'I Am Like a Small Creature Swallowed Whole By a Monster'
Agatha Harkness x Reader Harkness (witch/familiar) x Rio Vidal
18+ MDNI
Mommy Kink/ Daddy Kink/ Bondage/ Book quotes/ Suspension Bondage/ Praise Kink/ Lactation Kink/ Mind Reading/ Witches Familiar/ Soul Bonds/Married/ Metnions Rio but focus on Aggie/Reader
Previous chapters on A03
Chapter 8: “Every evening, I died, and every evening, I was born.” ― Chuck Palahniuk
My Masterlist
“I’m a smart witch. So are you game?”
“Yes, but I’d like to add something.” Agatha drawls.
“Ok?”
“If I win I want to do suspension bondage for as long as I want.” Agatha tilted her head to the side and you try not to inhale quickly.
“Deal.”
“That’s not how I do business with my little girl.” Aggie says almost sounding like she’s disappointed in your behavior. She leaned impossibly forward and you got onto the floor and whispered ‘deal’ before kissing her. She didn’t let the kiss be quick like you’d intended. She bites your lip and you open your mouth, your witch doesn’t hesitate and sucks your tongue before releasing you with a wet noise.
“So what’ll it be?” You ask wondering which book she’d pick. Agatha looks up as if she’s really considering her options. But you know she’d already picked a book, she’d just been fucking with you. Toying with you like you were her silly competitor and she’d been going easy on you.
“I’d like to add another level to our game.”
“Oh no.” You said feeling regret creep up our spine.
“Oh yes, my sweetness.”
“Let’s hear it, you devilish witch.” You said on your knees in front of her on the floor. Your eyes are at the same level now. She doesn’t answer.
“First round, you ready my good girl?”
You gulp feeling your mouth run dry you nodd.
“The first book is the most cursed book, not one our little Scarlet Witch grabbed, but something a little newer. From a mysterious source of magical strength and perhaps sinister intent.”
“Do I get a hint at what century you mean?”
Aggie leaned close enough for you to see her face near yours, she puts her fingernails against your chin and her smile is alarming. The brunette curls bounce as she shakes her head.
“No hints. I want you hanging from the ceiling tonight. I’m going to pour a scotch and strap a vibrator to your pussy. Then maybe I’ll read one of the books Daddy got you outloud while you spin slowly in the air. Bound for me.”
You knew when she’d said bound it had so many meanings. You were bound to her, magically, in marriage, in magic. Which is why she liked rope cutting into your skin so much. Bound.
“Not even the origin?”
Aggie laughs deep in her chest. Licking her lips and seeming nasty in her stern rules.
“Ok, I guess my first guess…wait, you said cursed book? You mean literally, if it’s not the Darkhold, you mean cursed as in historically hated, not just magic.”
You thought out loud and Agatha turned her head to the side eyeing you with interest. A game of cat and mouse was always her specialty. She liked that you were wicked smart, and you knew her rules. Just as she’d said to Billy, she chose her words carefully always, and never repeated herself for others.
Your voice starts off small, quiet, you don’t actually have to be loud because Agatha’s gripping your chin. But you are unsure for just a moment. So you start your monologue slowly.
“It’s a trick question. The book is only barley decoded this last few years. I can’t quote it.”
“You say the end with more confidence and Agatha kisses your cheek once and then twice.
“Very good little rabbit.”
Agatha only called you that when you were playing games like this. Bunny was her usual nickname so little rabbit really meant you were dancing in the flames of her bonfire.
“Early fifteenth century.” You say and she nods once her face morphing into sterness, that of a teacher with a student. Even though she wasn’t really your mentor. You being similar in age and all.
“Give me a name little girl.” She says and you lick your bottom lip and she watches your tongue like it has secrets on it.
“It holds different names, but most know it was the Voynich Manuscript.”
“You get one point. Now let’s see, your turn, what’s my clue?” She says moving her nails down to scrape against your throat. You hold in the shudder but she sees it anyway.
“Since you aren’t playing fair. I won’t either.” You say with a stronger voice than you thought you could muster. She’s got a cheshire grin on her face, glad you’ve come out to play like a Harkness. Her Harkness.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She bats her eyelashes and you feel through the bond that her clit is hard and she’s already very wet in Rio’s boxers.
“This book is banned. She may not have magic, but she changed mere mortals into powerful beings. It’s a woman–”
“Obviously, a man couldn’t do that.” Agatha blows her hair out of her face. You ignore her and keep going.
“Missiouri, St. Louis Missiouri.” You add at the end and Agatha looks down for a moment. Then to the kitchen like she’s looking through her mind palace, not at the room. That’s when you see the light and you don’t need her to speak. You’ve read her mind, she was too good at this game. You were fucked.
“Maya Angelou, she had more than one banned book. But you are referring to ‘I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings.’
You bite your lip and she growls a warning. You release the abused, kissed lip. Her lip curls at the side like a predator.
“And?” You say not giving her the satisfaction of punishing you for biting your lip or getting the question right.
“The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. ” Agatha quotes Maya like it was in the front of her palate and all she needed was to wet her appetite with it.
“Of all the quotes, that one is the most you of that book.” You admit feeling as though you were going to lose. But not ready to give in.
“Hmm, my turn.” She says not going into your flattery, her prize was too sweet to get hung up on your compliments.
“You gonna cheat again?”
“Oh please, you know we are an even match. Now are you ready for my clue?”
“I guess.” You sigh and put your butt onto your heels. She leans forward and puts her hands on your thighs now.
“This is one of Rio’s favorite movies. You sat with your feet on the dash as I drove you around a certain National Forest-” You let out a laugh because you’d made them drive you through every National Forest, that wasn’t really narrowing it down and the witch knew that.
“That isn’t helpful-”Your attitude cut her off.
“Dont’ interrupt Mommy or I’ll end the game and take my prize now.” She said and you put your hands up.
“I’ll be good.”
Agatha narrowed her eyes at you and you knew what she wanted to hear so you finished.
“I’ll be good, Mommy.” You added and she was mollified.
“I’ll give you one last hint but not because of your bratty attitude.”
You try to not roll your eyes as she says the last clue.
“The novel was roughly based off a man named…” You leaned forward and she knew you were clinging to her every word.
“-Gary.”
You pulled back and sat criss crossed. You closed your eyes.
“Do not use our bond to cheat, or tonight will include a punishment.” Agatha warned you and you shook your head. You weren’t a cheat and she knew that.
“Gary Heidnik.” You said after just three minutes of silence. Agatha’s eyes turned menacing, she wasn’t about to lose, and you were putting up a good fight.
“What’s the book, Dear?”
“If it’s Heidnik.. He was a bed wetter and a serial killer from Ohio. In the 80’s and 90’s?…If it is Mr. Gary the asshole of assholes. The serial killer and bed wetter..then it’s the sequel. Not the first in the series. Buffalo Bill was roughly based after the serial killer. So it has to be..Silence of the Lambs?” You say and you see Agatha’s mouth twitch, she’s not smiling. But she’s having fun.
“Quote?”
You don’t need time to pick your quote.
““I woke up and heard the lambs screaming. I woke up in the dark and the lambs were screaming.” You say and you both share a look, one that says you both knew you could hear the noise now. As you were this close to danger yourself.
“Not the quote I thought you’d go with little one.” Agatha says not upset with your choice just not what she’d thought you would do.
“Oh, what did you think I’d pick?”
She snorts like it’s obvious but says it anyway.
“Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.”
You nodded you did like that one but then she said;
“Or you’d pick the obvious answer…’ “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.” Agatha says and it’s scarier than Anthony’s version but you can’t help yourself. You make the sucking noise with your mouth and Aggie can’t help but chuckle at your antics. Before she looks deep into your eyes and gives on final Thomas Harris quote.
“Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it?” Agatha quotes Harris. Because it is true, if you won then you’d top her. But if you lost you’d miss out on whatever evil ideas she’d have for the night. It was a win win and a lose lose situation really.
“Yeah it really does.” You say looking down and deep in thought, memories of the past trying to fight their way in. Like a hard rain breaking the lining of an old windowpain.
Agatha pinches your hip and you shriek.
“Come back to me.” She demands and it’s not soft or gentle or even sweet. But you know it’s from a loving place. You whip your head to the side to clear your mind.
“My turn,” you tell her and her eyes squint again to study you. But she doesn’t speak on your thoughts.
