Chapter Text
The hunter started the warm July evening with a simple plan: get to the little neighborhood church Hyun-Woo had described to him by dusk, stake out for the night in the attic watching the nest entrance across the street, slip out at dawn and report back to the lodge. Easy. He’d maybe even have time to swing by that breakfast place between the target and home—that was always a treat. It wasn’t like the lodge didn’t feed all the hunters, but it was hard keeping all 190 (okay, closer to 195) centimeters of him fed on oatmeal, mealy apples, and mildly stale toast. His sisters had always said he ate like a bear.
As if it would be that simple.
Kim Cheol, 19 years old, nicknamed Lucifer. Nothing seems to be going right these days.
First there was the late start because someone had siphoned the gas out of his bike during the day, then kicked it over. Probably kids. The bike was fine if a little scratched, but it took him almost half an hour to hoof it to the nearest station, fill up a gas can, run back, resurrect the bike, and top it off for his ride across town. Better the extra stop than running out of fuel with an angry vampire mob breathing down the back of his neck. Figuratively, given they didn’t breathe.
Then of course there was the traffic—a pretty bad wreck on the road involving a car and a semi was the cause, though he didn’t linger long enough to get a full impression of the damage—and the road closure right outside the neighborhood. Whatever. He’d just have to circle around back and roll the bike the last block through an alley. Probably more subtle that way anyway.
No, what really screwed with his plans was the mundane human assault the street over while Cheol was covering the bike with a tarp. The roof line of the church was in sight when he heard angry male shouting, then panicked female crying, then some faint thudding sounds, like fists hitting flesh.
Cheol’s hearing was a lot better than average, so it didn’t surprise him when he ran around the corner that his ears had been right—there was a group of men (boys, more like, he corrected to himself as he observed the school uniforms) in a lose semicircle, taking turns kicking a prone figure curled into the fetal position on the ground while the others goaded them on. Another couple of boys held a crying girl by the arms.
“Hey!” Cheol shouted. The bullies startled—then froze at the sight of the six-and-a-half-foot grown man stomping towards them down the alley. Truthfully he was probably only a year or so their senior, but he’d looked about a half decade older than his real age since he was fourteen, and he could radiate menace like a vampire radiated Mesmer.
The kids were obviously startled, wavering between fight or flight. After the initial shock wore off the tallest one (seemed like the leader) puffed his chest out a bit and looked Cheol up and down. The odds were six on one, after all. Leaning towards fight, then.
Cheol had no intention of actually sending half a dozen human children to the hospital (even if he’d had the inclination, he certainly didn’t have the time). So, time to tip the scales back towards flight.
There was a reason he wore at least a light jacket year-round, even when, like tonight, it was way too hot for it. Cheol reached under his black leather bike jacket and pulled the gun from his shoulder holster. He didn’t even have to draw it all the way—the thugs saw the barrel in his hand and scattered, shoving the girl aside and leaping over the boy on the ground, frantically fleeing down the alley.
If they’d stayed (and been unusually observant) they may have noticed the gun was just for show; tranquilizer darts filled with saline solution and powdered silver wouldn’t do much to a human, after all.
Then it had taken another precious few minutes getting the kid to his feet, calming both the high schoolers’ hysteria (they couldn’t seem to decide if some strange man with a gun was better or worse than a group teenage bullies), and getting them to a populated area within a couple blocks of the police station.
Now Cheol was really late—night-has-fallen-and-vampires-freely-roam-the-streets-late—as he jogged back towards the church, running on the sides of his feet to mask his footfalls. He dropped into a crouch at the end of the alley and surveyed the churchyard. Seemed clear, the little cemetery bordered by a whitewashed fence deserted. Only a low blanket of mist curled around the headstones, which was weird given it wasn’t very humid, and it had been a hot, clear day. Well, he supposed the church was near a vampire den. Lots of spooky, illogical stuff seemed to happen when bloodsuckers were around.
Cheol rose out of his crouch and quietly ran into the open, vaulting the chest-high fence without much effort and landing as quietly as he could on the other side.
No movement troubled the mist.
He ran across the churchyard, weaving around headstones, and took the short flight of steps to the metal back door two at a time. He tried the door. Locked.
Cheol reached into his jacket and pulled out his lock picking kit, and in under a minute he was easing through the door and shutting it with a quiet *snick* behind him.
He held his breath—silent as the grave, no pun intended. Any church staff had probably gone home by this time of night. Maybe his luck was turning around.
He was in a long white hallway punctuated by several doors at intervals. The Virgin Mary stared somberly at him from a picture frame halfway down the hall, holding a spectacularly ugly baby Jesus that looked like a miniature middle-aged man. Cheol wondered—had any of those medieval artists ever seen a baby?
Okay. Hyun-Woo had said the entrance to the attic was on the north west side of the building, off the main chapel. Cheol locked the door again behind him and took off down the hallway, ignoring the judgmental gaze of baby Jesus and mother, as well as the stares of a few painted saints lining the walls.
He got through the hallway and halfway through a dingy reception space when he heard it—quiet, shocked hyperventilating punctuated by little shaky sobs. He froze, poised on the balls of his feet, still like a statue.
The sound was muffled—had to be coming from a room over, through the door he was heading towards.
Damn it .
Couldn’t be a vampire—they physically couldn’t enter places of worship. Churches, temples, mosques, even houses where bible study was held a little too often were off-limits. Had to just be a panicked human. A werewolf would have smelled the vampires a mile off and known to stay clear.
Cheol sighed and squared his shoulders. Time to play the hero a second time that night.
He eased the door open, peering into the room. The door opened into the worship hall; rows and rows of pews stood between the massive wooden front door and the altar and pulpit, lining a red-carpeted aisle. There must have been a surprisingly bright streetlight just outside of the circular stained-glass window above the entrance to the church—it threw a beam of light into the space almost like the sun, splashing faceted multicolor prisms onto the velvet-draped altar…and over a girl curled into a ball in front of it.
The door shut behind him and the girl startled, looking up. Cheol stared.
