Chapter Text
“Faggot!”
“We’re gonna kill you!”
Louis really didn’t need any more incentive to keep pounding his feet on the forest floor to escape these assholes, but death threats were a new low. He didn’t even know how it came to this. Prior to this mess, he’d been peacefully riding his bike home after serving detention at school; now, he was being chased through the woods by the majority of the high school’s football team after they’d knocked him off his bike. The team had been walking near the treeline of the forest when they’d spotted him, and that meant they’d probably been on their way to guzzle beer and tip cows in Old Man Marley’s animal farm. But Louis, one of the only three gays to his knowledge at his school, was a much better target than a cow.
He still didn’t know how these jackasses had managed to clock his sexuality, though. He’d never gazed in longing at any of their ugly mugs, he’d never had a boyfriend, nor had he taken part in any public displays of affection with members of his own gender that any bystanders could have been witness to. He didn’t have magazine cutouts of John Travolta or Shaun Cassidy taped anywhere in his locker—regardless of how much they belonged there—and he kept the skin-tight bell-bottoms to a bare minimum.
Life was a blur of consternation and exhaustion for a ‘faggot’ in 1973, but at least he wasn’t being burned at the stake. Little by little, the fight for fair and just equality was brewing, with minor successes here and there, but that meant the backlash was now stronger than ever before. With more blinding rays of acceptance on the rise, huge waves of hatred followed in the shadows, spewing from everyone that felt ‘threatened’ by love and its ‘unnatural expression.’
One of the best examples of these threatened ignoramuses was behind him, in the form of Troy, a chump of a football team captain with a bad attitude, horrendous grades, a majorly crippling alcohol problem, and buckets of introspective shame. It was clear as day to Louis that Troy was just like him. Maybe he had nifty powers of gayness that allowed him to detect his kin out in the wild, but whatever the reason for his certainty, Troy was undoubtedly a walking poster boy for ‘I’m gay, but my daddy won’t let me.’
Of course, that’s not to say Louis’ daddy let him; if the scars on his back from his dad’s favorite belt were enough evidence to the contrary, he had to admit Troy and himself shared something in common there. They just differed in their views of themselves; Troy wanted to commit suicide over it, and Louis just wanted a boyfriend.
“Better run faster, fairy!”
That sounded close. Louis took a chaste look behind him. It wasn’t good. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” he hissed to himself, beating his feet even faster. He wasn’t athletic by any means, but hate crimes tended to bring out the Olympian in anyone.
“Fucking cocksucker!” Troy bellowed at Louis’ back, his voice always ringing out the clearest to Louis since he’d been hearing it since elementary school.
The funniest or saddest part about that type of insult was that it wasn’t even true. Louis had only ever sucked a cock in his dreams. So really, all Troy was doing was needlessly reminding Louis that he was a virgin. Maybe it’s a good insult, after all…
He wasn’t letting Troy win, though. “You can do better than that!” he yelled over his shoulder just to piss his attackers off, zig-zagging through the trees so that he might hopefully be able to prevent the violent carnage that would ensue if he lost this little game of ‘Tag-You’re-Dead.’
“You love sucking cock, don’t you, you fucking fairy! God damned queer! Love taking that good dick up your poofy little faggot ass? You wanna suck dick?” Troy taunted so loud his voice cracked, heightening Louis’ amusement with each desperate and hopelessly repetitive zinger he hurled out of his mouth.
“I’m not gonna suck you, Troy. You can stop asking,” Louis shot back, smirking when a chorus of “ ohhhh ” was mooed from the cattle Troy called buddies.
“You’re dead, Tomlinson!” Troy bellowed the loudest yet, incriminating himself further with his vicious defensiveness. “When I catch you, you’re gonna get reamed, you fucking poof!”
“Sorry, did you say ‘reamed’ or ‘rimmed?’” he asked, being careful with where he put his feet so he didn’t trip over any roots and inadvertently end his own life. “I’m having just a little hard hearing you over your screaming hypocrisy.”
Troy didn’t respond, but Louis had to chuckle when he began to hear him panting behind him, apparently not as hyped up on adrenaline as Louis was. “How are you so fucking fast?” he wheezed.
