Chapter Summary: Miranda reveals the nature of her relationship to Karl, and an old friend returns.
Warning: drug use and soft sm*t ahead
X
1950.
"...and then she said, 'remember, Salvatore, you will always be in my favor.' What do you think that means? Do you think it means 'favor,' as in love or…or 'favor' as in friend?'"
Karl narrowed his eyes as Sal suddenly lurched forward and vomited into the rather rancid-smelling bucket. He was hard at work attempting to weave steady stitches across the chest of an unconscious man, and couldn't have been less interested in Salvatore's sappy monologues about his fixation with Miranda. The needle in Karl's hand shook as he grit his teeth back and forth along the frayed end of a thin black string. He had been distracting himself by focusing on the background chatter in his head - chatter, which he had come to realize was strange muffled feedback of a radio station broadcast that had somehow leached its way into his head. But not even the laughter of the ethereal radio host could drown out the sound of a particularly wet chunk of something foul tumbling from Sal's mouth and plopping into the bucket.
It had been ten years since Karl had first set foot in Moreau's clinic. In those ten years, Salvatore Moreau had gone from a moderately handsome and well-respected physician to a strange, bumbling, boil-covered sack of flesh. Gone was his headful of luscious black hair tied expertly at the waist, gone was the enchanting blue of his irises, and gone was his proud and straight-backed posture. Whatever it was that he had become - or was becoming - was the most ungodly and sickening thing that Karl had ever seen.
And Karl knew why.
Over the course of the ten years, Sal had revealed the nature of his relationship with Miranda. According to Sal's quickly deteriorating tales, Miranda had long ago implanted in him with something called a 'Cadou': a nematode exposed to Miranda's unholy black mold. She had promised Sal that he would become something beyond imagination - something so great that all would cower before him.
Well! Only one thing was true now: people were cowering before him, just not for the reasons that he expected. Karl was right in assuming that the poor man's body hadn't taken very kindly to being infected with an ancient, festering fungus.
"...or...do you think she means 'favor' as in I'm her favorite?" Sal blubbered as he wiped the spittle from his thick, bulbous lips. "But why would I be her favorite, unless there were others to be favored over? I know that she's implanted the Cadou in other villagers but they turned to Lycans, didn't they, Karl? You would know since you spend all of your days in the…oh, darn, what's that place called? Oh, hold on-" Sal covered his mouth as his cheeks filled with vomit once more. The string snapped between Karl's teeth as Sal loudly swallowed whatever he had dredged up into his mouth and then gave a long burp. "Or maybe she doesn't really love me - maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic in love with a beautiful woman…maybe it's you that she really wants…always looking at you with those big, beautiful eyes and that flaxen hair flowing-"
Karl roared as he reared up and overturned the makeshift operating table. The barely-lifeless body of their ill-fated experiment tumbled to the ground amongst the clattering of many blood-stained dishes and medical tools. He stood there panting and glaring at Sal before spinning around and punching the wall until his knuckles were bruised. It hadn't been anything that Sal had said. More than the sound of Miranda's name or the treacherous shaking of his fingers, it had been Sal's final descent into insanity that had pushed Karl over the edge.
Ten years Karl had spent as an outcast in his village, with Sal being his only anchor to some semblance of a human relationship. Now he didn't even have that anymore. Sal's mind-warping disease had created a distance between them that was so large that Karl now found himself suddenly, and hopelessly abandoned by his last remaining friend.
Sal watched him from beneath the folds of his phlegmatic, watering eyes before giving another wet burp again. Without hesitation, Karl bounded across the overturned table and grabbed Sal by the edges of his damp hood.
"SHUT UP!" Karl screamed, feeling himself go red in the face as he shook Sal senseless. "SHUT UP, SHUT UP, JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Sal placed his quivering hands on Karl's chest and Karl recoiled at the sight of the small, translucent worms wriggling between the physician's fingers. Sal licked his lips as he slid his fingers beneath Karl's shirt and began to massage his skin, bemoaning its 'youthful suppleness' and 'lovely elasticity.' Karl growled in rage and tried to untangle himself from Sal's unabashed fondling, but the latter seemed to become suddenly resolute in fingering a spot on the back of Karl's skull.
"What's this?" Sal gargled. "A scar?"
"Christ, you wanna stick your fingers up my ass, too? Stop fucking touching me-"
"No, wait-" Quicker than could have been expected from a beast like him, Sal squirmed around and jumped on Karl's back. Karl gave a rather high-pitched scream as the wriggling physician wrapped his legs around his lower back and held on tight. Karl stumbled around the room, crashing into the walls with no discretion and screaming at the top of his lungs as Sal scrambled his moist fingers through his hair.
