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Chapter Text

It was a hot afternoon in rural Mississippi, as many are. The humid air was still and heavy despite the sun starting its westward descent in the sky. The horizon slowly edged into hues of reds and golds that passed over rolling hills of cotton, spreading to everything it touched like a spilled cup of coffee over a tablecloth. Across the farmland, laborers began to make their way in from the fields with their day’s quotas. The heavy sacks filled to the brim with delicate puffs stood at a stark contrast to the dry, barren lands that plagued the area just a year prior. Although even with the ample rains, the late summer intensity gave rise to dust clouds behind the sparse cars traveling along dirt roads. The breezeless landscape carried only the faintest powdery scents of October goldenrod blooms.

Between sharecropper properties sat a small farmhouse, weathered but sturdy. The wooden structure reflected hints of white paint from its proud construction some years ago. On the roof, the scattered absence of shingles stood out like a tooth-gapped grin. A stone chimney jutted boldly into the changing sky. The front door had been propped open and the covered porch surrounding it had been recently swept clean of loose plant fibers and dust. Just off to the side of the home, a well-maintained black Ford Model T sat idly with mud-spattered wheel wells from driving through a recent rain. A quietly hummed tune floated past the car, not carrying far due to the present calmness.

The composer of the notes stood in the front yard, a basket of freshly washed linens sat at her feet as she methodically pinned them to a line strung up between two wooden posts. She sighed as the last sheet was hung, brushing back the uncontrollable dark waves that had escaped from the long braid that trailed along her back and stuck to the sides of her dewy face. The woman picked up the empty basket and looked out across the sky at wispy clouds cascaded in orange, like an inverted desert over the ebbing white waves of unharvested bolls. She momentarily soaked in the muted light of the setting sun during its final hours. The whirring sounds of sporadic insects arose from the fields before more would join them in their chorus of the night. 

Some people saw the anticipation of the evening as nothing more than a time to quietly settle into the day’s end. For others, like the woman in the yard, the night was a potential awakening of something new. A new dance with a stranger in a smoky bar. A new romance among young couples at the theater. A new story of antics to share with friends when the boredom of the daily routine leaves space for nostalgia. For those who saw the days at just getting by, the night was when living truly began.

Just as the woman began to turn to head back into the house, a sudden cold breeze cut through the stagnant heat. She covered her eyes with her hand and staggered back as dust swirled around her. The laundry on the line whipped against its holds. It was there, previously hidden behind a sheet that now danced up into the air, that she saw the silhouette of a man limping towards her.

“Please,” the man choked out. “Help me.”  

The woman gasped, not just at the almost-ghostly manifestation of this stranger, but also by his appearance. His white sleeveless top and brown pants were tattered and charred as if he had just run through a field of barbed wire and flames. The exposed skin on his chest and arms peeled and blistered like he had been a hog strung up over a pit and partially roasted. His face was badly beaten and one of the eyes beneath his matted mop of brown hair was nearly swollen shut.

“Please,” he fearfully begged again, stopping a short distance away, his hands up in a display of defenselessness. “They goin’ kill me.” 

The woman finally broke herself free from the initial shock and forced her mind to calm, trying to stay focused on her next move in the potential grip of danger. Her eyes darted towards the open doorway of the house, wishing she could summon the shotgun that was propped just beyond the entrance, then back to the man. She weighed the distance and nervously shuffled between her feet. The man was injured but still seemed able-bodied. He was close enough he would likely catch her before she could run to the door and turn the gun on him.

“Who is ‘they’?” she demanded as she held the empty laundry basket in front of her body. It was the only thing she had on-hand to protect herself. 

“The Choctaw,” he rasped, hands still raised, nervously glancing over his shoulder towards the road.

She eyed him skeptically, “Choctaw?” This was the first she’d heard of Native Americans in the area. However, she hadn’t been in town long enough to refute their presence. “How did you even get out here?” she questioned, but something else quickly drew her attention. “Why is your skin smoking?” 

Steam was seemingly rising from the wounds on the man, not unlike vapors from a boiling kettle of water.

He paused for a moment, considering how much to reveal in his next words before speaking, his good eye gauging her reaction. “I’ve been out here lookin’ for work. I came across some of those Choctaw people and they said they could help me. I didn’t have a reason not to believe ‘em, but then they robbed me of what little I had. When I ain’t have anymore to give ‘em, they  started torturin’ me.” His fearful voice broke into quiet sobs and his head bowed in shame. “They had taken some women and they was keepin’ ‘em hostage, but I couldn’t do anything to help ‘em. I just left ‘em there when I had the chance to run.”

The woman’s stance softened a little, but she still didn’t know whether to believe him. She knew she didn’t want to, nothing about the situation felt right. She knew better than most that men lied to take advantage of women everyday. But this man seemed simple and innocent, just an unfortunate soul caught in a bad situation.

They simultaneously heard a low rumbling sound and both turned to look up the road. A pocket of dust rose in the air in the distance. Leading the plume, a truck and several men on horses became visible. 

Maybe he’s isn’t lying, at least some of his story is holding up. 

Then her thoughts went back to the women, she wondered if she too would become one of the hostages.

The man turned back to her desperately. “Please, I promise I ain’t mean no harm. Just let me hide out here until they leave and I’ll move on. I can’t run anymore. I’ll die out here.”

The woman hesitated one last time, her gaze moving from the injured man to the company quickly closing the distance behind him. The heat of the setting sun and stress of the situation suddenly made her head pound. Her instincts screamed to leave him to his fate, but something about him blurred her distrustful judgement. Maybe it was sympathy for his guilt, maybe it was his pleading eyes filled with unmistakable fear, or maybe it was a higher power at work telling her to trust this man’s word.

“Come inside.” She let the laundry basket slip from her hands and swiftly began moving towards the door.

Chapter Text

The battered man expelled his breath and finally dropped his hands. He followed closely at his savior’s heels in case she decided to change her mind. 

The woman waited next to the door and swung it shut as the man hobbled past her through the entryway. The escape from the intensity of the sunlight gave his blistered skin instant relief. He surveyed the room as he moved deeper into its shadows.

The home was quaint but organized, a tiny kitchen with a wood burning stove and a kitchen table and chairs was offset to one side of the front room. A few vegetables from the garden were laid out on the counter in preparation for an upcoming meal. The other side was a living area with a fireplace, a bench, and an intricate wooden armoire that seemed drastically out of place compared to the boarded floors and makeshift shelving on the walls. The single window next to the front door was covered by an ornate shear cloth that only allowed filtered orange light into the room. A small hallway to the right of the bench led to two other rooms with closed doors.

As his back was to the woman, the man heard a familiar click and turned to find the two black holes from the barrel of a shotgun pointed at his face. His hands went up again.

“You do anything unsavory and I’ll blow your head off and throw your scraps out to your friends out there.” 

She seemed confident with the gun, well-practiced. He knew she meant what she said.

“Hey now, I understand. No need for that,” he told her assuredly with a small nervous smile.

She circled him with the gun still propped to her shoulder and then backed towards the kitchen. The man turned his body to face her as she moved. Finally, when she felt she had sufficient clearance across the room, she gave him an order.

“Sit down.”

The man slowly stepped to the side and slid down into a wooden chair by the kitchen table. They stared at each other calculatedly, until a sudden pounding on the front door made them both jump. The woman jerked the gun towards the noise.

“You need to get him out,” spoke a muffled voice from behind the door. “You are in danger. Give him to us or you’ll become the same as him.” 

Both individuals in the house stayed silent. The woman holding her aim steady at the door, the man seated at the table watching her decide on the next move. The quiet lingered for what seemed like an eternity. 

Finally, the voice behind the door spoke again, “You do not know what you are dealing with. We will be out here until night falls, then you are on your own.” The hollowed sound of footsteps leaving the porch followed the warning.

The woman gasped and lowered the gun, not realizing she had been holding her breath. 

“Thank you,” the man said quietly to her.

She glanced at him sideways, considering something for a moment, then walked to the kitchen counter to grab a bowl she kept filled with well water, a bottle of whiskey, and an old rag. As she faced away from the man, she also slid a kitchen knife in the pocket of the apron that covered her dress. She turned back to take everything to the table and sat in a chair next to him, placing the gun within her reach but out of his.

“We might as well get those wounds cleaned up while we’re waiting, you’re likely to get an infection,” she muttered to him.

The man leaned back slightly with surprise but without protest, allowing the woman to pour water on the wounds to try and flush out the debris and dab at them with the alcohol-soaked rag. As she wiped at his arms and shoulders, she grabbed the bottle and took a swig, then offered it to the man. She watched as he tilted the bottle to his lips. She would have guessed him to be in his mid-30s, but it was hard to tell what was behind the bruised and swollen face.

“You mind if I ask you your name, ma’am?” He feigned a grimace as if the liquor burned his throat, the raspiness starting to edge out of his southern voice.

“May. Yours?”

“Remmick.”

May used the rag to clean a swath of mud from the peeling skin on his arm. Some of the skin came off with it. She reeled a bit at the severity of the burns on his chest and arms but he seemed shockingly unbothered by them.

“Remmick? That’s an unusual name, where’s it from?”

Remmick again debated with how much to say, but decided he still needed her to trust him in his current predicament. “It’s a family name. It’s Irish.”

This information made her pause, knowing how his people were still treated in certain areas around the south. “Mister you came to the wrong area for work with that background. I’m surprised the town didn’t run you out before the Choctaw got to you.”

“You gonna’ run me out of here for it?”

“No. I don’t care where you’re from. That’s not what makes a man good or bad.”

“Yeah, well, ain’t many people in this world that are welcomin’ to those that are different from ‘em. You ain’t from around here are you?” he inquired, changing the subject. 

“I’m not.” She stayed focused on her work and tried to intentionally kept her answers vague, not wanting to look at his face or get closer than she needed to.

“I figured. You don’t sound like the folk around here, or act like them for that matter. What are you doin’ in these parts?” 

May sighed. “Well, my daddy died just before the depression hit and left me some money and that car out front. It’s all I had to my name when I came out this way. The poor bastards that lived in this house before me lost everything in the drought. They put this farm up for sale last year, so I bought the house and the land just around it. I let the sharecroppers buy off the fields. I had no need for them.” 

Why did I just tell him all that?

May realized she had already slipped into oversharing with this talkative stranger, likely because it was the first person that had taken interest in her life for some time. She was determined to pull back before she said too much more.

Remmick glanced at her and nodded. “You live here alone?”

This question made her uncomfortable.

“No, my husband should be home soon,” she said without meeting his eyes.

“I see.” Remmick considered this as he took in the interior of the farmhouse. “It’s a nice place. What made y’all pick this town? You got family here?”

“No. And I ended up here for reasons I’m not comfortable sharing with a strange man I just let in my home against my better judgement.”

Remmick was unsurprised by the woman’s defensive tone and curt responses. He could sense the weight of the emotional walls she had put up around herself. They hadn’t been put up just for his arrival. No, these walls were erected years ago and only reinforced throughout the years by life battering her down. Unfortunately for her, natural kindness and sympathy had weakened the walls just enough to get him in the house. He had seen that opening earlier out in the yard and skillfully played right into it.

“Yeah, I didn’t think you were really gonna’ let me in here at first. What made you decide to trust me?” Remmick asked the question but already had a good idea of the answer. He just wanted the amusement of hearing her false justification.

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t have. I just thought if those men were coming for both of us that it would be better to have two people fighting back.” She finally looked up at him. “You sure ask a lot of questions.”

He grinned behind his split lip, it was friendly yet a little unsettling at the same time. “I like to get to know people. You seem like one of those people where it would be interestin’ to get in your head.”

It was at this moment May noticed a golden flash from his left hand. A wedding ring. It distracted her from his odd remark.

“You got a wife?”

A shadow passed over Remmick’s face. His friendly demeanor instantly faded. “I did. But she’s been gone for a long time.”

“Oh.” She looked down awkwardly. “I’m sorry about that.”

Remmick didn’t respond.

May eyed a particularly deep cut on his right shoulder that appeared to be a knife wound. It had to be at least an inch deep, exposing tendons below the shallow layers of skin and fat.

“You’re going to need stitches for some of these.”

Remmick brushed aside her comment and leaned forward. “Tell me this now, why are you so lonely out here?” 

His words this time were slower, calmer, more calculating than anything he had said before. The pleasantry of his earlier small talk was absent from his voice.

May faltered, confused by sudden intrusive inquiry. “Why do you think I’m lonely?”

“I can just tell,” Remmick mused. “I can read people. More than just their body language, but what they have goin’ on inside. It’s a skill you develop when you’ve been around as long as I have. Just as how I knew what to say to get you to let me in here.“

Remmick’s initial rough, shorthand speak had completely fallen away. His voice, now clear, flowed like warm butter, thick and slow with a southern draw. Each word was purposefully articulated. It was comforting to listen to in a way, but at the same time the accent seemed slightly off, like it was bastardized with another native tongue that even time couldn’t fully erase. Something about the man’s strange words and the way he said them made the hair on the back of May’s neck stand up. 

“You’re desperate for companionship,” he continued.

“Why are you saying these things?”

“And what safer company than a helpless man that was equally desperate in his need for you to save him.”

She pulled back from him. “I think it’s time you leave.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re runnin’ from somethin’. What did you leave behind back home? What are you hidin’ from out here?”

Alarm bells sounded in May’s head. How could this stranger she just met read her as easily as a storefront sign, as if he knew her better than she knew herself. She had guessed him a simpleton by their first encounter outside but had started to see she had been very wrong. She wanted to believe that he was just a good manipulator, maybe he had been a snake-oil salesman in another life, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of him digging through her secrets like an open file cabinet, plucking out the papers of her story he found the most interesting, the ones that would get under her skin. 

May turned towards the gun to give herself time to think of what to do next, but when she turned back she froze. Her eyes landed on the spot where moments before the wound on his shoulder stood gaping open. In the seconds she had looked away, the skin had started to pull itself together, healing at an impossible pace right in front of her eyes.

“You should have listened to those men out there.” Remmick’s lowered voice no longer feigned any layers of innocence, only sinister glee that she had so easily fallen into his trap.

May held her breath and slowly raised her eyes to Remmick’s face. To her horror, she was met with two inhumanly red irises gleaming back at her. His mouth had broken into a threatening grin, but the teeth… they were too sharp, there were too many of them, like a shark just before it lashed out at its prey. She realized that sat before her was not a man, but a monster, and she had allowed it into the sanctuary of her home.

May felt her chest tighten, her pulse raced, her entire body stiffened. She spun to reach for the shotgun but it was knocked out of her hand before she could get a grip on it. Standing with such force that the chair toppled to the floor, she pulled the blade from her apron with the intention of plunging it into his chest. However, Remmick stood just as fast and grabbed her wrist with elongated claws, squeezing until she had no choice but to drop the knife and cry out in pain. He pushed her back into the kitchen and against the counter by nothing more than the firm hold of her wrist. She felt if she resisted that he might snap her arm in half.

May grimaced in pain, her eyes darted around for another weapon, her mind scrambled with plans for self-preservation that seemed futile against his unnatural strength.

“My husband will kill you!” she said through gritted teeth.

Remmick let out a mocking laugh. “No man lives here with you. You are truly alone out here.” He leaned his head in closer to her with each word. She took the opportunity to spit at him.

“Oh, I like a fighter,” he sneered, not even raising a hand to wipe the spittle from his face.

From this proximity, May could see the uncanny nature of his smile and his eyes. His face moved as a human’s would, but there was no depth to it, almost more like muscle reflexes than legitimate emotions. Just a convincing mask disguising an entity of sociopathic evil that long ago lost any actual humanity. A pure predator.

“What are you?” May whispered, still completely immobilized by his strength. The immense power of the creature felt exponentially larger than the body it was contained within.

“I am the answer to all of the questions you have been askin’ yourself your whole life.” 

Remmick leaned in closer yet, just inches from her face now. His tone then changed to one of gentler offering. “I can save you from that feelin’ of loneliness. I can give you somethin’ more than this life. You can become part of somethin’ powerful and unified - an eternity of fellowship and love. And I promise that once you join me, you will never feel alone again.” 

He pressed his body tightly against hers until he could feel the pounding of her heart pushing the fresh blood through her veins. Saliva ran down his chin as he scanned up her body, his eyes first landing on her chest, then hovering on her neck, and finally his gaze met hers. 

Remmick hesitated, locked in May’s frenzied glare. He could see the usual array of emotions from encounters like these - fear, helplessness, pleading, even a courageous bit of anger - those were all the same again and again. But this time he also sensed something else that surprised him. Naturally, her heart pounded with adrenaline, her face had become devoid of color from her impending demise, but he also felt her… excitement. He felt the warmth from her chest, smelled the delicate aromas of fresh linens from her simple blue cotton dress, and picked up on a glint in her stormy blue eyes he hadn’t seen in awhile, at least not while he was in this form.

The unexpected physical response threw him off and his face faltered to a look of confusion. He sought her out for understanding for the first time.

“You want this?”

Chapter Text

“You want this?”

May’s body helplessly trembled under Remmick. She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t answer him as she didn’t understand it herself in a way that could be put into words. While part of her was completely consumed by the perilous situation that confronted her, there was another feeling that stirred. This feeling wasn’t something she was unaccustomed to, but never before had it been summoned by another in such a way. 

May had always known there was something wrong with her, it was the reason her average life kept her feeling vacant and lost and why normal human connections had always seemed to escape her. It was a dark desire for reckless abandon she had suppressed deep within as long as she could remember. Trying to satisfy it with the pleasures of normal vices only made it grow stronger, demanding more and more from her each time. Instead she had learned to starve that part of herself to keep it weak, seeing no other way to fully satiate it other than a life of chaos. But day by day she forced herself to live by the expectations of a society that seemed unfulfilling and meaningless. The thought of Remmick having an otherworldly out from all of this secretly thrilled her. It made her thrilled by him. 

The sustaining terror she presently felt contorted and twisted itself until it became overwhelming infatuation that dominated any common sense. Her wrist relaxed under the calloused grip of Remmick’s strong hand. The thick muscles in his arms and chest suddenly became apparent to her. A sharp jawline was evident despite the swelling in his face. Even his monstrous features somehow complimented his handsome outline when she really put it all together. The way Remmick pinned her body between his own and the counter unexpectedly made her gasp not with fear, but with yearning. May was disgusted with herself, but she couldn’t stop. 

Did she want him or his promises? 

Truthfully, in the moment… she wanted both. 

A seductive grin passed over Remmick’s face. His crimson eyes sparkled with delight. He had picked up on her realization immediately. Remmick got off on navigating the weaknesses of others to break people down, but never before had that weakness led to lust. Her reluctance to accept her desire only fed his more. 

A swift hand raised to pull down the top of May’s clothing, the seams splitting to expose more of her tender flesh. He pushed his hips against hers even harder and leaned his face in against her neck, ever so gently running his sharp fangs along her skin, and finishing the trail with his tongue. May whimpered as his cold saliva dripped down onto her chest. With his free hand, Remmick pulled up the bottom of her dress and began running the tips of his claws along her thigh, moving inward in a teasing motion. 

“Once I am in that head I will be able give you exactly what you need,” he murmured in her ear.

“No. I don’t want this.” She lied to him. She lied to herself.

“We both know there’s nothin’ you want more.”

May’s fear acted as nothing more than kindle to the fire of longing igniting within her. The air around them was electrified. 

Remmick threw both hands under May and lifted her into the air with ease in one sweeping motion. She naturally wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and her thighs around his waist. He spun her around to the table they had sat at just minutes before and used an arm to clear the contents onto the floor. Neither of them noticed the sound of broken glass and clattering bowls as he threw her onto her back on the hard wood. Remmick positioned himself between her legs, holding her down with one hand, and traced his talon-like fingers down her neck to her lower stomach, admiring the way her breasts rose and fell rapidly against her dress and how she quivered under his touch. He bent over her and ran his tongue along the curve of her ear. She exhaled sharply with forbidden pleasure.

Before May could stop herself, she turned her face towards Remmick’s and forced her lips upon his. His body tensed this time, startled by the sudden consensual and passionate motion, but then he leaned into her kiss. Their mouths parted then locked together again with gasping desperation, hungering over one another. When he pulled back, he stared into her eyes. For the first time, he could read almost nothing on her breathless expression. She seemed to have lost control of her emotions and fully given in to feral passion.

Remmick leaned over her panting, not from exhaustion or even the actual physical need for respiration, but from straining against the ineffaceable instinct to sink his teeth into her neck and taste the sweet nectar of her blood. He stared longingly at the pale exposed skin above her collarbone then back to her face, still flushed and apprehensive. Remmick lunged forward with a breathy snarl, burying his head in the curve of her shoulder.

May inhaled sharply and braced for the pain, ready to scream as he took what remained to be taken from her. But rather than the feeling of dozens of knives piercing her flesh, she felt nothing more than cool breath on her skin as he hovered above her motionless. They locked eyes in their peripherals. She felt that something internal restrained him.

Suddenly, Remmick withdrew from May. The puzzled look on his face matching her own as he slowly stepped away from the table. He continued backing away from her, only stopping once he reached the front door. A small sliver of weak sunlight escaped the shade of the covered window and fell on his face. May clocked a swirl of smoke that arose from his cheek where the light hit. However, he did not react. His inquisitive eyes still watched her intensely. She fear not move in the event the slightest twitch of a finger ignite a predator response.

The silence of the room was impregnated with a thousand questions that neither stranger dare ask in the moment. 

At last, as stealthily as he had appeared in her front yard, Remmick slipped out of the front door and into the approaching dusk.

—

“You sure you’re alright, May?” 

May nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her own name.  

“Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry, I’m just feeling a little off tonight,” she replied.

May had shown up to work that evening late and disheveled, both of which were not normal to her character. 

Her boss, Louis, was cleaning a set of glasses at the other end of the bar top and had been watching May fixate on the door since she had arrived. 

“I can have Sally cover if you need to head home?” Louis offered.

Sally was Louis’ wife. She used to frequently come in to help out when things were busy, but not as much as of late since their first child was born.

“Thanks, but I’m good. I’m starting to feel better already.” May gave a small false smile. “How are Sally and the baby?”

“Oh you know, it was getting tough there for a bit. He wasn’t sleeping and between running the shop and this place I couldn’t help much. Sally’s ma’ being around has been a blessing though.” Louis chuckled and brushed his hand through his slick, black hair. “Never thought I’d say that about my mother-in-law.”

“That’s good.” May smiled, more sincerely this time. “Hey, it looks like we’re running low on the good stuff. I’m going to run upstairs before the crowds pick up.”

May stepped out from behind the bar positioned in the back of the small underground room. In the main area, half-a-dozen tables and booths and a few of the bar-top stools were intermittently occupied by regular haunts whom had been indulging for some time already. She greeted a few of them absently as she navigated through the small space. At the top of a short staircase by the entrance was the door-watch, Peter, perched on his stool with a cigarette hanging between his fingertips.

“Think it’s gonna’ be a wild one tonight, May?” He grinned and winked at her after taking a drag and pushing the door open.

Peter was a stout, red-headed farm boy that was young enough to still find thrills in a bit of trouble. Nevertheless, he took his job seriously and had effectively ejected many a drunkard from the establishment when they got too disagreeable.

“We’ll see,” was all she could muster out. Today had been wild enough. 

May stepped out into the alleyway as the inconspicuous door closed behind her. She took a deep breath trying to calm herself. Night had now completely taken hold of the day and with it the oppressive heat had broken, but the air still felt stifling to her everywhere she went. She looked nervously up and down the dark pathway between the buildings, half expecting to see a menacing creature awaiting her in the shadows to finish what he had started. 

