Title: Feed the Hunger
Author: homesweethomicide13
Rating: M for blood and death
Pairing: Barda x Doom
Warning: Blood, death, violence, sexual scenes
Disclaimer: I don't own any recognizable characters.
Summary: A kidnapped young man sits and listens as his captor tells him the story of what made him what he is. Yaoi.

Author's Note: Inspired by Interview with the Vampire.

Feed the Hunger

When young Johan Winters slipped unnoticed out of his home despite his father's words of warning, he had no idea of what he would find himself caught up in. It was the middle of winter, when the nights were long and dark. The air brought with it a deathly chill and a sense of foreboding evil. Johan tugged the collar of his coat further around his exposed neck to keep the cold out, and hunched his shoulders up. He didn't know where he was going exactly, but he decided he'd go wherever his mind took him. It wasn't the first time he'd wandered around with no real purpose, and he knew it wouldn't be the last. His father thought him strange, for he was always so curious about anything unusual. He had been banned from watching the news broadcasts, because if anything out of the ordinary popped up, he'd be off to investigate whatever it was. His father rarely brought any work friends to his house to watch the latest football game or for a few beers, because Johan would pummel them with questions until they got uncomfortable and left. But he couldn't help it. He was a curious young man; it made him who it was. Of course, he'd always been told that his curiosity would be the death of him. Curiosity killed the cat, after all.

"Thank god I'm not a cat." Johan murmured to himself as he strode past the tall spines of the iron fence that bordered the abandoned cemetery. Johan had always wanted to go in there and explore the old graves that were by now so thickly covered with moss and lichens that they were unreadable. But each time he had stepped up to the pointed spires of the main gate, a sense of dread filled him from head-to-toe, and he always ended up walking away. There were so many strange stories surrounding the cemetery, and none of them ended nicely. Johan's curiosity had seen to it that he knew everything about those stories, and they filled him with a cold fear.

His pace sped up slightly as he neared the thick darkness beside the edge of the cemetery. The large awning of an alley stood silent beside the iron fence, so dark that in only a few steps you would lose your sight completely. Johan himself had tested this one night. He'd ventured off the pavement with his hands outstretched, and in but three steps he had lost sight of his hands. He couldn't see within an inch of his face. And he had stopped walking, standing still in the darkness. Without another word, he had turned and left the alley. He had never gone near it since. If he were to walk past it at night, he would all but run.

For some reason, when he neared the blackness he was so uncomfortable with, he did not feel the need to run. Instead, he stopped right in front of it and turned to gaze into the dark. No traffic came by this quiet street, and pedestrians were all safely tucked away in their homes. Johan was quite alone on the street. And in the quiet that followed, he heard the faintest of sounds within the darkness. His body tensed up and he searched the dark in front of him. His heart skipped a beat when something moved. He felt it rather than saw it, which made it all the worse. Something was in there, he knew it. But what?

The logical side of him said it was probably a cat, or a rat. Some small creature that simply meant no harm. A creature that liked the darkness of the alley. He was certainly right about that last part.

"Hello? Is someone there?" He called out. It was more to make him feel less uncomfortable in the silence than anything else; for he was sure he would get no reply. Something seemed to swipe at his face, and he stumbled forward two steps. The darkness swarmed around him like a nightmare cloak, and his heart began to race. Why had he come this way? Why couldn't he have stuck to the main roads like his father had told him to? And then he saw it – movement in the blackness directly ahead of him. "Who's there?" Now there was a reply. Slowly, a quiet laugh reached Johan's ears, gradually getting louder. The laugh was dark and menacing.

"Do you really want to know?" The voice that followed was like silk, slipping gracefully through the night air towards him. The accent hinted at some European country, perhaps in the Russia region. Johan didn't answer – perhaps couldn't answer, for shortly after the voice spoke, the sound of footsteps filled the quiet, and Johan found himself frozen to the spot. And then he saw him. It was the eyes he saw at first, two gleaming emerald orbs in the darkness. The man stepped forward and Johan saw the pale face framed with a mane of silky dark hair. He was dressed in a rich black suit and a long cape lined with the same colour as his eyes. Johan wanted to take a step back, wanted to run, but his legs were frozen. The strange man took in the fright of the young man and smiled, showing off pearly white teeth, some of which were sloped down into a point. The moment Johan saw these, his legs jumped into co-operation and he turned to run, only to find that in a mere second, the man had managed to move to the entrance of the alley.

