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fellowshippers2006-05-29 11:10 pm
v-angelique.livejournal.com) wrote in fellowshippers2006-05-29 11:10 pm
A Viggo & Harry Vampfic
Title: The World is Not Enough
Author: Viktoria Angelique
Email: viktoria_angelique@hotmail.com
Paring: various
Characters: HS, KU, OB, VM, EW
Rating: PG-13 or a very light R
Warnings: This is a vampire!AU. That genre was a squick of mine until I read Uluthiel’s “Another Hunger” and became an instant convert. Oops. So if you’re not big on blood-sucking boys, either go away, or read her brilliant fic and then come back once you love it as much as I do now.
Feedback: Yes, yes!
Disclaimer: How could this be real? I mean, come on. Also, you’re going to need to suspend disbelief for this one. A lot of details are changed due to the liberty of an AU—ages, nationalities, etc are adjusted to make sense with the storyline. If that’s confusing, consider the fact that forty-six was very old in Roman times and no white-skinned people even lived in New Zealand until the twentieth century. Of course, no white-skinned people (at least in terms of the actors we’re talking about) lived in Latin America or Rome at the time, either—that’s why it’s called suspending disbelief. I mean, do you really think Russell Crowe could have been a Roman? Come on!
Summary: Where the hell did this come from? Basically I listened to Shirley Manson’s “The World is Not Enough” way too much and it was just too perfect for a vampire fic. I couldn’t pass it up; there was no way. Also Uluthiel’s great dark Victorian vampire piece gave me some direction, though the characters are very different. I've read quite a lot of other vampire AUs since then, but that was the one that gave me the idea and the inspiration. Oh, and no relation to the Bond movie. None whatsoever.
I know how to hurt
I know how to heal
I know what to show
And what to conceal
I know when to talk
And I know when to touch
No one ever died
From wanting too much
The world is not enough
But it is such a perfect place to start, my love
And if you’re strong enough
Together we can take the world apart, my love
People like us
Know how to survive
There’s no point in living
If you can’t feel the life
We know when to kiss
And we know when to kill
If we can’t have it all
Then nobody will
The world is not enough
But it is such a perfect place to start, my love
And if you’re strong enough
Together we can take the world apart, my love
I feel safe
I feel scared
I feel ready
And yet unprepared
The world is not enough
But it is such a perfect place to start, my love
And if you’re strong enough
Together we can take the world apart, my love
The world is not enough
The world is not enough
Don’t know when we’re in love
The world is not enough
---------
Harry Sinclair’s smile was slightly bitter. He rarely afforded himself time to look back on the past details of his life; as for one of his kind this was especially fruitless. When one has an eternity to live, why waste stress on past events? But this evening, as he watched the streets of London from a third story window, he couldn’t help but reflect.
Born only just shortly before the birth of Christ, Harry was not his real name. That, however, was not something Harry revealed lightly, and so to all he knew now, among the pomp and glamour of Victorian England, he was a Sinclair, from a British family and highly respectable. Of course, any vampire could sense his age. Harry was one of the oldest vampires still treading the earth, for though vampires are immortal, there were not so many once, and many of those who were alive in Harry’s time were either burned as the result of the hunts that popped up at various points in history or walked into the sun of their own free will, for whatever sad reason might drive a vampire to give up eternal life. Harry himself had no desire to end the hold he had over the world, however. Now, he was very old indeed, and none could face him in rage and get away alive. He had always enjoyed the thrill of power, the surge of adrenaline in his veins as he went for a particularly feisty kill or showed the true extent of his abilities in a rare display of dominance. Harry seldom had reason to exert himself thusly, but on the occasions that he did, he quite enjoyed himself. It was foolish, then, to look back at all, to entertain thoughts of the past, but he found himself doing this, now. He looked back, and he examined, and he wondered. The top of the world, after all, is a lonely place to be.
It was early in the reign of the Emperor Augustus when the man known as Harry Sinclair came into being. He was a Roman, birth as pure as any emperor, but his parents were killed when he was just a boy and he was soon sold into slavery. He worked hard as any man, even at a very young age, and he pleased his masters very much. He was even summoned to their chambers from time to time to indulge in sexual pleasures, something not unheard of in Imperial Rome. Just at the age of transformation, a ripe and tantalizing fourteen, Harry was easy prey. He was proud, stood erect and tall, but still retained some boyish features—the soft hair, eyes still with the hopeful glitter of youth, skin tanned from the sun but still soft and pliant. He was a great pleasure to his master at this age, but by the time he was eighteen, he was no longer an interest. Sold again, he was transferred from the coast to the Roman city itself. The city was glorious, and Harry longed to explore it, but he could not. He did backbreaking work, and might have died young if his constitution were not so strong. As it was, however, by thirty he was withering, and so his master sent him into the arena while he was still strong enough to be a gladiator. The roar of the people in the arena, the simpering smirk of the emperor high above, the heat of the sun and the dry floor of dust beneath his feet—this was how Harry was going to die.
He entered the arena at noon, and knew he was outmatched. The fight, not with lions or tigers, the Gods be thanked, but with a strong Roman soldier, was to be the cause of his death. The other man stood erect and broad, well armed against Harry’s humiliating near-nakedness, prepared for the fight. But then, by some miracle, Harry did something that he would never understand, not in a thousand years of living. Still a mere mortal, Harry Sinclair looked his enemy in the eyes, lured him in through the spell of shining power and an undeserved confidence—and won.
Later that night, before adjourning to the slave’s chambers, Harry was allowed a bath for his victory. The part of the baths where the slaves washed themselves was strangely deserted when he entered, and he closed his eyes gratefully as he sunk himself into the steamy water. He had bought himself time, only one day, but it turned out to be enough.
“A fine performance.”
The voice broke the silence, echoed eerily off the stone walls, and Harry started. The Latin was heavily accented, and he could not detect its origin. He only stared at the man, striking in beauty and unerringly confident. He stood, opposite the gleaming pool from Harry, dark in complexion, hair black as the darkest night, and eyes piercing, so dark yet gleaming at the same time. Harry could not draw his gaze away, and found himself warming to an impossible heat at the creature’s smile.
“I have been watching you,” the man admitted, but it was less of an admission and more a statement, for there was no shame about it. As he slipped into the water, swam slowly towards Harry, Harry thought he felt the water cool noticeably, but then that was likely to be an illusion caused by the resolute warming of his own skin. “I will have you, my beauty,” the other man spoke, his hand reaching out and caressing Harry’s neck with a firm stroke. Harry shivered, but was drawn to this man and could not look away. “I did not see you today, of course. It was not safe for me to venture out, but I was given a full description. I have decided, my beauty. You are ready.” Harry wanted to ask, ‘for what? Ready for what?’ But all he could do was nod, and he found himself cocking his neck slightly, not knowing why. The creature simply laughed, and pulled Harry into a tight embrace, impossibly cold but Harry had no time at all to ponder as the other man smiled widely and his razor-sharp canines made a statement that no words could adequately convey. This was no man.
Harry didn’t scream, barely protested, as the other yanked back his hair with one hand, baring his throat to those gleaming teeth. The world seemed to spin all around him as his life’s blood was sucked clean from him, but he put up no conscious struggle. He had no objection to death, and somehow without being told, he knew. This man was not Harry’s death. He was deliverance.
Harry shook his head against the memory, pulled back from the window, and wrung his hands a few times, returning to himself. It was rare that he indulged in these reminiscences, and now he realised just how hungry he was.
“Karl!” His voice was little more than a snap, but he knew the other vampire would not be offended. After all, Karl had known him for fifteen hundred years, and this was a very long time to ascertain another’s moods. They had not been by one another’s side forever, but they would always come back to each other. That was often how it was, Harry mused, with the first one you turned.
“Such beauty,” Harry spoke, his voice rough but caressing at once. The man before him was indeed beautiful, almost tragically so. After all, a mortal life was so short, doomed from the beginning. He knelt in a supplicant posture at the centre of the massive circle of stones, his dark robes whipping around him in the unusually strong night wind, but he did not start at Harry’s voice. Instead he remained, deep in concentration, as the wind increased and the vampire observed, patiently, leaping lightly to the top of one ancient stone arch and perching there to wait. Harry, after all, had waited two hundred years for this moment. He could wait a few more.
The young man in the circle seemed possessed, perhaps by some spirit, though Harry knew this was not possible. More likely it was nature’s own pull, the meditative state of surrender, and Harry grinned widely when he considered the double surrender that would soon be taking place. Since the death of the vampire who had turned him, he had not felt complete. Killing was automatic, and so he had been searching the globe, wandering restlessly until he could find a companion, someone to follow him into eternity for better or worse. The Egyptian had never promised him eternity, and then he had walked into the sun. Still, Harry did not fault him for it. He was glad for the gift of life, and it was this gift that he was so selective in giving, the gift that he would bestow tonight upon this beautiful youth.
