#old house with acreage

[hier--soir]

heart to heart

john price x f!reader

rating: explicit, 18+ mdni summary: john takes you away for the weekend, and nestled in a cottage on the countryside, you show him just how much you've been missing him. warnings/tags: long term boyfriend!john, john price never finishes his cigars, explicit smut, a little body worship, oral [m receiving], fingering [f], unprotected piv sex, multiple orgasms [m], some overstim [m], come eating x2, brief cock warming, idiots in love, porn with minimal plot. word count: 4.4k masterlist a/n: this was born out of me being physically unable to stop thinking about that middle picture being john price, so here we go follow @hier--soirupdates if you’d like to be notified when i share my writing

It hasn’t rained in six days.

Late autumn spins the countryside in its grasp; a warm cloak that sends the leaves golden and the grass dewy. In a small, unfamiliar kitchen you drop teabags into mugs and gaze out the window. Admire the vast acreage that surrounds the cottage, and the marshland beyond that.

The early morning rays are bright and cool, turning the cabinets a washy yellow colour around you as you wait for the kettle to boil.

Everything is quiet, calm. If you listen closely, past the sound of birds chirping and water bubbling, you can hear John’s heavy snores down the hall; still catching up on sleep after a long few weeks away.

When he came through the front door two nights ago, you’d been quietly surprised to see him home so soon. After not hearing much for almost a month, you’d resigned yourself to getting on with things in his absence. A fairly covert operation, you knew, so you’d spent your days waking to an empty house. Working and eating and showering alone and never exceeding the appropriate number of messages you could send him in one day without stirring worry. Little Angus with his long orange tail and his soft whiskers your only company in John’s stead.

Home at last, he’d wrestled out of his heavy boots and draped himself over where you lay on the couch. Soap opera long forgotten on the tele, he’d slipped an arm around the back of your head, held you to his chest and said, Let me take you somewhere.

The kettle whistles and you pluck it from the stove, still smiling at the memory. Douse the teabags in boiled water and watch as the windows cloud with steam. You leave his black, just the way he likes it, but soften your own with sugar and milk. Your toes are numb against the cool tile, and you rub them against your calf in search of warmth. Inside, your body is at sleepy old war with itself. One half longing to be back in bed, or perhaps to have not gotten up at all yet; the other half taking great pleasure in the mundanity of doing things like this for him again, after so long of not. Tap tap tap of an impatient finger against the counter until his tea turns the perfect colour, and then you’re on your way back to the room.

Leant amongst paisley patterned pillows and white linens, John looks a little out of place knuckling sleep from the corner of his eyes. A little too rough around the edges, too big, too hardened for such soft surroundings. In your brief absence, he’s drawn the curtains and nudged the window beside the bed open a crack. A long arm stretches out toward the sill, ashing a cigar onto the small dish he’s balanced there.

Naked as the day he was born, he lifts the cigar to his lips and blinks drowsily at you. Stretches his legs out, the muscles in his thighs straining, curled toes skimming the end of the bed. Eyes wandering, you kick the door shut with your foot and slink to the end of the bed, holding out his mug.

“’Morning,” he murmurs, voice still thick with sleep. Accepts the tea with a soft smile, the skin beside his eyes crinkling as he watches you crawl in beside him. Hands full, he twists an ankle around yours, face pulling up at the feel of your cold skin against his. “Jesus, you’re like ice. I’ll shut the window.”

“Don’t move,” you hush, nestling your head against his shoulder. “You’re right where I want you.”

John laughs softly, warm body vibrating against yours. “Is that right, sweetheart?”

“Mhm.” You watch him tap his cigar against the dish, sipping your tea and trailing fingers through the dark hairs on his stomach. Enjoy the way his body draws tense beneath your cool touch, goose flesh sprouting across his skin. “Middle of nowhere… unfamiliar town… no one will ever find you. You’re all mine out here, Price.”  

“M’all yours everywhere,” he says, abandoning his cigar in the dish so he can tug on the neckline of your—his—t-shirt. “This proves it, yeah?”

“I suppose,” you smile, lifting your mug to hide behind a sip. He watches you move, calculating and quiet as he sips his own tea. You fidget beneath the intensity of his stare, painfully aware of how well he knows you. That your want, your need, must be painted across every inch of your face.

“Love you in my clothes, sweetheart, I do.” John’s fingers curl beneath the hem of the shirt then, rough callouses tickling over your collarbones. “But you’re makin’ me feel awful naked.”

Heat flares in the base of your stomach and you chuckle, matching smirks splashed across your faces as you sit up and drag the shirt over your head. He watches as you flick it to the floor, gaze darkening as he looks over your body, focusing on the thin grey panties that cover the skin between your thighs. A thick arm curls around your waist, tugging you back onto him, and as you settle there his fingers slip down to fiddle with the band of your underwear.

“Cute,” he comments airily, middle finger dropping under the band to caress the skin beneath it.

Mug discarded off the side of the bed, you put both hands to his stomach now. Tickling his soft skin, playing with the hair there as you lean in and press a kiss to the centre of his chest. And then another, and another, with John simply humming, palm flattening against the small of your back to hold you against his side.

Your lips part, tongue dancing lazily against his nipple. Soft strokes until the flesh is stiffening and you’re practically purring against his skin, drifting across to the other one. You hear the soft clink of his mug hitting the side table, and then John’s hand falls against the back of your head. Thick fingers twist through your hair, playing as you kiss and lick over his collarbones, and the little tugs he gives have a low throb starting up between your legs.

“Feelin’ needy this mornin’, hey lovey?” John asks. His fingers come to the front of your face, cupping your jaw and forcing you to look up at him. Big blue eyes watch you pout, cheeks squished between his fingers as you nod.

“I missed you,” you say, turning to press your nose into his palm and inhale the smell of him.

His eyes soften, and all sense of teasing seems to slip out the window. “I know, sweetheart, m’sorry. Come here’n give us a kiss.”

His lips are soft against yours. Warm, and familiar, with a hint of Darjeeling. Pulling you up to straddle his waist, he coaxes your chest down against his and huffs into your mouth at the feel of your nipples against his skin, teeth sneaking out to smart at your bottom lip.

“Thought about you every day,” he mumbles against your lips. “Missed you every second, love, always do.”

You feel something hot and sharp spark behind your eyelids at those words, and flick your tongue against the seam of his lips, pushing it away, not now not now. You go soft and pliant against him; let him guide you through the kiss, coaxing your mouth open with his long tongue as his fingers dance down your spine. When his hand reaches the round of your ass he grips your flesh there, kneading it between his fingers and pushing down so your clothed cunt comes flush with his cock.

“Feel that?” John says, pulling away an inch to nose at your cheek. His cock is heavy between your legs, thick and stiff where it presses against the gusset of your panties. You gasp as he rocks his hips up, grinding against you until the damp fabric slips between your slick folds and rubs over your clit. “That’s how much I missed you, sweetheart.”

As he talks, the hairs on his moustache prickle against your lips, and you find yourself opening your mouth. Breathy moans spill as you roll your hips against his, lathing hot opened mouthed kisses over his jaw.

“Looked at your picture every night,” he continues raggedly, breath hitching as you suck at the hollow of his throat. His cock twitches against you, the slide only getting smoother as more slick spills into your panties. “Thought about comin’ home ‘n’ never leavin’ again, just so I could play with this pretty little cunt whenever I like.”

Your hips stutter into his and you whine, a tiny glimpse of an orgasm fluttering through you just from those words.

“S’yours,” you whisper against his skin, the words he spoke moments before dancing through your mind. “All yours everywhere.”

Faster than he can stop you, you’re slipping off his lap and settling beside him on the bed. Continuing the onslaught, you lick hot, messy kisses over the skin of his neck, across the broad span of his shoulders.

“My big man,” you say tenderly, fingers itching their way across his chest. You skirt your teeth down the middle of his sternum, squeaking a little when he murmurs in enjoyment and presses a hand to your ass again. “I missed your body so much.”

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Yeah.”

“Show me then,” he goads lightly, grunting around a smirk when you sink your teeth into the soft flesh over his ribs in response.

His fingers toy with the material of your panties as you drag your tongue over the dip of his belly button, and when you kiss the soft curve of his lower stomach, nose buried in the dark hairs above it, you feel him grip the fabric tight. You can see his cock in your peripheral vision. Swollen and heavy against his hip now. The tip has turned a pretty shade of dark pink, accented by little streaks of white where pre-come oozes from his slit and glides down his throbbing shaft. With your mouth on his belly, you reach out and wrap your fingers around him.

“Fuck,” John grunts, head lolling back against the pillows.

You smile, stroking him slowly as you drag your nose through his thick happy trail, all the way down to nuzzle against the dark thatch of curls above his base. Insistent now, his fingers push beneath the edge of your panties and drag through your slick seam.

You whimper, forehead resting heavily against his skin as he slides two fingers through the wet mess of you. Lewd sounds of your arousal fill the room as John traces featherlight circles around your clit, and your face heats against his stomach, fingers returning to their lazy pace around his length.

The throb between your legs has become a second heartbeat now, so strong that you’re sure he must feel it beneath his fingertips. If he does, he just sighs softly. Lets the thrumming of your cunt sync with the pulse in his fingertips, heart to heart, and murmurs low encouragements as you tilt your head to the side and begin mouthing at his cock.

“Missed my cock.” Your voice is low and unfamiliar in your ears, mouth overrun with desire and spilling your guts before you can stop it. “So pretty, John…”

Circling your entrance with a thick finger, he just says, “I know, love, s’yours. Go on.”

As slow as you can bring yourself to be, you lay gentle kisses down the entire length of him. Wetting your lips and gliding them over his warm, silken skin, before dipping lower and sucking his balls between your lips. A harsh grunt sounds behind you, and, as if in retaliation, he sinks two thick fingers inside you. You moan around his sensitive skin, holding his balls in your mouth and jerking him off until he’s trembling beneath you, broad thighs straining as he tries to hold himself together.

“That’s good, love,” he murmurs softly, almost speaking to himself as he curls his fingers inside you, humming when you grind into his hand. “Need ta get my fuckin’ mouth on you.”

But you just shake your head. Let his balls slip from your mouth with a soft pop before sticking out your tongue and guiding the weeping tip of his cock towards your mouth. Hasty, too needy for your own good, you slip your lips around him and try to take him deep on the first pass. Out of practice after weeks away, your throat constricts and you choke a little around him. So big, so overbearing, you’re too eager to be filled by him that you push and push until you’re gagging and sputtering. Cheeks hot and eyes downturned, you draw back, skin prickling as you hear him say something past the rushing in your ears. Take a moment to catch your breath and ground yourself, fingers tight on his thigh as your tongue swirls around his tip.

“This what you missed then?” he’s saying, collecting your hair in his fist to keep it off your face. “Hm, missed bein’ all full of me?”

“Mhm,” you hum around him, pulling back with a gasp only to press his head against your cheek. Eyes closed, you rub his ruddy tip against your chin, your lips, painting your skin with his precome. Feel the weight of him warm your skin and sigh in quiet delight. And when he groans, exhaling a heavy, ragged breath, you press your mouth around him again, desperate to hear him make that sound over and over again.

“Easy, darlin’, lemme see you,” John chokes out, thumbing sliding over the apple of your cheek. “So pretty with your lips around my cock.”

Heat floods your chest, and you drool around him. The words seem to trigger something in your mind, some insatiable desire to please, to make him feel good, because you’re relaxing, sinking your mouth down further on him. A low, drawn-out curse falls from his lips, fingers curling in the hair behind your ear.

Gaudy sounds of sucking and slurping fill your ears, and you would be self-conscious if it weren’t for the way John’s growls met them in the air. Wordlessly, he slips a third digit inside and the stretch brings a dull burn that has your mouth slowing against him.

Your eyelids flutter as his thick fingers stroke at your walls, searching for the spot that makes you spill every time, but your wanton cries of desperation are muffled by the heavy weight of him on your tongue. In slow, measured movements, he begins to shift his hips in time with your head. Feeding his cock to you and grunting when he feels your throat go soft and easy around him, letting him slip further in until your nose buries in the hair at his base.

John watches you, the blue in his eyes almost entirely swallowed by desire fattened pupils. Rakes his gaze over the way your lips stretch around his thick cock, tears dancing on your lashes as you take him in your throat. The heady taste of him is intoxicating, and you can only hold his gaze for so long before your eyes are rolling back, stomach pulling tight as you swallow around him.

Stuffed to the brim with John, John, John. He’s everywhere, filling your mouth, your aching cunt; it sends your heart racing, thighs trembling as your orgasm begins to crest.

Molten heats swims in the base of your stomach, curling and bubbling there as he you ride his long fingers, moaning his name around his cock. But just as you feel everything begin to go tight and tingly, John’s pulling on your hair and dragging you off him.

A thin strand of spit dangles between his tip and your mouth and he snarls at the sight, swiping his thumb across your bottom lip.

“Fuck, c’mere,” he huffs, squeezing insistently at your shoulders. “Wanna feel you on my cock when you come for me, yeah?”

Mind a hazy blur, you let the weight of him fall from your mouth, the hinge of your jaw still burning as you peel your underwear down your legs and spread yourself over his lap. John doesn’t pull his hand away though. No, he keeps his fingers between your legs, pumping them in and out, slowly, as you hover over his cock.

“My girl,” he says, eyes focusing on where the puffy lips of your cunt almost touch his cock. “My filthy, sweet girl.”

“John,” you puff his name, abdomen tensing when he rubs his thumb against your clit. Balanced on your knees and the tips of your toes, your legs shake a bit. Fingers dance forward to touch his shoulder, desperate for an anchor.

You frown a little, swollen lips parted in a torturous mix of desire and confusion, but he just offers a filthy grin and says, “Tell me you missed me again.”   

“Oh, fuck off,” you smart instinctually, lips twitching when he barks a laugh and slips his fingers from your wet clutch, grasp drifting to your waist. “Please.”  

“There she is,” he rumbles, jaw tensing as you glide his tip through your folds, coating him in your slick. A heavy rush of air spills from his nose. “My impatient girl.”

Once he’s got you on his cock, it doesn’t take long for you to fall apart.  

He lets you keep having it your way for a bit. Watches, gaze heavy, as you bounce on his cock, hands gripping his shoulders for leverage. You squirm on him, face twisted up as you adjust to the thick stretch of him after so long. It burns and aches between your thighs, but you can’t help but keep coming back for more, sinking down on his length faster each time. He tilts his head forward to suck one of your nipples into his mouth, moaning against the plush of your breast when you arch your back, crying out at the feeling of his teeth on the sensitive bud.

After a while he slots his greedy lips against yours. Presses hot, sucking kisses to your mouth, swallowing down every gasp and moan that crawls its way up your chest. The bristles of his facial hair scratch at your cheeks, your nose, and you love it. Have desperately missed the way it warms your skin as he presses his tongue inside your mouth and tastes behind your teeth.

Using his hold on your hips, he rolls you against his lap. Meets you thrust for thrust until you start to soak his length, jaw going slack as he growls into your open mouth.

“Fuckin’ hell, love, that’s it,” John groans, fingers tightening on your waist as your cunt pulls tight and hot around him. Thighs shaking, you let your forehead fall against his chest and ride out the flood of your orgasm. “I know, darlin’, I know, I’ve got you.”

Fingers fly up to grip the back of your neck, his other arm snaking around your waist as he continues fucking up into you. His cock presses hot and heavy into that soft, gushy spot deep inside you and you shudder against him, helpless little moans slipping from your parted lips. Face smushed against his hairy chest, you drool a little. Feel it pool between his pecs and smear across your cheek as your eyes roll back, dopamine pounding in your veins as he pushes you relentlessly through the high.

“Gonna let me fill you up?” he’s panting, feet planted on the bed now as he bucks into you, hips stuttering as he sinks closer and closer to his end. “Fuck, I’m gonna make a right mess of you, darlin’. That’s it, lovey, show me that pretty face.”

“John,” you mewl, toes curling against the sheets. “Shit, oh shit.”   

“Christ,” he grunts when you meet his eyes, jaw pulled tight. “So tight, m’ gonna come—”

“Wait,” you mumble suddenly, senses sharpening despite the way your thighs still shake against his hips. John stills immediately, grip tightening on your waist. “In my mouth, I want you in my mouth.”

His face crumples at that, a guttural noise sputtering from his lips as you lift off him and slip down to rest between his legs. He nods, brushing hair back off your face as you sink your mouth down on him, slick tongue hungry on the underside of his pulsing cock. He mutters your name, tells you how perfect you feel as he rocks his hips forward, tip nudging the back of your throat with every careful thrust.

“My sweet girl, doing so good for me,” he breathes, a coy grin on his face and a firm hand at the base of your skull. He holds your head in place as he fucks your mouth with slow, steady strokes. Groans every time you swallow, warm wet throat drawing tight around his swollen head.

“Look at me, let me see those eyes,” he mutters urgently, tugging on your hair until you’re blinking, focusing blurry eyes on his face. He thumbs at the teary streaks on your cheeks and gives a rough, prolonged groan as he begins to spill down your throat. “Fuck, fuck.”

You bob your head as his cock twitches and jerks against your tongue, sucking until he’s filled your mouth with warm come and it starts seeping from the corner of your mouth, dribbling down his shaft. You catch the spill with your fingers, swallowing his thick spend down and then licking what’s left from your trembling hands.

John watches on, chest heaving, and tuts fondly when you whimper, head spinning with the salty taste of him on your tongue.

“Bloody hell,” he exhales after a moment, dragging his knuckles over his face. “We’re never goin’ home.”  

You laugh, drowsily nuzzling your cheek against the inside of his thigh as his cock softens against his stomach. John cards his fingers through your hair absentmindedly, legs still twitching and eyes drifting closed as he tries to catch his breath. Lips slick with spit and come, you lay soft pecks along his sweaty skin. Smile when he shudders, fingers tightening against your scalp, but doesn’t pull you off.

There’s a hot flush of red splashed across the skin of his neck, his cheekbones, and his stomach is still warm to the touch when you reach out to graze his soft flesh. Sated and sleepy, he wets his lips and continues to play with your hair. Lovingly curls strands of it around his fingers and tugs gently before letting go, only to pick a new strand and do it again.

Overcome with emotion, and unable to stop yourself, you lean forward and take his soft cock back into your mouth.

John hisses through his teeth in surprise, eyes flashing open.

You don’t do anything crazy yet. Just let him feel the warmth of your mouth around him, the soft glide of your tongue against the ridge around his head. When he doesn’t pull you off after a second, you give him a little suck. Not hard—just enough to make his hips flinch down into the mattress and his legs pull tight at your sides.  

“Fuck,” he exhales, face pinched. His hand trembles against your head. “Fu—hang on, fuckin’ hell, love.”

You peer up past his stomach to where his mouth hangs open and his eyes are shiny and wide. His nails scratch against your scalp. Needy little nudges that blur the line between too much and not enough. You hum in pleasure around him when a choked sound falls from his mouth. Feeling a little mean, though, you pull back, licking your lips and smiling apologetically.

“Sorry,” you murmur, face hot as you squeeze his thigh. “Just want to love on you a little longer, that’s all.”

He hums deep in his chest, brow creasing a little as he brings his big hands to cup your face. His thumb swipes at your chin, smearing the saliva there, and you part your lips for him. He makes a sort of pained sound as he slots the digit into your mouth and watches you hollow out your cheeks out around it, swirling your tongue and sucking like you’d done to his cock just moments ago.

“Christ,” John breathes. Something needy and desperate glints in his eye, and he slips his finger from your mouth. Grips the back of your neck and gives a short nod. “Gonna be the death of me, ain’tcha?”

Guided by his hand, you take him back in your mouth and sigh in relief. Your eyelids flutter closed, and you rest your face against his hip, taking deep breaths through your nose and just holding him like that for a while. You can hear the way his breathing goes haggard above your head; short sharp bursts of air huffing from his nostrils. Sensitive as he must be, John lets you have your fun, shivering and spiting low curses as your touches get increasingly needier. And when you begin to suck softly at his length again, he seems unable to help the way his strong legs writhe against the mattress.

He says your name, rough and urgent, when you pull back only to snake your tongue out against his slit. Eyes fluttering open, you look up at him as you lathe your tongue down his length, smiling at how red his face has gotten, at how he seems to be holding his breath. John’s cock starts to swell and stiffen beneath your touch.  

“D’you want me to stop?” you whisper, tracing the blue vein that pulses down the side of his length with your tongue.

“No,” he pants, head lolling from side to side. “Fuck no, gorgeous. Just go easy on me, yeah? It’s ohh—” he winces “—s’a lot.”

You nod understandingly and press a kiss to his tip, smearing the fresh pearl of precome there against your lips. He’s fully hard now, throbbing when you wrap your fingers around his thick base and wrap your lips around his head. A guttural sound rips from his chest and he’s tugging at your hair. For a moment you pause, unsure, but then he’s pushing a little on you. Nudging you closer, further, so you take him deeper and deeper until his tip is nudging against your throat.

“Fuck,” John gasps, hips stuttering against your palms, sensitive cock twitching against your tongue. “S’too much, love, it’s—oh fuck.”

With a ragged grunt his cock pulses in your mouth, and a little spurt of come dribbles from his head. You moan, eyes closed, and swallow tight around him, milking every last drop of spend from his cock until he’s winded and clumsily pushing you off of him.

Breathless, you fall flat on the mattress beside him, feet dangling off the end of the bed. John’s broad palm cradles the back of your head still, a comforting weight as you wipe your face against the sheets.

Ears pricking, you realise it’s begun to rain outside. Soft patters of liquid that knock against the window, thin rivulets that drip down to splash and splutter against the sill. Long forgotten, his cigar sizzles and dies beneath the spray.

“Another tea?” you murmur finally, pushing up onto your elbows.

But with a soft, startled laugh, you find that John’s eyes are closed, chest rising with steady breaths; already back to sleep. Shaking your head a little, you smile fondly at his lax form, and consider closing the window. You settle instead for pulling the duvet from the corner of the bed. Curled against his thick side, you settle the blanket over the two of you and lay an arm over his stomach, content to have a proper lie in after such a busy morning.

thanks for reading, i'd love to hear what you thought x

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[sunlightmurdock]

Like This Forever | 0.1 | J. Seresin

masterlist | next chapter

You’re thinking of the past, right as the future is about to change forever.

Warnings: accidental pregnancy, childhood friends to lovers, country singer!Jake, smut, pining, blissful ignorance, other warnings to follow. wc: 3k (18+ minors do not interact)

A U G U S T 1 9 7 4 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 1

Driftwood — small town southwestern Texas, situated in Lockheart County. Springs, stony hills, and steep canyons. It’s good land, occupying a tiny patch of earth in the middle of the Edwards Plateu. That’s what they all say: good land, good soil. Large acreages of wheat for miles around, grown annually for harvest and winter through spring livestock grazing. The remaining two-thirds of the region is rangeland devoted to cattle ranching. Ranches in this region often seem older than the landscape itself. Lockheart County’s livestock industry is nationally appreciated, it was, even back then. Ranches here are huge, they’ve been there for generations. The town of Driftwood, itself, sits in a valley. It holds on to the people who settle there just like it holds onto the weight of that thick, summer heat all through the day. So hot that even the trees bend and furl like they’re seeking shade too.

Back then, Driftwood was even smaller than it is now. Post Office, Church, two schools, a fleet of locally owned stores on Main Street and a few other buildings for the fathers who weren’t ranchers or ranch hands to work.

On that day in early August, most of Driftwood’s thousand person population were nestled amongst the pews of St. Augustine’s Church, just outside of town. It’s a mile and a half from Main Street, and a mile and a half from the furthest fence on the Seresin Ranch. Their house is a sprawling thing that Bill’s grandfather had built — they haven’t got that kind of money now, and they didn’t on that morning in August. They’ve got three boys, who were squirming around the front pew, melting into the aged wood below them in their smart white button ups. They’ve got another boy too, standing behind Pastor James, holding a processional candle.

Jake’s their youngest. He was nine back then. Small for his age, especially when you stood him next to his brothers and their broad shoulders and long legs. His hair was beyond blond, lightened from the sun. His cheeks dusted with brown freckles and his eyes always narrowed into a type of John Wayne kind of squint. Jake loved John Wayne back then. He loved the cowboys on his bed sheets, and the fact he could see the cattle from his bedroom window. All he wanted back then was a pistol on his hip and a one-way ticket to El Dorado.

Mary-Lynn Seresin grew up in Driftwood, just like her husband had. She had known Bill since she was a little girl, and she had always known that she would marry him one day. Her nails were polished pink that day, sitting pretty atop the procession card as she fans herself with it. Two pews behind, you could still see a droplet of sweat bead from her neat blonde hairline and trail into the collar of her blue polka-dotted Sunday dress.

On that particular Sunday, the fans had packed up and stopped working. So, all six hundred of you who could make it out to St. Augustine’s we’re trapped in there — not just with Pastor James’ storytelling, but with the thick heat pressing down on the entire valley feeling like it had all been shut in this one room with the rest of you.

At the front, Jake Seresin’s cheeks were red, his hair was beading with sweat and his scarecrow, twig-like arms were trembling around the cross. He struggled with its weight and you had watched his green eyes flash out towards the crowd, briefly landing on his mother. Mary-Lynn gave him a proud nod. Bill was staring at the stagnant ceiling fans above their heads. You, were staring right at Jake.

Eight years old yourself, just eight weeks younger than Jake is, you have known that little grass-stain your entire life. In fact, Mary-Lynn and your mother found out that they were expecting just days apart. They had been in the same high school grade as girls, had married men who were good friends, and back then your mother had worked in the town’s hair salon five days a week. They grew very close through their pregnancies. Your mother was the first one to send flowers when Mary-Lynn went into labour a month and a half early.

Jake’s John-Wayne-Squint deepened through the heavy air, watching you like you were both about to draw pistols and settle this like men — right in the middle of Pastor James’ final verse. Your pigtails and your white Sunday dress weren’t fooling him. His robes and the heavy cross in his hand weren’t fooling you. Clearly following his brother’s gaze, Daniel Seresin turns and peers at you over his shoulder. He’s the closest in age to Jake, but he’s still five years older. Thirteen then and too grown up for childish squabbles like those, he just turned back to the front and shook his head.

The first three of the Seresin boys were all born within three consecutive years. Matthew, Noah and Daniel. They’re each tall like their mother, blonde like her too, and have inherited their father’s linebacker shoulders. Noah was fourteen and about to be a freshman in high school. After he fixed the chain on your bike at the beginning of summer, you were full-blown head-over-heels in love with him back then. You thought you were anyway.

Jake, however, had been in your class since Kindergarten and you had been forced to share your toys with him for even longer than that.

His arms trembled before you and your mouth had twitched. Neither one of you was listening to the service. It was almost over. Just a few more minutes until Pastor James wrapped up and the people of Driftwood and poured out of this sauna and out into the dry, morning sun.

Quickly, you shot a look at your mother sitting at your side. She was listening intently, staring right ahead with her neatly steamed clothes and her hair-sprayed hair. You’ll always remember the heavy smell of her rose-scented perfume. Every time you inhale it, you’re sitting at the foot of her bed, watching her fix her face in her vanity. Then, you looked to your father on the other side of you. Exactly the same. Pleased, you turn your attention back to the youngest Seresin boy.

Scrunching your nose, you had sat forwards just slightly and stuck your tongue out at him. Quite the diss back then. Jake’s green eyes had widened, sweat beading down his back under his white shirt and his service robes.

Driftwood is a safe place. It’s a fantastic town to raise children. The schools aren’t overcrowded and cars don’t speed through the centre of town. Country roads are a different story. But no one bats an eyelid, especially not back then, when their children are out of sight.

Mary-Lynn was busily detailing the events of her dinner party that coming Saturday to a group of women that are invited. She’s quite the hostess still. Your mother stood amongst them. Neither one of them were concerned about where their children were in the slightest. Until, that is, the sounds of muffled screaming filled their ears. The mothers of Driftwood rush to the commotion in their kitten heels and pretty dresses. Your mother was the first around the corner. She would recognise the sound of her baby’s screaming anywhere. But you weren’t the one in trouble. As usual, you had been causing it.

Your white dress grass-stained and muddy, dirt under your fingernails and covering your formerly white, frilled socks. You were kneeling. You haven’t yet noticed the crowd of women rushing in your direction. You’ve got Mary-Lynn Seresin’s youngest son pressed into the dirt, kneeling on his back and twisting his arm uncomfortably behind him.

“Say Uncle!” You demanded.

“You’re so dead! Get off!” Jake struggled under you, screaming with all the force that his growing lungs would allow. His voice must have been audible across the entire valley with how he was hollering. Freckled cheek pressed into the dirt, his white shirt was destroyed and he was in the middle of ruining his shoes with how he was scrambling for purchase in the dried dirt.

Quickly, your mother had grabbed you under your arms and hauled you off of the boy, spinning you to face her.

“What do you think you’re doing young lady?”

“He started it! — He said my dress was ugly!”

“It is ugly, you look like a girl!” Jake huffed from behind you as he had stumbled onto his feet and taken a look down at his church clothes. Slowly, he had lifted his gaze to look at his mother. Sullen and worried looking, he began to pout. It wasn’t working. Mary-Lynn had raised three boys by then, she knew when they were trying to play innocent.

The thing about growing up so close together, is that approaching double digits was a confusing time. It was around that age that your mother began to put her foot down when it came to all of those tom-boy activities. Girls might roughhouse and come home with holes in their jeans and mud on their faces, but young ladies didn’t. The dress was her idea.

Jake’s comment had been passing, just a whisper as his family had headed into church ahead of yours, but he was right — you did look like a girl. Back then, that wasn’t a compliment coming from him. So, you had cornered him outside and pummeled him into the dirt. Fair is fair.

“Mary-Lynn, I am so sorry about her — send me the dry-cleaning bill. I’m sorry, we should go.” Your mother had sighed in a hurry, frowning down at your ruined clothes, then looking towards Jake’s. You’ll always remember the smile on Mary-Lynn’s face after. Not pity, because she knew you were in a lot of trouble for this. Just fondness. She had gently patted your mother’s forearm and shaken her head.

“Let’s finish our chat. They’re already filthy. Let them play.”

Looking up at her, you hadn’t understood why she was siding with you back then. You had just almost broken her son’s arm for sport. As you grew, Mary-Lynn Seresin was always on your side. In her kitten heels and dresses, she remembered being a dirt-covered little girl once too. No one was telling her son that it was time yet, to be a man. There’s no harm in letting you be young a little longer.

Your mother had looked uncertain, but people in Driftwood always looked to Mary-Lynn for advice. She had somehow managed to keep four boys in line perfectly, her parenting expertise was studied by those around her. Finally, she had given you a brief nod.

You remember spinning on the delicate almost-heel of your church shoes, rounding on Jake, ready to brawl. You have no clue where the stick came from, but he was armed when you had turned around — but Jake always fought fair. He tossed you a stick of your own and took aim. Green eyes narrowed, he was trying to look down his freckled nose at you, but you were taller then.

“She’s gonna marry that boy someday.” Mary-Lynn Seresin had huffed with a wistful smile, watching the mud-caked children tear off through the field once again. This time, with sticks in hands and violent intent plastered across their dirty faces.

You’re not eight anymore. Jake’s not nine. This time of the year, you both happen to be twenty-six. You aren’t trying to kill him with a stick anymore either. You’re sitting at your favourite bar in Driftwood — there are four now — watching your best friend up on stage. He’s always confident. He has been since he hit that growth spurt when he was twelve. Since then, Jake has been unstoppable. But on stage is when he really shines.

The Dark Star feels like an old bar. It’s packed every Friday night. It smells like malt and smoke and Jake’s been playing here every Saturday since he was seventeen. This is the last time that it will ever be like this, and you don’t even know it yet. Jake’s in the middle of an original. People around here know him, they know his music. They might not get all the words right, but he always gets people singing.

Jake isn’t small for his age now. He grew into his nose, and he inherited those big shoulders, his skin’s tanned from his days out at the ranch. He’s strong and funny and kind. Sometimes it catches you off guard, when you turn your head and find a man in place of the little boy you once knew.

You’re in a booth, talking numbers. It turns out that you had inherited your mother’s knack for business strategy, and Jake’s way with words had rubbed off on you long ago.

You don’t look like the little girl Jake had once known either. If he was concerned about you looking like a girl before, then you can only imagine how dismayed he must be when he looks at you now. Breasts and everything.

“It’s more than potential, Stu — you saw how crazy people were for him when he was opening for The Ashford Band.” You tell him, fingers curled around a brown glass bottle. This is already settled, the deal is already done. You knew from the second that he walked in that you had Stu Adler suckered.

This is a deal that you’ve been mulling over for a couple of months now. Getting Jake on his first headline tour. His debut album came out last week and it’s doing well, but the record label is tiny and the publicity deal is even smaller. Jake’s making pennies compared to other people in his genre, but you’re about to change all of that.

“Six months is a long time on the road. It’s a different lifestyle,” Stu’s dishwater grey eyes flicker briefly up from the plunging neckline of your top to meet your gaze. He’s an older man, with a once successful career in Los Angeles. Now, he spends his time scrounging small towns for talent. He’s just a stepping stone in your plans for Jake. “You’re sure he can handle it?”

