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Owen’s crouched by the chicken coop, bottling the last of their latest batch of blood when he catches grass rustling, picks out the smell of the crypts and the sound of a skirt. He stands, puts the bottles away, and when no further noise follows, he says, “Yes, Shelby?”
They make a tiny, bat-like squeak and Owen turns to them, careful not to smile with teeth.
“I forgot you’d—” They gesture ruefully at their ears, shoulders up. “Vampire hearing.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Owen says, approaching. They’ve put their glasses away somewhere, and tucked their long, silvery hair behind their ears, out of their face. They’ve shed some layers, too, leaving them looking exposed and smaller and less themself, but still, the new appearance suits them well. “Lets us all track each other better. No more getting separated from the group and getting hurt on your own.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Shelby murmurs. Her mouth twists, then a flicker of discomfort. Owen’s sympathetic: the teeth can take some getting used to. “Um.” She plucks at the edge of her sleeve — bare face shows all that hesitation like black ink on white paper — but she’s bold; nothing will keep her words down for long. “I was having trouble sleeping?”
“Oh, yes, that can be hard,” Owen agrees. “Every little noise, every scrap of light— Wakes you right up. Are you tired?”
“I just thought I’d go for a walk. I wasn’t— I thought everyone was busy, I wouldn’t bump into anyone…”
Owen does flash his fangs this time, the reflex coming before he can catch it, and he hopes it looks enough like a smile not to spook her. He knows from experience: it’s easy to go toward the hands that reach for you, forgetting there are human minds and human hearts behind those hands. But Shelby seemed willing enough before to be guided from the grasp of those who can’t be trusted. “Would you like me to come along? I know you’ve got your claws now, but the day is coming soon and the townsfolk haven’t exactly been kind to you.”
“They really haven’t.” Shelby pauses, brow furrowing. “But you— you guys haven’t either. I told you, I’m not just gonna forget that.”
“So I remember. But we’ve given you a place to rest your head,” Owen points out. “Food and clothes. Surely that counts for something.” Shelby’s all tense like they’re braced for a fight. He wants to find the words that will unpick that tension. All around them, the smell of upturned earth as they shore up the castle’s foundations, bury ugly memories. “Certainly that’s more than the people of Oakhurst can say right now. And we haven’t laid a finger on you since the night you were turned.”
Shelby’s just looking at him with those big wide eyes. It occurs to Owen, briefly, that they must look uncannily alike now, all this white and red and black. Family. Despite everything, the past few days have carried their moments of the strangest buoyancy, half of it bubbling from Owen’s own chest.
“Shelby.” Owen searches for a softer tone, grasping as gently as he can the memories of candlelit rooms in which he devoured every detail Louis would give him on his future gift. “I promise you, I’ve no intention of hurting you.”
“I know.” They sigh, all in a huff. “I feel like I can’t think straight, but— there’s nowhere else to go now, I guess.” And they step in close and tuck themself against Owen’s front, their little hooked claws biting into the fabric of Owen’s clothes. It takes swallowing every instinct to not flinch in surprise.
He had seen, in a different life, children inspected for injury on the other side of a town square. Two friends hurrying, fleet-footed and elbows linked, away with the morning’s gossip on their tongues. A baby cradled neatly in the crook of an arm, glimpsed in a flash before its caretaker turned their back on him. He knows what a hug looks like. When Shelby turns their head slightly, nose pressing against his collarbone, Owen remembers he has not been sick for a long time, and he hugs them.
“What’s this about?” he murmurs, angling his head so he can keep them close, their hair scented like stone and dry air under his cheek. Their body, stiff and cool, is a solid weight against him.
“I can’t go home now,” Shelby whispers. “I couldn’t sleep ‘cause I was thinking about it. I was gonna go to the crypts, see what’s down there, if anything’s changed, but I just— I dunno. I never even got to write a letter home, you know? My mom’s gonna think I died out here, and then she’ll tell everyone she was right all along. Her kid’s crazy and everyone knows it.”
Owen laughs, though it sounds strange and rough in his own ears. “You’re the one who’s right. Better here with us then rotting away out there. You have a new home and a new family now.”
“She doesn’t know what happened to me,” Shelby whispers again. “She’ll—” They laugh too, bitterly, and Owen nearly lets go, startled at how it vibrates through him. But their claws are sharp and he doesn’t want to tear these clothes. “Carrying on the family legacy, I guess. Turning out just like my dad, going looking for monsters and disappearing.”
Owen squeezes her slightly and feels her shiver. “You haven’t disappeared. You’re right here. I can see you.” The moonlight falls unfeeling around them both. Shelby says nothing to that for a long while.
Eventually, murmured: “I wanted to ask another thing.”
Owen hums invitingly.
“Do you think there’s a cure?” Shelby asks. “I know you’ve said you don’t want one, but— I mean, Pyro mentioned— Does it even exist? Could it exist?”
Owen adjusts to rest his chin on top of her head. Her hair is so soft and she is so tense. She’s hardly tiny, but her body takes up at once more and less space than he expects. “Pyro’s been going around putting ideas in your head, has he? Of course there isn’t a cure. You have to be careful, Shelby. If the townspeople are making you promises like that, they’re desperate, and they’re only going to hurt you. You’ve seen what Avid’s like.”
“Yeah,” Shelby says, subdued. “I guess. Avid—” But she doesn’t finish the sentence.
“They’ll talk about saving you. Helping you. But we know better. There’s nothing to be saved from. They’ll come to you with all these promises, and once they realize it can’t be done, that there is no heroism to be performed here, they’ll turn on you. Decide there was never any helping you anyway.”
She moves, skittish, and Owen squeezes her again. She says, “No, yeah, you’re— Yeah. Yeah. Never mind.”
“It’s been a long night,” Owen says. He rocks slightly, which makes Shelby yelp, then giggle. He can’t help laughing too. “They’ve been terrible to you, Shelby, going around calling you a monster, burning down your house. Don’t waste your energy thinking about them.” He lets her go, taking her hand and pulling her claws away from his chest. “Extra sharp now, these things. Careful you don’t rip anything you don’t intend to.”
