Chapter Text
The room was dark with the only lights sourced from a computer screen and the surroundings outside the floor-to-ceiling tall windows. The subtle twinkling lights outside during the ungodly hour can be ignored, unlike the glaring, blue light coming from a computer screen. Impatient, rhythmic tapping of keys can be heard and there was minimal light highlighting the swept back blond hair and unimpressed green eyes. The same electronic light also reflected off of the glass display case hosting ineligible trophies and awards behind the blond hair and green eyes.
This guy paused, his hand sliding past a shiny golden plaque that was carved “Vincent D. Hensley” and grabbed an overly technical-looking phone. He grumbled and briefly tapped on his phone, displeased when he had to work overtime when his secretary didn’t.
“Make a reminder to tell Sandra to make copies of the shareholder agreements and have them ready for the 12pm meeting tomorrow,” Vincent spoke to his phone and paused, “And schedule a 5pm dinner in two days at some fancy restaurant with the Head of Marketing and Head of Finance. Be sure to send an email reminding both of them. Be mindful of their allergies and restrictions.”
He pulled out an overstuffed binder from under his desk and started filing through the organizer before finding a specific stack of papers. He took it from its confines and held it in front of him, somehow having no trouble reading it in the dark. He leaned back in his plush rolling chair and started tapping his thigh with his free hand in thought. Right, he just remembered he had to make a public announcement addressing fraud allegations against a suspended executive which led to product recalls and angry customers. He rolled his eyes.
He knew humans were stupid, but he didn’t think they were this incapable of doing their job.
In front of him were the legal documents analyzing and breaking down the idiot's crimes, including the suspected time length and associated evidence. At the bottom of each page was a stamp indicating the order they were supposed to be in. And goodie, ‘Page 1 out of 376’.
Thank goodness he didn’t have trouble pulling all nighters. People might be worried about his health or wonder where he gets his energy, but it doesn’t matter as long as he manages his responsibilities just fine. He would normally keep working in his comfortable office —and it’s not like anyone would kick the CEO out of the corporate building— but the sun was going to rise within this hour and nothing was stopping the light from burning right through these windows.
He doesn’t die from sunlight. It just really pisses him off.
Vincent drops the literal brick of papers on his desk to call his chauffeur to pick him up. He was in the middle of packing until the sun was peeking in between other skyscrapers and successfully blinding Vincent like it was time for his death and for heaven’s gates to let him in.
How funny.
Irritated and impatiently waiting for the approval to install remote controlled blinds for his office, he quickly grabbed his prepped briefcase while shielding his eyes with one of his hands— promptly forgetting his 376 pages of vulnerable information that he'll need to read by tomorrow.
He makes his way out of the building and meets the only car waiting by the entrance. There’s a man in an ironed black uniform standing patiently by the car doors, noticeably trying to swallow a yawn. He was only there because Vincent pays premium to make sure he’s available at all hours of the night and early morning. Anytime after noon is another driver’s problem.
“Mr. Hensley,” the chauffeur greets and elegantly opens the backseat door for Vincent. Vincent nods before sitting, appreciating the black tinted windows when the chauffeur closes the door. Soon enough, the car moves and they start driving.
During the drive, Vincent starts going through his agenda in his head. Shareholder meeting? 50 different scenarios prepared and loaded. Dinner meeting? Negotiation to hype prototype ready. Speech for broadcasting? Needed material almost slipping past Vincent’s fingertips.
“Wait,” Vincent calls out, not embarrassed how he still doesn’t know his chauffeur’s name after 5 years, “I left something back at my office.”
If the driver sitting in the front was annoyed, he was smart enough to not show it, “No problem, Mr. Hensley.”
“Use the back entrance”
“Yes, sir.”
The car is parked next to a more secluded, less welcoming area and Vincent leaves the chauffeur who’s obediently waiting by the car again. Vincent left his briefcase in the car simply for convenience and it’s not like he’ll need to show his badge to the sleeping security guard positioned out front when he’s the CEO who just left a few minutes ago.
