Chapter Text
You come to and the world rushes you in a tide of sensation, colour, taste. This wasn’t your bed, you’re not in your haven or anywhere else you recall sleeping, you were outside. Bleary, you look down in confusion. And your wet mouth drops open at the body you’re straddling. Their skin still flushed with fast-fading life, the blood still warm on your hands, on your tongue.
You’ve frenzied before on accident in your greener nights, and swore to never let yourself get like that again. Because it threatens the Masquerade and because the crushing guilt of killing an innocent was too much to bear.
But the reason you’re shocked is that this human looks just like you.
Before the cold, the bite, before everything.
She’s dressed to go for work in the icy early morning and you pinch yourself because this doesn’t make any sense.
You look around at the scene of your crime and try to recognise where you are. Cars roar in the distance, the city beginning to wake up, there’s nothing familiar you can pick up about this place at all.
In the alleyway, her bags' contents were scattered everywhere in the struggle that surely happened. Her purse above her outstretched arm. You lean over to grab it and grimace as you see the full extent of the damage to her neck, so much that her head barely hangs on by a stringy thread of flesh.
You fish out her ID and flip it over. It shows all of your details down to date of birth, confirming your nightmare.
“How..” You start in disbelief, turning to look back at her. But she’s gone, you didn’t even notice the weight below you disappear. Her clothes still huddled where she was, her form blinked out of existence.
The only other trace of this other you is the evidence staining your hands and filling your stomach. You want to throw up, but The Beast won’t let you.
Someone calls your name.
You look up to see a woman, shorter than you, who looks mortified. Factory reset, being caught red-handed by a human naturally makes you start thinking of all the ways to dispose of her. You shake your head with a disgusted frown, she’s right in front of you by then.
“O-oh, oh my god!” She grabs your shoulders, frantically looking over you. You look at yourself as she does, and it could look like a mugging. A really bloody one.
“What happened?! Jesus, we need to get you to the hospital-“
“No!” You cut her off. She looks at you incredulously, because you must look like you absolutely need help in her eyes.
You can’t have that though. Definitely not when you’ll show up clinically dead on all their tech readings. Breaching of the Masquerade, no matter where you are, is absolutely forbidden.
You grab her wrist, prompting her to look directly into your eyes. “Help me get home, please.”
Due to the time, the few people you see don’t pay any mind to you on their way to early work. That and it’s too dark to see the blood covering you without getting too close. The woman, Carol, she’d told you, helped you find ‘your’ apartment, a place clearly only recently moved into… with a lacking budget.
You end up putting a story together about getting attacked, then you end up ghoulling her soon after. Blurred the lines in her mind to make you one to trust, to obey, for her own safety of course. And yours.
As she staggers through the front door, you go to the bathroom. You don’t look at the mirror to see how disgusting you definitely look, you just turn on the faucet, letting it run over your arms. There you stand watching the blood flake off your hands, swirling prettily pink in the tap water.
You’re fucked.
Double fucked, maybe triple. But you’ve learned some new things about your place in this new world.
One. Your vitae has changed, drastically.
It might be the displacement of whatever brought you here but you find yourself being able to do things you thought impossible. Or something to do with the you that you consumed wholly.
You can eat, taste human food, your heart beats for extended periods of time, and you can even walk in the sun. You sleep even, it feels a lot less like death when you do too, but it’s inconsistent, sometimes you sleep in the middle of the day, whenever the compulsion rises. You feel more alive than ever. Not without a cost, you need to be mostly full to manage some of those. And being under the sun for too long at a time knocks you sick.
When you use your more inhuman powers, it uses up the blood you have in your body, which undoubtedly means you need to drink so much more often than you used to. The Beast is more voracious than ever like this, so most of the time you’re hungry, constantly.
Two. That here you’re alone, wholly, completely alone.
Back home, there was a sense of recognition that spread over hundreds of miles, a passive presence in the back of your head. Connection through the one thing you completely irrevocably shared with your kind, The Beast.
An intrinsic feeling that ran bone-deep, no different from knowing that there are millions of humans on Earth even though you’ve never met them before.
Now, it’s gone. Like someone’s switched all the lights off. So, with this conclusion, you think you’ve been transferred to another reality. Either way, you’ve taken the place of the you of this world.
You have cried about it, her, but you can’t say you’re not… grateful for the fresh start. Thus, you’ve dedicated yourself to living the unlife she never got to.
Three. You need to integrate into your new life, pronto.
