Andres swore this night had been the worst ordeal of his life.
Not the heist, of course—that ran without a hitch. The lock of the window in the back room had been left open by Andres’s informant and the cameras immediately disabled, the blood carried out in large black containers and stacked into the back of the freezer van. His driver had set off with it half an hour ago, leaving Andres to do the cover-up.
He tore out the security cameras, wrecked the entry, lobbed a brick through the window, haphazardly spilled a couple blood bags too old for safe consumption, caught the nearest of the two security guards and handed them off to be drained to unconsciousness by a trio of vampires he’d carefully selected for the improbability that they would ever be tracked down or connected to each other—anything to make it look like the theft had been the opportunistic rampage of starving vampires instead of a preconceived plot by a group of professionals. It was the best Andres could do on such short notice.
And he hated it. He hated that the media would cover it as though the vampires were dangerous monsters overwhelmed by blood lust. He hated that it would inspire outrage from the blood banks his community desperately needed to maintain their undercover access to. He hated it.
But it still wasn’t the worst thing he’d done that night.
That had been, hands down, meeting Shane again.
Or, more specifically, having a full-blown emotional breakdown just as he was meeting Shane, and not having the courage to explain that he had been the one beneath the mask all those months ago. Shane had been so kind and smart—so much the man who’d caught Andres’s attention back at that gala. But he hadn’t been enthralled with Andres. He’d gone from annoyance to pity, and finally to a mild interest… in friendship.
Was it because of how they’d met, with Andres blubbering over nothing? Or was it the absence of the anonymity they’d shared at the party, the sparkling lights and beautiful masks so conducive to breathless wonder? A lot of the first, a little of the second, Andres thought. But either way, it meant that Shane—his Shane—didn’t actually want him.
Andres couldn’t blame him. Even his team had given his swollen eyes odd looks, only relaxing once he’d made a show of rubbing them while complaining that his new brand of contacts were fucking him up.
But what did it matter? Shane had likely taken his number as a mere courtesy. Andres would never see his little swan again, and that was how it should have been all along.
He ran both hands through his hair, scowling as he turned into the alley. He had to get the man out of his mind, at least until he’d checked in with Maul and confirmed that all the blood had been stashed in the proper warehouses.
There were no customers outside the droplet-marked door—a shocking abnormality when two months ago would have boasted a line halfway down the alley. He knocked, waiting just long enough to wonder if he should have gone around the back before one of Maul’s staff opened it. She let him in without question. Maul was finishing a transaction with a gangly young vampire who licked his fangs as he watched Maul count the money.
“Three hundred?” Maul growled. “I said five twenty-five.”
“It’s everything I have.” The young vampire wrung his hands, looking like he wanted to snatch the bills right back.
“I can give you half.”
“Half of five-twenty-five, that’s two-sixty… two-sixty-two?”
“Half for three hundred.”
The vampire flinched. He swallowed.
Andres couldn’t stand the way Maul took advantage like this—making his own community pay more for being the poor, disadvantaged group the humans had forced most of them to be. This vampire probably didn’t have a permanent job or home, didn’t have the luxury of coming up with another three hundred dollars in the five days it would take him to go through that single half pint—seven, if he stretched it the way it appeared he had been, leaving him constantly brain fogged and hungry.
“Let’s say three hundred now for this half pint,” Andres said, crossing the room, “and two twenty-five for the other half when he comes for it next week. We appreciate our long-time customers.” He clamped the vampire on the shoulder, giving him a smile with as much flattery as edge.
Maul scowled, but he didn’t discipline Andres the way he would have had Andres contradicted him five years ago. “As long as you come next week. Or else the price goes up.”
“Thank you, yes, thank you.” The young vampire dipped his whole torso as he said it, almost a bow. He hurried out with the blood like he was scared they’d take it back should he linger.
Managing to twist even that little bit of justice into Maul’s schemes tempered the frustrated edge that still lingered after Andres’s breakdown—always lingered in Maul’s presence, breakdown or not. Maul certainly did his best to keep anyone around him from feeling comfortable.
Maul didn’t stop scowling, even after the door was locked behind their exiting customer. “The van just parked at warehouse four,” he said. “Everything should be unloaded by the turn of the hour.”
But Andres wasn’t listening. He was breathing, a long, deep breath, the back of his mind tingling as he swore he could smell something familiar. It had been haunting him all evening, an illusion of sunshine and the burnt edge of jam-topped toast.
It couldn’t be here though—not here. Shane had no reason to have come to this place. His scent was a figment. Another memory. Shane had just lodged himself so thoroughly into Andres’s soul with one chance meeting that Andres was transporting the ghost of him now.
His body carried him past Maul’s table, though, like a cord at his center was pulling him forward, to where a curtain had been erected to hide their insulated cases of blood from view. In the dimness, Andres’s sight had shifted mostly to the greyscale of his vampiric night vision, the world tunneled by the effect of his human-made contacts, but through the fabric, he swore he could make out the silhouette of a body in a chair. His heart thrummed in his ears.
