#ttybh

After having a coven head waltz into their house like he owned the place, convene for a private meeting with them, and then walk back out without a single threat issued or drop of blood spilled, though, he was beginning to re-evaluate his initial impression.

The entire situation had been so jarring and strange that he’d almost doubted its authenticity for a second, but there was no faking the scent of a coven head. Especially not one as well-established as... Janus.

(Something about the name scraped at him, like sandpaper against skin. It wasn’t the same sharp, piercing pain of ‘Virgil’, but it was disorienting nonetheless.)

He wouldn’t have thought a coven head was even capable of getting through an entire meeting without any blood spilled, especially a meeting with humans. Especially one where the humans in question seemed to spend half the time blatantly bickering with him.

If it had been his coven head that had been treated with such disrespect from beings as reviled and lowly as hunters…

He didn’t even like these humans, but the thought made him shudder.

Things were different around here, clearly. Everyone else already knew the rules, and he’d been left scrambling to catch up before it cost him.

“Fangtastic Four, are you even listening?” One of the insane humans in question prodded him in the side, eliciting an automatic low hiss.

Instead of looking even remotely threatened, Roman moved his finger up to point at Anx’s face instead.

“I’m over here putting my sweat, blood, and tears— mostly the blood, actually— into making sure you don’t wither away into a particularly pointy-toothed husk, and you aren’t even paying attention!” he accused, frowning theatrically at him.

What was this guy even talking about?

“Nope,” Anx replied, popping the 'P' with a casual air that would have gotten him cuffed at best by any older vamps in the coven. “I checked the kidnapee contract and ‘listen to my captor’s ramblings’ wasn’t on there. Add more fine print next time.”

Roman gaped at him for a moment, before pulling back slightly, his lips twisting with something Anx couldn’t read. In the next moment, he had returned to ranting, dramatic flourishes included. “I cannot believe you’re trying to pull the ‘poor, abducted victim’ card when you literally tried to take a bite out of Patton.”

Anx’s shoulders hunched slightly against his will, still waiting for the other shoe to drop even as he opened his mouth to snipe back. “Hey, I just call them how I see them. I was brought to a basement while unconscious, I can’t leave, and I’m wearing handcuffs. Facts are facts.”

Roman sighed exaggeratedly, a flicker of discomfort crossing his face. “Yes, well, don’t try to mind-control and-slash-or murder me during this whole bloodsucking thing, and we can discuss alternatives to the cuffs.”

As though the cuffs were the main problem.

“I feel like maybe you’re missing the bigger picture here,” Anx said, before the rest of the sentence registered. “Wait, you’re serious?”

Midway through the process of rolling his sleeve up to expose his vein, Roman raised a deeply judgmental eyebrow at him. “Have you been paying attention at all since my brother left?”

No, not really. Between the lingering haziness of his forced metal retreat and the bizarre fuzzy-feeling instincts that Remus had somehow activated, he’d been just disoriented enough for the conversation going on around him to go in one ear and out the other, leaving little to no actual impact on his brain. Something about research?

Somehow, he got the feeling that the others didn’t actually know Roman had decided to do this now. Letting a moderately untrustworthy vampire feed from him for the first time didn’t seem like the sort of thing they’d let him do alone.

This did explain why they’d returned to the room with the containment circle, though. His nose crinkled at the cloying smell of the runes, and he eyed the inactive circle with distaste.

He could already see the way things would go. He’d get to feed for precisely as long as they deemed necessary, probably the bare minimum required to keep him alive, and the moment he overstepped, all Roman would have to do was yank his arm back over that line and let the burn of the ward do the punishing for him.

What was the point of pretending this was an extension of trust, then? From within the circle, even if he did try to thrall Roman, he wouldn’t be able to escape.

“Hello? Tall, Dark, and Stormy, can we get on with it?” Roman cut into his thoughts, waving a hand in front of his face. Anx barely resisted the urge to bite it. “If you keep spacing out, you’re going to give me performance anxiety.”

“Performing? For what audience?” Anx snorted, and then watched with bemusement as Roman planted himself on one of the halloween-themed beanbag chairs.

“For an actor like me, all the world’s a stage,” he retorted, flapping his bared arm at Anx expectantly. “Now hurry up before I start developing stage fright.”

“What, you want to do it there?” he asked, brow furrowing as his gaze briefly slid over to the convenient, risk-free containment spell that was only a meter away. He was kidding, right?

