Chapter Text
Munich. September 30th, 1716.
It was exactly three years since Reginald Hargreeves had come into Klaus’ life.
Sir Reginald Hargreeves, an aloof billionaire from London, who showed up in the city one night and took a keen interest in his family. Or, more specifically in him . Several years ago, his father’s gambling troubles had come to the surface, and they’d lost the better half of their estate trying to pay off his numerous debts. But then Sir Reginald arrived. Bringing fancy wines and riches for his father, dresses and diamonds for his mother, and a whole myriad of pretty things for Klaus to wear or admire. Klaus didn’t care much for any of them, or for Sir Reginald, with his cold, black eyes, sinister smile, and icy touch that sent a chill through Klaus’s bones any time he tried to touch him. Still, he was prepared to grin and bear it all for the sake of his family’s reputation, and so every night, as soon as the sun had set, Sir Reginald would arrive at the house with more gifts. That was, until tonight.
Tonight, the night before Klaus’ twenty-first birthday, Sir Reginald had arrived earlier than usual, empty-handed, wishing to have a “private talk” with his father. That was over an hour ago, and he and his mother were still sitting at the table, straining their ears to try and make out the hushed whispers coming from the next room. His mother had a sad look in her eyes, twisting the emerald ring on her finger restlessly as they waited, and unable to make eye contact with him for more than a few seconds.
“Klaus!” His father’s voice boomed as he threw open the doors. “I have some good news for you.”
“That’s a first,” He mumbled.
“Don’t talk back to your father, dear,” His mother said in a hushed voice, resting her hand on his shoulder.
“Klaus,” His father continued. “You’re going to be married.”
Next to his father, Sir Reginald was watching him, his gaze even more sinister than usual, with his hands resting on his silver-topped cane, and Klaus found himself shaking his head as the realisation dawned on him.
“Everything’s been arranged. The ceremony will be held at Sir Reginald’s estate tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow!?”
“It will be a beautiful party, darling.” His mother squeezed his shoulder in an attempt to reassure him. “And this marriage will mean an end to all our family’s problems.”
Deep down, Klaus had known this was coming from the moment Sir Reginald came into their lives, but that didn’t make it any less hard to stomach. Still, he knew he was powerless to overrule his father, so he took a deep breath, forced back the tears that threatened to spill out, and gave the best smile he could muster.
“That is wonderful news,” He agreed in the same false voice he’d learned from his mother years ago. “And a surprise. I think I’ll get some air before dinner, so I can take all this in.”
He waited for his father’s curt nod of approval before standing and walking slowly, elegantly out of the room. He kept the facade up until he was two doors down, before breaking into a run the rest of the way through the house, bursting through the doors and bolting towards the stable at the farthest end of the garden, towards the one good thing Sir Reginald had brought for him.
The very first gift Sir Reginald had given him, on his eighteenth birthday, had been a horse. She was one of the most beautiful horses Klaus had ever seen, with silky hair and a jet black coat, and a small white diamond in the centre of her face. He’d named her Beatrice, but, in truth, it wasn’t really the horse that he was interested in.
He could hear the familiar whistling as he approached the stable, and a warm, fluttering feeling filled his chest. David was a year older than him and had arrived shortly after Beatrice, with a promise from Sir Reginald that he would take care of the horse, maintain the stable, and even teach Klaus to ride. Three years on, and he was still hopeless at riding, but then, he hadn’t exactly spent much time trying to learn. Klaus caught sight of him as he reached the open stable door, brushing out the tangles in Beatrice’s tail. The light of the setting sun filtered in through the cracks in the boards, giving a golden glow to his tanned skin and mousey curls. The shirt he was wearing had been unbuttoned halfway down and hung open as he worked, and Klaus found himself leaning against the door frame watching him until a chuff from Beatrice alerted David to his presence.
He smiled wide when he saw him, tossing the brush aside and making his way over to him.
“Enjoying the view?” He asked cockily, holding his hand out expectantly, as he did every time Klaus met him here.
Rolling his eyes, Klaus placed his own hand in David’s palm and watched in mild amusement as he leant down and placed a gentle kiss to his knuckles, a small tradition which began as a form of mockery, but had now become one of David’s many shows of affection. A few seconds passed, and David grinned up at him, tugging on his arm and pulling Klaus flush against his chest. His shirt was damp with sweat, and he smelled of straw and animal muck, something Klaus was still in the process of getting used to.
