Archive of Our Own ^beta

McCullum is grimly coming to terms with the likelihood of losing a guardsman from his patrol when he feels the soft whisper of air of an Ekon stepping through the shadows to join the fray. 

Normally that shiver of feeling would have him adding a few extra ticks to his projected casualty tally, but there have only been rumors of one particular Ekon frequenting this part of Whitechapel - the rest haven’t been straying this far out of the West End since the epidemic started to recede - so he’s not surprised so much as resolved when he glances over and sees Reid skewering the blinker skal that had been giving Priwen so much trouble on his sword. 

They both survey the situation for a second, and silently come to the same conclusion; Reid leaps over to the beast that’s tearing through the rest of McCullum’s squad, and he turns to take care of the last few wobbling skals with Reverend Kane.

He can’t say he doesn’t feel a bit of relief.

As he’s slashing through the final skal that’s caught up in the light of Kane’s crucifix, he sees Reid send a blood spear right through the beast. He flits in and out with his sword and stake while it whines and yelps, and after knocking it staggering back with a great backhand blow, Reid lunges in and sinks his teeth into its exposed neck.

McCullum supposes he can’t fault the leech for multitasking. 

Reid’s face looks nightmarish in the dim street as he turns back to casually survey the damage,  wiping the remnants of blood off his pale face and - licking his hands. McCullum grits his teeth. 

He’s waiting for Reid to nod and move on, as he has after a few chance encounters like this one. Geoffrey’s own breathing and heart rate are slowly returning to normal - Reid is just standing around, tilting his head with that look that McCullum knows is the leech dipping into that uncanny sense of theirs - when Reid’s icy blue gaze flicks toward Nelson where he’s fallen after a hit by the beast’s slashing claws.  

He can’t so much as shout before Reid stretches the shadows around himself and leaps to the recruit. 

Stupid, stupid, he didn’t even reload his crossbow after his last shot. He can hear the ghost of Carl berating him in his head for getting comfortable with this monster just because he showed a bit of reason from time to time. Now here he is, caught up in bloodlust after the fight, about to drain a man - a boy - under Geoffrey’s command, right in front of him. McCullum heaves his sword and races across the square. He knows he’s too late because Reid is already bent over Nelson, the other guard members frozen up or just now staggering to their feet - too late! - and he’s going to -

“What’s his name?”

“What?” He’s a few yards away and stumbles to a halt, blade half raised with indecision. Reid’s hands are on the boy, bloodied up again, scrabbling around at Nelson’s shirt.

“His name, McCullum!”

“Nelson. James Nelson.” He’s not sure why he gives it. Reid’s hands are sharp claws, but he’s just cutting through Nelson’s shirt.

“I need you to stay awake James! You’ve a nasty scratch, but I’m going to help you. I just need you to stay awake for me.”

Is he? He’s performing a medical examination?

“James, I have to move you. This is going to hurt, but I need you to keep pressure on your wound. Can you do that?”

Nelson’s clutching desperately at his side, eyes rolling around in their sockets.

“Reid -”

“There’s a dispensary just around the block from here that has the equipment I need to tend to him, you can follow me there. Ready James? Keep a hold on that wound,” and then he hoists the boy up in his arms like some gangly loaf of bread, for all the effort he seems to be expending. 

Nelson cries out and shoots a panicked look from Reid’s face - altogether too close to his neck - to McCullum. 

“Reid, damnit! Nelson, we’ll be right behind you, boy!”

And Reid is off like a shot, leaving McCullum to round up his guard and stagger along in his wake. They follow a trail of turned heads to the dispensary, and manage to rush inside before the old codger that watches the place can close the gates he’d just opened wide for the leech doctor. 

Reid’s already got Nelson on a table when they get up the stairs, ordering around the nurse like he runs the damned hellhole instead of her. She doesn’t seem to miss a beat, rushing about to gather the supplies he demands. 

The nurse spares a sharp glance at McCullum as he’s standing there with his mouth open like some gobsmacked buffoon. 

“Well? Help the doctor hold your man still,” she barks, and damn him but he’s already moving before he’s fully registered the order. 

So that’s how he ends up with a front row seat to watch the good doctor at work. Reid is fast and efficient, cleaning and disinfecting the wound, checking the extent of the damage, and smoothly stitching the boy up. 

He talks to Nelson while he works, steady strings of explanation in that gravely baritone of his, and it’s almost, almost enough to distract from the pinprick pupils set in unnaturally blue eyes, and the razor sharp teeth poking out from behind his lips. 

McCullum watches Reid work with a shocky sense of surreality, the sure and gentle hands seemingly more so against the backdrop of Reid’s monstrous nature. He credits that shock as the reason he doesn’t back off when finally Reid trims the last suture on Nelson’s side, applies a dressing, and turns the full weight of his attention on McCullum. 

“Here. I’d best disinfect and dress that wound as well, while I’m at it.

McCullum nods curtly, then belatedly realizes the doctor’s referring to him. Reid’s already turning around to find fresh antiseptic and doesn’t catch Geoffrey freezing up when the implication finally hits him. 

“Off with your shirt, please. I can’t dress it through your clothing.” 

He’s rummaging around in a bin for clean gauze. When he turns back, his eyes and teeth are closer to normal and Geoffrey - Geoffrey’s halfway out of his shirt, damnit. He shoots a look back to his guardsmen, but they look as dumbfounded as he feels, the useless tossers. 

Reid takes McCullum’s arm in hand and hums a bit as he inspects the scratch. Skal claws, but just a graze, if McCullum’s remembering correctly. 

“You should be fine without stitches, just take care not to strain the arm for a few weeks. You’re developing a nasty bruise on that leg as well, but none of the swelling looks severe enough to indicate a break.”

Damn him and his strange senses. 

Reid sets about cleaning the wound, and glances up - or rather, less down. Can’t be content with leechy powers, no, he has to flaunt it with unnatural height too - with a questioning look on his face when he finally notices McCullum staring at him like a dead fish.  

He self consciously runs his tongue over his receding fangs. 

“Ah. It’s a reflex I’m afraid, in response to all of the blood so soon after a fight. One I’m, so far, unable to completely curb.” 

“Unable to - You should be out of your mind with bloodlust right now!” And Geoffrey has helpfully served himself up on a platter. He clicks his teeth shut to stop any other brilliant revelations from making themselves known.

“Nonsense, Geoffrey,” Reid says with a twinkle - a twinkle - in his eyes. “You’ve no need to worry. After all, I just ate.” 

Geoffrey barks out a laugh before he can stop himself, and Reid offers him a toothy smirk. 

Unbelievable. 

He finishes tying off the dressing on Geoffrey’s arm and bustles around a bit more, checking for head trauma on Huckabee, and splinting a sprained wrist for Dunn. He keeps a notable distance from Reverend Kane, but recommends wrapping his ribs for a few weeks. 

The nurse - Crane, he recalls - watches Reid work with a fondly exasperated air as she goes about cleaning the instruments he used on Nelson, at least until Reid blinks at her like he’s just remembering she’s there. 

“Ah, Dorothy, forgive me. I -"

“Forgot that you do not run this clinic?”

How is it possible for a leech to look so bashful?

“Yes. I can -”

“Do not bother. I am used to dealing with the messes that doctors dump on me. Besides, it is late and you should be going.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am. Now shoo.”

“Very well. Thank you, Nurse Crane.” He glances at the guard. “Gentlemen. McCullum. Until next time, I suppose,” he says. “Oh, and if Mr. Nelson develops a fever that aspirin can not break, be sure to bring him to the Pembroke as quickly as you can.”

“Get out of my clinic, Doctor Reid.” 

“Good evening, Nurse Crane.”

He exits in only slightly less of a whirlwind than he entered, the tails of his coat snapping smartly behind him. Nurse Crane, smiling, shakes her head and continues to clean up the minor disaster in his wake. 

“That man. Always insisting on sticking his nose in everything he can reach. Though I suppose I bless him for it.”

McCullum’s staring at her. 

“You have something to say?” Apparently she’s all out of fond exasperation when it comes to McCullum.

“You know what he is. What he’s capable of.”

“What he is, is an incredibly skillful doctor who treats those most others wouldn’t give the time of day. People like your man here.”

“You saw his teeth.”

“I saw him treat a patient who desperately needed it. As I have seen him do so in the past.”

“There is a darkness in him. One you can hardly comprehend,” says Kane. He’d gathered his wits slightly faster than the rest of the guard, but still hadn’t made a move to stop Reid’s work. He’s standing now with a deep furrow between his eyes, and yes, leaning heavily on his cross and breathing uncomfortably - like he may be nursing a couple bruised ribs. Damnit, Reid.

She shrugs. “Jonathan has turned a blind eye to the darker secrets I hold to keep this dispensary open for the people who need it the most. The least I can do is return the favor,” and that’s that. 

They bundle Nelson up, head still rolling around, mumbling through the opioid haze about some leeches being pretty nice after all, didn’t even try to take a sip, did he? And slowly make their way back to the temporary headquarters at the old acting school. 

McCullum busies himself with steering Nelson’s teetering steps in the right direction, and tries to put the odd interaction out of his head.

He spends the next month trying to put the events of that night out of his head, in fact. He’s seen Reid around in that time; a few nights as they were headed to do their respective rounds, and once in another fight against a pack of skals. 

They’d met in the middle on that one, really. McCullum, Jimmy, and Roger had taken a squad down to clear a patch of East End sewers that had become overrun, and when they were finally sure they’d rounded the last of the leeches up in one last stretch of the labyrinth - hot and tired and smelling like the putrid muck they’d been stomping through for the past two hours - they’d turned a corner and found that the grate they’d been planning to crush the last of the skals against - the one they’d scouted and secured just two days prior - had broken and let the whole mess of them into the next tunnel over. Which was a straight shot up to the streets along the canal. 

“For fuck’s sake,” yelled Roger, and then they had switched gears from grimly plowing into the back of the crowd to chasing after them, trying to hobble as many as they could for the guardsmen behind them to deal with and race around to get ahead of them all before they could break free to the surface. 

Thankfully it didn’t come to that.

Or rather, it would have, but suddenly the skals seemed more willing to take their chances with Jimmy’s flamethrower than rush on ahead. 

It took a couple of minutes of hacking through the pack before McCullum could push into the next open chamber and discover that, no, it wasn’t that a miraculous second sewer grate had sprung up before the fleeing skals, but it might as well have for all the chances they had of making it through the other end of the room.

Reid was in the thick of it, flitting around through the shadows like some sort of macabre dancer, dodging through the frantically clawing skals and springing up to block the entryway whenever one made a break for it. He was swinging a hacksaw again, rather than the sword he’d taken up at some point during the peak of the epidemic, and he had a doctor’s white coat on rather than the gray and red overcoat he normally sported. All the better to see the thick lines of blood swirling around him, protecting him from the occasional lucky hit. 

There was more blood than just the shield, really. Every once in a while he’d point at a leech and it’d freeze in its tracks, then a mist of blood would pull out of its skin to stream back toward him. Lines of it were flowing up the blade of the hacksaw as well, disappearing somewhere under his sleeves. Neat trick for keeping it off of his fancy clothes, really, and it also seemed to be fueling the devastating blood spears he was hurling back through the skals.

McCullum was brought out of his musing when Jimmy pulled even with him and leveled his flamethrower at Reid.

“Easy, Spark. Just get the skals that turn back toward the tunnels.”

“You serious, boss? Now’s our chance to get the fucker while he’s distracted.”

“And then we’d flush the whole pack of skals straight into the streets,” said Roger, huffing up behind them.

“We could take ‘em all.”

“A dozen skals and the most powerful Ekon in the city on what? The quarter tank you’ve got left? Now’s not the time to settle your score, Barlow. Let’s clean this mess up,” McCullum said, and then he stepped into the crowd with his sword. Hoping that he wouldn’t feel the heat of flames at his back.

To his credit, Jimmy busied himself with blocking the path. McCullum hacked away at the edges of the scrum, and Roger kept them herded into a tight ball with blasts from his shotgun. 

The eight left were looking haggard, or at least more haggard than skals usually looked, when Reid shouted to him over the din.

“McCullum! Pull back!”

He grabbed Roger’s arm and heaved them both back away from the crowd of skals just as one in the middle sized up and started to glow like it was lit up from the inside. Reid had his saw down, but his hands were outstretched at the skals and straining with effort. There was a metallic taste in the air. For a moment the skal’s skin seemed to ripple from within, gurgling on the surface of it’s skin, and then all at once it burst outward with concussive force. 

