Chapter Text
“Hey kid. Little late for you to be out isn’t it?”
Alex looked up from where he was sitting on the wharfside wall, picking at his fingernails with a penknife. A man was approaching him, heavyset but with a docker’s muscles and hands like hams.
“I like being out late,” Alex replied. “It’s peaceful.”
“You look like you could use some company.” The man slid a hand not-so-surreptitiously into the pocket of his filthy trousers and jiggled it about. Alex curled his lip in disgust.
“Yeah, just not yours. Beat it.”
The man’s expression changed into something more threatening. “You should be nicer kid. Mouth like that could end you up in the river.”
Alex sighed and slid off the wall. The top of his head barely came up to the man’s chin, but it did mean he had a very good view of the fleshy folds of his neck.
“Last chance to walk away,” Alex said cordially. “Before I hurt you.”
The man scoffed. “You think you’re gonna hurt me with a little knife like that?”
Alex looked down at the penknife in surprise, as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. “Oh. Oh, no. I don’t need a knife.”
The scream was cut off mid-way in a choking gurgle, but the dock was deserted and there was only one other person in the vicinity to hear it. He was lying on the flat roof of a warehouse across the water, watching through a rifle scope.
Too far away to hear what the conversation had been, although he could guess. Alex had looked temptingly vulnerable sitting there all alone. Intentionally so, presumably. Perhaps he’d been peckish.
Yassen watched the last of it play out with interest. Saw Alex straighten up from the figure now prone and unmoving on the ground, saw him fastidiously wipe his mouth and look down at the corpse as if considering what to do with it. It would be easy enough to tip it into the river, but the lack of exsanguinated corpses turning up suggested he was more careful about disposal than that.
Alex glanced upstream. A moment later Yassen picked up the distant chug of a boat engine, and added another mental note to his growing file, extremely sharp hearing.
Across the way Alex bent and grabbed the corpse by the foot, dragging it out of sight with an ease that shouldn’t have been possible given the difference in their sizes. Yassen’s interest was growing by the second, not least because concealing his victim meant whoever Alex was here to meet didn’t know what he was.
An ancient barge laboured into view, leaving an oily sheen behind it on the dark water. Alex walked down the steps to meet it with a careless grace that also captured Yassen’s eye. The old stone would have been narrow and slippery, and yet he hadn’t hesitated. Even Yassen would have been wary about descending those steps in the dark.
Alex had jumped on board and Yassen wished he could hear what was being said. The murmur of conversation that floated across to him didn’t sound particularly friendly. If Yassen had to guess, he would say it had come as an unpleasant surprise to the crew that they had to take their orders from a teenager.
And to the average person, Alex’s disguise was unassailable. Yassen wasn’t sure how old he actually was – Scorpia’s archivists were positive he’d been active in both world wars, but even circumstantial evidence was sketchy further back than that. It would not do to make the mistake of treating him like a child. For that matter, it wouldn’t do to make the mistake of treating him like a human.
Although presumably he had been one once. Was there anything left of the boy he’d been, or was he now filled with nothing but a cold blood lust? Yassen mused idly on these things as he disassembled his rig. The boat had wallowed its way on downstream, taking Alex with it. Yassen’s intention had never been to make an attempt on him right away, tonight had been about gathering intel.
Know your enemy.
He knew of others that had been sent before him. The lucky ones hadn’t made it back. The others – well Yassen knew of at least two men currently in asylums. The mistake had been trying to take the boy alive. That policy had now changed. Scorpia had deemed Rider too dangerous to leave alive, and had consequently dispatched their best assassin.
One agent of death against another. Yassen found he was rather relishing the idea.
When he’d been briefed, his initial reaction had been one of scepticism. But Scorpia was hardly in the business of wind-ups, and the evidence he’d been given had been extensive. It had also been largely anecdotal, which was in part why he was here tonight, to witness it with his own eyes. Nothing he’d been told or shown would have stood up in court.
