#god I love erich and auri

[ashintheairlikesnow]

No Rest for the Wicked

CW: Vampire whumpee, referenced combat PTSD, some brief suicidal ideation (of the “if I die now, that’s okay” sort) throat torn open, blood loss, a kind of animalization (vampire getting feral for lack of blood), death/murder

For @whumptober 2022, day five: Blood loss

-

1989, somewhere in London

His wounds weren’t healing.

There wasn’t enough blood to power the cells to reproduce, to push the itch as they closed and rebuilt themselves, covering over hurt as though it had never happened. As if he were still a man living alone in the woods eighty years ago or more.

Instead, the last of the blood he needed to heal was joining the puddle beneath him in a dirty alley behind a restaurant. Fitting, to die in a crowded noisy city when all he’d ever wanted after the war was to be left the fuck alone to die with the sound of the shells burying themselves into the trenches still playing in the back of his mind.

With the sting of of the gas still echoing in his lungs.

With the screams of the other soldiers whispering in his dreams, trying to pull him into the earth with them. Some of them were still there, buried by time in the fields in France where they had fallen. You could still see, they said, the line of the trenches from airplanes, now green with grass... you could follow their winding path and know where you’d find the last remnants of men who had died screaming, crying, calling for their mothers.

Sometimes, in the newspaper, you’d see articles where some farmer accidentally plowed up a handful of bones, an unexploded shell, ammunitions... but not Erich Eeten.

Erich Eeten hadn’t died with his fellow soldiers, but he hadn’t been able to live with himself afterward, either.

The smell of his own blood was thick and rich, sparkling with death. It would not nourish him, it was only his own. No life was left in it. Erich felt it growing stickier with every passing second, seconds he spent gasping for needless air, clawing with frantic panic at the vampire on top of him.

The one whose fangs had ripped him open.

If the people walking by, only a dozen or so feet away, suspected anything, they never turned to look. Erich had learned over the years that cities often had people in them who never looked further than their own destinations. It was safer that way.

He didn’t blame them.

“Bet you regret stealing my kill now,” The vampire who had attacked him hissed against his neck, lapping at what was still coming out. “I’ve been hunting that hot piece of ass all night.” The press of tongue, warm and wet, made Erich shudder, and he shook his head back and forth, pushing at the vampire’s chest, over her collarbone, but he had no strength.

Nothing left.

The world was dim around its edges, going dark.

“Poor baby,” The vampire cooed, running her fingers back through his thick dark hair, speckled with hints of gray that had never grown in any further, frozen in time. “It’ll be a hard true death, you know. A rough one. It’s going to hurt.” She breathed the last words, and pressed a kiss to his lips, where blood was bubbling up, running out of him everywhere it could find an escape. Her lips were warm from feeding.

His were ice-cold, as he faded away.

“But that’s what you get for muscling in on my kill. I hope it’s agony, as you go. I hope you meet your true death weeping.” She pulled back, smiling at him, her eyes glowing faintly in the dark. “I hope you burn in hell. I’ll never see it.”

Erich coughed up a little more blood in reply, making her flinch backwards as some of it got in her eye and she had to wipe at it, hissing with irritation.

She stood up, dusting her hands off, and he turned his head, blearily watching her as she began to walk away on heavy platform heels. “Hey,” He croaked, one hand out, scraping at the pavement and broken rock beneath him, rolling with effort onto his stomach. “Listen.”

She paused, without looking back. She wore a heavy leather jacket, black jeans, her hair was dyed darker than the night sky. A nose ring glinted. “What?”

“It’s… n-not agony,” Erich managed, and now she did look at him, over one shoulder, eyebrows raising. “There’s... waiting for us, there’s... something. Better.” He watched her put her hands into her pockets, pull out a lighter and light a cigarette with shaking hands. “It’s… it’s going to be… good. After.”

He shifted onto his side, coughing hard to try and get the last of it out of his throat. Everything was copper and darkness, and the world was fading. He would die here, in a back alley in London, far from the battlefields that still haunted his dreams.

He hadn’t died with a gas mask strapped on making him blind and breathless as his lungs burned.

