I haven‘t heard of my favourite vampire for a long time. Let‘s see some Erich ultimately giving into his new nature. Pls 🥺👉👈
"Erich was slowly but surely starting to enjoy himself, feeling his humanity slipping away from him."
Dresden, East Germany, 1947
With every passing day, Erich Eeten was slowly - but surely - starting to... enjoy it.
The feeling of skin torn apart by his teeth, the rush of hot blood on his tongue and down his throat, warm skin that went cold as he drank and took another life, and another, and another... It had gone from a horror to an ecstasy, each time the idea that he was doing harm seemed further and further from his mind.
It felt like his humanity was slipping away from him.
More and more often, he found he did not care. He lived, after all, in the ruins of the greatest inhumanity he could ever have imagined.
Tonight, he walked with his hands buried in the pockets of a great overcoat, a cap pulled down low to shield the vaguely feline, inhuman pupils of his gleaming eyes. The ruins of the bombed-out city felt like observers all their own, piles of brick and rubble that seemed to sway towards him and then away.
The darkness slid around him like liquid, and the person he was following did not see him at all.
Why he had even wanted to return to Germany, he wasn't sure. To see his homeland desecrated and wrecked, the land of his father broken by the bombs that it had carelessly egged on again and again... Then split in two.
In the First War, they had taught he and the other soldiers, too young to know better, that there was glory in fighting for your country. Thousands had wandered home with shellshock and nightmares to show for their grand ideals and the ambitions of old rich men who sent the young and poor to die in the fields of France.
If he were going to weep for what Germany lost, he would have done so in 1918.
Here - now - all he could feel was the hunger that was never quite satisfied.
He sidestepped a fallen stone as he moved past the ruins of a grand church. Two walls were all that stood now, the curve on one side and straight lines on the other. A statue of Martin Luther still held court, looming with solemn dignity over the death of worship.
Someone had laid flowers beneath Luther's stone feet. They had gone gray, brown, and dried.
The man Erich followed had paused to light a cigarette, his matches a bright flicker of flame in the ever-present darkness.
Erich felt the ache in his fangs that longed to be buried in soft living skin. He swallowed, shifting slightly to the side. He let the shadows hide him.
It mattered so much less, now, if he knew someone had done harm or not.
Only the old rich men ever truly won the wars. The young and poor only went home to wait until they were forced to fight another.
And was it any worse to take life from a need to survive, than it was to order men like chess pieces to fall and be lost for nothing but vanity and ambition?
Zero pressure at all but I desire some modern Auri fuckin people up in their usual ways. How about they make a snack out of a random homeless kid they find on the streets with Erich? They don't have to be mean to them, actually, but y'know, it IS whump...
CW: Vampirism, blood drinking, ~murder!~, Auri being immensely fucking creepy, dubcon touch and kissing, nonexplicit spicy times
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"When Irish eyes are smiling, sure it's like a morn in spring," They sing, voice low and husky, seemingly too deep for their lithe, lanky frame. They move with their head tipped to one side, blood-spattered white-blond hair hanging across cheekbones, sliding smooth as silk against jaw. Their eyes glimmer as they move in and out of shadows, flashing brilliant like a cat's, slit pupils blown wide in excitement.
They walk slowly - the prey runs.
It doesn't matter.
The man stumbles back and away, trips over his pretty rose garden, shaking droplets of water like a whole new kind of rain, scented lightly in a way that makes Auri think of perfume. The world is a heavy, humid fog around them, too warm and yet they feel nothing but the breeze.
They laugh when he falls, watching him scramble to stand. He's up and moving again, sure he'll survive them, but of course it isn't only them he should be worried about, now is it?
"In the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing..."
"Shut up!" He shouts, half-screams, and their laughter rises over the top of it until a light in the grand house behind him turns on. Auri looks up, bathed in darkness, to see a little girl pushing a window up to open it.
"Daddy?"
"G-go back inside, Frances!" The man's voice trembles, and Auri licks at their lips, a shudder of desire for that fear racing down their spine, the thrill of a hunt nearly finished.
"I am inside, Daddy, what's going on?" She can't be more than seven, the pretty thing. Auri looks up at her. "Is Mummy outside there with you? Or... or should I go get her?"
