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Bound by Circumstance ― Chapter 19: No Sympathy for the Bloodwraith

PAIRING: Nik Ryder x trans*M!MC (Taylor Hunter) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Circumstance ⥽

Taylor Hunter (MC) has made it good for himself in New Orleans; turns out moving to a new city fresh out of college to reinvent yourself isn’t as hard as people make it out to be. Things only start to get confusing when he finds himself the target of a malevolent wraith. Good thing someone’s looking out for him though — because without Nighthunter Nik Ryder as his bodyguard he definitely won’t survive long in the twisting darkness of the supernatural underworld he’s tripped into.

Bound by Circumstance and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the book Nightbound and the rest of the Bloodbound series. Find out more [HERE].

Note: Circumstance only loosely follows the events and plotline of Nightbound, and features a separate antagonist, different character motivations, and further worldbuilding.

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Circumstance/series tag list!

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

Cadence recounts one of the worst events in the Council’s history as the bloodwraith’s motives are brought to light. Taylor’s new empathy turns into both a helpful gift and a terrible burden.

[READ IT ON AO3]

New Orleans, 1921

“If you think the entire Garden Coven unwilling to march on you without hesitation, then you’re far more a fool than you’ve already proved yourself to be.”

The Nighthunter rounds on him with stake in hand. Even as unofficial allies his intent is clear: I will use this.

But Cadence doesn’t step back because he fears the weapon. He fears the man using it.

Has seen that wild look in his eyes elsewhere — though never in a human. It is the look that watches his every step, that hoards the limp limbs of their meal closer, that seeks only to gorge on thick veins and will not be sated until red ichor spills from their lips they are so full with it.

In a reversal of fortune it is the human who looks at the vampire with the gouging claws of bloodthirst and madness.

Any creature of sound mind would fear Reimonenq now.

“They can’t touch me,” the sneering reply, “those damn Accords keep y’all from actin’ as a faction!”

“Those same Accords demand the same of you!”

“It’s different for me an’ you know it, Smith.”

“No—honestly I don’t. You’re just as much a part of this community as any of us. You’re beholden to the Accords just as we are!” But the thing he’s still struggling to grasp, the thing that leaves him gaping even as Derek Reimonenq resumes shoving his things into a ratty sack, is far worse.

“Even with the legality aside — you just murdered three young women in cold blood.”

If any vestiges of warmth remained in his once-alive body they are dashed in the moment the man’s cruel laughter reaches his ears.

“Trust me when I say there weren’t nothin’ cold about it.”

A blind fury consumes him. Sends him rushing at the man with preternatural speed to pin him to the wall; the same grasp capable of turning concrete to powder wrapped around the mortal’s neck.

“You think this is funny?!”

“What it is, damn bleedin’ hearted fool, is justice!”

Derek shoves him back; only succeeds when the vampire is too stunned to speak or hold his ground. “You storm in here spoutin’ all yer high-horse shit about them Accords but you think I’m the only one what broke ‘em? You think those devil-whisperin’ freaks didn’ bend they’re own rules just the same?

“Those girls were unnatural. Even for they’re kind. I been at this all my life Smith — I know how to suss out the ones who ain’t got no hope a’goin’ anywhere but bad.”

“You killed them before they even had a chance. You’re no seer Reimonenq, you can’t possibly think you’re justified on a hunch!”

Derek’s upper lip curls. Cadence is almost surprised he doesn’t glimpse fangs.

“A Nighthunter’s job ain’t easy an’ it ain’t nice an’ it definitely ain’t simple. I already compromised every-damn-thing I believe in when I joined in on ya damn Council. But Come Hell an’ high waters if I stop makin’ this city safe for me an’ mine.”

Like a creature in her own right there comes a small hollow noise at the door. Low and center — the tap-tapping of child’s knuckles. The men break their brawl to watch — to wait.

The knuckles tap-tap again. Firmer this time.

Derek wars with himself for only a moment — opens the door and smooths the kind eyes of a father over those of the beast before.

Cadence knows it isn’t his spectacles that cause him to see a familiar child; not the honey-eyed daughter of Reimonenq but the wild ginger mane of Meredith LaPointe’s youngest. Her face frozen in terror as it will always be; carved behind his eyelids and in his soul.

Even in a town like New Orleans some hauntings have nothing to do with the supernatural. Some are personal.

The little girl stands with her nightshirt bunched in impossibly tiny fists. Wide eyes shining at the sight of her father before realizing he isn’t alone. When her lower lip begins to wobble the vampire realizes his mistake and averts his unnatural ruby gaze.

“You’re supposed to be in bed baby girl,” croons the same man who had burned three girls mere hours ago.

He picks his daughter up and tucks her in close. Cadence wonders if she can smell burned flesh and hair on his old army coat. “Where’s that momma’a yours…” Doesn’t look back to his guest even as he closes the door behind him, ventures deeper into his slumbering home.

Now alone the towering man begs for an answer only he can give — the same thing he had thought with the sunset a looming enemy at his back on the steps of Reimonenq’s domain.

Why is he here?

He has no stake in the Nighthunter’s life. In fact they’ve run afoul of one another more than most. For a man apparently so dedicated to upholding the tenets of the original Nighthunters he sure found himself in debt to the creatures he should so despise often enough. They’d met that way — another payment to Cadence’s three year debt to Carlo in strongarming the money that was promised.

And fucks sakes… there’s nothing redeemable about a man who would hold his daughter with hands still stained with the soot of a witch pyre.

The Council will come for him. There’s even a likelihood the vampire himself would be one of the men tasked with bringing him for his trial.

Maybe he just has to accept that there isn’t a reason for confronting Reimonenq alone.

Maybe he just wants to understand.

Monster to monster.

“What foul…?” He catches another whiff of burned flesh and a shudder rolls through him. He wonders if it should remind him of the battlefield. Still so strong even with thin walls between them — like Reimonenq hadn’t even left the room.

Curious.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees the lumped and dark shadow of the hunter’s sack. Ready to cut and run even with a family awaiting his return on the city’s outskirts.

Cadence doesn’t have a family — or if he does he doesn’t know where to find them. Are they waiting for him? Are they just as ignorant to the truth?

All his unanswered questions and here the other man is almost eager to abandon it all. Jealousy is an ugly thing.

When he reaches for the bag it’s because he’s angry; because he wants to delay Derek as much as possible. Not just to face the consequences of his actions but so he knows what the fuck he’s leaving behind. Has to dial down his strength lest he send a myriad of Nighthunter’s essentials hurtling through the thin drywall.

Stakes clatter to the floor. A medieval crossbow lands arm-down and snaps the archaic metal off like shattering glass. Bare essentials of fabric tumble out and reveal the prize he had wrapped within with care and greed both; what remaining skin was peeled from muscle tissue and bone from the flames that had consumed them starts to flake off and settle on scuffed wooden floors.

One cooked finger snaps off and rolls under the nearby bed. The rest are curled up and in like spiders after they die of starvation.

He’s caused his fair share of bloodshed but this—

Trophies…

Cadence’s tears gather and the world goes blurry at his eyes. From rage, from disgust, from incredulity…

He rips his glasses off and shatters them in his fist.

To the Elders of the Garden District Coven, Carlo de la Rosa was at the center of the city’s vampire community. If they weren’t of his blood they owed him in one form of another — Cadence is proof of that.

He was old, powerful, and connected. He had to go.

To the malevolent specter of Derek Reimonenq, Carlo was a threat. Not just as the leader of the vampires of New Orleans but on a personal level as well. In the months following his death Reimonenq’s wife and daughter inherited more than his legacy — they inherited his debts too.

He was as remorseless as he was undead. He had to go.

The Elders witnessed firsthand the rapid rise to power of Denna Ostrowski; a shapeshifter rumored to have had over a hundred forms under her pelt. To the mundane world she was new money investing in the rich history of Louisiana. And money opens many doors — even among the supernatural.

She had her hands steeped in the cauldrons of both worlds. She had to go.

Only Denna came to town long after The Bloody Hand had been dealt with — near forgotten.

That didn’t stop her from learning as much as she could about the history of the Council; from allies to enemies. Learning where they lived, where they died, and where they had hidden every rotten putrid trophy hand.

It was a part of the past best left forgotten yet that didn’t stop Denna from destroying them all the way down to the bone. And for that her days were numbered.

Though they didn’t know it the Elders and their ghoulish pet saw eye-to-eye when it came time to level that gaze on Tonya Reimonenq. They called her Lady Smoke because those who ran afoul of her always disappeared without a trace.

Poof — gone like smoke.

She never asked for her gift; the Reimonenq Curse. But she took it and she used it without shame or guilt. Made a show of keeping her touch under expensive wrappings but everyone knew the truth.

She liked having such power; control over who lived and who died. And despite being of Derek Reimonenq’s decaying flesh and molded blood, Tonya had turned herself into a target — made herself a creature more than she ever was a human being.

“I was the one who brought him in front of the Council,” Cadence says without regret, without remorse; “I kept him from going into hiding. If I hadn’t gone to him that night the Garden Coven may very well have never found him.”

Cal frowns. “I thought you said he couldn’t be accused and punished. Which I still can’t make a lick’a sense of.”

“In the eyes of the Accords both sides were at fault — for different things, but equally guilty of knowing the laws and consciously choosing to break them.”

“What did the Coven do?”

The vampire shifts in discomfort.

“The girls Derek burned weren’t born into the families that made up their ranks at the time. The Elders back then had plans to blood them fully — sort of like an initiation you can’t back out of — but they were brought into the city from outside covens before it was done.”

“To put it plain they brought enemies onto Quarter soil,” explains Katherine with a tired rub of her eye.

Cal throws his glance back to Taylor and Vera and matches their confusion.

“I’m missin’ somethin’. ‘Cause no offense but I can’t see a guy like Elric agreeing to put kids to death over bein’ somewhere they shouldn’t’ve.”

“You’re right — Elric knew the girls were smuggled into town. The whole Council did, actually. Given the circumstances they agreed to turn a blind eye.” When he’s met with a silence that screams for him to keep going Cadence does, though the reluctance is clear on his expression.

“Listen — I never met them personally. I only know what I do from rumor and that’s putting it lightly. But one person heard from another who heard from God-knows-who-else that the girls all shared the same power—could do the same thing in the craft, you know?

“It was said they could remove free will. I don’t know how, or if it was wild speculation or the truth watered down. Even I laughed when the story reached far down enough to my rung on the ladder. Nothing of the natural world — be it magic or sensation or psychic connection — can truly take away all resistance to command. Even my kind, while connected to our Makers on a deep and intimate level, can resist their influence if we do so with all of our being.

“None of this mattered though. The Coven may have concealed their nature but everyone could put two and two together.”

“No one thought they were gonna try somethin’ shifty?” asks Nik. Cadence shakes his head.

“One of the Elders had a natural gift of his own; he could sever the witch from their ability to practice the craft. It was clear that was their plan — that the city didn’t have to worry. They just couldn’t do so until after being blooded into the Coven.

“I think most of us just felt sorry for them.” Doesn’t stare at the carpet underfoot but through it; both in the room with them and some place he thought he had left far behind. “I did. All around the country young men had been sent off to war and returned home empty husks, if they returned at all. There was a sort of cultural agreement that didn’t need words: children and their innocence was worth protecting.”

Kathy’s hand hovers over his before making a decision, offering contact to ground the man to the present. But the smile he gives her is hollow. The memories still haunt him — maybe they always will.

“Derek Reimonenq didn’t agree,” he continues to everyone’s surprise, “not that anyone expected him to. Neither did the Bayou Alpha but the war didn’t even give her back a body to bury, so she fell in with the rest. Everyone figured he would air his grievances and follow through as he usually did… bottle in hand.

“It’s the only time I can remember that the Council tried to find a flaw in their own laws. They wanted to convict him — everyone was demanding justice. But rather than two trials and needless punishment on the side of the Coven the only solution they could all agree on was a clean slate.”

“Which didn’t sit well with the witches,” Vera rests her hand on her racing heart like that will help — it doesn’t, “so they Cursed him. And all the Reimonenq blood ‘longside.”

Cadence nods tight-lipped; has said more than he thought he would have to and more than he wished to if his tension is anything to go by.

“Makes sense, now.”

Nik’s fingertips are warm on Taylor’s scalp. They card through his hair as if to remind them both they are here; that it’s all come down to this.

