Collectors

[Trillian]

He couldn't let up. He knew he didn't have to hold her as tightly as he was but he couldn't release the tension of his grip. When she started pulling away from him he tightened even more and he could feel her bones in her wrist grinding. It made him feel sick but he yanked on her anyway. She stopped fighting and that made it better.

He stared at her, into her frightened eyes. He'd seen a look like this on the face of the guy who'd upset the boss, but that look hadn't been directed at him. The stare hadn't affected him in any way but it was having an impact on him now; it made him angry. The verbal instruction inspired him into action and he crouched down to pick her up over his shoulder in a fireman's hold. She was dumped into the back like a sack of potatoes. He climbed into the back after her and moved her feet out of the way. A shoe fell off and onto the pavement. He watched it go before jumping down after it and picking it up. No sense leaving clues behind.

Once the doors were shut and locked, Mick sat down in the dark well of the van's cargo area beside their hostage, a hand on her hip and his other hand holding her shoe. Cinderella was being driven away in her pumpkin.

[Ehcorn]

Whatever they'd done to her made it impossible to brace herself. Her shoulder took the brunt of the impact, but it didn’t prevent her head from smacking against the van's floorboard. She saw splotchy flashes of light, like moments after a camera flash, and when she could focus again, it was on the short, bristly carpet scratching her cheek and Mick’s hand gripping her hip.

In the club, she’d enjoyed how firmly he’d held her and had delighted in wondering what it’d feel like to have his hands on the rest of her, but it’d gone all wrong. He’d led her to the back of a van and thrown her in. What happened now? Tears pricked her eyes as she cycled through the possibilities. Most ended with her mom having to fly all the way out to the city morgue to identify what was left of her body. Felicia whimpered lowly — the first sound she’d managed to make since she’d had her voice stolen — when she realized she might never see her mom or the rest of her family again.

No. She couldn’t think like that. Screw saving money. She’d get out of this, sell every last thing in her stupid dingy apartment, buy plane tickets, and she would get back to them. She pushed against her invisible bonds, focusing on moving her arm and fingers so she could get her—

"There’s a lighter in her side pocket. Remove it."

Her breath caught in her throat. How had he known what she was after? She couldn’t make fire. She could only manipulate it.

Without her lighter, she was powerless.

"Yes, I'm quite familiar with fire nymphs," the man said dryly. The van decelerated and the clicking of a signal indicator filled the cabin. "I'm surprised you found one, Mick. Pleased, but surprised nonetheless. They usually prefer places that are warmer than this."

The blood drained from Felicia’s face. She hadn’t said anything out loud. She couldn’t. Had he read her thoughts? How? Dread grew heavy in her gut. His voice had been in her head before, commanding her not to speak or move, and then he responded to her thoughts as if he could hear them, and he knew what she was, and... he'd been really, really pale, hadn't he?

Shit. Shit. Shit.

This was way worse than any of the other scenarios she'd come up with.

Vampire worse.

[Trillian]

Mick could feel himself shutting down, going into his unconscious-action phase. He didn't think about what he'd done or what he might end up doing. He didn't consider the feelings of the woman squirming beneath his hand or what would happen to her because of him. His focus was placed in maintaining his balance while the van swayed one way or the other around turns, holding onto her so she wouldn't move around and keeping her shoe in hand.

William broke through his emotionless wall with instructions for Mick to follow. With a deadened expression he fingered her pockets and removed the lighter as well as anything else she had on her. Phone, wallet... something small landed on the floor of the van and he set down her shoe to sweep a hand across the carpet. His fingers found a metallic object and he lifted it in front of his face. A key. He slid it into one of the wallet compartments - a cute, thin leather folder of a colour he couldn't make out in the back of the van - and pocketed it along with her lighter. It made a bulge but he didn't care. His gaze shifted off her face when William praised him for finding the prize that was the fire nymph, then he looked back at her.

"Is that why your hair's that colour?" he asked dully.

