SOMETHING IS OFF ABOUT Harry.
She doesn't know what it is, or if it's something significant, but something about him isn't adding up, and she's been tearing it apart in her mind trying to figure out what it is.
Leaves crunch beneath Jo's feet with every step she takes across the forest floor. The trees behind his house are thick and tall, creating a canopy that casts darkness upon the perpetual gloom that already hangs over the area. The clothing wrapped around her shoulders is his, as is the dagger holstered at her hip. With a subtle movement she practiced twenty times in the mirror this morning, she could have the weapon in hand within seconds, and, that, she supposes, is the only reason she's out here alone.
It can't be too dangerous anyway, especially since no one knows about his second house, let alone where it is. With that and the dagger on her side, she set out for some fresh air after spending her entire time here inside of the house. If she had to spend another second alone there, she would've lost her mind, and the forest appeared as a wonderful place to go to think clearly.
With nothing but nature surrounding her, she becomes lost in her thoughts.
They interweave every which way, twisting and turning until they turn muddled, but being outside helps. It's quieter here, somehow, despite the sound of the stream she follows through the woods providing a constant white noise.
Harry left the house hours ago.
He said something to her on his way out about the investigation, but she was too busy staring off into space beyond the top of the book she borrowed from his vast collection to listen clearly. She noticed his lack of warm clothing for a day cold enough to make her bundle up in a scarf she found in the bottom drawer of the dresser.
It's more for fashion than practicality, but beggars can't be choosers. Even though it's thin and practically see-through, she keeps it tied as a headscarf to keep her ears as warm as possible. The only other thing she could find to keep warm was a black wool cape that falls to her mid-thigh, so she slung it over her shoulders and stepped out into the winter air without a moment to spare.
It's somewhat infuriating that no matter how far she walks through the forest, he's always following her in one way or another. Whether it be the scarf around her head that smells like him or the evergreen presence of his secrecy lingering in her thoughts, he's always here without having to be here.
It makes her face flush with embarrassment because the whole purpose of coming out here was to find a reprieve from his house, his books, and his secrets, yet her mind always crawls its way back to him. It drags her, kicking and screaming, to the topic that has been her sole companion in his physical absence. It would be easier if it were actually him rather than the constant anxiety that surrounds the secret she has yet to unravel. It would be easier if she were able to go home—
A branch snaps somewhere behind her, and she whips her head around to the origin of the sound. Numb fingers curl around the handle of the dagger and tug it out from beneath the cape, the ornate gold detailing making a soft rattling noise with the sharp motion.
Her arms are instantly positioned in defense of an attack, just as her mother taught her years ago, but there's nothing to be seen.
No creeping predator is standing before her or lurking behind the tree she slowly moves past, no group of men waiting for her to mistrust her instincts and continue taking the lonely pathway to the train station like they were that night, just a vast landscape of stripped trees and a safe home waiting for her in the distance.
Still, there's a part of her that cannot let go of this lingering sense of being watched. It feels like every tree she steps past has a pair of eyes trained directly on her, and she doesn't know what to do.
It could easily be paranoia getting to her. The branch that snapped could've been an animal running away at the sound of her footsteps. This could be a hypersensitive reaction to nothing because of what happened the last time she felt this way, but, then, she remembers how quick she was to ignore her instincts back then. And, if she only listened, perhaps this wouldn't be her current situation...
She isn't going to make the same mistake twice.
She twists around in place and breaks into a sprint that carries her faster than she knew her legs could move. And, of course, the second she begins to run, she hears someone running after her from the exact spot the tree branch snapped.
Her instincts were correct.
The forest moves like a kaleidoscope in her peripheral vision, dizzying her, making her question which direction leads back to the house, and making her strides wobble every so often. While the trees were once the reprieve she so desperately sought from the dark interior of the house, which felt more like a fortress to her, they're now a cage.
As she weaves in and out between the trunks, narrowly missing the hands of the captor that caught up against all reason despite her enormous lead, the trees become the prison that keeps her from reaching the sanctuary of the house. The scent that lingers on the headscarf that reminded her of Harry's secrecy and constant presence in her mind is now her lifeline. If she can only make it back to him. If she can only reach him—
But he might not even be home yet. What happens if she reaches the house and he isn't there? What happens if there's no one here to save her in time?
The moss cushions the harsh impact her feet take from the all-out sprint she makes for the house, making it much easier for her to place one leg in front of the other again and again.
For someone with a tremendous lack of regular exercising, she's coping with the situation magnificently well. The only preparation she's had for this was when the fall alarms would go off at the hospital and everyone at the Nurse's Station would drop whatever they were doing to sprint to the sound of the grating noise. It must be the adrenaline because she doesn't feel anything but a heart-pounding rush that courses through her entire body.
