A Hunter’s body was not his own, not truly, not once the Legacy had been passed on to him and he was Honor-bound to protect the poor lost souls of the world. Since inheriting his power, Hector never slept, never ate, never had a moment’s peace to himself without his Honor first giving its assent. He was the passive member of this arrangement, it was only by his Honor’s absence in his mind that he was free to do as he wished. He’d learned to use his precious moments to their full potential, catching catnaps or inhaling food when he sensed he had been left to his own devices.
He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping before his eyes snapped open, his supernatural senses prodding him awake. From a dead sleep he was on high alert, but he was disoriented enough that he had to consciously extend his attention out and away from himself. He followed his wards through his apartment, testing each one for breaks or trespasses, but finding them all intact. No malicious forces had tried to enter, no thralls had broached his homestead.
Frowning, he sat up and perched his glasses onto his nose. The air in his bedroom was still and only silence surrounded him. He slipped out of bed and glided from bedroom to living room, swiveling his head this way and that for some answer or clue.
It came from his fire escape. The sound of a boot scuffing against metal. Unmistakable, now that he was looking for what had raised his Honor’s hackles. A glance towards the microwave showed it was just past dawn — not the ideal time for a break-in.
Hector flexed the fingers on his left hand in and out as he glared at the blackout curtain drawn down over the fire escape’s window. Tempting as it was to draw his sword, he didn’t want to risk surprising a mundane person. He grabbed his baseball bat instead.
Giving himself a countdown, he whirled open the curtain on one and barked out, “Hey,” as he raised the bat.
From his prone position on the grating, Ansel jerked backwards, slamming into the railing behind him. A glassy eyed, frantic look came over him and he bared his fangs in a beastly snarl at Hector through the window. It successfully drove him back, though it was from surprise rather than fear; a frenzied vampire wasn’t a new sight to Hector, but it being Ansel gave him pause.
“Hey,” he repeated, much softer. “Ansel?”
No response, and he had gone stock still, his eyes fixed on the bat which was still raised in his direction. Hector licked his lips and tossed the bat off to the side, creeping forward to unlatch his window. His movements were deliberate and broadly telegraphed, he wasn’t sure Ansel wouldn’t bolt away from him at the first opportunity.
“I’m going to let you in, Ansel,” he said. As he raised the window in its track, he reached out to his Honor for any signs of alarm, but it had fallen silent in his mind. “Don’t you fucking try and bite me,” he added.
Once the window had opened far enough for him to clear the frame, Ansel threw himself inside with alarming speed. He stank of blood and his clothes were stiff with the ruddy dried evidence of serious wounds which had healed over some time before. Now out of the elements and immediate danger, Ansel curled in on himself, shivering into the rug with his face hidden from view.
Unsure if a sudden noise or movement would spook him, Hector hovered near the open window, the skin on his arms and legs raised into goosebumps from the biting wind blowing in. When Ansel didn’t move and when he couldn’t stand it any longer, Hector stepped around him and shut the window, drawing the curtain back down. “Ansel,” he said firmly. “I need you to come back to Earth.”
Ansel made a muffled sound into the rug in response. Shaking his head, he balled his hands into fists and tried again. ” ‘m here,” he uttered into the ground. Even this seemed to be too much effort and he groaned in restrained agony.
Confident that he wouldn’t lash out in his disoriented state, Hector squatted down at his side. “You need to feed.” It was an observation, not a question. “Why are you here?”
Ansel tilted his head and one desperate eye landed on Hector’s face. “I can’t—” he grimaced as a wave of pain washed over him. “Someone’ll see.”
A flash of heat hit Hector and he recoiled from Ansel, masking his expression of disgust with his hand. Had he just come here assuming he could feed off Hector because of his obligation? “You can’t feed off a Hunter,” he said, and his voice was colder than he’d intended.
“Not—” Ansel started before he squeezed his eyes shut. “Not off you. Find someone.”
