A/N So, my first fanfic! Hope you enjoy, and that I've gotten Hal right and its not too confusing. Please read and review as I've never 'published my stuff before!


London 1832

Hal opens his eyes. His head is swimming with the typical post kill high and he can feel the heavy wetness of blood on his skin. He lifts his head, looking blearily around the room, taking in the carnage. An older man and woman lie curled up close to each other, their hands reaching for one another, but not quite touching. Three children, a girl and two boys lie sprawled across the sparse furniture. Hal grunts as he heaves himself to his feet. He was meant to be doing something before this happened, before he saw this sweet poor family through the window. He searches his memories as he snags his coat from the hook by the door, inspecting it for bloody marks and not finding any to his satisfaction. He frowns around at the room, trying to remember, but the blood high is making his head buzz and he cannot quite think what it was he was doing before he slaughtered the family. He shakes his head and takes several deep breaths, trying to clear the fugue from his mind. He pulls open the door and steps out onto the street. It's early morning in Whitechapel and a deep river fog lies over everything. Hal wrinkles his nose at the smell of rot that always pervades this part of London. The capital is filthier then he has ever seen it, for all the advances these Victorians claim to have made. London's poor are poorer, and the rich are richer, and death is thicker on the streets then it has been since the plague and the great fire that wiped it out. He scowls, sticking his hands deep in his coat pockets and hunching his shoulders as he walks. He may be the great Lord Hal, terrible killer and vampire legend, but Whitechapel was probably the most dangerous place in London and he would rather avoid getting stabbed. Anyway, his coat was brand new, and he did not want it full of holes. He hurries through the dark twisting streets, barely thinking and just letting his feet lead how and where they wanted. He walks through the smog-smothered streets for about an hour, seemingly aimless. But though his mind has forgotten, his feet have not and when he finally stops he looks up at a sky blue front door, with a bright bronze knocker, and wonders how he could ever forget her door.

Oh this demon in the gloom

Emerges from the fog

Mayhap his eyes glow

As he looks upon

The door of his lover

And his victim

In the shadows

Hours before the day.

How could he ever forget her, after all, was not that part of why he had murdered that whole family? Just so he could stand in the same room with her, and not tear out her throat, and drink her life away. As long as he over feeds, stuffing himself until he is staggering blood drunk, he can stop himself from tearing into her, the swelling pale skin of her breasts. He shudders, pushing the image from his mind, and slaps the bronze knocker against the door thrice, listening as it booms throughout the empty corridors of the house. She knew he had been coming that night and so had sent the servants away, lessening the chances of him killing one of them just to stop him from killing her. He could hear that she had done this, because there was only one heartbeat in the silent house. He would know her heartbeat anywhere, as well as he knew her perfume, and her slightly crooked smile. The door opens a notch and he sees one clear amber eye staring out at him, a strip of pale flesh, and the corner of her full deep coloured lips. He has been invited in before and so he does not wait. He pushes open the door, causing her to stumble slightly away from him. In that moment he has moved, pressing her against the wall with his whole body, his mouth finding hers an instant later, and he crushes her to him tasting the fullness of her, the life of her, his Eliza.

'Hal!' she gasps, her fingers clutching the lapels of his coat. 'You are drunk.' he laughs, delighted and runs a trail of hot kisses down her throat. She let's out a little moan and melts against him.

'It's all for you my love. All for you, everything is for you.' He is almost babbling, incoherent with relief at being near her once again.

'Liar.' she says, but before she can say more he silences her with one of those all consuming kisses. He pulls open the front of her dressing gown, the dark blue velvet parting easily in his hands, and buries his face between her breasts. He breathes in the scent of her, warm wood and pine needles on a summer's day, the wild rushing of the river and the light smell of honeysuckle after rain.

Hal picks Eliza up easily and carries her through to the living room, his steps sure and strong, and lays her on the warm rug before the gently burning fire. He slides his hand through her deep auburn curls making them stand our in a halo around her face, making her slightly pointed chin and wide cheekbones more exotic then ever. Her eyes held him captivated as they always did, their oddness delighting him in a world he increasingly found to be dull and predictable. One eye is a bright almost unnatural amber, with burnt orange threads running through it. The other eye was sea green with pale blue threads running through. It was her eyes, almond shaped and coloured like nothing he had ever seen that had enchanted him at first. Then it had been her laugh, and her recklessness, her independence, her quick tongue and long fingered hands. Then it was simply she, Eliza, and before he knew it he was dangerously infatuated with her. Enough not to kill her? Well, almost. Enough, at least, to waylay his killing of her with enough innocent blood. Long enough to cause her to fall in love with him. And so she had, hard and fast, for she had no defense against one such as he, a man of such brilliance and age. A man from another time, with sadness and hunger written across his perfect features. How, indeed, could she resist a man like that?

