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Sebastian Moran groaned slightly as he leaned back on the chaise in front of the fire, sipping wine.
The gaily decorated tree and the pine garland with bows and sparkling baubles that hung from the mantle indicated the holiday season. These days, seasons and holidays tend to blur, serving more as markers of time than any true means of celebration. As much as he bemoaned the trappings of the season, the home just looked wrong without at least that much, or rather that little acknowledgement.
The family stocking, with the family crest, that only a family member could fill.
The stocking that hung on the side of the mantle mocked him, for there would be no family to fill it, to have a family holiday feast with ever again. He was the last of his family line.
The stocking, much like the rest of the decor, just had to be there.
To be fair, he had families of the heart who could fill that role. Friends whose invitation to join their families' Christmas dinners was genuine, but he declined.
They were not his family; the only other living members had died many, many years ago.
That their deaths were at Sebastian’s hands notwithstanding.
Sebastian looked up at the portrait that hung above the fireplace: his father, Augustus Moran.
He imagined the man’s blue eyes sneering at him in shame and anger at what his eldest had become.
Sebastian had shot the eyes out of the painting in a drunken rage one night. All he could do was imagine them now. The man himself was dead, a victim of his own hubris.
The slash of dried, many-year-aged crimson across the neck marked him in the portrait as it had in death.
The only way a man like him could die.
Augustus made a choice without hesitation.
As had Sebastian.
So yes, as far as the world was concerned, he chose to give penance in the old homestead by celebrating the holiday alone.
As far as the world was concerned…
He listened as a soft, rhythmic thumping suddenly quickened, then slowed...
So many years later, the sound still enthralls him with a particular joy.
But that is not the sound that had him suddenly grinning as he put down the wine.
Instinct had the gun and a stake in his hands.
Both the stake, like the bullets, were wood dipped in silver; he was still a Hunter, after all…
Vampires. Young ones.
Ambitious ones to come here. Stupid ones to really think they’d survive.
Sebastian grinned…
And leapt shooting while airborne.
When he landed in a crouch, three vampires were shrieking as they slowly disintegrated. A fourth, freshly staked before the thought was finished.
A fifth and sixth one belatedly realized exactly whose home they were in…
“Hunter Moran! He’s real!”
…and tried to run.
Tried to…
The screeching was all that was left when a grinning Sebastian returned to the quiet living room; even the soft thumping was silenced.
“Oooh, they must have really pissed you off to bring them here... You do love me! Got any more presents?”
“Aww, is that how you greet me now, my love?” A lilting voice teased, “My poor heart is positively crushed, I tell you.”
He faced the impossible, and the impossible faced him.
==============
The saying goes: No plan survives first contact with the enemy. Master Vampire Moriarty and Hunter Sebastian Moran had danced a deadly tango around each other for over a decade, somehow always just escaping each other’s traps. Granted, Moran found himself just barely escaping traps, far more than he trapped the brilliant Moriarty, but it was enough that the master vampire knew not to underestimate him.
It was a game for them: the hunter and the hunted. And who was who was anyone’s guess.
Until a chase in a hotel room caused a fleeing Moriarty to slip on a banana peel.
Literally.
Moriarty’s attempt at self-defenestration from the bedroom window was thwarted when he careened into a wall and fell to the floor. The utter ridiculousness of it caused Moriarty to burst out in unhinged laughter, even as Moran pounced on him.
Years of pent-up frustration, the teasing and taunting while playing their deadly games, coalesced into a pinpoint moment when the lines of hysteria blurred between them.
Eyes locked on each other, neither could say when the kissing began.
Only that once it began, neither could stop kissing.
Nor stop at just kissing.
Sebastian was stunned to awaken very sore, very satiated, and still very human, albeit very alone in the hotel room come sunrise.
A choice was made without hesitation.
And at sunset it was made again.
============
Now, Master Vampire Jim Moriarty stood before him, comically pantomiming a crushed heart.
“Though that pretty little type AB negative makes up for it! What did she do?”
“Serial killer that I got to before Scotland Yard. As always, I test. Once I knew, I knew you’d appreciate the rarity of her blood type…” Sebastian raised his glass, “And the wine…”
Jim does not get drunk from consuming wine directly, but if someone has been drinking, he tastes it in their blood. The more and quicker they drank, the more he would be inebriated.
“Yes, you had her partake in a most lovely Bordeaux… You do love me!” Jim Moriarty grinned, his sharp teeth in crimson-tipped points slowly receding.
“I killed my brother to keep him from turning into a vampire. And murdered my father to keep him from killing me because he believed I already was one without hesitation. I think that means I do.”
==========
Augustus Moran was a Hunter—one with an impressive record of kills. Having never taken the time for love or family, as his father had, Sebastian knew he was perhaps two years from surpassing that record. There were many close calls, but Augustus, by some miracle, had always pulled through. Unfortunately, it led Augustus to begin believing his own claim that nothing alive could touch him. For in Augustus’ mind, since a vampire could be killed, that meant they were alive in their own way.
Against all odds, vampires had broken into the home. It was a massacre on both sides. Sebastian arrived in the living room in time to watch in horror as a vampire raised his head in laughter, seeing Sebastian’s mortification.
“Too late to save him, hunter.” The vampire’s mouth was bloody,
As bloody as the mouth of Sebastian’s brother, Severus.
There’s a finite window when a hunter is still human enough to want to commit suicide rather than succumb. That window had clearly closed or was never given a chance to open for Severus, who lapped greedily from the slit wrist of the laughing vampire that had turned him.
“You disobeyed my rules, Remy.”
A voice, dark and dangerous, was one that Sebastian recognized.
It was the only warning before a silver-tipped stake shot from a crossbow stopped the vampire’s laughter.
Only Sebastian was not the one who shot it.
Sebastian watched in shock as Moriarty stepped from the shadows, the crossbow that Sebastian had lost in another room in his hands.
“You’re mine. No one will take your life but me. But shooting you in your back as you watch your brother be turned is hardly sporting.”
Severus, still linked to the vampire, wailed as Remy disintegrated in an agonizing scream that seemed to echo even after he was ash. Now he knelt before Moriarty, pleading to the master vampire to finish what Remy had started.
“Speaking of…” Moriarty used the bow to indicate Severus, “Remy, like every vampire in my coterie, knows my rules. No hunter, especially a Moran hunter, is to be given The Gift, on principle. Even if they beg. What’s done is done here, and you know how this works.” Moriarty notched a fresh arrow in the crossbow and held it out to Sebastian. “So, you need to make a choice, Hunter Moran… And soon.”
Sebastian looked at the thing that was his brother. Being forcibly detached from Remy slowed the transition but would not stop it. Red human blood still dripped from the wound at his brother’s neck, but Sebastian could see it slowly turning darker as Severus healed and turned. He had a few minutes at the most before the change was complete.
Then there would be two vampires in the room again to worry about.
Moriarty may have his rules against turning a Moran Hunter, but as a newly turned vampire, Severus would be desperate for his first human feed.
And the only human in the room was Sebastian.
Sebastian understood. If by some miracle, Severus caught him and turned him as well? No Hunter is to be given The Gift. As new vampires, they had no chance in a fight against a master vampire like Moriarty; he would kill them.
Not understanding, or uncaring of the imminent consequences, Severus looked at his last living sibling with cold hunger, in his growing need.
“He is weak, always was. Sebastian was never the man I or my father was. Look at him! He knows what he should do, but even now, he won’t harm me. He is mine.”
A silver-dipped wood bullet through the brain proved Severus was wrong.
But Sebastian knew that was not enough, not for a Moran.
“What have you done?!” Augustus Moran ran into the living room in time to see his eldest son beheading his sibling.
Then Augustus saw Moriarty.
Severus had always been his father’s favorite, and Augustus saw Sebastian behead Severus while a master vampire watched.
Augustus raised his own crossbow on the vampire and fired.
Sebastian Moran will go to his grave not knowing what made him push Moriarty aside.
What was assuredly a kill shot, grazed Moriarty’s heart instead.
“You’re his? Is that why you could never seem to catch him?” An enraged and appalled Augustus threw his empty crossbow aside and drew his sword on Sebastian.
No Moran drew arms on another Moran unless they meant it.
The two swords clanged, sparks flew as father fought against son.
There was only ever going to be one outcome.
Sebastian’s wild swing cut an artery in his father’s neck that sent a spray outward. One that would not be noticed on the portrait above the mantle for several days. And in the background, instead of a quick death, a wounded Moriarty had begun a slow, painful interior disintegration that caused him to cry out.
“Moriarty!” Sebastian ran to Jim’s side.
He took his blade, cut the fletching, and pulled the stake out. Jim seemed to breathe easier, but Sebastian suspected it was no longer enough.
“I could survive a wood stake that missed, but the silver has leaked in. I’m being eaten from the inside out…” Jim confirmed the unasked. “I would need…”
“What do you need?”
“You know what I need, don’t be stupid, Moran…”
He would need blood. There was blood all around them, but none of it would do. The sounds of fighting had ended, and dawn was fast approaching. Any vampires left would have escaped to a safe place.
He would need fresh blood.
Fresh human blood.
“Do you hear a heartbeat nearby that you can get to?”
“Only one…” Jim looked away, “End of the road… I always knew it would come to this. Me dying at last because of a Moran… ”
“Not tonight…”
Again, Sebastian didn’t think about it. He made a choice; cutting his wrist and offering it, without hesitation.
“What are you doing? You’re a Hunter!” Jim placed a hand over the wound even as he looked longingly at the blood seeping between his fingers.
