The ancient vampire had watched him for the entire day, having no idea what suddenly came over him and made him so drawn to this white-haired human boy all of a sudden. He tried to find reasons for why he had followed the boy after accidentally bumping into him on the sidewalk at 6 a.m. His first conclusion was that he could smell his blood and knew it was one of his favorites, AB+, which also happened to be a very rare blood type. He'd changed his mind about this being the reason by lunchtime, when he was still watching the boy from a distance among the shadows. He'd brought his lunch, most likely packed by a parent or older sibling, because when the boy opened the bag, Kaiser could tell the look of first surprise, which meant he wasn't expecting something to be inside, and then disappointment bordering on disgust. Kaiser decided to listen in on the conversation he'd started with his twin seated beside him.
"A banana... really? Again? What'd you get?" The boy had grumbled about the fruit and peered eagerly over at his sibling's bag instead, disregarding the banana on the picnic table they were sitting at outside the school.
"Gummy bears! Wow, Foxy, mom must dislike you to give you fruit over gummies again; what'd you do this time? Kaiser watched as the sister smirked and jabbed the boy in the ribs after asking the question, much to the dismay of her brother by the sudden look that flashed across his face as he turned to avoid her gaze and begrudgingly picked the banana back up. "I didn't think she'd notice a few missing gummy packets from the pantry."
"You found the stash?! She must not have hidden it very well." The boy whipped his head back up from where he'd bowed it in shame, narrowing his eyes at his sister.
"Stash? What stash do you mean."
"Oh you know... The one mom hid from you because you always eat all the candy in the house when you find it." The sister smiled smugly as she popped a gummy bear in her mouth and glanced at the dumbfounded and insulted expression her brother was sporting, which made Kaiser snort from where he was. Leaning against a tree in the shade, Kaiser only occasionally looked over at the two from afar to lessen suspicion, using his supernatural hearing to pick up all of what they were saying even while being several feet away and out of sight.
"And you knew about this...? And you didn't think to sneak me any?" The boy almost sounded genuinely hurt if it weren't for the fact that he was fighting a smile just at how his sister giggled at his indignation. Kaiser found their dynamic fascinating and painfully familiar, something he once had nearly a millennium ago.
"No! Of course not; if I did that, you'd beg me and our brothers for the location, and then the reason mom hid them in the first place would repeat, and you'd eat the entire box again!"
"That was once."
"Once too many" The twin sister held her chin up high as she looked down at her brother with a stern yet soft and a bit teasing glance as the boy shrank under it guiltily, seeming to admit defeat as he sighed and visibly deflated.
"I'll give you the good part of the banana for one gummy...?" The boy tried to barter as an apology, glancing up from under his eyelashes to give puppy eyes to the sister, who went back to eating happily. "Sure!" She'd agreed easily, and they both smiled and continued eating together before the bell rang, signaling lunch was over.
Kaiser dipped further behind the tree when the two stood and threw their trash away, watching intently as they walked back to the schoolhouse, entirely oblivious to his existence. No, it wasn't his rare blood type that caught his attention; he knew that now. He'd even gone so far as to deduce that it wasn't even his unusual appearance that drew him near. Kaiser knew now that as soon as he'd glanced down at the boy that he'd bumped into, seen how he reacted to being confronted by a stranger, an intimidating one at that, and interacted with him in a certain way, that was what had caught his attention.
He was pathetic. Shy, nervous, weak, timid, clearly oblivious, and, of course, dangerously polite Kaiser was sure if he'd faked an injury in that moment, the boy would help him with it right then and there, no hesitation, maybe a few questions asked, and that's what made the dull eyes of the old vampire sparkle for the first time in a long time. He'd found something he hated with a passion because it reminded him of himself at one point, but it only fueled some part of him that needed to know everything. He was obsessed with figuring out what made people tick, including himself, and now he couldn't move on until he figured out what made Finley tick.
Kaiser continued to watch from afar throughout the rest of the day, hidden away in the shadows. Even though he'd been given an enchanted bit of jewelry to protect him from bursting into flames under the sun, he still preferred staying in the shade to hide from observant eyes like his own. He'd kept a close watch on the boy and his sister from school back to the street where he'd first "met" Finley and followed as the two led him straight to their house. He wasn't even supposed to be out this late; Ulysses would be furious with him; it's not like he could do much more to him, but Kaiser could never stop once he'd gotten stuck on something.
