House Draculesti

It was a lovely day when Gregory died.

The sun was high and bright in the sky so that even the soot-stained walls of London’s back streets looked cheerful. Women chatted in shop entrances, men hurried along looking important and children ran shrieking through alleyways. Horseshoes and wagon wheels clattered over the cobbles.

Arthur and Gregory were part of that noise and hubbub that made up the breath of the world’s largest city. They ducked flailing elbows and dove between swirling skirts and swinging walking sticks on instinct. The honey cake was sticky in Arthur’s fingers, the sweetness of that first bite taken on the run mingled with the tang of his rasping breath as his feet slapped against the cobbles. Gregory gave an elated hoot behind him, laugh as bright as the sunlight. Arthur dove across the chaos of a main thoroughfare, gained the safety of the curb, cut off from any pursuit.

Later, he wondered if he’d really felt the apprehension he remembered or if that was a conjuration of his mind, fuelled by later knowledge.

What he did clearly remember was the soft, dull thud – like someone hit a sack of flour. He remembered the rumble of wheels in his back, the strangled whinny of a horse, the crack of a whip and the curses of the driver. He remembered the way he turned, the way he looked for a bright flash of hair and smile, and couldn’t find it– until he looked down. The cart was swerving and rumbling away down the street, a rider swore as his horse danced to the side… around Gregory’s form, crumbled against the curb.

Absurdly, the first thing that occurred to Arthur was that Gregory’d never looked so small. So still. Then, Oh my god, Gregory!

He ran, three steps like a mile, and Gregory’s legs were still in the street and one of them was… was wrong, twisted, and there was blood, and there were people shouting for him to get the hell out of the street, and…

Arthur didn’t remember what he said, a babble of Gregory’s name and useless sound, but he did remember how heavy Gregory was as he grabbed his shoulders and pulled. He remembered the glassy look of his eyes and the way blood crept through his hair and started to run down the side of his face. There was so much of it and it was so red, and Arthur was so scared. The leg was really bad, he tried not to look at it because it made him feel sick, and Gregory wasn’t really looking at him, and, and he didn’t even react when Arthur pulled him up on the side walk, didn’t even cry out. Arthur looked up, looked around, at the crowd that flowed around them, gave them a berth, realized that he had no one to ask for help, that he had no money to pay for it.

The sun was as bright on the blood as it was on everything else and the city continued its clatter and murmur, indifferent.

Arthur grabbed hold of Gregory’s shoulders again, dragged him further from the street, from danger. There was the mouth of an alley right there, and the refuge of an abandoned old warehouse. He shoved at rotten boards, widened a gap enough to get Gregory through.

Inside, the air was still and warm. Dust sifted through the golden beams of light that shone through a dozen gaps.

“Gregory?” Arthur crouched on the dirt floor next to his best friend, closed his own shaking fingers around Gregory’s hand. The skin was cool and clammy, and he didn’t know what to do. He could see Gregory’s chest rise and fall slowly, and sometimes he blinked, but he didn’t answer, and the blood kept flowing, seeping into the dirt, and nothing he’d ever read told him what to do.

He should stop the bleeding, yes, but… but he didn’t dare touch the wounds. What if he made it worse? He sniffed, felt tears well in his eyes, felt them form a hard lump in his throat. He needed a doctor, but he didn’t know any doctors, and he didn’t have any money, and who’d waste time on one dirty street urchin without getting paid for it?

And even… and even if he found someone (maybe he could try one of the religious orders? The Sisters of the Poor? They were always kind) …even if he did– the leg looked really bad. No one could fix that, he didn’t think. And there was the head wound.

Gregory was dying. He knew Gregory was dying. And there wasn’t anything he could do. If only… if only he’d studied more. If only he’d read more. But the books were at home, and he was here, and what if… He couldn’t leave Gregory, he couldn’t leave him here alone.

Arthur sat in the dirt, and cried, and held Gregory’s hand, and watched the faint rise and fall of Gregory’s chest.

He missed Gregory’s last breath.

He scrubbed his arm over his face, and when he looked again, Gregory’s chest wasn’t moving anymore. He watched, but there wasn’t a next breath. Gregory’s eyes were glassy, fixed on the ceiling, and there wasn’t another blink.

