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This whole vampirism thing is a lot better than Louis’s interview might have suggested. Daniel finds, between prowling European streets at night—a crowded bar in Austria packed tight with people half his age grooving to music he’s never even heard before, a darkened alleyway that appears bright as day (or, what he remembers of it), stalking a Swiss couple who’d had a lovely picnic in the Alps—and gorging himself on as much blood as he can get, that it isn’t so bad. It is nice, after all, not to wake up and ache like he’d been run over a couple of dozen times by an eighteen-wheeler, and it’s very pleasing that he’ll never have to clean grease off of another pair of bifocals again. Surprisingly, he doesn’t even really miss the sun. Never a beach person, Daniel was, which is why he gravitated towards New York and holidays outside of the Caribbean.
And sure, he’s going to outlive most of the people he’s ever loved or tolerated, and being seventy and just starting his life is a bit of a kick in the balls, but can he really complain? It’s the thrill of the hunt, that adrenaline that courses through him like the purest coke he’s ever had the displeasure of sniffing. Morphine straight from the poppy. But hunting humans is boring. One quick snap, one minuscule bite, and years of life drained within a matter of seconds. He does find it funny when he’s recognized—usually in America and usually starting with a, Hey, aren’t you that guy who wrote that shitty fake memoir? before he shows them just how fake his book was. He’d hate to kill a fan, but then again Daniel doesn’t think he’s ever had one.
It’s hunting vampires that interests him. One vampire in particular.
In the months since he was turned, Daniel has run into exactly one other vampire, and it wasn’t the one he was looking for. Some kid who got turned in the eighties and hasn’t changed his style since—though according to the internet, all of those horrendous fads are coming back—who was rather displeased with what he and Louis worked on.
Don’t shoot the messenger, Daniel had told him, even as the kid had spat loads of venomous insults his way in some hole-in-the-wall pub in Dublin. Don’t you know who my maker is? Go bark up another tree. And just so you know, you may have been turned before me, but I’m still older than you, kid.
Anyone with any brain cells wouldn’t actually make an attempt on Daniel’s life knowing that Armand de Romanus, the famously ancient, fledgling-less vampire, had sired him. And yeah, it was a ploy for attention or some last-ditch attempt at making Louis give a shit, but he’d still done it, and then he’d fucked off like he always does when he’s scared.
And so Daniel was left, in between press conferences and a few one-off book signings that existed mostly as a way for the media to mock him, to follow the scent trail that Armand was keen on not leaving him.
He’d thought about going to Paris, to visit all of Armand’s old haunts and to see the condos they probably put up where the theatre used to be, but he doesn’t do that. Armand isn’t stupid enough to go back. He considers taking a trip to Venice while he's sightseeing in Amsterdam, but decides against it, not because he thinks Armand would hate being there, but simply because he thinks neither of them could stomach the smell.
So Daniel trails Europe, going to places he’d never had any interest in going simply because he can. Ten million goes a long way, after all, though he’d had the foresight to put most of it in a high-interest savings account to earn some more money. Don’t spend it all in one place, Danny, Louis had said to him telepathically one night after he’d splurged and bought himself first-class tickets to Barcelona from Lisbon. A pointless purchase, really, considering the red-eye only took two hours, but he was feeling fancy, and high-altitude wine always made him feel looser. Just enjoying the sights, he’d thought back, eyeing the vein on the side of the stewardess’ neck.
Daniel feels Armand’s presence for the first time when he’s in London, which is devoid of major tourism this time of year. It isn’t an overwhelming sensation; he isn’t struck by the feeling of him, like walking into a cafe and being stunned by the sight of someone you haven’t seen in years. It’s more like walking past a flower shop and getting a whiff of the hydrangeas, and feeling as if you’re seven, playing in your grandmother’s garden again. The scent that sometimes hits you at the subway station, and suddenly you’re in an airport you’ve only ever been to once before. It’s the ghost of his presence, like the aftershocks that linger when parting from a kiss. Something soft. Something stagnant. A winding path that leads to three back alleys, a smattering of rodents, and a large case next to an empty dumpster which holds, quite repulsively, a bloodless corpse about three weeks old triple wrapped in cellophane and gaffa tape.
Funny. Daniel had always assumed that Armand was more organized about his kills. In this day and age, this thing should have been found ages ago, if not from the stench then instead from the rather obvious and idiotic hiding place for it. Perhaps the Yard, like he, was on vacation. It’s all so reminiscent of those nights in San Francisco, of that neighbour who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, that Daniel can’t help but laugh.
This corpse is practically gift-wrapped.
“You know,” he says to no one, “Normally people court each other with brooches and trinkets.”
Then again, what’s a human to a vampire if not a trinket to be toyed with?
Because nothing is ever easy, Armand’s breadcrumb trail gets pecked at by pigeons. After finding the body, that whiff of hydrangea gets blown away by the wind, leaving Daniel with nothing but the stench of rot and the muggy feeling on the back of his neck from the underfoot ventilation. He decides to cruise Hyde Park and meanders back to his hotel before sunrise.
