#vampire henry

There was one thing everyone in your town knew: Don’t made deals with Vampires. It was an unspoken rule, a law to some. Werewolves, fine. They keep their word, and a deal with them is an honorable one through and through. Demons, wraiths, witches, The Devil—literally, anything would be better than a Vampire. But some still get entangled with them, though it never ends well. It’s as if they forget the odds of surviving these agreements. Vampires often ask for difficult things, and if you can’t deliver, you die.

Now, there was one other thing you always knew: Your ex was an idiot. An idiot who made idiotic choices and got his idiotic ass in heaps of trouble. So, when he pounded on your door in the middle of the night, sweating and panting, it was clear he’d, once again, fucked up.

“Close the door. Close the door,” Jason bolted into your apartment on shaky steps, fisting his fingers in his ash blond hair as if to tug out the strands.

“It’s one a.m., Jason.” You yawned. “What have you done now?”

He looked at you nervously, and said, “Ah, look, Y/N, I fucked up.” Shocker, you thought. “I, uh, made a deal.”

“And didn’t hold up your end again? Oh, boy, consider me stunned. Who’d you piss of this time? Another wraith?”

Jason swallowed and shook his head.

Your eyebrows scrunched together. Jason didn’t usually venture outside of wraith deals, or the occasional werewolf, but werewolves were not nearly as threatening. “Demon?”

He shook his head again, and your arms rose before they flopped back down to your sides.

“Well, witches are far and few between, and I doubt you met The Devil, so what else—” You paused, your eyes widening as Jason winced. “Have you lost your goddamn mind!”

“It was a good deal, ok? I thought I had it in the bag.”

Your heartbeat doubled in speed. “What did you promise them, Jason?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, and his palm pulled away glistening with sweat. “Just a bit of daytime shit.”

“Bodies?” Your voice rose. Women often had to be on the lookout during the day with extra caution. It was easier to lure prey when the sun was out. Centuries old half-vampires could survive in the sun for some time, so it was they, or a rare dealmaker, who tracked females to hand over to their superiors. As it was, three women on average went missing every week.

“They mentioned something about needing a few extra for some big boss or whatever. It’s some sacrificial shit.”

“They told you their plans?” You asked skeptically. If they told him their secrets, then they probably planned to kill him anyway.

“I overheard.”

“And you ran out of time?”

He dragged a hand down his face. “Deadline was yesterday.”

“God damn it, Jason! So, you came here?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go!”

“You don’t have anywhere to go because you keep trying to hide out in people’s houses after you fuck up! Now, get out!” You snapped, pointing at the door. “You’re going to get me killed. It’s only a matter of time before—”

You couldn’t even finish your sentence before your door slammed open and a dark silhouette illuminated by the hallway lighting filled the space. A second later, your head shot to the swooshing sound of a window being shoved up just enough for a figure to easily slip through.

This was exactly how these things--failed deals with vampires--went down. You’d heard the rumors, which you took with a grain of salt considering survivors of this same situation did not exist to confirm or deny them. But this was certainly close enough to the tales you’d heard as a child. You, of course, wouldn’t survive to confirm or deny the rumors and tales either.

The men stepped forward, closing in on you and Jason with each step, effectively trapping you. Though it was not like you would bother trying to run. They were practically twice the size of Jason. Taller, broader, stronger, and as their faces unveiled under the glow of your lamp, you noticed, insanely more attractive. Beautiful even. They were chiseled like gods, but all full-vampires were heard to be. A trick to draw pathetic humans in. After all, average people are drawn to two things in life: sex and beauty. Vampires embodied both more than any human could, even on their best day.

Before you could stare much more, you were gripped harshly by the arm and thrown to the side like a dirty dishtowel. Your body slammed hard enough into the wall to create a small dent and it jostled your brain in its skull, dizzying you enough that you could barely make out the threatening conversation yards away from you.

“Why must they always fail us?” A dark-haired vampire said to a blond. “It’s very disappointing.”

“They just don’t have it in them.”

The dark one tsked as he walked around Jason in a slow circle, sizing him up. “We give them a chance to prove themselves. They ask for whatever we can provide and all we ask in return is a few measly bodies.” He stopped his trail when he was in front of Jason again, then leaned down the five inches necessary for them to be eyelevel. “We could have had respect for you. But now what are you more than a meal, hmm?”

“G-Give me a-another day,” Jason stuttered, his whole body visibly trembling.

“That’s not how this works, blood-bag,” The blond said as he crossed his arms. “One chance, only.”

“W-What about her? You can have her!”

You did your best to lift your head only to be met with three sets of eyes on your face. One pair a glowing gray-blue. One, a dull, dark green. And the last, a cerulean so intensely bright they practically burned through your own. 

Yet, those ones were soft as they scanned your features, stopping at your lips a moment longer before looking back at your ex. “We asked for three.”

“I-I can get you two more by tomorrow, I swear.” Jason’s lip quivered like the pitiful rat he was, and if you had your full strength, you’d have run up and throttled him for trading you like meat. But your body ached, and your brain was still fuzzy from knocking your head into plaster.

The vampire huffed out a deep breath, shaking his head and crossing his toned arms. “I don’t know what it is,” He said. “But I just don’t trust you.” Then he looked past Jason’s head, nodding to his friend. You jolted at the sound of bone snapping, and watched, somehow calm, as Jason’s lifeless body fell at the feet of the blond. But the view was blocked moments later when the dark-haired vampire crouched in front of your exhausted, crumpled body. He was so much more beautiful up close, and you couldn’t seem to pay attention to anything other than how perfect he was. 

He studied every bit of you in silence until his friend interrupted. “So are we taking her, Henry, or is she to be a dead duck like this one,” The friend asked, then lightly kicked at Jason’s limp body.

“No need for her to die. She’s just an innocent bystander,” The vampire, Henry, said. You liked his name, it somehow suit him. You liked his voice more. He reached forward and grabbed a tip of your hair, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger before letting go, then hummed and ran a knuckle down your cheek. “You want to come home with me, Little Lamb?”

Despite how it should have been, panic alarms did not go off in your head, but you still said, as dignified as you could, “No.”

He sighed and cocked his head. “That was not the answer I was hoping for. Unfortunately, Lamb, what you want makes little difference to me.”

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