Work Text:
I.
Nandor has been alive for nearly eight centuries, and most of them have blurred together and ran into each other, the pages of his memories written in quickly bleeding ink, pages dissolving as they touch the water of time. There’s too many faces, too many people, too many moments he’s clutched in the palm of his hand and promised himself he would remember, only to loosen his fist and find only fine grains of sand. In the face of all that, though, he remembers being a boy clear as night; he remembers the mundane memories of his life in the cities of Al-Quolnidar.
There was the burning light, a constant presence, sun-warmth blossoming under his skin after spending too many hours outside playing with his friends. There was the clinking glass of the jug filled with herbal rose water, the bleating of goats in the yard, the rough fabric of his father’s military suit as Nandor sat on his knee and listened to his stories of war.
He remembers the Madrasa most of all, the smell of oud that permeated every part of the building, the dust highlighted by early morning sun as he pulled Qur’ans off the shelves and set them in their stands. He thinks of his teacher, a wizened old woman with a pinched mouth and a raspy voice who sung out verses from her chest. After class, he would put the Qur’ans back where they belonged and chase his classmates through the alleys, warm sand threaded in between his toes as he ran with open sandals, the pleasant burn of sun on the nape of his neck and on his scalp, under an unruly mess of black hair.
He remembers the smoky, rich scent of warmed oil as it was rubbed into his sister’s scalp, greasy strands of raven hair pulled into a braid with a dexterity that boys were not afforded the luxury of learning. In the summer they would sleep outside on charpoys, the frame large enough to hold far more than their three slight bodies curled up together in the still, warm night of the city.
When his sister is sixteen she is married off to an older man. Nandor’s cheeks burn to this day at the thought of not being able to remember her name or her face. All he remembers is the lilting sound of her lullaby voice, the picture of her braids stark against her tan skin, and that she loved to drink goat’s milk from the nanny they kept in the yard.
When he is fourteen he joins the military, after the death of his father. The Mongols have been pushed out of Al-Quolnidar by then, replaced with the menacing forces of the Ottomans who burnt down the libraries and mosques that made up Nandor’s town. He remembers walking by the ashes of the madrasa, watching the flames slowly engulf the domed building, thinking of the patterned carpet and the intricate wooden stands all lost to the heat of an indifferent empire.
His mother cries when he leaves. She prays Ayatul Kursi over him, blows on his cheeks and his forehead and on his eyelids, and presses her best wooden tasbih into his childish fist, pressing a kiss into the soft skin on the back of his hand. He keeps it with him always, tucked into his armour, and when he lay side-by-side with his fellow men in the battle tents he takes it out and starts takbir, chanting prayers with bloodstained hands.
He climbs the ranks fast. He shoots up like an arrow at age sixteen, his shoulders widening and height towering over the other men in his legion. He thinks of his mother and sister while he plunders and pillages and steals and slaughters, he thinks of their big brown eyes when he draws his sword across the throats of their enemies and watches their knees give out. At seventeen, he kneels at the feet of the Shah, looking down at the place where his tunic is detailed with gold, and his voice seems to be everything but real as he tells Nandor that Al-Quolnidar needs a supreme viceroy, and that the responsibility will fall on his shoulders.
When he returns home to tell his mother and sister the news, he finds an empty house and a neglected charpoy, stale tea long over-boiled and left to cool on the fire. His sister comes soon after, kisses his knuckles and says, she’s gone, Nadir. She’s gone, and she left the house and the tea on the fire and the blankets on the charpoy, and Nandor lays out with his skinny big sister in his arms that night, bitten to hell by insects and looking up at the endless expanse of sky. The sun rises over the horizon, over the disjointed blocks of dilapidated buildings, red light kissing the sandy desert as it rises, painting the sky in its hue.
Then, there are women. There are women in the villages that Nandor razes to ash, which he turns away from and encourages his companions to do so too. He leaves them with their children and takes their men, tortures them and recruits them and slaughters those who don’t cooperate. He plunders and pillages and the King brings women to his banquets and there are weddings – oh, so many weddings – with long smoking pipes and heavy cloaks and beautiful women behind veils. There were wedding nights with each of them, and a palace in the city filled with fresh fruit and servants and blessed water and a library filled with great knowledge that Nandor had saved from destruction by the empire which he served.
