#oopsior!

It had been six months since Jenny had learned about the existence of vampires. Six months, and very little to show for it besides a set of scars on her neck (as well as other parts of her body) and a few memories of vampires turning into dust in front of her. Her goal had not yet been reached and it was growing frustrating, the way she kept inching close and then losing. She had thought Philip her golden ticket, but he was dust now. Max was too mercurial to trust to turn her any time soon. And Metzli …

Alas. At least fall was in the air and the nights were growing longer. Her mood had been softened by the incoming spookiness that would take ahold of Wicked's Rest, and she had enjoyed a Halloween like never before. She had not lost hope yet, but she was returning to cemeteries.

Never mind the nagging memory of a groundskeeper 'saving' her from a vampire by killing him. Never mind the potential stupidity in such a thing. Her muse needed feeding and it were the spookier places in town that did it for her. Dusk was around the corner, a brisk fall wind played with the air and under her boots leaves crunched. Though she was no vampire yet, she could at least enjoy their cemetery aesthetic and take in the sight of the orange-tinted sky without being bothered by the sun.

As she focused on her phone screen to take a picture of the sun peeking through branches and past headstones and then herself, too, Jenny lost sight of her immediate surroundings. Her foot hooked around a tree root that had surfaced through the earth with sheer stubbornness and she fell face first, phone skidding over the ground and her tights ripping. She let out a hiss of pain, before quietly cursing, “Fuck,” when she heard someone approach. Just her luck, that her very pleasing evening walk was disturbed with witnessed clumsiness.

_

There was not much for the slayer to expect from the cemetery at this early hour. The sun was vanishing beyond the pines in the east, and soon, the moon would be the only source of light in the area. More than enough for the young man, who, ever since he was a small child, had never known what it meant to be scared of the dark. Not like that. To him, the dark was only another name for evilness, and that often had nothing to do with the hour of the day or night. 

How innocent and reckless to imagine that the worst things happened at night. Broad daylight was no better, no worse. 

And yet, now was not a time where the cemetery was particularly interesting.

He heard the stumble. He breathed in with expectation. Maybe he had been wrong about that.

Looking over his shoulder, he stood up from the tombstone he sat on to get a proper look at the poor unfortunate soul. 

Jenny. 

Henri sighed, and yet hurried forward, his boots pressing through wet leaves. Crouching a few feet away, he tilted his head. “Jenny?” he asked, although it was not precisely a question. Holding out her phone, he lowered his voice. Just in case. “You dropped this.” He noticed the rip in her tights, and the dirt on her palms. Not exactly the best way to end the day, was it? “Are you alright?”

—

And who better to catch her in this embarrassing moment than a slayer who had shown a tendency towards condescension already. Jenny wasn't sure how she felt about Henri – was he a friend? – but she knew she didn't really want to see him while covered in mud and bleeding from her knee. Of course, the list people she did want to see her like that was so short it might as well be non-existent.

“Yep, that's me,” she groaned, pulling her knee up to consider the damage done. Ripped tights were an aesthetic choice she'd gotten behind before, but there was nothing pleasing about ripping them on accident. There was nothing pleasing about the blood welling up either.

Her phone went ignored for a moment as she stared at the bright red mixed with dirt and a small wood chip or two. “Damn it.” She blew on the damage, wincing again and only looking up at the slayer when the expression had left her face.

There was something so childishly embarrassing about falling like this and being witnessed on the ground. Tears (of pain) stung her eyes and she cleared her throat to rid herself from the immature response. “Yes! It's just a graze.” She took her phone from him, then looked back at her knee. She'd felt worse pain than this. Not even that long ago. She inhaled sharply. “It's fine. It's just blood.” She'd also lost more blood in recent times. It was not a big deal.

__

“A graze?” The slayer raised his eyebrows as he saw the wound, the red spilling onto the woman’s leg as she sat and looked at the damage herself. “I have plasters and …” A whole first aid kit, which was not precisely the sort of things people carried around. They should have, he thought. There were plenty things Henri thought that people ought to have carried around with them, especially in this God forsaken town. 

“Let’s get that cleaned up before it gets infected,” something in the way he said it implied that Henri wouldn’t take no for an answer. Besides, he was already sitting down beside her and searching his bag for supplies. Handing over a single-use wipe, the slayer tried to ignore the tingle on his skin. Heh, they were in a cemetery. This didn’t mean they were instantaneously facing a threat. Plenty of undead folks were kind people. Plenty were jerks too, but Henri found that wasn’t exclusive to any species. 

“Should I ask what you were doing here in the first place?” Probably not. He wouldn’t like the answer. His top guesses involved vampire literature references of all sorts, and they already had a conversation on the matter that he preferred to entirely forget. “I shouldn’t. Agreed,” he responded, before she could. He did not want to have an argument, not so early in the night.  

—

Of course Henri had plasters. He was probably the mom-type friend, in the way people were mom-friends in fiction. Always carrying around everything, micromanaging like second nature, checking in on the people around him with sincerity. (This stereotypical friend-type was not based on Jenny’s experience with her own mom.) “You have something to fix my tights? I love them.” They were adorned with a pattern, had been bought eons ago. She wasn’t sure she could get the same pair again.

Her lip jutted out as she took the wipe, staring at her knee before wiping it. She hissed at the contact, but was glad to see the bits of dirt and earth leave the graze. Once it was clean, she dropped the wipe on the ground before rethinking that action. “Oops,” she said, as if it had been an accident, reaching for it and balling it up. 

Henri was asking a question that he thankfully answered himself, because Jenny was kind of done with talking to slayers about her affinity for vampires. “Then I won’t ask you in return.” She looked at him, giving a small grin. “Can’t complain, anyway, Mr. White Knight himself.” It would have been so easy to antagonize Henri after what had transpired between them before, but he’d shown her kindness. Jenny found it a little confusing, but took to it heartily. She was about to say something when a branch snapped in the distance, the sound of someone approaching swiftly and ferociously unmistakable.

__

Henri’s head snapped toward the trees before he fully had the time to even think his actions through. His breath caught in his throat. Out of all the creatures to run into, this was perhaps one of the worst that could have found them. 

His hand instinctively flew toward the blade he kept sheathed beneath his jacket. 

Henri didn’t speak at first, straightening up instead as his eyes narrowed on the darkness between the headstones, the shape of the creature clear as though it had stood in the sunlight. Its scent hit him then as the wind carried it their way, faint but distinct to the slayer’s nose in the crisp fall air. 

“Jenny,” he said quietly, keeping his voice low enough not to carry across the distance. “Stay behind me.” 

It was too late to explain, too late to pretend it didn’t exist. He could hear it moving, sharp nails against bark, snarling breaths. He could hear something wet. He had heard all these sounds before. Not often. More often than he’d liked. Definitely enough to tell what he was dealing with. 

