The door is a guard against everything but his thoughts.
He presses his forehead against it, each bit of grain biting into his face a separate memory-piece of Roy’s decimated body. He shakes and thinks his own skin will slough off. He trembles unconsciously, so loosened that he feels like he is boneless.
Eldrian forgets about Nellie for a moment. Violence blanks his mind of anything else but the horror of the last few hours. Even the Chamber hadn’t been so blindly vicious in their attack. They had been precise, yes, but no one had actually died. Blood had flowed, bark had been shredded – their home had changed forever – but loss of life and limb hadn’t been their intent. And now that he thinks about it, the young man isn’t sure it had been Jack’s intent either. He doesn’t think that monster had any intentions at all, really; he imagines it had been done purely in the moment. Purposeless violence. Irrational, illogical, in the heat-of-the-moment murder. Jack had been a creature baptized by blood and exhilarated and exalted by the fading pulses of his victims.
How much more animalistic he was than a calculated killer.
Only a brief moan from behind him pulls him from his reverie. Eldrian turns to the sound, at once startled by the lack of color in Nellie’s cheeks when he sees her. She hasn’t moved from the spot he unceremoniously dumped her just beyond the door, and it is all too obvious why. Jack’s parting gift on her calf still bleeds profusely. He moves in for a closer look, noticing the ragged parting of her flesh and the way the blood gathers around it as if it is a pool fed by an underground spring. Indeed, he wonders what lies below the surface of her skin. Instinctually, (though he still doesn’t understand how he knows these things) Eldrian knows that her fibula and tibia bones run through her leg, supporting her two-legged weight. He knows, too, that arteries and veins pump the blood away from and towards the heart, respectively. Some part of him wonders if one such vessel has been nicked – the amount of crimson fluid seems to suggest it – and what he can do for her if so.
“I’m a righ’ mess, ain’t I?” She smiles weakly, the edges of her eyes barely crinkling. He can see the tears threatening to spill over, but to her credit, she blinks them away. Roy must have been her brother, he thinks. What a shitty way to part ways. Eldrian puts a steadying hand on her shoulder like she’d done for him in the alleyway. His eyes look past her, however, to the place they’ve now landed. Nellie’s back is to the great, arcing hedges that rise above them in a sort of corridor. Other plants line the path, too. Some of them look wholly deadly, their colors neon and thorns sharpened to a point. But still others are delicate and pretty; fruits of varying shapes and sizes dangle from outstretched branches. There’s absolutely no way around the obstacle – they are completely surrounded by foliage - and he wonders if this is what she and Roy had envisioned when they meant to escape from Jack the Ripper. What kind of utopia is this, anyway?
A dark thought comes to him when he takes in the maze, but more importantly, an answer does as well. Just down the path, the ground sinks in a dip along the edge of the maze wall. Even from this distance, Eldrian can tell that it is filled with water. And along the little banks, rising in small clusters…cattails, thank god. He rises from his crouch and moves towards them immediately. “No, no, don’ leave me Eld!” There’s abject horror in her eyes as Nellie twists to plead, the idea of being left behind drawing more emotion out of her than losing her brother. Survival makes strangers of us all, Eldrian thinks, but he stops long enough to reassure her. “It’s ok. I know these plants. We have them back home. They –“
A sudden brightness burns behind his eyes, blinding him and slurring his tongue. In the same instant, his head is assaulted with the sharpest headache he’s ever experienced. The light soon fades from his mind and eyes, but the knife blade cutting into his skull doesn’t lessen its precise drive. Shaken but undeterred, the young man hurries towards the little waterscape. With deft, slender hands, he pulls a cattail from the soft bank of the pond, retreating back towards Nellie once he has his prize. Eldrian kneels beside her. He dabs his finger into the gel at the base of the long leaf, spreading it along the oozing wound on the woman’s leg. His motions slow as he watches the way the blood and cattail gel mix together. He realizes he doesn’t like the dilution, how tainted the blood becomes in the healing, anesthetic presence of the gel. Nellie seems to like it, though. She closes her eyes, the stressed lines on her face relaxing as she becomes the pretty, buoyant girl he’d known before. But Eldrian’s eyes trace down to the motion at her neck, her pulse still not as relaxed as the rest of her. It fascinates him, and without realizing his own movement, he draws in even closer so that their faces are nearly touching.
