Chapter Text
Avid sits out on the top of a hill overlooking the lake where the obelisk stood. Watching as the sun, even as indistinct as it was behind the clouds, slowly lowers down beyond even his grasp. Avid is used to waiting, yes, but he is also used to doing something with that waiting, whether it be experimenting with potions to researching, to carefully polishing his partner's crossbow. But now watching the sun go down alone outside in a place that he knows is populated by dangerous creatures of the night, Avid can’t let himself do anything but simply look out and wait.
The dead woods are silent. That is the most disturbing thing—the complete and total silence of a place that is supposed to be brimming with life. Avid has lived near the woods his entire life. Silence is because things are afraid. After all, something is stalking you. Because something is dangerous nearby, right now, all Avid can hear is his own breathing and heartbeat. There is not even the rustling of dead leaves and the breeze. Avid knows that it is silent because there is nothing here. After all, the dead woods are dead. That does not stop his hackles from being constantly on edge.
Avid breaths and goes through the plan again. Convince Shelby to turn him, hide it for as long as possible, make the vampire cure, and live a normal life. Turn, hide, make, live. Maybe if he finally accomplished the thing that he and Elle had worked their whole lives for, she would forgive him.
The sun sets, and it is just about dusk, when Avid stands up from his seat against the tree and walks over to the edge of the lake, swimming across and making it to the obelisk's island. He walks up the hill, looking at the red corrupted, spewing its unholy light for just a moment before he walks around it, and white hair flashes in his peripheral vision. He freezes for a minute, gasping, before he makes out the new black circle traveling throughout those locks and relaxes.
“Pst,” Avid calls out quietly.
Shelby gasps before coming to join him at the side of the beacon, saying, “You scared, what? What are you doing here?” Their tone is accusative, but that’s not the most interesting part of the sentence
“I scared you?” Avid has been on edge ever since he left the village, the whole time he has been in Oakhurst, probably ever since-
“Why are you everywhere?” Shelby accuses.
“What… what do you mean?” She doesn’t answer, so Avid continues, “I thought you got my message, right?”
“Yeah,” she admits, holding out her notebook, before waving it at him accusingly, “How did you even find this, though?”
Avid stops himself from letting out a small laugh at their petulant expression, “It wasn’t that well hidden, to be honest.”
“Well, I thought the banner was clever,” She looks down at the floor and kicks a pebble, more moss than stone at this point, into the water with that surprising strength of vampires.
“Well, um,” Avid rushes to assure them, “ I only saw it because I left you a chest…” Shelby’s expression shifts from dejected to hurt, red eyes staring into him accusingly. No, no, this was bad; he needed her on his side. None of the rest of the vampires would do it. “Did you not see all the food I put in there?” His words are small at the end; something unnatural in him bristles at the predator's eyes on him.
“Food? Avid in the chest was a stake,” they take a step forward and he takes a step back, “and on the sign was a threat.”
“What?” He asks in disbelief, barely having time to think as Shelby continues.
“In fact, I should be attacking you right now for that.” She says both a statement and a threat as Avid scrambles to dispel the miscommunication.
“No, no, no, no, no, what no” he denies, unable to stop himself as he takes another step away from the eyes that scream predator, and the growl building in his throat, “I put in the chest a bunch of beef” her expression doesn’t change “and, I put the head that you found here. Right here remember you took it off the obelisk.” he gestures frantically at the structure to his left, beacon glowing a sickly red.
“Well, when I got there,” They step forward, jabbing an accusing finger into his chest. Avid is stiff and unmoving. “Inside the chest was a stake, and on the sign it said watch your back.” She says once again.
Avid knows that is not what he had put in the chest. He had wanted to prove that it was okay for her to come home. He wanted to see if he didn’t really have to lose another one of his friends. To say sorry for burning her house down. “I did not do that,” Avid states as calmly as he can, pulse still racing under his skin. “I didn’t do that.” He repeats, “Something is clearly-” no best to stick away from accusations right now, “I’m glad we could meet, because clearly there's something in the middle of our communication that is going wrong.” Sheby still seems hurt, such a human emotion; she still seems like her. Avid clutches onto that like a drowning man. “Look, I’m uh,” he doesn’t know how to start it, even with all the time, he doesn’t know how to connect to this. “I’m just going to get right into this,” he decides, pulling his gaze away from Shelby, as they take a step back. “I’m sick,”
“What?”
