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The waxing moon looms gold above the stables. Wen Ning walks alone, the gravel crunching under his sneakers, but there's a weird kind of echo, like a second pair of footsteps behind him, only half a beat off his own. When he stops, the footsteps stop. When he turns around, there's no-one there.
He takes a deep breath as he walks through the entryway, huffing a lungful of the earthy scent of horse and hay. There are a few snorts and snuffles from the darkened stalls. He leans to peer through a grille, and jumps at the sight of a bulging brown eye staring back at him, equally startled.
He shudders. It takes several long moments for his heartbeat to slow.
The horses are quiet—some sleeping upright, others on their sides. The wakeful ones watch him warily, eyes gleaming out of the blackness as he patrols the stable like a prison guard. The echo behind him seems to have stopped.
Out of the stable, back onto the gravel path. The Jins' mansion is surrounded on all sides by a towering hawthorn hedge. Wen Ning reaches out and nicks the palm of his hand on a spiky branch. Watches the blood beading on his pale skin under the moonlight.
"Oops," he says out loud.
A low animal snarl fills his ears, from not far behind him; a whoosh, and suddenly he's tackled to the ground. White billowing shirt. White hand clamping down on his mouth. White tusks lengthening, lowering closer. Wen Ning struggles, head thrashing from side to side, shoving with both hands at the creature’s shoulders.
The creature is not bigger than Wen Ning, but it feels like ten tonnes of pressure bearing down, and its knee is digging sharply into Wen Ning's abdomen, constricting his breath. His ears are full of roaring. Against the creature’s cool palm, Wen Ning opens his mouth on a scream, pathetic and muffled.
He's going to die here, he realises, with slow clarity, as two needle points sink into the tender skin under his ear.
A familiar voice from above—
"Gotcha!"
The creature goes rigid, then slumps, the full heft of it crushing Wen Ning's body, making him squeak like a dog toy. Even with the creature paralysed, Wen Ning doesn’t have the arm strength to shove it off. He has to wriggle out from underneath. It’s very undignified.
Wei Ying is grinning and holding the syringe aloft like a smoking gun. All in black with her high ponytail, she looks like a cat burglar. "Fast acting sedative! Good shit, huh?"
Wen Ning gets to his feet, still panting, brushing the dirt off his palms. "G-good," he stammers. His mouth is still dry with fear. "Only—"
He looks down at the crumpled figure of the vampire on the ground. Its face is hidden, turned into the gravel. There's an old bloodstain on the sleeve of its white linen shirt, just above the elbow.
"What?" Wei Ying's sealing the syringe in a glassine bag, stowing it away in the leather pouch clipped to her utility belt.
"No offence, jie," Wen Ning says nervously, rubbing the spot on his neck where the vampire had grazed its fangs. "I mean, you are the expert! But—you couldn't get here any quicker?"
Wei Ying straightens up, then walks over to clap Wen Ning on the shoulder. (Wen Ning is several inches taller; Wei Ying has to reach.)
"Don’t be silly," she says. "I totally had it! I was just trying to find a good angle. Anyway, wouldn’t this job be boring if there wasn’t any danger?"
Wen Ning's heart is still thumping so hard he feels sick. "Right."
"C'mon," Wei Ying says. "Help me lift him."
Wen Ning goes on the vampire's left side, Wei Ying to its right. They squat down, each looping one arm over their own shoulder. Wei Ying counts down from three, and they stand, hoisting the vampire to its feet.
"Holy shit," Wei Ying says, voice strained. "He's heavy."
"She," Wen Ning says. The vampire is tall and broad shouldered with short cropped hair, but there's no mistaking her delicate features, nor the way her shirt bunches at the front.
Wei Ying stops for a second, blinking. "Huh. You're right. Come on, let's get her home. I want to run some tests."
They haul the vampire along a few steps at a time, its boots dragging on the path behind them. It's just over a mile back to the warehouse. Less than five minutes in, Wen Ning's back starts aching.
Sometimes, this job sucks.
—
Wei Ying became a freelance demon hunter somewhere around the time she was forced to drop out of college. The administration had trouble believing that she was really expelling a horde of malignant wraiths from the library, and instead seemed to think she'd single-handedly overturned half the shelves on the second floor and set fire to some of the special collections for... fun.
After that, she'd moved off campus, and into the apartment with Wen Qing. Wei Ying tried to hide her job at first, but it got stressful always having to hastily stuff the ouija board and jars of herbs under her bed, pretend her collection of sabres was for "fencing practice", and invent convincing reasons her clothes were always covered in bloodstains. Wen Qing took the truth with surprising equanimity. She was good at helping Wei Ying think through cases, made sure she went to bed at least every couple of days, and after the first few times she and Wen Ning had followed Wei Ying on a night hunt—"You need backup," Wen Qing had insisted—Wei Ying started cutting them in on her wages.
The Jins were a wealthy, high-profile family. Wei Ying almost certainly would never have landed this job if her jiejie wasn't engaged to their eldest son, Jin Zixuan. Wei Ying had got the call from him at 4am, raving and blustering. The next day came a series of lengthy, hysterical follow-up emails, with video clips and photographic evidence. A good half of every job, Wei Ying found, was about listening to the clients, affirming that their experiences were real, and, yes, very serious and scary.
It began with chickens. The Jins kept a few out in a coop in the yard so they could have fresh eggs for breakfast; the housekeeper was in charge of their care. One morning, three had disappeared. The housekeeper traipsed the length of the grounds, calling and calling, until she found them at the edge of the wood, bloodied. She would have thought they had been mauled by a wild animal, foxes maybe, but there was something odd about the scene. Their necks had been wrung, as if by human hands. They were laid out side by side, like fallen soldiers.
The Jins began locking the hens in a barn overnight, and installed security cameras. This appeared to work. Then, a fortnight later, the padlock on the barn door was broken, and another two chickens were found dead inside.
Jin Zixuan had sent Wei Ying a clip of the CCTV footage. Black and white, timestamp beginning at 00:12. The barn door shot from above. Stillness: then a hammer floated into the bottom right corner of the frame. The padlock moved, tugged to one side by its shackle loop. The hammer rose higher, guided by an unseen hand, then slammed down on the lock, once, twice, and the lock popped smartly open.
