Chapter Text
Bonus Chapter: 1982 - Melody of the Night
POV: Rob Bourdon
Los Angeles in 1982 was pure excess. The city vibrated, was loud, garish, and smelled of a pungent mix of hairspray, cheap perfume, and the metallic tang of cocaine. For the people out there, it was a party that never ended. For me, however, it was primarily one thing: a glittering prison of loneliness.
I had been a vampire for thirteen years. In 1969, right in the middle of the Summer of Love, my old life had been extinguished, and I had been reborn as something cold, unnatural. Thirteen years without sleep, during which I had first roamed with other vampire nomads until I finally met the Denali clan, and Carlisle Cullen, a strange, almost saintly man who loved humans.
They showed me a new perspective: that our existence didn't necessarily have to be monstrous. They taught me that we had a choice. I adopted the "vegetarian" lifestyle of the Denalis and Cullens, drinking animal blood instead of human blood, but the high north didn't hold me. As much as I appreciated their presence, I couldn't stay with the Denalis in the long run. The family was tight-knit, perfectly choreographed like a classical ballet, and for my taste, far too loud. I, on the other hand, felt like a wrong note in a symphony, a dissonance screaming for resolution. I was a loner, always searching for my own rhythm, my own beat. And so I was drawn to Los Angeles.
But the loneliness here proved to be a slow-acting poison. Night after night, I wandered the streets, a ghost in a city overflowing with life I wasn't allowed to touch. To keep from going insane, I had developed a pragmatic routine. Hunting wild animals in the canyons had become too risky for me; too many curious hikers were out there. So I shifted my hunting ground to the sterile corridors of hospitals. Cedars-Sinai became my pantry. I stole blood bags that had expired anyway or were due to be discarded. It wasn't a crime, I told myself as I hid the cool plastic bags under my coat, more like practical recycling.
That night in November, I crept through the oncology ward. Two bags of O-Negative pressed coolly against my chest under the stolen doctor's coat I had put on for cover. I was already on my way to the exit, escape in sight, when I heard it. Not the whimpering or moaning, nor the monotonous beeping of heart monitors that usually formed the soundtrack of these places. It was music. A violin.
The sound was thin, brittle, and trembled in the air, but it cut through the sterile silence of the hospital corridor like a razor. Someone was playing Bach. Or at least trying to. The notes broke away repeatedly; the bow scratched over the strings as if begging for mercy, but behind this technical imperfection lay an emotional depth, a raw despair that made me pause instantly.
As if pulled by an invisible rope, I followed the sound to Room 304. The door stood a crack open; the light inside was dimmed. I entered soundlessly and remained in the protective shadow of the corner. In the bed lay a young man. He might have been in his early twenties, but his body told the story of an old man. The cancer had literally hollowed him out, eaten him from the inside until barely more than skin and bones remained. His face resembled a skull, covered with paper-thin, gray skin under which blue veins shimmered.
He sat upright, laboriously supported by a mountain of pillows. On his sharp shoulder rested a violin. His hands, looking more like a bird's claws than human hands, clutched the bow and the neck of the instrument. He was trembling with exertion. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead, and with my sharpened senses, I could hear his porous bones crunching under the strain. Every stroke of the bow must have been hell for him, a single long scream of pain. But he played on, played against death, note by note.
Suddenly his arm failed. The bow slipped and created an ugly, screeching sound that hurt the ears. The young man lowered the violin; disappointment was written all over his face. "Damn fingers," he hissed breathlessly, anger and tears in his voice. "That was really beautiful," I said quietly and stepped out of the shadow.
He flinched violently, ripped his eyes open, and stared at me. His eyes lay deep in dark sockets, but they were alert. A dark, intelligent brown in which a fire smoldered that his body could long no longer support. "Who are you?" he asked suspiciously. "A new doctor?" "Something like that," I evaded. "I'm Rob," I introduced myself to him only by my first name. "Dave," he replied. He tried a smile, but the skin stretched too tightly over his bones, so it looked more like a painful grimace. "And unfortunately, that was anything but beautiful, but full of mistakes, Doc. But I need new hands to play it better."
In that moment, I should have left. I had my prey; I had no business here. But I stayed. Something about him fascinated me. "Why are you doing this to yourself?" I asked and stepped closer to the bed. "You must be in pain. Unbearable pain." "Pain is just an illusion," he said and stroked almost tenderly over the polished wood of the violin. "When I play… then I am not sick. Then I am not the guy with bone cancer who is about to croak. Then I am just a musician."
