Page 45 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
“If you’d like it to be. I’ll keep you and this place anonymous, for your safety.”
Tara nodded with more confidence. “I love it here. I know that might seem egotistical considering the event we’re running right now, but we do versions of these where the humans are in charge, or where the grouping is mixed, or the power play is minimal.”
Shane found himself less attracted to the other varieties of play the club put on, but he still thought it delightful that they catered to a range of desires. “If I might ask, as a vampire who’s been traumatically deprived of your power in the past, howdoesit feel to work in this particular event? And know that I hold no judgement. Your emotions are appropriate, whatever they may be.”
“I guess…” Tara trailed off, rubbing at her wrists again, but her expression turned soft and genuine. “This might seem weird, but it makes me feel cherished? Vitalis-Barron stripped the value in my vampirism down to what it could do for humans, and being here, with humans who will do anything for their vampires—it’s helping me love myself regardless of what I am and how I’ve been used. There’s something very special about this version of power play, I think. It’s nice to imagine for a night that we aren’t the subjugated, and reclaim the legends used against us in a way that brings pleasure to both parties.”
“You feel safe here, then?”
“Absolutely,” Tara replied. “Since I’ve come back, I’ve struggled to… to exist with humans in a place where I can’t predict whether they’ll be indifferent or hate me or—well, it’s hard. It’s really hard. But the owners of Starlight are paying for my therapy and providing me with blood. They helped me find housing and they connected me with one of their customers who was a physician before she turned. I don’t think I could make myself walk into a medical facility even if I knew they’d actuallysee me, but this doctor is helping me so much more than I could ever repay.”
That stung in a place Shane couldn’t pinpoint, deep and hot and not guilty, exactly, but guilt’s furious neighbor. For all his annoyance with his routine doctors’ appointments and needle sticks and the overwhelming costs that had come with them since long before he’d been the one shelling out that money, he’d never considered what it would have been like had those doctors refused to help him in the first place. He knew the vampiric turning process could stop a type 2 diabetic’s slow pancreatic failure and insulin resistance from progressing—for all the myths of vampires being undead, they were sometimes more alive than humans in the most literal sense—but his own body was already entirely reliant on insulin injections, not to mention hormone replacement therapy and surgery. Had he fangs among his teeth, would he have been able to transition the way he wanted?
He’d have to ask his vampire about it later.
Shane gave Tara a soft smile. “I’m sorry if this is intrusive, but are you implying that you’ve needed regular medical visits since your escape?”
She glanced away, her arms snaking around her torso in a version of the motion Shane had done himself so many times over the last few weeks. It made the crook of his elbow feel uncomfortably tender, and he was glad for the little fabric sleeve his vampire had given him. “Whatever those fucking—whatever they did to me, it hasn’t been fully reversible,” Tara said. “I think I’m the only one who’s survived this long. The others I escaped with all turned up dead within the month or vanished. Maybe they’re just hiding, like me, or maybe Vitalis-Barron—” The words ended in an anguished growl. “I hope they’re dead, instead of back in that lab. I’d rather die out here then have to relive…” She dragged in a breath and seemed to force herselfback to something easier. “Starlight lets me take all the breaks I need. If it’s a bad day, I’ll sit at the front desk and someone will help me do check-ins. I know I sound like a broken record, but this place has given me a community I didn’t think I could ever have.”
Shane’s vampire lurked behind Shane’s chair, fingertips brushing the nape of Shane’s neck, and he made the faintest distressed sound. He’d used that same word for the vampires of San Salud before: a community. But from what Shane knew of the blood trade, that community was nothing likethis.
“Why did you not believe you could have this? Did you feel separated from other vampires before?” Shane asked. “Or were they not helping you the way Starlight has?”
“I knew other vampires, sure, and some of them were my friends, but before this—before, you know—I was barely able to buy blood. I’d do freelance ad stuff online, and draw for people on the streets, and pick up gigs when I could, but it was never enough to cover three bags a month and rent. Since I’ve started here, though, I haven’t once gone hungry or slept outside, even if it’s someone’s couch or one of the humans letting me take a few sips before work. But Starlight’s reach is only so big. They make more than most vampire-serving establishments because they have a few vampiric members willing to offer a private service that rich humans will pay good money for.” She grimaced. “That should probably be off the record.”
“I’ll ask Valentine and Maddox before I include it.”
Tara nodded. “They have some money, is what I’m saying, and they put it all back into this community.”
Before Shane could respond, his vampire wrapped a gentle hand around his throat, fitting it just above the collar. His thumb graced Shane’s lips, sending a slight shudder through him. He went quiet, letting his vampire ask in his place, “Whatwould you have liked to see from the vampires you knew before?”
“I don’t know. Most of them were just as badly off as me, and I don’t blame them, really. What could they have done?” Tara shrugged, though her expression was the furthest thing from noncommittal, her brow tight with thought. “But then I hear someplace like Ala Santa took in a bunch of unhoused vamps when they were having hunter problems a couple months ago, and now they have that blood bank charity, right there in the poorest part of town. But we can’t bus in vampires from around the city to one single blood bank. We need more neighborhoods who work together like that, and more businesses that take care of their members the way Starlight does… And fewer places preying on us, like Vitalis-Barron.”
Or the blood dealers, Shane wanted to point out. But as his vampire withdrew his hand, pressing a soft kiss to the top of Shane’s head like a seal of permission, it seemed the wrong time to throw the thing his vampire had committed his life to under the bus, even if he didn’t get along with its greed-driven leader. That was another thing they’d have to talk about later…
Instead Shane went with, “May I ask how you ended up in their labs?”
“A woman of theirs found me at the beginning of the fall, when tourist season was coming to an end and my caricature revenue was drying up. My rent had just gone up, and the price of blood, too, and I didn’t want to be back on the street again. It was so hard to pull out of that last time, and I—”
“It’s not your fault, Tara,” Shane said, as gently as he could.
She nodded, rubbing a hand under her eyes. “They offered to pay me, just for a few tests, the woman said. It would be three hours a night for a couple weeks. When I arrived, things felt… weird. But I signed their papers and answered their questions, and then they brought me down an elevator, and everything…”
“You don’t have to tell me about that if you’re not ready.”
“It was hell,” Tara settled on. Her hands trembled as she tucked them closer against her sides. “I thought I was dead sometimes, and the rest of the time I wished I was. We were so starving, we’d drink any human blood they gave us, regardless of what they put in it. They were always taking samples, or putting us through experiments; medical scans and shocks and injections and hooking stuff into us. We were lab rats—lab rats shaped like people—but because our bodies didn’t work like theirs they couldn’t see that wewerepeople. Or they didn’t care.”
Shane could hear his vampire pacing behind him, as physically restless and unmoored as the heart in Shane’s chest. He couldn’t think too hard about the horrors Tara had been through—not yet. They needed to finish before it hurt Tara any further. “On your last night there, someone broke you out?”
“I don’t remember it well; I was so hungry. I think I killed a lab tech—we all did. I probably would have killed our rescuer too, if he hadn’t run.”
“He wasn’t a vampire?”
“No. But he had one with him—his partner, though I don’t think they were together at the time.”
Shane’s vampire gripped the back of his chair, leaning forward over his head. “So you know them? Where are they now?”
“We were able to connect recently, through a mutual friend who helps them host vampires who need a temporary place to live.” Tara pulled out her phone. Her hands still shook. “They’re good people, but that’s all I know. I don’t want to give out their information without their permission, but I have their number still—I can ask if they’ll meet with you?”
