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inscrutable-shadow · 22 days ago

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viii. thou shalt not steal.

a/n: Featured in the 2024 2nd edition of the @zineofgid! (Which still has a few physical copies available if I recall correctly, consider supporting charity and receiving a beautiful zine with works from more than twenty incredible creators!)

I think this piece is an excellent capstone to what's been an incredible year for my writing. Over 30k words of original content, two of those stories in print, and a host of snippets and AUs and just so much fun I've been having with all of my friends (and that means you!). I never could have imagined all the things that happened this year and I hope next year has just as much growth and good things waiting for me. :)

contains: blood drinking (consensual and nonconsensual), captivity, vampire whumpee, vampire whumper, restraints, m/m established relationship, intimate whumper, starvation, exhaustion, mild suicidal ideation and self loathing, hypnosis

4.7k, also on ao3!

acknowledgements: special thanks to @crash-bump-bring-the-whump for betaing and letting me both borrow mariano and harass him in his dms constantly, haha

yesyes goodfood warm bright salt yes! foodtime strongsalt hot red yum—

The vampire inhaled sharply, as if surfacing from a deep pool. Pulling himself from the blood-haze was difficult, but he owed it to his companion, the mage, not to take more than he needed. What he needed, really, was a full meal, a kill, but in desperate times, one made do with the resources available to him. His fangs slipped smoothly, if reluctantly, from the narrow punctures they’d made in the mage’s neck, and his tongue flashed out to seal them and lick up the last drops. Finished, but far from satisfied, he leaned back heavily against the stone wall, accompanied by the clink of silver chains.

The mage sighed heavily, freeing himself from his own venom-induced daze. “Get what you needed?”

“Yes, of course. I’m much better.” He didn’t look any better. He looked stretched-thin, exhausted, at the end of his rope, even. The demented scarlet glow in his eyes had dulled back to its usual crimson, but that was the only visible improvement.

“Thanatos.”

The vampire, whose name was Thanatos, mustered the strength to roll his eyes. “I suppose you would prefer the truth.”

The mage evaluated him coolly. “If you could, that’d be great.”

It was annoying how earnest he always was. “Of course I didn’t. I’m hungry, and worn out, and I’d very much like to sleep. Is that answer to your satisfaction?” Thanatos knew he was only being snippy because he was ill, but it made him feel better to imagine the whole thing being Mariano’s fault.

The mage, whose name was Mariano, shook loose waves of hair from his face. “Yes, actually. Thank you. It’s easier for both of us if you tell me the truth, you know. You’re always talking about ‘making conclusions based on an accurate premise.’ Sharing information is a big part of that. We’re on the same side, after all.”

“I should stop teaching you things. How could I have possibly thought giving you access to dialectical technique was a good idea?” His tone was sharp, but his smile was soft. The mage was right, of course, he usually was. It was just easier to ignore that fact when his arguments weren’t couched in Thanatos’s own words. “Let’s leave the debating to me in the—”

A sound from the hallway, filtering through the small grate near the top of the steel door, made both of them look up. Thanatos’s slit pupils contracted and expanded with the increase in light. The lights here were electric, not arcane or chemical, and emitted a soft luminescence that he was very familiar with: nightglow lamps, a vampire invention that illuminated a space without irritating the eyes of the light-sensitive. His and Mariano’s captor, who now appeared in the doorway, was also a vampire, darker than Mariano but with the telltale ashen pallor. His catlike eyes were lit in emerald rather than Thanatos’s crimson and held the faintest jade highlight, indicating a meal wouldn’t go amiss.

“Good evening, gentlemen.” The voice was low and smooth and threaded through one’s ears like an eel, dripping with the arrogance and unctuous command of someone who wielded thrall. Thanatos could feel the pressure of another vampire’s aura against his own, demanding he submit.

“Varro.” He wasn’t in the mood for games of politeness. He was significantly more concerned with suppressing the urge to run.

Tiberius Varro, now House Tenebrus, laughed. “None of your hollow apologies today, Iuventus? Fine, I’ll get straight to the point. You appear to have attempted to circumvent your punishment by committing your crime again.”

