The Case of River’s Vampire

Intro

Spoilers for everyone’s real names

AU

Evil was in the eye of the beholder. Some would claim things as evil that other things could claim were justice. The death penalty, for instance, could be thought of as both justice and evil – did evil deserve to be killed, or was it evil to kill? Were both true? How could you say it is evil to kill, but then say that evil deserved to be killed?

So, if it was okay to kill evil, then really, was it okay to kill evil before their time? That was to say… if you gave evil the death penalty and someone killed them before they reached it… did that make the killer evil?

He certainly didn’t think so.

Which was why he made a living off of killing evil.

Well, perhaps not a living… as that phrase was quite often used in reference to money. Instead he lived off of killing evil.

Some people often thought of his kind as evil. To him, however, evil is as evil does – he was only evil if he killed innocence. Killing evil did not make him evil – it made him justice.

Or perhaps that’s what he told himself so that he could sleep at night. Or, rather, during the day.

He had not been this way for very long, at least in relation to others with his curse. A youngling in comparison, although considering he had lived over fifty years he couldn’t be considered young at all. Most people at fifty were looking forward to retirement and cursing gray hair.

He wished he could retire and his hair was still as red as it had been the day he was born.

Most thought he was a teen by his appearance, when in reality he had been around twenty when it had happened. He supposed he should blame himself for it, really – walking through a park at night with head phones on and not paying attention had never been a smart thing to do, yet for some reason that’s how he found himself cursed with this reality.

It had not been his fear that had set the creature off, however. It was in fact his lack of fear that placed him with this curse. Because when the lanky female had approached him with teeth bared and death in her eyes he had welcomed it with no problem – recently his love had passed away, and he had lost his parents and baby sister years ago.

No reason left to live had equaled no fear.

The woman had seen it as some sort of sign, however, and had changed him into the night creature she was. She had been told by her superior that his lack of fear would be a sign of his need for changing – only to find out a few years later they were in fact incompatible and he was a very unhappy person.

Not to mention gay.

She always had a bad taste in men, she told him. Always ended up with the gay ones.

Just his luck.

Instead of just wasting away like he was so very tempted to do, he instead decided that if he needed to kill to survive, he might as well kill those that were going to die anyway – at first the prospect of killing dying people had thrown him off, but then he realized that instead he could kill people not about to die, but ones that would someday in the future be thrown through the legal system and then killed.

Also known as mass murderers, serial rapists, and every so often a husband who killed his wife for the insurance money. When he was really hungry.

The problem with this was that they took weeks to track down and he had to feed usually once a week to be in top shape. There was no avoiding this however. The only way to do so was to find a donor and frankly tracking down a human who ‘showed no fear’ didn’t exactly sound like a very fun job.

Thankfully he’d tracked down two bastard criminals that had avoided being caught. They were known for kidnapping children, keeping them a few years, and killing them off when they got too old. Usually he wouldn’t touch such disgusting men with a ten foot pole, but he was rather hungry and the chances of them nabbing a new kid was too risky.

He managed to get into their apartment through an open window – much to easy, as it usually was. The two bastards were sitting before a TV, both of them with a beer in hand as they yelled at some sports event.

A problem arose – how to take out one without the other screaming. He didn’t know the neighbors to well – if one screamed it was possible someone would come running – so he did the only thing he could think of.

He hit one over the head, before attacking the other.

Making quick work of the first bastard, he was on the second before the last drop of blood could fall from the first.

It was only as the second man fell silent that he heard it. A quiet sound, almost like a whisper through the deadly silent apartment.

He stood, not bothering to wipe the blood dripping from his lips. Listening closely, he let the sound (which was quite a bit like a gentle knocking) guide him to a small closet in a back room. It was locked, but he picked it with ease, carefully pulling it open to see what was inside.

It was not often he found himself surprised. Being caught off guard was not something that was considered good in his line of work, or life rather if you came to see it that way. Being surprised meant a serious lack in information, which could eventually result in death.

So when a pair of unusually white eyes stared up at him from inside of the closet (which was not a closet at all, but instead a small bedroom covered in toys of all shapes and sizes, as well as the most expensive camera equipment money could buy), he wasn’t at all sure how to react.

The child couldn’t have been older then six or seven, although his body was much too small for a child of his age. What was strange was the fact that his hair, eyes, and skin were all the same shade of white – he was like a cartoon that had never been colored in.

Also the fact that while others would run in fear upon finding a man standing over them, fangs hanging from his mouth and blood all over his features, this strange little boy simply sat in the doorway and stared up at him, large eyes blinking with a strange sort of innocence one in his position would not usually hold.

Those blinking eyes left him breathless for a few moments, confusion clouding his mind. There had been a child - and this child did not fear him.

“Aren’t you afraid?” He finally managed to question, his own voice sounding foreign through the silence, even to his own ears.

The child stared at him a few moments, before he dared speak. His voice was soft… gentle, perhaps like a teddy bear’s might be if it could speak. “You killed the bad men,” he said. It was not a question, more like a statement of a fact.

“…Yes,” he breathed, finally lifting a hand to wipe the blood from his lips.

“Then why would I be scared?”

The question was whispered with such purity that he felt himself wondering the same thing, though only for a moment, before reality set in.

Here sat a young child, witness to two murders he had just committed. He was an innocent, he in no way deserved to be killed… but a witness was not something he could afford. He couldn’t be certain that, if asked, this boy wouldn’t tell some psychiatrist woman exactly what he had seen. And she certainly wouldn’t believe a man had bitten both men and they had died – despite the evidence left – leaving the child to be sent to some mental institute that would hurt him more then help him.

The words were on his lips before they registered in his brain. “Come with me.” Where had it come from? He hadn’t even thought them before they had been spoken. Some outer worldly force must have driven them out.

Perhaps she had been right. ‘The human that does not fear you is the one you will turn.’ He hadn’t believed this at any point in time – it had not worked for him, but that wasn’t to say it did not work at all.

The boy was reaching up to him then and without thinking he lifted the child into his arms. Something pulled lightly against his hold and it was then that he saw the collar and chain, hooking this poor child to the nearby bed.

The lock was picked easily and he made for the window, still carrying the small boy in his arms.

“What is your name?” He found himself asking as he carefully climbed down the fire escape, the white child on his back, arms loosely clinging to his neck, no fear in his small figure.

“Nate River,” the boy said.

“Nate River…” he breathed. Beautiful words, so beautiful his next lines almost hurt. “You need to change your name. They can find you.”

The grip around his neck tightened, but not enough to cut off his air way…

“Near,” the boy finally said. “Call me Near.”

Jumping from the end of the fire escape, he started down the street, still carrying the white boy on his back.

“My name is Matt,” he informed as he approached his own apartment, which was in the basement of a nearby building. It was a free room, if only given to him by a girl whose family he had avenged by killing their murderer (the trial had been canceled due to faulty police evidence, and the man had gone free). She was a nice girl, if not a little strange a creepy, but anyone who would freely give a room to a vampire had to be.

“Hello Matt,” the little boy said. “I’m Near.”

And that was the start of their life together.