Archive of Our Own

Avid makes his decision after Shelby goes missing. Really missing. Not just wandering in the woods. Like, three-search-parties-can’t-find-her missing. Each fruitless attempt settles deep horror further into Avid’s stomach. He’s failed. He’s failed again. This time, no matter how much he screamed about garlic and silver and vampires, no one believed him. When they all came back from the third search, Ren had sighed deeply and mentioned something about the wolves this time of year. Owen had frowned sympathetically and nodded. Apo had held their head in their hands. Avid had kept his mouth shut. 

He has to think. No one will believe him, but he can’t give up on Oakhurst. He can’t. Doing so would mean everything he and Elle worked towards was for nothing. Elle’s sacrifice was for nothing. Avid stays up all night, desperately scribbling down a battle plan, and then tearing it up a second later. His furnace glows red, smelting silver ingot after silver ingot, and his windows are curtained by rows of drying cloves of garlic.

But it’s not enough. All of Oakhurst is going to die if Avid can’t make them see the truth. Scott, Pyro and… and now Shelby are going to turn them, one by one. Avid is going to have to watch it happen, knowing that he failed. 

So he searches. He hounds Doc, making the pair of them pour over old tomes in search of an antidote, a cure. Each morning, the first thing he does is kneel at the steps of the Church’s beacon and collect a bottle of holy water. The others might think him paranoid, insane, but that’s won’t stop Avid from doing everything in his power to keep everyone alive. He buries thick slabs of silver underneath people’s doorways, at the gates to town, scatted through the paths inside town itself. He’s the first to volunteer for beacon consecration and tomb raiding. 

The worst part is he knows it won’t be enough. He’s only one human. He’s one scared, weak human facing down three, maybe four supernatural creatures of the night. No matter what he does, it won’t be enough. He could create a castle of silver for Oakhurst’s people to live in, he could sow fields of garlic, he could create a fountain of holy water, and it wouldn’t be enough to stop Scott. At some point, there would be a weakness, and Scott will be right there, sucking the blood of whichever poor soul Avid can’t save next. 

After three sleepless nights, the idea comes to him. It is actually insane. Not throwing-garlic-at-people insane. So, so much worse. But, if it works, there’s a sliver of hope. If it works, Avid can buy Oakhurst time.

*

Avid’s appearance on Scott’s doorstep surprises the man himself. Avid can tell—Scott’s eyes widen as he opens the door, and he even takes half a step back. 

“Well isn’t this unexpected!” Scott muses, recovering so quickly Avid begins to doubt himself. “Hello, Avid. What brings you to my humble abode?”

“I need to talk to you.” Avid pushes past Scott into his and Shelby’s home. 

“Rude.” He scoffs, but allows Avid inside. “But, if you want to talk, take a seat.” Scott waves a hand at his table, and Avid sits. It hides the way his legs shake.

“I know you are a vampire.” Avid says. He’s surprised his voice doesn’t shake. He just sounds… tired. “I know you turned Shelby, and Pyro.” 

Scott stares at him impassively. “Avid, I’m not in the mood for useless accusations. I don’t know where Shelby is, and I really do think you should talk to Doctor Legs about this.” 

Avid pulls out his stake from his belt, and then the smaller one from his boot. He lays them on the table, and pushes them towards Scott. Scott raises his eyebrows. “What, are you surrendering to me?”

“Uh. In a way.” Avid brings his arms in to his chest. “I know you are a vampire, and I know you must be hungry.”

Scott waits.

“I’ll let you feed from me. I’ll stop screaming about Vampires. In exchange, you don’t hurt anyone else. You don’t turn anyone else.” Avid looks up, teeth grit, shoulders tense. 

Scott picks up Avid’s stakes from the table, and flips one of them in the air, snatching it up again with supernaturally fast reactions. “You sound quite insane, you know.”

“I know.” Avid blinks a few times. “You can… bite me now, if you want.”

Within half a heartbeat, Scott is looming over Avid, having spun him around and pinned him to the table. Avid clenches his jaw and tries to breathe slowly, not to struggle, but there is nothing like being hunted. It’s prey instinct, to runhidefightfreeze. And Scott knows it. He smiles, he smiles with fangs as he presses Avid into the table. Scott lowers himself to be level with Avid’s neck, slowly, slowly. “You know, you might have been scary.”

“What?” Avid breathes.

“You were right. You accused me instantly. If you were any sort of hunter, I might have had to take you out.” Scott licks up the side of neck, pressing his tongue against Avid’s carotid. Oxygenated blood must taste better, he thinks. “But you’re much more useful like this.”

“You’ll leave the townspeople alone, right? All of you?—if there is more.” One of Avid’s hands grips the edge of the table like a vice, the other rests instinctively on the back of Scott’s head. 

“If you provide me with the blood I need.” The words are barely out of Scott’s mouth when he bites. The pain briefly whites out Avid’s vision, and he gasps breathlessly. His hand twists in Scott’s blue locks, and the vampire hums warningly. His rapid heartbeat only serves to speed up his blood loss, and soon, he’s starting to feel lightheaded. Really lightheaded. Like, everything is spinning and he can’t hear anything. The only upside is the pain starts to fade too.

Scott’s hands fly up to cradle Avid in place, one arm across his back, and one gently holding his head in position. The wet slurp-gulp-lick sound of the vampire drinking his blood makes Avid want to be sick. It’s taking so long, and he’s losing so much blood that he starts to think he’s made a big, big mistake. Scott could just kill him, and probably no one would really care. 

Just as his eyes start to flutter shut, Scott pulls off Avid’s neck with a long lick of his tongue over the twin wounds. Blood flows out slow and sticky, clotting quickly by some sort of compound in the vampire’s saliva. Scott holds him, almost tenderly, as he licks away the last of the blood.

Avid is limp in his arms now, head spinning too much to put up any fight. If Scott wanted, he could drop Avid, and he would probably bash in his head on the edge of the table. 

But he doesn’t. He scoops Avid up and deposits him on the couch, before tossing a blanket over him. “Stay there until you don’t feel like you’ll pass out.

Avid can’t believe this. He… he willingly let a vampire suck his blood. He closes his eyes, exhaustion from fear and the whole blood loss thing making it hard to keep them open. His head is still spinning, and everything sounds like it’s underwater. 

What would Elle think of him now? Proud, that he’d finally done something brave? Horrified, that he let his life rest in the hands of a monster? Nothing, because she’s dead?

Scott interrupts his thoughts. “Don’t fall asleep. I don’t want your scent getting stuck in the fabric.”

“Scent?” Avid mumbles, still trying to scramble this thoughts together into a coherent line.

“Yes, scent. Heightened senses are a perk of the gift. All the better to hunt you down with, because I can smell your anxiety from across the town.” Scott, despite his harsh words, hands Avid a flask of something. When Avid just holds and stares at it (not really processing that he’s holding it yet), Scott sighs. “It’s water. And a little bit of that syrup Doc was handing out for stress. Oh, and some salt. You’ll need it to get back to making blood for me.”

Avid drinks. Scott is very strange. Vampires have extended lifespans (by how much, the stories vary. Some say several hundred years, most say immortal), so it’s likely that Scott is behaving in a way that would be normal a long time ago.