I looked him straight in the eyes and nodded slowly. I understood that. Better than he could guess. Music as an escape, as identity, as the only place where one truly existed. "Will you keep playing?" I asked him. He looked at me scrutinizingly, searching for mockery in my face, but found only serious interest. Then he raised the violin to his chin again, placed the bow slowly on it, and played the sweetest, saddest note I had ever heard. A tear almost ran from my eye—I frantically blinked it away, concentrated further on the terminally ill man before me who just kept playing. It was unclean, brittle, flawed—but it was real. And behind the violin, I heard the beat of his dying heart fighting desperately against the eternal beat of the music.
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I came back. Both the next night and the one after that. My bloodlust was sated, my supply lasted for weeks, but I hungered for something else: company. For someone who loved music so much that it rubbed off on me, captivated me. I sat by his bed for hours while the world outside slept. Either we talked, or he tried to play something for me on his violin. But his strength usually didn't last long.
Dave told me about his life before the diagnosis. That he wanted to study music, that it was his only Plan A. He told me that he actually played guitar and loved the bass, this deep thumping you felt in your stomach, but had learned the violin because his mother had wished it so much. "The bass is the foundation," he explained, and his eyes glowed feverishly in the darkness of the room. "The violin sings, it flies, but the bass… it carries everything. It holds the world together." "I am sure in your hands both sound beautiful," I breathed in response, while I carefully held his hand. He was so weak that he no longer perceived the unnatural cold I radiated.
I felt a connection to him I hadn't felt in thirteen years of immortality. Dave was sarcastic, he was angry at his fate, he cursed God and the world, but he wasn't broken. As weak as his body was, his spirit was strong, a wild animal trapped in a cage of rotting bones. I wanted to tell him my story. Tell him that I too was trapped—frozen in time, condemned to eternal youth while everyone around me wilted. But I remained silent. To him, I was just the strange visitor in the white coat who came at night, listened, and never looked tired.
On the fifth day, the situation tipped. As I entered the room, a different smell hit me—intense, sweetish, and heavy. It was the smell of organ failure, the smell of the approaching end. Dave lay flat in bed, barely more than a bump under the blanket. The violin lay on the nightstand, untouched and mute. He was too weak to even look at it. I sat down with him, pulled the chair very close to the bed. When I took his hand in mine, I felt the glowing heat emanating from it. The fever consumed the last reserves.
Slowly he opened his eyes. The shine had disappeared; they were cloudy as if a veil had been laid over them. "Rob," he whispered, barely audible. "I am here." "It's over, isn't it?" he asked. "The last concert is played." I swallowed hard. My throat felt constricted. "Not yet," I forced out.
I looked at him, really, down to the bottom of his soul. I didn't see the dying patient, but the life he should have had. The stages he should have stood on. The music that was still inside him and would never be played. But fate had other plans for him.
Unless I stopped it. I alone had the power to make him a cold being like me. Through my strength, or the curse given to me. Was it morally justifiable to damn someone to save them? Wasn't it pure selfishness to want to keep him just because I feared loneliness? Yes. It was deeply selfish. But as I held Dave's fragile hand and felt his pulse stumble, skip beats, I knew I couldn't let him go. Not now. Not like this.
"Dave," I said urgently and leaned deep over him so he could understand me. "Listen to me. I can help you. But it is… different than you think. It is radical." He blinked laboriously, tried to grasp my words through the fog of fever. "Chemo?" he breathed. "No. Something older. Something more powerful. I can heal you. But you will change. You will never be sick again. Your bones will never break again. You will have eternal time to play violin. Every night, forever."
He didn't understand. Not really. How could he? But he heard the hope in my voice, the promise that the music didn't have to end. "Does it hurt?" he asked quietly. "In the beginning," I admitted honestly. "A lot. It will burn." "Doesn't matter," he whispered. A lonely tear detached itself from the corner of his eye and ran over his sunken cheek. "I don't want to stop yet. I want to play."
That was the permission. I didn't need more. In this moment, the alarm went off. A shrill, piercing beeping. His heart monitor showed a flatline. Code Blue. I heard the heavy steps of nurses and doctors in the hallway, the hectic shouting, the rolling of the defibrillator cart. I had no more time. I tore the cables from his chest, pulled the IV needles from his arms, and lifted him up. He was featherlight, weighed barely more than a child, just a framework of pain and skin. With the other hand, I grabbed the violin from the nightstand, clamped it under my arm. With the only elbow still free, I opened the window to the cold November evening and jumped out with Dave.