Avid looks up toward the sky, and the clouds cover everything in the sky; he could never see the sky out here. “When I was a kid, my friend and I went out into the woods, you know, as kids do.” They had been so excited, jumping over creaks, making swords out of sticks, giggling at every crunch of sticks, as they went out in protest of all of their parents' combined rules. He didn’t hurt back then. Avid can barely remember it.
“And before we knew it, we were lost. We were screaming and crying for our parents, and we were just met with silence.”
The forest was quiet. Avid hated that the forest was silent,
“My friend, her name was… Elle,” It felt right to say her name out loud, and at the same time, it felt like a hole in his chest.
“She heard something and she told me to duck.” The silence had unsettled her as well, even more than him at first. “She was screaming and um I turned, and,” Avid doesn't remember what the creature looked like. He never saw enough to do that, just nightmares and the imagination of a terrified child. All he remembers is pain. “That's basically the last thing I remember.”
Aid wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “When I woke up, I was covered in blood; it was mine. He has been covered in blood two times in his life; this one was easier to wash out. “Um, but I could hear my parents. Somehow, Elle had dragged me out of the forest.” She had broken her ankle in the effort, and they got neighboring beds in the small clinic.
“But what ever had scratched my left a wound on my neck that to this day has not healed,” Everyone thought it was a wild dog at first, but the bandages kept coming back bloody, and when they tried stitches, it just leaked between them, not to mention, they couldn’t do it all the way down as close to his contorted artery as it was, the alchemist, had made some things that kept the bruise from growing, and stopped the pain. He was there so often and so consistently that he just learned how to make it for himself.
“It been forever, and” Avid reached out to loose the bandages feeling them pool at the base of his neck, exposing the bruised stretched, wounds, dark blood slowly rising from the cuts, Avid sees her eyes narrow, pupils focusing it, funny, he would have thought that as infected as it was it would be unappealing “Its getting really bad.”
Shelby looks at the oozing blood a second longer before looking at and noticing Avid's wary stare. “Did you think it was a vampire?”
“Yeah,” he admits, Elle had thought it was that; she was the one who really saw the thing that attacked him. Avid believed her, always. “I did, but now that I’ve seen what vampires are like, I don’t think it was. I-” Avid’s hand finds his stake positioned right over his own heart, fingers worrying at the wood. “I don’t know what it was.” That hurt, the realization that they had been barking up the wrong tree the whole time, that Elle had come here, that he had come here, and it was all for nothing, their whole lives for nothing. “ I talked to Pearl,” he admits, “she said it could be a werewolf.” Not that he was very forthcoming with details, ”I don’t know.”
Avid looks up, meeting Shelby’s kind gaze. “Did you show your legs? You know he’s a doctor. He could maybe help it.”
Avid just stops himself from scoffing. The Doctor doesn’t believe in the supernatural or him, for that matter; he wouldn’t help. Avid had been to plenty of doctors, and they never helped. “He’s busy trying to find the cure.” He excuses, instead of expressing his fear, that if he talked to the doctor for longer than five minutes, he would be murdered. He felt his bones ache. “Look, I came to Oakvale-”
“That's more important,” Shelby interrupts.
“I know, I know,” he placates, “but I don’t know how much longer I have, he’s busy, and I can’t figure this out.”
“No, you are more important,” Shelby repeats. They are panicking now. Avid is sorry about that. “He can put a cure to the side. They don’t even want it.”
Avid grasps her hands from where they are fluttering around, holding them gently in his. Shelby lets him, “I need to ask you a favor.”
“Okay,” they say softly.
Avid takes a step back, letting Shelby’s hands fall to her sides, and begins stripping off his silver armor, turning his back to them. “Do it”.
“What?” Shelby yelps. “What, what? Are you serious?”
“Please, I’m going to die,” he turns to face her once more, “Or worse, turn into something feral. I would rather be this,” Avid gestures to them, “Than dead or worse.”
“You know I’m, I’m not going to lie to you. They really do not want you to be a vampire. But I don’t want them to turn into people who don’t want to be.”
“Then don’t tell them,” Avid pleads, “ Don’t tell them I’m not going to tell anyone. I just-” Don’t want to become the monster that I have been fearing all my life. He thinks in his own thoughts.
Shelby rambles on regardless, “Oh man, I’m going to get into so much trouble.”
“I know I know, so don’t tell them.” He hammers in “I won't tell anybody. And I’ll just go back and, and, When I help them find the cure and if you want it to, I can give you some of the cure and it’s fine.” he rambles out practically in one breath, taking a second to regain it afterward.
“Oh man,” They look up to his expression, and hasten to explain, “I mean, this is what I told them, we should only be turning people-”
“I know-” Avid feels himself running out of time; it is literally now or never. “It’s not for forever, but right now.”