His wives have soft bodies and kind hands. Sometimes he invites them into his bedroom and they sing songs to him, sometimes they card their fingers through his hair and sometimes they let him come inside them, letting them carry the life of the most feared warrior in all of Persia. The children are born with big brown eyes and dark hair, surma stained faces and drenched in the best fabrics plundered gold can buy. Nandor can’t remember their names, can’t remember if he ever learned them.
The sky is drenched in a thick orange, the sun setting over the city, when Nandor throws his parties. There are wine and dancers and he sits on his throne with his wives and children flitting around him. His general takes him to the back of his house and backs him up against the wall and fits their mouths together, and Nandor grabs a fistful of his hair and licks into his mouth, rutting up against him and whining like a wounded animal. He can’t remember the name or face of the general, just the feeling of his tongue and the outline of his muscles beneath the thin material of his tunic, the brush of his hair against the exposed curve of Nandor’s neck.
It’s debauchery. It’s chaos. It’s excess to fill the hole that consumes Nandor, when he has a moment to himself, drifting back to serving the empire that killed his mother, that burnt down his school, that lets him hold a knife to a young girl's throat and still be allowed to call himself a human.
He isn’t a human. He is Nandor the Relentless. He left behind the concept of humanity a long time ago, clutched it tight when his mother pressed it into his hand and unfurled nothing but grains of sand in his palm when he left his battle tent years later, unsure of where he had forgotten it.
Days and weeks are spent in the hills of Persia, nights are spent in crowded battle tents that reek of body odour and blood, and he spends the early dawn strategising with his men about which villages best to plunder, to conquer.
They are struck unawares when they find a town filled with nightwalkers.
Like all their attacks, they strike in the early morning, the clicking of hooves beneath them and bows poised in their hands. The dusk has settled, and the dawn is yet to come, the early hours of a winter morning unkind to Nandor’s old bones and unaffecting to the village they stumble across. Tall, foreboding figures drenched in black and blood, hair down to their knees; stark pale skin; crooked, fanged smiles. Nandor’s army descends on them, and they descend back.
It’s the style of tales that Nandor has heard from dishevelled, dehydrated soldiers returning from days in the desert. It’s the type of stories he reads in the books that his servants have for his children. He remembers shaking his men’s shoulders, telling them to be brave and honest, to toughen up, that it was okay that they were bested and to drink some water. Now, with dark, winged creatures fluttering about his head and his soldiers’ throats being torn out by their teeth, he starts to think that the tales are more than just tales.
He’s pinned to the ground. It’s not the weight of a human – even though the man is smaller than him he flips Nandor over with the practised ease of an apex predator, and when he draws his mouth close to Nandor’s neck his breath is stale and cold. He draws his teeth over his jugular and digs in, pinpricks of pain shooting down Nandor’s body as he yells and thrashes, and the creature draws a hand over his mouth to shut him up as Nandor feels blood begin to leave his body.
He grasps a handful of sand and throws it in the creature’s eyes. The creature draws back, hissing, hand still clenched over Nandor’s mouth, and Nandor bites down hard, digging the blunt edge of his teeth into the cold skin of the creature’s palm, enough to feel the coppery tinge of blood leak onto his tongue.
The next few seconds, minutes, hours are all a blur. Nandor somehow finds himself on his feet, with a horse, limping as he runs far into the desert, into the next village. He knows his men will send for him. The villagers cower in fear at his blood stained mouth and clothes, at the puncture on his neck, at his wild eyes. An old nurse takes him into her house and gives him hot tea and a blanket and refuses to accept his money. Her face is wrinkly and written in concern as she studies him, as she watches him press a cloth into the two pinprick points on his neck.
He wakes in the early afternoon, and sure enough he sees his men’s horses and the familiar shouts and clanging of their armour outside. The sun burns on his skin when he exits, and his mouth is achingly dry, but he rides back to Al Quolnidar with them, the weight of loss and disappointment sitting heavy on his shoulders.
