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“I’m inclined to say he’s quite dead,” said Dracula.
“You don’t say.”
Lorrimer rolled his eyes and tucked his scarf tighter around his neck. It was chillier tonight. Winter was nearing, the bare trees were dusted with frost, and he wasn’t supposed to be in this damned forest again.
But here he was. And here was Dracula. Looking at him like butter wouldn’t melt.
“You say you found him like this?” Lorrimer looked at the body again.
“Yes,” Dracula nodded. “Ravaged by another werewolf, I’m sure.”
“How do you know he’s a werewolf?”
“Because he-”
Then the dead body moved.
It twisted and turned, and groaned and complained, and then sat up.
Rubbing its head.
“Bloody hell,” the dead body said.
Lorrimer gaped at it.
Dracula blinked slowly.
“Oh, my mistake,” he looked mildly disappointed, and then folded his arms.
The alive body stood up.
He was a fairly stocky man. Jet black hair, generous sideburns and vivid blue eyes. Handsome in a rugged sort of way. His mouth split into a grin that was roguish, as he looked at both Lorrimer and Dracula.
“...shit. Did I take a chunk out of any of you? Sorry if I did. Ain’t exactly in control of my faculties when I’m…um…like that.”
Lorrimer blinked a couple of times, processing the other man and his blasé nature with a concerned look in Dracula’s direction.
Anything that suggested he needed to look at Dracula for reassurance was quite worrying by itself.
Dracula was just scowling like an unimpressed cat though.
“Name's Ollie,” said the blasé man, holding a large hand out to Lorrimer, who shook it slowly.
Then Ollie offered his hand to Dracula, who looked at it like it might be an insult. He didn’t unfold his arms.
Ollie did not look put out.
“Friends call me ‘Olier,” he grinned. “‘Olier than thou’. It’s an ironic nickname, yer see. Me being a little bit-”
“I think we get the picture,” Lorrimer said quickly. And then; “So. You’re a werewolf.”
“Yeah. Only once a month though. Limited time offer on the extra hair and bigger- ”
“Can I kill him now?” Dracula said, looking at Lorrimer with pleading eyes.
Lorrimer gave Dracula a chiding glare.
“Of course not,” then turned the glare to Ollie too. “You haven’t hurt anyone, have you?”
Ollie shrugged. “I couldn’t tell yer. Never remember a thing when I wake up, yer see.”
He did look a bit sad about it though. It was, somehow, a step up from vampires. The man had something resembling a conscience, it seemed.
Dracula continued to scowl. “I think I should kill him.”
Ollie laughed. “Vampire, ain’t yer?”
Dracula didn’t grace him with even a glance. “Lorrimer, I can end him quite painlessly. It will be swift and clean, I promise it.”
“Hey, I’m not dyin’ swiftly an’ cleanly. It’ll be messy an’ slow,” Ollie's grin turned nastier, as he squared up to Dracula.
He wasn’t as tall as Dracula (nobody was), but his bulk more than made up for that. Lorrimer strongly suspected that Ollie was more than a match for Dracula physically, if only as they were both in these ‘human’ forms.
Lorrimer moved between them.
“Nobodies killing anyone yet. Not until I say so, anyway.”
As if he had the authority.
Apparently he did, as Dracula turned his glare, begrudgingly to the side.
Ollie’s grin turned into another laugh. He shook his head.
“You vampires think yer somethin’ else, don’t yer? All hoity toity, 'til yer get caught out with a cross or a sprinklin’ of holy water. Then yer whimperin’ and whinin’ and beggin’ fer mercy.”
His eyes became hungrier on Dracula then.
Lorrimer noticed it, with a strange and familiar twang in his stomach.
He didn’t like that he knew what it was.
“Would love t’ see yer beggin, Fangs,” Ollie said. “Can I call yer Fangs?”
Dracula hissed, quite unhelpfully.
“His name is Dracula,” Lorrimer said shortly. “You may have heard of him.”
Ollie’s grin dropped.
“What? Oh shit...” Then he laughed again. “Forgive me. I didn’t know I was talkin’ to the King of the hoity toits!”
