Page 17 of Missing Piece (Neon Scars #2)

“ A lright, you fuckers, come out. I can smell the both of you in here,” Vincent called out as he shut the door to Adam’s room.

He had wrapped the unconscious human in the blanket and left him on top of his bed.

He didn’t even bother with the ankle cuff this time.

It seemed like Adam really couldn’t get around without assistance, so he wasn’t too worried about him wandering off or doing something silly like trying to escape. Not after tonight.

This time, he was careful to keep thoughts of “horny fingers,” as the brothers called it, from entering his mind.

He just wanted to feed and try to figure out why he was so fascinated with the grumpy little human.

He hadn’t intended on giving Adam head, but as soon as the idea crept into his mind, it was as though he couldn’t stop himself.

He was already on his knees, his face between Adam’s legs, before it dawned on him how badly he was fucking up—but by then it was too late.

And then Adam started pulling his hair, and he slipped his own hands into his pants…He was planning on throwing his cum-stained underwear into the fireplace before the brothers got back from working and getting as drunk as possible, but his unexpected visitors made that plan difficult .

“Are you decent?” Marcus’s voice called from the foyer.

Fuck. He must have heard something. He didn’t want to have to explain himself to Marcus. Mostly because he wouldn’t know how to.

He fully intended on roughing Adam up before feeding on him, but the damn human threw him off guard back in the room.

He spent the whole day planning what he would do.

A little light torture, just like he would have done in the good old days.

Adam had proven he was tough and clever, and normally the monster in him would see that as a challenge.

Something to bend and break. But that part of him was suspiciously quiet.

“Yes,” he said flatly as he made his way into the foyer.

Marcus leaned against the front door, a cigarette between his lips as his amber eyes flicked up and down Vincent. “You reek,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I was not expecting company,” Vincent snapped, running his hand through his messed-up hair. “Why didn’t I hear your car pull up?”

“We walked,” Ophelia said, sitting on the piano bench with her eyes glued to her phone as usual, her tawny face expressionless. “From your neighbor’s house.”

“That is a seven-mile walk,” Vincent pointed out, eyeing Ophelia’s thick soled boots that looked pristine as ever.

She was small, barely five feet tall, and always wore shoes with at least a 3-inch platform.

Despite her high-pitched voice and small frame, everything else about her was big.

Her brown eyes, her coiled brassy hair, and her temper.

“I carried her to speed things up,” Marcus said nonchalantly, ashing his cigarette into his hand.

“That was a piggy-back ride, there’s a difference,” she said with a frown.

“There is no difference,” Marcus said.

Ophelia looked up from her phone, glaring at him.

“Why were you at my neighbors’ house?” Vincent asked quickly before Ophelia decided to argue the point. As humorous as her rows with her father were, he wasn’t going to wait for them to finish bickering. They’d be there till sunrise if he let that happen.

“Do you not read the local news?” Ophelia asked.

Vincent scoffed. “Why the fuck would I read the local news? To learn which hate group is standing outside which ethnic restaurant?”

“Your neighbors are dead,” Marcus said bluntly. “Several of them, in fact.”

“It wasn’t Matteo, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Vincent said. “Luka and I imported that swill from Macedonia they both like, so we’ve been able to get him a little blood every time he has a drink. He’s mostly still in his right mind right now.”

“Good, my wrist still makes a weird crunching sound since the last time he went full beast-mode and rampaged through Tennessee,” Ophelia said, flexing her wrist back and forth so they could both hear it. She stood up from the piano bench, glancing into the den. “Do you have any human drinks?”

“Check the fridge,” Vincent said.

“Your, um, newest toy isn’t passed out naked in there, is he?

Because I really don’t want to see white boy dick right now.

” Her usually blank stare twinkled with a mischievousness that let Vincent know she was not about to drop the subject.

She may have been devoid of empathy for her fellow humans, but she loved to know everyone’s business and made it her job to make others uncomfortable.

“He’s in his room.” He eyed Marcus, waiting for him to say something, but Marcus had a smirk on his face that may as well have said, “I’ll allow it” like a pushover judge in a bad crime drama.

“Thank God. Why can’t you guys bone in the house like normal people?”

“Ophelia, inappropriate,” Marcus sighed.

