↱KISS YOU TOO↲ ⇾hyunlix⇽

Torn

He doesn't want to do this.

Felix looks up to the mansion, rotting away at its foundations, and grips the dagger in his hand so tightly that he thinks that his nails will bite through skin and tendon, releasing a brilliant wave of blood for the entire coven of vampires to smell.

Chan had fretted about the light scars on his neck, fluttering around the medbay like a stressed blue morpho butterfly before finding a collar to cover the still-healing skin up, muttering something about the stench of artificial leather masking blood. It rests heavy against his pulse point, presence as comforting as a hand wrapped around his throat, neither squeezing nor letting go.

Other than the dagger, his gun rests within his back pocket, settling against his waist as it sits in his halter, carved with Old Blood and silver decorations since his family always seemed to emphasize the importance of tradition, letting Felix fire condensed wooden bullets from this ancient thing. The recoil had knocked him over when he had first tried it too, and Felix had begrudgingly let the gun back into his practice sessions recently, knowing that he could not deal with this particular coven alone with just his dagger.

The floorboards seemed just as ruined as they were two years ago, the door barely held in place as windows creaked and groaned. A draft of air whistled through, and the trees at the front shook their gnarled branches and heaved with empty trunks as the air thickened, mist rising from the forest that surrounded it.

Obsidian lined steps crumbled beneath Felix's feet as the mansion seemed to sag in on itself with a sigh when he headed towards the entrance, casting a glance at the foundations of the Old House.

Alive, but just barely. Fitting for creatures which stole life to live for themselves.

A goblin stared down at him from the knocker, the dark stone it was carved from making the demon look as if it were wet, the polished obsidian cold beneath the hunter's fingers as he knocked one, two, three;

"...I'm home." Felix whispers, and the door swings open.

Wind rushes to greet him, tousling his hair as the house seemed to exhale, floorboards protesting Felix's weight as he steps around the crack leading from the front of the mansion to the center, the middle of the entry hall blown to scraps as the hunter walks around the pit, eyeing the flecks of blood that encircle it like a grisly halo. Window frames clattered against unkempt walls, mold and vines snaking and pressing against gaudy wallpaper which have had their color drained long before Felix was introduced here, on his first mission.

"I see you've returned, hunter."

Felix's eyebrow twitched, and his hand retracted from where it originally laid on the dagger.

"Minho," he nods stiffly, and the other vampire nods back, gliding across the floor silently.

"You haven't been here for a long time, hunter. It is most unlike yourself to return here, not after all that is happening in the city," Minho tilts their head, light brown eyes glinting in the last remaining grasps of sunlight. "There is no reason for you to be here."

Felix snorts. "Look, I didn't come here to get told to fucking leave right after I entered this forsaken hellhole. How you guys put up with it, I will never know."

The vampire cracks a smile at that, brown hair falling into their eyes as they brush the strands away, unblinking. They watched Felix with those calculating eyes, carefully stepping closer to smell Felix as their hair kept falling into them, the hunter watched the silken strands stick on the surface of those glassy, lifeless eyes.

Felix shivers, looking away. Minho never made a habit of blinking after being turned.

"Someone you want from us?" the brunette pulls away, still having yet to push back their hair. "My sources tell me that it shouldn't be me that you want, anyway. Name them, hunter."