Chapter Text
Hongjoong crouches low around the corner of a broken down building, one gloved hand gripping the hilt of his dagger. The blade glints faintly in the soft moonlight, coated in the viscous, tar-black poison his father had received only days ago.
He hadn't trusted it at first. His father was sparse with the details of what exactly it was and where it came from.
But then his father brought him a case report. A vampire that several hunters had been tracking. It had already killed four people, ripped into their throats with a savagery that Hongjoong hasn’t seen in a while. One of the hunters had lost his life to the monster.
That was more than enough to convince him.
Yunho shifts silently nearby, his tall frame half hidden behind a tree. He holds his own poison dipped blade at the ready. His eyes meet Hongjoong’s, anticipating his cue with a small, excited smile. Of course he’d be enjoying the thrill of it, the nutjob. Hongjoong is used to this, thankfully, and can’t help but match Yunho’s energy as he adjusts his grip on his own knife.
It had finished storming just hours ago, leaving the small town coated in a layer of dark, cold haze. The freshly agitated water in the canal next to them gurgles just loud enough to cover their steps, their heartbeats.
It's incredibly difficult to get the jump on a creature that has senses superior to a human’s in every aspect. There are ways to go about it in the dense city, but it gets more complicated in the countryside, where wide open spaces and clean, quiet air lets someone see you coming from miles away. Storms are a hunter's godsend in these cases, as long as you know what you're doing. A storm will narrow the world back down into close quarters with a blanket of mind-numbing background noise perfect to hide in.
Hongjoong’s father, crouching several feet behind him, gives a quick hand signal. Hongjoong and Yunho surge out of their hiding spots, immediately locating the target and adjusting their trajectory.
A man had been standing at the canal’s edge, watching the water churn past. He turns at the sudden noise, an animalistic hiss already ripping from between his bared teeth. Fresh blood drips from his mouth. Hongjoong only has time to register the unmoving body at the man's feet before Yunho reaches him first. His blade catches the creature across his raised arm, deep enough to bleed but shallow enough that it should barely register.
The reaction is immediate. The vampire startles back with a hissing shriek of shocked rage that sends a zap of instinctual fear down Hongjoong’s spine. The wound bubbles and blackens, nothing like the red, sometimes white, sizzling burns that silver weapons generally leave on vampire flesh.
Hongjoong’s experience keeps him from hesitating, his muscles long since trained to operate even before he’s consciously aware he’s made the decision to move. He darts around Yunho, aiming for a crippling strike to the legs, but the vampire moves back too quickly and escapes with only a small slash across his thigh.
He wails and blindly lashes out, though, like the shallow cut had reached down to bone, face twisted in unhinged desperation. Most vampires wouldn’t even blink at a wound like that. It’s such a sudden shift from how Hongjoong is used to fights progressing that it catches him off guard for a split second; a precious sliver of time that can determine life or death when dealing with a creature that is much, much faster than him.
Yunho attacks at the exact same moment. He misses his strike but manages to shove the vampire off course enough that his clawed nails swipe just shy of Hongjoong’s torso. The vampire nearly slams into him, so close that the smell of death and rot fills Hongjoong’s senses. He flips the grip on his dagger and plunges the poisoned blade into the monster’s side, cleanly between the ribs, but nowhere near his heart.
The guttural, mangled scream that assaults Hongjoong’s ears is one he’s heard many, many times, but never this quickly. Never after such insignificant injuries that would usually heal in a matter of seconds. He’s watched a man sprint at someone with an axe lodged in his head, a woman stand back up after having her arm ripped off like it was nothing. He’s only ever heard this kind of dying scream when a vampire is thrown into their funeral pyre – when he can feel the radiating heat of a roaring, consuming fire on his face, smell the putrid stench of hellish skin and viscera finally disintegrating into ash.
The vampire collapses. His body convulses, the several knife wounds festering with inky black sludge. The quieter, whining sound seeping through his throat is horrendous, and then finally he goes still and silent.
Hongjoong and Yunho stare down at the body. An actual body, not a pile of ash.
“What the fuck,” is the only thing Hongjoong can think to say.
