Chapter Text
“Pidge, no offense, but you have officially lost your damn mind.”
Pidge looked up from their furious scribbling and raised an eyebrow at him. They had covered an entire notebook page in what looked like the deranged ramblings of a madman – Lance could make out the words “rosary,” “mirror,” and “Nosferatu.” And, of course, “blood.” That was written at least twenty times, along with “undead” and “bite.”
Hunk wrung his hands from where he sat on the bed. “I know you’ve been, uh, researching this stuff a lot, but Pidge, c’mon, you don’t…you don’t really think the woods are full of vampires, do you?”
Pidge scowled. “You guys don’t believe me. Wow. Even after all the evidence I collected –”
“A bunch of scratched up trees and some dead animals with holes in them doesn’t automatically mean vampires!” Lance exclaimed.
“Dead animals with no blood,” Hunk corrected.
Pidge glared at both of them. “Well, then what’s your highly scientific opinion, huh?”
Lance folded his arms. “Bears scratch trees, and wolves, and probably deer too. And maybe the holey, bloodless animals are caused by…by a weird parasite or something.”
“A weird parasite called a vampire,” Pidge declared.
“No!” Lance threw up his hands. “The Bigfoot on the beach thing two years ago was crazy enough, and the Mothman in the movie theater thing last summer was even weirder, but this is just…I mean, you’ve filled up an entire notebook with this stuff! Don’t you think that’s at least slightly worrying?”
“I think vampires prowling a few miles from town is worrying,” Pidge said, stubborn. Hunk and Lance groaned. “Oh, shut up, you guys just don’t get it.”
“We get that you’re into supernatural stuff, but the whole point of supernatural stuff is that it’s not real,” Lance told them.
“This is,” Pidge insisted. They brandished one of the Polaroid photos like a weapon, waving it wildly in Lance and Hunk’s faces. “Do those marks look like they were made by an animal to you, genius?”
And, okay, Lance could kinda see where they were coming from – the five long scratches on the side of the tree trunk did look like they could’ve been caused by something with humanoid hands and big-ass claws, but still…there was no way. He shook his head. “Pidge, listen, you know we’ll go out there with you if you really want us to –”
“We will?” Hunk said with dismay.
“– but I don’t want you to be disappointed when we don’t find a single Dracula.” Lance finished.
Pidge sniffed. “I almost hope one bites you, just so you believe me for once.”
Lance rolled his eyes. “I’ve already been on three chupacabra hunts, thanks very much. Turned out to be wild dogs with mange every single time.”
“This isn’t wild dogs,” Pidge muttered.
“Giant bats?” Lance suggested. “Huge snakes? Particularly angry birds that poke things to death in pairs? A hunter armed with a tuning fork?”
“None of those things are good,” Hunk said. “Maybe we should just leave the possible-vampires alone.”
“And wait for them to leave the forest?” Pidge snapped. “No way. They’re sticking to rabbits and elk for now, but who knows how long it’ll take for them to get tired of that?”
Hunk shuddered. “Can we just…find a different town to stay in for the summer?”
“Sorry, bud, but I don’t think our parents would agree that ‘vampire-infested forest’ is a valid reason to pack up camp. It took ages to persuade them to let me drive us up here in the first place, remember?” Lance patted his knee and turned back to Pidge. “Okay, if they’re vampires – and that’s a huge if – wouldn’t they have been hanging out in those woods for, like, eternity? You wouldn’t just be noticing this stuff now.”
“They haven’t been there for their whole lives…unlives, whatever. I’m pretty sure vampires are transient, and they move around, even if it’s just in the same large area. Shasta-Trinity Forest is the biggest forest in Cali, y’know. Besides, this isn’t the first time people have noticed this stuff,” Pidge added, and admittedly Lance’s interest was piqued.
“Wait a sec. There’s proof that this happened before?”
Pidge nodded, and flipped through their notebook until they reached a page covered in old newspaper clippings and shreds of printed-out articles. “See? Back in the early 1800s, when people first settled here, there were reports of ‘various beasts more or less drained of blood, through evenly-spaced holes in the jugular veins or carotid arteries.’”
“Spooky,” Lance agreed. “But there was a lot of spooky shit back then. Maybe it was a, uh, less-effective version of Jack the Ripper or something.”
“Everyone thought it was a witch,” Pidge continued, ignoring him. “So nobody dared to go into the woods, y’know, Puritan superstition and fear of nature, et cetera. Except for this one guy – Takashi Shirogane.” Pidge pointed to a small sketch on the clipping, of a handsome Asian man with a strong jaw, messy black hair, and a smile that seemed strangely sad.
Lance raised an eyebrow, aiming for cool though his skin was prickling. “Let me guess…didn’t end so well?”
