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RAHIL

Rahil had expected to spend the day alone.

The scowl that his one-night stand pointed at him from across the man’s living room was disappointing but not surprising. Not even unwarranted, if Rahil was being honest.

“What the hell are you still doing here?” Well that was a bit rude of—of—god, what was his name again? Rahil could remember the taste of the human’s blood—tart to the point of sour—but not the handle he’d used on the dating app. Hookup app, really. The dating occasionally came after, and never for Rahil.

Still, he grinned his most winning smile, his fangs out, and fiddled with his long, dark hair in a way that had made the sour man growl delicious things into his ear last night, things that included a fair amount of the word “fuck” and then dangling an offer of blood if Rahil pleased him. Rahil had certainly pleased the man then.

Now it seemed, not so much.

“It’s day, if you haven’t noticed. The sun isn’t good for my complexion.” Rahil had spent a not-insignificant amount of time in the daylight in his over thirty-five years as a vampire, and he wondered if the dusty brown of his Indian heritage kept him a little safer than his more stereotypical paler counterparts, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t still die from too heavy a dose of sun-poisoning.

“Is that my problem?” The man looked less handsome in the bright light of the late morning, an aggressive twist to his mouth and a hollowness to his gaze that Rahil had missed before—or not cared to look too closely for. “You had all night to leave.”

Rahil was pretty certain they’d finally collapsed at about three in the morning, which was technically not all night . He had chosen to stay, though, his exhaustion and soreness and post-climax hormones finally enough to carry him away for a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. If this was the price he paid, yet again, then so be it.

It was better than the alternative, Rahil told himself. He would take sharp words and a clear dismissal over the gentle excuse of having things to do that day and the casual promise of a text that never came. That wasn’t entirely fair; occasionally an offer of a second meeting did come. Rahil felt worse about those, because then it was him doing the letting down. Better they part ways now than later.

Rahil groaned, shoving his loose hair back. He hadn’t even had time to braid it. “Fine, let me get my coat.”

The man stiffened, and the shift in his stance revealed the cell phone in his hand. He held it like a weapon. Where Rahil was concerned, it was three clicks and a police siren away from being one.

“Would you be kind enough to grab it for me?” Rahil asked it like each word was a piece of fine porcelain. This man had wanted him to feel subjugated last night—maybe that would be enough to buy Rahil’s safety now. “It’s in the bedroom. On the floor, I think. Please.” His ass hurt, suddenly, and not in the nice, tender reminder of a night well spent, but a far more intrusive sensation.

For a moment, it seemed like the man might still object, but then slowly, one backward step at a time, he moved toward the bedroom. He reemerged with Rahil’s coat, shoving the old, full-length expanse of dramatic gray folds at Rahil’s chest hard enough to make him sway. Rahil spun, diving out the door before even bothering to put the coat on.

Sunlight streamed across the apartment building’s second story landing, and while Rahil knew he wouldn’t feel the effects of it for at least half an hour, he still scrambled to cover his thin white top. He looked slightly less like a stereotypical vampire this way—but only slightly. From the heels of his boots to the tight waist of his leather pants and the ruffles that tumbled around his pearl chokers, his whole attire screamed incoming: not normal , caught somewhere between fantastical pirate and Victorian goth, and entirely too warm for the current weather.

Despite the already sweltering summer morning, he buttoned his coat to his neckline, pulled his hood low and shoved his hands into his pockets, jogging to the shade of the trees that lined the street. Seeing this part of town—his old neighborhood, only a mile from the place he’d settled with his ex-wife to watch their boys grow up—slowly transform from quaint lower- and middle-class neighborhoods around tattoo parlors and family-run businesses to this artsy brand of boutiques and extravagant coffee shops had been killing him, but at least they maintained a lush landscaping. It was a pity they’d mysteriously only acquired the money for such manicured vegetation once they’d pressed the original residents towards its edges.

Rahil pulled out his phone—newly refurbished by himself. It was still at sixty-three percent. Very nice.