“You stink.” He wrinkled his nose up, shoving lightly at his chest.
“That’s the smell of a hard day’s work, darlin’,” David quipped, burying his nose in Klaus’ hair and taking a deep, dramatic inhale. “You smell of… snobbery… pompous aristocracy… and…” He moved down, pressing his nose into the crook of his neck while Klaus sniggered. “Oh, is that lavender? ”
Lifting his head up, David dropped the pretence, blue eyes softening as he bumped their noses together and pressed a kiss to his lips.
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” He said softly, kissing him again. “And I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life. Did I ever tell you that?”
“This morning,” Klaus said with a smile, letting his eyes flutter shut while David’s breath ghosted against his lips. “And every other morning before that.”
“Well, it bears repeating.”
There were a lot of people who had told Klaus they loved him, and twice as many who had called him beautiful, but none of them had ever meant it the way he did. They loved him the way someone would love an expensive jewel, a treasure to be owned and displayed. David loved him like a person. He talked with him rather than to him, and asked for his opinion on topics that, before meeting him, Klaus had never realised he even had an opinion about. He’d never felt more seen by anybody in his whole life, and it seemed a cruel irony that Sir Reginald had given him a glimpse of this happiness, only to steal it away from him completely.
“I love you,” He told him, unable to mask the sadness in his voice as the reality of the situation he was trapped in started to sink in. “So much.”
He wound his arms tightly around David’s waist, pressing his face into his shoulder and clinging to him while David ran his fingers through his hair.
“What’s wrong?” He asked. “Hey.” He tilted Klaus’ chin up to look at him. “What happened?”
So Klaus told him, and the two of them held onto each other even tighter as they tried to come to terms with the fact that it could be the last time.
“Klaus,” David said after a few moments, using his thumb to wipe away the tears that had gathered under his eyes. “Klaus, listen to me. You don’t have to marry him.”
“Of course I do. What other choice do I have?”
“Well, uh… You could marry me.”
Klaus smiled and allowed himself just a moment to imagine that he could. To imagine that it could be that simple.
“We can’t,” He said with a shake of his head, but David persisted.
“Sure we can! Look, here.” Letting go of Klaus, he scrambled across the stable for his jacket and dug around in one of the pockets. “This was my mother’s,” He said as he took his hand, slotting a plain, gold band onto his finger. “Listen, Hargreeves doesn’t pay me much for this job, but for the last three years I’ve been saving every penny I can. It’s not a lot but it’s enough for us to get away. We can jump on a train and figure things out as we go. It won’t be anything like the life you’re used to but… It’s gotta be better than being trapped here, right? We… We could sell the ring too for some extra money and-”
“David,” Klaus interrupted, holding his finger up to his lips to silence him. “I won’t ever sell this ring. Not ever.”
David’s eyes lit up, and a grin spread across his face. “So you’ll come with me?”
“Of course I’ll come- hey!”
Before he could finish his sentence, David scooped him up in his arms and spun him around the barn, kissing every part of his face he could find while Klaus clung to him and laughed uncontrollably.
David wanted to leave right there and then, but Klaus insisted on collecting a few belongings first, so they made a plan. Klaus returned home, smiled and made small talk about wedding arrangements with his mother all through dinner, then, at midnight, once everyone was asleep, he packed a small case, and crept back out to the stable where Dave would be waiting for him.
Only, as he drew closer to the stable doors, he couldn’t help but sense that something was wrong. It was silent. In all the time he’d kept Beatrice, he’d never known her to be silent. Cautiously, he pushed the door open and found himself standing in the middle of a waking nightmare.
Beatrice was dead on the floor in a pool of blood, and the moment he set foot inside, he heard David’s voice screaming at him.
“Klaus, get out! Get out!”
Before Klaus could react, he felt an icy hand over his mouth and a searing pain in his throat. The pain shot through him, setting each of his nerves on fire and overwhelming his senses. It was a ringing in his ears and acid on his tongue and fire in his lungs. A face appeared in front of him, and through his blurred vision he could make out Sir Reginald’s pale, angular features. His black eyes glowed red in the dark, and blood stained his lips.
“Say goodbye to the land of the living,” He said, his mouth twisting into a sinister smile as he licked Klaus’ blood from his pointed fangs.
