#hellmouthau

The gas station was in the middle of no where. Beyond the blacktop, everything faded into flat country and endless night in all directions. The few street lamps were swarmed with moths and their lights fizzled yellow and sickly, but somehow made the place look like a beacon on the highway for miles in any direction. The nearest bar was a four mile walk east, a little further out, but he hadn’t seen a car blur by in hours. Summertime. Everyone was getting plastered, at least everyone Wyatt knew. Part of him wished he was partying alongside them, if just to witness any insanity. The other part (the louder part) was adamant he take the night shift and earn some extra cash.

The man across the counter grunted something that might have been construed as a greeting, and Wyatt responded in kind. He’d started remembering the regulars, and this guy always got a Slim Jim, a six-pack of Bud Light, and two packs of filterless Camels, came to $17.92.

“Have a good one,” he muttered, shoving the receipt in the bag and handing the man’s spoils off to him in a paper sack. As he was leaving, the bell over the door sounded, synonymous with a blinding flash of headlights pulling up to a pump. It wasn’t a car he recognized. Instead of fucking with the unpacked box of Big Red in the aisle, or restocking the beer cooler, Wyatt pushed himself up on the back counter and took a long drink from a tall can of Pabst.

The pulp of the wood sloughed off easier when it was wet. It was a trick his grandfather had taught him, sitting in the back of an old Ford under their oak tree. He was young to hold a knife so big — as long or longer than his whole arm — but he was strong for his age, they’d told him, clapping him hard on the back and thrusting the sheathed blade against his chest. The hilt cramped his fingers, and the strenuous motion of scraping away the wood burned his biceps, but he kept going. There was one thing the men in his family couldn’t abide, and that was weakness.

If he could avoid having that disappointment directed at him for as long as he lived, he imagined he’d live a long while.

Ezra pulled the cigarette from between his teeth, and finally looked up from his work. He’d gotten through two dozen in an hour; not mad. As he exhaled a plume of smoke, he set his knife aside and exchanged its weight for that of a long-neck. Pale, piss-flavoured suds lingered within. Hunting didn’t pay for the good lager. When he noticed someone eyeing what was left of his six pack, he spoke up.

He could almost pretend.

His hand toyed with the light-- or perhaps it toyed with him.

He stood to the left of drawn curtains, their dark silk much like the night he preferred to this flittering sunlight. It filtered through the blinds, colored his flesh, would have heated it if he could feel it, but did not begin to burn him with its immense intensity.

He could almost pretend.

That the ring he now bore was just a sweet token from Ezra, and not the reason that the light did not threaten to set him aflame. That the ring was not just a trick of a witch, but a gift that human lovers might exchange.

He could almost pretend.

Almost.

Esca drew away his hand, and sunk back into the shadows of the room. "You are a lie,” he told it, studying the silver ring beneath the scrutiny of his gaze. Its black stone, at least, mirrored the look of his decayed still heart. He twisted it upon his finger, rolled the aged band over and over, and the obsidian jewel winked when hit by a flash of bright rays.

For a second he stood, and in the next he was seated on a leather sofa; an item which existed across the room’s threshold.

“This is mad.” Esca reminded, peering over at the Hunter. He moved to fast, sensed to much, breathed none. He had a knack for compulsion. Then there was that one comical bit: draining a human of life. The list streamed onward, and was rather daunting when he cared to make a tally. He’d long forgotten how to act human. “Ezra, what is there for us to do that’s remotely normal?”

Time settled like a cloak upon the eternal. She learned to wear it like a well worn jewel upon a graceful neck, roping death along her shoulders until it shined upon her skin like the gloss of her raven hair. She had seen the world turn and shift from tide upon tide now, seen the sun rise from east and bleed to its falling death in the west-- -come century after century. She had seen the way this earth sighed, seen how it bowed under plagues of man and the wars he raged. Eva had seen it all. Eva had lived it all. ( Eva had been alive for far too long, legends would have it said. )

And her immortality came at cost of blood and life alike. She had shed who she had once been, taken on a guise of another with immortality by her side. ( The memories never faded, grew sharper like knives carving their place in the folds of her mind until it bled and she could not ignore it-- -until it bled and sang its acknowledgement into being. ) By her side through it all, had been Esca. He was a brother to her farther than blood allowed. They had been by the other’s hand for an eon worthy of cull by the gods themselves ( the faithless said their names in vain, yet they did not burn for they were the undead-- -scorned by death itself ), he was family in every sense of the word.