“That was… way too easy,” Yunho says. His eyes are wide. He can’t seem to look away from the corpse crumpled before them. They’ll have to make sure that he’s not quietly regenerating, but the way that the poisoned wounds are rotting leads Hongjoong to believe that isn’t happening. He should probably be more cautious, but he is absolutely certain this vampire is dead.
Hongjoong’s father approaches them from his defensive position behind the building. He is one of the most composed people Hongjoong knows, and right now his face is open in a sort of muted shock that Hongjoong is not sure he’s ever seen before. Behind that shock, though, is… excitement? Relief?
“It works,” his father says simply. Decisively.
Yunho looks down at the thick black substance on his combat knife like it might jump at him. “Where the hell did you even get this stuff?”
“A stranger gave it to me as a gift.” He closes his eyes, drawing in a deep, steadying breath. He looks pensive now, his mouth slightly down turned in a way that Hongjoong knows means he's frustrated. “I had to make sure it was real first but… She said that if we want more, then we have to bring her a vampire. Alive.”
Hongjoong looks back to the ruined body at his feet. His heart is still pounding, the adrenaline nowhere close to wearing off yet. As far as he knows the hunters have never captured a vampire alive. At least, he’s never seen or heard of anyone even attempting it. It’s dangerous at best, suicidal at worst. But…
That was the fastest he and Yunho have ever taken down a vampire. No injuries. Not even a bruise. That thing barely even got a chance to fight and now it’s rotting under Hongjoong’s boot. The amount of vampires they could take down, the amount of hunters this would help, the amount of innocents they could save… It would be morally despicable if Hongjoong didn’t at least try.
He glances at Yunho, who still stands next to him, wary and unsure, but he knows that Yunho will always follow his lead. He meets his father’s calm, expectant eyes.
“I guess we better start looking then,” he says.
–
Four days later, Hongjoong is confused when his father tells him and Yunho to suit up for a city hunt and sends an address to a club. He’s staked out clubs and bars plenty of times; a crowd of young, intoxicated humans to chomp on is prime hunting grounds for vampires. Usually they wait for a string of mysterious murders to indicate that a vampire is nearby. They always follow the disappearances, the bodies. It’s how they find the monsters.
But Yunho tells him that there’s been nothing above petty crimes in the area for weeks. So what the hell are they doing?
The three of them post up in a corner booth, dressed all in black. Hongjoong is sipping on disgusting, warm beer, and he feels like a goddamn stereotype from all those vampire hunter movies that he can’t stop watching. Some of them get so close.
They’ve been here for a while, quietly surveying the patrons, definitely not creepy and suspicious. Hongjoong’s been watching a group of girls fall all over each other in drunken giggles for the past five minutes. Not because he thinks any of the barely dressed, freshly drinking aged girls are murderous undead creatures of the night but because he’s bored.
“Why are we even here?” he complains, raising his voice to be heard over the blaring electronic music. He pushes his terrible beer away and eyes the bright artificial red of Yunho’s fruity cocktail. He’s barely touched it. Yunho sees him looking and slides the drink towards him.
“He’ll show up tonight,” his father says, nearly shouting, but still calm and clear. Hongjoong’s never been on a club mission with him before, and he’d have sworn that his father would look out of place in the darkness and flashing colored lights, but he appears strangely right at home. He takes a drink of his whiskey, eyes sweeping over the other booths, the bar, the crowds of swaying bodies. God, his father really is the walking stereotype. “I’ve seen you barely move a muscle for hours as long as you’re focused, Hongjoong. You need to focus.”
Hongjoong slumps over the table, chewing absently on the straw in Yunho’s surrendered drink. It tastes so much better than the beer, but he can’t drink it too fast because he has to stay clear headed. Buzzed is fine, beneficial even, but drunk is a death sentence. If there were any vampires here. What is he even supposed to focus on? He likes to pretend he'd be into club scenes like this, but if there's nothing to hunt here then he'd rather be at home.
He scans the room again, but this time he locks eyes with someone who is staring at him. The man doesn’t immediately flinch away when caught looking, but he’s far from threatening. He’s stunning, actually, with long elegant features framed by silver hair. The color contrasts beautifully with his honey skin tone. His clothes are solid black, clearly made from expensive, high quality leather even from across the room. He could’ve walked right off a runway and into this pretentiously overpriced club.