May hadn’t moved for a long time after Remmick had left. Even with the sound of the Choctaw’s horses and engines resuming their chase outside she didn’t trust that she was safe. It wasn’t until her legs tingled with lack of circulation and her back cramped that she finally slid off of the table and stumbled towards the open door. Outside, the air around her home had been quiet and peaceful again. There was not a single sign of her encounter save for the laundry basket sitting awry in the front yard and the mess of items that had been tossed from the kitchen table. 

In a stupor, she had cleaned up and gotten ready for her evening shift at work. She certainly didn’t want to stay home to see if Remmick returned for her and she thought the presence of others may help bring her some sanity. Although now, standing outside of the door of the speakeasy, she felt anything but sane. The whole day had seemed like a fever dream. Perhaps her isolation had finally broken her. May dare not say anything to Louis about what had happened as he might have her committed. But maybe being committed was what she needed after her actions that day. 

May’s face flushed at the thought of Remmick’s deadly mouth on hers. A kiss she had instigated. Now relieved from the heat of the moment, it seemed exceptionally self-destructive, even for her.

A couple of the night’s entertainers approached the door with instruments in their hands and broke May free from her trance. After a quick nod of acknowledgement she briskly started moving up the alley until she emerged on the main street and turned the corner.

The strip of roadway in front of the establishment was eerily quiet other than the hum of a few globed street lights. Empty businesses rested ominously in the dark after being heavily occupied in the joyful bustle of the day just a few hours prior. The waning moon palely illuminated the sign above the main door of the building, Louis’ Drug Store. 

Louis ran a pharmacy that was mostly a front for the illegal prohibition-era business below it. Under the cover of a prescription, he was able to obtain certain spirits for “medicinal” purposes. That supply along with the occasional contributions from local moonshiners and the discreet delivery from his relatives back in New York supplemented their highly demanded inventory. 

May had served there for a little over a year. She had proven to be a trusted employee to Louis, so much so that she pulled her copy of the pharmacy key out of her pocket and let herself inside to collect a few bottles of gin. The inside of the store was heavily shadowed, with only dull panes of light glowing on the floor from the windows and the lightest shine of glass among the shelves of medicines. Each shimmering bottle reminded her of the reflection of eyes, eagerly watching her, wanting her. May pushed the thoughts from her mind and collected several spirits from the back, counting up the inventory and seeking out a patch of moon-glow to expertly falsify the pharmacy logs as Louis had taught her. She then exited the store and locked the door behind her before turning to head back to the alley.

In the middle of the previously empty street, a dark figure awaited her.

Chapter Text

Already on edge, May let out a bloodcurdling scream when the profile of a tall, broad-shouldered man approached her from the shadows of the drug store. 

“Holy Hell, May. It’s me!”

As her eyes adjusted to the street lights, May recognized an unfortunately familiar face and exhaled with a combination of relief and annoyance. 

Damnit, I don’t want to deal with this guy right now.

“Hey, Billy.” She tried to catch her breath. “Sorry, you snuck up on me there.”

Billy snickered and pulled off his derby hat, patting it on the leg of his trousers like he was trying to knock the dust off of it. The dark wavy undercut that had been hidden below his hat kept crisp with pomade. “What in God’s name got ya so riled up tonight?”

“I guess the dark must have gotten to me.” May turned to look down the street behind her, now concerned with getting caught out in the open with the armful of alcohol, amongst other things.

Billy tilted his head and stuck his thumbs in his vest. “Ain’t thought an owl like you would be scared of the dark?”

“I’m not normally. It’s just been one of those days.” May started to shuffle restlessly, looking for a quick out for the conversation.

“Well, didn’t mean to spook ya. I was just headin’ downstairs and saw ya comin’ out of the store.” He gave her a toothy grin under his thick mustache, regarding her like a painting in a museum. “I was hopin’ I’d see ya here tonight.”

“Yes, well… I do work here. Speaking of which, I need to get back downstairs.”

May tried to continue back to the bar but the man stepped in her path.

Billy had been obvious in his pursuits of May the last few months. May had not returned the sentiment. Not only was Billy a regular at her workplace but also a regular at getting obnoxiously drunk and starting fights. A shame because he was handsome and even occasionally charming, just stupid with machoism.

“You need help carryin’ all that?” He nodded towards the bottles she was presently struggling to juggle in her hands. Luckily, she hadn’t dropped them when he had startled her.

“No, thank you though. I got it.”

“Alright, if ya say so.” He placed his hat back on his head and tipped it at her as he moved to the side to allow her to pass, not unfamiliar with her stubbornness, but also not dissuaded by it. “I’ll see ya down there.”

Back downstairs, a few new faces stood at the door chatting with Peter and the soft warmup tunes of a muted trumpet drifted across the dimly lit space. May moved back to her position behind the bar, where she remained most of the night.

On a normal shift, May would occasionally join the patrons in their celebrations, dancing with the winding notes of the saxophone, singing with the keys of the piano, a casual flirtation here and there, she was as much hype girl as she was a barmaid. Sometimes she would even entertain Billy’s attempts to steal some conversation when he approached her for a refill. But tonight she remained mostly polite but solemn. Her thoughts were as hazy as the growing cloud of cigar smoke. Occasionally, her eyes would dart to the door and her heart would jump when a lone male entered, but it was never him.

Finally, the night began winding down. The whiskey jazz music slowed and the crowd dwindled. May offered to close up as an excuse to avoid going home just a bit longer and Louis gladly accepted her offer. He had seemed satisfied with her earlier explanation for her demeanor and hadn’t pressed her more the rest of the night. 

Bottles sorted, glasses cleaned, tables wiped, May locked up and headed towards the smaller street that ran behind the pharmacy where she normally parked her car, checking behind her every few steps to make sure she wasn’t being followed. The clacking of her boots on the pavement synced with the dreadful pounding in her chest.

She drove to her destination slowly, savoring every additional second that separated her from the potential confrontation that awaited her. Her stomach knotted itself as tightly as her grip on the resin steering wheel. The narrow, winding gravel roads seemed to be closing in on her. 

The shadows cast by her headlights on the cotton fields reminded her of dancing skeletons, their slender limbs maliciously reaching out from the ditches as she passed by. Perhaps they were eager for her to join them in their dance once she got home.

—

May fully expected to see Remmick’s red eyes shining in the darkness when she walked in the front door of the farmhouse. However, there were no unexpected silhouettes among the dark outlines of furniture in the front room. She carefully moved from room to room searching the rest of the house, kerosene lamp in one hand and shotgun cocked and ready in the other. She wasn’t sure if she would actually shoot Remmick if he had been there, but she at least preferred having the option readily available. 

Just as May was satisfied that she had searched every crack and crevice large enough for a person — or whatever he was — a small scratching noise came from the front door. It was quick and sporadic, claws on wood, only loud enough to be heard while motionless. 

He was waiting for me to come home. 

May moved slowly towards the front door. Her knees nearly buckled under her weight, her breath came in ragged gasps as she tried to remain quiet. The scratching continued randomly. It sounded like something was trying to get in. 

BLAST

Without fully thinking through her actions, May unleashed a fury of buckshot towards the wooden paneling in the lower part of the door. An inhuman screech came from the other side. She shakily loaded another round in the chamber and flung open the door, tracking movement on the ground where a creature flailed and then ran off into the edge of the fields, startled but unharmed. 

Shit.

A raccoon. 

May turned to her now pellet-hole riddled door and let out a long sigh. A repair for another day.

—

A heavy sleep finally fell over her after what seemed like hours. Too afraid of the dark hallway that led to her bedroom, she slept sitting upright on the bench in the front room, freshly spent shotgun laid across her lap on top of a quilt.

May jolted awake. The yellow glow of dawn filtered into the room. It cast uneasy shadows on what was once a safe space for her. Small flames barely clung to life in the dying fireplace.

What did I just hear? 

She carefully listened, uncertain if the noise was real or an echo that permeated from her haunted dreams.

There it was again. A fluttering. Maybe another critter.

The new addition of buckshot holes in the door had been projecting narrow beams of morning sunlight onto the ground. Except now, as she watched, the beams became shadowed as something blocked them from the other side. Her heart rose into her throat.

May once again stood and crossed the threshold with her weapon, more hesitant this time after nearly blowing a hole in her house earlier. There was only silence other than the loose boards creaking beneath her feet. Slowly, she used the end of the gun to pull back the window shade and peered outside. The porch and the yard appeared to be empty from this position. 

She reached the door and momentarily kept a still hand on the knob to weigh the idea of simply ignoring the sound, choosing instead to be a prisoner in her own home forever. But the thought of waiting until something came for her peaked both her anxiety and curiosity too greatly.

May jerked the door open and stepped back. She held her fire, praying it wouldn’t be a fatal mistake. 

“May.” A raspy, wounded voice called to her from just beyond the threshold.

Remmick had returned.

May was uncertain how she knew it was Remmick, as what was before her hardly resembled a man at all. The figure lay on its stomach, a hand still outstretched from having crawled onto her porch. A wooden stake had been pierced through his back and emerged from the center of his chest. His clothing was incinerated into oblivion and his skin resembled a charcoaled log pulled from a late-evening bonfire. She could see crusted organs and bones moving beneath his hollowed flesh. Unidentifiable bits of him fell onto the porch in a pile of ash and blew away in the light morning breeze. Even now, his torso smoldered as if hellfire rose from within him. There was no part of him that wasn’t crisp blackness and burning.

“May.” 

If Remmick hadn’t said her name again, she would have assumed this was a corpse. His voice was as weak as papyrus.

May’s body was no more than stone for all it could move. Her mind was unable to process a coherent thought in the face of the indescribable horror she was witnessing. As if the image wasn’t bad enough, the reek of burnt flesh suddenly permeated her senses, like a combination of putrid meat and sulfur. The stench finally forced her to cover her mouth as her stomach lurched. The gun was on the floor now, but she wasn’t sure when she had dropped it.

“The sun.” Came the dried voice from the indistinguishable maw that was previously a face.

Now that she could react, every muscle was so impacted with fear that she shook violently. Her mind moved from nothingness to racing panic. She had seconds to make a decision on whether she would leave the remnants of this monster there to perish or show him mercy beyond the abilities of most human will. Her thoughts froze like a mid-air coin flip and she reached down to yank Remmick’s living carcass into the house. She felt his body crumble under her fingers.

Remmick let out a raspy scream as his arms touched the threshold. “Invite me in!”

“Get in here!” May yelled as she pulled. She was not capable of questioning the request under the circumstances.

She heaved Remmick into the home, startled by how light he was, which should have been unsurprising given that much of his form was no more than cinders. As soon as his feet were clear she shut the door and yanked the curtain over the window, even throwing the quilt on top of the sunshade as an added protection. This immediately plunged the front room into darkness with the exception of scattered light emanating from the holes in the front door. She grabbed a piece of butcher’s paper from the kitchen and shoved small bits of it into each of the openings.

Finally, the room was completely void of the dawn.

May re-lit the kerosene lamp. She watched Remmick to make sure he didn’t react to the artificial light, uncertain of the level of his sensitivities, only moving closer to him when he seemed unaffected.

Although still a gruesome sight, Remmick’s cremated state was less terrifying when partially concealed in the shadows. He laid on his side wheezing, his internal flames now subsided and the smoke that rose from his body eased. May reached a hand towards him, then pulled back. She wasn’t sure if he had actually come here for help or, like a wounded animal settling into a peaceful recess in the woods, to die.

“Wh—what can I do?” she finally stuttered.

Between haggard breaths he choked out a few words. His crusted hand motioned towards his chest. “Take it out.” 

May nervously eyed the sharp splinter that passed through his body. She sat the lantern on the floor and reached for the stake with unsteady hands, wrapping her palms around its base.

“Okay,” she said shakily. “Here we go.”

They both yelled as she yanked the stake free from his torso. May continued to sit on the floor next to him trembling, the blackened piece of wood still in her grip. Remmick sighed with some respite.

“What else do you need?” she asked him, still in shock.

Some seconds passed as Remmick tried to muster the energy to speak. 

“Rest.”

—

May sat with her knees pulled up on the bench, anxiously watching Remmick across the cave-like room in the quiver of the lamplight. He laid motionless in the spot she had drug him to earlier, each breath graveled and alarmingly sparse. May wasn’t aware if this was due to his condition or his nature. She still wasn’t even sure what he was as his body was certainly in a state that no mortal man could ever survive.

It was hard for her to sit still. The nurture instinct in her wanted to tend to his wounds. But she remained where she was, aware there wasn’t much she could do but wait and let him rest as instructed. 

Even while being isolated from the world outside, May felt enough time had passed that it was probably getting late in the day. She needed to leave for work soon. If nothing else, being away from the house would keep her from crawling out of her skin waiting for the being on her floor to wake up. Quietly, she got up and changed and attempted to scrub the black stains from her skin and nails. Remmick didn’t stir despite her wanderings. She slipped out the door, careful to let as little natural light in the room as possible. 

It felt insane to leave him there alone, in her home, but secretly she felt invigorated.

—

The night at Louis’ was almost uneventful. Halfway through the evening, a small squabble broke out over a card game and Peter herded Billy out the door for the umpteenth time. 

As Peter approached the bar afterwards for a breather, May shook her head at him. “I swear that man will never learn.”

“Nothin’ to learn when your pop’s the sheriff and will bail you out of everything.” Peter sighed as he leaned on the bar with his forearms. “At least he’s keepin’ things excitin’ around here.”

Peter’s face suddenly shifted. “Speakin’ of excitement, you hear what Billy was sayin’ about the old sawmill earlier?”

“I thought that place shut down?”

Peter nodded. “It did. But a couple folk came down an’ bought it and I guess turned it into a juke joint. Anyway, this mornin’ they find the place partly burnt down with a bunch of shot up klan out front.”

He leaned closer to May, speaking quieter. “But here’s the weird part, they found one other body outside with the klan, one of them fellers that bought the place. Had a bunch of guns they say might have been stolen from them Chicago gangsters.”

May gave Peter a dismissive look. “That all sounds like small town boredom blowing up rumors. Nothing like that is going to be happening in Clarksdale.”

“I don’t know.” Peter shrugged. “Billy said his pop was up there all day. Guess it was bloody. There’s a bunch of people missin’, too.”

Remmick’s burning figure popped into May’s memory. She wondered if he had somehow been involved.

“You been alright, May? Haven’t seen ya up on the bar in a couple nights. Louis said you was sick or somethin’.”

May blinked, realizing she had been staring off into nothing. “Yeah, just haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Hope you get over it quick. I get a kick out of those bar dances.” He tapped a few fingers on the counter. “Well, I best be gettin’ back to the door ‘fore Louis starts givin’ me a hard time.” Peter and May exchanged a friendly smile before he made his way back up the stairs and May disappeared back into her own thoughts.

The minutes ticked by slowly until she could go home and check on Remmick. 

—

Hours later, when she arrived back at the farmhouse, May wagered a bet with herself on whether her houseguest would slash her into pieces the moment she stepped in the door or if he was dead. 

To her surprise, he still lay in the same position on the floor, miraculously alive but in some sort of state of altered consciousness. He appeared to be more solid, but still far from recovered.

She went to bed fighting against more haunted dreams, ones where the devil pulled her down and hellfire eternally melted away her skin. Occasionally, she would wake and listen for movement. 

The following day, May went about her normal business outside the house. She made regular excuses to come in and check on the thing still lying on her floor, hoping for some sign of life. Before she left for work, she carefully lifted Remmick’s head and placed it on a burlap pillow and laid a blanket over him. Did he even get cold? She didn’t know.

Three more days passed that were more of the same. Except the third night, when she came home, Remmick was awake.

—

May noticed something was different as soon as she pulled into the yard. The light glow of a fire flickered through the front window. A sight that would have perhaps been inviting under other circumstances. Instead, she sat in the car for a long while trying to build up her nerve.

She cautiously stepped through the front door to find Remmick sitting at the kitchen table with his back to her, hunched towards a low flame burning in the fireplace. The blanket she had laid on him earlier was draped around his shoulders. He didn’t seem to initially acknowledge her presence.

“Hello?” She inquired warily, every hair on the back of her neck standing up.

Remmick spoke without turning, his voice guttural and unsettling. “You saved me again. Why?”

May slowly drifted to the other side of the table and sat across from the creature. The dim firelight broadcasted an ethereal glow across Remmick’s face from this perspective. He still looked terrible, but comparatively, he looked like a man reborn. 

The dead and blackened crust that had encased him had been shed and he was now covered in tight pink flesh. He was as hairless as a baby bird, with milky white regrown eyes that stared into her soul. Only open orifices were present where a nose and ears were supposed to be. The left side of his mouth was pulled tight by a bright red scar that ran all the way to the back of his skull. The healing wound exposed his gum line and rows of razor sharp teeth, but there was no malice in his posture. He seemed subdued.

“Why?” He demanded again. His tone made May jump in her seat.

It was a question she had been asking herself. She already knew she didn’t have a good answer.

“It felt like the right thing to do.” She finally forced out the words.

They sat in silence for a long time. Remmick stared into the fire and May stared at him. As terrifying as he was, she couldn’t help but feel drawn to him. The intensity, the danger, the inhumanity. It burned up those dark wants within her as if the whole house was ablaze. 

She hoped he would say something else to satisfy her intrigue, but he remained weakly brooding over the flames. The quiet ate away at her until she could take no more and she stood from the table.

“I’m going to head to bed.”

She waited, but he didn’t respond. 

Reluctantly, she turned to walk down the hall. Just as she wondered if Remmick might kill her in the night, he spoke.

“Thank you, May.”

May only paused in acknowledgment before walking to the back bedroom and closing her door, pulling the slide bolt lock over as far as it could go and testing its strength by shaking the handle. She doublechecked to make sure the shotgun that she had laid on her nightstand was loaded and then sat on the bed, staring at the thin wood and metal that separated her from her inhuman guest. Before laying down, she decided to push a heavy dresser in front of the entry to the room as a final layer of security.

It wouldn’t stop him, but at least she would hear death coming for her.

Chapter Text

The dresser was still in place when May awoke the next morning. The memory of unpigmented eyes ripped her from sleep, heart pounding, gasping, heat clinging to the sheets and constricting her. Having Remmick in her home was like living with a snake, you never knew when you might move wrong and get filled with venom.

She laid in bed studying the shotgun and contemplated her choices. Finally, she convinced herself to rise and leave the bedroom unarmed, only to discover the front room to be empty. Her visitor was absent from his normal spot on the floor or at the kitchen table and May wondered if he had left in the night. The thought brought about an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach, almost like disappointment, but a noise from the back room rectified her first assumption. The feelings that returned were a mixture of fear and excitement.

Of the two rooms in the hall, the first was her bedroom and the second room further down was used as a catchall for her few belongings. Peering down the hallway, she now noticed the door to the second space was ajar. The frame around its entry stood as little more than a passageway to darkness.

In the windowless storage room sat a rusty sewing machine, a tub, some used gardening equipment, supplies to fix the roof that had sat untouched for far too long, and a rocking chair. 

In the rocking chair currently sat Remmick. 

May stood just outside the doorway to the room, looking in with her mouth slightly agape.

“Hey there.” Remmick greeted her with a small smirk, a weary and ghastly one, but still somehow it maintained a devious edge. 

Even in the gloom it was apparent that Remmick had improved overnight. His skin had gained some elasticity and the teeth exposed by the taut scar had lost their sharpness, as if he had the strength to partially mask himself again. His posture also appeared more energized, sitting alertly in the chair with the blanket across his lap. The exposed portion of his smooth chest was riddled with healing disfigurements - slashes, stab wounds, seemingly a few sunken bullet holes. His eyes still lacked color and May questioned how well he could see, but he seemed to be looking at her with curiosity. The absence of light made him appear as a white-eyed devil sitting on a throne in his lair.

“Hope you don’t mind me relocatin’. It got a little bright out there by the window.” The tone he spoke with had resumed a bit of the homely draw from their first interaction. 

The tension ran so deeply within her she could feel it in her bones. It tightened around her even more when he spoke.

“You still planning on killing me? Should I go get the gun?” May asked him stiffly, trying not to let him hear the apprehension creep into her voice. She saw fear as a weakness, fear would give him power over her. But in truth she was terrified, she could only try to hide the fear on the outside, inside she was lost to it.

If he was going to kill me, he would have done it already.

The thought brought her little comfort.

Remmick lightly laughed at her threat. “I assure you, ma’am, I’m in no state to be harmin’ anybody.”

She forced herself to keep her eyes on him, as much as she wanted to look away. “Yeah, well, that’s what you said the last time I let you in here.”

He tilted his head. “Last time was different.”

“Sure it was,” she said dryly.

Remmick held his grisly smile, unbothered by her criticism, maybe even entertained by it.

May glanced back to the front room, now seeing that the corner of the curtain had slipped down, then turned back to him, judging his demeanor coldly. 

“I’ll fix the window.”

“I’d sure appreciate it.” The smile grew wider yet. “And if you don’t mind, darlin’, I have another small favor to ask.”

May side-eyed him skeptically, somewhat concerned of what the request might be and unsettled by his use of endearments. “And what might that be?”

“You happen to have any attire I might be able to get into? Feels a little impolite walkin’ about naked as a jaybird now that I have skin again.”

May suddenly realized the obvious issue that his clothes had burned off in the disaster he had been in. The blanket that covered his legs was there to serve as modesty to what he had going on below it.

“Oh. Um, actually… I do. I’ll be right back.”

May left the room before he could notice her face turn red. She opened the lowest drawer in the armoire in the front room and dug out a dark pair of men’s pants, a light blue button up shirt, socks, suspenders, and a very worn pair of laced shoes. They seemed like they might fit.

“Here,” she said as she walked back into the room and tossed the clothes in a pile on the floor in front of him, keeping some distance. “You can have any of the men’s stuff in that old wardrobe. The people that owned this place before me got it to the front door before they realized there wasn’t room on their truck to take it. They left some clothes in it.”

He nodded and started to get up to change, dropping the blanket. May recoiled at his indiscretion, putting a hand up over her eyes and swiftly making an excuse to give him privacy. 

“Well then. I’m going to go make some breakfast.” 

As she left the room, a small part of her wondered what a man’s reforming genitalia might look like, but a larger part of her decided she was better off not knowing.

May was almost done cooking up a pan of eggs by lantern-light when Remmick returned to the front room. He walked slowly, like an elderly man in need of a cane. The clothes were a touch large, but would suffice.

She held the spatula up towards him. “Do you eat?”

“Not solids.” He stopped to rest when responding to her, as if speaking and walking at the same time was too much effort.

“How about some coffee?” she questioned, nodding towards the percolator on the stove.

“Not those kinds of liquids, either.”

“What kinds of liquids then?”

“Blood, mostly,” he said as he gingerly lowered himself into a chair at the table.

May raised her eyebrows uncertainly and returned to her cooking. “I see.” 

“Don’t worry yourself. I had my fill the other night. I’ll be good for a while,” he spoke while her back was to him, scraping her breakfast out of the skillet.

May was unsure if she wanted to take a guess on what that implied as she cautiously sat down at the table with her plate, intentionally selecting the seat furthest from her guest. After an awkward pause, she decided to take a gamble with some conversation since he seemed more talkative today than the evening before. 

“So, Remmick, I need a favor from you now.”

Remmick’s forehead arched. “Well, there’s only so much I’m capable of in my current condition, but I’ll do my best,” he said mischievously, sliding his palm along the table like an invitation.

As she watched his movements, she opened her mouth and then closed it again before deciding to ignore whatever implication he was making.

“I need you to tell me what you are. I think I deserve to know since you’re in my house.”

Remmick sat back, reluctant but unsurprised by the question. “Well, it depends on who you’re askin’. I’ve been called a few things — Moroi, Deamhan Fola, Obayifo, Nachtzehrer. I’m not partial to the term, but folks around these parts like to call me a vampire.”

