#notsft

It didn’t occur to you that the harbinger of your little town’s demise would be an old RV that was one pothole away from shuddering itself to pieces. You’d seen plenty of them over the years. Most folks who weren’t local were just passing through on their way elsewhere – stopping for the night to stretch their legs, to sleep, to grab gas or a drink or a pack of cigarettes, whatever. It’s just how it was living in a snoozy little town not far from a major highway. Plenty of people stopped for a while, but few ever lingered. So it was strange when they did. It made you suspicious.

But on the surface, there’d been nothing to suspect.

You’d been at the gas station counter just past midnight, scrolling through your phone, when they’d pulled up in a dirty RV that had to be decades old. A family of five. Had come from some other part of the South, judging by their accents. Three of them had come inside – an older man, a woman who seemed to be his partner despite being about twenty years younger, and a young boy you assumed was their son. The man had been the one to speak to you. He was perfectly polite, friendly, charming even. He’d introduced himself as Jesse. He and his family were roadtripping across the U.S. and had stopped to get gas, stretch their legs, and spend a couple days not cramped inside an RV.

You’d nodded politely as he’d spoken. Had rung up the gas and a couple magazines the kid had grabbed – none of the brightly colored kiddie ones. You hadn’t commented on it, kept your face as pleasantly friendly and neutral as possible. When Jesse has asked if there was a motel in this town, you’d given him directions. They’d paid in cash and left. And you hadn’t thought much of it, because it was the kind of story you’d heard about a hundred times. They’d stay for a couple days, realize there was fuckall to do here outside of sitting in a bar or sitting in a church or going to the grocery store, and they’d leave.

So what if their stares, hard and intense and glimmering with an unfathomable something, piercing like they could see through your skin to the veins and muscle and bone beneath, had lingered in your mind for the rest of your shift? So what if the kid glared at you with a simmering hostility and a calculatedness that felt distinctly wrong? So what if something in the back of your mind told you something wasn’t right about them?

You’d met plenty of folks passing by in this job. You’d met plenty of the friendly kind, and a few of the shadier kind. And you’d made a habit of listening to your gut when something felt off. Someone like you working largely alone in the dead of night couldn’t exactly take chances. So you paid attention to that prickle on the back of your neck, that curling unease in your stomach.

But the kid…. they were a family with a little boy. You’d brushed the unease off and gone back to scrolling through your phone to pass the time.

Then they’d come back around the next night, again past midnight. This time it was the kid and the two who’d stayed outside – a blond haired girl and a man wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket, and the kind of grin that set you on edge as soon as you saw it.

“Hey there.” You said the words with calm friendliness. “Can I help y’all?”

“I’m sure you can.” The man swaggered up to the counter with the confidence of someone who owned the place. You resisted the urge to cringe away.

You weren’t exactly the type to scare easy. What was wrong with you?

The girl and the kid were wandering, eyeballing shelves of candy and snacks without touching anything. They were siblings, maybe. Both blond like the woman from yesterday. Not like Sunglasses. He looked closer in age to –

Your attention snapped back to him as he stopped in front of you and propped an elbow against the counter. “What kind of ah…. fun do y’all get up to here? Got any bars, clubs…” His gaze flitted up and down your body. “….Strip clubs? Or is this more of a ‘grannies at town hall’ kinda place?”

You schooled your features back to neutrality despite the rising discomfort in your chest. “No clubs, adult or otherwise. Sorry.” You weren’t really. “There is a bar, though. It’s just down the road from the motel, actually. Surprised you didn’t see it earlier.”

“Well, yknow how it is. Kiddie-winkies keepin us busy n all that.” Sunglasses gave a vague wave toward said kids. The boy shot him a look of cold fury, while the girl seemed engrossed in reading the label on a packet of Nerds.

You gave him an obligatory nod. “Sure.”

The man studied you for a moment. After a beat of uncomfortable silence, he tipped his head and pulled off the sunglasses, then studied you again. His eyes were blue.

“Don’t suppose you’d be willing to show me round town, would ya?”

You blinked at the whiplash of this family’s oddness and Sunglasses now apparently coming onto you. Because that’s only what he could be doing. Ladies-man type. Alright. Sure. Not the first time it had happened.

“I don’t get off till seven a.m.,” you said apologetically. You’ll probably be gone by then, and I’ll be heading home to pass the fuck out, you didn’t say.

“Aw. Shame.” He tilted his head, eyed you up and down again. Like you were a strange little puzzle to figure out. Or a particularly interesting piece of meat. His smile turned cheeky and, if you were being honest, just a little bit strangely charming. “Don’t suppose I can convince you to skip the rest of your shift?”

Well. The idea was certainly tempting. “Not if I wanna pay the bills,” you answered instead.

He nodded and made a little hum. “Right. No mercy for the lil guy, huh? Well.” He straightened, flicking his sunglasses back on. The grin was sharp and feral again, and it poked at some ancient prey animal instinct far in the back of your brain. “Thanks for the directions, sugar. See ya round.”

And then they were gone.

You really hoped the kids hadn’t pocketed anything while you were distracted.

They were still in town days later, long after you’d expected them to leave. You only ever saw them at night, and even then, it was glimpses. Maybe that should’ve been strange to you, but you were something of a nocturnal creature yourself. Sleep all day, wake in the afternoon, work the night shift, come back home as the sun was rising and pass out soon after. Maybe they worked the night shift too, whatever it is they did. Though that didn’t explain the kids’ sleep schedule. It occurred to you that they should’ve been in school but hey, maybe they were homeschooled. It wasn’t your business. Maybe it should’ve set off alarm bells, but you knew better than to stick your nose where it didn’t belong.

But apparently Sunglasses had never learned that.

You’d been intending to grab some groceries and take them back home before your shift, but as soon as you stepped up the curb to head into the Harris Teeter, someone called your name and on instinct you turned around. And were met with a familiar face.

