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He deserves this.
To be selfish.
Is it selfish to reclaim something that had always been his?
No matter.
He had already done it. There was no use constructing reasons for a decision that had already been made.
The pretty picture before him was reminiscent of Millais’ Ophelia. Only instead of Ophelia’s copper hair spreading around her drowned body like the halo of some forgotten saint, it was Daniel’s own blood pooling in slow, lazy circles beneath his head, darkening as it cooled. A macabre allusion to the painting.
Though unlike Ophelia there would be no flowers floating upon the water to speak of innocence. No daisies for abandoned love. No violets for devotion. Only thick arterial red soaking steadily into cream-colored carpet until it became nearly black beneath the dim cabin lights, swallowing the woven pattern thread by thread. The blood gathered itself into branching rivulets and curling eddies, spreading ever outward until Daniel appeared almost cradled within it, crowned by it, offered up upon an altar fashioned from polished leather and private luxury.
The carpet of the jet had become saturated, the fibers unable to drink another drop. Blood rested upon its surface now in gleaming sheets instead of disappearing into the weave, reflecting the muted lights overhead whenever the aircraft shifted ever so slightly beneath them. The pattern it formed around Daniel framed his dying body in such a lovely manner. It swirled and preened beneath Armand’s gaze, almost as though it remembered his love for its owner and delighted in being spilled beneath Armand’s supervision once more.
A different night, many years ago, Armand would have licked the blood from the floor, upset at the wasting of even a single drop of the Edenic ambrosia that was his beloved’s blood. Especially after spending decades depriving himself of it. Every stolen taste had once bordered on sacrament. Every drop too precious to surrender to wood or stone or cloth.
Now he scarcely looked at it.
A far more important task demanded every fragment of his attention.
They remained where they had fallen.
Bodies tangled upon the floor, their positions nearly unchanged from the moment Armand had lunged across the aisle, wrenching Daniel from his seat before the journalist had even realized he was there. They had struck the carpet together in an ugly collision of limbs and fabric, Daniel’s shoulder colliding with the armrest hard enough to leave splintered wood behind before Armand had folded himself over him completely.
Daniel had never managed so much as a cry.
He would not have been able to, even had Armand not moved quicker than any human eye could follow.
The seizure had stolen the sound first.
His heart had clenched so violently Armand had felt it stutter beneath his hand before Daniel himself understood what was happening.
It had almost taken him.
Almost.
No.
Armand would not allow it.
He would not lose him to something as small and stupid as a failing human heart.
You see, Armand was an addict. An addict who had been sober for thirty-seven years, six months, and seventeen days before Louis had dragged Daniel back into their lives—back into Armand’s orbit, back into his waiting hands. Armand was weak. He would not survive rehabilitation a second time.
Did not want to.
If he were honest with himself…
He never truly had the first.
So he did the one thing he had sworn he never would. The one thing he had denied Daniel through pleading and arguments and quiet refusals that had stretched across decades. The one thing that had finally splintered them apart so far that Armand was forced to separate them completely.
Something that would haunt him.
Something whose guilt would consume him long after every star had burned itself to ash.
It did not matter.
Because he would have his beloved, beautiful boy back in his arms. Where he belonged. Where he should have always been.
And this time—
This time he would get to keep him.
He lay half atop Daniel, folding himself over his body as though he could become another blanket against the world. One hand cradled the back of his head, fingers threaded carefully through sweat-damp curls, while the other loosely held Daniel’s wrist where it had fallen limp above his head after his body had finally surrendered beneath Armand’s mouth.
Eventually the faithful thumping of Daniel’s heart began to lose the steady, sluggish rhythm it had fought so valiantly to maintain over the past two minutes.
It staggered.
Beat.
Beat.
A pause.
Another desperate contraction.
The exhausted muscle squeezed what little blood remained through collapsing vessels, refusing surrender even as the body surrounding it had already begun to fail. Admirable. Noble, even. Armand had always found something strangely beautiful about the heart’s stubbornness. It continued long after reason had abandoned every other organ.
Too late.
Daniel Molloy was never going to walk off this plane alive.
Armand retracted his fangs from Daniel’s throat with a wet squelch. Fresh blood welled lazily from the paired wounds, spilling down the pale column of his neck before disappearing beneath the ruined collar of his shirt.
