baekyeol; I'm ready for the fall (ready for the colors to burn to gold and crumble away) [3/6]

[aprilclash]

I'm ready for the fall (ready for the colors to burn to gold and crumble away)

Now here I go again I see a crystal vision
I keep my visions to myself
It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Dreams of loneliness
Dreams - G. Aplin ft. Bastille

baekhyun

Baekhyun dreams of Seulgi sometimes. He dreams of Soojung and Yuri and sometimes he dreams about Yesung. He dreams of his past lovers, their pretty smiles and the sparkles in their eyes when they looked at him. He dreams of the way they tore him apart, slowly, in tiny little bites. Baekhyun dreams of Chanyeol too, even if he knows nothing about him.

He dreams of Chanyeol because he has Yesung's charming ways, Yuri's flirty smile, Soojung's devastating beauty and Seulgi's piercing eyes. Chanyeol is human and he betrayed Baekhyun, just like Yesung, Soojung and Yuri. Chanyeol is human and he is a hunter like Seulgi, a beautiful bear trap, ready to snap around Baekhyun's wrists in a swirl of silver.

Baekhyun dreams of Chanyeol because he's angry, because Chanyeol's blood smelled wonderfully, because Chanyeol wasn't supposed to be anything more than just a fling, a way to spend Baekhyun's only night of freedom. He wasn't supposed to mean anything, he wasn't important. It could've been anyone else in his place. Chanyeol wasn't important.

Except he was, he made himself important, without even realizing why or how, when he decided to play with Baekhyun's feelings, when he, accidentally, hit a bit close to home. (Home being Baekhyun's heart.)

It's not even Chanyeol's fault, Baekhyun is well aware of it. Chanyeol was hunting, Chanyeol was doing his job. For him, Baekhyun had been nothing more than a target, a faceless and nameless enemy to subdue and arrest. Chanyeol couldn't have possibly known about Baekhyun's past, about Yesung, about Yuri and Soojung and Seulgi. He didn't know he was just the last of a long list of people who had been with Baekhyun for different reasons - because they wanted his money, or protection, or immortality, because they wanted to kill him.

Baekhyun curls up in his bed and dreams, and sometimes in his dreams things are different. Seulgi looks beautiful in white, so sharp and bright, so radiant that Baekhyun can forget about the silver cross hidden in her right sleeve and the ash wood stake she kept in the left. They dance and they kiss and Seulgi doesn't stab him in the back. Baekhyun doesn’t tear her throat open with his fangs and he doesn’t bury her under the burnt ruins of the deconsacrated church. Baekhyun dreams of Soojung growing old and dying happy, and he dreams of Yesung staying with him and not leaving, disgusted and scared by Baekhyun's true nature.

Then, one day, Baekhyun dreams of Chanyeol. He's a different Chanyeol, with darker hair and casual clothes. He hovers in front of the entrance of Baekhyun's room, hands tangled in tapestries hanging from the ceiling, and stares at Baekhyun, awkwardly. His faded jeans and black turtleneck look terribly out of place in Baekhyun's room, surrounded by silk and marble, gold and oil paintings and sophisticated Ming porcelains.

Chanyeol is confused and hesitant, if not a little fascinated with Baekhyun. It's a feeble hope, but this is Baekhyun's dream, so he can be foolish enough to pretend.

Except this is not a dream, this is a nightmare. Chanyeol has a silver blade - it twinkles eerily in the dim light with his every movement - and Baekhyun knows it's for him. Chanyeol has come to finish what Yesung has started, what Seulgi has almost finished. He growls in his head, trying to wake himself up. This is just a dream, a nightmare, it must be... Then Chanyeol cuts his arm and it stops being either a dream or a nightmare. It becomes darkness, madness and thirst.

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Mad World - G. Jules

Neon fairies dance in the darkness, drawing flowers of light, arabesques against the black of Baekhyun's closed eyelids. They look so much like club signs on Saturday night, bright pink, red, green, turning to gold and white, on and off, off and on again, they tear apart the holy sanctuary of the night with their brash, flashy colors. Baekhyun can’t stand them. He was born in an age where the world belonged to the sun, but when the sun was gone the world belonged to the monsters. Now there's not a safe haven left for people like Baekhyun. This new world is loud and vulgar, bold, so full of humans and all their garbage that it feels empty, devoid of any meaning. This is not a world worth living. At least not for him. But it’s his world nevertheless.

Lights climb in front of Baekhyun's eyes in a never-ending chase. They're white, but they burn red sometimes, and Baekhyun's throat twitches, his teeth growing behind closed lips. He smells blood.

He opens his eyes and the shadow play at the back of his eyelids dissolves into the aseptic white of Kyungsoo's immaculate kitchen, so clean and shiny it almost burns his eyes.

“Why am I on the table?” he asks, and the fangs have grown so long he almost stabs his own tongue as he talks. His mouth feels pasty and slow. There's a strange, delicious taste burning at the back of his throat and fueling his hunger. He licks his lips and he moans at the taste. Blood. There's blood all over his shirt and half of his face feels sticky with it.

He tries to get up but someone else pushes him down, then Jongdae's calm voice fills his head.

“Calm down, we don't want you going crazy again. Wait a moment, Kyungsoo is bringing you some plasma.”

He nods, and he sheepishly accepts the frozen, stale liquid flowing from the bag in Kyungsoo's hands. He swallows it as quickly as he can because it tastes terrible, such a stark contrast with all the fresh blood staining one of his favorite shirts, matting his hair and slowly drying on his face. His tongue darts out, languidly, to taste it again before it can go to waste.

“Are you alright?” asks Kyungsoo, leaning down to move the messy hair out of Baekhyun’s face.

“What do you remember?” asks Jongdae.

He doesn't answer either question. “What day is today?” he asks instead.

“Christmas is in three days.”

