Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The vitae that dripped off of Scott’s sleeves was so dark it was nearly black, seared by the silver and stake driven through an undead heart. The droplets disappeared before they could reach the floor, turning into dust that piled up on the ground like sand in an hourglass.

Avid stared at Scott from across the dark room, barely visible in the light of his own torch. The flame wavered as he shook, his grip tight on both the torch and his own carved weapon. Scott knew that even with his torch he would not be able to see much of the scene before him. He would be able to see Scott, hunched over but easily identified from any of the other townspeople from the color of his hair. He’d be able to see something under Scott, but by this point the body under him was barely recognizable as such. Ribs still rose from decaying skin, curling around the wet stake, holding it like it was something precious. 

For a moment they were both still, silence keeping them trapped under its thumb. Scott could still hear the whispers in the silence. They breathed down his neck, chanting something like a prayer. The words were twisted and wrong, something that wasn’t English or any other language that Scott was familiar with. They were repeated with fervor, the voices barely layering on each other, sounding almost like a singular person. But under the whispers opened a gaping void in space, a void where a member of what he once considered his own coven should be, a void that widened on out on the floor before him where that collapsing carcass stared up at him.

The torch tumbled from Avid’s shaky grip, clattering against the floor and snuffing out what little light he could rely on. They both moved at once, the spell of silence falling from their limbs.

Scott scrambled backwards, letting his coat flow with his movements to conceal the silver chisel still dripping with vitae as he pocketed it. He took rapid steps back until he hit the rough stone wall, scraping his back through layers of fabric.

Avid rushed forward, stumbling in the dark. His hip snagged on the stone pedestal that the consecrated chest sat on. He made for the decaying corpse, his eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness. He fell to the ground, knees hitting the stone with an awful sound. Not once did his face contort from the pain, eyes fixed on the splintering rib cage. Without hesitation, he plucked the stake from the center of what was once Owen’s chest. The only moment of wavering resolve was when the dark blood started to wet his hand, staining the cracks in his dry skin. He shivered at the feeling, hand twitching with discomfort as the blood dried rapidly against him, flaking off into dust. He watched the blood flake off, not a drop of it staining the soft pulp of the stake, leaving no evidence behind of the monster it had slain.

“What- what was-” he started to murmur, a question momentarily just for himself. He looked from the stake to the blackened bones that were slowly joining the rest of the vampire’s essence beyond the grave, turning into nothing but ashes on the floor of a forgotten crypt. “Who…?”

His eyes met with Scott’s even through the darkness. They were somehow brighter in the shadows, shining as if there was light to reflect back at him. Scott kept his back against the wall, holding his hands up to show his own empty palms, to show the black blood flaking off of his own skin and the sleeves of his coat. Avid’s brow was turned in, his face tight and tense.

“Owen,” Scott breathed, barely loud enough for the words to carry across the small room. He swallowed, throat dry, the void crumbling and filling in as an unwanted grief settled in his chest. “He… attacked me.”

Avid stayed quiet, eyes moving rapidly between the last dusted bones of the corpse and the man who had made them. The body rapidly turned into nothingness, not even hair, not even clothes. Everything that made the man before them had gone beyond the walls the beacon had erected, somewhere they couldn’t reach. The only evidence that the man had ever existed were the silver tools he left behind. A pickaxe, shiny and new, and an axe, sharpened but old and chipped.

“I can’t see anything down here,” Avid said, standing suddenly. The unbloodied stake was still held tight in his hand, his own stained one tucked away.

His movements were quicker than they had any right to be, no longer stumbling through darkness and uncertainty. He slipped quickly into Scott’s personal space and, for just a moment, he stared at him, mouth tight. Despite his claims of not being able to see he seemed to momentarily scan his throat, covered with a tightly tied cravat, a habit Scott had never gotten out of, from when he was still young, still attempting to hide as he was now.

“We have to get out of here.”

Before Scott could say anything about how he would have left by now if Avid hadn’t so rudely backed him against the wall, the hunter grabbed his wrist, his grip too tight. Every part of Scott wanted to pull away, yank his arm out of Avid’s rough hands. He kept himself from doing so, letting Avid drag him up the spiraling staircase and into the light of the moon, bathing them in sickening red. It sat high in the sky now, giving what little light it could to guide them through town.

“Let go of me,” Scott whispered sharply as he was pulled out into the open air. “Avid. Avid, let go.”

Avid gave no indication he had even heard him speak, taking long, quick strides to drag him into the unfinished house he and Drift had been tediously constructing. It was already taller than most of the buildings around the town, sporting two stories and empty windows. The roof remained open, letting moonlight flood the floors and allowing Scott to be dragged through the door without any ancient rules stopping him, right past a sign was scratchy, hurried words declaring the existence of vampires.

Torches were slotted into roughly crafted sconces, filling the room with more light than the town paths. It gave barely enough light for Avid to see by as he roughly tugged at the long sleeves of Scott’s coat, trying to fold the stiff fabric up his arm to see the skin of his wrists.

“If you want my clothes off you should at least make me dinner first,” Scott teased, attempting to gently bring his arms back in and out of Avid’s hands.

“Can you be serious for a second?” he snapped, not letting go. He turned over Scott’s wrists, pulled the sleeve up to look at the soft flesh on the inside of his arm, looking for any signs of a bite. Finding none, he moved onto the other arm, tugging much too roughly at the fabric.

“Be careful with that,” Scott hissed, trying once again to free his arm. “What on earth are you even doing?”

“Hold still! I’m trying to check you for vampire bites!”

“Vampire bites?”

“Are you for real right now?” Avid asked, letting go of Scott only to be able to stare at him more incredulously. “Vampires. What else do you call what happened down there?”

“Well, I’m not going to pretend it was normal,” Scott said, adjusting his sleeve while unsubtly checking for any signs that the fabric was overly stretched or any fibers had been torn.

“Then let me look!”

He stood from the dining room chair and pushed himself onto Scott, pinning him to the seat to pull at his cravat. The chair tilted back, creaking dangerously and scraping against the floor. Avid’s movements were sharp, violent, somehow both clumsy and precise. His hands found exactly where they needed to be but the movements of the rest of his body were downright oafish. His voice rasped with every word, as if forced out of a throat full of spikes. Scott couldn’t get a grip on him. He couldn’t even push him off, finding his own strength insufficient. Avid managed to untie the cravat and toss it aside, letting it drop onto the table as he tugged the collar down, only a fraction, less than an inch, but Scott knew it was enough. He knew exactly where his scars were, two perfect red puncture marks marring the pale flesh of his neck.

To his great relief, the door to the house swung open with a loud bang, hitting the wall hard. In the door frame stood Shelby, a fresh wound slashed across her cheek and weeping vermilion blood down her face and onto the white collar of her shirt.

“Oh!” Her eyes widened and she took in the somewhat compromising scene in front of her. “I didn’t mean to interrupt or anything.” She had that smile on her face, the one that meant she was absolutely up to no good. “If you guys were trying to have an intimate moment or-”

“No!” Avid yelled, letting go of Scott’s shirt collar and finally giving the man some much needed personal space. “No it- we weren’t doing anything like… that.”

“Say that to my cravat,” Scott grumbled, snatching the offended object from the table. He carefully tied his collar back up, sighing at the comforting pressure of it against his throat.

“Scott’s a vampire.”

Where had he heard that before? Oh, right, just about a thousand times from the same exact man.

“I am no such thing,” he said, finally getting his clothes back into their proper places and not violently pulled and pressed by an impolite peasant.

“Well, Owen was clearly a vampire-!”

“Owen was a what?” Shelby tried to interject.

“-and he attacked you, tried- tried to drain you-”

“Avid, slow down,” she said, shutting the door behind her much more gently than it had been thrown open and making her way deeper into the home.

“-and now you’re infected!”

“I feel exactly the same as I did before he put his dirty fangs on me,” Scott said, straightening in his seat.

“Wait, Scott,” Shelby rushed up to him, stopping short of encroaching on his personal space, unlike some people. A miracle, truly. “Did Owen actually attack you?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “Quite viciously, might I add.”

“And did…” she looked to Avid, brows pulled up tight. Her breath stopped in her throat as she thought. She met Scott’s gaze again. “Did he bite you?”

“Yes.” He brought a hand up to his neck and touched gently against the centuries old wound through the fabric with the tips of his fingers. It was quite lucky that a turning bite could never scab, never scar like a normal wound. The bite, though given to him more than a thousand years prior, still looked as fresh as the day he was turned, red and angry against pale skin. “I felt… I think he tried to drain me.”

“Aha! See!” Avid yelled, probably loud enough to be heard outside of the home but with how much he yelled all the time Scott doubted anyone would bother to listen. “Vampires are real! I told you-!”

“Avid, is this really the time?” Shelby asked, turning to glare. “My roommate was just attacked.”

“Exactly! Shelby, this is huge!” His eyes were bright now, sparking with energy. The dull, persistent presence that had pinned Scott to his chair just moments before was gone now, as if it had never happened. “Scott, what did it feel like? Are you nauseous? Tired?” Scott pretended not to notice how Avid’s grip tightened on the stake until the skin around his knuckles turned white. “Bloodthirsty?”

“I am exhausted,” he said flatly. “I wasn’t exactly planning to learn what it feels like to be a juice box today.”

Shelby’s face twisted, her throat tightening. She seemed as if she was holding back her own laughter. It wasn’t unnecessary. Avid would likely be pretty upset if he felt like both of them were still making fun of him even after he saw Scott kill a man. She looked like she’d eaten a lemon.

“What about the rest of you?” Avid persisted. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you have fangs?”

“If you come grabbing at me again to check my teeth I can promise you won’t have all of your fingers by the end of it.”

Shelby’s resolve fell slightly, a snicker crawling from her throat. She rested a hand on Avid’s shoulder to keep him from impulsively testing how serious Scott’s threats were.

“Avid, leave him be,” she said softly. 

