And Other Fruits of Men (4/6)
Mwuhuhahaha! I have the next chapter of this baby, hot off the presses! (If you've already read the little bit of this chapter I posted, you'll be wanting to skip ahead just a tad. Most of this is new-new.)
Let the lazy cut/pasting begin!
Title: And Other Fruits of Men
Rating: Overall, the story is a hard R. Consider yourself warned. :)
Summary: So what if Crawford was hot and powerful? That didn't mean Schuldig wanted to reproduce with him.
Warnings: swearing, dream-logic, mindfuckery, man-sexings, dangerous driving, urban supernatural!AU, shoddy editing, gore and violence, drama and action, crazy pseudo-science and psychic powers, profligate use of italics.
For your enjoyment/refreshment, chapters one, two, and three.
=====
Part Four: Morning, Midnight, Twilight, Noon
God, Schuldig loved post-sex mornings. The only thing that could have made it better was post-sex morning sex. But Yohji had had to leave early for his shift, and Schuldig didn't want to do shower sex only half-awake. Too much risk of slipping and hurting something tender. Instead, he lay in the bed, leeching the heat out of Yohji's spot, rolling and stretching and getting long red hairs all over Yohji's pillow.
Yohji came back, briefly, to grab his pants. His hair sprinkled water on Schuldig's bare skin as he shimmied into the legs and buckled his belt. He kissed Schuldig, quickly, and headed for the door yanking on his shirt.
"If you ever come this way again…" said Yohji.
Schuldig nodded.
I'm only a thought away.
They both knew how likely that was, though, and Schuldig was glad that Yohji didn't try to drag things out and say that he'd call.
"Bye'" said Yohji.
Yohji left.
Schuldig felt his mind drift further and further away until it was masked by the buzz of activity in the hotel. He let Yohji go, then, and he rolled over in the bed.
No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn’t drift back to sleep. After spending the night with Yohji's soft, warm thoughts, the people around him in the hotel chafed at him, scraping along his nerves with their worries and fears and false fronts. He wanted to sleep, damn it! And who would blame him if he had to give a few whiny bitches aneurysms to do it? Who would even know the difference? Schuldig had self-centeredness down to an art form.
He reached out to a mind: defenseless, completely unaware, in the middle of a phone call, whispered and angry and spreading like poison through his synapses.
He squeezed.
Blood vessels branched and twisted around his focus. One spot, one tiny little pinprick thinned, stretching out like a balloon. There. The trap was set. All he had to do was lean a little, get the blood flowing hard with anger, and it'd all come crashing down. And who easier to provoke than someone already struggling to stay calm? There were hundreds of ways to do it. Trick the brain, make it think the angry conversation was so much worse than it was. Jack up the adrenaline. Cause a fever or phantom pain. Schuldig could make this person think they were dying, bleeding out in the hotel room.
It would be so easy.
And that was when Schuldig felt the Other. Something that felt like metal, smelled like cold steel, was in his head with him. As soon as he was aware of it, the contact snapped, and Schuldig was alone, squeezing the brain of a woman he had no real intentions of killing. He eased off the throttle quick. Shit. He couldn't undo what he'd (almost) done. She must have one fuck of a headache now. Schuldig planted a suggestion in her head, to get to a doctor quick. She had interrupted his nap, but an incipient aneurysm was no way to get revenge.
The chilly, metallic feel lingered in his head, and he shuddered. There shouldn't have been anything that could influence him like that, without him knowing. It scared him to think that he might not have picked up on whatever it was at all.
He sat up fast. Had Crawford known? Was this all part of his long-term game to win Schuldig over? Scare him, so that he'd end up coming to Crawford-the-all-seeing for help. Except Crawford would know that Schuldig would see through him. But Crawford probably knew that as well, and his warning and offer of help was instead his idea of being funny.
"Fuck that shit," said Schuldig.
He wouldn't ask Crawford for help, not even if he was dying.
Schuldig checked out of the hotel earlier than he'd planned, what with Yohji having to work and the whole aneurysm thing. It would be better if he got some distance. Yeah.
Schuldig found a different hotel, dropped his things, and went out to see what was what. He also had definite thoughts about tracking down whatever it was that had wallowed in his brain that morning. He'd been left with two impressions: the taste of metal, and, later, when the metal had faded to rust, the knowledge that it knew the city very well. Now, whether it was, in fact, a human or some new horror he'd never encountered before, he didn't know. But he was going to find out.
He was too restless to sit and search only with his mind, holed up in the relative safety of his hotel room, so instead Schuldig bought himself a two-hundred dollar pair of trainers and a couple packs of cigarettes and wandered the streets.
There wasn't much to see, really; asphalt, crumbling curbs, lots of cars and unhappy people, scraggly trees and buildings that blotted out the sky. Dog shit. Pigeons. Used gum spat out on the sidewalk. The scents of diesel and gasoline. The usual, for a city of its size. To Schuldig, it felt uncomfortably like home. He caught himself looking over his shoulder now and again, as if he expected to find one of his cousins-or worse, aunts or uncles-trailing behind him. A coffee would be just the thing to settle him. There was no reason to be nervous. No reason at all.
