Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He wakes to darkness and thirst and the sharp smell of copper and pine, and when he raises a paw to rub the sleep from his eyes the paw hits something hard just above him.

In seconds he has felt out the dimensions of his confinement and come to the alarming conclusion that he is in a wooden box barely larger than a person.

None of the possible explanations do anything to calm his sudden terror.

But the lid springs open as soon as he pushes on it—yet before the relief can quite hit, before he’s even got his bearings, there’s a paw on his chest, ignoring his frantic struggles and holding him down. Holding him inside the coffin. He draws breath to snarl or hiss but there are eyes looming over him, drawing him into their gaze until he’s aware of nothing else, nothing but golden eyes.

And a voice that resonates through him like thunder, bidding him stay quiet and play dead.

Despite the growing panic, his eyes obediently close as his body relaxes back into the coffin. He can’t so much as twitch. Can’t even open his eyes again as he hears the lid get fitted back in place.

“Just a few more minutes in there,” the voice rumbles from outside, less forceful now that the commands have sunk in. “You’ll be out soon enough.”

Lying there, unable to do anything but listen to the bump of wheels over cobblestone, he tries to think back, to figure out how he got in this predicament. How long has he been unconscious? He’s so thirsty. Parched, as though he hasn’t had a glass of water in days. It feels almost more like a hunger, a ravenous emptiness eating away at his core. Have they been starving him? Has he been comatose, maybe, and only now roused himself enough to be fed?

That doesn’t make sense with the coffin. Or, if it does make sense with the coffin, it doesn’t make sense with the tom who so calmly told him to stay in the coffin. Nothing about this makes any sense, and his whirling thoughts aren’t doing much to calm the panic rushing through him. He can’t move, can’t make a sound, can’t breathe—

He’s not—he’s not breathing. Not even shallow, silent breaths. The seconds stretch to minutes and he still can’t draw breath; his chest won’t expand at all, no air in, no air out, just… nothing. It feeds the panic, but the panic doesn’t make him pant as it has most other times in his life, doesn’t make his heart race—

—is his heart even beating? At all? Maybe it’s just the sound of the wheels bumping over cobblestone, the jostling of his confinement, but he can’t make out the sound or the feel of a heartbeat, not the normal one and certainly not the pounding in his head that typically accompanies this kind of suffocating terror.

He’s… why isn’t he suffocating?

That gnawing hunger is still there, growing, but there should be an even stronger need for air, and there just… isn’t. As if air has somehow become optional. As if the command to play dead has given him the ability to actually do so.

Surely he’s just lost track of time— the time passed hasn’t actually been as long as it feels? He starts to count the bump of the wheels: twelve, eighteen, twenty-four… thirty-six, forty-eight, sixty, seventy-two, on and on and on and somehow there’s still no pressing need to take in air. His chest still refuses to move.

How he can still be conscious—

The wheels stop, causing a sudden jarring movement of whatever conveyance they’re in, and then… stillness. For a moment.

Then the carriage rocks again, harder, and the sounds outside change, grow louder— a door has been opened.

Words get exchanged. The rumbly voice is calm, reasonable, unruffled; the other two voices are higher pitched, one demanding, the other sarcastic. Mordecai can’t quite make out the words—

“—your tricks,” one of the high-pitched voices says in triumph as the lid of the casket flies open again, but then, in a mixture of outrage and horror: “sonofabitch! ”

Much as he wants to open his eyes, Mordecai can’t do it. Can’t so much as tense a muscle.

“They’re a bit disturbing before we pretty them up,” the rumbly voice says casually, and Mordecai finally recognizes it as the rich man from the train. “You might show a little more respect for the dead.”

There’s a long moment of silence—and then a muffled curse as the lid falls shut again, leaving Mordecai to wonder what exactly they saw when they looked at him.

