Act IV -- For night-bound eyes are blind unto the day

Although time had proved the vampire had little qualms curling up to sleep in the comforting darkness of a corner like an animal, his roost in his shadows had something of a frightful dignity to it. With his heavy wings tucked close to his sides in great sweeps of claw and rough-edged membrane, he might have been a statue carved deep into the stone bowels of a cathedral, meant to coax terror and dread into the hearts of errant sinners.

His sleep was bestial, monstrous, and nothing like the gentleman he so often pretended to be. His hair splayed like a colony of a fungus beneath a tree’s roots, the ghostly threads like unseen spiders in the dark.

He did not dream. The phantasms that once visited his sleeping brain had died along with him and had not returned upon his first needless breath. In truth, he could not remember what it was to dream; he slept like the dead, his moments of consciousness punctuated by periods of blackness so dense and so dark that nothing but a thin, instinctual responsiveness to his surroundings could penetrate them.

It was not enough to remember upon waking, this intuitive awareness of the space beyond his body. The bat did not dream, he did not remember, and he was not plagued by nightmares.

It was strange, then, that his body seemed to come alive now with a convulsive shudder. He fell to the ground with a velvety thud, the gruesome fruit of some terrible tree.  His nostrils flared in the darkness. The vampire’s sightless eyes remained hidden beneath their bruised lids, proof that he was still locked beneath the impenetrable veil of sleep.

But he moved with a clumsy single-mindedness, drawn almost instinctively to a non-descript patch of floor, as though pierced through by tenterhooks that snagged his tendon and pulled his ligament with a call he could not resist. He fell to his knees and then to the floor and scrabbled, briefly, at the darkness, as though straining for something to press close to his breast.

But tonight the floor was not darkened with soot and saturated with the smell of rain. After his initial search proved fruitless, the bat soon fell still.

He awoke then, fully for the first time, from his somnambulist wandering. He slid from sleep like a snake slips into cold water, his blank eyes opening to darkness and his chest heaving with breath. For a brief moment his wings arched above his head in bristling unease, his fingers flexing against the floor. But he quickly regained his bearings, the shadows that surrounded him familiar to blind senses, and he softened into the floor with a long exhale.

Time passed silently. The bat did not move from his sprawl in the center of his room. Soon, even through the layers of stone and plaster that cradled his quarters, he could sense the sun sliding weakly beyond the horizon.

Darkness fell on the island and still, the bat waited. Sleep did not come. But he knew something – someone – would.

It was late, much too late when the omen eventually returned to the vampire’s dark. He had lingered in the corridor for a time, relishing the isolated stretch of hall, or hoping to entice pity from a late night wanderer. Fabien did not like that this familiar door, this battered door that housed such horrors, was never quiet. He had practised slipping slowly through it, like a rebellious teenager seeking to sneak home undetected. But it always betrayed him somehow, whining softly, groaning at the feel of his weight against it. The omen never thought his scent might give him away most, or the soft sound of his corrupted lungs rattling like wooden toys abandoned in a nursery. He had broken his curfew by several hours, and time had simply run away from him again, fluttered from his soot dusted palms like a moth. He had slept somewhere else, curled in a bed of golden leaves which were now entangled in his hair with twigs and the juice of autumnal berries.  The omen closed the door behind him with an awkward gentleness, falsely sweet in its consideration, even if it was fuelled by fear. Though his eyes beamed like lanterns, they did not adjust quickly to the dark and he was momentarily blinded. With skeletal fingers stretched forth, he shuffled a step or two forward, feeling his way through the murk. But when his toes brushed briefly against the bat’s fur, the youth staggered back like a Sheppard boy discovering a sleeping bear. He did not however step too far aside, and began instead to lower slowly to the floor, his weary knee joints crackling like embers as he did so.

The slowness of his gesture seemed sacred somehow, like one setting into prayer, kneeling before some hallowed ancestral site. Anxiety had made him so slow, so cautious. He hoped perhaps to simply sink low, stretch out upon the floor and position himself as if he’d always been there. Had not been away too long, perched upon the rooftops, his eyes mirroring storm clouds that drifted lonesome across the sea.  The breath that caught and gurgled deep within his chest was surprisingly soft and calm, a contradiction to the tense heart and shadows of unease that were etched upon his sharp features. The collared fox continued to seek the floor, his leaf strewn tail whispering upon the surface in a soft sigh as it curled about his ankles.

Tariq’s sightless eyes were lazily hooded by his hoarfrost-rimmed eyelids. The open door bled warm, yellow light from the corridor into the bat’s darkness that his eyes reflected in twin pools of black, like bloodstains on the carpet. They watched silently, liquid predator’s eyes, as the boy trembled his way to the floor.

Almost instinctively, his hand found the boy’s throat, gripping it as though he were a misbehaved dog. The bat might not dream—but there was something in the way his hand gripped the slender curve of his throat that suggested it was done as much to reassure himself the omen was not a figment as it was to alert him that the bat was very much awake and alert to his presence.

“And where have you waited out the sun, my sweet prince du sang?” He breathed gentle against the boy’s ear. There was a distant tongue of breath in his tone that whispered quiet warnings of undernourishment. His hand shifted, brushing clumps of dirt and curling leaves from the wisps of his spiderweb hair.

He gathered himself from the floor in a hiss of slithering wing. The tense omen was bundled in his arms like a dying child, the hand at the back of his neck stifling any ill-fated resistance. His thin-boned, whipcord frame folded easily against the vampire’s solid chest.

“Dreaming of dark wings that belong, instead, to the birds in the sky above?” Navigating the door handle required thoughtlessly nudging the boy upward like a sack of potatoes. Once in the hall the bat dropped him gracelessly to the floor. His heavy wings bunched like draped fabric at his sides, the point of ivory claws like glinting teeth. His fur seemed too dark, bathed as it was in the light of the corridor, as though his shadows still clung around him. “Move.” Once the omen found his feet, aided by a jerk to the hair if he was not hasty enough, the bat guided him with a firm hand at his lower back down the hall, scattering crumbling leaves in their wake.

The door was one that was usually busy, although the lateness of the hour left it abandoned. The bat eased through, ushering the omen before him, and the pair was blasted by the chill night air from the balcony that barely left enough room for the two padded seats on it.

From all sides, the ocean stretched before them like a black canvas slashed through with the white-tipped caps of wave. The moon was a grim crescent surrounded by a milky halo of stars. Her reflection in the water wavered nervously as the waves beat against the stone below them, gurgling and hissing like a great, wet beast. The spray flecked them in a faint sheen of sea-foam that the omen likely felt as a lattice of needles.

