Page 55 of Johann

“Johann.”

Oh. Jay knew that voice. Wolfgang was here. Was he the appointed executioner?

Jay debated turning his head to the side to take a look—he was currently sprawled on the incredibly uncomfortable love seat Vee had always said was “more for aesthetic purposes than practical ones”—but he didn’t quite feel up to it. “I thought I bolted the front door,” he managed to say, his voice coming out quite hoarse, vibrating with his tremors.

“You did. I broke it.”

That made Jay laugh a little, but with another bout of shivers going, it came out strange. Like a death rattle.

“You’re aware you can’t actually die by starvation, aren’t you, little one?” Wolfe asked, sounding calm and cool as ever.

“’M aware,” Jay mumbled.

“Then what exactly is your goal here? No one’s seen you leave this house for more than a month. Have you really not fed for that long?” The sound of Jay’s teeth chattering was apparently answer enough, and Wolfe let out a long-suffering sigh. “Look at me, Johann.”

As tired as Jay was, disobeying a direct order went against his very nature (or at least, the nature Vee had cultivated so carefully). He painfully turned his head with a series of stuttered, jerky movements.

Yep. That was Wolfe all right. Jay’s…sort of friend? He was definitely frightening, in his own way, but he wasn’t overtly cruel in the fashion of so many of their den members. That was because he knew the importance of restraint, he’d once told Jay.

Also, he didn’t mind when Jay asked him questions about his psychopathy, so that gave him points in Jay’s book.

Wolfe clucked his tongue at whatever he found in Jay’s face. “You’re still wearing your suit, I see. I confess I’m surprised. You always seemed most uncomfortable in the clothes Vee made you wear.”

Jay didn’t have a response to that. In truth, he’d been wearing this same suit since Vee had died (he didn’t want to think about that; about her head ripped off, rolling on the ground), he was pretty sure. He’d lost his grasp on time for a long while, after he’d made it home, and when he’d eventually come back to awareness, he was already so cold, and sohungry.

“Your life is your own now, Johann. You can wear what you like.”

“You’re wearing a suit,” Jay pointed out, narrowing his eyes to try to focus through the shivers. A tweed number, to be exact. Wolfe’s outfits often had the effect of making the other vampire look mild and unassuming. A master of disguise, Wolfe was.

Wolfe gave a nod of acknowledgment. “I am. But I like suits. You don’t.”

“For how long?” Jay asked, his brain turning over Wolfe’s earlier words. “For how long is my life my own?”

Wolfe gazed at him for a long time then. Jay wasn’t a master of social cues by any means, but Wolfe was harder to read than most.

Especially when Jay’s eyes kept closing without his permission.

“I think you and I can help each other,” Wolfe finally said. “But first, you need to eat something. I’ve brought you a meal. He’s in the foyer.” Wolfe walked back to the doorway of the sitting room. “Enter,” he ordered to whoever was out there.

A tall, heavy-set man came into the room, his clothes just this side of threadbare. He looked like he had a lot of blood in his body was all Jay could think. He couldhearit rushing through the man’s vasculature, in fact. Jay’s beastie—who’d curled up inside him long ago, utterly exhausted from the lack of blood—perked up immediately.

Hungry.

Wolfe made eye contact with the obviously compelled human. “Stay calm, if you please. We’re all friends here.” He waved a hand at Jay, beckoning him over. “Come, Johann. Starvation will only make you weaker in their eyes.”

In the eyes of the den, he meant. In the eyes of those who were probably already weighing Jay’s value with or without his head.

Jay had always been weak. Easy prey. He knew that. What was the point of pretending otherwise?

But with this human in the room, his beastie awakened to a renewed hunger, Jay’s body moved without his permission. He was off the love seat and crawling onto the floor in seconds, his teeth sinking into the man’s wrist as soon as he was within reach, not quite having the strength to stand.

The man gasped, then moaned. Jay drank. And drank. And drank.

It was Wolfe who finally pulled him off, clucking his tongue again like Jay had done something naughty. “Let’s not drain him dry, hm?” Wolfe pressed his open mouth against the man’s wrist just long enough to stop the bleeding, then made eye contact with the human again. “Stay quiet and still until we return you home.”

Jay panted from his spot on the floor. His shivers had finally stopped, the cold chill leaving his bones for the first time in weeks. “I could have killed him.”

“You could have,” Wolfe conceded. “I stopped you.”

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