Arthur/Ariadne/Eames- Forsaken- Chapter 1- No Choice
Title: Forsaken: Chapter 1- No Choice
Author: blacksouledbutterfly (me)
Rating: NC-17 (eventually)
Pairings: Arthur/Ariadne/Eames
Word Count: 4, 080
Summary: AU. Getting involved with monsters is always a dangerous thing. But for Arthur Cole it has become both messy and bloody. Trapped between a vampire and a shapeshifter, bound to both, Arthur is thrown into a battle that none of them are ready for. A battle which very well may claim all of their lives.
Warnings: Mentions of sex and foul language throughout.
Notes: Chapter index can be found here. For this prompt at inception_kink.
Tom Hardy as Alexander Eames
He knows that when he gets called at two in the morning there's nothing good at hand. His nights usually end pretty late to begin with. Usually he doesn’t end up getting to bed before midnight or later to begin with. And tonight was no different.
After his rather bizarre meeting with Andrew Post he had made his way back to his apartment and had thrown his coat and his briefcase on the chair and then crawled into bed hoping to get at least five hours of sleep before someone decided to turn around and call him up, awakening him from a deep sleep. He wasn’t that lucky today however. Because at three his cell phone started to ring loudly from the end table.
It takes until right before the phone is about to go to voicemail for him to reach over and answers it, holding the phone up to his ear and yawning before he actually says anything. "Hello?"
"Are you working or are you available?"
Groaning the lanky brunette rolls over it bed and reaches up, runs a hand through his hair to push it back from his face. "I'm at home."
"Good. I'll give you the address."
"I've only gotten two hours of sleep, you know."
"I'll try to get people to kill others at more convenient times for you."
The edge of his mouth twitches and he lets out a sardonic laugh. He knows that logically if you work in a job going through crime scenes you can't be picky about what time things happen. Crime doesn’t take place on his schedule. He's come to terms with that by now but it doesn’t make the idea of being woken up after only two hours of sleep any more appealing. "You try that. See how well that works out."
Running his hand over his face to try to rid his face of some of the sleep that’s lingering there. "Is it really necessary I come?"
"Captain's orders."
That’s the problem with volunteering to work for the police- you get called out at the most convenient times. And it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a volunteer and that means he doesn’t get paid for his losing sleep. He gets called and has to get out of bed and head over to wherever they may be and work things out with the police. It was a pain in the ass to say the least. But he had signed on for it and it wouldn’t look very good if he didn’t show up when he was asked to.
"Alright," he sighs, reluctantly throwing his legs over the edge of the bed. "Give me the address. I'll be there as soon as I can."
He tried to ignore the satisfied tone in Bookout's voice when he rattled off the address.
The good thing was that he didn’t have to go very far to get to the place. It only a ten minute drive which meant that maybe, if he was lucky, he could get things over and done with and be back in bed in an hour tops. Maybe. He wasn’t counting on it though. He tended to have the Devil's luck.
The news crews were just starting to show up when he parked his car down the block. Half of the neighborhood was out in front of the crime scene tape, coats through haphazardly over their pajamas. Most of them weren’t even in shoes- they were in slippers. It was a typical scene, everyone who lives in the area coming to see what all the mayhem is about, all whispering to each other, all talking about who lived in the house, wondering what happened there, each coming up with their own theories based on…well, based on nothing really. Most of their theories are based on who the people are as people or who they perceive them to be. Facts don’t ever factor into it. It's pretty pathetic.
Once his car door is closed and locked and his keys are in his pocket he makes his way over towards the house, elbows his way through the crowd. People turn and look at him, this guy in ratty jeans and a t-shirt- he hadn’t bothered to dress for his regular job when he hoped just to go back home and get sleep when he's done here. But they all kept on looking at him like he had absolutely no right to be there which if he were them he would probably think too if he saw someone like him pushing their way towards the crime scene tape.
Once he reaches the tape he nods a slight hello to the uniform standing just inside the tape and then ducks down when he lifts it up for him. Up closer to the door he spots one of the detectives hunched down slightly near one of the bushes, hands on her knees, breathing deeply. Cody Keller has only been a detective in homicide for a couple of months. Before she had been one of the uniforms that used to show up at the crime scenes. But now that she's moved into homicide she's had to actually work in the crime scenes. And apparently that has been quite difficult for her.
Sticking his hands in his pockets he makes his way over towards the hunched over detective, watching her dark hair hang around her face like that. The only advantage is that apparently she isn't puking her guts out which is good otherwise she'd be one heck of a mess right now.
"Bad in there?" he asks her after a second.
