My Stepmom Is A Vampire & Her Entire Bloodline Wants To Breed Me

Chapter 196: Slaughterhouse

Dylan blinked hard as awareness crept back into his body, only to realize he couldn’t move. Thick restraints pinned his wrists and ankles to a cold metal table.

Panic surged instantly as he groaned and strained against them, muscles screaming in protest.

"Ohh, fuck that bastard Otto," he hissed under his breath.

His head throbbed violently, vision spinning every time he shifted. The overhead lights stabbed straight into his eyes making his skull feel like it was splitting apart.

Whatever he had been given wasn’t ordinary alcohol. His tongue felt numb, his limbs heavy, and his thoughts sluggish, but instinct screamed at him to stay awake.

Then he heard voices.

"The subject is stable. You can inject him with Progenitor Residuum."

Dylan’s breath hitched.

Footsteps approached. He forced his eyes open wider, fighting through the haze, and the room slowly came into focus. He was in what looked like an operating room, surgical tools lay neatly arranged on stainless steel tables, scalpels and forceps beside heavier instruments.

A sternal saw rested among them, its teeth glinting under the lights, and nearby were devices Dylan didn’t even recognize, all of them designed for cutting, breaking, or prying things open.

A figure stepped into view.

The man wore a doctor’s coat, but his skin was ghostly pale, and his eyes were hollow like glass marbles with nothing behind them.

In his hand was a syringe filled with thick maroon liquid, slowly sloshing as he moved closer to Dylan’s arm.

Dylan’s heart slammed against his ribs.

"Wait!" he shouted suddenly.

All movement in the room stopped. Three figures turned toward him in unison, all dressed the same, all wearing the same lifeless expression.

"I—I need to pee," Dylan blurted out, the words tumbling out awkwardly. He sounded half delirious, half desperate.

"Like, really need to. You want me to piss all over this place?"

As he spoke, sweat soaked into his palms. He twisted his wrist subtly, testing the restraint, and felt it shift just a fraction.

"He’s delirious," one of them said flatly. "The liquor’s effect hasn’t worn off yet."

"Should we wait?"

"What does the protocol say?"

They started debating among themselves, their voices overlapping in mechanical confusion, and Dylan knew this was it. This was the only opening he would get.

’Come on. Come on.’

He pulled harder, ignoring the pain tearing through his shoulder. The strap slipped and his hand came free.

Without thinking, he lunged forward and grabbed the scalpel from the nearby tray just as one of the doctors turned his head.

Dylan slammed the blade straight into the man’s eye. The scream that followed was sharp and piercing, cut short as the body collapsed onto the floor in a heap.

The remaining two doctors stared for a split second before slamming the emergency button. Red lights flooded the room as alarms shrieked, the sound drilling into Dylan’s already pounding head.

"Fuck!"

He tore at the remaining restraints, ripping himself free and rolling off the table just as one of them lunged for him. Dylan stumbled but didn’t fall, swinging wildly and driving a fist into the man’s face.

The impact sounded like cracking porcelain, and the doctor crumpled to the floor unmoving.

The last one charged.

Dylan grabbed the stainless steel tray and smashed it across the man’s skull with everything he had. The tray bent on impact, clattering loudly as the body dropped and groaned weakly.

No time.

He stripped the fallen doctor of his lab coat and took his jacket, and trousers in a trash bin. Sirens echoed in the hallway now, heavy footsteps approaching fast.

Clad in stolen uniform and fueled by sheer adrenaline, Dylan bolted through the opposite door, disappearing down the corridor just seconds before armed guards flooded the operating room.

He slipped into a room that looked like a storage area and slammed the door shut behind him.

Shelves lined the walls, packed with crates and metal containers, and he shoved one of them hard against the door, dragging it until it wedged in place.

He leaned back against the shelf and exhaled shakily.

For a few seconds, he just stood there, forcing air into his lungs, letting his racing thoughts slow enough to make sense of them. This wasn’t just some random facility. This was a lab. A hidden one.

And if the information Velstarth had gathered was even half correct, then this place existed for one purpose only: turning the teenagers and young adults they "recruited" into vampires through surgical procedures and took their cores out.

