Shane was consuming him, mind, body, and soul.
When they’d first arrived, Andres had thought that perhaps the Starlight Club would make what he had with Shane look better by comparison, show all the ways that he had been less monstrous to Shane than other vampires with the same inclinations, but this place—this bizarre and beautiful place—had done the opposite. It had beamed a spotlight on their cracks and gaps and the grime between. And then it had offered to clean them out and fill them with gold. To make them into something beautiful.
And with each new step they’d taken, he could feel that gilding setting a foundation.
Shane was here not because Andres had manipulated him, or pressured him, or even because they needed this to get to Tara, but because he wanted it. Wanted this.
The way he’d shivered from the pressure of Andres’s body, and whimpered from the touch of his mouth, and melted under his bite—it was eating Andres alive in the best way possible, building an ache so deep within him that it took a steady intention not to follow the lead of the couples around them and see how many noises he could get out of Shane before he licked the wound closed. But it was more than just the sensuality of it all. It was the way Shane had crashed between himself and Maddox to block out the holy silver, the way he’d listened when Andres had asked him to let his face remain a mystery, and the way he’d spoken with Tara, so calm and thoughtful and poised.
If all their texting hadn’t already convinced Andres that he wanted so much more than just a vampire-prey relationship, then tonight certainly would have. And maybe… maybe that could happen. There were so many couples here, so many partners who—like Valentine and Maddox and their Diego back home—had to see each other as perfectly equal and normal people every day, and still feel the fire of the game’s power and submission. Perhaps none of them had met their human while having an emotional breakdown, nor confirmed a hundred different ways over text that they were just friends, but…
Maybe he and Shane could still work even without the mask.
Or maybe he wasn’t enough like the vampires around him, his weaknesses too apparent, the person beneath the mask too emotionally feeble to maintain a proper relationship to begin with. He knew what had happened when he’d kept a committed partner in the past. His body was stronger now, sure, his nails long enough to flaunt the polish that made him feel like the they in his pronouns and his fangs sharp enough that adding a little gloriously feminine lace to a coat wouldn’t end with a black eye in an alley, but was he? Would he be someone Shane could still respect and obey?
This curated, masked version of himself was, at least—that much he knew.
Shane moaned beneath his bite, letting himself be pressed to the wall, neck bared so gracefully for Andres’s pleasure. Each exhilarated shudder his little swan gave was so much better than his fearful ones, every whimper sharpened by the knowledge of just what Shane was begging for: more, not less. As Andres fed, savoring each slow drag of sunlight blood, Shane grew more confident.
His hands caressed Andres’s sides and up his back, sending sparks across Andres’s skin even through the layers of leather and satin. Shane held him, held him like Andres was his protection and his comfort, playing soothingly with the hair that fell around the nape of Andres’s neck. Gradually, his fingers eased higher. They met with the strap that held Andres’s mask in place.
Andres paused, every muscle tightening. He forced himself to breathe, to keep his fangs inside Shane, and slowly, he began to feed again. He wanted to be at peace with whatever Shane chose. He wanted to believe that if the couples around him could be more to their humans than fanged creatures of the dark and still feel everything that experience provided, then he could too. He wanted to.
But when Shane toyed with the strap, combing the hair beneath it, he forgot how to breathe. His pulse hammered. Slowly, so slowly that Andres could have stopped him with ease, Shane began to pull.
Andres’s mind screamed: No, not yet, not—
Then suddenly Shane let go, jerking in Andres’s grasp so hard that Andres could only pull back, barely managing to brush his tongue over the bite pricks to stop their bleeding.
Andres’s mask wobbled, but it stayed in place, unlike his heart, which seemed to collide recklessly into his ribcage. Shane was still holding him, clutched now to the front of his jacket as he stared over Andres’s shoulder. A tremble ran through him.
His voice came out weak. “I could be wrong—I’m bad with faces—”
Oh god.
Then he continued, “But I’ve stared at her picture so often, and I swear there’s a woman in the brighter parlor who looks a lot like the one you threatened at Vitalis-Barron.”
That chilled Andres in a whole new way, a lower, deeper panic fueled not by guilt but by rage. He turned, casually wrapping his arm around Shane like he was going to sit them both onto the bench, and as he did, he scanned the room beyond their darkened corner. He spotted Margaret Lane quickly. She wore a simple fabric choker, clipped in the front by a brooch, her high-necked black dress slit at the knees. In a room full of half-dressed humans in jewelry and chains, she looked awkward and underwhelming. Afraid, even.