Gently we touched down in the landing in the backyard, in the deep shadow of the dumpsters, hidden from the eyes of the world. I laid him on the cold, damp asphalt. His heart had already stopped beating. Silence. I didn't hesitate a second. I bit him. Not in the neck—too much blood, too uncontrollable. I was still a creature with an overpowering bloodlust. I bit him in the arm with which he had guided the bow. I severed the skin and immediately had his blood on my tongue. It triggered a reflex in me that forced me to take a sip before I had myself under control again. Dave's blood tasted dull, sour, of death, yet the animal in me wanted it anyway. But I didn't allow that. Using all my self-control, I blocked my swallowing reflex and let only my own venom flow into his collapsed veins. I prayed to every god I no longer believed in that it was strong enough. That it could defeat the cancer. That it would burn the sick, rotten marrow and replace it with something indestructible.
Dave ripped his eyes open. He didn't scream, his lungs had no more air, but his whole body arched in a mute, brutal spasm. His back arched like a drawn bow. The fire had begun. I lifted him up again, pressed him to me, and started running. Faster than any human, I merged with the shadows of the night. I brought him to my hideout—an old, abandoned air raid shelter on the outskirts, where no one would hear us.
###
The next three days were hell on earth. I had thought I was prepared, I knew the process. But nothing had prepared me for what the transformation did to a terminally ill body. Dave screamed. As soon as his lungs were healed and filled with new air, he screamed continuously. The venom raced through his body, had to reconstruct every inch of his skeleton. It had to burn the cancer, cell by cell, replace the marrow, harden the structure. It was a war inside him. He writhed on the old mattress, clawed into the fabric until it tore. I had to hold him with all my strength so he wouldn't tear himself apart in his convulsions or break the freshly healing bones.
"Kill me!" he begged on the second day. His voice was rough, just a bloody rattle. "Please. Turn it off. Make it stop!" "No," I said hard, although I cried inside and felt every one of his screams like a blow. "You said you want to play. Hold on, Dave. Fight."
I talked to him incessantly. I told him about my time in the 60s, about the concerts, about the freedom. I hummed melodies, rhythms, anything he could focus on to keep him in the here and now. I watched his last remaining hair fall out—the final tribute to the chemo. But I was sure it would grow back. His skin too… it changed. The sickly gray disappeared. It became smooth, firm, and white as polished stone. Flawless. The sunken chest expanded, arched, muscles formed under the skin, reshaped, stronger than ever before. And finally, his hair grew back too, a strong red that was also reflected in the stubble of his beard, which was now also breaking through.
On the third evening, it suddenly became quiet. His racing heart stopped finally. The human had died; now Dave just lay there motionless. He looked like a statue of marble, carved by a master. Beautiful, deadly, and completely alien. I instinctively backed away to the opposite wall. I knew what was coming now. The awakening. A newborn vampire was not sane in the first moments. He was an animal, driven by a burning thirst and complete confusion. And Dave… Dave had suffered so much. He would be angry.
With a growl, Dave opened his eyes. The first thing I noticed was their color: They were no longer brown, but glowing red, the color of fresh blood. He sat up, in a movement too fast for the human eye, jerky, mechanical. He looked around, scanned the concrete walls, the darkness. His gaze fell on me. But he showed no recognition.
Instead, he hissed at me, a guttural sound deep from the throat. He jumped to his feet, crouched aggressively. He was disoriented; his senses battered him like a storm. "What did you do?" he roared. His voice was a thunder, deep and resonant, echoing in the small bunker. He struck blindly against the wall. The concrete crumbled and dusted as if it were mere sandstone. Startled, he stared at his own hand, fascinated and horrified by the destructive power. Emotions danced across his face, alternating within seconds. Finally, anger remained. "I'm burning!" he screamed and grabbed his throat as if he were suffocating. "My throat… I am so thirsty!"
Prepared as I was, I reached for the ready-laid blood bag and threw it to him. It was a fresh blood reserve from Cedars-Sinai. He caught the bag reflexively out of the air, ripped it to his nose, smelled it, and distorted his face in disgust. "What is that? That doesn't smell right!" "It is the only thing there is," I said calmly and raised my hands appeasingly. "Drink, Dave. It helps against the burning."
He hesitated; hunger won the fight against disgust. He tore open the plastic bag with his teeth; the blood sprayed over his chin and chest. He drank greedily, almost animalistically. The first, worst hunger was sated, but the confusion in his red eyes remained. He paced the room like a trapped predator, bumped into the few pieces of furniture, accidentally broke an old chair into matchsticks. "Argh! Everything is so loud!" he complained and pressed his hands over his ears. "I hear… everything. I hear the rats in the wall! I hear so many cars, and so many people!"