Klaus’ legs buckled underneath him and he collapsed to the ground, the pain swelling up in his lungs and choking the life out of him. Over the deafening sound of his blood rushing in his ears he could hear David’s voice crying out for him, and he desperately tried to crawl across the floor towards him. Fumbling in the dark, the pain completely clouding his vision, he felt a warm and familiar hand grabbing his, but before his eyes could focus he heard the sickening sound of flesh ripping, and the smell of blood overwhelmed all his senses. Then there was silence. Silence and darkness.
✢✢✢
Vegas. January 13th, 2019.
Dave woke with a start, clammy, and with a dull ache in his neck. He’d been having the nightmares for seven years now, ever since he turned twenty-one. Never the same place, or at the same time, but always the same man. A man that, as far as he could remember, he’d never once met while he was awake, but had dreamt about so many times that he could picture him as clear as any other person he knew. Dark curls, sometimes cascading down to his shoulders, other times cropped short, sharp cheekbones and a crooked smile, and the deepest green eyes he’d ever known.
Usually, the dreams were few and far between. Once a month at most. But in the last few weeks they’d grown more and more frequent, and now they seemed to be a nightly occurrence. At least, they had been since he’d arrived in this city. This was the third night in a row he’d found himself staring up at the mottled beige ceiling of their motel room, trying to shake the visions of green eyes, blood, and screams from his head.
“Still having those nightmares?”
Turning his head, Dave saw Elliot sitting on the edge of his own bed, already fully dressed and with a thick, weathered book resting open on his lap.
“You should really see someone,” He continued when Dave didn’t respond. “I met this guy once who told me that recurring dreams are a sign that otherworldly beings are trying to communicate with you. Might be that you’re being called to some higher purpose.”
Elliot had always been a few ants short of a picnic, but Dave liked that about him. Varied conversation was often hard to come by where hunters were concerned. In fact, conversation in general was hard to come by. And it was nice having someone around who was always ready to talk his ear off, even if it was usually about whatever conspiracy theory he’d been reading up on lately.
“Right now the only thing calling me is that waffle house we passed last night,” Dave grumbled as he sat upright, stretching his arms above his head and popping several joints in the process. “We can check the papers for any new missing persons while we’re there.”
In the last three weeks there had been eleven reported murders in or around the city, and, at his last count, over thirty disappearances. Some reported, others he and Elliot had managed to learn about through hushed whispers in bars and clubs in the two days since they’d arrived in town. It was easily the biggest, and the messiest case Dave had ever come across. Whoever was behind it clearly didn’t care about covering their tracks, which was unusual. This had to be the most callous, and the most reckless vampire he’d ever hunted. And Dave had hunted a lot of vampires.
He’d started young. Younger than most, according to other hunters he’d met. When he was eleven and crept downstairs in the middle of the night to find his parents’ lifeless bodies on the floor, being drained of blood by two hunched, shadowy figures. He would have been dead too, but just as one of the figures was about to descend on him, a sharpened wooden stake pierced right through its chest, and a tall, blonde woman screamed at him to get out. Before he even had a chance to move, the second figure pounced on the woman, and in a rush of pure instinct and adrenaline, Dave grabbed the stake from the dead vampire’s body and stabbed it as hard as he could through the other’s heart.
The woman, Sissy, took him in after that. She and her husband Viktor taught him how to recognise vampires, how to track them, and how to kill them. He was a natural, apparently, and it became the focus of his whole life. A few years ago he met Elliot while the two of them were hunting the same vamp, and they’d been working cases together ever since.
“Another one missing.” Elliot dropped the paper onto the table while Dave shovelled pancakes into his mouth. “Thirteen years old.”
“ Thirteen? Shit. What’s his name?”
“Apparently it hasn’t been released for ‘legal reasons’,” He said, making sarcastic air quotations with his fingers. “Amazing how the law manages to keep that stick up their ass, even with an undead serial killer on the loose.”
Chuckling, Dave looked down at the paper, scanning the article for anything that might be of use. There was only one photo of the kid. A cropped version of a school photo taken in the fall, with the other visible classmates’ faces blurred out. He was an orphan, living at a boarding school and, according to the statement from the principal, had a habit of sneaking out. It could be nothing, but with the number of other disappearances, it was still worth looking into.
“The school’s only a block away from where the last girl went missing,” He observed when he saw the address. “We should check it out.”
“Boarding schools give me the creeps,” Elliot mumbled and Dave cocked his eyebrow at him.