“Those Elder bastards were targetin’ power in the city but somehow usin’ Derek’s spirit gave it an agenda. Carlo for the past, Denna for revenge on his stuff — can’t say I blame it for hatin’ Smoke but —”

“And how exactly did I piss off ‘The Bloody Hand?’” Taylor asks in bewilderment. Nothing about the casual way the man shrugs reassures him.

“Dunno — you were convenient?”

“And we’re back to that now.”

“Sometimes a spade is a spade is a spade,” his mouth twists with deep thought, “though now we know why it wasn’t houndin’ on us the second you were outside a ward. They gave it a hit list but it chose the order.”

No one responds — what is there to say? Sure it’s satisfying to finally know, to understand.

But does it change anything?

It has to. Otherwise The Fate wouldn’t have led him on this; the altered path.

“This is good — this is a really good thing.”

The incredulity and judgment that bears down on Katherine isn’t personal — she knows that. More than that she doesn’t care. Not with the wry look she’s sending Ryder’s way. “Damn,” she laughs dryly, “it might actually be the only time in all this weird crap that things might work in our favor.”

“How d’ya mean?”

“You said it yourself; a spade’s a spade. Think about it, Nik — finally this is just a job like any other. Just creatures following their nature.”

A look of understanding comes over his weary features. “So maybe it’s time we follow ours, you mean.”

Like she’s reading his mind Vera speaks up where Taylor still struggles to connect the dots; “For the class, guys?”

Kathy’s smile is a rare thing. Rare and unnerving.

“We do what Nighthunters do best; we hunt.”

Even with everything he’s seen and endured the sight of rusted cemetery gates still form knots in his belly; dread and memory all tied up with the knowledge that at the end of the day he’s just as vulnerable here and now as he was that first night.

And you know what doesn’t help? Being in the Garden District again; that doesn’t help.

Being so close to their enemies — those literally plotting to kill them with more than one attempt under their witchy robes — that doesn’t help.

But it must be done. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Katherine had said while hoisting a rusted toolbox from its shelf in Cadence’s office, “since it’s proven already it can attack us anywhere — wards or no.”

“There aren’t any protection measures we can take?” Vera had asked; though they were all sure that if there was an answer they would have found it by now.

“Find a god and pray.”

That the cemetery is largely untouched is a miracle. Not for fear of ghosts and the scary stories tour guides like Tilly tell but for the fact that tourists usually just don’t give a damn.

Then again this is the closest cemetery to the Coven. That has something to do with it no doubt.

Cadence leads them through the dark and winding paths — Cal bringing up the rear. “No flashlights,” the vampire had insisted, “the moment we trespass is the moment the mundane authorities become just as much a threat as the witches.”

Lucky they have a vampire and a werewolf on their team then. Precision hunters pretty much known for their ability to see at night.

They keep close-knit ranks but let’s be honest; they’re about as subtle as the Scooby Gang would be in this scenario.

A joke he will not be saying within earshot of Cal if Taylor values his life.

Though the vampire insists—almost too much—that he hasn’t been to the Reimonenq crypt since Derek was put there almost a century ago he sure knows his way easy enough.

“Are you sure you’re okay with us doing this; vandalizing your family crypt?” Taylor asks Vera, because this just feels awkward especially with her here. And if she says stop you better know they will be stopping.

But nope; it’s all good. “I’m only frustrated I can’t get us in myself.”

They come to a stop — abruptly, like jostled dominoes — in front of an old stone grave.

Any other day Taylor would have walked right by it; dismissed it for another piece of city history made illegible from erosion over time. But through the greenish muck and years of wear, maybe because he knows what he’s looking for, it’s there.

REIMONENQ “Mourn not the dead, but those burdened to continue living.”

His heart sinks at the inscription beneath Vera’s family name — chances a glance her way, ready to offer what little comfort he can.

Her eyes scream of hatred but he can feel beneath the surface. All that anger stemming from a place of hurt, of loss; of regret. Hatred at the bones they hope to find within and regret for every life that could have been spared in the aftermath of him.

Cadence motions for Cal to help him strongarm the front slab.

“Wait,” says Vera through the stones in her throat and the tears in her eyes she refuses to shed, “gimme a second.”

Katherine holds her breath — thinks better of pointing out that they may not have a second to spare. They know; Vera knows.

But she also deserves this.

She removes her left glove while approaching the crypt. They step back, give her a wide berth and not just for her sake.

Fingers stretched as far and forward as they’ll go Vera lays her palm on the surface. Pushes with a fruitless effort but it probably isn’t the physical barrier she’s forcing back. At least that’s not what Taylor feels in her soul.

“When I was a lit’le girl Momma told me we didn’ have the luxury of choosin’ whether or not to be killers. That day I vowed to myself to be the first — to keep the Touch from ever takin’ a life so long as I held it.

“I was fifteen when she tricked me into usin’ it on a man — staged it like I was savin’ her life by taking another. And I’ll never forgive her for it.”

Taylor feels his heart begin to crumble, then crash into a deep dark sea in chunks as tears roll down her cheeks.

“But she proved something to me that day —” she continues, “— she proved she was right. That so long as we had the Touch we would be killers whether we wanted to or not. She may have tried to make me a hero but no one who can do what we do could ever be one.

“But here—lookin’ at this grave, knowin’ what I know and all that The Bloody Hand did? I don’t feel guilty anymore. I finally realize that I really never had a choice.

“It was always gonna be in my nature.”

Cal’s knuckles crack hollow in the silent cemetery. Cade averts his ruby eyes, swipes his tongue over the hint of a fang.

If anyone here can understand her, it’s them.

“That’s what makes him so evil,” Vera tugs on her glove with jerking frustration; and not for the first time turns her back on the name REIMONENQ, “he had a choice an’ he chose to kill. And I ain’t gonna forget that — no matter how ‘tortured’ his soul is supposed to be.

“Those Elders ain’t in the right in what they’ve done but he wouldn’t have been their weapon had he not chosen to do great evil first.”

Not a rallying cry or solemn eulogy — but her intent is clear.

No sympathy for the bloodwraith.

No sympathy for Derek Reimonenq.

Ryder insists on proceeding with caution—still a statement Taylor’s trying to wrap his head around to be honest—and earns Katherine’s grumbled agreement that they should at least check for remnants of the Elders’ visit.

Cal spots a couple of markings drawn in chalk by the base that set teeth and fangs on edge but ultimately Kathy concludes they’re nothing more than lay-hexes; the witch equivalent of spitting on someone and cursing them to burn in Hell. A bit ominous but not meant to guard the abandoned tomb.

Which, frankly, leaves Taylor more than a little unsettled.

“If they saw no need to enchant it, does that mean there’s nothing inside we can use?”

Nik shakes his head and steps back, allows the two creatures among them to really give in to that nature of theirs and pry the weathered granite from its seal.

“First thing any hunter does when dealin’ with the hereafter is t’learn about the life of the haunting dead. We got the life story and we got how he died —”

“Step two is consecrate whatever bones can be found.” Katherine finishes.

A groan of resistance cuts off with a loud THUD, the noise bouncing from crypt to crypt definitely more than loud enough to awaken the dead. Nice timing to start regretting not bringing Ivy along.

Cade props the front plate on the side of the structure, waves his hand at the irritating dust and sand set off from their force.

It must be nice not to have to breathe, Taylor would say — if he wasn’t hacking his lungs out and praying there isn’t any powdered body on his tongue.

When it settles and they can properly peer inside — the good news is that aren’t any corpses that might make him lose his nerve. One more fainting spell and Taylor might just have to live in shame in the backwoods of the Bayou.

The bad news, though, is also that there aren’t any corpses; rather a large black hole stretching into a void. Darker than the night around them, practically made of nothing.

The vampire sighs and pushes up his glasses. “It’s a small stairwell,” then looking back to Vera, “I know you aren’t to blame in the least but… there’s a reason no one has a basement in Louisiana.” Judging by the look she throws his way it’s better that she takes the high road and doesn’t comment.

“I can’t smell any water rot,” Cal sniffs the air again and the face he makes might as well curl the ends of his hair, “but there’s definitely dead things below.”

“Wow, dead things in a crypt, who would’a guessed?”

“Hey Ryder?”

“Yeah Kujo?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

There’s only enough space for them to go one at a time; and even that is being generous. Taylor can’t help but try to imagine the dignified Elder Daniels in her power-suit crawling into this muck — or Elder Vion hobbling through like a bag of bones.

Kathy volunteers Cadence to go first — an act the vampire looks like he objects to strongly. “Tall people aren’t really made for small —”

But it isn’t his height the huntress is concerned over; a revelation spurned by how she shoves him through the passage—crawlspace, really—and holds her breath as if waiting for something to happen.

Nothing does. “The inside isn’t bespelled. You can come out now if you want.”

If Cade could turn his head he would no doubt be glaring wildly. “Why bother, I’m already inside!” He seethes but takes cautious steps into the tomb, then into the earth.

Vera goes next, and of her own volition.

“Anyone else worried about the amount of oxygen down there?” And it’s such a clear opening for Nik to take a shot at the werewolf but Cal does have a point — while also looking a little green in the face.

So he and Katherine stay up top to guard the rather obvious and gaping hole in what should be a sealed grave. And for the sake of conserving breathing room, can’t forget that.

Nik’s hand is warm, solid as it coaxes him at his lower back. Only a few steps in he feels the drop of the descent. Waits until what little light from outside is obscured by the bodyguard at his back before he begins the journey down.

Down into the not-so-final not-quite-at-rest place of Derek Reimonenq.

Cal was right; there is a body down here.

But—and he’s just spitballing here really—he’s like… a little pretty-damn-sure it isn’t the guy who’s been dead for 98 years.

Ninety five, ninety four percent certain.

As he finishes igniting the last of the half-burned candle circle Cadence pockets his lighter and stands — doesn’t even have to hunch over. It had felt like they were walking for an hour in the pitch black but maybe he wasn’t that far off.

It’s not a tomb like anyone buried would have a tomb; more a room made sturdy with brick and mortar to do one purpose — and not even for forever. The candles have to be a new fixture courtesy of the Coven Elders and whatever hellish ritual they performed. Even the ground beneath them still holds traces of their visit; looks like Elder Daniels got her heel stuck in some as-yet unpacked dirt.

Derek Reimonenq’s body is probably supposed to be on the waist-height stone slab in the middle. Only it isn’t.

But someone’s is.

Ryder’s hand ghosts over yellow chalk marks on the walls. He pulls back a fingertip of the powder residue and gives it a little sniff; instantly regrets it with a recoil.

“Sulfur,” and he smears it back on the brick feeling desperately unclean.

Cadence joins Vera in looking up to where something large catches the reflection of the flames. He’s just tall enough to reach and brush the surface with a touch. “Looks like a quartz geode… I think I’ve read somewhere that halite can be cast to ward away weathering.”

“Explains why this place wasn’t swallowed up in Katrina,” agrees Nik.

There’s a long moment of silence before Taylor just can’t take it anymore.

“Is no one else gonna mention the dead corpse?”

Cadence snorts. “As opposed to the living one?”

Not what he meant.

But as the rest of the room’s oddities had been deduced the only logical progression was to the young woman laid to rest in a grave that isn’t hers. Maybe wasn’t supposed to be.

That she hasn’t shown any signs of decay isn’t even the strangest thing. No, that would be the pile of bleached-white bones serving as her funeral bed. Definitely more than what one human body should be made up of — but who says it’s human?

The almost medical distance with which Nik studies the long gash across her throat—not scabbed over but not bleeding, either, simply open—has Taylor looking away in discomfort.

While Vera may not have been initially as shocked as he, though, she keeps her distance beside him. “She’s so young…”

“Eighteen, maybe a tad less,” Cadence shrugs off the way they stare at him, “I tried out medicine a ways back, I think I can date a body.”

“Then how long has she been dead?”

“That’s the misleading part — but I think we have the halite ward to thank for that. Context included—I’d say she died the same night as Carlo de la Rosa.”

Vera sucks in a breath. “It killed her, too?”

“No, she doesn’t look like the other bodies.” Nik grunts and stands, wipes dirt from his palms and grabs one of the bones from under the girl’s knee to study it closely. “Conjuring the wraith — pulling Reimonenq’s spirit from the Veil, that’s some heavy necromancy, the kind you have to have in your blood. It could be one of the Elders but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say she’s our born Necromancer.”

Why is it that with everything he’s seen Taylor still has a hard time looking into her face, soft and so very still, and imagining her bringing that much evil into the world?