"No!" His voice is less a scream than a shriek, this time, and Auri feels the purr beginning to rumble even though they haven't bitten him yet. "N-no." The man tries to calm himself, and Auri holds perfectly still, all but invisible beneath the shade of some ancient tree, the last of what must have been a forest here, once. Now it's all civilization and boring as fuck. "No, darling. It's just... Daddy was thinking about a scary dream, that's all."
His eyes land on Auri's, and he holds their gaze in a sudden burst of bravery. That English stiff upper lip, they suppose, their own curling back to bare their fangs. The English always did like to say they could stare death down with dignity.
Well.
Auri would see about that.
He keeps their gaze, and repeats, quietly, "It's just a nightmare."
The words are a plea.
The little girl hesitates, then closes her window, and Auri lifts their chin, listening to the faint sound of her little footsteps as she races down the hall to wake her poor dear mum, so soon to find her darling husband dead in the garden.
"Please," He says, softly, putting his hands up to them. Harmless, unarmed, whatever he thinks might engender pity - but they are far too old and merciless for that. This is far too fun a game. "Please, let this be only a dream-... please don't hurt my wife-... my daughter-"
He backs directly into Erich, a solid steady weight. As hard to move from his place as any tree.
When the man spins around with a cry of alarm, Auri leaps.
Their hands curl around his once-strong biceps, their fangs bury into his shoulder, right through the thin fabric of his nightshirt when they misjudge the spot. They spit cotton and have to pull back and grab and tear it right down the seam before they can bite him again, ignoring Erich's mocking laughter as they pull heavy blood thick with gin, laden with overwhelming cheap false juniper, from the wounds they've made.
"What a mighty hunter you are," Erich teases, cruelty in his gaze, watching as they pull the man to his knees in the grass, dew soaking into every ounce of clothing both of them wear. He only watches - his own eyes sparkle bright while he waits.
"Killed you easily enough," Auri hisses, blood smeared around their mouth in a horrific pantomime of lipstick before they lower their head to drink again.
He snorts. "I was not in my right mind at the time."
"Are you ever?"
They take their fill, then rip out his throat just to see the last spray of life's blood before the body goes still. They stand, slowly, swaying from side to side. They're spinning with the gin he'd had in his veins, and the empty bottle lies on its side not far away. The smile they give Erich is loose, and they exhale in a sound not quite unlike a moan.
"Drunk," They say, as if discovering a new revelation.
"I'm shocked to hear it," He replies, kicking the dead man onto his back to see the way his eyes are still white-rimmed in horror. "He smells like a liquor store." Lights come on in the house behind them, cries for the father and husband who now cannot hear them. The little girl and her mother. Auri licks their lips, only to see Erich shake his head.
For once, they listen, and wonder who else, in other yards, is out in the middle of the night for the taking.
"I wanted children," Erich says suddenly, looking in the direction of the door, as if he will simply stand here and wait for it to be open. "Before the war. Before I fought, before everything around me died. I wanted children, and a family, and-"
"And I wanted to study with Botticelli," Auri replies, grabbing him by the hand and tugging him away. "You see how our dreams come true."
He can't resist their wants - he follows them all but helplessly, and they giggle as they hear the first screams when the man's body is found.
"Tell me he was wicked," Erich says, in a burst of earnest and sudden self-disgust. "This man I helped you to kill. Tell me he was wicked, like the others have been."
Auri is silent, focused on trying to walk steadily when their blood seems to slosh like the last of a bottle in a bar passed around the regulars. They make it to the road at the end of the drive before Erich spins them around, puts his hands to either side of their face, and looks them in the eyes.
"Tell me he was wicked," He whispers. "Evil. Tell me he deserved to die."
Auri stares right back, then leans forward and kisses him, opening their mouth until he licks the blood back off their lips, until they feel him shudder, his dead body coming to life. "He was evil," They say, only slurring their words a little. "And he deserved t'die. Better?"
"Are you lying?"
"Does it matter?"
He growls and they bark laughter right back, pulling him across the road and into someone else's yard, shoving him onto his back on the ground and climbing on top of him, straddling his thighs with their knees on either side.
"Auri-"
"Sssshhh." They press a finger to his lips, looking up to listen as the sounds of sirens begin to wail in the distance, coming ever closer. "We're going to listen to their agony, Erich., as they see him."
