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Since the days of old, vampires have been a plague upon the land. Blood-suckers, death-bringers, a perversion of humanity.
Every child is taught about them, though non-witches don’t know their true origin. To witches, vampires are one of the darkest consequences of forbidden magic, and a reminder to never cast these spells again.
What is particularly disturbing about them is that their vampiric traits were passed down from parent to child, scarring the genes of the original host for eternity. A lasting echo of forbidden magic. Unerasable, ever present, ever a threat.
They were hunted by the witches of old to extinction, though some say a few have slipped away and survived by hiding among humanity, ready to take unwilling victims when they have the chance.
Vampires have faded into myth and legend in modern times. They’re only regulated to whispers of livestock growing weak, or the occasional missing person in the foggy mist, but that’s only hearsay. Vampires are as good as gone, or so they say.
Coco is one such vampire. She deeply doesn’t want to be so.
Her whole lineage is filled with vampires, and they’ve hidden themselves for centuries among the people. Her skin is weak to light, her retractable fangs have already grown in, and the ever present lust for blood twists her stomach every day.
“Have you drank the goat’s blood yet?” her mother asks, bustling through the unopened store.
“Yes,” Coco says, sitting at the crafting table in the corner. They’ll open soon, and her mother always makes sure they drink their fill of blood before they start working.
She doesn’t like the taste of animal blood, but it’s the only way to get what they need without hurting people. Her family has sworn of feeding from people for as far back as they can recall. Animal blood is a close, if weaker, alternative.
Coco rubs her stomach glumly. She wonders what it’s like to get full. Her limbs feel weaker now that she’s hitting her growth spurt, like her energy can’t match her body. She sees the way her mother’s hands shake from hunger. She wishes she could help, but the alternative is to feast on people, and that’s just unthinkable. She doesn’t want to hurt anybody, not ever.
She remembers the first time her mother took her out to feed on fresh animals instead of the bottled blood they keep in their store room. They had to go quite a long way to another vampiric family that owns a homestead. She was only four, and she cried the whole way back after she heard the animal’s pained cries.
She has since grown used to the nature of their feeding, but she will never be ok with it. How can she be, when it’s in her nature to cause pain? Her kind fills stories that scare children away from the dark.
Her mother had sat her down after that crying fit with her face set like stone. “Magic is the reason we are the way we are,” she had said. “Witches cursed our family. Promise me that you’ll stay away from them?”
And how could Coco say no to that?
But…
She would never dare tell her mother this, but she secretly adores magic. She remembers the day they went to the city for some fabric, and how the cobblestone beneath her feet lit up as they walked. It was like magic was coming from her. Never before had something so beautiful, and it was because of her.
For a second, she believed she wasn’t cursed but blessed, but of course that belief shattered like glass when she stepped off the cobblestone path.
That day, she bought a book and a pen with the money her mother gave her for candy. She hid it under her cloak, for it was about magic, and her mother would have surely thrown it out had it become known to her.
Even now, it still hides under her bed. She flips through it occasionally, hoping that the secrets of magic would be shown, but nothing. It’s just a picture book. She could never bring herself to get rid of it.
As vampires, they’ve gotten used to the magic around them. Although her mother would tense whenever they used the magic spring, it’s just a fact of life. A flying carriage, however, is more unusual.
Coco eyes the high-class ladies that file into their shop, but to her disappointment (and a bit of relief), none of them don the pointed cap that she dreams of. They’re just regular people, unlike her.
She helps a man with his supplies instead, since her mother is so busy with the ladies. He’s tall and cloak-covered, and his glasses are uniquely designed so that one eye is covered. Coco tries not to stare at him.
She turns her attention to her work, cutting fabric with a practiced and steady hand. No matter how weak she gets from hunger, her skill never diminishes, and for that she’s grateful. She resists the urge to run out and inspect the flying carriage. She has to do her work first, then she could maybe sneak out with an excuse.
A shadow falls over her. She looks up and sees the man staring right at her, face blank. Coco panics for a second; did she unconsciously have her fangs out? But no, she runs a tongue over her teeth—her fangs are retracted right now.
“What a work of magic,” the man says, and for a moment Coco tenses thinking he’s talking about her, but he’s actually looking at the fabric she’s cutting. Maybe. His glasses make it hard to see his eyes, but she’s fairly certain he isn’t looking at her.