He could smell Shane still, smell him stronger now, bright and wonderful and terrible.
This was a dream—or a nightmare. What else could it be, when his arm felt numb, his fingers barely sensing the curtain’s rough material as he slowly pushed it back?
“My god.” His throat caught.
Shane—his Shane—sat there—bound there—limbs limp and head lolling, a slow stream of scarlet sliding through the tube implanted in his vein. On a rocker below him lay full bags of blood. Too many.
Andres could feel each one of them like a punch to the chest, the rest of the world spinning down to that deep red that should have pumped Shane’s life through his body.
Shane, who was left with so little that he’d lost consciousness. Shane, who was still being drained.
“My god.” Andres moved in a haze, knocking into Shane’s feet as he stepped around to his side. The man barely groaned, his lashes fluttering without opening.
Maul grabbed his arm. “He’s the fucking journalist who’s been poking around our territory. We checked and he has no one, we’re safe.”
The journalist Maul had said he’d take care of on the phone. So he’d chosen this: the certain death.
The worst outcome.
“You’re killing him.” Andres couldn’t tell how his own voice sounded through the shock. Hollow, probably. It was how he felt, gnawed open and carved out, like he was trying to embody too many emotions at once and his soul was still deciding which ones it could reasonably fit.
“He stuck his neck into our business—he should have expected we’d bite.” Maul narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t think you’d care.”
Andres shouldn’t have cared, not this much, not about someone who had such potential to harm their clandestine community already fighting to survive. Someone who’d all but rejected him earlier that night. But Shane… his Cygnus.
Andres could still feel the breath he’d held at the end of the Vitalis-Barron gala, after Shane had watched him threaten and bite a woman with more right to call herself a monster than he did, waiting to see if his little swan would let him leave without protest. His heart had pounded with each moment Shane’s hands had lingered over the handle of the door, but at his core, he’d known what his little swan’s answer would be.
Shane had earned that kiss.
There was no fucking way Andres would let him die now.
He just had to make Maul feel the same. Maul, whose predominant state in life was to take advantage and wrest control at every point imaginable, and who currently had all the power. But Andres had been slapped by the hand that fed him enough times to know how to work around that.
He exhaled, slipping his face into something almost like his usual expression, aloof and sensual and perhaps just a little devious. Hopefully by now, the puffiness around his eyes had faded too much for Maul to notice. “Normally I wouldn’t care about someone like him,” Andres said. “But I tasted this one months ago and nothing has compared since. It’s devastating to see so much potential blood go to waste.”
Maul raised his brow. “I’ll put aside some bags for you.”
“Oh, but you know how much better it is when you sink your fangs into the throat of a pretty human, when they’re warm beneath you and their breath quickens?” How many bags had Shane lost already? God, Andres had to do this faster. “Besides, if you kill him now, you’ll get 7 pints, if you’re lucky, perhaps 9 if you can exsanguinate the rest quickly enough to stay fresh after his heart stops beating. But if he’s alive, being bitten regularly, he’ll produce that in a few months. You cut my parasite gig on that blood bank short, let me at least try it on a single human; I bet I can keep him bleeding for me for a year, at least. Who knows, this could be the next big thing in blood collection.” He should not have said that, fuck, he was going to be putting ideas into Maul’s head.
But by the way the vampire’s eyes gleamed, one edge of his lips crawling upward, it was clearly working. “A long-term supply, huh.” He nodded slowly, eyeing Shane. “But he’ll be your responsibility. And you’re not just taking him for free. If you think you can get blood from him for a year, then he’ll cost you the same as a year’s blood.”
Shit. Maul charged him less for his bags than the average vampire—one perk of running the side of the business that would have let him skim off the top, had he been willfully stupid enough to try—but that was still…
“Round it down to ten grand and you have a deal?”
“Fair enough.”
“I’ll have the money for you by the morning.”
Andres could almost not believe the words coming out of his own mouth. Ten grand was the better part of his savings from the last few years, the safety net he’d been building for when his old Mazda finally bit the bullet. But then his gaze slipped back to Shane like he was the other end of a magnet. Like he was Andres’s. Ten grand, for the life of someone he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind for months; someone who hadn’t even remembered him. Ten grand, for his constellation.
Shane was more than worth it.
A knock broke through the quiet. Maul grunted. Pulling a smartphone off a side table, he handed it to Andres. “This was his. Do what you want with him.” He pulled the curtain closed and through it Andres could hear him greeting the newest customer—it sounded like a line was finally forming.
