Youngblood - 7. Shelter

Colton isn’t happy, but he reluctantly agrees with my conclusions. Rotting vampires are a bad thing and Hunters should know about the possibility of it happening again. He sounds a little surprised when I tell him Aschure wants to come back, but he accepts it; he has been working with her for more than a decade and seems to trust her. It makes me wonder if I’m overreacting a little bit, being the youngblood and all. Aschure huffs and puffs as she packs her things, smashing drawers and doors, but now that I have the go-ahead, she has given up arguing with me.

I let her do her thing and keep my mouth shut. The sooner she leaves, the lower the chances of her bumping into Cor. I have a feeling the vampire is still around, lurking in the shadows and waiting for me to come back out. Or waiting for her to leave so he can come in. No matter how primitive he acts, he isn’t stupid. He saw through Aschure the minute he laid eyes on her. But then, everyone seems to catch on faster than me, leaving me to stumble through the dark like a rookie. A fine investigator I am. Hah.

When Aschure is done packing, I follow her outside. She glares at me through the rain-wet windshield of her car as she pulls out of the parking lot, as if to ask one last time if I’m really sure. I wave goodbye and smile tightly. She shakes her head, puts the car in drive and roars away, tires screeching.

The rain has stopped and the wind simmered down to cold, unsteady gusts, whipping the wet concrete. The red motel sign light flickers, dancing across puddles and my shoes. My freshly donned shirt does nothing to protect me against the cold, rubbing over my hardening nipples with every flurry and change and doing nothing for my reeling mind. My stomach flutters again, a pale imitation of the panic I felt when I stepped through the veil, but no less intimidating. I’m a Hunter alone in a city filled with monsters. Out of my own free will. What was I thinking? How many times did I wish Aschure was there today, and now I just let her leave? How did I ever think I could do this alone?

A sudden tension prickles over my body and I hold my breath. Goosebumps rush down my back, but it’s not about the cold or the wind now.

He is here, right behind me.

I can feel him, no matter how quietly he moves.

Cor leans closer, growling softly as he sniffs my neck. A beast in a man’s skin. I’m afraid, but not as much as I should be. He can probably smell my nerves, but I have no idea what he might think about it. I don’t know fuck-all about what he thinks about in general. Or if he even thinks in terms that are even remotely human. I just know that there’s something about him that won’t let me go.

A passing car rips me out of my entranced reverie and I whirl around. Shit. There’s a bloody, beaten, black-eyed vampire towering behind me where everyone can see. Out on the street. Oh, and also, he’s practically naked.

I feel my Hunters’ mark tingling again, faintly but warningly. But what am I supposed to do? The next veil is an hour of brisk walking away and someone is bound to notice us if we stroll back there like we’re on a night out. Cor isn’t exactly blending in, what with him being covered in blood and dirt and holding on to his dignity by a tiny banana hammock shaped piece of rotting cloth. I’ll have to do something about that, stat. But first, hide the vampire. “Get inside there, you,” I hiss and push against rock-hard abs as if that could do anything. Thankfully, Cor humors me and retreats, head cocked curiously as I herd him towards the door to my hotel room. When I try to push him inside, he puts on the breaks, though, narrowing his eyes at me and curling his upper lip into a warning sneer. We stand there for a few moments, me shoving and pushing and him simply waiting for me to realize how futile my efforts are, until I give up, breathing hard.

Cor meets my eyes, wipes a clump of sticky, rotted cloth off his chest, and growls, “cage.” It sounds like an accusal.

“What? No, motel room,” I retort, frowning. The tension in his shoulders increases, so I add, “it’s just until I find something better. You’re not exactly… subtle.”

His jaws tighten angrily and he points at the lock in the door. “Cage.”

Good lord, really? A hard sneeze could break that door down, and the big bad vampire is worried I’ll lock him in.

“It’s not a cage. The door can be locked from the inside so nobody can break in, but you don’t need a key to open it.” I sidestep his brooding form and open the door wider so he can see the deadbolt as I switch it to locked and turn the door knob. It pops back into the door as expected. “See? I can’t lock you in.” Not that I could if I tried. I’d need bomb-proof steel to even slow him down, and he’d probably punch through that too, given enough time. The silver coffin flits through my mind, but I push the picture away resolutely.

