Chapter Text
The house was so quiet without everyone. Anya was still resentful of the idea of being left behind – of not being the first to flee. Had she realised what everyone was plotting, she would have packed herself up and shipped out well before. Was it selfish? Of course; they were all selfish. She didn’t want to get hurt and lo and behold, look what happened! Nadja was off being successful and sexy and in charge in England. Nandor was discovering himself, and Guillermo... Well, she didn’t really need Guillermo. Though doing a lot of things for herself now was taxing.
She wandered the house, getting more and more dusty and cobwebby, wailing. Oh, how she wailed. If there wasn’t records playing from the fancy room, it was Anya wailing her rhythmic, daunting cries. Letting her emotions out the only way she knew how – the healthiest way, surely -
“Darling, shut the fUCK up, The Baby is trying to sleep!”
Anya stopped in her tracks, glaring up the stairs. Of course she would have been on her own had Laszlo just listened to Nadja, kept his promise, and went with her. You would think she was thankful for having her one friend, perhaps her bestest friend. But he was different. Always harping on about the deformed Baby Colin Robinson, when to feed him, how do we feed him, he needs his a crib, blah blah blah. Anya had become a vampire not only to escape her previous life, but to avoid the act of motherhood altogether. This was not ideal.
“BUT I AM WAILING!” she screamed back upstairs, stamping her heel. She heard The Baby cry – unearthly, mature yet not at all – and she smiled. “He is joining in!”
“No!” Laszlo called back, as Anya covered her eyes with the back of her hand and continued to wail loudly. The volume caused The Baby to scream louder, and Laszlo stared at the rotting wall as the mismatched screaming and wailing got louder and louder.
He should have went to bloody England.
Laszlo always knew about responsibility. Though his proclamations of becoming a vampire had been based on debauchery – and sure enough he lived up to that a great deal – he could never leave behind his essence. The scientist in him, the Man within him that unfortunately had never perished with his mortality. Colin Robinson had done their finances and earned them the most money out of the group for decades. Not that Laszlo ever felt indebted to the man (or anyone), he would never say so in so many words, but there was an ounce of regret the moment he realised Colin Robinson was going to die. And an even larger measurement of joy when he realised that, perhaps, he had survived in a fucked up way appropriate for Colin Robinson alone. He had watched his nannies raise his sisters, he had watched his sister’s nannies raise his nieces and nephews. He thought he knew what it took to keep a baby alive.
Visiting the ‘Target’ for food for the baby had been an ordeal. Originally he had tested out how to feed The Baby through energy means – after all, he was still an Energy Vampire. Surely. He stubbed his toe, he yanked Anya’s hair, he purposefully got into a fight with her in front of The Baby. Yet for the first few weeks he had still screamed until they got ‘formula’. Everything that had happened to The Baby was being journalled constantly. Months after that, he didn’t seem interested in the food anymore unless it was a particularly challenging time for Anya or Laszlo to put it together (entertaining guests, feeding themselves, trying to get dressed). Laszlo was satisfied enough with claiming his raising of The Baby was more to do with science than the fact that he knew it would perish without assistance – he could only ever admit to his wife the truth. And she still had only sent him one letter in return to his many. And so, he went through life as easily as he could, head buried so that he did not have to further acknowledge his betrayal of Nadja. At least he had Anya, when she wasn’t crying about how much she missed the others.
“It happens, Anya!” they walked casually through New York, The Baby on a carrier on Laszlo’s chest, eyeing up anyone who stared for longer than a second. “You know better than anyone, people leave! It’s a wonder we stayed together for that long.”
She huffed, giving the passing humans looks as well as The Baby. His head was bad enough, but the weird looking baby coupled with their eccentric, old clothes was probably too much for the people of New York. Which was really saying something, considering the things you saw on these streets. “Still. I cannot believe I got comfortable, and then everyone left.”
“You are taking this far too personally, as usual.” they turned a corner, approaching Little Odessa. It was always an easy way to soothe Anya missing the household pieces; fob her off to her other friends. Anya let the accusation slide, if only because it was true. Had she objected, Laszlo would have quite happily come up with a dozen other examples. She hated when he went through his scientist phase: everything was a hypothesis, or provable, or evidence. Nothing was allowed to exist in a vacuum. Other people might find this admirable. Anya, who enjoyed being rather brainless and never put much thought into anything, found it too challenging.
