There were many places Damon would prefer to be over the rickety old elevator inside the New Haven Central Police Station. Namely, he'd like to be back between the suffocating press of warm bodies dancing the eternal night away. The exhilarating feeling of music pumping through his veins was like—well, Damon would guess it was better than any of the pills and powders the humans around him stuffed themselves with, but he wouldn't know. It was one of the few things that hadn't changed over the centuries Damon had been alive.

  No matter how loud he blasted music through his shitty corded earbuds, it never compared to the pulse of speakers so loud they shook the dance floor and rattled his bones so deep that he couldn't resist the urge to dance. Damon still nodded his head to the melody, tapped his foot to the beat, and mouthed the lyrics as he leaned into the corner of the elevator. What was the point of eternal life if you didn't spend it doing what you loved?

  Raphael's voice infiltrated Damon's mind, forcibly turning the music to a static drone. 'Behave yourself, Damaenetos.'

  Damon rolled his eyes. Even through the direct tap into his mind, Raphael's voice sounded disappointed as per usual. Ripping his earbuds out like an arrow lodged in his flesh and surrendering himself to the mundanity of life without music, Damon said, 'I'm always good for you, Raph.'

  Nose tightening in that way it only did when Damon annoyed him, Raphael said, out loud this time, 'The purpose of my communicating with you nonverbally is discretion. When you respond aloud, you ruin the facade. And how many times must I remind you to call me Raphael?'

  The elevator slowed to a stop.

  'So long as you remember to call me Damon, I won't embarrass you in front of your new human friends.' Damon snickered to himself. He had to find entertainment somehow. 'A little human company will do you good.'

  Raphael gave Damon a quick once-over, his eyes pausing distastefully on the strip of exposed skin between the top of Damon's low-cut jeans and the bottom of his cropped white t-shirt, then landed on his smirking face.

  Before Damon could say something Raphael really wouldn't approve of, the elevator doors screeched open.

  Every human in the office turned to watch the pair of vampires. Raphael kept his steps even so that it looked like he floated across the floor, and Damon strutted in like he owned the place, a rhythmic tilt to his narrow hips, the same he'd had since he was alive.

  Damon was used to turning heads. Even before his turning, he'd been blasphemously compared to Apollo, and, cruelly, time had only made him more beautiful. It wasn't egotistical. It was an undeniable truth of Damon's life, and one that he didn't care to counteract.

  Damon winked at a particularly cute guy, probably an intern by his relatively youthful appearance, as he walked past. Damon didn't miss how a muscle in Raphael's jaw flared.

  The woman holding an office door open for them blushed and avoided Damon's gaze. He smiled at her. Maybe it was just kindness, maybe it was flirtation. Not even Damon knew at this point. He let the humans interpret him however they pleased.

  'Raphael,' said a stern, feminine voice, drawing Damon's attention away from the woman, still blushing as she closed the door behind them. 'Thank you for coming on such short notice.'

  'Detective Superintendent.' Raphael's voice was saccharine as he broadcast it into Damon's and the DS's minds. She cringed at the intrusion. Damon just leaned against the door frame. It had hardly been a month since he developed it, and Raphael was already abusing his pureblood power. Damon wasn't surprised. He'd known Raphael for far too long for that.

  'Just Hawthorn is fine,' said the DS, her attention flicking between Raphael and Damon, but mostly Damon.

  He knew precisely what she was looking at—could practically see it reflected in her bulging brown eyes. The perfect golden curls that fell around his face like a halo of golden sunlight, the temptuous curve of his death-toned body, the bloodless veins of his strong arms only enhanced by the tight fit of his shirt, the body glitter and lipstick stains on his neck from a dance partner he could hardly remember, and the seductive angle of his lidded eyes. That carmine gaze he could never hold in the mirror.

  'I suppose, since you called upon me, that your infiltration operation didn't go quite as planned?' said Raphael, coaxing DS Hawthorn from her Damon-induced trance.

  'Yes, no, um… It did not go well, no.' DS Hawthorn put a cardboard box on her desk for the two vampires to examine. Damon didn't bother. He'd sensed its contents from the second he'd stepped into the office.

  Not budging from his position at the door, Damon said, 'Decapitated head. Effective, but a bit cliché if you ask me.'

  Raphael's eye twitched, and his voice flooded Damon's mind. 'I didn't.'

  DS Hawthorn's attention fell back on Damon, significantly more perturbed by his presence, as if she'd only just remembered what he was. He winked at her, and she wisely turned her gaze back towards Raphael, who took no pains to conceal his true nature behind modern fashions and current vernacular. Still, at the end of the night, Damaenetos and Raphael had been attached at the hip for far longer than either would care to admit.