May inhaled and held it. She knew it was coming, she asked for it, but something about hearing the word straight from the mouth of the beast made her blood run cold.

He sighed dramatically, opening his arms towards her. “Might as well ask your other questions. I can feel ‘em rollin’ around in your head.”

May looked at Remmick in surprise. “You can read my thoughts?”

“No, as I mentioned before, it’s more of an… intuition. I can feel things. I could only read your thoughts if I turned you.”

“Turned me?” Even the word tasted nefarious coming out of her mouth.

“Into what I am.”

“So you were human at some point?”

“Yes, a long while ago,” Remmick answered patiently.

She swallowed. “And how exactly do you turn someone?”

“A bite. A taste of your blood.”

May waited for more, but she could tell she would have to dig. He withheld details from her as if they were a gift now that she was the one asking the questions. Like he was trying to get a feel for her quirks through the information she demanded of him.

“Then what happens?” she finally asked.

“Then,” Remmick leaned forward. “Death seeps in. It consumes everything you are til there’s nothin’ left, your body and your mind change, they become replenished by our connection.” He sat back and shrugged. “And then you come back.”

May was filled with morbid fascination. He had casually spoken of killing someone and bringing them back to life as a new being as one might talk about the weather. All of this before she had even had her first forkful of breakfast.

“Is that why you came here? To turn me?”

The glow of the lantern flame danced between them as it consumed its cotton wick. Remmick tapped his fingertips on the table with reflection.

“Originally, yes.” His mocking gaze was locked on her. “I just happened across your place when I was in a tricky situation and needed some more hands. You seemed like you could hold your own, thought you might be a good addition.” He winked at her, which she found disconcerting with his pupil-less eye.

She picked up her fork and twirled it in her hand nervously. “Why didn’t you do it then?”

Remmick considered this for a moment. The confidence in which he had supplied her answers up to this point faltered. “You weren’t what I was lookin’ for at the time.”

May hesitated now. “Are you still planning on turning me?”

“That sharp little mind of yours would have been mine already if I wanted it to be.” He cocked his head. “But I think you knew that.”

She studied his face. The corners of his mouth were upturned with a bit of devilish amusement, but she felt he was telling the truth.

He looked at her untouched plate. “Your eggs are getting cold.”

“So, what’s your plan now?” she asked, less concerned with her meal than getting answers while she had the opportunity.

“I reckon lay low for a bit. Another round like that in this condition and I probably won’t be so lucky.”

May thought again of the burning revenant on her porch, she wouldn’t have described that as lucky, but to each their own. “Where will you go?”

He looked at her sideways with anticipation. “Haven’t figured that one out yet.”

“You can stay here until you're better, if you’d like.” The words were out of her mouth before her mind had caught up to them.

Stay here?! May, you idiot, what the hell is wrong with you?

She had no idea what possessed her to extend such an invite to a stranger she barely knew, a supernatural stranger at that. It frustrated her that she couldn’t get ahold of herself around him - letting him into the house twice now, sharing too much of her background, and now turning her place into a bed and breakfast for him, except the breakfast very well could be her.

But she’d always been pulled towards things that could destroy her, and here was destruction personified, sitting at her kitchen table. 

The sinister grin returned, like he knew what kind of power he had over her. “That’s nice of you to offer, darlin’. I might have to take you up on that.”

Darlin’. There it was again. May didn’t care for the pet names, the men at the bar threw them at her faster than they dropped their dimes for a drink, but she couldn’t help but notice her heart thumping a little harder in her chest as Remmick inclined his head at her with a playful grin.

It’s just fear. Look at him, he’s grotesque. A menace.

“One last question,” May started, still swinging the empty fork around to keep her anxious hands occupied. “What happened to you the other night? And why did you come back here?”

“You know that’s two questions, right?”

“Semantics.”

Remmick inhaled and braced himself against the table, now looking regretful. “I got caught up in a situation I underestimated. I was overconfident in myself and paid a price for that.” 

He paused to meditate on his next words. 

“And I came here because I was dyin’ and it was the first place I thought to go.”

The fork stilled in her hand. “And you assumed I’d save you again?”

“Didn’t assume, just hoped.” 

The arrogance had fallen away. There was something deeper there now, maybe gratitude, she couldn’t quite tell. May was thrown off by this. She sensed the heaviness of a much longer story, but decided not to pursue it more in this moment. 

Unsure of what else to say, she took her first bite of now cold eggs.

—

A few more days passed. It was an odd feeling having Remmick there. It wasn’t unpleasant, it actually felt almost natural to be around him, but May knew this lifestyle was dangerous despite the assurance he provided earlier. 

Remmick still rested often as a symptom of exhaustion from his healing. He would disappear to the back room or simply daze off while sitting at the table or on the bench and remain motionless for hours. But when he was alert and she was in the house, he watched her. There were times when she felt his eyes lingering on her neck just a bit too long for comfort. Other times, she caught him staring at her with a small fascinated smile, not in the perverse way the men in the speakeasy stared at her, but as if every movement carried something he could learn about her. She wasn’t sure which of the two looks concerned her more, the hunger or the intrigue.

The physical improvements were slow, but each day his wounds faded more. He gradually began looking less like a miscreation and more like a soldier scarred from battle. Over time, May also noticed her guest growing more restless in the evenings. She would return from her shifts to things done around the house. One night the blackened outline he had left on her porch had been scrubbed up. The next night, her door was properly patched. It also seemed that the garden was unusually weedless when she went to check it during the day. Chicken feathers appeared in the laundry now and again and sometimes she would have extra eggs in the morning. She didn’t ask, but assumed Remmick had started making trips to her closest neighbor to pick off a couple of their livestock.

One thing did remain constant, and that was May being captivated by her visitor. As her thoughts became consumed by him it quickly overtook her reservations. Work in the evenings was a combination of relief from her obsession and a desperate longing to be back home in his presence. She wanted to ask every detail about him and what he was and where he came from, but held back in fear she would run him off if she got too intrusive. 

The nervous questioning eventually grew into lighter banter as she became more comfortable with him, but there were secrets he held close to himself. A question that brushed against past trauma was met with divergence into another topic. May understood, she had secrets of her own. Neither of them dug deeper than that silent understanding.

Also unlike their first encounter, there were no physical interactions. Remmick remained a mostly polite but platonic houseguest, slipping back and forth between quiet brooding and polished charm. May struggled to keep herself grounded during the latter, especially as his appearance improved. More than once, her thoughts drifted to the activities that had previously unfolded on the kitchen table when his wit started to get the best of her. She hoped he couldn’t sense the quiet heat that grew within her during those times, but a frisky grin would usually follow and make her wonder.

Just shy of two weeks into Remmick’s stay, May lay awake in bed listening to the sound of hammering on the roof. The rhythmic thumping somehow brought her peace even in the middle of the night, perhaps because the noise meant she wasn’t alone. However, after things grew quiet, she found that sleep continued to elude her.

May got up and walked into the hall. Her pale nightgown floated with her through the darkened house like a ghost. The front door was open and provided a moonlit pathway that guided her outside where the shrill cries of frogs around a distant pond greeted her like a familiar song. The yard shimmered tranquil and empty with moonlight dew. Just beyond, the dry stems of cotton plants rattled together in the fall breeze.

Remmick had a tendency of moving the rocking chair to the porch once the sun went down and was usually sitting in it waiting for her when she came home from work. She correctly assumed he was in it now, looking off into obscurity, contemplating things he didn’t speak of. The chair creaked as it rocked back and forth under the gentle sway of his heel. He stopped when he heard May’s bare feet approaching and looked up at her with pale eyes as she joined him on the porch. Just by his posture she could tell he was more somber tonight, almost mournful.

“I apologize if I kept you up. I was on the roof earlier and noticed some of the spots gettin’ soft.”

“It’s alright, it needed to be done and I’m having trouble sleeping anyway.” May leaned against the doorframe. “Are you really sure you should be doing all that while you’re still putting yourself back together?”

“Oh it ain’t no problem, should just be a few more days.” Remmick shifted in his chair. “Speakin’ of which, I feel like I’m gettin’ to the point where I’m overstayin’ my welcome. Don’t be shy in sayin’ so if you’re needin’ me to move on.”

May shuffled uncomfortably at the thought. The idea of him leaving tightened around her heart in a way she couldn’t put into words.

“Stay as long as you need to. It’s actually been nice having you here.” It was a bold admission, but she meant it.

“Well, it’s been nice bein’ here with you.”

May’s breath caught when they locked eyes. It was then the gold ring on Remmick’s finger captured her attention again. It shimmered in the moonlight, an enduring reminder of another life.

The warm air on this night felt like a gentle caress on her skin, but she also sensed its powerful energy obscuring the line in the sand they had drawn between themselves and their pasts.

“Remmick, what happened to your wife?”

He held on to the sanctity of the quiet for a period before speaking. “She died. Many years ago. A natural death. A death I couldn’t save her from at the time.”

“What was she like?” 

He looked down at the wedding band, as if he drew strength from it to speak. “When I was young, I watched my father become nothin’ more than a servant to King Henry’s men. They took everything from us - our culture, our faith, our hope. I blame them for eventually takin’ the lives of my mother and father. They were a shell of themselves when they passed, hollowed out by a people that saw no other glory other than their own.”

May inhaled sharply. She had guessed that Remmick was older than his years, but he was talking about centuries. She couldn’t fathom the lives he’d lived and the things he’d seen. She suddenly felt insignificant in his presence.

“But then I met her. She was unrelentin’ peace for me in a time there was almost none to be found, at least not for our people. She was free in the way that the wind is free. Whatever was in her way, she found a way around it. Nothin’ else could hold her.”

A woman by the ocean. May could suddenly see her clearly. Fair skin, long plaited brown hair that reflected coils of red when it caught the sunlight tucked under a folded linen headband. A saffron-dyed dress with an open bodice draped over a sleeved smock. Eyes a deep blue that mirrored the tempestuous waters beyond her. Standing tall and proud and free. The woman smiled and the image faded away, the crashing tide of a foreign land ebbed back into dark waves of Mississippi cotton. May blinked, startled by the vividness of the hallucination.

“You remind me of her.” Remmick spoke as he stared off into a distance he thought that no one else could see. His voice was one of a man haunted by a thousand spirits.

“For once in my life, I thought I had somethin’ that couldn’t be taken by anyone. But death could. And so he did. She got sick one day and never got better. I let her ashes go into the sea. She went with the wind, as she did in life. Except she carried my peace with her as well.”

He looked up at the stars that had remained with him for generations, even when the ground beneath his feet turned over endlessly. Only those stars knew his battles, had seen the who he had once been, everything else that he had known had been lost to time or tragedy. 

“It wasn’t long after that I became what I am. With my new power, I swore I’d never be like my father. I swore vengeance on those men. I vowed to take everything back. But it was an empty promise. I knew I could never get her back. And she was everything.”

The air was too heavy to say more for some time. Remmick’s words held their own gravity around them, pulling everything inwards. May had nothing to offer. She hurt for him, but anything she said would just dissolve into the blackhole he had created. 

Remmick finally turned to her and spoke, “You better get some sleep, May.”

“Are you going to be alright?”

“I will be. Time heals all wounds, as they say. I guess I’ve had plenty of that.” His voice trailed off as he looked out into the fields.

May watched him another moment and then stepped away to return to her room. This time she left the bedroom door open. She climbed under the covers and pressed herself to the side of the bed against the wall. There she waited, awake, watching the doorway hopefully. As if in a dream, Remmick’s figure suddenly appeared there, just barely visible in the darkness. He stood still until he was certain of her silent invitation.

Remmick crossed the room and laid next to her on top of the blankets, still fully dressed, hands draped against his torso in a gentlemanly restraint.

Until this point, May had continuously maintained some level of physical distance from Remmick, afraid if she got too close that something might snap, whether it be his regressions or her own. But after a few minutes, she moved closer to him and he put an arm around her so that she could rest her head on his chest. His body gave off no warmth. It reminded her of when she used to lay on cool beds of moss next to creeks as a child, as much of a soothing escape then as it was now.

She felt their spirits settle after being invoked from their earlier conversation. The sound of his heartbeat came infrequently, it seemed as if a minute or more passed between each thump. She let the slow sound carry her into a restful sleep.

That night she dreamed of the sea.

Chapter Text

May awoke to the foreign feeling of another in her bed, her forehead gently tucked under his chin, his arm wrapped under her with the hand lazily draped on her shoulder. The light scents of smoke and earth that clung to his skin filled her with contentment. His presence warmed her even before she had woken enough to get her bearings.

She stirred with a heavy comforted sigh and looked up at her bedmate. It was dark in the bedroom, but the sallow morning glow in the hallway provided enough dull light for her to see him clearly. Remmick of course had already been awake - or perhaps hadn’t slept at all - and had lain there motionless, potentially for hours, as to not to disturb her. He stared back at her, face stoic but eyes wide and full of questions that seemed only reserved for himself, a look she had become well acquainted with. 

“Good morning,” she mumbled to him while fighting back a smile, her voice softened with sleep.

The serious look on his face broke into thoughtfulness when she spoke. “Mornin’.”

May stretched slightly to ease the stiffness out of her joints, but let part of herself continue to ache to avoid leaving her nested position on his chest.

“I slept late. I should probably get up,” May said reluctantly.

She felt his arm tighten around her. 

“Let’s just lay here awhile,” he said quietly.

Her heart thumped. “You’ve probably been laying there awake all night.”

“What’s a few more minutes, then?” He propped his free arm behind his head and sat up a little to get a better look at her.

May turned her face from him briefly to hide the redness building in her cheeks. 

“So…” she started. “From what you told me last night, you’re a little older than you look.”

A wry smile passed over his face. “A bit.”

“And you’re actually from Ireland? Were you in Ireland that whole time?”

“A lot of it. I traveled some. But Ireland always called me back when I was away too long.”

She looked back up at him. “And how long have you been in America?”

He had to think about this for a moment. “A couple decades.”

May frowned, wondering how long the siren song of his homeland typically waited before beckoning him back.

“Will you go back to Ireland again?” she asked him, nervously fiddling with a button on his shirt.

Remmick sighed and looked away for a second, the smile fading back into the pensive look he slipped into now and again. “I’m not sure when I’ll go back. The last hundred years or so weren’t easy. I started feelin’ like a guest in my own home.” The sorrow that crept into his voice told her this was a sore topic.

May decided to talk about something else to avoid ruining the mood. “Tell me about the other places you’ve been.”

Remmick reached out to absentmindedly stroke her hair as he shared details of some of the countries he had visited and what it was like seeing the world change over the years. May listened to his stories in awe, living vicariously through his travels as someone who had done little of such, but her mind also wandered as he spoke. She lost track of his words in the alluring way his eyes shifted as they sorted through his recollections, noticing how much they were haunted by time and memories even when the rest of his face was gentle and youthful. Her gaze then drifted to his lips, focusing on the way they tended to favor one side when he smirked even though the scar had mostly healed.

It had taken every bit of her willpower not to kiss him again as they laid there facing one another in an entanglement of limbs and blankets. Although they had crossed that boundary before, their relationship was different now. She was uncertain whether he would even want that after what he had shared with her about his late wife the evening before. 

In addition, something had been different about him since he had returned. The exploitative creature that had initially deceived himself into her home and nearly ravaged her had been sight unseen lately. The sinister arrogance that he had introduced himself with had softened into a playful teasing at worst. And now that he finally touched her, it was only with slow tenderness, as if he was afraid he would hurt her. 

She secretly wished for a bit of the monster as they curled up together, just enough to take advantage of her and satisfy her forbidden needs. Maybe that made her more of the monster than he now. Her lips involuntarily turned upwards in a wayward smile that she masked under polite interest in his stories.

—

May walked out of the back bedroom that afternoon. She had cleaned herself up, throwing on one of her nicer silk dresses, her hair brushed and partially pulled back into dark waves that fell below her shoulder-blades, her piercing eyes darkened with makeup. 

“I’m going to head into town a little early to grab a few things from the store and then I’m going straight to work from there,” she told him as she tucked her hair back more securely in its pins. “Need anything while I’m out?”

“No, I don’t need nothin’.” Remmick had moved to the front room and had been leaning against the wall, ruminating over the covering on the front window as if he could look through it to his personal sunlit hellscape beyond. Now he noticed May, his eyes moving up and down her silhouette. “What do you do for work, if you don’t mind me askin’? You a lady of the night?”

“Why would you think that?!” May turned to him offended.

He put his hands up in a display of innocence. “Hey, I’m not judgin’. Just with the hours you work and comin’ back smelling like alcohol and smoke and men I made a reasonable assumption. We didn’t talk about it before.”

She put her hands on her hips. “No, I am not a ‘lady of the night’. I serve drinks in a juice joint on the north side of town.”

“Oh I see,” Remmick gleamed. “I’m stayin’ with a little prohibition rebel. Should I call the law on you?”

“Good luck,” May said, unamused. “The cops around here are in on it, too. Hell, they come in for a drink sometimes.”

Remmick put a finger to his lips. “Well then I must be missin’ out. I might have to get a drink from you sometime, as well.”

May shook her head. “Not looking like that you won’t, you’ll run off my customers.” 

While much improved, Remmick’s hair had grown in patches around his head wound and the still-developing nose and ears and the baby soft skin on a grown man were quite a sight to behold.

“Nah, they’ll be too distracted. You look good enough for both of us right now.” He teased, giving her a wink.

Still blushing from his compliment, May said goodbye to Remmick and headed off in her car. She held an arm out the window, letting her fingers dance in the passing breeze. The sting of the heat and the dust were all that convinced her she wasn’t living a dream. She desperately wished she was still at the house with him instead of behind the wheel heading in the opposite direction.

After driving a few minutes, the fields gave way to thick patches of Tupelo trees that would follow the main road most of the way into town. But as she topped a hill just within view of the farmhouse, something in the trees caught her attention. It was dark metal reflecting sunlight from the dense vegetation. When her vehicle slowed to a stop and her eyes adjusted to the shadows, she also noticed the movement of a horse turning to bite at flies along its hind end. 

May realized she was looking at the small tribe of Choctaw from the day Remmick had first shown up. They were not so subtly hiding amongst the wood line just minutes from her house. She slowly put together that they had been following Remmick, hunting him, and probably were now debating on whether to hunt her as well since she was harboring their fugitive. Her temper rumbled with the vehicle’s engine as she observed them through the dusty windshield. 

Leaving the car running, May defiantly stepped out into the road to face them, staring them down in a gesture of a challenge. They studied her from a distance — grim, deprecating, but also unmoving. 

She said nothing, but she hoped the sun shining on her untouched skin said everything.

—

“Seems like you’ve been feeling better lately, May,” Louis said cheerfully as he mixed a cocktail. He spoke loudly as the bar was unusually packed for a weeknight.

“Definitely feeling better!” May shouted back as she swayed to the music. 

Much more than better, in fact. May felt as if she was floating. The excitement of having Remmick around had energized her in a way she hadn’t expected. At this point, she was almost unsure of how to go back to her life before him, it was a thought that plagued her should he decide he had enough of her.

“You’re better ‘cause I’m here now, right May?” Billy smirked at her from a nearby card table. He had been eavesdropping on their conversation as he played a hand of poker and worked on his fourth drink of the night.

“Shut up, Billy.” Old Mike, a scruffy graying man in his 60s who showed up every week, twice a week for his three gin and sodas, turned and shouted back at Billy from the bar top. “Can’t ya tell she’s not interested?”

“You’re just upset the ladies don’t want nothin’ to do with your wrinkly ass, old man,” Billy retorted with semi-friendly fire.

Old Mike turned back around and grumbled something to himself.

“I don’t know, Billy. I don’t mind the wrinkles, I’ve heard that’s where the older men keep all their money.” May gave Old Mike a wink and he cackled. Billy just looked confused, which made May join in the laughter as well.

Old Mike tipped his empty glass. “Get me another gin if you would, May.” 

“Coming right up, Mike.”

May turned around to the bottle shelf to mix up the drink. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the shadow of a new patron sit at the bar stool directly behind her.

“What can I get you started on, mister?” she shouted without turning around.

“I’ll go by your recommendation.”

May’s hands fumbled the drink she was pouring. The gin spilled out onto the floor and the clattering of the glass made a few people turn to look at her, including Louis. 

“Shit,” she said to herself.

That slow, unsettling draw was not one she was prepared to hear that night. 

She spun around, expecting to see a half-formed Remmick striking horror and disgust in everyone around him. Instead, she found herself facing a perfectly normal looking man. 

An even layer of messy brown hair had returned to Remmick’s head. His irises were fully darkened to what appeared to be a shade of murky blue from a distance, but if you knew what to look for you could see the slightest reflection of red in certain angles of lighting. May now also saw his fully healed face for the first time. His jawline was strong and stubbled and his skin was handsomely aged from what must have been pre-transformation days spent working in the sun.

She tried to articulate her thoughts, which were mostly curse words, but was too taken aback to speak. 

“Oh.” Remmick looked down at the floor. “Looks like you had a spill there.” He mocked her with a look of wide-eyed bewilderment, like he wasn’t the cause of her coming apart.

“What are you doing here!?” May finally got out, stepping towards him. She felt herself flushing, looking around frantically to see if he was attracting any attention, but no one seemed to pay him any mind.

He looked up at her and grinned, obviously amused by his own unexpected entrance. His canines were still just a little too sharp. “I told you I might come in for a drink.”

“I didn’t know you meant tonight!” she hissed at him quietly.

“I wanted to see you.” 

May’s flush deepened with this, torn between excitement and anxiousness. It was surreal seeing Remmick in this setting. A bass guitar hummed, a card deck shuffled, a group broke out in laughter, and in the middle of it all sat a being that could shift and tear out their throats at any minute.

“Everything alright down there, May?” Louis called to her from the other end of the bar.

“Yeah, everything is fine, Louis!” She looked down at the spilled liquid at her feet. “Sorry, Mike. I’ll make you a new drink.”

“I’ll drink that one, too, if you get me a straw,” Old Mike joked, side-eyeing the new arrival.

May got Mike his drink and then leaned across the bar closer to Remmick.

“You look better,” she said under her breath.

“Yeah, I ran into a guy that suggested a great place to grab supper. Sped things up a bit.” He gleamed.

“How did you get past the door?” May glanced across the room to confirm Peter was at his normal station.

“Guess I got lucky. That same feller knew the password and was generous enough to share.”

“Was this man you ‘met’ a customer?!” May hushed through gritted teeth.

“It wasn’t a big loss.” Remmick sat back in the stool and shrugged. “I saw he didn’t tip.”

May stared at him incredulously.

“So,” he slapped the counter. “How about that drink?”

She blinked at him, almost forgetting her occupation for a moment. “Well… I think we have something you might like.” 

She walked over to Louis and exchanged a couple of words with him. After Louis nodded, she reached under the bar to pull out a small wooden crate. In the crate were some bottles that were normally reserved for special requests. She fingered through the options, pulled out a bottle of stout, and then firmly sat it in front of Remmick.

He chuckled. “Irish beer?”

“You said you were Irish.” She shrugged.

“I did say that.” He looked at the bottle humorously then took a swig, considered it for a few seconds, then nodded at May. “Interestin’.”

“I can get you something else. Maybe not your preferred beverage, but we’ve got other liquor.”

“This is just fine.” He held the bottle and looked around the cramped space, taking it all in after being mostly stuck in the farmhouse the last couple of weeks. “You should see these places in New York City. It’s amazin’ what they’ve managed to hide in the shadows there.”

“You’ve been to New York?” She leaned in towards him. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

He moved closer to her as well. “I’ve been many places in my time. Maybe we can go to New York together someday.”

“I would like that.” May smiled sheepishly, resisting the urge to reach for the hand he rested on the bar. 

Someone suddenly shouted at May from across the room and the two quickly parted from their intimate conversation. “Come on, May! This is your song!”