It seems to be a big deal for Cor, though, and he steps closer to fiddle with the deadbolt, locking and unlocking it multiple times as if trying to figure out all eventualities. I hover close by, keeping an eye on the dark street and the other rooms. If anyone comes by, literally anyone, I’ll have to kill them. Not because they deserve it, but because it’s the easiest way to keep them from telling anyone what they saw. One might think that monster hunters would be the good guys, protecting innocents from the supernaturals, but they’d be wrong. Our job is to keep the worlds separate, and sometimes innocents have to die.

I want to believe that I would have a hard time shooting innocent passers-by, but the truth is that I don’t. Bleeding heart syndrome gets whipped out of us from the first moment we set foot in the training grounds. Usually. How I still ended up babysitting a killer vampire and discussing locking mechanisms in common motel room doors remains a mystery to me.

Another burst of raindrops batters the drenched pavement as Cor turns to me, eyes still narrowed. He examines me in a way that tightens my throat, and not in a good way, so I stand very still, passive, thinking peaceful thoughts as I wait for him to make up his mind. The urge to explain my motives and persuade him to go in is there, but it wouldn’t do any good. He talks and he understands English, but there is this flicker in his eyes, a certain blankness that tells me that the metaphorical lights are on but nobody is home. He listens—ish—, he reacts, he seems perfectly capable of understanding basic meaning and forming opinions, but I don’t think he gives two fucks about what I say. Only about what I do.

When he grabs the deadbolt and rips it out of the door, I wince involuntarily, but I don’t stop him. Repair costs and deposits would mean nothing to him and if this is what he needs to feel safe, I’ll live. He bares his teeth in a grin and throws the metal piece into the parking lot, then turns and walks in. I follow quickly, thanking Jesus, Mary, the saints, and god himself for the small reprieve.

***

The door thuds as it closes, but it won’t stay closed without a lock. I look around and grab the bible on the nightstand. No chairs in this room, so it’ll have to do. Cor twitches and freezes when he realizes what I am doing, breathing heavily and a little panicked, shoulders bunching as he forces himself to stay where he is. He lets me close the door and put the book against it, but it costs him. I’m not a psychologist, but I can see how being locked into a small box for centuries might give a man claustrophobia. Just to be safe, I hover near the door and off to the side, keeping my distance and eying him warily. His hands shiver ever so slightly as he stares at the exit, deep breaths expanding his chest as he seems to try and get a grip on his panic. And for him to have hand spasms, he must be almost frantic. My eyes flit down his body unbidden, taking in his state in the pale electric lights of my room. He looks so alien amidst the sixties deco, a piece of barbaric history shoved into the glory days of the Cold War. Not that he looks like the sexy kind of barbarian. The sickly yellow light shining from the bouquet of ancient light bulbs on the ceiling does nothing for the state he is in, bringing out the brown in the dried blood and the gnarly, swollen edges of the burn wounds on his chest. It shines on every little blemish, every bruise, every tangled knot in his mane, leaving nothing obscured. He’s a mess, in every conceivable way. And now he’s my mess.

He finally seems to accept that he isn’t locked in and turns away from the door to inspect the room, as if switching from the greatest threat to the next lower one. Muscles ripple as he stretches up and touches the cheap chandelier, hissing when he burns his finger on one of the bulbs. His abs peek through the remains of clothing, now nothing more than flaking, unidentifiable patches of cloth sticking to his dirty skin. Eight-pack, because why stop at six? And that’s the outline of his cock. My mouth turns dry and I quickly turn, swallowing. Okay, calm down. First things first. Bath, clothes, plan. No ogling, no touchy touchy.

I stalk towards the bathroom, telling my venom-drugged body off resolutely. Cor’s glare burns prickling holes into my back all the way to the shower. The need to turn to him becomes an itch, but somehow I manage to keep my eyes on the shower taps and not scald myself as I adjust the temperature. It’s no small feat.

As soon as the stream of water is just warm enough to be pleasant, I turn. “You need to shower first, you sti—”

And he’s right there, just like in the ramshackle apartment, just like outside. Staring. Looming. All he has to do is lift his hand and he could touch me, grab me. My breath gets stuck in my throat.