“Fancy meeting you here!” Sunglasses sidled up to you but notably didn’t make any physical contact. Points for that, you supposed.

“Well,” you said dryly, “I do live here.” You weren’t on the clock and didn’t have to have your customer service face on. You were free to say what you like, leave any time you like.

“Really? Thought you mighta been stuck haunting that place.”

“Stuck haunting a twenty-year-old gas station in this town? No fucking thanks. I’d rather drink myself to death,” you scoffed.

A delighted look sprang across Sunglasses’s face. “Sounds like a plan to me! How bout it? I’ll buy you a drink.”

Whoa whoa whoa, wait. You mentally backpeddled. “No – that’s not what – I have stuff I need to do before I clock in–” You weren’t exactly eager to get to work early, but neither were you eager to let a strange man buy you a drink.

“Aw, c’mon now.” He took off those sunglasses and met your gaze. “Just one drink. It’ll be quick.”

….He was pretty good-looking. He was the posterboy of tall dark and handsome, with the pale blue eyes, mussed black hair, and jawline. The leather and chunky rings gave a rougher edge to that prettiness. And there was something else about him – an erraticness, an unpredictableness, that was as enticing as it was unnerving. And really, how many other guys had tried to come onto you before, invasive and unappealing? How many of them had actually been truly tempting? Exactly none of them. And now that a guy like this, strange as he was, showed up and offered you a drink, were you really about to say no, even when you wanted to say yes, deep down? Were you really about to shoot down the only decent chance you’d gotten in this middle of nowhere Southern hell?

“Alright.” It just slipped out. It slipped out so easily it startled you.

Why would you say yes like that?

“Alright!” The man threw an arm around you and tugged you away from the grocery store parking lot – and towards the bar on the other side of the road. The bar you’d pointed out to him just days before.

Your head whirled. What the fuck? Why did you say yes? What had possibly compelled you to say yes to this stranger?

“I don’t. I don’t even know your name,” you stuttered.

His grin turned cheeky as he glanced down at you. “Severen. Feel free to wear it out much as you like.”

It was an astronomically bad idea to get involved with a total stranger. A total stranger whose smile gave you bad vibes. A total stranger who’d probably be leaving within a couple days. A total stranger who’d been so very eager to have your attention. There were red flags. He probably wasn’t involved in some drug or sex trafficking scheme, but you still didn’t know a damn thing about him. Severen. You wondered if that was the name he’d been given, or if it was something he’d chosen himself for the punk-cowboy thing he had going on.

And yet, despite your reservations, here you were. You weren’t usually so swayed by a pretty face, but something about those blue eyes had compelled you to say yes. And against all odds..... you were enjoying yourself.

Severen was engaging, to say the least. Intense. Energetic. Constantly in motion, even when he was sitting – moving his arms and hands animatedly as he spoke, bouncing his leg, fiddling with his sunglasses or his un-drunk glass of alcohol.

The longer you sat there and listened to him – the more you stared at him – the more you found yourself loosening your grip on caution. The more your reservations wilted away. You couldn’t even blame your drink, since there was no alcohol in it. He was just…. kind of fascinating. And energetic. He made you laugh. And despite your earlier misgivings, he was kind of sweet. He told you about his family. Apparently Jesse and Diamondback, the blond woman, had found him at a low point in his life and taken him in, provided him with food and shelter and company he hadn’t had in a long time. And they’d done the same with the two kids, Mae and Homer. They were a patched-up family who stuck together and took care of each other when no one else did. It was sweet. It brushed against something lonely and untouched in your heart. To have that kind of family, that kind of reliability…. you shoved down the pang of sheer want it stirred up.

You could not start wanting and getting attached like that. Not when they were just passing through.

Still. You couldn’t stop meeting his gaze. You quickly stopped minding how often his arm brushed against yours. And you very quickly started to idly wonder if there was room for a sixth in that beat up RV.

When your phone alarm pinged at 10:30 p.m., you didn’t want to leave the comfort of the bar and Severen’s scorching attention. You could hear the reluctance in your own voice as you said, “I should head to work.” But God, you didn’t want to. You almost hoped he’d ask you to skip out on your shift, like he had last time. You weren’t sure you’d be able to say no.

But instead he just fixed you with a smirk and said, “Prolly.” He waved you off as you reached for your wallet. “Don’t worry bout it, sugar. Drink’s on me.”

You hesitated. “Well. Thanks. This was actually really nice.” Please give me a reason to stay.

“Course.” His gaze flicked away from yours, down your figure, sizing you up again. Did he see anything different from the first time he’d done that? Did you…. feel something different from the first time?

You forced yourself to say, “See you round.”

“I sure will.”

You left the bar in a haze, as if slipping out of a dream. By the time you were clocking into your shift, reality had fully settled back in and left your body oddly heavy, limbs buzzing with the faint sensation of pins and needles. Doubt had come back in full force. About a dozen questions whirled around your mind all night. What the fuck had you been thinking? Why did you say yes to him? Why did you so desperately want to head back to the bar and find him again?

You kept a wary eye on the door for the entire night. But there wasn’t a single damn sign of life, even if you felt like something was watching you from beyond the bleached lights of the gas station. You were almost relieved as the sun peeked up from the horizon at the end of your shift. As if it would protect you.

As if it would shield you from whatever went bump in the night.

You kept running into Severen. You kept making bad decisions. He would take you to the bar or walk to work with you or come to the gas station and hang around like it wasn’t a public establishment you were supposed to be running. Every time you wanted to tell him to fuck off, every time you wanted to ask why he was still here and why he was stalking you, he’d make eye contact and the words would die on your tongue. He’d draw you in. He’d say something that made you smile or laugh or, God forbid, that made your face warm and your breath come a little too quick. Things were moving far too fast far too soon, and you knew it. Whenever he wasn’t around, you snapped back to reality and promised yourself that he wouldn’t reel you in again. You had to cut him off. Whoever he was, he was trouble. You could sense it. But then he’d pop up again and your resolve would instantly burn away – you’d forget why you wanted him to stop in the first place. He was hypnotizing.