So he sat down at an outdoor café and got the biggest, strongest coffee he could get. Black. He drained the cup in less time than it took him to finish his cigarette. He ordered another when the waiter came around again, and when he had the cup in hand, he continued walking.
Schuldig cast his mind like a net over the block around him. He could look much further, of course, but the wider he searched, the more likely it was he'd miss what he was looking for. And, considering he didn't know what he was looking for in the first place, he settled for precision instead of distance. It was a trade-off, to be sure. Schuldig picked up song lyrics he hadn't sung and the taste of food that he hadn't eaten. As people came and went, he had to stifle the impulse to say hi because he knew them now. It would take time and distance and maybe a lot of alcohol before he'd be able to scrub them out of his perception.
Going block by block was slow work. His feet ached, his throat was dry, and his head pounded from the extended effort. Usually what he did with his mind took a fraction of a second, a quick sprint, not this mind-numbing, exhausting thing he did now. He blinked and shook the hair out of his eyes for the hundredth time and wished he had another coffee and that he hadn't smoked that whole pack of cigarettes quite so fast.
What a tasty morsel.
Schuldig froze. It was the Other. Schuldig took a look around him. It took him a second to realize it wasn't speaking to him. It was speaking to someone else, and it hadn't noticed him yet, he hoped. Schuldig glanced left and right to see if he could spot who the Other was talking to. There. The woman coming out of that apartment building. He felt her thoughts fluttering, trying to resist the words pouring into the ear of her mind.
Won't you come to me?
Schuldig could feel the compulsion to follow down to his teeth, and he disengaged before he started walking blindly along, too. He limited himself to keeping the woman within sight while she weaved her way through the crowded, pedestrian-only section of the old city. There were plaques everywhere, and the nice tar-and-cement scheme gave way to brick and honest-to-God, ankle-twisting cobbles. He felt the city closing in around him like the bars of a cage, and he wanted out, wanted to run screaming from whatever it was that awaited him down some unknown twisting of the streets because here he could feel the tang of metal and the force of the Other personality bearing down. Schuldig knew it knew he was there. If he ran, it would only follow.
He paused and checked what he had on him to fight this thing. There was, of course, his mind, but the Other was adept there, too. He had his gun and an extra clip. And that was it. If he'd known he'd find the thing's lair, he wouldn't have come without a fucking tank to mow it down. He would have nuked it, with prejudice, from a distance. He would have done anything but what he resigned himself to do now: to go into the proverbial belly of the beast, practically naked.
Must I come to you, sweet Schuldig? Or you can continue to play charades, I the black beast and you the white knight. Whichever you like best.
He could smell metal in the air. His head ached worse, as if the Other's thoughts scraped along the nerves. He had no doubt the Other had heard some-if not all-of his thoughts. He didn't need to follow the woman any more, not with a direct line like this. Besides which, he'd lost his tenuous hold on her completely as soon as they'd entered the Other's presence.
Schuldig gritted his teeth. He kept walking.
He knew he had found what he was looking for when he found the first of the woman's shoes in the mouth of an alley. Schuldig drew his gun. A little further in, he found the other shoe, then beyond that, piece by piece, what remained of her clothes. The alley, which had been narrow, began to widen, until at last it came to an end, sandwiched between several low buildings. Surprisingly, Schuldig stood in a garden. Moss grew up the sides of the buildings and the cobblestone alley gave way to moss and grass and other green things. There were even a couple trees, old and twisted, reaching for the sun that slanted in from above. He'd never have expected such a thing in the heart of the old city.
"Do you like it? So few people appreciate it for what it is."
Schuldig whirled around at the sound of the voice. It was a young voice, young and male, and it didn't quite match the body. The man who stood between him and the alleyway was older than Schuldig, or so he guessed. He wasn't as tall, and only the breadth of his shoulders suggested physical power: he wore a jacket, a tee shirt that clung to his torso, and an ordinary pair of jeans. Schuldig couldn't tell what color his eyes were, or the color of his hair. He tried to put a name to the colors, but every time he thought he had it, the name, the words, slipped away. Everything in him shivered, overwhelmed by the sheer presence of the Other. Because that was who this was. No doubt. The taste of metal flooded his mouth, and Schuldig spat it out.
"Get out of my head," he said.
The man smiled.
"We could be friends, you and I," he said.
The man took a step forward, and Schuldig stepped back.
"No," said Schuldig.
The man cocked his head.
"No?" he said. "I thought we worked well together this morning. Did I mistake your pleasure?"
And the man's words evoked feelings in Schuldig; he re-lived how it felt to manipulate, the wonder of the branching veins, the knowledge that he just had to make one little push and everything would come crashing down… Schuldig shook his head. He laid a hand on the butt of his gun.
"Of course, I could give you so much more than that," said the man. "Much greater joy. Much greater power."
The man waved a hand, and a hissing sound came from above. Schuldig looked up, quick, before he returned to watching the Other. The tops of the buildings all around were crowded with creatures: ghouls, night watches, zombies, stonemen, breathers…All of them were deadly, and Schuldig could feel their minds seething. They wanted to eat him, all of them. They wanted to tear him apart. But the Other held them tight. He didn't let them move, hardly let them breathe. The feeling of that control washed through Schuldig. He felt the threads of the mind that bound the creatures, extending out, web-like, across the entire city.
