#low-energy and sluggish and much much much thinner than he should be

[thedreadvampy]

ohhhh I am beset with anxiety today

Otis is ill and I have been having a lot of dreams about it. he's going to the vet tomorrow but I'm scared they won't be able to help

anyway last night I had a dream I was taking him to the vet and I passed a man in the street with another, darker California Kingsnake wandering around his chest and waist. The other man's snake was called Admiral Handkerchief and his problem was that he'd suddenly got really aggro. Admiral Handkerchief bit me but mostly what I woke up with from the dream, aside from a lot of grief and anxiety about Otis' very real illness, limpness and weight loss, was 'holy shit Admiral Handkerchief is an unhinged name for a snake'

love that. Admiral Handkerchief. Cannot think of many things less like a melanistic California Kingsnake than a handkerchief.

[delimeful]

or set your teeth against my throat (2)

warnings: illness, mild emeto, bad decisions, miscommunication, short panic attack/flashback

---

As the night turned to dawn and then day, Roman didn’t stop running.

He couldn’t stop, even as his pace grew more and more sluggish, his path erratic. Every time he thought about pausing, finding a good campsite and finally letting himself take a breath, it was as though phantom sensations grasped at his skin or tore at his throat.

He kept moving.

It was stupid, probably, being driven forward by fear like a mindless animal. … It was definitely stupid. Still, after ages spent trapped in one form, the full moon’s pull on the wolf in him was irresistible.

For the first time in ages, he worried about the possibility of coming astray of a human settlement once the moon was overhead. Normally, Virgil was the one who dedicated himself to making sure their pack’s turning ground was far from any stab-happy humans, always double and even triple-checking.

In his current state, Roman could barely discern a single natural scent around him, let alone any human scents he should avoid. He kept feeling eyes on him, silent watchers, but the distinction between reality and his own terrified delusions was growing thinner.

When the sun finally sank below the horizon, Roman allowed himself to collapse on a soft patch of earth under a shielding copse of saplings. He had some hope, however shallow, that by wearing himself out, his wolf would spend the night curled up somewhere, settled into a sleep heavy enough to erase the pounding headache settled deep in his skull.

He’d been a fool to let himself hope.

His memories while fully-turned were foggy as usual, but the emotions were clear: he’d spent his entire night on the move. His wolf had been howling long, agonized calls into the dark around him, desperately searching for the other members of his small pack. Desperately waiting for a response that would never come.

To top it all off, when he woke up human-shaped in the early hours of dawn, his headache had only grown worse.

His only turn of fortune was that his wolf hadn’t traveled back the way he’d come, driven away by some immutable sense of danger. He could at least be grateful he wouldn’t have to make up for any lost progress, even if his body was weak and trembling from being pushed past the brink of exhaustion.

The further he got from those bloodsuckers, the better.

His vision blurred slightly with each step. It was seeming more and more likely that he was growing feverish, though it was hard to tell with nobody else around to ask. He kept pressing a hand to his forehead and neck, trying to gauge his temperature, but his hands were warm, too.

He’d complained about his packmates’ terrible circulation and icy fingers before, but there was very little he wouldn’t do for them now… Just the phantom memory of Virgil’s cool hand on his head, voice sharp but touch unbearably gentle, was enough to make tears prick his eyes.

He took a deep breath, forcing himself up on shaky legs. There was no way he could give up now, feverish or not. What would his packmates advise?

“For survival, shelter and water are most important,” he mumbled to himself, wincing at the poor imitation. He cleared some of the raspiness from his throat, imagining Logan’s face when he really got into sharing his newest bit of knowledge. “Running water is preferable to still water, which can carry illnesses, and for larger rivers there is also the potential to find freshwater food sources, like salmon, catfish, bass, um… pike, trout… cod?” He frowned, losing the careful enunciation. “Wait, is salmon freshwater?”

Logan could have listed more off, Roman was sure, but the effort helped cheer him nonetheless. He spent the next few hours winding his way through the forest, attempting every so often to sniff the air for damp soil with little success.

His ears still worked fine, however, and so when he caught the first distant trickle of rushing water, he wasted no time in following the sound. It was no river, but the stream was plenty to help quench the dryness in the back of his throat.