The barn door opened. Black rectangle. Fastforward to 00:40. The door closed again, padlock swinging.
It didn't stop there, a follow-up email continued, and this time the attachment contained a single image: the inside of a stable stall. The horse laid on its side, eye open, glassy and unseeing. The hay was dark crimson, thick and sticky with blood.
"Vampire," Wei Ying told Wen Ning cheerfully.
Wen Ning stared back at her, bemused. "That's a good thing?"
"Dude, yes! I haven't fought a vampire in months! Besides, this one seems tame. Killing farm animals? Honestly, if I wasn't being paid for the job, I'd probably let it go free."
As it is, Wei Ying decides the best solution is to capture the vampire and put it down humanely, but not before gathering some data. She’s working on an antidote to vampire venom, a solution to slow or reverse the process of being sired, and besides that, she’s got a few questions for her research. She’s never managed a real conversation with a vampire, only quick back-and-forths before Wei Ying impales them through the chest—“You’ll never defeat me, little girl!”—“Oh yeah?”—but this one seems like a good candidate: genteel for a vampire, as well-mannered as they come.
It's getting colder, the night deepening and darkening. By the time they make it back to the warehouse, the sweat is cooling and drying on their skin. The walk-in cage had taken many hours with a power drill to assemble, but tonight it would finally pay for itself. Wei Ying had set it up nicely with a chaise longue and a pile of fluffy pillows and blankets.
Over the vampire’s shoulder, Wen Ning gives her an incredulous eyebrow-raise that momentarily makes him look exactly like his sister.
"What?" she says, voice strained, as they drag the vampire inside and dump her on the floor. "A soulless demon doesn't have the right to die with dignity?"
Maybe dignity isn't the word: the comforter is baby-pink and patterned with unicorns.
"You guys took your time," Wen Qing observes, stepping out of the shadows, making Wen Ning jump.
"Thanks for all your help carrying her in, jiejie," Wei Ying says, and receives a cuff to the back of the head for her insolence.
Wen Qing stoops, peers through the bars at the slumped figure as Wei Ying locks the cage shut. "That's the vampire?"
"You were expecting, what? A cloak? Good evening," Wei Ying says in her best Dracula voice, then lunges towards Wen Qing, teeth bared, hissing like a cat.
Wen Qing bats her away, still looking. "I don't know," she says. "She looks our age."
Wei Ying had noticed that too. Under the pale strip light in the warehouse, she can see the vampire's wearing blue Levi's, a tank top under her dirty shirt. She wouldn’t look out of place at a bar.
Under their gaze, the vampire begins to stir. She turns onto her side, towards them. Seconds pass. Then her eyes blink open, gold, glowing, inhuman.
Fascinated, Wei Ying kneels down, bringing their faces closer together. "Hello," she says, softening her voice.
"Wei Ying," Wen Qing cautions from behind her.
The vampire gives no sign she has heard either of them speak, her face blank and impassive.
"Sorry about the tranquiliser," Wei Ying says. "You're not feeling too sick, are you? Sometimes there are side effects—there are a few issues I'm trying to iron out—hey, what's your name?"
Nothing. Wei Ying frowns, and reaches, feeding her hand between the bars and wiggling her fingers in front of the vampire's face to track the movement of her pupils, until Wen Qing snaps at her, urgently this time—"Wei Ying!" and she remembers it's a dangerous predator, or whatever.
"Hey, you speak English, right?" She tries in Mandarin. "Do you understand? What are you called?"
The vampire doesn't blink.
Wei Ying gamely summons her high school Spanish. Maybe the sound of Wei Ying's atrocious accent as she brightly chirps "Hola!" is the final straw, because the vampire interrupts, "I understand," in English.
Wei Ying falters. The vampire's voice is deep, sonorous, and pleasantly smooth. Her tone is even and unamused, and Wei Ying can feel an inexplicable flush creeping up the back of her neck.
She recovers quickly. "Great! Okay, so first of all, I have a few questions. Like I said, I'm trialling this sedative—you were out for—let me see—" Wei Ying checks her smartwatch—"just under forty minutes. Do you mind sitting up for me, please?"
The vampire moves slowly, first drawing her knees up in front of her, planting one palm on the dirty stone floor, then pushing herself upright. Facing Wei Ying, she crosses her legs. Her shoulders roll back, hands spreading out on her thighs. Big hands, Wei Ying notices, smooth and pale and well-kept.
"There's a good girl," Wei Ying says, and crawls closer on her knees, unclipping a keyring torch from the carabiner on her belt. "Keep your eyes open." She flicks on the light and checks each of the vampire's pupils, observing them as they shrink and expand. "What's the last thing you remember?"
When the vampire speaks, Wei Ying can feel a cool gust of breath on her face. "The boy."
From behind Wei Ying, Wen Ning makes a noise that might be a suppressed squeak.
"Um, Wei Ying," he says. "Do I have to—"
"It's fine," Wei Ying says, not moving her eyes from the vampire's face. "Your sister and I got this." The vampire gazes back, implacable.
The faint skitter of footsteps, the echo as the door creaks shut behind Wen Ning.
"What can I call you?" Wei Ying asks. Without realising it, she has lowered her voice.
The vampire doesn't reply, though a corner of her mouth twitches, like she wants to smile.
Wei Ying smiles back, delighted. "You don't wanna answer that one, huh? Okay. I guess I'll just call you, uh. Madame Vampire. Vampire-jie?"
"Lan Zhan," the vampire says.
"Huh?"
"My name is Lan Zhan." She looks as if it pains her to grit out the words.
"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Wei Ying's grin widens. The vampire stares back at her, nonplussed.
She's kind of funny for a vampire, Wei Ying thinks.
"Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan... Any vertigo? Nausea?"
"No."
"Dry mouth?
"No."
"Can you repeat this?" Wei Ying clears her throat. "We surely shall see the sunshine soon."
"We surely shall see the sunshine soon," the vampire says in a monotone drawl, no hint of a slur.
"I guess that one is a little insensitive," Wei Ying muses.
"Wei Ying, can we hurry this along?" says Wen Qing, and her voice sounds urgent and frustrated enough that Wei Ying cranes her neck to look up at her. "I have a late shift at the hospital."