“Fairy stuff,” Louis responded, knowing he’d need to lose them soon or he’d be at his limit, too.
“I’m gonna kill your ass!” Troy threatened maniacally, setting his exhaustion aside to hammer his feet even faster.
“You’re gonna what my ass?” Louis challenged snarkily, glancing back to smirk at the fuming jock on his tail. “Sorry, but you’re not my typ—Whoa!” he cut off to yell, suddenly rolling his way down the steepest hill known to man.
And I was worried about a root , Louis thought as he crashed his way to the bottom. This forest on the outskirts of town was notorious for having a cliff of death smack dab in the middle of it, and there used to be fences along the edge to ward distracted hikers away from the precipice, but he can thank wastoids—like drunken football players to be specific—for their destruction. Sheer vandalism is the new avant garde.
Troy and his gang erupted into squawks of laughter at Louis’ misfortune, so that was swell, but he was actually safer in a pile of limbs down at the bottom than he was up there with them, so he let the jerks enjoy the moment. Their cackles got closer as they tiptoed to the edge and peered down, but they couldn’t see all the way in the darkness that had gradually taken over the sky ten minutes prior.
“You down there, queer?” Troy called.
Louis kept absolutely silent in the pile of leaves that had ‘softened’ his landing, trying to slow his heart rate as he prayed to whatever might be listening that Troy would just give up.
“Is he dead?” one asked.
“How should I know?” Troy asked in exasperation, their quiet voices somehow still carrying down to him even from this distance. There were more muffled words that Louis couldn’t discern, and he upheld his commitment to being an inanimate statue. “You just fucking wait, Tomlinson!” he suddenly shouted, a fierce blast of relief crashing over Louis from the group’s lucky forfeit. “Tomorrow at school, you’re gonna wish you’d never been born!” he warned, voicing to his team to “bounce” because the “fruit wasn’t worth it.”
He thinks I don’t wish the same , Louis thought with a mental chuckle. Threats like that never went far with Louis, and it wasn’t even a good threat anyway. Regardless of what could be in store for him tomorrow, Louis had withstood a lot worse at home. Troy would never be able to scare him like he wished he could.
The team’s sluggish footsteps crunching leaves as they retreated was music to Louis’ ears, but he didn’t dare move until at least five minutes had passed. Then, when he was sure he was alone, he tried out that moving thing. “What a groovy night,” he said in a sarcastically chipper tone, sitting up with a wince and inspecting the damage. His back didn’t feel too great, and his neck had seen better days, but it was his right leg that really demanded attention. He must have scraped it across some straggling branch or something during the fall, and now it was bleeding pretty bad. At least the gash on his thigh seemed to be the worst of his ailments, so he impressively hoisted himself up on his feet to try to find a way home from his unfamiliar location. He picked the direction he was looking in and put one foot down in front of the other.
Ah, the ankle. The ankle was a problem, too. “Dammit,” he muttered, testing his weight and giving up from the sharp stabs of pain that followed. “This is ridiculous,” he said to himself as he gazed up at the night sky, futilely trying to use the stars to guide his way, but he hadn’t the faintest clue what he was actually looking at. “Works in the movies; why can’t it just work now?” he muttered, dramatically groaning and resuming his pitiful, directionless hopping.
He hummed the themes to his favorite shows and programmes to keep his mind occupied as he covered such slow ground, and he didn’t know how much time had passed, but eventually he came across a few sad-looking gravestones. “Oh, come on, gravestones?” he whimpered defensively, of the opinion that he definitely didn’t deserve a run-in with vengeful spirits after what he’d just gone through. He was actually kind of afraid of ghosts, too, even if it sounded silly for an eighteen-year-old. And how irrational a fear is it, really? In the movies, it’s always a joke, then suddenly you’re being possessed by some little girl that died in a fire in 1849.
“Powers that be,” he addressed to the sky, pointing at the gravestones with contempt as he filled the air with his own voice to feel less alone. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to cut it. I was wondering, if it’s not too much to ask, if you could actually make this night worse ? This isn’t nearly terrible enough,” he sassed, hugging himself around his middle and trudging on through the old and eerily overgrown graveyard as he tried not to imagine hands bursting up through the soil like something out of Garden of the Dead . He was also determined to ignore the recurrent rustling in the trees; hopefully it was just the forest’s harmless night dwellers on the hunt for sustenance, but that’s also what the first person to die in a film would assume.
