Fic (White Collar): Lost Boy - Part One
Title: Lost Boy
Author: cookielaura
Artist: cookielaura
Beta: sherylyn
Characters/Pairings: Neal, Peter, Mozzie, Diana, June, Hughes, Sara, Elizabeth, mention of Ellen, brief past Neal/OC, slight Peter/Neal, very slight Neal/El
Word Count: 21,827 (Part 1: 5,973)
Rating: R
Contains: Mild sexual content; violence including supernatural horror; death of OCs; use of supernatural powers to influence others’ will; attempt to encourage suicide; some of the more minor characters are necessarily darker than in WC
Summary: Neal Caffrey has spent his adult life on the run, leaving a trail of unintentional bodies behind him. When he is discovered by the Fae, a race of supernatural beings, he learns of his true nature as an incubus, and is forced to participate in an ancient and potentially fatal Fae tradition to earn his freedom. Will his new friend Mozzie, and the mysterious Fae cop Peter Burke be able to help him?
Notes: A White Collar/Lost Girl fusion, based closely on the Lost Girl pilot episode; no knowledge of Lost Girl is necessary to read. No Lost Girl spoilers beyond the pilot. Written for WC Big Bang.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything from White Collar or Lost Girl; I’m just playing. I have repurposed some of the original Lost Girl dialogue.
Thanks to: the mods of whitecollar-bb for running this challenge and giving me an extension, and sherylyn for the awesome speedy beta!
Ten years ago
When Danny Brooks was younger, when he was thirteen with a gap in his teeth and hair that wouldn’t lie flat and a habit of sneaking out of his room at night to watch old movies on the beat-up living room TV set, he had imagined his first time, and he had thought it would be romantic. He would be in love, and there would be rose petals on the bed, and champagne on the nightstand, and one day he’d marry the same girl and they’d live happily ever after.
Now that he was sixteen and fumbling in the back seat of Lacey’s dad’s old station wagon, things were different. He was different. It was just puberty that had changed him, he supposed, the same thing that happened to everyone. And if, when his friends at school talked about which girls they wanted to score with, he couldn’t detect in them quite the same level of desperate need, of hunger, of utter powerlessness in the face of their desires that Danny felt, then it was surely just because they were hiding it well.
Lacey was sweet. Blond and a year older than him, with wide eyes, a nervous smile and lip gloss that tasted of cherries. She was a member of the drama club like Danny, and she wore tight cardigans and jean cut-offs come rain or shine, and she liked him and he liked her, and that was enough. He wasn’t quite in love and there were no roses or even a nightstand, but he couldn’t wait. The last few months, the need had been rising inside him, the hunger growing until it became a sharp physical ache, until it drove him to distraction, until he thought he might die if he didn’t act on it soon, and the few short, mostly closed-mouth kisses that he’d stolen from Lacey on her front porch hadn’t been enough.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked Lacey, brushing a strand of highlighted hair behind her ear and fervently hoping that she was. She looked up at him, eyes soft and trusting, perfect white teeth biting into her lower lip in a way he knew was designed to turn him on, and she nodded, then reached up and pulled his face down to hers.
“Perfectly sure,” she whispered before their lips met.
They kissed, and she opened to him, her lips parting, warm and wet, her breath mixing with his as he pressed his tongue into her, one hand twisting in her hair. He registered vaguely that her fingers were unbuttoning his shirt and moving down to his belt, but he could only focus on the kiss, the kiss that went deeper and deeper until it felt like not only her breath but her soul, her very being was pouring into him, filling the vacuum that had existed inside him for so long. The times Danny had kissed before had been nothing compared to this. He felt her fingers slowing, giving up on the belt buckle, and her hands falling away, but he couldn’t look to see why. All he could do was push on, deepening the kiss, overwhelmed by the sense of his thirst finally being quenched. He felt stronger, his mind clearer, the dizziness that had been encroaching on him for weeks vanishing. He felt whole.
He pulled back for a moment to breathe, and everything fell apart.
It took a second for him to register what he was seeing, and then he reached out, hesitantly at first, then desperately.
“Lacey?”
She was smiling. She looked content, satisfied. Her lips were blue, and her skin was cold. When he touched her, it felt as though she’d been dead for hours already.
He called her name, rubbed her frozen hands between his, pulled to mind every bit of CPR instruction he’d ever received, breathed for her, pushed down on her chest to restart her heart. Nothing worked. His head pounded, his stomach lurched, his hands shook. And through the confusion, the fear, the grief, and the horrifying knowledge that somehow this was his fault, one word stood out in his mind. One word screamed at him.
RUN.
-----
Present Day
New York City was only the latest in a long line of places that Neal Caffrey had tried to lose himself in, but after just three weeks it had started to feel dangerously like home. Neal knew it couldn’t last, of course, but as he walked along the street, his mouth full of warm, chewy pretzel and his face turned to the early October sunlight that shone through the smog, he allowed himself to indulge the treacherous voice in his head that said, maybe this time will be different.
He had almost passed by the alleyway when his brain registered the shouts that were cutting through the usual noise of traffic, car horns and footsteps on the pavement. Once he’d heard them though, they were hard to ignore: the anxious, urgent pleadings of someone in trouble, and the menacing tones of whoever was causing that trouble.
Neal bit his lip. He could walk on. Whatever this was, it was certainly none of his business, and he couldn’t afford to make any enemies. But then he caught the sound of a body hitting a trash can at force, and before he was aware he’d made a decision, he was heading into the alley.
Even on a sunny day like this one, the alleyway was mostly in shadow, buildings towering over it from each side and a high, graffiti-covered wall at the far end. In front of that wall, half-sprawled against a trash can that he’d obviously been thrown into, was a small man. He was talking fast, one hand held out in front of him to ward off further attacks, the other hand pushing his glasses back onto his face. The three bulky men that were stood in a semicircle around him looked ready to tear him apart.
“He’ll get it back, of course,” the cornered man was saying. “But these things take time. As Aristotle once said, ‘Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,’ and I assure you -”
“You know what would be sweeter?” growled one of the men, advancing on the smaller man. “Bringing a few of your fingers back for our mutual friend.”
“That’s really not necessary -” the man protested, his voice rising in panic, but the men ignored him, closing in until Neal could no longer see the man at all. He could, however, clearly hear the punches, kicks and shouts of pain.
“Hey,” Neal called sharply, stepping out of the shadows and approaching the skirmish of bodies at the end of the alley. “Can I help you gentlemen with something?”
The men turned and directed a trio of angry scowls towards Neal. Between them, Neal glimpsed the fallen body of the smaller man sink to the ground, blood trickling down his face. He looked like he was already teetering on the edge of consciousness.
“Get out of here,” snarled one of the men, a ruddy-faced guy with a buzz cut. “Unless you want some of this too.”
Neal shrugged casually and gave them a bright smile. “Well, if you’re offering…” he said lightly, strolling forward until he was within reach of them.
The man with the buzz cut stepped up and shoved Neal against the side wall of the alley, hard. The bare brick bit through his thin shirt, scratching at Neal’s back, but the smile didn’t drop from his face.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Buzz Cut snapped.
Neal reached up and ran a finger along the man’s cheek. “You have no idea,” he murmured, satisfaction flowing through him as the man’s anger fell away from his face and his hands dropped from Neal’s shirt. The man’s expression turned soft, his eyes darkening in lust.