Oh. It's been less than two months. Two months since Chanyeol and his lies and his silver cuffs, his tasteless drugs and... He glares at his brothers and they both take a step backwards. “Why did you wake me up? What the hell, I clearly asked you, I even ordered you to leave me alone...”

Kyungsoo has always been the most belligerent one while Jongdae is calm and pacific. But Baekhyun knows them well, he has known them for centuries already, and he knows that under the frequent scowls and the angry silences Kyungsoo is actually the softer of the two, whereas Jongdae's easy smiles can hide pits of anger so deep that Baekhyun could drown in them. Even now, Kyungsoo looks angry but from the way he looks at his feet and shuffles on the spot, Baekhyun can guess he feels quite guilty for disobeying a direct order from his older brother. But Jongdae... He could be the beautiful statue of an avenger angel, lips set tight and eyes like steel, boring holes in Baekhyun's sleepy face.

“Right, because leaving you alone would've been such a great idea. Baek. Two months,” he raises two fingers, slowly, “almost two months. Really? Were you hoping to turn into a mummy? Were you hoping we'd forget about you and just leave you to rot, eventually?”

“I was hoping to forget.” He grits his teeth and the words come out jumbled but he's sure Jongdae has heard them. “I was hoping to dream of a more decent world where human assholes don’t fuck me just because they want me dead, but you had to ruin everything and bring me back here, did you?”

Jongdae tries to punch him, but Baekhyun blocks it easily. His body is weak because of the prolonged sleep, but he's just drunk and the blood is giving him the extra push Jongdae doesn't have. His brother growls, frustrated, and Kyungsoo retreats slowly, not too appalled by the idea of being caught between Baekhyun and Jongdae.

“So you wanted me to get up, I get it! All the eternity in front of us but let's keep Baekhyun from taking a little nap!”

Jongdae retaliates, and his teeth snap as he talks, his eyes faintly glowing as his power arises. “So you wanted to take a break, I get it! We're brothers and we've always been together but let's just take the decision of fucking going to sleep for the next ten years before even telling anyone the reason.”

The worst thing is that Jongdae is right. Baekhyun should've stopped, he should've thought this through... He should've at least talked with them before taking such a rash decision on his own. He had promised, after the last time, after Seulgi, after fifteen years of restless dreams, he had promised them he wouldn’t do something so drastic again. Jongdae is right but Baekhyun is more stubborn, he has four hundred years of accumulated stubbornness to challenge Jongdae with, so he simply sets his lips in a tight line and glares at his brother.

There’s something else bothering him. He can still feel it - the weak, bleached taste of frozen plasma is not enough to wash it away - the thickness of blood in his throat. Real blood, warm and sweet, drunken from an unwilling throat.

“Who did I bite? I need to know, Jongdae...”

But they don't need to say anything. The memories are flooding back, just like blood, Chanyeol's blood. Baekhyun doesn't want to believe that his brothers, his whole family would be so devastatingly stupid as to let that human into his rooms, but there's no way to mistake the taste. It matches Chanyeol's scent, the same scent that had lured Baekhyun him - taunted him - last Halloween.

He falls on the floor, closes his eyes. Everything is just a giant mess.

He doesn't even remember coming back to his house after the Halloween flop. Kyungsoo must have brought him back with Jongin's help. It's not difficult to picture his little sibling in his mind, worried sick and urging at Jongin to drive faster, eyes firmly set on the horizon where he knows that the sun will rise soon. He remembers the following day, Jongdae and Kyungsoo going to the police station, arguing - Kyungsoo wanted Chanyeol to go to jail, Jongdae refused to even think about the possibility of him losing his job. “He's the only decent agent they have in the whole department Soo!” - “I legitimately don't care!” Sehun's laughs, punctuating the fights and Baekhyun's migraines, so acute and painful. He remembers the noise, the dirtiness of the police station, the hungry stares of every employee the day he set foot in that low, disgusting place full of stupid humans who wanted nothing more than to steal a glimpse of him, like piranhas fighting over the last scrap of meat. The oldest vampire in the city, and he was treated like a freak show. He wanted to slash them open and leave them to bleed slowly, not even giving them the little honor of feeding him.

Chanyeol, though… Chanyeol and his dark eyes and his arrogant face and his hands clenched in fury. Baekhyun wanted to suck him dry. First fucking, then sucking. He wanted to ruin him for good. When he saw him again, at the police station, the morning of All Saints’ Day, it took a single look in those eyes to stir something in his belly, an ugly mixture of hunger and anger. Chanyeol’s eyes, dark with rage, with fury, with hatred, but still so pretty. They had tricked Baekhyun so well…

Baekhyun knows those eyes, he’s seen them countless times in his dreams. They are the eyes of someone who hates vampires, someone who hates him. Seulgi had the same eyes, and Soojung too, and Baekhyun had loved them so much...

“I just wanted to forget about him, ok?” he says, with a sigh. “That guy is dangerous and I should try to stay away from him.”

Jongdae's eyes narrow and if he wasn't sure Baekhyun would be able to stop him, he'd try to hit him again. “And then what? What happens after you forget? You wake up, you meet someone else who doesn't fall at your feet and you run away for another century? This is what you've become, Baekhyun?”

He doesn't know the answer. He doesn't... feel good. His head is spinning like a whirlwind, When he looks at his chest and he sees the mess that once was one of his favorite silk shirts, an original Victorian piece, he frowns. “He stabbed me. I was stabbed.”

“The blade pierced you from side to side,” explains Kyungsoo aseptically. “But he missed your heart, that would've been awful and maybe you wouldn't be here. Your teeth unfortunately didn't miss his neck.”

Baekhyun pales - even more than usual.

“Is he alive?”

“Alive and unturned.”

