Being Human: Ausencia [Hal/Eve, sequel to Lonely Rivers] 1/3
Title: “Ausencia”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: NC-17
Timeline: AU!future as shown in episodes 4.01, 4.07, 4.08.
Summary: To save humanity the War Child must die. Eve found a loophole but humanity isn’t as grateful as it should be. Sequel to Lonely Rivers. [Hal/Eve, side Hal/Cutler]
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Title is Spanish for absence.
Dedication: for shirogiku (my Eve is your Eve; don’t leave the fandom!) and non-canonical (did I ever tell you how much I love your obsessing over every single detail in this series?).
A/N: I actually hate writing sequels and multi-chapter fanfics but this story just begged to be written.
AUSENCIA
Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind.
James Joyce. “Ulysses”
Part 1
The tea is all wrong. It tastes the same but somehow paler, thinner. Her hands are shaking the first time she tries to make it after a break. She overdoes it with the milk and she almost spills the resultant drink over Regus’s scrolls.
(The first time he visited her in her suite, he apologized for not having been able to help her. He said he knew Annie, they’d traveled together for a bit, but things changed - and well, being Lord Hal’s keeper of scrolls was better than being a pile of dust in a hoover bag. Maybe it was Annie’s name that did it, but Eve didn’t feel as sick at the sight of him as she did at the sight of the others.)
“Easy,” Regus tells her in that kindly tone that he adopts when speaking to her. She may be mistrustful, and for a good reason, but the man honestly fails at being a vampire, so she can drop her guard around him once in a while.
The sight and the smell of blood make her want to retch. He tells her she should eat something. She nods and smiles and - “I will,” - the promise she doesn’t intend to keep.
* * *
“What is it with you and hunger strikes?” Hal wonders.
She feels giddy, needless breathing searing her throat. There is blood under her fingernails much like there was dirt before. She wants to laugh and she feels some repulsive, gurgling noises clawing their way out, but when she opens her mouth, there is silence.
He tries to pull her closer. She pushes him away and snarls at him, “Don’t touch me!”, lights up a cigarette with trembling fingers and coughs out the smoke. Hal grips her by the shoulders and says urgently:
“You can take a glass. No one has to die.”
And that’s - oh God, that’s funny.
“Are you fucking serious?” She’s always had quite a mouth on her; he claims to like it. See how he likes it now. She stubs out her cigarette on his forearm. He jerks, but they’ve done worse. They will do worse. His blood inside her is boiling. “How stupid do you think I am? If you give me a steak, I’ll know it comes from a dead cow!”
They all tell her she needs to eat something. Like she’s a sick child. But hey, it’s not like she’ll die if she keeps going hungry. Oh, wait, that has already been taken care of.
She takes comfort in the fact that she is creating problems for him. She remembers the faces of his flunkies when they saw her. Jacob laughed and he carried on laughing even after he realized it was not a joke. Fergus cursed but mostly managed to keep a straight face. Cutler looked sick, undoubtedly imagining a variety of scenarios of what would happen to him if Eve told Hal about his involvement in her escape.
Hal grips her chin and forces her to look at him.
“If you want to save humanity,” he says slowly, “sacrifices must be made.” It’s hilarious when someone like him talks to her about sacrifice.
He lets go even before she insists on it. He has been very civil lately. She can’t understand why. They are playing a different game now, though she can’t possibly imagine what his interest in it is. He is not getting anything out of it, not even her.
* * *
The press conference is Hal’s idea. Regus finds it insane but he wouldn’t speak up in front of Hal, and Eve wouldn’t let him talk her out of it in private.
Her awakening is slow and torturous, much like falling asleep was. She won’t lie: after years of sleeping in bunkers, on the floor or in dirt holes, a real bed with a springy mattress and a number of soft, puffy pillows seems like a haven, even though it seldom brings sweet dreams.
Eve disentangles herself from the warm embrace of the blanket and walks over to the dressing table. The emptiness in the mirror still unsettles her. She peers at it intently as if trying to figure out how it works, how a simple mirror can make her believe, even for a second, that she is not here, that she is nowhere. But it could be worse. She could be looking at her reflection and seeing Hal.
She gets dressed - a simple, elegant black dress and a string of pearls. Hal has been extremely generous with his gifts lately. She barely knows how to wear these things. She would have preferred her military vest strewn with crosses, but she is going for confident, successful and generally pleased with her life rather than writhing in pain in front of an audience.
She runs a brush through her hair - a good boar bristle paddle brush with a rosewood handle (she heard the maids talking), nothing like those plastic combs with jagged teeth she had to use before. She doesn’t really know what to do with it. She has worn her hair long since she was ten even though Tom vocally objected to it and Annie was inclined to take his side more often than not when it came to safety measures. You never know what an enemy can use to choke you. Could be your own hair. That was how Tom saw the world. Everyone was an enemy.
Eve started tying her hair up in tight buns and hiding it under headbands when her participation in the fighting became more active. Something tells her a headband wouldn’t go well with this dress. She would attempt Audrey Hepburn’s look in Breakfast At Tiffany’s (Annie liked the film; Eve has only seen an old, faded promo poster once) but she has no idea how to do it. She doesn’t want to call the maids; they are afraid of her and they don’t even bother to hide it. No one had ever made her feel scary before.
She ends up doing a simple ponytail.
Make-up leaves her positively terrified. She has to wash it off several times before she finally gets it right if you believe a flimsy reflection in a bowl of water. The empty mirror leers at her. She feels shallow for liking the way she looks, the way her nails are clean and neatly clipped, the way her hair is actually a few shades lighter than it used to seem in the sickly semi-darkness of the bunker.
Eve is no stranger to public speeches. She has delivered her fair share of them before the troops of the resistance and she can’t recall a word of what she may have said. It feels so artificial, so insincere now.
The crowd consists mostly of what few “free” people remain in the city, humans and vampires alike. The rest of the country will hear the address live on the radio. Eve knows there are agents of the resistance out there, undetected, drawn by rumours and fruitless hopes. Just thinking about it gives her the biggest attack of stage fright she has ever experienced. She wishes they could just let the world believe the War Child has disappeared but that would be dishonest at the very least.
Hal is standing right next to her, flawless in his impeccably tailoured suit. She envisions procuring a stake and driving it through his heart for the audience to cheer, except killing Hal wouldn’t stop the end of humanity, not anymore, wouldn’t even delay it, and they would most likely cheer for her to follow suit.
She steps up to the microphone. She hates the way they look at her with dark, suspicious eyes. She says: “My name is Eve Sands. I am the War Child,” and there is no going back. Stunned silence holds for half a minute before exploding into a cacophony of shocked outcries, questions and exclamations. The vampires must be wondering why she doesn’t look like a prisoner. Humans, most of whom are collaborators and have been on the resistance black list for years, are frightened and uncertain.
Eve talks about the upcoming healthcare reforms, the planned lifting of the pregnancy embargo, means to combat hunger and control epidemics, and wonders if it sounds like a load of political bullshit. She makes promises she isn’t sure they’ll be able to keep (isn’t even sure Hal plans on keeping them), and the words feel stale in her mouth.
Someone in the crowd laughs. It’s a hoarse, abrupt sound that makes her think of all the dank labyrinth of the abandoned tube, the stench of mould and sewage in the guts of the earth.
“Pretty words,” the man says, “from the lips of a devil’s whore who’s traded her own humanity for creature comforts!”
