Silas told him everything he knew, which was at the same level as a government broadcast.

Jack stared at him. “Fifty or so resignations, and they kidnapped a Circle magus? Why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

He gestured to himself. “We’re still investigating, but they were smart. They destroyed all of their files, and we haven’t been able to recover them yet. Also, look at me. I am not getting in Blackwell’s way again, and I advise for you to avoid her, too.”

Jack shook his head. “I already told you, I can’t do that.” He turned around, making to leave the office and being blocked by a wall of ghouls. “What is this, Sparkling Luft III? Let me out.”

Silas cleared his throat. “Are you forgetting the contract you signed?”

Jack scoffed. “You mean the job one you didn’t even let me read? Don’t screw around. Whatever the fine print is, I signed it under duress.”

Silas raised an eyebrow. “Be that as it may, you signed it. You’re now obligated to participate in the current blood drive.”

Jack’s mouth hung open. “What? You can’t do that, what about my human rights?”

Silas smiled. “You signed them over.”

He seethed. “You didn’t let me find out what I was signing! This is ridiculous!”

“This is business.”

The ghouls closed in on him, and Jack didn’t need a second prompt. He grabbed a pair of shoulders, vaulting over the creatures, making sure his foot accidentally hit the face of the one who’d elbowed him.

“F*ck this sh*t!” he shouted, shooting into the corridor so quickly he left the censor stars behind.

“Don’t let him escape!” Silas’ cry activated a stampede. As well as the security ghouls, a troop of vampires appeared at his back, plugging up the route to the elevators. They seemed huge to him, phantom saliva dripping from their incisors, without staining their suits.

He turned and ran. All of the corridors were the same, white walls and blue carpets and endless doors. He made a few random turns, his lungs feeling shredded, and his ears begging for release from the whooping in his wake.

He heard a horn.

Were they about to release the freaking hounds? He was sure that there were laws against human hunting, but he also had no idea what he had signed. They’d tricked him into becoming cattle.

"If you have the staff to spare chasing me, do something about the New Bloods!”

“But where’s the profit?” came a shout from the crowd.

“You won’t make anything from my blood! It’s made entirely of whiskey and bad decisions!”

He passed a water cooler, which was filled with a viscous liquid. He threw it to the floor behind him and continued.

The screams and howls almost shattered his eardrums.

As he turned another corner, he crashed into something and went sprawling: a skinny man, tall with dark brown skin and a thick moustache, wearing a football shirt and a frenzied snarl, emitting an overwhelming odour of curry.

“Oi,” said Jack, “since when do people smell like curry? I know the author’s creatively bereft, but that doesn’t excuse blatant racism!”

The man popped up to his feet, brandishing a jar of curry paste, his eyes wide. “Can’t you smell me? I ate all the curry I could, and now it’s too spicy, my blood’s worth nothing to you!”

Jack picked himself up, his face dropping. “How are you gonna scare them off with curry?”

He grinned. “Vampires don’t like spicy blood.”

“What, are you injecting the curry, or smoking it? How do you even know that?”

The man looked at him, his eyes betraying a depth of tumult and conflict. “I’ve been a blood slave here for a while, you pick some things up. My name’s Gerald. Did you escape too? I’ve been biding my time, and that ruckus earlier was the perfect cover.” He began walking past Jack.

Jack stopped him with a hand on the chest, knitting his brows. “Jack. And down there’s no good. What do you mean ‘for a while’? How long have you been here?”

Gerald quirked an eyebrow. “Um, I’m not sure. How long ago was the whole ‘Y2K’ thing?”

Jack’s expression tightened, his upper lip twitching. Blood slavery had been outlawed in the late forties, almost as soon as vampire society had been integrated with humans. “You poor bastard, this is a bloody travesty!”

“This is capitalism,” said Gerald.

“Oi,” said Jack, “don’t say things like that. What if the readers accuse us of being woke?”

Gerald narrowed his eyes. “Then we go back to sleep.”

Jack rubbed his forehead. “You’d probably make better jokes.”

He made a mental note to investigate Silas along with the New Bloods, provided he got out alive. Grabbing Gerald by the arm, he moved forward, but the other man held him back.