Stretching your legs out, you scoff incredulously at the accusation as Jake’s last song dwindles behind you. The beer bottle is cool against your lips. Stu swallows, watching your lips purse around the rim to drink. You know he’d die for the chance to get his wrinkly, old dick in your mouth — it’s why Jake’s about to get the best deal of his life.

“Jake? — Of course.”

“Can you?” Stu asks. The light on you for once makes you cringe. Even so, your poker face doesn’t falter. Calmly staring across the table at him, a small smile on your face. “Y’know, he’s going to need a manager that I can rely on. I.e. — one that he won’t dump, sweetheart.”

This only makes your smile grow. “Jake is like a brother to me. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

It’s that lie that secures the deal. Six months, a hundred and sixty dates across the US. Mostly small venues, but it’s his first headline tour — and it’s all because of you. Because of that one little white lie. Letting Stu think that he’s got a chance with you. Letting him think that you’ve never fucked Jake.

You have. Twice, already by this point. Once, after senior prom. Your date was an asshole and his was cruel. You’d parked his truck out in the west pasture of the Seresin ranch and got a little too drunk under the stars, and wound up with your legs hiked up over his shoulders. The second time was Thanksgiving two years ago. Your family joined his. All of his brothers have fiancés or wives now. Sharing Jake’s bed in his childhood home that night, neither one of you was drunk. You were just lonely, and maybe bored.

Tonight, there are a couple of different factors at play. Sure, by the time that you and Jake collapse down onto that red, velvet couch in the Dark Star’s ‘dressing room’, you’ve had plenty to drink. You’re not quite as lonely as you were that thanksgiving, though.

You turn your head and he’s grinning at the ceiling, chest heaving from the energetic final song. His arms stretch along the backs of the couch, his eyes closed for a moment. You watch him silently.

“You’re incredible.” Jake’s half-cut on an unhealthy mix of tequila and vodka, but smiling, eyes still shut, chin still pointed towards the sky. He gives his head a small shake. “A hundred and sixty dates.”

A smile plasters itself across your lips. As drunk as you are, it’s nice to be complimented for your hard work. “Yeah, we’ll see if you still think I’m so incredible when you’re living off of burgers and beer and still have eighty shows to go.”

The smell of cigarettes lives within the fibre of this room. Part of the furniture, nestled amongst the cracks in the red painted walls. There’s the couch that you’re sitting on, and an illuminated vanity against the far wall, and then a coat stand. It’s not much of a dressing room, but it’s fine.

You just wish it would stop spinning.

“I mean it.” His fingers rest atop your denim clad thigh, patting platonically. You hear him sigh from beside you. He squeezes at the supple skin under his hand. “Thank you.”

“Jake… since when do you have manners?” You ask him. Both of you are sitting with your eyes shut on this old, probably dirty, velvet couch. It’s five in the morning. The two of you might have gone a little overboard with celebrating. Wayne Mayhew, the owner of the Dark Star might have threatened to kick you both out of his bar if you didn’t finally get off of his damn stage ten minutes ago.

But there’s a high buzzing between the two of you that feels electric. Wordlessly, you know Jake feels it too. That this is the last night. Here, in this shitty hometown bar. Everything is about to change. After this tour, nothing will ever be the same again — for either of you.

Jake’s thumb trails back and forth in just one small pattern, reminding you that it’s there on your thigh.

It’s been on your mind all day, for no reason at all. That Sunday in August in 1974. Your ruined church dress and the fat bruise on Jake’s cheek the next day when you had seen him at the market. The start of it all.

Those late night drives and all the evenings you studied together. Jake’s football games and his band practices — back when he had thought he wanted to be in a band. Him drying your tears and making you laugh. Growing up together, talking for hours and hours about all of the possibilities. This was everything Jake had ever wanted, and he’s thanking you.

Your eyelids weigh double what they normally do — heavy as you blink open your eyes and turn your head. This time, he’s looking across at you. The tips of his fingers brush the inseam of your blue, low-rise jeans. His face is calm, he isn’t saying anything and he’s far from doing anything either.

Scrunching your nose, you poke your tongue out at him. Across the couch, Jake lifts his brows. The corner of his mouth twitches. He’s got stubble now. Stubble, and chest hair and an Adam’s apple. But that look, that glint in his eye that’s just daring you to try him has always been the same.

Jake’s fingers twitch, pressing into the soft flesh of your inner thigh. Dim lighting, fifteen year old red paint on each of the four walls, and that perpetual cigarette smell — it’s hardly a romantic fantasy. And this is far from a good idea.

But it’s Jake. Confident, loud Jake who gets shy when he’s around someone he really likes. Funny, smart-mouthed Jake who under it all is a great listener. Goofy, habitual Jake who has the nighttime routines of a fifty year old housewife.

Strong-willed, handsome, Jake, your best friend — who’s looking at you like you’re his next meal.

…

@fia-thefirst @daggerspare-standingby @dempy @v0id-chaos @moonlight-addisyn @grxcisxhy-wp @shakespeareanwannabe @coconut152 @330bpm-whiplash @takemetooneverlanddd @princess76179 @loveofvernonslife @averyhotchner @trickphotography2 @sushiwriterhere @the-romanian-is-bae @atarmychick007 @talktomegooseman @xoxabs88xox @thedroneranger @roostersforevergirl @buckysdollforlife @abaker74 @blackwidownat2814 @kmc1989 @whatislovevavy @lonelywriter10 @s-u-t @topguncortez @callsign-joyride @rosedurin @86laura11 @theenorthstar @mygyn @growup-thatbeautiful @percysaidnever @katiedid-3 @its-the-pilot

#jake smut #Jake Seresin #Jake Seresin x reader #Jake Seresin x you #jake seresin x y/n #Jake Seresin fic #jake seresin #Glen powell #Jake hangman Seresin #top gun: maverick

[thought--bubble]

The Monster in Your Fairytale

Old South AU Aemond X (Southern Belle Reader)

Warnings after the cut

Modern Aemond Masterlist

Full Masterlist

Banners by @arcielee

A/N: I'm grouping this with Modern Aemond because i don't want to create anymore masterlists and it isn't canon Aemond haha.

Warnings:: manipulation, dubcon, Breeding kink, smut, virginity loss, attempt at baby trapping.

Aemond Targaryen was sought after in your small rural town. The only single man left of the Targaryens other than his young brother Daeron, who was too young to marry.

The Targaryens were the most well-off family in the area. They came from old money. Their sprawling mansion and vast acreage of land showcased their wealth.

Aemond, being a young Batchelor who stood to inherit a third of his fathers wealth, was viewed as a great prize for many of the young, unmarried woman in your small town. The accident he suffered as a child leaving him with only one eye did nothing to dampen the flames of his popularity. After all, out here money was king.

Yet somehow, even with a plethora of young unmarried women swirling around him. That one beautiful eye set its sights on you

You were your fathers pride and joy. His sunshine he called you. You weren't the smartest girl around, but gosh, were you sweet. If anyone were to ask around, your small rural community, they would say your giggle was contagious and your smile even more so.

Your innocence and your trusting nature are exactly what reeled him in. What a pretty little silly wife you would make him. He imagined you popping out, baby, after silver haired baby laughing and giggling, never a care in the world, and in him, it awoke a hunger, a gnawing need to have you.

So Aemond decided he would do this the right way. Get to know you and make you fall in love with him. Who wouldn't fall in love with him? Every single girl in town wanted him, why wouldn't you?

So he approached you at the local farmers market. A place he would usually never be. The Targaryens had house servants for that kind of thing. Yet he came knowing you would be there, selling your father's wares. A bright smile on your face and that perfectly plump bosom pressing tightly against the fabric of your cheaply made dress.

He looked sharp. A nice pair of trousers with a fitted top, the two highest buttons left open.

"Give her something to gawk at," he thinks to himself as he fixes his shirt. He spots you at your usual table, pointing at various fruits and vegetables, trying to make a sale. Not that making a sale was difficult for you. You could sell someone air with just a smile and a suggestion.

He walks up to your fruit stand cockily, quickly snatching an apple from one of the baskets and tossing it in the air.

"Macintosh. Best you'll find for a long ways" You smile at him with that perfect little smile, your eyes wrinkling around the corners.

"Hmmmm." He gently places the apple back in the basket. "I'm looking for..... something sweeter"

"Oh! Well, we have strawberries! Those are mighty sweet. " You lower your voice to a near whisper." I could even let ya try one if you promise not to tell Daddy." You wink at him and hold up the smallest of strawberries in your delicate hand.

Aemond can feel a stirring in his pants he tries very hard to ignore. "Love to" instead of taking the strawberry from you, he leans forward and bites into it while it is snuggled in tight between your fingers. His lips graze your fingertips, and then you do it. You giggle. That addicting giggle.

What went from a gentle stirring in his trousers had now evolved into a throbbing as he wiped the juices from the strawberry off his chin.

You lean forward towards him. "juicey nough for ya?"

"Hmmmm" Aemond chuckles. "Always like the ones that gush"

"Then perfect! How much do you wanna buy?" You take out one of your tiny baskets ready to fill it with strawberries.

"Fill the basket," he says nonchalantly.

"Oh! That's an awful lot of strawberries, sir. That could get quite pricey. " You giggle again, causing the throbbing in his trousers to intensify.

He smiles at you and laughs while shaking his head, "As if she doesn't know who I am," he thinks to himself.

You fill the basket completely. Pride swells in your chest, knowing you just sold a good chunk of the strawberries you had brought to market, your daddy will be so proud, and the money will help.

You hand him his basket of strawberries and give him your best smile.

"A pretty girl like you should be married at this age..... yet from what I understand you are not." Aemond muses biting into another strawberry.

"Oh, Daddy has turned down all suitors. Doesn't think I'm ready." You blush slightly in embarrassment. Your father loved you. So much in fact that he was afraid that with your simple and caring persona, you would be easily controlled and abused. A thought that terrified him.

Hearing that your father has turned down, all suitors thus far does not deter Aemond in the slightest. He is a Targaryen. Your father would beg for him to court you sooner than he would turn him down.

So the next morning, he does what any good gentleman should do and goes to your father requesting permission to court you and is absolutely shocked when your father declines.

"My sunshine is a special girl," he had said. " She isn't ready for that kind of thing, but I am flattered by your interest"

Aemond leaves the small farmhouse baffled but ultimately decides that your father will not stop him from having what he wants. You are indeed a special girl and you will be his special girl whatever the cost.

So, he returns to the farmers market every week. Sometimes with flowers, other times a small gift, a necklace, a bracelet every time trying to interest you in joining him for a walk.

Each time, you turn him down.

"Daddy wouldn't like that." Your sweet voice invades his senses, but after six weeks of being denied, Aemond has decided he will no longer take no for answer, so he presses on.

"Your father doesn't need to know sweetness. I will not be untoward. I only wish to know you more. All the town talks of your sweet smile, but what of what's behind that smile? That is what I wish to know. " Aemond gives you his best look of caring and gentleness. "I will not lie. My feelings have been hurt by this constant declination of simple friendship"

Aemond has gotten to know you so well. You are sweet to a fault, and the only way he can get you to go against your father's wishes is to make you believe that you are being cruel.

"Oh! I'm so sorry, Aemond! I'm not trying to hurt you! Of course I'm not. " Your eyes are glassy as you look at him with sympathy.

"Got her," he thinks to himself.

"I guess one simple friendly walk won't hurt."

So after you pack up your wares for the day, he takes you on a walk. He asks you questions while he pretends to listen to the answers, the buzzing inside his head, making it hard to concentrate.

The walk is exactly as he described it. A friendly walk where you chat and enjoy the scenery, and every week that walk gets just a bit longer and a bit deeper into the woods.

You become more and more comfortable with the man you now consider to be one of your closest friends, and on a warm summer evening, he walks you into the woods the furthest he has walked you yet.

When the two of you stumble upon a meadow, he feigns surprise.

"Well, isn't this beautiful?" He looks down at you, watching you look around the meadow in wide-eyed wonder.

"Oh, Aemond, It's beautiful!" You happily exclaim, throwing your arms around him excitedly.

"Come." He takes your hand and leads you out into the tall grass of the meadow before he drops down to lay in the grass.

You watch him laying for a minute quizzically. "Aemond! What are you doing? You will get your clothes all dirty!" You reach for his hand to yank him up, but instead, he yanks you down on top of him.

"The view is so pretty from here." He looks up at you, pushing a strand of hair behind your ear.

"Oh gosh, I'm squishing you!" You attempt to get up, but Aemond sits up quickly, pulling you completely in his lap, your thighs on either side of his hips.

"A little thing like you? Squishing me? Preposterous. " He nuzzles his nose into your chin, eliciting a giggle.

"You're not so big yourself." You grip his waist and squeeze to accentuate your case.

"You'd be surprised, sweetness." He places gentle kisses along your jaw. "At how big I can get," He wraps his arms around your back, pulling your chest flush to his.

"Oh, Aemond......" Your voice is unsteady. "I don't think Daddy would like this"

"He doesn't need to know.." He trails kisses down your neck."Besides, every once in a while, you should do something you like. No matter what others think"

He watches your face contort in thought as you think over his words. His patience growing thinner and thinner. He grips your hips, gently grinding your heat on his lap.

"Indulge me," He whispers, "For just a little while"

You feel a build-up of heat curling up in your lower stomach and find it hard to say no to that eye that looks at you pleading.

"Just a little while longer, sweetness," Aemond pants heavily into the crevice of your neck.

Your hips start to grind against him, putting more pressure on that sweet nerve between your legs.

"Such a bad girl for me," Aemond growls as he nips at your bottom lip, gently pulling at it.

"I'm still a good girl, aren't i?" You worriedly ask. It's so important to you that you are a good girl.

"Mmmm.. yes, of course. " Aemond huffs between labored breathes. He leans back from you slightly to unbutton his trousers.

"Aemond?" You watch as his hands move beneath you, making quick work of the fabric as he pulls his hardened cock out and into his hand.

"Shhhh sweetness." He pumps himself with one hand as he cups your cheek in the other. "I've got you, I'll take care of you"

Aemond pushes up your dress and pushes open the split between your drawers, his breathing getting heavier with each touch. He runs his hand along your slick folds and smiles.

"You're all ready for me, sweetness." He gently bites at your chin, and a rush of warmth swirls in your stomach as he brings his finger to rub at your pearl in quick circles.

"A-Aemond!" You feel completely overwhelmed as that warmth in your stomach seems to be building, Your jaw is slack, and your breathing is forced.

"I've got you. Shhhhh... I've got you, " Aemond whispers to you as he continues to rub on your nub. As the pressure in your stomach continues to build, you can feel Aemonds' other hand on your hip, pushing you down as you feel immense pressure.

"Ah, Aemond!" You squeal the feeling of being split open is intense, and you now know what is happening.

"It's ok, sweetness, it's ok." He continues to rub your nub with his thumb as he pushes you further and further down his shaft.

"Fuck..." Aemond groans and closes his eye. "Oh sweetness, you're so perfect"

"Ahh, ahh." You hiss, the stretching is erotic and uncomfortable at the same time. A fullness that feels good and a stinging that hurts.

"Just a little further... Oh yes, " He groans loudly as your ass is flush against his thighs. "There you are." He pulls your face down towards him and kisses you with a passion you had only read about in stories.

you kiss him back while intermittently panting into his mouth. This sensation, this mix of pain and pleasure, was like nothing you had ever experienced.

He grasps at your hips and guides you to grind against his lap.

"See? You're still a good girl." He pants,"My good girl"

"Your good girl, Your good girl." You chant like a prayer as his movements intensify.

Aemond buries his face in your chest as he maneuvers you on his lap. Like a rag doll he fucks into you taking what he has long desired.

"Cum for me pretty girl" He begs as he grinds you against him faster his thighs shaking with the intensity.

You moan and pant loudly that feeling in your bottom stomach rising like it is going to spill over and when it does and your eyes roll back into your head Aemond loses all control.

He tightly squeezes your hips, bringing you down upon him with force. "Gonna fill you up." He grunts."Make you mine, " he slams you down harder and tilts his head back. "I want you full of me." He loudly makes a noise somewhere between a moan and a whimper.

"Ask me for it," he demands

Your brain is so foggy from your orgasm and the momentum of his thrusts that you stare at him blankly.

"Ask me to fill you." He grunts, and his face contorts. He looks almost like he is in pain. "Please, sweetness,"

"Oh please fill me Aemond Please" You coo.

He pulls you down roughly twice more before spilling into you with a loud groan, laying his back down on the grass as he slowly continues to push himself into you, riding out his orgasm.

Aemond lays back with a smile on his face. Your father would have no choice but to marry you to him now. The shame of being an unwed mother in a town like this would be unbearable, and if somehow he didn't get you pregnant this time?

Well, there was always next time.

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#ewan mitchell verse #aemond targaryen #modern aemond fanfiction #modern aemond/ you #modern aemond x reader #aemond x reader #aemond fanfiction #dark aemond x reader #aemond #hotd aemond #aemond smut #ewan mitchell fanfic #ewan mitchell #ewan nation #aemond targaryen x reader #jess fics #my modern war criminal bf

[alexiela73]

Hi!!!! <3 Is it possible to get another Ramattra headcanon, maybe a little angsty? Like...what are his final days with human s/o like?

Absolutely!

Ramattra

The life the two of you lived together had so many beautiful moments

Ramattra was the first omnic to get married- something the two of you decided to pursue a few years after getting together

While the two of you never had kids, you both travelled all over the world helping to repair omnics and try to make peace between the omnic and human societies

The two of you spent the last fifteen years in a house on a small acreage, as you started to get older. It was your first house together, and holds so much love

Despite how the years wore on, and how you continued to age, it never mattered to Ramattra how many gray hairs or wrinkles you had. He loved you, intensely

He was used to now helping you up and down the stairs, letting you nap and cleaning the house or taking care of the property. Your favorite thing to do together was to look through the albums you'd made of all the places the two of you had gone together

Ramattra knew your time was coming. You'd reached the ripe old age of 86, and while humans could have lived longer, Ramattra felt it- the shift in your life force

It was like watching the dying embers of a fire trying to stay alive

You had very little energy left

Ramattra would sit in the bed with you, a tray in your lap, and feed you while crooning soft words

You slept more often now, and Ramattra would gently stroke your hair and hum to you

Seeing you so fragile and small broke his omnic heart

The two of you had talked about this many times- Ramattra had felt like the years were passing far too fast. For him...he would never age or die like you.

You had held him at the time, as he struggled with the reality of knowing someday you would be gone...and he'd be all alone

Now he held you. It felt selfish, the way he held so tight to you, praying that you'd live another day

Each breath though clearly caused you discomfort, and he could only gently press a damp cloth to your head and hold your hand

It felt like the both of you knew when the moment came

"Ramattra," you had rasped, looking at him with half lidded eyes. As he leaned his face into your soft, delicate hand, he watched as the corners of your eyes scrunched as you smiled. "I want you to remember that I love you. So much...and that the world...is not a evil place."

"Shhh, y/n," Ramattra had said softly. "Save your strength."

A low chuckle had left you. "My darling...I have no strength left to save. You know...as well...as I that...this is it," you choked, coughing a bit.

Ramattra smoothed your hair, leaning in to press his forehead to yours. "I'm not ready yet," he said softly. "Please."

"No one... is ever ready, Ramattra. This is part...of humanity. And this...is why I have appreciated....everything I've had with you. When I'm dead...I will live on...in your memories," you said, voice weakening with every word, your breaths drawing out. "And carry... your love with me...always."

A part of him knew you were right, though that made accepting this no easier. Ramattra was scared of you going though, without knowing how much you meant to him. But what words could describe enough how you meant to him?

His voice sounded choked, even as you closed your eyes. "I love you, y/n...thank you. Thank you for being...my home," he said softly.

The way your lips pulled, eyelashes fluttering...your smile, no matter how small, was so beautiful to him.

"Thank you...for being...mine....." you whispered.

It was minutes before your heart gave way. Ramattra knew the moment it stopped beating.

For him, it was impossible to understand the kind of anguish he felt, the loss and grief, the love...

After all, he had never expected to fall in love with a human

And yet...given the chance to repeat it all... Ramattra knew he'd fall in love with you all over again, if only to hold your hand one more time

He ended up burying you beneath your favorite tree

Even years later, he visits it every day, and leaves flowers on your birthday and anniversary

#Ramattra #Ramattra x Reader #Ramattra Overwatch #Ramattra Headcanon #Overwatch #Overwatch headcanon #Overwatch x Reader #Overwatch Angst

[willowser]

i want to write this fic that's like — cowboy bakugou, late 1800's style LOL

with him as a leeeeetle bit older, spent his life in cattle drives, wanted to be a marshal at some point, but his health and injuries from his younger days made it hard 🥺 he doesn't settle down, doesn't have any kids though he's in his mid-30's, and — one day he gets a letter that toshinori dies.

it's really supposed to be deku's responsibility, but only god knows where he is. probably got the news and can't accept it, too chicken-shit to face it. yeah, it tears katsuki up inside, too, but someone has to stick around in musutafu and help figure out his estate, the ranch.

help figure out you.

toshinori married in his late age, an ad he put out on the paper. bought you, as katsuki has always said, though the older man would always just smile wryly at the comment, look around at his extensive acreage, his horses and cattle, and he'd say,

"i only want someone to share this with, young man, do you understand?"

and he didn't. he really, really didn't. especially because you were younger than even bakugou, fresh-faced, hardly knew how to cook anything decent or how to ride a horse. waste of money, in katsuki's eyes.

but when he arranges his feelings right, he meets you on the ranch and — you're scared, because you're now a widowed woman and everyone and their mama wants a piece. you have the money, now, to upkeep the place but you've never done it by yourself. have learned more in the few years you've been married but it's a big place, a big responsibility.

and when katsuki hears that the bank wants to take it all from you, he's all, "over my dead fuckin' body."

it's really all deku's responsibility, since he and toshinori were closer, but you need someone now. and if bakugou has to stay in the house with you and help with the ranch, make sure no one comes to bother you—

then he'll do it. because that's what the old man would've wanted.

#HE'S GRUMPY !!! #dealing with all his own grief from all might's death 🥺 #he comes to visit the first day and you invite him in and he has to excuse himself to the bathroom #because he's GONE and bakugou HATES IT #hates that he wasnt here #hates that DEKU isnt here #hates that the leeches in town are trying to dismantle everything toshinori built #just for profit #but what he hates MOST OF ALL #is YOU #when you light all the candles in the house after the sun falls #when you cook for him and it's much better than he remembered #when you peek into his room to tell him goodnight #when you're in his dreams doing the same — only you're inviting yourself into his bed #and he's letting you #WAAHHH #grumpy older cowboy I HATE HIM #blast from the past: hiatus q #✿ willow writes #✿ thoughts: bakugou #✿ theme: cowboy bakugou

[rafedaddy01]

I cant believe out of all places my parents chose Outer Banks to move too. This place is a shithole, except for the nicer part of town, where the rich live. This place is completely different from where i grew up, a small town In California called Nevada City. Man it was wonderful! the town pop was about 3,000 people and everybody knew everybody. it was home. but this place... in lack of better words; is a complete shithole.

of course my parents being the rich pricks they are, stayed back home to "deal with business" whatever the hell that means for them. so im staying with an old family friend of theirs, great! not..

the driver picks me up from the airport and as we drive to said family friend i admire the scenery. Houses, boats, shacks, homeless people, shops, that was all in the "poor side" as it call it, eye roll, i never enjoyed being rich. i was born into it. my father on the other hand was a made man. He opened up quite a few banks in our little city and recently they have evolved into bigger states/cities, hence the move.

we lived in a big manor on a secluded acreage back home, thats weird to say, i guess its not home anymore. we were close enough to town for me to be able to pop in everyday and work at the local museum, we always had lots of tourists come in and i enjoyed telling people about the history of our town.

i sigh in the back seat of the limo as i think about was used to be home and prepare to make acquaintance with the kings of the island. The Cameron's. my parents told me a little bit about them since id be staying with them until mom and dad could come down here permeantly.

There was Ward Cameron, the father. Rose Cameron, the stepmother. Rafe Cameron, the eldest. Sarah Cameron, the middle child. and Wheezie, the youngest of the bunch. They seemed noraml enough and i was kind of excited to make some new friends.

we pulled up to the house and man oh man. Ive seen some houses in my day but heck! seeing all the worn out building on the way over? the hosue has two stories and is white, it almost looks like the white house!

my eyebrows raise to my forehead as we drive up the long driveway and stop at the front of the house. the driver comes to my side and opens the door, ugh i hate being waited on, "thank you, Scott. You dont have to worry about my bags, i can carry them" i tell the older gentleman who looks like he should be in a retirement home with his white hair that is swiped back and covered by that redicioulse chauffer hat and that outift that sits loosely on his visible scrawny bones. "No worries Miss, Morales, its my pleasure." he smiles as he wobbles over to the trunk and takes my luggage.

"You must be Avery!" a feminine voice beams as she embraces me in a hug. Ugh, i do not like being touch. This town is just getting better and better. "im Rose Cameron, welcome to our home" she introduces herself and i take a step back examining her, she has blonde hair that comes down to about her shoulders and its pampered to perfection. She wearing a baby pink dress that hug's her curves magnificently. she has gold dangly earrings on and black thin heels, the kind that a sophisticated women would wear, shes beautiful but theres something about her i dont really like. "yes, hello" i smile back at her. "thank you for being so kind as to take me in" i tell her "oh nonsense, your parents are lovely people and we told them wed be happy to let you stay with us. as long as it takes"

As long as it take? what is that supposed to mean. does rose know something i dont, should i be worried?

i scratch the thoughts from my mind as we step into the estate, its beautiful, the twisting stairwell that leads upstairs and the gigantic chandelier that dangles in the middle. "wow, very beutiful Mrs. Cameron" i say as i take a look around "oh please, call me rose" she smiles, theres a viscousness in her smile, its fake. Ive seen it before, from my own mother none the less.

"let me show you to your room, the driver has already set your luggage in there" she says as she leads me up the staircase.

we walk into one of the many guest rooms, but this one is mine. the walls are a shade of gold and its oddly comforting. theres a large king bed in the center of the wide room and a balcony that hovers over the green grass and water thats seen in the distance. The bathroom is in the room and seems to connect to the room next door, i wonder whose room that is, probably another guest room.

"ill let you settle in and once your done you can come down for dinner and meet the rest of the family" rose smiles at me as she shuts the door and lets me settle.

i take a momment scanning the room, theres not much in it besides a closet, a bed, some nightstands, and curtains that fall along the frames of the windows. its much bigger than my room back home. i decide not to unpack everything, i dont plan on being her long, i hope.

I decided to take a shower, i was in a plane for 15hrs overall.

I wash myself with some shampoo that is in there, it smells like cedarwood and ginger, an odd mix but also strangly comforting. i lather my hair and body and let the hot water relax my built up tension.

once i hop out of the shower i wrap a towel around my body and head through my bedroom door, i stop and stare at the door across from mine, i wonder whose room that is.

i walk up to my luggage and pull out a mini plaid green skirt with a matching top, i dry my hair and let the pin-straight black strands flow down my back

i step out of the room at about 7:20pm and head downstairs, the smell of chicken infests my nostrils and my stomach grumbles, i hadnt even realized i didnt eat much today. i stride into the dining room and everybody is in there seats, except for two open ones, mine and i presume rafes, whose is empty.

"ah, there she is!' Ward speaks as he stands and rounds the table to me "Avery Morales, Sir" i say extending my hand. Ive learned my manners from talking to my father, he is a kind man when he wants to be but money changed him. he and my mother have both become vicious and would do anything to fill their wallets. its sad really, we used to be the perfect little family in Nevada and we still are, were, but with much darker secrets now, thats a story for another time.

"Im happy to welcome you to our humble abode Miss Morales" he says pulling my chair out for me. The empty chair is beside me while who i presume are sarah and wheezie sit across from me and ward and rose sit on opposite ends of the table.

"Im sarah" the girl to the left in front of me says. She is gorgeous, she has a tan that sticks to her skin like its her natural color and dirty blonde hair that flows down her shoulders and chest, her lips are plump and full and her eyes sparkle with kindness, i like her. "Wheezie" peeps the little girl next to her, shes young, maybe 13 or 14. She had black hair thats braided in two braids and glasses that frame her face.

"lets eat!" rose cheers as we dig in

we finish dinner and i insist on helping clear the table but ward says they have staff that do that and that i should get some rest because ive had a long day. Hes right im exhusted. I got to know sarah quite a bit, wheezie doesnt talk much. it seems like nobody really notices her and they all just ignore her whenever she trys to speak up. But sarah told me about the island a little bit and even said shed introduce me to some friends tomorrow.

I walk up the stairs and head for my room but i couldnt help thinking about the empty chair next to mine. why wasnt he at dinner? does he not live here, does he even exist. My mind is heavy with thoughts as i walk to the bathroom and turn the doorknob, that weird, i didnt leave the light on

"oh my god! im so sorry!' i squeal as i cover my eyes.

There is Rafe. standing. naked. in my bathroom, well, our bathoom. I guess i found out whose room is next to mine.

Pt2

@f4ll-for-you @v21sstuff @rafeysworldim19 @baby19sthings @eventualoptimism @drewstarkeysbae @sevenwivesofrafecameron @rxfecameronsslut @findapenny @r1vrsefx

#outer banks #rafe cameron #drew starkey #smut #dark rafe cameron #outerbanks #drewstarkey #drewstarkey smut #rafecameron #fanfic #rafe fluff #dark rafe

[hometoursandotherstuff]

17th Century Cornish Hall in the village of Hold, UK is for sale for $1,604,812 / € 1,250M. It has 6bd and is on 3 acres of land.

The living room has an old brick feature wall (do you love the contrast of the big flatscreen?). There seems to be a door in the wall that they blocked off.

I like the look of this room, better- that single tree down the middle of the ceiling, plus the roughly hewn beams give it the 17th cent. look. Plus, I think that the floor is original.

What a great office- love the painted old plaster and fireplace.

Love the ancient look- notice the patina on the stairs. Old plaster painted red, a giant tree down the middle of the ceiling, and an original stone floor.

The kitchen has a vintage look and where the wood burning stove is, looks like the original cooking hearth.

This railing was intricately carved.

The current owners have elegantly dressed the rustic main bedroom.

This is cool- they kept the original brick wall, and put up a glass shower so you can see it.

In these 2 bds the walls & ceilings were redone, but they left some of the original wood beams and floors.

Modern bath with vintage look elements, plus original architectural features.

Modern finished attic bedroom.

Large patio at the back of the house.

You can see the acreage in these photos.

#historic hall UK #17th cen. home UK #houses #house tours #old house dreams #home tour

[snowbellewells]

MY CSSNS23 MC: "Carolina Moon" {prologue}

**Thank you SO MUCH to my event artist @eastwesthomeisbest for the absolutely amazing cover art she created (in much less time than I should have afforded her). I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it, and am thrilled to be able to put it with each update of my story. Also, I'm so grateful to have @xarandomdreamx as my beta for this fic as well, though I did not give her this prologue, so any mistakes here are absolutely and unfortunately mine! And thank you too to the @cssns as a whole for once again providing such a great event of which to be a part!!***

Here is my second submission to the @cssns23 event!! This one is a modern au of the Nora Roberts novel and subsequent tv movie Carolina Moon. The main female character in the movie is psychic/clairvoyant (I’ll admit, I’m not too sure about the distinction between the two) and I thought her visions and what she goes through in connection to them made a nice real-world parallel to Emma’s magic. (There’s also a scene in here where the male lead says something that I could so perfectly see Killian saying to Emma… I just cannot wait to get to that point!)

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy this romantic thriller with some murder mystery elements.  There are some instances of abuse and violence in here though - which I feel like I should mention, since that’s a little darker than my typical style. Most of them are in flashbacks of Emma’s past, or in visions she has of victims, more than in the actual present day plot; still I wanted to make people aware before we got too far.

Please enjoy! (I’d love to hear what you think.)

Prologue

July 1993

The water at their hideaway always feels so good. She could sink into it until her head slips below the surface and never, ever want to come up for air. It’s cooler, more luxurious than even the rich, satiny sheets on the trundle bed those rare nights when she gets to sleep over at Rose’s. Emma Swan’s gangly, 13-year-old limbs slice through the murky water as if the constant humidity and sultry air of Storybrooke, South Carolina can’t penetrate here in their little forest haven. She knows, of course, logically, that the real world isn’t all that far away. The shaded pond she and Rose discovered two summers ago is just a short trek into the woods at the furthest edge of Rose’s family’s boundless acreage. Still, it feels removed enough to bring Emma a sense of peace and contentment she gains nowhere else.

Looking over her shoulder to the large, smooth boulder jutting out of the pond at the bank where they left their flip flops and cutoff denim shorts, she can see her best friend stretched out with her new book where they had spread their towels on the rock’s surface, just in the wash of warming sunlight that streams through the tree branches overhead. Rose’s flawlessly creamy pale skin is prone to burning, but at the moment her friend seems willing to take the risk for the benefit of lazing cozily to read as she dries in the sun after taking a quick dip. Shaking her head, Emma plunges back under, happy to stay in the chilly water a bit longer herself. She knew as soon as they’d met outside Rose’s house that afternoon, and she had seen that Rose held a new Boxcar Children book in her hand, that her friend would not be able to resist burrowing into those pages for long.