[Ehcorn]

Felicia stared disbelievingly at Mick. Was he for real? He’d just taken every last thing she had that might’ve helped her escape and he thought she’d want to chat with him about her hair? Of course being a fire nymph made her hair all the same shades of fire. He wouldn’t have been able to comment on how pretty it was otherwise. Her eyes widened when she realized she'd given him his line. A terrible, no-effort line that she’d accepted because he was hot and she’d wanted to have some fun. Christ almighty, she might as well have thrown herself into the back of the van for him.

"I made it so she cannot speak," the probably-a-vampire said. "Trust me, she has nothing of value to say."

She huffed out hard through her nose and looked askance at the carpet. If she’d had the ability to speak, she wouldn’t have wasted it on talking — she would’ve been screaming to the top of her lungs, hoping to hell someone heard her and reported it to the cops. But he'd made it so she couldn’t control her voice any more than she could hold herself steady as the clicking stopped and the van accelerated.

And kept accelerating.

Bumpy, jarring surface roads transitioned into buttery smooth freeway and her thoughts grew frantic.

Were they driving out of city now? Heading somewhere it'd be easier to get rid of her when they were finished... doing whatever they were going to do? Despair clogged her throat, but she swallowed it back and listened intently when the man up front spoke again.

"Do you still have the vial?" he asked, and Felicia’s attention returned to Mick.

[Trillian]

Mick had blanked out fully by the time William asked about the vial. He answered straight away but the question had a hold on his emotions and were dragging some of them to the surface.

"Yes." He frowned next, his feelings flickering behind his eyes as switches in his brain began to be thrown on. "Did you want to turn her into a werewolf?" he asked dubiously. He was conscious enough of the idea to disapprove though he doubted William would do such a thing to a fire nymph. Would werewolf blood even turn someone into a werewolf or would it just make them sick? Was he going to experiment and find out?

"I don't want to turn her into a werewolf," he said, remembering the animal in the cage that he'd gotten close enough to draw blood from earlier tonight. The memory made him shudder.

[Ehcorn]

Felicia was in wholehearted agreement. Lycanthropy was an untreatable magical STD that landed you in a cage once a month. Who in their right mind wanted to be a werewolf? Not that she had much of a say in the matter when she couldn’t open her mouth.

She eyed Mick, waiting to hear if he’d have to produce the vial and force her to drink it while her heartbeat pounded furiously in her ears. She almost missed the answer: No, he didn’t want to turn her into a werewolf. Felicia closed her eyes and released a grateful sigh, but her eyes shot open again when he explained his reasoning.

“Her blood will be tainted if she’s turned. No one will buy tainted blood, even from a fire nymph. It tastes terrible. She’s worth more as she is.”

Definitely-a-vampire went on to complain about a book Mick should’ve read, but she didn’t catch anything he said after that. She was too busy freaking the fuck out. The attacks hadn’t stopped. They were going to drain her. There was a flash. A memory. Telling her mom she’d got a job in the city. Having articles thrust at her. It’s not safe, baby. Look what happened to them. But it wouldn’t happen to her. Her mom was being paranoid. She was young, invincible. Stupid. So, so stupid.

Tears slipped freely down her cheeks, but it did nothing to relieve the growing ache in her chest. She’d messed up. Coming to the city, going out every night she wasn’t working, not dyeing her hair like her mom wanted — it was a series of mistakes leading her to an ending she’d never imagined for herself. She was alone. Powerless. She sniffled and thought of home, wishing she could warp herself back to Texas, rush into the living room where her mom would be up late reading, curl up on the couch with her, and never ever leave again.

As she settled into the imagined scenario, she could make out the silvery notes of a song meant to remind her that she wasn’t alone. Not really. They’d made her think she was powerless, but she wasn’t. The moon was there. She always was. She'd lend Felicia strength.

Reach, the moon sang. Just a little farther. Reach.

She reached, and when she sensed it, she gasped.

Her lighter wasn’t the only source of fire available to her after all.

