Chapter Eleven
Landon woke properly after a few hours, yawning and stretching out on the couch. They grinned at Isaiah, but the smile faded the moment they noticed he wasn’t grinning back.
He tried to remedy that, but it was hard. Everything was extra hard right now, with a whole life suddenly ahead of them both.
“You okay?” Landon asked, sitting up.
“Yeah,” Isaiah shook his head, then nodded. “It’s just weird, being human again. And free. And face-to-face with you, finally. And… I don’t know. I know how I’m supposed to feel about all of this, and how I do feel just doesn’t seem right, somehow.”
“I get that.” Landon offered out their hand, and when Isaiah took it, they pulled him onto the couch, letting his longer, lankier body curl around theirs. He sighed into the embrace, and for one lingering second, he did feel exactly right: safe and wanted and hopeful.
“I wasn’t doing great before I was captured,” Isaiah reminded them.
“I was okay, but not good, you know? Mostly just surviving, laughing at my friends’ jokes while knowing deep down that I had no one who was really mine since I lost Justin.
Since I left Justin.” He still wasn’t sure which it was.
Technically, he’d said goodbye, but only because anything else would have killed him.
“I’m afraid this won’t be any different, even with you here. Is that terrible?”
Landon took a deep breath. Steadying themself. “I’m scared, too. What if it’s not the imprisonment or the loss or any of that shit—what if it’s us? What if we’re just fucked up?”
Despite how much the pain in their admission tore into Isaiah’s chest, there was a hilarious irony to it all, too.
They were both still prisoners of something terrible and intangible.
But as long as they could tell each other so, perhaps they were in it together.
Isaiah sniffled a laugh. “Are you implying there was ever a chance that we’re not fucked up? ”
Landon shoved him, giggling maniacally into his locs. “Ass.”
“Bitch.”
“Whipping boy.”
“Princess.”
“I love you.”
“I love you,” Isaiah replied, no pause, no thought. He lifted his head and kissed Landon.
It was barely a brush of lips on lips, but Landon didn’t move, and Isaiah pulled away. He felt nothing—nothing but mildly awkward, anyway. Landon blinked, and Isaiah blinked back.
“No?” he asked, already feeling the answer in his chest.
“No,” Landon replied. “But that’s okay, right?”
Isaiah sniffled again, and his smile felt right.
He was happy, at least for this moment. “I’m relieved, actually.
After Justin…” Isaiah settled his head beside Landon’s, just breathing them in.
They didn’t smell like much to his human nose: faint sweat and dust. “Maybe I don’t want to be in love like that again? ”
Landon looked at him, and their lips twisted to one side.
“I think you do. Deep down.” They pushed back a few of his locs and cupped the side of his face.
“But I’ll be here when you do, and if it falls apart, I’ll be here then, and if it doesn’t, you still won’t fucking be able to get rid of me. You were my knight, and now I’m yours.”
Isaiah smiled, an emotion there, then gone again.
Not permanently gone, though, he reminded himself.
If he lived one more day, there would be one more day of these little moments of happiness.
It wasn’t a lot, but it was more than he’d had before.
And someday, perhaps that more would grow into much.
“And if it’s hard to keep living?” He was still asking himself that, but he wanted to know for Landon.
He needed to know. “What do we do then?”
They hesitated, picking at one of Isaiah’s locs mindlessly. “We… live anyway?” They gave him a little nudge with their shoulder. “You’re older than me, you should know this better.”
“I’m not the one who’s read dozens of the stuffiest philosophy books in existence.”
“You think I remember any of that shit?” Landon giggled. “Fuck off.”
Isaiah absolutely did not do that. “We do live anyway, I think. I hope. And maybe get therapy? Take hikes? Learn to cook? Read better philosophy books and start a criminal ring for stealing antidepressants for people who don’t have insurance?”
“I could get behind that,” Landon said. They went silent after, but it was a far better silence than any Isaiah had lived through yet.
Because this time he could touch them, watch the thoughts flitter across their face, play with the jaggedly cut bangs that fell around their eyes, and smile every time they glanced at him.
When they finally broke the quiet, it was thoughtful, a little timid.
“You really liked being a vampire, huh?”
“I didn’t dislike it,” Isaiah replied. “I disliked how I was treated for it, but not the being part.”
Landon’s brow tightened, but they didn’t seem judgmental, just pensive. After a moment, they said, “There were vampires in the lab before you. You know that, right? But I never got to know any of them. Not like you.”
“Still, that must have been awful.”
To be sitting in that cell, listening as they died, one after the next, knowing there was nothing they could do about it…
until Isaiah. Somehow, Landon had decided to talk back to him when he’d called across their wall.
He’d called to them, and they’d responded, and Hilker had heard enough of it to choose to get them both out.
Isaiah swallowed. “Was Hilker…?” What was he even asking? Was Hilker kind to any of the vampires before him? Did he want to fuck any of them? Would he have set them free, if the timing had worked out?