Ryder uses the bone to drag a wide circle around the dais in the dirt; follows the path just inside the candles and forces the other three back against the walls. “The Elders stood in a triangle — see the concentration of steps — and she did the summoning over the altar. When they were done… she wasn’t of any use to them and and had to go.”

“But she was one of their own,” Taylor protests, “they keep talking about how they’re trying to protect their Coven — she had to have been one of them right?”

It’s a heavy thought. Makes the air in the room feel a little thinner. Cal was right there isn’t enough for them down here.

“Come Hell and High Waters,” says Cade; and he probably means well but those words make him feel sick to his stomach now — some of that ends justifying the means bullshit.

“A sacrifice of one for the survival of the many. I wonder if they told her… that what she was doing was the right thing.”

“The right — they murdered her. There’s no way that’s right.”

“You’re questioning their morality now?”

Taylor falters. He has a point.

There’s just so much grief building up inside his chest he feels like his lungs might burst out of him. A terrible loss; losing himself, losing faith in something, losing trust and truth and…

And where the hell is this coming from?

I can’t breathe. Clutching his hand to his chest, heart seconds away from giving out, that familiar burn of breathing in too hard—too much. “I can’t breathe.”

Before he can collapse Vera helps ease him down to his knees, Nik suddenly at his side hands hovering — unsure of what to do, how to help, but filled with the desperate need to do something because feeling useless is a thundercloud gathering overhead.

“Rook—Rook breathe. I — what’s wrong? Can you talk? Talk to me Taylor, please —”

“Give him some space, Ryder.”

“Do you not see him having a panic attack?”

He gathers enough energy to rasp out only once; “Hey—huff—Nik—huff—backthehelloff!”

And because he can’t say it again he just waves Vera away with heavy slaps of his hands. He doesn’t mean to hurt her. Only to get his point across.

The breathing room they give helps a little. Not enough. Doesn’t stop the feelings he’s feeling or the confusion about those feelings.

They wait in silence while his panic subsides. Maybe it wouldn’t take so long if he understood what had caused it; but he’s met with nothing but patience and a whole lot of concern on Nik’s end.

When Taylor reaches out with a shaky hand it’s immediately grabbed; his entire being tethered to that one act. Nik squeezes first, he squeezes back.

His gaze drifts over the leather-clad shoulder to the body on the stone slab and… and he understands.

“I’m feeling her.” The aching grief twisting in his gut like a rusty knife, the purposelessness, the betrayal. “It—she—is everywhere in here. She’s suffocating.”

“She’s dead, Rook.”

“I mean her emotions—her soul. She wants to be known. She wants to be grieved.”

“So grieve her,” Cadence says, “however you can, you must. If you’re feeling that strong of an empathic connection there must be a reason why. It could tell us something we don’t know—something crucial.”

Taylor hopes to see some sort of confident support when he looks to Nik for help — but the worry is staggering. That makes it better, somehow; genuine.

“You don’t have to do anythin’ you don’t want,” his voice is quiet; hiding the scratch of emotion in his throat where his Adam’s apple bobs.

If only it were that simple.

On shaky legs he stands, makes his way to the altar where Cadence gives him a wide berth and waves for the others to do the same. Nik looks ready to stand by his side no matter what happens. He will, too. But he shakes his head, whispers “it’s okay,” and lets their touch linger until he’s too far to reach.

There’s no manual on this kinda crap — hopefully he doesn’t need one. He doesn’t think he does.

No… he doesn’t feel like he does. Which is apparently different now; a thing to worry about later.

Taylor inhales and brushes a trembling touch along the soft curve of her copper cheek.

“You swore a sacred oath to your Coven in blood, dear girl.”

Elder Vion’s voice rasps in his ear. Makes Taylor want to recoil out of a bygone terror. He’s half a step back when he remembers Nik is there and the Elder is not. And stands still.

“No one else would have you Cassiopeia. We took you in, gave you our protection.”

“We gave you a family — a home.”

Then an unfamiliar voice among them; young and trusting and tired—so very tired, dragged out of her bed in the middle of the night.

“Of course, Elder Millet, a-and I’m grateful! Please, please…”

“All of these things without expectation of repayment. Because our kind must stand together — must straddle the worlds of both dark and light and know balance in them.”

“You have been cursed, darling girl. But today we will turn that curse into a blessing.”

“But you made me promise —”

Then the feeling changes — grows old and damp and determined to do good by those who took care of her, by those who loved her.

The bones of a persecuted witch. Of three. The last three to fall victim to The Bloody Hand and the ones to call him forth from the hereafter.

They bind him in torment, in hellfire unseen.

The sight of them, knowledge that she could be one of them, makes her skin crawl.

Elder Daniels watches ever-present at her back as Elder Vion finishes the rite of conjuring; sprinkles the last of the dry spell over the bones. The mandrake powder tickles her nose. She holds her breath and prays not to sneeze.

The ochre within stains the bones her favorite shade of orange; the burned hue of a Bayou sunset. But combined with the flakes of iridescent mica that catch in the candlelight — the spell takes hold of the bones and claims them for their use. Leaves them a bright, almost bleached white as the powders are absorbed into the long-gone marrow.

Cassiopeia looks to her left for Elder Millet’s familiar motherly smile. It gives her calm and hope — reminds her of all the other fostered witches they are acting in faith for tonight.

This is what she was born for. This is why she was abandoned; because the Garden Coven was meant to find her.

She’s meant to do this; use her curse. This is how she’s going to repay them for all they’ve done for her.

“Cassiopeia, sweetheart,” Elder Millet doesn’t move—can’t move—from her spot in the triquetra; coaxes her forward still with a nod of her chin, “whenever you’re ready.”

A hasty nod; then she takes one final moment to steel herself and her nerves.

She’s meant for this.

The sulfur powder itches at her palms but Cassie resists the urge to scratch. Spreads her fingers wide and hears a pop in her thumbs as she reaches over and above the ritual bones.

On the other side of the altar comes the thud. thud. thud of Elder Vion’s walking staff on the ground a this feet. The candle flames around them flicker — almost to death.

Then comes the slow and throated chanting of Vion’s native tongue. The flames begin to grow.

The young witch buries that last shred of doubt way deep inside and trusts her protectors.

“Claw and blood, claw and bone. Bloodied flesh, endless stone…”

A whispered wind overcomes them. Fills the room warm near her toes and chilly to the touch.

Around the crypt it circles round and round — and grows.

“Soar with the zephyr, shriek with the crow. Life renewed I now bestow…”

She can’t quite tell if the shaking in her hands is the growing itch, her nerves, or the power of the spell. Nothing worth the reason to stop.

“My darkest will with blackened vein Unto this rotted soul I chain.”

“Again!” Elder Daniels commands. A tone that takes none but obedience.

“Claw and blood, claw and bone. Bloodied flesh, endless stone. Soar with the zephyr, shriek with the crow. Life renewed I now bestow. My darkest will with blackened vein Unto this rotted soul I chain!”

“Again!”

“I—I’m trying!”

“Try harder! Millet!”

“Cassiopeia you can’t break the chant. You can do it, I know you can!”

The whirlwind threatens to catch her voice and steal it from her lungs. Rattles the bones that stay together because they cannot imagine being apart — even in death. Hands stained with the sulfur’s ire and Cassie squeezes her eyes shut to keep it from getting in her eyes.

“Claw and blood! Claw and bone! Bloodied flesh! Endless stone!”

“It’s working! Jean—the knife!”

“You’re doing so good Cassie—we’re almost there!”

“My darkest will with blackened vein! Unto this rotted soul I chain!”

Taylor chokes on his own air; can feel the icy bite of the blade dragged across his throat. Sharp—so sharp it’s barely a pinprick but the wound left in its wake spills warm and wet down his front into his clothes soaking the ground taken in by the dirt and given a home here, below, in this awful place.

Ichor of the innocent to bind and control.

Before he can fall backwards Nik is there; familiar and solid and so so steady against the violent shaking that overcomes him.

He can still feel her— forces everything inside him to will himself not to see what happened next. Knows what was born from her spell, her devotion to the Elders, and her sacrifice.

Cassiopeia.

“She trusted them,” the words hang thick and dry on Taylor’s tongue, “she trusted them and they told her she was doing something good… she felt like she owed them.”

“And repaid that debt with her life…” Vera looks away; suddenly can’t stand to look at her.

Nik helps him back on his feet, brushes a hand through his hair and he leans into the warmth of it. Feels so cold now that the hot sting of Cassiopeia’s anguish is gone from him. Pulled out as if by a rusted hook embedded in his gut.

“Was it Reimonenq that did this to her?” asks Cade, who drags his finger along the curling edges of her wound.

“No, no… Elder Daniels, I think, was the one who sacrificed her.”

Nik frowns. “Why would you sacrifice the one doin’ the damn ritual?”

“The power in a ritual is beheld by the caster, obviously. With her death the entire thing should have been rendered null. But we all know that not to be the case.”

A strange look comes over the vampire’s expression for a moment; lips pursed thinly. He doesn’t look up from the body as he waves towards Vera. “Can you come here a moment? Take your glove off.”

“What? No!”

“Relax, you won’t be Touching me. I need you to Touch the witch’s hand.”

She looks between them all, Cassie’s body included, as if hoping one of them will speak up. “I won’t be Touchin’ anyone because I won’t do it. It’s too risky, especially here all… all cramped.”

“Please.”

Vera pleads at him silently. Taylor can feel her panic icy and crisp at the back of his throat. So he asks; “What do you think will happen?”

“If I’m correct,” whether he steps away from the altar and simply gestures, giving Vera space, is for her sake or his own is a mystery, “then nothing will happen at all.”

That it’s a risk he’s willing to take on behalf of Vera—that he isn’t the one doing the Touching and is all the more insistent anyway—is worrisome. But he’s their friend; they’re all in this together.

That—and the fact that if Katherine were down here she’d already be tugging Vera and her cursed hand forward without hesitation.

Curiosity, survival; whichever wins out it doesn’t matter. Not that it keeps the unfortunate inheritor of her family name from doing so slowly. As if trying to talk herself out of agreeing up until the last second.

“Which hand?”

“Either one will do,” then when her fingertips are a hair’s breadth away— “I seem to recall Derek wasn’t picky.”

Taylor wonders—quietly, in his head, and very much to himself—when the last time Vera actually touched another human was. Was there some sort of coming-of-age trigger for the curse? Or could she have been putting all the other toddlers on the playground at risk should she have decided to pull off her gloves and play tag?

Too long ago, the obvious answer. Obvious when Vera covers Cassiopeia’s hand first in fingertips — then her entire palm.

They wait. Nothing happens.

She shakes off her wrist—like this is something she’s at fault for—and tries again. Pushes this time enough to jostle the poor young sacrifice.

Again, nothing.

There’s a collective sigh of relief. All eyes on Cadence for answers, explanations, anything?

Nope. He just nods, as distantly academic as ever.

“So what does this mean?” Nik finally asks.

The last time he started rolling up his sleeves, Taylor witnessed Cadence’s transformation into some kind of merciless brute; a monster. Is it any wonder the hairs on the back of his neck stand up when he sees it again?

“It means I’m going to need something that can cut through bone.”

#nightbound #choices nb #playchoices #nik ryder x mc #nik ryder #cal lowell #vera reimonenq #katherine nightbound #oc: cadence smith #nightbound mc #mc: taylor hunter #oblv: bound by circumstance #oblv: new chapter #; my fics #cassiopeia

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allofusandco · 7 years

Text

Hell adjacent

with @moonoverbourbon

Nik finds himself in purgatory after attracting the attention of Jehoel’s enemies. Part of the angel of mine verse between Jehoel and Nik.

Benny:

Benny had taken to walking again. Far and wide; war was in his blood, the second time around, he had a reputation folks preferred not to test, and he was rarely bothered. Slept some. Thought about Dean, thought about Sam, hell, even thought about Castiel the boner-killer from time to time.

It was good that he walked. Because if he’d made a home, he never would have found the second human to make his way to purgatory.

Benny didn’t even know how he knew. Had an instinct. The man lay unconscious at the foot of a tree, and Benny scratched his head.

Maybe it was time to take a load off. Benny sat down, and rested his bones, waiting, watching, guarding. He told himself it was what Dean would want him to do. No human could last long in purgatory without a lot of practice killing, and there was no stain on this soul.

He sensed a stirring, and reached out, laying a hand on the stranger’s shoulder.

“Hell of a pickle you got yourself in, friend,” he said, figuring on a gentle approach.