Arthur sat, and held Gregory’s hand while it grew heavy and cold, tried to capture that lingering warmth for as long as he could, like it mattered that he held on. He sat, and he watched, while his legs grew numb and the light shifted through infinite shades of amber and the blood stopped and turned brown. The stench of loosened bowels tainted the still air, but still he sat, like he could capture some of the morning’s innocence if he just didn’t move, like he could reverse time and un-make this.

And he could fix this. He could.

“Magic can do anything, boy,” his father would say, black eyes glittering. “The only limit is your imagination.”

But he needed the books. And the books were at home. And he didn’t want to leave Gregory’s body. There were rats. And thieves. And body snatchers. What if someone found him? What if someone took him away, to be cut apart in some university’s classroom? He couldn’t… but he had to.

Finally, when the first blue shadows of dusk were creeping into the corners, he set Gregory’s hand down carefully, staggered to his feet. He was sore and clumsy as he crawled back out into the alley, and he shoved the boards back together to make it look like any other warehouse. Then he made his way home, first at a trot, then a run.

~~~~

The house loomed over him, narrow and dark, as he shoved through the door and dashed up the rickety old stairs. In the kitchen, he knew, pieces of bread were still on the table, where Gregory’d thrown his this morning as he declared he wanted something better for breakfast than day-old bread. Despite the wood that groaned under his steps, silence hung heavy all around him, and for the first time he noticed the grime that stained the corners, the dust that covered everything their feet and hands hadn’t worn a path through. He shuddered, ran faster for his father’s study.

It took him far too long to find the right books, every moment he flipped pages and skimmed text chewing at him. By the time he’d swept the right ones into a bag, plus the iron pen, the string, the candles, tinder and flint, it was fully dark out. Fog was creeping up the streets from the direction of the river, brought with it the smell of sewage and dying things.

~~~~

Power filled the air, breathed cold and damp against his skin. The cat squirmed and yowled in his grip.

He couldn’t… God, he couldn’t do it!

But he had to. And it was just a stray, like a hundred others in the alleys. Its brown fur was scratchy with dirt against his fingers, bald patches of skin fever-hot. His fingers almost met around the scrawny neck. All he had to do was squeeze, and twist, and it’d be over. It’d be easy. He just had to do it. 

He imagined what his father would say if he could see him now– only he wouldn’t say anything, he’d just look at him with that sneer of disgust, and turn away– his son too pathetic to even bother hitting.

It was just a cat. It wasn’t important. Its life wasn’t important, except for how it could give Arthur his best friend back.

Gregory wouldn’t want him to do it. He loved cats, was forever feeding them on their scarce scraps. 

But Gregory was dead, and if Arthur wanted him back he had to do this. 

It wasn’t nearly as easy as the books implied. His hands were shaking and the cat was struggling, twisting in his grip, its claws scoring his wrists, tearing the sleeves of his shirt. It was strong, much stronger than he’d thought, and the noises it made, the way its eyes bugged out as he clenched his fingers shut… He was crying, and retching, and still it wasn’t dead, it was suffering and he didn’t want that, he didn’t want it to be scared and in pain, but it was too late, it would just die horribly if he let go now, and with a sob he finally wrenched its head around. It spasmed, and shuddered, and then it finally went limp.

With his voice hitching around sobs, he started the incantations. The power that hovered around the room swirled and sharpened, until he thought it was going to scrape at him worse than the deep claw marks burning on his arms. He was bleeding, he knew, not because of the pain or because he could feel it, but because of how the power sniffed at it, hungry and mindless. 

And then it tightened, grew clear and glass-sharp, and swept him along. He could feel the moment when the ritual took. Suddenly, he was the one being pulled along, words dragged from his mouth. He took the iron pen and the cat’s carcass, drove the hard tip deep into its soft stomach. It didn’t matter that he felt sick, that he didn’t know what to do. His hands were strong, savage, and he stepped into the circle to splash the sacrificial blood onto Gregory’s body. 

