baekyeol; I'm ready for the fall (ready for the colors to burn to gold and crumble away) [2/6]

[aprilclash]

When the words weigh heavy on the heart
I am lost and led only by the stars
Human - Of Monsters and Men

chanyeol

Two months later

The phone buzzes again. Chanyeol knows it's his mother - she's been trying to call him for hours to ask if he has any intention to show up for Christmas - but he can't really answer right now. The car stops right in front of the yellow tape and Chanyeol gets out and immediately looks for Jin-ah among the camera flashes of the scientific squad. She sees him first and she gestures for him to come closer.

Chanyeol used to like Jin-ah when they were only colleagues working in the same department and the most intimate relationship they had included standing in front of the same coffee machine during the break and chatting in front of a mocha cappuccino that tasted like dirty water. He liked her during office parties, when she brought slightly burnt muffins she had baked herself and wore short skirts and high heels.

Chanyeol definitely doesn't like Jin-ah as his team leader right now. She's deliberately messy, so much that the chaos on her desk has started to invade Chanyeol's desk too, something that never happened when he shared it with Yifan. She's bossy and loud and she always gets drunk at office drinking nights. Bringing her home is Chanyeol's duty as the rookie, and she always makes sure to cry about her pitiful love life and stain Chanyeol's shirt with her mascara.

But the reason why Chanyeol dislikes Jin-ah the most is that, since he's started working for her, all he's done is paperwork. Chanyeol used to be the best officer of the department, with a record of twenty-six hostile vampires arrested in less than two years of service.

But Jin-ah doesn't usually work with crimes committed by vampires. She's in charge of crimes committed against vampires. And, like she's reminded Chanyeol in more than one occasion, “I can't let someone who hates vampires come with me, Chanyeol. They would never collaborate with us! How would you feel if you were the victim and someone treated you like you were the culprit? Isn't this the reason why you were almost fired anyway?”

It is, and Chanyeol doesn't like when people remind him of the incident last Halloween. He especially doesn’t like when Jin-ah talks about it because 'the Halloween incident' is the reason he has to work with her and do paperwork all the time.

But not tonight. Tonight, or this early morning, Chanyeol walks past the curious bystanders crowding the sidewalk and trying to get close to the crime scene, and reaches Jin-ah on the other side of the yellow tape, in front of the dismembered body of a vampire, or what's left of it. He sees a pale hand, pink lacquered nail art and a golden bracelet, lying on the damp ground. A few meters away, Hongbin from the scientific team is taking photographic evidences of a long leg wrapped in expensive stockings. The naked foot is dirty. Whoever the victim was, she lost her right shoe long before she was killed.

“We couldn't find the head,” Jin-ah says with a frown.

Chanyeol nods. He may have been doing paperwork for two months, but he still has ears and he has heard the other members of the team talking about this case and he knows this is the fourth vampire killed in a month. They didn't find the other victims' heads either.

“She was called Hyuna.”

“Kim Hyuna?” He didn't know the other three victims, a lawyer who was apparently visiting a client and two unregistered vampires with the brands of Kim Junmyeon’s clan, one that Chanyeol unfortunately knows too well. But he knew Kim Hyuna.

“Did you know her?”

“She was a singer and the owner of a club downtown, one of those high class places where you can only enter if you receive an invitation in expensive paper and gold letters. I led an inspection there, six months ago, to look for a vampire thief.”

Chanyeol remembers her golden hair and red lips, the way she made his heart pound with a single glance. But he also remembers her eyes, old and lonely, and her amazing voice. He finds himself feeling sorry for her. She didn't deserve to end up like this, torn to pieces, scattered carelessly on the ground still wet from morning dew.

“Why am I here?” he asks.

“Because you're an idiot and the head of the department thought it would've been nice to send you here to get some punishment and learn something about the people you so greatly despise.”

He frowns. “They're not people, they're...”

“They are people Chanyeol, and they are dying. And our duty is to protect them as much as to protect humans from them.”

He just bows, not wanting to upsets his boss any further. Not now that she's finally thinking to give him a chance.

“I have every available man on this case, but it's not nearly enough. Crimes against the Undead community are far less frequent than the ones committed by its members, and my department is small. We deal with cases of defamation and racism against vampires during our best days. We're not even remotely prepared to deal with a serial killer.”

“I used to work against vampires, not for them or with them. I'm not the best man for this job.”

She smiles her shark smile. She's young, Im Jin-ah, but she's smart and ambitious, and those two qualities are the reason she's now the chief of a department - even if it's a small one. “You don't have to worry about that, Park Chanyeol. On the contrary, you are exactly the best man for this job. See the way this poor girl was torn apart? This is not a man’s doing. Only a vampire would've been able to do this to another vampire.”

Someone comes and covers the rests of Kim Hyuna. Jin-ah lights a cigarette but does not offer one to Chanyeol. She knows he's trying to quit.

“I need you on the field, Chanyeol. Are you ready to come back?”

Oh yes, he is.

“I don't need an assistant, Jin-ah.”

“It's boss for you, Park.”

He scoffs. “I don't need an assistant, boss.”

“Too bad, because Seungwan is going to stay with you. She needs training and you're allegedly the best field agent of the entire prefecture.”

“Her training will have to wait. This is a serious case and-”

“Seungwan has been working in my department for six months, while you've been one of my agents for less than two. Maybe you need training as well, Park Chanyeol. At least I won't have to worry about you insulting the families of the victims. Let her do all the talking.”

He scoffs, resisting the urge to stomp his feet on the ground like a child. “You can't expect me to work with a teenager trainee glued to my back! How can I question suspects or talk with my connections in the vampire mob? People will think I'm a joke!”

He receives a shrug.

“Not my problem. Work on this case, Park, and do it well, or you'll be back to doing paperwork before the end of the week.”

She leaves just as Son Seungwan, Chanyeol's new assistant and trainee, arrives with all the reports and evidences from the previous cases.

“There's not a lot of stuff,” mumbles Chanyeol to himself, but Seungwan catches it anyway. “It's mostly photographs. If you want to see the corpses, we need to visit the vault. They're keeping everything in a freezer cell.”

Chanyeol scoffs, thinking about how useless that is. When vampires die, their corpses don't decay, nor they turn to ashes like many people think, burning with what's left of their damned soul. When vampires die, from either a stake in their heart or the first rays of dawn, their bodies turn to stone, white and smooth, harder and colder than every human body could ever look in the tragedy of rigor mortis. He thinks about Kim Hyuna's long legs lying on the dirty asphalt of a back alley in the suburbs of the city and how the dirtiness on her clothes wasn't able to mar the perfection of her skin.

“What do you know about this killer?”

Seungwan lazily raises an eyebrow. “I thought it as your duty to find it out. You're the expert, Park.”

