A/N: Happy Sunday everyone! We're picking up right where the last chapter left off; hope you enjoy the next installment of 'Chasing the Sun' :)
The chapter title comes from the song 'Coffins' by MisterWives.
Full chapter title: How Do You Soften The Thought of Carrying Coffins?
"Whoa whoa whoa Regina wait!" Emma put her hands up in surrender. "You're just going to kill me?!"
"I have to. Before you kill anyone."
"I won't kill anyone, I promise!"
"You can't make that promise."
"I haven't killed anyone yet! I've been feeling like shit for over a week! I think I can handle it."
Regina lowered her gun a fraction of an inch. She was right. She should be bloodthirsty and uncontrollable, yet here she was, a little frantic, but otherwise unchanged.
"Can you explain what's happening and maybe get that gun out of my face?!" Emma took a deep breath. "Sorry. I'm a little irritable."
"Well yeah, you're starving." Regina lowered the gun, and Emma followed suit by lowering her hands.
"Tell me something I don't know. How do I fix it?"
Regina looked at Emma right in the eye. "You feed."
"I've been trying! I've eaten everything in sight, I–" Regina cut her off with her hand.
"You feed... on human blood."
Emma got impossibly paler. "I what?" she squeaked.
"Have you ever heard of vampires?"
Emma rolled her eyes. "Of course I have; I'm a human being in the year twenty-seventeen, obviously I've heard of vampires." Regina gave her a pointed glare. "No."
"Yes."
"So... you're a vampire hunter? And... I'm a vampire. I don't even have fangs, what kind of shitty vampire is that?"
"You're not a vampire yet. You're in transition. You become a vampire when you feed on human blood."
"Okay, so I won't drink human blood then. It's fine, I'll just start sucking on a lot of Halls."
Regina shook her head, smiling despite the situation. "That's not how it works. If you don't feed, you die."
"But if I turn... I'll die anyways, you'll kill me."
She looked at the blonde. "I don't want to kill you. And maybe I don't have to." She sighed. "Do my tattoos, then we'll finish this conversation."
Emma nodded. "Okay." Dutifully, the blonde took out her tattoo needle and black ink, and Regina took her usual place on Emma's bench. She still trusts me Emma thought to herself. "How many?"
"Just one," Regina said without moving. "It's been a slow week."
Emma, used to doing these tallies on Regina, no longer needed a stencil, and went in freehand. As soon as her needle broke olive skin, Emma knew she was in trouble. If the smell of blood had distracted her before, the smell of Regina's was intoxicating. It was possible it was just because of how forbidden her blood was, or perhaps it was just Regina. Her jaw ached more than it had before, and Emma found herself having to hold her breath to get through the tattoo.
"All done," Emma rasped out. She wiped the few red spots that had sprung to the surface of Regina's skin, and she literally felt her pupils grow in size.
Regina got up and took the mirror that Emma was offering to her. "Perfect, as always." Regina handed Emma thirty dollars and the blonde pocketed it. "Now, what are we going to do with you?"
Emma shrugged sheepishly.
"I got you into this mess, so I'm going to help you. Even though it goes against everything I've been taught."
"Thank–"
"I'm not done. I'm going to help you, but if you give me any reason to believe that you're beyond saving, I won't hesitate in killing you, understand?"
Emma nodded.
"First things first, we need to get you out of transition."
"And how do I do that? I can't just walk into the Red Cross and ask for a donation... can I use my own?"
Regina shook her head. "You've already started the transition, you're not considered human anymore. It wouldn't work." The brunette thought hard for a moment. "Fucking hell what am I about to do..."
"Hmm?"
Regina took the needle Emma had just used on her tattoo and pricked the tip of her finger. Emma's eyes zeroed in on the blood slowly pooling on Regina's finger, a savage desire flaring in her belly.
"What are you doing?"
"Something I shouldn't. Now, take it before I change my mind."