Cody looks up at him, her dark eyes clouded over just a bit, her skin pale beneath her normally tan skin tone. She swallows reflexively and then rubs her hands against her knees and stands up, takes a slow deep breath and nods her head just a little bit. "Yeah," she breathes. "Yeah, it's pretty bad."
He offers her a ghost of a smile, the corners of his mouth twitching just a tiny bit. "You ever think you'll get used to this?"
"God, I hope so." She sighs heavily, reaches up and tucks some of her hair behind her ears, runs her palm over her face. "I don’t know how much more of this getting sick shit I can handle."
"I'm sure it'll get better." But he's not. Some people just can't handle crime scenes. Some people just can't handle seeing dead bodies.
"Yeah." She doesn’t sound too sure and he doesn’t blame her for that.
"They inside?"
"Yeah. Adam is waiting for you in the hall. He told me to send you right in."
He doesn’t bother to thank her as he heads inside.
"Well, you didn’t need to dress up just for us." Adam Shirley is leaning back against the hallway wall when Arthur gets there. His dark hair is flopped over in front of one of his eyes and he reaches up to tuck it back from his forehead. "You look like shit."
"Feel like it."
"Cody losing her dinner out there?"
"Not yet."
The corner of Adam's mouth twitches, threatens to turn into a smile but he fights it off, clears his throat instead. "Ryan is starting to wonder if she's cut out for field work."
"She's still new. Give her time. Not everyone is built with a non-existence upchuck factor."
"Guess we're some of the lucky ones, huh?"
"If you can call it that." He isn't so sure he considers the ability to handle violent death as a lucky trait. Sometimes he quite honestly would rather actually feel sick when he sees the things that he sees in this line of work. It would make him feel less like some sort of a monster or something equally as unpleasant. But for some unknown reason he was blessed with a strong stomach and some days that makes him feel less than normal. Of course, he isn't sure if he would be considered normal by most standards anyway. "So, why was I called out to this scene?"
"What? You can't just read it from me?"
"You know it doesn’t work that way."
Adam shrugs slightly in dismissal, nods his head slightly towards the other end of the hall. "Ryan insisted. Captain's orders. Any crime committed to something…not human- or what seems to be committed by something less than human and we're supposed to call you."
"Hmm." He'd had about enough of preternatural creatures for the night if he's being honest with himself but he doesn’t suppose pointing that out will do any good. He knew what he was signing on for the moment he agreed to work with the police. He knew it meant long nights and crime scenes that were less than pleasant. "Ryan down the hall?"
"Yeah. Last door on the left."
"Thanks." Reaching out he pats Adam on the arm and then reaches down to grab a pair of gloves from the box on the table just inside the living room. Tugging them on he flexes his fingers inside of the latex, moves down the hall to meet with the man who had woken him up from a sound sleep.
Detective Ryan Bookout is middle-aged and looks it as he stands in the bedroom, his hands encased in the same latex gloves that Arthur's are. He has a notebook held firmly in one hand, a pen in the other. He closes his dark brown eyes tightly when the flash of a camera goes off and turns to look at the uniform who snapped the picture. "Get the fuck out of here," he grumbles at him. "We got enough pictures to wallpaper the damn precinct by now."
"Pleasant as always I see," Arthur drawls as he steps into the room, sashaying to the side to let the uniform out. "I thought the captain told you to be nicer to the uniforms."
"He did. Guess I forgot."
"Just decided to ignore him is more likely."
On the bed there is a white sheet stretched out, blood spotting it in some spots, areas raised from where the body lay beneath it. A small body from the look of it. A petite woman or maybe a teenager. There's no way to tell without lifting up the sheet. But he learned very early on not to do that without permission. The first time- and the last time- that he did that he nearly got his ass handed to him on a silver platter.
"So, what have you got for me to look at?"
"Monica Ross. Twenty-one. Her parents were away this weekend. We called them already."
"Who found her?"
"First officers on the scene. Her best friend called them when she hadn’t been able to get in contact with her for three days. Wouldn’t answer the phone, wouldn’t open the door. Rigor hasn’t set in yet though. Couldn’t have been dead for the whole three days."
"And I got called in…why?"
"Take a look." He nods slightly towards the body, eyes never leaving the younger man's face. "Tell me what you feel. If anything, of course."
Arthur hesitates a beat, waiting to see if the older man is going to add anything to that but of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t like to tell Arthur more than the basics for some reason. Maybe he feels like it'll muddle things a little, influence his opinion. And in all honesty Arthur can't quite say he'd be wrong.
Stepping up closer to the bed he bends down a little, grasps one of the corners of the sheet and pulls it back slowly, tugging more firmly when it sticks to the blood. The girl's green eyes stare lifelessly up at the ceiling, the grayish film that death brings clouding them over. Her mouth is open in a small 'o' shape like maybe she had been surprised when she died, her blonde hair splayed out around her head, bloody where it's closer to the body. It’s a macabre halo.