“Go upstream,” he could imagine Virgil demanding, “make yourself harder to track. Wolves aren’t the only ones out there with good noses.”

“The water is so cold, though,” he complained to himself even as he began sloshing through it. “I have squishy human flesh, I’m going to freeze to death.”

Here was where Logan would point out his exaggeration, and Virgil would snap something snarky to distract him from the chill.

The burbling of the water was a poor substitute.

Once his feet grew truly chilled, he waded back out, mimicking Virgil’s voice to caution himself against the more slippery-looking rocks. He probably looked a little silly, holding both parts of a conversation, but it wasn’t as though anyone was around to see.

“Cut me some slack,” he muttered to nobody, allowing the comfort of his wolf form to slide back into place as the day turned to a chilly evening and he lay to rest. “I’m maybe-possibly-feverish, I deserve good things.”

He slept fitfully, and when he woke, there was a gray coat draped over him, and a small pile of walnuts and blackberries sat at his side, the nuts already shelled and the berries freshly washed.

The incredibly suspicious nature of their appearance only stopped Roman from eating them for about five minutes, and four of those five minutes were dedicated to imagining all the reasons Virgil would list to not eat them.

“Sorry, Virge,” he said through a mouthful of fruity deliciousness.

There didn’t seem to be anyone around, and no matter how he buried his face in the coat lining, his nose was too stuffed to pick up anything. It was an extraordinarily soft coat, though, and he felt awfully cold. It was hard for even him to imagine what harm could be done with a coat.

“I’m accepting this Possibly Evil Coat, but only for a little while, so don’t get any ideas!”

The woods were quiet in response to his declaration, and he sniffed daintily before climbing to his feet, internally bemoaning the way the world swayed slightly as he moved.

Couldn’t he just sleep here a bit longer…?

He imagined the unimpressed looks his packmates would give him. Imaginary Virgil in particular wouldn’t stand for sitting around when there was every possibility he was still being hunted.

“For all you know, that vamp was just a sick mind trick, and they’ve been toying with you this whole time!” Virgil would say, jumping to the worst-possible scenario that Roman always stalwartly tried to ignore. He shuddered, glancing around himself.

“You are not helping my mood, mister,” he muttered to Imaginary Virgil as he tromped through the underbrush with much less elegant grace than usual.

The little mystery offerings from the morning had helped stave off his plummeting energy levels, but they weren’t enough. It was only midday when the lightheadedness and the chills shuddering through him became too much, and he found himself collapsed on the ground between one blink and the next.

He was contemplating the benefits of simply remaining facedown on the dirt for a while when a cool hand wrapped around his wrist, carefully tugging him onto his back.

Roman blinked at the face above him, the blurry features slowly resolving themselves into the shape of the vampire who had freed him only nights before. The fear that shot through him didn’t make him any more lucid, and Roman bared his teeth in a snarl that was probably much less fearsome on a human face.

“Told you so,” Imaginary Virgil said, instead of doing anything helpful like tearing a vampire’s throat out. Roman missed Real Virgil.

The vampire was talking, a low, constant noise meant to soothe as he shifted an arm around Roman’s shoulders, lifting him to his feet. The blood rushed to his head, vision going black-- the next thing he knew, he was inside a small cabin, swaddled in blankets, the hearth crackling merrily feet away.

… What had he been worrying about? He couldn’t remember.

A chill shuddered through him. He was still so cold, even as sweat drenched the cloth around him, and he complained relentlessly.

His packmates tolerated his sickbed whining as graciously they always did, though for some reason they were more hesitant than normal to hold him close when he called for them. They seemed to be taking his care in shifts, as there was only ever one person in view, and sometimes he woke up completely alone.

(Strange, since they normally all piled up together when one of them got sick. They probably just needed to prioritize hunting or checking their territory boundaries or something. Roman wasn’t that sick.)

When they were there, Roman rambled and bickered with them nonstop, through shudders and chattering teeth, telling old stories and adding new twists to distract from the sickness ravaging him, only pausing when they pressed coriander seeds or wormwood to his lips.

