#count darkula

Dark doesn’t remember his first few days of unlife. Not really. He usually chalks it up to time; a few centuries can really blur those old memories. Like a photograph left out in the sun to bleach out the color and sharp edges. But there are some moments that are still crystal clear, even after all this time.

He remembers the things leading up to his encounter with death.

Creeping up a narrow stone staircase, dagger at the ready. Greasing the hinges of the door to the main chambers and extinguishing the single flickering flame he brought. Entering the stone room without a sound. Plunging his blade into the chest of the sleeping lord, hand ready to cover the nose and mouth to muffle the sound of dying.

He remembers the thing that happened in his final few moments of life.

Those piercing yellow eyes opening where they should have been closing. An amused smile instead of a scream. Cold, powerful hands grabbing him and holding him down. The strength in that grasp, the careless way those hands broke bone and silenced his screams. Darkness spreading across his vision, death reaching for him.

A sickeningly pleased voice crooning.

I’ve never known a mortal man to get the better of me. Death in my own bedchambers? Past my guards and army? Such skill is admirable. But to make an attempt on my life is unforgivable. An affront that warrants death in my lands. And although it would be equally criminal to be rid of such talent, I must keep order.

But do not despair, assassin - for I know a way to satisfy all.

Thick, viscous blood forced down his throat.

Pain. Darkness. Nothing.

The End.

And then-

The Beginning.

———-

I don't actually have many angsty wips rn. They're all crackish/humor. But I had this from my vamp wips doc about Dark's undeath.

There was blood. 

A lot of blood.

Wild was breathing quick and harsh as the adrenaline began to fade — some mortal traits were harder to kick than others — and his inhales became slower, more drawn-out as the scent rolled across the roof of his mouth and filled his lungs. 

There was a flavor to it. 

Black currant and pepper, baking spices and candied cherries, pomegranate and loam. His mouth watered as he rubbed his tongue against his palate, trying in vain to taste it, and he hungered. It had been far too long since his last meal. 

Someone was crying. 

Wild tripped over a lifeless limb and reached out to steady himself against the brick wall. His neck, his shoulders were singing in pain. But it would be short-lived once he began to feed. The alley was littered with bodies, already dead, already cooling, they wouldn’t make a satisfying meal. So he leaned toward the warmest scent, long ears twitching as he picked up on the wavering heartbeat, so very close to fading. 

“Come on, come on, open your eyes you asshole…”

As he took a shuffling step forward, someone firmly grabbed his arm. Wild bared his teeth as he turned, slitted pupils flaring in his anger. 

Hyrule put up a hand in a gesture of peace, but he didn’t balk. “Easy, Wild,” he murmured. The sound of his voice, calm and controlled, brought Wild back to his senses.

“Come ON!! GET UP!!!”

Wild flinched as a bulky shadow came up on them too quickly, but Dark only held out his arm to keep them behind him. Wild followed his hard stare down the alleyway.

“Wake up!!” Shadow’s voice cracked as he shook Four by the collar much more roughly than he ought to. Four was dead weight in his own clothes. His head lolled but he opened his eyes, and Shadow uttered an oath as he got on his knees and hauled Four’s torso into his lap. He kept his hands tucked into his long sweater sleeves and blood soaked into the material as he brushed the long, sticky hairs away from Four’s face.

“Here.” Shadow supported Four’s head with one arm, using his teeth to pull up his sleeve on the other. He grunted as he sank his teeth into his own skin and gave a quick pull. A stream of blood much darker than what pooled on the ground at his knees began running up his arm. 

“Shads,” Dark warned. He made no move to approach. 

“Here,” Shadow repeated softly, just for Four. He lifted his elbow awkwardly to tilt his arm so that the blood flowed down toward his palm. “Here here here…”

Four’s eyes slid lazily to the side as he followed the motion. When blood began spattering onto his cheek he grimaced, weakly lifting a hand to bat Shadow’s away. 

“Don’t you dare!” Shadow insistently pushed his arm toward Four’s face, but Four pressed his lips together as he turned away. “I can’t do this without you, Rain!!”

Four shut his eyes tightly. His brow twisted in pain, not just from the hole in his gut that had him bleeding out across the asphalt.

