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Growing up the way he had wasn’t something that Jake would ever recommend to anyone. It wasn’t the life he had wanted, even though his Grandpa had tried to thrust it upon him as the only boy out of three siblings. Grandad wanted him to continue the legacy, the mission, and never let Jake out of training. Right up until he turned eighteen and enlisted because it was the only way he could escape. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe. He did. He just didn’t want to do that. And besides. Abigail and Mina had it under control.
But, despite being far removed from his teenage years and his Granddad ten years buried, there were some lessons Jake couldn’t forget. And one of them was how to wake up without people realizing he had woken up. Especially when he had been waiting outside a restaurant for his first date with Bradley only for something to knock him out and for him to wake up, fucking tied to a chair in a room that echoed enough that either they were in the fucking bat cave or a warehouse.
The only reason he wasn’t freaking out more was the wide open space meant for great acoustics and little privacy. Allowing him to hear everything.
“What the fuck? I was going on a date and you do this?”
Bradley’s voice was familiar, and it didn’t sound like he was in danger, just pissed off, and so it helped Jake keep his body relaxed even though his head ached from whatever he had been hit with. Although, part of the headache might also be from whatever the fuck Bradshaw had just dragged him into.
“I don’t like the look of him. Mav’s told us some stories, you know. He’s a dick.”
That voice Jake didn’t know. It sounded familiar but not enough for him to place it. And the person knew Mav well enough to have heard stories. Not that any of this information helped Jake in any way.
“Yeah, that’s a feature, not a bug. I like the fact that he’s an asshole because it’s fun,” Bradley said, huffing. “How the fuck am I supposed to salvage this?”
“Well, he’s not awake, so we can just drop him back at the alleyway and take his phone, and you can pretend to find him. Pretend he’s been mugged,” another voice, this one female, said.
“Might be good for a romantic angle.”
That voice Jake did know, and keeping his body relaxed as his mind started whirling was easier said than done. Kazansky was dead. Jake had been at the funeral. And either this was the world’s greatest impersonator, or his death had been faked. Jake was inclined to think it had been faked since Bradley knew the man. But that meant going down a road Jake really really didn’t want to go down because it led to his history, and the last thing he needed was Abby and Mina hearing about it and teasing him about his dating choices. Again.
“Oh yeah. This is some bullshit,” Bradley snapped, sounding angry. “I cannot believe this. Seriously. I finally get a date with him after almost a decade of bullshit because I’m trying to keep a low profile, and you go and do this!”
“We’re just worried,” the woman said. “We’ve heard so much about your arguments and never anything good, so we’re just worried about it. Okay? Even Nat said that she wasn’t sure why you were going on a date with him.”
“When did you talk to Nat?”
There was a stretch of silence that could only be heard as guilt before he heard a bang and something echoed around the room.
“Oh my god, are you spying on my friends?” Bradley demanded, voice even higher. “I know you’re all worried, but you promised. I’m almost forty years old! Maybe I want to find someone like you guys have!”
“We’re not spying,” the first man said, his voice holding the reasonable tone parents had when they were trying to pretend they hadn’t been caught out.
Jake’s Mom had been the worst at that, gaslighting all three of her kids until they stopped talking to her about anything important. It was easy enough to do, considering she loved to talk about herself, and the last time Jake talked to her, he managed to get her to talk about the paint colors she was deciding between for an hour before he suddenly had to go. He didn’t miss the old coot, but his Grandad was the only one who could keep his daughter's head from flying off into space after his Dad ran off when he was nine. Halo, because she was a troll, loved talking to his Mom and seeing how long she could go without actually saying anything. Her record was almost four hours.
“Really? Then how do you know?” Bradley demanded.
“She was talking about it with Bob.” That voice Jake definitely knew, and he had to fight even harder to keep his body relaxed as Mav continued speaking. “She said you guys had spent most of your time when stationed together fighting.”
“Yeah, so no one would think we were fucking!” Bradley shouted, voice echoing. “We’ve been fuck buddies since flight school, and this is the first time that he’s actually agreed to a date, and now this!”
Fuck buddies was a stretch for what they had been doing, especially since Jake had dated a few other people on and off over the years, but Bradley was a drug and Jake was an addict. A fact that he hated even more now because he had a feeling he would be dragged back into his families bullshit, and frankly, he didn’t fucking want to be.
“Well, you could’ve told us,” the first man said, sounding a little petulant now. Whoever he was, Jake had a sneaking suspicion he knew who the unknown pair was, and he sounded put out.
