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Jack von Pyroscythe arrived at the coffee shop almost ten minutes early and was waiting for his drink (medium roast, black, splash of sweetener) when the Coven arrived in a pack.
Shelby was first, to his surprise. Pyro had expected him to lead the way. She bounded through the entrance, dressed in a plaid skirt, knee socks, and mary janes under a green T-shirt with flowering vines. Her hair was tied back with two ribbons. She looked so much like he remembered her that his chest contracted and nearly crushed his unbeating heart. Her hair was still white. He remembered when he first saw it that color, when she’d stepped out of the side crypt in the catacombs underneath the castle, resplendent as a pale vampire princess. Her eyes, on the other hand, were their original amber. Colored contacts, perhaps, like the ones he wore to keep his eyes blue?
He’d tiered up for this meeting, even though he disliked the prickle of the sun against his skin. He couldn’t walk into a meeting with the Goldsmith weak as a human. This was only second tier, though. He couldn’t face his third tier appearance, or more accurately the looks on other people’s faces when they saw it. The extra power of second tier might give him the speed to get away if he needed it, but otherwise it was little more than a security blanket.
Shelby came to a screeching halt in front of him. She looked like she wanted to hug him but couldn’t make that first move. “It’s really you,” she said. “I was afraid you might not show after all.”
“Hi,” he said awkwardly. He knew he should reach out to touch her – she’d granted him the invitation in all but words – but he couldn’t make his body move. His mind blanked on anything else to say, and he just stood there like an idiot. They stared at each other. He caught sight of Drift walking in behind her, followed by Avid. The barista called his name, and he took the excuse to break eye contact and grab his drink.
“Wow, Pyro,” Drift said, stepping up to stand beside Shelby. She wasn’t the same out-of-time shock. She wore cargo pants and a dark shirt under an unbuttoned flannel that just screamed old school dyke. Her hair was white and still curly but much shorter, falling just past her ears. Her eyes were also reverted to her original hazel. She grinned encouragingly at him, adeptly keeping her fangs from view. “It’s been a long time. You look great. Is it cliche to say you haven’t changed a bit?”
“Depends on what you’re comparing to,” he said, and he tried to smile. His voice barely sounded like his own.
Drift laughed. The sound was a bit nervous. “Yeah, I guess that’s true for all of us.”
“I sent Avid to grab the best spot,” Shelby said. “Come on. Let’s sit down and catch up.”
He followed her to a back corner, featuring overstuffed, mismatched chairs and a shabby loveseat set around a single coffee table – the sort of cozy conversation spot that made coffee shops the best neutral ground for this kind of meeting. It was hard to feel threatened in plush seats, warm lighting, and the background murmur of other people laughing.
He sank into a chair across the coffee table from Avid, who had grabbed one half of the loveseat. Avid looked up at Pyro as he sat and raised his hand in a wave. He was dressed in worn blue jeans and a purple hoodie that matched his eyes. His smile was ambiguously friendly, painted over something more thoughtful. That was as good as Pyro had hoped for and better than he’d expected. After all, how did one greet one’s would-be murderer?
“Hi,” they both said simultaneously.
“I couldn’t believe it when I got your email,” Shelby chirped. “I’d given up ever seeing you again.” The determined positivity in her voice thawed some of the chill. Pyro would be welcome here if she had to make it so by sheer force of will.
“It seemed like the right time,” Pyro said, focusing on her warm face. “I’m wrapping up an identity, and it was a good time to travel.” It was much more than that, of course, and everyone knew it. This was just a first meeting, nowhere near time to bare souls.
That was the moment the Goldsmith made his entrance.
Scott didn’t make a sound unless he meant to, but Pyro knew immediately when he walked into the room. Some sire detection instinct? Maybe, but Pyro doubted it was necessary. Scott just drew all eyes to himself, wherever he was. Pyro looked up, and the first things he saw were the blood-colored eyes. The others had adjusted their appearance to look more natural, but not Scott. He wore the alienness with pride – a little bit attention grabbing, a little bit warning.
His color scheme hadn’t changed. He wore an untucked silk shirt in crimson, almost certainly custom tailored to fit him so well, under a longer black overshirt that caught the air and swept as he moved. He’d find some way to wear a black cloak in any era. His white hair was a bit longer than before, with just enough product to turn it into a cascading wave to the base of his neck. The light caught a bit of bling, gold and ruby, at his wrist and ears and throat – garish to Pyro’s eye, but Scott liked garish. It was the kind of look that took hours of planning in order to appear effortless, even more so when you remembered that vampires couldn’t use mirrors.
He was gorgeous. Why did he have to be so gorgeous?
Scott walked up behind Avid on the loveseat. Avid raised a hand to brush against Scott’s, so absent-minded and routine that neither really seemed to notice. “Hey,” Scott said, and now his gaze rested on Pyro’s face directly for the first time. Scott smiled. It was a gentle, easy smile. “Glad you could make it.” Something in Pyro’s chest reached desperately for that smile.
“Yeah,” Pyro said, “you too.”
The smile broadened. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Then, as Pyro’s chest tightened further, Scott turned and looked over his covenmates. “Same as usual? I’ll grab drinks while you guys talk.” Then he turned and was gone again, the black shirt rippling as he moved.
