Page 3 of Missing Piece (Neon Scars #2)

Adam knew that laugh. He had subjected others to that cruel laugh when he was feeling hurt. Because if someone was hurt more than him, then his life wasn’t as soul-suckingly bad. Okay, it’s time to go. I don’t need to be thinking about those days.

He jumped as a massive metal dumpster screeched into his view, as if a car had hit it. The sound made his teeth hurt.

And yet, like the idiot he was, he didn’t start making his way to the front of the building.

The woman groaned, sounding like she was struggling to catch her breath. Adam took a puff of his cigarette, allowing the burning smoke to linger in his lungs a little longer than intended as he tried to imagine what was happening. There was no way either of them pushed a dumpster that size.

“You know the whole French name thing is super cliche, right? Like, you’re just embarrassing yourselves,” Vincent said.

There was the clacking of heels in his direction, so Adam turned his back and started for the front of the building. He didn’t want to get caught.

“Go grab that little eavesdropper. I’ll take care of this one.”

Adam’s blood froze in his veins. Before he could even think about how it might play out, his stomach lurched, burning his esophagus with a foul mixture of stomach acid and too much liquor, and his feet left the ground.

It felt like he was falling. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the ground to hit him.

His back slammed into something hard, knocking the wind out of him. He forced his eyes open, struggling to regain his footing. He blinked several times, not quite sure what to make of the sight in front of him.

Luka, the bearded guy from the bar, had him pinned against the wall by his throat, squeezing just enough to hurt, his fingernails pressed into the soft skin on either side of his windpipe.

Adam dug his heels into the ground and held his hands up.

Just beyond Luka, Vincent held a dancer by the hair, her legs kicking out and her heels clacking against the ground as he dragged her towards the dumpster.

“Well, I am happy to see you again so soon, Adam Nolan,” Vincent said with a grin as he yanked the stripper up to her feet.

Despite looking like she had just wandered outside in a bikini and being held by her hair, she didn’t show an ounce of fear.

She snarled, snapping her teeth at Vincent as she twisted and contorted, trying to pull her hair from his grip.

But there was something deeply wrong with her face Adam couldn’t turn away from.

Her canine teeth were too long. And there were too many of them. Her snarling stopped, her pure black eyes widening as they locked onto him.

“See something you like, Beth?” Vincent asked quietly, leaning down to sniff her. “It’s been a while for you, hasn’t it? The Order not feeding you enough?”

She licked her lips, no longer seeming to care that Vincent still held her by her hair. “Not while on a mission trip,” she said, her fingers twitching by her sides.

Adam forced himself to look away from her bizarre appearance.

Whatever her dancing schtick was, it wasn’t his style, and his greater concern was the silent man holding him by the throat.

“Whatever you guys are up to, I’m cool pretending I saw nothing,” he said, trying to ignore his sudden onset dizziness and the fear tickling the back of his skull.

He had been held at gunpoint, at knifepoint, and threatened with a variety of weapons over the years and had been cool as a cucumber.

He didn’t want to let the owners of a scuzzy townie establishment make him sweat.

“I bet you’re starving,” Vincent said to Beth, his eyes locked on Adam, a grin splayed across his face. “Do you want a snack? We can make a deal.”

She nodded, her fingers clenching into fists. Her lips curled, baring her teeth at Adam.

Vincent waved his hand at Luka. Without a word, Luka released his grip on Adam’s throat and stepped away, one eyebrow raised at the blond.

“Remind me not to go to your dentist. If he was going for the vampire goth look, he screwed it up by adding too many fangs,” Adam said to Beth, rubbing his throat.

Vincent smiled at him, that same brilliant smile he flashed in the bar. “Go get your snack, then,” he said to Beth as he released her hair.

She eyed Vincent tentatively, then back at Adam.

What the hell is she doing? He blinked, trying to think of something to say to snap her out of her method-acting vampire cosplay, but a hard weight slammed him back against the wall, knocking the wind out of him again.

He tried to gasp for breath as a palm slammed his face sideways against the brick, a small forearm pressed against his chest.

Beth held him in place, her eyes focused on his neck.

“What the hell?” he cried. He grabbed at her shoulders, trying to shove the woman back as hard as he could, but it was like she was made of stone. He couldn’t push her off. “Get the hell off of me, you psycho!”

This is going to hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut as he waited for her teeth to sink into his skin, all while shoving and kicking blindly against her. It didn’t matter where he hit her, she didn’t move an inch.

He heard Vincent chuckle and a sickening crunching sound as the pressure on his face and chest fell away. He opened his eyes, ready to thank whichever one of them stepped in to pull her back, but his jaw hung open instead, his heart galloping in his chest.

Beth was a few feet back from him, her body limp, only held up by Vincent’s firm grip on her hair near her scalp. But Adam couldn’t see her face. Not even when Vincent dropped her and let her crumple to the ground like a stringless puppet.

