agentlelog | I watched the sky bleed grey with see-through shades of violent, bloody stains [closed]

Entry tags:

jonathan reid

I watched the sky bleed grey with see-through shades of violent, bloody stains [closed]

Who: Jonathan Reid and Queen Fayura
When: Late evening
Where: The Queen's Residence
What: Taking up an offer
Warnings: Blood and self-harm and biting

Even Jonathan had to admit that he was starting to have a serious problem. Even with trying to up his blood intake with hunting through the city of a night (handy both in reducing the pest population and giving him a chance to learn the layout of where he now lived), his hunger bordered on desperation every night and he was concerned that soon he wouldn't be able to maintain his control around the innocent people here.

It was then that he'd recalled Fayura's offer, a temptation that had never really gone away, and Jonathan spent several days wrestling with dark dreams of taking her up on it only for it to end poorly, or losing himself and attacking others. Rationally, he knew it was similar to what he had done with Peter, but there was the concern that he had not seen the other man since and that ate at him as well. Irrational as it was, Jonathan tried to avoid it a little longer, sequestering himself away from everyone and only leaving his room of a night to scour the city for what prey he could find, returning to hide himself away again as soon as light threatened to spill through the streets.

But it wasn't enough. He looked and felt like the corpse he should, by all rights, be instead of this walking creature of blood and death and his thoughts turned towards that cursed offer again. He had to admit, Peter had had a point about the necessity of being able to stop Jonathan, particularly in his current state. And if anyone could do that now... it would be the Queen and her entourage. He didn't doubt that Alliaravar would not hesitate to separate his head from his body if he risked killing Fayura, and he imagined that Verim would be much the same.

And then as much as he disliked it... perhaps after this he could consider working on his control himself.

So Jonathan waited, pacing back and forth in his room, until the last of the light faded and he could leave the blacked out room and he could seek out Fayura. He knew exactly how he seemed when he finally located her, gaunt and hungry, his skin a sickly pallor and spiderwebbed with pale blue veins, but all the same he struggled to find the words now.

"Fayura, Lady, I..."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In recent centuries, Fayura had been forced to become a creature of habit. When she'd been younger, she had moved about constantly first with her mother and then by herself, and unpredictable movement kept her alive. Only after acquiring Craft teachers had she started following a schedule, but even that had been haphazard and driven by their strange circadian rhythms. Now, she kept the schedule Loren gave her, and he'd pointed out the necessity of making herself available to the Strangers as well.

After dinner, she retired to one of the parlors on the first floor of the residence, usually in a comfortable sweater and loose trousers, her hair pinned to her head with Craft and a book in hand. Her First Circle often joined her, drifting in to read with her or play cards together and then drifting out to find their families and retire for the night.

Jon found her in a rare moment of solitude. Lord Durnem had just left, and Prince Zaym had yet to arrive, leaving Fay curled alone on one of end of a deep, plush couch. She looked up at his approach, sensing the hungry energy at the depth of the Red.

As he entered, she vanished her book. He looked terrible; skin waxy and pale, so thin the veins showed through. Hunger made his eyes glassy and wild, but the look didn't frighten her. She'd seen it on too many faces in her childhood to be frightened of it as an adult.

"I made you an offer once," she said. "Have you come to accept it?"

Jonathan's lips parted unconsciously, and his vision narrowed down to the thump of her pulse and the rush of red beneath the skin that made veins and arteries stand out as a far too appealing target. He shuddered and closed his eyes instead, although it did little to close out the thump of her heartbeat.

"I am... afraid," he managed, the words coming with great difficulty. "I do not think I can stop myself."

"The most important thing you can do with power is use it effectively." With a thought, Fayura closed the doors to the parlor. A shield sprung up around it a moment later, more to keep other people out than to keep him in. Discretion, she thought, mattered to him in this. "And to do that, you must respect what it allows you to do and how it limits you."

She made no move to rise but called in a lacquered, blackwood box. Setting it in her lap, she opened it, laying the cover on the couch beside her. Blood red velvet lined the box, cradling the objects inside: a simple chalice made of gold and a knife of a dark, gleaming metal with a handle of white bone.