"How?" Johan gasped out as he stared up into the pale face of the man. "How did you do that?" The laugh came again, less menacing than before, and more amused.

"The same as you. Only… faster." He spoke in a rich, deep voice that Johan couldn't help but admire. Before he could say anything further, the man lurched forward and grabbed him by the shoulders, and all went black.

When Johan came to, he was no longer in the alley. He was still in the dark, and was lying on something soft and silky to the touch. A small pillow rested behind his head. Frowning slightly, he tried to sit up, but cracked his head on something just above him. Cursing at the pain, he lifted his hands and tried to find what it was. When his hands touched wood, he figured he was beneath a table or something. His hands moved further down, but he couldn't find where the wood ended. Curious, he lifted one leg and his blood ran cold as his boot clunked against more wood. He tried to move to the side, only to find himself confined by more wood. It was the same on his other side, and above his head. When his boots kicked at another board of wood at his feet, realization kicked in and he began to panic.

"A coffin! I'm in a coffin!" He gasped in between quick breaths. "Help! Please!" He cried out, banging on the wood above his head, writhing around in panic. He did this until his throat was sore and his hands were torn and bleeding. Then he fell back against the silk lining and succumbed to his fate. A tear rolled down his cheek and he bit back a harsh sob. Crying would not help him now. Nothing would. He was about to finally give in to the death he was sure was coming when he heard footsteps from somewhere outside the coffin. And then there came a scraping sound, and a sliver of light broke through the darkness. The lid of the coffin was thrown down and Johan bolted upright, staring at the man who had come to his aid. His hopes were dashed as familiar green eyes stared down at him in amusement.

"Nice of you to wake up, Johan." Johan didn't question how he knew his name. If he was correct in his assumption, this man was a vampire, the fabled creatures of the night. They could find out anything they wished to know. "I was beginning to think I'd lost you."

"Where am I?" Johan asked, looking around the room.

"You're in a stone crypt in the heart of the old cemetery." The man told him. "You're in my home, so watch your tongue."

"Why did you bring me here? Are you going to kill me?" He questioned. The man chuckled.

"I suppose I am, but you need not worry about that just now." He gestured Johan to get out of the coffin, and the young man did so instantly. "Take a look around, Johan, and tell me what you see." Johan let his gaze wander around the large crypt, and his eyes fell upon another large coffin against the farthest wall.

"Is that yours?" He found himself asking. He wondered why it was so much bigger than the one he had been in.

"It is mine, yes. It is larger than most because it once belonged to another vampire, also." Johan shivered. Could this vampire read his thoughts, too?

"But now it is only yours? What happened," Johan gazed down at the large coffin, "to the other vampire?"

"All in good time, my friend." The man turned and smiled at him. It was an eerie sight. "All in good time." Johan now noticed that the man had removed the cape he had been wearing, and also his jacket. A rich green shirt accentuated his slim frame nicely. "I wasn't always a vampire. I was a mortal young man, just like yourself." He smiled wistfully. "Until I met a man that would change my life forever."

"How did you become a vampire?" The eyes were back upon him now.

"Do you really want to know?" Johan was reminded of the last time he heard those exact words, sometime earlier when he had first come across this man. "Very well. I see no harm in telling you my story. I suppose I should introduce myself to begin with. My name is Jarred Hill, and I was born in a time long before your ancestors were born. I have lived many centuries; I have witnessed first hand the world evolving. I have seen the rise of technology, and the fall of mankind's morals. I was a curious young man, just like yourself. Perhaps I was a little older when I was born into the darkness, perhaps a little younger. But age does not matter in this age of darkness. I am centuries old and yet my face is still the image of youth. Age does not affect me. Sickness and death are no worries of mine. I am an immortal, set to live upon this earth until it is no more." Jarred smiled again, quick and wily. "Perhaps I should begin with how I met the man who would give me this ever-lasting life…