Not that Scorpia were in the business of suing people, although they certainly weren’t above a little reputational sabotage. The idea they could possibly prove the British Secret Service were using an unspeakable creature of the night to carry out their missions, not to mention covering up his multiple murders, had made a lot of people on the Board very excited.
Yassen had suggested mildly it might be easier and just as effective to demonstrate MI6 was using a teenager for the same thing, but he’d been told to shut up and get on with it. Priority one, take out the threat. Priority two, if possible obtain concrete evidence of the nature of said threat.
Which was why Yassen was now making his way round to the dock Alex had departed from. If he could produce a body with teethmarks and a distinct lack of blood – but by the time he got there, there was no sign of Alex’s victim. It had taken quite a detour to get round to this bank of the river, and he assumed Alex had made a call to a clean-up team who’d moved in immediately. He may even have had back-up waiting out of sight at the time.
Yassen looked round at the blank empty windows starting down at him and thought that maybe it would be a good time to leave.
–
Back in his hotel room, Yassen had a chance to study the camera footage he’d taken. It was – curious. It wasn’t that Alex didn’t show up on film, but there was a blurriness to it that made it impossible to pick out detail. He sighed. Evidence might be harder to come by than he’d imagined. Still, there would be the corpse to take back with him, assuming it didn’t do something inconvenient like crumble into ash. That would be definitive.
He planned his approach carefully, and without haste. A week’s night time surveillance of what MI6 liked to think of as their secret covert operations offices and he’d picked up Alex coming and going twice. The second time he managed to tail him to a large house in Chelsea, and a further period of observation seemed to confirm Alex was living there, and alone.
Yassen wondered idly if living there was the correct term. He could hardly be said to be dying there. He settled on residing, and pushed the thought away. Alex’s existence whether alive, dead or undead was irrelevant. Yassen’s job was to stop the part where he was upright and moving around.
He studied the tools laid out on the hotel bed in front of him. Nobody had been able to give him a definitive answer on what killed a vampire and he wasn’t going to waste time messing about with garlic and holy water, although there was a very sturdy stake and hammer amongst the collection.
Yassen’s main faith was in the high powered rifle. It could put a shot through a brick wall, he was pretty sure it could be relied on to ruin a vampire’s evening. The ammunition was carbon-tipped, just in case there was anything to the wooden stake through the heart thing, which seemed to be one of the more persistent bits of lore. He didn’t intend to get close enough to have to try it for real. Alex could move unnaturally fast when he wanted to, as Yassen had discovered the first time he’d tried to tail him. Getting close enough to stake the boy would almost certainly prove fatal, and not for Alex.
Yassen shook his head, annoyed with himself. Don’t think of him as a boy. Alex was at least two hundred years old, possibly a lot more. Thinking of him as a teenager was dangerous, not because Yassen might hesitate to kill him but because it might lead to unconsciously underestimating him.
No, the safest thing would be to take him out from a distance, then even if the first shot wasn’t enough to kill him Yassen would have time to take another, or should the situation call for it, retreat at speed.
Satisfied with his preparations, as soon as it got dark Yassen set out for Chelsea with what would turn out to be an entirely misplaced confidence.
–
It was a long wait, although Yassen was used to that. Alex must have left early for some reason, at first dark, but Yassen would get him coming home. An empty house across the road was swathed in scaffolding and Yassen lay on the boards at second floor level, out of the line of sight of any pedestrians and partially concealed by the kick-board. Alex wouldn’t know he was there until it was too late.
Finally, just before dawn Yassen saw a figure coming down the road. It was Alex. He sighted carefully, the crosshairs unwavering over Alex’s heart. And squeezed the trigger.
It was a perfect shot. Alex was thrown backwards by the impact into a bush foaming over someone’s front wall, and crumpled to the ground, unmoving. Yassen quickly disassembled the gun and made his way back to street level. His job wasn’t over yet, he had to retrieve the body.