Nandor tells his men, do not tell the other battalions about the nightwalkers. They agree, hesitant, under threat of punishment.
He goes to his home and doesn’t leave. The sun hurts his skin. He throws up everything that hits his stomach. The doctor comes and examines him and finds his blood pressure and heartbeat to be worryingly low. Nandor dismisses him, dismisses his concern – he knows the end to this story, and would rather it come sooner than later.
One night, his wife comes to him. He hasn’t touched any of them in weeks, not since he returned from the village and most certainly not since the doctor’s visit. His wife, Ayesha, is kind and young and doe-eyed, affectionate, plump pink lips and wide hips. She crawls into his bed, across the white silk sheets, draped in her nightdress, and straddles Nandor’s thighs. The warm weight of her is enough to get Nandor riled up, more alive than he’s felt since he came home, and he runs his hands under her nightdress, over the hot skin of her hips, gripping at the curve of her waist. She ruts against him and he pulls her closer, pressing their lips together, licking at the seam of her mouth to get to her tongue.
He pulls away, and presses kisses down the column of her throat, nosing at her pulse point. She runs her hands through his hair, tugging lightly when he sucks a bruise just below her collarbone. He draws back up and presses his nose against the skin, smelling the familiar scent of oils and sweat, with a metallic hint that draws his lips towards her once again. He drags his teeth across the line of brown skin, and digs them in, almost unconsciously, and her hand tightens in his hair and she lets out a loud, sweet moan.
The moan curves into pain, almost a scream, as he pulls her head to one side, digging his teeth in deeper and pulling away to suck at the wound. Nadir, Nadir, she chants, going silent and limp suddenly in his arms as he sucks at her neck, tasting the sweet, bitter notes of her blood.
When he pulls away, the wound drips menacingly across the bedsheets. Her eyes are wide open, void of life or emotion, deadweight in his arms. Nandor’s eyes widen as he drops her, legs drawing back, watching as the trickle of red darkens the pristine sheets, staining them.
There is a part of him that wants to keel over and throw up. The other part, the part that wins, is the one that draws closer, back to her freshly deceased body, and licks the blood away from her wound like a starving dog, that grips her shoulder and ignores how she twitches as he drains the last embers of life from her.
Then he leaves. That night, the moon sitting on the crest of the mountains, silver ground stretching out for miles, Nandor leaves his wife’s corpse on the bloodstained mattress, her life dripping from his fangs, and takes his horse and rides out.
He goes to his childhood home. The walls are crumbling. There is nothing in the cupboards, there is no furniture. The charpoy is left abandoned, creaking with Nandor’s weight as he sits. He looks around his old yard, notes the empty trays of food for the goats, the ropes around the fences cut loose, the chalk drawings he did as a child leaving multicoloured stains on the side of the walls even after all these years. He draws his finger across the rough surface, but he can’t pick anything up. It’s part of the building, now, inseparable. His childhood is embedded in the walls, buried beneath the tiled floor, shattered along with the glass windows.
He stares at the empty bookshelf. Only a book of verses from the Qur’an left to collect dust, not picked up by his sister or her husband. He stares at it, and wills himself to draw closer, to touch, to bury his nose into the pages and look up to the sky and ask Allah why he was cursed. But, Nandor thinks, as he turns away, he knows the reason. He knows why God condemned him to drink the blood of humans and drain their life from them. The answer is written in the razed villages, the burning temples, the eyes of a child as their father is taken from them. He knows the answer. He swallows back the visions of his guilt, and takes his horse to ride out to the next village, to take shelter for the breaking of dawn.
II.
Nandor straddles the man’s chest, pinning him down with his weight, then makes a desperate grab for the stake. The vampire beneath him thrashes, but Nandor is relentless, merciless, so far from human, that he pays no mind: taking the wooden spear in hand and plunging it through his chest. It doesn’t squelch or bleed, the vampire simply lolling his head to the side, and promptly dissipating into a cloud of dust.
His hands are shaking when he stands and crosses the small span of alleyway, falling to his knees in front of Guillermo, the gravel cutting into the fabric of his trousers. His familiar, bodyguard, his… whatever else, his Guillermo, is wheezing, hand splayed across the wound in his abdomen, the dark spill of blood staining his thick sweater. His entire mouth is red, blood trickling out across his bottom lip, dripping onto his trousers, and his eyes are wide and teary as he looks at Nandor.