  'We're confident that the Wolf killed Whitman,' said DS Hawthorn, opening the box for Raphael to examine.

  Still leaning against the door, not nearly close enough to see into the box—not that the angle mattered as Damon was too enamoured with something under his nail beds to bother looking—Damon said, 'Sure thing. So long as you're on board with the fact that our dear lupine friend just so happens to be a vamp, himself.'

  Again, DS Hawthorn ogled Damon, though not in the way he preferred. Her eyes were wide with fear and confusion, her fists clenched, and her body leaning away from him.

  That look awoke something dark and insidious inside Damon's cold heart. He sauntered towards DS Hawthorn without an ounce of hesitation or a modicum of shame as he dropped the humanoid facade he shrouded himself in. Gone was the image of burden he forced into his long limbs, the curve of his shoulders to hide his imposing stature, and the aloof expression he put on his face to keep it from enchanting every human he laid his eyes on. He softened as if glowing like a reflection caught in a bronze mirror.

  As Damon prowled, he didn't miss the photo of DS Hawthorn in a wedding gown kissing another woman in a suit framed on her desk. He simply didn't care. He tuned his senses in to her rushing blood. It pulsed through him just like the pounding bass at the disco or ritual drums thumping around an altar.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Some vampires got off on the fear, but Damon could never stand it. He much preferred feeling someone's pulse kick up from his attention alone, and DS Hawthorn's heart was thundering.

  Leaning over her desk, Damon let his gaze flick down to DS Hawthorn's parted lips and said, 'Don't be scared,' ignoring the decapitated head in a box between them, and reaching his hand out to brush a stray strand of hair from her face. 'Not all of us find pleasure in pain.' Damon watched with delight as DS Hawthorn's eyes shuttered and her body leaned into the fleeting memory of his hand against her cheek. 'I find pleasure itself to be reward enough-'

  'Damaenetos.'

  Raphael's voice cracked through the room like a bull whip.

  Damon sighed and resumed his post at the door, putting himself back in his human shell. But an afterglow remained as if Damon's body was too small to contain his radiance. 'You're always ruining my fun, Raph.'

  After blinking free from Damon's siren song, DS Hawthorn's face returned to the expression of horror it had worn earlier. Only this time, Damon stomached it even as it swirled within him like sour wine.

  'What the-'

  'Ignore him,' said Raphael. 'Damon is a lecherous man whore.'

  Damon shrugged. He'd been accused of far worse.

  'But despite his copious personality defects, he is nonetheless pureblooded. Through and through.' Raphael spat out the last few words like they burned his throat on the way up.

  In all the time they'd spent together, Raphael's jealousy had only ever burgeoned. Damon had been treasured and eventually sired by a pureblood. He'd had his power since he was a fledgling. Raphael waited over a millennium for his, and to add insult to injury, compared to Damon's power, Raphael's was little more than a party trick.

  DS Hawthorn managed to swallow the lump clogging her throat. She spoke to Raphael as though she feared addressing Damon alone would summon the dark thing inside him that bewitched people with a single look.

  'So he's able to… entrance people? Slip into their minds like you?'

  Damon snickered as Raphael's jaw flared, and he said, 'No. I did not sire him, if that is what you're insinuating. Damon is my senior by a few years, and his physical gifts are God given, I'm afraid.'

  Damon suppressed a scoff. Whatever god had bestowed them on him, it wasn't Raphael's. Damon's gods had died and abandoned him aeons ago, long before Raphael's was even born.

  'Haemokenisis,' said Damon. 'That's my power. Usually, decapitated heads still have some blood left in them, but your rat's has been drained dry. Only vampires can do that kind of damage.'

  DS Hawthorn blinked very slowly as she processed the information that Damon knew enough about decapitated heads to tell that this one was abnormal.

  Taking a preternaturally smooth step forward, Raphael said, 'You've run out of options. The infiltrant you've been cultivating for months was disposed of within hours, the Mayor is breathing down your neck to close this case so he can use it in his reelection campaign, and now, you've resorted to calling us.'

  Damon's earbuds burned a hole in his pocket. He hated sitting through Raphael's rants.

  'But we, too, wish to see this criminal vanquished, and I have devised a plan. Using a two-pronged attack, I know we will bring the Wolf to his knees.'

  Raphael plucked a grainy photograph of a man with slicked black hair, half of his face hidden behind a rigid black mask—the only photo evidence of the Wolf the police had been able to gather, and handed it to Damon.

  The Coven had known for years that the thing picking them off wasn't human. He couldn't be. No human hunter was that good. At first, many had thought the Wolf was a legacy, or even a group of people employed by the ROCS, but Damon knew from the traces of venom left in the decapitated head exactly what they were dealing with.

