Chapter Text
The cobbled streets glistened with rain long past, fog swirled amongst the bare stones, rolling off the black water which choppily lapped at the docks.
Lilac eyes surveyed the landscape before him, the dirt, the grime – the sickening stench of disease and decay.
The latest plague had swept through London, leaving those who had survived mired in the scent of despair, their blood bitter, their souls empty.
He sniffed, wrinkling his nose – nothing this eve had caught his attention, not a single pump of a warm heart filled with life’s wine had appealed to him.
Bedraggled men with grisly beards unloaded cargo, a soft hum on their lips as they worked and Daemon pulled his Cloaks collar higher, shielding his face from the icy breeze which hissed and spat against his deathly pale visage.
His dead heart pulsed just the once in a reminder – he needed to feed. He had gone too long without sustenance, without the satisfying sounds of his teeth ripping into the soft gullet of an unsuspecting victim.
He had long accepted his nature.
Monster they called him.
Vampire, they whispered.
A flash of silver, a crimson red coat flowing tight over leather trousers tucked into thigh-high boots and his nostrils flared.
She was here again – searching for him, hunting for him. Intent on exacting vengeance for the death of her mother.
His sweet niece.
He licked his lips as his body came to life, her scent on the breeze intoxicating.
He would have her this night, feast upon her, devour her whole and make her his.
****
Above the rows of houses so closely knit together, he knelt into a crouch, a smirk playing on his lips as he watched her stalk the labyrinth of alleyways winding and twisting through Trafford Street. The faint clicking of horse hooves on cobbled stones clacked faintly in the distance as he followed silently above her.
Dodging smoking chimneys and gaps that no mere mortal could jump – he huffed, exacerbated by her quick pace.
He was always more prone to taking his time on a hunt but it seem she had no patience, his dear little hunter.
He was waiting for the perfect moment to make himself known. It had after all been close to fifteen years since she last saw him and he blew a wayward lock of his hair from his eyes.
On the day of her birth, he had decided that she must have been the most joyous babe he had ever encountered. Her violet eyes were wide and searching, never leaving his face as he had held her and he had grinned boyishly at the little girl in his arms.
As she grew and their bond deepened – he would be the one she ran to when he first stepped through the mansion doors. He would be the one she would whisper her secrets to in the dark of the night when dreams plagued her and rattled her to her core.
The love he felt for her, for his family at that time was indescribable. Nothing would stop him from protecting his niece from dangers far and wide.
He was her protector.
He snorts.
Or at least he had been until he was turned.
Monster, he hears once more on the breeze but he shrugs.
He has been isolated from his family for fifteen years. None have seen him and once the initial blood rage had passed – he had boarded a ship to Europe and never looked back.
But something kept calling him home.
A scent perhaps, a memory even.
The phantom feeling of tiny arms offering acceptance and unconditional love.
Whatever capacity he had for love he had killed himself long ago. He had bled and drained, murdered, and maimed thousands in the short decade and a half – any compassion he initially had at the start was now a distant memory.
Rhaenyra comes to a stop at an old bookshop, the closed sign swinging in the wind, clapping ominously against the wooden shutters and he tilts his head.
Curious, he jumped the thirty feet to the floor, landing nimbly and almost silently behind her, slinking back into the shadows.
He saw how she hesitated, her fingers twitching on the hilt of her sword before it moved to the blaster concealed at her back. Within a breath she had unholstered her weapon and levelled it to his heart.
He stayed still, the fact that he did not need to draw breath now feeling like a boon as her violet eyes narrowed, a sneer on her pretty face as she surveyed the shadows.
She couldn’t see him – and yet he felt the piercing gaze of her eyes at it struck true and straight into his core.
His fingers flexed, lilac eyes sharpening, blackened veins appearing in the hollows beneath his eyes as his thirst for her waged war against his higher thinking.
“Come out. Craven.” She snarls quietly and his heart pumps once more – the need to feed tingling up the back of his spine, the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing on edge and yet his blood rage quietens.