By the time he gets into his office, the sun had risen a bit higher meaning it wasn’t painfully at eye level anymore. He could almost ignore it if he gave it the cold shoulder and walked in an odd way that’ll position him away from the sun. But he won’t. Because that would look stupid.
He grabs the stack of papers and promptly leaves the office. By the time he exits past the building’s door, he’s hit with a gentle sweet aromatic that makes him both alert and eager. His eyes landed on the limp body of the chauffeur, his uniform sliced through with blood pooling out from his wounds. The blood is staining his black uniform red before making a little puddle underneath the body. There’s even blood splatter on the bashed in car doors and tires, marking them like finishing touches a painter would. Vincent strains his ears for a heartbeat, but there isn’t any. But there was an added scent that was mixed with the chauffeur’s blood and it wasn’t there before. Vincent hums, thinking the newly introduced scent was probably from his murderer and it was still fairly pungent.
Vincent approaches the body, leisurely letting his eyes glow red since there wasn’t anyone around. He bends down and pokes one of his fingers into a deep wound, watching more blood gush out the more he spreads the cut. It looks like it was done with a precise wide slashing motion and a thick blade. He admires the art as pulls his hand back and brings his blood covered fingers to his mouth and takes a small taste.
Nothing too extraordinary, it’s blood that’ll sustain a vampire but it won’t make him excited for another bite. The blood was still warm but it was starting to taste stale since it’s making contact with open air. Vincent would almost be disappointed if he didn’t already know how boring the driver smelled when he was alive.
Vincent was about to stand to both wash his hand and then pretend to panic while calling for security. But he saw a glint in the air of something metal before it was thrown at him. He dodged, hearing an hatchet lodge itself in a ruined car door. He quickly stuffed the papers in his jacket as he looked up.
VIncent saw two guys. One was wearing a dull, yellow jacket that was zipped up and had long sleeves. He wore uninteresting jeans, shoes, and had brown hair. But what was eerie was the white mask covering his face that had black feminine characteristics drawn. The other one wore something gray with striped long sleeves. The same thing as the other with the jeans, shoes, and hair. But this one had orange goggles and some sort of cloth covering his mouth that was designed to mimic a toothy grin.
The one in the orange goggles held another bloody hatchet in his other hand, making Vincent hope he was stupid enough to try his luck in throwing and end up weaponless. But Vincent wasn’t given the chance to pray since the one with the white mask started to run at him with a simple knife raised in the air.
Vincent assumed that they both saw him act suspicious in human standard, maybe starting with the fact he probably should’ve screamed bloody murder at the sight of an actual murder. He didn’t even care enough about the chauffeur to even consider taking revenge but he’ll need to find a way to silence them before they could start to make rumors. So he’ll need to find a solution(a dead man tells no tales). And figuratively speaking, it should be easy to get rid of them since Vincent can both hear their heartbeats and smell their blood.
It’s just the matter of preventing evidence. There are cameras angled to monitor the entrance, so they’re most likely still recording. Vincent can keep the footage of the murder but he’ll need to delete his own reappearance. Damn, and he’ll need to do it before someone else comes around and starts making a scene. His main objective is basically to keep the place looking the same right after the murder happened and the two criminals left the body.
He took off his tailored navy suit jacket, internally mourning it but it’s not like he can’t buy a replacement. He idly humored the idea of planting the soon-to-be dead murderers up on the very top of his own corporate building, which would be above his own office on the 275th floor. It’s not like there’s a way to get up there, something about the altitude and the winds not being suitable for humans.