He tugs the sheet down no further than her waist, letting it fold onto itself as he looks down at the topless dead girl on the bed. He was right about her being a petite woman. She probably hadn’t stood more than five-foot in height when she was alive and now, pale and dead on her bed she looks even smaller, younger. She looks no more than a child.
Blood is splattered all over her chest, collected in the valley of her neck. "Laceration on her throat," he notes after a moment, leaning closer to take a look at it. "Probably the jugular."
"Probably."
He glances over at Ryan, arches an eyebrow as if asking if he's just going to stand there and agree with him but the older man says nothing, just looks at him. "Not that you need my help for that part, do you?"
"No," the detective agrees. "The M.E. can help us with that part."
Smiling a bit to himself Arthur glances down at the body, looks down at the young woman, lets his eyes travel down her torso. There's a piece of jewelry in her navel, a red crystal with a bat hanging off of it. a tattoo of a bat rests next to her navel, the ink still bright enough to look fake which means it couldn’t be more than a couple of days old. Three, four at the most. "Pretty girl," he murmurs, mostly to himself.
"Used to be."
"Still is," he insists. "Death doesn’t stop her from being pretty." He doesn’t have to turn to look at Ryan to know he's shrugging.
Several more cuts litter the girl's skin- her arms, her stomach, her chest. There's a distinct slice that curves along one of her pale pink nipples, one close to her wrist as though she had slit her wrist though that’s obviously not the case. Her skin is a mess of blood, like someone had splattered her with paint.
"So?" Ryan prompts. "Anything?"
"Not yet."
Straightening himself out Arthur extends the index finger and pointer finger of his right hand, fingers pressed tightly together and lets them hover just above the skin of the girl's forehead. And then slowly, very slowly he brings his hand slowly down her body, tracing her in the air. His fingers ghost over the cut on the side of the neck, down the space between her breasts, stops just beneath her navel.
The first thing he gets is laughter, feminine laughter, a lilting kind like bells or wind chimes, an appealing sound. It sinks inside of him, bounces around inside of his skull, warms up his spine. And then he gets these breathy sounds, feels lust and fulfillment, something else, something like being thrilled though he can't be sure. It feels like the rush you get when you jump of a ledge not knowing if you're going to break a bone when you land. And coldness, an indescribable coldness but a pleasant one. One she likes, one she enjoys, one that thrills her and makes her toes curl.
And then he feels it, the shock, the fear. He feels a searing pain in the side of his neck, feels warmth flow down his neck as though he himself were bleeding. He feels the rapid beating of her heart, feels her breath hitch, feels her panic. He can almost see her curling her hands into fists, beat at the person cutting her but they hit uselessly like trying to break through a brick wall. He feels every cut, every slice, feels the blood flowing out of her, feels her breathing slow.
And then he feels nothing but cold. A never-ending, all consuming cold of death.
He pulls his hand back from her like he's been burned, steps back and clears his throat a bit.
"I guess you saw something."
"You already know what I saw, what I felt."
"I know what I think you saw. I want to know what you did see."
He turns to look at the older man, dark eyes hazy, still coming out of being thrown into the dead girl's senses. "Vampire. But this doesn’t look like a vampire kill."
"Explain."
He knows he doesn’t have to, knows that Ryan knows damn well why it doesn’t look like a vampire kill. But he's not in the mood to argue. "Vampire don’t cut their victims. They bite them. And they don’t cover up the bites. But this one…" He trails off, motions to the body. "He sliced her up like a Christmas ham."
"Human acting like a vampire maybe?"
"No, this was a real vampire. But for some reason they were trying to cover their tracks." He looks back down at the dead girl on the bed, lets his eyes linger on the cut on her neck. And he feels it, the hunger, the longing, the bloodlust. It threatens to take a hold of him, turn him into that thing that did that to her, almost makes him want to lean down himself and lick at the blood still lingering around the wound.
"They didn’t have to kill her," he says after a moment. "Vampires can feed without killing. They wanted to kill her."
"Why?"
"That’s your job to find out, isn't it?" Taking the sheet in his hands he covers the body back up, resting the top of it gently on the pillow above where her hair is. "Do you need me for anything else?"
"Did you get anything about the vampire? Anything at all?"
"No."
He thinks about mentioning that a vampire came to visit him today but doesn’t see the point in it. There are plenty of vampires in the city and in all honesty he'd like to think this was coincidental.
"Good. Then if you don’t mind I'd like to go back to sleep."
Ryan nods at him, his eyes on his notebook as he scribbles something down in it. "Alright. You'll get a call if the captain wants to follow up with you."
