“Ooh, let me get one.”

Peering over his shoulder he gave a small wave to Millie before offering her the pack. She shuffled her way over to him and reluctantly withdrew a hand from her coat pocket, reaching for the offered cigarette. “Thought you were quitting.”

“Thought you had,” she replied, leaning forward and allowing him to light it.

“Ah,” he shrugged, intending to leave it there but instead feeling compelled to explain. “New guy I’ve been seeing smokes.”

She seized on the conversation opportunity and leaned beside him against the railing. With an over exaggerated sound of interest she nudged him with an elbow.

He put his hands up in front of him in mock defeat. “Just some guy who had his eye on me for a month, apparently.”

“A month? No, you can’t be that oblivious.”

“I had a lot on my mind, give me a break,” he scoffed, waving a hand in her direction. He decided against bringing up the fact that his judgment had been clouded by Ansel’s hidden nature; he’d spent that month keenly aware of his interest, but assumed it had been something far more sinister. The thought still caused a pang of guilt in his stomach. “He bought me breakfast at Misty’s.”

“Wow, a gentleman.”

Hector opened his mouth to speak before reconsidering and chewed on something in his cheek. “He’s old fashioned, I guess,” he admitted at length, smirking at his own inside joke.

A siren blared from down the street and the pair smoked in silence as an ambulance pulled into the bay on the other side of the building. Millie tapped a fingernail against the railing and waited for her phone to buzz, but when she didn’t get pulled away from their conversation, she spun on her heel and leaned against the railing.

“As luck would have it, I met someone, too,” she said. “Though I can’t say I’m seeing her,” she added, ashing her cigarette over a drain.

“Mm,” he intoned, nodding at the empty air in front of him. The way her expression had turned distant implied she and him were going through much the same murky waters; the uncertainty of where a relationship could go if one was even possible. “I’d wanted this to be more casual but it’s getting—” he inhaled between his teeth, “ —complicated.”

“Complicated like your schedules don’t match up or complicated like his ex is going to come after you?” she grinned at him.

He snorted, a plume of smoke escaping out his nose. “You’re pretty close with the latter.”

Her expression turned serious. “Oh, damn. Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s—” he shook his head and sighed. “This thing we’ve got going can’t last. And he knows that, but it still feels like I’m leading him on, I guess. I don’t know why.”

She pondered the edge of her cigarette as smoke curled up into the air. “This woman I met, she’s worried she’ll hurt me somehow.” She paused and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “But I feel like I’ll be the one hurting her. Maybe it’s something like that with you and your guy? Maybe it doesn’t feel as doomed to him.”

The word doomed hung in his mind, an all too accurate description of what he felt waited for him and Ansel. Oath or not, determined or not, there was an ever-growing part of him that held his interference was never going to change anything. He knew nothing of Baptiste specifically, but he’d known his share of lieges and every one of them was more likely to cut their losses in some way to save their own skin. Whether that meant taking out Hector, Ansel, or just moving out of reach remained to be seen, but the odds were all against Hector winning this battle.

And yet Ansel must be holding out whatever scrap of hope he had left that something else would happen. Something unexpected. That somehow Hector could pull through and deliver him from the hell he’d been living. That there was a real chance. Desperation was an incomplete answer for what was driving him; without his noticing it, Ansel had developed a real sense of trust in Hector that seemingly came out of nowhere.

Realization hit him like a truck. There was a sudden weight in his stomach and he sank down onto the balls of his feet, holding onto the railing and dropping his head down to his chest. All the tender glances and lingering touches Ansel had given him in their brief periods together came to mind; little pieces of evidence he’d been content to ignore were now stacked up large into a single terrifying conclusion. “He can’t be in love with me,” he whispered at his feet.

Millie choked on nothing and held her chest when a coughing fit overcame her. “Love?” she gasped. “You said it’d been a month, right?”

He let go of the railing and ran his fingers through his hair. Now that he’d said it out loud, it was the only thing that made sense and he spun the notion around in his head. Fuming, he got back to his feet and spiked his half-finished cigarette into the air like a dart.

She awkwardly patted his back and turned to watch cars lumber along the road beneath them. “Glad I could help,” she said. “I guess this means it isn’t mutual.”

He sagged into her, resting his head on her shoulder. “I’m a fucking asshole, I should’ve seen this coming,” he croaked. No wonder he felt like he was leading Ansel on; he very much was.

A stranger’s voice addressed him from far too close. “Maybe you should just dump him.”

Millie’s eyes widened as Hector pushed her away from the wall and positioned himself in front of her. A cloud of mist drifted up from the empty space beyond the railing and pooled where they had been standing. Too fast for the eye to register, the mist turned into a human’s solid shape — a woman in an oversized coat with the collar pulled up to just below her dead, grey eyes. The two locked eyes and her mouth twisted up into a coquettish smile when Hector didn’t back down.

He took an instinctual step backwards and bumped into Millie whose hand reached up to grip his sleeve. “Millie, you should go,” he said without breaking eye contact.

She shook her head so hard he could feel her sway behind him. “No.”

He gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to face her; he didn’t have time to figure out what she was thinking. The woman in front of him hadn’t advanced on them yet, but she eyed him up like a cat to a bird. “You should listen to him.”

Millie’s grip tightened and she said nothing.

The stranger swayed on her feet in seeming indecision before taking a confident step towards them. “Fine.”

“Who are you?” Hector asked her. Anything he could do to keep her focus on himself would buy him time to think of how to get Millie away.

“Loverboy didn’t tell you about me?” she asked, tilting her head off to one side. “How very like him.”

He swallowed hard. “Carmen.”

Her face hardened with unconcealed rage and she jerked the collar of her coat down below her chin. She flashed her fangs at him and snarled, “It’s Olive to you.”

“Okay, right, got it,” he said, holding his hands up in front of him. The invisible sigil on the back of his left hand ached for him to materialize his sword. A month ago he would have obliged, but now he had fleeting memories of Ansel’s face, his fangs, his too-cool touch on his skin clouding his judgment. His hands trembled in the air.

Emboldened by his fear, Olive took another step forward and flicked her hair over her shoulder. “You’re wrong, you know. He’s not in love with you.” She winked as she watched his impassive face, her gaze fixed on him like a predator. “But it sounds like you’d prefer that anyway, right?”

Bait. Hector wasn’t rising to it. “What do you want?” he asked, curling his lip.

Quicker than he could track, she rushed forward and grabbed him by the collar. With one firm yank, she pulled him away from Millie and spun him around, slamming his lower back into the handrail behind him. He grunted in pain and surprise, at least grateful she’d separated him from Millie. His Honor flared in his chest, spurning him to act, but he forced it down; it had never been so denied by him and it chilled him from the inside out.

“What I want,” she purred, her fangs perilously close to his throat, “Is for you to stay the fuck away from Ansel.” His name sounded somehow wrong in her mouth.

He swallowed hard and forced himself to look her in the eyes. Something in her gaze flickered, something that felt more complicated than simple malice. “Why?” he asked, and he tried to soften the question as much as he could.

She faltered for a moment, some of her bravado leaving her face temporarily before she recovered. “Do you know how many people he’s hurt? Let down? Believe it or not, I’m doing you a favor here.”

With the wind whipping at his exposed back, with the only thing keeping his feet on solid ground this woman’s steady hand, he couldn’t suppress the nervous laugh that erupted from his mouth. “And why do you care?”

“Because I’m not a total bitch,” she huffed.

Over her shoulder, Millie crept forward and though she froze in place at his stern glare, he couldn’t stop her from speaking. “You’ve got it wrong. Hector’s trying to help.”

Olive’s grip slackened in surprise and her attention went squarely to Millie. Panic rippled through him and he gripped hard at the edge of the railing; all his healing abilities wouldn’t save him from a fall at this height. “Millie,” he hissed.

“Help?” Olive repeated, curling her lip. “This shit again?”

Taking the opportunity to move away from the edge of the roof, Hector slid along the railing until he could circle off to Olive’s side. “She’s right, though. I’m helping him.” He swallowed hard, weighing his choice of words before pressing on. “I can help you, too.”

The dim sunlight of the afternoon was snuffed out and the trio was engulfed in a murky blackness, as if a dense fog had settled in around them. Millie’s arms wrapped protectively around herself and Hector staggered on his feet as Olive stalked in his direction. Despite the magical darkness, her enraged face was crystal clear. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” she spat out. “No human can help me. No one can.”

Images of a bar appeared projected on the fog around them accompanied by the muffled sounds of patrons. Behind Olive was the ghostly apparition of Carmen, leaning against the bar and chatting with Ansel, their conversation muted. Hector shook his head and took a step back; he’d never experienced a vampire’s psionic influence before.

“Ah, there’s your man,” Olive sneered, unperturbed by the sudden appearance of this memory. “Charming, isn’t he?”

He was still unable to make out any of their words, but the weight of the memory carried its emotion to him — Carmen was isolated, lonely, desperate for any meaningful connection and here was Ansel providing it in spades. He’d come in every few nights for months at that point, he was a genuine highlight of her shift and it was self-evident in the way Carmen’s eyes lit up to speak to him, in the way she leaned forward on the bar to just be nearer to him.

“How do I know all this?” Hector whispered to himself, his fingertips pressed to his lips. A sideways glance at Millie’s stricken face told him she felt the same.

“This is thralling, loverboy,” Olive said.

The word stirred something in Hector’s chest and his Honor bucked and writhed against his ribcage. This was wrong, this shouldn’t even be possible, and the old magic buried in his bones was furious. It strained against his resolve and for just a moment, the scene around them wavered and dulled in intensity.

His knees trembled when Olive caught his eye with her piercing gaze, her mouth split open in a grin. The memory intensified as the colors oversaturated and bled into the observers, poised to overwhelm them. It lurched forward in time and dropped them into a cramped stockroom piled high with boxes, bottles, and containers, leaving just enough space for Ansel and Carmen, who were backed in against the far wall.

Her terror was palpable by all three observers. Millie had moved closer to Olive, but when she placed a hand on her arm she was harshly shrugged off.

“What are you doing?”

Millie looked as if she might answer before shifting focus back to the memory playing out; it had been Carmen who had spoken, not Olive. Ansel loomed large over her, casting his broad shadow over her frightened face. His glamour melted away and she pressed herself flat against the shelving behind her. “What kind of monster are you?” she gasped, one hand flying to her mouth.

“Shut up and listen,” he growled. There was a dangerous edge to his voice Hector had never heard. Even in this space of memory his feet itched to place his body between Carmen and this supernatural threat. “On nights you work, some fellas are gonna start selling shit in the back corner. Dope, guns, whatever. You don’t see ’em. You don’t call the cops.”

Through the fear, Carmen’s face screwed up in rage. “Like hell I’ll — “

Ansel’s large hand slamming into the shelf above her head cut her off. “You will. The cops are on the take with us anyhow, nobody you can tell would give a shit.”

Trembling now, she backed off and lowered her head in a sign of defeat. She said nothing else, but she lifted her eyes to his and an unspoken question passed between the two of them.

“I’ll be here, too,” he said, much softer than he’d been a moment ago. “Nothing’s gonna happen while I’m around.”

In the present, Olive laughed to herself. At her side, Millie again reached out to her; her touch was not rejected a second time. The scene around them wavered and shifted, melting from storeroom to bar once again. A pair of young men — and men was a charitable word for the scraggly youths before them — shuffled past Carmen and took a seat in the far back booth. She followed them with her eyes before her gaze was intercepted by Ansel’s, who had positioned himself off to one side of the room.

A flash of anger that didn’t belong to Hector washed over him, Carmen’s clear feelings on the situation making themselves intimately known to him. It was a disorienting sensation, to so strongly feel an emotion that wasn’t his own. He opened his mouth to speak, to say something to try and end the scene, but Carmen moved in the next instant to stalk her way across the floor.

“Not to them,” she said, slapping her hand down on the table between the youths and the men they had been talking to.

One man drew himself to his full height. His eyes were cold and the muscles in his neck and shoulders taut as he stared her down. Again, Hector had the phantom sensation of someone else’s fear gripping his heart and constricting his throat.

“Get the fuck back to that bar,” the man said.

“They’re just kids,” Carmen said, and she almost kept the waver of fright out of her voice. “Whatever it is you’re selling, you’re not doing it to them.”

Although she was distracted by the men looming large over her in the past, Hector was free to let his attention drift over to Ansel. Like a junkyard dog on alert, he had gone still as a stone, his face expressionless as he watched and waited for the situation to tip in some direction.

And it did when the first man grabbed Carmen, his thick hand wrapped nearly all the way around her forearm. She froze, unable to even breathe, no matter how much she was desperate to move away. Out of the corner of Hector’s eye, Millie tensed as if she might insert herself between the two, despite this being a scene long since past.

It was Ansel who stepped in, his face inches away from the man. No word passed between them, but the man jumped back from Carmen as if she were red hot. “Hey, man—” he started.

“You’re done,” Ansel growled. “Get the fuck out.”

The man started to protest, but thought better of it as Ansel tightened his jaw and squared off his shoulders. He and his partner exchanged a look before slipping out around Carmen and heading to the door. Their opportunity lost, the two would-be buyers took the hint and scurried away, jostling Carmen in their haste.

The trance on her broken, she turned to Ansel, prepared to say something, but he cut her off with a stern glare. “I told you none of this was your business.”

This lit a fire in her and her face twisted up in anger. “Those were kids,” she hissed. “You can’t expect me to sit back when high schoolers are buying god knows what from—”

“That ain’t your problem what some shithead kids get up to.”

She looked at him with disbelief and her eyes simmered with contempt. “You’re a fucking monster,” she said before spinning on her heels and storming back to the bar.

The scene continued to play out behind them as Olive turned her blank face to Hector. “He’s such a great guy, isn’t he?” she sneered. “Still think he’s worth your time? Still think he’s worth your help?”

“I never said he wasn’t an asshole,” was Hector’s distant reply.