“Why don’t you and your friends go somewhere else?” Neal suggested sweetly.
“I - yeah. Yeah, we could do that,” the man said slowly, as though he was coming up with the idea himself.
Neal was just about to congratulate himself on a job well done, when one of the other men pulled Buzz Cut away from him, and slammed his fist into Neal’s stomach. Doubling over, winded, Neal looked up to see the second man glaring down at him.
“I dunno what you think you’re doing,” snapped the man, leaning down so his face was only an inch from Neal’s. “But you’re gonna regret it. Some people” - he shot a disgusted glance at his friend - “have obviously forgotten how to deal with people who can’t keep their noses out.”
The third man joined them, silently hauling Neal up and pressing him back against the wall, a sadistic grin on his face as he did so. Neal’s gaze flicked between the two of them as he tried to catch his breath. He couldn’t handle them both at once. He sighed, then dredged up another smile.
“Okay, do your worst,” he said softly. “But first, how about a little kiss?”
In a swift, smooth movement Neal leaned forward and pressed his lips against the mouth of the man holding him. The man’s breath caught as he went rigid under Neal’s kiss, and Neal felt a stab of regret that it would be the last breath he ever took. A second later, the regret was washed away by the wave of energy that flowed into Neal, lighting him up from the inside, erasing the pain in his stomach, scratching every itch in every cell of his body. He vaguely registered the second man cursing and trying to pull Neal off his friend, but Neal ignored it. It was pointless, he knew - nobody could stop him now, not even Neal himself.
When Neal was sated, when he had taken everything there was to take, his lips finally fell from the other man’s. The man crumpled to the ground, his icy blue lips curved in a sickening smile, his corpse an empty shell.
Neal stood back, his eyes sweeping the surroundings. The two accomplices were running out of the alley, their footsteps and shouts of fear echoing behind them. The man they had been attacking remained on the ground, eyes closed. Neal could only hope that he had kept them closed throughout.
He bent down gingerly, leaning in to check that the small man was breathing. Convinced that he was, Neal stood, straightened his shirt, ran a hand through his hair, and did his best approximation of a casual walk back onto the street.
He had to get back to his apartment and pack his stuff.
It had been a nice place while it had lasted.
----
Detective Peter Burke squinted through the late afternoon sun as he approached the entrance to the alleyway, cordoned off with fluorescent police tape. His partner, Diana, was already waiting for him, standing as far away as she politely could from the two coffee-drinking cops who were guarding the alley.
“Got a weird one here,” said one of the cops by way of greeting as he gestured lazily beyond the tape. “Guy looks real freaky. Smilin’ like he’s pleased to have been offed.”
Peter gave him a tight smile. “Thanks, Colin. Why don’t you guys go canvas for a while?”
The cop shrugged, downed the rest of his coffee and crushed the paper cup in his hand. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, walking off with his partner, and leaving Peter and Diana to duck under the tape and make their way toward the back of the alley. They bent down and Diana lifted the sheet from the body. Blank, dark-rimmed eyes in a near-translucent face stared back at them.
“Human?” she asked, peering at it.
Peter breathed in deeply, inhaling the scent of the body. “Yep. Killer sure wasn’t though.”
Diana cut him a half-amused glance. “Yeah, I figured that much.”
Peter pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and tugged them on, then reached out to move the victim’s collar down, looking for ligature or strangulation marks to explain the blue lips, but there was nothing. He frowned.
“I don’t remember seeing a kill like this before. And leaving it out in an alley for anyone to find? It’s careless, even for the Dark.”
“What makes you think the killer’s Dark?” Diana said.
“Well, I sure as hell hope it wasn’t one of us,” Peter said grimly. He leaned in closer, then pulled a stray brown hair from the shoulder of the victim’s tee. He held it up to his nose. It smelt of hair wax, apple-scented shampoo, and underneath that, freshness and youth. Some arrogant young Fae, presumably, who thought the ironclad rules about disposing of feeds didn’t apply to him.
“Male, brunet,” he said to Diana, and dropped the hair into the evidence bag she was holding out. “Were there any witnesses?” he asked.
Diana shook her head. “Not that we know of, yet. But there’s a camera outside one of the shops that covers the entrance to the alleyway. Jones is pulling the footage for us now.”
“Good. Our eyes only,” Peter said. He sat back on his haunches and took a final look at the dead man. “Poor bastard.”
Diana shrugged. “I suppose there are worse ways to go than with a smile on your face.”
----
Peter rewound the video and ran it again.
The footage was clear. A small, bald man being led into the alley by three unsavory-looking characters. A brown-haired man in a white shirt and jeans, seen only from the back, walking past the alley, stopping, and turning into it. A few minutes later, two of the three heavyset men fleeing the scene, looking like they’d seen a ghost. And seconds after that, the dark-haired man leaving. Again, he was seen mostly from the back, but there was a moment - a fleeting, vital moment that would be his downfall - where he turned and scanned the street to check he hadn’t been seen.
“Gotcha,” Peter said, pausing the videotape. The camera had caught his face: young, smooth, beautiful. Deadly. And yet somehow, vulnerable.
“I don’t get it,” Diana said. “If he wanted to feed, why choose to do it in front of three other humans? It’s just reckless.”
Peter pursed his lips. “I’m not sure it was about the feed. I think maybe he was protecting the little guy.”
“Why would he do that? The little guy’s human, isn’t he?”
“As far as I can tell from this,” Peter said. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anyway, we need to catch him. Put out an APB. Maintain surveillance but do not approach. I don’t want anyone bringing him in but us.”
“On it,” Diana said, heading back to her own desk.
Peter allowed himself to stare at the man on the screen for a few more moments. There was something puzzling him. The man didn’t look like the cocky, rule-flouting Fae Peter had expected. He looked nervous, almost scared. It didn’t make sense.
Peter sighed and let the tape run again. He watched the dark-haired man walk away, and moments later, he saw the small bald man emerge from the alley, glance around, and then follow in his footsteps, taking care not to be seen.
Peter turned off his screen and stood up. If the bald man was tracking the Fae, then Peter wanted to make sure he got to him first.
----
Neal dragged the trash can into the center of the small studio apartment. Stripping off his jeans, socks, shoes and shirt, he threw them into it, and poured lighter fluid over the top. It was vital to make sure there was no forensic evidence to tie him to the body in the alley. He took out a match, struck it and let it fall into the can, then finally took off the gloves he’d been using while wiping his fingerprints from the apartment, and tossed them in on top. Then he stood back and watched another of his lives go up in flames.
It was only when Neal started to shiver in his boxer briefs that he dragged his eyes away from the blaze and forced himself to move. Through the window he could see that dusk was already descending. It was almost time to go.
He pulled on the fresh clothes he’d picked out: black jeans, black shirt, black jacket, all chosen to help him melt away into the night. His hands moved clumsily as he buttoned the shirt; once the initial buzz of feeding wore off, he always got the shakes. It was important not to give into them though, not to surrender to the guilt that was slithering around in his stomach. The world was better off without the thug he’d taken out. And Neal was only surviving.
