When I emerged from the building the next morning, the vampire was gone. Curtis went his own merry way to work and I trudged to the train station. As I sat on the train, my body moved with the movement of the car, my thoughts were wandering. The security firm didn't call me last night which meant our vampire friend didn't break into the clinic. This was an interesting thought, usually they at least tried. Maybe he was waiting for me to let my guard down, maybe he hoped that after a while I'd go back to normal security and he'd have his easy access. It was a real pain, security was expensive and there was little profit in this place from what I had been told. Of course, I had no clue about the profits, that wasn't part of my job. I unlocked the door and as I opened the door I was shocked. He was sitting in the waiting room.
"Morning." he grinned.
As he waved his fingers at me, I saw the hand cuff that was around his wrist, the other to the arm of the chair.
"What are you doing here?"
I punched the code into the panel and flicked on the lights. As I turned around I shrieked, he was right behind me. He grabbed my wrist and put the handcuff on it, clicking it tight.
"There." he grinned again, wide eyed. "Now we are getting somewhere."
He lifted his hand, mine went with it. This was new, I'd never had this happen before. I looked at our handcuffed wrists and squinted at him.
"I can't tell you who it is. You are wasting your time and mine."
He shrugged looking at the door that had just opened. Rita was standing their completely mortified.
"Look." he grinned as he lifted our arms "We are going to become best friends."
"No, we are not. Where is the key?"
"In my pants." he winked at me. "Want to go fishing?"
"No. Unlock the cuffs or I'll call the cops."
"Not if you can't reach a phone."
"Rita call the cops."
She scurried past us toward the secured section of the clinic.
"Rita..." the vampire purred "Come here."
Rita stopped and turned, her eyes filled with pure lust as she sauntered to him. With his free hand he flicked her hair away from her neck and shoulder and trailed her jaw. She looked up at him with big doe eyes, a tiny smile cracked across her lips as a low moan emanated from her.
"You don't need to call the cops, do you Rita?"
"No." she breathed as she fluttered her eyes at him.
"That's a good girl, now why don't you go and find out that information that I want?"
I watched as she moved away, still in a trance.
"You're wasting your breath. I wiped the file yesterday."
His head snapped around to me, anger filling his face. Clearly he thought this would be easy.
"You think you're the first to walk in here demanding to know donor information."
"Of course." he smiled, the anger disappearing "Maybe we should begin again. I am Noah."
He waited patiently for me to respond.
"Not going to happen."
"Fine." he sniffed "I don't need your name anyway."
Noah looked directly into my eyes.
"Tell me who the donor is."
"Are we going to have this conversation every day Noah?"
He frowned with a slight squint, looking at me, searching me.
"Tell me your name." his fingers traced a line along my jaw, pushing my brown hair out of his way.
"Are you deaf or something? I said not going to happen, that means no."
Noah gasped as he stepped back, my hand tugging with his movement.
"Oh my god... I can't suggest things to you, I can't lure you... it's you. You are the donor."
"Unlock the cuffs Noah."
"Tell me it is a lie and if you can look me in the eye while you say it, I will."
Crap... giant monkey crap balls. I am a terrible liar. My parents always caught me out if I ever tried to lie to them.
"You can't, can you?"
"I'm sorry, I can't find the information you want." Rita completely scared the life out us.
We were so stuck in the moment that her walking across the room was unheard.
"I think Ronnie deleted it yesterday." she looked at me.
"Thank you Rita." he smiled at her and of course she grinned like a love sick fool "Now, Ronnie has decided to close the clinic today, so you should go home and rest, come back tomorrow refreshed for another day at work."
"Ok." she pouted "Will you be here?"
"Of course, I'm not going anywhere."
Noah waited until she was out the door, shutting and locking it behind her.
"What are you doing?"
"You know what you are to me, right Ronnie?"
I nodded.
"Why did you keep that from me? As the donor you have the right to tell me, it's in your precious rules. So why?"
"I... I don't know." I stutter a little freaked out. "You've been a little unnerving you know, hanging around, stalking me. This is some pretty heavy stuff you know. You expect me to just walk up to you and say hey guess what I'm the donor and we've been matched as mates but hey it's cool." my hand jerked his with the movements "I don't want to rush anything right, even though I've only got a life time and you've got eternity."
"Ronnie." he said quietly interrupting me.
"And for us to be together is like something really difficult because I'm human and will eventually die and you won't but at least I don't have to worry about you draining me, right? I don't even know what I want to do, do I become a vampire, is that possible? It's not like you could become a human, could you? This is crazy..."
In my freaked out ranting I didn't notice the amused look on his face, nor did I see as he leaned in to shut me up. I squeaked as he kissed me, slowly relaxing into an amazing kiss. God, this mate business was unreal.
"Do you ever shut up?" he asked, a breaths distance from my lips.
I stared up into those grey eyes, for the first time ever I really was quiet.