He checked his bank account, then his slew of taxi apps—how could such a short ride possibly cost that much at 10am—and back to his bank account, chewing on his lower lip. It was five miles to his house on the edge of the city. With his vampiric speed, he could make that at a sprint before the sun-poisoning caught up to him. Probably.

One of his nieces had sent him another hope your day is desi! gif over his email, which he quickly marked as unread again. He still had to figure out how to answer the family reunion chat in a way that opted him out of it without implying that he didn’t love or support them. Even then, he’d probably still get every auntie and all three of his siblings and his father complaining that he’d missed the last two. The thought made his bank account feel all the more empty.

Before he flipped his phone away, Rahil quickly skimmed his favorite dating app. He had a new message from an icon of a bare chest that read I think your fangs are really sexy and another with tell me where you’ll be tonight so I can fucking stake you . He’d accept both once he was home, on the off chance the latter thought he was making a hilarious dick reference and didn’t actually intend to murder any vampires. Ignorant asshole blood could sate his hunger just as well as anything else.

There was no response from the one match he really wanted to hear from, though.

Not that he’d imagined the man—Merc, as his profile stated—was likely to respond after ghosting Rahil’s every attempt to start a conversion. But Merc also hadn’t unmatched him. Rahil had stopped initiating, but he couldn’t bring himself to do the deed either.

Bare-chests one and two were nice and all, even if half of them turned out to be as distasteful as last night’s hookup in the morning, but Merc was the kind of man who didn’t need the shirtless pictures and sexual poses to convince Rahil’s body they were made to fit each other. What of his brown skin he did show was slightly pudgy over thick musculature and dotted with the occasional mole, his curls tucked back by a different vibrantly patterned bandana in every image—god, just by his pictures, Rahil knew he’d taste divine. It was his eyes that really caught Rahil, though, dark and deep and lovely as the night.

Intoxicating.

And unlikely to ever message Rahil back.

Maybe it was the fangs in Rahil’s third profile pic or the ‘favorite pickup line’ he’d used for his voice prompt— If I accidentally called you Daddy, would I get spanked? —or the fact that all he’d written in his description was tallest twink you’ll ever dom , while Merc had used words like hiking and creative soul and emotional connection . What did it matter, though? Rahil shoved his phone away and took off at a sprint, holding his hood up with one hand.

It didn’t matter.

However hot any of the humans Rahil let fuck him were, however good they tasted, it would be over in the morning. Maybe he could have gotten one really nice night with Merc, the kind he’d recollect in the way he still sometimes thought about his ex-wife when she’d ridden him, her hands gripping into his hair and a thin line of blood oozing from her abandoned neck bite. But it would still just be one night, and then it would be gone. Merc was clearly more interested in where a hookup might lead, and Rahil wasn’t interested in leading anyone anywhere. Not anymore.

Nonezo daddo , as his sons would have called it when they were trying to avoid eating their vegetables.

Even all these years later, the hollow space in Rahil’s chest still caught at the thought of them. He pushed it aside, focusing on the burning of his muscles and the sweat dripping down his back as he ran from shade to shade, dashing a sun-laden shortcut through one of the many micro-cemeteries that had made the city of San Salud famous. At least these ones, so near the edge of the city, were fresher, more for show than anything else—unlike the tragic ruins nearer the lakefront boardwalk, where the dead of decades of sanatoriums had been buried. If Rahil had been born just fifty years prior, he probably would have wound up locked in one of those for his eccentricities alone.

Not to mention the pansexuality. Or the fangs.

There were enough people out enjoying their Saturday morning that Rahil caught stares and whispers, but he pressed on. They could gossip about having seen a vampire fleeing the sun all they wanted, so long as he got home in one piece.

That was seeming less and less likely, though. Five intersections away from the last strip of slowly gentrifying shops, he was already feeling the effects of the light in an uncomfortable buzz that started deep in his bones. If he could just find a place to lie low for a few hours, maybe wait out the hottest part of the day…

The neighborhoods between here and his house were strictly residential, though, scattered homes built in a variety of styles over many years, interspersed by the remaining patches of sparse forest that had once surrounded his own lot like a blanket for acres. As the pain settled into his muscles, dropping him from a sprint to a lopsided jog, he searched for anything vacant and even halfway-shaded. His legs began to shake. If only he wasn’t so tired and old and— There .