“I’ll be the most careful,” Shelby says with a thin smile. She rocks on her heels, that unhappy twist to her mouth again. “Can I ask you one more thing?”
Owen is a long shadow of relief and affection as Shelby leads him deeper into the growing castle. They’ve dug up the rotten floorboards, picked out the shape of the roof and built up sturdy walls between their excursions to the beacons. With all the churned soil and busy work, there is no room to wonder about the holy spirits and their meddling. It’s muddy out from the rain Scott summoned earlier. With any good fortune, that nonsense about a cure has gone to pulp under the ground.
Shelby leads him down into the stone halls below, where she’s set her bed. The dark settles comfortably over Owen’s senses.
Owen takes off his boots and sets them by Shelby’s bed. Shelby wrestles off her own shoes, then pauses, reaches over hesitantly to take Owen’s waistcoat. They lie down under the blankets, Shelby closer to the wall. She adjusts, waits unbreathing for a while, then rolls over and stares at Owen. Her eyes are luminous, tinted gold.
“I think I just… don’t want to be alone,” Shelby says, feather-soft. Her gaze is piercing as a needle, utterly fixed on Owen’s face. Owen focuses on the exposed whorls of her ear.
The solitude creates a gently illicit frisson. Someone alone with him, willing to share air. Shelby’s cheek looks as sweet and tender as rising dough. Owen murmurs, “We could find the others.”
“They won’t fit in this bed,” Shelby says and Owen laughs. They bare teeth at him, not backing down even when he shows his own canines.
“All right,” Owen says, subsiding, but Shelby, bright-eyed and pleased, puts a clawed hand against his chest and pushes, until he’s on his back and they’re hovering over him, the blankets shoved aside and their hands splayed over his rib cage. Owen raises his eyebrows; it is like a spring flood through his dead bones, this confusion of touch. “What happened to just sleeping?”
“I can’t sleep,” they grumble, moving to straddle him. “I’m not tired.” They stare down at him, brow furrowed as if puzzled that he’s there. Owen is abruptly, inexplicably, tempted to buck against their weight.
“What are you playing at?” he asks, waiting for her to laugh or lunge or spit. Our kind, we work best alone, Louis murmured one night by the fire, Owen shivering with fever in the armchair opposite him. Louis amended, smiling at Owen’s querying look, Or in pairs.
“I— I don’t know,” Shelby admits. “I kinda just want to…” She puts one hand on his throat. She isn’t squeezing, but she’s hardly gentle either. Her thumb shifts, pressing underneath his jaw.
“Poke at me like I’m a dead beetle?” She is young. She is new. He can be patient.
Shelby pouts at him. Owen finds an unexpected wash of fondness at the look, but it only lasts a blink before she looks worried, or sad. They have no true need for light, either of them, but between the strands of hair falling into her face and the way she’s focused on moving her hand up, forcing Owen’s head back, something of her is occluded.
“Come on then,” Owen says, lifting his hands to rest them over his head, out of the way. He can’t imagine himself tempting, but he can play pretend for the fledgling. “Finish what you started.”
Shelby snorts. “I’m not roleplaying. And I’m not— I’m not gonna do anything else. Just touching.”
Owen squints at nothing in particular. “Oh, just touching. Mm.” Shuts his eyes against visions of silvery hair and the tap of claws under his chin, gentle, and says, “Care to be more specific?”
She releases his throat. The drag of her nail down to his collar then under it. Owen squints one eye open, but another finger joins the first, tugging uncomfortably so the fabric rubs the back of his neck. Her skin is cool and insistent and impossible to ignore. “Can I—?” She fumbles with the top button of his shirt.
He interlaced his fingers above his head without quite thinking, holding tight. He lets go now to catch their wrists, and they freeze like a mouse.
“You see this?” Owen says. “On my hands, up my arms? They go under my clothes, too. You don’t want to look at that.”
They blink, almost owlish, clearly considering. Owen thinks of Louis, the way the mayor would turn from the tea in front of them both and just stare at Owen sometimes. Owen wonders idly, a little achingly, if this is the other side of the feeling. He drags Shelby in close, until they’re nearly nose-to-nose, hand coming up to cup the base of their skull. No blinking now.
“What if I wanna see anyway,” they say, muscles locked. The puff of their breath against Owen’s mouth makes a judder of something go down his spine.
“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat,” Owen murmurs, exploring the texture of their hair with slow swipes of his thumb. “Don’t go crying to the others about what you find.”
Shelby’s eyes narrow. “I’m smarter than a cat. And braver. And if it kills me— I’ll just come back.” Shelby shifts in place — brief, muted jolt of sensation where their bodies are pressed together — and gets to work on those buttons. They don’t bother trying to take the shirt off him, just expose his torso and start running two fingers down his chest, hint of claws on his skin.
Owen jerks and hisses when they press down above his stomach. “Ticklish,” he explains, at their pause. “Don’t,” he warns before they can say anything. “Plenty of people have poked and prodded at me over the years. I killed them for it.”
“Geez,” Shelby mutters, though their mouth is a flat line like they aren’t sure whether to believe him. “Fine, let me know if this tickles.”
She starts putting her claws to real use, drawing dagger-point lines from his collarbones to the bottom of his ribs, lingering when one divot in his skin or another catches her eye. Occasionally, she digs in a little too hard or brushes past a little too gently and Owen twitches, a helplessly full-body reaction. Eventually, she stops apologizing for it. She weaves together a patchwork of invisible nettles across his torso, dragging her nails over the same places over and over. Pain, sharp, like freezing snow blown at whip-crack speeds. Owen finds himself breathing, deep and slow.
When they lift their hands, their nails are tipped in a fresh colour. “Red,” they murmur, half to themself, but they’re looking at Owen and not their hands. He tries to look too, catches little more than a glimpse before Shelby’s making a complaining noise and nudging him back down. He has some impression of stark crimson lines and beads on his skin like roses and thorns.
