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A steady stream of fags. Smoke coiling in the air in place of warm breath.
Geoffrey McCullum concluded his patrol with a last stop at the former plague pits. They were covered over now, but you never knew. It seemed that word had gone around that London was off-limits to all but Reid's little brood. It had been weeks since he'd seen so much as a Skal.
Geoffrey knew full well that they were about; some coterie of lucid ghouls that Reid and Sean knew of, but who didn't wish to be revealed to the once-and-future vampire hunter. He'd only caught one once. Slippery little bastard. He'd finally cornered it in a dead-end bolt-hole down in the sewers. These days, he always gave full warning before he went in for the kill; a few moments to give the ghoul a chance to reveal itself to be a bit like Sean.
The poor, leprous creature had begged, its bloated lips muddying the sense from the words. But, they had been words and enough had been intelligible. It had known who he was, and understood. It was only a scavenger. It hadn't meant to intrude on their territory. It didn't kill people.
So, he had let it go with a warning to behave.
He hadn't seen another one since. Their bodies might be rotten but they were sharp enough to stay out of sight and out of trouble.
Still, you never knew. So when McCullum turned the corner to the old plague pits, and saw the loose tunnel in the dirt, he resisted the urge to just toss an incendiary down there. It was at a shallow angle, but deep. Something or someone had wanted in at the buried corpses.
Instead, he loosed his sword and moved quietly closer.
The rising stench almost gagged him, making it hard to sense who or what was down there. Surely couldn't be human though.
Stepping back, he stubbed the cigarette out quickly. No way to know how flammable the gas was. Then he kicked a little dirt into the opening and coughed meaningfully. The sounds of scrabbling stopped.
Dragging a breath of foul air, he drawled. “Are you going to come out, or am I going to have to come in after you?”
No reaction from the hole.
“Trust me.” He said, meaning it. “You'll be in a lot less trouble if I don't have to come down there.”
Sounds of movement. His nose might be overwhelmed, but he could hear perfectly fine when it finally spoke.
“Geoffrey. I – ” It said, trailing off. McCullum recognised it; Doctor Swansea, his voice nervous and muffled by the weight of dirt. Doctor Swansea, who had far more blood on his hands than even he did. Doctor Swansea, the leech.
McCullum smirked, indulging a little growl. “Hello Swansea. You coming out?”
“I find myself a little reluctant to do so. I am sure you can understand why, in the circumstances.”
McCullum nodded to the truth of that. He squatted down at the mouth of the tunnel, laying his sword across his knees as he asked, conversationally. “Up to your old tricks, doctor? What mad experiment are you up to now?”
“Nothing of the sort, Geoffrey.” Despite speaking from a goddamn hole he'd dug in a corpse pit, the doctor still managed to sound indignant. “I'm – I'm documenting the bodies. Trying to, anyway.” The voice broke a little. “There are so many.”
“That's what a plague does, doctor.” McCullum wasn't about to let himself feel sympathy for the man who'd created the bloody skal epidemic.
Silence again.
“Why?” McCullum prompted.
“Why... what?” Swansea sniffed. God, how could he stand to sniff down there, if the reek was this bad outside.
“Don't try to wind me up, doctor. You won't like the result.” McCullum warned, “Why are you 'documenting' ?”
Silence again.
“Swansea.” McCullum prompted. “Don't try this shit with me.”
“You... you don't know?”
“I can guess. Getting ready for another round, are you?”
The doctor made a startled sound and said nothing more. McCullum felt the low growl start up in his chest. But then, he considered the sound again. He had taken it for a scoff but … it could have been a sob.
Suspicious, he asked. “Is this for him?”
“For who?” The querulous voice asked.
Geoffrey did growl then, letting it be heard down the hole.
Swansea's voice broke. “Yes. It's for Jonathan.”
Suspicious now, McCullum leaned in a little, speaking down the long tunnel. “Is he forcing you to do this?”
“Geoffrey.” Barely a whisper. “You surely can not believe I would wish to be here, if he had not.”
“That's not an answer doctor. Stop trying to squirm around the question. You're still shit at it.”
Hesitantly, voice cracking again, Swansea said. “Yes. He is.”
Well, shit. McCullum stood. After a moment, he sheathed his sword. “Swansea. Get out here. I am not having this conversation with a damn burrow. I'm not here to kill you.” He paused, reconsidered, “Well, at least not tonight, not for this.”
He counted slowly down from ten, giving the doctor a few moments. Thinking about it, it made sense that he'd felt the need to pop by here tonight. He always felt a draw towards Reid's blood, and Swansea was one of his brood. It probably wasn't a coincidence that they'd run into each other again.
He was all the way down to three, when the scrabbling started up.
“Alright. I'm coming out. But I'm trusting you, Geoffrey, at your word. I think you're an honourable man, beneath i-”
“Shut up and get out here.”
Swansea did, worming up out of the tunnel like a maggot.
God, he looked worse than last time. Not only because there was corpse dirt under his nails, and smeared across his face. No, the doctor looked like he was starving. He didn't even have a mask up; no subtle tricks to hide what he was. Pale lips pinched over his fangs, dark bruises under his eyes.
This time, he told him so. “You look like death, doctor.”
Swansea didn't meet his eyes as he straightened up. “Yes. I expect I do. You, on the other hand, are looking very well? Have you... come to terms with... with what Jonathan....” He trailed off.
“That I have, doctor. You haven't, I take it?”