This you lived a completely different life than the one you even remember, different friends, personality, the whole shebang. You learn bits and pieces about her in the way the apartment is minimally decorated, the passion there even with the lack of money to fill in the blank things, find things left forgotten, pictures with friends, and the guilt worries deeper each time.
You doubt she’ll ever leave your mind. A victim made a vengeful ghost doomed to haunt the murderer's narrative. Except the killer is me, myself and I, you think grimly.
But enough reminiscing, months have passed since then, and you’re about to leave for work. Fully dressed, you step out of your apartment and into the light. And you feel it immediately, letting out a small hiss under the pressure of the beaming, glaring sun. A sign you should feed soon probably.
On the way, you nearly trip on the insurmountable amount of flyers drifting through the street, pick one up for later as you go. The Freak Circus of Horrors, huh? That travelling circus had pitched up in this town recently. As you pass by, you narrowly squeeze past a man being besieged by a performer in green, flyers getting shoved in his face. The clown of sorts locks eyes with you and you swear you see the painted grin on the mask widen before you pick up the pace and get to the cafe.
Striding through the door, the bell jingles, you’re awash in the smell of baked goods and coffee. The relief is insurmountable, being outside was starting to get painful. Carol smiles at you from the back, fixing her apron as you walk over, putting your bag on the counter with a huff.
In a job like this, interacting with people is unavoidable. People, it’s almost comical how much of a relief it is to think of them as people, not just food, like the way you forced yourself to survive. It feels good being normal, living like a human, it feels like home. Even though every night when you ache to drink reminds you you’re not. Over time, you’ve learned to change your tune for every type of person you come across. So that now the faux grin slides onto your face like second nature, you’ve become so good at hiding your fatigue.
The doorbell jingles and you know who it is. No name quiet guy, same order, latte, whole milk, no sweeteners. When you probe his mind, it smells of depression and unfulfilled dreams.
ooʇ ʇı ǝʞıl sǝʇsɐʇ pu∀
And he always arrives midday on most days, he lifts his head at your approach.
“The same?” You smile warmly. He nods, fiddles with something in his hands.
A pink ticket.
He notices you looking and explains. “Some guy handed me this on the way here, didn’t want it no more, figured I may as well.”
You peer over and see the printed insignia stating its purpose, The Freak Circus Ticket. “Ah, so it’s for that travelling circus? Scary I’ve heard.”
You have been meaning to go but you keep forgetting. Or falling asleep.
Naturally, you’re nosy, so you’ve seen these tickets before in the hands of other customers, bickering excitedly for their upcoming visit, though those were gold, not pink. You open and close your mouth in consideration to ask if he may have gotten a fraudulent one. Oh well. His drink is made in record time and you place it next to him. “Hope you enjoy your time there, sir.”
The day passes fast after, you get home as the sun sets. You don’t even remember falling asleep.
Tired morning, you stretch, popping the joints in your arm and turn on the TV while you dress for the day.
“This morning— the report- this winter is degrees lower than the usual temperature last year!”
Chatter. Unimportant. The weather doesn’t bother you, even now that you feel it. Feel. You blink at the gnawing emptiness that spreads from the pit of your stomach to the base of your skull, and realise you forgot to feed last night. Whoops, you start doing your makeup.
“Unfortunately, we have an upsetting update to those who are missing,”
You glance at the screen and freeze, messing up your flick. Missing. Jacob Freed, a picture of a polite-looking man above MISSING in blaring red font. It puts a name to the face of that Tuesday customer in the worst possible way. You abandon your eyeliner and turn up the volume, invested now.
“Another man gone missing since late last night, packages found at the residence where he was last seen are presumed to be involved with drug activity—”
You turn it off, it’s upsetting news. Maybe it’s the ‘hey that’s mine’ sense of possession you have because you feed on him on the regular. He doesn’t even taste that good, it’s just the high concentration of caffeine in his blood that keeps you up longer. Bar that, it’s not that you knew him personally, but he didn’t seem like the type to do that sort of thing. Or the type to suddenly go missing. Then again, a lot of people are vanishing these days, aren’t they?
Something you should probably look into actually. Maybe later, after more procrastination.
You jump when your phone buzzes with an alarm, the last one you turn off just as you’re halfway to work, the one you keep forgetting to delete. You’re not even done and you’re late.
Shit.
In a graceless shamble, you barely manage to throw your shoes on and hobble out the door, eyeliner a pitiful mess that’ll no doubt make the day of all the people you’ll greet today. You’re in a bad mood and the day has just started.
