Tired of your pet getting into trouble while you’re away? Unlearning old rules, creating problems, or being mishandled by the ‘well-meaning’ neighbor? Ever had a short errand turn into something longer, and need someone to check on your pet? Or perhaps want to take a vacation alone without worrying over your pet bothering you or your friends?
Call me! XXX-XXX-XXXX
Available on short notice too!
Just give a few care instructions and worry no longer!
The bounty hunter didn't mean to find an injured vampire, but sometimes jobs don't go according to plan. And they can't just leave it; that would be reckless, and put the whole town in danger. So they take it home.
Content warnings for lots of dehumanization, including use of "it" as a pronoun.
This series was heavily inspired by @whumping-every-day 's Callum and Ash series, which you can find the masterlist for here. I got to the end of the series, went I WANT MORE, and then apparently the only solution was to write it myself. So, here you go.
Another big source of inspiration for this comes from @ashintheairlikesnow 's Vampire Chris AU, which you can find the masterlist for here. This inspired things like vampire brothels and the idea of people using vampires as drug dispensers for their narcotic-like venom.
Note: the vampire is female, but she currently uses "it" as a pronoun because of heavy conditioning. I am tagging the entries as "lady whump" and "female whumpee" because of this.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15 (Whumptober 2024, Alt Prompt: Communication Barrier)
Backstory:
Celeste, Part 1
I will punish your friend for your failure (BTHB)
Dragged by the ankle (BTHB)
Day outside/blood loss (Whumptober 2022)
Standing cuffs/stress position (BTHB/Winter Whumperland 2022)
Trying not to cry
Asks:
[x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]
Scenario asks:
Celeste gets bitten (canon), Tobias gets followed, Celeste's fangs get pulled (canon), What if Tobias had shot both hunters?, Role Swap AU
Other:
Journal entry (canon)
Coagulating (canon)
Celeste is given a coughed-up clot as a gift (significantly lighter than it sounds)
Rose anon tries to heal Celeste (painfully), Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14
Someone discusses torturing vampires with Tobias, Part 2
Comfort asks:
A treat for Celeste, Celeste gets a gift basket, a game of checkers
Kim whumps Asshole, aka the vampire's last owner:
[x] [x] [x] [x] [x]
My mutuals steal Celeste to whump and caretake her:
Masterlist is here because I was going over the link limit in this post.
Art:
Celeste the vampire (traditional, black and white)
Fangs on display
Blind Mistrust
Celeste the vampire (digital, color)
Elodie
Crossovers
Masterlist (how do I have so many links??? I went over the link limit again, hence the separate masterlist)
🤝 Some help performing a basic task (for the ask game!)
The Heart and the Hunger, Part 14
I chose Celeste as the whumpee. She certainly needs the help.
Tobias is trying. Both to help Celeste get clean, and to help Celeste regain some agency and control.
CW: conditioned female vampire whumpee, implied past torture, pet whump, feared (not actually occuring) mouth whump in the form of fang pulling
Masterlist
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Tobias was trying his hardest to keep his cool.
He would like to point out, just for the record, that he was far outside of his area of expertise. He was a bounty hunter, for fuck’s sake! His job was to find a target and bring them back to the contract holder, in the state specified by the contract. It wasn’t a job that lent itself towards spending much time around traumatized victims of absolutely heinous crimes. He might see victims in passing, if he were on the trail of a criminal, but he rarely interacted with them beyond giving them directions to the nearest doctor or police station.
Now, he had what might be the single most traumatized person he had ever met sitting in his bathroom. And she expected him to act like the last person who had power over her.
Tobias needed to punch something. Or drink something. Better yet, both.
But first, the girl.
She had finally stopped holding herself like a baby bird, head tilted back and mouth wide as she could make it. And wasn’t that just a fun revelation, that she was expecting him to pull out her fangs. And she was going to sit there and let him. Her reaction when he tried to take off her muzzle originally made far more sense now that he knew she expected that sort of punishment if he took it off.
Tobias had been accused of being a heartless bastard more than once. Right now, he kind of wished it were true. If he were heartless, it wouldn’t hurt so damn much to see her look of surprise when he said he wouldn’t hurt her.
And even with all that, she was still willing to put her hand in his and let him help her.
He carefully carried her to the bathtub, trying to avoid her wounds as much as possible. He tested the water temperature again—warm now, rather than hot as it had been earlier—before gently placing her in the tub.
“Okay,” he said, voice as soft as he could manage. “I’ll get you a washcloth so you can get the rest of your legs. Then I’ll wash your hair and face. Does that sound good?”
She nodded, rather reluctantly it seemed.
“I’ll be as gentle as I can,” he said, hoping he understood the reason for her reluctance. “And you can stop me at any time. Just… tap me on the wrist, or knock on the tub or something.”
She eyed him skeptically, then gently rapped one knuckle against the tub. It made a quiet thunk.
He grinned. “Exactly; good job!”
She looked startled, then pleased. Tobias made a mental note to keep praising her whenever possible.
He grabbed a washcloth and a bar of soap. Soaking the cloth in the bathwater, he scrubbed the soap over it, then handed it to the girl.
“This way you don’t have to have a good grip on anything,” he explained. “Just hand it back when you need more soap.”
The girl nodded, then set to work. Even with as small an area as she was cleaning, it still took multiple rounds of soaping up the washcloth for her to finally get clean. Eventually she managed though, and handed him back the cloth with an expectant, worried look.
“Well done, kiddo,” he said. “I’m gonna wash your face, then your hair, okay? You can stop me at any time, for any reason.”
She nodded slowly, knocking against the tub again.
“Just like that,” he said. “Were you wanting me to stop,” he held up one finger, “or were you just testing it out?” He held up a second.
She raised one dripping hand out of the tub with two fingers raised. Just testing out the signal, then.
Tobias nodded. He grabbed a clean washcloth and went through the same process of wetting and soaping it. He moved to wash the girl’s face, pausing at her flinch. When she made no further move to stop him, he continued more slowly.
The muzzle’s straps had kept parts of her skin clean, creating an odd patchwork effect of pale skin and dark grime. Tobias gently wiped at her face, taking care not to get soap in her eyes. Once the dirt was gone, he cleaned away the soap residue with another wet cloth.
“I’m done cleaning your face,” he said. “I’m gonna do your hair now.”
He moved to sit behind her, noticing her increased tension once he was out of sight. Not much he could do about that, other than make sure he told her what he was doing before he did it.
“Tilt your head back for me, please,” he instructed. When the girl did, he gently poured water over her hair, making sure to get all of it wet.
This was going to be… difficult. Her hair was a mass of snarls and tangles. On top of that, it looked unhealthy, like it would snap at the slightest tug. If it were his hair, he’d just cut the lot of it off. But then, he wasn’t a girl. Hair wasn’t a big deal for him.
“Your hair is really tangled,” he said. Better to tell her the whole situation now than wait for something to go wrong, he figured. “I’m going to do my best to get it straightened out, and I’m going to try not to yank on it while I do. But I’m not exactly an expert at this, and I’m worried that your hair is too damaged and might break.”
She turned to look at him, eyes wide and pleading.
“Like I said, I’m going to do my best,” Tobias explained. “I just wanted you to know what’s going on before I get started.”
She frowned, lips trembling. Eventually, she nodded and turned back around.
Tobias took that as his cue to get on with it. He grabbed some shampoo, grateful he’d thought to get that during his shopping earlier in the day, and started applying it at the ends of her hair, working up towards the scalp. He worked it in with his fingers, trying to gently tease out whatever tangles he could as he went. It was oily, and seemed to soak into the brittle hair and coat the strands.
“I’m going to start brushing out your hair now,” he said as he picked up a comb. It had widely spaced teeth, and he hoped it wouldn’t pull too badly.
He started once more at the ends, making sure to support the hair so he pulled against his own grip rather than the girl’s scalp when he caught a tangle. It was slow going. He winced and apologized whenever he pulled too hard, and frequently stopped to add more shampoo to help the strands untangle. Even with his best efforts, more hair than he would have liked broke off. Eventually though, he made it all the way up to her scalp and was able to run the comb through the length of her hair without any snags.
“I’m going to rinse your hair now,” he said.
She tipped her head back again at his direction, letting him pour water over her hair once again. He repeated that until he was sure her hair was clean.
“Done,” Tobias said, satisfied at what they’d managed to accomplish. “Come on, let’s get you dry and dressed.”
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While Celeste was sleeping, Tobias went on a shopping trip. He got shampoo for Celeste, since he just washes his own hair with soap (the heathen). What else he got will come up... soon, hopefully.
Still in the vampire's POV. She and Tobias are both Very Confused right now.
CW: non-sexual nudity, fear of punishment, past torture, feared mouth whump, female conditioned vampire whumpee. Let me know if I missed anything or if you'd like to be added to the taglist!
Masterlist
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Its owner brought it to the bathroom and set it down on a stool.
“So,” he said. “Today, we’re gonna finish getting you cleaned up.”
He looked it over, and it did its best not to flinch. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him, because he continued. “I’ll help you get undressed.”
It let its limbs go loose, not resisting as he moved it this way and that to remove first the shirt it was wearing, then the bandages he had put on.
“And now the muzzle,” he said.
So he was finally going to punish it. That was his right as its owner, and surely it was better to get it over with now rather than waiting. It had no reason to be upset. It had brought this on itself.
It still struggled not to cry as the bounty hunter undid the buckles. The same buckles that he had so gently loosened and untangled from its hair just… was it really just the day before?
He held up the muzzle after he had taken it off, eyeing the contraption and the vampire with disgust.
It was not going to cry. It wasn’t. It would take its punishment quietly; it had earned it. It knew how to behave.
Its owner went to exchange the muzzle for the necessary tools.
It tipped its head back and opened its mouth as wide as it could. Maybe if it proved it was well-behaved, he would use a steel bite block rather than an iron one.
“Uh… what are you doing?”
It could just see him at the edges of its field of vision. His hands were empty, which was strange. Where were the pliers?
“Seriously, kid. What are you doing?” he asked again. He looked as confused as it felt.
What did he mean, what was it doing? It was preparing to take its punishment. It had drunk blood without permission. The punishment for that was standard.
Fang removal.
If you can’t keep your teeth to yourself, leech, you don’t deserve to have them. It hadn’t bitten the bounty hunter, but it had still consumed his blood without his permission. Worse, it had consumed his blood after he specifically said stop.
Honestly, fang removal was only the beginning of the punishment such actions merited. He had been lenient with it so far, but surely this was beyond what he could allow.
He didn’t move, still looking for an answer to his question. Slowly, cautiously, it lowered its head. When the bounty hunter just kept staring at it, it slowly raised a hand and pointed to its fangs, then mimed pulling them out.
“You…” His face went through a complex series of movements that it couldn’t decipher. “You’re expecting me to, what, yank out your fangs?”
It nodded slowly.
He raised a hand, and it couldn’t help but brace for the blow that was surely about to come.
The blow never came. Instead, the bounty hunter was pinching the bridge of his nose. He muttered something about “rich sadistic fucks” and ran a hand over his face.
“Is this why you didn’t want me to take the muzzle off yesterday?” he asked.
It tilted its head from side to side. Yes and no. Muzzles meant safety, both for it and any humans around it. That was among the first things it had been taught. Muzzles kept it quiet, kept it contained, helped keep it on its owner’s good side. Muzzles were taken off for two things: biting, and punishment. The bounty hunter didn’t seem to want its venom, so the muzzle removal wasn’t for biting. That only left punishment.
Pulling fangs, breaking its other teeth, putting in a silver bit, making it swallow silver… there were so many options, and none of them were pleasant.