"I don't want to hurt innocent people-"
"But you will." They pull his head down to their neck, feel the way he starts to open his mouth by instinct before, with difficulty, he manages to pull it back again. "No. Nein. I said drink."
"You didn't say-"
"I say it now. Drink."
Their fingers bury into his short dark hair, the occasional hint of gray showing through. "When Irish hearts are happy," They sing in a whisper against his ear as his teeth just barely graze their skin, fighting with all he has, "all the world seems bright and gay..."
"You are not Irish," He hisses back. The fresh blood in them smells maddeningly good, though, they can tell - his mouth is watering, his pupils widening, overtaking his iris and lust is overwhelming all his silly remaining morality. Their commands are overriding any hint he has of an ability to control himself. "We are both German."
"No such thing as Germany when I was born," Auri says, laughing again. "We are both dead, Erich, and that is all that matters. Feed from me, meine Liebe-"
"Don't call me that." He hissed and then gave in.
He bit into them viciously, tearing open the side of their neck, and they had to muffle their cry of pleasure with a fist shoved into their own mouth as the stolen blood burst free to fill his.
Even still, they heard from across the street a woman's anguished voice call, "Did you hear that sound?"
They almost can't help the laughter, even as Erich's hands make quick work of their jeans, yanking them down their hips and discarding them to one side, his own pants pulled halfway down his thighs while he still has his fangs buried in their neck.
"For your smile is a part of the love in your heart," they sing in a half-whisper as they spread their legs for him.
"Shut up," He growls, as they lock their ankles behind his back and jam their heels into his skin.
"And it makes sunshine even more bright-"
He jams his hand over their mouth to stop them, and they bite those fingers hard until he groans and lets go again, both of them smeared in red, moving in unison.
They'd been ready for him from the second they had bitten the poor asshole who'd had the bad luck to have insomnia too close to a hungry monster.
By the time he starts to lose himself, hips rocking with abandoned thrusts that would have broken the living, both of them are purring and he has their hands in his, shoved above their head. Their fingers brush a dandelion, yellow as the sun even in the darkness. Friction rubs, pleasure building and building, coiling a spring that soon must snap.
They come with a burst of laughter, and though he glares his body follows their commands effortlessly, even the wordless ones, and he finishes inside them.
Across the street, their laughter drifts, sparkling and brilliant as shards of glass waiting to be stepped on. Men and women standing around a corpse look up, and then run towards it.
The police find nothing but the impression of a human figure in wet grass, and blood from the dead man across the street spilled on the ground.
Auri, draped in the boneless way of a contented, sated predator over a hotel bed on their back, turns and smiles. Fangs flash briefly in the dim light. "Oh, I don't know. I thought maybe we'd stay in tonight."
There's a small spatter of blood on their cheek that they don't seem to notice.
"Stay in?" Erich, sitting in the hotel's uncomfortable, modern chair, shifts. The plastic-coated seat creaks and shifts under him. He looks over at them. His German accent is still present, but faded by time, softer now. "But-"
""I know, I know. Have it your way." They roll their eyes, stretching their arms over their head, back arching. Very aware that Erich stares at them without trying to hide it - not any longer. "Erich wants to hunt, you see. There's a serial killer loose on the streets of Portland, Oregon or Maine I genuinely cannot remember which one we're in, and Erich likes his dinner wicked."
Erich scowls and looks back at the television. He has no reflection in the nearby mirror hanging off the hotel room's closet door. "I don't have to regret the death of evil."
"You don't have to regret anything, liebling," Auri says in a sing-song voice, rolling over onto their stomach.
"Don't call me that."
"Mon cher."
"It's mon chéri, and not that either."
"Mi amor?"
"Stop it."
"Min kärlek."
"Auri, Ich sagte stopp!"
"Du bist nicht lustig, liebling," Auri says, pouting, some of their silvery blond hair falling loose and wild over their face, emphasizing the way they barely seem human now. "No fun at all. Anyway, we're going to hunt a hunter tonight. Ignore his grumpy face. He'll have fun and he knows it."
Erich doesn't argue, just watches the news, idly picking at a hangnail on one finger. "I want to leave the world better than it was when I died," He says, softly.
