Lord, Help Us All [Langdell]

[Jesse Fforde]

It was a couple of hours before dawn, and Jesse Fforde was locking up shop. All the other employees had gone home, and although Jesse could lock up from the inside and use his tome to get back to Third Circle, tonight he opted to walk. Every now and again, Jesse got caught far too caught up in himself to remember who he was and where he had come from. Every now and again he forced himself to take a walk in order to gain perspective.

So much had happened in the past six months, and Jesse had been so sure that things would change. His attitude would change, and the family would change with him. They would be buoyed by his good mood and his good humour, and they would not be pushed away. Yes, he knew that he had done a lot to push people away when he was struggling with his will to live. Now, his frustrations weren’t due to any curse. They were due only to the truth. What was the truth? It didn’t matter whether he was in a good mood or not. Somehow, he had attracted into this family of his a motley crew of volatile loners. Not a family at all, not by any stretch of the imagination.

It should have given him enough cause to throw in the towel. To give up entirely. To stop trying. And yet ‘quit’ did not seem to exist in his vocabulary. Sure, he could say it often enough, but his actions said otherwise.

The bonfire hadn’t been all that bad, in the end. Hardly anyone was there, but that didn’t matter. It was mostly awkward, but that didn’t matter either. They were there, and that was enough. Jesse checked his phone before he shoved it into his pocket, out of sight and out of mind. The weather was warmer, now, and the air was fresh. A walk would do him good. He headed toward the Eastern edge of the city, and the road that would take him toward the lair; he would travel along the border of Swansdale and Redwood, and through River Rock. Mostly reputable districts. He would leave the slums behind him. From another pocket he pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter; he lit up, took a puff. The smoke created a halo around his head. He was alert, even if his gait was meandering.

He had decided, on a whim, that he would eat before he went home.

[Langdell (DELETED 8312)]

Since the moment he hitched a ride in the back of a truck headed due east, Langdell Byler knew he hated the smell of motor oil.

Overwhelming, even in the smallest of amounts, the smell of it stuck to his clothes and layered against his skin, despite only sitting by it, never actually coming into contact with the oil. The truck bed was stained by it, however. There was a red gas can in the corner opposite him. Two mutt dogs lounged across the metal bed, one small pug-like dog lounging across Langdell's legs and the other larger black mutt standing on its hind legs to peer over the truck side as they drove along.

The farmer driving the truck let Langdell off once they reached a city bus station. It was dark by then, and he was tired, and hungry, and thirsty. The old man, white bearded and dressed in thick denim overalls, loaned him some change for a hot meal.

"You get on home now, alright?" He said.

"Don't worry, I am, Sir, no doubt."

Langdell smiled. The man smiled back. Then, he was gone.

Langdell knew the man was sympathetic to his situation, a young Amish boy — no, a man, — alone and lost in the big city, nothing to his name but the clothes on his back, simple dark pants and shirt and boots and round-billed hat hiding his short hair. He still was clean-shaved and relatively clean, thanks to further generosity, this time from a Mennonite family two towns back off the highway. (They found him walking alone off the highway in a rain storm, thoroughly soaked head to toe from a mid-May shower. He stayed long enough for a meal, to dry his clothes, and off he was again, to a new city, somewhere he could blend in. [But who he was kidding — Amish men didn't blend among the unconverted. He was out of luck.])

He passed the bus station and headed down the road in search of a cafe, or even fast food would do him in. He had enough cash for a motel room for at least a week, maybe less depending on the price and how much he'd waste on food.

After several blocks of travel, Langdell settled on a bench facing the road. His feet were blistered. His back hurt. He rested his elbows on his knees and put his face in his hands.

What are you going to do now? He thought. You can't survive here. You have no skills, no ID. You're worse than homeless. You're useless.

He needed help. He needed a miracle.

But God wasn't in the miracle business anymore.

Especially not for a killer.