Her voice was a lullaby on the wind, it soothed him, nurtured the raging inferno of his chaos into a muted, dull thudding instead.
He blinked.
“Will you kill me, Little Huntress?” he drawls and his sensitive ears pick up the rapid change in her heartbeat, the thick swallow of nerves and how her lungs inflate with a hitched breath.
He steps from the shadows, his cloak flapping behind him so swiftly his movements blur briefly amongst the fog of the night and to her credit her arms do not shake as she holds him at gun point.
He sees the minute twitch of her fingers on the trigger and he frowns.
Would she kill him? Her uncle? Her family?
“I know who you are, monster! Death is too easy a punishment for you.” She growls and he suppresses a shiver.
He stalks towards her, slow careful steps, a wry smile on his face as he takes her in.
She was strikingly beautiful. As he always knew she would be. Trim, toned body; small waist, ample breasts enhanced by the synching of a tightened, laced corset. His eyes travelled the expanse of her long legs and another emotion he has long forgotten pushes to the surface.
Desire. Unbridled lust and he hardens in his low-slung breeches, the soft black Jersey mercifully long enough beneath his coat to hide the evidence of his want for her.
“Surely, we can come to some sort of arrangement, Princess.” He coos, a seductive drawl and he grins when he sees her eyes darken.
A Vampires lure was no small thing to scoff at. The trance he could place his most unwilling victims under with a mere cock of his brow, a tilt of his head, a flex of his finger...
All of the traits which came with his species was meant to lure, attract, appeal, and seduce. He knew he was beautiful – fog notwithstanding, here under the pale moonlight he know the shadows cast by his high cheekbones, the angular line of his jaw, the sensual curve of his lips would all appeal to her.
Which is why when she pulled the trigger – he had a mere fraction of a second for his eyes to widen and puff out a light laugh in shocked incredulity, before he disappeared into thin air. Materialising behind her, his hand around her throat, the other digging his nails into the plush leather of her corset, she shivers as the warmth of her skin soaks and seeps through to his cold, ageless, hardened body.
“That was unkind, niece.” He spits almost venomously as she attempts to dislodge his hold on her. Her blood is pumping at a rate where he can already envision how quickly it would flow over his lips, how he would moan at the droplets splattering against his bare skin down his chest.
“Rhaenyra...” he breathes huskily, nose burying in her tumbling silver locks.
Gods above, her blood sang to him.
A sirens call which urged him to gorge on her until the lights faded from her eyes, until every last drop had been swallowed in delicious torment.
“Niece? Surely you are mistaken monster. Perhaps the ages have addled your brains.” She curses him, voice harsh and unyielding.
A flurry of her arm brings her weapon up over her shoulder and when she fires once more, the windowpanes of the bookshop behind him shatter into shimmering shards of hardwood and he swiftly side steps and grips her wrist hard enough to elicit a gasp from her, rumbling in approval when the blaster drops to the ground.
He pins both of her arms behind her back and she screams her fury into the night. He continues to torment himself, inhaling her scent until his chest is heaving with exertion, loud pants in her ear.
The grip on his self-control is tenuous.
“Believe what you will, little niece. You are of my blood. I can smell the fire in your veins, the rage we share between us, our ancestry thick in our blood...” he purrs and she scoffs.
“If you are so taken by the smell of my blood vampire, bite me and be done with it. I tire of your conversation.”
The challenge in her voice, the strength as he battles against his restraint has his already straining cock pulse, and he groans, grinding against her unwillingly.
He could not help his nature. And he would certainly never apologise for it.
To his utter surprise and delight – she shrieks, her panic only now setting in when she feels the hard, heated lines of him pushing against the shapely curves of her ass.
“What....you can’t...you shouldn’t be able to...” she splutters, her nails biting and clawing into the flesh of his wrists and he is forced to wring another mewl of pain from her throat as he twists her arms to keep her from thrashing.
