Chapter Text
The tale the Ardhalis journalists painted of Dakan’s reveal as a vampire was one that Tristan knew the details of well. The story went that a vial of blood was found in Dakan’s chambers by the castle’s cleaning staff. When confronted with this information, he vehemently denied it, but when castle guards attempted to detain him and remove him from the room for questioning, he attacked, and the inhuman strength that vampires typically possessed was undeniable. Given the recent vampirism outbreak, he was imprisoned within the castle dungeon and interrogated. A few days after that, he broke free and made for the mountains.
The rest was history.
The images of him were black-and-white and crudely taken. One was of him in a dim room, his eyes glowing behind bars. Another showed him tied down to a chair, his teeth bared, with a void where his fangs had been severed, supposedly by his own doing. He was straining against his restraints, either yelling, screaming or simply instinctually trying to show his fangs at the nearest threat. His eyes were too bright in this image to really discern what emotion was there.
It was easy, even before hearing Dakan’s side of the story, to deduce that he was being tortured, supposedly for information. Yet the public was comfortable with this information as in the wake of so much loss and panic, it was believed that Dakan deserved it, that it was necessary.
It never quite sat right with Tristan. He had lost Alexander and Rachel, but he knew that Alexander would have looked at any unjust mistreatment towards vampires like in those newspapers and he would have scowled angrily.
And now, hearing Dakan’s side of the story, he felt his gut twist. None of the torture Dakan suffered was necessary or deserved. In that picture, Dakan was crying out in pain, crying out for mercy, for help. Yet his pleas to be saved were ignored by thousands…
Including Tristan himself.
He had to set things right. That was his job, after all.
The print shop he arrived at was one of the biggest in the city – Le Journal. A formidable, massive brick building standing in the north districts. While held in high esteem, it was a big operation, recruiting people from all over Ardhalis to keep moving its news cycle. Thus, it wasn’t quite the gilded marble halls that the executives likely wanted to make it out to be, but it was certainly big. As it was early in the morning, the reception was fortunately not as busy as it could have been. That was good. Understandably, showing up in full uniform to a place swarming with journalists as the Chief of Police was a nightmare.
Presenting his badge was clear evidence of this, as the receptionist’s eyes went wider and some young journalist intern having his first coffee of the day walked by and almost dropped his mug. Tristan smiled at him but with an intensity behind his eyes. He really did not want to become the next big scoop just by existing.
Fortunately, Tristan was saved from being made into a spectacle by being shown to where the journalist he was looking for worked. The man in question was an experienced journalist by the name of Anthony Collins. From the research Tristan had done, he knew a little background on him. He had been working with Le Journal for a long time, and in recent years had been promoted to supervisor of his section. Making his way through the lined desks of typewriters and piled papers, of interns dashing about, there was an adjoining office where Collins stood behind window blinds.
He was a wiry man, completely bald with a grey beard and horn-rimmed glasses. He was friendly, and greeted Tristan with a firm handshake, but where most journalists looked at the Chief with eagerness in their eyes, Tristan instead found himself staring at something akin to a sealed vault.
“Good morning, Mr Collins,” Tristan said as he took a seat in the office, observing the ordered chaos of files surrounding the desk.
“As to you, Chief Sinclair, although this is rather unexpected. Have I done anything wrong?” The question was asked with a humoured smile, one which Tristan returned as he withdrew some folded newspapers from the inner pocket of his coat.
“Quite the contrary, Mr Collins. I’ve found myself very impressed by your works. You’ve covered many extraordinary events in great detail over the years. The murders on Dalesbury street, the disappearance of Julie Clarke, the underground vampire’s den in the 4th district… the vampire of the royal court.” He looked up at Collins at the mention of the last article, and the man visibly tensed.
“I’ve been working for Le Journal for many years,” he responded, a little defensively. “What brings you here?”
“To put it bluntly, I am reopening the case into Sir Rhysmel’s transformation and his alleged involvement in the vampire outbreak two years ago.”