It’s disconcerting to walk by all these people knowing you’re not one of them, haven’t been for a while. Yet the feeling feels so much less significant when there’s no other Kindred to worry about. Waiting to plunge a stake into your heart, present you to the Prince for the big chop and give you your Final Death.
There's a lot of people up ahead and the stink of the hundreds of channels of hot blood rushing under their skin washes over you like a wave, you can’t help the shudder of excitement as you near, then freeze.
A man. Stood over a clown in red, and he’s kicking him. All the flyers the performer had no doubt been handing out were sprawled all over where he’d been knocked to the floor.
“Go back to the hell you crawled out of, get out of this town!”
Your face twists but you keep walking, because obviously someone would step in right? They have to. This is blatant assault in a public place.
Not your problem, stay out of trouble. Stay out of it. Keep low, don’t get involved, that’s how you survi-
You flinch at another solid hit to his face, more obscenities thrown at him and whip your head around the people nearby who were just standing, watching and whispering. You hear, obviously.
“He probably deserves it.”
“Yeah, that guy's way too tall.”
What?
He just sat there, accepting the pain in the face of public humiliation, the uncaring glances of onlookers. Expecting it even. Anger rose with you as you straightened your shoulders, baulking at the audacity-
No, you need to calm down.
You’re hungry, though hangry would be the best description now. Being under the sun is starting to hurt again. Normally, you’d thank god that today is the day quiet guy smokes around the back, just like you told him to. And his blood, if a bit bitter, was going to make you feel so much better. If he wasn’t fucking missing. Just your luck.
The man walks around him, and you breathe out slowly, reassuring yourself that he’ll stop, he’ll walk away.
Then the man grabs one of the big lilliripes protruding from the clown's hat, about to drag him, crossing about six of the lines drawn by a more hesitant part of your mind. Enraged, you don’t wait to rush him, nearly bulldozing a passerby out of the way in your dead lunge.
Then with both arms, you shove him.
You thank whatever god is listening that you narrowly pull back your strength, just enough for him to stumble and fall right onto his ass. He gets back up, swirling around, his face is red with rage. Had you not been blinded by anger, you’d probably be more afraid of how angry he looked, how much bigger he was than you, if you were human that is.
You put yourself in front of the clown, whose eyes you feel burning into the back of your head, blocking his abuser's path.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?!”
He looks startled at the physical intervention, especially considering that you look weaker than you are. You shout deliberately, drawing more attention, prompting people to stop and see what’s happening.
“Come near him again and I’ll get you arrested.”
He takes a seething step forward, obviously wanting to put his hands on you, and you tense because you can’t risk using your persuasion in front of a crowd. The Beast crowed for more provocation, more blood, even if doing so would ultimately end with you hunted, marked for death.
So you push the violence down the best you can.
Later.
Then, thank god, he notices the gathering crowd now focused on him with disapproving gazes and steps back.
People mutter and hum in agreement, that he’s going too far.
“You’re living with your eyes wide shut,” He chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Stupid bitch, you’ll see when they come for you next.” He hisses before walking away.
When I come for you next, you think hatefully. You whirl back to the clown. Whose masks' eyes you thought were painted, have lit up.
Gold eyes looking at you, cataracts, pretty cool.
“Oh my god, are you okay? I’m so sorry, what a shithead, fuck.” You pull him to his feet, the black gloves are so thick you can’t feel his pulse jump beneath them—he jolts, surprised at your strength as you frantically skim over him in search of any other injuries. You miscalculated his size when you saw him on the floor, because stood up, he is a whole foot taller than you.
That and the little blood you smell is… off.
Not bad smelling at all, just different.
Enticing.
ʇuɐM
No. Stop.
“He didn’t hurt you too bad, did he?” You pause, the expression on the mask was grinning now. He tilts his head yet doesn’t speak, part of the act? You blink and look down at the mess.
“And your flyers,” You frown, ducking down to start picking them up but he holds up his hands and shakes his head. “Oh, you’ve got it, uh well,” You hand him the pages you did get and nervously smile, missing his odd fixation on your hand as it brushes his again. “I need to get to work..”
“Look, if that guy comes around again, just come near the coffee shop down the road, you know the uh?” Oh. You’re so overstimulated that you can’t even say the name of the place you work at.
Embarrassing.
You gesture down the road with your hand and he nods. “He’ll know not to come with the police a ring away.”
“See ya.” You stride past him with a little wave, content with your good deed of the day. Nothing like sticking up for those who need it to boost your humanity.
Again, distracted by the hunger and the sun, you miss how his gaze follows you all the way to work.