“Now, get out of my house.” Scott says, tone as pleasant as if he was merely commenting on the weather. He yanks Avid to his feet by the arm, pulling a whine out of him from the sharp pain from the stress on his muscles. “Stop whinging. You’re fine.” And with that, he effectively throws Avid out into the street.

Avid stumbles a little, eyes aching as they adjust to the low light of the red moon. He still clutches the water-salt-syrup mixture Scott gave him, and as he slowly walks (getting less wobbly as he goes) he sips at it. It’s not… good, but Avid doubts it’s secretly poisoned. He’s a free blood-bag; it wouldn’t make sense for Scott to poison him when he could just drain him dry instead. 

He stays mostly in the shadows between the street-lights. Avid doesn’t want anyone seeing him like this. Oakhurst doesn’t need to see this. This deal is between him and Scott alone. 

He left his front door unlocked, slipping inside as silently as he can as so not to wake Drift. His head spins as he climbs the ladder up to his attic-room. The dizziness gets so bad that he has to crawl across the floorboards to his bed. 

The moon casts an eerie glow across his bed to the wall. When Avid holds his hand up, his shadow looks like claws. 

*

For the next three days, Scott leaves Avid alone. Mostly. It would be suspicious if he stopped antagonising Avid entirely, but he slows it down. There’s no more skull-wearing jump scares, at least.

Each morning, he sanctifies his bottle of holy water, and then hands it over to Doc. Then, Avid either joins a party going out to one of the beacons or tombs, or he mines for silver. He spends the better part of a day plating the floor around the church’s beacon with it.

On the third day, Scott joins Avid, Abolish, Ren and Sausage on a beacon/tomb raid. It’s afternoon when they set out, and they’re planning to loop around to the dead woods, where the beacons furthest from Oakhurst are (and are consequently, the hardest to keep pure).

Avid pauses on the bank of the river when they get to the stepping stones. He’s fallen in twice before, and he really doesn’t want to get wet today, since it’s especially cold. The sun is behind the clouds, as usual, but there’s a cold wind too. He rocks back and forth on his heels, letting the others go ahead of him.

Scott waits, standing beside, and half a step behind Avid; the perfect position for him to lean forwards, tilt his head down and bite. The thought makes Avid shiver. 

“Well, are we crossing?” Scott raises his eyebrows.

“I don’t want to get wet.” Avid mumbles, stepping onto the first wide, flat stone, and jumping to the next. He wobbles as he lands, having to pinwheel his arms to keep himself upright. 

While the others are still busting jumping across the stones further ahead, Scott uses the opportunity to leap almost five metres to the third stone, spinning around gracefully to face Avid. The sight of such a casual display of predatory strength reminds Avid all too well of how extremely human he is, how weak he is in the face of this monster. Scott has dressed himself up in sheep’s clothing, but he’s a wolf, and Avid feels that he’s just laid himself across his jaws.

“You need to keep your momentum. If you jump and stop and jump and stop you will end up in the water.” Scott instructs condescendingly. He waves a hand to where the others have almost finished crossing, jumping stone to stone without missing a beat. “It is within your limited human ability.”

Scott jumps ahead a few stones, leaving the path clear for Avid. He grits his teeth, focuses his gaze on the next stone, and jumps. He pushes off just as he lands, onto the next and the next and Avid builds up speed he can’t stop, so instead of pausing on the stone before him like Scott clearly expects, he barrels onwards and into the vampire, yelping as he does so.

Scott barely stumbles, catching Avid as if he weighs no more than a bundle of feathers. “Careful.” Scott admonishes, “You seem like you’re hellbent on ending up in the river.”

Avid tries to pull back, but there’s little space on this rock, and all he ends up doing is getting Scott to grab him by the arm to keep him out of the water. 

Scott sighs. “I really don’t know how humans don’t all kill themselves through stupid accidents. I could have let you slip, crack your head on one of these rocks, and you would drown rather quickly.”

At that moment, Ren shouts at them from the far bank. “Are ye plannin’ to be joining us soon? The day is running out, don’t ya know!”

Scott rolls his eyes, and scoops Avid up in a bridal carry. Avid yelps, one hand flying up to grab ahold of Scott’s black woollen coat. Like that, he jumps gracefully from stone to stone, and they make it to the bank in half as much time as if Avid had tried to struggle across the stones himself. Sausage wolf-whistles as Scott carefully lowers Avid to his feet. 

Avid splutters and throws a clove of garlic at Sausage, who ducks and cackles. 

Ren smiles at Avid, bumping his shoulder as he walks past. “Come on, laddie, we have a job to do. No gettin’ distracted.”

“I was not!” Avid protests, but it seems futile. He jogs ahead to catch up with Abolish, leaving Scott behind. He’s had enough of his embarrassment today, which Scott seems to revel in. Or anything which could inspire negative emotions in Avid, be it fear, pain, or disgust. 

But fate seems to be on anyone’s side but Avid. The sun is setting quickly, so they decide to split the party to visit both the beacon and the tomb before nightfall. Scott slides his hand across Avid’s shoulder, herding him away from the rest of the group. “Avid and I will go to the tomb. You three go consecrate, and we’ll meet back at the village.”

No one else seems to have trouble with that plan. Avid manages to hold it together until the others are out of sight, but once they’re gone, he can’t stop the shakes from spreading across his body. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat, and he’s hyper aware of every spot where Scott’s arm touches him across his shoulders.

“You don’t have to be afraid, Avid. I thought we agreed I wouldn’t hurt anyone from the village.” Scott looks down at him. “Which includes you, by the way.”

“No, you’ll just drink my blood.” Avid’s voice cracks on the last word.

Scott scoffs. “You made the deal, dear. I mean, you could back out, but then I’d have to find someone else to drink from, and I’d probably have to kill you to keep you quiet.”

Avid presses his lips together. He wishes he bought his stake with him, then he could wait for Scott to bite and stab him through the heart. He has garlic aplenty, but he’s given up eating it himself; poisoning someone’s meal is rude, according to Scott. (Even if that ‘meal’ is a living, breathing, feeling human person like Avid.) “I’m not backing out.”

“I didn’t think you would. You’re far too altruistic.”

The entrance to the tomb appears before them, and Scott bows at the waist. “Ladies first.”

Avid scowls, and his heart jumps into his throat. He looks down over the edge, glances back at Scott (waiting patiently), and jumps.

The splash of his landing echoes through the stone crypt, and as they always do, his boots dry as soon as he steps out of the water. Despite the fifteen metre fall, the fifty centimetres of water makes it feel as if Avid has merely taken a large step down. A little shock to the ankles, but not broken bones. He has no idea how it works, except that it does, and it’s some sort of universal magic that works both for humans and vampires, instead of the holy tomes that sting vampire skin when held, or whatever magic allows vampires to transform themselves into bats.

Scott jumps down after him, landing gracefully (as usual) and following just behind Avid. Avid knows he enjoys the way his heartbeat picks up, the scent of fear on his breath and in his blood. “Aren’t you going to pick up that book?”