The wound on Alex’s chest made a sickening kind of sense now. The recruiters were bait. The real work happened here.

The Vitalis Cores they harvested weren’t just trophies or power sources. They were raw material. Ingredients used to create what they considered "perfect vampires," and the Red Zone was where every secret tied to that process was buried.

"Seamus has to be here somewhere," Dylan muttered to himself. "There’s no way he isn’t."

The thought of regrouping crossed his mind immediately. His instincts screamed that sticking together was safer. His pride, however, rejected the idea just as quickly.

If he went looking for Seamus now and failed, they might both end up cornered. Worse, the emergency alert he triggered earlier meant security would tighten fast, sealing off corridors and restricting access.

Time wasn’t on his side.

"Fine," he said quietly, nodding to himself. "I’ll search for him while I investigate."

His relief returned briefly when he checked his pockets and confirmed that both his gun and dagger were still there. That small certainty grounded him. At least he wasn’t defenseless.

He adjusted his disguise carefully. Beneath the lab coat, a patient robe clung to him uncomfortably, but he tucked it neatly under the trousers and straightened the name tag on his chest.

With the coat buttoned and his posture confident, he could pass as staff as long as he didn’t draw attention.

Before leaving, Dylan scanned the storage room for anything useful. The shelves held surgical tools, injection kits, sealed containers filled with clear fluids, and more of that same maroon liquid he’d seen earlier. He paused, staring at it longer this time.

"That stuff again," he murmured. "Progenitor Residuum."

Whatever it was, it mattered. Enough to strap people down and inject them without hesitation. He took one and put it in the doctor lab so he could bring it back to the orphanage.

He pushed the shelves back into place, opening the door as if nothing unusual had happened, then stepped into the hallway.

The lights were bright and calm, washed in sterile white. Alarms were gone. Staff moved efficiently from room to room, none of them reacting as if anything had gone wrong. It was unsettling how quickly normalcy returned.

Dylan merged into a small group heading down a side corridor, matching their pace, his head lowered.

The deeper he walked, the more wrong this place felt. Otto had said everyone in the Red Zone was a vampire, but these so-called doctors felt weak and fragile.

The group stopped in front of a large chamber, and Dylan followed them inside.

The room was divided by reinforced glass. On the other side was what looked like an arena, wide and circular, its floor stained dark.

Inside it were dozens of young vampires. Some were barely teenagers. Others were children. Their expressions ranged from fear to confusion to something dangerously feral.

One of them slammed herself against the glass, fists pounding as she screamed. "Fuck you! What did you do to us? Let us go!"

Her eyes locked onto Dylan’s for a brief second before he forced himself to look away, pretending to check something on a clipboard that didn’t exist.

"They’ll be tested first," one of the doctors said calmly. "Then we decide who joins us and who gets harvested."

Dylan’s stomach twisted.

The man speaking stood apart from the others, clearly in charge. He looked young, maybe twenty-five, with white hair and striking golden eyes that gleamed under the lights.

He stood on a raised platform facing the glass, a microphone mounted in front of him and a control panel at his fingertips.

Dylan caught the name on his badge.

Mark Latros.

His blood ran cold.

’That Latros.’

Mark’s eyes swept the room and briefly met Dylan’s. A slow, knowing smirk curved his lips as he raised his voice.

"Open the gate," he announced lazily. "Let’s see if this batch lives up to expectations."

He pressed a button.

On the far side of the glass, a gate slid open with a heavy mechanical groan, and something massive emerged from the darkness beyond.

The creature was enormous, nearly five meters tall, moving with the hunched posture of a gorilla. Three distorted faces shared a single grotesque head, mouths stretching and twitching independently as it roared.

It charged toward the vampires. One of the young vampires didn’t even have time to scream before the monster crushed them beneath its hand.

"Don’t kill them!" Mark snapped, tapping another control. "We need the Vitalis Cores intact."

Electric current surged through the monster, causing it to convulse mid-motion, its howls echoing through the chamber.

Dylan swallowed hard, his pulse hammering in his ears.

He wasn’t just in danger anymore.

He was standing inside a slaughterhouse.