Packing hadn’t taken long. A few clothes, his shave kit, the book he was reading and some art supplies were all he needed - and pretty much all he owned. There was no point accumulating things when he had nowhere permanent to put them, and likely never would.
He swung the dark backpack over his shoulder and picked up the small pile of passports and ID cards left on the counter; it was safer for them to travel in his pocket. Fifteen different names he had laid claim to over the years - Nicks and Steves and Georges, a William and a Chris and a Gary - were all bundled up in a rubber band and shoved in his jacket. Danny Brooks was there too, though Neal didn’t expect to ever use that one again.
He cast a final look around, then headed out into the corridor, letting the apartment door swing slowly shut behind him. By the time he had reached the main doors, he had already started to let Neal Caffrey go. As he stepped out into the gathering darkness, he became nobody again.
He had only taken a few steps when he felt someone watching him. His muscles tensed, ready to run, as he scanned the street. He was about to put it down to his own tightly wound nerves, when a man stepped out from a doorway a few feet away, and raised a hand in greeting.
The man was small, bald, and had a purpling bruise around his eye, with what looked like a ripped strip of fabric forming a temporary bandage around his head. He was also uncomfortably familiar. Neal’s heart thudded in his throat, but he kept his face neutral, put his head down and walked on, resolutely ignoring the man.
“Hey! Hey, kid, I’m not here to hurt you.”
Neal stopped for a moment and looked at the man, eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, okay, I probably couldn’t if I wanted to,” said the man, shrugging. “I meant, I’m not gonna turn you in. To the police or…anyone.”
Neal huffed out a short, dry laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He started walking again, but the man fell into step next to him.
“Oh, so you’re not the guy who saved me from a very unpleasant fate at the hands of some acquaintances? And you didn’t do it by eating some dude’s face?”
Neal forced a more natural laugh this time, attempting to inject it with real amusement. “Eating some dude’s face? No. I stepped in and suggested they leave, that’s all. Looks like they gave you a nasty knock to the head, you’ve probably been hallucinating. You should head home and rest. Maybe find yourself some better acquaintances in future.”
The man reached out and grabbed Neal’s arm. “Wait. I know what I saw. And I just wanna talk. I think we could be useful to each other. Can we sit down and converse like normal people?”
Neal shook him off. “I’m not normal,” he muttered, the words bitter on his tongue.
“Well, fine, I can’t say that’s a moniker that’s often been applied to me either,” said the man, with a grin. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Mozzie. And you are?”
Neal stared at the hand, offered seemingly without fear or repulsion. He should leave. This couldn’t end well. But in his whole life, he had never had someone he could talk to about…about his situation.
He reached out and grasped Mozzie’s hand. “Neal,” he said. After all, he wasn’t planning on keeping the name, so what harm could it do?
“Drink?” said Mozzie, nodding in the direction of the nearest restaurant, and Neal shrugged.
----
Peter stood on the sidewalk outside the mansion, breathing in the crisp evening air and taking a moment to admire the imposing French-Renaissance façade. Normally he was eager to enter Schinasi, to unwind in the lounge or to sit at the bar and enjoy the company of others of his kind after a hard day in the human world. But tonight, he knew he would not be able to relax. Still, he couldn’t stay out here forever.
He straightened his jacket, then knocked at the door and was admitted by June’s housekeeper, a sweet young Fae girl who took his coat and smiled as she gestured to go through. The marble-floored hallway stretched ahead of him and he made his way down it into the large, oak-paneled room at the end, where he could see that Diana was already at the bar, sipping one of June’s unusual fruit tea concoctions. June herself was behind the bar, looking as regal as ever, her chestnut hair almost seeming to glow in the low light.
“Peter,” she greeted him softly, smiling, though her eyes seemed clouded. Peter seated himself next to Diana, who glanced briefly from June to Peter and then politely excused herself on the pretext of chatting to the waitress who had been eying her for weeks. She left her tea cooling on the bar.
June’s eyes followed Diana until she was out of earshot, then she turned her gaze back to Peter.
“Is it him?” she asked, direct as always.
Peter gave a half-shrug. “You tell me. Male, out-of-towner, unannounced. Helping out humans for no apparent reason.”
For once, June’s perfect posture slipped, and she leaned heavily on the bar. Her skin, still as smooth as a young Fae’s despite the millennia she’d lived through, was marred for a moment as a frown line appeared between her eyebrows. “It’s started then.”
Peter put his hand gently over hers. “I could…persuade him to leave. I have my ways, you know.”
June took a deep breath, then seemed to shake herself. She straightened, and slipped her hand from under Peter’s. “No. What will be, must be. We can’t fight fate.”
Peter raised his eyebrows and let his lips curve into a crooked smile. “Well, you can.” If there was anyone who could twist destiny to their will, it was June.
“Not this time.” June’s returning smile was tinged with sadness and regret, but she turned her back to Peter and selected a bottled beer for him, and when she faced him again she looked more composed. “I’ll help how I can, though, when the time arrives.”
Peter had just raised the bottle to his lips when Diana appeared beside him, her cell phone in hand. “Got a sighting, not far from here,” she said. “We can be there in fifteen.”
Peter put the bottle down, hard. “Let’s go.”
----
Since they had entered the restaurant, Neal had been watching Mozzie carefully, looking for any sign of threat, but none had presented itself. Instead, Mozzie had downed a glass of red wine, immediately ordered another, and then sat and stared at him in apparent wonderment for what had now become an uncomfortable amount of time.
“Were you planning on talking, or are we just going to look at each other?” Neal said at last. He was edgy; even in the poorly lit corner booth, his back against the wall and his eyes on the door, he felt dangerously exposed. He shouldn’t wait much longer to leave the city.
Mozzie raised his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry. It’s just…I’ve never seen one of you up close before. The government’s hidden you so well…”
Neal’s breath caught. One of you. A wave of dizziness swept through him as the thought that this man might know who he was, what he was, almost overwhelmed him.
“One of me?” he managed to say.
Mozzie nodded enthusiastically. “I’ve read all about Roswell of course, and Area 51, and I’ve seen the films, but to see an alien up close -”
Neal’s hope deflated in an instant, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I’m not an alien,” he cut in before Mozzie could continue. “At least not that I know of.”
Mozzie’s face fell a little. “Oh. I’m sorry.” Then his face brightened again and he shrugged apologetically. “I can get a little carried away. But then, if it’s not too gauche, may I ask what you are?”
Neal dredged up a smile to make his story sound a little less pathetic. “I honestly don’t know what I am. I wish I did. I learned when I was a teenager that I was adopted. And soon after that, I started to change, and I became… dangerous. So I ran away. I’ve been running ever since. Stealing wallets, picking up some work here and there.”
Mozzie took a sip of wine, and to Neal’s surprise, he saw genuine sympathy in the other man’s eyes. “That’s rough. I know what it’s like not to know where you came from. Who you belong to. Though maybe not to quite the extent that you do.” Mozzie tapped the stem of his wine glass, apparently thinking. “By the way, what exactly was it you did to my, ah, acquaintance?”
Neal looked away, focusing on the unimaginative art prints on the wall, trying not to think of the way the dead man’s face had looked. “I…drain people. Of their life force, I think. I need it. This hunger builds in me, until it overtakes me. And then I…have to find someone to feed on. I try and make sure it’s someone who won’t be a great loss to society.”