Heat flashes across Hongjoong’s skin. He’s had strangers ogle him in clubs before and normally it only succeeds in making him uncomfortable, but this is the most gorgeous man he's ever laid eyes on. If he were here off duty, he might have even been tempted to actually approach the man.
But he’s on the job. And his father is sitting right next to him.
The beautiful man’s attention is drawn away by his boisterous companion. Hongjoong is finally able to look away, feeling like he had just been knocked out of a floaty daydream to crashland back on earth.
Embarrassed heat crawls up his ears. His father probably knows that Hongjoong is into men, but he’s also never actually acknowledged it. He’s pretty sure his father doesn’t give a shit who he takes to bed as long as it doesn’t distract him from hunting the next vampire. And this would definitely land in the distracting category.
Even worse, his father notices the exchange. He’s watching the silver-haired man from over his raised glass. “That’s him.”
Hongjoong sits up straight, caught completely off guard. “What? How do you know?”
His father is quiet for a moment, clearly contemplating what to tell them. It sets Hongjoong’s teeth on edge. What could be so important that he’s not only keeping it from his own son, but from hunters currently on the job? Hunters don’t keep secrets from each other. Hidden knowledge is liable to get someone killed.
“The woman who gave me the poison said that he would be young but have silver hair,” he finally says.
“This is a club, half the people here have dyed hair.” He doesn’t usually doubt his father so much, especially out loud, but his father is also usually more forthcoming with information. And usually he doesn't put his full trust into mystery women he just met.
“I get that the poison was real, but is there anything else to back up her claims?” Yunho asks. ”We have no idea who she is or what her motives are, and there’s zero indication that there’s even a vampire in the area.”
His father doesn’t answer. He’s still watching the man at the bar, who thankfully is too absorbed in his conversation to notice. His father's mind is made up, Hongjoong knows. This man is their next target, no matter what they say.
Hongjoong groans and pushes his drink away. “Let me at least check before we attack some random guy.” He slinks out of the booth, feeling his father’s heavy stare on his back all the way to the bar.
There’s an empty space right next to the silver haired man and Hongjoong wedges himself into it, kicking a stray spilled cup out of the way. He leans heavily against the counter and waves down the bartender. “Gin and tonic,” he has to practically shout. The bartender starts working on his drink, and Hongjoong collects as much information as he can without acknowledging the man beside him.
He’s even more unreal up close. Hongjoong can only see his side profile from the corner of his eye, but his facial structure is gorgeous; a long rounded nose, a strong jawline that’s still smooth, almost feminine. His hair is thick and enviously healthy, despite the absurd amount of times he would have had to bleach it to achieve that color. Or the silver is natural. Honestly, he would look right at home on a vampire movie set. But real vampires have never looked like that to Hongjoong. Many are unnaturally pretty, sure, but they still just look like people. Until they’re snarling, contorting, and ripping into someone’s throat.
It’s how they move that gives them away. It depends on how far into their bloodlust they’ve fallen, but they can be anywhere between graceful and fluid to twitchy and sporadic. In both instances, they’re too quick, too efficient. Their bodies occupy space as if they’ve edited out the unnecessary parts of motion.
This man– maybe Hongjoong can see it just because he’s looking for it now, but he’s just on the edge of unnatural. He hasn’t moved much, but something about the way he holds himself, the way he nods or leans in toward his companion, sets off Hongjoong’s instincts. He’s just a little too elegant, a little too polished.
The bartender sets his gin and tonic in front of him. He digs his wallet out of his too tight jeans– the things he does for fashion– and purposefully hooks one of his rings on the pocket so that it’ll slip off. It plinks to the ground, rolling perfectly into the silver haired man’s leather boots that belong on a runway in Paris, not marinating in the unholy sludge of spilled alcohol and floor gum.
“Shit,” he says, making a show of swaying a bit as he leans down, helplessly looking for the ring that he can plainly see. The man turns at the commotion, glancing at him first with recognition and then down to the fallen jewelry at his feet. He bends down in his seat to rescue it, his arms long enough to reach without any kind of strain, making a movement that should be awkward look graceful and easy.
