Page 19 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
Ha ha.
They went on like that all the way back to Vincent’s crash pad, until his phone died again a few hours later, its five-year-old battery protesting up to the very last moment. It took him another hour to fall asleep, the soft aches and pains of second-hand sun exposure tensing his muscles and tingling in his nerves until he craved Wesley’s couch almost as much as the man’s blood. But it was worth it.
So worth it, that the next day he did it all over again, staying later at the café with two sandwiches instead of one and texting with Wesley until the sun was high overhead. No matter how much he ate, he couldn’t stop his blood thirst from curling through his gut and tugging at his attention, making his focus jump to exposed necks and wrists and thighs when anyone came a bit too close to him. That night he finally snuck his way into a house three streets over from Wesley’s and scooted onto the bed of a middle-aged woman who smelled about as good as bland oatmeal. He sunk his fangs in with a pinch of venom that would usually send a human into a blissful slumber. Instead, the woman wailed and jerked, reaching for her neck.
Vincent scrambled away, certain he’d woken her up. She drifted right back into a disruptive sleep, rubbing at her oozing wound like it was a bee sting. Or a hot sauce burn.
Vincent’s heartbeat sped to a rattling rhythm that made his head light and his lungs clamp up, but he forced himself to press a bundle of tissues to the fang marks until the woman stopped bleeding, and creep back out her balcony door before sliding into a complete panic.
What the fuck had that spicy ramen done to him? How was he supposed to eat if he couldn’t bite anyone? The steadiness of this current job had cushioned out his wallet some, but it was nowhere near enough to buy a blood bag off a black-market vendor—assuming he could find the San Salud vendors in the first place—and the human blood banks all had protections perfectly designed to catch a single, desperate vampire in the act.
Until whatever spiciness lingering in his venom glands faded, Vincent Barnes the vampire was fucked.
9
WESLEY
Wesley was having one hell of a week, that was for sure. Between updating Kendall on his vampire situation so often his friend was developing an unhealthy obsession and rearranging his sleeping habits in order to message Vincent as much as possible, he was starting to feel like a puppet on a string. But the more Vincent trusted him, the easier it would be to lure the vampire to Vitalis-Barron. To find proof of his mom’s death. To take down the sack-of-shit pharmaceutical company who was hurting—killing, even—not only humans but also vampires, so that nothing like what happened to his mom could happen to anyone else.
That was still the end goal.
As Wes headed out of his room, his legs carried him past the stairs, further down the hall. His chest tightened and his gut roiled like it might launch him straight at Vitalis-Barron’s doorstep. He barely felt the cold of the master bedroom’s handle, blinking at the creak of the hinges as he pushed open his mother’s unused room.
He stood in the doorway, her things made into haunting silhouettes by the dim light of the streetlamp outside: her shelf of historical romance novels cluttered with dragon plushies and figurines from cartoon shows; the queen-sized bed she had let Wes crawl into for years after his father left, never once suggesting that he was too old to sit and read with her; the stacks of board games she’d bought and never used, too many nights and weekends spent on overtime at the hospital as she fought to pay off this house for Wesley, to give him the generational wealth she’d never known.
And Vitalis-Barron had carelessly thrown out her life with not so much as a date for those who loved her to mark her death. People died in medical research; Wes had looked up all the statistics with such tunnel vision that he’d been shaking and stewing over it for a mess of uncounted hours. They died because they were already dying and the new procedure didn’t work and they died because of rare and horrible side effects and accidents. And maybe—maybe—Wes could have accepted that, if Vitalis-Barron hadn’t covered it up. Hadn’t pulled her into it with the kind of stealth that screamed of dubious legality. They’d taken this determined, kindhearted, nerdy woman with claims of help, knowing fully well that she might never come out again, and been willing to cover it up when she hadn’t.
For that, they deserved to burn.
This wasn’t about vampires. It wasn’t about Vincent. It was about justice. Until Wesley found proof of his mother’s death, and saw the people involved taken down, it couldn’t be about anything else. All the video games, the bets with Kendall, the messages with Vincent, were just a distraction to keep him from detonating or breaking down before he could get into Vitalis-Barron’s research lab and find his proof. And once he did…
Then Vincent would be free again. There was no crime they could pin on a vampire for having been lured into an illegal laboratory. When the lab was shut down, they’d have to let him go.
The ding of Wes’s phone dragged him out of his thoughts, leaving him a little jittery and a lot nauseous, but more determined than he’d been in days. He browsed his heap of unread messages and notifications as he ambled down the stairs. With a fresh email from the pharmaceutical company’s research department sitting in his inbox and Kendall on his back with such a constant string of “If you like the vampire so much then just apply for a job elsewhere” that he hadn’t picked up a call from her in two days, he decided to try something new. He flopped onto the couch, tossed one leg over the arm, and began typing away on his phone.
Dear Taylor,
I’m still very interested in the patient recruitment position! I have a prospect for my signing recruitment, but I was curious if you could connect me to a current employee for some tips. I want this to go well so I can get started with you all soon!
Best,
Wesley Smith
Was that too many exclamation points? Too pushy? Too weak? Wesley closed his eyes and hit send. By the evening, he had a reply.
Wesley,
Taylor forwarded me your email. I’ve been on their research subject recruitment team almost since it began, focusing entirely on bringing in vampire subjects. I’m happy to give you tips.
So you’ve spotted a vampire you think would be right for our research program? What are they like? Have you made contact? How are you going about this?
Regards,
Matthew Babcock
Subject Recruitment Specialist
“Always up for the hunt.”