Auri watches him, inscrutable. Then they sigh, heavily, and lay their head down on one arm. "At least you don't have to live through the Junkers. That was exceedingly irritating. Oh, but you were hiding in the woods and missed out on Berlin in the 20's. That was nice."
Erich snorts. "Was it?"
Auri goes, briefly, a little more solemn and serious. "For a while, it was. I didn't kill, in Berlin in the 20's. I never needed to. There was so much blood freely given..."
"Wasn't aware you have a shit about blood freely given," Erich mutters. "You mock me enough about it."
"You drink from tiresome assholes. It's annoying that you care if they want you to or not. Berlin in the 20's... Oh, they had such fire and they were so fierce, then. When they were undone, I felt sad for the first time in a century. It's the reason I started hunting for you."
He looks surprised, then. "It was?"
"Yes. I had to go find someone else I had had a feeling about." After a pause, the two vampires staring at each other, they pushed up onto their elbows. "Come on, Erich. Let's go hunt your killer."
"Finally, I'm starving."
"I'm not."
"I know, you fed off the trucker who drove us here."
"That darling man will have one hell of a hangover tomorrow. Let's go."
CW: Vampire whumpers, whumpee who is also whumper, sadistic whumper, blood drinking, hints of dubcon intimate whump implied (fade to black)
For @amonthofwhump’s 12 Days of Whump, Day Six: Countdown
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Paris, France, 1940
Erich leans back against the wall, frowning down at the blood under his fingernails as he inspects the cracked, chipped edges. There’s something deeply unsanitary about it, especially since he’s not entirely sure how many peoples’ blood it even is. He can’t possibly do anything about it, though. The blood won’t come out.
The streets of Paris are never empty, not even in these darkest days. There are always those who risk everything for a bit of joy and celebration of life - and there are always those who prey on them.
Of course, there are those who prey on the predators, too.
He sighs, counting inside his mind, as he sees a man pull his overcoat tight and step quickly over a puddle in the street, glancing left and right, the brim of his hat pulled down low to hide his face.
Right on time.
They know where he’s headed - to a small flat above a store that has been raided and razed to charring inside. He intends to terrorize the family still hiding within, demand money they don’t have for their dubious protection from Erich’s own countrymen. Invaded in May and conquered by the end of June, France quakes under a war machine they hadn’t known how to defend against.
Germany is an avalanche burying France, Poland, anywhere else its bony fingers can touch. He hears German spoken in the streets, and he recognizes the language but not the feeling within it. He knows the faces but not their expressions. He doesn’t know his country any longer, but then… he’d stopped recognizing his country long before he’d been turned into this. He thinks of the war he fought for them, for their great Imperial pride, and bitter fury churns inside of him, turning the very saliva in his mouth sour.
How many men had died, then - and how many of their very sons would die this time? All for the pride of some great man who stays hidden behind the lines, demanding the soldiers loathe the enemy to the point of death but never willing to risk himself?
He spits off to the side, eyes narrowing, tongue running over his fangs.
Still.
The man stops, perhaps feeling eyes on him, but he doesn’t see Erich hidden in the shadows. He murmurs to himself, and Erich doesn’t know a lot of French but he does know a curse when he hears one.
Erich keeps counting.
Three… two… one.
Auri drops from the balcony above the man’s head and lands on him, sending him flat on his stomach to the wet sidewalk with little more than a soft oof and the crack of his head against stone.
Their eyes gleam and glimmer iridescent in the darkness, fangs bared, their pale hair white in the near-total darkness aside from street lamps, a wild mess around their shoulders. They lean down and speak into the man’s ear as he struggles, trying to wriggle out from under them, throwing his hands up to try and pull them off.
It doesn’t work.
Erich wonders, idly, what they said to him. Auri doesn’t care about the world, but they feel darkly about what has been done to France for reasons Erich can’t even begin to fathom. He doesn’t ask, granted.
He scratches at the back of his neck, looking over to see a woman and man who were also sneaking out freeze.
The man lets out a strangled scream for help, bouncing off of the buildings around them, as Auri buries their fangs in his throat, fingers dug so deeply into his shoulders that they’re tearing the fabric of his suit.
The woman screams as she sees it, pointing at Auri. “Vampire!” She shrieks, in hysteric terror, and she and the man she’s with go racing away. They don’t try to help, or to pull the vampire off of the dying man.
You don’t stop to help, not in France, not these days.