When the guy with the white mask ran at him, Vincent quickly kicked the knife out of his hands before wrapping his own jacket around the guy’s head. He grabbed both ends of the jacket before slamming it to the ground, having the guy’s head crack against the pavement. Vincent did this a few more times, having the blood make little speckles through the thick and expensive fabric of the jacket but not letting a single drop fall. Vincent almost regretted his actions when the damaged head spilled a sweet scent; 10 times sweeter than that dead chauffeur. But he needed him dead even though his eyes glowed red in thirst.
Vincent saw the orange goggles as he continued to make his partner’s brain into mush and almost waited for him to come at him, too. He intended to use the expected dead body of the white mask as a meat shield against an incoming hatchet, but guessed his surprise when the dead man’s arms latched out trying to grab him. Of course, Vincent dodged but he had let go of his jacket in the process of dealing with orange goggles.
One of Vincent’s hands went to the hatchet trying to play tug-of-war while the other went for the owner’s throat. He would have instinctively curled his fingers and lengthen his nails to rip the throat from his shoulders, but that would have created an unexplained splatter of blood that would be a few feet away from the only established victim. So instead, he needed to strangle this guy and he really doesn’t like the feeling of sweaty, hot, and pulsing skin in his hand especially since this one struggles way too much and somewhat twitches. He felt the bones in the guy’s neck shatter before his skin started to contour to Vincent’s grip.
When the orange goggle’s grip started to weaken, and dying noises escaped him, and oh, he started to turn blue, Vincent glanced over to the white mask. By now, the jacket has fallen and laid discarded on the ground. The white mask had fallen to show his newly ruined face. Side of his face was caved in to the point that inner gaps for sinuses, mouth, and brain were visible. The muscles of his face were covered in blood with excess dripping from his neck. Brain matter was also visible and crumbling near the edges, sticking together with the shattered bone, strands of hair, and flaking skin. His left eye was almost falling from its socket since it looks like Vincent accidentally tore away his eyelids and parts of his socket and so it was only being held by tendons. His knees and shoulders also suffered some bruising in the process because it’s hard to swing someone’s head without dragging the rest of their body like a rag doll.
“Of course you’re still alive,” Vincent grumbled as he heard the frantic beating of the (former) white mask’s heart, which shouldn’t be possible. He glared at how the body was still visibly breathing and just collapsed on the ground while Vincent watched like he was personally offended. Now that he thought about it, he also heard the orange goggles still gargling for air even though it should’ve stopped ages ago.
So Vincent could confidently guess that those two aren’t human. But their heartbeats and breathing make good disguises to make them seem harmless. Vincent himself doesn't have a heartbeat but he sometimes has a little attachable device that he can press onto his chest to make little(annoying) ba-dump’s and vibration when needed. But the heartbeats with those two guys seem a little too real to be fake and he can actively feel some guy’s pulse literally in his hands. And they certainly smelled like human(food).
This human-but-not-human characteristic doesn’t match with any species of supernatural that Vincent knows. And factoring in how long he’s been alive for and how many lifetimes he’s lived through, that’s saying something. His mind had wandered towards the classification of a zombie, a former human that still breathes on Earth. But those aren't commonly known to intertwine with humans, since both have defined characteristics(decaying flesh) that makes it identifiable for each species.
It’s almost like they’re just humans with immortality. Vincent hummed, thinking maybe he should bury them alive and just be done with it. But obviously he didn’t have time for that. Maybe there was somewhere he could place them before he could get to them.
Ah.
In one swell swoop, he grabbed his bloodied jacket and the physically faceless guy with his free hand before teleporting up to the roof of his building(along with orange goggles who he was still strangling). He also had to make a second trip to collect the stuck hatchet from the car door, the forgotten knife that he kicked earlier, and the broken white mask. While he held all of the weapons in hand, he stared at the little droplets of blood the white mask left. Vincent sighed before pulling the folded silk handkerchief from his vest pocket to wipe it off before teleporting back up to the roof. He unceremoniously dumped all of the murderer’s belongings back at them, including the soiled handkerchief.
