Page 46 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

Brennan peeked through the window over the kitchen sink to see Travis’s back retreating toward the greenhouse. Then he started digging through drawers.

“What are you doing?”

“That buzzing. I didn’t think he had a phone.” Brennan’s words scratched against his throat.

There weren’t many drawers to try. He found the phone in the far one, wrapped up in a hand towel. It was the latest model of iPhone, sleek, with a pink case and—

The lock screen lit up with a preview of 99+ notifications, including some from Brennan.

“It’s Sunny’s phone,” Brennan said. His stomach dropped. Sunny didn’t seem like the type to part with her phone voluntarily.

Brennan froze with an idea that seemed impossible but also, entirely too possible.

A slew of thoughts lined up in Brennan’s brain all at once.

Travis and Dom had been friends.

Travis had killed people.

Travis had told them himself he’d helped his girlfriend with a vampire uprising in the 1920s.

Travis was tremendously powerful and more ancient than Brennan could comprehend.

Brennan had possibly fucked up.

“We need to leave, I think.”

“What about the blood supply? And Dom?”

“I’ll explain later, but for now let’s get out of here.” Brennan peered out the window and didn’t see Travis. He hoped he was still in the greenhouse. He went to Cole, still on the couch, and caught his eye. “I need you to trust me on this.”

Cole’s frown didn’t waver, but he nodded.

They moved to gather their things, Brennan tucking Sunny’s phone into his jacket pocket. He was starting to feel dizzy by the time they went through the tarp and into the rainy night.

Except, at the same time, across the field, Travis emerged from the greenhouse. There was a reddish glow from the building, some sort of special lighting that cloaked Travis like a bloody halo.

“Leaving already?” he called.

“I forgot I have an essay due at midnight,” Brennan lied. It was the flimsiest of excuses. He and Cole kept moving toward the exit of the clearing, and Travis kept crossing the field toward them.

“Aw, are you sure?” Travis said. “We didn’t even get to the good part.”

And that was enough to get him to snap. “What does that mean? What do you know?”

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

Travis froze. His eyes cut to Brennan, head tilting owlishly, and the buzzing sound cut straight through the rain.

“Oh,” Travis said. “Oh, man. You found the phone. My bad, honestly.”

“What did you do? Where are they?”

Brennan knew this was important but it was getting impossible to focus. Something smelled so good, and Brennan realized that he was thirsty. But he’d been so consistent with his regimen.

Travis clucked his tongue, disappointed. “You’re still asking the wrong questions,” he said. “But sure. Where do I start? They’re fine. Just in thrall for a couple of days. It’s unpleasant, but they’ll be fine.”

Rain fell down around them. Brennan hoped this was one of Travis’s weird jokes.

“What?” Travis said. “There’s no use keeping it a secret, is there?

I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but I couldn’t feel less threatened by you.

No offense. Is that offensive? Whatever.

Uh, yeah, they had a lead on Dom’s plan, they wanted to stop her, blah blah blah, so I temporarily incapacitated them. ”

Brennan recoiled, angling himself between Cole and Travis. “You’re helping Dom.”

Travis rolled his eyes. “No, god! Dom was helping me . I know she’s got the mysterious Goth thing going for her, but what’s the obsession? You guys really think she masterminded all this? She freaked out as soon as I killed those two people in November.”

“I thought Dom killed them. I thought you couldn’t leave your woods.”

“Oh, keep up. Dom turned a few people to gain power, yes, to free me. But as soon as I told her about the vampire ball plan, she totally pussied out.”

“But Dom was back in Boston. She sabotaged the blood supply.”

Travis scoffed. “Again, credit where it’s due? I sabotaged the blood supply. I didn’t know Dom was back in town until you came here and told me.”

Then Dom had been—what, helping? Fuck. Brennan’s head was getting heavy, staticky, and he dug his fingers into his temples. He was thirsty, and it was getting worse impossibly quickly.

“What did you do to me?” Brennan asked.

“Ding ding ding!” Travis cheered. “Yes! Million-dollar question! I was wondering when the tea would kick in.”