–––––

Nik:

Nik stirred, becoming vaguely aware of the dull pounding at the base of his skull. One eye fluttered, refused to open, and he sucked in a breath. What felt like a decade later he finally got one eye opened, then the other, and managed a groan. He tried to sit and failed.

Then he felt the hand on him and instinctively tried to fight it off – which made the pain in his head worse. But the words weren’t harsh, and they had that comforting Louisiana lilt…not like the angels that had confronted him outside the church.

“Who are you?” he asked, eyes finally fixing on Benny’s face. “Where am I?” Nik had about sixteen more questions he could have asked, but his mouth was like cotton and his heart was about to pound out of his chest.

Finally, slowly, he managed to sit, getting his first real glance at the man sitting next to him. “Am I dead? Is this…” This couldn’t be heaven. If this was heave, then Nik was sure that Damon would be there. Right? This couldn’t be heaven. “Is this hell?”

–––––

Benny:

Benny shook his head, and paused, and then shrugged. He didn’t rightly know.

“It ain’t hell, hoss. It’s purgatory. But that don’t tell you much either. Supernatural types end up here when they die, and unless I’m sore mistaken, you are one hundred percent, grade-A human. I’ve only seen one human here before, and he… well, he wasn’t that dead, I guess, so there’s some hope right there.”

Benny put out a hand. “Benjamin Lafitte. Y’can call me Benny, most people do. This is not a good place for a human. Lotta things down here that would like a bite out of you.” The fact that they didn’t need to eat anymore didn’t stop them from wanting to.

“There’s a way out. Ain’t easy to get to, but I can get you there. Sure as shit like to know how you ended up here before I get m’self into trouble, though. Who’d you piss off? You ain’t a hunter, I can see that plain as day.” Already he was wondering about food. If this man wasn’t dead, he was going to need some, and dead wasn’t simple or obvious around here.

“I’m a vampire. Don’t let it put y’off, we don’t need to eat down here.”

–––––

Nik:

Purgatory.

Nik’s blood ran cold. He didn’t know anything about Purgatory, but it didn’t sound like a place he needed to be for the long term. He didn’t know why or how he’d ended up here; it seemed to him that the easier thing to do would have just been to kill him. But… no. This would make Damon suffer even more, and Nik was pretty sure (as much as he could be sure due to the raging headache) that that was exactly what they wanted.

“Benny,” he nodded and immediately regretted it. “A hunter? No…I’m not a hunter. And supernatural? That’s…” If angels existed who was to say that other things didn’t exist as well. Benny confirmed it a second later when he said he was a vampire. Nik’s eyes went wide.

“A…vampire? I didn’t…I mean, I don’t.” What was he trying to say? “I guess anything is possible, yes?” He looked Benny over; he certainly didn’t look like the typical Hollywood vampire. No Brad Pitt in a cape and plastic fangs. Then he tried to get to his feet; it was shaky, but eventually he made it.

“I really don’t know why I’m here.” It was honest technically; Nik didn’t know why Damon’s brethren would come looking for him. He hadn’t seen Damon in years. “I fell in love with an angel,” he said after a moment of orienting himself. “He was…my everything. But I haven’t seen him in years, so I don’t know why they came after me.” Nik looked away, not wanting to talk about Damon anymore – and not to…well, a complete stranger. “Can you help me get out of there?”

–––––

Benny:

Benny chuckled to himself. Dean had been in love with an angel too, and it had broken Benny’s heart. What a world. He stood himself up, too, and nodded.

“As it happens, I’m probably the only thing in here that can get you out, but it ain’t gonna be easy. See,” he said, and started to walk. They had to follow a river for a good long time before they could start in the direction of the portal. “There’s Heaven – guessin’ you know a might bit about that – where good folks go. Hell for the bad. Purgatory’s for all us supernatural types. The fun bit is; y’can die in here, and no one knows where y’end up if y’do. My guess is it’s just over. But there’s a way out. Only works for humans.”

The last time Benny had made this journey, he’d been intending to go home. This time, he wouldn’t. He hoisted his axe up onto his shoulder.

“Not sure messin’ with the affairs of angels is always the best move, but love finds you where it will, I s’pose. I don’t know if you’re the prayin’ type, and I don’t know if prayers even get out of here; but you might wanna try to pray to your angel. See if he can meet you on the other side. Or else whoever threw you down here will probably catch y’by the scruff of the neck and throw y’right back. You got a name?”

–––––

Nik:

Nik didn’t consider himself very lucky to have wound up here, but at least he had seemed to happen upon someone who could help. He hoped. Of course, it could very well be that Benny was playing him for the fool, and was one of the very things he should be watching out for down here. Either way, Nik had little choice, and he was just miserable enough not to question it any further. If there was a way out, he had to take the chance.

He started walking, falling into step beside his new found savior.

A way out. Nik breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he wouldn’t be shut away down here forever after all; if there was a way out, he needed to find it. He needed to warn Damon that someone was coming after him through the people he cared for.

“I had no intention of messing in the affairs of angels, mate. In fact, I was all but certain none of that…this…existed. Damon fell, quite literally, into my path. It was eye opening to say the least.” Nik briefly wondered how far they had to go, but decided not to ask. Probably further than he wanted to know. “Prayer is what got me into this mess. I stopped to pray for my mother, and that is how they found me. Apparently, my lack of faith had kept me hidden until then.”

He sighed, and shook his head. “Do you think it will work? Or will I cross that portal to find a whole host of angels waiting for me because they’ve heard my prayer?”

–––––

Benny:

Benny walked steadily, trying not to pick up too much speed. They had a long walk – he wasn’t game to tell this man just how long – and he didn’t want to exhaust him too quickly.

“Still waitin’ on a name,” he said. “Don’t worry, I ain’t some warlock, just need a handle. We got a good long trek ahead of us. Be pretty weird if I gotta keep callin’ you ‘hey you’.” He listened, though, and winced.

“Yeah, orright. The way I understand it is if you just pray in general you draw a great big ol’ target on your own back. You gotta pray to him, directly. Use his name and everything. Makes it like a telephone call instead of a radio signal. Angels… some of them are plain assholes.” He peered at the water. For some unholy reason sometimes there was a fish or two. and if this guy wasn’t actually dead, eventually he’d need to eat.

Benny heard a branch crack. They were being watched. Well, alright. He hadn’t lost a fight in all his years in purgatory and he wasn’t going to now. Nor was he going to slow down and make anything change its mind on the timeline.

“You’ll be alright,” he said. “We’ll get you near where you need to be, and then we’ll make that call, make sure he’s waitin’ on the other side.” Benny shrugged, and let a grin crack his face wide open. “I haven’t had much of a purpose, last few years. Call this an adventure.”

The guy didn’t look like he wanted an adventure. He looked like he wanted to be safe at home.

“Tell me about him. Fell into your path?”

Benny didn’t get a lot of company, and he was glad for it.

–––––

Nik:

“What?” Nik blinked, and then dropped his head in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry. I, um, it’s been a very long day, mate. My name is Nik.” It wasn’t like him to be so rude; he would blame it on the blow to the head, his mother’s impending death, and the fact that he now found himself in Purgatory. It had been a very eventful twenty-four hours. “I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you sooner; I was a bit out of it.”

Praying in general. That was exactly what Nik had done, and Benny was right. It had put a giant target right on his backside. He could pray to Damon – Jehoel – and hopefully he wouldn’t break down in the process.

They reached the river, and Nik began to watch Benny a little more closely. He was watching the water for something, but as long as it wasn’t a sea monster or some other assorted purgatory creature, Nik didn’t care. “I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this, and if there is anything I can ever do to repay you, I will.” Though, he highly doubted there was anything he could do for a…vampire.

Nik surely hoped that he could trust him, because that easy going smile made it very difficult not to like him.

Something in his chest twinged when Benny asked him to talk about Damon. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but it had been a long time since he’d said anything other than a name in passing when someone asked if Nik was seeing anyway. He could never admit to anyone – not eve himself, really – that they weren’t together anymore.

“I called him Damon. His name is Jehoel, and he literally fell into my path.” He smiled at the memory, and maybe his walking sped up just a step in anticipation of getting out of here. “I lived in a small house in the swamps of Louisiana – from your accent, I suspect you know that place well. I was driving home from work one evening, and I saw something on the side of the road. I stopped, thinking it was perhaps an animal. It was Damon, and he was badly injured.”

The extent of those injuries wasn’t up to him to tell; it wasn’t his story.

“I brought him to my home, and tended his wounds. It took him a long time to heal – they were grievous. During his time with me, we fell in love. But…there was a war, and he had to go. That is why…” his voice broke just a bit, but Nik kept walking, not willing to let himself drown in the pain. “That is why I’m not so sure he will hear my prayer. I have not spoken to him in three years.”

–––––

Benny:

Nik. Alright. Benny nodded gruffly. “Please t’ meet you, Nik,” he said. “No need to apologize. This place is disorientin’, especially when you got no cause to be here, I reckon.” Benny adjusted his grip on the axe. If he needed to use it he didn’t want to lose half a second doing that on the fly.

“Thanks for the offer,” Benny said. “But I don’t need much of anything.” He was silent for a few moments, just walking, one eye moving over the scrub, trying to hear where their chaperone might be. “Or, well, maybe. I got a friend out there. Somewhere. Maybe I’ll give you a message for him. Not now. Before I hoist you on out of here. And don’t act like that’s no big thing. Trust me, he’s a rude son of a bitch, impossible to find, and won’t thank you for mutterin’ my name in his presence. But I know he’ll be glad to hear.

Benny’s spirits lightened at the mention of home. “Well, yeah,” he said. “Born in Carencro, a little ways inland, but I lived most of my life in N’Orleans,” he confessed. “On the water, for the most part. Built boats for Higgins Industries, durin’ the war. I miss it. The music, the drink… an oyster po’boy and a bowl of gumbo.” It was a pleasing surprise, with Nik’s accent, that he’d be from there. Not born and raised, but it sounded like it was home.

“Hold that thought,” Benny said, barely taking in the rest as he turned on his heel, rushing for their attackers.

This second time in Purgatory had been different. He wasn’t afraid of anything, not anymore. He’d always fought, always won, but now, he’d lost all fear of losing. It made him ruthless, it made him unpredictable. The head of one of the leviathan was rolling away in a half a second, and the other opened its mouth to run at Nik. Greedy, greedy, they didn’t need to eat down here.

It was dead before Nik could try to flee in terror, and Benny wiped his hands on his trousers.

“That’s gonna happen,” he said, “and I’m sorry for it; we’ll watch for a weapon for you, but for the most part, tuck yourself away good as you can, you’ll be alright.”

They continued following the river.

“I get the feeling when an angel loves, he don’t do it half-assed.” Benny shrugged. “Not sure they worry too much about things like years. Gotta feel pretty quick, in the scheme of things, especially if he left to fight. It’s what they are, isn’t it. Fighting. War. It’s their lifeblood, if they have it.”

Nik looked miserable.

“Thought there might be a war of some kind. Seen some weird traffic coming through here, but angels don’t belong here any more than humans do. I’m sorry your fella’s mixed up in that. But he’ll hear. They do. I knew an angel a while back. We didn’t like each other much, to start with, but we talked some.”

Benny peered at the water. “You hungry? This ain’t a trivial question, and don’t ignore hunger pains and tell me you’re fine, because we got a long way to go. We can stop, catch a fish, cook it up for you to eat and keep going, if you’re hungry, and if you’re hungry that sorta means you’re alive. If you ain’t – well, probably means the opposite. Also means you won’t tire out, so we’re talking about a win-win.”

–––––

Nik:

“Just tell me who he is and where you think I might find him. I will gladly take the message.” It was the least Nik could do for all the help that Benny was offering him – for all the hope he’d given him. If Damon could hear him – even if he couldn’t physically come to him – then Nik would be happy. He just wanted to know that his words were getting through, and that Damon knew that he hadn’t forgotten him.

Nik had just opened his mouth to speak again when Benny told him to hold his thought. He shut it just as quickly, turning as the vampire rushed off to face a…thing…that had just appeared out of nowhere. It was all he could do not to make a sound, but in the few moments it took Benny to dispatch the creatures, he stood still as a statue – afraid that whatever those things were had brought friends.

“What…what was that?” he asked, wondering if it was another vampire like Benny was. Though, Benny had yet to try to eat him; that was something, he supposed. Then he started speaking about weapons, and that was the last thing Nik wanted. He couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag, and violence had always twisted his gut. Hurting anything wasn’t on his agenda…but it if meant seeing Damon again, then he would have to adapt. He supposed.

