Page 25 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
“It’s not my fault you’re playing with your fangs.”
Vincent gave him a parody of a scowl. “Don’t you know it’s rude to mock a vampire’s equipment?”
“Oh, come on, they’re adorable. So small and sharp.”
“You can stop teasing me now, I get it,” Vincent grumbled lightheartedly. But when he looked closer at Wesley, the man didn’t seem to be teasing at all.
“No, I mean it. They’re cute.” Wes appeared almost flustered, the softest hint of red on his cheeks. He didn’t meet Vincent’s eyes, wrapping his arms around the container of blood like he was trying to hug himself. If Vincent hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Wes was serious. Serious that he found Vincent’s fangs cute. Cute, not like a pet or a kid, but like a blush and a touch to the cheek.
But he couldn’t have. He was just being Wesley, cracking innuendos at all the wrong times and skipping from one goof to the next. Only that wasn’t right either. Since Vincent had arrived today, Wesley had been softer, gentler, almost… almost…
Vincent swayed. The world spun around him. He held out a hand for the couch.
“You okay there, Vinny?”
He wasn’t imagining the fear in Wesley’s voice, was he?
“Maybe you should sit.”
Vincent did, but his vision still whirled and his mind sloshed like he’d drank a bottle of whiskey on an empty stomach. “I don’t feel—don’t feel so good.”
“Would more blood help?” Wesley sounded distant and a little wrong. He blurred in and out as he moved, squatting down beside Vincent.
“Maybe,” Vincent muttered. When he reached for the container, it was somehow still out of his grasp. He felt the ceiling fly away. Or maybe that was the side of his head? He reached out again. “Fuck. Wes.” But as he said it, he hit a pillow, everything going sideways.
Wesley’s hands wrapping around him, touched him, his voice echoing oddly off to one side. “Vinny, I’m here. I’ve got you.”
“I-I don’t want to…”I don’t want to die, he’d meant to say,I just met you, things just started to get better. He was finally feeling like he had a place in the world, in someone’s life. And now his body was numb and his mind was being dragged off by a dark, monstrous thing. A vampire maybe. He grabbed Wesley’s hand, trying to hold it, but his fingers were failing. Everything was failing. “Please,” he managed.
“I’m here,” Wesley repeated, holding him right back. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Vincent.”
Wesley. If Vincent was going to die in someone’s arms, at least he had Wesley.
11
WESLEY
His vampire lay unconscious on the couch, and it was all Wes could do to keep breathing.
His lungs felt tight. His chest hurt. His knees wobbled. A panic attack. He was having a panic attack. He’d suffered from a couple during college, and a couple more after his mother’s death, but it had been months since he’d had to actually work through one. No matter how much his body didn’t want to function at the moment though, somehow he had to force it.
Because everything else was alreadysonot going as planned.
Wes had been fully prepared to drug a hot, playful vampire, one who was acting sweet to get what he wanted and committing serial assault in his spare time. What he’dnotbeen prepared for was to learn that his hot, playful vampire was genuinely as sweet—if not sweeter—than Wes had assumed and thought his only options in life were to find the least harmful way to steal blood or else let himself die. Yet Wesley had stood there and watched him drink the drugged blood and said nothing.
Because this still wasn’t about Vincent. It was about taking down Vitalis-Barron so they couldn’t kill anyone else, vampire or human alike. It was hurting one kind, wonderful vampire for a moment to fix a problem that had been plaguing many more of them for who knew how long; years probably, considering when the vampiric population in San Salud had first begun to decline.
Wesley focused on that, focused on it with each shallow, lightheaded breath that seemed to burn behind his eyes as his legs threatened to give way.
If enough good people saw the way Vitalis-Barron had treated their vampiric research subjects, maybe laws in California could be passed to give vampires the same rights as human patients in such settings. It probably wouldn’t be a Supreme Court ruling or a constitutional amendment yet but, with how the government tried to treat them as a separate entity, not covered bywe the peoplesimply because none of the people who’d written those words had been explicitly vampires, it would still be something. It could do genuine good for the vampiric community.
It would be worth it, in the long run, no matter what sacrifices were made getting there or how awful Wesley’s stomach felt or the way the world still seemed to be collapsing in on him.
Also, Vincent had drunk half the drugged blood. Which meant that whatever Wesley did now, it was unlikely he’d ever be trusted again. He’d lose Vincent no matter what. Selfish as that thought was, it stuck with him.
The vampire looked so rough, still too ghostly with his hair matted and shadows under his eyes, but now he made tiny, mangled sounds, his eyes rapidly moving behind his lids.
He would be okay though. He had to be okay. The researchers would want him alive, and they’d keep him that way as long as possible, leaving plenty of time for their lab’s atrocities to be uncovered and the vampires in it released. And besides, he’d only drunk half the bag.
