Natalie and Anthony were now chatting with a group of what Andres could only assume were scientists by their fashion sense—or lack thereof—and that suited Andres fine, his eyes still red and his makeup a disaster. He kissed Shane’s hair and excused himself to the bathroom with a request that his boyfriend actually find them something to drink; he was probably going to need it in order to retrieve his sorely decimated confidence for the night. He dabbed his eyes as best he could and managed to at least smear the makeup into some semblance of normalcy, even if the silver and gold were now irreversibly mixed together, before heading back into the night.
The party atmosphere was in full swing, loud and bright and perfect for the start of a morally upright crime, if the criminal himself could only pull his shit together.
He was still on edge though, particularly now that Shane’s comforting presence was somewhere across the patio. While his partner’s attention had momentarily abated Andres’s recurring panic, it was already shooting warning shots up Andres’s spine. His fingers ached to be dragged through his hair once more. The tunnel vision of his contacts made the colorful outfits of the guests twist and blur in his periphery. It was amazing that he spotted Dr. Blood at all.
She wore a grey and white pant suit—so simple and clean it should have been illegal how perfectly she pulled it off—with her long, dark hair pinned back and a thick rope of gold at her throat that matched the gleaming line along the outside rim of her delicate glasses. Andres had expected to see her here—she’d been at the October costume gala, dressed just as simply, with the idea of a Frankenstein’s monster painted in silver threads across her fine features, accenting the angles of her face.
What he could barely process was the sight of a tooth-smiling Frederick Maul whispering in her ear.
Andres’s heart thrummed and his throat went dry as Maul clapped her on the shoulder like they were... not old friends, certainly, but at least estranged associates. Dr. Blood scowled. She didn’t push him off, though, didn’t call her security over. Maul stepped away with a casual wave and she just stared stiffly after him for a moment, before turning her attention to the next guest.
A horrified what echoed in Andres’s head, followed by a why he almost didn’t want to answer. He had to slink back into the crowd, to figure out what this meant—for him, for Shane’s article, for the blood trade, but too quickly Maul’s gaze slid over Andres. His expression turned stormy. He redirected himself toward Andres, his strides lengthening.
Andres fought down the instinctive fear that rose in his chest. He forced himself to keep his fangs concealed, straightening his shoulders and glaring. When he opened his mouth, though, Maul beat him to his own question.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Andres could have laughed if he hadn’t felt so broken inside. “I’m following your orders? You wanted dirt, I’m getting dirt.”
“You got dirt,” Maul snapped, too close for comfort. But Andres could not let himself take a step back. This was still just his boss; aggressive and cruel and responsible for compounding Andres’s trauma into what it was now, perhaps, but also the grouchy vampire who’d been pushing Andres around for years now, and all that time, Andres had not let himself be cowed. He thought. “And it worked. You did your part;you can return to stealing me blood.”
It worked. The words rang in Andres’s head, a siren drowning everything else out. Far more calmly than he felt, he asked, “What do you mean, it worked?”
“Thanks to that specimen list you scrounged up, I convinced Blood to strike a deal with us. We continue to keep her lab’s secrets a secret, and she gives us a say in what her people do while they’re on our streets.”
The way Maul said specimen list, like they weren’t murdered vampires, sent a shudder up Andres’s spine.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Maul snorted. “You know if this information got out, it could ruin Vitalis-Barron, but it could hurt us too. Do-gooders will flock to vampire charities once activists get involved, flood the market with free blood.” Of course Maul’s us wouldn’t be the same us that Andres used; it didn’t mean their community, but rather the two of them. The business. The blood trade. “Holding it over their heads is better than releasing it upfront. This helps us. Now we get to choose who they take and who they leave, and if they step out of line, they know we can defend ourselves.”
“Who they take…”
Maul must have thought the flatness of his voice was consideration, because he brightened, clearly self-satisfied. “Those damn blood bank mosquitos for starts. Whoever can’t pay us, or won’t pay us? We give Vitalis-Barron their names, make their disappearance look like vamp-on-vamp crime—the media loves that, makes them feel so safe and justified—and in exchange, they leave our customers alone. It won’t be viable forever, but in the meantime, we knock out our competition and renew our customer’s dedication to us.”