Pyro realized Avid was watching him. So were Shelby and Drift. They were doing this on purpose, introducing Scott slowly to see how he would handle it. Pyro wasn’t sure if he was touched or angry. Three months. Oakhurst had been three months one hundred years ago. Why would they assume he’d just crumble in Scott’s presence after all this time?
They were right, though.
“How have you been?” Shelby asked. “What have you been doing since… you know?”
That was a good question, one that Pyro could answer with the fraction of his mind that remained clear. He gave them the cocktail party summary of the water quality work he’d recently completed in Adelaide. He didn’t say anything about Apo and how badly her loss still ached, or admit that he’d avoided contact for so long in part because of her. Neither he nor Apo could run from Scott if he chose to hunt them – their sire could always track them down. When it became clear that wasn’t happening, it was a lot safer for Apo if Scott wasn’t given a reason to remember she existed.
Pyro expected to see their eyes glaze over; talking about his work was a sure-fire way to avoid conversation with anyone but his closest colleagues. But Avid actually seemed interested, asking more and more detailed questions about the chemistry involved in water purification. Avid had claimed to be a monster hunter and a chemist when they met at Oakhurst. Apparently, he actually was one of those things.
He and Avid were still talking about his work, to Shelby’s largely quiet but obvious delight, when Scott returned with a tray of drinks and handed them out. “Cream for Avid – I don’t know how you stand that – americano for Drift, shot of vanilla for Shelby. If you wanted something different, it’s too late now.” He sat down beside Avid and put an arm around him, tucking him close. They shifted their weight so smoothly that the surface of their drinks barely moved. Then Scott looked back to Pyro and grinned. “It’s tea for me. I never caught on to Americans and their coffee.” He might have kicked up the Scottish accent a bit for emphasis.
Pyro had spent hours, some nights, staring into the darkness and trying to understand why he had tried to break free from Scott in Oakhurst by attempting murder. Had it been because it was so soon after Czeslaw? Had Owen been more persuasive than he seemed? In the safety of his house near the university, it had all seemed so bizarre, like he’d been someone else whose motivations he could only guess at. There were so many other things he could have done. He could have just walked away like Apo did and offered his allegiance to the town. Hell, he could have just tried saying no.
Now, watching them, he remembered. He could feel Scott holding him under the water, see the vicious grin, feel the panicked burning in lungs that hadn’t needed air for a hundred years. And Avid… Avid had grinned at Pyro with Scott between them as protection, already knowing that he offered something the elder vampire wanted, something Pyro wasn’t giving him. Hatred for both of them flared up and burned through his veins.
He should never have come.
Desperately, he turned to Shelby and Drift and asked them what they’d been doing for the last century. What had led them to move to New York City? Was Shelby writing anything new after the success of the Vampire Diaries? Were they still in touch with M. Sausage or whatever he called himself now?
As their attention shifted, Pyro caught a change in Scott’s expression. A look of fierce, possessive love passed over the elder’s face for an unguarded moment. A century on, the others were mature vampires, but Scott still protected them as his fledgelings. The sight left Pyro shaken and struggling to follow Shelby’s meandering story. The gentle, friendly body language was just a face Scott wore that was useful, just as the disdainful, commanding charm had been a useful face at Oakhurst. He was no less deadly now than he was then. On the other hand, what lay behind that face at Oakhurst had been cold, brutal, and calculating. Scott had changed, but perhaps rather than softening, he had sharpened into a blade just for them.
Pyro would have given anything – his throat to fangs, his very soul – for just a hint of compassion in Scott’s eyes when they looked at him. At Oakhurst, there had been none to find. Just a hint of it had begun to form for Shelby, but that was fine. Shelby deserved the world. But now? Pyro's flailing attempt at freedom had been aimed at Avid because Scott was too far out of reach. It had helped bring this Scott into existence. The devotion was not for him. It never could be.
Avid shifted and turned to look at Scott. They exchanged a meaningful glance, and Scott…. sat back, changing his posture to be more casual and less protective. A glance flickered in Pyro’s direction. The subtext seemed clear. Avid had told Scott to back off, something Pyro had never been able to do in Oakhurst and something Avid, after turning, had never even considered. Scott hadn’t resisted at all. And this clearly wasn’t the first time. It shouldn’t have been such a shock that they’d grown in so much time, but it was.
Pyro hadn’t caught an unguarded moment. He’d received exactly the message Scott had intended for him. Scott had seen Pyro’s hatred, and he had sent a warning.
This had to stop. He couldn’t do this.
Shelby stopped to take a breath, and Pyro jumped to his feet. “Thanks for meeting with me,” he said. He wasn’t even sure what she’d been talking about. “This has been great, but I have to get back to the hotel. I hope we can work something out in the future.” He sounded like he was concluding a presentation to an urban sanitation board. Her expression was shocked and hurt. For a moment he wanted to die. She deserved better, but it didn’t look like he was the man who could do that for her.