He continued to laugh, and Dracula, to his credit, offered another warning hiss, before launching himself on the insolent man.
Lorrimer stood back and watched the brawl unfold before him with a combination of shock and interest.
As he’d thought, Ollie was full of brawn, and his meaty fists connected crunching punches upon Dracula’s thinner form. Not to say Dracula did not give back as good as he got; though his technique was more teeth and claws.
Like a dog and a cat going at it, Lorrimer realised. He wasn’t sure how or if he should try to break it up. He’d only recently learned that vampires and werewolves apparently hated each other on sight anyway. An age old rivalry that Lorrimer did not know existed, until he’d learnt that werewolves existed at all.
Sometimes he wished he’d never entered this damned forest.
Sometimes he wished he didn’t look at Dracula, who was currently snarling and bleeding under a werewolf called Ollie, with a want to protect him.
Another snarl, and then Dracula was pinning Ollie, fanged mouth snapping at his neck.
Lorrimer pulled the tiny pistol out his coat pocket.
“Stop it now! Both of you!”
Unsurprisingly, the fighting did not stop at all.
So Lorrimer fired a single shot.
Black and blue eyes gleamed wide upon Lorrimer, frozen in a state that had them both surprised.
“Silver bullets,” Lorrimer told them. “I believe you’re both susceptible to those?”
Dracula’s lip curled. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
Ollie sneered. He was currently pinned by Dracula. He didn’t look too put out by it, as he turned his head back to look at Dracula.
A look that was suddenly interested in a way that made Lorrimer feel that strange twang in his stomach again.
“What’s the deal with you two, anyways?” Ollie asked. “Ain’t no vampires I know hangin’ about with humans fer anything but a pint of blood." Then his sneer moved into a grin. “Oh no. Yer forbidden fuckin’, ain’t yer?”
Dracula threatened to snap Ollie’s neck.
“No ,” Lorrimer snapped at him.
To Lorrimer’s own surprise, Dracula stilled. But he still glared at Ollie as if he was imagining all the ways in which he might kill the werewolf.
Ollie continued to grin. “Yeah, I knew it. Fuck, yer got it really bad.”
Dracula only continued to glare.
Lorrimer suspected that Dracula didn’t really understand the implication. But then Lorrimer had long since suspected that Dracula didn’t understand anything about his apparent attraction to Lorrimer, only that he was. Lorrimer was happy enough to keep it that way, to be frank.
It helped his cause, having a vampire, and Count Dracula no less, on his side.
Plus it helped him not to think too deeply on his own feelings, whatever the hell they were at this point.
Better to focus on the problem at hand, anyway. Werewolves. Killing people. Very important stuff.
He walked slowly around the two supernatural beings, contemplating and considering. As if he was in control of all of this (who was he kidding?).
“Werewolves have been attacking and killing people around here of late,” he said slowly. “An entire pack of them. Do you know them, Ollie? Or their current whereabouts?”
Ollie frowned, shifting, or at least attempting to shift, under Dracula’s weight. “...what's in it for me?”
Dracula hissed. “Tell him, you dirty mongrel.”
“Won’t, you overgrown leech.”
Lorrimer sighed and gave them both a wearier look. He pocketed his pistol and folded his arms, leaning back against a tree.
“If you don’t cooperate, Ollie, I’m afraid I’ll have to see you destroyed. And I don’t really want things to come to that.”
Dracula grinned for the first time in a while. “Don’t tell him anything,” he told Ollie.
Ollie’s eyes narrowed, and then he huffed.
“I don’t know,” he said, and he sounded earnest. “Like I told yer…I don’t remember anythin’ that happens when I turn. It just...happens, and then I wake up. That's all.”
Even in the darkness, Lorrimer could see the plaintive look reaching the man’s face. He could hear the shreds of honesty, perhaps even sadness, in his voice.
Lorrimer raised a warning hand, as Dracula leaned in, to savage Ollie’s throat perhaps.
“Get off him, Dracula.”
“But-
“Off.”
Dracula looked petulantly at his would-be victim.
Ollie grinned triumphantly at him, and then tilted his head up just enough.