It's like his brain refused to focus on anything else. Even in just a day, in only 9 hours, he'd grown more and more Infatuated with the boy named Finley Fox Nelson. He'd picked up on his last name after hearing the teachers call on him and his sister, finding it interesting that only his twin, who he'd figured out was the younger, called him Fox or Foxy, but not a single other person did. Kaiser thought if he was as close to the boy as his sister, he'd call him Fox as well, which suited the white-haired mischievous yet cowardly thief quite well, in his opinion.
"We're home, Mom!" The girl named Freya Fae Nelson called out to the twin's mother once they'd gotten into their two-story suburban house that closely resembled the ones that sat beside it and all down the street in the seemingly nice and quiet neighborhood they lived in. Finley was quieter than his younger twin, deciding against shouting throughout the house and instead slunk to the pantry as he remembered their conversation at lunch about the secret sweets stash his mother had hidden from him but none of his other siblings, to which Kaiser learned he had three.
The two older brothers weren't home with them just yet. One of them, he'd found out after peeking into a window while surveying the house, had gone to college, given the way his room was lacking signs of life but decked out with decorations of the university the boy had chosen, and the other was off with his partner somewhere on a school senior trip.
"Mom? Helloooo... "Uh, that's weird; mom's not home yet." He'd hear the sister ponder out loud, something Kaiser knew already since he could tell by listening to the heartbeats within the house that it was just the twins inside at the moment, at least two people who had a heartbeat. He couldn't be sure if there were any dead bodies inside.
"Really? Huh... What about Dad? Shouldn't he be home by now?" Fox piped up from the pantry; Kaiser guessed since his voice was slightly extorted from speaking inside a small room, and the next moment Fae had slapped something, causing Fox to yelp and drop something, probably a little packet of gummies. Kaiser moved to a spot around the house that allowed him to just see through another window and spot the white hair of the twins, who had started bickering again about the hidden snacks until their worry for their parents' location kicked back in.
"Should we call them?"
"With what phone... Ours is only set up to call 911 if we need to, and besides, they're probably just running late because of work; maybe they got busy and had to stay back; it's fine." The boy was the voice of reason to calm his younger twin's nerves, but that did nothing for the girl as Kaiser listened to her small feet start to pace around the kitchen they both stood in.
"Both of them? The same day? Isn't that weird? I don't know, I have a bad feeling." Kaiser ducked out of the way of the window when, little to his surprise, the sister glanced at where he'd been. He wondered how long it'd take one of them to feel their sixth sense and perceive the danger most prey face when there is a predator nearby. He also wasn't shocked to find that it had been the sister first before Fox; the boy seemed happily unaware of danger while inside what he perceived to be a safe place, which made a cruel grin grow on Kaiser's face too quickly for him to stop it.
"Whatever, I'm going to start on homework; you should too before mom and dad get home." Kaiser listened closely as the boy's footsteps echoed up the stairs to the twins' shared room, where he heard a bag drop to the floor and the boy sigh loudly.
Kaiser waited and stayed camped out at the Nelson family house until the sun had set and the family's parents finally made it back home, stirring Kaiser from his intense focus on Finley's heartbeat, which he'd memorized and could tell the difference from his sister by now.
"Let's agree not to tell them tonight, ok? Not until the legal process is over... I don't even want to hear about a custody battle either; I'm keeping my kids, Ryan." The mother's voice piqued Kaiser's interest as she spoke sternly to a man in a separate car from hers as they both got out and walked to the front door, Kaiser slinking further back into the shadows to keep cover.
"They won't know a thing until you want them to, Maeve, and you can keep them and the house... I'm not that cruel." The man sighed, following the woman as she unlocked the door, and the two quickly changed their entire demeanor as the kids inside heard them arrive and said their excited hellos. He listened as the parents greeted their kids, going about their nightly routine, and Kaiser, without a phone or watch to check the time, had heard it was nearly midnight from the kids, who were questioning what made their parents come home so late. They lied, the both of them, because Kaiser knew it was most likely the divorce papers being served and gone over with a legal representative that kept them behind, but all they said was that their jobs and traffic held them up.