Pidge shook their head. “He was a Japanese sailor who was rescued from a shipwreck just off the coast, and decided to stay. Sounds like he was respected and a lot of people genuinely thought he might stand a chance against the ‘witch,’ which he dismissed as nonsense. He went into the woods with an axe and a rifle, and just…vanished. Never seen again, not a single trace.”
“Bears?” Lance suggested weakly.
“Bears don’t eat entire people,” Pidge countered. “It would’ve been messy.”
Hunk looked nauseous. “Just, just a thought, but have you ever heard the phrase ‘learn from past mistakes’? ‘Cause that seems really, really applicable right now.”
“Yeah, I have,” Pidge said, and shoved another article at him, dated a few years after the first. Lance peered over his shoulder as Hunk opened it and read the headline.
“Three Gold Prospectors Murdered.” Hunk blanched. “Oh god…is that picture what I think it is?”
Lance was really, really glad that cameras sucked back then, because from what he could make out, the photograph was of three corpses covered in blood, their necks twisted at unnatural angles. “Jesus,” he whispered.
Pidge stabbed their finger against the page. “This is the work of the unholy Vampyre, there can be no doubt.”
“That is a much cooler spelling of vampire,” Lance said.
“Well, there you go, case solved, awesome, guess we don’t have to wander around in the dark after all!” Hunk squeaked.
Pidge folded their arms. “Oh, yes we do. We won’t be defenseless, though – I have enough garlic, crucifixes, iron, and stakes for each of us.”
“And if those don’t work?” Lance asked.
“I thought you said there were no vampires,” Pidge retorted. “So you should be fine.”
*
Rosewood was the most cliché, picturesque small town imaginable. Sandwiched between the forested wilderness of the Trinity Alps and the city of Redding, it boasted a population of barely one thousand people, most of whom were over the age of fifty-five.
The Holts were one of the few exceptions to that – three years ago, Samuel and Colleen Holt had both gotten job offers in Redding; Samuel at Mercy Hospital and Colleen at Shasta High School. Pidge’s older brother Matt, who was a senior at the time and planning to go to college at Santa Clara, was happy to move away from sunny Los Angeles. But Pidge had put up more of a fight. As in, Pidge had locked themselves in their room for three days and refused to come out until Matt forcibly removed the doorknob.
There had been a lot of crying – Pidge had moved to L.A. in sixth grade, an awkward short kid with glasses too big for their face, standoffish, smart-alecky, and not exactly a people person. But Pidge had clicked with Lance and Hunk right away. Lance and Hunk had been inseparable since kindergarten, after they’d managed to build a Lego replica of the Death Star together, which had been pretty awesome considering it was built by five year olds. Lance still had pictures of it somewhere.
Anyway, Lance and Hunk took Pidge Holt under their wings and they became the Three Musketeers, partners in crime all through middle school and beyond, and so when Pidge had to move away in sophomore year, it was A Big Deal. Like, such a big deal that Lance, who had just gotten his driver’s license at the time, begged on his hands and knees to drive up with Hunk to visit Pidge for the summer.
Miraculously, Lance’s parents had said yes. No, that was a lie. They flat-out refused to let Lance drive anywhere that summer, let alone with Hunk in the passenger seat. Hunk’s moms were no doubt relieved by the eventual decision to have Matt drive them up instead. It was a long way from L.A. to Rosewood, but man, it was worth it.
And Lance had driven them up all by himself this summer, thank you very much.
Which was why he was currently wondering if that had been worth all the effort if it was only going to end in him dying in the middle of the woods.
Lance was a city boy, okay, he wasn’t going to deny that. This nature thing was not doing it for him. He was pretty sure he’d had at least ten bugs fly into his face, some of which were alarmingly large, and every little creak and snap around him made him flinch. Because it was really, really dark out there – his flashlight barely penetrated the shadows, and there was no light pollution out here, so the sky overhead was black and endless, stars blocked out by the treetops, moon barely a sliver. Lance grumbled under his breath and pulled his jacket tighter around himself as he walked into a wide clearing – Pidge was probably just waiting by the tree line and smugly taking notes while he and Hunk trudged around in the pine needles.
An owl hooted loudly and Lance swore so vehemently that if there were any stupid vampires around, it probably would’ve scared them off. Or so he hoped. Or were vampires drawn to swearing because they were evil? Lance didn’t know, but he was kind of wishing he hadn’t refused the string of garlic Pidge had offered him. It was spooky out here.
Crunch.
Lance stopped walking. That hadn’t been a regular forest sound, he was pretty damn sure. It sounded like a footfall. Oh god, please let it be an animal and not a bear, Lance prayed. Maybe an elk. A nice elk. A baby elk. Or a bunny. Please, please, please, let it be a bunny.
