The girl died weeping,
In his mercy, he did not make it painful, for she was younger than the others and sought salvation from the dark and frightening life she found lost herself in.
In the end, she clung to him, longing for the voice he used to call her name and the gentle caress of his fingers across her cheek. How sweet she was in her desire; her hair smelling like flowers and her face painted with beautiful colors. She was starving for something and it felt like a sin to waste such a lovely trinket. So, he tore into her with as much restraint as he could gather, feeding on her with his own longing as he drank down every drop of blood she had within her.
When he finished, he laid her to rest with her hands folded and her eyes closed, leaving her for someone else to find as he slipped into the shadows of another alley.
He straightened his coat and licked his skin clean. Still warm, still good.
However, the girl wasn’t enough and he craved so much more than she could give him.
Ah, but the night was young and the mortal crowds had only just begun to show up.
He reached the end of the alley and peered out onto the streets where humans infested the clubs and bars like rats seeking to end their starvation. Neon lights guided them to their next drink or the most convenient fuck as women and men alike waited on street corners and hoped for a stranger to kill time with. A few bars down, a group of young men began to fight and curse, hitting and bleeding until someone was stabbed and a girl screamed when the others scattered. Those screams startled two young women who exited a bar with innocence against their skin and were followed closely by two men with dangerous gleams in their eyes.
Oh, how he wanted them, yearning to rip into their throats as he watched them tempt fate so carelessly.
Humans begged for death.
They moan for it like a bitch in heat.
They lie, they steal, they cheat, they kill, and yet they still sleep like children at the end of the night.
How could he ignore them? They tempt him by walking the streets drunk on sex and gin, so willing to invite a stranger into their bed as nothing else matters but to be held and fucked and content with the idea that they had made it home for another night because they are invincible.
And how euphoric it is to take the first bite and drain them of that pathetic illusion.
He watched those two men leave the shadows of their hiding spot to follow their pretty victims down the street. And he grinned knowing four would be plenty for tonight.
He left the glowing avenue and sank into the darkness of the back streets, using the tempo of their heartbeats to guide him in their direction.
Then, he heard it.
A soft exhale, a breathy sigh coming from another alley that stopped him so he might listen more closely.
Curiously, he followed the sound, the smell of smoke and skin, and the dreamy hum of an unknown tune.
Between the buildings, the air was wet with the smells of puddles and garbage, tight corridors plagued with vermin who watched him with jasper eyes and hissed at his presence. White sheets hanging on loose ropes, wires stretching across the sky, and that gentle sigh calling to him like a siren in the shadows.
And there he was.
Leaning out of a window with a cigarette held between his delicate fingers, wisps of smoke escaping from between parted lips still tender with rough kisses. The lascivious way that beautiful young man stared into the night consumed him and his teeth craved that pale neck. He wanted to tear into it and hold that warm body close enough to kiss and hard enough to crush.
A strange feeling overcame him, a series of voices and images that played through his mind: a faceless young man and a voice promising something, the feel of his own lips against a neck so soft and a sweet voice calling a name he couldn’t remember. Uneven breathes escaped him, the red hunger rising and attempting to devour those old, fragile pieces of memories.
Then, the hunger won, shifting inside of him and exposing his fangs in a grin as the world went red. His siren finished the cigarette and yawned, sleepily laying his head onto his arms as if he were waiting for someone.
Waiting for him.
Why?
Fen screamed when Vic cried out. Gabriel shattered his bones and threw him to the ground, watching him turn in agony.
Why is this happening?
The vampire knelt before Vic and tore his claws into the man’s head, forcing it back to expose the inked and scarred flesh of his neck.
I couldn’t do anything!
Fen was hollering the creature's name, but he was beyond that name now. He was something more terrifying than the angelic face who visited him every night for weeks leading up to this nightmare. And tears fell down his face when he realized this hell was reality. Vic was going to die and he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t prevent it.
Just like mom, just like Diana!
When Vic screamed again, Fen looked up and moved towards them with the intention of fighting for the man who had fought for him many times, but something fell from his pocket and hit the ground with a sudden click.
He looked.
The butterfly knife laid against the wet ground with metal gleaming under the streetlight, reflecting the darkness of his eyes and the tears that fell. He picked it up and the closer he looked, the more eyes he saw.
He saw his mom’s eyes first, but they weren’t disappointed, they were warm and welcoming, a look he’d almost forgotten. He saw Diana’s, shimmering with a mischievous flash, not at all like the sadness and fear she held the night he returned home high beyond comprehension. He saw his dad’s eyes, calm and cold, but not shadowed by the irritation and stress he’d been struggling through when Fen started to go over the edge. Finally, he saw eyes he didn’t recognize anymore, a brightness that lingered before the wrong friends, before the drugs, before the accident, before happiness started to become a distant memory. Wet droplets dripped onto the blade—rain or tears, he didn’t know—and wiped everything away until his swollen red eyes were staring back at him, surrounded by the shadows of bruises and exhaustion.
The painful cries of both a monster and a man snapped him from his trance and he looked towards the two.