Eve sees security guards moving through the crowd and she opens her mouth to stop them (she wants people to speak up even if they are not her people anymore) when something flies up and lands on the stage in front of her. There is a loud bang; flames rise and some dark liquid splatters all over the guards. Someone screams. Eve feels a firm grip on her forearm and is dragged away from the burgeoning inferno. She struggles to breathe past the stench of the melting flesh. An incendiary bomb containing werewolf blood. The resistance does not use organic matter frequently, for obvious reasons. She should be flattered.
Eve looks up at her rescuer. Surprisingly, it’s not Hal but Cutler, trying and failing to look unaffected.
“It’s fine, it’s all good,” he mutters; Eve wonders distractedly whom he is trying to reassure. “Just what we wanted, right?”
Eve says through clenched teeth: “Let go of me.”
“Hey, I’ve just saved your - well, maybe not your life but certainly your pretty face!” Think Hal would like you covered in blood burns, is what he leaves unsaid but she hears it anyway. Cutler has never been particularly secretive about his feelings on the matter of her recruitment.
“Have you got any use for that hand?” Eve asks coldly. “Because if you don’t get it off me, I will break it.”
He jerks away. “Fair enough.” He chews on his lower lip and goes on: “Look, it’s nothing to- Things are going as planned. The death of the War Child, the deconstruction of a myth. Did you expect a pat on the back?”
She looks for Hal over Cutler’s head - because, honestly, if Hal doesn’t rescue this annoying git, she will stake him, and sod the witnesses. Cutler flicks his fingers in front of her face to grasp her attention.
“Who do you think you are?” she spits. She didn’t even know she could manage to look so dignified under such circumstances.
Cutler squares his shoulders, puffing up with assumed importance.
“Hal’s PR representative.”
She remembers a stupid joke Hal made shortly after her recruitment. Something about Cutler and Fergus being her big brothers now.
“This is what the whole peace with the Cylons business was about, wasn’t it?” Cutler says. Half the time she has no idea what he’s talking about and neither do most of the Old Ones. “So go back there and… Well, insert something motivational here.”
He may be a git but he’s got a point. One bomb isn’t enough to stop her.
* * *
She tries to read more of Hal’s long-winded books. She doesn’t even bother to memorize the foreign-sounding names and gets bogged down in the plot more often than not but his notes on the margins keep her going. His handwriting is neat, legible most of the time unless he is clearly in a hurry, which is when it slips into a jagged cardiogram line that is unreadable even under a magnifying glass.
Eve begins her days by exercising. Press-ups, sit-ups, jogging, anything to take her mind off her situation. She takes long showers and almost makes herself forget about the shortage of water in the whole country. It’s easy to be altruistic when you’ve got everything, people say. But they’re not completely right: it’s much easier to be self-centred when you want for nothing.
She walks around the mansion in short-sleeved shirts, proudly displaying the ugly letter “H” burned into her arm. She can tell it bothers the vampires; her presence, her appearance, perhaps her very existence bother them, but it’s one of the few feeble sources of entertainment she has got. She catches herself thinking like Hal. It disgusts her that she is not nearly as disturbed by it as she should be.
The library is a large, stuffy room crammed with book cases, crates and suspended shelves, all of which are overflowing with centuries-old folios, ancient scrolls, modern printouts - anything that comes in paper. There is a huge, ugly-looking computer cobbled together from various black market parts sitting in the corner of the room like a mouldy cake. It groans and rumbles and overheats, spreading the poignant smell of burnt dust.
No one comes down here unless they need something from the Vampire Recorder. Eve finds the place comforting and Regus’s company more than tolerable. Despite being rather inarticulate in everyday conversations, Regus has a knack for telling stories. He turns everything into an adventure quest and she asks him time and again to tell her about her father whose heroic death Regus witnessed and those early days of the revolution when there was still hope.
Regus doodles when he talks. He’s got stacks of drawings starring himself as a dashing superhero rescuing fair maidens from all sorts of perils and getting blood, sex and public acclaim as a reward (the lack of respect for his work in the vampire community is his sore spot; he manages to insert complaints on the matter even into his accounts of how Tom’s camper van ran out of petrol in the middle of a remote Scottish byway or how invisible Annie gave an old farmer a heart attack by accidentally picking Eve up in front of him).
He used to dream of getting published but of course vampires don’t read comic books. Eve likes them, tacky and repetitive as they are. The villains are especially good: the grey-faced, big-headed, malicious Mr Drizzle and the bipolar Heinrich Redshield whose enemies die of boredom while he is counting them. Needless to say, no one has ever seen these drafts. Regus is taking enough risk showing them to Eve.
“He’s agreed to all my terms,” Eve says, a hint of incredulity in her voice. They are back to discussing Hal. Regus looks sick and faintly curious at the same time. “What do you think that’s about? Why would he work against everything the vampires have been building since the beginning of the revolution?”
Regus shrugs and sips the tea she has made for him.
“Lord Hal’s got plenty of rats in his attic. Far be it from me to analyse him. Some vampires are simple: they’re all about food. Others are more complicated. And Hal…” He sighs. She can tell he doesn’t know what to make of her “relationship” with Hal; but the truth is, she herself hasn’t got a clue. “Out of all the bad news, Hal is the worst.”
Eve snickers. This insight is far from being novel.
“What I don’t get,” Regus says, “is why Mr Snow lied about the scrolls. Why didn’t he tell anyone about how important you were? Someone coulda killed you by accident. Griffin tried.”
Eve snorts humourlessly. It’s really not that difficult to figure out.
“Wouldn’t be much of a War Child if there wasn’t a war going on around me.”
* * *
When Hal is reading, his face adopts a strange expression, as if he both judges every character in the book and envies them. Most of the books in his personal collection look like they are older than Cutler. He must have read them a hundred times, which is an achievement if you ask Eve; she wouldn’t be able to finish most of them at least once. She wonders what keeps bringing him back to them.
It’s just one of the things she wonders about when she looks at Hal. She doesn’t like him and she certainly doesn’t have Stockholm Syndrome. She has never even been to Stockholm, never got farther than Calais anyway.
“Tea?” she asks, all business-like. She’s got questions she wants answered.
Hal looks up from the book, faintly bemused, like he has just noticed her. She has never offered to make tea for him before. He nods and watches her as she takes the canister and scoops up a spoonful of tea leaves. He doesn’t tell her how he likes it but he doesn’t have to. Black, with a splash of water. Such innocuous details are very easy to find out.
“Tell me about your friend, the werewolf.”
Hal frowns. “Why?”
She sets the cup on the table in front of him. Because I want to know is hardly an appropriate answer.
“Okay. How about Truth or Dare then?”
He laughs. “You sound like Cutler.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s an annoying thing.” He sips the tea. “All right, I shall indulge you. Truth.”
Eve smiles and lowers herself on the chair. “Tell me about your friend,” she repeats, her tone deliberate and a little teasing. “The werewolf.”
“His name was Leo.”
She knows that already. He is being childishly unforthcoming. She fixes him with an expectant look. Twenty Questions is an entirely different game.
“We lived together for over half a century,” Hal goes on. “Then he passed away.”
“When you say you ‘lived together’, does that mean you had him tied up in your basement and visited occasionally to gloat?”
“Quite the opposite actually.” He sounds distant, lost in the memories he would rather keep under lock and key. “We had a ghost too. Pearl was her name.”
A vampire, a werewolf and a ghost share a house. Sounds like the beginning of a fairytale.
“You’re having me on,” Eve says, sounding more certain than she feels.
He glances at her and smiles. “Yes. I am. Fantastic tea, by the way.”
Sometimes she thinks he is all made up of smiles, filled with them to the brim, so few of them sincere. She inclines her head slightly, accepting the compliment. It’s her turn. The thought of sharing any personal information with him is nauseating. He will probably know if she lies, so that’s out of the question.
“Dare,” she whispers.