Emma eyed the pin-pricks amount of blood being extended to her, and instinct took over. Against her better judgment, and the voices screaming in her head that she couldn't come back from this, she took the brunette's finger and licked it clean. It was as if her thirst was both sated, and increased tenfold. She felt fangs sprout from her gums, extending painfully, followed by her heart taking one last beat before going still.
"Mhmm, thanks, all better that was more than enough, mmmmm!" Emma squeaked.
Regina eyed the blonde, her fangs extending over her lower lip. "We both know that's not true."
"What do you want me to say Regina?"
"Be honest with me. That's the only way I can help you."
"Fine. I can literally see the blood pulsing under your skin, and I want nothing more than to sink my teeth into your neck like some damn cliché because I've never been so hungry in my life!"
"Alright."
"Alright?!"
"You've had a week to go to the police with my little secret, and you didn't."
"How do you trust that I'll stop?"
Regina brushed her hair over her shoulder. "I know you." She looked at Emma with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "Besides, you'd miss me too much."
"Cocky." Emma smiled at the brunette. "So... do I just go for it?"
Regina shrugged. "I guess so. I'm kind of new to this too."
Emma took a seat cross-legged behind Regina on the tattoo bench, running her hands along the spot where her neck met her shoulder. Of all the times she imagined being this close to Regina, being about to literally snack on her wasn't anywhere on her list.
"Sorry if this hurts," Emma choked out before instinct took over.
She struck like a cobra, biting into the brunette's neck, and Regina gasped before a moan somewhere between pleasure and pain escaped her lips. She arched into the blonde's mouth as if electrified.
Regina's blood tasted like flowers and cocaine, and Emma couldn't get enough. For the first time in a week she felt alive, which was ironic considering the circumstances. The blood flowed into her mouth, and she drank hungrily, her grip on the brunette tightening as she fed.
"Um... Emma?" Regina tried, but Emma was lost in her own little world. "Emma?" Nothing. "Emma, you're going to kill me!"
Regina's frantic tone snapped Emma out of her daze, and she jumped back (much farther than she was expecting) until her back was against the far wall.
"Shit, fuck, I'm so sorry." Emma let out a shuddered breath.
"It's fine. To your credit, I thought I'd have to get you off of me myself." The brunette dabbed at the wound on her shoulder. "Wow."
"What?"
Regina shook her head. "Nothing it's just... that eye color looks really pretty on you."
"What, green?"
"No." Regina held up a little pocket mirror that she carried in her purse, and Emma caught sight of herself. She still looked paler than usual, but she didn't look like she was on death's door anymore. That, and her eyes were now the color of molten gold.
"Wow that's uh... going to take some getting used to."
Regina chuckled. "Getting used to your eye color is seriously the last of your worries. Now, we need to seriously talk."
"Am I going to start sparkling?" Emma asked, still not moving from her spot in the far corner.
"Absolutely not and I'm offended you'd ask such a thing. Those so-called vampires wouldn't be worth my time. They're closer to anemic emo teens who just found out what body glitter was than actual creatures of the night." She adjusted her shirt. "And before you ask, you can't survive on animal blood, so jot that down."
"Should I be taking notes?"
"It's a figure of speech." Regina regarded the blonde. "You can come closer you know, I won't bite," she smirked.
"Yeah, but I might," Emma mumbled as she made her way across the room and took the seat in front of Regina.
"Alright, so I'm about to throw a lot of information at you, speak up if you have any questions, okay?"
Emma nodded, listening intently.
"Basically there are two types of vampires. Genitus Salus and Effectus Pravus, Sals and Pravs for short. It basically means born good and made evil, in layman's terms. Generally speaking, The Sals are born, live, and die, just as humans, save for the fact that they're a little stronger, sensitive to sunlight, and of course, need blood to survive, although an iron-rich diet can decrease the need for feeding. And then there's the Pravs, humans or Sals that were turned. They're immortal, need blood to survive, burn up in the sunlight, and lack morality and humanity. Pravs are the things you think of when you think of vampires, evil bloodsuckers that only come out at night and can only be killed by a wooden stake."
