#swerve is a vampire | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

harmshake · 1 year ago

Text

The Gentle Horror, Part 3

What is done in the dark will always be brought to light...

Vampire Jimmy Uso x Nyma (fem!black!oc) | 18+, NSFW, mentions of graphic m*rder, domestic violence, blood, and smut | 7,474 words

a/n: We're back! I decided that instead of rewriting the entire series to edit in Vampire Jimmy, I'd just edit out Vampire Swerve. 💅🏾

Happy reading! Read Parts 1 and 2 or my non-spooky stuff here, if you'd like. ✨

"They know what you did, Stephon."

"They're comin' to kill you."

"Wake up. Leave the girl behind and run. Now. Before it's too late."

The dream of Nyma's delicate and beautiful voice had swiftly warped into a nightmare of a deep, panic-stricken tone, trying to shake Stephon awake after a few moments of him feeling trapped within the warning he didn't want to hear.

He knew that voice and knew it well. Daphne, his maker, his ex-lover, and a vampire he hadn't spoken to in nearly a century. Stephon wanted to be surprised that their blood link still connected them after all this time, after he'd sworn her off and crossed the nation to leave her alone, but that surprise abruptly melted into the realization that they could never be separated. Not when it was her blood that ran through his veins and made him what he was. A creature of the night. A vampire that was apparently in such grave danger that Daphne set aside her hurt for him abandoning her to call out to him, help him.

Stephon had his reasons to sever his ties to the woman as though he owed her his life, their time together was just as destructive to it. He had craved peace, quiet, and calm after decades of insanity and sin. Peace, quiet, and calm that Nyma and her beautiful, brown eyes, soft skin, and even softer heart blessed him with when he least expected it, but needed it most.

He knew as soon as the sun went down that day he would go to her, rid himself of the fear that swirled in his mind from Daphne's caution from wherever she was, hopefully not near, so that he could be near Nyma, ridding her clothes and hiding himself in her warmth that made him feel not only alive but safe. Stephon knew better than to dismiss his maker's message as he also knew what he'd done...and that certainly the consequences were imminent.

Yet he wouldn't put himself or Nyma in harm's way, already thinking ahead of how to tell her of his gruesome mistake and to come away with him to leave it all behind him. She wasn't happy here, regardless, not when she was alone in a new state with no friends or family. Not when Tyree, her husband, the only person she knew, was dead. Not when it was he who killed him.

He was an abusive piece of shit, a low-down nigga, and Stephon had no qualms about scrubbing the earth clean of him. Yet he did so not at Nyma's behest, but at his impulse, something he wasn't certain how to speak to her about, but he would. He had to. And he had to believe that she felt those blood-rushing, delicious, and deep emotions for him as he did for her to trust him when he confessed that he murdered him for her good—that he only wanted to protect her.

Just like Stephon wanted to protect her now. If danger was after him, surely it would be after her as well since he had revealed what he was to her. Stephon shook again in his sleep as the nightmare, as Daphne's voice, finally released him, his eyes popping open with a jolt shooting through his body that lay in his bed. He didn't have to adjust his groggy eyes to know it was still sunlight beyond his basement bedroom, sunlight that would destroy his body like that of a lit torch setting ablaze a bundle of sticks, yet Stephon's gaze sharpened with immediate awareness that there was danger, the danger, right here and surrounding his bed as his eyes widened to see three tall men he didn't recognize in matching black turtlenecks and jeans like the Texas heat outside wasn't blistering.

However, Stephon did recognize that the heat would never touch them, not when they were cold-blooded, not when they were vampires just like him. Vampires sent here to kill him. Before he could think to flee with his incredible speed, the three men used their combined and even quicker speed to pin him down to his mattress, two of them at either end of him with large and fucking strong hands holding down his arms and ankles as the third man retrieved a wooden stake from the holster on his belt.

"Shit, wait, pl—" Stephon's eyes protruded with panic, the same panic he could still hear enmeshed in his brain where Daphne's fear thought to bury itself for his own good. But it was too late, his words too late, falling on deaf ears, anyway, as he knew the men would not hear his pleas, only his brief scream as the man hovering above him drove the stake into his chest, through his heart. He did it with such ease and force like that of a knife sinking into supple, human skin as Stephon was once human, too, once immortal unless struck in this brutal and specific way...that ease and force unsettling yet short-lived, short-lived like the millions of thoughts of his every wrongdoing, regret, and wasted love, as he could do nothing more than stare into the eyes of his murderer before his blood spewed from his chest and blurred his vision.