"Oh. That's okay," says Wei Ying, looking back at Lan Zhan, whose golden eyes are flicking between them with detached interest. "I'll see you when you get back."
"You're not staying here with her," Wen Qing says matter-of-factly.
Wei Ying's head snaps up again. "Why not?"
"Because you're not. Come on." She jangles her keys. "I'll drop you off at the apartment."
Wei Ying scoffs. "This is ridiculous. You think I can't handle myself?"
"I know you can't." She extends a hand for Wei Ying to grab. "Up, up."
"I'll be back soon," Wei Ying promises Lan Zhan, whose face has barely moved during the interaction. "Stay right where you are! We have so much to talk about! I'll bring beer and bloodsicles!"
She can't help but throw Lan Zhan another backward glance, right before she shuts the warehouse lights off. Lan Zhan's looking right back at her, eyes burning. She is so perfectly still.
"Wei—"
"Coming, coming," Wei Ying says hastily, flipping the switch, and the warehouse plunges into darkness.
—
At the apartment, she strips out of her hunting clothes, showers, changes into her softest oversized shirt and a pair of shorts, eats a microwave curry on the couch, and says goodbye to Wen Qing as she hustles out the door. Wen Qing's carrying her wallet and phone in one hand, a bag in the other, with a rucksack over her shoulder and a binder held between her teeth, and only manages a distracted hum in reply.
Then Wei Ying is alone.
Typically, Wei Ying does not fare well under these conditions.
She fucks around on her phone a little bit, flipping between her email inbox (1139 unread) and scrolling through dumb internet memes, but there's an itch in the back of her mind, a buzzing getting louder and louder.
Wei Ying knows why Wen Qing would have a few qualms about leaving her overnight in a room with a vampire. She's not stupid, but is it really so much better to leave the vampire alone? The cage is made of steel, but most types of vampires count superhuman strength among their powers. Lan Zhan could bend the bars. It's unlikely, but not impossible. Besides, Wei Ying didn't even have a chance to find out what kind of vampire Lan Zhan is, where she falls on the spectrum of psychic or telekinetic ability. Lan Zhan’s power could be relatively useless, like controlling the air temperature or creating visual illusions, or she could be able to move objects with her mind. Objects, Wei Ying thinks, that could be used to jimmy the lock. Wei Ying once read of a case in Moldova where a vampire could produce fire out of thin air, and burnt a whole village to the ground before someone finally hunted him down.
Wei Ying doesn't know anything about Lan Zhan. The longer she sits here, the more that seems like a horrible mistake.
She scrambles to her feet, shoving her phone in her back pocket. From her bedroom, she grabs an old canvas bag off the floor, and stuffs it with her research materials, the notebooks bulging with newspaper clippings and folded printouts of journal articles. She throws in a wooden stake, and several jars of garlic and sage wrapped in cloth, and then goes to the refrigerator to carefully decant three more syringes of sedative, securing the caps over the needles and sliding them neatly into the pouch of her utility belt, which she straps on over her shirt and shorts. She bundles a coat over the top, and runs out into the night.
She regrets it instantly. The rain has come on all at once, and with it, a sharp, gusting wind. Wei Ying tugs her hood up, but it blows back down in seconds. She has to duck her head, hold the hood with both hands, and hurry along the sidewalk, eyes cast down toward the asphalt, glistening with the reflection of the street lights. By the time she gets back to the warehouse, her teeth are chattering, bare legs clammy and freezing.
Wei Ying hits the switch and the warehouse whirs to life, strip lights flickering on one at a time, until Lan Zhan's face is finally thrown into relief.
For some reason, Wei Ying's breath catches. Lan Zhan has barely shifted, still cross-legged in her spot on the floor. Her eyes are steady on Wei Ying, expression placid. She doesn't look surprised to see her, or even curious, but for a split-second Wei Ying thinks she sees a ghost of satisfaction flit across her face.
She's probably just imagining it.
She lets go of the unease on a breath of laughter, dropping her bag on the floor, peeling off her sodden coat and shaking it out. "Told you I'd be back, didn't I, Lan Zhan? Hey, it's fucking freezing in here! As a vampire, do you still feel the cold? Because, you don't have any body heat, right? I really want to know," she says earnestly, when Lan Zhan doesn't respond. "Like, for research?"
"Mn," Lan Zhan says finally.
"Mn, like yes? Yes, you feel the cold?"
"Mn."
"Damn," Wei Ying says. "I'm sorry, dude! I think there might be a heater in here somewhere. Give me a second..."
The warehouse has belonged to Wei Ying for a year. It was a gift, of sorts—hush money, as Wen Qing had called it—after Wei Ying treated a minor case of demonic possession in a high-ranking city official. They really didn't need to pay Wei Ying off in the first place—who was Wei Ying going to tell?—but she's never one to say no to compensation, and besides, she badly needed an office to work out of. For a while, she'd even tried to live here, to give the Wens space. She turned a closet into her office, and spent weeks hunched over the desk with the pile of blankets, her stack of books keeping her company, the soft red glow of the halogen heater in the dark. The wifi and phone reception were so spotty that she never had to answer any calls. It was peaceful, no sound but the patter of rain on the rafters and the scratching of the mice. She didn't have a bed or a working stove, but she popped Adderall and drank coffee all day and night so she hardly ever needed to sleep or eat. Actually, Wei Ying had loved it, but one day Wen Qing had stopped by when Wei Ying was in the middle of working a case, bird's nest hair, on her seventh day unshowered. Wen Qing looked her dead in the eye and said, "This is an intervention.”
The office still has some of her stuff. The wall is papered with notes, basic stuff like incantations for summoning and banishing, ideas for inventions—lycanthropy blockers? curse-revealing mirror? demon-sealing lockbox?—and a centerfold from a titty mag she stole from Jiang Cheng's dorm room to amuse herself. The desk is cluttered with notebooks and objects from past cases—a cursed chess set, an EMF reader, a locket pendant with a faded old photograph inside. On the floor below, the plug extension adapter and the heater. She lugs them through, fusses around setting it up under Lan Zhan's steady, unblinking gaze.
"Aha!" The heater clicks on. Wei Ying holds her hands over the red glow, trying to get some feeling back in them. "Can you feel that from where you are?"