[Trillian]

Mick silently objected to the nagging about the fucking book again, glaring at Fire Fairy instead because it was safer than talking back to William. He couldn't see a lot of her expression but enough to know she was spacing out. He was surprised she would give up so easily.

Then there was an almighty bang; so loud that Mick's ears felt like they were withdrawing into his head. He was momentarily stunned and then lost balance. No, wait, it was more than that, he could feel that movement had changed from going forward to flipping upward. And it was a flip, not just driving up a steep ramp, because his stomach was flipping along with it. He was blind to the momentum of the vehicle, catapulted and then smacking against multiple walls or the roof or the door or every damnable surface while the van rolled end to end and slowly coming to a stop with one final crash.

He could smell something burning... oil? That wasn't good. Mick could hear a woman screaming faintly in the distance but when his eyes found the shadowy figure of the Fire Fairy her mouth was open and the sound was coming from her... but was it? It was so muffled that it made no sense. It took him longer than it should've to realise that her screams were likely super loud and he had been partially deafened by an explosion.

What the fuck had happened? It had sounded a little like an engine blowing (which Mick had experience with, thanks to some donuts performed in a carpark some years ago, where his car overheated and blown a giant hole in the middle of the bonnet). But when that happened his car had just come to a tired stop - it hadn't flipped anywhere. This was like a bomb went off inside the van.

Fuck; she'd managed it somehow. After the first asshole almost crushing him to death and this bitch almost blowing him up, he was done with fucking nymphs. Snarling, he leapt on her injured form in the corner of the van where she'd ended up. Her arm was positioned at a weird angle, likely broken. He didn't give a shit about it. He grabbed her by her throat and started cutting off her air supply. Fucking. Bitch.

[Ehcorn]

For William, the world hadn’t just rolled over on its axis until it came to a jarring stop: it had caught fire.

The entire front half of the van was engulfed by a roaring monster of red and orange that rushed and devoured him before he could even undo his seatbelt. If humans were saplings, green in the middle and difficult to burn, then vampires were brittle dry kindling. In a matter of seconds, his exposed skin — his face, neck, and hands — went from pale white to red and raw, then blackened and charred, splitting and oozing blood thicker than a human’s. He bellowed, but only the once. When he inhaled again, superheated air seared his mouth, throat, and lungs, rendering him mute.

His conscious mind shut down. Time was irrelevant. He reached a cusp, a point where he might be absorbed by the darkness, but his instincts and sense of self-preservation took over. The moment he next became aware, he was on the ground outside of the van, rolling, trying to snuff the fire — except this fire had been whipped into a frenzy by a fearful, moon-fueled fire nymph. No matter how much he rolled, it didn’t go out. The only thing that could stop it was distracting the nymph, which Mick handled beautifully as he wrapped his fingers around Felicia’s neck, crushing her windpipe with brutal pressure that threatened to snap her spine and caused the flames to retreat back to the van.

William was left sprawled on the asphalt, an overcooked steak crackling and smoking on the grill. It would’ve been easiest to let her go the way of the earth nymph, but William rocked onto his side and pushed himself to his feet with a grimace. They’d have to get another one if she died and at this rate, he wasn’t sure he’d survive another nymph.

He shuffled step by torturous step to the rear of the van, saving his strength for the moment he ripped the door off its hinges and reached in, taking Mick by the collar of his leather jacket like a pup by the scruff of his neck so he could lift him off the girl. The human had a surprisingly good grip on her, though, and she came with him. William growled and dragged them close enough to pry Mick’s fingers off her, then took her by the broken arm — coming to an abrupt halt and hissing through his fangs when her pain mingled with his, becoming a white flash of impossibly hot fire.

Like the majority of his body, his mind had been burnt and left raw. He could no more block her than he could command her to be silent when he resumed dragging them out of the van and over to the safety of the shoulder.

Cars came to a stop around them. More were slowing. Humans were calling out, asking if they needed help. A primal need for blood that he hadn’t experienced since he’d first been fledged overcame him and with his last reserves of power, he shoved both Mick and Felicia away from him and focused on a pot-bellied man nearby with a phone in his hand

He’d called 911, he said. Police were on the way.