But when he came across a gravestone that was particularly clear and not overgrown, he bent down to get a look at it, reading the name aloud. “‘ Benjamin Scottsdale…The Greatest Architect that Ever Lived ?’” he recited in complete confusion, squinting his eyes to ensure he’d read that right. It didn’t sound right at all, but there the letters were, and that is what they said. “Okay…” he said, scratching at his head as he rose back to full height. He’d have to just accept that and move on.
“Oh, good; it’s worse,” he noted with a deadpan tone, staring at the infamous town nightmare atop its creepy hill. He’s referring to the haunted mansion that plagued the urban legends of his little blip of a town in Idaho. Pitch black and gothic in its design, it looms over Fortwright with malice in its halls, and every kid for miles grows up hearing horror stories about the evil mansion that nobody ever returns from. It’s all rather silly when one thinks too deeply about it, but there was no denying it was unnerving to look at.
Louis had really only seen it a few times in his life. It’s so deep within the forest that one would have to go intentionally looking for it to actually find it—unless it’s Louis, that is. Then apparently all one needs to do is be gay and be hated for it. Then the mansion will merely be waiting on the other side of a nasty fall.
It started to rain then, the mansion offering safety from the elements and practically giving him a red carpet to approach. “No,” he told the foreboding building, trying not to think about how much warmer it would be inside than out here.
The thing was, nobody knew for sure if the mansion was actually as abandoned as the legends suggest, and the mayor has never truly been frank in his answers about it; citizens of Fortwright have sworn up and down that they’ve seen lights on inside, but they never have any proof, and it looked pretty uninhabited to Louis from here.
Harsh bong, though. No denying that.
It came down to risk and reward. Louis didn’t know the risk or reward of going inside, but he did know that it was somewhat a risk to continue on like this: injured and in the rain. There was no guarantee that Louis would find anything inside worth a help, and maybe he really wouldn’t make it out alive or un-possessed, but what choice did he truly have? His feet had actually already made the choice, and they were leading him to the hill before he could mentally agree, but he didn’t fight it after all. What’s really the worst that could happen, anyway?
The steep incline of land guiding the way to the mansion that was unnervingly perched on its hilltop like a giant, hungry vulture was daunting to say the least, but if the climb was the last step needed to escape the now pouring rain, then so be it. “This might not be ideal, but at least I’m not out tipping cows,” he said under his breath, finally reaching the run-down gate and falling against it in relief.
The gate had an unsecured and laughably useless lock rusted to its middle bars, and Louis warily removed it, ducking from the illogical landmines that might be activated and then rolling his eyes. “Pull yourself together,” he scolded, slapping the lock down on an adjacent strip of metal and pushing the creaky gate open just enough to slide through.
Upon closer inspection of the state and condition of the grounds, Louis slowly began to suspect the vacancy of the estate; it was a little more well kept than it would be if the place was truly deserted. The hedges were trimmed, the grass wasn’t in disarray, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d say there was a flower garden growing along the eastern side of it.
He stood in the rain like a wet cat, fishing through his pockets to flip a coin, a coin that would solely determine his next course of action. Now that the place looked lived in, barging inside was a knowingly risky idea; but on the other hand, so was bleeding to death. He flicked the rusty quarter up in the dark with a small ting noise, keeping a vigilant eye on it so he would actually catch it and then holding his breath once it was trapped in his grasp, slowly removing his hand to uncover his fate.
The coin was tails, and as he’d previously decided, so was entering the mansion. “Well, there you have it, folks,” he said to no one, pocketing the coin and inching toward the entrance with two rather uninviting metal bats for knockers on either door. Should he actually knock, though? Not with a bat , he decided, trying for the handle instead. To his surprise (and slight horror), it opened, and he recklessly waltzed all the way inside before he had a chance to process what he was doing.
