Under Cover of Darkness
There is the feeling of something huge and threatening in the darkness. Marcus can see in any light or lack thereof, if he wishes, but he doesn't and so the darkness is blanketing, eternal. He feels human, human hands touching something that is hard as stone but breathing and warm the way a vampire never is.
There are threatening pants against his cheek, and he knows instinctively that William hasn't breathed deeply like this in centuries. Marcus feels freedom, years of betrayal under his skin.
But William is forgiving, and nostalgic besides, and soon the sniffing is less threatening and more inquisitive, looking for something familiar in the cold, hard thing he's become. William has grown more docile, but if anything Marcus has acquired his ferocity, and the prospect of freedom makes him fiercer still.
His brother is still huge and threatening, but in the darkness it is easy to feel the body heat alone and pretend for a moment that he is only William, who had never been very good at hurting people.
He thinks of making a race of things where his brother will be welcome, honored. He thinks briefly of his father, whom he might have loved. He thinks of William's voice, which has survived only in his twin's identical vocal cords.
He will never see William again, nor hear his voice, nor touch his skin. He will never go home, for his home is a far-off thing, abandoned and long-since decayed. In the long years since his birth these thoughts have been abandoned by the wayside of power and that new, treacherous family that he has sired.
Marcus breaths deeply, the smell of dirty fur and bad breath and something large and hostile in the darkness.
It is the only home he has left.
