Chapter Text
🧛 IAN 🧛
Ian had thought he was in love. He thought he and Rutger were going to run away together, leave the streets of Chicago for someplace like Paris, where men such as them can live more freely. But now Rutger is just a pile of ash, he is some undead thing, and all he has to show for their time together is some strange key.
This might be the worst night of his entire life. Or is it the worst night of his death? That is only the tip of the iceberg. He has no idea what he is or how he is supposed to live (unlive?) like this.
He could throttle Rutger if he weren’t so emphatically dead even by undead creature standards. Ian had barely woken up transfigured into whatever he is supposed to be now when Rutger gave him an explanation half as long as a sonnet before he left Ian high and dry and utterly lost.
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Ian wakes.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep. He remembers sitting down on a log with Rutger after building a roaring fire for them in a secluded grove in the woods of Sherman Park. Rutger leans in kissing his way down Ian’s neck as he manipulates Ian’s suspenders and the buttons of his shirt. Then Rutger is nibbling on his neck as Ian tells him not to leave any marks. The world starts to spin and he feels lightheaded. And then there is darkness.
Now that he is awake, the world… it doesn’t seem brighter, but is seems sharper, more intense. Everything around him seems so vivid. He can espy each and every little dancing tendril of flame in the fire, which Rutger must have stoked to great heights while Ian was out, for it rises to almost twice Ian's height.
Rutger is there. And despite the fact that it must be past midnight, Ian feels like he is looking at him in broad daylight for the first time. By the same token, he truly sees Rutger for the first time, more beautiful than Ian had before realized, but unmistakably something unnatural.
“I’ve shared my dark gift with you, Ian.”
“Your what?” asks Ian, disoriented.
“You will need to feed soon. My blood will make you stronger than most once you get the hang of things.” He produces an ornate silver key.
“Find my house. Everything that was mine is yours now.”
He starts away. Ian means to follow, but he is far too dizzy to give chase.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“Stay where you are.” Ian’s body locks up, frozen in place against his will. “I need to take this at a dash.”
Ian is utterly confused, disoriented. The man who has been wooing him for the past several weeks suddenly seems so cold and remote.
For a brief moment, Rutger looks unsure, but then he steels himself. “I have lived far too long.”
Ian understands what is happening only a split second too late as Rutger launches himself headlong into the roaring flame. Ian rushes to the fire, horrified as a massive plume of smoke rises into the night sky. There is no sign of Rutger’s remains, as though he were a dry leaf instead of a man that had been flung into the fire.
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He wanders the streets of Chicago, lost in a world in too sharp a focus to resemble the one he had known just a few hours ago. The incandescent gas lights that line the streets are too bright, they make Ian’s eyes hurt and causes his head to throb like he has been struck by a bolt of lightning from above. They glow each with their own aura pulsating around them like little earthbound stars. And up in the heavens, Ian can see billions more stars than his eyes had a few mere hours ago. The radiant orbs in the sky pulse and contract, almost like they are living, breathing things with their own heartbeats. And it isn’t just the sights; he can smell rancid byproduct lining pastures past the city limits, the perfumes of the painted ladies who congregate at the wharf. He can hear the rattle of trains on the elevated rail coming from all directions. He didn’t ask for this, all the stimuli bombarding his senses.
He feels so weak.
And he feels a pressure inside him, urging him on. It almost feels like the pressure is a voice reverberating in the next room over but that he can’t quite understand. He knows it is sending him some sort of message, but he just can’t make out what he’s being told. But somehow in his gut, he thinks he understands.
"Feed." He has to feed. But what does that mean for him now?
🧛 MICKEY️ 🧛
Mickey’s mansion was one of the earliest buildings built in the Gold Coast when it first became a home for the Chicago elite over three decades earlier. Modest by the standards of the opulent neighborhood, but beyond opulent compared to anywhere else he has existed in his nearly one thousand years on this earth.
Normally, he would not opt for something so ostentatious, but Chicago has been his home base ever since he finally hazarded the journey to the States from the Old World almost a century earlier. He has watched the city evolve from a trading post for beaver pelts into a sprawling urban metropolis, which, whether history records it or not, has his finger prints in its infrastructure. Chicago is the most he has ever felt at home since he was a small farm boy in the Kievan Rus. When he is here, he wants to be ensured a certain amount of comfort and a great amount of privacy.
A vampire of his age doesn’t need to feed as much as a fledgling. He almost doesn’t need to feed at all, perhaps once a year. Even then, he is a master of the little sip. A little taste from a great many people over the course of a week will sustain him for over a year at a time.
So many of the new breed are never taught. And ever since that damned novel came out near the end of the last century, would-be Van Helsings have been cropping up here and there. And they notice the sloppy ones. It makes Mickey appreciate not needing to leave the comforts of home if he really doesn’t need to. He doesn’t even remember liking people that greatly when he was alive, let alone once he became a thing out of folk tales.
He has this entire estate to himself. He wanders the halls of his estate some nights, now fitted with Edison lamps. Tonight is one such night. He has done his best to build his personal history into the walls of his home. At 1,023 years of age, memories get fuzzy, images blur and cluster, and sometimes they simply disappear altogether. There is only so much one being, supernatural or otherwise, can retain. But building his history into the architecture helps, as does festooning it with bric-a-brac that hearkens back to memories dozens of lifetimes ago.
