Chapter nine: A foolish Idea leads to a foolish plan

  Moments after the notification fled his vision, the icon’s dripping fangs lingered in his thoughts, almost taunting as they scattered to light at last.

  Hunger surged.

  Something inside him crossed a threshold, and the change was immediate. His vital reserves dipped into the red, and his mind once layered and precise began quietly, insistently, urging him to hunt. A faint fog settled over his higher thoughts, blurring the edges of restraint. Andrew’s veins stood out beneath his skin with unnatural clarity, his heartbeat suddenly loud, rhythmic, intoxicating. Sweet red nectar flowed just beneath the surface, and Kain’s focus kept circling back to it despite himself.

  “Andrew,” he said at last. “I will need to feed very soon. If you cannot find a solution by nightfall, I will be forced to procure my own sustenance.”

  There was something cold in his voice now. Not hostile but stripped of warmth. Reptilian. Practical. Utterly unconcerned with the implications, or the fact that people were what he meant.

  Andrew looked up at him and flinched.

  Kain’s eyes had changed. The glow within them burned brighter, the violet veins threading the sclera now pulsing with a darker, blood-red energy in slow, rhythmic beats.

  Andrew stepped away.

  “How much blood do you actually need?” he asked. “Or better question how many people would you need to feed from without hurting them?”

  Kain considered him for a moment, genuinely thoughtful.

  “That is a well-posed question,” he said. “Three would be ideal. Two would suffice, though they would be… weakened. One could delay the progression for a few days.”

  His gaze flicked down, assessing.

  “If you were intending to feed me yourself, that would be inefficient. I would grow hungry faster than you could replenish your blood. The less full we are, the faster we starve.”

  Andrew stared at him. “That… sounds contrived. How the hell does your kind work? Mechanically, I mean. The more you explain this, the less sense it makes. You’re violating, like, several fundamental rules of energy exchange.”

  Kain did not answer immediately. He seemed to weigh his words with unusual care.

  “I believe,” he said finally, “that you would rather not know the precise mechanics. They are… unsettling, even to those accustomed to such things.”

  Silence followed.

  This time, Andrew was the one who took his time before breaking it.

  “Yeah,” he said eventually. “I think I’ll agree with you on that. I’m… coming to like you, Kain. But I can’t pretend this isn’t pushing my limits. Knowing you’re well. A predator of humanity.”

  He exhaled slowly. “I’m still trying to reconcile that.”

  Kain lifted a hand, then lowered it again in a slow, calming gesture.

  “I understand,” he said. “I cannot tell you how you will reconcile it. Only that it is not a choice. Feeding does not displease me and I do enjoy the taste however living, sapient humanoid blood is the only sustenance that nourishes my kind.”

  His tone remained even. Matter-of-fact.

  “Where I come from, this necessity was managed. We maintained blood-servants; volunteers, compensated generously for the responsibility of blood-letting.”

  Andrew grimaced. “So what happens if you eat normal food?”

  “It is quite delicious,” Kain replied. “But useless. My stomach produces no acid. It serves no digestive purpose. Any impurities that enter are simply annihilated by my aura.” He paused, then added, almost conversationally, “Still, I enjoy eating.”

  Andrew shook his head. “That’s… deeply unsettling. Like, impressively weird.”

  He looked up again, resolve firming behind the porcelain mask.

  “But listen. I think I know how we can solve the food problem.”

  Axle spun on his heels and hurled his phone behind him. It slapped off the wall without ceremony and bounced onto his bed, the caller taking the hint as the line went dead. The Caller ID Skermlord faded into darkness.

  Axle responded with a string of inventive, venomous curses.

  “Fuckin’ cock-goblin,” he muttered, thick southern drawl coloring every word. “Callin’ me out to the middle of nowhere at damn near midnight.”

  He snatched up his hoodie and vaulted through his window. The one-story drop barely slowed him his legs absorbed the impact with practiced ease. He pushed through the side gate and started toward the hideout.

  Wisconsin’s winter chased after him immediately. Bitter cold clawed at his face as he stuffed his hands into his pockets and pulled his hood up, which only made him look more suspicious, a fact he was painfully aware of. The realization didn’t help his nerves. If anything, it made him more paranoid. His eyes flicked constantly from shadow to shadow as his feet carried him onward.

