Page 88 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
He could hear her screams of attack behind him as she charged in the opposite direction, and he could do nothing but guide Andres the rest of the way to the car. His vampire was quickly looking like the weaker of them, his body slowly tearing itself apart from sun exposure while Shane’s had started rejuvenating, ever so slightly, under the power of Andres’s venom.
Shane helped him collapse into the back, shaking as he covered Andres with the blanket folded on the floor, and climbed into the driver seat. He felt sick as he turned on the engine, his head light and consciousness attached by a thread. From inside the house came another scream, another series of gunshots. Then nothing.
Shane hit the gas, tearing out of the front yard.
He could hear Andres making agonizing moans that seemed ripped from his soul itself, but the periods where all noise stopped were the hardest to bear.
“How are you doing, love? Andres? Stay with me?” He’d ask it like he was waking his vampire up after a long night of work and not hoping with everything in himself that he wouldn’t arrive to the townhouse with a corpse in place of his partner.
But each time, came a weak response. “I’m fine.”
They were bothso farfromfinethat Shane could hardly remember what that looked like on either of them, as he half carried, half dragged Andres out of the car and up the stairs.
“Your insulin,” Andres mumbled. “In the passenger seat.”
“I’ll get it in a moment.” He could feel that his body was dangerously off, between the blood loss and the lack of hisnightly doseand the hormonal upheaval of every nasty emotion he’d experienced. But he, at least, could mostly walk if he really put his mind to it. And Andres no longer could.
Shane deposited him into bed as carefully as he could, propping the pillows behind him and pulling the blackout curtains shut. His clothes would have to be changed later, but Shane drew off his shoes and unbuttoned the top of his high-waisted pants to let him breathe.
“Your contacts?”
Andres groaned. He lifted a hand sluggishly toward his eyes, but it shook with such ferocity that he couldn’t make it half the distance. He seemed to notice the trembling and his breath caught in a sob. “Ah,” he said, dropping his hand.
Shane kissed his forehead. “Relax.”
He found the little bottle of Andres’s eyedrops, and, gently as he could, he held open Andres’s eyes. His hands shook still too, but he managed to keep himself still long enough to slide the little pieces of plastic free. Andres barely flinched, his lids immediately falling shut after. It was such a small thing, but Shane swore he looked more at ease after.
It seemed to take Shane a thousand years to get back to the car for his insulin and return again, though the time on his phone read one minute. He sent off a text—to Clementine, Vincent, Tara, and Valentine all at once—and received three immediate responses, all echoing what he already knew.
Blood.
But it’s not a cure.
Shane didn’t know how much he could give in his present stage, but he had to try. He could not watch his vampire die in his arms while he lived. He refused to be the Cygnus of their story.
Clementine and Tara were typing still, but Shane slid the phone onto Andres’s nightstand and, peeling off his ruinedoutfit, he climbed into bed with his vampire. It was awkward at first, Andres unconscious and shivering, and Shane trying his best to maneuver them both. He pressed soft kisses to Andres’s skin whenever he could, subtleapologiesandthank yous and a thousand other things he couldn’t say. Might never get the chance to say again.
His chest caught, but he breathed through it, and focused on Andres.
Placing his pale, marred wrist in Andres’s mouth didn’t seem like enough to Shane, and in the end he managed to lay, cradling Andres from a little higher up, and pressed the crook of his elbow to Andres’s lips. Beneath the smeared blood, it was the one place that hadn’t been bitten—by sheer accident, he bet—and from it, Shane could no longer feel the memory of Maul’s first puncturing needle, only the brush of Andres’s fingers, the touch of his mouth, the gleam in his smirk, the way he saidyou’re mine, and meant it to the ends of the earth and back.
Shane pressed his skin into Andres’s fangs. The pain tingled up his elbow, no venom to temper it, and turned to a gentle sting as his blood flowed. Compared to the bites Maul’s goons had inflicted on him, this felt blissful. Shane brushed his free fingers through Andres’s hair, kissing the top of his head and he murmured, “Drink for me, my love.”
Slowly, Andres did, taking shallow, instinctive drags that pushed his fangs a little deeper into Shane’s flesh, locking them together. Shane never wanted them to come apart again. He held Andres as he drank, and when his partner had taken all he could, Shane drifted off with him, dizzy and lightheaded, Andres still wrapped tightly in his arms.
Shane woke with his vampire still warm and shivering against his side, the world an aching blur beyond them, and a steady hand on his shoulder.
“Easy,” Valentine whispered, and life did feel easier suddenly, like he and Andres were both going to be okay. “We brought Andres blood. I’d also like to give you venom, if you’ll allow? And we should get you fed something too.”
Shane wasn’t sure if he’d responded verbally, but his expression must have shown his gratitude, because the vampire—not his, but still one he knew he could trust—had scooped up his hand, and the next thing he knew, he was fading into a lovely dream.
It was the only peace he seemed to get for the next twenty-four hours.
Clementine and his boyfriend showed up with another bag of fresh blood, Tara with their doctor, and Valentine called in both Maddox and their second vampiric spouse, all three of whom seemed there for the sole purpose of becoming Andres and Shane’s unsolicited surrogate parents, taking over the tiny house like they were permanently moving in, while Vincent and Wesley texted constantly from the place they’d gone to hide in case Vitalis-Barron chose to take immediate action against them. Shane recovered quickly with another few doses of venom and a constant eye on his glucose levels, but Andres’s health remained touch and go as he fought to return to consciousness long enough to feed before slipping back into painful throes. The doctor reassured them that they were doing everything they were capable of with their current level of medical knowledge.It was hellish—between his worries over Andres and the chaos invading Shane’s normally solitary life.
But it was wonderful too.
Everyone cared so goddamned much, because Andres and Shane had tried to do something good perhaps, but also because they were in need and these people—these vampires and their humans—saw that as an opportunity and not a burden. They watched Andres each time Shane showered and slept and gave him all the venom he could possibly have needed to keep him capable of safely feeding Andres. Food appeared for him at such regular intervals that it became the only way Shane could manage to track time.
