Fallen

Um, yeah. Some of you are probably wondering where the heck I’ve been. And I don’t have a really good answer to that, other than the somewhat lame excuse that I’ve been dealing with “stuff.” I can’t even promise that posting this story signals my full return to AFF. But I wrote it, and I like it, and I thought I’d share it.

Kale and Nicholas are two characters from my “Sugar Hearts” trilogy. But I don’t think you need to have read those stories to enjoy this one.

Generally, I hate warnings, because they’re such spoilers. But occasionally the situation demands it, and this is one of those times. There is very violent sex at the end of this story. It’s consensual, but still, if that’s not your sort of thing, I understand.

As always, any feedback is welcome!


Fallen

“Time Here
All But Means Nothing
Just Shadows That Move Across The Wall
They Keep Me Company
But They Don’t Ask Of Me
They Don’t Say Nothing At All”

-- Sarah McLachlan


The city has changed so much.

Nicholas remembers when he used to miss daylight. Now, he wonders if daylight could possibly be as bright as the video screens that flare and dance all around him. Even though it’s past midnight, darkness never seems to reach the Pleasure District. People hurry along its sidewalks, lit by the shifting kaleidoscope of colors cast from the signs that flash their endless enticements: eat this, drink that, come here, go there. This is the golden era, the perfect time. Science has cured all forms of suffering. Happiness belongs to anyone with enough credit to pay for it. As Nicholas weaves his way through the crowd, casting no reflection against any of the shiny surfaces he passes, he feels like the last shadow left in the world.

Distracted by his thoughts, Nicholas fails to notice the girl crossing his path until it’s too late. Even when they collide, all he sees are her shapely legs, covered in heart-patterned stockings. And inevitably, he thinks of Pepper. But when his gaze travels upward, all resemblance vanishes. Instead of red, this girl’s hair is black, and two immense butterfly wings have been surgically attached to her back. Nicholas wonders if the wings are delicate, like a real butterfly’s, or if they’re fashioned out of some impossibly strong synthetic material. After all, this is the age of illusion, when butterfly wings can be stronger than steel, when mechanical things can masquerade as flesh, and anyone willing to pay for it can look like a fairy.

Seeming to become aware of Nicholas’s attention, the girl giggles and drops her purse in his path. Nicholas can offer her no words as he bends over to pick it up. However, the look in her eyes tells him that no words are necessary. She thinks she knows what he wants. And, even though she’s wrong, Nicholas is still tempted. But tonight he has a job to do. Giving her an apologetic smile, he continues on his way.

Finally, he finds the address he’s been searching for. Breaking away from the crowd, Nicholas turns into a narrow alley, and for a moment, it’s like he’s gone back in time. There are no video screens here, no shops selling hardware that blurs the line between man and machine, no people chattering in slang he can barely understand. This is Chicago as he remembers it. The way it had been over a century ago, when he was young, and naive, and still human. Hesitantly, Nicholas allows himself to savor the false familiarity. He doesn’t want to become like Kale, locked away from the city, unable to deal with what it’s become. But he can’t deny the brief comfort of pretending that he’s found a spot that the years have shunned, leaving it as unchanged as they’ve left his own body.

Even when Nicholas walks further down the alley, and reaches the door he was told to stop at, he can’t spot any high tech surveillance equipment. Only a doorbell and speaker grate. Shrugging to himself, he rings the bell, then waits for a response. Only a few seconds pass before a man’s voice crackles through the speaker. “Yes?”

Again, Nicholas can give no reply. So he continues to wait.

“Who is this?” the voice demands. “What do you want?”

Picking at a piece of loose paint on the doorframe, Nicholas wonders how long this is going to take. Every now and then, he’s tempted by the ease of getting a voice synthesizer implanted in his throat. But he believes in atonement. He was the one who decided to make a deal with demons, and if the price of breaking that deal was the loss of his ability to speak, then it’s a burden he’s resolved to carry without complaint.

In any case, he’s grown accustomed to the silence. He feels safe inside it, like a flightless chick buried deep in a nest of feathers. As the countless years have passed, as he’s watched his daughter grow up and go to her destiny, as he’s watched the people he loves age and die, as he’s watched his world transform into something nearly unrecognizable -- the silence has carried him through all that. He’s never needed to find words capable of describing his joy and his grief, his amazement and his despair. And somehow, by not describing them, he’s kept those emotions subdued enough to prevent them from inflicting the madness they’ve inflicted on so many of his kind. If he were suddenly able to speak again, Nicholas has no idea what might burst out. Something terrifyingly beautiful or dazzlingly grotesque? He doesn’t know. And it scares him a little. So he chooses silence.