Distracted by Remmick, May hadn’t realized the mood in the room had changed along with the music. The piano started playing the intro to a quick tune that she had built a small reputation on. A few people had started singing. Several faces turned to her in anticipation. More shouts of encouragement called out.

Oh no. Why now?

She looked over at Louis who nodded with an encouraging smile on his face.

“What’s happenin’?” Remmick asked, also noticing the attention.

“They want me to join in on the song.” May squeezed her hands into nervous fists on the counter. “I’ve made a fool of myself with this.”

His eyes flashed. “Well, you best give the people what they want then.”

May shook her head stubbornly but finally started singing along, quietly at first, then louder and louder as the crowd got more riled up. The sounds of clapping and stomping eventually overcame her and she hoisted herself up on the bar. Old Mike shook his head and pulled his drink to himself with a chortle. Cheers rang out as she put on a performance from one end of the counter to the other. Remmick watched as she tossed her hair back seductively and her hand slid down the leg of her silk dress. She kicked her feet to the sound of the piano, hips swaying to the piano.

May stopped in front of Remmick on her way back. He looked up at her in admiration as she dropped to her hands and knees on the bar top and sang to him. She smiled at him mischievously, the momentary celebration freeing her from her usual restraint. 

May saw something shift within Remmick. There was a hunger there, but not for blood.

Finally, the song ended and applause erupted. May took a quick bow and then allowed Remmick to help her off of the bar. Before her feet were even fully on the ground, Billy was there next to them.

“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meetin’ your friend, May.”

May could tell just by Billy’s slurred tone that this wasn’t going to end well. She gave Remmick a look that warned him of what was to come.

“Name is Remmick.” Remmick coldly held out his hand as a peace offering. 

Billy dismissed him, instead reaching for the bottle on the bar. “An Irish beer, huh? I’m surprised they would bother puttin’ this in a bottle. Nothing more than horse trough water comin’ out of that country.”

Remmick cocked his head. May saw the anger brewing within him and began to tense up herself.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Billy said sarcastically. “You’re not Irish are ya? If that’s the case, horse trough water is probably fine dinin’ to y’all. There’s probably some out front if you need a refill.”

“Billy, stop it!” May protested, putting an arm out to block Remmick from making a move.

Even Old Mike turned on his stool at Billy’s remark. “Knock it off, Billy. Nobody wants your dumbass startin’ a fight and ruinin’ the night for everyone.”

Billy’s jaw tensed and his eyes went from Mike to May to Remmick. The number of people against him was enough persuasion to back down, even in his influenced state. 

Billy begrudgingly relaxed his stance, but his eyes still burned with jealousy. “Nice to meet you, Remmick.” Billy tipped his hat at May more politely and headed for the door, deciding he had seen enough for the night. 

May studied the look on Remmick’s face and could tell he intended to follow.

“Don’t,” she warned him. “Billy is the sheriff’s son. You don’t want that kind of heat on you.”

“Fine.” Remmick held himself back at May’s request, still enraged.

“Sit back down and finish your drink. I’ve got to tend to some customers.” She glanced behind Remmick. “Have Old Mike tell you about the time he tried to start a pig farm.”

Old Mike groaned. “Oh no, now that was some shit. Pig shit.”

May left Remmick at the mercy of Mike and his pigs while she worked. She wandered around the bar picking up glasses, providing refills, and making general small talk. She made sure she always faced Remmick to keep a watchful eye on him, both for his protection and the protection of the patrons.

She eventually made her way back over and found that Mike and Remmick were talking about Ireland. Remmick’s eyes lit up as he spoke of sheer cliffs along the coastline, lowland fields of limestone that grew wildflowers among ancient fossils, and of the dancing and singing in a late-night pub gathering. This was the most animated she had ever seen Remmick, his eyes almost seemed glazed with recollection. He spoke with such detail that May could see herself among the landscapes he was describing. Finally, the conversation dissolved into a forlorn silence.

“Well, I think I better be goin’,” Remmick said to Mike and May as he stood.

“Let me see you out,” May told him.

Remmick and May walked towards the door. She grabbed his arm just before the stairs.

“I need to tell you something,” May started. “I saw the Choctaw on my way up here today. They’re waiting for you. You need to be careful.”

Remmick stepped back with frustration. “Damnit. I thought I’d shaken them.”

“I think they might have been waiting for me, too. To see if you had turned me.”

May could tell this upset Remmick, his brow furrowed with concern.

“Here.” Remmick held out his hand to May and dropped some coins into hers. “Change from dinner. Get Mike an Irish beer on me.”

“Will you be there when I get home tonight?” May reluctantly asked.

Remmick looked into her eyes. “Do you want me to still be there?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation.

“Then I’ll see you there.”

—

Remmick held true to his word. He was seated on the bench in the front room when May came home few hours later, but now he had a banjo on his lap and was idly picking at the strings as she closed the front door behind her.

“Did you steal that from your ‘dinner guest’ tonight too?” She nodded at the instrument.

He kept his head down when he responded. “No, I left this somewhere. Picked it up on the walk home.”

The light of the fireplace illuminated the skilled movement of his fingers until they fell into a steady tune. May stood and listened, suddenly enraptured by the sound, even more so as Remmick began to sing. His vocals did not carry the same southern draw that he spoke with. The vowels in his words were softened as he embraced the voice of his homeland, familiar words intermingled with a foreign tongue. The lyrics she was able to pick up on seemed to be intended as a joyous melody, one about loyalty and rebellion, but the pain and longing in Remmick’s voice drowned the prideful words with undercurrents of loss. 

For a moment, the beauty and sadness of the music seemed to carry May to a time and place she had never been. The room became cool and damp, the smoky scent of the fireplace grew rich with burning peat, and as the chorus struck, Remmick no longer played alone. A  fiddler dutifully stood to one side, arching his bow along the bridge of his instrument. On the other, a woman plucked at the strings of a harp. Remmick didn't acknowledge the symphony of voices that cried out with him in a ballad against their suppressors. The scene was odd, foreign, ancient. But it also felt like a welcoming. 

Remmick finished the melody and sat with his head inclined over the banjo. He gripped its wooden neck tight, desperately trying to hang onto something that slipped from his fingers, something that could only be felt by him. Echoes of the strings floated amongst crackles of fire. The musical apparitions disintegrated like the embers between the bricks.

“Please, play another,” May whispered, concerned if she spoke too loudly the fragile tension in the room might burn up, too.

A second song brought the room life again. Remmick rose from the bench, walking slowly towards her as he harmonized with the key of the banjo. May watched and listened, feeling as if something might burst within her. He was just inches from her now, looking down at the banjo, singing quietly. 

The atmosphere in the room had shifted back to the present. May realized Remmick had played the first song for himself, for his people. But this song was about love, and it was for her. 

It wasn’t until the final notes fell from his fingertips that Remmick looked at May. The red of his eyes glowed brighter in the firelight. They stared at each other, like a breath being held to the point of suffocation. She thought back to the devil that had accosted her in the yard and realized this man in front of her was no longer that thing. There was no mask now. His face was soft, conflicted, and human.

A realization struck May like lightening, one that had been quietly settling at the back of her mind until this moment. It had been creeping in like a slow sickness since she had first laid eyes on him pleading and desperate in the front yard. The feeling had started with a building heat, a fever you dismiss as a fleeting moment of weakness, but the affliction had continued to spread. The lust was just the initial flush that could be felt on the surface of the skin. The curiosity was the dry throat that couldn’t be quenched with water. The irrational decisions were the inflammation that clouded the brain. But the rest had sunk into her bones and body until she could deny being consumed by it no longer. 

She had fought it because she knew it should be wrong. She knew he was wrong. Remmick was a poison. He would pollute her blood, smother her breaths, rot her from the inside. And yet…

She had never felt more alive.

Remmick sat the banjo on the table and turned back to her, brushing a hand on her cheek. “There’s somethin’ about you. I can’t explain it, but I’ve been pulled to you since the beginnin’.” He looked at her intensely, like a man who finally had answers instead of questions. “I know you feel it too.”

She tried to resist the desire to fall into him, but the blocks that held her walls together shifted and cracked against the pressure, as did her voice when she tried to speak. “I just assumed it was some sort of spell you have over people.” 

“Not like this.” His tone was as low and melodic as his songs. “I thought I had came to this place for something else, but I think it was for you. I think you and I are connected.”

She let out a self-deprecating laugh, embarrassed by the weakness of her vulnerability, her eyes glistening with tears. “I felt like I was being a fool, but if you feel the same way, maybe this is real.”

“It’s real.” Remmick whispered. He cupped her face in his other hand and put his lips onto hers.

May’s walls crumbled.

~

The way Remmick kissed her was unlike anything May had felt before. A burning adrenaline flowed from where their lips met and spread from his fingertips as one of his hands moved from her face to her lower back, pulling her closer. The kiss that started slow and passionate became more feverous, the quiet gasping growing into heavy breaths. May put her hands on the back of his neck and grasped at his hair to force his lips in firmer to hers. The sensual heat made her feel like her whole body was alight. Finally, the silent anticipation of this moment was more than she could handle. She came undone.

As she kissed Remmick along his jawline, May reached up and slid his suspenders off of his shoulders one by one until each strap fell at his sides. She ran her hands around his neck, her fingers coming together at the front of his collar where she started undoing the buttons of his shirt, working her way down until it hung freely from him, his chest and stomach exposed to the warm night air.

May broke their embrace and gently pushed him back where he could see her full figure. Remmick stared at her questioningly until she slowly started sliding her arms out of the straps of her dress. He watched as she pulled the silk gown down her body, eventually letting it slip off onto the floor around her feet. As she shed each additional article of clothing, Remmick’s expression grew more ravenous. Eventually, she stood in front of him completely naked in the firelight and his jaw had gone slack as he took in her form. 

From the look in his eyes, May knew he had once again become the predator and she the prey, but this time she reveled in it. She wanted him to hunt her down and take her. May stepped towards him and roughly began kissing his neck as she worked at the buttons on his pants. 

“You’re goin’ to have to slow down or I’m not going to be able to control myself.” He exhaled. She could tell he was holding back, his whole body was tense, his jaw clenched when he looked at her.

May suggestively ran a hand down his bare chest, stopping just at the top of his pants and teasing her fingers into the waistband while looking up at him. “I want you to lose control.”

Remmick’s eyes grew wide and he pulled her in again, rougher this time, almost insatiably. With his mouth against hers, May’s teeth clinked against his fangs. His arms wrapped around her and she felt claws lightly running along the bare curve of her spine, sending shivers down her whole body. 

Finally. 

The risk of being torn apart at any moment was terrifying and exhilarating. He pulled back again before fulfilling this carnal desire and instead swept her off her feet, carrying her down the narrow hall towards the bedroom and tossing her onto the bed.

Remmick leaned over May, breathing heavily, saliva dripping from his mouth. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this,” he growled.

“Take it,” she whispered from below him, running her fingers down the side of her neck.

In his near feral state, she could tell Remmick seriously considered this offer. His wild stare hovered just below her jaw where he knew the flesh would be tender and the blood supple, but he returned to his senses with the thought of what else he could take from her. And what he could give.

Remmick roughly fumbled with his pants and had removed the remainder of his clothes and was on top of May before she could fully comprehend what was happening. There was no more restraint, he looked at her with a wicked, fanged grin and sparkling red eyes as he ran two of his fingers over his mouth then expertly slid the slick hand between her legs. The back of his claws rubbed her in a way that made her eyes roll back in her head. May writhed with pleasure with his touch while he whispered sensual comforts into her ear. She grabbed at his arm as she quickly felt her body pulsating under his fingers.

It wasn’t until she was satisfied for the first time that Remmick positioned himself to seek those pleasures as well. They both groaned as he slid inside her, his eyes closing and lips pulling back over his pointed teeth. He put a hand on her chest to push her down into the bed so he could enter her deeper. May felt her breaths tighten under his weight.

However, in this new arrangement, something changed. May locked eyes with him and his thrusting became more deliberate. He leaned down to kiss her, still with fiery yearning, but also with an intense rolling affection. Their initial frantic movements melded into a slow passionate exploration. Remmick’s hands slid up her back to hold her closer, their foreheads touching to feel each others breaths, to listen to the sounds they made together. The friction of Remmick’s skin against her own somehow felt rough and foreign and familiar at the same time. Soon they moved together as lovers in expert rhythm rather than two people that were experiencing each other for the first time.

As they switched positions, Remmick looked bewitched by the way May’s body moved on top of his. His taloned fingers guided her hips as she rose and fell, then slid up her chest to firmly cradle the base of her neck.

Their passions grew until he slipped his hands over hers and they fell into a synchronized climax, his groans harmonized with her gasps and twitches of satisfaction. May collapsed on top of him, completely spent by ecstasy. 

They laid there, gasping for breath, grabbing onto each other tightly, as if God or the Devil might rip apart their forbidden romance, as if gravity itself might flip upside down, as if they could hold each other in this moment forever.

Chapter Text

The evening Sheriff Bill Harmon sauntered through the door of Louis’ joint wasn’t entirely a surprise. May only knew of the sheriff from when he infrequently stopped by to collect Billy or to enjoy a drink himself. The badge the man carried might have been symbolic of the law, but a regular bribe from Louis was all it took for Harmon to turn his cheek on their illegal establishment. And while not a wholly righteous man, May didn’t typically feel strongly about Bill Harmon one way or another, except this night he seemed like bad news. 

A few of the patrons eyed the lawman nervously as he came down the stairs, at least two or three got up to leave. Even the stage musicians seemed to lower their volume to avoid unnecessary scrutiny. Billy sat at a card table in the middle of the room and tried not to acknowledge his father and the scene he was creating. He rolled his eyes as Harmon gave him a condescending pat on the shoulder on his way to the main bar. Louis and May stood behind the counter and anxiously watched this all unfold. 

A long breath came out of Louis before he gave May instructions. “Let me handle this.” 

Louis greeted Harmon with an empty glass and turned on his friendliest sycophant voice as the sheriff seated himself at a stool. “Evening, Bill. You want the usual?”

Bill was a broad man in his late 40s. His gray and brown speckled hair was short on the sides but long and slicked back on top. He was normally as serious as his son Billy was simple, but even more so tonight.

“Not this time.” Harmon gruffed, intertwining his hands on the bar top. “Here on business.”

“Well, Billy’s been on pretty good behavior so far, so I assume picking him up isn’t the business for once,” Louis joked.

The sheriff didn’t seem as amused. “No, been workin’ on a case for a few weeks. Decided it was time to swing by.”

“What kind of case?” Louis asked a little more seriously.

“Missin’ persons.”

Almost as if on a satirical cue, the band cut to silence before starting up again with their next song.

“This about the people missing from the sawmill?” May asked. She had been dutifully keeping quiet behind Louis, but her curiosity got the best of her and she stepped forward to interject in their conversation.

When Bill looked in May’s direction, his eyes seemed heavy with fatigue, the lines on his face deepened with stress.

“That’s when it started,” Harmon replied to her. “But the numbers been risin’ since then. Got folks of all shades just vanishin’ around town. There’s rumors, but they’re…” He shook his head like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Strange.”

I might be able to put a name to that strange, Sheriff.

May held her blank expression as best she could.

Louis cleared his throat. “It’s a shame about all that, Bill, but what’s that have to do with us?”

“No offense to y’all, but I know this place attracts some characters.” Harmon turned to look at the occupied tables, his eyes settling on a few regulars in particular. “I’m runnin’ into nothin’ but dead ends on this, so I just wanted to speak with a few of ‘em. See if any of ‘em might know somethin’.”

Bill turned to look at both of them now. “You two haven’t heard anything have ya?”

They shook their heads. May felt a nervous sweat starting to form above her brow.

Harmon nodded, unsurprised. “Right.” He groaned a little as he tapped a hand on the bar and climbed off the stool. “Well I’m gonna go talk to some of these folk. I’ll try not to run too many more of them off, Louis.”

Louis gave him a pained smile. “I appreciate it.”

They watched him walk to a distant table before Louis spoke again. “Just what I wanted to deal with tonight.” 

Louis grabbed a bottle from the shelf behind them and poured what remained of it into the empty glass for himself. “Looks like we need some refills. May, you mind running up and getting three bottles?” 

“Try to be quiet about it,” he added, glancing up at the sheriff.

May nodded and threw down the towel she had in her hand, relieved to put distance between herself and the interrogations. “No problem. I’ll head up there now.”

The street above was still dark and quiet, though it had lost its edge over May, given that the most terrifying entity that roamed at night was probably sitting on her front porch at that moment. A muttering voice drew her attention further down past the grocery where one of the local homeless vagrants was stumbling around under a street lamp. 

It was not an uncommon sight. The financial state of the country had started putting more and more men in that same position. They lined the sidewalks in town during the day, but normally disappeared to encampments at night — or forever, depending on whose path they crossed once the sun went down.

May slowed to watch, but the inebriate paid her no mind, so she walked on.

The heavy wood and glass door creaked as she slipped into the drug store. An overcast sky had made it a particularly dark night and May regretted not bringing a lamp with her, but she also didn’t want to attract attention by turning on the lights. She reached for the contour of the counter and used it to guide herself to the back corner where the gin was stocked. 

As she began pulling what she needed off the shelf, the door creaked behind her.

May whipped around and called out quietly, squinting in an attempt to see who else had come in.

“Remmick?”

Not Remmick. The shadowed figure that was now in the store with her was too tall, too lanky.

“Billy, if that’s you, stop trying to scare me,” she tried again.

Not Billy either. The body language wasn’t right, but she reached for anything hopeful, anything that meant the presence across from her wasn’t hostile.

Every hair on her body stood on edge when she was met with nothing more than heavy breathing. She pulled the bottles tighter to herself, feeling defenseless backed into the corner like she was.

“Why are you in here?” she exclaimed at the faceless person.

“Give me the liquor,” said a rough male voice she didn’t recognize.

The man stepped forward. At this angle she could see some of his ragged form. Long matted hair that fell past his shoulders, a coarse unkempt beard, an uncoordinated sway in his step that many of her patrons took on after a night of heavy drink. The repugnant smell of body odor and urine overwhelmed the phenolic scent of the drug store. She wasn’t sure, but she had suspicion that the intruder was the derelict she had seen down the street.

“Fuck off.” May stood her ground, but her voice faltered.

The shadow figure raised an arm, gunmetal shine of a pistol reflected in his hand. The click of the hammer being pulled back echoed through the room.

May sharply gasped.

“Give it to me,” he demanded again.

Without further opposition, she slowly slid the bottles on the counter by the cash register and stepped backwards until she hit the back wall. The man approached with the gun leveled at her head. May kept as still as possible, nervous that he would decide that it wasn’t worth keeping a witness to his crimes around. If she moved, if she showed any sign of resistance, she knew she was dead.

Suddenly, the door creaked again and the intruder turned to redirect the pistol. The newest shadow that entered was familiar, comforting, and unforgiving. May felt relief wash over her.

“Who the hell are you?” the drifter asked as the door to the drug store clicked shut.

Remmick’s silhouette stood motionless in the darkness, head tilted to one side, a hand in his pocket, completely unfazed by the weapon aimed at him. The outline of his form in front of the glass panels commanded the room. Even the shadows seemed to bend around him, as if had spent so long in their presence he had become one himself.

The fool with the gun didn’t feel this, nor did he notice how Remmick’s free hand ended in sweeping points, and most of all, he didn’t realize that he was about to be torn apart. But May did, and she became rigid with anticipation.

“You turn yer ass around and head back out that door or I’ll shoot ya.”

A quiet, sinister chuckle escaped Remmick. “And when that doesn’t stop me, what happens next?”

Without looking, May subtly reached behind her and felt around on the shelves until her fingers wrapped around a heavy glass jar.

The man spit, unimpressed by his challenger. “No chance of that. These bullets gon’ stop you’se dead.”

May couldn’t see it, but she could feel the wicked look on Remmick’s face when he spoke.

“Dead didn’t stop me before.”

With the last exchange of words, May cried out with rage and threw the elixir bottle at the intruder. He flinched as the glass container struck him square in the shoulder, shattering when it hit the floor. The distraction was enough for the man to briefly take his attention off of Remmick — and that was all it took.

Remmick was on the vagrant by the time May had steadied herself after the throw. From her position, she couldn’t make out what was happening other than two black masses becoming one, but she could hear every gruesome detail resonating through the enclosed space. 

It started with snapping, like a dry branch being broken into pieces. She flinched with each crack, her imagination filling in what her eyes could not. The man’s successive screams of terror and agony quickly cut away into choking and scuffling of feet.

May stood still while the man’s cries weakened to fragments of prayers, then further degraded into whimpers. She heard the squelching of ripping flesh and the sound of liquid dripping to the floor in a steady stream as the shadows gradually sank lower.

She moved around the counter where the angle of the street globes was enough see, just in time to catch the man slumping to the ground, quiet and twitching with Remmick hunched on top of him. Remmick continued to feed without concern of the world around him. She didn’t dare interrupt, just stood and watched in awe as he drank with animalistic urgency.

Minutes passed before Remmick drew a wet, ragged breath through his teeth and sat up. All humanity had drained from his posture, wretched and jerking, like the dam that had been holding back the lake of depravity inside him had finally burst. He slowly turned to stare at her over his shoulder, still kneeling, eyes glassy with bloodlust in the bleak light. A dark sheen stained his chin and neck and glistened on his fangs. 

May then turned to the massacre scene. Blood seeped from where the man’s neck was dark and splayed open, the repugnant liquid spreading along seams in the floorboards. At some point, something had been nicked that sent a splatter of red along the wall and dripped down to the baseboard in obscene trails. The arm that held the gun was bent in several unnatural angles, thrashed by Remmick in his attempt to stop him from getting a shot off.

The stillness between them was louder than any words that could be spoken. Remmick seemed to be waiting for her to make the first move. May herself waited for a reaction to overcome her — a wave of nausea brought on by the carnage, tears of hysteria, the urge to flee into the night. But other than the pounding of adrenaline, anything she should have felt remained absent. She felt absolutely nothing for the man that threatened to take her life and everything for the one that saved it. 

The side of her mouth unexpectedly twitched. She quickly suppressed a smile that had started to form, but perhaps not quickly enough as she saw Remmick’s eyes widen at her.

“The sheriff is downstairs,” she finally said soberly.

Remmick nodded with understanding, still eyeing her. “I’ll get this cleaned up.”

May held his gaze for another heartbeat before she turned to grab the bottles of alcohol that remained on the counter and rushed downstairs, nervous someone would come up to check on her. Thankfully, the sheriff was engrossed in another conversation as she hurriedly walked to the bar, but both Peter and Louis gave her a questioning look.

She pushed the clinking containers at Louis and bent down under the bar top to grab a handful of old towels. 

“Sorry that took so long,” she told her boss breathlessly. “I tripped in the dark and broke a bottle of elixir.”

Louis seemed concerned. “Are you alright? Do you need help cleaning up?”

“No!” May exclaimed probably just a little too loudly as she stood upright. “Sorry, no,” she said more quietly. “It was my mistake. I got it.”

Louis looked at her with suspicion, but May brushed him off and was gone before he could ask questions.

She jogged back to the dark drug store to find that Remmick had disappeared with the body. A crimson pool made it obvious where it had previously laid. The room reeked of the man’s stench and the metallic odor of blood. 

May dug out a bottle of bleach from a back shelf and dropped to the floor to scoop up the glass and start soaking up the mess. The blood was already coagulating and the towels quickly became dark and saturated.

As she scrubbed at the last of the discoloration on the walls, Remmick returned, looking worse for the wear. Bits of plant burs stuck to his pants and sweat plastered his hair to his forehead and soaked through the neck and back of his bloody shirt. He looked human now, save for the red mess around his mouth.

