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There was something about this lake that made it safe. Not in a cozy way, not because the water shimmered and sloshed in hushed tones, or because the trees parted enough for the moonlight to poke through. This lake was not safe in any way that lowered Owen’s guard. This lake was safe because it was dark, and nobody ever came here. The lake was safe because of its solitude. The humans always passed the lake by, but Owen was still ready for them to ruin it for him.
On the lake’s darkest side, under the silhouette of the trees where the moonlight couldn’t quite reach, Owen knelt by the water’s edge. Cold mud soaked through his pants onto his knees, as he washed his bandages in the shallows. He didn’t need the bandages for medicinal purposes anymore, so it didn’t matter that they weren’t cleaned in better water. He only used them to cover himself now.
Owen muttered angrily to himself and the water. He pretended his reflection was there, and he pretended to see that he looked like Louis. He had taken his hair out of its band so it fell around his shoulders and kept his face hidden in a curtain from the sides.
During the blood moon last night, Owen had caught Pyro talking to the townsfolk, working with them. He claimed to be afraid of Scott, claimed that Scott would do “terrible things” to Pyro, and sure, Scott was intimidating, but other than turning Pyro, Scott has done the man no harm. Doesn’t Pyro see? Scott has started a coven and let them into his home, he did not want to turn people just to kill them later.
Owen had also overheard Cleo talking to Legs. Cleo sure was interested in the cure, in the humans. They seemed to be playing both sides like Pyro, but that was more expected. Still, it hurt. Was Louis really the only person who was ever going to want to be Owen’s family?
“Owen?”
Clenching his hands around the bandages in the water, Owen turned his head to the left. The Doctor stood there, speak of the devil. Owen had been so distracted that the clumsy, foolish, cure-obsessed Doctor had snuck up on him.
“What do you want?” Owen asked.
“Are you alright?” The Doctor asked, stepping closer.
The Doctor wore his usual robes, stained now with tree sap and dirt. There was always a bump over his left hip where he kept a not-so-secret knife, but there was nowhere that Owen could see he might be hiding a stake. Owen turned back to the water, relaxing his claws again, and he continued to squeeze the dirt and blood out of his bandages. He was already cold, but the water was freezing, it was shocking and refreshing.
“Is anyone Oakhurst ‘alright?’” Owen asked.
The Doctor walked bravely to Owen’s side. “May I sit?”
“If that’s a risk you’re willing to take,” Owen said.
Owen stared forward, further out the lake. Vampires couldn’t drown, because they didn’t need the air. Sometimes Owen thought about swimming out there, taking in as much water as his lungs could bear, sinking to the bottom, and letting himself freeze from the inside out. It was a strange compulsion he had, one he didn’t know how to explain, but he was considering doing it in front of Legs. It would be priceless.
The Doctor took a moment to find a rock to drag over.
“Afraid of a little mud?” Owen asked.
“My robes are white.”
“Barely.”
“Okay,” Legs scoffed. “I’m doing my best, and I only have one pair.”
Everyone who came to Oakhurst seemed to have traveled light, and surely Legs had not been expecting to be doing so much surgery in a plain little town like this. Still, it was odd to Owen that Legs had only one pair of robes. Not very prepared or professional of him.
Even less professional of him was the fact that he was currently taking his robes off. Owen watched him with a raised brow, pausing in his bandage washing. The Doctor wore a collared dress shirt and a tie that always poked out, but Owen had never noticed much. The Doctor bunched the white-ish robes up into a ball, knelt in the mud next to Owen, then pressed the robes into the water.
“You couldn’t boil some water or something for this?” Owen asked.
“You’re not doing that either.”
“I don’t have to worry about sanitization, I’m a vampire.”
How strange to think. Sanitization used to be such a large part of Owen’s life. If he was not clean enough, people would not be near him, nor would they touch anything he touched, not even his coin. He used to wonder, if he had been more sanitary from a young age, would he have avoided his sickness altogether?
“They’re gonna get dirty again anyway,” The Doctor said. “This is a good start”
Owen lifted his bandages from the water and began wringing them out. The Doctor had sufficiently distracted him from his brooding and barely-begun plotting. Why was the man still doing this? Talking to Owen, sitting beside him as if they were friends—as if Owen hadn’t sliced up Avid and Drift yesterday morning and terrorized the town the same night.