“Remus said I would faint, and I’m fairly sure he was bullshitting me, but not sure enough to risk cracking my head open,” Roman replied dryly. “I’ve never actually done this bit before, you know.”

That wasn’t really what he’d been talking about, but whatever. It wasn’t like he was going to be the one to insist he be trapped, even if it was the obvious smart decision.

Anx tentatively sank into the matching purple beanbag chair next to the hunter, and wrapped his hand around the wrist of Roman’s arm, which had been helpfully (read: obnoxiously) shoved into his space.

Despite Roman’s faux-casual words, his heart was thumping a little too fast for him to be anywhere near relaxed. An actor, indeed.

Anx checked the doorway again, searching for shadows under the crack or the subtle turning of the knob. Any signs that the other two were waiting to pounce. Anything at all that indicated he was currently walking into the world’s most obvious set-up, other than his own panicked mind.

Nothing.

He frowned, eyes darting back down to the free meal he was being offered, and then sighed. Whatever the catch was, he might as well take advantage of the offer while he could.

Roman shifted antsily, darting glances at Anx from the corner of his vision. “Do you always take this long to— ow!”

—

Roman barely resisted the urge to twitch away as Anx sunk his teeth in, both from pain and indignation alike.

The pain faded only a second or two later, his lower arm going pleasantly numb, but he still felt like Anx could have been a little gentler about it. He would have appreciated a warning, at least!

He opened his mouth to say as much, and found that the part of his brain dedicated to coherent words seemed to have scuttled out of reach while he wasn’t looking.

Everything was a bit distant, now that he thought about it, like all his senses had been wrapped in a hazy layer of gauze. The realization caused a strange swoop in his stomach, but he couldn’t figure out what to do about it.

It was hard, thinking like this. All the important thoughts seemed to slip between his fingers and get lodged in hard to reach places like grains of sand. He blinked several times in rapid succession.

That seemed a little bit not good. Maybe he should have gotten one of the others to chaperone after all.

Anx was lifting his head now, gaze bouncing around the room like a hunted deer before finally settling on Roman.

Roman could feel the vamp’s nervousness, his gut-clenching anticipation, as though it was his own. He could feel the expectation of pain that hovered over his head like a guillotine, ever-present and automatic.

(Had Patton been able to tell just how wrung-out Anx was during his own stint under thrall? It explained the sympathy, at least.)

He also felt the moment that Anx realized that the thrall bond had snapped thoroughly into place between them. That for all his posturing, Roman wasn’t anywhere near experienced enough to throw it off or even resist it.

Anx could strip away his free will with the simplest of commands, and he wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.

He knew this was bad, logically. There was a part of him that was freaking out, but it had been confined to a small corner of his brain and cut off from the rest of him.

Physically, though, he’d never been more relaxed. His heart thumped along a steady metronome, his breaths coming deep and easy. According to his body, there was nothing to worry about.

His body was a dirty traitor, and there would not be any replenishing spa days for it in his near future.

Assuming he still had a future.

His fingers twitched again, and Anx followed the motion, still holding onto his arm with those icy fingers.

He stared at Roman’s sluggishly-bleeding bite mark for a long moment, worrying at his lip with a conflicted expression. Roman tried very hard to feel concerned about the likelihood that he was about to be drained by a vampire, and mostly failed.

“This is so stupid,” Anx muttered, and moved Roman’s arm back over to his side, releasing it.

In the same moment, Roman felt a mental tug, like an intangible line had been pulled taut, and then with a snap, the bond was severed.

For a few long seconds, he sat there, stunned by the sudden wave of sadness he felt at the rejection.

In the next moment, his survival instincts snapped back into place like a lock clicking, and he sucked in a sharp gasp of air, his heart rate kicking up belatedly as adrenaline surged through him. He fumbled for the dishtowel he’d brought and quickly wrapped it over the bite, just as an extra precaution.

“There. I played nice,” snapped Anx, his posture defensive as he watched Roman take big, gasping breaths. “Are you satisfied? Do I get to go home now?”

Roman held up a finger in a silent request for him to wait, still trying to shake the lingering effects of the bond. His whole body had gone from relaxed putty to rigid plastic in less than a second, and it was more than a little disorienting.

It had the added bonus of letting him actually think about his answer for a few moments, instead of letting the knee jerk response he wanted to give tumble out of his mouth. (This is your home.)