Five of the seven remaining went down instantly. The other two staggered around for a bit, screaming and scratching at the blood on their skin, until Reid put them down with his hacksaw.

He peered around for a moment, panting, making sure the skals were all down, before glancing at McCullum and Roger, then at Jimmy and the guardsmen who had caught up behind them.

“Well. I suppose that explains what had them riled up.”

McCullum’s still not sure what made him think he needed to defend himself at that point, but that didn’t stop him from gritting out an explanation.

“The grate we’d planned on corralling them against broke.”

“Ah. Yes. There was a beast down here a few nights ago crashing about, which might explain the recent damage.” He huffed out a sigh, then rubbed a hand over his forehead as if to relieve tension. “Any major injuries?”

Apparently that was the last bit of civility that Jimmy could stand. He leveled the spout of his flamethrower at Reid. 

“The fuck are we just standing here and letting this thing talk to us like it’s human, boss?”

“Shut it, Barlow,” growled Roger, lowly. 

“McCullum, I’m tired, I smell of filth, and I’ve just killed two dozen skals. I still have to convince two men that they were mugged rather than set upon by vampires, see three perfectly normal patients, and hunt down half a dozen rats before dawn. Do you, or your men, need medical attention?”

It was honestly the most strained he’d ever heard the doctor’s voice. Apart from that time he’d tried to kill him. 

“There’s nothing we can’t handle, Dr Reid. You took the brunt of the fighting for us.” He’s not quite sure why he put it that way, but apparently it had been another night for his mouth to get away from him. He’s had more than a few of those since Reid came into his life. 

“Very well, I’ll take my leave. Good evening, gentlemen. McCullum.”

“Reid.”

At least Jimmy waited until he left the room before rounding his fury at McCullum.

“What the hell was that-” but Roger was the one who cut him short. 

“He ever boil your blood?”

“The fuck are you -”

“When you were fighting him in that warehouse, with ten guardsmen and your flamethrower, did he ever try to boil the blood out of your veins? Because that’s what he just did to that skal.” Jimmy worked his jaw but stayed silent. “When he heard the leeches coming up from the sewers, from a block away in the hospital, he ran down here with an improvised weapon, blocked their path, blew through a dozen of them without raising a sweat, and then boiled that one’s blood until it popped like a balloon and took the rest of them with it.” Roger grimly surveyed the piles of rotting skals.

“He could have killed us all. He didn’t. Now he’s going back to his hospital. You want to follow him and pick a fight tonight, Spark, be my guest. I’d rather go back to HQ.” He glanced at McCullum. “Not meaning to overstep, sir, but he’s one problem I don’t think we’d be able to solve right now, and I’d rather not give him reason to become a problem until we are.”

McCullum sighed and looked around to meet the eyes of all of his nervously shifting guardsmen.

“The Great Hunt is over,” he said. “I called it for a reason. Every night, more and more leeches were running through the streets, and we needed to get their numbers down, fast. But that was then."

“We lost a lot of men. The leeches have gone back into hiding. Now’s not the time to be running pell-mell through the streets, it’s the time to be smart about hunting again. Reid steps out of line, we’ll make a plan, set a trap, and pull the full weight of Priwen down around him. But Roger’s right. We’ve more pressing issues than the doctor to focus on, and if he hasn’t snapped already, there’s no need to push him over the edge.”

But the thing is, he thinks as he makes his way through Whitechapel a week or so later, the thing is, that wasn’t actually the reason he hadn’t set Jimmy Barlow and his flamethrower loose to have his revenge on Doctor Jonathan Emmet Reid for besting him and ten guardsmen in an ambush on the western docks. The reason was that it hadn’t even occurred to him. The reason was, when he rounded that last corner and saw Reid cutting through the skals like flies, his first thought had been “Thank God.” 

“Thank God. Reid, incredibly powerful Ekon that he is, will definitely do whatever he can to stop these leeches from reaching the streets and harming anyone under his protection, which means pretty much everyone in the entire city. I should use my sword and my guardsmen to help Reid get this threat under control. And when the dust has settled after he uses a devastatingly powerful attack that I’ve never heard of (other than in a select few ancient texts about legendary vampires which I had previously assumed were highly embellished), I should check over the guardsmen in my care to see if I should give any of them over to him to receive medical care. You stupid fucker , McCullum.”

So yes, he’s been avoiding the issue. And no, he hasn’t been particularly successful. So now here he is, on his way to the one place where he might be able to clear his head, and of course, of course , when he rounds the cemetery gates, Reid is standing there, his back to McCullum, like some sort of sad spectre. 

It should be illegal for leeches to look so dejected all the time. McCullum should write it into the Priwen charter.

He should just turn around. It’s not like he’ll actually get any answers here anyway, just the ghost of Carl Eldritch thundering in his head about how soft he’s become. How he’s failing the guard.

He lets out a silent breath, then approaches the gravesite. 

Reid looks like he’s been dealing with ghosts of his own. 

“Mister McCullum.” His voice is low and rough, the sad bastard.

“Doctor Reid.” He studies the grave. Someone has laid a wreath over it, but it’s a few days old by now, so Reid hadn’t brought that by tonight. There’s a brand new stone at the head of the grave, declaring Mary Livingston née Reid a loving Wife, Mother, Daughter, and Sister. 

He’s seen it before, of course. After the imminent threat of the Disaster had faded and he’d caught up on reports, he’d visited the site where a priest had been drained of his blood and left beside a desecrated grave. Someone had been by to clean everything up by then, bury one corpse and rebury the other, but there was a temporary cross marking the place where Mary Reid had been laid to rest. 

It had been easy enough to track down the obituary from there, to read up on the tragedy of the Reid family between those scant lines. Killed in a mugging on the wrong side of town. Predeceased by her husband and child. No mention of her father. Leaving behind her mother, Emelyne, and a brother, one Doctor Jonathan Emmet Reid, who had yet to return from war. 

He’d made a splash when he did return, though. 

Still, there were pieces of the puzzle missing that only one person could fill in.

“Was this what drew you back to London? Hearing about your sister’s death?”

“No.” Reid shifts and takes a breath, like some great statue coming to life. “I’d been heading back to see to our mother, who had fallen ill.”

“It wasn’t a coincidence though, was it. Did some other leech do this to get at you?”

There’s nothing of a statue left in Reid now. He crumples in on himself like his strings were cut.

He’s silent for a moment, and when he speaks it’s at a whisper.

“I did this, McCullum.”

McCullum feels the blood drain from his face. His thoughts stop, except for the echo of a memory - Carl telling him to never trust a leech. To never assume that he didn’t drain people just because they hadn’t caught him in the act. He shouldn’t have approached. He should have brought his sword. He should have-

“She was looking for me,” Reid goes on like he couldn’t stop talking if he tried, like this is some sort of confessional. “I had sent word that I’d be back, and when I didn’t arrive she searched the whole city. She searched the morgues, the cemeteries, she knew what it would take to keep me from coming back home.”

“I swear to you, I didn’t know what was happening.” He turns to McCullum now, who is still frozen in place. There are red tears gathered in the corners of his eyes, and McCullum can only look on with morbid fascination as his mind screeches at him that it’s too late to run. “I crawled out of that mass grave, and there were bodies around me. I was so weak, so afraid. The whole world was gray and cold, except for one spot of warm, red light, so I stumbled towards it. Towards her. I swear to you, Geoffrey, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

He looks away, toward the grave again.

“The last thing she felt was my betrayal. And so it was the first thought she woke up with.”

“You turned her?” McCullum’s voice sounds like it’s coming underwater to his own ears. He still hasn’t gotten control of his legs back yet. 

“I’m not sure how. The only thing I can think of is that,” he huffs out a wet laugh, “that one of my tears landed on her.” 

He wipes his face then, a sad twist of a smile on his face.

“And then she woke up, and the only thing she could think to do was make me feel her pain.” He laughs again. “You know, if she had been a man, I think the Ascalon Club would have tried to recruit her. Turning her was what piqued their interest in me, after all.” He trails off.

“What happened to her?”

“She lured me here. She - she killed a few people, left clues on their bodies, and lured me to the cemetery to fight. There’s a… bond between a maker and their progeny. She said she couldn’t get my voice out of her head. She brought our mother out too, I don’t think she actually wanted to hurt her, just to hurt me. I convinced Mary to let her go.” He sighs and wipes his face again. “And then we fought. She killed Father Larabee when she needed more blood, and then we fought some more.” He looks up to the night sky.

“In the end, she asked me to kill her. Neither of us could bear what she’d become, so I did. And I laid her back to rest.” He shakes his head, and meets McCullum’s frozen gaze.

“You wondered before, back at Nurse Crane’s dispensary, how it was I could resist my bloodlust. But you had it wrong, Geoffrey. I couldn’t resist it. I drank, and I killed my sister, and I turned her into a monster.”

“But you haven’t since.”

“It doesn’t matter, Geoffrey,” he scoffs and looks away, dismissive.

Of all the things to get McCullum’s blood pounding again.

“It does matter, Jonathan! You were newly turned, blood isn’t a desire so much as a need at that point, your body was coming back from death!”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he’s defending blood drinking to a leech.

“You were a newborn, and you never drank from humans again. I can see it in your eyes.” Another realization comes to him and he grabs his forehead with his hand. “Christ, you were a newborn, eating only rat blood, and two weeks later you tracked down and killed a Disaster.”

Reid chuckles at that and casts a look over. There are red tear tracks down his cheeks.

“To be fair, I’d also been drinking from skals as well. And Ekons and Vulkoids, if they made a nuisance of themselves.”

“You’re a smug bastard, aren’t you.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that point.”

McCullum casts a look over to his own ghost’s grave, and heaves a sigh.

“Carl would have strung me up for talking to you, let alone suffering a leech to live.”

“Ah. I’ve seen some of his writings. He did seem rather set in his ways.”

McCullum snorts at that.

“That’s putting it mildly. He had his reasons, though. Mostly because he was usually right. Like with the thing that came back to Dublin instead of my father.”

Apparently it’s his turn for confessions now. Reid, for his part, listens quietly. Though with the way he likes to stick his nose in other people’s business, he’s probably hungry for it. McCullum indulges him anyway.

“That was easier to swallow for me, at least. It’d just killed my Mother, forced Ian to drink its blood - which at that point looked only like a poisoning to me, he hadn’t woken back up yet - and then it turned its focus on me. Not sure whether it was going to drain me or turn me, but either way Carl arrived just in time.”

“I hated him, for a bit.” He shrugs. “Even more, once he told me we had to go back and kill Ian. But he wouldn’t budge to my cajoling, the bastard, not even a little.”

“I think I hated him even more, when we finally returned to Dublin and caught Ian drinking from some poor soul in an alley. Hated that he was right. Not sure I ever stopped hating him, but somewhere along the way he became family, and I could hate him and love him at the same time.”

Reid’s smiling that sad smile of his in McCullum’s direction, but he has the decency not to comment as McCullum flushes and swallows the rest of his words.

“I’m glad it was you I faced, then, and not Eldritch,” he says when it’s clear McCullum’s done sharing. “Unwitting ally as you were, you came around when I needed it most. I couldn’t have created the cure without your help.”

McCullum’s not sure he’s glad, per se, but he thinks maybe he at least learned… something when he fought Reid in the Pembroke basement. Even if he had to be soundly beaten to get there.

“Could you have boiled my blood?” he blurts out before he can stop himself. He stares resolutely at Mary’s grave when Reid looks over at his outburst.

“Ah, no, that’s, er, relatively recent. Or at least, I’ve only recently learned to balance it with- well.” Some other horrifically powerful leech magic, McCullum assumes. Looking back now, it’s easy to fill in the gaps, to recognize how… careful Reid had been when they fought, using his blood shield, weakening him with the power that sized him and drew the blood from his veins, darting in to deal precise blows with his hacksaw or the occasional blood spear. He sighs a bit more explosively than he means to.

“To be fair, Geoffrey, I’m sure you would have been more than powerful enough to have dealt with any other Ekon in the city,” says Reid with an apologetic look.

“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better, Jonathan,” he grits out between his teeth. It’s mostly for show though, and by the twinkling in Reid’s blue eyes, he knows it too. 

They’re silent for a bit then, both caught up in their own thoughts. McCullum is running through the whirlwind of events during that brief stretch of the epidemic. The chaos, the screaming, the horrible calls of mindless skals as they multiplied night after night.