Vision that obscured as it faded to black in just seconds as he faintly heard Nyma's voice in the corner of his mind a final time as she sang a spiritual his mother used to, a song he had not heard Nyma sing and never would, yet he prayed with his last breath that his soul would linger in the ether to perhaps hear it, hear her, in another lifetime...

・・━━━━━━━━━━ ∞ ━━━━━━━━━━・・

The kill had taken only a second, but Jon felt it for hours later.

It didn't matter how many vampires he'd witnessed in their final moments, didn't matter how many times he restrained them to keep them still for their demise, or, worse, how many times it'd been him with the wooden stake in his grasp before he wedged it into their chests to pierce their undead hearts...their deaths were still deaths. And yet he knew they were justified, or, better, well-deserved.

Jon may have carried with him the weight of ending a life, but if it was a life that unabashedly tormented and ended another, he believed it was only right to correct the sin with another that cleansed the earth of their evil. It was not only his belief but his sworn duty as a bounty hunter, his only prey vampires that dared threaten to expose their existence with violence against unsuspecting, and usually innocent, human beings.

Jon was human once, a long while ago, yet his heart still bled with the news of war, death, and savagery toward his distant kin—especially if it was at the advantaged hands of a cold beast whose strength would eternally overpower a fragile, defenseless human. The mere thought "boiled" his blood enough to make it his life work to protect not only vampires but the humans whom they hid themselves from.

As he and his bounty hunter associates stood around the bedside of the remains of this cruel vampire, his blood splattered along his sheets, the floor, and in every direction, including upon Jon's long braids that fell over his shoulders and left cheek, he smudged the back of his hand to the stain on his skin before they collected what was left of his body to dispose into large, black suitcases lined with plastic. They worked impossibly quickly, seamlessly, packing up him, the sheets, and anything that his blood had touched before they cleaned with hydrogen peroxide and other products to leave the basement pristine and untouched to a mortal's gaze.

Yet, suddenly, Jon couldn't shake the distinct pull of guilt that touched his heart from the mortal who lived just next door, that pull growing stronger as he and his team filed out of Stephon's home through the front door whence they came, knowing no human would detect their presence as they were careful to act at this particular time of day when the sun was high in the hot sky and they were all shuffled away to their jobs in the city. Where a normal vampire would burst into flames from that hot sky, Jon, like his mates, was gifted with the ability to bask in the sun, the particular blessing known to vampires as daywalking, a blessing only bestowed upon bounty hunters by the Liege who depended on them to work tirelessly, day or night, to collect their bounty in good time.

But the human next door, the one who yanked at Jon's heart with her pain so blisteringly blatant that it felt like his own, was home at an odd time, tucked away in her bedroom upstairs and beneath her covers as she tried to sleep but could not. Jon couldn't see her as he and the hunters carried their luggage to their windowless black van to stow their haul, but he could hear her perfectly. Shuffling with restlessness in her cotton sheets, breath huffing with frustration for the lack of rest, lack of peace as every other horror tried to steal it. He knew of those horrors as it was why he was here in her neighborhood: To assassinate the vampire who murdered her husband.

However, Jon could feel with his heightened sense of discernment that this human woman knew nothing of that horror, only what it left behind...hurt, confusion, and a dull sense of healing that he felt trying to blossom in her heart from the vampire who rested in pieces in the back of their truck to be burned in the desolate woods as they closed the doors and climbed inside. That was the guilt that tried to rip at Jon's chest as they pulled away from the two-story home that once housed a beast who no longer could plague this otherwise quiet, lush neighborhood.

But it was another death to plague that poor human woman. Another mystery for her never to solve. And, obliquely, it was his fault. His brown eyes glanced at her home growing smaller in the passenger side mirror as they drove down the street, yet his guilt did not grow any smaller with it. And Jon knew then that it would not unless he did what he knew was right: Protect the humans who could not protect themselves.

・・━━━━━━━━━━ ∞ ━━━━━━━━━━・・

Four days.

Four days without Stephon.

It was unlike him to not slip into her home as soon as the sun went down, his home unusually silent when she went to knock upon his door each day, and uncanny for him not to at least speak to her from his own, her blood mingling with his own, too, in a way that she heard his sweet, beautiful voice between her ears even if he was nowhere near.

