The Demon's Scion

The soft soughing of the wind rustling the evergreens surrounding the farmhouse is comfortingly familiar. Perched on shingled roofing, the cast-iron weather vane spins and clicks as it’s turned with each gust of a north breeze blowing past. The air is crisp. The dark sky is speckled with dozens of glinting stars.

Kane rests his temple against the wooden railing. Sitting on the porch steps leading to the overgrown yard is uncomfortable; splinters are digging into his back from where his shirt has ridden up, and not to mention, he’s in the open; anyone could get the jump on him. He’s so exhausted that his traitorous eyes close anyway.

For a precious minute, he slips into a sort of meditative half-awareness where he can pretend for a moment that his hands aren’t red even after scrubbing clean the blood staining them. He can pretend the last few hours weren’t the worst nightmare he’s ever undergone. He can pretend that he’s not hanging by a thread.

The creak of the door opening has Kane’s eyes flying open, and he looks over his shoulder sharply. He needs only look at Hannah’s face, full of despair, and he’s on his feet, rushing inside with his heart in his throat.

Hurrying through the outdated kitchen with Hannah on his heels, he glances at Lucas, whose arms are crossed while leaning against the edge of the counter near the basin sink.

Bruising darkens his dusky skin, and there’s a nasty split on his lip from Kane’s fist. Lucas smiles with weary eyes. His brown hair is a mess. Hands stained red just as Kane’s, with blood that’ll never wash off. The slight nod the man gives Kane’s parting is like a pat on the shoulder to comfort someone in mourning.

Kane has to resist the urge to lash out with split knuckles because Lucas doesn’t deserve his unjust rage.

Hastening down the hallway, he passes Milton’s framed landscape paintings in a blur. The ajar door at the end of the hall is his only thought, and he has a strange floating sensation like he’s not truly present. The bright white of the bathroom light that spills out and along the patterned runner is striking against the dim orange of the hanging fixtures in the hallway.

Axel leans a shoulder against the wall beside the open door. His shirt is damp, and the locks of his black hair occasionally drip down his ivory-toned face. He’s obviously backed out to give Kane room to enter the bathroom. It’s not the biggest, and Axel is a giant bastard.

Kane would never have let the prick into his home under any circumstances until tonight. He’s had to break wards that had been in place for a decade so vampires could even step foot on his property. But nothing is ordinary anymore.

Before Kane can shove the door the rest of the way open—through the gap, the sound of the shower head running can be heard—Axel has seized the front of his shirt, halting him mid-step with a hand on the knob.

Kane looks down at the daring fingers and then up to the vampire's face. He doesn’t glare; he stares. All the anger, exhaustion, and need to hurt shine in his gaze.

Axel backs off smartly. “I was going to warn you; it’s bad.”

Kane snorts. “It was bad an hour ago.” And the hour before that. How could it get worse? Kane’s seen hell. It's blood staining his bathtub red and the constant excruciating sound of Reid taking his last breaths over and over again—a perpetual, never-ending nightmare.

Kane shoves the door open.

It’s bad.

The beige waterproof curtain has been drawn back on its circular steel pole. The spray from the shower head sprinkles dampness over the bathroom.

Reid hasn’t moved from the position he’d been in hours prior. Slumped with the nape of his neck against the tub’s edge, propped by a wet towel. His clothing is drenched and sticking to his form. His arm is slung over the edge of the tub, and his fingers hang limp, dripping blood onto the drenched tile and once-white bathmat.

Kiernan doesn’t spare a glance for Kane’s arrival. He’s on his knees, leaning over the tub, cursing under his ragged breath. His black button-down shirt has been rolled to his elbows, and the expensive fabric has soaked through.

In another circumstance, Kane might find the prissy vampire looking out-of-sorts amusing. Reid would probably be the one making a quip about it in Kane’s ear. But then the idiot wouldn’t be lying unmoving in a bathtub, dripping blood and unflinching to the spray of frigid water hitting his front and dripping down to his sprawled legs.

“Rainer, I need you over here,” Kiernan orders, slapping the other side of the porcelain where there’s some space away from the wall and bathtub beneath the closed and shuttered window.

The vampire’s fingers leave blood stains in their wake. “Come on…” Kiernan’s in the spray of water but doesn’t react, shoving his bleeding wrist against Reid’s slack lips for the hundredth time. “Stubborn…little...”

It’s not working. That dreaded truth is becoming impossible to ignore, but if Kane doesn’t keep hoping, he’ll lose his mind.

Moving to the other side of the bathtub in a haze, Kane catches sight of Hannah at the door threshold. She’s crying, a hand over her mouth to muffle the sobs, and the sight nearly breaks his steely resolve.

He drops to his knees, his bare forearms resting against the edge of the tub. The spray of cold water shivers his skin.

Kiernan sits back on his heels. His eyes are dark. He looks at Kane from across the tub and, past the din of spraying water, speaks those damning three words Kane has been dreading: “It’s not enough.”

