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Jonathan Emerson had never been much of a smoker, not any more or less than any man of his generation had been coming up, even without the changing attitudes towards the health of the products.
But tonight, he felt like he'd like one.
He sits on the porch, the cabin quiet behind him. The long day of rearranging furniture and clearing out the second bedroom ached in his shoulders and knees, and he was thankful it was soon to be the height of summer. If his daughter had waited any longer the damp of fall and winter would have slowed him considerably. He might still have to ask her, and his older grandson, to help him lug the heavier boxes out when they got here.
He fills the briar-wood bowl of his pipe. A gift, for his last birthday. She had been mighty generous lately, and he had to wonder if she knew something he didn't.
She always did as a matter of course, but maybe it was something specific this time.
The night grows around him. Clouds skudding in from the water signaled there was going to be a hell of a storm in a day or so, if not sometime the next morning. For now, they show him a rainbow of reds and golds and pinks and purples in the last of the day's light. The sun dies with a last gleam.
He can't say he expected the footsteps as they move up his drive, but he also can't say he's surprised.
...It's the eldest. As far as he can tell, anyway. Looked so, turned in their mid forties, at the earliest. The skin lays over the muscles and bones like glove, rouge coloring its cheeks and warm enough. The hair lightly tousled in a style that might fit someone a decade or so younger, the middle-aged trying to capture what it had only just lost. The smile is white, wide, and fits into the face like it could make no other expression.
Fits better than the suit, at any rate. Alive for who-knows how long, and still can't be bothered to look into a good tailor?
Jonathan watches it as it comes out of the gloom like a shadow itself, detaching from the darkness under the trees that line the road up to the yard. The yellow of the shed's security light shines off the edge of the glasses like a pale copy of the sun long gone behind the hills.
It stops at the arch of the fence, the entrance to the property. Above, the name Emerson sits burned into ash wood and wreathed with old barbed wire, and both sides of an elk jaw.
It steps forward and crosses.
Jonathan takes another long puff of his pipe. The tobacco was also a gift, given at the same time. It burns as bright in his lungs as the embers in the bowl.
"She said you tended to birth smarter whelps than you could afford for yourself," he says.
It stops just short of the porch steps. The shined leather loafers dusty from what must have been the short, performative walk up the road.
The smile doesn't leave its face when it tips its head to him.
"Mr. Emerson."
Jonathan tips his head as well.
"Mr. Lawrence."
Jonathan taps a single bony finger on the armrest of the chair he’d pulled up.
“Getting a little bold.”
The vampire offers a shrug. “A little risk often goes a long way. I’m sure as a businessman you can understand.”
“Do I.”
It looks around, movements slow as it does, likely for his benefit so he can see it doing so. Tracing the shape of the gables and marking the positions of the windows, the chimney. Appraising the ends of the porch where bundles of herbs and wind chimes and the occasional bone hung on rough-twisted twine. Jonathan lets it; he too notes as it pauses just slightly on the thick, iron train spikes hammered into each corner of the door frames, or the many big, clay pots of flowering garlic bulbs.
“It’s better to think of it as such,” it says lightly. “It makes both our lives easier.”
“Does it,” Jonathan replies.
For a moment, the human mask gains a crack. A small one, the tiniest of tensing around the eyebrows and twitch of the corner of its mouth. Still, it holds its composure with all the grace of an actor when the show must go on.
“Mr. Emerson,” it begins in a polite manner, “I won’t insult your intelligence by upholding pretense - you’re owed more respect than that.”
“‘Parently not enough not to be disturbed in my own home.”
Its eyes narrow. “Then I’ll make as little of a disturbance as you can tolerate. Mr. Emerson, let’s not beat about the bush - you’re a venerable huntsman in your own right, and have no doubt brought up several proteges. I hold no illusions as to what their purpose is, but am not so petty a creature as to come with some misplaced judicial vengeance for my kin-in-kind. However-”
It pauses, and its gaze settles on Jonathan. It’s dark enough now that the light is gone from the sky and the vampire is a blackness against shadow in front of him. As it speaks, the shine of the shed’s light catches on each white tooth.
“-you yourself aren’t getting any younger.”
Jonathan sits back in his seat.The temperature is falling quickly with the night, starting to eat away at his warmth, sapping it slowly. His old joints are already feeling rusty and he is very aware of how close it’s standing to him.
But still, it moves no closer.
Jonathan raises the pipe to his lips and draws a breath in. “It’s gettin’ chilly out here. Whatever you came here wantin’, spit it out, boy, ‘fore my old bones can’t take the dew, and my ears get tired of you.”
The creature tilts its head, obfuscating its face even further. From within the darkness, two little points of amber glow up like stoked coals, flickering for a moment before dying away. It seems to be collecting itself from his words before continuing.