Emma considered this for a moment. "But… I wasn't born a vampire. Does that mean I'm going to be evil?"
Regina considered this before shrugging. "For all intents and purposes, you should be. But the fact that you're even concerned about it means that you're not. I've never seen that before to be honest. You should be a compassionless, emotionless killer. You also should have gotten more than a sunburn from being out in the sun the past week, but that's pretty low on the list of concerns."
"Is there a cure?"
Regina looked at the blonde, and wanted so much to tell her that there was hope, but she couldn't lie to her. "No. The only time a vampire has ever been turned back to human was with the help of a Eupetic user, and the last one died nearly thirty years ago."
"I'm sorry, a what?"
"A Eupetic. Someone who specialized in light magic. Magic is inherently dark, but there was a league of women, they were called the Daylight Daughters, who were born to light magic."
"Hold on, hold on, hold on. So you're telling me that along with vampires being real, magic is real too? How don't more people know about it?!"
"It's easy to hide magic in the mundane." Regina said with a shrug. "People are always willing to dismiss things as tricks of the light or imagination instead of facing the idea that the world is bigger than they think."
"Okay," Emma started counting things on her fingers. "So magic is real. Vampires are real. Is there anything else I don't know?"
Regina smirked. "We'd be here all day."
"Rude. But really, is there anything else I need to know?"
Regina raised an eyebrow, that damn smirk still on her face. "Watch out for hunters. You'll find we all have hash marks down our backs."
"There are more than just you?"
"Of course," Regina laughed like that was the silliest question in the world. "My people are born to serve and protect, as it were."
"What do you mean by your people?" Emma asked, eyeing the brunette. "You're human, right?"
"Mostly. We have a bit of Genitus Salus in us. My mother is a hunter, like me, and she's half Sal, and my father is human."
"So... you're a quarter vampire, that's what you're telling me."
Regina sighed. "If you want to put it like that, I guess. We're called ammixtuses. All it really means is that I'm a little bit faster, a little bit stronger, and a little more resilient than your average human. That's what makes us perfect for what we do."
"So... your people, you're all hunters?"
"Most of us. Some of us are keepers. They protect the Royal Sals from getting attacked by Pravs. We all go to the same schools and get trained in the same ways, but keepers experience much less hand to hand combat, and they tend to fall out of practice as the years go on. Then they're switched out for a new, younger, faster keeper."
Emma shifted closer to the brunette. "So, what happens when hunters get older and slow down?"
Regina smiled. "We die."
"Right... so... your mother approves of what you do then?"
"Of course. There was no other choice, I was born to be a hunter. My father worries but... he supports me. Your parents approve of you becoming a tattoo artist?"
Emma just shrugged, an air of sadness falling over her. "I wouldn't know. I never knew my father, and my mother died in childbirth."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"Don't be, it's not your fault." They sat in awkward silence, before Emma spoke up again. "So... what now?"
Regina stood up from the bench and put a band-aid on the puncture wounds on her neck. "Now, we exchange phone numbers and addresses. If you need anything, you'll know where to find me. I've got connections at the Red Cross, so I'll finagle some blood bags from them tomorrow and bring them to you."
Emma took one of her business cards and scribbled her home address at the back, handing it to Regina. "How do I know you're not going to break into my house and kill me in my sleep?"
"You don't." Regina said as she wrote her own address and phone number on a loose receipt she had in her bag. "But I don't know that you're not going to do the same to me, so we're even." The brunette handed Emma her contact details and Emma folded the paper before stuffing it into her jeans pocket.
"See you tomorrow. Take the day off if you can, you need it."
Without thinking, Emma threw her arms around Regina. The hunter tensed, before giving into the hug. "Thank you. For everything."
"Don't mention it," the brunette patted Emma on the back. "You've got to ease up though, you're going to break my ribs."