Even now, eight days after they’d first come to town, you just couldn’t bring yourself to care that Severen was perched on the gas station counter, teasing you and making you giggle like a schoolgirl with a crush and completely distracting you from what you should be doing. Which was acting professional while there was a customer. Which you most certainly were not doing. He was making you fucking stupid, and you couldn’t care less.

The customer kept eyeballing you from out the side of his glasses. Embarrassment burned in your stomach. But you just couldn’t drag your attention away from Severen for more than a few seconds.

“Anyways, like I was sayin – Diamondback took one look at this sucker and just bout knocked his block clean off.” He whistled and you jumped when he snapped an arm out, as if punching an invisible attacker. He laughed at your reaction. “Knew from then on never to mess with that bitch.”

“She sounds pretty badass,” you admitted. You wondered what she’d think of you. After the initial meeting with Jesse, you’d spotted her wandering around the town at night, sometimes laughing and with her arm around a young blushing guy who’d moved to town a couple years ago. You wondered about that. Didn’t ask.

“Yeah, she ain’t half bad. Ole snake’s got one helluva bite, that’s for damn sure.” Severen paused, as if considering, then leaned over with a mischievous look. His lips brushed the shell of your ear. “I been told I got a good bite too.”

Oh you could not be thinking about that at the cash register. You ducked your head and furiously looked for something to do with your hands. Severen’s self-satisfied laugh – it was more of a giggle, really – just made your face warm more.

A magazine smacked down against the counter. You snapped your head up. The customer was staring at you with an unamused expression. The slicked-back hair and chain necklace and obvious impatience all just screamed douchebag, as if the words from his mouth didn’t say it loud enough. “If you lovebirds are done – can I check out?” Oh, and a Yank to boot. New York or New Jersey, if the accent was anything to go by.

“Sure thing,” you said with forced niceness.

“These too.” He tossed down a packet of spearmint gum and a bottle of iron pills. You nodded and rung them up.

You didn’t have to look at Severen to know he was sizing the customer up; the dirty look the customer was giving him in return was indication enough. You grit your teeth. Please don’t say anything. Please don’t start a fight. Please don’t –

“Got a problem?” Severen asked. The cheerfulness in his voice felt like the warning rattle of a snake. You sucked a breath in from between your teeth.

“Yeah, actually. Think you can fuckin move?”

For a second, you were certain Severen was going to just tackle him and start a fight then and there. But instead he hopped down from the counter and clapped a hand onto the man’s shoulder. That grin was still fixed on his face, but it was thin and sharp like a razor. “First come first served, Yankee.”

Something like disdain or anger flickered across the customer’s face, but you jumped in before he could say anything. “That’ll be twenty-four dollars and seventy-eight cents.”

The customer’s gaze bounced between you two, something unreadable in his shockingly blue eyes. He gave an annoyed huff, shoved Severen’s hand off, and rifled around his jacket pocket for a wallet. He tossed a twenty and a five down. “Keep the change.”

“Alright. Would you like a receipt?”

“No.”

You shoved the items in a shitty plastic bag and thrust it over the counter to him, accompanying the motion with a blithe smile. “Here you go. Have a nice night.”

“Uh-huh.” He paused before heading out, giving you a weird raised-eyebrow look. “Don’t let the fuckin bed bugs bite.” He said it obnoxiously, knowingly, like it should mean something. Your face heated as you recalled what Severen had whispered in your ear. Fucking asshole.

You waited till he was out of sight to turn your disapproving frown to Severen. The urge to melt and let it go was near overwhelming, but you shoved it aside. “What the fuck was that about?”

“Yankees ain’t got manners, that’s what.” Severen said it dismissively, tossing his head like a dog shaking off flies. Then he sprung over the counter and landed with a jostle of leather and buckles and spurs, and he popped up to full height with an expression that promised nothing good. The same expression he’d been wearing when he first set foot here. You startled back. He followed you.

“Since when do you care about that sort of thing?” Something rung in warning at the back of your mind, even as that fuzzy contentedness that came whenever you looked at Severen tried to smother it. Something was off.

“Aw, don’t be like that. Lookit me.”

Rough fingers curled around your jaw and tilted your head up. As soon as you made eye contact, the warning in your head went silent. The tension in your jaw and your brow and your body unspooled. You went limp, letting Severen herd you against the back wall and cage you in with his arms and his body. His head blocked the sterile glow of the neon lights, casting you in shadow. His breath settled against your lips.

“Now, aren’t you a pretty lil thing?” he murmured, all soft honeyed tones and Southern charm. You would’ve liked to have thought you were immune to that sort of thing, being in this business and all, but your heart hammered so loud in your ears and your throat that you couldn’t think straight. “Thought that since I first saw you. Thought to myself, ‘oh, well I could just eat this lil sweetheart up.’ Wouldn’t I be a lucky man?”

He laid a hand on your chest, just below your throat, fingers curling against your pulse as his thumb caressed your skin. The edge of his mouth twitched up in a smirk. “You scared? Excited?”

Your tongue felt heavy. Everything did, heavy and weightless at the same time. “Yeah,” was all you could get out.

“You weak in the knees for me? Lil heart aflutterin?” The hand at your neck had climbed to join the one at your jaw. He cradled you like something delicate. “You sweet on me?”

You managed a weak laugh. “Y-yeah.” That was one way of putting it. One way to describe whatever the fuck was going on with your body.

He smiled. Brushed his nose against yours. “Good. That’s good.”

“Severen.... please.....” You weren’t quite sure what you were pleading for. What, exactly, you wanted him to do. “Please.”