Avid steels himself and walks up to the chest. At any moment, he’s expecting a hand to grab onto his hair and fangs to sink into the skin of his neck. Except, it doesn’t come. Scott lets him collect the book from its plinth, where it glows softly, shimmering purple-pink-white. Avid leafs through it—most of the pages are too water damaged to be of much use, but there is always at least one clear spell per book. This one, he’s seen before. It’s Abolish’s ring of fire, sprayed from a lamp prayed over and anointed with holy oil. He places it in his bag, and turns around to face Scott.

“Why haven’t you bitten me yet?” 

“I was waiting.” Scott leans his shoulder against one of the carved columns holding up the ancient roof, head tilted to the side.

“For what? For me to drop dead from a heart attack?”

“No, for you to bring it up. I’m not just going to pounce on you, Avid. I’m not some feral creature.” Scott laughs, beckoning Avid closer. He moves, without really realising it.

“Stop— stop that!”

“Stop what?” 

“Whatever magic you’re doing!” Avid steps back, moving like a broken cuckoo clock—back and forth, back and forth. “Making me come to you!”

“I’m not doing anything, truthfully.” Scott inspects his nails. “I really do hope you can calm down about this. We’re equal partners in this deal. You give me blood, and in exchange, I leave Oakhurst alone. You’re the one who proposed this!”

“I know! I know!” Avid squeezes his eyes shut, dragging his hands down his face. “It’s not easy letting— letting some perfect predator latch onto your jugular.”

“I’m flattered.” Scott smiles, fangs on display. “And, if you are so kind, it’s been three days. I am rather thirsty, and your heart has been beating so loud, it’s almost like you want me to bite you.”

Avid snorts, but he reaches up to the white bandages around his neck, covering the bite from three days prior. His fingers shake, making it hard to undo the knot.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be bitten. It can be quite pleasurable if you just relax into it.” Scott steps forwards, again and again, guiding Avid back to the plinth where he collected the book, and slowly pressing him down until he’s half-lying down on it, propped up on his elbows.

“This is a deal. Don’t bring that into it.” Avid grits out, closing his eyes. 

“It’s only as painful as you want it to be, dear Avid.” Scott purrs, like some sort of predator cat. Like last time, he licks up the side of Avid’s neck, pressing his tongue to skin to feel where blood flows strongest. In some small act of kindness, Scott avoids where he bit last time, the wound still tender and scabbed over. Instead, he moves up, using his hand in Avid’s hair to guide his head back, exposing more skin to the vampire. Scott scrapes the sharp tips of his fangs over the skin there, drawing out a whimper from him.

Avid slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide open as his cheeks flush with embarrassment. He glances down, and he can barely see Scott’s eyes from where he presses his face into Avid’s neck. “Just feed already.”

“It’s only as painful as you make it. It really doesn’t have to hurt, Avid.”

“Shut up.” Avid gasps, hand moving to the back of Scott’s head to press his mouth against Avid’s neck. To get him to shut up. To get him to get this over with.

“Rude.” Scott mutters. “But I like it when you’re eager.” Avid squeezes his eyes shut, and Scott finally bites.

It stings. Last time, the pain almost caused him to pass out, but this time, he can bear it. Avid tries to think of something else, but it’s very hard to. Scott takes his time, pausing to lick at the blood escaping from the sides of his mouth and down Avid’s throat before biting back down. His fangs dig deep, and Avid kicks out his legs involuntarily. Scott moves to pin him down further. The weight across his body forces Avid to focus on his breathing. The pain bolts up the side of his neck to the back of his head, and down to his arm. He has to grit his teeth to stop himself from making more embarrassing, pained sounds, and he’s only so successful. Like last time, the pain starts to fade out as he loses more and more blood, and his ears start to ring. He tries to breathe through it, but Scott just keeps drinking. 

When Scott finally pulls off, he presses his fingertips to the side of Avid’s neck to staunch the bleeding. “It’s not any more moral to suffer, you know.”

“I don’t want to like it.” Avid lies down against the stone, twisting his head to try and press his temple against the cold surface to stave off the oncoming headache.

“Oh, Avid,” Scott coos, “such a tortured soul. Don’t deserve friends, don’t deserve pleasure, don’t deserve peace.” He strokes Avid’s cheek with the backs of his fingers, usually cold as the stone below him, but not with a warm flush that comes with Avid’s blood. “How awful it is having to follow some twisted moral code.”

“Better than you.” Avid mumbles, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. 

“Maybe, in the eyes of the Church. But the great thing about being a vampire is that we don’t follow the Church, we follow the flow of life, blood… pleasure.” Scott retrieves Avid’s neck bandages and begins to re-tie them. “Please wash these rags occasionally. Dirt getting in your wounds will upset the delicate balances of human biles, and I don’t want to be feeding from that.”

“Biles don’t exist. ‘S outdated metaphysical nonsense.” Avid lies still, very aware that Scott has literal claws, (long, well manicured nails, but there’s not much difference) and that he’s one flick of a hand away from tearing Avid’s throat open.

“Well, it’s of no matter to me.” Scott taps one of his fangs, as if to say ‘vampire, see?’, like it isn’t the first and final thing that always accompanies any thought Avid has of Scott.

Avid closes his eyes, and he lets himself drift on that barrier between consciousness and sleep. Someone is stoking his hair. It must be Scott. He spends five seconds, or five days in that limbo, before Scott shakes his shoulder. “We need to go now, Avid. The others are going to come looking soon.”

“No…” Avid whines, curling around Scott’s hand and squeezing his eyes shut. “Five more minutes.”

“We don’t have that. Now, up with you.” Scott picks him up under the arms, and forces Avid to stand on his own two feet. Avid stumbles, and Scott groans before looping an arm across Avid’s back and pulling one of Avid’s arms over his own shoulders. “Come on, Avid. You don’t want the townsfolk to see you like this.”

“Just let me sleep.” Avid whines, eyelids fluttering with the weight of trying to keep them open through his exhaustion. 

Scott drags him bodily over to the bubble elevator, and Avid’s stomach drops when Scott pushes him in and he goes flying skywards. When the bubbles spit him out, he has to pinwheel his arms to maintain his balance and even still, he more so stumbles off the stairs of the tomb, than walking down them. He ends up sprawled face down on the damp, leaf covered ground, and he closes his eyes. The cold feels nice against his skin. 

Scott drags him up to his feet again. “I might just turn into a bat, pick you up, fly into the air, and drop you to wake you up.”

“Don’t have to.” Avid mumbles, walking as best he can with his eyes shutting on him and his brain taking a pause every few seconds. He ends up leaning into Scott again, all sense of self preservation gone out the window in the face of his wonderful new idea. “Carry me ‘n just tell them I got a concussion or something.” 

Scott sighs. “It’s a mildly better idea than just dragging you along in the dirt.” And with that, he picks up Avid like he weighs nothing, and arranges him so that Avid is clinging onto him like a baby koala, arms around his neck and legs around his waist. Avid, tired as he is, is extremely pleased with the new place to rest his head on (Scott’s shoulder) and has no further thoughts on the matter.