"Yes, it is overwhelming. Try to concentrate on one sound," I tried to help him, handed him a clean towel so he could wipe the blood off his face, but he just stared at me uncomprehendingly. His just newly awakened brain didn't seem to work properly yet, or the many sensory impressions overloaded him. Slowly I stepped toward him, without hectic movements, grabbed his hand gently, and pulled it from his ear. After a short resistance, he allowed it. "Concentrate on my voice," I whispered with a deep voice, "try to block out everything around it."
Carefully I came closer with the towel now and held it in front of his face. Still he just looked at me, so I continued speaking, wiping the blood from his chin and hands meanwhile. Dave let it happen, his fearful gaze remained on me, but slowly he relaxed, listened to my voice. I felt a strange, warm feeling inside me: It was joy that he trusted me. But it would still be a long way.
###
It took three long nights until Dave calmed down, until he had come to terms with the biggest shock after his transformation. Three nights in which I didn't let him out of my sight for a second, fed him, stopped him from tearing open the steel door and running outside to hunt humans. He was strong. Much stronger than I ever was. When he got angry, he was a force of nature. But slowly his gaze cleared. The fog lifted; memory returned.
On the fourth evening, he sat quietly in the corner, knees pulled to his body. He stared at his hands, turned them back and forth in the sparse light. "I died, didn't I?" he asked. His voice was more controlled now, but still deep as an abyss. "Yes," I answered simply. "But I am still here, and the pain is gone," he stated, almost amazed. He ran a hand through his regrown, thick, reddish shimmering hair. "And I feel… massive. Indestructible."
I sat down in front of him, on the dusty floor, looked him firmly in the blood-red eyes, absorbed his gaze. "You are not human anymore. The human Dave died, but I brought you back as something else, stronger. You are now a revenant, a vampire, a Nosferatu, whatever you want to call it. With that, you unfortunately also have to feed on blood now. But don't be afraid," I spoke the last words hastily when I noticed Dave's flickering look of fear, "you can feed completely sufficiently on blood bags or animals. You don't have to kill humans to survive. I will show you everything you need to know."
While I brought his vampire existence closer to Dave with simple but sufficient explanations, his twitching hand repeatedly drew my gaze. The vibrato in his hand seemed to find no rest until I grabbed it. Dave's fingers had exactly the same temperature as mine, felt warm, familiar. I squeezed his hand, wanted to convey my support. Dave returned the grip gently; despite his immense strength, he was already so careful.
"I hope you don't regret that I turned you," I finally revealed to him the question that had been burning on my undead heart the whole time. Dave didn't answer immediately, but his grip became firmer. "I don't know if I could decide that just yet. But no, you gave me a new chance, and I will seize it. But I have one wish: Please don't leave me alone. All that you told me is overwhelming. I need… your help," he whispered so heart-wrenchingly that I had to suppress the impulse to hug him. Instead, I forced a smile. "I will never leave you, my Phoenix." Dave smiled back, stroked through the red hair, which was a reason for the nickname just chosen. "Thank you," he breathed.
I finally stood up again, dusted off my pants, and looked at the clock. Tonight I had to get new blood bags; my supply had shrunk considerably in the last few days. My gaze went to Dave; I considered whether I could leave him alone here yet, at least for an hour or two. The redhead still sat there, but his gaze was now directed at something else. He stared at his violin, which I had placed on one of the iron shelves here in the bunker. He regarded the instrument as if it were a relic from a past life. Briefly he hesitated, then he stood up, and in the next second, he stood in front of the shelf. His hand stretched out, fingers twitching eagerly. He wanted to grab it, wanted to feel the familiar wood. I was faster.
Before he could touch the instrument, I stood between him and the iron shelf. I grabbed his wrist. It felt like steel under my skin. He growled, a quiet, warning sound, and tensed his muscles. He could have hurled me across the room, that strong he was as a newborn. But he didn't do it. "No," I said sharply. "But… that is mine," he forced out. "Not now," I said and didn't let go of his gaze. "Look at you, Dave. You are still far too uncontrolled. You would break it before you play the first note. Your hands are weapons now, not tools."
