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Muddy water splashed up to Wind’s knees as he ran, dodging trees and puddles that concealed their true depths and sharpened wooden structures holding up corpses like art installments. Gunshots rang out from behind him. The spray of bullets missed Wind by a hair—or, at least, most of it did. He felt a stinging pain in his back somewhere, the force enough to topple men three times his size. He, instead, kept moving.
Wind hated this. He’d seen his share of fighting, of wars, of combat. He’d lived nearly two and a half centuries, of course he’d seen fighting. He’d joined a few battles, here and there, partially due to boredom and partially due to the fact that he hated seeing wrongs in the world. He knew how much trouble that particular drive got him into. He had the scars to prove it.
He liked enlisting in navies, getting on ships. It had been fascinating to watch how steam replaced sails, and even further developments since. This, unfortunately, was not the navy. Wind’s boots hit the solid ground. The half-liquid ground, anyway, as the mud did its best to suck him in. Rain slid under the collar of the uniform jacket that didn’t quite fit him. He shivered.
He’d seen wars. He’d never seen one quite this brutal or impersonal. The new generation of weapons made killing at a distance—en masse—not just easy, but default, and Wind had personally witnessed the horror of chemical weapons, not to mention the diseases that ran rampant through the trenches.
The War to End All Wars, the press called it. Wind doubted that, but he wished he could believe it. People always tended to die when those in power failed to agree, and he didn’t see that changing, despite how many genuinely good men in power he’d met.
People always died. For politicians, that was abstract, their soldiers just numbers to count or mouths to feed or feet to shoe. For soldiers, and for Wind, death was a close, brutal reality.
He’d grappled many times with guilt before, but Wind found himself facing the emotion like an old friend once again as he took shelter behind an overturned cart with another soldier. Probably one from the country in which Wind had enlisted, though the colors all muddied out here in the rain. The other soldier flinched at the gunshots that punched through the cart’s pockmarked wooden floor, and Wind knew without looking that the soldier was dead.
Stupid humans. They died too quickly, were too fragile. Even through the scent of terror and dirt, their blood cut bright in his nose.
Still, Wind held the soldier’s hand and witnessed his last breaths, because nobody else was around to do so. He could have saved this man, theoretically. Wind’s hands shook as he laid the soldier down—rage or more guilt, he didn’t really know.
Rain soaked his hair and made him shiver, splattering down from bare branches above his head. This should have been a beautiful forest, but instead it had been shelled and died on until it barely resembled earth. It felt like the worst parts of Paris’s catacombs, human remains stacked up in every corner.
Wind wished that he knew where Link had gone. He’d been a good leader—stern, but determined, and kind, and talented. He’d been a favorite for promotion, and Wind would’ve supported that, but after this disastrous battle, it would be too suspicious for Wind to show up alive. He'd have to leave.
Link and Wind shared more than a given name. They shared ancestry, and that wild determination to do the right thing. Wind had seen an older brother in Link somewhere, an older brother he’d gotten attached to. He'd wanted to take Link out to get drunk someday and have a true conversation with him.
Stupid Wind. He’d managed to avoid getting emotionally attached to anyone since Aryll and her kids, and her grandchildren. He’d forgotten how much it hurt to lose someone he loved. In the chaos of this charge, Link was lost. Wind might never find out what happened to him.
But he couldn’t stop now. That had been his mantra all through his recent, cursed life, and it was his mantra as he kept walking forward, ignoring the few shots that did manage to lodge in his skin. They’d fall out later.
You can't stop now.
He could save every single one of these dying soldiers, but they’d come to resent him. They didn’t really want to live, not if it meant vampirism, living forever without your loved ones. Once, living forever had sounded wonderful to Wind, but that had been before he’d lost even those who were supposed to endure eternally alongside him. That had been before he’d lost Tetra to a vampire hunter’s sword.
Wind kept going. Maybe he’d make a difference, in this war of inches and feet.
You can't stop now.
“Wind!” A familiar voice made Wind startle, and he looked over to see Link, sprinting full-tilt toward him. Link’s hair shone golden, somehow, as if he’d only just lost his helmet.