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, fine, I’m going, you guys can hash out the sordid fuck details,” she said as she pushed passed Vincent.

“Language!” Marcus called after her, shaking his head as he cracked the front door to flick the butt of his cigarette out onto the porch.

“What did you tell her?” Vincent demanded.

Marcus shrugged. “I just told her not to go out there, she came to her own conclusions based on how loud your little pet project was being.”

Vincent’s face warmed. How long had it been since he blushed? He didn’t blush. “You’re here to talk about my dead neighbors, so talk,” he said. He knew Marcus would see right through his attempt to change the subject, but he could still try.

“Can we go sit in the kitchen? You’ve let Ophelia loose in there, which is like just asking for her to set something on fire,” Marcus said, still smirking.

“She wouldn’t dare,” Vincent said as he motioned for Marcus to follow him.

Marcus laughed. “You still have bats in your attic?”

“Yep, they’re very noisy during mating season, which is about now. ”

“What did you do to make her pull that stunt?”

Vincent shrugged. “It was around the time I told her she might want to consider dating to blend in with her peers,” he said. “She didn’t like that suggestion, I suppose.”

“I’ll say.”

As soon as they crossed over the threshold into the kitchen, Ophelia thrust two beverages in their direction. “Your neighbors are super dead.”

Vincent took the glass from her. “Which neighbors?”

“The old couple. The Whitmans,” Marcus said as he accepted the drink from his daughter. He moved over to the small table near the back door and sat down in the chair, running his finger along the rim.

“And the Kilanowskis a few plots over. And the Bishops,” Ophelia added, hopping onto the kitchen island. She swung her legs as she took a sip from a third glass she produced from behind her.

“Hey, that has blood in it. And alcohol,” Marcus said, shooting her a glare.

She took a longer drink before setting it down. “I’m aware, there’s only one reason some savage would put a good Cabernet Sauvignon in the fridge,” she shrugged.

“That’s cannibalism and I raised you better than that.”

“Technically it’s hemophagy, not cannibalism. I guess if you blended someone into a smoothie that would be like a drinkable cannibalism, but that’s not what’s happening here,” Ophelia retorted. “Wait, are you more concerned about the blood or the alcohol? I’m confused.”

Marcus began swearing under his breath, rubbing his temples .

“Okay, as delightful as this debate is, I’d like to know why you two are out here just because a few farmers are dead,” Vincent interrupted.

Marcus gave him an incredulous look. “You don’t think a sudden string of murders near your property has something to do with being on the radar of a cult?”

“To be fair, I didn’t know about the murders until a few minutes ago, but go on,” Vincent said as he took a sip. Ophelia was right, refrigerated cabernet was a bit of a crime against the varietal, but they had pre-mixed the blood in days before and didn’t want it to go bad.

“I got a call from Matoskah after the second bloodless family showed up in the morgue.” Marcus paused, his amber eyes focused downward. “They had three kids, Vin, and one of them is missing.”

Abominations , his beast grumbled somewhere in the back of his mind.

“What are you implying? That this cult turned a kid? Even I’m not that fucked up,” Vincent said pointedly. “What about the rest? How did they die?”

“Early exams from the coroner show each of them were drained, and with foreign blood in their stomachs,” Ophelia said without looking up from her phone. “Mat said the DNA on the ingested blood was sent out for additional testing because the coroner couldn’t identify it as human.”

Vincent looked from Ophelia to Marcus, who was throwing back the full amount, his brow pinched as he did. “Are you telling me they tried to turn all of them?” Vincent asked.

He already had an intense dislike for those who harmed children, but he couldn’t think of anything viler than turning a child.

It was already a gamble to attempt it on a full-grown adult.

Any maker knew the risks, which was one of the reasons most of the vampires in town had never attempted it.

He liked companionship as much as the next guy, but it was too risky.

He had heard different statistics thrown around over the years.

One in twenty would survive. One in fifty. One in a hundred.

Better to let a human companion die of old age than take those odds.

“It appears that way, yes,” Marcus said. He got up and grabbed the bottle off the counter while snatching Ophelia’s drink from her hand in one smooth motion before he settled back down at the table.

“Hey!” She glared at him.

He waved his hand in the air as though to dismiss her.