“Of course I have.” The doctor tried to look defiant, but only looked lost. “I would have. I wanted this, you know. I searched for it.”
“You wanted this?” Feeling a little of the old, righteous anger, McCullum snatched the filthy notebook clutched in Swansea's hand. The doctor tried to object, tried to grab it back, but the attempt was pitiful against McCullum's strength. He pushed him easily away while he scanned a page.
His handwriting was awful, even without the dirt and dried smears of god-knew-what on the pages. But, it was still better than Reid's. They looked like autopsy reports. Rough and fragmentary, based as they were on corpses that had been thrown together without ceremony or preamble.
“What is this?” He growled.
Swansea began to plead, babbling as he always did. “It's for him. Please, Geoffrey. Please give it back, please don't destroy it. If you do, I will have to do it again and there are so many.” His voice broke again. McCullum realised the dark bags around his eyes weren't from lack of sleep. They were the smears of dried, bloody tears. “Please. There are hundreds in there. It's the only copy I have. I would have to start all over again.”
God, maybe... just maybe …McCullum could find a sliver of pity in his heart. Not for Doctor Swansea, who had caused it all, who had caused McCullum's own death in a roundabout way. But maybe he could for this pitiful creature. Good intentions and arrogance had made fools of them both. Ignorance had destroyed them in the end.
“Swansea,” He said, low, trying to push the doctor the way he wanted. Even if he'd been a worthless man, the doctor had been able to resist him before. But that had been before McCullum had grown into what he was, before Swansea had become so wretched. “What exactly is he making you do?”
“He's making me count them.” Swansea sobbed, his blood so thick that the tears did not run. They only smeared around his eyes. “Document them, as far as possible. I cannot stop until he's satisfied, and he's never satisfied.”
McCullum hissed in a breath. That sounded exactly like Reid's kind of justice.
“I swear, I've tried to find out, to learn everything I can from speaking with the survivors, but there are so many gaps. Whole families were eradicated by the epidemic. Immigrants without papers. John and Jane Does.” He swallowed, “I've had to move on to the bodies. I admit it's difficult to distinguish between the victims of the Spanish flu, and those I killed with my experiments.” His voice was no more than a whisper, “But I'm trying, I swear.”
McCullum didn't miss it. There was no pride or bluster left in this husk of a man. He had said 'my experiments'. He had said 'I killed'.
Feeling a little sick, McCullum had to ask, though he already knew the answer. He knew Reid too well. “Let me guess leech, he hasn't told you what he wants, exactly?”
“No.”
Of course, he hadn't. As far as The Monster was concerned, suffering was as much a part of what they were as the thirst. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Oh, I can't remember properly.” Swansea gave a self-depreciating little laugh. “It might have been a month ago. Maybe two. It hasn't been long.”
McCullum growled. “Do you even know what month it is, doctor?”
“What?” Swansea looked startled. His eyes glazed for a moment, then he looked panicked. “I mean, of course I do. Certainly.”
McCullum lapsed into silence, gritting his teeth. Swansea had deserved to be punished for what he'd done, but did anyone deserve this? He was almost certain Reid had lost interest already. He'd get back around to Swansea in time, when he was bored, but more interesting things had caught the monster's attention. Like him, and Sean. It could be a long damn time.
“Take it.” He growled, holding out the book.
Swansea snatched it back as though his life depended upon it. With excessive care, he tucked it inside his coat, being sure to button the pocket closed.
Fuck it. McCullum made his decision. What was the point in being what he was, of having a claim on Reid himself, if he wasn't willing to throw his weight against Reid's when it was the right thing to do.
“Swansea,” He said heavily. “Never forget what you did. Never forget that they were your god-damn victims. But, for the love of God, Swansea, take a break.”
Swansea jerked his head up, his eyes full of the pain of futile hope. “I can't, Geoffrey. When he comes back – ”
“When he comes back, tell him I made you do it. He'll almost certainly rough you up, but he'll come after me for the rest. I can take it. In the meanwhile, get your head sorted out so that you're not a bloody danger to every human within thirty feet, and clean yourself the fuck up.”
“You, you mean it? Truly? Despite everything?”
“Don't make me regret it, doctor.”
The words pressed deep into the doctor's psyche. He didn't fight them. He didn't resist them.
He didn't even need them, really.
As Swansea turned mechanically, hope and hunger emptying his face of all other expression, McCullum called after him. “Swansea.”
“Yes?” The doctor turned back, submissive and terrified.
“These are the rules. No innocents, not ever. Stick to real bastards wherever possible. If you don't know them well enough to be sure either way, you don't know them well enough to kill them. Break those rules and I'll find out, I guarantee. I'll come for you. Do you understand me, doctor?”
Swansea only looked relieved. “Yes, thank you Geoffrey. Thank you.”
“Get out of my sight.”
The doctor fled, as if afraid he might change his mind. The pale, skeletal figure was visible in the moonlight until he scrambled, ghoul-like, over the wall to the street and vanished from sight.
McCullum found a shovel, and filled in the hole. These poor bastards might be dead and gone, but they deserved their rest. McCullum would never forget, never forgive... but acceptance was a different matter. There was no point leaving the pit open. It would only cause more suffering in the long run.
He figured Sean would have a different spin on it. But that's why he was a Saint, and McCullum wasn't.
Maybe, he'd bring it up to Reid and face him head-on. A little violence would go a long way to wash this taste out of his mouth.