At last, another voice speaks, this one distinctly female. “You must be Kale’s runner. He told us that you’d be mute. Log in.”

Nicholas hears the door unlock and pushes it open. Inside the entrance hall, all resemblances to times past are instantly dispelled by a structure that resembles the frame of a shower stall, if shower stalls were made from gleaming chrome and lined by tiny flashing lights. Nicholas recognizes a fancy scanner system when he sees it. Without waiting to be instructed, he steps into it.

Immediately, the scanner begins to hum, and Nicholas feels the various waves of energy pass through his body -- checking him for any weapons he might be carrying, or any weapons he might have implanted in his body, or any other modifications that might cause trouble. Nicholas doesn’t blink. He knows they won’t find anything. There are no tests to detect his condition, and even if there were, no one would think to run them. In this age of science, children scoff at the idea of monsters hiding under their beds. Sometimes, even Nicholas finds it hard to believe in what he is.

After the tests finish, Nicholas steps out of the scanner and walks down the hall until he arrives at another door, which quickly slides open. Beyond it, a group of three people are waiting for him. Judging the two men to be no more than hired muscle, Nicholas focuses his attention on the woman sitting behind a desk at the room’s center. Her fingers dance across a pad on her desk, their movements detected by some invisible sensory system, and she wears a pair of dark glasses with a cord dangling from their frame, connecting them to the terminal beneath her desk. Although Nicholas can see nothing, he knows that bits of data are flashing past her eyes on the other side of those smoky lenses. He thinks of Sylvia then, and wonders how surprised she’d be to see the woman’s eyewear, so like the dark glasses she used to hide behind, except instead of blocking out the world, these reveal all its knowledge to anyone with a link and a password.

“Well,” the woman greets, without glancing at him. “I’m glad that Kale finally debugged his brain and decided to get compatible. It’s smiley that he’s held onto his domain for so long. But you can’t be running current programs on last week’s hardware. He’s obsolete.”

Nicholas nods, although he’s barely understood a word of what she just said. But Kale already told him what she wants. She thinks he’s here to negotiate, to surrender a portion of Kale’s territory in order to end the violent conflict that’s raged between the two rival crime bosses for the last six months. Somehow, Nicholas manages to keep from smirking. All that technology, all that information streaming past her eyes, and she still doesn’t know what a simple face-to-face meeting with Kale would have told her in an instant. Kale doesn’t negotiate. Kale doesn’t surrender.

Perhaps goaded by his silence, the woman finally pushes down her dark glasses and looks directly at him. “Nicholas Foster. You’re quite the unsearchable. Not a registry number, not a bioprint, not even a homepage. It’s like you never existed at all.”

But I did, Nicholas thinks to himself. Once. If she went back far enough, she could find all the records -- the vaccinations he got as a child, the grades he earned in school, the auditions he attended during the two years he spent studying voice at the Chicago Institute for the Performing Arts. She might even discover his picture and marvel at how closely that Nicholas Foster resembled the one who now stood before her, a young man with unruly brown curls and eyes the color of milk chocolate. But of course, they couldn’t be the same. That Nicholas Foster must have lived his life and died long ago.

Not guessing his thoughts, the woman continues. “I could use a ghost in the machine. If you ever get tired of running for Kale, I’d be happy to upload you.”

Nicholas’s throat tightens when he thinks about leaving Kale, the reaction of an animal that’s grown so accustomed to its cage for that it no longer trusts freedom. He knows that Kale has a long list of reasons to hate him. And he, in his turn, has his own list for Kale. Still, the years have bound them together, until each would die to protect the other. Nicholas feels his senses sharpen, preparing for attack. But even as his hands curl into fists, a voice inside him whispers: not yet, not quite yet.

