At Night (part 1)
Finally! Finally it is done! *dies* Fifteen pages of awesome. Which has in no way been beta-read, so if you spot any mistakes attack me with sticks.
Title: At Night
Characters: Henry, Wake, Malice
Warnings: Gay vampires, torture, and death. And Wake, who cannot keep his hands to himself.
Summary: The origin story THAT WOULDN'T END. Wake gets bored, all the time, and Wake falls in love every day. Henry has never been really bored, or in love, but he is very pretty.
Wake, being Wake, experienced boredom not so much as an emotion as as a transitional state - it was the feeling that signalled it was time to stop doing whatever he was currently doing to amuse himself, and start doing something different instead.
Possibly one or the other of these things he was doing to amuse himself involved the twisted slaughter of humans for no real or understandable reason - but, then again, could just as easily involve watching a play, or chasing rabbits, or howling at the moon. He wasn't at all fussy (Wake was fussy, in everything from what he wore to whom he ate).
On this one instance - an instance that, as it happens, would begin to set in motion a chain of events that would ultimately (though not for a while, and with some rather amusing bits in between, sometimes involving dragons) lead to his sad and (in his opinion, quite untimely) demise, and then everything which came after that bit, which was actually quite a lot - anyway, on this one instance, he was bored with... well, actually, not anything in particular, because he wasn't really doing anything in particular; just a hundred tiny little things that made up his nights.
So that was the first thing-to-be-done-for-amusement.
He decided, after some careful thought, during which he weighed up all the options on hand, that maybe the second thing ought to be a spot of recreational murder.
If you asked - and you would have to ask, and really press for an answer, if you wanted one - Wake would decide, after a little deliberation, that the reason he picked that girl for his first victim was that she was pretty. Not incredibly so; she wasn't, for example, stunningly beautiful, or indeed any manner of beautiful. She wasn't even really his type, so far as the vampire had a type (Wake's type was dark hair and pale skin and innocence. That was important). But there was a sort of a spark about her, like she had the potential to be truly wonderful; he took some pleasure in snuffing that out in as creative a way as he could think of.
“I'm doing you a favour, really.” His tone was light, conversational, as he licked warm, red, thick blood from his fingers. “You're much prettier dead.” Patting her hair softly, almost lovingly, he rose fluidly from his crouch, regarding the body splayed in front of him.
Wake was not one to boast (Wake would boast at any given opportunity, and then some), but it really was fantastic handiwork. She looked just right, treading that oh so fine line between beautifully obscene and over the top. After all, go too far, and the horror is diminished by the lack of any features to identify the corpse as human. That's why he had left her face, and only her face, untouched, brown eyes with a hint of green staring glassily up at the hazy night sky.
Whistling cheerily to himself, and blowing the dead woman a quick kiss, Wake slipped his hands into his pockets, and practically skipped home.
~
His hand was damp, clamped over his own mouth, salted with tears; he could hear his breath thundering in his ears, a soft wheezing in a fast, panicked rhythm; he waited. Footsteps, light, playful, no-care-in-the-world footsteps, receded. Fresh corpses smell of warm, metallic blood and meat, and they don't begin to gather flies until the sickly sweet musk of rot sets in and the body grows cold.
He didn't want to know that, but he did, now. Brown eyes, wide, could not stop staring.
His hand dropped limply from his face; still he stared, as blank as the glass eyes of the dead woman. Three beats of a heart that could only be his own; approximately seven seconds. Then he doubled over, retching, overlaying the scent of dead flesh with the taste of bile.
To wander the back streets at night is crazy and dangerous, but Henry doesn't tend to think of the consequences of his actions. He's not mad, nor simple; just a little bit of a wistful dreamer, at times. Dark places lend themselves better to his temperament; Henry is not a people person. His personality just doesn't fit very easily with that of other people. He regretted it, now - or at least, he would, once the shock response faded. For now, he was having trouble thinking anything at all, excepting several choice expletives, and, for some reason, that he would never set foot in a church again (his pastor had, once, when he was a boy, assured him that vampires did not exist. He was certain that men of god weren't meant to lie to little boys, so now he was annoyed).
Reality caught up, and reasserted itself with ruthless force; Henry, never an extremely brave man, contemplated the pros and cons of throwing up again. His mouth tasted of bile, and his stomach felt empty. Perhaps not.
Though it took great force of effort not to tremble, he couldn't be proud with himself, for that; just as he could not be pleased at the willpower expended to look away from the poor woman.
The human brain has ways of shielding itself from the greatest of trauma; and so, once he had frozen in shock, and then panicked, what came next was an odd, robotic calm. He moved from the shadows of the alley, limbs stiff and heavy and strange, scuttling around the corpse without so much as stirring the dirt on the ground beside it, hands attempting vainly to flatten the mess of black curls he called hair, where the sweat from his brow had dampened them. It could have been any night, hurrying home with sudden realisation that the light had gone from the sky. He seemed exactly the same man, with his quick, hurried, slightly nervous stride that seemed suited to pacing back and forth in a rage, and twitchy hands.
In many ways he was the same man, still just Henry - but just as, with this killing, Wake had set into motion a set of events that would lead (eventually) to his death, Henry had, in witnessing it, begun a set of events that would end (quite soon), in his.
~
Vampires come out at night.
Everybody knows this; deep in our superstitious bones, we all believe in vampires. Some will claim that what we fear are not creatures of flesh, but dark desires in ourselves, or in others. Some say that we do not fear vampires at all; that we want them to be real, to be the evillest of creatures, and save man from that title. Many people claim to know that vampires are not real; just a fairy tale, a scary story, a small and amusing footnote in the history of mythological creatures that has persisted through the ages because it appeals to the believers in us all.
And there are many myths, on the nature of vampires; where they came from, how they are made, what will hurt them. Crosses, holy water, garlic, sunlight, running water, silver, lemons. Some vampire legends have them drinking, not blood, but life force, or souls. Some are beautiful, haunting creatures, while some are fit for nothing but nightmares. There are those that have made a living studying these myths, learning the history of the vampire, understanding how they relate to man and why we, as a species, are enthralled with them.
But the people who know, not from old books and stories, but from experience and encounters and blood, will tell you nothing of myths, nothing of legend, nothing of prevention and destruction and the psychology of monsters.
They will tell you, with certainty, only one thing: Vampires come out at night. The rest, you will see in their eyes.