In the beam of light she looked almost angelic, like a dark-haired cherub, but it was…wrong. She was wrong.
She had remarkably large eyes and bold eyebrows, though that wasn’t what concerned Cheol—what concerned him most was the clearly-visible fangs poking out of her partially-open mouth, the glowing ring around her pupils (green, why was it green, vampire eyes glowed but they glowed red), and his hunter’s sense screaming at him that the creature in front of him was a vampire, prickling the hair on the back of his neck.
If he had to guess from this distance he’d place her at late middle to early high school. His lip curled with automatic disgust—the vamps had turned a kid.
The red of the carpet had kept him from noticing it at first, but the girl was sitting in a small puddle of blood (not blood, he corrected himself, ichor. Vampires drink blood, they bleed ichor) and holding her side, which was also covered in crimson. A large hole gaped in one knee of her jeans.
The vertigo-inducing sense of wrongness coalesced as he stared at her. She couldn’t be in here. No, literally couldn’t— they were in the main chapel of an active church. Besides that, she was gasping in breaths, either from surprise or pain, and vampires didn’t breathe. She was bleeding real blood too—the liquid pouring from her wounds was red, not the tar-black of ichor, and he couldn’t smell the tell-tale acidic stench of wounded vampire. Then of course there was the weird color of her eyes, but the most damning thing was that while half of his hunter senses were screaming vampire, the other half was screaming human. And he’d never been wrong yet.
And then a Bible flew at him. Cheol barely managed to dodge, then caught the hymnal the girl hurled at him a second later.
“Don’t come any closer!” she yelled, raising what looked like a golden plate (the top of a communion tray?) over her shoulder. The gold thing trembled in her hand, but her eyes met his with surprising fierceness, even as their strange green light flickered and died. “I’m warning you! I’ll…I’ll…” she looked around, dropping the plate thing and grabbing a candlestick off of the altar. “I’ll stab this through your heart! It’s silver!”
What?
Putting aside the fact that it was probably brass plated with gold (neither of which would do anything to a vampire), Cheol was…not a vampire. Which a real vampire should be able to sense, just like a hunter could. Her fangs were gone too, along with the glowing eyes. She looked just like a bleeding, scared kid.
“G-Get away, vampire,” she said, brandishing the candlestick and trying to use her free hand on the altar to help pull herself to her feet.
Jeez, was she turned like 6 seconds ago?
“Do I look like a vampire to you?” he said flatly.
The girl looked at him like he was stupid. “Yes!” She shakily stood, then gestured at his whole body with the candlestick. “What’s with the all-black getup and the menacing…” she trailed off. “Wait. You can’t be in here.”
“I should be saying that to you ,” Cheol said. He brandished the hymnal at her, mirroring her candlestick. How could this vampire be so clueless? “Did you just get turned?” Maybe there was some kind of development period for the geas on churches or something which would explain how she got in here.
“No! Nobody turned me—” she clapped a hand over her mouth.
“What are you talking about? Who turned you? All of the colonies I know won’t turn kids.”
“I’m not a kid, I’m 19 years old!” She spluttered indignantly, removing the hand over her mouth. “And how would you know any vampires unless you were a vampire? Ha!” She shook the candlestick triumphantly at him.
Did somebody deep-fry this kid’s brain? Well, looking at her, he guessed it was possible for her to be his age, just short and slight. Cheol gave her an unimpressed look, then raised his hand, showing her the small silver signet ring glittering on his middle finger. “I’m a hunter . What are you ?”
The vampire’s mouth opened and her candlestick drooped. “…oh,” she said. She swallowed, bushy eyebrows coming together, but oddly…she didn’t seem any more scared of him now than when she thought he was a fellow vampire. Just who was this girl?
“I’m serious, what are you?” Cheol repeated.
She was looking at him speculatively, shifting from foot-to-foot and leaning on the altar for support. Cheol could see all the blood—ichor—whatever on her shirt better now she wasn’t curled into a ball. She looked like she was in pretty bad shape. If she were a regular vampire she shouldn’t have bled that much except from getting absolutely gutted by a silver weapon. But if she’d been hit with silver the wound would be smoking, at least slightly. “If I tell you, do you promise not to kill me?”
“Are you joking???”
“I’m dead serious!” The girl finally seemed to remember the useless candlestick in her hand and gingerly put it down on the altar. “Please. You’re a hunter, right? You protect people from vampires?” So…” she glanced towards the front door, which Cheol noticed for the first time was roughly barricaded by a pew she’d probably managed to scrape over. “So you have to protect me from the vampire trying to get me!” She clasped her hands together in front of her like she was begging. “If I tell you, don’t try to hurt me, promise?”
“...” What the hell. “Fine,” Cheol said exasperatedly, running his hand through his hair. “If you don’t hurt me or any humans, I won’t kill you.”
The girl nodded really fast, her dark hair whipping around her face. She suddenly—stuck out her hand and…extended her pinky finger???
“Promise!”
“How old are you??”
“I already told you, I’m 19!” she said, shakily walking towards him, pinky still extended. “Promise!”
“Fine, I promise .” He looked down at the girl’s raised hand. “I’m not pinky-swearing, we’re not 12.” Cheol said.
“ Fine.” The girl huffed. “You’re holding a bible anyway, so you can’t lie.”
“It’s a hymnal.”
“Whatever.” She crossed her arms, shifting nervously from foot-to-foot again, peeking nervously up at him. She really was tiny. “My name is Mi-ae. I wasn’t turned into a vampire. I’ve never met one before today.” She licked her lips nervously. “I was born…like this. I mean, that’s what the reverend told me.”
A born vampire. Cheol knew such things were rumored to exist, although he’d never met one. Never knew anyone else who’d met one either.
God, what did he know about them? Very little. They were born to a human woman and an exceptionally powerful vampire. They were very rarely born at all, and even fewer reached adulthood. That was because…something about other vampires stealing their powers? Or something? Ugh, Song-i would know, or would be able to find out. But it’s not like he was in the position right then to call her.
“Someone told you you are? Or you are?” Cheol said skeptically. He had a headache coming on.
