Page 60 of Tainted Blood

“No. I’ve been running around all night. I spent all of an… hour in there.”

“Then I’ll watch that footage next,” I promised before frowning. I checked the time, realizing I had already wasted two hours on this hunt for the human.

Two hours? Damn it. I’ve been wasting their time and mine…

I started going through the folders, remembering where the footage from the lounge was stored, and found the time blocks I needed. Isaiah’s footage was saved in increments of an hour, and I turned them into playlists when I needed to cover a large amount. “I’ll start now, actually. This is more important than mystery human. I’ll text you if I find anything.”

“Thank you. We’ll find the human, too. Don't worry. Isaiah has had his staff looking out for the man since you first alerted him about the problem. ”

“He has to be related. My instincts aren’t wrong about that, right?”

“Not at all, but the blood was a stationary target versus a human you don’t know; therefore, you can’t properly anticipate,” he pointed out.

I couldn’t fault the logic, nodding as I opened the footage directly after the attack.

“I’ll get to it, then. Sorry.”

“It’s not a mistake, just a touch of inexperience,” Marcus said as he walked out. “Alexius, where do you want to go next?”

“Let’s try the staff hall. Everly doesn’t like this human. I don’t either.” He gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze before following Marcus out of the office.

“Isaiah doesn’t like when people harass the staff.”

“He’ll understand the need with this mystery human roaming the halls while the blood is unaccounted for,” Alexius countered, their voices growing more distant. The suite’s main door opened and closed, denying me the chance to hear Marcus’ reply.

I skipped over five minutes to the point after Alexius and I had left the room. There was a lot of directing, discussion, and things being moved. No one was looking suspicious or doing anything except triage. The wounded were moved, and humans finally came back into view, many looking a little worried or afraid as they saw the damage. When Isaiah finally came back from disposing of Samas’ body, he started barking orders, with Alexius doing the heavy lifting with others as they tried to find missing body parts. I covered my mouth, watching them do that, digging through debris and moving flipped furniture as they collected three arms and two legs, all having been torn off at different spots. From what I saw, though, none of them left with the decanters. However, the room was still two cameras down, with one destroyed and one no longer looking at anything useful. I couldn’t be certain, and I hated that.

After watching that section of footage from both angles I had available, I started watching everything beyond that, seeing the vampires file into the wings to their suites, Isaiah shaking their hands and patting their shoulders, probably offering them words of encouragement or thanks for fighting or something.

God, is thereanything? I need something, god fucking damn it.

I hated this. For years, it had been my job to review footage frame by frame. I was able to do it faster now, but there was somuchof it. I wanted to scream as I watched Marcus arrive with more humans and vampires from Isaiah’s nest. I hadn’t met most of them, but I had a feeling they were under Marcus’ control. In a situation like this, Isaiah would have asked for the most loyal of everyone who worked for him and the nest. As Isaiah left to go to the family wing for something, Marcus started the real cleanup and repairs to the lounge. Other humans from the mansion joined in, faces I didn’t recognize. Some would help for twenty minutes, taking out the trash with them as they left but didn’t come back.

I had an hour until sunrise. Only an hour and still several hours of footage to get through, impossible to finish even at four times the speed.

I need to find something! Where the fuck did that bottle go?

Watching the first angle until it was done, I grumbled when I didn’t see the blasted bottle. I started the next group from the other working camera, knowing the clock was ticking when I checked the time.

I was feeling hopeless as I started the second video with only forty-five minutes left, but only ten minutes in, I slammed the spacebar to pause the video when I saw him. When I hit play again, it was at only two times the speed. He came in without anyone paying attention, helping clean up and smiling at the others. Marcus wasn’t in the room at that moment based on the timestamp. He had left five minutes earlier, something I could see from the other angle.

Shit, this human knows what he’s doing, doesn’t he? He’s weaving his way around everyone. No one important has actually seen him in person… If they have, he’s the model employee, and no one vampire knows every human in the building. Isaiah knows his staff. He relies on his butler to know the staff each of his guests brought, but this mansion is huge…

I watched him as he went through the room with a trash bag. He was aimlessly picking things up as he looked for something, but to the others, he had probably appeared diligent and hardworking as he grabbed trash with drive and focus.

I saw his expression when he found it. His eyebrows went up in surprise, which he quickly hid. He stuffed the decanter, somehow still with its lid on, into his trash bag, then quickly kept filling it before walking out, no one ever knowing he hadn’t been there to help, not even the handful of vampires doing the heavy lifting for the human staff.

He knew what to look for. He knew.

He left through the door to the other wing. I found that footage, racing to see what happened next, maybe even where he was going. When I pulled it open, he was walking down the hall. With everyone asked to stay in their rooms, he had free rein not to rush or try to hide. He walked with a steady, purposeful pace, like any staff member who would be running a quick errand but didn’t want to disturb anyone.

He slipped into Ramman and Samas’s room, then back out two minutes later.

He took the notes he delivered… He had to have…

Then I watched as he went out the emergency exit. I was frozen at that point for ten seconds, considering that. Isaiah had released the security hours ago. He had to since the secrecy threat was supposedly gone with the death of Samas. Everyone was staying inside under the sheer threat of retribution at this point and no one wanted to be locked in a mansion if it burned down.

Which meant this human had gotten his own escape routes back.

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