But Landon shook their head. “You were the first living vampire since they hired him. I think for a while they were just bringing in samples from the ones they’ve got at Vitalis-Barron, until something changed—they got scared, severed any connection with the Vitalis-Barron lab.
And Hilker kept complaining that without a living body to test on, he could only get so far. ”
Isaiah still felt the crawling uncertainty of whatever had arisen between himself and Hilker—this lust, or alliance, or toxic union—pecking at the edges of his mind.
He could just let it go, he realized. He and Landon could leave, if they wanted to: hitchhike to LA, then up the coast, or down to Mexico, and he’d never have to see Hilker again.
That thought made him feel just as filthy as anything he’d ever done with Hilker, though.
Landon lifted their head, looking at Isaiah quizzically. “What’s the deal with you and Hilker?”
“What do you mean?” The bright red human blood in Isaiah’s veins felt very cold, suddenly. He could tell them—maybe he had to—but the thought of saying it all out loud made him sick.
“I don’t know.” Landon shrugged. “You just seem so casual now. Like you know him.”
He thought, uncomfortably, of Hilker’s dick up his ass, the man’s hands in his hair and then of the way he’d stopped. Like it hadn’t happened. He’d left, like it hadn’t happened.
He’d just…
“I don’t know him,” Isaiah said with certainty.
“I don’t think there’s anyone who does.” He grimaced.
Landon was the one with him now, and they had the rest of their lives ahead of them.
He had to tell them. “But I might have…” He could feel Hilker’s dick again as tried to say it, see himself stretched across the lab bench, and fuck—
“Isaiah?” Landon asked, their brows knit.
“He wanted me, okay.” Isaiah forced the words out, one after the next. “And I let him have what he wanted.”
The way Landon’s eyes widened made it all the worse, like they could see him now too, laid bare for the likes of Hilker. “You and he…”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you, I’m looking at him!” Landon snapped, before glancing away, cheeks red. “Or—you know what I mean.” They still appeared horrified beneath their embarrassment, but they squeezed Isaiah’s hand. “You did what you had to do.”
“No, I didn’t.” He could have denied it, put all the blame on Hilker.
But that wouldn’t have been fair. “I mean, maybe what I did got us here, and I’m grateful for that, but I didn’t do it because I had to.
I wanted everything he did to me. If I could have had his help a different way, I would have still chosen this one. ”
Landon just sat with that for a moment, seeming to turn it over in their head. “Are you going to… be with him, when he comes back?” Landon said the word be like it was poisonous, and Isaiah couldn’t tell if the implication was a sexual relationship or a relationship relationship.
He felt miserable. “Would you leave me if I did?”
“No, of course not.” They didn’t even seem to think before they said it, but they followed after with a slower, “But I’d want to check in. He’s still a bastard. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Isaiah laid his head against Landon’s, feeling his body loosen again, slowly but surely. “I have no idea what will happen between him and me after this. I don’t think he does either.”
Once Hilker drove Isaiah down from the mountain, they could go their separate ways, live out the rest of their lives without ever seeing each other again. That would be safe and comfortable. But the thought made Isaiah feel a little empty without really understanding why.
“I’ll tell you, though, whatever happens,” he said. “I promise.”
“You’d better.” Landon yawned after they said it and snuggled against Isaiah.
He let them both slide backwards across the couch.
As he cuddled Landon to his chest, watching the way the sun streamed across their back, Isaiah thought of all the futures they might have, once Hilker came back for them in twenty-one days, and decided that was twenty-one days too far into the future to care about.
He had today, and that was a lot easier to survive.
The only tears to be cried in this moment were the good kind.
Throughout the afternoon and the following day they set about cleaning up the place, cataloging the food—which after some messy calculations that neither of them were certain they’d done correctly, they decided would last for one month longer than what Hilker had said he’d be gone for.
With the help of the spare boots Isaiah found in the living room closet, they explored the cabin’s exterior and a little way down the dirt road.
That closet’s other prizes included a deck of cards that Isaiah used to teach Landon a variety of half-remembered games from his childhood and a stack of puzzles featuring haunting woodlands where the light didn’t hit quite right.
They finished the first one in three days, and the second one in two. Isaiah concluded they could do the third in twelve hours. He got to work while Landon took a midday nap on the couch. They awoke groggy and irritable, and Isaiah offered to brew them both tea.
When he returned with two mugs, Landon was poking aimlessly at the puzzle.
They turned toward him, accepting the tea with both hands and a smile that looked more like a grimace.
Isaiah swore their fingers trembled as they lifted the drink toward their lips.
Before they could take a sip, the mug dropped.
It shattered as it hit the floor, but Isaiah barely noticed. He leaned forward, holding Landon by the shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” they said. “Just…” they held out one hand. It shook. And as Isaiah watched, their face twisted in pain. “Oh,” they said, “Maybe I’m not fine…”
Then, they collapsed.