  He slipped into an alley where four buildings converged, forming a wide, hollow square of empty space completely inaccessible unless you could climb.

  Axle took a few steps back, inhaled, then sprinted forward.

  He leapt, boot hitting a pipe, other foot slamming into brick then he slipped, shoulder slamming painfully into a drain.

  “Ow fuck,” he hissed. “How does he do that?”

  After what felt like his hundredth failed attempt at that move, he gave up and did it the boring way. He grabbed pipes and drains jutting from the walls, hauling himself upward inch by inch. His biceps flexed, palms grinding against brick as skin protested under the strain. His left foot kicked off a circular donut shop sign, and with a final desperate push he leapt the last few feet.

  His fingers hooked the rooftop ledge.

  His weight crashed down into his shoulder, the joint clicking softly in protest as it ratcheted under the strain. For a brief moment, he lost strength entirely just hung there, suspended in a pull-up directly in front of a softly lit window.

  Orange light spilled over his black-clad form.

  Inside sat a man in his mid-forties, balding, pants around his ankles, frozen atop a toilet. A newspaper and sheer confusion were the only things preserving his dignity.

  They locked eyes.

  Axle stayed there. Muscles screaming. Arms shaking. He refused to look away.

  Eventually.

  The man looked down.

  Axle hauled himself up and vanished onto the roof.

  “Are you certain this is wise, Andrew?” Kain said quietly. “I am already hesitant to reveal myself to another. But to do so in such a manner… I cannot imagine you would have taken my side had I introduced myself that way.”

  Andrew pulled his head back inside through the makeshift window; scrap metal and hand-fastened shutters rattling softly as he did.

  “Trust me, Kain,” he said. “Axle’s like a mean old street dog. You gotta make a first impression that says he can’t get away with biting.”

  “And you trust this Axle?”

  “With my life,” Andrew replied without hesitation. “Man’s practically my brother.”

  He glanced back toward the window.

  “Alright. I see him. Get ready.”

  Andrew slipped away from the opening, grabbed his phone, and dropped into an ancient armchair. The cracked leather bore rings carved so deep into the arms they looked older than the oaks they resembled.

  Axle burst through the door shouting, “Where you at, hoe—”

  The predator struck.

  Something fast and merciless exploded out of the dark, slammed into him, and sent him skidding across the floor. Wooden pallets clattered beneath his back as he slid to a stop.

  Kain hissed.

  Four massive fangs unfurled, slick with clear venom. Blood-red eyes burned into Axle’s soul.

  His heart thundered. His pulse spiked. Fear flooded the room sharp, metallic, unmistakable.

  But Axle didn’t react like a dumbstruck child.

  Before he even finished sliding, his fear was already taking a back seat. Training overrode instinct. His hand plunged into his jacket, fingers fumbling once before snapping around cold metal. He came up fast, arm locked, leveling an L-shaped piece of steel at the thing in front of him.

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  “What’s up,” he snarled. “You want the smoke, motherfucker?”

  “What the fuck, Axle!” Andrew shouted. “Is that a gun? Where the hell did you get that? Why did you bring a gun? I told you to meet me here!”

  “The fuck you mean why I brought a gun?” Axle shot back. “You call me out here at midnight, vague as hell, what’d you expect?”

  Andrew laughed once, sharp and incredulous. “Nah, dawg. Don’t ‘what’d you ‘expect.’ me”

  Axle glanced past him. “And why you posted up with Bram Stoker’s ugly cousin over there?”

  “He’s why I called you.”

  “Right,” Axle said. “Say less.”

  His thumb flicked the safety.

  Andrew’s empty eye sockets narrowed fractionally cracks giving crow’s feet to his porcelain eyes. He snapped his hand forward.

  A playing card sliced through the air.

  Then another.

  Then dozens.

  In an instant, an entire deck erupted outward, slapping into Axle’s face like someone had fired a paper shotgun straight into his mouth.

  “Ah—dude!” Axle yelped, rubbing at his eyes, gun flailing uselessly as cards plastered his face. “Stop!”