“I’m not sure I take your meaning,” Thanatos replied, though an idea was coalescing in his mind.

“I know the new regulations are unfamiliar for all of us, but I believe someone of your age should be able to understand simple concepts such as territory and ownership. On each vampire’s designated lands, all game is theirs to claim. Violating that sovereignty is stealing, is it not?”

“I suppose so.” Thanatos had known hunting on another vampire’s territory would put him in a rather shaky legal position before he’d done it. He’d just hoped not to be caught. He hadn’t even killed the young woman he’d fed on the day before they’d been captured, merely left her dazed and confused outside of the town limits, but Varro had found him and elected to ‘punish’ him anyway. The whole thing was ridiculous in his opinion, pointless grandstanding he had no obligation to indulge. “However, property brought over a border still retains the rights of the original owner. You have no claim on my mage.”

“Perhaps not, though I do have the right to treat a thief how I please. I could just kill you for trespassing, but I don’t want to do that, do I, little Harbinger? What do you think I should do with someone who steals from me?” The one positive that had come out of Thanatos’s decades of military service to the vampire High Council was that the special operations nature of his duties had been quite mythologized by the public. He was fairly confident that Varro and many others thought he could set curses on those who mistreated him. He no longer had the backing of a master assassin, so there would be no following through on that implicit threat, but Varro didn’t have to know that.

Thanatos rolled his eyes. “I’m sure I don’t know. You were close with Rumholt, weren’t you? In the mood to electrocute me until I faint?”

Varro found the thought hilarious, so much so that he spent an uncomfortable several seconds laughing himself into a wheeze over it. Pointless theatrics, in Thanatos’s opinion. It wasn’t as if he needed to breathe. “Oh, I do like you! Rumholt was such a fan of his electrified implements. Or, was, rather, until you killed him.” Had him killed, technically. Ending another vampire himself was quite beyond him.

“Would you like me to apologize? Or do you just want to cut off my hands? Brand me with a ‘T’ for thief? What is this, the tenth century?” Thanatos was growing impatient. He didn’t have time to play Varro’s game. Mariano was here because of him and if he could get his mage out of here by humiliating himself, that was just what would need to be done.

Varro’s smile fell. “I already told you I don’t want your apologies, Iuventus. And I don’t want to risk your curse by roughing you up too much. What I want is for you to learn to keep your filthy hands off that which does not belong to you. I want you to lie on your belly in the dirt like the worm you are. You’re a wretched excuse for a vampire, a traitor to your own kind, and I do not grant you the right to subsistence while on my lands.” He tipped Thanatos’s face up to look contemptuously down into his eyes, and Thanatos found he couldn’t maintain eye contact. “You’ll be released when I’m satisfied you understand your place.”

“You can’t just starve him indefinitely.”

“Quite correct, points for the mage! As amusing as it would be to watch your Shadow rattle the bars of its cage, I don’t want to risk you becoming dangerous. No.” A smirk developed on Varro’s lips and the jade in his eyes glinted a devious hue. “Drink your mage as much as you’d like. An eye for an eye is fair though, no?” He slammed Thanatos backward into the wall of the cell with the hand under his chin transitioning into a choke. The purpose of this was to rile Mariano up, surely, and it worked: the mage moved reflexively, slamming against the end of the chains’ reach, his eyes burning with warning malevolence.

“Know your place, mage. Grown-ups are talking,” Varro taunted, and with the words came the suffocating pressure of his thrall. Unlike Thanatos’s, which was soothing and tender and drew one in with comfort and the promise of security, Varro’s hypnosis was muculent, insidious. It oozed into one’s psyche like animate slime. The wave broke against Thanatos’s mind, vampire as he was, but it took hold of Mariano easily, the defiance dying in his eyes with an immediacy that chilled Thanatos to the bone. “Don’t worry, I won’t damage him. I’m just… taking back what’s mine.”