“But I haven't been working on this case for the past few months. You did. And you're my assistant now so answer the question.”

“Apparently we know nothing. We couldn’t find any link between the previous victims, so we think he chooses them randomly. We tried to look into their pasts but it's extremely difficult to find information about vampires. They're extremely shy.”

“They're secretive bastards, that's it. So no link between the victims? Did you try asking other vampires living in the city what they think about these crimes?”

Seungwan shakes her head sheepishly. “The first two murders were vampires from Kim Junmyeon’s clan, but he refused to help us claiming it was their business and to stay out of it. We didn’t go farther than recognizing from the fire brands on their bodies, but initially we thought it was a territorial thing, a street war between thugs.”

Chanyeol nods, That's what he would've thought too. Obviously, no one had the balls and the competence to question Kim Junmyeon himself, one of the most influential and rich vampires of the city, so there was no way to confirm that theory or to know the names of the first two victims, still labeled on the reports as #1 and #2.

“Then another body popped out in the industrial zone, near the cotton mill. We found fifteen pieces,” - Seungwan's voice is clinical and her hand firm as he points to the gruesome photographs on the table - “but no head, obviously. We didn't know what to think because the body wasn't branded, but we weren't sure it was the same killer. It could've been a copycat.”

“The way he tore apart the bodies was similar, though,” points out Chanyeol, looking at the deep, even slashes. “It was done with claws, short claws,” a powerful vampire then, but not an old one, “but it's not done out of anger. Look, it's a clean, accurate cut. He probably did it slowly.”

He takes a little satisfaction in seeing the girl pale a little at the thought. “Yes, that's what the coroner's report said.”

“When did you find his identity?”

“It took us more than a week, because the victim, Mr. Yoon, was on vacation and no one denounced his disappearance to our department. He didn't even have any documents on himself. We had to call and cross every single vampire living in this city before we realized he wasn't from here. We were thinking that maybe he was affiliated with some other rebel pack, thus strengthening our theories about a street war, when Agent Lu finally found his hotel. The family has confirmed the identity of Yoon Doojoon.”

“Why was he here? If I were on holidays, I wouldn't come here. I would go to Bahamas or Hawaii...”

“They're vampires agent Park, you can't expect them to go to the beach! But you have a point. We checked his personal belongings at the airport and we found out he had set a personal appointment with a client the day before he was killed. He had a flight for Finland booked two days later.” And he never got to board on it. He was find stranded in front of a cotton mill instead, cut in fifteen pieces. “And I guess you can't tell me the name of his client, am I right?”

“There was a letter inside his notepad. In this letter only a time, 9PM, and a date, the day he died. It was signed as B., nothing more. Not even a place. He left his hotel room at 8PM and we haven't found anything else apart from his corpse. Do you think it's random?”

Chanyeol blinks, surprised by the sudden change of pace in the conversation.

“The choice of the victims, you mean?”

“Yes, you see, the lady vampire we found tonight was, according to the quick research I've done, really rich and well known in the vampire jet-set. She was a socialite. But this man was a respectable professional with three human wives died of old age or terminal illness and the first two victims were nameless goons of a powerful clan. There is no link.”

“There is no apparent link,” corrects her Chanyeol. “Of course there's the possibility that this serial killer chooses his victims randomly, but we can't be sure for now.”

Chanyeol doesn't care about his motives or the way he chooses his victims. He just knows one thing and it is the thrill of the hunt. He wants to find this bloodsucker bastard and drag him to jail in silver chains. Or, even better, behead him, stick a stake in his old, rusty heart and watch as his features freeze forever in an angry mask of stone. He just needs to find him first.

The phone buzzes in his pocket, again, and this time he picks it up and flips it open without even looking at the caller ID. “Mom?” he says. “I'm coming to visit you tonight, there are some things I need to ask you.”

Chanyeol hates family meetings and vampires. He hates his childhood's house and he hates his mother's new house. He hates the pale, pastel colors of his mother's favorite dresses, the bags of blood in the refrigerator and the bright neon lights constantly turned on at every time to give the impression of an eternal day (to console Park Joohyeon of her eternal night). He hates the evergreen shrubs peering from the thin layer of snow that blankets the garden and he hates having to wait for the sunset in a little park near the grocery store because his mother is still a young vampire who can't get up when the sun is still polluting the air with light and warmth.

After he arrives, he lingers in front of the door and takes a long, deep breath, reminding himself why he needs to do this. He likes his job. He liked it even better before a conceited vampire asshole threatened to press charges on him for sexual assault - he scoffs - kidnapping - he scoffs harder - and attempted murder - he shakes his head, unbelievable. Nevertheless, even if he's been moved to another department and he can't chase vampires all night anymore, Chanyeol still can't afford to give up in his job for the mere reason that it's the only thing that allows him to be independent.

Losing this job would mean coming back home to grovel for some money at his mother's feet and Chanyeol is going to do everything he can to solve this case and avoid that option. (Especially considering that the reason he got a job so young instead of going to university in the first place was getting out of her French manicured claws.)

Park Joohyeon is beautiful, but she has the beauty of a doll and not of a mother. Where other mothers are warm, she's always been cold to Chanyeol. Even now, when she sees him, it takes a moment for her face to unfreeze and shape itself in something that reminds a smile. A very forced one.

“Chanyeol dear,” she says, stepping aside to let him enter the house. He follows the smell of flowers into the living room, collapsing on the white leather couch. The entire house looks new, pristine, stainless. There are no signs of his mother's presence. It looks empty and unused, so different from the house where they all lived before, Joohyeon, Yura and Chanyeol.

Joohyeon was turned when Chanyeol was three months old and it took her years to get used to the changes in her body, in her future, in her - Chanyeol wouldn't call it life, because vampires are already dead. He grew up in a perpetually messy house, drinking milk out of the carton and eating pizza leftovers when his sister didn't want to cook. His mother was a ghost in a dirty flat, a pale, lost soul in rooms that had been her reign when she was still human. A lot has changed since then. Now she is a ghost in a clean house, but a ghost nonetheless.

“It is nice to see you again, Chanyeol.”

“I have some questions for you.”

There's always a sick satisfaction in seeing the flash of hurt in her eyes, real feelings finally disrupting the calmness of her features, when he dismissed her approach attempts like that.

“Don't you want something to eat first? There are cookies and I could make you a tea.”

Yura said she used to cook, back when she was still able to taste real food, but she doesn't do it anymore. Chanyeol has never seen her actually doing something in the kitchen.

“I'm not here to exchange pleasantries with you, I've come to ask you something related to my job.”

“I understand,” she says, and Chanyeol doesn't know if the way she looks down is a manifestation of real sadness or simply a social obligation for her. He doesn't even know if she still has real feelings or if she just remembers them and plays accordingly. “But I still want to talk to you. You never come to visit me, Chanyeol.”