But Benny seemed to think it was normal, and they kept walking.

Nik stayed a little closer, eyes on the tree line and looking for anything that seemed even a little bit out of place. Benny’s words about Damon helped center him a little, even if he didn’t much know what angels were really like. All he had to go on was Damon, and something told him that he wasn’t a typical angel. “Weird traffic?” Nik questioned, falling in step next to the vampire to better carry on their conversation. “Like those things back there? I can’t imagine that’s very normal.”

But then what did he know? He hadn’t even known vampires existed until meeting Benny.

The hunger question caught him off guard, but yes…yes, he was hungry. Nik didn’t remember when he last ate (or how long he’d been out), but he was hungry. He smiled, relieved that at least he wasn’t dead. Would that have complicated things? Likely.

“I’m hungry,” he nodded, eyes falling on the river curiously. If things were dead down here, why were there fish? “Fish, yes. Let’s catch one.” He’d gone fishing a couple of times, but never without a pole. How were they going to do this? “I’m not real sure how we’ll go about it, mate, but I would be appreciative of anything to eat. I didn’t realize I was starving.”

–––––

Benny:

“Well,” Benny said. “Weird’s a relative term, in these parts; everything supernatural that ever lived and died ends up here. Except angels. But lately…” He frowned. “One day I’m mindin’ my own business when a big ol’ bunch of demons just come spillin’ out in a rush. Demons are common around here. But I ain’t never seen that many in one go. I had a moment, let me tell you. Nephilim – half angels, half men; s’posed to be rare, but not anymore, apparently. I don’t know. We got monsters galore. But it’s been different. Just… different.”

It was a fine line; on the one hand, Benny didn’t want Nik scared out of his wits. On the other, he didn’t want him to think this was going to be some walk in the park, either, because that’s not what it was.

Benny kept his eyes out for a stick; maybe the width of his thumb, something he could snap the end off, to make a spear. Didn’t take him ten minutes, with his eyes on the ground as they walked, and he grunted in satisfaction.

“Don’t worry. Never found a fish too quick for me.” He winked, and moved closer to the bank. The water wasn’t too filthy, here. He had no illusions that this was going to be exactly a feast, but it would do.

“Now, you can ask me why there’s fish in the stream,” he said, crouching. “But I won’t be able to tell you, any more’n I can tell you why when you listen up good you can hear the birds of prey up high in the sky. Or why we get locusts. This place is a paradox. I can tell you I want blood, but I don’t need it and I won’t take it. Think too hard about this place…”

He struck hard, and felt the makeshift spear pierce a fish’s neck. He hoisted it out and onto the rocky bank, finishing its suffering with a rock.

“Think too hard and you’ll lose your mind. Now, for some, that’s the better option. But you got an angel to get back to.”

He wondered, sometimes, about Dean, about Castiel.

Took a little time, but soon enough he had the fish clean and gutted and cooking on an open fire. Didn’t smell like much, but it was food.

“Now, don’t I wish I had some of those old Cajun spices,” he said, wistfully. “But welcome to Purgatory. Pretty sure this is better’n what you’d get in hell.”

–––––

Nik:

Nik didn’t really need to know the goings on in Purgatory, despite his curiosity. He wanted nothing more than to get out of here, get back to Twain – and hopefully Damon – and forget this nightmare ever happened. It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful for all of Benny’s help, but he wished like hell that it hadn’t been necessary in first place.

But demons. The thought made him shiver. Add that to the growing list of things he wished he didn’t know about this world.

He felt bad that Benny was having to fish for him, but the vampire didn’t seem to mind. And he was right – the fish wasn’t much to look at (or to smell), but it was food. He wouldn’t starve before getting out of here.

“How long do you think it will take?” Nik asked, sitting down next to him as he cooked the fish over the fire. “The walk, I mean? I don’t think there’s enough cooking in the world to make that taste good, mate, but I appreciate the effort. I sorely wish we had Cajun spices as well.” He missed home. He missed his little cabin in the swamp.

Mostly he just missed coming home each night to Damon waiting on him with open arms.

“I was a bartender before I met Damon, and for a little bit afterward. I could really go for a nice glass of bourbon to wash this down with.” He accepted the fish once it was done, taking a tentative bite. Not gourmet by any stretch, but it would fuel his body.

“What about you? Before you came here? Did you have a job? A passion?” Nik felt like he was prying, but they were going to be together for a while. It paid to get to know him. “And forgive me for asking – feel free to tell me to mind my own business – but how does one become a vampire? Is it like the movies?”

Once the fish was finished, Nik dumped the bones back into the river, thinking for sure something in there might want them – but not really wanting to think about it at all. It was getting dark, the fire starting to cast shadows across the ground. They would likely be staying put tonight, which jangled his nerves even more. Nik thought he might try to pray to Damon as Benny had suggested, but if felt…odd…to do it in front of him. If they were making camp, perhaps later he would try. “Will we be staying here for the night, then?”

–––––

Benny:

Benny sighed. “I wish I could tell y’different, friend, but it’s gonna take some days,” Benny admitted. “Time ain’t always exactly linear, but I’ll get y’there. You just focus on keepin’ y’self safe and if somethin’ comes at us, you take cover, you hear?” He sat up against a large rock, back to the water, one knee bent and a hand on his weapon. “And if you find you got a bottle of bourbon hidden on y’ somewhere, you just remember who your friends are, alright?”

It was a nice dream. But Nik’s clothes wouldn’t have concealed the stingiest hip flask.

“Yeah, one at a time.” Benny chuckled. Nosy? Benny hadn’t talked about himself in years. Anything to distract them both from the task ahead. “A job, sure. A passion, no, that didn’t come ’til later. I was a cook, and I tended bar, and then during World War II I built boats, these special kinda boats that helped the Allies win over in France. I was good at it – and I was proud of it – but I didn’t have a passion for anything, much. Got married to a woman who was a good enough woman, had a kid… and then I got ripped right out of the world and made a vampire. And I admit I ain’t never seen a movie with a vampire in it, but it’s simple enough. You die with vampire blood in your body, and you’re gonna wake up hungry. Never saw my wife or my boy again.”

But he’d been busy enough. Keeping fed, keeping hidden, out of whatever coast wasn’t currently under a piracy warning.

(Vampiracy, Dean’s voice laughed in his head.)

“And then I fell in love again, and I tried to get away from that life, make my amends… and then I ended up here.”

Andrea didn’t deserve the energy it would take to tell her tale. Dean, he would have liked to talk about. But that was about as much as Benny had said about himself in one go in years, and the rest was going to have to wait.

“No, we ain’t campin’ here,” Benny said. “You can’t see the sun, most days, but it’s early afternoon; promise y’I’ll keep an eye out, cause it gets dark fast, but we got a good sight further to go yet.”

He knew this was going to exhaust his young friend, but the more they did each day the better.

–––––

Nik:

Two days passed without much more than walking and the occasion Leviathan causing trouble. It had gotten to the point that Nik was no longer jumping at shadows, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want out of Purgatory any less than he had that first day. Benny was good company, but Nik missed his home. He missed Twain. The pain he felt at missing Damon so fiercely was like an open wound.

They talked as they walked. Nik told him about being a bartender as well, about how he’d grown up, and exactly what it had meant to have someone like Damon in his life. Angel or not, Damon had been exactly who and what Nik needed.

Still needed.

They were still following the river, and luckily there had been a few more fish to be found – though Nik was pretty sure he was going to regret eating them. He hoped it wasn’t like that myth (whose name he couldn’t recall). Eating something in the realm of the dead meant he was stuck there – he couldn’t handle it if that were the case.

It was getting dark, just past what amounted to sunset here, and he was starting to yawn. Walking all day had a tendency to tire him out. Benny had been making noise about camping, and it was looking more and more like they wouldn’t get much further tonight. “How much further do you think it is?” Nik asked – the first time in days that he’d voice his curiosity aloud.

What he really wanted to know was how much longer it would be before he was reunited with Damon.

A small fire later, and they were sitting alongside each other. “A few days ago we were talking and you said you fell in love again. Do you want to talk about it? I mean, I may not have much advice to offer but…sometimes it helps to just have someone listen.” Maybe Benny would talk about what he’d left behind, give Nik a little something he could take out of here and do for the man that had saved his life.

–––––

Benny:

Benny sighed. “I think if we head out early and power through, we’ll be there by sundown,” he said, though he didn’t have a lot of faith. Nik was pushing, but he was exhausted. He didn’t have supernatural stamina, and Benny couldn’t rightly offer to throw the man over his shoulder. “This river widens, a way up, and after that we veer off, start looking for a dead tree, against a rock face. The door’s up on the cliff face. We’ll get there.”

They’d been lucky, truth be told. Nik drew in a lot of bad but not as much as Benny thought, or else the monsters who wanted him knew Benny’s reputation and had decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.

He poked idly at the fire, and thought. What harm was there? He wasn’t getting out again. He shrugged.

“It was the other human,” he said. “Human man, ended up right here in Purgatory. Nothing like you. He was a hunter. Merciless. I followed him for weeks before I approached him, to tell him about the portal out of here. He didn’t trust me, spent his life fighting men like me. But he needed to get out, had a brother still in the world he needed to get back to, and Purgatory is no place for humans. But I wanted out as well. I’d found a neat bit of magic that could let my soul travel out with him, where he could reunite it with my bones, bring me back to life.”

He tossed the stick aside, and crossed his arms over his knees.

“He was a good man. And easy on the eyes, if I say so myself. Said I was like a brother, but I wanted a whole lot more than that from him. We didn’t make it far, in the world. Couldn’t. I’m a monster, and that’s what he hates, even if he hated me a little less. I loved him, but that wasn’t enough. Out there… a vampire’s gotta feed, gotta eat. And that means hurtin’ people, or stealin’ from hospitals, which isn’t as morally gray as I’d like to think it is. So when he asked me to come back here, and help a friend of his out of Hell… I did it. And this time, I stayed.”

He stared at the flames, struggling to stay alive. Purgatory was hostile to anything so alive.

“We had… a few nights.” He smiled gruffly. “Best nights of my whole life. I spent a lot of years around sailors, but Dean had a mouth on him that could make some of them blush.”

He got lost in the memory, Dean plastered against some ugly motel wallpaper and demanding that Benny make him feel it, hollering endearments like they were insults.

“Sorry. Probably more than you were askin’ me.”

–––––

Nik:

A day. Nik could power through anything to get out of Purgatory, but he had to admit he was going to miss Benny. If only there were some way he could come too. He pushed the thought aside as a flight of fancy, and poked at the other side of the fire with a long stick. “I’m okay to go as far as we can tomorrow. Whatever we have to do…I just want to see him again.”

It felt wrong in a way, being this excited about seeing his love again when Benny was so far removed from his own. Nik felt for him, and renewed his promise to do whatever he could to carry a message to the man on the outside…even if it was to simply say that Benny was okay and still thought of him.

If the roles were reversed, Nik would want that for himself.

He listened to the story in rapt fascination. Who would have thought? A hunter? A vampire? He had only learned of such things since coming to Purgatory, but from what he’d been told – the two didn’t mix well. It had a very Romeo and Juliet vibe, and it made him ache for Benny all over again.

“What is his name?” Nik was determined – more determined than he’d ever been in his entire life. He was going to find this man that Benny loved, tell him, let him know that somewhere someone still thought about him. That someone still loved and still cared…and still wanted him. It was the very least he could do.

“I want to find him,” he said unceremoniously. “I want to find him when I get out of here. I want to tell him that you’re okay, and that you still think of him. If I were him, I would want to know that. I would want to know that someone thought of me, especially if I cared for them.” And he couldn’t believe that this man didn’t care for Benny. In just a few days, Nik had come to care for him very much. It would pain him to leave Benny here, alone, in his hell…

Maybe Damon could do something.

Nik blushed a deep scarlet as Benny continued to talk, but he couldn’t help thinking of Damon – how unabashedly sexual he was. It sounded as if he and Benny’s friend had a lot in common in that regard. “If you had another chance? A chance to start over? What would you do with it? Would you look for him? Try to make it work? There is part of me that worries it will never work with Damon and I – he is an angel, and I’m…just me. Who am I to hold his attention? Does that even make sense?”

–––––

Benny:

Benny sat tracing a pattern into the dirt with a stick. Should he even tell? Did it make any kind of sense? Would Dean be better off thinking of Benny as dead and gone? Was it so selfish? He closed his eyes, and thought of Nik’s next questions. Made his head hurt.