She let out a peal of laughter causing Millie to grip tight to her sleeve from surprise. He felt as if he should say more in his defense, but nothing she was saying and nothing she was showing him was defensible. He’d known what kind of man Ansel was, he’d heard the whispered rumors from those unfortunate enough to have crossed his path, he’d witnessed firsthand the cold and ruthless pursuit he’d given to Malcszyn. Hector had seen other vampires who had done lesser crimes, whose only real sin had been trying to survive, but he’d been less lenient on them.

He had been the sword, he had been the light in the dark.

He had cut them down.

His stomach lurched and he felt a cold sweat forming on his forehead. His fingers crawled up his face and covered his mouth. “Stop,” he mewled, almost too quiet to hear.

“Not a chance,” was Olive’s reply.

The scene dissolved from barroom to sidewalk, as Carmen left work a few nights later. Passing in front of a dim alley, a pair of rough hands grabbed her and pulled her off her feet. She opened her mouth to scream, but a brilliant pair of green eyes stared her down from the end of the alleyway.

Be silent.

The command was an echoing din in her mind, an all-encompassing force which snapped her mouth shut. Her whole body went rigid and cold with fear as she was carried forward, and her eyes darted down to recognize Ansel’s scarred forearms wrapped around her. She worked her jaw back and forth, desperate to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth, but the strange compulsion held firm.

At her side in the present, Millie’s hand was clamped to her own throat as if she was under the same spell. Olive’s eyes flickered in her direction and the vision around them wavered for a moment before sharpening once more. She leaned over, her lips close to Millie’s ear, and whispered something Hector couldn’t hear.

The stranger in the alley stalked towards Ansel and his captive, his feet so silent they seemed to glide over the ground. His hair was long, blond, and immaculately straight, flowing around his shoulders like water. His pale skin had a blush of color in his sharp cheeks, despite the glamour he wore giving him the false appearance of vitality. Altogether he looked like a wraith, a malevolent spirit haunting the streets of Odette.

The mood in the alley seemed to bend around him, becoming dense and heavy like the depths of the ocean. Even though he was not a very physically imposing man, Baptiste carried himself with the grace and confidence all predators had, and the prey around him reacted accordingly.

“So,” he said, already bored with the situation. “She is the one causing you trouble.”

In front of his liege, Ansel had none of his prior bravado or laxity; his posture was ramrod straight and his eyes pointed forward at the man’s face. “She ain’t trouble, I said —”

“Isn’t,” Baptiste snapped. “And I have no interest in your interpretation. You have wasted my time.”

When his lip curled, his teeth were straight and flat, with no indication of the fangs Hector knew lurked beneath his glamour. He was directly in front of the pair now, his eyes intent upon them even as the rest of his face expressed bored annoyance.

“Please,” Carmen croaked out; she’d found her voice again somehow.

There was no indication of surprise from Baptiste that she had broken his thralling, but his eyes locked into hers again. “I said be silent.”

She screwed her face up in fear and a few stray tears escaped her eyes. “Ansel,” she whimpered, unaffected by this new attempt to keep her quiet. His frigid hand tightened around her face and his fingers clamped her mouth shut instead.

“I can work another bar,” he said to Baptiste. “There’s a place down on Sycamore —”

Baptiste cut him off with a stern look. “Had you thralled her as I’d suggested, this would not have happened. You have wasted your time and my own.”

Hector’s eyes darted from Carmen to Olive, his brow knitted. If Baptiste was having this much trouble holding onto her with his commands, he failed to see what luck Ansel would have had. Not that it would have mattered to a man like him, failure seemed inexcusable no matter the reason. It did send a shiver up Hector’s spine, though — for all Ansel’s talk of orders and lack of say in the matter, he was sure Olive was here because she wanted to be here.

With what must have been an incredible show of courage, Ansel again tried to plead his case. “She can still be useful.”

With a curious tilting of his head, Baptiste fixed him with a keen eye and folded his arms behind his back. He didn’t say a word, but took a half step closer and waited for Ansel to continue.

He licked his lips and pressed on. “She’s smart. She’s got guts. We been shorthanded since we lost Winter.”

Buried in his arms, silenced by his strong hand, Carmen’s eyes darted up to the side of Ansel’s face in confusion; she’d clearly lost the thread of the conversation. But this being her own memory, Olive was stony-faced in her observation and her knowledge of what would come next.

A weight was settling in Hector’s stomach as he watched and he clamped his hand to his mouth. Olive’s eyes met his own in recognition. He knew what must be coming next, too, though he prayed he was somehow mistaken.

“Turn her,” Ansel said.

Something like a smile played at the corner of Baptiste’s mouth. “Would you like her for yourself?” Ansel made no verbal response, but an expression of hesitation flitted across his face and Baptiste took that as his answer. “No? Very well.”

A sudden understanding overtook Carmen and she tried to pull away from Ansel, but his grip tightened around her. She had no chance of overpowering him, but still she struggled in vain against him. Baptiste watched her with keen interest, like a hawk turning its head towards movement in a field.

Worried that the conversation was getting away from him, Ansel tried again. “Baptiste —”

An order cut through his words. “Kill her. Now.“

Frantic, Carmen twisted and pulled at Ansel’s grip to no avail. Although she was unable to scream, she made noises in her throat and worked her mouth against the palm of his hand. She succeeded in sinking her teeth into his flesh, the taste of his bitter and stale blood filling her mouth — and Hector’s own in this strange space of memory — causing her to gag.

Heedless to her struggling, he produced a knife seemingly out of thin air. The gleaming, cold blade wavered for an instant in the air just beyond her before it sank into her abdomen up to the hilt. Hector’s fingers clenched at his midsection as his own gut burned with phantom sensation.

Millie cried out wordlessly and buried her face in her hands. At her side, Olive’s arm twitched and she almost reached for her, but she chose to keep her distance. Instead, she directed her focus over to Hector, and not the now-sobbing woman beside her. The last words they heard as the scene faded from vibrant colors to muted grays was Ansel’s quiet voice.

“At least let me be with her when you do it.”

When the vision was gone, so was the phantom pain and rancid taste that had overwhelmed Hector. Sweat beading on his brow, he raised a shaking hand to his face and turned towards Olive. She was impassive, her expression set in a careful neutral. If it weren’t for the simmering heat in her eyes, nothing would betray the depths of her rage at that moment.

“Well?” she sneered at him.

The emblem on the back of his hand burned and he resisted the urge to grab it. For a moment he felt like a teenager again, lost and angry inside his own head. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he settled on saying, “You didn’t deserve that.”

This didn’t seem to be the answer she wanted or expected. She stalked closer to him, stepping past Millie who was still overcome with emotion, and jutted out her chin at him. “No. I fucking didn’t. But your man made it happen, didn’t he?”

Behind the two of them, Millie had found her voice. “Would you rather have been dead?”

Olive whirled around, furious. “I didn’t even get a choice, doc. I didn’t get a chance. He set me up from the start.” She tilted her head back over her shoulder at Hector. “He’ll do the same to you.”

“I know. He told me he’s supposed to turn me.”

She narrowed her eyes and squared her shoulders in his direction, a quiet hurt in her eyes. “How noble. And he gets to keep you all to himself?” She looked him up and down, her fists balled at her sides, before she shoved at his chest. She’d put in none of her prior strength, but the suddenness pushed him back a step. “And you’re okay with that, you fucking idiot? You should be three states away right now. He’s not worth your life.”

The back of his hand itched fiercely now, as a warning against the words on the tip of his tongue. “It doesn’t matter. It won’t work. It can’t work.” He let his grip on his Honor slip just enough to flare out across his body, to allow his supernatural protection to shimmer between them.

She jumped back, her arm in front of her chest. “The Hunter?” she whispered. Her head whipped from him, to Millie, and back again. Her expression at first was a mixture of bewilderment and fear, but all conflicting emotions gave way to her familiar rage. “He’s fucking the Hunter?” she snarled.

She was on him in an instant, her cold hands gripping at the collar of his coat. Taken by surprise, the two of them tumbled backwards to the ground, the wind knocked out of him when she landed on his midsection. He stayed his hand, held his sword inside him even as his empowered blood coursed through his veins, chilling his body to the marrow.

“Don’t hurt her!” Millie cried out behind them, her throat raw.

Trembling, Olive scrunched up the fabric between her fingers and bared her fangs at him. When he returned her stare, her expression faltered and fell. “Why?” she whispered. “I don’t —” Her words ended in a stifled sob.

Without any insight into her thoughts, Hector let them hang incomplete. Behind the two of them Millie approached, her footfalls deafening against their ears.

“He has to help,” she urged, her hand hovering above Olive’s shoulder. “You can trust —”

She shrank from Millie’s touch, her body heavy and shaking against Hector. She choked out a gutteral sound that turned into a laugh and buried her face into his coat. “You don’t get it,” she said. “You have no idea.” She pulled her face away and her cheeks were ruddy. “He’s just a killer.”

Millie hesitated, then took a step away. “He’s not—”

“She’s not wrong,” he said, and there was a raw edge to his words.

Olive’s eyes met his and one corner of her mouth twitched as if they were sharing a private joke. Quick as a flash she lunged forward, her fangs bared and ready to strike.

The world around Hector went silent, his body rigid. Cold fire coursed through his veins and for a moment his sword materialized in his clenched fist, heavy with purpose. But it’s gone in the next instant, furious to be dismissed by its wielder.

Something hot and wet splashed on his cheek and trickled down to his ear. Olive hovered inches from him, tears rolling down her anguished face, her lips pressed thin and white. She leaned away as Millie’s hands drew her closer to herself, her arms wrapped tight around her chest.

“Don’t,” Millie sobbed into her back.

No longer preoccupied, Hector’s Honor roved through his body and found no injuries, save for the cuts his fingernails dug into his palms. It danced in his chest, trying to spur him to act one last time while his prey was still in striking distance, but his limbs were leaden with spent adrenaline. He met Olive’s gaze for another uneasy moment before she shook her head and disappeared in a cloud of mist.

No longer supported by her weight, Millie lurched forward and landed flat on Hector’s chest with a strangled cry. “Olive,” she gasped, propping herself up. “Carmen!”

Too winded and strung out to speak, Hector wrapped an arm around Millie, exhaling in relief. He held her close as she weeped into his coat, ignoring his own tears stinging at the corners of his eyes. Cold crept into his back from the concrete beneath him and it couldn’t have been any kinder to her knees, but it was ages before either of them thought to move.

< Chapter XXV || Chapter XXVII >

Curling up her lip, she stepped one foot inside the doorframe before hesitating. Dog should do this, he’d gotten on Slate’s case often enough for the sporadic insect problems that he’d probably relish the idea of clearing out the room. She stood rooted to the spot, clenching the bags tighter to herself. The thought It’s this or the mess at the fountain, spurred her to enter at last.

Grabbing fistfuls of Slate’s afterlife and shoving them into a trashbag was not the catharsis she’d been looking for. He was a slob. Dr. Pepper bottles. Doritos bags. Receipts for convenience store pizza slices. Her hand shot up to her chest when she thought she’d heard feet scuttling in a plastic container, but she’d just shifted a pile of beer bottles. Slate had not been a brand loyalist, there were Coors, Budweiser, Corona, and Dos Equis labels mixed together. A cup noodle container near overflowing with bottle caps. A scattered assortment of half finished or wrongly finished crosswords and sudoku puzzles. A stack of battered and dogeared John Grisham thrillers and James Patterson mysteries. She’d never seen him read.

One bag sealed up and she started the next. Socks. Underwear. At least he owned multiple pairs, though he’d never gone to the laundry room. When had the Mansion even gotten a washer and dryer installed? Was it Dog? They didn’t have them in the 20s, right? She ran her fingers over the cracked screen print on a shirt, pale yellow sun on a dark green mountain range. This had been one of Slate’s favorites, judging by how often he’d worn it; the material was thick and soft, the neck tag worn into illegibility from washings and sweat. The scent of stale body odor partially concealed by Febreeze hit her nose as she passed the shirt into the garbage bag and she paused, her hand clenched against her trembling thigh.

A heavy set of footsteps stopped in the hall behind her and she froze, heart hammering in her chest. “What’re you doing? Slate ain’t got you cleaning his room, does he?”

Her hand flew to her mouth, suppressing something trying to crawl out of her throat. She shook her head before grabbing for another fistful of trash to shove in the bag. She couldn’t look at what she was grabbing anymore, her eyes couldn’t focus on what was in front of her.

“Hey,” Ansel’s — Dog’s — face was hovering near her own. “Why’re you crying?”

“Fuck off,” she gasped, wiping her cheeks and finding them surprisingly wet. 

“Carmen.” His hands were pulling at the bag, but her grip was too strong and the plastic stretched and thinned under his fingers. “Would you look at me? What happened?”

She swatted at his shoulder and when she turned to focus on him, the concern on his face broke her resolve. “Slate’s—” But her throat closed up, she couldn’t force the words out and fiercely shook her head.

Some unseen arithmetic played out over his face and he scowled. “Where’d Slate go, where’s—”

“Stop,” she said, letting go of the bag. The conversation was going in a dangerous direction and she was desperate to redirect. “I’m just— where’d he even come from?”

He blinked and furrowed his brow, the question succeeding in derailing his thought process. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Baptiste just showed up with him one day.”

She tilted her head to one side as she looked his way. “You weren’t with him when he turned?”

He shook his head and rested the garbage bag on the ground. “Baptiste likes to do that part by himself. I was only with you cuz I asked.”

Her hand clenched at her shirt over her abdomen. “You did?”

He grunted. “Guess I never told you.”

“No, you fucking never did,” she said quietly. 

A heavy silence fell between the two of them. Ansel shuffled his feet and knelt down to toss a few items into the trash bag. Carmen watched him with passive interest before kicking at a bottle with her toe.

“Do you remember what you said then?” she asked.

He craned his neck up at her. “When you was turned?”

She nodded, looking as closely at him as she dared. The phantom sensation of stale blood overwhelmed her senses; it filled her nostrils and coated her tongue and was splashed across his face. It wasn’t a night she remembered, so much as a night she felt deep in her bones.

But the bemused expression on Ansel’s face belied his next question. “Did I say something in particular?”

She bit on her lower lip and shook her head. “Not in particular, I guess.”