The door shut itself behind him like a creep, but he wouldn’t scream yet. Not until he was sure he was going to die. It was pitch black inside, so he fumbled around for any much appreciated light switches, but he dropped his head forward in defeat when he realized this joint probably didn’t even have electricity.
Amid his internal monologue of whines, he ironically found the toggle he’d been hoping for just a few feet down the length of the wall, and he bravely flipped it on even though the act could potentially expose him to whoever might be watching. The pain of his ankle temporarily forgotten, he jumped straight into the air when the old and cobweb-encrusted chandeliers bathed the main room in shimmering, golden light, but it wasn’t fear that made him jump. From his first real look at the mansion’s interior, it was pure astonishment.
‘Gorgeous’ didn’t quite fit the bill if he were to hand out compliments, but it was very close. The first thing he saw was a staircase across the foyer that separated the heart of the room into a west and east wing, and to the left of the foyer was an alcove of artworks and ceramic pieces that took his breath away. Art perforated most of the walls, to be sure, but this modestly immodest collection in the left corner was particularly jaw-dropping.
He hobbled over and gawked at the collectibles on display atop dressers and tables. His eyes scanned blue and white porcelain pieces from Asia, bronzeware bowls and vases that could have been from everywhere, incense holders that were unreasonably intricate and reminded him of Tibet, and so much more that he couldn’t knowledgeably place. There were more antiques and timeless treasures interspersed within just the first room of this home than Louis ever thought he’d see outside of a history museum, and for what?
But more to the point, this place was a museum. And Louis had just won an accidental golden ticket.
Turning his enthralled gaze to the floor, he beheld intricate, Arabian-style rugs at his feet that appeared to dwell right up there in the range of uncommonly priceless, and they made Louis want to dress himself in sashes and gowns and lounge on them like an Islamic princess. That rug carpeting was also what trailed up the stairs like a red-carpet walkway for Cinderella, but better.
He turned to the right to go explore the opposite side and his gandering came to an abrupt halt when unmistakable movement seized his panicked attention. He whipped fully forward to stare the ambiguous threat down, but his panic subsided as quickly as it’d come. It was his own reflection in a glass mirror above the fireplace. He put his hand over his heart and shook his head at his own jumpiness, bravely approaching the Louis in the glass.
This living room area was the most humble area he’d seen yet. The mantle of the fireplace may have had a few crystalline pieces and fancy candle holders on it, but he could find similar things at the Horans’, so they didn’t particularly amaze him. And the fluffy old couches and loveseats that circled a dark wood coffee table looked entirely lived in and inviting. He would wager that they were most likely the cheapest things here.
He turned in a full circle and took everything in. There were heavy curtains that framed windows to the outside that were several heads taller than him, and they seemed like they should be drawn closed, but they were held open by heavy silky rope ties on either side. He couldn’t picture a creepy dark mansion of this caliber bathed in sunlight, but it must be stunning.
He hummed to himself and headed for the mouth of the eastern hallway, slapping around at the wall for another light switch. This time little oil lanterns along the walls sprung to life obediently, casting shadows of themselves down the length of the corridor, and he studied all there was to see from his position at the opening of the hall. He saw four doors in this hallway, one at its deadend and three more along the right wall. He shuffled down the length of the hall toward the deadend but he had to stop when he came to a particular portrait across the middle door, perched proudly on the left wall.
He gazed unblinkingly at the faces of the boys in the portrait and his heart beat faster the longer he looked. It was a puzzling reaction, but he couldn’t deny their entrancing aura. Louis could only assume the boys were twins because both had brown, curly hair flowing down their shoulders and identical features on their faces. They were unfathomably gorgeous, and definitely long dead. If he had to guess, he’d say they were ancestors of the noble family whose home he had just presumptuously invaded.
He tore his eyes from their beauty to search for more information on the bottom edge of the frame, but he couldn’t read whatever language the title was written in. He thought it might be Greek, but he couldn’t be sure. The date was legible, though, and then came the sigh of self-pity. He’d known they were long dead, but 1488 was particularly ancient, and he mourned how inaccessible these boys were.