On his way, he calls Louis, because sometimes he doesn’t want every vampire in the world to hear him yapping about his good-for-nothing maker. It takes Louis so long to answer, Daniel isn’t sure he’s even going to pick up.
“Yes, Daniel?”
“Yeah, hey,” Daniel mutters back, hoisting his phone up with his shoulder so he can shove his hands into the pockets of the fleece jacket he’d nicked off some guy he’d eaten. “What’s up?”
“You called me,” Louis says. There’s a hint of amusement in his voice, like calling on a whim isn’t something Daniel should be doing. Maybe he isn’t. Vampirism brings out the childish impulsiveness in him. When Daniel doesn’t say anything, Louis tells him, “I’m at home reading a book.”
“Our book?”
It’s bratty. Impudent. He knows the answer and part of him just wants to see if Louis will feel bad.
Louis doesn’t answer. After a moment he says, “Was there something you needed?”
“No, not really.” Daniel shrugs. He passes a darkened shop window with his book in at the front. A fifty percent off sticker covers half the title. “Just bored, I guess.”
“I didn’t know that newly turned vampires could get bored,” Louis says. Perhaps a joke. Daniel reckons it takes at least fifty years and being locked in an unfulfilling marriage to get bored, but he’s already done that as a human, so he figures that vampirism might make it impossible.
The line goes silent for a few moments.
This is awkward. Very likely a bad idea. Daniel’s getting hungry again, and with Armand’s trail going cold, he’s half tempted to do something stupid just to get his attention.
“Well, I was enthralled for a while by the idea of hunting a dude who’s done nothing but make both our lives miserable, and somehow, after doing all of the things I could never do six months ago, I’ve come to realize that all of Europe really looks the same.” Daniel kicks a rock and watches it crumble into fragments. “You ever drive out of the city back in America and realize that you’ve seen the side of every road?”
“I can’t say I have,” Louis tells him. “Try Greece.”
“Went last month. Athens isn’t really all that. ” He’s just being pessimistic. “Tried Mykonos as well, but it just made me feel like I’d stumbled into a travel ad. Thought I’d give Orleans a go sometime, just ‘cause I find it funny.”
Louis makes a sound on the other end like a disapproving parent he’s just handed a D-minus report card to.
Daniel continues wistfully, “Haven’t really been able to brave France, though.”
There are several places Daniel has yet to go. Unlike America, which really shouldn’t be so vast, Europe is like blips on the radar. Stumble drunk a little too far out of Switzerland and suddenly you’re in Italy, or Austria, or even that weird little place called Lichtenstein that he’s sure is just a glorified bank for the Swiss to shove their francs into. The kind of country that looks like a postage stamp and you can drive border to border with your eyes closed. Once, a little drunk off a girl who’d had a depressing solo drinking session alone in the backseat of her 1997 Volvo, Daniel had tripped into a glacial spring that had water so blue it looked digitally altered. He hadn’t really been able to feel the cold, not like any human could. His muscles didn’t seize, his joints didn’t creak, and he hadn’t stiffened to keep the heat inside. Stupidly, he had tried to drink it and somehow found himself disappointed that he couldn’t taste anything. Maybe it was the alcohol in that girl’s blood. Maybe it was simply the lingering nostalgia from when things mattered.
Back in London, hazy inside the dimmed hollow of a coffee house, Daniel sees the back of a man’s head. Hair, dark and loosely curled, slightly frizzy from the day’s wear. Broad-shouldered and slim-waisted and tall, but not egregiously. A soft black cardigan and slacks that made his legs look longer. Brown eyes, not orange. Not as round and empty. He shakes his head and looks away.
“Sorry,” Daniel says. “I’m just bored.”
“It’s getting early here,” Louis says. He’s lying. Daniel knows it’s only midnight. “I should probably let you go.”
“Right, yeah,” Daniel murmurs. “No worries, man.”
He drains an office worker on the way back to the hotel. He tastes like bitters and disappointment. Maybe because Daniel is running out of ideas, he cracks the safety on the window and leaves it open all day.
-
There’s a sort of gravitational pull between him and Armand that Daniel can hardly comprehend most days. It’s like Louis said way back when—that bond between fledgling and maker, greater than any connection a human could ever have with another human, stronger than anything in the wild. He feels it deep in his chest, like there’s a magnet lodged under his ribs, drawing him closer and repelling him at the same time. Daniel is cranky, like how he gets when he quits smoking for a few months and then inevitably crawls back to it again. Chasing Armand is not unlike chasing the headrush of nicotine, something mind-numbing and wholly fulfilling until it wears off after about ten minutes and Daniel is once again faced with the reality that life really is miserable when it isn’t being dulled.
In Edinburgh, he finds himself in a castle, on a gloomy night tour, listening to the horrors of the history that preceded it. It really is some Dracula shit and makes him feel a little bit pretentious, the way he can draw his fingers along the cold stone walls and feel the agony that lives inside of them. He wonders if Armand had ever resided in a place like this; if his maker’s digs were half as gothic, if, when he was displayed—not unlike a piece of meat for the eating—he would have lavished in a four-post canopy bed like the one in the master bedroom, or if instead he was bound to the catacombs, the vast connecting tunnels that live beneath it. He stalks over to one of the windows, all too aware of the people exploring the room like he, all of their musings and innermost secrets and distasteful things they have to say about being dragged out to a place like this in the middle of the night, and touches the metal bars of the window panes, peering out upon the gloomy city below him.