[Jesse Fforde]

The bus was not a mode of transport that Jesse chose to take. Not because he thought himself above it – the train had most often been his go-to. But because he had a tome, now. He had fadeportals. He had a motorbike which he took out for a spin every now and again. And yet, on this meandering walk home, he had to pass the bus stop. Within its flimsy three walls there sat a young man who looked like Jesse felt. There was despair in his stature. Of course, the man could have been drunk, or nursing the beginnings of a hangover. He could have been tired, sleepless, lost. Homeless, even, and with a lack of anywhere to go for the next few hours, until the next charitable café started serving breakfast for the needy. By that time, Jesse would be safely locked away beneath the ground with his Clover – regardless of the fact that she was part of the reason he felt so ******* lost.

Jesse didn’t disturb the man, at first. There was something poetic in the assumed despair that begged not to be touched, or marred. He could have been an apparition, a figment of Jesse’s burdened imagination. Except that the scent of the smoke streaming from Jesse’s nostrils was interrupted by the scent of a warm-blooded human. There was something in the non-encounter that tugged at Jesse, that lured him back.

The vampire could do the human a favour. If he was in despair, Jesse could end it. It wouldn’t be miraculous, by any stretch of the imagination. It would be evil masquerading as mercy. When in the end, the vampire wanted only to satisfy its thirst, and Jesse wanted a balm for his woes. Maybe if he consumed someone else’s despair, it would distract him from his own.

He stopped and turned. He headed back toward the bus stop. He paused just before it, dropping the cigarette to the pavement and extinguishing it beneath the heel of his boot. He then took a seat beside the traveler, one arm resting loosely over the back of the chair, his legs sprawled out in front of him.

At this time of night – or morning – there would be no buses. Or, if they were, they came hourly rather than every ten minutes. Jesse couldn’t risk being seen – which was why he started to gather the shadows. It was slow, this act of magic. The lights weren’t extinguished suddenly. The atmosphere would slowly grow dimmer, less vibrant. The shadows were not cloying, not to begin with. To anyone sitting within them, they would be like the frogs in the boiling water. They wouldn’t know they were drowning in the darkness until it was too late. Unless they were perceptive.

Jesse didn’t say anything. He wasn’t like Clover. He didn’t play with his prey before he ate them. He would wait until the shadows were thick enough. Then, and only then, would he dive for the jugular.

Jesse has Unnatural Aura: Everywhere you go, humans are immediately put at unease by your presence. Something about you is unnerving, terrifying, or downright creepy. This makes normal interactions with humans very difficult, and stealth is nearly impossible. If you started on the Killer path, your predatory aura also makes humans instinctively repulsed by you, on some subconscious level.

[Langdell (DELETED 8312)]

His mama always said the Devil wasn't an ugly red man with horns and a tail. She said the Devil was temptation — he was lust, and greed, and gluttony, sins of the modern generation, of the outer world, the same world he sat in now, alone and lost amongst the pleasant sinners.

That's what she called them, at least: "Pleasant."

"They're pleasant sinners because they don't know their pleasantries are sins," she'd say.

He sat with her on the front porch of their small family home, a young eight-year-old boy watching his mother sew his father a new coat for winter. They lived in an Amish community, compact, with its own school and a town barn for gatherings. Church services were often held at the homes themselves, with each family taking turns on hosting each Sunday. He had never left the community grounds, but his father promised when Langdell finished the eighth grade — his last year of school, unlike public schooling — he could attend with him into town for any supplies they couldn't make from home.

"Is there anything that's not a sin, Mama?" He asked with a whine.

"Don't you talk like that. Don't you talk like that at all," she said.

He was reprimanded with a night-long session of scripture readings in his bedroom.

We're all sinners, he finally realized. But some don't realize they're sinning.

***

Langdell wanted to go home. He wanted to embrace his mother. He wanted to kiss his sister's face and apologize for all he'd done wrong. He wanted to sit by his father at the dinner table and tell him he was sorry, so sorry, for hurting him.

But life didn't work that way.

