NEW: To The Bone by Brighid (2/2)
Brighid
Author: Brighid
STILL RATED R!
All other info and disclaimers, see part one.
His apartment is the same as it always is: small, dank, depressing. Shit, I
think even the fish are depressed; they just sort of drift aimlessly in the
water. I had fish once, as a kid. They used to at least come to the side of
the tank when someone stood by them. Mulder's fish go and hide in the
plants. Considering the amount of gunplay that's gone on in here, I'm not
really all that surprised. They may be sluggish, but they obviously aren't
stupid.
I can hear him on the phone as he changes into his own clothes, talking to
Langly, who apparently is up on the Goth scene. I try not to think too hard
about that one. It's two in the fucking morning and I'm too damned tired for
that level of weird. Instead, I pace the living room, taking a mental tour
through all the terribly bad things that have happened in Mulder's
apartment. He must have something on the landlords; if he were my tenant,
I'd have evicted him years ago.
Mulder reappears, wearing black jeans, a black silk shirt, and a black
leather jacket. Combined with the luminescent pallor of his face, he is some
Goth's wet dream, no doubt. He tosses a pad of paper at me, and I glance
down at it, see a bunch of addresses.
"They're after-hours clubs, Goth or related, that are within a 10 mile
radius of Scully's place," he explains. "Some are poetry and music, some are
raves that won't stop. She's probably going to be hunting in one of them,
trying to blend in."
I glance from the pad to him and back again. "What, are your vampire senses
tingling?" I ask at last. I can feel him flinch at that, at the first time
someone uses that word. I've never been afraid to speak plainly to him
before; I'll be damned if I start now.
I look up to find his eyes half-lidded and gleaming, a small, sleek smile on
his face. "Something like that," he admits. "I've got this territorial
feeling, you know, and right now it's centering here," he gestures around
his apartment, "so I figure Scully's probably the same." Eyes snap open,
darken back to normal. "Besides which, she'll have to be subtle or else risk
being caught. She'll choose a venue where her appearance, her preoccupations
won't make her stand out. And all the legal bars and clubs will be closing."
He strides across the room, hands me a black T-shirt. "Put this on. Your
little grey sweatshirt will scare all the dead wannabes."
I drop the addresses, pull off my sweatshirt and pull on the black knit
T-shirt. It clings like a second skin, and Mulder laughs. "Well, sir, if we
were going out to the gay bars you'd have 'em lining up." He stares at me a
moment longer, a wicked smile curving that too-mobile mouth. "Maybe we can
stop off and get you a piercing somewhere tonight."
I marshal my face into an A.D. scowl. "I don't think so, Mulder." I pull my
trench on, the black leather indulgence that Sharon had bought me the year
before our divorce. I don't think I'll fit well, but they'll be too damned
busy looking at Mulder. The sonuvabitch gleams, like moonlight. It's scary.
I can feel that terrible push-pull in my belly even now.
He picks up the pad, hands it back to me, and then heads out the door. "I
hope you like Nine Inch Nails, sir," he says with that same wicked smile as
he pauses to lock the door behind us.
"Only if I get to choose who I pound 'em into," I answer, at my very driest.
He snorts at that, and laughs openly, without the shadows that have dogged
him all evening. His eyes are bright and hazel, and the only gleam in them
is pure Mulder. I wonder how long that will last.
**************
Three clubs down, all of them washouts. We've gotten into every one, too,
despite a few wary looks at Skinner. He really does look like a poster boy
for Gay America, big and butch. I think they let him in because they think
we're 'together' together, and at least I fit the part. If he hasn't figured
it out, I'm not going to enlighten him. He's handled things pretty damn well
tonight; I'd hate to blow his mind over such a piddling little detail.
It's hell going into those clubs; it's not the heat but the humanity that
gets to me. Hundreds of heartbeats, synched together by music or absinthe or
nihilism, and I can feel them inside me like there's nothing else in the
world. I open my mouth and I taste them, smell them, feel them crawl inside
me. Skinner's pulse beneath my mouth was enough to make the hunger rise up.
