Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse

Urgent mutters immediately came from the people all around.

Somebody in the doorway was saying that they needed to get him up off the floor, and somebody else was telling them not to touch him at all.

Dion didn’t say anything to any of them, or to Madeline, his attention entirely focused on the way that the prana from the fruit that Paris had eaten was flowing through his body.

The glow was spreading. From underneath where Paris had his hands pressed into his stomach, pale green light bled outward from his gut, throughout the rest of his body, running through his veins and up his body, engulfing his form while pulsing along with his heart.

He watched it move without so much as blinking, and then suddenly, the click of a gun’s safety snapping free cut through the room.

Dion’s brows immediately fell, and his attention was pulled off of Paris.

’...Of course. And I’m the one who handed him the damned bullets.’

Whatever warmth from his curiosity that his expression had, drained out of Dion’s face, and his jaw set hard enough that the muscle stood out along the side of it.

"If Paris dies, I’m putting a bullet through your skull, son."

Basil had spoken as his hands rose with his gun aimed right for the centre of Dion’s skull, and his finger set ready against the trigger.

Dion’s eyes looked through the barrel, staring down at the head of the bullet that had been chambered, and then they rose past it to Basil’s face.

"And if he doesn’t, then I get to kill you as well, right?" Dion’s voice had fallen to an ominous evenness, his gaze sharpening on the man. And then suddenly, the tension in his expression dissolved, and he smiled, saying, "Because surely you’re not threatening my life and expecting me to take it kindly."

Dion heard the faint creak of Basil’s grip tightening around the handle of his pistol, but the man didn’t drop his gun despite the threat.

Paris’s wet and ragged gasping through his pained moans filled the room from the floor between the two of them.

At the same time, all of the people that had been muttering between themselves had gone silent. Many of them even began to retreat from the room, not wanting anything to do with what was going on any more at all.

And there, Dion laughed a little in spite of everything.

"Mr. Basil, you’re a kind man," he said as his smile fell, and his expression sank into an even flintiness. "And I understand where you’re coming from. Honestly, you’re being perfectly reasonable. However, I’ll say it one more time. This isn’t the normal world anymore. And that hesitation, the kind that has you pulling a gun only after Paris has already swallowed the thing instead of before, is going to make you and every person close to you here suffer for it."

Dion looked away from the man, returning his attention back to the young man on the floor who Madeline had been trying to reach with her voice, though she had now stopped speaking to him and her trembling gaze had been bouncing between the two of them.

Then, Dion looked back at Basil, whose expression had fallen darker, his jaw so tight that Dion could hear the groan of his clenched teeth against themselves.

"If you were this serious about stopping me, you should have aimed that at me before I put it into his hand, but you didn’t." He tipped his head towards Paris on the floor and continued, "And now the two of us get to stand here and wait for him to suffer through it down there for one of our lives. And if he does come through it fine, then surely you wouldn’t threaten my life and expect me to take it kindly."

Basil didn’t answer him, and the barrel stayed exactly where it had been.

Then, Dion’s voice fell with the low snarl that resounded from his throat, everyone in the room, to different extents, flinched.

The air felt as if it had suddenly thickened, the blood within them thinning, and shivers draining away at the strength in their legs.

"Because you can disagree with me all you like, but you aren’t about to aim a loaded gun at me and expect me to forget that you did it. You keep that thing up, and the moment he’s back on his feet, I get to punch a hole through your skull. So I’d strongly suggest that you put it down."

For several moments, no one said anything, with the only things filling the silence being Paris’s breathing coming up off the floor, every gasp of it shorter and wetter than the one before, and the rain hitting against the window.

Then suddenly Madeline jolted to her feet.

She shoved herself in between the two of them with one quivering hand slamming flat against Dion’s chest, and it didn’t shift him so much as an inch as she tried to stop him from approaching before he had even tried to.

"Stop it! Both of you, just stop it!"

Her voice broke out of her louder than anything he had ever heard her say, and with the brief glance that he gave her, he noticed her eyes were faintly glistening wet and her jaw tight.

Even with that, she didn’t retreat as his cold gaze met hers.

"Uncle Basil, put the gun down!" She demanded as she looked over Basil briefly before turning her gaze back to him. "Neither of you will be killing the other!"

For several seconds, with the silence in the tension that lingered between them all, no one said anything while Madeline’s attention bounced between the two of them.

Then Basil’s arm came down, and the pistol hung loose at his hip.

"Now," Madeline’s attention finally lingered on Dion, "Do you know what’s happening to him? Is there anything we can do, anything at all? Just tell me how to help him, Dion, please."

"...I don’t know," he said, and one of his hands raised, gesturing back to Paris. "But doesn’t it look familiar to you?"

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