Baekhyun heaves a sigh of relief. The last thing he wants is a fledgling who hates vampires, hates Baekhyun and would probably hate his new life with just enough passion to throw himself into the sunlight because he can't survive the shame. He would also be a fledgling that reminds Baekhyun of his previous lovers, a fledgling whom Baekhyun wants to fuck insanely hard.

“Where is he?”

“In the living room. Last time I checked, he was screaming and threatening Sehun.”

“Wait, does Sehun have anything to do with this mess?”

Jongdae hits him this time, a chop on the back of his neck. “Of course he does! Do you really think we'd let a human - a human you hate, on top of that - walk into your room after weeks of starvation like a two-legged buffet? Sehun orchestrated everything. He brought Chanyeol to you on his own!”

“And you let him?” he exclaims, incredulous.

“We couldn't possibly know he was trying to lure the human into your room, Baek.”

Baekhyun can't stop the frustrated growl leaving his throat. It travels across the house, filling room after room. A few seconds later they hear the main door slamming shut as Sehun leaves the mansion, running away from his brother's wrath.

“You should've expected it, Baekhyun,” says Jongdae, in the following silence. “He’s always loved you the most. Leaving him like that, did you really think he wouldn't have felt betrayed, abandoned?”

Kyungsoo sighs. He and Jongdae have been with Baekhyun long before Sehun was born. They weren't with him when Yesung happened, but they were with him when he met Seulgi. And they waited for him as he slept, fifteen years, hiding his broken heart in the cold embrace of stone and silence after Seulgi’s death.

Sehun was so young back then, he didn’t even live with them yet. He was still with Yunho, their sire, but that was before Yunho was slaughtered during the Blood War. The world had been in chaos back then. Humans wanted vampires exterminated, Baekhyun was still sleeping and Kyungsoo and Jongdae couldn’t simply flee the country and leave him behind. The day Yunho died, Baekhyun felt it in his bones. It bloomed like a flower of pain through his chest, rattling his ribs and swelling until his body couldn’t contain it anymore. It woke him up, after fifteen years.

He was up on his feet and running before Jongdae and Kyungsoo could realize he was awake - the were busy crying the death of their master too, but they were younger and weaker, they hadn’t felt his last words and his final wish. But Baekhyun was his eldest son. Baekhyun had heard and he had dashed, as fast as he could, through fires, through barricaded streets and boulevards surrounded not by trees but by the impaled corpses of executed vampires turned stone, their faces dreadful and tormented.

He had found Sehun crying tears of blood next to the mutilated body of his sire, of his master, of his father. The crowd was about to tear him apart too, but Baekhyun didn’t let them. He took Sehun’s hands, wondered how old that scrawny vampire who looked like a child really was, and dragged him away. Sehun let him, because he recognized Yunho’s power in Baekhyun. He recognized his true blood brother.

They reached Kyungsoo and Jongdae. Together, they survived. After twenty years of open, bloody war, fought in wide streets and big squares through stakes and fire, through claws and teeth, finally a treaty between humans and vampires was signed. Only thirty years later an ambitious, rich vampire named Kim Junmyeon would’ve entered the Congress as the first vampire senator of the country. But Baekhyun didn’t care. He only cared about Sehun, about Kyungsoo and Jongdae. He had cared about Seulgi, but Seulgi had died - and whose fault it was, really? He had cared about Yunho, but Yunho had died - and Baekhyun had been too weak and slow, too stupid and emotional and wrapped in his own dreams, to be there for him, to be able to save him.

All the oldest, more powerful vampires of the country had fought on the first line to protect their nests and they had been wiped out. Baekhyun suddenly found himself being labeled as the oldest living vampire in the prefecture, but he still didn’t care.

He hadn’t really cared about anything for the last century before Chanyeol had decided to come and play with his feelings again, confusing Baekhyun with the intense aroma of his blood.

Baekhyun closes his eyes and grits his teeth, feeling another wave of thirst hit him. The two months he's spent without feeding have weakened his body, and now the beast inside him demands a sweet, warm compensation. The vampire inside Baekhyun wants the hunt, but Baekhyun is so much more than his vampire. He breathes. It's so calming, so relaxing. In and out, in and out. Kyungsoo and Jongdae wait, a little wary, until he opens his eyes again.

“Why did that idiot accept to wake me up, anyway? It doesn't strike me for the little good boy scout who brings cookies to vampire lodges and inquires about the health of every member of the family. What did Sehun do to convince him to play this game?”

Kyungsoo bites his lips and Jongdae frowns.

“You need to talk to him. There's a lot you've missed in the past few weeks.”

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
And to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Mad World - G. Jules

Chanyeol looks pale and feisty. He sits on the couch with his arms crossed and his legs spread wide, unconsciously trying to make himself bigger and affirm his presence in what he perceives to be a hostile territory. To Baekhyun, he just looks like a pouting child. But so handsome.

There is a shadow of dried blood over the bandages on his neck, but the strong smell of antiseptic covers the delicate fragrance that awoke Baekhyun from his deep slumber. Nevertheless, he takes a few deep breaths to make sure he's calm enough before he steps in front of Chanyeol. Between the two of them, Chanyeol is the child. Baekhyun is four hundred years old and he will not make a fool of himself behaving like a newly turned in front of this asshole hunter. He's done enough of it last Halloween.

“I've heard you, come out of the shadows oh mighty Lord of the Darkness.”

Baekhyun scoffs and circles around the coach to stand in front of his guest.

“Your stealth needs serious improvements if even a human like me managed to hear you.”

“I don't like to make my guests uncomfortable with the superhuman speed.”

“Whatever, You're barely able to walk, no need to lie just to impress- whoa!”

Seeing Chanyeol gasp and stutter as Baekhyun disappears and falls on his lap in less than one heartbeat is totally worth it. He snickers and Chanyeol's frown intensifies. “That wasn't nice. Is this how you treat your guests?”

“Only the unwanted ones.”