It was in Henry's eyes, dark brown and terrified. Though the sun beat down and kept him safe he could not help but second guess every glance, every stranger. The world was a darker place than it had been the day before.
Despite his vow in the tender arms of panicked hysteria, safety was still the church; something in the back of his mind was so certain no monster would ever intrude on his faith, the safe haven that was the house of God. There was no one else there, thankfully, as he sat down at the very back of the church, resting his head in his hands. His eyes felt heavy; he hadn't slept. He was beginning to doubt that he would ever sleep again.
This wasn't the only doubt beginning its creep into his mind; for Henry was also on the verge of doubting his sanity, too. What if what he thought he saw, wasn't what he really saw? What if he didn't see anything at all?
“What if I'm crazy?” He mumbled into the palms of his hands. After all, only crazy people would believe in something as, well, crazy as vampires. What if he'd only imagined...
The obvious hit him with all the force of lightning; his fingers curled up, digging into the sides of his head as he tensed, realising exactly what he had to do, if he ever wanted to believe he wasn't going mad.
He had to go back.
~
The alley way didn't seem nearly so... threatening, in the bright, cold, clinical light of day. Sunlight slipped down through the gap made by the squat, rambling buildings, and into the messy warren of passageways forgotten by modern man; the maze of poor, drunken bastards in dead ends, and refuse and human waste left piled against the old brick. No, the alley wasn't threatening, in the day - just disgusting.
Henry held his breath, and watched where he put his feet.
Each turning he took made his heart beat a little faster, his fists clenching and unclenching in time; every time a sleeping peasant, down on his luck and pretty much everything else, coughed roughly and resettled, Henry started and stalled, and needed a minute to re-gather his nerves.
The closer he got, the more deserted the world became. As if even the wretched poor were too afraid to take refuge here. Frankly, he would not be surprised if that were true. By now, that sick, sweet decay smell would have set in... he swallowed. No good. His throat was still dry and rough as grit.
Final corner. He could see, from here, the crumbling half-arch he had hidden in the night before, hand clamped over his mouth and breathing tight. His neatly cut nails hurt where they bit into the skin of his palms, but loosening his fists was currently an impossibility. Not even worth considering. Couldn't be done.
He resisted the urge to giggle hysterically to himself. It was not the first time that day.
If he had expected to feel frozen, petrified and unable to move, this was not the case; his feet didn't stumble or falter as he walked ever closer to the place where the body lay. It was his head that felt heavy and strange. A part of him felt like he would die, the second he reached his destination. The second he saw her, sprawled broken and bloody with her face still untouched, unblinking eyes still watching the sky.
Oh God, he thought. Oh God, please say that...
He didn't know, anymore, if he wanted this to be real... or if he wanted to be crazy. If he were crazy, if that...monster was just a figment of his, obviously diseased, mind, then... well, at least the rest of the world would be safe from... it. Earlier he had labelled the thing a vampire; now that sounded like something out of a penny dreadful, not something real. He just didn't know anymore.
The arch cast a shadow over him as he passed it; though the air did not grow much cooler, Henry still shivered. He could still feel the cold brick up against his back. In fact, he was certain he would feel it for the rest of his life.
Surely, he thought, he should be able to smell her - it - her - by now. Old blood, and rotting flesh. Iron and sweet decay. Why couldn't he smell anything? His heart started beating faster. Did this mean...?
Nothing.
Henry stared at the spot. There was nothing. Not even a spot of blood - nothing to show that anyone had died here. But that was impossible, that... dragging his hands through his hair, fingers snagging in curls, he bit back another crazed laugh.
“So.” He spoke to thin air, in a voice that most people would have shied away from; a voice that spoke of deep, mental instability. “I am mad.”
~
Some people always seem to be whistling a jaunty tune, just under their breath; Wake is one of these people. It's quite infuriating, actually - that's probably why he does it.
He is also the type of person to always have a very... relaxed air about them. No matter what is going on around them, they are unruffled.
Which is why, though it seemed as if every member of his (rather large) family were shouting, screaming, snarling, or otherwise berating him, Wake remained seated in an armchair, posture relaxed, one leg slung carelessly over the other, arms resting comfortably at his sides. It didn't even come off as an act; there was nothing to suggest that he was not perfectly, sublimely at ease.
“What, do tell me, little brother, were you thinking?” An elder half-sister - any elder half-sister, really, they were all exactly the same - shrieked in an annoyingly high pitched voice.
“Were you even thinking at all?” A half-brother - probably a younger one, Wake thought, since he didn't recognise the damn ponce - added in a snide voice that managed to be equally annoying.
Wake's self-assured smile proved to be the most annoying thing in the room.
“Do you have any idea what we've had to do to clean your mess, Wake, dear?”
Ah, mother. He did still love his mother, at least. Though her words were judgemental her tone was kind, and she lovingly ran a hand through his hair. Out of respect for her, he toned down the smugness of his smile, if just a little.
“I know.” As much affection as he held for his mother, Wake could not sound contrite. “But I was so bored, mummy...” He nuzzled against her hand, kitten-like, and knew she was on his side.
“We all get bored.” That voice he did recognise; it was ingrained deep into the part of his brain that recognised danger. A voice he had known literally all his life; that of his sister and twin, the aptly named Malice. There were daggers in her tone, but then, there always were. “What makes you so special, golden boy?”
“Malice.” He plastered a fond and utterly fake smile over his face. “I didn't know you were back from Paris.”
Malice was deadly beautiful; her eyes were the same jewelled, piercing green as her twin's, and her hair was the same sand brown, long and sleek and, currently, delicately curled around her china doll face. Privately, and occasionally vocally, Wake had always considered her repulsive. There is the stench of a witch about her.
“I came home early,” she informed him curtly, glaring down her nose. He resisted the urge to stand; that would only mean she'd won. “It's good that I did, or you might have had the run of London, completely unchecked. Really, brother, have you no discretion?”
Wake waved a flippant hand.
“I knew it would be dealt with. Why worry about little details, sister? One human will never be missed.” His normal, natural purr was slightly forced. Malice brought out the very worst in him. “You worry too much.”
“One of us has to, I suppose.” She sniffed, inspecting her long, scarlet nails with lazy eyes. “You're far too reckless for me to be the same, brother dear.”
“Hmm, if you like. It's the same to me. Anyway, if you're all done...?” He glanced around; no one spoke, not even one of his stupid, nameless cousins. Not even Malice. “I think I'd like to go to bed, now.”