Thanatos only had a moment to ponder what Varro could have meant by that before twin points of incandescent agony erupted on his neck. He couldn’t help but emit a strangled cry, but his voice died in his throat as the scrambled sensations resolved themselves and he realized what was happening. The wet movements against his neck were lips and tongue, the rush of air was breath, the hands were holding him still. Varro was draining him.

Vampires didn’t feed on each other. The idea was nonsensical: even just after being taken from a victim, the blood’s taste was muddy and muted, it couldn’t satisfy the Thirst, and there was little nutritional value. The only purpose the action could serve was as a power play, and that it certainly was. Varro was taller and stronger than Thanatos, if not by much, and nothing Thanatos could do made any progress toward freeing himself. He was immune to the venom’s effect and therefore got to experience the full force of the pain without the dampening effect of numbing euphoria. The punctures burned and he could feel every moist shift of Varro’s lips and tongue as he swallowed over and over, rhythmically, almost hypnotically.

Thanatos turned his eyes to meet Mariano’s, and what he saw in them made despair pool in his gut. Glazed over under what was most likely a suggestion of apathy, the mage merely watched what went on with a disinterest that bordered on contempt. That was nothing like the Mariano he knew. It went against his training, his personality, everything. The worst thing about it was that Thanatos knew how much his mage dreaded the idea of giving up control of his mind to another, of being compelled to act or stay his hand without his own will. He was being forced into compliance and it looked so utterly wrong on his face, for someone who knew him well enough to see the deep well of emotion under his flat expression to look at him and see truly nothing there… It was all Thanatos’s fault.

He didn’t disagree with Varro exactly. Thanatos had worked out very early in his unnaturally extended life that if he wanted to have his needs met, he’d have to resort to subterfuge. He was a coward, and by necessity, a leech. Apt to compare two bloodsuckers. There was an emptiness inside him, a voracious hunger, and he’d do anything to fill it, but he couldn’t earn anything legitimately. He lied and he cheated and he stole. He tricked others into being kind to him, into loving him, for the barest scrap of gratification. Varro was merely better at it than he was. It had made him feel good to foster a connection with Mariano that inspired such loyalty, just as it appeased Varro to make Thanatos squirm under his heel. He’d brought a human into a situation like this because he relished being worried over. It was hypocritical of Varro to set himself up as some paladin bringing down holy retribution on a sinner, but sinner Thanatos certainly was. He’d just have to take his “punishment for the sin of pride” and hope Varro got bored and threw him away instead of killing him. A reliable strategy. He prayed Mariano wouldn’t be collateral damage.

Thanatos felt distinctly lightheaded by the time he slipped unceremoniously from Varro’s grip and landed in a heap. There really was no reason to take that much. He’d run through what Mariano had donated and then some. Actual vampire blood was tasteless sludge, and Thanatos knew Varro must have felt rather ill, but none of it showed through the satisfied smirk. “The two of you behave now. I’d hate to have to do this again…” Thanatos wagered it was more that he was too full to do it again. Not that he’d put Mariano through that. The mage had lost enough blood and enough of his autonomy. Varro merely wiped the dregs from his lips with a thumb he then put in his mouth to clean. “I’ll leave you to think about your next steps. We’ve got plenty of time for you to learn this lesson.” The heavy door clanked shut behind him, and the two were alone.

Thanatos took several moments face-down on the floor before he forced himself back into his more upright position leaning against the cell wall. Mariano’s dark eyes, blessedly clear this time, could do little more than watch him struggle. “Are you okay?” The mage’s tone was deliberately even and betrayed no internal turmoil.

Thanatos was huffing quietly, trying to recover. “Yes, yes, I’m… fine. Just need a moment. Quite the singular experience.” He was also shaking all over, which didn’t lend credence to his words.

Predictably, Mariano didn’t believe him. “I’m getting you out of here.” That was his way of saying “I’m burning this place down, consequences be damned,” which Thanatos found adorable, but also misguided.

He laughed. “Your concern is noted and appreciated, mortal mage, but I invite you to consider what happens after the steel door.”