It hurts. He’s been eating well lately; there’s fuel to feed circulation. The way Shelby licks at the tip of their index finger, kittenish, dark eyes flitting over him, makes his blood throb sluggishly.
“See?” Owen says. “You like it. We’ll make a fighter of you yet.”
“Well—” Shelby pulls her finger from her mouth. Both her hands close into fists, hovering over him. “You would’ve stopped me. Right? If you weren’t okay with that. I just— I just wanted to see.”
“Now is a funny time to ask,” Owen drawls. “You haven’t even taken me to dinner first.”
“Should I have done that?” Shelby asks, expression all rounded shapes. “Is that a vampire thing, you gotta get each other food—”
“No,” Owen laughs, prying at her fists until she unfurls them, touches his bare skin and dirties her spit-licked hands all over again. “That’s called a joke, Shelby.”
The first giggle tumbles out of her like a hiccup, and the rest come in short order. It seems Shelby decides quick that Owen’s fine after all: she grabs his wrists and kisses him, clumsy at first and then fierce. Owen does not manage to stop himself from gasping. She is careless of her teeth like she’s trying to scrape out the depths of him and chew it to mulch in her mouth.
She will be a fearsome and lovely thing, once she is coaxed into taking hold of her gift with both hands. Owen, half-drowned in experiencing, has just enough presence of mind to identify the flutter in his veins as pride.
Shelby sighs when they release him from the kiss. Owen’s heart, if it beats, beats only at the pace of eons, but he licks at the places they cut his lip and feels a cold-hot thrill.
He swallows. “Haven’t done that in— Ah. Ever?”
“Really?” Shelby says, eyes enormous. “Wait, really?”
“Two hundred and twenty-five years,” Owen says dryly, any further depths to his consideration of that fact gulped down like new medicine. “Shunned by the entire town for twenty-five of those years and asleep for the other two hundred. I’d like to see you manage under those conditions.”
Shelby’s little laugh at that is music. The beacon’s power hums to them even down here, closing Owen’s cuts. They tap at his sternum, head tilted thoughtfully.
“All right, that’s enough,” Owen says, waving away their hands. When they swipe at him, claws all keen and swift and playful, he grabs their forearms. They pull hard against his grip, and the blood has made them strong, but Owen knows the limits of a vampiric body better. He squeezes until their bones creak, then lets them go. He touches the tips of their hair, and they still.
They look unhappy.
Owen fixes his shirt so it covers most of the blood. The colour of light-shot wine, it has handled stains like this well enough since long before this moment.
“Come on then,” he sighs, and drags them down into a hug. They utter a faint noise of complaint, but settle down. “If it’s that important to you,” Owen murmurs, dozy from the rush of closeness and the satisfaction of company, “we can do that again another time.”
Shelby’s hands twitch near his throat and Owen feels the familiar sting of a cut opening, closing. He doesn’t sleep, and he doesn’t know if Shelby does. The bedroom is boxy, unpolished, but it is part of the roots of their new home. He hopes Shelby likes it when it’s all done.
Pyro has to jump, then scrabble awkwardly at the deepslate, to join Owen in perching on the rough, broad top of one of the castle’s new walls.
“All right?” Owen asks, taking their forearm to help haul them the last little way up.
“Yeah,” Pyro says, collecting their limbs. They dust off their coat, awash in red light. “Great.”
“Good,” Owen says, and stops staring directly. “What are you up to at this hour?”
Crows call in the distance. It’s a strange time of night for crows, the forest around them palatial in the way of abandoned things, the land dipping down into shadows. The river must gleam like fresh sinew at the foot of the mountain, unwelcoming in the moonlight. But Oakhurst keeps strange creatures in its woods, and they call like the tumble of rocks again. It’s food and company, if nothing else.
Pyro does not fidget, but they hold themself stiffly, statue-still. Owen hears them breathe as if to speak, but then no words come. Another breath. On the third, Pyro says, measured as if to make sure the syllables come out in the right order, “I wanted to ask you for some advice.”
“By all means, ask away.”
Pyro’s expression scrunches. It’s nearly cute: he and Shelby look the same, feeling out the changed shapes in their mouths. “How well do you… know Scott?”
“About as well as you do, I’d expect. Why?”
Pyro shrugs, pushes hair out of their eyes, mop of bone-white tinted pinkish by the moon. They did take Owen’s advice and fish out a pair of those gloves they wanted from the crypt. Owen finds himself unexpectedly pleased. “You seem familiar with him, lately, is all. I was wondering.”
It’s been a strange few days. Flush with power, it’s been easier to bicker with Scott, who gloats and preens but mostly just seems happy that someone else has picked up the lion’s share of the labour. Easier to murmur appreciatively when Shelby shows off her new abilities, to grin at Pyro in recognition when they crest the ridge.
“I met him at the same time you did. It does feel like it’s been much longer than a week, doesn’t it?”
“A week,” Pyro echoes dully. They tug at their gloves. “And I already feel like I’m disappointing him.”
“Really? You two seemed all right the last time I saw you together.” Owen reaches out and Pyro flinches.
Owen does his best not to blame Pyro. He’s gotten careless. Shelby and Scott hardly bat an eye, knowing so little of what his sickness once looked like, but there are still the scars. Owen swallows vague betrayal; the taste of it is familiar.
“Has he done something?”
“I just—” Pyro visibly chews their words for a moment. “That night on the beach with Shelby, he… He was very displeased with me. I would hate for it to happen again.” They laugh, but it has a nervous quality. “That pickaxe he had— I guess it was made of silver! It hurt quite badly.” They bite their lip and before Owen can admonish them, they wince. Scent of iron in the air and Owen nearly licks his own lips in sympathy. They whisper, “Nothing I couldn’t heal from, of course, especially after taking his meal, but… Again. I wouldn’t want it to happen again.”
“No,” Owen agrees. The castle is silent, the wider world a warm cloak around its inchoate floorplan. “He’s not one to be taken lightly. The Goldsmiths are an old, old family, if the fables are true. You don’t want to cross them.”
