Chapter Text
Dirt clung to the cracked skin under his nails, feeling as if it would trickle down into his bones. The dirt wasn’t the soft, plush loam of life. It was dry, dead, sucking out what facsimile of life gave his skin a soft, red hue. Dirt as dead as the forest that surrounded him, loomed over him like a threat. Dirt as dead as the dust at the bottom of the grave before him.
His hands ached, fingers wrapped tightly around the silver handle of a chisel that he had worked against his own bones to create. The sting of the silver had turned to a dull, persistent ache the longer he held onto the chisel, the longer he carved what few words he could fit onto the headstone at the edge of the world, far enough away from any landmark, any beacon, that the others had very little chance of stumbling upon it. He shoved the chisel into his pocket, the last traces of pain licking his fingertips and the dirt caked into their faint prints. It sat heavy in his pocket. A weight, a reminder. This wouldn’t be the last grave he dug. It wouldn’t be the last bitter lines carved meticulously into a headstone. He wouldn’t come back here, though. Not one of the graves he planned to dig would be close to this one, as close to where his ashes laid. They deserved to be pushed deep into the walls, far away from the border, never again able to leave this place. They would stay trapped within the walls they had doomed themselves in.
He didn’t bother to wipe the dust from his clothes, the pale dirt clinging to the once fine, perfect fabric. It didn’t matter, did it? If- when things went to plan his clothes would be covered in sticky, sweet blood. He might not even bother to drain them properly, he thought, a laugh dying in his throat. He had no need for their blood, their essence. He was stronger than that. And when those walls fell he would have the whole world to hold in an iron fist, a whole world to drain into his veins until the very earth itself ran dry.
The moss that covered the ground of this forest was far from alive. What was left was akin to its skeletal remains. It crunched under his boots, crumbling into dust and dispersing further into the woods. There were paths winding through the entire forest, carved in just seven weeks of constant movement, constant life infiltrating its breathing corpse. It took several minutes of aimless walking for him to find one of these trodden paths. He knew this one. This trail wasn’t faint. It winded through the forest from the crumbling stone path at the river deep into its heart, an obelisk looming over a still lake. He followed it back to the river. He had no need to turn the beacons, not yet. There was hardly a point when there were still humans, rife with holy light, sprinting through the woods.
It took much longer to get from where he found the path back to the river. The trees parted, letting the soft rumble of life float across the river and grace the shore. Below the rushing water he could see the infectious death clawing its way across the riverbed, reaching closer and closer to the living woods they could just barely see. Owen had said that these woods weren’t dead when he was alive. Just two hundred years of his hate seeping from the tower on high to ruin any life in this domain. Did he know it was his doing? That he killed the very woods he planted with his festering anger?
The castle loomed on the other side of the river, sheer cliffs lifting it high above and blocking the sun from reaching him. The dark walls were haloed with the rising sun, light just peaking around its imposing form. It was as welcoming as when he had first been vanquished, filled with those he would once call allies who were apparently set to end his reign. Six hundred years he had sat in a false death, the world passing him by, his duchy rising and falling to become some common town, nothing like the sprawling infrastructure he had once so kindly funded. The sun moved as he stared up at it in contempt, peaking out from behind the dark walls and cutting into his flesh, searing his skin, anchoring him in the now. The chisel was heavy in his pocket. A promise, a reminder.
He needed to find Shelby and Drift. With tensions on high it wouldn’t be long until they were either cut down by those who claim to be stronger than them or wandered alone into the woods, cutting ties with the ones who killed their own, and got caught by the humans who wielded holy light like it was a weapon. They were the only ones he would protect. Their voices didn’t ring out and grate at his ears, scratch at his skin. Their voices didn’t call out with laughter, mocking a tragedy to their faces. Did the others have no shame? Laughing about the death of her fledgling in front of her? Not once in his years had he seen such blatant disrespect.
He would kill every last one of them, the chisel promised. He would drive a stake into their long-dead hearts and watch their body turn to dust under his fingertips. Dust that would lodge itself into his lungs, under his nails, into his skin. Dust that he would toss into their graves with glee.
A smile pulled at his lips, tugging like a puppet’s string. He forced a frown against its pull, keeping the light of sadistic glee from his eyes as he stepped forward to seal their fates.
Yet, when he stepped forward, he found himself facing a wall. A shimmering, mocking thing that mirrored the ones that surrounded his domain. His stomach dropped, throat running dry before his blood boiled, warming his limbs and setting his teeth on edge, grinding against themselves. He couldn’t be trapped here. He wouldn’t be trapped, wouldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t be stuck in the dead woods, forced to watch those disloyal parasites go about their lives as if they hadn’t snuffed out one of their own for the crime of breathing, the crime of inexperience, the crime of happiness. A growl pulled at his dry throat as an inch of his control snapped under his boiling blood.
His fist hit the wall. He felt blood rush back into his limbs as he felt the strangeness of the surface. It wasn’t like the walls at the border, strong and thick, tough as stone, as steel. This wall wavered, shimmering in the light. It felt like a curtain had been dropped at the water’s edge, anchored into the ground and into the sky high above, a give to its alien surface.
Maybe if he…
He pushed against it, feeling it fold under the pressure. It didn’t give in easily, didn't part like water. It still fought back against his persistence. He could feel its intentions, its threat to spring back to its original form if he gave up for even a second. The wall, the curtain, took shape before his eyes. What was once a fragile gauze thickened into a dark, silk curtain. Despite its inky black color it still reflected the searing daylight, but it reflected something more. In its shimmering lights it separated into faint hints of color, coiling within itself. It was almost hypnotic the way the patterns swirled before his eyes.
The wall parted like stage curtains, allowing him to fall through into an inky blackness that swallowed him up quicker than he could blink. The darkness held those shimmering colors of the curtain, like the border itself had taken him into its folds and held him there. But, he was still falling. Falling slowly forward as if moving through something thicker than water, thicker than blood. He couldn’t close his eyes against the darkness, watching every swirling color fade in and out of white shimmering light. None of the sounds of the world he came from reached his ears. The only sounds he could hear were muffled and thick, clogging his ears like wax. What he could hear properly wasn’t coherent. No, he couldn’t hear it; he could feel it. Feel it in the depths of his own head, behind his ears, sinking down his spine. It felt like that incessant ringing that had plagued him upon hearing Pyro speak of what he had done. It filled his mind like a fog that time, mimicking a racing heart that no longer could beat. These ones still filled his head, but more like a curtain of rain pouring down from an unforgiving sky. It whispered in the rain, lodging their voice deep into his brain, making a home in the grey matter, pushing outward like a spreading disease. He felt it push against his skull as if the whispers were trying to escape the confines of his head. It felt like pressure, like a pain he had never before felt, even when he was human, when he was alive to feel it. It ached to get out, clawed at his skull from the inside and left searing gouges in his psyche. The whispers grew louder with each passing moment but it was nothing he could parse.
Nothing he could parse except one. One voice, clear like crystal against the foggy whispers that tore at his eyes, swirled in his vision. He could feel this voice in his skull, around his limbs, against his throat, trickling into his veins like blood filling his heart.
“Find him. Return him.”
As suddenly as the curtains parted, the inky blackness disappeared. He flinched against the sudden light of day, shutting his eyes against its rays. He felt fresh air against his skin, banishing the sickening warmth of that oily film. Finally, he felt a rush of water as he landed face first in the river he was trying to get across in the first place.