“Last one, make it count Superstar.” The older witch says, it’s almost a threat. You agree before thinking hard. You hope your pick will throw her off but you aren’t sure.
“This book created a stir. Written by a witch, about a college experience. She was inspired by Nabokov.” You say and then stop abruptly before you say too much.
“That’s all I get?” Agatha says the sass hitting hard in her voice.
“Yup.” The ‘p’ pops as you say it. Aggie considered your words. But it was such a small amount of facts. That’s when she realized, she didn’t need to think about the facts. She’d use her secret weapon. You.
She knew you. Knew how you worked. You’d pick a witch of course for your final blow…but a younger witch, perhaps. One that went to college…you didn’t read a lot of books about mortal schools…unless..unless they were studying something you’d enjoy. That’s when it hit her. Agatha’s blue eyes shot into attention, zeroing in on you now.
“Latin.” She said confidently and your face flinched. She knew she’d won.
“Fuck.” You cursed and Agatha’s mouth contorted into blitheness.
“Donna Tart, you’d pick ‘The Secret History.’ Oh no, that was a bad choice, baby. You almost had me there. But you are Mommy’s girl. You like Latin like me. Your Daddy may have taught you Spanish but you are Mommy’s girl to the end. You like dead languages like me, forbidden ancient, and magical languages. Donna Tart wrote about a group of college kids who do problematic deeds. But they study Latin.” She said ‘Latin at the end like she’d put the final puzzle piece together.
“Damn.”
“I win, little witch. You did play a good game though. You’d almost had me at the end. Well sort of.”
“When will I be your rope Bunny?” You said closing your eyes. Aggie kisses both your eyelids before you open them again to look at her in defeat.
The following is a rough draft of the first chapter for the in-progress horror novel, and alternate ending Dracula sequel, Barking Harker.
It will contain unsettling imagery.
It will contain unsettling possibilities.
It will contain things that bite, bleed, scream, and laugh.
If all this is acceptable, then welcome. Enter freely and of your own will.
And leave all of the happiness and humanity you bring.
For a version that isn’t in Tumblr format eye strain mode, check out the Google Doc version HERE.
Link to Barking Harker TEASER 2 is HERE.
Barking Harker
TEASER
C. R. Kane
Preludes and Interludes I:
Nights in Asylum
SISTER AGATHA’S OBSERVATIONS
The Hospital of St. Joseph and Ste. Mary brought Jonathan Harker into its care on the 8th of July. While not the worst case admitted in Sister Agatha’s time, he was several leagues away from the best-off. The Englishman, so his manner and voice gave him away long before ever uttering his address, was like one trapped at the point of waking from a supreme nightmare. A persistent dread kept his eyes wide and wet, his body taut, his brown brow puckered in a constant flux of distress and distrust.
Less of the staff than of the reality around him.
“I cannot trust me,” he told her over his broth. Whether hearty or thin, his meals seemed perpetually doomed to chill half-eaten on their tray. Appetite had withered in him even before his arrival to judge by his gauntness. “I cannot trust that I am awake and safe. I cannot trust that the nightmare I left was genuine or some spiraling betrayal of the mind. I cannot—,”
She’d watched him rub furiously at the side of his neck, as though trying to scour something away. A hoarse noise left him.
“I cannot be like them. Mina’s waiting. Mr. Hawkins will be wanting an update. I cannot be…”
Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing at his neck. Fresh dew balanced on his lashes.
“Like who?”
The question nettled him. His lips twitched up in a rictus, the false smile of one doing their best not to shake apart in a fit.
“Any of them. The women in the castle. The monster in the box. The dream in the hail storm.” The smile broke open on an awful laugh. More a sob in dismal disguise. “The unhappy couple stolen from their dirt in Exeter. Not them. Please, not any of them.”
Scrubbing, rubbing, scratching, clawing.
Before he could draw blood, she asked, “Does your neck itch?” The assault stopped. He stared at his hands for a spell, regarding the crescents of topmost skin now embedded in his nails. He rubbed circles in one palm, then the other.
“No, there is no itch. It does not even ache. It ached before. After they…” The grey eyes rolled up to her like cloudy marbles. “Do you see anything there?” He dragged at the shirt collar. Sister Agatha looked. Aside from the tint caused by the fresh clawing, the skin was the same unmarked umber complexion as the rest of him. Albeit an unhealthily pale shade of copper, considering. He seemed like a man fresh from living in a cave.
“No, it looks quite fine. No rash, no injury.” Just as there had not been with their initial medical examination. A trial in itself, as he had suffered a scandalized anxiety at his being even half-bare before male doctors and female nurses alike. One of the newer girls had touched him—only to pluck a mote of cotton from the hair at the nape of his neck—and he had sprung away as if she’d struck him. He had stood rigid, seeming to judge the merits of running versus snatching up the nearest items at hand for a weapon.
Registering his own state, he’d apologized profusely to her. At a distance. The girl had stammered her own apology back, mumbling about the cotton.
“Not cotton,” he explained, eyes flitting to a wall mirror. An expression mingled between relief and misery had taken his face. “Only my hair.”
Sister Agatha had rarely seen the reality of ‘shocked white’ locks over the years, and even then it was often with those patients someplace past forty years. Jonathan Harker was scarcely past twenty. Whatever the truth of his experience was, it had been so titanic that it had burst his mental state like an egg against brick. That it had the trappings of an abrupt attack, mingled as it was with plain fever of the brain and body, alongside malnutrition, gave her hope that it was an instance of trauma rather than outright mental impairment.
Something monstrous had happened to him, and so his mind, at once a traitor and good-intentioned aide, had costumed the event with genuine monsters.
By the second week of August, when the worst of his symptoms would cool, Sister Agatha would do him the courtesy of writing ahead to his employer and his fiancée. The latter would include her postscript, trimming his ravings down to mere babble of wolves and poison and blood; of ghosts and demons; and the rest, she confessed to good Mina Murray, she withheld out of fear.
Yet not a fear for the young lady’s opinion of the poor bridegroom-to-be.
Truth be told, it was a fear she would never commit to paper. Not to any record, lest she look back on it and recall the whole of the young man’s stay. To examine such details too closely was to risk opening an abyss within her mind. One which she suspected to be bottomless and greased with a wonder untouched by the benevolence of miracle, and edging instead towards…
Well.
It was not worth the ink for her notes. Nor even her own breath, wasted on choking out the particulars she witnessed—or supposed she witnessed—to another ear. This was a place of healing and faith, not superstition, they would tell her. Supposing they did not invite her to enjoy the other side of their hospitality outright. Jonathan Harker’s early period was a warning against risking such a change of status. As illustrated by the escapade with the glass.
After Sister Agatha had confirmed there was no mark upon his neck, he had asked for a mirror. Seeing in the glass that she spoke the truth, he had loosed two small tears, his lips twitching as he uttered a single sentence. A whisper so low she almost missed it.
“It is a foul bauble.”
In the next instant, he had shattered the glass against the wall and tried to take a shard to his throat.
Sister Agatha and two others had to wrestle with him to get the piece away, though he succeeded in nicking his stubbled cheek. It had taken a fourth to get his arms down and the wrists fastened. Later, the doctors would remark that it was an incredible feat for a man half-wasted away. Yet said flicker of vitality was hardly noteworthy compared to the hideous reaction that followed as they fastened wrist and ankle. It was less a result of his being bound, but the action involved to make him so.
He had bellowed oaths at the flurry of bodies, fighting and bucking like a rabid thing.
“No more! You will have no more from me, you leeches! I will not go back, I will not be your stock! Get off me, get off me, you damned—,”
Then the sedative needle pierced his skin.
It stunned all present by how immediately opposite the intended effect was. Namely, Jonathan Harker shed all semblance of censorship, sanity, and human address, instead erupting with curses to make a sailor swoon, followed by a nigh animalistic series of howling screams that would leave him hoarse on waking. All the while, he kicked and yanked at his restraints with a redoubled strength. The struts creaked dangerously for a moment before the drug began to win the battle.
As they finished binding him, those miserable grey eyes blinked rapidly, fighting sleep as much as consciousness, muttering all the while, “No, no, no, not again, please, I cannot do it again, no, no…”
He slept. Poorly.
Even in better weeks to come, unbound, harmless and charming, Jonathan Harker would never sleep well as long as they had him. He spasmed, shivered, and moaned as nightmares sent memories to hunt him even in his rest.