He stared at his hands as if they belonged to a stranger. He clenched them into a fist, and I heard the air pop in between. The disappointment in his face was so deep it almost physically hurt. He slumped his shoulders; the growling fell silent. He leaned forward a bit, his forehead almost against mine, as if my mere presence would order the chaos in his head. Near me, he became calm. The wild animal went to sleep as long as I was the anchor.
"I promise you something," I said quietly into the silence of the bunker. "We will practice. Every damn day. I will teach you to dose this strength. And we won't stop until you can play the most complicated piece in the world without even one string breaking." Dave exhaled deeply, although he didn't have to breathe. A fine tremor ran through his body, then he relaxed. "Okay," he whispered.
In that moment, in the shabby bunker somewhere in L.A., I felt it quite clearly. The clicking into place. Like two gears meshing perfectly and setting a machine in motion built for eternity. I was no longer alone. I had gained a companion.
###
The next weeks were laborious. We left the bunker only at night to hunt—far out, away from humans, where he could take down deer to quench the burning thirst. During the day, we practiced. Not music, but control. Dave struggled to write on a sheet of paper without tearing it or bending the nib of the fountain pen. I had him balance a wooden box without smashing it, but slowly I ran out of boxes. He was frustrated, he cursed, he punched holes in the walls, but he didn't give up. And I kept my promise. I didn't leave his side.
One night, we took a shortcut through an already sleeping neighborhood, he stopped in front of a music store. In the display window, one could see various guitars, a keyboard, and an amplifier. I stopped too, observing Dave, who in turn regarded the guitars with a longing gaze. I understood him, but before he could play again himself, he definitely had to have himself better under control. Dave finally asked me for a favor the next evening. He absolutely wanted to have a guitar, no matter which one, even if it was already broken. This wish, so full of longing for music, stirred something in me. I actually got him a guitar, which he accepted with a hopeful look.
Then he began to withdraw with it. I heard him tinkering in the back corridors of the bunker. Sometimes I heard a metallic pling, sometimes a curse, then silence again. I didn't ask; I gave him his space. But two days later, he asked me again for an instrument, which I acquired from a pawn shop, an old electric guitar. And later yet another acoustic guitar. Dave grabbed every instrument brought along and disappeared from my sight. I didn't follow him; I trusted him that he would show and tell me when the time was right.
One night, about two months after his transformation, I came back from a short patrol. The air in the bunker felt somehow different. No longer charged with frustration or suppressed anger, instead it vibrated with creativity. Dave sat on a crate in the middle of the room. The light of the single naked bulb cast hard shadows on his face, which was now so timeless and perfect. His eyes were closed. At his chin lay the violin. My heart—or what was left of it—contracted. I wanted to call out, warn him that it was still too early, that he would crush the fragile wood. But then he raised the bow.
His hand didn't tremble anymore as he started to play. The first note was long, clear, and of a purity that sent goosebumps down my spine. No scratching. No squeaking. No breaking of wood.
Dave just played. Not a classical etude, but an improvisation, a melody of glass and steel, fragile and yet of unbridled power. His fingers danced over the fingerboard, no longer shaky like in the hospital, but with a supernatural precision and speed. He coaxed notes from the instrument a human could never have found. It was a lament and a jubilation at the same time, a farewell to life and a welcome to eternity.
I stood in the doorway, unable to move, completely enchanted by what I saw and heard. The music filled every crack of the cold concrete, warmed the room in a way no fire could have. When the last note had faded, he lowered the bow. He opened his eyes. The red still glowed at me so intensely, yet pride expressed itself in his gaze. However, the almost boyish grin on his lips didn't quite fit, but I felt his joy.
"How?" I asked hoarsely. "I thought you weren't ready yet." He laughed softly and pointed with the bow into the back corridor. "I absolutely wanted to play violin again. So I practiced," he confessed. "Secretly. With an old guitar I found in the rubble back there. The neck was thick enough; the steel strings forgave my mistakes. I learned how much pressure is too much." He stroked gently over the body of the violin. "Last night I knew I was ready. I just had to… translate it."
I shook my head incredulously and stepped toward him. "That was incredible," I said honestly. "Magical." Dave stood up. He no longer seemed like the monster that had awakened weeks ago. He seemed like an artist who had finally found his true medium. "You were right," he said. "I had to learn how to play again first. I needed the rough to understand the fine." He placed a hand on my shoulder. "But now I have control. And I can use the chance you gave me. Let's go; I need better acoustics. Then I'll play you the piece I lacked the strength for in the hospital."
We stepped out into the night. Two immortals, connected by blood and music. He with his violin, I with the rhythm in my veins. It was the beginning of something great.