“Now is not the time to remind me… But if you… If you accidentally turn me, keep your word to kill me. Promise to behead me.”
Moriarty has had a reputation that has endured since Sebastian first heard of the vampire. He was a man of his word. If he promised you something, he honored it. And in the rare case of things that happened out of his control, he immediately made it right. Sebastian needed to hear that promise.
Moriarty silently raised the bloody wrist towards his lips. Sebastian stilled the movement.
“Promise me!”
“Why beheading?”
“Promise me, Moriarty!”
“I promise to behead you, Moran!’
Sebastian had barely moved his arm in consent when Moriarty was on it.
Sebastian had heard the experience described from thralls and other vampires. The initial moment of pain, then the extended euphoria, supposedly better than any dopamine hit out there.
After the burst of momentary pain when the canines sank in, he felt nothing except the sensation of Moriarty’s lips on his wrist, the tongue that teased at the wound as he drew and hungrily swallowed, and the slightest thrum that made his body shiver.
But he had had no idea whether it was Moriarty’s biology or his own.
Sebastian blinked. He felt it, sensed it just as Moriarty himself raised his head in shock.
A new heartbeat…
One that was getting stronger…
Sebastian slowly reached for his sword.
Augustus Moran sat up and felt gingerly along his neck. It was bloody, a cut artery will do that, but the wound was healed.
He stared at the body of his younger son, his eyes slowly tracking to face his eldest son, his last son.
He glared at the vampire, who took a final lap at Sebastian’s wrist before licking his bloody lips.
“Well, I’ll tell you what: that rather blows the cobwebs away.” Moriarty rose from the floor with the preternatural grace of the vampire he was. He glanced between father and son, “This should be interesting…” and slowly backed away into the shadows.
Sebastian could see the moment his father understood there was no struggle. He voluntarily let a vampire, a master vampire at that, drink from his wrist in a way that cannot be mistaken for anything but an offering.
An offering no living Moran should ever give.
Augustus’ hatred and loathing flared brightly in the blue eyes he passed to his son as he took in the scene before him. Had the vampire attacked him, as Remy had taken Severus, there would be signs of a struggle, and Sebastian would have been forgiven, still dead; it was their way, but forgiven.
But not this…
Sebastian had knowingly, willingly betrayed his people for Moriarty.
Augustus drew his sword, determined he would not make the mistake he believed Sebastian had made in letting him live.
It was not a mistake. Sebastian knew what would happen and wanted Moriarty to know.
But now, Sebastian would finish what he had started. What he knew his father would do to him. What he had been forced to do to Severus.
Sebastian moved.
Even so, Sebastian had not fully realized he had risen, let alone crossed the room, until his father’s head rolled away from him, fresh blood staining the carpet.
Sebastian heard it, felt it, as his father’s heart beat its final beats.
Tears streamed down his face.
“What have you done to me, Moriarty? I have never moved this fast before! I never heard a heart beating from across a room before…”
“What have you done to me, Moran?” Moriarty shot back, seemingly coalescing from the corner. His shirt and undershirt were ripped open, revealing the smooth, unpierced chest underneath. “I have scars from silver poisoning. I never heal fast from it … I certainly did not expect to heal from poisoning that pierced my heart, yet here I am.”
Sebastian suspected the answer, and suspected Moriarty knew it too.
You need to make a choice, Hunter…
No. There was no choice.
For all the vampires he has tracked and killed since then. For all the vampires he will continue to track and kill, when it came to one vampire, his choice was made in a hotel room years ago.
Two men, neither quite human, entered a hotel room as mortal enemies, but made a choice and departed as eternal lovers…
“You’re…a… a Sempiternal…” Moriarty whispered the word with awe. “I thought your kind were all wiped from earth. It’s been over a century since I last heard of one existing.”
“Yes… All Morans are…” Sebastian admitted, eyes cast at his last two kills, then at his healed wrist, “Were… For all I know, I may be the very last of my bloodline, of my kind, and I willingly gave blood to you - without hesitation.”
“I promise I did not turn you, but your increased speed and hearing a human heartbeat say that I, a master vampire, have just given you a hunter, a Moran Hunter at that, even more power to kill us…” Jim reached up and wiped away Sebastian’s tears.
“So, what do we do now? Enemies from both sides will come for our heads, literally, if any discover what we've done, Jim.”
“We don't tell them. We’ll work it out, Sebastian.”
==========
“As I have killed my own to protect you. I would do it again without hesitation. Wouldn’t you?”
It was a choice made in a hotel room a century ago. A choice that made them myth and legend to the living and the dead, who don’t know the Master Vampire and his Master Hunter lover, who cannot seem to die, is real.
A choice they have made again and again for the past century.
A choice they hope to keep making again and again for future centuries.
Sebastian pulled Jim into his arms for a kiss.
“Without hesitation.”