The last thing he can recall… after the train, the letter… is pain, sudden and sharp. Those thugs knifing him in the alley. Is he still wearing the same clothes? Are they badly torn? They’d have to be, wouldn’t they? He’ll need to find a sewing kit—

—is he covered in blood? That coppery scent—

His skin starts to crawl at the thought of it, the need to do something about it, but he still can’t make his body move.

The voices exchange more words, two upset voices against one calm rumble, and then the coffin rocks as the door slams shut, blocking out more of the sound of wherever they happen to be.

A long moment later, they start rolling again, wheels bumping along the cobblestones.

“Almost there now,” the rumbly voice says. “You woke up a little earlier than I’d expected. I’m sure you have questions; they’ll be answered soon enough. And then, of course, you can slake your thirst.”

Chapter Text

The tom leaves him in the coffin as it’s being pulled out of the carriage, carried down a set of stairs—Mordecai tries to get some sense of where they are from sound alone, but all he can gather is “indoors”—carried further through some long, bumpy corridor with various twists and turns, and finally put down and settled into place.

Only then does the tom open the coffin lid, release the powers that have kept Mordecai still and silent, and extend a hand to help him to his feet. Bewildered and desperately hungry—and relieved beyond the telling to be able to breathe again—Mordecai doesn’t even think to resist.

They’re in a small cavern, carved from stone, which Mordecai can just barely make out through the lack of light. He’s surprised that he can see as well as he can; there is no hint of even reflected daylight, no artificial light sources to compensate, just darkness that somehow doesn’t block out all his sight like it usually would. But before he has time to question that too deeply, he turns to see the other occupants of the room:

The thugs who’d killed him.

Jerking back with a hiss, ears flat and tail bristling, Mordecai feels utterly betrayed—

—before he takes in the fact that the thugs aren’t moving and look… strange. Blank, even. Not triumphant and mocking like earlier, but just standing there… staring into space.

They probably can’t see, he realizes, but it’s more than that.

Glancing over at the tom who’d helped him from the coffin, he finds himself being studied with quiet amusement. “I trust these are the two you were concerned about?” the tom asks casually—then murmurs a command, and the thugs fall to their knees. “Do with them as you will. Sate your thirst for vengeance… and then your thirst for blood.”

The instinctual revulsion in Mordecai’s gut at the very thought of drinking blood does little to mask the renewed hunger, that gnawing desire that has been with him since he first woke in the coffin. And he can scent it, just below the skin, the pulsing lifeblood before him, within them, just as he can scent the lingering, dead tinge of his own blood, still on his clothes.

The blood from where they’d stabbed him. Intending his death.

Intending to go track down his sisters when he could do nothing to stop them.

The rage that wells within him aims to do something swift and brutal; it is only with difficulty that he tamps down the urge. His sisters are safe, he reminds himself; there is no need for drastic action. There is time to gather data, consider options.

“You hesitate,” the tom observes, mildly.

Casting a sidelong look at the tom, Mordecai wonders a thousand things, but gives voice to only one: “What sort of hold do you have over them?”

“They are deep under thrall until I choose to release them. They cannot act apart from my will.”

“Is that what you… did to me?”

“For your own protection, while you were still disoriented from the transition. I will not do so again unless at great need.”

“Yet you do it to them.”

“They are your rightful prey; I can release them as soon as you wish it. This was the easiest way to meet your request, ensuring that they could not harm your loved ones.”

Belatedly, the details slot together in Mordecai’s mind. Please stop them; my sisters— Would you like the power to stop them? I can give it to you.

“You’re the… the tom from the train. You found me in the alley.”

“I did.”

“You saved me? I thought…” He feels his chest, his fingers finding the holes in his shirt, but there are no wounds, or even scars. Yet the blood is still on his clothes. “I was dying. How—” He stops short, narrows his eyes. “What have you done to me?”

The tom’s eyes glow golden in the darkness, and a frisson of fear shoots up Mordecai’s spine.