Andres scowled. “Find Valentine or Maddox. Tell them we might need to empty this place soon.”
“What are you—”
“I’m dealing with her.”
In the haze of Andres’s monochrome night vision, tunneled by his human-made contacts, he could have sworn he was dreaming as Shane quickly kissed the edge of his jaw. Shane was across the room in a flash, leaving only an imprint of the pressure behind.
Andres forced himself to suppress his fluttering heart and followed Shane at a more casual pace, turning to trail after his prey instead as she meandered anxiously. Maybe this time he’d actually finish the job.
“Margaret, is it?” he growled, slipping one hand around her waist, and the other over her throat.
She made a sound of surprise, then another of horror. Her body tensed, as still as a deer caught in the headlights. “W-what do you want?”
“A word.”
He guided her into the nearby privacy space, through the curtains of the small, dark room. The couple already occupying the sea of floor cushions scrambled up, cursing. The human must have realized the severity of the situation, though, because he grabbed their things so fast he nearly knocked over the basket of fresh sheets. On their way out, Andres caught a flash of his face, and he swore the man looked just like the pictures of his cousin’s boyfriend, same undercut and crooked mouth, his long hair pulled back into a messy bun. But he was gone in a flash, and Andres had other things to worry about than whether his cousin’s open relationship secretly involved vampires.
He shoved Margaret against the wall, his fangs bared in a way the soft red glow from the fairy lights would turn monstrous. “Did Vitalis-Barron send you here?”
“Why would you think that?” Margaret snapped back, her voice fierce despite the fear in it. Andres couldn’t tell if she remembered him, but she certainly remembered this, the nearness of a predator, the rush of adrenaline and the prick of the bite from when his fangs drove into her neck at the gala. She swallowed. “I’m here as a guest.”
“Lies.” And they were—they had to be—but they also weren’t entirely.
As she trembled there, her gaze on the other side of the room and her heart pounding through the vein in her neck, her chin tipped and turned, so slight a gesture it had to be subconscious. Whatever she had come for, however much she clearly feared and despised the vampires she’d worked so hard to sacrifice in Vitalis-Barron’s labs, a part of her yearned for the prick of fangs. The flood of venom. The rush and the bliss and the submission.
“If you want so badly to bleed for a vampire, I can arrange that,” Andres murmured, dark and sensual in an entirely different way from the tone he took with Shane. Not a vampire’s voice, but a monster’s. “Or, you can tell me the truth.”
Margaret whimpered as he caught her hair, tugging her head to the side. Andres could hear a buzz coming from just beside her temple. There—a little black earpiece. How he hated being right sometimes. He snatched it up, holding it to his own ear.
“Lane,” a voice spoke through it. “We’re sending our people in now. Just hold out a few more—”
Margaret wrenched herself toward the main space, yowling as her hair ripped in Andres’s hold. He let her go. She was expendable to Vitalis-Barron. There was nothing else like this place for San Salud’s vampiric community, and it currently held so, so many vampires they’d lose if it went down.
“Lane!” the Vitalis-Barron rep shouted, then gave a lower, obviously annoyed, “I think we lost her.”
“Do you not even weep for your own?” Andres spat into the device. He dropped it and ran.
Maddox and Valentine met him halfway across the room, Shane just behind them.
“We locked the front as a precaution, and we have eyes on the back,” Maddox stated.
Andres nodded. “We have to get everyone out of here, now.”
“And funnel them into the alley all at once?” Valentine shook his head. “They’ll be snatched up.”
“What if we move them across from the roof to the buildings east of us and drop down onto the busier main street beside the boardwalk?” Andres asked.
“You make that sound so simple.”
“I saw your upper stories coming in. I think I could make it simple—simple enough for vampires.”
They stared at him, Shane included.
He shrugged. “I sneak into places I’m unwanted for a living. Sometimes the front door method doesn’t work both ways.”
Maddox pointed toward the private room they’d talked in earlier. “Go with Valentine. I’ll send the other vamps up to you.”
“I can help,” Shane offered. His softness, his vulnerability and obedience, all of that had been bundled up beneath a fire that seemed to solidify him.