“I am! I mean, I’ve never drunk blood, so I never did any vampire stuff before tonight, but when that guy was chasing me my vision went all—” she nebulously floated her hands in front of her to convey something “—and I ran insanely fast! Like, I passed a few cars!” Her hands hesitantly curled back. “But…it made me go all lightheaded and I almost passed out out there,” she gestured towards the front door.
“Who was chasing you?”
“Some guy! A vampire,” Mi-ae said. She rubbed her arms like she was cold. “Like I said, I’ve never seen one before,” she looked sheepishly up at Cheol, as if apologizing that she’d thought he was one, “but he had fangs, and red eyes…and he kept staring at me after I tripped and got this.” She gestured to the bloody knee of her jeans. “He kept following me, and I tried to get home, but then he jumped on me really fast, and I somehow got that super speed and almost got away. But I suddenly got all dizzy right outside the door and he caught up.” She grimaced, placing a hand over the dark, wet spot on her tee shirt. “He got me with his claws, and he tried to…bite my neck, but he suddenly started hissing and smoking and rolling around on the ground. Then I got in here and…you came,” she finished.
Cheol had no way to verify the born vampire stuff, but if she hadn’t had blood in a while (or ever) it would make sense that trying to use vampiric powers would make her pass out. But the vampire not being able to bite her…was she wearing a cross or a talisman or something? It was hard to tell in the low light, but he thought he saw a black string going around her neck and under her shirt.
“You’re wearing a necklace?” he said.
The girl blinked at him as if that was the most random thing in the world, but dropped her eyes and fished out a pendant from her shirt. It was a small stack of flat pebbles in a rough conical shape, like a miniature cairn pendant. There was a little mountain shrine just like that at his grandparents’ house growing up, although obviously much bigger. Well…that would work, if she believed in it.
He pointed at it. “That’s what protected you. Vampires can’t stand spiritual symbols.” He gestured around them, at the church. “Or holy places. You didn’t have to bar the door—he can’t get over the threshold.” That didn’t explain why she could (or why the pendant wasn’t burning her), but it must be something special about born vampires. After all, aside from the brief flash of teeth and glowing eyes, she was looking and acting completely human.
“Oh.” There was a long moment of silence.
“You mentioned ‘the reverend’?” Cheol had no idea why a religious leader would be helping a vampire, but…well, they’d already established this girl wasn’t normal.
“Oh, yeah! She runs the orphanage where I grew up,” she said. “I mean, calling it an ‘orphanage’ seems like a lot, since there were only 4 of us. But she was in charge of the church and she raised us. She told me to be careful of real vampires, and going out at night when I was bleeding, and…hunters…” Mi-ae glanced up at him almost sheepishly. “But I don’t live there any more. I moved from Semo to Seoul for college.” She palmed the tiny rock shrine pendant. “She was the one who gave me this and said never to take it off.”
There was a long moment of silence while Cheol digested all this. He noticed the hand that was holding the pendant was shaking. It was hard to tell in the low light, but she looked really pale. “Are you—”
She shifted a bit, cutting him off. “Um…do you have a phone? I dropped mine outside. Maybe we could call the police or something?”
Cheol leveled her a very unimpressed flat stare. “A vampire would kill a whole squad of police. Besides, it’s not like they would believe you if you told them you were being chased by a mythical creature of the night.”
“I don’t know!” Mi-ae flapped her hands. “Are you gonna…kill it? Or chase it off?” she looked up at him, biting her lip. “I mean, it’s what you do, right?”
Yeah, that would be suicide. Cheol could take a single normal vamp, but there was a whole nest of them just across the street that would get drawn out by the commotion, and wouldn’t they just love to kill a hunter out on his own. “You picked the worst spot to hide out, there a whole swarm—”
A boom at the front door. Both of them jumped. The door rattled again, shaking—then slowly began to creak open, pushing aside the pew.
A massive shoulder appeared through the crack, then an arm, and finally a whole giant shoved his way through the door.
Cheol was taller than almost everyone he’d ever met, and the man dwarfed him by at least half a foot. The man probably outweighed him by at least a hundred fifty pounds too—he was massive, slabbed with muscle and bulk, and bald. And human.
Cheol had automatically moved between the young vampire and the door, gently shoving her behind his back. He felt small hands knot the back of his shirt, and glanced down at his elbow to see her peeking under his arm at the giant.
“He’s human,” he muttered to her.
“Ahh, there you are, darling,” said a voice. Not the human—it came from a man dressed in all black standing in the churchyard, just outside the door. He leaned on a gold-tipped black cane, legs carelessly crossed over each other in a slightly awkward pose that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a male model. He was wearing sunglasses at night, a long black cloak, and a top hat.
Jesus. Cheol didn’t need any preternatural senses to know this guy was a vampire.
The giant shoved the pew aside, and the vampire distastefully prodded at the other half of the door with his cane, making it slowly creak open.
With the doors wide open Cheol could see them—the nest he’d been sent to spy on. All spilled out onto the street and looking with glowing eyes right at them, maybe twenty of them. Oh hell.
Another vampire lay on the ground, choking on ichor, the black boot of a female vampire tamped down on its chest.
“That’s him, that’s the one who was chasing me!” Mi-ae hissed, voice trembling. “On the ground!”
“So nice to see you,” the cane vampire crooned. “Born vampire. And…” he looked Cheol up and down, raising one thin eyebrow. It was hard to see behind the man’s glasses, but Cheol thought his eyes might have stuck on the scar under his right eye for a moment. “...Lucifer. Well, this is an unexpected combination.” He tapped his walking stick on the ground, once. “Hunter. You know what she is. Leave and no harm will come to you. This doesn’t concern your kind.”
Cheol fought to keep his voice from wavering. He mostly succeeded. “You’re attacking a helpless girl. That does concern me.”
“Who says we’re attacking her?” the man said. He gestured with his cane at the prone figure. “Only one person attacked her, and we’re taking care of him, aren’t we darling?” he asked the woman pinning the vampire down. She smiled, a slow, wicked thing, and nodded once.