As if that was any better. As if Hector was now expected to happily serve someone up as food. A hot reply was on his tongue, but looking down at Ansel’s pained form on the ground, his resolve weakened. It must have taken an unimaginable force of will to bring him up to his apartment, fighting off a frenzy every step of the way. Oath or not, that was a level of trust he hadn’t expected from Ansel, even if it was fuelled by desperation.
“Okay,” Hector sighed. “I got an idea. But we gotta get you out of sight.”
Moving Ansel proved the trickiest part of the whole endeavor. The first time Hector looped his arms under him, he bit back a scream of pain and recoiled away from his touch. After he regained his composure, he let himself be hauled to his feet, clinging to Hector’s side like a man drowning. It was the longest walk of his life, with Ansel choking back sobs as he half stumbled and half dragged his way beside him. Hector led him into the bathroom and leaned him against the wall, hidden from view by the door.
“Just stay here,” Hector said. Ansel nodded dumbly, biting the knuckles of his right hand and closing his eyes to control himself. “You better pick up,” Hector muttered as he pulled out his phone and dialed. There was a click and a gruff greeting on the other end of the line. “Hey, Carter, it’s Torres up in — yeah, listen, that leak is — yeah, again, it’s — ” Hector held the phone away from his face as Carter’s voice spilled out. When he felt like the man had spoken his fill, he snapped back, “Listen, I don’t know what the deal is, but unless Ms. Prewitt wants her closet to flood again — yeah, see you.”
As he turned to throw his phone onto the bed, Hector caught sight of Ansel out of the corner of his eye. He was leaning around the door of the bathroom; evidently his curiosity had been roused when Hector had raised his voice.
“Building super. The guy’s an asshole,” Hector said, waving Ansel back into place. Rooting around the edge of his bed, Hector pulled on a shirt and pair of jeans before leaning against the bathroom doorframe. “How you holding up?”
Ansel let out a grunt that may have been intended as a laugh. “Just put that fucking sword through me,” he said, thudding his head against the wall behind him. The pair of fang marks on the back of his hand oozed dark blood before slowly healing over.
“Sorry, you die and that breaks our Oath,” Hector said, chewing on one of his cuticles. “What the fuck happened to you, anyway?”
“Shot.”
“Shot?” Hector repeated, leaning in to face him. He was burning to ask for more details, but the haggard and drawn look on Ansel’s face put his questions out of mind. As pale as he ever looked, his complexion was more pallid than he’d ever seen, and when they did flutter open, his grey eyes had lost most of their shine. “Carter shouldn’t be too long,” he said, unsure if Ansel heard him. He moved on to another cuticle, tearing off a piece with a wince and opting not to heal the resulting wound. “You won’t like… kill him, will you?”
A heavy silence followed which Hector wasn’t sure how to interpret. “Not if you’re quick enough,” he said with the ghost of a smirk.
“Ansel—”
“No, Christ,” he snapped. “He’ll be fine.”
The longest ten minutes passed before a heavy knock rattled the front door, announcing Carter even before he called out, “Open up, Torres.”
It was the only time he’d ever been anything approaching glad to have him up. Throwing open the door, Hector stepped aside to let in a solid wall of a man, dwarfing Hector in height, musculature, and overall density. Gripping a toolbox in one hand and a long handled wrench in the other, he stepped around Hector like a fallen branch without a word.
“Bathroom’s that way,” Hector called, needling him pointlessly. Watching the wrench bob at Carter’s side, he had a moment’s regret for choosing him as quarry — he wasn’t sure the man wouldn’t just bash Ansel’s head in.
His worries were misplaced. The second Carter’s foot crossed the bathroom’s threshold, Ansel growled out a harsh, “Sleep,” and 275 pounds of meat crashed onto the tile floor. The toolbox clattered against the tile and skittered to the edge of the door frame. Still feeling conflicted about the situation, Hector picked it up and perched on the edge of his bed, cradling the tools in his lap.
After a few moments, Ansel stuck his head out from around the door, peering over at him. The change in his constitution after feeding was a difference of night and day and he even had a lopsided smile on his face. “Need me to move him somewheres?” he asked.