“They might not find a cure, it might not work-”
“WELL, THEY HAVE ONE,” Avid shouts. He takes a breath, pulse pounding in his ears. His skin feels too tight. “I don’t know how to fix this, Shelby. I have spent my whole life looking for a way to fix this, and have not gotten an inch. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to lose myself. There is hope here, with this-” Avid pulls out a bottle of holy water from his pack. “and that is literally all I’m asking for.”
Shelby takes a deep breath, even though he knows that they don’t have to do that anymore. “Okay,” they shrug slightly, teary, “If you are sure.”
“Okay,” he nods, “okay, okay, okay, all right, alright.” He turns his back to her again, but they pull them to face her, taking his left hand in their hands. Her hands are soft, Avid registers, head turned toward the clouded sky. There aren’t many calluses, like a reader. They are cold as well. Soft, cold, kind hands.
His hands are rough, he knows, thinking of all the small scars from cuts and acids instead of the feeling of fangs digging into his wrist. Despite his effort to keep them as dexterous as possible, working with volatile substances like he does inevitably led to various accidents. Elle had once joked that they should just wrap his hands, like his neck, to keep them both from deteriorating. His hands are an alchemist's hands. Scared and quick and warm.
The first thing that he realizes is the quickening of his pulse and the slight strain in his chest as he feels his breathing quicken. And it continues to quicken, as his mouth starts to feel dry, and a restlessness builds in his limbs. Avid feels the urge to pull away from Shelby, but refrains, keeping carefully still, and trying to make himself take big breaths. Then the headache starts, pounding at his temple and in his stomach, like nausea, as the world starts to spin slightly in his vision.
Avid's breaths are gasping now, lungs rapidly inflating and deflating as his body tries to supply itself with air with the little blood it has left. He feels cold, the bitter night air piercing into his body. Black spots begin to dance along his vision, and just as he feels the start of unconsciousness start to take hold, the pain starts.
The bite all these minutes that Avid had spent bleeding to death was a kind of numbness, as Shelby slowly drained him of blood, he hardly registered anything besides the pull of draining, and the initial sharp bite. But then he registers slightly his body feeling distant, and noises confusing, as his brain slowly loses oxygen, something starts to go in instead of out. The venom, or curse, or whatever the thing that turns vampires is, Avid is sure that he learned it somewhere, feels like boiling water, injected straight into his veins. All of his perception of pain is turned up to eleven at its presence, jolting him awake and into awareness, despite his limited ability to think of anything.
Avid feels sharp nails or what must be a claw bite into his arm. And registers slightly that he must have tried to pull his arm away. Not that he has much ability to protest, given the fact that his muscles feel like they have been turned to jelly alongside his papier-mache bones. The venom practically locks his limbs in place as it ramps up more with any attempt to move, making him practically in the grip of rigor mortis.
“This was not fast,” he mutters nonsensically, as the curse reaches his heart and begins to send unending wave after wave of pain through its every desperate, frantic beat.
Shelby lets go of his wrist when his heart begins to wrestle, slowing and speeding up in equal measure, leading him down gently to the floor, where he curls up into a ball, clutching his wrist to his chest in an attempt to get the pain to stop.
The venom didn’t stop at his heart, though; it continued, reaching up his neck, touching his wound, and Avid realized all at once that the venom wasn’t hot, it was cold. He realized this because, okay, have you ever eaten something spicy, and thought ‘hot, hot, hot, you know what, it should cancel this out with some mint, because mint feels cold, and this pepper is hot,’ and then have your mouth light up ten times worse because hot and cold are entirely different sensations? They are two entirely different sensations, and the infection around his wound begins to burn. And like mint and spice, it is a compounding of pain.
It was always warm, hot even, but as the venom met it, the infection began to burn. And the two curses began to fight against each other, and where they did, the pain compounded on itself. He gagged at the pain, the motion theoretically enough to make him pass out from the pain, but something prevented him from that motion, keeping Avid stuck as the pain reached another level, burning, meeting with frost as a battle for his body tried to keep itself alive in the background.
And his pulse got quieter and slower, bit by bit, until finally it stopped, and Avid finally, finally lost consciousness.
And unknown to him, as the burn reached his heart, fighting off the cold. Thump went to his heart once again.
Shelby gently lowers Avid to the ground. Before whipping the blood off her chin with the back of their hand. There was a lot of blood in a human, it turned out, and it was very filling. It filled them with a rush of warmth despite the bitter aftertaste of what she assumes to be the amount of garlic that Avid ate on a daily basis. There goes the no human blood thing, Shelby thinks with a touch of humor.