“Why didn’t you stay away?” he finally asks. Reid looks over at him, and he presses on. “Afterwards, I mean. With Lady Ashbury, or Blackwood, or whatever her name actually is. By all the accounts we could gather, you two were… very attached to each other. Yet here you are, no Lady in sight.” Here, in this cesspool of a city, haunted by the ghost of his sister, watching his mother grow old as he stays forever the same. Why does McCullum even care?

Reid sighs again. He does a lot of that, the mopey toff.

“I can’t say that I do not love her,” he says. “She helped me so much, when I was lost and new in this world of… of magic, and legend. I will always be grateful for the kindness she showed me in those dark hours. But perhaps it was a different sort of love than I had thought it was, at first.”

He shakes his head wistfully. “In the end, she couldn’t stand the thought of coming back to London, and I couldn’t stand the thought of staying away. London is my home, Geoffrey, for better or for worse.”

So, that hadn’t really helped get the leech out of his head, either. McCullum’s still mulling the conversation over for the next week, which is probably why the Sheen brothers conspire to drag him out to the Turquoise Turtle. Moody and snappish as he’s been these last few weeks, he can’t say he blames them.

It’s not as if they particularly like the place, he muses as he chokes back another swallow of watered-down whiskey. But it’s one of the only places around that will let them drink in peace anymore. Even if the barmaid glares daggers at them the whole time, fingering the gun in her pocket that she may or may not know that they know is there, and Watts doesn’t let them run a tab. 

Still, Toby and Vincent were right, he needed to get out of his head for a night, and the burn of bad whiskey to the tune of their back and forth bickering is slowly getting him to relax his shoulders. Right up until the moment when the good doctor strides in from the misty night.

At least it gets the barmaid to stop watching them like they’re a pack of vicious dogs snarling over table scraps.

“Well, look who’s come down from the hallowed halls of the hospital to grace us with his presence!” She sounds teasing rather than bitter, which is the first time McCullum’s heard it from her. “Doctor Reid, come in!”

“Good evening, Sabrina. Tom.” Toby and Vincent are as tense as he was at the start of the night, he notes with a wry smirk.

“Won’t you have a drink, Doc?” Tom says with the tone of a man who would definitely be willing to let this patron run up as big of a tab as he’d please.

“I’m working, I’m afraid. Besides, Tom, I’ve seen the state of your storehouse.” They chuckle together like old friends. McCullum grimaces through another swallow of whiskey.

“Is Dyson around tonight? He had that nasty cough last week and I need to check in on his progress.”

“As dedicated to lost causes as the Sad Saint, you are Dr. Reid. He popped out for a bit around noon, which means he’s probably due back any moment now, the poor sod. Feel free to set yourself down and wait for him if you wish.”

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t like to be any bother to you,” Reid says ostensibly to Tom, but he tosses a glance toward the guard’s table and briefly meets McCullum’s gaze. 

McCullum resigns himself to a long night, then gives Reid the slightest nod he can muster. Reid offers him a slight smile in return, which McCullum glares at.

“You’re never a bother, Doc. Just go ahead and have a seat,” says Sabrina.

It could just have easily ended that way, with Reid waiting quietly in the opposite corner of the bar, the Sheens grumbling into their drinks about leeches ruining all of their best plans, and Geoffrey’s shoulders slowly unwinding again; not from relaxation, but resignation. So he tells himself. Of course, the night has other plans for them. 

Dyson Delaney, the local drunk, does end up stumbling through the doors in relatively short order, and Reid swiftly corrals him into his corner. He takes out his doctor’s bag and efficiently sets to examine the man before he can so much as call for another gin. The trouble comes in the form of the two who followed Delaney through the pub doors.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” McCullum grumbles into his whiskey, which now suddenly seems to be far too empty.

Vincent and Toby swivel in their seats to check the newcomers, and turn back with grimaces of their own. McCullum allows himself a small chuckle as Vincent groans and rubs the bridge of his nose, and Toby’s sour look takes a turn for the worse. Then he’s right there with them as Ichabod Throgmorton opens his mouth. At least he’s not speaking to them. Yet.

“When I agreed to take you on in this capacity, it was with the understanding that you were ready and willing to take instruction, not that I would have to keep you from running off into trouble you aren’t yet ready to face.” He sounds put upon. That makes two of us, thinks McCullum. 

“Oh come on, sir! You’ve had me doing nothing but pasting up flyers, then running off to get more flyers to paste up. For weeks! I didn’t sign up so I could be your errand girl. If I wanted more of that I’d go back to waitressing!”

She’s a sturdy young thing, hounding at Throgmorton’s heels and refusing to let him dismiss her. 

“This field requires discipline, Miss Teasdale. One can not simply walk into the nearest vampire lair and expect to come back alive! There is foundational work to be done, first.”

Vincent snorts, and Toby looks like he’s about to rip his own ears off. 

“You’re forgetting I already came back from my first excursion into a vampire nest.” McCullum sobers at that, and even the Sheens perk up and swing back around. “So did the Doctor here, in fact. Isn’t that right, Doctor Reid?”

“I wouldn’t say it was quite as easy as that. Hello, Miss Teasdale.”

“And I’ll have you know that Doctor Reid deigned to ‘lower himself’ to spread my flyers before his encounter with the beast who took you, isn’t that right, sir?”

“... That I did, Mister Throgmorton. Though I wouldn’t say the first activity prepared me for the latter, precisely.” Of course. Of course Reid ran around putting up fliers to warn people about the dangers of vampires in London. Why wouldn’t he. McCullum contemplates his glass and wonders how he can fill it without walking past Throgmorton.

“Bloody Christ, I need more gin,” Toby mumbles, mirroring his thoughts. Vincent thumps him on the back, which is apparently the motion needed to finally draw Throgmorton’s attention to their table. His eyes narrow.

“McCullum,” he says icily.

“Do I know you, sir?” McCullum replies. Mostly to be a little shit. Reid coughs and looks back to examining Delaney, but doesn’t quite hide his grin.

“Come along, Louise. We will continue this discussion elsewhere,” but her keen attention is already on McCullum’s table.

“Those are uniforms. You in that Guard of Priwen I’ve been hearing about, sir?”

“Worse, I’m afraid,” Throgmorton sneers before McCullum can answer her. “He’s their leader. Come along, Louise.”

“You know, I don’t think I will, Mister Throgmorton.”

“Miss Teasdale -”

“No.” She’s got a tone of finality about her, though McCullum wouldn’t bet Throgmorton could pick up on that much subtlety. “I came to you to learn how to fight those things. If I just wanted to “raise awareness” I would have stayed in the West End and teamed up with Crazy Crossley.” Reid visibly flinches at that, which is interesting.

“Miss Teasdale, I must insist -”

“Ichabod.” Reid speaks with the slightest hint of a command in his voice. Whether human or vampiric, McCullum can’t tell, but it raises his hackles nonetheless. The Sheens tense up beside him as well.

Throgmorton, for his part, flinches and shoots a nervous glance to the Doctor, which he returns with a raised eyebrow. 

Teasdale picks up on the tension and looks about ready to burst with indignation, so McCullum heaves a sigh and makes up his mind.

“Come and have a drink, lass.”

“Louise, you will not find -”

“Ah leave it, you old phony. Ya couldn’t tell a vampire from a mosquito, let alone how to swat one,” calls Vincent.

Throgmorton bristles, but Reid steps in again.

“Ichabod,” he says, gently this time, “if she’s that determined to go down this road, better that she has the resources she needs to do so.”

Throgmorton looks green behind the gills for a second, and maybe even a bit guilty. But he rallies his sizable ego soon enough.

“Very well. Come find me when you’re ready to take things seriously, Miss Teasdale. Good evening, gentlemen,” and then he marches out of the pub with his nose in the air. 

Teasdale shoots a look at Reid, who has gone back to studiously fussing over the oblivious Delaney. Then she takes a breath, grabs the ale Tom had surreptitiously placed at her elbow, and approaches McCullum’s table.

“Geoffrey McCullum,” he says, holding out his hand for her to shake, “and these are Lieutenants Vincent and Toby Sheen.” His men nod to her and shift to make room.

“Louise Teasdale,” her grip is firm, and she meets his eyes dead on. “Rumor has it you could teach me a thing or two about hunting vampires.”

“That might be. ‘Rumor has it’ you’ve already had your first encounter with a leech.”

“That might be.” She’s still meeting his look with a challenge of her own.

“Most people, one encounter is enough. Yet here you are, champing at the bit to go back for more.”

“Maybe I’m not ‘most people.’ Sir.”

“I’m listening.”

She steels herself for a moment, looking over McCullum and the Sheens. Then she places her ale at the table and settles onto the bench. Looks like she’s come to a decision of her own.

“He found me in a pub,” she tells them. “Not the one I worked at. I’d just had a row with my father and wanted to forget, you know? I’d like to say I put up a fight, but I was dead drunk. I don’t remember much of it, just that there was a voice inside my head telling me to go with him, so I did. 

“Bastard locked me up in a cell in the sewers. There were bodies in the chamber outside, strung up where I could see him... practicing on them. He kept going on about how I had to agree to be his bride. Told me he could force me, but he wanted me to choose him. Wanted it to be my decision, in the end. Of course, when I just cussed him out and told him to let me go, he stopped feeding me.”

She looks off into the distance.

“My father came after me. That’s how Doctor Reid found me, you know. He found my father, with notes about me in his pocket. The bastard that abducted me didn’t leave much of Da left, but he didn’t search his pockets, neither.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“So am I. But mostly I’m angry. That entitled bastard thought I’d just go along with anything he wanted, and when I didn’t, he killed my father and left me to rot in that cell. I’m never going to let that happen again. Not to me, and not to anyone else if I can help it.”

“These aren’t easy bastards to kill, lass,” says Toby. “What makes you think you won’t just end up some leech’s feed bag, making it stronger when it tries to come after the rest of us?”

“I’m no stranger to brawls, and I can hold my own. If I need to spend time proving myself to the rest of you, then so be it, but better that than handing out leaflets on the docks.” She flashes them a cheeky grin. “Besides. The good doc managed to pull me out of that shit hole just fine. If he can manage it, so can I.”

“Then lesson number one, Miss Teasdale,” Vincent says with the self-satisfied air of someone about to rip apart her worldview, “that ‘good doc’ of yours is probably the most powerful leech in this whole damned city.”

She does goggle at him a bit, to be fair. Though more in confusion than in shock.

“Doctor Reid? How could he be? When I talked to him about my abduction, he didn’t even know whether or not vampires could fuck.”

Vincent spits out the swig he’d taken after his smug revelation.

Toby lets out a sputtering bray of laughter. McCullum fares a little better, though he does have to press the bridge of his nose to lessen the burn of whiskey that had just gone up the wrong tube.

“By all accounts, he is a rather young leech,” McCullum coughs, “he might not actually know.”

Toby keeps laughing and wipes tears from his eyes while Vincent tries to sop the ale off of his shirt with a rag. Across the room, Reid has his back firmly facing their table, though his shoulders are a bit closer to his ears than normal. McCullum supposes his ears would be red if he was capable of flushing.

“You’d think it would be one of the first questions they’d have when faced with eternal life,” Teasdale muses. Reids shoulders raise up another inch. 

“He’s a bit of a toff, though, isn’t he,” Toby manages to get out between giggles, “not sure he’s got the same priorities as us common folk.”

“Suppose you may be right,” says Teasdale. “But wait, you said he’s young and real powerful. Does that degrade over time, then?”

“More of the opposite, really,” McCullum grumbles. Is it just him, or has Reid’s posture shifted from embarrassed to smug?

“So do you just leave him alone because he’s one of the good vampires, then?” asks Teasdale. He’s ready to tell her lesson two is there’s no such thing as a “good vampire,” but she continues before he can open his mouth.

“Like Sean Hampton.”

“Sorry, like who?”

“Sean Hampton. You know, the Sad Saint?”

Teasdale looks between the three frozen guardsmen. At his table, Reid has frozen up too.

“You know, pale as anything, bloodshot eyes, only comes out at night? A lot of the lost causes that go there don’t make it through the night, but there’s no transport system to get them to the mass graves? Throgmorton’s had me plastering posters up in the Night Asylum Vicinity, so I’ve had time to snoop around a bit.”

McCullum nearly jumps when Reid is suddenly at their table. Toby does jump, and Vincent shifts in a way that means there’s at least two guns pointed at the doctor from under the table. Including McCullum’s, that is. 

“Reid,” he growls.

“The situation is under control.”

“Reid.”  

“They’re no threat to anyone, McCullum.”

“They?”

Reid powers straight past that bombshell.