He sighed, sitting back down in his own chair with a loud thump and an ominous creak from the shakily crafted furniture joints. He slumped in his seat with what could either be exhaustion of his own or just disappointment at not being able to pry Scott’s mouth open like a sadistic dentist. He took a breath, opening his mouth to speak as he turned to address Shelby. He seemed to finally notice the blood smeared across her face, still slightly weeping down her chin and neck.

“What happened to you?” 

“I got shot. Thanks for noticing.”

“Wait, wait, wait, let me try something!” 

Shelby was given no time to react before Avid smeared his dirty fingers through the blood staining her face. She jerked back, shouting a protest that he ignored. He turned back around quickly and shoved his bloodied fingers into Scott’s face, directly under his nose. Scott was given a bit more time to react, able to back up slightly before the hunter managed to clumsily get her blood on him.

“What on earth are you doing?” he asked, cringing at the noise his chair made against the wooden floors as he backed away further, rearing his head back.

“You don’t want to, uh,” Avid hesitated, looking down as he questioned his own speeding train of thought now that the both of them were looking at him like he was insane, which he was. “You don’t want to attack us? At all?”

“No.” Scott stood, dusting himself off and scrunching his nose up like the thought disgusted him

“You’re being crazy,” Shelby said, taking a spare cloth and wiping the rest of the drying blood off of her face. The wound had started to close, no longer weeping crimson down her cheek. “I’m leaving before you try to get him to drink my blood.”

“I wasn’t going to do that!” Avid whined. “Probably.”

She couldn’t help but snicker to herself as she made her way toward the door. She opened it only slightly at first, taking a careful moment to peek out and check if the creatures that had shot her on the way over were still poised to attack. She sighed in relief and slipped away into the red night, leaving Scott trapped in a room with Avid, who was nearly vibrating in his seat in… excitement? He really couldn’t tell at this point.

“This is huge. This is huge!”

Avid suddenly shot up out of his seat and started pacing the room. Scott guessed it wouldn’t take long, maybe a couple of days, before his constant movement and pacing wore a groove in the floorboards. He made toward the door subtly, maybe not to leave the house entirely but to at the very least not have Avid between him and his exits again.

“I’ve got to tell everyone. I was right. I was right! There are vampires here!”

“Avid, wait,” he interjected, grabbing Avid’s wrist as he rushed toward the door, out into the waiting town. Avid nearly froze in place, still as a statue for a moment. In a sharp, jerking movement he seemed to come back to himself, his head snapping to eye Scott.

“Wait for what?” he asked breathlessly. “They need to know! We have to keep the rest of them safe!”

“And what happens to me when you tell them?” Scott asked, lowering his voice. “What happens when they don’t believe you? When you tell them I killed Owen down there and they still don’t think that vampires are real? What happens then?”

“You were just defending yourself.”

“Why should they believe that?” He tightened his grip, glancing at the bloodied stake strapped to Avid like a lifeline. “They don’t believe a word you say. The only ones that believe you right now are me and Shelby.”

“And Drift.”

“Maybe Drift. In any case, Owen is missing. If you tell everyone that I killed him and they don’t believe you then that’s my neck on the line.”

Avid paused fully, letting his wrist fall limp in Scott’s grip. He looked down to the rough cut floor boards, eyes darting around as he started adding things up in his head. Scott hated when he was quiet. It was unsettling. Normally the man would speak on every little thought that came to his head, spilling out of his mouth like a waterfall without any consideration as to how people would react to his… everything.

“And if they do believe you, then what? Everyone thinks I’m a vampire too? I get run out of town?”

“I wouldn’t…” Avid hesitated, syllables halting and breathy. “I wouldn’t let them do that.”

“You can’t promise that.”

Scott let go of his wrist. The release was permission to leave. Leave if he wanted to risk Scott’s safety for his theories. Risk someone else for his own benefit. It was a gamble, Scott knew that. There was a good chance Avid walked out of that door right now and started yelling to the town about how Owen was a vampire, how he was dead in the crypt, and that Scott was a murderer. But what was the worst thing that would happen if he did? If Scott got run out of town it wouldn’t be new. It had already happened once and it was Avid’s fault that time too. It’s not like he had any true attachments here. Though, Shelby might be disappointed, which wasn’t ideal to him. He still needed her to turn Avid and that was much less likely to happen if she was disappointed in him. Avid would have to come crawling to her like last time, on the verge of dying from whatever curse he came here with. Whatever curse Scott could smell on the air when he got close. It was strongest when Avid had practically attacked him, his strength well beyond what it should be for a human.

Had he always been that volatile? Avid had been impulsive, sure. He thought about himself first and others later if not forced to reflect first. But strong? It was uncanny. Scott couldn’t even get the man off of him. Though, he was still at his weakest. Honestly, he was starving. His veins ached under his skin, pulsed like a heartbeat. A small voice in his head, not one of the foreign whispers in ears, told him to lunge now, to sink his teeth into Avid’s neck and have his fill, turn him right now. The rest of his brain knew that was a stupid plan. It would probably be the stupidest decision he could ever make. It was a plan that guaranteed that bloody stake stabbed through his heart to join Owen wherever his soul had settled.

“I won’t tell them.”

Avid grabbed the doorknob, eyes still trained on his feet.

“I’m gonna go find Drift,” he said, finally looking up to the door, trained forward like he was trying to avoid looking at Scott entirely. “You stay here, uh, just in case.”

The door swung open and the knob slammed into the wood paneling of the walls. Avid rushed out into the night ahead.

“Just in case of what?” Scott called after him. He got no response as Avid disappeared down the dark streets, around the buildings, and out of sight. He hadn’t yet started screaming about vampires, so that was a stark improvement.

Scott sighed and shut the door. It settled uncomfortably in its frame, the panels trembling. He leaned back, resting on one of the chests scattered haphazardly throughout the first floor of the home. This was going to be tiresome, he thought. Like herding a cat.

There wasn’t going to be a good way to go about all of this. Every version of the future held death for someone. There would be those who didn’t want to be turned, those who would fight the forces of “evil” until their final breath. He had to come up with some kind of plan. Something that would minimize damage done to those he could turn, those he could trust. 

He looked up at the ceiling, or to where it should be. There were gaps in the floor of the second story, letting him watch the clouds high in the sky. They drifted across the red moon, obscuring its face and occasionally blocking what weak light it provided. It was unnatural. As unnatural as the lack of stars. In the past there would be an occasional blood moon. A full moon would rise, darker than it should. It would give strength to the creatures of the night. The constant, reddened dread of the sky wasn’t normal and gave none of the strength of the moon it mimicked. Dust. He had truly thought that when he was asked. He had personally never seen a dust storm in his domain, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. As the nights had gone on, still clouded and gloomy, he doubted the idea. He was sure now that those beacons had something to do with it.

He hummed. Those witches always did have an odd moral code. The idea that this town, this cage, could either be the death of him once he had awoken, or that he, or any vampire for that matter, could turn and kill everyone in town and just be freed to spread their plague? Well, they never were a fan of humans either, were they. Humans were volatile. They were impulsive. They would only turn to the witches if they needed help but would otherwise shun them, banish them from their communities. It was common for a vampiric coven to have close bonds to a witch’s coven. That bond and their spells were the only reason Scott lived as long as he had, repelling the uncountable stakes that the peasants attempted to hammer through his heart with no success. 

The sound of the doorknob turning pulled him from his thoughts. He hadn’t moved from where he was stood directly in front of the door. He continued to not make any effort to move as Drift opened the fragile thing. She was looking down at her bag instead of in front of her, focused on whatever was falling to the bottom of the leather satchel.

“Hiya,” Scott said, voice light and friendly in an attempt not to be any creepier than he already seemed, silently trespassing in her house. Judging by the way she screamed and flailed, nearly slamming the door into her own face, his attempt wasn’t successful.

“Oh my god!” Drift exclaimed, chest heaving from her panicked screams. Honestly, Scott had heard enough screaming for the night.

“Sorry,” he said, sliding away from the door and further into the house, attempting to give her more space to breathe. “I was actually trying to not scare you half to death.”

“Well, mission failed,” she sighed, slipping through the door. She huffed and set her satchel on one of the scattered chests. “What are you doing in my house?”

“Drift! Driiiiiiift! Drift!”

Avid came running up to the home, swinging the door open with enough force to once again slam against the inner walls. There was already a dent in the wooden panels from where the knob had impacted with the wall. Small, but still noticeable. Avid was panting, doubled over in exertion with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. It took him a while to do so and he still hadn’t fully caught it when he stood up straight and inserted himself between Scott and Drift like he was trying to create a barrier between them.

“Don’t come any closer,” he said to Drift, holding his arms out to make himself bigger. “I think Scott might be a vampire!”

“If I was a vampire then it’d be smart not to turn your back to me,” Scott teased, leaning closer, letting his words breath against the little exposed flesh above the bandages covering his neck.

Avid shivered slightly, breath hitching. He looked back over his shoulder. “Well you- you didn’t attack me earlier.”

“Am I a feral cat now? I’m going to attack your housemate because I didn’t smell her through the door long enough?”

“Avid, did you know Scott was in here?” Drift asked. She started to unpack her bag, not looking at either of them fully as she focused on not losing her things to the bottom of the chests too. 

“I was trying to come find you and tell you.”

“We had just talked about this, buddy,” she said, slinging the now empty bag back over her shoulder and securing it there with a metal buckle. “You should be asking me before you invite people in.”

“It was an emergency!”

“A vampire emergency?”

“Well, actually, yes! Yes, it was.”

Drift just sighed, her shoulders dropping with her defenses. “I’m going to bed. I’m exhausted.”

“Wait, I have to tell you about-” Avid interrupted himself mid-sentence. He glanced back at Scott, stepping forward to not block him from the rest of the room. He looked back to where Drift was attempting to retreat from the interaction. “I have to tell you about something. In private.”

“Well, I know when I’m not wanted,” Scott joked, putting his hands up in a mock surrender.

“I’ll check on you in the morning.”

“Would really prefer if you didn’t, actually!” Scott called behind him as he quickly made his way out through the doorway.