“Oh yeah?” Bradley asked, his tone familiar enough that Jake could easily picture him.
Standing, arms crossed, chin up and legs spread, mouth pulled down into a frown, and the tendon in the side of his neck bulging as his face flushed as he fought to keep his temper down. “How would that have gone? Hi Mom, Hi Dad. Yeah, Flight School is fantastic. Ended up blowing the hottest guy in the class before he bent me over and ate me out over the bathroom sink, how was your day?”
Knowing Bradley as well as he did had prepared Jake enough he could bite his lip to keep from laughing, but he couldn’t stop the way his shoulders shook. But thankfully, it seemed that the group was more worried about each other than him. Jake wanted to keep his eyes closed, to let them drop him back in an alley and pretend he was mugged, but, despite all of this, and despite how much teasing he was going to get from his sisters, he knew he wanted to go on a date with Bradley and see where things went. But that didn’t mean he would make it easy, figuring that now was a good time to clear the air, considering he had been kidnapped and could use it to his benefit.
“That was a little too much information,” the man Jake could only assume was Goose said.
“You are being a little bit dramatic,” his Mom said, and Jake realized he didn’t actually know her name.
“Well, I’m sorry. I think hitting my date over the head and dragging him into an abandoned warehouse is more dramatic,” Bradley said, voice rising along with his anger.
“Hey, maybe we can keep it down,” Kazansky said. “It’s not like we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“No, we’re still in fucking downtown San Diego in an old Navy depot, just to make things even better,” Bradley said, voice a pitch higher that spelled nothing but trouble as Jake could hear Bradley losing his temper.
But it helped Jake; the noise echoing around the room meant that Jake could easily slip out of the fucking rope they had tied around his wrists. Not even tightly. It was clear not a single thing about his had been planned. Jake had been tied up better by his Mina when she was four and the darling of his Granddad, even though he was stuck on Jake taking over for him. Crazy old codger. He really hadn’t been the same after Grandma ran off and left him. He grabbed the rope before it could drop as the argument continued, and Jake opened one eye and tilted his head just enough that he could make out the group.
The lights were on, for some fucking reason, because Jake knew they could see without them. He wondered if that was in deference to Bradley, hopefully Bradley, and maybe Mav. Although considering all the shit they had survived a month ago, Jake was wondering if that was less survival and more something otherworldly. None of them were paying attention to him, so he took a moment to take everything in, even if his eyes kept getting distracted by how long Bradley’s legs looked in the black jeans and how the dark gray button-down was maybe a size too small and strained at the seams.
“Okay, okay. Bradley, calm down. We’re sorry,” his Mom said, stepping forward and holding out her hands. “We’ll go with the mugging thing, okay? Leave you to try and sort this out between you and him. If this is what you want, we’ll support it and let it happen as it happens. If you say you like him, then I guess there’s something worth liking about him.”
“He did save Mav and Bradley’s life,” Kazansky said, ever placid and reasonable.
“Not that it really mattered,” Mav said.
“Well, it means Bradley doesn’t have to die in the eyes of the world young, so that’s handy,” Goose said, arms crossed and looking so much like Bradley that Jake was questioning his life choices even more.
Goose’s words registered, and Jake closed his eye, biting back a sigh. Well, there went that last bit of hope that Bradley was still human. He wondered how long ago Bradley had been changed. He also wanted to know what the fuck Bradley and Mav had argued over since Goose was alive. Suddenly, he had a lot of questions.
Keeping his arms behind his back and moving slowly, he managed to grab his phone out of his back pocket, holding it at the ready as he shifted in the chair, getting his legs under him. Seriously, they hadn’t even tied his legs. It was pathetic.
He was also more than a little offended.
“So what, we just drag him back and hope he doesn’t wake up in transit?” Bradley demanded, petulant and irritated with the whole thing.
“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” Kazansky said, sounding closer than he had been.
Jake was up, tossing the rope at Kazansky’s feet and watching as he tripped even as he grabbed the fucking wood chair and backed up, pulling out his phone and dialing Javy, who, thankfully, picked up after the first ring. He blinked and saw the rest of the group, sans Bradley, suddenly standing next to Kazasnky, Mav helping him before he fell over.
“Calling out already? That’s a new—”
“Hey, you’ve got my current location. If you don’t hear from me in an hour call my sisters, yeah?” Jake said, interrupting Javy before he continued.
Javy had grown up the same way Jake had, and he got it immediately. “Fuck.”