Sister Agatha was there when he woke from that first drugged stupor. She felt her heart twist into knots as the epiphany dawned across his face. It was not an unfamiliar expression in her work; sane, mad, or ill, finding oneself immobilized was never a happy discovery. Yet in the Englishman, the sight became a relaxant. He untensed even under the gleam of sweat and tears. Whatever invisible wires kept him rigid were cut and he sank deeper into the mattress like a thing gutted.
“Here. I am here,” he murmured to himself. Then he turned to croak at her, “My apologies for the outburst. I thought you were someone else.”
“So we took it.” It was already being circulated among some of the staff that, assuming there was more than an imagined impetus for his behavior, his mind had translated the work of some human jailor to more legendary horrors. Sister Agatha regarded again the pallid tint of him; a man who had lived too long without sun. Her eye drifted to the fresh cut scabbing on his cheek. “Yet that does not explain your desire to commit one of the worst sins against oneself, as much as God. You claim you have a loved one waiting for you. Your fiancée.”
“Mina,” he breathed. The word left him like prayer. “Yes, Mina is at home. I could not let them keep me. Not like that.”
“Yet you would end yourself rather than go home to your Mina? You appear to have fought terribly to get as far as you have.”
“I did not think clearly. I am not thinking clearly.” His throat bobbed with a dry gulp. “The trouble is I can no longer tell if I am safe to return to her. They did it, you see. Him. The sisters. They got what they wanted. Those three, they almost dragged me back that night in the forest. Perhaps they might have if they were not so eager for the meal. They took their turns right there in the clearing just as he had his in the bedroom. But they overindulged. Even depleted, I was still able to slip them, content as ticks as they were. Or else they allowed me to escape, knowing what would become of me.
“Yet it was so strange, Sister. The blood, the pain, they happened. But by sunrise, the evidence was gone. I got to the trains still thinking it may have been a nightmare. I was so focused on the worst of possibilities; perhaps it had invented the scenes of room and forest alike to purge itself. Which feels absurd. I did not imagine the fear any more than I imagined their cold hands or the ivory pins of their teeth. Unless I did. Unless, unless, unless. That has been my state since I fled the place. Especially since I truly do not feel the pain in my throat or find the wounds. Gone, all.
“If I am suddenly mad, I am no longer worthy to be with Mina. If I am not mad, if what happened was reality, then I fear I am not safe to be with her. Not until I know for certain that, as sure as the Devil inflicted his kin upon me, God has done me the mercy of a miracle. The bite came more than once. I was siphoned and marked. But come daylight, any sign was erased. I have prayed for answers. For confirmation to prove one answer is truer than the others. As yet, I still cannot tell. All possibilities have their drawbacks.
“I dread to be mad. I dread the idea that the Hell I left and all its smiling devils were real. But at least the third, with its blessing, also proves the kindness of God in blotting out the monsters’ parting gift. For that, I pray most.” Jonathan Harker blinked up at her, the greater bulk of his desolation evaporating away into a simpler mask of request. “May I ask you for one thing, Sister?”
“What is that, Jonathan?”
“I should like to be held here at least a month. Regardless of how well or ill I appear, I plead for a month, barred in by the Cross and steadier heads than mine. More than anything, I require trustworthy senses that can observe objectively, with God’s eye over your shoulder. Whatever expenses shall be incurred by my stay, I can give you information and addresses to see to payment; as well as, if it is allowed, a surplus to aid those who come after me. Is such an arrangement possible?”
“It is, Jonathan, absolutely. But I would ask you something in return. Two things.”
“What are they?”
“The first, that you feel free to call me Sister Agatha. The second, that you will eat fully at your next meal.”
“I will, Sister Agatha.”
Now clearly set upon his own deadline of a month, the restraints were undone, though a watch was kept to ensure he did not have another grisly change of heart. With the exception of the man’s persistent nervousness and fitful sleep, the larger part of his trouble should only have been the fever. Indeed, under more ignorant circumstances, Sister Agatha would gladly have assigned all the strangeness of his stay to that dreary illness.
The poor fellow seemed in a constant state of warmth, saturating his clothes and the sheets with perspiration like a boiling clockwork. Neither medicine nor ice seemed to blunt the heat. A fact that was not made better with the young man’s insistence that he was scarcely aware of his own temperature. Certainly not half so much as he was aware of things beyond the small world of his sickroom.
For instance:
“Did they ever find the culprit who took Frau Brodbeck’s ring?”
The name struck her like a cold pin.
“Pardon?”
He must have seen some accusation in her face, for he half-hid behind his glass of water. Still, he nodded at the door.
“From the room across the hall,” he murmured. “The lady there, Greta Brodbeck, found me reading last night. I flatter myself that my German must have gotten better to understand her, for she spoke all in a rush.”
Sister Agatha felt an entire bouquet of icicles sink in her bowels.
“That was—that is how Frau Brodbeck speaks as a rule, Jonathan. Barely a pause to breathe.” As she said it, her own breath cramped in her throat. “What was it she said to you?”
“She insisted her wedding band was stolen and swapped with a paste replacement. She says to confront Dr. Weiss about it, for she claims the thief is one of his new hires, some fellow with a mole under his right eye. Her band had a diamond and two rubies. The swapped ring she showed me has a dull crystal and a spray of false emeralds. She seemed quite upset about it, as she’s to leave the hospital soon and none of the staff have listened to her about the matter.”
“Well, that will not do. This is the first I have heard of it, but I know there is time. She does not leave until the morning,” Sister Agatha said, impressed at her own placidity. It was the stillness of thin ice over a lake wild with life swimming in frenzy, but it held. She even smiled. “I will bring it up with Dr. Weiss.” Before she could reach the door, there was a creak as Jonathan sat up in bed.
“Before you go...”
“Yes?”
“Do you know whose dog it is on the grounds out there?” She turned to blink at him.
“What dog do you mean?”
“The one that was barking under the window last night. I confess, it frightened me at first. Imagination almost remade it into a wolf and I have had more than my share of the creatures. Transylvania and Munich both seemed intent on inflicting their company. But the pitch out there,” he gestured to the window, “was wrong. The bark was too deep to be anything other than some large purebred’s noise. I managed to hobble to the window to look for it, but I only caught sight of it running off around the hospital’s east corner. Certainly big enough to pass for a wolf, but for the shape of it.”
Saying so aloud brought some measure of relief to his tired features. Sister Agatha smiled in turn, now with less performance in its upturned corners.
“I’d not realized we were playing host to the animal. We would have heard if it was bothering the patients, so it must have snuck in some way and fled again.” Jonathan nodded at this, cloudy eyes rolling to the window.
“Perhaps it’s lost. Some household may have misplaced a family member.”
“We shall keep an eye out should it return. Try to rest, Jonathan--and please, do let someone know if you need help leaving the bed next time.”
Sister Agatha left him as he gave her his assent.
She waited until she was at least three doors away before her idle step turned into a brisk march.
Six doors turned it into a pace just short of a jog down to the building’s bowels.
Greta Brodbeck was waiting for her there, as patient as any corpse pending delivery to those with the duty of collection. In this case, her granddaughter. The ring on her wedding finger was as Jonathan described it. Faux crystals presented to him by an incensed old woman who had been dead most of the day before. The same Jonathan, she knew from the staff, who continued to break his bedridden streak only to force himself around in unsteady circuits of his room for his legs’ sake, to use the facilities, or to stare out the window. With the exception of his failed dog-watching, this was always done with a steadying arm and another’s assistance.
He had never been down to the morgue. He never even left his room.
These facts were shelved in the cellar of Sister Agatha’s mind as she went to Dr. Weiss, claiming to recognize the ring as a fake, and to ask the new young man, Arnold Baum, about where the diamond and ruby original might be. It took little pressing to force the fellow’s truth and the ring out of him, along with some hastily engineered tale to do with a sick relative, or perhaps a friend, who desperately needed the money, and really, Frau Brodbeck was hardly going to miss such a thing…
The trouble sorted, Sister Agatha briefly thought of telling Jonathan what state Frau Brodbeck was in when she made her complaint to him.
Would a ghost story help a man in his condition? Yes, it could be a miracle. It could also be a fantastic illusion born of the fever. All he would see is a tally mark to the monstrous theory he now holds about himself and the shadows of the world. Hush, Agatha.
Even so, she battled herself over it.
She found her fretting was moot upon her next visit. One she had put off until the evening, almost hoping he was too drowsy for pleasantries. But when she opened the door, she found Jonathan propped up in a chair beside the window. Grated as it was, he was allowed to let the glass up for a much-needed breeze. He was peering down at something when she came in. Smiling.
