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Porcelain and silver clamoured atop his notes, the overpowering scent of bread driving a sudden spike of hunger through Seward’s gut.
He had poured himself bodily over Mrs Harker's manuscripts, buoyed on cup after cup of peculiar, vegetal tea. Pacing his cage had offered no new insight. The pale autumn sun far below the rooftops promised no illumination. The tea had chilled.
He was ravenous.
Now, whorls of spiced steam entranced him. A clattering variety of small bowls and warm rolls stared brazenly up from the table. His notes, their notes well hidden beneath the tray.
His professor stood silent across the table. Seward ought, he supposed, to have lit a gaslamp before now. Twilight washed the suite in dim grey and impenetrable violet; Professor Van Helsing's expression lost in the shadows.
"Thank you," Seward offered eventually, more a chastened schoolboy than cherished apprentice. The Harkers' lives, among others, depended on his steady nerve in an especially gruesome autopsy. Yet, he hadn't even fed himself. His hunger pounded with his pulse: a wet, cold drum deep in his skull.
The paternal kindness knotted Seward's tongue and throat. But the professor simply lit the gaslamp on the table and offered Seward one of a pair of plates.
"The stomach," he said softly as he sat to Seward’s left. Near enough to share the feast in miniature. "Wears the mind's crown, my friend John."
Seward paid little concern to the possessive. It was a Spanish idiom, passed through Dutch or Latin to English. A few words inevitably got scrambled along such a journey. Besides, Seward's hunger eclipsed all else. Hunger alone explained the gravity drawing his gaze to the slope of the professor's shoulders, at ease in this private supper. Already fixed there, it followed that he would study the stretch of skin as the Professor folded back his shirtsleeves and reached across the table to claim a saucer of bright green herbs in salt.
The professor’s bicep clad only in a single shirt brushed Seward’s shoulder. His own protective wool, silk and cotton did little to blunt the heat; the flush that rolled like the tide through him started at their point of contact. Not for the first time, Seward felt underdressed in four layers. No amount of collar pins could hide his racing pulse from himself.
"Eat, friend John, eat. You will have need of your strength tonight."
There could be only one explanation for this, Seward realised with a panicky jolt. Something had happened. His compulsion to re-examine Mrs Harker immediately was overruled by a feral growl from his stomach. He fell back in his chair, dizzy suddenly. No doubt, from the hunger.
Seward tore into a peculiarly crisp tart of pureed apple, plotting which of the relishes, dips and pickles would offer the most vigour for their volume even as he swallowed. He had been reaching for a pillowy flatbread when a glass of something thick and sour was pressed into his hand.
"For the pastry," Van Helsing explained. The drink was cold, sweet, with an uncomfortably fine fizz. It made the tart agonizingly vibrant.
With the flatbread, Van Helsing directed him to a thick aubergine and pepper paste, and Seward found himself obeying easily. The professor knew his appetite well. It was safer and simpler to let his teacher guide him through the sheer variety.
Hungry vertigo had been replaced with the warmth of the meal, when the professor offered him a crystal glass. Within it, the frighteningly strong plum brandy popular with the locals gleamed dangerously. It was deceptively easy to drink, warm on his tongue, hot inside his throat.
The lights glow around him.
When he looks back at the table from the doorway, there is more food left on the tray than he had expected.
He follows Van Helsing only a single doorway down the corridor; the Harkers' suite shared a wall with his own.
Their door opens easily beneath Van Helsing's hand.
Within, their room is a dizzying mirror of Seward and Van Helsing's own. The table lamp is dark, pushed against their joint wall. The Harkers' single, large bed is to his left instead of the twinned set he and the professor share to the right.
And, seated at the edge of that massive, plush mattress, draped in a nightgown of gauzy white, is Mina Harker. The only light is the hypnotic flicker of a candle sconce on the wall behind her. The orange glow lends her velvet black skin a golden outline. Her hair is tucked beneath a silk wrap, the tails pouring over one shoulder. The other is bare. The scars of her neck and forehead stand painfully white, unwelcome constellations on her night sky
No doubt her husband guided her pliant limbs into this nightdress after her sunset report. Yet, she seems shamefully bare. Vulnerable, save for the profane power slowly building behind her sealed lips.
Her eyes are open, fixed on Seward.
He flinches when he realizes, though Mrs Harker has not moved.
A quiet, rattling growl comes from the table, too animal to be the radiator chasing the chill. Pooled in the shadow Mina casts from the candle, even Jonathan Harker's stark hair is barely visible.
Firelight dances bright on the exposed edge of Harker's kukri.
The gentle slide of the deadbolt should be easy to miss; the animal fear of predation leaves it echoing in Seward's ears.
"Fear not, friend John." Van Helsing says. The smoothly polished recitation of a physician soothing a child. It is wretchedly effective at slowing Seward's racing heart. "All is as we discussed; do you recall?"