"Sorry!" Emma let her go immediately.
"And put those fangs away, you're going to scare people."
"What? How?!"
"Figure it out!" Regina yelled over her shoulder as she left the tattoo shop.
The bell dinged over the door, and Regina was gone. Emma ran her tongue over her new set of teeth, and was surprised at the sharpness of her fangs. She picked up one of the mirrors she kept at her station and examined them closer. Regina was right; they were terrifying. Emma closed her eyes and focused all of her energy into drawing her fangs back into her gums, and to her surprise, she felt them recede. When she opened her eyes, her canine teeth looked human-like again; the only indicator that something was different were her golden eyes.
Emma got to work finishing tidying up the tattoo shop, leaving a note that said taking a day off! on the front desk; Robin wouldn't mind, it was her first vacation day that year, and she had no scheduled clients the following day. If they really needed her, they'd call.
She made sure the door was locked and the alarm was on before she left. When she passed the alley by the store, she had the strange feeling again of being watched. She stopped in front of the alley, fixing her gaze into the darkness. There was no movement, no sound, no eyes staring back at her. Emma shrugged, and continued her walk home.
::::
It turned out, taking the day off did more harm than good. She was feeling the best she'd felt in days, and she didn't have her co-workers to distract her, so she spent the day pacing her apartment. The fact that she no longer felt the need to sleep meant she had countless more hours each day.
"I need a hobby," she said to her empty apartment as she paced it for the forty-fifth time that day, The Price Is Right blaring in the background."
The sun started to set, and there was still no word from Regina. Emma wasn't worried per se, she was just anxious, antsy, and getting hungry. The food in her fridge was doing absolutely nothing for her, which only added to her irritation.
When the clock struck nine and she still hadn't heard from Regina, Emma decided a walk would probably help to clear her head.
That, she would soon find out, was a mistake.
::::
The cool River City air instantly made Emma feel calmer. She had pulled on the same jeans she had worn the day before setting out. She quickly leaned dusk and dawn were the least irritating times to be out in the sun, but she still wore a long-sleeved sweater to protect her skin as much as possible. Emma checked her phone every few minutes, obsessively now, seeing if Regina was trying to reach her.
I hope she's okay Emma thought to herself. Just as she was going to give in and call the brunette, she decided against it, not wanting to look like she couldn't handle herself.
Emma walked past a girl, the only other soul on the darkened street. Emma could hear her pulse thrumming under her skin, and her jaw ached. 'Behave' her consciousness chided.
She smiled at the girl. The girl smiled back, an innocent, angelic thing, before tripping. She skinned her knee on the pavement. "Are you okay?" Emma ran over with superhuman speed, and if the girl had been paying attention, she'd realize.
"Oh I'm alright, I just need to watch where I'm going."
Emma's eyes zeroed in on the blood dripping from the girl's knee, and her pupils dilated.
"Yeah, I'm okay…" the girl said again when Emma's grip on her knee didn't let up.
"I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry," Emma apologized, before her fangs extended of their own volition, and her mouth was on the girl's neck. A piercing scream rang out through the night before the calming effect took place, and she was quiet.
Stop! her inner voice yelled. You've had enough!
"Please," the girl croaked out, but Emma chose not to hear her.
Emma was driven by selfish hunger, and no matter how much her inner voice screamed at her, thrashing around in her mind, she couldn't stop. In that moment, she couldn't give a damn if the girl lived or died, as long as she got her fill. She heard the girl's heartbeat get stronger the more blood she lost, until it faded, slowly, then stopped completely.
Emma held the now dead girl in her hands, her body growing colder by the moment. The change in the girl's body temperature alerted her to the fact that something was very, very wrong. "No. No, no no!" Emma shook the girl, as if the mere action alone would bring her back to life. "Please, no." The hunger was gone, replaced with soul-gnawing guilt. Emma hugged the girl's body to her chest, sobbing. Not knowing what else to do, she reached into her pocket and looked for Regina's address. She picked the girl up in her arms and broke out into a run, the trees whizzing by her in a blur. She ran until she reached Regina's apartment, and chose to jump the fire escape instead of risk being seen carrying a dead girl in the halls.
