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“Have you seen the wild poppies growing in the fields around the town?” Scott looked up as Cleo came through the door, basket in hand, “There must’ve been thousands! I swear I see more every year.”
They dumped the basket on the dining table and leaned down to give Pearl a kiss on the cheek.
“Do our guests need a refill?” Cleo asked, turning to Scott, Drift, and Shelby, who sat clutching their still-steaming empty mugs of hot pigs blood.
“Ooh, yes please!” Drift said, holding out her mug.
“Can you put some cinnamon in mine this time?” Shelby asked.
They nodded, “Scott?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
Cleo reached into her basket and brought out a bundle of the poppies, “I’m gonna go put these in the vase in the kitchen,” She said to Pearl.
“Good idea.”
She nodded to the three of them, “We’ll catch up later, okay?” and left the room.
Scott stood up.
“Where are you going?” Shelby asked.
“I, uhh… I think I’ll go for a little walk. See how much Oakhurst has changed in the past year.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, I… I’d rather be alone, if that’s alright.”
Drift and Shelby exchanged a look of understanding.
Avid.
“Yeah okay, just come back safe, alright?”
Scott smiled, “Will do, Shelby.”
The halls in the castle didn’t echo like they used to.
As Scott crossed the dining room out to the front door, leaving Shelby, Drift and Pearl catching up at the other end, it struck him how the once booming clap of his heels on stone had given way to softness- carpets and wall-hung tapestries and bookshelves the height of the vaulted ceiling. Muffled sound, harsh edges taken off. A cold draft no longer blew through the empty rooms, because the rooms weren’t empty anymore, but filled with shelves of trinkets and portraits and spine-broken books and home.
The smell of cinnamon wafted through the air. The sound of friendly chatter at the dinner table filled the room.
And Scott stepped out the door into a bright day. He took a second to breathe it in. The last notes of September still lingered on the wind, and it was unusually warm for the season.
But he couldn’t dawdle here too long. He had errands to run.
He had people to see.
Shelby and Drift had assumed he was going to visit Avid. And while they weren’t wrong in thinking that, his grave was only a short stop on his way to where he needed to go.
He always did this bit alone. Perhaps it was because part of him was still embarrassed to admit that he cared. Perhaps he just didn’t want to explain himself to the others, even though he knew they’d understand. Perhaps he felt like if he had company then he would feel the need to show off, and this was a time for him to be honest with himself.
He walked around the side of the castle and unhooked the latch to the gardens that Cleo and Pearl had been maintaining over the past two centuries. It had expanded a lot over time, with a set of allotments being added in the fifties and the greenhouse being built in the seventies.
As the scorched soil in Oakhurst had healed from the scars, more plants were able to grow. The poppies came first- blooming red over the fields of bloodshed. Then came crops of wheat and carrots, and they could start breeding animals again. Soon, the garden was awash with local flora.
Scott moved through the flowerbeds to the far end of the garden, where there were crates upon crates of produce.
Pearl had said he could take anything he needed whenever- they grew way too much for two people, and they were happy to share.
Scott searched through the crates, putting aside the ones he needed until he had a small collection of what he was looking for.
First, a box of wither roses. The dead wood was healing now, growing greener and brighter with each passing year. Somehow- and Scott really never cared to understand these magic spells- preventing Oakhurst from falling into another massacre had broken the curse. The diseased forest behind the castle was getting better.
It had been twenty years exactly since that fateful day in 2006 when the eight remaining survivors of Oakhurst had waited with bated breath.
And they had all breathed out a collective sigh of relief when November passed and not a drop of blood was spilled.
Every two hundred years there was a massacre. But in that time, Cleo and Pearl- as well as the others, when they could- had built a place of peace and warmth. And, probably more helpfully, had not let a single human soul near the borders since.
When the dead wood had shown signs of getting better, they had collected as much pale saplings and wither roses as they could. As diseased as they were, they hadn’t wanted to lose the rare specimens. Scott was thankful that they’d saved those seeds. The black-petaled roses had that macabre flair that he liked. It just wouldn’t fit the vibe for him to put living flowers on his almost-lover’s grave.
He gathered a handful of them and tossed them into a basket, then dutifully stacked the crate back on top of the pile.
The wild poppies had already been divided into bundles. Someone (Cleo, he guessed) had wrapped the stems in twine in groups of about ten. Scott picked up a bouquet and added it to his basket.
The crate of loosely-packed hyacinths was almost filled to the brim- the soil seemed to take to them well. Scott picked out a fistful of the purple ones, and set them down next to the roses.
Lastly, he took a small bundle of trilliums- wood lilies- and a bundle of yellow hydrangeas out and placed them carefully in the basket.
The trek up the hill wasn’t too arduous, although Scott took longer than usual because the weather was nice. He’d stop a few times and listen to the late autumn bird calls- few and far between as they settled in for the winter, but much louder in the last twenty years than they had been at any point previously. Thankfully, his first stop wasn’t far.
