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He finds Michael immediately. Wet sand; windless night—it doesn’t take a vampire to track a seventeen-year-old boy half a mile down the beach. Michael stiffens when he sees David coming, but he doesn’t move from where he’s standing by the water, just close enough that the biggest waves send lapping rivulets over his sneakers.
He turns away and stares out over the expansive Pacific, not acknowledging David or saying a word. David sits down in the dry sand a few yards away and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
Michael is standing so still. The moon is up and bright, hanging over the ocean like a toenail clipping. David picks viscera out of his teeth and lets the life from the surfer diffuse through him, warmth seeping into his fingers and toes.
Max is always on him about being impatient. You might think living a hundred years would give you a different perspective on time but David feels it just like he did when he was twenty-something, huddled in the trenches, each minute crawling along like molasses. In some ways David has become more impatient the longer he's been immortal, at least with humans. When you know somebody is only going to live to see eighty, you want them to get a fucking move on. Do something. Save themselves or make room for somebody else.
In the post-feeding flush he’s feeling generous, but Michael’s capacity to stand and do nothing for so long is wearing on him. David knows he must be hungry. He’d smelled blood tonight, and now he knows what it is that his body wants—what it craves. What is he waiting for?
An hour later they’re in the same positions, and David is finally too bored not to break the silence. “You want a smoke?” he calls, and when Michael doesn’t answer lights a cigarette for himself. He thinks, annoyed, of the joint in Marko’s jacket pocket and wishes he had that instead.
“You’re stalling, Michael.” The words drift over the sand with the smoke. Michael’s shoulders are hunched in his jacket like he wants it to swallow him. “You already know what you have to do.”
Michael is silent for so long David assumes he won’t say anything. When he does, it comes out weak and croaky, like it’s the first words he’s said all day. “I can’t do—that.”
David chuckles. Youth! So sweet. So innocent. “You can,” he says. “We all did it. The first bite’s the hardest, and after that? Easy as breathing.”
“Why are you here?” Michael turns to him, beseeching. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“Because I’m bored, Michael.” David gets up, clapping grit off his pants. It’s been long enough. So Michael needs some convincing—well, so had the others. It’s annoying to have two concurrent works in progress, but Michael will come around and then Star will, too. He can see how Star looks at Michael, he’s not blind. Knock over one domino and the other topples with it.
He strolls across the damp sand, ignoring the seawater lapping around his boots. Michael is watching him, big wet eyes like a beagle puppy. “I can’t… kill somebody,” he says, so low it’s barely audible. “I’m not like you.”
“You’re wrong. You're just like me,” David says, and puts a finger under his chin, lifting his face up. “Say ‘ah!’”
Michael stares at him, not understanding, so David grabs his jaw and pushes his fingers and thumb into both of his cheeks, forcing the hinge of his mandible open. “Ahhh,” he says, opening his own mouth wide like he’s at the dentist, and runs his tongue over his teeth: first one long incisor, then the other. “Now you.”
Michael’s eyes widen. He copies David, running his tongue over his own teeth, and the color drains from his face. “How do I stop it?” he asks.
David abruptly lets him go, irritated. “Why would you want to? You got exactly what you asked for.”
Michael is running his thumb along the points of his incisors, like he doesn’t believe it yet. “I didn’t ask for this,” he says finally.
“You asked for brotherhood. A family. To be one of us, forever. Emphasis on forever.”
Michael’s eyes are red-rimmed and hollow. He doesn’t speak.
“You’re close, Michael,” David says quietly. “Close to having it all. Brothers who know you like nobody else. Who will die for you.” He grips Michael’s shoulder hard, until Michael winces under his fingers and tries to twist away. “Do this one thing and you’ll have a family for longer than life. Forever,” he says again, letting the word ring into Michael’s ears with its full resonance. “It’s not hard.”
Michael shakes his head mutely. A gull screams overhead, some poor lost bird on the wrong side of sunset. “I can’t.”
David steps back. So much resistance for such a small task. One human life, when so many were going to waste around him… hasn’t Michael seen the boardwalk? Hasn’t he walked the boards past junkies and hookers and kids stuffing hot dogs down their throats? What was a deadbeat surfer really worth, after all; and when you put him on the scales against eternal life with David and the band, why does Michael seem to see them tipping in favor of the sleazebag with a board shorts tan?
He keeps his voice level and bored, asks, “If I’m not enough, won’t you do it for Star?”
Michael’s eyes flick up. David raises an eyebrow. “Anything to impress a girl,” he says flatly. The night isn’t going the way he’d hoped. He looks out over the water, wishing again that he had that joint.
“Star will take the next step. You’ve already gone too far to turn back now, both of you.”
“There has to be something we can do.”
“There isn’t,” David says, in a malicious, lilting sing-song. “Of course, you could kill yourselves, but, hey—” He clucked his tongue sympathetically, turning back to smile into Michael’s stony, expressionless face. “—I don’t recommend that one. You remember,” he goes on suddenly, as an image swells up in his mind unprompted. “You fuck it up, and suddenly there’s a big—bloody—mess.” He taps Michael’s chest on each of the last three words with both palms. “Don’t want your mom to find that again, do you?”
This time when Michael lets his fist fly David is expecting it. He takes the punch anyway, but twists so that it hits his cheek instead of his nose. He comes up laughing and starts swinging.
