AN: I realize that turning a majority of the OUAT cast into vampires sounds silly, and I promise I'll try to make it as little silly as possible. Since Twilight happened it became hard to take vampires seriously but they were once – and still can be – very powerful creatures of horror. Let me know if you enjoy this.

Chapter 1: A Change of Order

Emma wasn't supposed to finish so late at work. Really, she was never usually at the office past ten p.m., but it'd been a crazy week, with paperwork just piling up, she barely noticed as the desks next to hers slowly emptied, and when she came out for air for five minutes, the atmosphere was full dark, outside the small bubble of radiance emerging from her desk lamp, and her watch read ten to midnight.

Midnight, she thought again, after she'd quickly gathered her things and locked the office door behind her. Midnight was a gothic hour, the hour of ghouls and goblins, the hour when all things unnatural came to life. The streets outside were unsurprisingly vacant. It wasn't a long walk to her apartment, fifteen minutes, ten when she hurried, but it was usually earlier. The cars rolling past you in gleaming flashes of color, the noise of passersby's conversations and light shining through the showcases of shops and coffeehouses, trying to lure you in – those were things Emma never consciously thought about and yet, now that the street was stripped of them, it felt radically different. Like it was hardly the same street at all.

How many times had she walked from the office to her apartment? Every day, with few exceptions, for the past five years. Still, she'd swear there was something uncanny about the night air, the sky black-as-terror above her head, the utter absence of sound around her, save for her footsteps on the pavement, whose pace was steadily increasing.

Ridiculous.

As if she were still that impressionable little girl, kept sleepless at night by the stories girls had been whispering to each other at the orphanage. That urban legend about a woman walking alone down the streets –

"Idiot." Emma hissed through her clenched teeth. The night was cool, the month of April had been mild. She'd not even bothered to zip up her coat.

Come on, now, she thought. Just a few more minutes. Vainly, she resisted against the urge to walk faster, pressed her hands to her chest to stifle the sound of her heartbeat. She wouldn't run all the way home like a terrified teenager. She was a mature, working woman, and she refused to believe secret thrills lay hidden in the coat of darkness –

Then, Emma suddenly forgot to think. She stopped walking, very much as if – not her own feet – but the very air around her had turned to solid stone. In her chest, her lungs were drained and tight as fists, crushed, smothering.

Emma felt the man behind her before she heard or saw him. Sure enough, when she stopped walking, he only stopped a second later, and the sound of his step behind her made the hairs in her neck stand still, but she felt him, even before that, felt him in the sudden sense of un-aloneness around her, filling the night with cruel mockery.

I wanted to run, she suddenly thought, could think of nothing else. Why didn't I run?

The man spoke as if reading her mind. "You know humans are the only animals who go against their instinct?"

Emma was silent. The air around her was still stone-like and there was no breaking its spell on her.

"Odd." He commented.

The voice, she noticed, was rich and not unpleasant, though somehow chilling. Remarkable. She was convinced, even if she'd heard that voice in broad daylight, in the middle of a crowded room, she would have shuddered, would have been filled with that bloodcurdling coldness, all the same.

Slowly, she heard him moving, his footsteps drawing nearer and nearer. Launched in a mad race, her heart was screaming wildly at her – Melt! Evaporate! – but breaking from her paralysis proved impossible.

"When you hunt rabbits, deer, even the tamest animals, they always run."

Emma wanted to close her eyes but then the man was standing erect in front of her, and it was too late. He was very tall, gaunt as a specter, with very long, very black hair. But the worst was his mouth, carved into a smile that Emma wanted to obliterate from her memory, because the raw fear it inspired was worse even than whatever was coming.

"Why don't humans run?" He asked.

Emma swallowed. It crossed her mind to beg but it felt as if nothing would come out if she opened her mouth, or something absurd and silent, like soap bubbles.

Suddenly, the man's hand was on her cheek, and Emma knew there was something deeply wrong with his touch, cold, unnatural, electric.

It shook her out of her dumbness. "Please –"

He put a finger on her lips. A black hole opened up inside of Emma, filling up with protest she couldn't speak. That's when she noticed the man's fingernails were unusually long. And the smell, coming from his skin –

Like the stray cat the girls at the orphanage liked to feed sometimes, who got hit by a car and when Emma picked it up it was stiff and heavy, its fur matted with blood and dirt.

The smell of death.

"It's all right." The man said. But then the smile on his lips said otherwise. "This won't hurt."

"No."

Killian caught his old friend Samael during a meal. The girl was hanging limp from his arms, blond hair cascading into the blue night, blood dripping down the pavement.

Anger shot straight to Killian's chest, that old ghost of a heart, whatever of it was left. "Just like this, Sam?" He said. "In the middle of the streets?"

Clearly, Samael had meant to defy him. But had he grown bold enough to defy the counsel as well?

"Let her go." Killian thundered.

Samael looked up from the girl's neck, half of his face red and wet, glistening in the moonlight. "Things have changed, Killian. If you'd sat at the counsel recently, you'd know caution laws are evaporating. Our kind is tired of sharing a world with humans when they could rule as kings."

"Not here. Not in this town."

"Everywhere I want. This isn't your territory anymore." Samael smiled. The pearly white of his teeth was rosy, and he ran his tongue across them to wipe them clean. "There was a time when you could settle in a small town and scare away all of the vampires who came near. But things are changing, friend. Pretty soon, war will break loose, and you and I know war against humans will mean slaughter."

He chuckled. In his arms, Killian thought he saw the girl stir.

"You won't be able to keep your precious Storybrooke untainted. Anarchy's coming. You might as well roll along with it."

"Let her go, Samael," Killian said once more. Serious as death. "I'll fight you."

A spark lit up in the other's gaze. Killian stood ready, alert, watching for the merest hostility.

"No," Samael decided. The woman fell inanimate on the pavement as he dropped her. "Not tonight. When you've been someone's friend for centuries, you expect their battle to be epic. When we fight, Killian, it'll be with the upper crust of the vampire race watching. You've meant much to me in the past. I want an audience when I kill you."

Samael smiled as he added, before disappearing into the night. "My fallen prince."

Killian waited until he was sure, until his whole body could verify, that he was the only vampire here. Then, he picked up the unconscious woman from the pavement. He knew her face, even in the darkness.

"Emma Swan," he spoke softly, to himself. "What a night you're having."

Then, he, like his friend, faded into the darkness, a shadow joining its kind.

Samael was right.

Things out there were changing.

End Notes: Before you call me on the clichés, yes, most are intended. I thought it'd be interesting to write a OUAT fic as a sort of gothic story, so of course Emma is an orphan, and of course Samael is every gothic villain rolled into one. I am planning to have a lot of fun with this, so if you're interested in yet another of my unusually dark stories for the fandom, and if you also think it'd be cool if vampires had a parliamentary monarchy, please tag along and share your thoughts and ideas.