“Not that way,” said Gerald. “They have the lifts too.”

“And how do you propose we get to the stairs, then?” He heard a baying from front and back, and they both paled.

Gerald grabbed him, ducking through a wooden door that the natural disaster had missed. “In here! The conference rooms are all...”

The door slammed shut, and before them was a long table taking up most of the room, twelve vampires in suits sitting around it. One, a portly man with a goatee, was standing in front of a screen covered in pie charts and diagrams. They were all staring holes through Jack and Gerald.

“Environmental Health Organisation,” said Jack, stooping to look underneath the table. “Just making sure you’re all up to code.”

A vampire at the foot of the table, a blonde woman fighting to keep her eyes open, sniffed. “Since when do EHO dress like they got kicked out of a Hell’s Seraphim meeting?”

Jack snorted, leading Gerald around the table to the door opposite the screen. “You fool! How are we supposed to do surprise inspections if you can see us coming?”

She shrugged. “Just saying. Besides, the blood stores are in the basement.”

Jack blanched. He and Gerald had made it to the other door, but one-by-one, the vampires began to stand.

“Isn’t that Lorelei’s boy?”

Gerald squealed, ducking behind Jack.

A geriatric man in front of him rose, supported by a cane, and he snatched it, watching him fall. Brandishing the cane, he opened the door, gesturing Gerald through without taking his eyes off the troop of vampires.

“Go!” he said. “I’ll buy you some time!”

Gerald bolted, and Jack waved the cane through one of his forms. His movements were clunky and awkward, but eight years of kendo practice had turned that into deception. Every time a vampire advanced, he would repel them with a swift smack, instantly returning to his defensive base. There were a lot of them, though. As they gained their collective senses, they split into three groups, each attacking from a different angle.

Gerald had made it through five conference rooms, all mercifully empty. If he remembered correctly, then the next one would exit across from the fire stairs, meaning he was almost free; he wouldn’t have been there without Jack’s sacrifice, though, so he resolved to live enough for two.

“Run like an Iranian homosexual!”

Gerald’s head crawled around, his eyes bulging from their sockets. “What are you doing? You barely lasted two paragraphs!”

Jack stormed past him, opening the door to the corridor with tears in his eyes. “Two paragraphs is a lot of work for a chimp with broken elbows, give the author a break!”

Gerald stuttered as Jack grabbed his arm, dragging him back into the corridor. To their left was a pair of double doors, the green sign above designating it as a fire escape, and to their right was a horde of vampires and ghouls.

“Remember what I just told you?” said Jack.

“‘Run like an Iranian homosexual?’” said Gerald.

Jack nodded. “Said homosexual is also an atheist.”

Gerald gulped, and they cannoned towards their escape, the growling of their pursuers palpable in its proximity.

***

Lydia had nothing. She was wandering random streets, because it was better than standing still. Back home, she’d have had minions to do the searching for her, but she couldn’t call herself a magus if she couldn’t figure something like that out - and besides, if the wasteland her mother sent her to ended up being the key to saving Jess, she could rub it in her face forever.

It would become the second-most enjoyment she got out of rubbing something. Lydia almost grinned, but snapped her focus back. Jess came first.

That said, she didn’t even know where to start. She had been walking for some time, and found herself on a narrow road, flanked by semi-detached houses with lawns and hedges. Both kerbs were filled with cars, and she found herself having to avoid wing mirrors as she continued along the uneven pavement, dusk beginning to fall.

“Here, you,” said a voice from her left, “you look like a woman with troubles.”

Lydia’s head span around, seeing nothing but bush, and her lip curled in disgust. “Who are you? Where are you?”

“I’m a hedge witch.”

She narrowed her eyes at the hedge before her, face aghast. “A what? So are you a witch who lives in a hedge, some type of plant mutant, or just an idiot?”

The hedge rustled. “How very dare you, I’ll have you know that our Coven is a respected part of the community!”

“That doesn’t answer my question...”

“We hedge witches have been around since before the Tower moved, trading favours for anyone who needs our help, and who can pay the price, o’course, with our powers ranging from simple fortune-telling to- oi, where you going?”