He sits in the armchair in front of Chanyeol. “I've heard you have something to tell me.”

“I’m working on a case.”

“I thought you had been demoted. I made sure you were demoted.”

Chanyeol looks like he'd gladly stab Baekhyun again, but he just stiffly nods. “They moved me into another department, following your specific request. Now I deal with crimes against vampires.”

“Well, isn't this ironic. You hate vampires but you have to save them...”

Chanyeol has a nice jaw, but now it's too tense, in an ugly way. Rage steals the beauty of his face away. He doesn’t take the bait. “There's been a series of murders. We don't know if it's random or if there's a connection, some sort of pattern.”

“Murders? You mean vampires? Vampires are dying?”

Chanyeol nods. “Many old vampires. Kim Hyuna was one of them.”

The world closes around Baekhyun for a moment. “Hyuna? Are you sure? She's...”

“She was really old and powerful and strong, but she is no more. She is dead. We found her in pieces, except her head.”

Chanyeol is smiling now, proud to have rendered Baekhyun speechless. He just doesn't understand how deeply devastating such news can be. Vampires live for so long and they have so few natural enemies that it's easy for them to simply believe they're immortal., something between a god and a monster, terrible and eternal like the night. Being a vampire it’s like walking a long, long journey; you can immediately tell who will be by your side for a while and who will walk on parallel paths with you until the very end. And Baekhyun was sure that, when the end would’ve come, Hyuna would’ve been there to watch it with him. First row seats for the end of the world. Except from now on her spot will be empty.

“Who are the other victims?” he asks, his voice a mere whisper. “What do you know about the killer?”

“There are other victims, four of them. Five in total with Kim Hyuna. But I didn't come here to warn you there is a killer in town. As far as I'm concerned you can throw yourself on his path and maybe he'll take your pretty little head too. I don't really care. I'm just here because one of the victims, a lawyer called Yoon Doojoon, had an appointment with you for the night he was killed.”

“Yoon... Doojoon?”

“Did you know him?”

Yes, Baekhyun knows Doojoon. A neurotic vampire with a terrible taste in ties and bowties, but an overall decent sense in everything else, especially business.

“Doojoon is dead?”

“Yes, he is quite dead. Did you see him recently?”

No, of course Baekhyun hasn’t. The reason is quite obvious, and he can only stare at Chanyeol hoping that the idiot realizes his mistake. He remembers Jongdae telling him once that Chanyeol was the brightest and most efficient agent of his department. Maybe this is his bad day, or having his blood sucked shortly incapacitated his brain activity.

“No, I didn't see him recently.”

Chanyeol clearly doesn't believe him and he goes on with his questions. “Why did you ask him to meet you that night?”

“I actually didn't ask him to meet me in the last three years. The last time I contacted him was the day after Halloween, when I wrote him a letter to initiate a legal procedure against you.”

“Why don't you stop lying to me, Mr. Byun? I know you've sent him a letter a few days ago and you even signed it. Kim Junmyeon confirmed it couldn't have been anyone but you.”

Baekhyun takes a moment to admire Chanyeol's stubborn face, the hard set of his eyebrows and the expression wrinkles on his brow, ruining the perfect work of art that is his face.

“And yet it wasn't me, and before you accuse me of lying again I will remind you that, thanks to your heartless little game, I've spent the last seven weeks in what you humans would call a coma to mend my broken heart.” A muscle twitches in Chanyeol’s cheek and Baekhyun already knows he wants to retort that vampires don’t even have a heart, but he doesn’t want to leave him time to talk. “My brother can confirm that I've never left my room and I've never written a letter or contacted any other vampire.”

Chanyeol's face suddenly pales and then becomes redder and redder as Baekhyun talks and he realizes his mistake. When he's finished, the tips of Chanyeol's ears are ready to explode.

Baekhyun's expression softens. He really wants to humiliate this man but at the same time he doesn’t like the way Chanyeol’s face gets really ugly when he feels exposed. “I didn't write that letter but I may still be able to help you, if you let me. Can you tell me something about the other victims?”

“I'm not going to tell you anything. You’re a civilian.”

“Hyuna was my friend-”

“She could've been your girlfriend and I couldn't have cared less.” Baekhyun gapes, speechless, at being shut up like this. “I've talked with Kim Junmyeon and I know you vampires think you're above the law... You think you can solve your own crimes and have your own vendetta at your own rules, but you can't. The police is taking care of this!”

Baekhyun doesn't want to growl but he can't stop the low sound in his throat. Chanyeol is so stupid. He's so damn infuriating, so self-righteous, so immanently wrong.

“Your rules? Since when have your rules ever benefited us, Park Chanyeol? Don't even try to lie, you humans created those rules because you were scared, you imposed them to us like a cage!”

Baekhyun is short, but his powers are slowly awakening. He can feel them, gripping at his flesh, rattling in his bones, ready to explode. Chanyeol can feel them too and he stands, trying to annihilate Baekhyun's imposing presence with his height and his size. When he sees it's not working, his hands unconsciously goes to the blade hidden in his sleeve.

“You need to be caged,” he says, “because you're nothing but monsters!”

Baekhyun can only be proud of his self-restraints as he gets up and reaches for the handle of the door, instead of the neck of the man in front of him. He turns towards Chanyeol.

“You are leaving, Park Chanyeol, right now, and please don't come back.”

Vampires can't use smartphones. Most of the new devices on the market have a screen that recognizes and reacts to body heat, which vampires obviously don't possess most of the time. Baekhyun himself, in one of his rare strolls from his room to the rest of the house to get blood, company and mostly to assure the rest of the family that he is still alive, has seen Jongdae cursing and swearing and throwing the unlucky phone against the floor leaving a nice dent on the pretty majolica. Kyungsoo is more classy. He has an old flip phone with a paltry color depth and a pixelated picture of his boyfriend set as his wallpaper. Sehun has a futuristic thing with a touch screen that works with pressure and not heat, and so many customization options that his hopefully eternal life won’t ever be enough to understand how the damn thing works.