There's no bite in her words, no strength, and yet they hit Chanyeol like whip lashes.

“You had my attention for twenty years, but I don't recall ever having had yours. Isn't it just convenient to remember about your son when he doesn't need you anymore?”

She stills and this time it's clear to him that she doesn't know how to react. Her face remains blank, trapped in a non-expression of confusion. Maybe she's asking herself which feeling she should show him, what reaction would make him less mad. The answer is: none. There's nothing she could do or say to diminish his anger right now.

He tries to shake personal feelings away because he needs to be lucid. He sees her doing the same, retreating back to her armor of coldness and distance now that she has understood he won't give her what she wants.

“I guess you've heard about the recent attacks,” he says, when he feels calm and detached enough. She just nods. “The Undead community is quite shaken.”

“Did you know any of them?”

“I knew Hyuna Kim, of course. Someone low-level like me couldn't possibly be her friend, but I've heard plenty of her.” Chanyeol pretends not to notice the lie. His mother is young, but far away from being low level. Not with her ‘connections’. “She was very powerful.” But she died anyway, is the unspoken truth.

“What about the lawyer? This Yoon Doojoon?”

“What about him?” she asks. “Yoon Doojoon didn't have any enemies, as far as I know. He was well known though, especially with older vampires. As you may already know, my kind can grow very old.”

She chooses her words carefully, trying not to upset him, but of course it upsets him. “I am aware.”

“It is possible to accumulate a huge amount of wealth in such a long lifespan, hence the existence of people like Yoon Doojoon. He administrated and controlled the money and the real estates of the most powerful vampires of the city. His services were extremely expensive.”

“I know he met someone the day he died. He had a work appointment.”

“Do you know who?”

“Would I be here if I did?”

She leans back in the armchair, her face still and emotionless. “I will ask Junmyeon, if that's what you need. Is there anything else?”

Chanyeol bites his lips. He's really testing his luck but he has to ask. “I need to talk to him. Junmyeon, I mean. The first two victims belonged to his clan, I know he was friend with Kim Hyuna, the last victim, and judging from the amount of money flowing every day in his hands he was probably very well accustomed with this Yoon Doojoon. It may be a coincidence, or he may be a link between the victims. You have to let me talk to him.”

“I'm afraid this can't be possible and you know why.”

“Is he still holding a grudge? The great and almighty head of the Kim clan is afraid I'll try to arrest him again?”

“Maybe if you hadn't tried to do it the previous six times, Chanyeol.” She clicks his tongue. “Maybe if you hadn't succeeded the last time.”

“Only for two hours. Your sire,” he spits the word like poison out of his mouth, “is too smart and too powerful to get blood on his hands.”

Managing to arrest Kim Junmyeon was both the highest and the lowest point of Chanyeol's police career, after the Halloween disaster of course. Not only Junmyeon was released almost immediately for lack of evidences, but Chanyeol was even forced to apologize to him. Two times. The first time by the head of his department and the second time by Joohyeon. “His goons do all the dirty job for him so he has a lot of time to come home and be the motherfucker he is with my mom!”

She presses her lips in a thin line.

“Junmyeon is a good man.”

Always the same old argument. Chanyeol already knows where this will end.

“Dad was a good man. Junmyeon is a monster. And you're one too.”

Chanyeol can't possibly remember his father - so he has no idea whether he was a good man or not - but he's known his mother, all of his life. She's the reason he hates vampires, the only one he will ever need. Her smile, her impossibly smooth skin and the way her forever young eyes smiled at him but never really saw him.

Chanyeol likes to think that his parents both died together, a few months after his birth, in that car accident. But his mother woke up again, in the arms of this short, imposing vampire lord who was rumored to control half of the city. She woke up angry and thirsty, with red eyes and two holes in her throat where her new sire had staked his claim. Sometimes, Chanyeol wishes Kim Junmyeon had never walked on them that day, never decided to save her life on a whim.

He wants to shout it, how he wishes she had stayed dead, but he doesn't dare. There's a limit and he's already crossed it one times too many today. He doesn't want Junmyeon's minions - or even worse, Yura - to show up unannounced at his door to lecture him about the right behavior to keep in front of his mother. In the first case he would probably get away with bruised ribs and a concussion, but he doesn't want to face an angry Yura.

“Talk to him. Tell him that more of his men could die if he doesn't help me. I need to go now.”

She walks him to the door and stops to leave a brief kiss on his cheek. It's soft and cold, like the touch of a flower. It burns his skin and lasts too long and not long enough.

The fifth victim is another girl. A pizza boy finds her during his last delivery of the day, in front of houses with perfect fences and perfect gardens. It takes them three hours to find all the pieces and in the end is Chanyeol who retrieves a tiny, dainty hand from a garbage can. The last piece of the puzzle - except the head, the head is always missing.

“No documents, no particular signs or brands on her body,” Seungwan briefs him quickly.

She looks young, but it's impossible to say with vampires. She could've been turned at a young age two hundred years ago, or last month. It's so difficult without the head.

“Her name is Ji-eun. Or at least her name was Ji-eun. Lee Ji-eun.” He turns to see Jin-ah talking with a handsome young man with dark, alluring eyes and pale skin. He’s a vampire. Chanyeol's entire body tenses for a second before he recognizes Jongdae.

“I see you've taken my advice,” he says to Jin-ah. Jongdae waves to him but doesn't get close. This is why Chanyeol likes working with him. Jongdae is nice for a vampire. Extremely good at what he does, goes straight to the point, doesn't try to engage in useless conversation with Chanyeol. It also helps that he's a vampire and, as Chanyeol has learnt chasing vampires around the streets for the past few years, most of the times it takes a vampire to find another.

Jongdae is not exactly part of the police and he's not even a freelancer, he's more like... a collaborator. He only shows up when he thinks something is threatening the Undead community, mostly murder cases. Two years ago, during one really bad case about a vampire killing virgin teenager girls, Chanyeol had felt curious enough to ask him why. “If one rogue starts killing people like this, the blame will fall on every single vampire on this city,” he had said. “You're too young to remember it, but I was there during the great vampire hunts in the Twenties and I'd like to keep living my peaceful life. No more Blood Wars.”

This time, Jongdae doesn't smile. He kneels in front of the rests of Lee Ji-eun, touching her pale arm fondly, almost like a caress. “She was a family friend. A spoiled little princess.” There's grief in his voice, a grief so deep Chanyeol and Jin-ah both take a step backwards. When Jongdae looks at them again, his eyes are devoid of every feeling, the way Chanyeol has often seen his mother do when he tries to hurt her. “She was one hundred and forty years old, roughly. Not really old for people like us.”