Gabriel had finished playing, finished ripping cuts and gashes into Vic’s skin, and now he intended on breaking his toy. His fangs were longer than ever, surrounded by sharper points and dripping with saliva. His face was unrecognizable, a monster from the darkness that lurked in the minds of everyone who is or was afraid of things that went bump in the night.
Fen took the knife and faced them, no longer shaking and no longer crying.
And before Gabriel could get close enough to Vic’s throat to tear into it, Fen pressed the tip of the blade into his throat and made a noise as the pain drew trickles of blood.
The vampire froze.
Those pulsing eyes glancing his way.
Rain fell against them, breaking the silence.
That monstrous appearance slowly began to vanish: bleeding eyes were washed away by that beautiful blue hue, the grayish tone in his hair brightened, and the wrinkles of hunger and rage faded into a cherubic warmth.
Now, he was staring with curiosity and confusion. But Fen kept the blade where it needed to be against his throat and matched the vampire’s stare with his own narrowed look.
Gabriel stood.
He dropped Vic to the ground, finally allowing the man the breath as he approached Fen with delicate steps.
When they were but an arm’s length away, Gabriel knelt in front of Fen with owl-wide eyes and the slightest tilt of his head, seemingly trying to understand something without having to ask any questions.
But when the answer eluded him, he spoke.
“You would do it, wouldn’t you?” Those other voices were gone.
Fen said nothing and the only thing he could manage to do was nod.
Gabriel watched him still, his eyes shifting to an odd expression Fen couldn’t identify. If he had to guess, maybe chagrin, maybe uncertainty. The look of a man—not a monster—who was close to breaking under the pressure of questions he had no answers to.
He cocked his head off at a strange angle and stared toward Vic as the man watched them from the ground.
The silence turned frightening until Gabriel shattered it with his voice.
“I…could give you everything,” He said in a whisper that almost faded into the rain. “Yet, you would kill yourself…instead of being reborn into a life with the reassurance that your will never suffer again? That you would never be alone and you will never be scared…because nothing would be more terrifying than you. Or I.” Gabriel paused but continued after a crack of thunder. “You would kill yourself than choose a life…with me?”
When Fen blinked, Gabriel was watching him, waiting for an answer to his question with a child’s curiosity and a demon’s impatience.
Momentarily, Fen felt nothing but rage and disgust as the answer to that question laid with all the bodies scattered around this city and the thousands more before it.
“You say I won’t suffer…and you said everything would be wiped away. The pain, the…fear, the insecurities, everything that held me down for years in this fucking hell of a life I fell into,” Fen felt his voice shaking. “But you’re lying.”
Gabriel’s eyes perked.
“You’re in pain…and you’re afraid.” His eyes narrowed more as his own anger started to rise. “You have to spend the rest of eternity with insecurities that followed you from the grave. You can't stop killing for whatever revenge you died with, and that's all you know,” A flash of lightning passed through the sky and tears started to wet his eyes again. "And that's all you know." Thunder rolled above them. “So, do it or I’ll do it myself! I’d rather die with Vic than enter another life filled with pain and darkness, one where death and blood are the only salvation!"
The blade's tip broke through his skin.
"I can...escape this life…but a life with you, eternal and unchanging, is worse than death.”
Gabriel was expressionless.
No anger, no hunger.
And he said nothing.
Fen had to blink because of the tears and when he did, Gabriel was reaching for him.
He flinched and closed his eyes, expecting to feel something unpleasant and his shaking hands were ready to push the blade into his throat.
But a gentle hand touched his cheek.
“I see.”
Fen opened his eyes to the rain falling against his tight grip and Gabriel’s arm outstretched, then droplets of blood.
Quickly, he looked up, but Gabriel had already turned away to stand.
He headed towards Vic but thankfully, did not touch him.
Instead, he reached for his coat and stepped over the man as he headed down the street
“Perhaps another time?” He asked, glancing back for a heartbeat and a glimpse of blue eyes with a threat of red. “…Another life?”
A promise.
And he walked into the night, disappearing into the shadows as if he were never really there.
The chaos clock ticked.
Fen dropped the knife when he felt safe enough and rushed over to Vic's side.
“Vic…” He said softly, concerned and almost sobbing when he helped the man sit up.
Unfortunately, Vic hardly had the strength to sit up on his own and ended up falling into Fen, who carefully ran his hands over the man’s bleeding face.
Silently, fearfully, they looked to the shadows of the street where Gabriel had walked away, anticipating he would appear again.
But he didn’t.
“Is…he gone?” Vic asked breathlessly, but not weakly.
Anxiously, Fen watched the darkness. The weight of heavy, moving shadows were gone, nothing nightmarish or ethereal, just the darkness of a rainy night. Normalcy. "...I think so."
“Can you stand?” He kissed Vic’s head, lifting his arm over his shoulders and supporting him as they stood.
The man almost fell over, but Fen caught him, kept him from falling and breaking against the ground.
Just as the man had done for him many times.
The two of them took one more glance in that direction before they fled down the opposite street.
And despite the voice that called his name faintly against the rain, Fen didn’t look back.
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