Erich doesn’t move.
He merely watches Auri’s throat bob as they swallow mouthfuls of hot fresh blood, and then looks up to see the father of the family above the store looking through the window down at the scene, where the muscle meant to scare him is instead dying on his doorstep.
The man looks up and meets Erich’s eyes.
He, after all, had been told in advance where Erich would be standing.
Merci, the man mouths, tipping his chin down in deference. Merci, monsieur. He doesn’t smile, and Erich doesn’t try to either. They only look at each other. Once upon a time they were the same in more ways than ever they were different. Now, though, one is an inhuman predator, and the other a man who wants only to save his wife and children from the jaws of the beast.
Being a monster doesn’t mean he can’t still do a little good, for as long as Auri will let him, as long as their interest in this game holds.
He pushes himself away from the wall and walks to the storefront, his boots scraping in a whisper against the pavement. Auri looks up at him without letting go of their victim, but their eyes sparkle in a wordless invitation.
Feed with me.
As always, he has found, he can’t quite resist their commands. Not even the wordless ones. He starts walking.
Erich looks up to see the man up above close the curtains again, and knows he’ll move on to the next stage of what they had agreed upon. They’ll line up suitcases by the door, pack everything they need. A very particular vehicle will pull up, and the family will pile inside. By dawn, they will be quit of Paris.
By two days from now, they’ll be on a ship with new names, heading across the ocean. New papers, a new life, paid for by the money Erich takes from the ones he and Auri kill.
He can’t save many - but he can save a few.
He knows what will happen to them, in the end, because he has seen what is happening in Germany. What everyone pretends they don’t know is happening, but they do.
He reaches down and Auri lets go just long enough for him to pull the man, who breathes now in wet gasps as his heart fights to keep beating, close to him. Auri pushes themself up to their feet and presses in on the other side, the man sandwiched between them in their unnatural strength. His hands come up to push weakly at Erich’s chest, he begs in whispered French for mercy.
“Nein,” he whispers in return, and he bites down on the man’s left while Auri digs their fangs back in on the right.
Drinking the last of a life with Auri, his packleader, sends a wave of euphoria down Erich’s spine. They are connected through the veins they drain dry. His knees wobble and he locks them to keep standing, his hands moving, burying themselves in Auri’s hair. He groans, softly, as their hands find his waist in turn, jerking him forward. The man is between them, but still he can’t stop but moan in pleasure.
It’s obscene.
It’s devotion.
They break apart only when the man is wholly and truly dead, and Erich pants softly with breath he hasn’t quite gotten used to not needing, looking at the blood smeared red around Auri’s mouth and finding it beautiful.
It was horrifying, once.
He struggles to remember that, in moments like this.
“I-... I want-”
“I know.” Auri grins, licking their lips until red goes pink and wet, eyes half-closed in their own ecstasy. “Are you satisfied, Erich? We’ve killed another evildoer, are we the angel of death passing doorways marked in blood enough for you?”
“They never said angels were lovely or kind,” Erich says, low and rough, and he grabs their arm and pulls them against him, listening to their laughter before he presses his lips to theirs. Both of them have mouths slick with salt-sweet blood and he licks it off their lips and out of their mouth. He pulls away, jerking them along with him, in love with and loathing them in turn, both at once, the strongest things he has ever felt.
They make it into an alley before he’s pulling their shirt off over their head. He hears, dimly, the sound of the car pulling up outside the storefront, of the man telling his children not to look at the body as they pile inside. He hears the engine roar as it pulls away, driving off into the night, heading hell for leather for a life that won’t look like this one.
He hopes it works better for them than it did for him.
Auri’s hands push up under his shirt, nails digging into his bare skin, and he tips his head back against the wall. When they bite him, it doesn’t feel like it did when he was living. Their fangs slide in, bury themselves to the hilt, and the venom floods him like a wash of pure and perfect pleasure.
“Please,” He groans. “Please take me.”
Auri is as bright as the sun, full of blood and a force of nature. They pin his wrists above his head, rolling their hips against his.
“Of course,” They murmur. Their lips move against his jaw, where there’s a scar from the war, that he’ll carry for eternity with the others. “Do it again tomorrow?”
“Please,” He whispers. “Yes. Let me help them.”