He stood, stretched each limb with liquid grace, kissed his mother on the cheek, and wove his way through the gathered family, stunned into silence by his sheer gall, and closed the door behind him with a smooth click. Wake paused, just outside the door, and waited.
Malice snarled; there was a ripping sound that was most likely caused by her perfect nails tearing through the fabric of the armchair. He chuckled, the smug smirk returning. His twin might bring out the worst in him, it was true; but, in the very least, the reverse could also be said to be true.
~
Night fell all too quickly for Henry's liking; mad he might be - oh, that much was very certain by now, seeing things that weren't real and constantly fighting back the urge to break into hysterical laughter was not included in any definition of the word 'sane' - but still, he knew one thing for certain: vampires come out at night. This unshakable fact might be crazy - but, then, of course, wasn't he?
No, it was quite neat and sensible, in so far as he could even consider himself sensible anymore. Vampires - which his mind was still convinced existed, even if he knew they couldn't - only came out at night, that much was fact. And so while the sun had been up the terror had remained only skirting the edges of his mind, quietly. Now, as the sun dipped slowly, pinkly below the horizon, that same terror was blossoming into full fledged, full blown panic. Henry's hands, always jittery, now would not stop moving for an instant; he scratched at his wrist, ran fingers through his hair, picked up little objects and twisted them in his hands; stuffing the hands in question into his pockets didn't help at all, it just made him feel trapped. So he fidgeted and fiddled and tugged at the edges of his clothes, and tried not to stare wide eyed at his surroundings, searching for danger that was most definitely not there.
It had seemed very clever at the time, to convince himself to stay out late, long after the sun had gone down; and then if he didn't encounter any vampires, well, maybe his mind would stop being so stubborn on the point that they existed.
(Or, whispered his mind, maybe he would get attacked by a vampire and be horribly, brutally murdered. But either way, this would all be over.)
Henry was edgy, nervous, tense - Wake was having the time of his (un)life.
Stalking was a hobby of his, really; he liked hunting things (people) for no real reason other than they were there, and they had no idea that he was there too. Just the thought of it amused him. They had no idea. He grinned, all sharp fangs and childish glee, slipping unnoticed through the dark streets in search of something to occupy his time.
There were plenty of humans around, even at this hour - one or two of them hold his interest for a moment or two, but never long enough.
Then something caught the edge of his eye, and he grinned. Stalking was much more fun if you had something in particular to stalk, after all. And there was his dear friend from last night, twitchy and terrified.
Because yes, of course, Wake had known he'd been watched, last night; he'd been able to hear the heavy breaths and the annoyingly loud beat of a heart, even over the woman's delicious screams. At the time, he'd been planning to kill the boy as soon as he was done with his first little game; of course, then he'd gotten bored and wandered off, instead, and damned if he wasn't glad of it now (he was damned anyway, but he was still glad).
It would be harder to isolate his prey if he had to drag along the twitchy kid, too, but he could do it. Anyway, the boy was pretty, all dark curls and big brown eyes. Wake appreciated beauty in all forms - and he was a sucker for a pretty face.
He scanned the crowd for a suitable victim; if he had this kid to entertain him, he didn't feel like he had to be so picky anymore. Anyone would do; a woman would probably seem more horrific to the human, though, so a woman it would be.
There. That one would do; she had nice hands, he noticed, very delicate and well formed. In Wake's experience, everyone had something about them that was perfect; one, single, beautiful attribute. In this woman, it was her hands; in his dear little curly haired playmate, it was that cherub face.
It didn't take long to shepherd the two targets down the same little alleyway, out of sight of the world; humans were so easy to guide without their knowing. Just knock one drunkard into their path here, shout out a rowdy catcall there...
Wake smiled, fangs flashing in the light of the street.
“Please, kind sir, I beg you...”
A heartbeat pounded wildly in his ears, but it was not the girl's. He smiled wider, reaching for one of those perfect hands. He'd start with the fingers...
Henry held his shaking hand over his mouth and tried not to sob, his free hand clutching at the cross at his neck as he weakly whispered a prayer, muffled by his own skin.
“Please God deliver me from this evil. Free me from this suffering. Let it end.”
Just around the corner, the woman with the perfect hands screamed in pure, perfect pain. Henry wept more freely than he had in years.
Wake only smiled beautifully, and pulled back another finger with a sickening crack.
~
His eyes felt red and raw, his mouth dry and cheeks cracked with salt; there were pinpricks of blood on his hands where his nails had cut in. For a moment, Henry simply stared at the little beads of red, as if confused; as if it were impossible, somehow, that he could be bleeding. Like the very idea was strange and alien. His blood felt wrong, spiky and vicious in his veins, as if it were flowing in entirely the wrong direction, or maybe not at all.
The second time is worse than the first. Now he knows. Coughs. Chokes on the air in his lungs, temporarily forgets how to breathe. Once again he finds himself wondering if it might be possible to throw up - but he hadn't been able to eat all day, had known, somehow, that it would never stay down, and so he doesn't. There's nothing in his stomach to throw up, anyway, so there wouldn't be any point to it.
She wasn't screaming anymore; that doesn't mean that it's over. Some strange, unfeeling part of his mind told him to look, to dart his head around the corner and see. It's either his rational mind, or his crippling fear, that stopped him.
Wake felt good; Wake felt better than good. His sluggish heart beat faster with each sad, sobbing breath under his hands, his dead blood singing with the power of it. Life, thick and pure and true; born into an unliving body, Wake devoured life. It fed him, yes, but it was more than that. He loved life, adored the strange simplicity of it; and he worshipped life the only way he knew - by stealing it.
The woman, of course, didn't matter - he had no special attachment to her, not like he was beginning to form with his pretty little cherub faced playmate. But that didn't, by any means, mean that her murder, didn't matter - because it did, oh, but it did. Wake was a creature of passion, and he loved with abandon; loved her life, loved her blood, and loved her screams.
Sitting on the dirt of the alleyway floor, he cradled a perfect, broken hand to his chest and smiled like a child. He could hear gasping breaths and muffled whimpers and a stifled cough and hoped, in an absent, back-of-his-mind kind of way, that his dear new friend wasn't planning on throwing up. Vampire noses are much too sensitive, really, and it leaves them far more vulnerable to certain scents than they would like - the unpleasant ones, mostly. That was, after all, where the garlic myth had come from - a strong enough smell could leave a vampire reeling.
