Chapter Twelve #2
Landon dropped away from Isaiah, collapsing onto the dirt, and Isaiah followed, a sudden, staggering rush of agony twisting through his insides.
He tried to breathe, tried to lift his head to check on Landon, but all he got was black stars over the blinding white of the approaching headlights.
Dirt rattled as the car skidded to a stop, too close for comfort and yet not close enough.
Someone barreled out of it, cursing.
Hilker?
The man’s silhouette appeared first, his bun bobbing in the stream of the lights, then his voice as he squatted down beside Isaiah. “Look at me— What happened?” he asked.
“Landon, please,” Isaiah groaned, “Check on Landon. Their mouth…”
Hilker was already moving, cursing again, but he didn’t let go of Isaiah’s wrist, not as he glanced at Landon’s fangs and pressed two fingers to their neck and muttered something that sounded like science spoken to the tune of religion.
He did finally let go of Isaiah then as he said, “I’ll be back. ”
Isaiah managed to sit up properly by the time Hilker returned with a massive, wheeling box of supplies, including the blood-pressure and heart monitor Isaiah was intimately familiar with.
He watched Hilker work, anxious and restless and gritting through the waves of pain now racking his body.
His tongue found its way to his front teeth, dragging itself back and forth.
Something cut it. He hissed softly, feeling the blood fill his mouth.
When he whipped his hand over his lips, it came away dark.
Not yet, he thought, and also, finally.
Landon’s heartbeat ticked to life on Hilker’s monitor, frenzied and chaotic, but Hilker injected something deep into their chest and it steadied out to a regular pace.
Their eyelashes fluttered. Hilker shone a flashlight into their eyes.
He muttered something to himself and turned back to his supplies.
In between the heart monitor’s beats, Isaiah could just make out the sound of Hilker ringing someone on the phone he’d left at his side.
“Are you even this kind of doctor?” Isaiah hissed. His gaze tried to drift down from Hilker’s eyes to his neck, the fabric of his button-up’s collar barely covering the gentle but anxious rhythm of his heart within.
Hilker didn’t miss a beat, drawing a needle from his kit and beginning the sequence to insert an IV line. “I was a paramedic before I got my PhD. So, no. But close enough. Now, insert the needle for me.”
He knew what Isaiah was, then—he hadn’t even had to look at Isaiah’s fangs, but he knew.
Isaiah closed his eyes, letting one finger drift over Landon’s vein, and even though the blood pumping beneath was vampiric again, he could feel it all the same. He pressed the needle in. Anthony quickly hooked a bag to the end. Landon moaned softly.
“They’re stable, at least,” Hilker grumbled.
Isaiah blinked, and purposefully did not stare at Hilker’s neck for one more second. And one more second. And— Fuck. He licked his fangs, then the next wave of pain hit. By the time he’d pulled himself together, Hilker was the one staring at him.
As carefully and certainly as he’d attended to Landon, Hilker began unbuttoning the top of his shirt and pushing down his collar. “Hurry. They’ll be ready to move soon.”
“Hurry with…” Isaiah swallowed. He could feel his own fangs, heavier and sharper than he swore he ever had before.
Hilker just kept staring at him, holding open his collar to expose his neck.
Heat flooded Isaiah’s face, and he ignored it: ignored the incoming wave of agony that threatened at the door, ignored the possibly dying body of his best friend lying on the dirt beside him, and leaned toward Hilker.
Isaiah breathed him in, just once, letting that distinct mixture of sweetness and coconut flood his senses, before his instinct took over and sank his brand-new fangs deep into Hilker’s neck.
The first taste of blood only heightened his need.
He latched one hand around Hilker’s shoulder, pulling him closer with his other, and drank like it was his first and last time.
There was no savoring, no moderating, no thought at all as his body took him over like a famished thing, as though every day he’d been human had counted as a day without blood.
That Hilker tasted divine was irrelevant. That he patted Isaiah’s hair with one hand, accepting this despite the force of Isaiah’s bite, was irrelevant. Isaiah wasn’t sure he could have stopped himself. Wasn’t sure he could stop himself.
Panic surged through the most conscious parts of his mind, and he forced his fangs free just long enough for Hilker to ease himself away.
“More later,” Hilker said, patting a bandage to the wound.
He looked as though he hadn’t even noticed Isaiah’s irrational state.
But no—there was a fresh pinch between his brows, a concern in the way he glanced at Isaiah.