"What the fuck is wrong with you!? Wait, stop that tickles - I'll fucking kill you, Sal, I swear to God, I'll fuckin- get the hell off me!"
"Ah-ha!" Sal said victoriously as Karl finally managed to buck him off of his back. He whirled around and glared down at the splayed-legged creature who was holding a tuft of Karl's hair in his slimy hands. "You do have a scar on the back of your head! The perfect placement for-"
X
"-an incision, at the back of the skull….allowing for the placement of the Cadou…direct access to the subject's nervous system via the brain stem-"
Karl opened his eyes and looked around in alarm. He was sitting on the edge of a table, his fingers clenched in a vice-like grip upon the edge. Miranda stood bent over a table in front of him, her figure blurring and then snapping quickly back into focus. Below her was the body of a young boy placed face down upon a table. The skin upon the back of his skull had been severed down the middle and was being held open by two wicked-looking hooks. As Karl watched in horror, Miranda carefully lowered a fleshy mass onto the pulsing ridges of the boy's brain and straightened her shoulders.
"A highly favorable subject," she said in an echoing voice as she slowly brushed her bloodied hands together. "The Cadou has taken to its host immediately. Already, the nematodes have begun to embed themselves in the stem-"
"What's happening?" Karl said in a failing voice as a tear rolled down his cheek. Mother Miranda looked up at him with a face full of fury. Somehow, he knew that the young man that she was performing her ghastly operation on was his brother. "What are you doing to him?
"Quiet," she commanded. Though he was repulsed by what he was seeing, he could not look away. Ken's back was rising and falling slowly, but otherwise, he did not move. It was as if he was in some deep and terrible slumber. Tubes were sticking out of his orifices and spilling upon the floor.
"I want my papa," Karl whispered, his eyes never leaving the grayish mass of Ken's skull. Though he was a grown man, his voice came out pitiful and childish. "I don't wanna be here anymore, I wanna go home-"
"I SAID SILENCE," Miranda cried. "How am I supposed to work with you jabbering away at the mouth? Hold your tongue, before I slice it out of you!"
"Please don't hurt him-"
"It's not him that you should be worried about, you quivering little thing-"
X
Karl opened his eyes and found himself on the floor of Moreau's humble little room. He quickly pushed himself up and stumbled away from Sal who was looking at him curiously.
"W-what did you just do?" Karl asked suspiciously, feeling as if he had been severely violated in some way that he could not yet understand. "What the hell did you just do!?"
"I didn't do anything!" Sal cried defensively. "I was just standing here when suddenly you fell faint on the floor!"
"I don't fucking faint," Karl growled. "You performed some sort of trickery, didn't you? Put your slimy hands on me and pushed these cursed images in my mind-"
"Images?! What images!?"
"Images of her-" Karl screamed, feeling wholly and completely out of control of himself. "Miranda! The bitch! The pagan whore slut! The two of you are in cahoots, aren't you? Trying to make me out to be some sort of god-forsaken lunatic! I tell you, I won't stand for it - I will not!"
"Pleeeeaaaase stop yeeeellllllling at meeeeee!" Moreau sank to his knees and began to cry as he held his hands out to Karl. Karl cringed and took a step back as the blubbering sack of contorted flesh crawled up to him and latched onto his pants legs. "And please don't call Mother Miranda such awful names! She is a goddess! She is beautiful! She is-"
But whatever else Miranda was, Karl didn't bother to hear. He turned away, threw the door open, and ran as fast as he could out of Moreau's clinic. He ran and ran and ran until his legs began to burn. He didn't know where he was going, all he knew was that he had to outrun the images crowding around his head: images of a fleshy mass called a 'Cadou,' images of Miranda wielding a scalpel above his brother's exposed brain, images of men turned to Lycans howling in the snow. He didn't know what was going on anymore. Reality and fiction were beginning to blur around the edges, leaching into each other in a way that made him feel insane and hopeless and completely abandoned by the realm of sensibility. He put his head down as he ran blindly through the village, muttering and crying scriptures to himself as the wind swiped up his tears and flung them behind him. There was nothing so painful to him as the sense of crazed sense of directionlessness that he felt then. Shadows were closing in on his world, shadows wrought like spider webs ensnaring his mind with false visions and incessant nightmares. How much more would he have to endure, he thought to himself as he crumpled against a wall and moaned behind his hands.
The villagers saw him standing there and made a wide berth around him, both amused and frightened by the sight of him sobbing against the wall. By then he had become a thing of legend: a wailing and senseless ghost of a man whose five-year exile among the Lycans had weakened his mind. Whatever respect they had left for the Heisenberg line lay in his father and his brother, but not him. He might as well have been dead already.
He lifted his head away from his hands and screamed.
X
Mother Miranda.