The Scottish air was full of chill, but Harry did not feel it tonight, felt only the warmth brewing just under the skin of his prey, and after waiting an hour or more, he leapt. Again, the youth was not startled, but seemed to give himself up to the firm hand on his shoulder. Harry swallowed hard when he understood. It was as if this young man had been waiting for this, waiting to be taken. For once, the one and only time in his life as a vampire, Harry was not completely in control. The youth floored him, and as he leaned back, eyes fluttering open as he laid his head back on Harry’s shoulder in offering, he could not resist. He leaned in, and he bit. Never had blood tasted so sweet, and never had a warm body felt so good under his hands. Under him, the man moaned, and Harry remembered, for an instant, his own conversion. He too had let out just the slightest whimper, a hint of the ecstasy that was to come, as his master had taken him. He felt a stirring in his loins, and realised as if it had only just come to him that he had not felt pleasure in a mortal way since…well, since he was a boy. Tonight, he would remedy this fact, and at the same time, create a new eternal being, one just as eager and ready to die as he had been that night so many years ago. He sighed as the youth dropped into his lap and he offered his wrist, already slashed with his own canines, for the man to drink from. It was his turn to gasp and moan, however, when the one in his lap sucked not with reluctance, but with vigour, his lashes batting open to stare directly into Harry’s own vampiric eyes. Harry watched in rapture as the Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, the man filled with his own blood, mingled with Harry’s, and slowly, ever so slowly, his eyes filled with an eerie, inextinguishable light.
Karl grinned broadly at Harry as he sank his teeth into the young sailor, restraining the other under his arm. Karl had always liked to let a victim’s companion watch his friend die, enjoying the fear in the youth’s eyes as he realised so suddenly what was to become his fate. Fear, to a vampire, is an aphrodisiac, and Harry burned with hunger and desire as Karl easily tossed him the second young man, moaning loudly with his lips still pressed to the sailor as Harry’s own teeth ripped into human flesh and drained the boy of his life. When it was over, they engaged in a kiss, long and passionate, their arms embracing in newfound warmth underneath their cloaks, and Harry remarked that they had not done so in quite a long time. He knew the reason, of course, but this would have to change. Fifteen hundred years was a very long time to be lovers, but after all, they had promised each other eternity.
“You are perhaps the most beautiful man I have laid eyes on.” Karl started, did not move for a moment. Regaining his composure, something that he seldom lost, he turned around slowly, smiling evilly to regain the upper hand. The young man before him had a brazen confidence, appalling in front of the creature that was sure to bring his untimely death, but it was almost as if he knew it. In fact, Karl realized with a jolt that was akin to horror, he did know it. “I don’t know why,” the youth continued, stepping forward and pressing his lips to Karl’s cold neck, just above the pulse point, “but I am certain that you bring to me death. And I am here to inform you that for naught but a kiss, I am willing to take it.” The Italian’s smile was wide, and Karl found himself very, very confused. Never had he heard of a man actually bargaining for his death with a vampire, but here it was, plain as day. Furthermore, there was no way the man could have known, intellectually. He must have somehow sensed that Karl was a vampire, but this was, as far as Karl knew, impossible. Still, he could find no other explanation, as the man’s hands boldly slid underneath his clothing, stroking cold skin and not wincing in the slightest. The press of warm lips against his own was intoxicating, and he realised with amazing clarity that he did not just want to kill this brazen youth—he wanted to turn him. The man’s breath hitched as he pulled away, and his lids lazily reopened to display a pair of sparkling, almost black eyes that defied logic. Karl felt himself pulled in, as if under a vampire’s spell, but, he reminded himself, he was the vampire here. Not…
“What is your name?” Karl whispered, more tender than menacing. He cursed himself, but could not turn back now.
“Orlando.” The man’s tongue rolled over the syllables in a relaxed manner, honey under Karl’s touch, and the vampire almost shivered. His mind, he realised, had been made up before he even entered the room.
“Tonight, Orlando, I am going to make you live.” And the only sound was a gentle inhalation, the musical sigh of Orlando Bloom’s last mortal breath.
Harry remembered with a smile the first time he had seen Orlando. He and Karl had been away from each other for a hundred and fifty years perhaps, by coincidence, mainly, as a bond such as theirs did not require geographic proximity to maintain. Being immortal beings, neither held a grudge if the other were to skip the continent for a couple of hundred years. The party in question would simply smile to himself, go about his own killing, and whisper to himself. ‘He’ll be back.’
It was therefore the year 1490, nearly fifty years after Orlando had been reborn, when they met for the first time. Harry had always scoffed at that term, “reborn,” as he himself had been there for Christ’s crucifixion, and he knew that the making of a vampire was much more beautiful than any king of Jews emerging from a stone grave. A vampire, after all, could live forever, love forever, thrive forever…and what could be better than that? Orlando, however, was truly reborn, in every sense of the word. When Harry met him, in Genoa, he was struck by how alive the young vampire was. He embraced every bit of his immortal life, from the kill to his supernatural abilities to the simple act of the daytime sleep. Harry was a bit surprised when Karl had taken another vampire, and he knew from the gleam in Karl’s eye that they had clearly lain together in one coffin for some time, but Harry was not one to begrudge his lover another if that was his desire, and taking in Orlando’s form himself, he hoped only that his love would be so kind as to share.
“You are truly as magnificent as mi amore has described, my friend.” These were Orlando’s first words to Harry, and he was strangely touched by the low reverent bow. Surprise, however, was the next emotion he felt, when Orlando suddenly was crushed against his body, arms fastening about Harry in an embrace dictated by passion. “I only hope that we too can learn to love each other,” he whispered, roughly, and Harry found he had no desire to look away. “You, my master’s master, a vampire old and wise and so skilled in every art.” Harry breathed in slowly; there was no mistaking to which art Orlando was principally referring. “I desire firsthand to taste your beauty.”
Orlando’s dramatic speech was tempered by a soft chuckle from Karl, who had evidently grown used to such displays, and Harry felt the spell break as his arms relaxed slightly, though still holding the young Italian within his embrace.
“He is quite alluring, is he not?” Karl commented with a gleam in his eye, and in no time Harry felt the return of the upper hand come to him, as he slammed Orlando with strength into an old stone wall. Orlando moaned low, like the rumbling of thunder, and growled as Harry’s mouth slammed so hard against his that his lips would have been bruised and split if he were a mere mortal. They fought passionately for dominance, hands seeking purchase underneath fine silks, but of course it was Orlando who ultimately yielded to Harry’s authority, submitting to him in such a state of beautiful innocence that Harry could almost have believed that he was making love to a mortal, not one who had been a vampire for half a century. Orlando breathed Harry’s name as he felt his release—not his real name, but it had an effect just the same, and Harry released his seed into Orlando with a satisfied groan, hearing Karl’s sigh in reply.
It had started as a means of protection, but it had evolved into something more. His mortal name, somehow, was something he had no desire to divulge, as if it was a last vestige of what he was. No living vampire had known or seen him in those days, and it was the one secret Harry kept; that of his mortal life. He suggested the idea to Karl as well, as a name that changed with the fashions of the day was convenient, but he knew Karl’s real name as Karl did not know his. It had never been a problem, but he also had no desire to reveal it. That name, like Harry’s past—ancient history, now—was the one thing that was sacred.
---------
Harry lay in his coffin late this evening, allowing himself a rare moment to think before he emerged for the night. He had left London a month ago, being somewhat disenchanted by the city’s characteristic dreariness and the nature of the slums in which they had been killing. Karl stayed, for Karl had grown to love the London of the 19th century, with all its finely dressed women and noble attachments. Orlando, too, was in town. Harry did not allow himself a mortal jealousy, as that was senseless for vampires. And after all, Orlando was still less than four hundred years old. He was a respectable age for a vampire, certainly, but Harry saw him as a fledgling. Orlando was letting his supposed age and wisdom get to his head, just a bit, and Harry was nearing his two thousandth birthday. Orlando had a lot to learn.
Harry didn’t blame Karl for the companionship he sought with Orlando, and he never would. Karl loved Orlando, but he also loved Harry, and that was okay. Orlando was young and vibrant and gave Karl something that Harry could not. Harry himself was never one to worship youth, and as much as he hated to admit it, Karl did not complete him. Not entirely. He was a good companion, and a good lover, but Harry had not yet met his match. That, he supposed, was his true desire. He enjoyed power beyond almost all else, but he had no one to share it with. Even Karl, old as he was, had not set eyes on the grandeur of the Roman Empire, the glory of the ancient days. It was lonely at the top, and Harry suspected that there was no vampire left in this world who could really challenge him. Love was a beautiful thing, but he longed for a love that was not just tender, but equal. Karl loved him to the end of the earth, but if Harry challenged him, Karl would have to back down. It was reverence, not fear, but Karl was no match for Harry. Harry knew this.
Growling, Harry extracted himself from the coffin he was keeping in a very convenient location. After leaving London, he had sought passage on a ship. He fed sparingly on the voyage, only killing two passengers in the very cheapest cabins out of necessity. Their blood had been sour with the taste of cheap whisky, and Harry was very pleased when he finally set foot on dry land again.
The blood in South America was exotic, tantalizingly sweet. The jungles that still existed in the heart of the continent made Harry’s heart soar, and something in him that had long been kept silent threatened to sing. He leapt among the treetops, tasted the blood of native tribes who thrived deep in the jungle, and made his way through Brazil with little a care in the world. In fact, until now he had barely thought of Karl, or Europe, or anything else, at all.