He rose onto his knees, still straddling Daniel’s hips, and without hesitation dragged one sharpened nail across the inside of his right wrist.
The skin opened instantly. Dark blood welled up, thick and gleaming, before spilling over his palm. He held it above Daniel’s parted lips.
His boy looked so terribly fragile like this.
The tender lines that age carved into his face had softened in his near unconsciousness. The perpetual tension that forever lived between his brows had vanished. Even his mouth, usually poised to form another impudent question, rested slightly parted in perfect stillness.
For one shameful moment Armand allowed himself to imagine this was simply sleep. That if he waited long enough Daniel would blink awake beneath him, grumble something cutting beneath his breath, complain about the ache in his neck before demanding coffee and a notebook.
The journalist was barely conscious now. His eyes had lost their focus entirely, staring through Armand rather than at him, lashes fluttering with each shallow breath. Whatever instinct had driven him to struggle had long since deserted him. His limbs lay heavy against the carpet, every muscle exhausted by the impossible violation of his own dying.
Armand held his wrist to his beloved’s mouth and watched the first drop spill over. A wayward rivulet escaped through the corner of his mouth, dribbling lazily down his chin before joining its kin on the carpet.
The blood painted his beloved’s lips a rich crimson as it slipped between them, which remained stubbornly, devastatingly still.
Daniel did not drink.
For a sluggish heartbeat Armand simply stared.
The blood continued to gather at the corners of Daniel’s mouth, running in thick crimson trails over the curve of his jaw before spilling over onto his ruined shirt collar. Blood began to pool in the hollow of his throat, mingling so completely with the wounds Armand had left there that the distinction between giver and receiver became impossible to discern.
Still…
Despite Armand’s blood now filling the cavity of Daniel’s throat, flooding the channels of his airway and leaving him on the verge of choking on Armand’s own blood—
Nothing.
Panic seized him. Not the frantic panic of mortals. Not the fleeting rush of adrenaline accompanying danger. This was older than that.
It settled somewhere deep beneath his ribs, ancient and instinctive, spreading through him with glacial certainty until every thought became consumed by a single horrifying truth.
He was losing him.
Again.
“Beloved…” Armand whispered, his voice breaking around the word. His hand found Daniel’s shoulder, fingers trembling as they curled into the blood-soaked fabric. He gave him a gentle shake.
“You must drink.”
Another.
“Please.”
His voice fractured.
“Drink.”
The plea reached only deaf ears.
Daniel’s lashes fluttered once.
A shallow breath escaped parted lips.
Nothing more.
“No…”
Armand breathed the word to himself more than to Daniel.
“No, no, no.”
He snatched his wrist away before another wasted drop could disappear into the carpet.
This would not be enough.
It was too slow. Too little. His blood had to reach deeper.
His free hand rose toward his own throat. Two claws settled against the soft flesh beneath his jaw.
Then, with sickening ease, they pierced. The skin offered almost no resistance. Neither did the muscle beneath.
He dragged them downward through himself, splitting flesh until they found the great artery hidden below. It burst immediately.
Blood surged upward into his mouth with impossible force.
Salt and iron flooded his tongue until swallowing became impossible. It poured down the back of his throat as quickly as it filled it, the pressure almost choking even an immortal body. The pain scarcely registered.
What was pain beside this?
He bent low once more.
One hand cupped Daniel’s jaw, thumb slick against blood-wet skin, while the other steadied the back of his head.
Then he pressed their mouths together.
A grotesque parody of every kiss they had ever shared. No tenderness shared. No laughter. No clawing hunger. No teasing bite at Daniel’s lower lip before either of them smiled.
Only blood.
Desperation.
Armand forced it from his own body into Daniel’s.
The first rush escaped immediately, spilling from the corners of Daniel’s mouth to run in warm streams over his cheeks and neck before disappearing beneath his collar.
Armand tightened the seal.
More.
He pushed harder.
His own throat contracted violently, forcing another flood between them.
He could feel Daniel choking beneath the torrent of liquid, the involuntary spasms of muscles no longer certain whether they should reject the foreign substance or welcome it rippled beneath Armand’s hands. His jaw twitched. His throat convulsed uselessly around each mouthful.
For several agonizing moments…
Nothing.
No swallow.
No movement.
Only the oppressive silence of the cabin interrupted by the quiet patter of blood striking carpet.