The Doctor paused. “Owen?”
“What?” Owen turned to him, furiously squeezing water out of his bandages.
The Doctor’s eyes were caught on Owen’s forearm, where his sleeve was rolled up. Owen followed his eyes and was reminded, as per every time he took his bandages off, just how awful his skin appeared. Especially with those damned scars.
“What are those scars from?” The Doctor asked.
Owen looked back to his bandages and unfurled them a bit to see how well he’d washed them out. They needed another soak, so he dumped them back in.
“It was the bloodletting, Doc.”
Owen had a series of thin white lines across his inner forearm from a scarificator. The scarificator was a small tool with spring-loaded blades in it that was pressed against a person’s arm, then set off to slice through the skin quickly and “painlessly.” This scarificator was pressed particularly harshly against Owen’s arm.
“I—didn’t know you were serious about that,” Legs said quietly. “But I guess it was probably pretty common during your time.”
“Quite.”
Owen’s parents were gone early from his life, but not before Owen had his first few appointments. At first, his parents weren’t on board with the whole bloodletting idea, but, as Owen’s skin got worse, they were willing to try anything. As his skin deteriorated, so did their love for him, their care.
“You make it sound like you did it more than once,” The Doctor said, hesitantly going back to washing his robes.
Owen scoffed. “When the fancy little machine didn’t work, they had to try more… potent techniques.”
Owen displayed his other forearm, whereupon there was a long, raised, white scar from a deep blade wound. The Doctor frowned deeply and brought his hand under Owen’s forearm, like he was going to cup it. Owen pulled his arm away and went back to dunking and squeezing his bandages.
“That’s awful,” Legs said. “I’m sorry. If it wasn’t obvious… we don’t do that anymore.”
Owen glanced at Legs curiously. “Never? Not even the leeches?”
“There’s no science behind it. Losing blood is never good for you.”
The leeches were the first method Owen was ever subjected to, when he was a kid. It was after his parents died that Owen took the risk of visiting doctors himself. That was when he met the scarificator.
“Did you ever have to try the leeches?” Legs asked.
Owen nodded. “When I was young.”
“How young?”
“Young enough that it only took one old man to hold me down.”
The Doctor made a soft, sad sound that drew Owen’s eyes back to him. The expression on Legs’s face was one of utter pity. Owen looked immediately away again—he had only said that to disturb Legs, but the Doctor’s reaction had, for some reason, gotten to Owen. It wasn’t the same pity Owen was used to—the looks that made him feel pathetic and dirty and useless—it was a look of regret. Regret as if Legs had been one of the bloodletting doctors.
“That shouldn’t have happened to you. I’m sorry.”
Owen rolled his eyes. “It’s not like you were the one to do it.”
“No, but, they were ‘doctors,’ they were supposed to help you. I’m sorry they didn’t.” The Doctor looked down at his soaked robes. “And I’m sorry I haven’t figured out how to help you yet.”
Owen’s hands stuttered to a stop around the bandages. “I thought the ‘cure’ was supposed to help me.”
“I’m not going to be another doctor that holds you down, Owen. If you don’t want the cure… then you don’t have to take it.”
Owen lifted his bandages from the water and began wringing them out again. When he didn’t reply, Legs went back to scrunching his robes in the cold water. He pulled the robes out after another minute, then started wringing them out too. Owen caught himself staring, but didn’t stop himself.
“So you’re just giving up?” Owen asked. Then, when Legs turned to him confusedly, Owen said, “The cure. You’re done trying to cure me?”
“I thought the cure would help you. I—I don’t know what it will mean for you, if everyone else becomes cured and you don’t. You’ll be stuck here. But I won’t make you do it.”
Owen began rolling up the bandages. He would hang them to try somewhere later. And wherever that ended up being, he would take the time to process how little anger he was feeling toward Legs. This was not normal for Owen. Legs was a human, there should be plenty of anger—many instincts to rip him apart and drain him or turn him—but it wasn’t there.
“Why did you think it would help me?” Owen asked.
“I thought the hunger would have been miserable. I thought having to kill things constantly was damaging your mind—I still think it is, honestly. I thought—I think—that the bloodthirst makes you paranoid, tired, and lonely.”
“I enjoy the killing, Doc.”