“Here.” May tossed him a rag. “Wipe your face and help me clean. My boss could be up here any second.”

Sure enough, the shadow of a person passed in front of the windows a few minutes later. Remmick tore off his top layer and May scrambled to hide the towels behind the counter as another man walked in, but to May’s surprise it wasn’t Louis, it was Bill.

“Sheriff!” May said nervously from the dark. “What brings you in here?”

“Why’s it so damn dark in here?” Harmon shuffled around grumbling. His fingers found the pull chain in the middle of the room and he turned on the lights.

The sheriff’s expression had clear surprise when he saw Remmick standing in front of the counter a few feet from May. He looked back and forth between the two of them, uncertain on what he had interrupted. Remmick half-dressed and damp, May disheveled and breathless. 

May secretly glanced around for any remaining sign of blood, but thankfully the room and Remmick appeared clean.

The sheriff looked at May questionably. “Louis said you’d been gone awhile. I was on my way out and told him I’d check on ya.” His eyes flicked to Remmick. “Who do we have here?”

“Remmick, sir.” Remmick stepped forward to shake his hand. As he did, May noticed a patch of blood that had soaked through to the back of his sleeveless undershirt. She grabbed Remmick’s arm to guide him so he wouldn’t turn, awkwardly trying to play it off as affection.

Bill raised an eyebrow as his hand fell back to his side. “What are y’all doin’ up here?”

May started to open her mouth with a rushed excuse but Remmick interrupted. “I was just stoppin’ by to see her, sir,” he said in his disarming southern draw. “Didn’t mean to keep her so long. Hopefully I don’t get her in any trouble.”

The sheriff nodded slowly. “I see. Where you from, Remmick?”

“North Carolina, sir.”

“And what’s a North Carolina boy doin’ here in Clarksdale?”

Remmick looked down with embarrassment, as if he had been caught stealing candy. “Me and May go way back. Schoolyard sweethearts. We’ve been a writin’ letters since she left and I just missed her so bad I had to come up for a visit.” He sheepishly looked at May and winked, his guise painted on as a perfect mask of boyish innocence.

Even May would have believed it if she hadn’t just witnessed him ripping a man’s neck open.

Damn, he’s good.

Harmon stared at Remmick a moment without expression. The grip May had on Remmick’s arm involuntarily tightened with nervousness.

“That damn young love,” the sheriff finally said, unimpressed. He then turned back to her. “Well you got Louis worried down there, May. You better head on back soon.”

She did her best to match Remmick’s charm. “Of course, sir. I was just heading back now.”

Without another word, the sheriff nodded to each of them in-turn, lingering on Remmick for just a second longer, and then walked out of the drug store and into the night. 

May and Remmick stood frozen arm-in-arm until they were sure he was out of sight. As soon as May felt it was safe, something snapped within her. The small feigned smile she had on her face became real and then quickly bloomed into a quiet giggle, her body lightly trembling as it overtook her. When she tried to control herself more, the laughter instead grew like an avalanche until her jaw hurt and tears streamed from her eyes.

Remmick looked at her perplexed. “You alright there?”

“Schoolyard sweethearts,” she got out between cackles. “I’m glad I’m not the only one that falls for your lies.”

“Well, lyin’ is basically how I make a livin’,” he shrugged. “Speakin’ of which, we’re gonna have to work on your actin’ skills. For a second there, I thought you was gonna confess to sins we ain’t even commit.”

She gave him a playful nudge and smiled up at him. “If you want to wait an hour, I’ll drive you home.”

~

May could still feel the rush by the time they got back to the farmhouse. She hummed and swayed in the kitchen, watching Remmick eagerly as he fiddled with the fireplace. When he turned, he caught the look in her eye and raised his eyebrows in wordless expectancy.

“So, you’ve been following me?” she teased.

He broke into a grin as he started casually strolling towards her. The fire caught and the room began to brighten.

“Just been checkin’ up on you. Makin’ sure you get to your car safe,” he said coyly, putting his hands in his pockets. “You know, I am a gentleman, after all.”

The kitchen table groaned a little as she leaned back against it and crossed her arms. “Well, after all the times I saved your ass, it was about time you returned the favor.”

He stood squarely in front of her now, taking his hands out of his pockets and placing them on the table on either side of her hips, his body close but not quite touching her. “Guess I still owe you a few more of those, huh?” 

She couldn’t help herself. Maybe it was way he looked right now, disarranged yet cocky. Maybe it was how her blood still rushed through her after witnessing a slaughter on her behalf. But she wanted him. Needed him.

“I might know another way you can pay me back.” The words fell off her tongue as a cat might speak to a mouse right before it pounced.

“Oh, do you?” He spoke softly to coax more out of her. “How’s that?”

Without another word, May reached for his belt, feverishly trying to undo the clasp. He let her fumble with it for a few seconds before he grabbed her hands to stop her.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said with a crooked smile. 

Remmick’s arms slid under May as he lifted her onto the table. His mouth met hers while he held her and she kissed him back like he kept the very air she needed to breathe. They leaned over together, the weight of his body pressing her back against the wood surface. She felt his tongue intertwine with her own and took a sharp breath as his hips rolled between her legs. The table wobbled under their weight, but its protests went ignored.

A log in the fire split as Remmick moved to kiss the spot under her ear, lingering on her neck and whispering to her in a way that made her come apart.

“I promise I won’t bite when I do this.”

May inhaled as he kneeled in front of where her legs hung off the table and reached under her dress to pull down her slip and underwear. The room was warm, but the coolness of his hands made her skin crawl in a way that only made her want his touch more. She tensed further as his hands slid up her legs and brushed along the side of her hips, raising her dress with his arms until she was fully exposed to him. His lips grazed the top of each leg just below the hem of her dress, then his full mouth was suddenly on her. 

She clapped a hand over her jaw, trying to stifle the unrecognizable noises that escaped her when she felt his tongue sliding over her parts. 

“Please,” she begged through her fingers. For what she didn’t know. Mercy? There wouldn’t be any until he was done with her.

One arm slid under the small of her back to pull her fully against his face, her upper back still pressed against the table. She gripped at Remmick’s messy hair with one hand as his head bobbed between her legs, with the other she reached out for something, anything to keep her grounded to the earth. Her nails helplessly scraped against the smooth wood as all semblance of thought broke down.

Remmick unexpectedly pulled away, looking up at her keenly to follow her expression.

“What are — .” But her words dissolved into a groan as a finger slipped into her, then another. The pressure pulsed deep inside her as Remmick smiled and slowly lowered his mouth back onto her and his tongue resumed its work.

She rocked herself into him, her back arching as she exhaled. Finally, she yelled out, her whole body contorted. Feeling her climax, Remmick wrapped his arms around each of her legs, angling her upwards into his face to finish her off. More waves traveled through her until the pleasure overwhelmed her. She pushed him off, gasping and writhing on the table.

He leaned over her, grinning with satisfaction at her ruin, his tongue licking the slick from around his mouth as she finished twitching.

“You’re bleedin’ soon, ain’t ya?” he asked after giving her a minute to recover.

The shock of his statement made May sit up on her elbows before she had even caught her breath. “How did you know that?!”

He didn’t answer her directly, just smiled mischievously. “I can’t fuckin’ wait.”

“You devil.” May returned the salacious smile before collapsing back on the table.

Chapter Text

Time was subjective. May could see that now. She dwelled on moments with Remmick like a child, full of wonder and inexperience, no longer drifting through bouts of monotony and loneliness.

It scared her. 

More than the creature in the dark. More than the claws and the teeth and the hunger. More than how the rest of the world would react if they knew what she welcomed to her home and body. What truly filled her with dread was how she felt about him. The intensity of it was unsustaining, like a wildfire that was burning itself into the black. She saw where it could lead and how powerless she was amongst it all, so she stood in the flames and settled in its heat while it still had the fresh kindling of a new romance to stay ablaze. 

But in the back of May’s mind, she wondered how long this simple existence would keep an unnatural being satisfied. Remmick was attentive and seemed mostly at peace, but she would catch him deep in thought when things were really quiet, especially on the nights where she would wake up to him watching her sleep. Eyes shining in the dark. Searching for something. Feeling. Waiting. But for what?

At the mention of the word, she would have left it all behind, for herself as much as for him, but Remmick seemed to need more time to wrap his mind around whatever plagued him. So, she waited as well — whether to be freed from her former life or for it all to fall apart, she didn’t know.

But these thoughts only had weight when he wasn’t around, like they did now, with May soaking alone in a steamy washtub and staring into the literal fire from the hearth in the front room. She rested her head on crossed arms on the edge of the cool galvanized metal with her hair pulled up. Her knees poked just out of the of the surface of the water, surrounded by bits of floating lavender. The herbal fragrance had brought no comfort to her restless meditation.

Remmick had gained his independence back with his recovery. He disappeared at night shortly after she left for work. Sometimes he was home before her, but this was one of the few evenings he had stayed out later. She had hoped to take advantage of the few hours of clarity to sort her thoughts into a potential conversation. Instead, she felt even more disoriented than when he was around. The solitude she once craved no longer kept her content now that she knew what was missing in these moments.

Behind her, the front door suddenly rattled. The worries dissolved as she rotated in the washtub to greet Remmick, but she wasn’t expecting the scene that stumbled in. 

Remmick stood in the entryway, soaked in gore, painted red from his jaw to the middle of his shirt in someone else’s fluids, maybe even multiple people by the spread of it. 

He looked equally surprised to see her, freezing with the door wide open and the knob still in his hand as he looked down at her in the bath. 

“I wasn’t expectin’ you here this time of night,” he said tentatively.

He tried to cover his penitence of being caught in that state with a smile, but it was more macabre than reassuring and there was a primal urge lingering in his eyes that crept under her skin. The Remmick she witnessed when he was hungry or had recently fed still unnerved her on an instinctual level. It was a harsh reminder that they weren’t the same and the one part of her human nature she couldn’t quite shake off, even when she had learned to embrace his other ‘qualities’.

She swallowed, keeping her voice steady. “It was a slow night. Louis sent me home early.” 

May found herself unable to take her eyes off of the remnants of violence. He followed her gaze down to his shirt, then cleared his throat and tried to futilely wipe off the dried blood on his face with his hands.

“Here,” May said, holding out a wet rag from her bath.

He paused and then moved into the room to take the cloth from her. Up close, she noticed the blood caked in the crevices of his fingernails and streaked up his arms where his shirt sleeves were rolled up. The redness was thick enough that it mostly just smeared in circles as he used the rag on his chest and neck.

“You might as well just throw that shirt in the fire.” She stayed locked onto the dark stains, some so saturated on his clothing they were almost black.

Remmick stopped and looked at her, holding the ruined rag at his side.

Before she knew it, May was being lifted up with the bath. She shrieked and gripped the sides of the tub as the water rolled and she was slung about. Remmick had picked it up with ease, but the awkwardness of getting it out the front door and down the porch steps caused water to slosh out onto the ground. May protested until he sat the fixture down in the front yard with her still in it.

“What in the hell was that about?!” she gasped. “Why did you bring me outside?!” 

Although they were clearly alone, she tried to cover herself with her arms, feeling exposed in the nighttime air.

“It’s a nice evenin’,” he said plainly, unbuttoning his shirt.

He hadn’t been wrong. The coolness outside of the house made the heat of the bath feel like a blanketed embrace. An astral light from the full moon glowed on Remmick’s skin as he undressed and slid into the bath behind her, causing some of the water to disperse and flow over the sides. He spent a couple of minutes rinsing off the blood before stretching out. May eventually accepted the new location of her bath and laid between his legs, resting the back of her head on his chest, surrendering herself into him. 

The chirps of katydids and crickets rose and fell all around them, like an orchestration being led by its composer. Cotton fields sat languid in windless dormancy. The night grounded her in its way of bringing tranquility to disorder, as it always had, but she stared up at the starry sky still anxious from her earlier contemplations.

Remmick must have picked up on her unease, he shifted a little under her weight and sighed. “You know, darlin’, if your thoughts start runnin’ much harder, you’re fixin’ to start boilin’ this bath water.”

May took a frustrated breath in and held it. “I hate it when you call me darlin’,” she exhaled with her admission.

“I know you do.” One corner of his mouth turned upwards in amusement.

She splashed water in his direction, making him chuckle as he playfully defended himself from her offense. But even as the surface of the bath resettled itself, her mind did not.

“Remmick?”

“Hmm?” he mumbled.

She looked up from where her head still laid on his chest and could see he was leaned back with his eyes closed, arms resting under the water. 

“What are you waiting for?” she asked.

“How do ya mean?” He narrowly opened his eyes at her.

May sat up to read his face, hoping to pull something deeper from his expression in case his words were shallow. “You’ve been traveling for hundreds of years. Clarksdale, Mississippi surely isn’t where you planned on stopping,” she said somewhat introspectively. “You’re healed. Why are you still here?” 

Remmick lifted a hand out of the water and lazily caressed his fingertips along the base of her neck. Although he had previously dismissed her accusation of spells, the way his touch made her whole body light up sure felt like one.

“You wantin’ me to leave?” he asked. A slight edge of hurt crept into his voice, whether real or manipulative she didn’t know.

“No, that’s not it,” she stated. “You’ve been studying me like a puzzle box since you got here. I want to know what your intentions are.”

The water lapped in waves as he sat up, pressing himself against her. His hand moved to gently squeeze the side of her arm, working in tandem with the night to ground her, his lips brushed against her opposite shoulder. She closed her eyes and shivered with the sensation.

“I told you,” he spoke into her skin. “I think you’re interestin’.”

May took a quivering breath and fought through his attempts to disarm her. “It’s more than just getting to know me. I’ve been feeling like you're about to tell me whether I passed the test or not.”

Remmick sighed again, long and hard, this time with more sorrow than anything else. “May, with the way I am and what I have to do, I’ve been losin’ myself over time without realizin’ it. I was likely more monster than man when I first showed up here.”

His voice hummed in her ear as he spoke. “But being near you, you bring back memories of my family I thought I’d forgotten. Touchin’ you reminds me what it’s like to be a man again. And I just want to be close to all that — and you — more than anything else…”

He rested his head against the side of hers, seemingly burdened by something heavy. “But the last time I rushed into somethin’, I about got ate up in the sun. I’m tryin’ things a little different now,” he said softly. 

That made May go quiet as she looked off into the fields. She felt foolish for not seeing it before. Of course he was different now. Nearly dying, especially that way, would be likely to change anyone. Still — something ate at her. Something about his reasoning.

He leaned down towards her ear. “You know, we sure talk about me a lot, but we don’t talk about you.”

The mention of her life was like flipping a switch.

“Not much to talk about.” She shrugged away from him. “There’s nothing exciting about me.”

May knew her story wasn’t a glamorous one. There were no tales of international adventures and mystery, just a trail of bad decisions and broken hearts that led her from her hometown to where she was now. She didn’t tell people about her life. Then again, normally they didn’t ask.

“There is though,” he said to her. “Remember how I told you I can feel things? I feel that about you. You've got a pull to ya. Comes from people who been hurtin’. There’s a story there.”

Somewhere in the trees beyond the road an owl let out hollowed cry. Another call beckoned back. An unseen animal rustled in the fields off to the side of the house before darting off.

“Not much to tell,” she said bitterly. “Daddy beat us, Mama put up with it, now they’re both dead. Had no other family to turn to after that.” She shook her head with disappointment. “And somehow I ended up in this godforsaken town.”

Half-truths. There were still parts she couldn’t talk about, even with him. Not yet. Not when she couldn’t even admit them to herself.

He tucked a strand of loose, wet hair behind her ear as he spoke. “Well, family ain’t just about blood. Sometimes it’s a people with a shared purpose.”

A pressure grew in her throat. Those words had touched something in her, something she hadn’t quite realized was absent until now.

“I wish I could find that kind of family,” she said, to the open night air as much as to him. Her voice had cracked a little when she made the admission, and now Remmick drew her into his arms to comfort her.

“But you never let nobody else take you in,” he said. “Why’d you keep to yourself after all this time? Surely you’ve had offers?”

It was a question he had asked before, about her loneliness. It had been in what felt like a different lifetime now, but last time it had been an attack, this time it was for consolation.

“Never had a man stick around long.” She looked down at her dark reflection in the moonlit water. “But it wasn’t just them, it was me. I didn’t want them getting too close.”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

She reached up to press his arms tighter around her chest, like a binding that would hold her together.

“It never felt right. Didn’t want to end up in that trap Mama did. Even if they didn’t lay a hand on me, there are other ways to beat a woman down, even from a man with the best intentions.”

Her breath caught. Here she was opening up to him in a way she couldn’t do for herself. She realized Remmick has been listening to each word in her retelling as if his life depended on it. He didn’t just hear her, he saw her, and how the woman in front of him came to be who she was. 

Now he held her in silence, giving her strength to move through her memories rather than smothering them deep inside where they simmered in the heat of resentment.

It was the exact support she needed. But then, he always seemed to know what she needed. She often wished she could do the same for him.

“You know,” she started. “I used to see Mama sometimes after she had passed. Like a ghost. Haven’t seen her in a long time though.”

It was a confession she was surprised to say out loud. She had gotten so caught up in the moment reflecting on her parents and their deaths and what had came after that it flowed out of her like warmed honey.

She couldn’t see Remmick’s face, but she felt him tense a little under her. 

“How did you see her?” he asked quietly.

The conversation wasn’t supposed to take this turn. It made her nervous. May knew the things she had seen weren’t normal, weren’t right, weren’t natural. She hadn’t told anyone about these hallucinations before for fear of how they would see her. But she decided to tell Remmick a little more since she had already brought it up.

“It would happen when I was alone and things got real quiet and unsettled. Mama would walk in the room like she was still alive. She never said anything, just always looked… sad.” 

May laughed to herself regretfully. “Sorry for talking about this, you’re probably thinking I’m insane now.”

But Remmick didn’t laugh. He stayed serious when he spoke. “Have you seen others?”

She hesitated, the smile falling from her face. Even the katydids had stopped their songs.

“Yes.”

The visions were a fixation she had since she was very young, perhaps as a coping mechanism for the loneliness, or to help her dissociate to happier memories. But they had been different since Remmick had shown up. She saw figures she had never seen before and they were clearer, like she could reach out and feel them.

She suddenly noticed how cold the bath water had become and that Remmick’s grip had tightened around her almost painfully. 

“How often do you see ‘em?” he asked, sounding breathless.

May broke free from his arms. “I don’t know if I want to talk about this right now,” she said as she stood to climb out of the tub and started walking towards the front porch. “I’m going back inside.”

Remmick called her name and leapt out of the water to go after her. She made it to the ajar front door before he grabbed her wrist to stop her from going further.

“Tell me!” he demanded, jerking her back towards him.

Water dripped from her bare skin, but it was the intensity in his reddened eyes that made her quiver.

“Why do you want to know all this?!” she said while trying to pull free from him.

“Because it’s important to me!”

The pleading in Remmick’s voice made her soften. She looked down at how he had hold of her — not violence, not possession. Desperation.

“Not often,” she said reluctantly, still staring at his hand. “I’ve been seeing them as long as I can remember, but it comes in waves and then I won’t see anything for awhile, sometimes years.”

“Do you see ‘em more this time of the year? In the fall?” he interrogated her.

“Yes,” she said slowly, looking back up at him. “How did you know that?”

“An Dá Shealladh,” Remmick muttered to himself as he stared at her and let go of her wrist. He started walking back and forth restlessly, naked and wet and pacing in the doorway.

May watched him carefully, thinking she had misheard him. “I don’t understand?”

He paused and looked at her with wide eyes, rapturous like her secrets were his salvation.

“There’s a Irish tradition, at the end of the harvest season, called Samhain.” The words he said were filled with such avidity that his draw had started slipping in and out of a Gaelic lilt, forgetting who he was trying to be, or maybe from remembering who he was. “It’s when the veil is the thinnest between the livin’ and the dead. Folks with special abilities are the most powerful then.”

“Special abilities?” May shook her head in disbelief. “Remmick, my daddy knocked me around until I was senseless enough to see things, there’s nothing special about that.”

“No,” His hands went to her shoulders, voice laced with excitement. “I’ve been tryin’ to figure out why I’ve been drawn to you. Why I feel my family around you but can’t see ‘em. Why I can’t get to ‘em through you. It’s ’cause you ain’t like the others I’ve met.”

Others?

His hands slid from her shoulders and down her arms until his hands held hers, gently now, but keeping her in place to impress the gravity of the situation on her. “You’re a caulbearer. A healer. You’ve got the second sight.”

The world around them went quiet as he brought his forehead to hers and spoke in a low voice. “You can help me see my people again.”

They were close enough to the fireplace that the flames danced in Remmick’s irises, except the fire also seemed to come from within him. 

“Your people.” she whispered.

May’s breath came out ragged from a sudden revelation.

His people.

The fiddler. The harp player.

The woman by the sea.

May stared up at him, fully shaking now.

“I think I’ve seen them.”

Chapter Text

May stood in the doorway of the farmhouse looking out into the yard. A lone vulture had perched itself on the pole of her laundry line, hunched and waiting, watching her with its beady eyes set deep into its featherless head. It was late-morning, but she couldn’t remember why she was there. The sun seemed muted, the world too still. Something didn’t feel right.

The air around her suddenly roared into a whirlwind as she was engulfed in smoke and flames. Black rolling clouds of soot billowed off of the wooden frame of her home and darkened the sky. Two people pushed past her, grappling onto each other as they were forced from the burning building. The first person she immediately recognized as Remmick, steam rising from his body as soon as he left the cover of the porch, but the second person took her a moment before she realized she was watching another version of herself running with him. The other May stopped and tried to pull Remmick back towards the house, exchanging desperate words that couldn’t be heard, but he forced her to continue forward and away from the blaze. 

The pair made it halfway across the yard before Remmick dropped to his knees and then collapsed to the ground. His cursed skin split apart and centuries of life began disintegrating in the merciless light of day. The May in the vision threw herself on top of him, screaming and hopelessly trying to shield his body with her own while he turned to ash beneath her. 

“No!” May cried out and reached towards them as the roof cracked and the house fell in around her in a thunderous…

Knocking.

May shot upright in bed. The nightmare vanished as quickly as it had come on, leaving nothing but a heavy pounding in her head and an even heavier pounding in her chest. A sweltering heat gradually dissipated from her skin, the kind that felt like it was cooking you from the inside. 

Fatigue still hung heavy in her eyes after another late night of trials. Even sitting up, she nodded between the edge of wakefulness and sleep. Having to endure hours of stories and songs each day since she had told Remmick about the things she could see had begun to push her past the point of weariness. 

The knocking came again and she forced her eyes open, realizing the sound wasn’t part of the dream. Remmick lifted his head from where he had been laying next to her and they exchanged a look of unease in the dark bedroom. 

“Stay here.” May whispered to him, uncertain of who would be paying her a visit.

She threw on a loose dress and cautiously made her way to the front room. The banging repeated a third time as she picked up the shotgun from where it rested against the bench before she reached the door. 

The unexpected harshness of the daylight temporarily blinded May when she cracked the door open. She tensed as her eyes adjusted, seeing that the offender of the peaceful morning was an older Native American man.

“Hello, ma’am,” he said to her solemnly. He was sharply dressed in dark trousers and a matching vest. A double-sash with intricate designs crossed his chest. His brimmed hat was pulled low over his brows as he scanned her face.

May heard a whinny and pushed the door open a few more inches to look out past the yard. The rest of the Choctaw party were staged at the point the main road faded into her own tire tracks. One man sat behind the steering wheel of an old farm truck. Two more stood in its bed, resting against the wooden railing. An additional two observers straddled the backs of horses with spotted coats. Their mounts had begun snorting and stomping at the ground with agitation as soon as she had opened the door. 