The vampire’s pelvis forced the boy against the slippery railing in a gesture that was delicately obscene. He folded his long fingers over the omen’s hands, trapping them on the cool stone. “What was it that so tempted you to break my rules?” His voice had dropped to a lazy whisper, hardly audible above the hiss of the ocean below. It circled the boy’s slender throat like a noose. “Tell me what you see, Fabien.”

The bat caught the boy in mid-breath, holding the air fast in his lungs, and trapping it at the back of his throat. The boldly twitching fox tail trembled briefly, before it slithered away to cower between his grubby feet. The omen clenched his eyelids shut, though it was foolish of him to expect something as simple as a strike.

He did not wish to be moved, perhaps because now he tried to prepare, clear spaces for himself in readiness. He pulled against the vampire’s grasp, pushed back against the harness of his palm and croaked a watery, futile “Wait.”

But too quickly oppressive darkness had lifted from him, and now the narrow corridor stretched fourth in a disorientating whirl. He hadn’t expected to find himself back here, not so soon. Suddenly the interior was more appealing, and his body moved as if to crawl back there, back into more familiar territory. Some thin grain of normalcy was a comfort he intended to cling to. The omen did not raise his eyes toward his master, not until he was ordered to rise, and only then was he startled into action. Slowly the boy rose, one foot at a time, like a page at court until he stood, knees trembling in confusion. His arthritically curled fingers moved to dust his shoulders and arms, and smooth the scraps of cloth that could no longer pass for garments. It was a ridiculous act in itself, but the action was derived more from a frail memory than an attempt at self-depreciating humour.

Though there had been a time, hadn’t there, when it was necessary to neaten?  He was sure of it, but could just no longer recall the cause.

The bat moved much too quickly for the youth, and often he stumbled, tripping over his own feet. The thin splinters of jet that were his pupils flitted often to the vampire’s profile, though he hadn't dare let a single word escape his teeth. His heart was in his throat, clambering like the tin cymbals of some novelty monkey automata.

He slipped into the cold gasp of night air like one falling into water, rediscovering the breath that had been lodged at the back of his throat since the bat had touched him. The cursed youth squinted into the darkness, cringed back from the spray, and sought to angle his body around towards the vampire in an attempt to speak. But he was pressed against the rail before such an opportunity could arise.

“I don’t remember” the boy lied, thoughtlessly, and impulsively. The weakly constructed excuse of a disobedient child, though sometimes there was truth in it, just not this time. “I don’t feel so good out here, Monsieur” he whined softly, he smell of the sea this close was affecting.  It made his stomach knot with nausea and eyes begin to redden and glaze with unsalted tears. The boy swallowed heavily, his mind rolling the question over before he provided an answer.

“It ... will be a trick, if I tell you. Whatever I tell you, you will make into something bad” he stammered softly, his eyes struggling to focus somewhere upon the vast expanse of inky water.

The brisk night air seemed to have invigorated Tariq. The last of the vagaries of sleep that clung like cobwebs had melted away, and his silhouette had been honed to one of sharp edges and keen, patient hunger, accentuated by the predatory curve of his wings in stately shadows at his shoulders. He inhaled the briny scent of the sea deep into his weary lungs, the omen pressed close enough to feel his ribs flex as his chest expanded.

The bat’s hand slipped upward at the boy’s surly defense, moving with spider-like ease from its grip of his hand to hold him unnervingly at the base of his neck. The sudden pressure forced him nearly to tiptoes against the waist-high balcony.

“Do not lie to me.” His voice remained soft as crushed velvet, although the click of his teeth in his jaw seemed to sharpen dangerously as he bit off the words. He moved forward forcefully, crushing the omen uncomfortably between the stone railing and the coolness of the vampire’s long frame. A sharp gust of wind flung a handful of sea-spray to splatter the ground at their feet, coaxing a piercing commotion from wakened birds in the distance. The vampire exhaled slowly. “Or you will feel much worse.”

The hand cradling the back of his neck slunk around to encircle his throat. It was a cruel grip that held him firmly and much too strained on the pads of his toes. “Do you think, beloved,” His lips were cold at the crown of his spine, his words deceptively patient. “That it will be better to refuse me?” He allowed the boy to digest his words in silence, the sound of the ocean around them filling the silence with its persistent, sloshing night-songs.

“Do not make me tell you again.” Cold lips painted a burning kiss at the strip of his bony spine exposed between the bat’s long fingers.

With both palms flat upon the cool stone, the boy became momentarily still and rigid within the vampire’s grasp. Only the dreadful proximity of rabid sea foam made him livid, and tempted the boy’s foxen tail to spring back into life. Leaf strewn fur, crackling with anxiety, lapped and lashed against the bat’s thigh with all the agitation of a cat. So too did the boy’s sharply pointed ears begin to quiver finely, animalistic in their response to this most ghastly of dangers. The youth’s greyish pallor had been bleached to a ghostly white, and though the bat pressed firm into him, he began to seek a way free. It seemed there were fingers within that dark water, fingers that reached for him, that wanted him. And he twisted toward the bat for protection, seeking safety from the cruel embrace of the sea.

His attention had disintegrated, and the overwhelming nature of their location made him dumb, No answer was quickly fourth coming. But slowly, and with time, the connections reformed, and the omen drifted back to complete the vampire’s request. His throat flexed against the tight grip imposed upon bruised flesh, and he looked. Somewhere deep into the horizon a ribbon of lightning brightened the sky like a jewel, and it reflected in the boy’s eyes like a crack through mirror glass.

“I see darkness, only darkness. There is nothing else to see,” he rasped softly, providing only a minimal answer which was scraped together and delivered without finesse.

“...At least not here, Monsieur, not here. It would be much better a view point higher up, can’t we move higher?” The sly words were weaved carefully, and would have been quite successfully conniving, had he not slipped back towards a pleading whine.
“It is not so good a look-out here for sightseeing Maítre, it is too flat-“The street urchin suggested, forgetting himself briefly. Suddenly this was Paris at night, and he knew where the most picturesque views of the Seine could be found, could guide them there.

The boy shifted his weight from toe to toe, trying to avoid the burning, sizzling water that pooled about them.

“There is only water here, dark, dark water,” he wheezed softly.
Somewhere far ahead, lightning struck for a second time, illuminating a silvery expanse of cloud.

“And stars.”