The fight is quick and brutal. Michael can hold his own, but David has more practice on the beach. After David punches him in the gut, hard, it takes Michael a few precious seconds to find his footing in the shifting sand; by the time he comes up again David is ready and waiting. They trade two more blows each but Michael is on the back foot, and he never really gets his momentum. He lands one punch against David’s jaw, and David absorbs it, dropping to sweep under the jab that follows—he’s not trying to read Michael’s mind, he just knows the patterns that Michael is following, can read the tells of his tensed muscles and react faster.
In the end it takes David a precise and beautifully timed uppercut to lay Michael flat. He steps on his chest before Michael can get up, then drops to his knees and puts his hand around Michael’s throat.
“Nice try, Michael.” He spits out a mouthful of blood and surfer. It stains the sand a reddish-brown. “I hope that was as fun for you as it was for me.” He grins, bearing his bloodstained teeth.
Michael chokes something unintelligible and David lets his grip slacken—he’s forgotten about the human need for an open airway. “Get—off—” Michael gets out, struggling against David’s thighs.
“I will if you keep wriggling,” David says viciously. He bears down harder with his hips and squeezes Michael’s throat in warning.
Michael freezes.
“And we were getting along so! Nicely!” David rolls his eyes to the sky. “But that’s brothers for you. Tale as old as time, right? Cain, Abel—which are you, do you think?”
“I’m not your brother,” Michael spits.
David lets go of Michael’s throat and pats his cheek. “Not yet,” he says cheerfully. He gets to his feet and puts out his hand to help Michael up. Michael ignores it and scrambles upright, never letting his back be fully turned. David tsks, amused. He’s made his point already; he’s not going to hurt Michael unless Michael tries something first.
“How did you know— that?” Michael is tight as a wire, his jaw tensing and relaxing spasmodically and his fists clenched. There’s a bruise blooming just below his mouth, but it will be gone by the time the sun comes up. “Nobody knows about that. Not even Sam knows about that.”
David cocks his head. Star hasn’t told him anything, then. Anything about what they can do after the change, who they are, what they can be, the nature of their particular breed of godliness. No wonder a human life doesn’t seem worth it. “All part of the gift,” he says softly. “I know a lot of things about you, Michael.”
The first real sign of terror crosses Michael’s face. Interesting.
“I know your first memory,” David lies, moving closer, watching Michael’s expression carefully. “I know your dearest wish and your greatest fear.” Nothing. David takes another step. “I know your childhood bullies. I know your first crush.”
Michael blinks: once, twice. Got you.
“Don’t play poker, Michael,” David purrs. “You’re too easy to read. Who was your first crush?” He reaches for it, but can’t pull any one image out of Michael’s head. It’s too fast, too loud, too bright. Somewhere sunny; somewhere dark. A school hallway, then the boardwalk, then a cliff over the water. He gets flashes of faces, but mostly of himself and Star. Michael twists away, avoiding his eye.
“Look at me,” David says. He pulls Michael’s face to him by his jaw. Michael resists, but David is stronger than him, and when he repeats himself, loading the command with power, Michael’s strength fails. David yanks his face around and stares into his eyes. “Who did little Michael Emerson fall in love with, hm?”
He does take hold of a memory then. A desert landscape. Two cans of coke tipped over, bleeding brown sugar over orange rocks. Endless stars. Full lips, kissed rust-red.
“Hm.” David closes his eyes. “Pretty,” he remarks. And sad, he doesn't say. Michael has a type. “What was his name?”
He is surprised by his own jealousy—Michael isn’t that beautiful. But the stolen memory slices into him. He feels like his skin is being peeled off of him as if from an apple, one curling strip at a time.
“Fuck you,” Michael spits. He's shaking with anger, his jaw still held tight in David’s hand. “You have no fucking right to do that—”
David tuts. “You wanted me to see it.” He reaches again. The school hallway again, the same boy walking past without a glance. A baseball field at night.
“Stop,” Michael says, voice wretched. His breathing is coming fast and shallow. He pulls against David’s hand again, but David holds him fast. He wraps his other hand in the soft grey cotton of Michael’s shirt, just over his breast bone. Michael shudders and suddenly the baseball field is gone, replaced by a different memory: David is looking at himself, wiping blood off his mouth.
He smiles.
Is this what Michael needs? Would it help, if David pushed him to the ground here and took him? Is that what he wants—to be ravished? David’s hand tightens on his jaw. He considers it.
But no. He doesn’t think so. Michael needs something else.
Carefully, slowly, David closes the gap between them. The kiss is soft and sweet. It tastes like blood, and like the ocean. Metallic, with a salty tang. Neither of them make a sound, or breathe, and the thin foam of a shimmering wave rolls over their feet and then recedes.
David lets Michael go. Unwraps his fist from Michael’s shirt and drops his other hand from Michael’s jaw. Michael doesn’t move; his eyes are open and his expression is complicated.
“First one’s the hardest,” David says lightly. “After that? Easy.” He steps away, walking backwards down the beach. “Join us, Michael. Set yourself free.”
When he’s far enough away to be lost to the gloom, he takes off into the night. For the first time in years he can feel his own heart beating an unsteady, jolting tattoo against the bars of his ribcage.