Page 39 of Vanish Into Light

“Gavin–”

“Are those –fang marks? Did that fuckerbite you?”

Desperation surging inside him, Lance shoved Gavin. Hard. “You need to shut up and back off,” he snapped.

Gavin’s eyes widened another fraction, and he looked like he had yesterday, when they were walking out to the Hummer: like Lance was actually frightening. Like he was someone – or something – he’d never seen before.

But Lance said, “Leave it,” and turned his shoulder toward the other Knight. “Keep your eyes on your surroundings and mind your own business.”

The silence that followed – undercut by the moaning and murmuring of the club patrons around them – bristled with questions and accusations unsaid. A slanted glance proved that sweat had blossomed on Gavin’s temple, and that his jaw was clenched tight. The idea of explaining himself, of putting last night into words and trying to actually make sense of it to an outsider, made Lance’s stomach hurt.

Movement drew his eye. Two women in barely-there silk dresses approached their group – approached Tris and Gallo, really, who stood in front of them.

“Well, don’t you boys look lonely,” one of them purred, canting her hips to the side, and reached toward Gallo.

Tris hooked an arm around his waist and bodily dragged him back against his own chest. “Leave off,” he said, in his flattest, least-negotiable tone. “We don’t want anything to do with you.”

“God, really?” Gallo muttered.

The girls traded looks, and made faces.

“Ugh,” one of them said, and shifted her gaze to Gavin. “What about your friends? Or are you guys an exclusive foursome or something?”

Lance started to answer–

And Gavin stepped around Tris – Gallo still locked in a protective death grip – and shot the women a grin. “Nah, not a foursome,” he said, easily, and already had his arm lifted so the first girl could slide right under it, her arm snaking around his lean waist. “Y’all showed up just in time: these three are boring as all hell.”

The second woman plastered herself to his other side, and fingered his dog tags. “Ooh, you’re in the military?”

“A Knight. Gold Company.”

Both of them oohed and purred in appreciation.

Lance stepped forward. “Gavin. This is a bad idea.”

The look Gavin shot him over one shoulder was half-betrayed, half-disgusted. “So’s getting fucked by a vampire, but look at you.”

“Gavin.”

“We’re just supposed to stand around and wait on that asshole? Nah. I’m at least gonna have a little fun. Normal fun,” he stressed, with another revolted glance toward Lance’s neck. His tone shifted. “Where should we take this party, ladies?”

“Fucking idiot,” Lance hissed.

“You gonna go after him?” Tris asked, and, when Lance looked over, found himstillholding onto Gallo, like he was protecting him from sex with strangers or something equally stupid.

Gallo looked at him curiously…and his gaze, too, dipped to Lance’s throat, brows lifting fractionally when he spotted the scabbed-over puncture marks.

Lance’s skin itched and burned; each blink brought another onslaught of imagination, mental flashes that were part memory and part promise, and his lungs ached; hot, pulsing need had settled in his gut and taken up residence there.

He’d never felt this way in his life, and they were looking at him, and Gavin was disobeying orders to go and get fucked, and Beck and Rose were God knew where, and he – he–

A hand touched his arm, the skin warmer than his own, the touch gentle. Beck, he thought, but then he turned his head, and it was the manager, Damien, standing there, his red eyes soft with something like concern.

Lance meant to yank his arm back. To stagger away. But instead, he stood rooted, muscles locked, feet seemingly adhered to the floor.

“Whoa, you okay?” Damien asked. A notch formed between his black brows, and his face was narrow and sharp-featured like Beck’s; his horns were different, but they were still there; he still elicited a strange buzzing under Lance’s skin, the way Beck did. He was not of this earth; he’d been born in the flames and the pain and the savagery of the pit, and he smelled like brimstone and ash, like Beck.

“You look like you’re gonna pass out, man.”

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