“Uh huh,” Jake said, still backing away even as Bradley walked over, hands up, no doubt trying to figure out what to say.
“Jake, I can explain,” Bradley said, but Jake ignored him as he slammed the chair onto the ground, feeling it crack, and he did it again, watching as one of the legs broke off and Jake dropped the majority of the chair and dropped to grab the leg, figuring he could at least use it as a club.
“Bradshaw?”
“Jake, I can explain,” Bradley repeated, hands still up as he stepped past his parents.
“So, fun fact,” Jake said, his eyes darting between the group, making sure they were all accounted for. He couldn’t move as fast as they could, but he also knew how to anticipate their movements. Right then, part of him was banking on Bradley to keep them back.
“Nooo,” Javy said, getting it before Jake could say anything. “Noooo. No way.”
“Uh-huh.”
Jake’s back hit a wall and he stopped, glaring at Bradley enough that he stopped moving, hands spread to the side. His back to the wall wasn’t the best position, but it was better than nothing since he had no one at his back.
“You’re fucking with me,” Javy said, disbelief in his voice.
“Oh, I wish I was. Little family gathering here,” Jake said, his eyes darting between the four adults and back to Bradley.
Javy started laughing, and Jake rolled his eyes, hanging up on his longtime friend, knowing that Javy would do what he needed him to do. He also knew that Javy was probably already texting his sisters and telling them everything. He kept his phone in his hand and the makeshift club out in front of him as the silence in the warehouse grew.
“So, I’m sure you have questions,” Kazansky said, voice authoritative as he stepped forward as well. If the man expected Jake’s ingrained Navy training to kick in, he would quickly find himself disabused of that notion. Jake had been trained before the Navy, and Kazansky was dead. Jake owed him nothing.
“Not really,” Jake replied, just to watch the man frown.
“It’s really…well, not simple, but it’s not complicated,” Mav said, shooting Jake an easy-going smile that wouldn't have worked on a baby.
“Vampires,” Jake said, shrugging his shoulders as they all gaped at him. Jake wiggled the chair leg.
“That’s not gonna kill anything,” Kazansky said, the smile gone from his face. “Stakes don’t work. Garlic doesn’t work. Sunshine doesn’t kill us. Holy Water, silver, all of that. They’re all just stories.”
Jake nodded, pretending to think about it. “So, I know that,” he said, figuring he might as well let all the cats out of the bag since Bradley’s parents had undone the knot. “But what I also know is that the sun doesn’t kill you. It makes you mortal. Which mean that this,” he wiggled the chair leg again, “would kill you then.”
Admittedly, there was a little bit of a time frame in which they could survive, but Jake wasn’t really in the mood to get into the long list of technicalities that came with everything involving a vampire. Technicalities he had learned before he had learned the fucking alphabet.
“You knew?” Bradley said, his arms dropping, face scowling.
“No, Bradshaw. I didn’t fucking know until I woke up tied to a fucking chair in a fucking warehouse,” Jake snapped back, glaring at him. “I have a fucking headache; I’m going to get so much goddamn shit from my fucking sisters about this because I know Javy’s already called them, and my date was ruined. So don’t you dare fucking try and pin this on me.”
The warehouse was silent when he stopped talking, and Bradley took another step forward. Jake held up the chair leg again. He felt stupid threatening Bradley with it, and he promised himself he wouldn’t go anywhere without at least one knife going forward, but damn it, he thought he was going on a nice date and would get to have some fantastic sex after. Not this.
“Okay, okay,” Bradley said, the irritation gone as he tried his best to calm Jake down.
Jake scowled at him, letting him know exactly how likely that was. “Bullet points, someone, because last I heard, you died in a training accident,” Jake said, looking at Goose before raising his eyebrows. “Go.”
No one spoke for a moment before Mav sighed.
“Goose got half-turned when we were stationed overseas. He never drank anything, so he was still human. He did break his neck during the hop, pronounced dead but then me and Carole managed to get some blood into him after the fact because why the fuck not at that point. It turned out that, hey, that was all that was needed. But he was already dead, so he went into hiding for a bit until things settled down. Things are good. It’s the 90’s so no ones looking too close. I got shot down and hurt really badly in 1999, and when I was stateside, they turned me as well. Carole gets sick around 2004; she and Goose make the decision to change her before it gets too bad, but it turns out the cancer doesn’t react well. So she dies for a bit but then comes back? We don’t actually know why, but she’s dead in the eyes of the world, so Bradley moves in with me. Ice got cancer in 2012, but we had to wait for him to be in remission before he got turned so we don’t have a repeat of Carole because he’s high enough in the Navy at the time it would raise some red flags. We did fake his death, though, because it was just easier.”
