I won’t pay for the change that you promise to prove
I’m done placing what’s left of my trust into you
I won’t die here
Inside your fury
Black blood wasn’t normal. It meant an infection had set in that Dr. Jack Benjamin had missed. That or an old injury. He couldn’t fathom how a bulging, blister-like, abscess could be filled with the substance. He stood over his sleeping patient, with a sharp scalpel still embedded into the sanitized skin above their left armpit. The patient had come into Royal London Hospital complaining about shoulder pain after a corrected dislocation. There was nothing in the charts that should have led to this condition. None of it made sense. The scent of rotten eggs and burning ash poured out of the patient along with that black blood.
“Doc, seriously, what is this?” One of the nurses in operating room asked.
“I honestly haven’t the foggiest,” Jack said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
At least, that would be true in his academic circles. Black blood and rotten eggs was a common occurrence in certain rituals that involved human sacrifices. The practice was outlawed over a decade ago, he should know. He was there when the bylaws on the subject were written. It could only mean one thing… there was another witch in Whitechapel. One that had no regard for the rules set by the Tremé coven that claimed the city of London as their home.
“I will make an incision exactly one and a half inches to the patient’s right of their left armpit,” he announced to the OR. “This will help us find and hopefully understand the source of the infection.”
Jack made the incision, sliding the skin back. Almost immediately, more black blood oozed from the wound. This time it was congealed and odorous with the scent of decaying flesh on top of those rotten eggs. The rapid beeping of the EKG machine was the only warning he received before the patient began to seize. Their arms began to tremble first.
“Strap her down!” He ordered. “We can—
“Doc.” Another nurse placed a bloodied hand on his arm, a somber expression plain to see in her eyes. “She’s gone.”
He looked up at the EKG machine. He hadn’t even realized the continuous beep of the flatline. He was so focused on trying to save the poor woman. The cool air in the operating room bit at his cheeks as he took in the expressions on the other nurses’ faces. This wasn’t the first patient he lost on the operating table, in his career as a surgeon. It wouldn’t be the last.
Every day, Jack cursed the Tremé coven for not allowing him to use his magic to give him a better chance to save lives. All they were concerned about was propriety and guarding their arcane secrets from the rest of the world. He knew the coven’s histories, how they had issues with humans, but it was 1925 for fuck’s sake. He would have liked to think that they had evolved as a people by now. There were ways they could benefit society while being careful. Every petition he made fell on deaf ears. Every life that slipped through his fingers, because he couldn’t whisper a single spell in fear that he would be found out for trying to help, caused contempt to settle in his heart. Dissatisfaction burned through him. The memory of the odor of rotten eggs mixed in the with cool, processed air from the ventilation system in the present. He was down in the basement level of the hospital. The morgue was freezing and dim even with the lights on. Jack used a little of his magic to cast a glamor on himself and the room so he that he wouldn’t be disturbed. He felt the action was warranted. He should at least be allowed that.
There were two failed operations today. The poor woman he operated on and the other, a young man, that his fellow colleagues were responsible for. He had already put the bodies away for them to be prepared for their families. All that was left for him to examine were the patients’ hearts. He had combed over both bodies three times, but he couldn’t find any remnants of spellcraft. It was bewildering. The scent was unmistakable in that OR earlier and yet he still found nothing. Even now the smell of rotten eggs and decaying flesh still seemed to penetrate his senses.
The two hearts laid on dissection plates in front of him. Nothing seemed remotely wrong with them. He had sliced both of them in half during his initial round of testing. They appeared normal, the valves were in the proper place. The septa were undisturbed, everything looked fine. It was at that moment the familiar aroma of fresh blood wafted into his nostrils, but it was different. Notes of copper and rust mixed in with the scents of the spices he was accustomed to using in his own kitchen. He looked around. He was certain that he didn’t have any food left out in the morgue. Looking down at the hearts on the lab bench, he realized it was smell of the blood still within them that called out to him. He sat back and put a hand over his mouth. He inhaled deeply then, momentarily forgetting there was still blood on his gloved hand. Transfixed by the scent, he touched the tip of his tongue to his fingers. The coppery essence of the slightly viscous fluid filled his tastebuds. He didn’t even gag. Looking back to the hearts sitting on the table, he took that same sharp scalpel and sliced a piece from each specimen. Maybe he could taste a difference between them, something that could alert him to anything he might have missed before in the other tests he ran.