Scott wasn’t sure why the man had wanted to be buried so close to the castle. Even after his turning, he’d never called it home, and even Avid had some distance from the place.
There was probably some reason why he’d chosen that spot.
Scott hadn’t known him well enough to understand it, though.
Wreaths of poppies already adorned the grave, as they always did this time of year. He remembered when he’d first seen them, he’d asked Cleo about it and she’d told him about a poem they’d read about remembering people you’d lost.
Apparently- he’d leaned later- several countries had then adopted the flowers as a symbol to commemorate the armistice.
The Great War had been hard on this tradition. Travel was limited and they had to miss out on their visits for a few years until things had died down.
Scott hadn’t talked to Cleo. But a few cracked smiles and monosyllabic greetings and comments from Pearl of “they’re just dealing with a lot right now” and Scott could fill in the gaps.
It was clear by their broken, searching eyes what she was asking herself.
What would he think of all this? This senseless fighting, this turmoil, this destruction?
Am I glad that he’s gone so he doesn’t have to live through this?
Scott hadn’t questioned the poppies’ appearance on the grave- not more than just surface-level intrigue, anyway- and Cleo never brought it up. They didn’t need to talk about it. Scott just started silently adding to the pile of wreaths with his own offerings (albeit borrowed from Cleo’s garden).
He wondered if she noticed the new additions.
He wondered if she knew they were from him.
Scott took off his leather jacket and knelt on it, saving his knees from the ache of the cold stone plinth.
Scott wasn’t one to kneel. He was the one people kneeled to. He had always been too powerful to lower himself before someone else.
But here he was.
He set the bundle of poppies down in front of the grave. His eyes scanned the moniker before him.
The Doctor.
Scott glanced down, not really wanting to look at the epithet of a man whose memory made Scott’s heart ache in all the ways he didn’t like.
“I don’t know if you’ll even like these,” Scott muttered, gesturing to the poppies, “I read somewhere that the white poppies are supposed to symbolise a commitment to peace and pacifism- that seems more your style. But white poppies don’t grow in Oakhurst. I suppose in some ways this land will always be hungry for violence.”
The grave- as graves should- didn’t answer.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll grow here soon. Cleo’s been doing a lot of work on the land… and… I have too. Not on the land, I mean, but on myself. I’ve come a long way in the past two hundred and twenty years.”
Birds chirped in the trees.
Scott took a deep breath.
“I’ve kept my promise.”
The words were barely audible- Scott was practically mouthing them, as if giving them breath would somehow break the stillness that came over everything.
“Two hundred and twenty years, and I’ve kept my promise. And I don’t intend to break it any time soon.”
Barely a flutter of a fallen leaf, barely a sway of a tree branch- nothing dared disturb the things that settled around the good doctor’s grave. He had come here to rest- so lifting his voice to even so much as a whisper felt like a desecration of his memory.
Scott remembered the torn skin and bloodied face of Legundo- all the destruction and pain that Owen had wreaked. He remembered the sight of him standing at the cliff edge and, with hoarse lungs, asking if it would be enough distance to fall.
And Scott had felt sorry for him.
Actually sorry.
The doctor’s pain and struggles had not affected Scott in any way. Scott hadn’t caused it, nor was it a detriment to him. It hadn’t even been his direct fledgeling that had turned him. Scott had no reason to feel bad for the doctor, and yet he did.
Why?
It was just being near him.
The thing that had made Scott’s stomach drop was the mere sight of another person in distress.
That had never happened to him before. Not for millennia.
Scott had learned a little thing about how he wanted to live his life from everyone in Oakhurst. And while Avid had sparked that, had blindsided the unfeeling vampire with affection, annoyance, confusion, reverence, sadness, loss, grief- a mess of emotions that Scott still had yet to untangle- every life lost in this town had changed the way Scott had modelled his own life from that point on.
Avid had been the first to touch his cold heart, but Shelby had kept it warm, taught him joy and love and understanding. Drift, too- Scott had learned a lot about trust and forgiveness from her.
But the doctor was the first person Scott had felt empathy for.
Breaking another person was an art that Scott had once greatly enjoyed, and some sadistic part of him that lay dormant now had admired Owen’s craftsmanship- the clean lines of fracture on the doctor’s face, the broken oaths and hearts and glass monacales, the bleeding gashes in the arms and the wounds that just wouldn’t seem to close. It took skill to tear someone apart both outside and in, and make even Mr “I can fix him” turn and confront head-on the idea of being shattered.
But it had hurt Scott to see. It never used to. And it wasn’t like he’d cared about Legundo the few times they’d spoken before.
Some vicarious feeling had still tugged at his heart.
And now, he was lowering his voice to gentle tones so as not to wake a man who had been dead for over two centuries.