He ran his hand over his face again. “This would be so much easier if you talked.”
It eyed him with outright fear then. He couldn’t be serious. Words were for humans, not vermin!
He must have seen its expression, because he said, “I’m not going to make you talk. It just…” He sighed. “It would be easier, is all. We can do it this way if you want.”
It nodded vehemently. It wasn’t going to play at being human, wasn’t going to try to trick its owner with pretty words. It knew better; it knew what its place was in this world.
“Okay.” He sighed again.”Well, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to hurt you.”
It frowned at him. But… why? It had disobeyed. He had every right to punish it.
“I mean it,” he said seriously. “I don’t know what you’ve been through, kiddo, but I know you’ve had a lot of people hurt you. I am not going to be one of them.”
It stared at him in confusion. His words just didn’t make sense. He couldn’t possibly mean that, but he was so adamant that he did. Owners lied, and it knew that, but this didn’t seem like a lie.
It was confusing, to say the least.
He shook his head. “We can talk more about that later. For now, the water’s getting cold. Can I help you into the bath?” He held out one hand, palm up. An offer.
We're back in the vampire's POV for this one! I wanted to show off her lovely headspace and the convoluted thought processes she's got going on in regards to why exactly this bounty hunter is acting like this. I intended to get farther along with the plot, but then the image of the vampire in an accidental, inescapable blanket prison came to mind, and that became a major focus. Hope it brings you as much joy as it does me!
CW for: female conditioned vampire whumpee, fear of punishment, internalized dehumanization, referenced dissociation, and implied/referenced non-con (very minor mention).
Let me know if I missed any tags, or if you want to be added to the taglist!
Masterlist
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The vampire woke to a knock on the door. For a moment, it didn’t know where it was. Had it been sold to a new owner? It didn’t recognize this place, this small nook it had slept in…
And then the memories clicked into place. The bounty hunter. He had brought it to his home, had gone out of his way to clean it and bandage its wounds. He had given it new clothes—well, more or less, considering it was swimming in the fabric of his oversized shirt—and allowed it to sleep in a bed.
It, of course, hadn’t been able to sleep in the bed despite the permission. It was too soft, too smothering. Too many memories. So it had pulled the blankets and pillows off and created a nest underneath the bed instead.
Which was where it was now.
The knock came again. “Kid? I’m coming in.”
It tried to get out, to kneel at the hunter’s feet and greet him as a proper pet should, but it was stuck. It seemed to have wrapped itself in the blankets as efficiently as a spider wrapping its prey while it slept, and now it couldn’t get out.
Fabric had no right to be this confining!
The door creaked open, and it heard footsteps coming closer. Feet came into view, clad in heavy work boots. “Kid?”
It struggled against the blankets again. How had it even managed this in its sleep!?
The bounty hunter bent down.
No, no no no, it wasn’t ready! It didn’t mean to disobey, it tried to greet him, it was just stuck!
The hunter’s face came into view in the small strip it could see from under the bed. He seemed… confused, but not angry.
“Why are you under the bed?” he asked.
It stilled, taking on the statue-stillness that only the undead could achieve. Its eyes were almost painfully wide.
“Sorry, forgot,” the hunter said with a grimace. “The muzzle.”
He hadn’t taken it off yet, nor had he punished it for doing so. Yet. It knew the punishment was coming; there was always punishment for breaking the rules, and it had broken so many the night it closed the hunter’s wounds. Taking off its muzzle, moving without permission, drinking blood, human blood, without permission… It was due for a punishment, and a severe one.
For now, though, it was still wearing its muzzle. Which in this case, meant it didn’t have to answer the hunter’s question—couldn’t answer his question.
He looked it over. “Are you… stuck?”
If it still could, it would be blushing. Behold, the mighty vampire, brought low by a blanket.
The hunter smiled, and… was he stifling a giggle?
He held up his hands like he was surrendering. “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. It’s just- Look, I know you're a fearsome vampire, top of the food chain, apex predator, but it's really hard to think you're scary when you're tangled up in a sheet like a particularly troublesome kitten.”
It isn't like wrapping myself up like a spider's dinner was intentional, it thought. It didn’t know where the boldness for such disrespect, even if it was just internal, came from.
“Can I help?” he asked.
It blinked at him, unsure what he was asking. Offering.
“I could… pull you out?” he suggested. “Help get you unwrapped?”
It hesitated a moment before nodding. The hunter had kept his word so far, had done what he said he would and only what he said he would. It didn’t think he would take liberties with it.
And if he did? Well, it was still better to learn what he would do now, rather than getting any more comfortable first.
He reached out for it, and it held itself perfectly still. It couldn’t lash out, couldn’t retaliate, no matter what he did. The consequences would only be worse then.
But all he did was grab a handhold to pull it out. He didn’t even grab it; he grabbed the blanket instead. And he was gentle enough that the trip out from under the bed didn’t even hurt.
Once it was out, the bounty hunter looked it over, appraising its makeshift bonds. “You did this in your sleep?” he asked.
It nodded and ducked its head.
Of all the responses it thought it might get, laughter wasn’t one of them. He let out a chuckle and said, “That’s some kind of talent you’ve got, kid. I’m not sure I could have done this on purpose, much less accidentally.”
It peered at him from under its lashes. He… wasn’t angry? No, not angry at all. He was smiling.
What.
“Give me a minute; I’ll get you unwrapped,” he said with a lopsided grin.
Once done with the task of freeing his new pet from its accidental imprisonment, he said, “Alright. So yesterday, we didn’t quite finish the task of getting you cleaned up.”
It held back a wince at that. It had been stupid, had been careless and just reacted without thought to the consequences. He was its owner; it was just a pet. He could do whatever he wanted with it, and it knew that. It knew its place.
But what its mind knew and what its body knew were two different things. Its mind knew not to flinch away from its owner; its body knew such touch as it had flinched from as a precursor to pain. Its body had just… taken over, momentarily, doing the little it could to protect itself.
The bounty hunter had yet to punish it for that, too.
“So, like I said, we’ll finish up today,” he said. “I’ve got a bath ready for you. Can I carry you there?”
He offered a hand.
Why was he doing that? It wasn’t the first time, either. He had done the same the day before. He kept asking it questions, giving it choices! Why was he acting like what it wanted mattered!? They had to be a trick, a trap; there had to be an answer he was looking for, a correct choice that it was supposed to make.
Well, this one was an easy choice, at least. It could crawl its way to the bathroom, but its new owner seemed to prefer the efficiency of carrying it. It knew the correct answer to this question.
Tobias is Trying. How well he's doing? That's a different story.
CW for non-sexual nudity, wounds (including burns, cuts, and broken bones, not in detail), starvation, and implied/referenced non-con. As always, let me know if I missed anything, and if you want to be added to the taglist.
Masterlist
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The vampire seemed utterly unconcerned by their nudity.
Tobias wished he could say the same.
He was running eyes-first into something he hadn’t bothered to consider before: the vampire’s gender. They were a woman.
A girl, really; probably not even out of her teens. And even though he knew that she was probably far older than she appeared, could easily be even older than he was, that didn’t make this any more comfortable for him.
Not about you, Tobias. Focus on helping her.
“I’m going to start at your shoulders and work my way down, okay?” he said, waiting until she nodded to continue. “Stop me if anything is too painful.”
She was just so damn small. And so injured. He felt like he should be averting his gaze, like this was far too intimate for him to see. This was as naked as you could be: having your very skin flayed off until what’s underneath is shown.
But no one else was going to tend these wounds.
Tobias wet the sponge and gently applied it to the vampire’s skin, starting at her neck and working his way down. His cleaning allowed him to see suspiciously hand-shaped bruises around her neck that had previously been hidden. Where the collar had been was now a band of blistered flesh among all the grime, and the vampire winced as water rolled over it.
“I know,” he murmured. “You’re doing fine.”
He kept going, finding more and more injuries as he went. The vampire, for her part, withstood his clumsy ministrations with more grace than he expected. She held almost perfectly still. Her only movements were little flinches that she always tensed after, as if expecting retaliation for a natural response. She moved when prompted, allowing Tobias to hold first one arm and then the other as he cleaned them. Both arms were covered in lines of burns, like someone had taken an iron or silver rod—possibly even the fireplace poker Harding had threatened him with—and pressed it against her again and again. Fresh blood beaded up from the broken blisters around her wrists.
The vampire stayed silent until he started working on her back. As soon as he started cleaning the worst of the burns though, she let out a high, thin whine.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I knew a way to do this without hurting you.”
She didn’t move away, though. Just hunched in on herself and let him do his work.
Her back was covered in not only layers of burns in different stages of healing, but scars and open wounds as well. He could clearly see her ribs against her skin, with more broken and healed crookedly than there were whole. The ridges of her spine jutted out like peaks in a mountain range.
The vampire was a living portrait of how cruel humans could be. Her torso showed evidence of years of mistreatment, of injuries that would have long since killed any human, poorly and sloppily healed with no treatment whatsoever.
Given that information, he should have known she wasn’t spared any type of assault.
The vampire flinched hard enough that she fell off the stool when he finished working on her torso and made to start on her legs. She scrabbled backwards on the floor, only stopping once she hit the wall. Once there, she curled into a protective ball, knees pulled to her chest and arms protecting her head.
It took him longer than it should have to realize what had caused such a reaction. He stood there stupidly, holding the sponge as it dripped onto the floor. It wasn’t until he saw the blood that had dried on the vampire’s inner thighs that he put the pieces together.
Tobias took a moment to compose himself. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, forcing down all the nausea and impotent rage such a violation caused. He didn’t care that she was a vampire. You don’t do that to anyone.
He sighed and opened his eyes. The vampire was wailing, a thin, broken sound that held more misery than anyone should have had to experience.
“Hey,” he said, trying to keep his voice in the same soothing tone he used to calm spooked animals. It was an unfair comparison, but she seemed like nothing so much as an animal at the moment, all higher intelligence fled in the face of terror.
“You’re okay,” he continued, crouching down in front of the vampire. “You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe here.”
It took long minutes of such talk before the vampire seemed to come back to herself. Her arms lowered from their position protecting her head; she stopped pressing herself into the wall like she wanted to go through it. She refused to make eye contact, but in a way that almost seemed… embarrassed, if Tobias was reading it correctly.
“You back with me, kid?” he asked.
She nodded, looking down at the floor.
“I don’t have to clean your legs if you don’t want,” he offered. “I mean. You do need to get clean. But I could just… help you do it yourself? If you wanted.”
She peeked up at him through her lashes, then looked back down. She held up one hand and curled it. The crooked fingers didn’t bend correctly, and the hand couldn’t close all the way.
“You… can’t, can you,” he said, hoping he understood her correctly.
She shook her head.
“Well, there goes that idea,” he muttered. At the vampire’s reaction, he hastily added, “I’m not mad at you. Just trying to figure out how best to do this.”
He thought about the problem for a bit more. How could they get her clean without adding more trauma?
Eventually he said, “How about this. I’ll get from your knees down. Your hair and face still need washing, too. So, we could get all the rest of it, hair included, tomorrow with a bath. That way you don’t need any grip strength to wash yourself. I can wash and comb your hair, and you can wash whatever you don’t want me to. Would that work?”
The vampire tilted her head to one side, considering the idea. Eventually she nodded.
“Okay then. Let’s get the rest of this done then, shall we?” He rose from his crouch and offered her a hand.
She ignored his hand and rose to all fours. Belatedly, Tobias remembered the cut tendons and how she couldn’t walk even if she wanted to. He went to stop her, but she had already crawled back to the supplies. She righted the stool; it had been knocked over in her panic. Then she stopped and looked at him, then back to the floor.