"HARRY!" she screams loudly enough to make her throat turn raw.
Cold, dry air burns on its way down as she huffs and puffs, scratching as if she swallowed handfuls of the shattered wine glass he dropped the other day. The man running at a speed that seems too swift to be possible is eerily quiet behind her. Not even the sounds of breathing or exhaustion can be heard from him, yet all she can hear from herself are heavy, panting breaths that threaten to send her into hyperventilation.
All she hears from him are thundering footfalls on the moss, leaves, and twigs littering the forest floor, and there was only one other time in her life where she felt as terrified as she does now. This time, it'll be a headscarf left behind on a blanket of moss rather than a knitted scarf upon the bloodstained snow.
The forest finally shifts into the yard behind the house, and safety is so close, she can almost grasp it. From the smoke trailing up from the chimney into the sky, it's clear to see that someone is home, and he'll be able to hear her if she screams enough.
Halfway around the side of the house, she calls out to him with every last ounce of energy she has, "HARRY! PLEASE, HELP—"
The wind is knocked out of her chest.
The man caught up and dove forward to tackle her, arms wrapping right around her waist to throw her into the earth with enough force to rob her of her breath.
Her mouth opens and closes like a fish, fruitlessly searching for air, as she reaches for her throat with both hands and claws at it in helplessness. The last time this ever happened to her was when she was a little girl on the playground at school. She tried to skip a monkey bar and plummeted down six feet to the mulch below onto her back. Feeling the air getting knocked out of her was a strange sensation to feel for the first time, so it isn't any more pleasant the second.
Absentmindedly, her body starts wiggling away from him when he gets his bearings and crawls up to her, but she isn't quick enough. Everything moves in .75 motion within her panicked world, and the knife was thrown too far out of reach when it fell for her to reach it.
She reels back one of her legs as she stares up at the man hovering above her with wide eyes and drives her knee up as hard as she can between his legs. He groans in pain but doesn't halt as she expected him to...It's only now that she realizes, as two sharp, pointed fangs poke out from their concealed glamour as human canines, that this person is not a human. No human could run as fast, recover from pain as seamlessly, or pin her down with as much effortless strength.
His hand grips her by the jaw possessively and shoves her head to the side to reveal her neck, the sight of which making a noise escape him that borders on pornographic.
"I hope you taste as good as you look," he murmurs and jolts his body toward her like he's getting off on the fear made visible in her eyes.
Hot, pungent breath clouds around her face with the words he says, making her erupt in a series of coughs and gags, and she mumbles under her breath her final "I love you's" to her parents and brothers before clamping her eyes shut.
This is the end, isn't it? At least she got more time after the initial attack on her walk to the train station. Maybe she was meant to die then, but didn't, and this is fate taking her back into the palms of its freezing, cruel hands.
But the ending she accepted does not come.
The sound she tuned out for her own sanity for the last moment leading up to this would've revealed the slamming front door and frantic voice calling out to her through the chaos. It would've revealed Harry as he shoved the preternatural creature off of her in time to stop its fangs from sinking into her flesh.
Her eyes shoot open, and she has never been so thankful to see this cloudy, dark sky in the entirety of her time spent here.
"The knife!" His voice is strained from where she sees him pin the man down beneath him, his limbs bucking and flailing wildly for escape, "Get the knife!"
She rolls onto her front, gasping for air that can't come fast enough, and scrambles on her hands and knees in the direction of where the dagger flew away.
It lies in the grass ten feet away, which might as well be the farthest ten feet of her life as she rushes for it through her tears and aching lungs. The desperation claws at her from within, urging her forward with the knowledge that Harry's in just as much danger as she is.
It feels like an eternity, although it's only a minuscule few seconds before the weapon is within her reach. And, as soon as her hand gets a flimsy grasp on the blade, Harry's voice floods the air once more.
"Throw it!"
There isn't time to second guess the plan, or worry if it'll hit him instead of land safely in the grass beside them.
There's no time for anything except action when she winds her arm back, dull side of the blade in hand, and throws it straight at him. But it doesn't hit him, nor does it hit the man-creature that attacked her, because Harry reaches out and snatches the knife, as quick as a striking snake, from where it was hurtling at him in midair.
Blood so dark, it's nearly black splatters across his face as he plunges the blade into his heart with an experienced precision she doesn't know whether to fear or admire. The color of the man's blood only confirms what she already knew: he is not a human. If the fangs or supernatural degree of strength weren't enough to convey that, the speckled black liquid sprayed across Harry's face would be.