“I come with an offer and a warning. The first can, if it must, be negotiated. The second…”
Something beyond the fenceline moves. A shape between the trees, pacing for a moment, pausing, and then returning to its movement. It seems with each pass to be coming closer to the fence, but never stepping out into the road, or into the open of the field. Jonathan can’t make out its form, but he imagines that if the moon were out, the light would catch the same tawny gold as its master’s in its eyes. Jonathan wonders which of them it is. He’s got a fair idea.
He wonders if it’s got half as much gumption as its master. Or maybe just twice the sense.
He raises an eyebrow at the vampire to say what it will. The smile is back in place, stretched over bones like rubber too small for its frame.
“An equal exchange. I am ready and willing to put you up anywhere of your choosing with full and complete control of the property to do with as you wish, in exchange for leaving this one.”
He stays silent.
It continues. “To be realistic, Mr. Emerson, it’s a wonder you’ve managed to hold onto this place as long as you have. Such a large property is of little use to someone not making anything of it agriculturally, and since it’s private I can only imagine that both hunting and fishing clubs as well as the local wildlife and conservation groups have been an endless bane on your life. And so lonely, with neighbors so few and far between. I do offer my late condolences as well.”
Jonathan’s brow twitches, fingers tightening around the bowl of the pipe. Its warmth is the only thing warm in his body, seeping into his old fingers.
“If she were still with us, I’m sure the Mrs. would take such matters into deep consideration. Given her position in all of this, even though she was human. Mostly.”
Jonathan leans forward, voice a growl. “Keep my wife out of your mouth. You’re dealin’ with me, an’ me alone.”
He wonders how many teeth it can show him in one expression as the smile widens to an almost sickening degree at his irritation and upset. Damned thing.
“Cut the bullshit and finish the hell up. It’s gettin’ late.”
It simpers a small chuckle. “For you. But that’s all, that is my offer in full, believe me or not. Simple enough. You vacate, and live the rest of your life in as much peace and quiet as can be reasonably assured.”
“And your warning?” Jonathan hedges.
Once more, it looks over the cabin, though this time it looks less like it’s seeing the building and more like it’s seeing past it. Something else in its gaze, rather than what’s right here. A breeze kicks up, cool and sighing through the bows of the trees. The bones in the chimes hanging from the porch rattle gently.
“Do you believe she cares for you?” It asks.
Jonathan blinks, but it doesn’t give him time to respond.
“I can surmise, at least on a surface level, what she’s getting out of it, but you?” It questions. “I think, Jonathan, that you’re really not being given a fair trade.”
It sighs, an exaggerated sound, full of put-on pity. “My warning is hardly a warning at all in the end. Just a statement of cruel fact. Whatever her ends for you may be, I can guarantee she cares as little for you as you would a particularly annoying insect, and you're entertaining enough for her in the moment that you believe she thinks of you as anything greater than that. A distraction, an interesting speck to look at for a while before she wipes you clean from her presence. There is a reason she calls herself the Widow, you know.”
The breeze dies, the chimes and mobiles and wind-spinners in the yard falling silent. The branches of the trees do not move, the frogs and crickets normally filling the night air with their chorus completely and utterly gone.
In the woods, the pacing, darting shape has gone as still as the world.
The sound that starts in Jonathan’s throat is a breath. One that catches behind his teeth in stuttering gasps, like it can’t quite get out in one go. And then it draws up his voice behind it, barking, rough sounds, and finally, Jonathan Emerson lets loose his laughter.
He laughs. He laughs until it hurts, his face split into a grin and holding his middle. He laughs right into its face that’s staring at him with wide eyes that are anything but human.
“Oh! Oh, hell!” Jonathan gasps. “You actually thought you had somethin’ to say. Hauled your sorry excuse of a corpse all the way out here too, my goodness.”
He looks down on the surprised face of the thing pretending to be a man.
“You think I don’t know all’a that?”
Whatever facade it had been maintaining in the face of his nonchalance, breaks. With a sound like ripping flesh and cold, wet breath, it snarls. The once pleasant face contorts into a mask of death, thin, pale lips pulling back to show long fangs that glitter like dim opals in the night. Amber gold eyes gleam out from under its brow with all the hate of a devil in the pits. It surges forward, hands curling into wicked claws that seek to grab and rend and tear him limb from limb.
You stupid old bastard! I’ll-!”
It doesn’t finish that sentence.
Until now, it had not yet touched the house. Come across the line separating the yard from the drive, crossed the threshold of the fence where, ostensibly, there was an open welcome to any who came with friendly intentions. Whatever good-will there had been, twisted and selfish as it was, is gone now. And it had closed that final, small distance by setting a foot on the first step of the wooden porch of the Emerson cabin.
The world around them roared.