Hal’s lips curve into a smirk. He leans into her across the table, fingers dancing over the table top to brush hers. It’s a tentative but intimate gesture that makes Eve feel uncomfortable. Hal smells of blood. He always smells of blood.
“Make me another cup of tea,” he murmurs suggestively. “Please.”
Wasting his round on that is ridiculous but since he is asking so nicely… No, actually, that part is not a good sign. Eve snorts.
She watches him drink, observing the way the rim of the cup fits between his parted lips. She remembers those lips pressed to her neck, more gentle than she would have imagined. She would have preferred him to tear into her flesh, brutally as rumour had it, but he was so tender. She feels like she will never wash herself clean of that tenderness.
“Why did you agree to my conditions?” she asks. He couldn’t have wanted her that badly. There must be another reason.
Hal’s eyes glimmer. For a moment, he is almost like the Hal she used to know. She doesn’t know what to do with him when he succumbs to silent melancholy. The look on his face becomes almost human, and it’s worse than any torture he could inflict upon her. She will take his cruel games, his savage temper, his inhumane jokes - anything but the sorrowful, resigned tranquility of a man reading a book because there is nothing else to do. It reminds her too strongly of how she feels.
“I didn’t say ‘truth’,” he remarks playfully.
* * *
There is a chapel on the premises, boarded up windows and bolted doors, and sometimes Eve walks deliberately past it and tries to imagine what it would be like to get inside. It must hurt like hell but it should be physically possible. A lot of things are, even coming in uninvited. It all depends on how you go about it and how much you are willing to risk.
Eve has never been religious or particularly well-versed in Holy Scriptures; she knows only what she can defend herself with. But she can appreciate the irony of God rejecting her for the sacrifice she has made for his beloved creations.
She has almost decided to try opening the door when one of the maids ambushes her and hands her a note. She calls her “my lady”, and Eve wonders if she has become the female equivalent of Lord Hal to them. The maids are human, mostly young, good-looking women who are trying to do everything in their feeble power to help their families in the resettlement camps. Their position in the palace brings their relatives comparative stability and better living conditions. They must have believed in her, these girls. They must have believed in the fairytale of the War Child, must have waited for her to set them free. The list of people Eve has betrayed is growing day by day.
She unfolds the note. Her heart skips a beat.
She tells no one where she is going. This is her business, not theirs.
The storage facility is old, sticking out in the post-bombing rubble like a sore thumb. Strong smells of dust and urine tickle Eve’s sensitive nostrils. There is another smell too, the stench of a dog, and something inside Eve, something she refuses to consider a part of herself, revolts against that smell. It turns her stomach. She struggles to breathe and ends up inhaling more of it. Disgust fills her to the brim; repulsion with herself for letting it affect her like she is one of them.
“So it’s true then,” a man’s voice says.
Eve looks around to see a tall, black soldier with a vaguely familiar face. He was on the retrieval squad. He delivered her the final piece of the prophecy.
“Lucas,” she says, a little uncertain.
“Eighteen months,” he spits. “Eleven of my men died for that scroll. Is this really what they died for?”
“It is,” Eve says, simply. “The War Child saves the world by dying. It is written.”
He tenses but makes no move towards her. Eve looks him over and can’t see a single cross on him. How very generous of him.
“Why didn’t you then?”
“I did!” she retorts. “Everything I was, everything I stood for is gone. The War Child is no more. All that’s left is Eve. And don’t I deserve it? Don’t I get a say in this?” She is shouting, willing herself to stop and failing.
Lucas laughs. It’s an unpleasant sound and it’s cut short by a spasm that shoots through his body. He grits his teeth. An outcry tearing itself out of his throat turns into a low rumbling noise. It’s all too familiar, but Eve can’t believe she has fallen into a trap so easily.
“Funny,” Lucas squeezes out. “You’d think the War Child would remember to keep track of the moon phases.”
She can hear his bones snapping under his skin. She hasn’t been this close to a transforming werewolf since Tom died. She takes a few steps back and rests her back against the door. She struggles to nudge it open and predictably finds it impossible. She tries not to feel betrayed.
Lucas screams. There is nothing human in that sound anymore. He falls to his knees, hands clawing at the dirty floor, bloody saliva dribbling out of his snarling mouth. Eve darts past him, narrowly avoiding a blow when he lifts his hand and attempts to sink his claws into her leg. There must be another way out of the warehouse.
The sound of shattering bones and splintering skin grows louder. It comes from the dusty darkness behind her. Eve looks around warily. Not only it’s going to be a very brutal death, but also a very stupid one. She has really brought it on herself and she’s not getting any bonus points for this. She chuckles nervously. Too bad she won’t get to see Hal’s face when he finds out his blue-eyed girl was ripped apart by a vengeful werewolf soldier.
Eve maneuvers between the stacks of old containers. The scent is much stronger now, coming at her from all directions as if Lucas has somehow split himself apart and invaded every corner of the warehouse. The sounds die down for a moment - and then a few containers come tumbling down, blown apart by the stroke of a paw. The wolf tilts his head up and howls. Eve dashes for cover. The beast sniffs the air excitedly and stomps after her.
Eve drives herself into a corner. She can see the other door from here, only half-shut, a bleary strip of darkness peeking through. She grabs a random piece of wood and tosses it aside with all her might. It drops, generating a loud bang, and the wolf turns his head towards the source of the noise and presses his ears against his skull, alerted. Eve leaps up, planning to make a run for it, but someone pulls her back at once. A hand covers her mouth. She struggles against the grip, though mostly out of habit. At least it’s not another werewolf.
“Shh!” the man hisses in her ear. “It’s me.”
He releases her cautiously. She turns around and meets Fergus’s hard eyes and bites back a number of questions. Now is not the time.
They crouch in the darkness, moving slowly towards the inky-black patch in the doorway. She can see now that had she run, Lucas would have caught up with her in a matter of moments. They have almost reached the door when he lunges at them, his razor-sharp teeth bared in a terrifying snarl. Fergus throws up a shotgun, a standard-issue firearm for the full moon, fires a shot and misses. Momentarily disoriented, Lucas drops on all fours, claws scraping over the floorboards, and bellows angrily. Fergus aims again, but Eve grips his shoulder and pulls him towards the exit. Lucas crouches and pounces as they break out running. Scraps of dismal grey clouds veil the moon but it still blazes behind them, spurring the beast.
Eve scrambles over a pile of debris and looks around wildly. It’s a bombed-out wasteland on the outskirt of London, open and leaving them vulnerable.
“Shit, I can’t see him,” Fergus mutters.
Eve finds herself fixing the back of his head with an unmoving gaze. She bends down and picks up a brick, weighing it on her hand as if trying to make up her mind about how to use it.
“We’d better get going,” says Fergus.
He turns around, and she hits him in the face with the brick. He cries out, a dull, wet sound, blood streaming down his face. Eve seizes the shotgun and turns the barrel in his direction.
“You must be joking!” Fergus exclaims, wiping the blood off. “There’s a huge, pissed-off lyco after us, and you’re pointing that thing at me?”
“What are you doing here?”
“My job as head of the police force.”
She all but slams the gun into his chest. She could shoot him point-blank, make a giant hole right in the middle of him and look through it like it’s a window. She is tempted to.
“Did Hal put you up to this?”
“It might come as a surprise, love,” Fergus says exasperatedly, “but not everything Hal thinks about revolves around you.”
The argument is cut short by another howl. Fergus curses and makes a grab for the shotgun but Eve takes a few rapid steps back, clutching the weapon fast in her hands.
“Give me back my gun,” he demands.
