Chapter Text
His second kill was a man by the name of Clay Cox.
Newly-born into an impossible world beneath his own, Jonathan Reid had only been trying to help. He was not unfamiliar with breaking up scraps; his height and patience helped him to form a presence useful for dousing the quarrels he’d come upon, mostly those brought upon by stress during service.
All intention was lost, however, when the very air grew thick with blood.
-Rotten or pristine-
One man was stabbed. The other, pushed into the brackish depths. Then, the first was right there, in Jonathan’s grasp.
-Each heart contains the seeds of life-
He knew not how or when he had gotten so close to the mysterious man, his hand placed gently on a willing shoulder. But he knew why. He felt the intention in that dark alcove. He knew how this would end.
-Drink at this river-
There was just a moment of lucidity. The chance to pull back, to flee from the oasis into the unending desert.
-Dry it all-
And he did.
The man was a murderer. There was nothing in his final thoughts but violence. He was unchecked, casting men into the cold dark water mere metres from a hospital. It was just like in the war—killing to heal, to protect.
The bargaining could not justify his actions, but perhaps it could provide a reason. A reason why Jonathan didn’t release the man.
Once finally returned to his right mind, the doctor shoved these thoughts far into whatever pit they came from as he laid the poor man down. Shaking hands unfurled his cravat, tearing off a piece of the fabric with intent to staunch bleeding wounds. There was nothing left to stop.
The quiet splash of the river swallowing another soul returned Jonathan’s reasoning to the forefront of his mind. It echoed in his mind, a mantra to hold him to sanity as he kept determined eye contact with the bloodied nurse before him. The man had been a murderer, and now he could kill no more. Jonathan incessantly replayed the moment of the progenitor crime in his thoughts, the instant the world turned red and melted away. It was the second thing he recalled upon springing to faux life the following night.
The first thing, naturally, was the truth. In the moment, there was no justification; no, there was nothing in his mind but bliss.
A month of aching hunger passed before he met his fourth kill—Seymour Fishburn.
He was strangely charmed by the man at first. Mr. Fishburn was a standoffish sort, surely unpleasant in conversation and less than amenable to those around him. But still, Jonathan left the encounter with, more than anything else, a feeling of shame. This man, wandering in a world he so clearly despised, grew so alive when he spoke of his mother. Meeting the sweet old woman herself only strengthened his view of the flawed but caring son. And what of Reid in comparison? A caring man, he would like to think, but a flawed son. Unwilling to face his beloved mother even at her own daughter’s funeral.
So, by request of the good son, Jonathan searched. He walked past shops and bars and rotting, bombed-open buildings. He brushed inhumanly keen eyes over every dark nook and cranny to catch a glimmer of misplaced silver or gold and patted down the pockets of every Priwen brute he left reeling. And after finding nothing he returned the next night to do the same.
It might have been the flicker of burning bins that drew the doctor down to where the Thames lapped at the shore. That, or it was the thick stench of blood and death mixing with the salty breeze. It hardly mattered. He had found dear Mrs. Fishburn’s necklace.
This time, the shadows which bled around his vision and carried him to Mr. Fishburn in seconds were of his own volition. He tracked the man down by scent like a hound.
His cold had cleared up. How wonderful.
Years of pretending—of telling patients they’ll be okay, humoring wounded soldiers’ tales of glory, and now weeks of simply acting human—steadied his voice. Calm, collected, patient.
“I have retrieved the gift for your mother, sir.”
The sneaky bastard was just as melancholically smooth as ever, even as the doctor clarified where he had found the item. The implied accusation—no, they both knew it was the truth—didn’t do a damned thing to Seymour’s demeanor.
“Ah, so that’s where I left it? I can be a bit stupid sometimes.”
It was getting difficult for Jonathan to hold back what he really wanted to say. To do.
“Why does there need to be a reason? They were just there, it happened, that’s all.”
The sharp pinch lasted only a second as cool liquid ecstasy smoothed over what was undoubtedly a puncture clear through the muscle of Jonathan’s tongue. Warring instincts fought to shout, to run, to bite…
But the rush of red across his vision brought unbidden memories of a stabbing along on a different murky riverbank.
Fishburn showed no remorse, no reasoning. But was there ever truly a reason?
Jonathan kept talking, he had to. He pried for a modicum of justification. A gram of empathy, a second of forethought. But, it seemed, there was no reason. Just an urge, a whim, and a corpse for Fishburn’s pile.
“I take no pleasure from it. Just gives me peace. Stills the anger, for a time.”
-Sates the hunger. For a time-
But brings rapture
He shuddered, weak in the knees before the twisted mirror of his own desires. The longing for the violent erasure of a life, borne from nothing more than an instantaneous need. An uncontrollable urge. Until the spark is quelled, the ripples dissipate, and the surface grows still once more.