“My pleasure.” Auri’s mouth moves against his cheek. “Or yours.”
It starts to rain, but neither of them notices. If they did, they wouldn’t care.
“Poor baby,” The other vampire cooed, running her fingers back through his thick dark hair, speckled with hints of gray that had never grown in any further, frozen in time. “It’ll be a hard true death, you know. A rough one. It’s going to hurt.” She breathed the last words, and pressed a kiss to his lips, where blood was bubbling up, running out of him everywhere it could find an escape. Her lips were warm from feeding.
His were ice-cold, as he faded away.
“But that’s what you get for muscling in on my kill. I hope it’s agony, as you go. I hope you meet your true death weeping.” She pulled back, smiling at him, her eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
Erich coughed up a little more blood.
As she stood up, dusting her hands off, he turned his head, blearily watching her as she began to walk away on heavy platform heels. “Hey,” He croaked, one hand out, scraping at the pavement and broken rock beneath him. “Listen.”
She paused, without looking back. She wore a heavy leather jacket, black jeans, her hair was dyed darker than the night sky. “What?”
“It’s… n-not agony,” Erich managed, and now she did look at him, over one shoulder. He watched her put her hands into her pockets, pull out a lighter and light a cigarette with shaking hands. “It’s… it’s going to be… good. After.”
I guess you know what we would like to see😉. In the end Auri promised him to be there😇
CW: Auri is a creepy motherfucker, dubcon/noncon touching implied, uh, dubcon... licking...? Look I said they're creepy right
The sky through his window is a blurred blend of red clouds and the last light of day above the canopy of the trees when Erich turns his head, looking out. A crow, or something very like one, takes flight - nothing but a black smear and wings, like a drop of ink in a pool of blood.
There is a weight on him, lukewarm, and he groans, softly. He hurts. Everything aches, his gums throbbing most of all. He runs his tongue over his teeth, finding the new fangs there, grown in hours what had taken him as a child days and days.
His stomach growls.
"I know you're awake," They whisper against his ear, nipping at it with their own fangs, one hand moving over his chest and down his stomach. He looks away, only to have them take his chin and turn it back, forcing his eyes to meet their eyes.
The glimmer in the light doesn't seem so otherworldly anymore. Maybe just because he knows his own eyes now do the same.
"Welcome to the world, newborn babe," Auri Saathoff whispers, delighted in him, in his very existence. No one has been happy Erich Eeten is around for a long, long time.
He blinks at them, and then his head drops back onto his lumpy pillow. He'd made it himself, when he moved out here. He'd been proud of it, then. "I am a grown man of thirty-eight-"
"You're an infant and little more. How do you feel?"
He keeps his eyes closed. "I ache. And... I'm hungry."
Auri hisses softly in excitement, their tongue lapping affectionately along his neck, where the wounds they made have long since been healed. Erich can smell old, dried blood - his own, and theirs - staining his shirt. He shivers at the way it feels to have that rough, cool tongue move against his skin. "There are other people who live in the woods," Auri murmurs. "We can find them. You should feed in the woods, it's a good place to begin. I'll show you what to do."
Erich doesn't want to move. His limbs feel leaden, and yet - his stomach growls. It needs. It is empty, it demands blood. His mouth waters at the very thought of another explosion of taste and heat and life inside of him. "I don't want to kill anyone."
Auri pauses, and when Erich looks at them, they're pouting. "Not even one person?"
"Not in the-... the woods. They have been kind to me." He takes their hand and pulls it to his mouth. He feels nothing when he kisses their knuckles. No heat, no life, no nourishment. Just skin. "We can kill in the town. They salute the growing darkness."
"We must show them, then, how much they will miss the light when it is gone," Auri says, excited, and they shift, swinging a leg over him until they sit on his hips again, their palms pressing just inside his shoulders. "Town, then. We will be so good together, Erich."
Erich doesn't have the energy to snort in response. He keeps his eyes closed, and after a breath of time he feels their mouth move against his neck again. "I'm dead, what good could it do-"
Their fangs slide in, and his eyes fly open, wide, staring up at the darkening ceiling that he can see each detail of, as if it were midday.
"Wh-what-"
"There's no blood to be had from you now," Auri murmurs, licking just to feel him shiver. "But it feels so good, doesn't it?" They bite down again, and this time Erich moans.