He’d carried that feeling with him, never wanting to let it go. Legundo’s memory was a reminder of everything Scott needed to feel.
“It was hard,” Scott uttered, “At first. But so much time has passed without me even feeling that urge anymore, and I’m really starting to think… I-I can do it. I think I might actually be able to do it. I think- I hope- that this can just be who I am now. And there’s always that fear that I’ll go back to my old ways, but… b-but it’s exactly that, it’s a fear. I’m not sure when it happened- I mean, it definitely wasn’t immediately from the beginning- but I don’t want to be evil. Not anymore. I want to keep my promise. I want to be afraid to break it. And I don’t really think I can ever truly be a good person, but… it’s the kind of person I want to be. And isn’t that enough? Isn’t that what you wanted for yourself?” Scott wiped his eyes. He hadn’t really realised he’d been tearing up, but the waterworks came more easily to him nowadays. He cursed himself for not checking if his mascara was waterproof, “I mean, there was a point in time when we thought the soil in Oakhurst would never heal. The earth would always hunger for bloodshed. But with time, and with help, we’ve achieved the impossible. And maybe… just maybe… there’s hope for folks like you and me.”
Scott fiddled with the zipper on the leather jacket he was kneeling on.
“I don’t know… maybe I’ll always be a killer at heart. But I don’t want to be. I don’t want anyone to suffer like you did. Not by my hand, at least,” he glanced to his basket and the bundle of purple hyacinths, “But anyway… I’ve kept my promise. That’s all I really came to say. I will continue to keep it for as long as I can still remember the sacrifice you made. And I will make sure that I never forget.”
He wiped his eyes again, frustrated for his lack of mirror to check to see if he’d messed up his makeup.
He drew in the still, autumnal air. He’d come to enjoy the feeling of oxygen in his lungs again, even though it wasn’t something he needed. It felt nice. It calmed him.
He stood up and nodded to the gravestone, “Thank you for your time, Doctor. I’ll… I’ll let you rest, now.”
He hooked his basket onto his arm and set off for the next one.
The mountain behind the castle was steep, and Scott was ever-thankful to vampiric strength that he could climb it with ease. He summated the hill and made his way through the pale forest. Even though its recent start to regrowth had made the woods seem wildly different, Scott still knew the way. The path to this grave was well-worn under his feet, and familiar to him as ever.
He’d been there just this morning.
Scott plucked a fresh wither rose from his basket and dropped it before the grave.
He’d only planned for this to be a quick visit- he’d spent most of the day here with Drift and Shelby, and he had other graves to get to.
His fingers traced the epitaph he’d carved himself.
Here lies Avid.
“We fly home tomorrow, so, this is probably the last time I’ll see you for the next year. I’ve just come to wish you goodbye.”
He took a hand off the gravestone and was about to walk away, but hesitated, “The thing is…” he said, “I’ve met someone.”
Scott was half-expecting the inanimate rock to burst into flames in outrage. It would’ve seemed very on-brand for Avid.
“His name’s Cam. He’s nice. He’s good to me. He grins when he kisses me and it’s honestly kinda annoying- he just presses his teeth against my lips, it’s not pleasant.”
Scott smiled at the thought, then looked down, his cheeks flushing in- what? Shame? Affection?
“I think… I think I’m in love with him.”
The silence that came from the grave was deafening.
“Which is legal now, thanks to that incredibly fun and violent night we had back in the sixties. Oh, you would’ve loved it. Four days of non-stop rioting. We threw bricks at police officers. It was amazing.”
Scott sighed, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Avid. I’ll still come and see you. I’ll always come and see you- come hell or high water, war, or global pandemic- I’ll find a way to come back here and tell you how much I’ve grown because of you. But… but I won’t stop myself from continuing to grow because I’m still waiting for a future that will never come to pass… I’m… I’m just sorry.”
Scott felt tears prick in his eyes. He felt guilty. Guilty for moving on from Avid. For loving someone new. Even though he’d never even known if he actually did love Avid.
But still, it felt like a betrayal.
If Avid could see him now, would he understand? Would he want Scott to be happy, or would he go all “Avid” on him and end up setting something on fire?
“The thing is, I didn’t want to move on from you. I held onto that longer than I should have. I will mourn you for longer than I knew you, and that sucks. And part of me was hoping…” He trailed off, then shook his head, “But you’re not coming back.”
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Was he hoping Avid’s hand would shoot up out of the dirt and claw his way out of his grave?
Maybe Shelby had made him watch too many bad horror movies on their girls’ nights.
Once they’d passed the long-dreaded two-hundred-year mark, Scott had begun to lose hope that Avid would come back. And that had hit Scott harder than he’d expected.