Her chest rises and falls at a rate she'd find alarming if she weren't so transfixed by the scene unfolding before her. Those curls that always fall into his face are dripping blood back onto the man's face as he sags into the ground, and Harry grunts with the effort of yanking the knife out of him and plunging it back into his chest again and again.
He leaves it inside of him this time, face flushed red from the exertion and shock of what he came out here to find, and stands to make his way over to her.
Jo sits, frozen, in the grass. Her gaze is locked onto where the knife sticks straight up from the center of his chest, black blood oozing through the fabric of his blue t-shirt. She's seen dead people before, but never murder. It's not like he didn't deserve it, since it was in self-defense, but the sight of it makes her stomach churn violently.
It isn't until Harry's feet come into view that she wakes from her shell-shocked trance.
The secrecy, the weird behavior, and the casual, almost supernatural strength when he was bandaging her finger the other night...it all hits her at once in one sweeping, grand realization that she curses herself for not putting together sooner. Cold air blows the hair back from her face, and the cape was ripped off of her shoulders in the struggle, but she doesn't care. All she can focus on is him and what she now knows.
His voice is tired when asks, crouching to her level, "Are you okay?"
But when he reaches to take her hand, she yanks it away from him. Harry's brows are furrowed with confusion.
Today began normally—well, as normally as her life recently is capable of being. As usual, he left early to get to work on the investigation while she was left to her own devices in an empty house, but then it shifted into this waking nightmare within the span of seconds. And she cannot begin to wrap her head around how fast it all spiraled into this.
"He-He wasn't human," she sputters, looking at him like he has three heads, "he had fangs, and you—"
With the words refusing to form, she turns silent, but they both know which direction this is headed. Based on the fear in her expression, he knows that she put two and two together as soon as the man's fangs came out.
The forest is ripe with noise to fill the gaps of silence between them—birds chirp to one another from the distant treetops, the stream rushes to a rapid current, and wind rustles the brush with a soft fluttering noise. All of the noises that steadied her on her walk in the forest now add to the swarming anxiety she faces. Rather than calming her, the noise coming off of the forest makes every racing thought feel ten times as overwhelming, and she can't sort any of it through as she stares at him with a knowing look in her eyes.
Harry stays quiet.
Knowing she needs as much time as possible to think it over, he simply settles down on his knees in front of her and takes notice of her disheveled appearance. The collar of the shirt she borrowed from him has ripped down the side leading to the shoulder, and it makes something inside of him turn feral with cold-blooded rage. But, the anger is quelled, for now, when he watches her eyes well up with tears.
She says, "I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind, but you aren't human either. I knew something was off about you, but I didn't know what it was until he attacked me."
If she hadn't been sure before, his lack of denial at what she said is the nail in the coffin. All he does is look at her, eyes soft with sympathy, and she has never been as scared because it's the most emotion he's shown around her since they met.
"I don't want you to be afraid," he says timidly.
Despite this being the moment she realized he isn't human, this is the most human he has ever looked in her presence. Perhaps he's different around his friends or lovers, but he's always cold with her, even when he's being nice. It was at its worst when she cut herself on the broken wine glass but she thinks she knows why now.
"He was a vampire, wasn't he?" Her face goes through a vast range of emotions before it settles on disbelief. "And you're..."
She won't let herself say it. It sounds too insane to be true, like something plucked straight out of a book she'd take from his collection to pass the time while he's busy working, but her mind can't find any logical, human explanation for the things that have happened. As unbelievable as it seems, it has to be true, because what does it mean if it isn't? Does that make her crazy?
And, of course, she's afraid, but not for the reasons he thinks she is.
It's not necessarily that she's afraid of him, because he has made his devotion to protecting her abundantly clear today, it's that she's afraid of what he's capable of. If he was able to refrain from attacking her when she was bleeding right in front of him, he's able to be trusted, but knowing what he is and seeing what he's capable of doing today...The fear is the only thing that keeps her grounded to reality and secure in the fact that she isn't going crazy.
"And you're a vampire too."
Harry's face is set in a mixture of anger, sympathy, and something she can't quite place. She finds herself searching him for a reaction, yet all he does is look at her, as if deciding something for himself, and stand up.
He offers his hand to her.
"Do you trust me?"
Everything else fades away from her as she debates the question, even with the situation that just unfolded and the body that lies not ten feet away from where they are. Weighing what has led up to this moment between them, she tries to think with as much reason and logic as she can and finds that the conclusion isn't one many people would come to.
Most people, when faced alone with a vampire in the middle of a secluded forest, would choose not to trust him. Maybe they'd be right in choosing not to, maybe she's too traumatized from everything that has happened to process it clearly, but, for reasons she can't explain, she takes his hand.