“What did she do in her life?” asks Seungwan, peeking at Jongdae curiously from behind Chanyeol.

“What most vampires do, my lady. Nothing. She played the guitar, spent a scarily huge amount of money on clothes and watched more television than she should have. Sometimes she visited me or my brothers.” He clicks his tongue. “Can we cover the body please? Journalists are starting to arrive and I don't want her spread on the first page of today's newspaper.”

Chanyeol lets Seungwan handle the rest of the usual questions. “Where did she live? We may need to go there and check her house.”

“One of her previous lovers left her an apartment in a luxury complex, near the park. That place will probably have CCTV but you won't find anything there. This same person hurt Kim Hyuna. I doubt human devices would be able to capture his or her reflection.”

“We need to try, nevertheless,” insists the girl, until Jongdae finally gives up.

“I will send you the address, but it won't be enough.”

Chanyeol already knows it, but they're fumbling like idiots in the dark. They need to check everything to find the missing detail. “Do you think there's a connection? Between these murders?” Jongdae considers him for a moment, but Chanyeol can’t perceive any frustration from his face when he answers, “I have no idea. Not knowing who the first victims were makes it difficult to find a link. Do you have any idea?”

“I'm trying to speak with Kim Junmyeon.” Jongdae whistles, Seungwan gasps at the name and Chanyeol sighs. “I know, I know, he probably won't want to see me, but I have to try. The first two guys belonged to his group. And he knew both the third and the fourth victim. Do you think he knew this Ji-eun too?”

Jongdae laughs, but there's not a real amusement in it. “Chanyeol, all the vampires who've lived in this city for the past two hundred years must have crossed paths at some point. Junmyeon probably knew her, like he knew Hyuna. But that alone doesn't prove anything.”

He looks at the sky, blue velvet turning into a brilliant shade of azure. He will have to go soon, before dawn. “Something is killing us, Chanyeol. I'm three hundred years old, one of the oldest in this city, and I don't feel safe. I have a feeling I could be the next corpse and there's nothing I could do to stop it. I've never felt so powerless.”

Chanyeol doesn't know what to say. He doesn't like vampires. If someone is killing them it’s his duty and his job to discover the culprit and make sure he stops, but he personally doesn't care about their survival.

However, this is Jongdae, who is friendly with everyone and sometimes shows up at the headquarters with donuts and tells jokes that make people fall off their chairs. This is Jongdae, who's careful not to step in Chanyeol's personal space and he's perceptive enough to realize that Chanyeol can't like him - Chanyeol wants so bad to like Jongdae, everybody likes Jongdae - and doesn't blame him for it. This is Jongdae, who's Byun Baekhyun's Blood Brother and the one of the two reasons Chanyeol still has a job - the other being Jongin. Baekhyun and Kyungsoo wanted him fired, but Jongdae managed to change their minds and Chanyeol was only moved into another department. He didn't have to do it - he and Chanyeol weren’t even friends - but he did it. Jongdae is one of the nicest, most decent vampires Chanyeol has ever met and maybe, if tomorrow they were to find Jongdae's body scattered across the streets, Chanyeol would feel sorrow.

“I know you don't like us, but I'm glad you're back on the field. This department needs a man like you if they want to solve this case.”

“I would've started working on this case sooner if your brother hadn't played his trick on me,” he says, putting professionalism aside for a moment. “Or have you forgotten the reason why I was blocked behind a desk doing paperwork for two months?”

Jongdae laughs, but there's a hint of danger to it this time. “We were almost too merciful with you, all things considered. You didn't lose your job, for example. Kyungsoo didn't grate your face against the asphalt.” There's steel in his voice. “Be grateful, Park Chanyeol. Baekhyun may be the oldest in our family, but he's still our baby brother and we are… very protective of him. We could have done so much worse.”

He doesn't doubt it. He only knows Jongdae's nice side and Kyungsoo's grumpy-bordering-on-murderous side, so it's easy to forget how ancient they are, how strong they must be. Baekhyun had been strong too, strong enough to almost manage to bite Chanyeol despite being weakened by the drug and the silver handcuffs. Baby brother, is what Jongdae called him... More like dangerous fiend.

“What is done is done. I already apologized, didn't I?” Reluctantly maybe, but he did. Baekhyun hadn't even looked at him, like his apologies weren't important enough. Funny, since he had refused to back down and retire the charges until he got at least those from Chanyeol.

Jongdae sends him a long, penetrant glance. Then he shakes his head, almost defeated.

“You just don't get it, Park Chanyeol. I could try to explain it to you, but it would take a long time and your life isn't nearly long enough.” He bows. “I will talk to Junmyeon, maybe I can convince him to give you five minutes of his time to talk about this case. It's in his best interest, after all. Just try not to arrest him this time.”

Cage me like an animal
A crown with gems and gold
Eat me like a cannibal
Chase the neon throne
Human - Of Monsters and Men

Junmyeon's call arrives two nights later, in the form of two beautiful boys with red eyes. Chanyeol can see their tattoos, their brands, peeking from short sleeves and deep cut collars. They're low level lackeys, less than fifty years old probably - he can see it from the way their eyes follow his pulse, undressing him as they quickly drive to a restaurant downtown. They're thirsty. He’s happy he doesn’t have to bring Seungwan with him. The girl will surely whine at having lost the opportunity to meet the almighty Kim Junmyeon, but the last thing Chanyeol needs tonight is another life to protect while he deals with the most influential clan of the country.

Chanyeol’s Undead guides are wary of him, probably conscious of his dreadful reputation when it comes to fighting and arresting vampires. Chanyeol knows he could take both of them down, if he wanted. Young vampires can't control their instincts yet, they're faster and stronger but also hungrier and easily distracted, and that makes them vulnerable. Chanyeol takes a great pride in being able to guess the approximate age of a vampire better than most of his coworkers. It’s one of the reasons he was considered the best field agent of the entire department. That was before Byun Baekhyun, obviously.

Chanyeol still stubbornly refuses to talk about last Halloween with anyone, but in the privacy of his mind he does nothing but reliving that night over and over again, looking for hints of Baekhyun's real age in his face, in the oddly mismatched colors of his eyes. But, for all the times he's thought about it, it still doesn't make any sense. Baekhyun had been impatient to follow him back home. He had been excited like a teenager, eager and thirsty, with fangs growing in his mouth and eyes glued to Chanyeol's neck. He hadn't looked like he was four hundred years old - like the oldest registered vampire in the city - at all. If Chanyeol had suspected... Well, he likes a challenge, but he's not an idiot. He would've called Yifan and Yixing and Jongin and the whole police station as back-up, instead of trying to seduce the target and ending up with a handful of extremely pissed-off, extremely insulted ancient vampire trying to bite him.

