Monsters of the Same Sort
"I beg your pardon?" the doctor asked with incredulity, staring down at the Kearns who still sat astride the fetid, emaciated woman, "Mrs. Kearns?"
At the sound of his voice she was spurred back into motion, punching Kearns in the mouth and twisting her hips, pulling her knee through the gap she created between herself and her husband. She lashed out with her freed leg, hitting Kearns in the stomach and pressing him back.
Looking half annoyed and half entertained Kearns grabbed her ankle and yanked her back. Pressing his superior weight down on one of her shoulders he slammed her back to the dirt, "Would you be so kind as to stop trying to kill us, darling?"
She gripped his arm desperately, "Let me have Warthrop at least, Jack. I have been waiting." Her voice was hungry and harsh.
Kearns gave her a mockingly sympathetic pout, "As difficult as it is for me not to indulge your bloodthirst, behind me stands Pellinore Warthrop, sweetling, a bit too young to be a the object of your vengeance."
Again, her struggling stopped, "His boy?"
"Quite," Kearns replied, "Now is that enough to keep you civilized?"
She shrugged, but did not give a definite reply.
Rather than press her, he got off of her and pulled her, rather roughly, to her feet. She stood awkwardly, favoring her left leg. Disconcertingly, she seemed even more horrific when she wasn't assaulting them. Her eyes shone in her sunken face, undeniably human. The halting of aggression highlighting the horror of the blood that streaked her hands and face.
Doctor Warthrop seemed to not be able to decide if he ought to be considering her with revulsion or professional interest. "How are you down here, woman?"
Kearns clicked his tongue with mock reproach, "Woman? You might call her Mrs. Kearns, Pellinore."
She ran her tongue over her cracked, bloody lips and didn't answer the doctor. Instead, she leaned down and picked up her gruesome weapon, slinging it over her shoulder and addressing her husband, "You came to kill the beasts then, Jacky?"
"We did indeed, my Milly, we thought any bait for them was long since devoured."
Warthrop's professional interest was clearly winning out, "How long have you been down here, Mrs. Kearns," he said, pausing slightly over the name, "Did you come of your own accord to hunt the anthropophagi?"
She spit at his feet, "Your whoremonger father dropped me in here as dessert," she slung.
Warthrop stiffened and looked away from her, "That cannot be correct. It has been more than ten years since he would have last delivered them any...sustenance. What would you have lived on?"
She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, brushing away some of the blood, "Poppies, mostly."
A low growl emanated from Kearns' throat and he ran a tongue over his teeth, "Malachi, you may very well want to take a closer look at that bone pit."
Malachi glanced back at the bone pit in confusion.
Kearns advanced on her, pulling her at him with one hand on her hip, "My dear, did you survive being slaughtered in a den of anthropophagi by slaughtering them yourself and gorging on them?"
She flashed him a feral smile, "I'm offended you have to ask, Jack, do you know me not at all?"
Regardless of the bloodied mouth and broken nose she had given him and her own filthy and not uninjured face, Jack wrenched her to him, kissing her viciously.
"Oh good lord, John," Warthrop said, turning away and stepping back.
Kearns jerked back, hand touching his lips and coming back bloody, "You bit me, you devil!"
She laughed, "There is a hunt to be had, Jacky, lets get on with it!"
Malachi offered in a hesitant voice, "Perhaps we ought to...bring the lady out of the pit and then resume the hunt."
Mr. and Mrs. Kearns turned to look at the boy with an incredulity that made him wilt. She took a menacing step toward him.
Warthrop put up his hand to stop the advancing woman, "She knows where the nest is, Malachi and seems to have some ability to hunt the beasts. It is in our best interests to keep her with us."
"Well," Kearns said rubbing his hands together, "You heard the good doctor, lead on, Milly."
"If it makes a distinction," Warthrop added before she led them off, "We have taken care of most of them. Only the young remain, and the matriarch."
"Is that what the commotion was?" She asked, leaping her pit of human punji sticks, "A greeting party for my darling Jack?"
Kearns followed her across, a live smile on his face, "Greeting party indeed, darling, and greet them I did."
She stalked forward, not waiting for Warthrop and Malachi to scramble over the pit. Unlike Kearns they did not jump but crawled into it and scrambled around the sharpened bones.
When she walked it was with a slight limp on her left side that turned her lope into a rolling sort of gate.
Taking note of it, Kearns crooned, "Break your leg in the fall, dearest?"
"Ankle," she said back, "Did you say Daddy Warthrop was alive?"
"No," Pellinore answered, "He died ten years ago."
"Pity," she murmured, "Turn out that flare, would you, Jack?"
"And go into the fight blind?" Warthrop protested.
Kearns shot him a look of boyish excitement, "I suppose she does know best." And he extinguished his flare, leaving them in total darkness.
She led them down the steeply descending tunnel, her footsteps nearly lost in the gloom, she moved with more certainty than any of the others, nearly entirely silent. By the end of the first minute Warthrop and Malachi were following Kearns with only the vague hope that he still knew where she was.
