I Sliced My Hand at the Blood Bank, and Now My Vampire Boss is Obsessed with Me

The air inside Aeterna Labs was cold and smelled of antiseptic, a sterile scent that seemed to scrub the very oxygen from your lungs. It was your first night, and the silence was the most unsettling part. It wasn't just quiet; it was a profound, weighted emptiness, broken only by the low, constant hum of the cryogenic freezers that lined the walls like polished silver tombs. The lights overhead were a flat, shadowless white, making the pristine laboratory feel more like an operating theater than an office.

You ran a hand over the cool stainless steel of a workstation, your reflection looking pale and tired. This job was a lifeline. The salary was almost obscenely generous for a night-shift lab technician, enough to finally make a dent in the mountain of your mother’s medical bills. It was enough to give her the care she deserved, the kind you could never have afforded otherwise. For that kind of money, you told yourself, you could handle anything. You could handle the isolation, the strange hours, the complete lack of human contact.

Your supervisor, a Mr. Julian Thorne, was a ghost. His instructions came via perfectly typed notes left on your terminal at the start of each shift. The first one had been waiting for you, a single sheet of heavy cream-colored paper beneath your keyboard.

Ms. Davies,

Welcome to Aeterna Labs. Your duties are outlined in the attached digital manual. Adherence to protocol is not a guideline; it is a mandate. Your focus will be on the intake and cataloging of all new acquisitions. Precision is paramount. There is no room for error here.

J. Thorne

No welcome, no pleasantries. Just cold, hard instruction. You spent the first few hours absorbing the manual, your fingers clicking softly on the keyboard as you navigated the complex inventory system. The work was meticulous, demanding absolute concentration. Cross-referencing donor codes, verifying temperature logs, ensuring every single vial was stored in its exact designated location. You moved through the silent rows of freezers, your rubber-soled shoes making no sound on the polished concrete floor.

You were the only one here. The orientation had been conducted via a video conference with a disembodied HR voice. You were told Mr. Thorne was the sole night supervisor and preferred to work without distraction from his private office at the end of the main corridor—a hallway that remained perpetually dark. You hadn't seen him, hadn't heard him. For all you knew, he was just a name on a piece of paper. The thought left a chill on your skin that had nothing to do with the lab’s temperature. You pushed it away, focusing on the numbers on the screen in front of you. You would be the perfect employee. You would be precise. You would be invisible. You would do whatever it took to keep this job.

The second week passed much like the first. The silence became a familiar companion, the sterile environment a second skin. You fell into a rhythm, a nightly dance with data and refrigeration units. Scan, log, file, repeat. The work was demanding, but the monotony was almost meditative, and you found a strange comfort in the precision of it all. The typed notes from Mr. Thorne continued to appear, always polite, always impersonal. You had done your job perfectly. Until tonight.

It was almost 3 a.m., that dead hour when the body’s rhythms dip and the mind fogs. Your eyes burned from staring at the screen. You were processing a new shipment, a high-priority acquisition from a private client in Geneva. Your fingers flew across the keyboard, entering the long alphanumeric strings. You typed in the cryo-unit assignment code, hit enter, and leaned back to rub your eyes. When you looked back at the screen, a cold dread washed over you. Lot 7B-418. It was supposed to be in Sub-Zero Unit 14. You had assigned it to Unit 41.

A stupid, simple transposition. But in a place where precision was paramount, it was a cardinal sin.

Your stomach plummeted. You could already picture the note that would be waiting for you tomorrow. Colder, sharper. A formal warning. Maybe not even that. Maybe just a final paycheck and a notice of termination. All your careful work, undone by a moment of exhaustion. Your breath caught in your throat as you stared at the incorrect entry, the blinking cursor a tiny, mocking heartbeat. You couldn't fix it. Once an entry was logged and sealed, it required supervisory override.

You squeezed your eyes shut, bracing for the phantom sting of failure. You had to report it. You reached for the internal messaging system, your hand trembling slightly.

A subtle shift in the air made the fine hairs on your arms stand up. You weren't alone.

You opened your eyes and he was there, standing beside your workstation as if he had been there all along. He hadn’t made a sound. One moment, there was an empty, sterile expanse of white tile, the next, there was him. He was taller than you’d imagined, dressed in a dark, impeccably tailored suit that seemed to drink the sterile white light of the lab. His stillness was absolute, his presence so commanding it felt like the air had grown thicker, heavier.