Miranda walked through the snowy avenues, her gaze pointedly forward as the villagers made way for her. They were comprised of members of her congregation, as well as old-religion folk who avoided her kind like the plague. But still, all lowered their eyes and muttered tepid greetings as she walked amongst them. They were nothing but sheep to her - fodder for her experiments, as she saw it. She would have liked to see them all massacred by Lycans - after all, neither she nor the world had much use for such fragile beings. But her most recent tests had proven unfortunately unsuccessful, and she still needed to find a suitable vessel for her daughter.
Which was why she had set out in search of Karl Heisenberg.
For the past twenty years, she had observed him like a hawk. Many times, she had tried to initiate contact but the man was stubborn. No doubt his bastard father had warned him to stay away from her, and this troubled her deeply. Though Alcina Dimitrescu had proven to be a favorable vessel, it was Karl that Miranda wanted. How wonderful it would be to have Eva reincarnated as a man born to such a strong bloodline. The world truly was cruel to the female sex, she reasoned, and she'd rather have Eva reap the riches of a male subject both strong and unapologetic - undoubtedly, Karl was both of these things. Although, it was obvious that his exile had weakened his mind. Many times, she had taken the guise of an Old Hag and simply watched him from the edge of the Potter's field. The young Heisenberg had resorted to spending his days reciting pomp gibberish to his Lycan companions and riding upon their bucking backs as if he was a child at a rodeo. It was obvious that he was losing his mind quickly but, if she interfered now, she could save him and maintain his status as a pristine vessel for Eva.
It wasn't sentiment that had lent her a sense of urgency, but a desire to save him from himself so that she could use him as the puppet that she so desperately needed. Time truly was of the essence.
A loud cry rang through the village square, and the people returning home in droves cast a nervous glance back at the alleyway between two buildings. Recognizing it as the sound of Karl's voice, she clutched her parcel tighter in her arms and rushed forward. She saw him standing there with stooped shoulders, knocking his head against a wall as he muttered to himself. No doubt he was still in the habit of reciting scriptures to the very same unforgiving God who had taken Eva from her. Whilst in the camouflage of the Hag, she had observed him trudging through the field carrying heavy tombstones upon his hunched shoulders while reciting verses from the bible. It was a ritual oddly reminiscent of his father dragging him behind a horse while teaching him scripture - a pitiable attempt at clinging to something familiar, she reckoned. Poor thing.
"Karl," she said over the sound of the whistling wind. He continued to knock his head against the wall, either ignoring her or unable to hear her. She cleared her voice and tried again. "Karl Heisenberg!"
He looked up. Their eyes met and a look of surprised disgust briefly crossed his face. Then, he squared his shoulders in indignation and turned away from her. She watched calmly as he made his way through the snow, his arms tucked tight to his body and hands shoved deep in his pockets. Oh, yes - though the factory had been handed over to Ken, it was obvious that Jebediah Heisenberg's influence was still hanging strong around Karl's shoulders.
"Karl," she tried again, irritated now. "A conversation between us is long in coming, don't you think?" Again, nothing from him. She watched with mounting impatience as his broad shoulders began to disappear in the crowd of villagers returning home. He was so tall by that point that he stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the crowd. She cleared her throat against the cold and tried one more time. "So what did your father say that your memories about me were? Nightmares? Bad dreams?"
This caught his attention. He turned and glanced at her over his shoulder, a single green eye glinting against the flurries of white snow in the air. She hefted the parcel that she had been holding higher in her arms and slowly unwrapped it as he watched curiously.
It was bread, freshly baked by the village baker and still hot. She saw his nostrils dilate at the smell of it before he wandered back over to her. He stopped only when he was uncomfortably close and flapped his hands in the air, hungrily wafting the scent towards his broad nose. Then, before she could say anything else, he grabbed the loaf from her hands and shoved it in his mouth. She was right in thinking that the smell of freshly made bread would be too tempting for a man down on his fortune to resist.
"Easy now, easy," she warned as he tore voraciously at the bread with tears brimming in his eyes. "It won't do to have you choke before I get a chance to speak with you."
"And just what is it that you want to speak with me about, Miranda?' He asked before hungrily sucking at the breadcrumbs still stuck to his fingers. It had taken him less than three seconds to devour the loaf whole. She had never stood so close to him before, at least not as an adult. For the first time, she noticed the sheer magnitude of his presence. There was a largeness to Karl that extended beyond his physical body - his very aura was suffocating and creepy, so much so that she briefly felt unsure of herself. Still, those unnaturally green eyes never left her face. They stared out at her with a wisdom beyond his years from beneath the curtain of his scraggly black hair. He hiccoughed and pointed a finger at her. "Don't think I haven't noticed you staring me down all these years like some obsessive freak-"
"Freak?" Miranda repeated in offense. "That's no way to talk to the woman who raised you."