The pulse under his fingers slowed with each beat; her breaths came out ragged, tired, empty. As her life slipped from her he brought her wrist to his lips, kissing away trails of blood, catching stray drops from the cuts along the lines of her palm, as if he were cleaning the wounds; as if it were a display of some gentle, perverse affection. A display of his love.
“Beautiful, isn't it?” He said aloud, unable to help but smirk at the strangled gasp; there was a scuffing sound, like the poor human was trying not to fall over, his knees having given out. Wake merely shrugged, dropping the cooling hand and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, only serving to smear blood across his lips. He stood, straightened his jacket with a fastidious air that belied the mess on his mouth and hands, even going so far as to dust himself down with red stained hands.
Henry pressed himself tighter against the wall, as if he could sink into it.
“You don't agree?” Wake continued, voice light; as he stepped around the corner, he held out one hand to brush along the humans shoulder, delighting in the shudder the touch drew from him. The vampire smiled, lips and fangs still sticky with blood. “Mmm.” He hummed, licking his lips. “Can I just say: you look delicious.”
He wasn't sure what he expected - babbling, perhaps, maybe even (if he were very lucky), a dead faint; instead, Henry made what was, admittedly, a rather pathetic little growling sound and threw possibly the weediest punch to ever hit Wake in the jaw. The vampire stumbled back, in shock if not actually in pain.
“You killed her!” Henry choked; recovering, Wake pointed one elegant, manicured, red stained finger at his own chest.
“Me? I have no idea what you... oh,” he snapped his fingers, smirking when Henry cringed. “You mean her.” One flippant hand gestured in the direction of the dead woman. “Yes, I suppose I did.”
“Why?” Henry demanded; his voice squeaked at the end of the syllable, and he was trembling fiercely, but held up well under the oppressive weight of his fear.
Quickly tiring of this exchange, Wake began to clean his fingers of blood, slowly and decadently licking up the length of each digit.
“Why not?” He drawled.
Henry spluttered in quiet disbelief; sucking lazily on his index finger, Wake leaned back against a wall and waited for the human to rediscover the power of speech.
Henry blinked. Then he blinked again, and wondered how it was that his fear was sort of... sidling away from him, as if his brain had thrown up hands in defeat and moved on to something else. In its wake, the fear left a sense of floundering nothingness (as if that was any way to describe a feeling, really), and a vague notion that the monster before him looked less like a monster than he did, for example, a particularly attractive young gentleman.
The finger sucking was a little unsettling, or it may have been distracting.
“You...” Henry managed, finally, after a few aborted attempts at speech that had consisted of nothing more than mute opening and closing of his jaw.
“Me?” Wake repeated, holding up his hand to his face to inspect his nails.
“You... I...” Henry stuttered weakly, blindly searching for words, and realising that he'd forgotten them. Possibly all of them. “Uh, yes.”
“Right. So long as you're certain about that, I suppose.”
And Wake, being Wake, was not planning on helping this situation any. In fact, he appeared to be enjoying it immensely.
“No, I mean -” The words spilled out in a hurry, eager not to be forgotten again, and then Henry paused. What did he mean? He wasn't actually sure, anymore.
Wake began work cleaning his other hand. He had an air of patient expectation about him, as if he could wait all night for Henry's thought to come to a conclusion, if it suited him. It did suit him, in fact; for the purposes of amusement, Wake was willing to do almost anything.
“It wasn't just her, either.” Henry stumbled out another sentence, though this one appeared to be unconnected to the first. Wake raised an elegant eyebrow. “That you... killed.”
“Ah.” Taking a step closer, he withdraw his fingers from his lips and leaned in. “You are,” he drawled, lazily, lowly. “Going to have to be much more specific.” He knew, of course, exactly what the boy meant.
“In the alleyway.”
“Mm, yes? Doesn't help.” He tapped a set of fingers against Henry's shoulder, somehow insinuating himself even further into his personal space. “When was this?”
“Last night.” The more he spoke, and the closer the vampire came, the more Henry felt as if he were no longer actively participating in this conversation, and that his mouth was simply running away without him. He wasn't stuttering anymore, however.
“Last night...” Wake made a great show of attempting to remember, his fingers now stroking against Henry's pale neck. “Ah, yes. I remember. Did you enjoy the show?”
At this, Henry was silent. Wake smirked, waiting for the penny to drop. And when it did, it dropped heavy and loud, and Henry pushed the vampire away from him with a shove of surprising force.
“You knew? You knew I was there?”
Placing a hand over his slow beating heart, Wake graced that shocked, disgusted and beautiful face with another charming, fang filled smile.
“You were very loud.” He explained, his hand tapping out a quick rhythm.
The human tried to think of a way to respond to this accusation, and could manage no better than a rather petulant little, “No I wasn't.”
“Oh, but you were.” Wake insisted; Henry nodded miserably. “Well? What did you think?”
“It was horrifying.” Henry replied, his tone resigned.
From Wake's grin, you would think he had received the highest of praise.
“He really think so?” He trilled, clasping his hands under his chin and making a show of fluttering his eyelashes. “You are so kind. But then, I did think it was some of my better work. Although tonight...” He sighed. “Oh, just perfect.”
With a sudden little flurry of movement that made Henry flinch, Wake was back again, standing too close for comfort - even if he'd not been a heartless, terrifying monster - and, laughably, holding out a hand politely.
“I'm terrible at manners.” He said, sounding grave. “My name's Wake.”
“Henry.” Henry said, and, the surreality of the situation finally catching up with him, fainted.
It was instinct, pure and simple reflex, that prompted Wake to catch the falling body; and then he had an armful of warmth and fuck if this boy - Henry, his mind whispered in a happy little sing-song voice, what a perfect little name, Henry - if he didn't smell just as tasty as he looked.
“Fuck.” He growled, gathering up his willpower; god, if he hadn't just eaten this would be fucking impossible, but dammit, you didn't waste a delicious mind-fuck like that on a kid and then just eat him. Fucking waste, that would be. Besides, the boy just reeked of innocence, sweet and unsullied, and Wake wanted to dig his claws in and twist, corrupt and debase and pervert until there wasn't a scrap of that sweet innocence remaining.
Just thinking about it made him feel hot and sharp and alive. Better than blood, it would be. Better than sex... well, he thought, staring down at that cherub face with cold, undisguised, lecherous desire, maybe it wouldn't have to be.