Your apology died on your lips. His gaze wasn't on you, but on the monitor, his dark eyes scanning the incorrect entry. You felt pinned in your chair, exposed under his silent scrutiny. A long moment passed, the only sound the low hum of the freezers.

Then he moved. With a fluid, unnerving grace, he leaned in, his shoulder brushing yours. The clean, cold scent of the lab seemed to emanate from him, sharp and distinct. He didn't speak. He simply reached past you, his long fingers hovering over the keyboard before moving to the screen.

"The error is here," he said. His voice was a low, quiet baritone that vibrated through the space between you. As he pointed to the incorrect field on the monitor, the side of his hand brushed against yours where it rested on the mouse.

A jolt, sharp and electric, shot up your arm. His skin was cool, impossibly smooth, and the brief contact left a trail of fire in its wake. You snatched your hand back as if burned, your heart hammering against your ribs. You looked from the screen to his face, finally seeing him clearly. He had a face of stark, elegant angles—high cheekbones, a severe jawline, a mouth that seemed carved from stone. But it was his eyes that held you. They were the color of night, deep and unreadable, and they were fixed on you with an intensity that felt less like an accusation and more like a question.

He straightened slowly, his gaze never leaving yours. After a moment that stretched into an eternity, he gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. Then he turned and walked back toward the dark corridor, melting into the shadows as silently as he had emerged.

The encounter left you unsettled for days. You replayed the brief, cool touch of his hand, the unnerving silence of his arrival and departure. You found yourself glancing toward the dark corridor more often, half-hoping, half-dreading you might see him again. But the lab returned to its silent, sterile normal, and the only communication you received were the same impersonal notes left on your terminal each night. You redoubled your efforts, your focus absolute, determined not to make another mistake.

Weeks later, you were in the middle of a routine diagnostic on the cryo-storage network when a piercing shriek shattered the silence. It wasn't a fire alarm; it was a high, insistent electronic wail that vibrated in your teeth. Red lights flashed across the main control panel, bathing the white room in a hellish, pulsing glow.

CRITICAL FAILURE: UNIT 7.

Your blood ran cold. Unit 7. It housed the oldest, most irreplaceable samples in the entire facility—the foundational acquisitions upon which Aeterna Labs had been built. The monitor displayed a cascading stream of error messages. Temperature rising. Coolant pump offline. Catastrophic failure imminent.

Panic, cold and sharp, seized you. The manual override. You had to get to the unit. You launched out of your chair and ran, your shoes squeaking against the polished floor. The unit was at the far end of the main storage bay, its indicator light blinking a frantic, desperate red. You fumbled with the emergency release panel, your fingers slick with sweat. The heavy, insulated door hissed open, releasing a cloud of frigid vapor.

Inside, the racks were a complex lattice of gleaming steel. The samples had to be moved, transferred to the backup unit, but the release mechanism for the primary tray was stuck. You pulled, grunting with effort, your muscles screaming in protest. It wouldn't budge. Desperate, you braced your feet and gave one last, frantic heave. The latch gave way with a sickening crack, and your hand scraped hard against the sharp edge of the metal rack beside it.

A searing pain shot up your arm. You cried out, snatching your hand back. A deep, clean slice ran diagonally across your palm, welling instantly with dark, crimson blood. You stared at it, dumbstruck, as a droplet fell, a perfect red circle against the pristine white floor. The coppery, metallic scent of it hit the cold air, thick and potent.

The alarm was still screaming, but it seemed to fade into the background.

In the space between one frantic heartbeat and the next, he was there. Julian. He stood not three feet away, his body blocking the doorway. He hadn't come from the hall; he had simply appeared in the swirling cryo-mist, a dark, solid shape in the chaos of the flashing red lights.

He paid no mind to the wailing alarm or the failing storage unit. His attention was fixed, utterly and completely, on your hand. His dark eyes, usually so unreadable, were wide, the pupils blown so large they nearly eclipsed the iris. His posture was rigid, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. A low sound, almost a growl, vibrated in his chest. As he took a slow, deliberate step toward you, his gaze locked on the blood beading on your skin, you saw an expression on his face that was raw and terrifying. It was not concern. It was not anger. It was a deep, frightening hunger, a predatory intensity that stripped away the veneer of the quiet, enigmatic supervisor and revealed something ancient and dangerous beneath.