Harry slept deep under the ground, in an ancient Incan crypt. The location was most convenient, deep in the jungle and completely obscured from any source of sunlight. Furthermore, no human would have cause to venture here, and though he slept in a coffin for comfort and familiarity, it would be possible for Harry to venture out into the crypt itself without any danger if a stray grave robber or vagabond were to appear below.
After allowing himself a moment’s thought, Harry was restless. He considered the places he could kill tonight—after all, he could make it quite far into the jungle with a vampire’s speed—but he settled for a village not far from his crypt. A lone woman venturing out in the night for water was his kill, and it was satisfying, but he still had a desire that he could not name tonight. He smiled when he ventured in an unfamiliar direction and found a stone structure, impressive as any Egyptian pyramid, towering up over the jungle.
It was an ancient temple, from what civilization he did not know, but testing the stones with his boot, he found that they were still perfectly sound. Leaping from ledge to ledge, he climbed to the top of the structure. However, when he reached the top, he frowned to himself. Harry was not alone.
“You sure look out of place around here.” He whipped around with a growl, observing the man who stood just at the edge of the temple’s roof in a full suit with tails to match Harry’s own, blue eyes gleaming in the night. The young man was cocky and self-assured, but Harry simply levelled a cool gaze on him, hazel eyes gleaming gold in the moonlight. He felt quite satisfied as he watched the young vampire calculating in his head, sizing him up. Couldn’t be a day over fifty, mortal years included, this one.
“I could say the same for you, little one,” he snarled, staring the other man down.
“My name is Elijah,” he replied, challenging, but a little frightened-looking at the same time. Harry could take this one down in five seconds flat. Still, he enjoyed a little foreplay before the fight. “And I’m not little. I’m fifty seven.” Harry snorted, circled Elijah slowly, marking his territory around his prey. “Oh fuck off. How old are you, big shot?”
“One thousand, eight hundred, and eighty eight years tomorrow, actually.” Elijah gulped, suddenly realizing that he was way out of his league, but he still didn’t look too horribly scared. A second later, Harry figured out why.
“Well happy fucking birthday.” The voice was low, raspy, and hot against the back of Harry’s neck as his chest slammed into the stone. He growled and flung his body upwards, heaving the new weight from his back, and whipped around to see what creature dared to challenge him.
Oh, this was going to be fun. The new vampire was tanned, taller than Harry and dressed just as himself and Elijah in fashionable European garb, but his eyes flashed blue in a more primal way than Elijah’s, clearly ancient. This vampire… well Harry had never fought another like him, he realized as he flung the lithe form into a sort of tower, and was instantly rushed again, this time falling dangerously close to the edge. Elijah stood watching in rapt fascination, almost fear, and Harry realized that this stranger was the little one’s master. How touching.
Harry recovered quickly, leaping again to his feet, and for a few minutes the two vampires simply circled each other, snarling, their fangs bared and gleaming by the light of the moon. Harry thought to himself that this creature was remarkably protective of someone he had only turned half a century ago, but he wasn’t one to sweat the details. He had been feeling restless, after all, and now that he was immersed in a battle, hearing the pumping of cold blood in his adversary’s veins, he realized that he had been raring for a fight. He needed a challenge, and almost no living creature could challenge him. Except, apparently, this vampire, who Harry had never met before but had to be almost Harry’s age, given his relative strength and his brutal fearlessness.
Harry shook his head dizzily when he realized he had actually been thrown from the temple, in a split second’s time, unable to even react. He was ready, however, when the other man leapt down after him, his cape billowing out behind him, and for an instant he was beautiful. Just an instant, though, for soon the other man had landed in a crouch, one hand in front of his body steadying himself with just the fingertips on the ground. His blue eyes stared straight ahead, and he was ready, but when he charged Harry took advantage of that confidence, wagering on the superiority of his own strength, and flung the vampire as hard as he could, watching as the muscular form slammed hard against a rock outcropping on a mountainside a hundred metres away. Elijah, standing now at the edge of the temple’s roof, was staring in horror, but neither vampire even regarded him, caught up as they were in rage and battle and bloodlust. This was a fight to kill, and though Harry had plenty to live for, he found himself unable to escape it. He watched as the other man shook himself from his hard landing and regrouped. Then, to Harry’s surprise, he began to run in the opposite direction.
“Viggo, wait!” Harry looked up quizzically for half a second, then ran after this elusive vampire, hurrying to gain on him. He was not going to let such a challenge get away incomplete, but at least he knew his opponent’s name now. Viggo.
After a couple of minutes’ running, unable to catch up with Viggo, Harry stopped in a clearing. The rushing of water roared loudly in his ears, and he realized with a start where they were. He had heard of the Iguanca falls in passing, but never fathomed their beauty in life until now. One of the seven natural wonders of the world, he knew, and he had seen most of them, but this was still absolutely breathtaking, a powerful vampire silhouetted in the darkness against a thunderous wall of water, gushing down into the valley as steam rose up and over the treetops of the jungle. It would be a beautiful place to die, Harry thought. Too bad he wasn’t the one who would be buried tonight.
“Viggo!” The youth was catching up to them, but he was no match for two vastly more experienced vampires. Harry saw the challenge and accepted it, walking across slippery rock, his grace and strength holding him fast against the power of the water, keeping him from what would be death to any ordinary human. Viggo’s eyes gleamed with the fury of a man who has no fear, and Harry wondered briefly if his challenger was very stupid or just very old. They sprang at the exact same time, meeting in the air in a clash of bone and sinew, and as their limbs wrapped around each other Harry quickly realized what was about to happen. Still entangled with Viggo, he began to fall, but not back down to the rocks on which he had previously stood.
Time stood still for a few short seconds as they plummeted, many metres to the base of the falls, finally landing in a disorganized heap with a violent splash. When he surfaced and managed to untangle himself from Viggo, he realized that he was standing in a river, water pounding down around him so that the spray almost surrounded the two vampires in a shroud, facing the most formidable opponent he had ever met. He had lost all will to fight, and staring at the vampire in front of him, he realized that Viggo had come to a similar conclusion.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked, only a whisper, but somehow Viggo still heard him over the relentless pounding of the waterfall.
“Your worst nightmare or your wildest dream. Your choice.” Harry could only just stare as a hand reached out, caressed his face for the briefest of moments, and then withdrew.
---------
For the next decade or so, Harry was cranky. Orlando avoided him, even Karl avoided him, and younger vampires definitely avoided him. After the incident at Iguanca Falls, he had looked everywhere for Viggo. The other man had essentially disappeared without a trace. When he ran from the falls, it took Harry a couple of seconds to realise he should be chasing, and that few seconds was all Viggo needed. He knew the land better, and he knew where to hide. For several months, Harry searched the area—old graves, crypts, anywhere that Viggo might be sleeping—but he had a disadvantage. Once he was able to corner the boy, Elijah, in northern Brazil, but the kid was little help. Harry used every trick in the book, and it seemed that Elijah genuinely didn’t know Viggo’s whereabouts. Viggo was smart, apparently, and he wasn’t going to trust the kid with something this big. Of course, why it was so big, Harry didn’t know. He did know, however, that he wanted to find Viggo.
After a year, Harry gave up. No one wanted to spend time with a depressed vampire, so when he got back to Europe he checked in with his pets and then took the next boat to Iceland. He brooded there awhile, feeding on fishermen and farmers, until the landscape bored him and he became desperate for warm climates, spicy tastes, native blood, and a vampire that seemed to be his only match.
Barring returning to South America, which he wasn’t really prepared to do, Harry decided to head to Egypt. He didn’t want to be on the defensive, always seeking Viggo out, but he found the landscape here surprisingly reminiscent. Not too far from where he had lived as a human, and the birthplace of his late master, the Egyptian land was dry and hot, but the pyramids were not all that unlike Mayan temples, and the blood of the dark-skinned inhabitants was just as tempting.
After five years, Harry got a note. Written on papyrus, for God’s sake, but in Latin, Harry found it infuriatingly mocking. “Still your choice. Together, we could take on the world—or destroy it. –V”
When he received the note, he went on another reckless hunt for the evasive ancient vampire, but again with no luck. Even Elijah was impossible to find, though he did find that a “pale, blue eyed boy” has been seen outside of Thebes, and here there were few who would fit that description.
Frustrated, Harry decided that the vampire wanted to be chased, and he refused to give him the satisfaction. Instead, he connected with mainland Europe again in the south of France, and reconnected with Karl and Orlando in Paris, where they had been living a little while after London. Orlando was still the same cocky bastard that he’d always been, but he had an uncanny ability to cheer Harry up, and he was happy to lie back and let Harry take a bit of his anger out on him as well. Karl, his partner, his near equal in the world, listened to his concerns and his theories on the ancient vampire that he could not catch, and offered comfort. He slept in Karl’s arms for many months, and then together with both of the two vampires, and by the turn of the century he was almost back to “normal.”
1900 didn’t seem any more special for Harry than 700, or 400, or 1200, but Orlando was getting very excited about it, and so he and Karl played along, preparing for a masquerade ball that Orlando had somehow gotten them invited to with a minimal amount of complaining. Orlando did all the work, procuring lavish costumes and masks for them, all the while promising that he would be able to come up with “dates” that wouldn’t be missed when they became dinner at the end of the evening. So when the New Year’s Eve came, Harry dressed obediently in a somewhat foppish ensemble of dark blue velvet and a mask heavily adorned with sequins and feathers, and followed Orlando (stunning as always in a deep purple ensemble) and Karl (in forest green) to a particularly fashionable quartier of Paris.
