Bloodbank

Eleven

I tried to stay calm as we approached the door from which the incessant screaming was coming from.

Every step towards the door made the noise louder, more desperate. It clawed at my ears and sent shivers down my spine, and yet I still made no move to try and escape my captors.

As the heavy door was pushed open, I immediately saw the source of the noise; a woman, being tackled to the ground by a large, muscular man, tears streaming down her face and her arms swinging around wildly.

"Are you going to be quiet now?" The man asked, and I noticed the AB + tattooed on her neck, above the neckline of the dress she wore, identical to mine.

As the man eased himself off her, she made a break for the door, her fingers desperately clawing at the frame and her messy, auburn tangles flying behind her. The men alongside me restrained her quickly, and as they pulled her into the dressing room - like setup, her eyes met with mine.

"Why aren't you fighting?" She sobbed as she was shoved through another set of doors. I would never see her face again, but what she said to me sunk deep.

It seemed as though I had been numbed to the world through the last month. Every litre of blood they took from me took more of my spirit with it, and at this point I had almost completely given up. My news from earlier in the day had only further diminished me, knowing that I was doomed to the same fate as my father, powerless to stop it.

I was numb inside, but even that couldn't extinguish the glimmer of hope that somehow, Scott was coming for me. He had been nothing but cold towards me in the few short days I was under his control, yet I couldn't stop thinking about him, and how I knew that he would want to make Mason pay for what he did. Scott would rescue me.

*******

"Ebony, type C," a disembodied voice above the stage I had been shoved out onto called. From what the men told me, I was about to be sold off to the highest bidder, who would then collect me in a few days' time, and continuously use me as a personal bloodbank, like a cow, if you like, until I died. Oh, and there was some Lord of some crap in the audience who wanted a type C.

Blinded by stage lights that penetrated my deathly pale skin, I could barely see the audience. Mere silhouettes were all I had to go by, and the shadow of small cups being passed around, undoubtedly full of my blood as a sample for the potential buyers.

Mild murmurs made my back erupt in shivers, and a single voice rose above the rest: a perfectly enunciated phrase that immediately produced an air of superiority.

"A million litres of AB"

All other voices silenced.

"Two."

This voice, while all others would have reduced me further into this state of never ending numbness, proved to be a spark in the darkness: a sliver of familiarity among the last few days of constant fear.

While a month ago I ran from this voice, now I wished to embrace it.

"Ten million"

The earlier voice echoed in the tense room, unmistakably belonging to the Lord. What felt like hours followed, before a curt "Sold" boomed overhead. Yet my hope did not diminish. It didn't matter that Scott hadn't bought me: it mattered that he was here, and I knew that he would come for me.

Ushered back behind the curtain, a set of substantial handcuffs were carefully clamped around my wrists. Clearly, my body was of more value now that they had a buyer, and this became very obvious as three men escorted me down a cold and unfamiliar corridor.

That was when a similarly cold hand belonging to one of the three slipped into my own hand, fingers lacing with mine, and Nathan's warm, friendly voice tickled my ear, "you're going to be okay"

And then all hell broke loose.