Chapter Text
An hour before James left the house, Regulus finally called him. James was so relieved to see his name pop up on his phone that he nearly dropped his cell trying to answer it.
“Regulus?” he breathed.
“James,” Regulus responded. His voice sent a zing up James’s spine, his stomach tightened at the sound.
“I miss you. Are you okay?” James said quickly, forcing the words out through chattering teeth. Regulus's presence, even through the phone, made adrenaline surge through his body.
“I’m okay. I’m coming to get you,” Regulus said simply. He sounded somber, as if he was admitting defeat.
“You are?” James asked, momentarily forgetting that he couldn’t be here when Regulus arrived. For just a second, he felt excitement. Dread was quick to follow.
“Yes,” Regulus said with a sigh. “We can’t find Dolohov, he’s left the area, and I can’t stay separate from you forever. I’m going to come get you and then—” He paused for a moment. “Then we’re going to go somewhere, just you and I. I’m going to keep you safe, I promise.”
James felt himself melt, he slouched down on his bed and let the hole in his chest open a little bit. “Okay,” he whispered.
“James, I—”
James waited for him to finish, he waited for him to speak. When he didn’t, James said, “What is it?”
Regulus sighed sharply through his nose. “Nothing. I—I’ll tell you when I get there.”
“Okay,” James said easily. “When will that be?” He smiled as he asked it, imagining Regulus appearing at the end of his bed, grinning sharply, his white teeth all on display.
“Tonight. I’m leaving now.”
James felt deceptively calm as he hung up. He’d been waiting for the right moment, but he needed to move soon if Regulus was going to be here in a few short hours. It was already mid-afternoon. James wondered if Regulus would be running or driving.
James went to search the house, finding it empty and quiet, unsettlingly so. He found a note from Lily on the table, she and Pandora had run out again, off on one of their mysterious errands. Now was the time, he decided. He hadn’t settled on any one thing, he didn’t know how to work around Pandora’s power, but he tried to be as vague with his future plans as possible until the last minute.
He hurried quickly down the stairs from the floor his bedroom was on, deciding at the last moment that he wouldn’t try to walk down the mountain. Someone would find him, they would catch up to him, that or he would freeze to death in the time it took him to figure out where he was going.
He headed toward the garage instead, swiping a set of keys off the wall as he went. They were all hung up right next to the garage door, nice and neat, as if they knew he would be looking for them. He was steps away from one of the cars when Narcissa moved. She’d been standing on the far end of the garage, so still that James didn’t notice her at first.
“Oh, fuck!” he yelped, startled. He dropped the keys and stared at her, frozen like a prey animal.
“Are you stealing from us?” Narcissa asked in her odd voice.
James swallowed. “Yes,” he said, because it was true. He was taking the car, he wasn’t planning to bring it back, that was stealing.
Narcissa tilted her head, just slightly, so fast that it barely looked like she moved. “Do you know how to drive stick?”
It took a moment for James to understand her question, his thoughts were buzzing through his head so quickly that he couldn’t hear them properly. “No,” he confessed.
“Then you shouldn’t take that one. Take the Lexus instead.” She moved, gone in a blink, then appeared next to him, a set of keys dangling from her delicate finger.
“Why are you helping me steal?” he whispered, very aware that he was wasting time, that he needed to get moving. His heart raced.
Narcissa pursed her lips but she did not reply. James took the keys from her hand and scurried to the far end of the garage where a black Lexus was parked. It was a nice car to most people, but in a room full of luxury, it looked like any run-of-the-mill vehicle. James unlocked it with a push of a button, jumping into the driver’s seat and starting the car in one quick movement.
Narcissa must have pressed something to open the garage because the door began to glide open without James having to do anything. He glanced back at where she’d stood a moment before, but she was no longer there. He didn’t have time to dwell on it. He drove out of the garage as quickly as he could without crashing, curving around the house to head down the long and icy road that led off the mountain.
He expected for the jitters he felt in Narcissa’s presence to persist or even worsen now that he was alone, but the calmness from earlier seeped back into his skin and he found himself drifting easily from one thought to another, his worry melting into the background. There was nothing to do for it now, and he’d done what he could to get away. Everything else was up to chance.
Once he made it to the bottom of the sister’s long driveway, he headed north and dialed Peter’s number. He’d been instructed to call once he was out of the house.
“James?” Peter whispered. He sounded hopeful, James was just relieved that he was still alive.
