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The blood bank portion of the hospital was more sterile than any other section and yet it smelled more distinct with the sharp edge of iron. The floor was grimey with dirt treaded in by those less scrupulous than her that would, no doubt, be cleaned up by someone on the day shift. She felt alien here, though less foreign than being on the street with dozens of mortals that would never understand her state of unliving, not without screaming first.
“You up for the needle? Hmm? Your donation could save a life, you know. Oh, but isn’t it a little late for altruism? I don’t think you’re here to give blood at all. I don’t buy it, Jack. I bet you’re here to take blood, am I right?” Her head turned from observing the employee of the month plaque she’d been intent on memorizing. Her eyes slid to the man behind the counter with dirty strawberry blonde hair, and a manic smile, curious. Tilly hummed in question as she tried to understand what the human was saying. She never could shake it off, her mind was fogged, listless.
“Your kind always has that ‘who? Little old me’ look. You disappoint me so, I thought you might be a change for once.” She just stared at him vacantly as her stomach growled vaguely. That didn’t matter though because she would never be sated. Not unless she was to hit her final and last rest. That may have been the shadows closing in on her penetrating her thoughts though. “You in there, vitae sucker?” His hand waved around as if to catch her attention but Tilly was already intently listening to him. She could smell him, what promised to be the sweetest vitae she’d ever drink. If she did choose to drain him like a juice bag.
“Somewhere within myself, whether that child is awake or sleeping is yet to be seen.” There was a deft wind of confusion that blew through the unpleasant man behind the glass, then it seemed as if he caught onto the tail of a joke. “Tough night, new customer ?” That his voice sounded like a cat’s purring was enough to force a bark of laughter from Tilly’s torn throat that had been absent earlier. “Why, yes. We may heal but the pain is always present and remembered, ghoul. We feel even in death.”
“So you’re smart enough to know that I’m a ghoul?” He grinned at her smugly. The employee of the month and apparent resident asshat, Vandal. “I’m also smart enough to know that you’re a Malkavian’s ghoul and due to the laxness you display, your master is someone higher up in the hierarchy. I would say, a Voerman. Not Jeanette, you’re not pretty enough or friendly enough even if you offered sex in currency. Therese, you remind me of her, bitchy. How smart am I, Vandal Cleaver?” If she cared enough then Tilly would have been angry, she would have spat her words out with the only disrespect she knew. The backhanded question had been enough to take the edge off of her exhaustion, however.
The man’s jaw worked in what might have been anger before he simply asked, “Who are you?” Tilly felt pleased that she had shocked him enough to evoke the question of who she was rather than how much money she could foist over. “Tilly. Do I get candy now?” She leaned on the ledge and put her head on top of her arms. He huffed before smiling in a dark manner, it sent shivers down her back. This mortal would be dangerous should he ever become kindred. Though it would seem Therese never would commit such an act. The daughter of Janus was no fool. ”And how do you know of my mistress and her sister?”
“Everyone in and around Santa Monica knows about the Voermans. I, however, am an ally of sorts to them. Both- of them in case you ponder the matter.” His face contorted sourly for a time before simply asking, “Need a fix?” They were apparently not going to converse anymore that night so she put bills equaling two hundred bucks on the counter and Vandal set three blood bags in their place. “Are you sure you want to give me these? It doesn’t seem like this is the right amount.” He glared at her in contempt. “Trying to squeeze more out of me?” She waved her hand in a placating motion. “The contrary, you gave me too much for what I paid. I would hate for Therese to get mad at you for simple kindness.” He blinked simply. “It isn’t kindness. If it bothers you that much just give me back one and calm down, spaz.” Spaz, it was a simple word and yet it made her blood boil over so easily. She left then with claws digging into her palm, all three blood bags stowed in a knapsack.
Fuck immortality.
~
“Need a fix?” Vandal looked happier than ever, who did he kill?
She didn’t think he was a murderer because of the madness exuding from his crooked smile, rather it was the concentration of iron clinging to him, hooking into his pores. He smelled divine.
“No, not this time, Vandal. Have you perhaps seen a thin blood named Lily around?” He giggled with a glistening in his eyes that bespoke the insanity running through his veins. Perhaps there were a few cans of energy drinks in there as well. “You can’t have that one, blood god.” Tilly unintentionally spat out her laughter in a cackle nearly as unhinged as he had let out moments earlier. “How sacrilegious of you, ghoul. Leaving aside the thinned for now, explain to me the manner in which I of all am a god.” Rather than sporting a blush that she vaguely wished to see, he looked at her curiously. “Malkavian?” That earned him a snort though it may be unkind. “That I am, my dear. Would have thought you figured that out before.”