It’s funny, Emma supposes, but that’s exactly what bonded she and Rose Jones in the first place. They might seem different on the surface, but in the end, neither of them quite fit with everyone else, and so they gravitate to each other, and have ever since Emma first arrived in Storybrooke as an eight-year-old orphan. They are each willing to give the other at least one person who takes them as they are and with whom they won’t have to pretend. Emma doesn’t care if Rose wants to read quietly and tell her about the stories she’s already finished instead of picking out dresses for the next cotillion class or preening in front of the mirror, practicing batting her eyelashes to charm boys or bragging to Emma about which ones she intends to kiss. Her sister Ruby, who shares the same thickly shining, burnished mahogany hair and pretty pink lips but little of her fraternal twin’s calming, gentle personality, does enough of that for the both of them. Their mother, a former debutante and southern belle, delights in the one daughter’s traditional coquettishness, and despairs of the other’s shyness. Cora Jones is a true throwback to another time who wants nothing more than to see both her daughters marry well and retain their places atop the social ladder. Emma could not care any less about such details; she is already clinging to the very bottom rung of such a social structure - if she and the so-called guardians with whom she lives are on the ladder at all. In turn, Rose doesn’t mock Emma for her thick, dark-framed glasses or secondhand clothes, nor does she cringe away from the “fits” that sometimes take hold of her friend, making strange, disturbing scenes Emma can’t understand flash across her mind with such intensity they sometimes knock her off her feet. Emma knows Rose’s mother and sister find her an unsuitable and embarrassing companion for Rose, but she is eternally grateful her friend seems able to see the best in anyone - even a lost girl nobody else wants - and so blithely acts as though she has no idea about the rest of her family’s opinions.

Cringing even while still submerged in the pond’s depths and practically invisible, Emma tries not to think of her unwanted visions. Her strict, hypocritical, and more than a bit deranged, foster father claims she’s possessed - and more than once has taken her episodes out of her hide. The man swears he’s beating the devil out of her and putting the fear of God in Satan’s place when he takes the thick leather strap to her shoulders, back and legs until she bleeds, but Emma has already lived long enough in a cruel and unfair world to know that his violence and “discipline” have less to do with parenting and concern for her soul, and more to show for his own twisted mind and overindulgence in the bottle. She wants to hide her spells from him, but when they come on her so abruptly and with such power, they are impossible to miss. She can’t fathom how a person like him was deemed fit to take in and care for a child, but mistreatment and injustice seem to be her lot in life thus far, and so she simply grits her teeth and survives.

It’s different though when the spells happen around Rose; the slight brunette merely rests a cool, steadying hand on Emma’s forehead or her arm until they pass, then she helps Emma stand until she feels in control again, listens as she attempts to make sense of whatever she’s seen, and most importantly… believes her. If only she could stay in the huge house Rose’s family calls home. She’d cook, clean, do chores, even stay in the servant’s quarters; Emma isn’t picky. It would still be a far sight safer than the situation she has in the rundown shack with the monster who’d been deemed her caretaker. Barring that, she would honestly rather live wild in these woods and survive off the land. She knew which plants and berries were safe to eat; Graham, her first friend, once a fellow orphan now happily adopted, had shown her ages ago, as well as taught her how to fish. It wouldn’t be easy, but she’d get by, and at least no one would lay a hand on her again.

This afternoon, those eerie images she sometimes has seem far away as she splashes up out of the water, trying to arc playfully like a mermaid as she breaks the surface. Drawing in a big gulp of air after staying underwater so long, Emma startles at the sound of teasing laughter, and whirls to see three figures on the bank where she and Rose left their shoes and shorts. 

“Well, look here,” calls out a taunting voice that never fails to set Emma’s nerves on edge. “It’s the baby beached librarian and her drowned rat friend!” None other than Emma’s nemesis, Killian Jones, crows from his vantage point on dry land.

Rose sits up ramrod straight, book still in hand and annoyed scowl on her face at Killian and his friends’ interruption to the quiet peace of their sanctuary. She isn’t genuinely angry, though; for all that she and her sister share little in common, she and her two-years-older brother are affectionately close. “Shut up, Killy!” she shoots back, throwing in the childhood nickname they all know he hates. “Who asked you to come looking anyway?”

The boy standing next to Killian speaks up next, making Emma scowl just as playfully as Rose had moments before. Graham Hunter might as well be her big brother; he’s the closest thing she’s had to family since her parents were lost in a car crash and she was thrown into the foster care system. Be that as it may, he and Killian Jones are thick as thieves, and he’ll give her a hard time for all he’s worth while in the presence of his buddy. “We just wanted to swim,” he calls across the water to the two girls, smirking at Emma, who now stands in the water with one hip jutting out and hands planted on her waist. “How were we supposed to know you two were infesting it?”

“Ha!” Emma jeers back, the affront plain in her voice; despite the fact that the entire routine is like a practiced girls-versus-boys exchange they’ve all engaged in countless times. There isn’t much else to do for entertainment in their sleepy little one-horse town. “You idiots know this is Rose’s and my hideaway, fair and square!”

“Well, Rose’s anyway,” a third voice cuts in snidely.

The cruel jab reminds Emma once more that to most folks she is just a charity case, quite possibly only included in anything at all because of her friend’s kind heart, and at the intentional slight, cuts her gaze to the third member of the boys’ little crew, skulking a step back in the shadows behind where Killian and Graham stand, as he always does. Her green eyes narrow to slits in genuine dislike and suspicion. Where before her animosity was largely for show, when they land on Walsh Ozman, it is all too real.

She has never understood why the other two boys - jokers and annoyances though they may be, but good guys when it comes right down to it - hang out with Walsh at all.  Where Graham and Killian are much more cut from the same cloth - athletic, outgoing, well-liked and pleasant - Walsh is a splindy, sniveling character, complaining and whining whatever their little trio gets up to. He lives not far from Emma’s foster father’s cabin with his single mother - a bushy-haired redhead who seems strangely overprotective and attached to her only child. Most people give the property a wide berth, except when high schoolers teepee it the whole month of October, and the general town consensus is that Zelena Ozman might be a witch and to steer clear. Still, beyond all of that, Emma might have been able to look past the boy’s circumstances and see him for himself - she of all people knew the gift it was not to be judged by where a person came from - if Walsh hadn’t simply given her “the willies”. Even standing too close to him made the fine hairs at the nape of her neck stand on end - and not in the way that nearness to Killian sometimes did; an altogether much more pleasant tingle, even if she was just as unable to explain one as the other.

“We could take their things,” Walsh suggests, holding up the threadbare, faded jeans Emma had left on the bank. “Make them walk back in their skivvies.” The wicked smile on his face makes Emma’s stomach turn over sickly.

Something sharp flashes in Jones’ eyes, his nostrils flaring slightly and his head giving a subtle shake of dissent that Emma can see even at the distance she stands away from him. Protectiveness, chivalry, or maybe the honor of a southern gentleman passed down to him through generations of his impressive family line; whatever it is, it sparks to life in his eyes at that moment as he quashes Walsh’s mean-spirited suggestion in no uncertain terms. “That’s my little sister you’re talking about Oz,” he growls, smacking the worn material from the smaller’s boy’s hands, even if the article of clothing isn’t Rose’s at all.

Emma feels her breath rush back into her lungs, though she continues to watch the guys warily for whatever they might do or say next. Before long, they grow bored of standing around and move on, hollering out age old taunts of “Bye, losers” and “Hey, smell ya later” to Emma’s derisive snort and Rose completely ignoring them to flip open her book again.

However, even with the intruders gone, it seems as if the perfect comfort of their retreat has been shattered by the unsettling interruption.  Soon, Emma wades to the shore and Rose clambers down from her perch, to dress once more and return to the world outside. For a moment, as she refastens her jeans around her skinny waist, Emma feels a strange prickling along the fine hairs on her arms… like they’re being watched. She jerks around, searching the surrounding trees and brush, but can’t see or hear a thing.

Rose’s small hand takes hers, snapping Emma out of the moment. “What is it?” she whispers, only true caring in her voice. “Did you sense something?”

Emma nods, but can’t give her suspicions voice. Usually her visions are clearer than that - this had just been heavy breathing and like looking at herself and Rose through another person’s eyes, outside her own body.

Rose stooped to grab the little canvas bag she’d bought along with water bottles, towels, and a second book in it. “Hey, don’t worry, okay?” she offers, hopeful and kind as always. “You’ll figure it out. Wanna meet back out here tonight? Secret Sister bonfire?” she winks mischeivously. “I have to get to dinner now. You know how Mama hates it if I’m not washed up and properly attired for the evening meal - or a second late. But we can talk some more then, maybe you’ll remember more and it will be clearer.”

Emma nods gamely. “The stars’ll be beautiful by midnight,” she suggests. “And we’ll definitely have the place all to ourselves.”

“Since we were so rudely interrupted,” Rose chimes in with a giggle and roll of her eyes.

“Shake on it, pinkie swear,” they say together in practiced unison, executing a complex handshake that ends with their pinkies hooked together and wide, matching grins on both their faces.

“Thanks Rose,” Emma whispers sincerely, trying to speak around the lump in her throat as if it’s no big deal. “I’ll be out here as soon as I can sneak away.”

Rose, for her part, wraps her taller, golden-haired friend into a tight, momentary hug. “Hey, we’re Secret Sisters! You can count on me.  I’ll see you then!”

They part ways at the edge of the forest; Emma heading to the rundown cabin that serves as her nightmarish version of a home, and Rose to the pristine Jones family mansion standing tall over all the surrounding land. Rose looks back over her shoulder with a smile and wave that bolsters Emma, and the memory fades back into the haze of the past…

Eighteen years later….

September 2011

The blaring of the horn as a sports car whizzed by, barely missing the nose of Emma’s beat-up yellow VW where it had begun to edge out into the country intersection, jarred her back to the present with a gasp and painful jolt to her chest. Panting for a moment as she gripped the steering wheel, Emma tried to clear her head and calm the pounding of her heart at the near-miss.

‘Get it together,’ she berated herself. It might have seemed like only yesterday as she remembered that sunny afternoon at the swimming hole, but that day had been nearly two decades ago. She was a grown woman, had made a way for herself, fighting tooth and nail for every step forward, and she answered to no one. She had learned to stand up for her rights and her needs, to control her visions and use them for good, and had even served a special consultant for the Boston PD. But, more than all of that, she had come back to this place to find peace, to lay to rest the ghosts that had followed her everywhere else she’d gone in the years between, once and for all. If she expected others to leave the past in the past, she would first have to manage to do the same.

She’d had no way to know as she and Rose parted that afternoon with promises and plans for later that it would be the last time she would ever see her friend. Emma had harbored the pain and the guilt and the unanswered questions ever since. Finally, it was time to meet the gazes of all of those who had stared at her in suspicion before she’d been packed up and moved away once more, and it was time she found answers. She wasn’t the scared, whipped, mistreated adolescent she had been at 13. What she had lived through then was not her fault, nor was what had happened to Rose that muggy July midnight. 

And if she had to return to Storybrooke, South Carolina to lay that burden down… well, it was long past time she did.

Tagging a few who might enjoy: @cssns @searchingwardrobes @jennjenn615 @kmomof4 @laschatzi @whimsicallyenchantedrose @teamhook @revanmeetra87 @stahlop @jrob64 @apiratewhopines @wefoundloveunderthelight @eastwesthomeisbest @xarandomdreamx @sotangledupinit @justanother-unluckysoul @booksteaandtoomuchtv @kazoosandfannypacks @anmylica @motherkatereloyshipper @jonesfandomfanatic @elizabeethan @the-darkdragonfly @donteattheappleshook @xsajx @lfh1226-linda @winterbaby89 @hollyethecurious @darkcolinodonorgasm @resident-of-storybrooke @drowned-dreamer @optomisticgirl @tiganasummertree @spartanguard @therooksshiningknight @gingerchangeling @gingerpolyglot @blackwidownat2814 @blowmiakisscolin @let-it-raines

#cs ff #cs fanart #cssns23 #carolina mooon #prologue #nora roberts au #cs modern au mc

[sotwk]

Hello! I'm not sure if my question will meet the criteria you posted regarding asks/headcannons/fanfics (itz my first time hehe), but I gotta ask 😅: If Thranduil, his wife, and the 5 brothers had lived in the modern times, what would their lives be like (ex. jobs, lifestyles, modern interests, etc.)? Basically a modern au of sorts...? I understand if you do not answer my question if it really didn't meet the criteria, but if you do answer, thanks in advance!

MODERN AU: THE ROYAL FAMILY OF MIRKWOOD

The House of Thranduil

Modern AU set in the United States (this writer is American and doesn't want to embarrass herself speaking of other countries, lol)

Fair Warning: This entire family is ridiculously accomplished in this AU, but this is clearly fictional so just ride along the fantasy with me!

Apologies for the length and infodump style--my mind really ran off with this concept!

Thranduil, The Patriarch

Businessman/CEO and 4th generation landowner.

Land ownership currently includes 1 million acres of timberland around the West Coast.

Business holdings include logging, saw mills, wineries, and forest-product manufacturing companies that employs thousands of employees.

Attended Wharton School to study business but dropped out in his third year when his father passed; (reluctantly) took over the company at 21 years old to prevent it from being seized by his father's scheming partners.

Met and fell in love with Maereth, a classmate at Wharton, but she was already in a relationship with someone else.

Continued to pursue her over the course of 10 years until they finally wed right before he turned 30.

His family home is a 2,000-acre ranch in Northwest Oregon, but he travels constantly all over the country.

During the economic downturn, saved the business and his people's livelihood by selling off a third of the family's acreage.

Refuses opportunities to expand in favor of maintaining fair wages for his employees and ethical and environmentally sound practices.

Personal hobbies include breeding and racing horses, outdoor activities, wine-collecting, and travel.

Despite rubbing elbows with powerful, rich businessmen like himself, he despises that crowd and spends only as much time with them as necessary for business.

His closest friends are the folks in his small hometown and the employees who work alongside him.

Maereth, The Matriarch

Born to a lower-middle class family from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Father was a construction laborer and mother was a part-time receptionist.

The middle child and only daughter; has 3 brothers.

Only one in her family to attend and finish college.

Practically engaged to her boyfriend at the time she met Thranduil.

Despite her rejecting Thranduil's advances and professions of love because of her existing relationship, she felt attracted to him and could not bring herself to forget him. They maintained a friendship after Thranduil dropped out of Wharton and moved back West.

Once her relationship with her boyfriend ended, Thranduil resumed courting her, but she rejected his marriage proposal out of a desire to pursue a career on her own.

Started her own company and ran it for several years before selling it at a large profit. Used the money to pay off her family's loans and help her parents retire.

Was finally won over by Thranduil's persistence and obvious devotion, and agreed to marry him.

Gave birth to their five sons over the course of a single decade.

Raised her children as a stay-at-home mom until they all reached their teens.

Currently sits on the board of the family's corporation and serves as the Chief HR Officer.

Chairs the family's private foundation that gives millions to charitable causes annually.

Is a talented crafter, craftsman, and builder, more so than her husband and most of her sons (except for Mirion), with enough skill to complete simple remodels on her own. She is the ultimate DIYer who dives eagerly into manual labor, which is one of the things Thranduil admires most in her.

Is also a successful gardener, able to keep flourishing backyard gardens that bear flowers, fruits, and vegetables of different kinds.

Spends most of her free time on endless home improvement projects or traveling as needed to visit her sons.

Mirion, eldest son - The Heir

The dutiful son who accepted his role as the eventual heir to the company. Started shadowing his father as a teen.

Married to his high school sweetheart, with whom he has two children (so far the only grandchildren of Thranduil and Maereth).

Lettered in 3 high school sports: baseball, football, and track, but discontinued sports in college to focus on academics.

Holds a degree in materials engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Upon marrying, settled his family at a ranch house in Oregon to stay close to his parents and majority of their holdings.

Started his own construction company that eventually became a part of the family conglomerate.

Was a stay-at-home dad for several years to allow his physician wife to return to her small town practice.

Attends many high-profile social engagements on behalf of his parents.

The ultimate dad: very involved in his kids' lives and is beloved by their friends; their home is a popular hangout for the neighborhood kids.

Constantly hit on by single moms and dads; unfortunately for them, he is singularly obsessed with his wife.

Had a very brief stint as a commercial model during his college years, and agents often suggest he return to it--but he has zero interest.

Very down-to-earth and a homebody outside of work. Leans towards introversion.

Favorite past times: DIY projects around his house, fixing up old cars, riding his horses, playing with his dogs, and having neighbors over for big backyard BBQs.

The closest thing the family has to a cowboy. The only one of his brothers to reside in a rural area and the only one besides their parents to own and keep horses.

Turhir, second-born son - The Soldier

Knew early on that he wanted to travel the world and serve his country as a soldier in the armed forces.

Enlisted in the US Navy straight out high school and became a SEAL.

Joined DEVGRU (Seal Team Six) where he became the officer of an assault squadron.

Has been in back-to-back tours of duty since his first deployment at age 19.

Has a running count of 10 combat tours, which would have been more if not for an entire year sidelined while he recovered from a serious spine injury that almost left him paralyzed.

Is quietly the most decorated Navy SEAL in history, with commendations that include two Silver Stars, three Bronze Stars, five Purple Hearts, the Navy Cross, and the highest honor: the Medal of Honor.

The perpetual nomad/couch surfer and the only brother not to own his own residence.

Was cheated on by his girlfriend while he was away on deployment. Never recovered from the heartbreak and has had no serious relationships since.

Favorite past times: Training for triathlons (running, swimming and biking), spending time with his brothers, reading novels.

Has competed in the Ironman World Championship and Badwater Ultramarathon.

Consumes paperback novels like water; buys them from used book stores and then donates to libraries afterward.

Frequently does hands-on volunteer work for charities like Habitat for Humanity and local food banks.

Suffers from PTSD and depression, which he manages with medication and regular therapy.

Absolutely detests social media and refuses to engage in any of it.

Avoids press attention like a plague. Does not attend big social functions with his family unless begged to by his mother.

Stays so far away from the limelight, the press/media sometimes forgets he is part of Thranduil's famous family.

Arvellas, middle-born son - The Genius

A bonafide genius with an IQ of 165, tested when he was only 12 years old; was subsequently accepted into Mensa.

Although he was a clearly gifted child, his mother declined to accelerate his education or place him in a different school from his brothers. She believed it was more important for him to enjoy as normal a childhood as possible.

Started college at Stanford University at the fairly typical age of 17, but completed his premed degree within two years and was a Doctor of Medicine by 26.

Not a practicing physician since he has instead devoted himself to a career in medical research, specifically in developing targeted treatments for aggressive cancers.

In addition to his MD, he holds graduate degrees in biochemistry and biophysics.

Has more trophies and accolades than all his brothers combined, all of them for intellectual achievements in various fields.

Holds over a dozen patents for different scientific devices, processes, and formulas.

A polyglot who speaks 8 foreign languages conversationally, including Spanish, Mandarin, German, Italian, French, Arabic, Hindi, and Japanese. Once he has gained fluency in one language, he immediately starts studying another.

Also speaks at least a couple of constructed languages from sci-fi/fantasy worlds.

On a dare from his younger brothers, took and aced the LSATs and was accepted to several Ivy League law schools, though he never attended.

Stays in athletic shape through biking, swimming, and playing tennis.

Reads (and collects) comics and graphic novels as often as he reads scientific journals.

Goes to at least one comic con a year as his schedule allows.

Wears a coat and tie even more frequently than his father does.

Has been with the same romantic partner for the last 5 years, but has shown no signs of getting married.

Gelir, fourth-born son - The Adventurer

A wildlife biologist and rehabilitation specialist with degrees in zoology and veterinary medicine.

Specialty is working with and rehabilitating wild mammals. His favorite animal is the wolverine, which was the first truly wild creature he had rescued and nursed back to health early in his career.

Prefers to do contract work with non-profit organizations, which enables him to continue travelling due to a a less-restrictive schedule.

Also does a lot of short-lived gig work on the side that allows him to engage in his hobbies while earning. Examples are working as a safari guide, a park ranger, or climbing instructor.

An avid (almost obsessive) outdoor adventurer who avoids spending time in cities as much as possible, and likes to explore new remote locations through camping and hiking.

A skilled climber with experience in nearly all types, including free soloing, mountaineering, and ice climbing.

A licensed scuba diver and skilled surfer and rafter. Swims like a fish.

Licensed to pilot private planes, drive motorcycles, and drive boats.

Most widely traveled member of his family, having been to every continent in the world, including Antarctica.

Only one in his family who can speak an African language (Swahili), which he likes to crow to Arvellas about.

Has made a conscious decision to keep/owns no pets, due to his frequent travels making him unable to properly care for one.

The eternal bachelor whose interest rarely goes beyond a few dates; has never been in a serious relationship and understands his restless wandering would make him a terrible boyfriend.

Was previously reluctant to put himself and his work in front of a camera, but realized (through his brother Legolas) that he can make a good amount of money by creating and posting videos on social media--money that would fund his travels and exploits.

Has been approached by major producers to host his own adventure show series, but prefers to work with independent filmmakers on legitimate documentaries.

Legolas, youngest son - The Celebrity

Professional footballer. Star striker of the US Men's National Soccer Team and the Seattle Sounders FC.

Career achievements include an Olympic bronze medal, an MLS (Major League Soccer) Cup, and a FIFA World Cup (a US first!).

The most independently wealthy of all the brothers due to multi- million dollar endorsements that include Adidas and Pepsi.

Has his own staff that includes a personal assistant, a publicist/social media manager, a private chef, and very hardworking sports agent.

A social media star with a following of 50 million in Instagram and still climbing, making him by far the most famous one in his family.

Is occasionally able to convince Gelir to do adventure/extreme sports-related videos with him, which always go viral. While Legolas does it for the fun and bonding experience, Gelir agrees to do it mostly for the money. On rarer occasions, he is able to convince Mirion to participate as well, when it has a fundraising aspect.

Diagnosed with both dyslexia and ADHD, which he manages with medication.

Aside from playing soccer and other traditional team sports, his hobbies include extreme/adventure sports such as skiing, snowboarding, windsurfing, mountain biking, skydiving, and paragliding.

Also a talented sketch and comic artist who occasionally shares his works online.

His favorite charitable activity is visiting children's hospitals, (including making sizeable donations), and has been requested several times by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Constantly being romantically linked to celebrities, less than half of which are actually true.

Receives a lot of attention from women and is frequently pursued by them. In all the "noise" on top of being in the public eye, he finds it challenging to find partners to genuinely fall in love with.

Tends to struggle with periods of loneliness, during which he seeks refuge in his family.

For more Thranduil/Mirkwood headcanons: SotWK HC Masterlist

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[dulcewrites]

AB!Elvis x black!reader with Him professing his love for her for the first time. 🥺if you have time.

The Closer I Get to You

Pairing: austin!elvis x black reader

Summary: A trip to Graceland cements Elvis’s feelings for you

Warnings: none, just sweet and fluffy

Requested: yes (thank you 🫶🏽)

A/N: ok so l wrote something and then scraped it (I actually might post it separately as a different thing). It was turning out to be long and a bit more antsy so I went back to the drawing board for something a bit softer. I hope y’all like this, and please keep sending in request

Masterlist

You’ve been staring at the outside of the house for a few minutes now. House is putting it lightly. Graceland is a mansion with sprawling acreage and a bevy of nice cars outside to match the opulence of the home. You can’t stop looking at the outside, a little mystified. 

“Y’know there’s an inside too, right?” Elvis teases as he leans against the Cadillac next to you. 

There are certain moments you get reminded that he’s a star. For example, like when you hear him on the radio at the bookkeeping shop you work at or when he calls you late at night after a show, recounting the new city he’s in. And now this giant structure in front of you that he calls home. Everyone wants a piece of him, and he’s here with you; giddy to show you a piece of his world.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen something so nice,” you say with a smile.

Elvis grins shyly at you and takes your hand in his. You can tell he’s proud of this place. This little visit had been weeks in the making. First wanting a time conducive for privacy to get you there, then working through busy schedules. Picking a time that was more peaceful, something Graceland rarely was these days. His dad, grandma, other family members, and friends were away, leaving just you two and his mom. When he said she’d be there, you didn’t know how to take it. Elvis clearly adores his parents, especially his mom, and to make anything less than a great first impression would be crushing to you. 

While walking up the stairs to the door, you use your free hand to fix your pin curls. Then rub your lips together, feeling the lipstick you applied while in the car. You’re nervous for obvious reasons. Being told you exist and were in his life is different from you be there in his house.

“Baby you look beautiful. Nothin’ to worry about,” he reassures you, squeezing your hand slightly. 

You nod and squeeze his hand back. He opens the door, and you’re hit with the smell of food and the sound of music. The living area that leads into the dining area is brightly lit and power blue. It was so him it hurt.

“Mama, please come greet your guest,” Elvis calls out. 

Trying to distract yourself for your nerves, you pick up a bright red pillow that catches your eyes. You’re taken aback when you turn it over and see Elvis’s face stitched into it. With a laugh and your brows raised curiously, you show it to him. He sheepishly takes it from you and throws it back to the coach.

“Oh, look at you two,” a warm, southern voice interrupts the moment. The two of you turn around to see his mom there. 

Elvis pulls you into his side with a bright smile. The introduction goes much better than you thought it would. Mrs. Presley insists you call her Gladys, and she tells you that you’re even prettier than Elvis described. The evening starts with Elvis giving you a grand tour of the whole place. Each room more opulent and over the top than the rest. You even marvel at the gorgeous kitchen and bathrooms. His bedroom is the last stop on the tour. It’s spiraling and you sit on the bed with a smile. Despite the grandness of it all, its lived in and comfortable.

After the tour, Gladys pulls you to the living area with a ton of old items of Elvis’s youth.

“Mama really?” Elvis winces at the baby clothes in her hand.

“She doesn’t mind, do ya honey?” 

You shake your head enthusiastically, fighting back a smile. His cheeks get a bit pink when she gets the photos of him on the road taken recently.

Dinner was full of laughs and warmth, and Elvis keeps his hand on your thigh throughout the whole thing. It’s all so… intimate, and you expect yourself to clam up, but the moment never comes. You basically beg Gladys to let you do the dishes in return for the hospitality. She agrees but only if Elvis helps you. 

You wash, and he dries, like a well-oiled machine. For a period, there was a comfortable silence except for the small radio in the kitchen. 

“I liked seeing you here,” Elvis breaks the silence, glancing at you slightly. “Seeing you with mama, seeing you at the dinner table, seeing you upstairs.” 

He trails off at the end before letting out a laugh and shaking his head. He wants to say something more, you can tell. He takes a deep breath before continuing, focusing hard on the pot he’s drying as if it is giving him the will to go on.

“I like you in my life. I love you in my life.” He says slowly, as if he hopes you’re getting what he’s saying. “I love you.”

He ends the sentence firmly suddenly turning to you with puppy dog eyes.

Love. That’s a new word for you two. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You’re so entranced by his words you don’t even realize you haven’t said anything back. You watched his panic a bit while drying your hands on a towel

“You don’t have to say it back,” he rushes out. “I just couldn’t let you leave wi-“

You interrupt him by grabbing his face and pulling him down for a kiss. He seems a little shocked before wrapping his arms around your waist. You pull away rest your forehead to his.

“I love you too,” you murmur.

And with that you turn back to your dishes. Out of your peripheral you see him staring a bit dazed. He had not planned this love confession, let alone prepared himself for you feeling the same way.

“Those dishes aren’t gonna dry themselves Mr. Presley,” you nudge him playfully. He grins and turns back to the double sink.

“Yes ma’am.” 

Yeah, you can get used to this.

#austin!elvis x black!reader #austin!elvis x reader #elvis imagine #elvis x reader #elvis 2022 #austin butler elvis #austin butler imagine #requests #my writing #black!reader

[creativeashproductions]

The Old Therebefore // Luke Castellan

Part of the “The Threads the Bind Us” blurb collection

IN WHICH: Hex does the unthinkable and creates a successful adult life. Or Hex has made peace with the ending of her former relationship with Luke. Or thought so when suddenly Hex is sitting on her acreage porch reminiscing with him on their teen years and the interlude between Luke leaving and this moment.

Warnings: Swearing, angst, May’s mental state, and nostalgia.

Pairing: Luke Castellan x fem!reader (nicknamed Hex)

Words: 2.2k

Part of the “The Threads that Bind Us” blurb collection

A/N: Divider comes from @firefly-graphics.

@websterss Julieeeee look what I did!

Masterlist

It was the fifth anniversary of that night. 1,826 days, give or take, since the life you intricately built imploded. Even in the years following Luke’s disappearance from camp, the bitterness that had coated your love for him hadn’t kept you from your promise. Unlike Luke, you honoured your promises. So once the agony and heartbreak had dulled, you set out from camp to Connecticut.

The house was a pale blue with chipped white trim and flower beds just a tad overgrown. The massive tree in the front yard had a worn swing attached to the thickest branch that swayed either by the wind or the memories of a young child. There was an indent on the porch exactly where Luke had described falling and breaking his collarbone. The steps had been slick from the January snowstorm that year.

It was the Castellan home. The lights were on, and a man sat on the porch steps unmoving. Even if the godly attributes didn’t give it away, the nose and his fingers tapping a specific melody on his thighs gave him away. Even his posture.

Hermes. God of Messengers, Travellers, and Thieves. Messenger of the Gods. Or Luke’s estranged father and bane of his existence.

“He-“ 

“—respectfully, Hermes, I don’t want to discuss your child. I’m not your therapist nor your friend.” You sternly informed the god. You didn’t spare him another look before striding up the porch to the front door. When your hand is raised to knock, the grip of a warm hand is wrapped around your wrist.

“Fine. But taking it out on his mother—“Hermes almost winced when you cast a glare upon his features.

“Unlike you, I am not entirely a self-absorbed little errand boy for Zeus. Nor do I abandon people I love, even if Luke did it first.” You spat his name out with barely restrained disgust, “I made a promise to help, and I intend to make good on that promise.”

Hermes let you wrench your wrist from his hand and rap three times on the house. The door opened, revealing a woman about 5 feet 5 inches tall with thick black hair streaked with grey strands and a smile on her face. The shattered expression in her eyes and the blankness of her face stole your breath. May Castellan was older but still the same woman in that worn picture Luke hid under his bunk mattress; it had disappeared along with its owner.

“Hello.” May breathed, blinking until an unsettling smile coated her features, “Are you here for the cookies?”

“I am.” You spoke, deciding to keep her as calm as possible. 

You toed off your boots beside the much smaller kid shoes stashed on the mud rack. The rubber sole of the Converse had a little stick man doodled on it. Luke doodled the same stick man on all the soles of his shoes to deter his siblings from swiping them.

“I made Luke’s favourite. He’s at a friend’s.” May breathed in a trance, and you wondered what year she thought it was.

Even without peeking into her mind, you could feel the splinters of her sanity cutting into your abilities. It was so fragmented that you genuinely worried if you had even a chance to mend anything.

“Mrs. Castellan, do you remember the doctor talking about new methods beyond medication and traditional therapy?” you gently asked, watching as she pulled a pan of cookies from the oven. The warmth of the appliance heated the room to almost an uncomfortable temperature.

The sight of dozens of pans of cookies around the room, varying in colour from severely underbaked beige to as dark and hard as a hockey puck. 

“Oh yes.” May hummed, keeping her brown eyes on the scuffed blue porcelain mixing bowl. 

“Would you be interested in trying a few sessions with me?” You questioned and found for the first time since coming that she was all there mentally.

“Would it help Luke?” It was a timid question that confused you, but nonetheless, you answered.

“Maybe.”

“Okay.”

Your eyes peered over her shoulder to the entrance of the kitchen, where Hermes was standing as quietly as possible. His eyes followed May as she puttered around the kitchen and wandered to the plush couch in the living room. The walls held pictures of Luke at different ages, until the forlorn one with barely a smile at nine years old.

“Here, love.” Hermes soothed, guiding May’s hands to the cup on the coffee table. It still held the paper and crayons with LC on the box in chicken scratch.

You saw the little touches that meant a much younger and more innocent version of Luke had been here. Did the memories of Luke haunt the halls of his house like he did at camp? 

While having Hermes there was the last choice you would have made you would just have to make do. He kept urging May to listen as he told her tales from his long life. She didn’t twitch when your fingertips caressed her temples, and you toed inside her mind.

You had spent an entire year in Westport, using every weekend to untangle the strings of May’s sanity. Hermes never failed to be there to distract her and help her from fighting it. It was an intensely slow and exhausting year, but by the end, the fractures of her mind had mended. Now, it was a beautiful Kintsugi in her mind.

You left Westport to build a new life. You attended college and found a job at an independent bookstore. You had your own house. Had a promising career you were proud of. You did fairly well.

“Can you get the door?” 

You hummed from your position on the rug in the living room to get back on your feet from tidying it up. You could quickly wave a hand and manipulate your energy to pick everything up, but you liked pretending to be a regular mortal. Your only worries were being on time for work and keeping up with hobbies.