Something about having been alive for 1600 years made the concept of death so much more frightening. After all, Scott had done the whole “rising again” thing. He knew it was possible. And some infantile part of himself somehow expected that to happen for Avid after a while. Avid was a vampire. He was supposed to live forever. How could he have been taken from this world so young? A fresh fledgeling and barely even twenty years old.
It had hit him at some point in the 2010s that Avid was dead. Not like Scott, not the kind that comes back. He was just… gone.
Forever.
And Scott had a choice.
He could look for parts of Avid in every superficial boyfriend and rebound guy in every gay bar in NYC- the tousled hair, the anxious smile, the raw, undiagnosed ADHD. Snippets and catches of Avid that Scott could still grasp in his fingers and hold for dear life. But it wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough to fill the hole in his heart that ran deeper than any stake could.
Or…
Or he could build a life with Cam. Who wasn’t Avid. Who would never be Avid. Who played his own, new role in Scott’s life.
He could keep rehashing the same old story, trying and failing to capture what he lost in the original, or he could write a new one. One that didn’t erase the old one, but built on top of it.
And as much as Scott feared that he was betraying Avid by loving someone else, he wasn’t forgetting Avid. He would hold that loss in his heart forever, because it was part of who Scott was now. Scott couldn’t be patient and caring and loving and all the things that made him a good boyfriend to Cam without the things Avid had shown him first.
Cam didn’t know much about what’d happened in Oakhurst. It was something Scott knew he had to tell him about soon- about the world of vampires and Scott’s bloody past. He didn’t want to lie to the man he loved. It wasn’t right. But it was complicated: if he were to live amongst humans Abolish had made it clear to him that there were rules that he had to follow, including keeping vampirism a secret. And what if Cam wanted to be turned? Scott didn’t want to stay young while his love grew old, but at the same time, he couldn’t break his oath.
Right now, all Cam knew was that Scott had family here (technically true) and that it was the anniversary of him losing someone he cared about (true) whose death was still affecting him (also true).
So Scott hadn’t lied about this trip. Just about everything else.
“You’ll like Cam,” Scott told Avid’s grave, “I might bring him with me to see you one year.”
If they lasted that long after Scott tells him the truth.
“So, uhh… I guess this is goodbye.”
Scott had said goodbye to the idea of anything romantic happening between him and Avid a few years before, but it felt official now.
It wasn’t goodbye forever. He’d still visit Avid every year. But it felt like an important goodbye nonetheless.
Scott didn’t want to linger too long here. He wasn’t sure how many tears he could wipe away before he broke. And he had other things to do than cry at the foot of Avid’s grave for the second time today.
He set onwards to his next mission, feeling more shaken than he’d care to admit.
It was a good thing the next one wouldn’t be as much of an emotional rollercoaster… right?
Owen.
Scott had brought no flowers to leave on that grave.
He didn’t have much more to say to the stone monument that he hadn’t already said.
But it bared repeating.
“I told you when I first visited you here that I hoped I was nothing like you. I still very much hope that. And I’m glad that I haven’t turned out that way yet. And thank you- for the example you’ve set. I don’t want to live in the darkness anymore.”
He always felt in necessary after visiting the doctor to come here and remind himself exactly why he wanted to keep his promise. He was thankful for the way it had worked out geographically- Avid’s grave often provided a respite in between Legs and Owen. The happy couple had a difficult one to see back-to-back while Scott’s emotions had all still been fresh and raw and new, and even with a few centuries of feeling things he still found it difficult without a palette-cleanser.
Scott studied the grave, and the epitaph inscribed on it:
Here lies Owen.
He finally got to choose his fate.
Owen had taught Scott what not to be.
Scott had always been good at containing his anger. This was mainly because he hadn’t felt anger- hadn’t felt anything- for over ten centuries. His wrath was careful and controlled.
That had always been the danger in beginning to feel emotions, a fear Scott had kept in the back of his mind. If he let the feelings consume him he might fall off the opposite end- blind rage and destruction. Owen let his love turn to hatred, let it fester and run deep until it destroyed everything and everyone around him.
Owen hadn’t felt remorse for the doctor, or for Avid, or the people in Oakhurst all those years ago. Neither had Scott at first. They hadn’t been people to him, just faceless forces of opposition. Food.
And that wasn’t an excuse, Scott knew that.
He still didn’t remember their faces and he hated himself for it.
He didn’t want to end up like Owen.
Scott didn’t kneel before this cenotaph.
He didn’t lower himself to Owen. He stood above and looked down at the monument to Owen’s memory.
Not out of disrespect. No, the vile part of Scott greatly respected the torment Owen had wreaked.
Out of fear.
Scott feared to get close to the ground, close to Owen. To sink to his level.
And even though the source of their violence had been vastly different, the outcome of it had been the same. Back in Scott’s day, he’d made torture and death an art. He’d done things to people that made Owen’s attempts at destroying Legundo look like a child’s macaroni painting. He’d spent too long sat too high up on his throne to ever be affected by anyone else’s wrath. It had been a long time since he’d been a fledgling, and he’d forgotten what it felt like to be hurt.