The night was colder now. The wind bounced off of the newly erected walls, forcing it through corridors of houses and causing his coat to billow as he made his way back toward his own home. Their houses were quite far, fully on opposite ends of the town. He would think it was to stay as far from Scott as possible if Drift and Avid weren’t already half done with their home by the time Scott had decided to stay with Shelby his first time around. 

There wasn’t a soul around as he made his way back home, nor the shambling bodies of the soulless undead that roamed the land. Things like this had always been a problem the further one got from the bustling cities. As the lights from the roads became sparse and the horses became more skittish, the wandering, unclean spirits made their homes in open fields and dark forests. He had assigned plenty of guards at the borders of the vast forests that went on for miles and miles even past the fabricated borders of the beacons. It was a simple safety measure, like a dog sent to watch over a field of sheep.

Warmth emitted from the walls of his own home. He could hear the creaking of Shelby rooting around the storage inside echoing over the top of the walls. He only took a couple of moments to straighten his clothes from the unpolished look he had been forced into by the unruly winds before entering the abode, quickly closing the door behind him.

Shelby kept herself entirely focused on her task as if she hadn’t even heard the door. She dug through the chest, shoving objects into her pockets and bag. Out of the depth of the box, she pulled out a bleeding satchel that… well it smelled like beef. She set it on a small table next to the chest, letting the blood leak out and seep into its wooden surface, staining it.

“Oh good, you’re back,” she said without looking up. She grabbed one last item from the box before letting the lid slam shut with a loud bang.

Scott’s eye twitched, ears nearly aching from the assault on his senses that he had been enduring the entire night. He wanted nothing more than to crawl back to the castle and curl into one of those horrible, uncomfortable stone coffins in an attempt to block out any more of the noises that surrounded him from forcing themselves upon his eardrums. Shelby didn’t seem to mind the loud noise, not even flinching from it as she grabbed the bleeding satchel and shoved it bodily toward Scott.

“Eat.”

“You want me to eat this?” He cautiously took the bag in hand, holding the few parts of the fabric that weren’t soaked in cow’s blood.

“Please don’t be difficult with me right now,” she said, her voice sharp like a mother scolding a child. “I know you’re hungry and I’d rather you didn’t try to suck my blood while I have my back turned.”

She turned away confidently, checking the contents of her bag once again. She spent a moment organizing it, sorting through the random assortment of items she had haphazardly thrown inside of it.

“I thought you didn’t believe in vampires.”

“Of course I believe in vampires!” she said, grabbing a stake from her bag and tucking it into her belt where a loop of leather made a perfect spot for the weapon to slot into. It was the same stake she had handed him earlier. The same stake he had stabbed through Owen’s chest. The same stake he thought Avid still had on his person. “I just didn’t hear about any vampires being in these woods. All of the rumors were saying stuff about werewolves and faeries and bigfoot, not blood-sucking undead.” She looked back up at him, eyes wide and holding a wild spark within, like flint against iron. “Don’t tell me you didn’t believe in monsters. I thought you were messing with me!”

“Uh, no?” he said, his nose scrunching up. “Why would I? As far as I cared, it was just fairytales the peasants read to their children to keep them from running off into the woods and getting eaten by real wolves.”

“But now you do.”

“Well, unless I fully hallucinated a man turning into dust after I stabbed him to death then yes, I believe in vampires.”

“Good! Then eat that.”

A knock came at the door, stopping Scott short of actually following through with Shelby’s badgering. They both turned to look. Through the windows they could see a flash of blonde hair and a black cape billowing in the windy night air.

“You guys alright?” Martyn asked through the door. “We heard a big exploooo…”

Martyn’s eyes pierced through the glass windows and spotted the, frankly ridiculous, scene the two of them were putting on. In Scott’s hand there was an actively bleeding satchel of raw meat that was dripping gore onto their floors while Shelby stood in front of him, fixing a wooden stake into place on her belt with the same blood staining her fingertips.

“We didn’t hear anything,” Shelby yelled through the door and up the walls.

“Riiight,” Martyn said, keeping his eyes trained on the two of them as he slowly backed away from the house. “I’ll just… go figure out where that came from, then.”

He dashed away toward the center of town. Scott sighed and set the bag of meat back down on the already ruined tabletop. He brought his hand up to his nose, pinching the bridge between his fingers. There was no chance that this little incident didn’t turn into something bigger. If he was lucky, which it seemed he often wasn’t since he had first woken from his crypt, they could convince him that they were trying to set up a trap for the vampires. It would paint them as crazy, but it wouldn’t paint a bigger target on their backs.

Morning crept in with the fog, blanketing the town in a fine mist and a wet chill. Shelby sat at the window, staring out into the bleak daylight with a dull look in her eyes. Scott sat on one of the beds, staring at the ceiling like it would pass the time any faster. Shelby insisted that they didn’t go out until the morning came to not make the rest of the town suspicious of them. He had agreed with her, albeit begrudgingly. He knew she was right but he loathed the idea of spending the entire night waiting for the ghastly sun to rise. At least the daylight didn’t burn his skin at this point or else this would be a complete waste of his time.

“We should get more materials,” she said as daylight inched across the floor, distorted through crude glass windows.

“Why is this a “we” task?”

“Because I need to keep an eye on you, duh,” she joked. Well, half joked. She didn’t give any other reason to be dragging him along such a pointless task.

The two of them wandered leisurely toward the forest gate, no specific destination in mind yet. There were no proper barriers protecting the town from the terrors of the night yet, but it would be somewhat useless with the lack of torches in some of the further corners of the town sealed inside of the palisades. They’d only be trapping the undead inside with them instead of locking them out.

Before the two could take off into the winding paths through the woods, they heard voices coming from around the outside of the walls. They turned to see a small group of four discussing something with tense, quiet tones. Their words were sharp between them. Cleo, Pearl, Avid, and Drift. Drift and Avid kept looking behind them, out toward the field, out toward the border. Between rapid glances, Avid glimpsed the pair standing at the gate, staring at the group in silence.

“Shelby! Scott!” he called out, barrelling toward them. The other three followed behind, carrying varying levels of reluctance to go along with his antics.

“Hey, Avid,” Shelby greeted, a bright smile dancing across her features. “Hey, Drift! Hey, Pearl! Hey, Cleo! What are you guys up to?”

“We were going to head out to find more of those tombs,” Cleo said as she approached.

“Tombs?” Shelby asked. 

“There’s a bunch of these creepy, gross tombs out in the woods,” Pearl said, tone pulled teasingly, like an older child telling ghost stories to their siblings. “We’re gonna go find some.”

“Oh, can we come with you guys?”

“Strength in numbers,” Cleo agreed with a shrug.

The, now quite large, group made their way into the shadows of the woods, great old trees towering above them as they made their way through its winding paths full of useless dead ends. It was only then that Scott noticed the lack of weapons on his person. His hand flew to the scabbard loops in his belt and found it bereft of protective metal or even poorly sharpened stone. He furrowed his brow. He should be fine, he thought. There were five other people here to make sure none of them keeled over. Well, at least two of them could keep the rest of them from dying to undead. Hopefully.

“Did you forget to grab a sword?” Shelby asked only a couple minutes later, peaking her head forward to get a glimpse at his side behind his coat. 

“I don’t plan on being attacked, actually,” he reasoned. “It would be better if we came back before it gets dark anyway.”

“What if something comes crawling out of one of those caves?” Drift asked, her hand falling to the handle of her own weapon. 

“Surely the five of you are capable enough to fight them off without my help.”

“Expecting us peasants to do the work for you?” Cleo asked, venom in her tone.

He hesitated, tempted to simply agree with her assessment. “I’ll make sure to bring a weapon next time, if you’re so burdened by an extra body.”

It didn’t take too much longer until the group broke through the treeline, their feet landing on the gravelly riverbanks. The fine rocks crunched under their boots, footsteps carving obvious tracks along their path. They all witnessed the looming, dead forest that sprawled out before them just on the other side of the coursing river, just barely visible through the morning fog that clung to the ground. The pale, dying trees crawled up the hills, growing outward like a living beast, looming over the living domain with a necrotic touch. They had all stopped to stare at it, judging its presence from a safe distance. Pearl was the first of their group to move forward again, walking toward the crumbling stone pass that gave a very precarious way to cross the rushing waters.

“Well, that’s rather… eerie,” Cleo said, following Pearl reproachfully.

“Let’s go in it!” Pearl said, all too excited as she hopped onto the first stone. She barely managed to stabilize herself on the leaning pillar of rock, preventing her from falling into the rapids. “This is fine.”

“Do you think this leads to something?” Drift asked, following in Pearl’s exact footsteps, watching her feet and then her own.

“Well, there’s a path,” Shelby reasoned. “Paths have to lead to somewhere.”

“It seems the further we get away from town the creepier it gets,” Cleo said, bringing up the rear of the group behind Scott.

“The entire forest looks dead,” he said, grabbing onto a pillar of rock that quickly crumbled under his too-tight grip. He really wasn’t looking to get his clothes soaked again.

“I bet we could find one of those magical tomes Sausage found!” Avid said, landing clumsily on the opposite shore, nearly falling over himself and getting a face full of sharp gravel.

“Is that what we’re looking for in the tombs?” Shelby asked.

“Hopefully,” Drift said, swinging her axe into one of the trees on the very edges of the forest. “Or something else cool. Sausage’s power is kinda lame.”

“It’s super lame,” Avid agreed, grabbing a bundle of pale moss that hung down from the leaves here. He twisted the fibers around his hand like he was coiling a rope before shoving it into his bag.

“Are you guys going to actually come along or are you going to stay down there and chat?” Cleo called down, already halfway up the hill and the only one actively climbing it, the rest of their numbers standing just off of the shoreline.

“But this wood is gonna make the house look gorgeous, Cleo!” Pearl yelled up to her.

“Maybe it would be best to stick together,” Avid said, watching Cleo continue further up the hillside, ignoring the protests of the group. He hopped down from a shaky tree limb that he had scrambled up the side of, landing with solid feet on the ground. Dead moss turned to dust in his wake.