Sensing he’d gotten the answer wrong, he rose to his feet and abandoned the bag. “Hey—”

“Y’know I never even knew Slate’s real name,” she said breezily.

Ansel at least sensed the discussion was over and picked up the new thread where Carmen had left it. “Neither did I.”

“Fucked up, right?” she sighed, perching on the edge of a bedside table. “Not that I give two shits about it, but I figured you two got close on your boys’ nights.”

“Every word out of that man’s mouth was a lie,” he snorted. “He could’ve told me my hair was red and I’d’ve still looked in a mirror.”

Despite herself, Carmen let out a small laugh and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “He was a fucking asshole, huh? I can’t believe he just abandoned you like that.”

Ansel shifted from one foot to the other and shrugged a shoulder. “I’d’ve done the same to him, I can’t fault him too much for that. Not like we liked each other, and he knew it.”

She picked at one of her jagged fingernails and squinted up at him. “It was still pretty fucked up to do that to you. Whether or not you two liked each other, you got sent out to do a job together for a reason, right?”

He let out a bark of laughter. “Yeah, cuz Baptiste knows it drove us crazy. He’ll never teach me enough to let me go out on jobs alone, he does it on purpose.”

She felt her lip curl despite herself. “I’m sure it’s so hard he only taught you how to shapeshift and use a glamour, you need to be able to turn into a fucking cloud, too.”

He tensed and the expression on his face closed off. “Yeah, actually, it would help a lot. And he didn’t teach me my glamour, I figured it out myself.”

Whatever snarky reply she’d had in mind died before it reached her lips. From the moment she’d been turned, the only way she had ever learned anything had been through Baptiste’s direct actions. The memory of him probing her mind as if his fingers had pierced her skull sent a shiver through her, and the thought that it could be avoided entirely was almost too alien to comprehend. “What? How?”

His mouth opened and then immediately snapped shut as he wrestled with some internal debate. “Can’t tell you,” he managed to say.

She smacked his thigh harder than she’d intended, but didn’t show it on her face. “Fuck you, too,” she said. 

“Can’t,” he repeated, massaging his leg. “As in, an order, Jesus.”

Her eyes nearly met his before sliding off to some spot on the wall over his shoulder. “An order’s not everything,” she muttered.

He took a half step in her direction, finger pointing at her face. “You—”

The sudden shift in his body language sent a jolt up her spine and an unmistakable flash of terror hit her face. She braced herself for a blow she knew wouldn’t come and kept her eyes on his hand as his fingers relaxed and he angled himself away from her.

“An order from him…” he said to the floor. “Even after a century, I never managed to disobey.”

With the danger gone, she leaned forward and looked him up and down. Not only did he look embarrassed for his outburst, he looked ashamed to be talking about Baptiste’s orders. This was a level of vulnerability she hadn’t expected, and she wasn’t sure where to go with it. “It’s not disobeying,” she said, “It’s more like ignoring.”

His head snapped up to her like she’d suggested growing an extra arm. “What?”

She waved her hands in front of her, as if a visual aid was all that was missing. “When some guy chats you up and you aren’t interested, you aren’t disobeying him, you’re tuning him out. Ignoring him. He doesn’t exist, right?”

His eyebrows arched up towards his hairline. “Fighting against it always made it worse,” he said. “Fuck me.”

“Not interested,” she said with a coquettish smile.

He didn’t seem to have heard her, he had his hand pressed over his closed eyes and was mumbling to himself. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, and when he spoke it was through gritted teeth. “It ain’t an illusion.”

Perplexed, she stared at him. “You look like you’re having a heart attack.”

He let out an exasperated breath she hadn’t realized he was holding. “It ain’t an illusion,” he repeated, with firmer emphasis.

She got it then, and leapt to her feet. “You’re talking about glamours, right?” she asked shakily.

Even the brief nod he gave her took a monumental amount of effort and his hand flew to the side of his head. “Fuck,” he growled, exhaling sharply through his nose. “Think reflection. A mirror. Who you really are. Human.”

Her excitement ebbed the more he tried to explain it. “That can’t be it,” she heard herself say.

His concentration broken, Ansel looked in her direction. “That’s the best I can explain it.”

Carmen shook her head. “Do you think that’s how Baptiste does it? That he’s just showing his true human side?” Her face flushed with heat and she couldn’t tell if it was anger or grief. “Bullshit. It’s camouflage, it’s how predators hide from prey.”

Rather than argue like she expected, his arms dropped to his side and he stood dumbfounded. The unbearable silence was broken by the sound of their liege’s voice ringing in her head.

Come to the parlor.

From the way Ansel’s back straightened and his leg twitched in anticipation, she could tell the message from Baptiste had hit them both at the same time. The order echoed in her head like tinnitus and pulled at some thread deep in her chest, urging her out of the room. She dropped the garbage bag in a huff and took one final swipe at her damp cheeks with the back of her hand. “Well, let’s go,” she said to the empty room.

Ansel was outside in the hall already.

The fine hairs on the back of her neck raised and she swallowed down a response as they approached the parlor. Baptiste stood at the window overlooking the front lawn, his hands clasped behind his back, faint rust colored streaks marring the bleached white of his sleeves. Carmen caught her thumb against the jagged edge of one of her ruined fingernails as she ran them together repetitively. 

She stopped walking just inside the threshold of the parlor, but Ansel stepped deep into the room, taking his place behind their liege. Though he was the bigger man by most criteria, Carmen was always struck by how he seemed to shrink beside Baptiste.

“I shouldn’t have to summon you,” he said, turning his dull eyes on Ansel. The way the two were able to stare at each other turned her stomach.

“I only just got back,” Ansel said, and then a grimace flickered across his face.

“Where from?”

“I had to feed, didn’t I?”

Carmen had braced herself for a grueling interrogation where Ansel’s story was dragged out of him piece by piece and so was unprepared for their surroundings to shift and waver beneath her feet. The parlor dropped out of sight and a new room appeared in smears of color, like wet oil paints on a canvas. Rather than information, an entire memory was being pulled from Ansel’s mind and put on display.

She took an involuntary step backwards and bumped into a wall which hadn’t existed a second before. 

Ansel’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. His face had gone bone white.

They were inside a claustrophobic bathroom, the three observers and some past version of himself, his clothes caked in blood and filth. “A handyman I ambushed, that’s all,” the living Ansel blurted out. “I didn’t know him. I didn’t come back here because I was in a frenzy, I needed to—”

His words were choked off by Baptiste’s stern gaze.

Carmen held her breath. There was no real frame of reference in the memory, but it must have taken place shortly after he and Slate had split up. The faint sound of rain was hitting the bathroom’s tiny window, and he was still haggard from that night’s disaster —

— “She fucking ventilated the poor bastard—”

She narrowed her focus to the bathroom in front of them as Ansel’s ghost cleaned the water off the floor.

“And what did you do between then and coming home?” Baptiste asked.

Nothing but silence answered him, but the memory played on and lurched forward in time from bathroom to bedroom, Ansel suddenly wearing a stranger’s clothes and lying in a stranger’s bed. To Carmen’s eyes the two figures in front of her seemed to faintly glow together in the dim light of the room; an artifact of the memory projection, perhaps.

“What do you want to do?” the man straddling Ansel asked.

“Whatever you want,” he said. “Just don’t touch my neck.”

The heat in Carmen’s face was unbearable even before the scene shifted through time once more, Ansel’s borrowed clothes forgotten in a heap at the edge of the bed. Lost to passion, he moaned under the man’s weight and pressed his face into the pillow beneath him. Her eyes only took in the scene for an instant before she spun on her heels, her hands covering her mouth. Being cut off from the visuals only made the intrusion more voyeuristic;  she couldn’t close her ears to the memory.

“Stop,” she heard herself say. “Stop it.“

The real Ansel’s head whipped around in her direction, his face a mirror to her own horrified expression, but the voice belonged to a different version of herself. Melding together with the bedroom was the memory of the Mansion’s garden, of its decrepit fountain, of Slate’s final moments on Earth. She saw herself struggling in vain to pull Baptiste away, to show some small amount of mercy for once in his life. 

“Ah,” Baptiste said, his own voice the one thing not drowned out by the memory of Carmen’s raw screams. “We were both busy, Dog, were we not?”

Trapped between the two memories and the men involved, Carmen’s hands moved to shield her eyes, but not before she caught a final glimpse of Ansel with his lover. His back arched and his head rolled to one side and the slashes on the side of his neck danced in front of her. 

Something hot and dark and ugly roiled inside her chest.

Both memories disappeared in an instant.

Back in her physical body, Carmen trembled. “You,” she hissed.

Ansel’s eyes darted over to Baptiste who was placidly observing her, but she stalked across the room and glared at his now-concealed scars.

“You go unglamoured around him? He knows?”

His face paled and his expression contorted. “He—”

“And while I was dealing with that—” she threw her arm out in Baptiste’s direction “—you were fucking some—”

“Carmen—”

“Don’t!” she shrieked and her breath caught in her throat. He had been moving to place his hands on her shoulders but he shrank away from her instead.

“But of course he knows,” Baptiste said, answering Carmen’s prior outburst. He circled around Ansel with his arms clasped behind his back, his eyes focused intently on her as he spoke. “Dog is quite fond of this one. In fact, I’ve granted permission for him to claim him.”

She took a step back from both men as comprehension dawned on her. Her face was a rictus of fury. “Sure, keep this one for yourself, nevermind me, right?”

He said nothing in his defense.

“You’re a monster,” she said before turning her back to the both of them and striding out of the parlor.

< Chapter XXIV || Chapter XXVI >

After turning the situation over in his mind, he came to the startling revelation that he’d been asleep in a way he hadn’t been for decades. He’d never relaxed fully around his past partners — the anxiety of his glamour dropping in his sleep was too much — and at the Mansion he was on edge for different reasons. 

As the sounds of the toaster popping and the kettle boiling drifted in from the kitchen, he rolled over onto his side and pressed his face into the pillow, masking the scent of food with that of Heck’s sweat, detergent, and shampoo. No matter how hard Ansel tried, everything of his at the Mansion smelled musty, dead, or decaying. The thought made him sniff at the sheets as if he’d carried the odor in with him when Heck had taken him into his bed.

In the warmth of the bedroom, lost in a daydream of imagined domestic bliss, Ansel almost fell asleep again before heavy footsteps jolted him upright. The sound of a hand thudding against the bedroom door and flinging it open was so severe, he was ready to dive out the window behind him until Hector locked eyes with him.

“A cop?” he said, hand gripping the edge of the door tight enough to blanche his knuckles. When Ansel shook his head side to side, a lack of comprehension on his face, one of Hector’s hands dragged its way down the side of his own stubbled cheek. “You killed a cop?”

Pieces clicked into place and Ansel found the means to speak. “I didn’t kill anybody—” he weakly protested.

“For God’s sake, Ansel—” He cut himself off with a noise of frustration in the back of his throat and slumped against the doorframe. “It’s all over the news. Cutter’s furious.”

“Let him be,” Ansel said, some of the initial tension leaving him. “I didn’t touch her, that was Slate.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Hector said, his face now in his hands. “As far as Cutter’s concerned now you’re a cop killer. You know what cops do to cop killers, right?”

“What the fuck’s he gonna do?” Ansel sneered, moving to sit at the edge of the bed. “Drive a stake into my heart? Fuck Cutter, he can do whatever he wants.”

“He can go to Baptiste,” Hector snapped. “And Baptiste could—”

“Baptiste won’t do shit. I spent damn near a century with that man, he knows I’d welcome the day he finally fucking ends me. It’s the only reason he hasn’t yet,” he said, baring his fangs. 

Hector fell silent and he peered at Ansel from between his fingers. “Ansel, please take this seriously.”

Squirming under his gaze, Ansel tucked one leg under the other and scratched at his neck. “I am,” he mumbled. “Just, Cutter ain’t a threat to me in any way that matters. He can’t make Baptiste do shit, no man on Earth could.”

The expression on Hector’s face was one of doubt, but he didn’t push back on the statement. Instead he crossed the room and sat next to Ansel, their bodies barely touching. “I just don’t want you getting hurt again.”

Ansel eyed up the side of his face, but Hector had turned his head to avoid him. With a huff he said, “Yeah, I get it, on account of your Honor.” When Hector’s head whipped around with his mouth pressed down into a thin line, Ansel’s stomach dropped.

“Yeah,” Hector said, his voice lodged behind something in his throat. “That’s why.”

“Heck,” Ansel said, reaching out to him. When he touched his shoulder with his fingertips, Hector pulled away. A flash of anger hit his face, but he tamped down the urge to grab him, pull him down on top of himself, and pick up where they’d left off. “I been away from the Mansion too long, I better go before Baptiste calls me back.”

Hector opened his mouth to speak, but covered it with his hand, nodding into his palm. “Yeah, maybe you’d better.”

That time, Ansel did grab his shoulder, pulling him into a kiss that Hector leaned into readily. “What’s eating you?” Ansel whispered when their lips parted. “What do you want from me? Really?”

Turning his head, Hector closed his eyes as if Ansel was too bright to look at directly. “Do you know how Hunters get our powers?”

“I—” Ansel started, but furrowed his brow. “No. I never thought about it before.”

Hector rubbed at the back of his left hand, casting his eyes down. “One Hunter passes their abilities on to a new one. I was still in high school,” he sneered.

Dumbstruck, Ansel leaned back and studied the side of Hector’s face. “You was just a kid,” he said. “That’s—”

Hector cut off his platitudes with a fierce hand gesture. “There aren’t a lot of people who know. A few people I ran into on patrol, but not my family. Not anyone I knew from before. It’s like keeping my personal and professional sides separate, get it?” He finally raised his eyes to meet Ansel’s, red at the corners and heavy with some unspoken weight.

Scratching at the side of his neck, Ansel cast his eyes off to a far corner of the room. “You can’t exactly get upset with me for assuming your concern came from the professional side then, can you?” With a sigh, Hector leaned his body weight against him, but didn’t respond. “But I’ll be careful. Cutter can’t do shit to me and I mean it, but I suppose that don’t mean he won’t try something.”