Sure enough, Orlando had done very well with the dates—sisters, in fact, all of them orphaned, and working at a factory. Harry didn’t ask where Orlando had actually found the girls, who cleaned up nicely but still showed signs of their lower upbringing, and instead pretended briefly that he actually wanted to be with Clare, or Clara, or whatever the hell her name was. After the space of a few dances, however, he got bored and took her outside and behind a copse of trees where he quickly enjoyed an early dinner and then remained on the sparsely populated balcony to wait for midnight.
“Lovely view, isn’t it?”
Harry whipped around, expecting to find the owner of the sarcastic whisper just behind his near, but saw no one. A vampire, then. And if he wasn’t going crazy, then he certainly knew that voice…
“Where are you?” Harry asked in just as low a tone, glancing around the balcony at the masked men and trying to recognise Viggo among the 15 or twenty people there. He could smell him now, smell his blood among the various human varieties, and he was starting to feel a little paranoid as he tried to decide which of the many men was the vampire he hadn’t seen at all in the past ten years.
“The world fancies itself nineteen hundred years old, today. The Christian world, at least. Of course, they got it off by little, but who’s counting?” Viggo’s voice continued in Harry’s head, not answering his question. “You and I, however, will be precisely nineteen hundred years old in two years. That, my friend, makes us the oldest remaining vampires in the world.” Viggo paused a moment, and Harry spun around wildly, trying to locate the vampire.
“Where the hell are you?”
“Have you decided yet, mon coeur? If we continue to fight, we could destroy the whole world in the process. The earth, after all, is more fragile than humans realise. If we choose rather to love… we could take it over.”
“What, you fancy yourself in love with me?” Harry laughed, and he was attracting attention from the other partygoers, but he didn’t care, still holding the mask in front of his face to mask the bloodstains he had probably missed in a somewhat careless feed.
“Don’t deny an attraction. To me, or to the idea of me. It doesn’t matter which, but I know it’s there.”
“So what if it is? I’m not capitulating to you just like that. So what if I am attracted to you? I’m not going to stop fighting.”
“Good,” Viggo replied, seemingly dropping from the sky to land in front of Harry with a rudely grinning mask held in front of his face. “I wouldn’t want you to.”
Harry narrowed his eyes, dropping his own mask, and looked up at the portico over their heads. Fucking theatrics…
“What do you say, cherie? We give them a show they’ll never forget?” Viggo lowered his own mask, stepping in so that their bare faces were inches from each other, Harry’s chin darkened with a smear of blood. His eyes were glittering.
“What kind of show?” Harry asked suspiciously, leaning in unintentionally.
“Oh, I think you know,” Viggo replied, his expression serious as his lips nearly touched Harry’s. “You’ve fed,” he whispered, and Harry nodded, not moving in but not backing up, either. “I haven’t,” Viggo stated simply, and without looking his arm snapped out, grabbing the waist of the nearest unsuspecting woman, who shrieked as her companion suddenly realised what was going on and shouted at Viggo.
“Hey! That’s my fiancée!” the man shouted, but didn’t get much closer when Viggo spun around and gave him a menacing look, one arm hooked under the young lady’s chin.
“Oh? Well I’ll let you choose, sweetheart. You want him to marry a girl? Someone other than you, that is?” She shook her head in confusion and that was all Viggo needed, grinning. “A two for one deal, then. Sorry, buddy.”
And with that, Viggo’s teeth sank into the girl’s neck as his other hand grabbed the man by the wrist, yanking him towards Viggo’s body to watch his fiancée die before Viggo dropped her and locked in on the fear in the man’s eyes. Harry looked around nervously as Viggo dug into the man’s throat as well, a bit concerned as the other inhabitants of the balcony fled inside, the women shrieking and the men no less scared.
“What are you, mad?” Harry asked in a sharp whisper, grabbing Viggo’s wrist in a less-than-gentle hold and pulling him closer to Harry as the man fell to the ground atop his lady. “You’ve likely started a riot!”
“So?” Viggo grinned evilly and tilted his head to lick once at Harry’s top lip, dipping the tip of his tongue underneath and transferring a bit of the coppery taste to his companion. “I don’t think you quite understand yet, darling. The world is our oyster…”
“And you’ve just alerted a few hundred possibly volatile humans to our existence.”
“Who can do nothing,” Viggo pointed out, dismissively. “Come, I have an announcement to make.”
Harry just shook his head, following Viggo back inside where indeed, a whispered panic was beginning to arrive. Viggo just grinned, a bit maniacally, and hopped up onto a gold-painted dais at one end of the hall.
“Mesdames et Messieurs!” Viggo announced in a booming voice, causing the majority of the masked humans to turn and stare at him, while the few that had witnessed the spectacle outdoors pointed and tried to alert their companions. “Good evening. I have an announcement to make. I hope you have enjoyed the ball, my friends. For a few of you, I’m afraid, it will be the last time you ever dance again.”
Viggo paused in his speech to give a devilish smile to the crowd, and Harry noticed some of the partygoers already backing away from his commanding presence. “You see, my friends, I am a vampire! That’s right, flesh and blood vampire, just as you’ve read in stories but with infinitely more class. Oh, and I’ve never been to Transylvania.”
Here he paused to wink at Harry, and a tittering went up among some of the crowd, obviously assuming a farce or New Year’s joke. Harry for his part caught Karl’s eye, and then Orlando’s, both looking just as confused as some of the humans in the room. Elijah, too, was standing in a corner with his mask lowered, dressed in silver and looking almost frightened at his sire’s bold display.
“So I wish you all a very Happy New Year, and now I suggest you run—not that it will help you much. Gentlemen,” he added, nodding towards the other four vampires in the room. “Pick your poison.”
For a moment the room froze, as if no one knew exactly what to think, but then the balcony doors flew open, and a woman shrieked as her companion held up the two bodies, one under each arm.
“Murderer!” the man screamed, and Viggo grinned as a true panic arose, everyone moving as quickly as they could out the doors and away from the dais. Karl hesitated for a moment, and then grabbed a young boy whose mask had dropped to reveal an attractive pale face and long, dark curls. Orlando, never one to miss up on an opportunity for free food, kept his “date” under one arm while he snagged a petite young redhead with the other. Elijah looked bewildered for a moment, but then snapped out of it when a young blonde boy nearly ran him over, and tackled the man to the ground, sinking in with relish.
“Cheers, gentlemen!” Viggo yelled over the chaos, throwing back his head and laughing with abandon as the other men drank from their prey.
“You really are mad…” Harry exclaimed in a whisper, catching Viggo’s eyes across the room and knowing that he could hear every word.
“Perhaps,” Viggo conceded simply, shrugging as he reached Harry in a few strides, ignoring the goings on around him and tipping Harry’s chin up for a greedy kiss, the taste of blood still on their tongues. “You’ll have to introduce me to your lovely companions when you have a chance,” he mused against Harry’s lips when they parted, a strong arm around Harry’s waist holding him in place.
“Sure… but was there really a reason to incite mass hysteria? We’ve got to leave Paris, now.”
“Why? Who’s going to stop us, exactly? The gendarmes?” Viggo snorted in obvious distaste for such officials and looped his arm more casually around Harry’s waist. “You’ve got to stop worrying about consequences, my dear. We have eternity to live, you and I, and no one to stop us. Now come. We shall celebrate in the company of your friends and Elijah, and then we will embark on a journey. I would much desire to show you all my favourite spots in the world, and you can show me yours…”
“Viggo. Slow down. I don’t….”
“Shh. Thou dost protest too much, cherie. Tell me, honestly. Have you really lived nearly two millennia and never desired to share your position at the top of the world with another? I know you have; I can feel it in the blood running through your veins. The joy of the hunt has become mundane for you, you’re easily annoyed, and you like to hide away from your friends and civilisation. Am I right, cherie? I know I’m right.”
Viggo paused a moment, and Harry stared at him, baffled, until he continued his diatribe. “Together we can do anything, and we will find new joy in it, simply because we are together. Give me the chance in your mind that you have already given me in your heart. Please.”
Harry stared at Viggo, his plea a strange one from a man who seemed to be all jokes and tomfoolery, far above begging anyone for anything. He was strangely touched. “Viggo, why do you never call me by name?”
Viggo smiled brightly, and reached up to cup Harry’s cheek with one broad hand. His thumb stroked lightly over the bone, and Harry instantly felt better. “Because, cherie, it is not your name. Is it?”
“No.” Harry let himself drown in Viggo’s eyes, gave himself up in that moment and threw his arms around Viggo in a tight embrace that was completely out of character. “Hadrianus Valerius,” he whispered, two words that he hadn’t uttered in nearly two thousand years.
Viggo smiled. “Roman?”
“Yes.”
“I am Vita,” Viggo whispered back, placing a strangely sweet kiss on Harry’s cheek. “Pleased to meet you,” he added as he pulled back, the twinkle back in his eye as he reached out to offer Harry his right hand.
