Ah, Love, but a day,
And the world has changed!
The sun's away,
And the bird estranged;
The wind has dropped,
And the sky's deranged;
Summer has stopped.
Ah, Love, but a day,
And the world has changed!
Look in my eyes!
Wilt thou change too?
Should I fear surprise?
Shall I find aught new
In the old and dear,
In the good and true,
With the changing year?
Ah, Love, look in my eyes,
Wilt thou change too?
Robert Browning
As he pulls his hands apart, the small window he’s created expands with them
creating a shimmer edged sheet of visibility into the house. Now, finally, he
can see the man he has come to watch, sitting in his comfy chair by the fire,
sipping slowly from a glass of scotch as he flicks idly through a book.
The emotions as he studies him are complex, as they always are; hatred which treads the boundaries of love, disdain tinged with irrational jealousy. There’s no space for anything simple between them. There never was.
The tableau remains unchanging for so long that Ethan’s fingers twitch with a desire to do mischief. Is this what Rupert is reduced to? Quiet evenings with no more comfort than a dusty tome for the man who would gleefully take on a posse of the Queen’s finest and boast of his bruises when they tumbled, laughing, back into the bedsit at dawn. Time, that cruellest of mistresses, has wrought more damage than Ethan thought possible and part of him longs to throw pebbles just to see the ripples spread and collide, to see if anything of Ripper still lingers.
He’s tempted to knock and declare himself, but when Ethan tries to imagine the expression on Rupert’s face as he opens the door, all he can see is rage and disgust, and really he has had that expression levelled at him enough to no longer crave it. Instead he will keep his distance and content himself with taking a turn being the watcher.
Rupert’s glass is empty, and Ethan waits for him to call it a night; it is, after all, well past the witching hour, and time for all good little boys to be tucked up in bed. What he doesn’t expect is the pre-emptory command that snaps from Ripper’s lips, unmistakable despite this spell’s woeful lack of sound. And more, the man who shuffles into view - head bowed, eyes lowered - to replenish the drink.
After replacing the decanter on the cabinet, the man kneels at Ripper’s feet. He’s shirtless and barefoot, dressed only in soft cotton trousers more suited to a dojo than the graceful living of an Englishman’s parlour, and something unidentifiable uncoils in Ethan’s belly, teasing his mind with feelings long suppressed by the demands of chaos. In appearance the stranger - slight, lithe, and whip thin - is himself twenty years past, though Ethan was certain he’d never looked quite so… broken.
The picture returns to stillness, one man kneels, the other reads, and Ethan continues to watch, mesmerised by memories and current motives. Twenty minutes pass and Ethan’s hands are cramping by the time Ripper closes his book and deigns to notice the supplicant at his feet. He leans forward, places the tome carefully on a small table and helps himself to a handful of bi-coloured over long hair, forcing the man’s head up and back until they are eye to eye.
Ethan’s breath catches in his throat when the stranger’s face shimmers and the truth is revealed. No man, then, this creature, but a vampire, and Ripper’s playing a dangerous game. Even mages know enough to treat these half-breeds with a modicum of respect and Ethan has met enough of them; from the wild unruly beasts that ride the coat-tails of chaos, to the hollowed out shells he saw during his, thankfully foreshortened, sojourn with those not-so-nice army boys. What Ripper can be doing with one, and why it allows itself to be handled this way is the most delightful riddle Ethan has come across in years.
With a small amount of tweaking and an extra zing of power, the window zooms in and now he can see well enough to read Ripper’s lips.
“Strip.”
The order speaks directly to parts of Ethan beyond his conscious control and it is all he can do not to loosen his own clothing in response. It seems to have a similar effect on the vampire, which shudders and closes its eyes before doing as it is bid.
Ethan gasps as slim pale buttocks come into view, not for the sight alone, though that is pretty enough, but for the mark inscribed upon them. Placed there for his eyes only, the twisted symbol of chaos written in magic so ancient it brings the frigid breath of eternal night closer on his heels.
This is the one then, the ‘Champion’ he was set to destroy, hiding, as he was told, behind a Watcher’s skirts. Hardly the slip of a girl Ethan expected when the infernal preacher offered him this contract with the devil. And why a vampire should require further corruption is beyond him. It seems almost a pity to destroy what little sense remains in those shadowed eyes, but this was the purchase price of freedom and Ethan knows the cost of disobedience. He shudders, pushing more recent memories from his mind, of white white walls and the all-American nightmare. He will not go back.
More for distraction than from any dire need, Ethan weaves his power around the pair and taps into the energy they create, pulling it from the air and using it to recharge his slowly depleting reserves. The vampire is in Ripper’s lap now, sun-bronzed hands stark against light-starved skin. It is a place Ethan knows better than his own soul and their movements leave nothing to the imagination. Not that Ethan needs to imagine; his body remembers even what his mind wishes to deny. The lack of Ripper is a continuous unanswered throb that permeates his existence as surely as magic, pursuing his dreams and tearing him into grasping wakefulness. The taste of them hangs heavy around him. Ripper’s searing flavours held fast, as always, by an iron will. The vampire strangely muted, though distinct in its coppery overtones, and through them both anger, denial and deep, bone weary sadness.
The vampire has a soul.
Ethan flinches back at the discovery before returning to study his prey afresh. Is this the much vaunted Angelus? Unlikely, he fits neither physical nor metaphysical description. A new one then, and this explains why Ripper plays the game he does.
“What a treat for you, old boy, in more ways than one,” he muses aloud, too entranced by the vampire’s elegant rising trot to watch his tongue. A mistake, in retrospect, as vigilant golden eyes turn immediately towards him. He freezes; skin crawling with the unfamiliar sense of being hunted, hawk turned mouse.
