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Garlic. He knows this pain. As the burn ignites on the back of his neck, spreading out and then piercing like thousands of needles through to his spine, he knows exactly what happened.
This may not be his first run in with garlic, but it is his first time being hit with a garlic gun, and he’s grateful that his reflexes pulled him out of the line of fire after the first shot. But he was still hit. There’s still garlic juice searing a path down the back of his shirt. The smell scorches his nose and mouth, and the pain in his chest as he forces in a breath—his first proper one in four years—is like tearing muscles. He coughs, and those needles in his spine slice open the back of his throat. He’d be coughing blood, he thinks, if his blood still flowed.
He peers around whatever structure he threw himself behind—a phone booth—and out into the street.
It’s empty. It shouldn’t be.
They’re waiting for him.
He shuts his eyes and lets his head fall back against the glass. His mind strains, searching out the reinforcements he brought. Friends. Soldiers. Vampires. Slayers. Anyone.
Nothing. He’s alone in his mind.
But that can’t be right. They can’t all be dead.
He reaches further. Beyond the street, and the state, and all the way across the country. He looks for Ingrid, then Renfield, then Talitha.
Nothing.
So, the issue isn’t a lack of allies. The issue is him. That garlic juice still eating through his skin, tainting the already foul stench of garlic with the tang of burnt flesh, must be interfering with his telepathy. This doesn’t bode well for his other, more taxing powers.
When he glances back out at the street, hoping to locate a familiar figure skulking through the shadows, he instead spots a sign. One he recognises.
Evidently, a lot has changed over the past seven years—the roads have been repaved, and there are traffic lights where he last saw a roundabout—but there’s a lot that’s still the same. A lot he should have recognised on sight—and would have if he hadn’t been so preoccupied. Such as the Stokely post office.
He chased a group of rebels all the way to Stokely, and he didn’t even notice.
The realisation that he knows the lay of the land—or, at least, he knows it better than his opponent—comes too little too late. He’s injured, and the sun—
—his gaze skitters to the east, where the sky has started to pale—
—the sun will rise soon.
As quickly as he can manage, Vlad hurls himself around the corner and into the phone booth, slamming the door behind him.
It’s small. Glass on all sides. No protection. He crouches down until he’s hidden behind the advertisement stickers that cover the lower panels. So long as he’s facing the door, he can see out as much as his enemies can see in, but hiding behind stickers won’t keep out the UV rays.
He’s trapped.
He’s twenty-years-old, the Chosen One and Grand High Vampire, and his unlife is going to be ended in a rural Welsh phone booth by a cloudy Autumn sky. Pathetic.
Fitting, too, he supposes. His life has always felt like one big joke. Nothing but a cosmic exercise in dramatic irony.
He wishes he’d written a will, if only to keep his father from going through his belongings. If he had, he would’ve left it all to Ingrid. Or Wolfie. Whichever would upset his dad more.
He shakes his head.
No. That’s the garlic talking—he can’t think like that. He isn’t ready to die.
He pushes himself up onto his knees. The phone’s receiver is cool to the touch, and slightly greasy from the hands of the however-many-people who used it before. He almost drops it.
The only vampire he knows with a mobile is Magda, and he doesn’t know her number. Besides, they haven’t spoken since he was seventeen, and they didn’t exactly part on the best of terms, so he doubts she’d care enough to rescue him. Even back then, her help would’ve come with a price.
Jonno is still in Blackpool, but he could get a message to the Cardiff branch of the Slayer’s Guild.
Vlad presses in the first few digits of Jonno’s mobile number, then pauses. Is it seven-three or three-seven? He could try both. But he can’t recall if the number after than is a nine or a six.
Fangs cut into his bottom lip, and he almost yanks the phone off the wall.
There’s only one number he knows by heart. Only one he ever thought worth memorising.
The Branaugh home phone number.