His eyes focus and unfocus like a camera lens. Down at the bottom of the hill, far enough away that anyone with a normal set of eyes wouldn’t be able to see it, the haze of a man like a Victorian ghost catches his attention. Slender, but still muscled. Skin appearing darker under the moonlight. A mop of curls that isn’t the perfect style Daniel had accustomed himself to in Dubai. If his heart was still beating at more than a snail’s pace, if he had fed before he got here, it might have picked up inconsequentially. Maybe he’s imagining it, but the man’s eyes seem to glow, even so far away, before he turns and stalks a woman down a twisting path.
Daniel is out of the castle and at the bottom of the hill before he can even think about it. Thirty seconds, maybe less, chasing the scent of Armand’s cologne and the taste of fear from the woman he’d followed. Foot tracks indent the softened ground; two pairs of shoes, one smaller and daintier than the other. He follows them like a hound, lip curling around a snarl, his fangs sneaking out from his gums despite himself.
The woman lies curled in on herself at the base of an oak tree whose leaves crackle and sway under the breeze. He kicks her corpse hard enough that she slumps over onto her side, and in the pale moonlight which glistens through the gaps in the branches, he can see the trail of blood trickling down her thin, greyed neck.
“You piece of shit,” Daniel calls out to him. He has to be around here somewhere—Armand is fast, but he can’t hop countries in under a minute. “You fucking asshole, Armand. Is this a game to you? Cat and mouse? Where do you get off on this?”
There’s no reply, but Daniel hadn’t really been expecting one.
Another few weeks pass and Daniel finds himself once again in his apartment in New York. His presence in America is less in his pursuit of Armand and more so that his publicist won’t leave him alone about interviews and conferences, most of which he needs to reschedule to be in the evening, solidified with excuses of, Yeah, well, sorry, but my tremors are worsening and it’s better at night, so I’d like to make as little of a fool of myself as possible in the public eye. Excusing the obvious.
It’s boring. Maybe it shouldn’t be—this thing that he and Louis have created, this life he’s put to the page, the gift he’s been given, scrutinized and laughed at and made out to be nothing but falsities as if Daniel couldn’t hear the hammering pulse of each and every audience member like festival drums. They always ask him the same questions, and when his publicist, or whoever else it may be, offers signings, no one approaches the table. What good is his autograph, after all, when in their eyes he’s nothing but a geriatric telling ghost stories?
He never really eats any of them, though he wants to. He thinks it’s in poor taste, after all, petty manslaughter.
Daniel is bored. Maybe he shouldn’t be, but he is. It’s the same kind of boredom that used to creep up on him when he was still using, when he would kick rocks around his apartment all day and then wake up a week later in a drug den, unsure of what choices caused him to end up there but feeling at least a little more fulfilled, if not pathetic.
And yeah, vampirism is great, yadda yadda. But as stupid and shitty and as boring as it sounds, something feels missing without that manipulative asshole staring at him from across the room with those sunset eyes. He finds himself wistful and pedantic, tipping his head back to stare at the blue-painted ceiling of his apartment like a wife waiting for her husband to return from war. It’s pathetic. He’s a journalist, for Christ’s sake, not a detective. He’d even stooped so low as to pick through strangers’ minds to see if he could sniff out any trace of his maker as if that maker wouldn’t erase himself from their brains as soon as he’d been committed to memory. It’s largely unsuccessful and just makes him feel like a creep.
He gets a call at five in the evening, and he’s always been an early riser, so he’s already up. He fumbles blindly for his cell on the nightstand. Daniel had forgone a coffin, even here, since it’s hard to explain and there are no good hiding places for a six-foot-four box in a New York apartment. Besides, he can’t really travel with it anyway. He answers the phone without looking at the caller ID.
“Daniel,” comes the voice of his publicist. “How would you like to go to Italy?”
He rubs his eyes, yawning. “Have you forgotten that I’ve been in Europe for the past three months?”
She scoffs annoyedly at him. “Yes, but instead of fucking around and doing nothing, this time it would be for something productive.”
After so long, he can’t even find it in himself to be offended. “Okay, hit me.”
“Another signing, something small and stress-free. I also got a call earlier from a late-night talk show who wants to do a segment on you and your book.”
Daniel sits up, narrowing his eyes. Outside, behind the blackout curtains and reflected onto the edge of his wall, he can see the hazy red glow of the sun seeping below the horizon. He considers offhandedly what he might do tonight. Maybe walk around Central Park. Maybe he’ll get a hot dog and relish in the fact that it won’t give him food poisoning, then wash the chalky taste down with a martini and an unsuspecting victim. Maybe a stray, because he thinks that if he tries to be open-minded, eventually Louis’ passivity will rub off on him.
“I don’t speak Italian,” is all he says. He should honestly have been expecting the second scoff he receives.
