Work Text:
"Words”=The Dark’s dialogue
‘Words’=Richter’s dialogue
______________________________________________________________________
“Let It out.”
Reason. Hold on. He had to hold on. The wheelchair-bound Richter struggled to remain awake.
Eszabet’s tongue was warm on his clammy, bruised cheek. She was feeding, drinking his bloody tears. A blow to his head earlier had broken something within. And with the ache and pressure building, he was unsure if the damage was physical or …something else.
“Let IT out.”
“The Gift of a Virgin. Not only a virgin but one born from the loins of heroes.”
What the fuck was the bitch talking about? He’d been a virgin until….until, Remembering was like an axe to the temple. The mush they’d forcefed him threatening to rise in his esophagus.
“No! Please take me.” All eyes turned to Tera. Her green eyes set with grim resolve. Richter recognized that look. A visage of a desperate mother, willing to go to any lengths to preserve her children.
“No,” He wanted to scream but the drugs made his tongue uncooperative. All he could produce was a distraught, muffled groan through his oxygen mask.
Oh, now sweet. The estranged aunt sacrifices herself for the prodigal son.”
“Will sacrificing yourself to save the boy who burned your sister’s home to the ground killing her…and your eldest son really make you redeemed?” The sharpness of the purple-haired vampire’s laugh drove the proverbial axe further into Richter’s head.
“Let It out.”
‘Stop, not now. I can’t.’
“We have no choice.”
In Aunt Tera’s face, he could see the semblance of his mother. Her hair blonde instead of brunette and older. But it was there.
“What?”
Maria’s voice was like bell attempting to clear away his inner darkness. Betrayal.
“Please, I beg you! The boy is powerless compared to me. I am a sorceress thrice his worth.”Disbelief. Horror. The gutter of human emotions was a horrible gambit he saw play across his little sister’s face.
The girl shook her head, blonde brows coming together.
‘You always have a choice.’
The iced mirror in which Richter peered at the beast was beginning to fracture. Shattering. Breaking lines spidered slowly across the frosted glass flames licking at the edges. Blue flames.
“We can do magic, Richter. Both were born to hunt. Let IT have control.”
“Please, I beg you! The boy is powerless compared to me. I am a sorceress thrice his worth.”
Fear shot through Richter like adrenaline.
Again, he tried to shout. His throat ached at the point of severance of his vocal cords.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Tera. I never meant to kill James or Jessica. It was just an accident. An accident. I didn't mean to hurt anyone.”
But Tera couldn't have heard that. Just like she didn't hear his screams the day when Maria was in danger.
The vampires all around the unconscious Maria outside the summer home. And he, lacking the strength to defend her in any form.
The day he’d given in to the Dark.
“Maria…” choked Tera, “Take Richter. Take him and run and don't look back.”
Annette had entered at some point. The caved roof of the Church lent them a view of the now fully devoured sun.
“Mother…I…”
“Go. Annette, take them and go! Please for once in your life Maria, do what I say!.”
Erzsabet pulled away from Richter.
No, he was the one. It had to be this way. No one else deserved to die on his account. He would die, here and now. Screaming would do nothing even if he could produce the outburst.
He saw more than heard Maria shout from Annette’s arms. Everything had faded to silence. The flames roared. Breaking pews. The purple-haired vampiress’s words.
“Let it out.”
She grabbed the Belmont’s face so tightly. His teeth creaked until some were uprooted and he tasted blood. He looked up at her, a glare his only defense.
From his eyes poured pure tears, streaking down his face onto the vampiress’ richly gloved hands.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. No. His death should have meant their peace. Through blood-caked lashes, he watched limply as the fangs closed in at his throat.
“I won’t look away. I deserve every second of this.”
How sweetly death called to him then. Like a siren’s song in a storm.
In his mind’s eye, the frosted mirror was waning.
There’s no going back. Never.
The silver ornamentation and strange glyphs began to visually melt. Edges catching alight with blue fire. The mirror was a hair’s breadth from shattering.
She latched onto his throat like a fucking leech. Suckling, nursing, absorbing. Every last bit of his blood. What didn't make it to her mouth gushed from the wound in his neck. Staining the leather of her garb sticky and slick.
Something stirred in his loins. The ecstasy and haunting want for blood exploded behind his irises. Warmth spread to him as blood was pulled from his neck to his lower regions. His pupils dilated, nostrils flaring to smell her own sex at the sadistic feeding.
He could feel her throat muscles work against his shoulder. Gulping down his essence until there was nothing left but his frail human shell.