Upior. 

The last one he had encountered had torn through a trained slayer before meeting its end by his mother’s blade. And that was in the middle of winter, when the air was too dry to carry on the wind. Henri was sure he imagined feeling Jenny’s injury now, but he knew for sure that the creature would smell it. 

“Don’t move,” he whispered, crouching slightly, as his blade slipped out of the sheath. His eyes darted toward the injury, the torn tights, the dirt, and the smear of red on her leg. “You have to cover this. Quick.”

A branch snapped. Closer. 

As the ascending moon drew long shadows across the cemetery, Henri saw the shape once again between the stones, moving low, moving fast.

Henri exhaled. Slowly. His shoulders squared. “Alright then,” he said, voice flat and quiet, the edge of grim resolve seeping through. “Stay down. And if it gets past me. Run and don’t look back.” 

And then, the slayer moved.

—

The tone changed. Though Henri had been considerate and slightly concerned, the volume with which he addressed her now had taken a turn for the serious. Jenny stared at him with inquisitive eyes, almost forgetting her ruined tights and the stinging graze she’d just cleaned.

She heard it too, though not as sharply as he did. Something was moving towards them, something that sounded far from human. She clutched her phone tightly, as if anything about that small piece of technology could do anything against whatever made Henri look the way he did. The words why and what’s out there died on her tongue as he instructed her once more.

“O—okay,” she stammered, pulling her scarf from her neck and attempting to tie it around her knee. “What’s going on?” Something was coming closer, that much she could gather from the second snap of a branch. This one sounded nearer than the one before and she stared into the dark like Henri did, holding her breath without any of her usual dramatics. Was it a vampire, like the one that guy had killed with his shovel? Or was it something worse? Her mind went to the zombie she’d encountered in this very same cemetery, and the werewolf that had fought it after.

Monsters aplenty in this world. Henri probably knew all about them. 

She remained squatted, watching Henri standing tall and strong. A weapon sat in his hand she felt a noise exit her mouth. One of concern, for both herself but also for the slayer she had so often deemed annoying. 

Henri moved and Jenny wanted to tell him to get back, but she did not — she understood that there was a certain gravity to the situation, and she did not want to die. (Later, she might reflect on her willingness to let someone else play the hero as she cowered in the back. Or maybe there’d be other things on her mind.) 

The thing – whatever it was – jumped out from behind gravestones, and she watched Henri move towards it. But the creature did not care as it honed in on its target, driven by the scent of her spilled blood. Jenny saw it in its full glory as it barrelled towards her and she screamed a scream of true terror, vocal cords straining as she pushed herself onto her feet and started scrambling backwards.

It was horrible. Two red eyes, a tongue that swayed through the air like a monstrous trunk, barbed and sharp. Jenny kept screaming as it moved towards her, that tongue splitting the air to jab at her throat. She dove, just in time, to feel it crash against her shoulder, the creature following its tongue and throwing her against the ground.

__

The slayer cursed under his breath, words that were covered in the instant by Jenny’s screams. 

A valid reaction, to a first encounter with brutality incarnate. 

The creature lacked grace when it moved, erratic and guided by a hunger Henri had only ever read or witnessed. There was no imagining the sort of drive that led this person (because this was someone still) to lose all sense of control. As a matter of fact, it was all the more difficult to remember that there was a person in there, all the more impossible to imagine what they were like. Maybe this was a father of two, maybe a university student, or that woman who covered the night shift at the diner sometimes. 

In Henri’s book, you couldn't fault a creature for needing to feed but that did not mean that he had to let them. 

He moved fast, spinning on his heels to get a hold of the upior before it could touch her. She might have brought this upon herself, Henri did not think that she deserved that kind of fate. 

His fingers curled around his knife, steadying his hold on it before he threw it at the creature’s cheek. Another knife was already in his hand, retrieved from his belt, and the hunter lunged forward, giving up his survival instincts as he did so many times before to save her. 

Save them. A voice in his head told him. And he told himself that he would try his best. But the monster was trashing in his harm, desperate to access Jenny’s blood. 

The vampire’s nightmare of a mouth didn't bleed where the knife hit it. The blade had stuck into the gum and remained there, the upior acting as though it was nothing more than something stuck in their teeth after a nice meal. Getting a hold of it, Henri sliced through bone and sinew, cutting at last into the monster’s barbed tongue and managing to get its attention. 

By the time it tried to get it wrapped around the slayer’s neck, it had come right off.  Henri could feel the weight of it, the drool and venom seeping through the cloth of his shirt before it turned to ash. 

He hadn't forgotten about Jenny then. He just needed to get rid of the upior first. With its tongue out of the equation, claws dug into Henri’s skin, turning his skin into a tortured canvas, painted with red. 

But the hunter didn't back down. He needed to make sure she had time to run away. Please run away, he thought. As for him, he knew now that it would be either him or the upior and Henri refused to go now. 

The same knife that found the creature’s jaw dug beneath the trachea and as Henri mouthed an apology to the person in there, the slayer drove the blade through, crushing through bone again, this time with a more definitive outcome. 

Sweat clung to his skin and the tingling on his skin had dimmed into nothing, when the creature, instead of turning to dush, let out a final gargle, its own body dissolving into red goo. 3… 2… His eyes shut close in expectation of the crimson rain that came with the bursting of an upior.

But the instants the blood hit his face, the hunter rushed to her.

—

How swiftly the wound to her knee was diminished. Jenny knew only how to scream as she felt something rip her shoulder apart, watching a meaty tongue retract from her. The pain did not register yet, only the bone-deep fear and the dawning realization that she was going to die. The instinct to fight against that. 

She pushed herself back, scrambling and attempting to get up. That was when the pain shot through her shoulder, when another sound joined the fray and she whined with pain. She fell back, unable to push her weight up with her marred shoulder, and remained there. Tears and snot were slipping down her face, as she watched what happened in front of her.

If this was a movie, she would applaud the body horror of the monster that had moments ago attacked her. If this was a movie, she would have yelped, but that would have been it. If this was a movie, she would be able to pause the scene in order to grab a drink, scroll down her phone or go to the bathroom. It should be a movie, some fictional thing that would end with the credits rolling over a dark cover of a popular song from the 2000s. 

But it was not. This was real. Henri was really trying to fight that thing, had sliced off its tongue and Jenny stared at it in horror. It was long and muscular, lined with barbs and slivers of saliva. She sobbed at the sight, any control she had over her emotions far from gone. She was reduced to instinct and so all that was left was fear. Fear disguised as panic, fear disguised as disgust, fear that was just fear, the bone-chilling and nerve-destroying kind.

Fear for herself, not yet in a way that brought her clarity about all she’d done over the past months, but in a more acute way. But also fear for Henri.

