Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sammie was no stranger to harsh mornings and hard nights, working long, taxing hours during the day to meet her quota and helping her Mama with chores and any of her remaining laundress work at night. At the end of those long, long days, when the exhaustion seemed to seep through to her very core, she felt like how she imagined a badly bruised apple might feel like, skin hurting something fierce with every minor press to it.

But even with the damaged skin, her core was firm and sweeter for it.

Those long days only felt more rewarding when she finally had time for herself in the late evenings, if her Daddy wasn’t around forcing her and her siblings into late night bible study sessions. Her siblings got off easy, they had the excuse of an early bedtime for school on weekdays. Her youngest brother, Duane, even luckier since he was still learning his letters. Sammie didn’t have that same luxury. Although she was still just a girl in the eyes of her parents and the law, her contract with the Sunflower plantation’s owner outweighed most things in her life, youth falling to age-old greed. Never music though, not when it breathed life into her tired bones, revitalizing her spirit.

Tonight was one of those blessed nights where she still found the strength to silently haul herself out of bed hours after everyone fell asleep, kneeling on the floor and slowly dragging her most prized possession out from darkness. She gently lifted it upright, her arms cradling it with the same gentleness one might handle a newborn with, for it too carried a piece of her inside it.

If Jedidiah could see her in this very moment, he would be driven to do something that a man of God, a father, should not do - succumb to a fit of irreparable rage. But Jedidiah was not there, and only the shadows of her room bore witness to the way Sammie lovingly held the treasure gifted to her from her older cousins. When Sammie first learned the twins left her a guitar, she nearly wept on the spot. She was younger and didn’t realize she was missing something from her life until it was placed into her thin arms.

Now, those same arms, still thin but toned from working the fields, shifted the guitar to her back, silver body inlay gleaming as a beam of moonlight crept through cracks in the wooden panels of her home and hit the guitar’s surface as Sammie bent down to grab her shoes. She felt the weight of the guitar settle against her back, a familiar and comfortable companion to her aching muscles. She stood and quietly made her way out of the house, following the dirt path to a white church not more than a field’s worth away. The journey to the church was as familiar to her as the back of her own hand, and it was a ritual taken with care, not fear despite what she knew could be lurking near the tree lines. Her Daddy warned her countless times if she was going to be lured by the devil, to not be caught unaware by the very real white devils or philanderers as even God wouldn’t be able to protect her if she continued her sinful path.

But her path led her into the familiar safety of her Daddy’s church, passing through the empty pews and settling into a chair near a window and the pulpit. Sammie sighed and leaned against the back of the chair, head angling back to catch a glimpse of the moon through the small window. Saturday nights tended to be balm for her soul, but the looming presence of Sunday mornings was disquieting. Sammie loved her Daddy and singing for her neighbors, something that felt holy and not unlike magic flowing from her fingertips to metal strings ensured that, but she wanted to sing more than gospel hymns. She wanted to be more than another sharecropper, more than Preacher’s Girl.

She wanted and wanted and wanted. She guiltily thought about a future that her Daddy would surely reprimand her for, preaching against the sin of greed. And truly, she was lucky her and her loved ones were healthy of mind and body, even Smoke and Stack from what she knew based on their latest letter heralding their return in a month’s time. But despite what her Daddy might say, Sammie couldn’t help but feel that wanting more for her life wasn’t a sin. The world already punished black folks enough daily, black women especially so, it didn’t need to rob them of their joy either. Despite what so many people might say or believe, Sammie knew it wasn’t a crime to exist, to have simple wants and be beholden to them. She felt most alive when singing, surrounded by happy faces she was able to paint smiles on with just the power of her voice - a voice of a young sharecropper not yet beaten by the constraints of life, not yet and hopefully not ever.

Sammie felt the pull of a song drag her away from her thoughts. She glanced back down to the guitar’s metal strings and slowly started strumming, an ache on the tip of her tongue waiting to be released. That night, the walls of her Daddy’s church heard a different book of revelation, something pure and earnest and haunting in its simple sincerity. A spell woven into the night, luring evil to light.

Chapter Text

Remmick had few regrets in his long, long unlife. As he traveled ancient lands and learned from the people, he found his existence to be both a blessing and a curse, especially for those who crossed his path. Of those few regrets, nothing burned more than forgetting pieces of himself, of his home. The flames of that hurt licked at his heels for all of eternity, no matter how fast or far he traveled or how many wayward souls he turned. Any time another hive fell, either due to youthful blunders, hateful humans, or by Remmick’s own hands, the loss and any regret he might have felt branded itself on his psyche. Oh, the pain was worse than the first rays of sunlight that caressed his fledgling skin when he first awoke immortal. Despite what he knew to be fatal, he stared at the sunrise over green hills like a yearning fool. Some things in life were worth burning for and the being that now called itself Remmick never regretted catching a glimpse of that rising eternal flame wheel.

Now, after more than two decades of wandering through stolen lands, a flicker of similar regret swirls through his pain-addled mind as he drops from the sky and crawls through meadow grass to reach the forest floor, claws gouging marks into the dirt as he drags himself to wooded shade.

The torch that spilled light into the veil first caught his attention more than a few years ago, the fire steadily growing in the last few years as he made his way back south. When he happened upon the Choctaw, he thought he finally found the source of that fire. He was too eager, as green as the pastures of his lost home. His excitement blinded his restraint, sloppy eating and unfinished meals led the Choctaw to him before he could forge any concrete connection. They chased him deep into the delta, days blurring together as he hid during the day and hunted at night. But the chase reached its turning point mid-meal one night as he tore into the neck of a deer. Remmick’s fangs sliced through thick muscle, head turning to spit out a clump of fur. As he glutted on the flesh and blood of the deer, Remmick paused. What was once a torch suddenly grew into a bonfire in his mind’s eye. A wispy, shapeless form called out to him in wordless song and the vampire laughed, blood dripping down his front. While the Choctaw weren’t what he thought they could be, they still led him to that enchanting warmth. Something that could summon the darkest evil from the veil between life and death meant it had the brightest light to gaze upon, to acquire, to harness.

But the Choctaw were not done with him. The hunt culminated in a last ditch effort of survival by Remmick. His hiding spot was found and arrows lodged into his body from afar, one brushing his heart a little too closely. Bullets followed shortly and Remmick crawled out from underneath a divinely shaded log after risking a glance at the sky, splinters raining down on his stolen clothing. He took a chance and fled into the quickly approaching, but not quite yet, night sky. Steam enshrouded his falling figure as he crashed far away from the Choctaw men.

His new safe haven was not safe for long. The patch of woods he found himself in had a small meadow, tall grass hiding predators just as the woods hid Remmick. As he rushed to the tree line for refuge from the sinking sun, a slithering body rose from the grass and lunged at Remmick. His weakened state delayed his reaction time, allowing the red, yellow, and black snake’s fangs to easily sink into the meat of his palm before he roared and flung its body away. His body slowed as he continued to drag his self forward, regret eclipsing his physical pain. He couldn’t die here, in the middle of nowhere, not when he had yet to meet the lure that called to him, whom he suspected to be a filí with the way their power reverberated through his soul.

Remmick groaned as he thought of the spark that spurred him onward, fighting through the pain of another being’s venom flowing through his cold veins. He never would have expected the deep longing in his rib cage to meet that spark to equal that of his longing for his family, for community, for home. But it would only make sense as a filí meant all of those things could soon be in his grasp.

As a fever overtook his mind, Remmick felt like he was crawling toward a hearth instead of lonely woods.