In a world where Vampires roamed every crevice and corner they could lurk in, you’d think that Rowan would be more cautious when aimlessly traversing the endless expanse of the forest he was currently stuck in.
Especially since those vampires slaughtered any human they encountered, feeling zero remorse or guilt. Their only goal was to either feast or turn. Either the human was valuable to keep them nourished, or the human would join them and add to their rapidly growing army of bloodsuckers. Once a Vampire had you in their clutches, you might as well have accepted death right there and then. Unless you were a Vampire Hunter, but these days, Vampire Hunters were few and far between. Most of them had been killed off by the new generation of Vampires who had evolved to be immune to the blades Vampire Hunters were given upon receiving their official title.
In a world where Rowan had lost his entire family and all of his friends to Vampires, you’d think that he’d be smart enough to know how to avoid ending up in his current predicament.
This vampire was tall and menacing, his fangs protruding from his gums and gleaming in the light of Rowan’s abandoned lantern strewn on the ground beside him, his bright red eyes ablaze with hunger. His mouth twisted into a demented smile, and his hair hung in his face as if he’d been in a vigorous fight.
The fight was short-lived and not vigorous at all. Rowan had been crouched down to examine some berries in the dark, with only the illumination from his lantern to show him the physical properties of the fruits, when he was grabbed and hauled to his feet. Before he could even process that he’d been grabbed, fangs were tickling his neck, and miraculously, he managed to elbow the creature hard enough to force him to release his tight grip. Though, his victory was demolished a few seconds later when he was shoved and fell to the ground, hard, landing on a shattered piece of glass and slicing his cheek open. Of course. Rowan just couldn’t catch a break, could he?
Nonetheless, he tried to push himself to his feet, but the wind had been knocked out of him due to the sheer force of the fall, so the best he could manage was switching his position so that he could watch the Vampire as he followed Rowan’s desperate scrambling backwards, his feet sliding through the grass hopelessly as he tried his hardest to catch his breath and jump to his feet.
But he couldn’t. Warm blood streaked down his cheek, tracing his jawline and dripping off of his chin. His lips were twisted into a snarl, his eyes narrowed as if he could intimidate this beast that was twice his size and one hundred times his strength. The most he could do was whip his blade out of his pocket and point it at the Vampire. He was trembling terribly, and his arm wavered, which lessened the effect of his attempted intimidation.
Rowan was regretting not becoming a Vampire Hunter.
Maybe he would have been able to save the people he cared about most if he had.
Maybe he would have been able to protect himself right now instead of staring at death’s door in its awful face.
“What a lovely feast you’ll make,” the Vampire taunted. “They always taste better when they try to run… oh, how I adore the taste of fear!”
Rowan inhaled a large, greedy gulp of air, but an unexpected sharp pain shot through his chest, and a cough was ripped from his throat. He whimpered, internally cursing himself for showing weakness.
“Fuck you,” he spat.
The Vampire’s smile seemed to widen if that were even possible. “Oooh, you’re a feisty one!”
Rowan coughed again. “I’m not afraid of you.” He was. He was terrified.
If he died, at least he would be reunited with his family in the afterlife. If there was an afterlife.
Silver fucking lining.
“Eh… if you’re not going to try and run then this is going to get boring really fast.” The Vampire sighed as if he was disappointed that he was getting a free meal without having to chase it. “In that case…”
The monster charged at him.
Rowan squeezed his eyes shut and braced for the pain of his flesh being ripped apart by sharp fangs. He prayed that this would be over quickly.
But the excruciating pain never came.
Instead, he heard rapid footsteps thundering on the forest floor, followed by the telltale sound of a blade piercing cleanly through muscle and blood, and then a thud as something hit the ground.
With unsteady, shaking breaths, he slowly, hesitantly opened his eyes enough to squint up at his saviour.
And he really wished the Vampire had just killed him. That fate would be better than this one.
Standing before him with a decapitated Vampire at his feet was none other than Alaric Orpheus. One of the strongest and last remaining Vampire Hunters, and also Rowan’s biggest enemy. Before the apocalypse tarnished the world, Rowan and Alaric were in the same weapon-training classes, gaining an education about how to use various forms of weaponry. The reasons people attended these classes varied: some because they wanted to become a soldier, some because they wanted to become a hunter, some because they simply wanted to know self-defence, and the list went on.
Rowan attended because he wanted to learn self-defence. His family was… well, his family was never safe from violence. He and his sister had two fathers, his sister was bisexual, and Rowan himself was gay. He and his sister were both adopted separately, so they weren’t biologically related, but they had the bond of biological siblings. But, since they were a family of queer people and orphans, there was an abundance of people who didn’t take too kindly to that. As if their lives affected them in some way.
Alaric also attended this class. He was vague about why, but every time Rowan asked him about it, he would give some strange response that just left him with more questions. His most common response was ‘I want to be prepared,’ which startled Rowan more than he cared to admit. Prepared for what? Alaric never revealed more than that.
He must have gotten on Alaric’s last nerve at some point because Alaric started being actively hostile toward him. Sneering at him when he got close, making unintelligible comments under his breath, rolling his eyes when Rowan failed to shoot a target. That was enough to convince Rowan to avoid Alaric as much as possible.
That was when the rumours began circulating.