He lined his tongue over the vampire’s cheek, licking it sloppily and delightedly.
Startled and disgusted, Dracula jerked backwards and away from him.
“Foul mutt!” he snapped.
“You love it,” Ollie cackled, and then groaned a bit, as he hauled himself into a sitting position, rubbing his chest. “Nice bite, Fangs.”
Dracula said nothing. He was standing up and rubbing his cheek as if it’d been diseased.
Both Dracula and Ollie looked worse for wear, as it happened, but they hadn’t killed each other.
Lorrimer wasn’t quite sure why he was relieved about that. The forest was sending him strange, clearly.
He was also rather glad that Ollie looked a bit sorry. Lorrimer offered a hand to haul him up, and the werewolf, man...whatever he was, gratefully took it.
“Uh, listen. I really don’t know the deal with you guys…or…any of this,” Ollie said. “But um. It’d be great if yer didn’t kill me or anythin’. I’m a decent bloke when it's not a full moon, have you know. I got a kid brother and a dog I have to feed. Stuff like that. A life, yer know?”
And Lorrimer felt for him in that moment, he really did.
He sighed. This had only made the werewolf problem far more complicated than it was supposed to be.
Just like the vampire problem, or more specifically the Dracula problem, he supposed.
“Alright,” he sighed, and then pulled a card out of his pocket. “Come see me. Tomorrow morning. We’ll talk more then.”
Dracula’s eyes widened. He looked horrified.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I...I forbid it.”
Lorrimer turned and stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“You are not to associate with this creature, Lorrimer. I will not have it.”
Lorrimer mirrored his frown. “Dracula. I do believe I can do whatever I like, with or without your permission.”
He turned away, but not before seeing Dracula’s furious pout.
Ollie looked quite relieved, as he took the card and pocketed it with a mock salute.
“Alright. Lookin’ forward to it. Is this some kind of…intervention? Or…yer know, cure?” he sounded hopeful about it.
Lorrimer laughed faintly. “Sadly not. I’m still working on a cure for vampirism, as it happens. Werewolves are a very recent venture of mine.” He smiled pleasantly at Ollie. “I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow though.”
“Me too,” Ollie nodded, and then looked back at a silently seething Dracula. “Later, Fangs. Nice wrestlin’ with yer.”
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“You’re jealous,” Lorrimer said, as he reached out, smoothing a hand over Dracula’s rumpled hair.
There were bits of leaves and twigs in it, collected over the scuffle with Ollie. There was also a bloody gash across the vampire’s throat, but it wasn’t very deep. Nothing more serious than that.
Anyway, Lorrimer liked tending to him for a bit. And he liked Dracula’s pouting face, and the fact that he didn’t protest the statement at all.
Dracula was incredibly jealous.
“It’s very sweet, you know,” Lorrimer smiled.
Dracula sneered, and then glared at the floor. “Insolent creature. I thought you wanted them all dead .”
“Not if I can help it. I’m not inclined to kill people, unlike some creatures.”
“He’ll kill someone else. Next full moon.”
Lorrimer smoothed his hand over the vampire’s face, touching his tensed jaw like he might be placating a sullen child. “But we have time until then, don’t we? And maybe he can help us.”
“Help ‘us’?” Dracula blinked back at him. Curious and reluctantly amused, all at the same time.
He leaned into Lorrimer’s wandering hand, then turned his head, kissing his fingers.
“Yes,” Lorrimer said, quite taken by the tender brush of those kisses. “Us.”
Then he turned Dracula’s head back, and captured his mouth in a kiss.
They rolled over together on frost covered leaves, but Lorrimer did not feel so cold anymore.
Heat flushed over his body instead, as he remembered the hungrier way Ollie had looked at Dracula.
And so Lorrimer claimed the vampire, again and again and again.
Lorrimer kept on claiming him, until a violent purple was tinting the sky. The forest was being roused by the telltale signs of sunrise.
Lorrimer stared at Dracula’s warmed and dazed and contented body with regret.
As usual, he didn’t want to leave the forest.
And as it happened, he was incredibly jealous too.
He wasn’t going to tell Dracula that, though.
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