Baekhyun doesn't have a phone. He's never really needed one. He sends letters, tiny envelopes written in heavy, rough paper with thick black ink and fountain pens - sometimes, when he feels particularly romantic, he uses a feather. He always signs himself as B. and usually the recipients of the scarce message he burdens himself to write don't need anything else to know it's him. After all, he only writes to his closest friends.

This time though, he doesn't feel like writing a letter. He needs answers and he needs them now. The sooner he knows something about this killer Park Chanyeol talked about, the sooner he'll be able to find that little worm again and throw that knowledge, all the knowledge that Chanyeol denied him, at his face.

So he goes upstairs, looks for the old prewar telephone Jongdae had installed on the house something like sixty years ago - Jongdae has always been fascinated with scientific discoveries and strange human stuff - and looks for Junmyeon’s number in Kyungsoo’s address book. The telephone is an old, heavy thing, and Baekhyun stares at the rotary system for a few minutes without knowing what to do before he understands how to compose numbers. He feels so stupid. He usually asks Sehun about these things, but Sehun is probably hiding under Minseok's gowns now, whining and pouting and getting fucked a lot, too afraid to come home and face the mess he has created.

Baekhyun holds his breath, not feeling any kind of discomfort by doing it - he has long lost the memories of the pain of being unable to breathe when he was still a human - until a velvety voice answers the phone on the other side of the city.

“Who's talking?”

“It's Baekhyun.”

There's a little silence on the other side, punctuated by strange scratching noises. The other person is still unsure when he answers.

“Baekhyun? It's been a long time.”

“Indeed.”

“I think telephones hadn't even been invented yet.”

He snorts. “It's not been that long, I swear we saw each other less than twenty years ago.”

A quiet laugh, accompanied by more white noise. “It's still been too much. A lot of things have changed in the last twenty years. I'm seeing a girl.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes and even though the other vampire can't see him, Baekhyun knows he knows Baekhyun has just done that.

“I'm asocial, not deaf. Jongdae and Kyungsoo has told me about her. Newly turned, right? They become younger and younger every time, you sick pervert!”

“If my choice of potential lovers would be limited to vampires over the first century then it'd be a very poor choice, don't you think?”

“Especially now that someone is going around and killing all of them, apparently.”

There's a sudden silence on the other side. Baekhyun waits. The answer, when it comes, is cautious.

“Since when do you care about what happens to the rest of us, Baekhyun? Last time I checked you were busy with the holy challenge of dying out of boredom. How is that going?”

“It was going so well, I had finally managed to enter into a nice comatose state, but guess what happened? My dear little brother and the son of your new little pet decided to wake me up, so here I am. Grumpy, unsatisfied, extremely bored and, more than anything else, angry with that lunatic.”

This time the silence stretches even longer. “Chanyeol came to wake you up? Chanyeol as in Park Chanyeol? Joohyeon's son? He wouldn't set foot in a vampire house to save his life!”

Baekhyun sighs inwardly. He knows. He knows Chanyeol hates him, he knows Chanyeol wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him. He knows because Chanyeol doesn't lose a chance to remind Baekhyun of that, almost as if he was afraid that if he didn't, some strange ideas would sprout in Baekhyun's mind. Like the fancy hope that maybe Chanyeol feels something akin to attraction for him. And it hurts, because even if Chanyeol doesn't leave any space for that kind of hope, Baekhyun feels it anyway and every time Chanyeol shatters it again, Baekhyun feels more stupid, humiliated and too tired to deal with the intensity of his own emotions.

“Well, he did. Apparently, he thought I could have some important information on the killer but he made an ass of himself and he left before I could tell him anything useful.”

The voice on the other hand curls in a curious question. “Do you know something I don't, Byun Baekhyun?”

“I know a lot of things you don't know, Kim Junmyeon, but it's still over my abilities to guess the identity of your mysterious killer without even knowing who's been killed, don't you think so? Now please make yourself comfortable and tell me everything you know.”

Baekhyun didn't know the two kids who died first, but he remembers their names because Sehun told him about them sometimes. Sehun used to volunteer at Junmyeon's nest a few years ago. Part time job for a bored kid. It wasn't really because he needed extra money. They all believed it was because he was entering in some sort of late teenager phase - one hundred years old late teenager phase - but it was actually because he had the hots for Junmyeon's brother, Minseok, and working there allowed him to see the older vampire every day. And slowly seduce him, apparently.

(Actually, Baekhyun only goes out once every year, Halloween night, but that year he made an exception just to visit Kim Minseok at home and give him the customary older brother speech. I'll kill you if you make him suffer, remember to worship the ground he walks in and don't allow him to play videogames for more than 72 hours straight. Metal Gear Solid can fry even vampire brains.)

But this is not important. What is important is Sehun, coming home before dawn and telling Baekhyun how hot Minseok was, how cool Minseok was, how powerful and sexy and cute and... Sometimes, not very often though, he talked about something else too, and so Baekhyun came to know about Taeyong and Yuta, who worked as errand boys for Junmyeon together with another couple of orphans, young vampires turned by mistake and rejected both by their sire and by their human family.

The news of Hyuna and Ji-eun's deaths is more difficult to accept. Baekhyun didn’t personally know the two kids but he knew Hyuna since the day she was turned. He had seen her go from an awkward teenager working in filthy, dark alleys to a beautiful woman in red heels, red lipstick, and red eyes tainted by blood, owning her own empire of the night. She had been worse than an obsession for so many men, a goddess to die for, but Baekhyun has seen her grow lonely and melancholic, just like him. They have shared secret gazes of mutual understanding the few times their paths had crossed in the last few years. As for Ji-eun, she had always been a princess. She had her castle, her servants, she had her voice and her laugh and she had a lot of friends. Ji-eun was like a little bird, everyone wanted to take care of her. She used to visit often a couple of decades ago, when she and Sehun tried going out together. It didn't work out, but Baekhyun remembers her laugh like shattering silver and the way she always made sure to drop by his room and say hi when she was visiting.