“What do you want with me?” Mi-ael piped up, still peeking out from behind Cheol.
“We just want to talk~” the man smiled. “It’s not every day you meet a born vampire, you know. So rare. So interesting. We won’t hurt you.”
He was lying. Aside from the obvious fact he’d come with a whole pack of hungry vampires and used a human—probably a thrall—to break down the church door to get to her, Cheol hadn’t exactly been sent here to spy on the nest because they had been such nice, peaceful bloodsuckers. There had been a spate of disappearances near here and even a couple murders. The human police had found three exsanguinated bodies in as many weeks.
Greed was making this swarm sloppy. With the Mesmer they should have been able to play catch and release with a population as big as there was here, but here they were, killing people and gathering in giant groups on the street with visibly glowing eyes.
“Don’t listen to him,” Cheol murmured.
“No duh.” Mi-ae pressed herself further into his back. Strange, but before tonight he’d never thought he’d willingly allow a vampire to burrow between his shoulder blades. “What do we do??”
Cheol swallowed, watching the thrall as he stood slack-faced by the door, like a bellhop waiting to usher guests into a fancy hotel. The vampires couldn’t get in, but it was many hours until sunrise, and Cheol wasn’t sure he could take out this walking human tank. Mi-ae was trembling against his back, and he didn’t think it was all from fear—she’d lost a lot of blood. It was splashed on the pavement just outside the church, under the subdued vamp, and trailed into the church towards the altar. Probably how the swarm had been alerted that the born vampire was in here in the first place.
Cheol noticed movement at the edge of the crowd, and another slack-faced male human staggered forward, getting a gentle push from the vampire smirking behind him. Shit . The vampires were grabbing people off the street and mesmerizing them. On the other side of the crowd there was another human staggering towards them, female this time, face still blank. Okay, they were well and truly screwed.
Cheol weighed his options and reached into his jacket, slowly.
“Come now Lucifer, really? I’d heard you were a boy scout, but she’s a vampire, like us. Just give it up and go home.” The lead vampire drawled.
“Close your eyes.” Cheol breathed, and shoved Mi-ae back, towards the door he’d come in from. He unpinned the grenade he’d pulled from his jacket and hurled it through the open front door of the church, whipping around and shielding his eyes.
A blinding flash of UV-saturated light exploded from the flashbang, brilliant even against the back of Cheol’s eyelids. “Run!” he shouted, grabbing Mi-ae’s hand and yanking open the door towards the back of the church. Mi-ae stumbled behind him as they ran—her palm was slick with blood, but he managed to keep a grip on her fingers and they crashed through the darkened reception space into the hallway.
Cheol paused just long enough to slam the door shut and grab a nearby folding chair, jamming it under the doorknob.
A gigantic thwack hit the door and knocked Cheol back into the opposite wall, but the barricade held, just barely. Not for long if that mesmerized giant had anything to say about it.
“This way!” Cheol grabbed the girl’s hand again and sprinted down the hall, past the doorways and judgmental baby Jesus. He and Mi-ae slammed into the crash bar and out, spilling into the deserted cemetery. Not quite so deserted now—looked like the swarm had sent two vampires—one male, one female—to guard the back entrance.
The vamps shrieked, faces contorting past human proportions, and charged. Cheol was barely able to draw a knife from his belt before he was bowled over, the male vampire snapping at his neck. Cheol slashed and the vampire gurgled, its throat cut; a well-placed kick to the midsection sent it flying. Mi-ae had grabbed a metal pipe that must have been lying on the ground somewhere and was holding the female vampire off, frantically swinging her improvised club while the bloodsucker laughed. Cheol sat up and drew his gun, sending a dart right between the vampire’s shoulder blades. It shrieked, arching its back and bowing over backwards against the pain, and with a great thwack Mi-ae nailed it in the face with her pipe.
The female went down, and Cheol sheathed his knife, getting to his feet and reaching out his free hand. “Come on—”
Cheol was suddenly flattened to the pavement by a crushing weight. He thrashed, feeling claws and teeth scraping his back and the nape of his neck, blindingly throwing an elbow and trying to buck his assailant off of him. Fire dragged in lines across his shoulder blades as the bloodsucker’s claws got him, but he managed to roll over to his back, barely catching the vampire’s lunge at his throat by pressing his forearm against the new vamp’s neck. Shit , the vampire had probably jumped off of the roof right on top of him. Yellowed, elongated fangs snapped an inch from his throat, and he frantically tried to wrestle the vampire away from any vital points, grabbing its long hair with his other hand and yanking its head back. He’d dropped the gun.
Claws dug into Cheol’s side and he grunted, using all his strength just to keep the assailant at bay. Bloodsucker was strong—probably a few hundred years old at least. Vampires didn’t breathe but he could smell the thing’s putrid mouth and the dead, still air from its useless lungs—
There was a *thwip* sound and the vampire screamed, writhing on top of him. Cheol shoved it off, drew his knife, and stabbed it into the vampire’s heart, between its ribs. It gurgled and twitched, then lay still.
Cheol panted, then looked up. Mi-ae’s pale, round face blinked down at him, almost reminding him of the moon. His gun shook in her hand, and she looked from him to the dead vampire and back again. She looked like her skin might turn as green as her eyes soon. “...Thanks,” Cheol said, sounding almost as shaken as she looked.
Cheol heard movement coming around the church. They didn’t have time to catch their breaths. He jumped to his feet, grabbing her free hand and pulling her through the church gate to the alley with his bike. He yanked the tarp off, then grabbed the helmet and shoved it on Mi-ae’s head. She spluttered with startlement as he righted the bike, grabbed the barrel of the dart gun and took it from her slack fingers, and started the engine. “Get on!” He holstered the gun again and held out his hand.
Mi-ae only hesitated a fraction of a second before she took it and let him help her onto the bike behind him. The helmet knocked uncomfortably against the slash wound on his back, but he still grabbed her arms and pulled her closer, wrapping them around his waist. “Hold on.”
