Part 17: Painmother
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, but mostly biting.
In this episode: impalement, injuries, deaths (enemy), brief mind control, biting (noncon), dismemberment, blood, time dilation trauma.
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Part 16: The First Lession
Masterpost
The day passed without incident, apparently, because Black Tolly knew nothing from crawling into his sleeping bag until sunset woke him. He found Arden asleep still. They were actually under the covers, head mostly under a pillow. He could just see the tip of their nose sticking out. They now exuded a faint hair-raising underscent of tin, a sign of growing arcana.
“Where is this place?”
“We are inside your mind, and mine. This was a coliseum where I fought once. Now, pay attention, young idiot. This is going to hurt.”
Rather than startle Arden, he went to rinse his mouth with water (awful), change his clothes, and pack. The bloodstains had mostly remained in both sets of clothes, but they were dry, and the next real retail center he knew of was Ellensburg over on the dry side, so until then, waste not, want not. He packed his bag and laid Arden’s at the end of their bed.
“Did… Did I die?”
“Of course. Nothing can survive disintegration. I want you to remember what that felt like, boy, because it’s important to remembering how to inflict it on another.”
“Stop calling me boy!”
“Ah. I see we’re a slow learner.”
There were packets of cookies by the lobby coffee machine, a more graceful offering than he would have expected. Tolly went to negotiate checkout with a different desk clerk than before. She was equally as dazzled, fortunately. He made sure there was no scent or sound of anyone else before he persuaded her to a little kiss and pet behind the desk.
It wasn’t so hard to spare someone who wasn’t Arden. He fought down the panicked urge to take it all, every drop, and was torn between shame and pride when he left her dozing with her head on her arms on the counter. She might be tired for a day or so, but she was alive, and he was at his full strength again.
“No. Not again. Let me go!”
“When you can stop me. No sooner.”
Tolly set the coffee and cookies on the night table. The sound wasn’t loud, but Arden jerked violently, clutching at the mattress. He stopped moving at once, hand resting on their shoulder. “Arden?”
”Tolly?” they said. “Is that you?” Their voice quavered in genuine distress, raw as if they had been screaming. They shoved the blankets away violently as they sat up, grabbing at his hand with both of theirs. The tinge of arcana was stronger now.
“Yes, I’m here,” Tolly said. Now was not, he sensed, the time to be arch. Arden practically climbed up his arm to get to him, so he sat down, submitting to a surprisingly violent embrace. He closed his arms around Arden very carefully. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“How long was I gone?” Arden asked, without raising their face from Tolly’s shirt. Their heart fluttered against his chest like the wings of a sparrow.
“You slept through the day while I was resting.”
“God. Not even twenty-four hours? For me it was three weeks. Maybe more. It got harder and harder to tell. Aeolus, he – I hate to call it training.” They shuddered in Tolly’s arms. “I did learn.”
“How is this possible?” Tolly asked.
“He said we don’t perceive time accurately when we sleep. He – he threatened to keep me for years if I didn’t get better,” Arden said.
“Did he hurt you?” Tolly asked.
“Yes. Over and over,” Arden said. Tolly stroked their back, careful of his talons.
“We have to find you another familiar,” Tolly said. He kept his tone quite calm. He didn’t want to upset Arden further. He just wanted Aeolus in another body. Within his reach, ideally.
“I don’t know how,” Arden whispered hoarsely. “I don’t know how to revoke the pact.”
“We’ll find a way. Eat, drink. You’ll feel better,” Tolly said. He squeezed Arden very carefully and then freed one arm to get the coffee. A whiff of it had Arden grabbing at the paper cup with both hands.
“Oh, fuck, yes, coffee. Thank you. Yes.” They took a hasty gulp, slightly sloppy, then tore into the cookie packet with one hand and their teeth as he handed that over, too. Tolly watched until he was sure they were busy. Then he went to cut his hair short again, leaving the bathroom door open. Arden staggered in past him as he went to load his own things into the car.