“Well, our friend this afternoon certainly wasn’t,” Mozzie said firmly, though it didn’t do much to alleviate the guilt still gnawing away at Neal’s insides.
“Did he - do you know - did he have any family?” Neal asked, not wanting to hear the answer.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Mozzie replied. “I can’t imagine anyone would have been crazy enough to procreate with him.” He drained his glass, then looked closely at Neal. “So the hunger and the feeding, you can’t control it?”
“No.”
“You should really work on that.”
Neal snorted. “Yeah, thanks for the advice. Are we done here? I have places to be.”
“You do?” Mozzie asked, and Neal averted his eyes, signaling to the waitress for the bill. She brought it swiftly, giving Neal the sort of smile that told him his next move would barely take any effort at all - she was already halfway gone.
He reached out and touched her hand, rubbing his finger softly across the back of it, watching the luminous blue light bloom softly for just a moment across her skin. “I’m really sorry, but I left my wallet at home,” he said. “Do you think I could come back later and make it up to you?”
The girl looked down at him, her cheeks tinged with pink, her pupils already blown. “Of course,” she said breathlessly. “Any time. Any time at all.”
Neal smiled, squeezed her hand, and left the restaurant, listening as Mozzie scrambled to follow.
“What the hell?” Mozzie demanded as he caught up to Neal on the street. “How did you do that?”
“Natural charm and stunning good looks,” Neal said.
“Oh, really? You expect me to believe that waitresses let anyone with a good haircut and a nice smile walk out without paying? Because I’m pretty sure they’d lose their jobs if that happened regularly.”
Neal glanced across at Mozzie, whose expression was the very definition of skeptical, and who appeared to be determined to follow Neal until he got the answers he wanted.
“Fine. I might have used a little something extra beyond my smile,” he said.
“Like?”
“Like, I can influence people to do what I want by touching them.”
Mozzie’s eyes lit up. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. It wears off after a while though.”
Mozzie shook his head in wonderment. “So, let me get this straight. You can seduce people into following your every whim, yet you’re broke, you’ve been hiding out in a murky studio, and you run from place to place? You could do anything you want. You could be living in a mansion on an island, somewhere hot and -”
“I don’t think an island would suit me,” Neal said dryly. “Limited population. I’d start running out of food supply a little too quickly.”
“Well, a penthouse then. Think of the cons you could run, with your talents! You could be a billionaire. We could be billionaires.”
Neal gave a frustrated huff. He had thought of those things, of course - every day was a battle not to take what he wanted, not to use his powers to become rich, successful, loved. But it wasn’t an option, not when he was a killer, not when there was a trail of bodies behind him and there would be more to come.
“Billionaires get noticed,” he pointed out sharply. “And I can’t get noticed. I have to stay below the radar.”
Mozzie waved away his concerns. “You just need a good manager. Someone to help you use your powers wisely. I nominate me.”
“What a surprise. And no thanks.”
“Why not?” Mozzie asked, and Neal jerked to a stop, frustration welling up inside him.
“You’re being stupid. Why would you want to hang out with me, knowing I could make you my next meal at any minute? It’s not exactly the smartest move.”
Mozzie raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re planning on sucking my life force any time soon. And besides, it seems like a pretty smart move to me. When I was growing up, I always kept the same strategy for survival: find the toughest kid in the orphanage, and stick with them. And you? You are definitely the toughest kid. I think this could be the beginning of a wonderful friendship.”
Neal stared at the man beside him, offering all the things Neal had wanted for so long: a companion, a partner in crime, someone who knew what he was capable of and wouldn’t run screaming in the opposite direction. Someone who would run with him.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll think about it.”
-----
Peter leaned casually against the wall across the road from the restaurant where the target had been sighted, and waited, Diana at his side. Even in the gathering darkness it was easy to see the restaurant exit, illuminated by the glow of a streetlamp, and they didn’t have to wait long before the man they were looking for came striding out, head down, a backpack slung across his shoulder. Following only a few seconds behind him, and quickly falling in step next to him, was the smaller man from the videotape, looking a little worse for wear but gesturing animatedly. Peter and Diana mirrored their journey on the other side of the street.
“Let’s do a walk by,” Peter said softly to Diana. “I want to see if I can get a read on him before we move in, get some idea what sort of Fae we’re dealing with.”
As they crossed the street, the pair of men they were heading for stopped abruptly, apparently in disagreement with each other. The taller man was shaking his head, his expression dark, but as Peter watched, his face seemed to soften, and the hint of a smile appeared. The smaller man’s face broke into a grin, and the pair began walking again. They looked almost like friends.
Peter and Diana arrived on the other side of the street and began walking towards the men, hoping they could cross paths without seeming too conspicuous. It gave Peter the chance to look at their target straight on while the man’s attention was on his friend, and Peter let his eyes roam every inch of the target’s body. There was nothing there to indicate what type of Fae he was, and with the evening breeze blowing in the wrong direction, Peter couldn’t even catch his scent. He resigned himself to the fact that the walk by would not produce any useful information, but as he and Diana passed the two men, the target caught his eye, and their gazes locked.
The target’s eyes flicked up and down Peter’s frame, and for just a second, his blue eyes seemed to glow brighter, as if lit from within. Then the glow faded and he smiled politely, turned his attention back to his friend and passed Peter and Diana without looking back. As he walked on, the breeze threw his scent back to Peter, and every one of Peter’s highly developed scent receptors seemed to explode at once. It was a scent he hadn’t encountered before, and he couldn’t identify the type of Fae, but the heady intoxication almost overwhelmed him, and he reached out to Diana to steady himself.
“Boss?” she said, concerned.
Peter shook his head to clear it. “I’m fine. Let’s do this.”
Peter and Diana set off after the pair of men, making up the distance between them until they were just a few yards apart. The men had taken the path Peter had anticipated, and were heading for a side road that would take them to the bus station. As the men turned to enter the street, the target glanced back, and a look of panic crossed his face as he realized he was being followed. But it was too late for him now.
“Take them,” Peter said to Diana.
Diana drew in a deep breath, her chest rising as her eyes narrowed on her targets. She opened her mouth, and the sound flowed out, a haunting stream of music that was powerful enough to part the air between her and her victims. The atmosphere vibrated around them as the pitch grew higher and higher, and the men in the line of her fire swayed on their feet. In seconds the smaller man’s legs went from under him and he fell to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head. The taller man was stronger, and his face screwed up as he fought against the onslaught of the siren song, but his resistance earned him only a few extra seconds before he too collapsed to the ground.
“Nice work,” Peter said. It came in useful, having a siren for a partner.
Peter and Diana moved forward, hoisting their target up and pulling him towards the van they had parked down the street. The man was limp in their grasp, almost a dead weight, and barely struggled as they cuffed him, wrapped a blindfold around his eyes and pushed him into the back of the van.
After they closed the door, Peter did a last check of the quiet street to ensure they had not been seen, then headed for the driving seat. Diana slid in next to him, and cast a look back towards their prisoner.
“Wouldn’t want to be in his shoes when we get him to The Ash,” she said.
Peter started the car, trying not to glance at the man sprawled in the back of the van lest he fall victim to those blue eyes and that enthralling scent, and lose sight of his assigned mission. “My thoughts exactly.”