The cool night air whispered along the boy’s clavicle, etching a line of chill across the flesh. It caught the bat’s hair, momentarily whipping it across the omen’s cheek before flinging it back behind them, a ghostly banner of cobwebs and ragged moonlight in the darkness.

Tariq did not shift to allow the boy to cringe back from the hissing waves. Every twisting attempt to step back from the bannister was met with stony indifference from the bat’s long frame, his grip like marble and the look in his blank eyes far, far away.

“Would you like to know what I see, beloved?”

He threw back his head, the silver pinpricks of stars above reflecting in his dead-water eyes. Dark lips twisted in what might have been a quiet disdain, his breath cool against the back of the omen’s slight neck.

“I see the only resting place your tired bones will ever have. When you have suffered for me... after I have cut you a thousand times, drained the last of the heat from your body and the blood from your veins, after I have split your bones into shards and licked the last of the sweet marrow from their inside—“ he paused, a fine shiver tracing up his wings as though the imagery left him breathless. Blank eyes caught the moonlight and flashed a predatory silver.

“I will gather you in my arms for the last time, Fabien, and I will dump what is left of your broken body into the dark, dark water.” Another flare of lightning, followed swiftly by a grumbling crack of thunder, interrupted him. The bat paused as a fine sheen of rain, hardly more than a heavy mist, began falling. The ocean responded like a sluggish beast woken from its sleep. It began beating against the cliff with renewed vigor, spraying spurts of foam into the air.

“Perhaps not this water... perhaps not this sea. But were I you, I would hope with every bone that you were truly dead and not merely bound and bleeding before that water swallowed you.” He shifted against the omen’s spine, grinding him against the railing as the bat silently regarded the black water below. “At least you will have your stars.” His grip on his throat twisted to allow air unhindered into his lungs. “Do you think I speak the truth about your grave?” He spoke the words lightly, conversationally, although each one was deliberate and taut with a terrible tension.

Fabien persisted in his fruitless attempts to slip free, and refused to relent. Not now, in this frustrating hold against cold stone, perhaps not ever. It was, at the very least, always better to struggle.  The omen replied immediately to the bat’s words with a sharp, stiff shake of the head which at first seemed to indicate churlish indifference. But he was instead compelled by a sincere desire not to know what he saw, nor hear what he had to say. The proud points of his foxen ears lowered sharply, before they nestled deep into his tangled wheaten hair where they continued to lurk unhappily. As the vampire continued to speak, the boy fidgeted aggressively for a time, until he was eventually lulled to perfect stillness like a wild animal soothed by a lullaby.  The image was too vivid, and made more terrible by the deep, taunting sting of sea water upon his ashen cheeks. Every tendon and muscle inside his scarred throat flexed against the harsh grip that encircled his throat as he sought a deeper, more rejuvenating mouthful of air.

The gentle glow of the cursed creature’s eyes settled somewhere upon the dim light of horizon, until the next thread of lightning caused he jaw to stiffen. Secretly he prayed to any Gods that smiled favourably on him to send a blade of lightning to finish them both right there.  He would sacrifice himself to it, if only to obtain the brief satisfaction that his death might cause the bat even a shard of displeasure. “Votre vision doit être impeccable” the omen croaked hastily beneath his breath when the vampire’s grip finally relaxed.

“Oui, I believe you...” he wheezed softly, struggling to obtain a satisfactory breath.
“...Though I did not take you for a Seer, Monsieur. “  His words were soaked in false admiration, though spoken sharply from behind a fence of gritted teeth.  

It seemed it was much too terrible to think another should have such power over his fate strand, and soon repressed frustration and anger rose hotly from his chest, stiffening the boy’s shoulders. He sank his pointed teeth deep into the flesh of his disobedient tongue, impaling the traitorous muscle until his mouth welled with blood. His efforts were not well disguised, and they were so, so dangerous. At any moment it seemed he might challenge the vampire’s words, unperturbed by the promise of unspeakable agony.  Terrifying though it was, it would eventually have to end. All things had their ending, and so would he. Better that, than to live the remainder of his immortality quivering under the shadow of death like some simpering, pathetic mortal.

And yet for now, no words came.

The tattered and wind-swept shirt the boy had scrounged had become thin with water, sticking to his slight chest as though to guard him from the stinging caresses of the sea. However, it proved little resistance to the creeping prowl of the vampire’s spindly fingers that crept cunningly up the small of his spine. He played over the boy’s gaunt ribs as though stroking a cat. The tips of his fingers pressed unnecessarily sharp into the valleys between the juts of bone.

“I see more than you would credit me, little one.” The bat’s teeth came together alarmingly near the tip of a fox ear. “Would you like to know what else I see?” This time, the sharp point of his canines neatly impaled the delicate flesh of his inner ear, removing a sliver from the crescent and staining the thin fur as a fine trickle of hot blood eagerly met the cool night air. Its copper scent ripened in the air, mingling with the brine of the sea.

“I see you remembering this moment the next night you are tempted to close your eyes in a darkness other than my own.” The hand about his throat momentarily slipped away to grasp the railing as though in support. His fingers came away slicked with the ocean-water that had pooled in glistening beads on the stone.

“Because if you do not, perhaps your final warning will be the fish kissing the last of the flesh from your empty eye sockets.” The bat peeled the omen’s shirt away from the skin only enough to slip his second hand beneath it, tracing a trail of inflamed skin from his chest to his throat as his slickened fingers enclosed his slender neck once more, sealing the sting of salt-water in a ring.

He forcibly turned the boy’s head to the side by the jaw, his mouth meeting the omen’s salt-raw lips with tangible pleasure. His tongue forced its way past the resistance of his lips, his mouth warm and wet and tasting faintly of blood. Heavy wings fluttered in a black shiver before stilling into great swathes of shadow at his side. The vampire pulled away with a sharp exhale.

“Do you think, beloved—“ His breath flickered soft and gentle against the sensitive skin at the back of his neck, swiftly followed by the firm chill of his teeth as they pressed into the curve where shoulder met neck. They lingered, but did not pierce the flesh. “That you will remember? Do you think, Fabien—“ Another press of his teeth, a cold kiss that threatened a bright bloom of pain. “That you will have the sense to heed?”

Watery light had carved the omen’s features into an artful expression of contempt; a marble Ganymede, his ashen skin as white as a stone. Distraction had shaped his mouth into a thin line of displeasure, formed the gentle light of his eyes into two angry sickles, their cat-like pupils perfectly still. So lost was he to the bat’s words, that it was little wonder as to why his initial caress was ignored, why his fingers were allowed to slide freely across the grey skin with a certain docile familiarity. The youth remained still while the fires of his irritation were excited, the slight crinkling of flesh across his finely sculpted nose sufficient evidence enough of his stance. No more words Monsieur, no more visions, he’d had his fair share of them for one night.