They tore out of the alley with the roar of a motorcycle engine. Cheol nearly crashed trying to take the turn too sharply—the weight and balancing was a lot different with two people, even if one of the people was tiny. He threw out a leg and managed to fight gravity, righting the bike before it swayed over, then yanked on the accelerator, hurtling them down the pedestrian-only road, which was thankfully deserted this time of night.
“Oh my god!” Mi-ae’s muffled scream sounded behind him, and she nearly crushed his ribcage with surprising strength as she held on.
Cheol managed to get them onto some actual roads without further incident, weaving in and out of traffic and between cars as they fled. That’s why hunters mostly rode bikes—you couldn’t outrun vampires in a car if you got boxed in.
Cheol hadn’t paid much attention to where they were going; he just gunned it and tried to lose the vampires he knew must be chasing them, even if he couldn’t see them. He felt them behind them, further and further as he and Mi-ae managed to gain ground on the road. Finally the pinpricks of vampire minds completely faded from his awareness and he slowed a bit, still fast but no longer reckless.
“You okay back there?” he shouted against the wind. During the chase Mi-ae’s arms had loosened from his waist somewhat, and she was slumped against his back, the helmet knocking against his spine.
“Urgh,” was her only reply, a sound he felt more through his back than heard.
“Hey, Mi-ae, are you…?”
A sway, and Mi-ae’s arms completely lost their grip. She started to list off the bike, and Cheol only barely caught her with one arm. He eased off the gas, managing to coast to a stop on the shoulder.
Cheol nudged down the kickstand and turned, catching the girl more securely as she tried to flop off the bike again. Her helmeted head lolled. She seemed semi-conscious.
Shit. Cheol stood and managed to pick her up off of the seat. They had stopped near a bridge overlooking a small river, with a deserted running track and benches lining the water, punctuated by clusters of small trees. He hefted her slight weight (she really was tiny) and ran down the slight grassy slope to a sheltered copse of trees. He gently laid her down on the grass, taking off her helmet.
Her face was all red from the warmth of the helmet and her bangs stuck to her forehead with sweat (another thing different from normal vampires—they wouldn’t flush or sweat). Her eyes fluttered open “...Lucifer?” she breathed, looking dazed.
“Yeah, I’m here,” he said, leaning over her and putting a hand to her head. He didn’t know what he was doing—he wasn’t a medic. But a hospital was out of the question; he had no idea what they’d find if they started operating, and he wasn’t taking any vampire around that much blood and that many wounded humans, no matter that Mi-ae had about the same amount of threatening aura as your average hamster. “How are you doing?”
“We…safe…?” she said, blinking up at him. God, her eyes really were enormous . He’d taken her for a middle or high schooler when he’d first seen her, but on closer inspection her face did seem older; she was tiny and had those big eyes and a rounded face, but the lines of her nose and jaw and brow were mature, somehow.
“Yeah, we got away. Can you sit up?” he said, putting an arm behind her back and helping her sit.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, then grimaced a bit as she sat upright. “Ouch.” She lolled against his shoulder, blinking up at him. “I feel…” confusion knotted her brow. “...hungry? Not here,” she patted her stomach, away from the wound, “but…somehow…”
Oh.
Well…she was a vampire, after all. And if she worked like other vampires, a dose of blood would fix her right up. Especially a hunter’s blood.
No. Wait. Was he seriously considering this?
No, no, no.
He was a vampire hunter. He never let vampires within a couple meters of him if he could help it, and he certainly didn’t go around offering his blood to them.
Mi-ae blinked up at him, her big (pretty) eyes a little dark, reflecting the night sky. Or maybe she was just hungry.
No.
She closed her eyes, nestling her head against his shoulder.
No!
“I’m gonna…hafta…go to sleep,” she slurred.
Cheol growled, yanking his jacket off and nearly knocking Mi-ae off of him.
“What—?” she yelped, apparently startled out of her stupor at least temporarily.
“Here.” He stuck out his arm, gritting his teeth.
Mi-ae blinked up at him, then down at his arm and…gingerly patted his bicep. “Yes yes, you’re very strong,” she said, a bit of a weird line to her mouth.
Oh my god.
“I’m telling you to drink, you weirdo,” he half-shouted. He looked around—nobody at all in sight, but still lowered his voice. “You’re half-dead. You need blood, and I don’t think they give transfusions at the hospital to your kind. So.”
The vampire gaped up at him, as if the concept of drinking blood was so foreign it had knocked something in her brain loose. “But you’re—! And I’m—! But I’ve never… What? What?”
“You’re a vampire.” Cheol said, fighting the alarm bells ringing in the back of his head that were warning him he’d gone completely off the deep end in one evening. “You’re in really bad shape. You need blood. I’m not knocking out some innocent person and bringing them to you to feed on. So. You need. To drink. My blood.”
Mi-ae’s mouth hung open—she stared at his face, then down at his arm, back at his face, down at his arm—then, slowly, hesitantly, brought her hands up to frame the crook of his elbow. “Um…I don’t know…how do I…?” she looked up at him with a completely nonplussed expression.
“I don’t know, you’re the vampire,” Cheol snapped, less irritated at her than mortified at himself. How had he gotten himself into this situation?? “Just…bite me, I guess.”
The vampire took a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay. Just…hm.” She stared at the crook of his elbow, where blue-green veins showed just beneath the surface. “Okay. Biting. Now.” She leaned down, towards his arm, Cheol tensed up, and—
That…wasn’t right.
First of all, Mi-ae hadn’t even bitten down hard enough to hurt. Second—and Cheol checked the tiny indents on his arm when she pulled back—yep, a very normal set of teeth impressions marked his arm, rapidly disappearing.
“Seriously?” he said, staring down at her. She looked mortified.
“I don’t know! How am I supposed to know how to do this?! I told you I’ve never done this before! And I don’t want to hurt you!”
Cheol sighed and reached into his boot, pulling out a normal (non-silver) pocket knife. “Here,” he said—and slashed across the crook of his elbow. Mi-ae gasped, but he’d barely applied enough pressure to break skin, drawing a thin line of blood across his arm. It didn’t really even hurt.