Author: cookielaura
Artist: cookielaura
Beta: sherylyn
Characters/Pairings: Neal, Peter, Mozzie, Diana, June, Hughes, Sara, Elizabeth, mention of Ellen, brief past Neal/OC, slight Peter/Neal, very slight Neal/El
Word Count: 21,827 (Part 1: 5,973)
Rating: R
Contains: Mild sexual content; violence including supernatural horror; death of OCs; use of supernatural powers to influence others’ will; attempt to encourage suicide; some of the more minor characters are necessarily darker than in WC
Summary: Neal Caffrey has spent his adult life on the run, leaving a trail of unintentional bodies behind him. When he is discovered by the Fae, a race of supernatural beings, he learns of his true nature as an incubus, and is forced to participate in an ancient and potentially fatal Fae tradition to earn his freedom. Will his new friend Mozzie, and the mysterious Fae cop Peter Burke be able to help him?
Notes: A White Collar/Lost Girl fusion, based closely on the Lost Girl pilot episode; no knowledge of Lost Girl is necessary to read. No Lost Girl spoilers beyond the pilot. Written for WC Big Bang.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything from White Collar or Lost Girl; I’m just playing. I have repurposed some of the original Lost Girl dialogue.
Thanks to: the mods of whitecollar-bb for running this challenge and giving me an extension, and sherylyn for the awesome speedy beta!
Ten years ago
When Danny Brooks was younger, when he was thirteen with a gap in his teeth and hair that wouldn’t lie flat and a habit of sneaking out of his room at night to watch old movies on the beat-up living room TV set, he had imagined his first time, and he had thought it would be romantic. He would be in love, and there would be rose petals on the bed, and champagne on the nightstand, and one day he’d marry the same girl and they’d live happily ever after.
Now that he was sixteen and fumbling in the back seat of Lacey’s dad’s old station wagon, things were different. He was different. It was just puberty that had changed him, he supposed, the same thing that happened to everyone. And if, when his friends at school talked about which girls they wanted to score with, he couldn’t detect in them quite the same level of desperate need, of hunger, of utter powerlessness in the face of their desires that Danny felt, then it was surely just because they were hiding it well.
Lacey was sweet. Blond and a year older than him, with wide eyes, a nervous smile and lip gloss that tasted of cherries. She was a member of the drama club like Danny, and she wore tight cardigans and jean cut-offs come rain or shine, and she liked him and he liked her, and that was enough. He wasn’t quite in love and there were no roses or even a nightstand, but he couldn’t wait. The last few months, the need had been rising inside him, the hunger growing until it became a sharp physical ache, until it drove him to distraction, until he thought he might die if he didn’t act on it soon, and the few short, mostly closed-mouth kisses that he’d stolen from Lacey on her front porch hadn’t been enough.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked Lacey, brushing a strand of highlighted hair behind her ear and fervently hoping that she was. She looked up at him, eyes soft and trusting, perfect white teeth biting into her lower lip in a way he knew was designed to turn him on, and she nodded, then reached up and pulled his face down to hers.
“Perfectly sure,” she whispered before their lips met.
They kissed, and she opened to him, her lips parting, warm and wet, her breath mixing with his as he pressed his tongue into her, one hand twisting in her hair. He registered vaguely that her fingers were unbuttoning his shirt and moving down to his belt, but he could only focus on the kiss, the kiss that went deeper and deeper until it felt like not only her breath but her soul, her very being was pouring into him, filling the vacuum that had existed inside him for so long. The times Danny had kissed before had been nothing compared to this. He felt her fingers slowing, giving up on the belt buckle, and her hands falling away, but he couldn’t look to see why. All he could do was push on, deepening the kiss, overwhelmed by the sense of his thirst finally being quenched. He felt stronger, his mind clearer, the dizziness that had been encroaching on him for weeks vanishing. He felt whole.
He pulled back for a moment to breathe, and everything fell apart.
It took a second for him to register what he was seeing, and then he reached out, hesitantly at first, then desperately.
“Lacey?”
She was smiling. She looked content, satisfied. Her lips were blue, and her skin was cold. When he touched her, it felt as though she’d been dead for hours already.
He called her name, rubbed her frozen hands between his, pulled to mind every bit of CPR instruction he’d ever received, breathed for her, pushed down on her chest to restart her heart. Nothing worked. His head pounded, his stomach lurched, his hands shook. And through the confusion, the fear, the grief, and the horrifying knowledge that somehow this was his fault, one word stood out in his mind. One word screamed at him.
RUN.
-----
Present Day
New York City was only the latest in a long line of places that Neal Caffrey had tried to lose himself in, but after just three weeks it had started to feel dangerously like home. Neal knew it couldn’t last, of course, but as he walked along the street, his mouth full of warm, chewy pretzel and his face turned to the early October sunlight that shone through the smog, he allowed himself to indulge the treacherous voice in his head that said, maybe this time will be different.
He had almost passed by the alleyway when his brain registered the shouts that were cutting through the usual noise of traffic, car horns and footsteps on the pavement. Once he’d heard them though, they were hard to ignore: the anxious, urgent pleadings of someone in trouble, and the menacing tones of whoever was causing that trouble.
Neal bit his lip. He could walk on. Whatever this was, it was certainly none of his business, and he couldn’t afford to make any enemies. But then he caught the sound of a body hitting a trash can at force, and before he was aware he’d made a decision, he was heading into the alley.
Even on a sunny day like this one, the alleyway was mostly in shadow, buildings towering over it from each side and a high, graffiti-covered wall at the far end. In front of that wall, half-sprawled against a trash can that he’d obviously been thrown into, was a small man. He was talking fast, one hand held out in front of him to ward off further attacks, the other hand pushing his glasses back onto his face. The three bulky men that were stood in a semicircle around him looked ready to tear him apart.
“He’ll get it back, of course,” the cornered man was saying. “But these things take time. As Aristotle once said, ‘Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,’ and I assure you -”
“You know what would be sweeter?” growled one of the men, advancing on the smaller man. “Bringing a few of your fingers back for our mutual friend.”
“That’s really not necessary -” the man protested, his voice rising in panic, but the men ignored him, closing in until Neal could no longer see the man at all. He could, however, clearly hear the punches, kicks and shouts of pain.
“Hey,” Neal called sharply, stepping out of the shadows and approaching the skirmish of bodies at the end of the alley. “Can I help you gentlemen with something?”
The men turned and directed a trio of angry scowls towards Neal. Between them, Neal glimpsed the fallen body of the smaller man sink to the ground, blood trickling down his face. He looked like he was already teetering on the edge of consciousness.
“Get out of here,” snarled one of the men, a ruddy-faced guy with a buzz cut. “Unless you want some of this too.”
Neal shrugged casually and gave them a bright smile. “Well, if you’re offering…” he said lightly, strolling forward until he was within reach of them.
The man with the buzz cut stepped up and shoved Neal against the side wall of the alley, hard. The bare brick bit through his thin shirt, scratching at Neal’s back, but the smile didn’t drop from his face.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Buzz Cut snapped.
Neal reached up and ran a finger along the man’s cheek. “You have no idea,” he murmured, satisfaction flowing through him as the man’s anger fell away from his face and his hands dropped from Neal’s shirt. The man’s expression turned soft, his eyes darkening in lust.