“I… don’t think that’s true.”
Owen glared at Legs as he finished wringing out his robes.
“I think,” Legs started cautiously, “you like feeling strong, you like feeling healthy—because you can run and jump and lunge while you’re hunting.”
Owen scoffed. “Not true.”
“And you like reminding yourself that you’re a vampire. It’s a comfort to you, because it reminds you that you’re not sick anymore… and it reminds you of him.”
“... No.”
Oh, but it was true. Owen was tired, and with every kill, animal or human, he grew even more tired. Truly, he didn’t want to be doing any of this. Yes, he wanted revenge for Louis, but he couldn’t leave Oakhurst, and he couldn’t stake himself, so all he had left to do was kill and live and see what happens.
“I won’t make you take the cure. I do think it would be good for you, but vampirism was obviously its own kind of cure for you, and I don’t want to take that away. You’ve had enough taken from you.”
Owen blinked, at a loss for words, and watched Legs fold his wet robes up and hold them in his hands—which must have been frozen.
“But if you won’t take the cure—and you can always change your mind—at least let me help you in another way.”
“What’s that?” Owen asked.
Legs stood up and held his hand out. “Some company?”
Owen stood slowly, without taking Legs’s hand. He backed a step away, trying to muster his usual anger or disgust, but all he felt was fear. Fear and nostalgic sadness.
“Hey,” Legs said softly, “I’m not—I’m not asking for you to betray the vampires, I’m asking you to do yourself a favour. Have a friend.”
“I have friends,” Owen hissed. “Scott and Shelby and—” Pyro and Cleo had betrayed him this very day.
“Scott is using you to kill everyone and get out of Oakhurst, and all the fledglings are too afraid of you to tell you how they really feel about being vampires.”
Owen refused to consider any of that.
“So why aren’t you afraid of me?”
Legs finally lowered his hand, then used it to hold his folded robes together better. “I don’t know. I just don’t see a monster in you, Owen. I see someone who’s hurting, a lot, and I think everything you’re doing is only going to hurt you more.”
Owen clenched his jaw. “Louis deserves to rest.”
“If he really loved you, his ‘rest’ would come with yours.”
The second Owen felt a sting in his eyes, he turned his back to Legs.
“If Louis was as good of a man as you say he was,” Legs continued, “would he really want all of this bloodshed in his name? Is this what he would want you to be?”
Owen closed his eyes tightly, forcing a tear to roll down his cheek. Owen began stuffing his bandages into his pockets.
“Owen—”
In a fluttering cloud of bats, Owen disappeared.
**********
Every time Legs got a knock at his door, he tried to guess who it was going to be. It was as likely to be Avid as it was Abolish for very different reasons. Avid got hurt a lot and Abolish always had thoughts on their plan. It was late though. So late, that everyone in Oakhurst other than those patrolling the walls should be asleep. So maybe it was Pearl, she was a bit of a night owl.
Owen was on the other side of the door.
Legs gasped. “Oh my God.”
Owen had blood all over his face. Red splotchy patches around his eyes that trailed down his face, covering his cheeks and chin. Some of it was smeared over his eyebrows and temples.
“Are you okay?” Legs reached forward.
Owen stepped back, looking down at Legs’s outstretched hands. He looked awful, even for a vampire. It had been a full twenty-four hours since Legs had spoken to him, let alone heard anything about him. His bandages were back on, stained already with blood from having to hunt. But if the blood on his face was from hunting, he’d attacked something that fought back.
“Hey, just—come inside,” Legs said, stepping back to make room for Owen. “Quick, before someone on patrol sees you out there.”
As Owen walked in he seemed eerily unlike himself. Completely unconfident and sluggish, off. Once Legs had Owen inside, he closed the door and headed from window to window closing all the blinds. As he did so, Owen stood in the centre of the room, arms crossed, almost hugging himself.
When Legs finally stopped flitting around and faced Owen, he whispered, “Are you okay? Are you injured?”
Owen blinked, then raised his hand to his cheek, feeling under his eyes. “Vampires cry blood,” Owen said. “I forgot it was there.”
“Oh.”
So he hadn’t been hunting at all. And since Owen was so pale, the blood stained his face easily. He had obviously been crying a lot and wiping harshly at the tears for the blood to be everywhere. As much as it had startled Legs to see, he was glad Owen had forgotten to clear it away before he showed up.