Kearns threw out a hand to stop Warthrop, who halted Malachi in turn.
She spoke from out of the dark in a breathy whisper, "I took us off their main passageway, we're above them, the ground is thin just ahead, a few good jabs and it will fall through on their heads. We'll knock it through and drop down a flare, it'll blind them."
"Are we at a safe height?" Warthrop hissed back.
"The kids won't be able to get you up here, doc, but Big Girl will make the jump no problem. Shoot her first, Jack, use all your bullets if you have to. I can handle the pups."
"You?" Warthrop asked, "You're going down there among them? That is too dangerous, we will shoot them from up here."
"I changed my mind, Jacky," she said in a hiss, "Save a bullet and shoot the doctor when we're finished."
Without further delay Kearns lit another flare, covering the narrow passage in reddish light. The woman hefted her clawed weapon and brought it down hard on the dirt in front of them. Once. Twice. Thrice. The dirt fell away in a cloud and Kearns tossed the flare down the hole.
They could see the beasts beneath them, leaping back from the light.
The woman tapped her weapon against a rock that protruded from the side of the hole.
click. click. click.
Mrs. Kearns' 'Big Girl' was vast, eight feet tall and thick with shimmering muscle. That one eye gouged from its socket. At the sound of the clicking she seized the youth closest to her and flung him back behind her, throwing out her arms and releasing one of their horrific screeches.
The motion left her chest exposed and Kearns did not waste the opportunity. The report of his rifle exploded in the small chamber. The bullet caught the big female in the gaping maw and blood splattered across her teeth. She leapt toward them and Kearns shot again, knocking her back.
The little ones scurried around her in fits of panic, howling and mewling.
"Keep her off me, will you, Jacky?" She said and leapt down into the pit.
Warthrop and Malachi took positions alongside Kearns, firing down into the hole.
Kearns, who laying next to Malachi whispered roguishly into his ear, "If you shoot my wife I'll put a bullet between your eyes."
The combined force of three rifles against a single anthropophagi was enough to keep it back, the beast slowly succumbing to its myriad wounds. Even a big thing like her was not immune to that much lead.
Mrs. Kearns had landed among the young and swept them back with her homemade weapon. Still, even with the matriarch kept out of her hair she was beset on all sides. Frightened of her and her weapon they might be, but without a good avenue for escape even the young would not die easy.
She swung her weapon mightily, catching one on the edge of its mouth, tearing back the skin in a red slash. Its fellow leapt at her from the side and she turned in time to meet it head on so it knocked her down with her face to it, rather than her side. It was stronger than her, grappling at her with its wicked claws.
Above her, Kearns turned his rifle from the felled female and shot again. The youth collapsed dead on top of her and she rolled from under it, bringing her weapon back to bear. The tussle had left bloody slashes in her wrists where it had held her that glittered wetly in the flare light.
Rather than dismay she seemed to be reinvigorated by the brush with death, launching herself amongst them again with reckless abandon. The other two above her pulled back, unable to find a clear shot at the beasts. Kearns had no such trouble, seeming to enjoy shooting right over her head or beside her shoulder.
"Kearns," Warthrop warned, "You'll shoot her. There is no need to aim so close. What are you doing?"
Kearns smiled, his gaze not shifting from its place along the sights of his rifle, "Dearest Pellinore, I am only flirting! You act as if I have not done this before."
"You made a habit of taking her on hunts?"
Kearns chuckled softly and shot again, knocking another creature off of her, "You make it sound as if she didn't want to come."
One of the larger beasts pelted at her and she dodged. As she bent to twist away from it's claws she stumbled, the stress she had put on her weakened ankle making her dip. One shoulder going low, the other altogether too high.
A shot rang out and she shouted, dropping to one knee. Blood course from her shoulder where Kearns' bullet had hit her.
"Devil take you, John!" She screeched, taking her weapon in her other hand to driving it deep into the belly of the oncoming anthropophagi.
She scrambled back, finding a wall to press her back against and waving the claw weapon threateningly. She was losing blood quickly from the shoulder wound. With her out of the way, the other two above took aim again, finishing off the last few of the monsters.
Kearns, seemingly unconcerned about shooting his wife, perked up as the last of them fell and said into the pit, "That seems to be all of them, sweetling, do you mind giving them a quick count?"
"Go to hell, John Ulysses, you shot me!"
"I hardly grazed you, come on now, be quick!"
She pushed herself off of the wall, holding her arm tightly to her chest. She did a brief circuit of the room, stopping sometimes and swaying.
Before she had finished her count Warthrop threw down a rope, "Tie yourself to that, we will haul you up."
She retreated back to the rope and tied it around herself in a harness, "Seven pups, four a little older, and the Big Girl, I think." Halfway back to the ledge she slumped in her harness, blood dripping the long way down to the ground beneath.
A half moment of concern crossed Kearns' face and he reached down as soon as she was close enough, pulling her up. She blinked hazily at him, "Get me out of this hole, will you, Jacky?"