“Can’t?” His lust filled mind queries and he chuckles darkly into the shell of her ear. “Fuck, you mean? Oh, Princess...I think you can feel the evidence to the contrary.” He rolls his hips against her again and in his brief lapse of blissful sensation – she swings her head back and connects with his nose.
Dazed momentarily, he feels the sharp press of a blade to his stomach as she pivots and turns in his arms and he is so proud of her in that instant - that a preposterous grin splits his mouth wide open.
Whomever had taught her to defend herself – had taught her well.
“Why do you call me, niece?” She demands and the blade rips a tear into his jersey and he licks his lips at the threat leaving her kissable mouth. The blade presses into the cavity between his ribs and he is oh so tempted to see the reaction in her eyes should her step forward.
His blood rages, his want for her intensifies. Lilac eyes stare intently at her violet rimmed hues – he sees her burning curiosity, her hesitance to kill him until she had gained her answer. She licks her lips unconsciously and he could howl his delight at the sight to the moon.
She would kill him though – this much he was now sure of.
“Do you truly not remember the nights we spent together? Bed sheets hung over chairs to huddle ourselves away as we read the tomes of our family by flickering candlelight?” he steps closer and she instinctively pulls back when the blade pierces his skin, droplets of black blood running down the meat of the blade.
“You lie!” She hisses but he rolls his eyes and swipes a thumb over his chest, collecting the blood on the tip of his finger and she snarls when he lifts his hand, blade now at his throat but he cautiously runs his crimson red digit over her bottom lip, dead centre and slowly, and she leaps back in shock as the connection between them flared to life.
Her bodies instinct is to immediately lick the liquid from her lips and the mere sight of how that pink tipped tongue dips through his blood has him trembling want.
The thought of his blood inside her, coursing through her veins, circulating the darkest and deepest parts of her ignites the embers of hope in his chest.
Perhaps he wouldn't have to live the rest of his life alone.
Perhaps she could be his companion.
His eyes darken at the thought and saliva filled his mouth. The need to bite her a steadily building crescendo which threatens to block out all thoughts.
She spits on the ground, gags with wide eyes, wretches as she wipes his fluid from her lips with the back of her hand, and sadly the moment is gone as a memory unbidden of her reacting the same way as a child erupted in his mind - when he had offered her a taste of his once beloved brandy. He splutters in laughter and she stares at him stupefied and stumped.
“What in gods name is wrong with you?! Why can’t you just be like the other evil cunts I have killed. Get on with it so that I may kill you and go about my business!”
Her rage is palpable and yet he does nothing more but cross his arms across his bleeding chest and watch her with a scrutiny that brings a flush to her cheeks.
“A Targaryen alone ... – “He slips into their mother tongue and her eyes widen, blade now being cradled against her chest, her hand shaking.
“- in the world, is a terrible thing. “She finishes with a shake of her head, body shaking.
“Who are you?” she steps back, one step, two - the faster she moves – the more his predatory instincts demanded he capture her.
She grits her blade so tight – she slices the palm of her hand.
His eyes turn black instantly at the scent of her blood on the air. The creeping veins like blackened vines trawling down his face from his eyes pulsing against the white of his skin - and he roars as his baser nature makes an appearance.
Sharp incisors plunge from the meaty flesh of his gums and he is at once an animal lost to its nature.
He is now truly a monster in her eyes.
A heathen, a savage, a murderer.
Her blood drips to the ground in a small pitter-patter of ruby-red rain and his urge to pathetically lick the droplets from the floor curls his fingers into claws.
“Run... Rhaenyra ... RUN!” He bellows as he clings to the last vestiges of his sanity.
She flees and the minute she disappears round the bend – he hums with a broken, pained moan as he drops to his knees, her blood not yet dry on filthy street beneath his feet.
She tastes like home.
She tastes like an eternity of bliss.
Of a peace this cursed life would never allow him to have.