“He’s a piece of shit,” Hector growled. “I can’t believe I didn’t assume he’d be working for Baptiste when I first met him.”

This earned a snorting laugh from Ansel, who raised an arm to wrap it around Hector’s shoulders. “He almost didn’t when we crossed paths, but he pleaded his case pretty good, I suppose.”

Hector picked at a corner of the sheets in silence for a moment before tilting his head up to look at Ansel. “What about you?” he asked softly. “What got you working for him?”

A tense silence fell over the pair and neither moved for fear of upsetting the other. “I pleaded my case pretty good, too,” Ansel said.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it—”

“I was a wreck after the war,” he said, plowing over his words. “I just felt hollowed out and angry. I had family I might could’ve gone to but I couldn’t bear to face ’em. I knew I’d changed and I didn’t want them to deal with it.” Here he met Hector’s eyes and saw the quiet understanding in them; something buried too deep for words to truly reach.

“Were you from around here?”

“Nah, Georgia. We were discharged at Newport News and I skimmed down along the coast until I ended up here. Well, Hays,” he said with a lazy wave of his hand. “I had plans to make it all the way out west, but I needed money. Someone bent my ear about robbing a rumrunner’s truck and splitting the booze for profit.”

“Baptiste’s?”

Ansel’s laugh was hollow. “We had no idea what we were getting into. I killed the driver easy enough, but the two guards were vampires. Tore my partner apart. I ran.”

“Jesus.”

Ansel’s hand made its way to his mouth, nearly overcome with the memory of Wolcott’s face slick with blood and wide open in shock. It was nearly a century old, and somehow still fresh in his mind. He shook his head. “I killed ’em both, somehow. I thought I was the luckiest man alive.” He turned to face Hector and laced their fingers together. “Baptiste found me not twelve hours later. He said he’d either kill me or have me work for him, and I wasn’t ready to die, so.” He shrugged and trailed off, letting the memory fade back into the past.

Hector stared a hole into the floor as he took in the story, some unseen calculations running through his mind. “Did you know what he was? Did you know anything?”

“Nothing. I died with his fangs in my throat and I had no idea what was going on.”

“That’s—” Hector shook his head. “Fuck.” His eyes met Ansel’s again and for a moment he mistook his expression for pity, but when his warm hand clasped tighter to his own, a shudder went down his spine. Something in Hector’s response told him he knew, that his experiences mirrored Ansel’s in some fundamental way, and neither one of them expected it. Ansel broke eye contact first, worried he might find some deeper emotion of his own reflected in Hector’s face but terrified he wouldn’t.

“And you?” he asked. “How’d you—?”

Hector pulled his hand away, shaking his head minutely. “No.”

“No?“

Brown eyes met grey and the dark flicker of a warning passed between them. Ansel squared his jaw and nodded to himself. “Alright. You don’t owe me nothing.”

“Oh come on, don’t—”

“It’s your business, I get it,” he said, standing and reaching for his borrowed clothes.

“Ansel.”

“Thanks for last night.” His voice was muffled by his shirt going over his head, and when he peered out through the collar, Hector was handing him his phone. He took it slowly, like he didn’t recognize it. “Thanks.”

Hector perched at the edge of the bed, tensed like he might stand, but he sank deeper into it instead. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said to the floor before he raised his eyes to meet Ansel’s. “Really.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said with a lopsided smile as he stepped into his sneakers. “I trust you.”

Their eyes lingered on each other, Hector’s brow furrowed, until Ansel broke it off by turning to leave. He retrieved his jacket from a hook by the door and savored the smells of the kitchen one last time before letting the door close behind him.

< Chapter XXIII || Chapter XXV >

She rounded the corner and slipped into The Railway, a diner which had been built and named long after its namesake had been stripped out of downtown. A quick scan showed it empty, save for a lonely figure occupying the bar; Hector sometimes found his way over when her shift was finished in that unerring way he had of making their paths cross.

Once she’d placed her order, she reluctantly peeled up the edges of her bandages, wincing as the adhesive pulled on her skin. The wounds left behind were no worse than a needle’s, the bruising a result of her own physiology rather than any rough handling by Olive.

Olive.

The name bounced around in her mind and her cheeks flushed when she pictured her face. Pale and with sunken, grey eyes she’d looked all the world like a living corpse, but there was a warmth to her, a softness that only a living body had. The experience had been nothing at all what she’d imagined when Hector had come into her life and warned her of things going bump in the night.

But Millie would be the first to admit she always had a weakness for a strong willed woman. For all the caution Olive had shown, there was a fire in her that was irresistible and her deferment to Millie’s directions was only a result of a well-argued case.

Mulling over the night’s events again and again as she sat at her table and received her food, she missed the object of her musings herself entering the diner. Not that she made herself easy to spot; Olive had bundled herself up in a high-collared coat and had a hat pulled down to nearly cover her eyes. 

“Can I sit down?”

Millie visibly startled to hear a voice above her so suddenly and she gave a confused look to the figure now hovering beside her. “I— sure, of course.”

Olive slid into a seat opposite, eyeing up the plate of food on the table with a sort of longing before placing her hands flat in front of her. The moment she sat down, a strange pall or shadow fell around the two of them, and the diner beyond their seats became hazy, like it had shifted subtly away from them in time and space.

“What’s happening?” Millie whispered, her eyes fixed on the smear of color that was the waitress cleaning one of the other tables.

“It’s just… I don’t know,” Olive said, taking off her hat and running a hand through her hair. “It’s just something that happens when I don’t want humans paying attention to me.”

“It wasn’t like this in the hospital room,” Millie said, turning to face her.

A pair of haunted eyes met her gaze before Olive cast them down at her hands. “It’s based on emotion, I think.” She didn’t elaborate and instead picked at the ragged end of a badly broken fingernail; the skin beneath was healed, but the nail was a jagged shard.

“That looks like it hurt,” Millie said, gesturing at the finger with her eyes.

Olive blinked and held her hand out in front of her as if she only just noticed the damage. “Oh. I must have broken it when— earlier.” She folded her fingers into her palm and covered her hand with the other.

A few tense moments passed over the table before Millie moved toward her silverware. “Do you mind if I eat?”

A wan smile hit Olive’s face and she propped her chin up on her knuckles. “…no go for it.”

Resisting the urge to share her plate out of politeness, Millie took a few thoughtful bites before glancing at her table mate again. “How did you find me?”

Olive bit at the corner of her lip, delicately enough that she didn’t draw blood. “I can find anyone I’ve fed from,” she said, her eyes darting over Millie’s face, gauging her reaction.

“Oh. That seems… useful,” Millie faltered before letting out an awkward laugh. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”

But Olive’s eyes rested on Millie’s face in an appreciative sort of way, she just seemed pleased to have the company. Behind the dulled color, Millie could tell they must have been a very strikingly warm brown before her turning. Her face felt hot and she smiled, looking away and down at her food.

“Am I bothering you?” Olive asked.

Millie raised her head suddenly and again met those eyes. “Not at all!” she said perhaps too quickly. “No, honestly. It’s nice to talk with someone outside of work.”

Olive pulled her ponytail out from the collar of her coat and ran her fingers through the length of it. A few times she breathed deeply, as if she was going to speak, but stayed silent. Finally feeling like she should say something, she sighed, “Yeah, I get that.”

“Is that why you came to find me?” Mille asked, gently prodding at the unseen block in the conversation.

Olive nodded and the dam was broken. She buried her face in her hands and clutched at a few loose locks of hair. “I’m just so fucking alone in that place,” she said, her tone of voice betraying none of the emotional turmoil plain in her body language.

“It isn’t just you there, is it?” Millie asked.

“It might as well be,” Olive said, and this time her words were tinged with bitterness. “I don’t expect anything from Baptiste, I’m not a fucking idiot, but Dog might—” She held her tongue, wiping viciously at one dry eye. “Whatever. Fuck both of them. Fuckers.”

“That sounds terrible,” Millie said, putting her plate off to the side.

Olive shrugged and folded down the collar of her coat. A tiny pair of pinprick scars were visible along her left jugular vein and she caught Millie staring for a beat too long. Rather than cover up again as she expected, Olive stretched her head to one side and flattened her coat, showing off her marks. “Courtesy of both of the fuckers in my death,” she said, flitting her hand over her neck.

“Both…?” Millie repeated with a bewildered look on her face. “I thought only one—”

Olive’s laugh was curt and mirthless. “Baptiste is my liege, but Dog… well, it was his idea. They have joint ownership over me.” She grew silent and grabbed for the salt shaker, twirling it on the table for something to do. When she spoke again it was much softer without any of her prior bravado. “Whatever. It was a long time ago.” It doesn’t matter or maybe I don’t matter being the message underneath it all.

The salt shaker made another half turn before it was stopped by Millie placing her hand over Olive’s. It was a silent gesture; she couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t just take away from the moment.

“I don’t need you to pity me,” Olive said, casting her eyes down. Neither woman moved her hand away and after another tense silence, Olive looked back up. “What’s your story, morning glory? Why are you doing this?”

“Didn’t I already say?” Millie asked, meeting her gaze. “It’s my job to help. I want to help.”

“You’re a doctor, not a— a—” Olive faltered, grasping for words. “Priest. This isn’t confession.”

Millie let out a genuine laugh. “I haven’t been to confession since high school.”

“Yeah?” Olive replied, a light shining in her eyes. “I kept it up longer than I should have, probably, but church was a sort of familiar thing to grab onto while the rest of my life got rearranged.”

“After you were turned?” Millie asked, her eyebrows raised.

Olive snorted in laughter. “God, no, way before. I moved around a lot after I hit 18.” When Millie nodded, Olive caught her eye and tilted her head. “What made you quit?”

“Teenage rebellion, if you believed my mother,” she said with a shrug. “Mostly because I knew they wouldn’t accept me being a lesbian.” Here she fixed Olive with a mixed expression, one part anticipation and one part wariness.

“Did your mother think that was teenage rebellion, too?”

With a shuddering laugh, Millie let out the breath she’d been holding and propped her chin in her hand. “Maybe, if she knew. I’ve never told her.” Her smile faded as she contemplated a spot on the surface of the table. “I don’t want to hear what she’d have to say.”

The silence that stretched over the table was more thoughtful than somber. It was broken when Olive tapped her jagged fingernail against the table and said, “Sounds like her loss.”

Millie’s eyes met hers, warm brown against silvery gray, and she let her fingertips drift closer to Olive’s until they were touching. “You said that other people here can’t see us, right?”

For a moment, Olive’s hand twitched like she might pull it back, but she let it stay as she shook her head and leaned over the table. Her face was so close her features blurred together and heat colored Millie’s cheeks; she briefly imagined what it would have been like to have her neck bitten instead, and her face darkened more. 

“No one can see if I don’t want them to,” Olive whispered. Her mouth was very close now. 

But just as Millie leaned forward, she jerked back, turning her head away sharply. The look on Olive’s face was one of flustered confusion, as if she couldn’t understand why her own body had moved away. 

“Was I—” Millie started before the restaurant and its patrons came back into sharp relief around them.

“You don’t want to get involved with me, doc,” Olive said, zipping her collar up tight to her chin. “I’ve chased off all of Dog’s partners, I’m sure he’d love to return the favor to me.”

Millie curled her fingers inward, her hand still stretched over to the other side of the table. “I don’t think it’s fair to tell me what I do and don’t want, Olive.”

“Carmen,” she uttered, and her eyes snapped over to Millie’s when she realized she’d spoken. 

Pushing herself away from the table, her hair fell over her face and almost covered how flustered she looked. The veil fell back around the pair, more opaque this time; the diner and its patrons almost disappeared from sight. Unlike before, Millie got the impression this was intentional. 

“Let me tell you something,” Olive — Carmen — said. “A story about a bartender down in Hays, six months out from active duty with the Coast Guard, finally feeling like she’s her own person in civilian life.”

Millie furrowed her brow and kept her gaze fixed on Carmen. “Coast Guard’s a hard program to get into,” she said.

“But I’d made it,” she said, brushing her hair away from her face, her expression darkly triumphant. “Sure I was doing scut work at some shit hole, but I was making it on my own. I had a life and it was mine.”

Unsure if she wanted her input, Millie stayed silent as Carmen examined a few split ends in her hair, twirling them between her forefinger and thumb. When the silence stretched on a bit too long, she reached her hand across the table again, warm fingers brushing cool ones.

“Then Dog showed up,” Carmen said, jolted out of her memory by the touch. “In a bar full of threes he was at least a seven because he didn’t spend the whole night staring at my tits.” She curled her lip at the thought and Millie felt some dormant protective instinct stir in her chest. “So I figured what the hell, why not? I thought him turning me down was the most decent thing a man had ever done for me.”

The silence that followed was heavy and electrically charged, as if a thundercloud had settled over the pair. Millie waited for the story to continue, her breath caught in her lungs, but no relief was coming. Even her hand clasped over Carmen’s wasn’t enough to stir her this time around.

“Carmen?” she said, aware of upsetting the atmosphere.

Her hand clenched tight to itself under Millie’s. “And then I died. That’s all.” She raised her head to face Millie, a few tears rimming her pale eyes. Her fist turned upright and she spread her palm to take Millie’s offered hand, her fingers trembling from the weight of memory. When Carmen leaned across the table, Millie welcomed her kiss even though she was afraid it might somehow break the spell around them. 

But the supernatural curtain remained around the pair long enough for Millie’s free hand to find its way to Carmen’s soft hair and cool cheek. The woman smelled faintly of soap, of shampoo with tiny flowers on the label, and Millie felt a flush of embarrassment for her own lingering scent of sweat and hospital-grade hand sanitizers. After a moment, the two parted with deep reluctance, and Millie wasn’t sure which of them had broken away first.

“I’m getting some mixed messages from you here, Carmen,” she said, tilting her head in the other woman’s direction. Her tone was light and teasing, but she wasn’t about to forget the vulnerability the two had just shown each other. 