“Only the dead go missing, and Sean provides all the care he can to the living to keep them that way. He’s no threat.”

Only one type of leech can feed off of dead flesh.

“Skals ? You’re protecting a nest of skals, Reid?”

“I am. These are no feral beasts, McCullum. They think and feel -”

“And subsist on blood and the flesh of the dead!”

“Only the dead, McCullum! They’re not hurting anyone.”

“Yet!”

“They just want to be left alone.”

“How many?”

“Geoffrey -”

“Don’t you ‘Geoffrey’ me, Jonathan! How many of those things are you harboring?”

“I’m not harboring them. They’ve eked out a living beneath this city for as long as it’s -”

“Oh, that’s fine then, they’re just ancient skals, no problems there!” 

“Would you just -”

“They put this whole district at risk!”

“The situation has been stable since before the epidemic, would you just -”

Reid cuts himself off this time. His head jerks up, and suddenly he’s staring at the wall. No, through it.

“Reid.”

But without so much as a glance, he’s up and striding toward the door. He whips past Watts, who had been reluctantly coming over as peacemaker when their argument started. 

“Everything all right, Doctor?” he calls, but Reid is already on his way out.

“Jesus bloody Christ,” growls McCullum, as he scrambles up from his seat in pursuit. The Sheens are hot on his heels, and Teasdale’s chasing after them.

By the time they’ve made it onto the street, Reid is halfway across the block. He glances back at the guardsmen, and then ahead and to the left of him before he steps into the shadows and is gone.

“Christ, he really is one of them, isn’t he?” pants Teasdale. She’s reached under her coat and pulled out a machete, of all things. McCullum’s opinion of her ratchets up another notch.

“Did he just point us in the direction he’s heading? What are we, his entourage,” yells Toby, incredulously.

“Only one way to find out,” Vincent shouts back as he charges after McCullum, who is already rounding the corner and searching for another glimpse of Reid’s coattails as he races through the shadowed streets.

He did mean for them to follow, as it turns out. They round another bend, and there’s Reid, sword out, facing off with another man.

Toby’s bringing up his bow and lining up a shot when McCullum makes out a shadow huddled at the second man’s feet.

“Hold fire!”

“Boss!”

“Hold it, Sheen!”

“I warned you Seymour,” Reid growls. Gone is the friendly doctor, the concerned citizen. In this moment, he’s all predator.

“Don’t you come any closer,” shouts the man, brandishing a bludgeon. 

“Reid!”

Reid is seething. The shadows seem to writhe at his feet, and McCullum can smell the iron gathering in the air.

“Boss,” Vincent has arrived and lines up a shot, but keeps his finger off the trigger. Teasdale shifts nervously into place behind them.

“Let him go,” Reid commands, and McCullum can hear the thin stream of power running through his voice.

The man - Seymour - lunges, but he’s no match for Reid. Faster than McCullum can track, Reid catches him, throws the bludgeon to the side, and slams him up the nearest wall.

McCullum adjusts the aim of his crossbow. “Reid, I’m warning you!”

“Tell them what you were doing Seymour!” The command isn’t a trickle this time so much as a torrent. Seymour’s head rolls back against the wall as he’s hit with the force of it. His eyes go glassy, and his face changes from a grimace of anger to something vaguely petulant.

“I only killed his stupid rat. I hadn’t gotten to the beggar yet.”

He said it with all the affect of a man complaining about the daily drudgery of a particularly annoying chore. 

“These stupid people walking around without a care in the world, it just makes me so angry, you know. I can’t help but bash their stupid little heads in.

“And then there’s this whiny little beggar boy, bothering me mum. She loves him more than she loves me. Did you know that, Doc? What kind of mother loves a slimy little urchin more than her own son.

“So yeah, I squashed his little rat friend. And if you hadn’t come and kicked up such a fuss I would have squashed him too.” He’s smiling a little, almost wistfully. Reid doesn’t look angry so much as devastated. McCullum lowers his crossbow and holds a hand out to Vincent.

“Sheen, you got a rope?” 

“Yeah, boss,” he says and gropes around on his belt to hand the thin cord over without taking his eyes, or his gun, off Reid.

McCullum slowly uncoils the rope and approaches Reid. 

“Put him down, Doc.”

“How many? How many lives have you taken, Seymour?” His voice is thick, choked up, but his grip is holding steady.

Seymour only barks out a laugh. “You think I count? I don’t keep track of them all. They can all rot, for all I care.”

McCullum eases in and puts a hand on Reid’s shoulder. 

“Easy Jonathan, put him down. We’ve got this.” 

Reid finally spares a glance back at McCullum. His pupils are pinpricks, but the smell of blood has receded, and the shadows lay quiet at his feet. He slowly lets the man slide down the wall, but keeps him pinned while McCullum ties his hands. 

“Sheen, and Sheen, I need you to get this man to the nearest police outpost. Take the new recruit with you.”

“Sir!” 

“It’ll be fine Toby, just get him secured and bring back a copper or two.”

Reid has already shifted his focus to the boy crouched on the street. He’s hiccuping out great sobs and trying to reach bloodied hands towards a small carcass of - yes, looks like it was a rat - in the street beside him, despite the odd angle that one of his arms is hanging from. 

“Rufus. Rufus! I need you to focus on me.”

“He killed Jack! He killed him!”

“I know, Rufus. Are you hurt anywhere but your arm?”

“He didn’t have to kill him, Doctor Reid! He was just a baby rat, he never hurt no one!”

“I know, Rufus. I’m sorry.” He does sound sorry, too. Not even placating, just sad that he hadn’t saved this boy’s… pet.

“He was my only friend,” whispers the boy, and yeah. He doesn’t look like he’s had much of anything in his life.

“He wasn't your only friend, Rufus. I know Mrs. Fishburn looks out for you too.”

“She’s never going to speak to me again, now that I got Seymour in trouble,” he sniffs.

“Seymour got himself into trouble, Rufus, and Mrs. Fishburn knows it too. Come on, let's get you up. I can’t look at that arm of yours in the street.”

Reid gently tugs the boy to his feet and steers him along the street, tucked under his arm like some sort of baby bird. They stop at a battered old house down the block and Reid knocks on the door. A diminutive older woman opens it after a short while, and if McCullum has any doubts she knew what her son was up to, they fade when she clearly grasps the shape of the situation with one look at Reid’s grim face.

“He’s finally done it then, Doctor?”

“I’m afraid so, Mrs. Fishburn. May we come in? I need to see to Rufus’s arm.”

“Oh, Rufus. I’m so sorry.” She does sound sorry, too, in that grim way of someone who saw a disaster coming from a mile off. “Yes, come in, I’ll warm some fresh water.”

Reid doesn’t say much of anything to Mrs. Fishburn. He doesn’t really glance in her direction either. McCullum gets the impression that he’s had the opportunity to say his piece before. He just bustles about, cleaning the boy’s hands, examining his shoulder, and coaxing him to drink a painkiller that has him swaying on his feet in no time.

“Get him settled for now, Stella. He’ll need to come by the Pembroke when he wakes for a more extensive exam, but nothing seems to be broken, just strained and bruised.”

“Of course, Doctor Reid.”

Reid looks at her hard, then.

“You will take care of that boy, Stella Fishburn.” There isn’t a thread of mesmerism in his voice that McCullum can detect, but there’s no room for argument either.

“Yes. I promise I will, Doctor.” For her part, she does sound ashamed.

They leave the house without so much as a goodbye. Out on the street again, Reid casts his eyes up to the sky and takes a deep breath.

“If I show you to where he disposed of his bodies, can you be sure to lead the police there?”

“I can.”

“Right,” he says with another breath, “this way.”

There are a lot of bodies. McCullum steels himself as he looks around at the drainage ditch by the canal, but the amount of carnage is profound. He’s happy to leave when Reid silently leads him back up to street level. They sit on the side of the wharf to wait for the Sheens to return with the authorities. 

“There was no way for me to prove to humans that Seymour was the one culpable,” says Reid. His voice is thick with resignation. He’s got his shoulders hunched in and his hands clasped before him, staring resolutely at them. “I can’t go directly to the police, now that I am… what I am. I let him know I was watching. Apparently that wasn’t enough.”

“Why didn’t you just kill him?” McCullum asks. Here he goes again, encouraging a leech to act more like his nature. Or at least more like the nature that McCullum’s been taught they have.

Reid just shakes his head.

“I will not play God, Geoffrey. I can’t just run around passing out judgement and calling it justice. I -” he cuts himself off with a frustrated noise and rubs his hand over his mouth. When he speaks again it’s softer. “I cannot go down that road. Not even once. Not with humans. Not anymore. Do you understand?”

And yeah, McCullum understands. He lets out a sigh of his own.

“Tell me about the Night Asylum, Reid.”

So Reid does tell him. He explains Hampton’s infection, his escape with the Disaster - Harriet Jones, the mess that had led him to meet Reid for the first time that night in Swansea’s office - and sending Reid down into the western dock’s sewers (and killing the notorious Ascalon bruiser as a week-old Ekon, Christ) to meet the Sewer Skals. 

“How did you know your blood would stabilize him?” McCullum asks when Reid finally trails off.

“I didn’t, not for sure. Old Bridget had suggested something of the like, and I’d found a document that hinted at the effect as well. I just knew I had to try, to keep the whole district from crumbling apart at the seams,” he shakes his head. “All I could do was try, and then keep an eye on the aftermath.”

“Like you kept an eye on Seymour Fishburn?” Reid keeps silent. “Hell, Reid! You’re managing full shifts at the hospital, keeping an eye on every poor sod from Whitechapel to Southwark, hunting skals on a nearly weekly basis, and don’t think I don’t know you have a hand in keeping Ascalon quiet lately! Something’s going to give. You’re spread too thin!”

Reid hangs his head and huffs out a mirthless laugh.

“I’m about to be spread thinner, too, if Doctor Ackroyd has anything to say about it. Doctor Tippets is resigning - as he should, he’s addicted to amphetamines and it’s been showing in his work - and though I do believe Waverley was the right man to take over from Edgar, it would be much easier to work out a manageable schedule with him if he didn’t… hate my guts so much.”

Or if the man in charge of his shift schedule knew why it was essential that he only worked nights.

“Why didn’t you turn Swansea?” McCullum asks. He’d seen the body. Swansea had been alive when Reid had taken him down from where Priwen had left him - and damnit, they hadn’t meant to injure him as much as they did - and passed a short time later, with no signs that he’d ended up a convenient meal. There had been a chance to save him. Reid must have known that.

Reid shakes his head again.

“You were right about him. His unethical experiment caused the skal epidemic, and he was never going to change. I couldn’t commit myself to watching over him for the rest of eternity, and I couldn’t trust him to stop.”

“But he was your friend.”

“Yes,” says Reid, looking at his hands. “He was.”

It’s McCullum’s turn to rub at the tension in his forehead.

“Look,” he says. His words come out in a rush, mostly so he can’t think about what he’s saying before putting it out there. “It makes tactical sense for Priwen to have a hospital nearby - to have a doctor nearby - who knows what we’re dealing with and won’t ask questions. I’ll go by the Pembroke tomorrow night, see if I can’t bring Ackroyd into the fold, so to speak.”

“I - yes. That would -” McCullum doesn’t let him finish.

“As for the Night Asylum, you won’t be the only one keeping an eye on the place from now on. Got it?”

“Yes, I understand.” He looks like he does, too. Maybe a bit too well.

“McCullum -”

“You should go. The coppers should be here soon, and it’s going to be complicated enough explaining how we caught Seymour without bringing you into the mix. Get back home before it gets light out.”

Reid absolutely does not smile at him, but the corners of his mouth may twitch up a bit.

“Until tomorrow night, then.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

McCullum remains sitting on the wharf until he hears his Lieutenants dragging along the reluctant police officers, wondering what he’s just got himself into.

He can’t say he isn’t dragging his feet the next evening on the way to the Pembroke Hospital. He hasn’t been back since he went to drag Swansea out. Since he dragged his own sore body out of the basement after the failed ambush for Reid. 

How confident he’d been then, both of his righteousness and his strength. He can’t even say he’s sorry to have been proven so wrong. At least not entirely. 

A few of the staff shoot him hard looks as he makes his way to the second floor, but no one tries to stop him. He wonders what Reid told them to explain Swansea’s sudden absence, if anything. He hasn’t seen an obituary for the man in the papers, just a brief article about the change in management. 

Doctor Ackroyd is exiting his office when McCullum reaches the top of the stairs. He does a good job of covering the brief flicker of fear that passes over his face by tightening his mouth into a grim line.