Whole rooms are dedicated to a vast library. He has been documenting his personal thoughts since before he was turned in 889 Anno Domini. Although the first few centuries are a bit spotty, written in hindsight. His research library is almost as old but infinitely grander. He has both collected tomes as well as his own handwritten records on the various subjects that have been the subject of his studies over the years. Some topics have lasted weeks, others have engaged his interest for decades at a time, but eventually, he moves on and those books end up part of the collection, collecting dust. But he would never part with them. He doesn’t know if he could remember the scope of his personal history without them. He even has a second handwritten set of his diaries secured safely in a vault in the basement, in case something should happen to the originals.
This is how he reckons with eternity.
He is about to play some music on the Victrola to pass the rest of his time until dawn when it hits.
Intense, scared, confused, overwhelmed. Feelings overriding his own senses. But these aren’t his own. His body reacts to them like both an invasion and a call for help. He staggers around until he can brace himself on the back of a settee.
Mickey has no idea what is happening. He hasn’t felt anything quite like this since his own sire was around. But it isn’t quite the same. There is a psychic bond between a maker and his fledgling. However, the experience is different for each. The fledgling can hear his maker’s thoughts while a sire hears his child’s emotions. The way his maker Wulfric explained it to him, this was so that the sire can know when his fledgling is in danger and can guide them as best he can. He hasn’t thought about his maker in over four centuries, but almost as though he summoned a ghost, he can hear Wulfric’s sing-song East Anglian accent in his mind.
But why is he hearing some fledgling’s inchoate panic in his mind? In over a millennium, he has never spawned a fledgling of his own; too much of a responsibility. And he would not ensnare someone, make them a thrall as he has been. He would not damn another soul and tether them to him against his will.
Oh, but this poor lost idiot screaming into his head... it’s more than he can bear. Even after a thousand years, Mickey can scarce manage his own intense emotions, thus why he keeps so many people at a distance anymore even within such a growing metropolis as Chicago.
Lost. Confused. Scared. And now a new sensation. He’s weak. Hollowed out. It’s almost as though... “Jesus Christ, did nobody teach you how to feed? Is this your first night? Where the fucking hell is your sire, kid?”
A new vampire needs to feed regularly in the first decade or so. Six fluid ounces after sunset when he wakes up and then again before sunset. The light of the sun won’t kill a vampire as so many damn novelists would have the living believe, but it will rob them of their strength. Even at his great longevity, Mickey will find himself weak during the day, easier just to sleep through the day off unless he an appointment with a mortal associate.
But for a newly made vampire, especially on his first night, he needs to get some blood in him before the sun comes up simply to sustain him through the long daylight hours while he is caught in the diurnal paralysis, when he will be most vulnerable.
And on his first night, that first feeding could spell the difference between life and death.
He. Mickey keeps using “he” in his head. Sight unseen, he knows somewhere deep inside him that this is a man, but he has no idea how he arrived at that conclusion.
He doesn’t know what he is doing. He has never had a fledgling before. He doesn’t know how he is supposed to communicate with this poor abandoned schnook of a newborn vamp. But he cannot simply let these cries for help go unheeded. He closes his eyes and tries to focus on the source of the feelings. Like a compass, he feels the pull, but rather than north, it points due south. He can almost sense what the boy is sensing, the fetid, rancid smell of the Union Stock Yards. No wonder he is overwhelmed. The newly enhanced senses of a freshly made vampire can barely deal with the scent of incense and freshly cleaned linens, let alone the foul stench of that stink hole of an abattoir.
Get out of there, rookie. He thinks very hard, hoping the fledgling can hear his thoughts as clearly as Mickey senses the newcomer’s emotions. You need to feed. It is getting late and you need to feed before dawn. Find somewhere safe and rest until nightfall.
He repeats the instructions over and over again in his mind, hoping he is doing this correctly. He has never in all the long centuries of his afterlife been on this end of the dynamic. He doesn’t know anyone who has, even if he does vaguely recall a similar strange account from long before his time. He has no idea whether the wayward boy is receiving anything from him.
But then the whirling panoply of emotions narrows its focus down to a single sensation—confoundment. But that confoundment soon segues into something resembling resolve. Mickey hopes this is the fruit of his efforts.
Despite his kneejerk instinct to leave this new vampire to his own devices, he thinks the better of it. For better or worse, this boy is somehow in his head, meaning his own maker is either gone or abandoned him to his fate. He has nobody else. Like Mickey, this boy is alone in the world. It’s irrational. This boy isn’t his responsibility. He didn’t sink his teeth into the boy and have him drink from him in return. He is someone else’s misbegotten creation. So why is he Mickey’s problem?
Because an untrained vampire creates a target on all their backs. Like it or not, he needs to find this boy and make sure he isn’t drawing unwanted attention to himself or any of the other couple dozen vampires in the greater Chicago area. He must seek him out. But dawn approaches. It is getting too late in the night for him to venture out and find this boy tonight, but at least he has pointed him in the right direction.
He retires to his bedroom and strips down to his undergarments, laying his nice suit out on his dressing table for the following night. As he climbs into his four-poster bed and draws the thick blackout curtains shut, he thinks of any parting words to tell the boy in his head before slumber overtakes him. What can he tell this boy to keep him from landing himself in a world of trouble that will no doubt impact them all.
Then it occurs to him.
Be careful. And remember to take little sips. Just what you need to survive.