“Charmed, I’m sure.” Harry rolled his eyes, but he knew in that moment that it would be all right. Better than all right. The world may not be enough for the two of them, when all is said and done, but it was a pretty good start.
Author: Viktoria Angelique
Email: viktoria_angelique@hotmail.com
Paring: various
Characters: HS, KU, OB, VM, EW
Rating: PG-13 or a very light R
Warnings: This is a vampire!AU. That genre was a squick of mine until I read Uluthiel’s “Another Hunger” and became an instant convert. Oops. So if you’re not big on blood-sucking boys, either go away, or read her brilliant fic and then come back once you love it as much as I do now.
Feedback: Yes, yes!
Disclaimer: How could this be real? I mean, come on. Also, you’re going to need to suspend disbelief for this one. A lot of details are changed due to the liberty of an AU—ages, nationalities, etc are adjusted to make sense with the storyline. If that’s confusing, consider the fact that forty-six was very old in Roman times and no white-skinned people even lived in New Zealand until the twentieth century. Of course, no white-skinned people (at least in terms of the actors we’re talking about) lived in Latin America or Rome at the time, either—that’s why it’s called suspending disbelief. I mean, do you really think Russell Crowe could have been a Roman? Come on!
Summary: Where the hell did this come from? Basically I listened to Shirley Manson’s “The World is Not Enough” way too much and it was just too perfect for a vampire fic. I couldn’t pass it up; there was no way. Also Uluthiel’s great dark Victorian vampire piece gave me some direction, though the characters are very different. I've read quite a lot of other vampire AUs since then, but that was the one that gave me the idea and the inspiration. Oh, and no relation to the Bond movie. None whatsoever.
I know how to hurt
I know how to heal
I know what to show
And what to conceal
I know when to talk
And I know when to touch
No one ever died
From wanting too much
The world is not enough
But it is such a perfect place to start, my love
And if you’re strong enough
Together we can take the world apart, my love
People like us
Know how to survive
There’s no point in living
If you can’t feel the life
We know when to kiss
And we know when to kill
If we can’t have it all
Then nobody will
The world is not enough
But it is such a perfect place to start, my love
And if you’re strong enough
Together we can take the world apart, my love
I feel safe
I feel scared
I feel ready
And yet unprepared
The world is not enough
But it is such a perfect place to start, my love
And if you’re strong enough
Together we can take the world apart, my love
The world is not enough
The world is not enough
Don’t know when we’re in love
The world is not enough
---------
Harry Sinclair’s smile was slightly bitter. He rarely afforded himself time to look back on the past details of his life; as for one of his kind this was especially fruitless. When one has an eternity to live, why waste stress on past events? But this evening, as he watched the streets of London from a third story window, he couldn’t help but reflect.
Born only just shortly before the birth of Christ, Harry was not his real name. That, however, was not something Harry revealed lightly, and so to all he knew now, among the pomp and glamour of Victorian England, he was a Sinclair, from a British family and highly respectable. Of course, any vampire could sense his age. Harry was one of the oldest vampires still treading the earth, for though vampires are immortal, there were not so many once, and many of those who were alive in Harry’s time were either burned as the result of the hunts that popped up at various points in history or walked into the sun of their own free will, for whatever sad reason might drive a vampire to give up eternal life. Harry himself had no desire to end the hold he had over the world, however. Now, he was very old indeed, and none could face him in rage and get away alive. He had always enjoyed the thrill of power, the surge of adrenaline in his veins as he went for a particularly feisty kill or showed the true extent of his abilities in a rare display of dominance. Harry seldom had reason to exert himself thusly, but on the occasions that he did, he quite enjoyed himself. It was foolish, then, to look back at all, to entertain thoughts of the past, but he found himself doing this, now. He looked back, and he examined, and he wondered. The top of the world, after all, is a lonely place to be.
It was early in the reign of the Emperor Augustus when the man known as Harry Sinclair came into being. He was a Roman, birth as pure as any emperor, but his parents were killed when he was just a boy and he was soon sold into slavery. He worked hard as any man, even at a very young age, and he pleased his masters very much. He was even summoned to their chambers from time to time to indulge in sexual pleasures, something not unheard of in Imperial Rome. Just at the age of transformation, a ripe and tantalizing fourteen, Harry was easy prey. He was proud, stood erect and tall, but still retained some boyish features—the soft hair, eyes still with the hopeful glitter of youth, skin tanned from the sun but still soft and pliant. He was a great pleasure to his master at this age, but by the time he was eighteen, he was no longer an interest. Sold again, he was transferred from the coast to the Roman city itself. The city was glorious, and Harry longed to explore it, but he could not. He did backbreaking work, and might have died young if his constitution were not so strong. As it was, however, by thirty he was withering, and so his master sent him into the arena while he was still strong enough to be a gladiator. The roar of the people in the arena, the simpering smirk of the emperor high above, the heat of the sun and the dry floor of dust beneath his feet—this was how Harry was going to die.
He entered the arena at noon, and knew he was outmatched. The fight, not with lions or tigers, the Gods be thanked, but with a strong Roman soldier, was to be the cause of his death. The other man stood erect and broad, well armed against Harry’s humiliating near-nakedness, prepared for the fight. But then, by some miracle, Harry did something that he would never understand, not in a thousand years of living. Still a mere mortal, Harry Sinclair looked his enemy in the eyes, lured him in through the spell of shining power and an undeserved confidence—and won.
Later that night, before adjourning to the slave’s chambers, Harry was allowed a bath for his victory. The part of the baths where the slaves washed themselves was strangely deserted when he entered, and he closed his eyes gratefully as he sunk himself into the steamy water. He had bought himself time, only one day, but it turned out to be enough.
“A fine performance.”
The voice broke the silence, echoed eerily off the stone walls, and Harry started. The Latin was heavily accented, and he could not detect its origin. He only stared at the man, striking in beauty and unerringly confident. He stood, opposite the gleaming pool from Harry, dark in complexion, hair black as the darkest night, and eyes piercing, so dark yet gleaming at the same time. Harry could not draw his gaze away, and found himself warming to an impossible heat at the creature’s smile.
“I have been watching you,” the man admitted, but it was less of an admission and more a statement, for there was no shame about it. As he slipped into the water, swam slowly towards Harry, Harry thought he felt the water cool noticeably, but then that was likely to be an illusion caused by the resolute warming of his own skin. “I will have you, my beauty,” the other man spoke, his hand reaching out and caressing Harry’s neck with a firm stroke. Harry shivered, but was drawn to this man and could not look away. “I did not see you today, of course. It was not safe for me to venture out, but I was given a full description. I have decided, my beauty. You are ready.” Harry wanted to ask, ‘for what? Ready for what?’ But all he could do was nod, and he found himself cocking his neck slightly, not knowing why. The creature simply laughed, and pulled Harry into a tight embrace, impossibly cold but Harry had no time at all to ponder as the other man smiled widely and his razor-sharp canines made a statement that no words could adequately convey. This was no man.
Harry didn’t scream, barely protested, as the other yanked back his hair with one hand, baring his throat to those gleaming teeth. The world seemed to spin all around him as his life’s blood was sucked clean from him, but he put up no conscious struggle. He had no objection to death, and somehow without being told, he knew. This man was not Harry’s death. He was deliverance.
Harry shook his head against the memory, pulled back from the window, and wrung his hands a few times, returning to himself. It was rare that he indulged in these reminiscences, and now he realised just how hungry he was.
“Karl!” His voice was little more than a snap, but he knew the other vampire would not be offended. After all, Karl had known him for fifteen hundred years, and this was a very long time to ascertain another’s moods. They had not been by one another’s side forever, but they would always come back to each other. That was often how it was, Harry mused, with the first one you turned.
“Such beauty,” Harry spoke, his voice rough but caressing at once. The man before him was indeed beautiful, almost tragically so. After all, a mortal life was so short, doomed from the beginning. He knelt in a supplicant posture at the centre of the massive circle of stones, his dark robes whipping around him in the unusually strong night wind, but he did not start at Harry’s voice. Instead he remained, deep in concentration, as the wind increased and the vampire observed, patiently, leaping lightly to the top of one ancient stone arch and perching there to wait. Harry, after all, had waited two hundred years for this moment. He could wait a few more.
The young man in the circle seemed possessed, perhaps by some spirit, though Harry knew this was not possible. More likely it was nature’s own pull, the meditative state of surrender, and Harry grinned widely when he considered the double surrender that would soon be taking place. Since the death of the vampire who had turned him, he had not felt complete. Killing was automatic, and so he had been searching the globe, wandering restlessly until he could find a companion, someone to follow him into eternity for better or worse. The Egyptian had never promised him eternity, and then he had walked into the sun. Still, Harry did not fault him for it. He was glad for the gift of life, and it was this gift that he was so selective in giving, the gift that he would bestow tonight upon this beautiful youth.