“I’m coming,” he said. He helped her onto the stool, then got back to cleaning her.
The rest of the process went more smoothly, thank fuck. There were several poorly healed breaks in the bones of her shins, and bruising along her knees from where she had crawled on unforgiving surfaces. Her ankles had the same blistered rings around them as her wrists; cleaning left them both bleeding again.
The last nasty surprise he found was her feet. It seemed like at some point in this horror show, she’d been forced to walk across… probably silver, if he had to guess. Nothing else left such livid scars on vampire skin, and the soles of her feet were covered in scars.
“Okay,” Tobias said as he toweled off the vampires and looked over the results. One less-filthy vampire in need of bandaging and a bath, and several buckets of now-dark water. Not too bad, in his opinion.
He wrapped the vampire’s wrists, ankles, and throat in a layer of bandages. There was little he could do for the various broken bones at this point; they were healed, however improperly, and would take re-breaking to set correctly. He did put a layer of salve over the burns and cuts on the vampire’s back, though, and bandaged that as well. He’d do a more thorough job after her bath tomorrow, but this would do for tonight.
He helped the vampire into a shirt of his, which was comically oversized on her. It came down practically to her knees, and he had to roll up the sleeves multiple times so her hands were free.
“I’m gonna have to work on proper clothes for you,” he said, thinking about all that caring for this vampire would entail. The bath and medical attention, obviously, but then she’d need food and clothing. How was he supposed to get blood for her?
He shook his head. That was a problem for the future. For now, he carried the vampire to a spare room and put her down on the cot in it.
He’d just have to keep figuring this out as he went along.
Have Tobias realizing more and more that the vampire is a person, as evidenced by his shift in pronoun usage!
CW for brief descriptions of wounds, including burns, and brief non-sexual nudity.
Masterlist
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They arrived at Tobias’ home late that afternoon. He turned his horses over to the grooms, then brought the vampire inside. He undid the ropes keeping it in its blanket cocoon.
“Welcome to my home, I guess,” he said awkwardly. There wasn’t exactly a social script for this situation. “I live here, and use it as the base of operations for my bounty hunting. There are extra bedrooms; you can pick one of those to stay in. First, though, I think we should take a look at your wounds.”
The vampire looked down at themself and nodded, nose wrinkling up in distaste.
“Probably be best in the bathroom,” Tobias said. “Can I carry you there?”
That got him a raised eyebrow and a look that clearly said, well how else am I going to get there? Then they nodded.
So Tobias carried the little creature to the bathroom. Once there, he set some water to warming as he went about gathering his medical supplies. He had a fair amount of them, having had to patch himself up after fights more than once, and he was sure that he would need more than a little to patch the vampire up.
He wasn’t using the bathtub for this. The water would get filthy long before the vampire got clean, and sitting in dirty water would just be counterproductive. He had a sponge, a towel, and more hot water than he thought was necessary. He was going to wash the vampire’s wounds by hand.
The water was warm; the supplies were gathered. Now he just had to… get on with it.
It was just so intimate, the act of bathing another person and dressing their wounds. He would see every bit of themself that they were trying to hide, all of the injuries that had been hidden so far. That gave him pause.
It didn’t seem to bother the vampire, though. He had set them on a stool a ways away from the fire, thinking it would keep them comfortable without the possibility of any burns. And they were trying to strip off their ruined clothing like being naked meant nothing at all to them.
Tobias rushed over to stop them; the vampire flinched away from his touch before stilling.
“You’re going to hurt yourself worse doing that,” he explained. “The clothes are probably stuck to your wounds. Pulling them off could make the wounds reopen. How about I wet the cloth where it's stuck, and ease it off that way?”
The vampire nodded slowly, shoulders hunching inward.
“I’ll be as gentle as I can, okay?” he said, trying to sound reassuring.
The vampire nodded again, seeming as enthusiastic about this as Tobias, if for different reasons.
He tied their hair up, keeping it out of the way of his work. Then he began working the vampire’s clothing free.
The cloth would be better suited to the rag pile than actual clothing. It had probably started its life as a dress, but it was now more ripped and tattered than anything else. It had stuck to the vampire’s back where the burns oozed clear fluid, and along various slashes and cuts where the blood had dried.
Tobias gently pressed the wet sponge against the cloth, loosening the clotted blood and other fluids that had stuck the cloth to the vampire’s skin. Once it was sufficiently loosened, he gently pulled it free.
Eventually he got the former piece of clothing off entirely.
Which left him with an entirely naked vampire.
He could already feel his cheeks heat up in embarrassment at the situation.
Tobias is just having a really weird day, everyone.
CW for dehumanization, “it” as a pronoun, muzzles, non-verbal character.
Let me know if I missed anything, and if you’d like to be added to the taglist!
Masterlist
——————————–
“Okay…” Tobias said, for lack of anything better to say.
The vampire was slowly coming out of their little huddled ball. He wanted to ask why it had saved him, what it was thinking, what it was planning, but didn’t dare for fear of sending it back into that frightened child-like huddle.
So. It seemed like the only way he was going to get answers was through yes or no questions. The vampire might not be willing to talk, but it was willing to communicate nonverbally. That was a starting place, at least.
“So. You don’t want to take the muzzle off,” he asked, just to confirm.
Vehement head shaking answered him. That was clear enough.
“And you don’t want to talk.”
Another head shake.
“But… you are physically able to talk, right?” he asked. THe vampire just cocked their head at him, so he clarified. “You shushed me last night. So it’s not that anything’s been, I don’t know, damaged? Your tongue, or your throat?”
It stared at him, then slowly shook its head.
“So not damaged then,” Tobias mused. “Are you able to talk?”
That got a very hesitant nod in response.
It was clear this line of questioning made the vampire uncomfortable. He needed to change his approach.
“Well, it’s another day’s ride back to my home. Once we arrive, we can figure out what to do from there.”
He couldn’t carry out his original plan now. Not after the vampire saved his life; not with how they seemed so damn human in their reactions and their fear. So instead, he’d just have to… figure out a way to care for them.
A way to care for a vampire. Ha. Somewhere, his mentor was cursing him out and didn’t know why.
He let out a breath. “So. It’s daylight now. We can set out now, but that would take wrapping you up in the blankets again to keep you out of the sun. Or, we could stay here until the sun sets. Would you rather go now—” he lifted one finger “—or wait?” He lifted a second finger.
The vampire had proved to be plenty intelligent so far. Hopefully it caught on to what he meant.
The small figure lifted a hand with one crooked finger extended.
“You want to go now?” Tobias asked to clarify.
Nod.
“Okay then.”
He packed up his bedroll and gear, then went to fetch the horses. Eventually, everything was ready to go.
Everything but the vampire.
Tobias gathered the blankets to shield it from the sun, then paused as another thought occurred to him.
“Hey,” he said gently. He may as well have shouted, though. The vampire, who had been looking off into the vague distance, snapped their head towards him, eyes wide.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. The gaze on him got less painfully wide, though no less intense in its focus.
“Okay…” Tobias said, gathering his thoughts again. “So. You’ve been riding with me, over the withers of my horse. Would you rather keep doing that, or would you prefer to ride the second horse? You couldn’t ride properly in the saddle, but it might be more comfortable to be over a proper saddle, rather than a horse’s withers.”
It didn’t matter either way to him. The creature was so light that its weight barely made a difference to his mount. If it wanted to be on the second horse, he could tie it so it wouldn’t fall. But giving it the choice seemed like a good way to start… fuck. Making amends? Treating it like a person? Damned if he knew just what he was doing, other than “his best”.
The vampire tilted its head again in silent question, then raised a hand. It lifted one finger, then a second, and waggled them both.
He had to chuckle at that. The little thing was reminding him he hadn’t given it a way to signal its choices. “Okay, okay. One finger for staying with me, two for switching to a second horse.”
It considered him a moment before finally raising just one finger.
Back to Tobias' POV this time! He is having such a weird time.
CW for dehumanization, "it" as a pronoun, muzzles, fear responses (panic attacks, really, but seen from the POV of someone who hasn't quite grasped the "this is a person" concept yet).
Let me know if I missed anything, and if you'd like to be added to the taglist!
Masterlist
--------------------------------
Tobias woke up confused.
Actually, let him rephrase that.
He woke up, and was confused that he was able to wake up. He was sure that the vampire was going to kill him.
He looked down at himself. He definitely hadn’t dreamed or hallucinated the previous night’s events. His shirt was slit open. Too bad, really, because he liked that shirt. He raised a hand to feel the bloodstained fabric, then the skin underneath it.
The wound was gone.
The wound was gone.
That wound should have killed him. It had been long and deep, and he had been losing far too much blood from it. And it definitely had been there; the damage to his shirt was proof enough.
His calloused fingers caught on something, and he hissed in pain. Looking closer, he could see a slight silvery scar running across his chest—
Right where the wound had been.
He looked down at the scar, dumbfounded. How was that possible? He racked his brain for anything that could have caused it. The knife that had cut him certainly wasn’t to thank for his healing. The owner of it had most definitely wanted him dead—highly doubtful one would use a magical knife that heals wounds on such an expedition. And he hadn’t even made it to his supplies, not that he had anything that could do this. He had collapsed, and then the vampire—
The vampire. Of course.
Tobias was just going to assume it was the blood loss that made him not realize how obvious the answer was.
He’d seen vampire victims’ scars before. If a vampire got a taste for a human in particular, it might bring that human along as a tasty snack for the road. Said human would eventually acquire layer upon layer of faint silver scars over all their juicy pulse points. The vampire would seal up its bite marks after it finished feeding as a way of keeping its meal fresh and bringing it along with them.
Tobias hadn’t known it worked for wounds other than ones that vampires caused, though.
He let out a groan as he sat up. His wounds might be closed up, but he was still feeling the after-effects of the fight. He would need to rest up before taking any more jobs. This job had been enough of a hassle; he wasn’t keen to take another one on so soon.
He turned around, taking stock of the camp. He was sitting in a patch of late morning sunlight. Both horses were still where he had left them, grazing contentedly by the stream. His bedroll was just where it had been before he left to take care of the hired thugs. And the vampire…
The vampire was curled into a tiny ball, protected from the sun by the shadow of the tree he had tied it to.
He scrubbed a hand over his eyes. He was not nearly drunk enough to deal with this situation. Tobias got up with a groan and walked over to the horses, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickle with the sensation of eyes watching him.
Definitely not drunk enough to deal with this situation.
He rummaged through the horses’ saddlebags and came up with a waterskin. He drank greedily from it. Despite how much he wanted to get drunk, he knew that alcohol wouldn’t help him heal after that fight.
He emptied the waterskin, then refilled it from the stream. That was as much fortification as he would be able to get before facing the situation.
The ‘situation’ being the vampire that had apparently saved his life.
Tobias walked over to the tree and sat down. He made sure that he was sitting entirely in the sunlight, just outside the shadow where the vampire hid. It had done its chameleon act again. In the light of day, it once again looked like a scared waif rather than a fearsome predator. That didn’t change his memory of it stalking towards him, eyes wide and fangs bared.
Up close, he could see that the vampire wasn’t just curled into a protective ball. No, it was in a very specific kind of position. It had kneeled so that its ass rested on its heels, then leaned forward until its forehead touched its hands where they rested in the grass. It was a strangely penitent pose, like a worshipper trying to placate an angry god.
He saw how the position exposed the creature’s entire back, the same back covered in weeping blisters and raw flesh and ragged cuts. The pose could be a worshipper praying to appease their god.
Or it could be a sacrifice offering itself up for punishment.