The corner of his mouth twitches.

A furious blush heats my face and I stagger away, cleaning off the bathroom sink deco with my elbow. He ignores the ruckus, watching me with widening pupils as I fumble and gasp.

“Shower,” I croak, pointing, and sit down on the toilet lid hard. If I don’t want to literally rub elbows with the vampire in question, it’s either that or falling gracelessly, so sitting it is. And of course my face is red because of the damn heat in this shoe box of a bathroom, not because of the proximity to that much muscle mass, or the tantalizing outline of a hefty, half-chubbed cock behind threadbare rags.

Cor watches me intently until I stop moving, then turns to eye the steaming shower, and I thank all powers that his attention is finally off me. I feel like I can breathe again, which is nice. Air is great. He prowls forward and reaches out for the steady—if weak—stream of water, flinching when his fingers meet the heat. He makes a strange sound, half gargle, half laugh, and grabs the shower head to examine it more closely. Water splashes everywhere, drenching both me and the meager stack of towels within seconds.

That’s gonna be fun when we come to the drying off part. “No no no no,” I curse and scramble forward to grab the shower head, shoving Cor into the tiny cabin as I wrestle it from his fingers. He staggers inside and throws me a crestfallen look, fists opening and closing as he assesses the situation. Something flinty flickers through his eyes.

“That’s not how you use that,” I quickly say before he gets any ideas, reaching inside to hook the shower head back into the fixture. Our bodies brush and I make a tiny whimpering sound as my cock expresses his excitement over Cor’s physique. His skin is incredibly warm, and it’s not the shower’s doing. He should be cool to the touch, faintly warm at the most, but he is warm like a living person. If I close my eyes I could easily forget he’s a vampire.

Focus. “Right, so, you stand in there and you use this to scrub yourself.” I present him with a cheap hotel soap bar, half the size of my credit card and definitely not enough to get centuries of grime off him. He’ll need a pressure washer or a sand blaster or something to get truly clean, but it’s the best I have. It’ll do for now.

Cor snags the soap from my fingers, sniffs it, and raises his brows, looking impressed. And he seems to know what to do now, turning around and dragging the tiny block over his skin in scrubbing motions as he twists and writhes in the steady stream of water. The last bits and pieces of cloth slough off his body and collect at the drain, so I pick them up and throw them into the tiny bin next to the sink. Cor just keeps on showering. Brown-red rivulets roll down his back and over his ass, dripping along thick thighs and corded muscles until they disappear into the drain, and why am I still staring at him?

I turn on my heels and stalk out, cursing softly under my breath. I can feel Cor’s sharp stare on my back as I pass the open bathroom door, but I know better than to try and close it after what happened to the lock on the front door. And I bet he’s smirking at that.

Water splashes as I pull out my phone. A stink unlike any other floats out of the bathroom, a mixture of dung, blood, and soap that sticks to my tongue and the inside of my nose until I want to retch. Instead I move to the front door, open it a crack for fresh air, and dial Stanley.

His greeting is less than enthusiastic. “What the fuck are you calling me again for? Is he dead?”

Lucky for me, he can’t see my grin. “Hello, Stanley. No he isn’t, and he won’t die any time soon. He’s actually showering, which is where you come in.”

He snarls. “I don’t come in anywhere, hunter. Because of you I’ve been made the envoy to you lot, and now my girlfriend has left me. And you know why? Because she doesn’t see a future for me. Like, any future. As in, she thinks I’ll be dead before we have a chance to move in together. So thank you, thank you a lot.”

And he hangs up.

My phone feels hot against my ear as I listen to nothing. My heart hammers to the beat of his accusal, feeding the little gremlins in my soul. Stanley—a vampire!—talks of future, family, romance, like it’s a given. Like I took something from him that should matter, like I should care or at least understand. I don’t. I have no future and I never will. Hunters die young, they don’t have a choice, and they don’t have a future. We live to fight until we can’t fight anymore, then we die and the next one takes our place. I won’t ever have a boyfriend and he will never have a chance to leave me because I might die.