Kane can’t breathe. He grips the rim of the tub so tightly that he’s surprised the porcelain doesn’t crack. “Save him.”

Giving Kane a disapproving shake of his head, Kiernan resumes forcing his blood past Reid’s slack lips, keeping him breathing if anything. They’d removed the bullet shards, but the gunshots from the motel haven’t healed.

Reid’s chest rises and falls, kept alive by Kiernan’s diligent donations for the last four hours. He’d stopped breathing entirely twice—hence the cold water. The frigidness seems to be working to remind Reid to take another breath.

“Save him,” Kane says again, fiercer. He's shaking. “I’ll fucking kill you. You know that? If he dies, you die. I’ll go to your coven and burn them all to ash. Everything. Families. I don’t fucking care.”

Looking wholly unimpressed by Kane’s hollow threat, Kiernan keeps his bleeding wrist poised against Reid’s lips. For a vampire, he looks tired, with pale golden skin and fallen eyes.

Kane realizes in horror that there’s a good chance that Kiernan will run out of blood to give. Where would that leave them? Axel then. But there has to be an end. They can’t go like this forever, and Reid’s too far gone for a hospital.

Kiernan reveals calmly, “I’ve called Gabriel.”

“No,” Kane snarls, reaching into the tub and grasping Reid’s limp fingers. His skin is numb from the cold spray of water. He knows Reid would rather die than allow himself to be shackled to his father in such a way. “Not that bastard. There has to be another way.”

“I had Axel call him an hour ago. He’s on his way.”

Hannah leaves the doorway of the bathroom in a hurry. Most likely to give Lucas a heads-up that there’s trouble about to drop on their exhausted laps—there’s always trouble when Gabriel’s involved.

“No. Reid wouldn’t want...” Kane can’t finish because he doesn’t know what he is going to say; there’s no other option. He tries again, desperate: “There’s got to be something else we can do.”

Kiernan frowns. “There’s no other way. Unless you have a vampire that’s over two hundred years old in your closet, Gabriel is the only option." He takes his wrist from Reid’s mouth and slumps against the tub tiredly. "His blood will be older. Stronger.”

They wait in silence for a few tense minutes, but there’s no change, and then Kiernan says softly, “I’ve never seen someone so stubborn. Try talking to him; maybe he’ll rouse.”

Looking at Reid’s slack face, Kane snorts affectionately despite his heartache. “You’re such a moron, thinking you’re allowed to die without my permission. Not going to happen. I have a ticket to the other side. Remember? I’ll come for you and kick your scrawny ass.”

Kane pushes away the dripping hair sticking to Reid’s wet forehead, and the moment his touch grazes the bruised skin above Reid’s swollen eye, there’s a sharp intake of air from the seemingly lifeless body.

Reid seizes, choking.

Kiernan reacts faster than Kane’s stupefied brain can catch up with what’s happening. The vampire leans over the tub, practically inside of the damn thing, and the spray of water smacks Kiernan’s back, diverting to hit Kane’s face and the blinds of the window.

“Come on,” Kiernan coaxes. “Give in.”

Wiping at his face, Kane rises and angles the shower head away. He looks down, and his heart beats a substantial thump, once, twice, and three times, then it drums in his chest like it’s trying to escape, rapid and aching.

Reid’s fingers are twitching.

“Kane,” Kiernan says sharply. He didn't call him Rainer, Kane thinks dumbly. “We do this now, or Gabriel takes over.”

The vampire looks over his shoulder, meeting Kane’s tired gaze, and despite Kiernan’s dripping hair pressed flat to his tan skin and tiredness in his form, he effortlessly shudders the air with vampiric dominance, and it’s impossible not to listen. “Gabriel shouldn’t be more than a few minutes away.”

Kiernan clicks his tongue when Kane glares at him, untrusting, unsure if this is some intricate scheme to have Gabriel’s vile presence invade Kane’s house.

With obvious reluctance, Kiernan explains, “I lied, back at that motel. Gabriel never gave the order for anyone to turn Reid. He ordered me because Gabriel knew Reid would resist him, but he’d chose me as the lesser poison. I’m the closest of Gabriel's retinue that he trusts with that much control over his son.”

Kane’s livid. Gabriel schemed all of this. He even put Kiernan at risk, who very nearly died by Kane’s fists if it didn’t all go to shit in the end. The only thing Gabriel didn’t plan was Azrael’s cult showing up and Reid taking a bullet.

Kiernan’s wrist continues to bleed; the deep cut from a kitchen knife drips blood down his tan arm. “Over the phone, Gabriel said explicitly to stop giving Reid blood unless his life was in dire jeopardy. This—what he’ll be walking into—is what he would deem a perfect scenario. He can save Reid and turn him while you stand helpless, unable to lift a finger.

