Page 82 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
“Give me a minute…”
Shane was going to need a lot more than a single minute by the looks of Dr. Blood’s filing system. He stumbled across the research proposal hard copies by sheer accident, but the drawer barely opened, its filed folders propped unreasonably high. He jiggled it, sticking in his arm to shove the unhappy thing into place. Something at the bottom clicked.
Shane froze.
Numbly, he began pulling out the files, clearing away the drawer until he could make out the compartment hidden in the bottom. A single folder sat within. It was too old to be their new secret project, but as Shane removed it, he recognized the title instantly. The VR Study. VR forVampirism Reversal.
A flutter of butterflies seemed to burst through his stomach, but as he delved into the first page, then the second, his gut twisted. He googled the name of the key patient to verify, andthere it was: twins, one announced dead at age seventeen after a freak accident, and the other…
Shane glanced at the photo of Vitalis-Barron’s head of research and her son, the poised, pale imitation of her.
Earlier, when he’d sensed how close they were to their plans falling apart, Shane had managed to catch Dr. Blood as soon as she’d left Maul’s line of sight.“Would you like to make a comment on your inclusion of vampires in your research studies?”he’d asked.
The glaze that had come over her eyes felt different in retrospect, hostile in a way he only now understood. The Vampirism Reversal study hadn’t just been her first as Vitalis-Barron’s department head. It had been her most personal.
This new information was everything—a scandal even the rich would respond to, a break of ethical protocol outside any matters of vampirism, perhaps even enough of a threat to keep Dr. Blood off Vincent and Wesley’s backs regardless of the article—but it was also just a piece in a much larger puzzle. One Shane suspected the new special project played a role in, as well. As he flipped to the final page, Anthony glanced back at him.
“Something interesting?”
Shane could deny it, but the way Anthony was looking at him, all languid scrutiny, made him choose honesty. “It’s an old one, but it’s… well, here.”
He handed Anthony the folder. The look on his face, shifting from awe to confusion, then an indecipherable stare as his gaze moved from the study’s purpose to the main patient, confirmed everything Shane had just looked up. “Huh,” was all he said, in the end, before handing the packet back.
Shane copied the front page, folding the originals and tucking them into his outfit’s inner pocket. By the time he’d finished, Anthony was on the camera station app on his phone, frantically adjusting which screens looped. “Blood’s in the left elevator.”
“Is she—”
“Out. Now.” Anthony began turning the computer off.
Shane scribbled across the front of the copy’s first page:We knowwith a pair of fangs after. He left it on her keyboard. Maybe it would be enough to keep Vincent and Wesley safe, and maybe it wouldn’t. It was better than nothing.
They locked the office after them and ran. Anthony led the way, going right, then left, and tore through a door that Shane only realized was the emergency stairwell when he nearly toppled down the first step. The exit clicked into place, cutting off the sounds from beyond, but on the display of Anthony’s phone, Shane could see Dr. Blood pausing in the elevator’s open door and glancing down the hall the way they’d escaped. After a painfully long moment, she seemed to second guess herself and started toward her office.
Anthony looked at Shane, and Shane shrugged. In silence, they descended the stairs a level. Anthony led the way to that floor’s elevators. Shane pressed the lobby button, no ID swipe required, but Anthony didn’t step inside with him.
“I’m going up to get Nat,” he explained, and watched, quietly, as the doors began to close. At the last moment, though, he shoved his hand between them. “Does she like me?”
It was not at all what Shane expected. “She’s in love with you.”
“Yes, I do know that. I’m not an imbecile. But does shelikeme? If we had met in different circumstances, would she be my friend?”
“Would you go to LARP-con with her?”
“If it would make her happy.”
Shane just smiled in response and clicked the button to close the doors.
The lobby was no more crowded or chaotic than it had been—less so, in fact—yet it seemed suddenly that every eye was on him, the stolen paper weighing heavy in his pocket. He swore the chandeliers were sharper than before, and the air staler. The noise of chatter and electricity left a faint hum in his skull.
He sent Andres another text,done; meet me in front of the left-most ground level doors, but the nerves bundling under his skin only grew. Trying not to look any more suspicious than he already did, Shane stepped from the hot, loud room into the cool of the outside.
After the brightness of the lobby, the plant-lined border of the parking lot walkway seemed to go from the hazy orange glow of the streetlamps to the deep shadows of monsters and mayhem in a single step. The dark filled his lungs. He waited for it to soothe the lingering panic in his bones.
They had come, they’d done what they meant to, and whether or not Shane could include the information they’d uncovered in his larger article, it was still an ace they hadn’t had before.
He closed his eyes, and breathed in. He breathed out again. The uncomfortable sensation remained. When Shane opened his eyes once more, a pair of fangs shone from the shadows.
“What do you know? A lonely pet,” the vampire hummed. “Are you in need of a cage, little plaything?”