“Ninety percent of people in the city speak English, Daniel. You and I both know if there’s one thing English speakers are good at, it’s spreading that shit around.” She pauses. Daniel can imagine her picking at gel-polished nails. Probably red. Maybe purple. He always thought she looked nice in purple. “Do you want the job or not?”
Italy has been a bit of a no-go for him. He thinks it’s from that brain-to-brain infodump Armand had given him when he’d tapped his wrist and let him drink the ambrosia. Bad memories there, after all, even if they aren’t his. He feels like as soon as he sets foot on Italian soil, the agony that lives in the very bones of the country is going to seep into his bloodstream and poison him.
“Where in Italy?”
“Rome,” she says. “I need your answer by tonight or they’ll—”
“I’ll do it.” Maybe it’s a bad idea. Then again, Daniel thinks that in his life, he’s made much fewer good choices than bad ones.
“Oh,” his publicist says. Daniel knows that she hadn’t been expecting such a straightforward answer. He doesn’t need the vampirism to get inside her head.
“Just email me the dates, I’ll make it work.”
“Right,” she says, “I’m clocking out, then.”
“Yeah.” The line goes dead.
It’s shitty work, scheduling long flights to places where he can ensure he can safely exit and enter the airport. Time zones are a bitch, after all, and while it would be more efficient to just get a private jet, despite everything, he’s conscious about the fuel emissions and doesn’t want to be an asshole. And, of course, he’s not dropping millions on a hangar. He manages the trip to Rome with only a few bumps and bruises, then spends 24 hours comatose in a nice hotel room with a California king and thick blackout curtains.
When he’s fully rested and has eaten his share of pompous Italians, he meets his publicist for dinner and goes over the itinerary. When he only orders an entree, she bitches at him about eating better, but he assures her (through a mouthful of chalk) that he’s eating fine, thanks, it’s just that the time zones fuck with his eating schedules.
The next evening, the talk show goes off without much of a hitch. He manages, in good faith, not to piss off any of the interviewers, even when they ask stupid questions, chalking it up to European niceties and mannerisms even when he knows it’s just because everyone thinks he’s an idiot. They offer him wine; he declines, knowing that he’s annoying enough even without alcohol to speed up the process. They ask him if he has any idea what to do for the next book, and he tells them that he’s got something in mind, but that he can’t say much more other than it’s going to be about music. He even shakes the rudest one’s hand, even though he wants to drain him cold on national television to prove a point.
Outside, sometime past midnight, he sends off his publicist, who seems pleased with his earlier display of caution, and decides to wander the streets. He never really felt drawn to Italy. He’d hopped the train here once after Alice had said no to him in Paris, relapsing on whatever street drugs he could get his fingers on and fare-evading the cross-country transport. He’d ended up in Turin and spent his days wandering like he does now, not really sightseeing, not really touring. Walking aimlessly until the day crept into night and he could slip into bars hidden away in darkened alleys, wishing so desperately to feel the thrill of that bar in San Francisco and failing miserably every time. He hadn’t slept with any men there—he’d been fucked up, but not enough to do that. He’d thought about it, though, leant up against the counter in a shirt too tight for his already skinny frame, chatting up pretty men who barely spoke enough English to get their point across, but Daniel had always understood from that look they gave him alone. Lidded eyes, a warm smile, the offer of drink upon drink in hopes of sweetening him up enough to agree to go home with him.
Something flashes in his mind. Stark white teeth a little too sharp, a mop of dark curls. The pop of a checkered blue collar and a cocktail untouched. A hand on his waist. A name he can’t remember. Adamo. Or was it, Ama—
Daniel stops walking. Shakes the thought from his head. He hadn’t touched that man. That thing in the shape of a man. And it wasn’t—
It wasn’t.
Somehow, Daniel has found himself wandering down a maze of side streets and alleyways, scarcely lit by streetlamps. If he had any fear left in him, he might have felt uncomfortable, as if something were watching him. He trails the cobblestoned path calmly, dragging his fingers along the brick as a mouse scuttles by underfoot. A scent passes under his nose then, something acrid and acidic. The stench of something vile—the stench of death.
This whole courting thing is really getting old.
There’s no doubt this was Armand. The body is laid so nicely for him, with his legs crossed and his hands folded neatly in his lap. His clothes have been smoothed, free of wrinkles, no sign of struggle besides the burst capillaries around his closed eyes. A small set of fang marks indent the side of his throat, now dried and cleaned of any scabbing blood. Daniel is at once reminded of when his daughters begged him for a cat, and then when he and Alice had finally relented to getting one, he spent most of the time cleaning up the dead birds and mice it would drop at the foot of his bed. It would always sit so politely, even with crimson staining the tan fur around its maw, big yellow eyes unblinking and softened as if to say, Here, for you. Like Daniel ever wanted such a thing. Corpses offer him no greater comfort to him dead than they did when he was alive.
Daniel sighs, locking eyes with the body at his feet. Few things lay about around the darkened alley, but around the corner is a rolled-up carpet, all stained and torn a little at the edges, so he unfurls it and covers up the body with its garishly patterned polyester.