I remember it all too clearly. It was a dark night at the beginning of winter; I was walking through the town market towards my home. I was alone in the world, my parents having died when I was young. I held no interest for the whores that flaunted themselves on the streets, and merely passed them by. Female company is not what I longed for. I longed for the rush of being in love, the joyous feeling one experiences when besotted to another. A quick night with a dirty woman is not what I wanted. I was walking along the dirt track towards the house I owned when a strange man stepped out from the tall grass at the side of the road. I was startled. I had never expected anyone to be out here this late. He stood there, watching me with a strange smile on his face. I remember that I was intrigued by the way he moved, the way he dressed and the way in which he stood. He radiated brilliance, elegance, and beauty.

"Who are you?" I called to him. He walked towards me – glided over the ground. He fascinated me from the very start. Before I knew what was happening, he had me pinned against a tree and his face was bent to my neck. I panicked, thinking that I was going to meet my end mere yards from the safety of my home. I felt his breath on my neck, and I was confused because the breath was icy cold.

"I do like a young man as a savoury treat." He murmured in a smooth, deep voice. It was a beautiful voice, with an unusual accent that I had never heard before. He lifted his head briefly and my eyes locked with eyes. He had the most beautiful eyes – a rich, deep sapphire that seemed to glow in the darkness. I opened my mouth to plead for my life, but I ended up saying something completely different instead.

"You're beautiful." I whispered, taking in his facial features. He looked no older than myself, with high cheekbones and full, pale salmon lips. His hair was long, dark and tied back out of his face. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but before I could do so, he was gone. Disappeared without a trace.

I spent the next few days looking for him. I searched in every tavern in the city I lived in, but I could not find him. After the fourth day, I had given up any hopes of finding that mysterious stranger again. But then he came.

I was already in my bed, just gone to rest. I felt his presence in the dark corners of my bedchamber, and I sat up in my four-poster bed, trying to peer through the lace curtains that I had drawn around the bed for privacy.

And then I saw him. He stepped out from the darkness and ripped back the curtains, giving me a full view of him. He was just as beautiful as I remembered him to be. No words were exchanged yet. We merely observed each other in silence. Quick as a flash he was towering over me on the bed – he had moved so fast I had not seen it happen. I knew now that he wasn't human – couldn't be human. And I could not stop the question before it came out.

"What are you?" I murmured. I do not know why I felt the need to be quiet. The smile that graced his face was glorious – he had such a beautiful smile.

"Nothing," he murmured back, taking my hand and bringing it to his lips, kissing it lightly before turning it so my palm was pressed against his lips, "but a vampire." He pressed his lips to my wrist as he spoke, and the intimacy of the gesture had my heart racing. This news did not frighten me as I thought it would, because for some reason I knew he would not harm me. If he had wanted to kill me, he would have done so that first night. As I stared into those sapphire eyes, I found myself falling into them, getting so lost that I found myself being seduced.

I did not resist when he leant down and kissed me. In fact, I returned it with all my soul. I did not stop even when my tongue caught one of his fangs and drew blood. I knew he tasted the blood, for he pulled back and diverted his attention to the rest of my body. Sexual experiences were new to me, and even now I see how fitting it was for my first experience to be with death itself. He made love to me that night, slow and passionate. I let him take me – wanted him to take me. He was careful not to bite too hard upon my flesh, which I took for granted that night. Now, however, I admire how much self restraint he had. If I had a living, bleeding mortal at my hands I would not be able to stop myself from taking what my body longed for.

When I woke the next morning I was alone. All that remained of our passionate night was the rumpled, stained sheets and the feeling deep inside of me that I could not name at that moment. I didn't do much that day. All I could think of was that beautiful man, whose name I had yet to learn. I waited for him that night, and the night after, but he did not come. Not until the third night. He returned to my room, the same way he had come to me before, and we shared another night together. I learnt his name that night, and he learnt mine, though I still believe he already knew it.