In spite of herself, Carmen let out a nervous laugh and leaned away. “I’m—” she started, before stopping herself and biting at her lower lip. “You’re right I can’t stop you from wanting to do something, but this isn’t worth getting hurt over,” she said. 

“You won’t hurt me,” Millie declared, holding her head up high.

“Not me,” Carmen said, looking her in the eye. “But trusting the wrong people got me killed. Just.. don’t be so quick to throw your life away.”

In the silence that followed, Carmen withdrew into herself, pulled her hair in front of her face, and stood. The diner around them was still obscured, the people all blurs and colors and muted sound. She hesitated at the table’s edge before the patrons and surroundings returned in sharp relief.

“Will you come and find me again?” Millie asked.

“When I need you, I will.” She lingered for a beat longer and Millie’s heart skipped when it looked like she would take her seat again, but the moment was gone. With a slow shake of her head, she turned sharply on her heel and strode out the door, leaving Millie alone again.

< Chapter XXII || Chapter XXIV >

Unbidden, her mind drifted back to the doctor from the hospital and she touched her fingers to the corner of her mouth. How strange it had been, to find a human so willing to give herself up as food with no real assurance it wouldn’t be her last act on earth. It didn’t make sense that she had trusted Olive so easily when they’d only just met. 

She smelled nice. Olive’s face flushed at the thought; she’d been around men too long. Maybe that was why she had let Mildred talk her into it, how she had so easily lowered Olive’s defenses. It was a nice reminder of her old life, to just let go and let a pretty woman tell her what to do. She’d only ever gotten in trouble listening to men, after all. 

That was a dangerous line of thought and Mildred’s face was almost replaced in her mind by Ansel’s. She frowned and forced it aside; he didn’t deserve a second thought from her.

It was his fault things had happened this way. His fault that her old life had been stolen. His fault that she was wandering that country back road and hoping she might just disappear. 

Her wish was close to being answered when a car roared out from around a bend, cutting the corner and coming perilously close to striking her. With cat-like reflexes she leapt backwards into the brush and glowered at the tail lights as they streaked past. The road to the mansion almost never saw vehicle traffic, and she didn’t need to identify the emblems on the side to know it was Sheriff Cutter blazing an erratic path to the driveway ahead.

Peering out at the road, Olive bit her lip before breaking into a run, trailing Cutter up to the mansion. She hated being around the man, but curiosity was getting the better of her. Maybe Baptiste would finally rip his throat out.

No such luck so far when she jogged up the steps to the porch. The front doors had been left wide open and Cutter’s voice carried out into the morning. 

“— want answers, God damn you, you fucking cocksucker, I —” and on he went, leaving a trail of expletives for Olive to follow from foyer to reception room.

It was a scene of two extremes: Baptiste sat in his usual spot, head down and eyes focused on the puzzle in front of him while Cutter stood above, his face beet red as he screamed his demands. 

He’d have better luck turning away the tide.

When volume didn’t get him what he wanted, he slammed his hands down onto the table, scattering puzzle pieces across the floor and drawing himself down to Baptiste’s level.

“Are you even fucking listening to me?” he raged, spittle flying from his mouth.

The floorboard beneath her feet announced Olive’s arrival with an almost deafening creak. Cutter’s head snapped up to her, the intense fury radiating out of him enveloping her and drawing her into the fight. “You fucking bitch,” he snarled. “Was it you?”

Rational thought seemed to have left the man as he stalked her direction, rewarded by the fraction of fear she knew had danced across her face when he’d looked her way. Whatever he thought he wanted before, she recognized his expression as the naked desire to hurt and punish someone. When she took a step back, he seized on the motion as a sign of guilt and his eyes blazed like hot coals. Quick as a flash he lunged forward and grasped her upper arms, drawing his face close to hers.

Cutter was screaming in her face, Olive knew, but she couldn’t make sense of the words. Let him tire himself out, she wasn’t anywhere in the room anymore. The faint beeps of monitoring equipment and the crisp scent of disinfectant mingled in her mind with a sweet perfume and a pair of warm brown eyes.

Cold green eyes watched her now, she realized with a start, the whip crack of her liege’s Thirst bringing her back.

” —you bitch —”

Cutter’s words were choked off in his throat as Olive turned her full attention on him and loosed her Thirst. A hot surge of energy flowed from her eyes into his, weaving into his pulse and wrapping her will around his own. The color began to drain from his face as he realized what she’d done so effortlessly.

“Don’t touch me,” Olive commanded and his hands sprang away from her like she was red hot. She took the opportunity to sidle away from him and took her place at Baptiste’s side, his head swiveling, eagle-like, to follow her around the room. She found the expression on his face almost prideful and bile hit the back of her throat.

Once out of her line of sight, the thralling over Cutter broke and he juddered forward as if his legs had been cut out from underneath him. Whirling around to face the two vampires at his back, he worked his jaw back and forth. His initial outburst seemed to have used up the bulk of his fury, but what was left still smoldered just beneath the surface of his ruddy face.

“Sheriff Cutter,” Baptiste said, as if he’d only just seen him for the first time. “What is it you wished to discuss?”

“My deputy,” he fumed, clenching his fists at his side. “She had her throat ripped out twenty minutes after one of your parasites killed that dealer in my cells.”

Baptiste’s head tilted to one side. “You knew the dealer was to be killed last night.”

“Not her!” One fist slammed into the wall next to him and Olive suppressed the urge to flinch. “She emptied her gun into someone, but it was just her they found. I know it was one of yours, who was it?“

Olive’s heart leapt into her throat and she cast a sidelong glance at Baptiste for any hint to an answer. His innate connection to his thralls would surely tell him if Slate or Ansel had died, but would he be able to sense if either of them had gone into a frenzy? Would he care? He never kept tabs on what they were doing once a job was finished. 

“Why does it matter to me who did the deed?” Baptiste asked. “My thralls only kill for a purpose. Whichever one is responsible had reason to do it.”

“That’s bullshit,” Cutter spat. “She wasn’t even on duty, she did fuck-all to—”

“She pulled a gun on Dog for no fucking reason. Crazy bitch.”

Cutter spun around on his heels towards the voice, coming face to face with Slate’s bored expression. He scratched at his chin, unbothered by the tension visible in Cutter’s neck and sauntered past him into the room. With a wink that made Olive’s skin crawl, he flopped down onto one of the chairs, dangling a leg over the arm.

Baptiste gestured in his direction. “There is your explanation, sheriff.”

The grinding of Cutter’s molars filled the room. “And what are you gonna do about it? I got a family asking me questions, I got reporters crawling up my ass—”

“You’re just mad you have to actually work now,” Olive said with a sneer. She’d grown bolder from her position beside Baptiste, now that the balance in the room had shifted away from Cutter.

Cutter’s expression could have cut glass. “I work. I work every single fucking day cleaning up your shit, covering your ass, keeping your whole fucking operation running.” He started stalking in front of the door back and forth, working himself back up into a fury. “When you leave bodies in my cells, in the woods, in the fucking street for anyone to trip over. And now you’re attracting, what, fucking vigilantes to my city for me to deal with, too?”

“The Hunter should be of little concern to you,” Baptiste said, sweeping his hair away from his face. “Humans are rarely their quarry.”

Cutter’s voice raised an octave. “I’ve had a whole station get an earful about a maniac with a sword and you tell me it’s not my concern?” 

Olive followed him with her eyes as his pacing increased and he tugged at the collar of his shirt. For as long as he’d worked under Baptiste, he didn’t begin to comprehend how the man thought, how apart he saw his thralls from the affairs of humans. What did Baptiste care if Cutter had to write more reports or give more press conferences on missing persons and corpses found? Humans were as lowly as an animal to him, their only value was as a beast of burden or as food.

“Hunter,” Cutter said, chewing the word in his mouth. “You expect me to work around this shit when I don’t even know what it is. This isn’t the time to get cagey, Baptiste.”

Baptiste’s piercing green eyes stared at Cutter as if he were a puzzle to be solved. Uneasy beneath his gaze, Cutter rolled his head around on his neck and shook some tension out of his shoulders. “A knight,” Baptiste said at length. “Holy. Divinely blessed, should you believe such things. Their magics only harm us, so as I said: they are of no concern to humans.”

Cutter curled his lip at the mention of magic, even though he’d borne witness to blood magic for decades. “And how many will there be? How long until he builds up a whole fucking army to take you on?”

Signaling his boredom with the conversation, Baptiste turned his back on Cutter and moved towards the opposite side of the room. Slate tensed up to see him approach and Olive felt unmoored to be left alone in the center of the room. Her eyes only landed on Cutter’s incredulous face for a moment before the blinding sensation of Baptiste’s mind enveloping hers hit her like a truck. Gritting her teeth, she let it wash over her as information pried its way into her head, making room for itself and sinking in deep as if it had always been there. 

“Hunters are solitary,” she heard herself saying, the words dripping with a contempt that wasn’t her own. “They aren’t like us. When they pass their Legacy — their magic — on to a new knight, it leaves the old one.”

Cutter’s pacing had slowed to a crawl as he took in this information, though his expression was one of naked disgust at having to take the conversation up with Olive. “Sounds like a bunch of self-righteous pricks,” he muttered to himself. 

“You’re one to talk,” she said before she could stop herself.

Slate brayed with laughter and she earned a venomous look from Cutter as he bored his eyes into her. Something acidic seemed to rise in his throat and she dared him to say it, but he bit it back. “I’ve wasted enough time here,” he said instead, turning to Baptiste. “Keep your dogs heeled next time.”

There was no movement from the three figures in the room until the sound of Cutter slamming the front door shook the windows on the adjoining wall. Olive’s shoulders relaxed and Slate let out another peal of laughter, slapping the outside of his thigh.

“What a fucking dickhead,” he snorted, looking to Olive for confirmation. When all she gave him was a distant stare, he continued on as if she’d responded. “Who the fuck does he think he is, coming in here, crying over some pig bitch that should’ve minded her own fucking business.”

“She pulled a gun on you?” Olive asked, quietly rejoining the discussion.

“On Dog. She fucking ventilated the poor bastard,” he said, shaking his head.

She blinked, uncomprehending at first before whirling to face him. “What? Where is he?”

Slate only shrugged, sinking further into his chair. “How the fuck should I know? I assumed he’d be back here by now.”

“The whole point of you two going out together is to cover each other and come back together,” she said, shaking.

“Hey, I did cover for him, alright princess?” Slate said, leaning forward and baring his fangs. “But it’s survival of the fittest and if he isn’t fit to survive, that’s not my fault.”

Through their entire back and forth Baptiste had been standing stock still at the window, his arms crossed behind his back. He turned when Slate finished speaking and strode back to the center of the room, looming over the back of the armchair he was in. Sensing his presence, Slate sat up straighter and his eyes darted up in Baptiste’s direction as if he could see him out of the top of his head.

“Fit to survive,” Baptiste repeated languidly, rolling the concept around in his mouth.

Sweat beaded up on Slate’s forehead and Olive watched with a fixed expression on her face as Baptiste’s hand crawled down and grabbed him by the back of the neck. With one strong hand he pulled Slate up and out of the chair, forcing him to his feet.

“H-hey, come on,” Slate stammered, bracing against the hand at his neck as if he might win the contest of strength. “If you want me to move, just—” His mouth clamped shut the next instant, the result of an unheard order passing from liege to thrall. With wide eyes, he silently pleaded with Olive as they passed, but she was looking through him at a spot on the wall. She did turn to follow the pair as they marched out into the hallway, turning towards the back of the house. 

Out the windowed doors of the conservatory lay the mansion’s abandoned gardens. In its glory days before the property had all been left to rot, the gardens would have been a spectacular sight: the magnolia trees, now overgrown, still flanked the gravel walkways through the grounds. Deeper in, closer to the property line were a few pecan trees which still gave plenty of nuts in the fall and some evergreens whose names Olive had never learned. At the center of it all was a wide fountain with a tiered sculpture in the middle which had long ago run dry. The only water in it now was the scummy collection of fall hurricanes and winter rains; the basin was filled almost knee-high as far as Olive could tell.

Without any effort or sound, Baptiste heaved Slate over the edge of the fountain and plunged his upper body into the frigid waters. With one last desperate look at Olive, Slate’s head disappeared beneath the surface as Baptiste leaned his body weight down on top of him. The thrashing started then, Slate’s arms grasping at Baptiste’s and his legs kicking wildly in front of him, water sloshing out of the basin onto the brickwork beneath it.

“What are you doing?” Olive said, though her words were so quiet they were swallowed up by the sound of the water. Her feet carried her forward and she put her hands on one of Baptiste’s arms, shocked at how taut the muscles were for as calm as his expression was. “Stop. Stop it.”

Trying to find purchase on Baptiste was like trying to grasp a marble slab. Though Olive strained to dig her fingers into his flesh, to pry him away from Slate, it became increasingly obvious there was nothing she could do. No matter how hard she pushed, pulled, or struck him, Baptiste was unmoving; he was a new fixture of the fountain with Slate trapped beneath.

Her throat closed up when the struggling, desperate noises from under the water slowed and then stopped; she hadn’t even been aware she’d been screaming. She took in a shallow, burning gasp when Baptiste hauled the sopping wet form of Slate out of the water and let it fall to the ground with a sickening crack. Kneeling down beside him, Baptiste pulled his torso towards him and cradled him in his arms in a grotesque mockery of salvation.

In the next instant, Baptiste’s head dipped down and he ripped his fangs into Slate’s throat. His pallid skin was stained crimson as rivulets of blood seeped out from his mouth and down the sides of his chin. Slate convulsed once and was still.

Olive’s eyes, red and wide, met Baptiste’s. Desperately she searched his face, unblinking, for any sort of answer, but he looked straight through her like she was nothing more than another part of the gardens. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he stepped over Slate’s corpse and strode back towards the house, leaving Olive to deal with the mess.

< Chapter XXI || Chapter XXIII >

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 >

No human ever noticed Olive if she didn’t want them to.

The hum and hiss of ventilators and monitoring equipment enveloped her like a blanket, an almost soothing reminder of the life that still existed in the rooms around her. She traced her fingers along the name placards outside each room, the marker bright on some and faded on others. Her target was at the far end of the hall, a room whose nursing schedule she’d memorized weeks before.