The Scottish air was full of chill, but Harry did not feel it tonight, felt only the warmth brewing just under the skin of his prey, and after waiting an hour or more, he leapt. Again, the youth was not startled, but seemed to give himself up to the firm hand on his shoulder. Harry swallowed hard when he understood. It was as if this young man had been waiting for this, waiting to be taken. For once, the one and only time in his life as a vampire, Harry was not completely in control. The youth floored him, and as he leaned back, eyes fluttering open as he laid his head back on Harry’s shoulder in offering, he could not resist. He leaned in, and he bit. Never had blood tasted so sweet, and never had a warm body felt so good under his hands. Under him, the man moaned, and Harry remembered, for an instant, his own conversion. He too had let out just the slightest whimper, a hint of the ecstasy that was to come, as his master had taken him. He felt a stirring in his loins, and realised as if it had only just come to him that he had not felt pleasure in a mortal way since…well, since he was a boy. Tonight, he would remedy this fact, and at the same time, create a new eternal being, one just as eager and ready to die as he had been that night so many years ago. He sighed as the youth dropped into his lap and he offered his wrist, already slashed with his own canines, for the man to drink from. It was his turn to gasp and moan, however, when the one in his lap sucked not with reluctance, but with vigour, his lashes batting open to stare directly into Harry’s own vampiric eyes. Harry watched in rapture as the Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, the man filled with his own blood, mingled with Harry’s, and slowly, ever so slowly, his eyes filled with an eerie, inextinguishable light.
Karl grinned broadly at Harry as he sank his teeth into the young sailor, restraining the other under his arm. Karl had always liked to let a victim’s companion watch his friend die, enjoying the fear in the youth’s eyes as he realised so suddenly what was to become his fate. Fear, to a vampire, is an aphrodisiac, and Harry burned with hunger and desire as Karl easily tossed him the second young man, moaning loudly with his lips still pressed to the sailor as Harry’s own teeth ripped into human flesh and drained the boy of his life. When it was over, they engaged in a kiss, long and passionate, their arms embracing in newfound warmth underneath their cloaks, and Harry remarked that they had not done so in quite a long time. He knew the reason, of course, but this would have to change. Fifteen hundred years was a very long time to be lovers, but after all, they had promised each other eternity.
“You are perhaps the most beautiful man I have laid eyes on.” Karl started, did not move for a moment. Regaining his composure, something that he seldom lost, he turned around slowly, smiling evilly to regain the upper hand. The young man before him had a brazen confidence, appalling in front of the creature that was sure to bring his untimely death, but it was almost as if he knew it. In fact, Karl realized with a jolt that was akin to horror, he did know it. “I don’t know why,” the youth continued, stepping forward and pressing his lips to Karl’s cold neck, just above the pulse point, “but I am certain that you bring to me death. And I am here to inform you that for naught but a kiss, I am willing to take it.” The Italian’s smile was wide, and Karl found himself very, very confused. Never had he heard of a man actually bargaining for his death with a vampire, but here it was, plain as day. Furthermore, there was no way the man could have known, intellectually. He must have somehow sensed that Karl was a vampire, but this was, as far as Karl knew, impossible. Still, he could find no other explanation, as the man’s hands boldly slid underneath his clothing, stroking cold skin and not wincing in the slightest. The press of warm lips against his own was intoxicating, and he realised with amazing clarity that he did not just want to kill this brazen youth—he wanted to turn him. The man’s breath hitched as he pulled away, and his lids lazily reopened to display a pair of sparkling, almost black eyes that defied logic. Karl felt himself pulled in, as if under a vampire’s spell, but, he reminded himself, he was the vampire here. Not…
“What is your name?” Karl whispered, more tender than menacing. He cursed himself, but could not turn back now.
“Orlando.” The man’s tongue rolled over the syllables in a relaxed manner, honey under Karl’s touch, and the vampire almost shivered. His mind, he realised, had been made up before he even entered the room.
“Tonight, Orlando, I am going to make you live.” And the only sound was a gentle inhalation, the musical sigh of Orlando Bloom’s last mortal breath.
Harry remembered with a smile the first time he had seen Orlando. He and Karl had been away from each other for a hundred and fifty years perhaps, by coincidence, mainly, as a bond such as theirs did not require geographic proximity to maintain. Being immortal beings, neither held a grudge if the other were to skip the continent for a couple of hundred years. The party in question would simply smile to himself, go about his own killing, and whisper to himself. ‘He’ll be back.’
It was therefore the year 1490, nearly fifty years after Orlando had been reborn, when they met for the first time. Harry had always scoffed at that term, “reborn,” as he himself had been there for Christ’s crucifixion, and he knew that the making of a vampire was much more beautiful than any king of Jews emerging from a stone grave. A vampire, after all, could live forever, love forever, thrive forever…and what could be better than that? Orlando, however, was truly reborn, in every sense of the word. When Harry met him, in Genoa, he was struck by how alive the young vampire was. He embraced every bit of his immortal life, from the kill to his supernatural abilities to the simple act of the daytime sleep. Harry was a bit surprised when Karl had taken another vampire, and he knew from the gleam in Karl’s eye that they had clearly lain together in one coffin for some time, but Harry was not one to begrudge his lover another if that was his desire, and taking in Orlando’s form himself, he hoped only that his love would be so kind as to share.
“You are truly as magnificent as mi amore has described, my friend.” These were Orlando’s first words to Harry, and he was strangely touched by the low reverent bow. Surprise, however, was the next emotion he felt, when Orlando suddenly was crushed against his body, arms fastening about Harry in an embrace dictated by passion. “I only hope that we too can learn to love each other,” he whispered, roughly, and Harry found he had no desire to look away. “You, my master’s master, a vampire old and wise and so skilled in every art.” Harry breathed in slowly; there was no mistaking to which art Orlando was principally referring. “I desire firsthand to taste your beauty.”
Orlando’s dramatic speech was tempered by a soft chuckle from Karl, who had evidently grown used to such displays, and Harry felt the spell break as his arms relaxed slightly, though still holding the young Italian within his embrace.
“He is quite alluring, is he not?” Karl commented with a gleam in his eye, and in no time Harry felt the return of the upper hand come to him, as he slammed Orlando with strength into an old stone wall. Orlando moaned low, like the rumbling of thunder, and growled as Harry’s mouth slammed so hard against his that his lips would have been bruised and split if he were a mere mortal. They fought passionately for dominance, hands seeking purchase underneath fine silks, but of course it was Orlando who ultimately yielded to Harry’s authority, submitting to him in such a state of beautiful innocence that Harry could almost have believed that he was making love to a mortal, not one who had been a vampire for half a century. Orlando breathed Harry’s name as he felt his release—not his real name, but it had an effect just the same, and Harry released his seed into Orlando with a satisfied groan, hearing Karl’s sigh in reply.
It had started as a means of protection, but it had evolved into something more. His mortal name, somehow, was something he had no desire to divulge, as if it was a last vestige of what he was. No living vampire had known or seen him in those days, and it was the one secret Harry kept; that of his mortal life. He suggested the idea to Karl as well, as a name that changed with the fashions of the day was convenient, but he knew Karl’s real name as Karl did not know his. It had never been a problem, but he also had no desire to reveal it. That name, like Harry’s past—ancient history, now—was the one thing that was sacred.
---------
Harry lay in his coffin late this evening, allowing himself a rare moment to think before he emerged for the night. He had left London a month ago, being somewhat disenchanted by the city’s characteristic dreariness and the nature of the slums in which they had been killing. Karl stayed, for Karl had grown to love the London of the 19th century, with all its finely dressed women and noble attachments. Orlando, too, was in town. Harry did not allow himself a mortal jealousy, as that was senseless for vampires. And after all, Orlando was still less than four hundred years old. He was a respectable age for a vampire, certainly, but Harry saw him as a fledgling. Orlando was letting his supposed age and wisdom get to his head, just a bit, and Harry was nearing his two thousandth birthday. Orlando had a lot to learn.
Harry didn’t blame Karl for the companionship he sought with Orlando, and he never would. Karl loved Orlando, but he also loved Harry, and that was okay. Orlando was young and vibrant and gave Karl something that Harry could not. Harry himself was never one to worship youth, and as much as he hated to admit it, Karl did not complete him. Not entirely. He was a good companion, and a good lover, but Harry had not yet met his match. That, he supposed, was his true desire. He enjoyed power beyond almost all else, but he had no one to share it with. Even Karl, old as he was, had not set eyes on the grandeur of the Roman Empire, the glory of the ancient days. It was lonely at the top, and Harry suspected that there was no vampire left in this world who could really challenge him. Love was a beautiful thing, but he longed for a love that was not just tender, but equal. Karl loved him to the end of the earth, but if Harry challenged him, Karl would have to back down. It was reverence, not fear, but Karl was no match for Harry. Harry knew this.
Growling, Harry extracted himself from the coffin he was keeping in a very convenient location. After leaving London, he had sought passage on a ship. He fed sparingly on the voyage, only killing two passengers in the very cheapest cabins out of necessity. Their blood had been sour with the taste of cheap whisky, and Harry was very pleased when he finally set foot on dry land again.
The blood in South America was exotic, tantalizingly sweet. The jungles that still existed in the heart of the continent made Harry’s heart soar, and something in him that had long been kept silent threatened to sing. He leapt among the treetops, tasted the blood of native tribes who thrived deep in the jungle, and made his way through Brazil with little a care in the world. In fact, until now he had barely thought of Karl, or Europe, or anything else, at all.
Harry slept deep under the ground, in an ancient Incan crypt. The location was most convenient, deep in the jungle and completely obscured from any source of sunlight. Furthermore, no human would have cause to venture here, and though he slept in a coffin for comfort and familiarity, it would be possible for Harry to venture out into the crypt itself without any danger if a stray grave robber or vagabond were to appear below.