Don't kill her, William said mentally to Mick as he forced himself to move again. He did his best to ignore the constant pain. One foot. Then the other. When he reached the stranger, William didn't wait for him to finish voicing his concern for all of his burns. He grabbed a handful of brown hair, jerked his head back, and began to feed with the greedy neediness of a vampire a fraction of his age.

[Trillian]

Mick only managed to force his gaze from the horrific sight of William feeding on his victim when he heard someone else commenting on it. Not everybody was around this side of the van, the flames keeping most looky-loos away, but there was one guy. He was the same age as Mick, by the look, but not as beefed up. More the tall and lanky type with skinny jeans and a groomed beard. This particular brand of hipster had pulled out his phone and was filming the burnt monster sucking the life out of Beer-Belly. This was the opposite of good. This was the definition of not-fucking-good-at-all.

Mick ran at him. He'd never been much of a footballer in high school, preferring baseball to anything else, but his tackle as he threw his shoulder into the soft waist of Hipster-Dude would please any college talent scout. They landed hard on asphalt and Mick could feel the flames nearby still licking at the vehicle that Hipster-Dude had rounded to catch footage of the burnt husk that was William. He heard the profanity filled warbling coming off Hipster-Dude as he crawled off him. The prize of his phone was close to them on the ground. Mick grabbed it and looked around for a place to get rid of it.

As Hipster-Dude slowly got to his feet, Mick threw his phone into the blaze of the engine. It was nothing like the fireball that had turned William into the blackened beast he was, but it still had a hold of the van and belched great billowy clouds of ash and oil into the night sky.

He could engines slowing down and then speeding up when they passed, the toots of irritated, impatient drivers and the choked sobbing of the Fire Fairy bitch at his back as she nursed her broken arm and tried to suck in air.

But above all that, in the distance, he could hear sirens. "We gotta move!" he yelled, hoping William's snack had car keys on him.

[Ehcorn]

With every frantic beat of the big man’s heart, blood poured into William’s mouth; it was hot and metallic and not enough. Growling, he tore through skin and a thick layer of fat, seeking more veins, more arteries, more blood. He dimly registered the wail of sirens but would've dismissed them as too far away to matter if it hadn’t been for Mick’s warning. He was right. They needed to leave before the police showed up. His desire for blood was far from satiated, but even if he drained the human straining weakly against him, he was certain his clawing, gnawing hunger wouldn’t fade. They had to get home, where he could nurse his wounds and feed as much and for as long as he needed until he healed.

Fortunately, after a quick scan, he determined his snack did have his keys. Unfortunately, it required fishing in his pocket for them.

William gritted his teeth and shoved his fingers in, stifling curses when his charred skin peeled back, sending waves of pain surging through his hand and into his arm. Somehow, he still managed to hook one of his fingers in a metal ring and pulled the keys out, though he wasn't able to hang onto them much longer than that. They slipped from his bloodied fingers and clattered to the ground next to his feet. Mick would have to come to him to get them.

Keys. Black truck, William sent Mick’s way, his mental voice as strained as his physical one would’ve been had he been able to pry his teeth loose to speak. Then he showed Mick an image of a shiny Chevrolet with an extended cab and bed: Their new ride.

Before he could talk himself out of it, William jammed his skinless hand into his own pocket to pull out his wad of knock-off Wizard String. It wasn’t as effective as what Wardens carried around — which the earth nymph had demonstrated when he’d started a fucking earthquake in William’s house — but it’d have to do.

The girl, he said, dropping the string next to the keys. He sent another image, this one of Felicia, who’d come to her feet and started to limp her way back to the freeway, croaking out plaintive requests for help. William left Mick to deal with her and began to drag his semi-conscious friend towards the truck, intending on bringing him along with them.

He would finish eating on the road.