“Why don’t you and your friends go somewhere else?” Neal suggested sweetly.
“I - yeah. Yeah, we could do that,” the man said slowly, as though he was coming up with the idea himself.
Neal was just about to congratulate himself on a job well done, when one of the other men pulled Buzz Cut away from him, and slammed his fist into Neal’s stomach. Doubling over, winded, Neal looked up to see the second man glaring down at him.
“I dunno what you think you’re doing,” snapped the man, leaning down so his face was only an inch from Neal’s. “But you’re gonna regret it. Some people” - he shot a disgusted glance at his friend - “have obviously forgotten how to deal with people who can’t keep their noses out.”
The third man joined them, silently hauling Neal up and pressing him back against the wall, a sadistic grin on his face as he did so. Neal’s gaze flicked between the two of them as he tried to catch his breath. He couldn’t handle them both at once. He sighed, then dredged up another smile.
“Okay, do your worst,” he said softly. “But first, how about a little kiss?”
In a swift, smooth movement Neal leaned forward and pressed his lips against the mouth of the man holding him. The man’s breath caught as he went rigid under Neal’s kiss, and Neal felt a stab of regret that it would be the last breath he ever took. A second later, the regret was washed away by the wave of energy that flowed into Neal, lighting him up from the inside, erasing the pain in his stomach, scratching every itch in every cell of his body. He vaguely registered the second man cursing and trying to pull Neal off his friend, but Neal ignored it. It was pointless, he knew - nobody could stop him now, not even Neal himself.
When Neal was sated, when he had taken everything there was to take, his lips finally fell from the other man’s. The man crumpled to the ground, his icy blue lips curved in a sickening smile, his corpse an empty shell.
Neal stood back, his eyes sweeping the surroundings. The two accomplices were running out of the alley, their footsteps and shouts of fear echoing behind them. The man they had been attacking remained on the ground, eyes closed. Neal could only hope that he had kept them closed throughout.
He bent down gingerly, leaning in to check that the small man was breathing. Convinced that he was, Neal stood, straightened his shirt, ran a hand through his hair, and did his best approximation of a casual walk back onto the street.
He had to get back to his apartment and pack his stuff.
It had been a nice place while it had lasted.
----
Detective Peter Burke squinted through the late afternoon sun as he approached the entrance to the alleyway, cordoned off with fluorescent police tape. His partner, Diana, was already waiting for him, standing as far away as she politely could from the two coffee-drinking cops who were guarding the alley.
“Got a weird one here,” said one of the cops by way of greeting as he gestured lazily beyond the tape. “Guy looks real freaky. Smilin’ like he’s pleased to have been offed.”
Peter gave him a tight smile. “Thanks, Colin. Why don’t you guys go canvas for a while?”
The cop shrugged, downed the rest of his coffee and crushed the paper cup in his hand. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, walking off with his partner, and leaving Peter and Diana to duck under the tape and make their way toward the back of the alley. They bent down and Diana lifted the sheet from the body. Blank, dark-rimmed eyes in a near-translucent face stared back at them.
“Human?” she asked, peering at it.
Peter breathed in deeply, inhaling the scent of the body. “Yep. Killer sure wasn’t though.”
Diana cut him a half-amused glance. “Yeah, I figured that much.”
Peter pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and tugged them on, then reached out to move the victim’s collar down, looking for ligature or strangulation marks to explain the blue lips, but there was nothing. He frowned.
“I don’t remember seeing a kill like this before. And leaving it out in an alley for anyone to find? It’s careless, even for the Dark.”
“What makes you think the killer’s Dark?” Diana said.
“Well, I sure as hell hope it wasn’t one of us,” Peter said grimly. He leaned in closer, then pulled a stray brown hair from the shoulder of the victim’s tee. He held it up to his nose. It smelt of hair wax, apple-scented shampoo, and underneath that, freshness and youth. Some arrogant young Fae, presumably, who thought the ironclad rules about disposing of feeds didn’t apply to him.
“Male, brunet,” he said to Diana, and dropped the hair into the evidence bag she was holding out. “Were there any witnesses?” he asked.
Diana shook her head. “Not that we know of, yet. But there’s a camera outside one of the shops that covers the entrance to the alleyway. Jones is pulling the footage for us now.”
“Good. Our eyes only,” Peter said. He sat back on his haunches and took a final look at the dead man. “Poor bastard.”
Diana shrugged. “I suppose there are worse ways to go than with a smile on your face.”
----
Peter rewound the video and ran it again.
The footage was clear. A small, bald man being led into the alley by three unsavory-looking characters. A brown-haired man in a white shirt and jeans, seen only from the back, walking past the alley, stopping, and turning into it. A few minutes later, two of the three heavyset men fleeing the scene, looking like they’d seen a ghost. And seconds after that, the dark-haired man leaving. Again, he was seen mostly from the back, but there was a moment - a fleeting, vital moment that would be his downfall - where he turned and scanned the street to check he hadn’t been seen.
“Gotcha,” Peter said, pausing the videotape. The camera had caught his face: young, smooth, beautiful. Deadly. And yet somehow, vulnerable.
“I don’t get it,” Diana said. “If he wanted to feed, why choose to do it in front of three other humans? It’s just reckless.”
Peter pursed his lips. “I’m not sure it was about the feed. I think maybe he was protecting the little guy.”
“Why would he do that? The little guy’s human, isn’t he?”
“As far as I can tell from this,” Peter said. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anyway, we need to catch him. Put out an APB. Maintain surveillance but do not approach. I don’t want anyone bringing him in but us.”
“On it,” Diana said, heading back to her own desk.
Peter allowed himself to stare at the man on the screen for a few more moments. There was something puzzling him. The man didn’t look like the cocky, rule-flouting Fae Peter had expected. He looked nervous, almost scared. It didn’t make sense.
Peter sighed and let the tape run again. He watched the dark-haired man walk away, and moments later, he saw the small bald man emerge from the alley, glance around, and then follow in his footsteps, taking care not to be seen.
Peter turned off his screen and stood up. If the bald man was tracking the Fae, then Peter wanted to make sure he got to him first.
----
Neal dragged the trash can into the center of the small studio apartment. Stripping off his jeans, socks, shoes and shirt, he threw them into it, and poured lighter fluid over the top. It was vital to make sure there was no forensic evidence to tie him to the body in the alley. He took out a match, struck it and let it fall into the can, then finally took off the gloves he’d been using while wiping his fingerprints from the apartment, and tossed them in on top. Then he stood back and watched another of his lives go up in flames.
It was only when Neal started to shiver in his boxer briefs that he dragged his eyes away from the blaze and forced himself to move. Through the window he could see that dusk was already descending. It was almost time to go.
He pulled on the fresh clothes he’d picked out: black jeans, black shirt, black jacket, all chosen to help him melt away into the night. His hands moved clumsily as he buttoned the shirt; once the initial buzz of feeding wore off, he always got the shakes. It was important not to give into them though, not to surrender to the guilt that was slithering around in his stomach. The world was better off without the thug he’d taken out. And Neal was only surviving.
Packing hadn’t taken long. A few clothes, his shave kit, the book he was reading and some art supplies were all he needed - and pretty much all he owned. There was no point accumulating things when he had nowhere permanent to put them, and likely never would.