Distracted for a number of reasons, it took Hector a second to respond with a shake of his head. “No, I got him,” he said, a mirror of Ansel’s smile passing over his own lips. “Just go hide in the kitchen or something.”
Ansel moved to obey, stepping around Carter and passing into the bedroom, but he stayed hovering in the doorframe as Hector took his place beside the man. Setting the toolbox off to the side, he placed the fingertips of one hand on Carter’s forehead and let his other hand rest on the back of his rough knuckles. Closing his eyes, he let his Honor rove over his unconscious form, but aside from a few bruises from the fall and the wounds on his neck from Ansel, he was unharmed. Pressing his palm flat on Carter’s forehead now, he let loose a brief surge of energy, healing him from the bloodloss.
Carter stirred almost immediately and was halfway to sitting up before Hector clubbed him in the back of the head. He slumped back to the ground. After another examination to ensure Hector hadn’t hit him too hard, he stood and filled a glass with water before upending it on the floor. A second glass splashed over Carter and he knelt back down.
“What’d you do that for?” Ansel hissed behind him.
Hector jumped and squinted over his shoulder. “Would you get out of sight?”
A scuffling of feet against the floor told him Ansel had listened that time and he waited for silence before slapping Carter’s face. The man was much slower to rise the second time without divine intervention. Sitting up with Hector’s aid, he blinked and cast a dazed look around the room.
“Jesus Christ, thank God,” Hector said, patting Carter’s shoulder. “You slipped and fell and — Christ I thought you were dead for a second there.”
“I fell?” Carter repeated, taking in the evidence around him. His hand rose to the back of his head and he winced at the knot already forming under his fingers.
“Do you need a hospital or something?” Hector asked, still hovering close to him and expertly feigning concern. “Fuck, I feel awful about this, calling you out and—”
Carter waved his hand at him irritably. “Fuck off, Torres, I’m going home.” Bracing himself against the edge of the shower, he pulled himself to his feet all while staunchly refusing Hector’s help. “Don’t fucking call me again, Paulie can find someone else to do this shit.”
“Yeah, sure,” Hector nodded emphatically. “He sure can. You okay to get home? I should walk you.”
With one final swatting of his tree trunk arm, Carter succeeded in fending off Hector’s good intentions. He hovered outside his doorway for a few moments until the man had rounded the corner to the stairs. Letting out a heavy sigh, Hector leaned into the door to close it with his hip and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked up to see Ansel’s piercing gaze pointed at him, an inscrutable expression on his face.
“You didn’t really think I’d kill him, did you?” Ansel asked, his tone of voice carefully level.
“I—” Hector paused, blinking. “You were in a frenzy on my fire escape. I didn’t know what to expect.”
“Uh huh,” he intoned, sucking his cheek in. This didn’t seem to be the answer he’d wanted, and he turned his head away to gaze out the window. “I better get going.”
“Wait,” Hector said so suddenly it surprised even himself. “Stay. If you’ve got nowhere to be.”
Warily, Ansel eyed him up and down, his whole body tensed for whatever fight was happening in his mind. After a few moments there was a clear victor as his shoulders sagged and he rubbed at one side of his neck. “Alright. I can’t go out in broad daylight like this anyhow.”
Now that the danger had passed, Hector fully took in Ansel’s wretched state. His shirt and jacket were ruined beyond repair with stains and tears, and his jeans weren’t much better off. It seemed like every exposed inch of skin was filthy from mud and old blood, and his hair was matted down against his head in places. Shot had been his explanation, but the air around them still felt too tense to ask for clarification. “You can use my shower if you want. I probably have some spare clothes that fit you.”
As if he was seeing himself for the first time, Ansel held his arm in front of himself for inspection, frowning at what he found. “If’n you don’t mind.”
