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It started as a bruise. About the circumference of a tennis ball, shades of deep blues invaded by tendrils of seaweed green, it sat square in the middle of his chest. He didn’t know how he got it, or how long it had been there for, so he figured he may as well ignore it. He was no stranger to bumps and cuts and scars he couldn't account for. If it bloomed while ignored, it could heal just the same.
It didn’t.
It grew, both in size and vibrancy, dismissed until one morning where Robin found himself struggling to draw deep breaths, a hand over his heart. The skin wasn’t raised, but it did feel slightly soft, like a half-empty blister. He could dig his nail in and tear the blue skin away like tissue paper, but he didn’t. Even through the gentle caress of his fingertips, he could feel the thrum of his own heartbeat. Not in the usual way, where the movement echoed through muscle and bone to knock at his skin, but like his heart was beating directly against that tissue-paper skin, and by tearing through he could touch it.
Now that it was something worth worrying about, he showed his mother.
‘Oh, my!’ she ran her fingers around the edge of the bruise, but mercifully avoided any direct contact. He didn’t want her to know just how squishy—how malleable—the flesh had become. ‘Did you get hit in the chest with something? Maybe a Rugby ball?’ his mother asked. ‘I have told your brothers to be more careful.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘No, mum. I wasn’t hit with a rugby ball, or a baseball, or the corner of a table. I don’t know ‘ow it happened just that it hurts.’
Elizabeth sighed. ‘Okay, well, best keep an eye on it. I’ll write you a note for PE.’
He forced a grin. ‘Awesome. Thanks, mum.’
Pushing the matter, admitting that he had been keeping an eye on it for a week now, and had known about the injury for two, would have worried her.
As the skin continued to darken, and soften, and wrinkle; as the vein-like green tendrils began to shift under his skin like thready worms; as the bruise continued to spread, and ache, and take on a smell; he knew who he actually needed to show. All the possibilities that ran through his head—flesh-eating bacteria, the bubonic plague, worms nesting between the layers of his skin, some kind of curse—lead him to the same conclusion. He would show Vlad, Vlad would ask Renfield to fix it, and Renfield would take far too much pleasure slicing, dicing and draining him until he had a cure. It wouldn’t be pleasant or hygienic, but it would work, and it’d probably be over with within a few hours. That beat a night on a waiting room chair at the hospital, or weeks being bounced between specialists with his worried mother.
Things didn’t quite go to plan, though, and the way Renfield’s eyes darted just about everywhere but Robin, and he wrung his hands together like a nervous child, caused something heavy to settle in his guts.
‘What is it, Renfield?’ Vlad demanded lowly. His eyes darkened the way they did now, when he got angry. One of many changes Robin was noticing in his friend as they counted down the weeks to his sixteenth birthday. Or, Robin counted down the weeks. Vlad brooded.
‘Well, you see...’ Renfield winced. ‘I might have... tried something out.’ His voice rose in pitch on the last word, his eyes scrunched shut. He was right to be afraid.
‘What?!’ Vlad demanded, loud enough for the walls to shake. He grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirt and bared his newly-grown fangs like he’d done it all his life. ‘What did you try?!’
‘An experiment,’ he whimpered. ‘The master tasked me with finding a way to get you to try human blood, and I thought... I thought...’
Vlad made a sound, something deep and snarling, and very clearly a threat. Robin swallowed down his fear. He was having a difficult enough time following the conversation—or more like the altercation—and panicking wouldn’t help. Still, he’d never seen Vlad like that before. So angry. So inhuman. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t directed at him, his pulse still quickened. He felt like prey.
‘You thought?’ Vlad asks lowly.
‘It’s just a little experiment.’ Vlad tilted his head, lips pulled back to show more of his glinting white teeth. Renfield shivered. ‘A—a needle to the chest—just a small one! Barely a prick, really!—the last time he slept over. I thought if you were going to bite anyone, it’d be him.’