  A halfbreed.

  In all his years, Damon had never heard of one, let alone met one himself—conception between a vampire and a human was already rarer than a donkey that ran like a horse—but he supposed it was possible.

  'With our knowledge of the night and yours of the day,' said Raphael, 'We will finally entrap him.'

  DS Hawthorn looked sceptically at Damon, who was far too busy examining the photograph to pay her any mind. He thought that, despite the poor quality, the Wolf looked like he had a good face for painting.

  'And how are you even going to find him?' said DS Hawthorn.

  Gesturing to the decapitated head, Raphael said, 'We've got his scent now. Thanks to the sacrifice you so kindly sent into the fray for us.'

  And what a sweet scent it was. Even through the pungent odour of rotting flesh, there remained traces of the Wolf's venom like the first echoes of spring on a briny sea breeze.

  DS Hawthorn baulked. 'We did not send Josiah Whitman on a suicide mission.'

  'So you say,' continued Raphael, running a clawed finger along the decapitated head's jaw, 'But you didn't even send one of your own to do the job.'

  'They'd have found it suspicious if one of ours suddenly decided to join the ROCS.' DS Hawthorn put the lid back over Josiah's head. 'Whitman had the perfect motivation.'

  'And yet his head is in the box between us,' said Raphael.

  Looking to Damon, DS Hawthorn said, 'I didn't call you to bicker. I will be the first to admit our most recent attempt to dispose of the Wolf was a tragic failure, but you and your Coven haven't been able to kill him, either. If we want to solve this case, we'll need to cooperate, so please, tell me this plan of yours.'

  At the deranged smile that crossed Raphael's face, Damon regretted every choice in his long life which had led him to this moment.

  'Was I not clear? Damon will seduce him.'

  DS Hawthorn blinked dumbly at the pair of them. 'Please tell me you're joking.'

  Raphael was not, in fact, joking. Damon couldn't recall a single time that he'd attempted comedy.

  'You've seen firsthand what he can do. Every attack we throw at him, he foils. You're lucky your attempt came back as a head in a box, but not even the hunter will be able to resist Damon's charms. He will be the mole we need. He will uncover the hunter's weaknesses so we can send him down to hell where he belongs. This hunter can't be killed. At least not the traditional ways. We've both tried with disastrous effect.'

  An uncomfortable silence stretched between the trio. Damon hated the plan, not because he thought he couldn't, he definitely could. He just didn't want to. Seduction of the proposed sort required commitment, even if for a short period of time, and Damon didn't do commitment. But this proposal wasn't new to Damon. Raphael had made it long before they'd come here. He wouldn't have brought Damon along, otherwise. He was enough of a loose cannon already, and Raphael didn't need to risk him storming out as he had when Raphael first floated the idea to him.

  'What if he's not gay?' asked DS Hawthorn.

  Raphael left Damon to answer.

  'If you live long enough, that stuff stops mattering. You either become a whore,' Damon gestured to himself, 'Or a prude,' then to Raphael. 'Besides, you didn't seem to have any reservations earlier.'

  DS Hawthorn paled. 'Fine. I'll entertain this plan, but if it doesn't produce any results within a month, we're doing things my way.'

  'I assure you,' said Raphael, 'It will. Damon may not act it, but he is one of our strongest.'

  As always, there was a bitter, cutting edge to Raphael's words.

  Not an ounce of disbelief coloured DS Hawthorn's face. Damon hated that look more than anything because it was justified. No matter how hard he worked to appear otherwise, Damon was a monster, and DS Hawthorn was glad to be rid of him. He could tell by the rush of her blood easing as they left her office and sequestered themselves back in the elevator.

  The moment the doors closed on them, Raphael said, 'Do you endeavour to disrupt every single plan I construct?'

  'Could have gone worse,' said Damon, fishing his earbuds from his pocket.

  'Damaenetos-'

  'Don't call me that.' Damon's voice lost its coquettish affectation, turning sharp as a ritual knife.

  Raphael spoke with undue softness. 'Only you are strong enough to stand a chance at survival should something go awry.' He only ever used that tone when he wanted something and knew he needed to appease Damon to get it.

  'I know.'

  'Only you possess the necessary… skill set… to-'

  'I said I'd do it, didn't I?'

  The elevators chimed, and the doors opened.

  Not caring if the humans in the building overheard him while he walked to the exit, Damon said, 'I'll find him, fuck him, and come crawling back to your bed after.'

  'Damon!'

  There was that chastising voice Damon was used to, the one he liked.

  Heads turned. They always did, whether Damon opened his mouth or not.

  'Where are you going?' called Raphael as Damon strutted off into the empty street.

  With a smile on his perfect lips, Damon said, 'The night is still young.'