The horror of it all descended on Andres so fast that his brain clung to the little ironies at the edges—that they were having this conversation here, at a gala of the richest humans in the city, and none of the dozen people around them had noticed. And if they had noticed… they wouldn’t care. Because, Andres realized with a dawning sense of absurd hilarity, most of these people probably didn’t hate vampires. In fact, in many ways, they actually liked vampires. Liked how much money and power they could gain at their fanged population’s expense, and how easy it was to push them into these corners where they traded each other’s lives away for the chance to be almost as free as the humans.
And they had made Andres an unwitting accomplice in it.
He felt sick. The work he and Shane had done for this—their plans to expose Vitalis-Barron’s experimentation and murder to the whole city in a plea for compassion—and Maul was going to use it to put more vampires in those cells and help cover up how it happened. And he expected Andres to assist him; would demand it.
“It’s what’s best for us,” Maul said. “Once we get going, you’ll see that.” From behind the subtle parting of his lips Andres could just make out his fangs.
They were meant for Andres to see. Meant to… to remind him…
He felt like the moment Shane had looked him in the eyes and put a word to his pain all over again, the creeping realization that Maul had known what he was to Andres all this time. The reason Andres had always felt on edge with him, defensive and hostile regardless of the mood or their conversation. Andres had forced himself to forget what Maul had done to him, but Maul had kept it just beneath the surface, ensured that it festered. And it had—it had turned to this, panic taut in his muscles, screaming at him that he was too weak to truly defy Maul.
He needed Shane suddenly—to protect him or be protected by him, Andres wasn’t sure—but the instinct was so strong that his attention shifted automatically through the crowd, toward the bar Shane had been waiting in line at. He was there still, accepting a cocktail with one hand, a water in his other.
Maul followed the look.
“Why is he here?” This interrogation had none of the grouchy roughness that Maul used to question Andres’s attendance, but that was worse somehow. The quiet, deadly tension in his tone made Andres want to scoop Shane into his arms and run with him.
He focused on his own breathing, and the softness of Shane’s smile as he chatted with the bartender, seemingly unaware that their lives were being torn down a dozen yards away. “He’s here,” Andres said, irrationally calm, “because I brought him.”
“You brought your plaything to work,” Maul replied, just as flat, but he flashed that hint of fangs again. “If you give me this he obeys me crap—”
“He does,” Andres said, but amidst his fear and fury, his mind snapped to the comfort of Shane’s touch, the thoughtfulness of his care, the way he’d so genuinely meant it as he promised to be Andres’s protection. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t look at the vampire who spent his life making those around him less than himself and pretend that Shane was anything but magnificent. “He listens to me,” Andres restated, “but not because he’s my pet or my toy. Our respect goes both ways. He’s here because he wanted to be and I wanted him with me. Because I love him. And because he’s my boyfriend.”
It was that moment that Shane finally turned away from the bar, looking back through the crowd. He must not have seen Maul—or else despite all the photos Andres had given him to memorize, he still couldn’t pick out Maul’s face in the crowd—because his gaze settled purely on Andres and his expression lit up. He gave a half-wave around the drink he held and pointed towards the food. Andres lifted his hand in return, hoping Shane took the signal as I’ll join you in a minute, and not I might have gotten us both killed.
Shane’s shoulders bobbed, and he disappeared toward the appetizers.
Maul snarled. “You fool. He’s fucking with you! He’s a goddamned journalist, and he’s landed in the juiciest story he could possibly have imagined. Of course he’s going to try to worm himself into your good graces, where he can uncover all our dirty secrets and pull the bones out of our closets. You’re not his boyfriend, you’re his goddamned plaything.”
Andres heard the words, but all he could think was that Shane had left his insulin in the car. He’d gone to pick up appetizers he couldn’t even eat.