There were forced-friendly goodbyes. Shelby wanted to say more, to try to pull him back, but the others drew her away. Pyro hung back and watched Scott usher the Coven out of the coffee shop and out of his life, probably forever. One hundred years had evaporated in minutes. If this was not enough time, no time would ever be enough.
Pyro took a deep breath and steadied himself. This had been an important experiment, but now he needed to accept the results. He was better than this. He didn’t need them. He had a life to go back to, one he valued and where he was valued.
He forced himself to walk out the door of the coffee shop and feel the light pricking at his face. It wouldn’t take too much blood rationing to lose the second tier and go back to hiking in the sunlight. It would take longer for his eyes to return to blue so he didn’t need contacts, but he’d done it before.
“Hi Pyro.”
Pyro jumped and swung around with claws ready, something he hadn’t thought of, much less tried, in decades. Scott was standing there, hands raised, posture as nonthreatening as possible. “I’m not looking to make trouble for you,” he said.
Pyro dropped his hands. He looked at the claws on his fingers, a consequence of reaching second tier. He hadn’t let them grow in years. He didn’t want them. Then he realized he still held his empty coffee cup. He stared at it, and before his eyes, it changed into a stake held over Avid, his chest and face covered in blood. Avid’s voice, begging for mercy, rang in his ears.
No.
He crushed the cup. “Why are you here then?”
“I was hoping for a chance to talk alone,” Scott said. “There are some things I need to say. They may not matter.”
Scott’s face was open and earnest, but that was the face he chose to wear. “Can we step out of the sun?” Pyro asked.
Scott nodded. “I guess I’m just used to it,” he said. “After a while, you start to enjoy the pain.” He smirked, and Pyro wanted to hit him.
They stepped into the shadow of the building. Scott leaned back against the wall and examined his claws, not looking into Pyro’s face. Maybe that was for his own benefit, or maybe it was for Pyro’s. “In Oakhurst,” Scott said, “I didn’t know how bad it was for you. I’m not used to reading someone that wrong. I thought you were the one loyal set of claws I could depend on to fight the war with me, right up until the crypt. You were kept looking for ways to prove you were useful, but you were always useful. Useful was the best I could see in anyone.”
Pyro stared at him. If he’d taken a moment to guess at what Scott might say, this wasn’t it. “Would it have mattered if you knew?” he asked.
“I would have made different choices, but I don’t know that it would have made anything better for you.” Scott sighed. “I’m not sure if telling you this helps anything. But if it does, you should know. You were important then, and I always knew it. I want you to hear that.”
It hurt to look at him. Pyro should turn away and leave, get as far as possible away from this man. Instead, he asked, “What about now? Does it matter now?”
“Yes.” The word was quiet, but with force behind it.
Pyro stared at his feet on the pavement. “I see.”
“Look,” Scott said. He leaned his head back against the wall. His hair cascaded away from his perfect face. “This has been a century of learning what I am and what I can be. What I’ve learned is that however I dress myself up, I’m still an old monster. If Shelby could hug that out of me, she’d have done it already. You deserve honesty, and that’s something I can give you. There’s a lot more you ought to have that I can’t.”
Scott paused, but he clearly had more to say. Pyro waited. “So here’s the deal,” Scott said. “Shelby wants you back, and I want that for her. I can stay away and leave you alone if it will help you feel safe enough to keep talking to her.”
Pyro thought about Shelby. She mattered so much to him, even now, but she was so tangled up with Scott that it was hard to imagine them apart. “Maybe,” he said. “Is that what you want?”
He could feel Scott looking at him. “If we’re talking about what I want,” Scott said slowly, “it would be to get to know the man you actually are, rather than the one I thought I could use. I’ll settle for Shelby having the chance to do that.”
Pyro looked back then, and it was there – the look he would have killed or died for. It was nothing like the look Scott had for his coven. This was small and sad and laced with regret. It was fragile enough that it might burst like a soap bubble if Pyro reached out to touch it, but it was just for him.
Pyro hung there, frozen in the moment, just looking. Scott stayed quiet and gave him space to do it. Pyro knew he wasn’t seeing something secret. He’d already fallen for that once today. Scott always knew what he wrote on his face. There was no way to know if you were being played.
Is it enough?
A good doctor had asked him that a hundred years ago, standing in the shadow of the castle. The question then was the same as it was now. What Scott Goldsmith had to give was never up to what it should be.
“I’ll text her,” Pyro said. “Maybe we can meet up just the two of us next time.”
Scott’s face lit up in a grin that could burn like the sun. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll let her know. I should warn you that she texts constantly when she’s excited.”
“That’s fine,” Pyro said. He smiled a little. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’ll keep up my end of the bargain,” Scott said. He stepped away from the wall. “Unless you say otherwise, I’ll stay out of your way.” They watched each other for a moment. Pyro was silent. He had nothing more to say. Then Scott waved and stepped around the corner into the alley. A flock of bats flew out into the sky.
Pyro watched the bats for a while. Unless you say otherwise…. Scott had left him an out. Was that respect or manipulation? Was there any way to tell? He shrugged. Whether this was wise or not, he was committed now. He threw the coffee cup into the trash, shoved his hands into his pockets, and made his way to the same alley. There really were some good bits to being a vampire. Flying was the best one.