Mav delivered the whole thing with the bland monotone Jake had used when reporting to a CO. He nodded before glancing at Bradley and raising an eyebrow.
“I had a little bit of teenage angst and crashed Mav’s bike and broke my back, paralyzed from the neck down,” Bradley said, tapping the side of his jaw where the scars were. “Got turned then.”
Jake nodded. He wanted to close his eyes and sigh, hating himself a little bit. He really was taking after his Grandmother more than he was willing to admit. “So why the fuck were you two fighting if they’re alive?” Jake demanded, waving the stick between Mav and Bradley.
“He didn’t want me to enlist,” Bradley said, scowling at Mav, who threw up his arms. “Pulled my papers to try and stop me.”
“You’re a fucking vampire, Bradley. Maybe I didn’t think it was a good idea for you to enlist! People look closely when you survive things you shouldn’t survive,” Mav snapped, waving a hand at himself.
“I’m not you! I don’t fly stupid,” Bradley snapped back.
“Maybe we can leave that almost twenty-year-old argument where it belongs, twenty years ago,” Bradley’s Mom said, stepping between them and smiling at Jake. “Try and reassure Jake here that he’s not in danger.”
Jake snorted at that, and she had the good grace to look a little chagrined.
“Look, Mav is a dramatic bitch when he wants to be and he told us a lot of shit about you and we were worried,” Goose said, hands in his pockets and managing to look like the only relaxed one. Jake didn’t trust it for shit.
“So, your response was to what? Kidnap me? What was the long-term plan here?” Jake demanded, wondering why the hell he was still in the warehouse and even considering hitching himself to Bradley’s family's level of crazy.
“Scare you a little,” Goose replied as if that made all the sense in the world.
“Oh my god,” Jake said, not bothering to hide the derision in his voice. “Are you actually stupid? No, seriously. So what, you, the dead dad of my date, was going to threaten me? How was that going to work out? No, seriously. Tell me. Let's run with the assumptions you made, and I don’t know you’re all fucking vampires, and instead, I wake up in a warehouse and see a bunch of fucking dead people. What happens then? Oh, well, clearly, I’m fucking hallucinating. So there goes my career because I can’t fucking fly if I’m seeing dead people.”
“Well, we were going to have Mav do it,” Goose said, a little sullenly now.
“Oh, so my CO kidnaps me and threatens me away from his Godson. That’ll look great for both his career and Roosters.”
“You’re calling me Rooster again,” Bradley said, sounding dejected.
“Yeah, well, you’re related to a bunch of stupid, so I’m debating the merits of letting this continue because right now, I’m not fucking impressed at all,” Jake said, meeting Bradley’s eyes and seeing the hangdog expression. He really had killer puppy eyes, but Jake's irritation was just enough to outweigh everything right then.
“Goosey was just worried,” his Mom said, stepping forward, a kind smile directed at her. “We want Bradley to be happy, that’s all.”
Jake let his scoff say everything he thought about that.
“We fucked up,” Mav said, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re an egotistical shit, and I was bitching about you to these guys, and maybe I kinda went a little bit too far. I didn’t think it would end up like this, and I’m sorry.”
If he wanted to, Jake could stay angry. But his head hurt, he wanted to go and lay down in a room he knew Bradley and his family wouldn’t be able to get into because they might have been turned for a while, but Jake’s family had been doing this for a long time. He wanted to lay down, sleep and wake up the next morning, bitch to his sisters and Javy and then go on another date with Bradley. A lunch date. Outside. It felt like it would be enough of a warning.
Jake nodded, glaring at Mav before he took the chair leg and pointed it right at the man. “Shit list.” He moved it to Goose. “Shit list.” Kazansky. “Shit list.” Bradley’s Mom. “To be determined.” He moved the chair leg to Bradley. “Thin fucking ice.”
Bradley, because he was the dumbest man Jake had ever liked, perked up like Jake had just said yes to a proposal. “Yeah?”
“Lunch, tomorrow. Outside,” Jake said, his eyes darting between the others as he dropped the chair leg down.
It had barely been down for a second before it was back up, the blunt end shoving right into Kazansky's chest as he moved, and Jake let himself be pushed against the wall, using it to brace himself and shove forward, smiling at the surprise in Kazansky’s eyes.
“Back. Off.”
