Severn drank a late night snack in the kitchen, leaning on the counter. The front door opened. He heard Rune groaning and something dragging over the floor. The door slammed closed. Rune entered the living room, dragging Hyde. Severn raised his eyebrow. Hyde seemed to be unconscious.

Rune laid him on the couch, then fell through his knees and panted. He pulled his coat off and left it on the floor. He turned Hyde onto his stomach and pulled his coat off, too, then dropped it on the ground again. He laid a bloody knife on the floor. He seemed to be inspecting something on Hyde’s back. Severn noticed the big, red stain on his sweater. He frowned in concern and pushed himself off the counter. He walked to them. “What happened?”

Rune flinched and looked up. “Oh, I didn’t see you.” He turned Hyde onto his back again. He stood up.

“What the hell happened?” Severn repeated.

Rune rubbed his arm. “Someone stabbed him.”

Severn’s eyes widened.

“Probably the gang,” Rune added. “I—” He choked up. “I turned him.”

Severn stared at him for a moment. “Did you?”

Rune nodded as some tears made their way down his cheeks. Severn wrapped his arm around him. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m sure he’d rather be a vampire than die so young, right?”

Rune sniffed and nodded. “Did I do it right?” he whimpered.

“I would assume so.” Severn glanced at Hyde on the couch, still breathing slowly. “He’s not dead.”

Rune grabbed at his hair. “They’re after him. Not only people close to me, but him specifically.”

“What makes you think so?”

Rune pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Severn. “This was attached to the knife they stabbed him with.”

Severn unfolded it and read it. He clenched his jaw. “Why? What did he do to piss them off?”

“What didn’t he do? He helped me get away from them, he makes it harder to sneak up on me, he killed one of their higher ranking people, they couldn’t get to the girls because of him. In their eyes, he’s a body guard who’s at my side at all times. The night they killed me, the woman was even saying how annoying he was, because he heard them coming before I noticed they were there.”

Severn only hummed as he stared at the note. He glanced at the bloody knife on the ground. His eyes narrowed. He stepped to the knife and lifted it off the floor. He examined it, felt its weight in his hand, and pricked his finger on the tip.

“What are you doing?” Rune asked, confused.

“I’ll be away for a few hours,” is all Severn coldly told him before walking towards the door.

“Huh? What are you going to do?”

“Pay some old colleagues a visit.”

“What—are you crazy? They could kill you again, you just came back!”

Severn ignored him and walked through the front door, slamming it shut behind him. He had an intense look in his eyes as he kept ignoring Rune’s muffled shouts from inside the house and left on a mission.

Rune sat on his knees beside the couch, leaning his folded arms next to Hyde. He kept an eye on him. He pressed his fingers against Hyde’s throat, feeling for his heartbeat. Still there. He brushed his fingers through Hyde’s hair with a sigh.

“What was all that yelling about?”

Rune turned to see Thomas walking into the living room. Thomas furrowed his brows in concern as he looked at Hyde. “What happened to him?”

“Someone from the gang stabbed him,” Rune told him.

“What?!” Thomas rushed to Rune’s side. “Will he be okay?”

Rune nodded. “I turned him.”

Thomas sat on the floor next to him. “Oh. So, he wouldn’t have been okay if you hadn’t?”

Rune shook his head with tears in his eyes. “He was already bleeding out.”

Thomas wrapped his arm around Rune. He searched the room. “Where’s Severn?”

“Doing something stupid,” Rune mumbled, frustrated.

Thomas tensed up. “What?”

“He grabbed the knife Hyde was stabbed with and said he was going to Pay some old colleagues a visit.”

“Oh no.”

“I told him not to, that they’d kill him again, but he completely ignored me!”

Thomas sighed. “I haven’t always been able to stop him either, once he gets an idea like that in his head.” He put his other arm around Rune in a hug. “I suppose all we can do is hope he’ll come home.”

Rune could hear the worry and fear in his voice. He leaned his head against Thomas’s. He thought back to Hyde. “Do you know anything about turning people?” Rune wanted to distract them both.

“I haven’t done it, but I’ve seen the before-and-after with your mother. And I’ve read a book on vampirism before.”

Rune raised his eyebrow. “Why would you need to read a book about that?”

Thomas removed one arm from Rune and stared into the distance. “I needed something to distract myself and that book was the only one in the house at the time.”

Rune squinted. “I’ve never seen a book on vampirism on your shelves, what house are you talking about?”

“My f—” Thomas shook his head. “Never mind. What do you want to know about turning?”

“Uhh.” Rune was caught off guard at the sudden change. “How it affects werewolves, I guess. Will he be a full vampire?”