Collins shifted a little uncomfortably but scoffed. “It seemed pretty open and shut to me. What he has done is horrible, and little investigation would change that.”
Tristan withheld his disgust. “What was done to him is another matter. The APD’s investigation into the case was poorly conducted due to the monarchy’s involvement. It is my duty to rectify that in the name of justice.”
An eyebrow raised. “What new evidence do you even have to reopen a case like that?”
“There was never much concrete evidence in the first place that was made available to the APD. Most first-hand information was withheld. The only exception is your article, and the photos provided alongside it. They are the only insight into anything that occurred behind the scenes, and I would appreciate your cooperation in bringing to light the truth.”
“I do not tell lies in my work, Chief Sinclair,” Collins emphasised sternly. “It is imperative that any good journalist tells the facts of the matter and let those carry the weight of the story. The facts were that the vampire of the royal court, this ‘Ebony Lord’, lived a double life and helped cause one of the worst vampirism outbreaks in recent history.”
Tristan’s jaw tensed, then he forced the muscles to relax. Dakan was not a monster. He missed the taste of strawberries. He missed the friends he cherished so dearly. He was just surviving.
Again, he swallowed back his contempt. “I understand your disposition, but I do not have any concrete facts to follow your claim. The photographer was credited as Mr James Brennen. Do you know if he had taken any other photos of Sir Rhysmel’s imprisonment?”
Collins did not meet the Chief’s eyes. “It is hard to photograph vampires. The photos in the article were the only useful images taken. The rest were blurry and incomplete. I strongly doubt they hold anything of use to you, and I’m certain they were discarded.”
“I see,” Tristan said. “The photos that were taken, the second one in particular, shows that Sir Rhysmel’s treatment when imprisoned in the castle dungeons was…” Inhumane. Cruel. His stomach churned as he had to bite back those words and instead settle for a less extreme word. “…rough. The second image shows he had sustained injuries to his arms from his captors. I can imagine this must have been confronting to witness.”
Collins’s gaze dropped a little, almost in agreement as he contemplated what was being said, but then he was tense once more. “If you wish for me to describe anything to do with the Ebony Lord, I suggest you read my article again. A Chief of Police – neither you nor your predecessor – has never shown this much interest in a case. Why do you care so much?”
“Professional interest, Mr Collins. Nothing more.”
“I’ve never heard anyone call him Sir Rhysmel after he escaped.”
“I do believe that is his name, is it not?”
Collins leaned forwards. “Whatever you are doing, for whatever reason, I would suggest you tread carefully.”
“I would suggest you do not threaten an officer of the law, Mr Collins.” Tristan told him with a glaring darkness brewing from underneath his mask. “Nor obstruct justice.” With a steely stare from the other man in response, he stood and tucked in his seat, his demeanour lifting. “But that will be all. I can imagine you must be a rather busy man so I will not keep you for any longer. Good day, sir.”
“Good day,” Collins said lightly, but his eyes did not stop glaring until the Chief was well out of the office.
Tristan reached the elevator, yet as his finger hovered over the button for the ground floor, he noticed he was unsupervised and decided to press the button for the basement instead. Until he was told directly to leave, he could afford to do a little snooping.
The basement was much the same as the rest of the building, busy and happening. Whereas on the higher floors there was sunlight streaming in through the windows, here there was instead strong fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. This was the photography and archives section of the building. With any luck, he might also find James Brennen as well.
Find him, he did, hunched over his work in the dim red light of one of the darkrooms. The dark-haired man lifted a photograph from the medium, where the details of the subject – a vampire with gleaming eyes – were beginning to develop. Then he saw Tristan out of the corner of his eye and jolted a little in surprise.
“Oh! Oh, it’s you. Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning to you too, Mr Brennen” Tristan said, briefly showing his badge although it was evident that the man already knew his position and the badge was difficult to see in the red light. “I don’t mean to keep you for long, I just wanted to talk about an article you took photographs for. It was the story covering the transformation of Sir Rhysmel.”