(That was a little strange. Logan knew mint worked better for Roman’s nausea. Maybe they were out?)

Time passed in a haze, marked only by the frequent offers of fresh water and stale rations. Eventually, he was able to even measure out his healing progress by how often he could keep the aforementioned nutrients down.

(One of them was busy hunting, but somehow there was never any fresh kill.)

He knew his fever had finally, properly broken when he reached out for the one who had been taking care of him all this time, and registered that their skin was icy-cold.

Roman jerked back and then instantly regretted it as every nerve in his body protested severely.

“Ah, careful!” warned the vampire, who was at least smart enough to stay out of immediate biting range. His hands fluttered around as though he was attempting to bat away the dark spots that were currently dotting Roman’s vision.

Unbidden, a rough growl tore from him. He had a heartbeat to feel vindicated at the vamp’s flinch before his breath caught in his throat, kicking off an uncontrollable coughing fit.

Each wheeze brought less and less air, and when he caught the vampire shuffling closer, it suddenly felt like he had no air at all. He hunched over his knees, shifting his hands to cover his neck pathetically, as though the motion could protect him.

“Back off,” he snapped, cursing himself when the words came out as barely more than a choked whisper. How many times had he said some variation on the phrase in the past few weeks? He should have learned by now that it never worked.

When he glanced up, though, he found the vampire had practically teleported all the way across the room. The sight of the vamp peering at Roman worriedly from the furthest corner was odd enough to yank his mind out of the half-formed flashback.

He took a deep breath, trying to remember the grounding exercises Virgil always ran through. His wrists were light, his knees didn’t ache; he wasn’t chained down. There was soft fabric around him, and warmth in the air; it was a far cry from cold cement platforms in lifeless forts.

There was a vampire here, but his eyes weren’t red, and he didn’t wear a cruel smile like a second skin. Roman might still be a prisoner, but he wasn’t there anymore.

Instead, his current location was… a curiously cozy cabin?

Roman blinked. It was a single room, a bit sparse in decor but containing a small coal stove, stocked pantry, and a cheerily roaring fireplace. He was sitting on the solitary bed, a nest of blankets creased around him.

He turned his blank gaze back to the vampire. For a moment, the only noise in the room was the low crackle-pop of burning wood.

“Are you okay?” the vampire finally asked, brow creased with what looked like genuine concern. “You’ve been really burning up, and fevers like that can take a lot out of you. At least,” a pause, “as fire as I know.”

Any and all snappy responses (both literal and metaphorical) flew instantly from Roman’s mind. He groaned and slumped over dramatically, ignoring the way his vision swam slightly at the movement. “Augh, that was terrible!”

The vampire grinned, his smile somehow dorky even with the visible fangs. “You don’t have to tell me twice: I’m a fast burner!”

“Are you sure?” Roman asked. “Because this is the worst thing you’ve done to me yet, and I’m including the mind games, apparent abduction, and imprisonment.”

“Flameous last words,” the vamp said, and then the rest of Roman’s statement seemed to catch up with him. He drooped like a wilting flower. “You’re not imprisoned here! And I’m not trying to... mess with you, or anything.”

Roman gave him an unimpressed look. “Just so we’re on the same page, that’s a yes on you abducting me, correct?”

“I mean, yeah, just a little bit,” the vampire admitted, “but I meant it in a helpful way! I wasn’t going to bother you at first, I promise, but then you got sick, and I could tell how feverish you were just looking at you, and--,”

“Wait,” said Roman, his brain slowly churning through the implications of that sentence, “you were just going to follow me without me knowing, the entire way--,” home, he didn’t say, because the mere thought of accidentally leading a coven of vicious vampires to his vulnerable packmates made his stomach turn, and then he was leaning over and being violently ill in the bucket beside his bed.

A cold weight settled against the back of his neck, soothing against his overheated skin for the few seconds it took him to realize what-- or rather, who it was. He jerked away with a halfhearted snarl, probably looking rightly pathetic.

“I’m sorry,” the vampire said mournfully, stopping him short. “I wasn’t trying to upset you, I just-- I knew it was my fault. If I’d gotten the key sooner, or been braver, you wouldn’t have been out in the cold for so long, you might not have caught sick at all. It wouldn’t be right for me to abandon you.”