Carefully, he cut into the septum of the heart belonging to his own former patient. He continued cutting until he had a decently sized slice. He repeated his actions with the other patient’s hearts as well. He studied them. They still appeared to look exactly the same. He took the slice from the other patient’s heart and stuck it in his mouth first. He chewed slowly and thoughtfully. This heart easy to swallow as he chewed. If there was a bone, the meat would have fallen off it was that succulent. The blood was light, salty and sweet. He moved onto his patient’s heart. Instantly he could tell the difference. The meat was tough and slightly bitter. The blood was no better, clotted and starting to turn black, reminiscent of what it looked like during surgery. What was that all about? Why was it that one heart was delicious, with blood as sweet as the sugar cane trees down in the Brazilian rainforests and as salty as the Caribbean seas? Why was it that the other was black with despair? He was sorely confused. Consuming them told him nothing, didn’t help him figure out if there was any foul play. It didn’t help him discover if there was any evidence of witchcraft. As he looked back to the specimens still laying before him, he found that he couldn’t be bothered. He ate the rest of the savoury heart.
He had no further use for his patient’s heart so he decided to burn it. He dragged the steel bin for biological remains closer to the lab bench. Depositing the specimen into it, he shook off any fluid remnants that may have run over in the dissection tray. Turning on the gas for the Bunsen burner, he lit a match using the flame. Tossing it into the bin, almost immediately the heart caught fire. The blaze was a sickly looking yellow before tuning black, just like the blood. His jaw dropped. This was the sign he needed. Ritualistic sacrifices always gave off the same color flames. The stench of ash and rotten eggs rose up from the steel bin then. Jack’s eyes watered as the odor overwhelmed his senses. He cursed the witch and whatever madness they were up to. How could they achieve something like this without leaving any other trace besides these flames. How the hell was he supposed to report this to the coven now. They would take turns laughing in his face for coming to them without proof. They would never take his petitions for anything seriously. Perhaps it was time he gave them something to listen to, something to force them to pay attention. Something to make them change.
He left the hospital to walk the streets of East London before going home. The moon hung high in the heavens. It wasn’t quite full but it offered enough illumination for him to take the scenic route home through a nearby grove. The white willow trees towered into the sky, standing tall and strong in the moonlight. Their trunks were thick and winding. Willowy offshoots stretched as least a few feet out from the trunks. The canopy of leaves and branches seemed to droop in their reach toward one another, as if someone was standing over him and protecting him from the elements as he walked on. The view was perfect, it helped him wind down from work and his irrational thoughts while in the morgue. Normally, he would have went out on the town with his friends before meeting up at the church to attend to whatever coven business needed handling, before retiring for the night. However, he would rather not have to deal with all those people tonight. He was weary from the length of time he spent on his feet. He preferred the welcome silence of taking the unbeaten path to his home.
The temperature in the area got increasingly colder the deeper he walked through the grove of trees, so much so that he began to feel somewhat out of place. Stopping for a moment, he looked around. He had ended up walking farther than he intended, missing the turn that would take him home. With the moon at his back to guide him, he turned in the opposite direction. He took a step forward and shivered. In this particular spot, it felt like it was below freezing. He moved away quickly, noting the air had gotten warmer again. Warily, he continued making his way home.
He was just down the street from his flat when he felt it, a weight pressing on his chest. It made it difficult to breathe. It was as if someone was squeezing his body, compressing him into a box. Looking around, he saw no one on the streets. In the dim light from the moon and the lanterns that lit up the pathway to his apartment, he could just make out a shadow. Was, was someone watching him?
Jack made a break for it, sprinting toward the front door of his building. The feeling in his chest eased as soon as he crashed through the entrance and closed the door behind him, effectively blocking out whatever, whoever, was targeting him. That was the last straw. He was a witch for fuck’s sake. He should be able to do whatever the hell he wanted without recourse, including protecting his own self. Now he would.
Jack never went back to working at Royal London Hospital after that night. He took up people watching as his new profession in the months that came and went. He studied them and their behaviours. He was still searching for the identity of the other witch in town that was using the humans in this town as their personal stock for their nefarious purposes. Lately though, that search took a backseat to his own desires. He began stalking the people he watched like an apex predator. The savoury taste of fresh, human blood gave his body new energy, his life a new purpose. He no longer felt helpless as he walked down the streets of Whitechapel. He felt strong, exuding a confidence he never really had before. His latest escapades garnered the attention of many. His kills made it into the post, onto the news channels playing on the radio. He never sought fame as a surgeon but he certainly had it now. Even if no one knew his name. He still cackled on the inside every now and then whenever he thought of the coven. The leadership had been up in arms when the fifth body dropped, especially when they discovered the meaning behind his calling card. A black dahlia, the symbol of a witch. He just knew the members of his coven wished they had listened to his pleas for change.
A smirk pulled at the corner of his lips as he stood at the bar of a new pub that had just opened recently. A reporter on the radio was discussing a string of murders that had been sending the authorities into a tizzy, his murders. He knew he had made it big when the breaking news had cut into the previous programming to alert the populace of the latest on the case, of a new body found. They were telling his story.