For a moment, Sister Agatha thought it hung strangely on him. Like a carved slit more than a true expression.
“What has you in such a fine mood, Jonathan?”
“Mm?” He blinked and the smile flickered out of place. “Apologies, my mind floated off for a moment. Do I seem in a fine mood?”
“You were smiling at something.”
“Was I? Oh, well, there was good news today, wasn’t there?” The smile returned, this one less static. “Frau Brodbeck stopped in to tell me you rescued her ring in time for her exit. She was most grateful. Though there were some parting words she had regarding the thief that I doubt I should repeat.”
Sister Agatha felt the blood drop out of her face even as she buttressed her own smile. Jonathan seemed to note this and was on the verge of a question Sister Agatha was still unsure how to answer, when a dog began to bark. The young man whipped his head back around so quickly she worried something might snap. Instead, he leaned into the glass and the strange smile curled again.
“I’m here, I’m here. Hello again!” His eyes swept back to her. They seemed even more faded against the exhausted bruise-brown shadows that ringed his gaze. The grey had faded almost to a misty hue. She thought briefly of Greta Brodbeck’s dead stare as she returned her stolen ring. The eyelids had cracked open in the interim between visits, revealing the clouding that marked all cadavers’ eyes within days. They seemed to watch her now, set in Jonathan Harker’s living face. “It’s our visitor,” he laughed. “He really is a hefty one. There must be some hole in the fence he’s wedging through.”
As if in answer, another bark sounded. It was a thunderous noise. The kind that belonged to breeds made for fighting bears and winning. Sister Agatha joined him at the window. She followed his gaze out and down to what looked like a black mountain on legs. True, the shape of it denied any lupine heritage, but its stature was gigantic. Two children could ride on its back without buckling, perhaps three.
Children with no fear of death, her thoughts amended.
The iron-dark hound stared up at their window with eyes made lambent in the lights of the hospital and the bright half-moon. Almost yellow. Its stare never broke to blink.
“Watch,” Jonathan whispered, not looking from the dog. He moved slowly aside, away from the frame, until he was no longer visible through the grate. The dog barked again. It boomed loud enough to shock the heart. Jonathan chuckled and bowed back into view. The black dog settled. It did not wag its tail, nor did it pace or whine. Only watched the Englishman watch it. As if she’d spoken aloud, he nodded and hummed, “He’s a serious one. Some manner of working dog.”
“It could be,” Sister Agatha agreed, trying to distract herself with squinting for a collar hidden in the black pelt. “Yet no one I asked mentioned any sightings of him and no one has come to call about their missing pet.”
“Not a pet,” Jonathan told the grate. “He is self-employed and takes his duties seriously when they come to him. But now he waits on his associate. The white dog.”
“There’s another?”
“Not yet. But soon.” There was a languid note to the words she did not care for. Turning, she saw that Jonathan seemed to have fallen asleep sitting up. His shut eyes still faced the window. “Black dogs do much. But the white dog is made for more. It smiles and laughs even when it hates. Hurts. Most of all when it is hungry.” His temple rested against the window frame, the dark eyelids revealing the dance and twitch of a dreaming mind. A small sound leaked out of him. Something that stuttered in a way that could have wept or giggled. His lips split over his teeth in a hard grin as tears traced his cheeks. Then, plaintive as a child, “I do not want the white dog to come.”
Sister Agatha roused him just enough to guide him to the bed where he sank down on top of the sheets, shaking and cooking in his own illness. When she went back to the window, the black dog was gone. She spoke to the others, warning them of the massive hound and insisting on a search of the surrounding fence for gaps it might be winnowing through. None cared to think of what damage such a creature might do to patients or staff cornered outdoors. Yet daylight revealed no openings in gate or fence suitable to be its threshold.
Regardless, the black dog returned the following night. On many nights more. According to Jonathan, it did not bark so long as it could see him. But despite his initial fondness for the animal, or what passed for fondness on realizing it was not a wolf, he now dreaded his visitor.
“It knows things I don’t,” he told Sister Agatha, led again to his sweat-soaked bed. “It knows what the white dog will do, what the white dog will demand if it gets to me here. And it will. Frau Brodbeck told me so. She seemed sorry to tell me. And—such an absurd thing to say!—she claimed I could take what I needed when the white dog came. I did her the service of the ring, so she would do a service in turn. Isn’t that strange?”
He giggled and sweated and sobbed into his pillow until sleep dragged him down. Said sleep twisted and twitched terribly, his dreams full of hunting and hauntings, a gibberish of pleas flying from him in supplication to God, to dogs, and to some unknown specter:
“I do not want it, I don’t want any, please, I don’t…”
Far more bitter fits mingled fear and wrath against those initial demons who ushered him into their haven, making his lip curl and hands clutch violently at the air:
“Why do you walk and talk and feast? Why do you not fester in your box? Why are you not the prey of your pets, of the birds and the flies? Come, my friend, let me take you home…”
All the while, he burned hotter and hotter within the oven of his flesh. Almost three weeks of this wretchedness passed before he reached his hottest point. The thermometer screamed red to its tip. They prepared an ice bath.
He let them carry him to the tub’s edge, but insisted on stripping under his own power. This he did without blushing before his audience. Such might have been taken as an improvement if he had not continued to claw mindlessly at himself—as though his skin were a last stubborn garment to be removed. He let the attendants’ hands stop his own without fuss. The grey eyes, now so wan around the pupils they were almost gone, tipped wildly in their sockets.
His only words were a sing-song burble:
“Burning above in old lands of sand, cool in the graves below. They burrow deep and they burrow far, where only dead and worms know. One of the dogs taught me that. Can you guess which, Sister Agatha?” His laughter came in a soft mad stream between his bared teeth, giddy as a hyena.
At least until his eyes rolled entirely into his head and his mind rolled away with them. When they brought him out of the bath, the ice had melted and he was solidly, implacably unconscious. He did not stir through the rest of the day. Nor the night. Nor the day after that.
“His temperature is dropping.”
“Good. I have yet to see a fever so stubborn in its breaking. It’s a wonder he did not set the bed alight, poor boy.”
“Doctor. His temperature has been dropping two degrees every hour.”
Down, down, down, out of fever and into a frigid cold. The window was shut, blankets were piled, and warmth was fed thinly into the cool statue that was Jonathan Harker. His breath was the only sign they were not nursing a corpse. On the second night, Sister Agatha was stirred from a brisk nod she took for a nap.
The black dog was barking again. That she felt the tremor of it in her chest failed to surprise her. Even Greta Brodbeck’s presence did not manage a shock.
“Because you are dreaming,” Sister Agatha insisted to herself. “You are dreaming and you will wake and all that makes sense now will make none then.”
Is this a dream? the dead woman asked in her usual rush. So Sister Agatha assumed. Frau Brodbeck’s lips did not move and the words were not words. Yet she did speak. Are you certain?
Sister Agatha was on her feet now, knowing she had to be out. Jonathan could not appease that awful hound as he was. Frau Brodbeck walked with her. She was dressed in her fine funereal attire and her ring winked prettily as they marched down the halls. None were there to see them. Sister Agatha could not bring herself to call for anyone.
If it was a dream, it would not matter. If it was not, what would happen if they saw what she did? What would happen if they didn’t?
Her attention flicked back to her companion. Frau Brodbeck seemed as whole as the day she was taken away for burial. And yet there seemed to be something hidden beneath the wrinkled shell of her. A secret and unpleasant core.
“Is your soul not at rest, Greta?”
I rest. He eats.
The black dog barked.
Something barked back.
It froze Sister Agatha as surely as bolts driven through both feet. The sound of it was not powerful for its volume, nor did it carry the same implicit threat of the black dog. Yet it struck deeper for the...what? The wrongness.
Yes, the wrongness of it. It ate through her ears, burrowed in the coils of her brain like insects and flourished there, sending a pestilence rippling outwards. Bile leapt in her throat, gooseflesh shriveled her skin, and a noxious pit fell open in her stomach that could not decide between a reaction of revulsion or terror.
“That is not a dog,” she heard herself croak. “It cannot be a dog.”
It is and it is not. Leave him be, Agatha. He will be a good boy once he’s done.
Another thunderclap bark from the black dog. Another eldritch answer from his companion. It nearly cackled.
“Greta, is that the white dog out there?”