He had a van parked nearby, marked with the same name as the scaffolders so not to draw attention. Luckily the street was deserted, and nobody had heard the silenced shot. If anyone had seen Alex fall, they would take him for a drunk.
Yassen dropped his bag into the front seat of the van and crossed quickly to where Alex lay on the pavement. There was a bloody hole in his chest, and Yassen stood looking down at the corpse impassively.
And Alex opened his eyes.
With a sinking feeling, Yassen realised he’d been playing dead to see who’d shot him. And Yassen had fallen for it.
Alex sat up with an expression of indignant irritation. “I liked that shirt.”
The rifle was in the van but Yassen had a handgun and was already firing. Alex, somehow, was never quite where he’d aimed though and it was far, far too late to run.
The last thing Yassen saw was the reflection of his own face in dark, angry eyes, and then everything went black.
–
Yassen opened his eyes cautiously, discovering that contrary to his expectations he was not in fact dead. He was lying on a couch in a large living room with heavy drapes closed against what seemed to be daylight outside, hands tied behind his back.
Alex was sitting in a chair not far away, watching him thoughtfully. As far as Yassen could tell he didn’t appear to have bitten him. Yet.
“Where am I?”
“My house.” Alex drew his feet up into the chair, propped his chin on his knees. “I hope you’re honoured.”
“Nice place.”
“Been in my family for centuries.”
“By your family I’m assuming you just mean you?”
Alex half smiled. “So you know. That’s disappointing. I always like the bit where people freak out.”
“I mean the part where you survived a bullet to the chest would have been a giveaway if I hadn’t already known. Perhaps I should have aimed for the head.”
Alex unfolded himself from the chair and came across, stood looking down at him. He’d changed his shirt, but the new one was hanging open and there was still a hole in his chest. Although considerably smaller than before, Yassen noticed.
“Wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“Stake through the heart then?”
“Hardly going to tell you, am I?” Alex gave him a sudden grin. “Maybe I can’t be killed.”
“Everything can be killed.”
“Which brings me to the question, what did I ever do to you? I don’t think we’ve met before. And I have a very good memory for faces. Why did you try to kill me?”
“You are a monster.” Yassen said it quite neutrally, and Alex frowned.
“A lot of people are monstrous. Do you kill them too?”
It was Yassen’s turn to almost smile. “Actually, yes. Quite a few, since you mention it.”
Alex looked curious. “What are you then? Some kind of vigilante?”
“A hitman,” Yassen corrected, and Alex’s gaze sharpened.
“Oh, now that is interesting.” He studied Yassen closely, as if he’d just ranked up from bedtime snack to something more worthy of attention. “It takes a lot to interest me these days but you may just have managed it. So you were paid to do it?” He waited for Yassen’s slight nod of affirmation. “Which leads me to ask – who by?”
Yassen shook his head and Alex sighed. With a speed that made Yassen blink, he moved from standing by the couch to sitting astride Yassen in less than a second.
“You will tell me,” Alex said conversationally.
Yassen shook his head again. “If I told you, the people I work for would kill me instead. And they are a lot more inventive than you.”
“Is that a challenge?” Alex put his head on one side. “Let me put it this way. You’re going to die anyway. Telling me who sent you will make a difference to how horrendously unpleasant your final moments are.”
Again, Yassen gave a slight shake of the head. Alex frowned. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” he asked, sounding faintly puzzled.
“Oh, I am. I know you’re going to kill me. Torture me, probably. But I can’t do anything about it, so why worry?”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “I think you might actually be more fucked up than me.”
“Why do you work for MI6?” Yassen asked, prudently changing the subject. He figured that while Alex was talking he wasn’t biting him. And he seemed oddly willing to talk. Yassen wondered how long it had been since someone actually held a conversation with him. “You have incredible power, and yet you do their bidding like any other dutiful employee.”