The white mask guy was still unresponsive. The orange goggles was coherent enough to glare at him while violently twitching, his neck squeezed down to a fraction of its original size making his head look comically swollen. Vincent grabbed his jacket from earlier to wipe his hand that had dried up bloody snot, sweat, and drool on it(guess from who) and started to approach the white mask guy with it, which started to make the orange goggles even more enraged. He tried to get up and that resulted in him puking up blood that flooded his mouthpiece. Vincent rolled his eyes at the pathetic display as he draped his jacket over the white mask’s body, successfully covering that ugly, trampled-on disgrace.
Looks like everything is still following his initial plan minus a few steps. Even though they weren’t dead, it wasn't like they were going anywhere. He was willing to bet they couldn’t fly. And even if they were immortal, if they had enough willpower to jump down some hundreds of thousands of feet, Vincent would think they deserved to escape his punishment. And honestly, he didn’t care too much.
He teleported inside the building, more specifically next to that sleeping security guard(remember him?) to use his computer. As CEO, of course Vincent knows all the passwords, including the ones to access the camera footage. He watched how the crime took place at 3x speed, not surprised when the chauffeur was bludgeoned by the hatchet guy. He quickly deleted all the footage after that and then rebooted the computer to erase any technological footprint of him fiddling with anything.
Vincent did a once over looking for any blood that got onto him or any scratches on his hands. Nope, all clear. He wondered if it’ll be too suspicious if he said he sent his suit jacket to get dry cleaned or something if he’s suddenly seen without it on. Oh whatever, it’s not like he’ll be suspected for murder anyways. Though, he will admit it’ll probably help his image if he remembered the dead guy’s name. Oh well, you can’t win them all.
He walked out to the entrance again, acting a role like he first discovered the body by notably stiffening his shoulder and recoiling so the cameras could capture his shocked and horrified reaction. He made a show of scrambling for his phone with a look of panicked as he dialed a number.
“Hello, do you need medical, police, or fire—-“,
“Please! Please get an ambulance here!,” Vincent cried, knowing that this call was being recorded. He flexed his throat so his voice would come out higher and had his free hand go up to his head in that classic display for fear. ”My driver…. There’s blood everywhere oh my god!”
“Sir, sir, please calm down,” the dispatcher on the other line said and Vincent almost rolled his eyes, “I need you to calmly tell me your address so I can send help.”
And just like that, Vincent had to act for the next 3 hours. The body was collected in a black body bag and Vincent himself had to call for some crime scene cleaners and a tow truck to get rid of the car that was ‘too traumatizing to keep’. When he tried to get his briefcase from the car, it was missing and that got him pissed. But he couldn’t quite show it because it’ll look heartless if it seemed like he cared more about his laptop and paperwork than his dead chauffeur.
He gave his statement at the police station and complied with the investigation(smirking when they collected the camera footage with the confused security guard getting suspicious glances from the police). He even got some sympathetic words of support so he guesses once the words spread, his performance might need to be distracted a bit.
Vincent will give the chauffeur’s family some financial compensation to make his own reputation look good. And maybe tighten security for show. Maybe not. Vincent is quite liking the security guard who isn’t doing his job. He might give him a raise.
When all was said and done, he teleported back up to the roof. He might’ve been prepared for another fight but he secretly hoped that they were gone. And they were. Even his bloodied jacket(that he draped over the white mask’s destroyed face) disappeared with the stack of papers he stuffed inside. And he didn’t see any corpses splattered on the ground like pancakes so those guys didn’t commit suicide either.
But if it wasn’t in front of him, it wouldn’t be his problem. If he saw those two again stupidly coming back for a second round, then he’ll teleport them to a secluded place to truly bury them alive. But for now, he called a taxi to drive him back home and to remind himself that he needed to hire a new driver. And print out those stolen documents. Buy a new briefcase. Buy a new laptop to replace the one that was in that briefcase. Buy a new phone. Buy a new suit.
Damn. Good thing he was rich