Yet that was the most disturbing part for Nyma. If Stephon had suddenly gotten too busy to see her, she could understand. He did not lead some simple life that she could even begin to comprehend. But she couldn't hear him anymore. She couldn't feel his presence, something like that of a small void spreading within her heart with eternal blackness where he used to be.

Nyma was only human, only knew what death felt like on the side of the living, the way it gnawed at the heart, but she knew this feeling well as it was the same one that haunted her when Tyree, her late husband, went missing. Stephon was in trouble or...he was not on this side any longer.

The thought kept her up at night and kept her tossing and turning in bed during the day when she tried to catch up on sleep. If there was one thing she was grateful for was the fact that she worked remotely, and yet being home alone in a viciously empty house—save for her golden retriever, Maddie, who could sense her sadness and tried to lick away her tears when they fell from her face as Nyma gently pushed her away—felt like a special kind of torture.

It was already torture to live in a new state so far from home, to live in this new place with her husband who tortured her in his heavy-handed way, to live in this new place with no one to save her until...

Stephon's deep brown eyes gleamed in her mind's eye as Nyma lay in bed, glistening tears running down her cheeks to both sides of the pillow behind her head before she closed her eyes to see his gaze better. Not realizing that the last time she would see it would be the other night after he held her in his arms as he rocked between her legs, rocking her soul with thrusts that she felt somewhere even deeper, even more ethereal. He drank from her that night, his sharp fangs breaking her skin along her delicate throat and hurting her so good, a passion that Nyma never believed existed before Stephon unveiled his true form to her.

A gentle monster. A lovely beast. And yet still merely a mesmerizing man.

Now that man was missing and Nyma wasn't sure if she could handle it. She wasn't handling it, truthfully, the last four days a blur that left the room spinning, her world tilting off axis, and she saw no other way to balance it than escaping into the night, sinking behind her steering wheel, and following the dark roads wherever they took her.

Those first four nights, Nyma felt like she was still searching for Stephon, hoping to see him walking along the bordering woods, sitting on a park bench, hoping to just see him anywhere. When she did not, the dark roads led her to a bar that sat on the corner just outside her neighborhood. Nyma wasn't particularly a drinker, that was more Tyree's taste before he let the liquor fuel his frustrations that he took out on her, and yet she still found herself heading inside after peeping at her reflection in the rearview mirror to adjust the black headwrap that hid her dark, afro curls that she hadn't bothered to touch since sorrow sapped her of her strength. Even her brown skin suffered for it, usually luminous but now pale, both from her sorrow and those cigarettes that she reserved to smoke out that sorrow, going through two packs in the last 72 hours.

She wasn't proud of it, especially when she thought of Stephon's words to her that she was too gorgeous to smoke, but like him and his Hennessy, she had her poison picked, too. And without him here, she felt the need to down more poisons, anything that soothed her nerves with a warm touch...although she had begun to fall in love with his cool touch...

Nyma felt the cool gravel beneath her knees when she fell onto it as she stumbled out of the bar an hour later, too drunk to walk and certainly to drive, but she wanted to go home, and by the grace of whatever god was above she made it there to crawl into her bed, Maddie leaping onto the sheets with her to rest her big head on her waist, and cry herself to sleep as she thought about how that same god could inflict mourning on her time and time again.

When the time was past noon the next day, Nyma was still tangled in her sheets with dried tears and drool on the fabric, only waking when Maddie barked and would not stop. The sound didn't cause her headache, but worsened it, compelling her to snatch the sheets off her body and stare at her bare feet sprouting from the ripped, black jeans she'd worn to the bar last night as she didn't want to fall down the stairs on her way to quiet Maddie by fixing her a late breakfast.

Yet Maddie was not at her bowl in the kitchen but barking and whining for a different reason, standing in her foyer with her hackles standing up, too, her eyes trained on the front door like there was someone behind it. Nyma's eye twitched with her heart twitching along with it from anxiety and excitement that it could finally be him. She clumsily rushed to the mirror that hung to the left of her door as she wiped at her eyes and mouth and adjusted her red tank top to look as presentable as she could, never mind that he had already seen her vulnerable and still called her beautiful.

A few quiet knocks then called from behind her door and Nyma called back, "Coming!" as she petted Maddie on her head to calm her and quickly led her out to the fenced-in backyard before she nearly ran back to her door where the knocks rang again. Her heart pounded hard in her chest to see Stephon as she unlocked and pulled open the door, but it sank just as hard when she then remembered he could not stand in the sunlight. Instead, she spotted a tall, light-skinned brown man standing on her porch.