“I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “I think… I think I could try to live like a man a hundred years and I still never would be one, and I still never would deserve someone like that. Only time it ever happened, you know that? Been in love twice before. My first wife, when I was human, my second, when I was… this. And then Dean. Never been with a man before that and my prospects here ain’t so good, I think,” he added, jocular, false. “Never felt anything like that. Women are delicate, especially when you’re as big as I am. Dean… Dean movin’ beneath me… that was somethin’ else. And when someone who don’t trust no one trusts you like that…”

He shook himself from the reverie, mortified. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… what do y’all say? Too much information,” he said, turning away with his cheeks burning.

“Dean Winchester. You won’t find him. He lives on the road, him and his brother. Saving people, hunting things. Rarely stays anywhere a week. Never had a credit card in his own name. Maybe if you get yourself nearly killed by something that goes bump in the night. What would I do. If I was a better man, I’d let him alone. One day, maybe he’ll get a chance to be happy. Might need to get a leg amputated first, slow him down enough to notice there’s a world left that he helped save.”

Benny glanced around them.

“You need sleep. If we’re gonna finish in one day tomorrow it’s a long day’s walkin’ we’ve got ahead. You need to pray, tell yer angel yer a day away. I’ll keep watch. But don’t forget. You pray his name. If the wrong sort finds out where you are, I promise you, you ain’t gonna end up in Purgatory a second time. And you’ll be a lot harder to find in Hell.”

He reached out a meaty hand to pat Nik’s shoulder, and settled himself more heavily against the rock, adjusting his hat as he went.

–––––

Nik:

As if he could sleep. Nik leaned against a large rock, eyes staring off into the darkness and imagining that every noise he heard was something come to kill him before he could reach the portal. He prayed, silently, specially calling out to Jehoel.

Benny says that we are a day away from the portal. By this time tomorrow night, we should be there. Time…is different here. I’m not sure how long it will be out there. But we are close, and I am safe. I do not know if you hear me, or if you will be there, but I am doing my best to get out. Please be careful, Jehoel. I love you.

He went to sleep with Dean Winchester’s name at the forefront of his mind. Regardless of what happened, regardless of what or who met him on the other side of that portal, Nik fully intended to hunt Dean down – and tell him exactly how good a man Benny was.

–

The walk the next day was long and excruciating, but Nik would not let up. Before, they had stopped to rest every couple of hours, but today he would not allow anything to slow them down. It even irritated him when a few Leviathan sprang up, an attempt at a last minute meal. Benny took care of them as skillfully as he’d handled the others, but still Nik had pressed him to keep moving.

When Benny pulled up suddenly at the base of a large rocky cliff, Nik shielded his eyes from the light of the sun and squinted toward the top. There it was, and he was so relieved he could have wept.

Purple and swirly – almost absurd looking – but there it was.

The portal.

Nik was hit with a sudden overwhelming sense of fear and nerves – so strong that it almost had him running in the opposite direction. He shook his head, and took a step back away from the cliff. “What if he’s not there?” he asked, voice shaking. “What if I can’t get through? What if this does not work? What do I do then?”

–––––

Benny:

It was a sore temptation. Benny stared into that purple light and wondered. It wasn’t too late to ask Nik to take him along. Do the spell… it wasn’t too late. Benny thought of Dean, that face.

For a second, he saw that face, in the purple light, and in another second, it was a totally unfamiliar one. Yet he knew right away. He shielded his eyes, and nodded, taking another step, getting a hand hold and then reaching back to pull Nik up the face.

“He’s there,” Benny promised. “He’s waitin’. Come on.”

Nik wasn’t Dean. He wasn’t weak, but he wasn’t Dean, and Benny had to help him up the rock face. The next time he glance up, the light was distorted, the face of the angel pressing into this world in a way that it had no business doing. He wanted to yell at it to pull back.

“I got him,” Benny called, into the screaming void. “Take his hand.”

An indistinct shape that eventually resolved into something vaguely recognizable as a body reached out, and Benny watched as the angel took Nik’s hand, and pulled him up, out, and into the world. Benny took a deep breath, and let out a sigh of relief, looking up into the light as he saw the two figures embrace.

He turned away, and took a step down.

“No,” came the voice. “No, don’t. I owe you. I’ll get you out. Anything you need.”

And there it was, the hand, reaching back through. Benny stared, even felt his own arm twitch with the need to act.

“No place for vampires up there,” he said. “Go on, now.”

“Human!” Barked the voice. “I’ll pull you out human. I’m the fucking right hand of God until we find Michael, Benny, I can do it. Take my hand.”

Benny closed his eyes, and imagined tracking Dean down. Telling him the good news. And wat would he see? Uncertainty. At best. There was no room for Benny in Dean’s life.

“Go on, now,” he said, and stepped down the cliff.

––

It took Benny a long moment to realize he hadn’t stumbled down into the brambles and roughs of Purgatory. He was kneeling instead on swampy soil, the smell of catfish and humidity in his nose, sea birds in his ears.

Home.

He sat back on his haunches and breathed the air, and finally stood up, and turned. The landscape was familiar, but…

“Oh,” he said, startled. His home in New Orleans, where he’d loved a woman, and fathered a son. He walked to the door, and let himself in, looking in wonder at everything he recognized.

And everything he didn’t – the record player, that was new. He crouched to flick through the albums beneath. Led Zeppelin, Credence… Kansas?

When he pulled out an album he recognized, a piece of paper fluttered out.

They don’t live forever. Be patient. I owe you everything. You know how to find me if you need me. – Jehoel

~COMPLETE~

#v: angel of mine #p: hell adjacent #benny rp #moonoverbourbon #all of us; & queue

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clansayeed · 4 years

Text

Bound by Circumstance ― Chapter 18: Let Me Do You This Kindness

PAIRING: Nik Ryder x trans*M!MC (Taylor Hunter) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Circumstance ⥽

Bound by Circumstance and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the book Nightbound and the rest of the Bloodbound series. Find out more [HERE].

Note: Circumstance only loosely follows the events and plotline of Nightbound, and features a separate antagonist, different character motivations, and further worldbuilding.

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Circumstance/series tag list!

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

The Fate intervenes.

[READ IT ON AO3]

“You were there — you were watching us at Prytania Street.”

“In a way, yes and no.”

“It can’t be both. I saw you there.”

“Yes, I was witness to the events of which you speak. But no, I was not there as you were there; on the physical plane. I bear witness to all things. That is my purpose and my burden.”

“You could have done something.”

“You are mistaken, halfling child.”

“Bullshit. That’s—That’s bullshit. Its an excuse to justify doing nothing!”

“If that is what you choose to believe I cannot stop you, only try to sway your mind.”

“Well you won’t.”

“The world’s belief that I am capable of more than giving testimony is a false one. I cannot change the course of what is to be, no more than you can. I see every outcome, every possibility — every path from the moment it is built reaching out into oblivion.

“Who walks those paths — who has the ability to forge them new or break the chain — that is up to the individual. Certain roads will always be taken, yes. But the forces making those decisions were here long before me and will exist long after I am gone.”

He’s angry. And because he’s angry he’s indignant — he doesn’t want to believe them. Not when they speak in the voice of a forgotten child or a lost lover or someone whose time has come yet they find themselves filled with only bitter regret.

Always with the same golden eyes.

The weight of his breath sends Taylor’s body into tremors of emotion. Things he knows all too well — despair, guilt, self-blame — and things he has no name for; might never have a name for in any human language.

They overwhelm him until they don’t. Until he can look at each and every face of The Fate and speak.

“I don’t remember. Why don’t I remember?”

It’s his voice, his tongue curling around the words formed on his lips. But they aren’t his. They’re just sort of pulled out of him like they were trapped deep in his belly on a string.

Words that come not from the mind but from some place deeper. Those dying embers he thinks may have once been called his soul.

The Fate turns their wrinkled face away.

He knows this emotion. Shame.

“Why don’t I remember?” he asks again.

Doesn’t know where he is, or how he got here, or what it all means. But like hell he’s going to move or be moved without an answer.

“I thought it would be kinder.”

Their new voice wavers. A new face looks back at Taylor — creases in a frown that will settle into lines of age eventually, but not quite yet; thinner lips, yet hands still youthful. They look so much like his mother it hurts.

Thought what would be kinder? What happened? Where is everyone? Where is Nik?

All very important questions. All answers he first wants, then craves, then needs in order to remember how to breathe.

Instead he just whispers a weary “please,” because they both know what it is he’s pleading for.

But The Fate is reluctant — that much is obvious. “I would rather you understand before I did.”

“Understand…?”

“That I am merely the storyteller. Not the book, not the author, just a voice reading from the pages.”

This again. Can they blame him for being skeptical? For thinking someone with a name like The Fate might have a say in the order of the universe, in who lives and who dies?

“If I tell you I believe you, will you give me back my memories?” Will you explain? Will it all make sense?

“Would you be lying to me, Taylor Hunter?”

“You’re The Fate — wouldn’t you know?” Then, met with only silence, he does the only thing that feels right. He just shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t — I don’t, okay? I’ve been asked to believe in a lot of impossible things lately, but this… this is more than that, and that makes it harder.”

Because if The Fate really has no say in the way things have been then that means they have no say in the way things end.

The Coven Elders do.

His friends do.

He does.

But not someone who could make it all better.

And that’s terrifying.

“So I don’t know,” he repeats, “and that’s my final answer.” Not the right or wrong answer, but the final one.

He’s met with a chilling reality when The Fate reaches out their hand and he takes it and feels home. The Fate doesn’t just look like his mother; they are wearing her face.

It’s a useless epiphany though.

Because he remembers.

What’s an extra hour or two?

The difference between life and death.

By the time he notices the familiar figure of The Fate standing just off stage left it’s too late.

The screams, the crackle and POP of a spotlight sending sparks showering down onto the stage, the heat and flames and smoke choking the breath out of him — those all came later.

First came the explosive bang of double doors opening at the back of the theatre. If there was ever an apt time for an actor to fumble their lines it was then.

He still hated Antoni, the prick, but gave credit where credit was due — a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it beat in between stanzas and Oberon was right back in the depths of his monologue.

Second was the gust of wind that turned heads — Taylor’s included — to the draft coming through the gaping doorway. It reeked of revelry and jaegerbombs with just a hint of despair.

Taylor was convinced that last bit was his imagination having a last-ditch effort to try and ruin his happiness. Stupid, stupid boy he was; turning back to the stage like that.

Third came thunk. thunk. thunk.

He could recall, if only vaguely, the rehearsal where Daphne suggested imitating the Globe Theatre in London. She wanted to engage with the audience as Puck and the director loved it.

Her last big entrance was from the back of the theatre, right — he’d forgotten.

Thunk. thunk. thunk.

Daphne came barreling down the sloping path — collided with the stage with wet noise.

Or… her head did.

And it rolled in classic horror-movie gothic to stare lifelessly at the audience. Eyes milky white, veins blackened and bulging under tissue paper skin.

What came next doesn’t matter. If the curtain caught fire before or after Theseus fainted from terror didn’t matter.

The only thing that mattered was the wretchedly familiar grotesque hovering in the entryway — the shadow it cast stretching long, mangled limbs out towards them.

The bloodwraith let out a screeching howl that shattered glass, incited fire, sent the entire space into a pitch darkness only to glow and flicker with hungry flames.

I’m sorry. His first and only thought.

Nothing else The Fate gave back to him mattered.

“Holy shit — am I dead?!”

Taylor uses the thought to grapple back onto the present and pull himself together. Doesn’t even think about whether or not he should be using that kind of language in front of a very very old supernatural being but okay maybe he’d been a little premature in the ‘nothing else’ department.

If he was dead that definitely mattered. Because if he was dead Nik was going to kill him.

When The Fate readjusts themselves — a refined and more calm way of saying ‘recovers from whiplash’ — they reassure him with a small shake of the head, silvery wisps on a balding head shaking out to perfect and natural curls. “No, you are not dead.”

“Oh thank god,” he whistles low, but its the relief that catches him by surprise. And not just because he doesn’t have to worry about being chewed out by a surly Nighthunter.

He’s actually relieved to be alive. Or at least not dead. One of those things he wouldn’t normally perturb the semantics over but given everything that’s happened it only seems right.

“Am I alive?”

“In a way.”

“That’s a yes or no question. Please let that be a yes or no question.”

It takes Taylor a moment (his brain is catching up as quick as it can, yeesh) but when it becomes clear The Fate, powerful ethereal being witness to everything until the end of time, is amusing themselves with his reactions he tries his best not to give any.