“Don’t you worry sugar. Imma make you feel real good.”

Lips pressed to yours. Slightly chapped and cool, but firm and relentless, a sweet moving pressure that had your head spinning even more than it already was. His body pinned you to the wall and his fingers tilted your head to the side, moving you how he pleased. He pressed his tongue into your mouth sooner than you would’ve expected. A helpless noise came from your throat. Heat shuddered down your spine. He kissed you deeply, languorously, as if he had an eternity to explore you.

A thought bubbled up from the back of your mind – what if a customer walked in on you? But then Severen was slotting a thigh between your legs and biting at your lower lip and you stopped thinking much at all. Your hands slid under his jacket, racking up his shirt and dipping along the curve of his spine as you explored smooth, cool skin. Or maybe you were just burning so hot that he felt cold in comparison.

You whined when he pulled away, only to sigh in relief when his mouth latched onto your neck. Wet, open-mouthed kisses and scraping teeth and one hand cradling your cheek as you tilted your head away and gave him better access. Fucking Christ he needed to stop being a tease. You squirmed and dragged his hips closer, sliding yourself on his thigh and biting back a sound of pleasure at the friction. One of his hands dropped down to brace your hip. He huffed a laugh against your skin.

“God, please Severen,” you breathed.

He hummed and pressed a kiss to your pulse. His fingers dug into your skin.

And then he bit you.

Not a playful nip. Not a hickey. A full-power clamp of jaws like a dog or an alligator biting down on its prey. Teeth tore through your skin, punctured clean through like you were butter left out in the sun. It knocked the breath right out of you. Pain exploded through your veins. Your body thrashed of its own accord. Your mind screamed awake.

A gunshot rang out. Severen yanked away from you, teeth ripping back out your neck. A cry of pain unlodged from your throat and you stumbled away, sliding down against the wall. Severen swung around and snapped bloody teeth at something beyond your line of sight. “What the FUCK–” Another gunshot. Severen yowled and his body jerked and buckled. He collapsed to the floor. You scrambled away from his body as his words ricocheted in your own mind. What the FUCK....?? Your breath sawed in and out from your chest far too quickly. Your head buzzed.

What the fuck had just happened?

There was the crunching of broken glass – when had one of the window panes been broken? – and a head peeked over the counter. Slicked back hair and glasses and ice blue eyes.

The customer from earlier.

You stared at him with what was probably a panicked, bug-eyed look. He stared back at you. Then his gaze drifted slightly to your left and his eyes darkened. “You’re uh. You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah.” Your voice came out raw. “He bit me.”

“Must’ve been one hell of a bite.”

“Yeah.” Was this really the time or place for this conversation?

You weren’t sure if you’d said that last part out loud, because the man grimaced and leaned over the counter, offering you a hand. You took it and tried not to think about the fact that yours was shaking. He yanked you up with ease then helped you clamber over the counter. There was a pistol in his other hand.

Your head swam.

“We should, uh, get you out of here.” The man shoved the gun into his waistband and glanced around. A hand snaked around your upper arm. Normally you would’ve pulled away, but you weren’t exactly confident in your ability to stay upright. Not when you were shaking and fucking bleeding from your neck as if you’d been bitten by a vam–

“Holy shit.”

The man gave you a look that was halfway between annoyed and alarmed. “What?”

“Did I just get bitten by a vampire?” you blurted. He grimaced again. You realized how that sounded. “No, I’m not – shut the fuck up, don’t look at me like that–”

“Oh come on–” For a guy who’d gone out of his way to save you and shoot the maybe-vampire-maybe-crazy-guy who’d fucking bitten you, he seemed pretty fucking fed up. “Here.” He grabbed a bottle of orange juice from one of the drink shelves and shoved it into your hands. “Drink the fuck up. We’re leaving.”

“We can’t leave the scene of a crime. There’s a fucking dead guy!”

“Yeah, unless he’s a fucking vampire, in which case I don’t think a bullet’s gonna do much to stop him.” He practically dragged you out of the gas station with him. You couldn’t exactly argue with his logic, even if the world was tilting around you and you were lightheaded and your thoughts wouldn’t stop sloshing around like soup inside your skull.

God, how the fuck was this even happening?

“Got somewhere we can hole up?” the man asked.

You almost blurted, Who’s we? Trusting a stranger was what had gotten you into this mess. Then again, he’d gone out of his way to save you. And even if a bullet didn’t do much to stop a vampire, you had to admit you felt marginally safer with a human shield. As awful as that thought was.

“Um.” You tried to collect your scattered brain. Took a gulp of orange juice and cringed at the bitter taste. “There’s a church that isn’t too far from here.”

“That’s not–” The man cut himself off.

You glared at him. “What?”

He gave you another annoyed look. You again debated yanking your arm away from him and walking yourself. Instead you took another sip of orange juice. You probably weren’t putting enough pressure on your neck.

“That shit probably doesn’t work. Hallowed ground and crosses and all that religious BS.”

“What? Why?” You frowned. “Don’t tell me your name is Van Helsing.”

He scoffed. “It’s Frank. And your little vampire buddy didn’t need to be welcomed into that shithole to get to you, so that’s probably a myth. And who the hell knows what else is a myth too, right? We could be wasting our fuckin time in a church.”

You strained to remember whether or not there had been a welcome sign on the door of the gas station. Working there for so long had made you blind to the details of the place. You tried twisting around to catch a glance of the gas station receding behind you, but Frank was pulling you along too quickly and had you in an iron grip. Shit, maybe he was right.

Another thought hit you. “Oh fuck,” you said aloud.

“What now–?”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” you snapped. “Severen, the fucking vampire, came here with four other people he calls family. I only ever see them around at night. They’re probably fucking vampires too.” A whole pack of vampires. Right under your goddamn nose. Then again, how were you supposed to expect something that wasn’t even supposed to exist?

“Oh, well that’s just peachy.”