White spots of light appeared wherever it hit, and then a line of white fire erupted from Gregory’s chest, started to split him open. It was a cold light, brighter than any gas fire he’d ever seen, so bright it hurt his eyes, so bright it felt like a spike driven into his head. With it came a cloud of stench that made him gag, something sweet and foul and rotten.

Wrong. This was wrong, it was going wrong, he knew that before the first grey, glistening hand dug its way out of Gregory’s chest. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. He could feel it, feel it in the hungry glee of the power around him. He could feel every imperfection in the circle, could feel every wobbly line of his sigils, every mumbled word and every drop of his own blood he’d spilled. 

He was going to die. Oh God, he was going to die. He knew it, and the power slinking around the room knew it. He was going to die, torn to pieces and devoured, everything he was food for whatever he’d summoned, his body and his blood, his breath, his fear, his pain– that was what they meant when they talked about someone’s soul.

He scrambled back, feet pushing, dirt gritty between his fingers. He knocked over a candle, hot wax splashed over the back of his hand, but it didn’t matter. He knew it was a futile gesture. The circle wasn’t going to hold, and there was no escape from the thing he’d called, the thing that was crawling out of the door he’d opened, that was cracking open Gregory’s body like some obscene cocoon.

Its skin was a waxy blue-grey, like the drowned body he’d once seen washed up against the wharf. The white light from inside the portal glistened on it. Its eyes weren’t human at all, two black dots in a line in each staring at him from within a blind, milky film. It set its hands against the dirt by the side of Gregory’s chest, bony fingers spread wide, elbows jutting out too far, and heaved a glistening stretch of mid-section out of Gregory’s chest. The movement made one of Gregory’s hands flop limply against the floor.

Arthur’s stomach lurched, and he realized he was crying, was making pathetic scared animal noises, and knew there was no help coming. The only person who would even notice he was gone was already dead, his body raped by Arthur’s foolish ritual.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He never should have tried this. It was wrong, it was foul, it was selfish, and please, please let Gregory be okay, please let his soul be wherever it was supposed to be.

The thing’s mouth gaped open, a black hole of hungry glee, and in a moment it would be on Arthur, and he’d die screaming.

The white light flared, so sharp and bright Arthur cried out in pain, so sharp he had to squint.

The thing twisted, and turned, as something else forced itself through the portal, Arthur could feel it like it was his body it was using, something huge and… Arthur didn’t have the words.

It made the power in the room quiver like grass before a storm. The candles were still lit, but it was like that didn’t matter before this darkness. Arthur could hear the rumble of a cab in the distance, but it might as well have been in another world. The power that was coming cast its shadow into the world, and Arthur quivered in it.

The thing crawling from Gregory’s body jerked, flailed, as it was pulled back down into the portal. Black cracks started to appear in its skin, raced upwards, and it shrieked as it was devoured, the sound like nails on a chalkboard.

Arthur clapped his hands over his ears, and curled up in the dirt, and gasped for breath. The pressure of power in the room grew, and grew, and grew, it was going to crush him, and it didn’t care in the least, he could feel that.

He’d been food for whatever he’d summoned, a big, tasty meal, but this thing barely cared. It would snap him up on an afterthought, a mere snack of convenience while it went to look for bigger and better prey.

Arthur curled into a ball on the floor, as tight as he could, and knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. It pushed at his gate, forced itself through. The power slapped at Arthur, too much to comprehend, too cold and too dark and too opposite anything happy and alive and good, and Arthur’s mind gave up, his consciousness blown out like a candle in the wind.

~~~~

Heat licked at his face, and strong arms held him as he swayed with someone’s steps. The scent of smoke clogged his nose, the taste of ash coated his mouth, mingled with the sour-bitter taste of bile. His stomach hurt, and his head, and his limbs were heavy. There was warm, bare skin against his cheek. He opened his eyes and looked up into a face, haloed by fire.

It was Gregory’s.

But it wasn’t, because it was perfect. No blood. No dirt. No shadows under his eyes. His face wasn’t thin from skirting the edge of starvation for years.

And he wasn’t dead.

But he was dead.

It was Gregory, but it wasn’t.

Gregory smiled at him, angelic.

Arthur screamed.

Next: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 1