I’ve never thought about this, too caught up with wanting to finally be in the field, to be good at what I do, and now here I am. It’s funny how a few words out of context can shake a person to their core. If I didn’t need his help, I would delete his number right now. The shower roars, then falls silent as Cor figures out how to stop the water.

Gnashing my teeth I dial him again, taking care not to crush my phone as I grip it hard. He picks up, already drawing breath to tell me where I can shove it, so I hiss out the one word that will stop him in his breath. “Fine.”

He barks a laugh, still furious. “Nothing is fine!”

“The fine. The one your clan owes.”

I know I have him when he says nothing for a moment, eerily quiet. He sighs at last, so very human for a moment. “What do you want, Gideon?” He sounds resigned.

I mentally run through the list of all the things I would love to have right now, then settle for the bare minimum. “A place to hide a vampire—strigan— whatever he is. Clothes for him, I mean for Cor. A hair clipper, and your silence about the whole thing.”

“Jesus fuck Gideon, you’re keeping him with you? No wait, don’t answer that. I can’t help you, not with this. I don’t want your pet psychopath to remember that I exist.”

The phone groans quietly and I quickly loosen my grip before the screen cracks. “This isn’t me asking for a favor. I will lower the fine. Considerably. And I’ll tell them it’s because you’ve been so graciously helping me find out what kind of curse made a vampire rot and fall apart alive.”

By the way Stanley hisses I can tell that he didn’t know about the leper vampire. And if he doesn’t know, Loreley doesn’t either. Which means I’ve suddenly become a very valued commodity, what with me having information they will desperately want if this thing spreads.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, sounding a little breathless and a lot worried.

Yup, I’ve got him. “Come pick me up and bring me some clothes for Cor and I will tell you all about it,” I say and turn around, just to find myself nose to nose with a very wet, very attentive Cor. “Fuck!”

“Fine, I’ll— What? What is it?”

I clench my chest and take a deep breath, closing my eyes. I will not faint. I will not faint. “Nothing, just being stalked. Get here as soon as possible, before someone notices the big guy and I have to start shooting people.”

Cor makes a soft sound and cocks his head as if he understands what I’m saying. My lips crook into a smile on their own, just as Stanley growls, “I’ll try to hurry. But if you prove my ex right by letting that beast kill me, I’ll come haunting you. Ghost vampire style.”

***

It’s about fifteen minutes and an eternity later when a hesitant knock breaks Cor’s and my stare-off. When I open the door, I find Stanley there, clutching a stack of dark gray sweats against his chest. He has done something to his curly hair that makes him look party-boy cute and he wears clubbing clothes. I might have interrupted his fun night out with my calls. Oops. His eyes are incredibly wide as he whispers, “is he here?”

“Yeah, he’s—” I turn and blink at empty space where Cor just was. “—here somewhere, I guess,” I finish, sigh, and step out of the way so Stanley can enter. “Come in and prop the door closed please.” I point at the motel bible and Stanley throws me a disbelieving glance, as if to say, ‘really? This?’. I shrug at his silent accusal. He’s a vampire, he’s not allowed to be vexed by my blasphemy.

Stanley hands me the stack of clothes and watches me go through them. “So what’s the plan here? You gonna keep him as a pet monster?” His words have a bite to them, and when I look up to his face, there is a tense line around his jaw, matching the glare of his eyes. The quiet anger in his expression makes me take a step back and swallow.

“First of all, look who’s talking about pet monsters as if it were frowned upon in your society. You yourself told me what his kind did to him for centuries. I didn’t hear you say anything about that, Mr. High And Mighty. And secondly, he’s not a pet,” I growl. “He’s a six-foot-something—”

“Naked,” Stanley wheezes.

“—naked vampire who needs… Wait, how do you know he’s naked?”

Stanley’s finger shakes a little as he points at something behind me, all traces of anger gone. A low, rumbling growl fills the tiny room, as if to answer the gesture.

I don’t know what instinct rides me, but when Cor charges, I’m in his path, hands pushing against his cool chest as if that would ever stop him. The set of new clothes falls in a heap between us, forgotten at the very real possibility that Stanley will get to know Cor’s strength intimately.