And then there was Doojoon, serious, boring, predictable Doojoon with his stupid boring face and his talent for investments. He wasn't a friend but he wasn't a simple acquaintance. He was a collaborator, he was trusted.

Baekhyun now understands how difficult it must be for Junmyeon and Chanyeol to find this murderer simply looking for connections between the victims. Everyone old enough in the city could've come in contact with all of them. It's so frustrating. He really wanted to best Chanyeol on this, to show him he has no right to look at Baekhyun like he's useless.

“This is so frustrating!”

“You tell me.” He turns to face Jongdae, standing sheepishly at the door.

“So you're working on this case too?”

“The police only called me for Ji-eun's case, but I’ve been following the investigations on Junmyeon's behalf since his kids died. I must confess though, that I've failed to find a connection.”

“They don't look like random picks either. It's so maddening. I know there's something we're missing, but I don't know what. Why the two kids? Why the lawyer? Why the owner of an expensive club and the rich girl? I don't understand!”

Jongdae sighs. “I don't like this thing, Baekhyun. I don't know if you've noticed, but all these people... Are people we know. Now, it might be a simple coincidence, but...”

It could be a coincidence. After all, Junmyeon probably knew all these people too and Jinki could say the same. But there is something Jongdae doesn't know. A letter, apparently signed by Baekhyun himself, lured Doojoon to his death.

“I think it's a message. But I don't know who would be crazy enough to endanger the entire vampire community of this city just to mess with a single person. And I can't understand what kind of message is this supposed to be...”

“But a message for who, Baekhyun?”

Maybe it's for me.

“That's quite the important question too, Jongdae, but I'm afraid that we'll have to wait. We don't have enough elements to do anything for now. If my theory is right, soon enough a new victim will pop out. Maybe that will be enough to narrow it down for us.”

Jongdae frowns. “I can't believe it! So we just have to stay here and wait until someone else dies? Who will be the next? Maybe Jonghyun? Or Jinri?”

Baekhyun doesn't know what to answer, but he's sure that every vampire in the city is asking himself or herself the same question. Yes, it could be one of them, but shall the killer come, at least they're expecting him now. He just hopes they will be prepared.

In the thick darkness of the room, something rings. One of those dull preset ringtones that haunt new phones. He watches Jongdae pale and softly curse as he tries his best to tap his fingers on the screen and accept the call. He doesn't even have to make an effort to hear the whole conversation.

“Hello, Junmyeon?”

The voice that answers on the other side of the phone is the same voice Baekhyun has heard less than forty minutes ago, but now it's broken and heavy.

“You should come immediately, and maybe bring your Kyungsoo and Baekhyun too.”

“What happened?”

“My brother was attacked in his home. He survived.”

“We're coming as soon as possible!”

There's a flicker of ominous silence.

“Jongdae, the killer took Sehun.”

Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
Mad World - G. Jules

Minseok's house feels smaller than the last time Baekhyun visited. Must be the crowd of vampires from Junmyeon's nest, come to check on their sire's brother. Around him, the signs of a violent, vicious fight have turned the elegant flat in a battlefield. The furniture has been overturned, curtains are hanging in shreds from the ceiling and there's blood, so much blood. It's mostly Minseok's, but Baekhyun can smell the pain and the terror of his baby brother in the uneven splatters of red on the pale wall. He grits his teeth.

A message for me.

He doesn't even wait to talk with Minseok before he turns on his heels and reaches the door. Kyungsoo stops him, a hand on his sleeve, a worried, whispered, “Where are you going?”

“I can still smell him. If I run, I can catch them.”

Jongdae overhears their conversation and he turns towards them.

“Don't be stupid Baekhyun, it will be dawn soon!”

“But I have to try!”

Suddenly, everyone is looking at them. Baekhyun catches a glimpse of Junmyeon, eyes like black fire as he looks at the weak form of his brother. There's a slash on Minseok's throat, an ugly hole surrounded by pierced flesh, covered in black, dried blood. It's not healing and Baekhyun can imagine why. Minseok's regeneration skills are working so hard at keeping him alive despite the terrible wound on his neck that his body has no spare energy to heal it. If this goes on, soon enough he will run out of power and die, but if he can muster just a little more bit of it, the wound might be able to heal, slowly but steadily. His life is hanging from a thin thread of destiny, but he still manages to look at Baekhyun. If Junmyeon's eyes are like a black fire, ready to burn and consume everything it touches, Minseok's eyes are like a black abyss. Unforgiving, merciless, dark. Find them, save him. Save my love, please.

Baekhyun slaps Kyungsoo's hand away and he rushes away from this house invaded by his little brother's presence, by his scent clinging to the wood and to the stone, to the leather of Minseok's couch and the silk of his bed sheets. He runs away and follow the read thread of Sehun's dread, his confusion, his desperation. Kyungsoo and Jongdae call him, and even Junmyeon tries to stop him, but he doesn't hear them.

Baekhyun runs. For the first time in years the city is spread in front of him, a giant playground for a forever young kid. He jumps over a car, too fast for the driver to see him, too graceful to leave a sign on the shiny metal. The night air would freeze human lungs but for Baekhyun it's simply cool. He breathes it in, feels it going straight to his head, waking him up. He's painfully hyperaware of the sun, mercifully hidden behind the line of the horizon but fast approaching. Baekhyun will just have to be faster.