He looked absolutely stumped in his unchanging expression and it pleased her to see so many sides of a mortal that many would never figure out. “I forgot. You always seem so-”
“Stable? Normal? See, my insanity isn’t quite as outspoken as other kindred. Everyone hides something, Cleaver. I just never stopped hiding it.” He nodded but his eyes were glazed in something she knew not how to parse. A moment passed and he was back again, smiling at her as if he wanted to take a pound of flesh from her. “Now about the thin blood, you can either gag her and give her to me or I can sneak in there and break her out.” He was present now and he crossed his arms and leaned into the glass partition. “Both those options end in an advantage for you. What’s in it for me?”
“Well, what would you want from me?” He thought on it for a good minute before finally listing out the conditions. “One, find a replacement. Two, get rid of my coworker Phil for me. Three, call me the most embarrassing nickname you can think of.” He seemed mostly pleased with that last condition, never mind there were too many conditions for the favor she asked.
She straightened up before her performance. Then she leaned up to the glass with a crooked grin before trailing her finger over in a tracing of Vandal’s mirrored reflection. “Honey bunny, won’t you let me have the girl? I’ll get you more victims, promise.” To top it off Tilly looked at him like just seeing his visage was ecstasy imitated and poured thick. His throat convulsed in a swallow followed by an inquisitive smile. “You really are crazy.”
She backed away and cleared away the act from her expression. “That isn’t madness, Vandal.” His expression slowly filled with something akin to disgust yet too cold and dull to be such. “Then what was it?” What was he taking this as, she wondered.
“An act. I don’t know if you get your rocks off on seeing the twistedness of our blood’s affliction and I don’t care. But this, the madness? I’d hurt you. I’d kill you.” She stared at the floor as, the reality of what she was found her once again. So much for a fun time. “I’ll find someone for you and I’ll be on call for the Phil matter but anything more isn’t on the books.” She trailed out silently, mood dampened significantly. “Blood god.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. His expression was unsmiling, stoic. “Here, your candy.” He had set a lollipop on the counter and she stiffly picked it up and stuffed it in her pocket. “I’ll see you.”
~
“Did you get my gifts?” Vandal looked up from the clipboard he was examining and stood to face her with his usual maddened smile. “They were quality goods, where’d you get them? Bunny.” She felt dull amusement. “One was a prosthetic craftsman, he has a thing for amputation. The brown-haired one, I’d prefer not to say. The one with blonde hair, that one is a stalker. The last one, the one with the hat and beard, vampire hunter. It was so fun to mess with him. He kept flipping around asking where I was when I was standing in front of his face the whole time.” Tilly couldn’t stifle the bubbling enjoyment in her bones.
“Okay Sparky, whose juice have you hopped up on to be like that?” She tilted her head, the fog was back and thick in her mind. “Heather’s blood. She’s my ghoul, lovely, she was bleeding to death in this very hospital.” Vandal seemed peeved by that strangely enough, smile stretching wider in impatience. “You stole a patient and turned her into a ghoul?”
“If I hadn’t then she would have died, alone. She asked for help and I provided what the good doctor didn’t. Although I’m not sure a good doctor would cheat on his wife. Anyway, I just fed from her not too long ago, it’s the rush. It’ll pass.” Yet it didn’t pass so quickly and inexplicably her throat clenched, she felt like crying. Her eyes watered with blood, fresh and dripping. It hurt. Why did it hurt?
First, there was a soft huff, until she started to shake. Silence, bated breath, and the beginning of a heartwrenching sobbing she thought she’d left behind with her mortality. The voice grew louder in her ear, her voice, her consciousness. It was an ugly and necessary thing but it hurt her too deeply to ever listen to it. It had been loud even in life but now it echoed deeply. It muttered the worst things at the worst of times and she realized she was circling the drain.
Then she fell in, spiraling continually until she was tucked up against a wall and tearing at her face. Vaguely she could register that she’d accidentally popped open her eye and it was leaking fluid. Her sobs wracked her whole body. Her aching fingers avoided parts of her body that were covered by clothing in her animalistic destruction. She heard Vandal’s voice faintly in the background of her cries, her screams of anger and shame and pure hate. She shouted over and over for it to shut up, for this torture to end. And then something hit her in the head and it was finally quiet.
~
It hurt, everything hurt.
But it was fine, pain was a friend to the living in life. It was also a friend to the dying in death. How friendly of the gods of death and life to welcome something so dreadful as pain.