Once again, he was gone in the morning. It became routine for us – he would come two times a week, and we would make love beneath the stars, and he would leave before dawn. He never told me where he disappeared to, and I never asked. We were close, very close. I suppose you could call us lovers, but it went beyond that. The feeling deep inside of me that I could not name at first gradually became something I could not ignore, and I then knew it for what it was.

I was in love. I had fallen in love with the beautiful Barda. His visits were the only things I looked forward to over the months that followed. I knew he was a killer, but it did not change my view of him. I even discovered him feeding one night, and it did not faze me. In fact, I helped him hide the corpse of the young whore he had fed from. The sight of him with blood dripping down his chin sent my heart racing. We made love right there in the forest. And then it happened. Perhaps it was the rush of the blood he had recently fed from, or because we were outside in the thick darkness of nature. Whatever it was, he temporarily forgot what I was to him. When he lifted my wrist to his mouth I thought nothing of it – he would often plant kisses upon the pulse found there. He would even nip the skin gently, and so when he bared his fangs I did nothing. But when I felt the searing pain tear up my arm, I knew something was amiss.

"Barda!" I cried out, and he jerked violently away from me, blood fresh in his mouth and on his lips. I cradled my wrist to my chest, staring at him with frightened eyes. He looked horrified that he had harmed me on purpose, and took off into the night.

I did not see him for many weeks after. I began to worry, because I missed him and I instantly believed someone had found out what he was and tried to do him harm. I searched for him everywhere, cursing myself for not asking him where he slept during the day. And then I found him. It was approaching dawn when I stumbled into the graveyard and saw him lying outside a crypt. I ran to him, tears springing into my eyes. I feared the worst. But he was still alive – as alive as he could be considering he was the undead – and I dragged his weak body into the crypt out of the sunlight that would soon flood the graveyard. I closed the stone door and looked around me.

That was when I saw the coffin against the wall. This was where he slept. I picked him up and carried him to the coffin, setting him down inside it and kneeling beside him. He stirred then, opening his eyes and gazing up at me. I remember how weak he looked, how his eyes no longer held the same sparkle.

"J-Jarred?" He asked, surprised. I touched his face, feeling how cold he was. This was not unusual – his skin was always cold, but never this icy. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to find you, Barda." I told him. "How long has it been since you fed?" He was so pale and weak. I knew he'd been without blood for a long time.

"I… cannot recall. I never meant to harm you." It hit me that he probably hadn't fed since he had tasted my blood that night. I felt horribly guilty. His eyes fluttered closed in exhaustion and I stood up, trying to decide what to do about it. My eyes fell upon a small knife in the corner of the crypt, and an idea hit me. Before my mind could comprehend what I was doing, I had taken the knife and cut into my wrist. I walked back to where Barda lay and held the wound to his mouth.

"Drink, Barda. Feed the hunger." The blood dripped into his mouth and he took hold of my wrist, drinking deeply. I ignored the pain, watching as colour began to return to his face. After a moment, he pushed my arm away and lay there, breathing heavily and licking his lips.

"Why?" He asked me. I tore a strip of cloth from my shirt and bandaged the wound up tight.

"Because you need to feed." I said quietly. "And because I care about you." It was the first time I had ever said it aloud. I knew he was surprised because he said nothing. He sat up in his coffin, which I was pleased to see. It meant that his strength was returning.

"I could have killed you." The smile that came to my face was gentle and easy.

"No. You wouldn't kill me." My confidence and trust in him made him return the smile. Silence fell between us. I eyed the coffin curiously, noting how it seemed too big for one man.

"Perhaps you would like to join me?" Barda asked with another smile. I met his gaze and moved closer. Our lips met briefly before I felt him slowly pulling me into the coffin. Taking the hint, I climbed in beside him and he lay down, watching me as I settled down beside him. We were closely entwined together, my head resting in the crook of his neck, my body curled around his. His lips were in my hair, and I knew then that I never wanted to part from him.

"Barda?" It was a big decision for me to make, but I did not want it any other way.

