him, but these tunnels had survived a hundred years. They’d outlast us all.

The final door opened into a brick-vaulted railway arch, walls thick with graffiti. A purple octopus wrapped around the word “DEEP” marked the metal exit. I found the hidden lock.

The hospital lay thirty minutes away. The night air bit cold as I wound through narrow streets. A cat yowled ahead, echoing off brickwork. Once, I thought footsteps matched mine, but when I paused, only silence followed. The skin between my shoulders prickled.

Three streets from the hospital, something moved in the shadows ahead.

I stopped dead. There, beneath a flickering streetlight—no, it couldn’t be.

The creature was too large for a dog, its sloping back and powerful shoulders unmistakable even at this distance.

A hyena? In London? Impossible. The beast turned its head, eyes reflecting an unnatural yellow in the darkness.

For a moment, our gazes locked, and the sensation of being observed became overwhelming.

Then it quickly slunk away between the buildings.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. Hunger must be affecting me more than I’d thought if I was now hallucinating impossible creatures. Arriving at last, I favoured the shadows as I crept toward the underground garage for hospital staff.

Dr Alistair Greaves was already waiting for me in his car, and his face pulled into his typical frown as I slid into the passenger seat. The forty-something pathologist didn’t like me very much, but he did like my money. Almost as much as I liked the blood he stole for me.

Greaves shifted in his seat, refusing to meet my gaze. “I’ve only got five bags tonight.”

My fingers dug into the leather of the seat. “Five.” The word came out as a hiss. “We agreed on ten at the very least.”

“Look, it’s been a difficult week. Most of the bodies came in too late—”

“I don’t care for excuses.” The hunger gnawed at my insides, sharpening my tone. “You’re being paid handsomely for this arrangement.”

Greaves fumbled with his briefcase. “I don’t choose the bodies I’m assigned.

You’re aware that the blood clots if I don’t get to them quickly enough.

Can’t exactly push past police cordons when they’ve got a suspicious death on their hands.

Sometimes the bodies sit upstairs for hours before anyone even notifies us there’s been a death, and by then…

” He shrugged helplessly. “Well, you know how it goes with coagulation.”

The metallic scent of blood wafted from his case as he retrieved the cooling bag. Even through the medical packaging, the aroma made my throat burn.

“Five hundred per bag,” I said, keeping my voice level. “That’s far above market rate. If you’re unable to meet my requirements, perhaps I should seek alternative arrangements?”

His head snapped up. “No, no. I appreciate the business. It’s just been—”

“I don’t pay you to make excuses. I pay you to deliver.” I pulled out my wallet, counting out crisp fifties. “Two thousand five hundred.”

His hands trembled slightly as he passed over the blood. “Next week will be better. I promise.”