“We brought you here because we thought you were V– our friend,” he corrected hastily. “And because we thought you were in danger, and needed a safe place.”

“I’m not him.” Virgil’s glares had always been scathing, but the unnatural purple irises added a whole new layer of eerie.

“Yeah, we picked up on that much,” Roman said curtly, ignoring– for now– the way he’d noticed a hundred little mannerisms that Anx and Virgil shared. “But the rest of it, I’m not so sure we were wrong about.”

Anx blinked, his defensiveness stopped in its tracks by Roman’s easy agreement. “What?”

“Anx,” Roman said, the name strange in his mouth. “Were you in danger? If you went… went home, would it be a safe place?”

For a brief, telling moment, Anx hesitated.

“Of course it’s safe,” he snapped, a beat late. “Safer than I am in a den of hunters.”

Roman worked his jaw, trying not to dwell on all the signs he’d seen that the opposite was true. If Anx had retained even half of Virgil’s stubbornness, there was no point in arguing in circles to try to force him to change his mind.

A different tactic, then.

“If you stay with us for a while, we could at least help you recover some of your memories. You can’t tell me you’re not curious about your life before turning at all.”

Anx’s lip curled up in a half-snarl. “I can tell you that, actually. What came before doesn’t matter, anyways. That’s the whole reason why vamps lose memories after turning.”

“Uh,” Roman blinked, genuinely thrown off. “Not to be contrarian, but that’s not true? Remus was turned, and he probably remembers more stories about our childhood than I do.”

Mostly so he could embarrass Roman at every opportunity, but still.

“I’ve actually never heard of memory loss as a symptom of being turned,” he added, trying not to let his concern crease his brow too obviously.

Anx had gone statue-still, and Roman bit his lip for a second before reaching out to set a tentative hand on his arm. “Are you–?”

“Don’t touch me,” Anx snarled, and in the next moment, he was on his feet and then bolting out the door.

Roman sat upright with some half-formed intention of going after him, or at least letting the others know that their resident vampire was upset, and then promptly flopped back against the beanbag as the world spun nauseatingly around him.

Right. Blood loss. He’d just text them then.

This was the problem with having vampire instincts that were more convoluted and twisty than a maze made out of rusty corkscrews. Sure, he got that this was Virgil’s face and body and goofy emo bangs, but his brain latched onto details like the glowing eyes and fresh-out-of-the-coffin smell and told him baby vamp instead.

The appropriate behavior for dealing with a distressed baby vamp did not include Janus swanning off to pretend like he’d never heard of an emotional crisis in his life, but luckily Remus was there to pick up the slack.

Planting his butt on the linoleum a few feet away from the corner ‘Anx’ had wedged himself into, Remus cleared his throat with a few obnoxious, phlegm-filled noises before starting up one of the few vampire-specific sounds that were audible even to humans.

The separation call was a low trill, one that burbled out in short staccato bursts, like a songbird’s chirrups but squeakier. Allegedly, it was similar to the noises bats made to communicate, which was about 60% of the reason that Remus was still of the firm opinion that vampires totally could turn into bats, everyone but him was just too limp-dick to really try.

Predictably, Anx’s head jolted up, the call catching his attention the way words hadn’t. His eyes were still a little distant, but they were at least seeking out Remus… and then settling on him with no recognition whatsoever.

Talk about a stake to the chest. He hadn’t realized how bad it would feel to have Virgil staring at him like a stranger. Remus thought he would honestly prefer it if Virgil had reverted to that one phase in his teens where he’d tried to stab Remus whenever he’d appeared on Janus’s behalf for check-ins.

He pushed past the knotted little ball of grief in his throat and made the chirp-call again, glad that this was one aspect of vampirism that he excelled at. Janus mostly stuck to the more subsonic vocalizations, but even those could come out a little wonky if he was all twisted up about something and ignoring his instincts.

Since Remus’s instincts were turned up to eleven pretty much always, he didn’t have that problem. Even with his calls coming out perfect, though, Anx was slow to respond. The baby vamp would inch forward a bit and then pause, all tense muscles and perked ears, before inching forward again.

It was… unnatural. Remus wasn’t a part of the coven that had turned Virgil– he planned to burn that coven to the ground with the vamps inside, actually– so a rejection wouldn’t have been unreasonable, but this wasn’t a rejection. It was just a very strange, stilted approach.