“I have given you power beyond what mortals could ever know,” the tom says, voice gone deep. “The power to hunt, and to overcome those who would hunt you. The power to drink of their life’s essence, and in so doing to escape the pull of time on mortal creatures. The power to defy death, to remain changeless while the world around you changes. This and more, I have granted you. All you have to do is… drink.” He motions toward the thugs, still on their knees, swaying slightly, eyes vacant.

Again, Mordecai feels the pulse of their blood within them, the hunger within himself; he’s surprised his mouth isn’t watering. But actually drinking blood, much less feline blood… it’s an abomination before the Lord. A godly tom does not drink blood, or even eat meat with the blood still in it; he’s known that since he was a kitten, learning his letters by studying the Torah on his sire’s knee.

A phantom twinge in the crook of his neck brings him back to the alley. He rubs his neck, finding no wound but recalling the sensations: pain, heat, wetness. Did this tom… drink his blood?

All you have to do is drink.

But if he has changed because the tom drank his blood… “Will it make them like me?”

The tom shakes his head. “You haven’t the power to pass on the gift. First you need to gather enough energy to begin discovering your own powers; I’ve merely given you the spark. Taking lifeblood from the unworthy would be the first step in your own journey—and the last in theirs.”

“And if I don’t?”

The tom shrugs. “Then your energy will fade away, with time, and you will be lost. Or perhaps… well. There are tales of a few who rejected the gift… those who did not drink, but walked out into the light and were reclaimed. The light burned away the gift and left them mortal again.

“If that is your decision, then walk up the stairs; there is day enough left. See if the Almighty judges you a righteous tom, and lets you survive the burning of the light.”

Glancing toward the tunnel, Mordecai swallows. “Sunlight… burns,” he confirms.

“While you are this new, this weak? Of course it will. You have no life force to guard you. But if you’d rather burn than drink, I certainly won’t stop you; I have no use for the squeamish.”

When Mordecai makes no move in either direction, the tom tilts his head. “Is it the fate of your sisters that holds you back? Out of respect for their innocence, I’ll dispose of these two on your behalf; you need not fear for your loved ones, whatever you choose.

“So make your choice: blood or burning.” The golden eyes burn brightly in the darkness, holding Mordecai’s gaze. “But know that once you have drunk your fill, there is no returning to a mortal life; you will be bound to me. Forever.”

Raised in the reading of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, Mordecai knows full well the rules that the Lord set down before his chosen people. He’s believed it his whole life, believed that G-d had truly spoken to his people, that the Lord watched over them and guided them, and yet… he’s never really known an alternative. Never been offered the choice to choose otherwise.

And where had the Lord been, while Mordecai’s family had been struggling to survive in that damp, stifling tenement with moldy paneling and holes for the rats to come in and gnaw at their food? When his sister, still a kitten, had died; when their father soon followed her? When Mordecai, barely thirteen, had become the tom of the house and faced the choice of how to provide for his family, without viable options, and had fallen into crime, even into murder, because it seemed like the surest way to get the money that the family needed so desperately?

Indeed, where had the Lord been when Mordecai lay dying in an alley—when the thugs had laughed at his demise and headed off to hunt down two young girls whose only crime had been being the sisters of a desperate, foolish tom? A young tom of seventeen years whose worst sins had stemmed from a love for family?

The Lord in all his glory had not appeared to Mordecai that night, but a different, darker lord had found him… and saved him. Stopped the thugs, and brought him to safety, and given him choice. Defended his sisters when the Lord would not deign to step in.

What would you pledge to me in return?

Anything. Please—save them.

And the Lord does not look kindly on oathbreakers, either.

If there’s a reason to cling to what he’s known, he can’t see it anymore. Besides, if the test of the light is the test of a righteous tom, Mordecai has no hope of surviving such a test. It seems that the choice before him is either to drink, or to die.

No, nothing so passive: to kill and drink, or to kill himself. No half measures. Either way, a life taken; either way, a dire sin. No way to avoid breaking one of the prohibitions.