“Where’s…” Pyro looks down at his gloved hands. Splays out the fingers in his lap. “Where are the Goldsmiths? Were they in Oakhurst?”
“Oh, they were all over the place, I imagine.” Owen eyes the stretch and flex of Pyro’s gloves over skin and muscle and bone. Does he recall the taste of Pyro’s living blood in his mouth? “They were definitely in Oakhurst. Ancient before I was even born. They told tales about the curse on the Goldsmith family around these parts.”
Pyro’s hands still. “You were born here.”
“I didn’t lie about that bit. Born, turned, and put to sleep.”
Pyro’s shoulders come down minutely. “You never left?”
“I was a lumberjack who was sick all the time,” Owen says, raising an eyebrow. “The only reason I had somewhere to live is because my parents left me the cabin when they died. Where would I have gone?”
All at once the tension melts from Pyro and they slouch forward. Their hair is just long enough to make a curtain over their eyes from this angle, and their ascot hides their neck. They look small. Melting. “That’s— That’s nice of your parents. That they left you something.”
“Nicest thing they ever did.”
“Oh.” They glance from their hands to him. “Is the cabin still there?”
Owen shrugs, stretching. Pyro tracks the motion with skittish attention, and Owen wonders what on earth Scott’s been teaching his fledglings anyway. In a moment of stupid, bubbling amusement, he beckons for Pyro. “I haven’t checked. Always hated the place. Drafty.”
“Oh,” Pyro says again, and then he laughs, a little cough of a sound as if just to be polite. It’s hard to feel too pitied though; he also inches closer to Owen. “I guess you wouldn’t go back even if you had the chance, then.”
“I’d sooner sleep in the dirt.” Then he moves, sitting so his legs can dangle over the edge. Pats the space beside himself and Pyro, shivery, takes the invitation and more, pressing himself against Owen’s side.
“Goodness,” Owen mutters. “You and Shelby are clingy.”
“Sorry, I didn’t—”
Owen stops their attempts to draw away with an arm around their shoulders. This, too, was a gesture learned by watching. Owen saw the farmhands in the long distance sometimes, the earthen streaks of their bodies colliding, separating, colliding again, as if that was conversation in itself. One might drag the other along, staggering, hitched together by the loop of an arm. Owen squeezes, then lets go. Pyro drops their head on his shoulder and Owen’s vocabulary in this strange language expands a little.
Eventually Pyro murmurs, low as if spilling out a secret, “I can’t exactly go home if he decides he wants nothing to do with me anymore. And— there’s nowhere else to go.”
Pyro doesn’t even specify which he they’re referring to. Owen wonders distantly if it’s always like that. “You have a place here. Don’t discount that before it’s even gone.”
Pyro sighs. Breathing, as a vampire, doesn’t work the same. Nighttime walks, deep sleep, the breeze off the lake — all their edges dull. They are activities continued only out of habit, or when there is blood in the belly to sharpen living sensation. The night is lukewarm around them both, and Owen is glad not to be faking shivers among the humans.
“When you and Scott invited me out that night,” Pyro begins, squirming minutely, “did you choose me on purpose?”
Owen catches his lungs expanding. He exhales deliberately. “When I woke up, I was planning on killing everyone who dared set foot in Oakhurst.”
Pyro makes an unintelligible sound, and shifts some more, though it’s hard to tell if he’s trying to get closer or further away. His weight stays on Owen’s shoulder.
“I didn’t know Scott was one of us,” Owen continues. “I thought it was just me, and two fools going gallivanting into the woods at night with a vampire.”
This time, Pyro’s laugh burbles up like raven-song. “Thanks.”
“You’ve learned, haven’t you? You’ve survived this long, after all.” Pyro shudders and Owen murmurs, “Cold? You’ll stop feeling that over time, too.”
“No, yeah, I— So. So if Scott had been human, we would’ve just both been dead?”
“That was the ideal outcome, yes.”
“I don’t know how to feel about that,” Pyro mumbles. He is a heavy body. Owen imagine slinging him over his shoulder, walking them both down the narrow, stony flights of stairs into the soothing dark of the underground.
“You were lucky,” Owen replies simply. “Scott—” He chuckles. “He really was hungry. The mess he made of you… It’s a good thing your clothes were dark and the river was so close. You were very calm about it all; I appreciated that.”
They are so unmoving. It is, Owen supposes, a valuable skill.
“Lucky,” Pyro repeats. “I actually— I don’t remember that at all. I remember… darkness. Not like nighttime darkness, but like whatever memory was there is just gone. You know what’s funny?” They lift their hand, raise it to their throat. “I can’t find the bite. Where I was turned.”
“It’ll have healed by now,” Owen murmurs. With the arm that Pyro isn’t leaning on, he reaches over and tugs until Pyro drops their raised hand into Owen’s palm, fingers curled inward. Owen lets it rest there a moment before guiding it gently back into their lap.
“It doesn’t even stay?” Pyro asks, voice small. “There’s no evidence of it or anything?”
“Most things don’t, once you have the gift.” Owen turns his head slightly and does not kiss Pyro’s hair, but gets close, lips parting as he remembers his teeth. “At least, that’s what I’ve been told. Wasn’t the same for me, but I was… an unusual case. What’s this have to do with asking me for advice?”
“Nothing,” Pyro mumbles. He twists around until he’s gathered his limbs close, until he can tuck his face against Owen’s neck and have his knees halfway in Owen’s lap as if he’s hiding, like a child. Owen touches his lower back. It is still a novelty. He thinks of stray cats, the way the little ones would wind between their mother’s legs while she blinked, gemstone-eyed, out of the dark.
The moon is swelling up like a tick in the sky.
“Owen,” Pyro says. They pluck at their gloves, eventually pulling them off entirely and stuffing them in their pockets with a sigh.
“Go on, spit it out.” He does press lips to Pyro’s hair this time; it is glossy and brighter than iron. Whatever else is happening between sire and fledgling, Pyro isn’t being starved.
