Page 29 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
Vincent stared at the writing for so long that he swore under his breath when he glanced at the clock again. He couldn’t quite remember what had transpired after his first wave of dizziness, but he knew deep in his bones that Wesley had tried to help him, could still feel the way Wes’s hand had gripped his, his soft voice never leaving. The idea of walking out after all that, without so much as the ability to say thank you, felt wrong.
But the longer he stood there, brain still a little mushy and muscles sore, the faster he was going to have to run to make his bus. His phone had long since died, but he tore off the edge of Wes’s note to scribble on.
Thanks! Gotta work. Phone dead. TTYL.
It seemed so blunt and bland, nothing to demonstrate his gratitude. Nothing to show that he understood the burden he’d been placing on Wesley and would take responsibility for it. Nothing to prove that he would pay Wesley back. He flipped the paper over.
I owe you a million.
He squeezed in a little heart and then a scribble of his name, the way he would for his sisters when they’d bothered to tuck him a hot-pocket after their parents had decided that“if you can’t eat at the table then you’re not hungry enough to eat at all,”and he didn’t pause to wonder if maybe it was too much or too childish or too—fuck—romantic until he was already standing at the bus stop watching it pull in.
Vincent sat at the window, watching the flashes of suburban neighborhoods and cemeteries turn to run-down apartments with the gravestones still squashed between them in the form of awkward alleys and gated courtyards. The occupants who lingered on the streets after dark in this neglected part of the city looked just haggard and hopeless enough to seem to belong in graves instead of tucked around them. If Vincent had been any less shy when he’d first arrived back in San Salud, he’d probably be there with them instead of the city’s outskirts. Maybe then, he’d have had connections to other vampires, other ways of getting blood. But then he’d never have met Wesley.
No matter how hard he tried to focus on the scenery, his mind kept slipping back to Wes. He really did owe the man so much—more than he could ever repay—yet the longer he lingered over that, the more he began to linger on other things. Things like the promise to feed whenever he needed it and the sound he’d made when Vincent had pinned him to the wall and the way he’d gone loose under Vincent’s grip, like he’d wanted it. Craved it. The way Wesley had devoured every sexy comic Vincent recommended and started sending others back, ones of lower quality from the deepest depths of the web but with happy, stable couples. Like maybe he was trying to say something.
The bus had nearly moved on by the time Vincent realized it was his stop. He shouted an apology and shot out of the closing doors. As he sped across the pavement, he collided with a tattooed man smoking at the corner.
“Hey, hey!” The man grabbed him.
Vincent startled.
He let go immediately, displaying his palms. “Pull your fangs in,” he hissed, “Before someone else sees.”
Vincent flushed. He covered his mouth as he retracted them. He hadn’t even realized they’d been out in the first place, but thinking of biting Wesley, of dragging his fangs over Wesley’s lower lip and sucking the wound closed as he gasped… those thoughts must have slipped them free. Were trying to slip them free now. Fuck. He tipped his head to the stranger and muttered a soft, “Thanks.”
The man just lifted his joint and turned back to the road.
It was kind of him. Maybe he was a vampire himself; he looked the part, dark clothes, tattoos, an odd almost sickly tinge to his olive skin. Or maybe he was just another person who understood having a need for something that most others didn’t.
Vincent jogged down the street and veered into the next alley. The plaque on the second door was so worn that only the D and G were visible and two of the metal bars on the little window were broken, but the bolt inside had looked new enough when Vincent had been in last. It wasn’t Babcock’s actual business address; he was pretty sure the man would laugh him off if he asked to visit there. This was just the place he or his assistant would show up to meet their informants and pass off their nightly pay.
But tonight, the light was off.
Vincent hesitated. A familiar tang filled the back of his nose. He knocked softly. When no one answered, he pressed his palm to the knob. It turned for him.
As he cracked the door open, the scent hit him properly: a slightly rank version of the lush, thick blood that flowed through a human’s veins, drawing his fangs out and stirring the still not-quite-sated hunger in his gut. It pooled across the floor, the puddle a monochromatic outline in Vincent’s vampiric night vision. His feet carried him inside, one step, then another.
“Is someone hurt?” God, he did not want to find a body in here. Especially if that body belonged to one of his employers.
But there was no corpse, just a puddle that ended before it reached the far wall.
“Mr. Babcock?” Vincent called warily.
Behind him, the door swung closed.
He turned, catching a flashlight beam to the face with a grimace.
“You thought you could wear our humanity like a skin to be shed, a wolf among the sheep,” Babcock said. It sounded like a line from a game or a movie, but his tone held none of the lighthearted humor with which Vincent would have quoted it. “Thought we wouldn’t notice that you’re the kind of vamp who bleeds this city dry.”
Beside him, his assistant vocally sneered.
“I—I’m not—I wasn’t—” Vincent squinted against the blinding beam, holding out his hands, palms up like the man on the street corner. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked without problems. I can do my job.” But that meant nothing to them. Vincent didn’t have to see their expressions to know it; he could feel it in the way they talked at him rather than to him, like every other person who’d dropped him at the first sight of what he was.
“You’re a parasite,” Babcock’s assistant snapped. “A parasite just waiting to make more little squirming, hungry parasites.”
Babcock lifted a hand to silence her, but when he spoke it was with equal distaste. “If you come with us quietly, you won’t get hurt.” Something flashed in his grip, still mostly concealed by his long coat—a weapon?
A shudder went down Vincent’s spine. So long as he didn’t get shot he could probably take them in a fight, but if he hit back and they reported the incident, he was the one who’d be blamed for it. Finding work was hard enough without the police looking for him.