He lay on the bed reading as he waited after that. Arden eventually emerged from the bathroom with a clean shave and makeup and bustled around packing, a little shaky still, but on the move. Eventually, Tolly became aware of them standing at the end of the bed.
“Yes?” he said politely.
“That’s the Complete Sherlock Holmes,” Arden said.
“You did loan it to me,” Tolly said cautiously. He sat up as he closed the book.
“Did you pack the other books, too?” They sounded curious, not angry, though something in Tolly still cringed and snarled and feared they would make him give it up.
“They wouldn’t all fit,” Tolly said. “Do you want it back?”
“No,” Arden said. “I have it on Kindle.”
“What’s Kindle?”
“It’s an app. You can get it while we drive,” Arden said. “I’m glad to see you’re all better.”
Tolly took up the omnibus and went to open the back of the Kia Soul. As Arden followed him, dragging the spinner, they said cautiously,
“Did you kill someone?”
“No. She wasn’t you,” Tolly said. “The longer I know you, the easier it will become, because you are not Nicholas. In the meantime, the desk clerk will be tired for a couple of days. If we’re around people, I can stay at my peak quite easily.”
“You really wanted to kill him,” Arden said, as they climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Passionately,” Tolly said.
“But you still grieve that he’s gone?” Arden asked, reversing out of the parking space. Tolly turned to look back between the seats.
“Yes. I don’t claim that is sane, but both are true,” Tolly said. “He was the only living creature I saw from when he tricked me until you found me. I loved him. I hated him. I still can’t quite believe he’s gone.”
“Complicated,” Arden said. He watched a camper pull out going back toward Seattle, then turned out onto the highway going East.
“It always is. Did Aeolus teach you anything useful, or was that just for his entertainment?” Tolly asked.
“I think he did,” Arden said slowly. “When we’re stopped again I’ll try to –“
The car shook violently. Tolly grabbed at the dash to keep from having his face smashed into it – stupid, he’d forgotten the seatbelt. Arden swerved onto the shoulder, and then the view out the front window tilted as the Soul started to lift into the air. Tolly grabbed at the door handle, but it snapped off in his hand without opening, and now they were fifteen feet up. He twisted to look back again. He could see a handful of dim shapes at the treeline, one with arms uplifted. The nearest Exalted is Painmother Nguyen, in Bremerton. How had they known where to set an ambush?
“Arden,” he said urgently. “She’ll drop us. A fall from this height won’t hurt me, but - ”
“Oh,” Arden said, eyes suddenly distant. Tolly could hear his pulse. It disquieted him that the sound of it wasn’t agitated. “I think I know what to do. When the door opens, jump.”
“I will not leave you.”
“I need you to stop the others,” Arden said. “You can buy me a chance. Go.”
The door snapped open. Tolly shot him one last agonized glance and jumped. It was a long fall, but no invisible hand snatched him from the air. Something tugged at his clothes, but then he hit the ground rolling and came up running at his fastest. He could hear them now. They had split, three moving toward three retreating cloud of leaves he had kicked up, two moving toward the car.
The car. Tolly scrambled up the trunk of a narrow fir with his talons until he could get to the lower branches, turning to hang by one arm with his feet braced against the bark. The Kia Soul was lowering slowly toward the ground, shaking and rattling as if in an earthquake. It dropped the last couple of feet as Arden dove from the driver’s side. A sudden cold wind whipped at Tolly’s hair. The three witches were spreading out, silent, no chatter. He shinned rapidly back down the tree to circle around the nearest. It was darker every second.
They must not have been sure of him, or they wouldn’t have attacked after dark. That was hopeful. This was confirmed as he whipped around another trunk and into view of a man in a dark coat. He jerked a hand up toward Tolly, hissing, “Seize.”
Tolly’s heart squeezed in his chest. It stopped him for a second, startled, looking down at himself. He looked up at the warlock. The man’s cold, tight expression said he believed he’d taken a life.