She knocked on the window, and Regina, to her credit, didn't jump. "Emma?" she asked, opening the window to let the blonde in.
Emma hopped into the living room before throwing the dead girl unceremoniously on the ground. "What do I do?"
"Um…" the brunette stuttered, her eyes jumping between Emma's frantic face and the dead girl on her living room floor. "It's okay, we'll just–"
"I drained her like a juice box Regina, she's dead! What do you mean it's okay?!"
"Well it's really not okay Emma! When I said 'don't give me any reason to believe that you're beyond saving,' this is what I was talking about!" The brunette snapped. "Your humanity is already fading. You let this happen, what were you doing outside? I thought I told you to take the day off!"
"I did!" Emma was yelling now too. "I spent the whole damn day at home waiting for you like a fucking puppy and when I didn't hear from you I went for a walk because I was bored out of my fucking mind!" Emma took a few breaths, trying to calm herself down. "Can I change her? Can I make her like me?"
"Absolutely not!" Regina crossed her arms. "She's already dead, for one thing, and another, you can't just go around changing people! Just because you're different doesn't mean the vampires you make would be the same. I'm not letting you go around making bloodthirsty little minions just because you feel guilty!"
"Okay, fine. Changing her is out of the question. Can you use that dissolving thing that you used on the vampires in the tattoo shop?"
Regina shook her head. "It only works on vampire corpses... who was she?"
"I don't know, just a girl. Does it really matter?"
Regina looked at the corpse on her living room floor, then back at Emma. "She was innocent."
Emma sputtered. "You don't know that, she could've been a serial killer!"
"No, she wasn't." Regina held a mirror up to Emma. "You've claimed an innocent life."
Emma stared back at her reflection, and where her eyes were once pretty and golden, they were now a crimson red, the picture of evil. She recoiled at the monster she'd become so quickly. "So... what do we do?"
"I can't believe we've gone from casual acquaintances to helping you hide a body in less than two weeks. What you're going to do, is get your fingerprints off her best you can, then you're going to get this dead body out of my apartment! Put her back where you uh... found her."
"In the middle of the street?"
"Jesus Christ, like... a bush or something. Nowhere near here."
Regina threw a washcloth at Emma before she started pacing her living room.
"So um... did you get those blood bags?" Emma asked as she got to scrubbing every piece of exposed skin on the girl that she may have touched.
"They had a weird amount of AB negative considering how rare it is, but no B neg. I thought I'd check Hawthorne Springs tomorrow… if I'd known it would take less than twenty four hours for you to resort to murder, I might have been a bit more frantic in my search."
Emma stopped what she was doing. "What does blood type have to do with anything?!"
"You should know, AB negative, while the most alluring, will weaken you and make you sick. B negative will keep you the strongest while tasting the best."
"God, Regina I'm really not picky! I spent my late teens eating out of a dumpster so I'll take what I can get."
Regina only raised an eyebrow. "Back to scrubbing."
Emma wiped down the girl's neck and shoulders, before throwing down the rag and declaring "I'm done."
"Good." Regina was sitting on the couch, watching some rerun of Friends. "Now go put her somewhere near where you found her."
"Can I come back after?"
Regina eyed the blonde warily. "If you'd like. Just don't bring any more dead bodies into my apartment, it really brings the mood down."
Emma rolled her eyes before donning a pair of rubber gloves and picking the girl up like she weighed nothing. She left Regina's apartment the same way she came in, and ran back to the quiet street she had first met the girl on. Emma put the girl behind a group of bushes, out of sight from the main road. "I'm so sorry." She said one more time, before walking off and hoping the girl was found soon.