He just wasn’t afraid of what had happened.
Hilker meant his offer of more. Even if he had to peel Isaiah off him, he meant it.
A tight, hot knot twisted in Isaiah’s chest. His jaw ached. He refused to look at Hilker’s neck, and found his gaze was fine with that. It was too busy trying to look somewhere else.
What would it be like, if it was just his idea… his choice… nothing to gain but the experience itself…
Landon was still stable, and the call Hilker had already tried to make twice so far ended in another please leave a message—
Hilker hit the end button with a growl, then restarted the call again. When he looked up, Isaiah leaned forward. He kissed the not-so-good Doctor Anthony Hilker on the lips.
It was a soft kiss, more of an offer than a gift, chaste and just a little lingering.
When Isaiah pulled back, Hilker looked… sad? He smiled weakly. “This was not a trade, Isaiah. You needn’t give me anything.”
Oh. Oh. For all his genius and his self-proclaimed objectivity, Hilker was an idiot. Isaiah returned his smile, bright and just a little biting. “That,” he said, “was because I wanted to.”
And for good measure, Isaiah kissed Hilker again.
This time, after the initial instant of shocked hesitation, all Hilker’s barriers fell away.
He kissed Isaiah back the way Isaiah had bitten him—reckless and unstoppable, his tongue and teeth at work to consume Isaiah with each hungry turn of his lips.
The ferocity and desire dragged a moan out of Isaiah, and his whole body pleaded with him to surrender, to give himself over to this perfect aggression.
For one glorious moment, Isaiah did.
He closed his eyes and pressed his hands along the buzzed sides of Hilker’s head, shifting and kissing and grabbing in perfect harmony to Hilker, giving where he needed to give and receiving when it fit, and caring about nothing but that moment, all pain replaced with pleasure, all disgust with desire.
This was better than the shame, and yet he felt some juicy part of that too in every tug and twist of Hilker’s teeth and hands, in the ways he seemed to take control of Isaiah after just a crack of permission.
Isaiah felt himself losing breath, his consciousness trying to slip away, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t dream of it.
Hilker pulled back for the both of them, panting as he glanced up the road. “There’s someone coming.”
It took Isaiah a moment just to register the meaning behind those words, his head still swimming and his lips tingling and everything in him begging to be consumed once more.
He had to stop. Focus. There were lights, peppered in the darkness in the same way Anthony’s had been.
“Why would they be…” And then it hit him. “Fuck.”
Hilker had already begun piling his equipment back in its box. “Get Landon!”
Isaiah didn’t need to be told twice. He scooped Landon into his arms, whispering encouragements to them as they groaned. Their half-empty IV bag flapped around his legs. They were almost to the car…
His heart leaped as Landon’s lashes fluttered open, but then their eyes rolled back and their body went stiff, jerking from Isaiah’s embrace as they seized. The IV cord caught around his ankles. Together, they fell.
The road only seemed to hit Isaiah after he’d already rolled twice, the pain coming late, buried beneath panic and distress. Landon? Where was Landon?
Isaiah tried to turn himself over, but he caught sight only of the road, three pairs of headlights about to round the bend, then Hilker’s arms. Isaiah reached for him, but Hilker pushed instead, rolling Isaiah once, then kicking—hard enough to hurt—and—ouch.
His head hit something as he tried to sit up, and only then did he register the hulking metal thing above him. Hilker’s car. He was under—oh.
The fucking bastard.
Despite how much it killed him to move away from them, Isaiah scrambled a little farther away from the edge of the vehicle and the beams of light now washing over Landon and Hilker.
He couldn’t see Landon’s face, couldn’t see whether their chest was rising and falling.
His heart ached to reach for them, or call out to them, even just to whisper their name: princess, my bloody fucking princess, please live.
The cars came to a stop, doors opening and slamming as boots hit the dirt.
Between the snaps and orders, Isaiah could hear Varsity shout incoherently and Hilker, still at Landon’s side, trying to dissuade her.
As the first of Varsity’s team approached though, Landon’s chest clearly heaved and released—they were still breathing.
Someone shoved Hilker out of the way to reach for them.
The moment the assailant’s hand touched Landon’s shoulder, their bodies became a blur.
The whole thing was done and over so quickly that Isaiah had to check himself—the blood on the ground, the dark-clothed body gushing from a dramatic rip in their neck, and Landon staggering onward. Toward the rest of Varsity’s team.