Cor doesn’t have to stop, not even to avoid hurting me. I have seen how fast he can be when he wants to, how easily he could have dodged me, but he doesn’t. He stops at the touch of my hands, his growl vibrating through his chest and into my very bones. “Don’t,” I shout, just to make sure he doesn’t change his mind and dodge me after all. “He’s here to help us. He brought clothes for you, see?” I nod down, too afraid to let him go and pick them up.

Muscles bulge and relax against my sweaty hands as Cor sucks in a deep breath, scenting the air. The way he narrows his eyes at Stanley makes me break out in cold sweat, but I do my best not to tense further. After a few long, precarious moments he straightens a little, huffs out a breath and rumbles a single, foreboding word.

“Hungry.”

And now I’m confused. It’s common sense that he should be hungry after spending what sounds like decades in a box, but when he didn’t suck me dry, I assumed his keeper fed him from time to time. Which he had to have done, or Cor would have lost his bulk. But still, if he was hungry when we met, why didn’t he drink my blood when he had the chance? And why does he eye Stanley like he is a ten-dollar-burger? I’ve heard of vampires drinking from vampires, especially when they are young or want to get high on venom, but the blood of their own kind has very little nutritional value. Those who are forced to live on vampire blood lose their unique abilities until they can get their hands on a human, and even vampires can become venom addicts if they aren’t careful.

Cor doesn’t behave like an addict, but he still ogles Stanley like he’s food.

I push him a little, trying to get his attention back to me. “We do not eat Stanley, okay? I’ll make sure you get something to eat as soon as we are safe, but right now I have to handle this.”

That broad chest vibrates beneath my hands again, the growl so low I can’t hear it. Then Cor huffs and relaxes a little, going from ready to pounce to tense and lurky.

“I told you, he’s a strigan, not a normal vampire.” Stanley’s squeaks as if he knows exactly what I am thinking. “He eats my kind. Like, really eat. Which is why I’d very much like to leave now.”

My head spins a little as I try to wrap my brain around the bomb shell Stanley so casually dropped. “Okay. Wow. I thought you were just being dramatic before. But really? No, don’t answer that, I do believe you, it’s just…” A vampire who eats his own people. Why didn’t I know about this? I’ve read almost every book in the Hunter library and definitely everything about vampires, but I can’t remember a single mention of a creature that lives off vampire blood. I mean, sure, there are enough carnivorous creatures who don’t discriminate and would take a bite out of a vampire if the chance presented itself, but having vampires as their main nutritional staple? That’s huge.

Cor makes a soft, guttural sound and turns to pick up the clothes, stalking off towards the bathroom, his hunger forgotten. Stanley watches him leave with a pinched expression, then licks his lips and turns his attention back to me. “It’s not public knowledge, this thing. I think his kind would have been long forgotten if it weren’t for him and what his master did to him. And those who do know about his existence, about what he is, would rather see him dead than free. He’s not much more than a rabid dog if you ask the elders. A nice diversion but nothing they would want to keep around.”

There Stanley goes, mentioning this master again. “His master… vampire? The one who locked him up and paraded him around?”

“That would be him, yes,” Stanley murmurs, chewing his lip as his eyes trail behind me.

I turn just in time to see Cor fumble with the zipper of his hoodie, a deep frown creasing his forehead. The sweatpants hug his legs like a second skin, outlining his muscles and package like they were tailored this way just to make old ladies blush. Right now I can’t imagine anything that wouldn’t look good on that body. I swallow loudly and clear my throat, turning back to Stanley just to find him staring at Cor with a flustered expression on his face. For some reason, it makes me angry. “Stop ogling him. You want him dead, remember?”

Stanley gives me a shit-eating grin. “He’s all yours, Mr. Hunter, Sir. Now, what else do you need from me?”

I fight down the urge to roll my eyes. “A safe-house for me and him, a pointer where I can get vampire blood for Cor. And answers to a few questions in exchange for information that will make you very popular with Loreley.”

Cor shuffles closer, looming behind me like an ominous shadow. I feel him lean forward and hot breath wafts against my neck as he sniffs me, rumbling approvingly at whatever he smells there. Stanley swallows and takes a step back, clearing his throat. “Okay, fine. I know just the place.”