Hazel slammed a hand into his chest, a spell on her lips, and for a moment, he felt disconnected from his own body. As if Hazel had pushed him out of a shell, and he floated behind it. In front of  him was his form, spider-webbed with light. Before he could even think why or what, he was yanked back, and Hazel caught her breath, blood dripped from the corners of her eyes and nose, and the Witch held on to her, wheezing.

“What—”

“Get away.” Hazel pointed at him. She wanted to wipe the blood, but thought better of it than to do so in front of him.

“Tell me, what happened!” he demanded. His hand remained in the Nathaniel Hawthorne book, fingers still splayed across the page affectionately. Sayre tried to move, but he felt like he was trapped in the mud. Slowly, he regained control of his body.

“A chair, Hazel,” the Witch said weakly.

Hazel glanced about and spotted the one by Sayre. She snarled at him, reached an arm carefully, and brought it to her sister. Once seated, the Witch’s head and shoulder slouched backwards over the chair. Her eyes: golden and blaring. Hazel held her hand.

“Sister,” she worried.

“It…will pass,” the Witch soothed.

After a moment, she blinked, and blinked, and with each one, the light faded, and she returned. A hand moved to her forehead. Fingers rubbed her eyes. She pulled herself forward with a groan.

Sayre watched, his body frozen, but no longer from the magic.

His encounters with witches had been few and far between, as by design. The local den would pay their dues to the local coven, and Sayre would reap the benefits, even if he wasn’t a part of the den. His meals always seemed to be cleaned up—even the more grizzly ones. Humans didn’t really know he existed. He was a shadow. A stray smudge of ink in a tome of human civilization. That’s how he wanted it. That also meant he didn’t exactly care to learn much about the others. And witches, of all things, remained a mystery even to the more learned (which would be bookworms—literal hairless beings who carved their way into shelves and spines of books and ate the stories).  Even still, the Witch overcome and possessed by burning, golden light and magic didn’t seem like something that shouldn’t have happened at all,  let alone often.

Sayre thought The Hunger was gruesome, but he was beginning to suspect the Witch’s magic may have been on par.

Hazel ran her kerchief over her face, turning her back enough from Sayre so he couldn’t see, but never far enough that she couldn’t watch his movements. Unlike her sister, who seemed to have no fear of him, Hazel was utterly untrusting. Good, he thought.

With the enchantment faded, on himself and her, Sayre furrowed his brows, and soured his expression. “That’s the second time you’ve done that to me!” he growled with equal parts anger, and curiosity.

A weak, but genuine, “Apologies,” fell out of the Witch.

Her sister hated it. “Don’t! Not to him!” Hazel spat.

The Witch’s hand reached for her sister’s arm. A gentle squeeze. “Hazel, could you get me some water?”

Hazel grumbled, knowing a ‘leave the room,’ when she heard it. “Sure,” she said. Then she was gone, but not before she sent a petulant glare to Sayre.

“You’ll have to excuse her, Hazel has always been…that.” The Witch looked up from her chair. The soft about her eyes was cursed, marble-like with streaks of gold, actual metallic gold, he thought. It seemed to shimmer even in the dingy light of her operating room.

“What happened?” His black velvet voice was firm, but not cruel. 

“Joys of magic,” she groaned, then heaved herself up. She stumbled towards the table and slammed her hands onto the dead Sullivan White’s chest. As she lifted it, something wafted from his body, wispy and ethereal, glowing softly blue. She drew it high with the flick of her fingers (it singled to a point) then she inhaled it.

It filled her mouth and nose, and eyes, with the soft glowing blue. The Witch slumped to her elbow, wheezing, coughing, then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and finally, finally had control of herself.

Sayre had been around for hundreds of years, he had seen most of the world and its secrets—and even he had never seen something like that. 

“Are you cursed?” Sayre heard himself ask before he thought of it.

The Witch gave a little laugh. “Yes, and no. Great powers demand great energy.” She turned, leaning—holding—onto the table. “As you know.”

Sayre snorted and looked away. Realizing he still held the book, he folded it carefully and traded it for his hat. “You seem just as cursed as I am.”

“Maybe. Or, maybe…maybe this is just a tax.”