They must get back to town at some point, because suddenly there’s a mess of panicked voices around Avid, asking him, asking Scott what happened, what’s wrong, where’s the Doc— Avid presses his face into Scott’s neck, and squeezes his eyes shut. It certainly feels like he has a concussion, with the way the world is swimming and his eyes keep fluttering shut without him realising.

“Avid slipped when we jumped down into the tomb,” Scott explains, lowering Avid onto some sort of bed. It might be in Avid’s house, or maybe it’s one of Doc’s beds in the infirmary. “I think he hit his head when he landed badly. He wouldn’t walk back to town, so I had to carry him.”

“Good job on bringing him back quickly,” Doc says, pressing a hand to Avid’s forehead, checking his hair for any dried blood from a cut or scrape. He peels back one of Avid’s eyelids, shining a reflection off a silver tool into Avid’s pupil. He groans and pulls away, but

Doc seems pleased. “His pupils are dilating nicely, but we need to keep an eye on him. There could be a bleed in his brain if he hit his head hard enough.”

“M’ just tired.” Avid protests, curling up on his side on the gurney. 

“I’m sure you are, lad.” Doc soothes, “Scott, could you make him drink some water? I’m going to make a stew, but we should try and get some liquid into him.”

“I’ll try. He’s not particularly cooperative.” Scott says, picking up a tin canteen to bring to Avid’s lips. As Doc steps away, Scott whispers to him, holding eye contact so intense it feels like Scott is trying to see Avid’s thoughts. “Avid. You don’t have a concussion. Pull yourself together. Once Doc feeds you the stew, you will feel better, and go home for the night. Understand?”

A strange feeling washes over Avid. At first, he’s panicked by the warm, almost cottony sensation spreading from the back of his head, but some melodic voice whispers inside his head; listen to Scott. Everything is okay. You are fine. You will feel better once you drink the doctor’s stew. There’s another voice, sounding a lot more like his own, screaming about mind control and enthralment and vampires, but it all feels a little silly now.

Avid drinks Doc’s stew under Scott’s watchful eye. He blinks slowly a few times, sitting up and shaking out his shoulders. “What do you put in this thing, Doc?”

“Mushrooms, Oxeye daisies, Coca leaves, a bit of poppy oil.” He lists, helping Avid to his feet. “You’ll feel great now, but you’ll crash later. Try and get a good night’s rest.”

“Doctor’s orders, huh?” Avid giggles. Legs escorts him home, side eyeing Scott when he offers to do it. He walks Avid all the way to his own bed, in case Avid trips over his own doormat and breaks an ankle, or something. 

He tucks Avid in, checking his forehead with the back of his hand one last time. “Avid…” He starts, and then pauses for a moment, looking around and dropping his voice to a low murmur. “Did Scott hurt you?”

“What?” Avid asks, frowning. Scott didn’t hurt him. The blood—it was a mutual agreement. It was for the safety of the town. Maybe it stung a little (a lot more than a little. he had almost passed out from the pain the first time) but it was for the greater good. Doc couldn’t know. Doc shouldn’t know. He would only try to stop Avid, when Avid had already tried everything else, and look how well that went for him; the town’s crazy. “No! I really just jumped wrong, and then I landed weird and I hit my head on the edge of the wall. Scott dragged me all the way back here.”

The Doc frowns, and his eyes flick down to Avid’s neck, where the bandages cover both his old scar, and the bites from Scott. Avid tenses, but the Doctor doesn’t make any moves. “Just… you can always tell me anything, Avid. There’s no shame in it. I will do always everything in my power to help you.”

“Thanks, Doc, but I really just need to sleep it off.” Avid smiles, snuggling down into his blankets. 

“Goodnight, Avid.” Doc calls from the doorway, making sure to carefully open and shut the door as not to cause any pain to Avid’s supposedly sensitive ears. 

“Night, Doc!” Avid calls, eyes already falling shut. 

If he were more aware, perhaps he would have heard the fluttering of wings outside his window—bigger than a bird, and seen a dark shape fly skywards in the light of the setting sun and the rising, blood red moon. 

*

Avid spends more time with Doc than almost anyone else. Doc seemed surprised when Avid was suddenly sharp and focused with his energy. Instead of wasting it on pointless screaming in the town square, he’s growing garlic like he’s supplying all of the country of Italy, mining silver like a front runner of the Industrial Revolution, and running so many experiments that he stinks of chemicals in a way which won’t easily wash off.

Scott complains about it when he bites Avid next, lecturing him about how he isn’t able to poison Scott by stinking up the place, and that he should remember that the whole town’s safety rests upon his shoulders.

Avid nods dumbly, but he’s screaming internally. (His mind seems to split whenever he’s around Scott now. There’s calm sticking like honey all over his limbs, and screaming panic in the back of his brain.) He’s always thinking about that. It’s what he thinks of when the sun rises and the roosters crow, when he watches Cleo digging through the dirt of the carrot patch, when Abolish and Ren set off to one of the beacons across the river, when the sun sets and the monsters start to crawl out of the dirt. He dreams of ways to vampire-proof the town, of new potion ingredient combinations to try. 

He’s managed to bury a slab of silver underneath the doormats of all of the houses in the village, minus Shelby and Scott’s. It hurts Avid to leave his friend without that protection, but he doesn’t want to provoke Scott by making it impossible for him to enter his own house. He hopes his blood is enough to keep Shelby safe.

Doc is worried about Avid. He can tell. Doc walks him home every evening, making sure Avid is safely inside before he leaves. It’s a nice gesture, and even if it’s effectively useless, it means a lot to Avid. It means that someone cares about him.

He plies Avid with as much of that regenerative stew as he can safely do so, carefully observing the shadows around Avid’s eyes. His diet has changed since Scott started feeding from him. There’s a lot more red meat to try and replenish the iron taken from him in the feedings, and that weird concoction Scott had made for him that first night, plus as many stews as the Doc can think up. 

One day, Doc brings him to a secret room. It’s hidden in a cave in the hills around the lake, down a dark passage unlit by torches, behind a block of andesite. 

There’s a workbench, a set of brewing stands and potion bottles, and even a small coop of chickens. “We might need blood, to bribe a Vampire.”

“So you believe me now?” Avid asks, opening one of the chests to find a week’s supply of holy water. It makes his heart skip a beat. This place might just be where he can find a cure, or create a weapon to stop the Vampires. 

“I… I’m a man of science, Avid. But I have never seen anything like this place in my life. There might be vampires, as you say, or there might be werewolves and Bigfoot as Shelby says. But I think… I think there is something here that we need to banish.”

Avid hugs himself. “Thank you for believing me, Legs. But you can’t go telling people this. We don’t know who might be a vampire, or working with them.”

“This room stays between us.” The Doctor promises, resting a hand on Avid’s shoulder. “Bring the holy water here. I’ve noticed my bottles running out quicker than they should back in my clinic.”

“So there is someone in the town.” Avid whispers, trying to inject the correct amount of horror into his voice. Well, it’s not hard, because could Scott be the one doing it, but he can’t be everywhere at once, so there is probably another vampire in town. He’d suspected Scott wasn’t working alone since the start, but this further confirmation isn’t comforting.

“I don’t want to believe it, but it’s better for us to be prepared.” 