These little pretenders are an invitation to madness. I want to know them
all, from the inside out.
I want to know them, to the bone.
It's here in the fourth club, a black painted warehouse with neon lights,
that I sense her. I breathe in the night and she is there, filling me up. I
can taste her, swallow her, and the almost-healed marks on my throat pulse
with the memory of her body sinking into mine. I stand stone still in the
threshold, searching through the mist and gloom and candles, trying to find
with my eyes what I know in my gut.
Skinner bumps gently into my back, and his breath is soft on the side of my
face. "She's here." It isn't a question, but I nod anyway. He puts a hand on
my shoulder, lets my body direct him even as my instincts turn me towards
her.
She is at the bar, small and white and inarguably lovely in a black T-shirt
and miniskirt. Her hair is sleek and blood red around her white, white face.
She is paler even than when the cancer threatened to eat her up, gobble her
down, but this time it looks good on her. She's learned how to make death
work for her.
Her hands toy with a wineglass as she talks to a waif-girl in a long, velvet
gown. Her fingers flash in and out, weaving small spells in the space
between her and the young woman. She is all smiles, bone-white and
brilliant, and her entire concentration is focused on the girl she is
seducing, spinning up in spider silk. She reaches out, touches the girl's
carefully painted face, leans in and kisses dark lips, then gestures her
towards the back exit. The girl smiles, a trifle dazed, and takes Scully's
waiting hand.
We find them in the alley, Scully wrapped around the girl with her face
buried in the slight cleavage of the girl's gown. I reach her first, pull
her back, and I am torn between the desire to lick away the carnelian smear
that stains her face and the equally powerful urge to rip her fucking face
right off.
************************
I watch in amazement as Scully leads the girl into the alley, have to shake
myself to remember that I'm witnessing a stalking, not a seduction. This is
an act of predation, not passion. Mulder is off after her, cutting through
the club's depths like a knife, pushing through with the same relentlessness
that has marked all his work. It's nice to know some things don't change.
I have to run to keep up. I don't take kindly to being ditched.
She's taking the girl right there in the alley, pressed up against an
overflowing dumpster. I see Scully's bright head pressed against the flat
white of the girl's half exposed breast, see the girl's lolling head and
glazed eyes. It is the most erotic, most repugnant thing I've ever seen. A
shudder moves through me, and I'm not sure if it's longing or revulsion.
Mulder grabs Scully, pulls her away from her prey. I step in, grab the dazed
girl and hustle her out of the alley, shaking and haranguing her back to her
senses. I know I ought to see her to medical care, but that would raise too
many questions I'm not prepared to answer. Instead, I cram a twenty into her
hand and tell her to take a cab to the nearest emergency room. It'll have to
do.
By the time I turn around again, Mulder and Scully are nowhere to be seen.
Some things really never do change, apparently.
Shit.
***************
She is a hellcat in my hands, all tooth and claw and appetite. This time we
are matched, though, and for every blow she lands, I get in one of my own. I
had thought waking was painful; that was hopeless naivete on my part. When
she touches me, cuts me, tears me, there is no disconnection or distance. I
feel it everywhere at once, tearing me in two, each time she claws or bites.
Finally she manages to climb up my body, like a cat up a tree, and sink her
teeth over the old marks she left the first time. My body stiffens, ablaze
in agony white-hot and vicious, forcing me to my knees. By the time my
vision clears, she is gone, nothing more than a small blur climbing up the
side of a distant warehouse. I howl something unintelligible and take after
her, relentless in my pursuit.
That is, after all, what I do best.
********************
It takes awhile, but I find them. Somehow, some way I don’t even want to
begin to consider, they've gotten to the roof of a warehouse at the far end
of the alley. I walk the perimeter of the building, and manage to find a
fire escape. Apparently we the living still have to work a little harder at
these things. By the time I reach the top, I am huffing, despite an hour at
the gym every day. If they both weren't already dead, I'd kill them.