A dark shape darts towards them. Fergus ducks. The werewolf roars and snaps his jaws, going for a bite.
“Give me my fucking gun!”
A gunshot thunders. Lucas yelps. His carcass drops heavily amid the wreckage, mid-run. Fergus meets Eve’s stunned look and smirks slowly. She drops the gun in disgust, spins around and starts walking away, shaking, in steps that are too broad to be comfortable.
“Well,” Fergus remarks, catching up with her. “I’m impressed.”
He has picked up the shotgun; it’s resting on his shoulder like in those Wild West films that Jacob favours. There is a west in London and things can be pretty wild (in fact, they are most of the time); Fergus probably sees himself as some kind of a sheriff.
“Don’t be,” Eve says coldly. “He’s not dead.”
They walk in silence for a while.
“One of your boys, wasn’t he?” Fergus asks. “We’ve been tracking him for a long time. I was here for him, not for you. Figured you might need some help though.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake! Not another one of them expecting gratitude from her. But no, Fergus is not Cutler, words mean nothing to him and he couldn’t care less about Eve in general. He might have left her there to be slaughtered but Hal would have had his head for it. It’s not goodwill, it’s practicality.
The blood coagulates, and his voice comes out a bit nasal.
“You know, the body count you’re leaving is really something.” He takes a deep breath through the nose to clear it and winces in pain. “But one of these days, when the shit hits the fan, you’ll have to decide once and for all who your people are.”
The worst thing is that he has a point.
* * *
Eve remembers the day Lucas brought her the last scroll. She had just come back from captivity and she spent her days poring over the parchments and mulling over her experiences as Hal’s prisoner. He walked in quietly and held it out to her, a scrap of human skin rolled up in a tube and bundled up in some dirty fabric. Eve unfolded it with trembling fingers and placed it underneath the other two pieces. As she read and the horrible truth was slowly sinking in, Lucas told her it wasn’t their first meeting. He seemed to remember her from a while back, back when she hadn’t been so disappointed and so disappointing to everyone else.
She could have told him to stick a knife between her ribs right there and then. Get it over with. Instead, she ordered him to leave and she took a few hours to think and she returned to the palace and offered herself to Hal. Maybe the people were right: maybe she was the devil’s whore.
She curls up in the bathtub, hot water pelting down on her, boiling out the aching in her muscles, the dust and the fear. It cannot beat the hunger though. She grips the edge of the bathtub, fingers rigid and white like bone, and grits her teeth, choking on the scream that is stuck in her throat. Water keeps pouring, colouring her heated skin red. As the tint deepens, raw and scalded, she can see blood dripping down her hands, trickling between the fingers, coating her arms in a crimson film. Eve releases a sharp breath and screws her eyes shut. When she opens them, it’s just water.
Her legs buckle as she gets out of the tub. The bathroom is filled with steam. The mirror has misted over, for once concealing its dreary emptiness from her. Eve runs her fingers through her wet hair and pulls at it, digs her nails into her skull but the pain is bland, insufficient. Her entire body spasms with jolts of hunger. She gets dressed rapidly and staggers along the corridor towards Hal’s quarters.
No, she can’t stand to see him now. The bastard that did this to her. She leans heavily against the wall and balls her fists and struggles to hold her breath. Everything within these walls reeks of blood.
She continues walking slowly, deliberating every step, until his door looms in front of her. She slams her fist against the paneling and receives no answer. It dawns upon her that he wouldn’t be in on a full moon. Having canceled the dog fights last month, he would most likely be drowning his boredom in blood and liquor at one of Jacob’s infamous parties. Exactly the sort of a social event she would do well to stay away from. Eve curses under her breath and trudges towards Jacob’s quarters.
Jacob opens the door himself. Eve makes an effort to look away from the bloodstains on his chest. He offers her a welcoming smile. She asks about Hal, and he beckons her inside. The room is smoke-laden. The heady scent of blood and heated flesh makes Eve’s mouth dry. She spots Hal in the corner of the room, sprawled on the sofa with a half-naked girl on top of him. Blood oozes from the bitemarks all over her body and her forearms are dotted with cigarette burns.
Eve spins around and storms out of the room, feeling sick. She has almost reached the stairs when Hal catches up with her. He grips her elbow and makes her turn to face him. She could claw his eyes out.
“Fergus told me what happened,” Hal says quietly.
She can smell the girl on him. Just a drink, though, nothing more.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she spits, seething with anger.
“Helping you to save humanity. Mostly. But I’m entitled to a break every now and then, aren’t I?”
“Are you also entitled to using a few select representatives of humanity as your own personal ashtrays?”
Hal shrugs. “I needed to vent.” He looks smug as usual, but there is a certain shade of discomfort lurking just beneath the haughty façade.
Eve bangs furiously on his chest with her fists until he lets go of her arm. He doesn’t bother putting up any resistance. Incensed by his attitude, Eve punches him in the stomach, kicks him in the shin, anywhere she can reach, making the blows as painful as possible.
“I should have staked you when I had the chance!” she growls.
Hal smirks. She had many chances and she’s missed them all.
He pulls her into an empty room and drives her up against the wall. Their bodies are barely apart, a bloody loveburger cliché, and she hates that the scent coming off his skin makes every fine hair on her body stand on end. It’s not just blood. It’s him as well.
“You should have,” he says. “But then your life would not have been nearly as entertaining.”
His hands glide up her hips. Now would be the time to stop this but it’s either him, or some misfortunate servant for dinner. Eve doesn’t trust him but she trusts herself even less.
He pulls down the straps and the bodice of her dress. With the tip of his tongue, he trails a moist line between her breasts down to her belly. He kneels before her, marks her ribs with kisses and lowers his head between her parted legs. He flattens his tongue against the hot, pliant flesh, savouring the taste. She can feel him inside, slow, lazy strokes, that maddening tenderness again. He plays her body like one of his antique musical instruments.
Eve tangles her fingers in his hair and makes him look up. She puts her foot against his chest and pushes him down on the floor and straddles him, taking him in brusquely. She’s had enough of him undoing her nerve by nerve.
She pins his wrists to the floor and holds them until she is certain he’s got the message: no touching. This is how he likes it after all. This is what all his whores do: climb on top of him and do all the job for him. She can do that just as well as they do. She must live up to her reputation.
She drags her nails across his chest, leaving pale white scratch marks. She could split the skin if she put more force into it. He would probably like it.
A small smile plays on Hal’s lips. He takes her hand gently, brings the wrist up to his mouth and traces the veins with his tongue. Eve wants to withdraw the hand, but he holds it firmly. He sits up, snaking his arm around her waist, bringing her body closer to his, and bites at her wrist. Eve draws in a sharp breath.
She used to think growing fangs was supposed to hurt. But it’s not like that. She doesn’t even notice them until she feels a burning desire to sink them into something. They are as much a part of her as her nails or her skin or her limbs.
Hal is smiling against her skin. There is already too much of him inside her but she is willing to go on until she overdoses on him, until she forgets herself, so she dips down her head and plunges her fangs into his shoulder. The first time around his blood had a ferrous taste; she couldn’t have told it apart from human. This time it’s more insipid, a pale imitation of the real nourishing meal, but it has a strange tang, neither good, nor bad, just his. She can feel human blood in the mix as well as hers. The way it circles in and out of her system is mind-boggling.
She pulls away, blood dribbling down her chin. She isn’t tidy; nor does she want to be.
She knows why he covers countless bodies in bitemarks. The very process of clenching and unclenching your jaws around somebody’s flesh can be cathartic. She learns it from him and she makes holes in his body and fills them up with her pain until she can’t feel it anymore. She feels nothing but him thrusting harder as she bites him over and over again, making sure he feels nothing but her.
