The Vampire Mael

Not in my mortal years, but I have mistakenly disturbed a few adders in the grass at the home Jesse and I share.

Would a mercy killing be necessary if hospitals are equipped for that sort of thing? Unless of course we are discussing particularly remote areas.

I don’t hunt every night, there is no need. I am quite comfortable for weeks and sometimes months before hunger makes itself known.

I’ve never tested this, and I have never been in a position where I would find the answer.

He stood near the edge of a narrow street, where the lamplight faltered and shadow took over without protest, watching the slow drift of the world as though it were a play he had long since memorised.

There was a certain comfort in that predictability, even among mortals who believed themselves endlessly surprising.

Still, the night was not without its diversions.

Mael shifted slightly, as if catching the faintest change in the air, and a small, knowing smile followed soon after.

“Armand,” he said, without turning at first, the name carrying an ease that suggested this meeting was less interruption and more inevitability.

Only then did he glance over his shoulder, expression touched with quiet amusement.

“You do have a talent for appearing precisely when things risk becoming dull. I was beginning to suspect the evening would pass without incident.”

He turned fully now, unhurried, hands loosely at his sides, as though greeting an old acquaintance rather than someone whose presence could so easily alter the mood of an entire room.

“I assume you haven’t come all this way merely to admire the scenery,” he added, a faint curve to his mouth. “Though I would understand if you had.”

A brief pause, his gaze sharpening just slightly with interest.

“Should I prepare for conversation, or trouble? Knowing you as we all do, both come hand in hand.”

Six years was an eternity.

Mael had known spans of time that swallowed empires whole, had watched centuries crumble into dust without so much as a tremor in his being and yet this absence, this small, human measure of years, had carved itself into him with a persistence he had not anticipated.

He felt her before he saw her.

Not in the crude way of proximity, but in that quieter sense, like the echo of something once held close, something the world had not quite managed to erase. It drew his attention with a certainty that allowed no mistake.

“Jesse.”

Her name left him softly, almost as though he were testing its shape after too long without it.

He didn’t move. For a moment, he simply looked at her, as if confirming that time had not distorted her into something unrecognizable. And it hadn’t, though it had touched her.

There was something more settled in the way she held herself, something sharpened behind her eyes. Not lost. Never lost. But changed.

A faint, almost rueful smile ghosted across his expression.

“Seven years,” he said, quieter now, the words carrying more weight than he intended and leaving a heavy ache deep within his chest. “And still, you are precisely where my thoughts insisted you would be...”

Only then did he step closer, unhurried, though something in the movement betrayed a restraint carefully chosen rather than instinctive.

“I had wondered,” he continued, his gaze steady on hers, “if time would make strangers of us.”

A pause. Brief, but filled.

“It seems it has not been entirely successful.”

His head inclined slightly, not quite a bow, not quite anything so formal. Something more uncertain. Something more honest.

“Will you permit me to stand here as though those years were not quite so long? Or must I earn that place again?”