“Fucking useless,” Nandor half-yells, feeling panic rise in his chest, “I thought you were supposed to be good at this vampire-slaying stuff.”
“Fuck… you,” Guillermo wheezes, then turns his head to the side to spit a thick glob of blood on the ground.
“I need you,” Nandor hisses, and lifts his hand to grab the side of Guillermo’s face. His familiar tilts his head back to face him, and his eyes widen. “This is extremely selfish.” His arm is shaking, smearing fingertips of blood across his human’s cheek.
“Turn me,” Guillermo says, voice paper-thin, speaking through gritted teeth. “Make me a vampire.”
Nandor feels the warm blood stick to the end of his fingers where they are sat on Guillermo’s cheek, feels the thrumming of his heartbeat thick in his throat, feels the soft skin and hot fan of his breath as he exhales heavily.
“You don’t want that,” Nandor says.
“I do!” He yells, and then winces immediately after, letting out a soft groan of pain.
“I cannot do that to you.”
“You can’t let me die,” Guillermo says, loudly, his gaze heavy with fear. He lifts his hand, and presses it over Nandor’s where it rests on his cheek. “Nandor. Master. Don’t let me die. Please.” His voice breaks on the last word, and he lets out a shivering sob.
Tears start to prick at Nandor’s eyes, and he turns over his hand to take Guillermo’s fingers in his grasp. He pulls them away from Guillermo’s cheek, and lifts it to his mouth, bowing his head and pressing his lips into the warm skin.
“Nandor,” Guillermo repeats, voice fading, crackling with tears. “Please.”
Nandor thinks of the burning madrasa, of the crucifixes around the pillager’s necks, of his Ayesha contorted against the white sheets, her blood drained from her. He rubs his cheek against Guillermo’s limp hand, and lets it fall to his familiar’s side.
“Please,” he says, again, and Nandor meets his eyes. The building is cutting off the moonlight, so half of Guillermo’s face is cast in shadow, the white light only catching highlights of the dark blood falling from his lips.
He reaches under the Guillermo’s collar, and rips away his crucifix, hissing when it makes contact with his skin. It goes clattering across the gravel, disappearing down the alley. He turns back to his familiar, and places one hand on his face to tilt his head, and the other on Guillermo’s shoulder, fingers spread across his collarbone, feeling the faint beating of his heart.
Any other time, any other day, any other person: the sight of blood leaking from their mouth, a human so entirely helpless, eyes wide with fear… Nandor would’ve felt powerful, ravenous, brutal. With Guillermo shuddering in front of him, struggling to keep his eyes open, stained and wounded, Nandor feels weak. He feels powerless. He feels like a fourteen year old in the army, standing shoulder to shoulder with men twice his height. He noses at Guillermo’s pulse in his neck, the scent of blood intertwined with his aftershave, and presses a chaste kiss into his skin. He hears Guillermo inhale softly, and then Nandor digs his teeth in.
Guillermo thrashes, involuntarily, and Nandor keeps his hand steady on his shoulder, pinning him down, holding him still. He feels Guillermo’s other hand come up to steady himself on Nandor’s hair, pulling hard as Nandor sucks blood from his neck.
Nandor pulls away, loosening Guillermo’s grip on the back of his head, and resists the urge to admire his handiwork, or clean it up. He digs his teeth into his wrist and offers it up to Guillermo, who looks at him, wounded and exhausted, before he latches his mouth onto the thin skin, and sucks. Nandor inhales sharply, unsure of how long it’s been since the last time he felt this sensation.
After what feels like all eight centuries of his life, and simultaneously less than a second, Guillermo’s body goes lax, his mouth loosens from Nandor’s wrist, and his head falls back, towards the brick wall of the alleyway behind him. Nandor protects his head, and twists his body so he’s laying on his side. He wipes his mouth clean, and spits out the remnants of Guillermo’s blood on his tongue. It’s bitter. He reaches forward, and runs the back of his hand over Guillermo’s face, tracing his fingers over his jaw, dragging his nails against the hot skin. The thought of that skin slowly cooling, his heart slowly stopping, his smile turning fanged, makes Nandor nauseous.
