Page 84 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
“I left him in the elevator to the lobby. He should have been here ten minutes ago.”
That was when Andres had first gotten the text, though. He could feel his heart beating in his ears like a rush, his knees going weak. He leaned against the wall and heard himself say goodbye to Natalie and her boyfriend without really processing it.
They walked away, hand in hand, and Andres was alone.
He pulled his phone out, nearly missing the buttons as he quickly reopened his message thread with Shane. Still no reply.
Andres
Are you here? I’m worried.
A read sign appeared. No response bubbles. Andres felt like the ground had been swept out from under him, and he didn’t know what else to do but charge onward and try not to think of Maul’s fangs.
Andres sprinted through the darkness, checking under bushes and around corners, moving so far out from the building’s main entrance that a security guard around the back attempted to stop him. His distress must have come through as he explained, though—or else they were just as worried by the thought of a diabetic guest accidentally wandering their property at night—because the guard radioed in Shane’s description. It took them half an hour to confirm that he was no longer on the premises.
All that time, Andres panicked. He stared at the last text he’d sent, typing and untyping into the chat box, confessions and pleas. But deep down, he knew the truth. He’d known it since the moment his boss had proclaimed Shane a manipulator and a liar.
As he dragged himself into his car—passenger seat empty of all but the packet of the nutrition bar Shane had eaten at exactly six-fifteen pm that night—he finally sent another text.
Andres
Maul, what have you done with him?
Shane
You’ll know in the morning.
31
SHANE
Andres wasn’t coming.
Shane didn’t hold that against him—Andres was one vampire and this was a city of secret spaces just like the desolate, unfamiliar courtyard Shane had been brought to. Dozens of those locations belonged to Maul. Shane knew; he’d wandered into enough of them himself in his search for vampires. For his vampire.
Andres had already found him in a situation far worse than this literal cage, saved him and cherished him for over four incredible weeks. That miracle wasn’t likely to happen a second time.
No one had bitten Shane yet, pricked him with any needles, pressed any blades to his skin, but part of Shane wished they had, that they’d just get it over with. The wait was killing him. His body was so tight that it felt like if he just curled a little more, he could pull himself into a secret place, a safe place between the shadows. Every tiny sound made him flinch.
“We’re saving him for later.” Maul had nearly smiled when he’d said it, the barest turn of his lips and a twinkle in his eye like a cat on the prowl.
Shane felt that look so deep in his bones that it had blurred everything else out—the trip here, bound and gagged, being unloaded from the van like a sack of blood, nails digging intohis arms. His outfit had torn. That moment kept coming back to him now, lying curled on his side beneath the cage bars and the distant starlight, like an irrational part of him was just as sad that Andres would have to mend it. As though when his vampire found his body—and he was sure that was the plan, the way Maul skirted his name with a sneer—Andres would see the rip first, and the corpse second.
The early morning air chilled Shane through, leaving him to cycle between the trembles of fear and those of cold. He could no longer feel his fingers beneath the tightness of the bonds, and the glucose monitor on the back of his arm pinched against the hard ground beneath him. He was certain his blood sugar was all kinds of off, and he kept reminding himself it didn’t matter. Andres wasn’t coming, at least not in time. Everything else would be redundant soon.
He could not make himself feel the wonder or acceptance he had when he’d spoken of death with Andres, couldn’t push through the horror enough to find any beauty in a demise like this. It would have been better if his atoms ceased to exist rather than go on to be a part of Maul’s terrible system. His lungs caught, the base of his throat burning, and he tried to picture the shallow grave he was sure they’d toss him in after, the little spring flowers that would soon grow up from it, but he could only see the way Andres’s face would crack when they finally stumbled upon it. That image seemed more certain now than anything he’d seen in his life.
Purple streaked across the sky, then a brilliant orange highlighted the undersides of the fluffy clouds. It signaled the coming of Cygnus’s lover, Phaethon, flying his sun chariot too high, then too low, his reckless ambition blazing across the face of the earth. Maybe this was their fault, naming themselves after a Greek tragedy. They’d just gotten their roles wrong, was all.
Maul waited until the light had begun to stream into the courtyard, creeping its way closer and closer to the boxy, six-foot tall cage the vampires had initially thrown Shane into. It looked built for a mastiff, or a tiger, perhaps, positioned in the courtyard’s center, where the low, tired walls and shadowed openings that surrounded it wouldn’t block out the sun for long. It seemed wrong for what Shane was—pale, but human. He didn’t think Maul’s intention was to give him a sunburn.
Unless he meant to turn Shane, like he had Andres. Leave him to die there one way or another, in agony.
That was a new thought, and it tore over Shane with a fresh wave of terror, so deep and smothering that he barely saw Maul’s goons opening the door. They plunked down a chair just outside it, and Maul straddled it as he stared at Shane. His eyes narrowed.
“Do you like him, really?” He sounded curious, but skeptical, like the answer wouldn’t change anything.
I love him, Shane couldn’t say through the gag, but he ground his teeth into it and nodded. For the first time since Maul’s goons had grabbed him, he felt his eyes moisten.I love him,he wanted to scream,I love him so much that he’s what I cry over, not fucking you.