“I’ll manage.”

“As attractive as that is, I can handle a bit of minor manhandling.” Mariano never blamed Thanatos for getting him in trouble like this. He always focused on solutions. Than wasn’t sure he deserved that. He certainly deserved to endure a bit of abuse for the trouble he always put others through. “Save it for when we have a plan, hm?”

The mage clearly didn’t agree. “So, where does that leave us? Back at square one?”

“Not quite. I’m no longer in danger of losing my mind, for one. The blood tithe has been paid, Varro can’t undo that. Starvation is a much less pressing matter.” Mariano stared at him. “Oh, don’t look like that. It would take weeks for me to die of it. That is a much more forgiving timeline.” Weeks of awful conditions, he knew he could endure. He wasn’t sure he could stand Varro draining him again.

“Because you starving to death is the more forgiving option.”

Annoyingly correct as ever. “I’m not suggesting we allow things to escalate that far. There’s no need for theatrics, mortal mage. Relax for once and actually listen. Behold, the crux: time. Assembling our pieces and gathering information.” The dragon was the most significant asset. Even an approximate location would improve any sort of escape plan.

He was about to launch into a more detailed explanation of this, but Mariano shook his head and sighed. “Let’s shelve this and talk about it later.”

Ah. Preparing an argument, of course. Thanatos could respect that. “Fine, then.”

“Fine.”

---

Starvation wasn’t nearly as easy as Thanatos had made it sound, Mariano noted. The vampire had initially tried to keep up with his usual entertaining persona, telling stories and making light of the situation like he always did. It would have been more endearing if it hadn’t been clear that the effort was too much for him as the days went on. He held up well to the taunts of their captor and even being smacked around every few hours until Varro got bored and went away again, but there would also be long periods where he retreated into himself, staring listlessly into space like someone waiting for the end.

He seemed so… tired. Thanatos’s eyes always glowed at least a little in the dark whether or not he was hungry, but now even in the half-gloom of the cell they seemed dull and their crimson color was muddied, as if looking through a dirty window. Mariano had taken to counting the seconds between the vampire’s breaths, usually somewhere around thirty but now often in the hundreds, as if he didn’t have the strength to shift his chest more often. It was awful to watch someone he loved just waste away like this.

There was a spark of good news among the guttering embers of the situation. Though his meager ration of lumpy oatmeal was unappetizing at best and nauseating at worst, whether by its own merit or the guilt of eating while Thanatos starved, he wasn’t getting the familiar heavy feeling of pact dampeners as he spooned it into his mouth this time. It seemed as if someone had neglected to add them. That meant that his pact was slowly reopening, he was getting echoes and ghosts of emotion from the other end, the red of anger and the blue of worry — with a bit of yellow as well, he realized with tempered excitement, when Bastian recognized he could feel him, too. If he focused, he could work out an approximate distance: just over a day away as the dragon flew. He and Thanatos could make that distance up if they had to. It was worth trying. It wasn’t worth letting Than get any weaker.

“Thanatos,” Mariano began, and waited for the vampire’s leaden gaze to sweep over him. The pupils contracted as they focused and gave him the vague feeling of being hunted. “I think I can feel Bastian.”

“Good,” was all Thanatos said. It didn’t look like he had the energy to say much else, though he shifted slightly, one hand tucked protectively against his stomach. He blinked, but maintained the same intense eye contact.

Mariano tried again. “We can just go to him now. I’ll break us out and—”

“You’d have to carry me. Even you couldn’t fight your way out of a place like this with me slung over your shoulder. You are incredible, mortal mage, but you are not a dragon.” Than’s voice was much quieter than usual, and though his words carried their usual pragmatic force, his tone evoked explaining a difficult concept to a child for the seventh time more than discussing an escape from a torture dungeon, even though he’d seen what Mariano could do if he put his mind to it.