Hector waved him on and Ansel disappeared back into the bathroom while he padded off to the bedroom to scrounge up something for him to wear. He’d kept the jacket Ansel had abandoned at his last visit, and put together a few other things from the bottom of his chest of drawers. By the time he was finished, the shower had turned off and Ansel stepped out a moment later, towel wrapped around his waist.
“You might as well burn what I’d been wearing,” he said in a mirthless tone of voice.
Hector opened his mouth to speak, but became too distracted by the sight of Ansel’s bare shoulders. His eyes slid across his broad back and followed the curve of his spine as it disappeared under the towel.
“Ain’t polite to stare at a man’s scars,” Ansel said, drawing Hector’s attention back to the apartment.
“I— what?” Hector blinked. He saw it then, the large scar which spread over Ansel’s shoulder blades to wrap down the backs of his arms, far less severe than the ones on his neck. “Sorry. I didn’t notice, honestly.”
“Sure,” Ansel responded, sounding thoroughly unconvinced. He moved to take the bundle of clothes Hector had left on the edge of the bed. “I got used to it a long time ago. Plenty of folks had worse than me when they come back from Europe.”
“Europe?” Hector repeated, the spell over him broken. “Like, what. World War Two?”
Ansel let out a genuine laugh at that. “One. Guess it never come up before.”
“One? Holy fuck.”
Ansel left him to puzzle over the timeline, disappearing back into the bathroom to change. When he reemerged, Hector’s hand was curled under his chin in thought.
“I’m just north of 120 years old,” he said, guessing at his source of confusion.
“Yeah, no, I got it,” Hector said. “You’re just the oldest thrall I’ve come across.”
Ansel shrugged and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “I got a way of sticking around, I suppose.”
Hector made a quiet noise in the back of his throat and his eyes wandered over to Ansel again, his body only partly hidden behind a shirt that had never fit him that well. “Must’ve been a burn, right?” he asked softly.
With a nod, Ansel rubbed idly at the edge of his scar on his right arm. “Mortar, burned up our tent. I never even made it to the real fighting.” He paused, mulling something over; Hector was unsure if this was still a touchy subject to have brought up. The silence was broken by a chuckle and Ansel said, “You think that’s bad, you oughta see the scars up here.”
When he gestured broadly at his neck with his left hand, a pit sank down in Hector’s stomach. He cleared his throat and picked at an invisible thread on the cuff of his shirt. “Glamours don’t work on Hunters,” he admitted, forcing himself to meet Ansel’s eyes as he spoke.
“Don’t— is that so?” he said, covering his mouth. He held Hector’s gaze for a long beat before glancing off to the side of the room and his hand crawled from his face to the side of his neck. “No wonder you was staring at me the first time you saw me.”
The pit in his stomach opened wide into a chasm and Hector felt himself in a free fall. “I don’t notice them anymore,” he said, mounting a feeble defense of himself.
His words didn’t seem to be reaching Ansel, who had withdrawn into himself and was boring a hole into the wall across the room. It was undeniable that his neck scars — fearsome evidence of his liege’s cruelty — had first attracted Hector’s attention like a lighthouse beacon. Every other vampire he’d known, liege and thrall alike, had pinprick scars from their turnings on their necks or otherwise hidden over major vessels elsewhere on their bodies. It made no sense to turn someone and leave them with scars like Ansel’s, not when a Hunter’s gaze could see right through any concealing magics. Baptiste hadn’t just enthralled Ansel for his own, he’d collared him.
The silence in the room was terrible and Hector inched closer to Ansel on the bed, closing the gap between them physically when his words didn’t seem to work. He rested his hand next to Ansel’s and let his fingers glance against the back of his knuckles. Ansel looked down with a start and furrowed his brow at this sudden closeness between the two of them before relenting and leaning his shoulder into Hector’s.
“My burns,” Ansel started, “It got easier as time went on. Little by little folks started forgetting the war. But these…” He again gestured to his neck. “It ain’t that they’re ugly but seeing them, I just see him. What he done. Knowing even if he weren’t around there’d still be this piece of him in me.”