“Ah yes, Sir Rhysmel. I remember.” Brennen said with a grimness to his tone. Given his conversation with Collins, Tristan found his use of Dakan’s name intriguing.
“Mr Collins told me there may have been other photos taken of what happened.”
Brennen hesitated, gripping the table. He was younger than Collins but his shoulders were naturally slumped from hours bent over his workstation and they only sagged further.
“You’re reopening his case, then?” the photographer finally said. “There were indeed other photos. They were ordered to be destroyed, but not because they were blurry or indiscernible. Quite the opposite.
“Anthony’s wife was turned into a vampire in the outbreak. He doesn’t want anyone speaking up about the case because he was threatened directly, as was his wife. But I… I hear that poor man’s screams in my nightmares. Every time I hold a camera…” he picked up a small box camera nearby, and as he held it, his previously steady hands began to shake uncontrollably. “It feels like I’m holding a gun. Every single flash…” he tried to press down on the capture button, but his hands were trembling too much. He shook his head and set down the camera once again.
“I can barely work anymore,” Brennen continued. “I don’t have much left to lose by coming forward.”
“I appreciate your assistance. You said the photos were ordered to be destroyed. Were they?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them. I hid them in the archives. One moment.” The troubled photographer left the room momentarily. The photographed vampires hanging around Tristan stared, and in his mind, the image of Dakan was among them.
Help us, they seemed to say.
He should have done this sooner, before the trail went cold, before people became all too comfortable with the aftermath of all that happened. He should have done more than drown in his niece’s tears.
I’m sorry, he thought.
It was a pathetic consolation to the suffering and dead.
Brennen returned with an envelope that he promptly handed to Tristan. With a heart full of dreadful anticipation, he opened it and withdrew the pictures contained inside, and in the dark red light, a horrific scene unfolded before him in the fourteen pictures.
Dakan, still blinded by the camera’s flash, being pulled out of his cell and into the torture chamber, a silver dart being forced into his flesh through the torn sleeves of his tattered uniform. The frantic struggle against his restraints as he screamed, his eyes weeping and undoubtedly searing with pain. He cried out for the journalists he was vaguely aware of, begging for help. One of his captors, broadly built and masked, punched him hard in the stomach and he was silenced by his own vomit.
The last picture was from further away, a final image as the journalists were rushed through. Keeling in his restraints, bent over himself in the chair, utterly defeated and forced to submit. Queen Lizbeth stood in front of him, her shadow draped over his form.
Tristan just stared, hardly realising how long he had been standing, frozen in shock by the photographs.
“I don’t know much about what Collins was told to write, what story he had to fabricate, but the two photos that were selected were the only ones that could paint him as threatening. He was begging us for help, and all I could do was take more pictures and cause him more pain. I’m happy to help however I can. Statement, anything. So long as Collins hears about none of this.”
Tristan pulled himself away from the photographs, concealing them back within the envelope. “You have my word. Thank you for your help. This has been very valuable information for the case.”
After he left the building, though heavy in heart, he couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Finally, the case could be formally reopened.
/////
“I figured you’d be back.”
Sunset. The golden light cascading on the sloped plainland crawling at the mountain’s base, catching the purple hues of the heather-dappled landscape. Here, the glow in Dakan’s eyes seemed like only a reflection of the sun, the fiery hues bringing colour back to his face. He outstretched his hand towards the tree that Hades watched from, and the large bat flapped over to hang from his master’s arm, earning a few scritches to the fluff around his neck.
Tristan travelled lighter this time, with only a small bag on his back. Given the cold breeze, he wore a long woollen coat with a high collar, reminiscent of the police uniform he likely usually wore. Dakan had not overlooked the fact that the human did not carry a spear with him anymore, only carrying the same grounded optimism that he did since their first meeting. He smiled. “Clearly you aren’t too displeased if you don’t have me against a wall already.”
Dakan turned his attention away from Hades, and the light caught the ever-present shadows around his eyes. “I’m not in the mood for shaking you by the lapels today.”