However, as soon as his lips parted as though permitted to state his concern, the only thing that escaped them was a hiss of discomfort.  His soot-black ear twitched with pain, and immediately sought to nestle deeper into the knotted wheat coloured hair. Blood continued to bead like tree sap from the slight wound, until it eventually dyed his bleached hair in a vibrant steak of red not so dissimilar to a satin ribbon.

When the vampire’s hand moved aside, the omen’s fingers took quick advantage of their temporary freedom and snaked up to comfort his weeping ear. Just as their tips were about to touch blooded fur, the youth’s features clouded with confusion. At first he merely glanced down with an animal dumbness, puzzled by his Master’s actions.
And then the pain came.

The boy buckled against the vampire’s chest, the skin under his palm turning molten as angry blisters began to erupt rose-like across his ashen skin. He seemed to crumble inwardly, fingers mutilated into arthritic expression of terrible pain. A half attempted gasp was sealed between their mouths, breathed in a frightened whimper against the bat’s lips and tongue. And when they parted, his parched lips remained gaping in silent agony until a thin line of bloodied spit seeped in a slow trickle down the corner of his chin.

The boy was frozen with pain, but he forced an answer from his lungs.  “O-oui... oui, d’accord, I’ll remember “he wheezed softly, scorched lips trembling, eyes glazed with pain induced tears.

“I’ll... remember it Monsieur, je promets.”

The briny water continued to gnaw away at his flesh, refashioning it into a reddened honeycomb as it melted through him like acid, edging perilously towards his bones. Perhaps the bat’s fine ears would even be rewarded with the soft spit and crackle as salted water gorged upon his cursed flesh.

“Laisse-moi aller, s'il vous plaít, Monsieur...  it hurts.”

The film of tears that had formed across the balls of his eyes broke, and droplets of unsalted water fell heavy upon his cheek.

Tariq held the omen close by the throat, stilling the instinctive, bucking fear that jolted through him at the pain searing his nerves raw against the impassiveness of his own still body. “Hush, child. Be still, be still.” His voice was soft, his tone tender and lightly crooning against the tortured skin as the boy writhed beneath his hands.

His fingers remained closed about the thin stem of his neck, the blisters that swelled beneath his fingertips spilling from beneath his hand, growing in angry streaks where the salted fingers had brushed against the flesh of his chest.

The vampire abruptly lifted the boy by the throat, supporting his weight behind the knees. He turned and laid him out, the final sprawl of a plague victim, on the padded chairs behind him, far from the worst of the stinging spray of the sea. Only then did he remove the hand emblazoning a painful sigil of crimson across the birds-wing of his collarbones.

The bat knelt beside the sprawled boy, one leg straddling his midsection. Gently, he took his face between his long hands, the salt on his fingers diluted enough to only be a mild irritant. He licked the hot tears from his cheeks. “So prettily you burn for me, Fabien,” he murmured absently into his cheekbone, lips meeting at the corner of his lips in a fluttery kiss. His tongue fell low to the tormented skin that had warped and simmered beneath his touch. Slowly, languidly, black eyes hidden behind their dusky eyelids, he sucked the salt from the flesh, his mouth tender, his affections as patient as any healer.

He continued to remove the salt like a hungry beast, something animal and terrible lurking in the shadow of the skilled movements of his tongue. Only after the last pinprick of sea-brine had been removed did he shift, ease the boy’s tattered shirt up to his throat to allow him access to the streaks of burning flesh marring his chest. These too were tended to with delicate care, his mouth warm and tender despite the pain it was sure to evoke across the damaged nerves.

The soft, misty rain continued to fall, chilling the air and glazing everything with a faint, crystalline sheen. It dewed in orbs on the bat’s fur, making him appear half-drowned. The ruff of fur around his neck was made shaggy with water, until he looked like a great, feral beast half-crouched over his shivering prey.

“My tender fox,” he sighed softly as he finished removing the salt from the wounds, his breath tangible on raw skin. Split tongue licked the last of the taste of the omen’s skin from his lips with quiet relish. “It will be a pity if I have to kill you so soon. You are not hoping for that, are you? Not when you can sleep in such peace in my shadows.” He crooned the words softly, affectionately, his fingers idly soothing through his matted hair.

Fabien had been petrified, inside and out. Shock had solidified his joints, turned his veins to ice, hardened the curve of his spine. The boy heard the vampire speak as through from behind a wall, or down in the deepest recesses of the ocean. When he seemed to claw his way back, his behaviour was like one who had been set alight to, desperate in his need to douse the pain. The boy’s frail, panic stricken chest heaved against the bats palm, but he let the vampire reposition him like a mannequin. Settled rigidly upon the cushions, the bright gleam of his eyes showcased the full horror of mutilated, blistering skin. It was not the most dreadful of wounds the vampire had inflicted upon him, but the look of it induced such horror in the boy, that his fingers desperately sought the vampire’s forearm for comfort.  

Fear had tightened his asthmatic lungs so severely, that the lack of breath had begun to darken the boy’s lips and make his vision flicker. As though the phantom grip his Master’s palms were still tight about his throat, crushing his windpipe.  

His flesh was raw, and it ached miserably as the bat soothed away the cruel bite of the ocean’s kiss. Yet the omen was a fine patient, lifeless as a corpse as he lay there, fighting against the dark shroud of unconsciousness. Only his bony fingertips moved, shifting through the vampire’s sodden fur as he held fast to him. When he spoke of peace, unobtainable peace, more tears began to slide in heavy steams down the side of the youth’s temples. His chest convulsed sharply, stifled a sob, and the fingers of one hand moved to probe tentatively at his seared skin. He could not bring himself to answer such a question. There was no rest for him there, in the dark, where his body betrayed him even from the realm of dreams.

“I would not wish to die like that Monsieur... to suffer.” The boy breathed sharply, his voice little more than a shuddering whisper, as small and distant as the ghost of a child. This child though, who had witnessed festivals of execution, one of the many sons who had watched the birth of Madame Guillotine, and who could only dream of such a swift and efficient end.

“Ne me fais pas souffrir... s’il vous plaít, Monsieur. Not that.”
The omen strove to sit up somewhat, his creeping skeletal fingertips worrying across the vampire’s fur. The beggar boy seeking but a single scrap of mould encrusted bread, the pauper striving to appease the king. First the one hand, then both, grasping and stroking, desperate for reassurance as he continued to arch up, fold in, shift closer. There was something awful about the neediness, a hysteria lurking just at the edges, a sickness. As though he might nuzzle his skull against the vampire’s shoulder like a deranged cat, or try to kiss his palms.