He flinches, just slightly, the tiniest perceptible movement that Hongjoong would have missed if he wasn’t watching so closely, as his fingers close around the pure silver ring.
He straightens and extends his hand to give the jewelry back to Hongjoong. The shifting club lights flicker across his face, flashing blue and red and green, casting and reshaping shadows in time with the beat that vibrates through Hongjoong’s chest. His makeup is dark, soft and deliberate, framing eyes that are narrowed but curious.
“You dropped this,” he says, level, and somehow Hongjoong can easily hear him over the din of music.
Hongjoong opens his palm and the man drops his ring into it. He watches for burn marks but the hand retreats too quickly, slipping out of sight as he adjusts the sleeve of his leather coat and rests his arm along the bar’s edge.
It’s all he needs.
“Thanks.” He turns back to the bartender who’s been waiting impatiently, completely uninterested in a clumsy, drunk patron fumbling around with his jewelry and flirtations with strangers. He pays and calmly leaves with his gin, not giving the beautiful man a second glance.
He returns to his father and Yunho, sliding back into the booth with a grunt. He feels hyper aware now, his body thrumming with energy. He wants to reach for the hidden combat knife strapped around his waist, just to have it in his palm, but he meets eyes with his father instead.
“Confirmed,” he states.
His father nods, eyes sharp. Not surprised, or even satisfied. Expectant like he was just waiting for Hongjoong to catch up. “We’ll corner him once he leaves.”
Hongjoong wonders if his father would have even accepted a different answer.
The silver haired man, the vampire, glances towards Hongjoong's booth a couple times while they wait. Hongjoong feels like a bowstring drawn too far back, every second stretching him thinner, tighter. Held at trembling tension until he can aim and release. He keeps his hands around the cold cup of the gin and tonic but doesn’t drink it. He needs the icy bite of the glass to ground himself. Yunho is calm at his side, eerily still and contained, but his eyes gleam with excitement.
Finally the man and his companion stand and move away from the bar. His companion is another man, shorter, with fluffy dark hair. His victim for the night, most likely. The two leave the club and the hunters follow.
They keep their distance. It’s the weekend and the night is still young, so the streets are quite crowded. It’s easy to blend in, and even easier to track the head of bright silver hair through the throng of mostly dark colors. It’s like he’s not even trying to hide.
The two cut into a smaller, less populated side street. Hongjoong’s father gestures for Hongjoong and Yunho to move in closer.
“Be careful with the poison,” he reminds them. “Don’t cut too deep and avoid the heart. We can’t risk killing him.”
They had spent days arguing the details. Capturing a vampire alive is something that’s never even been considered before. Technically, they incapacitate vampires all the time so that they can burn them. Sometimes they have to move them to a more discreet location, since burning a kicking and screaming creature in a city alleyway isn’t exactly subtle. A silver knife to the heart will stun their healing and immobilize them long enough to stuff them in the trunk and speed to a deserted lot or abandoned building, but keeping one under control for an extended period of time is an entirely different thing. They heal too fast, and break through restraints too easily.
The poison now also poses a problem they’ve never encountered before; it works almost too well. They discussed not using it at all and just relying on their usual methods, but his father had decided against it. If they have the option to limit risk of injury to the team, especially for a mission so dangerous, then they have to take it.
They only have a single vial left. Just enough, if they use it right.
The vampire and his companion are moving into even emptier streets. Either he’s looking for a quiet place to sink his teeth into his victim or he’s caught on to the hunters on his trail. If he hasn’t noticed the same three people always at the very edge of his periphery already, he definitely will soon.
At some point, they lose sight of the two around a corner.
The hunters take the moment to quietly unsheathe their knives. Hongjoong’s father uncaps the vial of poison and coats the blades swiftly with the noxious substance. It clings to the metal, reflecting in the light like an oil slick, the smell sweet and cloying with an undercurrent of dying animal.
“He knows,” Hongjoong’s father says, low and quick. “You two follow them, I’ll loop around to cut them off.” He’s gone before either can answer, a shadow slipping away between the dark buildings.
Hongjoong and Yunho enter the narrow, dingy alley, light from a distant streetlamp just barely painting the brick walls in pale yellow.
