EnglandxReader On Suspicious Bookstores

The bookstore was not at all what one would expect a bookstore to be. It was, of course, not actually a bookstore, but you could not have known that. So, valiantly, if somewhat stupidly, you ventured forth into the building, and immediately realized your very big, rather large, fairly huge mistake.

The bookstore was not actually a bookstore; indeed, it was a cover for something very different. A vampire Sanctuary.

The denizens of said Sanctuary looked just as startled to see you as you were them, dozens of pairs of faintly glowing eyes turned in your direction, stunned silence filling the rather stuffy air. You thought they looked something like deer caught in headlights, but you deemed it best not to say that, and instead turned right back around the way you'd come.

The air outside was much fresher, cool enough to make your breath fog, and smelled faintly of cinnamon, but this was not something you registered as you ran down the sidewalk, away from the Sanctuary full of glowing eyes.

The sun was setting fast, warm orange light flooding the street. While it was really very pretty, the dying light was not conducive to good visibility, and so, as you took a sharp corner, you didn't see the shadows flitting after you. Nor did you see that you had in fact turned into a dead end until you were met with a formidable and greasy brick wall.


As the shadows closed in on their prey and the last of the sun disappeared below the horizon, you decided two things. One, you were not going to go into anymore suspicious bookstores-that-are-not-actually-bookstores, and two-


–


When you finally woke up (and it took you quite a while), you were met with darkness so thick it felt tangible. You sat up and ran a hand through you hair, trying to figure out what you were sitting on. It was soft, and you were surprised. You had assumed that when one was assailed by vampires, one would wake up chained to a wall, potentially with ripped clothing.

A soft light bloomed in a corner of the room, revealing that your clothes were intact, and that you were lying on a dark chaise lounge. There were no chains anywhere in sight, and missing too were the Gothic chandeliers and cobwebs you were accustomed to associating with vampires.

You looked towards the source of the light, a small lantern set on a glass table, and discovered a man sitting in a curving black chair, watching you. The man was handsome, his green eyes sharp and bright, and entirely unlike the vampires you had seen in movies. You were quickly learning that movies were not a good representation of vampires.

“Why did you come here?” The man spoke quietly, but his voice carried.

“I, um, uh...” Your exceedingly eloquent answer did not appease the vampire. In fact, if anything, your stunningly well-worded response seemed to have annoyed him. Something in the back of your mind wisely informed you that annoyed vampires were not good vampires.

Deciding to try again, hopefully more successfully, you took a moment to gather your thoughts. The last thing you remembered was being cornered in a dirty alleyway (you rather thought perhaps it was the man who owed you answers), before you woke up here, surrounded by darkness. You cleared your throat.

“I thought your Sanctuary was a bookstore.” The vampire raised one gloriously thick eyebrow, his eyes narrowing.

“How did you get past the holo-glamour?” he asked, after a long minute of silence. Your mind went blank, your eyes growing wide. At least your vocabulary did not leave you in so bad a shape as it had the last time the vampire had asked you a question.

“T-the what?” The vampire sunk further into annoyance.

“The holo-glamour. The protective spell that was put on this building to make it appear as a bookstore. You should not have been able to come in, let alone see the Santuary for what it really was. You should have seen an empty room,” he explained, slowly, as if speaking to a child.

Annoyance crept under your skin at his tone, combating the buzzing fear you'd been feeling.

“Well, obviously someone didn't do a very good job with the spell, because I got in. Let me go,” you said. It was around this time you became aware of hungry and tired you were, and of how much your head hurt. You began thinking in earnest of ways to escape the vampire before you and get back to your nice warm apartment.

“I will let you go after you tell me how you got here,” the vampire said, in the manner of people who don't mean a word they're saying but want you to believe they do. You had regained enough of your senses to not be fooled.

“No. Take me outside, to the street, and then I will tell you how I got in,” you replied, trying and mostly succeeding in sounding somewhat confident. The vampire seemed to be weighing your proposal as he stared unblinkingly at you. You tried not to be unnerved. It wasn't working in the slightest.

The vampire nodded once. “If you try to run once we are outside, I will personally kill you and eat you for dinner. Literally,” he added. You swallowed hard and nodded in agreement. Your legs felt suspiciously like jelly.