"I'll wait on baited breath." He steps back from the bed, just looks at the covered body for several more moments before he makes his way out into the hall, tugging off the gloves on his hands and tossing them into the garbage as he nears the door. Cody is on her way back inside and he smiles at her, tries to be encouraging, knows that if she doesn’t get used to this all soon then she's going to just keep getting hell from the guys.
He shoves his way back through the crowd, fishing his keys out as he moves down the street to his car. Pausing before he puts his keys in the lock he watches the medical examiner's van pull up, watches the heavy set man climb out of the van.
He feels something slam against the back of his head.
And then he sees nothing but black.
Sunlight. That’s the first thing he notices when he wakes up. Sunlight is beating down against his face. Scrunching his face up he tries to fight off the light in his eyes. He's lying on a cold floor that feels like concrete against his cheek. And as he slowly starts to sit up a wave of nausea rolls over him like he's being thrashed around.
Crawling on his hands and knees until he feels the wall brushing against his fingertips he throws up.
"About time you woke up."
The voice startles him even as he throws up again. His stomach aches and his head is pounding. He groans, turns so he can press his back against the wall. His vision is hazy right now and he has to blink several times before he can see that there's someone else in the room.
A man stands against the opposite wall, half in shadow. He's wearing a cream colored suit and tan loafers, his too-thick lips curled up into a slight smile. There's a cigarette between two of his fingers and he lifts up the hand holding it to point at him. "Thought they may have given you too much," he tells him in an amused voice. "Don’t worry. It's just a side effect of the sedative. It'll pass."
"Comforting," Arthur grumbles from his spot on the floor. The taste of bile sloshes around in his mouth.
"At least you know you're not dying, darling," the man drawls in a crisp British accent. He turns slightly, reaches out and grabs something off of the table nearby and moves closer to Arthur. Crouching down he moves the cigarette back towards his mouth and holds it between his lips, talks around it. "Here. It'll help the taste." He holds out the bottle in his hand.
"Where am I?"
"Basement," he replies in a tone that indicates that Arthur should know that.
"Where?"
"Can't tell you that." The other man shrugs slightly. "Should have just come like the Master wanted. Take the water. It'll help."
"I'm not taking anything from you. For all I know it could be poisoned."
"If the Master wanted you dead you'd be dead. But…to put you at ease." He unscrews the cap and holds it up for Arthur to see and then takes the cigarette out of his mouth as he tilts his head back and pours some of the water into his own mouth and swallows it down without his mouth ever touching the rim.
"Satisfied?" he asks and holds out the bottle to Arthur.
He accepts it with some reluctance, downs half of the bottle to get the taste out of his mouth before he looks back at the British man. "You're not a vampire," he notes.
"Nope. Got a heartbeat just as much as you do, my friend."
"And yet you work for the Master."
"You could say that."
He swallows against the lump in his throat, shifts to get more comfortable. "What does the master want with me?"
"Don’t know that. Didn’t ask. I was told to keep an eye on you and I am. That’s all there is to it."
"So you do work for the Master."
"Like I said, you could say that." He drops the cap on the floor in front of Arthur and then stands up, stepping back towards the wall, brings his cigarette to his mouth and takes a drag from it. "You won't be seeing the Master until later. For obvious reasons." He motions slightly towards the sunlight pouring through the window for emphasis.
"This was a bad way to go about asking a favor."
"Didn’t leave anyone much of a choice, did you?" He shrugs his shoulders a bit. "The master wanted to meet with you. You refused. You don’t tell the Master no. Was just a stroke of luck you were at that crime scene tonight. It meant no one had to break into your place to get you here. Funny thing about crime scenes- police are so busy with the task at hand they don’t notice anything else going on around them."
"Yeah. Funny." Only it isn't and the other man seems to know that because he smiles, laughs a bit under his breath. "What did you hit me with?"
"I didn’t hit you, darling. I had nothing to do with getting you here. I'm just you're babysitter for the time being. And quite frankly, as of right now, I'm your only friend here."
"Bad way to go about making friends," Arthur gripes. The back of his head is throbbing where he got his and he leans forward a bit to place a hand against his head. There doesn’t seem to be any blood but there's a lump forming there the size of a baseball. "Usually when people want to make friends they introduce themselves."
"Fair enough," he concedes. "That’s quite rude of me."
"People call me Eames."
"Why do people call you Eames?"
"Because they do." Eames smiles at him again. "Don’t worry. As long as you behave yourself the Master won't do anything to you. You're here as a guest, here to be hired for a job."
"Something's already been done to you."
"Oh, darling," Eames breathes, shaking his head a bit as he looks down at the other man. "If you think this is having something done to you then you obviously don’t know how vampires do things."
