Of course he does.

He’s never been cautious about — well, about anything. It’s not hard to get him to come alone, to wherever she happens to want to meet him.

How convenient!

She kind of wants to watch a movie. Movies are actually great for meeting people, because you can discuss the setting and characters and whether you think the movie undermined its own themes by the end, so there aren't any awkward silences afterward where you're not sure what to say. Does he want to go watch the new Incredibles movie, and then afterwards maybe they can eat something?

He absolutely does want to do that, and offers to smuggle in candy so they don’t have to spend three fucktillion dollars on concessions.

Aww, but the theater makes most of its money on concessions, and if they smuggle in candy then they're interfering with the incentive structures and could get the employees in trouble. She won't judge him for smuggling in candy, but she will determinedly go without.

(Eee, pretending to be her human self is so fun, she cared about such ridiculous things!)

They meet at the movies about an hour after sundown.

He’s not hard to spot — he’s waiting at the entrance, all in black, with a chain that’s ostensibly a necklace locked around his neck and unnerving the woman at the ticket window.

She waves hello excitedly.

"Hi! I'm Imrainai," she says, a little embarrassed, like she's not used to referring to herself by her internet pseudonym. (She goes by her internet pseudonym ALL THE TIME NOW, it's GREAT, vampires can just call themselves WHATEVER THEY WANT.) "I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long?"

“—hey!”

He lights up as he turns to her, and opens his arms.

She hugs him tight. She doesn't seem to have any body heat, but it's a chilly night. She turns to the woman at the ticket window brightly. "Two tickets for the Incredibles, please!" 

He hovers next to her.

“You got me, by the way. I’m not sneaking anything in. How dare you make me a better person.”

She cackles madly as she pays for the tickets. "It was my plan all along! But I can buy you something inside, don't worry."

Adorable!

“Nah, you got the tickets. Don’t worry about it.”

"Suit yourself," she says cheerfully, and leads the way into the theater.

He follows her in to their seats. Luckily there’s still two together.

Hee!

She mostly just watches the movie. She just really genuinely enjoys Pixar movies.

He’s the kind of person who talks in movie theaters, apparently, but very quietly so his occasional commentary doesn’t bother anybody who isn’t Imrainai.

She is not bothered! Eee, this was such a good idea, they can watch movies together later in between all of the torture!

She gets a lot more talkative after the movie ends, talking about what she liked and what she didn't and what they could have done and what she's really impressed with anyway. Oh, it's late and really dark outside, could he walk her to her car?

He’s not quiet, either. (He gestures a lot when he’s excited, too.) And of course he’ll walk her back to her car, what’s the point of being all tall and intimidating if you can’t do that?

Awww! He is so sweet. She leads him to a green van parked more or less behind the theater. There aren't any other cars or people in sight. 

She gives him another big hug. Then there's the sound of bones shifting under her skin, and she pulls his head down to sink her fangs into his neck.

What

the fuck.

He struggles, of course, tries to push her away – but he seems to be scared he'll break her if he pushes too hard.

She's significantly stronger than he is; she doesn't have a problem pinning him to the car.

She's not gonna take all of his blood, of course, it'd be a waste to kill him now. Just enough to make him lightheaded and weak and disoriented.

Everything goes a little blurry, and his knees start to buckle, and – well, it's not like he's not going to react to this, she follows his blog, she knows this about him –

He slumps down against the car, looking most of the way to passed out. He would be flushed, if he had enough blood left in him for that.

"Wh...what..."

"It's OK," she says brightly, after her fangs slide out of his neck. A second person pulls him up and drags him into the van. Her face is different now; her brow ridge is protruding and her eyes have gone yellow and catlike, in a way that makes her smile look like it must be mean-spirited. "Bind his hands and feet and then bandage his neck, I don't super want him bleeding out or getting blood all over the car."

He honestly tries to struggle, but his limbs feel like they're made of lead, and he keeps drifting in and out of consciousness. By the time they get to his neck he just lets them. Might as well keep what blood he's still got inside his body.

(The internet safety PSAs did not warn him about this.)

She hops around to the front of the van and climbs into the driver's seat. She adjusts the rear-view mirror - she and her companion don't have reflections, if he has enough presence of mind to notice something like that. "Looks good, Naomi! I don't think we have to gag him, you can just put the hood on. But make sure he can breathe, humans have to do that. Sooorry, Z, I'd explain now but I'm gonna be super busy figuring out how to get out of this parking area and back to the freeway. Pipe up if you're hungry though, we have trail mix and stuff."

Naomi puts a sack over his head. Imrainai starts the engine.