They're grappling, rolling on the tar roof, two wild things. They make
noises I'm never going to be able to wash out of my brain. The mere sight of
them makes me want to piss myself. It's like watching two wolves fighting
over who gets to crack your marrow. A part of me wants to turn around, head
back down the fire escape and just go home and pull the fucking covers up
over my head. It would be the sensible thing to do, and God knows that until
Fox Mulder and his X-Files got assigned to me, I was a man who tried to do
the sensible thing.
Instead I bend over, take my back-up piece from my ankle holster, and circle
around them, looking for an opportunity. I don't hold out much hope of it
doing any good if I do get a shot off. I've only got standard issue, and I
have this feeling that it's got to be silver or something like that … or is
that werewolves?
They just didn't cover this shit at Quantico. God knows, until Fox Mulder,
they didn't need to.
It happens then, flows into place with the precision and grace of a ballet
or a great hockey play. She rolls him over, pins him under her with
unnatural strength, and rears back her head like a snake about to strike. I
squeeze off first one shot, then another, finally emptying my gun into her
face. It staggers her, throws her off her balance. For a second she just
smiles at me, a sickening coquetry from the midst of her ruined visage, and
then she tilts her head and laughs.
"Wait your turn, Walter. You're next."
Even as my blood freezes to absolute zero, she is toppled over, losing her
advantage in the momentary distraction. Mulder is on top of her, his head
burying itself in the soft juncture of neck and shoulder. She wails and
screams and flails under him, body arching impossibly high, but he rides her
out, covering her with his long, gangling limbs, blanketing her in the
determined weight of his body.
After a painfully long time, she at last goes still.
******************
I feel her go silent under me, know that it is finished beyond pretense or
deception. I ease back off of her, pull her into my arms, cradle her
once-again-mortal body against mine. She is small and fragile and beautiful
despite her shattered face, and more than anything I want to lick the blood
from her, so not a drop is wasted.
I throw my head back and howl, a sound that echoes and reverberates and
threatens to split the night in two. I feel her stir slightly, feel her sigh
my name against the stained silk of my shirt.
I look down, and her eyes are blue and bright and Scully again. "I'm sorry,"
I say, pressing my mouth over a bullet hole in her forehead and allowing
myself nothing more than a human kiss. "So fucking sorry, Scully."
She shakes her head slightly, barely any movement at all. "Just, too much.
Couldn't take being taken anymore," she says softly, as though pushing each
word out by sheer force of will. "Felt … good … to be the one taking," she
admits, a trace of a smile on her bloodstained mouth. "Too good." She sighs,
shifts in my grasp. "End it, please."
Her gaze is unyielding, unwavering, and I cannot turn my eyes. I hear the
sound of someone scrabbling about, the sound of metal scraping wood, and a
few minutes later feel something cold and slick pressed into my hand. I
glance at what Skinner's handed me, see part of a skylight frame, rusty-red
from weather and his blood. After a moment or two of just staring he sighs
and pulls it from my grasp again.
"Put her down, Mulder," he says, and his deep, gravel voice is painfully
gentle. Another sigh and he crouches down, pulls her from my arms. I snarl,
bare my teeth at him, but he barely flinches, just drags her away and lays
her on the dirty tar roof. He presses the makeshift stake back into my
grasp, covers my hands with his own, and raises our arms above our heads.
Together, with all the force we can both muster, we drive it down through
the fragile barrier of her ribs, and through her heart.
She flails once, makes a single soft noise as the stake pierces her through.
Her eyes blaze sapphire, lance through me even as the stake hits the roof
beneath her and sends a jarring shock wave back up the stake and through our
arms. I think the noise was thank-you, but I am sobbing too hard and cannot
hear what she says.