"I control them," the man said. "It's not so difficult for ones such as you and I. If you joined with me, you would not have to fear the falling of the night. You would never need to use your gun."
Schuldig drew. He aimed for square between the man's eyes.
"This gun, you mean?" he said. "Sorry. We go back a ways."
The man laughed, his throat exposed. It was a perfect shot.
"You don't really want to shoot me," he said. "Someone might get hurt. Why don't you put it down?"
Schuldig's headache eased marginally. He looked at the gun, looked at the man. Did he want to shoot him? He'd killed that woman, or fed her to his creatures, but Schuldig had seen the inside of her head. She was nothing, just like the woman in the hotel, or the ghoul he'd shot the night before. Schuldig didn't know why he'd bothered to follow her in the first place, except to find this man. And now that he'd found him…
"That's right," said the man. "You can always change your mind."
Schuldig was dully surprised to find he had put the gun down. The man walked closer and picked it up, putting it in one of his jacket's pockets.
"I'll keep it nice and safe for you," said the man. "Won't you have a seat?"
Schuldig followed the man's hands, which pointed to the center of the garden. There crouched two haunts, on what remained of their hands and knees. The man walked over, calm as could be, and sat on the back of one. Schuldig followed suit. Strange. It was warm, but Schuldig couldn't feel a heart beat, couldn't hear breathing. He'd never been so close to one before. It held so still it might well have been furniture. He felt no fear.
"There's really nothing to be afraid of," said the man. "They're as gentle as can be. Look for yourself and see how I hold them."
Schuldig closed his eyes and followed the spider-thin link between the man and the haunt. It was easy. Just the slightest pressure, there, and the haunt's instincts, its whole body, bent to the will. Schuldig slipped in underneath the other touch and held the haunt himself. The man withdrew, and Schuldig continued to hold the creature. He held it a little tighter, and a little tighter. The haunt's pitiful excuse for a mind beat against him, a moth battering itself against the burning brightness of Schuldig's grip. But Schuldig held it and bore down. The haunt grew weaker, struggled less and less until, finally, it stopped moving.
Schuldig opened his eyes and found the haunt was cold beneath him. The man smiled at him, and his eyes swallowed Schuldig up.
"If you stand, I will bring another for you. Are you tired?" The man said.
"No," said Schuldig.
He felt a little odd, a little floaty, but he was full of energy.
"Excellent," said the man.
He offered a hand, and Schuldig took it. Three more haunts leaped down from the roof. Two took away the corpse, and one assumed the hands-and knees position. Schuldig settled on its back. He ignored the sounds of rending flesh from above. So what? The things had to eat, and why not eat the dead? It was harmless.
Schuldig stifled a yawn. He was suddenly tired: killing could take it out of a person, but at least his headache was gone.
"So what do you think?" said the man. "We could really be something, you and I."
Schuldig nodded drowsily. It didn't sound so bad. This man, whoever he was, had power. Schuldig liked power, liked to be able to say yes or no as it suited him. He'd never have to worry about his family again; he could squeeze their objections to nothing. It would be a good life, infinitely better than babies and domesticity and whatever the hell else his family was undoubtedly planning, even now. He'd make this taste of freedom last.
Far away, as if coming from inside a tunnel, a phone rang. Schuldig yawned and leaned his head against the man's shoulder, natural and easy.
The phone rang again. It was louder now, shrill. Why was there a phone? He was in a garden. He didn't have a phone; he'd left it behind along with all the other family shit he didn't want to deal with.
The phone rang again. It bored into his consciousness. Crawford had given him a phone, hadn't he? Schuldig sat upright.
"Crawford," he said.
Schuldig felt the tiredness lift from him like fog, and he saw clearly where he was.
"What the fuck," he said.
He scrambled up off the haunt and backed himself toward the alley. What the hell was he thinking? Schuldig glanced at the Other, and he knew. He felt sick to his stomach, and his headache swept back in now that that thing over there had stopped tromping on his brain to suppress it.
"You," he said.
The Other sighed and stood. The phone rang one last time, then went silent.
"Pity," he said. "It would have been so much better had you come willingly."
Schuldig's hand went for his gun.
"Tch," said the man's face, said the body Schuldig knew was worn like a suit by the thing inside it. "We had this conversation already. You don't have your gun any more."
The Other withdrew it from its own pocket.
"Not that I need to shoot you," it said. "Not with the night coming on."
Schuldig looked up in dread: sure enough, the sun was shedding its last, feeble light over the already rising moon. The man's head flicked upward also, and a half-dozen ghouls leapt down, three at the mouth of the alley and three between him and the Other. Schuldig heard ankles breaking from the impact.
"Take him," the man said. "Turn him if you have to, but don't kill him. I want him alive."
The ghouls snarled, much less quiet than they'd been before. They advanced slowly, their movements stifled by the Other's grip on them. The rest of the creatures on the roofs around sent their eerie cries up into the flickering stars. Schuldig thought as fast as he could. No gun. No way out; if he ran, they'd hunt him down. The only thing he had to defend himself with was…
Schuldig reached out, sliding beneath the Other's control over the ghouls, and he squeezed, hard. One of the ghouls dropped to the ground. Blood trickled from its nose and then it was still. Schuldig's headache surged. He reached for another ghoul.