“Things change when you’re a vampire,” Pyro begins. “The— digestive system. And the teeth. The canines in particular. You… bleed differently. Blood, in general, works differently for us.”
“All true,” Owen agrees.
“Is that why I can’t—” He makes a thoroughly meaningless gesture, stiff as dead wood against Owen’s side.
Owen thinks of words coaxed out of children with an encouraging touch. Traces a circle low over their spine and is pleased when they relax slightly. “Can’t what?”
“Can I see your teeth?”
Owen decides, deliberately, that he can have enough patience for this too. This family has been kinder than any he knew a lifetime ago. He nudges Pyro back and flashes his fangs.
Pyro, as if startled, bares his own.
Owen laughs. “You have baby teeth!”
“What?” Pyro says, confusion spilling across their face.
Owen pushes Pyro’s lip up with his thumb. “Your fangs. You’re still so young, they almost look human.”
“Are yours—?” Voice made strange by Owen’s thumb against his gums. He frowns awkwardly around the intrusion and Owen pokes with the point of his claw in warning before retracting his hand. Stubbornly, Pyro tries again: “What, are yours bigger?”
Slowly, Owen peels back his lips. Pyro stares, brow furrowed. His tongue runs over his own canines, tentative.
“Like I said.” Owen takes Pyro by the chin, presses down on his lower teeth and levering his mouth open. “Baby teeth. They’ll grow.”
The sound Pyro makes is almost faint enough to be inaudible. Owen releases him, automatic this time, because that was not entirely a cry of surprise.
Pyro shuts his mouth, wincing, and Owen grabs him, runs his thumb along his bottom lip, which is enough to coax him into opening up again. He bit his tongue, and the smell of blood comes so sudden and sharp it is like a physical, glistening thing. Owen hooks his thumb over Pyro’s teeth and there’s that sound again, hitched like it tried to interrupt itself.
Owen sighs. “Careful,” he murmurs. He pushes his thumb further in and Pyro’s lips seal around the intrusion. His mouth is wet. For a moment he is obedient, and then his tongue touches Owen’s skin, licking with all the slowness of hope. Owen shakes his head and Pyro stops. “Someone might overhear you, making noises like that. I don’t think you want that, do you?”
Pyro reaches, fresh claws digging into the fabric of Owen’s waistcoat. Owen allows them close, removes his thumb and adjusts their two bodies until they can perch more comfortably on the wall. Pyro very nearly falls into him, clumsy, desperate, half-landing in his lap trying to help. Pyro loops their arms behind his neck, and Owen is pinned by an idea. If Louis had done this to him—
Owen holds Pyro firm by the hips. They remember to answer. “No. No, I wouldn’t want him to— find me lacking.” Pyro’s hand, faltering, finds one of Owen’s, gripping tight. They look frightened.
“What are you—”
“I’m sorry,” they whisper, dropping their forehead to Owen’s shoulder. Pyro clutches at Owen’s wrist, and brings his hand down between their legs, and understanding blows in like dead leaves in a gale.
“Ah. Is this what you were going to ask about?” He palms Pyro’s clothed crotch, feels the twitch of their soft cock under his hand and their nearly inaudible whine. “What made you think I’d be able to help with that?”
Pyro is still like taut rope is still, like a tree at the swing before it is felled. “It’s been days. It’s not as if I don’t feel— urges. But no matter what I do, no matter what happens, I can’t— Please. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Owen… hasn’t been thinking about it. Between all the business in town and the work around the castle and the fact that whatever was here two hundred years ago must already be less than ashes on the wind, there has been no reason to wonder what else the gift could do to a body.
“Days?” Owen asks, and Pyro shudders. Owen thinks again of the blood in Pyro’s mouth, surely swallowed down by now, its source healed over. “Mm. You’re very eager to please, aren’t you?”
Pyro whimpers. They are, in the shivering manner of something acting on instinct, trying to grind against him. Owen pushes back, and the way they huff is somehow grateful.
Really, there hadn’t ever been any reason for Owen to wonder. I suppose we’ll discover all the ways you will be changed when the time comes, Louis said, unashamed of his teeth, and a shiver crawled up Owen’s spine, coming awake to the anticipation of new and shared discoveries. He thought he would wake up and reach out blindly and there, for the first time in his life, would be another’s hand reaching back. He thought it would all put itself together from there.
Pyro, it seems, has had no such promise offered to him. Owen can’t bring himself to be jealous.
“I’m your test run,” Owen says, not really expecting an answer. He removes his palm — Pyro has the decency to stop moving for a moment, to stop breathing entirely — and makes quick work of the fastenings on the front of Pyro’s trousers. “You’d rather Scott be doing this, wouldn’t you?”
“Please,” Pyro manages, instead of the hiss Owen half-expected. Owen remembers to be mindful of his claws only after he’s shoved his hand down Pyro’s underwear and Pyro has winced.
“Fine,” Owen says, though it’s a little belated. The only unfamiliar part of this process is the angle, but he can manage. Pyro, sweetly enough, reacts to his exploratory stroking like they’ve never been touched. They leak. They whine. Their cock stays soft. “What are you hoping for? If the question was whether you can harden—” Owen squeezes, just slightly, and Pyro’s minute, desperate rhythm falters “—I think you have your answer already. If it’s satisfaction you’re looking for, you may as well just go to him directly.”
“But it’s— Is it normal?”
Owen’s stomach is hollow as if he’s hungry or horrified, but he’s hardly about to take a bite of Scott’s food. “Ask your sire,” he murmurs, ignoring Pyro’s panting breaths. He works them over steadily, the flesh under his hand a little bit warm. “I wouldn’t know.”
Pyro’s voice warbles, utterly at odds with the clinging grip he has on Owen. “You’ve never tried?”
“I haven’t had reason to. Unlike you, I’ve no interest in finding out what Scott’ll do if he sees.” Pyro shudders again, nearly keels over as their cock throbs in Owen’s hand. Owen grimaces; Pyro’s made a mess. “See? You could have tested this yourself.” They’re shaking, squirming uneasily. Owen approximates a one-armed hug for them, for just a moment, and then another moment because they’ve curled in on themself. “Come now, Pyro. You’ve learned your lesson. He’d hardly hurt you for being curious, would he?”