He groaned at the disgusting feeling of cold, wet fabric against his skin. It felt cold in a way it shouldn’t have, not at the height of his power. He pulled himself from the river with great effort and complaining, barely keeping himself from shaking out his hair like a dog. He breathed out a petulant grumble, stepping onto the crumbling path between the living forest and the dead woods. With any luck, his clothes would be dry by the time he got to the castle. He looked up at the castle he had for many years called his home, now infested with turncoats, looked to its looming form blotting out the sun.
Looked to where it really ought to have been. He should’ve been seeing towering, black walls, glittering stained glass, meticulously erected by kin that had once been a loyal coven. None of that remained on the apex of the cliff where it had sat. All that was left in its place were crumbled ruins. Pale stone walls eroded by time and rain, barely standing against the long, arduous six hundred years they had been abandoned by their master. Pale stone ruins that there had been when he first woke up down in its crypt, pushing away the heavy stone lid of his tomb and crawling out of the depths of his dilapidated home.
He looked back where he had come from, the woods disturbed by human feet, human wonder and fear dragging the dusty skeleton along with them. He expected to see the trampled dirt paths, packed in, cutting grooves through the forest. There was none of their touch. All that laid in their footsteps was the moss that had been coating the undergrowth in life and in death.
The woods ahead, twisting through the domain, were alight with the beating hearts of life. He could feel their blood in his skin, calling out to him, pulling him closer and begging to be drained, to wilt under his fangs. It was an abundance he had taken for granted upon waking, snuffing out the light of every creature he came across without a second thought to whether or not he would be able to feed himself for the time that was laid out before him. His veins rang out a greedy pulse of hunger, pulling him in toward the forest, itching at his skin to rend the flesh of the scattered livestock under his claws.
Though he couldn’t stretch any claws. He couldn’t feel them resting, waiting under his skin for the moment of attack. He couldn’t feel the passing storm calling to him, twisting in his grip to pull it closer and blot out the dull sunlight. He couldn’t feel the warmth of the blood red beacons scattered throughout the domain, welcoming him home. In fact, he couldn’t feel the beacons at all, not even the holy, golden light of consecrated ground, threatening to drain his vitae any time he wandered too close to their concentrated spirits.
No longer was he at the height of his power, stronger than the holy spirits itself. No longer able to vanish into thin air and prey on the humans that threatened his own life.
And he was starving.
He was on the other side of the river before he could think, a flurry of bats following his tail as he landed with solid boots on the opposite shore. He could feel his heart in his throat as he moved without his own control, seeking out the beating, bleeding heart of livestock. Thankfully, the livestock wasn’t of the human variety. He didn’t feel back in control of his own body and mind until his fangs sunk into the thick flesh of the cattle held in his grip. He could feel its fleeting life flood over his tongue. Beyond the refreshing, intense sound of blood rushing back into his body that flooded his head he could hear the pathetic noises of the cattle dying under him. Its heart fluttered erratically, only succeeding in feeding its blood to his veins faster. Sooner than it could think to run it was a withered corpse at his feet, every drop of blood pulled from its heart and filling his own body with a steady, pulsing beat. Blood dripped down his chin, a clumsy effect of his uncontrolled frenzy. A frenzy he had banished upon his first day awake, one brought on by six hundred years left starving under cold stone and earth, alone in the darkness.
He felt in his bones, in his ringing skull, that he wasn’t in the right time, the right place. He would believe it when he saw it, though. More than just the crumbled remains of his castle, more than just the abundant life in the twisting forests.
The paths that lead to the field where the scorched ruins of a town long left to rot were foreign to him the first time he had ventured into these woods. He had spent an embarrassingly long time wandering through the unfamiliar landscape that generations after him had carved into the earth. Now those paths were etched into his mind as well as his original duchy’s paths and villages had been, sitting alongside their memory. It took much less time finding his way to the plains of Oakhearst than it did at the beginning of those seven weeks.
There stood the trees that the humans had carelessly burnt to ash. There stood the life of the forest, wandering aimlessly. There stood Oakhearst, a ruin. A warning. Ruins stained with blood and burnt to ash. And in those ruins were humans. Living, breathing, unaware, unafraid of the two creatures of the night that watched them from the edge of the ancient woods, their eyes hungry, fangs aching, ready to rip into their flesh and sew fear into their hearts.
His pace into the ruined town wasn’t the same confident stroll he had taken up as they once were. He let his feet drag against the dirt. He let his shoulders sag and his face fall flat. He trudged into the town as if he had been walking for much, much longer than the ten minutes it took him to get from the river to the walls. His clothes were still slightly damp, still covered in grave dirt. The chisel still weighed heavy in his pocket, the only thing that seemed to stay with him across the veil.
His attempts to look sad and gross probably weren’t the most convincing. He had never claimed to be a good actor, and for a man as put together as him it was difficult to seem, well, not perfect and gorgeous as he was. Still, he did make the effort, keeping his sagging pace as he herded himself toward the voices arguing loudly in the center of town, standing just outside of the crumbling church tower.
The first one to lay their eyes on him stood, in retrospect, much more confident than she had any right to be standing in a burnt town in the middle of nowhere. Cleo’s eyes pierced him all the same, cutting through the fog like a silver knife and landing on his dusty, exhausted form. Her hair was bright red, a fire against the grey, gloomy sunlight. She looked at him with a level of disgust that was rather undeserved, in his opinion. She looked just as gross and dirty. Though, maybe the disgust was toward his fancy clothes. They were always a great actor.
“Oh, let me guess, you’re also new,” they said in the same near disgusted tone as they had seven weeks ago for him. Her face twisted into an angry scowl.
What did she expect to find here when she first arrived? What reason did they have for using this ruin as their hideaway when her coven was burnt and tossed aside like trash? Surely she didn’t expect to be able to sustain herself here, rife with a curse that ran deep, a curse they could probably sense as soon as they stepped through those walls that shut behind them like a cage.
“Well, yes, I doubt anyone would be living in this dump,” he said, making a half-hearted effort to brush the grave dust from his vest. He would’ve been annoyed that the dirt traveled from his nicer clothes to these old ones but it did help with appearances.
“No one lives here,” Legs, the doctor, gloomy as he always was, said. He looked over the ruins. “No one is from here.”
He had never learned quite what the doctor’s problem was before. He didn’t really care then and he didn’t really care now that he has another chance to find out, but he did plan on making somewhat of a better impression on the man than he managed to last time. According to Cleo, Legs had hated him from the moment he opened his mouth. Something about him being snobbish and rude and nothing but an annoying rich boy. Admittedly, he had never claimed to be anything but snobbish in the first place, but having the doctor on his side, or at least not so against him, would do him well. He thinks Legs wanted him dead before he even found out he was a vampire.
“No one is from here,” Cleo repeated, exasperated.
“It would be pretty tragic if somebody did live here,” Martyn said, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
He was never under the impression that Martyn was anything but a clever liar. Nothing in his attire gave the impression of money and his mannerisms were unfitting of a noble any older than five. What gold and finery was on his person didn’t match and seemed cobbled together from what he could snatch from a rich lady’s purse.
“They’d need an immense amount of D.I.Y. help,” the doctor said, turning toward the crumbling church tower behind them.
Cleo followed his eye toward the tower, toward the pulsing beacon sitting pretty inside. Unlike the town that surrounded it, the beacon didn’t give a hint of age on its surface. The glass wasn’t scratched or scuffed and the shining stone base gleamed like crystal. She ducked under the crumbling facade and circled the holy object, eyeing it like prey. With a steady hand, they touched the surface of the beacon. A swirling trail of light spread from the pulsing, pale center of the beacon, swirling like fibers in the water until it pressed against her hand.
