Mycroft sorted through the papers in the file on his lap while dictating new information to his secretary, Anthea, who was typing it up in a short hand of her own invention on what appeared to be a blackberry. He tutted at a note on one of the sheets, a heavily annotated room plan of the upper floors of the Bulgari Hotel.
"These room arrangements will have to change, the Chinese ambassador's bodyguard is having an affair with the Japanese ambassador. They'll need to be at least a floor away from each other. And the Spanish ambassador can't sit next to the Italian ambassador, so the seating plan for dinner will need to be completely rearranged." Mycroft looked almost crushed at this detail, the tiny flaws in an otherwise perfectly planned meeting, as much as he ever showed an expression of his true feelings. His assistant simply smiled to herself a little and pulled up the seating plans, adding to the notes she had already made. She gave the plans a quick glance and shifted through files almost too fast to read, speaking aloud to allow Mycroft to add information should he so wish.
"I can put their wives between them, but that will mean the French ambassadors wife is next to the Spanish ambassador… she doesn't speak fluent Spanish, so that won't work… if I move them both across the table they'll see it as a slight, but they can't stay there- I'll sort it for Monday." She shook her head slightly, chocolate curls springing neatly off her perfectly tailored jacket collar, and closed the file, pulling up a calendar in its place, only for a bell to ring out shrilly, echoing off the plush interior of the car and bouncing around in the enclosed space. Neither of the occupants flinched at the shriek, Mycroft simply pressing a button on his phone, silencing the noise. He closed his file and set it aside on the smooth leather seat, turning to face Anthea more fully.
Anthea saved her files, and quickly changed her phone to vibrate before putting it away. "Eddie, screen please." The driver responded quickly to her quiet instruction, pressing the button to make the opaque screen slide into place between the driver and his passengers. As the mechanism clicked into place the secretary unbuttoned the top two buttons of her cream silk blouse and moved her hair to the side, allowing her employer to pull her closer to him and bite through the scarred skin of her neck, carefully lapping up the blood that spilled from his teeth before it had a chance to stain her collar.
She settled more comfortably against him as he sucked the warm, clean blood from her throat, relaxing when he became less tense as his hunger was sated. She closed her eyes, thinking of ways to rearrange seating plans and of the lists of things she needed to do once they returned to the office. Used to the regular feeds, she no longer flinched at the feeling of blood leaving her body, ignoring the odd pull of Mycroft's sucking and the way his skin felt cold against her neck.
The politician was trying his best to restrict the amount of blood he took, but he had been away from his donor for days and was unusually hungry, so when he finally stopped taking blood, his secretary had fainted, slumped across his lap. It wasn't a new occurrence, so he just pulled the blanket from under the chair, tucked it around her as he moved her to be led more comfortably across his knee, and cleared up the bite mark on her neck with a wipe from her bag.
When the unassuming black car stopped outside the gentleman's club Mycroft favoured, she shifted into his lap more, murmuring quietly as she woke up.
"Sleeping… Mr Holmes?" She pushed off his knee to sit up, and he held his arm out to assist her.
"It's my fault, my dear, I apologise, I was hungrier than I thought. You stay here, I'll go into the meeting alone." He tucked the file he had been studying back into its bag and twitched out the wrinkles in his jacket.
She settled back as he stood and left the car, relaxing into the seat and snuggling back against the warm leather, pulling her blanket tighter around her shoulders as she watched him enter the Diogenes club. She awoke a little as a shadow in a long coat detached from the wall and followed her employer into the building, always a few steps behind, but close enough to slip through the gilded double doors before they closed. She shook her head a little, taking her blackberry out and sending a quick text to Mycroft's phone.
Your brother is following you. A
She smiled a little at the response.
Please find him a donor. MH
The only reason Sherlock ever voluntarily contacted his brother was when he needed to feed and couldn't be bothered to find a supply of his own. She took a rattling box filled with syringes and vials from beneath her seat and began to slowly extract blood for Sherlock, carefully monitoring the amount so as not to faint again. She set a reminder on her phone to get herself hooked to an IV fluids line once they were back at the office and took a ready mixed nutrient shake from her bag to help replace the fluids she was losing.
Once she had enough ready for Sherlock to collect after he was done antagonising his brother, Anthea turned her thoughts to the new problem: how to find someone who wouldn't panic at the thought of donating blood to a vampire, a subspecies which the modern world viewed with disgust and often terror. Lost in thought, she startled slightly as her phone vibrated again.
Perhaps some sort of doctor? MH