Its name bent under the weight of human arts; it had been miasma, once, then aether. They call it atmosphere now, and particles, but it had always felt the same, and it flattens now like the dead wind before a storm.
Outside the sky seethes, black with pregnant, dense clouds, weighted with threat. He knows from the way the skin prickles on the mortals around him. He knows from the small, darting things that have tucked into their burrows, from the landsman’s dog that lifts its great heavy head to nose the air. Without thought, without reason, the living know what the storm ushers. They know, but they do not realize.
The door opens, howling with rain, and a young man drips slick upon the threshold like a candle too close to the fire. Laurent observes him for a moment as a spider does: indirectly - through a half dozen borrowed eyes, perceiving the angles of him, the stinking condensation. He smells mephitic; like thinned ozone and a pervasive, fertile wet. But he feels, somehow, like lightning.
The scratchy, chattering noise of the television forecasts what the mountain folk already know. That their rivers are swollen with rain; that both flood the earth like a bane, bloating the soil with moisture. If it was an act of God, then He had transmogrified marl to mud.
Laurent nurses the coffee that he does not drink, already cold, and reflects on when he should pretend to retire to bed. He has a paperback in his other hand, one in the language of this place, if not the dialect of its people, and Laurent has already read through it twice.
But something, out there in the dark, stirs.
He knows its wrongness like a tug at the back of his neck, a scratching finger of suspicion, a certainty of something that does not belong. A dream, bleeding into the drowning of the world. His eyes shift like a hunting cat, scenting soured meat. And that is what it seems to him - distant, dampened by rain, his senses dulled by it, working sluggishly to overcome the deadning downpour to pluck at this thing that strokes at the edges of his thought in a way he does not trust. He cants his head, seeking it eyelessly, and though he masks the gesture like a teenage fit of idleness, his face is drawn. Grasping at this thing that touches his mind like rot.
He is a hound on the hunt, silent and attentive even as the rain drips miserably from his peasant clothing, dampening fiery hair to a dulled and darkened copper. Idle prattle buzzes at his back as he saunters to the far end of the room unheeded, close to the crackling hearth next to which the cramped and dusty little bar waits for its usual customers. Half-emptied bottles of liquor well past their expiration dates sit mostly for show on the shelves above the old taverner’s head, slender cobwebs strung from one rum to a vodka, from the vodka to murky absinthe. It comes as no surprise, really—the people here have long been making their own spirits, harvesting the fruit from every orchard sprawled over the hillside; and one such drink is what the youth is served.
“You’ll catch your death in these clothes, my boy,” remarks the man behind the counter as he tinkers with pots and glasses, fetching a small towel and placing it next to a steaming shot of clear pălincă. Its prickly scent rises to both their noses just as the man pockets the payment and turns his attention back to his dishes, a taste of honey and just a sprinkling of black pepper—naturally, the one remedy to every aliment under the sun.
So he drinks the shot. He reaches for the towel and pats the moisture off his fringe, soaked to the bone with rain that cannot chill him. Behind him, dim firelight glow catches in strands of his hair and flares a subtle red in the room’s drowsy penumbra.
There is no mistake. He feels it looming here—a shadow, a presence frazzling the edges of normality as though it never had reason to hide and has yet to make an effort to, knowing well that the common folk surrounding it would still be none the wiser. What comes out of these woods, however, is hardly ever so oblivious.
A stir of restlessness sits in the pit of his stomach and he prudently follows its lead, feels it creeping to the nape of his neck as he zeroes in on the intruder without a face to link it to. He stills where he stands to the point it seems he might be hearing something in the snap and crackle of the burning wood beside him, in the howl of winds gone wild above the chimneys; a slow and gradual furrow of the wizard’s brow shadows the smoulder of his gaze. Pale greens shift to scour the crowd, resolving to go by process of elimination yet finding that something is drawing his eye, past the men playing backgammon and past the dawdling barmaid, beyond bundles of herbs hung by the wooden ceiling—
But just as soon does he lay eyes on the stranger that the killing darkness of his countenance begins to clear, shedding layers of its fierceness in favour of a mild, deliberately clear disappointment. This is not the creature he’s been seeking—but it is his land to patrol, and he means for the intruder to feel seen.
It takes no time at all for the thought to cross his mind. The fang necklace beneath his shirt pricks at his skin as if on purpose; he holds the other’s gaze, impossibly fair—creature of the night merely posing as human, loose curls framing so delicate a countenance as he has never seen upon the sorry beasts haunting his forests, the mindless dead preying on anything they caught. Here, where the storm wizards of old still ruled over the mountains, the likes of such a vampire were little more than rumour.
But he seizes the chance. Infallibly, he parts from the counter at his side and comes sauntering closer, undaunted, the crowds that he passes a faraway blur. A fox circles the rabbit’s burrow—and yet tonight, two predators parade as sheep.
“—You don’t look like you’re from around here.”
He absently notes the untouched cup of coffee, the perfect smoothness of his hands. A faint tilt of the wizard’s head hints at lingering interest when he proceeds to pull a chair out for himself, never so much as bothering to ask. “It’s hard to miss a newcomer, you know.”
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