Blowing out a breath, I shove down my anger, guilt, and sadness, focusing on the task at hand. I need to grab anything valuable and get back to my place to change out of my hunting clothes. Every second counts.
In the tiny bedroom, I spot a framed picture hanging on the wall over his bed. The frame is the nicest thing in the apartment, and I’m pretty sure it must’ve cost him a whole dollar. It’s a picture of the two of us from ten years ago, at one of the “Family Forever” picnics the foster families in our neighborhood used to throw. Officially, they did them so that separated siblings could maintain relationships.
Unofficially, it was an auction. Foster moms would literally sit there and trade kids. Some of them wanted docile kids. Some wanted kids who could hold their own with the bullies at school. Some wanted hard workers, and some wanted girls at risk of pregnancy because hell, two checks were better than one. Didn’t matter to me and Nathan, though. We were just happy to see each other. I was fourteen in this picture, which would have made Nathan fifteen.
I press my fingers to the cold glass over his face. That smile, that real smile, the one that reached his green eyes and made the corners crinkle—I haven’t seen it in so long. Not since that summer, in fact. One year after this picture was taken, I moved to a house on the good side of Federal Hill, with a family who assumed my brother was bad news just because he was older than me. They stopped letting me see him. I fought it, but there was only so much I could do at that point.
So I threw myself into building skills. Knife-throwing, swordsmanship, martial arts… anything I could get my hands on. Since I was living with a relatively wealthy family at the time, they indulged all of my extracurricular requests—as long as I also agreed to do ballet and gymnastics. At the time, I thought those two things were useless, but once I was actually out fighting vampires, I found out how priceless those skills really are.
Nathan went the other way. He never got lucky enough to match with a family who were interested in helping him deal with our parents’ deaths. Without me around, he went looking for his own ways to mend his broken heart. Someone gave him a needle and told him to stitch his heart back together with that. It didn’t work, obviously, but it masked the pain enough to keep him hooked.
Then there was the alcohol and women and gambling. It’s real easy for a tall boy to be treated as a man around here, for better or for worse. In Nathan’s case, it was worse. At seventeen, he’d seen and done things that no grown-ass adult should even know about, let alone a kid.
When I graduated and got out of the system, I tried to take him with me. My foster parents set me up in an apartment and let me choose between college or having my bills paid for a year. I chose the latter, which they were happy about—it was cheaper, after all—and I brought Nathan home to live with me. I thought I could save him back then, I really did. But he just kept getting worse and worse. I dealt with it for as long as I could. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
“I’m not going to let you down again,” I promise the smiling boy in the photograph. “Never again. I’m going to get you out of there. I swear to god, I am.”
And I know exactly how to do it. No matter how much I hate what I’ll have to do.
With my lips pressed into a tight line, I pull the little frame off the wall and slide the photo out. Tucking the lightly faded picture into my jacket’s inner pocket, I turn on my heel and leave the room.
Stay the fuck alive, Nathan. Just stay alive. I’m coming.
Chapter Three
My first impulse is to go straight to the auction house, but as it turns out, I don’t exactly own anything suited to auctioning myself off.
Shocking, right?
Besides, Nathan’s already too deep in with the vamps for this to be any kind of smash and grab job. If I’m going to properly infiltrate their hive, I need to do it the right way. And that means taking enough time to do it right.
So after finding another cab to take me home, I spend the rest of the night on the dark web, browsing the vampire fan chatrooms. Several hours in, I know exactly what I need to do to maximize my chances of being chosen as a blood tribute—everything from the dress to the scent. Eventually, I try to sleep a little, but it’s largely useless. My eyelids don’t want to stay closed, and I’m restless and twitchy all night.
After a few hours of sort-of-sleep, I haul myself out of bed and mainline almost an entire pot of coffee. Then I head out, hitting up several boutiques downtown to search for the perfect dress.
I know it as soon as I see it. I don’t even bother trying it on, just hand my credit card to the woman behind the counter and try not to think about the number on the price tag.
Whatever it costs, whatever it takes, I’ll fucking do it. I’m not letting my brother rot in a vampire palace.
When I get home, I hang the dress from the curtain rod over my living room window. The dark red fabric is the most colorful thing in my whole apartment—which isn’t saying much, I guess. I didn’t exactly put a whole lot of thought into decorating this place.
The walls are light gray, the carpet is dark gray, and the second-hand couch is a muted