He silently stuck his arm out again, giving her a pointed look. He saw her visibly gulp, then she gently grabbed his arm again with her small hands. She looked down at his elbow, the blood slowly welling up from the tiny cut. Her breathing turned shallow—then stopped.
The air between them turned heavy, somehow. Her thumb started slowly stroking the sensitive skin on his inner forearm, prickling his senses, making his hair stand on end. He looked away from the cut to her eyes, and sucked in a short, reflexive breath. She was looking up at him.
Her eyes had gone green again, green like the sun dappling through foliage, ringed in glowing light around her pupils. His brain started to go a bit fuzzy at the edges, slipping like sand through his fingers, hazy and indistinct as the Mesmer started to take him. He tensed up as his training took over, his brain automatically fighting the compulsion, muscles knotting up until he forced them to untighten. He clenched and unclenched his fist, making himself relax and taking a deep, shuddering breath. Her eyes held a question as they met his. Her beautiful, beautiful eyes. She was so pretty—in the back of his mind Cheol knew this was the Mesmer talking, but even the rational part of his brain was taking note of the flush that had suddenly bloomed on her cheeks, on how nice the shape of her mouth was—he wanted that mouth to press against his arm and kiss bite him (Mesmer again). Cheol struggled to sift through all the thoughts and emotions mixing together like rain and spring water. He shut his eyes, took a deep, steadying breath, and opened them again, his training emptying most of the noise from his mind. He met her gaze (still pretty, but manageable without most of the compulsion) and nodded, once.
Mi-ae blinked, then turned back to his arm. The ghostly string that had snapped taught between them when he met her gaze didn’t fade—it hung there, invisible but tangible, as her lips brushed the crook of his arm. Cheol had to fight a startle, his senses both dulled from Mesmer and made intensely, excruciatingly sharp somehow.
Mi-ae opened her mouth and bit down.
It didn’t hurt. No, instead, Cheol felt an instant of pressure that might have turned into pain, but instead melted into the oddest tingling sensation, spreading up his arm to his shoulder, then his chest, and from there to his whole body. It felt like…like…
When he was a little kid in the countryside he’d gone on long, long hikes with the family dog around the wilds near his grandparents’ house. He’d gotten lost once and been out for hours, trudging up and down hills, crossing small streams, watching the sun get lower and lower in the sky as he wandered what seemed like endless woods and fields. Finally he’d managed to loop around close enough that he heard, just faintly, his father shouting his name. Cheol had run to him—the sheer joy of getting scooped up into those arms had been overwhelming. Cheol still remembered finally getting back to the house and lying down—he was safe, and cared for, and all his muscles got to relax and unclench all at once after being worked all day. The relief of lying there exhausted but safe, of finally getting to melt into the softness of his bed, was forever imprinted on Cheol’s brain.
It felt just like that, his whole body going wobbly and limp like he got to sit down on the world’s softest couch after a marathon. It was like he was made of warm, stretched taffy, and somehow tingling, as if all the atoms in his body were vibrating gently at once.
Distantly, his mind thought The bite must do this so tensing up doesn’t restrict blood flow but the thought curled through his mind like smoke through grasping fingers, dissolving. This was like nothing he’d ever heard—generally when he found vampires biting humans there was a lot more screaming and a lot less melting like soft serve ice cream.
The vampire—Mi-ae, Mi-ae, he thought with Mesmerized fondness—was drinking from his arm, her fingers still gentle on his skin. His head lolled back a little as another sensation, beyond physical, rolled over him, like his deepest self was touching hers. Like it was thrumming down the invisible red string connecting them.
Cheol had the absurd impression of biting into an apple—crispness, sweetness, tartness mixing on…not his tongue, but something. The image, feeling, whatever floated on the surface of his mind, green and fresh. In an unconscious, instinctive motion his free hand carded into Mi-ae’s hair, cradling her head, and she was so close he caught the scent of her hair—a soft, surprisingly warm human smell. An impression of spring floated over him too, tender green buds bursting out of branches, crisp air warmed to comfortably brush against bare skin; Cheol’s brain floated a thought before him—weird because apples are a fall fruit—as if that was what was wrong with getting strange spirit visions while he let a vampire feed on him.
He didn’t know how he was still sitting upright because it honestly felt like he could just melt into the grass beneath them and drift away, into the vision of (tart, refreshing, sour-sweet, flowers blooming, a plane cutting through a blue April sky) whatever the bite was doing to his brain.
We should stop.
He didn’t want to stop. He felt drunk. He felt pleasantly out of his mind. Nothing in his training had prepared him for this.
I’m going to lose too much blood—
A loud crack rent the air, and both he and the young vampire latched to his arm jumped. She scrambled away, wiping at her mouth and looking around frantically. Cheol jumped up (his legs feeling remarkably solid for that they’d had all the structural integrity of a melted candy bar a second earlier) reaching for his knife—until he saw a car lurch a bit on the nearby bridge, and his brain made the connection with the small flash of orange-yellow light that had appeared there a moment ago. A sports car had backfired on the road.
Mi-ae was still turning jumpily, looking for the danger. Cheol stretched out a quelling arm. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just a car.”
“...Oh,” she said, sheepishly wiping the side of her mouth again.
Cheol glanced at the bloodsoaked shirt stuck to her abdomen. He thoughtlessly reached forward to pull the hem up and check the wound—then flinched back. He wasn’t about to just yank her shirt up like that, medical reasons or not. The mortification welling up in him only got worse when she carelessly pulled up her shirt herself. Small, probing fingers felt around where the wound used to be. Her stomach was still bloody, but the skin underneath looked unbroken and brand new.
“Wow!” she said, her round eyes somehow going even rounder as she prodded around her abdomen. “That’s amazing!”
“Feeling better?” he said, looking away and trying to control his flush. He felt surprisingly good. Maybe a mite lightheaded from the blood loss—or maybe that was just his brain trying to reorient after getting fried by whatever vampire magic that had been.