The walls were red and molded with dark wood, it was familiar. She rolled on her side to see the comforter covering her was pink with black stamped hearts littering it. This was Jeanette’s bed. How had she gotten here? She remembered smeared afterimages of the mental breakdown she had fallen into. It felt so empty now, her emotions simply didn’t exist at that moment. “What did you do to her, Ghoul?!” Jeanette presumably, shrieked on the other side of the partition that marked the separation of the daughters of Janus’ spaces.
Tilly slinked out of the bed slowly with a distinct soreness nearly everywhere and a noticeable lack of visual quality in her right eye. Had she done something to it in that fit? She used the partition to stay standing. “He didn’t do anything. I just had a small crash.” Jeanette’s snarl had turned into a hopeful smile. “It can’t be that easy, can it?” It was pure curiosity and Tilly minded little. “A pin could set me off, it’s why I avoided certain things when I was alive. I guess I still need to do so, to a lower extent.”
“So you frenzied?” Tilly cackled at a fairly confused Jeanette who was unfamiliar with her brand of illness. “Against myself, yes. Sure, I frenzied.” Vandal’s eyes darted between the two women from his place pinned against the wallpaper by Jeanette’s strong grip. “This is an oddity between undead.”
“Vandal, do me a favor?” He focused solely on her. “Shut up before I have to stitch you back together. Because if I have to do so I will be discarding your penis and you’ll be a penisless Frankenstein thing.” That effectively shut him up but she could tell he was having a meltdown in his head as he jostled in miserable humor. His humor was either immature or macabre, Tilly didn’t know which one she preferred to see.
She turned back to Jeanette with little more thought. “Point is, it’s normal. Don’t worry and let her know the same for me please.”
“Next time I would savage the voices for you before you could give in, if you would let me.” Tilly smiled sullenly and solemnly shook her head. “Sadly the only voice is mine and now I have forever with it.” Jeanette said nothing more but laid a kiss on Tilly’s cheek before Tilly took Vandal and left. That man was lucky.
~
Shitty coffee, of course the only diner close to his workplaces had shitty coffee. It was better than someplace like Starbucks at the very least. The scalding temperature melted the chill from the wind outside. Vandal felt better with it in his hands.
Usually, gore had little effect on him, he even felt joy in its roiling waves, their harshness hitting the shores of his existence. Yet now he felt sick having nearly brushed up against the experience of seeing his customer- wrong, she wasn’t just a customer. He had no other description to anoint her presence with. It was a bitter taste on his tongue as he watched her on the other side of the table.
She was longingly looking at his plate of steak and he tried to reconcile this vampire with the shrieking mess of a thing splaying out blood and pieces of itself as it self mutilated. He’d tried to dredge that up? Out of all the twistedness he’d seen in the bloodsuckers, hers was possibly the most graphically displeasing thing to ever see. And yet she’d been worried about him . This soulless blood god had cared more about him when she’d refused to show her cards and it shouldn’t have meant something but it indeed did for him. It meant everything.
He looked at her with new eyes and a differentiated view. Found himself soaking in her appearance, she wasn’t pretty in the convention of society but her skin was smooth and she was neatly tucked into a tank top, if he would have looked under the table he’d find the black khakis she always wore. Her hair was cut just above her shoulders. She may not have been beautiful to many, but in the sense of symbolism and better senses, she truly was radiant. Maybe in another time, he might have begged to be hers if he were not the Bitch Queen’s thrall. “What’s your story?” Her eyes snapped to him instead of his food and she seemed pleasantly surprised.
“The high-class ghoul wants to know my name plaque in exchange for nothing?” Right, they were set in the kindred terms of social interaction, exchanges for everything. That didn’t keep her from supplying him with an answer though. “Highland, my last name.” His mind was elsewhere but he caught it. “Your name is Highland,” He deadpanned. “It’s better than what I was born as, legally changed it once I was old enough. Mom and dad had a good choice of names but the family name was ill-fitting. Especially when they were gone.” Her nails scraped the table’s surface. “Your turn.”
“I was born in a small town. Everyone knew everyone and everyone knew what happened behind closed doors. Mom was nice enough until I began high school, dad was never kind. No one was, so I hated them and they hated me. It was simple, something easy enough and constant enough to keep me from fighting back under pressure.” His tone had been light but in his next breath, he was seething. “Just enough to not kill that fucker and give him back what he gave me. I almost miss it, the hate. And the rats.” She said nothing and merely nodded thoughtfully, mouth twisting as if she wanted to say something until her head shook in rejection.