As the beast tore into him she screamed once more, the sound ending in a whimper that continued on with stalling breaths. Henri was putting up a fight, but Henri was just a man. A man who was trained for this, though, a man with a knife, a man who might bleed after being scratched open but who was the one who remained standing as the creature turned to a shower of blood.

Henri rushed towards her and Jenny moved towards him, trying to push herself up again and using the hand belonging to her uninjured shoulder. “Henri,” she wept, “Henri — what was — are you okay? You –” A hiccup. “You saved me.” And it wasn’t the first time someone had done that since she’d come to town, but it was the first time where she felt relief and gratitude, cutting her like a knife.

__

You saved me.

The words sunk a pit in his stomach because he knew what just happened. No amount of beating himself up over it would rescue her from what was about to come. Still, he dreaded what he had to tell her now.

Henri wished it had been easy. You did very good. Or. Don’t ever set foot in a cemetery ever again. Instead, his eyes couldn't help darting toward the mark on her shoulder and his heart broke further more for Jenny. 

From the sound of her screams of horror, the slayer imagined that this was what hell must have looked like to her. A far cry from the glamorous vampires in Anne Rice’s literature or the manipulative yet enticing Bela Lugosi figure of the collective imaginary. 

How was he supposed to tell her that she was set to turn into an upior ? Not now, not even next week if they had any luck but… 

“Jenny, it touched you…” he stopped himself.

Henri couldn't give up just because fate told him to. Perhaps, since the upior poisoned, infected its victim, perhaps he could get his hands on a cure ? He had read on that. It had to be possible. 

He couldn't give up on her. 

“We’ll… I’ll-” he had to tell her. Because what if he didn't save her in the end ?

“You’re gonna turn into this within this month or the next.”

—

She loved the imagery of people covered in blood. The concept of it was marvelous, an aesthetic choice that almost always worked. But she could not appreciate it right now, as she looked at Henri. Blood dripped from his blonde hair, and he was no Carrie or Patrick Bateman, but he was just Henri. Smelling of iron, looking at her with a look in his eyes she did not like at all.

What she liked even less was what he said next.

Jenny stared at him blankly for a moment, then let out a burst of laughter. It was akin to a sob, with how sudden and uncontrolled it slipped from her throat. She clapped her hands over her mouth, as if to stop herself from laughing more.

To suddenly slip into disbelief about a supernatural phenomenon after she’d easily accepted everything else she’d learned over the past year would be ridiculous. And yet …

“No,” she said, shaking her head. Her hands were still on her mouth, so the word continued to come out muffled, “No, no, no, no —” She covered her face with her hands now as another burst of laughter left her mouth. This time it wasn’t just one short shot of laughter, but something that went on longer, transformed into a fit of giggles. Desperate ones, that clung to the idea that this was a joke. 

It could not be real. That for all her attempts and sacrifices when it came to vampires, for all the risks she’d taken, the things she’d seen and the blood she’d lost, she would turn into that. She kept laughing, clinging to her sides, shaking from the sounds but from the underlying fear, too.

__

Her laughter was perhaps the most human reaction, the most human thing to do. Perhaps this was why it terrified him so much. 

And so the hunter looked at her, woe drawing lines between his eyes that felt more hollow than usual, devoid of warmth as the adrenaline seeped out and reality sunk its claws in. She was going to die, and it was his fault. 

“Jenny…” He started, but she was laughing again, and his words stayed stuck in, like gravel in his throat. She laughed. The look in his eyes stayed the same. Horrified, emptied of its light. 

In the dim light of the moon, the man, painted in crimson red, remained quiet. 

He finally crouched, slow and deliberate, so he wouldn’t startle her.

“Jenny,” he said softly, his voice roughened from the fight. “Hey. Look at me.” 

She kept laughing, and the sound cut through him the same way the upior’s claws did his chest. Brittle, loud, human. 

And now his hands were on her shoulders, as though to beg her to stop laughing and come back to him, as though to beg her to listen, because they didn’t have much time, and he had so much to tell her. “Please, Jenny. You… We… We’re gonna get you through this, and…” With a shaky voice, he added : “We’ll find a cure. We…” Yes. The cure. There was a cure. They could save her. “We’ll find a cure.” The words felt like a statement this time around, nothing like the shell of a sentence he uttered seconds before. “We’ll cure you. Because we have time. Weeks. We have weeks, okay? Okay.” And he was talking to himself now, filling in the silence, perhaps in fear that she might laugh again, that she might burst back into a fit of laughter and break his heart again. 

“Please.” He let go of her shoulders, as though touching her anymore might break her. He had done enough damage tonight. Now was the time for fixing it.

—

There were tons of literary devices she could reference right now, but her mind was not working that way. All it seemed to do was circle the same two letter word of denial, her body shaking with it. No, she thought, this cannot be how it ends. No, this cannot be how it begins. This cannot be the faith that the world has laid out for me. No, they will have been right. No. No. No.

Henri was speaking to her and she couldn’t even look at him and his blood covered face. That wouldn’t even be the worst of it, the red staining him — the worst would be whatever expression he was wearing. 

Okay, one literary device, then: the hero’s journey, where Henri was the mentor, and Jenny was the hero who met him at the beginning of her tale. A subverted trope, as Henri was the wiseman who’d warned her against going on that journey and now here she was, a few steps deeper into it all. And he was still here. He was talking to her. He was offering aid. He was touching her shoulders —

“Ow, ow, ow!” The sounds cut through her giggles, the sudden gust of pain that coursed through her making her land back on earth. The laughter ceased and in stead she listened, clinging to the words that Henri said, especially when he said cure. So there was hope. There was an objective. The journey continued. Jenny looked at him, “There’s a cure? I don’t have to — I don’t have to be like that?” 

The image of the creature flashed through her mind’s eye again and she let out a whimper, the crying returning as the laughter had left. “So what — where is it? How do we get it? What do we do now? Do you —” She was trembling again, with terror and dread. “I don’t want to be that, that can’t be what I become, not after everything not … not that.” She reached for her face again, burying in her hands again. “Not that. Not that.” Her knees pulled up and she thought she might remain there, on the ground, waiting for Henri to return with the cure he spoke of. That could be alright. That could be okay. That could be better than trying to get up and doing something as mundane as driving away from this place. “Just get it.” Her voice was small and childlike, belonging to a daughter who’d always gotten the impossible, the cherished and the sought-after. 

__

Henri would never tell her that, but the crying was actually an improvement from the laughter. An appropriate reaction. It wasn’t doing anything for the knots in his stomach but at least it was normal, and it meant that she was listening. 