“This doesn’t seem like the kind of place you want to get lost in,” Shelby said. She slid her own silver axe into a strap across her back and followed quickly up the hillside. Scott followed closely behind.

“Is any place the kind of place you want to get lost in?” he asked.

“You could get lost in a good book.”

Drift snickered at the rather corny statement, eating away at what little stamina she had to climb with the rest of them. She faltered for a moment, her foot catching on a pebble and loosening her shoe’s grip on the slope. Avid grabbed her elbow as she slipped, helping stabilize her and prevent her from falling back down where they came from and potentially scraping up her front on the way down. Ahead of them Pearl climbed the hill at a rapid pace to try to catch up with Cleo, much further ahead of the four of them for having been the last one to start climbing. She was probably one of the only members of their group who potentially worked on her stamina before arriving in Oakhearst. Scott knew that Drift and Shelby came from well established towns, giving them no reason to build up stamina from traditional field work or foraging. Avid was a wild card. He had given no indication of what kind of place he was from other than the fact he had nothing back there, no family or friends to speak off apart from the dead.

As they crested the hill they could see a black tower reaching up toward the grey skies. A small grove stretched out before them at the base of the surprisingly tall hill. The trees stopped at the edge of an eerily still lake, no movement in the shallow waters. It was closer in style to a pond, something left behind from seasonal floods from the nearby river. In the middle of the seasonal pond was a small island with sharp exposed stones bared against the waters, eroded over the years. It held a black, towering obelisk in its unsteady foundation. Broken stairs led up from the dead island grass up to a glowing beacon in its center, currently blocked from their immediate view by three walls that reached from the base up to the sharp peak. Candles littered the base of the tower, suggesting it was used for some kind of ritual purpose.

The beacons were very odd, he thought. While three of them were settled in purpose-built stone towers, the other four were settled in or near grave sites. The castle one, looming over his own grave. The town beacon, sitting next to a centuries old tomb that was now Owen’s. The one in a crypt carved into the side of a mountain. And then this one, shoved into the core of a some kind of mausoleum. 

“What is that?” Drift asked as she came up behind Scott and Shelby with Avid, Pearl and Cleo already waded halfway across the pond below them.

“I don’t know, but they’re almost to it,” Avid said, pointing at the two, who seemed so far away for only being down the slope.

“It looks so co- oh no!” 

Shelby cut herself off with a scream as her footing slipped, the dusty ground under her boots giving way easily under her heavy steps. She was sent sliding down the hillside, throwing up dust in her wake.

Scott let the gravelly soil slide under his feet, pushing one foot forward to guide his way as he intentionally slid down the hill after her, balancing carefully to keep himself from potentially embarrassing himself and repeating Shelby's mistake. She slid all the way down the hill on her butt under she reached the lake shore, her boots dipping into the water as she settled into place. He got to the bottom just after she did and held out a hand for her so she could stand easily. The other two scrambled gracelessly down the hill after them, taking a bit of care not to slide down too.

“Are you okay?” Drift asked, breathing heavily.

Shelby groaned in pain and grabbed Scott’s offered hand. As she stood he felt her bear no weight against him, rising easily with her own strength while grunting as if it took great effort to do so.

“I’m fine,” she said, wrapping her grip more securely around Scott’s. “Unless my skirt is torn. Then I’m going to bury myself in a hole and never come out of it.”

Drift rounded her, checking on the state of her skirt. Shelby twisted slightly, pulling at the fabric of her skirt to expose the pleats and check more thoroughly for any rips or tears. 

“It seems fine to me…” Drift said. “It looks pretty worn, though. I would try to not do that again.” She smiled softly.

“I’ll do my best,” Shelby said, mimicking Drift’s joking tone.

The trip across the shallow water was dreadful. Scott felt the stagnant water soak into his pants and the bottom hem of his long coat, slowly leeching liquid up the garments and further drench him in disgusting, frigid water. Shelby didn’t let go of his hand, unsteady on her feet as she watched the lake bed for anything else she could trip over and make her day even more embarrassing that she already thought it to be.

“This is a mausoleum of some kind,” Cleo said as their group finally gathered into one again at the base of the tower. They hauled themself up the broken stairs, climbing confidently up to the beacon.

“Is this another place to consecrate?” Avid asked.

He tried to get himself up the stairs like Cleo did but struggled much more than they did, lacking the upper body strength to get himself onto the structure. He had to rely on Drift giving him a step up with her knee. He pulled her up after him. Pearl was the last one up with them. She quickly started to tear away at the thick walls surrounding most of the sides of the beacon with swift swings of her pickaxe.

“Should we not disturb somewhere where someone is-” Avid started. Pearl’s pickaxe broke through the first wall, exposing the beacon more to the daylight. “You know what, it’s fine.”

“It’s another beacon,” Cleo said, working through another wall on her own so the group could more easily access the warm glass surface of the holy object gleaming before them.

“Should we do the thing?” Drift asked, approaching more hesitantly than the other three.

Cleo and Pearl put their hands against the glass silently. They all watched in awe as the swirling fibers of light uncoiled from the center, swimming through the trapped essence within the beacon until it met with their palms through the thick glass. Golden light leaked out of the crystal, bathing the dark forest’s island in its warmth. Avid and Drift joined in, causing more waves of holy light to pulse down the sides of the mausoleum. 

Scott and Shelby stood on the hard earth of the island, staring up at the group crowded up there. He turned his gaze out toward the water, toward the forest to the left of the obelisk. When he had first seen this beacon it already was consecrated, bleeding golden light into the parasitic forest that surrounded it. It was here that he realized that, after an eternity of silence and solitude, after centuries of well founded distrust, he was not alone in his domain. He learned that the centuries before him weren’t destined to be spent alone. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought that he was happy about it, seeing a kin after centuries without a coven. But more than anything on that night, more than any feelings or lack thereof, he was hungry. Hungrier than he had been since he had first received the gift. He had still been trying to fill the bottomless void that centuries of purposeful starvation, centuries locked in his own tomb, his own mind, had created. He didn’t dream. He didn’t think he remembered what it was like to dream anyway. Still, he had been aware that time had been passing. Not fully aware, not awake like Owen had been, buried in a grave he dug for himself. It was like drifting near the bottom of the sea, able to look up and see nothing but the dark waves of time surrounding him as the years drifted away.

The hunger had festered and boiled over into something he had no hope of ever controlling. He didn’t know if he really meant to turn Pyro that night, though. In centuries of control he had not once forcibly brought someone into the embrace. Not once injected his own vitae into the veins of an unwilling mortal. He had turned friends, those who pleased him, but always those who asked for it, asked for him to sink his fangs into the arteries and pull their mortality from within. He thought he had just meant to drain him, leave his body for the wolves. Leave his corpse to rot and bring back life into the dead forest that surrounded them. Without thinking, without meaning, his vitae leeched from his fangs to fill the empty space he had left in Pyro’s veins, dragging him from the grip of true death as he screamed out for-

“Eat.”

Scott blinked, the blood that spread from the pond’s edge disappearing from his wavering vision. He turned back to Shelby, their fingers interlocked with each other’s. She was looking up at the beacon, up to where the other four were chatting nonsense.

“What?”

“They’re about to turn the beacon. Eat before they look back.”

Being next to a beacon while it was being consecrated as some unholy thing was always quite draining. It felt like a weight was being placed on one's limbs, sinking them down into the earth below them, further trapping them within the beacon’s curtained walls.

Scott pulled a cut of raw meat from his back, wrapped tightly in wax-covered paper to keep it from bleeding all of his things and coating everything in gore. He trusted Shelby to warn him if one of the others looked over. He sunk his fangs into the flesh of the once-breathing creature. The muscle gave way under his teeth, cutting through the fibrous tissue. The sharpened molars that lined the back of his jaw took the meat greedily, filling his mouth with a dull sweetness that dripped down the back of his throat like honey. It was never as filling as fresh blood. His long-dead organs had to work to turn the gore into precious vitae instead of working the lifeblood directly into his veins through his fangs. He had to use blood to make blood, ultimately a net gain but not as satiating as warm bottles of blood.

The holy presence of the beacon echoed through his empty chest as it pulsed, a deep note resonating through his body like a gong. The weight on his limbs didn’t feel nearly as heavy as it would if he had been starving himself. What he did feel, though, was how Shelby’s grip tightened around his hand. Her nails dug into his flesh, just shy of piercing into his skin.

“Oh, I’m feeling good after that.”

“Yeah. That felt amazing.”

“That made me feel immediately better.”

The four mortals carefully made their way down the half-broken stairs, each looking at their feet as they took their steps. Drift took a moment’s pause to grab some of the candles from the ritual site and shove them into her bag.

“Does anyone else feel, like…” Avid trailed off in thought, tilting his head back and forth as he decided his words. “Invigorated? Stronger, almost?”

The small group voiced their agreement. Around the light of the newly consecrated beacon the humans almost seemed to glow. A golden light emanated off of their skin like a mirror to the holy light itself, softly dimming as the seconds ticked away.

“Did we get that from consecrating together?” Avid asked, glancing at the pair that stood just outside of the twinkling, swirling light of the holy beacon.

“I don’t feel anything,” Shelby said, finally letting go of Scott’s hand and leaving indents where her fingers pressed into his skin.

He took his hand into his chest, rubbing away the slight pain her nails had scratched into his skin. She continued forward, eyeing the a skull placed inside of the mausoleum, there was a crude runic symbol carved deep into the skull cap. She plucked it from its pedestal with a careful handle and tucked it under her arm.

“So it’s just those who consecrated that get extra strength,” Cleo said, glancing off into the distance down the floodplain.

“We should find more,” Drift said, eyes aglow with excitement, gold flickering in her iris.

“There should be more of them,” Scott said, looking up toward where the castle ruins were blocked by rolling hills and towering cliffs. “There can’t just be these two.”