She breathes a sigh of relief, and the man tilts his head curiously.
He opens his mouth as if to continue the conversation, but they are interrupted by a commotion outside. Some boys were playing with the carriage and broke it. Coco pouts; she won’t have the chance to see it herself. The ladies start getting mad and insulting the townspeople, and things start getting hectic.
Until the man—Qifrey—puts on a pointed cap and introduces himself as a witch.
Coco’s mother quickly hides her behind her back. She’s as pale as a sheet, and Coco can feel her trembling fingers on her arms. Coco herself doesn’t know how she feels. A mixture of excitement, dread, fear, awe. An amalgamation. She freezes in place.
Qifrey gives them both an unreadable look, but doesn’t approach them.
He asks for a private place to do magic, and everyone looks at the pair of them. Coco’s mother sighs and reluctantly lets him use their workshop. They can’t afford to seem suspicious. All the world loves witches and the gifts they’ve given, after all.
And none loves them more than Coco.
She sneaks into the workshop through the roof, and peeks in to see how Qifrey will cast his spell. She wants to see the moment of magic so bad that her heart hurts. She needs to see what makes her different from witches.
Are witches like people, or are witches like vampires? Is there anyway she shares similarity to them? Witches cursed her line, but that also makes them of magic. She has to know how to cast magic, to see if she’s able to do it, to break away from her life’s path.
She just…wants to bring happiness instead of pain. Is that too much to ask?
(It is.)
And then she sees it: the secret of magic.
All it takes is pen and paper.
After Qifrey leaves and the shop closes, Coco rushes to her room and digs out the little picture book of magic she got so long ago. She studies it, and there, those are the same images Qifrey was drawing!
And she draws her first seal, and creates her first magic, and tastes the first slimmer of hope she’s had in a long time.
She can be a witch despite being a vampire.
…
Her mother is turned to stone. Qifrey is by her side, promising to protect her, but all she can feel is aching sadness.
She is alone.
…
Life at the atelier is both wonderful and awful.
Wonderful in that she’s never had friends like the other girls, and she loves them. Tetia, Richeh, and even Agott have quickly grown close to her over the past few weeks. Each moment she spends with them is addicting, and she wants to spend all her time with them.
Tetia’s presence is comforting, like a warm blanket on a chilly day. She’s taken to looking out for Coco, and Coco does her best to look out for her, too.
Richeh is silent but kind. She seems like she doesn’t care, but Coco’s gotten to know her better than that. She’s skilled and strong-willed, and Coco knows she can always rely on her.
As for Agott…well, she doesn’t know where she stands with Agott quite yet. She holds Coco at a certain level of distance, but sometimes Coco can see glimmers of friendship peeking through the gloom.
And that’s without mentioning Qifrey and Olruggio. Both men look after all of them in an odd mix of brotherly and parental attention. Coco’s never had a father figure in her life before—it’s only been her and her mother, and now just her—but she imagines that Qifrey’s protectiveness and Olruggio’s care is close enough to it to count. She feels safe with them.
Yes, she misses hugging her mother and her quiet comfort, but she doesn’t mind her growing friendships at the atelier.
She’s almost scared at how attached to all of them she got. She can’t imagine life without them now. Her world is divided into before magic and after magic, and she doesn’t know how she’ll fare when she finally saves her mother (and she will save her, she can’t think otherwise).
But living in the atelier is also so hard. The pressure crushes her, and it all has to do with her secret.
As she learns more about forbidden magic and the consequences of it, she starts to understand what exactly she is. The depths of their unnaturalness go down deeper than even her mother knew. And if anyone found out—
If they found out…
She would be abandoned once more. Why would the other girls want to associate with a vampire? Why would Qifrey want to harbor a breaker of the principles? Olruggio would report her to the Knights Moralis and her life would be over.
And so would her mother’s life, if she’s not there to save her.
So she hides her vampiric nature closely to her chest. She sneaks out to feed on the animals near the woods, grateful that Qifrey’s atelier is in such a secluded place. She deals with her hunger with a smile so no one would notice. She keeps her teeth retracted even though they ache, and takes advantage of her witch's uniform to cover up from the sun.