He concentrated on clearing his escape route first, but it took time, took precious seconds that he didn't fucking have. One by one the ghouls behind went down, and step by step the ghouls in front closed in, the Other urging them on.
Schuldig saw things in bursts of clarity, punctuated by strobing light and wavering darkness.
You're pushing too hard, said the Other. Just say yes and it will all be over.
"No," said Schuldig.
Schuldig pushed his mind against the Other then. The Other pushed back. They fought, the Other to control Schuldig, and Schuldig to control the man's right hand. If he could just…Slowly, the man's hand rose. The barrel of Schuldig's gun gleamed in the moon's light. A crack in the façade of the Other, a lightning split in the smooth, seductive force of his mind. The gun came level with his temple. The Other clawed metal through Schuldig's mind and Schuldig retched.
"Schuldig," said the man. "You don't want to-"
The gun went off, and the rapport echoed in the garden. The creatures above went silent. Schuldig wiped his face on his sleeve, idly noting a nosebleed. The Other didn't move.
"Don't fucking tell me what I want," he said.
The silence in the garden broke first with the rank of ghouls in front of him. They turned on the body of the Other, eating with sounds and viciousness that made Schuldig feel sick. The other creatures jumped down, all intent on a share, whether of the man or a weaker monster-because they were monsters now, not friendly furniture, not stiff-legged puppets. They were monsters with sharp teeth and voices that gibbered and wailed, monsters that made noises that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Schuldig backed slowly into the alley he knew was behind him. He wished he had his gun, but there was no fucking way he could get to it now even if he did still have that clip in his pocket. Schuldig's head felt like it was going to explode which was, he decided, why he made a serious mistake in his escape.
He forgot the bodies of the ghouls behind him, and he tripped.
Schuldig recovered quickly, but the damage was done. All eyes in the garden turned to him, him and his stupid beating heart and stupid live flesh. A ghoul howled, and almost as one, the crowd of hungry, needing, starving creatures flowed toward him
"Shit," he said.
He fucking turned and fucking ran for his life.
There were too many of them: ghouls, stonemen, night watches, breathers, haunts and who-the-fuck knew. Schuldig was fast, but not fast enough. He was maybe halfway back to the old city proper, and they were gaining on him. Even if he made it that far, what then? They were all zeroed in on him; he could feel their intent throbbing behind his eyes. They weren't going to give him up, and there was no one left to control them; he wasn't fucking up to it, not when his brain was this fried. His lungs were on fire and pain stabbed his sides. Sweat blinded him to anything but the cobblestones in front of his feet. He didn't waste time looking back, not when there was a pool of light ahead: a street light.
Schuldig stumbled, twisting an ankle brutally on the way down. Hands tore at his clothes, and he felt teeth sink into his leg. He kicked out, and something's skull caved in. The others fell on it, but there wasn't enough meat to go around. Shit. Shit. He was going to die. He could feel it in his bones, felt the presence of something working its way into him. He really didn't want to die. Not like this. Schuldig felt himself start to panic. He wished, irrationally, for Crawford, and who the fuck cared what an irrational, dying man might shout?
"Crawford!" he yelled. "Crawford!"
Like fucking magic, Crawford came, knocking away the things that go bump in the night. He hit and punched and did things that left crumpled, dead heaps of monsters on the ground. And he didn't even have a gun.
"Schuldig," said Crawford. "Get up. I have a car."
Schuldig fought to get to his feet as the creatures backed away with the corpses of the dead. Crawford half-dragged him to safety, and Schuldig slid over in the back seat. The door slammed shut, Crawford beside him, and Schuldig's head hit the back of the seat when the driver hit the gas pedal-and probably some bodies, too, the way the car jerked violently as they picked up speed.
Crawford looked down at Schuldig's injured leg. Schuldig looked away, over Crawford's shoulder at the blurred lights that sped past the car window.
"You're going to have to take my leg off," Schuldig said. "Quick. Now. Before I turn."
He concentrated on damming the something that was working its way up his leg. But his head hurt so fucking bad and he couldn't hold it back for long.
"It's going to hurt," said Crawford.
"You think I don't fucking know that?" said Schuldig. "Do it now before you have to put me down."
Crawford pulled out a light-wire, and Schuldig went cold at the sight of it, adding things up in fractions of seconds as the poisonous stuff crept higher inside his leg, rotting him away. Crawford had been nearby and had called the cell. Crawford had planned for this, had a fucking light-wire in his pocket.
Crawford had known all along that things would go to shit.
Schuldig tried and failed to think about it objectively, like it was someone else everything had happened to. The only good thing about the light-wire was that it would heat up and cauterize as it sliced through. It was going to take serious effort to take off a leg, even for a man as strong as Crawford. A pity Schuldig wasn't in any mood to appreciate the sort of flexing Crawford was going to have to do. If there was anything he appreciated about Crawford, it was his arms and shoulders.
Crawford wound the ends of the wire around his hands and snapped it tight, once. The middle of the wire went white hot, and Crawford looped it around Schuldig's leg, just below the knee. Schuldig's pants started to smolder.
"Higher," said Schuldig. "Can't risk it."
Crawford slid it up several inches, and Schuldig smelled the sizzle of his own skin cooking.
"I'm sorry," said Crawford.