"Um, yes? Can I help you?" Nyma blurted as she squinted her eyes from the blaring afternoon sun assaulting her bleary eyes. His shoulders were almost broad enough to block it but he shifted on his feet to let it shine on her face, his face handsome yet slightly stern and concerned, even as he attempted a polite smile at her.

"Hello, ma'am. Are you Nyma? My name is Jon. I'm a friend of Stephon's. Can I talk with you 'bout him for a minute?" Jon's voice was just as polite as his smile, deep and laced with kindness and more of that concern Nyma could see crinkling his features. That same concern shifted to dread in her chest to hear Stephon's name come out of this stranger's mouth.

"Y-yeah, uh, please, come in," she stammered as she let Jon slowly walk past her and into her home where he stood awkwardly like he didn't know what to do with himself. She watched the long, thick fingers of his left hand twitch before he shoved both hands into the front pockets of his black joggers, switching around on his foot to face her when she said, "Have a seat, please. Do you, um, want anything to drink or—"

"Naw, I'm straight. Just want a few minutes of your time, if that's okay," Jon said without sitting down. His demeanor was already reticent even though he seemed nice enough, yet Nyma felt her dread burrow deeper into her chest at who he was and what he wanted to talk about concerning Stephon which would only take "a few minutes."

"Did something happen to him?" Nyma whispered as he parted his lips to speak, the truth trying to wriggle into her soul that she just wanted to confirm without further dragging it out.

Jon's face remained stern, concerned, yet soft as he replied, "Yeah. He's fled town. There's a warrant out for his arrest."

Nyma's eyes widened once more at the news, first panicked but then confused as Stephon was a sweet and quiet man, he had to be as no one knew what he was but her. She wondered if Jon knew, too. However, she didn't ask, wrapping her arms around herself as she tried to find the words to ask instead, "Arrest?! For what?"

"No easy way to say this," he said under his breath with a heavy sigh before he added, "Stephon killed someone."

"Killed? Who? W-what?!" Nyma spat immediately in disbelief. She knew Stephon had a notably noxious way of "eating his dinner," but she also knew he wasn't the type to be greedy. The night that would never leave her mind of when he feasted on her, he couldn't have been more tender...

Now Jon's eyes widened slightly at her question and he paused as if to silently debate with himself before he let out another tense sigh, this time his gaze holding hers. "He made me swear on my life not to tell anyone. Jesus. I'm so sorry to be the one to tell you when it shoulda been him before he went on the run. He...he killed Tyree. I'm sorry. I'm so fuckin' sorry."

Jon's hushed words rushed out of him before he rushed to her to catch her as her body tried to collapse to the floor, the blood rushing from her brain as Nyma couldn't stand or think straight, blotches of black filling her mind and vision. She didn't have to think too hard to realize all at once that what Jon said was true, all of the evidence she couldn't see as she got lost in Stephon's mysterious yet sweet gaze distracting her from reality...

The night she met Stephon, he seemed wary of her bruised cheek like he knew who caused it. That same night, Tyree was murdered with a snapped neck that his autopsy report claimed was a clean break with no signs of struggle. Almost immediately after, Stephon cozied up into her life to replace him with his promise to protect her the way her husband never did.

Nyma heard a loud cry echo through the patches of darkness that did not sound like her own but she felt her vocal cords quiver from its strength, saw Jon in spots through that darkness as he held her to his cool chest in a hug that did little to comfort her or muffle her sobs.

"I'm sorry," Jon repeated softly from far away before he pulled her to her couch a few feet away. Nyma's chest heaved with heavy, stuttering breaths as she tried to blink her teary ears to focus on her hands balled up on her lap, a technique she'd read ages ago that claimed to help quell panic attacks. Yet as Jon reappeared with a glass in his hands that her sights focused on then, she knew nothing would help unless there was a stronger substance in that glass besides the water he brought her.

He tried to sit down next to her once she took it from him, but then he seemed to think against it, staying upright as Nyma took a shaky sip of the water and nearly choked when another sob rushed from her throat. He grabbed the glass back from her to place it on her coffee table, his voice still hushed as he murmured, "Shit. I hate to drop this shit on you and leave. I really do. I wasn't supposed to come here in the first place, but it ain't sit right with me for you to be left in the dark 'bout all this."