"Raised me?" This time, it was Karl's turn to repeat her words in offense. "Bullshit. You're not my mother. Thanks for the bread, Mir-ran-der."
He shoved his hands in his pockets and began to walk away again. "You hear voices in your head sometimes, don't you?" She called to him over the hunched shoulders of the passing villagers. She saw his shoulders tense and knew that she had hit her mark, even though his back was turned. "Foreign voices, like those hailing from America. They tell you stories, don't they? Stories about Lone Rangers and dashing heroes. You…can hear radio broadcasts from lands beyond our own, in your head. All this time, you thought that you were crazy…that this 'background chatter' was just the product of an overactive imagination. But that's not true - you, Karl, can tap into foreign airwaves unknowingly."
He had fallen still, listening to her words with shoulders so tense that she feared he might whirl around and grab her by her neck. But still, she continued in a quiet voice that only she and he could hear. "And the random metals that seem to move at your command: nails flying out of the walls in your presence…blades crossing the room and hitting their target when you're upset…lifting Guglielmo's hammer with ease when no one else in your family could."
Finally, he turned around and looked her full in the face. There was horror etched into every line of his dirty face, she could see it from across the way.
"Narke Japonica," she said slowly, enunciating every syllable. "A species of electric ray hailing from the waters of the northwestern Pacific Ocean, local to a place known as Taiwan, and a place known as Japan…it can produce powerful electric shocks at will to stun their prey…it can conduct electricity, Karl, as can you. Your organs are similar to that of the Japanese Sleeper Ray - the Narke Japonica. You can control magnetic fields, and move metal-"
"How the fuck do you know all of this?" Karl asked in a weak voice. "How the fuck do you know-"
"Because when you were nine years old, I took you from your father and implanted a nematode in the back of your skull - a nematode that had been fed with the Black Mold. You gained superior powers because of it - powers that you, up until this point, could only barely control-"
"You lie-" he hissed and she raised her eyebrows.
"Do I? Then look me in my eye and tell me that I'm wrong, son. Tell me that you haven't been able to control metal of your own accord, that your body hasn't attracted metal like a magnet ever since you were young-"
"Stop lying to me, fuck! I'm not one of your damnable experiments, Miranda," he said heatedly with spit flying from between his parched lips.
"But-"
"No! I've seen what happens to the poor souls that you experiment on. They turn into Lycans, or worse-" he gestured in the direction of the docks where Moreau's Clinic stood. "Whatever happened to him."
Of course, she was well aware of Salvatore Moreau's unfortunate transformation. She had never intended for him to become a blathering, mindless monster but his body hadn't taken well to the Cadou. Unfortunate, as his medical knowledge and history as a sailor would have made him an exciting vessel for Eva. She shivered slightly and pulled her arms closer to her body, careful to keep from meeting Karl's eye. There was no doubt in her mind that he'd be able to see right through her attempts at manipulating him with those unsettling green eyes. It was the only form of power that he had over her.
"Salvatore Moreau was too weak to sustain the blessing that I had bestowed upon him," she said as her eyes roved along the faces of the villagers beyond his shoulder. "It was no fault of my own-"
"That man was my friend, you inconsiderate wench."
Miranda gave an exasperated scoff and shook her head. "Just as you have sought out the companionship of the Lycans in the field, you continue to seek the companionship of those within mankind who are beneath you. Karl. Do us both a favor and remove the veil that you have placed over your own eyes. You know that I speak the truth. I was there with you in the beginning, before your father took you away from me - you know this, you've seen this in the memories that you so naively call dreams! You are strong, son, stronger than any man that I have ever met. That is why you haven't turned into a Lycan, that is why you have not suffered in the way that Moreau has. You are a capable and favorable specimen, a pristine vessel for-"
"Specimen?" Karl repeated incredulously. His eyes slid away from her and sought out the wide figure of Mihaela as she rocked her way through the crowd. The two of them held each other's eyes as she passed. His lip curled ever so slightly along his teeth as she gave an indignant sniff before turning away from him and seeking out the company of Ken, who was standing some ways away in the doorway of an old tavern. Both Karl and Miranda watched as Ken held his arms out to her and encircled her in a possessive embrace before dipping her down and placing a hungry kiss on her lips. So Karl hadn't been completely alone in his exile, Miranda realized. The jealousy wafting from him was palpable, or maybe it was just the foul odor of an unwashed body rising off of him.
"And what of that specimen?" Karl asked, tilting his chin in Ken's direction. "Let me guess: you experimented on him, too. What, was his dick not big enough? Were you curious to see if we had more in common than our ugly-ass faces?"