‘So, you figured you’d go ahead and inject him with one of your foul, untested concoctions?’ He slammed his palm down on the bench beside Robin’s thigh. The wood splintered. ‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t carve you open!’ Vlad’s voice grew in volume. ‘One reason not to claw open your worthless chest and give the Branaugh’s your heart in reparations, then leave the rest of your corpse down here to rot!’ On the last word, a shelf of slime and insect husks launched from the wall, falling to the stone floor and ending the threat with a deafening crash.
‘I can fix it, I swear!’ Renfield sobbed, sliding from Vlad’s grip to beg on his knees. ‘Please, young master, give me a chance to make this right! I can do it! Please don’t kill me!’
Finally, finally, Vlad looked at Robin. In a blink, the fangs had receded and the black faded from his irises, but something angry and feral remained. Vlad would kill if he asked him to. It was a startling thought, enough so that he had to look away. Vlad would kill Renfield, right here and now—he just had to say the word.
‘He’ll fix it,’ Robin muttered.
Vlad nodded and Renfield scuttled away, stammering his gratitude.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Vlad’s voice was tight. He looked and sounded like himself again.
Robin pulled his shirt back on, followed by his leather jacket. It hurt to spread his arms—the pull on his skin burned—but he didn’t let it show. It’d been years since he felt like he needed to hide something from Vlad. The transformation was nearing, he reminded himself, so of course things were going to change. He wanted this. As much as he supported Vlad, he also wanted his best friend to embrace his vampire side. He hadn’t actually thought about what that would mean.
He squashed his fear and doubt down into something small. Something more akin to his regular feelings of anxiety and unease. ‘Just make sure he fixes this, yeah?’ he said. ‘Before mum finds out.’
Two days later and he was back at the castle. Back in Renfield’s lab. The man’s straight posture and proud grin lifted some of the lead from his guts.
Maybe it was all in his head, but the last two days had been the worst yet. The feel of his skin, throbbing and scorched, didn’t let up, even when he sat still. He was so afraid to take deep breaths that he couldn’t walk more than a couple of metres without needing a break. He lied to his mum, again, and claimed he’d tripped on the stone stairs leading up to Vlad’s room. He said Renfield had looked him over and diagnosed it as a cracked rib—Vlad backed him up. He got another note for PE, and his dad dropped him off at school both days on his way to work. He wished he could’ve enjoyed the special treatment, but all he could think about was how the mark had turned blue, and the curving tendrils where about to reach his collarbone.
‘A salve,’ Renfield said. He held up an old jam jar full of a dull green, almost-iridescent-in-the-candlelight, goop.
‘A salve?’ Vlad asked incredulously. ‘You stabbed him in the heart lord knows how many times with one of your massive needles, and you think you can fix it with a salve?’
Robin shivered. He didn’t know want to think about the fact he’d been given injections, not when he’d seen Renfield's workspace, and his tools. Vlad really had no tact.
The man nodded quickly. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing before, but I’ve tested this against the serums and against a sample of the breather boy’s DNA! It’ll work, I promise!’
‘So what do I ‘ave to do?’ Robin asked.
Renfield’s grin returned and the tension eased from his shoulders. ‘Just apply a little bit—say, the size of a bottle cap—to the darkest patch of skin, twice a day.’
‘For how long?’
‘Oh,’ Renfield’s eyebrows creased and he looked up in thought. ‘About a week, I suppose? Hard to say.’
A deep sound, barely audible, resonated from the back of Vlad’s throat.
‘But it will work, young master!’ the man squealed. ‘I swear on the master’s finest grave!’
-
He followed the instructions, and at first, things improved.
The salve cooled the skin, eased the pain, and just overall made it easier to breath. He could walk to school again, and sleep through the night. His family was relieved, though their’s paled in comparison how Vlad reacted when Robin bounded down the front steps to meet him on Monday morning, looking almost healed. There was a moment where Vlad raised his arms, and Robin thought he was going to hug him. There was a moment where Robin wished he would.
This improvement lasted all of three days.