Lan Zhan doesn't reply, which Wei Ying takes as a no.
"It'll be warmer in a few minutes," Wei Ying says. "It just takes a while. Oh, shit." She smacks her forehead. "I forgot the snacks. I'll get Wen Ning to bring them later. You can hold on for a few minutes, can't you?"
She slides her phone out of her pocket to type rapidly: hey!!! can you do me a favour and bring the popsicle mould from the freezer to the warehouse? yes that's (pig's) blood in there, no, jiejie doesn't know, pls don't tell her
The read receipt doesn't appear. It is kind of late now, well past midnight, but Wen Ning is a college student. Wei Ying has faith.
"Won't be long," she promises, stowing her phone away. "I know you must be hungry, since you were out hunting. Normally you drink blood from farm animals, right? What's that about? Is that like an ethical choice, or...?"
"I don't only drink animal blood," Lan Zhan says.
It's the longest sentence Wei Ying has heard her speak. The sound of her voice is like an icy palm placed on the back of her neck, sends a frisson down her spine, and she shivers.
"Right," she manages, and tries to recall her line of questioning. There's a reason she came here. Right.
She crouches down to pull her notebook out of her bag, arranges herself cross-legged on the floor, flips to a blank page, and clicks her pen. She's a professional. She can do this.
"So, Lan Zhan," she says, briskly. "Have you always lived in this region? Were you sired here?"
Lan Zhan tilts her head, scrutinising Wei Ying from the new angle, face-to-face. She doesn't reply.
"Oh, come on," Wei Ying says, exasperated. "It's an easy question! It's for my database! I just need a little bit of info about the vampire population. See—" She flips back a few pages. "I've met a total of fifteen vampires in this area. Nine were sired here but remained in the region, and of that nine, six developed abilities related to temperature control, with some stronger subjects able to control fire or ice. As you know, the climate here can be pretty—well—" Wei Ying cups her ear, looks up at the ceiling, lets the sound of the rain pummelling the rooftops fill the silence. As if on cue, thunder claps. "My hypothesis is that a vampire's abilities are adaptive, or at least that there may be a correlation between abilities and the environment at the time of siring. So I was just wondering, were you—"
"Have you always lived in this region?" Lan Zhan interrupts.
Wei Ying blinks several times.
"Ah, Lan Zhan, I get it! You want to make it a game, right, one for one? I guess that's fair.” It’s not fair, she thinks, but whatever. Lan Zhan’s talking. “No, I haven't. I moved here for college, never moved back."
"That man and woman from before," Lan Zhan says. "They weren't your family."
"Nah, just my roommates. I don't know of any blood family left alive." Wei Ying snaps her jaw shut, her face heating. She doesn’t know why she said that.
She changes the subject.
"You never answered my question.”
"No."
"What? Hey, that's not fair, I answered yours!"
"No," Lan Zhan says. "I wasn't sired here."
Wei Ying breathes out. She makes a note. The sound of the pen scratching is very loud in her ears.
"It's getting warmer, right?" She motions to the heater. "You feel it?"
"Hm," Lan Zhan says doubtfully.
"Well, it'll take longer for you anyway, since you're cold-blooded." She consults her notes again. "So, not from this region, then. And I guess I can assume you don't know how to magically heat this room, right? Any chance you could tell me what abilities you do have?"
Lan Zhan's mouth turns up at one corner, as if to say nice try.
"Come onnnn," whines Wei Ying, uncrossing her legs, setting her notebook aside and kneeling, leaning forward on her hands to peer at Lan Zhan through her eyelashes beseechingly. "Can't you just give me a clue? Like, ballpark? Are you clairvoyant? Lan Zhan. Is it going to stop raining in the next five minutes?"
"No," says Lan Zhan.
"Yeah," Wei Ying sighs, sitting back on her knees. The wind has begun whistling, the rain hitting the roof like thousands of tiny darts. "I wouldn't bet on it either." Note to self, she thinks, find a better way to test clairvoyance. "How about telepathy? Lan Zhan, can you hear what I'm thinking right now?"
She stares at Lan Zhan, and thinks very hard: Lan Zhan, if you receive this message, blink twice!!! Lan Zhan merely gazes back, nonplussed.
"Ugh, fine!" Wei Ying scrubs a hand over her face. "Will you answer one of my questions again if I answer one of yours?"
Something in Lan Zhan's expression intensifies subtly. "I will," she says.
Wei Ying ignores the way that makes her skin prickle, the nauseous swoop in her gut, the blare of alarm sirens. Maybe it's a bad idea. But from behind the bars, what can Lan Zhan really do?
"Fine," she says, turning her palms up. "Great. You go. Whatever you want to know."
"Before you moved here," says Lan Zhan, right away, as if she'd been bursting with it. "Who did you live with?"
"Ah." A little personal, Wei Ying thinks, but she supposes it’s okay to answer if she keeps the Jiangs’ names out of it. "Well, I did bounce from place to place a lot, but most of the time, I stayed with a foster family. I guess he—my foster dad—was friends with my mother when she was alive? So they took me in, and really, they were super nice to me, even though I made their lives a nightmare. I was a really annoying kid, got suspended from school a ton. And I was greedy! My foster mom used to say I would eat them out of house and home. But still, they gave me so much, more than I could ever ask for. And my sister—so good to me. I can call her on the phone whenever I..."
Wei Ying trails off. It's happening again, the talking without meaning to, and worse, at the mention of her jiejie, her eyes have started to fill up. It's just—it's been a long time since she heard Jiang Yanli's voice. Wei Ying doesn't always keep in touch with her while she's working cases. It gets upsetting, avoiding talk of all the mortal peril, or worse, accidentally letting something slip, and hearing Jiang Yanli suck in all her breath like she'd just scalded her hand on a hot stove. Wei Ying knows it's cowardly. If she died tonight, her last words to jiejie would be sorry can't, working xx. If there was ever any doubt Wei Ying was going to hell, she thinks that should be enough to extinguish it thoroughly.
"You feel like a burden to them," Lan Zhan says.
"Huh?" Wei Ying's vision is blurring. Her own voice sounds distant, distorted and alien. She can hear her own pulse thudding.
"That place was never home to you," Lan Zhan says. "Was it?"