Part 2 | Part 3
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: NC-17
Timeline: AU!future as shown in episodes 4.01, 4.07, 4.08.
Summary: To save humanity the War Child must die. Eve found a loophole but humanity isn’t as grateful as it should be. Sequel to Lonely Rivers. [Hal/Eve, side Hal/Cutler]
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Title is Spanish for absence.
Dedication: for shirogiku (my Eve is your Eve; don’t leave the fandom!) and non-canonical (did I ever tell you how much I love your obsessing over every single detail in this series?).
A/N: I actually hate writing sequels and multi-chapter fanfics but this story just begged to be written.
AUSENCIA
Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind.
James Joyce. “Ulysses”
Part 1
The tea is all wrong. It tastes the same but somehow paler, thinner. Her hands are shaking the first time she tries to make it after a break. She overdoes it with the milk and she almost spills the resultant drink over Regus’s scrolls.
(The first time he visited her in her suite, he apologized for not having been able to help her. He said he knew Annie, they’d traveled together for a bit, but things changed - and well, being Lord Hal’s keeper of scrolls was better than being a pile of dust in a hoover bag. Maybe it was Annie’s name that did it, but Eve didn’t feel as sick at the sight of him as she did at the sight of the others.)
“Easy,” Regus tells her in that kindly tone that he adopts when speaking to her. She may be mistrustful, and for a good reason, but the man honestly fails at being a vampire, so she can drop her guard around him once in a while.
The sight and the smell of blood make her want to retch. He tells her she should eat something. She nods and smiles and - “I will,” - the promise she doesn’t intend to keep.
* * *
“What is it with you and hunger strikes?” Hal wonders.
She feels giddy, needless breathing searing her throat. There is blood under her fingernails much like there was dirt before. She wants to laugh and she feels some repulsive, gurgling noises clawing their way out, but when she opens her mouth, there is silence.
He tries to pull her closer. She pushes him away and snarls at him, “Don’t touch me!”, lights up a cigarette with trembling fingers and coughs out the smoke. Hal grips her by the shoulders and says urgently:
“You can take a glass. No one has to die.”
And that’s - oh God, that’s funny.
“Are you fucking serious?” She’s always had quite a mouth on her; he claims to like it. See how he likes it now. She stubs out her cigarette on his forearm. He jerks, but they’ve done worse. They will do worse. His blood inside her is boiling. “How stupid do you think I am? If you give me a steak, I’ll know it comes from a dead cow!”
They all tell her she needs to eat something. Like she’s a sick child. But hey, it’s not like she’ll die if she keeps going hungry. Oh, wait, that has already been taken care of.
She takes comfort in the fact that she is creating problems for him. She remembers the faces of his flunkies when they saw her. Jacob laughed and he carried on laughing even after he realized it was not a joke. Fergus cursed but mostly managed to keep a straight face. Cutler looked sick, undoubtedly imagining a variety of scenarios of what would happen to him if Eve told Hal about his involvement in her escape.
Hal grips her chin and forces her to look at him.
“If you want to save humanity,” he says slowly, “sacrifices must be made.” It’s hilarious when someone like him talks to her about sacrifice.
He lets go even before she insists on it. He has been very civil lately. She can’t understand why. They are playing a different game now, though she can’t possibly imagine what his interest in it is. He is not getting anything out of it, not even her.
* * *
The press conference is Hal’s idea. Regus finds it insane but he wouldn’t speak up in front of Hal, and Eve wouldn’t let him talk her out of it in private.
Her awakening is slow and torturous, much like falling asleep was. She won’t lie: after years of sleeping in bunkers, on the floor or in dirt holes, a real bed with a springy mattress and a number of soft, puffy pillows seems like a haven, even though it seldom brings sweet dreams.
Eve disentangles herself from the warm embrace of the blanket and walks over to the dressing table. The emptiness in the mirror still unsettles her. She peers at it intently as if trying to figure out how it works, how a simple mirror can make her believe, even for a second, that she is not here, that she is nowhere. But it could be worse. She could be looking at her reflection and seeing Hal.
She gets dressed - a simple, elegant black dress and a string of pearls. Hal has been extremely generous with his gifts lately. She barely knows how to wear these things. She would have preferred her military vest strewn with crosses, but she is going for confident, successful and generally pleased with her life rather than writhing in pain in front of an audience.
She runs a brush through her hair - a good boar bristle paddle brush with a rosewood handle (she heard the maids talking), nothing like those plastic combs with jagged teeth she had to use before. She doesn’t really know what to do with it. She has worn her hair long since she was ten even though Tom vocally objected to it and Annie was inclined to take his side more often than not when it came to safety measures. You never know what an enemy can use to choke you. Could be your own hair. That was how Tom saw the world. Everyone was an enemy.
Eve started tying her hair up in tight buns and hiding it under headbands when her participation in the fighting became more active. Something tells her a headband wouldn’t go well with this dress. She would attempt Audrey Hepburn’s look in Breakfast At Tiffany’s (Annie liked the film; Eve has only seen an old, faded promo poster once) but she has no idea how to do it. She doesn’t want to call the maids; they are afraid of her and they don’t even bother to hide it. No one had ever made her feel scary before.
She ends up doing a simple ponytail.
Make-up leaves her positively terrified. She has to wash it off several times before she finally gets it right if you believe a flimsy reflection in a bowl of water. The empty mirror leers at her. She feels shallow for liking the way she looks, the way her nails are clean and neatly clipped, the way her hair is actually a few shades lighter than it used to seem in the sickly semi-darkness of the bunker.
Eve is no stranger to public speeches. She has delivered her fair share of them before the troops of the resistance and she can’t recall a word of what she may have said. It feels so artificial, so insincere now.
The crowd consists mostly of what few “free” people remain in the city, humans and vampires alike. The rest of the country will hear the address live on the radio. Eve knows there are agents of the resistance out there, undetected, drawn by rumours and fruitless hopes. Just thinking about it gives her the biggest attack of stage fright she has ever experienced. She wishes they could just let the world believe the War Child has disappeared but that would be dishonest at the very least.
Hal is standing right next to her, flawless in his impeccably tailoured suit. She envisions procuring a stake and driving it through his heart for the audience to cheer, except killing Hal wouldn’t stop the end of humanity, not anymore, wouldn’t even delay it, and they would most likely cheer for her to follow suit.
She steps up to the microphone. She hates the way they look at her with dark, suspicious eyes. She says: “My name is Eve Sands. I am the War Child,” and there is no going back. Stunned silence holds for half a minute before exploding into a cacophony of shocked outcries, questions and exclamations. The vampires must be wondering why she doesn’t look like a prisoner. Humans, most of whom are collaborators and have been on the resistance black list for years, are frightened and uncertain.
Eve talks about the upcoming healthcare reforms, the planned lifting of the pregnancy embargo, means to combat hunger and control epidemics, and wonders if it sounds like a load of political bullshit. She makes promises she isn’t sure they’ll be able to keep (isn’t even sure Hal plans on keeping them), and the words feel stale in her mouth.
Someone in the crowd laughs. It’s a hoarse, abrupt sound that makes her think of all the dank labyrinth of the abandoned tube, the stench of mould and sewage in the guts of the earth.
“Pretty words,” the man says, “from the lips of a devil’s whore who’s traded her own humanity for creature comforts!”
Eve sees security guards moving through the crowd and she opens her mouth to stop them (she wants people to speak up even if they are not her people anymore) when something flies up and lands on the stage in front of her. There is a loud bang; flames rise and some dark liquid splatters all over the guards. Someone screams. Eve feels a firm grip on her forearm and is dragged away from the burgeoning inferno. She struggles to breathe past the stench of the melting flesh. An incendiary bomb containing werewolf blood. The resistance does not use organic matter frequently, for obvious reasons. She should be flattered.