He sighed and ran a hand over his face again. He had no idea how to deal with this- this paradox. This creature should have been trying to rip his throat out. It should have killed him last night, or lashed out at any of the numerous openings he had undoubtedly given it.
“Why is nothing simple,” he groaned.
The vampire made no reply. He thought he saw its head turn towards him, though. It was definitely shaking. Fine tremors traveled through its arms and down its back as though it were trying to remain still, but struggling.
It was terrified of him, he realized abruptly. He was the angry god it was trying to appease, the divine instrument of justice here to mete out its punishment.
“Will you— just sit up, will you?” he said. It came out harsher than he intended. Reexamining his view of the world and its fundamental truths was making him short-tempered.
Vampires were supposed to be predators. They were at the top of the food chain, the most dangerous beast. They stalked the night and called it home, and humans cowered in fear before them. They were supposed to hunt humans.
Except for how this one didn’t. It was throwing all the rules out the window, switching all the roles around. It made Tobias feel like the foundations of his world had turned from solid rock to shifting sand, and he didn’t care for the feeling.
Its scramble to comply with his order didn’t make him feel any better, though. Neither did its wide and wild eyes, or the muzzle that had been clumsily and tightly fastened on its head.
“Jesus, did you put that on yourself?” he asked incredulously.
The vampire lowered its head and nodded.
“Ugh, that’s not— I’m not mad, okay?” he said, startling the thing into raising its head again. Its eyes looked better today; clearer, less hazy. He had a hunch. “Can you look at me, please?”
Slowly, reluctantly, it turned to look at him. It wouldn’t meet his eyes, but it was definitely looking at him, rather than just near him. It looked like his blood had healed the creature’s eyes, at least somewhat.
Interesting. But not what he needed to focus on.
“First of all,” he began, then had to pause and take a breath to collect his thoughts. “Thank you.”
It startled at that, violently enough that it almost fell over. Tobias almost laughed, until he used enough brain cells to realize what that meant about the vampire’s past.That sobered him up quickly.
“Truly,” he continued. “I would have died last night if not for you. Thank you for saving me.”
It dipped its head in a gesture that seemed equal parts acceptance and refusal.
“Why, though?” he asked.
Its head snapped up again, looking straight at him. It didn’t even seem like it was breathing. The stare was intense and unnerving.
And the thing was still wearing the fucking muzzle. Idiot, he chastised himself. It can’t exactly talk to him with that thing on.
“Right, you can’t talk with that on,” he said, discomfort at the situation making him fidget.
He was the one who had left the muzzle on it in the first place. It seemed like a good precaution at the time; he didn’t know the vampire, only that it was starved and injured, and he had no desire to get bitten. And it wasn’t like he had put it on cruelly; he had even loosened the straps so the muzzle fit properly!
So why did seeing it with the muzzle on again make him so uncomfortable?
He took a closer look at the straps. The vampire’s mangled hands must have had trouble taking it off, and even more trouble putting it back on. The muzzle looked like every single strap now had hair caught in them, and all were far tighter than he had fastened them.
“That can’t feel very good,” he said.
The vampire cautiously shook its head, using minute little movements that let it keep its eyes on him the whole time.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Tobias said. “Can I take it off?”
Whatever response he expected from that question, it wasn’t the one he got. The vampire moved faster than his eyes could catch. One moment it was kneeling in front of him; the next, it was pressed back into the tree like it was trying to merge with the bark. Its legs were drawn up in front of itself, and its head was pressed to its knees and covered by its arms.
It looked like nothing so much as a scared child, trying to hide from the monsters that lurk in the dark.
“Woah, hey, take it easy,” he said, trying to figure out just why it reacted like that. “I’m not mad, remember? I just want to be able to talk with you.”
It shook its head, the movement visible from its protective ball only because of the vehemence of it. It was letting out a high, thin whine.
“You… don’t want to talk?” he hazarded a guess.
It shook its head again.
“Okay…” he said slowly.
That was going to make this process a lot more difficult. But if that reaction was what he could expect from trying to make the vampire talk? Playing a game of 20 Questions was far preferable.
Tobias sighed. “Okay. That’s okay. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”
It cautiously raised its head, big dark eyes peering at him.
“Really,” he said, trying to reassure it. “I’m not going to make you talk. I won’t even take off the muzzle, if that’s how you feel more comfortable.”
It raised its head a little more, letting its arms drop from their protective stance.
“Can I at least loosen it a little, though?” he asked, hoping this question wouldn’t send it back into its huddle. “Like I said, it can’t feel very good. You had trouble putting it back on, right? Got your hair caught in it? I can at least fix that for you.”
The vampire tensed, but didn’t retreat. Slowly, eyes always on him, it nodded.
“Okay then. I’m going to come closer now, alright?” he said, remembering to give it ample warning of his movements.
He shuffled over to kneel beside the creature in the shadow. It was holding itself so tense that it was shaking with the effort, but it stayed still.
“Good job,” he said as he carefully loosened the first strap and removed the hair caught in it. The vampire’s hair was long, and was probably pretty once. Now, it was a mess of snarls and tangles. “You’re doing great, thanks for staying still for me.”
He redid the other straps in the same way. He made sure to keep his hands gentle and his movements slow, and praised the creature the whole time.
The muzzle was as gentle as Tobias could make it. Task done, he sat back, once again leaving ample space between himself and the vampire.
This time, it wasn’t for his peace of mind. No, it was for the creature’s.
Here we have the vampire's POV of what's been happening! CW for dehumanization, internalized dehumanization, internalized conditioning, anxiety, and generally a bad headspace. Minor blood, burns (not described in detail). Minor references to off-screen non-con.
This one's like, twice as long, so I hope you enjoy it. Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist, or if I missed anything in the content warnings.
Masterlist
——————-
The vampire was becoming used to pain.
It had resisted, at first. Fought back, used its remaining strength against the humans who tried to torture it. But a vampire’s strength only lasts so long in the face of silver and sunlight and starvation.
Biting—when not told to bite, when not being used for its drug-like venom—got it muzzled. Running got its tendons sliced through and legs broken. Touching the muzzle got its fingers snapped like twigs. Talking got its teeth broken and its tongue burned with silver.
And doing nothing? Not resisting when it was beaten, burned, and broken, over and over? That got it very little.
But little was better than nothing.
It had accepted this fate; accepted that it was an it, a filthy creature that didn’t belong among humans. Its only purpose was pain. It would writhe and burn and scream. It would endure whatever the humans did to it, whether they chose to spend a day watching it burn in the sunlight, or spend the time pressing silver against its flesh, or just using their fists and feet to beat it.
This was its existence, now.
----
The vampire thought it had been passed from human to human, owner to owner, a few times by now. Some preferred one method of pain over another. Some liked it to whimper like a dog begging for scraps; some preferred screams.
It was hard to keep track of what was happening to it. Its mind wandered, leaving the battered shell of its body behind in an attempt to escape. It never worked for long. Something would happen to drag mind back to body, and the cycle would begin again.
----
Its newest owner used it as entertainment. He showed it off to guests, inviting them to do what they pleased with it. He offered them iron and silver implements to use.
Some of them wanted its venom more than its pain, and it drank greedily from those. That was all the human blood it would get, and human blood was the only chance it had to properly heal. It never got much, though. There was always a human holding it by its hair, ready to pull it away at the first sign it had taken more blood than it had given venom.
The new owner also liked to play games. He had a room for it, where he kept it in place with a silver collar and iron chains. Sometimes he would add manacles to its wrists and ankles, pulling its limbs out so it had no chance to hide itself. More often though, he left it with just the collar.
The room had windows lining the walls, with thick shades that could be raised or lowered at his whim. Sometimes, he would raise just one shade, and the vampire had to spend its day awake, crawling away from the ever-encroaching sunlight. Other times he would lift them all, and it would spend the day burning, its leash too short to allow it into the blessed darkness outside its room.
The men would stand in the sunlight and laugh. They enjoyed what to them was a warm caress, not a burning flame. They would mock it, running fingers over the blisters forming on its skin.
It couldn’t see them, and always flinched at their unexpected touches. That made them laugh harder.
Its owner enjoyed having it kneel at his feet, only for him to kick it away. Then he would make it crawl back to him for the process to repeat.
Sometimes, though, he didn’t want to play games. He just wanted to “blow off steam,” as he would tell his friends. Those times were nearly as bad as the pain of sunlight—a deeper, more private agony. Usually he just used his body. That was bad enough, but not the worst. The worst times were when he would take something iron or silver and use that instead.
He always brought it blood afterwards. Animal blood usually, though sometimes human blood too. That was enough to keep it alive. The creature didn’t know if that was his twisted form of apology, but it would take what it could get.
----
The day its life changed started like any other. The men had noticed its eyes starting to heal, so they “fixed” that. They sat around drinking, the stink of alcohol heavy on their breath, as they made bets on how long it could keep the silver coins over its eyes. The winner patted its head, once it finally trembled hard enough for the coins to fall off.
The men had left after that, going to another room to continue drinking and gambling. It was left alone with its owner, who was in an awful mood. He used his feet, though it had heard him grab one of the iron fire pokers.
One of his kicks hit its burned back, and it whimpered and shied away.
“Shut up. You don’t get to flinch away from me!” he snarled, temper sharp and hot.
There was something going on outside the room. Its owner couldn’t hear it, not with human ears, but its heightened senses could hear the change in the men’s attitude. It could hear the footsteps coming towards this room, even with how lightly the person walked.
Bang. The sound of the door hitting the wall. It tried to turn, as though facing the intruder would help it to hear what was going on.
Its owner didn’t like that. “I said shut up, you fucking animal!” he said, punctuating his statement with another kick.
“Emmett Harding,” the newcomer said. That was its owner’s name, it knew that much. It had heard his friends call him by name before. “Bounty Hunters’ Guild. You are wanted alive and uninjured. Surrender your weapon and come quietly.”
Emmett Harding did neither of these things. Instead, he spat on the creature and decided that his best option would be to insult and then attack the bounty hunter.
That didn’t go particularly well for him.
“They never learn,” the hunter said, after its owner had dropped to the floor. He sighed, as though the idiocy of people continued to disappoint but not surprise him.
Then he came closer.
And closer.
And sighed again, and…
No no no don’t touch me don’t touch me please please please—
He touched it. He rested two fingers on its throat, as though checking for the pulse it hadn’t had in years.
It had managed not to move or make noise when touched, frozen in terror as it was, but it couldn’t help but shift away from the hunter once his hand was removed.
He swore, and it curled in on itself. It didn’t want to anger this man, this unknown bounty hunter who was undoubtedly armed and stronger than its owner. If he decided to hurt it…
Well. If he decided to hurt it, it would be hurt. It was as simple as that. There was nothing it could do to change what it was, what it deserved.
The man knelt next to it. His unseen gaze felt like a weight as he took in the creature’s pitiful state.
“Fuckers,” he said gruffly.
It whimpered at his voice.
The man sighed, then groaned, then yelled for the other men to bring blankets.
He was going to take it with him.
----
It lost time then, mind drifting away in its terror. It didn’t know what a bounty hunter would want with it, and was afraid to find out.
It came back to itself at the sound of the hunter’s voice. He was talking softly, almost… gently, to it.
“I’m going to take you out of here, and you’ll never have to deal with them again. They can’t hurt you any more,” he said.
Its body had curled in on itself in its mind’s absence, trying for the little protection it could get.
The hunter continued to speak gently, trying to… quiet it? Calm it? He kept up the soothing tone as he explained what he was doing. He didn’t cause it pain beyond what was impossible to avoid, like taking off its collar.