"Karl, stop." She ordered. "You know that I am not like the rest of the villagers. Your vile and weaponized tongue does not frighten me. Come back with me, son, to my place below the ceremony site. Think of me as you would Psalm 23. I will be your shepherd, and you will lack nothing. I will make you lie down in green pastures, lead you beside still waters. I will refresh your soul and guide you along the right paths…even though you walk through the darkest valley, you will fear no evil for you are with me."
Karl had fallen completely still and was staring at her, mesmerized. His pupils were so constricted that they were almost lost in the emerald of his irises. Still, his eyes remained riveted hungrily upon the slow, deliberate movements of her lips as she recited her own version of Psalm 23. Except, she did not refer to the Lord - electing, instead, to speak of herself in His place. Despite his estrangement from his father, Karl's mind still responded automatically to any scripture recited to him as if he was a prisoner to the pages of the bible.
Quietly, Karl's lips began to move in sync with hers.
"I will prepare a table before you," she whispered, entrancing him and drawing him in with the drawn-out echo behind every word. "I will anoint your head with oil, your cup will overflow. Surely my goodness and love will follow you all the days of your life, and you will dwell in the house of Miranda forever. Karl, will you come with me? Will you let me make a home for you beside me…let me lead you back to greatness?"
"Yes," he said, looking lost and confused and wholly unaware of what he was even saying.
"Yes, what?" She asked, testing him, watching his pupils begin to dilate.
"Yes, mother-"
Screaming suddenly erupted all around them. Karl roused himself from his trance and spun around. Miranda couldn't have given any less of a damn about whatever was making the villagers fuss and jump away from the avenue. She growled and struck her fist in her palm as the moment was lost. She had been so, so close to entrapping him in his snare. But then-
X
Karl shook his head and looked around, wondering just where exactly he was and what was making everybody scream. Words were echoing around his head - not the usual radio chatter, but odd and unintelligible fragments of scripture in Miranda's voice. Damn, he had been so close to falling under her spell. He could have kicked himself for it.
He heard her give an uncharacteristically vulgar growl from behind him. But his attention had been suddenly drawn to a horse galloping madly along the avenue. The villagers were quick to move out of its way as the rider steered it recklessly through them. Karl ducked and tossed his hands over his head just as the horse gave a frightened whinny and leaped right over him, close enough for its hooves to split the fabric along the back of his shirt. All fell suddenly quiet as he stood up and glanced behind him in time to see a woman swing her leg over the side of the horse. He barely had time to comprehend what was happening before she fluffed her hair out with her hands, stormed towards him, and grabbed his face. The very breath caught in his throat as she pressed her lips against his and held them there for a long time.
"I've b-been wanting to do that for a looooong t-time, Heisenberg," she whispered as she pulled back. Then, without so much of a warning, she crooked her fist back and punched him in the face hard enough to send him sprawling across the ground. He heard the villagers mutter 'oooh' as her shadow distended across his body. He looked up at her with a dazed smile and blood spilling from his nose as she balled her fists upon the sides of her abdomen and tilted her narrow hips to the sides. Whoever she was, she was dressed in a way that he had never seen a woman dress before. His eyes traveled up her workman's boots, to the snug pants, and the pale yellow button-up. Then his eyes traveled higher, past the narrow lips and arrow nose to the oh-so-familiar milky-gray of her irises and his mouth fell upon in shock.
"Oh shit!" He said as he quickly squirmed around and jumped up. "Marianne! Fucking Marianne Wilder!"
"I always liked t-the way t-that you screamed my name, Karl," she said with a smile upon her lips. "T-though you were always screaming it for the wrong reasons."
"God damn," he said, looking her up and down with relish. Everything about her from the wide-brim hat tilted across her head to the large silver hoops hanging from her ears just screamed American. "God-duh…da-yum. What the hell happened to you?"
"S-spent the past five years scrubbing the dirt from this village from b-beneath my fingernails, that's what. Took my ass back on over to America."
"A-mer-ica," he breathed in awe. He could feel Miranda's eyes searing holes into Marianne's face from over his shoulder. But he couldn't have cared less. All of her attempts to woo him had been effectively annihilated by the return of his closest friend. Though Marianne had built up a reputation as the village whore with a cracked-out head, all who gazed upon her glinting leather boots and high smirk couldn't help but feel impressed. There was an aura and glow about her now that seemed to light the very ground beneath her horse.
Someone cleared their throat from deep within the crowd and the people began to move away as Ken shoved his way through them. He stopped before Marianne with his hands upon his lips as he unabashedly looked her up and down, pausing just long enough to appraise her ass.