A moment later is she is dust, and then not even that.
This time, I feel tears running over my cheeks. Skinner reaches out, wipes
them away, and then holds his fingers up for me to see. They glisten darkly
in the moonlight, and I start to laugh, laugh until I think I might vomit up
the blood I've swallowed.
I should have known my tears would have a price. They always have before.
******************
He is weeping, dark tears that leave bloody streaks on his lightly flushed
face. I fight the impulse to stick my fingers in my mouth and suck the blood
away. "C'mon, Mulder. Somebody's going to call those shots in, and we'd
better be long gone before the police show up. I don’t feel like explaining
this whole Van Helsing routine to anyone." My breath wreathes my head, and
for the first time that night I realize it is cold.
He just sits there, weeping silently, staring at me with eyes gone silver in
the moonlight. At last he reaches blindly out, fumbles around until he finds
the stake. He grasps it tightly, then wordlessly holds it out to me.
I shake my head at him. No. No. "No, Mulder. No."
His expression shifts, becomes angry. "Yes, Skinner, yes!" he contradicts,
his voice a hiss. "Unless you want to go through that with me, too. Track me
down, wrestle me to the ground, fight me once the darkness inside takes over
and makes me as much predator as any animal we ever put away!" He thrusts it
into my hands, viciously, determinedly. "I can smell your blood, Skinner. I
can fucking taste you, even though I just gorged myself on Scully, and the
only thing I can think about is pulling you into my arms and crawling inside
of you, draining you to the marrow and then sucking that dry." He uncoils,
slithers over to me, presses his slick face against my throat. For the
second time that night he covers my carotid with his mouth, tonguing the
artery to the rhythm of my pulse. I drop the stake, and press his face hard
into me, hard enough so that his too-sharp teeth pierce me.
"Then do it, you sorry fuck, just do it," I hiss, both hating and loving the
feel of him against me. Blood and sex, the fundamentals of life and death.
And here Mulder was, both of them in deadly package.
He tenses against me, straining against me like a horny teenager about to
break in a virgin. I feel a small tentative suckle, feel my eyes roll back
in my head at the sheer sensation of it, and then it stops. He shudders in
my arms, collapses against me, boneless in his exhaustion.
"I can't," he whispers, face still pressed against my throat.
"And that's why I can't," I explain gently, tenderly.
"Even if I said please?" he asks, pulling away and smiling lopsidedly.
"C'mon, Skinner. You've gotta admit you've fantasized about driving a stake
through my heart. You'd be lying if you said you haven't."
I stand up, pull him to his feet. "Mulder, I don't even want to begin to put
fantasy and you in the same sentence." I sober. "Whoever did that to her is
still out there, you know," I say quietly, awfully.
Mulder nods. "So he is," he agrees. "And then there's all those men behind
the scenes, the movers and shakers. The conspirators. I have a feeling that
I still have a lot of work to do." He closes his eyes, infinitely weary. He
is more alone than I can ever remember seeing him.
"You're going to need someone to help cover your tracks," I offer quietly.
He opens his eyes, regards me thoughtfully. "Yeah, I suppose I will. And
someone to feed me information. Know anyone?"
I nod. "I might." I lift up my arm, let it come around his shoulders, trying
to give him my trust despite the faint, lingering trace of terror that
snakes along spine.
He leans against me for a second, impossibly cool and thin, then pulls away
and begins to head towards the fire escape. "Better get going before the sun
comes up. Since the stake worked, I don't feel much like tempting fate with
the dawn. Not today, anyway." He pauses at the lip of the roof, studies me
with hazel eyes, Mulder eyes. "You're going to have to kill me, eventually,"
he says, his tone almost apologetic.
I smile at him. "Well, shit, Mulder, I always knew that." He laughs, and it
is genuine and real and completely Mulder. It is a start.
***************
The End.
Krikkit
Carpenter's Vampires again... <EG>
Charissa
sigless, but working on it! :)