"No," Wei Ying says, then gasps. The syllable had flown out, unbidden. What is she saying? How could she act so ungrateful? "Wait," she tries, "that's not—I don't mean—"
"Wei Ying has never had a home," Lan Zhan says, and the tears finally overspill onto Wei Ying's cheeks, so that Lan Zhan snaps back into focus, and now Wei Ying can see that her eyes are burning a shade brighter than before, the unnerving yellow glare of headlights.
"You're," Wei Ying says thickly. "You're doing something, aren't you." Her thoughts are getting muddier. Lan Zhan, she thinks. Vampire. Powers. Danger. She can't access her sense of urgency. She's sinking towards the bottom of a lake. The light near the surface is still in sight, but the water feels warm, her body feels weak. She doesn't remember how to kick her legs.
Mind control, she thinks blurrily. It's a rare trait among vampires, but not unheard of.
"Wei Ying is alone in the world," Lan Zhan says, and the words should hurt, but all she feels is Lan Zhan's voice, rich and deep and melting, reverberating through her. Wei Ying’s skin is tingling, her fingers twitching where they are spread out on her thighs, her toes curling in her soggy sneakers.
"When did you do this," she says, faintly. The words are a tremendous effort. She feels like she's forcing the air out of her lungs.
"You're alone," Lan Zhan repeats. "Aren't you?" The question holds a note of command, and Wei Ying opens her mouth to answer unthinkingly, then catches herself, clamps down, biting the inside of her cheek. Wei Ying's not alone. There are people waiting for her outside this warehouse. Her roommates. The Jiangs. Yu Ziyuan always made sure she knew she wasn't a real part of the family—a guest, she said, you're a guest here, and you'd do well to remember it, but Jiang Yanli told her it didn't matter, that Wei Ying was even closer than a blood sister, and Jiang Yanli never lies, so it must be true.
She has to move. She has to get out of here right now. When she tries to shift her legs, she's rooted to the spot. Through the haze, she's aware of a quiet thrum of panic.
Lan Zhan's rising to her feet. Wei Ying watches helplessly as she draws herself to her full, towering height, clasps her hands behind her back, and contemplates Wei Ying from above. Her mouth softens, as if with pity.
"Stop fighting," she says.
Wei Ying feels it like a gut-punch when she's already battered and weak. She whimpers, bows her head, curling in on herself, but Lan Zhan's quick, and says, "No," her voice warm, and Wei Ying—she just—obeys, her head shooting back up before she can stop it.
"Good," Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying gasps. She can feel the word, infused with power, a hot white bolt of energy. The tingles are rolling through her again, more intense this time, a full-body wave, and it's, oh, it feels so fucking good, and before she knows it, tears are dripping onto her cheeks again.
"Not fair," she forces out. She knows she's flushed, panting and heaving as if she'd just came, right here on her knees on the floor. She can't imagine what she looks like, her mouth hanging open, her eyes glassy. Wei Ying's not so far gone that she can't feel shame piercing through the fog.
"That's really," she gasps, "really bad manners, Lan Zhan. Can't we just talk—talk about this like adu—mmm!"
Halfway through the word, Wei Ying's mouth seals itself shut. It's like fighting a magnetic force: try as she might, she can't pry her lips apart.
"Okay, enough!" she tries to say, squinting up at Lan Zhan in outrage. "That crosses the line!" It comes out more like Mmm-mmm, mm-mmm! Mm mm-mm mm mmm! but there's a smirky tilt to Lan Zhan's mouth that suggests the message got through just fine.
"Stand up," Lan Zhan says.
Wei Ying’s foot starts twitching, jiggling. It's trapped energy, the kind Wei Ying has experienced thousands of times in the back of classrooms and lecture halls, wriggling and squirming in her seat, spinning a pen between her fingers, her skin itching, but worse. Just get up, something whispers inside of her. Give in. It'd be so easy. It'd feel so good. The thought curls and twists through her mind like a viper.
She blinks tears away to stare up into Lan Zhan's face, shakes her head.
Lan Zhan's eyes flash. "Impertinent," she says, and Wei Ying moans through closed lips as the word rolls like a cold marble down her spine, and the buzzing cranks higher, her whole body juddering and spasming like she's being electrocuted over and over, and the whisper rises to a shrieking crescendo—GET UP!
She holds out for as long as she can. It feels like an hour, with the pain ratcheting up higher with each minute. Sweat stings her eyes. At some point, she must bite through her tongue, because the metallic taste of blood fills her mouth.
At that, Lan Zhan growls, low and animal. "Enough," she says. "Up,"—and this time, Wei Ying doesn't have a chance to resist. She's yanked upright, easy as pulling the slack out of a rope.
Wei Ying stares down at her feet. She doesn't remember giving in, sending the signal to unfold her legs, to push herself up from the ground. She was sitting, now she's standing. Her breath is coming in short, hard huffs, but the pain is ebbing fast, leaving relief in its wake, warm and champagne-floaty. She's not quaking anymore, but shivering, fevered, hot and cold.
"You will come inside now," says Lan Zhan.
Wei Ying watches her own hand move with no input or permission from herself. The alien hand flutters down to retrieve the key from the pouch of her utility belt. It looks capable and sure, slotting the key into the lock and turning. Clunk.
The cage door swings open, and Wei Ying's feet carry her over the threshold, and then Lan Zhan seizes her, big hands grasping Wei Ying behind the ears. Her palms are cool, but not as icy as Wei Ying would've imagined.
"Open," she murmurs, and Wei Ying's lips part obediently. She manages to suck in a single breath before Lan Zhan dips her head, swings in close, and—kisses her.
At least, Wei Ying thinks she's being kissed, for a long, confused moment, caught immobilised in Lan Zhan's grip, under the firm pressure of Lan Zhan's mouth, until she dimly registers the aggressive way Lan Zhan is licking and sucking at her tongue, and realises Lan Zhan is lapping up the blood from her bite. Lan Zhan is—very thorough. It feels like a real kiss; she can hear Lan Zhan breathing heavy through her nose. Vampires do breathe, she remembers from her research. Wei Ying just never would have expected it to sound so human. Nor would she have expected the way Lan Zhan's fingers tighten in her hair, sending sparks along Wei Ying's scalp, nor the low, appreciative rumble Lan Zhan makes in her throat as she drinks Wei Ying deep. Maybe it's because of her weakened state, the hour or so in Lan Zhan's presence having drained all of her resistance, wires crossing in her body and her brain. Maybe it's because Wei Ying has never been kissed before. Whatever it is, Wei Ying is returned to her body with alarming suddenness, a powerful surge of heat. She lets out an embarrassing mewl. Her knees buckle; she lurches forward.