“What is this?” she asked herself, barely audible to the rest of them that wandered closer with them. Scott came close but didn’t quite step under the threateningly unstable structure, casting wary glances at its height and the rubble around it. She tugged her hand away from the fibers of light as soon as they made contact with her skin through the glass.
“What are your names anyway?” Legs asked, ducking out from the ruins and taking a few steps away. He followed Scott’s eyes to the crumbling ruins and seemingly thought better of being close to the thing.
“Oh, I’m Martyn,” came the first answer, eagerness slipping out with his tongue. “I think I got left behind. On accident. My father forgot to check if I was awake and in the carriage after we camped last night.” He laughed, strained. “By the time I woke up they were all gone.”
He had barely listened to the conman’s ramblings the first time and though he did try to this time his eyes caught on a shock of red hair flitting between the ruined, broken houses. He kept his feet planted, though. The three of them would likely find it impolite for him to wander away from their active conversation.
“I am… so sorry,” Legs said, face twisted in a wince, likely regretting even asking, as if he had asked for anything more than names to refer to them by.
“Do you know that group over there?” he interrupted, thinking the doctor might appreciate the topic change, or at least he would appreciate not hearing Martyn’s tragic backstory again. He gestured to where he had seen the red hair. The group could barely see figures moving around between the ruins, obscured by the fog and rubble.
“They’re lunatics,” Cleo said flatly, narrowing their eyes at the group. “They are absolute lunatics. I wouldn’t go near them, to be honest.”
“Oh really?” Martyn asked, tilting his head like a child would, or maybe a puppy.
“They- they are… One of them is looking for werewolves.”
That was odd. He could’ve sworn Cleo had said something different the first time, something said with more disdain and somewhat incredulous. This time, the term was used with exasperation and something close to pity.
From around the ruins of the tower, a man in a black tailcoat appeared, wandering toward the group somewhat aimlessly, looking around at each one of them individually, taking in their forms, an almost calculating look trained on each of them. He hadn’t given the butler — Abolish was it? — much concern. Not until he had so efficiently slain one of his kin. Every swing of his sword seemed practiced, arcing with grace that no untrained man would wield it. As he looked closer now he could see the silver glint of his buttons and of the chain connected to the watch hidden away in his pocket. It was a casual display of the precious metal, not something an actual butler would be in possession of on his uniform, let alone whatever clothes he had been allowed to take on a personal leave.
“I’m Scott,” he turned to the other three, giving Abolish a short, acknowledging glance. “I think I’m just lost.” He interrupted himself with a strained, nervous laugh and moved his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with them. “My carriage- well, my horses. They got spooked by some wolves in the night. Before I knew it I was without horses and without men- they had chased after the horses. Probably got attacked by wolves. Who’s to say. I ran off rather than stay in the carriage. I wasn’t about to let the wolves eat me too.”
“Well that’s bad luck,” the butler, or maybe not a butler, said. He stood at something close to a proper posture, not bothering with the same nervous act Scott put on.
“Oh, this is the butler,” Cleo introduced.
“Something like that.”
“You look just like the ones in our house,” Martyn said. A lie, easily spotted in Scott’s opinion. Scott hadn’t ever seen a butler with as much finery as Abolish and Martyn’s clothes didn’t give any indication that his family would be better off than Scott’s. If any of them were really looking they could probably spot that Abolish’s ornaments alone were worth more than anything Martyn had on his person.
“I’ve worked with butlers,” he started, then seemed to think better of it and corrected himself. “I wasn’t… assigned as a butler. I was taken in by a… lord and he took me under his wing and… as a token I became his butler.”
Scott narrowed his eyes, looking him up and down, but decided to bite his tongue. His halting speech didn’t give much confidence that his words were truthful and neither did the words themselves. Though it had been six hundred years since Scott had to hire his own butlers he assumed it was still common practice to hire one from one of the many acclaimed academies meant to train butlers. All of his butlers and the butlers of the dukes and lords he knew had exclusively gotten theirs from these academies. Someone trained in proper etiquette, etiquette that Abolish seemed to be lacking, though whether that was because he had no formal training or because he wasn’t in his working manor wasn’t apparent.
“What about you?” Scott turned to the doctor. “I haven’t seen anything like these… clothes before.” He held his tongue against any biting comments but from the way Legs’ face twisted in annoyance he assumed his attempt fell flat.
“These are doctor’s robes.”
“Some doctor you are!” Martyn interjected in a petulant tone that felt sour on Scott’s ears. “You wanted to take me to surgery for a twisted ankle!”
“I never said that,” Legs said, turning his ire toward Martyn instead. “I told you, this place is nowhere clean enough for surgery in the first place.”
Scott attempted to tone out their incessant bickering, trying to find an opportune moment to slip away from the group and find quite literally anyone else to talk to. Before he could find his moment, another two approached their group from behind the scorched walls, moving like they were searching for something. His gaze first caught on the pale blonde hair of the detective. Her drab, brown clothes nearly blended into the foggy, dirt laden ruins, but her monocle shone in what little sunlight peaked through the clouds above. Looking between Martyn and Drift, one in a caplet two sizes too big and bouncing like an eager child and the other with shining buttons and an expensive lens, it seemed obvious one of them was richer than the other. It was unlikely that these commoners actually noticed this, though.
He could only see a brush of ashen brown hair before a sharp pain laced through his skull, pushing into one temple and out the other, skewering him before them. It felt as if a freezing spike of ice had impaled him, its frozen touch seeping into his brain, freezing him down to his core, working down his spine and to his legs. The frostbite lanced through his skull and pushed outward, clawing, pulsing, trying to get out. His ears rang with the intensity of the foreign yet not unknown pain as his sight faded at the edges, narrowing his vision to a small tunnel of light in front of him. Whispers started to eat at the ringing, biting at the corners of it, swallowing it whole, until those incoherent whispers took over his every sense. He felt the prickles of their voices against his skin and in his teeth. He felt nauseous. He was going to throw up cow’s blood in front of all these humans from the intensity of the pain pushing out of his skull.
“Are you, uh, dying?” a voice said, cutting through the whispers like a knife.
A hand landed on his shoulder, pushing away the prickling, burning feeling under his skin. The sharp, acrid smell of garlic pushed through his muddled senses until he could feel his own body again.
He found himself nearly doubled over in pain. He was half kneeling on the ground, accidentally clutching at the doctor’s robes like a child in an attempt to keep himself from falling further to the ground. His free hand clutched at his head, tearing at his hair like he was trying to rip it out by the roots. As the pain of the episode faded he couldn’t even feel the ache from that.
Scott looked up to meet Avid’s eyes, a deep, almost dull violet. There was a spark missing in them, a spark he only saw once he had fully taken to the embrace, manic energy pouring from his veins like blood. Those violet eyes and the dull tone to them weren’t natural, Scott thought. Shelby had told him snippets about what had caused Avid to go begging for a cure from her. She told him that it was something magical in nature. He had told him that he thought it was a vampire before Shelby was turned. She told him that he had gotten it when he was very young and it had only gotten worse. She told him that he thought he was going to die by the time her fangs had pierced his skin and replaced his blood with her own vitae.
The longer Scott looked into those unnaturally violet eyes the more the pain faded from his head until even the last vestiges of the whispers disappeared like dust in the wind.
