Chapter Ten #3
“You are a vampire, Landon.” Isaiah didn’t know how else to express the tension roiling inside him, fear and anger and shame—not even the sexy kind, but the shitty, acidic version that seemed to eat him alive.
He stepped toward Landon, half his brain expecting just to suddenly be there, standing in front of them, but instead his slow human legs took him ten times as long to traverse the distance.
“It’s not an illness. It’s not a curse. It’s just you. ”
Landon looked away from him—looked into the cooler.
“It’s not, though,” they said weakly. “I don’t think vampires are less good or less worthy or less anything—I never thought any differently of you because of what you were—but even after all these years, my fangs still don’t feel right in my mouth.
I don’t know how else to explain it— I—” Their words turned to a tiny sob, and they seemed to break from the inside out.
Isaiah dropped onto the couch with them, wrapping his arms around their trembling body. “Okay. It’s okay,” he whispered.
And it had to be.
Maybe this was the effect of Landon living their entire vampiric life in a cage, or maybe it was, as they said, something more inherent to them, but Isaiah wasn’t the one with the right to parse that out.
Maybe it couldn’t be parsed, self and trauma woven into a tapestry that would unravel entirely before one could be so entirely excised.
Whatever his own feelings, he had to let Landon make their choice.
Their first real one in nearly a decade.
“I can’t tell you what you want. So, if this is it… ”
They wiped back a tear. “You’ll help? You’ll be here?”
“Of course I’ll be here for you, princess.
” Isaiah smiled, feeling the promise anew now that they had a real future in front of them.
Whoever they’d become here, whatever they would mean to each other, he would give it his everything.
“Vampire or human or— or fucking werewolf, even. Whatever you are, I’m here and I want to help. ”
The little bubble of joy that grew across Landon’s face was lovely and genuine. “You too,” they said. “Vampire or human or fucking werewolf.”
Isaiah wasn’t sure what exactly his heart did at that, but it was warm and a little painful.
He watched as Landon pulled the serum out of the cooler, along with the instructions on how to draw and inject it. Their process probably wasn’t perfect, but Landon was determined to try, so they did, drawing their shirt up while Isaiah held the needle. They whimpered as it pierced skin.
“We can still—”
“Do it,” they said.
And Isaiah did.
The next few minutes were quiet and anxious.
Isaiah helped move the empty cooler to the kitchen and settle Landon onto the couch.
He knelt beside them as they waited for the serum to take hold, stroking the back of their hand.
“I think that quilt would make a pretty good sun-tanning blanket,” he whispered, like it was a secret.
Their secret, kept in confidence from the vampiric genes Hilker’s serum was about to annihilate.
“Yeah,” Landon replied, just as quiet. “Big enough for two.”
Then they were gone, overwhelmed by a pain that turned swiftly to unconsciousness.
Isaiah held them, stroking their head and telling them they were doing well, to keep fighting, he was here, he was here, until the agony slowly faded from their face and their breathing returned to normal.
They wiped a hand across their mouth before tucking their arms closer and nuzzling into the couch, their old fangs cradled in their palm.
From beyond the cabin windows, the sun began to stream in.
Landon looked so happy under its touch.
Isaiah paced from the living room to the kitchen and back.
His bones ached, like they were trying to wiggle their way out of his body.
He felt sick. And anxious. And tired. And nothing like he should have felt, having finally escaped the captivity he’d been certain would kill him, and gotten here with Landon, with their serum, on their way to starting a normal life somewhere fresh.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He rubbed his tongue against the top line of his teeth, so flat and even now, and stared at the empty cooler. If only he and Landon could have changed places. Landon had wanted this all along. Yet they’d been the one who was given the choice to take it or leave it, and not him.
Isaiah pressed his tongue to his front teeth again, squeezing his eyes shut.
He knew life would be easier like this—as humans, they’d have far more options in a new city.
They could both get jobs, rent an apartment, live off cash and each other’s love and not have to worry that whoever they took to bed might see their fangs and call the cops.
But Isaiah couldn’t get over how different everything already was from the fantasy future he’d dreamed of.
The world didn’t even smell the same anymore, as subdued and murky as his human night vision.
His aches were louder without the constant curl of blood hunger, the throb of his own heart amplified without the subtle awareness of every other pulse in his vicinity.
What was the point of better job opportunities and less hatred, if that meant he had to change for the world? It should have been the world’s responsibility to grow less hateful for him.
He was remaking himself for society, he realized, when the point of society should have been that it cared for every person within it, regardless.
Why else had people moved on from small warring factions tearing each other apart for the best territory?
Isaiah supposed in some ways, they still hadn’t.
That was the problem—they’d come together to build bigger and brighter things, just so they could tear each other’s lives down to take those instead.
Isaiah stared out at the front drive, along the dirt path leading down the mountainside.
The morning sunlight had already taken over the yard, stretching hungry fingers across it the same way it stretched across Landon’s face, turning their sleeping expression so peaceful.
Isaiah put his hand on the doorknob, and slowly, his heart racing, he pushed out into the light.
He felt little at first, just watched the sun pour across his brown skin with something he was afraid was still far too much like abhorrence. But then it started to warm. It was subtle, gentle, not the burning brought on vampire’s flesh, but a loving caress. A wake-up kiss and a tuck into bed.
Isaiah slumped onto a rock in the center of the light, closing his eyes and lifting his face to it.
Tears began slowly spilling down his cheeks. Stupid. Silent. Beautiful.
And he couldn’t tell, on his life, whether or not he was happy.