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 ofVitalis-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.
2
MERCER
Mercer had not expected to spend the day alone. The scowl his daughter was sending him across the kitchen table, though, told him he had to revise his Saturday plans.
“I thought we were going to do something fun?” he ventured anyway. “Go to the lake? If you’re feeling well enough, I could rent us a canoe.”
With an air fit for a 14th century general instead of a pale, freckle-faced middle schooler shoveling down a bowl of cereal, her dark braids crammed into a beanie, Lydia replied, “I’m busy.”
Mercer had eaten his own breakfast hours ago, but he picked at a few of the cereal’s marshmallows from the center of his palm. “You sleep in until all hours of the morning and then you’re busy?”