Still, Andres’s heart cried out. It was too dangerous; he was human, which meant if Vitalis-Barron touched him, they would face legal retribution, so they wouldn’t go after him purposefully, but that wouldn’t stop him from getting caught in the crossfire. And worse, what if this wasn’t a usual hunt for lab subjects; what if they weren’t taking pre-selected vampires, chosen for the fact that they could disappear without a trace? Whatever their original purpose here had been, they could have easily decided that the risk of burning everyone to the ground—destroying the community that was keeping vampires out of their reach—served them better than collecting new specimens.
Shane must have seen Andres’s worry, because he restated, “I have to help.”
“Then please be safe,” Andres replied. He slipped off his long jacket and slid it onto Shane, barely realizing that he was unfolding Shane’s arms, gliding fresh fabric up the crook of his elbow, all without Shane shying away even once. Andres’s throat felt tight, a lump forming at the base. “In case you end up outside,” he explained belatedly.
Then, all hell broke loose.
Something crashed through a window near the front of the building, and Valentine grabbed Andres, pulling him along. They ran like vampires, speed and agility throwing them forward so fast that Andres’s unfortunate eyes could barely keep up with his body, only Valentine’s grip stopping him from crashing into things. They barged into the private space they’d talked in earlier and through the side door, down a hallway and up two flights of stairs. Andres could hear the pounding of feet behind him, other vampires running as well.
When they reached the top floor, Andres redirected Valentine, leading the way to the back, eastern-most side of the building. He passed one window with a cursory glance, then another, and another, until—there, the ledge he’d seen from the alleyway. “Get it open.”
Valentine and another vampire burst forward to oblige, while Andres removed his lace gloves and mask, tucking the latter in the back of his pants when it wouldn’t fit in his pocket. He slid out his contacts after, retrieving his glasses from his jacket. It hurt to trade away the impeccable, elegant fa?ade for the practical frames, but he needed the better vision.
As soon as the window was open, he swung himself out, scaling down the ledge one, two, three steps. It would have been better if they had something to mount into the wall—it would have been best with a rope, technically—but this would have to do. The next building wasn’t more than ten feet away, the roof of one of the lowest of its tiered levels a slight drop from them. Any vampire could make that, with enough courage.
Drawing a breath, he flung himself across the gap. He cleared it by twice what was needed, just to make whoever watched feel like it was possible. When he turned back, Valentine had already helped the first vampire out after him. Andres perched on the edge, extending his arms.
The vampire jumped to him.
Below, the Vitalis-Barron humans continued to crash through the lower levels as, one after the next, the vampires from the club escaped the building, more than half carrying their humans across with them. Andres only had to catch a few, including Valentine, who crashed into him so hard they both nearly stumbled over the ledge. Andres clutched his shoulders, sensing the tremble that worked through him, so like Shane’s particular brand of fear that it made Andres feel protective.
“You good?”
“Yes,” Valentine replied, but his gaze went down to the alley. Not the height, Andres realized, but the people they’d left to bar the way. Their humans.
“You have a person back home, right?” Andres asked.
Valentine replied instantly, “Our spouse, Diego.”
“Go to them,” Andres instructed. He waved a hand toward the group that had broken into their new building but were awkwardly waiting for further instruction. “And take some of these fools with you.”
Valentine managed a nod. He seemed to have to drag himself every step, but he did it.
There were only a few vampires left: three, then two, then—Tara.
Andres had watched her stand beside the window, taking note of every time she stepped back to let someone else jump. And it wasn’t chivalry, he realized. It was terror.
As she pulled herself onto the ledge, she shook her head. Her legs trembled visibly. “I—I’m too weak. Everything Vitalis-Barron did to me—they—” Her words died in her throat as she swayed, glancing back at the window.
Andres could make out motion inside, accompanied by shouts and a scream. He thought back to Tara’s interview, not the horrified recounting of what she’d suffered, but the way she’d spoken about the vampires at the Starlight Club. Her community. His community too.
“Ah, fuck,” he muttered.
He gave himself half a second to judge the sheer stupidity of his decision, but not long enough to rethink it, before taking five steps back and running at the gap between the buildings. Distance wasn’t a problem, but he was jumping from low to high now, and he had to grab for the ledge Tara was standing on as his body slammed into the building’s side. The air left his lungs. His fingers slipped, his long nails scratching against the brick.
A strong hand latched onto his arm. He grabbed back, leveraging himself up to find Maddox, panting, a literal sword in one hand. There was something very much like blood on it.
“We should go,” Maddox insisted. The door inside bulged against its lock.
