The party was a distant thought.
It passed him with the clicking of glasses and too many conversations.
The smell of food, the happiness everyone felt, it was all an afterthought.
Oscar, fearing he would run off, tried to keep an eye on him the entire evening, but Henry could only silently apologize when they seperated and he took the oppurtunity to move through the crowd and slip outside into the twilight.
There was a fire in his heart, something that burned the coal in his body to help push him through the pain and the exhaustion as he ran faster. People looked at him as if he were a mad man, running down the wet streets in front of carriages, and pushing past people without a proper apology. Yet none of them mattered, nothing mattered but every step that brought him closer to his siren’s dark alley.
He only slowed his pace when he was under the same gaslight as last night, he saw the bench where he sat and turned to the alley Oscar was led into.
Scarlett and Danielle stood together, waiting in the same spot half-consumed in shadows and smoking, watching him run to Jasper’s house.
Henry knocked a few times and waited impatiently. When there was no answer he knocked again with a slight touch of jealousy passing through him. Concerned, and bothered at the thought of Jasper courting another man, he hurried back to those two dark angels that lurked in shadows and smoke. They watched him run closer, unmoving and smiling, but not like last night, no, now their smiles were unreadable, almost…pitying him.
He slowed and stopped before them, catching his breath with a bow. “Danielle. Scarlett.” He greeted each one with the tip of his hat, a gesture that brought soft snickers from their red lips. He continued, “Jasper. Have you seen him?”
Nothing. They stood silent for some time until Danielle—he guessed—spoke against the smoke wisps. “The park.” And Scarlett nudged her head toward a street in the distance.
Henry smiled and waved to them as he ran off, leaving them to hide in thier alley.
The park wasn’t far and Henry thought that if he hurried there might be a chance he could stop Jasper from being with someone else tonight, and if he interrupted, so be it. He’d just take the young man into his arms and ask his question, to hell with anyone who objects.
Yet somehow, the park seemed even colder than Jasper’s alley. The gaslights hardly breaking through the weight of darkness and he could only hear the tapping of his shoes against the cobblestone path.
And another pair that followed.
He turned.
No one.
“Jasper?” He glanced around.
Nothing.
His eyes narrowed and a disgusting feeling slithered up his spine, threatening to escape alongside the sickness brewing in his stomach.
His pace quickened.
He needed to find him, needed to find Jasper.
Footsteps behind him.
He turned again.
No one.
“Who’s out there? Show yourself!” His voice echoed, but despite the harshness of tone…he was afraid.
Then, broken glass, the sharp shatter of something—a bottle?
Dread fell over him.
His walk turned into running and he followed the sounds of glass and laughter, of something hitting something else with great force. All terrifying sounds that didn’t seem right, and he turned a corner guarded by bushes, coming into a clearing on the paths. With every step, he saw men, several men surrounding someone on the ground.
He froze, his stomach sank and his eyes went wide.
“Jasper!” Henry hollered, scaring the men who assumed he was someone to be afraid of, and he ran to them, shoving two out of the way and dropping to his knees.
His beautiful young man laid against the cold, wet ground unmoving, beaten and bloody to the point of being unrecognizable. His clothes were in pieces and his pants brought down to his knees where there was more blood and—he shuddered.
With shaking hands, he reached out but dared not touch him. Every bruise, every swollen part of his face, the blood, the breathless lips, Henry felt his eyes growing wet.
“H-Hang on! I’ll save—“
Something collided with his head and shattered against it.
Henry dropped to the chilled stone in front of Jasper’s still form and the pain began.
“Ah, right! The bastard from last night,” That sour voice spat and Henry was kicked in the head. “You piece of shit.”
“Your whore was a lot of fun he was,” Another blow to his gut.
“Showed him what’s good,” Henry tasted blood. And someone stomped on his hand, crushing bones beneath his boot.
“What’s this?” The shifting of paper and blood running down his face. “Oh, a doctor, fucking fancy.” Paper tearing.
A hard object crushed into his knee, but when he cried out a punch to his mouth silenced him.
The pain vibrated through his body and forced him into a ball to try to protect himself. The men shouted things that dissolved into the fog and he was nearly unconscious when they went through his coat—Jasper’s gift—and ran off into the night.
The sound of their footsteps and the silence that followed.
In and out, he faded.
Tears ran hotly down his face as he stared at Jasper, his fingers twitching, trying to move closer to the cold hand of the young man beside him.
Against the throbbing of his head, he heard something.
Soft tapping. Someone walking.
Fear consumed him.
And with clouded, dazed eyes, he saw the legs of someone approaching.
“..H…el..p” The words came out bloody, maybe not at all.
Gently, but painfully, his body was turned over and he looked up to see a face obscured in darkness with the gaslight glowing behind them. A soft hand touched his bleeding face, grazing the many cuts and blisters, it hurt, but he had no strength to escape that smoothing touch.
Jasper needed help, Henry didn’t care if he was dying, he just needed that young man live to. His heart rushed, wildly beating against his chest which made every broken bone ache. He tried to speak again.
“Shhh.”
He heard the sound so clearly it might’ve been in his head.
“I’ll help you, I will make everything better, and after, all of your pain will vanish.”
The voice made him cry, it was so comforting, so beautiful that it took Henry several moments to realize his neck was on fire and that burning pain sank deeper into his skin until he was screaming.
Then he was eating.
Not just eating, but drinking—sucking.
Something hot and wet and delicious.
His teeth ached and forced him to bite harder to relieve them.
He wanted to rip into his meal, tear it apart then lick every bit of red from each piece.
A voice told him to stop and he obeyed.
He came to with a jolt of pain and a gasp, rolling against the ground and sobbing, then crying out into the night. The wind moaned with him, the trees shivered in fear, and the moon hid behind dark clouds. But the shadows came to him, whispered immoral things, and wrapped around him like black wings that took the air from his lungs.
Where was he? What was he doing? Who was he?
He growled. A strange noise he’d never heard himself make, and he got to his knees.
The world was spinning.
Then, he saw him.
Jasper lying beside him, unmoving. Already dead.
His skin pale and his white eyes stared off into oblivion.
He crawled to the young man, lifting the dead and beaten body into his arms.
And he sobbed, red tears falling against Jasper’s ghost-pale skin.
“J-Jasper…” He whispered in a pathetic tone.
He wanted to call for help, wanted to carry him to safety, but his eyes locked onto the young man’s slender neck.
His teeth ached.
Pusled. Yearned. Longed. Needed. Wanted. Hungered
A tremor rolled through him, a vicious instinct to bite and tear and feed.
No, no, he didn’t want to.
Not him!
Yes. Him.
And he did.
He sank his teeth into Jasper’s neck, tearing at cold flesh to lick further into the caverns of muscle and bone. And he drank.
He fed until the pulsing dulled and the red tears stopped falling.
He freed himself from his siren’s neck with a deep and satisfying inhale.
Then the sorrow overcame him. The hate. The disgust. The agony.
A suffering that seeped into his skin like an uncurable disease.
And he screamed into the night.
But it didn’t sound human.
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