“You take bodies for parts—make ingredients with them. Potions, I suspect. All the while, you need it to sustain your power?”

“You drink blood,” she threw back.

Sayre snorted and turned. He crossed his arms, hat dangling from his grip. “I sustain my point: cursed.” He let his gaze drift over her. Her dark rimmed eyes. Her black velvet choker with an oblong, gold framed stone in the middle. Her scowl that carved across her skin as if a master sculptor had chiseled it out of marble, for the curves and angles of her face seemed too perfect to be anything but artist-touched. “What…was that?”

“You sound worried.” She grimaced as she straightened.

“Concerned, for myself. You’ve held my body hostage twice now, I just want to know if I should expect that, or…”

The Witch pulled in a deep breath, mulling over his words before she answered. “In truth, neither of those were me. The first was a charm on the shop, the second…honestly, I don’t know. That’s never really…been so extreme before.”

“What was it?” he asked, hiding his curiosity with obstinateness. 

As if the words were ice themselves, it prickled her expression on the defensive. “It’s a little difficult to explain, and not something I’d prefer to avail myself to—”

“The likes of me?” he snarled, and flicked a hand about himself, “a vampire?”

“—a stranger.”

He felt a growl roll up his spine and seize his chest. He’d had enough of this. Of losing control of his body, of his thoughts. Sayre snorted. He stepped forward, dropped his hat on the dead body, and lifted deadly fingers for her. His eyes hazed with a black and red. His fingers clamped on her jaw.  She showed her curse, and he would show his.  

“If it happens again,” he hissed with the low draw of his powers, fangs bare, and a gaze that ripped her to shreds, “I will rip out that little black heart of yours, and I will waste it. I will paint my walls with it just to watch it rot.”

The Witch didn’t flinch. Fear never filled her eyes. Never quickened her heart. Against his pinching fingers, he felt her cheeks burn, and twist. The audacity. She was smirking. Sayre held her with deadly intent, and the damned witch was smirking. 

Interesting.

The coils of his own vicious grin started.

“Before…or after I shove a bough through your chest?” she challenged with a peaked brow. Their eyes remained locked, until the glare she kept steady in his, flicked down.

His eyes dropped beyond the proximity of their mouths, down the slope of her jaw bone, over the black choker and frills of her blouse, and how close they stood together…to the pinching stab of a stake against his chest—the apex already through his frock, and suit, and shirt. Already on the skin above his dead, still heart.

“If I wanted you dead, you would be,” she said, sotto voce. Her words a purr in his ears, filling the empty caverns of his skull. “As I suspect, the same as you.”

Their eyes met again. A huff fell through his lips, but he pulled his hands away. His eyes, his powers, returned to normal. His fingers, however, felt hot. “We are at a stalemate.”

She massaged her jaw. “A comfort, no?” Again, he snorted. “A vampire…older than the dens…than the city, than the country in which he hunts…and a Head-Priestess of her coven.” She chirped in amusement when Sayre’s expression twitched. “It’s not just any ol’witch, with any ol’powers that could hold you back. You need something as ancient as you.”

The black and red of his curse threatened to come back. “Don’t…” he snarled, offended, “call me ‘ancient.’”

The Witch gave an apologetic little nod, an assurance she wouldn’t again. “How does it feel…to be as old as countries? To have something in your blood—your bones—that watched empires learn to walk? …How does it feel, to know you’re not the only one?”

The bite of a remark he had ready on his tongue died. “Witch’s aren’t immortal.”

They were long-lived, sure. But, immortal? He’d never met one.

“I didn’t say they were.” She cocked her head to the side. The stake in her hand, she left on the table…next to the dead body. A show of trust. It confused him. As did why he cared that she was engulfed in light and unable to control herself. Victim to her own might. “Magic, I suspect, can be like The Hunger. Sometimes it has more control over you, than you do of it.” 

Sayre didn’t say it, but he understood. He agreed. His sapphire eyes studied her. Maybe it was pity? Camaraderie?

Her head dipped away as she fixed the lay of her blouse and skirts. “I have no intention of killing you. At least” —her eyes crept up like dark stars, as did her half-hearted impish grin. Oh, yes; that was definitely going to be trouble— “not without me being in enough possession of myself to enjoy it.”