Then—
Armand felt it.
The sluggish heartbeat beneath Daniel’s ribs faltered.
Once.
Twice.
The rhythm that had stubbornly resisted death for precious minutes finally surrendered. It slowed until each beat seemed impossibly distant from the next.
Thud.
…
…
Thud.
…
…
Silence.
Armand froze.
The absence struck him harder than any sound ever could.
Armand tore himself away so abruptly blood stretched between them in thin obscene scarlet strands before snapping across both their mouths
His hands flew immediately to Daniel’s chest.He would open him. He would split apart flesh and bone if he had to. He would reach inside with his own hands, cradle that silent heart in his palms, and force it to beat.
He would squeeze it himself.
Again. Again. Again.
Until his blood reached every corner of Daniel’s body.
He would not lose him.
Not now.
Not like this.
Armand began to rise, hands shaking as desperate plans took shape in his mind only to collapse beneath the weight of panic. Blood continued to spill down his throat from the wound he had torn into his own neck, each swallow threatening to choke him even as fear and all-encompassing guilt threatened to do the same. But before he could commit to any action—
A hand caught the back of his head.
Fingers buried themselves deep within his curls, gripping tightly enough to sting.
Holding him there. Keeping him from leaving.
For one suspended instant neither of them moved.
Then—
Beneath the hand tangled in his hair…
He felt it. One tremendous beat. Heavy. Violent.
Alive.
The pulse reverberated through Daniel’s chest and into Armand’s own body until it seemed to seize his own silent heart, demanding it answer in kind. Demanding the long-dead organ remember, if only for a single impossible moment, what it had once been made to do.
The hand buried in his curls then tugged harshly, pulling him back down with enough force that their teeth clacked painfully together. Daniel scarcely seemed to notice. He was already mouthing desperately at Armand’s lips, frantic, instinctual, demanding he open them so he could drink from him once again.
And who was Armand to deny him?
So he met his beloved halfway. His lips parted willingly beneath Daniel’s, and Armand surrendered without hesitation, opening his mouth once more and pouring his life force directly into him. He welcomed the ache of Daniel’s desperate mouth, the bruising pull of his lips, the way he drank with all the graceless hunger of something freshly born. Every swallow was another heartbeat stolen back from oblivion. Every mouthful another impossible miracle coaxed from the edge of death.
Daniel drank.
Hungrily.
His throat convulsed around each mouthful with desperate greed. The first swallow became another, and another after that, until every instinct buried within the newborn vampire awoke all at once.
His fingers tightened painfully in Armand’s hair.
Individual strands tore free at the roots.
He clung with blind desperation, every muscle devoted to one singular need.
More.
More.
More.
Take it, Armand thought, pressing closer still. Take all of it if you must.
He could feel the impossible hunger unfolding inside his boy, ancient despite being only seconds old, consuming every trace of the human Daniel Molloy had been.
Armand did not pull away. He would not.
He emptied himself willingly into the creature being born between his hands, offering blood as though it were prayer, sacrament, absolution.
Anything.
Everything.
So long as Daniel lived.
They remained locked together until the wounds inside Armand’s throat slowly knitted themselves closed.
The torrent became a stream.The stream became a slow trickle.
Daniel’s mouth lingered there a moment longer, instinct refusing to relinquish what the fledgling’s body already understood it required. His lips parted only when there was no blood left to coax from the sealed flesh, a soft, involuntary sound escaping him somewhere between a swallow and a gasp.
Reluctantly, Armand began to lift himself away.
Every inch of distance felt wrong. As though some invisible cord stretched taut between them, protesting the separation.
He only needed to open himself again.
Daniel would need more blood. His body had consumed an impossible amount in mere moments, every cell remaking itself with ravenous urgency. Armand would continue to feed Daniel until he was no longer able to satisfy the fledgling’s appetite and would have to fetch one of the staff to feed to his beloved. Even then, he was reluctant to part with Daniel for so much as a moment.
Armand could already smell the transformation taking hold. His blood no longer smelled wholly human. Something richer now threaded through it, darker and infinitely older. The sweet metallic scent of humanity had already begun to give way beneath something ancient, something unmistakably vampiric. Daniel was changing. With every passing second, he became a little less human and a little more Armand’s.
His fledgling.