No, Jonathan couldn’t kill this man. Despite what every bone in his wretched corpse called to do, he wouldn’t. Not ever again.
This vow was not easy to keep, but kept it was, for a time. Jonathan Reid spared no second glances toward the vibrant gangsters and ruffians he met. He taught himself how to wield the shadows not to harm, as was their yearning, but to hide him away from those who hunted him like an animal. He restrained himself though blood-soaked streets and sewers which nearly drove him mad, leaving untouched the blood of man and cognisant skal alike.
He even let poor Sean Hampton take from his now-meager supply of blood. If the skal’s hunger was anything like his thirst, the satiation would be akin to a divine blessing.
It was exhausting. A weary weight bore down on him as though he hadn’t slept in days.
But when a fresh corpse—drained of all its wonderful ambrosia—was strewn before the Night Shelter while clutching his mother’s brooch, Jonathan Reid pressed on into the hostile night.
When his dear, dear Mary turned her own memorial cross against him, he drew the blood from his every vein to bring her down. The lives of dozens of London’s poor rodents was a pittance compared to the fresh human spirit driving his sister’s every cursed step.
Mary nearly attained the revenge she so deserved. Jonathan nearly died.
Vicar Larabee did. And that was why his sister had to as well.
He could have saved him. He couldn’t save his Mary, the first or second time. But the Vicar was right there and so alive. If Jonathan were just a bit stronger, he wouldn’t have been nursing his wounds when she leapt. If he’d just been faster, he could have pulled her off of him. If he’d just had more power, more blood…
His anger and grief spirited him away to the docks. A cacophony of the mind concealed any rational thought for or against the motion, but it would have been a lie to say he did not know who—what—he sought.
Jonathan Reid, monster that he has become, had now killed thrice beyond the war. The first two times, he knew not what he was doing. The third he knew all too well.
He had led Seymour Fishburn down the quay and into a shadowed alcove.
He felt no remorse.
His fifth kill was a mercy.
He’d tried all he could with Miss Billow. His medical training could do nothing, as any medication she took from him came right back up with the rats. Mesmerisation of his own did nothing but strain her mind. He could feel it, like the string of a violin tuned too taut and ready to snap.
She was in pain. She begged for relief. Waiting any longer would have been a cruelty. Jonathan was a doctor, he’d seen patients doomed to wait out their final days in suffering. They so often knew that was all they were doing, all they could do. He wouldn’t let that happen to Carina.
In the end, she didn’t sate him as well as Seymour had. Perhaps that was the manifestation of the guilt he did not feel.
His sixth kill was merely the result of a trap he’d strung himself into. The poor, poor Doctor.
By all appearances, things were going well. He had finally returned to the West End, as he should have so long ago. Endless nights were spent clearing the doctor’s childhood streets of their supernatural infection. Days, when the sun failed to drag him under quickly enough, spent mindlessly mixing medicines. Reid manor felt haunted; by the echoes of his sister and a ghost of his mother, even by the shell of his best friend. The sour judgement Avery held toward his neglectful master lay thick in the air. This must have been what it was to feel truly dead.
The fight with Miss Fletcher and subsequent escape from the guard were too much for him. Jonathan should have seen that. Perhaps he had, and that was why he retired that morning to the hospital rather than his bed at home. For distance.
He awoke to a world of black and white. The once-acrid smells of blood and pain that permeated the hallowed halls of a hospital were suffocating.
His shift that night was like a dream. He blinked from one patient to the next, unsure what was lost in-between. He had never had the time or carelessness to drink so much, but the nearest analogy he could muster was a fragmentary blackout.
One blink brought him out to the garden on his knees, pushing through unkempt greenery after a glimpse of movement, the hope of an unfortunate rodent.
Another, and he was clutching a beautiful ruby spiderweb, dancing with it in the shadows by the nurses’ lockers.
His instincts sang…
But he released Nurse Hawkins. He would not allow this nightmare to take of its own will. No, Jonathan Reid was still a doctor, still a man, still in control.
There was no way around it; he needed to feed. There was no leaving this hospital unsated, which left only one option: to make a terrible choice.
Among the hospital denizens, those that would be missed the most were off-limits. Mrs. Goswick needed to be there to care for her son; Mr. Hooks and Nurse Hawkins needed each other.
Chadana, however dubiously moral, fulfilled a unique and necessary role in the hospital. For all Ackroyd drove him mad, he was a good doctor…
Ah, so he was considering doctors.
Well then.
The din and stench of the hospital blurred to nothing as he burned from the inside out. His theory must have been correct; blood gains power from the understanding of its source.