[Trillian]

* * *

Mick pulled their new truck into the garage after some fussing. There was no more garage remote - it had blown up with the van. The only thing that had been salvaged was their lives (and William's only barely, from the ruined mess that had been him on the side of the highway), the blood phial in Mick's pocket (still intact by some small mercy), Fire Bitch (thrown into the back of the cab where she'd been warned to be quiet or she would be drained next, and thankfully all that had sounded were sniffles) and William with his Snack-Man.

Mick had looked at William far too much during the drive. Every few seconds his gaze would find the charred vampire in the rear-view mirror as a sense of unreality poured over him. Fire Bitch was likely uneasy sitting beside William listening to him slurp up Snack Man and he felt vindicated by it. The stupid slut had almost killed him and had made everything ten times harder than it needed to be. He hated her for the trouble she'd caused.

In the darkness of the garage he felt relief but it was short lived. They had to start putting their shit away. Mick had put the phial of werewolf blood into the glovebox and that was where he left it for the moment; it was out of harm's way. He didn't want it breaking after they'd managed to get it home. He hopped out of the cab and opened the door on the side where Snack-Man was but he wasn't prepared for the weight of the man as he fell out.

Dead weight.

Mick struggled beneath him before he was forced to drop him onto the cement floor. Meaty flesh fell onto the ground with a slap that had Mick pulling a face. He looked away from the fresh corpse so he could look at William. It was still dark in the garage but his eyes had adjusted to the dim light and he could swear that the vampire didn't look anywhere near as bad anymore - but he wasn't great.

[Ehcorn]

Although Mick had cleared a path for him to exit the truck, William remained in his seat with his eyes closed and his raw hands hovering above his lap. He’d woven tendrils of his awareness through the tapestry of Mick’s mind and followed a thread to the section that processed visual information — he was looking through the human’s eyes, seeing himself as Mick saw him.

He remembered a time witches had been revered and were sought out by kings for their advice and blessings, but he also remembered when the world had turned against them. He looked like what happened when a person was tied to a stake, a fire was set beneath their feet, and they were left to cook for a couple of hours. Where his pale skin hadn’t turned to glossy black charcoal, it’d fissured and peeled away to reveal angry red tissue beneath, but Mick was right: he had healed some since he’d fed. He’d stopped oozing blood, and countless nerve endings had repaired themselves and were busy screaming at him because they were afraid he wasn't aware he’d been burnt to a fucking crisp by a fire nymph.

Without opening his eyes, William turned his face towards Mick, the taut skin on his neck popping and crackling and flaring pain as it split. As his body continued to heal, the pain would fade, but his humiliation wouldn’t.

His hair — from the top of his head to his eyebrows and down to his beard — was gone, and it wouldn’t grow back.

No, not great, he said, his peevishness transferring perfectly well through his mental voice. Then he faced forward again. He didn’t budge after that, not even when the nymph disrupted the stillness of the moment by throwing open the door closest to her and launching herself out of the truck. There was a clatter and a series of crashes as she kicked her remaining heel off and knocked over a shelf lined with various tools on her way into the house.

He didn’t have to read her mind to know that she intended to find out if she could escape through one of the doors she'd find there.

Tie her up this time, William said. Or break her fucking legs, I don't care. Just keep it from happening again.

[Trillian]

Grimly, Mick nodded, his mind answering in the affirmative without conscious awareness and he turned to follow their pet Fire Fairy into the house. She was disoriented, in pain and afraid for her life which made her easy to catch up with but he could still feel a tendril of fear curling in his gut and making him want to piss his pants. It just made him angrier, that she could make him feel this way. The only time he'd ever experienced such terror had been when an assault rifle had been pointed at his head by a dumb thug that hadn't recognised him as a friendly. Lucky the boss had been there and come out to see who was disturbing the peace. The fucker had laughed and cleared Mick as one of theirs. Later, Mick had followed that thug outside and smacked him in the back of the head with a piece of two-by-four. Cowardly but effective. The bastard had come to and not remembered any of that particular day, including pointing his gun at Mick.

