The apprentices meet up again the next evening. They were still unsure of what to do about their new charge. Amanda had stayed clear of the cell since her late night feeding and the testing room had stayed blissfully quiet. John had a lot of questions. She didn’t have any answers but promised to investigate.
They entered the testing room together this time. Adam had dragged the mattress off the bed and into the remains of the crate. It must’ve taken some effort. The crate was slightly too small for the mattress and through the splintered hole they could see where the mattress had curled up against the sides. He had dragged all the pillows and blankets into the crate as well. He’s making a nest. Amanda thought with great interest. She wondered what it would be like to curl up in that nest with him.
“What the fuck?” Hoffman snarls. “Wasn’t the bed we gave him good enough?”
“It’s the lights.” Amanda mumbles to herself.
“What?”
She gestures up to the fluorescent bulbs burning overhead. “The lights. I think they hurt his eyes.”
Hoffman glares up at the lights and then back at the crate. “I think he’s just trying to hide from us.”
“No. Think about it. The bathroom has been dark for a long time. I mean he would’ve been in there for months without light and now we have him under these lights all the time. I think it hurts his eyes. They’ve adjusted to the darkness.”
“That’s not a bad thought.” Lawrence muses.
“Okay…well…” Hoffman huffs impatiently. “How do we get him out?” He whistles through his teeth. “C’mere boy! Come on out!” He whistles again. “Gordon, tap the crate with your cane.”
“I’m not doing that.” Lawrence snaps.
“I’ve got an idea. Just wait here.” Amanda strides out of the room. She heads to one of the refrigerators and pulls out a well cut steak that she had purchased the night before. I hope you like filet mignon. She unwraps the plastic as she returns. Once she gets to the cell she puts the tray down on the floor and pushes it towards the crate. She backs up to stand at the same distance as the other two.
At first nothing happens. Amanda is disappointed that her bribe isn’t working. They all jump when a pale arm seems to leap from the darkness of the crate and snatch up the steak. Amanda breathes a sigh of relief. She squints into the crate and sees a shadow shifting just within.
“Hi.” She starts. She can feel his stare but he doesn’t respond. “Lawrence?”
Lawrence is staring at the crate. He seems lost in thought but is brought back to himself when Amanda says his name. “Right.” He nods and fishes through his work bag. He pulls out a pair of hospital green scrubs and hands them to Amanda. She tosses them through the bars of the cell.
“We brought you some clean clothes.”
There’s silence for a while before Adam squeezes his body around the mattress and out of the hole in the side of the crate. He walks over to the scrubs and toes them uninterestedly.
“And what am I going to do with clean clothes?” He gestures to himself. His body was covered in grime from head to toe. Dust and sweat coated his skin in layers. Blood and shit was caked deep under his nails.
“Um…” Lawrence floundered for words.
“I can get you some stuff to clean up with.” Amanda offers. “Some water, some soap, a brush. You can get cleaned up before you change. That would probably feel better, right?”
Adam only shrugs. Amanda figures that’s as good of an answer as she’s going to get. She looks briefly at Lawrence and Hoffman. They stare back at her blankly. She huffs and turns to get the supplies.
When Amanda leaves Adam turns his attention to the two men. He listens closely to the sounds of their hearts beating, the sounds of their breathing. He can smell their sweat. With only two now in the room he can tell them apart with little difficulty. He tilts his head back, eyes closed, and lets his new senses take over. Lawrence’s breaths were steady, but his heart beat quickly against his chest. Hoffman’s heart was slower, calmer. His sweat was the sweat of heat, while Lawrence’s had distinct nervous sourness to it. It made Adam’s mouth water. He tilts his head to face Lawrence and senses the man’s breath pause a moment, his heart rate steadily increasing.
Lawrence swallows. To Adam it’s the thick, thudding sound of swallowing against a dry mouth.
“Can I…can I take your temperature?”
“What?”
“I’d like to take your temperature. I’m…well I’m very curious about your…condition.” Lawrence pauses, shifting his weight off his prosthesis. “From a medical perspective.”
Adam stares him down a moment, processing this request. He finally scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Fine.”
“Thanks.” Lawrence rifles through his bag briefly before producing a thermometer. He bends down and sends it skittering across the floor and under the door of the cell. Adam steps forward to take it. “Just put it under your tongue, as far back in your mouth as you can. Then press the button and wait for it to beep.”
“I know how to use a thermometer, Larry. I’m not a fucking idiot.” Adam snarls. He slides the device into his mouth.
It takes a while for it to read, much longer than Lawrence had anticipated. When it finally beeps Adam tosses it back through the bars without even looking at it. Lawrence pulls on gloves from his bag before picking it up.
“Worried that it’s contagious, Larry?” Adam steps forward and leans against the bars.