“Doctor Ackroyd. We need to have a chat.”

“No,” he replies, planting his feet and crossing his arms over his chest. “Whatever arrangement you had ended with Doctor Swansea’s departure. This hospital will have nothing more to do with you or your - street gang.”

He’s considering the best way to herd the man back into his office - beyond simply pointing his gun at him - when Reid strides down the hallway toward them. 

“Doctor Ackroyd -”

“Is this your doing, Doctor Reid? I’ll have no part in this -”

“Waverley.” He looks so damned dejected. “As the administrator of this hospital, there are things you need to know. About London. About me. Please, let’s have this conversation in your office.”

Ackroyd looks sour about it, but a part of him must be hungry for answers, because he opens the door for them and stomps inside. 

I doesn’t stop him from rounding a scathing look at Reid once the door is shut behind them though.

“You seem to be under the impression that this entire institution would come crumbling down around us if not for your presence, Doctor Reid. Let me be the first one to remind you that despite your expertise -”

“He’s a vampire,” says McCullum.

It’s a fairly good way to bring Ackroyd to a stuttering halt.

“I beg your pardon -”

“Reid’s a vampire. I’m a vampire hunter. Vampires exist. Any questions?”

Ackroyd goggles at them for a bit with his mouth open and eyes wide before he snaps his jaw closed and his temper returns. He rounds on Reid.

“I don’t appreciate this sort of - of prank! How dare you demand my time for such a -”

Reid has his hands up and is all set to placate the man, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? He doesn’t exactly fit the stereotype. McCullum sighs and pulls a stake from his belt.

Reid shoots him a concerned look, but turns his attention back to Ackroyd, who is too caught up in his tirade to notice. They’re still facing each other, Ackroyd snarling and Reid attempting to calm him, when McCullum approaches Reid’s back and swings.

In a whirl of shadows, Reid grabs Ackroyd and hops across the room. Because of course he wouldn’t just save himself and leave the man behind. He sends a chastising, indignant look at McCullum. 

“Geoffrey, what - why would -” he cuts himself off, presumably when he notices Ackroyd’s heart beating out of his chest. The poor man is gasping for breath. “Was that necessary?” hisses Reid.

“Would you prefer it if I’d open a vein for you and have you drink in front of him?” and - 

Oh, Geoffrey thinks as Reid’s dilated eyes snap to him. He’s completely frozen up in that unnatural way of a creature without a beating heart or breath. He feels his own heart rate skip ahead as a wave of adrenaline rushes through his body.

Reid blinks after a second or two, takes a deliberate breath, and turns to fuss over Ackroyd. McCullum forces his muscles to relax. Now’s not the time for a revelation like that. It might never be the time for a revelation like that. 

At least Ackroyd’s too distracted to notice the odd tension in the room.

“Waverley, are you quite -”

Ackroyd slaps Reid’s fussing hands away with a jerky motion. Reid lets them fall, and yes, there he is again. The dejected doctor look is back. McCullum sucks in a breath, then takes pity on the pathetic creature. 

“Ackroyd.” He nods his head to the chair behind the desk when the doctor’s attention reluctantly shifts from Reid. “Sit. Breathe. You’ve nothing to worry about, he’s just about the most boring leech I’ve ever come across,” he lies. 

Still, it gets Ackroyd to jerk over to his chair and sit down. McCullum sits across from him with a deliberate nonchalance. 

It takes a moment for Ackroyd to calm his breathing enough to speak, but he eventually rallies his nerves. He focuses on McCullum, never letting his gaze flicker toward Reid for too long. Though it does flicker there often.

“Doctor Swansea knew?”

“Yes.”

“Explain.”

So McCullum does. As dispassionately as he can, he walks through the existence of Ekons and skals, the Brotherhood and Priwen, Swansea’s experiment and the skal epidemic, and Reid’s arrival, rebirth, and role in stopping the Disaster. He glosses over kidnapping Swansea and the fight with Reid in the Pembroke basement. He entirely leaves out any mention of Mary. 

“Why - why should I allow - him to continue practicing medicine in this hospital?” McCullum’s got to hand it to Ackroyd, he’s doing well at faking the confidence he’d need to try to kick Reid out. 

McCullum leans back and shrugs.

“Other than the fact that the whole city’s short on doctors, and he’s the best you’ve got? Or that he’s filling in all of your funding and supply gaps?” Is it really guessing when he knows how pathetically helpful Reid always tries to be? By the way Ackroyd’s lips thin, he’s hit it dead on. 

“You can’t tell me it’s not useful to have a doctor who can diagnose a patient at a glance, and he’s certainly done more than his fair share of community outreach. The Lord knows the Pembroke Hospital hasn’t ever had a reputation for quality service, even before Swansea… left. Doctor Reid’s work is changing that, and you know it.”

“For our part, Priwen could use a practitioner nearby who won’t ask questions about strange injuries, and one specializing in blood transfusions is a plus.” Maybe that isn’t the best subject to bring up, though. Ackroyd flicks an alarmed look at Reid, like he’s wondering when - and why - the man’s fascination with blood began.

Reid quietly pipes up then.

“A coincidence, that. I chose my specialization years before - well…” 

“The point is,” McCullum continues before they can go too far down that rabbit hole, “there are a lot of advantages to employing Doctor Reid, and you can’t currently afford to turn them down. All you have to do is make sure his shifts are scheduled at night, and give him the flexibility he needs to pursue his… other endeavors.” 

Ackroyd swallows.

“How can I be sure he - that our patients are safe?”

McCullum sighs.

“I’ve been in Priwen for most of my life. Hell, I’ve led it for years now. I’ve seen things that no man should ever have to see, and I’ve faced down more monsters than I can count. A year ago, even a few months ago, I would have told you that you couldn’t. That I had never encountered a leech that I didn’t truly believe had to be exterminated for the safety of all of the humans around it. And then I met Doctor Reid.”

He shakes his head. “Time and time again, he’s proven the exception to the rule. If I had any reason to believe he may be a danger to his patients, or anyone else in this hospital, I wouldn’t be here.”

That’s just about enough of that. He refuses to look directly over at Reid, but he can feel a lightness from him, some of that great sadness lifted. McCullum stands.

“This is a new world for you, Doctor Ackroyd. It’s a new world for both of us, too. Will you allow us the chance to see this partnership grow?”

Ackroyd slowly nods, then stands to shake McCullum’s outstretched hand.

“We can speak more on specifics later, Waverley,” says Reid. “That is, if you’d…”

“Yes, I’d - that would be. Though I - I could use a moment to -”

“Of course. You know where to find me.”

McCullum can’t stand the awkward air in the office anymore, so he leaves. Reid walks silently by his side to the edge of the hospital’s courtyard. The tents that littered the area at the height of the epidemic have been broken down, and it’s beginning to look like it once did. Still, Geoffrey can’t shake the feeling that something about it has permanently changed while he wasn’t looking. One guess as to what that is, he thinks, pausing with Reid at the gate. 

“Thank you,” says Reid.

Geoffrey shrugs. “Nothing I said wasn’t the truth.” Except for that part about Reid being boring, not that he’ll tell him that.

“Nonetheless, I - well. Do you think your guardsmen will actually feel comfortable coming to Pembroke - to me - for medical care?”

“A few of them already have. Nelson won’t stop singing your praises.” 

Reid huffs a laugh at that. McCullum scrubs a hand over the back of his neck.

“We have a few medics who joined Priwen during the height of the Great Hunt. A couple of them have seen about as much of the front lines as they can stand. I don’t suppose you - or the Pembroke - that is, it might ease the transition, and the strain on the staff here -”

“Yes, I - Yes, we could use all the help we can get. I’ll er - I’ll propose the idea to Doctor Ackroyd.”

They both trail off. McCullum’s filled with a restless energy, but he can’t quite gather himself to start the trek back to the acting school headquarters. 

“There seems to be - has Priwen noticed a higher concentration of the ill-formed skals around the West End?” asks Reid.

“Yes,” he replies quickly, and doesn’t look at the relief he feels to have another topic to grasp onto. “Though we thought it might just be left over from the epidemic. It’s hard to move a squad of guardsmen through the more upscale parts of town, now that there are more people venturing out.”

“I’ve been clearing them out as I’ve had time, but I don’t seem to be making a dent in their number. There are rumors of disappearances starting up again, as well.”

“You think it might be another source of infection.”

“Yes. Perhaps something we missed in all of the chaos during the epidemic.”

“We could - well.” McCullum pauses, trying to think of a way to slip a surveillance team into the more heavily trafficked streets of the West End.

“I thought maybe, in the spirit of easing into easing into this new partnership, you might be interested in a… joint endeavor of sorts.”

“I’m listening.”

“If you try to tackle this with Priwen alone, I suspect you’d need to split the operation over the course of a few nights, first to send scouts to find and observe the situation, and then to send a group to deal with it. And with the difficulty of moving in the West End without raising suspicion, there’s a chance the circumstances would change in the interim. Meanwhile, I have a better chance of finding the source quickly, but I couldn’t contain all of the infected by myself if I have to confront a powerful enemy. But if I accompany a squad of guardsmen…”

“We’d have better odds of finding the source and eliminating it in one night.”

“Precisely.”

“I’ll need a couple days to gather supplies and assemble a team.”

“I’m scheduled for a night off on Saturday.”

“Saturday it is then.”

“Saturday it is. You could - that is, if you’re comfortable with -”

“Just spit it out, Reid.”

He flashes McCullum a sheepish grin.

“For simplicity’s sake, come to my townhouse when you’re ready; I know you know where it is. Though maybe leave the rest of the guardsmen waiting off the street. I’d prefer to avoid the scandal of welcoming a large group of armed men into my home.” Yet he was fine with welcoming one in particular. McCullum squashes that train of thought before it can go anywhere. In fact, this whole conversation is getting away from him.

He’s suddenly aware of how close he’s standing to Reid. In order to avoid eavesdropping, to be sure, but now he’s noticing how much taller the doctor is. It’s not a novel realization, but with Reid so near, the thought makes it way to the front of his consciousness and takes up entirely too much room. 

“Right. I’ll see you there. On Saturday.”

“Until then.”

“Right.”

“Good evening, McCullum.”

“Reid.”

He tries to make it look like he isn’t hurrying away. He’s not sure what he can do to keep Reid from noticing the fast pace of blood in his veins, but he’s personally chalking it up to realizing he just agreed to meet a powerful Ekon in his home. 

But he’s not really worried , is he. A few months ago, he thinks dismally, he’d have been worried. No, he’d never agree. Or he’d agree, and then come with the full weight of Priwen at his back. 

A few months ago, he’d never have a conversation with an Ekon in the first place. 

He tries to put his mind off of it and think instead about who he’ll take for this trial run. And how he’ll convince them it’s a good idea. And that he hadn’t been mesmerized into leading them all into a trap.

The thing is, he thinks while he’s picking up speed, walking faster to try to get away from his thoughts, but they’re stuck with him, aren't they. The thing is, he trusts Reid. He trusts him to keep his head in a fight. He trusts his judgement when it comes to citizens and leeches alike. Hell, he’s all but officially entrusted him with the medical care of the entire Guard of Priwen. 

He trusts a leech, and now he’s trying to convince the rest of the Guard of Priwen to do the same.

And somehow, because it’s Reid, he doesn’t even think it will be all that difficult.

He does get a few odd looks and mumbled complaints (or shouted, in Barlow’s case) when he explains the plan to Priwen, but they settle down fairly quickly. Reid hasn’t been shy about jumping into skirmishes to lend a helping hand against skals, and a few guards quietly reveal incidents when they’d been patched up, willingly or otherwise, in the aftermath. 

The Sheens and Roger have it out over who will be his second on the team headed to the West End. Roger wins through sheer bullheadedness; he didn’t get his nickname for nothing. 

In the end, he also brings along Kane and a half dozen gunners of varying degrees of experience, from Teasdale to Dunn, his newest and most seasoned recruits respectively. Let Reid jump in with the poisonous ill-formed skals, he thinks, he and the rest of the humans will pick them off from a distance.

On Saturday night he leaves them waiting in an alleyway (altogether too close to the Ascalon Club for his liking, but what in the West End isn’t) and makes his way over to the Reid Manor. He supposes he could go to the kitchen door instead of the front, but the stubborn arse in him persists. If he’s serious about forming a partnership, then Reid can deal with the whispers of his nosey neighbors. 

So he walks past the stone lions guarding the front steps with more confidence than he feels, and knocks.