He does not recall. Yet, his trust leads him toward the table, toward the blade. It would be easy to claim the stress and liquor had won out, leaving him pliant for lack of control.
Jack is well controlled.
Harker holds the blade's mirror edge against the angle of the light, as though it could yet conceal imperfections after such relentless honing. A lick of candlelight sings up the curve, searing at the wicked tip. Each step nearer binds Jack's ribs in thrill. Compression asphyxia. Meaningless words, detached from the reality of bone-parched hunger.
By the time Harker slams him to the table, bloodless hand a collar of cold iron at the base of Jack's skull, Jack is already limp and pliant. The crack of his jaw on the unforgiving oak bursts across his vision in iridescent snow.
If he is fortunate, he has time to feel if not words to think, his cheek will bloom in red and violet overnight. The desire distracts him, until the hem of his frock coat is flipped aside.
The white hot ice of Harker's blade presses lethally at the base of Jack's spine. Whisper quiet, it rasps into the space between his vests and trousers. The razor edge catches a seam at breathless last, and his trousers glide into useless sleeves. By the time he feels the cool air, Jack is already dripping onto the pool of ruined fabric.
He's not taken quite so unaware when Harker curls over his prone body and sheathes his cock. Harker's kukri is a bare, cold curve pressed against Jack's neck, sublimating to a scalding line as skin yields to steel, splitting more easily than wool had. Jack moans against the symmetry, numbers spilling past in a haze.
Three point five centimetres, to slit the carotid artery completely in two. 15 seconds to lose so much blood he would drown to sleep before he died. Even without Mrs Harker-
He had forgotten her.
Jack is barely breathing between her husband's statue blades; scraping his gaze towards her is an act of God.
She has not moved. She simply stares into Jack's pinprick eyes.
Her husband's knife at his pulse and cock in his hole are less pressing than Mina Harker's white scar, white sclera, black pupils, black skin. Her white, white teeth barely pressed against lips he hadn't noticed were open.
When her eyes break from his, Jack sobs at the loss; hisses at the sting of steel biting another fine red line into his throat.
"Ah, now, my friend," Van Helsing says from the direction Mina now stares. Jack breathes the cadence of those words. "You have no need to worry yourself."
The hand that digs into Jack's hair is strong, steady. He groans as his burning scalp is pulled up and up until he can bend no further backwards, scored throat spread wide, fingertips scraping at empty air. He is cracked into two bright pains: Harker's skinny thighs like iron bars pinning him to the table, and Harker's apathetic fingers hooked into his hair, putting him on display.
For a moment drawn long by Jack's shallow breath, he hangs, unable to look at anything but the gilt plaster ceiling.
Warm, blunt fingertips brush Jack's exposed neck, powder soft and pulling taut the thin lines scored into the skin.
The movement startles Jack, so sharp a contrast to the statue stillness of Harker in and around him.
Even bearing his weight one handed, Harker does not falter. He seems almost not to breathe.
Jack shakes.
His breath gives way to panicked gasps. He shivers around Harker's agonisingly still cock, the ceiling drifting out of focus as his eyes burn. Warm breath traces his neck. The Professor peels the fine cuts wider with infinite patience.
Jack's breath strains his outstretched throat, a cockerel waiting for the axe. There is a subtle burst beneath the professor's fingers, and Jack can't tell if it came from a clot or his skin tearing. Something wet trembles down the arc of his pulse. Blood, or sweat, spit, or tears, all equally invisible.
Jack's muscles spasm wretchedly as he hangs. Spinae erector that won't release even though they bear no weight. Serratus writhing, tearing uselessly at intercostals that can stretch no farther. He twists minutely in a noose of his own hair, vision swarming with nonsense sparks and blurs as his lungs fail and fail to fill.
“All is well, friend Jonathan,” Van Helsing pronounces. Hearing his own name used for the man fucking him punches loose what little breath Jack had left. “Though, perhaps we take greater care with him which does not belong to you, yes, madam?”
Mrs Harker gives no response that Jack can hear over the blood in his ears, the scalpel pain between each shivering rib.
Harker drops him.
Gravity inspires just enough vivid shock to remember the kukri, and no time to calculate the cutting force of his own body.
The professor catches Jack with only the slightest huff. That alone keeps Jack's wrists from snapping under his own weight. The crack of hardwood against soft cartilage pulls a pained howl out of him. Already Jonathan is clawing into Jack's hips, digging staccato gasps through Jack's cloying yowl.
Jack finds himself loosely grateful for the quiet when warm hands drag him by the scalp to seal his lolling mouth with his professor's cock. Skin and blood are hot and alive on his tongue. The rhythm Harker drives into Jack's waist eggs the professor's cock to swell, each breath taking more of Jack's focus to sustain. Between Harker at his hips and Van Helsing's hands in his hair, it is simple to brace his elbows and go lax. To flow with Harker's mechanised tide.