Weak and dull sapphire-hued eyes glanced over to the Lioness. His Aunt Tera, who had hated him, spurned him like the bastard child he was, was dead. The green hues that he’d feared so many times in his childhood dimmed. As had the life of Richter’s mother so long ago.
There was no feeling when his jaw was dislocated from her grip. The only thing telling him something else broke in his body was the awkward way the vampiress bit at his dry, lips.
Down her tongue went, spiraling, twisting, teasing. It was warm and thick enough to gag him. Iron and salt of his own body coated the insides of his throat. Caked on his teeth.
“Let It the. Fuck. Out.!”
And just like his bound, physical form could do nothing to stop the oncoming orgasm, his mental form could do nothing to stop the wolf from stepping through the mirror’s frame.
In his waning consciousness, the Belmont was vaguely aware of his jaws latching onto the vampiress’s obscenely long tongue. A distorted muffled scream bayed against his lips. Then her hands were on either side of his head trying to peel him off.
Fingerprints laced with his own fluids coated either side of his face as he held onto her like a fucking terrier.
‘Dark, fucking kill her.’
“Together, we slaughter.”
Heat scorched his veins. Started right at his stomach then, like boiling ore, it rose into his chest. Bubbling and oddly comforting in its searing strangeness. He’d only felt it once before. A day that had come to rule his entire miserable fucking existence.
Even his mind was afire with the blue light. Rendering it blank except for the need to bite and hang on.
Sin. Sin. Sin.
It poured from the vampire whose tongue was now tearing from its moorings. A rank stench. Like nothing he’d smelled before. Well, only once before. He held onto her sinew with the determination of a damned man. What was there to lose now?
Frayed muscle ripped clean from the vampire’s mouth in a spray of blood. The back of her hand was like a hammer. His brain rattled inside the skull and again as the wheelchair toppled. Everything going white and the sound fading.
A fluttering raven banged around his ribcage. A beast uncurling in his mind.
The old rage at Olrox. Injustice. Watching his mother die at those cold hands. The precious light left her beautiful eyes. Hunger stretched open its abhorrent maw inside his soul.
Consuming. Pushing. Burning. Purifying all but the need to feed and punish.
And if that wasn’t enough, the human, so tired of the indignant experiments and brutal endeavors to dissect and violate him, gave the reins to the demon.
“Do not become the monsters you hunt, Richter.” Granddad’s voice chided a tearful Richter from a lifetime ago..
“Fuck it.”
And then he was purging the weakness. Shame, fury, hate. For the first time in years, Richter felt magic in his body.
Blue flame drank his flesh and chewed his bones. And still, it wasn't enough. Both demons and man fueled the divine fire, and it fed on their spirits. Burning white at the edges. Restraints, control collar, and wheelchair rendered useless. Then he was rebuilt. Skin tearing free from muscle. And the muscle in turn changes, shifting. Sinew and ligaments restring across the newly formed bone. Together all reweaved from human into nightmare. Born through fire and tempered by darkness, the form that used to stride across the earth was no longer mortal. But darker. Deadlier. And vengeful.
The huge demonic wolf peered around the destroyed cathedral. The fire burning white in its mind and its need to feed forgotten for the moment.
Prey everywhere but also….danger.
His jaws were large enough to clamp on either side of his assailant’s head. She thrashed like a spring fawn. Weak and oh so brittle. Her wings beat the air uselessly and then with a wet pop, off rolled her head. An aching pit gnawed at what should have been his predator’s stomach. But deeper than the need to devour was the urge to protect.
So he left the bitch’s head, toppling before coming to a stop. Her ichor and undead fluids pumped briefly in the air from the frayed stump before her body buckled.
‘Help them,’ blared the tortured man’s consciousness inside the beast’s skull. A will not like his own pressing onto his bones to move. Gathering then leaping over Erzabet as if on wings of night. His huge paws touched down on the broken glass and gravel of the old cathedral’s roof and wall. Instinct took over as human will faded. The wolf threw weight onto his hindquarters, rounding his shoulders in a dramatic twist. Broken gravel slid beneath his paw pads. Momentum carried his body in a savage half-circle to face She-Who-Mauls with a snarl.
“Richter…”
The sound of a voice, so familiar and making a familiar…noise. It was a beautiful thing. Calling to him like summer sunshine against a twirling windchime. The wolf pinned his ears, fearing the faces of those who loved him.
“Fuck,” It was the first word his mouth had made in over 7 years. Freedom of movement was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
The darker-toned woman was reaching out to him. A way out. It was over….It’s over. His body could take no more. And his mind still reeling from the shift from mortal man to demonic hunter and back again…shut down.
The last thing he was aware of was the woman reaching for him. Always reaching.
“So close…”