Alex considered him, then shrugged. “As the years go by, it gets harder to hide what I am. More surveillance, more science. Working for them keeps me under the official radar. And I don’t have to worry about clearing up after myself either.” He smiled, and Yassen was acutely aware there was suddenly rather more fang on show than there had been a moment ago.
“Retractable?” he mused out loud, and Alex gave him a look. Ran a tongue over one sharp tooth then flicked the pair of them out of sight again.
“Good guess.”
“Who turned you?”
Alex’s expression turned darker. “I don’t talk about that.”
“You must have been so young.”
Alex stared at him coldly, and Yassen wondered if he’d made an error, but Alex’s desire to talk seemed to win out.
“It was my sixteenth birthday,” he said finally, in a fainter tone than before. “And that’s the last we shall say on the topic.”
“How old are you, now?”
“I was born in 1798. Turned in 1814. You can work it out, to be honest I stopped counting when the cake ran out of room for the candles.”
“Can you even eat cake?” Yassen was aware he was scrambling for conversational topics now, but Alex at least looked more amused by this one.
“I can eat anything. But I need blood to sustain me.” He drew a finger down Yassen’s chest. “Not that a prolonged lack of it would kill me, before you go getting any ideas. It would just make me tetchy, and you really don’t want that.”
Alex pushed Yassen’s shirt up, splayed his fingers over Yassen’s belly. His hand was warmer than Yassen had expected. Nails scraped idly across his skin.
“Do you know how long it takes to die from a stomach wound?” Alex asked, forming his hand into a claw.
“Depends. Can be anything from minutes to days depending on the damage.”
Alex smiled. “You really do know your stuff.” He looked considering. “On second thoughts maybe I should tear out your throat instead. Always the risk of perforating the bowel with a stomach wound, and I hate it when the food gets icky.”
He went from straddling Yassen’s thighs to lying full length on top of him, propping his elbows on Yassen’s chest to stare into his face. “Or I could do other things.”
“Such as?”
“Would you like to fuck me?”
The question, or at least the direction of it, was so unexpected that Yassen just stared at him. Alex smirked and sat up again, stroking his hand over Yassen’s crotch. “Would you?”
“You’d need to untie me,” Yassen managed.
Alex gave him a sideways look. “Technically I wouldn’t.”
“You’re stronger than me, and I’m unarmed,” Yassen pointed out, wondering what had happened to his gun and if it was nearby. “What harm could it do?”
“True.” Alex kept stroking him, smiling as he felt Yassen’s body start to respond, thickening under his fingers. “Do you like this?”
“I’d like it more if I wasn’t tied up.”
Alex sighed. “Do I look stupid?”
“No. But if fucking you is what keeps me alive then it makes sense to make a good job of it.”
“Hmmn.” Alex gave him another oblique look, as if he hadn’t expected Yassen to agree so willingly and was trying to decide if he was bluffing.
Yassen, who had a pragmatic nature and was inclined towards men anyway, was entirely willing to do whatever it took to keep himself alive long enough to find a way to escape.
Alex slid off the couch and stood up, removing his clothes with an unselfconcious grace. He stood there, naked in the lamplight, letting Yassen get a good view of him. His slim body was pale and beautiful, marred only by the slowly closing chest wound. He was erect, and Yassen wondered if it was the thought of sex or of the killing that would surely follow that was turning him on.
“Like what you see?” Aware of Yassen’s gaze, Alex gave him a mocking twirl before coming back to the couch.
“Very much.”
Alex snickered. “You’re probably lying, but thank you anyway. I like a meal to be polite.”
He unfastened Yassen’s trousers and drew them down to his knees along with his underwear, running a hand up Yassen’s rigid cock.
“Like what you see?” Yassen was aware that teasing the super-humanly strong killing machine was a dangerous path to go down, but he was also sensing that the more engaged Alex was, the longer he was likely to live.
Alex gave him a look, and Yassen caught a flash of fang resting on his lower lip as he smiled.