“I’m out,” James said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Peter whispered. James could hear the smile in his voice.
“Where do I go now?”
Peter coughed twice, then whispered to someone else. James couldn’t make out what he was saying. When Peter was back on the phone, he delivered instructions like he’d been reading them online. James had to tell him where he was, using a random mile marker as a point of reference. Peter must have looked up the directions.
“He says,” Peter said right before he hung up the phone, his voice shaking, “that you have one hour to make it here.”
“One hour?” James asked. “Is that enough time?”
Peter audibly swallowed. “It has to be.” James’s phone beeped as the call was disconnected and without trying to call back, James knew Peter’s phone would be off. That was the last communication they would have before James arrived, it might be the last communication they had ever.
He was lucky the driving directions were relatively easy to follow. He was driving far too quickly, but the roads were empty. The sun had set by the time he turned onto the highway Peter had mentioned, not a street lamp in sight, the road was disturbingly dark. Only his headlights reflecting off the snow provided any guidance.
His eyes drifted to the rearview mirror often as he drove, but no cars ever appeared behind him. Where he was, no one knew how to find him. He’d gotten away, vanished, and if he was lucky, they wouldn’t have to know what happened to him.
He hadn’t thought about that part much, he didn’t want to let any of it in, but he knew it would be bad if Regulus and the others went looking for Dolohov. He’d managed to evade all of them for days and days, and Severus seemed to think he was unstoppable. James didn’t want that kind of person going after Regulus and his family. He hoped his death would be enough.
He pulled into the snow-covered parking lot of the abandoned gas station just a few minutes after seven. There were no lights on inside, though most of the windows were boarded up. All the pumps out front had been ripped out of the ground and the roof looked like it was about to cave in.
It had definitely seen better days.
The building itself was longer than James expected. Most roadside gas stations in the middle of nowhere were tiny, only big enough to fit an employee and a few rows of drinks, snacks, and candy. This one looked like a long hallway, rectangular in shape but longer than James’s home. One of the doors was boarded up, but the other looked like it had been recently repaired.
James didn’t pause to think about what he was doing, he had less than three minutes to make it inside based on Dolohov’s hour warning, so he didn’t let himself hesitate.
“Peter?” he called the moment he was inside. The building was pitch black, but the moment he spun in place, the lights lit up. They weren’t excessively bright, but for a moment they blinded him. Panic surged and he blinked rapidly as if it would clear his vision. He pulled his glasses off with shaking hands, they were smudged, he hadn’t noticed on the drive here. He rubbed them with the end of his sweater.
It was too nice, too expensive, he should have worn something else. It wasn’t right to die in something so nice.
“James,” Peter whispered. James forgot what he was doing, just for a moment, but long enough that Peter’s voice startled him. He shoved his glasses on too quickly and stabbed himself in the eye before he managed to place them on properly.
“Peter!” He rushed forward.
A sense of wrongness filled him. Peter had been screaming in pain, he’d been begging him to come, but now he was just… standing there. He was standing in the center of the hollowed-out gas station, his arms hanging limply against his sides. Relaxed. He looked relaxed.
“I’m surprised you came,” Peter said.
“Peter?” James asked, slowly to a stop a few feet away from the man. Peter’s soft, baby fat-filled features used to look so innocent to James, maybe a tad spoiled at times, but never sinister. Pity lay there now.
“I’m disappointed,” a deep voice said. The words drifted over his shoulders and Peter’s eyes settled on the man who’d said them, but James didn't turn around yet. He was still searching Peter’s face for any clue of what was happening. “I thought you would be harder to catch.”
The calm that James had been wearing off and on for the last day settled heavily into him, drenching his clothes and swallowing up his bones. His feelings disconnected from his thoughts like a severed wire leaving him nothing but a dead outlet.
“Were you ever in danger?” James asked. His voice came out dead, all of him felt dead.
Peter tilted his head to the side like he was nothing but an innocent child, but it was Dolohov who answered.
“He was,” Dolohov said, his voice closer than it had been the last time he spoke. “I would have killed him if you didn’t show.”
“Oh,” James breathed, his shoulders dropping a bit further. He hadn’t made an error, not really. He’d still done what he could to save a man’s life.
“It’s better this way though, isn't it?”
“Yes,” James agreed because it was. It was better knowing Peter would have died.
“It was his idea though,” Dolohov practically purred as he came to stand next to James, brushing past him close enough that James could feel his presence, but not close enough to touch.