“Oops,” Tolly said softly, and moved. The man was probably still wondering why that hadn’t worked when cold hands snapped his neck. Tolly had chosen wisely not to drink; he barely darted away before white light almost blinded him. There was a stink of ozone as he sprinted around another tree. Lightning? The charge hadn’t traveled through the ground. Either magic could limit the reach of electricity, or the dead man had absorbed most of it.
The other two were back-to-back now, a man and a woman, both black-coated like the first. He glimpsed them through the trees as he kept running. Another bolt of lightning split a tree some feet behind him, not even close.
“Don’t start a fire,” he heard the woman say. “He can’t maintain that spell long. No one can.”
They thought he was using sorcery. That amused him. Neither would have time to realize their mistake. He dropped on them from another tree and flung the woman so hard that she smashed every bone in her body against a boulder. The man he seized by the throat to force eye contact.
“Sleep,” he said. The man put up more of a fight than Daniel had, but it wasn’t enough. Tolly watched as his eyes fluttered and shut.
The air tasted of metal. The wind still howled in Tolly’s ears as he hauled the unconscious man back toward the car. He saw Arden first. They stood leaning back with their arms up as if holding something heavy, and the air around them warped and rippled like water. Gravel struck trees and the grass behind them like a rain of bullets, embedding into trunks, striking sparks where stone hit stone. Where it hit the shield, it seemed to evaporate with little pings and hisses.
Exalted Painmother Nguyen stood yards away, facing them with one hand outflung. Through the distortion of her own powers, she looked to be an Asian lady of about the middle age, her hair in a neat roll and her coat black like the others. Her pulse sounded calmer than Arden’s now did. She knew she could outlast them, Tolly realized.
He did not at all expect her to perceive him as he charged. She didn’t question his speed or what he was. She didn’t even try to stop his heart. He was simply yanked into the air and hurled sideways. The world tumbled, and then pain ripped through his chest as his back slammed into something hard.
Tolly scrabbled for purchase with his boots and talons, unable to turn, expecting to fall. A tremendous pressure in his chest made him look down and see the blood-slicked length of rough fir bark emerging from just below his breastbone. He’d hit so hard in his impalement that smaller branches had snapped off all along its length. Some were still shaking down behind his back.
Blood oozed around the length of wood as he grabbed at it one-handed, sinking the talons of his other hand into the trunk by his hip to achieve a precarious balance with his braced boots. There was no numbness of shock, no disorientation of rushing endorphins as a failing body tried last-ditch efforts to save itself. He was keenly aware that his bottom four ribs were shattered and his heart and left lung were effectively obliterated. He could feel the branch grinding against his spine and his remaining ribs on that side with every slightest movement. Holding still didn’t ease the pain. Movement only made it worse.
Arden, where was Arden? Tolly looked around frantically as he realized he could only hear one pulse. The smell of blood was overwhelming, but it wasn’t blood that he knew, he realized with dawning relief.
Painmother Nguyen was in pieces. He could see one of her arms twitching in the grass nearby, and the back of her head not far off, yards from her torso in its black coat.
He couldn’t call out. Breathing was quite impossible –
“Oh, fuck, Tolly,” said a voice. Tolly rolled his head, but Arden must be somewhere below and to his right, where he couldn’t see. They sounded raspy and exhausted. “Hold still. I’ll get you down.”
It would have been easier if he could’ve blacked out as the invisible grip seized him and dragged him forward off the branch. He felt all of it, every tiniest roughness in the bark, every jagged edge of a broken twig stabbing into his wound on the way past. It seemed like it took forever. Then he was in air, and then, at last, his knees hit the ground. A shaking arm fumbled around his shoulder. Dark blood oozed slowly from the edges of the hole in his body as he looked down at it. It was trying to close, but slowly, burning through what he had saved.
“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Arden said. “Not both of us. But if you drink, you’ll heal, right?”
