A Heart Beats At Night

Chapter 3

"Beka?" Yuri gaped at the man in front of him, unsure of whether this was a dream or a nightmare. Otabek swung himself off the bike with liquid grace, never breaking eye contact. A low growl – a growl?! – rumbled through the alley, and Yuri quickly amended his previous thought. Nightmare, definitely a nightmare.

            "Yuri Plisetsky is dead," Otabek repeated. "I went to his funeral."

            The words Yuri could throw like knives deserted him. "I... Beka, I fell, and I woke up, I'm sorry -"

            "Don't call me that. Yuri Plisetsky never fell." He let out a laugh that wasn't quite a laugh, but something feral and cruel. "You're wearing his face and you don't even have a heartbeat. What are you?"

            This was his Otabek, but it wasn't. His face was the same, if a bit harder and curled into an uncharacteristic sneer, but Yuri's instincts were screaming at him to run. He fought down the rising panic, straining his senses. He was a vampire, he could hold his own in any fight, as long as he kept his wits about him. The thump whoosh of adrenaline-driven blood rushing through Otabek's body. Harsh breathing, barely controlled. A tang of hot metal and forest in the air. Otabek shifted his shoulders, a deep grinding of bone and tendon, that lengthened and deepened as Yuri stared in open-mouthed horror.

            With a sickening crack, Otabek dropped to all fours, but he wasn't Otabek anymore. The creature that had taken his place was covered in a thick pelt of dark fur. Heavy claws tap tap tapped against the sidewalk as it stalked towards Yuri, a snarl revealing teeth like pearly knives. Yuri bared his own fangs as it fixed him with gleaming yellow eyes. The thought of fighting not-Beka turned his stomach. Could he outrun the monster? Outclimb? He edged away until his back was pressed against the hard stones of the building behind him.

            A figure appeared at the mouth of the street, a silhouette ringed by the glow of a streetlamp. Yuri wanted to shout at them to run, to get as far away as possible; he wasn't sure that he had a chance. A hapless pedestrian would be torn to shreds. He opened his mouth to warn them, but cut himself off, fearing that he would just draw attention to easier prey... even if the thing seemed very focused on its current target.

            Otabek lunged. Incapacitate and run. Don't wrestle, try to go up, no fingers means no climbing. Yuri braced himself for the impact, but it never came. Instead, the monster remained suspended in midair, a pair of pale arms wrapped around its midriff.

            "Now, Mr. Wolf, that won't be necessary. I'm sure we can resolve this-" the words were cut off with a grunt of effort as the thing thrashed- "peacefully."

            "Viktor?"

            Otabek twisted and bit Viktor's bicep. Viktor returned the favor.

            "Hey Yuri." The words were slightly muffled by Otabek's ear.

:: :: ::

Viktor didn't try to talk to Yuri on the drive back to the house.

            He wanted to. He wanted to lecture the boy about staying out so close to dawn, about picking fights with werewolves, about sneaking out of the house after being told to stay home so he wouldn't get himself killed. And they would have that conversation, because even if Yuri wasn't a child, he was still Viktor's responsibility. Even as resilient as they were, vampires were fragile, relics of an ancient magic clinging to a world that no longer had a place for them. Most, he knew, didn't get through their first few months. The remainder were lucky to make it a decade.