"Yes, my love?" Warmth spread throughout me at his words. I reached up and kissed him.

"Let me join you in your darkness." His eyes widened and he lifted his head to stare down at me in shock.

"No, my love. No… Jarred I could not do that to you." I frowned.

"Then you would rather watch my body age and die, and be apart from me?" I was hurt that he did not want to be with me for all eternity. His eyes darkened and he looked hurt, too.

"It is a life of hell, Jarred. Do you wish to be eternally young?"

"Yes, so long as I am with you."

And so he let me join him. He fed upon me, puncturing my neck and feeding upon my blood. The pain was great, but the closeness and the intimacy were making up for it. I groaned aloud, but not in pain. It felt so good to be drained by him. I was disappointed when he stopped.

"I have drained you to the point of death, Jarred." He whispered to me. "And now you will feed from me." He bit into his own wrist and offered it to me. The blood tasted good – too good. I grabbed his wrist and sated the first hunger that hit me. I drank until he pulled his wrist away – and the pain hit. "Your body is dying. Do not be frightened. I am here for you, always."

It was horrible, to feel my body dying. But once it was over, I felt refreshed. I saw the world with new eyes. Vampire eyes. I would be forever young, beside my beautiful Barda. We made love in his coffin, several times. And then we slept.

When I woke I had a terrible hunger, unlike any I had ever experienced. I knew that Barda would teach me the ways of the vampire. I finally discovered where he had come from to acquire his unique accent. He said it was up north, in a country in the Scandinavian region. I loved his voice – so soft and silky, and so lustrous. When the night was in full swing, we left the crypt.

We were going out to feed.

It didn't take us long to find two willing whores to break away from the rest, and we took them away into the darkness, telling them that we wanted to go somewhere quiet and secluded with them. I watched Barda walk away with his whore to a small copse of trees not far away, and I directed my whore in the opposite direction. I pushed her up against a tree and lowered my face to her neck. I could see the blood pumping through her throat, and the scent of it was driving me crazy. She didn't have time to scream as I plunged my fangs into her pretty little neck and drained her.

I stumbled away from her corpse, blood dripping from my fangs. I don't know how exactly I managed to find him, but I was suddenly in Barda's arms. He licked the blood from my lips, eyes gleaming. I knew he was proud of me, proud of my first kill. The blood excited us both.

Every night since then, we would go out and feed upon whores and unsuspecting men and women. We would kill two or three a night, sometimes whole families. And each time we returned to our crypt home, our passionate screams would fill the air.

One night, Barda and I parted ways to feed, something we never did. He promised that he would have a surprise waiting for me when I returned, and I believed him, and went off on my own. I was fully satisfied when I came back, having killed four already. When I entered the crypt, the sight that met me filled me with such lust that you could probably smell it. Barda had filled our tin bathtub with blood, and was lying in it, the blood coating his beautiful body. He extended a hand towards me and smiled.

"Come and join me, my love." In seconds I had torn the clothes from my body and I pounced upon him, blood splashing over the sides of the tub. Our lips met, fangs clashing together in a fierce kiss. He raked his pointed nails down my back, leaving open wounds which quickly healed over. Our blood-soaked bodies writhed together, sending courses of unimaginable pleasure flowing through me. Somehow, he managed to flip us over so that he towered above me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist almost instantly.

His head lowered and he bit into my neck, gripping my waist tightly. I arched into him, head thrown back into the blood. When he lifted his head again, blood covered most of his face. I reared up and licked the blood from his cheek, slowly cleansing him. Our lips met once again and he thrust powerfully into me. Our love-making was often rough and violent, something we had both become used to, but it was never anything like this. The blood drove us on, to the brink of madness. When we both released in unison, I blacked out. When I came to, I was lying beside Barda in our coffin, clean of any blood. My whole body still shook from the power of our recent session. The lid of the coffin had been pulled down over us, which meant that daylight had risen over the cemetery.

I would forever hold the memory of the blood bath close in my heart and mind. I can still see him, lying amongst the blood, hand outstretched towards me. It still sends shivers through my body.