The vampire is there. Standing dead center in the street, hands casually in the pockets of his designer coat, quietly staring right at them.
Alone.
Hongjoong locks eyes with him for a single, rigid moment. The man doesn’t belong here; his clothes too pristine, his silver hair too bright, the elegant line of his silhouette too striking against the dirty backdrop of the smudgy, dim street. His eyes hold a calm stillness that twinges Hongjoong’s deepest instincts, his brain stem recognizing predator in the most life threatening, thrill inducing way. Hongjoong doesn’t breathe, can’t breathe, the pressure built so tight in his chest that his lungs are trapped on an inhale.
Then the beautiful creature pulls his lips back in a sneer. His narrowed eyes flash brilliant red, wickedly sharp fangs gleaming perfectly white.
“Go home, hunters,” he says, voice low and velvety.
Hongjoong lunges first, Yunho just half a second behind.
The vampire is fast. He moves fluidly and confidently, like he’s performing a well practiced routine. Hongjoong’s knife slices through empty air, and Yunho’s follow up thrust is easily side-stepped. Hongjoong swivels to keep up, feeling like he’s trying to grasp the wind with his bare hands.
Frustration fuels his next swing, but the vampire darts perfectly out of the way at the last second. His claws are extended, but he doesn’t make a single move to retaliate. He’s watching the hunters, alert, but he also looks positively bored.
It’s infuriating.
Hongjoong drives too much force into a thrust, and when he’s inevitably knocked off course by a twist of the vampire’s wrist, his arm is overextended. He doesn’t have time to recover, his blade is too far to block. He knows exactly what a mistake like this will cost him, and he braces for a debilitating hit to the ribs with those razor sharp claws.
It never comes. Hongjoong stumbles back a safe distance, adrenaline searing through his veins. His breath snags in his throat as he meets eyes with that red gaze, but he has no idea how to read what he sees there. The vampire had seen the misstep, but he looks just as impassive as before.
Yunho surges forward, seizing the rare moment of distraction. The vampire doesn’t have time to counter cleanly. Instead, he slams his shoulder into Yunho’s chest, raw force over finesse. Yunho is thrown back, his head cracking into the brick wall behind him, air leaving him in a guttural gasp. His body crumples to the street.
Rage flares hot under Hongjoong’s skin before Yunho even hits the ground. He doesn’t think. He lunges. His blade finally makes contact with the vampire, slicing through leather and skin from elbow to wrist. The shocked howl of pain is nowhere near satisfying enough.
The vampire recoils, wrenching himself away from Hongjoong, his movements uncontrolled for the first time. His chest heaves and his eyes are wide as he stares at the thick ooze clinging to the torn skin along his arm, black curling at the edges of the wound.
The anger still scorching through Hongjoong’s veins has him pressing forward. The vampire retreats for every step Hongjoong takes, his injured arm cradled to his chest. His scarlet eyes never leave Hongjoong now, no longer careless and uninterested.
He finally sees the hunter as a threat.
Hongjoong advances again, swinging a brutal arc at the vampire’s midsection. The creature throws himself backward, panicked, sloppy. He uses the momentum to pivot hard, muscles tensing to run–
He turns straight into Hongjoong’s father.
His father, Captain Kim, waiting in the shadowed alley just behind them for this exact scenario. He strikes with clean, deadly precision.
The vampire tries to scramble back, desperate, but he’s already too close, too off guard. The blade carves across his side, just below the ribs, as he lurches away with a sharp cry. He’s knocked off balance, crashing to the pavement.
He immediately tries to heave himself to his hands and knees, a hand clutched hard to his side as black, poison-tainted blood slips between his fingers and splashes to the street below him. Captain Kim steps closer and the vampire snarls at him, the sound wrenched from deep in his throat, animalistic and cornered.
It’s cut off in an instant as the hilt of his father’s knife slams into the vampire’s temple.
The force sends him careening sideways to the ground in a heap of sprawled limbs.