“Such a shame,” Tristan said. Between Tristan saying the words quietly and wind sweeping across the terrain, Dakan barely heard what was said. But he did hear it. Whether it was sarcasm or genuine, he elected to take it at face value.
Dakan shook his head and tutted with a wry smile on his face. “Now now, you devilish thing. You should be careful what you wish for. Regardless of whatever reason you have for being here this time, I need to talk to you.” He extended a hand towards Tristan, the tempting vice of a pale hand adorned with sharp, black nails. “May I?”
People usually came to the wild plains near the mountains to pick the wildflowers in spring, to reach at the swaying sea of green and mauve. Clutching at the life outside the city to feel a part of something more than the monolith that society had made itself. None would reach for the hand of the elusive Ebony Lord if it were offered. A hand that looked and felt like cold death itself.
Yet here Tristan did, taking Dakan’s hand and for a brief moment, finding warmth in it. For a second, in the amber sunset, Dakan looked completely human to him.
Then, in a swish of the vampire’s cape, there were bats. Once again, Tristan found himself encased in the swarm, caught so by surprise that he almost let go of Dakan’s hand. Fortunately, Dakan noticed this and used his other hand as well to grip onto the human and hold him tight.
In less than a minute, they were in the entranceway to the main castle building again. Tristan’s head spun but he quickly ignored it as Dakan abruptly moved away, sucking air between barred teeth and clutching his arm.
“What happened? Are you hurt?” Tristan asked, his heart leaping in his chest, both very confused and very concerned. He reached a hand towards the vampire but was unsure if any physical contact was welcome.
“It’s… nothing. Just overestimated how much a cut healed,” Dakan told him, although his suddenly haggard expression told a different story.
“A cut?” Tristan asked, his face posed in that gentle yet worried expression that seemed so characteristic for him. Eyebrows furrowed slightly; his eyes wide with the desire to help. Dakan looked at him carefully, then grumpily inched away from the human’s hovering hand. Ignoring the pain, he regained his composure, releasing his clutch on his injured arm.
For whatever reason, even in his own castle, Dakan scanned the halls, only finding two thralls roaming around tending to their duties and his bats hanging upside-down along any archway or under-hang that they could find. “Let’s move to the lounge room. Like I said, we need to talk.” Without another word, he turned and led Tristan up the candle-lined stairs and through the hallway as they had done on their first night. Tristan was too bewildered by Dakan’s behaviour to talk, until he noticed one of the vampire’s hands.
“There’s blood on your hand,” Tristan pointed out.
Dakan, a little taken aback, paused before the door to the lounge to investigate. He was right – blood had seeped onto his hand from the wound, and not an insignificant amount of it. He gritted his teeth. “Some stitches popped, I believe. Just my luck.” He pushed into the room and summoned light to the candles scattered around on various surfaces.
Tristan stopped, watching as the vampire paced around near the windows on the opposite wall. “Dakan, what happened?”
“Phantoms. Like I told you last time, they keep their eyes on me. To most of them, I’m not worth the hassle of bothering. I stay out of their way, and they stay out of mine. But then there’s a certain Phantom called Thomas Carter. He and his men have had it out for me since I escaped the castle. Their presence forced me out of the city and made me take refuge in this drafty old pile of stones.
“The Phantoms and monarchy would prefer me alive, because I sit here as their pretty little folk devil. To the public, I hold the blame for supposedly convincing the monarchy to lower their guard before the vampire outbreak two years ago. Both sides want me exactly where I am because of that. Carter, however, wants me dead. He’s biding his time to find an acceptable reason to kill me, where any trouble I cause has outweighed my usefulness. And now he has something.”
He cast a meaningful look towards Tristan. Realisation creeped over the human as an unpleasant feeling.
“Oh…” was all Tristan could say.
“You were right. The Phantoms are after you. They saw our little rendezvous last time. You need to be more careful. If you need to meet up with me again, I urge you to bring your spear. Anything silver too, if you can.”