Arthur finds it very discomforting that he can't argue that point.
Author: blacksouledbutterfly (me)
Rating: NC-17 (eventually)
Pairings: Arthur/Ariadne/Eames
Word Count: 4, 080
Summary: AU. Getting involved with monsters is always a dangerous thing. But for Arthur Cole it has become both messy and bloody. Trapped between a vampire and a shapeshifter, bound to both, Arthur is thrown into a battle that none of them are ready for. A battle which very well may claim all of their lives.
Warnings: Mentions of sex and foul language throughout.
Notes: Chapter index can be found here. For this prompt at inception_kink.
Tom Hardy as Alexander Eames
He knows that when he gets called at two in the morning there's nothing good at hand. His nights usually end pretty late to begin with. Usually he doesn’t end up getting to bed before midnight or later to begin with. And tonight was no different.
After his rather bizarre meeting with Andrew Post he had made his way back to his apartment and had thrown his coat and his briefcase on the chair and then crawled into bed hoping to get at least five hours of sleep before someone decided to turn around and call him up, awakening him from a deep sleep. He wasn’t that lucky today however. Because at three his cell phone started to ring loudly from the end table.
It takes until right before the phone is about to go to voicemail for him to reach over and answers it, holding the phone up to his ear and yawning before he actually says anything. "Hello?"
"Are you working or are you available?"
Groaning the lanky brunette rolls over it bed and reaches up, runs a hand through his hair to push it back from his face. "I'm at home."
"Good. I'll give you the address."
"I've only gotten two hours of sleep, you know."
"I'll try to get people to kill others at more convenient times for you."
The edge of his mouth twitches and he lets out a sardonic laugh. He knows that logically if you work in a job going through crime scenes you can't be picky about what time things happen. Crime doesn’t take place on his schedule. He's come to terms with that by now but it doesn’t make the idea of being woken up after only two hours of sleep any more appealing. "You try that. See how well that works out."
Running his hand over his face to try to rid his face of some of the sleep that’s lingering there. "Is it really necessary I come?"
"Captain's orders."
That’s the problem with volunteering to work for the police- you get called out at the most convenient times. And it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a volunteer and that means he doesn’t get paid for his losing sleep. He gets called and has to get out of bed and head over to wherever they may be and work things out with the police. It was a pain in the ass to say the least. But he had signed on for it and it wouldn’t look very good if he didn’t show up when he was asked to.
"Alright," he sighs, reluctantly throwing his legs over the edge of the bed. "Give me the address. I'll be there as soon as I can."
He tried to ignore the satisfied tone in Bookout's voice when he rattled off the address.
The good thing was that he didn’t have to go very far to get to the place. It only a ten minute drive which meant that maybe, if he was lucky, he could get things over and done with and be back in bed in an hour tops. Maybe. He wasn’t counting on it though. He tended to have the Devil's luck.
The news crews were just starting to show up when he parked his car down the block. Half of the neighborhood was out in front of the crime scene tape, coats through haphazardly over their pajamas. Most of them weren’t even in shoes- they were in slippers. It was a typical scene, everyone who lives in the area coming to see what all the mayhem is about, all whispering to each other, all talking about who lived in the house, wondering what happened there, each coming up with their own theories based on…well, based on nothing really. Most of their theories are based on who the people are as people or who they perceive them to be. Facts don’t ever factor into it. It's pretty pathetic.
Once his car door is closed and locked and his keys are in his pocket he makes his way over towards the house, elbows his way through the crowd. People turn and look at him, this guy in ratty jeans and a t-shirt- he hadn’t bothered to dress for his regular job when he hoped just to go back home and get sleep when he's done here. But they all kept on looking at him like he had absolutely no right to be there which if he were them he would probably think too if he saw someone like him pushing their way towards the crime scene tape.
Once he reaches the tape he nods a slight hello to the uniform standing just inside the tape and then ducks down when he lifts it up for him. Up closer to the door he spots one of the detectives hunched down slightly near one of the bushes, hands on her knees, breathing deeply. Cody Keller has only been a detective in homicide for a couple of months. Before she had been one of the uniforms that used to show up at the crime scenes. But now that she's moved into homicide she's had to actually work in the crime scenes. And apparently that has been quite difficult for her.
Sticking his hands in his pockets he makes his way over towards the hunched over detective, watching her dark hair hang around her face like that. The only advantage is that apparently she isn't puking her guts out which is good otherwise she'd be one heck of a mess right now.
"Bad in there?" he asks her after a second.
Cody looks up at him, her dark eyes clouded over just a bit, her skin pale beneath her normally tan skin tone. She swallows reflexively and then rubs her hands against her knees and stands up, takes a slow deep breath and nods her head just a little bit. "Yeah," she breathes. "Yeah, it's pretty bad."