He needed time to think, to come to terms with what had happened and figure out a plan on where to go from there. His hands dropped. He turned and looked at the man sitting beside him; instantly, Langdell was uncomfortable. He shifted closer to the opposite edge of the bench. He debated walking away. Maybe there was a shelter nearby — a church, if possible. He wanted the comfort of the Bible. He needed kind words, kind hearts, and the sympathy of a pastor or priest.

That was his plan until the shadows set in.

He didn't notice at first. He was a thinker, distantly staring before, finally, he felt a difference, a change. His eyes adjusted. He looked around him, and over at the man, and back down, confused.

"What is—?"

[Jesse Fforde]

The Necromancer had assumed this would all go down without a hitch. His companion on the bench had no idea that the shadows were thickening; there’d be no reaction, and the whole ordeal would be silent, and stealthy. Maybe Clover was rubbing off on Jesse too much; he didn’t think ahead. He didn’t think about where he would take the body, or whether he should get rid of it. He would, of course – he couldn’t be that much of a hypocrite, to drill secrecy into the heads of his progeny but not follow the rules himself. It was the promise of a bonfire that helped Jesse most nights. The smell of flesh cooking, the skin crackling neatly in the inferno. Reduced to ashes and bone.

It didn’t quite go as planned, however. Jesse’s intended prey soon became savvy to the supernatural force surrounding him; to keep the man from jumping up and stepping out of the circle of darkness, and to keep him from causing too much of a commotion, Jesse lunged. Bright blue eyes gleamed in the dark, reflecting the last remnants of light. Canines had lengthened, visible now beneath lips that had curled back in anticipation.

A question had been half uttered but Jesse didn’t answer. Again, he was not in the habit of playing with his prey, and that included conversation. He didn’t enjoy it when they begged, or when they tried to discuss the merits of their life with him. Most of the time, he didn’t really care. A tattooed hand reached for the stranger’s mouth, to cover it, to hold him still while would try to wrench the head aside, to reveal the length of the neck and the jugular beneath the skin.

Jesse would do his best to keep the struggle to a minimum before his deadly bite met its mark.

[Langdell (DELETED 8312)]

<Langdell> Langdell didn't understand what was happening. He struggled. He'd been warned about this; the world outside was dangerous, and no doubt filled with people like this, monsters, though he thought not literal, who attacked and preyed on the weaker. Especially the young, and immature, like himself, a 21-year-old runaway. "Please -- Please, stop," he fought as best as he could, pushing at him.


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse blamed himself. The shadows had been too much warning; had given the guy too much time to react. The thirst was a ferocious burn that consumed Jesse. With force, he shoved the male against the back of the bench, a growl reverberating in his throat. “Give me a reason to stop,” he said, voice a cracked husk. Though, reason or not, Jesse wouldn’t stop. The outcome might be different, but the stopping was out of the question.


<Langdell> "I'm only a child, please. God help me." He continued to struggle with what energy he had, which wasn't much. He'd been on the road too long, a lot of walking and running and little, if any, sleep. He grimaced at the paint of hitting the bench. He screamed for help.


<Jesse Fforde> The scream was cut short. The shadows thickened and pulled inwards, hiding the two men from the sight of prying eyes. In a moment of madness, Jesse took the stranger's reason and twisted it. Caught up in his own decision, Jesse took it as a reason to live; a reason to be given something more. To be an only child should have meant instant death. Instead, Jesse decided this man should be an only child no more. This time, he brooked no argument, and allowed no struggle. Jesse had shifted so that he was standing, his knee on the bench beside the stranger, his whole body keeping the man from struggling, or going anywhere. Fingers were clamped tight over the mouth that wanted to scream, canines finally sinking into flesh.


<Langdell> Again, he screamed, but this time only into the skin of the other man's hand. He tried to fight more, but it was useless. This man was a lunatic, he thought. A devil incarnate, there to kill him. God was punishing him for his past evils, what he'd done to his father back in the community. Exactly what he tried to run from, only to come face-to-face with this man, this monster, and those teeth. His struggles, meaningless, stopped.


