Chapter Twenty-Two #2
I saw you, bitch. He touched Shay’s nape as he made for the hallway, ducking left into the unoccupied bathroom.
I know you’re here. He searched the cramped space.
Clean linoleum. Simple stalls. One mirror above a single sink, illuminated by a buzzing ceiling light.
He peeked behind each stall—nothing—and stood before the mirror, searching his reflection for inconsistencies, for proof he was still asleep.
He pinched his wrist. Awake . Dug at his cheek with a fingernail.
Awake . Set his palms on the porcelain and stared into his eyes.
Brown, like soil. Brown, like a Ramírez.
The longer he stared, the lighter his eyes became, flickering like static on a busted television.
He was there and he wasn’t. Broad shoulders dove inward.
He unwillingly snapped his head to the side, listening to bone crack, and watched his jaw distort, color run from his skin, his reflection break and reach.
Everything inside him wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.
Panic bubbled, knotting in his intestines.
He took a painful breath, lurching forward to smack his palm on the mirror.
Laura looked back at him. Her mouth had split, carved into a jester’s smile, caked in blackened blood, and her palm glistened red against his, fingers tipped in steepled claws.
As he breathed, she breathed, her naked chest rising and falling, splatted like a sunrise.
When he opened his mouth, she opened her own.
Serrated teeth caught the miniscule light, too large for her small maw.
“Prophecy,” she said, and Cit snaked through her voice.
Aiden felt his mouth make the word.
Wake up , he thought. His eyes stung. Wake the fuck up.
The door swung open.
Aiden gasped. His hand fell, smacking the spotted faucet.
“Hey, man— whoa . You good?” Dylan listed his head, blinking suspiciously. His ponytail flopped to one side and he gestured to his nose. “You’ve got a bleeder.”
“Oh,” Aiden said, stupidly. He stared at his reflection—him, again—and wiped his nose. Blood streaked the side of his hand. “Yeah, this fuckin’ humidity does weird shit to my sinuses. I’ll be fine. ”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m good. Seriously.” He splashed his face, wiped droplets away with his shirt, and forged a smile, stepping around Dylan and into the hall.
Prophecy . The word resurfaced, spoken like a fairytale curse.
Laura’s face, her teeth, the way she’d occupied his body and replaced his reflection—turned his skin into an unfamiliar coat, clinging tightly to his bones, suffocating all the hope he’d hoarded.
Aiden stood on shaky legs and forced his clenched lungs to expand.
Glanced at his bandmates, loitering around the booth, and fought the urge to crumble to his knees.
Shay, hungry. Aiden, falling apart.
They didn’t have time for either breaking point.
“C’mon, I booked a cemetery tour,” Georgia said, pointing toward the door.
It wasn’t real.
Aiden ignored Shay’s prying eyes. Said nothing when Shay asked what is it? Called Laura a hallucination in the safety of his busy mind as the band and Pru boarded a red streetcar, exited on Anthony Street, and joined a midsummer walking tour.
It felt real.
He stepped over broken cobblestone, snapped a selfie with the band in front of a cast iron tomb, and pulled Shay away from the group, kissing him against a craggy grave to silence his thoughts.
It couldn’t be real. Lips slackened and fangs framed his jaw.
It had to be real. Shay lessened, somehow.
Became an unsteady shadow of himself. All shallow breath and tentative hands, too-slow touches and hot skin.
He was out of sorts the same way he’d been in Vegas, as if the strange, otherworldly glow he’d carried out of the sea had gone dim.
“You’re hungry,” Aiden whispered.
Shay quieted for a heartbeat. “You know when you start to get a cold? Fine one minute, gross the next? It’s like that. Imagine the shittiest comedown you’ve ever had but worse .”
“Would sleep help?”
“Maybe. Might put off the inevitable.”
Aiden swallowed thickly. “Yeah, okay. I’ll go back with you.”
“I can make it through the tour. The last thing we need is Georgia freaking out about a summer flu.”
Around the corner, the guide talked enthusiastically about Marie Laveau’s magical reputation in New Orleans and directed the group to Nicholas Cage’s pyramid-shaped tomb.
Aiden took Shay’s hand, hovering near the back of the crowd, and hoped claws didn’t pierce his palm.
Aiden leaned against the wall next to the window and watched sunlight bend across the bed in their hotel suite.
Nerves fluttered under the almost healed bitemark on his thigh.
He picked at his nailbeds. Gnawed hard on his lip.
Remembered and wondered and shyly, secretly hoped.
“Can you sustain yourself on blood alone?”