  “Drop the goddamn gun, Axle,” Andrew barked. “If anyone gets shot tonight, it’s gonna be your dumb ass.”

  Axle grumbled, spitting out a card. “You ain’t worth your holes.”

  He dropped the gun.

  “So,” he continued, gesturing vaguely. “What the fuck is that? And why is he here? This is our hideout; troupe members only, you know that.”

  “The full story’s gonna take time,” Andrew said. “And honestly, it’s not mine to tell. But—”

  His hollow gaze locked onto Axle’s toxic-green irises.

  “I owe him my life. He needs blood to survive. And I need another person so he can feed safely.”

  Axle’s grin vanished.

  He studied Andrew’s mask, reading him in a way almost no one else could.

  “No bullshit?” he asked.

  “No bullshit.”

  Axle exhaled slowly. “Alright. I wanna hear everything. But until then, how we doin’ this? You got a transfusion kit?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Andrew turned.

  Axle followed his gaze.

  They both looked at Kain’s mouth.

  At the four long, razor-edged fangs, still slick and dripping.

  Axle stared.

  “…You have got to be shitting me.”

  Kain spoke.

  His voice flowed toward Axle, smooth and deep, a baritone that slid pleasantly into the ear. It reminded him of voices from his childhood; speeches, documentaries, the kind of authority you trusted without thinking.

  “It will not be nearly as bad as you believe,” Kain said, smiling.

  The smile was not comforting.

  Not with that many teeth.

  Everything about it set Axle on edge.

  The voice was wrong; too clean, too perfect. Every other sound in the room suddenly felt crude by comparison, like nails on chalkboard.

  It isn’t a real sound.

  The thought hit him fully formed.

  His mind raced backward through lectures, warnings; intruders, Spawn, things that didn’t speak so much as reach into you.

  Your brain is the best piece of meat you have, Mr. Valrik’s voice echoed.

  When something feels too perfect, it’s already inside your head.

  Axle’s jaw tightened.

  He remembered that class vividly. The guest lecture. The warnings. Before his awakening. Before the transfer. Before his brother died and everything broke.

  “You pick the worst friends, bro,” Axle muttered.

  Andrew turned. “You’re my best friend.”

  “I brought a gun ‘cause you were vague.”

  Andrew sighed. “Point taken.”

  Kain closed the distance again, this time extending a clawed hand.

  “My name is Kainen Ebonhart,” he said politely; shortening it, as Andrew had suggested, to make it more palatable.

  “Axle. Axle Ceazar.”

  The young man reached out, then stopped halfway, brushing back his black-and-green spiked hair. Without warning, he grabbed Kain’s arm, yanked him forward into a brief, crushing hug, and then released him just as suddenly.

  Stranger still to Andrew was how seamlessly Kain returned the gesture, as if he’d known it was coming.

  Axle gave Andrew a small nod before turning back to the vampire. “Alright. Let’s do this. Just don’t make it gay I like it slow.”

  Kain glanced at Andrew, his expression unmistakably help me.

  He had barely met Axle, yet already the spell that translated their language stumbled and outright refused him more often than not. He was forced to rely on scent, intent, and instinct alone; an infuriatingly crude method that made him sound like a child fumbling through borrowed words. It only deepened his craving to truly understand their language, to strip away this humiliating filter.

  He seized Axle’s wrist, clawed fingers locking around the joint, and drew the arm upward until the sleeve peeled back, exposing the blue artery along the forearm.

  Axle went rigid.

  Four needle-points pinned his arm as his muscles instinctively tried, and failed to repel the intrusion. Fangs pierced flesh like knitting needles.

  Then the sensation smoothed.

  His fingers slowly uncurling, pain draining away moment by moment until only a numb, uncanny awareness remained, an almost haptic certainty that something was inside him.

  “God,” Axle muttered. “This is freaky as hell. You got some Minecraft YouTuber-ass class, man.”

  Fresh, sweet, hot blood flooded Kain’s dulled senses.

  Vital energy ignited across his unholy tongue as his aura seized greedily upon the river flowing through his fangs, down his blasphemous throat. Mana-veins threaded through the fangs flexed and pulsed, howling with hunger, tugging at Axle’s vitality like a harpoon sunk deep into a whale.

