Shane was doing this. It would help if he knew exactly what this was, but he’d stolen the longest, sharpest looking knife from behind the appetizer table—which, admittedly, wasn’t very long or very sharp, but neither were vampire fangs and they could still slit a vein just fine—and Anthony had no reason to anticipate Shane was here to threaten him.
He looked surprised to see his girlfriend’s online bestie dart into the elevator, taking a step back as Shane approached. Shane hit the button to pause the elevator’s descent and hoped it didn’t automatically release an alarm. He didn’t think too hard, not about the look on Anthony’s face or how much taller he was this close to Shane. Anthony was just a human—a single, unarmed human who had used his knowledge of science and his access to holy silver to bully his vampiric coworker in the past, but a human nonetheless.
Gathering his courage, Shane shoved the knife against Anthony’s neck.
The skin puckered around Shane’s knife tip, and Anthony’s eyes widened. His lips parted and closed again. He slid his palms against the elevator’s shiny railing.
“You have my attention,” he said, finally.
“Perfect.” Shane tried to imitate the inflection Andres would say it with, and found it was easy. If all this took was confidence… He bared his teeth. “Here’s the deal. I want access to Dr. Blood’s office, and you’re going to help me get it. I trust that you can do me this simple favor, since you’ve wormed your way into this place so deeply that no one’s noticed your customized activities yet.” Customized activities, like the custom drugs he’d been using Vitalis-Barron technology and resources to create for years.
Clementine hadn’t been certain that would translate into an ability to get them the files they wanted, but he’d been hopeful enough to suggest it. And the way Anthony’s expression shifted, every line going tight from withheld breath, Shane expected he was right.
“So, what do you say?” Shane asked.
“I’d say you don’t know how to hold a knife.”
He swore he didn’t see Anthony move, but the ground shifted out from under Shane as his wrist twisted. He hit the elevator floor with a painful thud that radiated up his hip, then a rush of panic that felt like fangs in his neck, in his wrists, Maul’s voice echoing in his head. But Maul wasn’t the one standing over him, carefully balancing the knife between two fingers.
Anthony snorted and shoved it into his belt. “You can tell your dear Dr. Hughes that Nat’s been teaching me a thing or two. Just in case.”
Then he leaned forward and offered his hand like he was going to help Shane up. It felt so absurd against the adrenaline still flooding Shane’s body that he hesitated.
Anthony snorted. “You should be aware that I’m not a man of any particular honor. If I was going to hurt you, I’d do it while you’re down.”
As ridiculous as this whole situation had turned, Shane couldn’t think of a reason Anthony would lie about that. In fact, he seemed incredibly calm, watching Shane with an amused congeniality. Shane had to remind himself that this was the same person who’d nearly ruined Clementine’s life for no reason other than that his then-coworker was conveniently in the way. Whether that was before or after he’d developed the alleged crush on Clementine, Shane had no idea.
But maybe that very lack of morals and loyalty was his saving grace: Anthony was probably just as likely to turn on Dr. Blood as he was on the person who’d held a knife to his throat.
Shane accepted his hand and stood. He gave Anthony a hard look after, lifting one eyebrow. “So?”
Anthony raised his own eyebrow right back. “You really don’t take no for an answer.”
“Because that’s not the answer you’re intending to give me,” Shane countered. “You’re not a man of any particular honor, after all, yet you helped me up.”
Anthony laughed at that, and the sparkle in his eye sent a chill down Shane’s spine. “My allegiance is to the science I can do with Vitalis-Barron’s resources, not to this place and certainly not to Dr. Blood. And you’ve intrigued me. So, what do you want from Blood’s office? Be honest with me, please. It’ll be very inconvenient for both of us if you aren’t.”
Shane doubted that inconvenient would be the right word for whatever might happen to him if Anthony discovered he’d lied. He suspected, though, that in this case the truth might convince a competitive scientist like Anthony better than any alternative Shane could think up on the spot. “Blood has a new project, something outside the regular bounds of the vampire research she’s conducting in the basement.”