“Is this one of those things where I’m like the first person to show you kindness and we walk off into the sunset together?” Their eyes met and then they both were cackling in amusement. “No, I’ve seen kindness, but the thing is, kindness kills.” If god existed then he could have sworn that it was her, her smile, fanged as it was, as she laughed.
~
Vandal hadn’t seen Tilly in a week, she had been coming in nearly every three days so it wasn’t a surprise to say it was unusual for her. He wouldn’t say he was worried. Maybe concerned over a loss of revenue. Though her companionship was a welcome entertainment from staring at numbers or the white walls of the hospital.
As he was readying himself to leave after his shift the phone rang. When he picked it up he could hear the Bitch Goddess on the other end. “I need you to go someplace before it gets much later with as many blood packs as you can plausibly carry while not drawing attention to yourself. Above the pawnshop, in room 508. Hurry.” The line went dead and he had the inherent desire to do as his mistress asked.
Being a ghoul came with the instinctive want to help a master, an instinct that Vandal resented. Due to that he still questioned orders. So he did wonder what was happening but he had negligently just filed it under vampire politics, too tired from a sleepless day. Politics were the kind of thing he never wanted anything to do with.
Once the door of 508 opened and Smiling Jack of all people appeared in front of him, Vandal realized he should have cared more to question things even if the rush of blood-induced ghoulish devotion had addled his mind. The bloodsucker merely opened the door wider in the midst of such thoughts and Vandal walked in lugging a cooler full of blood behind him.
The room was grimy, though that could be put up to the shoddy workmanship that came with urban living. It was largely unused except for the refrigerator if anything other than the computer on the desk or the currently occupied bed. A bare mattress on a metal frame.
He recognized that face. It was Tilly lying there.
The revelation hit him with a seizing of his heart. He wanted to shake her awake but she was still, so still, he nearly thought she was permanently dead. But if she was gone for good then she’d be ash. “How’d you get here?” He muttered lowly. “You know the kid?” Smiling Jack spoke to him and Vandal felt the oppressive foreshadowing that was often lingering on the vampire, along with a mild surprise. “Yes. Is this what the blood is for?” Jack seemed amused to an extent and annoyed to another.
“Yeah, gotta get the blood into her without letting the whole neighborhood know,” Jack said simply and took a step back apparently relinquishing control to Vandal’s expertise. Though that expertise was in the draining humans of blood rather than the fulfillment of vampire blood. Fulfilling Tilly’s blood. Fixing her broken body because she was in worse shape than-
Deftly he rummaged through his bag before finding some connecting tubes and searching for something. Under the bed was a hanger and using it along with some crusty rubber bands he made a makeshift iv drip of blood. “Why did you have iv tubes in your bag?” Vandal didn’t reply as he focused on inserting the needle into a shriveled vein.
Explaining would mean speaking of something he did not wish to indulge in, a paranoia. “Now we wait.” Vandal finally looked up at the wizened old vampire. “We? Mortal, you wanting to wait is fine but really? It’s idiotic.” Vandal found himself twisting his head to the side in question.
He looked at Vandal in exasperation before explaining. “She’ll be hungry, more than she’s ever experienced. May even try to kill you and we both know she wouldn’t like that, big ole’ softy.” Vandal was running on fumes as well and had work the next night. He wasn’t about to pick a spat with a vampire older than his grandfather’s father. That didn’t stop his anger from growing, an unfamiliar kind of anger.
He put all the blood bags he’d taken with him in the decrepit refrigerator and left but before he did he thought of something. “Would you tell her Van was here?” Smiling Jack laughed and Vandal stiffly stared past him. His skin heated with anger as he clenched his nails into his hands before disappearing into the darkness of Santa Monica’s streets. Surely she would be fine and if not then it wouldn’t be for long.
~
Another night went by without the sight of her. Another night where Vandal felt unfamiliar discomfort being without the presence of a person belonging to the single species he abhorred. It was wrong. It was wrong for him to crave her proximity and never would be right, and since it wasn’t right he focused on what was right as he did the paperwork for the blood bank as well as Therese’s investments. The rage simmering under his skin melted down into a cool mellowness as he read over and amended the tedious numbers. It was mindless. He was mindless.
“Vandal.” It was faint but he still heard his name clearly from her lips. Tilly stood there timidly with arms wrapped tight to her chest. She looked sick for a vampire, possibly this was her first day awake since he had been at the apartment. He motioned to the door to the left of the blood bank window after a moment of pause. She pattered that way and Vandal realized she was barefoot when her feet slapped the linoleum.
He left his booth and stood face-to-face with her. She looked ragged, not to mention the tattered remnants of what she usually wore. “I don’t have any money. But I don’t feel well, I need a fix this time.” Her voice was scratchy, drained of her lively slurring accent.