You were walking down a cluster of buildings now, passing by the grocery store and the bar. Warm hazy lights cast an orange glow on everything and reflected off Frank’s glasses, obscuring your view of his eyes. His mouth was set in a flat, grim line. You couldn’t get a goddamn read on him, or why he was here, or why he was helping you. You didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but after Severen, your guard was firmly up.

But….

You sighed. “We can hide at my place. I never took Severen there.” Of course, there was always the possibility that he’d followed you at some point. But then why wouldn’t he have attacked you there rather than in public? You twisted around, trying to get a look behind you again. You didn’t see any angry leather-clad blood-stained guys tailing you. You didn’t see any bats. Did vampires even turn into bats? Fuck, who knew? At least at your place, you’d have kitchen knives. And garlic, if that worked. Did you have anything that could be used as stakes? Did that even work? You’d heard decapitation was a sure way to kill anything, but you doubted you had the physical strength or mental fortitude to cut through someone’s spine, even if the bastard had tried to kill you.

Ultimately, you did end up going to your place. Your hands were shaking hard enough that you had trouble getting your keys into the door, and Frank glancing out into the open empty night didn’t do anything to ease your nerves. Especially not when his hand was resting on the grip of his pistol. It just made you want to start scanning the tiny neighborhood too. But once the door was unlocked, Frank ushered you in, slipping in right behind you before you slammed the door shut and locked it again. And hooked up the extra chain lock too. Not that it would protect you from vampire super strength. You assumed that one was real.

You flicked on the lights, but Frank immediately shut them back off. Only half a protest escaped your lips before he interrupted. “Nope. As far as anybody else is concerned, no one’s home.”

“Fine. Just give me a second.” You flicked the lights back on long enough to check the analogue clock hanging in the living room. “It’s just past three-thirty. We still have a few hours before sunrise. We can stay here until it’s light out, assuming that one’s real.” You hadn’t seen Severen or any of his pack out in the daylight. You were pretty sure that one was real, but now Frank had you second-guessing every bit of vampire fiction you’d ever seen.

But Frank just said, “Yeah. I’d say that’s a pretty safe bet.”

“Yeah. Okay.” You nodded dumbly. Stared at the faint outline of his face in the darkness. Christ on a stick. You were stuck with this guy until then. Another stranger. A stranger with a gun, no less.

Fuck.

“Alright. You close the blinds. I’ll do something about this.” You gestured to your neck. It had stopped bleeding, but you were damp and sticky with your own blood. “We can, I dunno, rub garlic around the door and windows afterwards?”

“You really think garlic’s gonna work?” Frank said doubtfully.

“I don’t fucking know!! You figure something out, Mister fucking Van Helsing! I’m gonna go deal with the fucking bite on my fucking neck.” You beelined for your bedroom and left him to his own devices. Hopefully he’d trip over something in the living room, the fucking douchebag.

You grabbed a change of clothes then stepped into the bathroom. There were no windows in the closet-sized space, so you closed the door, locked it, and flicked the light on. Through your squinting at the sudden brightness, you caught a glimpse of your reflection.

Jesus Christ, you looked like a walking corpse.

Okay. That was fine. That was expected. Whatever.

You stripped and dumped your bloodied clothes onto the floor. Jumping in the shower probably wasn’t the best move when you had a possible vampire thirsting after you and a stranger with a gun in your house, so you went with a dampened towel instead. When you’d cleaned up most of the blood, you dropped the towel onto the pile of your soiled clothes. You tried not to wince at the idea of throwing them away. The shirt and towel probably weren’t salvageable.

Not that that mattered right now. You were busy examining the bite mark on your neck. Miraculously, it had stopped bleeding on its own, though blood welled if you poked it too roughly. It had hurt at first. Now it was just weirdly, worryingly numb. The teeth marks were deep and torn, hadn’t pierced through cleanly and had probably been jostled as you’d struggled against Severen. But it was definitely a bite mark. And it definitely wasn’t a normal human one. The thought made you a little woozy, to be honest. You crouched down, and the rush of blood being forced back up made your head spin.

This couldn’t be real. This could not be real, and it could not be happening to you right now specifically. This was fucking insane.

You reached for the small medical kit under the sink. How the fuck any of this worked, you couldn’t be sure, but cleaning the bite mark and slapping a plaster on it couldn’t make things any worse.

Vampires bit humans to turn them into vampires. But they usually had to feed the human their own vampire blood to actually turn them. That’s how it went in Interview with a Vampire and Dracula, right? And that hadn’t happened to you. So you were good. Right? Probably? The feeding blood thing was something vampire fiction generally agreed upon. That was probably real.

But wait, Dracula was actually able to go into the sun in the original book. It only weakened him. Shit, what if the bursting into flames in daylight thing was made up? Your heart dropped at the thought. Although, no, you hadn’t seen Severen or the rest of his pack during daylight hours. And an RV could be a pretty good place for vampires to hide if they blocked out all the windows. Okay then, that one seemed like a safe bet. You weren’t so sure about garlic. That one sounded pretty silly. And as much as you hated to admit it, Frank was probably right about vampires not needing to be invited in. So you couldn’t count on that to protect you. And what about religious iconography? You weren’t sure you had anything in your house for that anyway. Fucking hell. You’d been thrust into a world you didn’t understand and didn’t know the rules to. And you had to keep yourself alive because of it. Well, yourself and Frank.

Even if the garlic seemed silly, it couldn’t hurt either. And surely you had something around the house that could be used as a stake. Unless it had to be wood.... did it have to be a particular kind of wood....?

“Fuck,” you muttered to your reflection. Maybe Frank would have some ideas.

You finished cleaning up and getting dressed, and then you headed back out. “You see anything weird?” you asked as you opened the bedroom door. And stopped. Squinted in the darkness.

The living room was empty.

