Page 65 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
“Fuck that.” Wesley’s words were sharp, his tone immovable. “I will suffer whatever comes, as long as it means this city’s vampires can sleep safer at night. Thatmyvampire can sleep safer.”
Vincent wrapped an arm around him, pleading softly, “Wes, no…”
Wesley shook his head—shook from his core outward—not the way Shane did, from fear or exhilaration, but with a fierce, boiling rage. “We have to. I don’t want you to lose me, even for a few months or years. I—” He broke off, drawing in a ragged breath. “I would hate that with everything in me. You are my heart just as I’m your blood. But how many vampires have lost everything because of Vitalis-Barron?” He turned fully toward Vincent, cupping the side of his fiancé’s face with such a perfect mix of tender affection and intense fire that it nearly masked the sadness in his voice. “We protected ourselves. We gaveourselves time, and it’s been incredible—the best six months of our lives. But we can’t be selfish forever.”
“We could leave,” Vincent protested. His eyes glistened.
“Babe.” Wesley spoke the word like it was theirs and theirs only. “We both came back to San Salud because as much as it hurt, we didn’t want to be anywhere else.”
“I know.” Vincent pressed his lips against Wesley’s palm, just standing there, breathing him in. It seemed like a moment Andres and Shane shouldn’t have been witnessing, but as Vincent muttered, “I hate this,” he turned his attention back to them. Though his fire was colder than Wesley’s, it burned every bit as strong. “You say you can get into the upcoming gala?”
“Yes,” Andres answered, and he could feel Shane’s tension and anticipation like it was his own.
Vincent breathed in, then back out. “Dr. Blood—Vitalis-Barron’s head of research—is doing more than just the hideous work that’s happening in their basement lab. She offered our friend a research position on a special project after he was fired. He turned it down but…”
“Now you want to know what it is,” Andres finished for him.
Vincent nodded. His arms wrapped tighter around his fiancé, who leaned into him, neck exposed and eyes alight with something murderous. Wesley replied in his vampire’s place. “It’s a wild card, one that could take her down, or take us with it. It’s not worth dying over. But if you were already prepared to go then, hell, let’s see what we find.”
Shane lifted his gaze to meet Andres’s, a fierce grin on his face. “You up for a little investigative journalism?”
Andres kissed him, a soft brush of lips as he replied. “Only if you’re down for a crime.”
Shane sighed his acceptance.
“Regardless of what happens,” Vincent cut in, “promise me one thing?”
“Of course,” Shane replied, and Andres echoed him, his heart and mind in unison. Whatever the sacrifice, whatever the cost. If these two were risking their lives together to help the greater vampire community, then he could too.
His face still half buried in his fiancé’s hair, Vincent’s lips parted, his fangs slipping down in a baring so feral it would have sent shivers down Andres’s spine before he’d turned. “Promise me you’ll make those villains pay in the end.”
23
SHANE
Make those villains pay.
Vincent’s challenge had been lingering in Shane’s mind, bobbing in and out like a tide along the shore. With it, it brought a determination for the inverse: to give back to the people those villains had hurt. Villains like Vitalis-Barron, but also Frederick Maul, and the entire city who’d made their vampiric population scrounge for blood in the shadows. Vengeance alone wasn’t justice—even if Vitalis-Barron certainly had to be stopped. But there were things beyond their destruction that needed doing, and Shane was in the perfect position to step into one of them now, because, as it turned out, the vampire who’d worked at the pharmaceutical company until recently was the same one who ran Jose’s Blood Bank.
A softly glowingblood availablesign sat in the building’s large, tinted and curtained front window, two little fangs poking from the bottoms of theos.
They’d called ahead, to be sure that ex-Vitalis-Barron scientist Dr. Clementine Hughes would be there, but as Andres was about to hang up, Shane had taken the phone on impulse. “Do you have a phlebotomist in at that time?” he’d asked, ignoring his sudden instinct to tuck his arm in close. “I’d like to donate again.”
He was ready—ready to give back to the vampires of San Salud who’d already lost so many of their own. He had plenty of blood to spare, his glucose levels managed well enough that losing some wouldn’t bother him, especially with Andres’s venom to pick him back up. It was just a little needle prick.
The crook of Shane’s arm still tingled uncomfortably as he skirted past the line of vampires waiting inside the blood bank. He tried to focus on the pressure of Andres’s hand against his back, on his nearness. His protection. Nobody here would dream of trying to take Shane’s blood without his permission, but if they did, he had someone ready to fight for him.
The phlebotomist met them at the front counter, escorting them both to a secluded donation chair in the farthest end of the large, portioned-off room. The arched wood ceiling crested over them and a display case of unusual salt and pepper shakers separated them from the next chair over. Shane’s nerves roiled as he sat down. The phlebotomist crossed the room to collect supplies, and Shane focused on the eccentric display, comically rating the shakers in his head. Two stars for originality, two for creatively coordinating the salt versus the pepper, one for whether they reminded him of needles or blood bags. The air tasted a little stale. What the hell was taking the phlebotomist so long? She couldn’t possibly have that many supplies to collect. It wasn’t like they intended to bleed him dry.
Shane found himself tugging at his shirt collar, then running his fingers through the ends of his hair.
Andres hadn’t bothered to put on his contacts that morning, and he watched Shane from behind his glass’s sleek, boxy rims with a worried look. “Are you all right, my swan?”
“I’m fine,” Shane responded automatically.
The lie didn’t seem to placate his vampire. “You know,” Andres said, gently, “theywillwant to access your veins somehow.”
Shane huffed, like that would clear the tightness that was building in his lungs. “I’ve done this before, yes.” He dragged his arms down, forming an ex of protection across his chest. He had asked for this. He was ready. Besides, the best way to keep riding was to get back on the metaphorical horse, wasn’t it?