Warthrop seized Kearns by the shoulder, "Move, John, we need to bandage her shoulder. She is losing too much blood."
Kearns did not move, but laid her on the ground and ripped away the remaining rags that hung about her shoulder. "It isn't such a bad would, Pellinore!" he said, tearing off a strip of her shirt to bind it.
Warthrop scowled above him, "I am sure she is also dehydrated and malnourished. I did tell you that you would shoot her, Kearns."
Improvised and remarkably dirty bandage in place, Kearns stood and slung her over his shoulder, "Perhaps I ought to have let her pummel you to death, Pellinore," he said with a smile. "It isn't as though she hasn't shot me before." Kearns pushed passed them flare in one hand, the other keeping Mrs. Kearns steadily on his shoulder.
He walked quickly up the passageway, Warthrop and Malachi hurrying to keep up. It took them half the time to return to the entrance at the sarcophagus than it had to reach their destination.
Immediately upon returning to the feeding pit, Kearns tugged at the dangling rope and said, "Still up there, my dear constable?"
Will Henry's face appeared in the circle of light high above them, "Doctor? Are you alright, sir?"
The doctor looked up, "It's done, Will Henry, take us up. We have a casualty. Snap to, Will Henry!"
There was a scrambling above them and Kearns tossed the flare to Warthrop, tethering himself to the rope as Mrs. Kearns had done, dropping her from his shoulder into his arms.
The two of them were pulled up slowly, momentarily blocking the light as they were pulled up through the shaft.
Malachi and Warthrop were taken up soon afterward.
In the cool breeze and light rain outside the sarcophagus, the woman was perking up, blinking. A befuddled smile crept over her face and she licked the rain off her lips.
"Who- who is that?" The constable stammered, "He was down there?"
Kearns glowered up at him, "She, my sweet constable. And yes, she was, a remarkably hardy victim of the late Alistair Warthrop. Also, as fate would have it, my wife."
The constable recoiled, whether from the statement or the smell of her, "You wife? Someone consented to marry you?"
He winked at the constable, "She readily agreed in fact." He turned back to Mrs. Kearns, her face and body now even more blood and dirt covered than when she first attacked them, "Faring alright, darling?"
She bared her teeth at him without energy, "Only a few small complaints, Johnny."
He clucked his tongue at her, "If you're going to keep going on about that tiniest of bullet wounds I won't hear it, Romelda."
He stood, hefting her in his arms.
She retorted but it was belabored and broken by short breaths, "Will you endure a remark that after twelve years of waiting in a hellpit, my dashing husband comes to my rescue and I must suffer it being a skinny academic who spends the entire adventure half dressed?"
Kearns tossed his head back and laughed. Warthrop, whose shirt had been donated as an impromptu bandage to Kearns' victim at the slaughter ring blushed darkly.
"We'll be returning to Harrington Lane for the evening, Pellinore," Kearns announced with a wink.
Warthrop's mouth twisted into a sneer, "You believe I will give you hospitality after you threw that woman to her death?"
Kearns' eyes twinkled, "Your father uses my wife to feed his own personal nest of poppies and you cannot even give us a night's rest?"
Warthrop relented, "One night, Kearns and only for her sake."
Kearns turned to walk away, bearing her in his arms. Over his shoulder he said, "Straighten it out with the constable will you, Pellinore?"
XXXXX
Returned to the room he had used at Harrington Lane, Kearns had dragged in a large metal basin and filled it with water while the doctor remained away.
"Let's get you cleaned up, sweetling," he crooned at Romelda Kearns.
She was sipping water from a cup Kearns had pilfered from downstairs. The shoulder wound really was only a flesh wound and with a little water she was coming to nicely.
She rolled to her feet, pulling off the rags she had been clothed in. Uncovered she looked much worse, coated with dirt and grime. With high pleasure she immersed herself in the bath, ignoring how the warm water stung at her wounds. She scrubbed at her skin and left the water nearly viscous with mud.
It took three fresh tubs before all the filth was stricken from her body, and a thorough brushing of her teeth. Stripped of the grime that had coated every inch of her skin, the cleanliness gave her a new cast of wickedness.
Her body was emaciated but lean, muscles cut with hard use although her body was undernourished. Her skin was brightly pale, nearly the cast of the anthropophagi. Her breasts were so reduced she looked nearly boyish. Her skin was crisscrossed with scars and cuts, not to mention the still bleeding gunshot wound. She inspected the shot. It sliced open the flesh of her upper arm, not a terrible wound.
"Sit, Milly," Kearns instructed. When she did he began dressing her wounds in real bandage, carefully winding the bandage roll around her bleeding shoulder.
She tipped her head back and smiled at Kearns.
He tied off the bandage, "I had thought you dead."
"Marry someone else in my absence?" She asked.
He snorted, "What the devil would I do with someone else?" He asked.
She shrugged, touching her fresh bandage, "Use them as bait?"
This made him laugh."I'll be back directly, sweetling," He said, "I must relieve good Pellinore of a final tool for your rehabilitation."
