Discalimer: Alan Moore, 20th Century Fox.
No monetary gain is intended.
Fool boy. She told him to leave, he was stubborn and arrogant.
Pride before the fall.
And he had fallen, poor tinker tailor soldier boy.
There was blood on her hands red, shining from the firelight.
Fool boy and his fool smile. Agent Tom Sawyer. He came to her, his hair combed, a proper suit to visit, and an invitation to dinner. Her lips were pursed, and her jaw clenched forcing down the urge to feed, turning a deaf ear to his pulse.
She declined the invitation with brittle words and urged him to return to the colony.
"America is no longer a colony," he said cheekily. His guns swayed unsteady in their holster.
"So it isn't. Is there anything more, Mr. Sawyer?" Sharp, severe but it doesnt harm him. Her words do not hurt him, but she can.
"Just the pleasure of your company this evening."
An arch of an eyebrow and she repeated. "Pleasure of my company?"
"Yes." He said with certainty and smugness.
"Knowing what I feed on?"
Sawyer was silent for a moment. "Blood, but, I reckon, not all the time."
"Yes, not blood all the time." Mina conceded.
"Like in Nautilus."
She wanted to hurt him then but kept the urge in her. "You are a fool. Did you never wonder why I gave in the urge to feed on those miscreants?"
Mina can almost read his mind, he is predictable that way, Sawyer thinks it's Dorian, thinks its her anger but she lets the silence stretch on until his eyes light with new knowledge.
Men atop roofs with pistols and rifles, and she, a demon of the night tearing through them. Not out of anger but because of the memory of Nautilus' luxurious but claustrophobic quarters; the scent of blood and the rushing sound of hearts beating in time. It took everything in Mina not to stalk down the halls, enter Nemo's abode and tear his throat in front of his goddess Kali and become for him, Kali incarnate, goddess of destruction.
Mina waited for that realization, then. "Good day, Mr. Sawyer."
The door shut, tightly against the outside world and she returned to her studies foregoing food, both liquid and solid.
*
When the moon finally rose, bathing the streets with sickly pale light Mina could no longer resist the call. She rose, planning to slip away from prying eyes of her neighbors through the back alleys to the vermin, the live stock, a petty criminal--
but not. Sawyer. "Evening, ma'am."
Mina gravely underestimated his persistence. Sawyer persistent and boyish as ever his scent and ruddy face hit her senses too fast and she was... overwhelmed.
It was a battle for control, one she was woefully ill-equipped to handle.
Allan Quartermaine treated him as his own child. Allan Quartermaine who was dead and buried, whom she adored when she was but a child, and was severely disappointed in, expecting to meet a hero but met, instead, a condescending old man.
She was falling, Mina thought, detached.
"Mrs. Harker? Mina?" He caught her by the elbows. She saw the skin young and supple and just beneath, blood.
Mina pulled away. "What are you doing here, sir?"
"My dinner invitation stands." He drawls in his odd accent.
Dinner. "Really?" Dry voiced but beneath, sub-vocalized her heady desire to feed.
"I should call a doctor--" Sawyer frowned.
"You will do no such thing!" She said through clenched teeth. "You will, however, leave, Mr. Sawyer. This instant."
"You're not well."
"Of course I'm not! I can take care of myself, or have you forgotten what I am?"
"I haven't. I don't fear you."
That provoked a laugh, "You silly boy. Just because you see does not mean you comprehend." She moved away from the door, pulled into herself, inside to the laboratory equipment, he followed the door closing behind him. "What I am is worse than your imaginings."
"I'm not afraid." Of course he wasn't, that was why his hand had slipped a little to where his guns lay. Of course he's not afraid. "I can handle anything."
The arrogance, the ill-conceived notions of his own standing anger boiled, a lesson needed teaching. It was never the best of combinations Mina meant only to scare Sawyer but what she means and what she desires can never meet half way and she was suddenly before him, in all her terrific, terrible glory. A legacy forced on her by that beast. He blinked, stepping back in this state she felt his blood rise, heard his heart beat faster and scented his growing fear despite himself. A heady combination more intoxicating than alcohol.
"Not afraid of anything, Mr. Sawyer." She mocked, low-voiced a mix between a purr and roar. "More fool, you."
And the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth, lifted her from what she was and the hunger... she could not stop. Fool boy, poor boy. The more he struggled the harder she bit him and the more blood flowed. She warned him, foolish boy.
Candlelight flickered, blood on her hands, on her mouth everywhere staining his white shirt.
Sawyer deserved it.