More than anything, it seemed as though Anx was waiting for someone to notice his response to the call and punish it, which was so antithetical to the idea of a call meant to reunite younger members of covens with the older protectors that Remus had to spend a few moments blinking away the haze of murderous intent that clouded his vision upon realizing it.

This wasn’t the time for murder, he reminded himself. This was the time for reassuring babies.

He added a crooning undertone to the next call, and was careful not to twitch as Anx finally crossed the last of the distance to slot neatly under Remus’s uplifted arm. He did that painful little tense pause again, but when all Remus did was start up a contented rumble, he went floppy against his side.

The last vamps he’d been with had hurt him for this, but he was still trusting Remus not to do the same. The thought made something in his chest feel bizarrely squishy.

“What are you doing?” Roman whispered furiously, as though he was worried that talking too loud would somehow make V’s dissociative fugue state worse.

“Come on, Ro-bro,” he replied from where he was squashing Virgil against his side and nearly vibrating with the force of his purr-rumble, “I know you don’t get bitches, but even you have to know how cuddling works.”

Roman made a face at him, but drifted closer regardless, watching Anx with a complicated mixture of confusion and curiosity.

Remus spared a second to be glad that his brother had never registered to his instincts as anything but a colony member, even back when they’d sort-of kind-of been trying to kill each other. That weird organ-squashing feeling seemed to correlate with how much trust his kinda-baby-brother-turned-baby-vamp was placing in him at the moment, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to endure not disemboweling anyone he viewed as even a minor threat the moment they got in range.

“I thought he was freaking out,” Roman said, giving the floor a distasteful look before sighing and sitting next to them. That was what he got for wearing white pants like a chump.

“Yep,” Remus confirmed. “I’m un-freaking him. Duh.”

“Impossible. You’re like the freakiest person I know,” Roman replied, earning himself a fastpass ticket to being put in a one-armed headlock.

The resulting swearing and wrestling jostled Anx slightly, and this time when his gaze flickered over to them, he was actually seeing them.

After a beat of processing where he now sat, Anx went entirely rigid, fingers curling in preparation to strike like the flashing of a cornered alley cat’s claws.

“Emo!” Remus greeted, keeping his left side loose and unthreatening even as Roman made dramatic choking noises from his right. “Welcome back to the land of the unliving!”

Anx stared at him apprehensively, pupils blown wide to catch every movement, and when Remus only sat there and continued his casual soothing rumble, he glanced at Roman’s thrashing with badly-hidden concern.

“Are you… killing the hunters?” he asked, looking like he was itching to start a fight about it but he knew in his little vamp heart that Remus could kick his ass into next week.

Not that he would. Who would fight a baby?

But man, Anx must have checked out early if he hadn’t even heard enough earlier to cotton on to the weird detente that Janus had with these guys. “Nah, just applying a little mild strangulation! It’s affectionate in nature.”

Anx didn’t look like he believed him, so Remus loosened his grip enough for Roman to wiggle free, making sure he ruined his perfectly coiffed hair in the process, of course.

“You loathsome, loutish, lawless little leech!” Roman cried, grabbing the hilt of his sword with a flourish that was all show.

But he was still grabbing a weapon next to a twitchy anxious newly-turned vamp, proving that he had not a single brain cell to rattle around in that thick skull of his. Honestly, it was like Remus was the only one with a little decorum around here!

Rather than shy away, however, Anx made a low growl in his chest, a baby version of the ‘my colony member, back off or lose a limb’ noise. He blinked afterwards, seeming almost as surprised as Roman about it, but there was no lying when it came to primal vamp noises.

Remus couldn’t have stopped the delighted, lip-splitting grin if he’d wanted to.

“Aw, you like me,” he singsonged, and was utterly unsurprised when Anx responded by growling and shoving him hard enough to make him topple over. He didn’t resist the momentum, cackling all the way down to a slumped position on the floor.

Yeah, that was definitely Virgil. Even if he did look alarmed and confused at his own daring.

“Hold it, is this a normal vampire thing? I thought the creature noises were just you being you,” Roman asked in an accusatory tone, seemingly ignoring Anx apart from the way his hands were now carefully positioned away from any visible weaponry.

For about a fraction of a millisecond, Remus contemplated the possible repercussions of throwing Janus under all six wheels of the double decker bus that was Virgil’s band of emotionally constipated hunters.

About as quickly, he remembered he didn’t give a shit. Also, it would probably be really funny.