He didn't have to punch Fire Fairy in the back of the head to knock her out. He'd trapped her in the corridor as she'd struggled to turn the knob with a palm filled with blood and sweat. She'd screamed when he'd caught up with her and it was cut short when his fist connected with her face. Even while unconscious, as he picked her up fireman-style, he was afraid of her, and he hated her for that even more.

He took her downstairs to the same cell the other nymph had been in, switching on lights as he went because the darkness was too complete. Harsh white light burnt into his retinas. The holding room was clean now; well, cleanish, there were obvious stains on the floor that hadn't fully come out and the cracks were still running up the walls. Let it serve as a reminder how dangerous these fairies were.

Mick all but threw her down onto the chair and stared at her for a long moment, unreality sinking in of how this whole night had gone. She'd let him pick her up for a one night stand. No doubt she didn't feel vulnerable like a lot of other women did; she could set her would-be rapists on fire. Well, he intended on her experiencing that vulnerability. Fucking bitch. With rage so heavily in his chest that he felt like he was suffocating, and a matching beat in his temples, he undressed her down to her underwear. He threw her clothes outside of the room into the corridor and then returned to strap her down. He took no care with her broken arm and she whimpered even in her lack of consciousness... or she was coming to. He didn't know. Backing up and looking at his handiwork, seeing her cute body dressed in pretty matching underthings, made him feel ashamed in a way he hadn't expected.

He ran out the door and shut it behind him, drawing the heavy bolt across that would lock her in. His heart pounded with his fear and tears fell down his cheeks. He wiped them off his face with harsh pushes from his palms and cleared his throat a few times before gathering up her clothes. He held them in a tight bundle and went upstairs to find William, to see if he could help him in any way.

[Ehcorn]

Another grisly scene had played out upstairs in the kitchen.

Shredded blood bags were scattered over the counters, with smears of dark red painted across the marble tops like one of William's modern abstracts. Cabinets had been flung wide open and cotton puffs, gauze, and everything he hadn’t needed from the first aid kit he’d ripped apart had been thrown aside.

William stood at the epicenter with his head down, fumbling with a pair of tweezers. The feeling hadn’t returned to his blackened fingertips yet. And it didn't help that when he tried to squeeze the pointy metal tips over a piece of cloth that’d fused to his chest, his fingers shook violently enough that the tweezers flew from his hand. They pinged off the tiled floor, resulting in a low growl of frustration that was cut short by a string of hacking coughs that had him reaching for the counter and hanging on so he didn't hit the ground too.

As the coughs faded, he realized Mick had found him. He didn’t want the human to see him hunched over like a decrepit old man, but there was no helping it. His coughing fit had set every cell on fire. For now, moving was out of the question. All he could do was clench his jaw and stare hard at the human with pain-glossed blue eyes, daring him to make some asinine comment about his appearance or inability to stand up straight.

[Trillian]

It was like looking at an entirely different creature. The alien in the kitchen still kind of looked like William, like some kind of lava monster bursting out of the vampire's skin. Those eyes, though, when they connected with his own the intensity was eerily familiar.

He could feel an apology forming on his lips - an unwanted one, an unwarranted one. But still it tried to form. It itched in his head like saying sorry would be the scratch that cured it, but he fought it anyway. William wouldn't care about nor desire his sorries.

He looked down at the thing that had caught William's attention before he had. It took him a quick scan to find it; the tweezers that required a dextrous touch. Mick moved to them and plucked them off the floor. He blew imaginary dirt off them and wondered vaguely if he should bleach them or something before he dismissed the concern as the last of William's problems.

Mick closed the gap between Lava Monster and himself, slower in his approach than he had the tweezers. Halfway in the kitchen and closer to the blood bags he could now smell them as well as see them, the metallic quality of the splattered plastic. The fear he'd experienced with the Fire Fairy returned again as he considered maybe William had run out of blood but still needed more, and now here he was, approaching the Lava Monster with a body full of what he needed to get better.

He faltered but got moving again. Tweezers in hand, he meant to ask; what do you need me to do?, but what came out was a little closer to his thoughts.

"What do you need from me?"