Vandal didn’t know what to say or do, someone that he’d perceived as wildly robust seemed so feeble now. It stunned him. He didn’t know what to do but he knew that he had to do something, preferably something to comfort her. So he wrapped his arms around her carefully, allowing her to rest against him knowing she must've been exhausted. “That first week I thought you were ash.” She hummed at him. “I was in an explosion, got caught on the lower level of a skyscraper, and nearly got crushed to death.” He let her go and she smiled at him. “Well, since you don’t have money I can’t give you any blood bags. Unless you have permission. Did you find the ones in your refrigerator?”
Tilly looked down at her unclothed feet blankly. “I drank them all when I first woke but it ran out fast and all my money got lost in the rubble. Heather’s gone too.” In the back of his mind, there was the inherent feeling of disappointment knowing he wasn’t her first stop once she’d woken. Although, the absence of her ghoul felt fortuitous in a way. “Don’t be sad. I only didn’t come to you because I couldn’t.” Her hand stroked his cheek though her fingers were cold, startling him out of his thoughts and causing him to look at the brown of her eyes. The touch winded a path up to his temple until she let her palm slide down to his chin.
His throat clenched as his blood began to boil, no, it stewed like a cat sunbathing. It felt good, she felt good. Too good. Therese may have the label on his existence but this girl, this fledging of an undead, held the secrets of something he’d long desired to understand. Something that held no name in his mind and slipped from his grasp. It made him want to hold her closer than the hair’s breadth that separated them. “You could drink from me.”
Tilly looked startled by the proposition. “Isn’t that not allowed, you aren’t my ghoul.” Vandal chuckled at her utter confusion. “That would be the case if I were unwilling. You need to read up on the rules, Till.” If blood were naturally circulating in her system he believed Tilly would probably have a rash of blushing across her neck.
She nodded at him slowly if not carefully, as if he would take the deal back. “Here.” He took her hand and led her to the mostly unused basement laundry room. After locking the door he opened the width of his neck up to her with anticipation flooding his system.
Her fangs hurt, of course, they did.
But it was life itself, the pain, the pain lit up his brain like a Christmas tree and the pleasure of it nearly made his knees bend.
She’d pushed him up against a washer when he’d started to go limp.
Her hands mussed his hair and he found himself trying to touch whatever he could reach of her. He said her name. He said it again and again as she filled him with a warmth he had never touched.
It poisoned his brain and finally, it was too much. The sensation became like the flexing of an overworked muscle and he wrapped his hand around the base of her neck.
“I don’t want you to but you need to stop, Till.” The ivory bone of her fangs unclenched from his skin and Vandal felt the distinct euphoria that came with a loss of blood as she licked at the puncture marks. It was a known experience, he had sometimes needed to substitute the bank’s stock with his own vitae. That didn’t stop the moment from ingraining itself in his brain.
“Thanks. I needed that… But you look like you need a cookie or two. Is there anything I could do for you?” He wondered absently if she would give in to any request he gave her. After a moment’s thought, he shook his head with what may have been perceived as a languid grin. “I have food in the break room, care to join?” She smiled with his blood still on her lips. “You joined me for my dinner, I might as well join you for yours.”
~
“So you really had an entire building drop on you?” She cringed at that while he carelessly bit into his night equivalent of lunch which was dinner or a midnight snack for “normal” people.
“Yes.” She nearly hissed it out. “Why were you there in the first place?” And then Vandal would later realize that he had in fact asked the right question because there was a lot of bullshit Tilly recounted.
Werewolves and ghosts and shapeshifters, this girl had been through the rough of it. He was almost impressed. Almost.
“So, I was working in this shithole while you were playing courier and gaining prestige. Fuck.” She quirked a brow at him, a habit no doubt, from the time when she was alive.
“Prestige?” The expression on her face made him laugh in amazement.
“Oh Tilly, you’re bloodsucking royalty now. You brought down the big guy at the top while carving out a niche of kindred willing to support you. Besides the older kindred, you’ve achieved the most among them the quickest.” He had forgotten about the sandwich in his hand and spoke with wicked excitement.
Tilly still seemed confused but as he explained her face twisted into terror. And upon seeing this genuine fear he was no longer excited, not truly. Though it made his pulse rush. “Why are you scared? You have the world at your fingertips, well, claw tips.”
~
She didn’t want to speak. She didn’t want to speak past the ringing of her own mind’s feedback. Her throat clenched and the blood in her stomach felt like it would come back up. When she did speak, it was like the grinding of gears. “I- I don’t want it.” Vandal looked at her like she was out of her mind and maybe she was, after all, it was what she’d known all along.