“You just think that because your main point of vamp contact is Janus. You’d have better luck prying emotional vulnerability from a rabid raccoon than that guy. Also, I guess most other vamps you three meet instantly attempt to maul you to death. Or run away, y’know, if they’re boring.” He stretched, making his back pop grotesquely.

“A rabid raccoon, huh.” Roman was looking at Anx contemplatively now. “Do you think vampirism counts as a form of rabies?”

Anx bared his teeth halfheartedly, but he seemed mostly preoccupied now with glancing between Remus, still sprawled out on the kitchen tile, and the door to the den.

“Why are you so…,” he trailed off, sounding confused and sort of miserable.

“Annoying? Vexing? Gross?” Roman listed helpfully, kicking in Remus’s general direction when he started preening at the “praise”.

“Safe?” Anx tried, and then shook his head like a dog trying to shake free a tick. “You’re not, you’re with him, but you feel…,” he grimaced, switching tracks. “If you’re not here for the hunters, you’re here for me. What do you want with me?”

Remus stared at the kitchen ceiling and contemplated deeply for a moment. “Mostly, I want to try pitching you into the air like a baseball.”

This was a thought he had about babies frequently, which was why he didn’t ever stick around when they were present. Luckily, baby vampires were far more resilient than mortal ones.

Anx stared blankly. Roman sighed with the exhaustion of one who had been subjected to this particular idea before. “You cannot ‘fastball special’ a baby. He’s not even a baby, he’s a grown man!”

Remus made an extremely dubious face, and Anx bristled in offense. The infant energies were off the chart with that one.

“What’s got you so freaked out about Janus, anyhow?” Roman continued, and Anx’s eyes flickered back over to the doorway with no little wariness.

He didn’t answer, so Remus decided to cut apart the middle man and spill the details himself. “It’s because Janabanana is a coven head, isn’t it?”

Anx stiffened in a way that meant his guess was right on the money. Remus propped himself up on his elbows, squinting at him intently until their eyes locked.

He ticked options off on his fingers, one by one. “Can’t be how strong he is, ‘cuz I’m stronger. Can’t be bad blood, ‘cuz you don’t remember him. So, it’s gotta be the only other thing you’d be able to pick up within minutes of meeting him: coven head.” Remus shrugged casually. “I mean, they’re easy enough to identify by scent. You’ve met one, you recognize them all.

“So, what’s got you all nervous, Count Dorkula? Bad experiences with the one you met?”

“None of your business,” he snapped, his spine stiff. “I’m not telling you anything.”

Despite the snarl in his voice, he looked only a moment away from retreating back to that dissociative shutdown.

Roman shot him a warning glance over Anx’s head, which Remus would have given him shit about if Anx’s response hadn’t just proved that it was actually extremely reasonable to be concerned about whatever the hell was going on in the gray matter of the vamp in front of them.

Still, pressing now wasn’t going to do anything for any of them. Remus shrugged and flopped himself back down against the floor, letting his head hit the tile with a dull crack to make Roman cringe. “Yeah, alright. Enough about that, then. Back to our original conversation; how do you feel about heights?”

“What?” Anx asked, bewildered. The utter confusion he was feeling at not being interrogated or otherwise tortured for information was not making Remus feel any less homicidal about his former coven, but it at least seemed to knock some clarity back into the baby vamp.

“Heights,” Remus repeated. “The sort of thing you would experience if you were, say, thrown at a supernatural speed into the air? In a manner similar to the act of throwing some sort of spherical object used for sportsgames? Hypothetically but also for real.”

“No,” Roman interjected immediately, like the buzzkill he was. “You are not throwing V– Anx around the house at mach speed. Janus will murder us both for endangering his already-traumatized family member, and then Logan will find a way to bring us back to life just to kill us again for destroying the furniture.”

“I’ve always wanted to get the full Frankenstein experience,” Remus mused brightly, and then rolled out of the way of his brother’s attempt to elbow him right in the solar plexus. He was midway through shoving Roman into a retaliatory chokehold when a throat cleared pointedly.

“I see you two have been very productive while I’ve been gone,” Janus drawled from where he’d snuck silently into the room so he could insert himself into the discussion with a snarky comment at the perfect moment. Classic Janus.

Of course, this has the side effect of making Anx jump like a cat faced with a cucumber, and the guy now looked one wrong move from crabwalking himself backwards into the security of the corner once more. Janus very carefully kept his mask of sardonic amusement at others’ expenses in place.

Honestly. Awkwardness must have run in the family or something.