He tracks Sehun until the dirty side of the city, where you can taste and smell poverty and neglect, where the neat, trimmed hedges of middle class houses become sandy courtyards overcrowded with old cars, old toys and nervous guard dogs. It's where the city fades into the countryside, and not in the idyllic, joyous way that suggests apple trees, cornfields and kids playing around in the sun and laughing. It's the reign of weeds and rotten wood in winter, of grass turned golden hay and ready to become the nest of a fire in summer. Nature has wrapped itself around the tiny groups of plywood houses, keeping them in a tight hold that means stray dogs scratching at their doors in autumn and snakes coming out of the toilet at the beginning of spring.

A group of teenagers sits on the stairs in front of a grocery store, smoking weed. Baekhyun would've quickly overlooked them, but the rap lyrics coming out from the open car parked in front of the store are the only sounds filling the evening. They're too quiet, and when he gets close to them he realizes that their gestures are too stiff, almost mechanical, and their eyes are glassy. Charmed, all of them.

“Hey, kid.” He snaps his fingers in front of them. “Hey, wake up! Wake up!”

He scrolls one of them until his eyes focus again. “What the hell happened, dude?”

“Where did they go?”

The kid stares, still looking a little lost and Baekhyun snaps his fingers again.

“Two vampires. One of them looked like a young boy, don't know anything about the other.”

He watches the boy slowly put the pieces together, and he snarls at him, making sure to show off his teeth. That seems to do the trick.

“The woods! They were going towards the woods! The boy seemed drunk, he wasn't even walking straight. There was someone else but... I don't remember” He grimaces. “I can't remember!”

“It's enough. Wake up your friends and take them home, I don't want to see you here when I come back, alright?”

“Y-yessir!”

Baekhyun doesn't fancy the idea of going into the woods alone. He doesn't know who will he face, but he's now sure that this person has done everything just to meet him. Chanyeol had been right about the letter, the one he thought had been written by Baekhyun. That was the decisive hint, the important detail. Without that note, Baekhyun wouldn't have even known that there was a killer in town. Sehun would've been kidnapped and Baekhyun might have found about that only years and years later.

This person has killed people, Baekhyun's friends, and has kidnapped Sehun, Baekhyun’s brother, only to get his attention. It's strange, Baekhyun feels like he should already know who the killer is, but he really has no idea. It's frightening.

The sun is closer and closer and there will be no place to hide for him there. It feels like a trap. But Sehun is close, now Baekhyun can feel him, close but weak.

He steps into the woods , hoping he won't regret it.

O Death, O Death
Won't you spare me over 'til another year?

Well what is this, that I can't see?
With ice cold hands taking hold of me
When God is gone and the Devil takes hold
Who will have mercy on my soul?
O Death, O Death, consider my age
Please don't take me at this stage
O' Death - A. Van Roekel

Baekhyun walks slowly on the edge of ambiguity, not sure if he’s the predator or the prey. The moon is naked in the sky and the forest is eerily quiet, pulled taut and ready to snap. There are little animals hiding in the bushes, flattened against the ground, holding their breaths, the frenzied drums of their little hearts betraying their fear. They can feel the presence of predators faster and deadlier than wolves and bears, so strong and scary that they can even overwhelm the universal instinct to run away. The air is heavy with their terror.

Baekhyun can feel now the authority of the other vampire, so strong that it annihilates Sehun's presence. His own power frizzles in response to the immediate threat. His nails turn to claws, flashing silver under the moon; his eyes glow red and then black, when his pupils dilate impossibly wide to be able to see the faintest detail even in the shadows. His skin prickle and burns as it hardens, ready to face the oncoming fight.

When he speaks, it's not with Baekhyun's voice anymore, but with the poisonous hiss of the monster.

“I am here, just like you wanted. Come out and face me.”

It's not what Baekhyun would've said. It's arrogant, it's challenging. These are not the words of the boy who likes English poetry, Greek tragedies and German philosophy, who enjoys sculpture and oil painting and handmade, tailored silk shirts. That Baekhyun is a relic, a reminiscence of a lost time, trapped in the garbled folds humans created for vampires after the Blood War, a cage of rules to ensure safety and peaceful coexistence.

But these are the words of the four hundred years old vampire who used to dine with the blood of virgin humans and tear the sanity of his enemies away with a cold laugh, the monster who dragged his brother away from a raging crowd, his fury so palpable, scorching cold and freezing hot, that the sea of people parted in front of him. This is Baekhyun, ten times wounded, ten times hurt and never killed, who fought until the last blood with Seulgi the day of their wedding - it should have been his funeral, it was hers in the end - when she tried to kill him and only found her own fall.

Once upon a time, there was a young vampire who believed he was a god. The world defeated him, his own feelings defeated him, and he buried himself under that defeat, made a cape out of it and he wore it all the time as he dragged himself through the centuries without a will to exist, without a purpose anymore - an immortality of nothingness. His true potential was hidden but never gone, and it grew, a four hundred years old hunger. And now, surprisingly, Baekhyun feels it again, the need to prove himself, the instinct to fight, like an animal. The bloodthirst.

“Come out if you dare!”

An amused chuckle cuts the silence of the woods in half, crawling down the trees. Then, a shadow takes form from one of the trees, like a slice of black. It hovers for a moment, head tilted curiously on the side as to gauge Baekhyun's reaction. Then it turns on its heels and starts to run.

There is no uncertainty. Baekhyun dashes towards the black ghost, through bushes and tree, moving runaway branches out of the way in a mad rush.

“Stop!” he shouts, but the killer laughs again, laughs at him, a lovely laugh, and Baekhyun snarls.

The calm, rational boy he had been would've realized it was a trap, but this is the monster, this is the animal and he's hunting - he's hunted. Baekhyun doesn't even see the white circle on the ground, but he feels his skin burn when he jumps over it.

His senses scream at him that this is a setup, that he has to get out of it immediately, but he stops. Lying on the dirt, surrounded by a large circle of white powder, only open on one side, he sees his little brother’s jacket. He hesitates, just for a second, and that distraction betrays him. The shadow turns and quickly throw the content of a little bag of salt on only open part of the circle, closing it and sealing Baekhyun inside.

