Page 32 of Bound in Blood (Vampires of Boston #1)

Chapter

Twenty

MATEO

E verything happened way too fast.

The kind of too fast where you can’t think, and your instincts completely take over your actions.

One second, Mateo and Marco were backing into an alley, staring down a man with pitch-black eyes.

Marco’s grip was tight on Mateo’s shoulder, fear coursing through both of their veins.

The next, Mateo watched as the man lunged, avoiding him entirely, going straight for Marco, tackling him to the ground.

Mateo barely had time to process what was going on.

Marco struggled, trying his best to kick the man off him.

It shouldn’t be hard, Mateo hadn’t gotten a great glimpse of the man before he tackled Marco, but he was short and looked quite a bit younger than the two of them.

But Marco was struggling. Which meant something was very fucking wrong.

Marco was on the ground, struggling, thrashing like his life depended on it, but the man didn’t budge.

And then…

Fuck… and then.

Mateo watched in horror as the man clamped his teeth onto Marco’s throat.

His stomach lurched, mind going blank. For a moment, he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t fucking think. Marco screamed before going completely still, and Mateo finally snapped out of his fear-frozen state.

He lunged.

He didn’t feel his body move, didn’t remember making the decision. Within a split second he was on the man, yanking him off Marco, bringing them both to the dusty alley ground.

The other man fought and struggled, but Mateo had that adrenaline strength. The kind you got when babies were trapped under cars. This man bit his fucking brother, and Mateo was going to bite back.

He clamped down on their attacker’s forearm. He’d read once that skin was easy to bite through, you just had to clear the part of your mind that reminded you it was skin. So he did. His teeth tore through flesh and muscle, taking a bite-sized chunk from the man’s arm.

Blood filled his mouth, thick and metallic, and Mateo immediately spit it out, but not before swallowing some.

It tasted wrong.

Mateo had had blood in his mouth before. Split lips from playground fights, bloody noses from grown-up fights (he’d never learned to watch his mouth.) But this was different. Mateo wasn’t sure exactly how, just that it was different.

The man screamed in pain as he yanked his arm from Mateo, blood getting everywhere. All over himself, all over Mateo, and all over Marco, who was on the ground, not moving, lips parted and skin pale, like a corpse.

Their attacker, clearly angry, recovered from the shock of Mateo’s bite, lunging at Mateo again. Sharp, and inhumanly fast, Mateo didn’t have time to twist away. His head was pounding, stomach churning and before he could shove the man off him, a sharp, searing pain tore through his shoulder.

This fucking bastard just bit him, too!

It’s nothing like how he bit Marco. This was messy and brutal, more like a wounded animal attacking out of anger than some creature out of a horror novel trying to drink the blood of mortals.

Mateo took advantage of his desperation, pulling his legs up and kicking the man straight in the groin with both feet, as hard as he could.

The man yelped, a choked-off, guttural sound of shock and agony, and Mateo didn’t waste a second. He scrambled backward toward his brother, holding his bleeding shoulder as pain burned through him like fire.

A dark streak of blood— Mateo’s blood —dribbled from the man’s lips as he staggered back, his expression flickering between fury and confusion and... fear? Mateo couldn’t process in time before the man turned and just… bolted.

He was there, and then he wasn’t.

Mateo’s breath rasped, his body trembling, his shoulder throbbing. His tongue couldn’t rid itself of the taste of blood, and everything felt heavy and exhausting and…

Marco.

Fuck, Marco!

Mateo turned so fast he nearly fell over. His brother was on the ground, still unmoving. Too pale and too still. Mateo reached out, holding his hand over his brother’s nose and mouth, feeling for breath that wasn’t fucking coming.

Mateo’s vision swam. He collapsed beside his brother, his hand reaching for Marco’s wrist. “Marco?” He clutched his brother’s hand, a hand that had gone way too cold.

“Marco, wake up,” he begged, but his voice sounded slurred and wrong.

Was this what dying felt like? Why was he in so much pain? The man had barely bitten him.

Marco wasn’t moving, and Mateo was dying, and at least if they were going to go, they’d go together. Mateo turned his head into Marco’s shoulder, holding his hand as tight as his weakened state would allow. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, before everything went black.

He woke up sometime later fucking starving.

Not the kind of hunger he’d become accustomed to. The dull ache of skipping one too many meals or the gnawing emptiness of eating too little for too long.

This was… something else.

It was sharp and clawing. It invaded his veins and bones and organs. Like his whole body had been hollowed out, and now all that was left was an empty void.

And something smelled… fucking delicious.

Mateo couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. Only act.

Vaguely, he thought he heard a scream. Vaguely, he felt himself bite down, and then…

Warmth.

It rushed down his throat in thick, heady waves. Warm, rich, decadent, perfect. Better than any food he’d ever tasted, better than anything he’d ever experienced. If he had to choose between this taste, and oxygen, he’d suffocate to death as a happy man.