Clever, he thought. Whatever magic had brought him to this time had its own plans, it seemed. Plans it bound him to with a spike dangling above his head as a threat. Make him reliant on Avid. Save Avid. It was clear from the start that this force, this magic, this possessive creature that invaded his mind was set on saving Avid from the fate of a wooden stake through his chest, claws rending his skin and leaving him as dust on the floor of a hole he never had a hope of clawing his own way out of. Clever, he thought, keeping the ironic chuckle deep in his chest as those violet eyes stared down at him in apparent concern. A cleverness he could work with. This force was intelligent. Perhaps not as intelligent as him but intelligent enough to form concrete plans, lines in the sand. They could work together on this, not that he had much of a choice in following its lead.
“I’m fine,” Scott said, letting go of the doctor’s now wrinkled robes. He made a move to smooth them out like curtains but stopped short, remembering that he had been clinging onto a man and not sturdy walls. He used his own strength to get himself to his feet, refusing the offered hands of both Legs and Avid to guide him up. With what little grace he could muster in the wake of searing pain he brushed more dust off of his vest. “Just a headache.”
“Must’ve been a killer headache,” Martyn said, stepping closer than he had any need to. “You were practically writhing in pain. You whined like a baby about it too.”
Embarrassing, truly. Never in his life had he let such a display of clear weakness show in front of anyone, let alone commoners. He barely kept his face from scrunching up in disgust at the idea of that level of vulnerability. Instead, he gave a light, dismissive laugh and took a step back from the circle, where Avid was standing no more than two inches from him and not making any moves to get out of his personal space. His hand finally fell from where it laid on Scott’s shoulder and he suppressed the urge to wipe off his presence. As endearing as he found him toward the end, he was still covered in sweat and dirt from a trip who knows how long
“It comes and goes,” he said vaguely.
“Here.” A strand of garlic bulbs was shoved into his empty hands, the horrid smell burning his nostrils and making a wave of nausea hit him, not very pleasant right after almost dropping from pain. He couldn’t stop his face this time from curling in displeasure.
“Can I have some of that?” Martyn called, leaning forward in curiosity at the nasty trinket Avid had so graciously bestowed upon Scott.
“Sure!” Avid practically skipped across the circle, holding out a few stray bulbs, the skin flaking off into his hands and sticking to the sweat there. Martyn took the herbs, outwardly pouting as he looked between his meager gift compared to the loop Avid had decided was Scott’s to keep.
“What is this?” Drift called, wandering into the church tower, avoiding every pebble with almost practiced ease, not even looking to the ground that could easily trip her up.
“We’re not sure,” Legs said, hanging back by Scott’s side, seemingly catching on to the wary looks he was giving the crumbling facade. “Every time someone gets close to it-”
“Woah!” Avid exclaimed, watching as a feathery strand of golden light reached out from the core of the beacon toward his hand, placed flat on its surface. The golden spirit bathed the remaining walls in its warm light, emanating out as if inviting the group inside. “Check this out!”
The others, Scott and Legs aside, didn’t hesitate to risk their own skin and touch the mysterious, clearly magical object that could easily, he didn’t know, explode into shattering glass? Their hands joined Avid’s on the surface of the beacon, each joined by the fibers of holy essence deep within its core. Each second that passed the golden lights stained the pale core more and more, twisting like a ball of string.
“Come consecrate with us!” Avid called out to him and Legs, that overly excited grin splitting his face from ear to ear. A foreign ache curled around Scott’s chest and settled in his throat, almost convincing him to join them before thinking better of it.
“I don’t trust that,” he said, taking another step back to get the tower more in his sights. “I don’t want that thing crashing down on me.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s perfectly safe,” Martyn said, an almost sarcastic tone lacing his words, though he didn’t bother stepping out of the danger either.
“Yeah, no. If that thing finally gives up and crushes you all to death, don't come crying to me.”
“What about you, doc?” Martyn turned his attention toward Legs at his side. “Scared of a bit of rubble.”
“Uh…” Legs’ eyes traced the evidence of its instability scattered across the ground. “Someone should stay out here in case you get injured.”
“You’re both a couple of wusses.”
In the corner of his eye Scott sees a different group gathered closer to the town’s edge, each of them twisting with excitement, eyes alight as they chattered on. In that group was Shelby, a soft smile gracing her face as she talked excitedly to whatever people were willing to listen to her wild ramblings, words flowing from her mouth like water. Her cold glasses reflected the scattered sunlight, obscuring her features to make her seem even more wide-eyed and eager. She bounced on her heels, unable to keep still for even a moment.
He tucked the strand of garlic away, not quite able to convince himself to just discard the rancid charm, at least not where Avid could see him do so. As the group of partial lunatics continued to bicker over the holy beacon, Scott wandered toward the other group of also partial lunatics.
“-Pearl, and I lost my entire family, and now I’m gonna set up in an entirely new place and new life.”
Right, he had forgotten just how forthcoming these humans pretended to be. Perhaps the amount of secrets that kept close to their chest made them believe the things they did decide to reveal weren’t odd to say out loud to complete strangers they met in the middle of nowhere. It was only compared to them that Scott’s story from the first day fell flat. In any other company his reasoning would sound completely logical.
He settled easily into the group without giving a contributing word. He let an empty smile sit on his face as he took in the group before him. He didn’t think he made an amazing impression on the group of them, if any impression at all. He knew that Ren wasn’t fond of him but he didn’t think he could avoid it this time either. The cursed man seemed to decide his opinion upon just looking at Scott’s fancy clothes.
Scott’s eyes settled on the figure approaching the group at the same time as his. A familiar, almost sickly pale face with an eager disposition and just as pale blue eyes. Pyro, a man who seemed so weak upon first meeting. A young man fresh from the city, impressionable and easy to frighten. Maybe that was his mistake, assuming that the fledgling wouldn’t bite when backed into a corner. With hindsight he knew that wasn’t true. Even upon draining him he should’ve known better, known not to push a man already once pushed to his limit. A man he knew would kill if he felt his hand was forced, even if he was wrong about whose grip was around his throat. A scowl pulled at Scott’s serene expression, nearly presenting itself for the group to see and judge him upon, as Pyro joined their group with that insufferable pep to his step.
“I know, sorry to drop- I know it’s heavy!” Pearl said, holding her hands up in a mock surrender after seeing the shocked expressions of the group around her. “Don’t worry about it, it’s fine. It was a looong time ago.”
“I like it,” Shelby said, saddling up next to Scott as if welcoming him into their conversation further. “We feel close already. We can all share! My dad was killed by a werewolf. I think.”
Scott looked to her, following her erratic movements. He opened his mouth to speak before a twist of red caught his eye. As the glint of sunlight fell away from her glasses he saw her eyes for the first time, and in their pale yellow of her iris he could’ve sworn, for little more than a moment between blinks, that he saw a swirl of red around her pupil. And just like that it was gone.
“Are you the one looking for werewolves, then?” he asked, looking her up and down. How had she survived on her own for so long before coming here? How long since her dad had disappeared into the woods? She had complained on end how everyone thought she was crazy before she left, not mentioning quite what they thought of her missing father.
“Yes, I am!” Her gaze was sharp as she returned his appraising look. When her eyes finally met with his they felt as piercing as Cleo’s calculating looks. “Really any kind of creature. Werewolves, fairies, spirits, anything really.”
Her eyes landed on his mouth, his hands, and then back up to his eyes. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, right? He didn’t recall her suspecting him from the start. Well, perhaps she suspected he was something called “bigfoot.” Something she hadn’t mentioned yet. Wasn’t she supposed to have mentioned it by now, causing the rest of the town to write her off as just as insane as Avid? Though the insistence on werewolves didn’t seem to get her much further than bigfoot.
