Page 4 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Shane swallowed and tried to roll away the tingling of his lips. It was the middle of the day now—or the middle of his day, at least, even if the night had technically already fallen—and he certainly didn’t need those fantasies wrecking him yet. God, he needed a distraction or else he was going to spiral from this, end up curled on his floor with a box of gingersnaps as big as his head, hunting through pictures from the gala for a glimpse of his vampire in the background, for confirmation that he was real and any clue he could follow back to him again, even just a glimpse of the mouth Shane could eternally feel pressed to his own but couldn’t quite picture in his mind any longer. He knew from experience that the backlash of that would decimate his mental health, and when the lead he was hoping for came in tonight, he needed every bit of his brain functional.
That meant turning his attention to special interest number two. He swore he had a half-outlinedShane Rates Thingsfor the Fishnettery’s aesthetic somewhere around here. And there was always half a chance that if he hung around the place enough he’d find a cute person to fantasize about in his vampire’s place.
Shane turned in his ChatterDash articles for the day, and with a much-needed shower and a less hurriedly calculated dose of insulin, he headed out into the night.
2
ANDRES
Andres had decided to stop having dreams, since Maul was slowly taking them all away from him.
“We need that blood now,” Maul said, his gravelly voice made rougher by their terrible phone connection. Knowing the vampire, he was probably in a basement somewhere setting up for the night’s sales. Or, more likely, barking at the poor employees he’d roped into doing the work for him. “Andres, Andres, you know how this business functions. We can’t survive off a few stolen bags here and a few stolen bags there. I need you to steal two hundred pints by tomorrow if we’re going to compete with that damn blood charity—Hey! Table goes on the left, we have to fit the cart in here still!”
Andres held the speaker away from his ear with a cringe, pacing beside his kitchen counter as he waited for his boss to finish shouting. He tried to sound unemotional but decisive—Maul was more likely to respect that. “A few bags here and there will all add up once I’ve planted my people in enough of the human’s blood banks, but I can’tdothat in the first place when the blood banks are on high alert because we keep wiping out their entire supply every time they lower their guard enough for someone from my team to slip in.”
Myteam, he said, when he really meantyourteam. The only members Maul hadn’t forced upon him were so hard fought forthat sometimes Andres wondered if Maul was doing it just to annoy him.
Andres ran his fingers through his hair. He could hear Maul in his head, snorting and telling him he was going to go bald if he kept doing that. Ironic, coming from a man who would have trouble competing with an egg, much less Andres’s thick, dark locks. And the incessant motion saved him on gel. He sighed, dropping his hand to the counter. “A big heist is riskier than a long-term plant, too.”
“That’s why I’ve got you torunthe heist.” Maul paused, his tone twisting. “Unless you don’t think you’re up to it?”
That was not a question Andres had the luxury of answering no to, not unless he wanted to see Maul replace him with someone less conscientious. And there was the house to consider. And the paychecks. “I’m not worried about our safety on the heist, but the fallout that happens after it. You know how the media runs with these things. They pick it up like wildfire, and every other blood bank in the city will be on their guard by evening. Donations will dip and they’ll double the police presence around the better sites, and when our stores are low again next month, we’ll be in the same position, but up a river with no paddle.”
“Can’t handle a police presence suddenly? And here I thought you were the one who talked his way into—”
Andres cut Maul off before his boss could describe one of the many cons he’d run over the last decade. “No, no, that’s not a problem for me.”
He wrung his hair again. How was he supposed to explain to someone like Frederick Maul, who watered down and marked up the blood he sold despite the hardship it put on his own community, that Andres’s problem was that very hardship? Renewed attention would make Andres’s own work more difficult, but more than that, he cared about the vampires they’darrest just for walking by a blood bank and the hatred which would stir throughout the city as the news cycled back to the theft over and over again, dramatizing it as though the vampires involved had sucked the stolen blood straight from dying children.
It was a dangerous short-term solution for everyone.
“We wouldn’t have this issue if our best customers weren’t getting snapped up by Vitalis-Barron hunters for their pharma experiments, while the rest scurry down to that damned blood charity.” Maul grunted. “If Jose’s is raking in the stuff, why don’t you try your plant idea there? They can’t possibly miss a few bags a night.”
Andres felt sick at the thought. While he’d never been to it himself, Jose’s Blood Bank had made life much easier for the most impoverished of his community, and that was enough to endear it to him. It was doing something that he could not so long as his life and business were under the thumb of Frederick Maul. So he tried to snag his boss’s attention back with a half-truth. “We shouldn’t have to. I think I’m closing in on Vitalis-Barron.”
Closing in was an overstatement—by the time his current lead panned out, he’d probably already have taken advantage of the pharmaceutical company’s annual onsite party next month to sneak into the corporate offices above their research labs and strip them of whatever information he could. But Maul still took the bait with an excited hum. “You bring me whatever evidence you find the moment you do. You know how sensitive this is. If we’re going to hit them where it hurts, we can’t be letting our guard down.”
“Of course.”
“And Andres? Send your team in at midnight.” Maul didn’t ask. He didn’t have to; it didn’t matter how good Andres was at talking and sneaking and sidestepping his way into places thatno one wanted a vampire to go, Frederick Maul was the only one who’d take on a felon-turned-vampire, much less rent them decent living quarters.
“Make it one-thirty.” Andres said, just to wrestle back a sliver of control. It wasn’t as satisfying as he’d have liked, his worry and anger still roiling deep in his belly. “You have a van for me to transport them in?”
“I’m bringing in the black one we used for Burning Man last year.”
Big festivals were prime places for phony donation centers that lured high and drunk attendees into dark tents long enough to fill a bag or two—most of them never even realized what happened. “I thought the fridge in that one was faulty? What’s wrong with our usual rides?”
“There’s been a human poking around their storage lot.”
Andres feigned a scoff, because it was what Maul would expect from him. “You’re afraid of a nosey human?”
“I’m not afraid; I’m cautious. This man says he’s some kind of journalist. He’s been sticking his head into vamp lairs all over the city for weeks, hounding my customers and banging down doors.” Any vampire had a right to fear that, but the way Maul explained it, Andres could tell all too well who the predator was. “Don’t worry, though,” he continued. “Next time he pokes his head out, I’ll take care of him.”
Andres couldn’t help the shudder that ran down his spine. He dragged his fingers through his hair, trying in vain to relieve the uncomfortable sensation. Takecareof him. That could mean two things. One of them wasn’t so bad, he told himself. One of them had made Andres what he was, after all.
He almost missed Maul’s next statement over the thrum of his own heart. “Take the Burning Man van. And check in when it’s done.”
“I always do,” Andres scrambled to reply, his final word meeting the buzz of a dead line. He leaned against the counter, covering his head with his hands, and breathed out. It didn’t clear the slimy sensation of Maul’s voice from the back of his mind.