“I can’t.” Shadow was openly crying now, lifting Four and pulling him closer, cradling his head against his chest as Shadow started to rock back and forth on his knees. “I can’t, I can’t, don’t do this to me, Rain, I’m not ready, it’s not— This is forever, right?? I can’t, I can’t do it, not without you. Please, please, please…”

Something that had long gone still in Wild’s chest seized at the broken sound of Shadow’s voice. Hyrule’s gaze fell before he let go of Wild’s arm and turned away, unable to watch. Dark cursed under his breath, but he remained still as stone.

Slowly, deliberately, Four leaned away from Shadow’s chest. He looked pointedly at Shadow’s wounded arm, then back to his face. Shadow’s exhale wavered as he looked Four in the eye, searching for some sort of confirmation. 

Four’s breaths were quick and shallow as his lips parted and he mouthed something that only Shadow would know.

Shadow hastened to bring his shaking hand to Four’s face. “Okay… okay…”

Hyrule tilted his face to the sky and shut his eyes, his fists flexed at his sides. Wild could do nothing but stare, transfixed, as dark blood spilled across Four’s lips and into his mouth. 

And Dark startled them both as he abruptly turned and stormed away toward the mouth of the alley. He made it about half way before he needed to lash out, kicking the side of a metal dumpster hard enough to leave a dent. 

—-

At a distance, Dark can almost think he’s sleeping.

Four is dressed in his favorite oversized hoodie and tucked beneath a heavy comforter. He’s laying on his side with a pillow tucked under his arm like he always does after a feeding. His face is serene and he looks comfortable in Shadows bed.

He looks asleep. But he’s not.

He’s dead.

If Dark got close he bet he could see the pallidness of his skin. The absence of warmth. The stillness of his chest. The gaping hole in his sternum where chunks of vital organs and spine were blown out the back of his chest.

Or maybe Dark wouldn't find that. It has been over two days now. It might be closed already.

Dark isn't willing to get close enough to check. Just stepping into the room was already risky enough.

The wall behind the bed has sprung to life when Dark walked in, pulsating and writhing. A dark, shapeless mass stretches floor to ceiling. There are no visible eyes but Dark can feel it watching him, ready to wash over him in a wave of fury if he dares get any closer. The edges of it whip and lash, a clear warning.

Dark crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe casually. "Hey, Shads. How's it going?"

The mass doesn’t dissipate. But it does creep down the wall to curl around the bed instead. It wraps its tentacle-like tendrils around the bedposts and loosely curls into the blankets. Hovering over Four’s body and hiding him from view.

"Leave."

The voice is distorted, stringy and full of echoes. A deliberate choice or merely a consequence of having no vocal chords in this form, Dark doesn’t know. It has a certain intimidation factor to it that would probably scare off most mortals, so Dark figures Shadow is doing it on purpose.

"Sorry, but I can't go. I just got here." Dark keeps his tone light but his body firmly planted where he stands. "And we have to talk."

"No."

"Yes. It's important. It concerns Four."

The black mass surges at Dark. It wraps around him and consumes what little light there is, swallowing the pale yellow that comes in from the hallway. Dark is swallowed into the belly of this beast, surrounded by an abyss of pure blackness. It’s only the feeling of solid floor beneath his feet that remind him that he’s still in the physical world and not the emptiness of the void.

Shadow's voice is a mere hiss that comes from everywhere and drips venom, reverberating through Dark like the bass at a rock concert.

"What about him?"

Dark blinks calmly, deliberately not letting his hackles rise. "Man, you're tense. Relax, I come in peace. Pinky promise. I just want to know what the plan is for when he wakes up."

The darkness swirls around him, agitated.

"You know, the plan. Your plan. For his first feeding.” Dark kept himself casual, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’d like to talk about it with you but I’d also like to be able to see. Because as cool as the visuals are, they're a bit distracting. You mind backing off a bit? Like I said, I’m not here to start shit.”

There is a moment of stillness. Dark stays relaxed as he’s assessed.

Then the room begins to reform through the darkness. Like a thick fog is lifting. Floor, walls, furniture all reappear.

“Thanks.” Dark shifts back to lean against the wall and face the dark cloud that still hovered heavily over the bed. "Anyway, I wanna know what you’re going to feed him when he wakes up. Because he's going to be hungry, Shads. Newborns always are. I’m sure you remember your first time."

The shadows shift around in thought. They coagulate closer to the floor, gaining something like weight to it. It’s still inhuman, but it appears almost solid enough to touch.