They lie close together on the rug, limbs tangled and hot, his fingers twinning lazily through her hair. His mouth rests against her warm bare shoulder, and occasionally his tongue will taste the salt of her skin. His eyes are lidded with half sleep, and it is one of those rarest of moments for him, when he is almost at peace. The warmth of Eliza's limbs fool him into feeling alive once more, and her heart beat is so strong, he can almost hear his own within it. He is almost asleep when Eliza moves, the smooth sliding of her muscles telling him she is about to stand up and move away. Without thinking, he tightens his grip on her, holding her to him, his arms tight around her torso. She goes rigid immediately, and he can smell rage and fear in her breath, and before he can get a better grip she has yanked herself away from him. That wakes him up properly and he props himself up on his elbows, looking groggily at her through the dim firelight. She has grabbed her dressing gown and wraps it around her pale limbs, hiding from him what had been shown with such ease and abandon an hour before. Or so he had thought. She stands across from him, her shoulders hunched, her arms wrapped tight around her body.

'Hal… Why were you so late getting here?' He frowns in confusion. It was still dark, wasn't it?

'What do you mean?'

'I mean the sun is about to rise, and you only got here two hours ago.' He laughs dismissively, but it sounds hollow and fake even to him.

'I lost track of time, that's all. Anyway, I'm here now.'

'There's blood on you Hal. God, its all over your neck!'

He jerks up, breath going out of him as if he's been winded. He grabs his underclothes and yanks them on angrily while she stands there, watching him, shivering slightly, even though it is not cold. He pulls on his trousers and reaches for his shirt, and then he sees the blood. Its splattered across the collar and runs in drips all down one sleeve. On the chest, just above where his heart would be is a clearly marked handprint, a small handprint like a child's. He grimaces, and lets the shirt fall to the floor. He turns away from Eliza, leaning his hand against the mantelpiece and going completely still, he does not even breathe. Eliza starts speaking then, and every word cuts deep and cold into him.

'Since we met, you told me what you were. I did not believe you at first, but then you showed me your eyes and teeth. Though I was afraid I told myself I did not care. I love him I thought, and what is love if not forgiveness? I got to know you better, and I saw your nervousness, your care for detail and the fastidiousness you try to hide. I saw you love me back, or so I believed. I knew you killed people, but I told myself that you did it for me, and so I had no reason to tell you to stop, for I could not let you go. I was as selfish and cruel as you. But I told myself you would only kill the villains, was that not why you go to Whitechapel before you come to me. Do not deny it either, for I have been there when doing charity, and there is no other smell like it. So, now I know what a fool I have been. How many children have you murdered so you can lie with me, Hal York? How many mothers and fathers and young girls? I love you, but I cannot condone this killing anymore. Not when you come to me with childrens bloody handprints on your shirt.'

She is crying now, sobs burning through her words. He hears a thud and he turns around, wishing his heartbeat would pound in his chest, wishing he could feel something apart from cold. Eliza has fallen to the floor, holding herself tightly, her eyes huge and wet in in her white tear stained face.

'What should I do?' She asks desperately, but he does not think she is talking to him. 'I cannot let you go, but things cannot go on as they are.' She shakes her head and clings more tightly to herself. Hal steps forward and kneels down in front of her. He does not try to touch her, he does not try to fool her he is human by breathing. He just sits and as he does she calms down a little, her breath coming more easily then before.

'There is nothing I can say, or do so you will forgive me then?' his voice is soft, and his full bottom lip is pulled in tight against his teeth. She stares into those hazel eyes, taking in his face, his strong slender body, his thickly tousled hair and pale pale skin. He is perfect and wonderful, and she was doomed from the moment she met him at that party. I will die for him, she thinks, I cannot leave him, I will stay with him even if he kills me.

'Can you stop?' she whispers, barely audible. 'Could you stop? Can it be done?'

He looks away. He wants to lie, to tell her it is not possible, that he has to kill. But he has stopped before. Or at least he has had times when he has been kinder, when he has only killed cruel men, evildoers, drunks and cutthroats, thieves and fellow murderers. But if he tells her it can be done, he knows she will convince him that he should try again. If he does, and even if he manages to go clean for awhile, he knows that when he breaks, as he invariably does, she will be the first one he kills. Maybe, he thinks, as he looks into her eyes her strange, beautiful, mismatched eyes, she already knows this deep down. Maybe it's why she has never asked before now. Since Hal met her he had felt that change in himself, the shift that meant he was coming to the end of this cruelest of cycles. Slowly he looks at her and says the words he knows in future he will hate himself for saying.

'Yes, Eliza. It can be done.'


Ah hem, so tell me what ya think!