Remus reached around and squished Anx into a sidehug briefly, long enough to roll his eyes at Janus over his head, before releasing him and springing to his feet. “See you around, hellspawn! Remember, if you commit a felony, I’ve got you covered like mold on an abandoned slice of cheese. Especially if it’s one of those really messy ones we talked about!”

This was confusing enough to drag some of Anx’s attention from his overwhelming wariness, and as a bonus, it distracted everyone else in the room from watching Janus experience emotional devastation in real time.

“I don’t think there’s any feloneed for that,” Patton said with a nervous laugh. He was making alarmed eye contact with Roman, who would now take the fall for seemingly allowing Remus to impart extensive knowledge of felonies upon their amnesiac teammate.

His job done, he gave Anx a hair tousle and the three stooges a customized version of a jaunty farewell salute (now with 200% more middle-fingers!) before following Janus back out of the sickeningly domestic little house and slamming the door shut behind them.

(He had already broken 4 sets of door hinges for this place, and was gunning for a fifth, but alas, the door remained upright. Not today, it seemed. Probably because Logan had started enchanting the damn things like the sore loser he was.)

On the porch, Janus turned away to compose himself, a bit of vulnerability that only Remus was allowed to be privy to. Remus didn’t say anything aloud, but he knew that Janus picked up on his subvocal hum, an ‘I’m here’ that wasn't spoken in words and didn’t require a response.

After a few moments of patiently waiting, he watched as Janus turned back towards the rest of the world. He’d pried each fragment of the sharp, jagged-glass hurt he felt about Virgil from his heart, and aimed them outwards.

At those who had dared to steal his only remaining family away. At those who had made sure Virgil remembered fear, even when he didn’t recall anything else. At those who had dared to spit in the face of the city’s most powerful coven leader.

It was time they got a little reminder of just why Janus had earned that title.

Covens weren’t kind to those under the hunter name. Anx claimed he didn’t remember anything from being Virgil, and Roman found himself hoping that extended to whatever tortures they might have inflicted on Virgil before turning him.

By the way the vamp flinched away from a stray gesture made by a spatula, though, he shouldn’t get his hopes up.

It was hard to resuscitate that earlier furious anger, not when he could see through all the gaps in Anx’s ‘evil malicious vampire’ act to the terrified individual underneath. He’d looked like he was facing the guillotine when Logan did a simple magic trick in front of them, tense with the expectation of being hurt.

Roman had gone into this business to help victims, including vamps. Anx claimed he hadn’t hunted anyone, and he believed it. The vamp seemed almost nauseated with stress at the idea of biting a willing donor, and it couldn’t be because of Patton’s history, since he was the only one among the four of them who wasn’t actually familiar with the painful tale.

The reminder made his hand tighten around his fork. This was such a bad idea. Roman could practically hear Virgil ranting about all the reasons why Patton shouldn’t do this, like a little anxious shoulder angel, and he didn’t intend to let the complaints go unheard.

Logan had drawn a reluctant Anx into both a seat and a conversation through sheer refusal to be ignored, and Patton was chirping in encouragement in a way that seemed to only unsettle the vamp further.

Right now, the topic seemed to be the pattern of thought behind his great escape onto the roof and resulting collapse, though Logan kept having to pause and reaffirm that they weren’t punishing him for that.

Going by the lack of progress, Anx was either extremely recalcitrant about giving away a possible weakness or he genuinely also had no idea why that had happened. Patton had already confirmed that there hadn’t been any intent from his end of the link, so there was no reason they could see for the abrupt blackout the vamp had had.

Logan was jotting a few notes into the air with a glowing finger, his favorite spell for when a notebook wasn't nearby. The vamp had stiffened up like he was going through rigor mortis upon the first use, but by now it only earned a nervous glance towards the others.

Logan paused mid-note, a new thought striking him. “Anx, would you--”

“Shut up a second.”

Logan frowned reflexively, and Roman huffed, already drawing breath in preparation to call the vampire rude, but Anx wasn’t looking at them. He was twisting around in his chair, head darting from side to side like a cat trying to trace the source of a noise. “There’s more vampires here. How’d they get past the hawthorn?”

For a moment, Roman went cold, thinking that Anx meant those that had turned him were back to drag him away again. But there was no recognition visible on his face, and the only vampires who knew about this place and could get through both Logan’s misdirection wards and Virgil’s defenses were--

“Oh, that must be Janus!” Patton said brightly. A heartbeat later, he looked over at Anx and his expression dropped into abject horror. Roman and Logan shared a glance, and then immediately split off to lock the door and yank Anx back into the kitchen, respectively.

