[identity profile] pdglyph.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] wl_fanfiction




Chapter 11

The date was the 25th of July, 1934.

Greg had been living with me for some time, and I thanked God every day of it that we hadn’t come together again. Though you know that he, who had been getting laid or drunk or both every day of his unnatural life at a whim, was furious at being kept in such an ill-fitting place.

At first I dismissed it, since I was now almost completely indifferent to him for ruining my relationship with the man I loved, but after a while even I couldn’t ignore that he was getting a little stir crazy. Especially when he began greeting me in the night-morning by spitting at me and howling to be killed.

Finally, I’d given in and made him up a room in the guestroom after fixing a large padlock on it and taking out anything I valued. I opened his door one evening to find him just lying on the bed staring at the ceiling. “Greg…” I sighed.

“Why don’t you just kill me, man?” he asked, still staring up at the ceiling. “This is almost as bad as Heaven was, just sitting around and doing nothing. Only let out to piss and eat. I can’t drink, I can’t fuck and I just realized the other day, when you let me out for food… I haven’t had sex since 1930… Four fucking years!” he shouted angrily.

I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against the doorframe.

He sat up suddenly, looking at me with those dark, piercing eyes. They were angry, bordering on lunatic. “Do something, Mochrie, or I swear I will kill myself and take my chances. I’ve been to Hell and I’ve served my time in Heaven, but this is insane. So kiss me, kill me, or let me go so I can take my chances on the streets.” He frowned, eyes sliding to the side. A pale, watered down version of his normal grin resurfaced. “Preferably kiss me… I’ve been dying for a repeat performance…” his voice caught as he watched me watch him.

“You won’t get one,” I said blankly. It felt peaceful, this empty buzzing sensation that I felt all the time. Hunting, talking with the others… I felt nothing without R- without him. Well… except maybe pain. That I felt quite well.

Greg was suddenly in front of me, his button down hanging loosely on his sallow, and slightly thinner frame. Everyone I knew was thinner… hard times did that to people, I guess. I looked down at him, felt his breath on my lips. But he just stared at me. I watched him as he swallowed hard, his heartbeat speeding up just a little as his eyes traced my lips.

I remembered when he once was able to touch me intimately without using his hands, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop him. The thought didn’t anger me, didn’t set fire to my lust. It didn’t do anything, even with him trembling as I sniffed delicately at his neck. I was cold, curious, and empty. Not a good thing, I knew, and as good as he smelled, all swirls of heady desire and want and fear… I didn’t feel a single thing.

“Get your coat,” I said, pulling away. He blinked at me. “Let’s go and see what we can find to entertain you.” I left him sagging against the doorframe.


His eyes were wide and I would’ve said frightened if I hadn’t known that the remnants of the demon inside his brain wasn’t giddy with joy at the amounts of sadness, despair, and death all around us. Chicago was a wreck. Everywhere you looked, the homeless hid in hopes of some shelter from the night and its terrors, hoping for food, hoping to survive to do it all again tomorrow. Some did, some didn’t.

“This is incredible,” he said softly, under his breath as we trudged down the street. We went to his old bar. The Monastery wasn’t serving anyone anymore, and no one was in any condition to buy it or plow it over. Greg leaned against the building, caressing it, moaning softly. “I can’t feel her… she’s dead…”

I shrugged. “Let’s go.” He shot me a look of pure malevolence, but got back in the car without any comment.

Our next stop was Ryan’s place. I’d stayed away all these years, but seeing Greg caressing the broken down building had me worrying because I hadn’t seen him in a very, very long time. Greg knew enough not to say anything when he realized where we were headed, and knew to keep his mouth shut at the look of anguish that must’ve been on my face when I saw that Ryan’s place had been closed down.

We got out of the car, staring at the building, dead like so many others around it. Greg watched me as I looked for the bum who’d sat across from it in better days, had been so proud of it as though it’d been his, only to find a rotting smell. I didn’t look much further, gagging to get the smell of sweetly rotting flesh off my tongue. I kicked a garbage can, which caved with a squealing groan of metal, and growled.

“Let’s go,” Greg said lightly, but held up his hands and backed up a step when I flashed him a dangerous look.

I rested my chin on my forearms as I leaned against the car. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this Greg… I wasn’t supposed to be this way, this depression was never supposed to happen… They say there’ll be war… in Europe… Another war. Just when they’d promised us that the Great War was the one to end them all. We’d have ever-lasting peace…”

Greg snorted derisively, turning in to a rush of cool wind and sighing happily in it. “There will never be everlasting peace for humanity. I can tell you that now, because peace is always going to be a short-lived illusion created by people who’re too frightened to admit that the world is a horrifying, dangerous and terrible place.” He turned to face me, mirroring me as I watched him on the other side of the car. “As to ‘not supposed to be this way’…” he gave me that shark’s grin, which had lost none of its menace even without the matching shark teeth. “Obviously this was how it’s all supposed to be, since it happened.”

I opened my mouth and was suddenly overcome with unease. My heart was pounding, and I broke out in a sweat as though I’d been running for miles. Greg even looked at me in mild concern as I staggered into the car, starting it up and gunning it before he shut the door behind him.

“Mochrie, where the fuck are we going?!” he demanded, gripping the door handle and dash board tightly as I swerved, following a pulling sensation in my gut. “What the hell is the matter with you?!”