Like a hurricane wind, the trees in the woods shudder under an invisible force that hurls itself up, limbs thrashing and roots ripping themselves from the ground like writhing pythons and twice as thick. The scream and snap of tearing greenwood combines with the sudden, cacophonous shrills of animals - every animal that had a voice to call out - waking and fleeing. Clouds of birds fly, blind, into the black sky, deer leap past right out into the open field, more afraid of the building terror of a darkness deeper than the faceless moon than being seen.
The earth itself around the cabin rumbles and shifts. The shadows of its crevices and corners grew, until like a blanket it covered everything. Snuffing out the pale electric light inside and guttering the illumination of the security lights. Creaking, groaning like a bone bending until it breaks, the wood of the walls and roof tremble, threatening to bring itself down on the offending, hated, disgusting foot that dared so much as brush the foundations of the place. Jonathan has moved as well, standing from his chair and gazing up with eyes wide. He could do nothing else.
The dark shape that had hidden itself in the woods, watching, waiting, threw itself out of the miasma of rage and nature, finally revealing the shape of a man.
No. A boy.
Jonathan only has a moment to see it, pale eyes and hair like ivory in a big black coat, before it’s gone again, down the turn of the road. Escaping with the wits of the animals before him.
More wits than his sire.
Maxwell Lawrence - or, the being that claimed that name, regardless of who or what he had been for a long, long time - had retracted. Scrambled away from the porch, the whole cabin itself that still stood above Jonathan. Cradling him in its fragile, unshakable foundations. It whips its head around at the trees, claws still out, teeth still bared and crouched like it expected something to come careening out of the living shadows.
It very well might. Generosity was apparently catching.
Jonathan has a moment to breathe. The darkness swamping his eyes holds him much as the cabin does, set to bring its jaws down on the both of them if it chose. Bait in a trap for something much greater than himself, and though there is care, there was always the understanding that he is so very human. She never lied to him about that.
And yet, he still smiles.
“A little risk in business, eh?” he chuckles. “Well, Mr. Lawrence, I have an answer to your offer, as well as that warning.”
A step at a time, his footsteps ringing out over the din of the angered world as he paces down the steps of the porch until he’s on the last one.
“This is not my land, so it is not mine to give away. These hills are more than trees and grass and rocks, and I know pretty damn well where among them I’ll end up one of these nights. She’s made that very clear to me. And you know, I think I find that plenty amenable.”
He snorts derisively. “Better than the alternative. ‘Peace an’ quiet’, what a racket.”
Around him, the ground rolls, things moving beneath it. The darkness deepens, and the scent of iron and salt floods the air of the yard in a wave. Below the steps, the dusty dry ground seeps with a sudden moisture, like a cloth laid over a bowl of water and slowly sinking down.
The earth is wet with blood.
Max tears around, trying to keep away from the patches of red mud and from being unfooted by the moving soil that threatens to take him if he weren’t to keep his feet. Roots like gripping, snatching claws unseat themselves to try and catch his ankles and feet, but he kicks off the ground and floats away from their reach. They sink back into the dark, wet earth with a sullen slowness. Waiting.
“Whether I’m here, or whether I’m not, it don’t matter.”
Jonathan meets Max’s eyes.
“She’ll be here. She’ll always be here. And she’ll sow you into the ground with the rest of us when she’s run outta patience for thieves like you.”
Something…happens. Jonathan isn't sure what, exactly, but in thinking back on it, he’s sure he doesn’t really want to remember. Max’s eyes, so full of a hate that Jonathan thinks might actually lash out like some kind of physical thing, makes a dive for him. Like a hawk dropping from the sky, claws extended to grab him up and make his end that night at that very moment. But he doesn’t touch him.
There’s a sound like a shriek. The heartwood of a cedar rending in two, and a darkness so complete it’s impossible to remember there was ever light in the world at all. It rushes up to meet the two. It hits Max, a spatter of cold wetness as meat shreds, and for a few moments he…
He thinks he’s dead. There is nothingness.
And then Jonathan is waking, blinking his eyes up into the navy blue of the late night sky, dotted with stars and clouds beginning to come in over the coast. The crickets and frogs chirp in the trees waving in a low breeze. He’s laying on the porch, back aching with the hard wood under his old shoulders and hips.
The yard is empty. The ground dry and undisturbed.
He hauls himself up, heart in his throat and breath coming in short little bursts for a few minutes as he collects himself. Looking down, he sees the pipe, forgotten in the sudden fray. It had fallen to the floor of the porch, bowl spilled and embers dead. He leans over and picks it up, scrubbing out the ashes with his foot just to be safe. Jonathan looks around. To the woods and fields, out to the road. All is quiet and calm.
He tastes ash and iron in the back of his mouth.
It’s probably time for bed. Getting too late for him to be awake, anyhow. He turns away from the night, the door of the cabin swinging open on silent hinges and ushering him back into the warmth of its embrace.
He ignores the dark, red smear on the bottom step of the porch, slowly being pulled into the ground.
It’ll be gone by morning.