Logan only had about three seconds to think of somewhere to hide a very conspicuous vampire version of one of his best friends before there was a yelp and a loud thump in the foyer.

He glanced down the hall and found that Roman had made it to the door just in time for it to swing open and crash directly into his skull, knocking him cleanly to the floor.

“Ro-Bro!” Remus cheered, taking a step over the threshold without hesitation. Logan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, but they all knew that locking the door had been a long shot anyhow.

Many vampire compulsions were based on the perception of the individual vampire, and Remus was notorious for being impossible to cast back out of one’s space once you let him in. He would probably have taken the locked door as an invitation to break it down.

“Why are you here, Sweeney Toddler?” Roman demanded, the effect somewhat ruined by the bloody nose he was frantically trying to stem.

“Me and Janny heard that the goody-two shoes trio stole a vamp right off the streets! Heard that you practically lured them into a little white van with Patton’s candy blood!” Remus explained brightly, and then sat heavily on Roman’s back when it looked like he was trying to stand up. Roman wheezed out a swear. “If you guys are breaking the treaty, we get to, too! I wanna go strangle politicians with their own entrails!”

“We did not break the treaty,” Logan said flatly, ignoring the way Remus pouted. “And you should know better than to come over uninvited, Janus.”

“Because I put so much faith in the honesty of your little band of hunters,” Janus replied, leaning on his cane in the doorway in his typical formal attire. “Remus, be a doll?”

“Do not--,” Roman started, but Remus immediately cut him off with an unhinged “come on in!”, and Janus stepped inside with a distinct aura of dastardly smugness. Roman would have groaned in exasperation if he wasn’t so focused on the nuclear-level disaster that was about to unfold in their kitchen.

“And would you look at that,” Janus all but purred, “it smells like you’ve got another vamp in here. Guess my sources were correct after all, what a surprise!”

“Janus,” Patton started, glancing frantically between their tentative ally and Anx, who was standing around the corner, just out of sight. “There’s something you should know, first--”

“Justifying, now, are we?” Janus asked with a distinctly displeased twist to his lips. “Honestly, Patton, I expected better. I understand you’re all oh-so twisted up over your missing member, but that doesn’t mean you can renege on our deal.”

He’d begun stalking down the hallway as he spoke, and despite Logan’s best efforts, he easily sidestepped past the two of them, turning into the kitchen with a dramatic flourish-- and then stopping dead.

“Virgil?”

—

Virgil was standing in front of him, eyes glinting an unnatural purple, smelling of the dust-and-blood that every vampire carried with them.

It was like something out of a nightmare. Janus wanted to pinch himself, wanted to wake up, but he hadn’t gotten back into the habit of sleeping after being turned, and eventually the ability slipped away entirely.

He wasn’t dreaming.

Virgil had winced at his call, and when Janus took a stuttering stride forward, he scrambled back a step in turn, lifting his arms and baring his teeth defensively. There was no recognition in his gaze.

There was no recognition in his gaze, and he was reacting like he thought Janus was going to attack him. Not seeking out help from his hunter friends, or even using them as human shields. A completely neutral vampire had approached him, and his first response had been to anticipate an attack.

Janus felt his utter shock and desolation shift into ice-cold, burning anger. He let his lips pull back into a soundless snarl, fury swelling in him.

“Who did this to him?”

He turned to the hunters, his eyes narrowing further at the pity written across their faces. “Well?”

“We aren’t sure,” Logan said, watching him carefully. “We encountered him on the streets, like you heard, and we haven’t attempted to ask him for the information, seeing as there were more pressing issues.”

Janus scoffed derisively, and faced Virgil again, tempted to just reach forward and shake him until the answers came out, until Janus had somewhere to direct the swirling turmoil inside of him. It didn’t matter who it was, Janus could handle it. He’d gone through hell to make himself powerful, and what was the point of it all if he couldn’t even exact justice for the only family he had left?

A heartbeat before he could reach out, there were strong arms wrapping around him, pinning his arms to his sides and lifting him clean up in the air. He snarled audibly this time, but no amount of threatening noises or vicious biting would stray Remus from his course.

“Easy, Deedee. You’re gonna make the baby vamp shit himself,” Remus announced, turning them both away from the corner that Virgil had retreated into.