...well.

He’s kinda fucked, isn’t he.

(Is this really the girl he knew? Why is that a bigger question in his mind than ‘vampires, what the shit?’)

The hood feels choking, heavier than it really is, and he’s so dizzy again, and he’s just going to

go to sleep.

They drive for several hours. If he wakes up at any point, he'll hear them alternating between discussing the movie and playing a Silly Songs with Larry CD. They periodically check that he's still breathing, and are pretty sure he's not in danger of actually dying. At one point they stop at a rest stop; Naomi kills a middle-aged woman in the parking lot, drinks most of her blood, and tosses the corpse in the back of the van. They consider taking her car, but it isn't a very good car, so they leave it where it is. 

They pull into their base of operations around three o'clock in the morning. Z won't be able to see anything, but Imrainai carries him over a gravel driveway, through a door, down a flight of stairs, and through another door before setting him on the ground.

He drifts. They throw someone into the back with him, partway through, and...there’s a song about...pirates?

He wakes up more fully as they descend the stairs.

“...y’re...pretty different ‘n person...”

"Aren't I just," she says cheerfully, before removing the sack. 

He's in a basement room with no windows. The walls are stone. The door is metal. There's a sofa and an old TV in the corner, where a twelve-year-old girl and a guy who might have been a college student are playing Mario Kart on an old Gamecube. The girl has a piece of duct tape across her mouth, but is otherwise not restrained. She looks unamused, but not scared. The guy has his vampire face on. 

"So. You probably want answers, yeah?"

"...that would be nice," he says, because what else the fuck is he supposed to say.

"And I will totally give you some answers. But first you have to eat something, because you lost, like, threeish pints of blood? And if we don't get some calories in you then you're unfortunately gonna pass out again. Roman, did you order the pizza like I asked?"

"Oh, yeah, it's over there," says Roman, pointing. He unpauses the game, and the girl looks away from Z in order to focus on winning Mario Kart.

"Thank you," says Imrainai, politely, before retrieving a piece of pizza for Z. "Now, I'm gonna untie you, but I'm gonna warn you, sometimes people think they can escape? And you're super outgunned here, so you should really just eat the pizza."

He looks to his left.

He looks to his right.

“...yeah, I’m just gonna eat the pizza.”

If he’s going to escape he’s not doing it minus three pints of blood (fuck, that might be a new record for him) on an empty stomach, anyway.

"That's a good boy." 

She pats his head, unties his hands, and gives him the pizza.

...aww, don’t bring that kink into this too.

He eats the pizza. He would eat it slowly, as a show of resistance, or something, but he is really hungry and it’s actually pretty good pizza.

She giggles at him, then crosses the room and peels the duct tape off the girl's face. "Hi Zana! You have a fun weekend?"

"I was using the duct tape," mutters Zana. "It was OK. I need more books in Hindi when you go to the library."

"You are so smart! Was Roman a better sitter than Naomi? Be honest."

"Well the worst thing he did was lock me in a closet for thirteen hours? So yeah." Her character hits Roman with a shell, then crosses the finish line. There's confetti and some celebratory music. "Sucks at Mario Kart, but I think he's getting better. Is the guy a snack or a toy."

"Toy! Mayyyybe a minion eventually? But he's super off limits for eating, you can totally kick his ass at Mario Kart."

"Man, I dunno how I'm gonna contain my joy," says Zana, absolutely deadpan, looking right at Z.

What the fuck, he mouths at her.

Sorry, mouths Zana, because like, she's not unsympathetic? But she's also not very confident that they're going to leave this one alive long enough for anything she does to really matter.

"OK! So now that you've eaten, as promised, answers. I'm Imrainai, I'm a murderous demon, and this is my evil lair! It's still a work in progress. But a proper evil lair requires some captives and a dungeon full of spiky things - also a work in progress, by the way, but it'll be super cool when it's done - and last week I was like, you know who would make a great captive? Z! Can you guess why?"

“I thought you were a vampire,” he says weakly, aware that this is definitely the wrong thing to protest.

"Oh, yeah, I totally am! Vampires are a kind of demon that sets up shop in a human's skin, and then we go around wreaking havoc. Sort of a combined human-demon deal. All of the ruthlessness and evil of a demon, all of the creativity and boundless capacity for cruelty of humanity! It's great!"

So...this isn’t Imrainai. Not the one he knew, anyway.

(Also, not now, boner.)

“...why did you pick me. Other than...everything I’ve ever posted on the internet, ever.”