Behind the house three down stood a massive barn-like structure, its windows shuttered. The lot looked quiet, but Rahil still skirted it with the utmost caution, his heart jumping into his throat at the bark of a dog from inside the cute single-story house. No one came out, though, and he rounded the barn to find a massive rolling door. It refused to budge, but the wooden shutter in the window at the top of its peaked roof was cracked open, with enough of a rim that Rahil managed to scramble up the door and leap for it, pulling himself up and over.

His arms shook, and for a moment he just perched there in the shade and the cool air—this barn had to have fantastic insulation—and opened the buttons of his coat enough to waggle the fabric, fanning the sweat he’d been building beneath his shirt. The position he was holding did not agree with his growing pain and shakes, and with a quick glance down at the assortment of craft benches and cupboards, he found a clear spot to leap to. And he leapt.

But he didn’t land.

As Rahil fell toward the ground, something wrapped around his legs, then his arms, catching him mid-drop. Suspended in the air with both ankles behind him and head level, Rahil twisted and pulled, his panic growing when each tug failed to free him, instead launching new—cords? They were thick as ropes, silver and malleable, but they moved with a mind of their own, wrapping around his torso and thighs. Were they getting tighter too?—oh god, he couldn’t tell. He had to stop—he had to stop struggling.

Stop struggling.

And just breathe.

Just breathe.

The inch-thick silver metal cords weren’t tightening, he decided, and now that his flailing had ended, they weren’t multiplying anymore either. But they were still there, hanging down from a mechanism in the ceiling and locking Rahil in place. He dangled from them, supported mostly by his hips and chest, with his knees bent to different degrees and one arm caught above his head. He felt like a shibari-entrapped prey in the middle of this bizarre barn of—fuck, were those torture devices?

No—no, they could just as soon be ordinary tools. They lined the wall above the work bench directly in front of Rahil, small instruments with points and blades, ranging from delicate, needle-sharp to broad, serrated saws. Anyone might have reason to own a display of various sized metal implements, some with blades. Anyone who also equipped their barn with traps.

Fuck.

Rahil didn’t dare twist to check the room for other potentially painful apparatuses, but through the gloom of the barn, a little too dark for his day vision and a little too bright to kick his night vision into full functionality, he could make out the points and curves and edges of other devices on the tables and shelves to his left. In his increasingly tense state, their shadows seemed ominous: the trophies of a serial-killer or the technology of a hunter.

He had no reason to jump to conclusions, he reminded himself, trying to suppress the steadily increasing beat of his own heart.

Except that he did.

Between the ropes and the blades, Rahil’s mind went to the same frazzled, antsy place it did with every new media update over the last few months. The danger within the city had been all over the news in an unending cycle of Vitalis-Barron: vampire hunters? , the ending a question mark, as though the world hadn’t been handed full proof of the pharmaceutical company’s villainy on a silver platter. Despite being unveiled, they were still out there, still performing their terrible deeds in the midst of what would surely turn into a legal battle soon, with PR conferences and statements and protests abounding on all sides. Amidst the chaos, those who hated vampires had grown even louder, their bigotry stoked from a spark to a wildfire.

And like a tragic cherry on top, Rahil had heard rumors that Vitalis-Barron was using this hatred to contract out their hunting.

To people like this. People with sheds full of weapons and chains, who could dismember a vampire and sell them the pieces. Rahil could almost feel the pressure of those deadly instruments carving across his own skin, adding exponentially to the growing pain caused by his time in the sun.

The cords that held him in place suddenly felt tighter again. As his lungs began to clench in panic, he tried to remember just how many good people in the city were currently raising their voices to combat its evils. But clearly no amount of allies could save Rahil from his own stupidity.

Fear lodged itself deep in his throat, so thick and dark it became indistinguishable from the shaking pain of his sun-poisoning.

Rahil was going to die here. He was going to die here, and he was fairly certain he wouldn’t be alone for it.