The words trickled in slow motion under the haze of all Brennan’s senses going haywire, the flush under Cole’s skin starting to smell like freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

“What did you do?” Brennan surged forward, out of the shelter of Cole’s umbrella, but the rain was nothing next to the raging, growing burn in his throat.

“Yet another thing Nellie’s curriculum doesn’t teach the vamplings,” Travis said. He pulled a vial from his overalls pockets, filled with something murky and black. “Vampire blood. Homemade! My very own recipe.”

“Brennan.” Cole’s voice was quiet and urgent behind him, one hand laid on his forearm, but Brennan couldn’t tear his eyes from Travis. “Brennan, let’s just go.”

“Oh, don’t leave yet, loves, I’m giving you a very helpful hint, and the ball will be much less interesting if you don’t pay attention.”

Brennan didn’t look at Cole, and Cole’s hand dropped from his arm.

“ Vampire blood, ” Travis continued, in a tone like he was narrating a children’s show. “It brings a feral thirst response when consumed by a vampire. And, of course, it’s essential to the process of turning a human. What could possibly go wrong, do you think?”

“Why?” Brennan asked. He could barely think, he was aware he was trembling, and he knew Cole was right, they needed to move. But he had to know.

Travis laughed and drew his brows together like it was obvious.

He said, “I guess I think it’ll be interesting.”

Brennan went cold, and it had nothing to do with the rain. He realized that his first evaluation of Travis was wrong. He wasn’t depressed or aimless with his age. He was bored.

And that was much more dangerous.

“Why are you telling us? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?” Cole asked.

“Uh, no. What are you gonna do about it? You can’t call Nellie and Sunny to help you. It might even be interesting to see what you try to do. I’m all for a good fight.”

Rage and thirst bubbled up as one. “You’ll get one then,” Brennan snarled, “I can promise you that.”

“You might want to get going then,” said Travis. He cut a meaningful look at Cole and smirked. “You’ll be needing blood soon.”

Brennan didn’t make a conscious decision to do so, but suddenly, he had launched forward, his hands fists, Cole shouting his name.

He was yanked backward by an invisible leash as swiftly as he’d started, his whole body locked up as if restrained. Invisible pressure grabbed him hard enough to bruise, if he could still be bruised.

Of course, Travis stood in front of him with his hand outstretched in a Force choking curl.

“You know, Brennan,” Travis said. Brennan’s toes barely skimmed the ground as the pressure pulled him forcefully upward. “I gave you a gift when I turned you. And all you’ve done is complain and hide and pretend. This is a gift, too. You’ll see that.”

With a wave of his hand, Travis turned away in dismissal and released his grip on Brennan. Brennan stumbled forward to catch himself as Cole appeared at his side with worried, fluttering hands. Brennan almost lunged after Travis again before Cole caught him by the arms.

“Brennan, let’s go, ” Cole pleaded.

He couldn’t have physically held Brennan back if he tried, but the fear in his voice made Brennan go pliant, letting himself be ushered away from Travis as hunger clawed at his throat and Cole’s scent clouded his senses.

As they fled through the rain, Travis’s laughter in the distance devolved into a coughing fit.

The entrance to Travis’s clearing sealed up behind them, thick brush growing to fill the space, but neither Brennan nor Cole stopped to wonder at it.

Brennan ran through every centering coping mechanism in the book. He tried to focus on his breathing. He tried to focus on his environment. No matter what, he kept finding himself focused on the smell of Cole, the beating of his quickening pulse.

Cole went straight into solution mode.

“It’s forty minutes’ walk to campus,” he was saying, using his phone as a flashlight while he charged ahead, tracking through the mud, “but I bet we could do it in fifteen if you run with me on your back.”

Brennan groaned and squeezed his eyes shut against the violent brightness of Cole’s phone flashlight, a wave of dizziness and hunger rolling through him.

“I bet you could do it in ten minutes, really, with proper motivation,” Cole said, voice going shaky.

“I don’t think I’m gonna make it ten minutes,” Brennan realized. He stopped to double over with his hands on his knees, trying to center himself, trying to stay in control of the instincts dying to take over and drink.

“Is there a—a cache nearby?” Cole realized Brennan had stopped and doubled back toward him.

“Cole, stop,” Brennan pleaded.