Reid’s butler, Avery Cork, answers the door. Because of course he does.

“Mister McCullum, I presume? Please, come in. Mister Jonathan is tending to Miss Reid in the lounge.”

The mansion is, well, it’s big. And full of all of the comforts money can buy. It’s not quite at that level of opulence that he’s seen in the truly ostentatious parts of town; at least most of the furnishings and rooms look like they serve some sort of purpose. Still, he finds himself wondering how many days’ worth of meals he could buy with one painting. Or maybe a clock. 

Cork takes his shabby coat without a second look, then leads him through a dim hallway to the lounge. Reid’s down to his waistcoat with his shirt sleeves rolled up, crouching before his mother, who’s sitting in a plush chair.

He tosses a sheepish glance over his shoulder.

“Good evening, Geoffrey. I’ll be with you in a moment,” he says quietly, then returns his attention to Emelyne Reid. He’s ostensibly checking her pulse, but since he doesn’t even need to be in the same room to do that effectively, McCullum suspects he’s just fussing. 

Miss Reid seems to be carrying on a conversation with the chair next to her.

“It is just so lovely to see you my dear, your little one does so much to liven up these old halls. Yes, yes, you know our Johnny, always fretting. Jonathan, won’t you come for a walk with us, Mary’s little boy just has so much energy to burn off before bedtime.”

Oh. McCullum swallows down any amusement he felt before. Reid’s gently holding his mother’s fragile hand between his.

“Not tonight, mother, I’ve got an appointment to keep. And I think it would be best if you - if you and Mary stay in as well. The streets aren’t safe right now.”

“Jonathan, Jonathan, always working too hard.” She raises her head and belatedly notices McCullum, who’s standing as unobtrusively as possible in the corner of the lounge. 

“Oh dear, we have a visitor! Where are my manners, come in, come in!”

“Mother, this is Geoffrey McCullum. Geoffrey, allow me to introduce my mother, Miss Emelyne Reid.”

“Oh Mister McCullum, Jonathan has spoken so highly of you and your work. Please, sit. Can I get you some tea?”

“I’m afraid we won’t have time, mother. I need to grab my kit, and then Mister McCullum and I have rounds to make.”

He hurries out of the room with an apologetic look on his face.

“I won’t be a moment, Geoffrey.”

And then he leaves McCullum. With his mother. Who thinks highly of his work. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Miss Reid gazes fondly after her son.

“That boy, always rushing about.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Oh, his father and I were so proud when he became a doctor, but I do wish he would take care of himself as much as he takes care of his patients. I can’t help but think he would have had an easier life if he’d become a painter, instead. He was always so talented with portraiture.”

And there’s a thought: Jonathan with that concentrated look on his face, his sleeves rolled up, flecked with paint rather than blood. McCullum can’t imagine him sitting still long enough to finish a painting though. And he’d probably still find some way to get himself into everyone’s business.

“Tell me, Mister McCullum, were you and my Jonathan friends?” 

Surely he’s mishearing her.

“Were, ma’am?”

“Yes. Before he passed, I mean.”

He’s still trying to figure out an appropriate answer to that when Reid returns from upstairs.

“Mister McCullum and I met after I returned from the war, mother,” he says. He’s dressed in his coat now, and carrying his doctor’s bag. He’s got his usual desolate expression on, too.

“That’s odd,” she remarks, and addresses McCullum again. “You do not seem deceased, sir.”

“He’s alive, mother. And as real as I am.”

“Some sort of medium, or a psychic, then?” she muses. Reid sighs and comes over to kiss her cheek. 

“I’ll be back later, mother. Please try to get some rest.”

“Good night, son. Please visit again soon.”

Reid’s quiet as they make their way out, except to ask Cork to watch over Miss Reid while he’s gone. They pause on the steps before descending.

McCullum swallows.

“How long has she…”

“Mary mesmerized her, to get her to the cemetery that night. I hadn’t been home yet.” Reid closes his eyes for a moment. 

“She used to talk to our father like that, after he left. Now she talks to all of us,” he throws a sad smile to McCullum. “The only difference is, I’m actually there.”

“I’m sorry, Jonathan.”

“She’s alive. Avery’s alive. It’s all I can ask for, really.”

They make their way into the street. It seems Reid’s not quite done confronting the ghosts of his past for the night, though. At the mouth of the alleyway, a mousey man with thinning hair turns away from banging on a townhouse door when he spots them.

“Clarence, old chap, how are you?” Reid greets him.

“I’m, well, about the same as ever. Who’s your friend, Johnny?”

“Ah, this is - this is Geoffrey McCullum. McCullum, this is my good friend Clarence Crossley.” So this would be the “Crazy Crossley” Teasdale had mentioned. By the look of it, he recognizes McCullum’s name too.

“McCullum? Of the Guard of Priwen, sir? Oh Johnny, you -”

“I’ve been working as… a bit of a field medic for Priwen, Clarence.” Technically true.

“You believed me, then?” The poor man looks close to tears.

“I told you I did, Clarence,” Reid says softly.

He scoffs.

“Yeah, but I didn’t- I mean, Venus told me she believed me, but that was just to - and then she tried to - to poison me. I took her all the documents you brought me and she burned them, Johnny. Burned them right in front of me, but you -” he turns to McCullum.

“Thank you, sir. I’ve got - I have so many questions. I saw one, in France, and then when I came back they were everywhere, I just -”

McCullum doesn’t need an Ekon’s senses to know Crossley’s heart is beating fast. He’s gasping for breath, too, whipping his head between Reid and McCullum, and then he catches sight of the guardsmen making their way up the alley, and he looks like he’s about to burst with frantic energy.

Reid tries to draw his attention, but he’s overwhelmed, staggering and clutching the pamphlets in his hands so tight they’re a wrinkled mess, his words coming out in fits and starts.

Reid steps in close and grabs Crossley’s face in both hands.

“Clarence! Listen to me Clarence!” The power in his voice sends a shiver down McCullum’s spine, but it does draw the frantic man’s focus in. “Your job here is done, Clarence. You have called people to the fight. You have opened their eyes to the threat of vampires.” 

His mesmerism is subtle, almost gentle. Crossley sways with it, but his eyes don’t glaze over the way Seymour Fishburn’s did that night on the docks. He looks at Reid like his words are the only things that matter in the whole world.

“You have done your part, and now the hunt is in good hands. Go home, Clarence. Tend to your wife. Your part of this fight is over. Go home and rest, good friend.”

Crossley swallows a few times and nods. 

“Yes, right, you’re right, I’ll - It was good meeting you, sir. I know this fight is in good hands now.” He shakes McCullum’s hand, and then claps Reid on the shoulder. “Jonathan, old chap, I’ll - I’ll see you soon.”

“You will, Clarence. Go home and rest.”

“Yes, I’ll just. Go home. And rest.” 

He blinks a bit and wipes at his eyes, then makes his way down the street with jerky strides.

“You know, we are still recruiting,” says McCullum, though he can’t say he means it. The other guardsmen have approached and are casting curious looks at Crossley’s retreating back.

Reid gives a wet laugh. 

“He’s a terrible shot. And he lives two doors down from Ascalon.”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you live right across the street from them.”

“I do. A prominent blood transfusion specialist, living next door to a secret vampire society, with a childhood friend obsessed with rooting them out. I’m starting to believe it’s a little more than sheer coincidence.”

He takes a breath to shake off some of the tension and claps his hands together.

“Right, I think that’s enough of that for one night. Gentlemen, Miss. I did invite you out tonight for a reason, and I think it’s time we got to it.”

Roger won’t quite let it drop though.

“You do know you stick your nose into everyone’s business and get to know their deep, dark secrets because it makes them tastier, right?”

“I was beginning to suspect as much, yes,” Reid snaps. “Though I’d prefer to keep on drinking exclusively from skals, and rats , rather than my good friends. If it’s all the same to you.”

It’s almost comforting to hear him lose his temper. It makes him sound less… impossible.

Roger shrugs, and waves magnanimously for Reid to lead the way. 

It’s a clear, warm night in the West End. He guides them through side streets into the Temple Garden district, and soon enough they start to hear the shrieks and moans of skals. Reid darts off a couple of times to deal with the ill-formed variety away from the rest of them, and the gunners take bets on shots at the rogue skals that come at them from the shadows. The light exercise helps settle their nerves.

Reid’s right, though. If he’s been thinning the numbers down as often as he says, then something is causing this outbreak to grow again.

Towards the northern end of the Garden, Reid stops them and points out a thin trail of blood, apparently leading in a ragged line toward a construction site. McCullum’s inclined to believe him when they wipe out the five skals milling around in the muck and find a broken grate leading into the ground.

“Why’s it always gotta be the sewers,” grumbles Teasdale.

“Trust me, it’s better than hunting the ones that live in townhouses,” says Dunn. “Er… no offense, Doctor Reid.” 

“Oh no, I agree with the sentiment entirely,” he replies, “and if one of those Ekons ever starts talking about ‘fine vintages,’ it’s my personal policy to cut them off - with a sword.”

There aren’t many skals to speak of in the tunnels themselves, but the Guard still quiets down and creeps along in single file. Reid leads them through the labyrinth like some sort of supernatural scent hound, following scratches on the walls and blood drips that only he can sense. McCullum isn’t confident Priwen would have found the nest on their own given a week and twenty men to scatter through the tunnels.

After one final turn Reid lifts a hand to stop them, then steps through the shadows to creep up another dozen yards. He returns to them and waves them back down the tunnel to talk.

“She’s an Ichor, alright. A half dozen ill-formed skals, and maybe twice as many rogues as well. They’re in a larger cistern chamber with two open points of entry. Three foot drop from the tunnels to the floor.”

“Any way to get to the second tunnel?” 

“Maybe. If it’s anything like this one, we could get to it from that central room four turns back.”

“Right. Roger, take Teasdale, Dunn, Marks, and Kane and follow Reid to the second tunnel. Reid, we’ll wait here for you to get them settled and return. We’ll start the attack from this side. Roger, your signal will be all the yelling and gunfire.”

“Got it, boss.”

McCullum keeps his gunners still and quiet for the endless ten minutes that it takes Reid to return. When he comes, he slips through the shadows to McCullum’s side, his expression grim and anticipatory. They nod to each other, then creep down the last stretch of the tunnels.

Before he even hops down, Reid opens with the blood boiling attack. It’s not enough to take the Ichor down, but the splatter takes chunks out of some of the skals. It makes them good and angry, too.

Reid jumps in, and the whole cistern erupts into chaos. McCullum and his gunners line up shot after shot, whipping the skals into a frenzy and keeping them off Reid’s back. He sees Roger’s shotgun blasts coming out of the mouth of the second tunnel, and the occasional ray of light from the Reverend’s cross that repels the skals when they cluster too close to their position. 

McCullum sends tight bursts of crossbow bolts at the Ichor and ill-formed skals. Reid is flickering through the shadows, darting through the massive hits from the Ichor’s mutated arm to slice away at her and her thralls. 

His movements are tight and controlled. He dodges in to land blows when the Ichor is winding back for her strikes, then flits away again before they can hit him. He sends bursts of blood spears at the skals when the blood flowing from his sword builds up, and throws up shields whenever he can’t dodge away. His focus never breaks from the Ichor, and McCullum gets a burst of satisfaction when he sees how much Reid trusts the guardsmen to pull the skals away from him. 

When more than half of the skals are down and Reid darts in for another series of blows, McCullum shoots another volley straight for the putrid flesh on the Ichor’s face. She throws up her massive arm when they hit, and with a furious cry, she sends it crashing down towards his tunnel. 

McCullum shoves his gunners back from the entrance to the cistern, but he can’t quite get out of the way before she hits and the tunnel crumbles beneath him. He scrambles to his feet out of the rubble and manages to get his sword up in time to block an ill-formed skal barreling toward him. He runs her through, but stumbles on the bricks as her body starts to bloat and fester. 

He braces himself and turns his head from the burst he knows is coming, but instead of the burn of poisonous filth, he feels a steady grip lift him from the cistern floor, and an impossible rush of air as Reid pulls him through the shadows, back up to stable ground. 

“I’ve got you,” Reid says softly in McCullum’s ear, and if he’s breathless and shivering, clutching on to Reid’s arm wrapped securely around his waist, it must have to do with how close Reid’s teeth are to his neck, or maybe just a belated reaction to the close call. 

With one last look at McCullum, Reid turns his attention back to the fight. He crouches low, his faint growl reverberating around the tunnel, and then springs forward into the cistern once more. McCullum watches from the crumbled tunnel entrance as Reid winds up for a final assault. Shadows coalesce at his feet, and he dances around her with single minded determination as he waits for an opening. 