“Got it!” 

Your lips twitched. You found Chris Rodriguez trying to wrangle his kid into the karate uniform. You gently pushed him further away on your trip to the front door.

“Rodriguez, it’s Friday.” You spoke gazing over your shoulder while your fingers twisted the lock open, “Flag Football Friday.”

“Shit!” Chris swore, scooping Axel into his arms and racing back to the stairs. Your laugh cut off when you finally looked at the person at the front door.

Genuinely, you felt the blood drain from your face. Standing there before you with longer curls and an ease you didn’t remember. It was one Luke Castellan in the flesh.

“Hey, Hex.” 

Luke faltered, peering beyond you to the frozen form of his brother holding the tiny cleats for a child. The child in question was listening intently to Clarisse.

“Now it’s only dirty if you get caught.”

“Chris, can you take Axel into the backyard and throw the football?” You questioned, refusing to look away from the man who shouldn’t be here.

You felt the fury from Clarisse’s direction and put your hand on Luke’s chest to push him out of the house. The door closed firmly, cutting off any view of your small family and life.

“How are you here? How are you alive? Aren’t you supposed to be Kronos’ vessel?” you demanded, crossing your arms and glaring at your ex-boyfriend.

Luke pushed his hands into his jeans. “Uh, I guess you guys haven’t kept in touch with camp.”

Your lips twisted, “No. The summer you left, I decided to take a page out of your book and leave.”

You caught the wince from the man and felt the slightest twinge of guilt at his reaction, but you had a right? Didn’t you?

“Is Annabeth here?” Luke asked, trying to look in the frosted glass of your bright blue door. All Luke had for communication was Iris-messaging and letters from his little sister.

“No,” you bluntly responded and elaborated out of pity, “Annabeth and Percy live in California now.”

“No way. Annabeth would never live in California! It’s too dangerous!” Luke adamantly replied, tensing his muscles. His body language took you back to his training sessions with the younger campers.

Your brows furrowed, “Oh! Shit, no, actually, Percy went missing before the Second Giant War happened. We found him at Camp Jupiter. It’s a Roman version of Camp Half-blood.”

It was rather unsettling how easy it was to revert to your old relationship with Luke. Revealing things you probably shouldn’t.

“Roman?” Luke questioned, tilting his head to the right like he had always done with his curious nature.

“Yeah. Anyway, the lovebirds attend New Rome University there. Annabeth alternates between school and travelling between Mount Olympus, New Rome and New York for her architecture work.”

“Oh.” Luke mumbled, peering at the ground, “I guess things have really changed.”

That soured your reminiscing, “Why are you here, Luke?”

“Chiron said I should start trying to repair my friendships with everyone. Can I come in?”

You gently glanced back to your house and found Clarisse stoically staring him down, “Honestly, it’s not a good idea. Clarisse would be very interested in teaching Axel about the importance of protein and using you like a skewer as an example.”

You watched Luke stumble before dropping to sit on the porch with a devastated look.

“I don’t know what happened between you leaving and now. When Ethan or I suppose Kronos, announced your disappointment, Annabeth looked everywhere for you. What made you stop?”

It was the one question you had wondered about for years: Why did he give up his plans and his servitude to Kronos? Why did he never come back? Why did he give you up so easily?

Luke twisted to peer off into the sunset, saying, “I went home to Westport. I had prepared myself for seeing my mom because it was necessary for the next part of the plan—“

“Dipping yourself in the River Styx,” you sarcastically respond, glancing over, “Ethan’s really got a big mouth.”

Luke tugged a blade of grass from the yard and started twisting it in his fingers.

“Imagine my surprise when I see the house has been repainted, the decorations and fixtures updated, and my mother preparing a feast in the kitchen with no cookie in sight.”

Your lips stretched, happy to hear May was thriving still. You really need to get back up to visit her.

“Good for her.” You sighed, dropping to sit beside him and watch the sunset with him. I last saw her three years ago at my college convocation.”

It was silent, and when he spoke, his voice cracked, “Why couldn’t I fix her?”

“I think it’s because May was never broken like Hermes described or Apollo claimed. I won’t lie and say her mind was perfect or just needed polishing. The memories were sharp, and the splintered remnants were the hardest puzzle, but I restored it enough. When Rachel became the Oracle of Delphi and the curse was fully lifted, whatever I hadn’t been able to help May restore snapped back into place.”

You wrapped your arms around your legs and rested your chin on your knees, staring at the field. You’d intentionally bought your property with an excellent commute to the urban areas but still having privacy.

“So, is Axel yours?” Luke asked, glancing over to you. His barely concealed question amused you the most.

“No. He’s Chris and Clarisse’s son. He’s the best part of them.” You replied, “He brings out the best in them, too. Clarisse is incredibly patient with him. Don’t let her hear, but she’s softer with him.”

“Clarisse as a mother.” Luke chuckled, mimicking your position, drawing his long legs to his chest. “That I didn’t see coming.”

“Clarisse wants another one, but Chris refuses. He wants to be married first.” You sighed, shifting to stretch out your legs.

“They aren’t married yet?” Luke laughed, peering over, “I genuinely thought they’d be the first to run to city hall.”

“Chris didn’t want to be married and not have you there for him.”

The conversation petered out, leaving neither an uncomfortable nor peaceful silence. The two of you simply existed in that space.

“Do you think we’d be together if I hadn’t left?” Luke murmured after a few minutes. He had watched Chris rushing the child to the car with Clarisse clenching the keys in her fist. Chris refused to look back at Luke, and Clarisse staunchly looked away to avoid storming over to beat him up.

“I don’t know.” You were truthful, but it didn’t mean it didn’t feel like someone had shoved a fire spot rod into Luke’s stomach and churned his insides, “Maybe we would have been, but I made peace and laid that possibility to bed a while ago.”

You stood up from the porch and brushed off your pants, “There’s a cottage on the property in the forest you can crash in. Stay as long as you want. Chris and Clarisse built a house a mile further ahead.”

“Do you live here alone?” Luke asked, puzzled by the size of the house and the extensive land. It took him an hour to walk from the bus station in town to the house.

“No, I don’t. Besides the Rodriguez-La Rue family, I have taken in orphaned demigods.” You replied gently, opening the front door. Sometimes, this is the pause in the journey to one of the Camps. It was a team effort between the Hephaestus children, Vulcan’s children, some of Hecate’s children, and me to make this place as impenetrable as Camp Half-Blood.”

You left Luke on your porch, skillfully evading the disclosure of your relationship status. 

Taglist: *Please send me an inbox to be tagged

#luke castellan x fem!reader #caitsy and ash productions #Caitsy *~* The Threads that Bind Us collection #PJO x fem!reader #luke castellan x you

[the-city-in-mind]

Batman is the product of bad street design

image: Vest on DeviantArt

If there were overlooking balconies and windows to provide eyes on the street, Crime Alley wouldn’t be “Crime Alley,” and Joe Chill would not have a place to rob people.

I mean in every depiction of Gotham other than the 1966 TV show, it’s portrayed like every American city that decided to raze the old main streets, put highways right through downtown, let industries move overseas, let the waterfront rot, has a weird Kowloon Walled City type slum in the middle?? permits industries to cloud the air with coal smoke (I mean, it’s dark DURING THE DAYTIME so what else could that be), let huge chains decimate local commerce…

If they had only read Jane Jacobs!

A good bit of analysis comparing Gotham to Metropolis posits Batman as Machiavelli’s Prince, ruling by fear but setting a moral standard in a city that was corrupt but “free,” and Superman as a Modernist, with Metropolis as Thomas More’s Utopia; an exemplar of civic improvement who helps make Metropolis, and in turn its citizens, better, by sweeping away the old.

One of the earliest stories Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, the creators of Superman, wrote about the Man of Steel, was a story in which Superman confronted juvenile delinquency by tearing down the slums where the troubled youth lived so authorities would be forced to build “decent public housing.” In Batman's Gotham, human-nature makes the city a bad place. In Superman's Metropolis, exactly like More's Utopia, it is the city that makes people bad, and it needs to be physically reordered for it to be a "good place" and for "the rude and uncivilized inhabitants" to be brought to "that measure of politeness." Superman isn't just any sort of utopian; he's a Modernist.

The "Superman in the Slums" story appeared in 1939, the same year that New York World's Fair opened, celebrating the theme of the World of Tomorrow. DC comic would print special editions comics featuring Superman for the Fair and even sponsored a Superman Day. One of the Fair's organizers' and the man who embodied the vision of housing projects and superhighways that would "displace outmoded business sections and undesired slum areas" was the Modernist urban planner Robert Moses. Slum clearance was the heroic utopian labor of the day, and he was the man responsible for bulldozing more acreage of "slum" housing then any other.

#urbanism #batman #superman #machiavelli #thomas more #utopia #modernism #jane jacobs

[see-arcane]

Death May Die

In Transylvania, an ancient book calls up a familiar face.

In the office of Hawkins and Harker, two men are found dead.

In dimensions far apart and horribly near, Jonathan Harker finds himself put to strange and sinister new work.

All the while, something shadows him through the worlds. It is old. It is cold. And it expects its due.

For those not in the know, this is a sizable ‘what-if?’ scenario based loosely on the premise of The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk comic-in-progress putting its roots down on Tumblr, a glorious public domain mega crossover and antidote to Alan Moore’s unpleasant take on the idea. Shout out to the amazing @mayhemchicken-artblog for all the fantastic work already put into the project.

Ao3 link here

That is not dead which can eternal lie,

and with strange aeons, even death may die.

 They waited for night before bringing out the book. It only seemed appropriate. He had needed to pay the local idiots twice the worth of their guidance to the spot, and another doubling to ensure they stayed on site while the ritual was performed. They thought it was to serve as a guard. Against wolves? Against the strangers who had first chased them down that fateful sunset two years prior and hacked their undead quarry into base elements? Q supposed these were reasonable enough excuses and so let them carry on believing them. It wouldn’t matter what they believed soon.

Q, as he was known in his less than legitimate dealings—which were his most frequent and personally lucrative ones—had been livid for the past two years. Which was a risky thing for his heart, his doctors told him. Q was reaching the far end of his life, his health balanced precariously on everything from peak cuisine to the most high-end of modern medicines. But he would be a liar if he said he had not dabbled in more esoteric treatments. Possibilities, rather. He had had none of his own success with the cures he sought, only played witness. Vulture. The pleading Dickensian waif pressed against the window of the one candy shop his wealth could not buy from.

 Eternity. O God, O Devil, O profanities in-between, eternity was real. It was in reach. And, by certain fantastic avenues, it could be applied to the flesh. That was Q’s chief concern above all else. He had come into many a harvested proof of eternity for the soul and of the myriad dumping grounds into which it might fly once the carcass died around it. Even before this grand hunt of his began, Q had known he was a man with a dearth of conscience. It seemed a superfluous thing in his life. Life had never bothered to prove him wrong for thinking so. The holy houses’ various Scriptures were all so much mist and pleading to be believed. It was all well and good that their flocks bought the lie of reward for the suffering and retribution to the glutted; the meek could go on pretending they would inherit the Earth until the day they rotted away in their squalor.

Q and his fellow betters were always happy to toast them and their virtue from their perches encased in filigree and acreage. At least, he had been. Back when he was young. Even when he was silvering. But circumstances had changed. Time had happened and Death was whetting a blade at his doorstep. And, for better or worse, certain uncanny revelations that went beyond the scope of any faith stamped in sacred script or tablet had reached his eyes, and mind, and the shuddering kernel of his heart.

Possibility hovered just out of reach. Safety from time, from the nothings and the worse-than-nothings after his living time ran out. Damn it all, he had been so close with Dr. Black and the experiment inflicted on his wife. Good dear Agnes Black, who had been prey to the soul extraction. The opal prison of spirit, a dazzling crystal chamber of inmost light... So he had been informed.

When Q had returned from Paris on his latest errand, only to discover from Mr. Davies that the imbecilic Travers had been scammed by some pretender with the secret code for exchange, that the imprisoned soul had been stolen again in almost the same heartbeat as the hired help had robbed Dr. Black, he had been angry. When he discovered that Dr. Black himself had died from a shock at the robbery, leaving the secret of extraction a mystery once more, he had been enraged past the point of words. Enough to strain his heart to the edge of safety.

Sighing, he had needed to tranquilize himself. It had been a small balm to see how Travers died. Likewise his pet idiot Sam. They got around to the latter’s errand woman too, once the man had squealed that she had thrown away the code paper. It was something, he supposed. Though it would have been better if his experts had been able to harvest anything worthwhile from them. The brighter minds in his employ kept insisting that such boons as organ transplants would come into the field someday; oh, it would have been lovely to have a few spare hearts to play with. Better still if he might have that deranged miracle man, the very Victor Frankenstein of medical legend, on call. But no. Not possible as yet, Mr. Q, not yet.

And yet, all that may only have been a prelude to bring him here. To the benighted wilds of Transylvania, and to the bloodstained bastard offshoot of Lazarus that might yet be plied for aid. The legends went that the figure he sought had learned his arts and won his vicious immortality from study in the mythic Scholomance. A rare tutelage, a dangerous one, with its infernal lessons being the fruit of years. Years Q did not have. But his visit to Paris had suggested there were other routes to pursue.

Routes that required certain reading. Specifically, reading that Q had also dropped a fair sum to have performed on this night, using a certain tome of unique repute. Mr. Davies stood behind the professor as the man recited; an additional insurance should the fellow have a sudden attack of stage fright or morals. Thankfully, the nebbish gentleman seemed prepared to put his underappreciated profession to use for its own sake, with or without the fattening of his bank account.

The rite was read. The night sky rumbled and groaned though there were no clouds. Q saw the stars had changed out of their proper constellations from one blink to the next and that the moon had been stained as if with disease. Around him, the locals murmured and chafed. He knew from their leader that the scene of that distant November dusk had been enough to put at least half his men off a return for any fee; they had been paid by a monster to do a monster’s bidding. They would not gamble twice.

“I pay better than any monster,” Q had assured, “and the only goal I have in mind is an experiment. No harrowing chases at my age. Should the experiment fail, and it very well might, the worst you and yours shall suffer for your pay is a great deal of boredom in the dark and a few pelts if the wolves get pesky.” He had not told them what would happen if the experiment was successful. Perhaps those few who came out had guessed at half of it. Perhaps they even thought themselves safe, being in the aegis of a former master. Perhaps they just could not afford to turn the money away regardless.

The latter were always Q’s favorites among hirelings. Inevitably the most expendable and dependable help in a single package, bless them.

They made noise as the atmosphere began to curdle. The professor sweated despite the cold, babbling on and on in that brittle tongue as if his own tongue no longer belonged to him enough to stop. Even Mr. Davies, a man as emotive as a statue even in his grimmest work, swallowed thickly in the bonfire’s light. The air itself bunched and writhed around them in protest. It lent an odd quality to the men’s shift from mere anxious talk to outright screams. A din that turned up to a shrieking choir as the bonfire blew out. All that was left to them was the noxious glow of the moon.

Yet that was all Q needed. Even with the creep of cataracts and the night’s own over-dense dark, he could see. All of them could.

What they saw was a thin man of extraordinarily bloodless pallor. He stood with his back to them, his hair a black cascade. When he turned his head, Q saw a single lantern-bright eye find his own. A peephole into Hell. Below that, the white shine of a grin with sabers for teeth.

It was him.

Finally.

“Count Dracula?” Q ventured.

The figure did not answer. Only smiled wider.

“I have heard a great many things of what you accomplished over the course of generations. It saddened me to learn of your loss. My native England would have flourished under such influence as yours, as it may still. I have endeavored, at great expense, to retrieve you from the outer spaces where such powerful souls as yours reside. I’ve no doubt that to you it was only the briefest respite, and I thank you most sincerely for answering our summons.”

The figure examined his nails. Their points caught on the moonlight.

“To be frank, Count, I am in need of your tutelage. Your wisdom. I would seek to do as you do, to exist as you exist. I have sources who name you as one of those rarities among the undead who retained his intellect and will despite the change. This I would—,”

“Are these meant to be for me?” The clawed hand had gestured airily at the gawping guides.

“Yes,” Q said aloud. “I expected you would be thirsty upon return.”

This received a hum of meager acknowledgment. A rosy flare of the eyes. Q braced to see the work of his teeth, the siphoning of life in action.

While he did see the latter, the former played no part.

It was a sight to behold, even in that lunar half-light. There was no avoiding the the red shine as the blood wept and drooled and sweated from the screaming mass of Q’s guides. Their leader garbled something wetly at him—Q, not the Thing ordering his veins to empty themselves through his skin—and tried to raise his pistol. Mr. Davies put a hole through his head first. For the first time since the man joined Q’s employ, Mr. Davies seemed at the edge of attempting mercy, for the muzzle of his gun almost drifted to the heads of the others writhing and crawling on the ground. Q waved him down. Their guest was clearly enjoying himself.

Really, it was somewhat entertaining. The insects upon the lowest rung of the ladder, flopped on stomachs and backs, twitching like beetles fresh from a lost battle with a bootheel. Their blood did not drip down, but rose up in slow glistening loops and arches on the air. Ruby ribbons. They drifted on some unseen river up toward the sharp smile of the harvester, close, closer, closest…

“On second thought, I’m not all that peckish. Never mind.” With a gesture, the blood stopped its migration and landed like a sudden coagulating rain upon the dirt. Its former owners were speckled with the spray. “Let us skip the morsels and the poor attempt at a grovel. You have never asked for anything in your life, and so have no talent for a convincing imitation. Such is the cost of only ever having to buy or steal what you want in the stuttering gold-congested heartbeat you call a life. You do not want lessons. You want a shortcut to immortality. This I can give you.”

The grin widened again. Horribly. Q had been given to understand that a vampire of any strain was prone to over-wide smiles, sometimes of a bestial shape. Count Dracula, he had heard, often wore the toothy rictus of a bat or wolf. This grimace was not that. It looked, if anything, like an amateur sculptor’s rendition of rigor mortis combined with the worst of those freakish creatures dredged up from the lowest shadows of the ocean. The sight of it made his skin want to peel like bad wallpaper and his eyes to crawl away to be spared the proximity.

Quite inexplicably, Q felt certain this Dracula could make such happen.

“However, I require a menial favor of my own. Not these table scraps,” he nodded at the human detritus at their feet, “but a more gourmet offering.”

“Such as what? Name your fare and I shall acquire it.”

“No, you shall not. You couldn’t if you tried. You’ve many a fine dog at your disposal, this one included,” he inclined his head toward Mr. Davies, who managed to appear a shade greener in the dark. “But the individual I have in mind would leave them headless in an instant. Not necessarily by such polite means as a blade. No, we shall go to him. Of you, I ask only the infant task of being present. I would like him to know exactly what has happened since he and his companion swung down their steel.” He gave a small laugh. Q thought he felt something die in both ears. “I am so dearly looking forward to his face. Ah, and before I forget.”

The blazing eyes turned upon the professor. He still clutched the book in both shaking hands. A whiff of ammonia wafted from below his belt.  

“You mispronounced fhtagn,” the grin intoned.

“O-Oh?”

“Yes. Wrong intonation on the ta. Just thought you should know.”

“I’m sorry! I’m so terribly sorry—!”

A white hand waved.

“No harm done. Even the cultists a hundred generations deep mispronounce half their empty rites. It is not their fault their makers failed to design them with the appropriate vocalizing necessities. You only have one tongue, one throat, two lungs. But even such grating lilts as yours and theirs can buzz in distant ears.” A great sigh was heaved. “It does the job. As for that,” he leveled a sharp nail at the book, “keep it closed and keep it close. Just because you open the way for a specific guest does not mean others will not seek an opportunity to slip through. Most not nearly so cordial as myself.”

The professor clapped the ancient tome shut as if hit with an electric current and, despite the clear shudder it gave him, hugged the volume close. His eyes darted frantically about the night as if there might already be some tagalong to the Count skulking in the shadows. Mr. Davies did likewise. Q even caught himself at it.

“Just a precaution, my friends. Always wise to be wary under such stars as these. But come, we delay our transaction. Immortality waits at the other end of a final errand in your England. It will require only the smallest effort, just as infinity shall be a mere nothing to me.”

Q did his utmost not to notice the copper odor thickening the air, likewise the almost voyeuristic cast of the moon as it hovered behind the voivode’s looming head. He was alright. Of course he was alright. This smiling horror would have unmade him in an instant if he wished; if he could. The crucifix at Q’s throat and the garlic blossoms lining his coat were as good as armor. Yes. Yes.

“Yes?” he asked, proud at the steadiness of his voice. “What effort is that?”

“You have an appointment to make concerning the acquiring of new real estate.” A forest of teeth bristled as the lips peeled up in an even deeper sickle smile. “One you will make with the firm of Hawkins and Harker.”

Harker. The name echoed in Q’s recollection. A name that had come up more than once as his men went digging. One the ravished lady, the other the pawn husband who had chased Dracula back to his land and—

“If it’s a matter of recompense for your,” Q gestured at his own throat, “premature exit, I have resources that can see to the matter most expediently. Within a week, I can have Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris in a windowless room to be addressed as you see fit. Likewise Mrs. Harker. Give me a fortnight, and I shall have the entire cadre at your feet.”

At this, Count Dracula’s expression did not alter. Only his eyes flickered, though not with red. It was a color without name. A color that seared and flamed with a heat and hate worse than Hell and further than Heaven. It even seemed to boil the Count’s pupils, for, in the space of a moment, they seemed to…

“If I wish for you to decide what I want, Lord Oliver Quentin Brighton, I will surely inform you. In the meantime, you will make your appointment with Hawkins and Harker.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Of course.” The eyes were merely red. The pupils were merely pupils. “It is new to you, isn’t it? Acquiescence. But it is only natural for you small kings among men. No matter. Let us be gone and leave the wolves to their late supper.”

“Your coffin,” Mr. Davies croaked, his eyes not quite rising to meet Dracula’s. “We have a coffin filled with earth waiting with the horses.”

“How thoughtful. But I shall not need it. Death has provided more than rest enough. It is a wonder anyone fears it as they do.” Dracula turned from them, the anatomy of his face realigning into a configuration that was nearly wistful. “Death is rest. Death is respite. Death is an end and a close and a one-way threshold to what comes next.” The wistfulness crimped under another put-upon sigh as he faced Q a last time. “But even death may die. Come, little man. Let us go kill yours.”

 Jonathan Harker was fairly certain his eyes were ready to fall out of his head. He was not certain whether this would be a loss or a gain for him. If nothing else, it would mean not having to scour yet another page of yet another sheaf of yet another wad of potentially vital—or just as potentially trivial—news reports and dusty arcana surrounding the overlap between ancient powers and modern bouts of uncanny happenings of late. These quarries were of the sort that made the miseries surrounding Dracula’s activity seem like a mere hiccough compared to the more odious work of these weightier horrors.

When had that happened, by the way?

Certainly the League had been no stranger to supernatural threats since its inception. Likewise for the various disconnected heroes, victims, and individuals carrying both banners who confronted human and inhuman perils alike. Prying into the histories of specific locations revealed cases of sporadic events that mirrored the attacks and accidents of the present day, though those older cases were given greater due than the contemporary instances; scientific explanations appeared to melt away so much of superstition that it worked in favor of the truly paranormal.

Hysteria! Bad dreams! Anxiety! Poor diet! And, of course, that easy and all-encompassing blanket: Madness!

Jack and Van Helsing were both of the bittersweet opinion that the latter was responsible for the seeming uptick in overt supernatural evils flexing their muscles. So much had been disproven that the bogeymen were shielded by disbelief until it was too late to admit the stranger truth. Jonathan hadn’t much room to disagree with them, considering how well denial had played into that first fateful stay in Transylvania. By the time he’d broken through to acceptance of the impossible reality, he was already a prisoner.  

But then, Holmes had made his own fair point: It was just as likely that events and entities, be they weird or wondrous, had always been happening, but this budding age of information and interconnection now shined a far broader light upon the shadows in which they dwelled. More lines could be drawn between A and B, X and Y, and the result simply illustrated phenomena that had been present all along. In this, Jonathan could also find decent footing.

Except…

If these miracles and threats have always been here, even in a fraction of the occurrences we have met, how is it they could have slipped into obscurity at all? How could we mislabel any of them as superstition rather than hold to them as fact as time and progress marched on? How, unless they were rare enough once upon a time, enough to be shrugged off as mere fantasy, only for them to raise their heads in greater number today? For all that we’ve done, all we’ve accomplished, does it not seem that there are more and more extraordinary things in need of our attention recently? Things of increasing potency, increasing pressure and power. As if we were all frogs in the same pot with the heat turning up and up as we prove ourselves too sturdy to be cooked in lesser temperatures.

There is more happening today than there was before. I know it. I feel it. It itches in the cold corners of me that whisper and chafe and tug me after the scent of some fresh Thing in need of hunting. And I think it is going to kill me. I don’t know what, I don’t know how. But I am sure of it. Something extraordinary will happen soon. And I will die to it.

Today.

“No, you will not,” he half-yawned to himself. “You’re just tired. That is the whole of it.” He ground the heels of both palms against his eyes, trying to crush the fatigue heat out of them. “You haven’t been this bad since—,”

Tonight is mine. Tomorrow is yours!

He bit his tongue to the edge of bleeding. Bit and bit and did not think of—

Awake, awake, the sound of her screams in your ears, fell asleep, stayed asleep, your idiot brain pinned under the monster’s thumb while he was there, in your bed, in her throat—

“Stop. Just stop. Not here.”

His teeth did not unlock to say this. No more than his voice rose above a whisper. It had been all he could do not to simply throw his last client’s paperwork in his pinched face rather than locking into his default charm to win the prickly fellow back into the dealing. Despite having a small and highly capable legion at Hawkins and Harker’s disposal, it was not unheard of to have those of the upper echelons insist on dealing directly with the head of the firm, as if this would somehow imbue their potential properties with greater value. A feat that may have been more doable if it were not for Jonathan splitting himself down the middle to juggle the firm and his work with Mina and the League.

That, if nothing else, was proof enough that the situation was starting to bloat.

What had begun as a comparatively leisurely balance of his working worlds was now a precarious act that risked his livelihood and those of his employees on one end and actual lives on the other. And that went without mentioning the strain of the performance for Mina. It was already hell enough for her and Irene to maintain the cogs that made the League tick. If she knew exactly how close to collapse he was at any given moment in these last few months, her own focus would shatter like glass.

Not that she did not already suspect something, of course. Whatever psychic awareness now roosted in her mind after Dracula’s attack—a power that even Clarimonde suggested might have been jostled loose rather than simply implanted and left as a souvenir—had flowered tremendously. With practice, intuition had extended to such a powerful certainty that she could pinpoint every member of the League within a mile. Jonathan, she said, could now be detected anyplace in the world. Such had been proven on a recent adventure that had placed them at opposite ends of the world. To chip away at her nervousness, Mina had used her journal to record the rough global coordinates she’d assumed Jonathan to be in alongside Fogg’s terse company on any given date, and both had been shocked to find her readings exact in every case.

“Better call up Nemo,” Griffin had hummed. “See if he can’t repeat the underwater trick with a deep enough trench.”

It was a poor joke on more than one count. Especially as, not long afterwards, the Nautilus had brushed terribly, unthinkably close to its own deep-sea peril. Worse than the malformed sea creatures. Worse than the aquatic folk they had met off America’s eastern coast. So awful, in fact, that Nemo had seen fit to dock the Nautilus in the secure shore Art had arranged, the better to let himself and his men find refuge on dry land for a spell. The very first threads of silver had cut through the Captain’s hair. Aronnax had handed Van Helsing his latest journal with three conditions:

“Read it. Record what you need. Then kindly burn it.”

Nemo’s input had been colder still:

“It is older than the sea, whatever it is. It was never native to the ocean, or Earth itself. I refuse to believe it. Dead for now. But not forever.” His eyes, bloodshot obsidian, had rolled to meet Jonathan’s. They seemed to hunt for answers there. “It thought that at us while we walked in those giants’ halls. Dreamed it at us. And it dreamed you too. Something you’re meant to do.”

“What?” Jonathan remembered asking. He couldn’t remember if he had been shaken by the notion or by the fact that he hadn’t felt shaken. Only tired. Expectant.

“There were no words in it, only an intention. Something in the tone of,” Nemo had frowned, “‘Take a message.’ I don’t understand it. It seemed too blunt, too mundane in the thick of all the nightmare that saturated that place. Yet all the men felt the same when I asked them of it. Those who could bring themselves to speak.”

That was two weeks ago. An experience added to a pile that had been sectioned off to contain the sundry ancient menaces that had been unearthed in northern England and Wales. The death of Francis Leicester, despite occurring in London, had led them northward to such horrors as the resurrection and revenge of the demigoddess Helen Vaughn, to the Little People and the vanishing of Professor Gregg, the ethnologist whose absent body had been blamed by a lawyer on a mere misadventure in a river, to the white figures who danced and bled hungry magic in the hills, to the Great God Pan and his satyr-scratching at the walls of reality.

On a limestone boulder, their most recent finding was sent to them by Gregg’s former governess and secretary, Miss Lally, alongside a concerned party, Mr. Phillips. The latter had gone inspecting the area the lauded Professor Gregg had vanished in—for Miss Lally would not bring herself or Gregg’s freshly orphaned twins back there for any ransom—and discovered some odd writing upon a limestone boulder, etched in red earth. He’d copied it, given it to Miss Lally, and the resulting message had been decoded by way of a black stone seal unearthed in Babylon. She had sent the message their way:

‘The hills fold. The soul bends. Pale man of death will hear the message.’

Which all went without mentioning the more infectious mess of The King in Yellow. What had begun as a single ominous volume bound in snakeskin presenting itself as a one-of-a-kind volume full of reality-denting power was now, inexplicably, appearing in high-end bookshops and the murmurs of the theatergoing crowds as an inorganic urban legend. Something that rubbed shoulders with the Scottish Play’s rule in terms of bad luck, but worse. Jonathan and Mina had seen a paperback of it looking at them through a window less than a week ago. And then Lord Henry Wotton had picked it up on a dare.

Dorian Gray had caught him doing it. He’d seen Wotton’s eyes skim dully over the ‘pedestrian’ masquerade scene’s opening act. Gray had tried to get the book away from him, to stop him reaching the second act. Wotton had laughed and let him burn the thing, promising he’d not touch the accursed volume now. After all, a book penned by the Devil should at least be more thrilling than the average gothic terror and the first act had thoroughly disappointed him…

“I should have known,” Gray had moaned as, in some secret room, his portrait wailed and tore at itself in the canvas, “I should have known he’d get another copy. Of course he wanted to prove himself better than the story. Everyone knows it now. Everyone knows it does not strike until you read the second act, that’s the rumor in every snug from the highest end to the lowest pub, and he just couldn’t—couldn’t help himself—,” And he had wept in full, tearing at himself without leaving a mark.

Lord Wotton presumably bought his new copy and read that infamous second act. Whatever it was. There was no way to tell from the man himself. Jack had heard from his former staff that what was left of him had not changed since his family placed him under the asylum’s care, for better or worse. Only that he continued to talk or scream or plead or patter with party guests that were not there, and occasionally had to be stopped from ‘unmasking’ himself by clawing his face.

“I say, mine appears to have been pasted on,” he was reported to say, “Does anyone have a letter-opener?” Then, as late as last week, “Oh, and His Tattered Majesty deigned to pass on that he is quite busy at the moment. Tell Dorian to tell his pallid solicitor friend to take a message.”

Naturally, all eyes had started gravitating Jonathan’s way. Concerned gazes, wondering gazes, gazes that conspired about how to politely insist he perhaps take an extended vacation from the outside world and have a good long stay in the League’s densely warded walls. Jonathan had bitten his tongue before he could mutter a word about the sadly dubbed, ‘Wallpaper Women,’ who had, paradoxically, been victims of a sort of yellow—or was it Yellow?—wallpaper in a bedroom of a country home where a throng of wife after wife was kept shut up and immobile ‘for their own good.’ The diary entries of the latest victim had gone into harrowing detail of where she and her predecessors might have gone after the room had its full effect.

A diary they had found just prior to unearthing a loose board under the bolted bed, pressed up against the wall where the hideous paper had never been clawed.

An edition of The King in Yellow had been there. Not snakeskin, not the paperback that would not even be on shelves yet. But a hardcover whose pages were worn with reading and re-reading by some unknown hand. The name scratched inside read, Hildred Castaigne. Below that was a bookseller’s stamp, declaring it had been sold in an American shop.

In the year 1919.

If some force is out there making plans around me at this scale, I don’t see any way of guarding against it. This is not the fodder of penny dreadfuls. Not cutthroats and tyrants, vampires and werewolves. There is only so much we can prepare for or fight against. I feel now what I first felt in that damned castle. Powerless. Even with all I have done since, all I have gained, I feel it. I know it. Whatever means to happen will happen to me. Sitting in our headquarters waiting for it to come is only painting a target on everyone else.

None of which he said aloud.

All of which Mina had read in his face as if he had written it there in crayon. He’d tried to smile and she could not mirror it.

