Wake

There are men in these woods who are hungrier than the prowling hunters.

A hunter’s flash of orange is a neon sin the dark, fluorescent buzz singing loudly no matter their quiet steps. They’re welcome; deer are not the only prey here. Down the embankment the two of them trudge in a way they think is silent, listening, and they don’t even hear a hint of the trio bounding in to take position above them. The other vampires’ feet are so light across the scattered ground, springing like foxes between the trees, and Psalm’s lithe body is so close to the tempo, but not enough. He is overtaken by waves of miniature malice each time his shoe kicks a rock. Did the humans just notice that tiny clatter across the cool dirt? To have the whole pack found out by his own green incompetence - he would much rather die.

“I wanna see how good you are,” comes a hisslike voice to the shell of his ear.

Guile. Psalm fights the urge to lash against him, prickling with irritation like something scratches underneath the skin, vying. The other carries himself with a malignance that is often reserved for tumors. He refuses Psalm’s personal space just the same, burningly aware that he can’t do a thing about it. He’s got momentum, fast like a striking snake. It’s double his own, honed over an amount of years that the older man won’t divulge the specifics of. Outwardly, he might be thirty-five, maybe forty. Practically, many more. The man’s appearance tells the tale of his personality, a combed coif of salt-and-pepper hair with a shiny leather jacket.

So he wants the fledgling to impress him.

“Take the left one, we’ll get the right.”

He doesn’t even care that the man below has a gun. Anything, he’ll do anything.

“You might regret that, Guile.”

Psalm throws his glance like a stone at Tracker’s head. The willowy vampire is made up of fawn-brown hair and freckles, ears pierced too many times to count and hands in his pockets. He might be in his mid-twenties, maybe thirty if you care to count the years of a supernatural afterlife. Psalm doesn’t remember the number, but it was less than a handful, so he’s barely scraping past the title of fledgling that Psalm embarrassingly holds himself. He’d started out as somewhat easy to get along with - for those who get along, that is. Currently, he eyes him with the wary expression of a man who only recently had his torso pincushioned by sinking claws and puncturing teeth, but as far as Psalm goes, he shouldn’t have gotten in his way.

“And why is that?” Psalm murmurs back, mockingly melodic.

“Stop,” Guile spits toward them.

He raises his hand. On the opposite bank that borders the path, far enough ahead that it flits in the hunters’ periphery, dances a doe-shaped shadow. The vampire moves his fingers like he’s plucking the strings of an instrument, making the fake marionette shift in turn.

The first hunter, a patient man of maybe fifty, holds up a subtle signal, then extends his hand to point slowly. The shadow puppet ignores them, pushing its head among the weeds. The younger man raises his gun, eager.

Then Guile flicks a finger in their direction. A gesture the same as unhooking two hounds from their collars.

Psalm is so feverish that he struggles with his shaking legs when he scales down the earth to close in, heart spasming in a way it shouldn’t, his mouth devoid of moisture. The older hunter hears the burst of pounding footsteps once they’re far too close, whirling and swinging his rifle with a yell that tears raw from his throat once he sees the eyes, the horns. Psalm doesn’t feel the pain when the solid metal slams into his shoulder, so distracted that even when it fires, hitting nothing, the ringing rush in his ears isn’t worse than it was. His limbs are weak, but his blackened claws are wicked hooks, and they keep hold of the hunter’s shoulders as he drops his weapon and his knees hit the hard ground.

The smell of blooming iron and the sound of the man’s rabbit heartbeat drown out all else. Reality is a muted fuzz surrounding the vignette of the two. Eyes wide and panicked, hunter and prey meet with each other for barely a second. Seeing the way that the tar-filled veins bleed into the vampire’s whites, how his pupils shine as violent scarlet pinpricks - he has to know that his opportunity’s closed when he reaches for the weapon, grabbing it by the butt with a scrambling hand. Psalm twists, jerking his body sideways, the man losing his grip and clawing marks in the empty dirt instead.

Faraway, the hunter’s son screams for his father. Psalm sinks his teeth deep, deep into the pounding artery, and the man underneath him spasms, but the venom makes his body quiet in a flood of stillness. The world falls into silence - and Psalm trips into unobstructed obsession.

Blood spews into his clamped mouth, the same as if he’d wrapped his lips around a faucet. Relief washes in just as fast. He is starved to the last drops remaining in his veins, expired and turned to nothing but mud, and nothing else can curb that dry and hollow feeling. It’s a stream of nectar that flushes his system, fresh and warm with a sweetness that fills him to the very brim, leaving his mind swimming in pleasance. Eyes closed, still gripping the limp body, Psalm is someplace else than here. Trust is double-edged and as sharp as a needle, and he’s been forced to clench it tight for this coven till his palm is nothing but a mosaic of slices. His psyche is in a corner, curled, silent and bundled and safe from intrusion. He does not drink from a dead man’s wound, no, he sips tart wine from an endless glass until his insides swirl and his eyelids are heavy-

“I said get up, you’ve had enough!”