It was a lot like that time he had tried to kill Junmyeon for sleeping with his mom without knowing the bastard was that Kim Junmyeon, the leader of the most dangerous vampire mob in the city. Chanyeol was fifteen at that time, an awkward, gangly teenager who lived in a dirty house because his mom spent all her time holed up in her room mourning her condition, and suddenly the guy who had turned her - her sire, the lousy bloodsucker who had ruined Chanyeol's life - had started to show up at their place. He wore expensive sweaters and had a clean, peaceful smile.

Fake, so fake, had thought Chanyeol.

And suddenly his mother was starting to go out of her room, cleaning the house, putting the best clothes she had in her closet and sometimes other new clothes that the bastard gave to her as a courting gift too. One day Chanyeol came home to find them kissing - a long, bloody, terrible kiss, she wasn't even wearing her wedding ring - and did the only reasonable thing he could do. He tried to kill a vampire lord with a butter knife. He really didn't know Junmyeon was that old or powerful at that time. If he had, maybe he would've looked for a stake before trying to stab him. A butter knife, or any knife, can barely break a vampire's skin.

There are no butter knives at the table Junmyeon has reserved. There are no knives at all.

“I hope you like sushi,” is the vampire's welcome, coupled with a fake, disgustingly sweet smile.

Unlike Chanyeol's mother, Junmyeon has had a lot of time, countless years, to perfect the subtle art of facial expressions. Chanyeol doesn't doubt all of his smiles are fake, but they're extremely natural and convincing, and it only makes him angrier. Vampires are dangerous predators and it's unfair that they can disguise themselves so well, mingling with their unsuspecting preys. Chanyeol likes vampires better when they're ugly and scary and heinous. He likes them best when humans find them disgusting.

Junmyeon is not disgusting. He’s the hot neighbor next door, the one who looks like the most boring person in the world but at the same time is the erotic dream of all the women of the neighborhood. He wears expensive suits and cashmere wool sweaters, plays piano and reads poetry in his free time. Junmyeon is white silk, black leather and the golden details that distinguish a fake from the original brand item. He is the original brand item everyone wants, the perfect trap, made to lure victims in and suck their blood later.

“I don't want to be here,” is what Chanyeol says.

“And here I thought you had finally decided to call me dad,” is the smug reply. The worst thing is that Junmyeon probably heard the rush of blood to Chanyeol's brain, the adrenaline, the hunger flooding his vein, the way his fists tightened despite Chanyeol's perfect self-control. The bastard always knows what to say to make Chanyeol mad.

“I know you don't want me here too,” he continues, voice tight with anger, “but people have died. Your people. Not mine.”

“What makes you think I know anything?” Junmyeon asks. The question in itself is not taunting. He really wants to know what Chanyeol is thinking.

“If you were involved you wouldn't tell me. But if you were involved Kim Jongdae would know it and he wouldn't be so worried.”

“What makes you think Kim Jongdae knows something about my business?”

Chanyeol shrugs.

“Eat, Chanyeol.” He lifts a flute of blood and starts sipping it slowly. Chanyeol looks at the trail of expensive food laid in front of him by an elegant waiter. He's not angry, but he picks at the food while he thinks of the best way to approach the next questions.

He decides to go for the straightforward way. “Are you involved in these murders?”

Junmyeon's gaze doesn't waver, no flicker of fake emotion in his face this time. “I am personally involved. Two of my brothers were killed and I've been doing everything I can to find the culprit, but it's not easy.”

Chanyeol knows they were not Junmyeon's real brothers, not in the same way Jongdae and Kyungsoo - Jongin's bloodsucker boyfriend - and that bastard Byun Baekhyun are related. They are true blood brothers, turned by the same sire, sharing a deep, unbreakable bond. If Junmyeon's blood brother had really died, Chanyeol is sure the entire city would've fallen in chaos as soon as the body was found.

“Who were the first victims?”

Junmyeon sighs. “Kids, at least for our standards. They were victims of an accident with a stray vampire thirteen years ago and I took them in when their families refused to take care of them.”

Thirteen years means they were slightly older than Chanyeol, but he knows that things are different for vampires. They're not usually considered adults until they're at least fifty years old and their most pressing urges - blood, blood and blood - are mostly sated. They still need to drink, but the thirst doesn't clog their minds like in the first years of their second life. “They were my errand boys, delivered letters and important documents.”

“When did you realize they were missing?”

“When they didn't come back in the morning.”

“Are your vampires forced to come back every morning to report and sleep with their brothers?”

Junmyeon drinks again, licks runaway droplets of blood from his lips before answering. “Not all of them do. We're not a sept, Chanyeol, and I'm not a tyrant. The people in my organization are mostly free to do whatever they want with their life.”

It’s funny, how Junmyeon calls it an organization. It has a nice ring to it, like something shiny and neat, it’s more polite. It’s funny, but it doesn’t surprise Chanyeol. Most vampires don’t bother to hide their disgust towards the human world, but for some of them integration is the key to being even more lethal predators. Junmyeon is one of them, all about appearance and first impressions. That’s why his nest is located under a big skyscraper in front of the city hall, a titan made of glass, steel and white-collared lawyers with ironed suit and elegant ties. Almost no one knows about the dozens of vampires sleeping under their asphalt and coming out of their concrete tombs at dawn.

The two victims, Taeyong and Yuta, must have worked there too, like bored, prepubescent secretaries. Maybe they made paper airplanes in their spare time, waiting for the big boss Kim Junmyeon to call them and give them a job, waiting for the sun to rise so that they could go back to their basement tomb.

“I am well aware that the people in your organization are usually free to wander around and be a public menace to innocent humans. But those two weren't.”

“Taeyong and Yuta were turned when they were very young. They were sixteen, maybe seventeen. Young vampires are naturally unpredictable, but vampires turned young have even less willpower. They came to me with the blood of Yuta's sister on their hands and clothes and begged for punishment. The girl survived, but their families wanted nothing to do with them. We didn’t know who had turned them and if they had stayed on the streets they would've gone berserk and killed someone in less than twenty-four hours.”

“So you took them in, two little killers. Well, you're all killers so I guess it wouldn't matter to you…”

Junmyeon's eyes flash red and the flute trembles in his hands for a moment.

“I took two children in my house and I taught them a job. I gave them a place to stay and I had people monitoring them and making sure they ate regularly and came back every night before dawn. I saved their lives.”

“You didn't save anything. They died thirteen years ago.”

Junmyeon is calm, perfectly composed, with his tailored suit and styled hair, he doesn't react to Chanyeol's obvious bait. Only for a moment the boy gets a glimpse of the deadly lord of the night that the person in front of him really is. But it's just for a moment, and it could've just been a trick of his imagination.

