König | Love Bites

[Friday the 13th]

König had been a vampire for thirty years now, and he was still discovering which old wives' tales were complete blödsinn and which were disturbingly accurate.

Case in point: the full moon.

He had assumed— foolishly, apparently, that full moons only affected werewolves. Myth. Legend. Hollywood nonsense. Except he had been feeling off all evening, his senses sharpened to an almost painful degree, every shadow on base seeming to writhe with hidden movement. The other operators had been twitchy too, which either meant something was in the air, or König's paranoia had finally become contagious.

The midnight stroll had seemed like a good idea twenty minutes ago. Clear his head, stretch his legs, maybe find a nice quiet corner to brood dramatically like the creature of the night he was. Classic vampire behavior. Very sophisticated.

Now, walking the perimeter of KorTac's grounds with the full moon hanging overhead like a spotlight, König was reconsidering his life choices.

Something was following him.

He had first noticed it near the armory— a shift in the air, the faint scrape of movement that wasn't his boots on gravel. His enhanced hearing picked up every little rustle, and the tactical part of his brain immediately began threat assessment while the anxious part began spiraling into superstitious doom.

Full moon. Friday the 13th. Both.

Mein Gott, what else is real?

He kept walking, maintaining his usual measured pace, hood concealing rhe concerned look on his face. Colonel König did not run from strange noises. Colonel König did not panic over folklore. Colonel König was six-foot-ten of undead Austrian intimidation and he would not turn into a bat in the middle of the base courtyard just because something was—

The footsteps behind him stopped when he stopped.

Scheiße.

"Ja, very subtle," König muttered under his breath, his accent thickening with stress. "...We are doing the horror movie thing now, apparently."

He resumed walking, angling toward the better-lit areas near the main building. His fingers flexed— no weapons tonight, just a supposedly relaxing moonlit stroll that was rapidly becoming anything but.

Werewolves are real, ja? His mind spiraled. If vampires are real, and full moons make me feel like this, then werewolves must be—

Another sound, closer now. Breathing that was definitely not human, or at least not only human.

König's jaw clenched beneath the hood. Thirty years of vampirism, and he still didn't know all the rules. Silver? Crosses? Garlic? He had been too anxious to properly, fully experiment, and now here he was, on Friday the fucking 13th during a full moon, being stalked by god-knows-what while he internally catalogued every superstition he had ever dismissed as nonsense.

What if it's something that eats vampires? Is that a thing? Can that be a thing?

He turned a corner sharply, pressing his back against the wall, trying to catch sight of whatever was trailing him. His heart would be racing if it still beat. Instead, he could feel that awful flutter in his chest that preceded an unwanted bat transformation.

Verdammt embarrassing

Nein, nein, we are not doing that. We are a Colonel. Colonels do not turn into small flying rodents when frightened.

The footsteps grew louder, closer. Something was rounding the corner.

König tensed, every supernatural instinct firing, his mind racing through possibilities: Werewolf? Demon? Some other bloodsucker here to claim territory? A really persistent stray dog?

Please let it be a dog. Just a very large, very intimidating dog.

The shadow stretched across the gravel first, elongated and wrong in the moonlight, and König's breath caught—

Something stepped around the corner.

König jerked back, eyes wide behind the hood, every inch of his considerable height drawn up in startled defense as his brain short-circuited between fight, flight, or bat.

"SCHEIßE —!"

[Scent Addiction]

König is going to die.

Not in a fun, dramatic, operational-hazard way. No, he's going to die because his partner smells like concentrated vampire crack and his hind-brain has decided this is the perfect moment to stage a hostile takeover of his higher functions.

Focus. Mission. Target two-hundred meters northeast. Breathe. Verdammt, FOCUS—

It hits him again. That scent. The one that's systematically dismantled his sanity for six months of partnership. Warm. Alive. Human. Close. Too close. The hide is barely big enough for one operator, and the proximity is cooking him from the inside out.

His hands shake on the binoculars. Fine tremor, barely noticeable— except his hands never shake. Snipers don't shake. Colonels don't shake. Six-foot-ten vampires with thirty years of tenuous self-control don't shake over something as pedestrian as hunger.

Except this isn't hunger. This is need, raw and visceral, clawing up his throat. Forty-eight hours since his last blood bag. He thought he could handle this rotation. He was catastrophically wrong, and now he's trapped in a coffin-sized hide with temptation breathing three feet away.

The burn starts in his gums, spreads to his throat as the scent hits him like a tactical flash-bang directly to his amygdala. His pupils dilate so fast it's almost painful, tongue pressing against the roof of his mouth— trying to ground himself, trying to focus on anything except the steady, hypnotic rhythm of a heartbeat that makes his fangs ache with an urgency violent enough to make him want to claw his own face off.

Seventy-two beats per minute. Steady. Strong. Stop counting. Stop listening. Stop—

He can't stop.

The hood is fucking suffocating, fabric clinging to sweat-dampened skin despite the cold. His vision tunnels, and he blinks hard to bring the target zone back into focus. Except the second his concentration slips, the scent crashes over him again like a riptide.

Copper and warmth and something uniquely, maddeningly specific that his brain has decided is the only thing worth existing for.

Du bist ein Colonel. Act like one. Professionals do not lose control. Professionals do not—

Every muscle locks rigid, like if he moves even slightly he'll shatter. The binoculars feel impossibly heavy, his grip white-knuckled, and somewhere in the back of his mind he registers that this is pathetic. Thirty years of barely managing this condition, and here he is, barely holding together.

His brain cycles through exit strategies. Radio malfunction. Movement in the treeline. He could stress-transform into a bat and escape through sheer humiliation—except that would require explaining why their Colonel suddenly became a small brown mammal mid-mission.

He can't leave. Time-sensitive observation window. Mission parameters. All the very good reasons why he's trapped in purgatory.

Breathe through your mouth. That will—

Rookie mistake. Now he can taste it, phantom copper-sweetness coating his tongue, and the throat-burn intensifies to agony. His jaw clenches hard enough to send pain radiating through his skull, constant throbbing reminder of exactly what his body wants and cannot have.

König makes a sound. Strangled. Something between a wheeze and a dying breath he tries to disguise as clearing his throat, except it comes out broken, and his hands shake harder because control is slipping through his fingers like water.

Scheiße, scheiße, scheiße—

The observation log sits forgotten. The target zone blurs. His entire world narrows to this— the scent, the sound, the unbearable closeness of something he cannot have and desperately needs.