When he woke up Wednesday morning, the skin on his chest felt... tight. Not all of it—not like it’d been stretched, or like the entire area was being constricted—but something more akin to getting a rubber band stuck around your wrist. It was as if he had thread under his skin, woven in a pattern like a spiderweb, and the thread had no give.
The lines on his chest, which still grew outwards from the flesh over his heart, now bulged like thick, over-filled veins. He tried to apply the salve, because that was the only treatment he had and it was what he’d been told to do, but when he tried to rub it in, the soft skin slid off like torn lumps of wet tissue paper. A black sludge, with a coppery odour and the consistency of puss, leaked out of the newly opened hole.
‘Chloe!’ he called. He was glad he’d left his door open last night—he didn’t want to have to march across his room and yell into the hallway. He didn’t want to move at all. He couldn't take his eyes off his reflection, and the way the black web seemed to pulse; or the slow, thick ooze, which must have been building up this entire time. He couldn’t deal with this alone.
Strangely enough, though, it didn’t hurt. There was no pain, anymore, only discomfort.
‘Robin, what do you—oh my God!’ She took a step back, hand over her mouth. At that point, she’d only caught a glimpse of him in the mirror. When he willed himself to turn around—to pull his own eyes away from the sight—her face turned green.
‘I’m not overreacting, then?’ he asked, voice edging towards panic. ‘This really is that fucked up?’
‘Robin, what did you...’ she trailed off, already knowing the answer. It had to be a vampire thing.
‘What do I do? Do I squeeze out the,’ he gestured frantically, ‘gunk, or do I tape some gauze over it? Would that be safer?’ He really didn’t want to leave it. The stench made his stomach churn, and no matter how much he stared, a part of his brain still rejected the sight. There’s no way this was real. This couldn’t have happened to his body. He couldn’t have... that... inside him.
But he could see it. Could smell it. Could feel how the veins—or whatever passages that shit was passing through—strain.
‘Is it contagious?’ Chloe hovered in the doorway, one hand on the frame like she wanted to bolt.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
He looked down at his chest—filthy and unnatural and wrong—then back to his sister. ‘No.’
In the end, they decided to drain the wound.
Chloe donned a face mask and a pair of disposable gloves, then began her examination. She gently prodded at the raised lines closest to the opening, forcing some of the blackness out onto a piece of paper towel and then spread it thin. The consistency was smooth, and despite the cloying, metallic odour, it didn’t contain a hint of red. Once Robin confirmed that the process hadn’t hurt, and Chloe was content that whatever biohazard she’d just extracted wasn’t part of an organ, she got to work in earnest.
The process looked, to him, like squeezing out toothpaste. He tried not to think about it beyond that. He tried not to think at all. The only sounds were their breath, and the creak of his desk chair each time his sister leant back to briskly deposit yet another piece of soiled paper-towel into a lemon-scented garbage bag.
She finished around the same time as their mother began calling them down for breakfast. He didn’t know if he should have been glad about that or not. His hands fisted his doona. The air, with its mix of rust and artificial citrus, tasted sour.
When she ran a disinfectant wipe over his skin, more sloughed off.
At the centre of his chest was a jagged patch of thin, silvery skin that shook in time with his heartbeat.
They stared at it. From that angle, he couldn’t properly judge the size of the thing, but the movement was unmistakeable.
‘You need to tell Vlad,’ Chloe said. She still had the wipe in her hand. Her fingers trembled.
‘I know.’
He didn’t tell Vlad.
By the time his friend arrived to walk with him and Chloe to school, he’d felt fine. Better than he had in weeks, in fact. Aside from the occasional, odd tingling sensation when his shirt brushed his skin, it was as if everything was back to normal.
It helped that Vlad didn’t ask about the treatment. Instead, he rambled about the guest list for the birthday party he didn’t want, but that his father was insisting on. Vlad’s birthday. Robin’s eyes widened. Vlad’s sixteenth birthday—and subsequent transformation into a proper vampire—was only a week away. All the more reason not to bother him, he reasoned.
