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There was often a sense of lonely helplessness when you knew you were about to lose a man in the field, or any patient for that matter. It was loud and palpable—explosive even—despite death being such a silent entity. Sometimes, there was fear, other times, resignation. There needn't always be obvious grave injury; you could take one look and see it in the glistening rheum of a person’s eyes, or the cracked paleness of their lips. They were about to die in your charge, at your knee in the mud and curdled muck, or in an already death-soiled cot, and there was nothing more you could do to prevent it.
Geoffrey McCullum had that look about him now, though he was still fighting for his last, laboured breath.
Grievance of the self. Denial seeping slowly into acceptance.
Death was much more visceral for Jonathan now. Geoffrey knelt at his feet, hunched and trying to stay upright, begging for an end he lied about wanting. The left side of his ribcage was partially crushed—two ribs broken, one fractured—inhibiting the lung encased there which feebly filled and expelled uneven, shaky breaths. If Jonathan listened closely enough, Geoffrey’s voice was quiet, whispered prayer and frightened curses. When looking even further into him, locked to the beat and susseration of Geoffrey's body, he could both see and sense the trickle of blood and fluids that wept from small tears in his internal organs. Astonishing, Jonathan thought, that Geoffrey was still breathing at all, beaten as he was from blows by tides and tendrils of shadow, and one well-aimed shotgun blast riddling his abdomen and sword arm with shrapnel—the latter injury being what finally put a stop to their futile battle.
Faced with the reluctant destruction he’d wrought upon another man, Jonathan fell to his knees in front of Geoffrey, who—despite them now being face-to-face—had trouble keeping his eyes on Jonathan's face. Fading. Geoffrey still carried on, dazed though he was, mumbling about the might of Priwen again. Jonathan clasped him by the shoulders to keep him from slumping over onto the dusty floorboards.
“What— what're you doing?” Geoffrey asked in a panicky slur. “No… don’t you dare come near…” Sharp inhales. Not enough air. A grimace that couldn't be hidden. Weak, he thought he was being weak in the face of a vampire. A disappointment; men were not weak. Priwen was not weak. “Don't come near me, leech…” He tried and failed to crawl back from Jonathan’s reach.
“Let me get you into the lift. If I could only—” Jonathan made an attempt to get Geoffrey’s good arm around his neck, but his urgent touch was shrugged off. “Geoffrey, please. You need medical attention. Surgery, if I am to be blunt so you might understand the seriousness of your condition.”
Remorse rose up in Jonathan's throat like the acrid, bile-bitterness of guilt and shame. He hadn't meant to bring him so close to death. There should be no apologising for this, though. Geoffrey had laid a trap, a one-man ambush; it was in Jonathan's right to defend himself when it had become clear that it was an entirely fruitless endeavour to convince Geoffrey to see past his biased hatred, to lay down his arms and partner with him for the sake of London, of Great Britain.
Geoffrey managed a laugh, thick and wet. “Into the lift… Right, and then you— then you what, lead me into the surgery theatre under the guise of a genteel… doctor’s care? Delicate, taloned fingers to patch me up, good as new. I’ll be damned if I fall for that! You’ll send me into a sleep on that operating table, one from which I’ll never wake… feasting upon me while your hospital staff are none the wiser, aye? Smiling with your sharpened teeth bloodied by my torn flesh, laughing at us all, your sheep for slaughter!”
Jonathan sighed. “Yes, well—whatever ruse you think I might pull, you’ll be falling into a deathly, everlasting slumber all the same if I don’t get you medical attention soon. My God...!”
Red had started to seep from Geoffrey’s split lip when he'd spoken last, fragrant as bruised flower petals. Hard to ignore now, saliva filled Jonathan's mouth at just the idea of its taste, a taste he could manifest in memory, having already violently sampled Geoffrey's blood in order to defend and reinvigorate himself.