She watched him leave, "Bring food too, Jack, for God's sake."
The water cooling on her bare skin made her shiver. She got up and rifled through the bag Kearns had left at the foot of the bed. She pulled out a spare set of his clothes and put them on. Nowhere near the six feet of her husband, she had to cuff the pants and sleeves. His pants nearly fell off of her skinny hips but she belted them as best she could. She collapsed into the bed, the prospect of sleep unimpeded by monsters making her smile.
She was asleep by the time Kearns got back, curled up slightly, his revolver held tightly in her grasp.
Kearns didn't come all the way into the room, lingering behind the door jamb, "Sleeping already, dearest?"
She flew up, leveling the gun at him. She held it steady for a moment, nostrils flared and eyes wide, then lowered it, putting it down on the nightstand. Only when it was out of her grip did Kearns fully entered the room, closing the door after him.
"You were gone a long time, Jack," she said.
"Dear Doctor Warthrop doesn't keep food in the house, I had to track some down for you."
She gave the air an animalistic sniff, "The food, Jack."
"We'll get to that," he said, "One more thing first." She reached out for the sack of food but he snatched it away, "Keep drinking your water for a moment. Sit on the floor."
She sulked but slid onto the floor and let him sit behind her on the bed, "Hurry with whatever you're doing Jack, I haven't eaten in awhile."
He flicked out the straight razor he had taken from Warthrop's bathroom and began taking off the clumps of dark hair her rough job with her claw weapon had left behind. He sheared off the ragged tufts of hair until her scalp was nearly bare, "Now, at least, it is even. Why ever did you try to cut it?"
"It kept getting all matted with blood," she said, "And it was one fewer thing for the poppies to grab. If you're done, I'll have some of that food."
"Not much," he advised, "I won't have you being sick all over my things. You look a boy in my trousers, by the way."
She devoured the food he allowed her with her hands, sparing not a moment for propriety, she grinned wolfishly around a mouthful. She swallowed and said, "Remind you of school?"
He scoffed, "If you didn't want me entertaining myself you should have been around."
She laughed then her eyes lit up, "Wait, Jacky, is Doctor Warthrop the Pretty Pellinore you wrote me about?"
"The very same!" Kearns exclaimed, "Less pretty now, much too brooding."
"Pouty Pellinore then," she amended, "Is that why you're here?"
He tweaked her ear, "No, we were hunting a den of anthropophagi, surely you recall them."
She shrugged, "Thought it might be a happy coincidence."
Finished with her food, he hauled her up alongside him on the bed, she laid herself out along his side, dropping her head on his chest. He moved his hand to her scalp to toy with her hair and scoffed when he remembered it was sheared off, "Why have I never met that Russian you spent your time with while I was away at school?"
"He's dead, Jack, died before I came back to Cambridge."
"Was he a hunter?"
"Mmm," she murmured in lieu of ascent.
"Died in the line of duty?" He asked, private humor coloring his voice.
She laughed softly into his chest, "I needed something to distract the Bukavac while I shot it."
XXXXX
Mrs. Kearns being in no condition for travel and Pellinore stricken with guilt over his father's brutality, allowed them not a single night, but three weeks of hospitality in Harrington Lane.
Kearns' maddening jibes had been toned down considerably with the addition of his wife, who stole most of his attention and who resisted his teasing far better than Warthrop.
By the third week her shoulder was healing nicely and she spent considerable blocks of time outside of her and Kearns' spare room, although she had not yet ventured farther than their back yard, and that only with Kearns keeping a close eyes. She was still prone to lashing out in violence, having nearly taken Warthrop's eye when he denied her carrying a knife around with her in his home. He had claimed concern over the welfare of little Will Henry, but so far the boy seemed immune to her bouts of aggression.
She had quite taken to the boy, who kept her well fed with his cooking. Under his care her form was filling out nicely for the short time that they had been there. It had been little Will, not Kearns who had gotten her a salve for her wounds and a cap for her bare head when she went out of doors. Will, of course, had not been present for her attempt on Warthrop's life, and he seemed to hold only empathy for her plight rather than the uncertainty and disdain Warthrop felt for her.
On the twentieth day of their stay she sat at the kitchen table, still wearing her husband's clothes, ladling chowder into her mouth. Will Henry sat across from her, also eating.
She tilted the bowl back, drinking the rest of the chowder down in one. When she put down the bowl she said, "You're a good cook, Will," she said.
"Thank you, ma'am."
"Jack says you killed an anthropophagus," she said, switching tact, "All on your own, with naught but a knife."
"Yes. A young one though."
She grinned, an aspect of her that remained feral regardless of her filling out cheeks that softened her appearance. "You are a young one too, though, so it seems fair."
"Was it really you that broke Dr. Kearns' nose?"
She laughed, "Yes, wasn't the first time."
He looked nearly impressed at this but stayed silent for a long time. She rose and ladled more chowder into her bowl, without asking him, she refilled his as well.