When they reached the gates of Stokely Grammar, Chloe elbowed him lightly in the stomach.
‘What?’ he hissed, mindful not to catch Vlad’s attention. The other boy was a few paces ahead of them, hoping to catch Ms Harker before the first bell to discuss something to do with his ‘transfer’. Robin wasn’t totally sure what lie the family had spun, but it’d resulted in some kind of work-from-home arrangement for Vlad which would start next week and continue until at least the end of the school year. He tried not to let his envy show.
Chloe’s mouth scrunched in a pointed look—one he knew well.
‘Don’t, it’s fine. I’m fine.’
‘You’re not fine!’ she snapped. ‘What’s gotten into you? This morning you were nearly paralysed with fear.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘It wasn’t that bad.’
She elbowed him again.
‘Okay, it’s not that bad anymore. You got rid of all the nasty stuff and I feel fine, so there’s no reason to worry Vlad. He’s got enough on his plate as it is.’
‘That’s a poor excuse and you know it.’
Robin ignored her, eyes fixed on Vlad, who was chatting with their headmistress. As if sensing him, Vlad met his gaze and offered a quick wave before he was ushered into the woman’s office.
‘It’s okay to be scared, you know.’
He knew that better than most, he thought, but she didn’t need to hear that.
‘Ignoring it won’t make it go away,’ she added, her hand on his arm.
Again, he said nothing. Maybe he was scared, and maybe he’d avoided the subject because of it, but he really did feel fine. He was fine. The phantom wetness and the stench of rot would fade, and everything would work out.
-
He spat the first bite of his sandwich onto the table and scraped his nails over his tongue. ‘Ugh.’
‘Robin, that’s disgusting,’ Vlad reprimanded, his own sandwich held just in front of his face, uneaten. ‘At least grab a napkin.’
‘Sorry,’ he muttered, face hot. He pulled a handkerchief—the one his dad insisted he carry, even though he was resolutely against blowing his nose into the same piece of fabric all day—out of his pocket and cleaned up. ‘Didn’t mean to put you off your tuck.’
‘What’s wrong with yours?’ Vlad asked.
He scrunched up his nose. ‘Recon mum accidentally used the old meat. It tastes rancid.’
Vlad put his own sandwich down, picked up Robin’s and sniffed it. ‘Smells fine,’ he said, though Robin swore Vlad’s nose wrinkled, if only slightly. He took a bite, then frowned. ‘Tastes like ham, what are you on about?’
Robin snatched it back. His eyes lingered on the missing corner, the slight indent of Vlad’s teeth and how the bread around it appeared damp, and considered taking another bite. Then he caught a whiff of it. Heavy, bitter, sour.
The stench reminded him of when a rat died inside the shed while his family were on holiday. It was the kind of smell that shook your vision, ripped the air from your lungs and made your stomach turn inside out. Like ammonia and sewage and something sharp, which tears at your nose and throat.
The smell of death.
‘Nope.’ He shook his head and stuffed the sandwich back into its resealable bag. ‘No way. You’ve gone mad.’
‘It tastes fine.’
‘It tastes dead.’
This made Vlad’s eyebrows raise. ‘Dead?’ he asked slowly.
Robin nodded. ‘Yeah. Reminds me of a dead animal.’
‘It is a dead animal—that's what all cooked meat is—but you shouldn’t be able to taste it.’ Vlad turned in his seat, entire body facing Robin, and examined him.
Robin shifted, no longer able to meet his friend’s intense, searching eyes, and fiddled with the sleeves of his jacket. He knew Vlad couldn’t read his mind—or if he could, he didn’t—but that’s how it felt right then. Like he was being carved into. His insides pulled out and arranged on the table in such a way that each detail could be catalogued and judged.
‘Robin,’ Vlad began, then paused, licking his lips. Robin followed the movement. Vlad’s apparent nervousness only heightened his own until he was no longer playing with his sleeves, but digging into them with his nails. He couldn’t care less about the marks in the leather. ‘Do you know why vampires have such... unique feeding habits? And I don’t mean blood, I mean food. Insects, raw meat, steaks made from cows slaughtered that day and so barely cooked that they still bleed.’