And he yanked the light-wire tight.
=====
Enough drama and action for you? XD I must go a-posting now...
~later
Let the lazy cut/pasting begin!
Title: And Other Fruits of Men
Rating: Overall, the story is a hard R. Consider yourself warned. :)
Summary: So what if Crawford was hot and powerful? That didn't mean Schuldig wanted to reproduce with him.
Warnings: swearing, dream-logic, mindfuckery, man-sexings, dangerous driving, urban supernatural!AU, shoddy editing, gore and violence, drama and action, crazy pseudo-science and psychic powers, profligate use of italics.
For your enjoyment/refreshment, chapters one, two, and three.
=====
Part Four: Morning, Midnight, Twilight, Noon
God, Schuldig loved post-sex mornings. The only thing that could have made it better was post-sex morning sex. But Yohji had had to leave early for his shift, and Schuldig didn't want to do shower sex only half-awake. Too much risk of slipping and hurting something tender. Instead, he lay in the bed, leeching the heat out of Yohji's spot, rolling and stretching and getting long red hairs all over Yohji's pillow.
Yohji came back, briefly, to grab his pants. His hair sprinkled water on Schuldig's bare skin as he shimmied into the legs and buckled his belt. He kissed Schuldig, quickly, and headed for the door yanking on his shirt.
"If you ever come this way again…" said Yohji.
Schuldig nodded.
I'm only a thought away.
They both knew how likely that was, though, and Schuldig was glad that Yohji didn't try to drag things out and say that he'd call.
"Bye'" said Yohji.
Yohji left.
Schuldig felt his mind drift further and further away until it was masked by the buzz of activity in the hotel. He let Yohji go, then, and he rolled over in the bed.
No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn’t drift back to sleep. After spending the night with Yohji's soft, warm thoughts, the people around him in the hotel chafed at him, scraping along his nerves with their worries and fears and false fronts. He wanted to sleep, damn it! And who would blame him if he had to give a few whiny bitches aneurysms to do it? Who would even know the difference? Schuldig had self-centeredness down to an art form.
He reached out to a mind: defenseless, completely unaware, in the middle of a phone call, whispered and angry and spreading like poison through his synapses.
He squeezed.
Blood vessels branched and twisted around his focus. One spot, one tiny little pinprick thinned, stretching out like a balloon. There. The trap was set. All he had to do was lean a little, get the blood flowing hard with anger, and it'd all come crashing down. And who easier to provoke than someone already struggling to stay calm? There were hundreds of ways to do it. Trick the brain, make it think the angry conversation was so much worse than it was. Jack up the adrenaline. Cause a fever or phantom pain. Schuldig could make this person think they were dying, bleeding out in the hotel room.
It would be so easy.
And that was when Schuldig felt the Other. Something that felt like metal, smelled like cold steel, was in his head with him. As soon as he was aware of it, the contact snapped, and Schuldig was alone, squeezing the brain of a woman he had no real intentions of killing. He eased off the throttle quick. Shit. He couldn't undo what he'd (almost) done. She must have one fuck of a headache now. Schuldig planted a suggestion in her head, to get to a doctor quick. She had interrupted his nap, but an incipient aneurysm was no way to get revenge.
The chilly, metallic feel lingered in his head, and he shuddered. There shouldn't have been anything that could influence him like that, without him knowing. It scared him to think that he might not have picked up on whatever it was at all.
He sat up fast. Had Crawford known? Was this all part of his long-term game to win Schuldig over? Scare him, so that he'd end up coming to Crawford-the-all-seeing for help. Except Crawford would know that Schuldig would see through him. But Crawford probably knew that as well, and his warning and offer of help was instead his idea of being funny.
"Fuck that shit," said Schuldig.
He wouldn't ask Crawford for help, not even if he was dying.
Schuldig checked out of the hotel earlier than he'd planned, what with Yohji having to work and the whole aneurysm thing. It would be better if he got some distance. Yeah.
Schuldig found a different hotel, dropped his things, and went out to see what was what. He also had definite thoughts about tracking down whatever it was that had wallowed in his brain that morning. He'd been left with two impressions: the taste of metal, and, later, when the metal had faded to rust, the knowledge that it knew the city very well. Now, whether it was, in fact, a human or some new horror he'd never encountered before, he didn't know. But he was going to find out.
He was too restless to sit and search only with his mind, holed up in the relative safety of his hotel room, so instead Schuldig bought himself a two-hundred dollar pair of trainers and a couple packs of cigarettes and wandered the streets.
There wasn't much to see, really; asphalt, crumbling curbs, lots of cars and unhappy people, scraggly trees and buildings that blotted out the sky. Dog shit. Pigeons. Used gum spat out on the sidewalk. The scents of diesel and gasoline. The usual, for a city of its size. To Schuldig, it felt uncomfortably like home. He caught himself looking over his shoulder now and again, as if he expected to find one of his cousins-or worse, aunts or uncles-trailing behind him. A coffee would be just the thing to settle him. There was no reason to be nervous. No reason at all.
So he sat down at an outdoor café and got the biggest, strongest coffee he could get. Black. He drained the cup in less time than it took him to finish his cigarette. He ordered another when the waiter came around again, and when he had the cup in hand, he continued walking.