“How could you not want it with all of the things you could have and get rid of?” The words wouldn’t formulate as they appeared and promptly dissolved. Only two words could stay. “I can’t.” It was this simplistic answer that had Vandal setting down his food and suddenly crowding her space.
It wasn’t unwelcome but if he had touched her skin at that moment she would have found it to be uncomfortable.
Just as she had feared, his hand reached out. “Don’t, I don’t want to hurt you.” His eyes were blue, so blue that you could dive into the murky waves of his mind and drown there. “Tilly. What’s your affliction from?”
It was she who reached out then. “I was small and had a weak body. Always sick, alone, and pain became a friend. They would laugh at me, use me as something to take enjoyment with and I bore it with a smile. I’ve never been more , even as I grew and became something new.”
His eyes were dark, a storm captured to be held by human hands. He held an arm out and she took the chance to make herself smaller, safer, even though she was physically larger than him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder, his heartbeat thumped in her ear. It reminded her of home, not her haven, but the home where she had lived with her parents. That was the last place she’d felt safe but now she felt it once again, in the arms of a psychopath. However, what was a psychopath in the face of a monster?
“What should I do now? I defeated the Kuei-jin, the Sabbat, and the prince but now I have nothing.” She felt the beginnings of a crying fit in the back of her throat.
Vandal said nothing. The room was silent. Her mind was screaming.
“Should I just rest now? Can I rest now? I’m so tired.” She wanted to be gone, to melt into the asphalt of reality like ice cream on a summer’s day.
His hand gripped her arm bruisingly. “No.” His voice was a low hiss tainted with the ferocity of his anger.
She tried to speak but he placed a hand over her mouth. “No. You can leave all the kindred behind. But, you can’t die, not again.”
His face told her he wished to say more, to do more, but he let go of her, leaving her colder than before, his warmth gone. She watched him turn his back on her as he violently rubbed at his face.
Quietly she spoke, “I’ll see you around.” Then she faded away from sight and left.
~
Why had he been so frustrated? It was idiotic. It would always be idiotic. But when she started spouting that bullshit he couldn’t take it.
If she were anyone else he would have laughed at her, encouraged it even, but she wasn’t. She was someone that he had begrudgingly come to feel something for. He didn’t even care about his own mother. He hadn’t even known Tilly for more than two months. So why was she important? Why was she an exception?
Maybe he didn’t need to know. She just had the habit of being so sincere in a world that seemed to want to chew her up and spit her out. Even with her affliction. He remembered when she said that she’d been torn apart during one of her earlier visits. That her intestines had been ripped out.
She was used to pain. It seemed that it was so familiar it had no effect on her and that made him pissed. Out of all of the miserable people out there, why was she meant to be hurt? Why did he care about her pain?
Had he hurt her? No, he hadn’t. Except for the night she had fed from him.
He’d nearly- He wanted- He sighed in frustration as he took his break.
“Trouble?” Vandal looked up from his now cold canned soup to see Dr. Malcolm standing in the doorway. He didn’t know the man well beyond the fact he was cheating on his wife with one of the nurses. “No.” Vandal was gruff with him, the same as nearly everyone. “Really? Because you seem like you’ve been huffing and puffing since I came in here for coffee fifteen minutes ago.” Malcolm’s dreads swung in a halo as he leaned against the doorjamb.
He was pissed enough without the meddling of the other hospital staff but now he wanted so badly to throttle the smug fuck. “Shut the fuck up.” Malcolm looked at him stricken and it satisfied the whole of Vandal that craved violence. “That’s a first. Something must really be bothering you if you openly cuss at me. Tell me about it.”
Sadly, Vandal couldn’t escape Malcolm’s persistence in trying to find out what was on the up and up. He followed Vandal into the restroom for crying out loud. Who does that? Apparently, his coworker did that because he’s a nosy schoolgirl of a doctor. Fucker.
“So you’ve got a friend-” Vandal groaned at the title, she wasn’t a friend. Malcolm eyed him before continuing. “You have an acquaintance who seems to be suicidal.” Vandal curtly nodded though his stomach tensed with the word acquaintance. That’s what she was but something about it didn’t sound right. “And when she expressed a desire to pass you got pissed and hurt her feelings?” The recap of the story seemed so plebian, so dull and normal .
It didn’t feel as acrid when it was put into simple terms. “Yes.” Malcolm started laughing and while Vandal had started to feel more at ease that relaxation had shriveled with each bark of amusement.