“If you’re very good I’ll eat you before I eat you,” Alex murmured. “If you see what I mean.” He leaned over and licked a stripe up the side of Yassen’s erection. Yassen shuddered, partly from the sensation and partly from the thought of those wicked teeth so close to his dick.
“So are you going to untie me, or what?” he persisted. Alex sighed.
“Oh, fine. Turn over then.”
Yassen rolled sideways, facing the back of the couch. He looked up. The window was about a foot beyond it, and while the black-out curtains were thick there was a bright chink where they didn’t quite meet at the top that suggested it was full daylight outside.
He’d expected Alex to fetch a knife or something, but Alex simply snapped the binding cord with his bare hands. Yassen took salutary note. He’d been testing the strength of it ever since he came round, and Alex hadn’t even broken sweat.
Did vampires sweat, Yassen wondered. Alex didn’t appear to have a heartbeat, or that wound would have been bleeding a lot more, but he did appear to breathe. Did he need to or was it habit? Yassen realised he had a lot of questions, but even if he got the answers he was unlikely to live to tell anyone else. This was, he suspected, why the files were so scant.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Alex laughed, and Yassen realised he’d been staring into space. That wasn’t good. His mind was trying to distract him from the thought of his impending death, and he needed to concentrate if he was to have any hope of avoiding it.
“Sorry. I was just wondering about your – anatomy.”
“How very clinical,” Alex grinned, sitting astride him again and stroking himself lewdly. “Would you like a biology lesson?”
“How do you even get an erection if you don’t have any circulation?”
Alex frowned at him. “If that’s your idea of sexy talk, I’m guessing you’re single.” He reached forward and ripped open Yassen’s shirt, running his hands over the planes of his chest with just a warning hint of nails.
Hands unbound, Yassen reached up to touch Alex in turn, through curiosity as much as anything else. He was perhaps a shade cooler than human but certainly warm enough to be pleasant to the touch and Alex let Yassen’s hands explore freely.
“You heal quickly.” Yassen’s fingers skated the edge of the wound.
“Want to help me heal quicker?”
Before Yassen could reply Alex had bent down and buried his face between Yassen’s legs. His heart skipped a beat, but Alex ignored his cock and sank his fangs into Yassen’s inner thigh.
It was a sharp, bright pain and Yassen drew in a breath, from shock as much as anything. Alex was making wet sucking noises as he fed, and Yassen fought down the instinctive urge to try and shove him away. He didn’t think Alex meant to kill him, not yet, but if Yassen started a fight Alex would almost certainly finish it.
Digging his nails into his palms to stop himself reacting, Yassen made himself endure the sensations until Alex finally sat up, wiping his mouth. Yassen tried not to look at the red smear of his own blood across the back of Alex’s hand. Instead he looked at Alex’s chest, and stared in astonishment. The skin was clear and unbroken, with no sign he’d ever been shot.
“Cool, huh?”
“Very impressive.”
“I mean, I’m still going to kill you. Just so we’re clear,” Alex said conversationally. “Can’t have people going round the place thinking they can shoot me. Or telling people where I live, for that matter.” He pinched Yassen’s nipple unexpectedly and made him yelp. “How did you find me?”
“I followed you.”
“Huh. Really? You must be better than most.”
“I am.” It was a statement of fact, not a boast, but it made Alex smile.
“Not better than me though. Should have stuck to humans. What’s your name? You know who I am, after all. If I’m going to fuck you and kill you I feel we should at least be properly introduced.”
“My name is Yassen. Yassen Gregorovich.” It meant Alex would probably be able to find out who he worked for now, but Yassen was conceding the odds of surviving long enough for Scorpia to kill him instead were probably not worth worrying about.
“Russian?” Alex stroked a hand up Yassen’s cock, playing with him until he was fully hard again. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a Russian before.”
“Oh we taste bad, you probably shouldn’t bother.”