Kazasnky, to his credit, just took a step back. “Why do you know so much?”
Jake smiled. “Erotica books.”
“C’mon,” Bradley said, appearing next to Kazasnky and tugging his arm. “Jake doesn’t have to tell us if he doesn’t want to. It’s not like people don’t sometimes know.”
“He knows a lot,” Kazasnky said, but he let Bradley pull him back.
“Don’t even think about it, Mav,” Jake said, tilting the chair leg to point toward Mav, who deflated and stared at Jake like someone had taken his favorite toy. “Since I don’t really want to fucking deal with another headache, I’m gonna be nice and let you know how I know so much.”
Everyone stilled in only the way the undead could still, staring at him, unblinking. Jake smiled. The one that had made his Granddad angry, because he looked just like his Grandmother, entirely too much like his Grandmother as he was finding out, a fact he was trying to forget.
“My name is Jacob Jonathan Seresin, and my mother is Lucy Seresin. Her maiden name is Harker,” Jake said, pushing away from the wall. “My Granddad was Quincy Harker Jr, and his grandparents were Mina and Jonathan Harker. They’re kinda famous.”
Bradley’s Mom and Kazansky looked gobsmacked. The others looked confused.
“So…the people from Dracula?” Bradley’s Mom asked, her eyes wide.
Jake nodded. “The one and the same. My sisters tend to do a little bit more of the family business than I do.”
“So, like…what does that mean?” Bradley asked.
Jake wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose. It was a good thing Bradley was cute and a good pilot most of the time.
“They’re the ones who killed Dracula in the original Bram Stoker novel,” Kazansky explained.
“No!” Jake said, glaring at the man. “Stoker was a sensationalist who took the story and changed it to sell more copies. My Great-Grandparents, along with Uncle Abraham, made a deal with the Count that he and all of his children would follow a set of rules so everyone could get along and we wouldn’t end up with a bunch of murders because nobody wants the bad press. Yes, my family will deal with some vampires as needed when they’re fucking around and killing a bunch of people, but most of the time, everything is fucking copacetic unless some idiots decide to kidnap someone!”
That was said with a glare at Goose and Mav, who both had the decency to look regretful this time.
“So…your family are like the…guardians?” Bradley said, tilting his head to the side.
“Yes.”
“Does that make you Romeo or Juliet?” Mav joked to Bradley.
“Wait, there’s rules?” Kazansky asked, stepping forward and looking at Jake intently. “To this whole thing.” He waved a hand at himself and the rest of his group.
Jake’s arm was beginning to get a little tired, so he dropped the makeshift club for the moment and rubbed his free hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah, dumbass. There’s rules. Didn’t you get told when you got bitten?” Jake asked, looking over at Goose.
“Oh, uh. They tried?” Goose said, suddenly looking nervous. “Mav and I were spending some time in Bucharest when we had a week off and ended up running into this woman, and she was interested, and I kept telling her no because I had Carole and Bradley waiting for me, you know? I kept telling her no, and she finally got the message, and Mav and me we’re heading back to the hotel, and then she showed up and did the whole…bite me thing. And it made my head feel funny, and she kept trying to get me to come with her, and I kinda almost did, but she kept saying something about marriage, but I was married, and I kept telling her that, and I wasn’t feeling good, so I started heading back to the hotel, right? Only she stopped me, and she looked really confused and told me once I drank blood, I’d be a vampire. I told her I was good, but thank you, and then we left. She kept shouting something at us about calling her when I turned so I could learn all the secrets of the night or something, and when we got back to the hotel, I found a number, but I’ve never been a cheater, so I threw it away.”
Jake was aware he was gaping, he was aware he looked like an idiot, and he was aware that if any of them wanted, he was an easy target right then, but his mind was whirling, making connections he didn’t want to connect. He was also trying to come to terms with the fact that Goose had, apparently, warded off a vampire because he loved his wife too much. It made a lot more about Bradley make sense.
“Uh…Jake?” Bradley asked, suddenly next to him, one hand hovering before it dropped to Jake’s shoulder and shook him. “Are you…okay?”
Jake ignored him as he let the club drop to the ground, and he dropped his head into his hands and took a few deep, fortifying breaths.
“How hard did you hit him?” Bradley demanded.
“He’s not bleeding!” Mav said.
“That’s not an answer!” Bradley snapped back, panic evident in his voice.
“Was this in the mid-eighties?” Jake asked, his voice muffled into his palms, regretting every life choice he had made to get to this point in his life. He should’ve gone and lived with Uncle Abraham in the mountains somewhere in Europe and ignored the world. Jake could raise sheep. He liked wool clothing well enough.