It did its best to cooperate with him. It tried to listen to him, because he spoke to it, not just about it. It nodded its understanding when he said he was leaving the muzzle on because he didn’t want to get bit. It didn’t resist when he pulled it from its protective ball, or when he wrapped it in blankets and ropes, or when he put it over a horse’s withers to take it away from wherever it had been.
And the hunter kept being kind. He gave it the first kind words it had heard in years. He spoke gently, touched it gently. He didn’t even seem to mind when it forgot where it was and struggled inside its blanket-wrapped prison. He just kept speaking in that soothing tone. He explained what he was doing, told it what to expect. He even loosened the ropes around it for the night, and didn’t even tie it to anything.
It expected to wake up and find it had been a dream. But instead, it woke up to the hunter explaining he was tightening the ropes again for travel, and praising it for staying where he put it.
It did not understand what was going on. At all.
Maybe the hunter was taking it to a new owner. Maybe he was going to keep it, or put it out of its misery. It had no idea what might be coming.
It just knew that it would enjoy this reprieve while it lasted.
----
That day’s ride was much like the night before, except this time, its owner (former owner?) was awake.
And talking.
He said horrible things. He told the hunter about what he’d done to the creature, what he planned to do. He suggested that the hunter try out some of the things he never got around to.
It couldn’t stop itself from trembling at the sound of its maybe-former-owner’s voice. He had been the one to decide its fate, choose the amount and duration of its pain, for so long now. Even with him out of reach—and he was out of reach, seemingly on a separate horse by the sound of things—it knew his voice as the herald of its agony.
And the hunter just… kept being gentle.
The hunter didn’t seem to even mind its flinching, where its owner would have beaten it for that. The hunter instead would put one of his big, warm hands on its shoulder or hip or side, always taking care to avoid its back with the worst of the burns there. He would speak in the gentle tone again, telling it that he wouldn’t do what its owner was saying. Telling it to ignore its owner, that he couldn’t hurt it any longer.
It wasn’t sure if it believed the hunter.
It desperately wanted to.
Eventually the horses stopped. Both men got off and walked away, the hunter giving it one more gentle touch on its shoulder before he left.
It drifted, then. Without the fear of its former(?) owner, or the voice and touch of the bounty hunter, it had nothing to distract it from its steadily-increasing pain. It was unavoidable that the fabric shielding it from the sun would press on its burns, and riding slung over a horse like this was putting pressure on bones it hadn’t even realized were broken.
Eventually, the bounty hunter returned. Alone. He was walking faster than when he had left, seemingly determined to leave this place behind.
His words to the creature confirmed that idea. “Sorry, kid. But we’re going to have to ride a bit longer. I don’t want to be anywhere near that fucker and his father, and I’m sure you don’t, either.”
He was… taking it away. It was getting away. It could cry with relief, even as the man’s words confused it.
Why didn’t he want to be near its former owner? It was almost…
No. No, that was impossible.
It had almost sounded like the hunter disagreed with its former owner’s habits.
It distracted itself from the hard ride that followed by considering that further. The bounty hunter had seemed angry at the other men, especially at its former owner. And he had been kind, in his gruff sort of way, to the creature. He hadn’t intentionally caused it pain, had even tried to not cause it pain.
Was it possible that not all humans thought vampires deserved this kind of treatment?
All of the creature’s history told it no. That was just wishful thinking. It was just a creature, just a filthy bloodsucker that deserved anything done to it, no matter how awful. It was meant for nothing but pain.
But this man…
He gave it hope. And it knew, it knew, that hope could cut the deepest, once it was torn away.
----
By the time the bounty hunter stopped the horses, the vampire still hadn’t reached any conclusion. What it had reached was a level of pain where it couldn’t stay quiet any longer. Little whimpers were escaping past the muzzle.
“Easy, easy,” came the hunter’s voice, along with a gentle hand on its side. “That was a tough ride; I’m sorry. But we should be far enough away from those rich assholes and any goons they could send after us by now.”
If it had space in its mind for anything beyond the pain, it might have boggled at the man’s apology. As it was, it just kept trembling.
The hunter lifted it off the horse and set it down—on its side, specifically, he always set it down on its side. He moved about for a bit, then came back to the vampire’s side.
“I want to untie you,” he said.
It instantly went still, all other thoughts abandoned. The idea of being untied…
“But here’s my problem with that,” he continued. “I don’t want to get mauled in my sleep. So, here’s what I’m thinking. If you can promise to be good—no biting, no scratching, no fighting—then I can take you out of this little blanket cocoon. If you can’t promise that, you’re staying in there.”
That was— was he really— of course, it knew better than to bite or scratch anyway, and for this—
It nodded vigorously. Please, please…
“Okay,” he said. “Don’t make me regret this.”
He made short work of the “little blanket cocoon,” as he had called it. And then he just… waited.
What was he waiting for? Did he expect it to do something, to repay him for this kindness somehow? But what could it do, what did he want, what was—
“They did a number on you, huh,” he said softly.
It turned its head away. Its eyes were burning from shame. If it wasn’t such a filthy leech, such a fucking monster, a disgusting creature, abomination, freak, it wouldn’t have been hurt like this. All its injuries were just a reminder of what it was, what the man seemed to be overlooking for some unknowable reason.
Its movement seemed to bring about some change in him. He stopped waiting, and instead considered how best to keep it contained for the night, now that he had let it out of its wrappings. But instead of tying its hands—it offered them to him, it knew how to behave, and it wasn’t going to waste this kindness he had shown it by being defiant—he instead tied it to a tree. He didn’t even hit it when it touched the rope, felt the knots, exactly how he had said not to.
The bounty hunter didn’t make sense. It knew it would pay for this kindness of his, this madness of his, eventually. But for now? It would take what it could get. It fell into a light sleep, still trying to understand all that had happened.
----
It woke to the sound of hoofbeats and the sound of the bounty hunter stirring. He got up, smelling like metal and oil—a gun? His footsteps and heartbeat faded out of the creature’s hearing, disappearing in the same direction as the hoofbeats.
It wished its eyes still worked, then. It knew it wouldn’t see the man, wouldn’t see the commotion. If the scene was playing out where the vampire couldn’t hear the man’s heartbeat, it certainly couldn’t see him. But not being able to see made it feel so vulnerable. It was out in the open, and now alone, with no way to protect itself from whatever might be happening, whatever might come for it next.
It waited and worried, and worried and waited. It heard a gunshot, and the sound of horses neighing and bolting away. And then?
Nothing.
It was alone in the dark. It didn’t have the capacity to admire the paradox of the situation. Here it was, in what should have been its natural habitat. It should have been most comfortable like this. Instead, it was left waiting for something awful to happen.
Time passed, though it couldn’t say how much. Fear always blurred the passage of time in its mind. All it could do was hope, and pray to whatever might listen to a damned creature like it.
Please let the hunter be alright.
It smelled him before it heard him. Blood, fresh and hot. He was injured.
Injured severely, it seemed. His footsteps, once the vampire could hear them, were uneven and unsteady. He made nearly all the way back to camp before collapsing heavily. The sounds of scuffling and labored breathing reached its ears.
This was bad.
He was close, though. He had made it back this far.
It was up on all fours before it had truly planned what it was going to do. The scent of the hunter’s blood was nearly overpowering this close, making its fangs ache. It crawled closer, ignoring the pain in its battered limbs.
“No,” he croaked out. His voice wasn’t the gentle tone he had used before. Now, it was rough with pain and fear. “No.”
It kept dragging itself closer. So close, he was so close, it could make it if it just tried hard enough…
The vampire’s mangled hand found the hunter’s body, and it pulled itself to kneel next to him. It needed its mouth for the next part. It pushed past the lessons beaten into it and reached for the buckles of the muzzle. Its much-broken fingers were clumsy in their crooked state, but it managed to pry the straps loose. The weight that had been its companion for so long fell away, and it let out a hiss as its mouth was freed.
“No,” the hunter rasped beneath them. “Please.”
It reached out, trying to find the source of the blood. The vampire found a long cut across the hunter’s chest, and he let out a cry of pain.
“No, no,” he begged. “Please.”
“Shh,” it said, the first proper sound it had made in… far too long. It didn’t have the words to console the hunter, to tell him that he would be alright. That he was safe.
So it just bent its head over him, setting its mouth against the cut.
The hunter’s heartbeat was rabbit-quick now.
He didn’t understand. It couldn’t make him understand. He must have thought it was attacking him, lured by the smell of fresh blood.
The smell luring it was true enough, but it wasn’t attacking. It wouldn’t, not this man, not after the kindness he’d shown it. It had promised, even: no attacking, in exchange for this night of relative freedom.
No, it wasn’t here to hurt him.
It was here to heal him.
It licked across the cut, going slowly so its venom would take effect. It laved the blood off his skin, unwilling to waste the precious liquid. But that wasn’t what this was for. It wasn’t feeding off him, not truly. It wouldn’t bite.
No, it was closing the wound.
Vampires had many strange abilities and useful gifts. One of them was the vampire’s venom, the substance that numbed pain and terror both, putting prey into a state of contented euphoria to let the vampire drink in peace. Another, lesser known ability was that vampires could heal humans, to an extent. They could seal skin with a pass of their tongue, leaving little but a scar behind to mark their presence.
It was useful for feeding without notice, and for keeping prey from bleeding to death if that wasn’t the desired outcome. And in this case, it let the creature help the man who had shown them kindness.
It went slowly. A stronger vampire would be able to do this with just one lick, but the creature was weak after prolonged suffering and starvation. It had to make sure that this worked.
The hunter fell asleep while it worked, its venom and his own exhaustion making him unable to stay awake. That was fine; he needed rest to heal, and this way the creature wouldn’t cause him more fear.
It closed the wound on his chest and sat back on its heels. It still smelled blood, though. It managed to track the scent back to its source. The hunter had another wound, this one on his leg. The wound wasn’t bleeding much, but the creature closed it anyway.
It sat back again and breathed deeply. No more blood scent. It had done it. It smiled in triumph.
And then the realization of just what it had done sank in.
The smile slid off its face.
No, no, nononononoNO! Even when it was trying to help, it was still just a filthy, disgusting little parasite. It had taken advantage of the hunter’s weakened state, done this to him against his will. He had begged it to stop. And had it listened?
No.
Tears welled up in its eyes once more. This time, it let them fall.
This man had been kind to it, even knowing what it was. And it had repaid that kindness with cruelty and fear. No wonder it had been locked up; it couldn’t be trusted to control itself.
It felt around, finding the muzzle on the ground. It put the bit back in its mouth, tightened the straps with its mangled hands. This was what it deserved. This, and more.
It followed the rope around its ankle back to the base of the tree. Even knowing that it deserved punishment, the creature was still selfish enough to want to avoid the sunlight.
It didn’t try to find the makeshift bedroll the hunter had made for it. It didn’t deserve that kindness, not after what it had done. It crouched down on the grass, legs bent under its body, forehead touching the ground. Penitent.
It would wait for the hunter to wake. Then it would accept whatever he chose as its punishment.
Content warning for dehumanization, including “it” as a pronoun, as well as blood and violence.
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Masterlist
———————-
Tobias pushed the horses hard, riding faster than he’d dared with the target in tow. He made sure to cross every stream, ride over patches of stone, and use every other trick to throw off trackers that he knew.
By the time he deemed it safe enough to stop, both horses were flecked with sweat even in the cool night air. The vampire was shaking, though it was clearly trying not to. Once he slowed the horses to a walk, he could hear its tiny sounds of pain that had been covered by the sound of pounding hooves.
“Easy, easy,” he said, gently resting a hand on its side. “That was a tough ride; I’m sorry. But we should be far enough away from those rich assholes and any goons they could send after us by now.”