In fact, Louis didn’t think he’d ever actually seen a relic so old in his life, and he continued to sear the image of the clone boys into his mind, reciprocated to how their painted gazes seared themselves into him. They struck him as odd in inexplicable ways. It was almost as if more of their personalities were shining through the painting than would make sense for such an innocuous scene, and certainly coming from such an uneducated observer of art such as himself. He didn’t know how he was possibly picking this up, but the standing one—the one with his hand curled around the shoulder of the one in the chair—seemed like he was up to no good. The one in the chair looked too happy and trusting.
Art school students would probably laugh at that, though, and they might give him entire speeches on why he was wrong about that and how the work should be properly interpreted. He decided to move on, uncomfortable with how deeply those twins drew him into them. He really wished he had more time to study each painting in the hallway, but he had come here for an important reason and it wasn’t as if his leg had magically stopped hurting, so he reluctantly kept walking en route to the bathroom he hoped he’d eventually come upon. He had a sneaking suspicion it was the door at the end of this hall.
Upon reaching the end of the eastern hall, he lightly pushed the final door open and he suppressed his victorious yelp. He’d discovered exactly what he’d been looking for. He leaned his weight against the bathroom’s old porcelain sink for support and twisted the old, grumpy nozzle atop it, awaiting the coveted essence of life to pour from the spout but it seemed he would not receive that gift as quickly as he’d anticipated. For in lieu of a nice flow of water, the sink made a terrible groaning sound instead, and brown mud sluggishly oozed down in its place.
Louis theorized the decrepit pipe just needed to cast the gunk out of itself first, and he used the waiting time to hunt for hand towels. Fate was apparently on his team tonight because he spotted an old, dusty rag under the sink in the dark and yanked it out, impatiently watching the lumpy goo evolve into the clear liquid he needed. He undid the buttons of his casual brown bell-bottom jeans and gingerly eased them down his legs, lifting the garment up over the wound as much as he could in the uncomfortable process.
The sink—with its horrendously mediocre plumbing—finally roared to life as it coughed out the last of the sludge. He thrust the rag under the hissing stream and slapped it on his thigh after wringing it out, wincing and taking a sharp inhale in through clenched teeth from the sting. This must be how slugs feel when sociopaths pour salt on them , he thought, wetting the rag once more to give his leg round two.
Gritting his muscles, Louis bravely dragged the cloth back and forth against his skin to give the wound the necessary tough love it required, coming to the conclusion that less pain now wasn’t worth a deadly infection later. That simple act ended up drenching the rag in his blood, and he did a second sweep of the cabinets to hopefully find another one and, as luck would have it, he did find two more sequestered in the back corner.
He tore one into two halves and wrapped the first strip around his leg, tying it expertly because he’d watched more than enough M*A*S*H this year to know how to properly dress an injury. He had just finished carefully shimmying his hips back into the waistband of pants when his heart practically sprouted wings and burst from his chest to migrate south for the winter.
Can’t blame it, though. It would be hard for any heart to stay inside the cage of its owner’s ribs when a distant door in an ‘empty’ house slammed so hard it shook the walls.
Louis wanted to sprint out of the mansion that very second but he didn’t want to be caught either, so he wrenched the water nozzle off and crept out of the bathroom on his tiptoes with trembling knees, staying close to the wall and bending down in a crouch as if it made him less visible. It would be pretty apparent to whoever lives here that someone had been in their house—all these light switches certainly hadn’t turned themselves on—and Louis had thus made himself into a perfectly illuminated target.
The exit wasn’t far away, but every step and creak of floorboards above him on a higher floor made him freeze, and he’d have to regain all of his dwindling courage just to take one more step toward the opening of the hall. Eventually, though, he made it back, staring down the front doors across the living room and debating how he could make his grand escape.
He snailed his way along the back wall of the living room toward the staircase so he had more of a straight shot to the front door, his heart pounding so badly that he felt it between his ears. He was only hesitating so much because by making a break for it, he could be carelessly stumbling out into a potentially dangerous situation with a gun pointed at his back or something. He had to play this safe.
He also knew he wasn’t alone in this area. He was sure of it. And he couldn’t help but feel like the other party was directly above him, near the top of the stairs. How was he supposed to escape now?