“He needs me,” I whispered as we skidded to a halt, Greg slamming into the glove compartment and cursing heartily as he clutched his forehead. I smelled his blood but didn’t stop. He needed me… Now…

Greg was shouting after me as I got out of the car, and I turned to see him chasing after me, blinking blood out of his eyes. “Greg, he needs me! So follow or get lost!”

And I ran.

I ran so fast my lungs felt like they’d burst, and I heard Greg’s ragged breaths fade as I pulled ahead, dodging trashcans, bums, then… the sound. A terrified cry, horribly familiar, and the excited snarls of a hunt. He was being hunted. “RYAN!” I cried out, my coat threatening to trip me as I vaulted a chain link fence.

“COLIN!” he screamed, and then a cry of pain. I rounded the corner to find a pack of illbreeds chasing him as he ran right for me.

“Duck!” I shouted, drawing so fast he hadn’t even hit the ground when the first two bullets went through the vampires, spraying the others with bones and blood and thicker things. They didn’t even stop. Why didn’t they stop? Dimly I heard screaming, and I think it was me as I kept firing into the roiling mass of hateful, spitting, hissing shapes with hungry eyes and gaping mouths. They leered at me, and suddenly I saw the first vampire I’d ever met. He’d been pale, with a mop of dark hair and eyes like two empty, black holes in his face. And his smile, his teeth, how empty he was, all malevolent appetite and nothing else.

It was all his fault.

Hatred welled in me like a tidal wave, my hand throbbing with it. Blood would make it feel better. Blood would soothe the burning, roiling pain.

I sailed past Ryan’s terrified, prostrate form on the ground, and tore into them with relish. I nearly came when my hand sank into one illbreed’s chest, and he clawed at my arm even as my gun in his nose silenced him. I flung the body away from me, striking another with it and throwing them both into a wall. The pinned vampire whimpered and squirmed in pain, trying to get away from his fallen comrade. I felt something hit my back, and we both went sprawling, the momentum of the creature sending him tumbling ahead of me.

He hissed, baring his fangs at me, glancing around for company. He had only the creature struggling to stand with a broken leg and he knew it. The rest of his pack mates lay strewn in the garbage, their bodies waiting to disintegrate into ash when the morning light hit them.

He glanced at my hand, soaked up to my elbow in brackish blood and hissed, this time in fear. He knew what it was, knew what it meant. “Charge me…” I grated through clenched fangs. “Charge me you fucking coward…” It came out slow, measured and serene.

He growled at me and charged. I caught him by his throat and swung him around, spinning us both until he hit the wall. A deep, animalistic shriek came out of his mouth until I crushed his throat. He collapsed against the wall, eyes wide and frightened as he clawed at his ruined windpipe. I snarled down at him, and backhanded him with all of my strength. Everything I constantly had to hold back, to keep in check, I let it out on his delicate looking, high-boned cheek. His face caved in and his hands fell away from his throat.

The body twitched as shards of bone settled into his brain, and the sudden silence almost hurt, my ears ringing in it.

I sighed, feeling so light, so giddy. So this is how it felt to let it all go. I looked at my gun in distaste. It wasted so much potential. I glanced over at the last, whimpering little illbreed who’d been thrown into a wall. He’d been taken at what looked like fifteen, too young even for my tastes. I shrugged and shot him through the head, popped the cylinder open and reloaded.

I holstered my gun, grimacing at the stains on my clothes soaking down to my skin, black in the dim light and turned to find Ryan watching me. He didn’t even jump when Greg rounded the corner, gasping for air, clutching a hand to his ribs as he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped at his sweating, bloody face.

“I came to save you…” I said quietly. I felt like a young child holding a messy finger-painting up to his father. I wanted approval. Because I did good, I saved him. That was good, wasn’t it?

“Huh?” Greg grunted, then glanced at the petrified Ryan and nodded, leaning against a wall. “Oh…”

“Oh dear… Lord…” Ryan turned and vomited long and hard, and I was rather grateful he was already on his knees, because that’s where he would’ve been when he finally finished. “You’re a monster…” he whispered. I cocked my head at him, frowning, dimly aware that my heart was breaking yet again. “You’re a fucking monster, how could I… how could I not know, how could I have slept with you been in love… with you… don’t…” he stood, trying not to look at me and yet somehow his eyes would skitter back to me. I wished they wouldn’t. He crossed himself, looking away only to see the bodies. Then he looked at Greg. “This is all your fault…” he said, just barely angry and too frightened to be much more.

Greg shrugged, unconcerned. “Yeah it was. But hey, at least I can stand by him when he needs me the most.”

Ryan reeled like he’d been struck across the face and looked at me, his eyes filled with abject pain and horror. “Dammit Col…” he whimpered. “I’m so sorry…” and then he ran.

I just watched him go. I took the handkerchief Greg handed me and wiped absently at my face and hands. He tossed it away in distaste when I handed the black and brown mess back to him. “Shall we go home?” he asked.

“Yes,” I nodded.

“Good, cuz I dunno about you, but this smell is making me hungry,” he mumbled, glancing back at the carnage I’d left behind.

Even if part of my mind was screaming in gibbering terror, the other part was humming happily in agreement at the same time. Some nights it was refreshing to have someone around who was a bigger monster than myself.
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