Note: This is based on Moriarty the Patriot and The Holmes-Dracula File (by Fred Saberhagen). If you like the original Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, look up the title, it's a cool read. I kept the appearance and personality of the manga version of Holmes here. Moriarty does not appear in the Holmes-Dracula File, either, so he's also manga version. Everything about Holmes' parents in this setting is made-up but I based it loosely on the HDF plot-line. Likewise, I made up Liam's early childhood and parents, since they have not yet been mentioned in the manga.
Trigger Warning; Mentions of hearing voices, killing, and blood.
Liam sat up holding his throat with bandaged hands.
Again, the dream.
Again, the noise.
As soon as he opened his eyes the voices started hammering him from within his mind. He was very conscious of the fact that these voices were separate from himself. The inner identity that was 'him' was not 'them'. And likewise, 'they' were not 'him'.
Usually, he was only slightly troubled by it.
Unless he caught a cold or became injured.
Then it was very much harder to deal with.
His dreams were always entirely red and it made him breathless. Liam grabbed the sheet as he began coughing, pitched forward, trying to get some air into his lungs. He felt sweat trickle down his neck. His hands moved against his will to his ears. He knew that it was not his ears but he still held onto them.
He wanted to rip his eardrums out!
He just wanted it to stop!
"Liam!" Sherlock came into the room and grabbed his hands away from his ears. "It was a dream!" He stated. "You had a bad dream!"
Startled, Liam looked at him.
This person was pouring out so much time and concern, and affection, that he felt even more guilty.
In fact, he did not have much guilt for the people he had killed.
That was not even something one could feel guilty about, in his opinion.
However, the people who were left to endure the burden of it for the rest of their lives, that he did feel guilty about.
However, this was not connected to his crimes but rather his physiology.
Since it had been like this from the 'beginning'.
Letting Sherlock lay him down, Liam let out an exhausted sigh. "I remembered something from a long time ago." He muttered. "It is something I have tried very hard to forget but…I see it all the time now. When I am sleeping. When I am awake." He looked at this man. "I am going crazy."
Sherlock frowned at him.
"Was I screaming?" Liam asked, holding onto the covers at his sides tightly.
He felt like he was going to sink or float away if he did not grab onto something.
"Yes," Sherlock replied, warily. "Because of the dream…!"
"My mother was screaming like that when she died." Liam pouted. "She screamed and clawed her ears and her throat. She went mad. And then, she started bleeding. Just like in a penny dreadful." He stared morosely at the ceiling. "Louis does not even remember her face. We were three at that time."
"Three years old," Sherlock repeated, with a sigh. "That's awful. So that's how you ended up at the Orphanage."
"No, that was later," Liam commented. "We went to the orphanage when we were six. We lived with an old couple for a few more years. Until they also passed on. The bookshop owner had found our mother and took her in. She had collapsed on their doorstep when she went into labour, apparently." He sighed. "It's amazing both of us survived."
"You and Louis are fraternal twins!" Sherlock sounded surprised...and strangely excited. "It wasn't in the reports or any of the information…but I strongly suspected that you were." He frowned as he checked his childlike validation. "Then Louis doesn't know how she died."
"No. And he will not know." Liam stated. "Well, he never asked. He does not want to know. He wants the mother that exists in his heart and nothing else. And that is also just fine." He smiled. "That mother…I never had that. But, it seems, I may have inherited her insanity. I have begun to see the same dream. And I screamed like that."
"Liam," Sherlock looked at him with his blue eyes extremely worried. "You need to rest. Do you…want to…?"
"No." Liam cut him off. "I will never resort to that. I will remain myself until the end. Even if I go insane after that." He shut his eyes.
Truly, drugs were one way to lessen the burden on his brain.
He did have a head injury.
His eye was…he could not 'see' out of it now.
However, he could still see 'something' on that side.
A vague sense of colour and distance that he was not certain was anything of the world of the living.
He also had a headache, nausea, shortness of breath, and could not control his temperature.
He heard voices.
If that was not an 'illness' he could only say he was possessed.
Glancing at him, Liam smiled. "Thank you." He said, gently.
Sherlock nodded and got to his feet. "I'll get you some soup. You've lost weight, you need to eat more. I know you're having trouble with solid foods so I laid in some soup and puddings."
He headed into the adjoined kitchenette to heat up the foodstuffs.
Liam had no doubt that if he put his mind to it, Sherlock could be a world-class chef. Because of his knowledge of chemistry, he was basically an alchemist. Food preparation was, at most, just layering the ingredients and heating them to the correct temperature.
However, while Liam wanted to eat his companion's cooking, he did not think he would be able to swallow it in his current condition.
He felt like his throat was going to burst.
He was so distraught from the sensation of suffocating that he could not lay still.