There it is, she’s grandstanding again, swinging that great arm of hers back for another attack. Reid lets his sword fall and clenches his hands like he’s pulling up some great weight. The world seems to slow down for a second, and then the shadows leave him to gather beneath the Ichor. 

He’s seen Ekons pull solid spikes out of the shadows - he’s been hit by a few as well - but none of those had been anything like this. 

The shadows swell up, pulsing and bubbling, and rip into the Ichor, impaling her and lifting her up off the ground. She screams while they grab at her, and with a great heave she’s pulled down onto the massive spikes. There’s a resounding crack, and she goes suddenly limp. 

Reid rushes forward, sword raised, and lops off her head as the shadows release her and her body crumples to the floor. The few remaining skals stagger around, directionless, until the guardsmen snap out of it and pick them off. It’s over. 

Reid strides over to Geoffrey, his sword once again hanging by his side. He takes Geoffrey’s hand in his and examines the bloody knuckles.

“Are you alright? Did you get caught up in the skal’s miasma?”

Geoffrey shakes his head and has to swallow a few times before he speaks.

“No. You got me out of there before I could breathe any in.”

Reid smiles at him. “Good. Be sure to clean these out when you get back.”

He rolls his eyes. “I know how to treat a superficial wound, Doc.” 

“I’m glad to hear it. Looks like I have a few less superficial wounds to tend to in the other tunnel.”

A blinker skal had made its way into the second tunnel at some point during the fight and caused some damage before Roger and Teasdale put it down. 

Reid makes quick work of stitching up a sluggishly bleeding gash Dunn’s arm, then he turns to Roger. He’s sitting back against a wall and clutching at his arm while Teasdale hovers over him.

“It dislocated, I’m afraid,” says Reid.

Roger just groans.

“I knew it. Alright, lassie. I’m going to need you to grab my arm and give it a good yank.”

Reid darts in to bat Teasdale’s hands away with a scandalized look on his face.

“Stop that! It’s barbaric and likely to cause more harm than good.”

“It’s got to be reset, Doc,” Roger blinks at him.

“Yes, and there are better ways to do that than “grabbing and yanking.” Now lean forward and help me get this coat off of you.”

“It’s how I’ve always done it before.”

“And let me guess, it’s hurt like hell every time.”

Roger squints at him skeptically.

“You’re telling me,” he drawls, “that resetting a dislocated shoulder doesn’t hurt.”

Reid lets out an exasperated breath.

“I won’t say that it will be entirely painless, or that this technique works in all cases, but no, it should not be especially painful. Lean forward, please.”

Roger lets Reid ease him out of the thick overcoat, then sits back to lean on the wall, still watching him carefully.

“Now what?”

“Now you try your best to relax the muscles in your shoulders, and I manipulate your arm in a way that should encourage it to pop back into the joint.”

“I don’t like the sound of you ‘manipulating’ any part of me.”

“Then you can use the word ‘move,’ if it makes you more comfortable.”

“You sure you’re not going to just pull it into place now that you’ve got my guard down?”

Reid laughs.

“What’s your name, sir?”

Roger works his jaw for a bit before replying.

“Roger. Some people call me “The Wall.”

“Apt. I remember fighting you.”

“I remember you throwing me into a window.”

“You were trying to kill me at the time.”

“Fair enough.”

“The point, Mister ‘Wall,’ is that I can’t ‘just pull it into place now that your guard is down,’ because your guard isn’t down. Now relax your shoulder, and I’m going to start to slowly raise your arm above your head.”

Reid does just as he says, lifting the arm inch after slow inch and pausing whenever Roger flinches to tell him to relax again, as the rest of the guardsmen look on with varying degrees of skepticism.

After the third pause, Roger grits his teeth and speaks again.

“You know, you could just mesmerize me to get me to relax.”

“One, I’m fairly certain the Reverend would try to fry me, which is a fight I’d rather not get into while I’m treating a patient, and two, would that actually relax you? If I don’t throw my full weight into it I’m fairly certain you’d try to resist a command that goes against your instincts like that.”

“And if you do throw your full weight into it?”

“I’m pretty sure you’d never try to tense up a single muscle ever again. Which would make things like moving rather difficult.”

So he keeps slowly lifting Roger’s arm up and over his head.

His arm is almost straight up when Roger pipes up again.

“How is it that a guy capable of throwing a full grown man through a window, and whatever unholy thing it is you did to that Ichor, is so damn precious when it comes to setting a dislocated shoulder? My way would have fixed this five minutes ago.”

“Your way would have had you in pain for a month after the fact,” says Reid. “And if you must know, I find it best to think of patients as flowers while I’m treating them.”

Roger shoots him a look.

“Wonderfully fragrant, and impossibly delicate,” he says, and bends Roger’s elbow gently toward his back to continue the stretch.

Roger roars with laughter, “did you hear that, boss? He thinks I’m a flow- Oh Fuck!” He winces, but Reid’s already lowering his arm back down to his chest. “Jesus Christ, what was that? That did not feel natural!”

“That is what it feels like to reset a displaced shoulder without the distraction of tearing muscle and ligaments, or grinding bones together. Now hold your arm there while I get you in a sling.” He’s got that smug smile back, the bastard.

Roger does as he’s ordered, but grins back at him cheekily. 

“So if you think I’m a flower, does that mean I’m pretty too, Doc?”

“The metaphor breaks down at that point, I’m afraid,” Reid drawls, adjusting the knot on the sling behind Roger’s neck.

“I think he’s sweet on me, boss,” Roger croons to McCullum.

“I think the shock is getting to your head, Roger,” says McCullum. But it’s good to see him in high spirits.

“Keep this immobile for three days, and refrain from putting any strain on it for another two weeks. Go easy when it comes to heavy lifting after that.”

He sets to efficiently packing up his doctor’s bag. McCullum slides over to him.

“A flower, Reid? Really?” 

Reid just grins and shrugs. “I think it’s rather apt,” he says, and shoots McCullum a sly look which he immediately and permanently puts out of his mind. Fucking leeches.

They’re all in high spirits as they make their way out of the sewers, drunk off the victory without the heavy weight of casualties. Roger is strutting around like his sling is a badge of honor, and Teasdale’s giving a blow by blow reenactment of Reid’s fight to anyone who will listen, despite the fact that they all saw. 

McCullum’s walking side by side with Reid as they lead the rowdy group back through the Temple Gardens. He looks… McCullum can’t rightfully call the doctor’s expression smug, it’s far too gentle for that. He seems pleased. Content, even. And once or twice McCullum has to look away to avoid getting caught up in the soft smiles Reid can’t seem to stop sending his way. Maybe that’s how he ends up spotting the group of Ekons following him at the same time that Reid’s senses pick them up.

Reid raises a hand to halt the group while McCullum slides his sword out of its scabbard. The guardsmen form up around their injured members, and Kane taps the butt of his cross on the cobblestones in that confident way that never fails to rally them. 

McCulllum’s fiercely proud of them in that moment, tired from their fight but defiantly baring their teeth at the group that’s loosely surrounding them. Reid stands easily amongst them, shifting silently to a better defensive position in counterpart to McCullum like they’ve done this a thousand times. 

“Good evening Lord Finney, Lord Hamersley. And your progeny, I presume,” he calls as easily as he would greet any of his human acquaintances on the street. 

There are half a dozen Ekons in the group, and a Vulkoid rambles up to join them from further down the path. They’re nearly outnumbered, especially when accounting for their injuries, but somehow McCullum can’t bring himself to worry.

“Doctor Reid. We knew you were a traitor to our kind, but this? Walking amongst the Guard of Priwen like you’re fast friends? Your impertinence knows no bounds.”

“He did more than go for a stroll with us tonight, you posh bastards,” jeers Teasdale.

Finney, or Hamersley, he can’t tell which one’s which, ignores her.

“They hunt our kind, Jonathan. Surely you know they’ll turn on you before long.”

“Ah, no we could never,” drawls McCullum. “After all, he’s taken out so many of you lot we consider him an honorary member. Or did you not notice Ascalon attendance getting a little… sparse of late?”

“How Lord Redgrave could ever suffer you to live when you first betrayed us, I will never understand,” says Hamersley, or maybe Finney.

“It’s probably because I’m such good friends with his ex-wife,” replies Reid. They look about as nonplussed at that statement as McCullum feels. A few of the younger Ekons shoot questioning glances at their makers, but they look about as confused as the rest.

The non sequitur seems to be the last straw for the Vulkoid.

“Enough talk!” he thunders into the silence. “I’m not here to blather, I’m here to eat. Only question is, should I start with the humans or the traitor?”

He doesn’t get to decide, however. The Vulkoid takes three lumbering steps toward them before Reid puts his hand up and seizes the blood in his veins.

“Care to do the honors?” he asks McCullum. Normally he’d be a bit hesitant to go straight for a killing blow on a Vulkoid before wearing it down, but Reid’s standing with an easy confidence that tells him it’s all in hand.

“Don’t mind if I do.” He almost feels sorry for the beast. His eyes widen, but he can’t move an inch as McCullum lopes over and swings, neatly severing the Vulkoid’s head from its neck in one great blow. 

Reid lets the body go, and it falls to the ground like a stone. It almost feels melodramatic after all the trouble they just went through to fell the Ichor. 

The Ekons are frozen around them. 

“Gentlemen, if that’s all. It’s nearing dawn and I’d like to get home in time to bathe before I sleep.”

“This isn’t over Reid!”

“I’m sure it isn’t. Though might I suggest you have a conversation with Lord Redgrave before calling on me again.”

The Ekons don’t seem to have any reply to that, so they slink back into the shadows with a few furtive glances at Reid. McCullum doesn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. He rolls his head over to look at Reid.

“Do I want to know what all that was about Redgrave’s ex-wife?”

“Old Bridget? She’s quite lovely, really. If you come to an accord with the Sewer Skals you’re bound to meet her.”

“He married a skal?” That haughty old bastard?

“Oh, no. He attempted to preserve his mortal wife’s beauty by turning her, but his blood is too weak to make Ekons.”

“I thought he was the progeny of William Marshal himself.”

“That is his claim to fame, yes. As well as his claim to authority.”

“Well. Damn.” Reid just grins over at him as he tries to take the new information in. The most exclusive and powerful group of Ekons in England, run by a centuries-old fraud. They start walking again, the rest of the guardsmen trailing in their wake.

“I know why they think you’re a traitor now ,” says McCullum after he has a moment to process, “but what was it that actually got you kicked out of the Ascalon Club? It can’t just be that you’re so soft on humans. And for that matter, what made you think it was a good idea to join them in the first place?” He can’t imagine it was the dinner parties.

“I only joined them in case they had intelligence on the source of the skal epidemic - not that it did me any good. I still had to run around investigating by myself.” And he’d been the only Ekon to show up to fight Doris Fletcher, so they obviously hadn’t offered to help him with that, either. “They officially rescinded my membership when I refused to make Aloysius Dawson my Progeny.” 

McCullum shuddered at the thought of giving a man with that much money and power eternal life and endless bloodlust to top it off.

“To be fair, they probably would have kicked me out as soon as they’d realized how many of their member’s ‘hunts’ I’d permanently cut short. Or maybe not. For a group that claims to work for England’s goals, they have a rather concerning lack of regard for her citizen’s lives - mortal and immortal alike.”

“Have you claimed the entire city for yourself then? God you’re a territorial toff, aren’t you.”

“I’m not territorial, Geoffrey.”

“Oh, so you’d have no problem with a few packs of Ekons hunting in, say, Southwark?”

“It’s not territoriality to want to protect the citizens of my city.”

“I’m sorry, whose city did you say this is?”

“It’s an expression, Geoffrey. I’ve lived here my whole life, I’m entitled to a little…”

“Territoriality?” 

Reid scoffs, but it’s not like he can deny it. McCullum lets out a short laugh. 

“You really believe that, don’t you? Poor little newborn. Didn’t your maker sit you down and have a talk about your nature?”

“My maker is a disembodied ball of blood capable only of speaking in riddles, who left me to wake up alone and starving in a mass grave. We haven’t exactly had a chance to talk on the finer points of my condition.” He says it with the same drawl as before, like he hasn’t just made the ground drop out from beneath McCullum’s feet. That’s happened too many times tonight.

“What did you say about your maker?” he asks. Reverend Kane and Roger have stopped in their tracks as well. Honestly, McCullum should be used to the bombshells Reid keeps dropping by this point.

