Left Alone 14: His Eyes Have All The Seeming
Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. Tropes/content warnings: vampire whumpee/caretaker, male whumpee/caretaker, non-binary whumpee/caretaker, morbidity or thoughts of death. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. Mostly we're talking about consent to be bitten, but being bitten in this universe varies from "mild discomfort" through "multiple climaxes" and I don't know where the story will end up yet, so I think it's important to be clear.
In this episode: possession by a spirit, bloody non-fatal injuries, vampire sun damage or sunburn, exhaustion, fainting/loss of consciousness from injuries, choking, threats of death, TW for Latin scholars who can tell how bad the translation is.
If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!
Part 13: Cabin
“Tolly. Tolly, hey.” Someone was shaking his shoulder, familiar heartbeat loud and excited in his ears. Tolly tried to ignore it for a while. His body felt made of lead, which meant it was still daylight. But the irritating voice did not stop, so at last he unzipped the sleeping bag and crept out from inside it and halfway out from under the covers.
“Arden, it is day. I trust this is important,” Tolly said. He leaned on his elbow as he regarded Arden, who now sat on the edge of his bed in the cabin instead of their own. Their hair was wildly disarranged, which he hoped meant they had at least gotten some sleep today. He couldn’t help noticing that even now they hadn’t said wake up, which would have compelled him to obey.
“It’s important. There’s letters carved around the ruby in Latin or something,” Arden said. “I can’t read them. Can you?”
They thrust their hand under his nose. Tolly caught at their wrist – warm, delectable, pulsing beneath his fingers – and looked at the ring, trying to focus on it. A faint burning on his face and shoulder drew his attention to the window. The room’s curtains were shut, but there was still a pale, painful glow around their edges. Even looking at it stung his eyes. He looked quickly back at the ring.
Around the edge of the ten-carat star ruby, words were incised, tiny and finely carved into the gold.
“Yes, it’s Latin,” Tolly said.
“What’s it say?” Arden said.
“Hold still. Hold still, Arden.” His entire upper body was starting to hurt. The sun could easily get through his cotton shirt. He could see the flesh of his own hand turning red as he read aloud. “Pactum faciam in nomine - ” He cut off abruptly, letting go of Arden as he jerked back under the covers and sheets into merciful darkness.
“Are you okay? I closed the curtains,” Arden said.
“It’s an instruction for forming a – hhh – a pact with a spirit,” Black Tolly said from the safety of shadow, trying to keep the pain out of his voice. Everything in contact with his upper body hurt. “But there’s no name to summon them by. Nicholas would have left a name.”
“Damn. Tolly? You looked - ”
“It doesn’t hurt. I’m already healing.” The pain in his skin was rapidly fading. He could feel his blood being spent on it, but he had fed well. It wasn’t a problem. It probably wouldn’t even grow his hair back out. But it still felt like trying to think through mud, like looking at the world through molasses. The blankets felt like iron weighing on his shoulders.
“We’ll talk of it tonight. The sun is too heavy, Arden.” He slumped, face in the crook of his arm, and not even Arden’s worried voice could keep him from black sleep now.
When he woke again, his mind was clear. Night had fallen. Something warm lay across his right wrist – familiar pulse – Arden’s hand. He lifted the covers and found Arden asleep, their breathing shallow and regular and extremely close because they were lying across his bed. Tolly regarded them as he lay on his side.
This is good. If they care for me, they will treat me better than he did.
I don’t deserve that. Nicholas understood me better than they do.
What choice do I have?
As he moved, they stirred, blinking in the dark. “Tolly? Are you back?”
“I’m back,” he said.
Arden fumbled for the lamp, giving Tolly enough warning to shield his eyes until they adjusted. “Are you all right? You scared me a little.”
“If I’m not ashed and scattered, I am not truly dead.” He slid out, eellike, as Arden sat up. “Worry about your own health, not your monster’s. Did you eat today?”
“I finished the Soylent and had another bar,” Arden said. “And I went and got a burger at the Lodge restaurant.”
Black Tolly warred with himself about whether to scold Arden for leaving without him or be glad they were at least eating. Finally, he settled on, “Good. Drink another Soylent, please, and we will discuss the ring.” He ran his hands over his head as he straightened away from the bed, standing in front of the treacherous curtains. His hair was still too short to be easily disarranged.