Everything is going fine. She can manage this. No one has to know.
…
The cracks start showing soon enough.
Coco’s at Starry Sword Stationary, picking up some ink refills for their atelier’s storage. Qifrey is upstairs talking with Nolnoa, while the other girls are checking out various shops around the island. Coco herself is sitting in the basement with Tartah, chatting about the powders used for ink adjustments.
It’s a particularly hot day, so she takes her cloak off. They’re inside so she’s not too worried about her…skin condition. It’s nice and chill inside with Tartah, probably another work of magic, and she appreciates the cool feeling on her heated skin.
She tells herself a million times that she won’t forget her cloak on the way out. It would be incredibly stupid of her to, in more ways than one.
She forgets.
She doesn’t notice her skin’s exposed at first. She’s gotten so used to her skin always being covered that she doesn’t give it much mind anymore. It’s only when she’s a few blocks away and her skin starts to burn does she realize her grave mistake.
She runs to the nearest source of shade. Luckily, the sun has just started to set, so the buildings cast long shadows that she can hide in. Once under some protection, she looks down at her arms and sees the rawness of her rashes crawling up them. Her eyes water at the sting.
She crosses her arms despite the pain, hiding the burns from sight. She knows that they just look like sunburns, but she can’t take chances. She’s thankful that her face doesn’t burn as easily, especially with her hair covering it, but the rest of her isn’t so lucky.
She looks around at the milling people, and a small part of her feels jealous. They don’t have to worry about the sun like she does. Even nature spurns her existence.
Sometimes, when she was a kid, she would stick her arms into sunlight just to feel the warmth on her skin. She’d always regret it later and her mother would scold her, but the allure of sunlight was just like magic to her.
She looks towards the stationary store, but it’s too far away to trek back without getting even more burnt. She’s never tested how much sunlight she could stand, and this is already reaching the limit that she knows of.
She slowly lowers herself to the ground against the building—some flower store she’s never visited before—and wonders what to do. She looks up at the sky. What a silly mistake. Maybe she should wait for one of the others to find her, but how would she explain why she couldn’t get her cloak herself?
She wonders if Tartah has noticed her cloak in the store yet, and if he would search for her to return it. She hopes so.
“Coco? Why are you sitting on the ground?”
Coco looks up and sees Tetia tilting her head at her, a curious look on her face. Her pink pigtails shine in the light, and she looked like she was out having fun. Coco tenses and hugs her arms closer to herself.
Tetia’s smile dims. “Is everything ok?”
Coco does her best to look casual, and says, “I forgot my cloak at the Nolnoa’s. Silly me, right? But it’s just so hot out that I’m resting in the shade before getting it back.” She laughs weakly.
She internally winces at her flimsy excuse. It’s not as hot as earlier; it’s rapidly cooling down as the evening sets in. She would wait for the sun to set to get back her cloak if it weren’t for the fact that Qifrey wanted to get home before dark. She doesn’t have much time left.
A shadow hovers over her briefly before she’s covered with a cloak that’s decidedly not her own. It smells like sand and roses. Tetia’s.
She grips the cloak around her, covering her arms before Tetia can see the burns. “Why are you giving me this?”
“I’ve noticed how much you like wearing your coat. It must suck not to have one with you right now, right?” Tetia puts her hands on her hips, looking proud of herself.
Coco huddles deeper into the cloak. She looks down to hide her quivering lip. Tetia...
“You didn’t have to,” Coco says, though she grips Tetia’s cloak tight.
Tetia smiles. “I wanted to. Now let’s go get your cloak.”
She holds her hand out to Coco. Coco takes it.
It’s warm.
…
Growl.
Coco clutches her stomach, curled up on her bed. Her cravings for blood have been making her miserable the past couple of days.
She hasn’t been eating well, and it’s starting to show. It’s getting harder and harder to sneak away and find blood. Qifrey especially has been paying attention to her comings and goings, most likely worried that the brimmed caps would try to corner her again when she’s alone.
And they would. Coco suspects that they know she’s a vampire already. The one with the eye mask had leaned down and whispered to her, ”We know what you are, child of magic.” It freaked her out. What if they tell someone?
She doesn’t want to be near them.
So she appreciates Qifrey’s care, but it’s left her no choice but to starve.