Part 2
Title: At Night
Characters: Henry, Wake, Malice
Warnings: Gay vampires, torture, and death. And Wake, who cannot keep his hands to himself.
Summary: The origin story THAT WOULDN'T END. Wake gets bored, all the time, and Wake falls in love every day. Henry has never been really bored, or in love, but he is very pretty.
Wake, being Wake, experienced boredom not so much as an emotion as as a transitional state - it was the feeling that signalled it was time to stop doing whatever he was currently doing to amuse himself, and start doing something different instead.
Possibly one or the other of these things he was doing to amuse himself involved the twisted slaughter of humans for no real or understandable reason - but, then again, could just as easily involve watching a play, or chasing rabbits, or howling at the moon. He wasn't at all fussy (Wake was fussy, in everything from what he wore to whom he ate).
On this one instance - an instance that, as it happens, would begin to set in motion a chain of events that would ultimately (though not for a while, and with some rather amusing bits in between, sometimes involving dragons) lead to his sad and (in his opinion, quite untimely) demise, and then everything which came after that bit, which was actually quite a lot - anyway, on this one instance, he was bored with... well, actually, not anything in particular, because he wasn't really doing anything in particular; just a hundred tiny little things that made up his nights.
So that was the first thing-to-be-done-for-amusement.
He decided, after some careful thought, during which he weighed up all the options on hand, that maybe the second thing ought to be a spot of recreational murder.
If you asked - and you would have to ask, and really press for an answer, if you wanted one - Wake would decide, after a little deliberation, that the reason he picked that girl for his first victim was that she was pretty. Not incredibly so; she wasn't, for example, stunningly beautiful, or indeed any manner of beautiful. She wasn't even really his type, so far as the vampire had a type (Wake's type was dark hair and pale skin and innocence. That was important). But there was a sort of a spark about her, like she had the potential to be truly wonderful; he took some pleasure in snuffing that out in as creative a way as he could think of.
“I'm doing you a favour, really.” His tone was light, conversational, as he licked warm, red, thick blood from his fingers. “You're much prettier dead.” Patting her hair softly, almost lovingly, he rose fluidly from his crouch, regarding the body splayed in front of him.
Wake was not one to boast (Wake would boast at any given opportunity, and then some), but it really was fantastic handiwork. She looked just right, treading that oh so fine line between beautifully obscene and over the top. After all, go too far, and the horror is diminished by the lack of any features to identify the corpse as human. That's why he had left her face, and only her face, untouched, brown eyes with a hint of green staring glassily up at the hazy night sky.
Whistling cheerily to himself, and blowing the dead woman a quick kiss, Wake slipped his hands into his pockets, and practically skipped home.
~
His hand was damp, clamped over his own mouth, salted with tears; he could hear his breath thundering in his ears, a soft wheezing in a fast, panicked rhythm; he waited. Footsteps, light, playful, no-care-in-the-world footsteps, receded. Fresh corpses smell of warm, metallic blood and meat, and they don't begin to gather flies until the sickly sweet musk of rot sets in and the body grows cold.
He didn't want to know that, but he did, now. Brown eyes, wide, could not stop staring.
His hand dropped limply from his face; still he stared, as blank as the glass eyes of the dead woman. Three beats of a heart that could only be his own; approximately seven seconds. Then he doubled over, retching, overlaying the scent of dead flesh with the taste of bile.
To wander the back streets at night is crazy and dangerous, but Henry doesn't tend to think of the consequences of his actions. He's not mad, nor simple; just a little bit of a wistful dreamer, at times. Dark places lend themselves better to his temperament; Henry is not a people person. His personality just doesn't fit very easily with that of other people. He regretted it, now - or at least, he would, once the shock response faded. For now, he was having trouble thinking anything at all, excepting several choice expletives, and, for some reason, that he would never set foot in a church again (his pastor had, once, when he was a boy, assured him that vampires did not exist. He was certain that men of god weren't meant to lie to little boys, so now he was annoyed).
Reality caught up, and reasserted itself with ruthless force; Henry, never an extremely brave man, contemplated the pros and cons of throwing up again. His mouth tasted of bile, and his stomach felt empty. Perhaps not.
Though it took great force of effort not to tremble, he couldn't be proud with himself, for that; just as he could not be pleased at the willpower expended to look away from the poor woman.
The human brain has ways of shielding itself from the greatest of trauma; and so, once he had frozen in shock, and then panicked, what came next was an odd, robotic calm. He moved from the shadows of the alley, limbs stiff and heavy and strange, scuttling around the corpse without so much as stirring the dirt on the ground beside it, hands attempting vainly to flatten the mess of black curls he called hair, where the sweat from his brow had dampened them. It could have been any night, hurrying home with sudden realisation that the light had gone from the sky. He seemed exactly the same man, with his quick, hurried, slightly nervous stride that seemed suited to pacing back and forth in a rage, and twitchy hands.
In many ways he was the same man, still just Henry - but just as, with this killing, Wake had set into motion a set of events that would lead (eventually) to his death, Henry had, in witnessing it, begun a set of events that would end (quite soon), in his.
~
Vampires come out at night.
Everybody knows this; deep in our superstitious bones, we all believe in vampires. Some will claim that what we fear are not creatures of flesh, but dark desires in ourselves, or in others. Some say that we do not fear vampires at all; that we want them to be real, to be the evillest of creatures, and save man from that title. Many people claim to know that vampires are not real; just a fairy tale, a scary story, a small and amusing footnote in the history of mythological creatures that has persisted through the ages because it appeals to the believers in us all.
And there are many myths, on the nature of vampires; where they came from, how they are made, what will hurt them. Crosses, holy water, garlic, sunlight, running water, silver, lemons. Some vampire legends have them drinking, not blood, but life force, or souls. Some are beautiful, haunting creatures, while some are fit for nothing but nightmares. There are those that have made a living studying these myths, learning the history of the vampire, understanding how they relate to man and why we, as a species, are enthralled with them.
But the people who know, not from old books and stories, but from experience and encounters and blood, will tell you nothing of myths, nothing of legend, nothing of prevention and destruction and the psychology of monsters.
They will tell you, with certainty, only one thing: Vampires come out at night. The rest, you will see in their eyes.
It was in Henry's eyes, dark brown and terrified. Though the sun beat down and kept him safe he could not help but second guess every glance, every stranger. The world was a darker place than it had been the day before.