“Abandon me?” Roman spluttered. What did this guy think he was, some lost pup? “I can take care of myself just fine alone, thank you very much! I have absolutely no need for suspicious sanguinous stalkers on my tail.”

For emphasis, he shoved the blankets off of himself, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and stood up in preparation to leave.

One blink later, he was facedown on the floor, his body numb yet his nose stinging from the impact. “Ow.”

The vampire offered him a hand up. “Autumn is my favorite season, but that certainly didn’t seem like a very nice fall.”

“Must you kick a man while he’s down?” Roman bemoaned, ignoring the proffered hand in favor of pushing himself up.

His traitorous legs wobbled under him, and he ended up collapsing back into a seated position on the bed, right where he’d started. He felt a wave of familiar despair wash over him. The sickness had sapped every ounce of strength from him; whatever villainous plans lay ahead, he had no chance of foiling them.

… Maybe he could still foil some of them.

Roman met the vampire’s gaze as solidly as he could. “No matter how adeptly you try to play the kindly stranger role, I’m not going to fall for it.” I’m not going to lead you to my family. “You may as well cut your losses and do whatever it is you’re planning to do to me.”

He waved a dismissive hand for emphasis, as if it didn’t matter to him. As if the mere idea of getting so close to freedom and then dying (alone, far from his pack, without them ever even knowing what happened to him) wasn’t enough to make him feel like there were roots tangling in his lungs and weeds clogging his throat.

The vampire nodded slowly, a troubled look on his face. “In that case…”

He moved closer, and Roman focused very intently on not flinching, no matter how badly he wanted to, or how hard his body was already shaking. The vampire reached out--

“My name is Patton,” he said, very carefully offering his hand at the midpoint between them, “and what I want is for you to stay right here in this house until you’re healed, and then you can go wherever you want to go, and I’ll make an oath not to follow.”

“What?” Roman blurted, staring at Patton’s hand with blatant confusion. “You-- I-- What?”

“I really don’t want to hurt you, kiddo.” Roman stiffened, because that was a classic villain line setup if he’d ever heard one, but-- “So, once you’re healed, whatever you need me to do to prove it, I’ll do it.”

Roman’s increasing headache had nothing to do with his fever and everything to do with the oxymoron that was a philanthropist bloodsucker.

What was the right option? He couldn’t get away, but he couldn’t trust that this bizarre hospitality would last, either. Perhaps the best course of action here was inaction-- lulling the vampire into a false sense of security by pretending to be sick even as he grew healthy enough to escape?

Roman could act. He was good at it, and the bar for his illness had been set quite convincingly with his earlier faceplant. He let his muscles go lax, slumping over slightly to give off the impression of conceding without actually ever agreeing to Patton’s proposed plan.

“If you’re so intent on me trusting you, you can start by telling me where I am,” he sniffed, graciously not mentioning the abduction thing again.

Patton brightened, letting his offered hand drop without comment. “This is an aidhouse! It’s part of a system recently set up in this division of the kingdom for common good and to prevent spread of disease.”

That explained the insulated, if somewhat bare, interior. Roman raised a curious eyebrow. “And they’ll let just anyone use it?”

“That’s the principle behind it, yep! Normally, with non-plague cases, an apothecary apprentice would stop by to check in and offer guidance, but I told them I had it apothecovered!”

The puns were apparently a permanent fixture in the guy’s repertoire. Logan would be in agony. Roman ignored the pang in his chest at the thought, leaning further back against the pillow mound. “Yes, you wouldn’t want some poor apprentice to stick around long enough to find out there’s a lone vampire in their midst, would you?”

Dial it back, he could imagine Virgil hissing, as though the emo had any room to talk about unnecessary vitriol.

“Well, no,” Patton admitted, his smile turning a little strained. “But I turned them away because I already have all the experience I need! I worked as a full-time doctor before-- um, before...”

The smile turned full-on tremulous, and Roman was seized by a strange panic at the sight of it. He sprawled over the bed haughtily, the way he always did when demanding attention from his workaholic packmates.