Cole froze a few paces away from Brennan. He was shivering from the cold. Freezing rain washed over him, umbrella forgotten somewhere along the way.

“Stop what? It’s gonna be fine.” Cole sounded like he was trying to convince himself. His heartbeat rang in Brennan’s ears like a siren, the scent of him even this close overwhelming.

Brennan summoned every bit of logical thinking he had left and said, “You need to get away from me.”

“It’s gonna be fine,” Cole said again, but he was wide-eyed and panicked.

“Cole, I’m not—”

“ No, ” Cole said, voice shrill. “We’re in this together. You said that.”

“We are,” Brennan said. “That’s why you’re going to keep going to campus, and I’m gonna go the opposite way and see how many squirrels I can drink before I start crying.”

With that, Brennan turned and sprinted into the thick of the woods, ignoring Cole shouting his name in favor of snatching a rabbit from its path.

It was like licking the pages of a cookbook. He hadn’t expected it to do the trick, but he hoped it might buy him some time.

Brennan had moved onto the second squirrel by the time Cole jogged up to him, breath coming in puffs of fog in the air.

“Why the fuck are you running away from me?” Cole said, and he’d never sounded so pissed.

Brennan was so dizzy, so thirsty, so desperate he thought he was going to lose it, or die. He would prefer dying.

“Cole,” Brennan said. Blood was on his lips. “You are the literal light of my life, but if you don’t get far away from me right now I’m going to—”

“Bite me.”

“I was going to say go feral, but yeah, that’s basically—”

“No, I mean,” Cole said, “bite me.”

He was waiting for a reaction with wide eyes.

“It won’t kill me,” Cole continued. “And it won’t turn me. You can stop and I haven’t donated blood in a month, so I can totally go again.”

He put it so logically that Brennan felt sick, not just thirsty.

“No,” he said, with such finality that he was sure Cole would leave it there.

Instead, Cole closed the distance between them and cupped Brennan’s jaw in his hands, tilting his face down toward Cole’s like he was going in for a kiss but pausing an inch away.

Everything in Brennan was alight, but not in the good way that happened when Cole usually kissed him.

His head throbbed. Cole smelled like ambrosia and nectar.

Cole’s heartbeat became everything, a warm bubble around them both, one Brennan was terrified of bursting.

“What happens if you don’t?” Cole asked, voice quiet, breath falling on Brennan’s lips.

Brennan couldn’t let himself breathe.

“What?”

“If you don’t get human blood. Do you starve? Do you die?”

“I don’t know.” Brennan was shaking. He didn’t know, and he was scared—of what would happen if he didn’t do this, and what would happen if he did.

“So bite me,” Cole said. He tried to be lighthearted. “It’s win-win, really. I can’t say I’m not curious, though I wish the situation were a tad different.”

“You’re serious,” Brennan whispered.

“I am.”

Brennan wanted desperately to tell Cole that he loved him, then.

Cole was watery-eyed, a determined set to his jaw.

Brennan was hyperaware of every movement of him, every shift, every breath, the fluctuating speed of his racing heart.

Cole had never been more beautiful, and Brennan loved him, but it wasn’t the time.

Those words should be saved for somewhere softer.

“I’m so sorry,” Brennan said. His hands tentatively gripped Cole’s waist, squeezing in reassurance and apology.

“I know,” said Cole, and he extended his neck.

And Brennan bit him.

Sweet relief flooded every one of Brennan’s senses.

Cole tensed and cried out, then shuddered and collapsed into it, into Brennan’s arms. Distantly, Brennan remembered a pamphlet— a vampire’s venom is soothing to its prey —and then Brennan wasn’t thinking of anything but the sweet glory of the drink, the base instinct of it, how it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

The fog in Brennan’s head started to clear but didn’t fade completely. Brennan drank, and thirst continued to burn at his throat.

“Brennan,” Cole said weakly. A warning. And reality crashed down on Brennan again, the self-hate, the fear, the I’m hurting him I’m hurting him I’m—

He pulled off and staggered back, leaving Cole swaying where he stood, dazed, eyes clouded over.

Brennan wanted to throw up. He wanted to run to Cole, make sure he was alright.

He wanted to drink more.