Lan Zhan's quick—their mouths don't part for so much as a second, Lan Zhan stooping to chase Wei Ying's movement. One hand drops to Wei Ying's shoulder, steadying her, and the other drifts down to Wei Ying's waist. Her long fingers span Wei Ying's entire lower rib cage. She pulls Wei Ying in, presses the length of Wei Ying's body to her own, and Wei Ying remembers she's only wearing a thin night shirt, because her nipples are hard, and pushing against Lan Zhan's chest.
Lan Zhan releases Wei Ying's mouth, still squeezing her waist tight, and Wei Ying opens her eyes—when had she closed them?—to peer into her face, close and luminous. Lan Zhan licks her lips thoughtfully. Her pupils are wide and shiny-black as she takes in Wei Ying's expression, the way her chest is rising and falling, the way, even now, her body is sinking into Lan Zhan's, chest to chest, hip to hip, as though a burning core in the centre of Wei Ying is straining towards a burning core in the centre of Lan Zhan.
"You liked that," Lan Zhan observes.
Wei Ying splutters. "Fuck you," she says hoarsely. "Let me go," though even as the words come out her mouth, she knows Lan Zhan doesn't have her incapacitated the way she was a few minutes ago, knows she could shove and flail and kick and scream, but the urge just—isn't there. Her limbs feel warm, buttery, pleasantly weak. Lan Zhan's hands are holding her upright, strong and assured.
"Didn't you?" Lan Zhan asks. Her top canine teeth, Wei Ying notices, have lengthened, the sharp points resting on the swell of her lower lip.
"No," Wei Ying says, and gasps ah! as Lan Zhan's fingertips dig into her ribs suddenly, hard enough to bruise.
"Tell the truth," Lan Zhan says, voice smoky with power, and Wei Ying closes her eyes so she doesn't have to meet Lan Zhan's gaze as her own mouth springs open like a trap, her tongue and teeth forming the words unbidden.
"Yes," she says. "I liked it. I like it, fuck, it feels so good, your mouth, your hands on me. No-one's ever"—ah, what is she saying?—"touched me like this before."
She hears Lan Zhan exhale. "Never?"
Wei Ying shakes her head, and Lan Zhan releases her grasp. For a moment, Wei Ying thinks Lan Zhan is really letting her go. She opens her eyes wide, a strange, sick twist in her stomach, some emotion she can't identify; but then, Lan Zhan's hands fly up to the collar of Wei Ying's shirt, and in one swift motion, she tears it apart, exposing Wei Ying's tits to the cool air.
"What," Wei Ying starts, but Lan Zhan's hands are already spreading over her tits and squeezing hard, so hard it aches, and Wei Ying cuts off with a moan, and Lan Zhan's bowing her head and fastening her mouth to the join of Wei Ying's neck and shoulder. Wei Ying feels Lan Zhan's fangs—not yet puncturing the skin, but resting flat, a couple of centimetres above her left clavicle. She feels Lan Zhan breathe out in a chill gust, and then, so slowly and minutely she thinks she might be imagining it at first, the fangs begin to grow.
And grow. And grow, to the length of daggers, and Wei Ying's frozen again, her whole body stiffening. She's afraid to exhale, of the slightest twitch or spasm, of nicking an artery with a single false move. She can hear her pulse thundering in her head. She wonders if Lan Zhan can hear it too.
"Good girl," Lan Zhan says, lips moving against Wei Ying's neck, and Wei Ying almost misses the feeling of the fine prongs piercing her skin, gasping at the roaring, blinding, mind-obliterating pleasure as Lan Zhan's approval envelops her; but then Lan Zhan sinks deeper, and deeper and—oh shit—she feels it.
Wei Ying is accustomed to pain. She doesn't remember a time she was without it. Her left palm still bears a raised scar from Yu Ziyuan's cane. She still bolts her food, a holdover from the weeks she spent sleeping rough after she ran away from the foster home; she still remembers the hunger cramps, and waking with her joints screaming, bruised all over after a night of rattling on the freezing cold sidewalk. As an adult in the field, wrangling the undead and the demonically possessed, she gets hurt regularly: a concussion here, a rib fracture there. Only eight months ago, she laughed through Wen Qing resetting her broken wrist without anaesthetic.
It's not the pain. At least, it's not only the pain, but the sheer onslaught of sensation. Lan Zhan's hands knead and pinch her tits, greedy and merciless, and her teeth push deep inside like long syringes, and Wei Ying is dizzy, her knees weak. A ragged sob is torn from her throat—high-pitched, involuntary, totally unlike herself, loud enough to echo in the silence of the warehouse; and then Lan Zhan withdraws her teeth, and Wei Ying feels the hot gush, blood rising to the surface and dribbling down her shoulder, and Lan Zhan's chasing it eagerly with her tongue, licking it up like the sweetest nectar.
Wei Ying blinks down at her. She can't see much of Lan Zhan's expression, only that her eyes are closed, brow furrowed, intent, absorbed.
"Does it taste that good to you?" Wei Ying asks, voice wrecked.
Lan Zhan growls again, louder this time, a sound so deep Wei Ying wouldn't have believed her body was capable of making it, and in a flash, drops low in front of Wei Ying, and hoists her up with hands under Wei Ying's mostly-bare thighs. Wei Ying squeaks as she sails through the air and is slammed unceremoniously on her back on the chaise longue.
"Lan Zhan," she says, and tries to sit up on her elbows, but Lan Zhan's bearing over her, thighs bracketing her hips, and she effortlessly catches Wei Ying's upper arms and forces her back down, Wei Ying’s head thumping back on the pillows, before Lan Zhan’s hands go to unclip Wei Ying's belt. Lan Zhan tugs it off and tosses it aside; it lands on the floor of the cage with a clatter, and then Lan Zhan's hand is reaching under the waistband of her shorts, sliding over the front of Wei Ying's briefs, which is how Wei Ying realises, with a hot shock, that she's wet. Not just damp, but sopping, her pussy aching and throbbing, and when Lan Zhan's thumb glides over her clit through the soaked cotton, Wei Ying's whole body jerks violently, and she has to bite down on a cry.
