Armand drinks in long, slow swallows. Thoughts are absorbed the same way, settling in his belly, warm and heavy. Filling. If he isn't empty, why does it fill him? If he isn't empty, why—as Daniel's thoughts slow, and quiet, and wan, but stay as busy as they can to the final struggle—then why does he find himself holding the dying mortal so tightly, even after the last viable mouthful of blood is siphoned out from easy veins?
Smoke. Crackling fire, which struggles like someone slammed the flue shut, and then dies.
There is the smallest tremor through his fingers as Armand opens his palm with his fangs, and presses it against Daniel's slack mouth. Barely anything, certainly not enough to coax Daniel's mind into trying to drink, but that's barely necessary.
Strange, potent, a smear of blood that is barely enough to swallow but mingles with saliva, enters the failing human by way of membrane, little evil sparks of unlife.
Whatever happens next, Daniel is only capable of remembering it in abstract. Clutching pain, bowel-low and sick. Fever. Hunger. Then worse, thirst. The kind that feels like you'd kill a man to slake it. (On that point—) And then, in the dark, it comes. Water in the desert. There is no moving, and no ability to make it come any faster than the meagre trickle that Daniel has no choice but to accept.
"That's enough," says a voice.
And then he wakes up.
The sound of daytime traffic, from within a room low enough to the street to hear it. Daniel has seen enough shitty hotel rooms to recognise the basic layout of this one, king bed and yellow walls, fading laundry. The light is odd, with a lamp on, and the windows mostly covered with something thicker than standard threadbare curtains, casting deep shadow. But there's a corner where the daylight comes in, the corner with the obligatory chair that no one sits in, except someone is.
Lanky figure, bathed in the sun, hands folded between his knees.
The door to the bathroom is closed. The door to the hallway out is closed. And Daniel is hungry.
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Smoke. Crackling fire, which struggles like someone slammed the flue shut, and then dies.
There is the smallest tremor through his fingers as Armand opens his palm with his fangs, and presses it against Daniel's slack mouth. Barely anything, certainly not enough to coax Daniel's mind into trying to drink, but that's barely necessary.
Strange, potent, a smear of blood that is barely enough to swallow but mingles with saliva, enters the failing human by way of membrane, little evil sparks of unlife.
Whatever happens next, Daniel is only capable of remembering it in abstract. Clutching pain, bowel-low and sick. Fever. Hunger. Then worse, thirst. The kind that feels like you'd kill a man to slake it. (On that point—) And then, in the dark, it comes. Water in the desert. There is no moving, and no ability to make it come any faster than the meagre trickle that Daniel has no choice but to accept.
"That's enough," says a voice.
And then he wakes up.
The sound of daytime traffic, from within a room low enough to the street to hear it. Daniel has seen enough shitty hotel rooms to recognise the basic layout of this one, king bed and yellow walls, fading laundry. The light is odd, with a lamp on, and the windows mostly covered with something thicker than standard threadbare curtains, casting deep shadow. But there's a corner where the daylight comes in, the corner with the obligatory chair that no one sits in, except someone is.
Lanky figure, bathed in the sun, hands folded between his knees.
The door to the bathroom is closed. The door to the hallway out is closed. And Daniel is hungry.