The sudden whistling sound gave Wind no warning. He felt paralyzed, as if he’d been shoved into slow motion while the world sped up around him.
Link tackled him to the ground in the same instant that one of the puddles exploded behind him, a geyser of dirt and mud and rain blowing into the sky and spattering around them. They hit the ground together, rolling until they came to stop by some bushes that miraculously still stood. Link’s arms pinned Wind’s down, and Wind’s next breath was more mud than it was air.
“No,” Wind choked out, not hearing his own voice due to the ringing in his ears. His fingers curled into the wool of Link’s uniform. He knew he smelled blood. Too much of it. That explosion had been far too close. The shrapnel…
Wind’s body caught back up. He sat up and turned Link over, eyes wide. “No. No, Link! You did not just save me!”
“Sorry.” Link had the audacity to smile at him, though his lips paled as Wind watched. “I’d rather you live.”
“I would have! You idiot of a human!” Wind felt his face heat as his eyes filled with tears, water mingling with rain on his face. He cleared his eyes with his hand, smearing more dirt. “No, no. You can’t die. You, especially. Don’t die, Link.”
“Everyone’s gotta.” Link winced and tried to sit up, but Wind kept him down. “Kid.”
“You aren't going to survive those wounds,” Wind said. He could smell it. Unless he got Link to a medical station immediately—which he wouldn’t—and Link was treated properly and thoroughly in a clean environment—which he definitely wouldn't be—Link would bleed out or go septic.
Wind glanced around. Their part of the forest sounded devoid of living things. Rivulets of drizzle and settling puddles were the only things that moved. Even the shells and gunshots had gone quiet, continuing on.
Link looked tired. “Probably wasn’t gonna survive the war, anyway. Not like I have anyone to go back to.”
“Nobody?” Wind asked, voice dull.
“Nah. So ‘s fine, really. You can go back to your sister.”
Wind bowed his head, fist clenched in the breast of Link’s jacket. He missed his sister. He didn’t want to lose another sibling, especially not like this.
He wanted Link to live. Link, who gave him food from off his own plate, who tried to let Wind be independent but helped him redo his tie knot if it went away, who had pushed him to be better. He wanted Link to live.
The whole world pivoted around that one fact.
Wind leaned in so he could speak without yelling. “Link. Do you want to… do you want to live?”
A drop of blood beaded at the corner of Link’s mouth, and he gave Wind a tragic look. “Go home, Wind.”
“I don’t have one,” Wind said. “You’re the closest I have, right now. I can save your life. Tell me to do it, and I will.”
“We’ll never make it back,” Link tried to say, but Wind cut him off by baring his teeth and pushing his fangs out.
“See? I’m not human, Link, I’ll live forever and sometimes that sounds like the worst thing possible, I won’t lie, but I don’t want you gone now. I want to save you. You don’t have a lot of time.”
Link looked blankly at him. Confused.
“Do you want to survive?” Wind asked. “If you say no, I’ll… I’ll let you die. But if you say yes, I’ll do it. I’ll save you.” He clutched Link closer to his chest.
I love you, he meant. You’re the closest thing I’ve had to family in two hundred years. Don’t die.
“I…” Link was fading. Dying, doing the one thing Wind didn’t want him to do. He blinked a few more times, and voice came out shakier than Wind had ever heard it. “Do it, then. Whatever it is.”
Wind looked down at his paling face. He’d contemplated saving those who died near him many, many times, within and without war. But… he’d never actually done it. Now that he had the motivation and the consent, he felt unsure of his actual ability.
He dredged up his memories of Tetra and the crew giving him explicit instructions on turning someone else into a vampire, so he wouldn’t do it by accident. As Wind did his best to recall her words, he almost felt the Caribbean sun on his hair and worn-smooth wood beneath his palms. After this nightmare, Wind decided, he’d take Link to go visit somewhere without fighting for a while. Somewhere with sun and the ocean and palm trees. That sounded wonderful.