“I can’t rule that out.” Lawrence responds as stoically as he can. This statement makes Hoffman’s heart rate increase.
Lawrence looks over the thermometer reading.
87.2 F
“What’s the word, doc?”
“Nice and normal.” Lawrence lies, he offers a smile.
Adam grins and steps back to the crate. “You’re a terrible fucking liar, Lawrence.”
Lawrence opens his mouth but Amanda pushes back into the room before he has an opportunity to speak.
“Here you go.” Amanda feeds the items through the bars: a metal basin of warm water, a bar of soap, a small bath brush, and a few towels.
“Thanks Mandy.”
“Don’t call me that.” Amanda huffs.
“So…are you all going to stand here and watch me strip and scrub?” Adam turns his attention to Hoffman. “I’m sure you’d like that, wouldn’t you, big boy?” He flicks his tongue through the air.
Hoffman scowls but Adam can smell him sweat. He grins with satisfaction as its scent turns somewhat sweet with arousal.
“Can’t a man get a little privacy around here?” He continues.
“I can keep an eye on him.” Lawrence offers.
“Hmm” Adam huffs. “Well you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all, right doc?”
Amanda eyes Lawrence carefully.
“I can handle him.” He reassures her.
She nods and looks at Hoffman. “Let’s go.”
Hoffman lingers for a moment before nodding. “We’ll be right outside.” He says to Lawrence before following Amanda out.
The two apprentices leave their new charge with Lawrence.
“Look at us.” Adam muses. “Right back where we started. Just the two of us, so close and yet so far. Funny how that happens, huh?”
Lawrence frowns. “I want to know what happened to you.”
“What happened to me is that you fucking left me there to starve. And starve I did, but it would never let me die.” Adam spits at Lawrence. “All I am now is hungry. There’s nothing else left”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe whatever the fuck you want.” Adam pulls his shirt off his body. He slings it at the bars and they ring under the force. The sound makes Lawrence jump. He steps back. Adam huffs a laugh before peeling off the rest of his clothes. He carefully scrubs away the layers of grime and visceral fluids that caked his skin.
Lawrence watches carefully. Admittedly, he is somewhat emaciated. The bones and sinews are too prominent, but Lawrence had seen worse. There is a strength to his movement which seems to surpass his physical form. Once the grime is scraped away Lawrence is able to get a better look at the condition of his skin. It has all the lividity of the long deceased. It seems less dehydrated now than it had previously appeared, there was a plumpness that was returning to the flesh. The vessels under the skin appear black as if filled with stagnant and coagulated blood. The many vessels of the eyes are engorged with blood in a deoxygenated purple hue, giving the whole sclera the appearance of being badly bruised. His eyes appear more sunken, yet somehow clearer and sharper than Lawrence remembers. However, he concedes that his memory of Adam may have been altered by the haze of blood loss and panic that had plagued him at the time.
Adam pulls on the green scrubs and Lawrence decides he doesn’t look any worse than some of his advanced patients. Those patients were suffering from the ravages of cancer. Lawrence could only guess at what Adam was suffering from.
“Would you let me check your heart and lungs?”
“My heart and lungs?”
“Yes. I brought a stethoscope.” Lawrence digs through his bag a moment before producing the stated device.
Adam stares at him for a long time and Lawrence fears that he will decline.
“If I can get more information about what’s happening to you, we might be able to figure out some kind of…treatment.” Lawrence explains hopefully.
“Fine.”
Lawrence nods and sets his bag down. “Great, just come up and stand next to the bars. I’ll have you stand perpendicular to me so I can listen to both sides of your chest.”
Adam stands as described, his shoulder resting against one of the bars of the cell. Lawrence comes to stand next to the cell. He puts the stethoscope in his ears and hesitantly reaches a hand through the bars to place the drum against Adam’s back.
At first he hears nothing. He listens closely but his straining ears are not rewarded.
“Um…take a deep breath.”
Adam draws in a breath. Lawrence is met with the distinct crackles and wheezing associated with damp, fluid filled lungs. He can only imagine what an x-ray of Adam’s chest might look like. He moves the drum to the other side of Adam’s back.
“One more breath, please.”
Adam draws in another and Lawrence hears the same on this side. The image of drooping, liquifying lungs fills Lawrence’s mind. They ooze black tar. He slowly moves the drum to rest on Adam’s chest, listening for his heart.
……ba……dum……ba……dum……
The rate is so slow Lawrence can scarcely believe it. He glances at his watch to keep count.