Vampires have no feelings. Vampires are dead. Why would he be angry for those two fledglings?

“We can agree to disagree.”

“Did you find anything? About the person who killed them?”

“Nothing. He vanished, like a shadow. Every vampire in the city is either looking for that murderer or hiding from him, and yet he keeps killing, unnoticed. My boys were young and they did not know how to fight, but Kim Hyuna was powerful.”

Kim Hyuna was powerful but she died quietly and her body was found by street sweepers the morning after. Lee Ji-eun lived like a princess in her castle and a pizza boy tripped on her arm on his way back to his workplace before four in the morning. Yoon Doojoon...

“You weren't really useful,” he says to Joonmyeon, and the vampire answers with a quirked eyebrow and a question of his own. “Why do you think Im Jin-ah's department only deals with petty thieves and cases of vampires suing humans for minor crimes? This is their first murder since the creation of your department.”

“Because there's nothing out there mean enough to kill a vampire?”

Junmyeon's sneer is feral. “Oh, killing a vampire is not that difficult - as you have proved to yourself and the world multiple times, Park Chanyeol - and the world is full of self-conceited assholes who think we're nothing more than hungry, soulless monsters and would gladly impale us all.” The pointed glare is not lost on Chanyeol. “They try, sometimes they succeed, but it never becomes a police case. Do you know why?”

Chanyeol feels wrong-footed. He doesn't know how to answer. Junmyeon does it for him. “Because we take care of it before it can become an issue. We find the culprit, be it a vampire, a human or anything else, and we apply our own justice.”

“You know doing that is against dozens of federal laws, right?”

“If you can find the proofs you're free to press charges on me, but you'll never find any. The vampire community in this city is tight. It happens sometimes, when you're forced to spend the eternity with the same, old faces. We protect each other, and we've learnt to do it more effectively than your police force would ever do.”

“But now you need us, don't you?”

“Like I said, if it was easy, we would've already done it ourselves. It doesn't look like you're having much more luck than us, though.”

Chanyeol takes the blow with class. He still has a last trump card to play. “Well, maybe there's something you can help me with.”

Junmyeon falls back into the reliable, trustworthy mask of the rich kid with too much free time. “I will do whatever I can to help you. After all, we're working towards the same goal.”

“The night he died, Yoon Doojoon went to meet someone.”

Junmyeon nods. “I guessed as much. He only came to town for work related reasons. But I have no idea who the person he was supposed to meet is. He had a lot of clients.”

“Yes, my mother has already told me this. But I have something you don't have. A letter, written in a little notebook we found in his hotel room.”

Junmyeon's interest suddenly spikes. “Do you have a name?”

“No, but maybe you can help me with it. I only have an initial. B.”

Junmyeon sags against the comfortable chair again. He grimaces. “This information is completely useless. I know who this person is and I can assure you not only that he isn't the culprit, but also that he can't tell you anything remotely useful.”

“Let me be the judge. Every detail can be the decisive one.”

Junmyeon hesitates. He takes a moment to evaluate Chanyeol, taking in his stubborn frown and his tense stance. Chanyeol doesn't know what Junmyeon sees when he looks at him. Joohyeon's useless son who will die in less than one hundred years freeing everyone from his heavy and hateful presence? A snotty brat? A dangerous vampire hunter? Chanyeol has always been good at reading people, but he can't read Junmyeon. He can't read his mother. He couldn't read Byun Baekhyun and it almost costed him his career.

“It's really useless, Chanyeol.” And oh, he hates it so much when Junmyeon uses the reasonable voice, when Junmyeon wears the responsible parent mask with Chanyeol. It's maddening. “Even if I tell you, he won't want to see you. He won't allow you to ask him any questions.”

“Just tell me the name, Junmyeon.”

Tell me the name and I'll leave. Tell me the name and I'll show you, exactly, what I can do.

Maybe then, Junmyeon will stop considering him a barking puppy. Maybe then Junmyeon will start treating him with respect and maybe, one day, even an ounce of fear. Most vampires who have met Chanyeol have ended up fearing him. But not Junmyeon. (And not Baekhyun. Baekhyun had liked him at first. Later, he had simply hated him.)

“There's only one vampire in this city who signs himself as B., but the people who may have had the chance of receiving a message from him can be counted on the fingers of your right hand.”

“Why?”

“Because he's old, really old, but he doesn't have a very exciting social life nowadays. Or in the last ninety years. That's why I told you he won't have anything to say to you. He literally never gets out of his house. Last time he did, I heard it didn't go quite well.”

He chuckles, and Chanyeol kind of feels mocked. He doesn't understand why, though. He has a bad feeling about this.

“The person you're looking for is called Byun Baekhyun. You may already know him though.”

The look of extreme smugness and satisfaction in Junmyeon's face when Chanyeol's jaw drops is one of the most infuriating things ever seen. Chanyeol hates vampires.

Breathe in, breathe out
Let the human in
Breathe in, breathe out
And let it in
Plants awoke and they slowly grow
Beneath the skin
So breathe in, breathe out
Let the human in
Human - Of Monsters and Men

“I'm breaking up with you.”

Jongin raises his hands in quick surrender but Kyungsoo looks deadly serious and Chanyeol is caught up between feeling annoyed and awkward in the middle of a lover's quarrel that was born because of him.

He tries to send an apologetic glance to Jongin, but his best friend is too busy making his best kicked puppy face at his boyfriend.

“It's about the murders, Soo, Chanyeol is working on the case.”

Kyungsoo's eyes are slithers of suspicion and contempt. “So he thinks my brother is the murderer or associated with the murderer. That's even better!”

“I just want to ask him some questions,” tries to explain Chanyeol, but Kyungsoo harshly cuts his off before he can explain. “You shut up! I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to Jongin. You have lost every right to talk to me!”

When Jongdae had told Chanyeol that, despite Baekhyun being the oldest, he and Kyungsoo were extremely protective of him, Chanyeol hadn't thought convincing them to let him meet Baekhyun would've been so difficult.

“I have a warrant,” he tries again, ignoring the way Jongin's eyes silently beg him to just shut up you're making it worse. “You can't keep me from seeing him.”

Kyungsoo wavers a little. Then he seems to recompose himself. “Well, if it was for me my brother would also have a restraining order against you. Haven't you done enough to hurt him? Why must you make him suffer again?”

“Kyungsoo,” begs Jongin. “No!” growls his boyfriend, baring his fangs. “Send him away Jongin, we're done here!”

He storms out of the room, slamming the door behind his back so harshly one of the glass panels break in a thousand pieces.

“Well, so much for my warrant.”

“You could've shut up, I was this close to convincing him!”