“Thanks, freak,” he says out loud, tucking his hands in his pockets as he begins to walk away. “You know, you could at least leave me live ones. It’d be like a maker-fledgling bonding experience, yeah? You catch ‘em, I drain ‘em.”
No answer. He whistles all the way home.
-
After his work in Italy, he’s free to roam for another few months. He spends most of it in an Airbnb he’s renting in Munich that’s filled with lots of odd shit, like a Japanese gay bar poster and a plastic snow globe that displays a stock image of cured meat. Things he’d write about, maybe, if the higher-ups weren’t pestering him for another serious book, even though he’s barely through the throes of the interview. It was supposed to be his last one, but he catches wind, through the vampire hivemind, that a certain Frenchman is picking up music again, and he figures that after deciding whether or not to tear out his jugular, that Frenchman might want to tell his version of the events.
But he doesn’t reach out to him. Not yet. Not when that pulsing ebb of Armand is at his fingertips. He’s palming blindly at him like his phone on the bedside table, pushed just out of reach when he’s just too tired to sit up and grab it. He considers bothering Louis again. Decides against it. He hovers over his daughters’ contacts, ponders calling his eldest and asking about the baby she was thinking about having. He decides against that too, since it probably isn’t good to be only partially absent from her life. False hope, and all that. Maybe that makes him a bad person.
He wonders, somewhat absentmindedly, if there’s going to be more to life than this. Sitting in a weird little loft apartment surrounded by trinkets and a kitchen with a lock on the door—what is the owner keeping in there?—writing about things he hasn’t touched on in years. Heroin highs and the AIDs epidemic and micro-horror that makes him cringe when he rereads it. He writes about nightlife. He writes a fucking poem. He wonders too if there’s more than wandering cobblestoned streets and laughing when he sinks his teeth into someone. The way he feels better now than he’s ever felt in his life. The way his naked body looks under yellow fluorescent bathroom lights. Flat Coke that tastes like nothing. Mini Coopers. One shakily-smoked Italian cigarette on the roof of a mausoleum, the rest crushed in his palm so he could watch the tobacco drift away in the wind.
God, this is depressing. Maybe Armand means to curse him to death by melancholia. It would be poetic if it wasn’t ridiculous.
Before sleep, he often tunes into the hivemind to see if he can pick out anything interesting among the overlapping voices. It’s mostly just vampires wanting him dead, and also vampires wanting Louis dead, because of the Great Laws or some bullshit, which, yeah, alright, that’s fair. Maybe not fair , but understandable, even if it’s a little annoying. Some of them are whiny and existential, and Daniel considers telling them that there’s a perfectly good sun they can self-immolate under if they’re so over un-living, but decides it’s probably better not to poke the bear. Sometimes he picks apart conversations about trivial things, vampires talking across countries, lovey shit and occasionally some bickering. On a rainy Tuesday, probably past Daniel’s bedtime, he hears this:
I saw him. The old one.
Well, that’s super specific. Daniel doesn’t really know what constitutes old. His gauge on age is rather skewed since he went from being an old man to a baby vamp in about ten minutes. Louis is old to him, but only because he could technically be his grandfather. In comparison to all of the other vampires Daniel has heard of, Louis is actually relatively young.
So, old. What’s that? A few centuries? A millennium? Daniel drums his fingers on the edge of the bed frame, trying to tune out the other chatter to listen to what these two are talking about. It proves rather difficult since he’s still not used to the glorified group Zoom meeting.
Who?
The one with the fire in his eyes.
Slightly more specific. Vague enough that it’s probably a pathetic lead to follow, but at this point, Daniel will take anything.
Where? one asks, No one has seen him for years.
In Latvia.
Another voice, one who hadn’t spoken until now, pipes up. No, you imbecile, not Latvia. Poland.
Fools, all of you! It was Russia!
How would you know?
Because I was there.
Daniel doesn’t realize he’d gripped so hard he’d splintered the wood until he felt shards of it stab him under his fingernails. He releases it, begrudgingly thinking of the deposit he’s going to have to pay this freak of an owner, and then crosses his arms over his chest. It’s not reasonable to leave here. There’s no conceivable way that after this long, Armand would be foolish enough to leave a trail someone other than Daniel could follow.
Unless it wasn’t borne of foolishness.
Maybe the bastard just wanted to get caught. Like when serial killers get tired of outsmarting the police and purposefully get sloppy. But it isn’t in character. Not really. Armand can be testy around Daniel; he knows that he has a quality that just happens to get under Armand’s skin enough for him to act out, but not like this. Not as stupidly as this. Then again, maybe it’s just stupid enough that Daniel will follow.
And he just so happens to have brushed up on his geography to know exactly what place lives nice and neat in between all of the other countries those vamps had argued about.
-
His search, while gruelling after his departure of Munich, leads him rather dully to an old, dilapidated-looking apartment complex that probably hasn’t been updated since it was built in the sixties. Daniel smells magnolia and contempt and blood in the air, and even though this lead will probably be a dud, he pushes open the door of the complex anyway.