“Don’t think that I care. I don’t. But I do have a smidge of empathy left after a hundred years, and I know what it’s like to have a maker you loathe. Gabriel cares for his son, but Reid hates his father; he doesn’t hide it. It’s why it was so easy for me to manipulate him; he’s looking for anything that isn’t Gabriel to fill that void.”

“You…” Kane’s words escape on hot, angry breaths. “Fuck you and your games!”

“You need to choose quickly, me or Gabriel.”

Silence stretches. Kiernan slaps the edge of the bathtub, rousing Kane from his enraged stupor. “Get over here, you stupid oaf! Touch him like before!”

“Fuck.” There's no choice.

Kane returns to his place beside the tub, the knees of his drenched jeans squelching against the soaked tile. He rubs a palm over Reid’s forehead, cheeks, and sides of his neck. Reid's skin is freezing. "Hey, idiot." He gently rubs the pads of his thumbs over Reid’s eyelids. “Wake up.”

Kane has a spike of excitement at the ragged breath that slips through Reid’s lips. He gives Reid’s cheek a light slap. “Yes, come on!”

Elation at seeing the twitch in Reid’s fingers grow and a more substantial rise and fall of his chest has Kane reacting impulsively. He seizes Kiernan’s wrist, uncaring that the vampire tenses at the forward touch.

Kane shoves the bloody gash against Reid’s mouth. “Yes,” Kane whispers breathlessly as Reid begins to rouse, his head lulling. Kane never thought in a million years that he’d be smiling from ear to ear because Reid is accepting blood, but after hours of turmoil, Kane’s ecstatic.

Kiernan inhales sharply. His arm tenses in Kane’s hold and he strains, “Stop.” He’s gripping the edge of the tub. “It’s enough.”

The reason the vampire is tensing is obvious; Reid’s roused enough to clamp his mouth on the bloody wrist, biting with what are presumably sharp teeth made for rending flesh—the disturbing sight has Kane’s stomach lurching.

Kane keeps the vampire’s hand captive quite easily and realizes that the only reason Kiernan hasn't yanked his tensing arm away is that the vampire is weak from blood loss.

“He needs more.” Kane doesn’t know if that’s true, but Reid is becoming more animated by the second, clearly enjoying the irony taste enough to make muffled garbled groans. Kane’s fingers hold Kiernan’s wrist tighter.

Kane thinks a dark thought: perhaps letting Reid have his fill is a better way, and making sure Reid never has a maker to suffer under would deal with a major problem before it crops.

“It’s enough for now," Kiernan says, breathless, the bite affecting him. He shoves at Kane’s face with his wayward hand, his palm digging into bruises and his fingers threatening Kane’s vision. “Let. Go.”

Kane does, reluctantly. Kiernan retakes his arm. Reid opens his eyes.

Just like in the motel, the familiar blue is overtaken by a darker shade of unnatural black. They meet gazes and Kane’s breath hitches.

As if from a distance, Kiernan turns the shower off, the knob squeaking.

In the past, Kane had once stared into the eyes of a transformed werewolf. Its muscles had rippled with the desire to tear his throat from his body. The animal’s maw had dripped blood and torn flesh. And he'd felt something close to fear.

But the predatoriness that came from that animal pales in comparison to the stifling sense of dread that weighs on Kane’s shoulders at the subtle tilt Reid’s head takes and the distance in his darkened eyes.

Reid’s hunting and it’s not like anything Kane has ever felt before—no vampire has ever made him sweat with a sensation very close to terror. Kane shivers, knowing he’s prey. It’s hard to resist the urge to move for the pistol that’s attached beneath the vanity a few feet away.

“Reid,” Kane whispers shakily, yearning for a dumb quip.

Then Kiernan is pulling a piece of fabric, ripped from his discarded jacket, over Reid’s head. Reid puts up a paltry resistance, nostrils flaring, hands rising to grasp the edges of the tub. His stomach wound has stopped bleeding. Kane thanks everything good in the world for that mercy.

“What are you doing?′ Kane asks, feeling numb.

“He won’t be himself for a while longer. He might try for entrancement. He was adept even while human.” Kiernan ties the black fabric tightly, and Reid’s head bows forward slightly. “I know it’s a personal experience, but I should stay for this. He’ll probably kill you otherwise."

Kane nods, feeling overwhelmed.

“I must advise you not to take his blood unless you’re okay with being his companion. Are you? Best you tell me now so I know to stop him.”

Kane glares. He knows vampires are fucking weird, and he’s not interested in learning their terms, ever.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Kiernan says dryly. He frowns. “I can feel...our connection is faint but growing. He’ll try.”

The vampire sits back on his heels heavily and takes in Kane’s expression of horror with a tired sigh. “What is it now?”

“I can’t give him blood. He’s—”

Reid’s head turns. He’s listening to Kane’s voice intently, licking at his bloody lips. The predatoriness is unnerving. The bruises on his face have begun to fade.

Kiernan grimaces. “We’ll tie him.”