The other party made the choice for him. “Whoever is in here, I’d advise you to get the fuck out!” a deep and furious voice roared, echoing down every corridor and bouncing off the walls of the living room in such an omnipresent fashion that pegging the precise origin of it was rendered an impossibility.
Louis was one hundred percent willing to obey the command and vacate the premises, never to return, but now his body simply wouldn’t move like his mind wanted it to. The voice had paralyzed him, and the knowledge that the second floor landing served as the perfect look-out for the voice to document who’d been trespassing in his home was entirely horrifying.
But if that loud suggestion had been a warning, and a final one at that, Louis really had no choice but to obey. He was the one in the wrong here, after all.
Louis somehow managed not to glance behind him and impressively made it all the way to the doors, flinging them open and jogging—he still couldn’t run—down the yard to start the long and confusing journey back to his forgotten bike on the side of the road by the forest. He could only pray it was still there and Troy and his goons didn’t steal it to add insult to injury. He would then arrive at a home he’d have to climb in through a window to get back into, but at least it was one he wouldn’t be illegally trespassing on. He just hoped he could get some substantial sleep before sunrise. He had a long day of toilet water ahead of him.
~~~
Harry snuck out from the guest room he’d locked himself in and stalked forward until he was at the second floor landing, a hand curling around the railing as he stared at all the places the boy had just been. The sweet scent of his blood was still here in the house and he ached to more intimately encounter it, his arm swinging him over the railing and feet landing soundlessly on the first floor before he’d even agreed to his body’s predatory wishes.
He’d been of the opinion for a long time that his monstrous days were far behind him, but there was something absolutely undeniable about this scent; familiar yet foreign, and all too tempting to his nature and its demands. It was with that fascination that he found himself stomping down the halls toward one of his bathrooms, wondering how Martin had not yet awoken from his slumber from either all the noise or the scent of blood itself. Harry figures this scent could awaken him mid-day.
He walked with purpose down the eastern hall until he was glaring in incredulity into the mansion’s only bathroom. He couldn’t believe it. A great insult had been committed to immortal-kind tonight, and he was furious with the unknown human who had managed to leave a blood-soaked rag behind in his tornado-like wake.
He rushed through the door with a speed unseeable to the human eye and picked up the ruby-colored rag, a plethora of emotions raging in his still and lifeless heart. Smelling something this enticing, this bright in comparison to the dullness of his usual hospital blood bags, made him feel like he was in a whole different century. It brought him back to alleyways and brothels and taverns, to blood orgies and overdoses. It almost brought back Hadrian.
He brought it to his nose and took a deep inhale to really experience this moment, and it was everything he dreamed it was. Even just smelling it almost gave him life. His eyes rolled back in his head as his fangs extended in uncontrollable want, and he couldn’t help his hiss of, “ Jupiter ,” surrendering himself to his desire and shoving the rag in his desperate mouth, greedily sucking the blood out of it before it dried and letting it blast him alive like he’d be after consuming three or four grown men. How was this blood worth more than all that?
“Master Harry, I smell blood. What in the world is going on?” Martin asked in confusion as he swung the bathroom door open, rendered speechless at the scene before him.
After two hundred years together as equals, Martin was still keeping up the ‘Master Harry’ thing. He’d started once they’d gotten their estate, and no matter how much Harry tried to tell him he wasn’t his butler, his little shadow wouldn’t hear of it. After so long of being around an elder such as Harry, it’s safe to say that Martin had observed some incomprehensible behavior, but he couldn’t imagine how he looked to his cherished creation right now. Certainly he didn’t look like a paragon of integrity and self-restraint, sitting here against the bathtub with a bloody rag in his mouth.
“You’re in a craze,” Martin noted, pointing to each of his eyes slowly, as if in shock.
Harry stood from the floor and glanced at himself in the mirror, growling in rage at the deep tint of red in his irises that framed widely dilated pupils staring back at him. This was particularly annoying, and also very unexpected. Just who was this source? How did they have blood like this? It was so robust and lively that he was almost hyperventilating, and he hadn’t felt like this in centuries.