Eve looks up at her rescuer. Surprisingly, it’s not Hal but Cutler, trying and failing to look unaffected.
“It’s fine, it’s all good,” he mutters; Eve wonders distractedly whom he is trying to reassure. “Just what we wanted, right?”
Eve says through clenched teeth: “Let go of me.”
“Hey, I’ve just saved your - well, maybe not your life but certainly your pretty face!” Think Hal would like you covered in blood burns, is what he leaves unsaid but she hears it anyway. Cutler has never been particularly secretive about his feelings on the matter of her recruitment.
“Have you got any use for that hand?” Eve asks coldly. “Because if you don’t get it off me, I will break it.”
He jerks away. “Fair enough.” He chews on his lower lip and goes on: “Look, it’s nothing to- Things are going as planned. The death of the War Child, the deconstruction of a myth. Did you expect a pat on the back?”
She looks for Hal over Cutler’s head - because, honestly, if Hal doesn’t rescue this annoying git, she will stake him, and sod the witnesses. Cutler flicks his fingers in front of her face to grasp her attention.
“Who do you think you are?” she spits. She didn’t even know she could manage to look so dignified under such circumstances.
Cutler squares his shoulders, puffing up with assumed importance.
“Hal’s PR representative.”
She remembers a stupid joke Hal made shortly after her recruitment. Something about Cutler and Fergus being her big brothers now.
“This is what the whole peace with the Cylons business was about, wasn’t it?” Cutler says. Half the time she has no idea what he’s talking about and neither do most of the Old Ones. “So go back there and… Well, insert something motivational here.”
He may be a git but he’s got a point. One bomb isn’t enough to stop her.
* * *
She tries to read more of Hal’s long-winded books. She doesn’t even bother to memorize the foreign-sounding names and gets bogged down in the plot more often than not but his notes on the margins keep her going. His handwriting is neat, legible most of the time unless he is clearly in a hurry, which is when it slips into a jagged cardiogram line that is unreadable even under a magnifying glass.
Eve begins her days by exercising. Press-ups, sit-ups, jogging, anything to take her mind off her situation. She takes long showers and almost makes herself forget about the shortage of water in the whole country. It’s easy to be altruistic when you’ve got everything, people say. But they’re not completely right: it’s much easier to be self-centred when you want for nothing.
She walks around the mansion in short-sleeved shirts, proudly displaying the ugly letter “H” burned into her arm. She can tell it bothers the vampires; her presence, her appearance, perhaps her very existence bother them, but it’s one of the few feeble sources of entertainment she has got. She catches herself thinking like Hal. It disgusts her that she is not nearly as disturbed by it as she should be.
The library is a large, stuffy room crammed with book cases, crates and suspended shelves, all of which are overflowing with centuries-old folios, ancient scrolls, modern printouts - anything that comes in paper. There is a huge, ugly-looking computer cobbled together from various black market parts sitting in the corner of the room like a mouldy cake. It groans and rumbles and overheats, spreading the poignant smell of burnt dust.
No one comes down here unless they need something from the Vampire Recorder. Eve finds the place comforting and Regus’s company more than tolerable. Despite being rather inarticulate in everyday conversations, Regus has a knack for telling stories. He turns everything into an adventure quest and she asks him time and again to tell her about her father whose heroic death Regus witnessed and those early days of the revolution when there was still hope.
Regus doodles when he talks. He’s got stacks of drawings starring himself as a dashing superhero rescuing fair maidens from all sorts of perils and getting blood, sex and public acclaim as a reward (the lack of respect for his work in the vampire community is his sore spot; he manages to insert complaints on the matter even into his accounts of how Tom’s camper van ran out of petrol in the middle of a remote Scottish byway or how invisible Annie gave an old farmer a heart attack by accidentally picking Eve up in front of him).
He used to dream of getting published but of course vampires don’t read comic books. Eve likes them, tacky and repetitive as they are. The villains are especially good: the grey-faced, big-headed, malicious Mr Drizzle and the bipolar Heinrich Redshield whose enemies die of boredom while he is counting them. Needless to say, no one has ever seen these drafts. Regus is taking enough risk showing them to Eve.
“He’s agreed to all my terms,” Eve says, a hint of incredulity in her voice. They are back to discussing Hal. Regus looks sick and faintly curious at the same time. “What do you think that’s about? Why would he work against everything the vampires have been building since the beginning of the revolution?”
Regus shrugs and sips the tea she has made for him.
“Lord Hal’s got plenty of rats in his attic. Far be it from me to analyse him. Some vampires are simple: they’re all about food. Others are more complicated. And Hal…” He sighs. She can tell he doesn’t know what to make of her “relationship” with Hal; but the truth is, she herself hasn’t got a clue. “Out of all the bad news, Hal is the worst.”
Eve snickers. This insight is far from being novel.
“What I don’t get,” Regus says, “is why Mr Snow lied about the scrolls. Why didn’t he tell anyone about how important you were? Someone coulda killed you by accident. Griffin tried.”
Eve snorts humourlessly. It’s really not that difficult to figure out.
“Wouldn’t be much of a War Child if there wasn’t a war going on around me.”
* * *
When Hal is reading, his face adopts a strange expression, as if he both judges every character in the book and envies them. Most of the books in his personal collection look like they are older than Cutler. He must have read them a hundred times, which is an achievement if you ask Eve; she wouldn’t be able to finish most of them at least once. She wonders what keeps bringing him back to them.
It’s just one of the things she wonders about when she looks at Hal. She doesn’t like him and she certainly doesn’t have Stockholm Syndrome. She has never even been to Stockholm, never got farther than Calais anyway.
“Tea?” she asks, all business-like. She’s got questions she wants answered.
Hal looks up from the book, faintly bemused, like he has just noticed her. She has never offered to make tea for him before. He nods and watches her as she takes the canister and scoops up a spoonful of tea leaves. He doesn’t tell her how he likes it but he doesn’t have to. Black, with a splash of water. Such innocuous details are very easy to find out.
“Tell me about your friend, the werewolf.”
Hal frowns. “Why?”
She sets the cup on the table in front of him. Because I want to know is hardly an appropriate answer.
“Okay. How about Truth or Dare then?”
He laughs. “You sound like Cutler.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s an annoying thing.” He sips the tea. “All right, I shall indulge you. Truth.”
Eve smiles and lowers herself on the chair. “Tell me about your friend,” she repeats, her tone deliberate and a little teasing. “The werewolf.”
“His name was Leo.”
She knows that already. He is being childishly unforthcoming. She fixes him with an expectant look. Twenty Questions is an entirely different game.
“We lived together for over half a century,” Hal goes on. “Then he passed away.”
“When you say you ‘lived together’, does that mean you had him tied up in your basement and visited occasionally to gloat?”
“Quite the opposite actually.” He sounds distant, lost in the memories he would rather keep under lock and key. “We had a ghost too. Pearl was her name.”
A vampire, a werewolf and a ghost share a house. Sounds like the beginning of a fairytale.
“You’re having me on,” Eve says, sounding more certain than she feels.
He glances at her and smiles. “Yes. I am. Fantastic tea, by the way.”
Sometimes she thinks he is all made up of smiles, filled with them to the brim, so few of them sincere. She inclines her head slightly, accepting the compliment. It’s her turn. The thought of sharing any personal information with him is nauseating. He will probably know if she lies, so that’s out of the question.
“Dare,” she whispers.