When Frau Brodbeck did not answer, Sister Agatha turned to her. Regret slammed through her like a giant’s open hand.
Greta Brodbeck was only a third there. A rotten Greta, a piecemeal Greta, more skeleton than flesh in the remains of her burial garb. Only her left hand was perfectly intact, along with its ring. The maggots had given those fingers the courtesy of being their final stop. Elsewhere they were busy weaving in and out of the pallid scraps of meat still left on the rest of her bones. Even that was sparse.
For the other two thirds of Greta Brodbeck had been stolen. Snapped bones jutted from the residual decay, with the marks of great animal teeth and clawed gouges making even this much ragged. It was as if she had been worried at by wolves. Or—
Bark, bark.
What remained of Frau Brodbeck’s face smiled. Half her head was too stripped of meat to do anything else.
Do not worry. I will not miss such a little thing. She raised her left hand—the only hand—and laid it on Sister Agatha’s shoulder. The grip was light, but solid. Cold. If you look, you will regret it.
Sister Agatha blinked. She was alone in the hall. She remained alone, still hearing the barking of the things that were not dogs.
“This must be a dream. I would not do this otherwise.”
For she found herself almost running out into the terrain of the hospital grounds. She was struck only for a heartbeat by the tilted beauty of the night; an alien landscape of flowers and gates and hills she did not know under the pale moonglow. But this respite ended with mayfly speed and any bud of poetry withered and died with it.
Sister Agatha saw the dogs.
The black dog, a hill of fur and lantern eyes, sat as if posed for a portrait. There were no features to it but the eyes, the shape, and the vivid white daggers of its teeth. A decayed human calf was clamped in them. At its feet, slowly disappearing down a different gullet, was a tidy heap of rotting anatomy. Bones and meat and a tumble of organs on which flies and moths hopped, taking their minor fills before the greater maw descended. The maw of the white dog.
The latter was a vision that offended immediately and entirely. Not least because it was a creature that seemed stretched and pressed into the rough mold of a man. The result was a horrid pastiche of both.
It sat stooped on its haunches, the back turned to her as the head bowed low and tore at human gristle. It had hands to hold its meal close, thickly knuckled and set with heavy claws. A hide that was an imperfect tint of deathly grey-white pallor and a dim living brown sheathed the botched architecture of bone and muscle. Its only note of true white was the hair. The bulk of its wild pelt stood along head, shoulders and the stark ladder of the spine. Sister Agatha thought abstractly of mange.
Her hand went to the Cross as God’s words came through her lips. Hearing her, the black dog slowly raised its head. Sister Agatha spoke louder. Faster. The black dog growled once around its mouthful of leg. Sister Agatha knew at once that the black dog could split her with paw or jaw if the urge came.
It was older than the names men had given it. Older than the English’s fatal joke of the church grim, older than Black Shuck. Older than any title breathed upon humanity’s dirt. Older than the hammer and nail and the Son destined to dangle from the trinket at her neck. The black dog had a duty to a force as old as life itself.
Do not interrupt.
“Deliver us—deliver us,” the words were caught in her. “Deliver us from—,”
The white dog turned to look at her. Its mouth was a huge and impossible hollow. It hung wide and grinning as a serpent’s mouth. Just the size for the head staring out at her between the vise of teeth.
Jonathan Harker’s dead gaze met hers just as the jaws snapped shut.
“Sister! Sister! Agatha, it’s alright!”
She woke to a circle of wide-eyed faces hovering over her. One was Sister Klara paused in the act of bringing salts to her nose. Another was Dr. Weiss, looking near a faint himself. The third was—
“Jonathan?”
The young man had stumbled from his bed to come crouch and worry with the others. She recognized the his room, albeit seen from the wrong angle. For some reason she was on the floor.
“Good morning,” he tried to laugh. She found it somehow relieving that he couldn’t. The relief redoubled at the sight of his eyes—grey, yet unclouded. Bright.
“What is this? What’s happened?”
“What happened is you were screaming loud enough to scare the birds,” said Dr. Weiss.
“You were already on the floor,” Sister Klara added, tucking the salts away. “We thought it was a fit until Jonathan pointed out you were asleep.”
“I tried to wake you,” Jonathan murmured, “but at the time I assumed I was still dreaming too.” This time he managed a true and sheepish smile. It sat right on him. “Not a good night’s sleep for either of us, it seems.”
Sister Agatha muttered an agreement and spent the next twenty minutes trying to shoo ensuing questions from her fellows the way one swats at flies. It was not until late afternoon that she returned to check in on Jonathan. Though his hands trembled, he was making steady progress through a meal, forkfuls of beef disappearing one after the other.
“I think this is the first time since you arrived that you have eaten with any appetite.”
“Mm?” he hummed, still chewing. He swallowed hastily and fidgeted with apology. “I think you’re right. A belated gluttony, but for a special occasion.”
“What occasion is that?”
“A twofold celebration. The first, that my latest temperature sees me at 37 °C, and it appears to be holding. The second being our point on the calendar.” Here a bittersweet sort of joy lit him up. Washed out and lean though he remained, Sister Agatha could not deny there was some new ember of vigor struggling to stoke a fire in him. “It has been over thirty days since I arrived here. In those thirty days, yes, I was sick. Last night was…” The chipper new edge to his features wavered. He had laid aside his tray and now rested both hands—rather, clamped them—upon a book in his lap. The only volume he had on his person when the hospital collected him. The only one he had read and reread during his stay.
A small traveler’s journal, a third of its pages made dark with writing. To her knowledge, he had not asked for pen or pencil since coming. He gripped the little book until his knuckles showed white.
“It was a particularly bad one, if only in my head.”
The hands relaxed. He brightened again.
“Yet that itself should be taken as good news. It and the passage of time have, at the very least, provided an overdue confirmation. Whatever concerns lay ahead for me now, they are not the ones I feared most. I will take whatever victories I can in this state. All that said, I think I am about due to take my troubles off your shoulders. To that end, I would ask for one final piece of help.”
It was the 12th of August when Sister Agatha wrote the letters he could not, sending them the same day. There was no barking in the night.
It was the 24th of August when Mina Murray arrived, boiling over with equal parts relief and dismay at the sight of her fiancé. The latter feeling was not helped by the revelation that his current state was a vast improvement to how he had arrived. Still, the couple left St. Joseph and Ste. Mary’s happy, for the Superior saw over their wedding vows right there in Jonathan’s room. They departed as husband and wife and many remarked that there were few couples of greater health or wealth who could boast even a fraction of the joy carried by that blissful pair.
Sister Agatha felt a warm release unfold in her chest as she watched Jonathan Harker depart. A tired young man, his dark hair still feathered with that premature sprinkle of white, but one who transformed with every look at his beloved into the handsome youth he must have been before his shock fractured him. As if Mina Harker’s presence alone were medicine and the fellow’s brain was finally sending orders to mend the body into a presentable shape. She wished the couple well, asked the Lord to shelter them, and rejoiced at another silent night.
It was the 26th of August when Sister Agatha received belated word that there had been some madman at work in a churchyard not a day’s ride away. This she heard from one of the hospital’s cooks.
“Happened two weeks ago, my brother said. Some vandal tore up our poor Frau Brodbeck’s plot. Some fools have tried to put it on wolves, but it is so much ignorance. Wolves have food enough aboveground. They would not put a pack’s efforts into digging up the lady’s fine coffin and rattling her old bones apart.”
“How do you mean?” Sister Agatha asked, praying against an answer. The cook shook her head without lifting it from her work. A hen deprived of its bones, chopped fine, then finer. Something greasy moved in Sister Agatha’s throat at the sight.
“They found her coffin pried open and most of the dear woman torn away. I expect they blamed wolves more than any graverobber or lunatic because her wedding ring was left alone. Even madmen, they think, would not have left the jewelry behind. But Lorant says it must have been a man and a dog, for all the paw prints tearing up the earth about the spot. Which I take to be doubly evil, if I may say it. Staining one’s own hands with such vile work is one thing. Dragging one of God’s kindest creatures into it is cruel. The poor things are too loyal not to go along with their master’s whims and there are such fiends in the world who would abuse it…”
Sister Agatha nodded and excused herself.
There was no barking that night either. She dreamed just the same.
In it, Jonathan Harker had finished the supper of Greta Brodbeck and proceeded to eat himself bite by laughing bite.
SANITARIUM SUITE
Cozening the madman at the window was taking more time than he would normally have suffered if the need were urgent.