The vampire stood and offered you his hand. You took it, not entirely trusting your legs to hold you up, and followed him to a door previously hidden in shadow. He turned the handle and swung it outwards, revealing a long hall with many doors and a carpet that vaguely reminded you of your grandmother.

The man released your hand and led you to a door on the far right of the hall. It opened into the room you had first walked into earlier that evening, now void of vampires and far nicer for it. You breathed a very small sigh of relief when you caught sight of the open street beyond the Sanctuary's windows, one that the vampire caught in his sensitive hearing.

When the pair of you stood on the outside street, the air cold now that night had fallen, but the street itself brightly lit by the neon signs above, the vampire turned to you with an expectant look.

“How did you get in?” he asked once more. The lights reflected in his eyes and turned them a myriad of dark teals and bright, gem-like greens, his sandy hair turned blue.

“I saw the sign, opened the door, and walked inside, you said. Then you promptly turned and began walking away, hoping to get away before he made you into dinner.

There was a soft rush of air, and then the vampire was standing in front of you, not at all pleased. You stumbled half a step backwards. “You simply walked inside. You didn't use anything to get in. No spells, no devices,” he said disbelievingly.

“Yes,” you replied, fisting your hands in the pockets of your jacket. A tingle ran up your spine, like a little warning. You turned around quickly, uncomfortably aware of the vampire now out of your range of sight.

A young man stood in front of you, his head cocked to one side. “Food?” he asked, clearly directing his question to your blond captor. You answered anyway.

“No, not food. Not food at all. Just a normal person, who is not to be eaten,” you said, holding your hands up in front of you. You glanced back at the blond vampire. He seemed amused.

“Not yet, Alfred. She hasn't yet told me what I wish to know.” Not yet? you thought. You'd rather not be eaten at all.

“Hurry up then, Arthur. I'm hungry.” Alfred shot you a strangely friendly half-smile and ducked into the bookstore/Sanctuary.

You turned to the blond vampire, Arthur. “You said you would let me go if I told you how I got in. I did, so let me go,” you demanded.

“Did I? I seem to remember you saying that if I brought you out here, you would tell me what I wanted to know. I don't seem to remember freedom being one of your terms,” Arthur said. You swallowed the panic rising in the back of your throat and decided that associating with vampires, should you live, wasn't something you were ever going to do again.

“I don't know how I got in, I just did, so please let me go because I can't tell you anything and all I wanted was a bookstore but somehow I got vampires instead and then I was kidnapped and knocked out and I'm tired and I want to go home,” you said, all at once, the words spilling out of your mouth before you could stop them. It was a last ditch effort, and not a very good one, but you were understandably lacking in experience when it came to vampires, and running out of sane ideas.

The vampire cocked his head and took another long moment of silence to peer at you. “I believe you,” he said. You sagged with relief. “But, unfortunately, you've seen far to much, and I'm going to have to erase your memories of the past day or so.”

In less than a second your brain became a tornado of half-baked escaped routes, excuses, and entirely ridiculous arguments based on absolutely no logic at all, something along the lines of “You can't erase my memories because I like waffles”, and you were cursing your brain for being so utterly unhelpful.

“You really don't have to do that. I'm not going to tell anyone! Why would I do that? That's crazy,” you said, your voice rising nervously. You were doing a spectacularly awful job of talking your way out of this, and an impossibly worse job at appearing nonchalant.

Arthur ignored you and turned your face to his, his hand settling under your chin. He stared long and hard into your eyes, and then backed up, looking satisfied. What the f-.

“Sorry, do I know you?” he asked, his demeanor changing into feigned politeness. You looked at him like he was crazy.

“You... Of course you know me! You kidnapped me, threatened to eat me, and then threatened to erase my memories!”

Arthur looked shocked and confused, a comical expression you would have laughed at if you weren't so worried about your own safety and the sanity of the vampire in front of you.

“No, I... You're not supposed to remember me! I just erased your memories,” he said.

“Did you really? That's weird, because I seem to remember everything,” you said, backing away from Arthur. He was speechless for several long moments, most of which you spent not-so-subtly inching backwards.

