Page 65 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
“No one else is supposed to be on this level.” The end of his voice trembled, but somehow it just made the harsh statement more threatening instead of less. His jaw tightened. He tipped his chin toward Wesley’s gun. “Are you here to shoot me with that?”
Wes raised it. “If I have to.”
Vincent grabbed his arm, pulling it down. “You will absolutely not.”
“Vinny!” He didn’t fight, but he looked almost pleading as he said it.
“You need enough therapy as it is!” Vincent hissed. He breathed in, then out. “I can deal with this.”
The scientist looked a little confused, but as they approached, his shoulders stiffened and he wrapped his fists around the back of his seat. He picked the chair up, wielding it like a club. Vincent sped in to dodge the blow. He grabbed the man by the arms, ramming him backwards into his cubicle desk with an instinctive feline growl, his fangs slipping threateningly over his teeth. The man returned the sound with a hiss that revealed his own fangs.
Vincent froze, alarms resounding in his head.
The man dropped onto his desk with a sharp inhale. “You’re one too?”
The alarms continued to ring. Real alarms, in the building. A feminine voice followed over the speaker proclaiming an active shooter emergency.
Wes grabbed Vincent by the arm, pulling him away from the Vitalis-Barron scientist—thevampiricVitalis-Barron scientist. The vampire stared back as Wes hauled Vincent to the stairwell, shouting over the sirens. “Let’s go!”
Vincent finally dragged his gaze away from the shocked scientist as they reached the stairs. He scrambled up them fast enough that he was pulling Wesley again. They broke out onto a corridor beside a lobby to the building’s main entrance, the gray rugs and fake potted palms like the ones in the reception area they’d come through earlier. The emergency exit to the back lot sat at the other end, and they rushed out of it, triggering a fresh set of alarms in their wake.
The chilly night air seemed to fill Vincent with a final burst of adrenaline. The rest of their run passed in a rush, carrying them through the forested lot at the back of the complex and around the side where they slipped out through a turnstile pedestrian exit. As they hiked back to the van, two police cars raced by them, lights flashing.
Vincent hoped the escaping vampires would be safe against them. He tried not to feel as though he should have done more. There was little more hecouldhave done, not without endangering Wesley or making him leave alone.
They fell into the van with heaving chests and limp muscles. Vincent laughed at the ceiling as Wesley started the engine. When Wes didn’t join him, he looked over.
“Wes? We did it.”
“Yeah,” Wesley said. His smile looked forced, and it was almost a relief when the man turned his attention back to the road. He pulled onto the street.
Vincent sat up straighter. “We did do it, didn’t we? You found your proof? We can take them down?”
“They killed her, yeah.” His voice sounded hollow. “But she was a vampire, so…”
Vincent’s heart twisted. “Oh.”
Wes ground his hands along the steering wheel like he was trying to pull it into a new shape. His lips peeled back, a sheen glistening along his lower eyelids. “They’re monsters. They’re goddamned monsters and I fucking hate them,” he shouted. “How do they do this, Vinny? How do they convince themselves that any of that is okay?”
A month ago, he could have been talking about the vampires instead of their torturers. Vincent didn’t know how to feel about that—what he did feel was too many things all at once, and none of them really had to do with Wesley at all. He watched the cars pass, but in his mind he saw the way the cotton-candy haired vampire had looked at Wes, like they would tear his throat out for the blood within. “Because they see us when we’re so starving that we can’t help but kill, and they pretend that it’s our natural state instead of something they did to us.”
“I hate them,” Wes repeated.
“Me too.”
It seemed there was nothing else to be said, or perhaps there was just so much else that it couldn’t fit right then, the bottleneck of what they’d just been through holding it back. They drove the rest of the way in exhausted silence. Vincent flipped Wes’s TV on the moment they entered the house, struggling so hard with the controls that he thought he’d broken them before Wes showed him how to switch to cable.
“I don’t even know why I still have it. I always stream everything,” he muttered, collapsing onto the floor, legs sprawled out and head on the armchair that always seemed to have a stack of clean laundry covering it. “Mom is why; she wanted it. She would record a couple shows off it as they aired. The memory is probably full at this point.” He paused, a breath in and a breath out. “I guess I can get rid of it now.”
Vincent wanted to hug him, but his arms felt like lead and his chest almost too heavy to lift, and there was still something between them that hadn’t quite been worked through; he didn’t have the energy for it yet. Instead he just said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s Vitalis-Barron who should be sorry.” The statement seemed to settle over them like a metal blanket.
They waited, one of them watching the yard, the other the television.
At four in the morning the breaking news began playing a reel about vampires having tried to storm Vitalis-Barron for the blood in their research bank, killing two employees and injuring another three. The newscaster repeated phrases likedangerousandon the looseanddon’t approach. They’d gotten free, at least; for that Vincent was grateful. And there was no mention of him or Wesley, no one breaking down their door.
Vincent’s door.