That’s what Avid is trying to do. He’s trying to prepare the town. He knows that his deal with Scott isn’t a solution in the long term. He’s already gotten weaker, and it’s been less than a month. Soon, Scott is going to get hungrier, or the other vampire is, or maybe he’ll just get bored of this game he’s playing and decide to end it. He could do it any time he feeds, just bite a little deeper, feed a little longer, and Avid would be over. 

He’s started sneaking garlic seeds into Cleo’s vegetable patches, dropping garlic bulbs into the animal’s feed. The pig’s breath is bad enough already, and Avid doesn’t want Truffle to become vampire-food. He doubts the pig can actually sniff out vampires, but it’s a morale booster.

He’s started experimenting with withered roses. In the pale forest, they’re one of two plants that ‘grow’, the other being the pale trees themselves. Avid isn’t really sure if they do grow, because it all seems to be dead over there. He’s never seen such a plant before—one which stings when you touch it like nettles, and emits smoke-like spores like a mushroom he had once seen—and neither had anyone else in the town. It excites Avid, because he reasons that if vampirism did originate from Oakhurst, (as another one of his theories speculates), then the cure for vampirism must also exist in Oakhurst. 

It’s the balance of life. If there was nothing to keep the vampires in check, they could kill all humans, and then run out of their primary food source. It only makes sense.

He adds the withered roses to water creating a dusty, smoky version of perfumed rose water. He adds it to Doc’s regenerative soup, it tastes like ash and something dead, and Avid feels like his heart might fail for a good ten minutes after forcing it down. (Doc had yelled at him for consuming a potentially poisonous plant. Avid had nodded along, scolded, but had resumed his experiments the second Doc’s back was turned. He doesn’t have the time to be careful.) He hides one in his pocket the next time Scott feeds from him, but apart from causing Scott to complain about peasant stink for the umteempth time—“you’d think over six hundred years the poor would learn to wash themselves better, but it appears you were too busy degrading your fashion.”—the wither rose has no effect.

He mixes it with holy water, and he gets the first real result. It’s not like he expected it to do something miraculous, but when he’s pulled away from his experiments by Shelby having found a massive footprint she was sure was Bigfoot and insisted he look at it, he accidentally leaves the withered rose to soak. When he comes back, he has to ask Doc if he’s pulling a prank, swapping it out for a regular rose. Doc is just as confused as he is, and it takes Avid a moment to realise that the holy water… returned the rose to normal? 

It’s not like it’s a cure for vampirism, but it sure is interesting, and any lead is better than no lead.

Avid had known holy water had been important, and he had expected it to play some sort of part in the cure (please say there is one. there has to be) but for it to cure the disease effecting those roses—it’s better than what he had hoped for. The Doc has to tell him to calm down, as he jumps around their underground lab. 

It’s one of the few times Avid has energy. He had thought he could manage this—the draining cycle. But, as he always does, Avid had charged head first into this deal with the devil without preparing himself first. Most days, he falls into bed like a stone some time in the early evening. His hands are blistered from mining and smelting, and his brain hurts from wracking it for answers.

Drift is getting concerned. She corners him and watches to make sure he eats something, drags him back to send him to bed early, accompanies him on his various escapades. Abolish has been watching him close too, and if it weren’t for the way Avid is always checking his surroundings, he probably wouldn’t notice it. Abolish doesn’t talk to him much, doesn’t talk much at all, but Avid knows he’s watching him. And Scott especially. 

Avid has to hold himself back from running to Abolish, asking him if he notices the red rims in the centre of Scott’s blue irises, if he notices the way Scott watches everyone like a predator, the way he never eats anything human, the way he never wears silver armour, or goes near the town’s beacon, or enters through the front door of his and Shelby’s house, where Shelby has a silver block of her own (She added it herself, telling Avid that werewolves, faeries, and witches wouldn’t go near silver, and she was worried about the wolves that they would sometimes hear howling at night.), Scott only ever goes through the back door. 

But he can’t bring it up. He doesn’t even whisper the word Vampire in town. The only time he ever allows himself to speak of vampires is with Doc, and only when they’re in his cave laboratory in the hills around the lake. Avid can’t bring it up, because if he talks about Vampires, the deal with Scott is off, and he will doom everyone to a bloody, awful death. Or something worse. 

And then they find the first cure book.

It’s Abolish who finds the first book. Inside, it instructs the reader to find the other tomes containing the rest of the cure, and that the first step must be to splash a vampire with holy water. It takes him three days to show it to Doc. Abolish had been sitting on the knowledge that there is a cure, and they just have to look for three whole days, pondering his mortality or something while Avid literally stretched out his neck for the town. 

When Doc tells him (talking loudly about a possible remedy for Avid’s new fatiguing illness while he wrote down the real message), Avid’s knees shook so badly he had to sit down. 

There is a cure, and they can find it, and Avid’s efforts and sacrifices can actually save the town. He can save people, this time. 

In that same written conversation, Avid tells Doc what he’s been doing—nothing about who it is, but that there is a vampire in town, and that Avid’s been offering up his blood for their safety. Legundo’s face is a twisted mess of concern, fear, and determination as he loudly talks about how they should really be establishing a proper medical wing. Avid, with shaking hands, pulls back his sleeves to reveal the lesser bites stretching up the inside of his forearms.

Legundo falters. His voice trails off, and he sits down next to Avid, carefully examining the bites. “Avid. You…”

The Doctor doesn’t know what to say. Avid wouldn’t either, if someone told him something ridiculous, like that the moon was made of cheese, and then the next day they brought home a hunk of it. He laughs, and chokes up halfway through it. “It’s worth it, Doc. For Oakhurst.”

Legundo cleans his wounds, a strip of cloth soaked in a mixture of holy water and some strong, clear spirit that Sausage  and Ren had brewed up. It stings, but Avid’s built up quite the pain tolerance over these past weeks. “They’re healing well. No infection.” Doc sounds worried at that, even though to Avid, it seems like a good thing.

He keeps his voice low. “Sc—The vampire said that their saliva is like… a healing agent. It stops the bleeding one they’re… fed.”

Legundo moves to his other arm. “What I wouldn’t give to just be able to study that.”

Avid chuckles. “Well, hopefully not the town.”

That draws a stiff smile out of the Doctor. “No, Avid. Not the town. There’s too many worthwhile souls here.”

When Legs finishes up with Avid’s arms, he moves to stand up. “Wait—there’s more.”

“More?” Legundo’s brows press together. “There’s already ten bites on your wrists alone.”

“You try telling a vampire they don’t need to feed.” Avid mumbles, hesitantly untying the bandages around his neck.

Legundo’s face drops with the bandages. A look of horror fills his eyes as he takes in the sight, frozen like a fox in a torch-beam.  

“Doc?” Avid whispers, covering up the mess with his hands.

“How are you not dead?” Legundo asks, stepping closer and taking a knee so he can get a proper look. “And what gave you this?” His fingers hover over Avid’s old wound, mostly closed up now.

“An accident a long time ago.” Avid pulls out his silver pocket watch and uses the flat back of it as a mirror. “It didn’t heal up until he— until he started feeding from me. But it’s fine.”

Legundo starts washing the wounds on his neck. “How… how old are you, Avid?”