He stands, and brushes over his cloak, dislodging the gravel pebbles. He lifts Guillermo easily, one arm under the crook of his knee and the other wrapped around his shoulder, and starts to make his way home. Snow is beginning to fall now, white wisps of ice catching in the dark curls of Guillermo’s hair, melting against the blushed curve of his cheek. Nandor feels tears fighting their way out of his eyes as Guillermo buries his face into Nandor’s chest, slinging his arm across his master’s shoulder.
When he arrives home, Nandor kicks the door open with one foot to immediate protests by his roommates. He stomps up the stairs to Guillermo’s room, not bothering to remove his shoes or his coat, and lays his familiar over the bedsheets. His blood has dried against his throat, against his chin, stark lines of red against his tan complexion. Nandor’s head is ringing, vision going fuzzy, so much so that he doesn’t realise his roommates are in the room, speaking to him, until he feels the sudden weight of Nadja’s hand on his shoulder.
“Nandor…” she whispers, but he can’t turn to look at her. He can only look at Guillermo, his poor, sweet Guillermo, who has achieved his life’s ambition of vampirism. Nadja is saying something to him but he can’t hear it.
“I need to go,” Nandor says, and so he does. He pushes past Colin Robinson and Laszlo, and no-one stops him when he bursts out the front door and flutters away into the night.
The night is still young when he leaves, and when Nadja finds him hours later the day is no closer to breaking. He sits on the ledge of a duplex terrace, looking out over the millions of lights shining below him, cutting through the steady haze of white snow. Nandor hears her before he sees her, and doesn’t need to turn around to confirm his suspicions.
“How is Guillermo?” He asks.
Nadja doesn’t say anything. She comes and sits beside him, her legs pointed inwards, towards the fire exit, body twisted to face Nandor.
“How are you?” She questions, instead.
It feels like a punch to the gut. He turns to her immediately, his eyes widening with panic.
“Is he dead?”
“He’s in the hospital.”
“Is he dead?”
Nadja sighs, “Last I checked, no.” She looks away before turning back to Nandor with narrowed eyes. “He was close to dying. He just would not stop bleeding.”
Nandor looks back out over the towering buildings, and then back down at his shaking hands. He clenches them into fists, his nails cutting crescents into the cool flesh of his palm. “I turned him.”
Nadja sighs again, this time more deeply. “You can’t turn a Van Helsing. They’re immune to it.”
“What?”
“Laszlo went and looked in the library. Apparently it is common knowledge.”
There’s a pregnant pause, only the whirring sound of wind and cars passing by down below to fill the silence. Nandor isn’t sure whether the snow has picked up speed, or whether the sudden ringing in his ears is a product of his own mind. Regardless, the world seems to spin a little faster below him, and the clumps of snow seem to weigh down his eyelashes further.
“Laszlo also said, er,” Nadja says. “That drinking Van Helsing blood makes you turn human.”
It feels like she has turned to Nandor and ripped open his chest with her bare hands, tore apart his ribcage and is holding his still heart in the cusp of her palm. Nandor turns to her, sees her eyes shining in the low light, her pale skin catching the light from the fire exit.
“You are lying.”
She rolls her eyes. “I usually like to fuck with you but I feel sort of bad right now, and I’m not that much of an arse.”
A moment passes where all either of them can do is stare at each other.
“Come home, Nandor,” she says, voice quiet, “He will want you there when he’s back. Then we can figure out what to do.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, and lets out a shaky exhale. He doesn’t know why this always happens around Nadja specifically – but the tears begin to trickle out before he can stop them, and he feels the lump forming just behind his tongue to the point where if he speaks he’s afraid he’ll start sobbing.
“Oh, Nandor,” she says, the picture of exasperated fondness. Nandor opens his eyes to look at her, and her gaze is soft, sympathetic almost, and she’s wringing her hands in her lap, mouth twisted into a frown.