For the first time since he had begged his sister to awaken, the vampire knelt beside his sacrifice and spoke gently to the silence.
“You are right, Doctor. Branagan would make a wonderful practitioner. Perhaps now she will be free to show her skills beyond malpractice, dear Corcoran.”
Carolyn Price. With his seventh kill, he had laid to rest one of the last dregs of his human life.
Jonathan knew he would not—could not—do anything but protect his patients. Even when starving and lost in the hospital, they hadn’t even been a consideration. Maybe it was territoriality, perhaps the linchpin of his remaining morals.
Thankfully, Carolyn hadn’t counted. Perhaps because of the horrible things she had been doing. Or maybe his old life was no longer his.
Regardless, it was not a difficult choice. One life lost for another freed. Mrs. Price was a monster—she trapped her daughter in and used her like a doll, a possession. Her shop had stunk of stale blood and deceit. This was simply another mercy.
His ninth kill was borne of righteous fury. Venus was a devil.
Jonathan really should have gone directly to the Pembroke after Old Bridget’s warning. It was good he hadn’t the energy.
Clarence looked such a pitiable thing, out on the corner in the winter chill, gesturing wildly to the empty night air. He was heard by nothing but the creatures he crusaded against. Clarence Crossley had never been so frail, so weak. Anxious, perhaps, but not the poor sickly specimen of today. Yes, it was a sad sight.
His old friend’s state of mind was something Jonathan had been keeping track of, but with so much on his plate he had done nothing for the matter. But right then, in the wake of Priwen’s apparent preparations to rain hellfire upon his hospital, nothing else seemed more important.
The brief talk with his old friend went about as well as it ever did in those days. The subject of their conversations had never strayed far from memories of smoke and trenches—a curse far too many men now carried. Jonathan did what he could to keep away from the topic of vampires, but his poor chum seemed desperate to have anyone entertain him on the matter. Should there not be someone else to hear these fears, to give dear Clarence some comfort? Why must he have been out all hours of the night so dreadfully alone?
So Jonathan Reid bid his fellow veteran goodnight and went to pay his wife a visit.
He hadn’t meant to loop around the back, had he? Maybe it was a habit now, after learning so many of London’s dirty secrets, to track a human before engaging. To lurk in the shadows, watching. Waiting. Following a shimmer of blood, an elevated heart rate. He’s learned to recognize signs of someone doing something they wished no one else to see. Jonathan had simply meant to check in on his best friend’s lovely wife, perhaps ask her favor in keeping him warm and well-fed. Alas.
‘Killing is a hell of a lot easier than healing’
He’d said that himself, hadn’t he? Ages ago, back in his past life. Perhaps that was what Venus thought too, as she dripped wretched poison into her husband’s tea. Perhaps Jonathan agreed. Sometimes, you cannot have one without the other.
So he killed.
He killed to heal, to fulfill his duty as a doctor and as a friend.
Yes, he had danced with Venus at her wedding. The wedding where she had vowed to love her husband ‘til death do they part. She had broken that vow just as she had broken her ‘beloved,’ so Jonathan had broken her in turn. And it was the most incredible he had felt since Mary.
Swansea would have wanted it this way. It was faster, more painless.
He liked it anyway, wanted it. Jonathan could tell.
Regardless of the decadent meal he had just indulged in, the ekon left the theater feeling hollow. So much had happened in just one night, and despite his proximity to the West End—to home, to rest—the night was still yet to be over. There was still, potentially, a hunter in his hospital. And now that Edgar was gone, his employment status was at risk of following.
Shadows swept him past empty houses and the screams of vampire and hunter alike. Oh how Jonathan Reid yearned for a leisurely stroll. It seemed the closest he could get nowadays was walking a circle about Whitechapel, empty and forgotten as it was. Even that was tainted by the echoing howls of skal and fanatical shouts of Father Whittaker. Jonathan wondered what skeletons might be hiding in that particular closet. He let his thoughts wander to what sweet sustenance he could draw from such a passionate man (harmless fantasies, of course) as he flew through cobbled streets.
The Pembroke, upon the doctor’s return, was astonishingly mundane. Some poor nurse had gotten around to cleaning up the paint and blood around Edgar’s door, and that was that; life moved on. Bull-headed patients and sanctimonious physicians went about their scripted movements with a dedication that could have rivaled Miss Fletcher’s. At once it was a comfort and so maddeningly trite.
Was this the life he would have been living, were he still living? So horrendously unaware of the disaster below his feet, within his city’s very veins? So painfully useless against it all?
It did not matter, for Jonathan Reid had died. As such, he knew the truth. He left the mortals to their ways and retreated to his office to finally decipher what had made Doris Fletcher tick.