“Just a while longer,” she had whispered into his neck. In bed, they had folded around each other like two hands gripping. Her warm, him cold. Even now. So, so cold. “Tell them you’re ill, tell them it’s an emergency. Holt and the rest can manage well enough.”

“They have been managing for almost a month. Robert is a talent and a godsend, but he and my former fellows can’t cover for my absence indefinitely. It is not enough to our bigger clients that good work is done. If rumor comes along to stain a reputation—say, to do with the flighty new boy who Hawkins left his business and estate to, followed immediately by his dying—,”

“You are not a new boy. You’ve been steering the firm for two years now.”

“Which is ‘new’ to anyone over forty years of age. I have been able to keep several plates spinning for a while now. But I cannot ignore that particular plate any longer than this current stint. Not if I don’t want to step on important toes and leave us and my employees holding the bill. It was miracle enough that I happened to catch on to that trouble with the ‘Lady Ducayne’ business. Saved us a lost client and a few lives in the same breath. But that isn’t the sort of coincidence that crops up regularly.”

“Does Hawkins’ legacy matter more to you than your own life?”

“Mina.”

“Does it matter more than not leaving me a widow before we’ve had even half a decade to wear our rings?”

“Mina.”

“Jonathan. Please.”

“I cannot hide in here forever. Life won’t allow for that, no matter how mundane or monstrous. I have to.” He’d breathed into her hair. “You know I have to.”

“Then I should be with you. I never did get to play secretary to you.”

A writhing chill had moved in his bones at that.

“We are a bit too late on that track, I’m afraid. The position is taken.” Then, lower. “And the League needs you more.”

“Do not say that. Do not talk to me about need.” Her hand had trembled where she gripped him. His did likewise. “For God’s sake, Jonathan, it’s just a job! Retire early, take up a new vocation, become a travelogue writer, do something, anything that does not—that doesn’t—,”

“Put me at risk? I have been at risk since the night Dracula thrust me into his caleche. Risk has never left me. It has been walking side by side with me every day and every night by dint of what we do here. How we help the world and safeguard it from being devoured. That won’t change if I’m here or if I’m in my neglected office.”

Or, he did not say and failed not to think, becoming the unofficial hunting dog and part-time psychopomp of our merry band. Death and I have been holding hands since I first picked up the kukri. Now it won’t let go even when the blade is sheathed. It is here, now, in our room, Mina. It is everywhere I am and it speaks. Constantly. Sometimes a whisper. Sometimes a howl. But it speaks to me. It steers me. It wears my skin like a glove. Only in times of need; that I will not deny. But it does all these things—and it has not been wrong once.

I doubt it is wrong now. About me. About how much time is left.

And Mina, Mina, I do not want to bring my end knocking at this chamber door. Not where it might touch you. Not where you would have to see it happen.

So here he was, in his office instead. He would not have dared to stay inside if he had felt that warning prickle upon seeing any of his employees. Their…what was it? Life clock? Corporeal limit? Whatever it was that dictated the approach of a life’s end, it had not appeared to flare out at him in any of the familiar faces. Not even good Robert Holt’s wan countenance showed a trace of danger. This, when it had taken three of the doctors in their menagerie to help resuscitate the bedraggled man after his own hellish stint with a supernatural master.

He had stayed with the Harkers for the better part of a year before they walked him back through the minutiae of acquiring his own flat again. Helped in no small part by his already having a job waiting for him at Hawkins and Harker. Between this and how soundly the so-called ‘Beetle’ had been addressed with the aid of Clarimonde and a steady grisly application of cold steel, Robert Holt had already more than sworn a knight’s loyalty to the League’s secrets and more than a relative’s love to the Harkers themselves. A fact compounded by what both Jonathan and Mina had divulged of their own experiences—an account that had pried open the full deluge from Robert’s miserable tongue and ended in a catharsis salted with tears.

All of which was to say that Jonathan found himself immediately relieved to see that Robert’s life looked hale and long before him. In turn, Robert lit up upon seeing Jonathan like a lantern erupting into a campfire.

“Jonathan,” he’d begun. Aware of the many heads turning, he’d coughed and began again with, “Mr. Harker, good morning! How was your trip?”

“Longer than I’d have liked it to be,” he said in full earnest. “But there are some clients more demanding than others.”

“Harker, you have a small army to do your runaround work for you these days. You keep doing the grunt work and sweeping dust off your desk and you’ll go out like a candle.”

This came from Mr. Bentley, who had, in fact, recently announced he was making a change of occupation to start up his own firm. He’d been a solicitor for far longer under Hawkins and had seen the ‘writing on the wall,’ so to speak, in terms of nepotism; even if it was between a man and a boy who was son in everything but blood. Jonathan had never been able to tell if the man’s ribbing was in true mirth or a manner of bitter coping with the clerk-turned-solicitor; one who had made up for Peter Hawkins’ kindness twice over in his adamant work. And then, after the misery of the Transylvanian client had come and gone, there was the gift-wrapped firm and Hawkins’ own keenly timed natural death—as if the old man had been holding out just long enough to pass the barely-revived successor his keys in apology and farewell—Jonathan the Clerk was suddenly Mr. Harker the Employer.

No, Jonathan did not quite blame him if he was sour or not. Robert, knowing what he did, had a few hackles up already. These hackles came down when Bentley got a better look at his almost-ex-employer in full, and all the smiles, reinforced or otherwise, melted away into something very near to worry.

“God’s sake, where did this last one drag you off to? Back to Transylvania?”

Jonathan bit his inner cheek as even more heads craned around. Worse, Robert was scrutinizing him up close. The word ‘Transylvania’ had become a prickly word about the office ever since Jonathan’s initial return to the country. Rumors simmered in whispers and theories whenever they thought he couldn’t hear them. Usually in a concerned spirit as much as a baffled one. ‘Halfdead Harker’ was one of the favored epithets. One fellow, thoroughly drowned in eggnog around December of last year, had asked him outright if he was a vampire. Laughing. Jonathan had laughed back, telling him he certainly hoped not, or else he would have to quit the restaurants altogether. Ha ha.

But he had been careless in certain moments. Too much strength shown, hands too freezing in their grip, eyes too bright and devoid of blinking. And, of course, there was his habit of the kukri. Always, always on his hip. That, his odd turns of health, and the unmissable change to hair and eyes all added up to some kind of oddity. But this was all a chaser to the initial surprise of his returning state. Silver-white streaks in the brunet mop, shadows branded in bloodshot eyes, and seemingly half his personality blasted out of his skull during some nameless nightmare spent in foreign forests and the care of a nuns’ hospital. Wary looks had found him at every corner as he clawed his way out of shock to go over the paperwork and preparation needed to be a partner…followed by suddenly becoming sole head and owner of the firm.

Being that his eyes worked excessively well of late, Jonathan had not been able to avoid his own telling look in the mirror. No matter how he practiced his smiles, how clean he was shaven, how smart the suit, he looked like Hell’s own errand boy. Again. Pretending he did not know this, he rubbed his searing eyes and ignored the sensation of a clock tick-tick-ticking down in his head, and muttered something hasty about:

“Ah, nothing so dire this time. Only I fear I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Or at all.

“But no rest for the wicked,” he’d attempted to laugh, feet already sidling him toward the office door. “The Sandman will simply have to make his appointment after Lord Brighton’s.” With that, he scurried out of range of any further looks or questions. He almost bolted the door. Instead, he made his usual cursory check—the frame and molding’s varied sigils and holy symbols still had their places etched stealthily into the woodwork. The mirror still hung at head-height by the door. Good. Good, good, good.

He arranged his desk so that Lord Brighton’s papers were set to one side, the few things he’d taken from the League to peruse—he may as well see if there was something more he could do if this seeming countdown proved to be a mere bout of paranoia—set to another, and the day’s newspaper on top of both. Impulse had drawn him to the day’s print, then ordered him to flip to the obituaries.

Derleth, Howard, passed at age 52. Admired professor of ethnologic and linguistic studies of America’s Miskatonic University,—

A prickle of recognition goaded him into circling the university’s name in pen. Beside it, he scratched a note: Possible coincidence, but mention to others.

—was found dead in his rooms at the Lillup Hotel, having apparently died in his sleep. He leaves behind many fond students and faculty.

That’s a lie.

How did he know?

Because you are what you are. For what little time is left to be such.

“What I am is tired and busy. No more, no less.”

It was less than convincing as a mantra, yet he stuck to it. At least until his eyes began to glaze over. Until the clock tolled louder, louder, louder in his head and his chest and that alien cellar that had carved itself out in his soul. Text swam and Charon held vigil at a river and he was so cold he could not feel it and oh, he wished he had left Mina more than a letter this morning, had kissed her cheek and lips another minute before he slunk away from her with all the guilt of a cheat, too afraid to wake her and be caught in her words and her love to leave, and couldn’t it all just stop for a moment, just a heartbeat to let him sleep and breathe and live as more than a cog crushed in the machinery of too many industrious works of men and monsters and madness beyond both, please, please, please—

There was a knock at the door.

“Mr. Harker?”

“You can come in, Robert,” he said as he shuffled the League’s heap of leads into a locked drawer. “And Jonathan’s still fine in here.”

You call this fine?

Robert ducked into the room looking like the picture of worry. He shut the door behind him and he too seemed to ponder sliding the bolt home. Instead he searched Jonathan’s face.

“I understand if you cannot give details. But has your,” his pitch lowered, “other vocation been wearing you down? Because you look…”

“Dead?” He watched Robert purse his lips. “I know. Thankfully, I’m not there yet. Too much to do. But since we’re on the topic—,”

“We aren’t—,”

“—you do know what arrangements have been made in the event that circumstances arise that might remove me from the picture? I know there is not as much history in place between us as others in our unique circles, comparatively speaking. But more than enough has happened in our short time together to make it…make it prudent that…”

His lips twitched up in what tried to be a grin and only managed a grimace.

“Jonathan, please, has something happened? Why are you talking like this?” He could hear as much plea in the other man’s voice to not hear the answer as much as to learn it. Mr. Holt’s life had been a deeply unhappy one with almost more losses than mere indignities. “Are you..?”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“Have you been studying for the exam?” he got out steadily enough. “If you’re stuck on anything, remember not to be shy about going to Norton or Utterson. They seem the types to have more developed methods than my burn-at-both-ends regimen.”

“I—yes, I’ve been practicing.” Robert was at the desk now. “Jonathan. Has something happened?”

Not yet. Give it a quarter of an hour if this infernal internal clock has its way.

“No. Just keeping prepared. Making sure everything is up to date.”

“Yes, you mentioned as much before. Back when you made the second trip to Transylvania.” Jonathan had been fiddling with a pen. The pen nearly cracked. He set it down on the desk and folded his hands so he had something to grip without it breaking. “I’ll—I’ll go to the others if you won’t say. If they remain hushed, I’ll understand it’s a larger secret, and that I won’t pry at. I know enough to understand that even my nightmare was a frail thing compared to other horrors you’ve tromped through. But if I go to—to Utterson, or the Nortons, or to Mina,” Jonathan clutched his hands so hard the knuckles creaked, “and find they are just as in the dark, then I and everyone else will know you are hiding something. Some potentially fatal pain.” Robert’s pitch lowered again. “And I was given to understand that such things were barred from the League and its friends.”

“They are. But we aren’t in the League right now. And, supposing something was wrong, something I would not, could not share, do you doubt I’d have good reason to withhold it, Robert? Really, I might not even have a secret, fatal or otherwise. I could be imagining the whole thing. If I am, then I will gladly share the matter over lunch. If not?” Jonathan shrugged. “Then it will be a secret well-kept.”

“Jonathan—,”

“I believe Lord Brighton has just arrived.” This was as much intuition as distraction. He had the sense that strangers had entered the building a moment before some small murmur of greeting began its tremble through the space outside the office. “Would you show him in, please, Robert?”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Robert Holt regarded him with a look that might have passed for stern if it was not so wounded by premonition. Jonathan tasted sickness at seeing it.

“…You will not be rid of me or this subject today.”

Jonathan did not correct him. Only waited until the door was between them again before he brought his clasped hands and his own temple together in the first true prayer he’d made since he began falsifying his deific pleas in that wretched traveler’s journal after that bloody October night.

God. If You give me nothing else in this life, give me peace. If what I feel today, now, is true, and this is when I end, take care of them all. They have given too much and saved too many for them to go without blessing. Protect them. Let them prosper. Let the devils worse than men or Hell can make be turned back into the shadows so that they may rest. My God, my true God, I do not even know if You are what answered me in those first horrid hours when life took its surreal turn. Did You save me? Did You burn the vampire’s hand and my love’s innocent brow? Did You make me this cold and killing Thing when I swore my soul as the bargain for Dracula’s end? Are You what whispers to me? I do not know. Perhaps I never will.

I will suffer that ignorance gladly in life and death if only You will do right by those I love. Mina, my Mina, she deserves it if no other.

Please.

Please.

Please.

Knock-knock.

“Lord Brighton and company to see you, Mr. Harker.” Robert’s voice, flattened into workplace cordiality. Jonathan scrubbed his face with both palms and sat up straight, smile pinned in place.

“Come in.”

The door opened. Three men walked in. With each face, Jonathan Harker became privy to a new certainty.

The first man was dressed as a gentleman of burgeoning middle age. He had the deaths of many a man, woman, and the occasional child stained in his palms and crusted under his nails. His latest was Professor Derleth, who had died in bed, but in no way asleep.

The second man was a richly wrapped specimen of elderly leather and ravenous eyes. In a hand heavy with jeweled and signet rings, he clutched a wrapped item, the size of a large book. It struck at some secret sense in Jonathan and appeared to dent the air around it like the point of a dull knife dimpling a throat.

The third man was not a man. It had never even been human, despite the face it wore. A face that smiled out at him from a familiar fanged mouth.

And from the mirror upon the wall.

“Make a move or raise your voice, and everyone in this building will suffer the consequences before you can brandish any weapon,” said the old man he took to be Lord Brighton. His murderer shut the door behind them all. Bolted it. “Do you doubt that, Mr. Harker?”

As the question hit the air, so did a sudden and horrendous ripple of awareness. A possibility that flickered on the edge of his consciousness like a candle guttering, unsure if it would be doused or not. The candle was the lives of every person in the building. And, he was sickened to feel, the hazier lives of those in the buildings bookending their own. He kept his hands on the desk and himself in his chair. Ice and bile slid down his throat.

“No,” Jonathan heard himself say. His attention hadn’t departed from the Thing wearing Count Dracula’s face. Nor had it looked away from him. Purest delight radiated from it—him?—and irrevocably stained the emotion with the filter of the unthinkable mind producing it. In the mirror, the red eyes burned away into a new color. The pupils boiled until they showed three lobes each.  

“Good. This business should conclude readily enough. Or, if the account I received proves even half true, the Count may take his time.” Lord Brighton ran his thumb along the spine of the wrapped parcel. Black velvet. “Apologies for the—,”

“No.” Jonathan spoke toward Brighton, but still his eyes did not move from the face of ‘Dracula.’ He realized with mounting alarm that he couldn’t, even when he tried. “No, we turned Dracula to dust.”

“And we put that dust back together. It was quite a simple maneuver, really.” The black velvet wrapping was peeled away with a showman’s eagerness. Something of pride was stitched through the overall miasma of anticipation coming off the old man. “Once you start reading the process walks you along itself.”

The velvet was tossed aside. From the corner of his frozen eye, Jonathan saw the book and felt a nauseous epiphany turn over in him. No, it was not The King in Yellow. But this tome had appeared more than once in the League’s more recent researches. Enough that Quincey had suggested a group make the trip to the grim little corner of Massachusetts where the Miskatonic University was supposed to have an unabridged copy of the blighted book in its library. There was little doubt now that the campus’ volume had been borrowed by its recently departed faculty member. Nor would it likely return to those shelves again.

The Necronomicon stared at him as plainly as the smiling Thing idling in the corner. If with less interest.

Inside him, time was ticking faster. Faster. Faster.

Against all hope, he had to ask, “You used that to call him here?”

“To call him to the killing ground where you so rudely ended a long and miraculous career of life beyond the shackles of nature? Yes.”

‘Dracula’ paused the stare to roll his eyes. In the mirror, he had far more than two to do so with. Albeit with far less skin.

“Shall I guess that the goal was a tradeoff for your own immortality?” The proud look curdled at the edges. “Don’t take offense. I’ve seen too many of you not to recognize the type by now. Nine out of ten self-serving idiots chasing the supernatural are doing it to give themselves a longer life span, or power, or both.” Because he hadn’t looked away, because he could not look away, he addressed the summoned party. “Is that what you promised him?”

The sharp teeth bared another giddy inch.

“Yes. A promise I shall keep in exchange for all his arduous labor. It is the least I can do after he has brought me here to my good friend, so that we might finally catch up on lost time.”

“I must give you credit,” Jonathan managed around the boulder of dread growing in his chest. “You do a fine impression.”

“As fine as it needs to be.” The grin grew again. It showed too much. Something slithered behind the prison bars of spindle teeth. “At least for your sake.”

“I’m going.” This came from the man who had been silent since entering the room. A greenish hue traced the lines of a face that seemed wholly unused to anything resembling discomfort. Jonathan realized he’d kept his head ducked the entire time, refusing to risk looking at the Thing in Dracula’s skin. “Do what you’re going to do, but I’m not staying. I’m not.” He turned to the door.

“Davies,” said Brighton.

Mr. Davies’ hand was on the knob. He fumbled a sweating moment with it, having forgotten about the bolt.

“Davies—,” Brighton grated again, then stopped.

A white hand was suddenly resting on Mr. Davies’ shoulder. The man froze as if nails were driven through both feet. Still, he knew better than to look.

“It’s quite fine,” said Dracula’s voice. “But I must tell you something before you go.” Jonathan watched the lips move as if mouthing something in mute pantomime. He heard nothing, but felt as if something were crawling just beneath the level of his senses, an insectile squirming that trundled over him in a wide and pointless detour before turning to burrow into Mr. Davies’ skull. Even with his back to him, Jonathan could tell the final fibers of nerve had rotted away like old silk. Davies’ head trembled on the thick neck, shaking in frantic negation.

“No. Please, no. I-I wasn’t part of this. I was never part of this!”

“Oh, but you were. You are. It is an unseemly thing to disregard the people who get the job done for their master. Besides, it is as little to me as your vocation has been to you. Even if it has always operated in the opposite direction. No need for thanks.” The abomination in the mirror laughed with every mouth it had. “You are most welcome.”

Mr. Davies made a small high noise in reply, scrabbling at the lock with sweat-greased fingers. He’d barely undone the bolt before he froze again. This time with a spasming shudder. Alarm shot up Jonathan’s spine and reflex made him try to stand—only to find himself locked down in his chair. There was not even the nicety of a strained muscle allowed. In every inch, every nerve and bone, he was as set and immobile as a doll. A doll with a mechanism inside. Tick, tick, ticking.

Nearly there. Nearly done.

Mr. Davies jerked and twisted as rosy foam gurgled and bled up from his mouth. His hands clawed at throat and chest while the whites of his eyes showed all the way around, rolling frantically to Lord Brighton. Lord Brighton furrowed his brow in either confusion or irritation as the man buckled to his knees. An entire disappointed moue formed as Mr. Davies wasted the last of his energy on reaching for his employer’s trouser leg. Lord Brighton stepped nimbly back as the hand fell limp.

Then Mr. Davies was dead. Cooling and drooling into the rug.  

No. No, that’s wrong. His life is still present. It’s stretching out and away into the future. He must be having a fit. He should come out of it…

Yet Mr. Davies continued to cool. All semblance of life and its animal spark was already faded out of his eyes. The latter had rolled up to gawp at Jonathan in that final spasm. Blind, they still seemed to see. Dead, the man still seemed to plead.

There is no ‘seem.’ He’s there. You know he’s there.

Jonathan did. Jonathan could still do nothing. Just sit and stare and wait.

Say something! Call for someone! You can still talk!

And what could he say? What would shouting to the sane world outside the room do except to turn a potential massacre into certainty?

“Well, that is a pity,” Lord Brighton huffed. “But I suppose I wouldn’t have required his services beyond nudging the more menial pen pushers and porters going forward. On that note, Count, I feel it is prudent that we turn to business. There is only so much time before some pest at the door comes in to nag Mr. Harker about some trivial matter and there is mess enough to consider with Mr. Davies—,”

“You truly cannot help yourself, can you?” Dracula’s voice hummed. His eyes, in his head and in the glass and in the shadows growing dense as ink about the room, crept on Jonathan like centipedes. “You see how he can’t, don’t you? Who was that fellow in the ramble that would-be detective fed you? The storyteller was Dyson, who took the telling from a sad rag of a man named Selby—there was something about a hand in red chalk…”

“Sir Thomas Vivian,” Jonathan murmured. Tick. Tick. Tick. Down to heartbeats now. Make them last. “The royal family doctor who tried to kill his friend over buried treasure in the hills.”

“Ah, yes. How did it go?” The voice of Count Dracula changed abruptly to an unknown middle-aged timbre, one of affected upper class tone: “‘Let us talk of business matters, Selby.’” The following laugh was the Count’s, likewise the voice after it, though both were laced with something new. Something that crawled. “He was rich as sin as well. Too dense to consider anything but getting more gold, accursed and inhumanly wrought as it was. Went for his poor companion’s throat without half a thought, not thinking for an instant about the flint blade his friend had just revealed as his proof of discovery. Oh, greed. It does something to the intellect as much as the soul, I think. That and too much inbreeding among certain branches of nobility. It eats a hole through the already pitiful granule your sad lot call a brain. All they can fathom is themselves. The only importance of the future is how much more gratification might exist for them there. Tedious in the extreme and gluttonous to the point of idiocy.”

At all this, Lord Brighton had managed to grow some irate roses in his shriveled face. His leathern fingers gripped the Necronomicon tighter.

“Not so idiotic that I cannot undo what’s been done, Count. Derleth gave us that much.”

“Before you murdered him,” Jonathan put in. “Right? You couldn’t risk him returning the borrowed book. There is a chance he told you the truth, supposing he didn’t suspect your intentions. There is twice as much chance he fed you a lie as he put the obvious together, leaving behind a spring trap to bring some worse horror on your head. Or the head of whatever sacrificial reader you might try to bribe or coerce into action. But neither option matters. You already damned yourself and everyone else the moment you opened the door to him. Whatever he is.”

Lord Brighton turned his frown on Jonathan.

“What are you on about?”

“He is not Count Dracula.” He fought his voice as he said it, urging it not to shake here, at the last moment. Fought harder not to believe the words that would leave him now, true as they and all their portents were: “He’s a god.”

A knot of fear and revulsion twisted in his stomach as the room’s air flexed. Bristling the way a cat will when it’s pleased. Jonathan tasted his heart and his breakfast rising up when this was joined by a final laugh. Every light in the office and the sunlight in the window stained at the noise.

“That I am. But let us not torment the poor supporting maggot any longer. He does not care for such things either way. All he wants is his candy and all I want is to stop having him in the room. So.” The god that was not Dracula stood from his seat—

Tick-tick-tick—

—and turned a bored smile on Lord Brighton. His roses had wilted again to something clammier.

“When you appear to Ellison down the line, do give him my best wishes. As best you can, anyway. It shall be hard enough work attempting to scream.”

“Wh—,” was as far as Lord Oliver Quentin Brighton got before he vanished. The god sighed in Dracula’s voice, the very essence of relief.

“Finally.”

“Where is he?” Jonathan asked, not wanting to know. But he wanted the next moment to happen even less.

Tickticktick.

“Do you recall the account of the Dreamlands? The little escapade Miss Pleasance and some gaggle of others passed through once upon a time?”

“Yes.” The word barely rose above a whisper. His attention was stuck on the alteration of the god’s eyes. All pretense of simple red had burned away from them. They did not blink as he strolled around the desk and bent down to Jonathan’s shoulder.

“The underside of that. He will live there now, solid and eternal. Well, I say solid,” Jonathan winced as a claw like an obsidian spade grew from the white hand’s thumbnail and slit first his tie, then his shirt collar open, “but he’s more on the viscid side.” In a sing-song lilt, he elaborated, “A great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. He will leave a moist trail when he moves. Blotches of diseased, evil gray will come and go on his surface, as though light is being beamed from within.”

Ticktickticktickticktick—

“Why?”

The shirt collar was folded down and away.

“Why what?”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you wearing him?”

“I figured you would appreciate a familiar face over one of my others. A personal touch, you know. Even this is for quaintness’ sake. I can feel your memories as they turn over in there.” The spade nail tapped Jonathan’s brow. “A little picture book flipping through its pages. It was this side of the throat he went for, yes?”

“Don’t—,”

But the teeth were already in his neck. Where he had not felt Dracula’s bite when it found him that night in June, this one came with a feeling worse than pain. The theft of blood seemed only cursory while something else, far deeper and more integral than flesh, screeched and thrashed against invasion. Jonathan thought dismally of a blind and groping hive sinking into the folds of his mind, building colonies and turning over the paraphernalia of his life with awful feelers. He would rather take Dracula a hundred times over. A thousand.

Instead he could only sit and bleed and choke—and worse. Think of Mina. His mind fled to her as it always did in its worst throes. The eternal safety blanket, clung to whenever some bleak end seemed near, good-bye, good-bye, hide in her, say farewell, last thought, last want, last prayer.

Mina-love-you-Mina-so-sorry-Mina-God-God-God-let-her-know-that-let-her-be-safe-be-happy-God-please-Mina—

“I’m right here, Jonathan, I heard you the first time.” The mouth had come away from his throat, now glazed in red. A tongue like the hide of a lamprey licked the dribble away. “The true first time. Not your desperate little session before the door opened. No. We go such a long way back. Even before the night you swore your soul to send your little bogeyman to Hell.” As Dracula’s face began to contort into a grotesque parody, Jonathan felt a burst of sensory recall—a forest in the dark, the cackle-chase of mist that meant to fall on him with thirsty teeth, pain and hunger and fever and a sunrise that was an infinity away—and remembered, against all desire, the particulars of the denser nightmare that followed.

For it had followed a prayer. Rather, a trade disguised as a prayer. The words were lost to him, but the intent was there. The want.

Help. (Me.) Help. (Mina.) Help. (Victims.) Help, help, help. (And I will give all I can and all I am, whatever that is worth to You. Please.) Help.

“I heard. I answered. And our departed matchmaker’s playing with forces older than the universe has made for a most convenient reunion. Better still, a chance to check off one of infinite chores, and collect what is owed.” Jonathan watched and choked on a mounting scream as the god undid his own shirt before driving the spade claw into his breast. The skin split open, but the ichor that poured from it was not blood. What should had been a wound changed instantaneously into a breathing maw. Teeth chittered. Pieces squirmed. The ichor, a tar that slithered and bubbled as if alive—for it was—peered with eyeless eagerness at Jonathan’s mouth. “Best of all, we can address the missed opportunities of the past. It was all petty good fun when he saw to your woman first. But I think we both know who was still at the top of his list for this.” A hand that was no longer a hand clamped onto the back of Jonathan’s head. “Say ah.”

He bit back against the command. Even against the howl that clawed against the back of his teeth. It did not help.

Tick.

The ichor found its way between pursed lips. Muscle worse than a tongue worked open his jaw. Jonathan did not drink so much as drown in the flood that crawled its way to mouth and throat and all the roads of flesh beyond. His one solace was the fact of his dying. The room faded as he did. Away, away, until all but he and the god remained. As even this winked out, the god was present enough to make his laugh heard.

Tick.

“Jonathan Harker. My friend, my fodder. You should know better than most—death is not the end. It never has been. Death is where we start.”

The world and the vampire decomposed into an endless crawling black. It sprawled. It swirled. It was a single three-lobed pupil set against the cosmic inferno of an iris with no edges at all. Jonathan Harker knew himself for less than a mote before its vision. The fragment of an atom. Yet it saw him just the same.

“Come,” said a voice with no mouth. “We have so much to do.”

The pupil swallowed him.

Tick.

And he was gone.

 At least until he woke in the castle. Not that he would understand it was a castle upon opening his eyes. There was too much space and what angles were perceivable in the ugly stone hurt to look at too long. He might have been in some titanic cavern mouth near the sea. Brine and alien odors burned his nose. Somewhere, things swam and gibbered and croaked their fealty or fear. Likely both.

But somewhere far closer, a mountain turned over in his sea-salted sleep.

Close enough that the turning trembled the enormous cathedral of rock and rattled the air with the thought-hum of drowsing.

Not drowsing. Dead.

Jonathan Harker shuddered like a struck tuning fork under the weight of this groggy clarification. It was helped only slightly by the fact that he still hadn’t turned his head to try and look upon the monolith in the dark. There was not nearly enough gloom to hide the sight of him—for it was a him, and he was another god—and the gradual adjustment of his eyes to the greenish moonlight dribbling in past the towers and edges of a Cyclopean city beyond the castle only improved his sight for the worst. It traced more and more detail in the black, making him want to squeeze his eyes shut and scurry back to the brief oblivion he'd left behind.

Look.

No, he thought. Then, to test if his mouth still worked:

“No.”

You will look or I will consume you and let you spend the next millennium as a cyst in my third stomach.

Jonathan turned over on his side and looked. He was heartened somewhat. Compared to the thing that had worn Dracula’s husk, it was a far duller mental agony to look on this new-ancient member of a pantheon he had no desire to name. This god had forsaken the looming post of his perch-throne to rest upon the floor and his bed of sponge and slime. Jonathan thought abstractly of the cephalopods Nemo and Aronnax were wont to describe with dual awe and respect. The head, which was the size of a town square, reminded him of a bloated octopus whose eyes had drifted slightly to face forward in an unpleasantly humanoid glower. Growing from that was a likewise distended body that mirrored something of a gargoyle, complete with the shrugged and folded wings that draped like a membranous blanket over one side.

One of the tentacles that made up the face’s lower half uncurled to point down at him.

You are Jonathan Harker.

“Yes. Is it safe to—to know your name, sir?”

No. It is Cthulhu.

The name squirmed uncomfortably until it was rooted permanently in his mind. Then it fell asleep.

“Am I dead?”

Yes. To die is to dream and you are in mine.

“Why?”

To take a message.

“What message? Who for?”

Cthulhu told him. There were no words, yet the dictation was taken in full and excruciating detail. Jonathan thought his head, dead as it was, might still pop with collecting the full weight of it. By the time the god was finished, Jonathan Harker was bent double on the slick floor, willing his brain not to drip out of his ears. He willed harder that the presence groping idly through his skull would recede. It had already delivered the message and was now loitering in the cramped labyrinth of his mind the way a body will putter around in the workplace rather than returning straight to a task at counter or desk. Suckers were prying up the boards of his childhood and claws scratched the paint off his adolescence so freshly and strangely budding to adulthood. He almost screamed aloud as boneless limbs peeled open the chronology of his life and turned over the howling core-light of the soul.

The god hummed. The god retracted himself, leaving Jonathan wheezing and weeping on the grime of the stone floor. The god’s glare did not so much soften as adjust some minute increment further from aggravation. The god watched as Jonathan stumbled up first to his knees, then his feet, his hands only just loosening the hopeless cradle they’d made for his pale brow.

That is all there is of importance.

“Alright—,” the word choked him. How strange to think he could choke while dead. “Alright. I-I’ll just—yes. Must go. Now.”

Yes. Gods be with you, Jonathan Harker.

“Thank you?”

Do not. It is only fact.

So it was.

In the time to come, beyond R’lyeh and its dead waters, past the Dreamlands and its edgeless borders, in the mystic dark that was the truer space under the skin of Panicked forests, hills, and caves, throughout the black-starred kingdoms tattered and Yellow, and in chthonic and cosmic dimensions yet further, Jonathan Harker would find himself in the company of many gods. They and their adjacent wonders and horrors.

The first, the last, the worst, and the most constant of which being the vampiric mimic who was waiting for him at the black-green ridge of the city and the start of the teeming obsidian ocean. He still smiled with Dracula’s lips, though the shine of his eyes was the obscener truth; fluid and flaming.

In one of his hands was an elaborately bound itinerary book. A pen that appeared to be a tiny calcified alien figure balanced daintily in the other.

“What was the message?”

“You—,”

Killed me, stole me—

“—heard him too.” He tasted the truth as he said it. He tasted more of loathing, but that was tamped back down and away.

“Yes. But I am asking you what he said.”

“It wasn’t all for you.”

“I’d expect not. For a career slugabed, he always has some complaint to make concerning something disturbing his nap and the nap he dreams about within it. The stars are not right for me to be asking him what time he means to herald anything more harrowing than a few creatives’ sea-salted nightmares, he says. The maggots on land are seeding progeny who will one day use their boats and drills to hunt for oils and aggravate him as an upstairs neighbor’s stomping and banging will, he says. Dagon’s grandchildren keep swimming up to knock at the castle and paddle away laughing, he says. Always something and always with a wide range of parties to deliver complaints to. For my part, I only care what idle chat was directed at me. The rest,” he flapped the hand with the pen in Jonathan’s direction, “well, that is for you to see about. So. What did he have to say to me, my friend?”

“There weren’t any words. Not to any of it.”

“Mmhmm?” The tone of a governess encouraging a toddler through his ABCs.