“What happened?” Legs asked, coming closer, but knowing not to reach out.
“I think,” Owen looked at the floor, “you may have been right.”
Legs had said a lot of things at the lake in a very desperate attempt to get through to Owen. While he believed all of them, he wasn’t sure what Owen was talking about.
“I don’t think Louis would be very proud of me,” Owen whispered.
Legs startled, putting his hands out as two red drops fell from Owen’s eyes. “He wouldn’t want you to hurt people for him.”
Owen shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t.”
Legs stepped closer, hoping Owen would take his hands. “And he would just want you to be alright.”
“Do you think he could still love me?”
Legs bit his tongue to keep a straight face. He didn’t need to go scaring Owen off with any emotional expressions. Owen was flighty, defensive, and emotionally overwhelmed, constipated, and inept.
“Yes, absolutely,” Legs said. “And I think he’ll be proud of you for understanding what you’re seeing now.”
Owen snuck a look at Legs’s hands. “Even after everything I’ve done?”
“I think so.”
Hesitantly, Owen placed his hands in Legs’s. This was a momentous occasion and Legs would not mess it up by being too rash.
“Let’s get all this blood off of you,” Legs gently tugged Owen toward the sink.
There was no functional running water in Oakhurst, but there was infrastructure for it, which had not been used in a very long time. Nobody here knew how to fix it, or if it could even be fixed. Their electricity was in the same state, which meant that they relied on fires and the rivers. It didn’t bother Legs much but it would be difficult if they were still stuck in Oakhurst when the winter came.
Owen leaned against the counter by the sink. Legs kept a bucket of water in his house and had some of it boiled in bottles. Legs retrieved a bottle of clean water, despite Owen not needing the sanitization, so he said before, and a cloth. He held the cloth over the sink, wet it, then reached toward Owen.
“Hey,” Owen hissed, ducking backwards.
“I’m just cleaning the blood away,” Legs said, pausing.
“I can do that.”
“You can’t even see it.”
Legs was the doctor, and he was going to take care of his patient. Owen may not have been injured, but the blood would be sticky and start to crack, it couldn’t have been comfortable. And this was the perfect opportunity to continue proving to Owen that he cared.
“Come on, it’ll be faster if you let me do it,” Legs said.
Owen rolled his eyes and nodded. Legs tried to keep it as professional as possible to avoid scaring Owen off. Legs held Owen’s shoulder with one hand and wiped the blood away with the other, being as gentle as possible around his eyes, but having to scrub a little bit over his eyebrows. Owen did not stop glaring at him, but that may have also been his resting face. When Legs was done, he tossed the cloth in the sink.
“Feel better?” Legs asked.
“Sure.”
“Now do you wanna tell me what you’ve been up to since we last spoke?” Legs leaned sideways against the counter, crossing his arms. “Nobody’s seen or heard from you.”
Owen rested a closed fist on the counter. “I was thinking. A lot.”
“And what conclusions did you come to?”
“Louis wouldn’t want me to hurt people,” Owen said. “So I won’t. Unless I have to.”
This was the greatest possible thing Owen could say other than an agreement to take the cure.
“That’s good news.” Legs smiled, at which Owen recoiled subtly. “In what case would you ‘have to?’”
“If anyone tries to turn me, or if anyone goes after Scott.”
Legs steeled himself and took a subtle breath despite how far his heart dropped. He had been hoping that Owen would want to be turned, would be willing, even, to help the humans convince the other vampires to turn as well. Still, Legs would not force him. It was, however, an issue that Owen was defensive over Scott. That was somewhat unexpected. They may need to kill Scott to turn the others, and that was far from Legs’s first choice of plan, but it was on the table.
“I understand,” Legs said. “But can I ask, why the concern for Scott?”
“It’s not concern, it’s honour. We’ve been in this together from the start, he built the coven I am now a part of. I won’t betray him, and I won’t let you take the gift from him.”
Since when did Owen have honour? It was not honourable to kill people. Well, maybe it was the act of killing Oakhurst that Owen thought to be honouring Louis. Maybe he had always had honour. Misguided, bloody honour.
“We can’t get out of Oakhurst until everyone is on the same side,” Legs said. “Turning people who don’t want it is hurting those people.”