And then Owen had taken Avid from him.
And he hadn’t even been sorry.
Owen had justified all his atrocities with righteous rage. Before the shift, Scott hadn’t even bothered to justify himself. He had been perfectly comfortable being evil.
He wasn’t sure what was worse, but he didn’t want to be either one.
“I’m sorry for what you had to go through,” Scott told him, “But I’m glad I haven’t followed in your footsteps. Maybe I’m privileged to have had that option, I don’t know… but still. I’m glad. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it had to end this way for you. I’m not going to let it end like that for me.”
At first, his decision to reform himself had been completely selfishly motivated. He didn’t want to die- could you really blame him? But time spent performing this altruism made him realise that he didn’t actually want it any other way. Even at an inconvenience to himself, he’d choose to be good, because that’s the kind of person he wanted to be.
Scott nodded to Owen’s grave, and left.
He hadn’t known about this next grave for the first few years. He’d stumbled upon it about a decade after Oakhurst, on a walk by the shore- a large, stone cross with two planks of wood nailed to it, an inscription on it in black ink.
Pyro
Somebody mourned him eventually.
It was in Shelby’s handwriting.
He wondered why she hadn’t told Scott about it. He’d asked her on the train ride home the year he’d found it, and she’d gotten very quiet, hid her face behind a curtain of hair and turned to look out the window at the mountains passing by the tracks.
“I just…” She sighed, “I know he could’ve been better but… couldn’t we all? I think he deserved to have one just like the others. Despite everything.”
Scott had ignored the grave on most of these trips, even after he started including Owen in his yearly rounds.
He wasn’t sure why.
Maybe he just couldn’t face it. It had been the hardest lesson of all to learn.
Pyro had taught Scott to feel guilt.
It hadn’t come right away. It hadn’t come all at once. But the stab in Scott’s heart had driven a deeper and deeper rift over the past century.
Pyro had been cracking before he’d met Scott. Scott had destroyed him anyway, and hadn’t even gotten much satisfaction from it. And Scott doubted that even sullying something pristine would have tickled him the way it used to. The art was tired.
But Pyro was more than just something for Scott to toy with. He was a person. Scott saw that now.
Scott had been visiting Pyro’s grave for about a hundred years.
He hadn’t kneeled until the past fifty.
But Scott slowly let his knee hit the dirt in front of Pyro’s gravestone, and set the hyacinths down at the base. He remembered a story- popular long ago, even before he was born. The Great God Apollo had fallen for a Spartan prince, who was killed by a discus to the head at the hands of the jealous Zephyr, God of the West Wind. In his grief, Apollo turned the young Prince- Hyacinthus- into a flower, preserving his beauty forever.
Scott had always thought the story a little tacky, and had never really understood why such a great, powerful, immortal being would mourn for a mere royal.
But a lot of his opinions had changed in the past two centuries.
Hyacinths were a flower of grief, and all kinds grew in Oakhurst. The different colours had their meanings, of course, and the purple ones represented guilt.
Deep regret.
A plead for forgiveness.
An immortal, omnipotent being, brought to his knees and whispering “I’m sorry”.
As he put down the handful of purple blooms, he noticed that there was already a bundle of yellow chrysanthemums laid against the stone cross. Their petals were wilting slightly, and Scott reckoned they’d been there for about a day.
It seemed like Scott wasn’t the only one who made the rounds alone.
Shelby.
It had to be her. Maybe Cleo would’ve wanted to pay respects to her sire, but Scott somehow doubted she would’ve brought the flowers.
No. This was a Shelby move. Of course she’d visit his grave, she’d built the damned thing. He wondered briefly if she visited anyone else as well- Owen, or the Doc, perhaps. He wondered if Drift did something similar. He could ask them about it, but that would mean admitting to this yearly tradition, and that somehow didn’t feel right.
He wasn’t doing this for attention- to earn praise for his redemption. This was a quiet moment of respect for his fallen kin.
“I’m sorry,” Scott said to Pyro’s headstone, “I know that doesn’t really cut it, but it’s the best I can do for now.”
A soft autumn breeze swept leaves across the stone monument.
It was quiet.
Pyro had been so eager and bright-eyed, excited to learn. Scott had, admittedly, taught him lots about the way the world worked.
He’d known that man for barely a day before he’d slaughtered him by the obelisk, and the sunny-smiled scholar was cast aside. And while that had been Pyro’s choice to lose the humanity that Shelby proved was possible to keep, Scott couldn’t deny the hand he’d had in it.
Scott had grown up fighting for attention. He’d left Pyro doing the same, carrying on the cycle, knowing full well where it would lead, and not caring.