“....Frank?” Your heartbeat thumped in your ears as you peered into the kitchen. He wasn’t there. “Frank? Are you–”

Something grabbed you from behind. A hand muffled your shriek before it could leave your throat. You thrashed and kicked and bucked like an animal as you were dragged. Your elbow jammed against something solid. A grunt of pain hit your ear.

Then you were tossed onto the bed. The mattress softened the harshness of the fall, and you jerked upright immediately. You scrabbled for a weapon as a figure filled your doorway. Tall wiry gleaming glasses outline of a jacket –

“Sev–”

He pounced onto you and you shrieked again. Clawed and writhed and–

It wasn’t Severen. It was Frank. With a mouthful of sharp teeth baring down at you. Oh fuck.

“Now what are the chances of that, huh?” he sneered. “Getting attacked by two different vampires in one day? Talk about bad luck.”

“GET OFF!” You renewed your struggles, but that brief moment of shock had given Frank all the time he’d needed. He had you caged against the bed, grabbing your arms and pinning you down with his bodyweight. “No!!”

“Fraid this just isn’t your day.” He said it so cruelly, so carelessly, like you were little more than a beetle under his shoe. Tears pricked your eyes. God, you were so fucking stupid, you’d fallen for the same fucking shit again.... “Tears? Really? Now? We’re just getting to the good part.”

“Fuck you,” you gritted out.

He laughed softly. You jerked under him again, but he remained immovable. “Maybe in another life. Now. Hold still.”

He leaned in, teeth bared and breath puffing against the other side of your neck. “NO!” you screamed. You threw every ounce of energy in your body into heaving against him. One of your knees hit his gut. The air rushed out of him and he doubled over. You yanked a hand out of his grip and blindly grabbed something from the bedside table and smashed it against his head. He toppled to the side. You shoved him off and bolted.

You didn’t even make it to the bedroom door. A hand was on your arm and you were spinning and then you were on the mattress again, this time with Frank shoved up behind you and pinning you to the bed, your back to his front and your face pressed against the sheets. You hollered, half-muffled. He wrestled with your flailing arms.

“Not so fucking fast, bitch,” he spat in your ear. “I haven’t eaten in weeks. I’ve been buying my time on fucking gas station iron pills, but now that I’ve got live, squirming prey? You’re not getting away from me that easy.”

You snarled some combination of words at him. You weren’t even sure what. But you writhed and jerked and flailed and didn’t let up for one second, even as he pressed against you and swore at you.

“Yknow,” a familiar voice drawled, “it’d be easier if you hypnotized em. Right?”

You both froze. You turned your face to stare at the bedroom entrance.

Alive and well, leaning against the doorjamb with one leg crossed in front of the other, mouth and shirt smeared with blood that looked black in the darkness – Severen. Sunglasses and all. Very much not looking like a man who’d been recently shot.

Your heart plummeted. Despair like nothing you’d ever experienced washed through your body, cold and stinging like alcohol.

“The fuck you mean ‘hypnotized’?” Frank said. He didn’t sound smug anymore. Just pissed.

A disbelieving laugh burst out from Severen. “You don’t know about that? Ohhh I get it now!! Well I’ll be damned!!” He took a step forward, practically sauntered. “You’re a newbie, aren’t ya? You ain’t figured out all the perks yet! Yknow what else you ain’t figured out yet, newbie?” Another step forward. A sliver of light from the bathroom – you’d forgotten to turn the light off you’d just closed the door you’d been in such a rush – hit his sunglasses and illuminated the edge of a smile and blood-splattered skin. His voice turned sharp and low like you hadn’t heard before. “You don’t steal another vamp’s prey.”

Frank flinched behind you. You saw Severen move, but it took another second to figure out what else you were seeing. A pistol, gleaming and old-fashioned, aimed at Frank. It might’ve brought you relief in any other circumstance, but here, now, aimed at a vampire....?

“This might not kill you, but I can assure you, it hurts like a bitch.” Severen flashed his teeth at the both of you. “So how bout this, son? I’ll be the bigger man and let you go, and you fuck off into the night and never cross my way again. But first, and here’s the fun part – we share this lovely lil sweetheart here between the two of us. And if you say no, well,” he laughed cheerfully, “I’ll shoot ya and drink up by myself, and then I’ll make you regret stumblin into an elder.”

You couldn’t breathe. Two options. Neither of which ended with you still having a pulse.

“So!” Severen wiggled his free hand through the air. “What’ll it be?”

The following pause was heavy and lasted far too long. Please say no. Please refuse him. Please fight him or try to disarm him or fuck up and give me a chance to escape, please, God, please....

Frank sighed through his nose. “You know what? Fine. Fine! Whatever. As long as I get something out of this clusterfuck.”

The words triggered something in your brain, that primal drive to survive. You yelled and thrashed, hoping to catch him off guard and fling him off. He just hissed and squeezed your arms till your bones felt like they were about to snap. You cried out in pain. Tears blurred your vision.

“You wanna help me out here or what?” Frank asked Severen.

“Sure thing, partner!” The words dripped with saccharine venom. He neared the bed and reached up to his sunglasses. Hypnotism. Cold fear doused you.

“NnnNOOdon’tyoufuckindare!” You squeezed your eyes shut and turned your head away. Severen’s laugh twisted your insides unpleasantly.

“Aw now don’t be like that!” You heard shifting fabric, the creak of leather and jingle of a dozen pins and badges. Fingers forced their way under your chin and tugged at you, trying to coax you towards him as rings dug into your cheek. You struggled to resist. Clamped your jaws together and strained your neck muscles so hard it felt like something was about to pop. “I said, don’t be like that.” Nails dug into the skin at the back of your neck, piercing and hurting and lancing pain through your nerves. It shocked you into relenting, and Severen twisted your head towards him with a noise of approval. You screwed your eyes shut tighter. He tsked at you. “C’mon now, open up for Sev.”