Few, if any people live here. He can only hear a handful of heartbeats through the walls, and even though he hasn’t eaten since he crossed the border, the sound doesn’t make him vibrate like it normally does. Inside the threshold, he closes his eyes and listens.
It’s not very interesting. Someone is thinking about their lack of dinner. Another person wonders when the Reaper is going to come for them. Underneath it all, like a whisper from the faraway edge of the forest, he hears, Please, please, please, and it stuns him to a halt.
He’s here. Daniel doesn’t know how he knows it, but he knows that he’s here.
He, despite every urge to use that handy preternatural speed of his, takes the stairs slowly, like one might savour an overpriced meal. That magnet in his chest pangs again, pulled in as if reeled, that hammering that seems only to ring out when he’s been in a place Armand has been once, be it the night before or a hundred years prior. Daniel can smell him. He can taste the tang of his blood in the air, even if he hasn’t bled. Those hydrangeas waft up to him as if they’ve just bloomed.
The door to the apartment is unlocked, but even if it weren’t, Daniel would have kicked it down.
It isn’t like what he imagined. In fact, Daniel finds himself wondering if Armand is even actually there or if he, like Louis had in Paris, was imagining his maker, sitting poised and elegant in a ratty old chair. The studio apartment is mostly empty, save for a kitchenette overflowing with toasters and instant pots and one pressure cooker that looks like it survived two world wars. A single dusty mattress lies in the centre next to where Armand is seated, his back turned, staring out the cloudy window at the Belarussian skyline.
A whimper sounds from the corner where Daniel turns to find a man, no older than he was back in San Francisco, huddled in the corner. He has no physical bindings, but Daniel knows that with Armand in the room, that doesn’t mean anything. His eyes, bloodshot and wet with tears, widen at the sight of Daniel, pleading almost, to be freed of his assailant. Poor thing. Daniel stalks over to him slowly, scrutinizing his shaggy hair and the blood leaking from his nose. He tries to speak, his voice grating and squeaky, but no words come out.
“When I asked for live ones, I was joking,” Daniel drawls, poking the boy with his shoe. “What’d this one do?”
In a voice not entirely his own, the boy says, “Nigerian prince scams.”
Daniel snorts.
“The silent treatment isn’t like you, Armand. I liked it better when you were bitching at me,” Daniel says, and then, with the grace of a lion, kneels to take the boy’s throat between his teeth. Armand’s already bitten him, took a little drink, maybe, to keep himself going. A swell of pride, or maybe something worse rushes through Daniel at the thought of reopening the wounds Armand made. It’s romantic, almost, if he shuts off his mind to how sick it is.
The boy tastes fearful and acidic but doesn’t struggle much against Daniel’s bite. Perhaps Armand is holding him dormant. Perhaps he simply wanted to go. He prefers his meals older, a little more weathered. He’d never really liked veal when he was human.
Daniel grimaces as he wipes his mouth and stands, pushing the body away with his foot before returning to the middle of the room.
“I’ve gotta say,” he murmurs glancing around again at the peeling wallpaper and the bright green sludge in one of the blenders, “This place is a massive downgrade.”
Armand doesn’t speak for a moment. He doesn’t move, so still, it’s as if he’s a doll, posed and propped up in a little girl’s plastic house.
“You left your window open,” he says finally. “In London. And Geneva.”
Brussels and Athens and New York, too. Daniel purses his mouth. “Did I?”
“Yes. Do you have any idea of the things you were inviting inside?”
“I think you do,” Daniel tells him. He stops a few feet away from Armand. Because he needs the confirmation, he says, “You came.”
“Yes,” is all Armand says.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a pompous, enigmatic piece of shit?”
Armand shifts slightly in the chair. So hairline anyone without eyes like Daniel’s wouldn’t even see it. It’s that slight shift of the muscles in his shoulder blades, a tenseness reserved only for the verbal equivalent of being slapped in the face, but Daniel doesn’t think he offended him. Armand would have been a fool to have sired Daniel and expect the brashness to go away with immortality.
There are many things Daniel would like to say to Armand. Things he has spent his nights in between meals pondering the way he used to pour over his writing, hunched and manic. He’s imagined this exact scenario no less than a thousand times, and yet now that Armand is before him, surprisingly tangible, he feels as though all of it had never existed to begin with.
He wants to hurt him. Toss him out the window and drag him along the pavement by the hair. Sink his teeth into his throat and taste the meat of his flesh underneath the honeyed flavour of his blood. I want to tear you apart. I want to devour you so you can never leave me again. Armand cannot hear his thoughts. Perhaps this is a good thing.
Stalking forward, Daniel rounds the decrepit chair until he’s standing in front of Armand, blocking the blue-grey haze of moonlight on his hollow, angular face.
Armand hasn’t changed at all, but Daniel hadn’t expected him to. He looks unfazed, emotionless, the way he’d looked so many times at the dining table or on the loveseat with Louis, void of all feeling, an automaton. He doesn’t look up at Daniel as he murmurs, “You found me.”
“Only because you wanted me to.”
“You’d have found me regardless.”