Without a sound, she slipped into the room and pulled the door shut behind her. As always, a dormant part of her raised her arm to make the sign of the cross when she entered. The single bed in the corner was occupied by a man in his 40s, his skin pale and thin from being bedridden for the last two months. Overall he was in fine physical condition as far as she could tell and if it weren’t for the monitors and IVs connected to him, he might have been mistaken for sleeping. Unfortunately, he’d been rendered non responsive from massive head trauma, and though the majority of his wounds had all but healed, it was looking less likely he would wake.

Motorcycles were such dangerous vehicles.

Her weekly visitations were the most frequent he had lately aside from the staff; his family consisted of one brother in the area and he couldn’t stop by too often. She’d heard chatter that the patient was going to be transferred to a long-term care facility soon, and she would have to move on to someone new. “Hello, David,” she said, because it was only polite. “It’s cold today.”

David made no indication he was aware of anything happening around him. The blips on his heart monitor kept their languid pace and his breathing never quickened. Although he lay as still as a stone, his body was flush with the warmth of life as Olive touched her fingertips to an exposed part of his leg. Veins in the calf were trickier to feed off of, but the nurses never seemed to notice wounds beneath compression socks.

As if they could even recognize them for what they truly were.

She removed her mask and knelt down beside him, gingerly moving his leg into position. There was never any concern he might react to any of this stimulus, she was much more gentle than any medical testing would be.

Ridiculous that Ansel would rather sweat and suffer in the mansion than take care of himself. Olive curled her lip at the thought. Orders were one thing, but self preservation should always come first. She’d learned that lesson long ago. Shaking her head to herself of the thought, she leaned close and prepared to strike.

The door opened behind her.

A frantic pulse flared behind a pair of dark brown eyes and a woman froze in the doorframe. As unobtrusive as Olive could be, there was no hiding her presence in the room, and a tense moment passed where neither one of them dared to move.

The spell was broken by the woman first, who stepped closer towards the bed and started to speak. “You’re—”

Olive slipped her skin and became a mist that rushed past the startled newcomer, gathering in a pool behind her in an instant. Rematerializing, she leaned heavily against the door, sealing off the only escape. The woman whirled around and they again renewed their standoff.

Thralling was the best option. Olive could order her to stay quiet, to stay in place, to allow her to leave without raising any alarm. She would lose her feeding spot — and it would use up her reserves for a net negative overall to the evening — but she would be safe. Olive pressed her fingertips together one by one as she turned the thought over in her mind. Overpower the woman and make her bleed, it would be over quick; she was just another human, no challenge to her at all.

“Please,” the woman said, holding a hand up when Olive took a step forward. “You… you’re a—” her voice caught in her throat a moment, “—vampire, right?”

Narrowing her eyes, Olive paused. She was unglamoured and had shape shifted, yes, but no human’s first thought should be vampire if they didn’t already know about them. “What makes you say that?” she asked, drawing herself up straight.

“I’ve been… warned,” the woman said. She lowered her hands in a placating gesture. “My name is Mildred. Millie. I’m a doctor here.” Although her tone and body language were becoming more open, her pulse was racing faster now that she knew what she was facing down. 

“Warned?” Olive blinked before realization hit her. “You’re working with that Hunter.” Her lip curled into a snarl and she clenched her hands into fists—she was in a more dangerous position than she’d expected.

Panic hit the doctor’s face. “No, no, not working. He’s a friend, but—” she stammered and her eyes darted back to David’s prone form. “You must need to feed, right? Blood?”

None of this conversation was going the way Olive had anticipated and she felt very wrong footed to be nodding along to her question. “Yes,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “Get out and let me, then I’ll be gone. No need to bother your Hunter friend, you’ll never see me again.”

Mildred shook her head. “You can’t feed on him. Patients like him… he’s more delicate than you think, you could do serious harm without meaning to.”

Olive peered over her shoulder at David, his chest rising and falling slowly. He looked healthy enough to her, but she couldn’t ignore the sincerity and authority in the doctor’s voice. “He your patient?”

“Not exactly. But I look out for him when I can,” she said, turning her head in his direction. “I was working the night he was brought in.”

The two of them watched him for another few breaths, the heart monitor keeping steady time through the break in conversation.

Again, the doctor was the one to speak first. “Does it hurt, when you feed?”

“He doesn’t feel a thing,” Olive said, pulling the end of her ponytail over her shoulder and running her fingers through her hair. “A prick, maybe, but it can’t be worse than a blood draw or something.”

Though she had turned to face David, Mildred’s eyes darted back over to Olive when she spoke. “Feed on me.”

For some reason, Olive felt her heart skip a beat and she took a few instinctual steps away until her back pressed against the door again. “What? Are you crazy?”

“I have a duty to protect this patient,” Mildred said, squaring her shoulders. “And… and if you need to do it to survive, then I think that falls under duty, too.”

A snorting laugh escaped Olive, an outburst of unbearable tension more than anything else. “I don’t think that’s part of the Hippocratic oath, doc,” she sneered.

“Sure it is,” Mildred said, matching sneer with smirk. “It’s near the end. ‘I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.’ And vampires,” she declared with the utmost solemnity.

The absurd turn in the discussion had Olive suppressing a fit of laughter. Brushing a stray lock of hair away from her face, she found Mildred’s eyes peering at her intently, and the woman had taken a few undetected steps closer. “You know I could just kill you and go,” she said, baring her fangs in a wide grin.

“You wouldn’t,” Mildred stated with confidence, holding her ground against the weak threat display. “You haven’t hurt David. How long have you been coming here?”

“Weeks,” she admitted before shaking her head. “This is some Hunter’s trick. You’re working to trap me.”

“No trick,” Mildred flatly declared. “He’ll never know. He’d probably want to kill you for sure.”

“And this is supposed to make me trust you?” With a snort, Olive shook her head and folded her arms in front of her chest. “Why do you want to do this so bad?”

Mildred tilted her head to one side, brow furrowed. “I help people who need it. So let me help you.”

Olive’s expression of derision turned hard and closed off. If the woman was so determined to put herself in harm’s way, she wasn’t going to turn her down. Maybe if she made it an unpleasant experience, she likely wouldn’t bother her again, teach her a lesson about self preservation. But the way Mildred was standing, so determined despite the fear her racing pulse exposed to Olive’s eyes… 

“You should sit down,” Olive said, flicking her hair back over her shoulder. “I’m not catching you if you pass out.”

Without a hint of hesitation, Mildred wheeled a chair away from the wall and sat herself down, ramrod straight and facing Olive. Pulling her hair away from one side of her neck, she seemed to say, Well, here I am.

Olive’s fingers rubbed at her own cheek before she could think better of it, her skin almost felt warm to the touch. “It doesn’t have to be your neck, if you don’t want it to,” she said. “Especially if you don’t want your Hunter friend to suspect anything.”

Tapping at her chin, Mildred considered this then nodded once in understanding. With a flick of her wrist, she undid the button on the cuff of her shirt and exposed her left forearm. “It had better be this way, then.”

For the first time in a long while, Olive felt herself hesitate as if her feet were rooted to the floor. With a firm shake of her head, she approached Mildred who obliged by presenting her arm. For as calm as she was acting, she couldn’t suppress the tremor that shuddered through her when Olive wrapped her fingers around her wrist to pull the arm out straight. She should be frightened, any human would be when confronted with being food for something else. Before she could second-guess herself, before either of them could change their minds, Olive’s fangs pierced the flesh just below the crook of Mildred’s elbow.

With a whimper of either surprise or pain, Mildred turned her head away as Olive’s mouth closed onto her skin. Her fist clenched tight as her blood flowed out, coaxed from her vein by Olive’s Thirst and her high blood pressure. Feeding from Baptiste was no substitute for the sweet tang of a human’s blood, and there was something even more alluring about this meal which had been given to her almost freely.

When she had her fill, Olive moved her head away and pressed her fingertips to the wounds left behind. “It shouldn’t bleed too long,” she said softly.

It was only when Olive spoke that Mildred looked her way, blinking at her hand holding pressure on her arm. “Oh,” she murmured. “Yeah, it shouldn’t.” Her fingers brushed over Olive’s as she went to take her arm back, and for a moment neither one of them moved any further. “I never got your name.”

Carmen.

“Olive.”

Dark brown eyes searched her face as if she could read her thoughts. “Olive,” she repeated. “Is there a way to contact you? For next time…?”

Whatever spell that had fallen over the two of them evaporated and Olive withdrew into herself, moving closer to the door. “I can find you,” she said, pulling the mask over her face. Just to make sure, she allowed herself one final look over the woman, to pick out the intricacies of her soul among the others she’d fed from.

“Okay,” Mildred said, nodding to herself.

Olive turned, her hand hovering above the door handle. Suddenly the mansion seemed so far away. She glanced back over her shoulder and Mildred raised her eyebrows a fraction, expecting her to say something. But the silence followed her out the door and into the hall.

< Chapter XIX || Chapter XXI >

“Total bullshit,” he repeated for the hundredth time. “Two people to take care of one lunatic in a cell.”

Slate walked ahead of Ansel and had his hood pulled down so far over his head that he couldn’t see the exasperated look that passed over his partner’s face. Flicking the stub of his cigarette into the gutter, he exhaled audibly and said, “Bellyaching won’t change it.”

“‘Bellyaching’? What the fuck?”

“Griping,” Ansel said with a wave of his hand. “Complaining. Whining. You are the single most miserable cuss I’ve known in a hot minute and that’s saying something.”

Slate peered over his shoulder and let out a braying laugh. “Fuck me, what crawled up your ass and died?”

“Shut up.” 

This had Slate fully turning to face him with a fanged jeer. “Come on, Dog, lighten up,” he said, and for a moment the ghost of Wolcott’s face lingered next to him. “You’ve been in a mood all day. What’s wrong, your boyfriend dump you?”

Bristling, Ansel snapped, “Fuck off, Jesus Christ. You are just about the last person on earth I wanna talk to about this. Why Baptiste had to go and turn the most annoying man I ever met is beyond me.”

With a snort, Slate turned his back on Ansel again. “Cuz I get results,” he said, pulling up proudly on the shoulders of his hoodie. “Better question is why’d he turn Olive when all she does is fuck him and fuck around with you?”

The hairs on Ansel’s neck stood on end as a chill ran through him. She already hates you. “Fuck you care?” he asked, kicking a discarded soda bottle into the street. 

Slate shrugged. “Making conversation,” he said. He lapsed into merciful silence for another block before glancing back over his shoulder. “You sure you wouldn’t rather do this?”

“What happened to you getting results?” Ansel asked through a glower. “Besides, I got no way into that cell.”

Swaying from side to side as if considering a complicated problem, Slate said, “It’s not that hard to—”

Ansel cut him off with a gruff, “Stop.” The man was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. “You get what orders are, right? I can’t teach you shit, so let’s just get this over with so we can get out of this fucking rain.” Though Slate shot him a dubious look, he did as Ansel said and dropped the subject. 

It wasn’t long before the police station loomed out of the mist like a fortress. The pair couldn’t risk getting any closer than catty-corner to the building, huddling together underneath an awning that only blocked the worst of the rain and none of the chill. Despite the dimness of their surroundings, Ansel’s supernatural vision was unimpeded as he scanned up one side of the street and down the other for any prying eyes. Satisfied, he nodded at Slate who slipped his skin and melded into the night as a cloud of vapor.

Tempting as it was to leave, Ansel stayed put and lit a cigarette as he idled on the street corner, making a show out of looking at his phone. Few people were out in the weather and the ones who braved the cold hurried past him without a second glance. As a biting wind cut past him, he was reminded again that his best jacket had been abandoned at Hector’s. His stomach twisted into a knot that had nothing to do with nerves about the job he was currently on.

In fact, as much as he hated the backtalk, he would grudgingly admit Slate was right in his self-assessment — he got results, and Ansel never had to fret about whether or not the job would be done. Tonight was one of the simpler plans to follow: get in, kill Malczyn, and leave the mess to Cutter.

“Don’t I know you?” a voice asked behind him.

Spinning on his heel, Ansel came face to face with a woman he didn’t recognize in the slightest. Solid with blonde hair collected in a tight ponytail at the nape of her neck, she had stopped only a few feet behind him with her hand on her hip. Although her tone was casual and open to conversation, she held herself with some manner of authority and her blue eyes were trained on him like a hunting dog.

“I don’t believe so,” he said, turning his head away from both her and the station.

“Yeah, sure we do,” she said, stepping around to his line of sight again. “I’ve seen you at Arlo’s, right?”

It was a safe question, nearly everyone in Odette had been to the local watering hole at least once and Ansel was no exception. It was possible she had seen him there, but it sounded more like the woman was fishing for something. Something about how comfortable she was to be invading his personal space set off an alarm in his head, but he was having trouble connecting pieces together while keeping an ear out for Slate. “I don’t drink,” he replied.

“That’s not what I said.”

Fuck. She’d caught his deflection for what it was and he could feel the jaws of some unseen trap ready to spring shut. There was a flicker of something in her pulse as she waited for his answer, and she’d taken a half step away from him.

“Listen, lady—” he started. He’d been intending to try a different tactic, but the words were closed off in his throat when Slate rematerialized behind her shoulder, his hoodie and face crimson red with blood.

The woman picked up on the change of his expression in an instant and whirled on the spot, unholstering a handgun in one fluid movement. “Alright, don’t move, I’m— is that blood?” Her prepared speech had ended in a gasp of shock as she took in Slate’s ghoulish figure on the street corner.

Time slowed down as Slate first glanced Ansel’s direction and gave a halfhearted shrug as if to say what’re you gonna do? Before Ansel could utter a word of protest, Slate again dissipated into mist, appearing to leave the two of them alone.

Ansel must have cried out then or else made some sudden movement without realizing it, because the next sensation he had was several blows punching through his midsection. No matter how cool she’d been trying to play it, the woman was as twitchy as a rabbit and had opened fire in his direction. Knocked back by the kinetic force, Ansel stumbled over his heels and began to fall to the ground.