“I am no fool,” Geoffrey seethed, breaking Jonathan from his hunger-induced entrancement. “There is never safety in the arms of a devil, no matter how they try to tempt you into believing otherwise. I know your kind and all your damned manipulations! False kindnesses! So leave me to my fate, why don’t you, or go on and kill me now, Jonathan. Get it over with. I may be beaten, but mine can still be a death of honour.”
In another type of wonder, one clashing with the sheer frustration and anger caused by Geoffrey's bullheadedness and lack self-preservation, Jonathan realised he'd heard the utterance of his own name. This was Geoffrey imploring the person, not the doctor nor any image of an evil he'd previously invoked with insults each time he'd taunted or derided Jonathan.
He grabbed Geoffrey’s face between his hands. A wince of pain soon turned into a snarl as Geoffrey struggled to push Jonathan’s hands and arms away from him.
“You see!” Jonathan exclaimed, giddy as if with some revelation more profound than the moment was owed, yet he did not restrain that feeling—found he simply could not. “You don’t completely think me the vicious monster you wish I was. Is that just another of the Guard’s fanatical teachings? All vampires hold the seeds of inhuman evil and abominable sin in their hearts, regardless of the morality they still possess?” The claw of his thumb pressed into the contusion that already bloomed in blackened blues over Geoffrey’s right cheekbone. “I know I am no good, but not for the reasons you think you’re so sure of.”
“Tell me,” Geoffrey began through gritted teeth, “on your nightly excursions, did you meet other blood drinkers whom you'd thought so awfully high of? Were they not walking, murderous horrors?”
The question immediately brought to mind the kindness Elisabeth had bestowed upon Jonathan in the clutch of just a few disorienting nights. As he'd come to know her, she quickly became a guiding light of sorts when Jonathan wandered this new, nocturnal world so very lost in the dark. He also thought of the enigmatic Old Bridget and her colony of docile sewer skals. And poor, good-hearted Sean Hampton, unfairly doomed to become a frenzied, mindless creature until Jonathan’s blood had saved him—and perhaps, by proximity, his faithful flock—from a more wretched existence.
“Yes,” Jonathan answered plainly, “I have, in fact. I've met people under this same curse, still trying to do good. But Priwen would end them all the same. We are not all monsters.”
“Vile liar… I’ve seen the evidence of evil, none of you have an ounce of humanity left. I have seen with my own eyes how you’ve no trouble takin’ down your own kind, even… in all their varied, monstrous forms. To say nothing of the way you’ve butchered innocent citizens...”
“You've no idea the falsehoods tarnishing your judgement.”
Jonathan bit back his own accusations, tempted as he was to correct Geoffrey on the paltry measure of innocence his human victims had while throwing Geoffrey's hypocrisy in his face: the night of slaughter those Priwen dogs brought upon Nurse Crane's small Whitechapel clinic—over the absurd assumption she was harbouring vampires.
“Some Oath you've upheld, doctor. No one needs to teach me you’re just as evil as all the rest,” Geoffrey continued on. “You have proven it every night you stalk these London streets, leech. Hell, even saved me the trouble of putting your dear, departed sister out of ‘er misery.”
It would be easy, like crushing a spider beneath your heel, to end it here. To twist Geoffrey’s skull at the wrong angle against the support of his cervical spine with all of his might. To snuff out the heat of the flame that had been lapping at his heels relentlessly since he awoke in that pit of rotting corpses. Instead, Jonathan rested his forehead against Geoffrey’s, his own physical and mental weariness making itself known. And of course, there was always that beautiful, horrible need, ceaseless in its voice. Jonathan closed his eyes, listened to the rhythm of Geoffrey’s slow pulse, his weakening heart—how it picked up its pace when Jonathan brushed his thumbs against Geoffrey’s temples with a softer touch.
“My brave huntsman. You bolstered your strength with Arthur’s blood, yes—I witnessed it, felt it. You could have had me, but you held yourself back, didn't you? This is not how things need to end.”