“If you’re such a skilled doctor, then I’m sure you won’t have any problems running me through your treatments so far?” Roman challenged, inspecting his nails. It wasn’t a pointless query, either; some common human treatments were toxic to werewolves.

“Oh!” Patton said, voice still a little choked up. “Of course, let me see…”

The brink-of-tears quality to his words faded as he began to recount everything Roman had missed in his feverish haze. Patton’s exposition was nothing like Logan’s, cheerful rambling and jokes thrown in where Logan preferred efficient lists and muttered tangents.

Roman found himself drifting off to the sound regardless.

It seemed that pretending to trust Patton wouldn’t be as hard as he’d thought.

[cedarmoons]

pt. 3

@4biddenleeches is the best y’all js :3

--

She has been in Vesuvia for little over half a month, and it has been storming for the past three days. She lies in the nest of blankets and pillows on the ground, which passes as a bed in her work-in-progress home, and stares at the ceiling. Her left hand does not hurt, thanks to Asra’s ointment, though with the thunder comes difficulty sleeping. Despite the rain, it is humid and hot, and she tosses and turns, trying unsuccessfully to rest.

When she does finally sleep, she dreams of the Devil’s prison, and sees only empty chains. Broken manacles litter the walls and the floor; posts holding irons have been ripped from the bedrock they are embedded in. Blood gleams slickly on the cobbles, and the room smells of smoke and ash.

The Devil is gone.

“No,” Ziah whispers. “No.”

She looks up and sees her name written across the wall in blood. Hot air that smells of the desert brushes the back of her neck, and she turns around.

She gasps, jerking awake, sitting up in her nest of pillows. She rests her head in her hands and breathes, focusing on the beat of her heart, the drag of breath through her teeth. It had not meant anything. It had just been a dream.

The room flares white as lightning strikes outside. Thunder booms the moment after, so loud it rattles the windows in their panes. Ziah stands, gooseflesh rippling over her bare arms and legs, and walks on unsteady legs to the window. She stares at the rain running down the glass in sheets, absently massaging her left hand.

After a few moments she turns around and goes into her near-empty kitchen, which, other than the necessary amenities of gas stove, ice box, and countertops, has nothing but a vase of tithonias and Asra’s arthritis ointment.

Downstairs, her protections break with a screeching alarm. Ziah winces, instinctively moving to cover her ears before catching herself, lowering her hands. She senses the shadows shift behind her and turns on her heel, focusing on the darkness behind her phonograph. Something is watching her there, hidden as before, yet somehow more menacing in its silence.

“I said before that you are not welcome here,” Ziah warns. There is not much she can do against a creature from the other plane, other than shore up protections, which is apparently useless.

The Master is very angry with you, the creature says in reply. A chill runs down her back. He misses his traitorous beloved. It inhales, deeply, as one sitting at a feast inhales the aroma of the proferred food. Your power... ohh, I’m so hungry.

Her whole body tingles. Ziah ducks and the window behind her shatters, thunder booming and rain blowing inside. Glass sprays across the room, glinting from the water droplets on their surfaces.

She puts her hands together and rests them over her chest, fingertips and thumbs forming a triangle over her sternum. The flash of summoned light catches the creature by surprise — it shrieks and turns away, the light briefly revealing only an opaque, strange outline of a white shape with curling horns. She sprints downstairs, cursing viciously when she accidentally steps on broken glass, cutting her feet.

Ignoring the sting, she yanks on her traveling cloak and steps into her sandals by the door, and despite how quickly she moves she feels sluggish, slow, as if it had actually managed to siphon energy from her.

That thought is alarming. The moment her sandals are half-on she yanks open the front door.

No, the thing shrieks, both petulant and furious. Something splinters upstairs. No, the Master wants you! So hungry...

Ziah steps out into the rain and slams the door shut behind her. She reaches out, finding her protections not broken as she had thought but drained of energy and rendered inert—which should not be possible. She had charged them with a full year’s worth of power.

She thinks of the creature, and its whine: I’m so hungry.