“Agreed,” rumbled out of him without his consent.

The Witch chirped as she moved around him. At the desk, she lifted the book with one hand, and pulled a flask from the drawer she pushed closed with her hip. Again he had a perfect line of sight to the soft of her neck as it intersected her jugular and that black velvet choker. He raked in a breath. His fangs aching, but he leashed his hungers. 

When the Witch returned, she offered the items she had collected for him. “Payment.”

Sayre took the flask. “And…a bribe?”

“Gift,” corrected gently.

He stuffed the flask in an inner pocket, replacing the empty one he handed back to her. It sat next to the stake on the table, next to their exchange.

The Witch tilted her head. “No? You seemed so transfixed with it?”

“Hadn't seen an original in awhile. Nice to see something from…” Sayre turned and lifted his hat. He held it against his chest. “It can be comforting to see other things that have weathered the ages.”

“Though so few,” she bemused. A beat later she asked, “What is your favorite?”

Sayre gruffed. “I beg your pardon?” The Witch wiggled the book in the air, the action asking for her.  “Something I am not keen to avail myself to, to—”

“A witch?” She once more flounced and flourished her fingers, this time in pride. Her magic responded and sparkled. Speckles of gold against the dark operating room. 

“—a stranger.” He tilted his head, as a form of goodbye, and affixed his hat. As he moved for the door, the Witch chuckled. “Something amusing?”

“I’m just realizing, in fact, that this little arrangement was a good idea. How similar we are.” She loosed a smile, satisfied and coy. “The Scarlet Letter,” she said. The twitch of his expression said his confusion for him. “My favorite Hawthorne.”

Sayre stared, and studied. “The Minister’s Black Veil.”

“Hhm!” The Witch chirped.

“Don’t like it?”

“Just amused by it.” Her nose scrunched as she said it. A teasing action.

He glared narrowed human sapphire eyes with all the enchantment of a centuries old vampire. “Hester Prynne,” he said through his teeth, playful in his annoyance.

She flicked a brow, and met his insult.  “Minister.”

Sayre forced himself to take a step back even though his bones felt heavy. An odd sensation, he thought to himself on the long walk to his belfry. He had control of his body once more. He knew that he did, but for that moment, standing in the dim light of the basement horror, a body between them, an empty flask, a stake, and a Nathaniel Hawthorne tome, Sayre felt something he—

He wheezed as he looked down to the point of the stake protruding from his chest. He felt the splinters through his lungs, his muscles, against his bones. He gagged on dead blood in his mouth. With a wobble, he tripped into the wall with his shoulder. The stake repelled from his chest and with it, he felt an intense cold. A horrible, horrible cold.

The stake found his chest again, and again missed his heart. He wasn’t sure if he was grateful or furious. Right now…he was dying…he was…

He held his hand out and pulsed his fingers outward. His eyes filled with black and red. The body behind him screeched and fell to the ground, writhing and screaming through a crushing trachea. Sayre twisted and the body lifted. He flung it into the wall, where a single knock was enough to crack the skull open. From the body, he pulled the stake, and a necklace, then he limped, hand to the two massive holes in his chest, all the way to his belfry-home.

Sayre didn’t make it.

He slipped through the broken doors of the cathedral and ricocheted from dust-laden pew to dust-laden pew. Behind him a trail of rust and black puddles. His knees gave out with a whimper. He fell to his hands gagged on lost air and the dead, rotten blood filling his lungs. As he fell to an elbow, he searched for the flask, clawed it open with an unmatched desperation that left great sheared edges of metal, and flung the witch’s payment down his throat.

He coughed, and it went spraying.

Sayre then fell to the stone floor on his side. His head cracked against the stone. Another wound. Another point of pain. The flask, torn asunder and spilling red within reach. Hells, he was desperate enough to force out his tongue and lick it off the floor. Instead, he lifted a hand for it, but his vision faded. He felt cold, colder than he had ever felt in life, or in unlife.

“Do you know how difficult it is to remove blood from grout?” bounced in his head.

He snorted a laugh, then faded into black.