Chapter Text
The town held an open-air farmer’s market every Saturday morning. Today, if one looked up in the trees and squinted hard enough, they’d see something rather strange: a bat perched right-side up in broad daylight, atop some leaves, notably avoided by the crows and magpies that also massed around the town square.
Below, amongst the swirling crowd, stood a rose-haired woman with a crossbow, talking animatedly with one of the sellers, occasionally laughing or leaning forward to jokingly threaten them. Apo stared down, ignoring the swelling of longing within her and the swelling of hunger and the scent that made her heart leap and the scent that made her salivate
She already knew Cherri hadn’t received her letters; so Cherri didn’t know she was already back. She still expected Apo to return once the six months were up. She’d still be counting down the days.
She wouldn’t be expecting… this.
Apo didn’t want to look at themselves. The journey back had given them time to think, the last thing they’d needed. She’d realized she’d done the exact same thing she did in Fernsfield all over again; she had run from the blood, run from the slaughter, run from her duty. Except this time, her punishment wasn’t to be banished to a post far away, where the Captain had to have known the rumors about Oakhurst, he lied to me about what I’d find there, he hoped I’d never return. This time, her punishment was something she’d lost the chance to take back.
Cherri turned her head to gaze at the trees with her good eye, and for a second it felt like she was staring right at Apo. Apo flinched away, hoping desperately that the leaves hid her form. She could feel herself slipping, and the tenuous control she had over her powers told her she couldn’t stay like this for much longer. So she shut her eyes and flew away, hoping against hope that no pang of recognition would come to her love’s heart.
—
The afternoon and evening passed in a haze.
Apo’s cabin in the forest wasn’t their proudest creation. They’d always had a knack more for brick and stone than wood and cloth, but due to the temporary nature of most military outposts, they’d grudgingly gotten used to working with those. Since Oakhurst, though, they had gained an appreciation for wood. It had an earthiness, an aliveness the cold stone did not.
Or maybe the stone just reminded her too much of the castle. Of those damn beacons.
She hunted in the forest each night, her enhanced senses helping her avoid the sparse human habitations that dotted the area. Sometimes she would hear wolves, but they shied away from her.
Even an apex predator will avoid a monster.
The label she’d shrugged off at the time, she couldn’t really deny now. Once she’d left Oakhurst, without her determination to make it out or her lust for revenge, she couldn’t ignore the hunger. She’d borne a vain hope that in keeping herself weak, drinking little enough blood that her claws were just nails, perhaps it might recede. That she could be what she’d been during those first days, ravenous and tortured but more or less herself as she used to be.
But it didn’t go away. Her body craved not just the blood, but the strength she’d gained from it, the vampiric power she’d indulged in so long while justifying it as necessary to make it home. She hated to admit it, but she felt wrong without it now, so deeply pained each time she noticed her claws were missing, every time she lacked the strength to leap fifty meters. Yet giving in to the hunger held no peace. It felt like an old wound reopening, a reaffirmation that she’d been cut off from her humanity.
The silence in her mind echoed the words the humans had said to her, the accusing stares of the people she’d wanted so desperately to call friends. The inner walls of her cabin bore the marks of claw and axe, from the times she couldn’t take it anymore and her aggression boiled over and she had to tear apart something, anything. Like the monster she had become. Like the monster they’d turned her into.
And she’d made damn sure she never forgot what she was. Across from the pile of leaves that composed her makeshift bed (she still couldn’t sleep anymore), she’d built a table. Atop that table, next to her sloppy attempts to mend the dress Cherri had made her, lay five bottles of crimson blood she’d collected during hunts. She’d almost made a game of it this past month, spending whole afternoons staring at it, feeling the curdling disgust and fear from an ever-smaller part of her, and the screaming thirst from the monster she knew would eventually win.
But tonight, her trance broke as the darkness within her leapt. She felt a soaring feeling she’d not felt since Oakhurst, one she’d hoped to never feel again.
“No,” her hoarse, out-of-practice voice rasped out. “No, no, no, no, no.” She could feel it, pulling her, a disgusting cry of joy from her instincts, that another human being had become one of her kin.
Pull yourself together, the rational part of her mind said. If someone has been turned-
Then there was another vampire who turned them. Here, in this town where there shouldn’t be. One that might pose a threat to the people here.
One that might pose a threat to Cherri.
As if possessed, she stumbled around the cabin and grabbed her tools. An axe of iron; not silver, but it’d do for now. The makeshift stakes she had held every night until she found she wasn’t allowed to move it anywhere near her dead heart. After a moment of hesitation, she scooped up one of the bottles of crimson, just in case.
She ran out of the house and flew into the night.
—
Apo’s cabin wasn’t the only lodging in the forest; despite the logging companies moving in, the town still had many families of lumberjacks who lived out there during the dry seasons, until shortly before winter, when the wildlife became too dangerous. Her flight took her to a cottage closer to town, but still far enough away that she knew the gurgling screams she heard from within wouldn’t reach anyone else.
She froze in midair, unsure what to do next. As a vampire, she couldn’t enter unless invited, but it didn’t sound like the residents were in a state to do so, and even if she tricked the attacking vampire, it wouldn’t count. So she needed to lure the vampire outside.
“Hey!” she yelled, shifting out of her bat form and floating to the ground. She tried to think of something else to say, something clever that might catch the vampire’s attention. “Uh… hey you.”