Unfortunately, it also meant that he had to talk, and he did not have all the answers yet. This was not the sort of situation he found comfortable. Most of the reading he did was to avoid such situations. You could not be caught by surprise if you already knew all the facts, right ? Well, he did not know all the facts. Upiors were not that common (because they usually killed their target), and Henri liked to believe that their rarity also stemmed from that possible cure. He knew he had heard of a cure before. He was certain about it. 

But clear answers? He didn’t have any. 

He sighed as she demanded he brought her the cure. She sounded convinced that he just kept a bottle of anti upior pepto bismol in his closet. If he ever needed any proof that she didn’t know a damn thing about how things worked in his world, there it was. 

Things were never simple. The choices they had to make? Impossible. Happy endings ? Who could define what they consisted in ? Was not dying a happy ending? Emilio came to mind and Henri told himself that he’d rather die than return undead himself. 

Things weren’t simple. She had walked into this cemetery looking for a vampire. She had found one. Simple would have him smile and tell her to lie in the bed she made for herself, tell her that he was going to save himself the trouble and kill her now, before she inevitably turns in a month. 

Instead, Henri said: “I need to look into it. I have never done this before, and whatever this cure is, I don’t know if it’s going to come without consequences.” 

His eyes couldn’t focus on her face, he chose to look at her wound instead. “I’ll go patch you up now.” And if they were lucky, no one would cross their path. 

—

Henri wasn’t getting up to go get the cure as she’d so weakly demanded, which wasn’t a surprise per se, but still a disappointment. Jenny got what she wanted most of the time, especially when it existed on the material plane. A cure was something that could be made or bought, and so something she right now believed she could get.

There was something to be said about how she’d gotten what she wanted now, her shoulder oozing from the contact with an upior, the fate written for her in the stars. She had come to this cemetery to find a vampire, and she had found something. She was not ready to think about the irony of her situation yet, and perhaps never would be — just as she had never been ready to assess why she was so willing to seek out death in the first place.

“Consequences be damned,” she whined, “I’ll take it — you will find it, you have to Henri, I don’t want –” She closed her eyes and sobbed miserably. “I cannot become that, did you see that? What even – what even was that?” She opened her eyes and looked at him like he was the last buoy left in the harbour, the last thing she could hold onto before drowning. She wanted to reach for him, cling to him, but she remained as she sat, pulling her legs closer to her even if the strain hurt her shoulder.

Jenny considered what Henri was saying. Her shoulder did need tending to and she tried to look at the wound, letting out a wail as she saw the damage done. She could not see the full extent of it, but her limited sight was enough. “Okay, okay, okay,” she said, teeth clattering. “What do I do — what do you need? Do you want to do it here, on the ground?” Somehow, even now her disgust shone through. 

—

Henri had tried not to point a metaphorical finger at her, no matter how much he thought she deserved to get told that this was all her fucking fault, but now she was making demands and there was something deeply irritating in the way she whined about her fate. Wasn’t this all she ever wanted ? 

He remembered how she was hellbent on showing him how wrong he was on the subject of vampires, back at the library. And now she thought she could just pick what sort of horror she was to turn into? Maybe he had failed her. Maybe he should have managed a way to show her upiors and spawns, wights and nachzehrers. Maybe that would have kept her out of trouble. 

“Consequences be damned?” With a scoff, the slayer got up to his knees. “THIS is the consequences for your actions.” And he didn’t care whether or not she wanted to turn into an upior. He was going to help her, not because she deserved it, but because it was the right thing to do. “What tells me that once you’re cured, you will stop your stupid quest for immortality ? Do you know what else lurks in those cemeteries? There are worse fates than this, Jenny. You don’t know a damn thing about the undead, and we tried to warn you but you don’t care about anyone but yourself.” He motioned toward where the upior burst. “And now that person’s dead.” Because where she only saw a monster, Henri knew there was someone. 

“I don’t fucking care what you want.” His voice had lost its usual calm and quiet. And his words echoed through the night with frustration and anger. “I’m going to help you because that’s what we do, but I don’t think you deserve it.” 

He left her side then, picking up his hunting gear and slinging the bag over his shoulder. “I’ll keep you under watch tonight. You’re coming with me. Now get up and let’s get going.” 

—

She grew silent. The crying did not stop – it was the kind of weeping that went on and on – but she clenched her jaws together, eyes blazing with shame, but indignation as well. All emotions born from the same endless source within: denial. It had started with the laughing, with the delirium that she’d gotten caught in as Henri had lifted the veil on her future. Then, a lapse of acceptance and then the entitlement, the hope she clung to in a way that was unfair to Henri, although that wasn’t what she was thinking of.

Jenny listened quietly, her jaw continuing to tremble as Henri laid out the truth — his truth. She wanted to argue with him, that this was no consequence to any of her actions, that being attacked by a tongue-wielding monster was far from a natural result to walking a cemetery at night, something a ton of people did, by the way! She wanted to argue that this was getting awful close to victim blaming, and she had thought better of Henri. 

But there was something about his tone that made her jaws feel glued together. There was something about the ache in her shoulder that made her stop for a moment. There was something about the memory of sight of that beast that kept her quiet. She was struck by it, his proclamation that she did not deserve his help but he’d give it to her anyway. 

And when Henri said she was coming with him, it was a command, and she did not move to disobey it. She just inhaled sharply, another sob leaving her throat. Her next words sounded choked, as if she was lacking oxygen: “I’m sorry! I’m sorry okay, I just — I just —” She inhaled again, “I don’t want to be that – I just — I’m scared, and it hurts and I’m sorry, alright?” She felt snot run down her nose, into her mouth and choked as she struggled to inhale again. 

Shame washed over her properly now, as did the fear she’d just confessed to. That was the underlying thing, the monster underneath her bed, the ignored elephant in the room. She was afraid. She had been afraid for months. Jenny hid her face in her hands again, wiping at her nose. Muffled, now, still strained by lack of oxygen, she mumbled, “Please,” she said, “Please just help me. I’m sorry.” She started to unfold, hissing with pain as she moved her arm and tried to get up. She felt dizzy as she got up to her knees, struggled to push herself up with one arm, inhaled too fast to exhale properly and wept openly through it all.

___

He wanted to scream in her face, tell her that she deserved it, that she did this to herself, and that she only had herself to blame now. But he stayed quiet this time. His anger couldn't have looked more obvious anyway. Henri figured he didn't even need to tell her how he felt about the whole ordeal. It was clear in the way he stood, the way his gaze had hardened into granite, even as he handed her a tissue. "Bit late to be sorry," he finally said, because he wanted her to stop repeating the world like some sort of incantation. 

Sorry would not fix shit. Once again, hunters would fix messes and she'd probably not learn her lesson and come back to the cemetery looking for a more appealing undead type. 

With a sigh, he held out his hand and helped her to her feet. 