“I wanna follow that path,” Pearl said, pointing down the floodplain between the river and the pond where the trees parted with the tip of her silver sword. “That looks interesting.”

The group stomped down the path away from the obelisk and toward the riverside. The ground here was covered in sandy sediment brought in from the flooding river, the dirt packed loosely due to the moving tides and the rushing water. The crumbling stone paths that stretched across the river were reminiscent of the pillars of old stone bridges, their actual spans having long eroded into the water and been washed away down to the sea.

“I haven’t heard you mention vampires once this entire trip,” Pearl said as they reached the stones.

“Who, me?” Avid asked as if anyone else had been yelling about vampires for half the day prior and erecting signs around town about how they were definitely real and he wasn’t a crazy person. “Pshh, nooo. I just, y’know. It seemed to be getting on people’s nerves and-”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she interrupted. “Please keep not mentioning them. You were giving me a headache.”

The group of six cautiously made their way across the much larger expanse of river than the other crossing they had jumped across. This one stretched far enough to meet with a small island in the middle of the river’s rapids. The columns here were clustered closer together, protected from the years of erosion by the shallow plot of land sticking up from the water. Other islands like it dotted this span of the lake, tossing up white foam that clung to the stones like lichen.

Scott made it halfway across the old bridge when he realized that Shelby and Avid seemed to be lagging a bit behind the rest of the group. It seemed to be somewhat intentional. The two of them talked far enough away from the group that anyone with a mortal’s senses couldn’t hear them over the rushing waters. Scott paused once he got to the other end of the river bank, listening in on their chatter under the guise of waiting up for them as Pearl and Drift started to climb up the steep face of the cliffs.

“-if you see another vampire, you need to tell me so I can kill them,” Avid said, falling into one of the columns with a small grunt as his chest hit the rock. 

“What, like, if Scott’s for sure a vampire?”

Avid paused. He was either thinking of what his answer should be or how not to fall face first into the river and hit his head on the rocks. “No, of course not him,” he answered.

“What if I was a vampire?”

He gasped. “Did Scott…”

“No,” she laughed, balancing on a rock with her arms splayed out, testing her own grace. “What if I was a vampire before I got here?”

“Well…” He almost fell again, barely catching his footing. Shelby grabbed onto his arm and helped him right himself. “I mean. As long as you don’t… hurt anyone…”

“What if I had to?” She stepped ahead of him, watching his movements to see if he would fall again and need her help. “What if I got attacked and had to hurt someone?”

“Well that’s different. You’re just- just trying to defend yourself.”

“Scott!”

Cleo called to him from down the shore. They stood far from the path, waving an arm in the air to get his attention. He glanced once more at the two groups. One still struggled across the river, their boots soaked through. The other was making the precarious trek up the mountain itself, Pearl taking care to pace Drift with each leg of the journey. He decided to opt for Cleo’s way, avoiding the climb or the caves that littered the cliffside with his stark lack of any weapons including his own claws. He didn’t quite run toward them but he made his way over quickly enough, fast enough that Shelby and Avid didn’t bother trying to get his attention before ducking into one of the dark caves carved through the rocks.

“I thought you were with Drift and Pearl,” he said when he caught up to her.

“I’m not climbing that,” she said, turning to start her own trek into the woods, climbing up the slightly steep incline the seasonal floods had carved into the gravel shore. “Plus, I think I saw one of those tombs.”

She led the way forward into the forest, twisting around the trees with an air of confidence. Scott followed, sticking close enough to them that he wouldn’t lose them in the densely packed foliage. He kept his ear to the wind, listening closely for the steps of any approaching human or undead that crawled their way to the surface and into the burning daylight. There were no paths in this part of the forest. Most of the tombs themselves seemed to stick out like a sore thumb on the landscape, as if sprouted from the ground like the trees themselves instead of created by humans or witches. They were large and imposing and seemed to bleed out a flood of spirits, unholy and holy alike. No matter who you were, the tombs gave off a sense of unease that was only satisfied by climbing back down the steep pyramid-like structure.

The two of them stared down into one of those tombs. The morning fog sunk into the depths, causing the pool of water below to barely be visible from their distance. Daylight was the only thing that lit up the sinking column of stone. Cleo took the plunge first, dropping like a rock. Scott heard more than saw the splash in the water as she hit the bottom. He followed after, feet sinking into the protective waters that collected there.

He looked into the dark corridor. Cobwebs stretched like skeletal hands across the ceiling and dusty floor. Skulls sat in small alcoves. The only light in the place was provided by the eerie glow of bioluminescent lichen that grew only in the most dank and dark places of the realm. Cleo was at the end of that corridor, reaching into a chest that sat on a pristine stone pedestal carved with runes in a language long dead by the time he had been sent into his own slumber. Out of the chest she pulled out a dusty tomb. It was bound in leather and inlaid with gold to mark out its title.

“Way of the Prospector,” Cleo read off of its surface. “I’m taking this one.”

“Be my guest,” Scott said, lifting some of the candles from the dust and dusting them off before pocketing them away. He cringed at the way the cobwebs clung to them and broke off in wispy fibers.

Cleo opened the book as she walked toward Scott and their exit but was stopped by the blinding light that shone from its pages. They froze in place as golden light spilled from the book and filled their vision. The light acted almost like a fog, falling to the ground and spilling out while some flew into the air like smoke. The spirits that fell to the ground swirled around her feet, creating ripples in the air like water. The light spilled from the pages and down her arms, curling around them like vines, wrapping tightly around her flesh until it reached her chest. Once it did, there was a final bright flash of gold. In that light the book disappeared from their grip, leaving sparkling dust in its place that fell to the ground and stuck there like a fine dusting of snow.

“Woah,” she said, blinking away the lingering searing pain of bright light from her eyes, barely able to see now in the much duller daylight.

“I think that was the same kind of magic as the beacons,” Scott said, stepping away to approach the bubbling column of water that promised an escape from the grave.

He stuck his hand into the water, feeling the way the bubbles brushed against his skin and tried to pull him up toward the surface. When he took his hand back out, it was as dry as the rest of the grave. He stepped in, leading a way for Cleo as the bubbles surrounded him and carried him up and out of the tomb, spitting him out on top of the pyramid. He straightened his clothes, tousled like he had just come out of a windstorm. Cleo came up right after him, just disheveled from the trip. She smoothed her hair down idly as they both made their way down the steep steps of the tomb.

“I heard someone mention that you’re a farmer,” Scott said, looking around the dense woods to see where one of the paths back to the town might be.

Cleo looked at him for just a bit longer than what could be considered normal. “I am,” she said after the pause.

“What did you farm? Crops? Animals?”

“Why do you want to know?”

They were stubborn to questioning, closing up at idle curiosity. He wondered how Pearl could get away with it, asking a million and one questions whenever she was given the chance. She also knew when to back down from questioning, though not from much else.

They still gladly followed Scott as he led them to one of the paths. He had avoided a lot of these tombs, having no real use for them beyond keeping up appearances. Once he didn’t have to do that he left it up to the fledglings and Owen to find and hopefully destroy the cure books. He thought it futile to look for them anyway. It was unlikely that the spirits that filled the tombs with knowledge would let it just disappear into the fire.

“Can’t a man be curious?”

“Livestock.”

They continued down the path in silence. Scott could feel their walls going up further, shoulders tense as they kept a keen eye on his back. The dirt road winded through the trees in a leisurely direction. For a time, only the sounds of the forest accompanied their trip. Wind rustling gently through the leaves and sending piles of them down to the forest floor to decompose and become a home for small animals. Birds that flew by, migrating with the changing of the seasons. 

“Have you tried to leave yet?” he asked.

“Yeah,” they said, voice almost tense but not as sharp as when his questions were directed at her background. “We can’t.”

“I tried to leave earlier,” he said, nodding. “What do you think it is?”

“It might be the beacons. Or the tombs.” She sighed in relief as they reached the edge of the forest, the landscape breaking out into the barren fields, town within their sights. “Oh, finally.”

“So, what,” Scott went on as the two of them approached the palisades. “We just turn all of the beacons and we can leave? Surely it can’t be that easy.”

Cleo stayed silent for a moment as they walked, looking straight ahead as she took the lead from Scott.

“No, probably not,” they said after a time. Just before the two of them reached the gate, just before they entered the town, they stopped in place. Scott stopped with them. They turned to face them, looking at him like he was a puzzle. “Do you know something? You’re acting like you know something.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged, tilting his head to the side. “Do you know something? You act like you don’t believe in the supernatural, call everyone crazy for thinking that maybe monsters are real, but don’t seem to question the beacons or the tombs at all. How do you explain those?”

They frowned, turning back to look toward the center of town, toward the beacon. “I can’t. I can’t explain them.”

“I think you know more about this place than you’re letting on.”

“I think you should shut your mouth before you get yourself in deep water.”

The warning, though threatening, didn’t seem to be said in true anger. It felt genuine, like she knew what talk like this could ultimately lead to, knew that speaking so loudly of the truth of the supernatural could get one in real, tangible trouble. He knew what she knew. He knew she knew vampires were real. He knew she was raised by one, even. He knew that they kept a set of their mother’s clothes in their bags “just in case.” He knew that she would deny the existence of vampires until it no longer served her to pretend. 

He knew that she didn’t know that the tangible trouble in this domain would be himself alone.

He knew it wasn’t going to be hard to convince her to join him. She had only ever really played on one side of the battle; her own. How she would play that game wasn’t clear yet.

“Scott! There you are!”

He turned to see Shelby running up to him from the woods, her bag so heavy with wood and silver that her gait swayed to the side with the weight of it all. Behind her, Avid approached slower. He looked exhausted and was covered in a fine layer of sweat and coal dust.

“We didn’t know where you ran off to,” Shelby said as she met up with him, skidding to a stop against the dew-covered grass.

“I went with Cleo into one of the tombs.”

“Did you find a book?” Avid asked, clearly trying not to vibrate with excitement.

“Yeah, but Cleo got dibs on it.”