“Yes, I could see,” is the ironic reply. “What do we do now? I really need to talk to Baekhyun and I need to do it quickly, before Seungwan gets tired of waiting at the police station and comes here looking for me. Do you think I could sneak out and try to find Baekhyun’s room on my own?”

“Kyungsoo would behead you if you tried.” Jongin takes a deep breath. “The girls who died, both of them... They were Baekhyun's friends, apparently. Old, old friends.”

Chanyeol stares at him for a moment. “He doesn't know they're dead, does he?”

Jongin shakes his head. “They're just trying to protect him. Baekhyun is so old, but for them he is a child.”

Baekhyun didn't look like he needed protection when Chanyeol had met him.

“There’s some other reason they don’t think you should meet Baekhyun, but he won’t tell me and I don’t understand. Kyungsoo has been really… jumpy since Halloween every time I talk about his brother.”

Chanyeol doesn’t care about the household problems of Do Kyungsoo. He just needs to talk with Baekhyun. How do they expect him to solve this case if he can’t use the only hint he has.

“Look, I'll just find Kyungsoo and I'll try to explain that this is really important for you and the case. Don't you dare going anywhere on your own, Chanyeol, or Kyungsoo will really kill you and I will have no choice but help him hide your body afterwards.”

Chanyeol wisely keeps a snarky answer for himself and watches his best friend disappear, swallowed by the darkness of the corridor. He waits until he hears the foreword of another argument, half-shouted and half-whispered, bloom on the other side of the door.

His phone chirps, a message from Seungwan asking him if he needs backup. He sends her a big NO and a stern looking emoji and hopes she gets the message.

He sighs so hard he doesn't realize there's someone else in the room with him until the other person knocks on the table to announce his presence. “Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you,” the boy says after Chanyeol jumps up. He is young - he looks young - with a pale, blank face and hair styled like a high school kid.

“I'm Sehun.” Oh, Chanyeol has heard about him from Jongdae once. Sehun is the fourth brother, the youngest of the family, as far as Chanyeol knows. He's only two hundred years old but he doesn't look older than seventeen. And now that he can see him better, Chanyeol is also sure he’s met Sehun himself a few times during night patrol shifts. The kid likes going to clubs, but Chanyeol has never caught him doing something stupid like biting people in public. “You're here to talk with hyung, right? I can take you there.”

“I appreciate your help, but I wouldn't want your brothers to be mad at you because you helped me.”

Sehun shrugs. “There's no need to talk to me like a kid, you know? I'm old enough to be your grand-grandfather. And I'm definitely old enough to make my own decisions, just like Baekhyun is old enough to make his own. They are not protecting him in keeping things away from him.”

Hearing this kind of speech from someone who looks barely older than a teenager is strange, but Sehun's words also feels logical.

“Then I will accept your help. I swear, I won't unnecessarily bother your brother, I just need to ask him a few question.”

“Follow me, and try to be discreet. Kyungsoo wouldn't like to know I'm taking you downstairs.”

The house is huge. It looks like someone has taken different halls from different mansions and has mashed them together, like a kid playing god with giant lego pieces. A complicated mess of corridors leading to nowhere and countless doors of different fashion and shape keep the whole structure connected, like ropes tying together pieces of time that struggle to run away with their history. Sometimes they climb upwards and sometimes they have to go down, without a semblance of logic.

“Does your brother enjoy being so out of reach that it takes two hours to find his room?”

Sehun smirks, leaning on the colossal travertine banister. “It’s one of the pleasures of his eternal life.”

The third floor is completely empty, with shiny, dark wood on the floor and heavy brocade curtains covering the wide windows. It oddly looks like an old ballroom. Inside a secret room between the second and the first floor, Chanyeol sees a pool table, a giant, empty aquarium and a small cinema.

Everything screams filthy rich. Everything lies in neglect and dust. There’s a massive amount of stuff, all kinds of things from all kinds of different times, piled up and dumped everywhere in a bizarre kaleidoscope of colors and styles.

“Do you even use these rooms?”

Sehun snorts. “We used to. Jongdae managed to keep the aquarium running for twenty years. Then I killed all his fish after a bad fight and he didn't talk to me for almost a decade. We have a lot of time to get bored, you know?”

“Must be a terrible life, always holed up at home with nothing to do.”

Sehun laughs, looking terribly juvenile with his terrible undercut and the ratty t-shirt. Only the pointy teeth give him away. “Who says we spend all of our time holed up at home? I'm part of a dance crew and we have gigs every now and then. This is how I met Jongin. I was the one who introduced him to Kyungsoo, did you know?”

No, Chanyeol did not know. He thought he knew Jongin pretty well, but he never stopped to ask him how he had met an old vampire like Kyungsoo. He never stopped to ask what would compel a hunter like Jongin to date a vampire.

“If only you took your head out of your ass you would still see things much more clearly,” hints Sehun, guessing Chanyeol's thoughts. “Like, for example, you would understand why everyone thinks you behaved like an ass to Baekhyun.”

“I was doing my job. I've told it countless times, I'm sorry but I was only doing my job.”

“No you are not sorry,” says Sehun. “You apologized but you were never sorry.”

Rage mounts in Chanyeol's chest, erupting like lava from his mouth before he can stop it.

“I'm sorry if I made a mistake and your brother's feelings were hurt, the poor baby. I'm sorry if I left him hanging for my dick in the end. I would've taken a great deal of satisfaction in fucking the smugness out of his face but unfortunately for him I hate vampires and I would never stick my cock in one of them willingly.”

It was said to hurt but it only manages to anger Sehun to a great deal. The boy has his hand on Chanyeol's throat before the boy has uttered the last word, and he effortlessly pulls Chanyeol upwards until he's tiptoeing on the floor to keep breathing. Chanyeol is an idiot. He's always been and he will always be an idiot. He will probably die in this dusty house full of forgotten rooms at the hands of an impatient baby vampire who wants to avenge his brother's honor.

Sehun glares at him for what feels like forever, with his cat-like yellow eyes. Chanyeol's throat shakes and writhes, fighting for air, and only then a disgusted expression appears on Sehun's face and he lets Chanyeol fall on the ground.

“You think I care about your little quest for a murderer? Ji-eun was my girlfriend and I've loved her, a long time ago, but even if it was the only way to find her killer I still wouldn't let you near my brother knowing the damage you caused the first time.”

“Then why are you taking me there now?” he asks - he tries to ask, his throat feels too raw and he can barely let out the words.

“Because my brother has fallen asleep after Halloween and hasn't woken up since then,” he says. “We can't wake him up.”

“Asleep? What do you mean?”

“It’s something like a coma, but it’s intentional. My brothers say I shouldn’t worry about it, because it’s not the first time he’s done it, but my lover says it’s still very dangerous. Bad things can happen when vampires and dreams are involved. He could go mad or die of starvation. He could decide that in the end he prefers dreams to reality and never wake up.”