During their fight, Jonathan had seen Geoffrey grab up that damned flask of King Arthur's blood and drink from it again; whatever strange vigour it leant him had burst forth in a bright fury, but it was also as short-lived as the white-hot flash of lightning in a night sky. A clash of swords, the swift sink of a crossbow bolt, then waning excursion. His flesh had a deathly pallour, but he'd not yet been mortally wounded.
Jonathan's preternatural senses latched onto something, but he didn't know what it was exactly. A change, an oddity he couldn't quite reach for because he could not see it for what it was. No matter now.
“I didn’t want it to be so easy.” A strained cough worked its way from Geoffrey’s chest. Tiny blood particulates misted the air between them. It was agony, being this close. The scent so deep, so strong. “What can I say, I love a good challenge. Now… stop yer stalling… and put an end to it.”
Jonathan opened his eyes and shook his head. “At every turn, you’ve let me live. For a reason elusive to me, in spite of your contrary blustering like a mad crier, you don’t really want me dead, do you, McCullum?” With a tilt of his head, he leaned back to level his gaze at Geoffrey. Held his head still. Gentle. Gentle the beast inside the man. “Do you? I think what frightens you most is that I am different from what you anticipated, what your zealotry taught you.”
“Fuck you.” One more show of strength, and Geoffrey was pleading again, “You are toying with me… Won’t you give me the death I am owed? Stop these— these provocations!” His voice had gone reedy and desperate.
Pain, fear, anger. Regret.
“We both know I could do it, easily. Feed on you until your grey flesh shrivels and clings to your bones like a dried husk. But I never wanted to kill you, you’ve only forced my hand. How can you think it so noble, to beg on your knees for the devil who bested you to put you out of your misery?”
“Y-you are a… coward…. playing God. The same as Swansea with his experiments.” Whether he realised it or not, Geoffrey clung to Jonathan, hands fisted into his greatcoat, twisting the fabric to keep himself upright. His lips brushed Jonathan's beard, his throat.
The sweet scent of blood leaking into Geoffrey's abdominal cavity rose up from his mouth with each breath he gasped for. It stirred the ache Jonathan suppressed so poorly.
“Is it not enough to know I want you alive? This is your last chance. Allow me to help you. We’ve only wanted the same thing this entire time. To save this city. We could have worked together in this, but let me help you this once, save your life, and after, may we never again cross paths, if that is what you desire.”
“I kept you alive out of… morbid curiosity. A weakness in my duty. That is why I knew I had to put you down finally. End your threat… I failed, but Priwen will go on. As it always has. You're a damned thing, Dr Reid. And I'll gladly meet you and every one of your kind in Hell.”
Geoffrey seemed to muster the last reserves of his exhausted energy to push Jonathan away, falling backwards as he did so. He laid across the floorboards, chest heaving as his body gave out.
An unexpected rage filled Jonathan, filtered through the fraying control he'd dealt with throughout their duel. He crawled over Geoffrey's body, thinking of all the arrogance and ignorant pride that corroded this dying man’s character. He thought about the dissipation of Geoffrey’s breath against his throat. A strange loss.
“All right, you wanted a monster?” Jonathan snatched Geoffrey’s tattered scarf away, eyed the fresh bites he’d made towards the back of his neck. A necessity, and now, for the nature driving him. He hauled Geoffrey up by his lapels. “I'll give you one. I will show you sin incarnate, Geoffrey McCullum. I’ll give to you a true taste of what makes me such an abomination in mortal eyes. And you will begin to see this world through mine.”
Jonathan bit into the meat of his palm. The tamped-down hunger stirred by his battle-wounds, and those he’d inflicted upon Geoffrey, rose to the surface of his consciousness, causing him to partake in his own blood almost too enthusiastically.
