I Took the Night Shift at a Blood Bank and Discovered My Boss Is a Vampire

The automatic doors hissed open, admitting you into a silence so profound it felt like a physical presence. The air inside was cold, clean, and carried the sterile scent of antiseptic that did little to mask an underlying, metallic tang. This was Aeterna Vitalis. The name, etched in severe silver letters on the glass, meant "Eternal Life," a fact that seemed both pretentious and unnervingly sincere. It wasn’t a blood bank, not in any conventional sense. It was a vault, a futuristic laboratory of glass walls and polished concrete floors that reflected the cold, white light of recessed LEDs.

A man stood waiting for you in the center of the vast atrium. He was tall and lean, dressed in a black lab coat tailored with a precision that bordered on severe. You knew from the orientation file that this was your supervisor, Julian. The file hadn’t mentioned the unnerving stillness about him. He didn’t shift his weight or gesture or fidget. He simply existed in the space, a figure of absolute calm that somehow made the frigid room feel even colder.

As you approached, his eyes found yours. They were the darkest eyes you had ever seen, and they held your gaze with an intensity that made you feel completely exposed, as if he could see every doubt and every secret you held.

“River,” he said. Your name was not a question. His voice was a low, smooth baritone, devoid of warmth but resonant. It filled the silence without disturbing it.

“Julian,” you replied, your own voice sounding thin and uncertain.

He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. “Welcome to Aeterna Vitalis. We do not deal in volume here. We deal in rarity. In specificity.” He began to walk, and you fell into step beside him. “Our clients are among the most influential in the world. Their needs are unique, their circumstances… delicate. The products we safeguard are, in many cases, the only thing standing between them and the end.”

He spoke with a grave formality, his words chosen with the care of a poet composing a eulogy. There was no clinical detachment in his tone. He spoke of blood as a sacred trust, of lives held in a constant, precarious balance. You looked from the gleaming steel of the laboratory equipment to the dark intensity of his profile, and a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room worked its way down your spine. This wasn't just a job. You understood that now. This was something else entirely.

He led you from the atrium into the main processing lab. The silence followed, broken only by the low, steady hum of the refrigeration units and the sound of your own footsteps, which seemed jarringly loud on the polished concrete. Julian’s, you realized with a start, made no sound at all. He moved with an unsettling grace, his long coat swirling around his ankles without a whisper of fabric. It was like watching a phantom, a projection on the cold air.

“Each sample is logged and cross-referenced with our donor archives,” he explained, stopping before a sterile stainless-steel workstation. His voice was low and even, yet it carried effortlessly through the cavernous room. “Every step is monitored. There is no room for error.”

His hands moved over the console, fingers flying across the touch screen with practiced speed. He brought up a schematic of the cryo-storage vault, a complex lattice of glowing blue lines. “The core temperature is maintained at two degrees Celsius. Any deviation, even for a moment, could compromise the integrity of our oldest assets.”

You shivered, pulling your thin jacket tighter around you. Two degrees. It felt colder. You could see your breath fogging slightly in the air, but Julian seemed entirely unaffected, as comfortable as if he were standing in a summer meadow. His focus was absolute.

He turned to a heavy, brushed-steel door and pulled on a pair of thick, black gloves before pressing his palm against a scanner. The door hissed open, revealing a smaller, even colder chamber. A plume of frigid vapor rolled out. Inside, resting on racks, were several shallow trays lined with what looked like polished silver. He lifted one out with extreme care, his gloved hands the only thing making contact with the gleaming metal.

“This is a new acquisition,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper. He held the tray for your inspection. Nestled in a custom-molded recess was a single vial of dark, ruby-red blood. It seemed to absorb the stark white light of the lab. “O-negative, Rh-null. Fewer than fifty individuals on the planet share this phenotype.”

The way he said it sent a strange vibration through you. It wasn't the detached tone of a scientist. It was something deeper, a possessive reverence. He wasn't looking at a medical sample; he was looking at a priceless artifact. His dark eyes were fixed on the vial, his expression a mixture of profound respect and a deep, hidden longing that made your own blood feel sluggish in your veins. He spoke of the donor not as a patient, but as an artist, and of their blood as a masterpiece.

He traced the edge of the silver tray with a gloved finger, his movement slow and deliberate, before carefully placing it back inside the refrigerated unit and closing the door. The heavy click of the latch echoed in the vast, cold room, sealing the treasure away.

The rest of the shift passed in a blur of sterile procedure and quiet observation. The hours bled into one another, marked only by the silent, automated cycles of the machinery and Julian’s low, precise instructions. You cataloged, you cross-referenced, you monitored temperature gauges until the numbers swam before your eyes. Through it all, he was a constant, silent presence at the edge of your awareness, moving with that same impossible quiet.

Finally, the first hint of dawn began to soften the hard edges of the night. The sky visible through the towering atrium windows was shifting from inky black to a bruised, deep purple. Your shift was over. A wave of exhaustion washed over you, so profound it was almost dizzying. You gathered your jacket and bag from the small locker you’d been assigned, the metallic click of the closing door sounding like a gunshot in the immense silence.

To leave, you had to pass his office. It was a cube of glass set into the main corridor, an island of shadow in the brightly lit facility. As you drew near, you slowed your pace, an involuntary curiosity pulling at you. The lights inside were off. He sat in a single, high-backed chair, his form a dark silhouette against the faint, pre-dawn light filtering through the window behind him.

He was not working. He was simply sitting in the dark, holding a cup. It was a fragile, white porcelain thing, delicate and almost luminous in the gloom. It looked ancient, out of place, a stark contrast to the severe modernism of everything else in Aeterna Vitalis. He lifted it slowly, and you stopped, hidden by the angle of the corridor. You watched as he tilted the cup to his lips. The liquid inside was not black like coffee, nor brown like tea. It was a deep, viscous crimson that coated the white ceramic as it moved. It clung to the sides, thick and slow-moving, catching the faint light with a dark, ruby sheen. It was definitely not coffee.

A cold dread, sharp and immediate, pierced through your fatigue. He lowered the cup, his throat working with a single, deliberate swallow. And then, without turning his head, his eyes lifted and found yours through the glass.

He didn’t seem startled or angry to be caught. He simply looked at you. His gaze was direct, unwavering, and in the dim light, his eyes were bottomless pits of black. The expression on his face was entirely unreadable, a mask of calm that revealed nothing and concealed everything. The silence between the glass wall and where you stood felt heavy, charged with a question you were too afraid to form. For a long, breathless moment, the world seemed to stop, shrinking to the space between his eyes and yours.

You were the one who broke the connection. You tore your gaze away, a sudden, panicked energy flooding your limbs. You turned and walked quickly toward the exit, your own footsteps suddenly deafening on the polished floor. You didn’t look back. The automatic doors hissed open, admitting the cool, damp air of the coming morning. But as you stepped outside, the image of the porcelain cup, the dark, thick liquid, and his hollow, knowing eyes was burned into your mind. This was more than a job. You knew that with a certainty that chilled you to the bone. This was much, much more.