He found a campsite, with a stream nearby for the horses and a tree that would provide shade come sunup. He dismounted, taking the vampire with him as he went to set up camp.
There wasn’t much to actually do in terms of setting up camp, really. He wasn’t willing to risk a fire. He might have deemed this far enough from the Harding estate to rest, but he wasn’t going to be stupid about it and put up a big sign saying, Here we are, come and get us! So really all he had to do was lay out his bedroll. It was a nice enough night not to need a fire, anyway.
Now he had to deal with the vampire.
It was still trembling. Tobias sighed. He was probably going to regret this. But they would arrive at his base tomorrow. Tonight was the thing’s last night of… un-life, so it seemed cruel to keep it tied up.
He approached the vampire where he had set it down at the base of the tree and crouched down beside it.
“I want to untie you,” he said. It went still instantly upon hearing his voice. “But here’s my problem with that. I don’t want to get mauled in my sleep. So, here’s what I’m thinking. If you can promise to be good—no biting, no scratching, no fighting—then I can take you out of this little blanket cocoon. If you can’t promise that, you’re staying in there.”
The blanket-wrapped figure stayed still a moment longer, then made what was quite clearly a nod.
“Okay,” Tobias said. “Don’t make me regret this.”
He methodically undid the ropes keeping the vampire’s makeshift sun-shield in place, then unrolled it from the blanket wrappings. It was a tiny little thing: at least a head shorter than him, with a build that suggested it was thin even before starvation took what little meat it had on its bones previously. The burns across its body looked even worse than he remembered. He had thought the thing might want to see the stars, but its eyes were clouded over—it was blind. Probably blinded by silver coins placed over its eyes, if the size of the perfectly circular burns was any indication.
“They did a number on you, huh,” he said softly, more to himself than to the creature.
It turned its face away as though embarrassed.
The reminder that the thing understood him snapped him out of his reverie. He cleared his throat. “Well. I know you’re not going to run off—” the cut tendons in its ankles ensured that, and he almost felt cruel for bringing it up— “but I do want some kind of assurance that you’re not going to try anything while I sleep.”
He was trying to decide how best to ensure that—maybe tying it to the tree?—when it offered its arms to him, wrists together. He could see now that its fingers were bent and misshapen, as though broken and healed incorrectly. It was still looking away from him, but it held perfectly still as he took its wrists in his hands.
Its wrists were so thin that he could hold both of them in one hand if he wanted. There were burns around them too, as though it had been held in iron manacles at some point. He thought about tying its hands, like it obviously expected—the rope rubbing the top off of blisters, coarse fibers biting into raw flesh—and discarded the idea.
“No, I’m not going to do that. Not as long as you’re planning on behaving,” he said. The thing nodded quickly. “Okay then. I’m leaving your hands free, but you have to leave this rope alone, alright? It’s going to keep you by this tree so you’ll have shade in the morning.”
Not that he planned on sleeping past sunrise anyway, but still. It nodded again, and Tobias fastened the rope around first the tree, and then one of its ankles. It ran a hand along the rope, feeling the knots he tied.
“Hey, I said leave that alone,” he called, a hint of warning in his voice.
It snatched its hand back as though burned. Small noises that sounded almost… apologetic, somehow, made their way past the thing’s muzzle.
“Okay, okay,” Tobias said. “Just don’t do it again.”
It nodded again, hands clasped together over its chest.
He sighed. What was he even doing?
Well, it wasn’t like there was anyone here to see his acts of insanity, and he was putting a definite end to it all tomorrow. Just… one night of kindness for it, before he put it down.
He arranged the blankets he had used to shield the thing from the sun into a makeshift bedroll and pillow, and helped the thing onto them. It curled up on its side, hands running along the blankets and grass like it was memorizing the texture.
He shook his head. Just one night.
Tobias slipped into his bedroll, and had to bite back a reflexive goodnight to his traveling partner. He shook his head again, and fell into a light sleep.
---
He woke some time later to the sound of hoofbeats. He pulled out his gun—regular bullets this time, not incapacitating electricity—and went to find what was going on.
There were two men approaching on horseback. They looked like the kind of less scrupulous bounty hunters that the Guild didn’t accept—men who would take any contract, regardless of legality or morality, just to make some coin.
The men spoke softly, but Tobias still managed to hear snippets of the conversation.
“...still think… lost them...”
“...find… vampire… paid...”
“...fucking leech, why… and the man?”
“Kill him, of course… in the way… knows…”
“...take the coin?”
“Of course; Harding said… fair game…”
“Right, as long… make sure he’s dead…”
So it was like he expected. Harding—elder or younger, it didn’t really matter at this point—had hired goons to capture the vampire. Since Tobias was the only one who could tie the man to the crime, they were supposed to kill him, too.
He sighed. Fuck Harding. Fuck both of the Hardings, and fuck these men coming to kill him. They hadn’t seen him yet; he had a good hiding spot in the undergrowth, and the element of surprise. If he did this right, he could take one out before they knew what was happening, and be on the other before the thug got his bearings again.
He raised his weapon, aimed, and fired.
---
Tobias was almost back to the campsite. He just had to get a little further before he collapsed; he just had to make it to his medical supplies.
He had, in fact, managed to take out one of the men without being spotted. It was a clean shot, and the man was dead before he had fallen off the horse.
The second man’s horse had reared at the sound of the gunshot, throwing him off. Tobias shot at him as well, but didn’t manage to do more than graze the second man in the commotion.
The man had proven to be a competent fighter with both guns and knives, and Tobias had been hard-pressed to win against him. He had managed, of course, but not without injuries.
Both of the men were now laying dead in the middle of nowhere. Their bodies would be picked clean by scavengers, and it was unlikely any human would ever find them. Tobias had a deep graze on his leg and a nasty cut across his chest. He was losing a lot of blood. Unless he got back to camp and treated his injuries, he would end up the same as the two thugs sent after him.
Tobias stumbled back into camp as his injured leg gave out on him. He pulled himself towards his bag, where his medical supplies were, but he was running out of strength. His fingers were going cold, and his legs felt like lead weights. He was so close.
Close wasn’t good enough, though.
He let his head drop, panting. Well, there were worse ways to go out than preventing a rich asshole from getting his hands on a vampire.
The vampire.
He was out of energy to be scared. He felt oddly detached as he heard the creature’s muffled noises from behind its muzzle. He managed to summon up enough strength to turn his head towards it.
It was sitting upright, sightless eyes wide. In the moonlight, it looked less human than ever before. Gone was the scared little waif he had been seeing. This was the hunter, the predator, the monster that stalked humans in the dark.
He heard it draw in a breath, saw its nostrils flare in the moonlight. It got to all fours, crawling towards him.
“No,” he said, trying to sound authoritative. “No.”
It didn’t stop, though. It kept getting closer until it was kneeling over him.
He found he had enough energy left to be scared, after all.
It reached up to the muzzle it still wore. Its crooked fingers were clumsy at the buckles, but the smell of blood made the thing determined. Finally the straps were off, and the muzzle fell to the ground with a small thump. The thing hissed, fangs finally freed after who knew how long.
“No,” Tobias said again. “Please.”
It reached out to him, gnarled hand finding the cut across his chest.
“Ah!” he cried in pain. “No, no. Please.”
“Shhhhh,” the thing said. "Shh."
It lowered its mouth to his chest, tongue licking at the wound already there.
Well.
There were worse ways to die than a vampire’s venom sending you to sleep, too.
As always, content warning for dehumanization, including "it" as a pronoun.
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Masterlist
———————-
Tobias woke up to the sound of his target complaining.
“...head, what the fuck,” Harding groaned. Apparently he wasn’t enjoying his post-drinking-and-Tesla-gun headache. Tobias smirked from where he lay on the bedroll.
“Hey. HEY! Bounty hunter, what the fuck!” the man yelled, before groaning again.
“I wouldn’t yell if I were you; it’s only going to make that headache of yours worse,” Tobias said, still with his eyes shut.
“I thought you said my father wants me uninjured.”
“First off, I never said it was your father who put out the bounty,” Tobias said, pushing himself upright. Harding went pale where he was tied against the tree. It was a cheap scare, but damn did he want the brat to shut up. “And as far as I can tell, you’re not injured.”
“Not- not injured?! Tell that to my pounding headache!” he sputtered, puffing himself up with the affront to his important personage.
Tobias hated dealing with rich kids. They were, in his experience, whiny brats that relied too much on their parents’ money and never did anything themselves. This one wasn’t proving his assumptions wrong.
He rolled his eyes at the target. “Settle down. You’re not concussed; I checked. And the headache is mostly just a hangover, which has nothing to do with me.”
He got up and started packing up the campsite, still listening to Harding whine about how his father would hear about this, did Tobias know who he was, he was very important, and blah blah blah.
“Yeah. Whatever. Your father can deal with you himself when I return you to his estate this evening,” he said. “You need food and water. If I untie you, are you going to try to run off?”
The target, to his credit, did seem to actually think about the question. “Like I’d bother, when you’re just going to take me to my father and we can get this all straightened out there,” he said, with a very mature pout.
“Fine.” Tobias untied the man and handed him a waterskin and trail rations. “Don’t even think about complaining, rich kid. It’s one day. Deal with it.”
The target grumbled, but ate and drank without much fuss. Tobias took that time to tend to the vampire.
“Hey,” he said. It had taken advantage of the slack in the ropes to curl into a little ball in its hopefully-sleep. “We’re about to get moving again, so I’m going to tie the ropes tighter. I’ll loosen them again this evening, okay? Good job on staying put.”
It was pliant under his ministrations, letting him move it to and fro as needed to tighten the ropes keeping it covered from the sun. He made sure to tell it what he was doing, and it stayed calm.
Right up until the target opened his mouth.
“Oh my God, you brought along the leech?” he said while finishing his breakfast. “That’s. Wow. I knew bounty hunters were strange ones, but I never thought you the type to keep a plaything like that.”
“What, unlike you?” Tobias said back, tone pleasant but face hard. As soon as it heard the target speak, the vampire had gone absolutely rigid with what Tobias hesitated to call fear, but he couldn’t think of what else it could be. He absently rubbed a hand along its side, like trying to calm a spooked horse.
Harding shrugged. “I’m just saying. I figured you were too straight-laced, with that stick up your ass. You gonna keep it around? Let it test new weapons for you?” He smirked. “I practically trained it for you, if that’s your plan. It’ll stay nice and still and let you do whatever you want to it.”
“How about you shut your mouth?” Tobias said, letting some of his anger leak into his tone. He was eager to get rid of this target already. The man was a sadistic fucker, and if it wasn’t for the bonus that bringing him in uninjured would provide, Tobias would be happy to rearrange his face a little. A broken nose might teach him that not all things in this world would stay still and not fight back.
The target’s smirk grew wider and nastier. “Or what?”
“Or you get to make the rest of this trip unconscious,” Tobias said, pulling out the Tesla gun again. Shooting him again would probably be fine. It would definitely be better than listening to the filth he kept spewing.
Harding backed down at the threat of being shot again.
The whole day passed like that. They rode for the Harding estate, with Tobias and the vampire on one horse and the target on the other. Harding made commentary about everything; Tobias did his best to ignore it.
The vampire was seemingly terrified of the man. Which, if Tobias thought about it in human terms, made sense. He had kept it in that room for who knows how many months, and obviously tortured it. But the concept of a vampire being scared of anything was so strange as to be unthinkable. They were predators, and humans were their prey. Humans were supposed to be afraid of vampires, not the other way around.
Tobias kept finding himself putting a hand on the vampire’s side or shoulder or hip, avoiding the biggest burns that covered its back in his attempt to calm the thing. He would tell it to ignore Harding, that he wouldn’t do as Harding suggested, that he wasn’t going to hurt it like that.