“Remus!” Janus hissed, holding himself very stiff to express his displeasure. “We need to know. I won’t allow them to get away with–!”

“Oh, I didn’t say anything about leaving them alone,” Remus answered, his voice darkening into something that promised cruelty. “But you aren’t gonna get what you want by shaking him down like a high school bully with a humiliation fetish. Look at him.”

Virgil had gone from defensive to blank, his gaze looking somewhere beyond them, not reacting to any of the going-ons in the increasingly cramped kitchen.

Janus sagged, the fight draining out of him. He’d never wanted to see Virgil look like that again.

Logan sighed, reaching out slowly and curling a hand into Virgil’s. “I suspected this might be his response if he believed we were going to interrogate him on the vampires who turned him. We are all familiar with his sense of loyalty and the lengths he’d go to.”

The words were calm, but they felt like an accusation anyway.

“I didn’t expect a fellow vampire to prompt it so easily, though,” Logan continued, his eyes calculating when he met Janus’s glare. “It paints a concerning picture of his life for the past few months.”

Roman’s face dropped into a further scowl, as though his suspicions were only being confirmed. Oddly enough, the look wasn’t directed at Janus.

“Virgil– that is, Anx,” Logan corrected, seeing the way a flinch rolled through Virgil belatedly, “is the only one who currently knows anything about our enemies. Our only avenues moving forwards are to hope he grows to trust us enough to share the information, or seek it out on our own through investigation.”

“Me and Janny can handle a little detective roleplay,” Remus replied, finally setting Janus back on his feet. He stayed close, resting his chin on top of Janus’s head in a gesture that looked ridiculous but kept Janus’s mind from straying to cold desolation. “You’re keeping the emo in the house arrest cuffs?”

“He thralled Patton briefly,” Logan explained, and Janus felt his lungs constrict slightly as he glanced at Patton.

“No harm done!” The man in question said, keeping his expression carefully bright. Janus could have spotted the lie a mile away even if he wasn’t intimately familiar with Patton’s plight.

“Dubious,” he replied flatly, and allowed a subvocal noise of disbelief and worry form in the back of his throat, knowing that none of the humans had the senses to pick up on it. Remus certainly did, but beyond a teasing grin, he kept his mouth shut.

Roman’s head suddenly shot up to stare at Janus, his eyes alight with a sudden realization and none of the disdain or hurt he usually fostered.

“Patton’s going to donor for him!” he said, sounding ludicrously similar to a child tattling to a teacher. The effect was only amplified by Patton’s frustrated call of his name.

A beat late, the words registered.

“Oh, absolutely, what a splendid idea,” Janus said sarcastically, giving Patton a look that conveyed just what he really thought of the idea.

“Wow, that’s the worst idea I’ve heard all day!” Remus chimed in. “And that’s saying a lot, coming from me!”

Patton frowned in disapproval of their disapproval. “We don’t have a surplus of bagged blood to spare,” he said, “certainly not enough to feed him. Anx needs a donor.”

“He doesn’t need it to be you, you self-sacrificing twit,” Janus snapped back, well beyond the limits of his patience. “Make Roman do it.”

“Me?” Roman echoed, startled. Patton went to protest, but Roman only had to roll the idea around in his head for a moment before apparently deciding that it made perfect sense. It was a surprising turnaround for someone who regularly jumped to the opposite side of petty arguments just to ‘foil’ Janus.

“He’s right,” Roman said, ignoring the exaggerated expression of shock that Remus was putting on to point at Patton. “That solves it! We have a source for blood, and you don’t re-traumatize yourself!”

“I’m not–,” Patton dropped the protest, his face flushing as he tried a different track. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, kiddo. You’re not used to being a donor for a vampire–,”

“I’ll figure it out,” Roman countered, with the sort of bullheaded stubbornness that was normally annoying as hell when directed at countering Janus. “Anx isn't used to it either, we’ll figure it out together! Easy.”

Logan looked like he wanted to mention that having two inexperienced parties was actually worse than just having one, but a glance at Patton kept his jaw firmly closed. Patton’s entire household had teamed up against him, and Janus was too busy ignoring the pit in his chest to even appreciate it properly.

Once they fixed this, Janus was going to complain endlessly about being forced to work with the goody two-shoes trio for Virgil’s sake again. He was going to needle him into talking about all the things he’d experienced, the ugly painful memories that he would keep locked away from the others.