His shoulders sagged with disappointment. The three of them walked back into town where most of the townspeople had made their way back as the day dragged on into the afternoon, casting long shadows against the ground.

The sun set against the horizon, filling the night with the moon’s red glow. Scott watched Shelby as she packed up supplies for another trip out into the dark of night. A sharpened silver sword, silver armor she nabbed from Avid, and a couple of bags of food were all equipped and ready for her escapades. Scott stood at the side door as she finished up, the armor clinking gently against itself.

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea to be going out in the middle of the night,” he said, glancing out the window toward the opening in the walls where someone had now put a gate to keep out the roaming undead.

“It’ll be completely fine,” Shelby insisted, slinging her leather bag over her shoulder. It clunked heavily against her armor. She took a moment to regain her balance as the weight of it threw her off. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

He sighed as she ran out into the night but didn’t stop her, watching her form disappear around the side of the walls and off into the further woods. He had considered for a while the idea of following after her, avoiding the town altogether for the night. It could go just as wrong as her disappearing in the first place, though. He thought it funny — well, not really funny — that the only times anyone from the town other than Avid and Drift cared for her safety was when she was gone. Even then, Drift was much too afraid to go out into the woods and find her. Avid asked after her and attempted to form his own search party, even if his other actions were brash and impulsive and honestly plain stupid.

Scott was distracted from his own thoughts by the sound of voices outside of his door. A cobbled roof kept them from being completely audible anymore. It was nice that no one could eavesdrop on him or Shelby but he couldn’t quite make out what people were yelling about. He looked out of his front windows and spotted a small crowd gathered around the ruined church tower. Their forms were haloed by the beacon’s light, turning them into long shadows that stretched out until the tops of their heads landed on the steps of the crypt.

He stepped out into the cold night, the breeze blowing through the gaps in the palisades and brushing against the sparse trees that were dotted through the cobbled together town. Pine needles dropped heavily from their branches and littered the ground with a thin mesh of foliage that linked together like sod. In this kind of cold even the warmth of the consecrated beacon was somewhat welcoming. He was greatly looking forward to the chance to eat his fill and not having to worry about trivial things like the cold and the undead.

“You!” a voice called out from the group as he approached the communal warmth, eyes turning to him and glowing in torchlight.

Apo stepped out from the gathered people and stomped toward him with purpose. Her hair tangled tightly in the breeze, creating a mess of fly-aways that she attempted to subtly tame with the flat of her hand. Scott put his hands up in a mock surrender, continuing to approach the group at a leisurely pace. 

“Yes, me,” he said, keeping his tone light and smiling in the sparse light. “Did I do something?”

She stopped directly in front of him, blocking him from approaching the group any further. They stood a bit away from the group, their shadows brushing their ankles.

“You were the last one to see Owen. Where is he?”

Oh. He held his breath. He had truly thought that not a soul here would notice one of their numbers missing so early into their time here. It seemed that Owen had left more of an impression than he had originally thought. Or, now that they knew that none of them have a way to leave, a man’s absence felt more sharp.

“Who?” Scott asked, lowering his surrender. “Which one was Owen?”

Apo sputtered, face turning a very funny shade of red as she only got more upset. At this rate she was going to match her hair. “You know exactly who,” she insisted. “Last night? In the crypt?” She pointed at the structure that stood behind Scott. He didn’t turn to look. “No one’s seen him since. Where is he?”

Scott paused and fixed his expression into one of concern. He looked around the group that had gathered there. It was most of the town, barring one or two. Ren, Shelby, and Pyro were all missing from their ranks. Those that were gathered stared at him as Apo went through her poor interrogations. They looked expectant, breath held with their tension. All of them except for Avid and Drift. They stood in the back of the group, the closest ones to the beacon. Holy light danced off their clothes. Scott met Avid’s eyes for only a moment before Avid dropped his gaze, staring down at his feet as the mob came for Scott’s neck. He scoffed quietly to himself.

“I left him down there so I could go home and sleep,” he said, side stepping from Apo. She leaned forward into his space with her accusations, looming into him even though she held no height over him. “I haven’t seen him either. Maybe he wandered into the woods and got attacked by wolves. Why am I being questioned about it?”

“Has anyone actually seen wolves?” Sausage asked. He gave off the impression that he was concerned, but Scott could see the way his fingers drummed impatiently over his pocket, thrumming against the notebook filled with ideas for his fantastical works of pure fiction.

“I haven’t,” Martyn said. He stalked up to Scott with Apo, though he stayed back a step, subconsciously keeping out of her personal space. “I haven’t heard anything even resembling a wolf.”

“I’m guessing as much as the rest of you,” Scott said, narrowing his eyes. “Do you think I killed him or something?”

“Maybe,” Apo said, crossing her arms and leaning back again. She looked around the dark town, the hair on her neck standing up. “Maybe you killed him when you were down there. I don’t know.”

Scott laughed with one, sharp sound. “Are you serious?” he asked, barely able to keep himself from laughing completely through the sentence. “Are you being genuine right now? Why would I kill him?”

“We don’t know you,” Martyn said. “You could be… you could be a serial killer! You’ve been giving off creepy- creepiness since you got here.”

“None of us know each other,” Legs interjected, he already sounded exhausted.

“We’re all complete strangers,” Avid echoed, voice wavering as he stepped forward, put his neck on the chopping block as the group turned to face him. “Scott is a complete stranger. Owen is a complete stranger. He could still be in the woods for all we know.”

“He would’ve been back by now,” Sausage said, glancing toward the moss-covered cabin that the two of them had been sharing.

“You don’t know that,” Avid pushed, voice hardening. “You don’t know anything about him! None of us do! You can’t just go accusing people of murdering each other because you can’t find them for two seconds?”

Scott sunk his fangs into the meat of his tongue to keep himself from laughing at the absurdity of it all, tasting his own vitae as it leaked into the back of his throat. He focussed on the taste of his own blood instead of how unknowingly hypocritical Avid was being as he shouted at this version of Scott’s accusers. Avid, who knew that all that was left of Owen was dust at the bottom of the crypt.

“He was the last one who saw him,” Apo repeated, voice lowering as she narrowed her gaze onto Avid. 

“Down in the crypt?” he asked, stepping forward closer to where the three were separated from the masses. “Then let’s go down there and check for ourselves!”

No one moved, eyes falling to the darkened steps of the grave. They spiraled down into what almost seemed like an endless void of blackness, blanketing anyone in dread the moment they took a step into its embrace. 

“I’m not going in there,” Martyn said, shaking his head. “That’s like walking into your own grave.”

“I’m not good with… bodies,” Apo said, not looking away from the dreaded tomb, like looking away from it would let the shadows creep further down the steps and soak into the dirt.

Sausage was the first to move toward the crypt, walking as if it was some great sacrifice. As his foot landed on the first stone step upward, a deep thrum was felt by every being still within the domain. A darkness seeped out, not from where Owen’s ashes sit in the crypt, but from somewhere deep in the forest. Scott watched with a sharp eye as the humans that surrounded him sagged, the unholy desecration of one of their beacons sapping away at their vitality. A couple of them groaned at the feeling, the darkness thrumming, pulsing through their chests and out through their limbs.

“What was that?” Pearl asked, eyes cutting through the darkness to stare toward the forest.

“I think it was one of the beacons,” Cleo said, looking out toward the echoing source of their strife, out toward the lake west of town. Each of them could feel the direction that the horrible thrumming resonated from, able to pinpoint its source even if they didn’t quite know what was out there.

Scott, on the other hand, felt energy sparking through his fingertips. He felt power pulse under his skin, inside of his veins as vitality that had been sapped him with every consecration returned to him. Above it he could feel something far, far away. He heard those subtle whispers, echoing against the trees as if they had also come from that desecrated site. The voices were light and airy, excitement curling on its tongues. They came from the direction of the beacon while still being stuck inside of the confines of his own head, coming from behind him and in front of him separately but the same. He felt none of the overwhelming presence that he associated with the whispers, only its soft voice.

“You know, maybe I don’t want to go down there either,” Sausage said with a nervous laugh, taking a few steps back from the tomb.

“You’re all just going to assume, what?” Scott asked, voice sharp, face forced into a deep frown despite the airy joy that whispered through his brain. “That Owen’s body is down there? Without even checking for yourselves?”

“I-” Apo started, cutting herself off just as quickly as she met with the uncertain eyes of the townspeople. “Where else would he be then?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know,” he snarled without thinking. He stopped, backed up half a step. He took a deep breath that his lungs didn’t need to give the impression of intentionally calming himself down. There was nothing suspicious of being upset in the face of a murder accusation. “I’ll go down there myself and check if none of you are brave enough.”

Scott stepped toward the crypt. He wasn’t surprised when Apo pushed past him, desperate for the control she so clearly lacked from the situation. He didn’t necessarily blame her for her wariness given the fact that she was right about Owen’s fate. Though, she would be happy that there was no body that the military could assign her the blame for down there, or anywhere in all of Oakhearst.

She ripped one of the torches from the dirt, gouging out a hole in the ground where it had been planted.. The light wavered in the breeze, threatening to put itself out against her sharp, sudden movements. She led the way down into the crypt herself. Scott didn’t follow her, letting Martyn back her up as he had been, emboldened by Apo’s false confidence. He instead stood at the top of the stairs as the two disappeared into the darkness. The torchlight reflected off of the carved stone all the way back up, dancing along the steps.

It was hard to hear them from the top of the crypt. Their voices were hushed, echoing against the stone walls, distorted beyond comprehension.

Scott looked up toward the group of accusers and witnesses. Some of them had already left, walked back into their homes and away from conflict. Most of them had stayed, though. Either out of interest in the unfolding events or in an attempt to keep warm by the beacon and not retreat to the poorly insulted houses. Three of them strayed from the beacon, from the warmth, and joined Scott at the crypt. Avid, Legs, and Cleo stared up at him as he gingerly made his way back down the steps. The four of them waited in the silence, holding their breath against any assumptions of what was to be found down there. Well, Legs and Cleo were. Avid and Scott didn’t have to assume when they had both seen what laid beneath their feet.