Robin shook his head.
Vlad ran a hand through his hair and averted his gaze. The urgency was gone, replaced with discomfort, and maybe a bit of shame. He wished he could interrupt and tell Vlad not to worry about it, that he didn’t need to tell him anything that would make him feel even worse about himself—and his race—than he already did, but Vlad had to have brought this up for a reason. It was important.
‘We need fresh meat because,’ he closed his eyes, ‘only fresh meat tastes alive.’ When he looked back, the shame was unmistakeable, as was the plea. A plea for understanding. For acceptance. The carry over from his constant, pervasive fear that someday all this vampire business would get too much, and Robin would throw him away. It didn’t matter how many times Robin reassured him that he knew Vlad couldn’t help what he was, and that it wouldn’t matter regardless, because vampires were cool, it did nothing to alter Vlad’s own self-image. It didn’t stop the projection.
He had the urge to grab Vlad’s hand, but he supressed it. That wasn’t appropriate, not in the middle of the school lunchroom, and especially not now. He settled for a smile. ‘That makes sense, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Processed meat would ‘ave all the blood cooked out, yeah?’
Vlad’s shoulders sagged. ‘Something like that. Processed meat, meat that’s been in the freezer, meat that’s been cooked all the way through...’ he bit his lip. ‘It tastes bad. Rotten.’
‘Rotten?’
‘It’s like any attempt to preserve it doesn’t matter. We can always taste the age of a corpse.’
Robin shuddered. ‘So, you think this is a side-effect, then?’
Vlad nodded. ‘My own tastebuds have already started to change,’ he said as he peeled open his own sandwich, revealing the contents to be some kind of lumpy, white mush, specked with brown. The brown flakes varied in size and thickness, which some resembling pieces of cellophane, and others like short, thick hairs.
‘That’s...’ he couldn’t finish the statement. Bile rose in his throat and he struggled to swallow it back. This had to be the third time that day he’d almost thrown up.
Vlad shrugged. ‘It’s easier to stomach than the alternatives, and more discreet.’
‘You’re sending me ‘round the bend, mate. Just drink blood.’
Vlad ignored the comment and finally bit into his lunch, giving an exaggerated moan of enjoyment.
Robin looked away. It didn’t matter that he had nothing to eat—his appetite was as dead as the cockroaches in Vlad’s mouth.
‘Aside from that,’ Vlad paused to swallow, ‘have there been any changes?’
Memories of that morning flooded back. He’d pushed it out of his mind, but now it felt urgent. ‘Yeah. Yeah, there ‘ave. Can I come over after school for a chat?’
‘Of course.’
-
‘...in?’
He blinked.
The wind jostled his hair, and the buzz in his ears wasn’t a buzz, it was dozens of voices. The sun was too bright, so he shielded his eyes with his hand. His arms were cold. Why were his arms cold? Where was his jacket?
‘Robin?!’
Vlad.
The body in front of him was blocking the onslaught of light, and there was no residual heat on his arm or on his face. That wasn’t right. Vlad hadn’t been there a moment ago. He hadn’t just appeared, either. Robin ran his hands over his face and tried to think, but his brain was underwater. A current pushed against his thoughts, and fighting it, trying to follow any one train of thought or thread of memories, was a slow and difficult process.
He fisted the front of Vlad’s PE shirt, just below the crew neck, so his friend couldn’t disappear while he tried to figure things out.
Vlad spoke, he heard him, but the words made no sense. Vowels, consonants, syllables—he recognised the parts, and he knew they meant something, but everything was moving too quickly. He couldn’t keep up. Couldn’t process it all. He closed his eyes and listened to the familiar, undeciphered sounds.
When he opened them again, Vlad and his halo of afternoon sun had been replaced by a dimly-lit wall of chipped, egg-shell coloured paint. Cool, damp air skittered across his bare shoulders and brought goosebumps to his arms. He shivered, then someone grabbed his forearm.