“Can you not promise this one thing?” the boy croaked weakly,

Tariq allowed the boy to grasp his arm and borrow his steady strength as he finished worrying the last of the sea-water from his flesh. However, as he struggled to sit upright, the bat placed a long palm on his still-bared chest and gently forced him back against the seat. The omen’s chest continued to heave beneath the weight of his hand and the bat’s skeletal fingers trembled softly.

“Quiet, quiet,” he breathed, the words too steeped in soft affection to truly be a command. He shifted, drew his leg nearer to allow him to rest his head on the omen’s stomach like a great hound. He remained silent for some time, keen ears sipping in the boy’s ragged breath, the panicked flutter of his old heart. His enormous wings had collapsed around him, transformed into a worn cape about his shoulders that trailed to the ground. It was only after the boy had regained a measure of calm, only after his hysteria had receded just enough to insure he would not lose consciousness that his lips parted.  

“I will not promise you anything, beloved.” The words were gentle, measured, each one carefully composed before rolling from his snake’s-tongue. The vampire’s hand found the boy’s matted hair and idly stroked it, crooked fingers tangling in knotted curls. “I can not. Perhaps you will suffer for me, choking on blood and sea-water even as the wreckage of your eyes trickle from their sockets.”

He placed his hand gently over the omen’s eyes, blinding him to the grey-misted sky above. His own blighted eyes could not see how the thin rain had transformed the boy’s skin into something of glistening silver, smooth and aquatic, marred only by the raging wounds that burned roughly across the flesh.

“Or perhaps, dear creature—“ His volume dropped, lowered until it was nearly lost in the sound of the swells still beating against their enclave.  “I will gather you to my chest as you sleep and rip your tender throat out before you have even opened your eyes.” The vibration of the words could be felt in the throat that rested against the boy’s side. His palm remained pressed gently over his eyelids, the pressure just enough to stifle further attempts to rise.

“Do not let it worry you. It is for me to decide. Until then, you can be a good boy, and we will not have to visit this scene.” He lifted his head, dark eyes glowing a ghostly silver in the moonlight. “You can do that, non?” His breath was as soft as the sweetly whispered words across the painfully stippled flesh.

Fabien was soothed so easily by the vampire’s soft words, and the firm press of his hand. And yet his frail sobs of discontent persisted, often catching at the back of his thin throat, and jolting his scorched torso gently against the dull pressure of the bat’s skull. When bid to hush, he did, purpled eyelids half shrouding the dim glow of his cursed sight, which illuminated the sheet of misted rain like a curtain of dew. The boy had begun to shiver fiercely, though not through cold and wet, not through the dull ache of sore skin which encircled his throat. He listened with trembling lips, listened in silence, until he could do so no more, and then shook his head solemnly to and fro.

“Non...” the boy wheezed, not in protest, but rather a desire to alter his destiny somehow, tailor it to something more pleasing. Something he might forget about. It was as though he’d never considered it before, had never really paid heed to the bat’s warnings.

“Non, mais j'ai peur de mourir, Monsieur” he whispered quickly, the words gasped softly from beneath the blindfold of the vampire’s hand.“J'ai fait des choses terrible.” He uttered rapidly, offering the words like special token or priceless jewels, a secret key which might work well in his favour.

Soon thin, bony fingers were curling about the bat’s wrist, seeking to ease it carefully away from the hollow of his eyes. He enacted it with trembling caution, like one might touch a feral dog prone to bite. The boy pulled at him gently, trying to shift his touch down over the pointed slope of his youthful nose, over the smooth, sharp rise of his jutting cheekbones and sunken cheeks. Then finally the youth sought to guide his touch down at last to his mouth, his trembling lips and shuddering, haunted breath.
“J'ai peur de mourir, Maitre” he whispered, breathing the words into the well of the vampire’s hand. There was something strangely ceremonious about it, sacredly affectionate, like a long travelled pilgrim seeking blessing from a holy man, a leper seeking salvation.

“S’il vous plaít... on m'a donné un cadeau.”

If there was time, if his touch was not cast aside, the boy’s cold lips would meet the flesh of the bat’s palm in a firm kiss. It would linger there for as long as he could will it, while the tears continued to flow in a steady stream down from the corners of his tortured gaze.

Tariq’s fingers softened as the boy warily pulled at them. Like the lax paw of a lion, his fatal claws were held limp as he allowed his hand to be re-positioned against the boy’s cold mouth. The soft fringe of his white eyelashes trembled at the kiss placed against his palm and his long fingers shuddered as though to cup it in his hand like a gold coin.

“Enough.” The word was nearly a hiss, its edges softened as though the omen were a half-tamed hound he feared startling. “No more, Fabien, no more of this tonight.”

The bat’s heavy wings abruptly rose into thick blots of black at his shoulders, another kind of blindfold, that blotted out the moon and stars and muffled the lulling roar of the ocean beneath their dark-veined expanse. Cushioned against the noises of the night, the omen’s sobs seemed to reverberate as though they were in a cathedral, cloistered away in their own private den of claw and torn membrane.  

“N'ayez pas peur.”

There was something of infinite tenderness in the kiss he placed on the back of his own hand still pressed over the omen’s trembling lips. The vampire leaned over to lend the boy his strength, his tepid heat, and now, the unoccupied hand that had crept to stroke the hollow of his sob-heaving stomach with gentle, coaxing fingers.

“Do not be afraid,” he murmured again, the cadence of the boy’s native tongue lost, broken in his mouth, spilling its mournful ghost across the omen’s shivering flesh in the form of the bat’s cold breath.

Gently, slowly he tilted the omen’s head to expose an ashen strip of his seared throat, marked with the angry red of his most recent branding set against a startlingly vivid bloom of blue-purple bruises and the raw silver of old scars. The vampire’s black eyes were blind to the savagery he had painted across the flesh. But the press of his cold mouth against his neck was tender and delicate as a healer’s hands when battle-wounds needed to be staunched for the broken and ruined and rotted.

“Not of me,” he breathed, the hand that was not still pressed to the omen’s mouth slipping lower over curse-grey skin beaded with cold water, his touch firm and reassuring along his shivering flank. “Not tonight.”