Her head was facing the wrong way.

He wanted to say something. Anything. But he could suddenly taste his dinner of gas station pizza and every type of liquor he drowned it with on the back of his tongue.

He stumbled forward, his legs weak, and grabbed the dumpster, clutching his abdomen as he heaved the contents of his stomach all over his shoes.

Adam could hear Vincent over his violent retching as more vomit boiled up his throat. Oh God, why won’t it stop? How much more is there?

“Stick her in your trunk and drop her off in a field, perhaps somewhere out in Secor,” Vincent said. There was a long pause, and a vague whispering sound, like Luka was speaking into the wind. “Well, if she makes it before dawn, then she earns her freedom. It seems fair.”

Adam couldn’t have looked up even if he wanted to.

His eyes and nose were a mess of watering and snot, blurring his vision and making his head feel stuffy.

He heaved again, making a face as only the bitter, chemical taste of stomach acid forced itself out of his mouth and joined the mixture of partially digested food and liquor at his feet.

Pull it together, man, pull it together.

These guys just snapped a stripper’s neck in front of you.

He slammed his fist against the lid of the dumpster, breathing hard through his nose as his mouth continued to water.

He couldn’t let himself throw up anymore.

He had seen some messed up things during his using days, but never a murder.

If I don’t want to end up in the trunk with her, I need to pretend this is no big deal.

Play it off and get away. I can go home and drink myself into oblivion and forget this happened.

He sucked in a deep breath through clenched teeth, using the sleeve of his hoodie to clear the remnants of tears, snot, and vomit from his face.

He steadied himself against the dumpster.

“You gonna have to report that to HR or what?” he asked as he faced Vincent. He tried to hide his surprise when he saw that the body was gone, as was Luka, but he knew the sound of his nails scraping against the lid of the dumpster gave it away.

Vincent grinned at him and folded his arms across his chest. He studied Adam up and down, as if taking his time to evaluate every inch of him.

Adam suppressed a shudder. It differed from when they were inside.

It was hungry. And not the kind of hungry that was hot.

It was unsettling, like he literally wanted to pop an apple in his mouth and roast him over a pit with pineapple slices.

“I am HR,” Vincent finally said when his eyes wandered up to Adam’s lips. “You’re interesting, you know that? For human.”

Adam’s face betrayed him, twisted in confusion.

“What?” He tried to force the muscles in his face and neck to relax and stop giving away the mounting fear.

He flinched at a sharp pain in his neck, his hand taking longer than he wanted to grab at the pained area.

There was a small spot of wetness and a smear of blood on his hand when he examined it.

The hell? Adam looked up, surprised again to see Luka standing beside Vincent, placing a cap on the end of an empty syringe.

Oh God no, what was in that? One of his eyelids drooped and a warmth spread through the muscles in his arms and legs as they went slack.

He grabbed onto the dumpster as his knees gave out.

Whatever the silent guy just hit him with, he had never put anything like that into his body.

It wasn’t even enjoyable. He was just getting weaker and weaker by the second.

“W-what did y-you–” Adam started, trying to dig his nails into the metal.

Vincent cocked his head at him as his knees hit the ground. “You’re going to take a little nap,” he said as he closed the distance between them.

Adam planted his hands on the ground in front of him, struggling to keep his eyes open.

He kept trying to tell his muscles to respond, to raise his brows and keep his eyes open, but it wasn’t working.

His arms shook as he tried to keep himself off the damp asphalt.

Nothing was working. It was like he was waking up in the hospital all over again, trying to get his stupid foot to respond.

“What was in the syringe?” he slurred, drool dripping out of his mouth. I’m not winning this fight.

“You’re a tough little thing, aren’t you?” Vincent asked. “Why do you care?” He pushed gently on Adam’s shoulder.

Adam’s arms gave out beneath his own weight, and he saw his world falling sideways.

But it didn’t feel like he was in his body anymore.

It was more like he was outside of it, watching himself tip onto his side.

The cool asphalt felt good on his hot face.

It made him want to close his eyes. He thought he could hear Robert calling his name, but he sounded impossibly far away.

Adam reached up, waving his weak hand and trying to grab at the blond man crouching beside him, his eyes closing. “No painkillers,” he slurred, his lips barely moving.

Don’t fall asleep! Stay awake! Fight! His hand connected with something soft, so he tried to close his hand around it, his eyelids fluttering as he tried to look at the blond.

Now Vincent’s face was wrong, too. Instead of pure black, his irises were still that ice-cold blue, but the whites of his eyes were gone, enveloped in blackness.

“Why?” Vincent asked, lying down on the asphalt with him.

He was so close the tips of their noses were almost touching. Adam could smell his breath—a mixture of metal and whiskey. “Thirty days…I have thirty days,” Adam forced out as his eyes shut. Cool fingers brushed his bangs off his forehead, almost comforting.

Then he was falling.