The spectators in the company were similarly dressed as the one in front of her, some with additional fringes and animal leathers mixed in with their attire. Though unlike their selected mediator, they were also well-armed with rifles, held lowered but ready, and had belts of ammo adorned alongside their sashes. The rows of cartridges glistened on their persons in the unyielding sun. They surveyed her with the keen sight of hawks overseeing a field.

“Who the hell do you all think you are, coming on my property like this?” May squinted her eyes at the group by the road and then at the one on the front porch through the narrow opening in the door.

“You have been tricked by him,” the man replied. “He is Impa Shilup. A soul eater.”

A spark of anger flickered within her, made sharper by her lack of sleep. “You don’t know what he is,” she scoffed.

Despite May’s skepticism, the negotiator maintained his nonchalance. “He has been killing people in town. It is time for him to leave this place.”

She stayed silent at this. The Choctaw meant well and she knew it, but she also knew she was in far too deep to heed their warnings. The killings weren’t a revelation. She understood why Remmick left at night, where the blood came from, what he needed to do to survive. Hell, she had seen it herself firsthand when he had turned the drug store into a butchery. But these men that tried to counsel May only saw her as a damsel in distress, not as the willing participant she actually was.

“This must end,” continued the man. “You must either hand him over by tomorrow… or we will burn your home down to get him out.”

Burn my home down.

The significance of the threat made May draw back and look at the man on her porch up and down. She tried to appear undaunted by his boldness, but her heart raced with fury and fear — fury that made her consider using the gun she had kept hidden just out of sight, fear that reminded her how outnumbered she was in the present situation. Realizing she was the only thing that separated these men from Remmick, she allowed fear to win.

“Get off my porch, you’re not welcome here,” she hissed before closing the door in his face.

May braced herself against the interior of the door, breathing heavy, holding the shotgun like a crutch. The persistent throbbing in her temple made her wince. As she caught her breath, she sensed she was being watched. She turned to find that Remmick had been leaning against the wall at the end of the hallway listening to the encounter. He had gotten dressed but his dark hair was still tousled by their sudden awakening. He coldly stared at the ground with his hands in his pockets.

“It’s an empty threat,” she assured him warily, doubting her own words after what she had dreamed.

“It ain’t empty.”

Her mouth opened but she couldn’t respond at first. Something about the way he wouldn’t look her in the eye made her chest tighten.

She threw her hands up. “Alright, fine. We’ll just leave.”

“Not we.” His eyes finally met hers, foreboding and unwavering. “I need to leave.”

She froze. May heard his words, but the order they were in had no meaning. At least none she wanted to believe.

“What?” she said incredulously. “No, I-I’m coming with you.”

Remmick shook his head slowly, easing her into his decision. “You can’t. Not yet.” 

Her knuckles went white on the hand that gripped the gun, the other balled into a fist. “Don’t do this,” she begged.

“It ain’t gonna be forever,” he started, taking a few steps forward, raising his hands from his pockets to settle her. “Just long enough for them to move on. I’m gonna show ‘em I’m leavin’. Then when I’ve got things in order, I’ll come back to —”

“You can’t just leave me here!” Her voice echoed through the house in the silence that immediately followed it. The tension hung in the air like the last strand of a rope hopelessly stretched to its breaking point.

“After everything we’ve been through,” she continued weakly, jaw trembling. “After everything you… ” May was unable to say more. Her legs quivered. Wet tears streamed down her face and broke up the dust on the floor where they fell. 

Remmick swiftly crossed the room. The shotgun clattered to the floor at their feet as he put his arms around her.

“Don’t cry. It’ll be alright.” He pulled her in tight and rested the side of his face on her head. “This is why I gotta keep movin’. I’ve got us both in this mess now. It won’t be long before that sheriff comes sniffin’ ‘round here, too.”

“But why? Why can’t I go with you?” May softly wept, burying her face into his shoulder, torn by the source of her comfort also being the root of her pain. She felt his hand running down the back of her hair, his other arm was nearly the only thing that kept her standing.

“As soon as you leave this place with me you’ll have nothin’,” he told her. “I have nothin’ to give ya right now. You don’t know how dangerous it is to be what I am. You’re human, you won’t make it. At least here you’ll be safe.”

She looked up at him, clinging onto his shirt desperately. “Then just turn me. I’m ready. I’ve been ready.”

The decision came to her easily. It was something she had weighed since she first understood it was a possibility. At any cost of the damned life it would bring, she would at least have her freedom, and more importantly, she would have him.

Remmick shook his head, growing more anxious to convince her otherwise. “I know you’re ready, but I ain’t.”

There was remorse on his face, though the words that were meant to be reassuring already seemed distant. His eyes showed no sign of tears. Maybe he wasn’t capable of them, she thought.

Or maybe this has all been a lie.

She pushed free from his hold and stormed across the room before swinging around to him again. 

“Why not?!” She demanded, arms flailing wildly. “You want my abilities or—or whatever you call them. You said you can get in my head if you turn me. So why not just do it so you can use them yourself?!”

Remmick’s lips tightened. “It ain’t that easy. It might ruin everything.”

The walls of the front room felt much closer than normal, almost making it hard to breathe. Exhaustion started to creep in over her adrenaline. She crossed her arms, trying to hold herself together.

“Remmick, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve been at this for awhile. The songs, the stories, it clearly hasn’t been working the way you thought it would. I don’t think I can help you see what you want to see on my own.”

He sighed and turned away to put his hands on the back of a kitchen chair. He leaned his weight on it and looked off at an empty spot on the wall, thinking to himself before putting those thoughts into words. “For some people, their gifts are from what they can do. They can summon the past and present through their words or their songs.”

“Your gift is inside,” he continued. “It’s linked to your soul. Might be somethin’ passed down through your family. Or maybe you were reborn from another like you. But think of the others usin’ their poems and music like they’re castin’ out an invitation. You’re the door to let in what they’re invitin’. They’re drawn to you, just like I was.”

He straightened himself and turned back to her, his mouth grim. “They say, with what I am, the soul gets locked up in the body. Cuts you off from your ancestors in this life and the next. Now, I don’t quite know how that all works, but from my experience, I’m inclined to believe what they say is true.” 

“And if that’s the case,” he went on. “Turnin’ you shuts that door. Ain’t nothin’ getting through it after that. Not my people. Not yours.”

There was genuine sorrow under the frustration of the moment. A deep-seated burden surfaced in his explanation, not unlike the one he carried in all of those quiet moments she had wondered about. The ones where she now realized he had been trying to pick her apart in his head.

“That’s all this is about isn’t it,” she accused him, baffled at how she hadn’t seen it before. “You’ve just been using me this whole time to get to them.”

“You're not understandin’,” he said with agitation.

“Oh, I understand.” She laughed bitterly. “I understand you care more about some damn ghosts than what’s right in front of you in the flesh. Are you even capable of feeling something for another person anymore? Or did that door shut, too?”

“Look at me, May.” He got in her face now. Too close. Too intensely. Heat simmered under his words. “Do you think I chose this life?!” 

Something broke in Remmick. A shame he had been holding back for a long time exploded from within. “I’ve turned hundreds, maybe thousands, and do you know what they all ended up bein’?! Sacrifices!” 

While he shouted he continued to encroach on her. May recoiled, trying to back away from him. 

“Worthless attempts to have some kind of family again!”

She eventually stumbled into the bench along the back wall and fell onto it backwards. Her anger shrunk into itself. She looked up at him with terror as he bore down on her.

“I came so close! I could feel it! I almost brought them all back! And then it was all taken from me!”

His eyes turned red and wild, his fangs summoned by anger, claws digging so deeply into the arm of the bench that it splintered under his grip. 

“Hundreds of years of the world doin’ nothin’ but takin’ just ‘cause of who I am. Tradin’ one damnation for another. You don’t understand what that’s like!”

May locked up, a familiar fear glistened in her eyes. The way he loomed over her took dark memories she had thought she had buried and gave them life. Now May was just a young girl, Remmick her father in a frenzied rage. What had she done this time? Maybe cooked dinner in a way he didn’t like? Came back from playing in the woods too late? Tried to stop him from hitting her mother again? 

The memory broke and left May trembling. A twinge of resentment bubbled up, going as far as her glancing at the gun that laid on the floor by the door, but she pushed it back down.

Remmick suddenly seemed to realize he had gone too far and blinked until his irises were blue again. He relaxed his grip on the wooden arm and slid down into a crouch in front of the bench to collect himself.

“May, I’m fuckin’ tired,” he said softly. “My body is tired of chasin’, my spirit is tired of losin’. I can’t go through that again. I can’t lose you too.” Remmick tried to reach out and touch May’s face but she flinched away. A shadow of guilt passed over him as he retracted his hand.

“The time away will let all this attention die off,” he went on, calmly now. “And I ain’t just here ‘cause of your gifts, but I think that invitation is what we’re missin’ in all this. It’s out there and need to find it again.”

He reached for her hand instead. She reluctantly let him take it and met his eyes. There was something there in the way he looked at her, full of longing and sadness, like she was all he had left in this world.

“No matter what, if all I end up gettin’ out of all of this is you, then that’s how it’s meant to be… How you and I were meant to be. But after all of these years of searchin’, I have to at least try.”

A broken quiet separated them even as they huddled just inches from each other. May sniffled, Remmick looked down at the floor.

“When will you leave?” May finally asked.

He squeezed her hand and sighed.

“Tonight.”

—

The shorter days had started to recall the last remnants of the summer heat with the setting sun. Even the crickets had forfeited their songs of the night for the season. Muddled streaks of purples and blues rimmed the evening horizon as the lone car rattled over an old wooden bridge. Although May’s eyes were red and swollen, no more tears fell from them while she slowed the vehicle to the side of the road. Every drop of sadness within her had been spent, now she only felt numb.

Remmick agreed to a ride to the edge of town but had remained silent in the passenger seat the entire trip. She wanted to give him every second she could to change his mind, even when she knew he wouldn’t. Not when her safety was at stake. Not when redemption called to him.

The car sputtered and stilled when May turned off the engine. She suddenly put a hand to her head and inhaled. The pain from earlier hadn’t subsided and was starting to feel like it might split her skull open.

Remmick looked at her with concern. “What’s goin’ on with ya?”

May rubbed her temple. “When that man from earlier started talking about burning the house down, I imagined what would happen to you,” she mumbled before letting her hand fall to her lap. “It made me feel sick. It’s probably just because I’m tired.”

He hesitated. “You imagined it or you saw it?”

Screams from her dream echoed in her head. The question was too heavy for May to think about, but she had been trying to suppress the terrible feeling that they would both be in danger if he stayed. She couldn’t dwell on it now with everything else weighing down on her.

“I don’t know,” she said.

He gave her a knowing glance but didn’t press her more. They sat together in the dark for some time. The small interior of the car and the quiet outside made every breath, every shift in a seat a deafening sound. She decided she had to speak to break up the silence before it maddened her.

“How long?” she asked, facing straight ahead.

He turned the question on her. “How long will you wait for me?”

“I can’t answer that,” she replied, knowing damn well she would wait forever for him.

Remmick looked out the window where moonlit wildflowers along the ditch withered and went to seed, working their way somewhere deep and quiet until warmth revived them. 

“May, I know this hurts, but if I find who I’m lookin’ for I can rebuild that fellowship for us… for a family and for protection. I’ve seen what that can look like now. I’ll find it and bring it back to you.”

He waited a moment for her to respond but she only stared out her window. On her side of the skyline there were no hints of color, no hope for new beginnings, only blackness. She couldn’t understand how leaving seemed so easy for him while it left her in ruins.

Remmick cleared his throat and reached into the backseat to grab his banjo. He put his hand on the passenger door handle, waiting in her silence a heartbeat longer. She still looked away from him, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge his decision. Giving up, he opened the door to climb out of the car and began walking away. 

May had started shaking in her seat with regret as soon as the passenger door had shut. She frantically fumbled to get her door open and burst out of the vehicle, shouting Remmick’s name while she ran after him. Dried weeds caught at the bottom of her dress when she left the roadway to catch him in the field. 

The yelling had caused Remmick to turn just in time for May to hit him like a brick wall. He staggered back as she threw herself into him. His conflicted expression immediately softened with reassurance under her touch.

“Please,” she whispered, burying her face into his chest, wanting to take in every last piece of him one final time. “Come back for me.”

Remmick held her so tightly she thought she might snap in half. She would have almost preferred that to the fate he was leaving her to.

“May, I promise, as long as my heart still beats, I will come back.” 

Before she could stop him, he melted out of her arms and into the night with the banjo on his back.

Chapter Text

The return of normal routine was like a slow blade to the chest — sudden, agonizing, and plodding. May’s regular life no longer felt like reality, only her time with Remmick had seemed real. Now, each day the world moved forward behind a pane of shrouded glass and the loneliness returned as sharply as it had left.

The Choctaw moved on almost immediately, but nights were now spent watching the door at the speakeasy and then the door at home, waiting for him to walk in and sweep her away. 

Except that didn’t happen, even as the days folded into weeks. 

May managed to drag herself through the motions until things became more natural for her again. Time did indeed heal wounds, but those wounds still left scars. Although her daily thoughts were no longer completely consumed by Remmick after enough time had passed, small reminders would stop her in her tracks. Focusing too hard on the discolored patching on the door made her have to sit down with a glass of whiskey. Her breath caught in her throat each time she heard the sound of a banjo playing a song in a specific key. Old Mike mentioning Irish beer and asking if Remmick would ever be back to buy him another sent her behind the bar for a good cry.

There were times she sunk so far into her doubts, she even looked at Billy and wondered what life would be like if she chose a normal partner and lived a normal life. She knew it would relieve her from the uncertainty she lived in now, but the idea of settling down in Clarksdale for the rest of her life was more than she could bare.

A couple of months had passed when May finally accepted an invitation from Louis and Sally for dinner. She had been over there many times before, although the baby had been almost a newborn the last time. Holding the growing infant brought the first earnest smile to May’s face since Remmick had left. She felt that twinge of acceptance of normalcy as she dined and laughed with her friends. It seemed, just for a brief moment, that things were okay. 

However, as soon as she returned to the darkness of her empty house, the desperation returned. She slept in the rocking chair on the porch that night.

—

It was a slow night in January when May found herself exceptionally bored at work. She was leaned over the counter, chin propped up in her hand, halfheartedly watching a low-stakes poker game when she noticed Peter speaking with someone at length through the slot in the door. The conversation eventually caught Louis’ eye, who left his place behind the bar to investigate. The two men inside exchanged words with whomever was outside until Louis gave a nod and Peter reluctantly opened the door. Three gentlemen entered, one of which reached out to give Louis a calculated handshake as they walked in.

May gave her boss a questioning look as he returned.

“Out-of-towners.” Louis responded to her silent inquiry as he shoved a handful of a cash bribe in his pocket. “It’s quiet tonight, they shouldn’t be able to cause too much trouble.”

The tension could be felt amongst the guests as the strangers ventured down the stairs. The men wore trilby caps with shabby dark-colored tweed jackets and pleated pants that seemed ill-fitting on their gaunt frames. Two of them held stony-faced expressions while the third in the front looked almost mockingly entertained by the small venue. They scanned the room and said a few unimpressed words to one another before finally approaching May at the bar. 

“What can I get you, gentlemen?” May asked. She put on a friendly facade, but the trio made her feel uncomfortable as well.

“Whiskies,” the man on the left said callously.

May got them their drinks and the two surly men casually wandered off to the card table. The third lingered at the bar, giving her a vulgar look before he joined his friends. Her skin crawled. 

With Billy being absent from the bar that night, May had thought she was going to get a break from the half-witted courtship attempts. She now had reasonable suspicion to believe that was no longer going to be the case. At least Billy was a harmless flirt, she didn’t know these men or their motives. What she did know was that each time she looked up, the third man seemed to be dissecting her with his eyes.

Sure enough, after a few rounds of cards and drinks, the grinning man started to return to the bar. May quickly picked up a few clean glasses and pretended to wash them to seem occupied.

“Evenin’, miss.” He gave her a greasy sneer under a pencil-thin mustache as he sat on the closest stool. A toothpick poked out from between his teeth and he rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue, like he fancied it a seductive prop. 

May nodded at him coolly. “You need another whiskey?”

“No, I was wantin’ to come over and talk to ya.” His accent was thick, rooted with a twang from somewhere even deeper in the south.

“Oh, well sorry, I’m a little tied up for a chat,” May said as she ran her rag around the spotless glass.

“Uhuh.” He squinted at her suspiciously. “Don’t seem to be too busy in this piece tonight.”

May looked for Louis for a reprieve, but he was across the room talking to Peter. Feeling stuck, she turned back to the man, trying to decide if he was too cocky or too dim to catch her disinterest; maybe an incurable combination of both.

“So…” she reluctantly continued. “I haven’t seen you boys before. You all from around here?” May smiled despite her aversion, feeling somewhat of an obligation to be polite to paying customers as long as they didn’t cross any lines.

“No, just passin’ through.” He pulled his cap down lower over his eyes. “And ya know, I’ve passed through a lot of places, but I’m tryin’ to figure out how a pretty thing like you ended up workin’ in a place like this. Don’t ya got a man back home to take care of ya?”

His eyes were lingering on her chest now. The discomfort crept to her stomach.

May summoned up a lie, her voice growing colder the longer the interaction dragged on. “Yes, I do, but I do this to help out. Times are tough, as I’m sure you know.”

“Huh. Well, that ain’t right. You should have a real fella that takes care of ya,” he said as he plucked the toothpick from his mouth and grinned. “Why don’t ya let me take care of ya tonight? I can pay. You know, to help out with those tough times and all, if you’re interested.” He winked.

May had enough.

“Mister, I doubt you could afford me nor satisfy me. So no, I’m not interested.” She dropped her act and turned away from him, pretending to take an inventory of the bottles behind her.

“Come on now, don’t be like that.” The man said in a condescending tone. “How about ya just tell me your name, then?” 

May continued to peruse the bottles, blatantly pretending she could not hear him.

“Hey!” he shouted, anger edging into his voice. “Woman, don’t ignore me. Hey!”

On his second attempt to get her to respond, he leaned over the bar and grabbed the sleeve of her dress. May was startled by the sudden feeling of restraint. She yelled and pulled back at his grip, knocking over a stack of glasses with a clatter as she pulled her arm free. 

Peter and Louis immediately noticed the commotion and started making their way to the bar. Just as they got halfway across the floor, yells and scraping furniture erupted from the card table. The two other strangers and two of the regulars started swinging their fists at one another. Chairs toppled over and bottles shattered into a hundred pieces on the floor. Louis and Peter jumped between the feuding teams and attempted to physically separate them. May’s harasser turned to engage in the fight and she was able to back up far out of his reach.

As quickly as the chaos started, Louis and Peter along with a couple of other bystanders were able to quell it. They aggressively pushed the two strangers toward the door. Pencil-mustache followed, scowling at May as he passed by the bar for the last time. May glared back, thankful to be free of him and his friends. The few patrons cheered as soon as the three were out the door. 

“Well, that was a mistake.” Louis grumbled to her as he started to grab a broom and dustpan to clean up the broken glass. “May, get everyone a round on the house.”

She swiftly moved to fill everyone’s glasses. Surprisingly, the mood in the bar immediately picked up after the excitement. The small crowd drank more and for longer than a group double the size. Louis also served an hour longer than he typically would before announcing that he was calling it a night. 

“Hopefully that’ll preserve the word of this place. Had too many fights up in here lately,” he told May as the last few people filtered out. 

Louis was particularly mindful about what people thought. Especially in this type of industry, reputation could make or break the crowds. There were other options around if the town decided a place was too much trouble.

May suddenly noticed how stressed and tired Louis looked as he picked up a piece of glass he had missed earlier. “Why don’t you head home, Louis. You too, Peter. I can close up.”

“You sure you got it, May?” Louis looked a little uncertain, but even more-so relieved.

“Yeah, it shouldn’t take long. I’ll be right behind you.”

“You’re a blessing, May,” Louis said as he grabbed his coat and hat.

“Yeah, thanks, May! Have a good one!” called Peter, who was already halfway out the door.

May swept up one more time, made sure the cash was locked up, and then stood behind the counter, looking out over the haze of empty tables. She imagined ghostly figures filling the space now that the living had moved on. The translucent entities drank and chatted and danced with eerie silence.

She longed to be alone when the crowds were around, but the isolation gave her mind too much time to think. And when she had time to think, her thoughts always wandered to Remmick. His ghost now appeared amongst the others. He sat in the stool in front of her again, staring at her with hungry eyes. She reached for him, hoping to feel the cool softness of his skin when she touched his face, but her hand only passed through empty air.

May often wondered where Remmick’s journeys were taking him. Was he finding what he was searching for? Was he even alive? If he was dead, at least that would mean she wasn’t a fool, that she hadn’t been strung along by another false prophet of love or that he’d found what he was looking for and decided he didn’t need her anymore.

She came back to her senses when she realized she had scratched an indentation in the bar with her nails. She looked up and the ghosts had vanished. It was time for her to leave as well.

May fastened an extra button at the top of her coat as she locked up the speakeasy door in the chilling winter breeze. A crescent moon and overcast night sky made it particularly challenging to navigate the dark alleyway. The buildings shadowed all but a narrow pathway between them that she hurriedly followed to her car. 

Once there, she unlocked the driver’s door and had started to open it when a force suddenly slammed it shut. She turned her head enough to see another hand on the car door just over her shoulder. In the same instant, hot whiskey-scented breath blew across the back of her neck.

~

“Well, if it ain’t the pretty thing from behind the bar. You kept me waitin’ out here long enough.” 

May’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and in the reflection in the car window she could now see the outline of a figure in a trilby hat directly behind her. The man must have hidden in the shadows of the building and followed her.

“Take your hand off my door.” May’s voice was cold.

She had been facing the car, but now the man grabbed her and forcibly turned her to look at him. The top half of his face was shadowed by the brim of his cap, but the bottom was twisted into a devilish smile. She knew of the unhinged anger that simmered just below it and struggled to keep a neutral expression, concerned that any outward sign of fear or resistance might incite more of a reaction from him in return. Her eyes darted down the road, looking for someone she could call out to, but the back street was empty at this hour. 

“No, I think ya owe me an apology first.” The man sneered. “I didn’t appreciate your disrespect earlier.”

“I apologize for disrespecting you, sir.” It pained May to say those words, as empty as they were, but sometimes pride had to take a step back for self-preservation. She might be stubborn but she wasn’t dumb.

“Good girl. See, if you’d shown me this kind of respect earlier I wouldn’t be out here to teach you a lesson.”

Pencil-mustache’s degrading remarks had sparked a fire in her veins that she now restrained. May put on her best shit-eating grin. “Yes, sir. I will be more respectful next time. But I’m going to be leaving now.” 

May tried to turn to open her car door again but the man forced a hand against her shoulder to pin her against the car.

“Not so fast now, girl. That husband of yours has clearly let you run wild. It’s time that a real man show you how to act.”

This was the most terrifying difference between monster and man. At least with a monster, the intention is clear. There is no negotiating with a lion. In fawn or fight, fawn loses, fawn is destroyed. With man, it’s a delicate dance to try to pacify them, and what could happen to the fawn is unpredictable. From this instinct, May sensed the time for placation was over. This was not a man that could be appeased with simple words. It was time to fight.

She swiftly brought a knee up into his crotch, causing him to stagger backwards and fall into the street. As soon as she pulled her car door open and started to climb into the driver’s seat, another arm grabbed her around the neck and dragged her back out onto the ground. She realized the other two strangers from the bar had been standing by and now made themselves known to assist their partner. 