And the voices were louder and louder, begging him to move, to rove. He sat up and put his feet on the floor. His bare feet made not even the lightest of patters across the rug to the door. A door that did not squeak. Over the sounds of culinary work, the soft shifts of movements in the air did not reach even the keen ears of the Great Detective.
Liam wandered out of the apartment in a daze. It was dark with a high moon. A red moon. Red was an ominous colour. The colour of his dream. It had been this kind of colour that night, so long ago, when his mother had started screaming.
They called it a Blood Moon, he thought.
He followed the wind and the moonlight. He was not fully aware of where he was after twenty minutes. He did not care. Although it was dangerous everywhere there was no threat to him. He followed the shadows that whispered sweet nothings to him until he came to what he thought was an abandoned factory.
It had that kind of industrial appearance.
It was not empty.
There was something here, something he caught in his hands, something that brought him immense joy and relief…
"Liam!" Sherlock had caught up to him.
How, Liam did not know.
He dropped what he was holding in his hands out of shock as his trance broke.
"Sherlock…" He said, his lips slipping so that his words slurred. His lips were wet. He put his hand to his lips only to notice that his hands were covered in blood. Just like his mouth was full of blood. It was very hot. It…tasted so good that he sucked it off of his fingers on both hands. Desperately. He felt elated by the taste. "More…" He shifted his eyes over the ground.
The blood had to have come from somewhere.
Someone.
"Liam." Sherlock approached him cautiously. "Liam look at me!"
He looked back up at this man.
"Focus on me! What do you want to do?" Sherlock had a stern tone and expression. "Do you want to come back with me?"
Go with him?
Yes!
He wanted to be with this person!
"I…want more…" He muttered, tears running down his cheeks. "I'm insane! I've gone completely insane!"
"No. You haven't!" Sherlock said. "You are just awakening to your true self, Liam. You do not know what you are! Come back with me!" He held out his hand. "You have to choose it for yourself but I am here for you!"
Taking his hand, Liam felt the light tremble in it as well as the warmth. He skipped a step and fell against his chest. "I'm…I feel so sleepy…" He muttered. He became aware of the contentment in his body. That suffocation, that ache in all his joints, the sensation that his veins were constricting, it was all gone. "The pain is going away! Am I…am I…?!"
"No." Sherlock cradled him. "No, you're very much alive."
He was carried princess-style back to the flat.
He did not have any blood on his hands or face, it had all somehow soaked in, but his clothes were a mess. He pulled off the dirty nightshirt and found Sherlock was already holding a clean spare.
Sherlock even washed his feet for him.
Then, he obediently got into bed and sat back against the pillow.
"What…did you mean by that?" Liam asked, frowning at him critically.
Sherlock pulled over a chair and let out a sigh. "Just what I said. You are not insane." He nodded firmly. "Not any more than anyone else, anyway. Me, too. I'm not crazy, am I? But I am…different from other people."
Nodding, Liam accepted that they both fell into the 'genius' category.
All geniuses were eccentric and…'odd'.
"My mother had an affair." Sherlock just said it straight. "Mycroft is technically my half-brother. It doesn't matter, half or whatever, we're brothers. But, hm. I had another sibling. He died." He shrugged. "I do not remember much about him other than that he was not as smart as me." He lifted a hand. "My mother was not of noble birth, she married up. Her husband, on the other hand, was an esquire cum lord. He was a strict man but not unkind. However, he was not common and lacked something she needed. Anyway, it fell apart between them. And, me and that man, did not get on well from the beginning. Because he knew that I was not his child, is what I thought." He folded his arms. "My mother died when I was fourteen. My stepfather, if I can call him that, told me the truth at that point. That her lover…was not human."
"Eh?" Liam blinked at him.
"That man was a vampire." Sherlock shut his eyes. "I did not inherit any of the vampire characteristics. My twin brother did. But, he had died. I had thought he died of illness. That wasn't the case. My stepfather killed him."
Sitting up, Liam took his hands. "He killed your bother?!"
He felt devasted on his behalf…and outraged.
"I left home and I never spoke to him again," Sherlock stated. "I cannot imagine what that was like. He had to raise children that were not his. Well, that's rough but so what? But then, one of these children was…" He frowned. "A vampire."
A vampire.
Liam thought about that.
What did he know about that word?
A person…that was not human?
A kind of man-beast.
Something that drank blood or somehow sucked up the life force of others.
That was already quite frightening but a child?
He had been…quite methodical as a child because his survival had depended on it. If his needs had included blood or lifeforce…he would have done anything in his power to get it, just like bread.
Sherlock had calmed himself and took a deep breath. "I knew when I saw you on the ship. I immediately recognised you when those women pointed you out. But, you did not recognise me." He frowned. "I did not know why. At first, I thought you were just ignoring me. Then I realised you did not know about it."
"Eh?" Liam blinked at him. "I am…?"