His phone buzzed gently in his pocket.
He didn’t have time to reach for it though, because Maul was in his space suddenly, a hair from his chest, and he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. His skull tingled, his jaw and his neck felt as though they were shattering, and he could do nothing.
“You’ve been my greatest asset, Andres. But you’ve gone soft again—let your weak fucking heart get the better of you. If you don’t do something, that’ll kill you just as surely as your pathetic human body would have.”
Maul didn’t have to reveal his fangs any further than the tiny tips that only Andres could see—the way his attention bore down on Andres, he could almost feel their sharpness. Those fangs weren’t the exact pair that had dug into his flesh and ripped his old life away from him, but it might as well have been with how Maul had given the order, looking on unconcerned while it happened.
Maul pressed his palm to the front of Andres’s shirt and twisted his fingers. Strands of the thin fabric ripped. All of Andres’s muscles screamed to pull away, but he felt himself go dead inside; dead and cold, locked in the festering place Maul had cultivated.
“If you want to keep the life I’ve given you, then you’ll put your boyfriend in a cage,” Maul growled, “or I will put you in one instead.”
He gave a shove as he let go, and with his legs stiff and wobbly, Andres nearly ended up on the ground for the second time that night. He caught himself, just barely. His hands lifted toward his hair, brushing back the loosed strands, and the chill along his skin quieted. It felt better to have his arms up, he realized. To have them in front of his neck. Perhaps he’d been protecting himself for a lot longer than he’d known.
Maul stepped back with the same suddenness that he’d come in. “Do it now, Andres. So long as you’re compromised by that pest, you’re too much of a liability to have any use to me.”
Then, he left.
Andres’s body didn’t seem to recognize it—his own mind could barely track the place where Maul had wandered back off into the crowd, his heart thudding and his vision tunneling like his boss was still there, just waiting to jump back out at him and finish the job. Whatever that job was.
Somehow, he managed to retrieve his phone. He clicked right past Shane’s text to a call. His hands didn’t shake. His voice didn’t stutter. It felt like the universe was laughing at him. “Are you safe?”
“I think so. I’m hiding near the entrance,” Shane replied. “Why is Maul here?”
“He made a deal with Blood in exchange for the information we got from Wesley and Vincent, for keeping it buried, I guess. I’m sorry—I didn’t know he’d—”
“It’s fine. We’ll release the list ourselves, and then whatever deal he’s made will be void.”
Oh, obviously, part of Andres responded, while the other part droned, if we live that long. He couldn’t help but remember Maul’s accusations about Shane, and he was sure this wasn’t the time or the place, but it felt better to say the question out loud than hold its poison tucked against his heart. “You’re not just with me because you’re trying to get the Vitalis-Barron story, right?”
Shane went quiet. The sound of his side of the party collided with Andres’s. His final reply was gentle, but firm. “Would you let me have that story, even if I no longer wished to be yours?”
Andres didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes. Of course.”
“Then that’s your answer,” Shane replied. The sound that came through after was breathless and lovely. “You do know I was obsessed with you first, right? You were why I started investigating vampires. You’re why I’d keep doing what I could to help them, even if we weren’t together, because I—” His voice broke, and the rustle that came over the speaker had Andres’s heart in his chest until Shane hissed, “Shit, I see Anthony Hilker walking toward the elevators.”
“Shane!”
“We came here for a reason.” Shane panted softly. Fuck, he was running.
“Wait for me, then.” Andres ran too, trying to dodge through the mingling guests with all the vampiric agility and speed that his anxiety-ridden legs were objecting to.
“He can’t know you’re a vampire.”
“I don’t—” care, he wanted to say. But he did care about that, the thought of losing Natalie, regardless of whatever horrors she’d committed, too unbearable to fathom. “Please, wait for me. I’m almost there.”
“It’s too late,” Shane said.
Andres side-stepped a couple just entering the party and charged into the roof’s lobby in time to watch the elevator door close, Shane and Anthony behind it.