His firstborn.
His Daniel.
He paused only inches above him. Their foreheads brushing.
“I missed you so very much, beloved.” Armand let his eyes drift shut as he breathed the words against Daniel’s damp throat, his voice scarcely louder than the whisper of fabric shifting against blood-soaked carpet.
For one exquisite moment—
His heart felt full.
The hollow ache he had carried for decades seemed, at last, happy to hold the one thing capable of filling it back in his arms.
Every sacrifice. Every lie. Every betrayal.
Surely…
Surely this justified all of it.
Then something struck his chest.
Hard.
Armand found himself stumbling backward before he even understood what had happened. He fell back onto his knees, his palms catching against the blood-slick carpet and sliding several inches before he finally came to a stop.
He stared.
Daniel had pushed him.
The fledgling scrambled backward on trembling elbows, dragging himself across the blood-slick carpet. His heels kicked uselessly against the floor, searching for purchase they could not find while fresh blood smeared beneath every frantic movement.
“What the fuck!”
Daniel’s voice cracked violently, raw from disuse and soaked in terror.
Fear painted every line of his face.
His breathing came in ragged, desperate heaves despite lungs that no longer required air. The reflex remained, his body reaching for oxygen it would never again need.
His clothes clung to him, saturated from collar to cuff in a grotesque mixture of his own blood and Armand’s. Fresh crimson continued to drip lazily from his chin, gathering at the point of his jaw before falling into the widening stain beneath him.
His eyes—
Armand’s eyes-
Luminous in a way they had never been before.
The color had deepened until they burned almost molten in the dim light of the cabin.
A perfect testament to the intertwining of their beings.
“Beloved—” Armand breathed, reaching toward him almost without thinking.
“What did you do?” Daniel’s voice tore through the cabin.
“I…” Armand faltered, his head tilting slightly to the side in genuine confusion. “I gave you the gift.”
His voice softened instinctively, the way it always had when speaking to Daniel.
“I don’t understand, beloved. Is this not what you always wanted from me?” Armand asked, his brow knitting in quiet confusion.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Daniel barked, his breathing still ragged.
Daniel’s jaw clenched, his shoulders drawing taut in that familiar way they always had whenever he was about to say something he knew would poke the bear. His stubborn, beautiful boy had never known when to quit. He would prod and provoke simply because someone had told him not to, because retreat had never come naturally to him.
Why he thought Armand would lash out at him now, of all moments, was beyond him.
“I turned Louis down.” He laughed once, a short, disbelieving sound that held no humor whatsoever. “What made you think I’d want it from you?”
Armand blinked.
“I…”
His thoughts refused to settle.
“But…”
Every conversation. Every argument. Every plea.
Had he misunderstood?
“No,” he whispered, more to himself than to Daniel. “Beloved, I don’t—”
“Stop calling me that!” The words landed with startling force. Daniel’s voice rising until it echoed against the narrow walls of the cabin.
Armand flinched.
The endearment had always come as naturally as breathing. It had lived inside every thought he had ever had of Daniel. To hear it rejected—
No.
Daniel did not know what he was saying. He could not. His mind was still fractured by the turning.
He was frightened.
Confused.
He needed comfort.
Armand closed the distance between them on hands and knees, uncaring that his palms slipped in cooling blood.
“Daniel,” he whispered gently, as though soothing a frightened animal. “Look at me.”
Daniel tried to recoil again but there was nowhere left to go and Armand would not let him. His back struck the row of leather seats with a muted thud. Armand reached him before he could flee farther.
Carefully—
Oh so carefully—
He cupped Daniel’s face between both hands.
His skin was cold.
Far colder than it should have been.
“…Where are you?” Armand whispered. His eyes darted frantically across Daniel’s face. Searching.
Searching for some tiny crack through which the man he loves might emerge. For the familiar softness hidden beneath perpetual sarcasm.
For the warmth.
The affection.
The quiet amusement that always lingered behind Daniel’s eyes whenever they looked upon him. The only being that had ever looked at Armand that way.
Anything.
“The fuck are you talking about?” Daniel rasped.
His brows pulled together in genuine confusion.
“I’m right—”
The sentence died abruptly. Daniel’s entire body lurched and his expression twisted.
He shoved Armand’s hands away with surprising strength before doubling over violently.
A wet retch echoed through the cabin.