Unfortunately for you, you managed to back yourself straight into someone, who proceeded to fold an arm around your throat. You gasped, pulling at the arm, but it was too strong. Arthur looked up at the sound, his expression going stormy. He straightened.

“Let go of her.” You struggled in the person's grip, quickly running out of air.

“No, I don't think I will.” The voice was male, and somehow familiar. The man's grip loosened for a moment, allowing you several long gulps of air before tightening again.

“Alfred, let her go,” Arthur commanded, his voice brimming with authority. Alfred's arms loosened enough for you to nearly free yourself, but then he had you back in his grip, his arm closing your around your throat again, though this time, something sharp pressed into your neck.

You felt the tip of Alfred's fang pierce your skin, blood welling to the surface. And then, all at once, Alfred's weight was gone, and you could breathe. You gasped, stumbling forward, taking fast breaths.

“You should know better, Alfred, than to disobey the word of your leader,” Arthur growled as he held Alfred against the wall. Alfred had the good sense to look at least mildly frightened. Arthur backed away, turning his back to the other vampire. Alfred slid down the wall slightly, watching the blond carefully, as if he was getting away with something. Then Arthur turned back to face Alfred, and Alfred's face contracted in pain. He gripped his chest, took a ragged breath, and collapsed onto the dirty street.

You looked back and forth between them, hugging yourself. Arthur turned towards you, reaching for the slightly bleeding wound on your neck.

“What did you do to him?” you asked.

“I crushed his heart. It's not permanent. He'll heal.” You didn't know how you felt about that. It's amazing how unappealing the prospect of the vampire who tried to kill you waking up is.

“May I?” Arthur asked. You nodded mutely. Arthur gently moved aside the collar of your coat and slid his thumb over the cut. It sealed under his touch, leaving the skin smooth.

“How did you do that?” you asked. Arthur snorted quietly.

“Wasn't that my line?” You rolled your eyes.

“I'm the head of a vampire clan, which means I have special abilities,” he said, cleaning his thumb on the edge of his coat. You nodded as if that was something you heard everyday, falling silent. You were fairly sure your brain had gone into overload, otherwise you might be reacting slightly more to having nearly been eaten. As it was, all you could manage was exasperation.

“I'm afraid, that since my abilities don't seem to affect you, I'm going to have to swear you to secrecy,” Arthur said. You nodded.

“I won't tell. You have my word.” Arthur offered you his arm.

“It's not safe. Let me walk you home.”

You nodded, starting up the street, Arthur beside you. Your apartment wasn't far, only a few streets away, in one of the hundreds of high rises populating the city. Arthur kept keen watch the whole way.

You paused at the door to your building, turning to the vampire. “You saved my life.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow. “I also threatened to eat you.”

“But you didn't. So, thank you,” you said with a shrug. You fell silent for a moment. “I mean, it doesn't make up for the fact that you kidnapped me...” you added with smirk. Arthur laughed quietly.

“Sorry about that,” he said, looking back up at you. There was a beat, the only sound the steady hum of the city.

“Name's (Name), by the way.” Arthur's cheek dimpled in a one-sided smile.

“(Name), huh?” You hummed in response. Arthur pulled open the building door. “Well then, goodnight (Name).”

You failed in your attempts to ignore the gentle pressure of Arthur's hand on the small of your back as you walked inside.

-

Your flat was mostly dark, save for the city lights coming through the wall of windows and blooming on the light floors. One of the window panels stood open, white curtains fluttering in the cool evening breeze. It was quiet as you stared out of the windows, watching the steady movement of the city.

A gentle rush of air sent a few strands of hair brushing across your face, a shadow falling across the floor. You looked up.

Arthur stood in the open window, leaning on the frame, his eyes sparking in the dim light. You stepped towards him, taking in his messy hair, his dark coat, his pensive expression. You cocked your head slightly. Your breath sounded loud to your ears in the stillness of the apartment.

Arthur reached out and caught a strand of your hair, running it between his fingers. “Why aren't you affected by it? The magic?” he whispered. His breath tickled your face, a wash of mint. You shivered.

“It's a mystery,” you whispered back. His eyes flicked up to meet yours. You inhaled slightly. They swirled with color, intense, but quickly turning mischievous.

“I like mysteries.”