He fails, of course, but he tried his best.

“Yes, halfling child, you are alive.”

“And —” Nik? Elric? Vera? Cal-Kathy-Cadence? Garrus-Krom-Ivy? “— everyone else?”

“Is there one for whom your concern is greatest?” It sounds almost clinical; doesn’t help that they now sound eerily similar to his hormone therapy physician.

Maybe they hoped Taylor would have to think about it. Maybe they wanted to see what makes him tick.

Too bad. “I’m not picking which of my friends I care about the most, if that’s what weird all-knowing trope you’re going for.”

“Not even your father is placed above them?”

“I barely know the guy. That answer it for you?”

The Fate gives a “hmm” and a nod. “Forgive me, I have never had such luxuries.”

“Family, friends?”

“Those as well. I see the bonds of the material made; thousands, millions in the spaces between heartbeats. But I do not feel them. I wish that I could.”

It rings wrong in his bones. Makes his blood curdle in his veins. “If you’re trying to justify preying on my fears to learn emotions, I’d say stop.”

“Is there a threat to be made?”

“No.” He’s not stupid — but he’s not just going to stand there and take it, either. “You didn’t answer my question. Are my friends — all of them — alive too?”

He can tell The Fate hesitates as one last test of wills. Still it doesn’t stop him from clapping a hand over his mouth when they finally nod.

“Thank god…”

They’d thought it would be safe. That they had time—however brief—to try and make the most of things; time together, the city in all her glory.

Taylor doesn’t realize they’ve been walking together, a simple man and Fate, until he stops and looks out of one of the large windows lining the hallway.

Outside is beautiful. It’s a lacking word but the only one that comes to mind. It’s the kind of sunset that people write entire poems and songs about because they can’t think of a simple one-word description either. So it’ll do.

He drinks it in — the vibrant sunset that reaches long tendril fingers of pinks and oranges across the sky and continues on and on and on into an endless horizon. Bright enough to illuminate dust motes hovering practically immobile in the still air around him. Even his heavy and awestruck breathing doesn’t disturb them.

Like he isn’t even there.

And it occurs to him like an afterthought that if he left this place to commune with that sherbet sky he’d never find the end. There’s a peace in that.

He could ask the obvious; where are we, how did we get here, what does it all mean, but instead he focuses on the things he does know rather than what he doesn’t. “You brought us here.”

“Yes.”

And he hadn’t planned it at all; the trap The Fate has so willingly fallen into. But there it is.

“That means you intervened.” He turns away from the world beyond only because he has to. Catches their ever-changing face in the sunset’s light. “I thought you couldn’t intervene.”

When they finally answer the words are chosen with care; careful not to reveal too much, careful not to make promises unable to be kept. “I did not change the course of what is to come; that is beyond me. But it is not beyond you, and so the lines blur. If you could be guided, or given more time, or protected from a death thought previously inevitable, then perhaps you could enact that change with your newfound advantages.”

His mouth twists ruefully. “You’re telling me you found a loophole in destiny?”

“Of a sort.”

“And you choose now to do it? That’s…” For once in his life Taylor thinks before he speaks; to his benefit. “Unless this isn’t the first time you’ve done it.”

The Fate looks at him with the eyes of a child again; a disturbingly profound wisdom looking him over as if in a new light. “There are very few places in the puzzle of time where I may fit.”

“So all that stuff you said about being an observer — what you’re saying is that’s a load of crap.”

“Would I have told you then what little I could do, would you have believed my interference so small?”

They’ve got a point. “No.”

“Then you see why these revelations take time.”

Maybe he does. That doesn’t change the truth, though. Doesn’t change the thoughts racing through his mind; thoughts of the dozens, hundreds of things that have happened that could have been changed in some little way. Changed had they had more time, or if they’d known more.

Or if he hadn’t been protected.

If Nik hadn’t been in the graveyard, Taylor would be dead. He was there, and at the bar, because…

“You hired Nik to protect me. You were the one on the other end of the phone line.”

“Yes.”

“Did it make a difference? No—No it couldn’t have. You said you couldn’t change it. You —”

“All that is meant to unfold still will. If not as swiftly as the witches had hoped.”

“So all you did was prolong the inevitable.”

“All I did?” his question played back to him in a voice rusted with time, incredulity on The Fate’s new leathery features, “You think so narrowly. What have you changed, what have you incited?”

“The Elders are still —”

“What. have. you. done.”

“I —” Is it any wonder he falters under the intensity of that stare; the weight of their words bearing down on him heavier than anything he’s tried to carry before?

Fine. What has he done?

He’s hurt Garrus by bringing Elric to the show.

He’s brought Garrus and Krom closer.

He’s put Vera in danger.

But given her a chance to reconcile with her mother.

He’s the reason Cal was cast out from his pack.

And the reason Donny is still alive.

Stop it, Taylor wants to say, because there’s no way that annoying voice in his head contradicting everything he’s thinking is him. It’s them — they’re in his mind.

But he’s heard dozens of voices from dozens of their lips; none of them have sounded like him.

And only his voice is ringing between his ears.

“If I’d died in the cemetery that night — would any of those things have happened? Be honest.”

“I see all outcomes; the realms in which they did happen and those where they did not.”

“Okay, so —”

“But because of you, Taylor Hunter, they did. And that cannot be undone.”

Taylor reels at the very thought of it. Talk about daring to disturb the universe. But all those things — they’re speaking of the past, of the present.

What about the future?

“Was it enough, though?” Was it enough to make a difference? Enough to save them? Enough to win?

Instead of answering with words The Fate reaches up, out. Doesn’t let up even though Taylor recoils (for good reason) at the weight of permanence that hangs around them in an unseen aura. According to The Fate themselves there are versions of this story where he dies; is already dead.

And knowing that doesn’t scare him nearly as much as being touched by someone who has seen it happen.

“Those who seek to change destiny always fail,” — something so morbid and hopeless shouldn’t sound so reassuring — “because it will always lie out of their reach. They never understand how to bring it closer. Now you do.”

The warmth of the sunset beyond prickles the back of Taylor’s neck. But even basking in the glow as they have been The Fate’s fingers are cold as ice.

Cold with the weight of the sorrows they’ve seen.

Wherever they are stretches out infinitely on either side of them. He hasn’t seen another soul this entire time. Knows somewhere deep inside himself that no matter how many halls he sees, no matter how many doors he opens, they reside here together. Alone.

So why then does he whisper? Who the hell knows.

“If you’ve seen all the terrible ways this could end… why do it? Why try?”

“Because,” they smile and suddenly Taylor sees why every other part of them is cold; to compensate, “I have hope.”

How, how can they have hope when they know what’s coming? “Hope for what?”

“Hope that you will prove me wrong.” You can change what is to come.

“Talk about your unrealistic expectations.” How?

“It has been done before — however rare.” You already know how.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t.

He —

He watches Cal with his arm over Vera’s shoulder — holding her close, pressing his mouth into her hair more a gesture of comfort than a kiss. To remind her the warmth of another body is close. That she isn’t alone.

A bright light flashes in front of his eyes, blinds him. Taylor tries to pull back but the EMT squeezes his shoulder and keeps him in place. “Not yet, bud, just try and follow the light okay?”

It doesn’t really make sense to keep staring at the thing that makes it harder to see but he does what he’s told. Follows the pen light left to right and up to down because that’s what they need of him right now.

“Your friends said you took a pretty hard hit.” He can feel the gloved hand on the back of his head feeling around for a lump, a cut, blood — anything.

Definitely more than the nothing he gets that’s for sure.

“Do you remember anything like that?”

No, he doesn’t. He only remembers silvery curls and an insistent understanding that he’s capable of more than he thinks. But those thoughts aren’t his.

It’s with reluctance that the EMT lets him jump from the back of the ambulance with the closest thing to a clear bill of health.

“Rook!”

Thank god he hears Nik only when there isn’t a stethoscope on his chest because surely his heart stops beating.

Taylor turns, doesn’t have the time to brace himself before he’s inhaling leather. Isn’t smothered by it at all — in fact it helps calm him more than expected.

Then Nik’s looking him over — touching the back of his head and holding up his arms; looking for cuts and bruises and any sign that he’s less than one hundred-percent okay. “Did you get checked out? Why the hell would they let you go? If they’d seen the way your head bounced off that concrete wall they’d be thinkin’ differently. Fuckin’ hell, they…” Just like the EMT he feels nothing, though. But this time Taylor isn’t let off the hook so easily.

“What the hell? There ain’t even a bump.”

“I hit my head?” he asks; realizes it’s the wrong thing to say when Nik’s eyes widen.

“You don’t remember? Shit — we’re gettin’ you to the hospital.”

“I don’t need a hospital.”

“I beg to differ!”

“If you’d —” Taylor actually has to smack the flurry of Nik’s concerned hands away, “— just stop for a sec’? Please!”

Even in the chaos of grief and seemingly fruitless attempts to restore order Taylor is loud. Manages to get more than a few heads turned his way — some that look between him and Nik in rising suspicion. He takes the man’s hand and pulls him off to the side before any of it becomes a thing.

They find the one police car without the overhead lights flashing. Away from the crowd swarming, from people who secretly wished they could be paid to learn what happened and grieve for it. Despite being entirely removed from the situation they are moths; the cruisers that bathe them in reds and blues are their flame.

Nik wastes no time. “You’re starting to scare me Taylor,” and he believes it with or without Nik using his name, “if somethin’ happened to you, somethin’ medical, we gotta —”

“Nik,” he insists again, “stop talking.” Cups his hands along a chiseled jaw and brings the man down to kiss him like that’ll explain everything. In a perfect world, maybe.

But even annoying as he’s being right now Taylor can’t hold it against him. He cares — in his own weird way sure — but he does.

They part for air but he allows strong hands to keep him close.

“I only just got back,” he mumbles almost breathlessly, “I don’t need you jumping down my throat.”

“Wait—what?”

“I —”

There’s a tickle on his forehead as Nik’s brow furrows. “No I heard ya. But you didn’ — we were here the whole —” Lucky for them both when, somewhere in the middle of those half-formed explanations and racing thoughts, he remembers that he’s Nik Ryder; Nighthunter.

“Got back from where?”

“Not here.”

“Yes, here.”

“Nik.”

Taylor would like to believe he relents because of trust, but knows the far more likely explanation is exhaustion. But he does and that’s what matters. “Okay Rook, okay. Your turn to call the shots.”

“First we need to get everyone together. I saw Vera and Cal, but…”

“Kathy an’ Cade were still givin’ statements last I checked. Iv’, Krom, and Garrus hightailed it before the cops showed up. Wait—you’re really sayin’ you don’t remember any of this?”

“Stay focused. Where’s Elric?”

“With them. He was out cold, hurt bad from the looks of it.”

Taylor’s heart straight-up stops beating. “Did the wraith —?”

“No Rook, no he, uh, he took a fallin’ rigging for you. Pushed you right outta the way and that’s how you hit your head. I really don’t like —”

“Later. We can’t go back to the Shift.”

“Well there we agree.”

“There’s my place, but —”

“No, nowhere connected to any of us. The Elders could’a hexed the place.”

“Suggestions, maybe?”

“Well damn Rook — not like I’ve got a map of secret warded places I can just pull outta my ass—actually…” Nik changes his tune so fast Taylor gets whiplash. But he knows the thoughtful look in those dark eyes well enough by now that he dares to have just a little bit of hope.

Why try?

Because I have hope.

By the time he’s pulled out of his brief recollection of The Fate, Nik is pulling him by the hand back into the crowd. They spot the beacon of Cadence’s towering head over everyone else and find the others still recuperating on the curb where he stands guard.

Cal spots Taylor and immediately tries to stand — but he’s leaning far too much to the right to be moving so fast. Katherine catches him, eases him back down with admonishing words.

“What did the EMT just say?”

“Yeah yeah, I ain’t a cub Kathy.”

“Then pay attention next time — to what they’re saying, not to their asses.”

Vera reaches for Taylor like a source of comfort. He takes her hand and squeezes; feels the warmth of her through blue medical latex in a way her usual silk doesn’t allow. Wordlessly she holds up a long scrap of familiar fabric as explanation.

Whatever Cadence had planned on saying, it catches on his tongue to be swallowed back down. Something makes his face turn away with a crinkle in his nose.

“No offense Taylor, but you smell like mold on vellum.”

“Huh?” Cal sniffs the air and comes to a similar conclusion. “Reminds me of the shed Kristof keeps his pelts in — like… dust and mothballs.”