“So… your arm…”
Dakan sat himself down on one of the chairs with a deep sigh. “Carter’s men came here to try and teach me a lesson. They had silver weapons on them. I was cut in the arm by one of them. They left me alone after enough persuading, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hold them off with just words for much longer. But I refuse to simply stand aside and let them kill you or Lauren, or whatever else their schemes entail.”
“I appreciate it.” Tristan said, feeling a swell of respect for the vampire. Though still quite grim and bitter towards him, the fact remained that Dakan wanted to protect him as well. “Would you like me to look at your arm? I’m no doctor by any means, but I have done extensive medical training. Field work and all that.”
Dakan eyed him with distrust engrained in his stare. He looked like he was one nudge away from exploding and seemed to much prefer leaving a presumably poorly dressed wound to accumulate some kind of infection and then dying painfully from it instead of letting this strange not-so-strange man tend to his wound.
Tristan raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. It was a gesture usually reserved for dealing with Lauren’s tantrums. “Compared to your medical experience of…?”
Dakan grumbled something and relented. “Fine. Just… please be careful to not ingest any of my blood.”
Tristan leant down beside him, level with the noticeable cut in his sleeve. “That would be incredibly bad practice. Just promise me you’ll hold still.” Dakan gave a small nod, a little more comfortable to the other man’s proximity. Gently, Tristan rolled back the sleeve, tucking it back neatly and with far more care than Dakan expected. The red wound snarled from its cover with its misshapen stitches, still oozing blood. Dakan was right – a stitch had snapped.
“No wonder it hasn’t healed. What did you even use to sew with?”
“I don’t exactly have good medical supplies,” the vampire admitted in embarrassment, though didn’t clarify what the mystery thread was. Probably bat wool or something strange and magical.
“I figured as much. That’s why I brought some supplies with me, and also to stitch myself up if I ended up head-first on some boulder,” Tristan told him, slinging the bag he was carrying off his shoulder and rummaging through it. “What I’ll do is pull out your old stitches, disinfect the wound, stitch it up again and bandage it.”
“Okay.” Dakan said, still sounding a little uncertain. He watched with hawk-like eyes as Tristan procured a pair of small scissors and used a clean cotton pad with pure alcohol to disinfect it. Then their eyes met as Tristan turned back to the wound, and Dakan looked away. Then there was a slight sting as the scissors touched the wound and just barely slipped under the first loop of thread to snip. Dakan’s arm tensed, which Tristan felt.
“Sorry,” Tristan said as he pulled the loose stitch out of the way.
“It’s fine. I’m just…” he paused, wincing as another stitch was cut. “…not used to people being so close to me.”
“A necessary evil for now, unfortunately,” Tristan told him. “Just let me know if you really want me to back off.” Dakan nodded, slowly relaxing a little and not wincing so much every time a stitch was cut. Flinching, he knew, was the easiest way to accidentally fling blood into a medic’s face while they made incisions or whatnot. His doctor had told him a story about that once.
“You said that Thomas Carter wants you dead, against the wishes of the rest of the Phantoms. Do you have any idea why?”
“Not exactly, but I’ve gleaned a lot from our enlightening chats over the years. He wants me dead out of revenge. I presume the blood that transformed me was the blood of a vampire he was close with. He calls me a ‘Stolen Lord’. People call me a vampire lord, a special type of vampire that is more powerful in some way, and only the first to drink their blood may become a vampire lord as well so long as their predecessor is dead. I’m not sure what really makes a ‘vampire lord’ different from other vampires but I’m not going to let Carter find out.”
“I’ve heard rumours, too, but I’m not sure either. I’ll have to look into it,” Tristan said, pulling away the last stitch and setting about disinfecting the wound. “I talked to the people working at Le Journal who wrote the main article on you. You were right, they were close-lipped. With a little convincing, I recovered more of the images that were taken of you, and the photographer is willing to provide a statement. It’s not much, but it’s a start. I… brought the photos, too.”
A shiver passed through the vampire at the mention of the photos, and he blinked a few times rapidly, shutting his eyes tight with every flutter of his eyelids. Then he shook his head, ending the physical reaction. “I would rather not look at them. Not right now, anyways,” Dakan told him. “How much… did those pictures show?”