“Here, let me,” Frank said from behind you. He yanked you away from the bed and clasped your upper arms in a near bone-breaking grip. You had no time to recover before he bit you and agony ripped through your neck and shoulder. On instinct your body arced, strained, tried to pull away from the pain as your eyes snapped open of their own accord. And then there were fingers around your chin, roughly yanking you down, forcing you to meet eyes the color of the afternoon sky –

“Relax, sweetheart. The three of us’re gonna have some real fun tonight.”

The effect was instantaneous. Something fuzzy and hazy wrapped around your thoughts. Even as you struggled, your body loosened, and your thrashing weakened to a soft writhe. You bit down on your own tongue till blood filled your mouth. Focused on the pain, the hurt, the agony radiating from your tongue and your jaw and your neck and your arms, and refused to let yourself get swept up in the stupor. You were not doing this, you were not letting this happen, you were not going down without a fight. If they wanted you, they’d have to fight tooth and fucking nail, you swore it to any God that was fucking watching.

“Jesse likes to go on about how this sorta thing is really more the power of suggestion than actual hypnotism. Accordin to him, hypnotism ain’t even real.” Severen said it casually, as if commenting on the color of the walls or the softness of the pillows, even as the dog-like tilt of his head revealed the predator in human skin. “Which is real funny comin from the walkin talkin livin dead. But point is, lil sweetheart’s still gonna be struggling if you don’t do it right. Get off newbie.”

Frank unlatched from your neck. You whimpered in pain, tried to pull away, but your body responded only weakly.

“What?” He sounded almost as bleary as you felt.

Severen cackled. “Don’t know how to make it feel good yet either, huh? Whoever vamp daddy is did a piss poor job at teachin you the ropes. Scoot over. Let a professional handle it.” He cupped your neck and ripped off the plaster you’d placed over his bitemark.

A bitemark on each side, you thought through the fuzz. Now you were all evened out.

Teeth pierced through your flesh for a third time that night. It hurt. It hurt. You tried to put up a struggle despite the weight of your limbs and the lightness of your head. Pleading words and cries fell from your mouth. They went unheeded. Severen sucked at your skin and lapped up your blood – yes, this was really happening, this was what they were going to do to you – and your head swam. Your shoved at him weakly, but you might as well have been shoving at a brick wall.

This was it. End of the line. A lamb to the slaughter. Bottom of the food chain.

Your thoughts and emotions tangled together, fueled by the rush of pain and adrenaline and blood loss. Something crept through your veins. A chill spreading outwards under your skin. Death. This is what it felt like to die, you were sure of it, and all you could do was wait for it to overtake you.

.....Except.

It wasn’t. It didn’t. It was something else. Something started to replace the pain and the despair, something that was warm and liquid and buzzing. It filled your senses and glowed in your chest and trickled further down, dangerously down.

It felt.... good.

Awareness flooded your senses, hyperawareness of every little detail and sensation. The light spilling from the bathroom, casting the scene in lurid suggestive shadows and slivers of amber. Severen’s teeth buried in your neck, his lips closed around your skin as if working a permanent hickey into your throat. How he cradled your head so sweetly and dragged a hand down your side. Frank’s breath on your ear and your cheek and your neck, the proximity of his lips. Both of them solid and pressed against the length of your body, immovable and caging you in and supporting your body weight as your legs buckled beneath you.

How could you have been afraid? How could you have run and cried and screamed when it felt like this? You shifted against them, searched desperately and half-mindedly for some sort of movement. You might have whimpered. Or moaned. You weren’t entirely sure.

Severen unlatched from your neck but didn’t go far. You could feel him smiling against you. “Didn’t I tell you it’d feel good? All that struggling for nothin.” You mm-hmmed as enthusiastically as you could, despite the intoxicating headiness unfolding in your body and making you dizzy.

Frank’s exhale brushed against your ear. You shuddered. “How the hell did you do that?” he murmured. Some distant part of you wondered the same.

“Ain’t rocket science.” Severen licked at the gouges of your bitemarks. Sparks of pleasure flew under your skin.

At some point you’d started squirming. You wanted that feeling, that friction from when Severen had pushed his thigh between your legs at the gas station and you’d ground against him. That felt like a lifetime ago. Like a dream. You wanted it back. You wriggled your hips and got a response from the both of them. Frank made a low choked noise in the back of his throat and one of his hands flew to your side, nails digging through the fabric of your shirt. Severen sucked in a breath and tipped his head back. His throat worked enticingly as he ground back against you. Oh fuck that felt good. You gasped and grabbed Severen’s shoulders to steady yourself. And tried desperately not to sound like a dog in heat as you writhed against them.

You were too warm, burning up. Aching and struggling to breathe. Hands slid along what parts of your body they could reach, mouths and tongues and teeth pressed against your neck.

The thought of being consumed no longer seemed so terrifying. The mental image of them tearing into you, bloodying and messing themselves with you, teeth gnashing and throats working and tongues exploring your veins and arteries and snapping them like rubber bands was so visceral, it made you clench around nothing.

Eat me alive eat me alive please God devour me.

Between one moment and the next, you’d been dragged to the bed. Frank was behind you still, holding your back to his chest. He grabbed your waist and pulled you flush against him, and when you rocked against the hardness pressed to your ass, you were rewarded with a stuttered groan. You couldn’t even remember why you’d been annoyed at him. He was making such delicious little noises because of you, was grinding against you with the desperation of a man who hadn’t been touched by anyone else in years. How long would it take him to cum in his jeans just from this?

Your attention was abruptly, fully drawn away when Severen dropped to his knees in front of you. Enough light bled out from the bathroom to let you see the fresh blood smeared across his face, overlapping the dried splatter from before. His eyes glinted in the dimness. He looked like a predator. He was a predator. But you couldn’t find it in yourself to be afraid, not when he was pushing your thighs apart and running his fingers up to the hem of your jeans. He thumbed the button. At this angle, the way he looked up at you through dark eyelashes was absolutely obscene.