“Avid?” Shelby calls out, looking down at the small ball of a soon-to-be vampire. Her voice is the only thing in the silence besides Avid’s gasping breaths, and his heart giving its dying beats, from where it is in the center of his curled-up pile of flesh newly drained of blood. And then his breath stuttered and stopped, and his heart went out, and the forest was only full of dead quiet things once again.
Shelby feels the familiar tug of a coven bond snap into place.
Right.
They had forgotten about that.
Oh no.
Everyone would be coming here now.
Shelby looks up nervously, scanning for the sight of that familiar, bat silhouette along the clearing night sky.
Shelby considers flying off now. Getting out before anyone comes to investigate. Before she gets caught going against the rest of the coven. Before she gets in trouble for going against her new family.
But then they look at Avid curled up to try and hide from the pain that they gave him. Bandages still pooled at the base of his neck, the open wound just visible peaking around to the back of his neck. That wound was horrible, and as much as he tried to hide it, he was terrified. Of turning, of his wound, of her. But still, Avid had trusted Shelby with this. Told them his story, and asked them to turn him in.
No, she couldn’t just go, not now, not before making sure he was okay.
“Avid” Shelby calls out again, crouching down to meet him at his level. Did I do something wrong? They wonder. But no, even though his heart stopped, she can still feel that bond tugging them closer. He’s dead, but he is not gone.
Shelby places a hand on Avid's back, and it is warm under their palm.
No, he is hot.
They are warm. Warm from the influx of new fresh blood, warm from the source, and he is hotter. Shelby has gotten used to the difference in temperature of the world to her undead body, but right now, with fresh blood, they are nearly human, and Avid is warmer than her, hot, burning up even though the barrier of cloth between the two of them.
And then in the silence of Shelby’s shock, a thump sounds out in Avid's chest.
The only thought in her head is What, as she stands up slowly and backs away slowly.
And then it thumps again, and again, and Avid’s breath restarts, low at first, then stuttering gasps.
Shelby looks at him in confusion and horror. He was dead, like her, like Pyro, like Scott. His heart shouldn’t be beating; he didn’t need to gasp for air like he was drowning. He was a vampire; he was one of them who had felt the bond.
Shelby feels for the bond and only then notices how it has begun to fray. Fray like the harsh movements of a too dull knife against a thick, sturdy rope. Little but snapping.
Avid shifted now beneath her unwavering, wary gaze. His hands go to push him up before the hands collapse under him, and his weight molds, nearly dead, unable to support his weight. A whine comes from his throat, an animal sounds like a wounded hound, caught in a trap, between his painting gasps.
As focused on Avid as they are, Shelby almost doesn’t catch the sound of wings on the wind. Almost, but they do, and even still, Shelby can’t tear her gaze away from Avid's form as he starts to push himself up again.
“You,” Apokuna’s voice accuses from where they come out of bat form on the other side of Avid, crouching down to help him up. “You turned him.” Her cold, calculating gaze takes in Shelby’s frozen and tense state, “Why aren’t you helping him?”
Why didn't Shelby help Avid stand up? Why, now, after that, his blood smeared the back of her palm, and their veins and stomach were filled to the brim with it, was Shelby so sure that they would die if they all didn't run right now?
Shelby feels the fraying speeding up; it is half gone by now, and there won't be much left of it soon. As they hear his heartbeat get stronger and stronger, and see bones begin to shift under the red half moon.
Werewolf, Avid had said. ‘Gifts like ours don’t tend to mix,’ Scott had once offhandedly remarked when she had asked if he had ever met any other supernatural creatures.
Apo has Avid leaned against their shoulder now, head so close to her neck. As they whisper assurances and questions, and try to shield him from Shelby with her body. He is slumped and his eyes are foggy and unclear, as his chest continues to spasm despite everything.
“I-” Shelby can’t take their eyes away from Avid, as he continues to spasm and twitch in pain. “I don’t think I did it right.”
“You don’t think you did it right?” Apo’s voice is indignant and mocking. As Cleo comes out of bat form beside the pair. “What in the world does that mean, Shelby? I thought you didn’t want to turn anybody? Why in the-”
“His heart’s beating again,”
Apo is silent listening, as all three of them take in the fact that Avid, despite everything, is alive, and Shelby’s implications that at one time he wasn’t.
“What the Fuck,” Cleo says.