May repeatedly screamed in hope that someone might hear it, but it echoed into the night unheard. The third man’s hand moved towards May’s mouth to silence her and she sunk her teeth into it hard enough to tear flesh and draw blood. As the third man yelled and withdrew from her, May reached behind her and managed to run her nails across the second man’s eyes and face. He cursed and loosened his grip on her neck. This gave May the opportunity to get her feet under her and run. Before she could get more than a couple of feet away, she felt a glass bottle shatter on the back of her head. 

The world seemed like it was tilting. May couldn’t initially register that it was actually herself that was falling face-first towards the ground. The bottle had stunned her to the point she momentarily forgot about her assailants. She writhed on her stomach as pencil-mustache grabbed her ankle and pulled her back towards the car. Her senses started to return as he flipped her over onto her back and put a firm hand around her throat. Choking against his grip, she slid her hand down her leg until she felt the hard wood handle of a small pocket knife she kept hidden in her stockings. After subtly removing the knife and flipping open the blade, she jammed it into the side of the man’s shoulder with a defiant cry.

“Bitch!” Pencil-mustache roared as he released her throat to jerk the knife out. He pulled his fist back and brought it down directly onto May’s face. Everything spun. More blows came to her face and then her chest and sides as the other men began kicking her. The taste of iron filled her mouth as she screamed. 

“Get her in the car!” One of the men yelled, but it sounded very far away as May’s vision faded. She felt herself being tossed into the back seat. Then she felt a man on top of her. Finally, she felt nothing.

~

Louis pulled up to the back of the pharmacy at his normal time the following day. The crisp morning was overcast and dull. He sat in his car trying to rub the tension out of his head from the late night the evening before. His hand froze in place when he realized May’s car was parked a couple of spaces down from his. In his fog, he hadn’t immediately noticed it while pulling in. Maybe she had forgotten something at the bar and had come back early? 

He cautiously exited his vehicle and approached the car from a distance. There, on the window of the backseat, he noticed a smear. It looked like blood. Like a bloody hand had wiped itself down the inside of the window. He jogged the rest of the way to the car and peered in the window of the backseat.

“May!” He yelled.

The handle was unlocked so Louis pulled it open. May’s legs slumped out of the door.

“May! May!” Louis continued to shout as he shook her, uncertain if May was alive. She was badly beaten, her face purple, her dress torn and spotted with blood. 

Finally, May let out a raspy breath. 

“Oh, thank goodness.” Louis cried as he swept May up in his arms and carried her to his vehicle. 

__

May came to in the doctor’s clinic. She could hear whispered voices, but her vision was heavy with painkillers and further obscured by her swollen eyes. She only managed to groan to let the voices know she was back with the living.

“May! She’s awake!” She recognized Louis’ voice. “May, what happened!?” he asked as she felt him grab her hand.

May initially couldn’t fathom how she ended up in this place and in this state. Her limbs felt like they were tied to bricks, her chest was bandaged so tight that it was hard to breathe, and every time she moved she could feel things grinding in her scalp. 

“We better wait for the sheriff,” came another male voice she didn’t recognize.

She managed to get her eyes open enough to see Louis leaned over her with heavy concern on his face. Behind him was a solemn doctor in a wool suit. A nurse in a white dress came in from another room pushing a rattling tray of medical supplies. The nurse set up by May’s head to begin the arduous task of removing bits of glass from her bloody hair.

“Where am I?” May whispered.

“Do you not remember?” Louis asked, squeezing her hand tightly. “I found you in the backseat of your car.”

May was still bewildered. Everything was happening so fast. 

Sherriff Harmon came through the door next, adding to her confusion.

The doctor and Louis walked over to the sheriff and exchanged some words that she couldn’t hear. With each passing minute, May felt herself becoming more alert and more aware of the pain. She looked down and could see that the part of her chest not bandaged or covered in a medical gown was hued in purples and blues from bruising. Finally, the three men came over to her bedside, the sheriff leading the group. 

“Afternoon, May. It’s been awhile. I’m sorry we have to meet again in these circumstances,” Harmon said remorsefully.

“Why are you here, Sheriff?” May asked.

“May, it appears you’ve been attacked. Do you remember anything about last night?”

Looking up at the men in the clinic brought back the image of three men standing over her on the dark street. It all returned to her in a heavy, painful gasp that made her cracked ribs shudder.

“The men in the bar.”

Louis started to speak but the sheriff held up a hand and interrupted him. “What men?”

“The out-of-towners,” she recalled.

The sheriff looked at Louis, who nodded.

“Can you describe the men?”

“Not well. They were wearing hats and bulky clothes.” The devilish grin flashed in her memory. “One had a thin mustache. They jumped me at my car when I left the bar last night.”

May could see the guilt on Louis’ face. 

“What happened then?” asked the sheriff, taking down notes on a pad and paper he pulled out of his back pocket.

“I—I don’t remember. They beat me and…” May couldn’t bring herself to say more.

The doctor spoke up. “I can give you some insight on that, Sheriff.”

The three men started discussing the doctor’s findings and Louis’ recollection of the prior evening. The more they shared, the more May felt overcome by emotion. The nurse finally noticed a tear running down May’s cheek and shooed the men off to the other room.

“Everything will be okay.” The nurse attempted to soothe May as she worked out the glass pieces into a bloody bowl of water.

May thought about the night before, as everything faded to black she remembered hopelessly begging for Remmick to save her.

“No,” May said quietly. “It won’t be.”

—

May spent several days at the clinic. She took all the pain medication the doctor would provide, just as much to numb her mind as her body. Louis and Sally visited her several times. When Louis stepped away, Sally had told May how much he blamed himself for letting the men in and then allowing her to close up by herself. May assured her that no one was to blame but the people who did this to her. The sheriff also came by twice more, asking more questions, but so far having no leads.

Between the intrusive procedures, lack of privacy, and discomfort of being stuck in the clinic bed, May was thrilled when the doctor said he was sending her home. 

Sheriff Harmon showed up to drive her as Louis and Sally had already driven her car back to her house. 

“Ready to be home?” The sheriff gruffly asked from the driver’s seat of his patrol car.

“Yes.” May groaned as she carefully lowered herself into the vehicle with the help of the nurse. The healing ribs still shot bolts of pain through her chest when she moved wrong. 

When the car started to move, she leaned her head on the window and watched the buildings as they passed by, made blurrier by the lingering medications in her system and the general disarray in her mind. They hit the edge of town before Harmon broke the silence again.

“Still haven’t been able to track those boys down. I talked to folk down at the train station and at the bar. Got a pretty good description of ‘em. Put out some feelers in nearby towns to keep an eye out, but no tellin’ how far they got if they’re movin’ by train.”

May didn’t have the energy for a response. She stared at the dust billowing behind them in the car’s side mirror. The update was disappointing. Then again, she didn’t care as much about the men facing the law, she wanted them dead.  

“I’m gonna do everything I can to get ya justice, May. Those boys need to be put away for a long time for what they did to you.”

They pulled up to May’s house with few additional words exchanged. Sheriff Harmon helped May out of the car and to the front door.

“Can I do anything else for ya ‘fore I head out?” He asked from the porch.

May stood inside and gripped the edge of the open front door for support. “Just catch those bastards, Sheriff.”

The sheriff gave a sympathetic nod and headed back to his vehicle. May watched him until the car pulled out. As soon as he was out of sight, she turned to the rocking chair on the front porch, now gathering dust and cobwebs as it waited for an occupant. Then she slowly closed the front door, dragged her feet over to the bench in the front room, and collapsed into herself. 

—

May moved just enough for minimum bodily needs over the next week. Days and nights blurred together. She eventually got the courage to look at her face in a mirror and was met with someone she barely recognized, both inside and out. May hadn’t been much of a crier before, but now it was a normal occurrence between the bouts of grief and rage. She cried for the person who was taken from her, the person who once found peace in the night, the person she thought could defend herself, the person who swore that another man would never lay a hand on her. 

She also cried for Remmick. She wished so badly he was there, but part of her hated him for leaving. It was a bitterness that ran deep.

A knock at the door one afternoon immediately brought those mixed emotions to the surface. As surprised as she would have been to see Remmick, she was more surprised to see Billy.

“Billy? Why are you here?”

Billy stood nervously shuffling his feet on the porch. His dark hair was parted in the middle and he was nicely dressed in a long-sleeved shirt with a vest and matching trousers. 

“Hey May, I uh… heard from Pop you weren’t doing well. So I brought you some stuff from the store.”

“Oh.” May now noted the paper sacks in his arms. 

“Thanks, Billy. That was nice of you.” She hesitated. Normally she would have dreaded Billy coming around, but she didn’t feel much anymore. “Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?”

His stance became more confident with her invitation. “That sounds great. But just show me where it is and I’ll make it for us, you should take it easy.”

Billy sat the sacks down and brewed a mug of coffee. May didn’t protest, she didn’t have the energy to host. He sat at the kitchen table with her and talked awhile. They mostly spoke about the bar. He told a couple of stories of his foolishness to lighten the mood. Although they initially avoided any talk of May’s attack, the tension eventually became too much for him. She could tell his eyes kept moving to the healing bruises on her face.

“I wish I had been there that night, May,” he said as he looked at her. “I don’t know what I would have done, but I would have done somethin’.”

May shook her head, squeezing her hands tightly around the hot mug. “You probably would have just gotten yourself mixed up in a fight with them, Billy.”

He looked down at the floor regretfully. “I do get myself in a lot of those don’t I? But that one would have been worth it.”

“You might have gotten yourself killed, too. These weren’t your regular scrappers. I think they meant to leave me for dead.”

“Well, Pop will find ‘em,” Billy said with too much certainty. “We’ll get justice for ya.” 

May put on a fake smile. Like father, like son. She didn’t care much for the pity, as earnest as it was. It only made her feel weak.

Billy left a short time later. May investigated the bags to discover an amusing combination of what he thought were necessary provisions, then she slowly made her way back to her bedroom. The short hallway, which she had passed through hundreds of times now, seemed endless. 

Eventually, she found her way to the bed and curled up against the wall, leaving space for a second body that wasn’t there. As she closed her eyes, she drifted back to a place where time couldn’t touch her.

Chapter Text

6 Months Later

May cursed and squinted as late-night summer rains pelted the windshield of her car. The headlights barely broke through the sheets of water that fell from the sky, but bolts of lightening occasionally lit up the road with false daylight and kept her from veering off into the flooded ditches. The accompanying thunder rumbled over the slow and steady hum of the engine.

It had been another long night at work. She had returned a couple of weeks after the assault, but the effort of resuming the satirical remarks and carefree attitude that charmed her customers still drained her like never before. Regardless of May’s best efforts, her tired eyes betrayed false smiles, her animated voice was fringed with lifelessness, and the regular dances on the bar were now beyond her abilities. People had noticed, but they accepted this as her new normal. 

Even Billy had flipped his frisky banter to attempts at concern and support. The first few months he passed on regular updates of the investigation conveyed by his father, but those eventually quieted as the case went cold. 

May still thought of Remmick often, but she had lost hope of his return, accepting that he had probably moved on in this life or the next.

She felt as if she had been driving for ages when the mottled outline of the farmhouse finally came into view up ahead. The car lurched when she hit the front yard, tires spinning out on muddy ruts amongst the puddles, until she gave up and turned off the key. A troubled hush hung inside the vehicle that deafened even the heavy patter of water on metal. She sat there a moment, bracing herself for the trek through the rain and for the vacant rooms that awaited her once more.

After a breath of anticipation, May got out of the car and trotted towards the house, face lowered in the wind, her boots splashing in the waterlogged ground with each step. She had almost reached the cover of the porch when more lightening illuminated the front of the house. 

She stopped in her tracks.

The rocking chair creaked as its inhabitant lightly tilted it backwards and forwards. May wouldn’t have heard this over the storm, but her world had gone still regardless. She neither felt the cool droplets on her face nor heard the growl of thunder in the distance, but with the flash of another soundless fulmination cracking across the sky, she could see the figure with lustrous red eyes sitting in the rocker by the front door, waiting for her arrival. 

May did not move as he rose and came towards her, stepping off the porch to stand in front of her in the rain. The air felt thin despite her heavy breaths and the torrent from above soaked her hair and matted her red dress to her skin. 

Part of her wondered if this was a dream. Perhaps his ghost had come back to haunt her again. But as Remmick stood just feet in front of her, a wide grin plastered on his face even as rainfall drenched him, May knew this was real, and she was furious. His smile fell away as he noticed her anger.

She wanted to speak, there were a hundred things she could tell him, but all of the words she had fantasized saying to Remmick upon his return jumbled in her head. Instead, she pushed past him, leaving him standing alone in the downpour calling her name. She flung open the door and tramped into the front room. Remmick attempted to follow her.

“You’re not welcome here!” She turned and yelled, causing him to stop just outside of the threshold as if he’d hit an invisible wall.

Remmick’s dark, wet hair was plastered to his forehead and water dripped from his brown overalls and now-translucent white shirt. He shuffled and gripped the outside of the doorframe, struggling against the supernatural holds that prevented him from going to her. “Come on, now. Just let me in there.”

“No!” May panted with fury. “You can’t come in!”

“You gon’ keep me out here til the sun comes up?” He tilted his head at her, brows furrowed and pleading. The look was reminiscent of the first time he begged for her to let him in. The emotions that stirred made her seethe.

“Eight months!” Outrage rattled in May’s voice as she pointed an accusatory finger at him. “Eight months you strung me along waiting for you!”

“I—I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was gonna take so long.”

“No, you didn’t think about me! About what you left me here with! Then you just show up here like my life wasn’t destroyed while you were gone!” 

Remmick studied May’s rage, the tears in her eyes, the new frailty in her frame. A look of confusion crossed over him. “What happened?”

Her face crumpled, heaving breaths growing more panicked. She slowly collapsed to the floor on her hands and knees while sobs overtook her.

“May, please,” he whispered, watching her fall apart with growing desperation.

May couldn’t keep herself together. It was like everything had come crashing down on her again. As angry as she was at Remmick, she was even angrier that she would have to come to grips with reality by letting him back in. She had been complacently drowning for too long and now his hand was suddenly reaching out to pull her from the water. But it was time to accept it. She couldn’t keep sinking.

“Fine.” The sound of her voice barely left her lips. “Come in.”

Remmick immediately lunged past the doorway and kneeled on the floor next to her, scooping her into his arms and pulling her into his chest. Even with the chill of his skin, a warmth filled May that she hadn’t felt since he had left her standing in that field so many months ago.

“Please,” he begged. “Tell me what happened.”

“I can’t,” she gasped.

“You have to. Let me help you.”

They held each other in a tight embrace. Water from their wet clothing left a dark pool on the floor beneath them. The sounds of thunder reverberated outside the wooden walls. But inside, the sound of his peculiar southern voice lulled her back into reminders of the comforts he used to provide — maybe could still provide.

May sat back and took a deep breath before telling him about her confrontation with the three men. She detailed their behavior at the bar, being caught off guard at her car, the unsuccessful attempt to fight back, and finally, the way they took advantage of her after being beaten senseless. Her voice shuddered and even failed her at times during the story, but she pressed on, determined to share the burden she had carried the last few months. 

Remmick listened. He was careful not to interrupt, but the rage in his eyes grew with each detail. When May finished, he stood up and paced about the room. He finally stopped at the kitchen table and yelled in anguish as he lifted a chair above his head with one arm and brought it crashing down to the floor. The wood broke apart into nothing more than splinters at his feet.

May flinched, both fearful and awestricken by his strength. 

If I had that kind of power, I could have stopped them.

“I never should’ve left you. You was right. I got too caught up in everything. I was just…” His fists clenched at his side. “Just needin’ to rebuild that fellowship so badly. I wanted you to see what it could be.”

“Did you even find who you were looking for?” she asked reluctantly.

Remmick didn’t look up from his circle of destruction, but his posture shifted. She recognized the change immediately — defeat.

“No,” he said. “I got some others with me, but not the kind I was tryin’ to find. I couldn’t sense it anymore. And I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about you. I felt like you needed me.”

“I did need you. I still do.”

He looked at her, his blue eyes wide and guilt-stricken. 

“And I need you to do something for me again,” she said quietly, tears continuing to stream down her face.

“Anything.”

“Turn me. Free me. I can’t keep living like this.” 

He paused before going to her and crouching down at her level. “May, you need to know that this life comes with a cost. Never again will you know the warmth of sun on your face. You’ll never have children. You can’t settle anywhere for long else people get suspicious and start huntin’ you. Time and death will take everything you know.”

“But will it take away this pain?”

“Yes, it will,” he said. “But it’ll replace it with hunger like you’ve never known. If you don’t feed it, it’ll turn ya into an animal. You’ll have to kill, whether it’s by choice or not.”

“I’ve done it before.” She swallowed. “Killed someone.”

“I know.”

She looked at him with surprise. “You can tell?”

“I can.”

May was thrown off by his impassive response. She wanted to explain herself, to tell him how it all had come to pass, but she was unsure of how to even begin justifying what was essentially her whole upbringing.

“My daddy.” It was all she could get out.

May thought of the man that lay in a shallow grave back in Illinois. The man that beat her mother black and blue time after time and then May herself when she was older. Every act he saw as defiant was met with the back of his hand, or a belt, or whatever other means of punishment he saw fit in the moment. It was why the escape of a quiet night in a field became a sanctuary to her when the screaming started.

She watched her mother tolerate the abuse and so she did the same. But one day, May woke up and her mother was dead. An accident, a tumble down the stairs, they had said. She knew better. Something within her got pushed over the edge that day. 

Not long after her mother had died, the man she referred to as daddy, but never did a thing to earn the title, hit May for the last time. She traded the neighbor a cow for the shotgun that presently leaned against the bench in the farmhouse and loaded daddy’s chest with buckshot. His death hadn’t been quick.

No one would come looking for him, a man that wouldn’t be missed couldn’t go missing, but May still fled and had started her new life in Mississippi before the dirt had even settled on the burial plot. 

Remmick reached out and placed a gentle hand on her chin, bringing her back to the present. “That person you were, in that moment you watched the life fade from your father’s eyes, is who you will be… forever.”

Truthfully, she had felt nothing in that moment. She had stood there and watched her daddy take his final ragged breaths and waited for some sort of emotion to overtake her, but it never did. Perhaps the perfect balance of relief and torment had taken anything she should have felt and made it numb.

Numb.

May went quiet as she pulled herself out of thoughts of the dead and refocused on her current life. It was a lot to take in now that the opportunity was in front of her. ‘Trading one damnation for another’, that was how Remmick had described it. Like a deal at the Devil’s crossroad, but Remmick offered her something the Devil didn’t. 

“You said time will take everything from me, but that’s not true, it can’t take you,” she said.

He shook his head slowly, like he was trying to interpret her thoughts. “No, it can’t.”

“Then will you stay with me? Even if I lose my gifts doing this? Even if I’m not the one who can bring your family back?”

He rested his forehead against hers as the turmoil in his face subsided. “Always. We’ll be connected. Together forever.”

His vow made her inhale with a quick, sharp sob. “Then the rest is worth it.”

Remmick took the hand that rested on her chin to tilt her lips towards his. They kissed gently, a kiss that was both sad and hopeful. When they parted, he spoke. “Before I do this, I want to give you a gift. It’s a mercy I was never offered myself.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Knowin’ you’re seein’ the sun for the last time.”

—

Thousands of sunsets had elapsed over May in her lifetime. A few of those sunsets had turned the sky into a painter’s mosaic that she had stopped to appreciate, but most she had taken for granted, and certainly none had affected her like the one she was now experiencing from the bottom step of her porch. 

The orange light scattered as it began to pass through the top of the tree line in the distance, the tips of the grasses shimmered with the golden luster of its rays. She closed her eyes and took in the feeling of the fiery heat that passed over her face and warmed the tears that trickled down her cheeks. It was a bittersweet farewell, but she knew with the imprisonment from the day would come the freedom of her spirit. 

Remmick sat on the floor of the shadowed hallway, patiently watching May say goodbye to the light through the open front door. He could only pull from stolen memories to imagine what she was feeling as it had been far too long since his own mortal skin had last basked in the warmth of the sun. In his mind, he pictured the glow on her face and tried to understand the peace that presently radiated off of her.

He mourned that they would never truly share a sunset together, but on this night the delicate connection between them would be intertwined into one. He would no longer just feel her, they would become each other.

As the shadows spread in the doorway, Remmick stood and followed them. He stopped when he was behind May on the porch. Her eyes were still closed, but now only the night touched her face, the way it soon would always be.

“I’m ready,” she whispered, feeling his presence.

Remmick took her hand and led her to a blanket on the floor in front of the dim fireplace. Her hair pillowed around her head like a dark halo when he laid her down. He ran his hand along the soft features of her face, knowing they would remain unchanged even as buildings would crumble. These features, in this moment, were trusting but not fearless. May’s eyes glistened with the uncertainty of death. Remmick knew that as a human, she would have to make that journey alone. Only once she returned would he be able to join her mind as well as her body.

He reached up and unbuttoned the top of her blouse so that he could carefully pull it off of her shoulder and expose the base of her neck. The skin under the brush of his fingertips trembled. He then leaned down and kissed her passionately, hoping to remember the warmth of her lips as long as he could, knowing it was the last time he would kiss the woman he loved in this form.

“Come back. I’ll be here waitin’ for you,” he whispered to her.

May nodded.

He sank his teeth into her neck.

May could not scream. The pain was too great. Instead, only gasps escaped her. Remmick felt her instinctively fight against him, her hands flailed at his chest and her legs kicked, but he held her down while she struggled. Her thrashing settled into quick twitches as her blood rapidly drained into his mouth. Within minutes, he felt her life slipping away. She had passed the point of no return when he pulled back, holding her hand and whispering sweet assurances in her ear as she faded. Her breathing became more shallow until it stopped. The steady thumping of her pulse in his ears weakened until it became imperceptible. He watched her eyes reflect the flames from the fireplace before they went lifeless.

The room was quiet save for the crackle of the fire. Remmick carefully cleaned the blood from her neck and his own face. Then he laid next to May to watch over the hollow body of his lover, eager for any sign of her return. 

Remmick was surprised to feel anxious. What if it didn’t work this time? If he lost May, he knew he would be lost himself, she had been the only thing that had tethered him to his humanity. He also wondered how much of her spirit would remain when she returned. Would there still be reminders of their life before? Would the memories be preserved? Or would their chaos feed into each other, dooming them both to become monsters? 

He knew there was a risk that the loss of the human side of May meant those visions of his past would also be lost, but he saw how she was hurting, and he wanted to free her from that more than anything. 

He owed it to her for everything she had done for him.

As he waited, Remmick thought back to the night following his first meeting with May. He had been chasing the callings of another — quick, loud bursts that he had sensed a county over. The noise had initially thrown him off of the low but steady hum that came from May when he had gotten close to her. 

Starving, hunted, distracted, he had ran out of her door in pursuit of the boy with musical gifts that he thought could summon his ancestors. But Remmick had become so focused on this endeavor, that as he had the boy in his grasp hours later, he had foolishly not noticed the skyline lightening to the east. The morning blaze had bore down on where he stood in the pond, scorching his immortal skin as steam and smoke twisted itself into a fiery vortex around him. He had rested his hands on the stake that still emerged from his chest from the battle and stared into the glowing horizon as it set him alight. It was a sight he hadn’t seen for centuries and it was as beautiful as it was lethal. 

At the time, he had known he was dying, and part of him accepted that. He had considered letting the flames free his tired spirit, to finally allow the sun to consume his weary flesh.

But then he thought of her. 

May had remained restlessly in the back of his mind since they had crossed paths. In that moment, he thought perhaps if he returned to her, she could save him, in more ways than one. 

Now, as he looked down at May’s still body on the floor of the farmhouse, Remmick realized he had not been wrong.

Too many minutes seemed to pass. He nervously stroked her hair, hoping his touch would bring her life. 