Uncertainly he said, "The doctor...the doctor says you tried to kill him in the tunnels."
She nodded, "Thought he was his father who threw be down there. I've got nothing against him."
He toyed with the chowder in his bowl then ventured, sounding unsure of himself, "Most….most women I've encountered are quite taken with him...with the doctor I mean."
She laughed, a hyena's cackle, "Most women aren't married to John Kearns."
Misunderstanding her meaning he bit at his lip and ventured further, "I know you were…away for many years and I don't know what Dr. Kearns was like before but I wish you to know… I don't think he is a good man."
She leaned back in her chair and carded her fingers through the traces of hair growing back on her scalp, "You're sweet for giving me the warning, but I know what sort of man Jack is, Will Henry."
Again, he remained silent for awhile, the asked, "Can I ask you a question?" He was looking at her what bordered on fascination.
"Sure," she said, "Ask away, little hunter."
"When did you marry him?"
She laughed, "Is that all? When I was fifteen."
He looked startled, "That is so young. Malachi is fifteen." He paused then asked, "And him? How old was he, I mean?"
"Jack was sixteen," she gave him a grin filled with affection, "Why are you so curious? Making sure I am not taken in by the heartless beast to whom I am bound?"
Will looked startled that she referred to him as such but made no comment about it. It was clear he was formulating more questions, so she waited patiently, grinning at the boy.
"The doctor knew Kearns in school. How did he not know you?"
She shrugged, "I wasn't interested in school and Jack was busy with his studies, so I headed up to Russia to hunt Bukavacs. I guess Jack didn't mention me." She seemed to to mind that in four years of school with Pellinore, she had not been mentioned even once.
"You went to Russia on your own?"
She laughed, "Sure, it was the perfect arrangement really, anyway, Jack didn't want to go."
"Why not?"
"He hates the cold. So he went to his fancy school with Warthrop and I hunted monsters in the ice."
"How many years?"
"Four, I left I was eighteen, he was nineteen, just starting school. Came back when I was twenty two."
Will Henry gave her a look plagued with empathy, "And how old were you...when…"
She bared her teeth in another grin, "When your doctor's father plucked me off the streets of Boston? Twenty five."
He furrowed his little brow, "Then you can only have been with Dr. Kearns nine years all together, starting when you were only fifteen."
Her voice softened, "Will Henry, are you still trying to convince me that I have no idea the monster I married?"
His next words came out in a rush, "He used a live woman as bait for the anthropophagi."
She shrugged, "Of course he did, that's how you bait anthropophagi."
His eyes widened, "That does not surprise you?"
"John and I share a particular bond, Will. And a private bond."
Will took the cue and left off his questioning.
XXXXX
In the evening, retired to their borrowed room, Romelda Kearns reclined in a chair in the corner, trouser clad legs splayed in front of her, twirling her husband's knife in her fingers.
The door opened and Jack came in, carrying a canvas bag with him, "I've got a treat for you, pet," he said, drawing a plump peach from the bag and showing it to her. He sat on the edge of the bed and removed his boots.
She looked at the bag with hungry eyes, "I have not had fruit since before my captivity."
"I do remember that you have a particular proclivity for peaches," he said softly, eyes twinkling at her, "Bring me my knife, will you, Milly?"
She rose like a cat and approached him, spinning the knife so that she could hand it to him handle first. Then she shoved him lightly in the chest.
He took the cue and shifted back until he could recline against the headboard, pulling her down with him so she was tucked against his side.
He began cutting into a peach, carving out a thick slice and handing it to her. She took it in her fingers and devoured it, "Have you gotten softer in my time away, Johnny," she whispered to him, "I have never known you to be so nurturing."
He tapped her on the nose with the very tip of his blade, "It comes with a price, sweetling."
She reached out for his next piece of peach but he flicked it out of her reach. She ran her tongue over her lips and said, "Name it, Jacky."
A low growl crept into his voice, "You'll tell me what you ate down there."
"As I said," she answered with a teasing lilt in her voice, "I ate the anthropophagi."
He held out the slice of peach for her but, rather than taking it herself, she took his hand by the wrist and led it to her lips, eating the fruit from his fingers.
His voice dropped in timbre, "Then perhaps you'll tell me why you were hunting us."
Her lips lingered over his fingers, gathering the last of the peaches' juice. She hummed in appreciation.
"Well," she said, licking the sweetness from her teeth, "You do have considerably fewer teeth to worry about than a poppy."
Kearns grinned and cut her another strip of fruit, in a low voice, soft as velvet, he asked, "How many?"
Her teeth flashed as she devoured the slice of fruit, gripping his wrist and nipping at his fingers as she did. He shivered.
She took her time swallowing the fruit, letting its sweetness linger in her mouth, "Thirty six."
A shudder ran the length of Kearns' body, he pressed on in a darkly hushed voice, "Did you scavenge them after the poppies had their fill or did you kill them yourself?"
She raised her eyebrow, "This is a reciprocal arrangement, John," she whispered back.