“Yeah!” She let her shirt fall and wiped her hands on her jeans, then looked up at him with those giant, round eyes, giving him a bright smile. Her teeth were human and clean of blood, and her irises had mostly dimmed to normal, but there was the faintest glow of emerald light still simmering there. Cheol tasted the bare hint of green apple on his tongue. “Thank you so much!”
“Are you sure?” he blurted, all the while the last sane piece of his brain was screaming at him—What are you doing a vampire voluntarily stopped biting you and you’re asking her to reconsider —“Was that enough?”
“Yeah, I feel great.” She flexed her arms and grinned, looking down at them. “I feel really strong. Like I could pick you up!”
“Don’t try,” Cheol said quellingly, face flat. God, he was an idiot. He’d basically shown his throat to a rabid tiger, then asked it if it was really sure~ when it decided not to kill him.
He sighed, roughly shaking a hand through his hair. Okay. Woo. He had to get his mind back from vampire snack dreamland, and fast. He still felt a bit drunk. He would have time to unpack…all of that, later.
So Mi-ae wasn’t dying any more. Now what? He couldn’t take her home, not until he could be sure they weren’t being followed, or that the vampires didn’t know where she lived. His home, the hunting lodge, was out of the question for obvious reasons. And they couldn’t stay out in the open like this—not at night, and not when she was still covered in blood that apparently attracted normal vampires.
One problem at a time—they had to get fresh clothes and get her clean. Hotel or bathhouse—and only one of those was likely to be (1) private and (2) open this time of night. Hotel it was.
He briefly examined his arm. The bite, two very polite puncture puncture wounds, looked days old instead of seconds. Must be the healing power of vampire saliva. As a hunter his wounds healed faster than normal, but not that fast.
Mi-ae was suddenly close, too close, trying to look at the bite wound.
“Woah!” Cheol shied back. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“Woah, hey, sorry!” Mi-ae jumped, holding her hands up in the air. “Hey, aren’t you some kinda bigshot vampire hunter, Lucifer? I shouldn’t be able to sneak up on you, right?” She scrunched her nose at him grumpily.
“I don’t know, maybe having a vampire drink all my blood is having an effect on me,” he snapped. But he honestly didn’t think that was it, at least not directly. It wasn’t blood loss. It was more like he’d gotten a kick in the head from whatever magic that had been and hadn’t recovered yet.
“...Are you okay?” she asked, quietly after a long second. “It didn’t hurt too bad?” He’d compared her to a hamster in his mind earlier, but maybe a puppy was more apt, with eyes like that.
“...I’m fine,” he said flatly, feeling awkward for some reason. “...Anyways, I’m not the one who nearly fell off the bike ten minutes ago. Come on, we gotta find you somewhere to stay the night.” He bent and picked up his jacket from the ground, then headed towards the bike.
“Can’t I just go home?” Mi-ae said, trudging up the slope behind him.
“Can you guarantee none of the vampires know where you live?” Cheol said. “Or that your blood won’t let them track you down?”
“Ugghhh,” Mi-ae said. “How did this happeeennn? I fall and scrape my knee one time after dark and I’m some kinda…vampire fugitive?”
Cheol shrugged, glancing down at his phone. “It looks like there’s a hotel less than a kilometer from here,” he said. “You can wash up and…” he squinted at her.
“What?”
“...You do sleep, right?”
“Of course I sleep!” Mi-ae huffed. “I sleep, I eat real people food, I bleed when I fall down, and I go to college!” She clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Oh no! I have an 8 am tomorrow!”
I think that’s the least of your worries. Cheol put his phone away and got on the bike, nudging the kickstand back up. He held out the helmet to her.
“Do I have to?”
Cheol raised an eyebrow.
“Fine.” She said sulkily. She shoved the helmet on and got back on, her arms around his waist feeling strong and steady again. Actually, really strong. Cheol wondered if she’d start feeling and acting more like a vampire now she’d drunk blood. His hunter sense was picking up on more vamp energy than before, anyway.
The motel wasn’t too hard to find—it looked…non murder-y enough, if cheap, and if the unshaven middle aged man who checked them in thought two male and female college-age students showing up at midnight covered in blood and scratches (and smelling slightly acidic from vampire ichor) was weird, he didn’t say anything about it. “Two beds please,” Cheol said, tapping his wallet on the counter.
“We only got one room left, and there’s one bed. A queen,” the man said, chewing his gum and looking bored. Well. How cliché. Cheol would just have to sleep on the couch. Too bad Mi-ae probably didn’t sleep upside-down in her closet from the hanging rack like a bat.
Cheol sighed and slid cash over to the man. He glanced at the keycard the receptionist handed him. Second floor. That was pretty ideal—high enough it would make it hard for vampires to bust in the window, and low enough that if he or Mi-ae had to jump from that same window it wouldn’t hurt them too badly. He glanced over at the girl, who appeared to be vibrating with energy under the slightly yellow glow of the lobby lights. Actually, if Mi-ae were anything like a regular vampire now that she had blood, she could fall three times as far without getting hurt.
Cheol opened the door—just a regular motel room, nondescript. Not even a couch for him to sleep on, just a dingy maroon reading chair that was way too small for him shoved in the corner by the window, and of course the bed. At least it looked mostly clean.
Cheol let Mi-ae in behind him and closed the door, then ducked into the bathroom. He wet a washcloth and came out, gesturing behind him. “You shower first. I’ll go out and try to find you a change of clothes,” he said.
Mi-ae was staring at the bed (she hadn’t seemed to be paying much attention when he was talking to the man at the front desk) and startled when he spoke to her. “Huh? Oh…okay.” She nodded almost shyly and ducked into the bathroom, closing it behind her.
Mi-ae had bled over Cheol’s jacket, but thankfully his shirt and his pants seemed to have escaped unscathed. Cheol rubbed as much of her blood off his jacket as he could with the washcloth, then held it up. Well, it would have to do—he couldn’t hide his gun or silver blade without it, and he wasn’t about to leave the premises with only his boot knife. He scowled a bit, remembering the giant thrall. Maybe next time he should go out with a real gun. Human or vampire, silver bullets would be effective.
