Page 84

Fox

“ W hat are you doing?” Fox asked.

Dane didn’t glance up, his gaze fixed on the little handheld console he was fiddling with. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Fox crossed his arms, leaning fully against the doorjamb that led into the living room. Obviously, it looked like his brother was playing a game. By himself. “Anything good?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light.

Dane’s brow furrowed as he pressed different buttons. “It’s weird. I’m ferrying these souls to the afterlife, but I have to complete these quests for them first. Make them happy before they go, I guess.”

“Cool.” It didn’t sound cool, actually. It sounded depressing as fuck. Dane usually played his games with Fox, and they didn’t include doing chores for dead people before they dissolved into the ether. They shot up zombies, or raced stupid little cartoon characters against each other. Fun shit.

Fox’s devil—the vampire part of him—shifted restlessly inside him, but it didn’t make any demands. It was probably feeling just as clueless as Fox himself. If it wasn’t about fucking or feeding, the thing was goddamn useless.

Fox just didn’t know what was wrong . Something had changed in Dane over the past six months or so, but Fox didn’t know what. There was no sadness pulsing down their bond, no anger. Just a strange…blankness. Like a bone-deep boredom.

Fox didn’t know what the fuck to do. He and Dane had been on the same page their entire lives—as humans, as vampires, bonded or unbonded. There’d never been friction between them, never this blank space Fox didn’t know how to fill. It was what made them them.

What made them freaks, Dane would probably say.

He tapped his fingers against his bicep. “What should we do tonight?”

Dane shrugged a shoulder, still not looking at him. “Dunno.”

Jesus. Fox kicked at an empty bag of chips on the floor. The living room was a fucking mess. Not that it was ever exactly spotless, but it wasn’t usually this bad. Trash everywhere, dust you could practically make a snow angel in.

Dane was usually the neater one.

Fox tried again. “You know that old man down the street, the one that had the ambulance at his place a month or so ago?” He was met with silence. He pushed on anyway. “I saw him in his yard again. Guess he didn’t kick the bucket after all.”

Nothing. Goddamn. He and Dane had always liked spying on their neighbors, ever since they’d moved into town from the desert outskirts five years ago.

They’d sit on their porch and watch the humans go by, speculate on their average-ass lives.

How long had it been since they’d sat on their porch and gossiped about the humans? Too long.

It wasn’t like Dane wasn’t allowed to have his alone time. It was just…he’d had nothing but alone time for ages.

Was it time to leave Tucson, maybe? They’d have to go eventually, what with them never aging.

Even humans couldn’t remain unobservant of that fact forever.

Fox had expected to have more time, but maybe that was foolish thinking.

There wasn’t exactly anything in particular keeping them here.

It had just felt…right to stay. Like it was where they were meant to be, at least for a time.

Fox didn’t know. He just didn’t fucking know .

It was like he and Dane were out of sync for the first time since they’d turned, since this bond between them had solidified, stranger and more intimate than anything they’d felt in their human lives.

Since they’d found out they were platonic mates, tethering each other to their humanity, keeping either one of them from ever going feral.

He wanted to suggest they go on a hunt, maybe liven things up with a bit of blood, but they had a few days to go, at least, before they needed to feed. Would it be too obvious a ploy if he pushed for earlier?

Or maybe feeding didn’t even need to be part of it. Maybe they were overdue another kind of distraction. How long had it been since they’d shared someone? Maybe they just needed a warm and willing body between them, someone to remind his brother what kind of pleasures their world had to offer.

The doorbell rang.

Oh, thank fuck. Chances were it was that little old lady from down the street, asking to borrow some random baking ingredient. They never had what she was looking for, but it didn’t seem to stop her from coming by. Dane had always gotten a kick out of chatting with her.

But Dane didn’t look up from his game.

Fox sighed, pushing off from the doorjamb. “I’ll get it.”

He opened his door, his mouth turning down into a scowl the second he saw who it was. “Oh, fuck right off.”

Jamie, the green-haired punk, only grinned at him, a goddamn toothpick between his teeth like some wannabe cowboy. The guy had had more than one screw loose when he was human, and Fox doubted the transition to vampirism had improved that situation much.

“What’s up, man?”

“You getting the hell off my porch, that’s what. I thought we had one of those unspoken agreements, staying away from each other.” Fox bared his teeth. “You’re making me speak the unspoken, asshole.”

Jamie removed the toothpick from his mouth, waving it around in some conciliatory motion.

“It would be my pleasure to never see you again. Just got a bit of business to attend to first. Someone—” He broke off, flashing a wide grin over Fox’s shoulder.

“Oh! Tweedledum! Nice of you to join me and Tweedledick over here.”