The soft radiance of the omen’s eyes disappeared behind his darkly bruised lids, snuffled out like a candle flame beneath his dark and troubled brow. There was one final protest to be released before he was silent. One last plea to make, mouthed through the gentle motion of his lips against the vampire’s skin, a slow “s'il vous plait.” The boy’s lips lingered against the flesh of the bat’s palm, parting briefly to anoint the hollow of his hand with a stunted breath. He inhaled deeply, briefly sealing the air within his ruined lungs before it was released in low, softly rattling sigh.

Fabien opened his eyes just as the bat’s wings arched above him like a scythe, blotting out the sky. The youth’s pulsating sight lit up the area about their skulls like a match, warming the light in a strange, hallowed glow. Muffled beneath the vampire’s hand, he whispered a curious “Pourquoi pas, Monsieur?”The words spoken as though they were a special kind of secret.

The omen’s frail body tensed gently against the bat’s palm like a newly harnessed colt, and it was not long before his shivering began to subside, his unhappy murmurs to dim. Suddenly the youth was reminded of how exhausted he was, his body recalling its previous terrors, the pain, the days of troubled sleep and neglect. The boy’s eyelids began to droop, his aching body so hungry for comfort that it began to warm to the bat’s touch without his consent. He almost slipped away from him, shielded now from the stinging wind and the pungent, nauseating stench of sea water. There would perhaps be other nights, other chances in which he might construct a better case for his life.

When the vampire moved towards his throat, the omen startled back to life, his cat-like pupils slipping sluggishly up toward the bat’s blind eyes, watching him with forlorn caution. His skull rolled to the side, doll-like, at the press of his lips the boys chin arched slowly upwards, and his blood encrusted foxen ear quivered softly. The omen’s spine arched somewhat like a cat at the motion of the bat’s hand, and a sharp breath of air parted his teeth in a single hot flush. Suddenly the omen’s fingers tightened more firmly around the bat’s wrist, the wrist he had not released all this time, the wrist he had clung to as though it gave him some vague sense of control, even though it could so easily be eradicated. The muscles from shoulder to upper arm trembled with effort, some internal battle which suggested he might strive to ease vampire’s hand away, edge it from the lips he had offered so willingly. But no such protest came, and the boy’s eyes continued to rest fixatedly upon his Master’s eyes, and his breath continued to shudder hungrily against his Master’s hand.

“Pourquoi?” He repeated shakily.

Tariq did not acknowledge either of the questions whispered shakily into the palm of his hand. Instead, his maned neck curved to allow the cold press of his lips into the burnt and bruised flesh of the boy’s throat. His forked tongue flicked from between his lips, soft and mild as a moth’s wing. His mouth remained pressed close to the precious architecture of the omen’s neck, a fine shiver tracing up his wings at the ragged breaths that made the skin pulse and hum under his lips.

“No more,” he repeated, his volume dropping until the words were nearly a purr. Lazily, the hand at the boy’s pelvis found new purpose, slithering delicately to the crook between his legs. Soft as a bell chime, his fingers stirred the club-marked flesh, the pain of the next soft kiss pressed into the boy’s wounds likely a potent, if not thorough, distraction from the brushing of his fingertips.  

“Fabien.” He breathed the word like a wisp of smoke, his breath cool as winter’s tongue against the raw skin of his seared throat. “My star-crossed fox, let me—“

Abruptly, he shifted, his wings folding to reveal the night sky in a flash of silver-black as he lightly straddled the omen’s torso. The bat’s knees pressed into the cushion beneath them as they bore the brunt of his weight, his thighs embracing the boy’s hips between them.  The hand that had been over the omen’s shivering lips slipped down to rest on the slender jut of his collarbones as the vampire bent his chest low, his weight distressingly light on the boy’s pelvis and his lips uncomfortably cold on the torn flesh of his throat.

“Let me bite you,” he finished softly, coaxingly, the words catching a burr at the back of his throat. He lifted his hips only enough to allow one hand to reclaim the skin it had found between the omen’s thighs, teasing it between his fingertips, the contact infuriatingly gentle. His lips traced a wintry path from the angry wound at his throat to the center of his chest, marking another cruel kiss between the fingers splayed along his collarbones.

“Let me bite you, beloved, and then, let us sleep.”

Fabien swallowed the last of his words, the half formed fragments of his questions, and was sufficiently silenced. Serenity briefly illuminated his features when terror had at last receded from them, and it restored a boyish softness to harsh contours of his skull. But the youth flinched against even the most delicate of touches, the vulnerable skin of his throat now much too raw for contact. So when the bat’s exerted pressure there, the searing heat of his sore flesh was almost unbearable. Soon his bony spine had begun to twist firmly into the cushions, coiling around itself like a dying serpent.  The diversion was a fine one, but did not linger long enough for the boy to mistake the gentle touch between his thighs. Matted and leaf encrusted, his crackling foxen tail flicked valiantly over the bat’s fingers, pathetic in its attempt to barricade against him, the grimy fur slipping like a child's play thing around the tormenting hand.

And yet at the sound of his name, the youth’s eyes closed like shutters, and his spine rose in a slow, subtle arch. His gaunt body was arrested with trembling, and a staggered gasp of pain shadowed the vampire’s words like a soft sigh of assent.

Already the skin beneath those fingers had begun to grow firm, as though the pain which throbbed through him carried with it the sparks of some wretched desire. It was a miserable reaction, something which he seemed unable to control, born of nightmares.  In slow,  unhappy realisation of this, the boy’s expression quickly became agonised.  “Please... don’t... provoke me,” he begged softly, each wheezing word heavy with youthful embarrassment and confusion. They were followed by a frail convulsion of the chest, as the omen's smoke ravaged lungs were assaulted by the residue of a sob. Irritably he rubbed at his temple, the tips of his soot caked fingers searing at his hairline, sifting through the knotted hair.  A second shiver surged down the length of his spine at the bat’s request, and his flesh thickened more profoundly under his gentle attentions.

“J-just take it” he whispered, tilting back the sharp point of his chin in a manner which flexed the irritated skin of his neck terribly. “I d-don't know why...je veux que ce. Il est trop lourd à porter. Just take it.” There was an urgency in his words, a fevered panic that was accompanied by the tense flitting to and fro of his statically charged tail.

Tariq’s smile was a wicked flash of brittle ice in the dark, cold and cruel and cutting. At the encouragement of the omen’s traitorous flesh the motion of his fingers paused and fell still. He brought his fingers to his mouth, slickening them with his tongue, his lips, relishing the taste of the boy’s fevered want before returning to the cunning coaxing of the skin between his legs.