Something collides with the other side of the door. Ziah stumbles back from the threshold and brings her palms together, recharging the lines of dragon lily ink and weaving a steely net that will prevent anything—anything—from leaving the house. It is not permanent, especially if this thing can consume magical energy as she suspects, but it will give her some time to get away.

The creature screams in rage and despair as she turns and moves as quickly as she can, limping on her right foot as pain stabs up from the arch to her ankle. Rain beats down upon her, but she is more exhausted than she had first thought, and her magical reserves feel dangerously low. More than once she steps into ankle deep puddles that splash her to her naked knees. She allows a brief moment to regret not having time to change out of her pajamas before pulling on her cloak.

The constant storms mean the streets are flooded, the canals too swollen with water to prevent the stone levees from overflowing. At the next bolt of lightning, followed by a clap of thunder, she sees a dark shape moving in the floodwater—a vampire eel—and grits her teeth.

She is still strong enough to walk upon its surface, wincing at the pain in her right foot, and pretends not to notice the vampire eels that follow her under the water, drinking every drop of her blood that runs into the floodwaters.

The bigger problem is finding the Mooney house. She had not bothered to learn the way to Asra’s. Vesuvia is transformed at night, she finds, especially at so late an hour when not even the gas street lamps are burning. The fresh unfamiliarity makes her task all the more difficult.

She finds the floating markets and the baker’s stall, and, soaked and shivering from cold, finds a canal she remembers crossing with Asra. Ziah gathers her cloak closer to her and looks over her shoulder.

When she finally finds the Mooney house, she is certain she looks like a drenched rat. She is exhausted, soaked to the bone, too concerned with her limited power to shield herself from the rain, and she has by now put all of her weight on her left foot. Her stomach cramps on emptiness and twists, because her body thinks she has used too much magic, too soon.

She sniffs and approaches the door, reaching out to the knob before she senses the energies of various protections and curses. Asra had been thorough — it is multilayered, complex, the work of a magician who had had months or years to perfect his craft. She senses spells to shove an intruder away, curses that wither entire arms, hexes of burning pain and more. If she was not in such a hurry she would find it all incredibly impressive, considering Asra’s youth. Or perhaps this work is not Asra’s alone — perhaps others had contributed to this web of magic as well.

The house, too, is bristling. It considers her an intruder at this hour, and she is unwelcome. This it makes clear to her.

Ziah suppresses a shiver and sniffs again. If she gets a cold because of this... “I have no time for this,” she says. “Let me in.”

The house remains adamant and hostile. Ziah scowls, then closes her eyes. She reaches out, fingertips inches away from the door, and feels for the network of energies that wrap around the house, like a cluster of thick ivy and other vines that protect and conceal everything beneath. But there, on the second story window, a weak link, a place where the tangled layers of hexes and protections and spells is thinner than the rest. That would take less effort.

One cannot rip out a single section of ivy without taking at least some other section of it as well. One cannot snag a web string without destroying the rest in turn. “Stubborn fool,” she mutters to the house, and reaches in, focusing her will and her remaining on that weakest link.

The house resists, fighting her tooth and nail, screaming in her ear as it tries to prevent her from ripping out the protective magics that it has had for ages. She manages to uproot the weakest section, unraveling the surrounding areas in turn, before the door swings open. She pulls back at once and steps inside, shutting the door and breathing heavily.

That had taken more effort than she had anticipated. No matter whether Asra had contributed to the spells protecting the Mooney house or not, she should not underestimate him.

The first floor is pitch black, and the rain is loud outside. Ziah rests her forehead against the wood, catching her breath, and hears a soft glide behind her. She turns around just as lightning flashes, bleaching Faust of all color for a single heartbeat.

As her eyes adjust to the darkness, because she does not have the spare magic to even summon a witchlight, she sees Faust tilt her head at her, tongue flicking in curiosity. She cannot imagine what she must look like—soaked, shivering, putting all her weight on her good foot.

She listens. Asra’s heartbeat is upstairs, steady. He is asleep, then. At this hour of the night she is not surprised. That he can somehow sleep through this storm... that is more surprising.

“Faust,” she says, finally, her words punctuated by thunder. She shivers, cold rainwater running down her legs under the cloak, teeth chattering. “Please wake Asra. He and I must speak.”