He hadn’t died in the woods in his bed, another long casualty of a war that went uncounted because he’d waited until the war was over to be lost.

But… here, it would end. 

It was as good a place as any.

Better than some.

“You think there’s a heaven?” She asked, hesitating, taking a drag off her cigarette and blowing smoke into the air. “Even for us?”

“I think… I was s-supposed to find out a long… time ago. I’ll… I’ll tell the bastards you s-said hi if I make it.”

She snorted. “I just killed you. You’re oddly cheery about it.”

“Guess… I am. Can’t blame you. Shit move, for me t’steal a kill, right?”

He laughed, but all that did was make him cough up more, and when it bubbled too thickly in his throat to breathe, she left. He listened to her heels click on the ground until they faded to silence. Until even the shouted conversations of the people on the street had gone dim, muffled. He wondered what it was like to die with no heartbeat.

He was about to find out.

Erich’s eyes closed, finally. He hoped only for peace.

When a wrist was pressed to his mouth, warm and living, he groaned and tried to turn his head away. No, no, let me die, let me join them in the fields, let me fall into the trenches where I was supposed to rest-

“Drink, liebling, now,” Auri commanded, and Erich’s mouth opened against his will, took in the hot rush of fresh living blood. He bit down hard, then, gnawing into the skin and listening to a weak cry of pain. The pulse of the wrist’s owner was rapid, fluttering in fear, and his hands came up, smearing his own drying blood over her as he pulled her close, her body hot like a brand against his. He swallowed, and felt some of it run out of the wound in his throat even as the telltale itch began.

The girl was weeping, whoever it was he was killing. He couldn’t care any longer. Now that the hot blood of life was in his mouth, he barely heard her and with a mind gone mad with thirst, he no longer cared. He drank, took in swallow after swallow of salt-sweet copper, and after a moment felt a shift of weight and knew Auri was there, too, holding her down on top of him. 

“Good, liebling, there we go... there we go, my love,” Auri said, and Erich’s eyes opened, taking in their pale face behind the victim’s shoulder, smiling at him with sparkling eyes before they turned and buried their fangs in her neck. She threw her head back and cried out, and there was something obscene about this - Erich on his back with a woman’s hips pressed to his, Auri behind her and pressed to her, how the three of them moved together in a harmony wracked with the poor thing’s pain.

Erich felt his wound healing, and he couldn’t think well enough to remember that he had wanted, before, to die.

Auri drank their fill and left him to take the rest, not moving away but resting their head on the girl’s shoulder and holding her still as she thrashed and struggled, desperate to escape. “Kill her,” Auri whispered. “Drain her dry, liebling.”

Erich was with his packleader.

He had to obey.

He felt every hint of life and breath leave the victim’s body until she was limp, until her heart slowed and finally… stopped.

Only then did he realize what he’d done.

He jerked backwards, his head smacking into the ground beneath him, and Auri pushed themself up, tossing the dead body of the victim carelessly aside. “Feel better?” They asked, hands on their narrow, angular hips. They wore acid-wash jeans and a torn black tank top. They’d been in a club or something while Erich went to hunt alone. 

“No,” Erich ground out, voice still rough, as he rolled onto  all fours and then slowly pushed himself up. His head swam with blood, soaking in it like a man diving into a pool. His chilled fingertips were warming, his face flushing with it. “I was going to die. I wanted to be done with you!”

“But I don’t want you to be done with me. So you won’t. Sorry I was late. I was… busy.”

“Feeding?”

Auri shot him a dazzling smile, and he hated and loved it in equal measures. “No. Well, not the way you’re thinking. Come on. You need to rest somewhere safe.” They held up a key ring, jangling it. “My little friend there-” They gestured at the dead body. “-told me her parents rent her a flat, no roommates. We have a day or so before anyone notices she’s not where she should be. Let’s go get some sleep, hm? Then we have a plane to catch.”

“No,” Erich said, but he knew it was pointless.

“Yes,” Auri replied. “Now. Come, my child.”

They turned and walked out of the alley into the din of the city.

Erich felt the pull of their command, and he set his jaw in a miserable line and followed.

-

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