Cheol came back from his little excursion about 25 minutes later. He’d had a devil of a time finding a shop that sold clothes open this late—the only place around turned out to be a dinky little tourist shop with a liquor store in the back. He’d been able to buy an “I ♥️ Seoul” shirt (adult small—he’d genuinely looked over at the meager children’s section trying to mentally gauge Mi-ae’s size, but he figured it was better to err too big than too small). The only bottoms the shop sold were a suspiciously flimsy pair of leggings (“I ♥️ Seoul” written over the seat) and a few pairs of men’s swim trunks. Swim trunks it was. He’d bought her the smallest pair he could find, navy blue patterned with slightly doofy-looking smiling stars. New underwear was right out. And nothing in the shop was going to fit someone of his size.
He turned as soon as he shut and bolted the door behind him to find Mi-ae’s hazel eyes peeping at him around the slightly cracked bathroom door. He held the shopping bag out to her. “Sorry. All I could find.”
“Thanks!” Mi-ae said, snatching the bag and ducking back into the bathroom.
He looked up when Mi-ae emerged from the bathroom. The shirt seemed to fit okay (a little big), but she looked like she was swimming in the swim trunks. Good thing they had a drawstring, so at least she didn’t look like she was in immediate danger of her pants falling off.
“...Sorry,” he said again.
“No, at least there’s no holes in them!” she said, glancing down at herself. “Or…blood.” She pressed her mouth into a line, seemingly remembering what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. Cheol glanced down at her knee—no sign of even a scrape
“...Yeah,” Cheol said. He got up and moved to the bathroom. “I’m going to wash up.”
Mi-ae made an affirmative noise as he closed the door. The bathroom mirror had somewhat defogged (she must have had to wait a bit for him to come back after she finished her shower) and Cheol turned around as soon as he stripped his shirt off, craning his neck to try and see the damage to his back.
Five jagged slash wounds from the vampire’s claws marred his shoulders to his upper back. Hopefully the shower, along with his hunter immunity, would be enough to clean the wounds so they didn’t get infected with anything. He couldn’t be turned, but that didn’t make him completely impervious to MRSA or anything. Well, whatever. The cuts would heal, scar, and then the scars would be gone like they always were.
All but the first one.
Cheol caught sight of his face in the mirror and turned, scowling a bit, then stripped off the rest of his clothes and hopped into the shower. There was still plenty of hot water left—Mi-ae hadn’t hogged the tap, apparently.
Cheol scrubbed the blood and graveyard dirt off until his skin was pink and blissfully clean, then climbed out of the shower and regretfully put his dirty clothes back on. Though aside from the scratch wound blood on the back of his shirt his clothes had escaped mostly unscathed, at least compared to Mi-ae’s.
He was still toweling off his hair when he emerged from the bathroom to find Mi-ae…not there. What the hell?
He opened the door and thankfully didn’t have to search long. Mi-ae was walking towards him through the corridor, her small frame buried under what looked like the hotel’s entire supply of spare pillows. Well, at least he assumed it was Mi-ae. He couldn’t see her face under all the pillows, but he doubted there were any other 155-cm half-vampires running around the hotel that night. “What are you doing?” he said, wedging the door open with one of his boots before he jogged down the hallway and took the pillows covering her face.
“Oh, thanks!” Mi-ae said. She followed his nonplussed glance to the pillows. “For the pillow wall on the bed!” she said brightly. “Since there’s only one bed, we can stack these between us.”
“What are you talking about? I’ll just sleep on the floor.” My clothes are dirty and you’re…
“What are you talking about?” Mi-ae said as they went through the door and she unloaded her haul onto the bed, then flopped over onto it. “Have you seen the floor? It’s filthy! I saw some dead cockroaches over there.”
She missed it, but Cheol went a bit stiff at that.
“Besides, you got hurt because of me, and…” she glanced up at him shyly. Her black hair was somehow even darker in the low light, and damp from the shower. His enhanced senses could smell her even from over there—she smelled the same as he did, cheap hotel shampoo and bar soap, but beneath it was that scent he’d caught while she was biting him. Spring and tart apples. Cheol’s heart beat in his throat. “You saved me.” She held his gaze for a long moment, then turned and started stacking pillows. “So. No sleeping on the floor, mister hero.”
Honestly…the speech was nice, and Cheol really didn’t feel like sleeping on a dirty hotel carpet. But it was the bugs that did it. He would wish the vampires had gotten him if he woke up to a cockroach crawling over him in the night.
Cheol sighed and walked around the bed to the opposite side, plopping down on the other side of the Great Pillow Wall of Seoul. Mi-ae popped her face over and grinned at him—she looked like she was holding back a giggle. “Goodnight!” she said cheerily, seeming way too full of energy for—Cheol glanced over at the clock—1:30 am after a near death experience.
“Mmn,” he made a sleepy, noncommittal noise, closing his eyes as Mi-ae flicked off the lamp. He was beat. Normally he didn’t have much trouble staying up all night (he had to pretty often for stakeouts) but tonight…maybe it was the exhaustion from fighting and running, or maybe it was the bloodloss, but he felt like he could pass out and sleep for two days right there, in jeans in an uncomfortable hotel bed and next to a strange girl vampire. Hell, maybe it was the bare hint of apple and May sky that was mugging his brain now that she was near him and it was quiet, the feeling trying to drag him off to dreamland.
He was almost asleep when he somehow…felt her gaze on him. He cracked an eye open. “...What,” he murmured flatly, catching Mi-ae's gigantic eyes and full eyebrows peering at him over the pillows.
“...I’m guessing your parents didn’t really name you Lucifer,” she said.
Cheol let out a soft snort, closing his eyes again. “It’s a nickname,” he said, and despite himself the corners of his lips curled into the barest hint of a smile.
“Then what’s your real name? I’m Mi-ae—but you already knew that. Hwang. Hwang Mi-ae.”
“...it’s Cheol,” he said, and now the illusion of a soft spring day really did sweep him off, to the threshold of sleep. “...Kim Cheol.”