No choice at all, really. The Talmud claims he ought sacrifice his life rather than slay another, that his life is worth no more than the one he might kill, but just now he has a hard time believing that.

And while he’s none too clear on the details of the future set before him, he’d rather strive for life so long as he has the option.

Besides, the thugs will not survive the night in any case. And the blood on their hands demands justice, a justice so far denied them by the law of the land; it might as well be his already bloody hands that see it done. Was that not the way of things? The tales have become all jumbled in his head, but he vaguely recalls the Lord sending punishment by the hands of the wicked, using one evil to stop another.

As he steps toward the worst of the two, he tries to pull together some thought, some final prayer before he cuts ties with the Lord he’s known and binds himself to a new lord, but it feels like he’s surrounded in thick fog, blocking out what’s left of the light.

It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?

He bares his fangs, and bows his head, and drinks.

Chapter Text

The fresh, warm blood flowing down his throat feels electric—instantly energizing, clearing away the weariness, the fog in his brain, the anxiety and sense of dread that have been dogging his heels for days. Even the darkness feels more alive around him; he can make out more detail, all his senses brought into focus.

The fuzziness around objects, the hampered vision he’s been dealing with since childhood, is simply gone, and somehow he knows that this is no temporary change. He’ll never need glasses again.

Fighting back the part of him that wants to drink his fill and never stop, he lays the thug down on the cavern floor, partly to prove that he still can. That he’s in charge of his impulses, even when they’re this strong, this fulfilling. He will not let this new nature consume the tom he used to be, not so long as he has the power to retain some portion of himself.

The thug’s shallow breaths are testament to Mordecai’s self-control. Savoring the salty taste in his mouth, he watches the rise and fall of the thug’s chest for a moment before turning away.

The tom to which he’s now bound himself is, of course, watching him, but gives no sign of approval or disapproval.

For a moment, Mordecai studies his benefactor. “Then I am yours, now?”

“By your own choice, and not unwittingly,” the tom confirms. “I trust you do not so quickly regret it?”

With narrowed eyes, Mordecai meets the tom’s gaze. “To whom have I bound myself?”

“I am Atlas. Lord Atlas, if you’re after a term of respect. ‘My lord’, for the typical form of address, at least within my holdings, or out of earshot of the mortals.”

“Your holdings?”

Spreading his arms, Atlas indicates the cavern around them. “This area has many hidden caverns, and I control nearly all of them beneath the city itself. A handy safe haven for my people.”

“Then I am not the only one to receive this gift.”

“The gift itself, I have bestowed upon a handful. Some of them squandered it, so I am more careful with my choices these days. As for the rest, some know me in my true form, others know only that I provide them with a place to take shelter, a place to belong. But they are all mine, bound to my service in one manner or another.”

Mordecai glances back at the thugs. “Under… thrall?”

“Hardly. I enthrall my prey, not my allies—except, on rare occasions, to prevent some greater harm. Those who cannot amass followers without using force merely reveal their own lack of wit. Or charm, if you will.” He chuckles. “Besides, I can only enthrall a handful at a time, and not without effort. Why should I seek the sort of followers who would scurry off into the night the moment I got distracted or let down my guard?”

“You claim to choose carefully,” Mordecai muses aloud, “yet you gave me this gift within an hour of meeting me. Before you found me dying, we hadn’t exchanged even a single word.”

“I admit it was a risk,” Atlas says mildly, “but I thought I might as well give you a chance. You’d managed to impress me.”

“…Had I?”

“The way you evaded these hoodlums for days before they caught up with you… young as you are, you clearly have a talent worth nurturing.”

Just how long had the tom been stalking him? Suppressing the impulse to swish his tail, he confirms, “You’d been following me for days.”

“Oh, I had business in the area, and happened to cross paths a time or two. So I noticed you, yes, but did not seek you out.”