Andres forced himself into action. Tucking Shane’s phone away, he knelt beside the chair and withdrew the catheter from Shane’s arm. The man’s blood continued to ooze, and the scent overwhelmed Andres like a gust of heat from an oven. He cradled Shane’s arm and lifted the little wound to his mouth. That small taste of him was unparalleled, savory and sharp and a hint of sweet all wrapped into one haunting flavor that felt like a long afternoon in the sun as a human. If Andres had truly been buying him for his blood, ten thousand would have been far too cheap for such a delicacy.
Shane moaned, his whole body flinching away from Andres’s touch with a feeble twitch that seemed more instinctual than conscious.
“My poor little swan, what have they done to you?” Andres muttered.
Andres held him still, pressing his fangs into Shane’s skin slowly and gently to push a dose of the blood-regenerating vampire venom into his body. This time the sound Shane made was sweeter, addled by the momentary intoxicant. It passed as soon as Andres’s fangs had left him.
He’d need more before the night was over, but that would be enough to keep him alive.
Andres scooped up Shane’s legs first, lifting the man’s knees until his lashes fluttered. His eyes didn’t quite open, but he pulled from Andres’s touch with more certainty. Andres’s chest hurt. He followed the retreat, drawing his thumb up the side of Shane’s arm along the rip Maul had cut in his sleeve.
“It’s all right, Cygnus, it’s me,” he murmured, his voice dripping with the flirtatious darkness he’d employed on Shane at the gala, hoping that the sound and touch—devoid of tears and clumsiness and all the pathetic qualities Shane had first seen in him at the bar—might awaken the memories buried in Shane’s subconscious. If only his little swan had held on to their kiss with a tenth of the spark that Andres had. “I’m here for you.”
Shane went so still that a tight panic began welling in Andres’s chest—if Shane didn’t recognize him, or simply couldn’t find some level of safety in him after whatever hell Maul had put him through—
Then Shane’s breath released. He eased into Andres’s touch, his whole being leaning toward Andres’s side of the chair, toward his presence or his scent or whatever the man could sense of him in his current state. “It’s you…”
“It’s me,” Andres whispered back. “I’m picking you up now, all right?”
Shane made a sound in response, his eyes still closed, but Andres thought it was affirmative. He slipped Shane’s arm over his shoulder and cupped him behind the back, arm still beneath his knees, and lifted him bridal-style. It was so easy with his vampiric strength, but by the looks of Shane—lean and small and a little bony—he wouldn’t have been hard to carry regardless.
His head lolled backward, and he groaned. Andres shifted his hold, helping Shane rest his temple on Andres’s shoulder. Shane’s pained noises turned softer, and he tucked himself close like he was going to sleep there. It was… strangely perfect. Shane so vulnerable in his arms, so trusting, so entirely his—this man that he didn’t even truly know, but whose blood now belonged to Andres. He could still taste Shane, the last remnants of that sunshine scent singing on his tongue.
He avoided the now-busy front room, taking Shane down the hall and out the back, using the far alley to reach his car. If Shane had driven his own vehicle there, someone would have to come back for it later. As he leaned to open his passenger door, Shane muttered in his arms, his words slurring together.
“How did you find me?” His breath tickled Andres’s skin.
“I think you found me, my Cygnus.”
“I’ve been looking…”
That did something odd and lovely to Andres’s chest. Shane had been looking for him? Had that been what the investigating was for? Because Shane had wanted him, had wanted more of their time at the gala, more of whatever this was.
He hadn’t known Andres at the bar, but it seemed that was truly because of the circumstance—because of Andres’s breakdown, his hoarse voice, the utter lack of flirtation and touch and mystery. Part of him feared that the moment Shane woke properly, saw who Andres was beneath the bravado, he’d realize he really didn’t want anything more from Andres but friendship. Perhaps, though, Andres could do something about that…
He lowered Shane into the seat and put on his belt before climbing into the driver’s side.
Fuck, where did Shane live?
“Cygnus?” He asked, but with his legs down again, his little swan had passed out, head dropped to one side to expose the length of his beautiful neck.
Andres could feel what remained of Shane’s blood struggling to pump through the veins that ran beneath the skin. Andres could feel, too, the venom filling his fangs at the thought of another taste. But right now, what he needed was to get Shane lying down again and give him enough venom for his blood to replenish.
Andres had a vision of Shane in the luxurious king-sized bed he’d treated himself to last year, swaddled in silken sheets and sheer fabric, brought home and kept close the way Maul surely thought Andres would. The idea sent a shudder through him and he tried to burn it from his mind as soon as it appeared, but it left a residue behind: the thought of Shane in a little collar of precious metal with a chain to tug on and a gap for Andres’s fangs to sink in. It was delicious and it was monstrous and he could not let it get the better of him.
Horrors such as those were reserved for the vampires in the media, most of whom died when the human’s destined lover burst in.
Andres slid his hand under Shane’s limp, delicate fingers and laid his index on the print-reader of his phone, hoping either it or the face recognition was enabled. The device unlocked, and at the top of Shane’s map app was the favorite place labeled ‘home’. Andres was almost—almost—disappointed.