“How do you know this?”
“She offered Dr. Clementine Hughes a job on its research team after Vitalis-Barron fired him.” Shane held his breath, hoping that the revelation aimed Anthony’s fury in the right direction.
“Well, that—” He seemed to search for a word and then fail to find a suitable option, merely gritting his teeth in something that would almost be a smile if it wasn’t so deadly. “They’d fired him. And she still—”
Bingo. Shane breathed out.
Anthony scowled. “You think there might be some hint in her office as to what this project is?”
That was a start, and a better one than Shane could have ever expected. “It’s the only lead we have.”
With a flash of his badge against the elevator reader, Anthony punched a decisive number into the pad, his lips curling. “Then I think it’s time we do a little digging.”
“A little digging?” Shane complained as Anthony unlocked Dr. Blood’s office door with what he assumed had to be a stolen key. He’d already used his phone in the elevator to do something he assured Shane would loop the cameras. “Are we criminals or archeologists?”
The office was exactly what Shane had expected from the head of Vitalis-Barron’s research department: polished wood and big windows, stately cabinets, a personal printer, and a computer system with three separate monitors that each looked more cutting edge than the last. Her only pieces of décor were a small line of awards and a single picture that showed a young, pale man who looked like a ghostly version of Dr. Blood herself: the only living member of her immediate family. As far as Shane’s research could tell, she loved him in a distant, proud way.
Anthony snorted, closing the door behind them. “I don’t think any proper criminal threatens someone with the world’s fanciest butter knife.”
Shane felt his cheeks prickle with a flush. “It was not.”
In response, Anthony pulled the knife back out and prodded him in the shoulder, one eyebrow raised.
“Well, fuck.”
Anthony scoffed, taking a seat behind Dr. Blood’s computer. “I’m beginning to wonder if everyone who breaks into this place is incompetent.”
Shane began checking the cabinets. “My partner—”
“Ah, yes, the one you left uselessly in the lobby.” He plugged something into the computer’s port. It was probably not true hacking, but Shane knew so little on the topic that it certainly looked like hacking to him. He glanced at Shane after a moment. “You should text him back. The buzzing is annoying.”
He’d done so once in the elevator while Anthony was distracted—a simple confirmation of success—but he still felt relieved when he retrieved his phone. Andres’s messages had grown no less panicked since his first one, but slightly more supportive and slightly less like he was considering chaining Shane to his bed after all. Shane replied quickly and moved back to his searching.
He could still feel the occasional vibration of Andres’s texts, each one warming his heart. Anthony continued typing and clicking, and Shane glanced over at him what he felt was the appropriate amount for a bastard he was putting just enough trust in to get use out of. Somehow, Nat had fallen in love with this man. Was heartbroken over him. And as much as Shane thought his friend’s best option was probably to run far and fast in the other direction, he’d noticed the way Anthony had smiled whenever she did, a more genuine and happy expression than any of his others.
“You know,” he said, closing yet another cabinet full of signed regulatory paperwork, “Nat’s worried you’re losing interest in her.” The computer clicking paused, and Shane forced himself not to look.
“We haven’t seen each other as much since she was fired.” Anthony cleared his throat. “Is she… all right?”
“That’s a question you should ask her yourself.”
Anthony made a noise, soft and thoughtful and a little melancholic, and then the clicking resumed. After a while, he muttered, “I don’t see anything immediately useful. You don’t have a name or a term I can search for? Otherwise we might be here a while...”
“Did you try the date ranges yet? A special projects folder?”
“I’m not an amateur. But neither is Blood, unfortunately.”
“VR Study.” It was an impulse, nothing more. “Look that up. It’s not the name, but it might get us closer.”
“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 for Vampirism 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, and there 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 know with 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 she like me? 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?”