Hongjoong tries to calm his racing heart as he watches his father loom over the fallen body, cold steel in his gaze. His father rolls the vampire onto his stomach with a ruthless kick, then seizes the back collar of his ruined coat and yanks it down his arms. The vampire stirs, still conscious but severely disoriented. He weakly tries to jerk away, unable to coordinate his limbs as his coat is torn completely from him. He’s slim underneath, his torso now only covered in a dark sleeveless shirt, his bare arms exposed to the cold air.
“The rope,” Captain Kim snaps, wrenching the vampire’s arms behind his back, a knee pinning his frame to the pavement.
Hongjoong jolts back into action. He rushes forward and kneels beside them, pulling a coil of kevlar rope from the inside pocket of his jacket. It’s heavy in his palms, dyed black and interwoven with threads of pure silver. His father shifts so that Hongjoong has room and he begins wrapping it tightly around the vampire’s wrists.
The second it touches his bare skin, the vampire arches violently with a harsh gasp, nearly flinching right out of the two hunter’s grips. His clawed fingers spasm wildly, dangerously close to vulnerable skin. Hongjoong redoubles his grasp on the struggling creature with gritted teeth, careful to keep the sharp claws immobile. The gash on the vampire’s arm gushes fresh blood as Hongjoong presses on it, slicking his hands in a mess of red and black.
“Hold him still,” his father barks, hands grasping hard at the vampire’s shoulders.
“I’m trying,” Hongjoong snarls, shoving his full body weight into the vampire’s lower back, all his strength focused on keeping the thing’s claws locked in place. “He’s– Fuck, he’s strong–”
Captain Kim grabs a fistful of silver hair and rams the vampire’s head into the concrete, right into the same section of skull that had been hit before.
The body beneath them goes completely slack. Hongjoong quickly secures the rest of the rope around the vampire’s limp wrists, binding them together in multiple layers. The nauseating smell of burnt flesh assaults Hongjoong’s nose as the vampire twitches weakly, a drawn out groan rasping from his throat. Angry welts are already swelling and blistering wherever the rope makes contact with his skin.
Both hunters relax marginally, attempting to catch their breath in the lull. The dark pool of blood below the vampire is spreading, soaking into his shredded clothes, the wound on his side no doubt having opened further from his thrashing. He’s still conscious, even after all of that, but the fight seems to have drained out of him. The red of his eyes is duller now, unfocused. Blood from the gash on his temple trails sluggishly down his cheek, clinging to the silver strands of hair plastered to his face. His breath drags shallowly through his chest.
Hongjoong releases the limp form and stands. Crimson is smeared all over his pants, his hands, the cuffs of his jacket. His arms and abdominals ache from the strain of basically wrestling something far stronger than he had any right to subdue.
Usually fights are quick, every second spent engaged stacking the odds against you. Any other day, he would have stabbed this vampire in the heart at the very first opportunity. Instead they had to cut him down and bleed him to exhaustion.
They never would have won this fight without the poison. Tar black and sludgy, repulsive, mixed into the blood drying on his hands.
At least it doesn’t hurt. He can confirm that it only affects vampires.
He still wants to wash it off as soon as humanly possible. He can’t shake the thought that it’s absorbing into his skin, tainting him underneath.
A hand lands on his shoulder. He nearly flinches, his arm tensing to engage right back into combat, but only his years of working with Yunho tell him that it’s the taller hunter next to him.
“You good?” Hongjoong asks, voice low. His stomach curls uncomfortably. He’s seen Yunho hurt on hunts too many times to count, but it never gets any easier.
Yunho smiles at him, clearly tired and unsteady. Blood snakes down the side of his face from his hairline. “Yeah, probably just a lil’ bit concussed.”
“Too concussed to go get the car?” Captain Kim asks. He’s still crouched next to the fallen vampire, hovering just in case. The creature looks nothing like a threat anymore; curled beneath a hunter’s boot, arms bound tight behind his back, covered in his own blood, silver hair fanned out across the dirty asphalt.
His father is right to be wary, regardless. Hongjoong has seen vampires even weaker than this one end a careless hunter’s life in seconds.
Those vampires always died in the end. But this one will be kept alive, for reasons he still doesn’t know.
“I'll get it,” Hongjoong says, turning away. Another vampire down, but it doesn’t feel like victory. Not until the monster is a pile of ash.