Hal’s lips curve into a smirk. He leans into her across the table, fingers dancing over the table top to brush hers. It’s a tentative but intimate gesture that makes Eve feel uncomfortable. Hal smells of blood. He always smells of blood.
“Make me another cup of tea,” he murmurs suggestively. “Please.”
Wasting his round on that is ridiculous but since he is asking so nicely… No, actually, that part is not a good sign. Eve snorts.
She watches him drink, observing the way the rim of the cup fits between his parted lips. She remembers those lips pressed to her neck, more gentle than she would have imagined. She would have preferred him to tear into her flesh, brutally as rumour had it, but he was so tender. She feels like she will never wash herself clean of that tenderness.
“Why did you agree to my conditions?” she asks. He couldn’t have wanted her that badly. There must be another reason.
Hal’s eyes glimmer. For a moment, he is almost like the Hal she used to know. She doesn’t know what to do with him when he succumbs to silent melancholy. The look on his face becomes almost human, and it’s worse than any torture he could inflict upon her. She will take his cruel games, his savage temper, his inhumane jokes - anything but the sorrowful, resigned tranquility of a man reading a book because there is nothing else to do. It reminds her too strongly of how she feels.
“I didn’t say ‘truth’,” he remarks playfully.
* * *
There is a chapel on the premises, boarded up windows and bolted doors, and sometimes Eve walks deliberately past it and tries to imagine what it would be like to get inside. It must hurt like hell but it should be physically possible. A lot of things are, even coming in uninvited. It all depends on how you go about it and how much you are willing to risk.
Eve has never been religious or particularly well-versed in Holy Scriptures; she knows only what she can defend herself with. But she can appreciate the irony of God rejecting her for the sacrifice she has made for his beloved creations.
She has almost decided to try opening the door when one of the maids ambushes her and hands her a note. She calls her “my lady”, and Eve wonders if she has become the female equivalent of Lord Hal to them. The maids are human, mostly young, good-looking women who are trying to do everything in their feeble power to help their families in the resettlement camps. Their position in the palace brings their relatives comparative stability and better living conditions. They must have believed in her, these girls. They must have believed in the fairytale of the War Child, must have waited for her to set them free. The list of people Eve has betrayed is growing day by day.
She unfolds the note. Her heart skips a beat.
She tells no one where she is going. This is her business, not theirs.
The storage facility is old, sticking out in the post-bombing rubble like a sore thumb. Strong smells of dust and urine tickle Eve’s sensitive nostrils. There is another smell too, the stench of a dog, and something inside Eve, something she refuses to consider a part of herself, revolts against that smell. It turns her stomach. She struggles to breathe and ends up inhaling more of it. Disgust fills her to the brim; repulsion with herself for letting it affect her like she is one of them.
“So it’s true then,” a man’s voice says.
Eve looks around to see a tall, black soldier with a vaguely familiar face. He was on the retrieval squad. He delivered her the final piece of the prophecy.
“Lucas,” she says, a little uncertain.
“Eighteen months,” he spits. “Eleven of my men died for that scroll. Is this really what they died for?”
“It is,” Eve says, simply. “The War Child saves the world by dying. It is written.”
He tenses but makes no move towards her. Eve looks him over and can’t see a single cross on him. How very generous of him.
“Why didn’t you then?”
“I did!” she retorts. “Everything I was, everything I stood for is gone. The War Child is no more. All that’s left is Eve. And don’t I deserve it? Don’t I get a say in this?” She is shouting, willing herself to stop and failing.
Lucas laughs. It’s an unpleasant sound and it’s cut short by a spasm that shoots through his body. He grits his teeth. An outcry tearing itself out of his throat turns into a low rumbling noise. It’s all too familiar, but Eve can’t believe she has fallen into a trap so easily.
“Funny,” Lucas squeezes out. “You’d think the War Child would remember to keep track of the moon phases.”
She can hear his bones snapping under his skin. She hasn’t been this close to a transforming werewolf since Tom died. She takes a few steps back and rests her back against the door. She struggles to nudge it open and predictably finds it impossible. She tries not to feel betrayed.
Lucas screams. There is nothing human in that sound anymore. He falls to his knees, hands clawing at the dirty floor, bloody saliva dribbling out of his snarling mouth. Eve darts past him, narrowly avoiding a blow when he lifts his hand and attempts to sink his claws into her leg. There must be another way out of the warehouse.
The sound of shattering bones and splintering skin grows louder. It comes from the dusty darkness behind her. Eve looks around warily. Not only it’s going to be a very brutal death, but also a very stupid one. She has really brought it on herself and she’s not getting any bonus points for this. She chuckles nervously. Too bad she won’t get to see Hal’s face when he finds out his blue-eyed girl was ripped apart by a vengeful werewolf soldier.
Eve maneuvers between the stacks of old containers. The scent is much stronger now, coming at her from all directions as if Lucas has somehow split himself apart and invaded every corner of the warehouse. The sounds die down for a moment - and then a few containers come tumbling down, blown apart by the stroke of a paw. The wolf tilts his head up and howls. Eve dashes for cover. The beast sniffs the air excitedly and stomps after her.
Eve drives herself into a corner. She can see the other door from here, only half-shut, a bleary strip of darkness peeking through. She grabs a random piece of wood and tosses it aside with all her might. It drops, generating a loud bang, and the wolf turns his head towards the source of the noise and presses his ears against his skull, alerted. Eve leaps up, planning to make a run for it, but someone pulls her back at once. A hand covers her mouth. She struggles against the grip, though mostly out of habit. At least it’s not another werewolf.
“Shh!” the man hisses in her ear. “It’s me.”
He releases her cautiously. She turns around and meets Fergus’s hard eyes and bites back a number of questions. Now is not the time.
They crouch in the darkness, moving slowly towards the inky-black patch in the doorway. She can see now that had she run, Lucas would have caught up with her in a matter of moments. They have almost reached the door when he lunges at them, his razor-sharp teeth bared in a terrifying snarl. Fergus throws up a shotgun, a standard-issue firearm for the full moon, fires a shot and misses. Momentarily disoriented, Lucas drops on all fours, claws scraping over the floorboards, and bellows angrily. Fergus aims again, but Eve grips his shoulder and pulls him towards the exit. Lucas crouches and pounces as they break out running. Scraps of dismal grey clouds veil the moon but it still blazes behind them, spurring the beast.
Eve scrambles over a pile of debris and looks around wildly. It’s a bombed-out wasteland on the outskirt of London, open and leaving them vulnerable.
“Shit, I can’t see him,” Fergus mutters.
Eve finds herself fixing the back of his head with an unmoving gaze. She bends down and picks up a brick, weighing it on her hand as if trying to make up her mind about how to use it.
“We’d better get going,” says Fergus.
He turns around, and she hits him in the face with the brick. He cries out, a dull, wet sound, blood streaming down his face. Eve seizes the shotgun and turns the barrel in his direction.
“You must be joking!” Fergus exclaims, wiping the blood off. “There’s a huge, pissed-off lyco after us, and you’re pointing that thing at me?”
“What are you doing here?”
“My job as head of the police force.”
She all but slams the gun into his chest. She could shoot him point-blank, make a giant hole right in the middle of him and look through it like it’s a window. She is tempted to.
“Did Hal put you up to this?”
“It might come as a surprise, love,” Fergus says exasperatedly, “but not everything Hal thinks about revolves around you.”
The argument is cut short by another howl. Fergus curses and makes a grab for the shotgun but Eve takes a few rapid steps back, clutching the weapon fast in her hands.
“Give me back my gun,” he demands.
A dark shape darts towards them. Fergus ducks. The werewolf roars and snaps his jaws, going for a bite.