Lan Zhan's eyes flick up to her face, amused. Her mouth and chin are stained dark red with blood, and so are the tips of her canines, still peeking out from between her lips.
"Does it feel that good to you?" Lan Zhan asks, a mocking echo.
Wei Ying screws her eyes shut and tries to twist her head away from Lan Zhan's gaze, but Lan Zhan's free hand stops her, wrapping around the front of Wei Ying's neck, thumb and forefinger digging painfully into her jaw. Her hands are warmer now, with fresh blood coursing through her veins, Wei Ying thinks.
"Behave," Lan Zhan says, softer. "This is what you want."
"What I want?" Wei Ying's voice rises, hysterical. "This is not what I w—ah—ah—!"
Lan Zhan pulls aside the elastic of Wei Ying's briefs and slips two fingertips into her oversensitive pussy. Wei Ying yelps—she's done it to herself before, obviously, but her own hands are much smaller, and Lan Zhan doesn't pause or hesitate: she pushes until she's sliding all the way to the knuckle, lowers her head and drives her teeth into the soft flesh at the top of Wei Ying's breast, and Wei Ying's eyes roll back in her head, her mind wiping blank.
She loses herself for a long time, caught between the sharp sting and the rapid tightening in her gut, the hot throb of yes and more, foreign and bewildering. She can feel herself gushing around Lan Zhan's fingers. She can hear the sloppy sound of it, the filthy rhythmic fucking, mingling with the slick slurp of Lan Zhan's mouth moving on her, guzzling at the open wound like it's a water fountain; Lan Zhan's hard gulps, her breathing, harsh and shallow, through her nose, the occasional throaty grunts of relish as she feasts on Wei Ying's body.
Soon Lan Zhan's moving over her, rolling her hips in a dirty grind, almost unconsciously at first, like she needs it too, her jeans a rough drag against Wei Ying's thighs; and then she's—stopping? Dislodging her teeth, wiping her fingers off on Wei Ying's shorts, shuffling back on her knees. Wei Ying makes a pitiful, confused little whine she'd rather die than admit to, but Lan Zhan's only grabbing the waistband of her shorts and briefs and tugging, and shucking them off, and Wei Ying is fully naked in the warehouse.
Fuck. What if Wen Ning comes back, she thinks, stupidly. Her fingers twitch at her sides with the urge to cover herself up. Lan Zhan's gaze on her is heavy, hooded, roving down the soft planes of Wei Ying's stomach, the wide swell of her hips. Her hands follow, running up her thighs, slow and hot, her thumbs tracing Wei Ying's old whip scars, burn marks, the faint bumpy line from an old dog bite on her calf. Wei Ying shivers; and Lan Zhan is crawling over her again, lifting Wei Ying's legs for better access, sliding a hand under her ass and squeezing tight, nails digging in. Wei Ying feels her body release another ooze of slick. It must be obvious to Lan Zhan, she thinks, from her vantage point between Wei Ying's parted legs. She must be able to see Wei Ying's pussy, flushed dark, shiny-wet and twitching, and the thought makes her moan with embarrassment and arousal.
Finally, Lan Zhan touches her again, and Wei Ying sighs into it, until she feels a third finger prying at her entrance, and her eyes fly open.
"Nnnnn," she says: her tongue isn't working too well. "Nnnn—Lan Zhan—no!" But Lan Zhan's finger is already forcing its way past the resistance, blunt and relentless, a dull sting, spreading Wei Ying open wider, and maybe it wouldn't matter if she could form the words, Wei Ying thinks hopelessly, maybe there's no point wasting her breath. Lan Zhan's a vampire, why would she care. The most recent bite is still blurting blood down the valley between Wei Ying's tits, but Lan Zhan's lifted her head to watch as Wei Ying's traitorous body opens itself up to her.
Ah, it hurts, it hurts; and abruptly it doesn't, a smooth, slippery slide home, and Wei Ying gasps with relief. That's it, she thinks dopily, the worst of it is over, as Lan Zhan rocks her fingers inside, an upper-cut that catches the most sensitive part of her, sends intense ripples of heat through her body. Her back arches, her abdomen tightens, but before she can relax, she feels it—yet another fingertip pressing at Wei Ying's swollen, oversensitive folds. Fuck!
“I—can’t," she cries, with tremendous effort. "I can't, I really—"
Lan Zhan hushes her—no commanding force behind it, a soft, reassuring sound, like soothing a spooked animal—and sinks in deep.
Her hand feels monstrously huge inside of Wei Ying, and she's—not careful. Every thrust punches another pathetic cry out of Wei Ying's chest, and Lan Zhan keeps fucking her faster and faster, giving Wei Ying no pause for breath, until it's just one long, continuous, hiccupping wail, Wei Ying's head thrown back, neck bared in surrender. Lan Zhan bows to lap up the blood spilled on Wei Ying's tits, the flicker of her tongue breaking Wei Ying out in a fresh wave of goosebumps. It shouldn't—shouldn't—feel this fucking good, Wei Ying thinks desperately; there has to be something wrong with her, she must be damaged or sick, Lan Zhan's powers must have messed up her brain, maybe irrevocably, because there's no way she can still be the same person after this, get up and brush her teeth and walk to work like she doesn't have the knowledge of Lan Zhan's rough hands, demanding mouth and spear-like teeth, the thrall still lingering at the edges of her consciousness, a seductive murmur of it's fine, give into it, when she knows she's losing blood, knows Lan Zhan has no reason to spare her life. Why does it feel so...
"You were made for it," Lan Zhan answers, and brings her free hand up to Wei Ying's throat to hold her still as she lowers her fangs to the jugular. The moment the two sharp points puncture Wei Ying's skin, Wei Ying seizes up and comes with a strangled sob, pulsing around Lan Zhan's fingers.
