Page 85 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Maul shrugged. “That’s a pity.”
His goons pulled Shane up by his arms, and Maul thrust the chair into the cage. When they shoved Shane into it, he swore it was the same one he’d been strapped to before. He could almost feel the way he’d thrashed and screamed when they’d bound him then. This time his hands were too numb and prickling and his throat raw from breathing in the sickening strap of fabric pressed halfway into his mouth all night, his lungs too tight to scream and his muscles too cold to fight, but the memory melded into the reliving of it, nothing in his mind but terror and abhorrence. And Andres.Andres.
Maul slapped his hand on the cage door a few times. “Take what you want,” he sneered to his goons. “I just need him alive in the end. Alive and bleeding.”
Shane managed to whimper something that sounded like a protest before one of the vampire’s hands fisted into his hair, holding him as the other three pressed up the layers of his sleeves and pulled down the fabric around his shoulders. His choker came away with a searing tug, leaving his neck bare and stinging for mere moments before the fangs sank in. Through the gag, he sobbed.
He didn’t know if they gave him any venom—didn’t think he’d feel it beneath the pain and the panic. His body, so sluggish and hollow, still fought the touch with everything it had, trembling jerks that grew smaller and smaller with each bite and rip.
Alive and bleeding, Maul had said.
They were feeding, all right, but with every fresh bite their fangs dragged along his skin, no gentle brush of tongue following, leaving the fresh cut to drip. They were tearing him open.
Shane choked, his head spinning, and he could feel himself slip like he had in the blood bank, darkness crashing in around him that could have been blood loss or sheer anxiety.
“That’s enough,” Maul barked.
The vampires let go. It barely helped. The sting of their fangs and the ire of their touch still flared across his skin, ground into his soul. Shane could barely see through the tunneled fog of his fear, Maul’s face floating behind the bars of the cage as it clicked shut.
“I should have told him no, bagged the rest of your blood and been fucking done with you. But then, this is what happens when you give your playthings too much freedom.” He shook his head. “It has to stop somewhere.”
Playthings. It took Shane a moment to understand him through the haze, and then all he could see was Andres’s face crumbling as they’d admitted that Maul had hurt them, that after escaping a childhood of bullying and quiet insidiousness, Maul had taken advantage of Andres’s attempts to downplay the pain in their life and used them like a toy to be manipulated or discarded.
Find me again, my love,Shane wanted to hope, to pray even, though what he’d be praying to he didn’t know. But as the sun slid across the courtyard, the drip-drip-drip of his bites turning the white of his outfit to red, Maul’s goons dropped mirrors into place along the courtyard’s edges, one by one by one, until every bit of light in the space was angled at the cage. A vampire’s death sentence. Shane could see the nail-marks on the cement floor beneath him now, dried blood in the cracks, the deep, near-black color of a vampire’s, and he could wish for nothing but this:Forget me, Andres.
Don’t let the gods throw your body to the stars.
32
ANDRES
Somehow, amidst the total collapse of his mental and emotional state, Andres had managed to contact Wesley and Vincent and warn them of Maul’s treachery. Then he’d collected Shane’s insulin in a little freezer bag, and fed his cat, and stood in his apartment like a goldfish out of water, his tears slipping into his mouth for what felt like the hundredth time that night. He barely noticed them anymore.
Do something.
He had to do something.
But what.
He didn’t know anyone but Natalie who he could trust to help him in this, and if he had to share all the details with her—no, that wasn’t even a question. It would be worth a stake through the heart, so long as she helped rescue Shane first. Hands shaking, Andres made a list of all the places he could possibly think for Maul to go: van lots and storage centers and their range of trading locations. He sent it to Natalie with as vague an explanation as he could, saying merely that someone who didn’t want Shane’s article to come out had taken him and there might be vampires involved.
She didn’t ask questions, except which places he’d be hitting first, and quickly divvied up the rest by who was closest.
Hell Creature Extraordinaire
I’ll bring you some of my holy silver. I have a couple pistols too, if you’re comfortable.
Cat Mom
No worries, I’ve got my own stuff.
But thanks.
He bared his fangs in the mirror on his way out.
After a quick stop at his place for the less tooth-based weapons he occasionally brought on more dangerous heists, he systematically set himself to flying through his list. The night wore on. All he could taste was salt—salt that seemed to come from nowhere, because he absolutely refused to think of all the things Maul could be doing to Shane. All the ways he might already have been hurt, or worse.
You’ll know in the morning, had been Maul’s only text.