Despite his vow in the tender arms of panicked hysteria, safety was still the church; something in the back of his mind was so certain no monster would ever intrude on his faith, the safe haven that was the house of God. There was no one else there, thankfully, as he sat down at the very back of the church, resting his head in his hands. His eyes felt heavy; he hadn't slept. He was beginning to doubt that he would ever sleep again.
This wasn't the only doubt beginning its creep into his mind; for Henry was also on the verge of doubting his sanity, too. What if what he thought he saw, wasn't what he really saw? What if he didn't see anything at all?
“What if I'm crazy?” He mumbled into the palms of his hands. After all, only crazy people would believe in something as, well, crazy as vampires. What if he'd only imagined...
The obvious hit him with all the force of lightning; his fingers curled up, digging into the sides of his head as he tensed, realising exactly what he had to do, if he ever wanted to believe he wasn't going mad.
He had to go back.
~
The alley way didn't seem nearly so... threatening, in the bright, cold, clinical light of day. Sunlight slipped down through the gap made by the squat, rambling buildings, and into the messy warren of passageways forgotten by modern man; the maze of poor, drunken bastards in dead ends, and refuse and human waste left piled against the old brick. No, the alley wasn't threatening, in the day - just disgusting.
Henry held his breath, and watched where he put his feet.
Each turning he took made his heart beat a little faster, his fists clenching and unclenching in time; every time a sleeping peasant, down on his luck and pretty much everything else, coughed roughly and resettled, Henry started and stalled, and needed a minute to re-gather his nerves.
The closer he got, the more deserted the world became. As if even the wretched poor were too afraid to take refuge here. Frankly, he would not be surprised if that were true. By now, that sick, sweet decay smell would have set in... he swallowed. No good. His throat was still dry and rough as grit.
Final corner. He could see, from here, the crumbling half-arch he had hidden in the night before, hand clamped over his mouth and breathing tight. His neatly cut nails hurt where they bit into the skin of his palms, but loosening his fists was currently an impossibility. Not even worth considering. Couldn't be done.
He resisted the urge to giggle hysterically to himself. It was not the first time that day.
If he had expected to feel frozen, petrified and unable to move, this was not the case; his feet didn't stumble or falter as he walked ever closer to the place where the body lay. It was his head that felt heavy and strange. A part of him felt like he would die, the second he reached his destination. The second he saw her, sprawled broken and bloody with her face still untouched, unblinking eyes still watching the sky.
Oh God, he thought. Oh God, please say that...
He didn't know, anymore, if he wanted this to be real... or if he wanted to be crazy. If he were crazy, if that...monster was just a figment of his, obviously diseased, mind, then... well, at least the rest of the world would be safe from... it. Earlier he had labelled the thing a vampire; now that sounded like something out of a penny dreadful, not something real. He just didn't know anymore.
The arch cast a shadow over him as he passed it; though the air did not grow much cooler, Henry still shivered. He could still feel the cold brick up against his back. In fact, he was certain he would feel it for the rest of his life.
Surely, he thought, he should be able to smell her - it - her - by now. Old blood, and rotting flesh. Iron and sweet decay. Why couldn't he smell anything? His heart started beating faster. Did this mean...?
Nothing.
Henry stared at the spot. There was nothing. Not even a spot of blood - nothing to show that anyone had died here. But that was impossible, that... dragging his hands through his hair, fingers snagging in curls, he bit back another crazed laugh.
“So.” He spoke to thin air, in a voice that most people would have shied away from; a voice that spoke of deep, mental instability. “I am mad.”
~
Some people always seem to be whistling a jaunty tune, just under their breath; Wake is one of these people. It's quite infuriating, actually - that's probably why he does it.
He is also the type of person to always have a very... relaxed air about them. No matter what is going on around them, they are unruffled.
Which is why, though it seemed as if every member of his (rather large) family were shouting, screaming, snarling, or otherwise berating him, Wake remained seated in an armchair, posture relaxed, one leg slung carelessly over the other, arms resting comfortably at his sides. It didn't even come off as an act; there was nothing to suggest that he was not perfectly, sublimely at ease.
“What, do tell me, little brother, were you thinking?” An elder half-sister - any elder half-sister, really, they were all exactly the same - shrieked in an annoyingly high pitched voice.
“Were you even thinking at all?” A half-brother - probably a younger one, Wake thought, since he didn't recognise the damn ponce - added in a snide voice that managed to be equally annoying.
Wake's self-assured smile proved to be the most annoying thing in the room.
“Do you have any idea what we've had to do to clean your mess, Wake, dear?”
Ah, mother. He did still love his mother, at least. Though her words were judgemental her tone was kind, and she lovingly ran a hand through his hair. Out of respect for her, he toned down the smugness of his smile, if just a little.
“I know.” As much affection as he held for his mother, Wake could not sound contrite. “But I was so bored, mummy...” He nuzzled against her hand, kitten-like, and knew she was on his side.
“We all get bored.” That voice he did recognise; it was ingrained deep into the part of his brain that recognised danger. A voice he had known literally all his life; that of his sister and twin, the aptly named Malice. There were daggers in her tone, but then, there always were. “What makes you so special, golden boy?”
“Malice.” He plastered a fond and utterly fake smile over his face. “I didn't know you were back from Paris.”
Malice was deadly beautiful; her eyes were the same jewelled, piercing green as her twin's, and her hair was the same sand brown, long and sleek and, currently, delicately curled around her china doll face. Privately, and occasionally vocally, Wake had always considered her repulsive. There is the stench of a witch about her.
“I came home early,” she informed him curtly, glaring down her nose. He resisted the urge to stand; that would only mean she'd won. “It's good that I did, or you might have had the run of London, completely unchecked. Really, brother, have you no discretion?”
Wake waved a flippant hand.
“I knew it would be dealt with. Why worry about little details, sister? One human will never be missed.” His normal, natural purr was slightly forced. Malice brought out the very worst in him. “You worry too much.”
“One of us has to, I suppose.” She sniffed, inspecting her long, scarlet nails with lazy eyes. “You're far too reckless for me to be the same, brother dear.”
“Hmm, if you like. It's the same to me. Anyway, if you're all done...?” He glanced around; no one spoke, not even one of his stupid, nameless cousins. Not even Malice. “I think I'd like to go to bed, now.”