“Curiosity has led me to a lot of places I shouldn’t have gone,” Pyro whispers, though there is something dazed about their tone. They take Owen’s dirtied hand and begin to lick it, kittenish. They pause halfway to stare at Owen’s palm as if surprised it’s there. “Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
Owen wonders whose hand, exactly, Pyro is looking at. The wet drag of their tongue, the way their mouth hangs vaguely open: that’s sweet too. “You may as well finish the job.”
Pyro does. Owen wipes the spit off on his own clothes. They need washing anyway.
“Scott’s reasonable,” Owen says, pushing Pyro’s hair out of their eyes. They don’t shy away; they practically list into it, nearly falling over. “And you’re one of his now. He won’t hurt you just for asking questions.”
“One of his,” Pyro says, voice odd. He brings up the heel of his hand. Wipes his mouth.
It’s just Owen and Scott down at the end of the grand hall. Owen is perched by the beacon, which is pleasant to be around. It sets a vague, faint warmth moving through him like new marrow leaching into his bones. There’s the shuffle and creak of wooden floors and chests.
“Are you helping or are you just gonna watch?” Scott asks, elbow-deep in their temporary storage. He’s meticulous about keeping his cloak out of the way, has his sleeves carefully rolled up, but for all his fussing about it, he does work. Sometimes even with minimal complaint.
Owen kicks his feet idly, his heels thudding against the stone siding of the stage on which the beacon is set. “I’m quite happy up here, actually.”
“Of course you are,” Scott mutters. “First you’re canoodling with my fledglings and then you’re lounging about instead of helping me with things—”
“Canoodling?” Owen demands. Scott guffaws. “And what’s this about your fledglings? I seem to recall that it was Pyro who turned Shelby. You made a pretty big deal about that.”
“And Pyro’s mine, so Shelby is too.” Matter-of-fact. “I might as well be her sire; it’s not like Pyro is going to be much use for teaching her anything.” Scott shuts the chest he’d been sorting through. “How much glass do you have?”
“On me? None.” Owen checks the pockets of his cloak. “I have a bottle of crimson, if you want it.”
“Nah, keep it. I’m trying to expand our food supply, not just have us drink from the same bottles over and over. Here.” He sets two more crimson bottles next to Owen.
Owen takes them. Scott has been strange from the moment they met, and the vampirism only explains about half of it. Maybe it’s the age, those centuries of learning humanity’s turning wheels, their hammer-beat hearts. Owen puts one bottle away and turns the other around and around in his hands, admiring the dull, liquid slosh of it. Scott will never hear Owen say it, but this is more generous than he had to be, and more generous than Owen was expecting.
“So?” Scott says, breaking the silence. He’s done what he was doing, apparently; the chests are all closed, one hand is on his hip, and he is lit warm from below by the glow of the furnaces, cast stark by the lanterns along the walls. “You better not be giving them any ideas.”
“I don’t know how many ideas I have to give,” Owen says. Honesty. It wasn’t so long ago that they were living in Oakhurst proper, and its memory lingers; some part of him thinks he should lie. “They want to know about the gift. I can indulge them, with the limited knowledge I have.”
“Indulge them,” Scott repeats meaningfully.
“It doesn’t do us any good to leave them in the dark,” Owen says. “Does it?” His throat’s better now, now they have a steadier supply of food, but speaking still scratches at him. It’s familiar, reminiscent of long evenings spent at Louis’s table, or in one of his armchairs, cajoled into staying so late his voice broke and he was forbidden trying to go home on those winding, lightless paths out of town. He wishes it were not so familiar.
Scott, with another flourish of his cape, hops up to sit a comfortable distance from Owen. He, at least, minds personal space. “Shelby tried to kiss me.”
“Oh?” Owen says.
“On the cheek. She said you let her do it to you too.”
“She was feeling restless,” Owen says, aiming his gaze at the cavernous impression they have made of the night sky, the places they have erected supports for the nascent ceiling overhead.
Scott hums. Motion in Owen’s peripheral vision. “I don’t know who taught you, but that’s not a vampire thing.”
“I didn’t claim it was,” Owen says, surprised into looking back down.
“I like it, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to feel appreciated, but… You know, if you aren’t sure about something, you could just ask me. No need to make things up and confuse the fledglings.” Scott pats the back of Owen’s hand and Owen jolts. “So you’ll let the babies touch you but not me?” His eyebrows are up. “I see how it is.”
“Don’t be like that,” Owen sighs as Scott withdraws, straightens.
Scott cares for little beyond his own machinations. He’s transparent enough about that, and regardless, Owen knows his ilk. He tries to hold on to that. He tries to remember the difference between sketching out plans with Louis (a mill, a granary, stronger walls) and being here.
“Since you’re indulging us, will you indulge me, too?” Scott’s irises are red. His hair is silver. He is, all of him, luminous.
“If it’s within my abilities,” Owen says, feeling magnanimity buoyed by that miserable, sickly tide of hope that’s been tugging him since they all arrived at the castle. It’s hard to swallow, even knowing what Scott is.
They all match. Red eyes. Silver hair. He’d pass the sleepless, freezing hours of winter during his human life dreaming of a sibling coming in and holding him, a parent whose movements around the fire would be accompanied by the sounds of humming, the smell of food. Other times, he’d picture kissing a little sister on the crown of her head. Wringing out a cloth with unwavering, unmarked hands to place on his feverish younger brother’s brow.
Scott jerks his chin at Owen, drops from the beacon platform, and begins to stride away. Owen follows him, and they wind up outside, somewhere that has aspirations of being a courtyard. It is only wild grass and rubble at the moment.
“Stargazing?” Owen asks.
Scott chuckles. “That’d be cute. Maybe another night, if the humans leave us alone for long enough.”
