Excerpt from Moonwish:

The human body is a miraculous machine. Think about it. The liver can regenerate itself in as little as four weeks, the human brain can retain an amount of information equal to 20,000 dictionaries, and the circulatory system acts as a high-speed transportation system, moving 8,000 liters of the life-giving, life-sustaining elixir around our body every day that we all need to survive.

Blood.

I’d never given much thought to my blood until it was taken from me involuntarily. Not spilled, not withdrawn in a medical procedure… no. It had been removed. Pints of it. And I couldn’t even be mad. Well, I could, but then I’d have to be mad at the man I’d fallen ridiculously in love with, and since he was the reason I got out of bed every day, and the reason I was currently strapped with wires all over my torso while running—walking, I mean—I had to let that shit go. I wouldn’t be running for a long time to come, if ever.

I could be mad. Or at least perturbed, but I wasn’t. Not really.

“Creed Lowell, I swear, when I get out of this place, I’m going to kick your ass—”

“Mmm, I can’t wait.”

The treadmill slowed to a stop. I grabbed for my water bottle while the nurses got the readings from my latest test, and I gasped like I’d just finished a marathon. Hopefully I’d done better this time and would be one step closer to getting released from the convalescent hospital. I felt better, stronger, but I still needed to use a cane, and I was nowhere near the shape I’d been in before. Hypovolemic shock is a bitch. 

Creed’s smile on the screen of the SAT phone made the pain lessen somewhat, though being kept away from him hurt more than I could stand. 

“You’re such a tease,” I said, between gasps for air. “You’re going to be in so much trouble when I get out of this place.”

Creed sighed. “Promise? How much longer, have they said?”

The thing driving me through my rehab was that I knew Creed needed me as much, if not more, than I needed him, and I was desperate to be with him again. This FaceTime bullshit wasn’t cutting it.

The door opened and my uncle—Santa Cruz PD Officer Reynaldo Cabral—entered with a laugh. 

“Hey, Six Dollar Man, you almost done? I gotta get back.” My uncle could be an asshole—my favorite nickname for him was Dicknaldo, after all—but he was just as anxious for me to get out of rehab and back to my life as I was. It wasn’t only because he was sick and tired of being our go-between. He had possession of the super-secret bat phone that Creed and I had to use to communicate. Creed was being kept at a classified location by an FBI agent who was working with a non-governmental task force to deal with the events that put me here. 

No. Uncle Rey wanted me out of here so we could all focus on finding the people who’d been wreaking havoc on our hometown, and who regularly took blood and energy from people without their permission. 

The plan was that as soon as I was well enough to be released, I’d be secreted away in the dead of night to be reunited with my lover. It sounded like the plot of a romance novel, but in reality, it was much more serious than that. 

“Six Dollar… fuck off. I’ll be done in a minute.” I used a towel to wipe my face, cringing at the thought that once upon a time, I could run a six-minute mile, and now walking for six minutes at two-point-five miles per hour had me sweating buckets and wrung out.

“Sorry, Rey. It’s my fault we’re taking so long. I love watching him sweat.” Creed winked at me, but the absence of his multi-watt smile let me know that while this rehab was physically torturing me, it was torturing him by proxy. 

“No problem, Nurse Creed. By the way, Vanessa wanted me to let you know that she’s sitting in on Stephen’s deposition tomorrow. Agent Barringer is going to be participating remotely as well, so I’m sure he’ll keep you updated as much as he can.”

“I’m aware,” Creed said, his expression going dark. “Any word on Timothy Hicks?”

Rey shook his head. “Not yet. We’ve managed to get a few more names of folks involved, however, and it looks like what Stephen was saying about being a pawn may be sort of true.”

“Bullshit,” Creed said, but it was more of a summation than an interjection. 

After my exsanguination at Loch Lomond in the Santa Cruz mountains, Stephen Adams had been captured by my intrepid aunt, Detective Vanessa Cabral. She’d barely kept herself from beating him to within an inch of his existence after he’d kidnapped her wife and son, and yours truly. But all Stephen would say was that everything he’d done was to care for The Source, that he had nothing to do with the attacks in town, nor the biomedical and financial organizations. We knew that wasn’t true—at the very least, he would be charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, and the murders of the four young men who’d been leading the terror campaign in downtown Santa Cruz. Stephen Adams would never be a free man again.

It wasn’t enough.

“I know,” Rey said. “But I’m no detective, so what the fuck do I know? Anyway, I’ll give you two a minute to wrap things up.”

He stepped back out into the hallway, and I smiled down at Creed, who winced.

“As much as I love seeing you without a shirt, I’m not a fan of your current accessories.”

I looked down at myself and poked at the monitors. “I don’t mind it. Hopefully the doctor will like my results this time.” I pulled the phone closer to my face. “How are you, though?”

Creed’s smile didn’t have the charm it used to, and the dark circles under his eyes worried me, though he always argued that he was fine.

“I’ll be better when I can kiss you. Hold you. Who are you that you’ve turned me from a solitary man into one who pines? I may be the mythological creature of darkness in this relationship, but it’s you who’s put a spell on me.”

If he’d been himself, if he’d smiled that flirty smile of his, I would have laughed out loud at his proclamation. But he was serious.

“There’s nothing dark about you, and you know it. Babe, I’m sorry. I’m trying my hardest. If all my tests look good in the next few days, the doctors will start making discharge plans.”

“I know you are, Roman. I’m just being morose. Ignore me. Please, take your time. You need to be well. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, though.”