Daniel waves a hand. Dismissively, he scoffs, “Vampire bond.”
“I made you in a moment of weakness,” Armand says, brows pinching so minutely that Daniel is almost sure he imagined the shift in expression. “I made you at my lowest.”
“Didn’t feel very weak to me.”
Armand’s eyes shift upwards, taking in the sight of Daniel; his hair, somehow fuller, his gait more upright. None of that hunching, pained posture and presence from months ago. None of those drab clothes, picked mostly out of a need to look semi-professional and still offer comfort to his ailing body, now replaced with light-washed jeans, heavy boots, and jackets he might have worn in his twenties. A reclamation of youth channelled in the born-again body of an old man. No more bifocals, just designer sunglasses, not only to hide his change in eye colour, but simply because it makes him feel cool, and he hasn’t felt cool in a very long time.
“Why did you run, Armand?”
“Because I couldn’t face my creation,” he says plainly. “Because I couldn’t face the one thing I’d sworn never to do. The thing I find most ugly in the entire world.”
“Please,” Daniel scoffs. “Cut the self-loathing bullshit. Why did you run?”
Armand pauses, considering his true answer, maybe. The corner of his mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile. He murmurs, “Because I wanted to see if you would follow.”
Something fractures in Daniel. Under his ribs, inside of his heart, under capillaries and cells frozen in time. It rebuilds itself into a monster with gnarled teeth and foaming mouth, clawing at his insides for a means to escape. All he can think to say is, “Fucking hell,” before he’s on Armand.
Armand hardly reacts. A little surprised, maybe, that Daniel is the one to kiss him, to grab the back of his head and lean down over him, consumed by the beast that’s built itself anew inside of him. He doesn’t kiss back, even as Daniel nips at his bottom lip, makes a noise so animalistic he hardly recognizes that it even came from him.
Maybe Armand doesn’t want this from him. He is, after all, a creature whose life was filled by taking and not giving, that boy from Delhi stripped of his innocence and used by everyone for the five hundred years that followed. And yes, Armand is a monster, yes, he’s batshit insane, but that doesn’t mean that Daniel should be like them.
He pulls back, heaving, searching in Armand’s darkened eyes for some kind of answer, digging through his expression and wishing so desperately he could crack open his skull to take a peek inside. Fuck whoever made them this way, to take away his ability to see inside Armand, to break that connection, so Armand had his free reign of Daniel’s fragmented memories and all Daniel knows of him is the lies and manipulation underneath the glimpses of him he’d gotten when Armand’s blood had first touched his tongue.
Armand pants a little, somehow winded. Daniel is about to apologize before, in less than a second, Armand has him up against the wall and is kissing him ferociously. Daniel can do nothing but take it, flattening himself against the wall and reaching out to touch the narrow dip of Armand’s waist, hardened and muscled and cold, even through his layers.
“Are you sure this—”
“Yes,” Armand cuts him off. Daniel doesn’t really need more confirmation than that.
It’s weird, doing this after so long. Daniel hasn’t screwed since his last marriage ended, and even before that, they were mostly celibate. No one wanted to touch this body, no one wanted to see the way he, even now, ached for a mouth on his neck and a hand in his hair. It was unseemly. It was vile. And after a while, he stopped caring enough to want it.
It doesn’t seem to bother Armand, though. Maybe that shouldn’t make him as giddy as it does.
Armand drags him over to the middle of the room where he, with much more force than necessary since Daniel would probably do anything Armand told him to right now, shoves him backwards so he falls onto the frameless mattress. It doesn’t wind him like it should, but the feeling of Armand’s slender body sliding up between his thighs does. Maybe he hasn’t changed since he was twenty, cruising gay bars, spreading his legs under the guise of wanting drugs or a story and knowing deep down that he would have done it without any of those excuses, because a man on him, in him, surrounding him, made him feel a whole lot better than anything else did back then. And he doesn’t really remember any of it. He knows he was a little fucked in the head, and he also knows that he knew dirty bathroom stalls as well as he knew bedrooms and back alleys, knew that he’d thought he’d let Louis take him after he’d drained him to near-death and that thought excited him, but he doesn’t remember much more than knowing he liked it. Hidden away. Locked in a box that was chained and padlocked. He’d liked it then and he’d liked the idea of it when his eyes wandered to the waiters and the concierges and the pool boys on vacations with his wives or girlfriends or anyone, really, even if he never did anything about it. Kept it locked in that box without any idea where he kept the key.
It seems now that Armand is the one who’d held it after all these years. Panting and heaving and moaning a little into Daniel’s mouth, his strong, thin hands pulling at Daniel’s clothes like they were made to personally offend him. Maybe he didn’t even need the key. Maybe it was just Armand.