“Aiden,” Shay said, and it meant do not .
“Look, you did it once. You fed on me at the party and it worked. Your eyes went back to normal, you didn’t get sick, you?—”
“Fed on you,” Shay said, softly, painfully. He braced on his palms, sprawled on the bed, staring at Aiden from across the room. “That situation was circumstantial.”
“The being high part or the sex part? ”
Shay’s cheeks darkened. “Option C for both, please. Jesus, Aiden. Yes, obviously because our inhibitions had suddenly disappeared, and because. . .” He paused to huff. “Because we made it something dangerous.”
“Okay, well, we need to pick our danger, because you either bite me or you bite someone else, and I’d rather deal with a sore spot than another corpse.”
“That night in the parking garage, I almost killed you,” Shay snapped.
He knitted his brows and his chin dimpled, lips parting for a shaky breath.
“I didn’t know if I had killed you until I got back to the Cosmo and found you asleep.
I just… I sat there and listened to you breathe for hours.
I still hear it—I still hear you begging me to let you go?—”
“Yeah, I still hear you, too,” he said, cutting Shay off before his voice gave out.
He’d seen Shay cry before, but not in a long time, and never over him.
“Right now, our other option is finding a drunk tourist for you to eat. So, pick. Bite me or go hunting. I’ll find you someone—I have no problem doing that.
But this hotel is crawling with cops and the clean-up will be way fucking worse. ”
“You should have a problem with it.”
“But I don’t.”
Shay clenched his jaw, shifting his eyes to the ceiling. His complexion had started to sallow, eyes sunken, lips pale, knuckles ashy.
“Where?” Shay asked, hardly above a whisper.
“Where, what?”
“Where do you want me to bite you?”
Aiden flushed, absently touching the band-aid on his throat. “If you bite low enough, I can hide a mark on my neck with my sister’s rosary. Thigh might be riskier.”
“Riskier? ”
“If you clip my femoral artery, I die in, like, eight minutes,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I did some research after the party.”
“Oh, awesome. Good to know I’ve almost killed you twice.”
“Better than actually killing me once.”
Shay sighed.
“We’re sober, you’re not completely feral in a parking garage, and I trust you, all right? A bandage is a lot easier to deal with than a body.” Aiden pushed away from the wall and curled his hand around Shay’s jaw, forcing his gaze. “Let me do this. Please.”
Shay scooted backward and braced his back against the headboard. He patted the space between his legs. “Come here.”
Aiden did as he was told. He unwrapped the rosary from around his neck, unclipped his black choker, and crawled onto the bed, resting his back against Shay’s chest. He stayed steady, shifting pliantly as Shay adjusted him.
Brought him closer. Angled his chin upward, baring the smooth, unmarred column of his throat.
Shay nosed at the base of his neck. “Here?”
“Higher,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. Anticipation filled him like a first crush. Shay dragged his lips upward and Aiden said, “Yeah, that’s?—”
Fangs sank into his throat. Aiden gasped and squeezed his eyes shut, halting a stream of hot, salty tears. Shay wrapped around him, one hand splayed on Aiden’s chest, the other gripping his thigh, and groaned against the new wound, clamping his mouth down harder.
“Easy, carino,” Aiden whispered.
He dislodged his teeth. Sealed his lips around the mark and tongued at each puncture, drawing blood into his mouth in slow, hungry pulls.
Aiden breathed deeply, resisting the urge to press his thighs together and chase the heat stirring in his groin.
So, maybe being bitten was a sex thing. With Shay groping over his clothes and lapping eagerly at his throat, how could it not be?
He kept his composure. Inhaled, exhaled.
Braved a touch to Shay’s hand, clutching his thigh, and made a soft, surprised noise when Shay squeezed, constricting like a snake around his body.
Eons passed, but when Shay released him, Aiden almost asked to be bitten again.
He opened his eyes and counted Shay’s breaths, his chest rising and falling against Aiden’s back.
When Aiden found the courage to turn around, black eyes looked back at him.
Spindly veins scrawled Shay’s cheekbones, and his red mouth parted for a purring growl.
Aiden slid his thighs around Shay’s lap. Traced the black lines jolting from his lashes; touched the bloodstained bow of his top lip.
“I wasn’t very gentle,” Shay said, apologetically. His voice belonged to him and others—cobras hissing, tigers calling, waves crashing.
“You were gentle enough.” Aiden searched for blood on Shay’s gums and deep in his mouth. Shay startled at first, as if being kissed hadn’t occurred to him, but Aiden craved him, right then, like that, with his secret on display and his tongue slicked red.