“Not, like, vampires or anything, like in this guy’s books.” Shelby gestured toward Mr. M, as if presenting him to the group. “He’s famous, you know.”
Mr. M opened his flapping mouth to boast about his literature, his extensive fantasy works he claimed were based on real stories, though his chattering was interrupted before it could begin by a deep, pulsing sound that echoed through the chests of every being, living or dead, in the town walls. Their vision went dark, clouded by the strengthening holy spirits. In the dim light, only if one really looked toward the beacon in the center of town, one could see golden motes of light flying out from the tower and off into the distance, each to land deep in the tombs scattered across the domain. Scott could taste the familiar, sour taste of consecrated ground. It felt like bile in the back of his throat, like an ill prepared meal come back to haunt him. He felt his limbs grow heavy, as if lead poured through his veins. With the weight in his veins came the hunger, gnawing at him like a rabid animal, pulling at his limbs as the beacon ate away at his vitae.
Beside him, he heard Shelby utter a sharp, tutting noise. He looked back to her as the darkness fell from his vision and presumably from the vision of all of the others. Her eyes were narrowed at the church tower.
“What was that?” she asked, her tone clipped.
“They were doing some kind of magic circle over there,” Scott said as some of their numbers moved toward the ever-inviting warmth and glow the beacon offered human, pure life. “I don’t mess with that nonsense. None of that spiritual magic stuff.”
“I do,” she said with none of the enthusiasm as something that magical deserved from a person as curious as Shelby.
She followed on the heels of the other humans, rushing forward to catch up. In a previous life Scott would have hung back, opting to stay away from the very thing that threatened to trap him in this horrid, dead place. In a previous life he had no qualms about standing aside and introducing himself to Pyro and Renhardt. In this life he instead opted to move forward, following in Shelby’s step and joining the eager, fluttering humans around their town’s core.
“We consecrated!” Avid cheered, bouncing like an excited child, eyes brighter than they had been only moments before.
Scott stayed on the outskirts of the group, keeping in line with his previous qualms about the stability of the tower. Legs still stayed away from the beacon, watching with a careful eye like a stiff breeze could knock the one thing down on top of every one of them. Scott kept his eyes on the beacon and the clamour inside that, in truth oddly stable, church tower. The voices of the town melded into a cacophony of nonsense that was near impossible to parse full conversations out of. He could catch stray phrases, worried words. Talk about the dangers of messing with something like the artifact before them. Fascination with the sparks of holy energy that swirled around the base of the beacon like fluttering fairies. Excitement at the warmth the beacon gave off, blazing warm like a fire was held inside the glass. The pure potential energy in the object was a sight in itself.
“I don’t know if it was a good thing. Whatever happened it felt like the sun was blotted out.”
His eyes snapped to the pessimistic voice, a man he assumed had stayed on the outskirts of the town for much longer than he apparently did. There he stood, a scowl painted permanently onto his face, unkempt hair falling into his eyes, and a silver axe strapped to his back, a weapon more than a tool. There was Owen, a corpse that crawled out of his own grave, as petulant as a teenager waking from a nap and all the grace of one too. Without another word, the man wandered off again, backing away from the overbearing noise of the humans he claimed to despise. Despised so much he decided to give them the upper hand, Scott thought bitterly. With him followed several more skeptical members of the group, the lot of them heading toward the outer wall with stone tools slung over their shoulders. That scowl never fell from his face even as he introduced himself in a somewhat friendly tone.
“What do you think it is?”
Scott turned back toward that insidious device, the warmth of the beacon licking at his ankles like a growing brush fire. He hadn’t expected anyone to linger there, despite its inviting aura. He had expected them to fan out and start collecting supplies to rebuild this decrepit town. Last time he had joined them, wandering into the forest to gather firewood and coal to light up the dark corners of the town, just as worried about the encroaching undead sapping his life away as the humans were. This time around he didn’t plan to be nearly as charitable. It hadn’t gotten him any grace the first time after all. As far as they knew he was completely incapable of manual labor.
In that tower, away from the worker ants, were a small group of crazy people who stared at him expectantly.
“Were you asking me?”
Shelby and Drift sat on the precarious steps, shoulders touching. Shelby’s legs swung in an inaudible rhythm, the soles of her shoes barely avoiding scraping against the sharper glass edges of the beacon, less than an inch of clearance. Drift stayed oddly still compared to her companions, hands set politely in her lap. Scott didn’t previously think that she was from money but her mannerisms suggested a proper upbringing the other two weren’t privileged enough to even witness. Avid moved the most, bouncing on his heels, hand braced on the beacon’s warm surface as if touching the artifact for longer would bestow more golden light into its swirling core. Or maybe his hands were just cold.
“Yeah,” Drift confirmed, having been the one to ask him in the first place. “Any ideas? Shelby said it was probably fairies.”
“Not a clue. Probably some religious nonsense.” He glanced toward Avid who was still bouncing like an excitable rabbit. “You said something about it being consecrated?”
“Yes!” He finally took his hands off the beacon and took to pacing around the small room as Scott finally joined them under its roof. Avid’s eyes darted around the room, snapping to breaks in the stone where he could see the rest of the town and the steady labor of the others. His eyes held a spark, an echo of the manic edge he had when fully embracing the eternity before him. “This whole place is known to be supernatural! They say that two hundred years ago every man, woman, and child in this town died to a creature of the night!”
“Well don’t sound so excited about it,” Drift murmured with a light huff of a laugh.
“So, what?” Scott asked. “A zombie plague killed the whole town?”
“Oh! Cleo said that the whole town died to plague,” Shelby said.
“No, no, not zombies,” Avid said, rolling his eyes, annoyed that they didn’t share the exact same thought pattern as him. “Vampires!”
Out of his belt, Avid pulled out a sharpened stake, the bark still flaking off of the dry wood, catching on the fabric of his pants and risking embedding splinters into his hand. The exposed pulp of the wood was stained in a dark but faded red, as if dye had been soaked into its structure and had been slowly washed or worn away by time. Scott could smell the blood for what it truly was, though its normally sweet and inviting scent had an acrid sting curling around the sharp iron notes. It smelled like the blood of a plague victim, or worse, the blood of some annoying witch. Ew.
“Why do you have that?” Drift asked, leaning backward slightly and risking tumbling backwards off of the stairs. Shelby put a hand on her knee to stabilize her.
“I- It’s to kill vampires.”
“Why is it bloody?” Shelby asked, her nose scrunching up.
“Well- it’s-”
“Did you kill someone, Avid?” Drift asked in a hushed tone, glancing at the cracks in the tower.
“She attacked me! I- I had to defend myself!”
“Everyone calm down,” Scott interrupted, he sighed and brought a hand to his temple, rubbing it as if he had an oncoming headache from their bickering. “Avid, put that thing away before you get splinters.”
Avid’s movements were stuttered and awkward, nearly dropping the stake to the ground instead of slotting it into a loop in his belt where it hung like prayer beads.
“If… if she attacked you then…” Drift started, glancing at Shelby and Scott for help she wasn’t going to get. “Are you sure you didn’t defend yourself against a person?”
Shelby elbowed Drift, just lightly, admonishing.
“She- she wouldn’t have done that,” Avid said, voice lowering to something just above a whisper. “Something, a vampire, bit her and- and when she got back she…”
Scott heard a faint whisper behind him, he could practically feel their breath on his neck. He kept himself from visibly jolting but snapped his head back to confront whoever snuck up on him. To his dismay, no one was there, and he heard another. When he looked back toward the group he was thankful that none of them seemed to notice his sudden movements. Another whisper, louder. And another. He dug his nails into the palms of his hands, gritting his teeth against the threat of another blinding pain. Sooner than he could process the whispers dissipated again and he had missed half of the conversation to his mind playing tricks on him. Or whatever being had lodged a geas in his mind.