Thomas hummed. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Out of the four states-of-being other than vampire, there were two that couldn’t be fully turned. Faerie can’t be turned at all, one became a hybrid. If I’m remembering correctly, that one was werewolf. But I read that book decades ago, so take it with a grain of salt.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Rune’s eyes widened. “A hybrid? What would that look like?”

“He’d be lucky, honestly. He’d only get the good traits of vampires. The lifespan and aging, fangs, healing open wounds. He could drink blood, but wouldn’t have to. He wouldn’t burn in the sun. He’d keep all his werewolf traits.”

Thomas grabbed his chin in thought. “Now that I think about it, I’m pretty confident it was werewolf. I remember the book described something about vampirism and lycantrophy both being considered ‘curses’. And the thing about curses is, you can’t get rid of one by being infected with the other.”

Rune blankly stared at him. “Lycan—what-now? Curses?”

“Lycantrophy is the name of the ‘werewolf curse.’ The story goes that both werewolves and vampires started out as a few people being cursed, and then passing their curses onto their children, or spreading it by turning others in the case of vampires. Over the years, they became so common place that they’re considered regular states-of-being, now. But these are only myths at this point.”

Rune let himself process all that for a while. Thomas stayed quiet to let him do so for a minute before continuing, “There were two more things about turning, but I can’t remember. Something to do with aging and souls.”

Rune sighed and looked behind him at Hyde. “We’ll see what happens.”

A couple hours later, Rune still waited. Thomas had moved to the dining table. Severn hadn’t returned yet.

Rune heard movement on the couch behind him and turned to look. Hyde had pushed himself up on his elbows and rubbed his forehead. He opened his eyes slightly and glanced down at Rune.

Rune smiled in relief and flung his arms around him. “Hey.” Hyde pushed himself up further to sit on his behind and hugged Rune back.

Rune moved his hands to Hyde’s cheeks. “How do you feel?”

Hyde frowned. “Fine?” He looked down at his hand. “What did you do?”

“I turned you.”

“Then why is my skin not greyish?”

Rune pushed Hyde’s lip up with his thumb to check. “You have fangs, so it did work.”

“I do?” Hyde licked his teeth, he hummed.

“Seems like you really are a hybrid.”

Hyde raised his eyebrow. “Hybrid?”

“Apparently, werewolf and vampire happens to be the only possible hybrid. You age and heal like a vampire, you have fangs, and you could drink blood if you wanted to. But other than that, nothing changed for you.”

Hyde stared at him. “Age like a—oh, shit.”

Rune let his hands fall down from Hyde’s face. “What?”

“My lifespan has doubled.”

“Oh.” Rune glanced down. “I hadn’t thought about that.” Rune shook his head, there were more important things right now. He put his hand on Hyde’s shoulder. “Can you turn around? I want to check the wound on your back.”

Hyde nodded and turned. He pulled his shirt up and over his head, then left it on his arms. Rune rubbed the spot between his shoulder blades where the knife had been. The wound was completely gone. The only trace left was the dried blood. “Like it never even happened,” he mumbled under his breath. Hyde hummed, Rune saw him rubbing his chest. “What?”

“My chest fuzz is gone.”

Rune frowned. “Oh, weird.”

Hyde pulled his shirt on and turned to Rune again. Rune hugged him. “I was so scared I’d lose you,” he whispered.

Hyde sighed and hugged him back. “You didn’t. You knew how to save me.” He rubbed his face into Rune’s neck. “I’m still here.”

Rune smiled and curled his fingers around the hair in Hyde’s neck. He sighed. “And I worried if you actually wanted the turn. It’s a pretty big and permanent change.”

“I’d much rather be a hybrid than dead.” Hyde hugged him tighter. “And I’m glad I won’t age twice as fast as you.” He let Rune go and put his hand on his cheek. “We could still have another one-hundred-and-fifty-something years together, that sounds amazing.” Hyde smiled.

Rune smiled too with tears in his eyes. He was glad Hyde saw this as such a positive thing. He didn’t even seem to care he almost died.

Hyde pushed their foreheads together and whispered, “I love you.”

Rune grabbed Hyde’s hand on his cheek and leaned into it. “I love you, too,” he whispered back.

----------------------------------------

Severn kicked the door. It swung open. He stood in the doorway, the knife in his hand dripping with blood, people groaning in pain behind him, grabbing at their cuts and stab wounds.

Three people stared at him, Severn observed them. One big guy on the left of the desk; one medium guy on the right; and a small, pathetic little man safely sitting on his big, fancy desk chair between them. Severn smirked. “What’s with the shock on your faces? Thought you’d gotten rid of me?”