As it was to be the first misdirection of many, the lunatic’s invitation would need to happen soon to cement what the valiant knights would declare the timeline of their remaining woman’s violation. The Penelope to her friend’s Helen. He had intended to collect them as a pair anyway, but circumstances had altered his itinerary. Surprises abounded.
Her aid in the would-be crusade, for one.
Jonathan Harker for another.
Oh, but it had taken all his will, and no small amount of interest in another notable face, not to turn his head in Piccadilly as the young man spotted him. All the while gawping and shaking against his wife. If he had not reached out and pressed his screeching mind down to sleep on the bench, his and Mrs. Harker’s small holiday would have been spoiled, and that would not do.
Now here was the lovely couple again. Hale and happy and dreaming whatever the righteous dream of.
He had gained entry to the sanitarium scarcely an instant after the young doctor offered it as their personal sanctum to operate from. Dr. John Seward thought himself a king of this meager castle, his subjects either loyal or too disempowered to do any ill against him. But, like with so many soft rulers of the age, he lost sight of how easy even the strongest foundation could be chipped at with an axe of gold.
In a guise, he had feigned the role of a man seeking a place to store an ‘unwell’ wife. Might he have leave to examine the cells? Cost was no object and he would not cast his dear madwoman into anything but the finest of padded boxes. He had been toured about the place, the madman of the window being already pressed to sleep and his prey busily fussing over his demise floors above. In, out, and gone with the stamp of invitation carried away for future use. Such as now.
Now, when the deeper part of true sleep was pulled ever deeper, until the Harkers drowsed too heavily for dreams. The girl would know nothing of his presence until future visits masked him in the veil of a nightmare. Her young man would not know him at all. Not for some time.
He took a moment to idle once the fog congealed to flesh and bone. His pacing went soundlessly around the room as he lifted this, nudged that. He pondered the merits of silently rearranging the entire room’s furnishings, including the bed and its sleepers, for the lot of them to wake to. It would almost be worth it to imagine their faces. The thought tickled enough to make him lay a plotting hand on the headboard.
But no, it would be too much a waste. They did not know of his premature access and it was best to keep them blind until the madman caved to him. There was time enough to play later. For now, work. Insomuch as he could call the matter any sort of labor.
He circled to Mina Harker’s side of the bed and lifted the whorls of hair off her neck. Simple access. But on the chance that her husband or their assembled champions had the wit to check one another’s throats, a less obvious location was called for. And really, he had started this excursion in the spirit of holiday. Why not indulge?
Pressing at the couple’s minds again, he sank them just short of a comatose stupor, then peeled away the covers. Her nightdress was already rucked suitably high. The mark he left upon the handle of her hip was small. A pinprick that might be attributed to any number of scratches and jabs from her daily ensemble. More, unless she was the sort to twirl bare before the mirror, only her husband would manage to spot the pinpricks. Despite the young man’s experience, even he would not recognize so meager a wound.
His bite broke her skin as daintily as toothpicks sinking into fresh bread. One sip. Another. Done.
The impatient hedonist in him stamped its feet and demanded a deeper drink; such a small nip was barely enough to slick his teeth.
“A moment, a moment,” he hummed to himself. He slit his finger on a canine. “Business comes first.”
The cut dripped a murkier red than living blood, but it was his, and that was key. With one hand he parted the girl’s lips and slid the bleeding digit down onto her tongue. The blood ran on its destined route. A pitifully dull sight compared to what was to come. He had rehearsed the eventual pose in his mind a dozen times already, likewise the inevitable gnashing of fangs and wicked litanies. Even clever children needed pageantry to goad them along now and then. His theatre with Mrs. Harker was destined to be one of his gaudier performances. The people of this land were such cringing sorts. A glimpse of his bloodied breast in her shrieking mouth would stick them all like a hot spur. Especially her dozing neighbor.
“I wish I could be there as it happens,” he whispered to the sleeping faces. He took the finger back and saw, to no surprise, it had healed already. His knuckle tipped her chin up until the mouth closed. “I know there will be much more to see. Far greater sights to share.” His hand drifted to Jonathan Harker’s head and crawled in the brown-white field of hair. The hand crept to the shelf of his cheek as he traced the vanished trail of that slipped razor. “But I hate that the game needs so much distance in this stage.”
His claw swiped open a new red line. He bent to it, tasting the cut until, as before, it sealed. The young man slept on.
He floated away to the cupboards and drawers of the little space. Here was the typewriter standing like a beacon of temptation on the desk. It would take only the smallest note to upheave them all:
My Friend,
Thank you for tonight’s drink and those before it. See you soon.
—D
Again he resisted.
Though not quite enough to ignore the collection of typed memorandum Mrs. Harker had amassed. Hours crept by as his practiced gaze flew through the assorted narratives. Much of it bored him to the point of pain, bar the doctor’s description of his poor Helen—ah, no, Lucy—and her cruel demise. He had felt her destruction even at a distance, like the severing of a limb. Brisk as their time had been, she had been his, and the robbery would have demanded recompense even if the knights were not striving for his end.
“When the time comes,” he told the shape of Mrs. Harker, “do not take your new lot as my seeking a mere replacement. I mean that sincerely. It will be a revenge. You have done sizable work here,” he rustled the pages, “and are deserving of a retribution for your own sake. I would not short you such a private attention.”
There was scarcely anything else worth noting beyond the scant half-truths the Dutchman was feeding them. It was pleasing to see that the nonsense with the garlic flowers and the crucifixes had been swallowed like honey with only a few days’ playacting and toying with the wolf. He wondered if they would get to the Wafer trick with him before the game moved to the next phase.
Setting aside this latest drudgery, he thumbed until he found a surprise wedged near the bottom of the stack, a buried treasure. His eyes flashed like suns as he turned the horrid crescent of his smile to the man in the bed.
“You kept a diary? Wherever did you hide it?”
Mr. Harker stayed silent on the matter. So he remained as his translated entries were devoured page by page. His reader nearly sulked as the section reached its end. The newer entries were perused, but there was little enough intrigue in them. Nothing but loving foam and earnest goodwill and yet more swooning over the apparent genius of the Dutchman. Yet there was some gold to sift from the dirt. Of the two ills that had rattled him since his miraculous departure, it had been the fear of madness more than monsters that wounded his spirit. Uncertainty had been the thing to unmoor him. Even a reality populated with demons could be shouldered so long as he knew it to be reality.
“Good man,” his reader intoned. “Too many take the opposite turn. They break and never repair. But look at you, my friend. Ready to hunt once the goal is set. It is almost worth it to have you run away from home.”
Smiling, he set the typed pages back where he found them. It was even shorter work to unearth the journal itself. No longer afraid of spies, the good solicitor had tucked the slim volume under his pillow. His wife had done likewise. Still in the damned shorthand, he saw. He had intended to begin studying the art of that curt cipher once he was established in his desired estates. Rather, as fate had conspired, if he was settled. He shook his head. Such a thin holiday, this!
A last impetuous urge tugged at him to make off like a burglar with the journals. Perhaps even the typewriter. The pens, the pencils, the paper, the ink…
“No, I will not,” he sighed and tucked the diaries back in their places, laying the sleeping heads back in the dents of their pillows. “A poor attempt at our old fun is no reason to spoil our time to come.” He walked his nails under Mr. Harker’s jaw. “Thirsty work lays ahead, my friend. Would you mind terribly? Your darling scarcely spared a drop.” His young friend gave wordless assent. “My thanks.”
Memory rolled back to that final night shared in June, the pretense dead, the door swung open, the crucifix’s nettle-sting cast away with a swat as the awaited meal was thrust screaming into his teeth. His friend had been far too addled with consciousness to be pressed into sleep or trance. No, it had come down to the comic tragedy of a struggle. He almost laughed now to think of how the shaving razor had been waiting behind the crucifix, wanting to harvest something from the expected thief.
Again, too fast for such flailing.
He had drunk deep with his friend awake and hating and wetly muted against any prayer that might have come to mind. Finished, he had snatched the razor away and left his guest to mull the next night and those to follow with his eager keepers. Good-night, good-night, my friend, thank you for all you have given.
Once away, he had related much of the scene to his loves before their laughing lot shut themselves in to sleep. Not to worry, not to worry, the young man was not depleted. Nor would he ever be, should all go well. Too much good evidence suggested it would. Even Mr. Harker’s escape from his hostesses was a positive sign.
