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Naturally, he’d figured Sky was a con artist and he couldn’t actually talk to the dead. No one could.
Except now he knew magic was real.
Vampires were real.
Little sandwich-eating underworld creatures were very fucking real.
His brain was still trying to digest it all.
Maybe that was why he passed out on the couch after Sky returned home that morning. It didn’t matter that he had an enormous pile of work to get done, his house was a mess, and he really needed a shower. His brain announced that there was no more room, no more computing power. It simply shut down. And Nolan slept…well, like the dead.
His phone woke him in the late afternoon with its jarring ringtone. He never left his ringer on, but with his brother in danger, he hadn’t wanted to risk missing his call.
Nolan lurched upright and answered the phone without even seeing the name on the screen. His eyes were blurry, and his brain was still coming online.
“Hello,” he said in a rough, sleep-husky voice.
“Nolan! You gotta come get me!”
The fog instantly cleared at the sound of his brother’s frantic voice. “Owen? Where are you? What the fuck is going on? I’ve been searching everywhere for you. Erik told me you pissed off some vampires. I went to that nightclub Phoenix looking for you and nearly got my ass handed to me.” All the rage, frustration, and fear Nolan had been carrying for the past several days came pouring out at once. He didn’t know if he wanted to strangle his brother or hit him with his car.
“You went to Phoenix?” Owen’s voice jumped several octaves, and then after a long second of silence, it had dropped to a whisper as he continued. “Shit. You can’t do that.”
“Yeah, I know that now!” Nolan shoved to his feet and paced his living room, deftly dodging furniture and stepping over shoes and stacks of books randomly placed like land mines waiting for the reckless and unwary.
“I need you to come get me now. Before the sun sets. I’ll tell you everything when—”
“No! Now! I’m done waiting. If I’m putting my life on the line for you, I want to know what the fuck this is about,” Nolan interrupted.
“Nol—”
“No more bullshit. Start talking, or I’m leaving you to the vampires.”
Leaning his butt on the sofa, Nolan crossed one arm over his stomach and rested his elbow on his forearm as he listened to his brother swear at him. There was a slight echo in the background as if he were in an empty room, his angry voice and stomping feet rebounding through the blank space. A full minute ticked by as he waited for his older brother to calm enough to speak.
“Fine. Whatever. I got in trouble with this gang that I borrowed money from. I was getting ready to pay them back when they sold my debt to these fucking vampires,” Owen grumbled, each word sounding as though he were grudgingly giving it through clenched teeth.
“What? They can do that? Just hand your debt to vampires?”
“Obviously,” Owen mumbled, and the urge to shake the shit out of him nearly overwhelmed Nolan. Fuck his brother. Until last night, he’d had no idea vampires existed, and he wished he was still in the dark about that little fact. His life had been humming along fine before he knew about vampires.
“What vampires?”
“The clan is called Sandor. The ones I’ve dealt with are Colette and Aldo. I don’t know whether they’re lovers or siblings. It’s…I don’t know, weird and creepy.”
“Yeah, I’ve met them,” Nolan muttered. He didn’t remember them all that clearly, but creepy was the feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Nolan!”
“What? I was looking for you! Now, how much do you owe them so you can get free of the vampires?”
Owen groaned. “That was fucking weeks ago. They gave me an option—give them the money right there on the spot or I work for them.”
“And if you chose neither option? They’d kill you?”
“Duh! Get your head out of your ass. Of course they were going to kill me!”
Nolan closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm his temper so he didn’t hang up on his brother. “Okay, fine. You went to work for them. What do they have you doing? Why are you on the run now? Were you selling drugs? Stealing shit?” He couldn’t bring himself to ask whether they’d made his brother into a killer.
“They…needed me to…find people for them.” His brother’s voice was barely over a whisper, each word seemed to be pulled from the bottom of his soul.
“What’s that mean? Find what people? And for what reason?”
Owen huffed and there was a scrape in the background as if he’d dragged his foot across dirty concrete. “They’re vampires, man. They need blood and they prefer it from living donors, if you get my meaning.”