Owen had done similar to Legs at the end of it, or, at least, had tried to. He’d passed on his pain to his fledgling, made it his mission to make someone feel the anguish he’d felt.
He wondered briefly what would’ve happened if Scott had let Owen turn Pyro instead. Now that would’ve been interesting- Scott probably wouldn’t’ve been held so accountable for everything that went wrong, and maybe wouldn’t’ve been forced into this quest for reformation. In a way, he owed it to Pyro.
Hypotheticals aside, seeing the doctor standing broken on the edge of a cliff, Scott was confronted with all the pain he’d caused others in his life. And he felt guilty, if only a little.
But it grew.
And eventually Scott was able to get here, kneeling before Pyro’s grave and saying, “I’m sorry.”
Pyro had hated him by the end. Scott didn’t blame him.
“I mean, is there anything else I need to say? If I try to explain myself, it will just come out wrong. It was wrong. I’m sorry. I’m just sorry.”
Scott had explained himself to the grave before. He’d found every angle that could minimise the damage that he’d caused. Pyro had heard it all, by this point.
“I guess…” Scott stood up and shook his head, “I’ve said all I can. I’ll leave you be.”
His face hard-set, he followed the shoreline back to the path to town.
On his trek through the spruce woods, he came across something he hadn’t seen before, but had clearly been here since their time in Oakhurst: a roughly hewn stone with words engraved into them as if they had been carved by claws.
Truffle.
Scott didn’t really know what that was about- he dimly recalled something about Pyro’s pet pig being murdered?
He hadn’t really cared much at the time. Maybe he should have. If Pyro had gone to the lengths to make her a headstone, then she’d clearly been important to him.
Scott hung his head and let a moment of silence fall over the grave, before moving on.
Cleo had been right.
The fields around the walls of Oakhurst were bursting with poppies.
Blood-red blooms covered the grass, a spread- a sea- of petals that almost washed out the green.
Scott walked through the town, which was now rebuilt high and stable and (probably most importantly) fireproof.
A large library was the first building he passed as he walked through the gate- filled to the brim with tomes taken from the crypts. Nobody who ever entered Oakhurst could use them, but they felt important to store. Occasionally Abolish stopped by and took a few back to his organisation.
There hadn’t been many records of the history of Oakhurst, and it was an ongoing project for Cleo and Pearl- helped by Sausage and Shelby, and using Scott as a primary source- to document as much as they knew about the place. It meant that if anyone did stumble upon here, there would hopefully be a lot less bloodshed.
In the library, there were a list of names of everyone who had lived in Oakhurst for as far back as they could find, next to them were their dates of birth and death.
Scott had been responsible for most of them.
So many more he’d killed. Ones he was sure had names, but were lost to time. Forgotten. So many bodies so scarred they were unidentifiable.
Scott thought about going in and flicking through that census, familiarising himself once more with the names of the people whose lives he’d cut short, but he was running out of time, and the others might start wondering where he was. He’d have to make time to do it in the morning before they left for their flight.
The library was something Pyro would have loved. Owen, too- they wanted to preserve the legacy of Louis and everything he’d done for the infrastructure of the town.
Scott passed it, and headed towards the centre.
The beacon had stayed there, black and cracked and smoking slightly, for two centuries. He remembered the day of the bicentennial, he’d been in the kitchen of his old house with Shelby, now rebuilt, having a cup of blood when Sausage had practically broken down the door to tell them to come to the beacon quick.
Something was happening.
They’d been terrified of this.
There had been theories. Fears of what would happen. Oakhurst would call more humans back to the town and start this massacre anew, or it would lock them all back in as vampires and not let up until every last one of them was dead, or it would reincarnate the souls of the ones they’d lost, or a thousand other equally terrifying possibilities.
The beacon had started to glow, changing from black to red to gold to a dazzling, lush green.
“Oh, this is not good,” Cleo had said.
“It… It feels good,” Peal had replied.
“Yeah, it feels all tingly!” Sausage had cried, “More than it ever did before.”
“I don’t like this,” Apo had clutched Cherri’s hand, “Cherri, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve brought you here.”
Abolish even had an expression of mild concern- the situation was dire.
The beacon kept glowing brighter and brighter, and Scott still remembered the smell of freshly cut grass and spring flowers and petrichor filling his nose, warmth spreading across his dead bones for the first time in millennia. The feeling was unfamiliar, but it felt good. Not good in the way Scott used to feel after a feast or a massacre- that freeing, consuming rush of power. Good in the way it felt to spend a quiet morning on a bench in Central Park, and that moment just before sunrise where the crepuscular light began to bring colour into the world, and Scott would just close his eyes, and forget all responsibilities, and enjoy the sound of the starlings heralding the new day.
A quiet hush had fallen over the room, and Scott’d realised the others probably were feeling something similar.