It’s exposed out here. Shelby and Pyro have made themselves scarce; the night has a skeletal, barren quality without their chatter. It would be nice. A different evening. All four of them. Constellations, and old stories Owen heard as a small boy about how they came to be. He could share them, if the others want to listen.
“Don’t flinch this time,” Scott says, which is the only warning Owen gets before one of Scott’s fingers is under his chin, tipping it upward.
Owen does flinch — he is not without his failings — and Scott tuts. “Mm. Thought so.”
“Thought what?” Owen says. There is a chilly feeling sprouting feathers in his chest.
“The other reason I want those bottles,” Scott says, thumb suddenly pushing hard into the corner of Owen’s mouth, “is you three are such messy eaters! Getting blood all over your faces just trying to drain a chicken. It’s like no one ever taught you people manners!” When Owen goes to move away, he frowns. “Hold on, let me…” Licks his finger and presses it back where it was, rubbing. “There. This side too.”
Owen bats Scott’s hands away. “All right, all right, I don’t need you mother-henning me—”
“Don’t you?” Scott asks, and suddenly his other hand is gripping Owen’s face, claws threatening to cut. “Because it sure seems like you barely know what to do without me organizing everything. At this point, it’s starting to look bad for me. We can’t go around acting like those livestock back in town.”
We. Owen doesn’t know what to do. He bares his teeth, warning.
Scott is unconcerned. He finishes polishing away whatever it was he saw on Owen’s face. “It’s just disappointing,” he murmurs. “I’m willing to make do for a little bit if I really have to, but I was hoping you would know better, at the very least.” He pauses, head tilting. “You’re not busy right now.”
Owen knows better than to agree. “What do you want?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Scott says, lips thinning. “It’ll be fun! You’ll get food out of it. And you’ll learn something new.” He flicks his wrist, exposing the skin. “Here, drink from me.”
No further ceremony as he holds it out, as if that night on the beach never happened. As if he doesn’t glide through the castle’s unfinished halls with the ancient surety of something untouchable. As if Owen could sink his teeth into that alabaster skin and find sweetness there.
Owen bites, but the blood that wells into his mouth is foul, tasting of metal gone somehow hot and sour in the sun. He drops Scott’s arm and spits into the grass and Scott, with that same arm, grabs him by the wrist to stop him backing away.
“That’s horrible,” Owen coughs, caught.
“Owen,” Scott says, with a dangerous kind of amusement. “I’d hardly call that drinking.”
“You’re joking,” Owen rasps.
Scott smiles, genuinely, teeth and all. “You’ll remember what I’m trying to tell you better this way.” A playful tug, until they are standing closer than either of them have ever stood. Scott is unfazed at Owen’s hiss; if anything, his expression is one of a person charmed by a kitten. “I’m guessing you don’t know what happens when a vampire tries to drink from another vampire that doesn’t have enough blood.”
Owen could turn into a bat and be gone from this place. He doesn’t know what Scott wants and there’s nothing to be gained from a gambling game where your opponent won’t tell you the stakes.
Scott’s grip gentles unexpectedly. Lets go entirely, though his expression is hard to read. “I’m just trying to help.”
Owen can’t really keep himself from reacting the way he does to that, the step back and the scoff. That taste still coats the inside of his mouth. “You’re starting to sound like the humans.”
Scott rolls his eyes. “I’m actually wanting to be helpful here. They’re not going to be. I would know; I’ve been a vampire longer than you, Shelby, and Pyro combined! Whatever ideas you’re still holding on to from your human days, you need to let those go.”
Owen breathes very deliberately and does not lick his teeth.
“Come on,” Scott says. “I thought you were with us.”
The flavour is a little like coins slick with the sweat of his palm, or like bandages peeling brown from his skin when he worked through the long summer days. “I am.”
“So?”
The wrist again, as unmarred as if it was never touched. It’s dizzying, to wonder how many times someone like Scott might’ve been cut open only to carry on unbothered, so Owen doesn’t think about it. He bites, and the taste floods his mouth, and he can’t— He squeezes his eyes shut. It’s worse than garlic and worse than the medicinal stew the doctor gave him back in town and worse than the boundless dark of centures spent watching the same men plot the same scheme against the only person in the world who mattered. It’s sour. It’s cold. There are chunks in it, congealing on his tongue.
He can’t do this.
Owen gags and twists away to spit it out. Scott has his other hand on Owen’s bicep, gripping him, forcing him upright. A bit of the rotten not-blood lands on the hem of Owen’s trousers.
“Oh my god,” Scott mutters. “Don’t think about it, just swallow.” Tightens his grip. “Or you can lick it off the grass, if that’s easier for you.”
Owen glares, baleful. “You’ve done this before? How do you even keep it down?”
“Don’t think about it,” Scott repeats. His currently-free hand pets Owen’s hair, claws catching on his curls. Draws him in close by digging those needle-points into the back of Owen’s skull. “Would you rather have it from my neck? You didn’t get to take much from Pyro, and I don’t think you got anything from Shelby. Or do you not have experience drinking from here either?”
“I have plenty of experience,” Owen growls, resisting automatically. Scott lets him for a moment, then guides him back down as if Owen only got lost, and now needs redirecting to find the withered vein down the side of Scott’s throat.
“Sure,” Scott says, the vibration of his voice uncomfortably close to Owen’s mouth. “Go ahead.”
“Give me your wrist then,” Owen hisses, baring teeth at the skin so close he could lick it. He gets his hands on Scott’s chest and shoves hard.
Scott takes a step sideways without letting Owen go. “You’re so fussy,” Scott mutters, and Owen can feel by the pain in his scalp the ugly fistful Scott is clutching of Owen’s hair. “Here, fine, we can move away from your mess if you want.” He guides them both another step into the courtyard. It is, absurdly, nearly like a waltz, and Owen stumbles slightly. Scott doesn’t let him fall.
Left foot, Louis told him, years and years and years ago. No, he laughed. Other foot. Owen muttered something — he’s not sure he recalls what anymore — and Louis smiled, a sliver of mirth Owen had trouble looking at directly. The steps themselves were simple. The late evening collapsed around them in thin sheets of light, and it was just the two of them, turning a little circle, to no music at all. Louis’s hand on his hip, certain of its belonging there. It all seemed simple, then.
