Andres was out front in what felt like a matter of heartbeats, time eaten up by his anxiety and desire to see Shane in the flesh—to run his hands over his Cygnus’s shoulders and up his neck and hold him close and tell him how he was never allowed to be so reckless ever again, interspersed with admissions of how much Andres loved him.
Andres loved him.
He loved Shane enough that between seeing him vanish into the elevator and receiving his latest text, he’d decided in no uncertain terms that if they had to flee the city together to keep him safe from Maul, then Andres would.
As he left the building, though, he found that Shane hadn’t arrived yet. His worry tried to urge him back inside, but that would just take him further away from the place Shane was ultimately coming to. He sent a text instead, a simple I’m here, and leaned against the wall between the two left-most doors. A few people came and went from the farther entrances.
When the door beside him finally opened, he jerked upright, but it was only a woman dressed like a modernist interpretation of an upside-down triangle, who did her best to ignore him. Behind her came someone he knew, at least.
“Hey, gender thief.”
“Hey, Natalie.” He didn’t have the energy for banter. Even the smile he gave her felt weak. “Have you seen Shane?”
“You lost your partner too, huh?” She grumbled, though Andres thought, uncomfortably, that her partner hadn’t just been threatened by a vampire who’d already tried to kill him once.
Not that Maul would do anything to Shane, yet. Probably. Just how little he found himself believing that once-certainty made him feel sick.
“What’s up? Your makeup is different…” She reached for the glitter around Andres’s eyes.
Andres flinched away. The panic settled protective and fierce at the top of his spine, and he breathed through it, letting it ease back into himself.
Natalie was still watching him, looking even more worried now. “Are you okay?”
Andres thought of Shane’s arms around him, his offer of protection, and shook his head. “I’m not, really.” He said it, and it didn’t hurt. Instead, it made the hurt that was already there unravel, let his chest loosen and tempered his body’s lingering panic. “Our childhood fucked me up a lot more than I’d realized, and now that I have someone close to me again, it’s all coming out. But I’ll be okay, I think. I’m just a little on edge right now.”
Natalie groaned sympathetically, bumping into his shoulder as she leaned against the wall at his side. “I went to therapy in college, you know? I don’t really talk about it, but it helped. I realized our family didn’t mean to be shit, but that didn’t stop it from happening. Didn’t stop it from hurting me. And you, I guess.” She pecked his cheek softly. “I’m sorry.”
Andres wrapped an arm around her back, squeezing her gently. “You think it was just us, the black sheep?”
“I don’t know. Our siblings seem fine, but… I also thought you got out unscathed. Like I was the only one who it fucked up because I was just weaker or something.” She laughed. The sound was less bitter than he expected, especially from her: a child who’d been all rage and recklessness, grown into someone just as sharp, with far more ways to weaponize it. “Though my therapist always said that was unfair to myself. And they were right.”
“Do you still go?” Andres asked.
Natalie shrugged and shook her head at the same time, an expression of confusion more than anything. “Not really. Not since Matthew was murdered—my mentor, you remember I mentioned him?”
He did remember, but the context of the night put what he knew into a more sickly light. Murdered was perhaps not the word Natalie should have been using, though by the look on her face, she clearly felt it was. “He worked with Vitalis-Barron too?”
“Yeah,” Natalie replied, like it was of little importance. “Well, after what happened to him, I tried to go back, and I just—I don’t know, they didn’t get it. But maybe I was the one who didn’t get it.”
He wanted to hug her, to hug her and strangle her all at once, to ask her where he went wrong with her—whether this was his fault. If he hadn’t pulled away so much after he’d turned, or he’d told her way back then, when she was still a teenager, maybe she wouldn’t have become this. He swallowed instead, swallowed through the lump in his throat. “What was he like?”
“He was funny and thoughtful and he treated me like I was worth his time, right from the beginning. I had no one, except the rare occasion of you, and then Vitalis-Barron assigned me to him and he… he cared. Not just about our work—though he believed in me there, made me feel like I could actually do something important for once in my stupid, floundering life—but about me, as a person. And then some criminal with fangs bashed in his head, and Vitalis-Barron won’t even admit it happened. I was so angry when he died.” She drew in a sharp breath that seemed half sadness and half rage. “I’m still angry he died, I just can’t seem to do a goddamn thing about it on my own.”
“Life sucks sometimes,” Andres concluded, his voice rough, “and emotions are little bastards.”
Life had sucked for them both, giving them similar painful childhoods and vastly different adult losses. Natalie’s pain wasn’t any less real than his. Hers, though, could get innocent people hurt—could get himself hurt, if she knew what he was—and Andres had no idea what to do about that, except hug her, and hope that was enough to keep the worst of her demons from lashing out.
And maybe go to therapy.
Natalie returned the hug like she was afraid it was the last one she’d get, her arms tight around him and her face buried in his shoulder. She didn’t let go until Anthony strolled out the farther doors and called for her, and even then she gave a quiet, I love you, as she disengaged. Anthony extended a hand to her. She smiled and took it, squeezing gently.
And, god, Andres still loved her too. Without his cousin at his side though, the space felt increasingly emptier, his earlier fears creeping back in.
“Was Shane with you?” he asked Anthony.
“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.