It’s just that he wanted its last days to be as cruelty-free as he could manage, he told himself. He was going to put the thing down as soon as he got it back to his base.
The thing was, Tobias knew that Harding was right. There were bounty hunters out there that would give an eye to have a captive vampire to test weapons on, or just take out their frustrations on. Those were also the kind of hunters that would take just about any job, regardless of legality or morality.
Tobias wasn’t one of those. He didn’t believe in playing with his food. If something needs to be killed, you kill it, as cleanly and efficiently as you can. There’s no reason to draw out something’s suffering, even if it isn’t human.
It was dusk by the time they reached the Harding estate. Knowing the man was more likely to bolt with his destination in sight, Tobias had handcuffed the target to himself. He left the horses—and the vampire—outside the gate, and brought the target in.
Garrett Harding, Tobias’ employer and Emmett Harding’s father, received the two of them graciously in his office. Tobias undid the handcuffs and returned the target to his employer, who seemed torn between fussing over every mark on his son and scolding him for his misdeeds.
“Father, I demand that you see this bounty hunter stripped of his guild status at once,” the younger Harding said. “He interrupted my evening’s entertainment and scared my guests, and attacked me without provocation!”
The elder Harding just scoffed. “Hunter, I trust that my son is just telling tall tales again?”
Tobias nodded as politely as he could manage. “I interrupted your son’s night of illegal gambling and drinking in the course of my work retrieving him. Once I found him, I identified myself as part of the Guild and asked him to come quietly. He refused, and tried to attack me with a fireplace poker. I subdued him using an electricity device to render him unconscious.”
The elder Harding beamed at him. “Well, see? The man was just doing his job, Emmett! None of this would have been necessary had you answered the summons I sent.”
Emmett sniffed, trying to look haughty. The effect was mitigated by his rather jovial-looking father slinging an arm over his shoulders. “He also stole my property.”
Tobias wanted to smack the kid for thinking of a vampire as property. They weren’t something you could own.
The elder Harding turned back to Tobias. “Oh? Care to explain?”
Well, fuck. There were two ways this could go. Tobias just had to hope that Garrett Harding wasn’t the same sort of sadist his son was.
“When I found your son, he was kicking a severely injured person while wielding a fire poker,” Tobias began. “Upon closer inspection, that person proved to be a vampire. It is my professional opinion that it had been held and tortured for multiple months, most likely the entire duration of your son’s strange behavior, sir. As this job was a retrieval, I do not have the weapons necessary to kill a vampire on hand. I am taking it back to my base of operations to put it down there.”
Garrett Harding nodded while his son sulked. Tobias didn’t quite trust the look in the man’s eyes, though. He looked like a man who had spotted treasure and was willing to go to great lengths to retrieve it. It seemed he wasn’t the sadist his son was, but just another businessman. Greedy, corrupt, and willing to peddle poison like vampire venom to make a profit.
Once the rest of his payment was received, Tobias left the Harding estate as quickly as he could politely go. He wanted to get far away from this corrupt father and sadistic son and whatever henchmen they might have on their payroll.
He found the horses just where he had left them, with the blanket-wrapped vampire still slung over one of them.
Good, good. Now he just had to get out of here.
“Sorry, kid,” he said to the creature. “But we’re going to have to ride a bit longer. I don’t want to be anywhere near that fucker and his father, and I’m sure you don’t, either.”
With that, he mounted up and rode out into the night.
The bounty hunter is now named Tobias, he/him pronouns. CW for dehumanization, it as a pronoun, and swearing. As always, let me know if I missed anything so I can add it.
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Masterlist
———————-
Tobias had left his horses—one for himself, and one for the target—tied in the main square. The bounty hunter paid one of the street kids to fetch them. Now the problem was getting everyone on the horses.
After some consideration, Tobias decided to stay with his original plan, just slightly modified. He would put the target on one horse, tying him on as he was still unconscious. This could be explained away as the target being drunk. The vampire would ride with him, slung over the front of his saddle so he could keep an eye on it. That would be harder to explain.
Luckily, this house was close to the edge of the city. He could avoid most of the people, and could explain the situation to any guards that might stop him. Bounty hunters were known to be odd people with odd priorities; it shouldn’t cause too much of a stir.
He lifted the target onto one horse. The only reason he didn’t drop the man like a sack of potatoes is that it wouldn’t be fair to the horse. He manhandled the target until he was seated properly in the saddle, then tied him on. He patted the horse’s shoulder absently as he walked off to get the vampire.
The target’s idiot friends had rallied and decided to watch again. Tobias glared at them all.
“Guess you’ll have to find a new source of entertainment, boys,” he said dryly. Preferably one that didn’t involve torturing creatures for fun.
He went and retrieved the vampire from where he had left it, tied like a corpse in its shroud.
“I’m going to pick you up now,” he said softly before doing so. He rested it over his shoulder. If he was taking steps to avoid the worst of the burns on the creature’s back, it was only because a vampire in pain would be much harder to deal with.
He continued telling the vampire what he was doing as he lifted it onto the horse and mounted up. With the target secured, and the target’s horse tied to his own, he left the city.
He found a good campsite after about an hour’s travel and dismounted. He then turned to the two additions to his party.
Tobias untied the ropes holding the target to his horse and slid the man onto the ground. The campsite he had chosen was a little ways from the main road next to a copse of trees. He found a good, sturdy tree, and tied the target to it. The target would wake up in a few hours, and he didn’t want to risk having his bounty run off before he could deliver it.
Now, to the other thing. He grabbed the vampire, which thrashed weakly.
“Hey, hey, it’s still me, take it easy,” he said, cursing himself for not telling it what he was doing beforehand. It calmed down, or possibly it ran out of energy to keep struggling. Either way, it stopped moving.
“I’m going to set you down now. Try to get some sleep; we’ll be traveling again tomorrow, and the sun will be out then.”
With that, he set it down on its side in a patch of grass, and loosened the ropes around it a little. If it could manage to get some sleep, it wouldn’t be a hassle to deal with tomorrow, and it would sleep more easily if it could get at least a little comfortable.
“I’m leaving the blankets on in case I don’t wake up before the sun rises,” he said. That would be a rude wake-up call, to smell burning meat and hear the thing make that horrid little keen of pain again. “I’m not going to tie you to anything, but I expect you to be well behaved and not try to go anywhere, got it?”
There was a slight movement from the blanket-wrapped figure that might have been a nod. It didn’t matter much either way; it was too wounded and starved to do much of anything.
He settled down on his bedroll, thoughts racing too much for him to sleep. Why was he taking so much care with this creature? It was a vampire. He knew what they could do, had witnessed the carnage they could cause firsthand.
Still, it wasn’t like he was setting the thing free. He was taking it to be put down. The least he could do is make sure that its last days weren’t quite so full of cruelty.
Part 3 of my continued not-working-on-Nanowrimo series. CW for dehumanization, collars, muzzles, burns, eye trauma (not in detail), and swearing. As always, let me know if I missed anything so I can add it.
Let me know if you want to be added to or removed from the taglist.
Masterlist
----------------------
The target’s idiot friends did in fact bring blankets when called. They stayed well away from the vampire’s room, though.
“What,” the hunter growled. “Don’t want to get in here now that the sun’s down? Now that there’s no show to watch?”
The men shuffled uncomfortably, but admitted nothing. The hunter scoffed and shook their head. The men could stay as quiet as they liked, but the hunter knew the damage caused on that vampire was the work of a long time and a lot of cruelty. Too much for just one person to cause.
“It’s just a fucking leech,” one of the men said. “Why do you care what happens to it?”
They glared at him until he shrank back. “Because wild animals are most dangerous when cornered, you fucking idiots.” They said the last with the most disdain they could muster.
If they couldn’t see any menace in the figure curled up on the ground, well, that was their own weakness to deal with. They knew what vampires, even—no, especially—starved and injured ones like this could do, given half a chance. They might be getting soft, but they wouldn’t let anyone suffer because of that. They knew what had to be done.
“But… blankets, though? What’s the point of that?” said another of the group.
“So that it doesn’t burn in the sun in transit,” the hunter said. “I don’t feel like dealing with it lashing out.”
The men were clustered around the door like they were watching a show. The bounty hunter suddenly, irrationally, felt like this was a violation of the creature’s privacy. Like this was the bloody, fucked-up version of men trying to get a peek at a woman changing clothes.
It was hard to get more naked than the thing was right now—clothes hanging off in tatters, skin burned and flayed away from bone.
“Unless you idiots feel like helping me, I suggest you move along,” they growled. The men scattered, and the hunter muttered a few parting words about their intelligence and good sense, or rather their lack thereof. This was just because they didn’t want an audience to deal with the creature. It had everything to do with getting those idiots out of their sight, getting them to stop breathing down their neck, and nothing at all to do with that ridiculous idea of invading the thing’s privacy.
They shook their head, and focused back on the task at hand. The vampire needed to be covered so it wouldn’t burn while they brought it back to their base. It was at this point, as they looked down to figure out the best place to start wrapping the thing up, that they saw how it was curled in on itself and heard the tiny keening whimpers it was making.
They closed their eyes. Why did they always end up in batshit situations like this? They blew out a long breath.
“Hey,” they said to the creature. “It’s okay. They’re gone now.”
It was obviously listening, though how much it understood was another matter. They kept their tone as soft as possible, wanting to keep the thing calm.
“I’m going to take you out of here, and you’ll never have to deal with them again. They can’t hurt you any more.”
It was still curled into its tiny ball, but they thought it had turned its head to face them.
“I’ve got blankets here. I need to take you outside to get out of here, so I’m going to wrap you up in the blankets to keep the sun off you. I’m going to have to tie them in place, or they might fall off.”
Could it even understand them? Or was it so far gone with the pain it had endured that it couldn’t fathom language any longer?
It didn’t really matter. They still needed to do this. They would just… keep talking to it. Like a spooked horse or frightened dog. The tone mattered more than anything.
“I’m going to take your collar off now,” they said.
They reached out to find the clasp on the collar. The vampire flinched as their hands made contact with it, but it didn’t go far.
“Shhh, easy, easy,” they soothed. There was the clasp; it was simple enough to undo. Now came the bad part: actually taking the collar off. With the burns underneath it, this was going to be deeply unpleasant.
“Okay,” they said. “I’m taking it off now. Sorry; there’s no good way to do this.”
They tried to be gentle as they took the collar off, but even with the care they took, far too much skin came off with the collar. The vampire was making that horrible little keening noise again.
“Sh, shh, it’s done, easy,” they said, tossing the collar aside. They didn’t want to be touching it any longer than they had to. “Now we just have to get you wrapped up.”
They moved the vampire out of its curled posture, and came across another problem: the muzzle. Luckily it was made of leather and steel, not iron, so it didn’t need to be removed entirely. However, it was still on far too tightly. Intentionally too tightly, it seemed on closer inspection. There was plenty of space to loosen the thing, but the sadistic bastards had chosen to put it on like this instead.
They let a sigh hiss out through their teeth. They couldn’t do anything to the fucker who had done this; his father was paying them to return him alive and unharmed.
“Okay,” they said to the creature, still in that gentle tone. “I’m going to loosen this muzzle. It’s staying on, though. I don’t want you biting me, got it?”
It nodded. It nodded. It was listening, and understanding at that.
That would… well. This would get awkward quickly once they got it back to their base, but it was helpful for now at least.
“I’m going to touch the straps now.”
They kept up the soothing explanations as they loosened the muzzle and started wrapping the thing up. Occasionally they came across something new and unpleasant that they hadn’t seen before, like how the thing’s Achilles tendons had been severed, or how it looked like someone had put something—silver coins, maybe—over the thing’s eyes to burn them.