One hand wrenches him up by the dark curls so hard that his neck snaps back and twinges, piercing even through the rush. Eyes open, the whole world explodes into color and moving shapes, and he stares up at Guile, returning as always to unpleasant sensation. The corner of his mouth leaks blood, the moon is full through the gap in the trees, and Guile and Tracker are grabbing him by both arms, dragging him back from the two slumped corpses among the detritus. Psalm jerks in between them, their grips tightening, grinding deep into the layers of skin and muscle. It only makes the fledgling kick, writhe, try to bite even more until he’s pinned by four restraining hands forcing him into the dirt, no choice but to look back at the two faces as he snarls like nothing close to a human. It’s a deep, grating sound that rips out of his larynx, the men above him baring their fangs with rumbling throats to match.

“Can’t go against Angel, come on, you know this,” Guile says.

“Why can’t I?” he asks, breathless.

“Man, we don’t know what you’ll do.” Tracker’s fingers twitch in the fabric of his button-up, and maybe that’s sympathy, in a certain way.

“I thought we were supposed to trust each other,” Psalm sneers back.

Tracker’s fingers readjust. “Yeah, but we can’t-” They tighten. “You have to get initiated.”

Initiation. One of those things he’s been promised far too many times by Angel in her darling voice, her delicate hand cupping his face, giving him a pet to the cheek. The mention does nothing more than dump gasoline on his fury and throw the match in. Incensed, Psalm’s clawed fingertips rake deep into the dirt, trembling. They know who he’s supposed to be, and they treat him like this? He can’t even drink until he doesn’t feel ill? His stomach clenches too tight around the first mouthful of blood in days. He needs to listen to the others, just needs to bide a little more time, then they’ll never treat him this way again. They won’t be able to.

But his grip on trust has worn down to tendon and bone. And with a flare of fear, he remembers that soft voice in his ear as she took his life, making similar promises as he slipped.

“It’ll be quicker if you just listen to what we tell you. You’ll see why soon. You’ll believe her,” Guile whispers.

Psalm wills his muscles to relax, diaphragm faltering like the billowing wick of a candle.

“I know,” he breathes out.

Both the other vampires blow out their own breaths, sharing glances before their fingers slowly unstick from his skin, one by one and inch by inch. They’re both looking back at the hunters behind them, wondering whether too much blood has soaked into the dusty trail, if it’s worth it to sink their teeth into the leftovers. How long it’ll keep them full. What about both bodies between the two? That surely will tie them over for the next week, maybe even two, while Psalm’s stomach will gnaw at him tomorrow and whine and beg, rolling over like a dog wondering why its bowl has been so barren. Days and days and days, and maybe he’ll be initiated. He heard a whisper filled with a swell of pity nights ago in the hall, wondering whether the fledgling would turn to ash, and a returned answer of no, he’s stronger than that, if he’s who she says he is, which he feels is a flimsy-

“Stay down for a sec, we’ve gotta eat,” Guile says.

Don’t interrupt him. Anyways, which he feels is a flimsy excuse for starving him until he begins to see the light, which is supposedly the flame of the incinerator, since he can apparently disintegrate into a crispy pile of ash from the act of not eating. Is it a slow disintegration, or all at once? Will they have signs, enough time to pour blood into his mouth like some sort of healing potio-

“Hey, didja hear me?” Guile continues, and then he slaps him.

He actually slaps him. It is an utterly unharmful ping of his palm against the side of his face, more of a wake-up gesture than anything, but not only has he interrupted him once again, but he has also struck him.

Psalm stares back at him.

“Stay still.”

“What?”

Guile blinks, furrows his brow, and stays still. Nearby, trying his best to drift closer to their food source, Tracker shuffles. Before he can realize what’s going on, Psalm knocks Guile back with an elbow, then strikes with the hooks of his talons, dragging deep jagged lines across both of the vampire’s eyes. The man tumbles back with a broken, guttural scream, so loud that it brings the ringing back to his ears. It isn’t long before Tracker crashes on top of him. The disadvantage of having mauled him earlier is that he knows Psalm’s moves before he makes them, knows that he’s built out of more rage-fueled offense than anything else, has an awareness that his defensive reflexes are not so fast.