He’s suddenly, brutally, reminded of his sister. Her face is lost to time, the sound of her voice long forgotten, a million other morphed faces and expressions taking her place over the centuries. Yet, looking at Nadja sitting hardly a foot away from him, looking lost and confused and concerned, the feeling of his sister’s body tucked against his on the charpoy, the sound of her voice clear as she sung out lullabies comes to mind.
He wonders if she lived a good life, if she thought about him, if she tried to find him. He wonders if she was lonely when he left, after his mother and his father. He wonders if she thought about him while she was dying, and wished that he was well.
He wonders where he was while she was old and frail and sick. Still as young as the day he left, probably in bed with an assortment of men and women, fangs probably stained with blood.
Eight centuries, and this is how it ends. With a small boy in an alleyway, soaked through with blood, the light leaving his eyes. His Guillermo.
“I will come home,” Nandor says, voice brusque, “But I need to go somewhere first.”
“Promise me you won’t do anything fucking stupid,” Nadja replies, and reaches over to put her hand over his, “I am very sort of scared of Gizmo, and I need you to keep him tame.”
Nandor doesn’t say anything. He turns into a bat, and takes off again. He doesn’t turn back until he comes to the front of a building he has passed by only a few times in the last century, but one that has burned its imprint into the back of his mind.
It’s a small building, and when he walks in all Nandor can think is that it smells like home. The scented oils of his childhood, the paperbound books and stands, the smell of soap wafting from the washroom. Nandor had suspected his very entrance into the building to set off the itch beneath his skin, but he feels surprisingly calm.
He’s standing by the door observing a couple of men prostrating when another comes to stand in front of him, and offers a large smile.
“Assalaamu-alaikum,” he greets, and that does set Nandor’s eye twitching a little, “Are you here for Isha?”
Nandor shakes his head, suddenly struck mute, unable to put into words why he’s here. How does he explain, to the man in front of him, standing in a plain white tunic and kind eyes, that he’s come to ask the God he hasn’t spoken to in centuries why now?
“Are you okay?” He asks.
“Yes,” Nandor manages to spit out, “I was just… lost. I am lost.”
The man’s eyes soften. “Do you need someone to talk to?”
The kindness somehow feels worse than Nadja’s revelation less than an hour ago. Nandor tries to maintain his composure, but feels a tear slip across his cheek regardless, an unspoken betrayal. The man reaches forward and places his hand on Nandor’s shoulder.
“I’m Fawad,” he says, “You’re cold. Come and sit in my room. We can talk after I finish praying.”
“Okay.”
Fawad lets go of his shoulder, and smiles at him softly. “What’s your name?”
Nandor exhales shakily. “Nadir.”
“Come on, Nadir, my room is just there.”
True to his word, Nandor takes a seat just behind a desk in the room. There are no pictures on the walls, only small fabric scrolls of verses in Arabic that Nandor has long forgotten how to read. The shelves are full of both Arabic and English texts, ranging from biographies to translations to theologies from different schools of thought. Nandor studies them from where he sits in the chair, flexing his fist against the worn leather arm of the seat, trying to ignore how his skin feels like it's on fire.
Fawad returns soon after, and takes a seat opposite him. He pours Nandor a glass of water into a plastic cup from the vase on his desk, and pushes it towards him.
“So,” Fawad says, forearms resting on the desk, palms splayed upwards, playing with the ring on his finger, “Is everything okay? You said you were lost.”
Nandor nods. “I am lost. I have been lost for a long time.”
Fawad nods politely, and gestures for Nandor to continue, so he does, “I have not been to a… place of worship, in many years. Not since my wife died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Fawad says, “Is that when you lost your faith?”
Nandor thinks about that for a moment, before he shakes his head. “I do not know that I ever had it in the first place. I was a soldier. I have seen so much death and destruction. I have caused so much terror and pain.”
“ Al-Ghaffar, Al-Rahman, ” Fawad says, “The All Forgiving, the All Merciful. Allah will accept your repentance if you give it. He has mercy for all his creation.”
Nandor shakes his head. “Not me. He has cursed me.”
“Cursed?”