"It'll be worse for him thanks to that hole in his gut." Dark continues, daring to take a step into the room. When Shadow doesn’t lash out, he takes another. "I don't know if you've ever healed from something like that. But it takes a lot of energy to mend a wound like that. Especially since he got it as a mortal."

“I can pull someone off the street,” Shadow finally speaks up. His voice sounds more normal now, just a twinge more raspy and hoarse. “Or you can. Not like it's something you’ve never done before. I don’t know why you’re even bringing this up.”

Dark stops a mere foot away, just outside Shadows form. He narrows his eyes in ire. "I bring it up because I don't know how in control he's going to be when he feeds for the first time. He might kill someone, if we're not careful."

Shadow scoffs quietly, putting on his usual snark like a mask. “So?”

Dark exhales sharply through his nose. “I’m serious, asshole. If he’s hungry enough, he’ll be like an animal. He’ll tear his meal apart.”

"So I get someone no one will miss." Shadow waves him off. “I’ll clean up the mess and dump the leftovers. I’ve done disposal before. It’s not a big deal.”

Dark almost snaps at the dismissive tone. He forces himself to breath a lungful of air he doesn’t need and unclench his fists. Relax his posture and ease his tightened jaw. Tempers the urge that’s been building since the alley to grab Shadow by the throat and beat some sense into him.

Shadow has tunnel vision right now. Dark reminds himself. He’s scared. He’s young and he’s stupid and he’s scared. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand. You know it, you saw it. In the alley. He just doesn’t understand.

Dark is going to make him understand.

So he takes another breath and keeps himself from yelling. "Clean up isn’t the issue. I’m talking about what happens after.”

Shadow stills. His form shrinks even more. Now Dark can see a shadow of his real body among the darkness, glowing eyes cast down to stare at the body buried between the sheets. One of his newly formed limbs, blurry like physical static, lightly wraps around Fours limp wrist.

“After?”

Dark nods. “Yeah, after. Because he’s going to snap back to his senses sooner or later. And once he does, he’s going to realize what he’s done. And I don’t know him as well as you do, but he doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who’d be okay with killing an innocent bystander."

Very few people would be okay with something like that. Plenty of the undead Dark has met over the centuries regard their first kills as their first step into full blown depravity, willing or not. Freshly awakened vampires can act like animals - tearing open veins and ripping flesh from bones. The hungrier they are the more brutal the kill. It’s usually fatal and it’s always messy.

It’s a hard thing to live with, and even harder to come back from. Even experienced killers flinch away from brutal murders like that.

Dark swallows thickly, phantom copper tang in his mouth.

“You don’t want that for him, Shads. Trust me,” He murmurs. “You cursed him with immortal life. Don’t curse him with eternal regret, too.”

The darkness shutters, a barely contained gasp of pain.

It swarms and coalesces, revealing Shadow in his true form, sitting at Four’s bedside. He holds Four’s hand, brushing stray hairs behind Four’s ear with a touch so tender it makes Dark want to avert his gaze. But he doesn’t. He watches the two of them, regret aching like a physical stake in his chest.

“This is a responsibility, right?” Dark prods quietly.

Shadow quietly readjusts the blankets he moved when he sat down. He tucks Four back under the covers, covering him just like Four always liked. He swallows thickly.

“Right. Yeah.'' Shadow says. “My responsibility.”

He stands, shakily shoving his hands into the front of his blood stained hoodie. He turns his red-rimmed gaze up at Dark, eyes lost and distant.

“So,” He asks shakily, “What did you have in mind?”

——-

I took some liberty on vampire transformation. A bit of borrowed lore from Buffy on it taking a while for the change to set in. And a little from Demon Slayer about going feral for food upon awakening. Plus the whole Shadow having shadow power was too much fun to not include.

I kinda of love vampire Dark. like a whole lot. I feel like he’s a lot more mature than HSH or lmtcoy Dark because he’s so much older. He’s got more control to him. He might not really get mortals but something like this he understands completely.

And I don’t think I’ve really covered Shadow past being a snarky shit. I don’t get the chance much because there’s so few things that’ll actually break down those walls. But this specific situation is ripe for shadow actually being and feeling vulnerable for a change. For a whole variety of reasons like guilt for letting Four get killed, guilt for changing Four despite Fours initial wishes, fear at almost losing his partner, worry for what comes next, worry over how Four will take the change.