“Give me my fucking gun!”
A gunshot thunders. Lucas yelps. His carcass drops heavily amid the wreckage, mid-run. Fergus meets Eve’s stunned look and smirks slowly. She drops the gun in disgust, spins around and starts walking away, shaking, in steps that are too broad to be comfortable.
“Well,” Fergus remarks, catching up with her. “I’m impressed.”
He has picked up the shotgun; it’s resting on his shoulder like in those Wild West films that Jacob favours. There is a west in London and things can be pretty wild (in fact, they are most of the time); Fergus probably sees himself as some kind of a sheriff.
“Don’t be,” Eve says coldly. “He’s not dead.”
They walk in silence for a while.
“One of your boys, wasn’t he?” Fergus asks. “We’ve been tracking him for a long time. I was here for him, not for you. Figured you might need some help though.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake! Not another one of them expecting gratitude from her. But no, Fergus is not Cutler, words mean nothing to him and he couldn’t care less about Eve in general. He might have left her there to be slaughtered but Hal would have had his head for it. It’s not goodwill, it’s practicality.
The blood coagulates, and his voice comes out a bit nasal.
“You know, the body count you’re leaving is really something.” He takes a deep breath through the nose to clear it and winces in pain. “But one of these days, when the shit hits the fan, you’ll have to decide once and for all who your people are.”
The worst thing is that he has a point.
* * *
Eve remembers the day Lucas brought her the last scroll. She had just come back from captivity and she spent her days poring over the parchments and mulling over her experiences as Hal’s prisoner. He walked in quietly and held it out to her, a scrap of human skin rolled up in a tube and bundled up in some dirty fabric. Eve unfolded it with trembling fingers and placed it underneath the other two pieces. As she read and the horrible truth was slowly sinking in, Lucas told her it wasn’t their first meeting. He seemed to remember her from a while back, back when she hadn’t been so disappointed and so disappointing to everyone else.
She could have told him to stick a knife between her ribs right there and then. Get it over with. Instead, she ordered him to leave and she took a few hours to think and she returned to the palace and offered herself to Hal. Maybe the people were right: maybe she was the devil’s whore.
She curls up in the bathtub, hot water pelting down on her, boiling out the aching in her muscles, the dust and the fear. It cannot beat the hunger though. She grips the edge of the bathtub, fingers rigid and white like bone, and grits her teeth, choking on the scream that is stuck in her throat. Water keeps pouring, colouring her heated skin red. As the tint deepens, raw and scalded, she can see blood dripping down her hands, trickling between the fingers, coating her arms in a crimson film. Eve releases a sharp breath and screws her eyes shut. When she opens them, it’s just water.
Her legs buckle as she gets out of the tub. The bathroom is filled with steam. The mirror has misted over, for once concealing its dreary emptiness from her. Eve runs her fingers through her wet hair and pulls at it, digs her nails into her skull but the pain is bland, insufficient. Her entire body spasms with jolts of hunger. She gets dressed rapidly and staggers along the corridor towards Hal’s quarters.
No, she can’t stand to see him now. The bastard that did this to her. She leans heavily against the wall and balls her fists and struggles to hold her breath. Everything within these walls reeks of blood.
She continues walking slowly, deliberating every step, until his door looms in front of her. She slams her fist against the paneling and receives no answer. It dawns upon her that he wouldn’t be in on a full moon. Having canceled the dog fights last month, he would most likely be drowning his boredom in blood and liquor at one of Jacob’s infamous parties. Exactly the sort of a social event she would do well to stay away from. Eve curses under her breath and trudges towards Jacob’s quarters.
Jacob opens the door himself. Eve makes an effort to look away from the bloodstains on his chest. He offers her a welcoming smile. She asks about Hal, and he beckons her inside. The room is smoke-laden. The heady scent of blood and heated flesh makes Eve’s mouth dry. She spots Hal in the corner of the room, sprawled on the sofa with a half-naked girl on top of him. Blood oozes from the bitemarks all over her body and her forearms are dotted with cigarette burns.
Eve spins around and storms out of the room, feeling sick. She has almost reached the stairs when Hal catches up with her. He grips her elbow and makes her turn to face him. She could claw his eyes out.
“Fergus told me what happened,” Hal says quietly.
She can smell the girl on him. Just a drink, though, nothing more.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she spits, seething with anger.
“Helping you to save humanity. Mostly. But I’m entitled to a break every now and then, aren’t I?”
“Are you also entitled to using a few select representatives of humanity as your own personal ashtrays?”
Hal shrugs. “I needed to vent.” He looks smug as usual, but there is a certain shade of discomfort lurking just beneath the haughty façade.
Eve bangs furiously on his chest with her fists until he lets go of her arm. He doesn’t bother putting up any resistance. Incensed by his attitude, Eve punches him in the stomach, kicks him in the shin, anywhere she can reach, making the blows as painful as possible.
“I should have staked you when I had the chance!” she growls.
Hal smirks. She had many chances and she’s missed them all.
He pulls her into an empty room and drives her up against the wall. Their bodies are barely apart, a bloody loveburger cliché, and she hates that the scent coming off his skin makes every fine hair on her body stand on end. It’s not just blood. It’s him as well.
“You should have,” he says. “But then your life would not have been nearly as entertaining.”
His hands glide up her hips. Now would be the time to stop this but it’s either him, or some misfortunate servant for dinner. Eve doesn’t trust him but she trusts herself even less.
He pulls down the straps and the bodice of her dress. With the tip of his tongue, he trails a moist line between her breasts down to her belly. He kneels before her, marks her ribs with kisses and lowers his head between her parted legs. He flattens his tongue against the hot, pliant flesh, savouring the taste. She can feel him inside, slow, lazy strokes, that maddening tenderness again. He plays her body like one of his antique musical instruments.
Eve tangles her fingers in his hair and makes him look up. She puts her foot against his chest and pushes him down on the floor and straddles him, taking him in brusquely. She’s had enough of him undoing her nerve by nerve.
She pins his wrists to the floor and holds them until she is certain he’s got the message: no touching. This is how he likes it after all. This is what all his whores do: climb on top of him and do all the job for him. She can do that just as well as they do. She must live up to her reputation.
She drags her nails across his chest, leaving pale white scratch marks. She could split the skin if she put more force into it. He would probably like it.
A small smile plays on Hal’s lips. He takes her hand gently, brings the wrist up to his mouth and traces the veins with his tongue. Eve wants to withdraw the hand, but he holds it firmly. He sits up, snaking his arm around her waist, bringing her body closer to his, and bites at her wrist. Eve draws in a sharp breath.
She used to think growing fangs was supposed to hurt. But it’s not like that. She doesn’t even notice them until she feels a burning desire to sink them into something. They are as much a part of her as her nails or her skin or her limbs.
Hal is smiling against her skin. There is already too much of him inside her but she is willing to go on until she overdoses on him, until she forgets herself, so she dips down her head and plunges her fangs into his shoulder. The first time around his blood had a ferrous taste; she couldn’t have told it apart from human. This time it’s more insipid, a pale imitation of the real nourishing meal, but it has a strange tang, neither good, nor bad, just his. She can feel human blood in the mix as well as hers. The way it circles in and out of her system is mind-boggling.
She pulls away, blood dribbling down her chin. She isn’t tidy; nor does she want to be.
She knows why he covers countless bodies in bitemarks. The very process of clenching and unclenching your jaws around somebody’s flesh can be cathartic. She learns it from him and she makes holes in his body and fills them up with her pain until she can’t feel it anymore. She feels nothing but him thrusting harder as she bites him over and over again, making sure he feels nothing but her.
Part 2 | Part 3