Lifting the chalice from the box, she floated it in the air in front of her, and she pushed up her sleeve. The tips of her fingers resting on the handle of the knife, she turned her gaze toward his. Something not quite human looked back at him, something that recognized a predator and respected that power but wasn't bothered by it or afraid of it. "This is ceremony. You may join me or remain standing, whichever is more comfortable for you."

Permission. She asked permission with that sentence.

"And if you prove too disagreeable, believe me: I've dealt with worse than hungry, Red Jeweled males before." Her tone wasn't dismissive, but it was light. Her attempt to ease his tension if she could.

The suddenness of the doors closing behind him made Jonathan twitch, his nerves already frayed by too many days of poor rest and nights of scouring the city. His eyes flicked open again, pale to the point of being closer to white than blue, and he swallowed hard at the appearance of the box and the blade.

"I do not believe I should," he said quietly. "I cannot promise I won't make for you the moment that you break skin."

He hated how similar this was to his first waking, too gone to hunger to even realise what he was doing until Mary lay on the ground before him. The fear that this would end the same twisted his stomach.

Her expression soured with displeasure not because she didn't like the answer but because she didn't like what it implied. "You haven't been taking care of yourself," she said blandly. "Your Jewel will demand more of you. If you—"

But if wouldn't help them, and chastising him now would only make things worse.

"If you attack me, I will pin your ass to a wall, Dr. Reid." She lifted the knife to her wrist. "Freely offered," she said as she ran the blade along her skin. Like all her weapons, it was sharp enough to part flesh like a hot knife went through butter. Power welled within her as she drew her strength to the wound to give him the best she had to offer.

"I realise that," Jonathan began, but then the knife moved and his gaze flicked to it immediately, his mouth going dry. As soon as it touched skin the scent of blood hit the air and Jonathan was lost to it.

His mouth opened in a snarl and he jerked his head away, fighting to hold on to his control. But as more blood spilled even that fragile attempt was gone and in a flash he disappeared and reappeared in front of her in a swirl of dark smoke and shadow, lunging for her wrist and the bright red blood there.

For all her assurances she could handle herself, nothing could have prepared Fay for his speed. Briefly, alarm flickered her in her eyes. An instant later, irritation replaced alarm.

"You're starving yourself," she snarled at him, "you're hungry and draining everything your body has just wearing your Jewel, and you pull this?"

This, she supposed, was how her males felt when she did something idiotic. Bizarre to be on the receiving end of the experience for once.

A shield snapped around her, a bubble of power that absorbed the force of his bite as she gathered her strength. Red against Red would not be effective. She drew on her Jewel of rank instead, a thread of darker power that gave her the edge she needed, and she slammed Jon against the opposite wall. Power held him there as she let the blood from her wrist pool in the chalice in front of her.

"The giving and taking of blood is sacred." And the Blood held few things sacred. "This is ceremony, Prince, and if you insist on behaving like an addle-brained puppy, I will treat you like one." When there were three mouthfuls of blood in the chalice, she vanished the knife and touched her fingers to the wound to seal it. "Mother Night," she muttered, scowling at him. "If I let you go, will you walk to this chalice, take it, and drink it like an adult, or do I need to put a sippy lid on it?"

The air left him in a rush as he hit the wall and Jonathan struggled against the unseen force holding him pinned there. It took a moment or so longer for him to be able to regain his control, the wound closing enough to give him an extra edge now that she was not bleeding so openly, and he sucked in a breath of air, leaning his head back and making a pained sound.

"I will..." It was more a snarl of pain and hunger than the smooth sound of his voice, but he thought he could perhaps manage that much. Although with the amount the cup likely held, he did not think that it would aid him much at all.

She lifted a brow at him in unspoken challenge.

But she wasn't stupid. Fay didn't release the spell holding him to the wall until she'd shielded herself. Twice. Partially for good measure, but partially because she could just hear Allairavar bitching at her in the morning if she had one cut more than the single line on her wrist. And then he'd spend all day fluffing her pillows and making sure she had enough tiny sandwiches.

"Then here you are."

She released him to drink her blood, watching him intently. It was perverse of her, really. She should have diluted it with a healing brew. Instead, he was going to get three mouthfuls of what one of her tutors had called liquid lightning, and he'd probably have enough energy to punch through a brick wall without using Craft to strengthen the blow. Ah, well. One took one's pleasures where one could find them. He'd get what he needed, and she'd enjoy his eyes bugging out of his head when the blood hit him like a team of draft horses.