“Twenty this February.” Avid straightens his posture, lifting his chin as if daring the Doctor to comment on it.

Legundo sighs. “You’re far too young for all this. You should be in the city, studying something.”

Avid doesn’t know what to say to that. If you gave him the choice, he’d love to be in the Capital, studying chemistry at one of the Universities. But he didn’t get a choice, and at least this way he might even kill a vampire, might even save someone. He might even get revenge.

Legundo does what he can for Avid. He washes the bites, he puts stitches in the remains of the old scratch (still weeping, much to Legs’ horror), and he wraps it all up with clean linen. He forces Avid to sit and drink one of his stews. 

It sits warm in Avid’s stomach, settling next to the relief of finally being believed and sharing his burden with someone, and next to the hope that Avid can feel all through his body. 

Doc can help him. Doc can fix him up. There is a cure. Oakhurst and its people are going to live. 

Avid falls asleep on Doc’s examination bed. The Doctor tucks a blanket around him.

*

It’s been a week since Scott last fed, and it’s been making Avid nervous. Usually, the longest Scott would go without feeding would be three days, and once or twice he had even cornered Avid twice a day. After Avid had actually passed out in the middle of the town that day, Scott had stopped twice-a-day feedings.

But he had never had to wait so long for the next attack. Scott had mentioned he had been surviving off animal blood, but with the use of the word ‘surviving’ instead of ‘living’, it implies that he needs human blood to keep at full strength.

And he hasn’t drank for a week.

Avid hasn’t exactly been searching Scott out. He doesn’t like being bitten, no matter what Scott implies, and he has actually enjoyed having a regular blood pressure these last few days. He’s been able to go mining for extended periods without having to sit and catch his breath, able to run around with Drift from tomb to beacon to tomb again; and to top it all off, the next cure book had been found! 

It seems like the universe had decided to smile on Avid.

Both he and the Doc were collecting the supplies they would need for the cure. Holy water would be paramount, as well as crucial in any fight with a vampire, and the second book mentioned spilling the blood of the sire. Easy enough, because Avid was going to need to stake Scott anyways. The third book was still missing, yet to appear in any of the tombs, but Avid was an ideas man. If he had a hundred ideas, chances are one of them would work. He was still fixated on his earlier discover of the cleansing of the withered roses— maybe a hint to the contents of the first book? 

Avid gasped, leaning across his desk and picking up his leather bound notebook and a pen. The use of holy water as a part of cure was implied by its environmental impacts! The requirement of the death of the sire… because the sire took the life of the baby vampire! And the third clue…

Avid chews on the end of his pen. There has to be another environmental clue to the last part of the cure. Maybe something to do with the sun? Or the blood moon? Or maybe they have to modify the staking process? Make it out of silver instead of wood? Avid scribbles down all of his ideas, connecting them with lines in a massive maze of thoughts. There’s a list of different materials Avid has brewed with holy water (everything from garlic to spruce sap to bone dust from one of the old skulls in the crypts) and their results. Most yield nothing, but occasionally there’s a result, most of those being some sort of poison.

Avid has yet to figure out a way to poison a vampire without also poisoning their victim, and as he is the only test subject, he’s not so willing to just drink anything he brews up. Not when they’re this close to finding the cure.

The brewing list reminds him; he needs to head to the town’s beacon to bless a bottle. He’s yet to do so today, and if he’s going to be wasting some of it brewing up various experiments, Avid has to replenish the holy water at least at the same rate he uses it.

With that thought, he pulls out a few bottles from his chest, filling them with water from the pail in the corner of his room. The water swirls with bubbles and silt, but the process of consecrating the water essentially boils off all impurities, so it doesn’t bother him.

Avid slips on a coat and boots to walk to the church. It’s been getting colder in the evenings as autumn continues, and the days have been getting slowly shorter and shorter. He hums a tune as he walks, a hymn that he used to hear played at Christmas time, accompanied by the bells tolling across the countryside.

Oakhurst’s bell is made of solid silver, and only used to call town meetings. 

The beacon glows softly in the slanted evening light. If Avid listens very carefully and holds his breath, he can hear a sound like a harp’s note emitting from it. When he reaches out to touch it, the core of gold sends out a lightning bolt to the surface of the glass containing it, connecting to his palm and thrumming energy through Avid’s whole body.

It feels good. From the moment Avid had stepped into the town, he had felt the beacon calling to him, singing a song it seemed like no one else heard. He had crouched to it, placing his hands on its warm surface, and known deep within his bones that this thing was holy.

Avid sets down his bottles of water on the altar, and crosses his legs to sit at the base of the beacon. He closes his eyes, picks up one of the bottles, and places his other hand on the beacon.

The humming dances across his skin, like little tingles of static electricity as he conducts the power into the water. Slowly, the silt clears, and the bottle warms in his grip. When he opens his eyes again, the bottle is clear and heavy, and he places it in his lap, almost hugging it to his chest. 

He’s halfway through the second bottle when there’s footsteps on the tiles of the floor. Not the opening of a door and then footsteps, but footsteps like someone appeared from thin air.

Avid spins around, clutching the bottles to his chest, one hand reaching for his stake. He doesn’t have it. He’d stopped carrying it.

Scott stalks towards him, a pleasant smile leaving now his face. His footsteps are soft, his shoulder relaxed, but something is making Avid’s hair stand on end.

“Good evening, Avid.” Scott greets, coming to a stop a respectable distance away. “Blessing some water, I see?”

“Where have you been?” Avid asks. With the absence of a stake, his fingers are white-knuckled around the neck of the bottle. If he smashes it, he can use the jagged edges—

“About.” Scott avoids the question. “All that adventuring works up one’s appetite.”

Avid forces himself to relax. There’s no reason for Scott to be suspicious of him. He’s blessing the water because he’s using it for experiments. He’s jumpy because Scott hasn’t fed from him for a week, not because he’s trying to find a way to kill him. (Scott would be a fool if he didn’t expect Avid to be doing that, and he’s no fool.) “Could— Could you wait? I have to bless this and then bring it to Doc. He’s been using it for wound cleaning.”

“How… interesting. Rather desperate, but interesting.” Scott steps forwards. “And no. This only takes a minute.”

Avid tenses, but he places the bottles of holy water beside him on the altar, and stands up to face Scott. Scott easily has six inches of height on Avid, exaggerated by the heeled boots he wears. “Why were you gone so long?” Avid asks, trying to keep his mind busy as the Vampire starts to unwrap the bandages around his wrists.

“Repairs to my home. Six hundred years of ruin really destroys the foundations.” Scott carefully examines the bite marks on Avid’s forearms, from the ones scabbed over to the ones barely more than a silvery scar. “They’re healing well. Did you do anything to them?”

“No.” Avid replies, avoiding Scott’s gaze. “Just changed the bandages after they got wet.”

“Hm.” Scott moves to Avid’s neck, delicately pulling away the layers of linen. “And these too. You’re a little fighter, aren’t you?” He holds Avid’s jaw, tilting it back to better examine the bite marks he made.

Scott pushes Avid back, forcing him to stumble until the backs of his knees hit the beacon’s pedestal. Avid clenches his jaw, waiting for the slice fangs through flesh. It takes so long that he peeks an eye open, and finds Scott’s face inches from his own, blank apart from an intense stare. He yelps, and Scott laughs, smiling again as he runs a hand through Avid’s hair to pull his head back and expose his throat. 

Without warning, he bites. And it hurts. It’s not like a usual feeding doesn’t hurt, but Scott at least seems to take the time to lick over the bite site, using the properties of his saliva to partially numb the skin. Usually, Scott bites slowly, carefully avoiding thick arteries and nerves.

This time, it feels like he’s biting to cause Avid pain.

He pulls back after a good fifteen seconds of suck-slurp-gulp-ing down mouthfuls of Avid’s blood. Scott stares at him, hair glowing like a halo around his head, backlit by the light of the Church’s candelabra chandelier.

“Why did you lie to me, Avid?”

“What?”

“You said your bandages got wet.” Scott picks up the lengths of linen. “These aren’t your bandages. These are the same ones the Doctor uses.”

Avid’s stomach drops. For the first time in a month and a half, genuine fear fills his veins like ice. “I just— I just borrowed them from him!”

“Oh, Avid.” Scott coos, reaching down to squish Avid’s cheeks with one hand, effectively silencing him. “I can tell when you lie. Your heart speeds up. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.”  Scott pauses, tilting his head to the side as if to say, listen, hear that? 

Avid holds his breath.

“And, I was there.”

Avid is dead. He’s one hundred percent going to be killed by this vampire. 

“I’ve been watching you. Any moment you thought you were alone, I was there. When you told the Doctor about our arrangement,” His voice is thick with what Avid can only describe as disappointment. “I was right outside, listening. I watched you fall asleep. I read that cure book over your shoulder. I was lounging on the bed while you brewed those potions. You have never been alone, Avid.”

Avid trembles. There’s no other word for it. He trembles like a cornered rabbit, while the wolf salivates over his exposed throat. 

“I was beginning to like you.” Scott pouts, rubbing a thumb across Avid’s cheek. “You aren’t half bad when you’re not screaming nonsense.”

“Just kill me already.” Avid croaks, slowly moving one hand to where he left the holy water bottles. Scott is faster, pinning the wandering hand down with one is his knees.

“Ah ah ah, you tell me to kill you, yet you’re so desperate to live.” Scott tilts his head to the side, crimson eyes glinting in the lowering light. “Do you think anyone in this town would have made half of the sacrifices you did to save a group of strangers?”

“That— of course.” Avid lifts up his chin defiantly.

“Sweet, naive Avid. They wouldn’t. They won’t. Once I take you, perhaps they’ll search the woods for a few days, but most of them will only pretend to be sad. Some of them will even be happy that you’re gone.”

“What do you want?” 

“A lot of things. From you? I wanted honesty, a bit of honour, perhaps a little less self sacrifice, but that’s just who you are, isn’t it?” Scott pinches his cheek again. “You’re too good for these people.”

Avid cries. In the face of death, tears gather in the corners of his eyes and fall down his cheeks. His chest stutters with frantic breaths, and he freezes with shock when Scott delicately bushes away Avid’s tears, fingertips cold. As Avid cries, Scott just watches, periodically brushing away his tears and shushing him like he’s an upset baby. To Scott, he might as well be. The man could be thousands of years old, and Avid would never know. The bizarre thought causes him to giggle through the tears, and all of a sudden he’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe, tears still streaming down his face.

Scott’s face softens. “Oh, Avid.” He cups the side of his jaw, leaning down to press his mouth against Avid’s neck. “If only I could keep you like this, forever.”

He bites again, and it hardly hurts, much to the contrast of his earlier bite. It’s gentle, almost like a kiss, as he drinks Avid’s blood. The same sense of artificial calm clouds Avid’s mind, and he can’t summon the energy to fight against it. He thinks vaguely, “I’m going to bleed out against the beacon.”, and the thought barely seems to register. It floats away like smoke on the wind.

Avid’s ears have begun to ring when he notices that the door of the church is cracked open, and that someone is there. He tries to focus his gaze, but all that matters is he can see the glint of a silver sword in their hands. Someone is here so save him, someone is here to kill Scott. He has to let—he can’t—this can’t happen—it must— 

Avid’s eyes are wide, and his breathing speeds up. Scott pulls back from feeding to say something, face soft and smiling, before he sees Avid’s expression and where his eyes are locked, and he snarls, crouching possessively over Avid’s prone body.

Scott’s entire demeanour switches in half a second. He goes from a well put together, polite vampire, to a capital-V Vampire with gleaming fangs and power through every muscle. 

The situation only gets worse when Avid notices that Abolish isn’t alone. The Doctor is behind him, Pearl and Cleo at the other doorway, and he can hear more voices behind them. Avid doesn’t want to imagine what they’re seeing— a bloody, limp body splayed across the altar with a snarling monster crouched overtop, a predator disrupted from its meal.

“Step away from him, Scott.” Pearl calls, unsheathing her sword with a scrape of leather against metal. “We can talk about this.”

Scott moves to stand, but Avid’s grabs his sleeve, stopping him from moving away. His hand moves without him, pulling Scott closer. The figures at the door are danger, he can’t let them get close to Avid. The foreign flows through the back of his mind, and Avid thinks, ‘Oh, I’m connected to him.’ A half dozen theories flit through his mind, enthralment, covens, blood-bonds.

Scott crouches lower over Avid, one arm snaking around him to pull him to pull Avid’s limp body to his chest. 

“The game is up, then.” Scott says, “I suppose you intend to kill me.”

“Give Avid to us, and we can talk. We don’t want anyone to get hurt here.” The Doctor calls, raising his hands in a placating motion. “Please, Scott.”

“This isn’t a negotiation.” He says, standing up and shifting Avid so he can hold him with one arm, “You all came to my home, and besides, Avid agreed to this.”

Drift gasps, and the sight of her horrified face, leaning over Cleo’s shoulder, spurs Avid into action. Minimal action. He wriggles slightly, one hand weakly reaching out towards her. She lunges forwards, and is caught by the arm by Cleo and Pearl, holding her back.

Avid leans back into Scott’s chest, and Scott strokes his hair. “Shhh.” Scott hums, smile curling up into something sinister. “He offered up his neck for all of you—in exchange for the safety of the townsfolk. Have I harmed any of you?” Scott addresses the townsfolk.

There’s no answer but tense silence. Scott sighs dramatically. “The answer is no, by the way. I upheld my end of the deal. No strange accidents, no interference even when you lot starting working on ways to kill me. I’ve been awfully restrained.”

“You call that restrained?” Drift points at the bloody mess of Avid’s neck, where a criss-cross patchwork of healed scars, scabbed wounds and fresh bites undermine Scott’s claims.

“Considering the last time a vampire had to deal with humans in Oakhurst, it ended with the killing of the whole town…? Yes.” Scott smiles, showing his fangs. 

“You don’t have to do this, Scott. We have a cure. We can stop the bloodlust.” The Doctor steps out from behind Abolish, speaking softly, like he’s trying to calm a spooked animal. Avid knows it’s futile. He can feel Scott’s emotions leaking through to him through that overwhelming fog of calm.