“You said it had a summoning ritual on it, but no name,” Arden said. “You don’t know the name of the spirit that Nicholas got power from?”
“No. He never said. So, he can’t have expected you to learn it from me,” Tolly said. “It must be somewhere else on the ring.” He considered. “He wouldn’t imperil your life by forcing you to remove it.”
The two of them stared closely at the ring for a while. Arden tilted it slowly to and fro in the lamplight.
“There’s something inside,” he said. “Something’s carved on the back of the stone inside the setting. Can you see it? It’s only visible if you tilt the ring just right.”
“Give me your hand again.” Tolly tipped the hand and ring very slowly, eye almost touching it, until the light hit just right in the red depths and he saw…
“Letters,” he said, letting go. “There is more than one language, but one is in Carolingian Miniscule. As few people who now exist understand a script used to write the Vulgate in only the earlier part of the thirteenth century, I have to assume it is meant for me. Of the others, one is in runes I can’t read, one is in a later Latin script, and one is in English. These preceding three are each marked with a small cross.”
“So what’s the final name?” Arden asked.
“Aeolus. Perhaps it is intended to summon the spirit.” He couldn’t keep doubt from his tone. Tolly was well aware of his ignorance in these matters, an ignorance cultivated by long centuries of carefully avoiding people he knew could end him, and Nicholas had very deliberately done nothing to dispel that.
“And it’ll teach me to cast spells? To defend myself?” Arden said.
“I don’t know,” Tolly said. “He must have thought so. Perhaps it is a familiar he has used himself.”
“It can’t hurt to try, right?” Arden said. “Worst case is that nothing happens.”
“I think we have little choice,” Tolly said. “The Silencer team were not able to cast violent spells. I’ve never had to face someone who could.”
“All right.” Arden sat up straighter, wiping at their eyes to get the cobwebs out. “Read me the Latin.”
“Pactum faciam in nominee illius qui hunc anulum non praecipere potest,” Black Tolly said. He paused every few words to let Arden repeat after him. Then, when he had come to the end, he said, “Now the name.”
“Aeolus?” Arden said.
The two of them sat looking at each other for a moment, Arden with one foot off the bed braced on the floor, Tolly standing opposite them.
“So what’s supposed to happen?” Arden asked. Before Tolly could answer, he saw them twitch, grabbing at the cheap headboard behind them. “The – the fuck is happening - ? Who are you?” They were staring at something, as if someone stood to Tolly’s right. When he turned his head, he saw nothing. There was no sound or scent of another person in the room.
“There’s no one else here,” Tolly said.
“He’s gone,” Arden said. “I don’t - ” They jerked violently, as if yanked by invisible strings. Tolly would have sworn they lifted completely from the bed for a second. “No, wait. You can’t - ” Their eyes rolled up into their skull, only white showing. Tolly dove in and grabbed at their arms to stop their head bouncing back against the wall. For a moment he thought they might be seizing.
“Arden? Arden, can you hear me?”
The tremors stopped. After a moment the eyes rolled back down, and Arden blinked up at him slowly.
“I’m not Arden.”
Tolly was violently yanked backwards and slammed into the floor. He was stunned to realize he couldn’t move. All of his great strength couldn’t lift one finger from the carpet. It was like being crushed by a giant fist. If he had needed to breathe, it would have been very difficult to do so. His bones creaked and the floorboards creaked under him.
A face hovered into his view. Now it was smiling, and not in the shy small way he had seen Arden smile. The wide, slightly distorted grin didn’t look right. It didn’t move the eyes, and the eyes didn’t blink.
“Well, that was more effortful than it should’ve been,” said the possessing spirit. The voice was forced into a lower pitch, rougher than Arden’s normal tone. A thin trickle of blood ran from one nostril.
“Let them go. The body isn’t yours, Aeolus,” Tolly said.
“Obviously it is,” said Aeolus, through Arden’s mouth. “It’s still weak, but I’ll soon see to that. Thinking he could fight me for it. Ha. Yes, idiot, I can hear you in there screaming THEY. I don’t care. The body’s mine now, and so are you, until I see fit to throw you Outside.”
Tolly, listening to this monologue, had never ceased straining against his bonds. He knew immediately when they started to weaken.
“Stop struggling,” Aeolus said immediately, head snapping around to look down at him there on the cabin floor. Tolly froze out of pure reflex. “That’s better. You’re a prisoner of Nicholas’ little toy, aren’t you?” He held up the ring to look at it, sniffing back more blood from Arden’s nose. “I watched everything he did, you know. That’s part of the pact. But why be a passenger when you can drive?”