The Ekon blood coursing through his veins was incredibly potent, Jonathan knew of that with some certainty due to how little necessitated Mary’s fatal change, and what a healing draught it was for Sean in a way. Jonathan swallowed a groan as he dropped his hand away. Droplets fell to the floor, running down along his ring finger, and he watched them bead as they grasped at the dust to further form their uneven little shapes. Blood still coated the inside of Jonathan's mouth, the pure taste of its sacred colour trapped behind his teeth. The fire in Geoffrey’s eyes had gone out, and the fight from his heavy limbs. Surrender. Before he went limp in the boughs of Jonathan’s arms, Jonathan leant down and kissed Geoffrey deeply, licked between his lips to the warm slickness of his tongue. The struggling was enough to pull Jonathan back to himself, to disgust him with his own irreversible actions.
It was done.
Damn him, he wanted it, even now, this sort of petty retribution, yet it still horrified him. For that was what most frightened Jonathan—the ability he had to so easily slip into the pelt of the beast Geoffrey and all the other soldiers of Priwen wanted him to be… what Elisabeth had warned him of.
He let Geoffrey’s writhing body fall upon the boards and, proving him right in his presumptions about Jonathan’s cowardice, left him there to die alone at the first signs and sounds of his agonised turn to Darkness.
Jonathan had looked death in the face more times than he ever cared to count. This… this was what finally made him flinch away.
Hours passed it seemed, before Jonathan felt Geoffrey. When the bond came it was, in a way, much like what he felt of Mary’s mortal death—urgent, sharp, and instantaneous—the serrated blade of fate forming and tearing through their familial union. Her delirium and blame scraping inside his skull. Later, it was a synaptic misfiring when he took his sister's life a second time. A soul’s gasp, if such a thing could exist.
What Jonathan had now with Geoffrey was just as painful and bizarrely innate. It was an abrupt scream, hollowing out his chest cavity, however quiet his own throat remained; it was fury searing down to bone. A gangrenous throb that spidered through every limb more and more with each passing minute, each night, thickening. He wanted to go to Geoffrey, be made to bear witness the curse he’d passed on, to console, to be punished, to aid him somehow, though Jonathan still knew next to nothing of his own immortality. How craven he was, to shirk the duties of the proper teacher he’d never learned to become.
After three days, the hum of loneliness crept over his skin like the rasp of fingernails seeking out that twin suffering. Prodding, clawing, digging.
Connection. A warm grasp.
I have found you, as always. I feel you completely. I can feel it all now.
Jonathan's every muscle was trembling, tensing. Heart hammering. He gasped from the suddenness of it. A cut-off moan. Shameful how it rang out in his empty room. His hands shook and he drop his pen upon his notebook. The blood. Yes. Ask him. A cure for hate. Ink freckled the page. Chair legs screeched along the floor as he pushed away from his desk.
Where are you?
Tell me… do you feel it too?
He did. Of course, he did. Everywhere, all of him. A part of him, a part of each other. Mary was in madness, this was…
Done with purpose.
Pleasure.
Need. Need. Need. This— this cyclical thrall! What have I done?
Given me a gift. Power. I wonder what you feel when I kill them. When I drain them.
Vampires hunting vampires.
Why not? You have already done it. What a pair we could be.
If you didn't dare to look in the mirror, you could avoid glimpsing the shadowy devil smiling behind your reflection, just as children believed the monster couldn't possibly consume them if they closed their eyes tightly enough.
A lie to steel your resolve.
But monsters were real, and their hunger was endless.
What he couldn't know, not just yet, was that through Geoffrey's blind hubris, he'd already damned his soul by drinking, from a flask of all things, the ancient blood of the very thing he'd been brought up to despise. Before their fight, before any blows between them, before Jonathan's sinful kiss tying them forever, the decay had begun. Death in motion. Jonathan's blood had only forced a new, much stronger bond, severing the growing roots of a long-lost king. But Geoffrey… he had been the one who sealed his own fate.
Show me. Guide me to you. I need you.
Please, my progeny.