Lydia started stomping away, sighing. “I don’t see why I should have to listen to you. I don’t need the help of some bush monster.”

“Who you calling a bush monster? I’ll have you know I keep a strict grooming schedule for my bush!”

Lydia scowled. “I definitely don’t need to hear about your bush. I can do my own magic, thank you very much."

The hedge scoffed, as much as it is possible for a hedge to scoff, producing a noise more like cracking twigs. “Then why don’t you?”

Lydia backed up, shoving her face at the bush with a huff. “Why’s that any of your business?”

The witch cackled. “It’s something you can’t do, isn’t it? Aw, imagine that, big-shot city-girl magus with Swiss cheese skills.”

She exhaled through her teeth; the hedge witch was right. Tracking magic required one to be able to direct energy over long distances, something she had never learned how to do. She had never needed to. “If you’re so insistent, then perhaps I’ll let you prove yourself to me. How quickly can you find somebody?”

The hedge laughed. “Depends on what you got for me. DNA works best for the spell, even if it’s old, and I’m partial to a block of blue cheese. Mouldier the better.”

Lydia smiled, pulling a hairbrush from her jacket pocket. She’d managed to grab it from Jess’ room before she left. Even if she couldn’t do it herself, she still knew how it worked. As soon as it was near the hedge, it sucked it in, almost pulling Lydia along.

“If you help me find my sister, I’ll bring you a full wheel.”

***

“Do you know why vampires sparkle?” Jack and Gerald were hammering down a concrete stairwell, bare and utilitarian, with sweat flying off their brows, the pounding of their feet bouncing from the walls.

“I always thought their skin cells were like crystals, and refracted the light?”

Jack sputtered, almost choking on his panting laughter. “Pfft, seriously? That’s too absurd even for this novel! It’s to attract their prey, and ward off enemies.”

Gerald stared at him with a snarl, almost tripping over himself. They were halfway down. “How does that help us?”

Jack caught him, and they passed a door with a sign reading ‘24F’. “Vampires aren’t very good at chasing, so don’t worry about them. It’s the ghouls you need to-”

Gerald cried out, and Jack turned to see a pair of ghouls dragging him through the door. He grit his teeth. “Gerald!”

“Leave me, save yourself!” Gerald disappeared, and the door slammed shut, leaving him in cacophonous silence.

For some reason, there was a three-foot wooden rod next to the door. Putting aside the contrived logic, he picked it up, clenching his jaw, and went on the warpath. He hadn’t known Gerald for long, but their shared terror had forged an unbreakable bond between them.

He burst through the doors, swatting aside vampires as he charged up the corridor, following the smell of curry, until he came to a black door, covered in runes and arcane sigils.

He barrelled through the entrance, finding himself in a torture chamber: there were no windows, the walls and floor packed with racks and chains and whips, and in the centre of the room a throne, holding a tall woman with flowing black hair, eyes painted black and lips red, wearing a dangerous leather corset and thigh-high boots.

She was stroking Gerald’s hair, his head resting in her lap. “Who’s a good boy?”

Jack's face faulted. “Gerald? What’s going on, I thought you were a blood slave?” He was basically purring. “Why are you enjoying yourself?”

Gerald looked up, his nose wobbling as his mouth twisted into a horrified gash, tears threatening to fall from his eyes. “Are you kink-shaming me?”

He held up his hands. “What, no, of course not, I was just...” His expression twisted as the realisation hit him. “You duplicitous bastard, I’ll f*cking kill you!” He made a run for Gerald, but he was caught.

A pair of ghouls had come from the shadows, and gripped his arms tight.

The Vampinatrix grinned. Jack just flailed, gnashing his teeth. “No! You can’t do this to me, you assholes! What about my rights?”

She held up a piece of paper in her free hand, smirking. “But you freely gave us your consent.”

As the ghouls dragged him off, Jack had to fight not to cry. “There was nothing free about it, I was coerced! And isn’t the point of consent that I can withdraw it at any time? This is abuse! I demand a lawyer!”

Eventually, a solicitor was provided, who laughed and told Jack that it was his own stupid fault for signing the thing.

He needed a new career.