Was it good for her? Probably.
The Vedun Alley was as boisterous as ever. Lev waved from his table sitting outside one of the bars at the alley intersection - “Anya! Your- Highness,” he stood, flapping his long coat behind him as he pulled out the chair for her. She rolled her eyes, waving him away.
“Don’t! I am not!”
“I know,” Lev smiled, used to her denials and refusals to be called anything but her name by him. Perhaps it had something to do with his own lineage – his father, and his grandfather, had worked with her. Her family. To Anya he was an equal, especially as she had shunned her titles the moment she became a vampire (though Lev argued that that had nothing to do with her titles – her brother had never denounced her, no one had, seeing as they all died pretty soon after. They had bigger things to worry about than remove a missing Romanov’s honorifics. “You don’t like it – ah, he is getting bigger!” he pointed at The Baby, “Weird little guy.”
Laszlo chuckled, unable to really disagree, as he went to get the blood liquor for the evening. Anya’s eyes scanned the crowd, peering into what she could see of the bar. “He’s not here.”
“I know.” Anya straightened up, eyes snapped to Lev, “I wasn’t expecting him to be.”
“Simon’s not shown up for some time.” Lev threw some pistachios into his mouth, crunching as he studied the vampire. Even behind his maroon tinted glasses, he could see every minute expression, every twinge. “Maybe you need to go to him...?”
Anya nearly bawked, straightening the frilled collar of her shirt, “Absolutely not. He was the one that wronged me! He should come to me.”
Lev nodded along. Anya could tell he didn’t quite agree, but didn’t have the balls to voice that opinion any further. Instead he sat up, “Oh! Your egg is finally going to be fixed. Ready by sundown in two days, I think. All the parts arrived.”
Had she been told this six months ago, Anya might have clapped and did a little bounce. But the egg just made her think of Nandor, and she could only smile. Stupid, stupid, handsome Nandor. She missed him. “That’s taken some time!”
Lev shrugged, “I got a shipment from Russia of all the parts, but they got damaged in the explosion.” Anya had no idea what he was talking about of course, rarely keeping up with the news, let alone the news that was months ago. She looked perplexed – could he have finished it sooner with more locally sourced parts? The words were on the tip of her tongue, so Lev got there first: “I want it to be as authentic as possible!”
Alright. She understood that. “This thing is just as important to me culturally as it is to you, emotionally.”
“Alright, alright! I didn’t ask for your life story.” she shrank in her seat. Laszlo returned, putting down the glasses of blood and a carafe so that they didn’t have to get back up any time soon. Anya stared at the liquid, barely listening to Laszlo and Lev patter on. Where was Simon?
The Cat’s Eye had changed in the last few months. Its unexpected guest had put everyone on edge, except Griffin, who was even lighter on his feet than usual. He seemed practically giddy. The monster of a vampire had turned up, drenched in rain and clearly underfed, near sunrise one night. And he’s been healing in one of the uppermost rooms ever since. Simon had avoided returning to the Kooky Household (as most of them seem to call them – and that’s the more innocent name for the troupe) ever since he realised just how much he might have fucked up with lying to Anya.
Simon pulled on the sleeve of his suit jacket as he walked down the iron stairs. No one was setting up drinks, no one was wiping down tables. “What’s happening?” he demanded, eyeing up one of the bartenders, “We should’ve opened hours ago.”
“Griffin says it’s a lock-in.” he claimed, wrinkled nose wrinkling further, and walked away so that Simon couldn’t ask anything else. Simon looked around the dark room for the owner – but he was up on the second floor, dressed to the nines an sparkling shirt and too tight leather pants. Fuck, that was a good outfit. Simon would need to grab those pants later. Griffin waved to him, grinning, and Simon barely returned the favour. This was getting weird.