The bat’s unoccupied fingers traced the trembling down his chest, relishing the rattling shiver of his ribs, smoothing droplets of cold dew into the skin marred with old wounds. He leaned forward to brand a cold kiss at the corner of his lips, his tongue slipping into the wetness between his gasping teeth. A spider-soft shiver traced finely up his spine, bleeding into the words that became a soft growl in the omen’s mouth. “As you wish.”

Lazily, the vampire nudged the boy’s chin aside. He inhaled the scent of his wounded flesh and quivering acquiescence and exhaled a long, tremulous breath of air between his parted lips. Tenderly, his lips came together on his throat, his teeth hard in his mouth.

He did not bite despite the aching strain in his jaw. He placed another burning kiss into the angry scarlet of his salt-torn skin, the hand at the crook of the omen’s legs twisting cruel shivers of pleasure deeper and deeper into the skin.

When he raised his head from the boy’s throat, the dark water of his pupils had expanded to black, liquid mirrors that glinted with the silver of the waning moon. Abruptly, he shifted, sliding back on his knees to allow him to bend over and take the eager flesh he rolled in his palm into his mouth. He took it deeply, hungrily to the back of his throat before breaking away with a soft, hissing exhale and reaching for the omen’s arm.

Gently, as though he were cradling a wounded bird in his palm, he picked up the boy’s wrist with both hands, the claws that tipped each finger prickling indelicately into the skin. He murmured something unintelligible into the thrumming pulse of his veins before parting his fearsome jaws.

His teeth sank into the skin, piercing the delicate machinery of muscles at his wrist. Blood spurted immediately from the pale blue of his arm, twin trails of deep crimson snaking wildly to his elbow as they spilled from the corners of his mouth. The bat’s wings rose, trembling, in response, and the ghost of a groan escaped him as the hot blood met his tongue.

With his hips grinding into the firmness he had shaped from the omen’s pelvis, the vampire’s blind eyes fell shut. He did as the omen bid and he drank.

Despite the pain and exhaustion which afflicted every part of him, Fabien could stand to be still no longer. To be laid out there on those seats, as though upon some sacrificial altar. His behaviour became softly erratic, the muscles of his torso contracting as he sought to force his body upright. There was something not quite natural in the action, as though some tropical sickness compelled him to rise, disturbing his body into unnecessary action.  It seemed in that moment there was not enough space to breathe, not enough room for the omen to prepare his flesh for the imminent impact of teeth.

It was impossible to untangle, and soon the bat’s lips were pressed against his mouth, and the unrelenting stroke of his fingers seemed to plunge him deeper. When the cursed creature found a window in which to speak, he gasped his words like one resurfacing from deep waters.

“W-wait, can’t I not sit?”

The omen flinched so sharply that his upper and low teeth collided in a loud click, his pulse becoming crazed. Though no pain had come, the boy was left panting, each exhale ornamented with a frail whimper. So concerned was the youth with teeth and blood, he did not watch his Master’s movements, and remained tense and distracted when the vampire’s mouth enclosed his heated flesh.

What vague progress Fabien had made to prop upon his elbows unravelled instantly. The omen crumbled like old stone, one arm giving way in a staggered collapse, the second following quickly until both his shoulder blades were once again settled. His lower body bowed, and the flesh of his stomach hollowed inwardly as though some electric surge tightened all the muscles there before eventually coiling into his filthy toes.  When the vampire moved his arm, it was lifeless, save for the fingers which remained clenching, trembling under the sharp shock of pleasure.  

But this momentary wave of bliss quickly mutated into a cold hard pain that had the boy’s thin wrist bending, twisting as much as it could within the bat’s grasp. Eventually he began to weaken, to calm, his brow pinching as his lower body met the motion of the vampire’s hips in an involuntary roll of yearning.  The boy’s shuddering breath left his throat in a low moan, much too forceful to suppress. His head inclined forward the side of the bat’s skull, the motion strange in its fragmented affection.

“Will it not hurt to cut off the limb you call your own?” He whispered into the dark fur, though it was hard to determine whether he was being ponderous or gratingly inquisitive.

The boy’s question went not so much ignored as carelessly overlooked. The blood that rushed in Tariq’s ears pounded too thunderously against his skull for him to focus on such weighty ponderings. He quelled the omen’s attempts to rise quickly, brutally, forcing him down on his back thoughtlessly, his body hard and hungry and demanding. His long fingers tightened along the underside of his arm, drawing the blood away from his veins and into his ravenous jaws with a snake-charmer’s ease.

Abruptly, he pulled away from the boy’s wrist with a soft, hissing gasp that suggested it was premature, that he had drawn away much too soon for his satisfaction. The corners of his mouth were jeweled with blood. His voice had thickened into a coarse snarl with his glut of blood, an impatient growl snapping at its heels.

“Fabien.” The word was sharp, a bow being drawn too swiftly across cat-gut strings. The fingers of one hand abandoned his wrist to trace a softly trembling path down his stomach. They stroked the heated flesh trapped between his thighs with an eagerness that bordered on the cruel. “Why, beloved, do you choose to stray so far from me when this—“ He took unkind advantage of the boy’s flexing hips, meeting his involuntary roll into his palm with a twist of his wrist apt to sing across the sensitive nerves like the sting of a whip. “--this,” he continued breathily, his breath rattling in his tight throat. “--is a much more appealing freedom?”

He dipped his head low again, brought his mouth to the soft ghost of bruises blooming across his wrist, and pierced it again. His teeth pricked the artery, coaxing a spurt of heat into his mouth and a gentle groan from his throat. He drank softly, sweetly, his lips forming a tender kiss over the wound.

His fingers quickened their terrible pace on the eager flesh at his pelvis, his teeth drawing pain like a stream of sweet, red wine from his nerves. When he lifted his head, his black eyes gleamed like the black water at the bottom of a well, his mouth stained a blushing scarlet. “Why, Fabien, why,” he breathed into the skin, his breath warming despite the growing chill around them as the storm gathered. “Do you hide in the shadows when this unbinding is waiting for you?”

Fabien’s frail, sharply pointed shoulders trembled in youthful frustration. The bat’s silence was monstrously unacceptable, an insult, and one made sourer by the hands that forced him down and kept him still. The boy increased the pressure between them, forcing his chest up under the vampire’s hand as though encouraging him to crush through his sternum like ice. Break down into the rotten pit of his ribs, where the withered lungs resided, and finally, finally silence his breath. His eyes called for it most poignantly, angrily whispering their plea: Do it, do it now. Crush me, break me. I am refuse, I am damage.

