Title: Drowning Puppies
Rating: R
Word Count: 869
Trigger Warning: Child Abuse
Disclaimer: I don't know how this happened, and I do not drown babies. Or puppies.
Summary: Judas and Bianca, who had never necessarily been cohorts, were up to something.
Judas and Bianca, who had never necessarily been cohorts, were up to something.
They’d been loitering quite close to one another, earning suspicious glances from everyone - especially Stella. Judas had returned these suspicious glances with nothing but a bright smile and an almost dainty wiggle of fingertips that sufficed as a wave. Whenever anyone drifted close enough to hear, which was a considerable distance given the company’s supernatural gifts, they would fall characteristically silent and look reasonably disinterested in one another until Julien came in sight.
It was during a moment that everyone seemed especially occupied with something else - Judas had little cause to care what - that Bianca whispered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Found a sack.”
Judas, who was inclined to keeping his expressions schooled, did not fail to obscure his interest. Only one eyebrow rose and he hmmed lightly in his throat. He tilted back his glass casually. “Really is embarrassing, isn’t it?” he murmured around the rim of the glass before the blood touched his lips, concealing the movement and muffling his words as he drank. He was lowering his glass when something small and uncoordinated bumped into his leg.
“Pop-Pop,” the crawler burbled, wrapping a fist into the fabric of his pant leg.
Judas grimaced like a man who had just swallowed something scalding, the tendons in his neck flexing momentarily before he bared his teeth in some semblance of a smile. It held no particular amount of warmth at first, and then dissolved into something that appeared more genuine. Rule number one: do not scare the child.
“Hey, Mitchell,” he said with the same sort of false cheer he used when addressing idiots and door-to-door salesmen. He set his glass down and took the opportunity to glance at Bianca. She appeared to be sizing up the child in comparison to something in her mind’s eye. Judas reached down and plucked the boy off the ground, asking, “Wanna go for a walk?”
Mitchell did not respond except to blow bubbles at him; Bianca nodded impatiently.
It was centuries of sneaking about that allowed both of the older vampires to sneak out of the room without anyone noticing. Or maybe they did notice, and didn’t really think much of it. They were the boy’s grandparents, after all, and he seemed content to burble in Judas’ arms and tug at the longer hair around the man’s ears. Judas endured this with all the grace he endured everything else as they closed the door behind them and made headway for the nearby river.
Judas didn’t mark the moment when Bianca produced the burlap sack, but once he did notice it he held Mitchell out and regarded him the same way he would regard a shirt he’d planned to buy: slightly detached and with caution. Didn’t want it to be too small. Mitchell burbled and clapped. “Pop-op-op-op!”
“Yes, yes, you little monster.” With nobody watching or listening, Judas was much less inclined to pretend; his voice, however, was eerily pleasant. Mitchell, who would likely not grow up to be too intelligent anyways, responded to his tone, not his words, and laughed. “Yes, yes, Grandfather’s funny, isn’t he?” he asked as he lowered the boy into the sack.
Mitchell looked momentarily alarmed, his eyes going wide. He started to fuss. “Shh, it’s a-“ began Judas. Bianca deftly wrapped the length of cord around the neck and tied it into a knot.
The motion did not stop Mitchell from fussing. If anything, it set him off, and his muffled whines from inside earned smiles from the older vampires, although Judas’ was fleeting. “Put him in the water,” he said, making his own way to the water’s edge in order to dip his hands in and scrub them, as if trying to rid them of cooties or some terrible, flesh-eating disease. Bianca drew up beside him, glanced at the running water and then the sack, and crouched beside him to dangle it from the cord until the water darkened the brown fabric to nearly black.
Before Mitchell could really get to screaming at the cold water’s touch, Judas reached out and submerged it. Bubbles of air rose to the top of the water and popped. It wasn’t like drowning a real, adult person; there was no struggle. It was like drowning a runt puppy.
Essentially it was the same thing.
“Dad? What…are you two doing?”
Judas nearly toppled into the water. Bianca froze, but the pressure she was applying to the burlap sack didn’t lessen at all. “Nothing,” Judas intoned, standing swiftly. “I dropped something.”
“Go back inside, sweetheart,” Bianca suggested, rising beside him. Judas chanced a glance over his shoulder at the bag, which was swiftly beginning to float to the top. It stopped only when Bianca, less concerned about the materials used to make her shoes, shifted her balance and used one foot to push it back in the water.
“Have you seen Mitchell? Someone said you had him last.” Jezebel had narrowed her eyes, detecting something suspicious.
“We left him inside,” replied Judas seriously. “Haven’t seen him for...I’d say five minutes.” It wasn’t even really a lie.
Although, eventually, he figured they might have some explaining to do.