::::
When Emma returned to Regina's apartment, the brunette hadn't moved from her spot on the couch. She snuck through the window quietly, not trying to startle her.
"You came back."
"Yeah." Emma sat on the opposite end of the couch, trying to keep as much distance from her as possible. The sound of Regina's heartbeat had the opposite effect of everyone else's. While a passerby's heartbeat had literally sent her into a frenzy, Regina's grounded her. But that didn't mean she didn't still want to sink her teeth into her neck again.
"How are you feeling?"
"Physically? Great. Mentally... awful. Life was so much easier before I became this… this thing. I was just a woman in a tattoo shop, that was it, that was Emma Swan. Now? I'm Emma Swan, undead creature of the night."
"We all get dealt a shitty hand sometimes," Regina answered, looking at the blonde out of the corner of her eye, "it's how you play that hand that shows who you really are."
"I mean... I'm playing with a rusty fork and a handful of live snakes but..." she shrugged.
Regina chuckled. "Have you always been this dramatic?"
Emma exhaled by way of a laugh, but she didn't actually answer. Instead she said, "What if I can't do it?"
"Do what?"
"This whole... vampire thing. It took me less than a day before I killed someone... what if I can't stop?"
Regina turned to face Emma. "Did you like it?"
Emma considered this. "No. I mean, at the moment I didn't really care if she died or not but after... god, after I wanted nothing more than to die too."
"Then you'll learn to control yourself. Every time you go to feed, you'll remember that feeling. And as long as you remember that feeling, and how shitty you feel, you'll be fine. It's once you lose sight of your humanity completely that we're going to have a problem."
"Why aren't you scared of me?" Emma's voice dropped to a whisper. "I'm scared of me."
"Because you're stronger than you give yourself credit for Emma. You've had several opportunities to try and kill me, but you haven't. Come here," Regina opened her arms to the blonde, and she looked at Regina, worrying her lower lip, before she shrugged and accepted the embrace. She sat with her head in Regina's lap while the brunette ran her hands lazily through her hair.
That's how they sat. Regina watching Friends, Emma actually feeling somewhat relaxed, the sound of Regina's heart, so strong and true, drowning out all the thoughts that were spinning around her head.
"If my superiors could see me now, they'd reassign me so far from here it's not even funny," Regina mused, more to herself than anything.
When the episode ended, a news alert broke them out of their calm state.
Breaking news, a girl identified as thirty-one-year-old Lilith Page has been found dead on the streets of River City. It appears that she's the latest victim of the series of animal attacks that have been plaguing our streets.
As always, please try not to walk alone late at night, as these animals are still at large. This has been Ashley Boyd with Channel Eight news, more at eleven.
Emma was decidedly not relaxed anymore, the consequences of her actions now plastered across the news; the girl's smiling face staring back at her like a curse. She had a name now, and that made her feel worse. She wasn't just a nameless girl. Lilith Page. She had a name, a family, hopes and dreams, and now she was dead... because of her.
Regina's hand had gone still in Emma's hair. "Lilith Page... why does that name sound familiar?"
"It didn't seem like you knew her," Emma said, looking up at Regina from her lap.
"No, I didn't, I've never seen her before tonight... the name just sounds like something I've heard before."
"She probably just has one of those names."
Regina shrugged. "Maybe." She pat Emma's leg, indicating she wanted the blonde to get up. "It's getting late, and unlike you, I do need to sleep. I'll have stuff for you tomorrow."
"Hint taken," Emma answered with a smirk. "Goodnight, Regina." Before she could stop herself, she leaned forward and gave the brunette a quick kiss on the cheek. "Bye!" The hunter remained frozen in place while Emma made a mad dash for the window. She jumped from the window, landing in the back alley with a soft thud.
She had the distinct feeling of being watched again, before she felt a pinch in her neck, and her vision went blurry. The last thing she saw before everything went black was a blonde woman, her scarlet painted lips curled into a twisted sneer.