“You can do it,” Scott says. “I believe in you.”
Owen bites down harder this time, less careful of how his teeth tear flesh. The taste, which had lingered unpleasantly, floods back, all the more terrible for its sudden sharpness. The world constricts to his mouth, to the workings of his throat. Owen swallows and half of it seems to stick in his esophagus, cling like spiderwebs to the insides of his cheeks, his teeth.
When he shoves now, Scott lets him stagger free.
Owen swallows hard, then swallows again, again. He jumps when Scott’s hand lands on his shoulder. That slight, abrupt motion is too much, apparently. He turns to the side and retches, dropping into a crouch. Nothing comes up, though he could swear he feels the coagulated, festering mimicry of blood like a lead lump in his stomach. He retches again, half-welcoming the feeling with the hope that it will get the globs of Scott out of him.
Scott’s hand comes down to pet the hair right over the back of Owen’s neck.
“Not helping,” Owen grits out. He chokes, throat going tight maybe from the claws so near his throat, maybe just because he’s coughing like it’ll make anything come up. His body refuses to grant him the relief of actually vomiting; he is strung along by nausea. Not even bile falls out of him.
“You’re way more sensitive to this stuff than I thought you’d be.” Scott makes a wondering noise. “I almost want to see how you’d react to garlic.”
Owen shivers, recalling the pungent smell of the cloves Avid waved around back in Oakhurst. The repulsive stab of its scent. It’s disorienting: the animal part of him that would scream for deep breath is dead, and now there is too much of him that is too acutely aware of how his body revolts against its proper function. Each gulp of air and saliva — tinged sour by that taste — only serves to make him gag again.
Owen’s put his hands in the grass without quite thinking. It’s inside him. Is he dizzy, or only expecting to be? His innards convulse. Scott mumbles something but Owen’s not really listening. He registers, belatedly, the drip of spit from the points of his fangs.
“I can help,” Scott soothes, kneeling next to him. “Open your mouth wider.”
Owen presses his lips together, swallows hard around another gasp, and obeys.
Scott hooks two taloned fingers into Owen’s mouth. They press in as far as Owen can accomodate, and then farther. When his body seizes this time, it is protracted, pinning him in place until he hacks up a few dark, putrid lumps he refuses to examine more closely.
“Ew,” Scott mutters, pulling his fingers out while Owen heaves.
A flutter of motion. Owen manages to lift his head to see that Scott is holding a handkerchief, wiping his fingers.
“Don’t get up yet, I don’t think that’s all of it.” Scott taps Owen’s cheek.
Owen closes his eyes again. The clots he spat up brought no real relief with their leaving. And it smells worse now. If he pays too much attention to it— Owen does his best to shuffle backwards, and it’s hard to tell if he’s trembling. The world contracts again; another ruddy blot, too small, comes out of him.
“You’re really trying, huh?”
Owen is woozy. He doubts that’s genuine sympathy in Scott’s voice. Is this what Louis meant? About a vampire’s ego being dangerous? He grits his teeth, unable to tell the difference between bile and misery. His body, of course, tries to retch again.
“Open up.”
Owen doesn’t even think, wrung out and stripped down to obedience. Scott’s fingers slip inside him and pet at the base of his tongue.
Like a key into a lock. Release comes in a sharp convulsion of his taxed muscles, and then what’s left in his stomach streams out, cool and wretched. Owen doesn’t know how long he stays there, hunched over his own mess, gagging and spitting the last of it out.
He shoves himself up, wobbly, and Scott catches him before he can leave, hands inexplicably clean. “So. What did we learn?” Scott’s smile is leering and strange.
Louis was so gentle, when he shifted his hand up slightly, seeking to guide Owen better, Owen froze in place with a laugh, too caught to lean in or away. Oh, dear, my apologies, Louis giggled when he realized, hand retreating to the safer perch over Owen’s hip bone. I intended only guidance, I promise.
“Don’t drink from you,” Owen manages. He is unsteady, twitching against Scott’s grip on his forearms. The whole world its wide arc overhead. And then, in a few unneeded breaths, he is nothing at all. Nothing but the filth, seeping into the edges of his sleeves. Perhaps it is seeping into his skin. He feels vile enough for it. “I didn’t need to be taught that.”
“No, what you learned is that a vampire that hasn’t eaten recently is worse than useless to you,” Scott corrects pleasantly. His neck hasn’t quite healed, and he doesn’t seem to care, torn flesh limp and shiny. “Got it? Now you know something new!”
The hunger is familiar. The hunger has been familiar since before he was turned. It darkens, yawns wide, and Owen lets Scott pet his hair because he is a monster. Because he is tainting Louis’s memory by thinking of the man now. The temporary reprieve — the four of them and their little feast of chicken and cow once they no longer had to hide themselves — was just that: temporary. He can’t tell the hunger and the nausea apart anymore. He has no tears left for this, but his body spasms with the preparatory mechanisms of weeping, as he dreams helplessly of tucking his face into Louis’s neck and staying there.
“Don’t drink from a vampire that hasn’t eaten recently,” Owen says hollowly.
“There you go,” Scott says, all peculiar approval.
Owen spits into the dirt by their feet. Musters all the grace he can in retreating from Scott’s touch.
“Vampires have all kinds of weaknesses you don’t know about. Do you believe me now?”
“Yes,” Owen says, carefully. He does not taste the mouth he kissed Shelby with. He does not feel the body he pressed against Pyro’s. What kind of idiot was he, to do those things? To be in this place and to think—?
“You could say thank you,” Scott suggests.
It was for guidance. For guidance, and a friendly word, and a closeness, perhaps, but not like that.
When Owen doesn’t reply, Scott shrugs. “Okay, you stand there in silence then, but just so you know, I’m not dragging you back inside if you faceplant in your own vomit.”
Scott goes. Owen needs to clean his clothes; he is dirty. Why did he let that happen?