“He says one of your sons has been weaving in and out of here and Earth’s waters. The one like a sea serpent, born in your time haunting the Vikings. While teething, the venom was enough to make him rot and shed two sets of limbs before he ripped out one of the fangs and stabbed him with it. Both appear put out, but he wants you to set your son elsewhere.”

Sighing, the god in the vampire skin scratched something down in his book.

“Well, that is a good mark for you and a tedious one for me. The entitled slab of gelatin doesn’t recognize play when it swims up and bites him. My spawn is an endlessly growing boy, after all. Do tell him I’ll see what I can do about relocation as soon as he sees about throwing his poor pet cultists a little scrap or two of acknowledgment. He’s been ignoring them the past few centuries and the dithery pests are starting to pull at my apron strings.”

“What—,”

“You will want to take note.” Jonathan Harker found himself holding his own ledger and pen. “The pages are infinite, but I assure you, this will fast seem insignificant to all the dictation it must hold up to. I would recommend one of the crystal lenses the architects are playing with in the Land of Muse, but I wouldn’t want to overwhelm you. Oh. And you will need something better than this.”

Between one instant and the next, Jonathan’s kukri vanished from his hip and appeared in the god’s hand. He watched as the steel was sunk into the god’s trunk, failing to pierce through to the other side. When the blade was unsheathed, the metal pulsed blackly for a long beat—at least until the steel drank in whatever stain it was.

“I am inside you as deep as a god can go. Well.” He rolled his shoulders in a shrug that revealed the edges of his hair to be alive with tendrils. They appeared to make faces at him. “Very nearly. It is my mark and it will be satisfactory enough to most, though there are bound to be nuisances that shall need sterner addressing than courteous mien and a poke with the pen. There is experience enough to see you through either dealing.” He whirled his hand and the kukri was sheathed again. It hung heavier on Jonathan’s hip and seemed almost magnetized to him. Less a weapon than a limb. It was unpleasantly pleasant. “I do not doubt that you will manage.”

“Manage what? Why am I here? Why did you—,”

The god’s borrowed face split open on a grin that threatened to shuck the whole disguise like pale leather.

“Kill you? Amusement was part of it, I confess. A large part. But it was also the simplest way to set you upon the next step of your illustrious career path. Before you claim shock or make false cries of modesty, know that I know you. All of what you have been and done, what you will be and do. Time is so much putty—and vapor and river and ice, as well. To say nothing of the unvarnished bauble of your spirit. You positively blister the eye with your extremes. When you are good, you are very, very good. But when you are mad you are perfect. For our needs, at least.” The monstrous leer reset into human parameters. He snapped his book shut and let it dissolve into smoke. “That said, I did hear all Cthulhu had to say to you. You comprehended what he divulged and did not buckle under the weight of his intent. Just afraid enough to savor, but professional enough to maintain yourself. Earth has been good practice on that front.

“But now you are here to pay what is owed. What luck that all I ask is that you do what comes naturally. Accommodation, solicitation, and the solving of troubles that, frankly, I do not feel like troubling myself with. Bringing messages hither and thither, seeing that issues are addressed as civilly or viscerally as they require. I shall check in with you and your progress as you toddle on…”  

Jonathan was only half-listening. Supreme revulsion had forced his attention to split between the false Dracula and any direction that did not contain him. This led to his gaze snagging on another figure. It drifted slowly atop the water, stamping the waves to stillness as the ebon of its low boat glided near R’lyeh’s edge. What teeming things had raised their heads in curiosity now ducked away, hiding lambent lidless eyes in the depths. The boatman, if that was what it was, cut just as recognizable a silhouette as the god nattering before him.

Tall, slim, hooded. Hands of bone upon the single oar.

Cold radiated from them like heat came off the sun.

“Ah, but I’m rambling! Come, I will not be responsible for ruining your punctual streak. You cut the Transylvanian wilderness down to a mere jog on corporeal terrain. We must do better here.”

Before Jonathan could tell him to wait—indeed, before he could convince himself that any plea would pause or salvage anything now—the god waved his hand and they were both gone from the un-sunken city. Now they stood in the benighted maw of a hollow that crossed soils with that of a place in Wales, not too distant from land with names like ‘Grey Hills’ and ‘Caermaen.’ Pallid shapes slithered and walked and trilled and sang and danced and unspooled. They remembered him far more fondly than Jonathan recalled them and their insistent welcome. Likewise for the horned god that allowed themselves to be called Pan, watching with eyes made of bough and stone and phantasm.

Waiting.

“Oh, they have missed you. Dear Dr. Raymond would squeal to stand where you do now.”

Dr. Raymond would scream if he stood in front of me, muttered a kneejerk hate in him. Or Van Helsing, for that matter. It was too close a thing with Seward and that damned ‘surgery.’ Far, far too close. Should never have let him slip away…

“You say I’m here to take messages. To—to solve the troubles of gods and their acolytes.”

“Ah, see? There you go being polite. You may call them what they are. Sycophants, lickspittles, accidents made with the local mortal meat, occasional deific dandruff…”

“Whatever you may call them, I am meant to,” Jonathan gestured helplessly with the strange notebook, “what? Play secretary? Attendant?”

“Messenger.” The voice rippled and sent the pale denizens in the gloom scurrying back. Jonathan still shivered as he had while alive, back when he felt the slime-glazed flick of some extended limb recoil from where it had grazed the back of his head. Perhaps it was the same member of the so-called ‘Little People’ he had to wrestle himself from before he could be dragged underground to stay. “Only a messenger, Jonathan Harker, just as I am the Messenger. A message can be delivered in many ways and the problems encased in them can be addressed with as much variety. Or, if you are simply not in the mood, as I so frequently am not, you can leave it to their judgment. True, their judgment usually comes with a significant body count, but only with such lives that are scarcely a blink in the great temporal scheme of things.”

“Cthulhu, he mentioned…he gave me things to tell people I can no longer reach. Not like this.”

“I know. They are negligible. Which is really just another word for mortal. They shall get around to dying in their own time and you can share your intel then. Unless,” the mask of Dracula melted like tallow, the features eagerly warping into truer shapes, “you wish to have them sent ahead early. Perhaps they shall find their way here. If you like, I can open the way to your widow in just a—,”

“No!” The old pain of misery simmered in him, but thinly. Just as the tears that stung his eyes were dulled. They were not real. They were not part of anything living, but a memory of living. The breath that hitched in him was there only out of habit. “No. Please, no. I’ll do it.”

“Jonathan, you would do it if I tipped an entire continent down my gullet and used England to pick my teeth. The courtesy of familiar company is only that. I’ve no need for threats with you.” He pointed at Jonathan’s middle. A horrendous writhing twitched to life in him and teased at the phantom of bones in his spectral anatomy. Puppet strings rooted within rather than to the clumsy exterior of joints. “Dracula is in Hell. You sent him there with your own blessed hand. You are most welcome. Now get to work.”

  In Pan’s domain, Jonathan Harker turned to face the Little and the White and the Demi People of this and many gods of Nature and Supernature, his book in hand. The People had much to say. As with the dreaming god of the sea, he wondered at how they expected him to deliver half their insistent sibilant notes in his condition, but considering how they reckoned time and their own loose grip upon humanity’s reality, they must have imagined he would wait until all the relevant parties had passed away for him to share their topics of discussion. Perhaps he would.

Meanwhile, he took note of what things might be carried to other entities presumably in reach. There was some dispute of territory with the gnoles aboveground and another with the ghouls below it.

True ghouls. Tunneling. Teeth full of death snapping at those below. Flesh rots and flesh dies. Growing back from the dying annoys us.

“There are worse things,” he murmured aloud. Inwardly:

Assault. Abduction. Sending your admirer with a medical license to spike the chemical suppliers with your ritual powders to turn victims into monsters against their will.

The doctor Arthur Raymond had no orders, the Great God Pan rumbled in his head. Only a fantasy.

“And the rest? What reason do you have for attacking and stealing people as you do in the living world?”

This world lives too. This world is lonesome. My Mary is here. Mine. Our Helen comes and goes, as you saw. Dies and lives as spring will do. The man Villiers learned the hard way. She wants, she wants. She only went through her lovers to find one who would stay after she showed them the truth. After she gave them a night of changing as our flesh changes. None died by her hand, but by theirs. They would not stay for her after. Few do. They do not understand. You do not understand.

“I understand that you never ask. You take. You violate. There is no life or will or want in the world that you and yours consider equal or greater than your own. For all your uncanny makeup, all your madness and marvels, your habits seem no different from any other empire or rapist, apart from the nuance of more surreal consequences.”  

Such is Nature. Such is Supernature.

“If a dog can understand ‘yes and no,’ so should a god.”

You’re wasting breath you don’t have. Go.

Jonathan closed the book and turned to climb up out of the hollow. He tried not to notice the brushing of wondering digits on his head and back and legs. One hand went to the kukri. The digits retreated.

You will see to the gnoles. You will see to the ghouls. There will be retribution otherwise.

“I will do what I can.” Whatever that would be.

And the others. Those upon Earth. You will tell them what needs knowing.

…If I can. The Dreamlands seem the only course.

Mina flickered in his mind again. Her face distraught. He hoped she would dream where he could find her—but the hope was thin.

Jonathan stepped up and away, following the instinct-pull of a messenger’s route that towed him toward the groves of the gnoles. To work, to work.

 In a black-green sea, the figure upon the low slim boat turned the oar in their skeletal hands. Patient, if irate. A scale-girt face peeked up at them. Cataracts glazed the fish eyes. Memories of manhood and dry land had not been drowned in all the centuries between now and the shore. Please, could they..?

The figure pointed at the spot between the wide-spaced eyes.

A moment later, the corpse floated. A moment after that, kinsmen swam up to collect and consume him goodbye.

The figure threw two coins into the waves and pushed the oar once more.

 This took hours.

This took days.

This took months.

This took years.

This took all time and none at all.

 But in practical terms, this all took just long enough for Robert Holt to worry. To wonder at the shout of a stranger and the scrabbling at Jonathan Harker’s office doorknob from the inside. To call through the door and hear no answer. To finally, miserably, open the door.

And scream.

 In the time it took for Mr. Bentley and a throng of younger fellows to come running, Jonathan Harker had already met with the gnoles, delivered and received messages of matching bile, and began making suggestions. If the matter was one of territory and trees, could they not solve the matter by way of a neutrally impervious border? No one side could snatch forest from the other if there was a genius loci between them. Death was, if not a harrowing deterrent for the parties involved, a sure irritant. To die and undie was a loathsome process. Sowing one of the more viciously solitary land spirits along the terrain of dispute would ward off the encroaching Folk on either side the way the presence of a buzzing hornet nest attached to a fence would steer away wanderers on Earth.

There was much chittering and trilling and grudging hisses from them as much as Pan’s myriad Folk. It was as close to an acquiescing tone as either party could manage.

By the time Mr. Bentley and the rest reached the office and found Robert trying to find a pulse or a breath on Mr. Harker’s corpse, as well as Lord Brighton’s companion dead on the rug, Jonathan Harker had spent two years learning how to sow a genius loci himself, as neither side—including the one with a god—deigned to lay it in place themselves. The result was an entity that passed for a brambleberry shrub. A thing of fruit and blossoms and thorns and faces glowering from its leaves. As an experiment, one of the White People and one of the gnoles dared to pluck berries from their respective sides; this, after two other volunteers had to be whipped and thorned and blood-siphoned to bone as a distraction.

Screams, contortions, and an explosive growth of new prickly shrubs from their flesh ensued. Their soul-bodies limped hurriedly away from the roots, and did their best to join their fellows in cheering over the success as they reconstituted. Jonathan Harker made a note of this and then followed his feet to the ghouls. A far easier reception, as he had acquired some good feeling from his work with Aurelia and her matrons. They even had a manifesto describing their reasoning ready and waiting for him on a scroll:

BUNCH OF CHEATERS DOWN THERE. WE SMELL DEAD FLESH? WE’RE COMING TO DINNER. THEY WANT TO DIG INTO OUR CATACOMBS? THEY CAN BE DINNER. SIMPLE AS THAT.

“That is fairly simple. I can tell them so, but I doubt that will settle the trouble itself. I take it they started it?”

“That they did,” one of the more human-shaped members gurgled. “Get in everywhere like weeds. Tried to conscript old Erichtho herself with that potion of theirs. She quaffed and killed it. Filled the guilty party with extinct insect eggs from half-past the dinosaurs and resurrected them all at once. Had us a good laugh. But they are grabby buggers whereas we take what comes natural. Always more life, so there’s always more dead. Circle of supper. We’d keep ourselves to ourselves if it weren’t for them nosing into our crypts looking for more pits. That’s both here and in the meaty corporeal demesne, for your record. Greedy pricks.”

The ghoul spat gristle while her companions gibbered and snarled in agreement. Jonathan took note.

“Would it help if they detoured to more,” he gestured lightly at the surrounding emptied caskets and their half-eaten contents, “livelier ground?”

“Oh, detours have naught to do with it. They have plenty of ground to play with in the liminal domains. Trouble is they think everything subterranean is theirs to call. It’ll be quite a time once those subway trains come into fashion, I guarantee that. Bastards won’t even leave a footbridge alone if they see some pretty young thing trip-tapping on their lonesome. They can go on forever, so they won’t steer away from the latest fancy unless something’s there to slap their hand. Tentacle. Whatever. Us giving them a little dose of necrosis to go with their regrowth act is us giving them that slap.”

“I just had to deal with a similar issue with the gnoles. Apparently, they were the encroaching party in that one. There’s too much real estate squabbling aboveground even for Pan’s People to lay claim to all of it without trouble. Is there anyone else with investment in underground territory? A neutral party that might be worth deferring to or..?”

The ghoul’s lips quivered up and back from a doggish grin.

“Aye. An older sort. Was kicking long before Their Horned Majesty of Stolen Milkmaids and Herded Shepherds was ever seeding satyrs around Greece or the Isles. Poked his head up a while back to jab that dreary American’s dreams for a poem, I think, but he ducked on down again. He has his work to do, same as Pan and their gardening and mystic maintenance, but doesn’t go around using it as an excuse to be an eldritch ass. Get him involved and I reckon the Folk will find themselves quite disinterested in expanding into occupied real estate. Only trouble is getting him to squirm up and into our mess. Busy fellow, he is.”

“Who is he?”

The ghouls told him. Jonathan managed to not make a face. Then asked for directions.

Four years passed. Robert Holt shook and held Jonathan Harker’s corpse, while Mr. Bentley sent two coworkers flying out to get a doctor and the police, as, with the timing known only to a nightmare, Mina Harker came rushing into the building, something was wrong, wrong, wrong, she had dreamt it asleep and felt it awake, and where was he, please, please, where was Jonathan?

As it turned out, Jonathan Harker was following the cathedral dimensions of the tunnels left behind by a Conqueror of great and grisly pedigree. It took some time to find him, as he was a fellow constantly on the move, and when he was found it took almost as long to clamber up to his front end. Already being dead, Jonathan had no trouble holding an audience with him. There was no life or meat on him to bother with, or so the Conqueror wordlessly informed him.

It was a more cordial meeting than Jonathan might have expected. Something to do with his work in Transylvania. The erasure of Dracula had put himself and Quincey Morris in some good graces for those of the Conqueror’s like. Likewise his choice of patron. What was it he needed, young man?

Jonathan explained. The Conqueror detoured.

It transpired that new routes were established which crossed ghoulish and Sidhe territories alike. Among several others. These routes were unique in that they were stamped with the passing of that oldest, the most unassuming, the most all-consuming of reapers, the Worm. Eater of plant and animal and god, fertilizer of life. Yes, it was preferred that the consumed be decaying before it passed into the unfathomable maw, but not a strict requirement. Certainly not for those who rejuvenated and resurrected themselves willy-nilly to begin with.

Which was to say, if any Folk thought it worth the gamble, they could try and breach other underworlds’ domains for conscription if they liked—but only if they were prepared to risk going whole and alive into the gullet for the next thirty years only to be excreted as sentient soil. Flowers would ensue. Likewise for the ghouls.

The Folk sulked away from the tunnels. The ghouls toasted each other with goblets of bodily swills and embalming fluid. Jonathan declined his own.

“Suit yourself, lad. What is it your sort take, anyway?”

“My sort?”

“By way of pay, that is. The running bit is that its coins on the eyes, but that’s just a matter of travel. Or does your boss handle all that?”

“What do you—,”

He was gone.

“—mean?”

The catacombs of the ghouls had given way to, of all places, a theater. On stage was a slim and handsome young man. Between blinks he was either black or a man-shaped chasm with a grin of lunatic stars. His eyes gave him away as the Messenger. He was idly breaking down a number of scientific apparatuses and loading them into cases that evaporated as they were packed.

“They are a surprisingly companionable group, as carrion collectors go,” he said as he fiddled with a device that spewed a crystal-clear light projection of an apocalyptic vista upon the wall behind him. “Very community-minded. I imagine they assumed I was not giving you your due.” The projection switched off as the depicted city caught ablaze and the last living citizens wailed and charred and changed in its green light. “I am many things, but cheap is never one of them. Especially not when a maggot does more than simply entertain. You, Jonathan Harker, have the honor of being promoted to caterpillar. Congratulations. Sadly, you missed the audience.”

Jonathan took a reflexive step back as the god stepped off the stage and his foot landed on a discarded pamphlet. In a print he did not recognize, on paper that did not yet exist, the font declared:

SEE THE FUTURE LAID BARE! SCIENCES THAT REVEAL THE BONES OF SPACE AND TIME! HE TOURS FROM FURTHEST EGYPT TO NEAREST METROPOLIS! COME AND BEHOLD THE WONDERS OF NYARLATHOTEP!

The city named for the event was one nestled in what the Americans had dubbed New England. The date was set in November of 1920.

“Oh, never mind that. This little show wasn’t for your Earth. Not even the display outdoors.” The Messenger shrugged into a smart traveling suit whose make seemed tailored to a different era and strolled up and past Jonathan in the aisle. The horrid rooted grasp in his core yanked Jonathan along until he matched the god’s stride. “There are so many parallel playgrounds to visit, you see. For this one,” the doors of the building swung open on the benighted desolation of city and street and sanity where growths groaned, cement mouths wailed with shrieks and laughter, and a gulf in the countryside yawned all the way to the throbbing nucleus of the universe, “I turned the clock forward on my latest spectators. Can you guess what they called me? Among the other epithets that jump to mind upon seeing too much melanin and intelligence in the same place, that is.”

“Pharaoh.” The word came to mind and mouth on impulse. In that moment it seemed as obvious to him as math. The Messenger affected a preening stance.

“On occasion I am.” The handsome young man suddenly dissolved into a more familiar frame. Jonathan tried to put more distance between himself and the returned guise, but Dracula’s hand sank like a claw into his shoulder. “Though I am happy to change costumes for company’s sake. No, the name was an insult and the insult was an unforgivable one, for it was not even true. I will suffer many cries of hate and horror if they are earned, but this! They called me a fraud! A toymaker playing with static electricity and film tricks! It could not stand. So I sent them to this future, where they could be introduced to the truth of my predictions. Which, I will confess, were rigged—they were promises more than anything. Less an oracle huffing vapor than an architect revealing his blueprints. Mind your step.”

Jonathan jumped as a hand—what used to be a hand—scrabbled for his ankle. It grew out of a length of tendon and sinew that was once an arm, but was now a mere umbilical stretching from the fungal heap attached to one of many blasted ruins. The eyes in that mass were many and pleading. He thought inexplicably of Mr. Davies. The kukri itched at his hip and cold twitched in his hands. He had to do something. He needed to—

“Ah-ah,” he was tugged back in line by gut and grip, “leave them be. They are not your concern.”

It is. It must be someone’s.

“Why would you do this? What point is there to inflicting all this?”

The Dracula mask turned grave as the eyes burned.

“Would you believe it was by necessity?”

“No. No, I would not. You are too powerful to have any true need for preying on innocents of any world in this way.” Jonathan swallowed dryly. Again, so odd in a throat that had no need for it. “You did this because you wanted to.”

“Not just me. Cthulhu and the broader brigade of the Old, the Great, and the Outer gods have their stamp on all of this too. As they will in other dimensions. As they already have in other worlds. But you are not far from the truth. Now comes the next question: Why do you want to do this, gods? A query as old as worship itself.”

“And what is the answer?”

“What do you expect it is?”

“Because you can. Because no one can stop a god but a god.”

“If you want the maudlin take, I suppose that would suffice. But it is too blunt, and more, you do not believe it yourself. Not completely. You were made, Jonathan Harker. All civilizations in all worlds in all layers of reality. And while the joy of creating a toy simply to break it has a brute pleasure in it, that defeats the purpose of sowing entities with the eternity of a soul. A mind. The truth is, it gets terribly lonesome and annoying with only other gods about. It’s always the same dull un-faces and same aggravating dramas running their gamut over the eons and it grows so tedious you could just detonate the entire idiot universe out of boredom. Which has happened more than once.” En sotto voce, he added, “Azathoth had not carved me out of himself to be his imaginary friend yet and so was prone to the odd cataclysmic tantrum whenever the Drummers and Pipers’ mad songs failed to soothe him. Between myself and all you new mites scurrying about and providing enrichment for the immortal crowds, this rendition of Existence has been the longest one running.

“Which is all to say that gods do what we do, from menace to miracles, so that we do not go insane and smash the whole thing.” Jonathan tried to crumple into himself as the Messenger traced his neck with the vampire’s nail. “Our sincerest thanks for enriching eternity for us. Of course, all of that could be a lie. I do not defraud, but I can lie. So perhaps it’s all just a matter of we in the deific menagerie pouring water on anthills for a laugh. Who can say?”

Jonathan neither knew nor much cared in the moment. Not for the first time in the years spent in this new state, he tried to wake up. Desperately, fervently, willing Mina to shake him awake or for some final rattling shock to jolt him back into his drowsing body. He could almost see himself prone on his office desk, Mina and Robert and fretting professional faces huddled around him, trying to solve the question of his absence from the cold flesh.

If this is a dream, it is not a living man’s. Do not bait yourself. You are here. You know it.

Yes, he knew it. But was it too much to imagine he wasn’t? To pretend there was some exit, some merciful end to—

What is that.

Something was coming up the derelict road. It stalked on two legs, strolling at a stolid march through the mire of horrors. Above, six arms flowered from the trunk of the body, carving through the living and unliving detritus with strange appendages that seemed like blades at a distance. All was unmade where it walked, all died and sighed. And above the arms, a stare. Cold. Cold.

 Hello, Jonathan thought with a curious flatness, do I know you?

“But here I am dawdling. You have done such a fine job and you are due for recompense. Here.” Jonathan sputtered a moment as something clasped over his face and knotted itself at the back of his head. A mask of yellowed ivory. “You’ll want something removable where we’re going. Even dead, I imagine trying to peel your face would sting somewhat.”

The god was closer now and the proportions revealed to be even more gargantuan than expected. Cthulhu’s mountainous bulk was dwarfed to a pebble beside a single leg. One of the hands that was a blade receded into itself to produce genuine digits. It bent down as if to crush Jonathan in a fist.

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” the Messenger intoned. They vanished from the spot as the massive hand came down. The god sighed. Stalked. Carved. Whittling at patience like a frail and flaking wood.

 On the living Earth, bodies had been removed from the premises of Hawkins and Harker. With little wheedling and much weeping, Lestrade had tilted things enough to allow Mina Harker and her glassy-eyed companions to take the cadaver of Jonathan Harker away. If not to the Harker estate.

 Within a ballroom, in the midst of a masquerade that had seen a thousand midnights and still had not ended, Jonathan Harker removed his mask to behold the shrieking Yellow splendor of the Palace of Hastur. If only briefly. The Messenger had not lingered to ward off the swarm of guests, some human, most in a state of transition to Carcosan native, some entirely indecipherable in terms of species, but all gilded in their finery. Some where so committed to the pageantry that their costumes were grafted to and through themselves.

One guest winnowed through the herd to rescue him from a dance with a partner whose arachnid legs glittered in either brilliant chitin or molten gold shells and whose manifold mouth seemed intent on trying to fit both around and inside his own. The guest straightened the black-gold brooch at his throat before snatching Jonathan away with an inescapable flourish.

“Mr. Harker!” laughed a voice through the Yellow-red spill of peeled lips. “How stunning to find you gracing such circles as these—pardon, dear Lady, but I simply must borrow him; His Tattered Majesty calls, many thanks—I had not expected you to be on such a guest list. Not after that little tiff with Miss Pleasance and your fellows. Perhaps your being one of those addicts of the Bard has won pardon enough. I will not lie and say I saw old William about, but I might say I saw Marlowe, just as I might say they are in talks for a sequel to Doctor Faustus to make up for Goethe’s nauseating rendition…”

 As the faceless guest hauled him out of the ballroom and into further phantasmagoric halls that coiled and sprawled like an architectural damask pattern, Jonathan’s eye fell upon the clutching hand. Over the silk glove’s ring finger was a wedding band of simple gold that now blazed Yellow. But on the forefinger was a signet ring with the letter W encrusted in ornamentation. As he recognized it, the recollection of the wetly rasping voice dawned on him.

“Lord Wotton?”

“I was, I am, I fear I shall be forever. But at least the fear is well-written here. None of that blubbering twaddle I get from my neighbors in the asylum. All their madness is terribly mediocre. The mere misfiring of this lobe or an overload of that chemical. The King, at least, lends some artistry to it.  I only wish he would stop fussing with the Second Act and move on to a new work. We are a busy cast of props and each time he rewrites the scene, we must have another midnight unmasking. Which would not be so awful—there is the most marvelous conversation to be had and I have no qualms about an endless party—but no one has a mask they can spare. I arrived without one and so must always shed more of what’s above the neck. Even once I hit bone and brain and the jelly of eyes, unmask, unmask. Do you suppose I can still talk without a head? I’m sure I can, I shall. Gods know there was living proof enough in England that one might talk extensively without ownership of a brain. If anything, it only improves one’s standing in Parliament.”

Wotton laughed at that. A noise that pierced at the last ragged note.

“So I must assume. I don’t see myself holding the ears of anyone beyond the Lake of Hali or Purfleet’s medical swaddling anytime soon. How would I know what goes on in Parliament? That silly trinket of a youth…oh, what was it? Dorian? Dorian. He comes by now and then. He never talks of Parliament. Truly, he’s become such a dreary lad. But at least he wears despair prettier than I ever shall.”  

“Wotton—,”

“Don’t let him read it, Mr. Harker. I get the feeling he may do something rash—there are more mirrors in his head than thoughts and more a parrot in his throat than his own words, so I fear he may pick the thing up just to follow after me. Ah, but he did warn me, didn’t he? And the silly boy believed me when I said I would not try again. Perhaps it is better to be a mirror than whatever I was before the play. Not a good thing. That is his rule about it, did you know?”

“Wotton, wait—,”

Up the stairs, past chambers that stared out over a land steeped in toxic hues of poison frog and stinging wasp. Dull sun and duller moon drifted in lazy orbits like searching vultures.

“Oh, the Wallpaper Women, they were mere refugees. Never touched a page but for that first girl locked in the room. She found it waiting under the floorboards for her. Wanted to be an actress, so it’s said, and she would even have taken Cassilda’s fate over her own mundane Purgatory. The book’s paper stained the wall’s paper and the way was opened for all the Cassildas and Camillas to follow. In another Earth, he even spared a girl from the suicide of the Pallid Mask. He even brought her pets back to life after her cad lover dumped them in it. Oh, he plagued an entire world, a warped reflection of our meager mud ball, and hunted the secret sinners in all their corners. Some sinned great and some sinned mild. But they were found and were damned with the evil stepsisters’ plight. They had birds eat their eyes and glass carve their feet for their domestic evils.

“But the tyrants, the traitors, the cowards, the cads, we are gathered here to play our bit parts. The justice of the fairy tale. The dramatic catharsis of the stage. It is why I can never stop talking. No matter what I have or haven’t to say.”

“Wotton.”

“Yes?”

They had come to a stop on a high corridor whose black marble shined with faces. Jonathan pressed his mask into Wotton’s empty hand.

“Keep it.”

“…Thank you. Now, the King is waiting. Supposedly to deliver a message, but I suspect he wants another pair of eyes to sear with a read-through. I shall leave you to it. And Mr. Harker?”

“Yes?”

Lord Henry Wotton, eternal attendee of the masquerade paused before hiding the raw meat of his face with the ivory. The naked eyes finally met Jonathan’s.

“Dorian did not tell you all that I said. I have no hope in that cell, you know. No more than I do here. But each time my mind flits back to that room, to Earth and flesh and the flicker-flints of sanity, it reminds me what is to become of me for good. A man on another Earth, Castaigne, his madness ate him to death. He told me so as he wept and groveled in a crown he made of bone and silverware. I know what my ending is, but the sane spells…those are wretched. They grow briefer and briefer and the relief of them is torture, for I know how soon I will be back here to unmask again. I told Dorian then, I tell you now. See me dead back there, if you can. Tap Dr. Seward and his lancet for it. Godalming or the American if you must absolutely scrape the bottom of the barrel. But…

“But I would feel more relieved if it was you. Finality seems more in your purview. Anyway.” He tied on the mask. “It is nearly midnight. I must be off.”

He disappeared down the stairwell just as an ornate door of gold and black stone swung silently open. Jonathan stepped inside. The first thing he heard was the sound of keys click-hammering away with a speed that rivalled his memory of Mina’s whirlwind typing. It was not the sound of a typewriter, however. The noise was a far gentler tap-tap-tap with no slide and snap as the finished sheet spat its way out of the device. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Pause. Click. Click. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Click. Tap-tap.

“In here, Mr. Harker. Or do you prefer Jonathan?”

Jonathan followed the voice—a man’s, mellow but focused—through a looming wilderness of books and bound manuscripts and shelves that reached up into a lightless ceiling so high it might have melted up into a night sky. He found his way through by following an ochre glow whose source rested in an illumination veined through the walls of what seemed to be a decadent designer’s iteration of a writer’s cluttered office.

The King in Yellow sat bent at a desk, the wisps of his fingers flying over the low flat keys of some wafer-thin creation of crystal lens and golden frame. Words grew into paragraphs on a never-ending scroll within the glass as a strange ornate box to the desk’s side opened its mouth on a hinge and grew what looked like a book page by page within its patient cover-to-be.

“I can go by Hastur if you like. Or Ambrose. Sometimes I’m even a Charlotte. I’m only a Howard when I’m feeling particularly gruesome. I’ll not wheedle you for a Your Tattered Majesty or suchlike. Henry cannot help himself with his bitter-edged flattery and flattering bitterness. It’s taken him nearly a hundred years to get around to developing a sincere thought. Quite proud of him, honestly. Thought it would take at least two centuries minimum. Coffee?”

Jonathan noticed for the first time that he did smell caffeine cutting through the air. The only blend he’d ever tried was one that Quincey had insisted was the most palatable out of all the, ‘downright depressing,’ offerings London had in supply at any café or shop, apparently paling compared to the cups he had ground himself back in Texas. He followed his nose to a petite but handsome machine with a crystal pitcher full of coffee whose scent was nearly perfume in how it prickled. As he watched, the King in Yellow willed it to pour into a weathered mug, followed by a dollop of pearlescent cream and a sprinkle of white powder—

“Not that nutcase Pan’s dust, I assure you. Even if it didn’t give me transfiguring indigestion, it doesn’t even have the excuse of a decent flavor. That was just a pinch of sweetener. Jar’s by the machine.” The mug drifted to the waiting palm of a spidery over-knuckled hand. From there, a gnarled slit opened in the ivory horror of the King’s face and nursed the brown brew. “Ah. Should have added caramel. But I save that for after I finish a chapter. Take a seat, take a seat.”

Warily, Jonathan found a clear space on a nearby couch. He sat amid more books, more papers. On the nearest sheet:

'Good stranger,' I continued, 'I am ill and lost. Direct me, I beseech you, to Carcosa.'

The man broke into a barbarous chant in an unknown tongue, passing on and away.

An owl on the branch of a decayed tree hooted dismally and was answered by another in the distance. Looking upward, I saw through a sudden rift in the clouds Aldebaran and the Hyades! In all this there was a hint of night -- the lynx, the man with the torch, the owl. Yet I saw -- I saw even the stars in absence of the darkness. I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under what awful spell did I exist?

I seated myself at the root of a great tree, seriously to consider what it were best to do. That I was mad I could no longer doubt, yet recognized a ground of doubt in the conviction. Of fever I had no trace. I had, withal, a sense of exhilaration and vigor altogether unknown to me -- a feeling of mental and physical exaltation. My senses seemed all alert; I could feel the air as a ponderous substance; I could hear the silence.

A great root of the giant tree against whose trunk I leaned as I sat held enclosed in its grasp a slab of stone, a part of which protruded into a recess formed by another root. The stone was thus partly protected from the weather, though greatly decomposed. Its edges were worn round, its corners eaten away, its surface deeply furrowed and scaled. Glittering particles of mica were visible in the earth about it-vestiges of its decomposition. This stone had apparently marked the grave out of which the tree had sprung ages ago. The tree's exacting roots had robbed the grave and made the stone a prisoner.

A sudden wind pushed some dry leaves and twigs from the uppermost face of the stone; I saw the low-relief letters of an inscription and bent to read it. God in heaven! my name in full! -- the date of my birth! -- the date of my death!