Lance turned, slowly…and almost fell on his ass when he saw the figure standing across the clearing, face pale and eyes glowing a faint yellow in the darkness. Lance’s flashlight beam cast shakily over the figure and it flinched back, but Lance saw the guy’s face, androgynous to the point of pretty, shaggy black hair falling over his brow, eyes wide and dark, but most importantly, lips parted and sharp white fangs gleaming.
A cry died in Lance’s throat and he stumbled frantically backwards, only to trip over a tree root and fall back against a pine tree, dropping the flashlight, the tree bark rough on his back through his hoodie and scraping his palm where he caught himself.
The cut was shallow, little more than a rug burn, but the guy – vampire, he was a literal vampire – noticed it immediately. His nostrils flared, pupils dilating and body gravitating towards Lance like a straining hound, his mouth opening wider and head tilting. He was scenting, and the hunger in his expression was unmistakable as he took a step forward, then another, moving in a way that Lance could only describe as prowling. The flashlight lit up the clearing unevenly from where it had fallen, making the whole scene look even more like something out of a shitty horror movie.
Lance grabbed the crucifix hanging on his belt and shoved it out in front of him. The vampire stopped, paused, tilting his head and blinking at the new object with apparent curiosity, and slight confusion. Then his mouth quirked and he snorted, continuing to advance. Lance tried to move, tried to run, and suddenly found that he couldn’t. He couldn’t even open his mouth to scream, trapped against the tree, unable to look away from the vampire’s steady golden gaze.
When the vampire reached the crucifix, he easily plucked it out of Lance’s fingers and tossed it to the ground alongside the flashlight, utterly undeterred. Lance’s breath shallowed as the vampire leaned in, intent, reaching for his cut hand. Lance’s wrist twitched abortively in his grip – this thing was strong, even if he was shorter than Lance, and there was no way Lance could get away if he decided he didn’t want to let go. The vampire lifted Lance’s hand towards his mouth and Lance made a strangled sound of terror and dismay – it was his right hand too, fuck, he really needed that –
The vampire licked him.
Lance stared. “Um,” he said, shaky. “What…what the fuck, dude?”
The vampire was licking the scratches on his palm in long, slow laps, eyes hooded. There was barely any blood, but he seemed determined to get every last drop, and though Lance waited tensely for the sharp prick of teeth, it never came. Instead, he just continued to lick, harmless as a kitten, and if Lance wasn’t mistaken he was purring. The vampire’s grip on his arm gentled, still too strong for Lance to break, but his thumb was reverently rubbing small circles over the veins in Lance’s wrist.
Lance half-expected him to have wickedly curved claws, but they were just normal, human-looking nails. In fact, the guy looked mostly human – minus the glowing eyes, the fangs, and the unnaturally pale tint to his skin. But, Lance couldn’t help but notice, his cheeks seemed to be flushed when he lifted his head from Lance’s hand.
Lance didn’t have long to ogle him, because then the vampire pinned him against the tree. Lance did scream then, and struggled – whatever hold the vampire had over him seemed to have suddenly broken – maybe he was distracted. The vampire growled and slapped a hand over his mouth, voice low in Lance’s ear as he hissed, “They’ll hear you.”
Lance gulped. “Who?”
“Galra,” the vampire said with obvious distaste. “They’d…mmm, why do you smell so good?”
The vampire’s face was pressed against his neck and his body was flush against Lance’s; hard, lithe muscle. Lance couldn’t move a single inch. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t,” he gasped, heart pounding. The vampire was nuzzling into his throat, and Lance could feel his breath on his skin, which was…well, not hot, actually, not at all. Not cold, either, just kind of…lukewarm. It was weird. It was even weirder when the vampire licked him again, this time right over his pulse point. Lance jerked and made a bizarre whimpering noise that he was going to be really embarrassed about later, if he wasn’t dead by then. The vampire’s open mouth slid wetly over his throat like a sloppy kiss, fangs barely covered by his lips, one hand tight on Lance’s wrist and the other covering his hip.
Lance was scared but also kinda turned on, which was even scarier.
The vampire hummed and inhaled deeply. “So different,” he mumbled, half to himself.
“Keith! Get away from him, now.”
The new voice startled them both. It was loud and male and distinctly authoritative, and the vampire leapt away from Lance as if burnt, looking very guilty. Lance looked around wildly for the source of the voice…and then saw a pair of slitted golden eyes glowing from the darkness, out of the flashlight beam’s range. There was another one?
“Keith,” the voice said again, warning, and the vampire – Keith? The vampire was named Keith? – slunk away, towards the other pair of eyes. Lance stood frozen against the tree, vampire spit drying on his neck and palm.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Keith said to Lance, shoulders hunched and mouth twisting. “Go away. Or they’ll kill you.”
Then he slunk away into the shadows, and the other vampire disappeared along with him, leaving Lance alone in the clearing.
Lance leaned his head back against the tree and stared up at the stars through the treetops, panting and shaking uncontrollably. “I hate you so much, Pidge,” he whispered.