Robin looked down at Vlad, knelt in front of him with blood on his hand. Vlad hadn’t looked up. Did not seem aware of the eyes on him. He used one hand to hold Robin steady while the other brought the small, square packet of a single-use disinfectant wipe up to his mouth and tore it open with his teeth. His face heated up as his mind formed the beginnings of a dirty joke, but he pushed the thought to the side. This wasn’t the time. Instead, he took stock of his surroundings, realising he was sat shirtless on a bench in the boys’ change rooms, with Vlad mopping what was very clearly blood, not black ooze, away from the papercut-thin slices that ran along the trail left by that morning’s bulging might-have-been-veins.
Vlad’s eyebrows were pulled in, his mouth a tense line, and his eyes darted along the expanse of skin, scanning the cuts and wiping any blood away before droplets could even form. Robin didn’t know how they got there. In fact, the more he thought, the less he knew about anything that had happened since about half-way through lunch break.
His sandwich had tasted funny. Vlad explained how vampire tastebuds differed from those of a breather. At some point after that they’d gone to PE class, and he remembered bits and pieces—walking onto the school oval, their teacher explaining something, and talking to Vlad. He didn’t remember getting changed, the warm-up game, what—if anything—they'd played after, or what he’d spoken about with Vlad. Did he speak? He only remembered Vlad’s voice. The gaps weren’t obvious, more like his memories were gradually fading into each other. As one lost detail, the clarity would rise in another, making it impossible to pinpoint exactly when he’d tuned out of one moment and into the next.
He was brought back to the present by the scrape of the clunky metal first aid kit, which rested beside Vlad’s knees and moved as he dug through it, carelessly shoving Band-Aids and sick bags out and onto the floor.
‘Vlad?’ he said, trying to keep his voice low so as not to startle his friend.
Vlad’s body froze as his eyes shot up to meet Robin’s. His expression morphed quickly from wide-eyed shock to lax relief—shoulders dropping and mouth falling open in a sigh—before his jaw snapped shut with an animalistic snarl.
Robin swallowed and curled in on himself instinctively, only to cringe at the stinging pain that shot through his skin. He didn’t feel injured before, but he did now. It stung and burned in exactly the way he would have expected had he paid the injuries any mind. Like he was covered in long, thin papercuts.
Vlad’s rage didn’t lessen. He yanked Robin down by his hair, the movement harsh and his grip painfully tight. His face was held only a couple of inches from Vlad’s. He could see how black the vampire’s eyes were, and when he glanced down, he caught the flash of sharp, white fangs.
‘Don’t,’ Vlad started, voice deep and accompanied by an unnatural echo, as if another was speaking underneath it, ‘ever scare me like that again.’
Released from the grip, Robin watched, froze, as Vlad slumped in on himself. The picture of exhaustion.
‘What happened?’ he asked, once he thought he’d given his friend enough time to collect himself.
Vlad sighed, then gave him a look very similar to the one he’d received from Chloe a few hours before. ‘I don’t know, what did happen, Robin? Why did I have to pull the first aid kit off the wall for the first time this year? Why did I have to use a whole packet of gauze? Why is your PE uniform soaked with blood?’ He gestured broadly at Robin before throwing both hands up in frustration. ‘Why did you go catatonic in the middle of a game of Farmer Sam and have to be dragged here for me to clean up?’ He crossed his arms and leaned them on Robin’s thighs, pausing to glare up at him in a way that was more petulant than angry. ‘Oh, and if anyone catches us in here, it’s your turn to think of something good, because I was supposed to take you to sickbay for your bloody nose,’ he quirked his eye on the last word, ‘so I’ve already told my share of lies today.’
Vlad’s words, along with his closeness, made Robin startlingly cognizant of his state of undress. In this position, he could think of a few very convincing lies, but he didn’t say that. Again, it wasn’t the time. This was serious, he reminded himself, digging through his brain for any memory of that stupid kid's game. Of having blood on his shirt. Of Vlad bringing him here.
