Blood In The Machine Book Novels & Stories

Another message appeared. SERA REQUIRED. Then the final line. CRIMSON BLOOD PROTOCOL: ACTIVE. The chief engineer whispered, "No..." The machine began to hum. Deeply. Like something enormous breathing beneath the floor. The Council's senior representative slowly backed away from the screen. "What did we activate?" Nobody answered.

This place, with its humming energy and watchful silence, felt alive—and deeply aware of her presence. Determined to make sense of the situation, Emma turned her attention back to the machine. Its intricate design fascinated her: a combination of brass gears, glass tubes, and etched metal panels. Symbols similar to those in the book adorned its surface, glowing faintly as though imbued with latent energy. A single lever, now partially shifted, caught her eye. It bore the same triangular pattern she had seen throughout the manor.

"Run some tests on this blood in the labs and bring it back to me as soon as possible." The nurse nodded and made her way out of the room. I rose up from the bed and followed the doctor into a large, white room. Machines and equipment beeped, while the smell of antiseptics was still prominent in the air. In the middle of the room, was a lathe cylindrical machine, that I made out to be the scanner. Beside the machine was a small table that held tools that looked like complicated knives. I swallowed, following behind the doctor closely. He led me to the cylindrical machine and stretched out his hand towards it.

Machines — ancient-looking, brass and glass and ropes of silver tubing leaned over me, and tiny needles were already embedded in the veins along the crook of my arm. A glass vial at the end of a tube filled slowly with blood that shimmered strangely, the liquid catching the candlelight and running like molten moonlight. Someone had cut me, had hooked me up like an animal on a farm. I didn’t even feel cold. My skin felt like it had been stripped of sensation, as if my nerves were thick ropes in a storm. A thin, high laugh floated from somewhere deeper in the chamber. Voices argued in the dark beyond my sight; words, shredded and half-formed, slashed into my head between waves of nausea.

She nods. Taking a deep breath, I move to sit beside Fury and roll up my sleeve. The doctor swabs the inside of my arm before inserting the needle. There’s a sharp pinch, then a wave of warmth as my blood begins to flow through the enchanted tubing and into the pump. The machine hums quietly, regulating the flow before channeling it into a second tube connected to Fury’s arm. The process is ritualistic—familiar, yet far more intense than the last time I did this for Caspian, back when I was merely an Alpha swearing the sacred oath.

He kicked at the glass sphere. "Let go!" he snarled. The machine didn't crush him. It didn't apply pressure to his spine. It activated the siphoning sequence. The claw began to glow with a hungry, sucking darkness. Viggo stiffened. His back arched. His mouth opened in a silent, agonizing gasp. I felt the bond between us pull taut—a golden wire vibrating with his pain. Visible streams of red energy were ripped out of his chest. His strength, his metabolic fire, his very life was being vacuumed into the metal. The energy flowed up the machine’s arm, feeding the tubes.

Its internal gears ground loudly as it raised two plasma blades. I did not wait for it to strike. I lunged forward, sliding under its guard. The heat from its weapons singed my hair. I drove my sword upward into the glowing orange core in its chest. The steel blade sparked against the brass plating, but it punched through. The machine shrieked. It did not bleed. It leaked a thick, viscous black oil that smelled like burnt ozone. It thrashed violently, its remaining two arms swinging down to crush my skull.

She looked at Dante not as a lover, but as a jailer who had forgotten to double-check the lock. Dante was on his feet, his naked chest heaving. The "Blood Protocol" wasn't just a flicker in his eyes anymore; it was a total eclipse. But for the first time, the machine was malfunctioning. His gaze darted between us—me, the "Ivy" he had just shared his bed with, and her, the "Ivy" who had clawed her way out of the basalt. "Dante," I whispered, my voice trembling as I clutched my robe shut. "What is this?"

My hands were shaky or maybe I was the one wobbly. I feel blood slowly run out of my nose like I was an active volcanic mountain, erupting molten lava, bit by bit. In This case, my body was the mountain, and my nose was the vent from which thick blood spilled out. I cleaned them up some more, with my hands. It made it a whole lot messier, the blood was now spread on my nose and mouth region. Blood ran down my nose, staining my mouth, and droplets of blood were on my lab cloth. All that had happened now had drawn the attention of the kids by my side.

His mouth had moved to his forehead, his eyes reddened, they were held by a single line from the socket. “You don’t learn your lessons, do you?” Then he spun around and threw me at a tree. BANG I coughed up the blood that had formed in my chest from the impact. My heartbeat hammered in my ears. What the hell was this thing? It slowly made its way towards me, opening its gaping maw that led into the darkness and sharpened teeth ready to pierce through its victim. The heat in my chest slowly built up, a heat that was familiar but strange.