There was no one else. No Shane.
Don’t think about that, he told himself, not yet. He swept Tara into his arms on one side, and linked his hand with Maddox on the other, and hoped to god or the universe or whatever nonsense had prompted the evolution of vampires that this worked. As the door burst open behind him, he launched them all across the alley.
They tumbled as they hit the rooftop, and Andres let Maddox go, wrapping Tara in his arms. He helped her up immediately, finding Maddox already on his feet, his sword miraculously still present.
“Shane?” Andres asked.
A bullet whizzed by his head, sending a bolt of fear down his spine.
He wrapped an arm around Tara and ran for the building. Each step felt like tearing off a piece of himself. The moment they were behind shelter, he grabbed Maddox by the shoulder, repeating his question with a growl. “Where’s Shane?”
“I think he went out the back.” Maddox pulled his phone free with one hand as he jogged across the room, a limp in his step. Andres was pretty sure the graze bleeding on his bicep was from a bullet. Yet he seemed so calm as he continued, barely pausing for Tara to lick the cut closed. “They captured one of our vampiric employees, and there’s a few injured humans. I’m calling an ambulance. Where’s Valentine?”
“Safe,” Andres replied. “On ahead, with the others.”
“Thank you.” Maddox nodded. He found the stairs, taking them two at a time with Tara on his arm. Andres could hear the roll of loud music from below—one of the bars along the main street, probably. They could slip out the front, blend into the sidewalk traffic; or if not blend in, then at least use it like a shield, the human bystanders offering a certain amount of security against being bagged and dragged off. Vampires might have been easy prey under their country’s loose laws, where people could argue the protections included only those without fangs, but an obvious kidnapping was still generally considered illegal.
Andres let Maddox and Tara go, watching from a distance to be sure they got safely to Maddox’s motorcycle, but his heart, mind, and body were still focused on Shane, his worry consuming more and more of him by the minute. Andres couldn’t just walk around to the alley. He’d transformed his outfit by buttoning up his shirt to the collar and pulling his pant legs down over his high boots, the coat, gloves, and mask he’d worn all evening already long gone and his sturdy black frames on in place of the night’s colored contacts, but he still had an air of ostentation and a plethora of red, gold, and black eye makeup that might have been suitable for any number of boardwalk clubs but not a backstreet full of an unknown number of Vitalis-Barron employees. And Maddox had called an ambulance there anyway; Andres could hear it pulling in now.
His phone buzzed.
He’d forgotten it so completely that the vibration startled him. But he’d constructed a pocket into Shane’s outfit to let him carry one himself, so—
Andres scrambled to pull out the device. He had to flip away from a stack of grumbling messages from Maul in his scramble to open the thread he wanted.
Shane
I just had the weirdest night, and I kind of need someone to know I’m alive right now.
Oh thank fuck. Andres could cry. He was crying, mist forming at the corners of his eyes. He tried his best to wipe beneath his glasses without smearing his makeup. This wasn’t his Shane, he reminded himself. Not the vampire’s Shane, but the one belonging to his friendly neighborhood emotional wreckage.
Andres
Are you all right? Where are you?
Are you alone?
Do you need help?
/I care
Shane
You are such a mom friend, and you know that’s not how you use the backslash /affectionate
Yes, I’m fine, just shaken. I got separated from my partner, but I’m not really alone if I’m talking to you? ;)
(There’s also plenty of strangers around now, if I need help.)
Wait, partner? Andres’s heart skipped a beat, trying to settle somewhere between an overjoyed we’re dating now and the icy knowledge that they could never have a real relationship so long as he still hid his identity. Then a selfie loaded with the message proof of life. Shane had Andres’s black coat wrapped tightly around him, and he must have removed his collar, because one side of Andres’s hastily-closed bite mark peeked out, a red dot surrounded by a bruise. The background was so dark that it took Andres a moment to recognize it: the lake. Shane was at the boardwalk.
Phone still clutched in his hand, Andres ran.
When they’d entered the Starlight Club, it had been late in the evening, the Saturday night crowds in full swing, but now they were starting to tamper off, the sidewalk hordes lessening to a scattering of couples enjoying the mild spring night and a tipsy brides-person party in rainbow tiaras tottering on their heels from laughter, the Fishnettery aglow behind them. The lake had emptied of all but a single boat, far across the water.