There was nothing.
More concerning was his total lack of concern. He understood, on a conscious level, that he should be freaked out. His condition was deteriorating. Today alone, a mysterious black sludge had leaked from his chest, cold-cuts became his enemy, he’d had multiple blackouts, and his skin burst open where there hadn’t even been cuts, before. This was, objectively, unnatural, and likely a sign of worse to come. Yet, even as he thought this, he wasn’t worried. He was calm. Content, even.
He wanted to reach out and touch Vlad’s face, since they’d never sat this close for so long before, and the only thing that held him back was his own guilt. Anxiety flickered in the other boy’s eyes, which he hated, both because he’d caused the emotion and because he couldn’t share it. Vlad had enough to worry about without him bleeding on everything.
Robin gasped. He put his hand over one of Vlad’s and turned it over, pleased when he didn’t meet any resistance. ‘That’s my blood, yeah?’
‘Obviously.’
‘Why aren’t you reacting to it? Shouldn’t I have fangs in my neck right about now?’
Vlad stared at their hands and didn’t say anything for a long moment. ‘It’s like lunch meat,’ he finally admitted.
‘What is? My blood?’
Vlad nodded. ‘It smells... old. Not like the bottled stuff that dad keeps in the wine cellar, but... it’s like...’
‘Yeah?’
Vlad leaned his forehead on his folded arms, and Robin could no longer see his expression. ‘It smells coagulated. Like blood that’s been spilled on the ground and them left to cool.’
Robin shivered, more from Vlad’s tone than the words themselves. The words didn’t seem to reach him. He knew what they meant, but at the same time, they meant nothing at all. Vlad spoke like each word was a falling anvil, and he was waiting for them to land, afraid to see what they hit.
Robin didn’t say anything else, and eventually Vlad got up.
They changed back into their regular uniforms in silence, then snuck out front to sit at their usual bench and wait for Chloe.
Vlad had become pensive, and Robin wanted to comfort him, but as he began searching for the right words, his vision glowed around the edges, like looking at a backlit mirror. The rustle of trees, the burr of wind, and the distant chatter all merged into one droning hum, and he didn’t wonder why because he didn’t think anything at all. He just felt.
He felt content.
-
Everything—sight, sound, touch, smell—all warped together. He could smell the red of his doona cover. He could feel the brush of Chloe’s words along his neck and cheeks as she whispered.
Her fingertips were on his chest—delicate, firm, sure—and he accepted the care. The sense of safety. He accepted it, even as some instinctual force assured him that he didn’t need it.
A sound like peeling tape. The prickle of air against fresh, sensitive skin. He was shedding, he thought, like a snake.
Chloe’s voice grew panicked. The one that responded—steady, soft, deep—had a frantic edge, though the speaker tried to mask it. Robin wondered what they were so worried about—he found the whole situation quite funny. A human moult!
Chloe wiped the centre of his chest with something soft and damp. His ribs thrummed against her hands, like small, rhythmic earthquakes.
His heartbeat.
Wait. That shouldn’t be there.
He didn’t need that anymore.
‘Vlad,’ Chloe said, and the name pulled his attention more firmly into the room. ‘You have to do something! What’s wrong with him?’
Vlad’s reply was low, measured, and Robin could only grasp fragments. ‘...not healing... Renfield... doesn’t make sense...’ His words ebbed in and out like a tide, and parts were lost under the waves.
He let the waves pull him under.
He was in a box. One that was narrow, and made of a dark, rich wood.
He turned his head, the outer-wall slipping away and making him feel exposed—hunted—until he saw him. Vlad. His pale skin glowed under the non-existent light, and when their eyes met, his showed only contentment. There was no room for fear, or panic, or doubt in their shared grave.
A death was not an ending.
The oak whispered. No, it wasn’t the coffin, those were voices. Hundreds of them.
