Diego glanced back at the club, making a show of their misery, their indecision. The hunters were still watching—all of them, all of them but the woman. She slunk towards Valentine, one of the Paladin’s few real pieces of holy silver dangling from her fingers. Valentine stepped back on shaking knees. It was hard to tell from where Diego stood, but they swore his fangs had retracted.
They could feel his terror like it was their own, and their character slipped as a fresh wave of something almost like stage fright tore through their body. They had to be done with this. But it needed to be believable. They lifted their voice, “Give me something now,” they begged, “Just a drop. Please.”
Maddy glared, fire in his eyes. His fist coiled.
Diego repeated the question louder, stronger, a silentdo it, it’s timehidden beneath the word. “Let me taste you, starlight.”
With a crack to the jaw, Maddox knocked them down. The ache of it was bright and hot and Diego wondered for an instant if this was what he felt when he asked for their bite alone, no venom to shield him from the pain. Then they were kneeling, hands on the sidewalk, head ringing. In their peripheral, they could see his fingers beginning to tremble.
Still, his voice remained cold as ice as he growled, “Stay down, or I’ll tie you to a cross and burn you up with the building.”
He wasted no time, stalking back toward the club. From inside Valentine cried out, a whimpered sound that ravaged Diego’s chest. It was now or never. Diego wasn’t supposed to be encircled by hunters for this, wasn’t supposed to be in danger of vengeance; but they couldn’t change that, and they couldn’t leave Valentine to suffer for a single moment longer. If it was their life or his, they knew what they’d choose.
The final act had come.
Fangs out and face a mask of rage that was barely a mask at all, Diego launched themself at Maddox’s back. They wrapped one arm around his chest, the other over his shoulder, and tore the tips of their teeth across his neck. The fake skin the stage artists had applied ripped with ease, the bag of real human blood from the club’s employee stores pouring out with each pinch of Maddox’s arm against it. It filled Diego’s mouth as it streamed past their chin and saturated the front of their twinkling suit, dimming the stars one by one. Beneath the unfamiliar blood, Diego tasted something lovely and dark. Fuck—if in their haste they had cut Maddox beneath the fake skin…
But he was already gurgling, struggling, throwing Diego off as he collapsed.
Therewasthe scent of his blood underneath, Diego could smell it now, seeping into everything. The hunters were around them, even the woman who’d been going after Valentine, and Maddox was bleeding—really bleeding.
“Starlight…” Maddox muttered, his eyes on them so deep and heavy Diego felt themself dragged into the depth.
Then they closed, and with a shudder, his chest went still.
It was an act. It had to be an act.
But all Diego could sense was his blood now, clogging up their nose and tearing through their chest, and his admission that he would be happy to die at their feet, and the terror tightening like a noose around their chest. They would not lose him. They could not lose their Maddy again. The burn of the hunter’s holy silver barely broke them out of their shock, forcing them back—away from Maddox—as a man on their left screamed and lunged for them.
The crackle of a loudspeaker boomed across the street, “Serina Freeman, your establishment is surrounded.”
All they wanted was to drop to their knees beside Maddox, but the world turned to chaos as a group of humans in police uniforms and mock-holy silver bracelets tore out of the dark building across the way.
The loudspeaker continued, “You are under arrest for abetting a dangerous group of homicidal vampires. Everyone on this premises must remain where they are and comply with police authority.”
A few hunters turned and fled, but most stood taller, waving the group in blue forward like their vigilante faction had been working with the cops the entire time. From their perspective, perhaps they felt they had—Maddox had certainly told them enough times that this was the best outcome; to get the authorities to step up and do their jobs, rid the city of vampires the way they were supposed to. And here were people with badges and weapons, apparently come to do just that.
Diego forced themself to shy away from the fake holy silver with a hiss as Nina charged them, her red hair tucked back in a low bun. She caught them by the arms, yanking both wrists behind their back. Serina’s styling had transformed her from the femme fatale who’d offered herself up as consort two weeks ago to someone barely recognizable. Diego could hear the man next to her giving a crude rendition of rights, but they couldn’t drag their gaze from Maddox.
His overwhelming scent filled their lungs and the blue and red lights someone had fitted into their black SUV flashed against the pooling blood. The silver fox Diego had bitten in place of Maddox the first day he slit his wrist for them was talking to one of the lingering hunters as the rest were guided out of the building, away from the scene of the—alleged—crime.
“We’ve been keeping tabs on this place for a few weeks now, since a group of concerned citizens tipped us off. We suspect these vampires have been responsible for a lot of local unrest, and it was only a matter of time before one of them showed their true colors again,” he explained, serious and congratulatory and just self-righteous enough that even Diego would have bought the act, had they not been the one to run him through the lines four hours ago. “We’ll get the others convicted if we dig through their building long enough. That place is a hoard… lots of evidence buried in there.”
The last thing Diego saw as they were dragged to the faux undercover police vehicle was someone in a uniform placing a sheet over Maddox’s body. He wasn’t dead, they reminded themself. This wasn’t real, and he wasn’t dead.
But they couldn’t clear the taste of his blood from their mouth as their car circled around the block and to the safety of an empty parking lot a few streets over. The vehicle that had “arrested” Valentine came around the corner after them, and Diego waved to him as they climbed from their car into the back of the one that would retrieve Maddox.
They hid between the back seats as it started driving, shaking with each bump of the wheels. An eternity seemed to lapse before they came to a stop again. Diego risked peeking out from the side window.
Two humans dressed as EMTs laid a sheet over Maddox and lifted him on a makeshift gurney. No one checked his pulse. Beneath his shroud’s red stains, Diego couldn’t be sure if there was fresh blood. They didn’t know whether it would have been a good sign, or a bad one.
The fake EMTs slid Maddox’s gurney into the back of the van, and the doors closed.
Maddox didn’t move. But he wouldn’t yet—what if a hunter was too near the vehicle, saw him pulling off his old shroud as the car drove around the corner? Diego forced themself to wait the longest ten seconds of their life. The moment they had turned out of sight, they shot over the seats, yanking back the sheet themself.
Maddy still didn’t move.
“Maddox! Maddy?”