"Several reasons, actually! Masochists are a dime a dozen, and it's way more fun to torture people who're begging for mercy anyway, so if you guessed that that's all then you get no points. But it's really boring not having anyone to talk to. Roman and Naomi are great, but they lack a certain sense of aesthetics. And Zana's great, but I'm sooort of trying not to do any irreparable psychological damage to her fragile twelve-year-old psyche before I turn her, because there are some kinds of insanity that get more entrenched and untreatable after you become a vampire. But you! You're a human with a more or less perfectly functional conscience, so I can totally have fun gouging babies' eyes out in front of you. I don't super care if I drive you insane before I turn you, you could still be really fun if you were insane. But I'm hoping the torturey bits and the enslavement, like, aren't going to mess with your ability to offer commentary on Pixar movies? You just seem like you're down for lots of things!" 

She giggles at him.

"Oh! Also I think you're an interesting person. So congratulations. The boring ones get to be dead."

Sorry, he's kind of stuck on gouging babies' eyes out, here.

"Why. The fuck."

He glances quickly between Zana and Imrainai.

"Can't you–find some other way to torture me than–"

Wow that's strategically inadvisable. If she's trying to figure out how to really fuck with him he just told her how. He's gonna shut up now.

"Y'know, that was just an example, but I am totally putting that on my to-do list now. But yeah, I can find lots of other ways to torture you! Some of them will be horrible and some of them you will be very conflicted about. If you're good, I'll give you options! Now, do you need anything else right this second? 'Cause if not then I'm gonna let you get to know Zana, I think. Me and Roman have to go dig a skull out of a lady we killed, then treat it so we can add it to the skull throne. The skull throne is a work in progress, too, but it's gonna be super pretty when it's done."

“...I’m good.”

He sounds just a little blank. He...needs a little processing time.

"OK! Have fun! You're allowed to play the Gamecube and eat however much pizza you want, and I'll come check on you in a bit!"

She beckons to Roman, and the two of them close the heavy metal door behind them.

"Any daring escape plans?" asks Zana, idly, after waiting long enough for their captors to have made their way upstairs.

"...well, obviously we have to get you out first. But I don't know how."

"Yeah, I got nothing right this second. But she sounds like she's not gonna kill you right away, that's cool I guess. You like, knew her when she was a human or something?"

"Yeah. Just online, but she was a pretty good friend."

He looks up at the stairs.

"How long has she been, uh...possessed?"

"About two years now. She was like, really nice before the vampires tortured her to death and handed her body off to a demon. She'd be really sorry about all this. If she were here."

Fuck. Really? He tries to remember if there's anything that changed, any real sign that she wasn't herself anymore.

"...so there's no way to just...take the demon out. If she's dead."

Zana looks at her hands. "There're maybe ways. Really dangerous inaccessible ways. She lets me have books, even books about demons, but no spellbooks or anything. Obviously. There are stories about this one vampire who got cursed to have a soul again, but the details've been lost and I don't know if it's the same as bringing the person back. It's sort of a dumb hope, I think. I really think we should figure out how to just kill them, that's something we might actually be able to do." She looks pained saying this, but only a little bit, like she's mostly but not quite made her peace with it.

"...if we can't do anything else, and they're all like that, then yeah. We should."

A twelve-year old should not have to make these plans. Neither should he, really, but that's not the most horrifying thing in the room right now.

"How long have you been stuck down here?"

"Bout eight months. I spent like a year in foster care after she killed my mom and brother and stepdad. They've only been here a few months, before that they were living out of an RV."

His hand goes in his hair.

“What the fuck. What the fuck! I’m so sorry...”

"Yeah." She frowns and looks at the screen, where Yoshi continues dancing under raining confetti. "D'you like. Need a hug or something."

“Do I need a hug—what about you?”

Fuck. He takes a second to calm himself down.

“...right, uh — what do we know so far? That’d help?”

She runs off and comes back with books. "Some of these're in French or Latin. Lots about vampires, but lots of conflicting information, too. You can kill them with fire or sunlight or beheading or a wooden stake through the heart. Aversion to crosses and holy water but I don't think you can kill them with it. They can't enter the houses of living people without an invitation, which doesn't super help us, but it's good to know. Imrainai's working on solidifying her power in the area, plus weird dumb shit like her skull throne. She might turn you, in which case you become a soulless demon too and that would kinda suck. 'Specially for me. No offense, but a vampire you doesn't sound like someone I super want around."

He nods through her explanation, trying to commit it all to memory the first time. She seems like a really smart kid.

Being turned sounds like...something he’d rather avoid.

“Uh. Why would I be a worse vampire than anybody else?”