His stomach clenched around organs that no longer possessed any purpose, attempting desperately to expel a humanity already gone.
The sounds were horrible.
Daniel’s body spasmed with the effort, shoulders shaking as instincts fought a body that no longer obeyed them.
Armand’s hands remained suspended in empty air where Daniel’s face had been only moments before.
He should help him.
It would be the kind thing.
The right thing.
Every fledgling suffered through these first humiliating moments. The body mourned its own death before finally surrendering to what it had become.
He knew this. He remembered it. Remembered the agony. There had been no gentle hands to coax him through his own suffering, no soft voice to assure him it would end. He would not condemn his beloved to the same fate.
(Distantly,the groan of wet, salt-infused oak.)
Slowly, carefully, he began to crawl toward Daniel once more.
He wanted only to cradle him. To stroke his hair and kiss his forehead. To whisper that the sickness would pass. That the hunger would remain, but this little agony would end.
Daniel caught Armand’s movement in his periphery.
And flinched.
Hard.
As though Armand’s touch itself promised violence.
There was no newfound recognition in the boy’s eyes. None of the warmth. None of the fondness. None of the quiet adoration Armand had been so certain would return the moment he finally gave his boy the curse that all their years of arguing had revolved around.
Something inside him quietly, irrevocably gave way.
Armand laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
Until the laughter broke apart into ugly, horrendous sobs, each one ripped from somewhere so deep inside him it seemed to tear flesh on its way out. His shoulders shook violently. Tears blurred his vision almost immediately. The sounds tore themselves from his throat wetly, each one uglier than the last, collapsing into great gasping things that shook his entire body.
He had been right.
Of course he had.
All fledglings came to hate their makers.
His had merely gotten a head start.
When Armand finally looked up, Daniel had not moved.
Not one inch.
Decades ago, the mere sight of Armand’s tears would have sent Daniel across any room. He would have cupped Armand’s face in those perpetually warm hands, muttered some half-hearted insult to disguise his concern, kissed his forehead, wiped away his tears before pretending they had never existed.
Now…
Daniel only watched. Confusion slowly curdled into revulsion.Then anger.
Bright as the midday sun that had hung overhead for the theatrics of Claudia and Madeleine’s execution.
Hot as the iron Armand had once used to hold Nicolas de Lefant in the fire.
Rage. Raw. Freshly born. Or newly rekindled.
It burned beneath those amber eyes that were now perfect mirrors of Armand’s own.
Armand rose.The movement lacked all of his usual grace. His limbs felt strangely hollow, weakened by the sheer volume of blood he had poured into Daniel. His knees threatened to buckle before finally locking beneath him.
When he had drawn himself to his full height, he allowed himself one last glance downward.
Daniel was still shaking.
Whether from fear, or from the violent transformation still unfolding beneath his skin, Armand could not know.
Perhaps he never would.
Daniel’s mind was closed to him now.
Forever.
Armand closed his eyes and turned away from the macabre tableau behind him.
The plane had landed at the private hangar nearly ten minutes earlier. The staff had been instructed, under no circumstances, to enter the passenger cabin, and there was not a single opening through which the murderous sun could find Daniel’s skin.
He walked slowly down the aisle.
Opened the cabin door.
Then stopped.
He looked back.
Daniel had managed to pull himself upright. One blood-slick hand gripped the back of a leather seat hard enough that the polished wood groaned beneath his fingers. His shoulders rose and fell with breaths he no longer needed, every instinct still insisting upon the habits of a body already dead.
He looked as though he were about to speak.
His brows drew together into that familiar crease, the one that always appeared a heartbeat before another question. Another impossible, unwanted inquiry. Another relentless attempt to understand the incomprehensible monster that had followed him through alleyways and cheap bus seats and Parisian cafés before, impossibly, horrifically, ending beneath the same sheets.
For one horrible moment, Armand hoped.
Perhaps this was all some terrible misunderstanding. A miscommunication born from the delirium of the change.
Perhaps—
But Armand was at his core a coward.
He had always found it easier to flee than to remain long enough to hear the answer.
He stepped through the doorway.
The cabin door closed behind him with a quiet click.
Soft. Unremarkable.
It sounded, all the same, like the lid of a coffin.
And once again,
(maybe maybe maybe certainly)
He was alone.