"Well, hello sugar," he cooed from behind as her eyes began to slowly rove towards the sky. "Brown sugar, amiright? Figured you'd come crawling back to me eventually…all those years in America spent dreaming about sucking on my balls again, eh? Baby, you know I got a factory now-"
She spun around and snatched him up by the nose. He gave a nasally whine and crumpled to his knees as she applied a steady pressure. A sickening 'crunch' sounded out around the space as she gave her hand a swift yank, breaking his cartilage. Karl couldn't help but laugh as he watched his brother scream and thrash his legs around before her boots. No one moved to help him, and Karl laughed even harder at the sight of his arms flailing about in the snow.
Marianne sucked her teeth and crooked her pinky at him. The sight of her using such a familiar and vulgar gesture filled him with so much elation that he couldn't even drop his smile when she turned back around to glare at him. For the first time in what seemed like a long time, she held his eye. Her expression softened and she looped her finger in his frayed belt loop.
"We have a lot of c-catching up to do," she informed him above the sound of his brother hollering. "Let's g-go somewhere private."
"Yes ma'am," he said beneath his voice. She hopped back up on her horse and gestured for him to take a place behind her. He braced his hands against the saddle and was on the verge of lifting himself when he suddenly felt a soft pressure on his lower back. He looked irritably over his shoulder and found Miranda staring back at him with those cold, colorless eyes. He had completely forgotten about her proposition and everything that she had revealed to him only a few minutes earlier.
"Karl," she said in a voice much unlike her own. She was enraged, and betrayed herself by letting it show. Finally, her holier-than-thou demeanor had given way to something much uglier: desperation. "We had an agreement. You said that you would come back with me, to my place beneath the ceremony si-"
Her eyes suddenly narrowed as he tucked his bottom lip in and crooked his pinky at her. The raunchiness of the gesture was not at all lost on her. "God bless America, amiright, Miranda?" He asked joyfully before Marianne snapped the reins and sent them galloping along the lane.
X
He thought that Marianne was going to fuck his brains out. After all, what else was supposed to be implied by her saying 'let's go somewhere private?'
He felt himself on the verge of bursting by the time that they finally reached the Potter's Field. The feel of the horse ambling between his legs paired with his arms around her small waist had turned him on so much that he was positively panting by the time they reached the mausoleum that he called home. Getting off of the horse had proven difficult, but somehow he managed to do it. He would have reached out, held her down, and fucked her senseless in the snow had he not felt so weakened by a desperate sense of arousal. But then, before he had even had time to react, she had looped a heavy rope around his wrists and bound him to a low-hanging tree branch.
He had stood there with his arms outstretched above him, shuffling around on his tippy toes as she stomped around the cemetery in search of something. She barely cast the Lycans a glance as she wound her way around them, occasionally boxing them in the nose when they got too close.
"Oh-ho-ho," he had said at one point as she dragged a large bucket through the snow. "Is this how you American girls like it? I heard about it, you know, in the magazines. You ladies like to tie your men up before fuckin' 'em, huh?"
She had said nothing to this, instead choosing to fill the bucket with snow before lighting a fire beneath it. He found her silence jarring, but chose not to question it - that is, until he saw her retrieve a bar of soap and a few rags from one of the many pouches hanging from the horse saddle. He had screamed bloody murder as she cut his clothes off strip by strip, leaving him naked and shivering in the icy wind. Without hesitation or a word of human sympathy to spare, she had riled the water into a soapy lather and wrung the rags between her hands.
"I could s-smell you from m-miles away," she had said while swiping the rag roughly across his twisted face. "Still got dirt on my tongue from kissing you. Hold still, cunt!"
He had done no such thing. Luckily, there were only Lycans around to witness his rather invasive and non-consensual bathing. She hadn't held back - she had scrubbed every inch and crevice of him until he was reddened and sore. It was only when his skin was raw and the water in the bucket had turned black did she finally untie him and march him over to the stairs of the mausoleum. It was there that she had continued to torture him - this time retrieving a pair of shearing scissors from her bags and setting to work ridding him of the mats and tangles in his waist-length hair. He had sat there naked beneath an itchy wool blanket taken from her horse's back, cursing her beneath his breath as pieces of his hair tumbled across his face and ears. She hadn't said anything for the entire time, aside from the occasional 'be fucking still' or sailor-man's curse. Not even his beard was spared as she knelt before him and made quick work of the oily whiskers curling along his jaw. By the time that she was done, he could feel the coldness breezing past his naked and hairless skin, and he wondered just what the hell had been done to him.
The whole process had taken hours, judging by the slow trajectory of the moon through the star-misted sky. Now, she sat upon the lid of a tomb smoking something that was not tobacco as she watched him adjust the sleeves of his new shirt. Along with her meticulously selected torture items - soap, shearing scissors, and cologne - she had brought along a bundle of men's clothing with the tags still hanging off of the collars. Years spent in unraveling and dingy rags cast off from his brother had made him forget that special feeling of pulling on heavily-starched fabrics. Now, he held the material to his nose and sniffed it gratefully. The oil that she had massaged into his limbs after his traumatizing bath had already melted into his clothes, making his skin felt so silky as it shifted beneath the cotton.