He barely realizes what the killer is doing as he kneels in front of Sehun’s jacket, almost like it contains a proof that he’s still alive - he is, he must be - but he feels it when the circle is completed. It's a like an electric lash, biting at his back. He falls on his knees with a quiet whimper.

“You think salt can stop me? You fool!”

“Salt wouldn't stop you, but on the other hand salt and silver will keep a good job of keeping you trapped there until dawn, darling.”

“It can't be... You... You're dead...”

She laughs, the same argentine laugh that has lured him into the woods - and this is not the first time it leads him into a trap.

“You would know, Baekhyun... I was killed by you!”

“You're dead, you died ninety years eighty years ago, Seulgi!”

She snarls at him and the hood falls back and he can see her pale face, the shadows under her eyes and the ones inside her eyes. He can see her jet black hair and her long lashes. He can see her teeth and her claws and the scar he left on her throat when he killed her a long time ago. But she's not dead. Undead.

“Look at me well, Byun Baekhyun. Look at what you did to me! This is worse than death!”

“I didn't do this!”

“Yes, you did, you slashed my throat open and you left me to die. But I woke up, alone, inside a cold tomb... I screamed inside for days!”

Little Seulgi, who looked too young to be a vampire hunter, too soft to be a threat, too warm against Baekhyun's side. Her eyes are so cold now.

Baekhyun didn't know. He would've never thought that she had been Turned, by him.

“Listen, I know you hate me, but my brother did nothing to you... Let him go, I beg you!”

“Letting him go? And why should I? He was the reason everything started, after all… Oh, but you don’t know. You weren’t there as he was Turned, as your sire,” her mouth curls cruelly around the word, “took him away from me! He was mine!”

“You’re crazy!”

Seulgi chuckles as she paces around the salt circle. “Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet. I've only just started, Baekhyun... Or maybe you thought I only did this to hunt you down and kill you? I must admit, the two kids where a mistake I had to expiate, I should’ve never Turned them thirteen years ago, and all the other victims were specifically chosen to drive you out of your nest. Think of how relieved I was when the little note I left in the lawyer’s room brought that hunter to your house and you into my game.”

Long, black hair falls over her face when she laughs. “I admit it got... quite personal with you, but I'm not only doing this for revenge. You're my sire, and as long as you're alive you'll always be able to control me. The only reason you can't order me around now it's because you're trapped in there, but soon enough you'll be nothing more than dust, I will have my Sehun back, and I’ll be able to complete my mission. I will destroy your cursed race. Then I’ll be free, at last.”

Free to go out and kill all the vampires she can. Not only Baekhyun and Sehun, Taeyong and Yuta, Doojoon, Hyuna and Ji-eun. She'll kill Kyungsoo and Jongdae, Junmyeon and Minseok. She'll kill Jinri and Tiffany and Hyoyeon. She'll kill Kibum, Jinki and Jonghyun. She'll kill all the vampires Baekhyun knows and even those he doesn't know, and no one will really be able to stop her. Seulgi is a hunter of the old school, she knows secrets a simple rookie like Chanyeol will never have the chance to learn, tricks and hunting methods lost in the fog of blood during the Blood War, when the hunters of the Fil Rouge was exterminated. Seulgi had been the most dangerous hunter Baekhyun had never met, but as a vampire the possibilities spread in front of her are endless. No one would ever be able to stop her knowledge and newfound strength combined. No one but her sire. No one but Baekhyun. And he's going to die here, like a fool, disappearing in ashes at the first glimpse of the rising sun.

“I think it's time for me to go now, master. I'm just sorry I won't be able to assist while the sun does what I couldn't do ninety years ago.”

She turns on her heels, snapping the hood on the long hair, and gives him a last, lingering glance and a mocking kiss that flies from her fingertips into the air.

“Wait, Seulgi, wait!” She flinches at his voice, feeling the pull towards her sire, her maker, her only master, and normally she would've complied immediately, without even realizing, but the barrier standing between them keeps the link from working properly.

“There’s no time left. Goodbye, Baekhyun.”

She disappears in the woods. He tries to reach her, but the barrier of salt and silver is too strong, it hits him like poison and makes him want to crawl out of his skin. He screams for help, but deep inside he knows it doesn't matter because his time has already ended. The sky has turned from dark blue to a lovely shade of indigo, while the stars begin to tremble and fade in the morning. At east, a shade of pink has made his way through the crowd of clouds at the horizon. In a few minutes, sunlight will wash over the clearing.

Baekhyun tries to break through the barrier again, until his hands are badly burns and itching everywhere. Finally, he cradles Sehun’s jacket in his arms, and prays that, wherever he is, he is safe. He finally looks at the sky, where red is bleeding on the blue and waiting to turn to gold. Baekhyun has not seen a dawn in the last four hundred years. He really wants to see it, one last more time.

“Forgive me, Sehunnie.”

That's when a loud rumble shatters the holy silence that winds up the earth just before dawn. The whole ground shakes with its strength. Baekhyun doesn't immediately recognize the sound. It's only when the dirty, old grey Sedan barges into the clearing, hits a tree right in front of him and sweeps the salt and silver barrier away, that he realizes what it was. A car engine. An old car engine.

Park Chanyeol looks at him from the driver's seat and whistles, before taking a long drag of smoke. “Get in the trunk, quickly! Don’t worry, your brother is alright! Come on, possibly before you become a bag of dust!”

He closes the trunk on Baekhyun's face when the first slice of light hits his back and the next thing Baekhyun knows is that they're moving, everything hurts but he’s still alive. The sun rises and he’s still alive.

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you,
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very, very
Mad world, mad world, enlarging your world, mad world
Mad World - G. Jules

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