Jack's focus narrows to his breath, to swallowing his moans rather than gagging on spit. Harker is a metronome and somewhere far away a syncopation starts up in the professor's voice. Not the iambic monotony of English, but quick clotting consonants and silk strewn vowels. The noise is meaningless behind Harker's rhythm.
Jack has lost track of his eyes, rolling behind closed lids as he lets Harker drive him onto the professor. When they flicker open, he finds Mina's wide, dark gaze pinning him in place. His breath stutters, and he chokes.
For only an instant, his throat is clear. Jack catches a glance of concern upon his teacher's brow.
Cold metal touches the back of his neck, herds Jack back to his work. The blunted reverse edge of the kukri, surely, or it would have split Jack’s jaw from his skull. He knows precisely how much force Harker can exert. With the blunt edge, it would at least take some effort for Harker to relieve him of his head.
His teacher’s eloquent hands clutch incoherently at Jack’s burning scalp. The nonsense lyrics drip warm and wet down Jack’s chin long before he realises he’s mouthing out the incantation in time. He barely recalls learning it, but one line after another, the Latin comes to him. The professor’s flagging cock shivers, hot blood pulsing as it fills. The weight on his tongue drags Jack back to silent service.
Elige cui dicas 'tu mihi sola places.'
Choose that to which you will say: To you alone springs forth my joy, my pleasure, my wonder.
Haec tibi non tenues veniet delapsa per auras:
Choose, now, while your hands are free to guide your own reins. Choose! For these pleasures will not fall upon you as a gentle rain on summer breeze.
Quaerenda est oculis apta puel-
See, and seek, and by your own eyes alone measure and match this gir-
“Puellum.” The voice that cuts the professor to silence is far less human than the snarling radiator. Harker’s relentless rhythm ends abruptly with him buried in Jack’s cunt, Jack gagged silent by skin and blood.
The meaning of the word rests just past Jack's grasp; breathing as Harker crushes him against the flesh and bone of the professor's hips takes more focus than Jack has. His aching chest struggles to pull in enough air. He's slack jawed and twitching helplessly as Harker’s fingers dig bruises over the crescents his nails have already bitten into Jack’s skin.
"Puella," the professor corrects so kindly. Harker's fingers flex, nails burning as they tear deeper into Jack’s body. Bright colours dance across Jack's vision.
His rolling eyes catch Mina's. Still open. Still staring. Bright in the contrast of the shadows licking where the gauzy nightgown and golden gaslight do not protect her soft, dark skin.
For a moment her lips part, her sigh thunder, her teeth pale lightning. Jack shivers helplessly. It's the first time he's seen her move all day. She does not speak, yet both Jonathan and Van Helsing as one repeat, "puer."
The territorial tension dissolves, and Harker picks up his rhythm as though nothing has changed. Jack gasps around the professor's cock. A high whine sings of aneurysm behind his eardrums as he struggles again to breath.
When Mina’s toy metronome falters at last, he drags Jack hard against his hips. Something pops in white hot agony as tensed muscles in Jack's lower back snap against the stretch. Harker's cock aches like a palpated blood clot in the heat of Jack's cunt, the shock having ripped any promise of orgasm from him.
Jack feels shaky, cold, satisfied as Van Helsing so gently cradles his skull in wide, hot hands. The professor's seed on his tongue is bitter and thin and he sobs for the love of it.
A long silence.
Seward teeters barely upright on shaking knees and leans most of his weight on Van Helsing. It’s easier to let the Professor guide him dimly to the door than to walk under his own power.
Mina stares with avian stillness, tracking Seward’s slow movement across her uncontested principality. He stumbles against the professor, looks away from her, staring blindly ahead.
From a great distance, Seward hears the Harkers’ door unlatch, watches the Professor check the corridor is clear, drifts back into their own suite. The Professor a steady pressure against his shoulders. The corridor’s lamps all glow so brightly. His untouched coat and ruined trousers hang limp around his thighs. He is sure it would be more difficult for anyone catching a corner glance of his drunken stumbling to see the Harkers’ mess leaking down his legs than it is for him to feel it.
Too soon, he is back to his soft, solitary bed tucked against the window. The air around the glass is achingly cold, but the heavy blankets and hissing radiator beat the chill away.
He stares from within a heap of delirious warmth out over the streets and rooftops. His little watchtower at the far corner of the cloister of suites their hunting party has claimed.
The forward guard, he reassures himself as he slides into sleep.
By morning, John remembers dining in warm lamplight, drinking until the colors smeared bright and aimless. From there he has only glimpses and a deep ache in his muscles. The frigid sea mist traces fine scabs on his neck; it cannot reach the deeper punctures arcing over his hips. John shivers, and the dim morning fog burns away in streamers of autumn gold.
Soon, soon, there will be word of the Czarina Catherine.