“How bout this? He drinks you, and I eat you. Sound fair?”

Lust hit you like a physical force.

Frank dropped his head down to your shoulder and licked at the bloody bite mark he’d made. “Yeah, alright. Sounds fair.”

You had enough time to catch a flash of teeth from Severen before he was undoing your jeans and dragging them off you and taking your underwear with them. It took a tangle of limbs and wandering hands to maneuver your body, but then you were bare and exposed and you suddenly realized how wet you were. How wet you’d been the entire time they’d been manhandling you. Heat flared in your cheeks and deeper in your guts.

“Well, lookit this,” Severen purred. “All this for lil ole me?”

“You?” Frank muttered against your skin.

“Was my idea.” And then his mouth was on your exposed cunt and Frank was sinking his teeth into you and it was so much, it was too much, it was near overwhelming. Pleasure shot through you so intense it made your body jolt from the force of it. Your heart pounded in your throat where Frank’s mouth met your skin. He kept grinding against your ass as he drank. He pushed your shirt up and explored the expanse of your body, every dip and fold, teasing and testing every inch of sensitive flesh. All while Severen’s tongue lavished your clit, warm and wet and fucking relentless. He drank up your arousal like that alone would sustain him. His tongue swept tight little circles over your clit and then dipped down between your folds, back up to your clit, and he did it again and again until your thighs were shaking and you were twisting your fingers into his hair. The hot pressure of his tongue and his fingers digging into your thighs and Frank clutching you and sucking on your neck was all too intense. You shuddered and jerked and panted from the pleasure. You were burning, coiling tight, about to shake apart from it all. You had no idea what you were or weren’t saying.

Fuckfuckfuck, it needed to stop but you didn’t want it to, please don’t stop fuck oh God please –

Frank pulled his teeth from your neck to press sloppy open-mouthed kisses to your skin, smearing the blood already drenching you. His lips were slick, the prick of teeth a promise. “Fuck, you taste good,” he slurred, words barely more than a growl. He rolled one of your nipples between his fingers. It was all you could do not to cry out.

And then you did cry out as Severen’s teeth pierced your inner thigh. Fresh blood joined the slick mess between your legs. You rolled your hips forward against the fingers Severen had shoved into your cunt and the thumb he’d pressed firmly to your clit, and then you continued the motion backwards to grind against Frank’s still-clothed bulge. It hit you so perfectly you wanted to cry, and maybe you did. It was impossible to tell with the onslaught of sensation. Half-blind, you grabbed Frank by the hair and yanked him up. His protest was cut off when you slammed your lips against his and swallowed the noise. He opened to you with a broken moan. You ran your tongue along his teeth. The coppery tang of blood made your insides curl with disgust just as much as it had you riding Severen’s fingers. You pricked yourself on Frank’s teeth. Sharp pain, the taste of blood, and then he was grabbing the back of your neck and devouring you, teeth and tongue and frenzied need, kissing you like it was his salvation and your demise. It probably was. And God, you wanted nothing more.

A new hand at your neck urged you away from Frank. You turned your head. Severen was leaning up, eyes-half lidded. “Oh, you sure fuckin do. Blood and pussy taste like heaven.” He pulled you in and you kissed him too, tasted your blood and arousal and you moaned into him. Frank nipped at your neck, dragged his hips against yours. Severen’s fingers were still curled inside you.

You were going to explode. You were going to die. You were going to irreversibly shatter apart and it was going to be messy and it was going to feel so fucking good that you wouldn’t even mind.

The sound of a belt and a zipper shot through you like lightning. You were pulled up onto your knees and they both came up with you, Severen in front and Frank behind, pressed against your bloody and sweaty and spit-soaked body. Frank shifted behind you and his tip pressed against your aching cunt. Between Severen fingering you open and the fluids coating your thighs, he was able to slide in with ease. You choked on the feeling, the relief from the emptiness and the fullness of him inside you. An experimental thrust had you doubling over against Severen, which just made his thumb rub harder against your clit. The next thrust hit you even deeper.

You felt sick. Sick with desire, in pain from arousal.

You only belatedly realized you’d reached for Severen’s belt, shaking hands pawing at the clunky metal buckle. He laughed at you but helped anyway. When you curled your blood-slickened fingers around him, his eyes practically rolled into the back of his head and his jaw went slack. He thrust into your hand with barely-restrained desperation. The dual motions were uneven, jolting and frenzied, but then you slid into a rhythm and the three of you writhed in tune. Moans and huffs, cries of pleasure from you and a tear-dampened face. You jerked Severen off as he punished your clit, as Frank fucked into you, as you lost what was left of your mind. You kissed them and they switched between kissing and biting and sucking and licking you. There was so much blood. All of it yours. You couldn’t care.

You seized in pleasure when they bit you at once, teeth buried in either side of your neck, four hands playing you like a finely tuned instrument. Sobs wracked your throat from how good it was. They used your body like a doll, kept moving until their own release was spilling into your hand and filling you up. Kept moving after that, chasing every wretched bit of pleasure in your bodies until the pain had returned and you could no longer tell it apart from the pleasure.

When they finally blessed you with mercy and released you, your body fell limply to the bed. Your limbs were dead, useless, body entirely wrung out. Your head swam and muffled ringing filled your ears. Colored dots danced along the ceiling, nearly obscuring the two bloodied faces peering down at you.

“Thanks for the fun times, sugar.” The words were muffled, as if coming from underwater. You couldn’t bring yourself to respond. Couldn’t make yourself get up, move, do anything. Why was that bad....? You were so tired. Too hot and too cold and impossibly tired. The bed was heaven underneath you.

The faces were saying something, but you couldn’t hear them.  Didn’t want to.

You let your eyelids slide shut.