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse's grip relaxed only a little when the struggling stopped; not enough to give the man any freedom to escape, but enough so as not to crush him in a vice-like grip. Lips curled around the wound created by the eager clamp of his teeth, disallowing any single drop of blood to escape. Hot, fresh. Pure, even, this blood. It was bereft of all the toxic bitterness associated with this century's poisons. Who was this soul, and how the hell did something so clean end up in Harper Rock? All the more reason to find out. The decision had been made. Maybe Fforde required someone clean. Someone good. Rhett had been good, but rather than help the 'family' he'd run away. Maybe this one would be different. Jesse drank greedily, hungrily, but stopped when the heart was about to give out. Pulling back, he didn't allow himself the time to enjoy the fullness of his belly; the thirst was still there. Still hadn't abated. It never would. He lifted his own wrist to bloodied lips and tore into the skin. A wound of his own, dripping thick blood, which he forced against the stranger's lips. No words. Just action.


<Langdell> He was to die there, on a city bench, in the darkness of shadow. There wasn't need to fight it, for he'd come to terms with the death. More than likely, it was deserving, he thought. His eyes shut. His body weakened. He felt cold. When he felt the man pull back, his eyes partly opened: The job wasn't finished, so why had he stopped? Was he destined a more slow death? He tried to speak, but his words came out slurred and tired. He tasted blood suddenly, and gagged, trying to turn from it. For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the mission of sins.


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse wasn't one for talking. Being mute for near on a decade meant that talking didn't come naturally. Words weren't thrown out willy-nilly, without purpose. For a while, he'd said too much. Talked too much. But he realised that when he talked, he only made things worse. Talking was overrated. Silence was more becoming. But in this situation, he realised, he had to say something. "Don't fight it, if you want to live. You might not think so, but I'm giving you a gift. Don't be rude. Take it," he said, twisting his wrist to keep the fresh wound from closing up, from trying to heal. This one might not make it, like the others hadn't made it. Try, and try again. If he made it through the week, Jesse would at least know he was strong enough.


<Langdell> He felt delusional, dying and tired. Somehow, it made sense. Blood to replenish the blood taken from him. He opened his mouth, accepting the feeding. The blood sickened him, the taste of it. He instantly wanted to throw it up. But weakly, his teeth locked around the wound and he drank from it fully, accepting all given.


<Jesse Fforde> Sometimes, Jesse wished it would go back to the way it was; the days that he could sire, and his new progeny would be fit as a fiddle only hours later. This spontaneous decision, however, would lead to a week of attentiveness - if he lasted that long. Jesse knew he'd be in trouble. His motives would be questioned. How often had he been told not to bring strangers home? To at least learn their names first. This was a habit that was hard to drop, it would seem. Cursed or not. The shadows remained tight around the two of them. Jesse waited, minutes, long minutes, until he thought the stranger had had enough. "You're going to feel sick, now. For a while. You're going to feel like you're dying. If you're worthy, you'll survive," Jesse said. "I'm going to take you home. Stand, now - and then you can rest," he said, standing himself and offering a hand to help the other to his feet.

[Jesse Fforde]

<Langdell> He swallowed down the great majority of the blood, only a little dripping out his mouth and onto his chest. At first, he felt intoxicated, and strangely numb. Then the sickness took over. His stomach twisted. His throat burned. He wanted to throw up, and this time actually felt the real physical need for it. With great difficultly, he climbed to his feet. He gripped the other man's hand tight, then he tilted forward against him as dizziness took over. "I'm going to die," he muttered.


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse laughed, a bitter laugh threaded through with legitimate mirth. "Now now, you'll get nowhere with an attitude like that," he said, wrapping an arm around the stranger's waist and turning him in the direction of the road that led out of the city. The home he was talking about wasn't too far beyond the urban mess of the city. "My name is Jesse Fforde. For all intents and purposes, I am your sire. Things are going to be different, now. But we'll just wait and see how far you get before I explain too much..." he said, the last bit muttered mainly to himself.