“He left me for years, to suffer… to suffer and lose and live in fear of the sun. Then today, of all days, he grants me the forgiveness I asked for centuries ago. He did not save the person I wanted to save, the person I loved, he did not give them what they wanted, but me instead. Why? I have not prayed to him since I was a child. I have done terrible things with no remorse.”
Fawad rolls his ring around his finger, and speaks gently, “He forgives. It is all a test. You can find peace. If not in Allah, then where else?”
Nandor thinks, where else? He thinks of his mother’s smile, of his sister’s laugh. He thinks of Laszlo playing the piano and Nadja singing along, of Colin Robinson’s bright eyes. He thinks of Guillermo, his Guillermo, gentle and kind and murderous, courageous. He thinks of the pile of bodies he and Guillermo have worked their way through in the past 10 years, and the God that allowed that to happen. He thinks of the red beams of sun over the horizon of Al-Quolnidar, of the sand between his toes, of Guillermo’s crucifix.
“Guillermo is hurt,” he says suddenly, looking up to meet Fawad’s eyes, “I have been hurting him for years.”
Fawad seems unaffected by his outburst, and offers him a smile. “It’s never too late to realise your mistakes. Ask for his forgiveness, and don’t expect him to give it.” He draws his hands back into his lap. “You’re a good man, Nadir, I can tell.”
“I am not,” Nandor protests, voice small, “I have not told you all of what I have done. You would not say that if you knew.”
“Your mistakes aren’t the most important thing about you.”
Nandor stares at him for a moment, and then looks above his head at the Arabic verse emblazoned on fabric and pinned to the wall. He thinks of Ayesha, pale and lifeless, body twisted out against the white sheets, leaking blood from her neck.
“Maybe,” he says.
III.
When Nandor arrives in Guillermo’s bedroom, the sky is beginning to pale. He draws the curtains shut, and wraps a spare blanket around the curtain rod. In his bed, Guillermo is pale and drawn, breath coming out in short huffs, dark purple bruises beneath his eyes. The wounds on his neck are no less visible with time, although the excess blood has been cleaned. From where he’s laying beneath his duvet, Nandor can’t see the bandages wrapped tightly around his abdomen, but he doesn’t doubt that they are there.
Nandor sits on the edge of Guillermo’s bed, watching him. There’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his hair is damp and limp from being snowed on and sweat through. His eyelashes are dark against his skin, fanning out across the high planes of his cheekbones. Nandor reaches out, against his better instinct, and runs the tip of his finger across the bone, feeling the warmth of Guillermo’s skin beneath his touch. It feels like absolution.
He has not found God in a place of worship for over seven hundred years. The last ten has granted him a new kind of ministry, written in the dark brown eyes of a vampire slayer. The slant of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the plane of his chest – salvation in the hollow of his throat, in his bruised knuckles, in his scarred abdomen. Guillermo’s eyes flutter open, and Nandor takes his hand away, watching as his familiar’s eyes come into focus on his face.
He smacks his lips, then says softly, “I feel like shit.”
Nandor could cry out of relief, but he just smiles. He’s been wrung dry over the last few hours.
“Aziz-am,” Nandor mumbles, and runs his knuckles across Guillermo’s cheek, “You scared me.”
“Aziz-am,” Guillermo repeats, clunkily, “What does that mean?”
“Stupid idiot,” Nandor supplies, ignoring how his familiar’s eyes narrow, “Are you in pain?”
“A little bit,” he says, diverting his eyes as Nandor moves his hand away, “More emotional at this point.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Nadja told me about the whole Van Helsing vampire thing at the hospital. Leave it up to me to choose the only aspiration in the world I physically can't do.”
“That is not true,” Nandor says, “There are many aspirations you cannot achieve. I do not think you could beat Simon Bile in gymnastics, for example.”
Guillermo smirks. “Simone Biles. It’s a woman.”
“I should have guessed,” Nandor says, “Women are always more flexible than men.”
“Is that scientific?”
“It is from 750 years worth of experience, Guillermo.”
“Sure.” There’s a moment of silence, where all they can do is look at each other. “Can you help me sit up?”
Nandor reaches forward, and places a hand at Guillermo’s back to help adjust him upright. He takes the pillows out from underneath him and fluffs them, then stands them vertically to support his spine. Guillermo leans back into them with a curious expression on his face.