Schuldig cast his mind like a net over the block around him. He could look much further, of course, but the wider he searched, the more likely it was he'd miss what he was looking for. And, considering he didn't know what he was looking for in the first place, he settled for precision instead of distance. It was a trade-off, to be sure. Schuldig picked up song lyrics he hadn't sung and the taste of food that he hadn't eaten. As people came and went, he had to stifle the impulse to say hi because he knew them now. It would take time and distance and maybe a lot of alcohol before he'd be able to scrub them out of his perception.
Going block by block was slow work. His feet ached, his throat was dry, and his head pounded from the extended effort. Usually what he did with his mind took a fraction of a second, a quick sprint, not this mind-numbing, exhausting thing he did now. He blinked and shook the hair out of his eyes for the hundredth time and wished he had another coffee and that he hadn't smoked that whole pack of cigarettes quite so fast.
What a tasty morsel.
Schuldig froze. It was the Other. Schuldig took a look around him. It took him a second to realize it wasn't speaking to him. It was speaking to someone else, and it hadn't noticed him yet, he hoped. Schuldig glanced left and right to see if he could spot who the Other was talking to. There. The woman coming out of that apartment building. He felt her thoughts fluttering, trying to resist the words pouring into the ear of her mind.
Won't you come to me?
Schuldig could feel the compulsion to follow down to his teeth, and he disengaged before he started walking blindly along, too. He limited himself to keeping the woman within sight while she weaved her way through the crowded, pedestrian-only section of the old city. There were plaques everywhere, and the nice tar-and-cement scheme gave way to brick and honest-to-God, ankle-twisting cobbles. He felt the city closing in around him like the bars of a cage, and he wanted out, wanted to run screaming from whatever it was that awaited him down some unknown twisting of the streets because here he could feel the tang of metal and the force of the Other personality bearing down. Schuldig knew it knew he was there. If he ran, it would only follow.
He paused and checked what he had on him to fight this thing. There was, of course, his mind, but the Other was adept there, too. He had his gun and an extra clip. And that was it. If he'd known he'd find the thing's lair, he wouldn't have come without a fucking tank to mow it down. He would have nuked it, with prejudice, from a distance. He would have done anything but what he resigned himself to do now: to go into the proverbial belly of the beast, practically naked.
Must I come to you, sweet Schuldig? Or you can continue to play charades, I the black beast and you the white knight. Whichever you like best.
He could smell metal in the air. His head ached worse, as if the Other's thoughts scraped along the nerves. He had no doubt the Other had heard some-if not all-of his thoughts. He didn't need to follow the woman any more, not with a direct line like this. Besides which, he'd lost his tenuous hold on her completely as soon as they'd entered the Other's presence.
Schuldig gritted his teeth. He kept walking.
He knew he had found what he was looking for when he found the first of the woman's shoes in the mouth of an alley. Schuldig drew his gun. A little further in, he found the other shoe, then beyond that, piece by piece, what remained of her clothes. The alley, which had been narrow, began to widen, until at last it came to an end, sandwiched between several low buildings. Surprisingly, Schuldig stood in a garden. Moss grew up the sides of the buildings and the cobblestone alley gave way to moss and grass and other green things. There were even a couple trees, old and twisted, reaching for the sun that slanted in from above. He'd never have expected such a thing in the heart of the old city.
"Do you like it? So few people appreciate it for what it is."
Schuldig whirled around at the sound of the voice. It was a young voice, young and male, and it didn't quite match the body. The man who stood between him and the alleyway was older than Schuldig, or so he guessed. He wasn't as tall, and only the breadth of his shoulders suggested physical power: he wore a jacket, a tee shirt that clung to his torso, and an ordinary pair of jeans. Schuldig couldn't tell what color his eyes were, or the color of his hair. He tried to put a name to the colors, but every time he thought he had it, the name, the words, slipped away. Everything in him shivered, overwhelmed by the sheer presence of the Other. Because that was who this was. No doubt. The taste of metal flooded his mouth, and Schuldig spat it out.
"Get out of my head," he said.
The man smiled.
"We could be friends, you and I," he said.
The man took a step forward, and Schuldig stepped back.
"No," said Schuldig.
The man cocked his head.
"No?" he said. "I thought we worked well together this morning. Did I mistake your pleasure?"
And the man's words evoked feelings in Schuldig; he re-lived how it felt to manipulate, the wonder of the branching veins, the knowledge that he just had to make one little push and everything would come crashing down… Schuldig shook his head. He laid a hand on the butt of his gun.
"Of course, I could give you so much more than that," said the man. "Much greater joy. Much greater power."
The man waved a hand, and a hissing sound came from above. Schuldig looked up, quick, before he returned to watching the Other. The tops of the buildings all around were crowded with creatures: ghouls, night watches, zombies, stonemen, breathers…All of them were deadly, and Schuldig could feel their minds seething. They wanted to eat him, all of them. They wanted to tear him apart. But the Other held them tight. He didn't let them move, hardly let them breathe. The feeling of that control washed through Schuldig. He felt the threads of the mind that bound the creatures, extending out, web-like, across the entire city.
"I control them," the man said. "It's not so difficult for ones such as you and I. If you joined with me, you would not have to fear the falling of the night. You would never need to use your gun."