He offers her a ghost of a smile, the corners of his mouth twitching just a tiny bit. "You ever think you'll get used to this?"
"God, I hope so." She sighs heavily, reaches up and tucks some of her hair behind her ears, runs her palm over her face. "I don’t know how much more of this getting sick shit I can handle."
"I'm sure it'll get better." But he's not. Some people just can't handle crime scenes. Some people just can't handle seeing dead bodies.
"Yeah." She doesn’t sound too sure and he doesn’t blame her for that.
"They inside?"
"Yeah. Adam is waiting for you in the hall. He told me to send you right in."
He doesn’t bother to thank her as he heads inside.
"Well, you didn’t need to dress up just for us." Adam Shirley is leaning back against the hallway wall when Arthur gets there. His dark hair is flopped over in front of one of his eyes and he reaches up to tuck it back from his forehead. "You look like shit."
"Feel like it."
"Cody losing her dinner out there?"
"Not yet."
The corner of Adam's mouth twitches, threatens to turn into a smile but he fights it off, clears his throat instead. "Ryan is starting to wonder if she's cut out for field work."
"She's still new. Give her time. Not everyone is built with a non-existence upchuck factor."
"Guess we're some of the lucky ones, huh?"
"If you can call it that." He isn't so sure he considers the ability to handle violent death as a lucky trait. Sometimes he quite honestly would rather actually feel sick when he sees the things that he sees in this line of work. It would make him feel less like some sort of a monster or something equally as unpleasant. But for some unknown reason he was blessed with a strong stomach and some days that makes him feel less than normal. Of course, he isn't sure if he would be considered normal by most standards anyway. "So, why was I called out to this scene?"
"What? You can't just read it from me?"
"You know it doesn’t work that way."
Adam shrugs slightly in dismissal, nods his head slightly towards the other end of the hall. "Ryan insisted. Captain's orders. Any crime committed to something…not human- or what seems to be committed by something less than human and we're supposed to call you."
"Hmm." He'd had about enough of preternatural creatures for the night if he's being honest with himself but he doesn’t suppose pointing that out will do any good. He knew what he was signing on for the moment he agreed to work with the police. He knew it meant long nights and crime scenes that were less than pleasant. "Ryan down the hall?"
"Yeah. Last door on the left."
"Thanks." Reaching out he pats Adam on the arm and then reaches down to grab a pair of gloves from the box on the table just inside the living room. Tugging them on he flexes his fingers inside of the latex, moves down the hall to meet with the man who had woken him up from a sound sleep.
Detective Ryan Bookout is middle-aged and looks it as he stands in the bedroom, his hands encased in the same latex gloves that Arthur's are. He has a notebook held firmly in one hand, a pen in the other. He closes his dark brown eyes tightly when the flash of a camera goes off and turns to look at the uniform who snapped the picture. "Get the fuck out of here," he grumbles at him. "We got enough pictures to wallpaper the damn precinct by now."
"Pleasant as always I see," Arthur drawls as he steps into the room, sashaying to the side to let the uniform out. "I thought the captain told you to be nicer to the uniforms."
"He did. Guess I forgot."
"Just decided to ignore him is more likely."
On the bed there is a white sheet stretched out, blood spotting it in some spots, areas raised from where the body lay beneath it. A small body from the look of it. A petite woman or maybe a teenager. There's no way to tell without lifting up the sheet. But he learned very early on not to do that without permission. The first time- and the last time- that he did that he nearly got his ass handed to him on a silver platter.
"So, what have you got for me to look at?"
"Monica Ross. Twenty-one. Her parents were away this weekend. We called them already."
"Who found her?"
"First officers on the scene. Her best friend called them when she hadn’t been able to get in contact with her for three days. Wouldn’t answer the phone, wouldn’t open the door. Rigor hasn’t set in yet though. Couldn’t have been dead for the whole three days."
"And I got called in…why?"
"Take a look." He nods slightly towards the body, eyes never leaving the younger man's face. "Tell me what you feel. If anything, of course."
Arthur hesitates a beat, waiting to see if the older man is going to add anything to that but of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t like to tell Arthur more than the basics for some reason. Maybe he feels like it'll muddle things a little, influence his opinion. And in all honesty Arthur can't quite say he'd be wrong.
Stepping up closer to the bed he bends down a little, grasps one of the corners of the sheet and pulls it back slowly, tugging more firmly when it sticks to the blood. The girl's green eyes stare lifelessly up at the ceiling, the grayish film that death brings clouding them over. Her mouth is open in a small 'o' shape like maybe she had been surprised when she died, her blonde hair splayed out around her head, bloody where it's closer to the body. It’s a macabre halo.