He could feel his skin tingle as they walked out, but nothing came their way. The slayer thought to himself that he wouldn't have minded a little something to get his edge off. Because he remained furious. Furious that these people never listened. Furious because that upior wasn't doing anything wrong and now it was dead. All because of one person's stupid, selfish life choices. All because she didn't think it through. 

They walked through the cemetery without much trouble. They were quiet, and if there were anyone around, they were not the type to run and scream at the sight of blood, though they might have been the sort to hide.

As they left the tombs behind them, Henri’s gaze was drawn to a singular car parked on the lot. Bright red. Definitely looked like something someone who never worked for anything in their life would own. He sighed, at his own thought, because that was a bit rude, even coming from him. 

“Well that solves the issue of walking around Downtown covered in blood, doesn’t it?” Pause. “Keys?” Because she wasn’t going to drive now. Not after what just happened. Not with what was happening. Opening the passenger’s door for her, Henri dumped his blood coated coat into the trunk and wiped some blood off his face with his sleeve ; then getting behind the wheel and taking them to his place. The ride was a quiet one, safe for the radio playing some song he didn’t know. Soon enough, they were stopping by a two storey brick building, safely tucked between a permanently closed post office and a bookstore, also closed at this hour, thank God. 

—

She had nothing to say in response to that statement. It was clear Henri felt a way about this that would offer her little comfort if she dug deeper into it. She was vulnerable, not just because of the tears, the snot, the blood and the shaking — but because she’d proclaimed that she was scared and he did not meet that confession with much. So Jenny remained silent, ashamed and petrified. She remained silent, because to talk was to ground herself more and more into this reality they were in.

Henri offered his help and she took it, two bloodsoaked hands meeting. She walked behind him, whining softly from the pain each step took, but the crying had stopped. A dazedness had washed over her, a kind of autopilot that came from the bloodloss, the possibilities ahead and the memory of that creature on top of her.

She was pulled back to where they were when Henri spoke, eyes falling on her car. Jenny struggled to dig her keys out of her bag, the pain in her shoulder growing louder with every moment her adrenaline continued to melt. She offered the fob to him, then got into the passenger seat without complaint. She didn’t want to go to wherever he lived or whatever other location he had in mind. She wanted to go home. To the townhouse in Oldtown she lived in or the dreamed of home she always longed for when the earth seemed gone. The one where her mother was always home when she needed her and held her, singing softly. The one she fantasized about during sleepless nights. That dream space a lonely kid had created, that kept her yearning.

For a moment she did think Henri was driving to her house as they passed her neighborhood, but he kept driving. The radio played. She looked out of the side window, watching sidewalks and patches of grass pass. With every bump and turn she moaned, but she knew better than to ask Henri for anything. It was similar to sitting in a car with one of her parents when either of them were stressed, except that there was more blood and death involved. Like, a lot more.

The car stopped and Jenny looked up, seeing buildings she recognized vaguely. “Where are we?” She did not move. Just looked, waited for Henri to tell her what to do. Her stomach swirled. The car ride had been a moment caught in time before the next steps. “Shouldn’t we — hospital?”

__

“Hospital?” He gave the young woman a look. Sure, he was going to take her to the hospital, covered in blood than belonged to… possibly someone who should have been dead for centuries already. What a great idea. 

All he could hope for was that she figured out why just by getting a look at his face, the blood drying all over it, and the way his eyes kept on darting toward her shoulder and that vicious wound. This was not explainable, and any doctor who properly examined the gash left by that barbed wire tongue would be unable to assess what had caused this. And that's usually when questions were asked.

“I never go to the hospital,” that wasn't entirely true, although he had never been for himself. He never had to. Hunters recovered so quickly, what was even the point ? And frankly, bone trauma was easy to fix. At least, that was how he felt, and he knew he wasn't the only hunter feeling that way. “You’ll be fine. I could open a pharmacy with the shit I keep home,” he quipped, with no humor to his voice. 

And if she wanted help, she’d have no choice but to follow him inside. 

And so he got out of the car, opened his front door, and headed straight to his bathroom, avoiding for now, to look at his reflection in the mirror. He wouldn't like what he would see. His failure, plain and obvious on his face.

—

It was a foolish suggestion, she’d known that the moment she’d put it to words and as Henri looked at her, covered in blood. There was no explanation for the injury on her shoulder, and though they could use the good old ‘wild animal’ excuse, Jenny understood that they would not go and lie to a bunch of doctors and nurses. 

Henri’s voice was almost as sharp as barbed tongue and she wanted to cower in shame, an instinct that had occurred to her aplenty in the past moments since she’d walked in the cemetery. The shame she’d felt when falling over was nothing compared to this, though. She bit her lip to keep it from trembling, wanting to trust Henri to take good care of her but not quite getting there. “Alright.” The answer was meek, lacking her usual attempt at a witty rebuttal. 

He was not happy with her, that much was glaringly obvious, and it felt unfair to her. She had not asked for this. She had just walked a cemetery at night, with some intent, but she had not brought this upon herself — even if she thought different. Jenny tried to grasp it, what had happened to her and what might happen next. But she couldn’t come further than fear and shame, and wallowed in them as she sat in the car, waiting. She could drive off to the hospital herself, to find kindness in nurses and doctors she could not be honest with. She could do it. But she didn’t, in stead slinked out of the car after Henri and into his apartment. 

Every step reverberated into her shoulder, her face twisted with pain and exhaustion as she moved after him, into the bathroom. Jenny was silent. She slid down, landing on the tiles. A sound of pain escaped her. She looked at her shoulder, sparing a glance, and then whined louder as she saw it — the blood, the ripped skin, the somewhat strange tinge to it that made it seem green-ish. She looked away, back to Henri. Pleading, quietly.

___

Henri kneeled on the floor beside her, with a bag that could have been stolen from a first responder’s trunk. “That’s…” Well, it did not have to be awkward, considering what they both had been through already. And it wasn’t even 10 pm yet. What a great start to a night.

“Let’s take your shirt off,” he finally stated, lifting and placing her arm against his shoulder to keep her steady while he attempted to peel off her blouse. The fabric clung to her like a second skin around the wound, and the bleeding resumed as coagulation was torn off in the process. He supposed that as long as he was focused on treating that wound, he didn’t have to yell at her anymore. He could forget how angry he was with her reckless behaviour, and he no longer had to think of what he should do if she ended up going through this transformation, because upiors were closer to monsters than they were to vampires in his book. Uncontrollable beasts who knew nothing but their thirst for blood, nearly unstoppable forces. He still wondered how he had managed to get away from the one in the cemetery with just a few gashes on his arms and a complete blood spray tan. 

Aoife most likely would call bullshit when he’d tell her about it but he knew his parents would be very proud. 