Tolly pulled himself around, grabbing at Arden’s shoulders to look them over. They were pale, bleeding vividly red from nose and eyes and ears. This close, he could at last scent it. The familiar torment was almost a comfort.
He laid a finger sharply over Arden’s mouth before they could speak again to give an order. Then he staggered to his feet and ran, doubled over and weaving, to find the warlock he had left alive earlier. He still lay sleeping in the pine needles under a tree where he’d been dropped.
He didn’t get time to wake up. Tolly gathered him up as gently as a lover and then latched onto his artery like a leech. He could hear Arden’s uncertain footsteps behind him as pleasure erased the pain in a gentle wave. When the pressure in the man’s carotid gave out, and the pulse in his ears died down, Black Tolly at last looked up to find Arden leaning on the tree trunk.
“So it does take a life,” Arden said hoarsely. Tolly inhaled. The lung held. He looked down at the smooth and undamaged expanse of his own chest.
“When the wound is dire,” Tolly said.
“I killed them,” Arden said. Their voice was the nervous one that Tolly knew and recognized, their pulse an irregular flutter. He stood up in one swift movement to catch them as they slumped forward.
“I have you, Arden. You’re all right,” he whispered as he gathered them up. They were light and limp in his arms, silent except for their heart.
He saw the fifth body as he carried Arden back to the car. The woman’s body lay twisted almost in half backwards. Arden’s powers must have thrown her into the protruding rear bumper of the black Sprinter van. It was all the way off the road, parked back from the shoulder under the darkness of the trees.
Tolly buckled Arden into the passenger seat, smoothing sweat-soaked hair back from their face. Their eye makeup had run again, black mingling with the bloody tears. They blinked a couple of times as he wiped it with his sleeve, but they couldn’t seem to hold their eyes open.
“Where’s the rest of your shirt?” they mumbled, head lolling into the seatbelt.
“I’ll get another one,” Tolly said. “How do you feel?”
“Everything hurts.”
“Hurts how?” Tolly asked.
“Throbs. It pulses, like… Another heartbeat. But bad.”
Tolly checked in his pocket. His phone had survived with a crack across the plastic outer case on the back. Eleven thirteen.
“Is this fatal?” he asked.
“Aeolus says… Probably not...” Tolly exhaled through his nostrils. He didn’t need to breathe. There was no reason for him to have been holding his breath. Arden’s early quixotry had been the result of confusion and the familiar self-destructive urges, not actual fact.
“Do you know how they found us?” he asked. He shook Arden slightly when there was no response, very careful, but insistent. “I’m sorry, child, but I must know. Ask the old man.”
Arden groaned. “Augury from the. Bodies. You can find the killer if you can scry within a couple of hours, Aeolus says. He – it’s – it’s hard for him to reach me now.”
“I see.” Tolly set his phone timer with great care. Then he bent to gently kiss Arden’s forehead. “Leave it to me, Arden. I’ll take care of it.”
He went around to the back of the car, stripping his ruined clothes as he went.
He had no idea if cars had passed them, but nobody had stopped. The Painmother and her presumed coreligionists had staged the whole thing back from the road. Headlights might catch the Soul in passing, but probably not the bodies. He wadded up the clothes into a plastic grocery bag rather than risk leaving them to law enforcement or witchery, not knowing if they could aid in this supposed augery. He hurriedly wiped himself down as best he could, then came up front to wipe Arden’s face with a clean body wipe, ignoring his groan of protest. In under five minutes he had rendered them presentable enough to pass for tired travelers, maybe ill in Arden’s case, but clean of blood. He coaxed Arden into taking a couple of naproxen sodium from Arden’s own luggage, washed down with a drink of water.
Then he started them to the East again, keeping politely within the speed limit. It was possible no one would find the bodies soon enough to perform divination, but he couldn’t depend on that. So in two hours, when their pursuers could no longer possibly tell from the bodies which way they were going, he would double back West. He was almost certain he could reach one of his surviving boltholes near Northgate before dawn.
Part 18: Weight of Dawn
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