Owen squeezed his eyes shut and looked at the floor. “I know. I know.”
Did he? Did Owen finally understand? Had he always understood and ignored it?
“And none of the vampires can be cured while Scott is alive.”
Owen snapped his head back up. “I know.”
Legs clenched his jaw, trying to get a hold of himself again. He was focusing far too much on the future. If he wanted Owen’s trust, if he was going to help Owen, he needed to focus on what Owen needed. Owen had obviously come to him for some kind of… comfort?
“I’m sorry,” Legs said. “I shouldn’t be stressing you out like this right now.”
“I’m not stressed.”
Owen’s shoulders were hunched, his fist was tight where he rested it on the counter, he continually glanced past Legs at the door, and sometimes down into the sink where the bloody cloth lay. He was flighty and agitated, and likely a bit embarrassed.
“Why did you come to me?” Legs asked, before quickly adding, “I’m very glad that you did, but why?”
Owen turned away from Legs to lean backwards into the counter with both hands. Again, Owen was not injured, but he certainly looked in pain and exhausted.
“Because I don’t know what to do now. And I thought, maybe if I came to you, and told you that I was willing to listen, maybe, then you’d tell me what you want to do next.”
Legs could work with this.
“If you’re really serious about not hurting anyone anymore, I just need you to get the other vampires to stop turning people, and I need you to tell the townsfolk that you’re done hurting them.”
“They’ll just stake me right there.”
“No, they won’t—”
“Which might not be so bad at this point.”
Legs frowned. “Owen.”
Owen shrugged. “Scott doesn’t care too much about turning people, he just wants to leave. I don’t quite know why he did it to Pyro that night. I was just going to drain him and let him die. Scott turned Shelby, I imagine, because he was quite fond of her.” Owen lolled his head toward Legs. “If I’m going to convince him not to turn anyone, it’s going to have to be because we’ve found a way for him to stay a vampire and leave Oakhurst.”
Legs sighed. “Which is not possible.”
“But if everyone became vampires—”
“They don’t want that. We don’t want that.”
Owen sighed too. “So how do we decide who gets what they want, and who doesn’t?”
The problem was that if they gave the humans what they ‘wanted,’ Scott had to die. In fact, they were in so deep now that Pyro may also have to die to save Cleo. If they gave the vampires what they ‘wanted’ nobody had to die, but they would all be doomed to that hunger, immortal life.
“We start by talking.” Legs said. “We make peace, we stop fighting each other, and we talk.” He took one step closer to Owen, drawing his attention. “And I think, for the record… it might make more sense at this point to have everyone turned.”
Owen gaped, turning slowly toward Legs.
“But,” Legs continued, “we have to be absolutely sure that turning everyone does not make them—”
“Monsters.”
“That many vampires is a lot to feed. And,” Legs cringed, “if it’s the immortality someone’s afraid of, they can always be staked when they’ve had enough.”
That was Legs’s plan.
“As long as they have someone willing to do it,” Owen said. “You can’t stake yourself.”
“You can’t?” Legs asked.
Owen stared.
Oh.
“You can’t,” Owen said.
They stared at each other for another moment before Owen turned away. Legs was nearly compelled to ask Owen about it—about how he knew that vampires couldn’t stake themselves. And—and was he saying that because it really was a trait of vampirism? Or did Owen just not have the strength to stake himself when he tried?
“I will talk to the vampires.” Owen said. “I will tell them that I think we should meet with the humans. And—and I will tell the humans that I am done hunting them.”
“That’s all I ask,” Legs said. “Well, maybe one other thing.”
“What?” Owen scoffed.
“When you’re ‘thinking a lot’ again, and you go missing for a day, or when you feel like you don’t know what to do next, just come to me.”
Legs expected a glare, scoff, or a disgusted face, but Owen looked back at Legs with an unusually neutral expression.
“Alright,” Owen said. He then pushed off of the counter and headed toward the door. “I’ll let you know tomorrow what the vampires have said.”
Legs hated to see him leave so soon. He didn’t feel like he’d sufficiently helped. Owen had shown up covered in bloodied tears for God’s sake.
“You can stay, you know,” Legs said. “I don’t mind.”
Owen turned invisible and opened the door. “I’d hate to ask more of you.”
The door closed before Legs could insist Owen stay.