"I have a boyfriend."
"The gay guy from the train yesterday?" he said with a raised eyebrow.
"Oh, uh no. The other manager for this place. He's off opening another clinic."
"Linus Dalton?"
I nodded.
"Oh this is just great." he rolled his eyes.
"What? Why?"
"Maybe we should start again, I am Noah Maddox. Do you know who my father is?"
I nodded again, feeling my heart sinking. His father was the leader of the vampires in the council and Linus's father was the leader of the humans in the council. This wasn't good, it was far from being good.
"We need to handle this very carefully."
He produced the key and unlocked the cuffs.
"I am not going to give up Ronnie." he stalked me to the wall as I backed away. "I will make you mine and I don't care if there is an almighty war because of it. No one takes what is mine."
My phone rang as he kissed me again, the distinct ringtone that was Linus. What great timing. When I regained composure I answered the call.
"Hello?"
"Why did you send Rita home?"
I frowned wondering why she told him.
"Did she tell you that?"
"She said you were closing the clinic today and sent her home."
"Why did she call you?"
"I don't really think that is the issue here Veronica, why are you closing the clinic?"
I could feel some nagging sensation, something wasn't right. Why did Rita call him?
"I have a call coming in, I'll talk to you later."
Before he could respond I hung up the phone. Moving away from Noah, I walked through the office to the security room, dialling Curtis.
"Hey hey Ronnie."
"Hey Curtis, I need a favour."
*********************************************
I had found the past few minutes of security footage and wiped it, finding the back up and wiping it too. I backed up a copy of all of the security footage from around the clinic and then moved out of the clinic.
"What are you looking for?"
"Evidence."
I locked the door to the clinic, putting a sign on it that it was closed due to illness and began the walk to Curtis' place.
"Where are we going?"
Noah looked at me like I was acting weird.
"A friend's place."
It took us ten minutes of solid walking and three train stops to get to Curtis' unit. He was waiting for us, just like I asked. Curtis should have been at work but was able to come and go as he pleased so long as his work was done. He opened the door with a smile only to see the man behind me, the smile got a little bigger as the door opened.
"Welcome."
Noah and I walked into his unit. Curtis was a stickler for cleanliness and liked the whole minimalist look. Everything was white, perfectly straight and in its correct place. The only colour was on the walls, art hung beautifully.
"I did a detour on the way home." he said with a wry smile as he led us into his office. "Look what I found."
"Are they cheating?" I winced at the phone in his hand, knowing he had photographic evidence of something "I don't want to know, do I?"
"Pssh. Cheating. Get real girl. No, your boy wasn't doing the horizontal shuffle with your receptionist. This was sheer luck I might add. I stopped to chat with a friend I hadn't seen in ages and saw Linus pushing a wheel chair with an old girl in it. Stunned I was, wondering what on earth he was doing. Thank God he didn't see me but I saw him unloading a bus load of oldies into this building. My friend who was watching me, watching him said they'd been doing that for some time now. He thought it was going to be an old folks home but hadn't heard anything about it." he flicks his fingers over the screen, showing me picture after picture of Linus and another man taking each of these people off the bus and into the building. All of them were frail, barely alive.
"Then little miss turns up and starts helping him. The other guy takes the bus away, Linus and Rita go inside." He shrugged. "Not sure on what to make of it, did Linus say he was going into aged care?"
"No."
"Well anyway, got the disc for me?"
"Yeah." I pulled it out of my bag and handed it to him "Where's this building?"
"Corner of South Street and Washington Avenue. We were outside the little coffee shop on South Street, there's an alley way that runs behind the building. Almost out of sight." he grinned.
We left Curtis to run through the hours of security footage, this was his field of expertise, computers. Now I was sitting in Noah's car, crazy me had willingly gotten into a complete stranger's car and thought nothing of it. Then again, I let the complete stranger kiss me twice. Maybe I was losing my mind. Too much stress. Noah thumped his fingers on the bottom of the steering wheel, watching out the window. There was no movement across the road in the alley, the doors to the front of the building were boarded over, spray painted that it was private property. All of the windows were the same, boarded over. Five levels of boarded windows, the dull brown bricked building looked like it was a construction zone yet after hearing what Curtis said about the elderly people being taken in there, I wondered what was going on. A bus pulled into the alley and the side doors opened, Linus walked out pushing a wheel chair. One by one all of the elderly people that were on the bus were taken into the building. I looked at my watch, four pm. It took them about an hour to unload all of the people off the bus, then Linus got on the bus after locking the doors. I ducked down as the bus pulled out onto the street.
"Do you want to follow them or check out the building?"
This was an interesting question. What did I want to do?
"Maybe follow them, we can always come back later."