Footsteps echoed and pounded against the stone walls. Apo came first out of the darkness, the torch casted a bright revealing light upon their little scene, flickering warm light across the crumbling, carved stonework. Martyn came up behind her. He held a silver tool in each hand that glittered in the torchlight. In one he clutched a worn silver axe. It was chipped and old but sharpened to slice easily through wood like it was butter. The other held a pickaxe, newly forged, shiny and pristine, the tip barely dulled from use.

“Is that…?” the doctor asked, eyes fixed on the old axe. The words were hushed, as if speaking them louder would confirm them.

“He wasn’t down there,” Apo said.

“So it could’ve been anyone!” Avid yelled, drawing eyes from the townspeople that stood on the outskirts of their conspiracy.

“It still could’ve been Scott,” she reasoned, glaring at him as he casually leaned against one of the stone pillars, arms crossed over his chest.

“I was with people all day today,” he said, shrugging. “Right, Cleo?”

His gaze lazily slid to her, standing as still as a statue at the bottom of the stairs, shoulders practically touching with the doctor. She had been oddly quiet, mouth pulled in a hard line as they kept a watch over the group like a prison warden.

“Yeah,” they said, looking him in the eye. Her focus was somewhere else, somewhere in her own head. They seemed to look through him. “We went out and consecrated the beacon at the obelisk.”

“He wasn’t with you when you came back,” Martyn said.

“Yeah, he was with me,” Shelby said as she walked up to the assembly, dragging Drift in tow with their fingers interlaced. She smiled softly, her eyes obscured by the way the torchlight reflected off of her lenses. “Avid and I met him at the gate. I’ve been with him since then.”

“Where have you been?” Avid asked quietly, though not so quiet that it looked like he was trying to hide his question from the others. Scott watched the three closely. Drift let go of Shelby’s hand and grabbed onto her upper arm. She squeezed it for a moment.

“Explorin’” Shelby said with a shrug.

“All night?!”

She laughed. Scott stepped forward and the group of three silently accepted him into their circle, letting him slot into the conversation. Shelby calmed her nonsensical laughter and looked to Scott. Her expression shifted slightly, turning softer at the edges, brows pulled up in concern.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “Drift filled me in.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Scott assured her, a lighthearted smile softening his features.

He looked over his shoulders at the other four. The doctor and Cleo spoke to Apo and Martyn, the latter two looking down at their feet like scorned children. Legs took the lead in the conversation from Cleo, her brow pinched and his body poised in disappointment. His features looked sharper in the flickering shadows, the scar across his false eye more prominent with the shadows deepening the lines etched into his forehead.

“They were never going to find a body down there,” Scott said under his breath, just loud enough for his three to hear him, that smile not leaving his expression.

“Lucky that vampires turn to dust then, right?” Avid said, laughing nervously. His hand brushed over the blood stained stake. “Or else we’d be in real trouble.”

Scott’s brows turned up with his smile, his expression taking on a more playful color, and he tilted his head, looking down at Avid directly instead of down his nose. “Why would the rest of you be in trouble?” he asked.

“Well, uh,” he said, averting his eyes to not look directly into Scott’s. “It probably wouldn’t look good if they thought I was defending a murderer.” He laughed, tense, throat tight as he pushed his voice through it.

“You kinda were though,” Shelby teased, poking Avid’s shoulder with enough strength to make him flinch away from her prodding.

“They don’t know that!”

“Quiet down,” Drift scolded in a sharp whisper, gesturing outside of their tight circle.

Grass crunched underfoot of heavy, metal laden boots. Apo walked up to their group, her arms loose at her sides and her expression pulled in a way that made her look as if someone had made her eat an entire lemon before she walked over to them.

“Cleo told me to apologize,” she said, nearly through gritted teeth.

Silence. Waiting.

“Was that it?” Scott asked, a laugh against his throat turning his tone from incredulous onto the edges of hysterics. “That was the apology?”

“W- no,” she said, clearly trying not to snap at him as her eyes narrowed into a glare. “No, I just… I am sorry for assuming that you killed Owen.”

He nodded, keeping his mouth shut. Their circle stared at her expectantly in an agreed silence. 

“I just can’t be responsible for a missing person right now,” she went on as the quiet beckoned her onward. “It would reeeally not look good for me.”

“Why would you be held responsible for that?”

“This is my outpost.” Apo looked around at the derelict town, eyes tracing the lines of the hastily constructed buildings. “It would probably look bad if someone died here while I was manning it.”

Scott sighed, bringing a hand to his cold cheek as he looked up at the top of the church tower. The red moon was perched at the top of the parapet. “I think you’re fine,” he sighed. “If there’s no body there’s no crime.”

“That is so suspicious,” she said, looking to the right of his group. “Does no one else find that suspicious?”

“Nope.”

“Not really.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“You’re all crazy people!” Apo exclaimed. She stomped away from the circle in a huff, throwing her arms up in the air in exaggerated exasperation.

Shelby laughed openly as Apo retreated. Her body shook with unrestrained giggles, leaning slightly into Drift. Scott only let a small snicker escape his throat before he tamped the contagion back down, smiling fondly down at her. He scanned their conspiracy with that same fond eye. Drift’s hand was still holding tight to Shelby’s arm. Her weight settled in their direction. Avid had caught Shelby’s contagious smile and was making a valiant attempt not to laugh with her as well. After a moment, though, he noticed how Scott’s eyes didn’t leave him.

“Oh, Scott,” he said, turning to face him. He took a generous step forward despite the little room that was between them in the first place. “I need to check on your, uh—” he looked outside of the group at anyone that could be listening in on him “—that scratch that you got last night.”

Scott sighed. Avid’s attempts at lying always seemed to fall flat, making it almost seem that he was hiding more than he was attempting to conceal in the first place. He reached up to Scott’s collar again, almost getting his hands on him while he was lost in his own thoughts. He realized quick enough to bat his hand away, taking a step back. 

“Do not go tugging at my clothes again in public,” he said playfully. “People might get the wrong idea of us.”

Avid’s face lit up with almost the same pallor as the blood moon that shone above them.. He stammered out something unintelligible, tongue tied in knots. He took a step away, shoving the offending hand into his pocket as he twitched a bit at the edges.

“I think it’s about time to go home, buddy,” Drift said with a laugh.

She let go of Shelby’s arm, leaving the soft sweater creased and rumpled from her tight grip. As she moved to Avid’s side she was unsteady on her feet, her toes tripping over themselves with her steps. Her eyes went slightly unfocused as she tried to regain her footing. She ultimately stabilized herself on Avid, a hand rested on his shoulder to help find her balance. Shelby winced as the two of them watched them both retreat back to their own home. Avid spoke under his breath as he had to guide her blind down the dark streets, disappearing around the clustered corners of tightly grouped buildings.

“Is she alright?” Scott asked, making the very short walk back to their home.

“I think she’s just tired,” Shelby said, waving a hand dismissively. “Are you going to bed?”

“Well, no.” He laughed deep in his chest, putting on a bitter edge to his tone. “I can’t exactly do that anymore.”

“Perfect! Then you should come with me.”

“Come with you where, exactly?”

Shelby changed her path to walk toward the town’s walls, striding with the confidence that Scott would follow her even without an answer and that there was no universe in which he didn’t. She was right, of course. He followed in step as she left the town walls.

“I don’t really know,” she finally answered as she guided him aimlessly toward the treeline, “but I probably shouldn’t go out alone again.” She giggled like wind chimes. “You might get accused of my murder too.”

“So we should both go out into the night and die together. Perfect plan.”

“I know, right?” she said, her tone utterly bereft of sarcasm. She was still joking, though. Probably.

The moon was slowly setting as they walked the winding paths through the dense trees. Soon, the dark night sky would give way to the soft, pink hues of morning light, bathing the domain in the fragile warmth of the sun. Soon, the undead that wandered the land without a true purpose would be cleansed by the holy, burning light of day. It was quite unfortunate that even with the heavy blanket of clouds that covered the sky the sun could still burn his skin. He didn’t find the smell of burning flesh all that appealing.

They didn’t stray from the tamped down paths. This was one of the more simple ones, the only one leading directly from Oakhearst to the castle at the heart of the domain without straying out toward the cliffs and tombs that littered the earth. The night still hung heavy in the air for now as the crumbling, quite precarious bridge came into view. Fog obscured the ruins that sat like a specter in the distance, creating the illusion that the bridge led to nothing, dropped off into empty air at the end of it.

“What happened here…” Shelby murmured as they approached it.

She stepped carefully onto the stone deck of the bridge. Great chunks of the span of it had fallen into the river below, creating large craters in the ground where it had impacted with the looser layers of sediment. She didn’t care to look at where she stepped.

“Do you think anyone’s been here yet?” she asked.

Scott nodded, following in her steps as she continued on. Not once did she trip on loose stones nor did her feet catch on the edges of the large gaps that were carved in the chiselled stone. She was light on her feet, jumping over debris like a dance.

“There’s a beacon here,” he said, looking up through the fog. “Someone’s already consecrated it.”

“I wonder if there’s any books there.”

Scott stepped over one of the pieces of the protective side walls that had fallen inward, blocking parts of the path. It created an awkward bit of path where you could either stretch to go over the debris or instead choose to fall into the rapids so, so far below them. Shelby barely acknowledged these obstacles, leading the way with confidence.

The ruined castle formed out of the fog in front of them. It was quite disappointing to look at. Weeks they had worked to build the dark stone foundations of the castle from the ground, tearing down fragile ruins to put something greater, stronger in their place. Moss cover, cracked walls. A great crumbling archway. It spoke nothing of their efforts and it spoke nothing of the grand manor he had lived in before being put under that sleeping beauty’s curse for six long, long centuries. At the other end of what was once a grand hall was a hand-carved mahogany pulpit, the polished shine long dimmed and not properly reflecting the golden light of the beacon that stood behind the newer and shabbier lecture. The holy light still danced against the cracked stone wall behind it and the unpolished wood the beacon sat on, creating a shimmering vortex around its core. The golden light was dimmed somewhat by the cold light of the ever-glowing lanterns that sat in dark stone fixtures. He had been surprised that any of it remained at all after six hundred years of on-and-off neglect. Six hundred years of erosion, of rebuilding, and of the man that was now dust under his nails burning the cobbled together corpse of a building to the ground in an unending, violent rage.