“Was it?” James asked with bland curiosity. He thought he already knew that, Peter didn’t seem ashamed, but he seemed knowledgeable.
“Speaking of which,” Peter mumbled, his voice still the soft cadence of a coward. “You said you would…” Peter pointed to the side of his neck and twisted his face to inelegantly allude to something. James would have wondered what it was had he been more interested in what was happening around him.
Turning his back seemed the only right course of action. He stared at the door as Dolohov and Peter had a conversation that sounded like it was taking place underwater. He could make a run for it, he likely should try, saving a man who’d conspired to lure him away from his protection wasn’t something he needed to do, but he couldn’t get his legs to move.
Dolohov would likely catch him anyway.
Peter’s scream was something like out of a movie, James expected it to be fake. He’d faked so many while they were on the phone. So he turned around slowly, one eyebrow quirked. Peter was holding his neck, his face twisted in pain. He was stumbling left and right, but somehow he managed to stay standing.
“Not… here…” Peter mumbled, his words barely intelligible.
“Too late now,” Dolohov said with a bloody grin. Peter gave James one last pleading look, a look James didn’t understand and didn’t have the energy to interpret. Then he was stumbling away, toward the door.
“What did you do to him?”
“What we agreed.”
James looked at the man, the killer, the vampire that wanted him dead and buried. He seemed so human for a moment.
“I don’t understand,” James confessed.
“I assume that happens to you often,” Dolohov said with a pout. He was making fun of James, mocking him. A bit rude if you asked James. He was already going to kill him, the least he could do was not taunt him.
He was foolish to expect anything else.
“Did you come alone?” Dolohov asked. James was surprised he hadn’t asked earlier.
“I’m alone,” James stated. He’d never been so alone in his entire life. All his life he had friends, family, loved ones, girlfriends, boyfriends. He had a life filled with others. He felt grateful for it, satisfied that despite everything he had so much good in his life.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Dolohov said, speaking thoughtfully, like a professor, like a storyteller. James wondered if he didn’t get enough attention in his usual life. “I was expecting more of a chase. You had so much protection, I thought it would be harder to get to you. I’m used to drawing things out, I once hunted a human for eleven months. Almost a year. You can understand how disheartened I felt discovering that all I had to do was dangle the life of an acquaintance in the balance to get you all to myself.”
“The other humans you’ve hunted, they let people die for them?”
“They did,” Dolohov said with a small smile. “I’ll confess. That was usually my favorite part. The horror they showed, the cowardly choice they continued to make, putting their own short life above another’s. I enjoyed it. I figured a man who lives with a pack of vampires would be similarly ruthless. I never would have expected you to come so easily.”
For a split second, James considered making a joke. Come so easily, honestly, it was too easy, but thankfully his mouth stayed locked shut. He was in enough danger without provoking the man.
“I knew I’d catch you eventually though, I almost always get my prize.” Dolohov’s eyes glittered, pitch black and reflecting the cheap lights hanging above.
“Almost always?” James whispered. Fuck, he hadn’t meant to speak. Dolohov’s grin widened, satisfaction at a trap well planned and better executed. Twice he’d caught James.
“Once, many years ago, I discovered a couple. A human woman and a vampire. He was so—” Dolohov looked away, his eyes drifting up to the ceiling, “protective. And she was so weak, a sickly little thing, always somewhere else. He kept her like a toy, but when I tried to play, he fought back. I’d never seen a prize so worth having. It was worth killing her just to see him fail.”
“But you didn’t succeed?” James asked. His hands were shaking again, the way he described the other human-made James’s stomach turn.
“No,” Dolohov growled, his dark eyes settling back on James’s face. “He did what your vampires refused to do. He hid her away,” he ground his teeth together, “and he changed her.”
James gasped, a quiet thing, barely a puff of noise, but the words felt like a knife being plunged into his chest.
“By the time, I found her, she was already writhing on the ground, half changed. There was no point then. I made quick work of him though. I would never let someone rob me of something I wanted and get away with it. He had to pay. He was dead before she ever opened her eyes.” Dolohov paused, just for a moment, his eyes moving rapidly around the room like he was seeing something James couldn’t spot. “You can imagine my surprise seeing her in the meadow.”
James took one step backward. He could no longer feel his legs, but they seemed to react for him.
“The meadow,” he breathed.
Dolohov smiled viciously, a mean thing that looked hungrier than anything. “I don’t think she remembered me, that pretty little redhead kept her hidden though. Still protected, even as a vampire. Who protects you, James?”