<Langdell> Worsening by the minute, he put the majority of his weight against Jesse. His head turned down, face rested into the other's shoulder. Maybe he really would throw up. He still could taste the blood in his mouth, and on his lips. "...m'...name's...Langdell," he managed, barely. His skin didn't feel so cold anymore. He felt more feverish than again, breath labored. It reminded him of when he was a child and had contracted the flu. After exhausting all natural measures, his parents had no choice but to bring to a local hospital for treatment. The memory spawned an idea: "Hospital," he said. "I need ... hospital."


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse shook his head. "No. You don't need a hospital. We're going home. You're going to get worse before you get better. You'll need more of my blood every night. That's your medicine. If you want to live, you'll take it," he said. The lair was secure, at least; he couldn't worry too much about this guy trying to escape, to get himself to a hospital to be poked and prodded not by doctors, but by scientists trying to figure out what was happening to his body. They were already on the dark road that would lead them toward Third Circle - the welcoming, green arboretum that was the welcome mat to the lair underneath.


<Langdell> He wanted to argue. It made sense to him: He felt beyond sick, and weak, and tired. He wondered if this was what being drunk felt like, unable to combat his captor and swaying dizzily. "I want to live," he said. "I want to live, please. Please, I don't want to die yet."


<Jesse Fforde> "Living is up to you," he said. There had to be a will to live. Death had to be fought back with force, rather than cowered to. Jesse wasn't going to coddle or coo; he wasn't going to tell Langdell that he was going to be perfectly fine, and everything was going to be perfectly fine. It wouldn't do to offer false promises. There was a good chance he wouldn't make it through. "I'll do what I can to help you live, but I can only do so much," he said. "Not shut up, and focus on walking."


<Langdell> He wanted to complain about the pain and sickness. But instead, he fell silent. He walked. He was slow and sluggish, but put all his strength into the walk. He wasn't sure where they were going, and yet, without much of a choice otherwise, he continued forward. While walking, he licked at the blood on his mouth, tasting what was left. Strangely, he thought, it had started to taste good.


<Jesse Fforde> Soon enough, the two of them entered the arboretum. He helped to carry Langdell to the elevetor, to take him down to Cerberus. Cerberus would be better; less traffic, and Jesse doubted the sick man would want to be some zoo spectacle in the busiest part of the building. Cerberus was quieter, less people coming and going. There were beds, too, and Jesse helped Langdell to one of them.


<Langdell> Once in bed, he laid back. His hat fell off. He wanted to take off his boots but couldn't manage, too weak. The boots were old, brown, worn-in, and muddy on the bottom. "What's... going to happen now?"


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse took the boots off for Langdell - probably the first and only nurse-like thing that he would do. "I told you. You're going to be sick for a while. You should stay here. Your body is in transition. You're going to change into a vampire. You're going to start rejecting food and drink. You'll crave blood. I'm not going to leave you to suffer alone - I have other things to do, but I'll be back every night," he said. "For now, you should probably just rest."


<Langdell> Vampire. The word was strange, but not foreign. Although he wasn't raised around TV, and movies, and modern books, he knew what a vampire was, mostly from spoken stories. A part of him had always believed them as reality, but as much as he believed in demons, not physical beings but more like stories told to scare children into being good, sinless little creatures. "I'll do...whatever...I have to."


<Jesse Fforde> "Good. Rest," Jesse said with a gleaming grin. No blood clung to his lips; no blood stained his teeth. His thirst was a monster, and it didn't allow any stray drop to remain unswallowed. On the walk home Jesse's tongue had sucked all the blood from every corner of his mouth, from each crack in his lips. Whatever he'd taken had been given right back again. Jesse had to go. He had to get out and feed again, otherwise his mood would be nothing to trifle with. Although he could boost his own blood, it wasn't the same. It did nothing for the thirst. It was probably mind over matter, but Jesse's willpower had been shot to hell months ago. "I'll be back later," he said as he stood.


<Langdell> He turned his head so that he could see him go. The man still was a stranger to him, but he hadn't killed him. At least, hadn't appeared to of, yet. It would depend over the next week of time. He felt sicker b the minute and turned, burying his face into a pillow. "Okay," he said, accepting it. Accepting everything.