  A tiny fragment of Axle’s soul stretched and twisted, writhing as too much vital force was dragged through too narrow a channel. It hardened, locked, then cracked shearing loose and washing down the metaphysical current into Kain.

  SNAP.

  The predator in him screamed for the rest.

  Kain clamped down on the urge.

  With visible effort, he tore himself free, sliding his fangs from Axle’s flesh.

  Blood dripped lazily from Axle’s forearm, four thin trails tracing his skin before stopping altogether. The puncture marks sealed in moments, the veins beneath them seeming to dry up and retreat as if the blood itself had reconsidered its escape.

  “My saliva acts as a mild local paralytic,” Kain said evenly, “and accelerates clotting within the bloodstream.”

  All three stared as the four narrow wounds dulled from red to pale pink, closing like an oil baron’s final well. He did not mention that the same substance slowed long-term healing.

  It didn’t take more than a moment for Kain to set his sights on his second meal and begin feeding.

  Kain exhaled, slow and satisfied, wiping the last trace of Andrew’s blood from his lips just as a vision flared behind his dead pupils.

  [Hunger has reduced. Hunger stage: Well-Fed]

  Within him, the tiny fractures torn from Andrew’s and Axle’s souls were crushed and broken down, dissolving into his unholy aura. The air around him thickened, pressure swelling outward before settling once more.

  [Experience earned: 2 XP]

  Axle lifted his arm beside Andrew’s, lining the eight puncture marks up side by side.

  “Check it out we’re hole bro—”

  “Do not,” Andrew snapped, voice sharp with sudden offense, “finish that sentence.”

  Axle blinked, then shrugged. “Fair enough.”

  His expression shifted, humor draining away as something harder settled in its place.

  “Alright. Change of topic. I think I’ve earned the right to know what kind of bullshit I just paid a blood tithe for.”

  Andrew’s hollow sockets turned toward Kain.

  “I am here at your sufferance,” Kain said calmly. “I will trust your judgment. But know this; I will defend myself should that judgment prove… erring.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  Crimson light ignited within them, violet energy flooding the veins threading through his sclera until they blazed like twin red suns. For a heartbeat, Axle saw it; two burning nova’s consuming the world, stripping it bare down to ash and stone.

  Then the pressure vanished. His vision dimmed.

  “Holy shit,” Axle muttered. “Anyone else piss themselves a little?”

  He glanced at Andrew. The jester’s face was unreadable as ever.

  Axle snorted. “Alright. Seriously. What the hell is your deal with Captain Cryptid over there?”

  Andrew didn’t hesitate.

  If he couldn’t trust Axle; rough edges and all. Then he was already so deep in it that trust didn’t matter anymore.

  He told him everything.

  Axle listened without interruption, his usual chaos absent, his posture still. His gaze lingered on Kain throughout, assessing, measuring. There was something in that look Kain didn’t like; it mirrored his own from not so long ago, when Eidruhn had made his offer and he’d been forced to decide whether salvation and damnation were different things at all.

  When Andrew finally finished, Axle exhaled slowly.

  “Man… that is a catastrophically bad plan,” he said flatly. “Barely even qualifies as a plan.”

  He shot Andrew a sideways look.

  “Full offense, you can’t teach for shit. That’s why your uncle ended up with a router and no modem. And even if you could teach, it’d take forever. Without first-hand experience, exposure to the real world, and obviously no earthly or human instincts, triple the time, easy.

  He gestured vaguely at Kain.

  “I get the feeling he wouldn’t care, but I know you don’t want to be tutoring the basement monster until you’re thirty.”

  “Cut me some slack,” Andrew snapped. “It’s barely even a plan I haven’t had time to—”

  He leaned in, lowering his voice to a whisper he should have known was useless.

  “And don’t call him a monster. He gets snippy about it.”

  Axle raised a brow and whispered back.

  “Like murder-snippy, or old divorced white lady snippy?”

  “I didn’t feel it prudent to test that while alone in the woods with him.”

  They straightened at the same time, conversation snapping back to normal as if the aside had never happened.