He breathed roughly through his nose in lieu of a laugh and offered her another piece of fruit, "You will be sick if you eat too much, you are still recovering."
"Then your curiosity will await my constitution," she replied, tilting the fruit passed her lips. Again, she held his fingers between her lips, sharp teeth scraping. He leaned toward her, crowding over her.
When she didn't speak immediately he growled, "Reciprocal arrangement, remember, darling?"
"Do you need me to tell you that I didn't carve femurs into punji sticks especially for you?"
His voice came in a whispering growl, "Say it."
She drew her lips back and revealed her teeth, "The first few I scavenged, while my ankle was healing. After that, I did it, Jack. I let them into traps and slit their throats. I dragged them into high tunnels where I couldn't be followed and I devoured them. I drank their blood and ate their flesh."
He closed his eyes and reveled in her words, "Tell me of the taste."
She reached up and stroked back a fallen lock of his elegant blonde hair, twirling her it in her fingers, "Don't you remember, Jacky?"
His eyes open and blazed at her as though illuminated by their own light, "I want you to tell me."
"I thought I had rid myself of wanting it, Jack," she said, touching his face, gently scraping her nails on the blonde stubble that lingered there. She had dropped her voice to a whisper, "But it came back as soon as I heard one of them quivering in the dark. I could not help but sink my teeth into their throat. Like salt and copper it tasted, Jacky, and nearly sweet."
"I must restrain my impulses every time I smell it," Kearns said, matching her gesture and tilting her face up toward his, "And I have not tasted it since I was sixteen at sea, on that boat with you."
Her fingers trailed across his lips, lingering over the place she had bitten him in the tunnels. The wound was healed now, it had not been deep.
Remembering the assault Kearns' lips spread into a smile under her fingers, he whispered, her fingers on his lips, "Do it again."
"Do what again?" she teased.
The tiniest furrows appeared in his brow, "Must I spell it out for you?"
She grinned lazily, "I want you to say it."
He swallowed and drew her close to him, his arm wrapping around her waist and bringing her body flush with his. His nose scraped along her jawline until his lips met with her ear. In hot breath he whispered, "Bite me."
She did not comply at once, and merely scraped her teeth against his throat, down the side of his neck, hard enough to leave red marks, but nothing more.
An animal's noise fell from his lips.
At the juncture of his neck and shoulders she paused. She knew what sounds she could draw from her Jack Kearns and she had no intention of not cherishing them. She kissed his flesh softly, fingers unbuttoning his shirt as she did. She pressed her lips against his shoulder, opening them only to draw her tongue against his skin, sucking tenderly as though he were made of the flesh of an exotic fruit.
He groaned in consternation above her, his patience was far from endless and it had been a long time. Giving in, she sunk her teeth into him, not enough to cause any real damage, but she broke the skin and the taste of human blood filled her mouth. He gave a small ecstatic shout and she moaned, sucking the blood passed her lips.
He took her by the chin and pulled her face to his, kissing her bloodied lips. At the taste of his own blood he growled and sucked her bottom lip between his teeth,his tongue seeking out the remnants of the coppery taste. He growled and rolled on top of her, easily shifting her around, having still a good fifty pounds on her.
She used the new position to divest him of his unbuttoned shirt, and looked over him in the lamplight. The flickering flame made his skin look golden, and shone in his hair that tumbled over his shoulders. Traces of blood seeming dark against his lips.
She softened for a moment, reaching up to touch a scar that jagged across his right pectoral, "This is new."
"Erbörü, in Turkey," he said briefly, his deft fingers unbuttoning his borrowed shirt she wore, yanking her up so he could tear it away from her. They had not gotten her new undergarments and she wore nothing beneath the borrowed shirt. She was not yet the weight she had been when last he saw her, but she was far less skeletal.
She lifted herself up and pressed her lips to the scar, "You should have told the foolish monsters that I am to be the only thing that leaves marks on you." She gripped his sides, nails biting deep.
He gasped and grinned. "Do you remember," He said pressing her back down and trailing his lips down her throat, speaking between kisses and bites, "The forest in Grenada?" He nipped at the soft flesh of her side, trailing his hands up to push her arms back behind her. "We hunted each other," he scraped his stubbled cheek up her belly and halted over her breasts, breathing hotly on her nipples, "in the moonlight."
She shuddered under him and groaned, "I would never forget," she rasped, "How you howled beneath me when I had caught you!"
He dragged his teeth over her nipple harder than necessary.
"Jack!" She called out breathlessly.
He rose back to her face, hands clamping her wrists down above her head. He seemed like a lion above her, blond hair untied and falling about his face, "I do not remember that," he whispered, "Wasn't it you who was howling beneath me?"
She laughed, "No, Jack, that was in Germany, do you not remember? You killed a werewolf with your bare hands. Your blood was so high from it you could not even wait to get back to an inn nor clean its blood from your hands."
"Ah yes, that's it," he said grinding his groin against hers and making her growl, "It is a wonder you did not fall prey to lycanthropy, so much of its blood you licked from me."
