Chapter Nine #2
Victor nodded. He was running a fever, flexing the fingers of his hands eager, desperate, for it. Shift now and jump on the body before him, it was already laid out for him. He could eat Erik, gobble his innards and juices, and Erik would heal. Erik would live.
Under him Erik frowned and tried to get up but he was still pinned down, unable to get away. Without touching it, the glass door leading into the back garden slid open, letting in the cool night air.
“Outside then,” he tilted his head, slowly and gently guiding Victor off him.
“Come. Join.” Victor’s mouth was full of teeth and the tips of his fingers had split like bark, sweat beaded on his forehead and beneath his arms. He willed himself to stand up and walk on two legs, moving past the carnage without waiting to see if Erik would follow him outside.
Victor held his jacket in one hand, his wallet and new set of keys in the other.
He had to make a stop at the coffee shop before heading to the bakery.
He had promised Stefan they would talk about this month’s deliveries.
Somehow the pack leader had gotten it into his head that allowing a vampire to stay in Tarnovo meant Victor was now going to bake whatever pastries Stefan demanded.
The man’s stubbornness, and sweet tooth, knew no boundaries.
Again, he found Erik on the sofa downstairs, this time perched at the end of it, sitting cross-legged, as far away as possible from the brown stains of blood.
He was reading another book… or was it the same one from before; Victor could not tell.
It could have been one of the books left from the previous owner, which meant it was probably in Bulgarian, but Erik had said offhandedly how he was not particularly fond of socialist literature.
Partisan letters to the homeland and the trepidations of tobacco manufacturers and their workers did not interest him.
Victor considered getting new reading material on his way back.
There were boxes with children’s games and puzzles in the basement, but judging by how fast Erik read, those puzzles must have already been ordered and discarded in seconds.
The ruined sofa, the stains on the floor and the carpet bothered Victor.
It was a mark of what they had done. Unlike the blurred memories and thoughts he carried from the times he had shifted into a wolf, this he remembered—this he saw.
He could still taste Erik in his mouth, the memory of the body twitching under him, the foam of blood.
“I will order replacements,” Erik said, sensing his discomfort.
Victor thought about arguing, but then his attention snagged on Erik’s hair.
It was cut short, and a little ruffled and damp from the shower.
Victor had been too preoccupied with the blood to notice.
Erik looked better with short hair: it suited him.
There was a spring in his step, and it seemed he carried himself more freely, more easily.
Victor preferred him like this; this was the familiar Erik, the man he knew, the man he trusted.
Until the night fell, and the hair grew back: long again, smooth as silk.
“You do not have to cut your hair on my behalf. Day after day,” Victor heard himself say.
“There is nothing to it, once you get used to it.” Erik shrugged and placed the book in his lap. He raked his fingers through his hair, ruffling it further. “There are dozens of little mundane things mortals do every day.”
“Yes, but do it because you want to,” Victor insisted. “Do it for yourself, not for my sake.”
“Then what do you want me to do for you?”
“Be yourself. That is enough.”
Erik huffed; his coy smile faded.
“Courting you is impossible.”
Victor could not help but laugh. Is this what we are doing?
Courting? Vampires were a strange breed.
Lycans he understood; their urges were manageable, but vampires…
An impulse rose in Victor’s chest, to cross the room, narrow the distance between them, and to run his hand through Erik’s short hair, to smooth it away from the youthful face.
Erik’s cheeks were still flushed with blood—Victor’s blood.
Later… There would be time for that when he got home from the bakery.
“You have quite the appetite on you. It took me by surprise, I must admit.” Erik patted the ruined cushions of the sofa. His nails scratched off flakes of blood.
“What do you think I was going to do when you offered me a bite?” Victor asked, eager to hear the answer, for he had none of his own. It was a craving he was not familiar with, a part of the beast he had never allowed to awake.
Perhaps Irena had been right, there was a danger in having a vampire here.
Before they met, Victor had been in control, his urges manageable, he had never known such hunger.
Erik’s blood was doing something to him.
Even now, having exhausted himself in the forest, he wanted another bite; Erik pinned on the ground beneath him.