After allowing himself a moment’s thought, Harry was restless. He considered the places he could kill tonight—after all, he could make it quite far into the jungle with a vampire’s speed—but he settled for a village not far from his crypt. A lone woman venturing out in the night for water was his kill, and it was satisfying, but he still had a desire that he could not name tonight. He smiled when he ventured in an unfamiliar direction and found a stone structure, impressive as any Egyptian pyramid, towering up over the jungle.
It was an ancient temple, from what civilization he did not know, but testing the stones with his boot, he found that they were still perfectly sound. Leaping from ledge to ledge, he climbed to the top of the structure. However, when he reached the top, he frowned to himself. Harry was not alone.
“You sure look out of place around here.” He whipped around with a growl, observing the man who stood just at the edge of the temple’s roof in a full suit with tails to match Harry’s own, blue eyes gleaming in the night. The young man was cocky and self-assured, but Harry simply levelled a cool gaze on him, hazel eyes gleaming gold in the moonlight. He felt quite satisfied as he watched the young vampire calculating in his head, sizing him up. Couldn’t be a day over fifty, mortal years included, this one.
“I could say the same for you, little one,” he snarled, staring the other man down.
“My name is Elijah,” he replied, challenging, but a little frightened-looking at the same time. Harry could take this one down in five seconds flat. Still, he enjoyed a little foreplay before the fight. “And I’m not little. I’m fifty seven.” Harry snorted, circled Elijah slowly, marking his territory around his prey. “Oh fuck off. How old are you, big shot?”
“One thousand, eight hundred, and eighty eight years tomorrow, actually.” Elijah gulped, suddenly realizing that he was way out of his league, but he still didn’t look too horribly scared. A second later, Harry figured out why.
“Well happy fucking birthday.” The voice was low, raspy, and hot against the back of Harry’s neck as his chest slammed into the stone. He growled and flung his body upwards, heaving the new weight from his back, and whipped around to see what creature dared to challenge him.
Oh, this was going to be fun. The new vampire was tanned, taller than Harry and dressed just as himself and Elijah in fashionable European garb, but his eyes flashed blue in a more primal way than Elijah’s, clearly ancient. This vampire… well Harry had never fought another like him, he realized as he flung the lithe form into a sort of tower, and was instantly rushed again, this time falling dangerously close to the edge. Elijah stood watching in rapt fascination, almost fear, and Harry realized that this stranger was the little one’s master. How touching.
Harry recovered quickly, leaping again to his feet, and for a few minutes the two vampires simply circled each other, snarling, their fangs bared and gleaming by the light of the moon. Harry thought to himself that this creature was remarkably protective of someone he had only turned half a century ago, but he wasn’t one to sweat the details. He had been feeling restless, after all, and now that he was immersed in a battle, hearing the pumping of cold blood in his adversary’s veins, he realized that he had been raring for a fight. He needed a challenge, and almost no living creature could challenge him. Except, apparently, this vampire, who Harry had never met before but had to be almost Harry’s age, given his relative strength and his brutal fearlessness.
Harry shook his head dizzily when he realized he had actually been thrown from the temple, in a split second’s time, unable to even react. He was ready, however, when the other man leapt down after him, his cape billowing out behind him, and for an instant he was beautiful. Just an instant, though, for soon the other man had landed in a crouch, one hand in front of his body steadying himself with just the fingertips on the ground. His blue eyes stared straight ahead, and he was ready, but when he charged Harry took advantage of that confidence, wagering on the superiority of his own strength, and flung the vampire as hard as he could, watching as the muscular form slammed hard against a rock outcropping on a mountainside a hundred metres away. Elijah, standing now at the edge of the temple’s roof, was staring in horror, but neither vampire even regarded him, caught up as they were in rage and battle and bloodlust. This was a fight to kill, and though Harry had plenty to live for, he found himself unable to escape it. He watched as the other man shook himself from his hard landing and regrouped. Then, to Harry’s surprise, he began to run in the opposite direction.
“Viggo, wait!” Harry looked up quizzically for half a second, then ran after this elusive vampire, hurrying to gain on him. He was not going to let such a challenge get away incomplete, but at least he knew his opponent’s name now. Viggo.
After a couple of minutes’ running, unable to catch up with Viggo, Harry stopped in a clearing. The rushing of water roared loudly in his ears, and he realized with a start where they were. He had heard of the Iguanca falls in passing, but never fathomed their beauty in life until now. One of the seven natural wonders of the world, he knew, and he had seen most of them, but this was still absolutely breathtaking, a powerful vampire silhouetted in the darkness against a thunderous wall of water, gushing down into the valley as steam rose up and over the treetops of the jungle. It would be a beautiful place to die, Harry thought. Too bad he wasn’t the one who would be buried tonight.
“Viggo!” The youth was catching up to them, but he was no match for two vastly more experienced vampires. Harry saw the challenge and accepted it, walking across slippery rock, his grace and strength holding him fast against the power of the water, keeping him from what would be death to any ordinary human. Viggo’s eyes gleamed with the fury of a man who has no fear, and Harry wondered briefly if his challenger was very stupid or just very old. They sprang at the exact same time, meeting in the air in a clash of bone and sinew, and as their limbs wrapped around each other Harry quickly realized what was about to happen. Still entangled with Viggo, he began to fall, but not back down to the rocks on which he had previously stood.
Time stood still for a few short seconds as they plummeted, many metres to the base of the falls, finally landing in a disorganized heap with a violent splash. When he surfaced and managed to untangle himself from Viggo, he realized that he was standing in a river, water pounding down around him so that the spray almost surrounded the two vampires in a shroud, facing the most formidable opponent he had ever met. He had lost all will to fight, and staring at the vampire in front of him, he realized that Viggo had come to a similar conclusion.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked, only a whisper, but somehow Viggo still heard him over the relentless pounding of the waterfall.
“Your worst nightmare or your wildest dream. Your choice.” Harry could only just stare as a hand reached out, caressed his face for the briefest of moments, and then withdrew.
---------
For the next decade or so, Harry was cranky. Orlando avoided him, even Karl avoided him, and younger vampires definitely avoided him. After the incident at Iguanca Falls, he had looked everywhere for Viggo. The other man had essentially disappeared without a trace. When he ran from the falls, it took Harry a couple of seconds to realise he should be chasing, and that few seconds was all Viggo needed. He knew the land better, and he knew where to hide. For several months, Harry searched the area—old graves, crypts, anywhere that Viggo might be sleeping—but he had a disadvantage. Once he was able to corner the boy, Elijah, in northern Brazil, but the kid was little help. Harry used every trick in the book, and it seemed that Elijah genuinely didn’t know Viggo’s whereabouts. Viggo was smart, apparently, and he wasn’t going to trust the kid with something this big. Of course, why it was so big, Harry didn’t know. He did know, however, that he wanted to find Viggo.
After a year, Harry gave up. No one wanted to spend time with a depressed vampire, so when he got back to Europe he checked in with his pets and then took the next boat to Iceland. He brooded there awhile, feeding on fishermen and farmers, until the landscape bored him and he became desperate for warm climates, spicy tastes, native blood, and a vampire that seemed to be his only match.
Barring returning to South America, which he wasn’t really prepared to do, Harry decided to head to Egypt. He didn’t want to be on the defensive, always seeking Viggo out, but he found the landscape here surprisingly reminiscent. Not too far from where he had lived as a human, and the birthplace of his late master, the Egyptian land was dry and hot, but the pyramids were not all that unlike Mayan temples, and the blood of the dark-skinned inhabitants was just as tempting.
After five years, Harry got a note. Written on papyrus, for God’s sake, but in Latin, Harry found it infuriatingly mocking. “Still your choice. Together, we could take on the world—or destroy it. –V”
When he received the note, he went on another reckless hunt for the evasive ancient vampire, but again with no luck. Even Elijah was impossible to find, though he did find that a “pale, blue eyed boy” has been seen outside of Thebes, and here there were few who would fit that description.
Frustrated, Harry decided that the vampire wanted to be chased, and he refused to give him the satisfaction. Instead, he connected with mainland Europe again in the south of France, and reconnected with Karl and Orlando in Paris, where they had been living a little while after London. Orlando was still the same cocky bastard that he’d always been, but he had an uncanny ability to cheer Harry up, and he was happy to lie back and let Harry take a bit of his anger out on him as well. Karl, his partner, his near equal in the world, listened to his concerns and his theories on the ancient vampire that he could not catch, and offered comfort. He slept in Karl’s arms for many months, and then together with both of the two vampires, and by the turn of the century he was almost back to “normal.”
1900 didn’t seem any more special for Harry than 700, or 400, or 1200, but Orlando was getting very excited about it, and so he and Karl played along, preparing for a masquerade ball that Orlando had somehow gotten them invited to with a minimal amount of complaining. Orlando did all the work, procuring lavish costumes and masks for them, all the while promising that he would be able to come up with “dates” that wouldn’t be missed when they became dinner at the end of the evening. So when the New Year’s Eve came, Harry dressed obediently in a somewhat foppish ensemble of dark blue velvet and a mask heavily adorned with sequins and feathers, and followed Orlando (stunning as always in a deep purple ensemble) and Karl (in forest green) to a particularly fashionable quartier of Paris.