The urge to say I understand or I’m sorry was powerful, but Hector pushed them to the back of his mind. Inheriting his Legacy was nothing like this, what he’d been through as a Hunter didn’t come close to the hell on earth Ansel was living. Empty platitudes and hollow words threatened to widen the gulf between them again and so Hector said nothing at all. He leaned in and tilted his head in Ansel’s direction.
The kiss was an attempt at comfort for two men who’d given up on the very idea, with none of the intense passion of the day before. It was only when Ansel’s hand landed on Hector’s thigh that he shifted position and let himself press against him, urging him down onto the bed. Just for now there was no one else in the world.
Pulling away, Ansel cupped Hector’s cheek with his cool hand. “Baptiste told me to turn you. Ordered me,” he said, his eyes heavy with sorrow.
Shaking his head, Hector took Ansel’s fingers in his own. “That’s literally impossible. A Hunter—”
Ansel’s hand gripped tight to him and he screwed up his face. “If I don’t— when I don’t, he’ll know. He’ll figure it out right away, he’s not stupid, Heck, he’ll come after you—”
Hector cut him off with a stern look. “Then I’ll take care of him.”
A stray tear rolled down Ansel’s cheek and he lowered his head. What reason did he have to believe Hector could stand up to the monster who had tormented him for a near century? When you’re that used to drowning, what hope could you have to ever reach the shore?
Hector kissed the tears away, leaning into Ansel as if he could take all of his pain into himself. There was no resistance at all, and Ansel melted underneath him, pulling him down on top of him. Straddling him, Hector pressed their foreheads together and took in the intimate scent of his own soap on someone else’s skin. “What do you want to do?” he asked.
Ansel shook his head. “Whatever you want,” he said, tracing the edge of Hector’s waistband. “Just don’t touch my neck.”
“Mm,” he intoned in reply, running his fingers along the edge of Ansel’s hairline. “Do you—?” he started, then thought better of saying anything and kissed him again.
Ansel only let him get away with the deflection for a moment before he stopped him, rubbing his cold thumb against his lips. “What were you gonna say?”
Hector pursed his lips in thought, taking Ansel’s hand and kissing his knuckles and the inside of his wrist. “It’s stupid,” he muttered. “It’ll ruin the moment.”
A ghost of a smile passed over Ansel’s face, one fang exposed at the corner of his mouth. “Nah, c’mon,” he said, coaxing at Hector’s back with his fingertips.
Defeated, Hector took Ansel’s hands in his own and stretched his arms up over his head; Ansel let him guide him, putting up no resistance to Hector pinning his wrists against the bed. Hector leaned in close, their noses nearly touching. “Aren’t you scared of me?”
Beneath him, Ansel shifted his weight and pushed against Hector’s hands, but he tightened his grip in response. “Why? Cuz you could have that sword through me in a second if’n you wanted?”
“That’d be the main reason, yeah.” He had more than the sword at his disposal if need be, but it was an academic point. For as much as he was worried the mood might be broken, he’d only felt an increasing desire from the moment Ansel bucked his hips upward into him.
“Adds a little excitement, don’t you think?” he asked, a full fanged grin spreading across his face now. For all this bravado, there was still a dullness to his eyes, like he wasn’t sure where the conversation was going and didn’t want to get his hopes up.
“That’s not funny,” Hector whispered, slackening his grip on Ansel.
Without missing a beat, Ansel took in the change on Hector’s face and his own expression softened. “No, I ain’t afraid of you,” he said. “I like it better this way, I don’t gotta be, y’know, on around you. It’s nice.”
Despite his words ringing true in Hector’s ears, the dissonance it made with what he wanted to believe hurt his chest. For all the assurances the two had made about keeping things casual, he keenly felt his feet were on the edge of plunging into some abyss. The whole reason he had wanted an arm’s length between them was this fear of pulling someone down with him, but if Ansel wasn’t afraid of drowning it wasn’t fair of Hector to push him away.
Hector fell into Ansel like a daydream.
< Chapter XX || Chapter XXII >