She’s never craved blood this much before. It’s gotten to the point that she sometimes stares at one of the other girls’ necks for a moment too long, or fantasizes of sucking blood from anything. It scares her. She doesn’t want to become something she hates, more so than she already is.
She has started to close herself off from everyone. She hides in her room to try to subdue the cravings, but it doesn’t work too well. All it leaves her with is misery and hunger.
She’s considering sneaking out the window to find some blood, damn the brimmed caps, when there’s a knock on her door. It’s a soft knock, a whisper on the wood, and Coco would have missed it if it weren’t for her sharp hearing.
She almost wants to play deaf, but she can’t bring herself to be that rude to the others. “Do you need something?” she asks, and hopes her voice doesn’t sound as weak as it feels.
There is no answer. Coco’s confused for a moment, but then the door creaks open and in comes Richeh, as quiet as a mouse.
Coco sits up in bed. Her stomach lurches, but she keeps on a straight face. “Is there something you need, Richeh?”
But Richeh remains silent. She walks up to Coco, stepping over the strewn about paper and ink that always decorate her side room. Coco blinks at her. For the life of her, she can’t figure out what Richeh is doing.
Richeh comes to a stop before Coco, and blankly says, “Hold out your hands.”
What?
Coco does as she’s told despite her befuddlement; holding out both hands in front of her, cupped together.
Richeh places something into them. She stares at Coco expectantly. Coco takes a moment to examine the small object in her hands. It looks like an orange rock, and it’s wrapped in a clear material.
“What is this?” she asks.
“Candy,” Richeh says.
Candy? Coco’s seen them before in stalls in the city, but not wrapped up like this at home. At Richeh’s prompting, Coco carefully unwraps the hard candy and puts it in her mouth.
An explosion of flavors. She stares down at the wrapper in surprise. She wasn’t expecting so much to come from something so little. It also somehow tamed her cravings, if just a little. Could it be the sugar? “Wow, Richeh. Where did you get this? It’s amazing.”
Richeh looks down as if to avoid eye contact. “I made it with a spell,” she mutters into her cloak.
Coco gapes at her. She made something so wonderful? She wishes she didn’t pop the whole thing in her mouth now because she wants to study it and figure out how Richeh crafted something so amazing.
Richeh makes an odd hand motion. Coco tilts her head, confused, and Richeh sighs. “Come with me.”
Coco slowly gets out of bed. She feels a familiar head rush, but it’s not as bad as she thought it would be. The sugar of the candy helped more than she thought it did. She can’t believe she didn’t think of sugar before! It’s not a solution, but it will help tide things over before her next blood meal.
She follows Richeh all the way to her room, and into her secret room too. She looks around with wonder at all the crystal strings. She’ll never get tired of Richeh’s magic and how beautiful it is.
Richeh takes her hand and Coco realizes she’s been staring at the ceiling for a while. Richeh leads her to a small basin in the corner of the room, and Coco looks down to find hundreds of the candy she’d just eaten, all sitting there peacefully and unwrapped.
“We can share,” Richeh says simply, then leaves to sit in her seat at the opposite corner, sucking on a piece of candy herself.
Coco takes one into her fingers and lifts it up to her eye. The light shines through it, creating a beautiful amber glow. She smiles, her cravings quieter than they have been in a while.
“Thank you, Richeh.”
…
The girls take turns cooking for the atelier.
Qifrey doesn’t always have the time to, and Olruggio barely leaves his own atelier at the other side of the building, so it's often up to them to feed themselves.
And today, it’s Agott’s turn to cook. She usually likes cooking alone so as to practice her magic more, so she rebuffs any attempts from Coco or Tetia to help. She shoos them out of the kitchen, not allowing anyone to disrupt her flow of work.
Coco shakes her head fondly. Oh, Agott.
She’s gotten used to Agott’s prickly personality over the past few weeks. She cares, Coco knows she does, it’s just hard to see it.
Coco and Tetia clear up the table in preparation for dinner. They make it a game between them, seeing who can clear up the most space the fastest. Coco smiles. Days like this in the atelier are special; no troubles, no worries. She wishes every day could be like this.
Agott enters from the kitchen holding a stew of some kind. It smells divine. Coco’s mouth waters as they serve it among the four of them—Qifrey and Olruggio are too busy to join them tonight, which is a bummer.