"Yes, you are!" Sherlock nodded. "Apparently, these characteristics can they lie dormant for that person's entire life. Some event triggers these latent abilities and the person begins to change. Should I say 'grow up'? It is that kind of process. For my brother, he awakened when he was still very, very young."
"What event?" Liam asked. "What triggers this metamorphosis?"
"Ingesting blood other than your own," Sherlock said. "And…sexual desires."
Ah.
Well, that made sense.
"I…I did get blood on me on occasion. I have killed many people." He thought back to the ones he could remember. "I have always had these dreams and other symptoms but it was not until there at the end that I began to feel truly insane. So I changed my plans. I planned to die before I could degenerate and become a burden." He looked at Sherlock. "That is because some of the blood entered my mouth?"
"Yes." Sherlock nodded. "I should specify that it must be raw blood. Cooked blood contained in animal meat has no effect whatsoever."
"I see," Liam muttered. "Sherlock, does that mean Louis may also have these characteristics?"
"It's unlikely but possible," Sherlock replied. "I only know one other person like this, like us. There are other vampires out there, of course, born from vampire parents. Vampires are not that different from humans. Vampires evolved parallel to humans from some shared ancestor. This is why humans and vampires can even have children together." He frowned. "But there are differences. Chiefly, metabolic."
"Drinking blood." Liam put his hand to his lips. "So, I am a vampire now. I do not have fangs."
"They will grow in," Sherlock replied. "Right now, you only just drank blood for the first time. The metamorphosis will speed up. I do not know…much about that. I've never seen it." He looked down with a frown. "There is a place in Britain that is supposed to be home to vampires. They live in secrecy due to the stigma. I suppose there are places like that all over the world. Since you are like this, one of your parents was a vampire, and probably came from that town."
"It was my mother! My mother was a vampire!" Liam stared at his hands. "I saw her screaming and pulling at herself, she was bleeding! Why did that happen to her?!"
"Liam, you were three," Sherlock stated. "What came immediately before that? What came immediately after?" He frowned. "It's possible your mother was sick. I should think that vampires can get sick, like any other living thing. But, just like my brother, whom I thought was sick…he was actually murdered! It's possible the same thing happened to your mother."
Sitting back, Liam made himself think about that.
He had actually thought of that before.
While he remembered the blood, it was possible the blood had been someone else's. It was also possible she had been poisoned. He had simply wandered out from his bed and happened to see her last moments so he had no idea how the blood had gotten on her.
What had come before that he could not know because he had not been in the room.
What had followed…?
"I…ran away." He said, in surprise at his own actions. There had been a time when blood had frightened him. "I ran to Louis and hid under the blanket. I did not come out all night!"
Sherlock looked sad as he shook his head.
"If someone killed her, it may have been because she was a vampire but it could also have been for some other reason." Liam looked at Sherlock with a glare. "An intruder may have done something to her. It is also possible she had become involved with a man." He felt a little awkward as he admitted it. "My mother was not a smart woman. Well, not that she had a chance to be. Sherlock, my mother was seventeen when she died."
"She was seventeen when you were three?" Sherlock lifted his eyebrows. "She was fourteen?! That's a child!"
"Yes. Please savour the feeling of discomfort that fact gives you." Liam nodded. "She was a maid in some big house and got with child. I found them later. There were three males in the house it could have been. But while one of them was a cad…they were not really bad people. I could tell by how they treated their servants that it was not an offence carried out over and over. So I just left them alone." He frowned critically. "I never would have come to the conclusion that she was a vampire but perhaps she ran away for that reason and not because the father was a noble."
Nodding, Sherlock ran a hand back through his hair. "What happened tonight is my fault." He said. "I've been watching you for signs of awakening but I totally missed it. Although, you could have just said you were thirsty."
"It's not at all like feeling thirsty!" Liam retorted. "I do not enjoy killing people! I do like seeing the guilty punished but killing is just a process to me. But blood?!" He glared at Sherlock. "I've been terrified I would hurt Louis or Albert. Or you!"
Sherlock put his knee on the bed and pulled him into a hug. "I'm sorry." He said, in a rather stuffy, possessive tone. "I was afraid to say it! At this point, if I told you about my family and you rejected me…"
Liam pulled himself up by Sherlock's arms, putting a kiss on his lips. He half expected to be shoved away. Although they were rather close, and he had taken the implied flirtation, he was not completely certain where he stood.
He found his clumsy kiss returned.
That was it.
It was just a kiss.
Sherlock had a tight expression as he forcibly lay him down and moved off to the side to light a cigarette.
Liam turned on the pillow to watch him as he fumbled with his matches, his face pink.
Yes, yes.
Who else could make the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, blush like that?
Irene Adler?
No.
Only he could elicit this reaction from him.
Liam treasured that sense of victory as he shut his eyes.