The years passed like minutes. Before long, fifty years had passed and we still remained in our crypt. We had not aged at all. We still remained in our youth. No one noticed that we did not age, for anyone who got close enough was killed almost immediately. Vampires have to be cautious, after all. Though death cannot touch us by mortal hands, we are still in grave danger of being discovered. Barda told me of a vampire he knew, Glock I think his name was, who was discovered by mortals and left chained outside in full view of the sky. He was guarded by many men and women, and when the sun rose, he was killed.

We were careful about our kills. We would never kill near our home, and we would disguise the bodies carefully. Somehow, we were discovered. I do not know how it was so, but we had to leave our crypt.

Barda took me to his home country, which would soon become the land you should know as Finland. We remained there for a whole century, extra cautious. We met with no other vampires, although Barda told me that many vampires once lived there.

It was towards the end of the 100 years we lived there that I found the little boy upon the brink of death. I wanted to end his misery once and for all, and so I picked him up and fed on him. Barda found me and saw what I had done. For some reason, he was terribly angry. He tore the child from my arms and set him down, before turning on me, striking me in the face. I was shocked and hurt, because he had never shown intentional violence towards me.

He went back to the boy and put a hand to the pulse in his neck. I could tell from his eyes that the boy was dead.

"Why did you kill him? An innocent child?" He asked me. I was still so hurt that he had hit me. That's when I learnt the vampires actually could cry. I watched a tear slowly make its way down his face, and I walked over to him.

"He was dying, Barda. I thought I was helping him." I went to put a hand on his shoulder, but he jerked away from me.

"Never feast on a child again, Jarred." And with that, he left me there. When I returned to our home for rest, our coffin was closed. I opened the lid, only to have him pull it back down. Now I was awfully hurt. I ran down to the basement in our home and locked myself in there, and I cried. It was the first day I had spent alone since becoming a vampire. When dusk fell once more, I woke up and discovered I wasn't alone. I was lying with my head in Barda's lap, and his hands were in my hair.

"Barda?"

"I am sorry, my love." He was so sincere that I actually smiled. I sat up and gave him a quick kiss to let him know that I felt no hard feelings towards him, to let him know that he was forgiven. "It was cold in the coffin without you."

"Then next time I will be more stubborn." I smiled again, and he returned it. We fed together that night, and for many nights after.

After those long 100 years, we returned to our first home, the crypt in which I had become a vampire. Our coffin was returned to its spot against the far wall, and we felt at home again.

We spent many centuries there, watching the world age and evolve. We grew with it so we could blend in easily. The sights we saw will be forever planted in our minds. No other could imagine those things.

We witnessed the rights for gay marriage come into the world. It gave me an idea. I knew I would always love Barda, and though we had never exchanged the words, I knew there was a place in his heart for me. I would wait for the right time to put my idea into action.

Not long after this, Barda and I found two young children playing near our crypt. They looked like twins – a boy and a girl. The boy's eyes were blue, like Barda's, and the girl's were green, like my own. I had never gone near a child since the incident in Finland, because I did not want to hurt Barda again, but when the children saw us, they screamed. They couldn't possibly know what we were, but we clearly frightened them.

"We must." Barda murmured to me. I knew how hard it was for him to make this decision, and so we advanced on the children. Barda took the boy and I the girl, and we drained them to the point of death. "Wait." I looked up at Barda, confused. "I cannot kill this child." Our eyes locked and we both knew what we must do. Together we cut open our wrists and held the wound over the mouth of the child we had. And as both children drank deeply, we exchanged another glance.

We soon learnt that the boy was called Lief, and the girl Jasmine. We adopted them as our own, and taught them the ways of the vampire. Together the four of us polished off many, sometimes two or three families a night. We would never kill near our home, as always. Now that there were four of us, we had to be extra careful.

Many more years passed and I put my plan into action. I took Barda to the country of Canada, and in the dead of night, we were married. I remember the amused glance we had shared when we heard the line "in sickness and in health, till death do us part".

We were a proper family now. Lief and Jasmine were our children, who unfortunately would not age as normal children did. Because of this, they could not be schooled, and relied only on our teachings. It hurt both of us when they asked why they could not change like the other children.