Coco takes a deep whiff of the stew in front of her. For some reason, it makes her nose itch, but she’s not about to say that in front of Agott. The other girl is looking at them all expectantly as they try the stew. Coco tells herself that she will compliment it the best she could.
She brings a spoon of the stew up to her lips. The flavor is rich and addicting. Coco smiles brightly, about to tell Agott so. But then her throat itches, just the same as her nose. She holds her throat with her hand. She tries to clear it with a cough, but it feels like her throat just gets tighter.
By now, all the other girls are looking at her with open concern, even Agott.
Coco tries to smile at them, not wanting them to be worried for her, but her face feels numb. The spoon she didn’t know she was still holding slips out of her hand, clattering in the bowl of stew. What’s happening to her? Does it have something to do with the stew? But everyone else looks fine—
Garlic. It’s garlic.
Coco’s had garlic only once in her life before. It was one of the times she and her mother visited the city. Her mother had given her money for sweets, but Coco saw a skewer from a street vendor that looked wonderful so she bought that instead.
The next thing she knew, she was at home in her bed, her mother’s face above her, tear tracks on her cheeks. It turned out to be another vampiric curse, apparently—one that almost took her life. Garlic.
Coco sways in her seat, then stumbles off of it trying to steady herself. Agott rushes out of her set and kneels by Coco’s side, gently lowering her to the wooden floor. Tetia and Richeh buzz in the background, but their words sound far away to Coco. Her vision is filled with Agott’s face, her mouth moving but Coco’s ears unhearing.
Her vision gets spots in them. The world around her shrinks, and all she can think of is her ever tightening throat. She can’t breathe.
Then, suddenly, she can.
She takes a big gasp of air. She feels wind on her face, and realizes that Agott has a seal of wind drawn on her quire next to her. She looks at Agott with watery eyes.
Agott breathes a sigh of relief once she sees her breathing again. “Are you alright?”
Coco shudders. She’s not, but she will be. She nods slowly, not quite trusting her voice.
Then Agott hugs her. “Don’t do that again.”
Coco freezes in her arms. Agott’s never hugged her before. She relaxes in her arms, sinking her weight into her. Agott holds her up easily. Coco is shaking, but she thinks Agott is shaking, too.
She holds her until Qifrey returns from his errand, and he takes her to a doctor for further checkup. She doesn’t want to go—what if the doctors can tell?—but Qifrey won’t take no for an answer. Thankfully, they just call it an allergic reaction and treat her there.
Qifrey gives her a curious look when she lists the ingredients that were in the meal she had, but he doesn’t ask any follow up questions, to Coco’s relief.
Agott never makes that stew or anything with garlic in it ever again. Coco doesn’t know how she figured it out, but she makes no mention of it. Coco just hopes that she only made the connection with food, and not her vampiric nature.
Coco is more careful with her food from then on.
…
Coco wakes up with a start, blood dripping down her chin.
She sits up in her bed, hand bolting up to her lips. Her fangs are out—she must have bit herself in her sleep. Her split lips stings, and she cringes at the pain. She’s never bit herself this badly before.
She cleans the blood off of her fangs with her tongue and retracts them, then gets out of bed. She can’t remember the dream she had right before this, but she thinks that it was probably a nightmare. Every night she’s plagued with dreams of her mother scornfully gazing at her with stone eyes.
Needless to say, her nights never pass peacefully. This is the first time she hurt herself, though.
She tiptoes her way through the atelier, careful not to wake Agott sleeping near her. She makes her way to the bathroom, and activates the light spell to see her surroundings more clearly. She almost gasps when she looks at the mirror.
Blood is gushing from her lip, staining her night shirt and probably leaving droplets all the way back to her room.
She has to clean this all up before anyone notices. She frantically searches for a towel with one hand, and tries to grab the water contraption with the other. Predictably, it falls from her hand and clatters down on the floor. She winces at the sound.
“Kid? What are you doing up so late?” a voice says outside the door.
Coco jumps. She whips around and there stands Olruggio, leaning against the door frame. He has eyebags deep on his face, looking like he hasn’t slept a wink all night. His face collapses in shock when he sees all the blood, and Coco turns her head away, bringing up a hand to hide it.