At last, a ragged breath, strained and sudden. Her back arched as muscles and organs and mind were given new life. Then quick, alarmed breaths as the memories flooded in.

“Shhh. Shhh. It’s alright.” Remmick pulled her close to comfort her as they linked. He closed his eyes while her past flowed into his thoughts. It was nothing more than a small blip in the relative scheme of his being, but they were important to him. 

He saw her childhood, tumultuous and lonely, he remembered the intricate details of what she had to do to escape it, and finally, he witnessed her journey to Clarksdale. He faintly smiled as they met for the first time from her view, fright and apprehension blossoming into longing and affection. He held her tighter as he watched those men torment her.

And finally, he saw her visions. The faces tugged at his recollection, but the names and details had been forgotten long ago, even of the woman he recognized as his wife, glowing like an angel by the cliffside. In just that brief scene next to the sea, he could see her and the homeland he had lost, but nothing more. Time had erased everything else. The memories were like sand that slipped through his fingers. What May had seen was all he had now, and he was grateful she held those reminders for him. Then again, she had always felt like home.

May finally calmed in his arms. She touched her teeth, feeling their unfamiliar sharp edges, then studied each side of her jagged hands. Her eyes were wide with wonder as she took her new world in. They darted quickly from one edge of the room to the other until they finally locked on him. It was there they softened, feeling the comforting intermingling of their thoughts along with his touch. He smiled as he noticed her eyes reflected red hues. 

A thousand words were exchanged between the two of them without a single one spoken. Remmick stared at her, still beautiful, but different now.

And his — forever.

—

The bar was as full as anyone had ever seen it. Louis glanced at the clock as he rushed one drink order into the next. May was hours late, which was both agitating and concerning. She obviously hadn’t been herself lately, and he couldn’t help but wonder if something else had happened now. 

“Who the hell are they?” Old Mike question as he twisted around in his stool.

Louis heard this and followed some of the guests’ gaze to the door where a group of three couples had just walked in. He didn’t recognize them at first, but then the pair in the front of the small crowd parted and at the heart them he saw May. 

She wore a black sequin flapper dress with black stockings and flats. The long dark waves of her hair were pulled back with a headband adorned with lace that fell over her eyes. But most notably, she had on a seductive grin that invited all to feast on her irradiating presence. 

Every eye in the bar was on her now. Peter stood behind the newcomers with his mouth hanging open. Even Louis had stopped serving to watch the scene unfold. Only Billy dejectedly recognized that Remmick had also come in behind May.

The two other couples in the party split off to a poker game and an open table. Remmick drifted off somewhere in the back shadows of the speakeasy to keep an eye on his new followers. May approached the bar at her own pace, soaking in the attention.

“Sorry I’m late, Louis.” Her voice was free of remorse.

Louis was too dumbfounded to be upset. “You doing alright tonight, May? Who’s that you came in with?”

“Those are just some friends in town for the night.” She gave him a sharp smile. “And I’ve never been better.”

May started serving up drinks like it was what she was born to do, smiling, flirting, laughing. Every guest she interacted with was enraptured, men and women alike. Louis kept glancing over at her with bafflement. It was almost like the old May had suddenly returned tenfold.

A member of the mysterious group approached the band on the front stage and whispered something in the ear of the piano player. Their hands slipped into each other’s in a quick exchange of cash and the piano player nodded. Remmick watched this from the back of the bar with a faint look of mischief, secretly manipulating the interaction, then playfully glanced at May.

The band was only seven notes in when May feigned a look of indignation across the room at Remmick, after fourteen notes she was up on the bar, and by the time the lyrics began she was free.

 “Hey, I remember ya.”

Remmick’s attention suddenly diverted to the man standing in front of him and his mood soured. “And I remember you, as well, Billy.”

“Ya came in with May, right?” Billy pointed towards the dancing figure on the bar. “Boy, I ain’t seen her like this in months.”

Remmick met the small talk with unamused silence.

“Anyhow,” Billy continued sheepishly. “I saw ya come in and just wanted to come over and apologize for last time. I’ve came to see I’m a bit of a sap when I drink. I’ve been cuttin’ back lately.” 

It was true, Billy’s eyes were clear now and his hands were vacant of their normal spiked beverage.

“I heard you’ve been lookin’ after May.” Remmick replied.

“Yeah, yeah. Well, as much as she’d let me. I’ve just been worried about her since… you know.” Billy glanced back at her again. “Say, not that it’s my business, but she your girl?”

Remmick also looked at May. He was pulling a few strings since she was freshly turned and needed some time to adapt to the cravings before being let loose, otherwise the place would have been a bloodbath by now, but the fire that burned inside her was organic.

“No one holds that woman.” Remmick said proudly.

Billy nodded, partially understanding. “Well, I’m glad May seems so happy with ya here. And hey, ya should let me buy ya a drink sometime as part of my apology.”

“I appreciate that, but we’re actually leavin’ town tonight.”

“Oh,” Billy said with surprise. “How long y’all gonna be gone?”

“Awhile. You’ll probably be long gone by the time we come back.”

Billy chuckled. “Well, I ain’t plannin’ on goin’ anywhere else anytime soon. Hell, I’ll probably die in this town.”

“I know.” Remmick’s eyes flickered on him. The look made Billy take an uneasy step back. 

“Well, ya take care of her, then,” Billy said reluctantly. “Good luck.”

Remmick nodded and Billy wandered back into the crowds. The song had also ended and Remmick decided May had her time to say her goodbyes. 

Not a soul in the busy bar noticed the group of six look at each other in perfect unison. Only a few noticed them slip back out of the speakeasy one-by-one. 

It would just be a few minutes until Old Mike turned to discover a half-dozen bottles of Irish beer had been dropped off on the stool next to him. 

Then, it took about a half-hour for Louis to curse and realize he was working the bar alone again, followed by another half-hour until his discovery of a set of car keys in the cash register and a note that said ‘Sell it and use the cash for the baby - M’.

For Billy, it was a few days before he made a trip out to the abandoned farmhouse to confirm Remmick had been telling him the truth. The door was unlocked and most of the items in the home had been left behind, including a shotgun laying on the kitchen table.

But for May, the quest for revenge began the second she stepped out of the bar.

Chapter Text

The man with the pencil-thin mustache drunkenly stumbled out of the speakeasy. His two almost equally intoxicated comrades followed closely behind. They were somewhere in south Texas, he wasn’t sure where at this point, nor did he care. He was glad they would be out of there in the morning with the suitcases of stolen cash they’d left back in the hotel. All of these places had started to look the same to him. Dusty buildings, dusty people, everything was so fucking dusty. Even the dames were dusty.

Part of his sour mood was just because none of the women the last few nights had been worth a second look. Probably for the best, he had to be on good behavior since their stunt with those two broads a couple of weeks ago had landed them in the papers and identified them as robbery suspects from that wealthy couple they’d held at gun point back in Memphis. The attention had spurred their trip out of the country and this dusty, women-less shithole was their last skip of the stone until the border.

The three men joked and walked under the shadows of overhangs along the closed businesses. Raunchy laughter bounced off of the darkened windows and then faded off into the void of night. They were just stepping into an empty intersection when someone called out to them.

“Can I interest you boys in a drink?”

The men stopped, bumping into each other as they were startled by the voice that seemingly came from the darkness itself. A woman stepped out from a recessed entryway, still little more than an outline in the deepened gloom cast by the building.  

“The hell ya doin’ out here this time of night, lady?” the man in front asked. He was intrigued in his drunken state, but he also kept one hand on the pistol tucked on the side of his belt under his coat.

“I’m sorry, didn’t mean to scare you gentlemen. Just saw you all out here alone and thought you could use some company.” She slid her arm up the brick wall next to her. Her words dripped with temptation like sap from a split maple tree.

“Oh I see.” The man with the pencil-mustache removed his hand from the gun and sneered. It was just a prostitute, but maybe this would work out. He figured whores were better at keeping their mouths shut. “How much ya company run a man?”

“Three of you will cost extra. But maybe we can work out a deal.”

“A deal?” He licked his lips, his eyes running up and down her form. “I like the sound of that.”

“So, you got a name?” The woman’s voice asked as the man slowly started walking towards her.

He chuckled and shook his head, the greasy leer never leaving his face. “Sweetheart, you ain’t need a name for this kinda deal.”

“Well, you were sure insistent on getting mine back in Mississippi.”

The man halted his approach and cocked his head. “We’ve met before?”

It was now that May allowed herself to step out into the streetlights. Her pale skin reflected the artificial glow like it was its own light source. She wore a burgundy dress fringed with black that matched her dark red lips, picked out special for the occasion. Her eyes were shadowed by the contours of her face, but they had an disquieting intensity about them.

The man looked at her with uncertainty. She looked familiar, a fine enough thing like her would have made an impression, but he couldn’t quite place her among the women he’d been involved with recently and it had been over a year since they’d been in Mississippi.

“I’m not surprised you don’t remember someone you thought you’d left for dead,” she said coldly.

“Boss,” whispered one of the counterparts behind the frontman. “That’s that bitch we beat up in the car. The one that stabbed ya.”

Pencil-mustache’s eyes went wide and his hand moved back to his gun. His partners already had drawn their weapons.

“How did ya find us?” he demanded.

May snickered maliciously, no longer feigning seduction now that the prey had been lured in. “Well, when you leave a trail of hell, it’s easy for the devil to follow.”

She smiled, exposing rows of inhuman fangs. The way her head shifted and caught the light caused her eyes to burn red even in the darkness.

The three men yelled out in surprise. One man in the back pushed pencil-mustache aside to step forward and unloaded two shots into May. She yelped and fell to her hands and knees, her head hanging as a small bit of blood and saliva strung down from her mouth.

The men hesitantly stood their ground, still in disbelief of what they thought they had seen, waiting for her to succumb to her injuries. Instead, May slowly sat back and looked up at them. She flinched as two more shots rang out and pierced her chest. Blood flowed from the holes in her body, but she seemed unfazed.

“Now, is that any kind of way to treat a lady?” she asked, flashing a quick, sharp grin.

“Oh shit. Run!” One of the men shouted. 

May leapt at the man that had shot her, knocking him to the pavement before he could get out another trigger pull. She came down on top of him and tore into his neck with pointed teeth, ripping him open down to the windpipe. The man’s shriek turned into a gargle of blood and flesh as she lapped at the liquid that flowed freely from his wound. 

She got her fill from the first man and rose, regarding her latest victim with an expressionless, bloodstained face while he grabbed at the void in his neck in a dying panic. He was still looking up at May in shock when she stepped away to go after the others, leaving him to suffocate and bleed out slowly on the street rather than finishing the job. No mercy would be granted this night. Their suffering would heal her.

The other two men had taken off and split up a ways down the road, trying to put distance between themselves and the monster behind them. One of them darted down an alley between buildings. He had turned to glance behind him when he unexpectedly slammed into someone. 

The running man flew backwards, skidding on the paved stones below along with the gun that had fallen from his hand. Disoriented, he looked up at the person he had run into. He wasn’t expecting to see a male creature with red eyes and menacing smile beaming down at him.

“No, no, no. Please don’t kill me!” The man pleaded as he kicked and drug himself on his back towards his gun. 

Just as he reached for the weapon, a clawed hand wrapped around his arm. The man turned to see May looming over him. She looked up at Remmick and smirked as she snapped the man’s wrist in half. Remmick smiled back while the man screamed in pain. She then pulled the fractured limb towards her and sank her fangs into his bicep. The man feebly beat at May’s back with his uninjured arm until Remmick grabbed it and joined in the feast. 

When the second man was sufficiently weakened, May stood to let Remmick handle what was left of him. She knew Remmick would also return to her first casualty to ensure he didn’t come back.

May had one more person to take care of. She had saved the best for last.

—

Pencil-mustache had ran just past the edge of the town with a plan to loop back further down where he had a clear shot of the hotel. He had felt exposed in the dark open streets and slipped into a corn field where he hoped the tall stalks would provide some concealment. The distant screams of his partners had gone silent but still echoed in his mind.

Now he quietly moved between rows, gasping to catch his breath and looking over his shoulder every few steps. As he crunched through the narrow paths of corn he realized the field may have been a mistake. Every shadow cast by the moon was a demon’s hand coming to collect him, every shuffled breeze was the devil’s breath hovering over his neck, every path between the cornrows that ended in blackness was a doorway to hell, waiting to pull him in.

The man stopped mid-stride. He swore he had heard a whisper. But now, as he stood still, there was only the sound of leaves brushing against one another as the wind picked up. He took another step. Again, he thought he heard a quiet voice partially masked by the crunching of his feet. 

He started walking again, quickly now, and the voices picked up their frequency. Now he was running, darting between rows, lost in the field with blind hysteria. The murmurs grew in volume the faster he moved. He whimpered as the leaves whipped at him, swearing some of them felt like fingers wrapping around his arms. They knocked the pistol from his hand, but when he turned to try to retrieve it the voices drove him forward in terror.

As he ran down a cleared section of corn, he saw the lights of town and relief overcame him. However, the hope was short-lived as May descended in front of him. Although seemingly impossible, he swore she floated down from the sky. 

He spun around to escape back into the corn, but everywhere he looked he saw shadowed figures standing among the stalks. An array of red, gold, and white eyes reflected back at him. 

He turned to May. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t know what ya were.”

“That shouldn’t have mattered,” May replied, her face and torso soaked in fresh, shining blood. She watched with satisfaction as the man trembled.

“You right. I—I’ll change. I’m leavin’ the country and I’ll never come back. I swear—I swear I’ll never touch another woman,” he said desperately. “I got a lot of money. I can make ya rich if ya want. I’ll give every penny to ya.”

In the blink of an eye she was on him. She brought her hand down and slashed at his face. But this wasn’t like last time, her claws split open his skin and nearly blinded him. The man dropped to his knees screaming as blood streamed from his jawline. 

May grabbed the man by his throat to lift him to her face. “I don’t want your money and I don’t want your false promises,” she hissed over his anguished cries. “I just want you to feel what I felt back then before I end your worthless life.”

She tossed him several feet in the air across the clearing. The man crashed down onto dry, broken stalks. One of the stalks punctured his clothing and tore into the flesh on the back of his thigh. He cried out as he lifted his leg from the embedded stem, feeling the blood trickling down his pants.

“What’s wrong? You said you wanted to show me a good time,” she called after him while he rolled over and tried to limp away from her. “I’m having a real good time now. Aren’t you?”

Sharp searing pain suddenly ran down his back as something raked open his layers of clothes and skin. He fell forward onto his stomach, groaning through his teeth into the dirt. May stood over him and delicately licked the blood from her talons. The man crawled from her, dragging himself along the ground in what he knew was a hopeless attempt at escape. He muttered aimless prayers under his breath asking to be saved. 

A new voice came from the cornrows. “Interestin’ choice of last words for a man such as yourself.” 

A pair of boots stepped into the broken stalks in front of pencil-mustache’s line of sight. He shakily looked up, still barely able to see. His gaze went higher until it landed on Remmick’s fiendish face.

“What—what are you?” Pencil-mustache’s voice was weakened with horror and pain.

Remmick smiled. “Well, since you’re apparently a prayin’ man, to some we might be salvation.” He held out his spindly hands in a sort of offering. “Just not yours.”

May nodded and Remmick released the companions that had been eagerly waiting at the edge of the clearing. They lunged towards the man on the ground. He screamed as they descended upon him, literally ripping him apart to get to his blood, ensuring there would be nothing left of him to turn. 

Remmick stood to the side and watched the content expression on May’s face as she took in the carnage.

Not everyone was meant for this life, he had learned that by witnessing the loss of so many of his kind through the years, but seeing the way May was now, bathed in blood and moonlight, it was apparent how naturally this all came to her. 

He knew he didn’t control her, her soul wasn’t trapped, it was where it was meant to be — connected with his. Her presence had given him a new purpose and stripped away that loneliness he had initially recognized in her as a mirror of his own grief. It stirred forgotten feelings of tenderness within him that he was still getting re-accustomed to. But he had time. Plenty of it. He looked forward to that time for once.

Sensing Remmick’s thoughts on her, May returned his gaze. In that moment, peace washed over both of them.

Chapter Text

Epilogue 

The late-autumn bonfire licked at the night sky. May watched the small glowing cinders spit out from the tips of the flames and drift down like a fiery rain to where the six of them gathered around its base. The shadows cast by their congregation melded with the towering pines encircling them.

Remmick had brought the group into a forest clearing to pay respects to one of his old traditions on the last day of October. He stood at the edge of the darkness a short distance away from where the rest of the company stood or sat on logs, his somber face half-hued in orange and half-shadowed. As much as May wanted to go to him, she knew to give him space when he fell into these moods.

It had been a little over three years since May had left Mississippi with Remmick and the others. They had traveled more slowly since Texas, though not entirely without purpose. There were no secrets now and she knew Remmick still quietly sought out the boy, or even another like him, since May hadn’t had a vision since he turned her. 

The search might have upset her when she was fully human, but sharing his memories had made her better understand his desires. While May had ran from a past that smothered her, she had seen how Remmick’s had been ripped from him over the centuries. It was ingrained in him to preserve what little he had left. She could presently sense him trying to pull fragments of his history into recollection. This was one of those nights where he was more haunted by it than usual, but something else about the evening also unsettled May.

Although the chill in the wind had no bearing over her anymore, another sensation had begun to prickle at her skin. There were many new feelings — or lack thereof — she had adapted to since she had changed, but this one was different. The air felt heavy, almost stretched, like a force was pushing against it. It was reminiscent of something she thought she had left behind in her old life, though her present awareness of it was stronger, more raw. 

She looked at Remmick as he stared silently into the fire and saw the smoke and shadows shimmering around him. Their eyes met and she glanced down at the banjo at his feet without saying a word. The others watched in reverie, eyes reflecting with unearthly tints, while he slowly bent down to pick up the instrument.

May inhaled as the first note struck her like a wave that ran through her core. The rest hadn’t taken long after that, Remmick had maybe gotten two verses in when the veil split open around her. The other side came spilling out as if it had been silently waiting to be set free. 

Figures in costumes and cloth masks decorated with animal furs moved around the bonfire. The spirits exchanged breads and fruits and tossed sacrificial animal bones into the flames. Some of them danced, some gathered around one another to share tales amongst themselves. The sounds of flutes and harps and foreign whispers that hinted of stories of ghosts and gods and fairies floated through the air.

Remmick played on, his mouth agape, eyes wide and glimmering with remembrance. The other companions all rose and May stood and watched in disbelief as Remmick’s ancestors surrounded them.

A woman stepped forward between Remmick and May. Her face was masked, but the tempestuous blue eyes that peaked through the fabric and the long brown hair that fell down her back brought back the image of the woman by the sea. She looked at Remmick first. They held each others’ gaze with a wistful quiet, lost in a time long past. Then she turned to May; the two women regarded each other with admiration for a moment before the woman nodded and stepped away into the otherworldly gathering. 

As the woman departed, Remmick and May’s eyes locked again. She sensed that, for the first time since they had been linked, that he felt whole. May moved to him, draping her arm around his back and resting her head on his shoulder as he strummed the banjo. He leaned back into her with silent gratefulness. They stayed that way for hours, watching the celebration into the night.

And so began the longstanding custom. Once a year on Samhain, when the veil was thinnest between the living and the dead, May brought Remmick’s people back to him.

—

May had spent much of her life suffocated by the complacent comfort of small towns. Clarksdale was never a found home for her, it was just where she had reached the point she was so inexplicably lost she could go no further. She had hoped to just catch her breath and move on, but she needed a reason to do so. 

Now, with limitless time and with her eternal love by her side, the world had opened itself up to her. The next few decades with Remmick were spent traveling North America. They listened to the reports of the atomic bomb being dropped from the radio of a cafe in San Francisco in 1945, awed over the commercial planes flying overhead in Las Vegas in 1953, watched their first drive-in movie in Toronto in 1958, and witnessed man land on the moon on a tv in a late-night diner in Mexico City in 1969.

May and Remmick adapted their styles as trends changed through the years, but their physical youth remained, and their connection and love for one another grew. It was present in the subtle eye contact when they were amongst others, the light touch of a hand while they admired incredible natural landmarks, a suggestive dance in a smoky club when the mood was right. 

Of course, they shared in their darkness as well, bathing in the blood-soaked afterglow of a recent kill, often making love in its ecstasy. Remmick consistently found himself in awe of May’s strength and beauty, particularly finding her irresistible after they had fed.

The company changed overtime as well. They lost one of the couples they traveled with to a sunrise in New York in the 1950s. The second couple eventually parted ways for their own endeavors a few years later. Occasionally, May and Remmick would find new companions that caught their interest. However, by the last couple of decades of the 19th century they traveled alone more than with others, but never did May and Remmick leave each other’s side.

They returned to Mississippi just once in the late-1980s. It had been a calling that May couldn’t quite shake. The feeling of standing in the yard of the farmhouse where they first met was indescribable. The home had broken down long ago, the roof weathered and collapsed in on itself. May joked if she had repaired it earlier that it might still be standing, but she was not sad to see it in this state, the home had been nothing more than an enclosure for her grief. It was a metaphor for the life she had abandoned and there was no longer a need for its walls and roof to protect her. 

They ventured into the town cemetery and found the graves of Louis and Sally, passed some decade before. A couple of rows over they also found the headstones of Billy and his wife, both more recently departed from the earth. 

May wondered about her own death sometimes. Although she was invisible to it in the moment, eventually she assumed it would catch up to her, whether in the blazing fires of the sun, at the hands of another, or as the world itself caved in. She neither embraced it nor feared it, only accepted it as a an inevitability and planned on living life fully for its new experiences until that time came, as it had came for her old friends.

Surprisingly, Louis’ Drug Store was still standing, slightly renovated but still mostly unchanged through the years. May wondered if Louis’ son or grandson was running it. Of course, the speakeasy below it appeared to be nothing more than a cellar now. Although, in her mind she saw the ghost of Peter opening the door to let in an eager group of young people, ready to celebrate a rowdy night out in 1932. 

May wouldn’t go behind the building of the old speakeasy, that past had been laid to rest. In the same way, she had no interest in returning to see her childhood home in Illinois.

It was with this thought of home that she turned to Remmick. He stood beside her in the dark street, as he had for the past fifty years. He knew the question before she asked, not for the first time, and likely it would not be the last. 

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

In the early-1990s, May and Remmick found themselves walking down the neon-lit streets of Chicago. They leaned on one another, laughing about a recent misadventure. The notes of live music echoed out of the doors of the venues and onto the street around them where it mixed with the excited voices of bar hoppers and the noise of street traffic.

May was admiring the towering buildings above them when she realized Remmick had stopped some distance back. She backtracked to him, but he barely noted her presence. He was transfixed on the sounds coming out of one of the dive joints. It was the deep soulful voice of an older man singing over the tune of a bluesy guitar. May knew this was the voice of the boy, now an elderly man, that had slipped from Remmick’s grasp many years ago. 

The sign on the bar said Pearline’s.

“Do you want to go in?” May asked him.

Remmick turned to her, stirred from his trance. He thought about the countless years spent trying to relive his past, a time centuries ago before suppression had crushed his spirit and the country he once knew, but May had helped him understand mournfully that time was gone. Instead, it was time to live for the present. 

Perhaps someday he would build a new people, but for now, May was enough. Hundreds of years of struggle had been untwining themselves from him as these realizations grew. The voice in the blues bar no longer drew him in as it once had.

“No,” he said with assurance. “There’s nothin’ in there for me.”

Remmick leaned into her ear to whisper a new confession, one he hadn’t been ready for in nearly a hundred years. “Let’s visit my home next.”

May smiled.

May and Remmick walked away hand-in-hand under the lights of the city, and above that the sparkle of the unchanging stars and moonlight that watched over them. Nothing else held them in the moment, not even time.