“More than enough to prove to me ten times over that you’re telling the truth,” Tristan said. By this point, he was now readying the needle and thread, hesitating as he lingered on the wound. “This will hurt. I… don’t have anything to stop it from hurting that isn’t excessive.”
Dakan met Tristan’s eyes again, knowing what images must have plagued them. He had seen what had created those small, near-invisible scars across his arm, and god knows what else that Dakan didn’t see. He had already relived the journalists’ visit blind. He didn’t want to relive it all with sight. “Please, Tristan, just… just get this over with.”
Tristan lowered his gaze back to his task with a small nod of acknowledgement. Shortly after, Dakan felt the piercing sting of the needle through his skin, sewing together the torn tissue in brisk, calculated stitches. He remained as calm as possible, but there was that nagging thought in the back of his mind, that unspoken knowledge Tristan possessed.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You’re hurt.”
“I mean, any of this. You do not really need the help of someone like me to keep Lauren safe. You knew it would put you in danger.”
Tristan pulled through another stitch, a little more firmly than the previous ones but still with a delicate touch. “Same reason as you in the end, I suppose. It’s never been the same since losing Alexander and Rachel. Call it the stages of grief or an early midlife crisis if you’d like. I met you, all the way out here in this drafty old pile of stones. In a way it felt good to be as alone as I felt on the inside these past years. Everyone I knew died one way or another. Either they truly died, or they became someone I barely recognised, always pretending to be someone they aren’t. High society is no different to your thralls. Dead and dumb.”
“I understand that feeling well, even before all of this. If there was any good thing to come out of my transformation, it’s that I can see the noble class for what it is. Most of them, anyways. And you…” Dakan ran his free hand through his own hair, trying to ease the turmoil brewing beneath the surface. “You decided to go all the way past those heads outside my castle, and to flirt with death… were you feeling lonely or completely suicidal?”
Tristan snipped the end of the thread of the last stitch and retrieved a bandage to bind around the stitched wound. “You aren’t as bad of a man as you might think.”
Dakan said nothing, his lips pressed firmly together as Tristan finished tying the bandage around his arm. As soon as he was done, the vampire stood and walked over to the window, at the light clouds gathering in the distance over the faint trails of sunlight that remained. He rolled down his sleeve, forcing himself not to look at the small scars along his arm as he did so.
“I gave them all chances, Tristan. So, so many chances. But they never listened, nor did they back down,” Dakan told him, his voice heavy as if pressed under oceans of grief. “The first few, I did not know how to kill. I watched them struggle, too paralysed to put them out of their misery. So then I learned to kill in a way that did not necessitate so much pain, even if it was so brutal. Their families would kill me if I dared return their remains. But I don’t know… if it was all worth it. Dozens die, just for me to sit here and sulk.” He looked further up at the sky. Tears sat at his waterline, ready to fall if he dared to fully close his eyes. “Why am I still here? What am I doing? Why haven’t I just… given up?”
He looked out at the fickle stars, their distant blinking in the cosmos above. He blinked back, his tears spilling onto his cheeks, but there was no comfort, no connection to those faraway giants. Lo, the stars, so far, so still and silent, were such facsimiles of him yet even they could not find companionship in each other.
A hand touched his shoulder, grounding him. Tristan’s head tilted against Dakan’s shoulder, resting in the nook of his neck. “You are surviving. Sometimes that’s all you can do. It can be hard, to make that decision, to kill or be killed, but you are worth it. Don’t ever doubt that.”
It washed away the messy tangle of memories and emotions knotting over themselves and fighting like a pit of snakes, but from that absence, it brought to light the turmoil that Dakan could no longer ignore. Tristan… he had let him so close. Half of him wanted to push him away. The other half wanted to pull him closer.
It was tearing him apart, that flux in feelings. Some would call it hell. Some would call it love.
He couldn’t decide what he wanted in that moment, and so he didn’t decide at all. That was respite enough, for now.