  Axle clapped a hand on Andrew’s shoulder.

  “I get it. You owe him. You can’t just walk away from that. But you’re overcomplicating this.”

  Andrew stiffened.

  “You’re not a teacher,” Axle continued. “You’re a fool. So play the fool and let teachers teach him.”

  Andrew’s head turned slowly, joints in his neck practically creaking.

  “Are you completely bat-shit insane?” he hissed. “He’s an intruder.”

  Axle waved the concern away.

  “Bah. Who’s gonna know?”

  “Everyone,” Andrew shot back. “Look at him.”

  “I am,” Axle said, eyes never leaving Kain. “Have been. I don’t really see the problem.”

  Andrew gestured wildly at Kain’s face, his hands shaking erratically as if strangling an invisible ghost.

  “You’re overcomplicating it again,” Axle cut in. “Everyone’s gonna think exactly what I did when I saw him; he’s got some weird class that messed with his physiology. Shit happens. Those lycanthrope fuckers are way worse to look at.”

  He jerked a thumb toward Andrew.

  “Most people don’t have all the enhancements your faceless trait is feeding your perception. You’re seeing everything wrong with him at once.”

  Andrew fell silent, tension bleeding out of his posture as the words settled.

  Kain finally stepped into the space the pause left behind, voice calm and deliberate.

  “I can alter my appearance to better fit your kind. The greater difficulty is speech.”

  Axle blinked. “What’s wrong with your speech?”

  “I do not speak your language,” Kain replied evenly. “I manage through a translation spell, but only for a few individuals at a time. My energy systems are too damaged to cast greater spells.”

  Axle grimaced. “That’s… not ideal.”

  He rubbed his chin, thinking.

  “Alright. You’re still level zero, right? I should be able to ballpark things using your stats. Read me your mental attributes.”

  “My Intelligence is twenty-five,” Kain said. “My Wisdom is thirty.”

  Axle spat onto the floor. “Hogwash.”

  Andrew snorted. “Yeah, same. When he told me that, I straight up forgot to even ask about his traits.”

  Axle stared at Kain, something unsettling clicking into place.

  “Hold on. His base intellect is three times a normal person’s. That’s… not supposed to be possible.”

  Andrew shrugged, unease creeping in.

  “I dunno. He says his kind only look human. Under the hood, it’s a completely different machine.”

  Axle’s eyes drifted to Kain’s third eye, studying him like an incredulous ant looking up to a god.

  “Isn’t three times the intellectual stat gap about the difference between dogs and humans?”

  “Yep,” Andrew said automatically.

  Then, slower.

  “Oh. Yep.”

  Kain refrained from explaining precisely how his mind surpassed theirs; how his brain was a deliberate marvel of fleshcraft and spellwork rather than a wet soupy piece of meat that was a bigger accident than those who carry them. Instead, he smiled faintly, content to watch the weight they placed on numbers settle into something like reverence.

  He allowed himself a private amusement.

  No matter the world, humans seemed to adore assigning meaning to crude measurements and fleeting curiosities.

  The Fool and Axle continued well into the night, voices rising and falling as they hammered the shape of a plan; one that would see Kain enrolled as a student in their school. Kain contributed only when necessary, clarifying limits, correcting assumptions. After his first revision was dismissed as “crip shit,” he stopped trying to lead entirely.

  He didn’t know what the phrase meant, but it was clear that things here did not function as they did in Valatia.

  Much of the discussion slid past him. Birth certificates. Social security numbers. Identification cards. Awakened tags. Each solution unearthed three new problems. The sheer obsession with documenting identity struck him as deeply unnatural; no people of Valatia would ever tolerate a ruling body so invested in cataloguing their existence.

  Eventually, their voices faded into a low murmur.

  Kain stepped away from the hideout and vaulted upward, scaling the side of a squat red-brick building with effortless grace. His light frame and unnatural strength carried him easily to the roof.

  Below, a sea of lanterns spread outward. Walls of glass pierced the clouds, reflecting colors sharper than firelight; brilliant, artificial hues Andrew had told him were called neon.

  Kain watched them glow, silent and thoughtful.