They spoke of candles. Scratch marks. The echo of footsteps. They muttered nonsense, equations, and songs he hadn’t heard before but that reminded him of nursery rhymes.
A few of the voices were familiar. He didn’t fixate, instead allowing them to wash over him with the rest.
-
The first thing Robin noticed was the cold. It seeped into his back, made his bones ache and his muscles harden. He curled his fingers, slowly, and they dragged along the icy surface. Metal, he decided. His mind still hovered somewhere between the here and the other place—the one with the dirt and voices and Vlad—but his senses were returning. Bleach. Ammonia. Rust. The stench was unpleasant, but not enough so to be worth reacting to. His nose didn’t even twitch. It was bad, and it was there, and that was it. So simple. He wondered why his mind wasn’t always this quiet. Everything was so easy like this, and so peaceful.
Then, the quiet ended. The peace broke.
The voices hadn’t left him. In fact, they’d multiplied, and now crowded the edges of his mind with whispers that climbed over one another until none of them made sense. He caught fragments—take it, peel it away, not yours, catch him, bleed it dry, it’ll rot, it’ll grow, it’ll live—but as soon as he tried to focus on one, another clawed at his ear. None spoke directly to him—it didn’t even feel like they knew he was there—but all demanded to be heard. He could do that. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t much of anything.
Over the murmur, another voice cut through, louder than the others. Closer.
Vlad.
Robin would know his voice anywhere, he’d been hearing it for so long. I’d listened to it laugh, and whimper, and yell, and cry. He’d heard it crack with puberty, before settling into something deeper—more mature—but still comfortably familiar. He’d heard it speak English, and Romanian, and French, and Welsh. It was because of this that he was still able to recognise it, even as just a sporadic and tuneless hum. Vlad’s was the only voice, among hundreds, that wasn’t speaking. It was also the only one that sounded like it was right beside him—lips against his ear.
Renfield’s voice rattled somewhere to his left. High and stammered. Afraid. It carved the line between the outside world and whatever was in his skull. He forced himself to be present, if only enough to hear Vlad’s response.
‘—poisoned him, you worthless little rat! If he doesn’t make it through this, I’ll tear you apart and make you eat your own—’
He let his head roll towards them and forced his eyes open. His vision was blurry and the handful of candles that lined the walls burned far too bright, but he could make out the sharp angle of Vlad’s shoulders. Renfield cowered somewhere out of sight.
An overreaction, Robin thought dimly. Vlad was always this now—sharp, impulsive, protective. It wasn’t necessary—he was fine. He’d accepted it. Whatever this was, it’d threaded itself through his muscles, his veins, and blended so seamlessly with the core of his being that there was no reason to extract it. He could feel it there in the same way he felt his tongue. A part of him—one he was used to and would be uncomfortable without.
Catch it. Hurt him. Into the grave. Feed. How sickening.
There it was, again—that noise. The one that shook his chest in a rhythm that wouldn’t stop and he didn’t need. That beating.
Then Vlad was beside him. Pale-faced—his frantic, tired eyes darted over Robin’s chest. When their eyes met, the relief was palpable, and he had a distant twinge of guilt. Vlad hadn’t needed to worry, but he did so anyway. He always worried too much.
Robin lifted a hand, which trembled from the effort, and cupped Vlad’s cheek. His skin was warmer than his own, and it grounded him enough to shape words. ‘It’s okay,’ he murmured. It sounded hollow, even to his own ears. ‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’
‘Robin.’ Vlad’s voice cracked. ‘I don’t—I—I—’
He traced the curve of Vlad’s jaw with his fingertips, as he slid them lower. Vlad’s voice—his real voice, not the one still humming in his head—went silent as Robin pressed his thumb against his lips. If he had any other reaction, Robin didn’t see it. His focus shrunk until there was nothing but soft lips, a warm mouth, and the smooth edges of a fang.
A prick. A shock of pain.
Blood.
His blood, still liquid and red, at least in his fingertips, shone even more vibrantly as the vampire’s face changed pallor.