Nyma glanced up at him and tried to hear him as a mild ringing in her ears threatened to mute him, but she'd heard enough. All she could do was nod and put her face in her hands as that darkness came to consume her, anyway, only able to kind of hear Jon as he hesitated to move before he quietly shuffled to her front door to let himself out.

In the long stretch of silence that passed after he left, Nyma felt frozen to her couch, her cries frozen in her chest, as her pale, brown skin became paler and cool as if her heart had at last, after so many mournings, froze over, too.

・・━━━━━━━━━━ ∞ ━━━━━━━━━━・・

Nine years earlier...

Red light poured through the dark nightclub, the strobes vibrating with the bass of DeJ Loaf's "Me U & Hennessy" as a beautiful, black woman vibrated her body with a sensual swirl of her hips on Jon's lap as he sat on the white leather sofa in his section. He forgot her name and he didn't bother to ask again, too gone off the Remy to care as he cared more about how the thick curves of her ass felt in his hands, watching how it bounced when she bent over to twerk for him.

"You gotta girlfriend?" she asked in his ear once she leaned back against his chest, her long braids spilling on him and her soft, cool lips grazing his skin and making him shiver with the need to feel those lips on his dick that tried to poke her through his jeans.

"Do it matter?" he asked back gruffly, his hands gruffly pawing at her ample breasts in her strapless dress before he sluggishly remembered they were not alone in this section, his boys and the girls they entertained surrounding them. Yet when the woman's delicate moan surrounded his ears, Jon suddenly didn't care to hear or see anything else if it wasn't her leaned over again, face down, ass up, so he could make her whine more of those pretty moans to him.

Yeah, he had a girlfriend at home but she was likely asleep at this ungodly hour of the night, giving him enough time to slip away and do what he pleased as he saw fit. He was a grown man, a strong-willed man, and with the brown liquor coursing through his veins, that strong will led him to the woman's apartment to fit himself inside her with her legs squeezed around his waist and his lips on hers as she let him sip more of her pretty moans as he made her cum.

When she moved her lips to his neck, Jon heard himself moan, too, and felt himself get lost in her tight, wet, and bizarrely cool depths and now her kiss as she found a spot on his skin to suck deeply.

"Goddamn, girl," he moaned again as he thrust even deeper, her odd temperature not hindering his climax creeping up on him, gripping her waist for support as she gripped his naked back with nails scratching at his skin. Her teeth gently scraped his throat where she kissed him, as well, before they nipped a little hard. He cursed again and again, louder, when she bit him harder, a white-hot pain unlike any he'd ever felt shooting through his body when his sloshed brain caught up to the fact that her teeth penetrated his flesh.

Jon tried to stagger up and off of her but she was all of a sudden strong and stronger than him, pinning him to her body as she sucked from his neck with such force he felt lightheaded instantly. His throaty, orgasmic cries spiked into gurgling cries for help as blood filled his mouth, blood that she licked from his lips when it spilled before she continued at his neck. He worked to tear himself away but it was futile as this random bitch had him trapped and, worse yet, he felt dizziness travel from his foggy head and through his limbs where his strength rapidly teetered off.

He had never hit a woman in his life but with his remaining consciousness, he tried to choke her and fight for his life—life that he felt swiftly drain from him and into her mouth, the sounds of her eerily satisfied moans resounding in his ears as every other sound and color in the room dissipated into haunting nothingness. Nothingness he didn't want to meet as it effortlessly swallowed him up against his will.

"Jon."

"It's Jon, ain't it?"

"Get up, baby. Please. Come to me."

He heard her voice beyond him somewhere in the nothingness, her voice that was not Imani's, not his girlfriend's, and he became desperate to cry, scream, and curse at it as if this was the afterlife, he knew he had been sent to hell.

It had to be hell if that woman, that fucking creature, was here, had to be with the distant screams he heard all around him, and yet he was awfully frigid, his body throbbing with the coldest chills and the sharpest pain that kept him frozen wherever he was, his strength still seemingly absent from his body that felt like ice.

Yet when he finally gathered the willpower to slant open his eyes, Jon saw the interior of her bedroom again. The same moonlight billowed through her lavender curtains. The same pearl-white fan that spun lazily from the ceiling. The same round lips attached to that woman, that creature, who stared at him strangely and made him want to run for his life, especially as those lips that were once moist with her red lipgloss now crusted over with flakes of dried blood. His blood.