The beacon’s light turned from green to pure white and glowed ever blindingly until the room was bathed in a brightness that Scott was sure the cloud-covered skies of Oakhurst had not seen in… well, ever. Certainly not as far as he could remember.
The beacon’s light filled every corner of the room.
And they’d watched with bated breath as it slowly, gradually, crumbled to dust.
The small room heard nothing but stunned silence, broken only by the sound of birds chirping outside.
Nobody said anything for about a minute.
Abolish walked forwards, crouched down on the ground and poked the pile of dust with a gloved finger.
“Is it… gone?” Drift asked, uncertainly, “Is that it? Did we win?”
“Someone should go check on the other beacons,” Abolish instructed.
“On it,” Cleo said, taking Pearl by the hand and leading her back out through the door.
“So… it’s over now?” Apo asked.
“It seems that way,” Abolish replied.
“It’s really over?” Apo repeated. She turned to her wife, a mixture of excitement and relief on her face, “Cherri, it’s over now! It’s finally, finally over!”
“It’s over!” Shelby cried, turning and beaming at Scott.
“Let’s not be too hasty,” Abolish warned, “This is only one beacon, we don’t know if-“
“I don’t care. It’s over,” Apo cried.
“It’s over!” Sausage jumped up and down and flung his arms around Apo and Cherri. Apo seemed so relieved that she didn’t even complain.
And just like that, no more beacons.
No more curse.
It was over.
As far as they knew, anyway.
Scott passed by the tower in the centre and peered inside the open door.
The beacon was still gone.
After twenty years, Scott wasn’t sure if he expected anything different. But he still checked, just to make sure.
He didn’t want any of this to happen again. This was why he visited these places every year.
He was the one who had set the dominos running. He was at the root of all that went wrong, more so than he’d first realised after Abolish ran some checks and discovered that Owen’s vampiric lineage could’ve been traced back to Scott.
He needed to remind himself of all these lessons- everything he’d needed to learn from the people in Oakhurst.
And he needed to come here, too.
The beacons had disappeared because they’d all put in the work to stop the bloodshed. They’d healed the soil of Oakhurst. It was a reminder to Scott that the effort to change actually counted for something. Being good makes the world better, and now, hopefully people wouldn’t fall to the curse anymore.
Still, Cleo and Pearl kept the place on lockdown. Just in case.
And just because the beacons were gone and the curse was lifted, it didn’t mean that Scott was off the hook. He had to keep working, keep bettering himself, keep making amends.
He’d never stop visiting these places. Even if the town repopulated and the forests completely regrew. Even when the scars on this land completely faded. Scott would never forget how important it was that he kept growing.
On the outskirts of the town stood a cabin.
In front of it stood two graves.
Renhardt Dogmourne
Martyn Woodhurst
Although Scott had been the one to drive the sword through Ren’s chest in the end, he hadn’t had much to do with the circumstances leading up to their deaths- the tragic miscommunications.
All the things that could’ve been avoided.
If Ren hadn’t looked at them with blind mistrust.
If Apo had just talked to Martyn.
If only.
Everyone had done what they’d done out of fear. Ren and Martyn out of fear of vampires, Apo out of fear of humans.
Fear was a thing Scott understood well- not from feeling it, no, but from using it. Fear had been his weapon of choice, his tool, his chisel. He knew just how well it could destroy something.
He was kneeling before proof of that.
Both these deaths could’ve been avoided if they’d just communicated. And Scott remembered that. He kept it in his mind, and if he had a problem, he’d make sure to tell someone. Shelby, Drift, or Cam- hell, sometimes even Abolish, since it was easy enough to get his attention.
There was sort of a comfort in having a trained assassin watching you at all times, and more often than not Abolish had helped Scott get out of a few sticky situations.
It had been a difficult thing to explain to Cam. It had taken him a few dates to notice the spy with a sniper that followed Scott everywhere, and of course he’d had questions.
But it hadn’t exactly put him off, which was a good sign for when Scott finally told him about the whole vampire thing.
Scott reached into his basket and brought out the rest of the flowers, laying each bundle before the graves, the trilliums for Ren and the hydrangeas for Martyn- the repetitive ritual becoming almost second nature by this point in the evening.
That was the last of them.
He didn’t need to stay here long, and the others were probably wondering where he was. He stood up, and brushed the grass stains off his jeans.
“I, uhh… anyway, I’m sorry,” He told the graves, “It didn’t have to end like this.”
He picked his now-empty basket up and set off back up the path.
Shelby, Drift, Pearl and Cleo all looked up when the door opened.
Scott approached the table.
“Your mascara’s running, by the way,“ Shelby said, knotting her brow. She seemed to clock that Scott had been crying, and was unsure whether to bring it up. Scott forced a smile, trying to assure her that he needed no comfort. This was good. This was important.
He liked feeling emotions. Even the bad ones. He needed them.
“I’ll fix it later,” Scott told her, sweeping a curtain of white hair over his face.