He swung the dark backpack over his shoulder and picked up the small pile of passports and ID cards left on the counter; it was safer for them to travel in his pocket. Fifteen different names he had laid claim to over the years - Nicks and Steves and Georges, a William and a Chris and a Gary - were all bundled up in a rubber band and shoved in his jacket. Danny Brooks was there too, though Neal didn’t expect to ever use that one again.
He cast a final look around, then headed out into the corridor, letting the apartment door swing slowly shut behind him. By the time he had reached the main doors, he had already started to let Neal Caffrey go. As he stepped out into the gathering darkness, he became nobody again.
He had only taken a few steps when he felt someone watching him. His muscles tensed, ready to run, as he scanned the street. He was about to put it down to his own tightly wound nerves, when a man stepped out from a doorway a few feet away, and raised a hand in greeting.
The man was small, bald, and had a purpling bruise around his eye, with what looked like a ripped strip of fabric forming a temporary bandage around his head. He was also uncomfortably familiar. Neal’s heart thudded in his throat, but he kept his face neutral, put his head down and walked on, resolutely ignoring the man.
“Hey! Hey, kid, I’m not here to hurt you.”
Neal stopped for a moment and looked at the man, eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, okay, I probably couldn’t if I wanted to,” said the man, shrugging. “I meant, I’m not gonna turn you in. To the police or…anyone.”
Neal huffed out a short, dry laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He started walking again, but the man fell into step next to him.
“Oh, so you’re not the guy who saved me from a very unpleasant fate at the hands of some acquaintances? And you didn’t do it by eating some dude’s face?”
Neal forced a more natural laugh this time, attempting to inject it with real amusement. “Eating some dude’s face? No. I stepped in and suggested they leave, that’s all. Looks like they gave you a nasty knock to the head, you’ve probably been hallucinating. You should head home and rest. Maybe find yourself some better acquaintances in future.”
The man reached out and grabbed Neal’s arm. “Wait. I know what I saw. And I just wanna talk. I think we could be useful to each other. Can we sit down and converse like normal people?”
Neal shook him off. “I’m not normal,” he muttered, the words bitter on his tongue.
“Well, fine, I can’t say that’s a moniker that’s often been applied to me either,” said the man, with a grin. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Mozzie. And you are?”
Neal stared at the hand, offered seemingly without fear or repulsion. He should leave. This couldn’t end well. But in his whole life, he had never had someone he could talk to about…about his situation.
He reached out and grasped Mozzie’s hand. “Neal,” he said. After all, he wasn’t planning on keeping the name, so what harm could it do?
“Drink?” said Mozzie, nodding in the direction of the nearest restaurant, and Neal shrugged.
----
Peter stood on the sidewalk outside the mansion, breathing in the crisp evening air and taking a moment to admire the imposing French-Renaissance façade. Normally he was eager to enter Schinasi, to unwind in the lounge or to sit at the bar and enjoy the company of others of his kind after a hard day in the human world. But tonight, he knew he would not be able to relax. Still, he couldn’t stay out here forever.
He straightened his jacket, then knocked at the door and was admitted by June’s housekeeper, a sweet young Fae girl who took his coat and smiled as she gestured to go through. The marble-floored hallway stretched ahead of him and he made his way down it into the large, oak-paneled room at the end, where he could see that Diana was already at the bar, sipping one of June’s unusual fruit tea concoctions. June herself was behind the bar, looking as regal as ever, her chestnut hair almost seeming to glow in the low light.
“Peter,” she greeted him softly, smiling, though her eyes seemed clouded. Peter seated himself next to Diana, who glanced briefly from June to Peter and then politely excused herself on the pretext of chatting to the waitress who had been eying her for weeks. She left her tea cooling on the bar.
June’s eyes followed Diana until she was out of earshot, then she turned her gaze back to Peter.
“Is it him?” she asked, direct as always.
Peter gave a half-shrug. “You tell me. Male, out-of-towner, unannounced. Helping out humans for no apparent reason.”
For once, June’s perfect posture slipped, and she leaned heavily on the bar. Her skin, still as smooth as a young Fae’s despite the millennia she’d lived through, was marred for a moment as a frown line appeared between her eyebrows. “It’s started then.”
Peter put his hand gently over hers. “I could…persuade him to leave. I have my ways, you know.”
June took a deep breath, then seemed to shake herself. She straightened, and slipped her hand from under Peter’s. “No. What will be, must be. We can’t fight fate.”
Peter raised his eyebrows and let his lips curve into a crooked smile. “Well, you can.” If there was anyone who could twist destiny to their will, it was June.
“Not this time.” June’s returning smile was tinged with sadness and regret, but she turned her back to Peter and selected a bottled beer for him, and when she faced him again she looked more composed. “I’ll help how I can, though, when the time arrives.”
Peter had just raised the bottle to his lips when Diana appeared beside him, her cell phone in hand. “Got a sighting, not far from here,” she said. “We can be there in fifteen.”
Peter put the bottle down, hard. “Let’s go.”
----
Since they had entered the restaurant, Neal had been watching Mozzie carefully, looking for any sign of threat, but none had presented itself. Instead, Mozzie had downed a glass of red wine, immediately ordered another, and then sat and stared at him in apparent wonderment for what had now become an uncomfortable amount of time.
“Were you planning on talking, or are we just going to look at each other?” Neal said at last. He was edgy; even in the poorly lit corner booth, his back against the wall and his eyes on the door, he felt dangerously exposed. He shouldn’t wait much longer to leave the city.
Mozzie raised his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry. It’s just…I’ve never seen one of you up close before. The government’s hidden you so well…”
Neal’s breath caught. One of you. A wave of dizziness swept through him as the thought that this man might know who he was, what he was, almost overwhelmed him.
“One of me?” he managed to say.
Mozzie nodded enthusiastically. “I’ve read all about Roswell of course, and Area 51, and I’ve seen the films, but to see an alien up close -”
Neal’s hope deflated in an instant, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I’m not an alien,” he cut in before Mozzie could continue. “At least not that I know of.”
Mozzie’s face fell a little. “Oh. I’m sorry.” Then his face brightened again and he shrugged apologetically. “I can get a little carried away. But then, if it’s not too gauche, may I ask what you are?”
Neal dredged up a smile to make his story sound a little less pathetic. “I honestly don’t know what I am. I wish I did. I learned when I was a teenager that I was adopted. And soon after that, I started to change, and I became… dangerous. So I ran away. I’ve been running ever since. Stealing wallets, picking up some work here and there.”
Mozzie took a sip of wine, and to Neal’s surprise, he saw genuine sympathy in the other man’s eyes. “That’s rough. I know what it’s like not to know where you came from. Who you belong to. Though maybe not to quite the extent that you do.” Mozzie tapped the stem of his wine glass, apparently thinking. “By the way, what exactly was it you did to my, ah, acquaintance?”
Neal looked away, focusing on the unimaginative art prints on the wall, trying not to think of the way the dead man’s face had looked. “I…drain people. Of their life force, I think. I need it. This hunger builds in me, until it overtakes me. And then I…have to find someone to feed on. I try and make sure it’s someone who won’t be a great loss to society.”