Daniel is remembering things now with Armand tonguing into his mouth. The way when he’d pounced on him back in Dubai, he’d cradled the back of his head so he wouldn’t crack his skull when they hit the floor. He remembers—thinks he might not ever forget—how Armand’s little fangs had pierced his throat, slicing through scar tissue like butter, and how he had told him to stop, maybe, perhaps with words or perhaps with his mind, to scare him off with images of what Louis might do to him. He recalls: You wanna kill me? You wanna turn me, Armand? Really? More than anything, Daniel recalls how the pain had morphed into something like bliss, how, on his back, Armand had aligned their bodies so they were flush, and how when he’d arched, hands wrapping around Armand’s back instead of pushing at his chest, it had almost been like sex if he thought about it hard enough. Not unlike right now, where his hands, no longer riddled with tremors, slide up under Armand’s ratty shirt and claw at his back until it sticks to his skin with blood. Armand hisses at it like it hurts, but his hips stutter where they’re frotting, so Daniel doesn’t feel too bad. Right now, even after months of reflecting, he doesn’t think he could feel very bad about making Armand bleed. Not when he’s so pretty while he does.
He doesn’t need to think very hard about this, though. It feels pretty cut and dry. Armand is on top of him. Armand is hard. Armand is hard and on top of him and Daniel feels like a teenager figuring out how his dick works for the first time. It’s not magical or mind-blowing, even if he’s struggling to have a coherent thought. It’s clumsy and eager and desperate, fuelled by months, or maybe years of dancing around each other in some twisted waltz. So Daniel will let Armand take what he needs, give him what he thinks Daniel deserves because he likes that too. He likes the thrum of boyishness that seems to fill Armand as he frantically presses his hips against Daniel’s. He likes hearing the way Armand’s slow pulse has picked up to normal human speed. He thinks about tasting his blood, about consuming and devouring and exchanging it like vows, but even as his fangs grow and recede, he can’t get his jaw closed enough to bite, and neither can Armand. Not yet.
They flip-flop around until Daniel’s on top. It’s not quite sex and somehow dirtier than if they were naked. Daniel is harder than he’s ever been and he’s about five seconds from coming in his pants like a kid with a pillow between his thighs because Armand is beautiful and ethereal and monstrous underneath him. Straight out of the Louvre. Debauched and too easy for Daniel to tear apart. His blood is seeping into the mattress through his shirt. The bite of it in the air is sweet and disgusting all at once. He longs to press his face into the dusty, mildewy material even if that’s pathetic to imagine. It’s just hard to believe that a few months ago he was chasing Armand like a hound, and now Armand is writhing around under him, chanting things like Good boy, and Beloved, and Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, in between moans like that doesn’t make Daniel want to tear into him even more.
In the end, none of their clothes actually come off. Armand does claw at him enough to bare his chest, leaving a beading trail of blood in his wake, and Daniel would be pissed about his shirt if the thought of Armand so eager to get him naked didn’t make his cock drool into his jeans. There’s blood in his mouth, too, even though neither of them have bitten each other. Split lip, maybe, but Daniel can’t be sure if he did it or if Armand had cut himself on his own volition. It’s almost better than his first taste of it in Dubai. How he’d clung to Armand and drank from him like he’d cease to exist if he didn’t, messy with it all over his lips and chin even though he hadn’t wanted to spill a drop. Armand is a clean eater. He always licked the plate after he was done. So neat it looked like nothing at all had happened. But he was always like that, neat and unmoving, face unchanging, minimalist in terms of decor and living. Bare bones. A giant walk-in coffin. They flip again; Armand grabs Daniel’s hips so tight he might have splintered bone.
Maybe their desperation is something to be marvelled at. Daniel has never felt like this in his seventy years. Buzzing, vibrating, a dull purr in his bones like a motor. It’s like he physically can’t get enough of Armand, and even though he knows logically that he could get more, if only he had the mind to peel Armand out of his clothes, to bare them both until they were skin-to-skin, to open or be opened, fuck or be fucked, but he doesn’t do any of that. Perhaps they will when they get out of this apartment. Ship back to America in storage containers on cargo ships like fiends and really truly have the heart and patience to explore one another more than this. But right now this is all Daniel needs:
Armand grinding against him. Armand’s blood in his mouth. A corpse in the corner watching them like they’re putting on a show. It’s awful. It’s vile. Daniel cums anyway.
He really shouldn’t be so proud to be the cause of the pinch in Armand’s brow or the way his voice peters off into something high and whiny and unsophisticated like it is when he moans Daniel’s name. It shouldn’t make his belly stir, even after he’s just spent himself, and it definitely shouldn’t make him wish that all the way back in San Francisco when he’d offered himself like the whore he’d been, that Armand had accepted so maybe they could have been doing this for half a century.
However, he considers as Armand is stretching out Daniel’s arm to hold his hand and pressing too-sweet kisses into the skin of his neck, that half a century in the past is incomparable to the infinity laid out before them. It’s such a cloying thought that he feels sick on it. He grins, bloody, and pulls Armand back up for another coppery kiss.
“You’re hot when you’re desperate,” Daniel tells him when they pull apart. Armand grimaces.
“Petulant boy.”
“How else would you have me?”
Armand doesn’t answer. But it isn’t like Daniel doesn’t already know.
“Armand,” he says after a moment. Armand tilts his head, feline and inquisitive. “Don’t ever run away again.”
“...Alright.”
And maybe that isn’t a good enough answer. Somehow, though, Daniel doesn’t care.