She twisted, flipping him over and pinning him under her. She sat atop him and dragged her fingernails down his chest until she had reached his belt which she began to unfasten. She fixed him with a bloodthirsty stare, "I am too much the monster already."
He turned them once more, rolling her onto her back, he leaned over her, balance on his elbows, forearms running along each side of her head. He hung over her face, hair curtaining around them, "DId I ever tell you that I had never seen a man killed before I watched you slit the throat of the first mate when we were starving on that open boat out at sea." He whispered, "Do you remember what you said do me? When I flinched at the sight of his blood, and the others fleeing as far as they could from you?"
She quoted herself, "Morals are only fear, Johnny."
He carried on with the story, face so close to hers she could feel his lips moving, "It was not me on that boat, Milly, you held the crew in check. Twelve men. You cut down the first eight all on your own, you held them all in fear."
She didn't seem to know if she ought to smile or not, "But it was you who held the captain at knifepoint," she said, "Telling him to marry us or drown in blood. You were not nearly so good with words at sixteen as you are now."
His face was darkening, "And, tell me, do you remember the first time we fought, truly fought?"
"Yes," she said, smile definitely dying, "You expected me to sit in a flat while you were at school and wait for you to come home."
"I was nineteen, about to go to school, at my prime. You had me on the ground in minutes. You were always the better at hand to hand combat."
"This has long since been decided, Jack," she said, "And you the better marksman."
The boyish smiles and animal's snarls slipped off of his face and she was met with the cold that lay underneath. Beneath him, she did not flinch. He fixed her with eyes that were more black than gray and said, "And I am supposed to believe that an old man succeeded in catching you? When I could not?"
Immediately vitriolic, she shoved him back and he sat up astride her, she pushed herself onto her elbows, "You mean the elder Warthrop?" she hissed, "You mean when I was taken and thrown to monsters for twelve years?"
He bent toward her, "How is it that a feeble old man, ten years from his death managed it?"
She fumed, "Is this about a hunter's pride, John Ulysses?" Her voice was rising in pitch, shaking, she pulled herself from under him and swung around so he knelt in front of her, and her behind, seizing a fistfull of his hair to keep him in place, "To hell with you!" She pulled his him back by the hair, wrenching his head back. She raised a knee to the small of his back and pushed so his torso was bowed, baring him from pelvis to his exposed throat.
Had she a knife, she could have slit his throat, but that was not her intent. She lowered her head and bit again at the side of his neck, harder this time, blood flowing. He flung one of his hands to her head, holding her to his throat, the other he reached behind him, taking hold of her hip.
Between nips and bites that left red crescents up and down the column of his neck she snarled, "There is not a grand story, John," With her other hand, she released the buttons on his trousers and slipped her fingers beneath the fabric, teasingly low. She nipped at his ear and hissed, "I did not hear him and he put a rag of chloroform over my mouth and I was in that hell for twelve years!" His length pressed upward against his pants and he growled. Succumbing, she forwent her teasing, sliding her hand down his entire length. She wrapped her fingers around him, biting down on his shoulder as she squeezed.
He released a shout that, although belayed by the euphoria written on his face, sounded more injured than aroused.
Admittedly, they had made quite a commotion, and to anyone out of sight of Kearns' face, it might have sounded as though he was falling victim a rather gruesome attack. Answering the sound, and announced by only hurried footsteps up the steps, Pellinore Warthrop slammed open the bedroom door.
It took him a moment to come to terms with the particularly compromising position he had found them in, eyes travelling from Kearn's exposed and bleeding throat to her hand that was conspicuously in his trousers.
Although she did not release his hair, Kearns gave Warthrop a lascivious wink, "Come to join the fun, Pellinore? God knows you could use a bit of unwinding."
She looked at Pellinore through her eyelashes and continued moving her hand over Kearns, "I'm not sure the revolver is strictly necessary."
United entirely in abusing Warthrop after his interruption, Kearns allowed himself a keening moan, saying with a shuddering voice, "You are a little overdress, my dear Pel."
Color had risen high in Warthrop's face but even under duress he was unable to retreat without explanation, "I heard you shout and I believed you to be fighting. She still remains in an unstable condition." He took a step backward toward the door.
Kearns stretched his languid muscles, his trousers low on his hips, his wife's hand moving beneath them, "Stay for a bit and I'm sure we'll put you in an unstable condition right quick."
This drove him back, Warthrop gave Kearns a detestable look and slammed the door.
She released his hair and he dropped his head back onto her shoulder, further stretching out his neck, "Twelve years ago," he breathed, "I thought you had left."
She drew her hand back and circled around him, pushing him gently back. He allowed her to position him, laying back on the pillows. She slid his trousers and underthings off, Kearns lifting his hips to allow it. She unclasped hers as well, leaving them with his on the floor.
She sat over him, her legs tucked under her at either side of his hips, her lips twitched up, for the moment, she ignored his confession, "What would you have done if Warthrop had stayed?"