“What?” Nandor asks.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“Ye-es,” Nandor replies.
He watches Guillermo adjust himself, wincing lightly as he moves, clutching his hand to his stomach. Nandor reaches forward to help, but Guillermo raises a hand, sighing in relief when he finally straightens appropriately.
“You really didn’t want to turn me into a vampire, huh?”
“It is a curse. I have told you this.”
“I’m not a child. I know it’s a curse.”
Nandor feels anger bubble up inside him. “You do not know anything. You would miss the sun, your family and your friends and eating normal food.”
“Why do you even care if I missed the sun when I’m a vampire?”
“Because I care about you, you fool!” Nandor yells, “You do not have one… one scrap of an idea, how much I care about you. Do you, Guillermo? Do you know?” Guillermo stays silent, eyes widening. “No, you don’t.”
“Nandor…”
“I was bloodthirsty in my human life. I did not use my teeth but the blade of a sword. I left my wife to bleed out on the sheets. I left all my children behind. I ran away and hid from the world. God was not kind to me because I was not kind to his creation. Vampirism is punishment. He has offered you deliverance.”
Guillermo places his hand on Nandor’s thigh. Nandor takes it and shuffles closer, bringing it up to lay flat on his chest, where his heart should be beating, and speaks lowly.
“I have done bad things, terrible things. Maybe I deserve to be cursed forever. But your Van Helsing blood is going to make me human again, instead. The last eight centuries have been leading me to you, Jāné del-am. Guillermo, my Guillermo, I am sorry. I am sorry I was not a better master to you, and… and that I could not do what I promised you I would. I take full responsibility.”
Nandor watches as tears begin to drip down Guillermo’s face. His hands fist into the sheets, holding back the urge to reach forward and wipe them away. “Please, do not cry.”
“Fuck you,” Guillermo mumbles. “Fuck you, Nandor.”
Nandor blinks at him, disbelieving. “What?”
Guillermo fists his hand into the material of Nandor’s shirt and pulls him closer, until there’s barely an inch of space between them. His breath is warm where it fans over Nandor’s face, and his dark eyes are aimed towards Nandor’s lips.
“You waited twelve years and a failed vampire turning to give me the most romantic speech I’ve ever heard in my life,” he whispers, “So, shut up. Shut up and kiss me, you dickhead.”
Nandor stays very still for a moment, and then the dam breaks. He takes Guillermo’s face in his own, warmth flooding the cool skin of his palms, and then he leans forward and captures his familiar’s lips with his own, listening to the soft sigh of relief Guillermo lets out when their lips finally meet. Guillermo’s hands find his shoulders, and pull him closer, and Nandor lets his hands snake around until they find the soft, short hairs at the nape of his human’s neck. He sucks on Guillermo’s bottom lip and drags it out over his fangs, relishing in the small whine it elicits from Guillermo. He licks at the seam of his lips and pushes his tongue forward, and tightens his hands in Guillermo’s hair.
When he pulls away, Guillermo’s lips are red and kiss-bitten, eyes wild and shiny. Nandor brings his thumbs to smooth over the space behind Guillermo’s jaw, feeling the soft skin there.
“My sweet Guillermo,” he whispers, scanning over all his features, from his wide eyes to his parted lips to the dimple on his chin, “I would live the last eight centuries all over again to be here with you now.”
He reaches up to wipe at the tear that slips over Guillermo’s cheek. “Do not cry.”
“Oh– fuck,” Guillermo laughs and looks up, blinking furiously, before he directs his gaze back to Nandor. “You can say all these romantic things because you’re so old. How am I supposed to compare to that?”
“I would rather you did not,” Nandor says, stroking his calloused thumb over Guillermo’s cheek. “I am feeling quite special now.”
Guillermo leans his forehead against Nandor’s, arm coming to loop around his waist, the other coming to rest over his phantom heart. He could stay here forever, he thinks, warm and cared for and repentant, his very own River Jordan, water in his lungs and in his soul, burning him alive, letting him cough up long-held curses. Guillermo’s soft smile feels like seeing the sun come over the horizon after years of darkness.