“How about a potentially vampire-infested boarding school?”
“That actually creeps me out less . Let’s go.”
The school was made up of several angular, sandy coloured buildings, with square windows and flat, brick red roofs. It didn’t strike Dave as a particularly homely place, but then, that was true of most places that vampires visited. Elliot, through means that Dave didn’t care to question, had managed to score them each an authentic-looking LVMPD badge, and they were ushered into the building with very few questions asked. The principal was a tall woman, with dark hair streaked with grey that fell almost to her waist. She wore a mustard blouse with a black pencil skirt and heels that clicked purposefully against the tiles as she walked, and an expression of perpetual disappointment that bore right into Dave’s soul when she looked at him.
“The boy’s room is this way,” She said with a sigh, sounding bored with the interaction already, and leading them up a flight of stairs and along a winding corridor.
“So, uh… This kid gets out a lot?” Dave asked as the principal stopped outside one of the dorms, not even needing to check the number before taking out a key and opening the door.
“This is the third time this academic year.” She nodded and perched herself on the edge of the small desk that had been pushed up against the wall. “The caretaker suggested putting bars on his window, but I don’t think that would do anything to stop him. I swear it’s like the boy can walk through walls or something.”
Exchanging a glance, Dave and Elliot set to work inspecting the room. There was a minimal amount of furniture inside. A bed with plain blue bed sheets and a small table laden with books pushed up beside it, a wooden closet, and the desk. A collection of sci-fi posters and torn out comic book pages were stuck haphazardly to the walls, but aside from that, the room was immaculate. The bed was made, with pyjamas neatly folded on top of the pillow, books carefully tucked away, not the scene one would expect if the kid had been snatched unwillingly from his room.
“Did he take anything with him?” Elliot asked while Dave inspected the window.
“His uniform and coat,” She said, recounting everything as though she had been over it a hundred times. “A satchel with his school books, and Mr Pennycrumb.”
“Mr Pennycrumb?”
“His toy dog. He takes it everywhere.”
Vampires weren’t known for their sentimentality, and it was starting to look like this could just be a simple case of a rebellious school kid making a break for it. Still, they checked for the usual signs. No visible claw marks on any of the walls or the furniture, no traces of blood, no ashes on the floor. It was difficult to conduct a thorough inspection for traces of the undead with a school principal watching over their shoulders, and Dave had a feeling she might be starting to cotton on to the fact that they weren’t genuine detectives when he started sniffing along the window ledge for that lingering smell of death vampires sometimes left behind. Still, if she suspected anything, she never said, and she still thanked them politely for their time as she showed them back down to the main doors.
“Well, that was a colossal waste of time,” Dave muttered as they made their way back up the road to his car.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, Elliot pulled out a comic book and waved it at him. “Do you have any idea how rare this edition is?”
“You stole a thirteen-year-old’s comic?”
“Not like he needs it now.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“I had a troubled childhood.” Elliot shrugged. “And a troubled adulthood.”
“Yeah, didn’t we all?”
They decided to get back to gathering information on the last official missing person, a woman named Lila Pitts, who was last seen just over a week ago. They’d managed to piece together a fair amount yesterday. She was twenty-five, originally from England, adopted by a wealthy Countess but left home six months ago to try and make a life for herself. She’d been sleeping on a friend’s couch and working in a local dive bar until eight days ago, when she finished up a shift and was never seen again.
It was definitely a vampire. That , at least, they knew for certain. There was an alley close to the bar that her friend said she would use as a shortcut, and when he and Elliot checked they found blood, claw marks in the pavement, and a bracelet that her friend confirmed belonged to her. What they couldn’t work out was what the hell happened to her body. Or any of the other bodies for that matter. He’d never encountered a vampire before that showed any kind of interest in disposing of their victims once they were finished with them, but here they seemed to be vanishing into thin air. A few times now Dave had found himself toying with the idea that maybe this particular vampire was eating its victims, not just draining them, but Elliot was insistent that any kind of solid food would make them sick. He didn’t have any evidence for this beyond a reference to a movie he’d seen, but he argued so convincingly that Dave had felt compelled to believe him.
They returned back to the alley, as if, for some reason, Lila’s body might suddenly have materialised. Shockingly, they found it just as empty as before, with the addition of a ginger alley cat that hissed any time they impeded on his personal space, but in the light of day they could see smaller details that they missed the night before. A scrap of fabric that matched the scarf Lila had been described wearing, an acrylic nail with blood and skin underneath it. Dave lost a coin toss and wound up digging through the dumpster while Elliot attempted to follow the trail of scratches and claw marks across the ground.