“Anyway, let’s get this program started up. I’ll put everything on a grid for you. I want the section of Kale’s domain that begins with the old monorail station and goes to--”

With inhuman speed, Nicholas moves, grabbing the first of her two bodyguards and smashing his head down against the corner of her desk with such force that the man’s skull makes a crunching noise. As the man slumps to the floor, Nicholas spins around to face his second opponent. The other bodyguard already has his gun out, and without hesitation, he fires six rounds directly into Nicholas’s chest. The force of their impact knocks Nicholas back against the wall. But moments after the bullets pierce his flesh, his body is already healing itself, reducing his pain to a manageable level. By the time he regains his balance, he doesn’t feel anything at all. Swiftly, Nicholas snatches the gun from his stunned opponent and strikes him on the head with it, hard enough that blood bursts into the air like the petals of an exploding rose. Then Nicholas turns toward the woman.

She’s gaping at him in terrified amazement. “It’s not possible. We scanned you for body modifications. We scanned you for implants that might increase your strength or speed.”

Since she’s about to die, Nicholas decides to grant her the satisfaction of an answer -- at least, the only answer he’s capable of giving. Drawing his lips back from his mouth, he reveals a pair of glistening white fangs.

“No...there’s no data...no scientific proof. There’s no such thing as...”

Oh yes, there is. Nicholas circles around the desk and crouches beside her. He can smell her fear. He can hear the blood thundering in her veins, waking his hunger from its shallow sleep. Both excited and exhausted by the murder of her two bodyguards, Nicholas yearns to sink his fangs into her flesh, to draw nourishment from her warm body. But instead, he reaches up and closes his hand around the tin Medal of Saint Michael that hangs from a leather cord circling his throat. The only holy symbol he can touch without pain. Pepper’s gift to him. Her promise that he wasn’t instantly damned by the sacrifice he made when he became a monster in order to save their daughter.

The one time he gave into frenzy and drank from an unwilling victim, the medal had burned so hot it left a scar.

“Please...” the woman begs. “Whatever Kale is paying you, I can pay you more. I can give you whatever you want.”

Sadly, Nicholas shakes his head. No. You can’t. I wish that you could, but you can’t. With a gentleness that surprises even him, he cups her face in his hands. This is Kale’s answer to your proposal. This is the only answer he’ll ever give. Softly, Nicholas brushes his lips against hers. Watches her eyes widen in surprise. Allows her a single fleeting instant of hope. Then, resolutely, he twists his hands, breaking her neck.

As he feels her body go limp, Nicholas bows his head. Go to your rest. And if you can spare some small mercy, leave a beacon behind to light my way, in case the day ever comes when I can follow you. The prayer has become a ritual with him and he mouths it without much hope. But he’s killed so many people -- if even a fraction of them grant him this favor, he’ll have a blazing trail leading him into heaven.

Or into hell.

Done with his funeral rites, Nicholas removes the woman’s dark glasses, unplugs the cord which had connected them to the terminal beneath her desk, and tucks them into his pocket. Then he gets to his feet and leaves that place.

When he reaches the mouth of the alley, Nicholas lingers in its shadows. He should return to Kale. Let him know that the deed is done. But instead of moving, Nicholas stares longingly up at the night sky, its stars obscured by the glaring city lights. I wasn’t always like this. There was a time when the thought of hurting someone, much less killing them, would have made me throw up. Even after I became a monster, I was gentle. Why did I let Kale do this to me? Why do I let him keep doing it?

At first, he’d served Kale for the sake of Pepper. After she was gone, he’d served Kale for the sake of their daughter. Then, finally, he’d served Kale for the sake of Sylvia. By the time Sylvia died, it was too late. At the end of so many years, there was nowhere else left to go, nothing else left to do.

In his heart, Nicholas knows that what he has with Kale isn’t healthy. But Kale gives Nicholas a sense of purpose. Kale remembers the same people Nicholas remembers, even loves some of them the same way Nicholas loves them. Kale is his tether, the cord that keeps him from floating off into darkness, the string that leads him out of the labyrinth. To cut himself loose from Kale is to risk becoming irrevocably lost. So, tearing his gaze away from the night sky, Nicholas steps back onto the crowded sidewalk.

The journey home does little to stir Nicholas’s senses. He moves along the familiar path like a man in trance. Only when he comes within sight of Kale’s mansion, its towering spires defiantly archaic amidst the city’s blocky skyscrapers, does he start to become aware of his surroundings. By the time he reaches its door, the numbness has nearly passed.