He stood and left Malcolm behind in the break room only to have the doctor try to follow him into his booth. “Hey, Cleaver! Look, I’m sorry.”
The doctor did seem somewhat apologetic so Vandal decided to hear what he had to say. “Speak.” Malcolm grinned at that but Vandal ignored it. “So this girl makes you feel things? Makes your head all confused without a sip of anything?” He smiled at Vandal smugly before making his oh-so-amazing deduction. “You love her.”
Vandal was far from amused. “I’m meant to trust the doctor who’s cheating with a coworker on what love is?” There was no smile on Malcolm’s face then.
“Look, love can persevere but at some point, you get married. And once you get married love seems pale in comparison to the mountain of responsibility you have to shoulder. I love my wife, I do. But we haven’t seen each other as much as when I was younger, working shorter hours. Paige was new and infectious. Do I love her? No. She knows it better than I do.” The vigor seemed to deflate from the man as he seemingly explained himself for the first time.
“It takes more than love to stay together and what it does take is more like dedication. Unfortunately, I don’t have that.” As Vandal watched the man he concluded perhaps people weren’t exactly hopeless. They just didn’t know what to do with their lives even if the path seemed clear cut.
Maybe Tilly had known this feeling, and maybe that is what caused her to feel so ready to leave a world she’d deemed unfit. It was the humanity she’d retained. It was the part of her that he coveted.
~
She sat on her couch. It was more comfortable than the misshapen mattress at her last haven, the one that had been hers since her initial turning. Since she woke up screaming past the dry blood in her throat that crusted there like small shards of glass. It was an instinctual response to the remembered pain of being killed. Right, she had been killed, not turned but killed. All that she had ever been was dead. For others that may have been a blessing but to her, it was a curse. The one pride she had in life was her ability to live and decide her fate, but that had been taken from her.
Even Tilly’s memories seemed to fade now, lost was the vibrant colored saturation of it all. Would she still be herself once the past was erased from her memory or would she be a husk with nothing left? There was no guarantee, life never had a guarantee, but this uncertainty gave her a newfound fear.
Where first she feared life, she now feared life after death, an unknown quality for most except the secretive kindred around her brimming with secrets. Secrets no one answered. Maybe it was her inherent paranoia or the shared issue of her vampiric bloodline but she felt more frightened by the day.
There were no errands asked of her, no calls, no messages. Though the Voermans would no doubt be there for her, it felt dull. They had been the first to test her. They had almost killed her. What trust could she give them when there was no doubt that they could and would try again?
The other kindred Tilly had dealt with were just as unpredictable if not more. The kindest among them was possibly Gary Golden, Nines Rodriguez had been in the same ranking but after almost getting blown to bits she hadn’t heard from him.
That was after almost dying to a huge ass werewolf that had been twice her height and thrice her size. So it came as no surprise he ended up on her shit list when she’d heard he was alive and had essentially abandoned her to a cruel final death. Maybe it was a pity she hadn’t expired then but his hastening of an eventual inevitability was unwelcome.
Gary Golden was indeed nice. He had a grudge though, from what she knew through her clairvoyance he had been a Cleopatra siring. Possibly his shallow distaste for Malkavians was due to the possibility of understanding his shadowed past.
He had been a star, a gorgeous individual on a meteoric rise until he was turned into something he didn’t know how to recognize. She would know. After all her mind had done the same instead of her physicality.
There were times when she would come up with knowledge she had no way of seeing firsthand. The beginning of her was the end of those who came before. She had seen Caine, the first of her blood, the last of her blood. She knew the story of her sire and because of it, she couldn’t hate him. She could, however, hate the beast inside of him that had called for her to be another in a long line of fucked, so she did.
Her phone rang, so loud in a space that had been devoid of sound for so long. It sat on an end table, beside the couch. It seemed so far even though it was right beside her. Tilly couldn’t bring herself to reach over and pick it up. It rang and rang until the hour hand on the clock facing her was well into the daylight hours. Then it grew quiet.
A fervent banging started on her door. It mimicked a thrumming, a heartbeat. Her chest ached with the thought as she curled in on herself. Nestled in the crook of the couch Tilly didn’t see it when the door burst inward.
It had been a cacophony of wood splintering resounding with the crack of the remaining door slamming into the plaster wall. She didn’t move, didn’t care to. Even as footsteps trailed in. Even as her head ached with the echo of the noise. Even as a hand’s nails bit into her arm. Even as her body was turned to the point she nearly fell off the couch. Her person splayed in a subtle offering. But then she saw blue.