He belonged to another now too, and Eva shared him willingly so. The hunter held a part of his heart that she cherished for him to have as so, though she would never flower those words on her tongue. No, Eva could not. For he was a hunter, he carved those with her form lifeless on his stake. ( But it was matters of the heart, and she mused if he had garnered Esca’s attention and love after an eon of utter solitude, who was she to claim any higher a ground for his worthiness. ) 

A thousand years past with his home now apart from her, and they still saw it upon themselves to meet with every passing week, or a few. Calling him from his lover’s arms was a task, though Eva had now mastered it to a skill. ( With proper blood bags to accompany as bribes, of course. ) 

She smelled him when he entered, soundless as the fold in the shadows he had always been-- -even far before he had turned. He smelled like him. Like honey seasoned by sunlight, like the taste of rubies and the curl of sun-rusted metal. AB negative. A rare thing, for a rarer love. ( Though she put neither revelation to tongue. )

“Late again, brother? You’d think an eon would be practice enough, but you are decidedly stuck in your ways.” 

Eva “Euna” Rhie, Vampire

Euna Rhie was born the daughter of two renowned hunters. A descendant of a long line of hunters, the Rhie family was respected within its community. Known as a Pillar Family, the Rhies had a long-standing tradition of setting and amending codes of conducts within their clave as the turning tides of time brought upon new waves of mythical creatures that wrought havoc upon human settlements. They saw themselves as protectors rather than hunters, and followed a strict code of conduct that was based on honor above all else. This honor did not excuse weakness, however, and the realms that fell under their reign were protected ruthlessly and mercilessly against those who dared to disturb the peace. Trained for the profession since birth, Euna demonstrated a proficiency in an extensive spread of weaponry and combat, along with some variety of linguistic skills. Though trained in all weapons available at their disposal, Euna found a penchant for blades-- -a beloved specialty of her own.

It was in her adventures as a hunter that she came upon and befriended Esca Mercuritte: an orphaned hunter that excelled at his work. The two formed a steadfast bond that did not dwindle even when Esca was turned to a vampire, though their contact remained few and far in between as Esca took to the shadows as the creature of the night that he had become.  

She had been on a diplomatic mission, if not much else, to gather council from a few other Pillar Families they considered allies-- -there had been a proliferation of werewolf attacks upon the northeast, tensions among all populations were high- --when she was attacked by a pack of werewolves. Though a skilled warrior, Euna was overcome in the fight and left for the dead until she was saved by Esca and turned into a vampire. With the life of the undead having been breathed into her form, in her panicked haze Eva insisted upon returning to her family even as Esca warned her it was foolish to do so in her newly turned state. The advice, however, fell upon deaf ears as Eva made quick work on returning to her family. She thought herself a protector still, though it was the urges of the undead that overcame her long enough for her to kill her own family in bloodlust. When she awoke from the week-long nightmare that had been bathed in blood by her own tooth and fang, her family was dead and she left the shambles of it behind and escaped into the night. She found company in Esca under who she was trained in some matter or form, to the life of a vampire.

( Legends would have it said that the Rhies were killed during a vicious vampire attack while their daughter Euna was murdered by a hostile werewolf pack in the washing tide of rising tensions that changed the fabric of how the Pillar Families viewed supernatural and human relations once again. )

an ode to a dead world | hellmouth au ; [ eva aesthetics 3/? ]

“The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; 

there is (  t e r r o r  ) in the sky, 

for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse-- -                                 - --foretold in no books of men or of earth’s gods. ”