Another hour or so passed, and the crews were gathered – Simon's Leather Skins, and Griffin’s Red Snakes. Though to be completely honest, Simon couldn’t remember the last time anyone in his gang even answered to him. It had never been an issue recently; he had either been following Anya like a lost puppy, or hanging out with Griffin anyway, so it had always seemed like they were there for him. How true was it, really?
“Everyone!” Griffin declared, arms spread wide, “Thank you so much for your patience. Our new guest has been appropriately fed, watered, dressed, and he would finally like to introduce himself.”
They waited. With Griffin’s unnatural glee, they all had assumed it was going to be something terrific. Something that was going to change their lives. Someone. From the highest iron walkways, a shadow appeared. Simon liked the dramatics of it all. The tall figure glided to a gap, and stepped off into the air. Gliding down gently, his cloaks flowing off the walkway behind him, encasing him in black and red. The red lights would highlight his long, ragged beard. The twist and ratty curls of his hair. His large, clawed hands flexing as he landed at the foot of the stairs on the ground floor, staring at them all. A few were too new, too fresh, to know what they were looking at. Simon though, and Griffin, and some others, were well aware. He had never thought the man to be so tall. He had thought his sunken in eyes and his strange, alluring but deadly features and haggered yet handsome face were all rumours. Honestly, he had chalked up the man himself to be a legend.
“Please!” Griffin announced, bouncing down the stairs two at a time but stopped so that he could still be seen over his shoulder, “This is a monumental moment. If you don’t understand, then that’s on you. But those that do - I see you.”
The man’s lips curled up, his long, thin fangs revealed as he smugly smiled at them all. “They are just afraid.” his accent thick, his tongue heavy. It was like he hadn’t been used to speaking at all. “But no need to be afraid. You are under my protection now. For the uneducated – but you will learn my full potential - I am Grigori Rasputin.”
The crowd mumbled. Rasputin – in New York? What was that even for? Why not try again in his homeland? “In fact, you will all learn your own full potential. I have been watching, for decades, for a weak spot in the Vampiric Council. Until I could no longer do so... And so I delegated. Across the world, my men, watching.” he eyed them, seeing who shied away and who refused to be so cowardly. Simon found himself staring. Power. He had power. “And Griffin, one of my many agents, has awoken me.”
“Partner.” Griffin tried to interject, but Rasputin bellowed louder,
“We have been under the thumb of an idiotic autocracy for too long!” he spat, fists in the air, “My people, are you not ashamed of where you are? Why you wallow in secret, and let humans dictate our lives? Vampires should live in freedom. And it should be humans that hide from us!” vampires began to shout with approval. They hollered, cheering on the idea: of course vampires should be in charge. Of course vampires should be the ones deciding what is the right time to do things (At night!), and humans can use the sun to do their humanely deeds and flee from danger. Not vampires, hiding from slayers and sunbeams. Embarrassing.
Rasputin settled them down with one hand motion. “I have also been made aware of something that had taken from me is also in New York. Who is the man responsible for finding her?” he turned on his heel, chains from his belt clinking. Simon was unable to put two and two together fast enough.
“This is the man!” Griffin reached out to grab Simon by the arm, bringing him forward. Simon felt glued to the floor, not sure how or why. Being in the shadow of Rasputin put some sort of feeling that he wasn’t familiar with (fear).
“You found her.” Rasputin studied him, tilting his head. A crooked finger reached out to pull at the chain around Simon’s neck, bringing him even closer. Simon couldn’t look away, teeth grit behind his lips as they shared a silent, private realisation together.
This was Anya’s necklace.
And he recognised it.
But he wasn’t saying it out loud. He ran his thumb over the emerald centre before letting Simon go and straightening up. A scare tactic, eh? Well it was working.
“There is just one simple thing I must fix, before we continue with the larger plan at hand. Where is my wife?”
Any attempts at gathering himself and being the vampire Simon knew he was, were thwarted by those simple words. He stared up at Rasputin, finding his voice to only squeak out one thing.
“Your what?”
🎵🎵🎵
Run, run, run
Time to run and hide
Run, run, run
And now I'm going to find
You scurry off into the darkness
Hurry, I'm behind you
Don't you speak
Hide and seek