And then they all feel it, the last threads of a bond snapping until there is nothing but a fraying cord where the other side used to be, like a gaping loss. Another one snaps into a different place a second later, but that isn’t what any of them are focused on.
Avid begins to spasm as Apo is forced to drop him. The shifting under his skin turns to the audible snap of bones as his skeleton begins to remake itself, pushing through muscle and tissue. Until the skin is stretched to thin and it begins to be pushed through like canvas warping and tearing in equal measure. Hair and coarse brown fur grow and appear to replace it, as what used to be Avid grows. Claws sprout from his nails, his teeth sharpen and become too big for his skull until his jaw cracks and remakes to accommodate them. Shelby hysterically notices a tail peaking out from the ruins of his pants. Until hunched before the three of them, hasty, paining for air, but heartbeat strong in all of their ears, is crouched by a newly turned Werewolf.
His body hurt. He had nearly died, he was hungry and thirsty, and couldn’t get enough air even into his bigger, more natural lungs.
This body was better; it was bigger and stronger, and things couldn’t hurt him as easily here. He doesn’t know why he ever tried to stop being this.
His head still wasn’t right; he breathed in and in and in, but that didn’t make it better. There was supposed to be something right, he was supposed to-
He was hungry. He needed-
Flesh, meat, bone things tearing beneath his teeth, fear fear on something not him-
He was hungry, he was hurt. You need to eat to heal. He thinks burned, some false pack bond burns away the last remnants, thrashed and torn with prejudice, causing him a flinch all around him.
He looks up at last, still hazy gaze taking in the three-
Friendsvampiresenemiesdeadhelppac-protectthemprotectersvenomhurtdontbelivenever-
He shakes his head to dislodge the torrent of thought, wining slightly for-
EllePackPlease
They all smell of blood, not the same amount though, one is pale with little of it, jittery, one is Sharp-eyes, one there is fresh blood on the back of its palm, blood that was his, it wasn’t supposed to have it, it makes them-
He shakes his head faster this time
They all smell of death, too. Of cold and not rotting yet, but staying off rotting, that is their right before the wound starts to go bad. This whole place smells of death, cold and rotted, and not even the decay that would allow new growth to start.
The forest is silent. He does not like that it is silent.
The weak one speaks. It says something that is him, he thinks, but the words are hard to catch and harder to catch on to. It is not a threat; they, she, he doesn’t know, maybe both, will not hurt him.
The strong one speaks next, but not to him. To its pack. Its voice is quiet but scary. Strong one, only good source here, nothing else moves but the dead things here now. But they are strong, they are fed, and they are a threat. He can’t take her, he is.
One of them, Sharp eyes, moves towards him, and he flinches back with a growl.
Don’t don’t, I am strong, I can-
He uses his left paw, and he flinches in pain at it, blood starting to leak from the wound.
His panting is the only thing in the forest that sounds, and he is surrounded by dead things.
Not hurt tries talks and he turns, but He sees the fangs, fangs are bad, fangs hurt, he remembers-
Fangs lunging toward his neck, fangs in his wrist as he slowly loses his life, fangs in a smile as the people he is trying to protect turn against him, fangs and-
He lunges toward the fangs like he has before, but with teeth instead and claws instead of wood sharpened to a point, and he misses weakly, managing to dodge, from his weak, scared stumble. As he shakes his shaggy head in confusion.
No, no protect, protect, protect who? His head hurts, he is hungry, and there is nothing here to eat.
Out, he needs out. How?
There are three around, but Weak is closer to Sharp-eyes now, and he is against the black pillar, with the red light. His eyes shift from dead thing to dead thing, looking for an opening. A deep growl was building in the pack of his throat, passing, the parts he can reach, the epitome of a cornered dog. The panting is still loud and frantic, nearly drowning out completely the frantic argument that the dead things are having.
They are talking, growling at each other, but the focus is on him. He does not want that focus. Their eyes are sharp, too sharp, and all of them have fangs.
He eyes the gap between Strong and the pair of Weak, and Sharp-eyes, snapping every time one of them gets close, he needs out, he needs an opening. Weak turns away slightly, and he lunges.
Out, out, out, here is dangerous, here he can’t eat.
He dives into the water to get off the island, his thick coat protecting him from the cold water, even as some of his two little blood seeps into the lake. It is suffocating and bad, the cold is bad, but even so, he sprints and leaves as fast as he can, rushing into the dead underbrush, and through the thick trees. Flesh, he needs a life, he needs a path out, he needs something he can eat.
And with the voice of the dead things joined by two more, all he can do is run.