When the bat released him, the omen’s lean hand twisted in a deformed shepherd’s crook, the flesh made skeletal-white through its loss of blood. Yet still it remained outstretched in forlorn slump, awaiting some formal dismissal. The boy’s eyes lifted tiredly over the vampire’s features, the dark, blurred shape smeared with a ruby smile.

“L'Homme qui rit” he rasped, a spell of deranged amusement curling at the corners of his prettily bruised mouth. However, such a smile soon waned as his throat became filled with a heated breath of pleasure. The skin under the bat’s palm was moist with longing, though it was hard to tell whether the touch of his fingers of the slice of his fangs excited most. Battling through this humid curtain of confusion, the omen jerkily sought to lift one at the knee, to slide his ankle into position as though he might lever his lower body away.

“S-stop” the omen gasped, his lower body writhing with effort. “I don’t want your distractions.”

“You didn’t answer me.” It was a shuddering, petulant response. Accusatory, somehow, As if the vampire had not played the game correctly, not in a way the gamin understood. There would be no eye for an eye.

And yet, the omen’s wrist relaxed strangely when it was reclaimed, the bone and sinew folding against the bat’s mouth like a good natured child offering water to a thirsting dog. He sought to focus on this pain instead, a simpler reaction, something he could more easily decipher.

But soon the heat, the deep, fulfilling caress of his master’s fingers was too sublime to ignore. Finely crafted, articulate cries of pleasure were tightening at the back of his tongue, slipping into the breath which departed him in a hot flush. He was left flexing shamefully against the vampires palm, surging against him until, and perhaps a little too hastily, he released with a boyish cry of thankful satisfaction.

Tariq’s bared teeth glinted a wet, cutting silver in the water-soaked dark. The sky’s thin drizzle had strengthened to a fine rain that clumped his hair together in ghostly strands of wet and beaded like jewels on his muzzle. His warm breath whispered from between parted jaws in a fine mist, the surrounding air just cold enough to crystallize in a dragon’s-hiss of panting fog from his nostrils.

His fingers shuddered to a vexed halt between the omen’s thighs at the shameful cry growing in his throat. However, the boy would not be allowed the release of his thankful breath; instead it would be trapped at the back of his throat, forced into stillness by the bat’s palm tightened over his mouth. The fingers that muzzled him were still slick, still warm. They pressed unkindly over his mouth. The dark curve of hard claws prickled the sensitive skin of his cheek.

“Enough.” The wolfish bark trapped between the syllables transformed the word into a curt command. The bat allowed the boy’s still-bleeding wrist to fall limply at his side as his unoccupied hand crept up to grip the base of his neck. “Enough of this.”

He lifted the boy’s head, forcing the muscles of his stomach to tighten. His kiss was hungry and cruel between his own long fingers. The tip of a canine caught the omen’s lip and the taste of blood rose to eagerly fill his mouth. The bat released him hard enough for the rotted heat of his asthmatic lungs to struggle for air for several seconds after impact on the seat below him.

However, he would not have to long to gasp for air before rigid teeth sank into the muscle of his neck. The bat pierced the flesh still enflamed with the ghost of sea-water, his taut body quivering with pent-up malice between the omen’s spent thighs. The bite was deep and hard and unnecessarily painful, and the wound was apt to throb tenderly long after the vampire pulled away, his creased muzzle soaked through with scarlet.

He shifted to his knees and, with a twist of his spine, kicked the prone boy from his perch to land gracelessly on the cold, water-soaked ground. His heavy wings rose like the heads of serpents, flaring wide with a sound of torn fabric, their ragged edges trembling down to the delicate bones. His thickly-maned chest heaved.

A crack of thunder boomed and the skies above them opened, the storm that had lingered coyly in the air breaking in earnest. Rain poured in fat drops that soaked through fabric and fur and chilled to the bone. The night came alive with the cadence of falling water, a forest fire of crackling rainwater.

“If you sleep,” The vampire had to raise his voice to be heard above the susurrus of rain, although it still came out as a ragged whisper. He bit off each word. “Do so only in my shadows. Next time you’ll lose your tongue, one of your dear fingers.” If he had more to say it was swallowed in the strain of his trembling self-restraint, the storm doing little to conceal the fierce quivering that rattled his bones, shuddered through his wings. Just like that, the omen was dismissed.

The omen whined from under the cruel pressure of the bat’s palm, his lips pressed somewhat thankfully into the hard weight which prevented the release of his low, velvety moans. When the vampire’s hand withdrew, only a small rattling breath of air parted his teeth. But it was quickly followed by hot spark of amusement, the vague flicker of which illuminated his youthful mouth like a defiant candle flame.

At first it seemed only to be the residue of pleasure which caused the impish delight to sharpen Fabien’s features, his body still succumbing to the lingering warmth of drunkenness. Then, it hardened, curled into the corners of his mouth with brutal delight.

It was destroyed the bat’s mouth, devoured, swallowed away until that brief, dangerous light left only smudged shadow. The boy winced as his lip was torn, and flinched against the vampire with renewed anxiety. When his body impacted the rain soaked seat, it was seized by violent, rasping coughs which encouraged him to lean forward, to turn aside. And so it was with body primed to turn, to rise, that the vampire’s teeth impaled him.

This time he was not forced into silence, his cries were not stifled. They returned in this warped, mutated form, coarse, animalistic and breathless. When the vampire withdrew, the youth’s rasping coughs seized him a second time, tightening through his frail chest with miserable pain. His trembling fingers moved toward the wound, testing nervously from some indication of irreparable damage. He kept his palm pressed there with a child-like uncertainty, the softly glowing eyes wide and horrified.

It was then, trembling and frightened, that he was cast aside. One elbow and knee collided with the floor, and fresh blood splattered about his knees like stars. The omen carefully hitched his clothing back over his hips, pausing briefly to observe the crimson rivers which slid rapidly along his forearms, down between his fingers. He wavered, startling like someone plagued by a painful recollection, an unpleasant memory.

“Oui... sleep, I should... I’ll go there now,” the boy croaked, his voice small and fearful.

He struggled to find his feet, one hand seeking the seat, the other still pressed firm against his neck, the skeletal knuckles white with effort.

“You’re not... angry with me still, Monsieur?

The omen staggered a step or two toward the vampire, his fingers outstretched, first for balance, until it was clear they sought to touch wet fur. Blood continued to wash over his skin in serpentine trails.

“I didn’t mean to make you angry,” the boy lied softly.

And then, recalling his amusement, he smiled.