James’s head was spinning, he was still trying to understand what Dolohov had just told him and now he was being asked a question? How could he be expected to answer?
“No one,” James said, the words like a life of their own, a decision made without him.
“A shame,” Dolohov said. He sounded sad, but James understood that it wasn’t empathy for him, it wasn’t care, it was disappointment at an easy kill. That’s all James was, easy prey. He wondered how much of his life had led up to this point, it felt like so many deaths had barely grazed him, came and went before he’d understood what he’d escaped. Had he been marching here all along?
Dolohov’s hand moved, a flash followed by stillness, but it was enough to draw James’s eyes. For a second, it appeared as if nothing had changed, but then he spotted the little black object cradled in Dolohov’s pale fingers.
A camera.
“It’s no fun if he doesn’t get to see it,” Dolohov said. He spoke that James couldn't hear him, as if it didn’t matter either way if he did.
“Who?” James asked. His mouth was so dry that it felt like he’d been swallowing cotton.
“I believe his name is Regulus,” Dolohov said. James felt a spike of anger. Dolohov didn’t deserve to speak his name. “A member of the Black family. They’ve been a thorn in my side for a long time. Torturing one of them—Well, needless to say, I need him to see it.”
He lifted the camera slowly, pointing it right at James’s drawn face.
“We’ll have to put on a show for him. You don’t mind, do you?” Dolohov smirked. In another circumstance he would be handsome, that smirk would be charismatic, even intriguing. Now it made James's stomach flip. He abandoned all rational thought and turned to run. He knew he’d be caught, vampires were so fast that he couldn’t even see them when they ran, but he had to get away. He had to run, run, run.
His fingers were inches from the door when he went flying backward. The inside of the gas station was lined with pieces of wood, all of them pressed together like an expensive fence. He’d wondered who put them up originally, but when he slammed into them, he figured it must have been Dolohov. They cracked against his back painfully, crumbling down on top of him as he fell to the ground in a heap.
The pain took a moment to arrive at his brain, his adrenaline kept him conscious and kept most of the feeling in his back at bay, but he could still feel the likely broken ribs breaking apart. He’d broken a few bones in his life, he could remember it vividly.
This was so much worse.
Dolohov knelt in front of him as he gasped for breath. He couldn’t pull in enough air, his lungs felt like they were constricting, collapsing, caving in.
“Beg him to avenge you,” Dolohov instructed, commanded. It sounded like pleading.
“Regulus, don’t,” James gasped. Regulus wouldn’t listen to him, he couldn’t imagine a world where that would happen, but James had to try. He owed him that much for leaving him as he had.
Dolohov grabbed him by the jaw, his fingers like ice. “Beg him,” he growled.
“No,” James refused. The word came out muffled. Dolohov dropped his jaw and backhanded him across the face. His vision swam, his glasses flying off his face, but James knew he was holding back. Dolohov could have killed him with a flick of his wrist. He was making sure James stayed alive and awake.
“I could make it worth his while,” Dolohov said. He sounded so frustrated, so easily swayed by a few denials. He lunged forward slightly and kicked James’s legs open. The movement made pain shoot up his back, but the panic he felt was more pressing.
“No, no, no, no,” James begged. He hadn’t wanted to beg, he’d wanted to die with some dignity. Not that he considered such a thing before now. Dolohov grabbed him around the calf.
“Then beg,” Dolohov said and with one press, snapped James’s leg. James cried so loud that his voice cut out, his vocal cords unable to stand the strain. He couldn’t see anything, his vision blurred with tears and pain, his glasses long gone, but he could make out Dolohov’s shape in front of him. “Beg him to avenge you. Convince him. Don’t you think you deserve it? He didn’t protect you, he didn’t change you. He left you to die.”
It wouldn’t have mattered if James wanted to give in, he was beyond words. He was incapable of speech. Sobs tore out of him, pain so bad that he thought he would have passed out by now. How was he still awake? Why was he still awake? Why couldn’t he have died already?
A sound like metal scrapping metal filled his ears. Warmth fell down around his ears. Blood. He was bleeding. Dolohov was making noises like an animal, a savage creature unable to refuse the call of blood.
James put a hand up as if blocking his view would save him. He hoped it would be over soon. He prayed for it to end. Cold, dead hands pulled at the neck of his sweater, ripping it open, and a sharp penetrated his skin, harsh fangs sinking right in.
Darkness finally, gratefully, claimed him.