Page 116 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

Brennan focused on Cole, eyes still puffy but widened in concern. His gaze flickered between Brennan and the distant sounds of shouting. Brennan followed his gaze. There was lots of movement—people gathering near the harbor, or scurrying away as quickly as possible.

“What is it? Are your vampy senses tingling?”

It was such an adorably Cole thing to say that Brennan almost found comfort in it. But something cold clutched his chest, the shaky feeling of anxiety coursing through his veins.

“Come on,” Brennan said, and the cold gripping his chest must have come through in his voice because Cole didn’t ask questions, just took Brennan’s hand.

They approached the mass of people gathering around the edges of the harbor. A few teenagers were filming on their phones, while the crowd watched the water with shock and awe.

Brennan tuned out the noise of an approaching news helicopter, as well as all the gossip behind him. He pushed through the crowd, pullingCole along by the hand as they shimmied between people like at a rock concert.

When they finally got to the edge, Brennan froze. Cole ran into his back and then squeezed next to him to see what everyone was looking at.

The water was a river of red, bright clouds of what was unmistakably blood, the scent mixing with sea salt and burning Brennan’s nostrils. Red for a whole expanse of harbor, petering off to black in the distance. Even if Brennan couldn’t smell it, even if he could fool himself into thinking it was food dye, or some other strange effect, the water was undeniably littered with floating empty plastic blood bags.

His brain spun. If this was what Dom had been doing at the blood cache, then it hadn’t beenoneblood cache. It had to have been a lot of them.Allof them. Was this her plan? To attack the blood supply? If it was, it was a good one. The urban clan’s ability to lay low was dependent on it.

Brennan’s mind was racing faster than he could keep track of with all the dominoes tumbling through his brain of all the ways this was very, very bad.

Cole waited to speak until they were back on the T, the train car empty save for one guy sleeping across a row of seats at the other end.

“I’m guessing this is a vampire thing.” Cole sat across from Brennan on the edge of his seat, drumming his fingers incessantly on his knees, desperate to pace.

“I saw Dom earlier,” Brennan confessed. “Messing with a blood cache near the restaurant.”

Cole did a double take. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Why didn’t you say anything about the internship?”

“You’ve had a lot going on!”

“Well, right back at you! I didn’t want to derail your thing.”

Cole laughed dryly. “I would’ve taken vampires over disappointing my parents any day.”

Brennan winced. He might be panicking, but his boyfriend had gone through a tense experience of his own.

He wished he didn’t have to deal with this shit. He wished he could ignore it, take Cole home and lie in his bed and listen to records and letCole be as sad as he needed so long as he didn’t do it alone. He wanted to hold his hand and say supportive things. He wanted to be normal. He wanted to be a good boyfriend.

But it always came back to this: he was a vampire. Maybe that was all he could be.

“I’m sorry,” Brennan offered weakly.

He finally checked his phone, but there was no response from Sunny or Nellie. He tried each of them again while Cole gradually drooped in his seat, arms crossed and leaning against the window with a crease in his brow like he had a headache building.

“No answer.”

“Then what?”

“I think we should get you back to campus,” Brennan said. “I mean—you’ve had enough drama today. I can look into it.”

“No,” Cole said, whipping around from where he’d curled into himself. “No, I want to help. This is the perfect distraction. Please, if I go home I’m gonna put on my sad Taylor Swift playlist or watchLove, Simonand cry at the coming-out scene because my mom can’t be Jennifer Garner, so please, please, can we deal with the vampire problem so I don’t have to do that?”

Brennan squeezed his eyes shut. Whatever Dom had done, she’d done it because Brennan hadn’t stopped her. She was right there. And he couldn’t do a damn thing. Still, he didn’t regret for a second staying to support Cole. But maybe that meant he would never be able to have both things. To have love, and humanity, while also being part of a vampire clan. He would always have to choose.

He prayed he wasn’t choosing wrong.

“Okay,” Brennan said, reluctant. “I guess there’s one other person we could go to for help.”