“We should go out and get some wood so we can build that house before dark,” Avid said to Drift who now stood closer to him instead of up on the stairs where Shelby still sat. He seemed in better spirits somehow. His mood tended to fluctuate rapidly. “See you guys later! Don’t forget to eat your garlic!”
Avid took off toward one of the gates with a crude stone axe clutched in one hand. Drift followed on his heels, shouting back at him to wait up as she slung a leather pack over her shoulder.
That left just Shelby and Scott in the warm hum of the beacon. Admittedly, the warmth was nice, especially with his clothes still just slightly damp. He came as close as he could to the beacon without touching it and risking starting to desecrate its holy presence with the entire town potentially watching him. Including Shelby, who stared at him with a deeply uncomfortable intensity.
“I picked a spot for our house,” she finally said.
“Our house?” Scott asked. He didn’t remember her being so forward. Could something as small as engaging in a conversation like this cause that much of a change so quickly? He needed to be careful about that before he lost track of the human’s movements entirely.
Shelby stayed quiet for a bit. Her eyes darted around the room, her brow creasing as she thought, teeth worrying her lip. “Yeah,” she said, drawing out the vowels. “I need someone to watch my back so the werewolves don’t get me too.”
“Have you figured out if there are any in the woods?”
“Not yet but I have a feeling some people in town aren’t being quite truthful with me.”
With how intently she had been seemingly analyzing him for the past few hours he expected her gaze to fall to him once again. Instead, her eyes darted to the woods. It couldn’t be clear who she was thinking of with more than half the town having disappeared to gather supplies.
She looked back to him with an excited grin. “I think there’s, like, a mimic or bigfoot, and I’m gonna discover it and make it big. I’m gonna get rich.”
“There’s a lot to unpack with that sentence.”
“People say that a lot when they meet me.” For a moment her shoulders seemed to sag slightly, as if she had been holding a tension in her back up until now. It wouldn’t be surprising if it was, she did seem as paranoid as their dear Avid, he just didn’t know how his presence would relax that paranoia at all. “That or they say I’m crazy.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” The words fell off his tongue with a familiar ease. “I’d say other things, but not that.”
“Nice things?”
“...Sure!”
Scott looked at the giant hole in the wall, glancing at the ruined bit of a house he knew she would erect a little cottage. He should probably find more sheep for a bed this time. The insomnia was a bit of a giveaway for the vampirism in retrospect. It was one of the many reasons Avid wouldn’t get off his back in the beginning. Along with Shelby disappearing randomly into the forest without telling anyone except Scott where she went but he thinks Avid already had assumed he was a vampire by then and was just throwing around random accusations as “proof.”
“What of these shacks are you taking?”
“We are taking that little one by the crypt,” she said, hopping down from the stairs next to the beacon.
She pointed toward a dilapidated pile of wooden rubble that was slightly smaller than the other dilapidated piles of wooden rubble. He didn’t quite remember how it looked the first time except that the roof had micro bangs and Avid didn’t like that it had a back door because it could potentially let vampires in. While he wasn’t wrong, because it was a good way for Scott to avoid that pesky silver block Avid had placed under their door, it’s not like a back door was exempt from the “asking for permission” rule. He also remembered that she had stolen mud bricks from his crypt to decorate the floors.
“You seem very set on this “we” business,” he said.
Shelby pouted outwardly, crossing her arms in front of her. “So you don’t want to be bestie roommates with me?” she asked.
“Shelby, we’ve known each other for, like, a day.”
“No better way to become besties than to have to be around each other even when we sleep!”
She strided toward the ruin like that wasn’t a completely insane thing to be saying. He followed after. He wasn’t going to not room with her, of course. He needed to stay with someone until he moved back into his castle (and built the whole thing from the ground up again without a hopelessly loyal fledgling to do the dirty work) and Shelby had been an… okay roommate. She was much weirder before she got turned, which isn’t how it usually would work but you can’t make crazy much crazier. He did plan to turn her again. She was one of the only people in this wretched town that he actually could stand.
“As long as I don’t have to do most of the work,” he said.
“If you could just grab a couple small, itty bitty materials for me, though.”
“You’re actually going to make me, me, do work.”
“Only a little! I promise!”
Shelby held out her pinkie, leaning forward into his space more than he was strictly comfortable with. He looked at her offered pinkie, leaning back as much as he could without bending his back at a sharp angle. She had taught him about pinkie promises before. It was a childlike way to swear on something. Much less messy than a blood oath, though also less binding. It’s not as if it actually mattered whether or not she was going to keep her word on that.
He linked his pinkie with hers. Her skin was cold against his, chilled by the autumn wind that billowed through the town, tosseling her hair. Her smile widened into something innocent and bright. She unlinked their hands and threw hers up in the air.
“Yay!” she cheered loud enough to echo out of town. “We’re gonna be roomies!”
Shelby had made him go out with the other peasants and chop wood. Like a laborer. He wasn’t sure if in her eyes being a lumberjack was only a small amount of work or if she didn’t care about her own pinkie promise but he was surprised at how quick she was to order him around like a dog. He told himself that he only gave in because the time sent out into the woods to fend for himself like the survivalist he was not gave him ample time to feed on the wandering livestock without anyone badgering him for killing all of them or noticing the way he ripped into raw flesh with his teeth. Also to get wood, because Shelby would likely be suspicious of him if he came back after hours of “work” with nothing to show for it besides a satchel of raw meat and a handkerchief stained with animal blood.
By the time he had wandered back to town, remembering both that the humans were not yet brave enough to venture into the darkness of the night and to not overindulge this first night as he had the first time around, the red moon was rising into that dark, dark sky. Not a star was visible overhead. He remembered spending hours on his balcony, centuries ago now, sketching star charts in his notebooks by the pale light of the moon and its companions. The gloom that curtained the cursed land shadowed those stars completely, rendering the night dark and full of terrors ready to rend one’s flesh from their bones, and he wasn’t just talking about himself.
As he approached the town he could feel the fluttering, panicked heartbeats of the humans within his own flesh. They called out to him, blood pumping into their extremities, begging for his fangs to latch onto their wrists and drain their very being into his veins, the fear soaking into their blood in its sweet, addicting allure. For humans, the smell of fear, the sweat and quick breathes, the shaking limbs as their blood circulated rapidly throughout their system like a galloping horse, smelled rotten and wrong. For the creatures of the night that fed on their fluttering hearts it smelled like a meal, like a satisfying hunt. Their flesh was a different story altogether, unfortunately. He knew humans felt the same about how tough and unpleasant muscles filled with panicked tension was, working to keep their own livestock happy and calm. It was a sacrifice Scott had been willing to make when he ruled over their land with an iron fist. Most of the time. He couldn’t help but indulge in that fear as sweet as syrup from time to time. He was glad he was no longer starving, else he dragged one of their numbers into the woods to drain them to dust under his claws.
Doing so would ruin his plans, though. Apparently, it would ruin them enough that the icy sword of Damocles hanging above his head thought to further its threats, pressing into the fragile flesh of his temple with an almost excited tremble. Whispers pressed into his skull with it. Not intense, not overbearing, but he could hear them leak into his head like water with the feeling of the spike piercing him, a crack in the hull.