One step at a time. Wind adjusted his hold and pulled Link’s uniform jacket open quickly, popping a few buttons in his haste. He ignored all the mud and the sweat and bent down to position his teeth right over Link’s carotid. He kept his fingers on Link’s pulse and counted the seconds between faint beats, waiting.
The instant Link’s heart hit the right sluggish speed, Wind struck. He bit down, digging sharp teeth deep into Link’s thin skin. Cooling blood spilled into his mouth and past his lips. He ignored both that and the primal urge to keep biting and rip out the throat.
He hoped he’d get this right. He wasn’t sure any gods really existed, but he prayed to them anyway, mentally begging the divine there in a forsaken, freezing field. If there was any sympathy at all from the heavens, or from the ghosts the wandered the stippled fields here, Link would survive.
Vampire bites expelled venom with paralytic and amnesic properties, which made it easier to feed without killing. Over the years, Wind had learned how to control the flow of his own venom well. The turning process required all the venom he had. It would take several days to replenish, days in which Wind would personally be unable to feed safely on a human.
In Wind’s hold, Link began to seize. The venom did its dirty work, beginning the long turning process. Wind well remembered the awful pain.
Once he felt that things were well underway, Wind detached, a bit lightheaded. He felt the sticky blood coating his chin and knew that he looked like a nightmare himself, clutching a bleeding soldier close like this. He looked up at the faded world around them.
He hadn’t thought this through very well. They had nowhere to go. The turning process would take another day or two, if it went well, and up to a week or more, if it didn’t. Wind needed to get him and his new vampire spawn somewhere safe. The command center and the trenches were an absolute no-go—the risk of a field medic tainting the turning was too great, and Wind didn’t want to give any two-year-old vampires any great ideas. He didn’t want them to see him weakened, having just made a rather rash decision.
He needed somewhere else, and as Wind cast his mind about, he landed with relief on the perfect solution. “Perfect” perhaps was an exaggeration, but it was workable, and private, and very likely safe enough for this.
Wind pulled Link’s jacket off his body, used the sleeve to clean up some of the blood leaking all over both of them, and wrapped the jacket around Link’s arms. He picked Link up into his arms—somewhat awkwardly, as Wind was fourteen and much smaller than Link, even if he had the requisite strength—and, determined, began to walk.
Once he started, Wind didn't stop for several hours. He walked away from the battlefields and entered a husk of a village nearby, shelled to abandonment. Broken bricks scattered across the cracked cobbles. Shards of colored glass from the church’s window mixed with the shattered remains of a fountain in the square. Wind paused at the door of a pub with its windows blown out, but all his enhanced hearing picked up was the labored breathing of the man on his back.
Wind set Link down behind the bar with a grunt, keeping him on his side. He checked Link’s eyes—unfocused, but shining. Good. He'd be more coherent tomorrow, Wind thought, and in pain.
After a brief trip to the rooms above the bar to scrounge what extra clothes and blankets he could, Wind arranged his things around Link. He found an old metal bowl, lit a broken candle from his bag, and set the candle into the bowl for extra light. He hoped he would be able to find some water here, maybe firewood or clothing.
Wind found Link’s flask and took a drink himself before turning Link to his stomach and ripping his clothes to get at the skin of his back. Blood dripped from torn holes, and muscles kept jumping as the turning process worked. None of the shrapnel pieces looked to have gone very deep, or hit anything necessary, but if they remained, Link’s body could focus too much on healing and the turning would fail anyway.
There was a reason that turnings, ideally few and far between, traditionally took place in homes or on ships, where new vampires wouldn't be injured. (And where they could be contained, if something went wrong.) Wind really needed to take care of these injuries.
He unpacked his bag and evaluated his inventory. Not much in the way of first aid—not that he knew much about that anyway. He had a few bottles of preserved blood, which he thought was disgusting, but the practice of carrying extra on him had saved him more than once. Luckily, Wind had a rather full stomach from two nights ago, so he could save his bottles for Link, who'd need them, and probably wouldn't even register how bad they tasted.