She closes her eyes. How would she explain getting such a deep cut? It’s too severe to be from her regular teeth, so she can’t use that excuse. Maybe she can say she was messing with a knife while making a midnight snack…
Oh god, she’s hungry. She always is.
A large hand lands on her head. She looks up and sees Olruggio staring at her with furrowed brows. “Let me see that cut, kid.”
He kneels down in front of her and gently grips Coco’s wrist, pulling it out of the way so he could see her mouth better. His facial expression is set in its usual gruffness, but softness plays at the edges.
He tuts under his breath. “That’s a pretty bad cut. I’ve got an elastic bandage contraption I’ve been working on. It should hold it together. For now, put some pressure on it, ok?”
He pats her on the head, then leaves the room. Coco blinks in surprise. He didn’t ask where she got the cut from. She smiles even though it pulls at her cut. She’s lucky to have such caring people around her.
Olruggio returns with a roll of bandages inked with a seal. He carefully bandages her cheek, and she can feel how the cotton pulls the cut closed. It stings, but her awe at the contraptions overrides her pain.
“I know it hurts,” Olruggio says, “but this will help.”
“I know,” Coco says. Or, tries to say. Speaking around the bandage is harder than she expected.
Olruggio sighs and ruffles her hair. He looks fond. “Be more careful next time, you got that?”
Coco smiles and nods. Yes, she really is lucky.
…
It all comes to a head one drowsy day in the atelier.
Agott is in her study, practicing drawing after drawing. Richeh is in her room, and Tetia’s outside. Olruggio is who knows where, so that just leaves Qifrey and Coco in the main room, eating a small snack between them.
Coco thinks everything has been going well. Despite the past few hiccups, she’s been hiding her vampiric nature pretty effectively. No one suspects her, and she’s getting closer and closer to curing her mother. Things are looking up.
Qifrey is leaning against the windowsill, legs crossed. He’s reading a small tome. His presence is comforting, even though they’re not talking. He smells like sandalwood and ink, and Coco leans in close to him. Sometimes she likes her enhanced senses, as it lets her notice things she otherwise wouldn’t have.
Agott has a small freckle under her eye. Some strands of Tetia’s hair are more red than others. Richeh always smells like candy, even when she hasn’t eaten any recently. She loves looking at all the things that make her friends unique.
Sometimes, it feels like she belongs with them. If it weren’t for the secret she was keeping, she would. But it’s better than they don’t know.
But then it all comes shattering down.
“I know you’re a vampire,” Qifrey says so casually that Coco almost didn’t react.
Once her body catches up to her mind, she stands up abruptly. She looks at him in horror. She slowly backs away from Qifrey, eyes jumping to the exits of the room. She needs to get away. It’s too late. Qifrey knows. She’s doomed.
Qifrey suddenly pales, bringing a hand up to his mouth. “Ah. I suppose I should have worded that better.”
“What—What do you mean?” Coco stutters. She’s shaking, her knees knocking together.
Qifrey closes his tome, slowly placing it beside him on the windowsill. He hunches down. He looks at her like she’s a scared animal. Coco doesn’t like it.
“Coco, I’m not going to report you,” Qifrey says. His eyes are kind. “You have nothing to be afraid of.”
But Coco shakes her head wildly. He’s lying. No one would ever be kind to a vampire. They’re unnatural, forbidden, twisted. Qifrey is just trying to get her not to run. Her breathing picks up, a staccato of panic. She feels like she could collapse on the spot.
Qifrey frowns, as if he could read her mind. He sighs and digs into his cloak. Coco holds her breath, but he just brings out a small piece of paper with an unfinished seal on it. She’s never seen it before.
“I don’t blame you for not believing me,” Qifrey says, placing the paper in between them, “but I’ve been working on this project for the last few weeks. It’s to make your life easier. Before you run, would you try it out?”
Coco’s always been too curious for her own good. A secret project Qifrey’s been working on? A new seal she’s never seen before? Those words pull at her brain, and she steps closer to the paper before she can stop herself. It has a sigil of water, but she’s never seen the signs around it before. The ring is incomplete, and her hand itches for her pen just to see what it does.