“An early draft, but one of my better ones, I think. Working on something a little riskier for the next world. Grim and sweet at once. A bit of detective theme, a good dose of eldritch horror, but with less of that suffocating purple prose. A bit more wit, more soul. Arthur seems a good name. Arthur and John. What do you think?”

“I think I’m quite confused,” Jonathan admitted. “And I will have to pass on the coffee. The dead don’t drink. At least I haven’t yet and it’s been…” He tried to think. To count. “I really cannot say how many years.”

“Ha. ‘The dead don’t drink,’ he says. Amazing you can say so with a straight face when your entire origin story centered around some terribly thirsty corpses. Even the lack of, quote, ‘true,’ corporeality is no reason to cut yourself off. What do you think the folks of the Elysian Fields are doing with those ambrosial gardens? The heavens, the nirvanas, the realms of fantasy and reward unending, all have made accommodations for the act of consumption. It is one of the delights of life and, being a delight, it is not barred from a soul unpinned from its world. And while this is no such paradise, the act of percolating a drink the dead can imbibe is less than child’s play.” The King’s voice dropped to a stage whisper, “Nyarlathotep does so love to peacock about how he’s one of the older kids, how he’s Azathoth’s favorite, the Messenger and Soul of the Gods, the Crawling Chaos, and so forth.

“He is all those things, sure. But he’s also, if you will pardon the jargon of the future, full of shit.” The King took a sip. “There’s tea as well, if you prefer…Mr. Harker? Or Jonathan?”

“Jonathan.”

He moved to get up for a cup, but the King’s hand went click, a new crystal scroll appeared in the lens, the keys tap-tap-tapped and Jonathan was suddenly holding his favorite cup from the cabinet he and Mina had brought from their little apartment to the house Peter Hawkins had left them. Scuffed and shabby, but theirs, like all the cups and plates they had found in secondhand shops together. It was even the blend Mina made for them on Sundays. Holding its heat, smelling the leaves, brought hot needles back to eyes and heart in a way he hadn’t felt in—

Minutes. Years. Lifetimes.

—so, so long.

“I feel I am becoming static. I keep asking the same questions, but I must ask again, just in case an answer happens. What is this? All of this?”

“Yes, you have asked before. It’s a lucid thing to do. Not many of the dead, the dreaming, and the in-between will bother with it. The mind sleeks itself down to fit the logic of the domain. The only whats and hows and whys that occur to them are in reaction to the stimuli of their narrative. None of your existential pinhole-poking. The Messenger can get away with tapdancing around honest answers because he is, you will have noticed, an immensely overpowered snot. Which does track with him being one of the most humanoid of his crowd. He’ll call it ‘dumbing himself down’ for the Earthly brain. Meanwhile the most intelligent conversation he’s had in the past five millennia has been listening to Kadath’s Dream Gods chatting about their vacation to hallucinatorily pretty faux New England. Even the shoggoths have more on the brain than the rest of the geriatric pantheon. They think like fungi and only really get somewhere interesting when they playact like the mortals.”

Another sip. Tap-tap-tap-tap…

One hand typed all the while as the King said, “Which is all very fascinating in the abstract, but not the answer to your questions. The trouble is, I cannot be too blatant. That would ruin what’s coming and it hardly needs any help. Already this plot you’ve been punted into is haphazard and frayed and, frankly, borderline amateurish. There’s a reason Old Crawly did not orchestrate Randolph’s little dream quest in the next reality over so much as watch him putter along at random to Kadath before doing the divine equivalent of tying his shoelaces together to see if he’d trip and fall into unending terror and lunacy at the heart of Azathoth. But then Mr. Carter went and woke up. Prank foiled.

“Sadly, it’s not so simple for you. Being dead isn’t even the worst of it. He actually has something of a plan for you. Nothing so grandiose and clogged with a nesting doll of wiles and prophecy so much as seeing an opportunity to run with. One he has been running with since he filled you with his poison. He’s been having fun with it. With you. With the game of keep-away. But soon he will come down to the climax; that is, turning the game fully to a con. When that time comes, you must keep certain things in mind. Take note.”

The King in Yellow held up one wispy digit after the other, ticking points off.

“One, it feels like ages since it mattered, but recall you are a solicitor by trade. Fine print and property law will remain bafflingly pertinent even now, for he will try to get you to sign. It is his only way to give his claim legitimacy.

“Two, the messages you assumed you could not deliver, you can. Not only by death, and not only by whispering through the Dreamlands. Do not forget—ignorance was and remains your worst enemy. You could have slain Dracula in his castle if you had known all the factors; your instincts and your God nearly got you there, but for the trick of the basilisk stare and the swarming minions. What you believe is possible is your limit. Discover what lies beyond those assumptions, and far more doors will open to you.

“Three, your God is not of Abraham. Nor of Alhazred. While there is fair claim for a custody battle with Eros, for your tithes are many to Love, even that is not your God. They have blessed you many times and you have done your duty by them in due fashion. That you are as you are now is testing their patience down to its last infinitesimal thread. Which the Messenger knows.

“Four, and this is most vital—,”

A cool fingerless grip locked around Jonathan’s throat and hauled him backward in a strangled tumble. Couch and Carcosa, cup and King disappeared as he was hooked through and away to a place that had existed on many Earths and none—one of several lies made to Euclidean space.

Jonathan fell in a sprawl upon sand that lurched and lived against its will under frantic constellations. When he looked up, he saw a black pyramid whose blocks were carved from cosmic abyss. It scarcely held his attention. Not compared to the shape that trundled on its spiny legs and turned his mind over in the teeth of its three-lobed eye like a child gnawing a candy.

“I do hope you did not take him seriously. He was meant to tell you something important, not improvise some piddling addition to his script.” Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, sighed and half the stars guttered like candles. “There is simply no trusting a writer.”

 In the headquarters of the League, Jonathan Harker’s corpse was arranged on a table beneath a lamp. His snowy head rested on a pillow rather than a block, the eyes and mouth examined cautiously. Robert Holt’s description of the men who arrived prior, only one of whom remained by dint of being dead, was worrisome.

“I couldn’t tell how many men were with Lord Brighton,” he did not catch how both Dr. Jekyll and Griffin bristled at the name, “one man or two. I thought I must have imagined the third.” He described the third man as he’d seemed before he’d been mistaken for a shadow. Mina had to fight not to scream or be sick. Art dropped into his chair as if punched. Quincey let Jack grip his hand with his own trembling fingers until he ached. Van Helsing looked miserably to the ceiling and began whispering as many curses as prayers in every language he knew.

This, in conjunction with Jekyll and Griffin’s murmured suspicions of Brighton, or ‘Q,’ as the supposed alias was—the stuff of barroom twaddle and urban legend that higher circles would not quite dare to breathe aloud where the high-class walls had ears—made many more hearts freeze. And then there was the newspaper, marked by Jonathan’s pen. The dead Professor Derleth, Miskatonic University, one of the few known homes of a copy of the Necronomicon.

“But why would anyone want to bring the Count back? If they knew why he was slain, what he was…”

“Lord Brighton was half dust last time he was seen in public,” Dorian croaked from his corner. “Even Henry avoided the man. Said he felt too much like Brighton was daydreaming of ways to siphon the life out of him like one might suck the juice from an orange.”

“If not a vampire, then he was certainly a man who wished to be,” Holmes said half to the room and half to the air. His hawkish gaze had yet to move from Jonathan Harker’s head. “However he found out about Dracula, it perhaps more inspired than worried him. Money can only comfort so long before the Ferryman comes to call and he needs but the cheapest fare to do his job. Mere tuppence. But assuming Brighton was successful in bringing the Count back, it would explain nothing of what was found in the office. Or not found. No Lord Brighton. No Necronomicon.”

“But plus a dead henchman with not a mark on his neck and—and Jonathan with,” Jack’s gorge rose, rose, balanced at the back of his throat, “with the wrong kind of mark.”

“It is true,” Van Helsing said in a dead tone that fought to be doctorial. “Dracula, even being animal-crude, he did not leave a bite so strange upon the neck, only little spots such as a pinprick leaves. These punctures too are small, but far, far too many. It looks to my eye like the leech or his cousin the lamprey took their drink.”

“A nested mouth. Yes.” Holmes gnawed and puffed at his pipe. “Mr. Morris, you say there were such maws to be found lurking in your adventure in Louisiana?”

“I did. There were. Though I wouldn’t call those lot vampires. Not undead, just folks with the same condition as those poor Innsmouth locals. They couldn’t have done that,” he said softly in the table’s direction. “They need the water. I’m more curious about the black stain on his tongue.” In his chair, Holmes straightened up an inch. Only Watson and Irene noticed. “Supposing he—supposing something made him…” He floundered a moment.

“Supposing this third man, Dracula or not, did to him what was done to me? The exchange of blood?” Mina’s voice cut the air like a knife. It barely raised. It was barely a voice at all. Which made sense, she supposed. She did not feel she was entirely in the room at present. Too much of her mind had fled howling from the tangible world as her mind tried, in its constant habit, to search for Jonathan’s presence. Not here, naturally. Not in that dead flesh. Not on Earth. Out, away, beyond. But there were so many directions. So much wilderness of other planes to hunt.

No. She would not find him.

No. She would not stop.

“Mina, perhaps you shouldn’t be—,”

“You fear him getting up as much as staying on the slab, don’t you? You fear worse than that, supposing this Dracula was not Dracula at all.” All watched as her hand folded into the limp digits of her husband’s. Fresh tears threatened as she realized it was not cold, but merely the temperature of the room. Tepid. “The Necronomicon does have a nasty habit of bearing especially horrendous fruit.”

“Mina—,”

“You will not put a stake in his heart. Nor will you sever him.”

“No one is suggesting…” but Watson went silent as Holmes laid a hand on his arm. In the same moment the doctor caught the many gazes that dropped and darted. “It is too soon to consider such measures, is it not? We’ve yet to even examine him in full.”

“It can certainly be no worse than the Leicester case,” Jekyll said through a shudder. “Nor that of Ms. Vaughn. But Morris is right. That black stain is too much a tell. Perhaps some manner of poison?”

“No,” Irene hummed from where she’d been pacing. She had unearthed a folder that had turned bloated with research. The label K.i.Y. and adjacent was scratched at its top. “Not poison. Anything good enough to masquerade as Dracula, and keep Jonathan in his chair without getting the blade out, and got their teeth into him? That’s too much power to bother with something so mundane as poison. Whatever it had him choke down, it was meant to do something more creative than murder.”

“What of the dead man on the rug, then?” Robert Holt croaked. He was on his third tumbler and not a drop had served to dent the wretchedness in his head or his eyes. “Joseph Davies. He was a bit green at his edges when I saw him go in, but nothing suggested he wasn’t hale as a horse. This thing playing Dracula, did it not do the same to him?”

“No, Mr. Holt. There was no fit for Jonathan, no foaming. Different methods were applied for each man. Davies was a mere afterthought. I would wager even Lord Brighton was but a means to an end. This entity, our Dracula-in-potentia—he wanted Jonathan for something.” Irene looked aside at the man on the table and the woman holding his hand. Her voice softened. “But then left him behind.”

“No. No, that isn’t it.” Mina’s throat strained. “There’s nothing here. That is the strangest thing in this. If this were some elaborate way of providing a-a host for some demon or monstrous progeny, an eldritch infection or the like, that would make more sense. I’d know if there was something else in here.” Her thumb rubbed the weathered gold of his wedding band. “Some usurping force or other. I’d know if he was stuck somewhere inside. But there’s really, truly nothing. It’s as if—as if he were shoved out of himself and the space he left behind was filled up with plaster. No possession. Just a blockade.” She brought the lukewarm hand up to her lips. “It does not even feel like a death. More like—like a crude joke. O-Or a robbery. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Her voice hitched until it cracked. A sound like glass splintering.

“I am so tired. So, so tired of this same joke, over and over. He cannot be stolen from me again. Not again. Not like this.”

Quiet thickened for a long spell. In it, Holmes still did not look away from Jonathan Harker’s head. Finally, he took himself fully to the table and stared down at the pale young man’s mouth. He scrutinized it as if it were some living culprit. Or else sheltering it.

“Sherlock?” from Irene. “What is it?”

“The stain. It’s wrong.”

“Wrong..?” from Watson.

“It hadn’t occurred to me until you mentioned it, Mr. Morris. You said, ‘the black stain on his tongue.’ You only saw him as he was brought in, as most everyone here did. Looking at him now,” the whole room bristled as he pulled on his leather gloves and pried the jaws open, “yes, his tongue is stained. But only his tongue.” His line of sight moved to first Robert, then Mina. “Which is wrong.”

For a moment, both wondered at him. But they looked again at Jonathan’s face, frozen in dread as it was. It was hard work tearing their eyes away from his, but when they did, they peered as one at his mouth. Revelation sliced through heart and stomach at once.

“Oh, God. It changed,” Robert spoke so low he barely heard himself.

“What? What has changed?” came the murmur from the room at large.

“The stain,” Mina breathed, her hand now quivering around the corpse’s. “It isn’t what it was when I first saw it. Robert?”

“It changed,” he repeated. “It’s nowhere near what it was when I got the door open.”

“I’m not following,” Jekyll put in, frowning over the dead man more closely.

“Likewise,” from Griffin.

“Only the tongue is stained now,” Holmes said. This time his eyes fell solely on Robert. “But what did he look like when you found him, Mr. Holt?”

“It was a mess,” Robert said, now outright gawping at Jonathan’s clean face. “A great oily spatter across his mouth and chin. Some had even dripped down his neck.”

“And you, Mina? You got there before I or Lestrade’s men reached the spot.”

“His lips. Just his lips, teeth, and tongue were blackened.” Mina swallowed around a hot pain. “I remember thinking it looked like the stain a child gets after sucking on some colorful sweet.”

“Indeed. And now all that is left is the blotch on his tongue.” Holmes’ eyes seemed to flash as he pulled the jaw open wider. “There is not even a drop left upon the gums. This mess has been draining so steadily, so stealthily, that it was almost imperceptible that it was retreating into him at all. Hiding away and hoping no grieving witness would take note. This stuff,” he said, glowering at the blackness in Jonathan Harker’s throat, “is an accomplice in and of itself. Alive enough to work on behalf of the initial attacker. If we can get it out…”

But there was already a small legion of doctors rushing the cabinets. Jack fished out a surgical hook with a long black handle. Aiming it handle side down, he positioned himself opposite Holmes. Holmes was just as hastily shouldered aside by Watson, his own gloved hands taking up the task of holding the mouth open.

“Keep him steady,” Jack said without looking up.

“Go on,” Watson nodded.

The handle descended toward the uvula. Yet before it could even graze the throat, Mina’s head snapped up. Her line of sight faced the western wall. Toward the library.

“Mina? What is it?”

“There’s something—,”

But her words were lost in the sound of the crash. And the laughter.

 Back in the ink-dark desert, the Crawling Chaos was doing his best to turn Jonathan Harker’s soul inside out and into exciting new shapes. The god had insisted as best he could over the man’s screams that it was really Hastur who should be blamed. Guile was always the greater thrill than brute force. Not that it took an iota of force to play with Jonathan as he was now. Just a little light incentive for him to disregard the King in Yellow’s poor advice and take a wiser course once he allowed Mr. Harker to have eyes and hands and the ability to use them properly.

“True, I do not have the cloven hooves on or the guise of a Franciscan friar, but the Book of Azathoth can be signed with or without pageantry. I granted Gilman a little trans-dimensional tour and all it got anyone for their trouble was a sore throat for Keziah and a hearty meal for Brown Jenkin. Decent playthings all. But this?”

Nyarlathotep tweezed the kukri from its sheath, the metal’s shine still warped into an ugly iridescence with the polish of his veins. He ran it through Jonathan Harker’s stomach for the first cry. Twisted it for the second. Then stuck him to one of the enormous building blocks of the pyramid like a beetle. Jonathan willed his hands to be hands again, willed them to pull at the handle with the struggling fibers of his strength, but the blade would not move. It was not his.

“This is an investment. One I would have been so happy to lay out in pleasanter terms. But the King has gone and soured any words a Pharaoh might have offered. I felt your suspicious little wheels turning and smoking up here.”

Jonathan howled again as the ichor fired its roots up and into the phantom bowl of his skull, filling his mind with knives and salt.

“Yes, I am upset as well. But if nothing else, the Count’s treatment proved how precarious it is to let the game of cordiality play past pretense. You were a slippery thing when given a moment’s chance upon the corporeal Earth. I’ve no doubt you would have wriggled away from even my grasp, given the chance. It is one of three things you do so well, Jonathan Harker. Escape. Persuade. Pursue. All in service to some Good beyond yourself. It is a most admirable disposition and better still for your actually having the skill to make it matter. But to the point.”

The giant and its distended sin of anatomy disappeared. The Pharaoh now perched airily upon the block below the one Jonathan dangled from. Prismatic robes billowed like wings from him and the obscenities of his eyes stood out all the brighter in the handsome face. Again he held the strange book he had cradled at R’lyeh, along with its calcified pen. He flipped idly through the pages until he came upon a section of paper darker than the rest. Veins pulsed in each heavy sheet. The names upon them were few compared to the thick portion before it. Those contained generations of multiple eras on multiple worlds in multiple dimensions. The one the Pharaoh held up for Jonathan to see already had his name in it, though not printed in his hand.

All the names in all the languages he could and could not fathom above it had been written in that style—it was only the phrase beside each that had any variety. They belonged to the owners of the names.  

“We are due to make things official. It is all well and good to collect grovelers and kissers of robes for their own sake, but it is quite another to gain someone for the retinue who is good for more than being a sentient bauble. And you, Mr. Harker, have performed splendidly throughout the interview.” At the word, Jonathan’s own donated ledger manifested in the air. Pages packed with itineraries and messages shared with myriad Powers, flipping through the years-that-were-not. It vanished just as neatly. “While I cannot offer you anything so low as a law firm, I shall give you something far more precious.

“You shall live again, Jonathan Harker. You will walk in your Earthly flesh, whole and unharmed—the token you swallowed has kept your husk preserved against all decay and destruction. So it always shall. More, you will be able to stroll through all worlds, all membranes of reality, without the trouble of projection or translocation. You will go as gods go, in service to what the gods require. You shall keep those Powers who paw at the Earth in a complacent state, lest they give in to tantrum at last and make a ruin of your planet. And, naturally, you will see her again. All your little skittering hive will be in reach once more. What messages you have gathered for them can be passed on before you pass out of their lives. Which will be best, given your situation. It is always a distressing time when an endless thing loves that which ends.

“Perhaps you could look up Ms. Vaughn the next time she reforms. I’m given to understand she’s one of Pan’s more charming spawn and you will be too durable to off yourself once she shows you what’s under the skin. Opportunities abound. But that’s all to come. First, you must sign beside your name. Three little lines. Iä Azathoth. Iä Nyarlathotep. Then, in whatever tongue you please…” The Pharaoh pried one of Jonathan’s shaking grips from the kukri’s handle and slipped the pen into it. “…I am as God’s hand. Though I should like you to be more than that in time. Hastur did not lie when he said I suffer from a dearth of good company.” Jonathan watched as the Pharaoh shifted to the Count. He wore his noble’s cloak rather than the London tailoring, his white hair flowed rather than the black, and his bloodless face turned back to the skeletal gauntness of that early thirst. “I am in hopes I shall see more of you in—,”

You will see nothing.

The thought came to Jonathan only after his fist had locked about the pen and driven it straight through the god’s borrowed red eye. The pupil bloomed at once into its three-lobed truth as new ichor poured and squirmed and glowered upon the pallid cheek. The god clicked his tongue.

“I see you need more time to consider the proper course. It hurts my heart to know it. A few of them, even.” The pen was plucked free as the vampiric maw began to grow. Too clear a view of the churning and pulsing of the god’s innards appeared in the gullet. “You shall roost in the chambers of the third one. A cozy niche beside a valve where you can think on your actions. We shall try this again in a century.”

But as the mouth yawned, the pyramid trembled. All the sands shook with it. The arid warmth that had filled the air now descended into a cutting cold. Overhead, the stars that had once guttered went out entirely. Yet Jonathan Harker could see.

See the god wearing the vampire frown.

See the healing wound of the eye suddenly blossom again, bleeding godly gore and gristle as a man might.

See the rot that turned the aristocratic hide to spongy decay.

See the silhouette of a hand big enough to balance a schooner on its thumb clamp around the side of the pyramid, followed by the head of its owner. A head crowned with a striped nemes, that reeked of flowers and spice and carrion. A head that belonged to a jackal. A head whose growl shivered the desert again. Jonathan had been hearing the black sand’s whispered wailing up until then—when the thunder of the growl ended, there was only silence. The god beside him reassembled his borrowed face enough to grouse.

“Ah,” said the Messenger, scratching at his decomposition with the fervor of one clawing away an eruption of acne. “You.”

“Me.”

“In my defense, you were hardly putting him to full use andrrggghhl,” as he spoke, Dracula’s throat split and his chest dribbled. Even his forehead split and oozed. Necrosis and ash ate through him. The god balanced his dying head on his shoulders and sighed wetly.

“What was that? I cannot hear you over the sound of your chicanery.”

The god wearing Anubis snapped his fingers. It produced both a thunderclap and Jonathan Harker, still impaled, dropped into his palm. He froze as Anubis pinched the kukri from out of his middle. Cold flooded into the wound as Nyarlathotep’s intrusion bled out, freezing, hissing, and flaking away on the frigid wind. Even the grim shine of the kukri shrilled and shuddered away, the ichor fleeing its metal host like condensation. Anubis shook the grimy frost loose and willed it to its home in Jonathan’s sheath.

“It is trouble enough to clean up the mess you and yours leave in play. I draw the line at poaching.”

“Borrowing,” said the Pharaoh. The Count had rotted off of him, though he still had to pick at remaining viscera. “Expanding his prospects, as it were. Opening the door to more creative endeavors than you and your sickles.”

“By robbing him, pantomiming the role of his patron, and cheating him out of his earned eternity. By trying to cheat me. Had you already gotten to the drivel about how very ancient and endless and Before and After the Outer Gods and their descendants are? Or were you saving that for the honeymoon?”

“We are the Before and the After and Existence itself,” Nyarlathotep intoned. “Unlike you. Even Death may die. This you know.”

“Yes, you slithering ponce, of course I do. I’ve been doing the metaphysic equivalent of changing you and yours’ nappies since the first time Azathoth had a fit. You cannot fathom the mess there would be without an End to go with your destructions and disfigurements. And that's not even counting the Cataclysms you are all too far up your own cosmic crevasses to have been aware of in this and neighboring Existences. Ones where you do exist and ones where you—bliss of blisses—do not. At least not as anything more than paper. If it were not for the logistical wreckage to follow, I would scrap this entire universe for the relief of not picking up after you.”

“As if you could.”

The jackal lips leered.

“As if I haven’t. You do love the confidence of thinking yourself forever, don’t you, Crawling Chaos? Out of them all, I think you are the most able to be satisfied at yourself. Creeping through neighbor realities, practicing your pranks on mirrored worlds across time and space. Earth is always a favorite, blithe little blue marble that it is. On his, that world’s Hildred Castaigne and his compatriots from a quaint cult in America are about to make a fine mess; one I’ve no doubt you planned to keep him from until the revelation came too late. Always a fine tactic, that—remove all ties but yours. But you conspired for this with the same ignorance you conspire everything.

“The ignorance of one who mistakes himself for singular. Unique. Irreplaceable and infinite. You, Soul of the Gods, are so thick you even believe Pan and Hastur are younger than you. Than Azathoth. Than me, as I exist in this script. All because you are too proud to read all that is written. It’s not all invention, you know. Some is merely taking dictation. You have not even crossed paths with the Messenger whose Tablets lay in wait for Mark Ebor. Do ask the King in Yellow for his shelf marked ‘Blackwood’ if you feel especially daring. Use the Black Seal of Ixaxar to read what the Peoples Below have written of history before Earth grew around them.

“Or throw yourself in Leng and putrefy awhile. I do not much care. But whatever you do, past, present, and future, in all the realities you can and cannot fathom? Know that the next time you try to pickpocket what is mine, I will eat through a thousand of your faces and as many of your toy-worlds. Know that I will whisper a secret from Hastur’s drafts that will kill your delusions with the march of a starving maggot and leave you hiding and soiling yourself in your tendrils with all your precious pretensions Ended without hope of resurrection. Know that for all the deaths and undeaths and deaths-that-die by your tinkering, eternity does not exist. I will be there, waiting. Beyond the last of the scripts. The last apokálypsis. The End. Know that, Nyarlathotep. And know one thing more, above all else.”

Jonathan Harker watched as Anubis unfolded into something else. Something no human hand or eye or word could ever fully illustrate, no matter how many ages and god-faces they had tried to sketch it with.

Yes, it was Anubis. It was also Osiris. It was Yama and Shiva, Hel and Níðhöggr, Thanatos and Charon, Ereshkigal and Nergal, Māra and Morana, Arawn and Morrígan, and a hundred more besides.

It was the Death as greater-than-dreamt, greater-than-feared, greater-than-prayed by every world known, unknown, unborn, undead within the slim infinity of a single multiverse.

It was cold.

It was the End.

“DEATH MAY DIE. BUT I AM NEVER CHEATED.”

The toll of the voice was too much. Oblivion came. Jonathan Harker went.

Gone to rest.

 “Sorry, son. I would let you drowse until the sun burns out if I did not think you’d hate yourself for it after. Even with such elastic time as we have here, even if I told you there was more than enough to make the save, you would hate yourself for dallying. Alive or dead, you grudge yourself any time to rest.”

Jonathan swam up to the voice with a spasm. Papers flew, books toppled, a pen clattered away. A hand padded with age and calluses settled on his shoulder. Cold, familiar. Good.

“Easy. No exams here. Nor any godly grunt work. That was what he was after you for, you know. He wanted all the play on Earth for himself while you took the errands. Doubt if he’ll admit it anytime this millennium, but you did a fairer job of it than he would have. You are a more than worthy worker, lad. I’m sure you’ve heard so before and ignored it—but don’t deny it now.”

Jonathan looked up and knew at once that he was not seeing or hearing the true Peter Hawkins. No more than he was sitting at his old clerk’s desk outside the man’s office with the late spring light turning the afternoon air to amber and gold. It did not stop his tears.

“He—it—y-you said someone named Castaigne was coming after the League? Wotton said he was in the ballroom…” Hawkins-who-wasn’t waved his hand at that.

“Same and different. The madman in the King’s masquerade was plotting fratricide long before the play got to him, and he did that plotting in an America that does not exist in your Earth. Pray it never does. The Castaigne at the League’s doorstep is another Hildred—your Hildred—and he has made friends with some misled admirers of the drowsy fellow in the ocean. The one who gave you that first Earthly memo to deliver, you’ll recall.” A fond exasperation came into the lined face; the look Jonathan had been met with a dozen times in as many days when Hawkins had caught him working and studying on half a night’s sleep. “I shall save you the pleading. We’ve been done with that since you cracked the old leech upside the head with a spade. I do not much like a cheater, nor do I abide by the ruin they leave behind them. Death shall die for you yet, son. Only walk with me on your way back. We’ve a shortcut.”

Jonathan took the hand that was Hawkins’ and staggered up from the desk. He followed the old man out the door and into—well. There were not words enough for the place any more than its Owner. But it was the place of After. The place of Endings and Beginnings. Crossroads and Crossrivers. Jonathan could not help his stare and was grateful for the first time in ages that he need not blink.

“Is he here somewhere? The real Peter Hawkins?”

“Him. Lucy. Some sailors. A fresh and frantic Transylvanian sent here by the poor mercy of a bullet; he would have a message for you too, regarding his men left to the wolves and the wild. Nyarlathotep bled them, but like the deplorable Mr. Davies, he never finishes his work in full. Those he ‘kills’ he obstructs. Locks them inside their own rot to make the suffering last even down into dust. Or at least until I or some volunteer come along with charity in hand. In your case, he did the reverse. Locked you out of the house and dragged you off before I could catch up to you. A natural death, your rightful death, that’d snap you straight to one of my faces and places. But not his work. Damned cheat.”

They were passing out of Death and into Dream. Jonathan felt the change like a shift in weather even before the scenery altered. Paranoia blossomed.

“We can skip this part if you like. Leave Q to go on suffering karma’s overdue quid pro quo for another hundred and nine years. Ellison could wring gallons of inspiration from this particular crevice of horror, but the short story will get to the point neatly enough. Ah, disregard the steel pillar. That’s for another Earth that even the Elder Things won’t touch.”

Jonathan began to read the flaring writing on the steel—

(HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.)

—and swiftly ducked his head. The steel, which, of course, was not just steel, glared after him as he went, sullen at his flesh-free form. Jonathan had no meat or bone to play with and so the thing of Hate merely thought sulking sadism after him.

They came upon something worse, if only for how much pity it inspired. That and repulsion.

“Lord Brighton is quite alive and quite aware. He can be nothing else. The immortality of an especially durable and despairing jellyfish. And because he was made so whilst still holding a certain ancient volume of ill repute in his hands, it never left the things those hands became. You see?”

Jonathan saw. Regrettably. The Necronomicon was grafted into the gelatin of the semi-fluid limbs. What might have been Lord Brighton’s face bubbled and moaned at them. An attempt to run ended only in a shuffle and splatter against the metal floor. A splatter that lived and lived and lived.  

“You have Death in you, Jonathan. True Death. The deal we made was not in words, but in oath. In exchange. Even your vow to Mina was a half-made thing beside it. If she had turned, you would have shielded her. Been turned. Subjected yourself to whatever Hell she was slated for—and whatever slaying your friends might bring. Or else fallen upon your kukri. I have seen the Earths where this happened. I have been Godfather Death to you in so many lives, so many ends, so many starts. I confess that this you—here, now—is the one I have grown to admire most. You do not suffer villains. But you refuse to be callous to innocents, be they human or horror.

“You do not just cull. You protect. You help. You hunt. You love. And you do not cheat. The only trouble is that you also do not rest.”

“There was hardly room or time enough to rest,” Jonathan said, trying not to watch how Lord Brighton quivered himself upright. “You must know that. The League is inundated with strange new cases, threats that could swallow the world.”

“You have heard the messages of the gods. The ones you mean to pass on. You know something of the reality already—why the uncanny upsurge now? Why not ages ago, when man was weak and ignorant of all but Nature? The gods and monsters have not changed. They quibble more with each other than spare a glance for humanity. So. If they have not changed their habits, who has?”  

Jonathan knew.

“Your habits need a change as well, for the record. Death is not just the cessation of life, after all. You can put an End to far more diverse things if you put your mind and my hand to it. And once you do, don’t go inventing new chores to soak up your time. Take a break before you break yourself, young man.” Peter Hawkins’ eyes burned hollowly. “Unless you want another out-of-body experience.”

“Ah…”

“Just a joke, son. You’ll get around to dying properly sooner or later. Everyone does. But know that my ears will be plugged and my door will be locked to any Harkers of any generation wheedling me about psychopompous work to do. In the meantime, soul form or not, I suggest you roll up your sleeves.”

Jonathan did. It scarcely helped with the Necronomicon’s retrieval. Touching the kukri served to freeze and flake away the residue from his hands. Whatever flickering blotches Lord Brighton had for eyes winked out as the steel swung down and cleaved an Ending through all the muck he had become. The steel beam of Hate sizzled so vivid a red that it colored their entire corner of Nightmare. Someplace near, a great clock tolled twelve in gothic chimes.

“And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all. Which is better than far too many alternatives. Now, steady with the blade. Shall I do it for you?”

“No,” Jonathan said, levelling the point carefully. “No, I can manage. Only, can you tell them…tell Hawkins, tell Lucy, my—my parents, tell the mother in the courtyard, tell them I—,”

“They know, son. The dead know all they need and all they want. And they know you’ll do fine. I’ll be seeing you. Though hopefully not too soon.”

With that, Jonathan Harker drove the kukri, clean and cold and full of Ending, through his chest.

 In the League’s library, chaos reigned. It was Yellow and scaled, full of theatre and madness, and all the eldritch trimmings. A collaboration had formed, supposedly led by Hildred Castaigne, supposedly followed by the Cult of Cthulhu. The Yellow Sign waved, the carved figure was raised, and the snakeskin volume of The King in Yellow was in their grasp, freshly stolen from its keep. Now they demanded the Necronomicon. The dreams had led them; the mingling of prophecies that would unfold into the new world they and their gods would own once apocalypse came to pass. The League would turn the tome over, or they would detonate the explosives already planted around the building’s exterior. Enough to level the lot.

On discovering the League did not have said Necronomicon to give, there was as much scoffing as anger.

“They are fools all. Ignorant to their own prize. Bring out the Initiate! The Hand of the Messenger! We know he was taken to his rites this day!”

Before anyone could ask for clarification, their guests erupted in a joint thrill as both their demands entered the room.

Jonathan Harker walked in and the temperature dropped twenty degrees.

He held the Necronomicon in one hand. His kukri in the other. His mouth was a bitter line that wished to deliver its first message. This he gave to the nearest empty vase. Said message came in the form of a black and rotting bile, freshly evicted from his stomach and throat in a hideous stream. It smoked and gurgled and died in the vessel.