Schuldig drew. He aimed for square between the man's eyes.
"This gun, you mean?" he said. "Sorry. We go back a ways."
The man laughed, his throat exposed. It was a perfect shot.
"You don't really want to shoot me," he said. "Someone might get hurt. Why don't you put it down?"
Schuldig's headache eased marginally. He looked at the gun, looked at the man. Did he want to shoot him? He'd killed that woman, or fed her to his creatures, but Schuldig had seen the inside of her head. She was nothing, just like the woman in the hotel, or the ghoul he'd shot the night before. Schuldig didn't know why he'd bothered to follow her in the first place, except to find this man. And now that he'd found him…
"That's right," said the man. "You can always change your mind."
Schuldig was dully surprised to find he had put the gun down. The man walked closer and picked it up, putting it in one of his jacket's pockets.
"I'll keep it nice and safe for you," said the man. "Won't you have a seat?"
Schuldig followed the man's hands, which pointed to the center of the garden. There crouched two haunts, on what remained of their hands and knees. The man walked over, calm as could be, and sat on the back of one. Schuldig followed suit. Strange. It was warm, but Schuldig couldn't feel a heart beat, couldn't hear breathing. He'd never been so close to one before. It held so still it might well have been furniture. He felt no fear.
"There's really nothing to be afraid of," said the man. "They're as gentle as can be. Look for yourself and see how I hold them."
Schuldig closed his eyes and followed the spider-thin link between the man and the haunt. It was easy. Just the slightest pressure, there, and the haunt's instincts, its whole body, bent to the will. Schuldig slipped in underneath the other touch and held the haunt himself. The man withdrew, and Schuldig continued to hold the creature. He held it a little tighter, and a little tighter. The haunt's pitiful excuse for a mind beat against him, a moth battering itself against the burning brightness of Schuldig's grip. But Schuldig held it and bore down. The haunt grew weaker, struggled less and less until, finally, it stopped moving.
Schuldig opened his eyes and found the haunt was cold beneath him. The man smiled at him, and his eyes swallowed Schuldig up.
"If you stand, I will bring another for you. Are you tired?" The man said.
"No," said Schuldig.
He felt a little odd, a little floaty, but he was full of energy.
"Excellent," said the man.
He offered a hand, and Schuldig took it. Three more haunts leaped down from the roof. Two took away the corpse, and one assumed the hands-and knees position. Schuldig settled on its back. He ignored the sounds of rending flesh from above. So what? The things had to eat, and why not eat the dead? It was harmless.
Schuldig stifled a yawn. He was suddenly tired: killing could take it out of a person, but at least his headache was gone.
"So what do you think?" said the man. "We could really be something, you and I."
Schuldig nodded drowsily. It didn't sound so bad. This man, whoever he was, had power. Schuldig liked power, liked to be able to say yes or no as it suited him. He'd never have to worry about his family again; he could squeeze their objections to nothing. It would be a good life, infinitely better than babies and domesticity and whatever the hell else his family was undoubtedly planning, even now. He'd make this taste of freedom last.
Far away, as if coming from inside a tunnel, a phone rang. Schuldig yawned and leaned his head against the man's shoulder, natural and easy.
The phone rang again. It was louder now, shrill. Why was there a phone? He was in a garden. He didn't have a phone; he'd left it behind along with all the other family shit he didn't want to deal with.
The phone rang again. It bored into his consciousness. Crawford had given him a phone, hadn't he? Schuldig sat upright.
"Crawford," he said.
Schuldig felt the tiredness lift from him like fog, and he saw clearly where he was.
"What the fuck," he said.
He scrambled up off the haunt and backed himself toward the alley. What the hell was he thinking? Schuldig glanced at the Other, and he knew. He felt sick to his stomach, and his headache swept back in now that that thing over there had stopped tromping on his brain to suppress it.
"You," he said.
The Other sighed and stood. The phone rang one last time, then went silent.
"Pity," he said. "It would have been so much better had you come willingly."
Schuldig's hand went for his gun.
"Tch," said the man's face, said the body Schuldig knew was worn like a suit by the thing inside it. "We had this conversation already. You don't have your gun any more."
The Other withdrew it from its own pocket.
"Not that I need to shoot you," it said. "Not with the night coming on."
Schuldig looked up in dread: sure enough, the sun was shedding its last, feeble light over the already rising moon. The man's head flicked upward also, and a half-dozen ghouls leapt down, three at the mouth of the alley and three between him and the Other. Schuldig heard ankles breaking from the impact.
"Take him," the man said. "Turn him if you have to, but don't kill him. I want him alive."
The ghouls snarled, much less quiet than they'd been before. They advanced slowly, their movements stifled by the Other's grip on them. The rest of the creatures on the roofs around sent their eerie cries up into the flickering stars. Schuldig thought as fast as he could. No gun. No way out; if he ran, they'd hunt him down. The only thing he had to defend himself with was…
Schuldig reached out, sliding beneath the Other's control over the ghouls, and he squeezed, hard. One of the ghouls dropped to the ground. Blood trickled from its nose and then it was still. Schuldig's headache surged. He reached for another ghoul.
He concentrated on clearing his escape route first, but it took time, took precious seconds that he didn't fucking have. One by one the ghouls behind went down, and step by step the ghouls in front closed in, the Other urging them on.