He stood, stretched each limb with liquid grace, kissed his mother on the cheek, and wove his way through the gathered family, stunned into silence by his sheer gall, and closed the door behind him with a smooth click. Wake paused, just outside the door, and waited.
Malice snarled; there was a ripping sound that was most likely caused by her perfect nails tearing through the fabric of the armchair. He chuckled, the smug smirk returning. His twin might bring out the worst in him, it was true; but, in the very least, the reverse could also be said to be true.
~
Night fell all too quickly for Henry's liking; mad he might be - oh, that much was very certain by now, seeing things that weren't real and constantly fighting back the urge to break into hysterical laughter was not included in any definition of the word 'sane' - but still, he knew one thing for certain: vampires come out at night. This unshakable fact might be crazy - but, then, of course, wasn't he?
No, it was quite neat and sensible, in so far as he could even consider himself sensible anymore. Vampires - which his mind was still convinced existed, even if he knew they couldn't - only came out at night, that much was fact. And so while the sun had been up the terror had remained only skirting the edges of his mind, quietly. Now, as the sun dipped slowly, pinkly below the horizon, that same terror was blossoming into full fledged, full blown panic. Henry's hands, always jittery, now would not stop moving for an instant; he scratched at his wrist, ran fingers through his hair, picked up little objects and twisted them in his hands; stuffing the hands in question into his pockets didn't help at all, it just made him feel trapped. So he fidgeted and fiddled and tugged at the edges of his clothes, and tried not to stare wide eyed at his surroundings, searching for danger that was most definitely not there.
It had seemed very clever at the time, to convince himself to stay out late, long after the sun had gone down; and then if he didn't encounter any vampires, well, maybe his mind would stop being so stubborn on the point that they existed.
(Or, whispered his mind, maybe he would get attacked by a vampire and be horribly, brutally murdered. But either way, this would all be over.)
Henry was edgy, nervous, tense - Wake was having the time of his (un)life.
Stalking was a hobby of his, really; he liked hunting things (people) for no real reason other than they were there, and they had no idea that he was there too. Just the thought of it amused him. They had no idea. He grinned, all sharp fangs and childish glee, slipping unnoticed through the dark streets in search of something to occupy his time.
There were plenty of humans around, even at this hour - one or two of them hold his interest for a moment or two, but never long enough.
Then something caught the edge of his eye, and he grinned. Stalking was much more fun if you had something in particular to stalk, after all. And there was his dear friend from last night, twitchy and terrified.
Because yes, of course, Wake had known he'd been watched, last night; he'd been able to hear the heavy breaths and the annoyingly loud beat of a heart, even over the woman's delicious screams. At the time, he'd been planning to kill the boy as soon as he was done with his first little game; of course, then he'd gotten bored and wandered off, instead, and damned if he wasn't glad of it now (he was damned anyway, but he was still glad).
It would be harder to isolate his prey if he had to drag along the twitchy kid, too, but he could do it. Anyway, the boy was pretty, all dark curls and big brown eyes. Wake appreciated beauty in all forms - and he was a sucker for a pretty face.
He scanned the crowd for a suitable victim; if he had this kid to entertain him, he didn't feel like he had to be so picky anymore. Anyone would do; a woman would probably seem more horrific to the human, though, so a woman it would be.
There. That one would do; she had nice hands, he noticed, very delicate and well formed. In Wake's experience, everyone had something about them that was perfect; one, single, beautiful attribute. In this woman, it was her hands; in his dear little curly haired playmate, it was that cherub face.
It didn't take long to shepherd the two targets down the same little alleyway, out of sight of the world; humans were so easy to guide without their knowing. Just knock one drunkard into their path here, shout out a rowdy catcall there...
Wake smiled, fangs flashing in the light of the street.
“Please, kind sir, I beg you...”
A heartbeat pounded wildly in his ears, but it was not the girl's. He smiled wider, reaching for one of those perfect hands. He'd start with the fingers...
Henry held his shaking hand over his mouth and tried not to sob, his free hand clutching at the cross at his neck as he weakly whispered a prayer, muffled by his own skin.
“Please God deliver me from this evil. Free me from this suffering. Let it end.”
Just around the corner, the woman with the perfect hands screamed in pure, perfect pain. Henry wept more freely than he had in years.
Wake only smiled beautifully, and pulled back another finger with a sickening crack.
~
His eyes felt red and raw, his mouth dry and cheeks cracked with salt; there were pinpricks of blood on his hands where his nails had cut in. For a moment, Henry simply stared at the little beads of red, as if confused; as if it were impossible, somehow, that he could be bleeding. Like the very idea was strange and alien. His blood felt wrong, spiky and vicious in his veins, as if it were flowing in entirely the wrong direction, or maybe not at all.
The second time is worse than the first. Now he knows. Coughs. Chokes on the air in his lungs, temporarily forgets how to breathe. Once again he finds himself wondering if it might be possible to throw up - but he hadn't been able to eat all day, had known, somehow, that it would never stay down, and so he doesn't. There's nothing in his stomach to throw up, anyway, so there wouldn't be any point to it.
She wasn't screaming anymore; that doesn't mean that it's over. Some strange, unfeeling part of his mind told him to look, to dart his head around the corner and see. It's either his rational mind, or his crippling fear, that stopped him.
Wake felt good; Wake felt better than good. His sluggish heart beat faster with each sad, sobbing breath under his hands, his dead blood singing with the power of it. Life, thick and pure and true; born into an unliving body, Wake devoured life. It fed him, yes, but it was more than that. He loved life, adored the strange simplicity of it; and he worshipped life the only way he knew - by stealing it.
The woman, of course, didn't matter - he had no special attachment to her, not like he was beginning to form with his pretty little cherub faced playmate. But that didn't, by any means, mean that her murder, didn't matter - because it did, oh, but it did. Wake was a creature of passion, and he loved with abandon; loved her life, loved her blood, and loved her screams.
Sitting on the dirt of the alleyway floor, he cradled a perfect, broken hand to his chest and smiled like a child. He could hear gasping breaths and muffled whimpers and a stifled cough and hoped, in an absent, back-of-his-mind kind of way, that his dear new friend wasn't planning on throwing up. Vampire noses are much too sensitive, really, and it leaves them far more vulnerable to certain scents than they would like - the unpleasant ones, mostly. That was, after all, where the garlic myth had come from - a strong enough smell could leave a vampire reeling.