Chanyeol didn't even know vampires could go on controlled coma, let alone die from it. His bewilderment must show on his face, because Sehun snorts at him. “You'll see with your own eyes. Come on, we're almost there.”

He opens a door hidden behind a curtain and drags Chanyeol back in the past in a time made of splendor and ostentation. Baekhyun's room are old like him, all ancient, wooden furniture, precious carpets, closets full of velvets and silks, gold and pearls, vestiges of lost times. Sehun points to a stone arch covered by a silken veil.

“Baekhyun is resting over there.”

“Why is he even sleeping?”

“Why don't you tell me?” bites back the kid, but Chanyeol has no answers for him. “You can ask him when you wake him up. Don't stand too close to him while you do it. He hasn't drunk anything since Halloween. He won't be able to stop himself as soon as he senses your blood.”

“Wait a moment, aren't you coming with me? I don't want to go in there alone...”

It's crazy, invading a vampire's territory like this while he's sleeping. Baekhyun will definitely try to kill him in the first, hazy moment of wakefulness. It's suicide. Sehun is sending him to die.

“I can't,” the boy says, faking a look of sorrow. “Before he disappeared in his room, Baekhyun has told us we are not allowed to enter and try to wake him up. He usually doesn't do that - giving us a direct order, I mean - but he's the oldest and he's our blood brother. We can't disregard his orders.”

With their sire - Chanyeol wonders if he or she is still alive, and if they are they must be among the oldest vampires of the entire country - gone, Baekhyun is the oldest vampire of the family and that gives him some sort of power over his brothers. “Kyungsoo and Jongdae are strong enough to get inside his room and check on him sometimes, but even for them it takes a great deal of energy to disobey a direct order from Baekhyun. I wouldn't stand a chance against him.”

“So you're sending me, a human, inside a room where not even your older brothers can enter, to wake up a sleeping vampire who hasn't had any blood in weeks, who hates me and is most likely to kill me at first sight?”

Sehun's smile is sweet and childlike. “You were the one who insisted to come here even when everyone told you it was a waste of time. If you want the information you have to work for it.”

Chanyeol growls deep in his throat. He really, really hates vampires.

The air is silk, shadows form a grin
If I lose control I feed the beast within
Human - Of Monsters and Men

Baekhyun hasn't changed a lot since the last time Chanyeol has seen him. Chanyeol supposes he never will.

His hair is darker now that his powers aren't crackling around him. He looks young. They all do, crystallized in the exact moment they were Turned, but there's always that edge of eternity in the stiffness of their limbs, the awkward way they force themselves to move slower than they can in order not to scare the humans around them. There are always signs that betray their true nature - stone, diamond, blood and darkness in a human shape, more than humans and less than gods, monsters. But Baekhyun, sprawled on the bed like a lost child, with the messy sheets tangled in his limbs and legs and his face hidden in the curve of the pillow… Baekhyun looks terribly human and terribly young.

His chest heaves up and down. Chanyeol remembers noticing it the first time too and finding it odd. Vampires usually don't breathe. They don't need to. But Baekhyun does, even when he sleeps. He sniffles and smacks his lips together and rolls on his bed and he doesn't looks like a monster at all.

He tiptoes around the room and stops in front of the bed, wondering how he should proceed. The last time he was involved with Baekhyun and a bed it didn't end well.

He takes out his dagger, safely stored in a hidden pocket of his jacket. It's his life insurance, a long, shiny silver blade that burns Undead skin and can, sometimes, even kill vampires. Baekhyun's mouth curls into a snarl, almost as if he can feel the presence of silver in his room and the threat it poses. But Chanyeol has no intention of turning the blade towards the sleeping vampire.

Just a scratch, repeats Sehun's voice in his mind, the smell of blood will surely wake him up. Make sure you're ready to fight for your life, because he'll be starving.

Chanyeol presses the sharp edge against his forearm, a cold kiss against the vein underneath. It cuts through the skin effortlessly, and warm blood - Chanyeol's blood - pools around the wound, slowly dripping down Chanyeol's wrists.

For a moment, the room goes eerily quiet. Baekhyun stops breathing, he stops sniffing, he stops moving. Then he growls and he opens his eyes. They’re red. His fangs are so long he must keep his mouth open to flash them at Chanyeol.

He gets on his feet faster than lightning. He's strong, but he's also clumsy, too wrapped in his terrible hunger to be able to think properly. Chanyeol manages to slash his face with the silver dagger and the pained, raw snarl he receives is enough to make his bones throb in fear. The wound sizzles and smokes as Baekhyun’s body heals itself until there’s no trace of the wound.

Baekhyun aims at his neck first, but something stops him before he can sink his fangs in Chanyeol's tender skin. Chanyeol turns and sees Sehun, fighting with all his forces to keep his brother away from Chanyeol. It doesn't last long. There's a snap and a pitiful whimper and the boy falls on the lucid wood of the floor holding his unnaturally bent arm.

There are other noises - Chanyeol can hear approaching steps, screams, he recognizes Jongin's voice - but the only thing he can focus on is the look of raw, desperate want in Baekhyun's face. This is not the elegant, charming predator he met last Halloween, with flashing eyes and a smile that made even his heart throb, nor he is the sleeping child with the pouty face and loose, lax limbs sprawled over the messy bed. This is not even a monster, but an animal, a creature of pure need, his hungry gaze fixed on Chanyeol's neck.

Chanyeol sees Baekhyun's last attack coming and he knows there is no way for him to stop it. In his head, he curses Sehun and his stupid idea. The other boy has used him to awaken his own brother, now he can see it clearly, but now there is no one to stop Baekhyun from killing Chanyeol.

Chanyeol tightens his hold on the knife and he waits until Baekhyun crushes him with the strength of a bullet train, strong and overwhelming. Only then he drives the blade against Baekhyun's chest at the same time the vampire's teeth dig into his neck, tearing a cry of pain out of him.

Everything burns. Everything goes black.

baekhyun

Cage me like an animal
A crown with gems and gold
Eat me like a cannibal
Chase the neon throne
Human - Of Monsters and Men

Baekhyun doesn’t know where he is. It’s too late when he feels the piercing pain in his back, spreading through his chest, near his heart, right before everything becomes numb. He doesn’t know what is happening but he doesn’t really care. He keeps sucking, because everything else is fading away but Chanyeol’s blood is so sweet, so pasty on his tongue and throat. It feels like booming laughs and warm hands on his eyes and hair, it feels like Chanyeol felt when he was pretending to be a caring person, before Baekhyun found out that the fucker was, in fact, a fucker. Baekhyun passes out from the pain, thinking that at least the fucker has missed his heart.

If I could only let go
Human - Of Monsters and Men

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