Page 45 of Tainted Blood

I got to work. Isaiah explained he had cameras in the hallways and in the lounge. Nothing had audio because he didn’t want to upset his guests. If I wanted, I could view anything in the building I thought was necessary, but it was understood that my focus was on what happened to Samas. That meant I would be watching Ramman and Samas through the night. I could go back to their arrival if need be. Isaiah kept a week of footage on his server at this estate at any given point.

Deciding to work backward, I started with the fighting, taking down the times when Samas died versus when he had started transforming. I noted how long he had been drinking the blood Ramman had brought.

Ramman didn’t have any… Well, that makes one thing very clear. It had to have been the blood, but what supernatural would cause Samas to become that? I know supernatural blood can do a lot of different things to vampires, but that was insane.

I knew we needed that blood, so I clicked through the footage, frame by frame, trying to find where it had ended up or if it had been destroyed. It had been knocked off the table early, lost in the rubble as Samas lost control of whatever was happening to him. Different vampires passed by where I had last seen it, but with how everything was knocked around the room, I lost track of it quickly. Of the four corner cameras in the lounge, only one survived the fight in its original position. One had been knocked down and was probably hanging by its wires. The other two were completely destroyed and offline. There was no way to know where it had ended up just based on the footage.

“Damn. I’ll need to hunt it down. No one would be stupid enough to drink more of it, right? Maybe Isaiah knows how to run tests on it. That could give us some answers.” I texted Alexius, asking him to keep a lookout for the decanter, and quickly received an affirmative.

I went back to my hunt through the footage, getting the images Isaiah wanted on the way, saving them to an extra flash drive I kept on hand and printing them off so he could inspect them and even file them.

Once I felt confident there was nothing else I could learn from the lounge before and during the fight, I started hunting for whatever Ramman and Samas had been up to all night. They had spent the beginning of the night in their room, leaving to join the rest of us in the lounge. During the day, someone, who I could only assume was Isaiah’s staff, dropped off notes, sliding them under the door. Wanting those notes, I wrote a reminder on a memo pad to get them later.

When Isaiah and Alexius walked in, I wasn’t done yet, wanting to get through Ramman and Samas’s first night here.

“How do you do it? It’s been four hours,” Isaiah said, walking up as he looked at what I had on the screen.

“Here are the pictures you need,” I said, lifting a manilla envelope I’d found for them. I had no idea I had been working that long, but I wasn’t fazed. I could focus on work, and it was easy to lose myself in it. “I also saved them to a flash drive. I want to find the decanter, just to keep it away from everyone else. Ramman didn’t drink the blood he and Samas had brought. I think it’s what caused Samas’s transformation. I know that seems really obvious, but it’s good to have evidence. If Ramman had drunk it, but nothing happened to him, then we wouldn’t be able to say it was the blood, right?”

“Correct. I’m glad you could verify that,” Isaiah said, opening the envelope. He winced at the images. “You got him at several points in the transformation, I see. Good. This will prove useful…”

“I wasn’t able to find the decanter, but the room is destroyed.” Alexius leaned on the desk next to me. “Marcus is already here with help to clean it out and begin repairs. They’ve been told not to drink it if they find it because it’s evidence and is clearly detrimental to vampires. There’s just one problem…”

“What?”

“Everything in that room smells human or vampire. I didn’t smell any supernatural blood.”

“Excuse me?” I couldn’t believe that. I looked between him and Isaiah, wondering if Isaiah had any thoughts because it didn’t make sense to me.

“You’re more than welcome to verify it. I certainly did, but your nose is much more sensitive than mine or Alexius’s, thanks to your age. I didn’t catch anything, but you might.” Isaiah closed the file. “Since the wounded are in safe rooms for healing and we’ve been able to properly secure the bodies of the dead, I can now focus on the other parts of this. Maria has gotten word of the incident, but we haven’t been able to discuss it yet, not properly. These pictures, now that I can study them, remind me of something I’ve seen before. I know a couple of people who might know something, but it’s going to be a gamble.”

“Okay, so what do you want me to do?” I asked, crossing my arms. “My timeline is sparse right now, but it’s coming together. Ramman and Samas stayed in their room until they came to the lounge. They had some notes delivered to them by a human on staff during the day—”

“Show me that human,” Isaiah ordered, his head snapping in the direction of the computer. I pulled up those moments, having marked the time in my notes. He started shaking his head. “I know every human on my staff. He’s not one of mine. Some of the Masters and Mistresses brought support staff, though the rule is they keep the number of staff they bring under four. Print out that frame, and I’ll give it to my butler. He’ll be able to find out who that human works for. If someone wanted to pass notes, that’s fine, but it would be nice to know who was talking to them. Perhaps it was whoever was supplying them with the blood. They don’t often trade those sorts of objects in my home, but I can’t say it’s never been done. Continue with your report.”

“I was working on seeing what they did during their first night here,” I explained as I sent the image to the printer. “I’m working backward from the attack, so I was just seeing them get in for dawn, probably heading to sleep. No one was with them, and they didn’t have any conversations in the hallway. Nothing like that.”

“Good work,” Alexius said, nodding as he pushed away from the desk. “Let’s go test your nose. Isaiah?”

“Meet me in my office in ten minutes. I want you both in the room when I talk to people. You might hear something important I don’t catch, or maybe you’ll have information they need.”

“How is everyone doing?” I asked before we broke apart. Isaiah jerked to a stop before he could march out of the room. “Like Isis… Kamose was injured, and Nailah is dead…”

“Isis…” Isaiah sighed, looking over his shoulder at me. “She’s guarding Kamose, and I’ve decided to give her a wide berth, and I recommend you do the same. Nailah wasn’t just the vampire that Turned her. Nailah was also the woman who gave birth to her. Kamose isn’t her biological father, but he is the only father she’s ever known, both as a human and as a vampire. Kamose will survive, but it will be a long time before we know if they’ll be okay, and there’s a high chance they never will be.”

I nodded, wringing my fingers together as I stood.

“As for everyone else… Well, let’s hope Sucaria and Dago don’t start trying to kill each other before I can send them on their way. Let’s also hope they don’t try to kill me for keeping them here. They’re in a bad position since one of them needs to take over for Caturix as quickly as possible. They can only do that in Berlin, but they can’t leave for Berlin yet.”

“You won’t just pick from the list? There’s a list for this. That’s how Edwin got Jacob’s nest.”

“In their case? No.” Isaiah shook his head. “Caturix trained two successors, and they both want it. Just like Alexius could have taken Jacob’s nest, thanks to Jacob’s will. The list is about other situations, like when Alexius said no to Jacob’s nest, and suddenly, we had a nest that needed someone to be in charge. Or a new city for an expansion of our influence or a reclamation of a territory we’ve lost, like what we need to do with Seattle.” He thumped his fist on the wall by the door. “This entire situation is a nightmare.”

“This was planned by someone. It had to be,” I said, looking at the screen, wondering if there was anything caught on camera that could tell me something I didn’t already know.

“I don’t want to become so paranoid as to say you’re right, but logically, I don’t think I can argue with you and say this is the fault of Ramman’s incompetence. He’s never made this sort of mistake before, and he wouldn’t want Samas killed.”

“Is he… okay? And Maxwell. I mean…”

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