He dropped the rag into his hand and gasped for the air that he actually needed, meeting Martin’s flabbergasted eyes and deciding to try to explain himself. “I feel—more alive right now—than I have in—four hundred years,” he panted, placing a hand over his chest and grinning to feel the intensely thumping heart beneath it. He closed his eyes and sighed in bliss as he just took all this for what it was, savoring the exceptionally rare experience of having so much life within him after deciding not to enact massacres anymore all that time ago. The fact that he could get this feeling from one single rag in lieu of leveling a village was staggering, and it made him yearn to capture this bleeding boy and tie him up in his room for the rest of his life. He wouldn’t, but…he was tempted.
“Four hundred years? Is it that exquisite?” Martin asked in wonderment, nearly reaching out for the rag but stopping himself in time. Harry understood; such a statement would be extremely intriguing and would make one want to experience it for themselves, but Harry wasn’t sharing. “How is it that good?” Martin continued, his eyes searching the bathroom for some kind of clue, but neither would be finding one. “You didn’t even get it from the source,” he said, Harry only shrugging at first.
“This blood isn’t normal,” he said, only having that as a fact to work with, but it couldn’t be denied. It wasn’t normal at all. “Something is very different about it...and I can’t figure it out.”
“You think it is inhuman? It smells human, but…” Martin said, the excitement of everything making him drop the official butler manner he usually maintained. Harry preferred he acted normal, anyway.
He also had a point. “I thought for a second that maybe it was the blood of a magical or something, because I’ve never tasted that, but it’s absolutely human. Just not a normal human,” he said, staring hard at the rag and trying to understand what that could mean. “But one thing’s for sure: whoever this intricate blood belongs to is positively begging this elder to devour them,” he noted darkly, biting down on the rag and keeping it in his teeth as he walked toward the door. “Accurséd human. He has no idea what he’s just done,” he muffled in irritation, passing Martin en route to his refrigerator because now, thanks to the rag, he was more ravenous than he’d been in a very long time.
“Clearly I missed loads of excitement as I was sleeping. What exactly happened here?” Martin asked as he followed, racing forward and beating Harry to the fridge so he could see to his unnecessary butler duties.
“No idea,” Harry grumbled as he tossed the rag down on the cherry wood kitchen table and sat down, eyeing the crime like it was the single greatest offense to him there’d ever been. “Humans have obviously come here before on occasion, as we both know—especially in October. They walk around, giggle like idiots, tamper with certain things though they have not the courage to steal, but they always get spooked by their shadows and flee before they’re found. Never in our two hundred years in this estate, not even once, has anyone , left their blood behind ,” he roared, leaping to his feet and pacing around the kitchen before he started destroying it.
“It certainly is insensitive on their part,” Martin agreed, offering the pitcher of blood he’d heated to perfection over the stove.
Harry downed the whole thing in a flash, and he didn’t have to ask for Martin to scurry back and prepare more. “Am I not innocent enough?” he asked rhetorically, his tone desperate. “Am I not invisible enough? Did I not decide long ago to cut myself off from society and let humans live their lives uninterrupted? When I could just as well tear them apart? I do it all for...I do it for...and then this little mouse comes by and threatens to…”
Martin cleared his throat. “You are a beacon of restraint and empathy, and this is an undeserved crime against you and your humanitarianism,” he said carefully, pushing the second pitcher across the table and inviting Harry to return to his seat.
Harry walked back to the table, but he didn’t sit, angrily snatching the pitcher in his grasp and chugging the dull liquid down to the last drop, far beyond the point of savoring his current stash, but it didn’t matter. Zayn would come if he so called for him. What was truly worrisome is that this blood in their collection did nothing to measure up to the blood of the rag, and in a craze, he feared losing his passionately constructed abstinence.
“Do you think—” Martin began, cut off by Harry’s sudden feelings of instability.
“Don’t talk to me right now, I’m not doing well,” he pleaded, waiting for Martin to leave the room so he could meditate on this and find his inner peace again. Martin nodded and left the room, and he felt bad immediately for sending his little shadow away, but he needed this. He fiddled with the key hanging from the cord around his neck and fell into his chair once he was alone, slamming his face down onto the table and concentrating on his bloodlust. He had to beat this, or this town wouldn’t be safe.