“Go ahead,” Qifrey says, again as if reading her mind. “It’s a spell to produce blood-like qualities in water, so you have a steady source of high-quality food. It’s my gift to you.”
Coco looks up at Qifrey in shock. Could it really be…? She hurriedly grabs her pen from her cloak, already running with ink from her earlier practice, and completes the ring. A ball of red water—blood—hovers above the paper.
After looking at Qifrey for permission, which he nods, she cups her hands and takes a portion of the water in them. She brings her hands to her lips, and sinks her fangs into it. She’s heavily aware of Qifrey’s eyes on her, but she does her best to power through it.
And it’s wonderful.
It’s nothing like the goats or sheeps blood she’s had before. It’s rich, fluid, and gives her more energy than she expected. She looks at Qifrey in surprise.
“Well, how is it? I haven’t had the chance to try it myself, you see,” Qifrey says.
Coco blinks. Try it myself...? “What do you mean?”
Qifrey smiles, then opens his mouth. Out come fangs, much longer than hers, a lot like her mother’s. It’s been so long since she’s seen another’s fangs. Her eyes start watering, and she launches herself across the room and into Qifrey’s arms.
He’s cold, just like all vampires are. Coco can’t believe she didn’t realize it before.
“I understand how hard it must’ve been, keeping this a secret all this time,” Qifrey says, patting her on the head. “I’m sorry I didn’t see your struggles sooner.”
She looks up at him with wide eyes. “Does anyone else know?”
“Olruggio knows about us. He’s the one who helped me with the spell, you know. He’s been pushing me to create something like this for a while, but it was only finding out about you that gave me the courage to do it.”
Coco could tell there is more to the story than that, but figures it’s not the time to ask Qifrey why.
Qifrey continues. “I expect that the other girls suspect something, but it’s your choice whether you want to tell them or not. I didn’t mean to scare you earlier; I just couldn’t stand leaving you alone any longer.”
He wraps his arms tighter around Coco, as if shielding her from the world around her.
Coco smiles. She doesn’t feel so alone now. The vampire in her is happy. “Thank you, Master Qifrey”
“We’ll always be there for you, Coco. Never forget that.”
…
Qifrey is almost certain he wasn’t born a vampire.
That “almost” bothers him more than he’d like to admit. He’s long since accepted that he’ll never know whether he was born a vampire or turned into one using forbidden magic. No mark is left on his skin, but he knows that magic can find its ways to corrupt in unseen manners.
It’s some cruel twist of fate that he was found in a coffin all those years ago. Vampires are traditionally the epitome of the undead. Was he already dead when they found him, kept alive only by his blood? Was his death cruelly taken from him, along with his life? He’ll never know.
But soon, he will.
Only Beldaruit knew of his affliction. Qifrey could never tell what he thought of it, but he took care of him anyway. Later, Qifrey told Olruggio, too. Otherwise, it’s been his darkest secret. He would be banished from witch society if anyone else knew.
He’s always thought of his vampirism as the curse of his past life. He’s never stopped searching for a cure, not really. Along with his eye and his memories, it’s one of his foundational drives. He wants to expunge vampirism from this world, cure it of its blight forever. It's what such a curse deserves, he thought.
That is, until he met Coco.
Dear Coco, who wears her heart on her sleeve. Who has the imagination and adoration of a pure hearted child. Who is a vampire, too.
Throughout all his life, Qifrey has never met another vampire before. He’s heard that they live in secret communities, but Qifrey had been cut off from that by the brimmed cap that took his memories.
He didn’t know how liberating it would be to even just see another vampire.
He’s watched Coco grow and grow over the brief time he’s known her. He’s also seen the signs of her vampiric nature shine through despite her obvious attempts to hide it. He should be outraged. He should blame the magic of old for ever giving this curse to a child.
He feels relief that he’s not alone.
He feels a parental draw to her, and wonders if it's vampiric instincts. He’s never felt it this way before, and for once, it’s not a horrific reminder of his nature but instead a chance of connection.
He creates the spell of blood not for himself, but for her. He would have never given himself that relief, but for Coco he shall. She has shown a bright side to being a vampire, however slim, just by existing.
Ultimately, that’s why he revealed himself to Coco. So she wouldn’t be alone either. He regrets the way he went about it, but not the things he said.
He’ll always be there for her.