But he could only move his eyes, eyes that hurt like hell to open wider in fear to take in the monster that greeted him to hell.

"Yes, you're dead. But not really. But you mine now, baby. I'm so glad it worked. I'm glad you're up." She lept from the bed to leave Jon paralyzed on it as his eyes struggled to follow her. Another freezing chill shook his body, the pain so excruciating that a whimper slipped from his throat yet stopped short of his lips that he couldn't open.

"You cold? That'll pass soon, I think. Then you should be able to walk again," she said with a toss of her hand in the air as she breezed out of her bedroom. She returned with the breeze, a speed Jon didn't truly recognize as speed but as her disappearing and reappearing with a young, lanky, white man, no older than 25-years-old, writhing in her arms, his screams sounding just like the ones he faintly heard when he woke up. And yet the woman put him to sleep, her hands snaking around his neck to twist and silence his agonized cries like they never existed.

Jon wanted to cry from the horrendous sight and the cruel sound...but something about the way the man smelled made the pain in his body throb with new intent—not just pain like he was injured, but pain like he was starving.

"You need to drink. That'll help you heal faster. Here." She was at her bedside in the blink of an eye, holding the man like he weighed nothing, gripping him by his short, blond hair as the rest of him tumbled to her carpet, shoving his exposed neck up to Jon's lips.

Thick tears dotted his eyes as he realized she wouldn't do to the man whatever she had done to him, leaving him for dead and making those tears seep from the corner of his eyes that he could only dart in every direction as he tried not to look at the man's jugular vein that seemed to call to him, tried not to inhale whatever that metallic, yet sweet scent was that still surged in that vein.

"Drink. Or else you'll die."

The woman pressed his neck to Jon's mouth, and he felt his gums sting with new teeth that achingly and slowly sprouted from them, teeth that he felt pinch his bottom lip before he reluctantly opened it. His strength gingerly returned only to carefully crane his neck for a better angle to taste the man, taste his blood, the peculiar and horrifying pleasure flowing into his mouth as his tears flowed down his cheeks, forcing a grunt from him as he let the blood slide down his throat.

"That's it, baby. Drink. He's all for you," the nameless creature cooed as Jon's eyes burned with bloody tears, his throat burned from the hot blood, and yet he could not stop. A silent prayer flickered through his mind for the man as he did not deserve this, he did not deserve his life and blood stolen, and yet Jon could still not stop, grunting and gulping and making himself full and sick even after he was certain there was not a drop left in him.

"I'mma get rid of him, feed, and come right back." She stood and hoisted his wilted corpse onto her shoulder and reached down to caress her fingers along Jon's bottom lip which was wet with blood before she said softly, "When I get back, I promise I'll tell you everything. Just know that I'll never abandon you and you can never abandon me...we belong together now, baby."

Her name wasn't Imani. The creature. It was Nika. The monster. She was his maker and he was her hostage. Three days and three nights passed since she made him over like her. A creature, a monster. He had regained most of his strength back by the third night and was able to flit around her apartment, his prison, his hell, like a moth trying to find the light—yet he was unable to leave when there was light outside, her heavy curtains drawn shut during the day that when he tried to open them, his skin sizzled like someone threw fire at him.

And he was unable to leave at night, Nika still much stronger than him, even as a newborn herself but with more time to grow into her new, cold body that possessed powers Jon felt trying to unfurl in his yet he fought it, fought his being, his lust for blood, only fighting to fucking get away from her back to his family.

His girlfriend left to fend for herself and their 3-year-old son, Jon Jr., left to worry about why Daddy never came home, left to wonder why he didn't care enough to call...never to know it was because he cared too much about getting his dick wet.

"You'll never see them again. You can't. You'll kill them on accident. Bet," Nika uttered when she blocked him from her front door. Then she approached him with her hands on his face, hands he shoved away with all his might that might as well have been to the wall the way she stayed planted to the carpet. She reached for him again, her nails digging into the skin of his cheeks as she whispered on his lips, "Forget 'bout them, baby. You mine now, Jon. I was so lonely but then God gave me you...and you got me. We'll never be lonely again."