It took a while of deep breathing and a lot of clenching of his entire body, but eventually he began to feel less feral, able to think of things beyond the immediate lust of his fangs. He was still at the mercy of his troubled and overactive mind, but the mystery human came back to the front row of every passing thought. He had much to consider here. A human with impossibly potent blood had broken into his home, left a sample behind, and Harry had tasted it. This was already highly problematic for them both.
For unbeknownst to the ignorant human, Harry was now addicted to his blood. He didn’t know the perpetrator’s identity, and he wasn’t optimistic enough to think he’d ever encounter the boy again by mere chance, but it didn’t matter. Harry would now never forget his taste. And for the first time in a long time, he feared his own nature. He didn’t think he’d be able to move on from this, and he could easily imagine himself becoming dissatisfied with the mere memory of what he’d experienced tonight and going out on a rampage to find the boy again himself. That wouldn’t end well for many reasons; the boy would lose his life, and Harry would lose his streak of not killing anyone since he’d turned Martin.
“Curse you,” he growled, his heart slowing pitifully after five minutes of distracted brooding. Now, on top of everything else, he’d wasted his high. He futilely clung to the life he’d been temporarily given, but as always, the effects of blood wore off and he returned to his natural state of living death. “Curse every day you ever have. Luckily for you, your blink of a life will be over before you know it.”
“Master Harry, I know this isn’t a good time, but I found this on the bathroom floor,” Martin softly announced, dropping a rusty coin on the table and sliding it forward until it was within Harry’s reach.
Harry squinted at what he recognized to be a quarter, gingerly tapping it with the sharp extended claw of his index finger and dragging it across the polished wood until it was resting innocently on his edge of the table. He picked it up and gave it a quick sniff, but it smelled of about seventy different humans, and he scrunched his nose in distaste. “Ugh,” he gagged, dropping it back down and watching it noisily dance around in a circle before falling flat and motionless.
“Shall I dispose of it?” Martin asked, already holding out a hand to whisk the object away.
Harry thought it over and shook his head, picking the coin up and closing a determined fist around it. “No. I’ll keep this. Thanks, little shadow,” he said, holding an arm out to invite Martin to walk into. He felt bad about sending him away earlier, and he needed to reassure him that he was wanted and appreciated.
Martin smiled and walked forward, wrapping his arms around Harry as Harry did the same, and he could feel his creation’s tension ebb away. “I understood, you know,” he said, letting Harry know that he hadn’t taken it personally.
“I know,” Harry said, releasing Martin from the embrace and giving his chest a gentle rub.
“And I know you’re worried about this, but no one has more control than you,” he said, Harry nodding silently and watching Martin take his leave.
He was wrong about that. There was one individual who had always had more control than him. He stood from the chair after a few more moments of silence and walked to the stairs to retreat to his bedroom and sulk in private. After reaching the fourth floor mirror room, he kicked the rug away from the trapdoor and took the spiral staircase down to get to his room, flipping the coin around in his fingers the whole time with the rag held tightly in his other hand.
He jumped down the last three steps and kicked his clothes away as he made a path to his mattress on the floor, face-planting down into it. The size of the bed was called ‘king,’ but he certainly didn’t feel like one right now. He rolled over and set the human’s quarter down on his little side table and flicked his gaze between the bloodied rag and a random spot on his concrete wall.
What do I do? he wondered, conducting a series of thought experiments about all the good and bad that could potentially come from this little encounter.
He pursed his lips after he ended up scaring himself with the future and rolled the cloth up lengthwise, maneuvering it around his wrist and using his teeth to pull one side of the knot he’d made. He turned his arm around to gaze in longing at the memento wrist cuff he’d fashioned and sighed in disappointment as he realized how much of a goner he already was. There wasn’t even a sliver of hope that he could let this go.
What am I gonna do with you? he thought to the human boy out there somewhere, wishing more than anything that he’d be an idiot and come right back, but the chances of that were slim. Harry had scared him off like he had everyone else, and humans weren’t generally suicidal creatures, driven instead by an all-encompassing instinct to survive at all costs.
I really don’t want to have to come and find you, he whined in his head, taking a breath of the addictive scent at his wrist and closing his eyes to pretend like he could sleep through the night.
He couldn’t.