Something twitched and jerked against him, like a cat that was no longer content with being held. It scratched weakly at his arms, but he barely registered it.

Everything inside him screamed more, more, more.

All too fast, the warmth faded. The source, whatever it was, tapped out. There was no scratching at his arms.

When blackness overcame him again, Mateo’s last thought was of when he could get another taste.

The next time Mateo woke, his head was killing him. A deep, skull-splitting kind of pain, like his brain was trying its best to tear its way out. He groaned, bringing a hand up to his temple, trying his best to block out the overwhelming everything.

The smells, the sounds. All too fucking much.

His stomach lurched, and he was pretty sure he was in more pain than just his head at some point, but there were so many sensations crashing into him that he couldn’t focus.

Slowly, he sat up, his muscles groaning in protest. His limbs felt like they didn’t belong to him, like they were made of lead. Slowly, he blinked his eyes open and fuck…

That was a huge mistake.

Everything snapped back into focus at once. Too clear, too sharp. The shadows in the alley had detail. He could point out every imperfection in the cobblestone. Every bit of texture and dust stuck out as if someone had outlined them with a fine brush.

His stomach lurched again.

He breathed in hard through his nose, trying to give his brain some fucking oxygen. And that was another mistake.

Because of the smell.

Metal, sweat, rot. Blood. It clung to his nose, coating his tongue, making something he couldn’t name but didn’t like curl deep within his gut.

Mateo swayed a bit from his sitting position. Blinked again.

Why had he been napping in an alley? Hadn’t he and Marco been trying to catch the next train out of the country?

Where even was Marco?

Mateo stiffened. Something was very, very wrong. He swayed again, catching himself on the cobblestone with his hands, and touched something wet. Sticky.

Slowly, too slowly, he looked down.

Blood. All around him.

And then he saw the body.

The corpse.

A middle-aged man, hair just starting to gray. His throat was gone. Torn open, shredded. Like an animal had gotten to it.

Mateo stared, the world narrowing to a ruined body too close to him for his liking.

He lurched forward, retching, but knowing nothing would come up.

Nothing could come up. Because he already knew what was sitting in his gut.

What was drying on his lips, thick and metallic and wrong. The taste still lingered.

Warmth. Decadence.

Perfect.

His hands shook, raising up to his mouth and scrubbing at his lips, his teeth, his tongue, but it didn’t go away. It seeped into his body, becoming a core part of him.

Fuck. Where was Marco?

Mateo’s head jerked up, breath strangled in his throat. His eyes scanned the alley, too sharp, too inhumanly clear, and then…

Marco.

He was sprawled a couple dozen feet from Mateo, deeper into the alley.

He was motionless, lips parted, eyes closed.

His throat and face and clothes were covered in blood, and it made Mateo a new kind of sick that he could differentiate between the smell of Marco’s blood and the smell of whoever’s blood was covering him.

Focusing a little closer, he could see the slight rise and fall of Marco’s breath, could hear a very faint heartbeat. Mateo scrambled toward his brother, slipping in the blood as he moved too fast for his brain to understand. He grabbed his brother’s face, and it’s cold. Too cold.

“Marco.”

No response.

Mateo shook him, a little too violently.

“Marco!”

The cold inside Mateo spread, threatening to suffocate. He couldn’t exist without Marco. They were two halves of one sane person. He had seen him breathe, hadn’t he? Had heard his heartbeat? Or was he making it up?

No, no no no. This was not happening. Marco was fine, of course he was fine. Just taking a nap. A nap covered in blood. As one did. Mateo pressed on his brother’s face, his chest. He shook him, even more violently than the last time. Anything to wake him up.

Mateo inhaled, breath breaking on a sob. For the first time since he woke up, his vision blurred. “Please,” he whimpered, leaning forward, forehead hitting his brother’s chest. Silently, he prayed to any god that might listen.

And then, beneath his forehead, a twitch.

A slow, unsteady inhale.

Mateo jerked back so fast he nearly fell again, just in time to watch Marco’s eyes snap open. Not gradual, like someone waking up from a casual nap, but all at once, like being revived from the dead.

Mateo gasped, body locking up as he stared at his brother. His entire body locked up as Marco pushed into a sitting position, because his fucking eyes… they were wrong.

They were not the same gold they had always been.

No, Marco’s eyes were pitch-black.

Mateo stared at Marco, and Marco stared back, and when Marco inhaled again, it was slow and shaky, like his lungs had completely forgotten to work. He moved like he was trying to re- learn how to, and the way he looked at Mateo was almost as if he’d looked directly through him.

Marco’s lips parted, but no words came out. And Mateo felt a familiar emotion creep up the back of his spine.

Hunger.

Suddenly, that body in the alley next to Mateo made a little more sense. Even more suddenly, Mateo was afraid of his brother for the first time in his life.

Marco’s nostrils flared.

His gaze, black and bottomless, flickered down.

Right to Mateo’s throat.