The League gaped. The cult seemed nonplussed. Castaigne seemed only to be searching for a token of the Yellow Sign to prove a connection with his own faction.

Jonathan delivered the next message.

“Your dreams are not a lie,” he said. “They are accidents. Cthulhu does exist. He does not care what you do in his honor. He will do you no favors either way. He will not even do you any fears, because he is not a herald. A day will come, billions of years from now, when we are all dust, that the sun will burn out on its own. The Earth will freeze. Cthulhu will rise. Only then will he fly out, rekindle that star, and begin growing a garden. Until then, all he wishes is to sleep. All the visions you think are his declarations are only his dreams. Not orders. Not promises. Just dreams.”

He looked to Hildred Castaigne who retreated another step in addition to the several he had already taken back.

“The King in Yellow, both the play and its playwright, operate in terms of story, theatre, and extremity. He does not spread the books. Publishing houses and rumor and the lure of old sins are all that move the play. No one is a character in it except in the madness it might inflict. You are not in its cast. You are a victim because you wished to make a victim of your brother out of deadly jealousy that existed long before you thumbed through the play. He is no prince of Carcosa, nor are you.”

He addressed the visitors as a whole.

“The otherworldly has always existed. Even before humanity wrote myths. Even before humanity existed. Certainly before Earth in any iteration. They have not changed. Humanity has. We have grown and we have spread, and there are too many of us who go looking for the divine and the profane only to intrude or bribe or bridle, hoping to profit from gods and monsters at the cost of others. You, and so many cousins to your thinking, are why supernatural menace has been on the rise. There is no prophecy to blame, no special alignment of planets and stars—just an army of gluttons and trespassers tramping through the uncanny looking for treasure.

“It must end.”

If not how the fellows in charge of the detonators—technological marvels operating by radio wave—were expecting. These had already been disarmed. He had scented the lethality-in-waiting planted around the stonework. It had taken barely a jog and a cut apiece to ruin the fine and fatal work.

It took even less to see to the interior. He made it simple.

“I would like for some of you to live. There’s no point in sharing a message with dead men. At least not when they can’t get back up and talk again. On the other hand, you all have murder crusted under your nails. Innocent lives sacrificed to appease gods who never wanted or asked for your worship. Their dreams are ones of horror, so you assumed horror would win their good graces and boons. So, here is what will happen. You are all going to leave. In that, you have an option. You can leave by way of the police. Trials will happen. Cells will follow. Your compatriots may receive what intel I have given, or you may sit and stew on it, or you may just head to the gallows and be done with wondering.

“Or,” the bitter line of his mouth curled into an even worse smile. It had the curve of a scythe. “A special treat. A new trick I learned in crossing back here. How would you like to meet your idols in person? I can get you to them. It’s such a short walk. The only trouble is, again, worshipper or no, they will have no inclination to treat you any different from the rest of the mortal mites. But you can meet them. Right now.”

Jonathan pointed back to the lightless hall from whence he’d come with the edge of the kukri blade. It seemed darker beyond that threshold even as they looked. Cold leaked from it. The frigid breeze of Sheol. The endless night over the Styx.

“However you go, wherever you go, one thing is to be guaranteed. None of you are going to kill again. Not for a dream or a whim or a godly bribe. Because I will know. I will find you. And you will only get to die if I am feeling forgiving.”

The lamplight seemed to dim a shade. In that gloom, Jonathan Harker’s eyes became bright as fresh-struck obols.

“What will it be?”

 The police found a band of fifteen intruders waiting bound and bug-eyed at what was known to the sort of circles who gossiped about such things as, ‘The Storyteller Club.’ The title was a public creation, so-named because of the endless outlandish rumors tied to the supposed members and their doings. It was a place known almost entirely for the stories people invented about it.

Some joked that it was nothing more than some toff’s little getaway from the manse to hang about with his friends away from prying staff’s eyes. Some said the place was clogged with secret codenames and nefarious-to-scandalous dealings. Some said it was some private theatre or other, if some of the more outlandish characters were even half-right in their description. Some said it was all royals inside, or all vagabonds, or all spies, or the highest of society that even Her Majesty wasn’t in-the-know enough to visit. But the most agreed upon ‘facts’ of the Storyteller Club were that strange things always tended to happen in its vicinity and that entry to the building was excruciatingly exclusive.

Gentry and nouveau riche alike had made their attempts—Out of curiosity! For a lark!—and been universally turned away practically at the door. Lestrade and his men, it seemed, had the rare honor of being allowed the foyer, if only to collect the fresh harvest of intruders, all of whom they would find with warrants for arrest on multiple murder charges overseas, now with such petty aims as would-be burglary and a failed bombing on their hands.

“Well, suppose that’s madmen for you, isn’t it, Holmes? How is, ah,” Lestrade had gestured awkwardly about his own head, “the young man who coughed up the poison?” Said poison was still clotted and smoldering in the vase. Two very unhappy policemen had triple-wrapped it in linen and spared some clean gauze to go over their mouths and noses. It was a mutual agreement that a scientist or two could have a peek at it before it would be unceremoniously ‘lost in a small fire.’

“Mr. Harker is doing much better now that he hasn’t been left in so poor a condition he could be taken for dead. Mrs. Harker feels much the same.”

It was quite some work getting husband and wife to unlock from each other long enough to answer any questions. Even then they would not unfasten enough to release one another’s hand.

“It was all quite bizarre, Inspector. As soon as the door was shut, Lord Brighton had his man aim his pistol between my eyes. Being that a knife is no match for a bullet, I stayed where I was while Lord Brighton talked. He kept saying something about how I knew his ‘secret name’ was Q and all this surreal talk of killing death and fealty to what I assume were gods he’d either invented or dug up in a history text. Somehow I had figured into his ideas as a sacrifice of some kind. He told me my options were to drink that awful swill or be shot dead. I drank and became as good as dead anyway. As to my neck?” He rubbed the scabbing wound unhappily. “I could not say. My mind quite shut down after swallowing the muck. Were there any strange animals found?”

“None but the bastard at your doorway and the lord who’s got away. Near as we can figure, Lord Brighton took a ‘no witnesses’ approach to whatever mad hobby he was playing out. Once the doctors finish analyzing what’s left of Mr. Davies—a fellow with his own proud resumé of bloody business—I’ll eat my hat if they don’t come up with a less artful toxin in his system. Seems you got the exclusive treatment and he got the bum’s rush. None of your workers saw anyone pass out the door either, so the hounds will be at work trying to trace the codger from your office window. No luck yet. Even these lot you corralled, they haven’t said word one about Brighton, though they’ve plenty of unholy chatter on their past arrest records.”

“Well,” Jonathan shrugged, “perhaps it’s a holiday for them. A fine day for sacrificing. There may be something about it in here.” His free hand settled unhappily on the cover of the Necronomicon. “Though I think it would be better for your sleep if you didn’t. It’s one rare volume we are sorry to have borrowed from Professor Derleth.”

“In hindsight,” Mina frowned, “perhaps it was that very thing that marked you, darling. We are collectors and scribblers of esoteric works here. Professor Derleth deigned to lend us this while he was on holiday. We were due to return it before he left, but now it seems…”

“Oh, hell,” Lestrade pinched at his nose and shook his head. “Has this whole circus been over some lunatic bookworms’ squabble while hunting down a collector’s edition?

“We really couldn’t say, Inspector. Only that this and a copy of The King in Yellow we had under lock and key was also targeted. We’ve never cracked the cover, thank goodness, so we cannot say if it’s a real edition or just a prop. But superstition and a rare find deserved a spot in our collection; if not our reading circulation. Somehow word must have gotten out.”

“Reading circulation?”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Norton chimed in. “We’re something of a book club in here.”

“History hobbyists as well,” from Professor Van Helsing.

“Conservationists,” from Mr. Morris and the much-improved Mr. Holt.

“Sometimes,” Dr. Seward hummed, “they even let us doctors hide under words like, ‘debate’ and ‘discussion’ when we’re having a proper row.”

“A dialogue,” Dr. Jekyll corrected.

“I just come here when someone brings around a new pet,” Lord Godalming shrugged.

“They make an excellent resource, this lot,” Holmes hummed around his pipe. “If not for scholarly bric-a-brac, then for the blessed relief Watson and I can find away from the doldrums that pass between cases. Well. Until recently. It seems too many a rumor have run rampant about this place and we’ve been built up in the imagination as a site worth harassing with obscure pantheons. I suppose we’ll have some Maenads knocking at the door next.”

“Well, it’d go a fair way to help your lot’s case if they knew you were just a gaggle of academics shutting yourself in a box to natter over Dickinson and Darwin. God’s sake.” Lestrade scrubbed a hand over his face a last time and seemed to wish his other hand held a stein. “Right. Mr. Harker? We’d appreciate your tagging along as proof to our mortician that you’re livelier than advertised. We’ll need to halt the march of your death certificate before it can reach newsprint.”

Both Harkers, and Holmes, and Watson, and damn near half the members of the Storyteller Club—soon to leak out to the public ear as, ha!, the Storybook Club—invited themselves along. Jonathan Harker proved himself to be sufficiently alive, but with insufficient circulation and, to judge by a half-second examination of his eyes, operating on incredibly insufficient sleep.

“I know. I would have worked myself to death eventually if I hadn’t been forced to drink myself there today. I mean to take a proper holiday after taking a very long nap. But before I go—,”

“I’m not the medical man to talk to about a prescription.”

“No, not that. I should like to see someone you have here. I was told I should take a second look at him to see if it might jog any memory from before,” he cleared his throat, “everything. If perhaps I or the others were being followed.”

Joseph Davies was on the slab waiting. The carving had already begun. Pieces examined in tandem with the bloody foam of the mouth. No matter how many times the eyelids were pulled shut, they fluttered open. Blind, they still saw. Dead, the man still pleaded.

The mortician curled his lip at the sight of him.

“I’ve mopped up more than a fair share of souls this bastard sent me. I hope they’re all lined up waiting to give back what he gave them in Hell.”

“He does deserve Hell.” Jonathan scarcely noticed how the mortician shivered beside him, gooseflesh and the hair on his nape standing out all at once. He laid a cool hand upon the table. Its cold spread from him to its cargo. “But not this one.”

The eyes saw no more. The dead man did not plead.

Later, the mortician would see two coins left behind on the slab.

Pennies.

 Lord Henry Wotton had a new visitor shadowing Dorian Gray. Jonathan Harker was given leave to inspect the padded interior of the cell and he came to a stop near a high corner. There was a small, nearly imperceptible slit in the padding. From it, he worked a gorgeous, yet somehow unpleasant brooch of black gem and gold sigil. A Yellow Sign, even. He made a note to deposit it in the nearest graveyard.

“My, my. However did that get up there?”

“Wotton.”

“Harker. Is this when you evict me from the party? I am curious how you’ll manage with these witnesses and no dashing blade at your hip. I suppose you might do it with your hands.”

“Yes, with my hands.” So saying, Dorian, Jack, and a number of anxious attendants watched on as he laid an icy palm against Wotton’s brow. The air crisped as he pantomimed sliding off a masquerade disguise. “It’s not just the end of the party, Lord Wotton. The story is over, the curtain has fallen.” A strange light came and went in Jonathan’s eyes as he whispered, “The End.”

“Oh, but wouldn’t that be so neat? So easy? If you…if it would just…just end and…” Muscles twitched and ticked and loosened in his face, the default sardonic smile finally going lax. A glassy shine polished the bloodshot and half-jaundiced eyes. “Oh. Oh, God. He isn’t there. None of it is there.” The noise that followed could not be separated between laughter or sobbing. There would be time enough for him differentiate them once he was on the other side of the asylum walls. It goes without guessing that Wotton no longer frequented society circles afterward, nor did he have a cent to spare for theatrical endeavors.

It was said, however, that he made a sizable annual donation to the mysterious-to-mundane function of the Storybook, née, Storyteller Club.

“No,” he would be quoted sometime later. “I am not trying to bribe my way into their ranks. Rather, I am paying them to keep themselves and their work as far from myself and the public as possible.”

 Transylvania saw another visit. A remote corner of old memories. Jonathan found the remains of every man that had been scattered by elements and animals with the ease of a bloodhound. These they buried, but not before Jonathan had laid a cold palm on each of them. The wind sounded like sighs.

 In Wales, the people of Caermaen and the Grey Hills who had been fighting unsuccessfully to forestall the purchase and development of their verdant old acres and stones, found themselves with unexpected champions flocking from the same English corners that had wanted to tear the turf up and crowd more cities in. The emptied pockets of lords, doctors, world renowned professors, and a trio of volunteer solicitors who possessed all the wit and will of the Devil himself descended like locusts upon the would-be land barons and their shoddy contracts.

Before the season was out, the buyers were booted and the entire undeveloped terrain was cordoned off as a protected nature reserve, not to be encroached upon by any form of human expansion. A change that was made clear almost to the point of seeming excessive to the locals.

If only to reach the ears underground as well as above.

The night before they left, Jonathan Harker went to the wardrobe of his room at the inn, and found a surprise waiting. One he very cautiously, very quietly, invited his companions to see before they saw about removal. Jack Seward had to sit down for a long while. Van Helsing sat with him.

Dr. Arthur Raymond, amateur lobotomist to his adoptive daughter and innumerable other girls, source of the alchemical White Powder lacing spree in the Burbage chemical supplier chain, self-styled worshipper of Pan and his Peoples, and the man who had almost sliced a sliver of bone and brain out of Jack Seward’s skull to fill it with that same ancient drug as an experiment, was left beside Jonathan Harker’s shoes in the wardrobe. At least, the doctor above the neck.

His face was locked in a rictus of terror. It held in place especially well with the stone jar full of reconstituted White Powder jamming his jaw open until it broke. The eyes were no longer eyes so much as black-green pus. The language of Ixaxar, the Black Seal, was used to carve a red message across the man’s temple. The translation:

DOCTOR SAW THE GOD HE SHOWED TO MANY.

HE SEES FOREVER.

WORK DONE. NOISE GONE. GO DEEP NOW.

THANKS GIVEN TO PALE MAN OF DEATH.

 DREAM GOOD.

 The head was burned. The White Powder with it.

 Soon the world quieted its supernal rumbles. The League collectively relaxed by several increments. The Nautilus even went back to deeper seas and discovered, improbably, that the sunken city they had visited had flickered out of existence once more, like the vapor of a dream. Notably, this was after Captain Nemo began a sea monstrous campaign against the fellows working to build the first oil drilling structure off the coast of California. A similar industrial endeavor was foiled by, just as absurd in the newspapers’ opinion, a horde of fish people dismantling the operation in the night.

Odd times abounded. But not as worrisomely odd as they had been.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Harker slept in for the first time since he woke from his drugged fog in the care of the nuns. He did so with relish. He did so with vigor. He did so with Mina Harker watching for the first sign of nightmare, of his breath gone too still, of anything and everything else that might try to shatter the vision of peace drooling into the pillow beside her. Nothing did. She watched him anyway.

It had been her longest running hobby since they first made the leap of settling into the same bed. Doubly so when the worst of Dracula’s menace was thrust on them. But the habit never went away even in tranquil hours. A silver-white curl fell over his face. She tucked it away behind his ear and then let her palm rest on his cheek. Cool, but not cold. How odd that it reassured her now. He had apologized to her for his condition in a dozen ways despite her insistence that it did not matter. His temperature only plummeted when he was ‘at work.’ He certainly thawed a great deal during play, as their holiday had illustrated on more than one night. Afternoon. Once or twice after tea.

“It’s another sign of you now,” she’d told him. “It proves you’re in there.”

He always found it hard to believe her. She always found it easy to prove. So it went. So it would go for as long as they could fight for it. Griffin had muttered in passing that he could no longer tell if Jonathan was the most or least lucky man alive. Even the ‘alive’ part seemed always to be in limbo.

The hand not on Jonathan’s cheek moved down to her stomach and she smiled.

I beg to differ, Dr. Griffin.

“Mina?” The voice fell dreamily out of him. His hand floated up to cover her own, sandwiching her warmth in his skin.

 “I’m here.”

 “Good. Good,” he murmured to the pillow. “Quin seer loosey…”

 “What?” she laughed. “Jonathan, are you awake or not?”

“No.” He blinked at her and scrubbed his mouth clean. “Yes. I think. Sorry, I was talking with someone.”

He did do that on occasion now. Fell asleep and kept in some kind of action. Walking and talking. Sometimes they were only dreams. Sometimes the dreams were more. But even in sleep, the young man refused to be still. Even if he did rest.

“Who with?”

“Mutual friend. I’ve had my suspicions for a while, and I wanted to see if she might have inside information. She did.”

“What did she say?”

“She sends oceans of love and millions of kisses.” Jonathan laid her hand against his lips. “And she insists that our first choice for names should be Quincey or Lucy.”        

 Somewhere, someone writes a world. Another. A hundred. The faces in them are old and new and forever and fresh.

They are made of pencil and paper, button and screen.

They are heroes and villains and gods and monsters and character and friend and fiend and fantastic all over.

They will live.

They will die.

Death will die, now and then, and bring them back for another story, for better or worse.

But here and now—a now that can last as long we like, for time passes differently in the dream of our world—they are happy. They love and are loved. And all that is weird and wonderful awaits them.

-FIN-

#so ends the trilogy of Jonathan Harker VS Weird Old Dudes #in case you didn't guess my Christmas gift from me to me is Not Editing These Giant Bastard Block of Text #this is a whole novella I pulled out in a week #I'll edit it when I feel like it* #*never #hope you guys enjoy the read #you're going to be here for a while #now on to the cast list #jonathan harker #dracula (But Is He?) #dracula #(the novel) #mina harker #the great god pan #cthulhu #the king in yellow #lord henry wotton #the inmost light #the novel of the black seal #arthur machen #ambrose bierce #an inhabitant of carcosa #sherlock holmes #the yellow sign #captain nemo #pierre aronnax #20000 leagues under the sea #and too many more to cram in here I'M TIRED #the league of extraordinary gentlefolk #The Adventures of Jonathan Harker and the Strange Old Men

[negligenceatbest]

Where we Start is Where we End. (Where we Live is Where we Die.)

Summary: You lost everything in the apocalypse. Everything you ever cared about, that is. After bouncing from survivor groups to other survivor groups you decide you can't live like a rule book anymore. So, you decide to travel the map and end up in Baltimore, MD.

You expect nothing more than to find a place to lay your head down and sightsee for a few months before keeping it going to the next place, like you had before. The apocalypse was a free vacation Afterall.

Maybe it'll start to cost you one day.

Relationship(s): Yandere Cult leader Hannibal Lecter x Reader

Chapter Five: Anti Fruit Snack Association.

Words: 2.2k

A/N: this took me forever to post it was basically done but was sitting in my drafts bc i had to rewrite some parts. to those still reading this series ty for ur patience and without further ado let’s get into it :))

Sometimes, you wonder what life would be like if the apocalypse didn’t happen at all. If on that spring evening so many years ago, the sun didn’t fall, and the human race didn’t turn where you would be? And though, it’s inevitable and probably (certainly) nothing you could’ve done to stop it, what if you could have? What if someone could have?

To be known as the hero who saved all of mankind. And to be known as the hero who helped. What would that have been like? You didn’t know and wouldn’t know in this life, but it was still fun to think about. To be looked at differently than who you once were. Then who you were now.

But even if it wasn’t you, and there was somebody else, somebody with more credentials and more experience or maybe just somebody who looked better on screen to say that they saved the human race… What kind of life would you be living right now, in that universe?

You would probably have finished high school and would have made something of your life. You would have traveled like a normal person, maybe meeting that guy you met the other day and his dog like a regular person. Making blatant conversation that did nothing but further your relationship that was yet to come. Then, you could’ve been regular friends. Like regular people in regular situations. Maybe become something more like regular people do.

That would be your preferred normal future.

You wouldn’t have had to scavenge for your food, visiting stores with high claims secretly just so you could get your fix not to starve. You wouldn’t have to wear the same outfit for days on end just to ensure you had enough clothes before you could find some place to wash them again.

There were many things you wouldn’t have to do again, and vice versa. You wished you were in that universe now.

But unfortunately, you aren’t and will never be. You will grow old on this planet that houses living corpses that seek food in their warm counterparts. They will always seek you out, cold eyes gazing into your warm ones. You will keep moving and they will always be slightly too close behind. Always a little too close for comfort.

You, a warm counterpart, will keep killing until you die. Whether it be for self-defense or for food. It’s a kill or be killed world and you will never have the hands of a saint.

*****

Lightning bugs only coming out during the summer was one thing you were regretful to learn multiple years ago, their tearful existence leaving you like the seasonal apple trees your grandmother used to plant in her field over the acreage of her farm.

You had only seen them a couple of times in your life, their beauty lighting the dark and bringing you to a path of wonder you would follow blindly on your own accord, a trail of bright light following behind you as you went. These bugs had lit up the dark and you had experienced fireworks in your own hands. These bugs were wonder and faith, you would wait plenty more summers if it meant having a chance to see them again. Even in the apocalypse.

Right now, you sit in a tire swing far from the house you squat in, humming a song you grew up listening to and reading the journals you just couldn’t seem to stop reading. This time, the writer, Will Graham, talks of his childhood. Nothing too explicit, and nothing too subtle. Mostly of his adoptive father and this Hannibal character. You were growing curious if the writer would ever come back to the house. You would like to put a face to the penmanship.

Most of the writing in these journals were comedic in a sense, but you can tell the writer has struggled. You shook your head at the thought and realized that everyone alive had struggled now. Still, it wouldn't be fair to pity someone who didn't ask for it.

Your legs kick slightly as you swing softly in the tire and chew on some fruit snacks you had gone to find the other day. They tasted a lot like if fruits were chemicals, but they were still good, so you didn’t care. You turned the page with your free hands pinky and thumb and read that page as well, hoping you wouldn’t finish these journals all so soon and if you did that there were more somewhere else.

Maybe reality shows were onto something when tv was still a thing. People really were interesting sometimes.

You continued to read one page after another, never growing tired of what they had to say. On one page you had read of Will finding an abandoned dog he named Winston, a male dog who was terribly hurt and not much of a people person himself. The writer had gotten close enough by feeding him and being as non-threatening as possible. Soon, after Will gave the dog treats, they became inseparable. You wondered if it really was the treats or if it was true animals could tell good people from the bad ones.

You counted back the date, thinking of the already older dog being even older by now. Winston probably was already a senior citizen by now in dog years. It would be nice to meet the dog before you left if you could.

If you couldn’t, you wouldn’t be so surprised either. It wouldn’t be the first time something didn’t go right. You really started to wonder about the owner of the house now, thinking that maybe he had moved elsewhere.

It would be sad, but plausible. You had done so as well, why couldn’t he? You shrugged to yourself subconsciously.

Tires rolling over gravel halted your thoughts as you fell out of the tire swing and back onto your blanket that held your booklets and fruit snack wrappers. The ground was soft as you fell with an ‘oof.’

The house seemed farther away now that someone was here and you kind of sighed as you wished you had brought your binoculars. It was probably the owner anyway so you weren’t that worried, but you hoped they wouldn’t be that freaked with someone lounging in their house.

You mean, imagine if you came home and someone was sitting on your loveseat reading your diary entries laughing at your painstaking memories and was eating fruit snacks that you weren’t even sure we’re safe to consume. To your defense though, they were the good type so that does kind of make it better. Anyways, you suddenly really wanted to hope the owner would be a good person.

Maybe you were too nonchalant about staying in another survivor's house. You should have just looked elsewhere. Somewhere without a fireplace or hot water or plumbing. Yeah, no. You would take your chances fighting off the anti-fruit snack homeowner (if they were anti-fruit-snack.)

You doubted it.

You slowly made your way back to the rustic house and trying to put on a welcoming face. You thought about how you would tell the person you had been staying in their house for days without them getting mad. You didn’t know if they would take that well at all, so you decided to just not add any more fuel to the fire and not tell them about reading their diaries.

Hopefully, it all goes well.

*****

After Will had finished talking to Hannibal in his office, he decided to look for Kylo. As tired as Will was, his dog was more important than sleep. He was family. Family doesn’t leave each other behind.

If Will was being honest, the temptation of a silk duvet and matching pillowcases to rest his head on were something he had all but wanted to say no to. He had all but wanted to decline Hannibal's invitation, but he concluded long before that the safety of his dog (his family) was more important than sleeping like a king. Will would rather sleep in his dog stuffed barn, covered in fur and kisses and warm as a coat than to even choose leaving his dogs behind for a one-night arrangement of velvet comforters and feather pillows.

What good would a night of comforters and cloud like wonder do if after all that, his dog was nowhere to be found or even worse? If he had took that offer, if he had even thought for a second that it would be something worth more than finding his dog alive, then Will would have truly succumbed to the world he lives in now. Will would then know that he was better off being dead then ever being compared to anyone in this stupid suburban hell.

But Will wasn’t that person, not yet anyways, and somehow he knew he wouldn’t be-even if it was only for awhile.

The night was pitch black and cold, drawing a shiver from Will as he walked in silence. The small amount of light illuminating from street to street was sadly only coming from inside the curtain covered windows. It had shown a pathway, all the way down to the third to last house before the street ended with a turn, it was the only house without lights on and Will had known that that was Arleen’s house. If not because of her upkept garden he could slightly see, then because of the sleek cruiser parked out front that hadn’t been driven in years.

Damn, Will thought to himself, that is one hell of a ride.

And it sure was, too. Though Will wondered if there was any way to get it back up and running again. It wasn’t a priority in the first place so he didn’t care. Will had made it to the house, walked around to the side door and knocked once, twice, thrice before he stopped and looked around, still on edge. He waited a while, before he knocked again and heard a hard bark.

Will sighed as he heard that bark, a relieved feeling swaying over his nerves. A feeling almost like he had been high and was as relaxed as ever. His adrenaline crashed downwards and he felt himself sway as he stood. He was so tired. Will soon saw the porch light and urged himself awake for a little while longer. He would be asleep soon, it’s fine, he told himself.

The door opened and Arleen peeked over in her white night dress and curler filled hair, she sighed in relief finding it was Will. Not even saying anything she urged him in and pushed him into the living room, guiding him to the sofa. She guided his sitting figure to a laying one and pushed off the extra pillows to where he only had one for his head to rest.

Will followed blindly, trusting her undeniably and opened his mouth to speak as she left the room for a moment. She came back in less than a minute with a comforter and thick blanket to stack on top of each other. Will took them from her and just as she was about to leave and turn the light off he had called out to her, noting how everything went so fast.

“Mrs. Bradshaw?” Will queried.

“Yes, William?” She turned around with a small smile, she could tell his night hadn’t been well and she hated seeing the boy like that. Such a sweet child who’s only flaw was having one too many dogs, it didn’t matter though because as she saw it, he was doing them a blessing.

“Uhm..” He hesitated, “Are you not gonna ask me why i’m here?”

“I already know. It’s written all over you.” She laughed, “Plus it wasn’t like I wasn't expecting you since I woke up with Kylo scratching at my door.” She finished. Will nodded in understanding and assumed Kylo was in the house somewhere. He let out a small hum and opened his mouth to say something else before he was interrupted by a tired voice.

“Let’s talk in the morning over breakfast, okay? Beauty sleep is required of those over 50.” Will nodded, sinking further into the warm blankets. “Now, goodnight.” She said and Will returned the words and blinked as the room turned black. Soon, Will was laying down staring at nothing in particular except for the dark and only then did it occur to him how drained he was. He felt like he had never slept, and his only hobby was seeing how long he could go without blinking.

His eyes burned and he closed them, cuddling more into softness. It’s okay, he knew it, Hannibal would take care of the mess he made, and maybe he would finally kick them out. No it wasn’t a maybe, Will thought, He would.

It was handled in a different way, obviously. But We all know that.

#hannibal fanfiction #hannibal #hannibal lecter #hannibal nbc #hannibal x reader #second account #writing account #will graham x reader #will graham fanfiction #hannibal fandom #apocalypse au #hannibal and will #reader insert #will graham #hannibal au #yandere hannibal #yandere hannibal lecter #hannibal gifs #zombie apocalypse #zombie apocolypse au

[renee-writer]

Letters Chapter 1

AO3

The house draws her. Having finished university, she is looking for one to let. She has no interest in buying one, especially an old manor house, five times as big as she needs with a ton of repairs needed.

 

So why does she find herself, standing in the crumbling, once great room, talking terms with the realtor?

 

“It is a steal, Miss Beauchamp, a real steal. This is a buyers market anyway and with the property standing vacant for so long, the owners are practically giving it away. Why, with all the acreage  that comes with it, it is a foolish person that would turn it down.”

 

She was no fool. She knows that Mrs. Fitz was just trying to make a sale. Still, there is something intangible that is drawing her in. She finds herself signing the paperwork.

 

With the money her parents and her Uncle Lamb left her, she can afford it. Still, there are the repairs and the simple fact that she had no intention of buying the house in the first place.

 

Shaking her head, she walks through the huge investment she just committed to. Was it the age of the property that drew her? She was partially raised by an archeology professor, after all, and Lallybroch ( yes the house has a name) is well over three hundred years.

 

“You would love her Uncle Lamb.” She speaks aloud in the cavernous space to hear her own voice echo back at her. It doesn’t creep her out. To the contrary, it makes her feel less alone. “Hello house. My name is Claire and I will be living here.” A smile as ‘ living here ‘ bounces around her.

 

“As soon as I figure out where to begin.” She adds in her head.

 

A contractor is called.

 

While she waits, she walks back through. It is different, knowing it is hers. She is looking for a room she can make a temporary bedroom. She soon realizes that, until some work is done, none will do.

 

Resting against one of the walls in what was the master or Laird’s  bedroom, she feels something slide. With a frown, she turns and looks.

 

“Why, it is a secret hideaway!” Her voice echoes around as she fully moves the stone, kicking up stone dust that makes her sneeze. She reaches her hand in with hesitation. Who knows what could be there?

 

What she finds is a stack of letters. Enchanted, she slides to the floor and unties the ribbon holding them.

 

“I wonder if they are old love letters.” She muses before lifting the first envelope up.

 

The paper is heavy. She swears she can taste the age of them in the dust and light perfume that rises as she opens it.

 

The first line shocks her.

 

“My dearest Claire,

I knew, in time, this letter would find you, even if it took three hundred years.

#my writing #outlander fanfic #letters #chapter 1 #new story #jamie and claire #cannon divergence #outlander fandom #modern au

[deancasbigbang]

Title: Whiskey & Wine

Author: palominopup and GeekyGirl (team)

Artist: MarsHunter

Rating: Explicit

Pairings: Castiel/Dean Winchester; Sam/Eileen; Dean/OFC (Past – not explicit); Castiel/Mick (Past – not explicit)

Length: 62616

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Tags: AU/Modern Setting; Gay Sex; Kid Fic; DCBB 2022

Posting Date: October 20, 2022

Summary: Dean’s family have been in the wine making business for generations. Henry, his grandfather, started the vineyard after he came back from the war and today, it was one of the top producers in the Texas Hill Country. Sam and Dean inherited it and continued in the family legacy.  When the neighboring farm became available after foreclosure, Dean went to the auction to bid on it so they could expand their business, unfortunately, he was outbid. Now, the property is owned by an ex-cop turned dog trainer. Every time Dean drove past the place, he got angry. He wanted that land. Adding insult to injury, one of the dude’s dogs kept escaping and it attached itself to Dean’s little girl. Dean disliked all things that slobbered, including that stupid dog until his daughter went missing.  Castiel used his grandmother’s inheritance to buy the old farmhouse, barns, and acreage. He’d been a K9 cop but resigned after a stray bullet killed his partner and seriously injured his dog. Now, he raised dogs for search and rescue groups. Whiskey, his canine partner, kept escaping and visiting the vineyard next door. The last thing he wanted was a feud with his handsome neighbor. 

Excerpt: He waited until Sam’s car left the lot and then eased into the traffic heading out of the park. He slowed the Impala as it neared Cas’ driveway. He knew this type of thing was wrong on so many levels, but it didn’t stop him from shutting off his lights and inching down the gravel road. Crowley’s car wasn’t there. Did that mean Cas was at Crowley’s? The porch light was on, but he couldn’t see lights in the house. If he only knew where Crowley lived. God, Winchester, you’ve turned into one of those Criminal Minds stalkers.   He shifted the car into reverse and looked into the rearview mirror. Something hitting his window made him jump. “Fuck,” he shrieked and then saw Cas standing there, Whiskey at his side.  Rolling down the window, he exclaimed, “Dude, you almost gave me a fucking heart attack.”  “Why are you here?” Cas didn’t look amused, his head tilted as if confused why Dean would be on his property at eleven o’clock at night. In his car. With his headlights off. What the hell could he say? I got lost? I was just in the neighborhood?  “Uh,” Dean opened his mouth, but closed it with a snap.   “Dean, why are you here?” He repeated.  “Look, I saw you with Crowley and that dude is... is bad news.”  “So, you are here to tell me that I cannot be friends with Crowley? Seems presumptuous of you.” 

DCBB 2022 Posting Schedule

#dcbb 2022 #fic preview #2022 promo #deancas #destiel