Wind uncapped Link’s flask and dumped the liquid inside on Link’s back to clean off the dried blood. Link cried out, then, but Wind set his jaw against the sound.
He flipped the knife in his hand, then got to work digging out the shrapnel.
Link spent about three full days in miserable pain, his head in Wind’s lap.
“Why am I on fire?” he'd ask, and Wind would put down the poetry book he'd found in the church to hold Link closer.
“It won't last forever. It'll be over soon.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
Wind kept running his fingers through Link’s hair, because he remembered Tetra doing the same for him when the sensations in his skin overwhelmed his thoughts. (If he let himself remember his own turning, if he thought about how much he wanted Tetra and the crew to be here, he wouldn't be any use at all.) Link responded well to the gentle touch.
During a few of the hours they spent together in strained silence, behind that dusty bar, Wind read aloud. His voice sounded wrong to him sometimes, and with only wind in the windows and Link's whines of unbearable pain to accompany him, his young voice made a painful contrast to the words of the heavy poems he'd found. He sounded like an innocent child thinking of lost toys instead of an old man remembering someone that died four lifetimes ago.
He didn't do much reading aloud.
Mostly, he kept Link talking, asking questions about his life. It kept them from focusing on the difficult things right in front of them, though Wind kept adding notes to his little book as he thought of things to address.
Drunk with pain wasn't exactly the sort of drunk Wind had anticipated, but he heard Link’s short, sad life story anyway: laborer father, artist mother, an apprenticeship. An trophy or two in fencing, an older sister. The tragedy that took them all away. The decision to enlist, maybe do something useful before he died.
“I can't promise you won't die now,” Wind muttered into afternoon sunlight when Link had finally managed to slip into unconsciousness. “But the Consortium is gone, and we've become myths. You're out of danger. You aren't ever going to be alone, now.”
Wind stretched out his fingers to feel his namesake blow against his back, threatening to send him tumbling down the cliffs and into the foamy gray ocean below. He'd imagined something a bit more tropical, but he did have to admit that traveling along the coast of France did beat that cramped town. Now that Link could walk on his own, Wind was taking him to Italy.
“Isn’t there something in folklore about vampires being burned by sunlight?” Link asked behind him, sitting on rocks and staring at the open horizon. “And being repelled by religion? And garlic? Why are we going to Italy?”
“It’s pretty there,” Wind answered.
“And…”
“And it has several very busy ports. What do you think about waiting out the rest of the war, earning some honest money, and traveling overseas?”
“I think I'm still a little bit concerned about the vampirism.”
Wind smiled, not turning around quite yet. “Our bloodline doesn't have to worry about sun or garlic or crosses. We have other things. Italy is a perfectly safe place to hide out for a while.”
“How do you know?” Link asked, almost accusatory.
“I've been there before. It's nice. And before you ask, re-joining the war would be very difficult for a number of reasons, so I'd rather not.”
Link remained quiet for a moment, long enough that Wind turned around to look at him. They both wore clothing scrounged from the abandoned town store, hard-wearing boots and plain shirts. They had packs full of things that the evacuees had left behind, giving them a cover story about farmland and marching armies. Wind didn't look old enough to be drafted, and Link, right now, gave off the impression of a permanent sickly condition. Wind knew they had to find him a good source of blood soon, but the pale skin and dark circles beneath his eyes were a really handy cover. Maybe if they took a boat down to Egypt instead of staying in Europe…
“You saved me from dying,” Link said, interrupting Wind’s train of thought. His blue eyes flickered with red, a sure sign of bloodlust that he couldn't quite recognize in himself, yet.
“Technically, I just killed you faster,” Wind answered. He sat down on one of the rocks too.
“Why don't you save everyone?”
“Going right for the big questions, huh?” Wind filled his lungs with ocean air and nodded. “When I was just a few weeks into being a vampire, we stopped off at one of the forts in… I don't even remember. There were some older vampires there, unhappy with my Captain because she technically had not had permission to turn me. I said something stupid like, ‘you can't tell her what to do!’ but they could, because that's how vampires work. I sort of made a mess of things. They didn't kill me, but I did land myself in their dungeons for a few days.”