“I like the look,” Drift remarked, “Sad boys are totally trendy right now.”
“How was your walk?” Pearl asked.
“It was good. I took some flowers from the crate in your garden, I hope that’s okay, you said-“
“Oh, yeah, that’s fine,” Cleo assured him, “We got loads.”
She collected the now-cold cups of blood from the table, “I’m gonna go wash up.”
“I’ll help,” Scott offered, following her out of the room.
The old storage room had been converted into a kitchenette off the side of the dining hall. It was fairly tidy- Scott doubted that they cooked much food- and the only space that seemed to be used at all regularly was the microwave, where they heated up the blood.
There was a rich spice rack that was kept well stocked, and branches of herbs- rosemary and bayleaves- hung from a rack on the underside of the upper cabinets. The two of them had apparently discovered the joy of adding spices to the blood at some point in the early 1900s, and it had changed their quality of life.
Scott preferred his blood plain, but he appreciated the holistic and homely aesthetic that Pearl and Cleo had built in the once-cold castle.
A bowl of wax fruit stood next to a blue vase on the countertop. It was filled with the fresh red flowers Cleo had brought home earlier.
“The poppies are lovely by the way,” Scott told Cleo, hopping up onto the kitchen counter, “Have you thought about growing some white ones in the garden? I heard they-“
“I’ve already bought the seed packets and I’ll be planting them in the Spring,” They said.
“Good girl.”
“I’m not really either of those things,” Cleo reminded him.
“Right.”
“I…” Cleo trailed off and looked down, a curtain of white hair falling across her face, “I know you’ve been going to see him.”
So. She’d finally brought it up.
Scott shifted where he sat, “We don’t need to talk about it, if you don’t-“
“Just…” She took a deep breath, “Thank you. Pearl helps me clean up the graves sometimes, and Abolish likes to sit with him when he visits, but… I’m glad it’s not just me leaving poppies for him on the anniversary of it all. I’m glad he has company.”
I’m glad someone cares.
Scott hadn’t learned the power of showing someone he cared before everything that had happened. How much it could mean to someone to just listen, to just feel for them.
Cleo had noticed the smudged mascara. As much as she had cause to hate Scott, she’d seen that he could feel. And she seemed thankful for it.
“I know he meant a lot to you. Much more than he did to me, but-“
Cleo shook their head, “I’m just happy he’s being remembered.”
“Do you know if he had family?”
“If he did, we wouldn’t’ve let them in- protection from the curse, and all. It’s hard that the only people who can celebrate his life were the people who knew him at the end of it. Although, knowing his past… I doubt he would’ve wanted it any other way.”
There was a lull, and they sat in silence for a bit, before Scott said: “I love your gardens, by the way. It’s the one thing I don’t like about New York. You can’t have proper gardens. I miss it.”
“Did you used to have gardens here before you were put to sleep?” Cleo asked.
“Oh, I had the most exotic plants brought from far overseas. I never tended to them myself, but I loved to wander through them.”
“But now you’ve learned the value of getting your hands dirty and not relying on servant labour.”
“Yes.”
“And are you, errr… are you actually gonna help me wash up?” Cleo asked, looking between Scott and the sink.
“Oh, right-“ Scott hadn’t intended to help with the dishes, he’d just wanted to talk to Cleo alone, but a promise was a promise.
He’d gotten good at keeping his word.
The cups and bottles were left on the drying rack and they joined the girls back in the dining room.
“We need a girls’ night when we get home,” Scott, pulling up a chair next to Shelby.
“Agreed.”
“And can we not watch a horror movie this time?” He asked.
“Okay, does the original Heathers movie count as horror?” Shelby replied, “Because Winona Ryder is really hot in that.”
Scott grinned, “We’ll see.”
He engaged himself in friendly chatter with Cleo and Pearl for a bit when he felt his pocket buzz. He fished his phone out and opened it with the press of his fingerprint.
Message from Cam:
I miss you xx
Miss you too, Scott texted back, Look- we gotta talk when I get home, ok?
There’s some things I gotta tell you about.
There. He hated to make Cam worried with the vagueness, but this way Scott couldn’t chicken out of telling him the truth.
Pearl glanced out of the window, “It looks dark enough now. You should be safe to travel.”
“Here-“ Cleo reached into a wicker basket next to one of the bookshelves and brought out a bouquet of assorted flowers from their gardens, wrapped in brown paper and twine, “For your apartment at home. Keep them watered.”
Scott took them, “Thank you, Cleo.”
He took his phone out and unlocked it.
Coming home soon <3, he texted to Cam.
They each said their goodbyes, then, arm around Shelby’s shoulders and Drift holding Shelby’s other hand, they stepped out of the castle into the warm autumn air.
“Goodbye, Oakhurst,” Scott said to the night, “We’ll see you next year.”