No! A voice, the last vestiges of sanity or perhaps her conscience.
He was a boy, only a boy, and a friend, if an annoyance. She must stop... but she was so hungry. Your own fault, m'dear. Whose voice was that? Her own or someone elses.
You are a good woman, Mrs. Harker.
The struggling stopped, his heart would stop beating soon--
No!
She snarled, pushed Sawyer away tearing flesh as she did. He dropped on the floor, a used puppet.
Mina fled and caught on the palm of her hands the crucifix she placed on the table earlier. She clutched it and felt it hiss and burn on her skin, she held on braving pain until the monster within her fled in fear and the cross no longer burned. A sob fell in her throat but she fought against it with fierce control. She breathed in, slowly finding her center. Sawyer's prone body lay on the floor, blood trickling slowly from his wound.
Mina stood mesmerized until she felt the sting of the crucifix once more. That would not do. Methodical and sure she went to Sawyer, the crucifix still in hand, slightly searing but not as painful, tore her skirt and wrapped it around his mangled throat she tied it firmly, staunching the blood flow. She refused to acknowledge to blood. The cross-burned again but she continued her work until she was sure the threat of blood loss will not lead to death.
Assured, Mina rushed away from him, into the night as she planned and fed, disgustingly on vermin. The thirst must be slaked. Food of the other kind will follow shortly.
*
Tom Sawyer awoke with a splendid headache, his throat, parched and hurting. Funnily the expected taste of dead creatures did not come. If it was not a hangover why was he feeling so woozy? And on the floor?
"I see you are awake." The voice slid out from the flickering candlelight.
Tom jerked the events of the night suddenly startlingly clear. Her teeth, jagged, painful his futile attempts and finally darkness. "Am I--"
"Dead? Hardly, Mr. Sawyer," Mina's voice was so reserved; so cool it was hard to reconcile her with... with that creature. Mina's face floated above him, the same stern visage but not, thankfully the monstrous ruby eyes of that creature. He swallowed and winced from the wound, it was then he felt the pressure on his neck, almost suffocating him. A bandage, smooth to the touch, Tom did not know what to make of it.
"It will hurt for a while," Paper was pressed to his palm. "Instructions on how to mend the wound."
"Did you," it was hard to speak with a dry mouth and painful throat, "did you turn me into... into you?"
Her shoulders squared. "I am not a monster enough to do so."
"You can't?"
"Because I won't."
He was too dizzy to puzzle out that fleeting expression on her face, he suddenly yearned for America where things were less complicated, less scary.
"Don't you have to leave for America?"
He clambered to his feet, could she read his mind?
She raised her eyebrows at his behavior as if he was a silly child. And he was, he could almost hear his old school marm's voice: 'That's the moral of the story.' A delirous urge to laugh hit him, it came out scratchy and hoarse and he stopped because the effort pained him.
"I presume you will no longer bother me? Since you are on your way to the colony."
"America is no longer a colony." He answered automatic and without humor.
"It would seem so."
It was bizarre. They were reenacting the earlier scene, in the day. The room was spinning.
"My, it's getting late in the hour, you must leave, lest the neighbors think me a woman of ill repute." Mina said, prim as a Victorian lady, without irony. As if she had not attacked him. Her too bright eyes focused on him.
"I must leave." Tom said, playing along, the gentleman until he looked down at expecting his coat and shirt soiled at a loss but they weren't. Somewhere between his sleeping and waking Mina had replaced his clothes.
Mina accompanied him to the door, "There is a back way, a carriage waits for you."
Sawyer nodded. "Thank you, ma'am. Mrs. Harker."
"Murray." Off his startled look. "My maiden name."
"Ms. Murray."
Then for the first time that night, her stern visage melted slightly and reached for him, Sawyer jerked back away from her hand. Her hand stilled in the air, it hung there before it fell to her sides; he saw the burned scar on her palm in form of a cross. He was sure she did not have it earlier.
"You've learned your lesson." She said with both approval and sadness.
"I learn, eventually."
"You are a good lad, stay out of trouble." Kind words a parting and consolation.
"Yes, ma'am." And he turned away, moving forward, not looking back. Tom thought of his semi-packed bags and his voyage to America. He was leaving much earlier than expected. He need not look up to know a lady was peering from one of the windows above, a silent, watching figure. Tom shivered and he was sure it had nothing to do with the warm summer air, he entered the carriage and casted a brave glance upwards only to see the rustling of curtains and of extinguished light. He continued to peer upwards as the carriage rolled away and the windows melted into the shadows, and continuing on above-- the Moon.