“Well, our friend this afternoon certainly wasn’t,” Mozzie said firmly, though it didn’t do much to alleviate the guilt still gnawing away at Neal’s insides.
“Did he - do you know - did he have any family?” Neal asked, not wanting to hear the answer.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Mozzie replied. “I can’t imagine anyone would have been crazy enough to procreate with him.” He drained his glass, then looked closely at Neal. “So the hunger and the feeding, you can’t control it?”
“No.”
“You should really work on that.”
Neal snorted. “Yeah, thanks for the advice. Are we done here? I have places to be.”
“You do?” Mozzie asked, and Neal averted his eyes, signaling to the waitress for the bill. She brought it swiftly, giving Neal the sort of smile that told him his next move would barely take any effort at all - she was already halfway gone.
He reached out and touched her hand, rubbing his finger softly across the back of it, watching the luminous blue light bloom softly for just a moment across her skin. “I’m really sorry, but I left my wallet at home,” he said. “Do you think I could come back later and make it up to you?”
The girl looked down at him, her cheeks tinged with pink, her pupils already blown. “Of course,” she said breathlessly. “Any time. Any time at all.”
Neal smiled, squeezed her hand, and left the restaurant, listening as Mozzie scrambled to follow.
“What the hell?” Mozzie demanded as he caught up to Neal on the street. “How did you do that?”
“Natural charm and stunning good looks,” Neal said.
“Oh, really? You expect me to believe that waitresses let anyone with a good haircut and a nice smile walk out without paying? Because I’m pretty sure they’d lose their jobs if that happened regularly.”
Neal glanced across at Mozzie, whose expression was the very definition of skeptical, and who appeared to be determined to follow Neal until he got the answers he wanted.
“Fine. I might have used a little something extra beyond my smile,” he said.
“Like?”
“Like, I can influence people to do what I want by touching them.”
Mozzie’s eyes lit up. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. It wears off after a while though.”
Mozzie shook his head in wonderment. “So, let me get this straight. You can seduce people into following your every whim, yet you’re broke, you’ve been hiding out in a murky studio, and you run from place to place? You could do anything you want. You could be living in a mansion on an island, somewhere hot and -”
“I don’t think an island would suit me,” Neal said dryly. “Limited population. I’d start running out of food supply a little too quickly.”
“Well, a penthouse then. Think of the cons you could run, with your talents! You could be a billionaire. We could be billionaires.”
Neal gave a frustrated huff. He had thought of those things, of course - every day was a battle not to take what he wanted, not to use his powers to become rich, successful, loved. But it wasn’t an option, not when he was a killer, not when there was a trail of bodies behind him and there would be more to come.
“Billionaires get noticed,” he pointed out sharply. “And I can’t get noticed. I have to stay below the radar.”
Mozzie waved away his concerns. “You just need a good manager. Someone to help you use your powers wisely. I nominate me.”
“What a surprise. And no thanks.”
“Why not?” Mozzie asked, and Neal jerked to a stop, frustration welling up inside him.
“You’re being stupid. Why would you want to hang out with me, knowing I could make you my next meal at any minute? It’s not exactly the smartest move.”
Mozzie raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re planning on sucking my life force any time soon. And besides, it seems like a pretty smart move to me. When I was growing up, I always kept the same strategy for survival: find the toughest kid in the orphanage, and stick with them. And you? You are definitely the toughest kid. I think this could be the beginning of a wonderful friendship.”
Neal stared at the man beside him, offering all the things Neal had wanted for so long: a companion, a partner in crime, someone who knew what he was capable of and wouldn’t run screaming in the opposite direction. Someone who would run with him.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll think about it.”
-----
Peter leaned casually against the wall across the road from the restaurant where the target had been sighted, and waited, Diana at his side. Even in the gathering darkness it was easy to see the restaurant exit, illuminated by the glow of a streetlamp, and they didn’t have to wait long before the man they were looking for came striding out, head down, a backpack slung across his shoulder. Following only a few seconds behind him, and quickly falling in step next to him, was the smaller man from the videotape, looking a little worse for wear but gesturing animatedly. Peter and Diana mirrored their journey on the other side of the street.
“Let’s do a walk by,” Peter said softly to Diana. “I want to see if I can get a read on him before we move in, get some idea what sort of Fae we’re dealing with.”
As they crossed the street, the pair of men they were heading for stopped abruptly, apparently in disagreement with each other. The taller man was shaking his head, his expression dark, but as Peter watched, his face seemed to soften, and the hint of a smile appeared. The smaller man’s face broke into a grin, and the pair began walking again. They looked almost like friends.
Peter and Diana arrived on the other side of the street and began walking towards the men, hoping they could cross paths without seeming too conspicuous. It gave Peter the chance to look at their target straight on while the man’s attention was on his friend, and Peter let his eyes roam every inch of the target’s body. There was nothing there to indicate what type of Fae he was, and with the evening breeze blowing in the wrong direction, Peter couldn’t even catch his scent. He resigned himself to the fact that the walk by would not produce any useful information, but as he and Diana passed the two men, the target caught his eye, and their gazes locked.
The target’s eyes flicked up and down Peter’s frame, and for just a second, his blue eyes seemed to glow brighter, as if lit from within. Then the glow faded and he smiled politely, turned his attention back to his friend and passed Peter and Diana without looking back. As he walked on, the breeze threw his scent back to Peter, and every one of Peter’s highly developed scent receptors seemed to explode at once. It was a scent he hadn’t encountered before, and he couldn’t identify the type of Fae, but the heady intoxication almost overwhelmed him, and he reached out to Diana to steady himself.
“Boss?” she said, concerned.
Peter shook his head to clear it. “I’m fine. Let’s do this.”
Peter and Diana set off after the pair of men, making up the distance between them until they were just a few yards apart. The men had taken the path Peter had anticipated, and were heading for a side road that would take them to the bus station. As the men turned to enter the street, the target glanced back, and a look of panic crossed his face as he realized he was being followed. But it was too late for him now.
“Take them,” Peter said to Diana.
Diana drew in a deep breath, her chest rising as her eyes narrowed on her targets. She opened her mouth, and the sound flowed out, a haunting stream of music that was powerful enough to part the air between her and her victims. The atmosphere vibrated around them as the pitch grew higher and higher, and the men in the line of her fire swayed on their feet. In seconds the smaller man’s legs went from under him and he fell to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head. The taller man was stronger, and his face screwed up as he fought against the onslaught of the siren song, but his resistance earned him only a few extra seconds before he too collapsed to the ground.
“Nice work,” Peter said. It came in useful, having a siren for a partner.
Peter and Diana moved forward, hoisting their target up and pulling him towards the van they had parked down the street. The man was limp in their grasp, almost a dead weight, and barely struggled as they cuffed him, wrapped a blindfold around his eyes and pushed him into the back of the van.
After they closed the door, Peter did a last check of the quiet street to ensure they had not been seen, then headed for the driving seat. Diana slid in next to him, and cast a look back towards their prisoner.
“Wouldn’t want to be in his shoes when we get him to The Ash,” she said.
Peter started the car, trying not to glance at the man sprawled in the back of the van lest he fall victim to those blue eyes and that enthralling scent, and lose sight of his assigned mission. “My thoughts exactly.”