“Yeah, 1984?” Goose asked.
Jake dug his phone back out of his pocket and looked at the screen, ignoring everyone as he dialed a number he knew by heart.
“Jakeeeeeee, Javy is telling us the most amazing story,” Mina sing-songed when she picked up the phone. He could make out Abigail cackling in the background. “Don’t tell me you’re turning into a fanger-on?”
“Was Grandma in Bucharest in the eighties?” Jake asked, rubbing a hand over his face and hoping the answer was no.
Mina snorted. “Shit, where wasn’t she in the eighties. You know she was doing her groupie thing for dear old Dracula back then, following him around and doing her best to show him she could be a good wife for him. Weird old bat.”
Jake shuddered at the thought. He had met Dracula once, and the man creeped him out, not because of the vampire thing, but because he was the sort of creepy that made you want to cross the street even in the middle of the day. It didn’t help that he looked like a bunch of school children had stretched white playdough over a mannequin and called it a human. It didn’t help that he still dressed like he was living in the 1800s, and only the fact that he had a lot of money because it turned out that Renfield was a savant with the stock market kept people off his back about it.
“Why?” Mina asked.
“What’s happening?” Abigail asked, suddenly also on the phone, voice tinny now, clearly on speaker.
“I think Grandma’s been hiding some stuff,” Jake said, looking at Goose and hating everything right then. “Namely, turning someone who didn’t want to get turned and then not fucking following up!” he shouted, his anger spiking again.
“Oh, shit,” his sisters chorused.
“Like, they don’t know anything?” Mina asked.
“How bad is it?” Abigail spoke over her, and the two of them went straight into work mode.
“What the fuck have you been eating?” Jake demanded, looking around the group.
“Fuckin’ rats. Only thing we touch,” Goose said, gagging.
“Oh, thank fuck, they’re vegan,” Jake said, slumping back against the wall.
“Small mercies,” Mina said.
“They’re?” Abigail asked.
Jake could feel his worlds crashing together, and a hand squeezing his shoulder had him turning his head. Bradley stood there, frowning and clearly worried, and suddenly Jake knew that for as much as he hated everything, he liked Bradley enough that he'd deal with all of this. He liked how Bradley never backed down, he liked how they argued and how Bradley could make him laugh, and most of all, he liked how Bradley felt curled up next to him whenever one of them fell asleep instead of staying over, and he knew he was in for a world of teasing.
“Hey, brats. Do me a favor and get Grandma over here to deal with the bullshit she didn’t follow up on,” Jake said, not looking away from Bradley, ignoring everything else for the moment. He could deal with it when his head wasn’t aching.
“Sure thing. What are you going to do?” Mina asked, teasing and probably already knowing what Jake was thinking about. There was a reason his Grandad had favored him. He really did take after Grandma, and not just in looks and stubbornness. Apparently, he also had a penchant for tall men with mustaches who were vampires.
“I have a raging fucking headache that’s getting worse by the moment, and I think I’m going to make Bradley take care of it while his family slowly worries about what happens next,” Jake said, turning a bright smile at the rest of Bradley’s family, the smile widening when Mav and Goose flinched back. Even Kazansky looked a little unnerved. Bradley’s Mom just smiled.
Bradley snorted. “Yeah. I think I can do that.”
“I don’t wanna know,” Mina said, gagging. “We’ll get Grandma and drag her out. See you in a few days.”
“Bye,” Jake said, hanging up before they could say anything else. “Right. I’m going to go and lie down for a bit. Don’t contact me; I’ll let you know when your sire is here, and she can fucking deal with it.”
“My…sire?” Goose asked.
“Hope you like history because you’re about to get a crash course in Vampirism 101. You’re all invited,” Jake said, shoving his phone back into his pocket. Ignoring the four of them, he looked at Bradley, who was watching him, bemused and worried. “I’ll give you the run down myself.”
“That so?”
“Mmhmm, under one condition.”
“What’s that?” Bradley asked, dark eyes preternaturally bright.
“Advil. So much fucking Advil.”
“I can do that, sweetheart. Not the first date I wanted, but I can make it work.”
“Atta boy.”
With that, Jake let Bradley take his hand and pull him out of the fucking warehouse, leaving the other four to sweat. He had a first date to salvage. And maybe if Bradley was lucky, Jake would let him know all the reasons why humans and vampires could have a lot of fun together.