The noises inside the house stopped, and she heard footsteps. The door opened, revealing a pale white-haired woman in an ornate beige dress, eyes red and glowing in the dark. “Oh,” the woman said. “Sorry, I don’t intend to share.”
“You turned someone,” Apo spat.
“And if I did? If this is your territory, you’ve done an awful job defending it. And besides, little fledgling…” The vampire straightened up, eyes narrowing. “You look too starved to be mouthing off to me.”
Apo threw aside her axe, then pulled the bottle of crimson from her belt. She held her nose and downed it all at once. She no longer retched at the taste, yet still felt sick at the sudden warmth, at the primal joy that shook her form.
The other vampire scowled. “Seriously? You call yourself a vampire, yet you can’t even enjoy blood?”
Apo laughed bitterly. “I get that a lot.”
“Leave. Now.” The older vampire stepped out the door, claws at the ready.
Well, that wasn’t the plan, but… whatever gets her out of that house. Her fingers ached as her own claws grew; not as long as this pretender’s, but sharp enough to do what she needed. The strength flowing through her demanded to be unleashed.
When Apo had been forced through basic training, it was obvious to all she wasn’t fit for the army. She’d retched at the sight of blood, her hands shook whenever she held a gun, and she chafed under her superiors’ orders whenever she didn’t agree, which was often. But one thing she’d been known for, that gave her a reputation around the battalion, was dueling; specifically, sizing up an opponent’s stance and approach. Sometimes this was bad, because she could tell beyond a doubt when she couldn’t win. Like that night, when I faced Scott.
But from the other vampire’s swagger as she approached, it was clear she was no Scott. Nor an Owen, or even a Pyro. And Apo was no longer the conflicted human they’d been back then.
Apo lunged forward and took first blood, raking both of her enemy’s arms with her talons. The other vampire fell back, screeching in pain, and then Apo was on her, tearing chunks of flesh with her claws and her teeth. The mass underneath her shifted and she hit the ground as a flock of bats tried to bite her and wriggle away.
She growled and snarled, swiping at them, eyes catching one that moved with too much purpose to be a wild animal. She leapt and shredded one of its wings, sending it spiraling to the ground where it turned back to its humanoid form, crouched down, red eyes glowering up at her.
“You have no idea who you’re-”
Apo didn’t let her finish that sentence. She had no time to think, her adversary’s wounds were already closing. A month of pent up fear and aggression mixed with the rush of the blood she’d drank, and she allowed the monster out one last time please make this the last time.
Her world fractured into images.
Her quarry trying to escape into the house.
Her claws grasping flesh, tearing flesh. Her own flesh being torn.
Her claws breaking as the blood in her system ran low.
The other vampire standing over her, wounds steaming, rage in her eyes.
The axe on the ground behind her. The axe in her hand. The axe in her enemy’s head.
The stake in her enemy’s heart.
The scream in her own heart, a monster mourning the kin it had just killed with its own hands.
The long silence that followed the kill.
What have I done, the darkness in her screamed. Louder, far louder, than when she’d believed she’d killed Avid.
“Why do I have to care about killing a monster?” she rasped aloud. “Just because I’m one of them? I did what I had to.”
She was our kin. We’re a monster too.
A moan of pain from the house broke them from their trance. “Hey!” Apo yelled, stumbling over to the door. “I… can I come in? I need to help!”
No response. Curse this curse! They rounded the house towards one of the shuttered windows around the side. “Please! I want to help, but I can’t enter unless you say I can!”
“Please…” a hoarse voice said. “Please… protect her. My daughter…”
“I need permission to come in!” Apo tried their hardest not to let the desperate rage into their voice.
“It’s too late for me… but… she…”
Stop wasting my time! Did all that rambling count as an invitation or not? Apo decided to chance it, and ran back to the door. She took a deep breath, and pushed.
Her body allowed her to enter.
The cabin’s entrance was in disarray; tools scattered all over the floor, shoes thrown against the wall. On the far side, she saw stairs leading to the upper floor. And nearby, in a makeshift kitchen and dining room-
A middle-aged man and woman, now unconscious, bleeding out from wounds to their chest and neck. There was no saving them now, not without a doctor. Maybe with a blood transfusion-
No. Never again.
That sense of a new vampire wasn’t coming from them. She walked carefully up the stairs, stumbling a little as she felt some of the wounds on her arms close up. There were two bedrooms up there.
One of them had the door ajar, a trail of blood leading inside. Apo carefully stepped inside.
A blond girl, looking a few years younger than Apo, sat on a makeshift bed sobbing, back turned away from the door. Crusted blood adorned her neck, and from the slight pallor of her skin, Apo knew this was the new vampire she’d sought.
She grasped one of the two remaining stakes in her belt. The girl wasn’t a monster now, but she’d been damned to a life Apo didn’t wish on anyone. All of the vampires had been normal, themselves at first, but between the instincts, the thirst, and the way humans reacted to them, they’d all lost themselves. Even Shelby, even Drift. Even Apo herself.
It would be far kinder to spare this one that fate.
Apo stepped forward, stake at the ready. The girl turned to face them, eyes hollow, desperate, pleading, crusted blood on her lower face. Then, the girl spoke.
“I’m so hungry.”
Apo shut her eyes. Damn it.
She dropped the stake, and let the girl pull her into a hug.