Page 61 of Vanessa’s Bravery

Harris made an attempt at shrugging his shoulders, but the movement caused him visible pain.

Patrick looked over his shoulder to Ethan. “Bro, just give him the needle already.”

As Ethan approached with determined strides, Harris yelled, “No, no! Not the needle. I’ll tell you his name. Thomas. He said his name was Thomas.”

Patrick felt adrenaline shoot through him. They all knew a vampire named Thomas: Scanguards’ own IT genius. The name had to be a coincidence. “What’s his last name?”

“He didn’t say. I swear! And I only saw him twice. Please, believe me!” Red tears were welling up in his eyes now.

Patrick glanced over his shoulder up to the observation window, before turning back and demanding, “Describe him!”

“I don’t know. Taller than me. Short light brown or dark blond hair.”

“Facial hair?”

Harris shook his head.

“That’s not a very good description. That could be anybody.” But hopefully not Thomas.

“I only met him briefly. And it was kind of dark, and frankly the guy creeped me out.”

Patrick shook his head. “Yet you agreed to be turned by him.”

“Yeah, I mean… he was offering everything I wanted…”

“Back to the vampire who turned you. Where did you meet him?”

“Online at first.”

“Via the incel forum you’re on?”

Surprise flashed in Harris’s eyes. “How do you—”

“We know what you’ve been up to,” Patrick interrupted. “Where did you meet this guy in real life?”

“Somewhere behind a bar in the Castro.”

Patrick sucked in a breath. Many of the bars in the Castro were known as gay hangouts, and he was certain that Thomas and his partner, Eddie, had been to many of them. Did that mean that Thomas could indeed be involved in this?

Patrick pulled his cell phone from his pocket and navigated to an app, typed in Thomas’s name in the database, and it spit out his photo. He turned the display so that Harris could see it.

“Is that him?”

Harris shook his head instantly. “No. I’ve never seen that guy.”

Patrick turned back to the observation window. “It’s not Thomas.” But with the vague description that they had, they needed to bring in the big guns to find who this vampire was. “I think we need Gabriel down here.”

“He’s already on his way down,” Samson said via the speaker system.

The door opened in the same instant, and Gabriel strode in. He walked up to the captive, who shrank back, clearly scared of him, because with his imposing figure and the large scar on one side of his face, he looked like a violent criminal. Only those people who knew him, knew that he was a considerate man who abhorred needless violence, and only employed it when his friends or family were in danger.

“Are you gonna use your skill?” Ethan asked from behind Patrick.

Gabriel nodded. “It’s the only way to know for sure.”

He stopped right in front of Harris and stretched his hand over the vampire’s head without touching him. Patrick knew about Gabriel’s skill of being able to look into other people’s memories, but he’d never witnessed it firsthand.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Harris asked, his eyes darting nervously from Gabriel to Ethan and Patrick. “What is this?”