This isn’t a person, they had to remind themself. It’s a vampire. It’s dangerous. It would kill you given the chance. Just because it looks like a person doesn’t mean it is one.
Eventually they got the thing properly wrapped up in the blankets and secured those in place with rope.
Now, they just had to figure out how to get both the target and the vampire out of here.
Continuation of this. I'll think of a title for this series soon.
CW for dehumanization, "it" as a pronoun, collar, burns, considered mercy killing/"putting it down"
Update: the series is now called "The Heart and the Hunger", and you can find the masterlist here.
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The hunter swore, quiet but heartfelt. This was exactly the kind of complication a job like this didn’t need!
The creature flinched, curling in on itself even further.
They had worked cases with vampires before. It wasn’t common, but it wasn’t unheard of. Sometimes, people couldn’t get in touch with a specialized hunter of the supernatural and came to a bounty hunter instead. Other times, like this, the bounties got themselves mixed up with the wrong kind of trouble.
Usually, it was the vamps hurting the humans, though. They had never seen it the other way around. They’d heard stories, sure—people wealthy enough and insane enough to keep vampires locked up as pets, milking them for their addictive venom—but had never actually thought they’d see it themself.
They couldn’t leave it here. This vampire was a threat to everyone in the city.
It was kind of hard to think of it that way with it cowering at their feet, though. What the hell was it even doing, and why?
They knelt down next to the thing. Up close…
Well. The hunter didn’t fault themself for thinking it was a pile of rags at first. The creature looked awful.
It was wearing the tattered, filthy remains of what might have once been a nice dress. The whole thing was filthy, in fact, covered in layers upon layers of dirt, grime, and blood. It was beaten all to hell, too. If it didn’t have a dozen broken bones at the very least, they would eat their favorite boots. The collar on it was probably a cheap plated silver; up close, the hunter could see that it wasn’t just chafing the creature’s neck, but burning it, though not as much as pure silver or iron would.
In fact, the whole thing was covered in burns, all in different stages of healing. They frowned and looked around the room. What could have done that? The fire poker their target had held was most likely iron, and would burn a vampire, but that would only be lines, not entire patches like this.
Their eyes found the windows. Of course. Sunlight. It was dark now, but the windows would let enough light in to cover most, if not all, of the room. The vampire’s chain was long enough to let them crawl about, but didn’t seem long enough to let it access all of the room. The sick bastards could open or close the window blinds, letting in various amounts of light to burn the creature. In fact, the hunter would be willing to bet this entire bounty that the chain was just the right length to keep it from being able to escape the sun in the darker side of the room.
“Fuckers,” they cursed quietly. The thing on the floor let out another whimper.
They sighed and closed their eyes for a long moment. What the hell were they supposed to do in a situation like this?
They couldn’t leave it here, they’d established that much already. It wasn’t safe to have a vampire near humans. They couldn’t kill it; they had the gear to put down vampires, but it was all back at their base. This had been a live retrieval mission. They’d had no reason to bring anything as specialized as vampire hunting gear along. Calling in a proper hunter would take longer than just taking the thing with them back to their base.
They groaned. No. No. That was a terrible idea. Were they honestly thinking of taking this thing back to their base so they could put it down properly?
They pushed their way to their feet and yelled for their target’s idiot friends to fetch them some damn blankets and be quick about it.
Apparently they were, in fact, thinking of taking the creature home to put it down properly.
So instead of working on my Nanowrimo story, my brain gave me this. Take it and enjoy.
CW for dehumanization, muzzles, collars, beatings. As always, please let me know if I missed anything so I can add it.
Update! It's a story now. It's called The Heart and the Hunger; you can find the masterlist for it here.
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The bounty hunter crouched in the shadows behind the building. This was it; this was where their target had been going.
They had been contracted by a wealthy business owner to find his missing son. The son had apparently taken to sneaking off, spending large amounts of time away from home and spending an unusual amount of money. Now, he had been gone for over a month, and hadn’t indicated a plan to return.
The father suspected a gambling problem, or possibly that his son had taken a mistress. Either way, it was an embarrassment and a waste of money, and it needed to be stopped. The bounty hunter didn’t know the reason behind the son’s disappearance; the bounty hunter didn’t care. Their job was just to retrieve their target and return him to his father.
It had taken some doing, but they had tracked the target to this building. It was a mess of a thing, lurking on the outskirts of the city far away from any other inhabited building. The hunter had left their horses closer to the town center, bringing along the gear needed for a retrieval mission. Now, they just had to wait for their target to arrive.
After enough time to make their knees ache, the hunter’s target finally arrived. They let him walk inside; the retrieval order had been given with the stipulation that a private retrieval was preferred. Apparently, the businessman didn’t want to air his dirty laundry by having his son taken by a bounty hunter in view of God and everyone. It made the job more difficult, but the pay was worth it.
The hunter rose from their crouch, subtly stretching their sore joints. With catlike stealth, they made their way inside.
The inside of the building looked no better than the outside. It smelled of must and decay, and they had to wonder why a man like their target would be here of all places. He had plenty of money to throw around; why stay in a dump like this rather than somewhere better? They shook their head. It didn’t matter why; all that mattered was getting their target.
They followed the sound of voices to the end of the hall. There, they found a suite of rooms in much better condition than the rest of the building. It had been cleaned recently, and lamps were lit within. One hand on their gun in its holster, they made their way inside.
The door to the suite had been open; the door inside, leading from the entrance room to what lay beyond, was not. They could hear voices coming from behind that door; their target was inside, along with at least two others that they could tell.
They weighed the odds. It wasn’t entirely private, but it was far better than any other opportunity they had found. Acceptable. They drew their gun and kicked the door in.
Inside was a group of men clustered around a table with drinks and cards laid out. At the hunter’s entrance, the men all scattered, looking to the intruder. Seeing the intimidating figure the bounty hunter cut, and the gun they had raised, the men raised their hands slowly.
“Ah, damn,” one muttered. “And I was winning, too!”
Another tried to stomp on the first’s foot; they missed, eyes locked on the hunter. “Shut up, you idiot. Like it matters now!”
“Bounty Hunters’ Guild,” the hunter said, identifying themself as required in guild rules. “I am here for Emmett Harding.”
The men looked among themselves, suddenly even more uneasy than when the bounty hunter entered. Finally, one of the men gestured behind the group, to the back of the suite.
“Harding went back there,” he said, gaze never leaving the bounty hunter. “Not too long ago; that’s the only exit, too, the one you came in from? So he’s definitely still here.”
The hunter regarded the man coolly. He gulped. He seemed nervous, and wasn’t telling them everything, but was most likely telling the truth.
“Stay put,” they ordered the group of men, getting frantic nods in reply.
They lowered their gun, but didn’t put it away. Silently, they made their way towards their target.
Only one other room in the suite had lights. They paused outside it, just to make sure.
Sounds of flesh being struck, followed by a pained whimper.
“Shut up. You don’t get to flinch away from me!.”
Their target was inside, and that was enough for them. The door was unlocked, but they still kicked it in to catch the target off-guard.
The target was standing on the far side of the room, holding what looked like a fire poker loosely by his side. His eyes were slightly unfocused, stance unbalanced. He’s definitely been drinking. At his feet was a… pile of rags?
The pile moved slightly, and the target kicked it. “I said shut up, you fucking animal!”
“Emmett Harding,” the hunter said, getting the man’s attention on him. They pointed their gun at him, just to encourage him to stop having stupid ideas. Looking at him again, they could see flecks of blood on the man’s shoes and pant legs. That wasn’t his first time kicking whatever or whoever it was at his feet. “Bounty Hunters’ Guild. You are wanted alive and uninjured. Surrender your weapon and come quietly.”
“My fucking father wants me back, huh?” the man said, swaying slightly. He spat; it landed on the creature—person?—at their feet. “Well tough shit. I’m not going back to being his perfect little heir, and you can’t make me.”
He launched himself at the bounty hunter, fire poker raised high. The hunter rolled their eyes at the man’s stupidity, and pulled the trigger on their gun.
Lightning erupted from the muzzle with a crackle, hitting the man square in his chest. He went down like a sack of stones, hitting the ground gracelessly.
“They never learn,” the hunter muttered under their breath.
The Tesla gun was the best weapon in their arsenal for live retrievals, especially of stubborn idiots like this target. It put the recipient of its electricity out like a blown-out candle, and they stayed that way long enough to give the hunter plenty of time to bind them as needed and start getting them back to whoever put out the bounty. It was easily the most expensive piece of equipment they owned, but it had more than paid for itself in the short time they’d had it.
They checked his pulse, just to be sure. Steady and sure. The man would have a wicked headache when he woke up, a combination of a hangover and hitting his head on the ground, but was otherwise uninjured. They didn’t bother tying him up; he was going to be unconscious for hours yet, and carrying him out of here bound hand and foot would be outside the bounds of the “private” clause of the bounty.
So, target acquired. Job done.
Except…
The hunter sighed. Damn their conscience; it got them into far too many tight spots, and usually meant a tough job with no payment. But if they didn’t check on their target’s victim, not knowing would eat away at them.
They knelt down next to the creature on the ground. Close up, they could see why they mistook it for a pile of rags; the person’s clothing was torn to shreds, and they weren’t in much better condition. They were mangled and shredded in a way that spoke of deliberate cruelty. A chain ran from one wall to… they moved to get a better look.
It ran to a collar around the person’s neck.
Was their target just the sort of sadist who got off on kidnapping and torturing people?
They sighed again. Why was nothing simple.
They pressed fingers to the person’s exposed throat, just above where the collar chafed the skin. God, the person was cold, no warmer than room temperature, and had no pulse to be found.
But that didn’t make sense; they had heard the person whimper, seen them move! It would take hours for them to cool this much!
The person shifted again, bringing the hunter’s attention to their face. Dear God, they were muzzled. Why would anyone…
They looked closer.
The muzzle had cut cruelly into the person’s face, obviously too small for them but forced on anyway. It held their mouth open uncomfortably wide, displaying—
Whump prompt? Consider the following: a group of different whumpees (a pet, experiment, gladiator, prisoner of war, etc.) are trying to make it out in the world, but they don't have the skills needed, so they rely on each other. Like, only the experiment can read and the gladiator-type-one can drive.
Nice! I’m definitely not taking on another long-form project currently (*loudly repeats “No” “Nooo” at brain in a dog voice*), so I’ll open the floor on this one.
BUT an image that came to my mind:
Gladiator is driving through the night, relying on 71B in the front seat to read the road signs. 71B is distracted, however, by constantly looking at 71A in the backseat. The two experiments are holding hands over 71B’s shoulder; it’s clear they’d much rather snuggle up together.
When 71B misses a sign, Gladiator is ready to start a fight, but immediately lowers his voice when the pet sleeping in the back stirs. He’s more fond sorry for the pathetic, desperate-to-please thing flinching at every wrong movement than he wants to admit - and they never would have gotten this far without them soothing and begging everyone to keep calm whenever arguments start to break out.
Then, Gladiator slams the brakes hard when he spots yet another broken being crawling, on all fours, into the road, trailing blood.
Experiment 71 were kept in adjacent cells, separated by a glass wall, so that they could always see each other but never talk or touch.
Everything that happened to 71A happened to 71B with a day’s delay. B always knew what was going to happen to them. A had to deal with the uncertainty.
B is extremely protective of A. B, having yet to go through what A already had, was always in a position to give A whatever comfort they could without real contact (while terrified out of their mind). Oh, and of course, it’s deeply ingrained that bad things happening to A means bad things happening to B.