Ironically it is Ripper who saves him. A sharp tug on the vampire’s cock and it arches in pleasure/pain, its hands clawing at Ripper’s shoulders. Ethan shivers in empathy as a jolt of arousal sings through his body and a primal part of him wails, desperate to be the one just once more. He can see Ripper’s eyes now, depthless restless seas, and they draw him in, stealing his sense of self until he believes himself transported there in the vampire’s place, feeling Ripper inside him, tearing him apart with punishing thrusts. His breath rattles in the air, creating a fog of need that clouds his vision and when the vampire comes, writhing and twisting to escape that deceptively cruel touch, Ethan follows, pushed into the precipice by the glint of satisfaction in Ripper’s eyes.
He staggers, stunned, colliding with the tree behind him, and only just remembers to withdraw the spell. The power washes in, glutted on sex, and all he can do is sway under the hurricane of lust drenched magic that goes nowhere towards filling the aching void inside him. In this he is a vampire himself, leeching energy from the world to feed his insatiable hunger; it sustains him as simple food no longer can, and on his darkest days Ethan ponders what that means for his humanity.
It takes time to absorb so much, but eventually he manages to swallow the indigestible lump and settles it comfortably in his belly where it can be vomited up on demand to fuel the spells he must now cast. Turning back to the house, he reopens the window and sees immediately that the room is empty, the yellow tinged lights dimmed and the fire is burning low in the grate behind its protective screen. He has been gone longer than he thought.
“Enjoy the show, mate?”
The question is followed by a cigarette butt that bounces off Ethan’s shoe and he spins around. There, behind him, stands the vampire, dark eyes deadly in the streetlights.
“Bugger.”
Caught in the act. Again.
The vampire’s human face cracks into a lopsided smirk, yet its eyes drop shyly. “Yeah. Reckon that about sums it up.”
Ethan almost feels sorry for it. In another time and place he would have taken time to appreciate that particularly British sense of humour, would probably have gone out of his way to court it and its owner; he wasn’t beyond taking what he wanted from the undead, particularly ones as attractive as this.
“So what’s a chaos mage doing hanging around Rupert’s humble abode, then? Thinking of jumping tracks and joining the righteous?”
“What an enchanting idea,” Ethan replies, his fingers scribing sigils in the air behind his back. “If they are all as sweet as you, my dear, I really should sign up toute suite.”
The coy boyish smile vanishes, replaced by a demon’s glare. And a demon’s cutting tongue. “Well, aren’t you one of the stately homos of England. Doing the tour are we? Next stop Sir Ian’s place I’d wager.”
“Hardly,” Ethan is barely in control of his words now, too deeply immersed in the spell to risk splitting his concentration, “it’s more a case of quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Or in this case watching the Watcher.”
The vampire is upon him before he has chance to draw breath, pinning him against the tree, fangs at his throat and Ethan would swear if he had air in his lungs. He’s failed; so close, so very nearly free, only to end like this, an ignominious death on the teeth of a souled vampire.
The irony is enough to rip a strangled giggle from his chest and then, just as suddenly, he is free, and the vampire is on the ground, holding its head and spilling the very same curses that stuck in Ethan’s craw a moment before. Warm relief flushes through Ethan’s body from head to toe and he gasps for air, his legs the consistency of blancmange, but he hasn’t survived this long without the ability to recover quickly. Magic still hangs heavy around him and a single word completes the spell, “Splinter!”
Blue eyes meet his own as the spell hits and he sees it take effect, watches the hard won assimilation of soul and demon fracture into jagged shards of confusion and self-hatred, those base remnants of humanity immediately besieged by demonic lust and castrated power. The creature disintegrates, curls into itself and wails in the heartrending voice of a broken child. And for a second Ethan almost feels pity for the damaged creature. The vampire had come as close as he was to freedom, and Ethan knows well how bending to the yoke chafes even for the insane.
Turning away with a shudder, he sends out the call to let his employer know the task is done and steps back as its minions flock around the struggling carcass, crow-like in their wide winged robes. Sightless they swarm with the coordination of ants, eerily silent while the vampire sobs and declares himself ‘a bad, bad man’. They do not speak, cannot, Ethan suspects. Not that he desires conversation with them; the simple fact of their existence is an anathema to him as there is no chaos in oblivion.
“What the bloody hell is happening?” Ripper’s voice bellows from the house and the door explodes outwards as he barges through it bent on a rescue.
Ethan interposes himself, taking on the unlikely mantle of peacemaker and turning stolen energies around on their owner. They freeze Ripper in place long enough for scurrying feet to depart and for Ethan to mark words of forgetfulness on his quondam lover’s brow.
It is an easy task to send him stumbling back towards the house, head shaking like an angry bear bothered by stinging thoughts. It is harder for Ethan to speak the final word of the spell that will rip away all but the basic memories of the vampire. His conscience pricks him. It feels like rape and Ethan knows he will never forget the accusation in Rupert’s eyes.
He speaks and feels the power rush from him, more and more again. A floodtide he cannot stop, tearing at his thoughts and memories, sending them tumbling one over the next until mind and matter converge and there is no place to hide. Reality screams to a sudden, deadly halt and for a single, crucial, second, Ethan no longer exists.
A shift. Subtle but necessary then with a sigh Ethan drops his hands to his sides and is, quite suddenly, no longer a mage filled with the power of chaotic magic, but rather a simple man who’s shoulders bow under the weight of all he has seen and experienced.
He turns, blinking, and without a backward glance, walks away a free man.
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