He could vaguely sense the power that flared up around her and Jonathan was grateful for it. He didn't trust he could manage the walk to the chalice otherwise and when he was finally free to move, the shields helped to dull the scent of her and turned his focus towards the chalice instead.

He would have liked to move slowly and at least attempt to honour whatever ritual this was, but to his shame that strength wasn't in him now. Instead he disappeared and appeared again, chalice in hand and drank from it like a man stranded in the desert who'd just been presented the first cup of water.

Even taking it from a cup, the blood was warm and wonderful on his tongue, exactly what he'd craved after so long. There was an immediate rush of pleasure at the sensation, registering almost as the first swallow spread through him, and he finished the contents a moment later. His head pitched back as a sudden rush of euphoria followed, slamming into him hard enough that the chalice dropped to the floor from suddenly limp fingers and Jonathan let out a shuddering groan and dropped to his knees.

This was more powerful than the first time he'd fed, more mind-numbingly intense than any simple pleasure of flesh even, and he gasped for air as he could feel the heat and power spread through every single fibre of his being. He felt more powerful than ever, powerful enough to even take on the Disaster, the Red Queen, without breaking a sweat, and when his eyes snapped open again they were like pools of black rimmed with a faint edge of blue.

Fay blinked, stunned, not quite sure how to process the sight before her. She'd given her blood to people before. She'd given her blood to Allairavar, Loren, and Verim because they were hers, bound to her through Craft and ritual and promise.

Nothing like this had ever happened.

She rose from the couch in a rush. Though she kept heavily shielded, layering a shield from her Jewel of rank beneath the Red shields, she went toward him and crouched by his side. Blood was the memory's river. Blood carried power and strength. A mouthful of her Blood had done wonders for people who needed her strength. She hadn't considered what it might do to a Stranger whose body wasn't like theirs and whose power wasn't like theirs.

Wild eyes met hers as she reached toward him. Black. Blue. A fully eclipsed moon at midnight. That called to her, to that thing in her that frightened the Blood but had given her the ability to call the Strangers to Terreille.

"Jonathan," she said softly, her voice a whip wrapped in velvet. This was the voice she used with her Princes when they pulled at the leash they'd given her to hold back their tempers. Kind. Gentle. Utterly unforgiving. His eyes were an eclipse moon. Hers were a blazing sun painting the sky bloody as it sank beneath the horizon. "Jonathan, do you need me to help you?"

His senses felt like the were stretched to the limits, every fiber focused to the point where he could hear the flow of blood through Fayura's veins, smell the subtle scent of her skin that became almost overwhelming as she moved closer. Her voice drew his attention to her immediately, away from the distraction of the faint sounds in the rooms beyond this one, and it took him a moment to piece together the meaning of the words beyond the velvet of her voice.

"My Lady..." He wasn't certain what exactly she offered, but he felt he trusted whatever she had to offer at this moment, still lost in the pleasure from feeding.

Witches were born into their castes; Fay knew healing Craft, but she was no Healer. When her power swept through him, darker than Red and hundreds of times richer, it moved more sluggishly than a Healer's spell.

Strength fortified him from her blood. She felt life returning to him in a way it didn't with the demon-dead. This wasn't the same. But of course it wasn't. Vampires, whatever they were, were not demon-dead.

"Find control, vampire." She didn't know what to call him. Prince. Medico. Doctor. Vampire. Fayura did not like ambiguity. She dedicated her entire life to the fight against it. "You are not your body and you are not your mind. Your Self is deeper than that, apart from that." The Self could survive without the body. She'd seen Blood make the transition to demon-dead relegated to existence in a decapitated head. The Self didn't even need the mind, not really. "Find solace in the abyss. Find the source of your power and follow it down to the web of your mind." She'd created those webs in them by giving them the Jewels, by linking them inextricably to the rules of her own world. "There is quiet in the dark of the abyss, a peace that lends clarity and calm." All the Blood descended into the abyss, sometimes to gather power and sometimes just for the relief of communion with that inner strength.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I watched the sky bleed grey with see-through shades of violent, bloody stains [closed]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject