He knocked at the door. Kate could hardly believe it. She didn't believe it. Lucern's idea of breaking into the blood bank was knocking at the bloody door? He really needed to get a TV so that he could get a grip on reality. One didn't pull a break and enter by knocking.
Maybe he'd lost his mind, she thought unhappily. That thought took hold, and Kate considered it seriously. It was definitely possible. The hunger and pain caused by his lack of blood could have pushed him over the edge. He might now be a raving lunatic, she thought. So she told him so.
"You're insane," she muttered in the silence that followed his knock. "The bloodlust has driven you over the edge. You—"
She snapped her mouth closed as the side door opened. Kate was so surprised she merely stood and gaped as a man appeared. Sandy-haired and about her age, he wore a lab coat and a questioning expression as if it were only slightly out of the ordinary for people to be knocking at the side door after hours.
Kate hadn't really expected anyone to answer but, if she had, the last person she would've expected was one of the blood-bank workers. They should all be at home, shouldn't they? She'd expected a security guard, or maybe a member of a cleaning crew.
Her thoughts were distracted when the fellow seemed to notice their ski masks. She was pretty sure that was the cause of the sudden panic on the man's face. When he started to close the door, Kate glanced at Lucern and gave him a nudge. Apparently, she needn't have bothered. In the next moment, the man halted. Lucern was already working to control his mind.
There was silence as Lucern merely stared at the man, whose face slowly became blank. Lucern asked pleasantly, "Are you alone?"
"Yes." The blood-bank worker's voice was dull, almost sounded drugged.
"Are their security cameras here?" Lucern asked.
Kate felt justified in having insisted on the ski masks when the man said yes. Lucern, though, looked less than pleased. She supposed he'd hoped to take his mask off.
"Would you be so good as to show us to your supply of blood?" Lucern asked next. Kate rolled her eyes at his Old-World courtesy. It seemed the man did everything that way. Even break-and-enter.
When the blood-bank worker turned and started up the hall, Lucern glanced at Kate. "Wait here. I'll return directly."
"Yeah, right," was her answer. She hefted her bag over her shoulder and followed him inside. This had been her idea; she'd be damned if she was going to wait out in an alley, wringing her hands like some wimpy heroine in a novel.
Lucern glared at her. She glared back. Moving to follow the man in the lab coat, she left Luc to fall into step behind her.
She glanced around nervously as they walked up the hall. The blood bank was as silent as a tomb. Not a happy thought, she decided, but it brought to mind coffins and she wondered about them. Obviously, Lucern didn't need to sleep in one. While he had reinforced the darkness in his hotel room by hanging a blanket over the curtains, he wasn't sleeping in a coffin. She supposed that was something else Stoker had got wrong. But, then, according to Lucern, he didn't need a coffin because he wasn't dead. He was just old.
Kate was scowling as she, Luc and their guide entered a room with metal and glass refrigerators around it. Luc was very old. She usually preferred to date men her own age. Lucern did not fit in that category. She could safely say he was the oldest man she'd ever dated. Maybe he was the oldest man anyone had ever dated.
She paused just inside the door and merely watched as Lucern walked past her to one of the refrigerators. He opened its door, revealing neat rows of the red liquid he so needed.
Kate peered curiously at the man in the lab coat. He looked completely out of it, a zombie at Lucern's mercy, and she felt a moment's gratitude that she had a strong mind. If not, Luc could have put the whammy on her and gotten her to do anything he wanted. Which was a scary thought.
She turned her attention back to Lucern, then watched with interest as he selected a bag and poked his teeth into it. The procedure was pretty clean. He was apparently able to suck the blood directly up through his teeth like through straws, because he just stood there, teeth inserted as the blood drained away. It was relatively quick. Still, Kate found herself glancing nervously up the hall as she waited for him to finish.
Lucern went through eight bags that way, one right after the other. When he had finished with the last, he started to close the refrigerator door. Kate rushed forward and stopped him.
"What are you doing?" he asked as she opened her backpack. She began shoving bags in.
"Getting some to go. You'll need more tomorrow," she pointed out. "And I don't want to go through this again."
Lucern nodded. "Take the empty bags, too," he instructed. Then he moved to the blood-bank worker, murmuring something she couldn't hear.