Jon wasn't having it and wasn't going out with a fight, all the fight he willed in his muscles he used to break free of her grasp once more, ripping her door off its hinge before he flew into the black. The stars and moon twinkled above with no pity on him to hide his frantic bursts of speed he could barely control as he ran, only illuminating him as he prayed no one saw him, and that he didn't accidentally hurt anyone who got in his way, the aromas of their blood wafting from miles and feet away that tempted him to run to it instead of home to see his family.

"Jon!"

Nika wasn't far behind him, closing in, her bare footsteps, from being in too much of a hurry to follow him that she neglected shoes, barely touching the asphalt of the empty street, she was so fast. Faster than him. Surpassing him. Jon cried out as he led her right to his home and watched her sniff the humid air before she lept into it, his eyes bulging in awe and terror to witness her land on her feet on the third-floor windowsill that belonged to him and his family's apartment.

He had only a tremor of a heartbeat, an odd feeling when his soul, or what was left of it, shook with such fright as he dashed inside, not needing to smell the air to find his floor or differentiate Imani and Jon's blood as he recognized it as if he'd always known it, even smelling traces of his own blood in his son. Yet when traces of their blood littered the air, their blood-curdling screams hanging in it, as well, Jon kicked down his door to see perfectly in the near pitch-black living room Imani and her lifeless, brown eyes watching heaven as she lay broken on the tile floor, red pouring from her chest and glistening on the matte finish.

Nika crouched by her body among shards of glass and red, her hands smeared with it and her face with red tears as she shouted at Jon who stood with dread so heavy it nailed him in place, that same dread shouting at him, too, that he was too late, that his son had suffered the same as his mother.

"Jon! Look what you fuckin' made me do!"

"I told you couldn't see them again. I fuckin' told you!"

He was too shaken to speak, too heavy to move, too livid, too destroyed, too weary, too harrowed to do anything but listen to the silence that Nika filled with her laments for him and, somewhere in the distance, though he heard it like it was already here, police sirens.

"Jon, please! Come with me, please!"

Jon blinked and in that same blink, he saw himself cracking a leg off of the wooden coffee table behind Nika, watching it falter on its side before he cracked her spine with the shrapnel, watching her falter on top of Imani's body as her blood erupted from her along with her surprised gasp and shriek before he wedged it deeper and through her chest. He had no reason to believe it would work, no reason to believe vampire lore created by humans was nothing more than lore.

But Jon had one reason to yank the makeshift stake out of her back to flip her over to the tile and stab her again and again and again, her blood painting his face and her body ceasing to move from his first strike.

And as the police sirens and their tires screeched to a halt in front of his building where he heard the cacophony of screams, murmurs, and whispers, he fled the remnants of his home and his family, never to see again, with his one reason that he would never forget: He had no one. Nothing. And it was all his fault.

Present day...

The glass of Coke should have dripped with condensation as the ice had tried to melt in the warm room, yet Jon's cool hand around it kept his drink perfectly chilled before he brought it to his full lips for a tiny sip. He wasn't a fan of soda but water tasted worse. Coffee was better. And even though he was tucked away in a booth at a bar, he didn't care for the taste of alcohol, either.

He hadn't drunk in almost a decade, not since that night that ruined every night that followed it—every night that he spent alone with only the memories of Imani and their son, their faces, their smiles, their laughs, their screams, their cries, their last breaths.

The R&B music in the bar was quite loud but it couldn't drown out his thoughts that were always louder, always reminding him why he owed a great debt to humankind, the kind he had forsaken with his family as his original iniquity. A debt he paid with his duty as a seasoned vampire bounty hunter, the seasons growing warmer, then colder, all while he never grew older, but his bounty grew larger.

It was why he stayed stationed in University Park, a small, suburban neighborhood where he and his mates had slain the vampire that roamed it. He could sense the presence of a few others in the area, but they were well-hidden and well-behaved, causing his team to hit the road for the next hit...yet Jon had circled back as he still felt unsettled.

That debt he believed he owed personally to Nyma, especially after he shattered her world with the news that her friend, and likely lover, Stephon murdered her husband and left town without a word of it to her. The lie he created to deliver that news was one Jon regretted instantly, but he could not tell her the truth. Humans were not allowed to know of his and Stephon's kind. And their kind certainly weren't allowed to harm said humans.

Yet Jon knew he had harmed that human woman with his duties and his words, something that tried to shatter his heart. He sipped his Coke again and licked his lips, tucking his hands in his armpits before he rested his elbows on the glossy, wooden table and shook a bit, his denim jacket providing no warmth as his body underneath it was too cold. He didn't shake for any reason other than studying Nyma as she rose from her stool at the bar to walk in his direction. He didn't want her to see him, didn't want to have to lie to her again, but he felt the need to be here, to observe her.