His lion's grin returned, "What fun that might have been," he crooned, "Can you imagine the two of us teamed up against him?"
She leaned over him and began a series of kisses down his belly, her hands moving before her, tracing over his pelvis and down his thighs. He quaked beneath her. Against his skin she murmured, "Jack, do you know why I would not leave you?" She slid further down his body, her breath hot over him.
Hands fisted in the sheets he growled, "You need someone to shoot for you while you illadvisedly leap-" he paused to gasp as her tongue ran up his length from tip to base, "among fifteen monsters with-" his own sharp moan interrupted him when she wound her tongue around his sensitive tip, "an improvised knife?"
She ran the tip of her finger up the underside of him, "Are you asking me if I need someone to shoot me in the shoulder, Jack? Because I believe even frigid Pellinore would suffice for that."
He released a choked laugh, "Tell me why."
She hovered over him, "When you were sixteen years old I tossed you chunk of human flesh to feast on and you only asked how to properly slit a throat. You and I, John Ulysses, are monsters of the same sort." She slid her mouth slowly around him, tongue swishing from side to side beneath.
His head dropped back against the pillows, "Romelda Maria," he said breathlessly. As she continued, steady in her pace, he helplessly bucked his hips.
Tantalizingly, she withdrew, "When did you become so impatient, Jacky?"
He wrapped his hand around her thighs and flipped her backwards, rolling up so they lay backwards in the bed, him on top of her, "It has been twelve years, darling, I believe I am owed a bit of impatience."
He raked his hand down her body, sliding firmly between her legs, "Did you think, sweetling, that you would be allowed that and have no repercussions?"
Her back arched as his fingers found their mark, circling. Her breath rasped, "I rather look forward to your repercussions, Jack."
He pressed particularly firmly, her body flinching in enjoyment. He growled, "You'll have to do better than that, my pet."
He shifted his hand, his middle and index finger, slicked with her wetness slid inside of her, curling, his thumb rubbing that sensitive bundle of nerves.
Her hand flew up to grip his hair, this time, her voice nearly broke, "Jaack!" She twisted her hand in his hair, leveling his face with hers, hungrily, she said, "Your turn, bite me, John."
His eyes alight, he bit down, a matching spot to the one she had left on him, his teeth coming away bloody. She would have screeched but he shoved his hand over her mouth, muffling it. She pulled his hand away from her and growled, "Devil take me, Jack!"
He aligned himself with her and growled, "Don't worry, darling, I'm about to." He leaned down over her and pushed his way forward in a long, smooth motion until he was sheathed entirely within her.
They let out twin groans of satisfaction.
They paused for a moment, then a low growl emanated from Kearns' throat and they were driven into action. Her nails scraped down his back and he pulled her leg up, pushing it over his shoulder for better leverage. He turned his head, kissing and biting her calf, all the while rocking in and out of her.
Low, heaving moans came from his lips between clenched teeth, a perpetual noise that crescendoed as he slid within her and decrescendoed as he pulled back. She dug her nails into his hips each time he sank into her anew and breathed his name, "Jack. Jack!"
When her voice rose to fever pitch he covered her lips again and she sucked his fingers between her teeth, biting at them and wrapping her tongue around each in turn. Within her he jerked and his growls harshened, becoming nearly howls.
His body began to shudder and he lost the rhythm he had started with. His spine straightened and his head tipped back, hair falling around his shoulders. He jaw locked with his mouth slightly agape, although no sound came forth.
Watching him come undone above her, her body clenched around him, her back arched and a long moan fell from her lips. The euphoria she felt condensing like waves through her was matched only by Kearns who seemed half god and half beast above her.
Spent, he collapsed on top of her, pulling himself out of her and turning to the side.
She leaned her head against his chest, breathing hard. He leaned down and kissed her head, trying to catch his breath.
XXXXX
Kearns whistled the next morning as he sauntered down to the breakfast Will Henry had prepared. He dragged his wife down with him, tugging her by the hand like a lovestruck boy.
"Goodmorning, gentlemen," he said grandly to the room at large, "Pellinore," he said, winking at the doctor, "little assistant apprentice monstrumologist."
Will Henry scooped breakfast onto two plates, handing one first to Mrs. Kearns and then to Jack.
She smiled at the boy, "Morning, Will."
"Morning, ma'am."
Warthrop interrupted them harshly,"You will be leaving today," He said, leaving no room for argument.
"I suppose, I suppose," Kearns relented, "She seems in a good enough state to be getting around anyway. Ready to have us out of your hair, Pellinore?"
He neither looked up at them nor replied.
"Mrs. Kearns?" Will said uncertainly.
"Yes, Will?" She said softly.
"You're..well..you're bleeding ma'am, right through your shirt."
Kearns tilted his head to inspect the deep bite mark on her shoulder that reopened if she moved too effusively and he smirked, "Indeed she is, Will."
"Did something happen?"
Kearns gave a lascivious wink to Warthrop, "Why don't you ask the good doctor, Will?"
NOTE: So I put more plot in there than I had really intended, but I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you thought!