As he was tossing one of the garbage bags over his shoulder, a mark on the wall behind the dumpster caught his eye and he stopped to investigate it. It was another scratch, not as deep as the ones Elliot was following, but still as clearly defined as any other mark he’d found in his years of hunting. The more he looked, the more scratches he began to notice, scaling all the way up and over the top of the building, in the opposite direction of the first trail they’d spotted.
“There’s more than one,” He said under his breath when the realisation dawned on him, before turning and calling over to Elliot. “Hey! There’s more than one!”
“What are you talking about?” Elliot asked as he walked over.
Dave pointed up to the wall. “Two sets of tracks. There were two vampires here.”
“Ooh,” Elliot mused, his eyes lighting up excitedly. “I’ve always wanted to find an actual coven!”
The way Elliot responded to these things, as if he was trying to tick items off some kind of supernatural bucket list, could either entertain or irritate Dave depending on what mood he was in. That had always kind of been Elliot’s thing, though. He got into hunting through sheer willpower, dedicating his life to trying to prove the existence of various supernatural creatures until one day, in a moment of dumb luck, he found himself tangled up in the middle of a hunt. By that point his wife had already up and left, but hey, he seemed to be pretty happy with his current situation.
“Covens aren’t a thing, Elliot,” Dave told him. “You watch too many movies.”
“Just because you’ve never seen one, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” Elliot folded his arms stubbornly. “And how else do you explain two vampires hunting together?”
“They weren’t hunting together. The tracks are going in opposite directions. More than likely they were fighting over a kill, and the winner left with the body.” He paused, chewing on his lip thoughtfully. “Never known them to hunt in such close proximity to each other though.”
He could see in Elliot’s eyes that he wasn’t finished with the coven argument, but he conceded for now, shrugging and nodding across the street.
“We should go back to that bar, see if anyone saw any fights that night.”
Dave nodded in agreement, and the two of them headed down the street, to the bar Lila had been working at before she disappeared.
There were only one or two people inside the bar, the late-night crowds having not yet arrived, and that suited Dave just fine. It was dark inside, with dark wooden bar tops and polished floors that reflected the purple and green ceiling lights. A young girl in a shirt brandishing the bar’s logo was weaving a mop in between the circular tables dotted around the room, while a man in a matching shirt cleaned glasses behind the bar.
“You’re a little early for Happy Hour, fellas,” The man said, not looking up as the two of them seated themselves at the bar.
“We’re not here to drink,” Dave said flatly as he dug his fake badge out of his pocket, “We just have a few questions about a fight that may have taken place nearby.”
“Fights take place nearby almost every night.” He glanced up, cocking his eyebrow at him. “So you’re gonna need to be real specific.”
“Alright. The night Lila Pitts went missing-”
“You’re wasting your time.” The girl with the mop cut him off, leaning against the bar and loudly chewing gum as she spoke. “Lila’s fine, the little stop out.”
“How do you know?” Elliot asked and she shrugged nonchalantly.
“I saw her,” She told them. “This morning, on my way to work. There’s this big house I always walk past. Always thought it was empty, I’ve never seen anyone going in or out before, but this morning I saw her walking past the window.”
“Nicki, that could have been anyone,” The barman said but she shook her head.
“It was her! She was wearing the jacket I leant her to walk home in!”
Dave and Elliot exchanged a glance, and Dave cleared his throat.
“Do you have the address?”
“Sure, but I don’t know what you’re expecting to find,” Nicki said as she pulled a notepad out of her back pocket and started scribbling. “I knocked on the door when I saw her and didn’t get any answer.”
Taking the address, the two of them left and returned to the car.
“Okay, what’s our plan?” Elliot asked as he buckled his seatbelt.
“First, we get sandwiches.” Dave’s stomach growled as if to emphasise his point. “Then, we stake out this house.”
“Heh,” Elliot chuckled. “Stakeout. ‘Cause vampires.”
“‘Cause vampires,” Dave agreed.