Alaric came from noble descent; that was just a fact. However, Rowan was starting to hear hushed whispers in the corners of the training hall that Alaric had some dark secret. The most common speculation was that he’d murdered someone– or multiple people– and was trying to cover his past. Rowan shuddered at the thought; that there was a cold-blooded murderer among them.
Gradually, Rowan threw some insults back at the mysterious noble, but his last straw was when he’d nearly stabbed himself while trying to master a sword maneuver, and Alaric yelled from the sidelines,
“You don’t belong here.”
Rowan really shouldn’t have proved him right.
But he did. Like the idiot he was.
He’d quit his training. He didn’t want to see Alaric’s stupidly handsome but irritating face ever again. Before he’d left, though, he’d gotten one last snarky remark in, right in front of everyone.
“At least I’ve never ruthlessly murdered someone.”
He didn’t care what happened to Alaric after that.
And then Alaric had the goddamn nerve to become a Vampire Hunter. How he’d survived this long was beyond Rowan. He figured Alaric would have harassed his way into an early grave by pissing off the first Vampire he tried to kill.
But apparently not.
They stared at each other intensely, Rowan’s heavy heaving the only noise between them. Alaric’s inky black hair had grown since he’d last seen him. It now flowed down to his shoulders in faint waves and was currently hanging in his eyes, curtaining his eyes enough so that his grey irises could peer down at him condescendingly through the thick strands. His sword dripped with Vampire blood as it hung at his side. The pale skin of his cheeks had a bit of a blush to them due to the exertion of dashing here to save Rowan’s life.
Rowan was the first to break the uncomfortable silence.
“Why did you save me?”
Alaric didn’t answer him for a good minute or two. Since Rowan felt his strength returning, and he didn’t have time to deal with Alaric’s bullshit, he pocketed his knife and pushed himself to his feet with a groan. Shaking his head, he started toward his supplies left stranded beside the berries, when Alaric finally answered his question.
“Just because I’m the bad guy doesn’t mean I’m a bad guy.”
Rowan let out a wry laugh. “Always with the fucking riddles, aren’t you? Are you able to say something clearly, for once? Or is it a noble rule that you have to be mysterious about everything or else they’ll publicly burn you alive?” He turned his back to Alaric and dropped into a crouch to scavenge around in his backpack for his first aid kit.
“I think that what I said was pretty clear.”
“News flash, dude,” Rowan said, “it isn’t.”
“Whatever. What are you doing out here? Are you hurt?”
“Why the fuck do you care?”
“Are you hurt?” Alaric repeated.
“You sure as hell didn’t care about me getting hurt two years ago during training. Now leave me alone.”
“I just saved your life, and you’re acting like an asshole. A ‘thanks’ would be nice.” He could hear the sneer in Alaric’s voice.
Rowan abandoned his task and instead stood up to spin around to face his enemy again. “Well, maybe I didn’t want to be saved by you. Did you ever think about that?!”
Alaric grimaced. “What is your problem?”
“What’s my problem?” Rowan laughed incredulously. “I don’t know. Maybe my problem is that it’s more humiliating to admit I was saved by you than it would have been to be murdered. Did you forget what happened back at training?”
“Of course not.” Alaric was annoyingly calm, but Rowan could detect restraint slipping from his tone. Alaric was trying not to snap at him. “But that’s in the past now, isn’t it?”
“I quit training because of you!” Rowan flailed his arms up at his sides. “You can’t just bully and harass me daily and then expect me to be all sunshine and fucking rainbows when we meet again. That isn’t how the world works.”
“I saved–”
“You were doing your goddamn job. You would have saved me if I were literally anyone else. You didn’t want a guilty conscience. That’s it.”
A muscle in Alaric’s jaw twitched and worked as his eyebrows furrowed. Rowan huffed and raked a hand through his short, loosely curled, mussed, dark brown hair. There was dirt caught in the knots, and Rowan really wished he could stumble upon a stream to bathe himself. He felt disgusting.
“You’re bleeding,” Alaric said.
“You figure that out on your own, Sherlock?”
Alaric ignored him. “Let me patch you up.” His eyes darted to the wound on Rowan’s cheek. Something flashed in his eyes, but Rowan paid no mind to it.
“I’m fine. I can do it myself.”
“You’re bleeding a lot. Do you know how to disinfect the wound? Or how to do stitches?”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. I have supplies in my backpack.” Alaric nodded to the large black backpack he was carrying. It looked heavy. What an idiot he was to carry such heavy cargo when he was trying to survive the apocalypse.
Well, there was no harm in accepting Alaric’s help, just this once. He could just ditch him after this. Rowan evidently lost his first aid kit, and he really didn’t want his injury to get infected. He didn’t have to tell anyone that he’d been saved and tended to by Alaric Orpheus. It could be his shameful little secret.
“Make it quick. I have somewhere to be.”
“This is the apocalypse. No, you don’t.”
Rowan sneered. “Can we do this without you being a smartass?”
“No.”
“Then I’m leaving. And I’m going to let his wound get infected, and if I die, it’ll be your fault.”
“That…” Alaric sighed in exasperation and rubbed his forehead. Good. Rowan wanted him to be annoyed. “All right. I’ll stay quiet as long as you do.”
“Deal.” Rowan revelled in the thought of not having to utter another word in Alaric’s direction ever again.
He just had to get through the stitches, and then he'd leave Alaric behind.
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