Page 231 of Blood Day

“You’ll find the vampires in my world feel similarly to me, and the ones I’ve assigned as professors at your future university understand the fragility of your current state. There will be no more mandated coursework surrounding the pleasure and amusement of my kind, but I will require you to learn.”

A pause followed, one that had me swallowing in anticipation of what he would say next.Learn what?

“My society thrives because we work together to protect it, which is where your improved education comes into play. You’ll be assessed upon entry and given a series of tests to determine your preferences. Then your academic profile will be created.”

The video shifted to show a file with a human named Jane Doe on the screen. Her face was blurred, but her shoulders and chest were exposed, giving me a clear view of her jacket and the gold crest etched into it—Blood University.

Beneath her photo was a series of attributes, but not the ones I usually saw associated with my own record. These contained math and writing scores, as well as career aptitudes for accounting and other business functions.

As soon as I finished reading, another file appeared, this one a male named John Smith. He had a similar photo—face blurred, jacket with the school emblem—and a list of qualities. It seemed he had an aptitude for languages and martial arts. The bottom of his file read,Guard Candidate—Interested in Vampire Transition.

“Vampire transition?” I read aloud, my brow furrowing.

“It means he’s interested in being turned. We ask all humans upon graduation for their interest. It doesn’t mean they’ll be granted immortality—we can’t turn everyone—but it helps us narrow down who wants to become a vampire and who does not,” Khalid replied.

“Oh.” My brow crinkled. “Isn’t that… not allowed?”

“Nothing he’s doing is allowed,” Cedric murmured. “It breaks every rule of the Blood Alliance. But I think that’s the point.”

“It’s not about breaking rules so much as self-sustainability.” He paused the video as his voice began speaking again, and pulled up a series of graphics instead. “Look at the trend lines, Cedric. Tell me what you see.”

I studied the graphs with him and heard the answer lurking in his thoughts.A blood shortage.Globally or just in certain regions?He reached forward to swipe his finger across the screen, shifting the images and sifting through them as he read the data with a furrowed brow.Most regions,he translated.Except a few. When he landed on Khalid Region, his eyebrow arched. “This says you’re low on blood, too.”

“It does,” he agreed. “That’s the trend in the database governed by Lilith.” He hit a button. “And this is the real trend, including my blood bank data.”

Cedric’s lips parted as he reviewed it all, his mind providing me with more explanations of what we were seeing.

He’s created over a dozen vampires a year, according to this growth. Yet his blood allowances are…“How?” he marveled. “How do you have so much blood?”

“I tax my humans,” he replied with a shrug. “Their donations provide them with safe passage in my territory, and most of them enjoy my way of life over the futures they were promised by the Blood Alliance. It’s not necessarily a utopia, but it works. And the balance remains intact.”

Cedric continued sifting through the files, his shock palpable. “You’ve hidden all this…?” His sentence hung on anunfinished question, but I understood his confusion and awe. Because this was…unreal.

“I have,” Khalid confirmed. “Through a series of mirages.”

“Mirages?” Cedric repeated.

“And this brings me back to my initial point—Lilith will fail because she hasn’t considered the past in her future plans. Historical friendships. Historical bonds. Historical matings.Historyin general.” He finished his drink again but this time didn’t move to refill it.

Instead, he held Cedric’s gaze for a long beat, the two men evaluating one another in a manner only apex predators could.

A chill slithered down my spine, and Emine shifted a little in her seat, her gaze flickering between the two males.

Then Khalid pulled up another screen, this one showcasing a town shrouded in desert-like mist. “Lilith has cameras all over the world. That’s how she monitors all the territories. She also has her own set of spies that she uses to gather intel on the various leaders. But I learned all this early on. And I circumvented her.”

He clicked another button, clearing the image and revealing a city bustling with activity. It was one of the feeds he’d displayed earlier—a busy street filled with humans walking with purposes.

“This is real,” he said. “But that’s not what Lilith sees.”

He returned the screen to display the deserted town again.

“I’ve put filters over her cameras to show her what I want her to see—dystopian mirages that suggest my world is depraved and dark and totally in line with her wants and desires. And the spy she has in my territory is one of my own, not hers. So she reports what I tell her to report to Lilith.”

“Similar to Viper, then?” Cedric inferred.

“Similar to Viper, yes. Only Viper has a very different task—he’s keeping an eye on the resistance for me.”

Cedric frowned. “He’s watching Darius and Jace?”