“Take a nibble?” Erik said. “Every time I drink from you, you stare at my mouth, as if you want to eat me alive. I thought you were going to muster the courage and do something about it, not literally devour me.”
“I will be careful next time.” Victor’s voice carried a soft rumble.
Erik’s eyebrows shot up, his chest shaking with laughter.
“Oh, no. I will be the only one feeding next time, wolfling. If you want to take a sip, you will have to make do with my wrist. You nearly tore my head clean off.”
EMERICK, 2017
The room was strange, the bed was too big for him, too soft and empty.
The pillows and sheets smelled of nothing he recognised; his scent had not settled into every crook and cranny, had not yet displaced the sharp tang of detergents and chemicals.
It was worse than sleeping in the earth or in a box. Emerick was not used to sleeping alone.
This will not do, he huffed and got up.
Crossing the hallway, he let himself into Victor’s room and nudged next to the sleeping form on the bed. It was warm, and solid, human. A shape to keep him company, a body to anchor Emerick as he slept, plagued by dreamless dreams.
Still he could not drift off, despite the hour.
He took note of the bedding: the heavy blankets, the quilts, things meant to keep one warm during the long hours of the night in winter.
He had never given such matters much thought; the sheets they used in Béziers were clean, silk or cotton, the blankets and covers were red, royal blue, midnight skies drowned in his and Silvio’s scent.
Never quilts, never coarsely spun wool. Emerick had never been cold in Silvio’s bed, a vampire hardly, if ever, felt cold.
Now, next to Victor in the small bed, he was getting flustered and crushed under the weight of the wool in its many bright patterns.
Victor was like a roaring fire, burning to the touch and loud. So impossibly loud... His heartbeat was deafening and the sound of his steady breath, held in sleep’s embrace, was enough to drive Emerick mad.
Have mortals always been this loud?
He nuzzled closer to Victor despite himself, trying to block out the endless noises the human body produced. He would have to teach himself to ignore it; in time, it would fade into the background, no more intrusive than the flood of foreign thoughts that assaulted him daily.
Sometime in the late hours of the afternoon, Victor twitched and sobbed in his sleep. He had turned away, facing the wall. The blankets lay kicked aside, leaving him to shiver.
Emerick knew better than to rummage through a human’s mind while they slept, the nightmare could pull him in if he were not careful.
He dabbed Victor’s forehead with his sleeve, gently arranging the covers over him.
His sorry state reminded Emerick of how they met.
Emerick had been wearing the vestiges of the Reich, a makeshift costume to blend in the chaos, as he tended to a man he had picked from the street.
Victor looked like he had been caught in a mortar blast, parts of his body torn, his face a map of gashes and rents.
Don’t let me die. The man was praying to the void.
Tobias, don’t let me die in this uniform.
Don’t let me die. Don’t let me die. They will bury me in it.
Take it—take it off me. Tobias— It was not vanity that dictated those final words.
Emerick lifted the body and carried it away with him, earning Silvio’s scorn, but he did not care, what harm would there be in nursing this mortal, in talking to him as the war raged on.
Emerick had not lied when he said he needed a distraction, an entertainment of sorts. He was angry with Silvio, with all of them. Frustrated at not being consulted before the Marquis had accepted the crown and sceptre, rising higher in the court of the dead.
‘Marquis Gabrielli’, Emerick chewed on his new title and tried to swallow it with mouthfuls of Victor’s blood.
Poor wolfling, are you hungry? He teased after each sip, aware of how Victor’s eyes never strayed from his mouth, how they flashed, nocturnal, like a bird of prey.
Do you remember how I taste? He had licked along the man’s face and jawline, the curve of the neck, familiarising himself with the dips and curves of Tobias—as the man had introduced himself.
Emerick had sliced his palm and let the blood drip and sizzle over the torn flesh of the abdomen, watched the skin churn and knit itself back together; no scar left to tell the tale.
Some wounds he could not heal; bones were impossible to grow anew, so he made do with human means and let time do its work.
He gave his patient cups of blood, the smallest of dosage of immortality.
Is that why you are still young and beautiful, wolfling? Have I made myself a puppet?