His brows furrowed deep as he ran a wash cloth over the woman’s shoulder. The wound looked worse yet when it was not covered with blood, somewhere between ground beef and mince pie getting made. But now was not the time for childhood memory flashbacks. 

And as he looked up, he crossed her gaze. She wasn’t scared, panicked, or angry. She needed hope, he realized. And he didn’t have any to give her. 

—

This was probably the least sexy way someone had undressed her. Jenny barely helped get her shirt off, feeling feinter as time passed on. She’d grown familiar with blood loss, but not this much, and not this viciously. Whatever energy was left was spent on the pain caused by her blouse being peeled from her. Her shoulder felt hot and searing and she did not put any effort in keeping herself from moaning and groaning as Henri worked. 

At least she was occupied enough to ask for painkillers, to wonder if he had anything like morphine in that gigantic bag of his, to complain about the fact that the hospital would have given her that immediately, surely. She had half a thought about the risk at infection but she nearly laughed at that idea — it seemed they were far beyond things like rabies at this point. She felt a bubble of amusement push past her lips, her eyes tearing from pain. “Maybe I’ll get rabies,” she mumbled in a moment where she wasn’t whimpering. “Ha. Ha.”

She had been angling her head up, staring at the bathroom ceiling. Searching for points to focus on. A spiderweb, a crack in the wall, a tiny stain. But she eventually looked down again, the sight even worse now. Jenny was silent, even if she wanted to wail. She stared at it and wondered how Henri thought he could fix this, the ripped skin, the flesh showing, that strange tinge. She closed her eyes, squeezing them so tight she saw stars. “It’s bad, huh?” 

___

Right. Pain. He didn't know Jenny enough to evaluate her tolerance for it, but he shouldn't have expected her to grind her teeth and wait til he was done to swallow a few pills, or chew them down, which he believed was more effective. 

He had not worried about anti inflammatories and antiseptics either. “You’re gonna wish you got rabies,” he commented, dry as ever, and went to the sink to clean his hands with soap. “We’re gonna need a few stitches.” Pause. “I’ll give you a shot of pain killers,” he stated before she could say anything about needles. 

His cat approached the bag of supplies then, protesting quietly as Henri shooed him away. “It could be a lot worse. That thing could have ripped off your whole arm if I had taken longer to get to it.” And he doubted transforming into an upior would have regenerated it back. “Do you have allergies?”

—

She did wish that this was rabies. Although she’d heard that could kill you in under a day, the cures against it and the help available were all at the hospital, where Jenny didn’t have to sit on a bathroom floor with someone whose bedside manner left much to be desired. She felt relief push through her when he mentioned pain killers.

“Okay, okay,” she said, keeping herself from pushing Henri to be faster, or asking him why it had taken him so long to get the painkillers. A whine from the back of her throat escaped in stead, her flesh feeling like it was searing. It reminded her of acid reflux in a way, but worse and fleshy, tearing at her tendons.

The thought that her arm could have been gone was harrowing, but she found little comfort in whatever she had ended up with in stead. She just whimpered and turned to the next question in stead. “Strawberries and – and nickel, but nothing — nothing that matters, I think.”

__

"Strawberries?” The slayer had never heard of that one. Then, part of his upbringing had led Henri to believe for a long long time that allergies were made up. His immune system must have prevented him, and his family from having any, and it was the sort of weakness that would have been easily frowned upon or laughed at in hunter communities too. Imagine your only weakness being flowers? Ridiculous, right? “That’s a bummer. But cherries are a lot better anyway,” he commented absent mindedly, more to keep her focus on the banal conversation, rather than because he felt very strongly about fruit too. 

He discarded the syringe in the sink, and reached for the stitching kit in his bag next. “Alright. Just… breathe?” While she could, he couldn’t help but think. That made his mood drop a bit further down, and with that, the pit in his stomach was getting harder to ignore. The slayer sighed quietly, and set himself to work. Henri worked with method, quickly, his jaw tight, and his stomach twisting each time he heard her whimper or suffer at all. “You’re doing fine,” which was perhaps the most effusive he had ever been with the young woman. 

He cut the thread and moved onto the other half of the injury. Another point of torn flesh that needed to disappear as soon as possible behind layers of gauze and bandages. 

—

“And bluebe-berries too,” she blubbered, because she liked those the very best. It didn’t matter, but it was something else to say than the horrors she was thinking about. She wanted to ask Henri about the cure and how to get it. What would happen if they couldn’t get it. What that would make her. What he’d do in that case. Would he kill her the way he’d killed the upior? Or would he aid her the way he was now, with some complaint but still doing it all the same?

Jenny felt some of the pain dissipate, but not all of it. A numbness took over her shoulder and she tried to follow his instructions, to breathe — and she did, though it was shaky and filled with sharp inhales, her eyes closing and opening with every sensation. “I —” She didn’t want to argue that she wasn’t doing fine. That in stead of fine, she was scared, more scared than she’d been over these past months. And that she hated the pain, that she felt nauseated by it. That it burned through the painkillers. 

She inhaled sharply and asked one of the burning questions anyway, because she was about to slip down a road of horrible thoughts and imaginations if she didn’t. She wasn’t looking at what Henri was doing, staring at tiles in stead as she spoke up: “What’s gonna happen to me?” 

___

“Depends on the blueberries,” he responded with a slight, void of a smile. “Some taste bland. You have to get them from the farmer’s market,” or maybe he was just used to the ones in his parents garden, and those were the only ones who could even compare to the real thing. Again, he didn’t feel that intensely about fruit. He just wanted to distract her from the pain, and it was doing sort of the same thing to him. The sense of dread was dimmed down a bit. Just a bit.

“I’m… Let’s finish this and then I’ll explain what happens next, okay?” He supposed that with a rundown of all the steps that would lead to her death, she would certainly feel a whole lot better (turn off sarcasm). 

He cut the thread once again, spraying his work with antiseptic and dabbing at it with gauze once more. Blood no longer seeped out now, and though the scar would be an ugly one, she would most likely be safe… for now. He then grabbed a washcloth from the cabinet, running it under warm water and passing it over her arm and her back, where the blood had trickled down and dried on her pale skin. He grabbed another one, and did the same for her face, staring at her intact shoulder as he ran it against her cheeks and wiped off tears, mascara and snot from her. 

Then he got up and yet again avoided her gaze. “I’ll go get you clothes.” 

—

“That’s true. Nothing quite as bad as a bland or soggy blueberry,” she said, just to say something. There were many worse things than that. Monsters that ripped you open with their barbed tongues, to name one. Jenny was glad to have something useless to say, though. Because while the distinction between a good and a bad berry was important to make, it had nothing at all to do with the rest of what was happening.