“Do not think I failed to notice all you did not write, my friend,” he spoke against the unmarred throat. “Was it because you thought it brought no merit, leaving them as a living man? Or because you knew others would read the whole of it? What would she think of that night? Of all the ones before it?” The spires of his teeth shined. “I wonder.” They slid into the pulse with perfect neatness.
The sleeping face hardly twitched. Seconds passed. A minute. Then he was unhooked from the red fountain and nursing the residue from his gums. The punctures closed before he counted to ten. He drummed his fingers over the spot.
“Much quicker than our misadventure in Munich, yes? I thought that fretting little soldier might have gone after you even with the officer there. He almost popped your skull even before he saw the mark. I do wish that scene had made it to your diary, if only to see how you might scramble to make it rational. Did you disregard it as imagination? What do you think of it now, my friend?” He bent until his mouth was nearly in the shell of the young man’s ear. “I have saved you more than once since you first crossed the water. Despite how you chose to repay me.” He took up one of the sleeper’s hands and pressed the fingers to the unchanged scar upon his white brow. “I would be most annoyed at this if it did not prove me right. A shovel, Jonathan! Of all things!”
He bit back a tide of laughter and laid the limp hand down upon Mrs. Harker.
“No, please, you need not apologize now, nor pour out your thanks. All will be mended in due time. We have aided each other already, as is only right for friends.” He righted the clothes and the covers until the couple was as they’d been. “My Harkers, my Harkers. We have such work before us. And play, where it can be taken.” He was all but vapor now. Eyes and a smile pinned to smoke. “I look forward to it.”
With that, the last of him faded and leaked away into the far corners of the night.
Dwalin, now – thankfully or sadly? – fully dressed again was staring up at us…staring up our skirts to be exact.
“Yes, ladies, do you need saving from that ruffian?” Another well-modulated voice resounded, followed by the fast, controlled steps of the captain of the Lacrosse-team, Thranduil.
“No-one will ever know!” I hissed mockingly at Tova who just rolled her eyes; she – evidently – had also forgotten that there was more than one team practising at this hour, in this part of the campus, and that we might be caught by several people. Thranduil – hating the Floorboll team – was, of course, the worst person to fall upon.
“Who do you call “ruffian”, you prissy fool?” Dwalin growled. It looked like Tova and me were about to witness a fistfight first-hand, while stuck on a wall, between two impressive specimens of the other sex.
If it hadn’t been that cold and uncomfortable, I’m sure that she wouldn’t have minded completely. Neither would I have, to be completely honest, but that was neither here nor there in this moment.
“Tova?” Thorin strolled out, dropping his bag immediately and pushing past his best friend to look up at us.
“Hello Thorin.” She replied in a small voice; how were we to explain what we were doing here?
“We…that is Jia…wanted to invite you to the small party in our hall tonight.” The words just gushed out of her mouth before I could bodily yeet her down. Either way, it was probable that her heart’s desire would have caught the wretch.
“DID WE?” I screeched, spearing her with an indignant look. “Oh yes, oh, there he comes! Ori, want to come to the party tonight?” Tova craned her neck and made the poor man stumble over his own feet with surprise as his name was called out so unexpectedly.
“Me? Party? Where? Ah, you said. At your place…erm…yes. Hi Jia.” He stammered, drawing closer. With every step he took, he seemed to hammer a fierce blush into his own cheeks which transformed my insides into goo and my tongue into lead. “Hello…” I sighed, ready to throw myself off the wall, but it wasn’t nearly high enough for me to just break through the crust of the Earth with the impact and vanish, never to be seen again.
“You came here to invite Ori to a party?” Thorin cocked an eyebrow, patting the other man quickly on the shoulder. “Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with Ori, mind you, but you both came here…to invite him? Only him?”
“Yeah, that sounds rather improbable. I am sorry to agree with that beefcake, but…I mean, can just anyone come?” Thranduil flipped back his long, almost colourless hair over his shoulder and turned his elegant profile into the dying sun as he looked up at us searchingly.
We – definitely – had never wanted to invite him, but being good girls, we could hardly invite half of those present and not the other ones. “No, you have to be invited.” Tova bit her lip, pondering the question at hand.
“Tova, no, no, we cannot. They’ll kill us. We cannot do that.” I whispered frantically. “You’re all welcome to come though.” As ever, Tova was convinced that she could get away with her hare-brained ideas.
In my mind, I could see Ceri – 2 doors down from our room – the perpetual teacup in her hand and her mouth set into a pouting moue upon learning that Tova had invited the most obnoxiously self-enamoured prick to the party.
“What are ye doing there?” Dwalin came back to the original question. Of course, there was no reason for us to be on a wall if we had only wanted to invite them; especially as it was now painfully obvious that getting down would be a lot harder than scrambling up, if we didn’t want to drop like sacks of flour.
“Stupid idea.” Tova gave him her most radiant smile and – with a shrug – he extended his tree trunk arms and lifted her from the wall easily. “Come on, little one.” He laughed and plucked me off the wall as if I was a low-hanging apple.
He shook his head at the others and jeered that this was exactly the reason they had no girlfriends.
“Well, not everyone is that ready to grab women by the waist” Ori huffed indignantly.
“Obviously.” Tova sneered at him, which made him look up with an almost wounded expression in his eyes.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you two beauties tonight then. Can I bring anything?” Thranduil picked his bag up and slung it carelessly across the straight, narrow back many a girl would have loved to decorate with her nails and teeth.
“It’s a party in a residence hall, not a date, dude.” Tova grinned, even though I knew for a fact that she would have loved this to be a date…only, not with the pale-faced prince of starlight.
With my feet on the ground again, I was ready to make for the hills, but – loyal as I was – I didn’t want to leave Tova behind to deal with the cloud of testosterone that was buzzing in the air. “Tova, if we are to attend that party, we should maybe leave…now?” I suggested softly, tugging at her sleeve.
“See you later, ladies.” Thranduil didn’t miss the chance to scoff at the other men and walked away as if there was a red carpet under every step he took. “Pretentious prick.” Thorin mumbled under his breath.
They were all popular with the ladies, but for different reasons, and I knew that Thranduil – being the heir to a vast fortune – was much sought after by gold-diggers and wanna-be-trophy-wives, whereas the floorboll-team was mostly fresh meat. They looked good and would have been worth the occasional tumble if one could pin them down, which was a thing often tried and never achieved.
There was the occasional rumour that there was more to Thorin than met the eye, but as far as we knew for a fact, they were all working-class lads who had made it to university by securing scholarships; they were the kind of chaps one would invite to a make-out session behind the bleachers and not to a dinner with one’s parents.
“So…do you want us to come as well?” Thorin then asked, looking first at Tova and then at me. “Or is it just Ori and Thranduil you wanted to invite? I mean, I’d understand…”
He – evidently – had not believed Tova when she had denied the whole date-dimension of the invitation.
“Thranduil? He’s invited himself.” Tova huffed, annoyed, but unable to go back on her word.
Time for revenge, I thought, a wicked pleasure spreading within my chest as I purred: “Oh no, Tova would be delighted if you could come. We know that it’s a bit last minute, but hey, she’ll even dance with you if you come.”
Her head swung around – I could hear the creaking horror movie sound effect in my mind – threateningly slowly.
“Oh? Are we filling each other’s dance cards now, darling? Right…” She walked purposefully over to Ori and whispered something in his ear that made him go bright red in the sunset gold pouring over them.
“TOVA!” I exclaimed. “Tell me, tell him… that whatever I said isn’t true.” She challenged me.
“I do not know what you said!” I hedged. “It doesn’t matter. You know me, and you know I know you.” She shot back.
“It is probably true? I would never express it like that, but there might be a bit of truth in it?” I admitted reluctantly.
I would not have thought it possible, but Ori went from bright red to a much darker shade, looking positively closer to cardiac arrest by the second – much to the amusement of his friends.
“Nice. We’ll see you later then…” Thorin took hold of Tova’s hand as she made her way back to me and lifted it gallantly to his lips. “I am looking forward to that dance.” He smirked and – at least – that vixen had the decency to blush as well.
“What did you say?” I hissed as she pulled me away, back to our dorm, to get ready as fast and as perfectly as anyone had ever tried to do. It was quite a feat to accomplish, but the stakes were higher than ever before, and time was running out.
Original Female Character | Starting Late Season 2
Will include canon divergence.