Her cerulean eyes fly open, surprise flushing her face. The heat of it makes him suddenly hungry. “You may ‘ave healed me, but don’ expect no snogging yet, you cheeky boy.” Nellie pushes him. Playfully, he supposes, but it elicits an inhuman growl from deep within him. He doesn’t know where it comes from. He tries to concentrate, brushing past the new kind of shock written on her face, and ties the leaf around the now-medicated wound. “C’mon. We need to get moving.” Eldrian helps her rise, shakily, to her feet.
The going is slow (terribly slow; panic and desperation at the speed they travel only grows within him with each footstep) but they manage. They are in some sort of maze, Nellie soon pieces together, the walls sectioned into corridors with choices at every turn. There’s no rhyme or reason to the paths they take, not at first. They simply go where the path seems more attractive and less foreboding. At one junction, Nellie looks up from her concentrated walk to cry happily, “oh, it’s beautiful, innit?” The largest flower Eldrian’s ever seen perches at the end of a twisted vine, so high he can barely reach it. He does, though, standing on the tips of his toes and picking it. He puts it Nellie’s honey-colored hair, hungered by the way her cheeks blush red again. He’s disgusted by himself.
But seconds later (after they’ve walked further down the path) the vine seems to come to life behind them. A snaking, slithering sound on the dirt ground alerts them to its approach. The pair turns just in time to see it rising into the air in front of them, the tip of it a gaping maw lined with several rows of sharp teeth where the flower used to occupy. It floats in front of their faces, waving and writhing, snapping its faceless mouth. Eldrian realizes he doesn’t have a pulse, (or a heartbeat anymore for that matter –when did that happen?) but if he did, it would surely be up. They are frozen by this new development – that the maze isn’t all exotic flowers and beautiful sightseeing, that there are things here with teeth and claws and evil-intent – and Nellie reacts in a way he doesn’t expect. She doesn’t scream but reaches up to her head and pulls the flower from her hair. With a single, hard motion, (that has her swaying on her unsteady feet) she throws the flower at the vine. It catches it, swallows it in one gulp, and transforms back into its flowering, former self before pulling itself back against the hedges, apparently satisfied with the offering.
“I- I didn’t expec’ tha’ to work. Honest.” Nellie’s voice holds some amount of amusement, but he can still feel the heat of her panic. It draws him in close, his eyes seeming to flash red as he takes her weight up against his shoulder once more. They continue on, but this time, they do not touch anything. Eldrian likes the feel of her against him, the closeness of her beating heart. It’s so loud, so incessant – like a buzzing bee that won’t leave the confines of his brain. He mostly likes that she’s close because it makes her more accessible. She can’t run far, after all, and this fact soothes him in a primal way. It also churns his stomach with bile.
They are cautious now and on high alert for any out-of-place sights and sounds. It’s difficult, though, because this world is so alien that it’s impossible to distinguish what belongs and what doesn’t. Eldrian finds that his body has changed in more ways than one, at least. His hearing is far better than before; his eyes are sharper and see every slight discrepancy in what lies ahead. It is due to this change that he sees what is ahead long before Nellie knows what is happening. He pulls her down just as the creature flies over their heads, its claws outstretched in anticipation. “What the bloody ‘ell was that for?” He watches its retreat, understanding why she hadn’t seen it but not why he had. The reptilian animal had been made completely out of heat, or at least it had appeared to, shimmering in the light, its signature barely visible to him.
They come to a crossroads at one point. Eldrian feels in his bones that they should go one way (despite the foreboding, sinister trees they can just make out at the end of the path) but Nellie insists on going another. Something feels far worse about the whisper of the waterfall down her path. She finds it soothing, but he can hear past it to the tinny shrieks – almost as if souls were being split with each splash against the rocks below. “We turn left here,” he insists, all warmth gone from his voice. She can do little to protest, and limps along beside him, shaking her head the entire time.