His mates had already cursed him out from A to Z for bothering with "the mortal," blowing his cell phone up the last week he'd been in Texas, but he was thankful that even in their annoyance with him, they were just as loyal to him and didn't rat him out to the Leige, their bosses and central government of all vampires. Jon knew they could handle a few missions without him while he completed his own: Keep Nyma out of further harm's way.

Maybe it was because of her brown skin that shone similar to Imani's, even her afro coils the same density as they fell around her slender face. Maybe it was because of her soft voice that had a Southern twang to it that wasn't from this area, intriguing him and also worrying him as it slurred with her fifth shot of Hennessy. Or maybe it was because of her trying to order a sixth shot, one that the bartender poured for her when they should have cut her off, especially since Nyma seemed to be trying to drink herself to death as she came to this bar every night he'd been here to watch over her.

Jon watched her now as she struggled on her feet to the restrooms near him, but she did not see him, the shadows of the corner he sat in giving him a full view of the bar but very little of him. Not that she would have noticed him, anyway, the way she ran into the restroom door before struggling to open it, discovering it was locked, and wobbling her way back to her seat to down that shot that waited for her on the counter.

He sighed and shook his head, hating to see her like this, hating that this divine chaos was his fault. He didn't know this human, but he would get to know what it took to protect her from herself, from more of that divine and chaotic mess she was oblivious to. Then he would leave her the right way, not broken like the other day, but healed.

It was the very least Jon could do after devastating his home all those years ago and now hers, too.

With another displeasing sip of his soda, Jon glanced at Nyma from across the room before whipping out his phone from his jeans pocket to scroll through and look busy. He didn't have any active social media anymore or any contacts in his phone he could call besides the work-related ones as he lived to work and worked to live. However, he would be a liar if he said he didn't miss it, miss the simple life of texting his homeboys, posting pics on Facebook, and tagging his family in cute memes he shared on his Wall. The life he had before.

Jon simply thumbed through a Google newsfeed page, his eyes glossing over it all as he refused to scroll through his old apps that captured all the moments of his life before, apps he only kept as mementos as it was too painful to look at.

Instead, his eyes flashed to Nyma to look at her again as she hobbled down from her barstool a second time. He figured she was getting up to try the restroom one more time, yet when her deep brown eyes locked on his with curiosity, Jon slightly shook with that invisible chill to be caught.

He didn't know how he would explain to her that he, a friend of her friend that she had never met before earlier last week, was suddenly in a bar minutes from her home and staring at her off and on.

But as she made her way to him, their gazes still curiously stuck on each other, Jon discreetly sucked his teeth as he quickly thought of another, and unfortunate, lie to slither through them.

A lie to help her sleep at night. A lie to protect her. A lie to hopefully keep her alive.

Thanks for reading! 🖤

a/n: I promise you the next chapter is going to be a lot softer and sweeter cuz WHEW I know this one was a doozy. I appreciate you making it to the end! 🫶🏾

Tagging: @visionarymode @cyberdejos2 @thesamoanqueen @vebner37 @dreamsinfocus @fame-ass-ers @southerngirl41 @jeyusos-girl @nayys-world @msbigredmachine @purplehairgawdess @mohawkmama @po3ticb3auty @alyyaanna @murrylove @papireigns-05 @vintage-pvssy @bebesobrielo @urasunflower @seeingstarks @555sage @unfriendly--blvck--hottie @theninthwonder @tabletheofhead @venusesworld @ariieeesworld @sassginaswanmills @theglamclosetsl @baeusos @2-muchsauce @empressdede @woahdude9481 @leaderofthebadbitchbrigade @twocentuar @claymorexpunisher @alichesmi @eclectic-tee @brwnsugababe @joannasteez @whatdoeseverybodywant @puppetmastermya @caramelcleopatraa @femdisa (If you'd like to be added or removed from this series' tag list, let me know!)

#jimmy uso #jimmy uso fanfiction #jimmy uso imagine #jimmy uso smut #jimmy uso x black oc #au jimmy uso #alt universe jimmy uso #vampire fiction #vampire smut #wwe fiction #wwe smut #swerve strickland #swerve strickland fanfiction #black writers #black fiction #spilled ink

99 notes · View notes