Shelby ran ahead of him, nearly tripping over the scorched carpets in her haste toward the beacon.

“What are you doing?” Scott asked, following no faster than a carefully paced walk behind her. “It’s already consecrated.”

“I know,” she said, jumping up onto the wooden pulpit.

Her shoes landed hard on the hollow wooden structure, echoing against the chest of Scott’s own valuables that was hidden inside of the floorboards, already once raided before had even got his hands on it. He watched from the safety of the floor, his eyes level with the glowering beacon.

Shelby put her hand against the glass of the beacon, her eyes wide as she was bathed in the hallowed light. 

Under her fingertips, her steady presence, the swirling ball of golden twine began to unravel itself. Under her hand, it unwound, spinning rapidly. A thread of its twine reached out through the waters of the spirits trapped inside of the glass until it eventually met with the palm of Shelby’s hand. At their joining, the now sickly pale thread bled. Red seeped from her palm, from her essence, and began to stain the waters the color of sanguine. Her grin widened as she watched its undoing.

Shelby turned her head to Scott, smiling to her ears. He could see clearly now the red that surrounded her pupil, threatening to overtake the pale yellow of her irises, bleeding into them.

“Come up here and help me,” she said, a contagious glee soaking every syllable. “Quickly, before someone shows up to stop us.”

Scott moved before he could think of what to say. He jumped up onto what was once a platform for a grand throne, designed by his own careful hand, though he had no hand in the actual construction. He wondered if the peasants had done something with it or had simply tossed it into the waters to be carried off to the sea with the memories of his reign.

He thought of a question as he placed his hand atop the beacon’s surface, the glass still warm from the divine waters that fought pitifully against his and Shelby’s souls. It was quite an obvious question: “Were you the one to desecrate the lake beacon? While we were arguing about Owen?”

Shelby sighed. It wasn’t something heavy, something tense. It was as if the false exhale was releasing any tension that filled her hollow chest, removing itself from her presence with each passing second that their hands were joined on the unraveling beacon.

“Yeah, that was me.”

“So you’re… a vampire?”

She giggled softly. She pressed harder onto the beacon, using the hand there to swing herself up onto it until she was perched on top of it, looking out toward the bridge. Her eyes trailed up from the ruins toward the slowly rising sun. The sunlight through the clouds bathed her features in the soft, pink light of dawn, shining as if she had been brought down from the heavens themselves. In that divine light she smiled more openly, though she didn’t relax. Instead, she made the minuscule effort to flex the complicated muscle structure to let her fangs drop into her smile, glinting in the light.

A deep thrum resonated throughout the land as the last of the golden twine under their touch was cast away into the darkness. The deep red that twisted from their souls seeped further down the connected threads, reaching into the pale core of the beacon. It twisted like a writhing snake in the waters of the veil. It sent up an unnatural chill through the glass, like a frosted window in the deep of winter. He welcomed it into his empty chest.

“Did Owen turn you,” he asked, never looking away from her face that was turned to the overwhelming light of day. “Is that why you knew how to kill him?”

She laughed, eyes scrunching up with her joy. “No, of course not. That’s a good story, though. I’ll probably tell that to the others if they ask.”

He paused, brow creasing as he took a moment to think. “How long then? Before you left your hometown?”

She tilted her head back and forth, weighing thought and feather. “Long before I stepped foot in Oakhearst.”

Scott stayed silent, battling the twisting, unbalanced thoughts that clouded his brain. He looked down at the slowly spinning ball of red twine before them, letting the twisting distract him, focus him. Every passing second dyed its fibers in that deep red hue, seeping the desecration into its core, into its false soul. Every passing second gave off a cool, comforting pulse that echoed in his long-dead heart. They both sat in that silence as the sun rose overhead.

The townspeople were probably on their way by now. They’d probably felt the way the holy spirits fled from the beacon, banished violently from where they sat as the anchoring lodestar to the curtained domain, torn out as if it was its own heart. Shelby lowered her gaze from the rising sun through the crumbling archway. Her expression hardened as she watched the bridge for any movement, eyes cutting through the fog like a blade.

They had gotten so, so close. The last few threads of pale grey light fought weakly at the edges of the core, almost twisting the entire beacon into their darkness. They had gotten so, so close.

“Look up.”

His gaze snapped up to Shelby, but her mouth was closed, eyes widening as she spotted something at the bridge. Three figures approaching them from the path back to town, just silhouettes in the fog.

“They’re here,” she said in a voice that wasn’t the same whisper he had heard a second ago.

With a speed only kin could manage, she hopped off of the beacon and dragged Scott away from the pulpit with a viciously tight grip around his hands, her nails digging into his flesh to anchor him to her. In a second they were falling, wind whipping at their hair as they fell to the bottom of the crypt stairs.

His feet hit the ground with a painful thump but Shelby gave him no time to recover. As soon as she got her bearings she pulled him under the shade of the winding staircase, tucking the two of them away from the light, away from eyes that could pierce through the blankness and see them there, staring like ghosts from the crypt. In this time, in this place, they didn’t have an escape route. They hadn’t carved path after path through the cliffs, through the caves. If whoever had come to thwart their plans rushed down into the corrupt with them they could do very little to defend themselves. Either sequester away as bats in the blinding daylight, hope not to be trapped by grasping hands or thrown weapons, or fight back. Risk themselves in their weak states.

Footsteps echoed against the ruined walls, barely audible from their hiding place, echoing down the staircase. The steps stopped at the base of the pulpit, one of the three having to skid to a stop with the soles of their boots squeaking against the stone floors, kicking up dust and gravel.

“Where did they go?” Apo asked through gritted teeth.

“I don’t know,” Martyn said. His normal hesitations, his reservations, seemed to vanish under pressure. Under the focus on a survival situation, he was at his most confident.

“Do you think they…?” Sausage started.

The two of them heard footsteps against the thin layer of grass that coasted the centuries old stone that surrounded their grave. Sausage stopped at the edge of the staircase, looking down into the darkness, letting his movements finish his sentence.

“If they did then it’s no use following them,” Martyn said, meeting Sausage at the edge. “That’s a trap if I’ve ever seen one.”

“Then what do we do?!” Apo asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, stepping back from the stairs. “Did you see who it was?”

“I saw blue hair,” Sausage said, following after, their voices all fading somewhat. “It had to be Scott.”

“There was someone else with him, though.”

“It was Shelby,” Apo said darkly. “They had red hair. Darker than Cleo’s. It had to be them.”

“Then we head back to town,” Martyn decided for them. “We need to tell everyone what we saw.”

“Do you really think they’re gonna believe us?” Apo asked incredulously. “I just accused him of murder. It’s going to look like I have it out for him.”

“That was pretty silly of you,” Sausage said, almost mockingly.

“Oh shut up. You’re the one who said he was with Owen last.”

“Even if they don’t believe us then we know as a group,” Martyn interrupted. “We’ll just have to keep an eye on them. Make sure they don’t try that again.”

The group retreated quickly. Their steps echoed down the great hall, back toward the archway, back down the bridge. The three left two vampires, sitting right under their noses, sitting in the dark of their graves, in the castle they would call home, where they had called home. The three of them left the beacon swirling with pale white light, untouched by the theoretical forces of good or evil, light or dark.

Shelby let out a breath that she didn’t need to be holding onto. She let her weight drop against the cold stone wall, leaning against its surface as relief flooded her body. 

“That was really close,” she chuckled, an edge in her throat.

“They still saw us,” Scott said, peeking out from under the stairs and staring at the cloudy sky above them.

“It didn’t matter when they saw you last time.”

He turned back toward the shadows. Shelby sat on the ground now, knees up to her chest, her arms resting on them. Her head was tilted back against the wall as she looked up at him. She smiled to her eyes, warmth flooding her, something familiar. Something foreign bubbled in Scott’s chest.

“What do you mean “last time?””

Whispers ate at the edges of thought, ate as his mind and his skull. They were quick, breathless. Excitement flowed from the murmurs, filling his brain with their own feelings, an attempt to replace his thoughts. He batted them away, though they ate away at him until he could only have a singular thought free of their influence.

“Owen didn’t attack you down in those mines,” Shelby said instead of answering. “He wouldn’t have. He’s too smart for that. I know that. I know that you know that.”

“How do you…”

She looked down to her lap. Pinpricks of sanguine tears rose to the corners of her eyes, droplets that threatened to spill over, carve darkened paths down her cheeks and stain the soft green of her sweater.

“I needed to make sure,” she said, voice wavering. “I needed to make sure it wasn’t just me. That I wasn’t the only one she dragged back here.”

Shelby looked up again as bloodied tears fell down her pale face. He didn’t know he was moving until his knees hit the rough stone ground. The stone dust wore against the fabric of his pants, threatening to tear holes at the knees. 

Did it matter? No, of course not. Why could something like that matter? Why could anything matter except the weight of Shelby, of his fledglings, of his friend, in his arms? How could anything matter except the way her arms wrapped around him in return?

She laughed against him, shaking with it. It was a wavering, watery sound, but it was like music to his ears. Every note bubbled with that foreign feeling in his chest. He felt her vermilion tears soak into the fabric as she laughed, as she cried, as she shook. Her arms wrapped only tighter around him, threatening to crush him in her grip. 

As he held onto her, he felt something run down his face. Something warm that stung his eyes. He freed an arm from her grasp, with a little bit of struggling and effort, to touch the wetness that formed on his cheeks.

Crimson dripped down his fingertips, pooling in the palm of his hand. It dripped down his face and stained Shelby’s sweater. She laughed, clinging onto him like a lifeline, like he was her anchor.

And she was his.