After he heard the time, he knew he should go back. He'd stayed out for too long and another few hours, and Ulysses would send someone out to find him and bring him back by force. So with one last glance through a window, a deep breath to smell the sweet scent of his favorite blood type, and a quick listen in on the boy's heartbeat, Kaiser was gone in a blink of an eye.
~◇~ At the Cult ~◇~
A loud thwack sound echoed in the cold and dingy basement Kaiser had been dragged down and made to stay in, the next being the wet splattering of blood hitting the cement floor after he'd spit it from his mouth. The 6'5 vampire had his head bowed as blood flowed from his nose and slightly parted mouth before it would stop suddenly when his healing kicked in and mended the wounds, the sight of his blood not helping to calm the raging cult leader above him, who'd landed several more blows before stepping back and observing his work. "You were late," Ulysses growled at him. Kaiser refused to move for fear that the sound of his chains dragging loudly across the cement floor would cause the demon to strike again. "I'm sor-" Another loud thwack sound echoed as Kaiser's face was thrown to the side, nearly toppling him, but he managed to catch himself, spitting out even more dark red blood this time and flinching away subtly from the same hand that he held up high in preparation for another hit.
"Did I say you could speak? If you are going to say anything, it sure as hell better not be an apology you don't mean. Now tell me, dog, why did you disobey? Have a good reason, or else you've lost outside privileges." He'd stand to his full height after that, but not before wiping his blood-soaked hands on Kaiser's shirt that stuck to his skin, already stained and damp with it.
"I got distracted, sir. I lost track of time." Kaiser chose his words carefully, not wanting to explain what exactly he was doing but not wanting to stay silent to further anger the man glaring holes into his skull. A cold chill ran up his spine when he heard Ulysses chuckle, wondering what was funny and feeling like he'd missed something important, to which he was immediately proven right when Ulysses spoke again. "What is it about that boy that is so distracting for you? Don't think I wasn't aware of what tail my dog was chasing while off its leash... So, Kaiser, how much did you learn about him? You had what? 14 hours to watch him uninterrupted, so give me the debriefing."
Shit, that's no good. Kaiser couldn't help the scowl that came across his features much too quickly to hide it, bowing his head down further so Ulysses didn't see just how angry it had made him while he tried reigning it in so he didn't growl when he went to respond. "Finley Fox Nelson, but his younger twin sister calls him Fox; he's 16 years old and has three siblings in total. AB+ blood, white hair, and fair skin with dark brown, nearly black eyes, around 5ft8, Polite but weary of strangers, he lives on 1035 Chapel Street; his parents are getting a divorce, but he doesn't know that yet, and he likes sweet things." Kaiser finished retelling all the information he'd gathered from just observing the boy and his family, and Ulysses, who'd listened with mild interest, slowly smiled down at him.
"I think this might be the most you've spoken in one go... He must be very interesting. I'll tell you what: if you stay obedient and do as I say when I say it without hesitancy, I'll let you have him, but if you so much as stay out one minute longer than we agree, I will kill him myself. You can't have a human child challenging your loyalties... Understand?" Kaiser nodded after a moment, annoyed at the threat but staying still and silent so Ulysses would move on. Ulysses, however, wasn't finished with his point as his shoe pressed down on Kaiser's crotch, making him jolt at the sudden pain and sit up straighter, which allowed Ulysses to grab his throat and shove him further back into the wall.
Now hovering close to his face, Ulysses snarled at Kaiser, demonic claws digging into the sides of his neck as he choked him. "If you cannot manage the simplest of orders, I will have you kill him yourself. Is that clear?" Kaiser stayed still where he'd been pinned, blinking away from the intense gaze of the cult leader too close to his face as he managed to nod again, appeasing the demon, who finally let him go and stepped off him and away back to the exit door of the basement. With a few knocks, the guards on the other side unlocked the door and let their leader out, leaving Kaiser bloody and agitated alone in the cold, dark basement, which was his room when he was in trouble or when they planned to use him as an executioner every blue moon.
It was annoying to have something he found interesting held above his head like that, but he didn't expect anything less from the demon he was serving. He'd hoped that he would be able to keep the boy a secret, but of course, there were far too many eyes and ears when it came to the cult to hide anything like that. He would simply have to keep close watch on him from now on, and what better way to do that than having him in person, within arms reach, 24/7?