Again, Mordecai’s eyes narrow. “Before the train, I never saw you.”

“Your attention had been otherwise occupied. Besides, I am only seen when and how I wish to be. When you saw me on the train, it was because I wanted your attention.”

“Yet you did not step in until I was already dying.” Mordecai looks away, musing aloud. “You knew I would not survive such a fight. You obviously had the power to intervene…”

Atlas shakes his head. “My powers were limited at the time; the sunlight drains my reservoir, and I had spent quite some time handling certain matters that day. If not for your blood, I would not have rejuvenated swiftly enough to track them down, let alone enthrall them.

“And had I approached them while my strength was low, I imagine I would have fared as well as any other rich tom caught on the wrong side of town. They wouldn’t have killed me, no, but I would not have recovered in time to catch your dwindling life before it faded.”

“And you didn’t think to intervene back at the train station? No, I suppose not,” Mordecai answers his own question. “It might have been safer for you physically, but if you couldn’t enthrall them—or restrain them—you’d risk word getting back to the ones who sent them, and then you’d get tangled up in a matter that doesn’t concern you. This way, they simply don’t return, and their deaths remain a mystery. If the others investigate, all they’ll find is a dead end… and the implication that I might be more dangerous than I seem. With no leads, they won’t pursue.”

“Well reasoned,” Atlas rumbles, and Mordecai feels a flush of pleasure at the unexpected praise. “On top of that, when I left you at the train I had not quite decided whether to acquire you, or how; you’re right that this was all very fast. I had been considering how you might prove yourself to my satisfaction, but then you were dying, and there was no more time.

“And then, with your dying breaths, you begged for the lives of your sisters—a noble request that speaks of a great capacity for loyalty. Loyalty is a rare quality these days, and I can always use a faithful disciple at my side.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Mordecai mulls over the night’s events—more than a night, now; Atlas had mentioned something about sunlight—and decides that while Atlas’s words seem a bit too honeyed to be taken on faith, he can take at least two things for granted:

One: Atlas had little reason to intervene, or to save a practical stranger, and yet Mordecai’s body is not lying cold and stiff in that alley.

Two: If not for Atlas’s intervention, however self-serving it might be, Mordecai’s sisters would still be in peril.

And for all the doubts brought on by his fresh clarity of mind, there’s little use for them; he’s already accepted the deal, twice over.

Once you have drunk your fill, there is no returning to a mortal life.

Would you bind yourself to me so deeply?

I am yours, now?

By your own choice, and not unwittingly. I trust you do not so quickly regret it?

“My lord,” he says at last, crossing one more mental threshold toward whatever future his choices have laid out for him—but a new thought occurs. “Are you royalty, then?”

“Greater,” Atlas says without hesitation. “Though if you trace the sires back through history, the first of us was a warlord and a beloved ruler of a small country, so in a way we share in a mortal royalty as well. I am descended directly from him, and now, through the gift, so are you.

“Of course, our nature is hidden from the mortals—most of them—and addressing me as lord in public would draw altogether too much attention to our operations. So on the surface, or at least within earshot of the mortals, you should call me ‘sir’, and refer to me as Dr. May.”

Mordecai frowns. “You’re a doctor as well?”

“Well, the field of medicine has changed significantly since I studied it in depth, but yes, I earned that title honestly. The access it grants me can be quite useful at times.”

The words he’d heard from inside the casket return to him: They’re a bit disturbing before we pretty them up. You might show a little more respect for the dead.

Anyone might transport a loved one’s body in a casket, but the way Atlas spoke of them… he’d been playing the part of an undertaker, hadn’t he? And it sounded like it hadn’t been the first time. Given that someone had opened the casket and been shocked by the contents, they’d clearly thought that he was using the casket for a different purpose. What else might be found—hidden—in a casket?

Smuggled goods?

I have no use for the squeamish.

It seems that Mordecai has signed himself up for a rather surprising life, and not merely the gift of unnatural powers.