"Well?" She asked before giving in to a fit of coughing. The odd sweetness of the smoke lifting from between her fingers pricked at his nose.
"Is this what the men out in America wear?" He asked as he turned this way and that, admiring his reflection in the frosted window glass. The outfit that she had chosen for him was attractive, and had settled along his body like a second skin: a beige shirt buttoned up along a pale green undershirt, brown trousers held up by a thick belt, heavy boots with a matching pair of black gloves, and a dark green leather jacket that stopped well below his knees. He couldn't even begin to imagine how much an ensemble such as the one that he was now wearing would cost out there in the land of the free. "I think I looked better in my rags."
She shook her head and coughed again. The clothing that she had stripped off of him with her knife had been promptly burnt and then cast out, still smoldering, into the snow. "You let your exile strip you of your humanity," she said before sucking a stream of smoke back into her mouth. "You let them strip you of your humanity. Just because you were cast out like a dog doesn't mean that you had to live like a dog. You're worth more than that."
"Said by the woman who punched me in the face after five years of not seeing me," he quickly pointed out. "Besides, I had no choice! I had nothing left to my name! They took everything from me, Marianne: my fucking factory, my fucking livelihood….what the hell was I supposed to do?"
"Slit their throats in the middle of the night," she said simply before popping a smoke ring from between her pursed lips. "Every single one of them, starting with your bastard brother. What's it going to take for you to realize that you've got untapped potential within you? I've known it ever since we were kids. How else do you think you were able to lift that?" She tilted her chin towards the hammer leaning in the corner. She hadn't seemed the least bit surprised when he had relayed to her his story of lifting it without even touching it, and this had admittedly irked his sense of showman's pride.
"You sound exactly like-"
"The withering cunt, Miranda? I guess by now you know all about what she did to you and your brother."
"How the hell did you know about that?" He asked in surprise and she smiled at the smoldering cigar between her fingers.
"You weren't my only friend in the village," she said as she slid her legs off of the tomb and stood up. He felt himself melt into her touch as she adjusted his collar and then massaged her fingers along his neck. His arms slunk around her waist of their own accord as she eyed the scars all along his face, her expression betraying neither sympathy nor alarm. Her lack of a reaction was comforting to him and he squeezed her tighter. "I've been in touch with someone in the village all these years…asked him to keep tabs on you for me. The man has eyes everywhere and a…very big presence." She chuckled at something he didn't quite understand, then twisted around in his arms to retrieve something from atop the tomb. "You'll never go without again, Karl. I can promise you that. I've set up monthly shipments between the Duke and my friends out in America: basic things for you like clothes, food, and news. Even when I leave again - and, Karl, I will leave, you will have everything that you need. Say something," she said, holding a small metallic box to his mouth.
"What?" He said stupidly and she clicked a button on the box.
"What?" Came his very voice from the box and he jumped back in alarm.
"What the hell is that?" He asked suspiciously and she clicked a button again.
"What the hell is that?" Came his voice again and she smiled.
"It's a recorder," she said as she slipped the box into his pocket. "Weird thing about humans is that we can hear our voice for our entire life and still not know what it sounds like. Everybody says that you have Lucifer's tongue, and I wanted you to be able to hear it for yourself…just so that you know it's not a bad thing." She wrapped her arms around his neck and gazed fearlessly into his eyes. For the first time, he noticed how pretty she was in a very basic, run-of-the-mill way. Her unblemished brown skin and doe-like eyes were somehow both enchanting and yet easy to forget.
"You're an idiot," she said breathily as she ran the tip of her nose along his neck, causing little bumps to erupt along his skin. "Five years ago, I spent several hours busting my ass in the backrooms of a tavern just to raise enough money to send you to America. And you remember what you told me?"
"'I fucked Mihaela.'"
"'I fucked Mihaeal,'" she said at the same time and then gave a scornful laugh. "That night, I could smell the sardine-pussy sweat on you. I still do, in fact. You two been busy out here in the Potter's Field?"
"It's not like that," he said quickly, though attempting to protect her feelings made him feel like a weakling. "I hate that bitch."
"Yeah, you do. Open your mouth," she said as she shifted beneath his arms. The cramped space of the mausoleum was quickly heating up, causing sweat to build up around his armpits. She retrieved a small baggie from beneath her shirt, popped it open, and swiped her finger around the white powder inside. He did as he was told and she slid the white power along his tongue. She clasped the baggie closed and pocketed it as he ran the metallic bitterness of the power along the roof of his mouth. "Let me tell you something," she said as she wound her arms around his neck again. "A woman who hates you won't let you shove your manhood into the most vulnerable part of her body for five years straight. I don't doubt that Mihaela started to see in you what I saw from the very beginning."
