Fantasy RP The Enemy's Embrace (FaeWhisperer)

[Chaotic_Pyro]

The moon hung low and swollen, casting pale light over the moss-covered ground as she moved silently beside her father, crossbow slung over her shoulder, stake and gun strapped to her thigh. He was focused, eyes sharp, jaw clenched, every step purposeful. She’d seen him like this a hundred times before. The hunts were sacred to him. A ritual. A war. And she was his legacy, trained to carry the same fire and hatred. Vampires were monsters. That was the rule. That was the truth.

They were tracking a particularly powerful vampire rumored to be hiding in the ruins of the old chapel. Her father had intel, he always did. “Tonight,” he’d said, “we end one of the oldest of these creatures to still be walking.” She hadn’t asked questions. She never did. But something about this night felt...off. The woods were too quiet.

She scanned the trees, senses sharp. The chapel loomed ahead, its stone bones broken and bleeding ivy. Her father raised a hand, signaling her to stop. He stepped forward, crossbow raised, eyes locked on the shadows near the altar.

Then everything unraveled.

A blur of motion. A vampire, feral, fast, and furious, launched from the darkness. Her father turned just in time to fire, but the creature was faster. It slammed into him with brutal force, sending him crashing into a tree. The sound of his skull hitting bark was sickening. He crumpled to the ground, unmoving. “Dad!” she cried, rushing toward him, but the vampire was already on her.

She barely had time to draw her gun before the vampire charged her. She ducked, rolled, and shot him in the chest, but not quite the heart. He bared his fangs before charging at her again and knocked her backward. Her body hit the ground hard, breath knocked from her lungs. The vampire took that chance and jumped on her, burying his fangs into her neck. She tried to reach her stake but the vampire blocked her access as he drained her of blood.

She could feel herself growing lightheaded. Then impact, but not against her. The vampire was ripped away from her with a force that shattered the silence. She scrambled to her feet, heart pounding, eyes wide. She couldn’t breathe. Her father groaned behind her, still unconscious. The creature lay broken against a tree, unmoving with a hole in his chest. And standing between her and the dead vampire was a figure she didn’t recognize. And she stood there, holding her neck where the vampire had bit into her, and staring at the stranger with what she assumed was a bloody heart in his hand.

 

[FaeWhisperer]

The man standing between her and the now deceased vampire was Elijah Mikaelson, one of the original vampires turned. He had recently returned back to New Orleans with his younger half brother hybrid, Klaus. Being here, Elijah had tried to redeem himself and his family from their past grievances they had left behind. But so far, family rifts were rising once again, and he was trying to prevent it like so many other times in the past.

And doing dirty work was never easy in any situation. Elijah had been on his way to meet with a local witch, who knew about his mother and older brother named Finn and why they needed to be stopped. Family meant everything to him, but the moment his witch mother and older brother turned on him and their younger siblings — he knew he had lost all and any attachment to them. So the next best course of action was to stop them both from resurrecting his father, who was a worse vampire than his brother Nicklaus.

It just so happened that here he had come across a lead that a rampant vampire had been attacking vampire hunters. It seemed that the creature had been afflicted with some type of blood curse that made them act more like rabid dogs than people. This affliction / curse definitely smelled of magic and his mother written all over it. If she had failed in killing her children before, sending afflicted vampires to do her bidding instead definitely tracked.

With the bleeding heart in his hand still, he had a calm demeanor about himself, and Elijah was wearing a well tailored suit. Unfortunately the creature’s blood had gotten onto it and he knew having that dry cleaned would be expensive. But pushing it aside, he saw the woman before him, clearly confused on what was happening. He noted her what he could only assume father on the ground with a possible cracked skull.

If he didn’t act fast, the father would lose his life first, and the daughter would quickly bleed out.

Dropping the heart, he pulled out a handkerchief and began wiping his hands clean. He surveyed the area quickly to make sure there would be no more attacks before he turned to the woman. “Let me treat him with my blood, it’ll take only but a moment and he’ll be good as new,” he offered.

 

[Chaotic_Pyro]

She couldn’t stop staring, between the vampire’s lifeless body and the man with the heart in his hands. The stake was still clenched in her hand, but her grip had gone slack. Her breath came in short, uneven bursts, and her knees threatened to buckle beneath her.

Isolde’s father groaned behind her, still unconscious. Blood matted his, and the angle of his neck just looked…wrong. She wanted to move him, take him out and get him help, but her eyes were locked on the suited man before her. The man who appeared suddenly and ended the threat in seconds. He didn’t look like a killer.

He looked like he belonged in a penthouse, not a battlefield. The suit was immaculate, or it had been before the blood that was splattered. He moved with calculated precision, a kind of grace that wasn’t trained but learned through centuries of time. There wasn’t panic or rage. It was almost disturbing. Most of the vampires she interacted with were violent.

She watched him drop the heart, the way he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began to clean his hands. It was like watching someone wipe down a wine glass after a dinner party, not blood after a kill.

Her heart thundered in her chest. She felt the sting of the cut on her temple, the ache in her ribs where she’d hit the ground. Her father was dying and this man, no, this vampire was offering to help. She didn’t know who he was, not yet. But something felt different, not safe, it was never safe to be around a vampire. But he wasn’t like the ones her and her father hunted.

Snapping her attention to her father, she rushed to his side, fingers trembling as they brushed blood from his brow. He was pale, too pale. She could feel the seconds slipping away the more she hesitated. She knew vampire blood could heal, she knew that. She’d seen it once, another hunter, a colleague of her father’s. He took the blood to survive. Her father called it a betrayal, worse than death.