He tugs the sheet down no further than her waist, letting it fold onto itself as he looks down at the topless dead girl on the bed. He was right about her being a petite woman. She probably hadn’t stood more than five-foot in height when she was alive and now, pale and dead on her bed she looks even smaller, younger. She looks no more than a child.
Blood is splattered all over her chest, collected in the valley of her neck. "Laceration on her throat," he notes after a moment, leaning closer to take a look at it. "Probably the jugular."
"Probably."
He glances over at Ryan, arches an eyebrow as if asking if he's just going to stand there and agree with him but the older man says nothing, just looks at him. "Not that you need my help for that part, do you?"
"No," the detective agrees. "The M.E. can help us with that part."
Smiling a bit to himself Arthur glances down at the body, looks down at the young woman, lets his eyes travel down her torso. There's a piece of jewelry in her navel, a red crystal with a bat hanging off of it. a tattoo of a bat rests next to her navel, the ink still bright enough to look fake which means it couldn’t be more than a couple of days old. Three, four at the most. "Pretty girl," he murmurs, mostly to himself.
"Used to be."
"Still is," he insists. "Death doesn’t stop her from being pretty." He doesn’t have to turn to look at Ryan to know he's shrugging.
Several more cuts litter the girl's skin- her arms, her stomach, her chest. There's a distinct slice that curves along one of her pale pink nipples, one close to her wrist as though she had slit her wrist though that’s obviously not the case. Her skin is a mess of blood, like someone had splattered her with paint.
"So?" Ryan prompts. "Anything?"
"Not yet."
Straightening himself out Arthur extends the index finger and pointer finger of his right hand, fingers pressed tightly together and lets them hover just above the skin of the girl's forehead. And then slowly, very slowly he brings his hand slowly down her body, tracing her in the air. His fingers ghost over the cut on the side of the neck, down the space between her breasts, stops just beneath her navel.
The first thing he gets is laughter, feminine laughter, a lilting kind like bells or wind chimes, an appealing sound. It sinks inside of him, bounces around inside of his skull, warms up his spine. And then he gets these breathy sounds, feels lust and fulfillment, something else, something like being thrilled though he can't be sure. It feels like the rush you get when you jump of a ledge not knowing if you're going to break a bone when you land. And coldness, an indescribable coldness but a pleasant one. One she likes, one she enjoys, one that thrills her and makes her toes curl.
And then he feels it, the shock, the fear. He feels a searing pain in the side of his neck, feels warmth flow down his neck as though he himself were bleeding. He feels the rapid beating of her heart, feels her breath hitch, feels her panic. He can almost see her curling her hands into fists, beat at the person cutting her but they hit uselessly like trying to break through a brick wall. He feels every cut, every slice, feels the blood flowing out of her, feels her breathing slow.
And then he feels nothing but cold. A never-ending, all consuming cold of death.
He pulls his hand back from her like he's been burned, steps back and clears his throat a bit.
"I guess you saw something."
"You already know what I saw, what I felt."
"I know what I think you saw. I want to know what you did see."
He turns to look at the older man, dark eyes hazy, still coming out of being thrown into the dead girl's senses. "Vampire. But this doesn’t look like a vampire kill."
"Explain."
He knows he doesn’t have to, knows that Ryan knows damn well why it doesn’t look like a vampire kill. But he's not in the mood to argue. "Vampire don’t cut their victims. They bite them. And they don’t cover up the bites. But this one…" He trails off, motions to the body. "He sliced her up like a Christmas ham."
"Human acting like a vampire maybe?"
"No, this was a real vampire. But for some reason they were trying to cover their tracks." He looks back down at the dead girl on the bed, lets his eyes linger on the cut on her neck. And he feels it, the hunger, the longing, the bloodlust. It threatens to take a hold of him, turn him into that thing that did that to her, almost makes him want to lean down himself and lick at the blood still lingering around the wound.
"They didn’t have to kill her," he says after a moment. "Vampires can feed without killing. They wanted to kill her."
"Why?"
"That’s your job to find out, isn't it?" Taking the sheet in his hands he covers the body back up, resting the top of it gently on the pillow above where her hair is. "Do you need me for anything else?"
"Did you get anything about the vampire? Anything at all?"
"No."
He thinks about mentioning that a vampire came to visit him today but doesn’t see the point in it. There are plenty of vampires in the city and in all honesty he'd like to think this was coincidental.
"Good. Then if you don’t mind I'd like to go back to sleep."
Ryan nods at him, his eyes on his notebook as he scribbles something down in it. "Alright. You'll get a call if the captain wants to follow up with you."