“Uh…” what the hell does somebody say to that, “I’m sorry?”

“Just thought you ought to know.”

“Actually — speakin’ of all that research you do, Smith,” everyone looks at Nik like he’s grown a second head, but no one can match Cadence’s bewilderment; since that has less than nothing to do with the attack that’s left them reeling.

“What about it?”

“Any chance you know if the Saint Louis has still got that, uh, preservation sigil still in the stones?”

“Sure. That whole block of Chartres does.”

Katherine’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Ryder, what are you thinking?” But he ignores her carelessly.

“Includin’ your office?”

“Yes but — Oh.” Epiphany crosses his face and makes his glasses slide down to the tip of his nose.

And though it may be just as annoying to be on the outs of something Nik, Cadence, and even Katherine with her slow nod of understanding seem to know that the rest don’t — there’s a comfort to it. Like they’re all back in the Shift shotgunning ideas on a chalkboard and not scrambling for a place to hide.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” the way Katherine says it though — it’s like a self-directed insult, “why didn’t I think of that?”

“Think we’ll all fit?” asks Nik.

Cadence gives everyone a calculating look, seemingly taking measurements. “I don’t see why not, so long as you don’t mind a bit of clutter.”

Kathy doesn’t even bother covering her snort, the derisive “Ha!” that earns her something like the vampire version of a pout. She remains unfazed. “That’s putting it a little more than lightly…”

“It’s not that bad. You’re making me out to be a hoarder.”

“Let’s just hope no one’s claustrophobic.”

“Kathy!”

Admittedly Taylor doesn’t know a lot about vampires besides the basics; immortal, super fast, super strong, blood-is-life. But there’s more, isn’t there? There has to be.

For example — werewolves are pack animals. He can guess that vampires are less so. So what fills the void?

Because from what he’s seeing before him… they’re nesting creatures.

This is a nest, right? Please someone say this is a nest, that this is normal behavior. That somewhere else in the city Isadora de la Rosa is just chilling in a giant pile of stuff like some sultry dragoness and Cadence is just following some sort of undead instinct.

Otherwise this guy needs help. Like — Hoarders-level help.

Ryder’s reaction does nothing to ease his discomfort; giving an impressed nod as his eyes sweep the room; the piles… and piles… and piles…

“You’ve cleaned up,” he moves an old filing box with little ceremony to rustle himself up a place to sit; apparently its every butt for itself here, “and is that two walls I can see?”

There are two seats not actively serving as storage and Katherine beelines for it. Cal gets there first with some semblance of victory — though it’s short-lived.

“You’re in my spot.”

“Grow up. First come first serve.”

She repeats herself in an actual growl. “You’re in my spot, Lowell.”

Arms crossed over his chest, he snorts a derisive “I don’t see your name on it,” only to fumble for purchase when she grabs the chair-back with both hands and spins it around.

Her name actually is written on the back. And in very large, blocky permanent marker.

She doesn’t need to tell him a third time. Settles in like it didn’t even happen. Out of everyone gathered, Cadence included, she’s the only one who looks like she really belongs.

“Three guesses why that is.” She says to Nik. It doesn’t take the man long to connect the dots.

“I’d’ve given some money to catch a glimpse of spit-shined Raines in this disaster.”

“Enough!” The vampire groans; finishes clearing up the last of what appears to be an outdoor patio table for the rest of them to prop against. “Unless by some miracle my—admittedly disorganized—attempt at scouring centuries’ worth of documentation in my so-far fruitless pursuit of an identity is the key to vanquishing the threat at hand.

“If so then by all means, continue on!”

It doesn’t help that the awkward silence is broken only when a towering stack of loose papers slides passed the tipping point and collapses somewhere unseen.

“Fuck.”

He accepts his defeat and takes up the chair beside Kathy with a surprising amount of dignity.

But his tirade served more than just a single purpose. It reminds Taylor of why they had to find somewhere to regroup, why it had been necessary in the first place.

You already know how, The Fate had said. And with a surety that had blurred the boundaries of whatever reality they had been in while talking outside of time and space.

Cadence’s mess isn’t the answer.

But someone not-Taylor in the room just might be.

“Vera…”

You already know. And the first thing he sees when he comes back to himself is Vera crying on the curb. That’s not a coincidence. In fact he feels a sharp, almost icy clarity when his train of thought switches tracks.

When he remembers the last time she cried and knows — just knows — that everything going forward isn’t random chance. It’s all meant to be.

Wordlessly they clasp hands. If before they were only doing this together and for Kristin, the same can’t be said now.

Taylor begins with a soft “I’m sorry,” because what he’s going to ask her is hard but there’s no way around it; he tries to be kind because she deserves that much at the very least, “but I’m gonna need you to tell me… tell us, I guess… what exactly you meant when you said you, uh, recognized the bloodwraith.”

Where’s a falling stack of papers when you need one?

Directly following another attack isn’t the best time to ask something that heavy. Everyone’s thinking it, but either lacks the guts or has enough brains not to speak it aloud.

The longer they wait the less time they have. If their minutes in the hourglass aren’t borrowed already.

Taylor can’t imagine the amount of courage it takes for her to share. She’d already been one sneeze away from “no no never mind, I don’t wanna bother you with it, let it go please; for me” back in the apartment. He recalls a brief flash of relief when they were interrupted. Though that didn’t last long given the news.

He’s there, you know, if she wants a hand to hold. Hesitates that hand over her shoulder as he watches the woman close in on herself… and lets it fall.

By the time she’s ready Cadence has ducked out and returns with a tray of water glasses and steaming mugs of fragrant teas. Three sleeves of soda crackers once abandoned are now their equivalent of a replenishing snack after a long journey.

All of it a little too mundane for the conversation at hand.

Vera gives herself a few shaky breaths — and begins.

“You ever been to one’a those big family reunions; the kind where you don’t know more than half’a the people showin’ up but it’s a birthday or a funeral or the like and you don’t really have a say in the matter?”

Literal crickets.

Even when she looks at Cal for backup he shakes his head and offers a shrug as an apology. “The Pack may be big but we’re tight. It’s impossible not to know someone, even if it ain’t a face but a scent.”

“But we can imagine.” Katherine makes a ‘continue’ gesture without bothering to mask the haste. “Keep going.”

Vera does.

“You’re wrong there, Kathy. No’ne who ain’t born a Reimonenq can really get what happens when you get more than a dozen’a us in the same room. All with the same blood in our veins but any opportunity to marry out the family, to change the name with somethin’ more bindin’ than just a court order — they take it.

“Last one I went to was ma Mémé’s funeral. Nawlins funerals, you know how they are —” only this time Taylor’s the sole sore thumb but no one stops to explain, “— and since she ran the Reimonenq Clan everyone who once carried the name or could have done was bound by duty to attend.”

Wistful memory clouds her eyes for a long moment. Whatever memory it is can’t be a happy one, not by the tick in her brow. “Met my uncle for the first time there. I didn’ even know Momma had any siblings — and here come up walkin’ two. They could’a been any random strangers on the street but they were huggin’ me and tellin’ me about seein’ me as a baby and…”

Katherine makes a not-so-subtle noise and shifts in her chair until it squeaks loud enough for Cal to flinch. It’s her chair, bears her name. She knows exactly what she’s doing.

Before she can say anything Cadence tactfully intervenes.

“So sorry about that; the chair drowned Kathy out. I could be wrong — but I think she was about to ask the relevance of this story and the wraith.”

Vera nods with a startling lack of apology. “If I could skirt around it I would. But every way I’ve thought about… about how I felt when I looked it in the eyes? This is the only way I can make it make sense.”

“It’s okay Vee,” says Taylor, “say what you have to.” And if he doesn’t mind her taking her time because it gets him a better chance of reading her inside, of understanding not just the words on her lips but the ones on her soul, he definitely isn’t going to mention it.

“I could see that they were my blood. Hell they were the spittin’ image of Ton—of Momma before she took over ma Mémé’s operations. The shady… smoky kind. But I didn’t know ‘em. I was five weeks away from my move to New York—I didn’t want to know ‘em.”

“Did they have the…?” She looks at Ryder sharply, watches him mime his hands without rhyme or reason. Her nostrils flare in anger.

“No. Turns out the Reimonenq Curse is a picky lit’le thing; picks the first born — or the only born, in my case. I got why she didn’t keep in contact when I found that out.

“I didn’ know why it bugged me s’a much until later. ‘Cause I just couldn’t give rhyme or reason to how I could see so much’a myself in stranger’s eyes.”

A hush falls over the group. Within it — an understanding. No longer with the need to ask Vera to tie her story together because she’s actually a lot more intuitive than even Taylor previously gave her credit for.

And now those tears of hers — always justified, always — they’re more than that. They’re understood.

Vera had looked into the eyes of the bloodwraith. What she had seen was far worse than simple familiarity.

She’d seen a part of herself in the rotting void of its skull. Recognized something hereditary in scraps of rotting flesh stuck in the gaps between its mouthful of fanged teeth.

And she’s still fucking standing, she’s still sane?

Not that there was any competition but Vera Reimonenq was definitely just crowned the strongest of them all in a landslide victory.

She gives them each individual looks. As if daring any of them to try and play Devil’s advocate. But why would they? You don’t fake something that soul-crushingly awful.

“There’s more.”

Cal kicks back on the floor with a groan. “Any chance there isn’t?” He’s the only one who could get away with it though.

“I wish that were the case. I’d been tryin’ to find the right time to bring it up — turns out it just needed to be brought up for me.”

I’m sorry, says way Taylor pulls her in for a one-armed hug.

It ain’t your fault, replies the last weary quirk of her lips.

“I ain’t the only one.”

“Tonya,” supplies Cadence, and Vera’s wobbling bottom lip breaks all their hearts in unison.

“Yeah—Yeah Momma she… she felt it too. I could see it in her eyes. She won’t spare it a thought but I don’ believe in coincidences anymore. She an’ I both feelin’ the way we did, then that thing’s touch takin’ away her Curse —”

“Mary Mother of Christ!”

The vampire stands so fast his chair goes flying into a stack of boxes — lucky for them all whatever contents are heavy enough to stay standing.

At first Katherine looks worried beside him, though it dulls quickly into exasperation. “Folks and faes I give you the Drama King…”

“Not the bloody time.” The look in those ruby eyes is almost manic — just like they had been when Cade had tried infodumping on them at the Shift. Only this might be slightly more relevant — hopefully.

“Care to share?” Cal drawls.

Cadence pays him no mind; focuses only on Vera and gets her attention in turn. There’s almost anticipation in the way he whispers, “You figured it out, didn’t you?”

“Well I wasn’t sure — not until now. You knew him?”

“I had the misfortune.”

“And you were… around when the Coven retaliated.”

“Like I said,” he wipes the lenses of his glasses with such convenient timing he could only be avoiding meeting her eyes, “I had the misfortune.”

It isn’t long after that they realize no one else is even close to catching up to them. A silent back and forth emerges Cadence as the lucky soul burdened with explanation.

“We’ve been so focused on the what of the bloodwraith,” there’s no possible way he knows what stack to dig through, it has to be a diversion to remove himself from the heart of the matter; doesn’t stop him from nudging Nik aside and rifling through an open filing cabinet, “what it is, what it seeks, what it can do.”

Nik grumbles at Taylor’s side. “And that ain’t important?”

“No no — it is. But it… it gave us tunnel vision. Made us docile; we stopped asking questions. Aha —”

Cadence pries free a packet; the contents of which Taylor can’t see even if he squints.

But the text must not matter because he focuses instead on a carefully cut newspaper article attached to the front. The same old paper as his news spread on the war — ink the same faded black.

He can barely look at it, though. Offers it to Kathy’s awaiting hand. “The fire was too great not to make the paper. Carlo personally ensured the cause of the blaze was covered up but no one could keep the deaths quiet. The city only knew three young women perished — not that they were the Garden Coven’s newest blooded witches. And because that fact needed to be concealed at all costs… there were no consequences for him to face.”

“For who to face?” Taylor’s afraid to ask but someone’s gotta do it.

Vera’s voice cracks when she answers.

“My ancestor — Derek Reimonenq. The Bloody Hand.”

“And the tortured soul the Coven used to bind the bloodwraith to this world.”

#nightbound #vera reimonenq #choices nb #playchoices fic #nik ryder x mc #cal lowell #katherine nightbound #oc: cadence smith #nik ryder #nightbound mc #mc: taylor hunter #oblv: bound by circumstance #oblv: new chapter #; my fics

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