She felt her lip tremble as Henri held off on answering the question. That was never a good sign, though it wasn’t like she’d expected him to say none of it was going to be a big deal. Jenny nodded in lieu of a reply. She remained silent as Henri continued his work, washing with a kind of softness that seemed to fully contradict all the violence they’d seen that night. She gave no complaint or argument as he washed her face and for a moment she felt like a child, even though she had no memory of either of her parents ever washing her like this. 

She nodded as he moved away, not sure if he saw it. As Henri went to get clothes – no quick jab made about how she wanted dark colors and no beige, please – was made. Jenny in stead pushed off her shoes with her feet and started peeling off her tights. The rash on her knee was still there, juvenile and innocent in how small the injury was, compared to the other one on her body. Still, she hissed as she pulled the fabric over it and discarded the stuff in the tiny bin in a corner. Even if the tights had not been ripped, she wouldn’t have wanted them any more. 

She pushed herself up then, bare feet hitting the tiles as she swayed, gripping the sink with her good arm to pull herself up. She saw herself in the mirror, for a flash. Puffy eyes. Hair flecked with blood. Her shoulder — she looked away and her shoulder shook with a sob as she waited for Henri to return.

__

This was the first time he had had for himself since they had met in the cemetery, and without warning, before he could do anything about it, Henri felt all of tonight’s emotions hit him in the face all at once. The pit in his stomach sunk further and he was quick to wipe away the warm tears that stung at his eyes and felt like a burning flame against his cheeks. 

His lip quivered. With a sharp inhale, he closed the bedroom door behind him and sat down on the bed. Worn out and helpless. 

He did not have a fucking clue of how he was going to help Jenny. But he knew of a cure, and he would do what was necessary to get to it. 

He returned with what he personally would have liked to wear on such a terrible night. A tee shirt that wouldn’t snag at her stitches, a fleece lined sweater that would keep her warm, courtesy of the Archeology Department (and lovingly dirt colored), some woolen socks, and a pair of sweatpants she’d need to tighten at the waist as much as she could, he supposed, but which would do the job for now. 

Placing them on the hamper basket’s lid, he avoided her gaze again. “D’you need a hug?” He sniffed, his gaze falling onto the clothes he’d set down for her.

—

She heard Henri return and she wiped at her face with her good arm, trying to get rid of the newly formed tears. Her attempt to gather herself was poor, but she tried to look like she wasn’t on the verge of falling apart as she turned around. A poor attempt, because she already had that evening. She wasn’t sure she’d ever stopped.

Jenny looked at the clothes Henri put down for her, wrapping one arm around her body. Suddenly she felt naked, standing there in just her skirt and bra, but it wasn’t like she had the energy to be embarrassed about it any more. She just felt cold and exposed. 

And he wasn’t even looking at her. She doubted it had anything to do with her (lack of an) outfit, or the gnarly wound on her shoulder. Jenny was looking at him, though. Wanting to see something like the softness in his gaze that he’d used when he’d wiped her clean. Wanting gentleness, endless amounts of it, and pity for what she had gone through, and maybe just some kind of unitedness in the face of the horror of tonight.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation as he asked. Henri hugged her and she returned the embrace with her good arm, eyes squeezed shut tightly and tears still leaking out. After a moment, she pulled back and murmured. “Can you — I’ll get dressed now. Thanks. For the clothes.”

__

He nodded quietly and left her alone once again, closing the door behind his back. He stood there for a few seconds, the amount necessary, he supposed, to gather his thoughts and shove away whatever knot in his stomach he could feel. 

Part of him wanted to text Estella, because she always knew just what to say to cheer him up but… considering how he felt now, the slayer was concerned she would just call or come over no matter how much he tried to explain that he was fine. As for his family or Eve, well, he didn’t want to get a second hunter’s opinion on the matter, because it might be more level headed and undo what he was trying to do here (although he could understand that other hunters might see the threat already here).

Instead he leaned into the pillows of his couch and grabbed onto a fleece blanket, reaching over for his notebook and his fountain pen. 

A photo of Eve slipped out from the back cover and some light briefly returned to his face as he tucked it back inside his notebook. 

He then began writing the first step on the list. One she had already gone through. The upior’s saliva enters the bloodstream through touch. 

He twisted on the couch to get a look at his bookshelves. He would cross his notes with his parents’ and then… Well maybe he’d also take a look at his books too. There weren’t too many receivable ones, when it came to vampires, and he imagined he would have trouble finding a lot regarding upiors but… Well maybe his parents would suffice. Maybe they’d know.

When Jenny finally walked out of the bathroom, he was adding a broad timeline to each item on the list. In three weeks if he couldn’t find a cure, she would die. 

—-

Jenny looked at the pile of clothes for a moment after the door was closed behind her. It seemed like an insurmountable task, a hill too tall to climb. That was how everything felt right now, though. With the pain numbed and the bleeding stopped and the danger quelled for now, she felt the world rest underneath her feet again. How was she supposed to move on from this? To get dressed, to get out of the bathroom, to hear what fate laid ahead of her? To talk to her sisters, or her friends? To write her fucking play?

She looked at herself in the mirror. This time she did stare at the injury, glad that most of it was covered with bandages. Henri had done an excellent job. She wondered if he had to do this often. If these kinds of things did not feel like impossible hills to climb for him.

Eventually she got to work. Her first challenge was a large one: getting her bra off one handed was a task in and of itself. Once she’d snapped it off she let it drop, kicking it to the side. There was blood sticking to it. She wanted it burned. 

She hissed and moaned through the process of putting on the shirt and jumper, then got to work with swapping the skirt for the sweatpants. The outfit was comfortable. Another thing Henri had done. His acts were filled with consideration, but the tone of voice he’d held earlier was still on her mind. The way he’d been avoiding her gaze, too. Jenny figured this was another hill she wasn’t ready to climb yet.

Once she’d gotten her socks on (another struggle, what with her aching shoulder) she wet her fingers under the faucet with cold water and pressed wet fingertips onto her face. She dried off her hands and left the bathroom. Her clothes were abandoned on the floor, kicked to the side. She took only her bag and shoes with her as she searched for Henri, finding him on the couch. “Thanks.” She remained standing for a moment, before sitting down on a chair. She was too tired to stand. The familiar feeling of being anemic was there, too. “For the clothes. And everything. What’s that?” 

__

He had sunken in the couch when she walked out, although judging by two steaming cups on the table, Henri did move quite a bit while she dressed, making himself a cup of coffee with the old French press his mom relented to give him when he moved out. Something to think about me every day, she had dramatically stated, as though her son wouldn't be calling every morning to let her know that he had lived through another night.

He wondered what he would tell her in the morning. He knew what his mother would have done. She would have called it a mercy kill, and she perhaps would have been right. But Henri still believed in finding a cure, and he still refused to think of his mission as janitorial. He wasn't cleaning up the town, he was making it safe, and you just couldn't do that by taking out the good people that had the misfortune of being undead.