“What can I getcha?” The barman asked him. Looking over, he could see that the man was watching him curiously.
“A Bloody Mary, extra bloody.”
Once he received and paid for his drink, he walked off to find a table in the back of the pub. He sipped on his cocktail with a sigh of contentment. It was delicious but he would have preferred for there to be actual blood in it. He had not been sitting at his table for very long when he had all of a sudden become aware of a peculiar presence. It was cold, all-encompassing, and heavy. It made his heart squeeze tightly in his chest.
“So, you’re him.” He looked up to see a rather handsome man in a debonair suit sitting in the seat right next to him. The top hat on his head complemented the circular lenses he wore over his glacial blue eyes. The man’s voice seemed to ricochet around in his chest. It coiled its way into his thoughts, it was deeper than he was accustomed to hearing on a regular basis. “You’re Jack.”
“My apologies,” he said as he sipped from his drink again. “You must have me confused with someone else.”
“I’m quite sure I have the correct person.” The man leaned forward and gave him an odd smile. It seemed to pull at the edges of his mouth as his lips spread across his pointed teeth. It was unnerving and alluring all at the same time. That weighty feeling in Jack’s chest came back again. “Quite a bloody trail you left in your wake. You have a number of people in the whole of London frightened.”
“Again, you’ve got the wrong person.”
The man smirked. “Jack Benjamin, I’m here to impart a message onto you. Your time on this plane of existence is numbered. Put a halt to all of your vile plans or you will force my hand. I assure you, my judgement is far worse than that of your little coven’s, than even your poor excuse of a father.”
Jack sputtered as the man got up and left him at the table. The sensation of his chest tightening was back again, in full force this time. He choked on the sip of his cocktail that he had just taken. He grabbed at his own throat. His heart raced. All of a sudden, the feelings ceased. His blood turned cold then as fear filled him. Whoever that man, that witch, was made his threat clear. He had reduced Jack to that helpless surgeon from all those months ago. He was the Whitechapel Murderer now, the Ripper of East End, as the news stations dubbed him, nothing should have been able to phase him. Anger burned in his blood as he stood abruptly from his table. He stalked out of the pub and into the streets.
It was at the stroke of midnight, a couple of hours after the pub closed, that Jack found his latest prey. It was a man. He appeared to be drunk but that mattered little. He stalked the man down a deserted alley between aged buildings in the seedier part of town. It seemed like the man knew he was being followed. He took many different routes but Jack never lost sight of his quarry. He had rounded a corner and caught the man by surprise, the poor chap had walked straight into his blade. Muffling his shriek, the former surgeon stabbed and stabbed. Blood splashed onto Jack’s clothes, his face. His lips stretched across the points of his teeth, the moon shined down on him in that instance. He watched, delighted, as the light left his latest victim’s eyes. The man sagged against Jack in death. Dragging the body a ways down the alley, he got right to business. After carving the heart out of the dead man’s chest to save it for later, he played. With magnificent strokes of a stolen hospital scalpel here and deep gashes with a butcher knife there, he removed some of the other organs until he grew bored. He had left yet another corpse to be found. It was torn to pieces, ripped to shreds. As he walked away, he took the heart out of his pocket. He decided that now was a great time to take a bite.
Just as he was about to wrap his lips around his meal, Jack was thrown back a few feet. It felt like fire singed his flesh, but he could no evidence of that. He couldn’t even feel the heat, yet his skin burned. His back hit the wall of the decrepit building where the body of his latest victim was laying to rest. He groaned. His back ached where it made contact with the wall. He was disoriented, he had even dropped the butcher knife and scalpel he was carrying. Looking up, he blinked to clear his vision. He saw the man from the bar chewing on something. He stood shakily with his hands splayed in front of him, ready to defend himself with magic if necessary. As the light from the moon streamed into the alleyway, Jack’s ire rose at the sight before him. That bastard was eating his well-earned meal.
“How dare you—
Jack choked on his own words. All of a sudden the witch was upon him, taking up all of his personal space. He grabbed at the hand squeezing his throat, almost crushing his windpipe. Calling up cerulean sparks, he willed them to intensify into blazing spheres. With as much strength as he could muster, he smashed his hands against the man’s arm. The other witch appeared unbothered. In fact, his flames had begun to die out, as if the man was drawing Jack’s power into him.
His eyes widened then. The witch’s face changed. Glacial blue irises shifted into pitch-darkness, swallowing the pupils, the sclera, everything. The man’s muscles bulged beneath his clothes, writhing as if they were begging to be released, before popping free from his flesh. This man was no witch at all. Unfathomable power seemed to radiate from those gruesome, black, and slimy tentacles as they undulated in the air. All this was happening while the man, this being, was taking chunk after chunk out of the heart that Jack had gleaned from the body a few feet away from them.