“Mmm, nah. I really do quite enjoy being a vampire. Trading immortality for a limited lifetime with you lot is an unattractive deal.” Scott laughs, and Drift clutches her stake tighter. Avid can see the way her knuckles whiten around it, how her gaze stays locked on him. “Avid knows how to make a decent proposal. You all should have listened to him much earlier, then it wouldn’t have had to come to this.”

“You bastard!” Martyn shouts, reaching down to his waistband to grab at something. 

Scott sees it before Avid even really notices, and in half a second he has Avid in-front of him, a body shield, with one hand pressing on his throat and fangs half an inch away from Avid’s carotid. “Throw that, and Avid dies.” His voice is low and cold, and Avid is the only one in the room who doubts him. There’s an undercurrent of concern floating through his mind, a possessive tug towards his human. Not theirs. Everyone else is frozen.

Avid has to focus his thoughts on what he wants to say for a solid second before he can speak—the blood loss, and the enthralment (he’s pretty sure of that now) are hindering him. “I’m okay.” He croaks, “He’s telling… telling the truth. I agreed to it.”

Everyone’s faces get angrier and more horrified, more determined. Scott’s grip tightens on Avid, and he can feel the vampire tense behind him. 

“Just— listen to him. Please.” Avid’s voice cracks on the last word. “I don’t want anyone hurt.”

“Move away from that door.” Scott says, pointing to one of the Church’s three doors where Ren and Martyn are standing. “None of you try anything, or he dies. I assure you, I can kill Avid before any of you can touch me.”

Reluctantly, the townsfolk move away, when Scott passes them, he flips around to walk backwards, keeping Avid between him and the others. He keeps an arm around Avid’s torso, lifting him to help him walk.  He starts walking faster as everyone turns, following them, until Scott is running with Avid in his arms and a mob of angry humans chasing them.

Cleo is shouting about ‘the code’, the Doctor keeps insisting that Scott doesn’t  have to do this, and Drift is just screaming his name, “Avid! Avid!”.

Avid stares blankly into the deepening night as Scott carries him towards the castle.

Scott jumps between the crumbling pillars as if they were only the stepping stones across the river to the pale forest, moving as lithe and graceful as if he were holding nothing.

He slows when they make it to the doors of the castle, setting Avid down on his own two feet, keeping a grip on his bicep when Avid wobbles. “What a mess.” Scott sighs. 

Avid has nothing to say.

Oakhurst certainly believes him now; all carrying weapons of silver and wooden stakes and holy water. But it’s too little, too late to save him. That’s what is deal was, in essence. His blood instead of theirs, his life for the town.

“You must be cold.” Scott says, in lipping his own cloak and draping it across Avid’s shoulders. “Let’s get you to bed, it’s been a big night.”

Avid makes to protests as Scott pulls him along the blackstone brick hallways, down a spiralling stairwell, and through the halls of his own crypt that Avid had stumbled into, abandoned, on his second day of being in Oakhurst. Skulls with glowing eyes from candles inside line the halls, providing a dim, atmospheric light. It’s barely enough for Avid to see his own fingers, but vampires don’t need light. He thinks he might hear voices behind one of the doors he passes.

“Lie down.” Scott instructs him, pulling Avid into a dark room with thick red carpet, and an ornate four-poster bed. He arranges the eiderdown duvet around Avid, fluffing up the pillows and slipping one underneath Avid’s head. Then, he sets about cleaning Avid’s wounds. He produces a basin of water and a handful of linen bandages and washcloths out of what seems to be thin air. Scott wets one of the washcloths and wipes at the dried blood on Avid’s neck with a featherlight touch, carefully avoiding the raw wounds. He cleans in silence, letting Avid stare up at the black lace canopy of the bed. Scott doesn’t speak until he finishes wrapping up Avid’s neck. “I’m not going to kill you. Just in case you got the wrong impression.”

Avid blinks slowly. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

“I could have.” Scott raises a brow. 

“You were worried.” Avid lifts a hand, touching the back of his head where it connects to his neck, where he can feel the enthralment bond.

Scott pauses for several breaths. “Hm. I’ve never accidentally enthralled someone. Or done it so badly. You shouldn’t be thinking on your own.”

“Huh?”

“Most humans are pretty useless once enthralled. It’s mostly to stop you running away and screaming when we feed. I suppose I was trying to calm you down…”

“So you did do something to me.” Avid accuses, thinking back to the time when Scott drunk from him in the tomb and he felt that unnatural sense of calm wash over him.  

“Not intentionally! A six hundred year nap leaves one quite rusty. You shouldn’t be feeling my emotions, just whatever I want you to. Enthralment isn’t a two way street.” Scott presses the back of his palm to Avid’s forehead, as if checking for a fever. His hand lingers, brushing away Avid’s fringe from his eyes. “I wonder how it would be if I turned you…”

“No!” Avid twists away. “I don’t— I don’t want to be a monster!”

“Now now.” Scott placates, “Vampirism doesn’t make one a monster. It enhances aspects of one’s personality and self, but it doesn’t create a monster out of nothing.”

Avid closes his eyes. Scott has to be lying to him. Elle would never— she would never.  He curls into himself, tugging the duvet closer around him. “For example,” Scott continues reaching out to stroke Avid’s hair again, “Owen was resentful of the town as a human, and once he became a vampire, resent for the town became a species wide rage. It tends to be either charisma or violent tendencies that make themselves known. This… bond… I have no idea what it could become.”

“I don’t want to be a vampire.” Avid repeats. “I just— I want to go home.”

“This is home now, Avid. As a blood bank, or a vampire. The choice is entirely up to you.” 

With that, Scott stands. He readjusts the way the blankets and cloak sit around Avid, protecting him from the chill of the Castle’s air, and leaves. 

A blood bank until he dies, or a vampire, eternally tied to Scott. Avid can’t detangle the knot of feelings that brings up, and if he believes Scott, none of those feelings are induced. That… adoration, that pull, it’s all Avid. That desire underneath the fear and knee-jerk reaction of no, he can’t, to follow that pull. 

… Was Elle a vampire? She had… Elle, who had protected him since they had first met, dragged him from the woods and ran with him headfirst into the world of monster hunting, she would never hurt him. If vampirism enhances personalities, then Elle was not a vampire. But the bite… it had looked so much like what he had thought a vampire bite looked. Twin puncture marks.

Avid looks down at his own wrists. The scars across his forearms are half-moon imprints of teeth, with two larger scars where the pricing fangs are—but still, there’s the imprint of other teeth. 

He pulls the blankets over his head, hiding from the light so he can’t keep comparing memories and marks. 

He bought them time. Avid bought Oakhurst the time it needed to realise the danger that lived within its very walls. He bought Doc the time to find the cure books; Abolish, the time to prepare his swords; Drift, the time to hunt down the trail he was trying to leave.

Even if he dies here in a lungful of his own blood, Avid did it. He saved the town full of people that thought him insane. He payed his debt. He saved them, this time.

Maybe he’ll become a vampire. Maybe he’ll turn and kill Scott and use the cure to fix himself. Maybe he’ll turn, and he’ll like it. 

The possibility scares him.