Sitting up, he put his pencil down beside his coffee cup. “I made you herbal tea.” He wondered if she’d even fall asleep, but the hunter was mainly concerned of what she’d do if he let her wander out now. “I… I'm not certain how precise I can be about this but, this is … huh,” his eyebrows furrowed. This is how you die ? This is the torture that awaits you ? 

Nothing he had written on that sheet of paper was the sort you ever wanted to see happen to you. “That's how someone,” you, “turns into an upior.”

—

It struck her, as she sat there, how lucky she had been. It was a strange thought, considering the fresh injury of her shoulder and the horror she had witnessed today. Jenny did not feel lucky, but as she went over the memory of before the attack – the falling and worrying about being witnessed in such clumsiness – she was faced with the truth. If Henri hadn’t been there…

And it wasn’t a comfortable thought, that she could have been dead. That this was one of the better outcomes, sitting here in joggers that were too large and wool socks tickling her feet. Her shoulder whining with acidic pain, her head aching from the crying and the fear that still made a house of her nervous system. She had been lucky and it was Henri who embodied that luck. 

He’d made her tea. It made her cry. A sniffle rose as she watched the steam rise. She wanted to thank Henri, even if she did not know how. She’d said the words tonight, but they didn’t seem like they served the weight of what she meant.

She stared at the piece of paper once Henri had revealed what it was, eyes hollow and yet curious, too. “Oh,” she said distantly. “Oh, okay. Henri.” She paused. She didn’t reach out for the paper yet, basking in the momentary ignorance of her fate. Even if she knew what she’d end up as. “What is an upior? Just … just a monster?” 

__

“Some consider the upior to be demonic rather than vampiric,” but any slayer would tell you that demons had nothing to do with the undead. He felt rather that demons belonged to a different plane of their universe, one that they sometimes decided to cross through. “There are plenty of vampire species out there. The upior is far from common because it’s so aggressive it rarely manages to let their victim go.” The bloodthirst was impossible to control, and victims were rarely able to get away. And so they didn't reproduce much. “Victims die before they can turn. Generally instantly,” he paused again, at last deciding to push away the shame to look at her. Because how could he not feel ashamed.

Henri wondered how long it would be before he forgave himself. There would be no reassuring him of his (lack of) responsibility. He was there when it happened. He also had a chance to warn her before, back when he first met her. He had a chance to stop the beast sooner. Thoughts were swirling around his mind now, and when it came to moments like those, there weren't many remedies to stop this unstoppable train of thoughts. He would have to work on finding a cure or find a way to balance one evil with one good deed, most likely on the edge of a blade. 

“The upior is a vampire,” he kept himself from bitterly congratulating her just yet on escaping human nature, because it was a cruel thing to say, because he would have found little solace there, and because he wanted to believe in curing her, in saving her. “They’re a mindless bloodthirsty beast the second they scent blood, like you found out earlier. But the rest of the time…. They look just like you and I. There was a person in there. It was wrong to kill them for acting on instinct.”

—

Vampiric. Vampire. Jenny was trying to comprehend what the other was saying — how had she not known that there were other vampires out there besides the ones she’d been baring her neck to? All those people that had warned her against the danger of letting them drink from her, but none of them had mentioned the monstrous ones. She had no energy to be frustrated about this, nor to question whether that would have made a difference. Maybe she would still have gone to the cemetery tonight, even if she knew about upiors. Right now, that very idea seemed ridiculous (shame and guilt over her appearance in that place, at that time had started to ingrain themselves with her nervous system the moment she’d seen that tongue). But who was to say? 

But, right — vampire, Henri said. She’d started manifesting succeeding her transformation before June 2026, she remembered vaguely. That was what she’d discussed with Baz. And now here she was, shoulders ripped to shreds and her goal on the horizon. She wanted to laugh again. She wanted the world to start making sense to her again. Because in that world, Jenny was not afraid. Not of the past, present or future. Not of all the blood loss she’d gone through, the ways she had always known deep down that she was putting her out there to possibly become a vampire victim statistic, not of the things she’d seen and felt over these past months. But she could not deny her fear any longer. She could not smile at the idea that immortality was around the corner. There was no happiness here. No relief. No thought that at least it was a vampire, and not some strange beast. Not after tonight.

She felt unsteady, even as she sat there. Her lip trembled. “Oh,” she said eventually. Jenny leaned towards the tea, grabbing the mug and pulling it close. Someone had died tonight and it wasn’t her. Should it have been her? She stared at Henri. Realized the choice he’d made and that it had been her he had saved. Realized that he perhaps wasn’t like Owen and Jade with their stakes. That he was her best bet, here, even if there was blood clinging to him that was on her. Guilt wasn’t an emotion she was familiar with, but she was growing swiftly acquainted. “I — didn’t want anyone to die. Or for you to have to –  to have to do that.” How many times had she argued with slayers (or just men with shovels) that she hadn’t needed saving? Three vampires had turned to dust in her presence, and one into blood. For this one, she could not angrily blame Henri, the way she’d blamed Caleb, Jade and Owen. She could not blame him at all.

The tea smelled good. She wasn’t surprised that Henri had good taste in tea — an indication that despite all their squabbling, she knew him well enough to note this without surprise. “I’m sorry.” A beat. “So … what now? Do we just … go to sleep, and … start over tomorrow? Try to find a cure? Try to …” Live with this? Forgive me? She wasn’t sure. She quieted herself with a sip of tea. Perfect temperature. Not a surprise, either.

___

The vampire hunter turned his head. 

He really didn't want her to see how upset he was. Through the window, he watched for a moment as the fairy lights twinkled, flooding the street below with artificial magic. The street was deserted, and he wondered who else was out tonight. People like him, no doubt. And then surely people like Jenny, who would probably find nothing but death tonight, because most people didn't have the luxury of being saved at the last minute. Jenny was one of those victims, even though she must have thought he had saved her life.

But Henri didn't look like a savior tonight, and everything about his attitude suggested that he wanted nothing more than to disappear, once again. He had already had this feeling of being nothing more than an insignificant element in a world that was far too vast, and every time this state of mind came over him, an intense melancholy took over, locking him in a state close to tetany. 

He wasn't going to kick Jenny out, but the fact that she could look at him when she knew he had failed in his mission? It made him sick. He wanted to yell at her, tell her to go and leave him alone, because he didn't want anyone to see him. It was ridiculous, but failure had always had this effect on him, and he strove every day to ensure that he would never have to experience this kind of situation again.As a result, he strove to know how to do everything and to avoid anything that was inexorably doomed to failure.

And because of that, Henri promised himself that he would do everything to get Jenny out of the situation she had just put herself into.