He shivered, stepping through one of the theoretical gates in the wall nearest to the crypt. The darkness of the night had already graced every inch of the town. It was a miracle that it hadn’t been already overrun by the undead at the snail’s pace they were lighting up the darkest corners of the walls. A few motes of firelight traced the paths between the houses, sparking from weak torches embedded into the packed earth.
“I don’t like it at all,” a grating voice called from one of the ruins next to the catacombs. “It’s so gloomy.”
Shelby huffed, stabilizing one of the walls of her- their home. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, catching her breath from exertion. Behind her, Pyro was rambling on about the darkness of the night and the blood red moon that was cradled in the arms of the night sky.
“Yeah?” she asked, her voice taking on a mocking lilt that, while not entirely unfamiliar, felt wrong in the moment. She kept her back to Pyro, looking over the barely stable four walls of the house like a blueprint was sketching itself out behind her eyes. “You think a vampire is gonna get’cha?”
“What?” he cried. “No! I’m not like- like Avid. I’m not crazy.”
Scott walked up to them, a bundle of wood cradled in his arms and leaving fibers trapped in the fabric of his jacket. He had wrapped the wood in it, thinking it easier to get the splinters out of the stronger material than the softer, more pliable sleeves of his shirt.
“You sound just as paranoid,” he said, casting a sidelong glance at Pyro, the way he was fidgeting with his hands, looking around as if something was going to come up behind him and drag him away. Even without considering the active threat in front of his eyes he wasn’t exactly wrong. Scott could hear the distant sounds of yelling and panic as others fought off the hordes of the undead at the other walls.
“I’m not paranoid,” Pyro insisted, shoving his hands in his pockets upon noticing Scott’s eyes on them. “I have a healthy fear of the things that go bump in the night.”
Shelby snorted, hopping down from a half erected wall. She gingerly took the bundle of wood from Scott, unwrapping the jacket from the materials and taking an absent moment to brush some surface splinters from the fabric. “You’re practically shaking in your boots. At least Avid is trying to do something about it.”
Pyro’s face turned from a nervous, tense pull, to a twisted scowl, nose scrunching up like he smelt something foul on the air. “I’m not scared,” he insisted, entirely unconvincing. “Just because you two are acting like there aren’t hordes of zombies doesn’t mean you’re being reasonable.”
The sour man stomped away, like a child. Immature, malleable. Maybe with Owen out of the picture Scott could shape Pyro into a proper fledgling, one that would listen to their sire properly. No, he couldn’t risk it, he thought. The man had a jealous streak a mile wide and he wasn’t going to put himself in its path. Let someone else turn the man instead.
“The house is coming along well,” he said, turning back to Shelby who was sorting through the wood he had gathered.
“Yeah,” she said, sighing. “It should be done by tomorrow night. I hope. It’s not gonna be much, though. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Are either of you opposed to me building a town mine here?”
Scott and Shelby both jumped, shoulders tensing. They turned to the man behind them in a mirrored movement. Even without powers of invisibility Owen had a habit of sneaking up on people, whether intentional or not. The way he blended into the shadows was uncanny, especially for a vampire of his limited experience. As far as Scott could tell none of Owen’s original rampage had been something one would describe as “stealthy.” It was likely something he had to do far before being turned, shying away from those who would see him a plague-bearer or a curse. Owen wasn’t looking at them as he spoke but there was no one else around that he could be talking to. He only turned to them when neither of them answered his nonsensical question.
“In… the crypt?” Scott asked, raising a brow. “There seem to be plenty of caves surrounding the town. Why in there?”
Owen shrugged, looking back toward the building in question. “It would be easier to not have to go outside of the walls to get more stone and silver.”
“I mean, it should be fine,” Shelby said, turning her focus into fitting the windows with glass — where in the land had she gotten that so quickly? — instead of the figure haunting their doorstep. “Just don’t build it directly under our house.”
“Oh, you’re both living here?”
“Scott didn’t want to build it himself.”
“Huh.”
The three of them went as quiet as the night should have been. In the distance, they could all hear Avid screeching about silver and its mystical, protective properties while the rest argued about the state of his sanity. Scott knew Cleo was in that group, a scowl on her face as always when someone had brought up the idea of vampires. She knew exactly how right Avid was in his suspicions. She likely knew about the vampiric origins of Oakhearst itself, lying through her teeth about a plague and a disbelief in the supernatural. Scott himself didn’t have a clue she believed in even common folklore before coming to this town until well after she had been turned. Every sentence that came out of her mouth was a carefully constructed lie. He’d have to watch for that. He wasn’t yet sure if she would be better on his side immediately or after a few weeks. He certainly wasn’t going to be the one to turn her, though. He would suspect her ideas of having a sire were similar to his, to eliminate them as a potential threat.
Though, Scott had a different concern; the man standing before him, cast in the red glow of the rising moon, nails digging into his calloused palms with an itch to kill the entire town, to make them fear the dark that surrounded them. How he held in his unstable nature for as long as he had was far past Scott’s knowledge. What he did know is that the man wouldn’t have to keep up that poorly constructed facade for long.
“Do you want help?” Scott asked, grabbing a silver pickaxe and slinging it over his shoulder.
Shelby cast him an odd look, brow raised. He wasn’t surprised. Willingly doing labor? Now why would he do that? He had a passing thought about her being suspicious of his sudden change in attitude but the details weren’t important anymore. If she was suspicious of him he would cross that bridge when he came to it. She had every right to be, after all. Her and Avid both.
“Yeah, why not,” Owen said, shrugging.
He made his way leisurely toward the stairs of the crypt, going down into the depths of the ancient structure. He didn't walk with purpose or in any kind of hurry. He almost seemed bored of every little thing he did, doing it just for the sake of doing it. Scott huffed tensely through his nose and took a single step toward the darkened crypt.
“Scott, wait.”
He turned to Shelby, raising a brow. Her face was dark before him, no smile gracing her features. The excited spark that normally lit up those in her presence was gone, dulled and as absent as her expression. Her eyes were glued to the crypt, fixed on where the last glimpses of Owen had dipped under the overhanging stairs. Gaze steady, she reached into her pockets.
At first, Scott thought she was pulling out torches. A helpful tool, something to light up the dark and dangerous caves the two of them were sure to break into. He knew they could, knew the cave of the mine would eventually lead down into and of the bountiful supply of coal and silver that laid in its cradle. He didn’t plan to get that far. He wouldn’t need those torches.
She held the wooden object out in front of her, though, and it was clear what she was really offering to him.
“Take this with you,” she ordered, not suggested, voice soft and quiet, barely above a whisper.
In her hand was a sharpened wooden stake. It looked new, as if carved that day from a live, wet branch pulled from an aging tree. It was sharper than the dulled, awkward thing that Avid wielded, pulled into a cruel point.
Scott smiled. “Dont tell me Avid is starting to convince you vampires are real,” he said despite taking the stake in hand. “You think some bloodthirsty thing is going to attack me down there?”
Her gaze snapped quite suddenly from the crypt, her eyes meeting with his. There was no humor in them, no levity. She hadn’t let go of the stake yet, instead pressing it further into Scott’s hand, affirming he had a grip on the weapon.
“I just don’t trust him.”
The stairs leading down into the crypt were more stable than any of the other structures in Oakhearst. Whether that was because they weren’t exposed to the elements like the rest of it or because Owen didn’t feel a need to destroy what had been originally nothing more than a tomb was uncertain. It made the trip down into the darkness, the final resting place, that much easier.