“I’ll figure it out,” Mariano pressed back. “I can’t sit here and watch you waste away, Than. I love you too much for that. You said we should wait, we’ve been waiting, I think it’s time to—”

Thanatos snorted humorlessly. “You think I’d enjoy watching you die trying to help me escape the consequences of my actions? I know you have difficulty with that sometimes, but really, Mariano, I thought you were smarter.”

“That’s… unfair, Thanatos. And a little mean.” Mariano frowned. Where was this coming from?

“Isn’t it just? Life is often unfair and mean.” The stare broke as Thanatos rolled his eyes and then averted them. “Go ahead and get yourself killed. Not as if I can stop you.”

For a moment, Mariano wondered if he really was just being dramatic again. If Thanatos really thought he could and should take the abuse, maybe there was just a plan he wasn’t sharing, a detail Mariano wasn’t seeing. Then he decided that was fucking stupid.

He almost told Thanatos so, though in kinder words, but the vampire sighed and spoke again. “No, you’re right. You should go. You have Bastian and… people who care about you. If you leave me here, they oughtn’t chase you. The border of his territory is ten miles to the north. You… deserve to continue your life.”

“And you don’t? I’m not leaving you here. You let him get to you, let him make you think your life is a waste, didn’t you?”

Than blinked at him, then smiled sadly. “I’m being silly again, aren’t I?” A pause. “How far is Bastian? I’ll be strong enough to walk the next time I eat, that would be a good time to—” The door rattled as it unlocked and admitted Varro once again.

“Come, Iuventus. I’ve thought of a most diverting activity for this evening. I got a letter in from Lady Valkayne. She provided some enlightening insights about your time in her care that I think will be quite instructive.” Thanatos blanched as the guards hauled him to his feet. Mariano hadn’t heard him mention this name before, but it clearly meant nothing good.

He almost moved to do something about it, but Thanatos gave him one of his trademark self-deprecating smiles and assured him he’d be all right. Between the chains and the three hostile vampires, the odds weren’t incredible. He’d wait one more time. Just one more time. As soon as they brought Thanatos back to the cell, the two of them would be leaving.

What he didn’t expect was the state Thanatos would be in when he returned. The guards didn’t even bother chaining him up again, they just hurled him bodily onto the floor at Mariano’s feet. The vampire’s previously lifeless crimson eyes had brightened back up into the brilliant scarlet associated with his curse. But instead of the desperate search for blood Mariano would have expected, Thanatos could only groan softly as his head lolled to the side. He was soaking wet, dark hair clinging limply to an ashen-pale forehead. Though he’d never really looked dead to Mariano before, now it was easy to believe he was a walking corpse. He needed blood. Now. Escape would have to wait.

Bound as he was, Mariano had few options. His wrists were encased in the soon to be useless suppressor cuffs, and he didn’t think Thanatos had the strength to feed from the neck like he usually would. The only easily accessible patch of exposed skin was near the elbow, between where his shirt ended — torn near the beginning of it all — and the cuffs began. “Than!” he called out, and the vampire’s eyes meandered upward to meet his own. He saw no recognition in them, only fear, pain, exhaustion. “Than, please, you have to drink, here…” He thrust his arm into the open mouth and was rewarded by a flash of white teeth and black sclera as Thanatos’s fangs plunged deep into the vein.

Without the silver shackles, the vampire’s Shadow was free to use every tool at its disposal to hunt. Mariano felt the heavy warmth of Thanatos’s hypnosis settle over him, but their desires were already aligned, there was nothing to change. “It’s okay, Than. You don’t need to use that on me. Relax and drink.” He carded his fingers slowly through Thanatos’s still-wet hair, the pain of the bite barely registering to him.

The color gradually returned to Thanatos’s face, and between one blink and the next, Mariano could see his personality come back before he pulled his fangs from the punctures and sealed them with his tongue. “Mariano?”

The mage laughed softly with relief. “Yeah, it’s me. You all right?”