Insulting nicknames aside, Fox’s muscles unclenched just the slightest as he felt his brother settle in behind him.

Dane wasn’t completely catatonic, then. Although, none of it was exactly normal either.

Dane should have been the one to answer the door.

He had less of a hair trigger than Fox when it came to dealing with the jerk-offs of the world.

“Okay, so…let’s see.” Jamie hummed in thought, as if they’d asked him a question instead of telling him to fuck off. “About a month ago, a little kiddo vampire turned up in Hyde Park.”

Fox’s muscles tensed right back up again, and he could feel the heavy tingle of shock radiate through the bond from Dane behind him.

Turning kids was taboo as hell for their kind, for very good reasons.

They were unpredictable and hard to control, with insatiable appetites.

They had to be put down more often than not, and who the hell wanted to do that to a child? “Did you— Are they—?”

But Jamie shook his head. “Nah. He’s not dead. He’s with his new moms, doing fine from what I hear. Real one of a kind, that one. But uh—”

“Who the fuck turned him?” Dane rasped out, his hand gripping Fox’s shoulder.

Jamie cocked a dark brow at him. “That’s what I’m getting at. We never found him. Luc and I have been looking, but we keep missing the fucker.”

Fox scoffed. “Sounds like you’re doing a shit job of looking, then.”

“Yeah, well—” Jamie shrugged. “Fuck you too, I guess.”

“What are you saying?” Dane asked. “You need us to clean up your mess?”

“I’m giving you a friendly heads-up. I’ve seen him.

Not with my eyes, you know, but up here.

” Jamie gestured to his head. The weirdo had visions, of the present and occasionally the future.

Because apparently being an immortal bloodsucker hadn’t been enough paranormal activity for him—he had to go and be clairvoyant too.

“There were saguaros and shit in the vision. I think he might either be in Tucson or will be in Tucson. Seasons are hard to determine in the desert visions, I can tell you that much.”

Fox paused a beat, waiting for Dane to say something, but his brother stayed silent. “Yeah, all right, we’ll keep an eye out.” They didn’t owe Jamie or his psychotic mate any favors, but there was no way they were letting a predator like that run free in their town. “What’s he look like?”

He listened on as Jamie gave the least helpful description of all time, of a generic-looking white dude with generic-sounding features. Why, when they needed to find someone, was it never some super obvious tell, like a bright-pink mohawk and an eyepatch, or some shit?

Afterward, Jamie cleared his throat, running a hand through his shoulder-length hair. “So I’ve—I’ve got a little sister, you know? I think she’s older than what he’s looking for, but…”

Fox bit back a smart remark, holding his tongue for once. He couldn’t fault the guy for worrying over his kid sister. “Like I said. We’ll keep an eye out.”

And they would. Honestly, Jamie was a good enough guy, if a bit of an asshole. It was that semiferal fuck he’d ended up with that Fox couldn’t stand. How those two were a match was beyond Fox’s understanding.

That was the problem with romantic mate bonds—they turned people into goddamn idiots.

After a beat, Jamie nodded, turning as if to leave, before leaning back and peering out around the porch to the street, beyond what Fox and Dane could see from the doorway. “Holy shit! Colin ?”

And then he was off, leaping off the porch like a demented gazelle.

“Fucker,” Fox muttered. “Dropping a bomb like that on us and fleeing into the night.” He glanced to Dane over his shoulder. “What do you think? Patrol around town tonight?”

As much as he felt bad for the kid who’d been turned, he was almost grateful for the shit news.

It was something to focus on, something to distract Dane with, even.

They could spend their nights searching Tucson for this nondescript asshole.

And if they happened to find some tasty treat to share along the way…

But Dane was looking out in the direction Jamie had run to, shifting on his feet, his eyes brighter than Fox had seen them in a long time. “Something smells good,” he murmured.

Fox sniffed the air. Dane was right. Something smelled…fresh. Like the desert after the first rain of the season. Herbal and earthy and fucking delicious. Fox licked his lips. “Should we go see?” he asked, one foot already out the door.

But the scent was fading quickly, and just as fast, Dane’s expression was shutting down again, back into its blank mask. “Nah. Why bother?” He turned back around, retreating into the house. Back to his depressing-as-fuck video game, most likely.

Fox stared after him, his chest tight.

What the fuck? They were vampires, goddamn it.

Immortal, bloodthirsty, and hot as fuck.

They didn’t need to be bored or depressed or whatever the fuck his brother was right now.

The two of them didn’t brood . Not since striking out on their own, at least. It just wasn’t their thing.

They could leave that to the Anne Rice characters of the world.

Fox needed to fix this. He was going to fix this.

The only question was, How did Fox fix something when he had no fucking idea what was even broken?