"I'll wait on baited breath." He steps back from the bed, just looks at the covered body for several more moments before he makes his way out into the hall, tugging off the gloves on his hands and tossing them into the garbage as he nears the door. Cody is on her way back inside and he smiles at her, tries to be encouraging, knows that if she doesn’t get used to this all soon then she's going to just keep getting hell from the guys.
He shoves his way back through the crowd, fishing his keys out as he moves down the street to his car. Pausing before he puts his keys in the lock he watches the medical examiner's van pull up, watches the heavy set man climb out of the van.
He feels something slam against the back of his head.
And then he sees nothing but black.
Sunlight. That’s the first thing he notices when he wakes up. Sunlight is beating down against his face. Scrunching his face up he tries to fight off the light in his eyes. He's lying on a cold floor that feels like concrete against his cheek. And as he slowly starts to sit up a wave of nausea rolls over him like he's being thrashed around.
Crawling on his hands and knees until he feels the wall brushing against his fingertips he throws up.
"About time you woke up."
The voice startles him even as he throws up again. His stomach aches and his head is pounding. He groans, turns so he can press his back against the wall. His vision is hazy right now and he has to blink several times before he can see that there's someone else in the room.
A man stands against the opposite wall, half in shadow. He's wearing a cream colored suit and tan loafers, his too-thick lips curled up into a slight smile. There's a cigarette between two of his fingers and he lifts up the hand holding it to point at him. "Thought they may have given you too much," he tells him in an amused voice. "Don’t worry. It's just a side effect of the sedative. It'll pass."
"Comforting," Arthur grumbles from his spot on the floor. The taste of bile sloshes around in his mouth.
"At least you know you're not dying, darling," the man drawls in a crisp British accent. He turns slightly, reaches out and grabs something off of the table nearby and moves closer to Arthur. Crouching down he moves the cigarette back towards his mouth and holds it between his lips, talks around it. "Here. It'll help the taste." He holds out the bottle in his hand.
"Where am I?"
"Basement," he replies in a tone that indicates that Arthur should know that.
"Where?"
"Can't tell you that." The other man shrugs slightly. "Should have just come like the Master wanted. Take the water. It'll help."
"I'm not taking anything from you. For all I know it could be poisoned."
"If the Master wanted you dead you'd be dead. But…to put you at ease." He unscrews the cap and holds it up for Arthur to see and then takes the cigarette out of his mouth as he tilts his head back and pours some of the water into his own mouth and swallows it down without his mouth ever touching the rim.
"Satisfied?" he asks and holds out the bottle to Arthur.
He accepts it with some reluctance, downs half of the bottle to get the taste out of his mouth before he looks back at the British man. "You're not a vampire," he notes.
"Nope. Got a heartbeat just as much as you do, my friend."
"And yet you work for the Master."
"You could say that."
He swallows against the lump in his throat, shifts to get more comfortable. "What does the master want with me?"
"Don’t know that. Didn’t ask. I was told to keep an eye on you and I am. That’s all there is to it."
"So you do work for the Master."
"Like I said, you could say that." He drops the cap on the floor in front of Arthur and then stands up, stepping back towards the wall, brings his cigarette to his mouth and takes a drag from it. "You won't be seeing the Master until later. For obvious reasons." He motions slightly towards the sunlight pouring through the window for emphasis.
"This was a bad way to go about asking a favor."
"Didn’t leave anyone much of a choice, did you?" He shrugs his shoulders a bit. "The master wanted to meet with you. You refused. You don’t tell the Master no. Was just a stroke of luck you were at that crime scene tonight. It meant no one had to break into your place to get you here. Funny thing about crime scenes- police are so busy with the task at hand they don’t notice anything else going on around them."
"Yeah. Funny." Only it isn't and the other man seems to know that because he smiles, laughs a bit under his breath. "What did you hit me with?"
"I didn’t hit you, darling. I had nothing to do with getting you here. I'm just you're babysitter for the time being. And quite frankly, as of right now, I'm your only friend here."
"Bad way to go about making friends," Arthur gripes. The back of his head is throbbing where he got his and he leans forward a bit to place a hand against his head. There doesn’t seem to be any blood but there's a lump forming there the size of a baseball. "Usually when people want to make friends they introduce themselves."
"Fair enough," he concedes. "That’s quite rude of me."
"People call me Eames."
"Why do people call you Eames?"
"Because they do." Eames smiles at him again. "Don’t worry. As long as you behave yourself the Master won't do anything to you. You're here as a guest, here to be hired for a job."
"Something's already been done to you."
"Oh, darling," Eames breathes, shaking his head a bit as he looks down at the other man. "If you think this is having something done to you then you obviously don’t know how vampires do things."
Arthur finds it very discomforting that he can't argue that point.