All of a sudden, Jack could feel the frigid cobblestones beneath his knees. The being had dropped him. Using that to his advantage, he raised himself to the balls of his feet and darted away. His heart was beating so fast, his fear grew. He put as much distance between him and whatever that creature was as he could. He took a sharp left and sprinted down another alleyway. Freedom was so close, he could almost taste it. Instead, he tasted dirt. He had tripped over his own feet and landed face down on the ground.
That cold, heavy sensation fell over him again as if a building was crushing him into the stone pathway. He looked up only to realize that he was back where he started, a few feet away from the corpse he mangled. What felt like his own butcher knife tore through his trousers, exposing his lower half to the elements. Ice curled in his belly when something moist trailed a path up his left leg toward his inner thigh. In a last ditch effort to save himself from what he feared was coming, he pushed himself onto his back. He let out a burst of cyan flames from his chest. They engulfed the creature. He smiled triumphantly.
When the flames died down, the alleyway was rendered in total darkness. Just as he was about to feel his way out of the back streets of East End, a massive hand curled around his neck again. The bastard just won’t die. That hand squeezed hard and this time, Jack lacked the energy to summon another fiery blast. He kicked out only for both of his legs to be restrained by what felt like a rope. It was too cold and slippery, as if it was drenched in some fluid. He realized then that he was truly caught by the creature, those tentacles writhed around him as if they had a mind of their own. He was pressed bodily into a wall, his lower half positioned so that his posterior was presented to the alley. He froze.
“I told you to put a stop to your murder spree through the streets of Whitechapel, you did not listen.”
The words, whispered harshly in his ear, were Jack’s only warning before something hot and hard forced its way into him. The warning imparted onto him by that mysterious man from the bar made itself known in his thoughts as his body was violated. The searing burn caused tears to well in his eyes as his asshole was torn open. He could feel it when something ripped inside of him. It hurt, but the creature never stopped the attack. His mouth fell open, stuttered whines wrenched free from his throat. He couldn’t move but that was alright by his standards. Through the pain he realized that he had never felt like this before, so small, so thoroughly ravished, taken so forcefully out in the open. He liked it.
“Did you— did you really think that raping me would make me stop?” Jack gasped out through the force of those thrusts that saw his chest repeatedly rubbing up against the wall. “That making me bleed would cause me to think twice about hurting others? Newsflash pal, I like pain. Try that one on for size.”
The man chuckled behind him before pulling out. Jack whined at being left empty but gasped when he was turned to face his rapist. His eyes narrowed at the way the moonlight, finally peaking through the clouds, illuminated the man’s skin, the way it still rippled strangely beneath corded flesh.
“You’ll regret that choice of words.”
The man forced Jack to his knees then, right in front of the body he mutilated. It was the only witness to his own mutilation. Perhaps it was fitting that he suffer these consequences if they resulted in this much pleasure. He moaned when his attacker entered him again. This time the burn was more of a pleasing ache that sent sparks up his spine. It was painful, yes, but there was nothing in the world that was worth having if it didn’t pain him to get it. The skin on his knees was rubbed raw as he was fucked into the ground. It wasn’t long before a certain warmth filled his lower belly, climbing like a wave before crashing over him. A whimper slipped from his lips as his eyes rolled in the back of his head. He could feel it when the man came inside of him, the stings of fluid seeping into the tears in his flesh.
“So, did I deliver?”
Jack smiled and turned his head to see Curtis’ massive frame looming over him.
“Yes doll, you did. Didn’t realize you were going to add stalking to the mix though. And fucking me while shifted? Worth it.” He groaned a little as Curtis pulled out. He whimpered at the feeling of his lover’s large and cool fingers dipping into his hole. “How much is it?”
“It’s a lot, sweetheart. I tore you open.”
“Good,” he said tilting his head up slightly as he silently asked for a kiss. He smiled happily when he got it. “Maybe next time, you can take my other hole, I love it when you make me bleed.”
Curtis smirked into the kiss. “You mean this one?”
Jack gasped when Curtis roughly dug those meat claws of his into the hole in question, his pussy. He always had it but never understood how he was born with it until he met the terror that was Curtis. He heard the murmurings throughout the coven about the first witch to bind themselves to a god being from his own bloodline. He heard about the tumultuous trials his ancestor suffered through for power, how their body was modified to serve a deity’s deviant purposes. He never believed it until Curtis showed him the cosmos, explaining why his body was made that way and for what purpose. That was after the man had taken him actually against his will the first time they met, of course. Perhaps the god was responsible for his descent into depravity, for his craving for pain. Perhaps that was the reason he made the same choices his ancestor did, binding himself to creature such as this.
“Make love to me, doll.” He whispered against Curtis’ full lips. “Make it hurt.”
ns 15.158.61.45da2