His hand hovers over the keypad. He hasn’t spoken to Robin in seven years. He doesn’t know if Robin still lives at home, or how much he remembers, or if the family even has a landline anymore.
But he’s out of options.
He dials.
The ringing is unbearably loud, and each repetition shakes his skull like an anxious heartbeat.
‘What?’ Robin’s voice. It’s muffled and groggy, but unmistakably him. Vlad hadn’t expected this—he was preparing himself to lie to Graham or Elizabeth, or make up some sanitised, non-supernatural emergency for Chloe. Not this.
The sound hits him like a blow to the chest. It takes a moment to remember where he is and why he’s calling. He swallows down the gasp rising up his throat, as well as the lump forming, and blinks the stinging from his eyes. He doesn’t let the memories come—the memories of what he did the last time he was here. Everything Robin did to support him, and everything he took in return. He hasn’t thought about it for so long. Hasn’t let himself.
He grieved it all when he was thirteen, then moved on.
He didn’t have a choice.
‘Robin.’ Vlad’s voice cracks. He swallows, again, and hopes the next words sound less weak. Less pathetic. Less tight with guilt and fear. ‘It’s, uhm—it’s Vlad.’
There’s a breath, sharp enough to be audible, then: ‘you’ve got some bloody nerve, calling ‘ere, you know that?’
‘I know.’ He doesn’t try to keep the guilt out. ‘I wouldn’t—I would never call you out of the blue like this, not after—not if I wasn’t—’
‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ A pause and another intake of breath, this time accompanied by the wet click of Robin licking his lips. A nervous habit. Jonno looks down, Chloe clenches her teeth, and Robin licks his lips. Facts he will remember, no matter how much time passes or how useless the information has become. These are his friends. ‘You’re in the thick of it, and I’m your last resort?’
The words sting worse than the garlic. It isn’t just the words, either. It’s the tone. There’s that same indignation he’d often heard from Robin when they were younger, but it’s mellowed by a sense of resignation. Like he wouldn't expect anything else. Whether that is a reflection of how lowly he views Vlad, or how lowly he thinks Vlad views him, it hurts just the same. ‘Yes,’ he answers, because it’s the truth. He hates that it’s the truth. ‘I’m about to be dust.’
He doesn’t question whether Robin will understand—will remember what that means. He has a sinking feeling that, regardless, the outcome will be the same.
A bitter laugh crackles down the line. ‘Good.’
The sun crests the rooftops and a single, thin ray stabs the back of his hand. His legs buckle and he huddles under the mounted phone. A glance down at his blistering skin, the stench of burnt flesh anew, and he can’t hold in a whimper.
‘What’s going on?’ Robin demands.
Vlad presses the receiver tight against his cheek, then cups his injured hand over his healthy one in what resembles a hug. Even with the hostility, he still finds comfort in Robin’s voice, and in the illusion of presence. He’s twenty-years-old, and frightened, and he doesn’t want to die alone. ‘The sun has started rising. I’m near the post office, in that old phone booth. It’s glass, Robin! They’re waiting for me outside and my powers—they aren’t—I'm—Robin, I'm stuck.’ His voice tapers off into a whisper, but he doesn’t cry. Well, more like he doesn’t sob. Tears roll and his face flares with heat, but he ignores it.
‘Why are you calling me?’ Robin asks, after a moment of quiet shuffling. ‘After everything you did, and all these years of nothing, why would you call me now?’
Because I trust you, he thinks helplessly. Because I’m remembering a time when you were the only person I could trust. Because I’m scared, and you’re the person I used to go to when that happened. You’re the person I faced the danger with.
He wipes his nose on his sleeve.
Because I don’t want to die, and I hoped you wouldn’t want me to die either.
He doesn’t say any of that. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, instead. ‘I took things from you that weren’t mine to take. I thought—I was a child, and it all happened so fast—and in the moment I thought that it was the kind thing to do. I wanted to keep you safe.’