Alex’s grin widened. “Ah, but you forget I’ve already sampled you. You’re quite delicious, I assure you. I look forward to the main course.”
He bent over again and Yassen tensed, but this time Alex slid his mouth over the head of Yassen’s cock. This didn’t necessarily make him relax, but after a few seconds with no hint of fangs in the mix, Yassen let himself unclench enough to start enjoying it. Or at least as much as he could with the nagging thought that Alex could probably bite the whole thing off if he was so minded.
Alex had other aims in mind though, and after a while of sucking down on Yassen with every sign of enjoyment he sat up again and shifted himself along until he was holding himself above the wet cock.
Oh, thought Yassen, and then couldn’t summon much else in terms of coherent thought.
“Give me a hand then,” Alex ordered. “Since you insisted.”
Yassen reached down and obediently held himself steady as Alex lowered himself onto him. Yassen winced in automatic sympathy, but Alex didn’t flinch and Yassen supposed that if a shot to the chest wasn’t going to slow you down, a lack of decent lube probably didn’t even register.
If Alex’s pain receptors were skewed he certainly appeared to have no such problems with pleasure, and began riding Yassen with enthusiasm.
It was, Yassen reflected, one of the weirder situations he’d found himself in. He’d considered a number of possible outcomes to this assignment, and it was fair to say none of them had involved vigorous unprotected sex with a homicidal maniac.
Not that it was unpleasant, if you could forget about the imminent threat of death. Alex knew what he was about and Yassen wasn’t at all sure how long he could last. That was another awkward thought – did his lifespan depend on his stamina?
He let his head fall back, trying to muster some degree of concentration, but with his cock buried in the tight bouncing warmth of Alex’s body it was difficult. His eyes were drawn again to the thin line of light between the curtains. Was sunlight actually fatal to vampires? He wasn’t sure, but the fact remained the curtains had been firmly closed and he’d only ever seen Alex at night.
They were firmly out of reach though, even now he’d been untied. Alex was quite capable of breaking his arms if he made a lunge for them, even if he’d been close enough.
The germ of an idea unfolded in Yassen’s mind. He would get one chance only, but it required a distraction. And what better distraction than an orgasm?
He reached up and wrapped his own hand around Alex’s cock, starting to jerk him off in time with the rise and fall of Alex’s thighs. Alex looked down at him in mild surprise, then let his own head fall back, seemingly content to take Yassen’s offer at face value.
He pushed eagerly into Yassen’s hand, groaning approval as Yassen began to put a bit more effort into thrusting up into him.
Blond hair and lambent skin gleaming in the lamplight, Alex looked beautiful above him, and it would have been easy to forget what he was, but the burning ache in Yassen’s thigh from the fresh bite mark was a nagging reminder not to lose himself in the moment.
He thought Alex was close, and gathered his strength. He would get one shot at this, and it might only buy him seconds at best. Yassen shifted position, moving his hands to Alex’s hips, taking his weight as he slammed down onto Yassen’s cock in search of the last elusive stroke that would drive him over the edge.
And there it was. Yassen felt Alex spasm around him as he started to come, and in the same instant he used the momentum of Alex’s own body to lift him – and keep on lifting him. Distracted and dazed by the moment of climax it gave Yassen the second he needed. Alex might be strong but he wasn’t particularly heavy, and Yassen threw him backwards as hard as he could and lunged himself, not towards the door, but the window.
He sensed movement behind him as Alex gathered himself and sprang with an angry hiss, but Yassen had a hand on the curtain now and wrenched it sideways.
Daylight poured into the room and Alex hurled himself into the shadows with a strangled scream and the smell of singed hair.
Yassen clung onto the heavy material for dear life, standing precariously on the back of the sofa, his trousers round his knees and stomach smeared with Alex’s come.
There were angry, incoherent noises coming from the darkness beyond the shaft of light now. Yassen did the only thing he judged he had time for, and threw himself through the window.
–