They found the house easily enough. It was modestly sized, with golden yellow walls and an exposed brick extension. The windows were arched, with curtains obscuring any view inside, and the front door was tucked away beneath a roof canopy, held up by two stone pillars. Ivy and climbing roses scaled the walls, and there were beds of lavender and honeysuckle planted beneath the front windows. There was some evidence of personal touches outside. A bronze birdbath tucked among some bushes, large, brightly coloured pots clustered together on the porch, and a moon, forged from some kind of metal, fixed to the wall at the front of the house. Dave would never have picked it for a vampire hideout, but it was the best lead they had, so they sat outside and waited... and waited… and waited.
Just as Nicki had said, there was no sign of anybody coming or going from the house, and the curtains remained closed. As the sun began to sink lower in the sky, there was still no activity until, almost nine hours into their watch, a light flicked on in one of the rooms, and a silhouette appeared behind the curtains. The curtain twitched, and for the briefest moment, a face appeared, glancing up at the sky, judging the light level. It wasn’t Lila. Dave could just about make out a glimpse of facial hair and a flash of blood-red eyes before the curtains snapped shut again.
“Well,” Dave said, slumping back in his seat. “I’ll say one thing for this vamp. He has a great eye for landscaping.”
Elliot hummed in agreement and took a loud slurp from his drink before responding.
“So what’s the plan? Wait for sunrise and shank his ass?”
“Yeah, the usual.”
“Neat.” Elliot kicked his feet up onto the dash and settled back against the headrest. “You can take the first watch.”
Dave didn’t bother to argue, resting his head against the window and letting his mind wander as the sound of Elliot’s snoring began to fill the small space they were confined to. He envied Elliot’s ability to sleep in just about any environment, regardless of the noise and light levels. But then, with the number of nightmares he’d been having lately, he was glad to be able to put off sleeping for a little longer.
The deep indigo sky, tinted with the orange haze of the city lights, was a lot different to the skies he was used to. Growing up on Sissy’s farm, the skies were clear, with fluffy white clouds in the daytime and more stars than Dave had ever seen in his life at night. He’d always thought her farm seemed more like something from a movie, or a children’s cartoon, too perfect to really exist in real life, a jarring contrast to the array of weapons and vampire traps set up inside the barn. Before that, at his real home, the skies were generally grey through the day and seemed to be showering them with rain more often than not. Or maybe those were just the days he remembered. These days he found it was getting harder to recall solid memories of his life before hunting took over. He remembered small things. His mother’s smile and blue eyes that matched his own, the fishing boat with peeling paint his father used to take him out on, and Scout the cocker spaniel, who was hit by a car when he was nine. The rest was foggy, like an out of focus photograph, and the only physical reminder he had left was his mother’s wedding ring, which came off as he was clinging to her hand, while Sissy tried to pull him away and get them to safety. Now it stayed around his neck, secured by a fraying piece of string, serving as evidence to prove that part of his life had been real.
Time passed quickly, and soon it was Elliot’s turn to take over watching the house. Dave found himself dreaming about the green-eyed man again, this time more vividly than ever. He could feel the rain soaking through his clothes and chilling him to the bone, the squelching of the mud beneath his feet, and the blood on his face as a bullet passed right through the other man’s throat.
Jolting awake, with the sound of screaming still ringing in his ears, Dave blinked into the sunlight and realised it was morning.
“Have you tried sleeping with an amethyst under your pillow?” Elliot asked nonchalantly, nibbling on a stale cracker he’d fished out of Dave’s glovebox. “They’re supposed to be good for sleep.”
“I’m not desperate enough to try one of your crack theories yet,” Dave grumbled and Elliot laughed.
“Oh, so keeping a bunch of wooden stakes and silver knives in your trunk to ward off vampires is fine, but you’re drawing the line at natural healing remedies?”
“I’ve seen vampires,” He said as he pulled his jacket back on. “Half the shit you suggest is straight out of a pyramid scheme pitch.”
“I just think you could benefit from being a little more open-minded.”
“Are we breaking into this house or what?”
Muttering something under his breath, Elliot opened the door and got out, and Dave followed him around the car to the trunk. Dave had tried out plenty of weapons in his time, but eventually decided to settle on the basics. Stakes, knives, and flasks of holy water. They each strapped on holsters and loaded themselves up with as much gear as they could before making their way over to the house.
The window of the front door was stained glass, with intricately cut blue and gold dragonflies, and a brown mat with “all are welcome” printed in black letters was laid across the floor. While Elliot got to work picking the lock, Dave inspected the lantern fixed to the wall, which was still lit, projecting multicoloured shapes onto the surrounding brickwork.