And there stood Shane. Arms clutched tight to his chest, his cheeks pink and his hair a mess, the scent of him, savory, a little burnt and a little sweet and so, so warm, mixing with the tang of the breeze off the lake. He was the most beautiful thing Andres had ever seen—whole and uninjured and waiting for Andres.
But that wasn’t right; Shane wasn’t waiting for Andres. He was waiting for his vampire.
Andres’s heart caught and his hand went to the back of his pants where he’d stashed his mask. He found nothing—lost during the escape. He took a step back, but his moment of hesitation allowed Shane’s gaze to latch onto him in the darkness.
No horror or anger followed, Shane’s brows simply tightening as he squinted. He lifted a hand to wave without really tugging it away from his chest, and asked, “Do you know me?”
“Oh. Um, yes, hello.” Andres was crying again, tears too big and full to miss. Shane still didn’t know. He was safe and he was alive, and he didn’t belong to any version of Andres that could be here right now. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, wiping his eyes as he closed the gap between them.
Something like recognition crossed Shane’s face, but his confusion only deepened. “Andres?”
His name on Shane’s lips was immaculate, and yet it sounded just like the beginning of the end. “I promise I’m not always like this.”
“It’s all right.” Shane looked unsure of what to do with himself, like he wanted to offer a hug but didn’t know where they stood on physical touch. Andres’s whole heart yearned for it, to wrap him up in his arms and just hold onto him until the chaos in his chest subsided, but for all the emotional intimacy they’d shared over text, they’d never really touched, not from Shane’s perspective. And Shane kept watching him, his eyes pulling back across Andres’s jawline, over his lips, along his earlobes to where the ends of his hair curled.
Andres pressed a hand to his mouth, looking down the boardwalk. “Can you not?” he muttered. “I feel enough like a fool.”
He hadn’t specified what he wanted stopping, but Shane turned slowly toward the lake, one hand on the railing. He cleared his throat. “Were you at the Fishnettery again?”
“No, just… a club.” Andres had to stop talking. He had to stop being here. But he had to stop lying, too, or he was going to ruin this, dig himself deeper until it was a pit he couldn’t climb out of without breaking both their necks in the process. He had already lied for so long…
Shane could choose to hate him for it.
The knowledge was still sinking in, pressing its slow, terrible hooks into Andres’s heart. He’d been focusing so much on how Shane wouldn’t be able to see him as the over-emotional friend and still tremble beneath his touch and melt in his arms, that he hadn’t considered the option where Shane decided to no longer see him as either. Not lover or friend, but a monster.
Andres tried not to think about that. He tried to believe that if only he could knit the two halves of himself together strongly enough, they could still move forward. They could become one of the couples from the Starlight Club, mixing romanticized moments of power play into an ordinary life of extraordinary love. They could.
He just had to prove that.
Shane hadn’t replied yet. Standing at the railing, a soft flush in the moonlight, he looked fragile suddenly. He held his arms against his chest, his brow tight as he gazed across the water. Beneath the worry and the pain, part of Andres longed to unwind him, to peel him apart, to see him quaver and melt and feel his pulse flutter. The more Shane bundled himself tighter, the more that impulse grew.
“Do you know what it feels like,” Shane asked, “when you’re so consumed by another person, so quickly and so completely, that when you lose them, even for a moment, it’s like your whole being is in suspense, pulled out of time? You become a Schr?dinger’s person; whether you’re alive or dead depends on them, but you won’t know yet, not until they return.” He dragged his fingernails against his neck, pressing them to the bruises where Andres had bitten. “Is that love, or is it obsession?”
“I think it’s both, and it’s neither.” Andres stepped forward, soft, monstrous steps, coming up behind Shane like a creature of the darkness. “The feeling is the same, but it’s the action you let it drive you towards that makes it one or the other.”
Just keep loving, he’d been told by a stranger a few months ago, golden hair and fangs and so much of that singular emotion in his eyes that it had hurt to look at. Andres wondered where that vampire was now. If his loving had held him together or torn him apart.
Andres refused to keep letting his own obsession make that choice. So he’d have to try love and hope for the best.
Shane made a sound like a creature dying. Or one coming to life. “You know, I’m waiting for someone,” he said, his voice shaky with a humorless laugh.
Andres took one last step, until he was hovering over his Cygnus, around him. “And you’ve been so patient for me.” He whispered the words, leaning in. “But I think you’ve waited long enough, my pet.”