"I-"
He raised his eyebrows and blinked quickly before looking around in wonder. It felt as if something in his mind had snapped, and his vision had clarified with an odd intensity. A heady sense of euphoria settled upon him as he gazed at the brightened colors within the room. Whatever was in the white powder had done something to him, something that he had no intention of coming back from. The pain of the injustices that had been inflicted on him for so many years suddenly began to fade away, and he felt as if everything in his life was a thinly-veiled blessing.
"If Miranda's god is black, then mine is white," Marianne said quietly, watching him succumb joyously to the effects of the cocaine. There was so much irony in her words that he couldn't help but brace his hand upon his sweaty forehead and laugh uproariously. He felt bigger than himself as if his very soul was pushing out against the boundaries of his skin. He thrust his hand out and the hammer came flying to him with an unearthly speed.
"Nowhere in the pay-jess of history can one find a greater champion of justice," he said in a voice that he couldn't hear as he wriggled out from beneath her arms and swung his hammer around. He leaped onto the lid of the tomb and held his arms aloft, feeling within himself greatness that had no end. He imagined that this was what it was like to be his brother: boundless, free, and godly.
Never before had he felt such a seductive power.
"Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear! From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!" He paused and gasped. "A cybernetic surgical enhancement…a reactor core in the place of a reanimated heart….why didn't think of it before!?"
He leaped off of the tomb and quickly shuffled through the papers sitting in stacks upon the mausoleum floor. Upon each page lay a blueprint drawn in his own hand of mechanical/anatomical experimentations conjured up by his mind. He tossed the papers aside with no discretion, searching for the right one, as she sighed and leaned back against a wall.
"You never bothered to ask why I came back," she said as if to herself as he mumbled beneath his breath. "I was hoping to get a chance to tell you…"
"...could use headgear to monitor and control brainwaves, and neural activity," he said as he drew his finger along a crumpled page bearing the image of a man fitted with layers of scrap metal.
"I couldn't stop thinking about you for five years," she continued quietly. "Out there, in America, I met men from all walks of life. But they all had one thing in common: an ability to see beyond the wars waging through beyond their homes, and a desire to share a brotherhood of liquor, pussy, and jazz."
"...apparatuses fused onto the face for those requiring a constant airflow to breathe…" he continued to mutter, completely unaware of her as he wrote the words Ein, Zwei, Jet, Panzer, and Sturm across the top of the page. She sighed behind him.
"And I thought to myself, 'this is where Karl belongs: with the sinners and vice players of the free world.' Karl."
"...a Soldat army!"
"Karl. Look at me. Now."
Realizing that she was still, in fact, there he whirled around and stared at her in surprise. She had shed every layer of clothing and was standing before him naked as the day she was born. His breath came out in a low whistle as he looked her up and down, taking in every inch of her tiny, beautiful body. She closed her eyes as she unclasped the earrings from her ears and tossed them onto the floor. "But more than that, I guess, I couldn't stop thinking about coming back…just to try you out, like I had always wanted to."
"Sorry…" he said with some difficulty, watching hungrily as she licked her fingers and then dipped her hand between her legs. "W-w-what were we talking about?"
"You, fucking me on the floor."
He didn't have to be asked twice.
He took his time with her that night. It wasn't as if he had a choice. She took a swift and impressive charge of everything: guiding him, ordering him, coming and withdrawing in turns as the room began to reak so heavily of sweat that it was overpowering. In her time spent fucking American diplomats, she must have learned a lot. Sex with her was nothing like sex with Mihaela. Sex with Mihaela had been angry, hateful, and full of murderous intent. He couldn't count the many times that he had put his hands around Mihaela's neck and squeezed until her eyes bulged while pounding the very life out of her. Though Marianne was small - small enough for him to cover her breasts with his hands - she was adamant and just as hungry for him as he was for her. Many years later, she would tell him that it was the worst sex of her life.
"Come with me," she had said at some point when he had taken the upper ground. He had looked down at her struggling to breathe with the weight of his forearm pressed against her chest.
"Don't mind if I do," he had said back, rather salaciously, and she had shaken her head in response.
"No," she had said with difficulty. "Come with me…back to America. There's room enough for you there, not in this village."
"What?" He had taunted. "You want me to go back with you so we can play mommy and daddy on the shag carpet of some lavish American townhouse, in front of a pretty fireplace and some indoor fountain?"
"You ain't the only big boy in my life, Karl," she had said before grabbing his chin and giving it a firm shake. "Tell me you wanna come, though, and I can make it so."
The way that she pulled herself in tight around him then had been enough to make him howl, loud and long enough to wake every man and woman in the whole damn village.