The pulse under his fingers slowed with each beat; her breaths came out ragged, tired, empty. As her life slipped from her he brought her wrist to his lips, kissing away trails of blood, catching stray drops from the cuts along the lines of her palm, as if he were cleaning the wounds; as if it were a display of some gentle, perverse affection. A display of his love.
“Beautiful, isn't it?” He said aloud, unable to help but smirk at the strangled gasp; there was a scuffing sound, like the poor human was trying not to fall over, his knees having given out. Wake merely shrugged, dropping the cooling hand and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, only serving to smear blood across his lips. He stood, straightened his jacket with a fastidious air that belied the mess on his mouth and hands, even going so far as to dust himself down with red stained hands.
Henry pressed himself tighter against the wall, as if he could sink into it.
“You don't agree?” Wake continued, voice light; as he stepped around the corner, he held out one hand to brush along the humans shoulder, delighting in the shudder the touch drew from him. The vampire smiled, lips and fangs still sticky with blood. “Mmm.” He hummed, licking his lips. “Can I just say: you look delicious.”
He wasn't sure what he expected - babbling, perhaps, maybe even (if he were very lucky), a dead faint; instead, Henry made what was, admittedly, a rather pathetic little growling sound and threw possibly the weediest punch to ever hit Wake in the jaw. The vampire stumbled back, in shock if not actually in pain.
“You killed her!” Henry choked; recovering, Wake pointed one elegant, manicured, red stained finger at his own chest.
“Me? I have no idea what you... oh,” he snapped his fingers, smirking when Henry cringed. “You mean her.” One flippant hand gestured in the direction of the dead woman. “Yes, I suppose I did.”
“Why?” Henry demanded; his voice squeaked at the end of the syllable, and he was trembling fiercely, but held up well under the oppressive weight of his fear.
Quickly tiring of this exchange, Wake began to clean his fingers of blood, slowly and decadently licking up the length of each digit.
“Why not?” He drawled.
Henry spluttered in quiet disbelief; sucking lazily on his index finger, Wake leaned back against a wall and waited for the human to rediscover the power of speech.
Henry blinked. Then he blinked again, and wondered how it was that his fear was sort of... sidling away from him, as if his brain had thrown up hands in defeat and moved on to something else. In its wake, the fear left a sense of floundering nothingness (as if that was any way to describe a feeling, really), and a vague notion that the monster before him looked less like a monster than he did, for example, a particularly attractive young gentleman.
The finger sucking was a little unsettling, or it may have been distracting.
“You...” Henry managed, finally, after a few aborted attempts at speech that had consisted of nothing more than mute opening and closing of his jaw.
“Me?” Wake repeated, holding up his hand to his face to inspect his nails.
“You... I...” Henry stuttered weakly, blindly searching for words, and realising that he'd forgotten them. Possibly all of them. “Uh, yes.”
“Right. So long as you're certain about that, I suppose.”
And Wake, being Wake, was not planning on helping this situation any. In fact, he appeared to be enjoying it immensely.
“No, I mean -” The words spilled out in a hurry, eager not to be forgotten again, and then Henry paused. What did he mean? He wasn't actually sure, anymore.
Wake began work cleaning his other hand. He had an air of patient expectation about him, as if he could wait all night for Henry's thought to come to a conclusion, if it suited him. It did suit him, in fact; for the purposes of amusement, Wake was willing to do almost anything.
“It wasn't just her, either.” Henry stumbled out another sentence, though this one appeared to be unconnected to the first. Wake raised an elegant eyebrow. “That you... killed.”
“Ah.” Taking a step closer, he withdraw his fingers from his lips and leaned in. “You are,” he drawled, lazily, lowly. “Going to have to be much more specific.” He knew, of course, exactly what the boy meant.
“In the alleyway.”
“Mm, yes? Doesn't help.” He tapped a set of fingers against Henry's shoulder, somehow insinuating himself even further into his personal space. “When was this?”
“Last night.” The more he spoke, and the closer the vampire came, the more Henry felt as if he were no longer actively participating in this conversation, and that his mouth was simply running away without him. He wasn't stuttering anymore, however.
“Last night...” Wake made a great show of attempting to remember, his fingers now stroking against Henry's pale neck. “Ah, yes. I remember. Did you enjoy the show?”
At this, Henry was silent. Wake smirked, waiting for the penny to drop. And when it did, it dropped heavy and loud, and Henry pushed the vampire away from him with a shove of surprising force.
“You knew? You knew I was there?”
Placing a hand over his slow beating heart, Wake graced that shocked, disgusted and beautiful face with another charming, fang filled smile.
“You were very loud.” He explained, his hand tapping out a quick rhythm.
The human tried to think of a way to respond to this accusation, and could manage no better than a rather petulant little, “No I wasn't.”
“Oh, but you were.” Wake insisted; Henry nodded miserably. “Well? What did you think?”
“It was horrifying.” Henry replied, his tone resigned.
From Wake's grin, you would think he had received the highest of praise.
“He really think so?” He trilled, clasping his hands under his chin and making a show of fluttering his eyelashes. “You are so kind. But then, I did think it was some of my better work. Although tonight...” He sighed. “Oh, just perfect.”
With a sudden little flurry of movement that made Henry flinch, Wake was back again, standing too close for comfort - even if he'd not been a heartless, terrifying monster - and, laughably, holding out a hand politely.
“I'm terrible at manners.” He said, sounding grave. “My name's Wake.”
“Henry.” Henry said, and, the surreality of the situation finally catching up with him, fainted.
It was instinct, pure and simple reflex, that prompted Wake to catch the falling body; and then he had an armful of warmth and fuck if this boy - Henry, his mind whispered in a happy little sing-song voice, what a perfect little name, Henry - if he didn't smell just as tasty as he looked.
“Fuck.” He growled, gathering up his willpower; god, if he hadn't just eaten this would be fucking impossible, but dammit, you didn't waste a delicious mind-fuck like that on a kid and then just eat him. Fucking waste, that would be. Besides, the boy just reeked of innocence, sweet and unsullied, and Wake wanted to dig his claws in and twist, corrupt and debase and pervert until there wasn't a scrap of that sweet innocence remaining.
Just thinking about it made him feel hot and sharp and alive. Better than blood, it would be. Better than sex... well, he thought, staring down at that cherub face with cold, undisguised, lecherous desire, maybe it wouldn't have to be.
Part 2