……ba……dum……ba……dum……
Only 20 beats per minute, basically dead. Lawrence remembers the only other time he had heard a rate so slow, back when he was in medical school. He had seen a man who ruptured his cervical vertebrae on a steering wheel as he was ejected out the front window of his car during an accident. Always wear your seatbelt, came the disapproving comment from the emergency doctor attending. Seared into his memory was the way the man’s pupils had widened when they discussed taking him off life support. Lawrence’s superiors had been disapproving of the notion that he could still somehow comprehend but Lawrence always wondered. Had he somehow been aware yet unable to express his wishes? The thought haunts him now.
……ba……dum……ba……dum……
Lawrence is lost in this thought when he feels Adam grab his wrist and pull his arm through the bars of the cell. His momentum forward stops abruptly as his shoulder impacts the bars. Adam reaches his other hand through and grasps the back of Lawrence’s head forcing his face against the cold metal. He bends Lawrence’s arm back to the edge of its range of motion to press the drum of the stethoscope to Lawrence’s chest.
Ba dum. Ba dum. Ba dum. Ba dum.
Lawrence pushes his free hand against the bars of the cell trying to leverage himself free. Adam’s grasp tightens against his skull.
BaDUMbaDUMbaDUMbaDUMbaDUMbaDUM…
“Adam! Please!”
Adam leans his head against the bars next to Lawrence’s ear.
“Now you can hear what I hear.”
BaDUMbaDUMbaDUMbaDUMbaDUMbaDUM…
Lawrence struggles and cries out.
“Hey! HEY!” It’s Amanda, screaming at the edge of the cell, frantically waving a raw steak through the air. Lawrence eyes her desperately.
“Let him go! Let! Him! Go!” She demands.
Adam pulls harder against the back of Lawrence’s head. Lawrence can feel the bones of his skull creaking against the metal. He screams.
“Please!” Amanda cries. “If you let him go I’ll feed you! As much as you want!”
Adam eyes the steak in her hand before turning his attention back to his living prey.
“I don’t want cow.”
Lawrence feels the skin over the brim of his nose stretch and split as Adam continues to force his skull through the bars. Blood trickles down his face.
“I’ll get you a person!” Amanda begs desperately.
Adam pauses his assault. He seems to contemplate his options. “When?”
“Tonight.”
He looks over Lawrence’s face, obviously struggling with letting go of such easy prey.
“I want them alive.” He says, staring into Lawrence’s eyes.
“Okay.” Amanda says weakly. “I’ll bring them alive.”
Adam pauses a moment before leaning down to Lawrence’s face. Lawrence flinches and struggles against the bars. Adam draws his tongue up over Lawrence’s bloody face. His eyes roll back in pleasure at the taste of living blood. He lets Lawrence go.
Lawrence falls back into Hoffman’s arms, who drags his body quickly back away from the cell.
“Are you fucking crazy?” The detective murmurs to him, but Lawrence is dazed from the attack.
Amanda drops the steak into the cell and bolts to Lawrence’s side, helping Hoffman get him steadied.
“Let’s get him out of here.” She huffs.
The pair drag Lawrence out of the testing room. As they close the door Lawrence casts one last glance into the cell. Adam and the steak have disappeared into the crate.
Johanna Constantine has seen many abominable things in her time. As of now, she's performed over 60 excorcisms, faced more than 200 demons and has been possessed herself more times than she can count. However, when she meets Adam (a mere vampire over 150 years of age) she's in for a set of surprises.
"Are you trying to scare me?"
"Please, every demonic creature in existence knows that it's not possible to instill any kind of fear in you, Johanna Constantine."
"You've done your homework, I see. And who are you?"
"They call me Adam, ma'am. Now, would you please put away the stake you're hiding behind your back?"
Got an ask for the question “What would Werewolf Shiro and Vampire Adam would wear in a small cryptid town?” about a fortnight ago from @wadamwoltron that I finally came around to:
“It's gotta be the classic Cullen look for Adam bro. Pea coats, monochromatic palettes, looks like he listens to My Chemical Romance but is too prep to admit it. You could branch out from the boring gray Edward colors and do some warm tones lol. I feel wolf Shiro would be athletic jock clothes. Thin underarmor, varsity jackets, sweatpants, leggings, tank tops, some flannels, lumberjack boots. Nothing too expensive so he doesn't feel bad when he ruins em transforming lmao”
The response made me think of Shiro in comfy Patagonia outdoor pants and a soft flannel. Adam wears coats all the time to look classy to rock the attractive librarian look. The small cryptid towns don’t know what hit ‘em when this mysterious couple rolls up.
Imagine that you’ve started dating this mysterious dark stranger. You fall in love with his words of being together forever and that you’d be happy... then one day he suddenly bites your neck and drink until your almost unconscious so that you can still see the horrifying fanged smile as he rips out your heart...
Inspired by ‘Angels’ by Within Temptation.
((Dark Adam imagine, think before when he was still bloodthirsty and feral))