Noah pulled out into the traffic, a few cars back. Cautiously he followed the bus, ensuring he stayed out of view. It pulled up beside a house, an average looking two level wood panelled house with a pretty garden. Linus got out of the bus and wandered into the house, not knocking at the door, not stopping for the occupants to come out and greet him. The bus pulled away and it sunk in, this was his house.
"Oh god." I breathed as I watched a woman fold into his arms.
It got worse, there was a child jumping around his feet, wanting to be picked up. Noah pulled away before it got any worse, not that it was possible. Not unless she was pregnant or dying or somehow related to me. That would be the end of it all.
"I'm going to ring the bastard." I hissed as I searched for my phone in my bag.
"What?" Noah frowned at me "Are you crazy? Do not ring him Ronnie. We need to find out what he's up to, if you go telling him you know he's got some other woman with kids then he'll know you've been following him. Think first Ronnie, please."
"Fine. But when this is done, I'm calling dibs on cutting his business off, ok?"
"Really?" he said dryly "You really think I want to be touching his business? What is it with you women wanting to cut it off all the time?"
"Well I don't like being cheated on."
"I think you might find that it's that poor girl in that house that's being cheated on Ronnie, sadly you are the other woman in this little triangle."
"Oh god."
The car seemed to close in on me, the darkness surrounding me, shrinking around me. My chest began to feel tight as I tried to breath, increasingly getting harder to suck in air.
"Calm down Veronica, jeez."
I looked up at Noah who was shaking his head.
"End it with him once we've figured out what's going on." he grinned at me "After all, you've got someone better now."
******************************************
The clouds were a wonderful cover for us, hiding the moon's light we were able to slip through the shadows of the buildings and along the alley. Noah gently pressed against the boarded windows hoping to find a loose one. We thought we were out of luck until a delivery van came into the alley. It slowed by the doors and the driver got out along with the guy that was driving the bus. He opened the doors and they started taking things into the building. Noah and I were able to slip into the building and remained hidden among the boxes in the loading dock. The doors clunked as they closed, the rattling of the chain and finally the click of the lock. We were trapped unless we found another way out. Noah pulled out his phone turning on the torch app, lighting our way through the boxes. We made our way to a set of double doors, carefully I opened one side, peering through the gap. There was one large industrial kitchen, no one to be seen. We walked through the kitchen, long rows of stainless steel benches that looked brand new. Noah opened the large metal door to an enormous walk in fridge, full of food that wasn't ordinary food. It was bagged food, boxes upon boxes of bags. Noah picked one up, reading the label on it.
"Pureed food, full of nutrients, I'd say clip it in and it would feed the old dears."
At the end of the room was an elevator, the doors were quite wide. Presumably for hospital beds, it certainly looked like an elevator out of a hospital. We took the stairs that were to the left of the elevator, slowly and quietly making our way to the next floor. I could hear the sound of beeping, a ventilator sucking in and out. Over and over again the sounds were the same, in serious numbers. Then someone sneezed and the woman excused herself. As we turned the corner we lowered to the steps, the stairs opened up to a large room that spanned the entire floor. To our right was the woman sitting at a desk reading a magazine. Music could be heard through her headphones, her feet propped on the desk. But the rest of the room was the shocker, rows upon rows of hospital beds, people laying on them. Their arms had a tube coming out of them, a long line of red liquid being collected in the bag at the end. There was another tube that had the food connected to it, the other end went somewhere under the bed sheets. Noah tugged my shirt and then nodded his head, time to find a way out.
We found a door, only problem was it was alarmed and we didn't know until we had opened it. A loud siren screeched, piercing the quiet night. Noah picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder and ran down the street, sheltering in a darkened alley a few buildings down.
"That's not good." he groaned.
He pointed to the security guard that was now walking around the building, shining his torch over it. We watched as he stopped at the door and looked at it, then talking to someone on his phone. I looked across the road at Noah's car, at least there were other cars around and it wasn't obvious.
"It's a blood farm."
I turned to look at Noah who was hidden in the darkness of the alley, doing something with his phone.
"What are you doing?"
"Sending the video to my father."
"Are you crazy, you will start a bloody war! Things are delicate now, you go telling your father what he's doing..." I whispered angrily "Jeez, all hell is going to break loose."
"Are you taking his side Ronnie? You know this is against the rules of donation."
"No I am not taking his side!"
The sound of footsteps clicked down the side walk, Noah and I looked at each other, both of us freaking out. Noah presses me against the wall and lifts my legs around his waist, keeping his hands high, lifting my skirt. He kisses me hard just as the light of a torch shines around the alley.
"What the hell do you want?" Noah growls at the security guard.
"My apologies, have you seen anyone trying to break into the building down there?"
"A little busy to be worrying about your building."
"Uh-huh."
The light left the alley and again the shoes clicked their way up the street.
"You can let me down now." I whispered.
"What for?"
"Very funny. We have to get going, can you drop me back at my place?"
"Aww." he pouted as he let my legs down "No fun time for Noah tonight?"