The cold winds whipped around the trees, blowing harshly against her pale skin, her long blonde hair wriggling out from her head like a hundred tiny snakes slithering out to freedom. It was cold enough to make even the Frost Giants want to stay by a hearth, she thought, as she sat on the shoreline.
It had been a long time since she was last in Kattegat, her father Floki had let her leave the moment she was of age, a glistening dampness to his eyes as he did, when she told him how she desired exploration. Nonetheless he let his little girl go, and she loved him for it. A truly free soul, he regarded her as, for she resembled him more than her long dead mother in that way, and hence he knew he could not contain her to the little hut he, Helga and she had shared throughout her childhood.
But now she had returned, and as she sat upon the beach, pondering her next move; whether to enter Ragnar's hall and seek her father out, or let the eventually gossip of fish-wives announce it to him, a large figure came towards her. His blonde hair stuck out brightly against his pale skin and his ice blue eyes stared at the figure upon the sands as if they meant to capture her blonde form on the spot.
"Runa Flokisdottir? Is that you?"
His gruff voice inquired, though surprise widening his eyes alerting Runa to the fact her arrival had not graced the gossiping hoardes of women through the town yet.
She stood slowly, stretching her aching limbs with gentle popping sounds and light gasps of relief expelling from her lips at each sound. She was taller than he remembered, nearly as tall as he was now, with blonde hair falling past her shoulders in braids not so dissimilar to the kind his mother wore. Rippling like water pouring from the rocks they fell, the wind lapping them about in the air to create a halo around her head. She looked strong, as a scar ran from beside her left eye to the base of her cheek burned red in the chill of winter.
"Is that little Bjorn, so grown up?"
Runa pondered aloud. For as much as Bjorn was observing her, she was doing the exact same of him: angling him up, akin to how a predator would it's prey.
He was so tall now, she thought, nearly two meters in height. Gone were the funny ears that stuck out like leaves and angry expression that she so loved to bring to his face. Now stood a young man, a beard just beginning to form on his chin, his figure pronounced for all the world to see as that of a warriors, and in that moment she thought she must have been looking at Rollo, if not for the stock of blonde hair that grew on his head. But the eyes.. The eyes were unmistakably Ragnar's eyes. So blue, it sent a chill to her very bones.. Or perhaps that was just the frostbite settling in?
He gasped a little at her enquiry, then chucked before launching himself forward to run and scoop her up in his arms. Runa, taken aback, had little time to prepare for the aptly named bear hug that engulfed her. For the first time in months, Runa let herself be filled with joy rather than concern, and a string of light giggles tumbled from her mouth.
Summary: Everyone in the world has a soulmate. And until they meet that soulmate, everyone in the world stops aging at 25. Wrongfully accused of a horrendous crime and on the run, you happen to bump into the man who’s been avoiding you for the past seventy-five years.
Warnings: Fluff, Slow Burn, Angst, Smut, Injuries, Violence, Language, More To Come
A/n: The first of many teasers for tonight and tomorrow! I really hope you like it...
~*~
‘The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.’
~*~
“How old are you?” You ask cautiously, always afraid to ask him anything about his past.
He exhales deeply, his face illuminated by the glow of the fire. “Over one hundred. I’ve been here a while.”
Your eyebrows raise, surprise covering your features.
“You’ve been running from her, havent you?” He stiffens, closes his eyes, then nods once.
“I... I’ve done a lot of bad things. And then... I came to my senses and started trying to help people. That’s why I became... this. So that I could keep people safe.”
You glance down at your lap, bottom lip coming between your teeth.
“Don’t you think you’re... contradicting yourself? I’m a wanted criminal and yet you’ve let me into your home. Why?” He chuckles without humour then looks over at you, his eyes burning hotter than the fire.
“I don’t fucking know. I know I should turn you in to Pierce. I know you should be behind bars for what you’ve done. But there’s a part of me... that doesn’t want to see you getting hurt. A part of me that doesn’t think you’re guilty. And I can’t fucking understand why.”
“How old are you?” He asks after a moment.
“Twenty-six,” you whisper, almost ashamed of yourself for being so young.
It’s quiet for a few minutes, the chirping crickets and the crackle of the fire keeping things from being awkward.
“Bucky?” You ask quietly, your voice shy.
He turns to you, waiting for you to speak.
“Will... will you show me something?” He hesitates then swallows hard at the innocent look in your eyes.
“What?”
You take his hand and slowly bring it to your chest, holding it there when he tries to move.
“Show me how a man loves a woman.”
~*~
LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO BE TAGGED IN THIS SERIES!!!
That’s right, I’m still writing this story-! This chapter is gonna be a long one, so here have a teaser!
“Look man! Whatever you think I did to MoonJumper, I didn’t!” Julia yelled trying to move out of the way; this was a chance to try and talk, even if she felt like it wouldn’t work. “MoonJumper acted on his own!”
“Lies and deceits!” The jester yelled “Do you take us as an imbecile?!”
“No, But I am now!” Julia yelled back, she knew it would make him more angry, but she wasn’t wrong. “Only an idiot would believe that I’m lying! Because I suck at lying!”
The shield shattered, Julia watched the green fragments rain down like glitter. She looked up in shock, as Zephyr cackled.
“Oh dear, the diamond’s shield has-“ Zephyr was in the middle of taunting, when all of a sudden he had to pull back from a large energy beam. A startled scream was let out from Zephyr as both the adults looked to side.
Head detached, the jester looked in confusion. That beam had come from a.. child..? There standing off in the distance was a majorly ticked off Hatted child and a very nervous sack boy.
Remus Lupin has just sat in a different compartment than he had for the past five years. Now, this wouldn't be a huge deal if it wasn't for the fact that the only reason he wasn't sitting there was because his friends thought he dropped out, which he had tried to. Remus states out the Hogwarts train window to the brick wall of platform 9 and 3/4 awaiting the shitstorm of memories to come back.
"I trusted you!" He spat clenching his bloody fist more. Sirius states in horror blood slipping down his face from his nose. "I thought you were my friend!" Remus clenched his fists. "I trusted you with everything!" Sirius looked like his world was crashing down. Remus continued to rage his arms knitting with the pain of tender muscles, his knuckles throbbing.
"What was the best possible outcome of this," venom was coursing through Remus' veins, "he'd be scared!?" Sirius shook his head slightly, scared. "That you'd get a good laugh!" Remus took a threatening step forwards, Sirius practically scrambled backwards into James. "I could have killed him!!" Remus didn't know how to make his point more clear, his voice was already breaking from the strain of yelling. "You would have made me a murderer!" Remus stepped towards him again, and Sirius fell trying to back up. The two boys stared at each other. Remus with seething hatred, and Sirius with toilsome sorrow.
"Congratulations," Remus grumbled wiping his hand on his robes, "you just let our biggest enemy know my biggest secret. By tomorrow the whole school will know. So I'm going to do it first..." He turned and started to stride off, "I'm leaving Hogwarts."
"Sir with all due respect-" Dumbledore raised a hand to silence him.
"If you're saying 'with all due respect' it means you are about to say something disrespectful, so save yourself the mumbling and just don't say it. You're an excellent student, Mister Lupin. I will not allow you to drop out."
"Filch is headed this way," James had his nose stuck in the map as usual.
"Of course he is, it's almost sun down." Sirius snickered shoving Remus who grinned his cheeks glowing.
"Accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." Remus eyes grew large and started to water. His mouth dropped as he gazed from the bearded man to his mother and father.
Screams of agony ripped through his little five year old throat. It burned, every part of him burned. Tears marked rivers down into his open mouth which let out a monstrous howl.
A soft clicking noise.
Click
Click
Click
He peered around his dark room. A small nightlight cast an orange glow on his bed. He waited, listening. Fear running mice up and down his body. He waited sweat pooling in his little hands.
Click
Click
Click
He swallowed a rock and waited even longer staying quiet.
In a flurry of bed and screaming and foul breath and large monster was upon him, ripping and tearing, yellow eyes set like diamonds in the rough that flared and glinted anger and passion.
Remus opened his eyes. His heart was pounding and his throat ached like he had just drank fire whiskey. His compartment was empty, and it was twilight. He fixed his eyes outside waiting for his heart to stop hammering against his rib cage.
Sirius stood leaning against Hogwarts in the cooling air. Whispers of smoke floating into the sky. He took another drag off his cigarette and let the smoke cascade in billows. He was bored without Remus' random facts about lung cancer. A surge of pain and anger flooded through him, and he took another long slow drag of his cigarette.