He didn’t get a chance to respond. Like clockwork, the heavy door swung open again to admit a swaggering Varro, clearly having enjoyed whatever water-based torment he’d just subjected Thanatos to and itching to come back for more. “Guess who,” he chuckled, an overplayed opener at best, but he didn’t waste time in hauling Thanatos up off of Mariano’s lap and trying to prop him up against the wall to give up the blood again. Thanatos didn’t just let him, though. He summoned his shields, trying to keep hands away from him. Varro merely clucked his tongue and brought his own shadow to bear, beating at what little resistance Thanatos could put up.

It was obvious Thanatos couldn’t hold out against a better fed and much stronger vampire for very long. He was shaking with effort even if his eyes blazed scarlet once again with defiance and the light of his contract. It wasn’t right to just let him fight on his own. Mariano decided that he’d sat on his hands long enough. Time to show what a war mage could do.

---

Even a worm will turn, Thanatos thought. That explained why he was suddenly fighting for his life the instant he got a bit of freedom and some blood in him. The blood haze had barely receded — the drumbeat of hot salt food delicious more still echoed in the back of his head, but he’d felt the primal drive to force foreign hands away from his body, to prevent himself being violated again. Varro was so unperturbed by his resistance he didn’t even bother calling the guards back in, but so focused were the two vampires on each other that they forgot they weren’t the only factors in the equation.

The ultrasonic hum an idling mage constantly emitted was difficult to make out over the sounds of the scuffle, but Thanatos could pick out a distinct upward shift in pitch: Mariano, attempting to force a cast through the restraints. The sound built into a resonating screech like microphone feedback. A flood of relief washed through Thanatos and he redoubled his efforts, now with a focus on keeping Varro’s attention away from the crackles and snaps of each amplified surge of magic slipping out around the ward. The cuffs should have been enough to keep most mortal mages from even attempting something like this. Mariano wasn’t most mages. The screech pitched higher and higher until it strained the limit of even Thanatos’s hearing, an awful hissing whine. Moments later, there was a soft pop as if a lightbulb had burst, and then the roar of igniting plasma.

The stream of blue that erupted from Mariano’s teeth melted through the cuffs in a trice. When he got to his feet, his pact rings glowed more brightly than they had in days and white fire blazed at his palms. There was the avenging angel Thanatos loved so dearly: tall, dark, and ready to turn a vampire into a pile of ash. Varro did turn when he heard the noise, gathering liquid shadow around him with a snarl. “What did I tell you about interfering in the affairs of higher beings?” he growled, or at least, Thanatos guessed that was the end of the sentence. Varro never got to finish, a burning hole through his windpipe quickly followed by one through the chest, obliterating the heart. Mariano wasn’t one for one-liners. Gods, that was hot.

Finally, Thanatos had time to catch his breath. The damage from the repeated drownings, seventeen total, was already fading thanks to Mariano’s gift. And a gift it truly was, freely given, not asked for. Mariano always gave of himself when Thanatos needed it, without hesitation and with no need to be convinced. If he didn’t want to be somewhere, he wouldn’t be, as he had clearly demonstrated. The reason he belonged to Thanatos — and Thanatos to him, he thought with a thrill — was exclusively by his own choice. He was not stolen property; he was a friend, a partner, a lover.

“Are you all right?” Mariano’s hand on his shoulder interrupted his thoughts. “Can you walk or do you need—”

“I’m fine, darling, really,” Thanatos was quick to reassure. “You were incredible.”

“Couldn’t watch it again.” Mariano started working on the door, focused plasma from his hands parting the metal with ease. As it crashed to the floor, footsteps drummed in the hallway. They’d have company soon. “Ready to go home?”

They were both in terrible shape and had less than ten seconds before confronting an army. Escape would be nothing less than a desperate affair of fighting for their lives, even with the head of the snake still smoldering on the ground between them. Still, somehow, the cloud of despair that had filled the tiny cell and hung oppressively over them for days seemed to spill from the open door into the hall and leave them both breathing just that bit more freely. Thanatos almost wanted to laugh. Instead, he focused his blood sense into identifying the strength of the numbers coming toward them. He might as well be useful: no rest for the wicked, after all.

“Indeed, mortal mage. Let’s not keep Bastian waiting.”

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