Each strike that Tracker lands is a reminder that he can’t afford to lose blood. His courage curdles. Psalm is made of instinct, and it’s reeling against the threat of thirst, of becoming incapacitated. Of becoming nothing. The trenches in the flesh of his cheekbone pour red, and the deep holes sunk below his collarbone fester with searing pain, staining his torn shirt with growing dark blots. He can’t do this. He’s on his back, lungs struggling from impact, arms streaming from their wounds as the older vampire thrashes against him.

“Enough! Enough! Okay!”

Tracker seethes on top of him, his crazed expression peeking through a curtain of mussed hair. The shoulder of his t-shirt hangs in bloody ribbons.

“There’s no way I’m gonna get off you, not till you stop fucking moving.”

“Tracker,” Psalm chokes out, throat closing in a spasm of emotion. No, he shouldn’t be having that. But it makes Tracker twitch to remove whatever speck of reaction had landed on his face, and he could swear it had looked like doubt. He isn’t used to choking up, but it might just sway him if he lets it happen. “Please. I can’t fight anymore, it hurts too much.”

“Psalm,” Tracker says firmly.

But the very edge of his name quivers. Psalm tilts his head to stare up into his eyes, and in turn, the vampire freezes.

His voice comes out pillow-soft and pleading: “I don’t feel good. I don’t have enough blood, Tracker, please, you know you can trust me. Help me up.”

Tracker lets out a shuddering sigh, then his shoulders begin to loosen. He’s giving up. The other vampire shifts from sitting on his hips, stands, and gives him a hand that he takes with a weak grip, hissing as he pulls himself up.

“Did you just help him? Tracker? I can’t fucking see,” Guile mutters from the ground.

Psalm holds up a hand gently, stopping Tracker from floating toward him. He ghosts over instead, ignoring his body’s stinging and aching in favor of the roaring satisfaction that what he’d tried is working. He kneels down beside the eldest vampire, the other man’s fingers spread to cover his visage, whole face drenched in a curtain of blood. He’s getting thirsty again. His touch is so tender when it alights like a feather on Guile’s shoulder, feeling him clench before nothing follows.

“I will kill you, I don’t care who you are,” Guile tells him, almost a whisper. “I know you’re there. I can smell you.”

“I’m sorry about your eyes,” he lies remorsefully. “You know I didn’t mean it.”

“I can’t see.”

“I know. Why don’t you go back? Come on, you’re both injured, I’ll clean up the mess. Take the hunters off the path, hide them somewhere, and then I’ll come back too. I know the way. Just wait for me.”

Guile looks up in Tracker’s direction, and Tracker shifts silently, his bright pupils blown wide and too glassy. They twitch back and forth, landing on parts of the dusky, thicket-filled scenery as he tries to think, but they magnetically tick back to their focal point. Psalm follows them before they draw slowly to meet him. He makes his own look temporarily gentle. In the painful pause, Tracker’s conscience twists and contorts, expressing as a worming pinch to his face, a bit like there’s something in his mouth that he wants to get rid of. Psalm won’t let him spit it out. He watches him come to terms that he has to swallow it. With the dapples of moonlight between the rips of his shirt, Psalm catches glimpses of the scars from earlier on his torso, healing, but still standing out in thick pale ridges of skin.

“Okay. We’ll wait.”

Tracker’s shoe scuffs the damp scarlet dirt as he steps past him, leaving a couple partial prints of a bloody sole before it tapers into nothing but pale, sandy ground. Psalm’s gaze fixes on that point till he hears both pairs of feet meander away, then he turns to look up at the boughs framing the wooded path, leaves gleaming silver with natural light. Minutes previous, this scene was a snuff film snippet only ever glimpsed on accident from stray internet links. Before now, it was closer to imagination than reality, something he could reason was nothing but special effects or good makeup, some darkly creative idea instead of a plan enacted. Even back then, in those borrowed memories from teenagehood, it was never convincing to try and pretend the death on screen wasn’t real. There was always something telling about it.

Tonight it’s the way that the man and his son stare upward in permanent snapshots of fear. The father’s fingers still curl from grasping at Psalm’s clothes in desperation, a sensation he hadn’t even felt. Saltwater runs in a half-dried rivulet across the son’s cheek as it rests in the rust-covered sediment. The crash of nausea against the walls of his stomach is so powerful that Psalm has to pause, leaning over, bracing with a hand pressed against the son’s lukewarm back. He breathes raggedly, the iron stuck in his throat, gagging on it: No, no, he can’t do that.

He swallows. Breathes in deeper, sinks onto the bloodsoaked ground, and curves his body over the corpse of the father. Then Psalm’s fangs carve two clean holes in the flesh of the man’s throat, making way for the trickle of blood that he nurses shamelessly. It’s food. He feeds.

When he’s done, he runs for his life.