“So,” Link said, brow furrowed as he tried to figure out the moral of the story. “You don't save more people because you don't have permission? That doesn't sound like the Wind I know.”
Almost involuntarily, Wind laughed. “No, that isn't the point. Remember how I told you that most of the vampires died out in the seventeen-hundreds? There isn't anyone left to give permission. The point is—”
Link held up a hand, and Wind went quiet, waiting. “Hold on. There isn't anyone left to give permission, but you got in trouble for not having it?”
“Link,” Wind said, narrowing his eyes. “How old do you think I am?”
Link suddenly looked nervous. “Your papers said eighteen, but I know that's a lie.”
“It was. I’m fourteen.”
“Somehow, I still don't believe you.”
Wind grinned. “Wise young whippersnapper. I've been fourteen for more than two hundred years.”
“Oh.” Link wrinkled his nose like he couldn't quite wrap his mind around that. “So you survived… whatever happened to all the other vampires.”
“I did,” Wind said, more sober. “So, to your question, I don't make more vampires whenever someone around me dies because it would be irresponsible, and I consider it morally repugnant.” He set a hand over his heart for the drama, and didn't mention the guilt. Not today.
“Why?” Link asked. “If you can save people…”
“Is it really saving?” Wind spread his arms. “Think about it. You're walking and talking, but you aren't breathing. Your sanity and life depends on hurting other people.”
“Are you trying to make me hate this?” Link shook his head.
“I'm just trying to prove that not everybody wants it,” Wind said. “I wish I could've explained it to you before I forced you into a choice. Not everybody can handle it—I think you can, but I've heard stories about others. And imagine if I wasn't here, if I'd just bitten you and left you. You wouldn't know what you are, now. You wouldn't know how to feed without causing panic or killing, you wouldn't know how to recognize the signs of hunters in your trail. You might have gone insane with bloodlust and killed dozens of humans. Like I said: irresponsible.”
Link made a face. “Still. I can't help but think…”
Wind knew. He'd been on battlefields before. In hospitals. He'd wandered the places where people died and hated himself for not giving any of them a chance. But his reasons remained sound. (He didn't know if he could do it alone.)
“Lots of people get turned during wars,” he said. “Unfortunately, they get killed and die too quickly, because their sires don't stick around to teach them. It wasn't always like that. There's a reason I haven't sired any more vampires yet, at least not until you. You won't die, because I'm going to teach you how to not.”
“Until me?” Link echoed. “I'm the first, in over two centuries? I'm still not sure I believe you about that, by the way.”
“Pirates are very honorable, why would I lie about my age?” Wind argued with another smile. “Yes, you’re the first. I got attached to you. We have the same name, actually.” He wrapped his hands around his knees and rocked. “I was born as Link, too.”
“Huh.” Link digested that, and Wind knew they'd probably need to go over it all again later. Link was smart, but this was a massive shift in perspective, because he hadn't even known vampires existed before this. Wind had at least that luxury in regards to his own life and turning.
“Have you aged at all?” Link asked eventually. “Or are you stuck?”
“I'm stuck,” Wind responded with irate vehemence. “Fourteen forever. I won't ever grow up and be taken seriously! I won't even ever have a beard. Do you know how disappointing that is? All the best pirates had beards.”
Link smiled back at him. “I bet we could find someone willing to donate a fake one.”
“Doesn't make me look any older,” Wind sighed dramatically. “I tried that already.”
“Everything is different now, isn't it?”
“More than you know, I think.” Wind sat up straight. “Which reminds me! We have to talk about your name!”
“My name?”
“You, sir, are dead. You're MIA. Not every dead body gets home, and yours is officially lost. They won't find you anywhere. So you get to choose a new name and a new identity!”
“Oh. I don't know if I have anything prepared…”
“That's okay, we have time until you need papers and all. In the meantime, I can call you Carl.”
Link blinked, then laughed. “That doesn't fit me. Does it?”
“That's the point, it'll force you to pick something else sooner!” Wind explained with a smile. “So, Carl, any ideas?”