He walked Arden’s body over to stand straddling Tolly, looking down.
“His eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,” said Aeolus. “Nicholas quoted that a great many times, looking at you. I see why.”
It was at this point that Tolly came off the floor so fast that his movement could not be tracked with the naked eye. His hand closed around Arden’s throat as he spun, and then he slammed Aeolus back into the wall by the door. Their feet – his feet – their feet barely touched the ground, scrabbling to keep him from being choked to death as Arden’s hands clawed at Tolly’s wrist.
“Let me go,” hissed Aeolus.
Tolly slapped him.
He was careful. He could’ve taken Arden’s head off. But he had been out of his prison for long enough to have rebalanced himself to his own strength, to the habit of lifetimes. Arden’s head rocked to the side, a red mark rising on their cheekbone.
“I take it you don’t truly hear the words of the invocation. You certainly didn’t stop to read the inscription yourself,” Tolly said. “Pactum faciam in nominee illius qui hunc anulum non praecipere potest. And you, Aeolus, cannot command this ring.”
“Let me GO,” Aeolus demanded again. Black Tolly slapped him back the other way.
“Let me go, or I’ll tear you to pieces!”
“Why don’t you, then?” Tolly asked. Aeolus’ eyes rolled upward again, and Tolly felt a sensation like knives cutting at his flesh, but now when he braced himself the bruising force could not pry his fingers from Arden’s throat. It was an exquisite agony, wounds opened all over his body as if slit by many little knives, but he remained. And blood gushed from Arden’s nose. The eyes came back down, furious, old eyes in a young face.
“Arden’s body isn’t accustomed to your power yet, is it?” Black Tolly said. “You’ve already spent what they can channel. And now you can’t stop me from drinking you dry.”
“He – they say you’ve been ordered not to kill them!”
“And so I have. But, as you’ve pointed out, you’re not Arden,” Black Tolly said. He leaned closer, grinning brightly so that Aeolus could see his fangs slide out of their sheaths in his gums, growing to a length unnatural in a living human being. “And I can do whatever I like to YOU, Aeolus. So, mark me well. You can remain where you are, and I will consume you. I’ve been desperately craving this blood from the instant I first scented it. I can barely contain myself. And now you’ve made me bleed.
“Or you can fall back to where you belong, and teach them and give them power in trade for sharing their senses. That is the pact. As long as Arden is in control, I can do no harm to this body I hold. I suggest you make your mind up very quickly. My thirst grows every second.”
Black Tolly leaned in very deliberately, ignoring the weak attempts to pull his fingers away, and ran his rough tongue over the blood that covered Arden’s lips and chin. Aeolus could see his eyes glaze with the intense pleasure it gave him, his grip starting to tighten as the giddy frisson rolled through every one of his senses. For that instant, he didn’t feel the pain of his wounds at all. For that instant, every single thing he had suffered over the last few seconds had been more than worth it.
“All right, all right! Stop!” Tolly came back to himself to find Aeolus suddenly limp in his grip, features slack, eyes half-open. He let go at once, jerking back in terror. Had he killed Arden after all?
But no, he could hear a pulse thundering in his ears when he had none. The body crumpled in a heap in front of him was alive.
Now he felt the pain.
Tolly swayed, looking down at himself. Blood soaked his clothes in oblong patches where his skin had been slit. He felt the sting where the open air touched the cuts in his face and hands. He bled slowly, and the narrow wounds were already trying to close, but he could feel the loss of strength where blood had been lost, where blood was being spent to heal. His mouth felt dry. He fought down panic at the memory of his shriveled flesh inside the secret room, at every swallow scraping his throat.
He bent to seize Arden and carry them to the bath, before he should bleed on the cabin’s carpet, and there he slumped into the tub with them lying against his chest. He could see blood running down the drain between his bare feet. Some of it soaked into one of Arden’s white socks with their worn-down heels.
The sensation of a living body draped over his dead one was intoxicating. He could feel every small pulse. And that pleasure would become more painful every instant that his thirst was not sated. His canines refused to draw back on their own.
“Wake up. Please, Arden,” he said, and now he could not keep the exhaustion from his voice. “I can’t – I can’t bear this. I need you here.”
Part 15: Glass of Water
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