Page 27 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
“And a blanket?”
“A what? Why?”
“For the sun. He’s a vampire, Wes. It’s almost noon. I don’t know what the hell you’re on about here, but you’re not murdering him.”
“Fuck, right, you’re right.” Wesley’s insides descended into a bout of nausea to go with their twisting. He could have killed Vincent, here, in the car, with his own stupidity.
Wesley stole a blanket straight out of the dryer and tossed it over Vincent like a shroud, tucking the ends onto the seat’s headrest to keep them in place. The sight of the vampire strapped in and so buried in fabric that Wesley couldn’t even see his chest rise made everything worse somehow.
“I’m getting in the car,” Wes stated.
“I wager five dollars that you’re just standing next to it.”
He absolutely was. “You can prove nothing.”
The minivan’s alarm went off as he closed the driver door. He lost thirty seconds to cursing and Kendall’s shouting as he fought to turn it off, and another thirty seconds searching for the garage door opener, before finally backing out onto the street so fast he had to slam the brakes to keep from hitting his neighbor’s ancient RV. Vincent’s head wobbled beneath the blanket. Wesley grimaced.
He took off slower, cruising down the street at just above the normal ten-miles-over-the-speed-limit that the city abided by. His neighborhood of little old houses blurred by, with their painted stucco exteriors, tight stoops, and disgruntled lawns. Glimpses of the cemetery appeared between them until he pulled onto the larger suburban road, heading through the gentle hills toward the distant skyline of the inner-city and the gleam of the lake beyond it.
More cemeteries popped up along the way—San Salud was famous for them. San Salud: St. Health. A bad translation on a bad translation. The city had sprung out of a series of sanatoriums, both the rich-catering, long term care facilities for terminal tuberculosis patients and the ‘madhouses’ notorious for locking in anyone with no funds and no loving family, rumored to have been using them as lab rats for their more experimental treatments. If Wesley’s mother was any sign, Vitalis-Barron’s big new branding and distribution across the country hadn’t stopped it from doing that. Which was whyhehad to dothis.
His gaze leaped to Vincent’s blanketed form and back to the road.
He had to do this.
“Talk to me, Wes.” Kendall’s voice through his phone speakers made him jump.
“I’m getting on the freeway. Vitalis-Barron’s central headquarters are across the city, against the lake, so it’s less direct but I think it’ll be faster than trying to fight the inner-city traffic.”
Kendall didn’t need to know any of that, and it was clear by her hum that she also didn’t care. “Wes, not to beat a dead horse—or an undead bat, I don’t know—but are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes!” But despite all his rationalizing, everything in him said no, no he was not sure at all. He wiped something wet off his face and clenched his hand around the wheel. “I don’t know.”
“I know you, Wes. You’re an impulsive gambler, and you’re very good at taking shitty risks now in the hopes that it’ll turn out well in the long run. It’s a terrifying sort of optimism, and it can be kind of great until it starts putting people in danger and blinding you to the consequences.”
“That sounds like a lot of judgment for someone who claims to be my friend.”
“I am your friend. I’m still here, aren’t I?” Kendall sighed, so deep and long that it scraped at Wesley’s soul. “I love you, Wesley. I don’t know why you think this is the one and only job for you, but have you ever considered that maybe what you’re doing right now is an incredibly fucked up thing and it’s not worth whatever you think you’re going to get out of it?”
“Yeah, I’ve considered it a lot, thanks,” he grumbled, because a low mutter was all he seemed capable of giving without releasing the tornado-sized ache that was growing in his chest. He could tell her all the good this one horrible act would accomplish. He could make her understand. If only he understood it all himself. “You know, I think I need my attention for the road. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
“Wes, please—”
But he was already shuffling his phone out of his pocket, drifting into the next lane as he did it, and flicking the call off. The moment the screen went back to the home page, Wes slammed his fists against the wheel. He’d hung up on Kendall so many times before—it was basically tradition at this point—but this time it felt different. It felt shitty. The quiet left an empty spot where she should have called back, or messaged at least, a hollow silence that let Vincent’s little unconscious sounds of panic and pain echo around the minivan.
Wes flicked on the car radio and forced himself to keep driving. Even the chatter of the host’s talk on health smoothies couldn’t distract him from the way Vincent was growing slowly more restless, his half-dose of Babcock’s drug wearing down in his system too fast. Wesley sped up.
As he made his way around the central mass of the city, Vitalis-Barron’s main complex began to loom off to his other side, the massive compound starting in warehouses and industrial factories that wrapped toward the lake, where the main laboratories lay behind high, barbed walls, overlooking the city from a hill. San Salud’s first sanatorium had stood there, once, back when the entire downtown was a single street, before the vineyards all sprung up to the west and the boats filled in their shimmering lake, when the whole region of California was just tiny towns and Hollywood hadn’t even named itself yet. The city had come so far from those days, yet something dark still lurked at its core. Something that killed people. People like Wesley’s mom.
Like Vincent.
Wesley’s chest ached as though it were being torn open, and he gritted his teeth, staring at the road ahead of him. Staring so hard that his exit whipped past. The freeway curved toward the lake, tightening to two lanes as it wrapped itself between the touristy boardwalk shops and the downtown skyscrapers. Wes cursed, slowing to accommodate.
Beside him, Vincent groaned. A real, solid groan, halfway to being awake. No, this was too soon. If Wes could just turn around, he could still make it to the research labs in time. He could still do this. He could—
“Wes?” Vincent’s tiny mutter sent a tremor through him, tightening his throat so hard he could barely breathe through it.
“Yeah. I’m here,” he whispered.