Lan Zhan doesn't falter or slow down, jackhammering inside her at the same brutal pace while she retracts her teeth to slurp from the geyser of blood, and Wei Ying doesn't get a chance to recover. The hot tingly aftershocks all over her body quickly spark into discomfort, a thousand needles pricking; Wei Ying swears and shoves at Lan Zhan's torso with her limp, exhausted arms, but Lan Zhan just hums and knocks her hands away until Wei Ying gives up, and impossibly soon, she feels orgasm mounting again, faster this time, she can feel herself careening towards it, helpless and inexorable, the heat building and spreading, her legs locking up and her toes curling. When she goes over the edge, the sound dies in her throat. Her mouth works mutely. Tears pour down her cheeks, soaking her hair; she tastes the salt on her tongue.
Lan Zhan detaches her mouth from Wei Ying's neck with a wet pop, and lifts up, bracing herself above Wei Ying to regard her. She tilts her head consideringly. Her fingers are still moving inside Wei Ying, but more slowly now. Wei Ying's chest is still heaving, her back soaked in sweat, shivering uncontrollably. Her vision is grainy like old film, her ears ringing.
"Again," Lan Zhan says.
Wei Ying still can't speak: she doesn't have the strength. With effort, she shakes her head.
Lan Zhan's eyes glint. She gives a slow nod. Yes, you will.
Wei Ying does. Almost without warning, her body lurching, muscles constricting, her pussy squeezing around Lan Zhan's hand; she comes down panting, and then—"Again," Lan Zhan says, "again, again," and, oh, it hurts, sharp cramping in her calves, in her arched feet, waves of heat lapping over and over. She loses track of how many times she comes. She's still coming when darkness swoops in and pulls her down.
—
"Wei Ying."
Her throat full of sand, and her head is so heavy, a lead weight. What did I drink last night, she thinks blearily, and opens her eyes, about to turn and reach for the glass of water on her nightstand, but then the black metal cage bars blink into view above her, and the voice rings out again, clear and vivid and definitely not a dream, this time with a low note of urgency: "Wei Ying."
She turns her head an inch, and groans at the weight of it, but there's something wrong with her vocal cords; it comes out a whispery rasp. Lan Zhan is kneeling next to her on the floor by the chaise longue, cradling her own arm. There's a crimson open slit running from her elbow to her wrist.
"Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying tries to say, but nothing comes out. Lan Zhan's eyes snap up to her face, like she heard anyway, her expression clear and sanguine.
"I am not hurt," she says. "Open your mouth."
Wei Ying's lips part automatically, and Lan Zhan kneels up and extends her arm towards her. For a moment, Wei Ying's puzzled, doesn't understand what Lan Zhan's trying to do, but then a bead of blood trickles along the crease of her inner elbow and plummets through the air, and Wei Ying has to jerk her head away sharply. It misses her mouth, splashes her on the jaw.
Lan Zhan's trying to turn her.
Wei Ying sits up sharply, and the edges of her vision go dark. She has to sink her head between her shoulders and take several deep, shuddering breaths, and as she does so, she notices her entire torso is covered in blood, drying, stiff and crusty like old paint. It doesn't help with the churning nausea.
"Stop," Lan Zhan says mildly, and Wei Ying's head wrenches up, her body going snapshot-still. "Good."
The praise feels like fingers running through her hair, nails dragging over her scalp. She has to struggle to keep her eyes open.
"You don't want to run," says Lan Zhan.
Wei Ying's voice still isn't cooperating. She tilts her chin up, meets Lan Zhan's eyes, and thinks very hard, You don't know me.
"I do know Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, rising to her feet and stepping closer. She reaches with her uninjured arm, cups Wei Ying's chin in her hand, tipping Wei Ying's head back further. "Alone, with no home to return to."
Wei Ying's eyes flutter half-closed. She thinks of the word home, tries to picture it. An image swims behind her eyelids: the bunk bed she once shared with Jiang Cheng. She wasn't allowed to tack posters to the walls, so she taped hundreds of small clippings to its headboard, pictures of girl bands, cool animals and the ciphers to her own made-up secret codes. A polaroid of Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli by the beach, Jiang Yanli making heart hands, her face scrunched up with happiness, and Jiang Cheng looking slightly off-camera with his mouth open in outrage, moments after Wei Ying had chirped, "Okay everyone, on one, two, three... Jiang Cheng's a virgin!" The first time Wei Ying had visited after college, the bunk bed had vanished. "Oh yeah, Mom put it in landfill," Jiang Cheng told her.
"Your home is with me now," Lan Zhan says, and she must do something, because it bursts into Wei Ying's head, hyperreal, fuller and brighter than any of her own shadowy memories of childhood: rainbow lights of unfamiliar cities after dark, racing along the rooftops of train cars; sea swimming, her limbs strong and swift, slicing through the waves with no resistance, air cool on her face, salt on her skin, the water gleaming all the colours of the beachfront, silver and pink and blue and gold; clattering on cobblestones on a long winding street with a bottle of liquor in her hand, cackling, Lan Zhan's arm wrapped tight around her, holding her up. Not a lot of sun, Wei Ying notes, but she always preferred nighttime, anyway.
Lan Zhan releases Wei Ying's chin, raises her bleeding arm up to her own mouth and sucks. When she places her thumb on Wei Ying's lower lip, Wei Ying opens up for her, no mental coercion necessary. Lan Zhan rests one hand on the back of Wei Ying's head, dips low, and kisses her with her mouth full of blood.
The first draught goes down like medicine. It's blood and only blood, gloopy and wrong-tasting, but Lan Zhan's mouth is hot and insistent, and Wei Ying sighs and submits to the caresses of her tongue. With the next mouthful, the flavour is—not different, exactly, but intensified, deeper and richer, new flavours coming to the fore. Lan Zhan kisses her again, and again, climbing up onto the chaise longue on her knees in front of her, pressing close. Around the fifth time, Wei Ying is panting with thirst; her hands rise to the back of Lan Zhan's neck to pull her closer. Her body feels—nourished, like it found something it was missing, tingling, warm and alive, the pain of her wounds dwindling to a faint buzz.
Wei Ying, Lan Zhan's voice rumbles in her head. Where do you belong?
With you, Wei Ying thinks, and then can't stop thinking it: with you, with you, with you, with you, and Lan Zhan inhales sharply through her nose, clenches her hair tighter, and kisses her until her lungs burn.