Schuldig saw things in bursts of clarity, punctuated by strobing light and wavering darkness.
You're pushing too hard, said the Other. Just say yes and it will all be over.
"No," said Schuldig.
Schuldig pushed his mind against the Other then. The Other pushed back. They fought, the Other to control Schuldig, and Schuldig to control the man's right hand. If he could just…Slowly, the man's hand rose. The barrel of Schuldig's gun gleamed in the moon's light. A crack in the façade of the Other, a lightning split in the smooth, seductive force of his mind. The gun came level with his temple. The Other clawed metal through Schuldig's mind and Schuldig retched.
"Schuldig," said the man. "You don't want to-"
The gun went off, and the rapport echoed in the garden. The creatures above went silent. Schuldig wiped his face on his sleeve, idly noting a nosebleed. The Other didn't move.
"Don't fucking tell me what I want," he said.
The silence in the garden broke first with the rank of ghouls in front of him. They turned on the body of the Other, eating with sounds and viciousness that made Schuldig feel sick. The other creatures jumped down, all intent on a share, whether of the man or a weaker monster-because they were monsters now, not friendly furniture, not stiff-legged puppets. They were monsters with sharp teeth and voices that gibbered and wailed, monsters that made noises that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Schuldig backed slowly into the alley he knew was behind him. He wished he had his gun, but there was no fucking way he could get to it now even if he did still have that clip in his pocket. Schuldig's head felt like it was going to explode which was, he decided, why he made a serious mistake in his escape.
He forgot the bodies of the ghouls behind him, and he tripped.
Schuldig recovered quickly, but the damage was done. All eyes in the garden turned to him, him and his stupid beating heart and stupid live flesh. A ghoul howled, and almost as one, the crowd of hungry, needing, starving creatures flowed toward him
"Shit," he said.
He fucking turned and fucking ran for his life.
There were too many of them: ghouls, stonemen, night watches, breathers, haunts and who-the-fuck knew. Schuldig was fast, but not fast enough. He was maybe halfway back to the old city proper, and they were gaining on him. Even if he made it that far, what then? They were all zeroed in on him; he could feel their intent throbbing behind his eyes. They weren't going to give him up, and there was no one left to control them; he wasn't fucking up to it, not when his brain was this fried. His lungs were on fire and pain stabbed his sides. Sweat blinded him to anything but the cobblestones in front of his feet. He didn't waste time looking back, not when there was a pool of light ahead: a street light.
Schuldig stumbled, twisting an ankle brutally on the way down. Hands tore at his clothes, and he felt teeth sink into his leg. He kicked out, and something's skull caved in. The others fell on it, but there wasn't enough meat to go around. Shit. Shit. He was going to die. He could feel it in his bones, felt the presence of something working its way into him. He really didn't want to die. Not like this. Schuldig felt himself start to panic. He wished, irrationally, for Crawford, and who the fuck cared what an irrational, dying man might shout?
"Crawford!" he yelled. "Crawford!"
Like fucking magic, Crawford came, knocking away the things that go bump in the night. He hit and punched and did things that left crumpled, dead heaps of monsters on the ground. And he didn't even have a gun.
"Schuldig," said Crawford. "Get up. I have a car."
Schuldig fought to get to his feet as the creatures backed away with the corpses of the dead. Crawford half-dragged him to safety, and Schuldig slid over in the back seat. The door slammed shut, Crawford beside him, and Schuldig's head hit the back of the seat when the driver hit the gas pedal-and probably some bodies, too, the way the car jerked violently as they picked up speed.
Crawford looked down at Schuldig's injured leg. Schuldig looked away, over Crawford's shoulder at the blurred lights that sped past the car window.
"You're going to have to take my leg off," Schuldig said. "Quick. Now. Before I turn."
He concentrated on damming the something that was working its way up his leg. But his head hurt so fucking bad and he couldn't hold it back for long.
"It's going to hurt," said Crawford.
"You think I don't fucking know that?" said Schuldig. "Do it now before you have to put me down."
Crawford pulled out a light-wire, and Schuldig went cold at the sight of it, adding things up in fractions of seconds as the poisonous stuff crept higher inside his leg, rotting him away. Crawford had been nearby and had called the cell. Crawford had planned for this, had a fucking light-wire in his pocket.
Crawford had known all along that things would go to shit.
Schuldig tried and failed to think about it objectively, like it was someone else everything had happened to. The only good thing about the light-wire was that it would heat up and cauterize as it sliced through. It was going to take serious effort to take off a leg, even for a man as strong as Crawford. A pity Schuldig wasn't in any mood to appreciate the sort of flexing Crawford was going to have to do. If there was anything he appreciated about Crawford, it was his arms and shoulders.
Crawford wound the ends of the wire around his hands and snapped it tight, once. The middle of the wire went white hot, and Crawford looped it around Schuldig's leg, just below the knee. Schuldig's pants started to smolder.
"Higher," said Schuldig. "Can't risk it."
Crawford slid it up several inches, and Schuldig smelled the sizzle of his own skin cooking.
"I'm sorry," said Crawford.
And he yanked the light-wire tight.
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Enough drama and action for you? XD I must go a-posting now...
~later