"I think the demon takes on some of the personality of the host. Imrainai's, y'know, evil, but she's still into Pixar movies and Nintendo in addition to all the new stuff, like maiming and killing people. You're into like. Pain. I don't know if that matters, but I don't super wanna find out."

He considers.

“...yyyeah, no, let’s avoid that.”

"Yeah. Let's."

She sighs and grabs another slice of the half-eaten pizza. Gotta keep her strength up if she's gonna kill people at some point.

Yep. Him too.

 "How often is somebody else down here?"

"Depends. New people maybe every couple weeks. Mostly they hunt people outside and just take the heads and valuables after they're done with the blood. They feed once every few days when things are going well for them, but not a whole person every time, not unless they've gone a while without feeding. Sometimes they split a whole dude three ways. If she took three pints from you then she'll be good for at least another couple days, I think. Uh, but sometimes they bring people home so they can torture them, and sometimes the people hang out here. Mostly they're too busy crying or screaming or going into shock to play Mario Kart. Uh, not that that's wrong of them or anything, I'm not actually more upset about being bored than I am about the thing where they keep killing people."

It figures that when he finally lives out a kidnap/torture plot it's actually fucking horrible in ways he's not into.

(This girl needs to get out.)

"...yeah. I didn't think you were."

He starts to draw his knees up to his chest and stops himself, carefully, stretches his legs out.

"Do they ever all leave here at once?"

"Sometimes, I'm pretty sure. Not for more than a night at a time, and it's hard to say exactly when because they also have the upstairs." She looks down. "If one of us could escape, we could go get backup or something. Call the police. Or like, witches or something. I don't even know if witches are really a thing, but if they are they might be more useful."

"–is that a thing from the books?"

He hopes witches are real.

"Oh, yeah. The vampire who got his soul back was cursed by a witch. But also sometimes they just, like, immolate people. Well, vampires. But also people."

"...so, you talk to the police, I talk to the witch? If they exist?"

She doesn't laugh, but she smiles a little. "If we find any. Then yeah, you can talk to the witches."

"Deal."

He puts out his hand.

She shakes it.

The vampires come back downstairs, apparently very pleased with themselves. 

"I do like the idea of eating babies," says Naomi, very matter-of-factly. "They're supposed to taste better the younger you have them."

"OK!" says Imrainai, delightedly bouncing up and down a little. "You can totally do the honors and find us a baby!"

...he really shouldn’t have given her the hint there, huh.

He guesses...he should probably try not to react, to stuff like this, right? Save a couple babies.

So he carefully clears his expression and pastes on a vague smile before he turns enough for Imrainai to see his face. Not like he hasn’t practiced enough.

Oh good, he's going to try to be noble. Destroying people who're trying to be noble is her favorite.

"It's been a long night, though. We kidnapped someone! We have totally earned some time off from terrorizing ignorant mortals. Anybody wanna play Smash Bros? I think we've almost unlocked Mr. Game & Watch."

"...fuck it," he says, resigned to his fate. "Might as well."

There are four controllers and five people, and the vampires do not take turns. Zana's willing to switch off every other game with Z, though. This is also good for keeping people from getting all that pissed at her, since she tends to win a disproportionate amount of the games she plays.

Z tries hard enough to be fun to beat, but is bad enough at Smash Bros that he doesn't win many games. He tries to keep the mounting terror of future psychological torture on the down-low, but this means his commentary is decidedly subpar.

According to the clock under the TV, it's well past sunrise when the vampires tire of their game. Imrainai snuggles Z. 

"OK. Someone needs to tie up the prisoners before anyone goes to bed, does anyone actively want to do that or is that gonna have to be a chore?"

This is fine this is fine this is fine this is fine this is fine this is fine this is fine.

"Can't you just lock the door?"

"Obviously not, then you'd have way more resources to attempt escape," says Imrainai, cheerfully.

"I guess I like tying people up," muses Naomi. "Though it's more fun if you get to cut off circulation and make people scared that they're gonna have to have things amputated. Especially if you go ahead and amputate afterwards."

"...can we maybe not?" he says weakly.

"No," says Imrainai, patting his head. "And no cutting off people's circulation for six hours, Naomi, you can play with your food later if you're into that."

He guesses he can probably sleep tied up. He's done it before. And it's been long enough since he last slept that he can probably manage it even with...all this.

"Is there a place for humans to sleep or is the floor part of the suffering?"

"Oh there's totally a place to sleep, we have a mattress on the floor in the other room. Naomi can get you all set up. Pleasant dreams!" she says, before kissing him on the cheek and leaving for the upstairs again.