In the pitch black of the tomb, Owen worked away at the stone walls, just past a pedestal holding a wooden chest in pristine condition, as if protected from the influence of the passing centuries. Scott knew those chests were touched by the light of the holy spirits, maybe not in as good of a condition before the holy beacon was activated. He knew they were filled with holy texts anytime you turned your back to them, threatening his life with just a word, a swing of a lantern. How long had the spirits plagued this land, laying in wait? What were they waiting for? For Owen to crawl out of his own grave? For Scott to wake from his sleep? He laughed to himself, just barely audible against the echoing walls. They were likely for himself. Owen was barely a threat compared to him, compared to the power he wielded over the original people of this land. Two thousand seven hundred ninety nine people, barely a drop in the pond of blood that had soaked these lands for over a thousand years before he was even a thought in his mother’s head.
Scott set the pickaxe down on the ground. Why should he bother pretending? There was no reason to try, no reason to hold back. He was far below the ground now, down where only the muffled sounds of their voices reached the very top of the crypt stairs.
The man before him, that drop in the pond, was the source of every single one of his problems since waking. Convinced that he could never belong, convinced that no one besides his long-dead love would accept him. He called himself the fangs and claws of that allegedly benevolent man. He dragged Scott’s own fledgling into that hole of fear, feeding on a feeling Pyro had since he was young. It was easy for Owen to do when he was so sure of it himself. For weeks he had threatened the town, boasted about how he would rip each one of them to shreds, blamed every last one of the humans for the death of his love.
Owen should thank Scott, really. If he missed his love so badly would it not be better to join him in whatever afterlife there was for creatures like them?
“I want to be clear about something,” Scott said, striding through the crypt. He tossed the stake from one hand to the other, feeling its weight. “What I’m about to do isn’t personal. Not yet.”
Owen stopped in his work and turned his head, his face the picture of perfect confusion. Even in the dark Scott could see the twist of red in his eyes as he looked at what could be a potential meal. That red coiled in his iris before disappearing with the sliver of control Owen still had over himself.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“It’s a preventative measure, really.”
Scott stalked closer, gripping the stake tight in his hand off-hand, splinters digging into his palm and ripping the skin. Pin-pricks of dark vitae seeped from his hand. Owen’s gaze dropped to it, to the weapon, to his undoing.
“Why do you have that?”
“What I’m doing really is a mercy,” Scott went on, coming closer, boxing him in. “You don’t want to be alive without him, do you?” Owen’s eyes snapped wildly around, at Scott, at the stake, at the exit that seemed so far away now. “Living forever with what you did. Living with that knowledge, deep down, that he wouldn’t be proud of you. That he wouldn’t love the monster you had become at the slightest provocation.”
“How-” Owen’s grip tightened on the pickaxe, the silver gleaming in the pale torchlight. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not some kind of monster.”
“Oh, but you are.”
Scott’s boot impacted the center of Owen’s chest in a flash of movement. His back hit the stone wall behind him. The pickaxe clattered to the ground as he slid down, sliding away from him. He grunted, pained, the false breath pushed from his shriveled lungs.
“I don’t know whether I should truly be mad at you.” Scott kicked the pickaxe further away from Owen, keeping it far away from his reach. He reached into his pocket, feeling the icy bite of silver that weighed heavy there. “You haven’t yet made the decisions that led me here. You haven’t even thought of them. But, at the end of the day, you’re a loose end.”
“Wait, no-”
A piercing scream of pain cut through the holy air as that silver promise embedded itself into the soft flesh of Owen’s shoulder. Dark vitae dribbled from the wound, sinking into the fabric of his shirt. A sizzling sound echoed with it, the cold metal burning his flesh. His clothes really were nice. Scott wondered, absently, if they were a gift from his love all those years ago. They certainly weren’t befitting of a lumberjack banished to the outskirts of the realm.
Owen sucked in a pained, tense breath through his teeth. His hand grabbed at his shoulder, attempting to take the weapon out himself. Before he could get a grip on it, Scott ripped it out of him as violently as he had plunged it in. Owen choked, shoulder slumping as the arm went numb from the silver working through his veins.
“How did you-” he gasped in pain, eyes blurring with bloodied tears. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t the first time.” Scott knelt down with his legs on either side of Owen’s, a twisted mirror of intimacy. He leaned close, resting the already bloodied tip of the chisel against Owen’s windpipe, the silver just barely scraping open the sink. More vitae leaked from the shallow wound, soaking into his collar. “I didn’t find out until we both tried to turn that beacon. The one in the dead forest you crawled out of.” Owen looked confused again, Scott’s words didn’t make any sense from the eyes of one who had only been dragged through his hell before them once. “You see, I’ve been here, under your feet, since you walked this domain as a child.”
Scott pressed the chisel into Owen’s throat, piercing the windpipe. If vampires needed to breathe Owen would already be clawing at death’s door. As it was though, Scott took the stake in his other hand and pressed it against the flesh above his heart. He gasped, pain lancing through his body from the tip of the spear. Fear filled his eyes, vitae spilled from the wounds decorating his flesh. For the first time in over two hundred years Owen felt fear. Scott could taste it. His eyes searched Scott’s face for a meaning that made sense. He reminded Scott of a fly, of a butterfly with its wings pinned.
“It’s nice to meet you, Owen. I’m Scott Goldsmith, and I will graciously let you die by my own hand.”
The stake sunk in further, meeting muscle, dancing against bone. Vitae poured from his mouth.
“Please-”
“Say hello to your sire for me.”
The sound of a vampire dying is never nice on the ears. Whether it’s from fire or from a stake driven through their long dead heart. It’s an unnatural sound. It’s nothing like the dying cries of cattle or of birds shot from the sky. It’s twisting and wrong, a cacophony of souls layering on top of itself, escaping their bloodied throat. It was louder than it had any right to be, loud enough that it might shatter one’s eardrums, might cause blood to seep from their ears. The older one was, the more humans felled by their claws and fangs, the more unholy the sound was to listen to.
Scott’s eardrums couldn’t burst from the sound but he did hear ringing as if they had. His vision tunneled as Owen’s vitae splattered against his clothes, the little blood left from those people he had killed, drained, slaughtered with a righteous hand, bursting from his rotten heart. Scott felt the heavy weight of death in his chest, thick in his throat like mucus. It wasn’t easy to kill another vampire. The death of their kin rang out to all of those that shared the embrace within the domain and weighed heavy on what was left of their soul. It coiled like a curse.
The ringing, though, wasn’t normal. Scott had never had to fell another vampire but he did know that the whispers that twisted, curled around his brain, weren’t a natural part of the process. They shot off like sparks, lighting up corners of his brain like a version of pure dopamine hitting his system. He felt warmth down to his fingertips as the vitae that stained his fingertips flaked off and turned to dust that collected on the cold stone floor. The being that brought him here rejoiced in the kill, in the quick decomposition of the unholy being at his feet. It rewarded him for it, driving away the heavy weight of death from his chest. Scott smiled, watching the frozen look of pain on Owen’s face start to decompose before his eyes.
“Scott?” a voice cut through the deadly silence of the crypt, Owen’s crypt, the plague’s final resting place.
His eyes snapped toward the stairs, vivid blue eyes cutting through the darkness. At the foot of the stairs was a shaking figure, a torch in one unstable hand and a stake in the other.
Avid watched as the body under Scott slowly, tortuously crumbled into a black dust. It worked from where the stake had pierced his soul, his very being, outward, working at his bones like a vulture at a carcass. They both sat in the silence of the dead as what was left of the vampire before them turned to ash under Scott’s fingertips, under the stake he still held tightly in his hand.