#ulris

Coryss took a glance down. Luckily he hadn’t He did feel dry though, all the way through. “Fun? You’re supposed to be dead!”

“Yes, I know,” Ulris waltzed passed them, ignoring the knife and whatever Amerix was making, and sat on the glass desk, too casual to really care about whatever they were up to. “It’s a bit of a parlor trick. I was so excited when I found out I could do it. Not all vampires can, you know. Found that out the hard way.”

“They found your head at the party,” Coryss breathed. His breathing was labored, his throat parched. “The police said you were dead.”

Ulris opened his eyes further and gave them a ‘no duh’ look. “I didn’t want to go to prison. You know what they do to vampires in prison? It’s quite dreadful and I’m far too important, and pretty, for that.”

Coryss didn’t know what happened to vampires in prison. He didn’t really care.

“So you just, played dead until they left?”

“Yes, well the mortician owed me a favor so it really was quite easy.”

“And you decided not to answer the door, just to wait around and yell boo at us?”

He crossed his legs. They didn’t seem to have the same kind of damage as his arms. “Like I said, it’s fun. Whenever I die people come by, break in, try to loot the place. I’ve learned to, not so much let them, but to see how much they can take. You did very well, even with that little breakdown in the hall and the sigil you put on my fish tank. You are going to have to undo that though, my darlings don’t deserve that.”

Coryss chanced a glance at Amerix. She waved him off. Something for later then.

“You aren’t like other looters, it seems,” Ulris put a black nail against his black lips. “You came here looking for information, something important.”

Coryss froze. He didn’t know how Ulris would react to his need, what he’d come here for. At best he’d be laughed at, at worst, Ulris would decide to protect Julian’s information by killing them both. They were trespassing and Coryss was armed, still, with a silver dagger. He could easily pass their deaths off as self defense.

“Um, well, uh,” Coryss started. He sucked on his lip and tried again. “We were looking for information on Julian Nakamura.”

Ulris cracked his neck, thought better of it, and pushed his head more solidly into place. “Julian? That’s an odd reason to break into someone’s home. If you had come during the day my gardener would have gotten it for you. That’s a minor thing to trespass for.”

Coryss ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t think there’d be a gardener.”

Ulris leaned back and opened a drawer, pulling out a post-it note and a pen from his desk. He quickly wrote down the information that they had come for. Feeling a bit silly now, Coryss picked up the sheath and put the dagger in his pocket. Amerix followed his lead, though she kept her hand on her fanny pack just in case.

“Why do you wish to bother our poor introvert, anyway?”

Coryss lowered his head. He felt shame at it, suddenly, like this was something so beneath what vampires would find important. “They saved my life, recently, and that of my friends. I made a deal with them, to help us and I would give myself to them.”

Ulris stared at him for a long moment before bursting into a violent sort of laughter. It was a laughter that showed off all of his narrow and sharp teeth. They were the kind of teeth that scraped against the jugular, that itched after they grazed the skin, that threatened to tear the throat out. Coryss felt like he knew them far too intimately. He froze, taking a single step backward. He was dressed now, lucid, and not pretending to be something that he wasn’t. Still, a fear blossomed in him that Ulris would recognize him as one of those he had drank from just the other night.

“And what, pray tell, do you think they would do with you?”

Ulris held out the post-it note to him then and he snatched it, trying to be close to him as little as possible. He didn’t think he could stand the concept, of being touched by Ulris again, now that he knew which of those at the party he was. He didn’t ever want to see Ulris again.

Ulris had other plans and he rolled his wrist, sliding forward an inch, and caught Coryss by the hand. He helped himself to his feet and drew terribly close, so close that Coryss could feel the lack of breath against his cheek. He shuddered, closing his eyes and, as if on some kind of instinct, bared his heavily bandaged throat.

“They would do nothing with you that you desire, if they do anything with you at all. You think that a vampire is tame, because they do something nice, every once in a while, but while Julian is leashed they are also the hungriest of us. You know what happens when you try to pet a starved dog, yes?”

Sweating, panicked, Coryss nodded.

“Julian is always feeding and yet always feeding. And you, well, you smell delicious and oh so familiar.”

Amerix put her hand, gently, on Ulris’ wrist. He snarled and hissed, releasing Coryss’ hand immediately. She followed him, still holding onto his wrist, until he was once more sitting on his desk, as the veins of his arm and hand turned black and prominent.

“I think that’s enough of that, don’t you?” Amerix threatened. When she released his wrist there were welts that had cracked and were bleeding a thick dark ichor. The wounds were in the shape of some of her rings.

“Yes, indeed,” Ulris sniffled as he shook his wrist, trying to shake off the effect of the silver. “Don’t be strangers, now.”

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Amerix decided, placing her hand on Coryss’ back and turning him towards the door. “It was absolutely awful meeting you.”

Ulris didn’t show any signs of insult to that and waved them off with his uninjured hand. Amerix kept her hand on Coryss’ back as she led them out of the workspace and back into the sitting room. The door was barely closed behind her when she grit out a simple, “Yep, I was right. I hate this guy.”