It hurt Barda the most. I knew this because every time he looked upon our children, a sadness jumped into his eyes that I longed to be able to take away. He adored children – he had not wanted to bring them into our world.

Many women commented on how lovely our children were, and how nice of us it was to adopt. I wanted to protest and say that they actually were our children, but Barda always spoke first, thanking them for their kind words and saying how he could not have gone on knowing these two wonderful children were without a loving family, and so I went along with it.

But then it all went wrong. It was the eve of the millennium, and the four of us went out to feed together as a celebration of the 2000th year. Barda and I had just fed and were rejoining Lief and Jasmine, when a group of men seized the two children and carried them off. Barda and I followed silently, waiting for a chance to retrieve our dear children, and kill the men who had hold of them.

We followed them out into an open field, where we hid in the darkness. We watched as they tied the children to a large stake in the middle of the field, and stood on guard around it. Beside me, Barda choked out a gasp, tears shining in his eyes. We both knew what was going to happen to them.

Some of the men broke away, announcing that they were going in search of the 'two men who accompany these fiends'. They were coming for us. We returned to our crypt, closing the great stone door and hoping that they did not know where we remained. They did not find us there, for which we were grateful for. When dusk fell, we emerged cautiously, and made our way back to the field where Lief and Jasmine had been tied up.

They were still there, alone in the field, still tied to the stake. Before I could stop him, Barda had run out to them. I knew what had become of them from Barda's tale of the vampire Glock. It was true. The sun had turned their bodies to ash, which only crumbled away into a heap on the grass when Barda reached out to touch them. I felt his pain and he felt mine as we both cried for them. And then, just when I believed it couldn't get any worse, the same men came out of nowhere and ran at Barda, who was standing exposed in the field.

I could do nothing as they pinned him down and tied him up. I could do nothing as they struggled to hold him still. I am still ashamed of myself for what I did – I turned and I ran. I ran all the way back to the crypt and locked myself away there. I didn't emerge for a week, because I was terrified that if I did, I would meet with the same fate as the three whom I loved dearly.

Johan watched as a tear slipped down Jarred's cheek. The vampire turned to face him full-on and sighed.

"And so I remained in hiding for another few years, until I brought up the courage to come out into the town again. Tonight was my first night out. And do you know… it is the eve of the night I was born a vampire." Jarred smiled now, eerie and menacing. Johan felt panic rise in his chest, and he got the feeling that he was being watched – and not from Jarred.

"So did… did Barda… die? Like the others?" Johan wanted to stall Jarred for as long as possible, hoping that the vampire would change his mind about killing him.

"Why don't you see for yourself?" Jarred was no longer staring at him, but looking past him. Johan stiffened up as a shadow fell over him, and he turned slowly and looked up into a face that had been so deeply described to him that he did not need to be told who it was.

"You always did like to play with your food, Jarred." A Scandinavian accent met Johan's ears, and he found himself falling into deep, sapphire eyes. Johan could not move when fangs met his neck, and he fell unconscious to the floor. "Perhaps, on this special night, another blood bath is needed?" Jarred smiled at the man he would love for eternity.

"A blood bath would be nice, my beautiful Barda." The two vampires crossed the room and met in the middle, clothes already being torn from their bodies. Jarred glanced down at Johan and smirked. "But I miss having a son." Barda lifted Jarred's face and kissed him lightly.

"Then, my love, I shall adopt him for you."

As the years went by, technology moved forward. The rise of the modern world was ever increasing, and with it, the morals of mankind fell. Two youthful men watched all of this from their crypt home in the middle of an overgrown cemetery, fingers entwined with their matching gold rings, joined together for eternity. And every five years, another young man would return to the cemetery to visit them, to tell them of his adventures in the new world. And after a while, he would bring with him another young man, with a matching ring on his finger. In time, they would move forever to another country, leaving behind the two vampires that had taught them all they knew. And Barda and Jarred would remain in their cemetery for all eternity, together.

Not even the dawn could tear them apart.