Entering, Nicholas is greeted by Kale’s new healer, a pale young man known only as Snow White, or just Snow for short. As far as Nicholas can tell, Snow seems decent enough. But it’s clear that he’s in it for the money. There’s no trace of the fierce, unspoken loyalty that drove the woman he replaced. Nicholas misses Sylvia. He misses her intelligence, her abrasive comments, and the days he slept beside her, safe in the darkness of a windowless room. After she died -- for a long time after she died, he thought he’d never sleep again.

“He’s in his office,” Snow informs, as if there was some other place Kale might conceivably be. Nodding, Nicholas strides down the hallway.

Kale doesn’t look up when Nicholas enters his office. So Nicholas lingers just inside the doorway, studying his employer. Unlike Nicholas, Kale is not immortal. The demon taint in his blood has slowed his aging, but not stopped it, and strands of grey threaten to obscure his hair’s natural color, like ash slowly settling over a dying fire. Nicholas tries not to think about what will happen when time eventually claims Kale, leaving him completely alone. Maybe the madness will come then. Or maybe he’ll finally be free.

With Kale’s attention still focused on a pile of papers, Nicholas walks closer to the desk. There are no computers, no weblinks, no high tech gadgets of any kind. Just a framed photograph of a young man with sharp features and a wicked smile. Marzipan Penicandey -- Pepper’s brother, Kale’s lover. Also the main reason why Kale hates Nicholas. Because when Marzi was sick, Nicholas refused to save Marzi’s life by turning him. Nicholas represses a sigh. He loved Pepper. And after she was gone, he loved Sylvia. But of them all, he misses Marzi the most.

Reaching into his pocket, Nicholas draws out the dark glasses he took from Kale’s rival, and tosses them down on the desk. Finally, Kale looks up. He doesn’t request any details about the mission or ask if Nicholas succeeded. He doesn’t care about the details. And he knows Nicholas succeeded. Instead, he rises from his chair, inquiring “Did you kiss her?”

Nicholas nods.

“Then let me taste it. Let me savor her despair.”

Obediently, Nicholas submits as Kale yanks him close, claiming his mouth with a fierce kiss. And he wonders if Kale can really taste something as intangible as defeat. Perhaps. Or perhaps this is simply a convenient excuse for both of them. A way to slip past all the things they should have said years ago, all the things it’s far too late to say now. A way to find some brief respite from the loneliness they’ve learned to live inside.

Almost against his will, Nicholas raises his hands, grabbing Kale’s arms and clutching them so tightly that his fingers ache. Forcing their two bodies to remain pressed together even when Kale finishes with the kiss. So near to Kale, restraint dissolves. Sanity flies away on fragile wings and Nicholas becomes a creature of lust and hunger, craving touch, craving the taste of the blood that first turned him over a century ago. More, he demands silently, meeting Kale’s stare. More. All of it. Right now.

Kale’s green eyes burn with their own desire. Again, he kisses Nicholas, and this time Nicholas’s mouth pushes back, driving his tongue between Kale’s lips. There is no gentleness in the gesture. Gentleness will come later, after they’ve fought their way through this battlefield of anger, need, and fear. Right now, Nicholas wants the violence. Like the silence, the pain is his penance, and through it he yearns to find some brief moment of forgiveness. As Kale shoves his fingers deep into Nicholas’s unruly curls, twisting and pulling until the stands threaten to be torn from their roots, Nicholas’s mute moans only urge him on.

Then, Kale breaks the kiss, and throws Nicholas down on top of his desk, scattering papers like frightened birds. The impact nearly knocks Nicholas senseless. For a moment, the room spins around him, and the blood seems to falter in his veins. Not even his blood -- stolen blood, just like his stolen passion and stolen life. Dizzily, Nicholas tries to raise himself up on his elbows. But Kale has already climbed up onto the desk, and he quickly straddles Nicholas, pinning him in place. Triumphant as a predator about to devour its prey, he unfastens the buckle of Nicholas’s belt.

Nicholas spreads his arms, grabbing the edges of the desk in an effort to brace himself. He knows there will be no lube, no attempt to prepare him. Nothing can prepare him for this. Roughly, Kale yanks Nicholas’s pants down over his hips, before unzipping his own. That’s as undressed as they ever get. To be any more naked is to display a vulnerability neither of them is ready to reveal. Once, after coming inside from a particularly cold winter day, Kale didn’t even let Nicholas take off his coat and boots. He just fucked him, while Nicholas sweated, and groaned, and kicked bits of dirty slush onto all of Kale’s important documents.