“Got it,” Elliot whispered as the lock clicked and the door swung open with an agonising creak.
Rather than the gloomy interior Dave had expected, the hallway was lit with strings of lights in a variety of colours and shapes. Some were draped from the ceiling, others along the walls, while some had been balled up and used to illuminate coloured glass jars and vases. There were two rugs spread across the floor in front of the door in clashing pink and red colours and a cluster of plants in intricately painted terracotta pots grouped together in the corner. A tapestry of bright blue, purple, and orange patterns was hung across one wall, and against the opposite wall, a wooden table painted with flowers and covered with a collection of candles, vases, and sculptures. Further along, a set of windows were shrouded by deep turquoise and gold curtains, and an ornate mirror hung on the far wall, framed by another matching set.
It was silent as the two of them crept across the stone floor, but Dave couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. The flickering lights cast shadows that seemed to dance across the walls as they walked, taunting them, and one string of deep red bulbs seemed to resemble glowing eyes whenever Dave caught a glimpse of them. They reached a large, stone archway with gold, beaded curtains hanging on either side, and Dave gripped the handle of the knife he was clutching a little tighter as they headed through into what appeared to be a sitting room.
This room was less brightly lit, with just two small lamps on the coffee table, and another string of lights on the far wall, illuminating a collection of South Asian art. They had to take care as they explored the room, weaving their way around tables and pieces of furniture. In the dim light he could make out a set of plush turquoise couches, covered in orange and yellow cushions, and a square wooden coffee table adorned with plants, books, and unlit candles. There were bookcases against one wall, and on the other, a fireplace with even more candles and vases set along the mantlepiece. Beautiful wasn’t a word Dave usually associated with vampire homes, but this house was easily one of the most beautiful places he’d seen.
A floorboard creaked overhead, and all thoughts of interior decoration quickly disappeared from his mind. The two of them froze, holding their breath as they tried to listen for any more signs of movement. It seemed as though the whole house was moving, with faint creaks and cracking noises coming from all directions.
After a few agonising seconds, Dave allowed himself to breathe again, his heart drumming loudly in his ears as he glanced over at Elliot. Slowly, cautiously, he took another step across the room, careful to avoid a box of trinkets left on the floor. He watched as Elliot attempted to do the same, lifting his foot to take a step. As he did, another loud creak from down hall caught them both off guard and Elliot stumbled backwards, throwing his arm out to steady himself and knocking a large, decorated vase to the floor. Time seemed to slow down as the vase hit the floor, shattering with a loud crash.
Dave immediately prepared himself for the inevitable fight, pulling another knife out from a holster on his thigh and planting his feet firmly on the ground ready to defend himself. Seconds passed but no fight came, and the two of them exchanged confused glances.
“Must be a real heavy sleeper,” Elliot whispered.
Dave was about to reply when he heard the sound of a door being flung open, and footsteps padding purposefully down the hall towards them.
“If that was my Ming vase,” An oddly familiar voice snapped as the ceiling light flicked on overhead. “I swear to god I’ll put the both of you up in a motel until you’ve learned to control your- oh… hello.”
A man stood in the archway, dressed in a deep purple, silk bathrobe and black slippers, his damp hair wrapped up in a towel with a few dark curls escaping. Both his hands were decorated with colourful rings, one holding a cigarette, and the other clutching a crystal glass filled with what, to the unassuming eye, could be mistaken for red wine. But Dave wasn’t interested in any of that, because he couldn’t take his eyes off the man’s face.
It was a face he’d seen a thousand times before, so familiar he could draw it blindly. It was the face that had been haunting his dreams for the last seven years. The same pronounced cheekbones, though his skin was a little paler. The same defined lips, twisting into the same crooked smile as he cocked his head curiously at Elliot. And the same long dark lashes, batting flirtatiously, accentuated by dark makeup smudged around his eyes. But his eyes… His eyes weren’t the vivid, earthy green he remembered. Now they burned a deep, blood red, with a faint, otherworldly glow to them.
The floorboard creaked beneath Dave’s feet, and the man’s head whipped around to look at him. His eyes widened, his lips parting in a look of shock and recognition that seemed to match his own. The glass slipped from his frozen hand and shattered on the floor, but neither of them so much as flinched at the sound, as the man slowly tried to regain his speaking voice, finally managing to choke out a single word.
“ David. ”