He was there with terror in his eyes, Vandal. His hands held her, clenched with enough strength that her fangs ached. She smelled him, the fear in his sweat. “Hi.” He stared at her with a specific brand of stupefaction before his lips curled into an eerie grin. “Hey.”
“So what brings you here?” She asked, not because of any particular reason other than her own discomfort.
Vandal helped her back onto the couch without complaint, sitting down on her armchair once he was done. They ignored the broken door barely hanging by its now singular hinge. “You.”
Something in the silence between them caused her throat to tighten. “Well, I don’t know why you’d come to me.” His mouth quirked as his hand came to rest on a backpack she hadn’t noticed at first.
“Don’t Malkavians see the future or something?” She shook her head at him before looking away toward the ceiling. “Sometimes,” Her leg drifted in the air to point in the direction of the door, craning at an awkward angle. “But I never saw your breaking down my door coming. Which I’m not mad about since you thought I had killed myself.” Her leg and foot pointed at the ceiling. “Surprise, I’m alive as dead can be.”
Shifting, shuffling, a solid thunk right near the couch. Tilly’s eyes drifted to the side to find Vandal on his knees next to her. It was strange, out of character for him.
Vandal never bent the knee to anyone except those that forced him. “I want it.” His aura wavered, licked at her fingers as they lay splayed across the curve of her opposing hip. A chill made its way down her spine, something was stirring. “Want what?”
He bit at his lip with furrowed brows. His strawberry blonde hair hung limp against his cheeks. He didn’t know how to say what he wanted but she could tell, it was in his spine, his scent, in his very blood.
“I’ll be yours.” The words slipped out of her mouth like they were insignificant.
His eyes met hers, she could hear his heart beginning to thrum more insistently.
“I’ve never wanted to live before, being embraced was never in my plans. I was meant to go to school, find someone, pop out a kid, and die.” She peeled herself up and threw her legs over the side.
“I never went to school, I was always single, I never had children and I never died on my own terms.”
Her hand came to cup his cheek. “I don’t have purpose anymore, maybe I never did, but meeting you made me think that wasn’t such a bad thing. I wouldn’t have been around you if I were still human, but god if you don’t make me wish I had.”
There was more silence, enough that she thought she’d misspoken somewhere. “If you give me yours I’ll give you mine.” It was spoken in a single breath that was never replenished because suddenly his lips were on hers.
His breath was hers. Her breaths were his. There was no differentiating between their will because they were in agreement, they belonged to one another. Or, a better way to say it was that they belonged together, with each other.
His hands raked down her back and hers carded through his hair to hold him carefully. In contrast, he held her as if he wanted to destroy her. Part of her wished he would.
He tasted like blood, not how it did now, but how it had as a human. He tasted like the hospitals she’d been in, like the chemical release of tears. He tasted of violence sweet and perfumey. She couldn’t get enough because it had been all of her sufferings and yet they were so far now.
His tongue wept crimson into hers after having hit one of her fangs. Her mind was overloaded with the singular thought of more. She wanted more of him, more of some unknown quality he could give her.
It was with that thought she pushed him gently away. Vandal quietly gasped for air as Tilly licked her lips, feeling the almost inflamed texture of where he’d cut into them with blunted teeth. “You kiss like a beast, Van.”
He chuckled darkly before placing a kiss to her neck that had her mind garbled with static. “Your beast.” He placed a succession of more kisses that drifted downward only to be stopped by her hand in his hair, pulling. “I can’t do anymore, not right now. Not without consequence.”
She was terrified, of how fast everything changed, and her waning self-control. Most of all though, she was afraid of what Vandal would say. So scared her lungs decided to work despite her lack of need for them when she wasn’t talking. Inflate, deflate, fast, and faster.
Where once there had been a look of sourness, there was only concern left. Why was he looking at her like that?
He’d grabbed her hands, using them to pull her into an embrace. He was warm, and soft. His arms, however, weren’t soft as they squeezed her and faintly she registered that she was shaking.
She shook and shook but he was there to steady her, soothing, calming.
The next night she woke entangled in limbs. Turning her head she saw Vandal’s sleeping face centimeters from her own. He looked younger with every intake of breath, all remnants of reality’s toll were gone.
His body shifted like the creaking of a house, swaying dearly and with a deep breath, his eyes opened to gaze up at her. “I didn’t know I was taller than you.” His brow furrowed as he snuggled into her shoulder trying to forget the forbidden knowledge that he was in fact short.
Tilly smiled, maybe if the Voermans ever left Vandal in the dust she would embrace him. After all, California was Anarch territory now and she was owed for that. “I think I’ll love you.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she imagined his voice saying, “I already do.”