‘You ‘ad no right to decide that! After everything we went through—everything we did and saw together—you should’ve known better than to decide that for me! I trusted you—cared about you—and what did you do with it? You ripped two years' worth of memories from my ‘ead and then disappeared for seven fucking years! You left me alone, after I told you how shit everything was before you came ‘round, and there was no one to help me put myself back together! You got any idea how terrifying that was, all of a sudden not knowing where I’ve been going every day after school for two bloody years? Entire weekends, and holidays, and birthdays just—gone? Drawers full of knickknacks I’d never seen before? The horrid sense of anxiety I felt every time the sun went down? Crying because I miss someone, or something, and I can’t make the feeling go away because I don’t know where it came from in the first place?!’ Robin pauses for a few deep, ragged breaths, and underneath it is the slide of the backdoor. He continues, softer: ‘do you have any idea what you did to me, Vlad?’
Vlad sobs. His entire body quakes, his boots jitter against the glass and his forehead hits his raised knees. He doesn’t recognise the sounds tearing out of him. Shivering breaths and a heaved, wet keening. He chokes on it, along with the mix of tears and saliva pooling in his mouth, and that only makes the sound louder. It’d be pointless to try and supress it, so he doesn’t. He has no shame left.
The sun climbs higher and a ray hits his garlic-coated neck, digging claws into the still-fresh blisters. He tries to pull his shirt up higher. The phone is still clutched, white-knuckled, against his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeats, ‘I’m so, so fucking sorry. I’d fix it all if I could. I mean it, I do, please believe me. I’m sorry.’
The next words are shaky, and so quiet that Vlad can barely hear them. ‘You did this to yourself.’
Vlad closes his eyes. ‘I know.’
A click. The line goes dead.
‘No!’ Vlad screams—howls—into his knees. ‘No, don’t hang up! Don’t let me die alone!’
He curls further into himself. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. To Robin. To his family. To the boy he was before he put on that crown. The one who fantasised about growing up with Robin, in Stokely, and leading a normal life. His skin smokes and he whispers apology after apology to everyone he failed.
The door slams open.
Before he can lift his head, something dark and heavy is thrown over it, and he’s left reeling as he takes in the smell. There’s no smoke. Or garlic. Or dust. Instead, there’s being twelve, going on thirteen. Walking to and from Stokely Grammar. Caricatures sketched into the margins of his exercise books. Sleepovers with his best mate.
The darkness smells like a mixture of leather, and sweat, and Mrs Branaugh’s detergent.
Hands grab him by the shoulders and haul him up.
‘Move,’ Robin snaps, frantic and close and real. ‘Don’t you dare die on me now, I swear to fucking God, Vlad, if after all this bullshit—’
He reaches blindly—tries to cling to Robin, despite being swaddled and dragged—but he’s swiftly shoved off.
Right into the back of a car.
He lands on his back, sprawled across the worn, polyester seats. He slides the leather jacket down from his face, but doesn’t otherwise move. His head throbs, his skin is still imitating soot, and he’s trembling all over; and yet, it’s the best he’s felt in years.
Robin clambers into the driver's seat. He glances over his shoulder, just for the briefest moment, and Vlad takes him in. Robin’s hair is wavier than it was when they were younger, and there’s a shadow of stubble around his jaw, but he looks otherwise the same. His age—the time lost—comes through more in his expression, and his posture, than his appearance. His teeth are clenched, and he moves with purpose. His round, brown eyes are tired and swollen.
Vlad’s chest aches. He missed those eyes.
‘Don’t get things twisted,’ Robin says as he pulls onto the road. ‘I haven’t forgiven you.’
‘I know,’ Vlad whispers, clutching the coat tighter. He pulls it up over his nose, eyes fixed on Robin. His hair. His hands gripping, steady and white-knuckled, onto the steering wheel. What he can see of his profile.
He’s here.
He’s real.
He saved him.