She would have dumped the whole clip into him if Slate hadn’t grabbed her suddenly from behind, one hand firmly on the underside of her locked hands and the other gripping her tightly bound hair. Gunshots rang out into the night with a deafening roar and bullets glanced off the facade of the building beside them, showering them with shards of brick.

Ansel tried to shout, but was unable to draw a breath and his vision darkened and swirled with the effort. The only sounds he could make were the wet, sucking noises of his punctured chest wall as he desperately tried to fill collapsed lungs. With incredible effort he hauled himself up onto one elbow and could only watch as Slate jerked the woman’s head to the side and sank his fangs deep into her now exposed neck.

Arterial spray, thick and dark, glittered in the streetlight as Slate tore his face away from her. She fell to the ground with a sickening crack, one feeble hand crawling to her gushing neck before landing slack on her chest.

As Ansel’s wounds finally knit themselves together, undoing the massive trauma he’d sustained, the time bubble around the street corner popped. Someone a half block up was leaning out their window and yelling and dogs in the damaged building were barking at a threat that no longer existed. Slick, bloodied hands dug at Ansel’s arms, urging him to his feet.

“We gotta go,” Slate hissed in his ear.

Dazed from the blood loss and the bottoming out of adrenaline from the chaos just moments before, Ansel was slow to rise and slower to comprehend the situation. He looked at Slate like a stunned cow, and the razor sharp snap of his Thirst against Slate’s brought him renewed focus. “What the fuck. What the fuck,” he gasped.

Gripping both of his shoulders, Slate pulled his face close to Ansel; through the rain, the hot, metallic scent of blood stung his nostrils. “Run!” he roared, pushing him away and taking off down the street at breakneck speed.

Even if his mind was still disengaged, his legs heard the call to action and Ansel broke away from the scene in the opposite direction Slate had taken. Although his body had healed over the damage, his reserves were now beyond tapped— the meal Baptiste had given him had barely been sufficient for maintaining his Thirst. His skin shuddered as if he was being licked by live flames, and his muscles all cramped and constricted. The scant few people he whirled past in his flight were little more than pulses wrapped up in a blur; he couldn’t make out any faces, they were just the alluring promise of a blood meal. All of these were signs he was perilously close to tipping headlong into a frenzy.

He couldn’t go back to the mansion. He wasn’t sure he could even make it that far. This realization brought him to a sudden halt in an alleyway. His heart pounded irregularly in his chest and his breath caught in his throat causing him to double over, hands gripping tight to his knees. Nearly all conscious thought had left him, his mind was a beast circling desperately from one unpleasant future to another.

A passing car’s headlights illuminated a street sign in the corner of his eye, and he latched onto it like a beacon. The jumble of letters meant something, even if he couldn’t make out the word for what it was. Somehow it promised safety, it promised relief and comfort and protection. His feet turned and carried him down the street, away from the chaos and din of sirens and lights that flared to life behind him.

He gave himself to fate, to let it swallow him up and trusted he would make it through to the other side.

< Chapter XVIII || Chapter XX >

“Mm’llo?” he mumbled. 

“Mr. Torres?” a woman on the other end he didn’t recognize said. “This is Deputy Dawson down at the station, we need — “

“Tell him to get his ass down here toot sweet,” another voice bellowed down the line.

The fine hairs on Hector’s neck stood on end when he recognized Cutter and he shook off the last bit of sleep, perching his glasses on his nose. 

“Sorry,” the deputy said. “But —”

“I’m on my way,” he said.

“Great, I’ll tell him,” she said, relief palpable on the other end of the line. The call disconnected.

Pulling on whatever clothes he had at hand, Hector grabbed his phone, keys, and wallet, and bolted out of his apartment. He noted with dull surprise it was still dark out; he hadn’t registered the pre-dawn time before he’d left. As satisfying as it would be to leave Cutter hanging in the breeze for waking him so early, he broke into a run down the street; the police station wasn’t too far away by foot and he didn’t want to leave his bike in Cutter’s purview while he was in a mood.

The man himself was waiting at the top of the steps for him, smoking a cigarette which might have been the only thing keeping him tethered to earth. His shoulders broadened somehow to see Hector jogging from around the corner.

“Your boy,” he fumed like a chimney. “Your boy is this fucking close to— “

“To what, Sheriff?” Hector snapped, daring him to voice his threat.

Cutter’s dark eyes danced with fire, but he held his tongue. “Get the fuck in there.”

Just inside the door, Hector was met by the deputy he’d spoken to — a tall, solid woman with a faded tan and straight, dishwater blond hair wrapped tight in a bun at the nape of her neck. He mistook her expression for sympathy until recognizing it as restrained amusement; whatever was happening struck her as darkly humorous.

“Is this about Malczyn?” he asked as she started leading him to the holding cells. Her only answer was to hand him a folder which he skimmed haphazardly until his eyes honed in on the details of his statement. I wanted to kill him so you’d lock me up, I’m not safe— Hector swore out loud. “If he’s been asking for me, why do you have this?” he asked, flapping the folder at the back of the deputy’s head.

Dawson gave him a chilly look over her shoulder as he accused her brothers-in-arms of impropriety. “He didn’t ask for you until an hour ago. It’s all in the report.”

Their final destination was not the roomy holding cell which doubled as the drunk tank on the weekend, but the smaller, more oppressive room at the very end of the hall. Through the observation window, Malczyn was plainly visible, shackled to the desk. His fingers were clutching tightly to his hair and he bounced his leg so hard his whole body shook. When the deputy announced Hector’s arrival through the intercom, Malczyn’s head snapped up and the harsh lighting of the room cast the bags under his eyes in sharp relief.

“I’d watch yourself,” Dawson said, unlocking the door. “He’s two seconds away from going all Hannibal Lecter.”

The door closed behind Hector with a small click and the room felt as pressurized as an airplane cabin. Actual tears brimmed Malczyn’s eyes to see him and his body sagged with relief even as he began blubbering. “Thank God,” he said. “Thank God, thank you Jesus, thank you, th—”

Hector cut him off with an irritable wave of his hand. “What the fuck?” he hissed, taking the seat off to his side.

“Are they still after me?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. 

“Probably? I told you to fucking skip town, not try and cave in a man’s skull.” He slapped the folder down on the table between them with a harsh flick of his wrist. “What the fuck?”

Malczyn withdrew into himself and worried at a scab on the back of his knuckles. “I couldn’t— I didn’t know how to find you. It wasn’t safe out there, I— ” He withered under Hector’s severe gaze.

“What do you think I can do for you now?” he asked. “You confessed to some serious shit here, you’re going to big boy prison.”

Malczyn seemed a hundred miles away as he shook his head from side to side. “But you can get me out,” he said, gripping the edge of the table. “You can— I’ve seen what you can do — ”

Leaning away from him, Hector threw his hands up in exasperation. “Sure, I’ll pull a sword on a dozen cops in a police station, you fucking idiot.” From the way Malczyn’s face fell, that had been exactly what he’d wanted Hector to do, as if he was just a tool to be used. Something in Hector snapped and he saw red. “Sorry, but you’re on your own with this one.”

Malczyn made a tiny, winded noise and dropped his head into his chest. He looked so morose, that Hector was caught off guard by the man’s hand whipping towards him and grasping his necktie. The fabric bit into his neck and he was jerked forward, his head slamming full force into the table in an explosion of noise and pain.

“Get me out of here, you son of a bitch!”

Desperate fingers took a fistful of Hector’s hair who swung a blind haymaker up, catching Malczyn in the side of his head with a satisfying crack. The door to the room burst open and there was a flurry of activity as voices barked orders and hands pulled Hector away. His glasses had gone missing in the commotion, but he could make out the blur that was Malcyzn as he howled wordlessly and clutched at his face as two cops descended on him. A rough hand was underneath his own arm and shoved him out of the room into the hall, slamming the door shut and cutting off the sounds of Malcyzn’s distress. Relief hadn’t even washed over Hector before he was hurled full force into a wall and pinned in place with an arm across his chest.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” 

Cutter’s face was so close, Hector could make out the man’s features unaided. “I’m — he attacked me first,” he said thickly. Talking was difficult. He wanted to sit down.

“Why were you close enough to get attacked? You read his file, he’s a beast,” Cutter said, releasing him to jab a finger into Hector’s shoulder.

When he opened his mouth to respond, his lips were slick with something hot and wet and when he dumbly pressed his hand to his face, his fingers came back streaked with blood. Pressing his tie to his nose, another white hot flare of pain danced in his field of vision and his head dipped and swirled. He sagged into the wall, blood seeping around his hand and dripping onto his chest. “Sheriff, please.”

“Sheriff,” a second voice echoed. 

When Cutter turned his head, Hector used the last of his battered brain’s processing power to shuffle away from him and to the nearest chair. With his head cradled in his hands, with Cutter’s attention diverted, his Honor at last took matters into its own hands and a surge of cold fire flooded his head. Fog gave way to dazzling clarity as his magic healed his concussion. It was a mixed blessing, however, as his nose remained fractured and throbbed in agonizing time with his racing pulse.

“You need to fill out a report,” that same second voice said above him. Deputy Dawson looked down on him without much sympathy, but she was better at masking it than Cutter’s naked contempt.

“I’d rather leave,” he said.

She pressed his glasses into his hand. Somehow they’d survived the assault intact. “It’s quick, I promise.”

It took a half hour, in fact, due to Cutter’s persistent interruptions. Hector wasn’t sure what had sparked this new focus from the man, but it was like being circled by a hungry wolf. 

Once he’d finally been released with a terse, “Don’t call me about him again,” Hector had staggered down the street to his apartment. His head still pounded from the headache Malczyn had beaten into him, but his mind was crystal clear as he pulled out his phone, tapped out a brief text, and sent it before he could reconsider.

You free?

Till this evening, was the too-quick reply. Hector paused halfway up the stairs of his building, stomach constricting as he chose his next message.

You’re buying me breakfast.

After some back and forth, Hector had sealed the deal and was stripping out of his filthy clothes in his bathroom. Finally alone in his sanctum, he unsheathed his Honor and healed his fractured nose, bracing himself against his sink’s basin as his legs swayed beneath him. When he was certain he wouldn’t pass out, he showered and scrubbed the cake of dried blood off his face with no small amount of satisfaction. 

As he dried himself off and stared at his now pristine reflection in the mirror, he wondered what the hell he was thinking inviting Ansel to his place. It had made sense at the time, but he wasn’t convinced it hadn’t been a thought process borne from a still-concussed mind. He didn’t know him, and Oath or not, he didn’t have any reason to trust him. The thought that maybe he just wanted to see him again — maybe in the way someone might want to watch car crash videos — caused his throat to tighten.

He had enough time to ponder this as he dressed before there was a knock at his door. He verified it was Ansel through the peephole, but he called out to him, “Are you alone?”

There was a pause. “Who the fuck would I bring with me?”

Hector narrowed his eyes; his question had been neatly dodged. Nice try, he thought. Raising his voice he began to repeat, “Are you—”

“Yes, I’m alone,” Ansel said, muffled by the heavy door. “No one knows I’m here but you.”

His voice rang clear with truth. Hector slid the bolt and unlocked the door, opening it with a cautious creak.

“Do you want this food or not?” Ansel asked, waving a heavy plastic bag in his direction. 

The scent of syrup and bacon grease weakened Hector’s resolve and he swung the door wide. “Come in, Ansel.”

Raising an eyebrow, Ansel crossed the threshold and rolled his head on his neck as he did so. He peered up at the door frame, then behind him as Hector closed and locked the door again. “Drafty in here.”

“My wards,” Hector replied. “Divine barrier, it keeps things out if I don’t invite them in.”

Ansel made a noncommittal sound at that, setting the bag down on the coffee table. Wrinkling his nose, he said, “It smells like blood.”

Caught off guard by the comment, Hector took a moment to respond. “What? Oh, don’t worry about that.”

Hector took a seat on his sofa to spread out his order’s contents while Ansel stayed hovering on the other side of the table, arms pinned to his sides. From the bag he pulled out two orders of short stacks, three fried eggs, a generous portion of home fries, and an assortment of bacon and sausage links. 

“I probably shouldn’t be here,” Ansel said. “Baptiste could find out from me where you live.”

Hector was busy doctoring one short stack with syrup and took a greedy, blissful bite before answering with a shake of his head. “Doesn’t matter, even he can’t get in.”

“Don’t stop him sending someone to wait outside for you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Hector said. Chewing thoughtfully on a strip of bacon, he observed Ansel from the corner of his eye. “How many of you are there?”

Ansel scratched at the hideous scars on one side of his neck. ” ‘sides me and Baptiste? Two. They ain’t — you don’t gotta bother with them.”

After finishing his first stack of pancakes, Hector stood and crossed the room into the kitchen, turning on an electric kettle with a flick of the switch. “No promises,” he said over his shoulder as he pulled a jar of instant coffee out of a cupboard. “I’ve got a right to defend myself.”

This caused Ansel to square his shoulders. “If any of us came after your head, it’d be under an order,” he snarled. “We got no control over that.”

“What difference does that make to me?” Hector scoffed. ” ‘Sorry, I know you don’t mean to do this, here, take my neck’. Please,” he said, rolling his eyes.

The two stared at each other in stubborn silence until the kettle ticked off and Hector turned to make a cup of coffee. He was just sinking into the aroma when Ansel cleared his throat behind him.

“I’m pretty sure Cutter knows about you,” he said in a quiet voice.

Hector spun on his heels so fast he nearly knocked his mug onto the floor. “What? What the fuck does that mean?”

Ansel’s whole demeanor was evasive, like an animal that knew it was cornered. Instead of a direct answer, he backtracked into explaining the context. “Cutter’s our man, he’s been on the take forever. He was—”

“You didn’t think I’d want to know that?”

“I didn’t get a chance to—”

“Fuck, so he knows I’m a Hunter? Does he know about this? Is he—”

“Would you fucking let me finish?” Ansel raised his hands in front of himself. Hector fumed at him in silence. “Baptiste made me tell him so he’d keep an eye out. I didn’t tell him it was you, but I had to describe you and, well,” he trailed off, waving one hand like and there you have it. 