The big man charged into an attack. Severn stabbed him in the shoulder and pushed him to the side using the knife. He pulled the knife out and kicked him out the doorway. He turned back to the small boss man, holding up the knife. “I believe this knife is yours. Somehow, it found its way into my son’s boyfriend’s back.” He approached the desk.

The medium guy cried out and charged at him. Severn stepped out of his path, grabbed his shoulders and slammed his head on the desk, knocking him out. He pushed him out of the way with his foot. He sat sideways on the desk and loomed over the boss.

The boss stared at him in shock. “How is this possible?”

Severn let out an evil snicker. He climbed onto the desk, then placed his feet on the chair on either side of the boss. He leaned his elbows on his knees and got into his face.

“Oh?” Severn pointed the knife at his throat. “You thought, just because you rammed a stake through my heart and dumped my body in the middle of the forest and watched it rot until all that was left of me were bones, meant you’d gotten rid of me permanently?”

He pushed the tip of the knife into his skin, the boss leaned back and gulped. “And since you thought I was gone, you decided you could go after my son and break my family apart even more.” Severn let some of his anger show on his face.

“What do you want?” the boss demanded. “To stop us? To take us down? To kill me?”

“Now why would I want that?” Severn lifted the boss’s chin up with the knife. “No, I don’t want to start a war. I don’t care what you people do to others.” He gave the boss a threatening glare. “All I want is for you to leave me, my family, and anyone surrounding us alone, understood?”

“Or else?”

“Well, if I can come back to life after all that was left of me was a skeleton, who knows what else I could do?”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Fuck around and find out. The moment I see any of you anywhere near my family, you’re all dead.” He pressed the knife into his neck, drawing blood. “Are we clear?”

The boss pinched his eyes closed and gulped, then nodded.

“Brilliant,” Severn whispered into his face. He backed away, letting the boss relax a little. He stabbed him in the shoulder for good measure, the boss cried out in pain. Severn pulled the knife out and got off the desk.

He put his free hand in the pocket of his jacket and twirled the knife in his other. He walked through the doorway, past the line of bleeding people, groaning and grunting in pain, and went on his way home.

----------------------------------------

Rune laid on Hyde’s chest on the couch, listening to his now-regular heartbeat. Hyde played with his hair.

The front door opened, Rune flinched awake. The door to the living room opened, Severn walked in, bloody knife in hand. Rune pushed himself up in Hyde’s arms as he called out, “Dad!”

Severn didn’t even look at him as he made his way to the kitchen. Rune got off the couch and followed him.

“Severn!” Thomas called too, he stood up from his chair at the table and went after him into the kitchen. Severn dropped the knife into the sink right before Thomas threw his arms around him. Thomas let out a relieved sigh. “You’re okay.”

Severn took a deep breath as he hugged him back with one arm. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Thomas let him out of the hug but kept his hands on his arms. “Where have you been?”

“At the gang’s base.”

Rune noticed a red stain on Severn’s sleeve. “What did you do?”

Severn stepped out of Thomas’s grip. “Just had a little chat.”

“With a knife?”

“…Yep.”

“Then why do you have blood on your sleeve?”

Severn’s eyes widened and he looked at his sleeve. He frowned. “Damn it. I was being so careful.”

“What the hell did you do?!” Rune demanded.

Severn glanced at him. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

Rune was dumbfounded for a moment. “What kind of answer is that?!”

“Where did the blood come from, then?” Thomas asked.

Severn sighed and dropped his arm. “I might’ve stabbed a few people. Only in non-lethal places, they’ll be fine.” He nonchalantly waved it off.

“Why? What happened?” Rune demanded.

“I went to their base and I gave them a piece of my mind. We won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

“Why not?”

Severn’s shoulders tensed as he got angry. “They kept us under control through fear all these years, it was about time for a switch.” He turned away from them and continued to let his anger out. “They had watched the life leave my eyes, watched me rot away in the forest, watched me turn into nothing but a skeleton. Now, I came back from being only bones. Who knows what else I could possibly do?” he finished with an unsettling grin. He turned to them, his grin more normal. “I bluffed out of my ass, but it worked.”

Rune stared at him in disbelief. “You made them fear you?”

“Pretty much. To a murderer, what could be more terrifying than his victim coming back to life?”

“Do not ever do anything that reckless again!” Thomas scolded him as he got into his face. “I lost you once, I’m not losing you again due to your own recklessness!”

Severn slightly leaned back away from him. “Okay, okay. I promise I won’t.”

“You better. Now, come here.” Thomas hugged him again.

Severn put one arm around him, then looked at Rune. He held his arm out to him. “Come on, I’m sure you want to join, too.” Rune huffed, but hugged him from the side. Severn rubbed his cheek against Rune’s head. “I’m sorry I scared you. Both of you.”

Rune sighed. “I’m just happy you’re okay.”