But this was real, her father was fading. She stared at his face, pale and slack, blood trickling from the gash at his temple. His chest rose in shallow, uneven breaths. The man before her had survived countless hunts, walked away from battles that should’ve killed him. But this time she wasn’t sure he’d make it. Her hands hovered above him, useless. All her training couldn’t stop death from creeping in on her father.

Her fingers curled into fists, her nails digging into her palms. Her father would never forgive her. If he woke up and knew what she’d done, what she’d allowed, he’d see it as betrayal. A stain on their legacy. A weakness. But she couldn’t let him die, not like this. Not when she could prevent it. Her voice came out hoarse, barely audible but she knew the man would pick it up. “Do it.”

She didn’t look at him, the words felt like acid on her tongue. She kept her eyes on her father as she stood up, clutching the stake tighter in her hands. “But try anything, and I’ll drive this through your heart.” She threatened.

 

[FaeWhisperer]

Elijah could see the betrayal the woman felt clear as day on her face. The act of saving her father with something as simple as vampire blood would cause more agony than the actual wound itself. And it only made sense, because she was a hunter and after the initial attacker had been…subdued— he finally had a chance to recognize her father at least. One of the most renowned vampire hunters who had killed more vampires than Elijah had, and more supernatural creatures than he could count.

Her father had come across Elijah in the past, but Elijah never had known he had a daughter. Sure there were rumors and things he had picked up in the past, and Elijah had seen her before, but he never would have guessed she was the man’s daughter.

And because he had known about her father, he also knew how he felt about vampire blood curing wounds on mortals. Knowing the man, he would probably would want to die right then and there, nothing to be saved. But Elijah saw this to his advantage. If he helped saved a pair of vampire hunters, perhaps they could work with him, especially to help end his own mother and brother.

As he was thinking all of this, it was only just a mere moment after she had asked him to do so, and he swooped down and knelt where her father lay in her arms. Elijah looked up and then took his wrist to his mouth, biting into it and causing blood to be drawn. He then held his bleeding wrist over the man’s mouth, using his free hand to open it. Letting the blood drip into her father’s mouth next, it was only a matter of time before his wounds would start to heal.

“I have to fix his neck as he heals or it will not heal properly,” he tells the woman next. Stabilizing the man’s neck before a sick crunch could be heard. Thankfully, Elijah did so in a way that the man would not die with vampire blood in his system, knowing that would be worse than death for the man laying before him.

“When he wakes I’ll compel his memory so he doesn’t know what saved him, make him think he only suffered a few light injuries..” but Elijah would make sure he was still the one in the story to save the pair.

He then looked her over, “You should probably drink some too, or at least let my blood drip over your wounds to heal. They will not heal otherwise.” Meaning, she would definitely bleed out. It was interesting that he offered just to drip his blood over her wound, rather than have her ingest it.

 

[Chaotic_Pyro]

Isolde watched him kneel beside her father, now crouched in the dirt beside a man who would rather die than accept his help. Her father’s blood still stained her hands. She could feel the warmth of it cooling against her skin, the weight of his body heavy in her lap. She knew if her father found out about it he would hate himself, and her. She’d seen what he did with his hate, and it frightened her.

She just watched as the man bit into his wrist with practiced ease, crimson welling up like ink from a pen. Her stomach twisted. When a fellow hunter had been dying and someone had made a desperate choice. Her father had called it a disgrace. A corruption. “Better to die human,” he’d said, “than live with that filth inside you.” And now here she was, letting it happen.

She flinched as Elijah opened her father’s mouth and let the blood drip in. It felt wrong. Like betrayal. Like sacrilege. But she didn’t stop him. Because she couldn’t. No. Because she wouldn’t.

The silence was broken by a sickening crunch as Elijah adjusted her father’s neck, nausea welling in her stomach at the sound. She winced, instinctively reaching out, but he was already done. Her father’s breathing began to steady. The color returned to his face. The wound on his temple began to close.

She felt her throat tighten. This was the man who taught her how to kill. Who taught her how to hate. Who told her that vampires were nothing but monsters wearing human skin. And now he was alive, because one of them had saved him. She didn’t know how to feel. The man’s voice cut through her thoughts, low and calm. He spoke of compulsion, of rewriting the memory, of protecting her father’s pride. She hated how logical it sounded. How easy he made it all seem.

But she knew it wouldn’t work. “You can’t. He ingests vervain daily, all the hunters are supposed to…” She explained, not taking her eyes off of her father. He always put it in his tea, or whatever he had to drink in the morning. Maybe with the blood loss it would be out of his system, but she wouldn’t risk it.

Then he looked at her. She stiffened under his gaze. There was no hunger in his eyes. No cruelty. He offered her his blood,not to drink, but to let it drip over her wounds. A small mercy. A compromise.

That’s when she felt more pain from her wounds, the shock and adrenaline slowly leaving her body. She could feel a gash on her head, and the bite wound from the dead vampire. The pain was sharp now, pulsing with every heartbeat. She wouldn’t last long. Not without help. She didn’t speak. Didn’t look at him. Just nodded once. Reluctantly.

“I…I don’t know where the head wound is…so I’ll have to drink your blood. I don't want you touching me longer than what needs to be done.” She muttered, knowing she didn’t want to find out how bad it was nor did she want the vampire touching her longer than necessary trying to find it. Not that the idea of being touched by the vampire repulsed her, she never had the same level of hatred of her father. But she knew that there was a lot that vampires were capable of, and she didn't want to experience any more than what she had tonight.

"My promise still stands, try anything and this stake goes through your heart." She repeated, wanting to make sure the vampire knew that she wasn't playing around. It was the only thing that was making her feel like she had some sort of power in this situation.