Foregoing his usual milk and sugar, Hector sucked down his bitter mug of coffee as gears turned in his head. “Does Baptiste know?”

Ansel shook his head. “But Cutter’s more dangerous for you right now, probably.” Hector idly nodded his agreement, rolling a swallow of coffee around in his mouth. “He why you were bleeding earlier?” Ansel asked with a dangerous rumble in his chest.

“No,” Hector said, blinking in surprise as his stomach tightened again. “No, it was Malczyn.”

“What’d you see him for?”

“I was his lawyer until he bashed my head against a table.” The thought of it still furrowed his brow, and he added more water and coffee granules to his mug.

Ansel clucked his tongue at that, one fang briefly visible as he curled his lip. “Cutter said he’d gone off the deep end, but god almighty.”

Hector eyed him as he returned to his breakfast, fresh cup of coffee in hand. “You gonna kill him?”

Cocking his head to one side, Ansel asked, “Don’t that go against your code of honor or whatever?”

Hector speared a few potatoes on his fork and waved it in Ansel’s direction. “You really don’t know the first thing about Hunters, do you?” When Ansel shook his head, Hector let out the closest thing he felt to a laugh. He shoveled a few more forkfuls of food into his mouth before elaborating. “I’m not some chivalric knight or whatever the fuck. ‘Honor’ is just what we call our magic. It has its own rules, but they don’t really follow, like, the law.”

“But you helped him before,” Ansel said, leaning a hip against the arm of the sofa furthest away from Hector.

“That was because of an Oath he’d made with me,” he said, sipping at his coffee. “Same reason I’m helping you. Think of it like a contract: when you ran away from him, he wasn’t in danger anymore and the Oath was fulfilled. Doesn’t matter to me if you come back for him later, so long as he doesn’t invoke a new one.”

Ansel folded his arms and a grimace hit his face. “Ain’t so easy with our Oath, is it?”

Though a few scraps of food still remained, Hector pushed the container away from him and tucked his left leg under himself. “An Oath can only be invoked if you’re in genuine danger and mean me no harm. The only way to fulfill it is if you’re no longer in danger or you don’t need my specific help anymore. And since I sincerely doubt Baptiste is going to just let you go,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Pursing his lips, Ansel slid from the arm of the sofa down onto a cushion, brow furrowed in thought. “What happens if you can’t do it?”

“If I’m trying and don’t manage it? Nothing, there’s no time limit or anything,” Hector said, picking at a few crumbs that had escaped onto the table. His voice was more somber as he continued, “But if I give up, if I forsake an Oath, if I fail in any way, I’ll lose my Honor. Literally. My magic will violently leave my body and I won’t be a Hunter anymore.”

“When you say ‘violently’ — “

“It’s the worst pain you’ve ever felt, apparently,” he said in a mockingly cheerful tone. He locked eyes with Ansel to gauge his reaction and he at least looked appropriately disturbed. “You really didn’t know when you did it?”

“I had no idea it was even a thing,” Ansel said, covering his face with a hand. “I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known.” 

His first sentence rang true to Hector’s ears, but a whine of feedback accompanied the second. He frowned involuntarily, but he said nothing; being a human lie detector was an ability he’d rather keep to himself for the time being. Like Malczyn, Ansel was a cornered animal grabbing onto anything that might promise an escape. He studied the vampire now sitting comfortably on his sofa, his hands steepled together under his chin, deep in thought. If it hadn’t been some manner of trick that had led Ansel to take interest in him, to invoke an Oath, to make a leap of faith by asking him for help — 

Hector’s stomach was in knots. Of course his Honor had reacted to Ansel; on some level he wasn’t any different from the frightened, lost humans to whom he’d rendered aid before. In some ways he needed help more than anyone Hector had ever even known. For the first time he felt a pang of sympathy for the man and the level of desperation that had sent him to Hector.

When Ansel spoke, he sounded a hundred miles away. “I got something on my face?” he asked with a bemused smile.

Hector blinked. He’d been staring. A handful of replies crossed his mind, but he disregarded them all and instead leaned forward to press his own lips to his.

The kiss seemed to hit Ansel like bad news, and he froze up in response. It lasted long enough to be awkward before Ansel broke it off, pushing Hector away with a firm hand on his shoulder. “You’re kinda sending me some mixed messages,” he said, his eyes darting off to one side.

Hector’s face flushed with heat and he leaned away. “I didn’t— I’m just—” he stammered, pressing his fingers to his lips. Where the fuck did that come from? He cast a sidelong glance at Ansel who was studying him like a puzzle and he felt his cheeks darken with color. “I have a hard time meeting people,” he offered lamely.

A small knot formed in Ansel’s brow as he considered this. “You got a lot of good reasons to keep people at arm’s length, I suppose,” he conceded. “This’d be pretty convenient for you.”

Though he tried to hide it, Hector picked up on a hint of shame in his voice. “I didn’t kiss you because you’re convenient,” he said, attempting to course correct the situation. It sounded like a hollow excuse even to himself.

“Listen, it’s fine if you want casual,” Ansel said, plowing over whatever point Hector was making. “Baptiste don’t let me be with anyone long enough to get past that anyhow.”

A jolt ran through Hector. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Ansel’s expression wavered as if he might start crying, but he held it together enough to lean forward and cover Hector’s mouth with his own. Hector wrapped his arms around his shoulders and held tight, as if the two of them had fallen overboard from a ship.

They might as well have, in a way.

Hector kissed him hungrily, it had been too long since he’d been able to satisfy his base desires and he briefly gave his body over to raw impulse. He let Ansel’s tongue rove around his mouth, surprised at how quickly it was warming up, and his own hands pulled at Ansel’s jacket from the shoulders, as if he could remove it over his head. Ansel, finding it suddenly too bulky for the situation, broke away for a moment to unzip it and cast it off to the side. Now less encumbered, Ansel pressed his chest against Hector’s and his intensity encouraged Hector to recline fully on the sofa, pulling him down on top of him.

Although he lost himself once again for several blissful moments of wandering hands and passionate kissing, Hector’s mind dropped back into the present when he felt a firm bulge pressing against his pelvis and cold fingers prying at the waistband of his pants. He made a muffled sound of protest and squirmed underneath Ansel’s weight.

“You okay?” he asked, pushing himself up.

“I just need a minute,” Hector said.

Ansel pulled away into a seated position back on the far end of the sofa. He didn’t seem upset, but he had withdrawn back into himself and was staring out the window with his arms folded tight against his body. Hector sat up and rearranged his shirt out of the rumpled mess it had become. The trite phrase It isn’t you, it’s me came to mind and he pushed it away with a frown.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Ansel asked.

“On the fire escape,” Hector said, indicating the window with his chin.

As Ansel clambered out the window, Hector didn’t half wonder whether he would just take the opportunity to run away, but he stayed leaning against the railing and lit a cigarette in the chill of the morning light. Hector chewed at a rough piece of fingernail while he watched, his mind racing with a hundred things he should say or do. When he judged Ansel was halfway finished with his smoke, he got up and crossed the room, leaning out the window.

“I’m trans,” he said.

Ansel acknowledged him by looking over his shoulder and nodding. “Ah,” he said.

Hector drummed his fingers against the window frame waiting for more, but he’d fallen silent again. “You do know what that means, right?”

With a bark of laughter, Ansel threw his head back before turning to fully face him. “I’m old but I ain’t ignorant.”

The tension between them melted palpably and Hector found himself giving half a smile in return. Still, he tapped his fingertips against the vinyl-coated wood and looked away to watch a car parking across the street. A cigarette appeared in his field of vision and he started visibly.

“You smoke?”

“I keep trying to quit,” Hector said, taking the proffered cigarette regardless. It was hand rolled and used a stronger tobacco than he was used to, and he only took one drag before handing it back.

Ansel finished it before speaking again. “It’s fine by me if’n you want a casual thing,” he reiterated, flicking the end of his cigarette off towards the street. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, I suspect, might as well have a little fun with it, right?”

Guilt gnawed at Hector like a caged rat. His eyes looked Ansel up and down for any hint of his inner thoughts, but the man had become as impassive as a stone. “It’s just—” he started, but held his tongue when Ansel turned to face him.

“Heck,” he said, and it took Hector a beat to realize it was intended to be his nickname. “Please.” Don’t make this complicated.

Resting his arms against the window frame, Hector said, “I’ll modify my wards so you’re allowed in without an invite. I keep weird hours.”

Ansel chuckled to himself and looked as if he was going to agree, but he screwed his face up in a grimace and turned away. “Baptiste is calling me.”

A half-dozen things sprang to mind for Hector to say, but he kept them all to himself. Ansel did a sweep of the empty street before hooking a leg over the railing of the fire escape and dropping to the ground far below. Scrambling out the window and gripping the railing tight, Hector caught a fleeting glance of his broad back as he rounded the corner and disappeared from his sight. 

A heavy weight in his stomach remained.

< Chapter XVII || Chapter XIX >

A pair of headlights cut through the darkness and blinded him to the night, illuminating his pale figure like a spectre haunting the side of the road. The police cruiser veered close enough to Ansel that he felt the sharp rocks and debris pelting him in the face as they were kicked up by the tires. Unmoving, he stared at the vehicle as the door swung open and Cutter’s sour expression glared at him.

Dog glared back.

For a myriad of reasons, it was rare that Cutter initiated a meeting with him. If anyone should be pissed it was Dog, but from the way the sheriff slammed the door shut, Cutter was in a far worse mood.

“I thought your boy wasn’t gonna be my problem anymore,” Cutter fumed, stalking around the front of the car.

There were precious few people on God’s green earth Dog answered to, and John Cutter wasn’t one of them. Dog’s only response was a half-hearted shrug. “He making trouble again?”

Cutter was close enough that the scent of liquor on his breath sparked a deep longing in Dog. “He broke a fucking shop window,” he said. “He smashed the clerk’s head in and tried to burn the store down.”

That gave Dog genuine pause. “Malczyn did?” His impression of the man had been meek as a kitten, but he supposed any cornered animal could bite.

“ He’s gone fucking insane, and he’s talking.”

Blood froze in Dog’s veins. “What’s he saying?”

“A monster’s trying to kill him. Something about a man with a sword. What the fuck, Dog? What did you do to him? Did you fry his brain or some shit?” 

Dog’s stomach dropped like a stone. “Well I didn’t pull a fucking sword on him,” he deflected, cold sweat forming on his forehead.

“No shit,” Cutter sneered, pulling a cigarette out and lighting it with a harsh flick of his wrist. 

Like a collar tightening around his throat, the order Tell me what Cutter wishes to discuss with you tugged at Dog. Unable to disobey, he opened his telepathic link to Baptiste.

Cutter says Malczyn got himself arrested. He’s talking about me and the Hunter.

At his side, Cutter stewed in silence, recognizing the distant look on Dog’s face for what it was. Puffing on his cigarette, Cutter folded his arms tight against himself.

Baptiste was slow to respond, but the faint buzzing in the back of Dog’s mind told him the man had been contemplating his answer. Tell him about the Hunter. Their paths may cross and Cutter needs to know.

Rolling his head on his neck, Dog waited for the buzzing to leave him before speaking. “The swordsman is real,” he said, crushing his own cigarette out under the heel of his boot. “A Hunter.”

With a wrinkle of his nose, Cutter studied Dog’s eyes, his pulse deadened by the alcohol in his system. “What’s he hunt?”

“Us.”

Cutter snorted, a plume of smoke erupting from his nose. “You, maybe.”

“He ain’t a joke,” Dog said, jabbing a finger at Cutter for emphasis. “Hunters are divine magic users with a warped sense of justice. You’re just as likely to end up on the end of that blade as I am.”

“ Thanks for your concern,” Cutter jeered. “What’s he look like?”

“ Tall,” Dog said, without hesitation. “Light brown complexion. Dark, curly hair.” He couldn’t feign ignorance, this memory could be tapped at any time; omitting even the basic details he’d eventually given up to Baptiste would be too dangerous. 

Cutter wasn’t as drunk as he’d hoped and as he studied the man’s eyes, they widened minutely although he jerked his head off to the side to mask his look of recognition. “I’ll have to keep an eye out,” he said. “What are you gonna do about your boy?”

Dog’s sidelong glance over at Cutter left no room for misinterpretation. “You got him in a chair?”

“ Not yet,” he replied, narrowing his eyes. “I told you about making a mess— ”

“ I don’t give a shit,” Dog growled, rounding on him. “I don’t take orders from you.”

Whether it was the drink or the stress getting to him, Cutter popped off. A solid left hook connected squarely to Dog’s jaw, the weight of his fist focused entirely on the heavy stone of his class ring. Dog stumbled backwards in surprise, bone splintering and mending in an instant, and he flared with anger.

Cutter’s handgun was as sleek and dark as the road beside them and even colder than the night air when he pressed it to Dog’s chin. For a moment everything else fell away and the world became the scent of oil on metal, Cutter’s ragged panting, and the chaotic thrum of his pulse in Dog’s eyes as he stared him down. 

He could loose his Thirst, take him over in an instant, but even with his life on the line he held back. Maybe a bullet would do the trick, maybe it would be enough. He’d mercy killed a thrall that way himself a hundred years before. 

Dog suppressed the urge to flinch and force Cutter’s hand.

“I don’t take orders from anybody,” Cutter said, at last. “I’ve got a partnership with your boss, I’m not his bitch.” The muzzle of the gun dug harder into Dog’s flesh and Cutter pushed his head away with it before holstering it.

His words made Dog’s teeth itch. “It’ll probably go down tonight,” he said, taking a step back. Like a flash fire, once the tension between the two men had flared, it dissipated and left only a smoldering heat in its wake. “If’n you don’t want it to be in your cells, do what you gotta to make it work.”

Slipping his skin, Dog morphed into his canid form and disappeared into the undergrowth beside the road. He watched Cutter for a beat longer — the man shrugging off the experience like it was a crick in his neck — before turning tail back to the mansion.

< Chapter XVI || Chapter XVIII >