He knows he is right when they are able to walk past the towering trees that border the hedge, pressing against the leafy border with some arrogance in their stances. He watches them for any movement as they pass, but he sees none. Just along the next bend, the once-horse can see a platform gilded by some unknown light above. The center, it must be the end. With new determination, he pulls the girl ahead, his nails digging into her wrists unknowingly. Not until after they’ve passed does anything happen. Nellie stumbles over a root, and many things happen at once. Eldrian feels himself falling as the earth opens below his feet. He lands with a hard thud at the bottom of a crudely-dug pit (surely Missy can have done better, he thinks, perhaps her pets are learning). The shock doesn’t hurt one bit, which makes as much sense as anything else has so far, and he thinks he’ll be able to haul himself up.
An anger grows within him, despite knowing he’ll be all right. If only the stupid girl hadn’t tripped – we’d be done with this by now. The thought scares him, and he presses his hands to his head, trying to clear the headache that surely must be causing it. “Oh my god! Nooo!” Nellie’s shrill voice pierces him further, until he thinks his head will explode then and then, sending grey matter into the air as harmless shrapnel. “Nellie? What is it, what’s wrong?” He stretches his arms up as far as they will go and jumps, feeling his weaker body (compared to when he was a horse, but stronger than it had been in London) respond to the coil and release of his legs. He makes the edge, just barely, and rises to meet whatever has frightened the other human (he doesn’t know that he can no longer count himself among their kind). He feels strong, invincible and ready to face this newest adversary.
It still surprises him when he sees it.
It’s vaguely human in shape, but that’s where the similarities end. Great ram horns jut from the side of its massive head; its teeth are pointed and glistening, even in the gloom just beyond the trees. It looks like some sort of well-muscled hybrid – a beast in every manner of the word. Apparently, it had taken advantage of Nellie’s fall, because by the time he is back on the surface, Eldrian can see it pinning her to the ground, its horns on either side of her face. Already, her clothes are torn by the wicked claws at the end of its fingers. Fueled more by that same, red-hot anger than any concern for Nellie, Eldrian charges it. The ram-man doesn’t expect it, his sunken eyes lit with shock when the boy-vampire collides with him. Eldrian hisses at the contact, his body finally catching up with its changes. Purely on instinct, he clamps down on the meaty shoulder of the beast, his teeth lengthening and sharpening as they drive further into the flesh. The creature howls in pain, swiping at the vampire and connecting with his back.
Eldrian feels the sting but doesn’t care. The bloodlust has overcome him, and had the creature been less strong (a broken bird like Nellie, sweet Nellie) he might have drained it dry. But this beast is too much for the fledgling bloodsucker, and he pushes him off in a final, painful shove. Eldrian doesn’t need to breath – not anymore – but his chest heaves with unspent effort. The fight had only made him lust for more: more violence, more savagery, more blood. And he turns to Nellie with haunting red eyes. “My Nellie.” He steps closer to her, predatory in his movements. “My little English sparrow.” The voice isn’t his, and later, once he’s human (and much later when he’s a horse again) he’ll regret the words ever leaving his lips. “No, please Eldrian. Please, it’s me.” But the beast’s blood is only a sampling. He licks his lips and tastes the copper, yearns for more.
The vampire-boy moves in for the kill. She tries to get up, tries to grasp at the root that had felled her but to no avail. By the time she’s halfway up, he pushes her down. He grasps with one hand at that honey-hair that had once held his flower. With the other, he pushes down her shoulder (where once he’d grasped in comfort). Her head lies over the opening of the hole he fell down, exposing the pulse at her neck. With one last look into her blue, blue eyes, Eldrian bites down. He drinks until her moans are silenced. He slurps and licks every last bit. The ground shares none of his meal today. And when he’s finished, he leaves her body there without a second look back. All he wants is more, all he needs is to drink and drink and drink. When he slams the clear elixir down, it is with the urgency of a man left too long in the desert. It’s not blood, but after a few seconds, he becomes glad that it isn’t. As he becomes human again, the realizations crash on him like waves on a shore: unrelenting and powerful. He drops the bottle and he weeps. His tears are salty, like blood, and he deserves the taste of each one.
Eldrian
gentleman son of Jason & Talulah