Having dealt with his zipper, Kale pulls out his cock, already impressively erect. As always, Nicholas is transfixed by the series of thorn-like protrusions that run along its length, the only physical trace of Kale’s demon taint. But even its fearsome appearance doesn’t make Nicholas flinch. He stopped flinching a long time ago. Instead, he tightens grip on the edges of the desk, and spreads his legs as best he can with his pants only halfway off.

Despite Nicholas’s obvious willingness, Kale hesitates, as if in need of some additional emotion. The lust is there. Nicholas can see it in Kale’s tight, rapid breathing. But lust isn’t enough. Not to justify what he’s about to do -- to justify this brutality disguised as an act of passion, this act of passion disguised as brutality. So Kale’s eyes slide over Nicholas, over the desk, until Nicholas sees them find what Kale’s been searching for as they lock onto the overturned picture of Marzi. Anger. Reproach. Hatred. When desire can’t be spoken, those serve as adequate enough sparks.

“You let him die,” Kale hisses. “You could have saved him. But you let him die.”

I let him choose. The argument is so familiar, so often given, that Nicholas doesn’t even bother to mouth the words. But he hears them inside his head anyway. He didn’t want to live if it meant never feeling the sun, never eating a bowl of strawberry ice cream, never seeing anything but emptiness when looked in a mirror. And I don’t blame him. God, I don’t blame him.

Nicholas suspects that Kale does blame Marzi. But it’s not fair to blame the dead for dying, so anger gets turned on those left behind, those still available to play the role of whipping boy. Seizing Nicholas’s thighs, Kale drives his cock into him, and Nicholas arches his neck, screaming. Somehow, even though the scream is silent, Nicholas can swear that he hears it ringing in his ears.

Again and again, Kale shoves himself into Nicholas’s ass with ruthless abandon. And, just like when it was struck by the bullets, Nicholas’s body heals itself after every assault. But that only makes the pain worse, each thrust ripping open virgin flesh. Sweat trickles into Nicholas’s eyes faster than the tears can run out of them, until he feels like he’s drowning. Yet, after the initial scream, he doesn’t complain. He simply grits his teeth and takes it. At least he can still feel the pain. At least he can still feel something.

Weakly, Nicholas’s eyes slip shut. But even then he finds no relief. Darkness has abandoned him, leaving only swirling red whirlpools dancing behind his closed lids, taunting him with their pulsing heat. The pain is driving him toward frenzy. The hunger that he felt after murdering the bodyguards returns, filling his veins with fire. Filling his mind with need. Nicholas’s mouth stretches open, and his fangs stab through his gums, sucking urgently, even though all he can draw into them is air.

Then, in the depths of his agony, in the depths of his craving, Nicholas feels a hand on the back of his head. Hears a voice speaking to him tenderly. “Shh. Shh, my dearest one. Let go.”

It takes tremendous effort. However, one by one, Nicholas manages to uncurl his fingers from the edge of the desk. As the last one releases its grip, Kale lifts him, pressing Nicholas’s mouth to his bare throat. No words are spoken. But Nicholas understands. Desperately grateful, he sinks his fangs into Kale’s flesh, and drinks.

Kale is still pushing into him, but slower now, and accompanied by soft murmurs, like a mother cooing to her babe. As Nicholas draws blood from Kale’s veins, he also draws all the sensations Kale is feeling. Kale’s pleasure overwhelms any lingering discomfort, washing over him in warm waves, coaxing Nicholas to his own arousal. And now, finally, there is gentleness, compassion, perhaps even affection. All the things that Nicholas needs more than the blood, all the things that feed him more than it ever could. All the things that keep him going for just one more day. If he had to endure hell to get to this moment, Nicholas doesn’t care. He just clings to it.

Locked in Kale’s arms, trading blood for blood, Nicholas thinks about Pepper, who loved him when he was a man. He thinks about Sylvia, who loved him when he was a monster. And he thinks about this strange, twisting thing he has with Kale. Like the embrace, it won’t last forever. But like the embrace, it’s good enough for now. It’s a refuge from the world that has become a foreign country, the people who have become aliens. It’s a place where he still belongs. A place where two creatures born of magic can still exist.

The city has changed so much.

But love hasn’t.