Sure enough, Orlando had done very well with the dates—sisters, in fact, all of them orphaned, and working at a factory. Harry didn’t ask where Orlando had actually found the girls, who cleaned up nicely but still showed signs of their lower upbringing, and instead pretended briefly that he actually wanted to be with Clare, or Clara, or whatever the hell her name was. After the space of a few dances, however, he got bored and took her outside and behind a copse of trees where he quickly enjoyed an early dinner and then remained on the sparsely populated balcony to wait for midnight.
“Lovely view, isn’t it?”
Harry whipped around, expecting to find the owner of the sarcastic whisper just behind his near, but saw no one. A vampire, then. And if he wasn’t going crazy, then he certainly knew that voice…
“Where are you?” Harry asked in just as low a tone, glancing around the balcony at the masked men and trying to recognise Viggo among the 15 or twenty people there. He could smell him now, smell his blood among the various human varieties, and he was starting to feel a little paranoid as he tried to decide which of the many men was the vampire he hadn’t seen at all in the past ten years.
“The world fancies itself nineteen hundred years old, today. The Christian world, at least. Of course, they got it off by little, but who’s counting?” Viggo’s voice continued in Harry’s head, not answering his question. “You and I, however, will be precisely nineteen hundred years old in two years. That, my friend, makes us the oldest remaining vampires in the world.” Viggo paused a moment, and Harry spun around wildly, trying to locate the vampire.
“Where the hell are you?”
“Have you decided yet, mon coeur? If we continue to fight, we could destroy the whole world in the process. The earth, after all, is more fragile than humans realise. If we choose rather to love… we could take it over.”
“What, you fancy yourself in love with me?” Harry laughed, and he was attracting attention from the other partygoers, but he didn’t care, still holding the mask in front of his face to mask the bloodstains he had probably missed in a somewhat careless feed.
“Don’t deny an attraction. To me, or to the idea of me. It doesn’t matter which, but I know it’s there.”
“So what if it is? I’m not capitulating to you just like that. So what if I am attracted to you? I’m not going to stop fighting.”
“Good,” Viggo replied, seemingly dropping from the sky to land in front of Harry with a rudely grinning mask held in front of his face. “I wouldn’t want you to.”
Harry narrowed his eyes, dropping his own mask, and looked up at the portico over their heads. Fucking theatrics…
“What do you say, cherie? We give them a show they’ll never forget?” Viggo lowered his own mask, stepping in so that their bare faces were inches from each other, Harry’s chin darkened with a smear of blood. His eyes were glittering.
“What kind of show?” Harry asked suspiciously, leaning in unintentionally.
“Oh, I think you know,” Viggo replied, his expression serious as his lips nearly touched Harry’s. “You’ve fed,” he whispered, and Harry nodded, not moving in but not backing up, either. “I haven’t,” Viggo stated simply, and without looking his arm snapped out, grabbing the waist of the nearest unsuspecting woman, who shrieked as her companion suddenly realised what was going on and shouted at Viggo.
“Hey! That’s my fiancée!” the man shouted, but didn’t get much closer when Viggo spun around and gave him a menacing look, one arm hooked under the young lady’s chin.
“Oh? Well I’ll let you choose, sweetheart. You want him to marry a girl? Someone other than you, that is?” She shook her head in confusion and that was all Viggo needed, grinning. “A two for one deal, then. Sorry, buddy.”
And with that, Viggo’s teeth sank into the girl’s neck as his other hand grabbed the man by the wrist, yanking him towards Viggo’s body to watch his fiancée die before Viggo dropped her and locked in on the fear in the man’s eyes. Harry looked around nervously as Viggo dug into the man’s throat as well, a bit concerned as the other inhabitants of the balcony fled inside, the women shrieking and the men no less scared.
“What are you, mad?” Harry asked in a sharp whisper, grabbing Viggo’s wrist in a less-than-gentle hold and pulling him closer to Harry as the man fell to the ground atop his lady. “You’ve likely started a riot!”
“So?” Viggo grinned evilly and tilted his head to lick once at Harry’s top lip, dipping the tip of his tongue underneath and transferring a bit of the coppery taste to his companion. “I don’t think you quite understand yet, darling. The world is our oyster…”
“And you’ve just alerted a few hundred possibly volatile humans to our existence.”
“Who can do nothing,” Viggo pointed out, dismissively. “Come, I have an announcement to make.”
Harry just shook his head, following Viggo back inside where indeed, a whispered panic was beginning to arrive. Viggo just grinned, a bit maniacally, and hopped up onto a gold-painted dais at one end of the hall.
“Mesdames et Messieurs!” Viggo announced in a booming voice, causing the majority of the masked humans to turn and stare at him, while the few that had witnessed the spectacle outdoors pointed and tried to alert their companions. “Good evening. I have an announcement to make. I hope you have enjoyed the ball, my friends. For a few of you, I’m afraid, it will be the last time you ever dance again.”
Viggo paused in his speech to give a devilish smile to the crowd, and Harry noticed some of the partygoers already backing away from his commanding presence. “You see, my friends, I am a vampire! That’s right, flesh and blood vampire, just as you’ve read in stories but with infinitely more class. Oh, and I’ve never been to Transylvania.”
Here he paused to wink at Harry, and a tittering went up among some of the crowd, obviously assuming a farce or New Year’s joke. Harry for his part caught Karl’s eye, and then Orlando’s, both looking just as confused as some of the humans in the room. Elijah, too, was standing in a corner with his mask lowered, dressed in silver and looking almost frightened at his sire’s bold display.
“So I wish you all a very Happy New Year, and now I suggest you run—not that it will help you much. Gentlemen,” he added, nodding towards the other four vampires in the room. “Pick your poison.”
For a moment the room froze, as if no one knew exactly what to think, but then the balcony doors flew open, and a woman shrieked as her companion held up the two bodies, one under each arm.
“Murderer!” the man screamed, and Viggo grinned as a true panic arose, everyone moving as quickly as they could out the doors and away from the dais. Karl hesitated for a moment, and then grabbed a young boy whose mask had dropped to reveal an attractive pale face and long, dark curls. Orlando, never one to miss up on an opportunity for free food, kept his “date” under one arm while he snagged a petite young redhead with the other. Elijah looked bewildered for a moment, but then snapped out of it when a young blonde boy nearly ran him over, and tackled the man to the ground, sinking in with relish.
“Cheers, gentlemen!” Viggo yelled over the chaos, throwing back his head and laughing with abandon as the other men drank from their prey.
“You really are mad…” Harry exclaimed in a whisper, catching Viggo’s eyes across the room and knowing that he could hear every word.
“Perhaps,” Viggo conceded simply, shrugging as he reached Harry in a few strides, ignoring the goings on around him and tipping Harry’s chin up for a greedy kiss, the taste of blood still on their tongues. “You’ll have to introduce me to your lovely companions when you have a chance,” he mused against Harry’s lips when they parted, a strong arm around Harry’s waist holding him in place.
“Sure… but was there really a reason to incite mass hysteria? We’ve got to leave Paris, now.”
“Why? Who’s going to stop us, exactly? The gendarmes?” Viggo snorted in obvious distaste for such officials and looped his arm more casually around Harry’s waist. “You’ve got to stop worrying about consequences, my dear. We have eternity to live, you and I, and no one to stop us. Now come. We shall celebrate in the company of your friends and Elijah, and then we will embark on a journey. I would much desire to show you all my favourite spots in the world, and you can show me yours…”
“Viggo. Slow down. I don’t….”
“Shh. Thou dost protest too much, cherie. Tell me, honestly. Have you really lived nearly two millennia and never desired to share your position at the top of the world with another? I know you have; I can feel it in the blood running through your veins. The joy of the hunt has become mundane for you, you’re easily annoyed, and you like to hide away from your friends and civilisation. Am I right, cherie? I know I’m right.”
Viggo paused a moment, and Harry stared at him, baffled, until he continued his diatribe. “Together we can do anything, and we will find new joy in it, simply because we are together. Give me the chance in your mind that you have already given me in your heart. Please.”
Harry stared at Viggo, his plea a strange one from a man who seemed to be all jokes and tomfoolery, far above begging anyone for anything. He was strangely touched. “Viggo, why do you never call me by name?”
Viggo smiled brightly, and reached up to cup Harry’s cheek with one broad hand. His thumb stroked lightly over the bone, and Harry instantly felt better. “Because, cherie, it is not your name. Is it?”
“No.” Harry let himself drown in Viggo’s eyes, gave himself up in that moment and threw his arms around Viggo in a tight embrace that was completely out of character. “Hadrianus Valerius,” he whispered, two words that he hadn’t uttered in nearly two thousand years.
Viggo smiled. “Roman?”
“Yes.”
“I am Vita,” Viggo whispered back, placing a strangely sweet kiss on Harry’s cheek. “Pleased to meet you,” he added as he pulled back, the twinkle back in his eye as he reached out to offer Harry his right hand.
“Charmed, I’m sure.” Harry rolled his eyes, but he knew in that moment that it would be all right. Better than all right. The world may not be enough for the two of them, when all is said and done, but it was a pretty good start.