“He’s a horned figure made entirely of blood?” Reid glances over at McCullum, then down to his chest with concern creasing his brow. Probably watching the way his heart is pounding away. 

“Christ almighty, you’re one step below a calamity,” breathes Kane. At least McCullum’s not the only one who recognizes the gravity of Reid’s casual revelation.

Reid pauses to look them over. They’ve made their way closer to the busier parts of West End now, near the corner where Reid will go on to his family home, and the guardsmen will turn down and head for their temporary headquarters. 

McCullum can’t help but think of what a passerby might see if they walked by. It’s well lit here, and the streets are clean. McCullum in his ragged overcoat and unseasonable scarf, Kane with his red hood and processional cross, Roger and the rest of the guardsmen sporting grimy uniforms, they’re all standing out like sore thumbs. 

A respectable citizen would never guess Reid, with his crisp clothing and well-trimmed beard, standing with the confidence of a man who’s perfectly at home on these quiet streets, was capable of bringing the whole city to its knees. If he so chooses. 

“He made me to stop a calamity, actually. At least from what I was able to parse out,” he adds quietly. 

And he had done, hadn’t he. All the power in the world, and Reid spent his waking hours healing the sick and running around solving the petty problems of anyone he comes across. Running around with McCullum to put down Ichors, and rogue skals, and chasing down the Ekons who don’t hold themselves to the same strict moral standards that he holds himself. 

Reid breaks through the silence with a small laugh, and just like that, McCullum sees the impossibly kind, posh doctor again. He flashes a smirk at McCullum, the tip of one fang just barely showing between his lips. 

“You know, next time you go and bite off more than you can chew on a hunt, you should down a diluted drop of my blood instead of King Arthur’s. To compare the effects I mean. It would be a wonderful scientific experiment,” he drawls.

“What are you talking about, Reid?”

“You do know he was an Ekon?”

“Of course I know that,” McCullum grumbles. He doesn’t have to like the fact, but it’s true. “It’s well documented if you get deep enough into the Brotherhood archives. He was a powerful Ekon from an ancient line.”

“It’s just I was led to believe he was my brother,” says Reid, his eyes wide with false innocence. “In Vampire terms, at least.”

He can’t think of any response to that but to smack the unrepentant leech in the chest. 

“You are not!”

Jonathan just tilts his head back and lets out a bark of laughter. 

“Reid, you are not some sort of legendary -” but he just keeps laughing and walks away. 

“Good night, my dear hunter.”

McCullum rolls his eyes at the retreating man and sends an exasperated look at his guardsmen. 

If he’s looking for solidarity, though, he’s sadly disappointed. 

Roger’s eyes are widened in alarm, and Dunn is clutching at his recently stitched arm. The other gunners shift nervously, a few rubbing at their throats or staring, stupefied, at McCullum. Who had just thumped an Ekon with powers straight out of horror stories on the chest like they were old buddies letting off steam after a pleasant night of patrolling. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. 

Reverend Kane sends Geoffrey a sad, grim look. One that promises a sad, grim conversation down the road. He turns away from the Chaplain and his guardsmen and continues down the road toward their headquarters.

Teasdale, at least, looks mostly oblivious. Like she doesn’t see anything wrong with the leader of a group of vampire hunters trading good natured barbs with the most powerful Ekon in London. 

Christ.

He manages to get back to his room at the acting school without being cornered by any of his guard, and for lack of anything else to do he cleans his weapons and crawls into bed. 

If he tosses and turns with uneasy dreams about Ekons and Ichors and soft breath against his ear and gentle grips around his waist, well. That’s no one’s business but his own.

Kane and Roger find him the next day, sitting on the scaffolding on the western wall of the acting school, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun. He gets maybe too much satisfaction out of  the muffled cursing of the two big men figuring out how to crawl out the window and onto the narrow platform, but he’ll take what amusement he can at this point.

Finally they settle in on either side of him, Kane leaning back against the warm brick wall, and Roger shuffling to sit beside McCullum with his legs dangling over the edge of the scaffold.

McCullum takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“Myrddin Wyltt,” he says. “Myrddin Wyltt, or Michael, or… Merlin. Whatever you want to call him. Reid’s one of the Horned Wildman’s progeny.”

“Like William Marshal, then?” says Roger.

McCullum just nods.

“Myrddin Wyltt is said to only create progeny once in a great long while,” says Kane.

“And with purpose. Turning a blood specialist to stop a blood borne epidemic. Makes sense, I suppose. Sounds like the ancient bastard’s trying to keep up with the times; a modern child for a modern problem,” says McCullum. He turns his face to catch the sun’s rays.

“What do you suppose Reid’ll do, now that the epidemic’s mostly over?” asks Roger.

McCullum shrugs.

“See to his mother, for the time being. We know he’s been sending correspondence to the Ashbury estate in Scotland, but he doesn’t seem inclined to run off and join her. And he likes London. For all of his tendencies to jump into messes, he appears to be a bit of a homebody.”

“And what will Priwen do, now that the skal epidemic is mostly over?” asks Kane with a raised eyebrow.

“The city’s still a mess,” says McCullum. “I may have called off the Great Hunt, but we’ve seen over the past months that there’s still plenty to clean up, especially now that we have to go back to the shadows to hunt. Even after we get a handle on the skal population, we know plenty of Ekons moved in to take advantage of the chaos.”

“But we’re not going to hunt Doctor Reid.”

McCullum grimaces. 

“Even if I could justify it based on his actions, I’m not sure we could hunt Reid. Certainly not without more casualties than I’m comfortable with. And to what end? What if we just manage to push him past his limits and he snaps? He could cut a swathe through the city. I’d rather leave him to play house and stick to his hospital rounds. If he wants to help us get the skal population back under control, all the better.”

Roger looks over at him.

“The Geoffrey McCullum of a year ago never needed a justification to hunt down a leech, peaceful or not.”

“The Geoffrey McCullum of a year ago got his arse kicked by a newborn Ekon. An Ekon who spared me, knowing I’d abducted his friend, and later popped by to politely ask for the means to put an end to the Disaster ravaging London.”

“You don’t want to hunt Reid, do you,” says Roger, not unkindly.

McCullum looks at his hands. The same hands he’s been using since he was twelve to fight this endless war.

“No. I don’t.”

“Then I do believe it’s time you make this arrangement with Doctor Reid more official. And permanent. And I suggest you do so before continuing to flirt with him.”

McCullum whips his head around at Kane, mouth gaping.

“I do not flirt with him!”

But the Reverend has seen him through puberty. Seen him when he’d -

He turns to Roger for support, but he’s just leaning on the scaffolding and raising a sardonic eyebrow.

McCullum groans and puts his face in his hands.

“God I do, don’t I.”

“Know that I do not judge you, for only the Lord can judge,” says Kane, “but yes, you do.”

“Haven’t seen you this bad since, well…” says Roger. “It’s been a while.”

He does have a type, though, doesn’t he. It’s not like he’s ever acted on it, not really. The only time he ever really liked someone it was - and it’s not as if he ever - 

Besides. Yes, Carl was one of very few people with the type of power that Geoffrey admired, that he wanted to… be bent by. And who he trusted. But that wasn’t the only thing he wanted, was it? All his life he’d met violence with violence, and God he was so tired of it some days. Carl would have never thought of other people like - how was it that Reid put it? Like they were impossibly delicate. Geoffrey’s not sure he’d call himself a flower, but he can admit a certain appeal to being handled… gently. At least every once in a while.

“Carl would kill me if he was still alive.”

Kane huffs.

“Yes, he would have. But brilliant tactician and recruiter that he may have been, Carl Eldritch’s inability to compromise - his inability to even prioritize when it came to hunting - was what destroyed him. It would have destroyed all of Priwen too, if he hadn’t had the wherewithal to select you as his successor. Dedicated to the cause as you are, even the ‘McCullum of a year ago,’ as Roger put it, wouldn’t have dragged us half cocked into a fight we couldn’t win. Not if there were an alternative. We follow you for a reason, and this won’t change that.”

“Chin up, Geoffrey. It’s not the end of the world, fancying a leech. At least he’s a nice one, even by human standards.”

Honestly McCullum would rather be anywhere else in the world right now. He contemplates the long drop to the paving stones below.

“Besides, big, strong, posh man, can’t blame you that much. There’s a reason so many damsels are tempted by the prospect.”

“I’m going to leave now,” announces Kane, and he starts squeezing his way back through the window.

“I’m not a damsel,” growls McCullum.

“Eh, I don’t know about that one. I seem to recall a certain doctor rushing to carry you out of harm’s way during our last fight.”

“Watch it, Roger. You never know when someone might be tempted to throw you through another window.”

“What, with those scrawny little arms? You’d need a big strong Ekon to help you with that one, Boss.”

He scrubs his face in his hands.

“You’re talking as if this is some sort of done deal,” he mutters through them.

“What’d he call you last night, his ‘dear hunter?’”

“Roger…”

“Alright, I’ll stop. But if you don’t decide to ‘pursue this partnership,’ you should let Nelson know. He looked mighty disappointed to not be invited on last night’s excursion.”

“ Roger .”

“Or let me know, for that matter. It’s not very often someone calls me a flower.”

He shoves Roger none-too-gently in his bandaged arm, but he must still be on the good painkillers because he just laughs and starts hauling himself up. He claps McCullum on the shoulder with his good hand.

“All seriousness, Boss, we’ve got your back. You haven’t led us astray so far,” he says. “Mind you, though, if Doctor Reid ever gets over his pacifist ways and hurts you, we’ll bring the full weight of Priwen down on his head.”

So that’s all wonderful. He’s still turning over all of the thoughts clamoring around in his head as he makes his way inside to ask his newer medics what they think about going to work at the Pembroke Hospital. 

(They’re ecstatic, as it turns out. Jacobs had surreptitiously begun writing his resume already, and Baker looks like he might cry with relief at the thought of working with functioning medical equipment again.)

The thoughts are still in the back of his head when he drags Barlow, kicking and screaming, to agree to a ceasefire with Reid. He doesn’t think he’ll risk asking them to actually work together anytime soon.

They’re with him every time he climbs out onto the scaffolding to grab some fresh air in the late summer sun, and they’re definitely there when Reid contacts him again - in a message sent with Dunn after a trip to Pembroke to remove his stitches - to help him deal with an ill-formed beast that has been haunting the East End sewers.

He still has the worries and what-ifs bouncing around in his skull as they make their way along the canal the next evening. He bickers back and forth with Reid on the way to the fight, letting himself get wound up and wound down again with the push and pull of their conversation. 

“Pardon me for a moment, my dear,” says Reid at one point, briefly grasping McCullum’s shoulders as he moves past him into a dark drainage tunnel. He can’t even bring himself to be disgusted when he watches Reid effortlessly catch a skal from behind and drink it dry, then casually drop it to the ground. 

“Not my favorite breakfast, but it does the trick. Now, where were we?”

Somewhere between the skal and the beast, his thoughts settle. 

They tackle the ill-formed beast together. Reid keeps it distracted with blood spears and his precise sword blows while Geoffrey fires his crossbow and darts in to deal swift strikes whenever Reid freezes its blood. Reid calls on the shadows to finish the job, then quickly pulls Geoffrey away before its body can release that final toxic cloud. 

He’s already fussing over Geoffrey’s cuts and bruises before the gas dissipates, so Geoffrey agrees easily enough when Reid suggests they head back to his office to dress the wounds.

They take the back way in. When they get close enough to the scaffolding on the outside of Reid’s office, he easily tucks a hand around Geoffrey’s waist and pulls him through the shadows to the platform. He’s almost used to the feeling by now, but it still takes him a moment to catch his breath once he’s back on solid ground.

He’s not sure what he expects when they enter the room. It’s certainly not the plush extravagance of his childhood home, but there’s none of the sterile white of a hospital room either.

It’s a bit cluttered, really. He’s got neat piles of notes on a table full of lab equipment, and a desk strewn with disassembled bits and bobs that, on closer inspection, could be weapon modifications. There’s even one that might work on a crossbow, though Geoffrey’s never seen Reid use anything but his sword or hacksaw. 

Geoffrey takes it all in - the neat hospital cot tucked in a corner, the shelves of reference texts, the medical illustrations hanging on the walls - while Reid hangs their coats and rummages in a cupboard for fresh bandages. He rolls up his sleeves so Reid can gently clean the scrapes on his hands and forearms, and casts around for something to focus on other than how close they’re standing. His eye catches on a glossy potted plant, and he lets out a surprised laugh.

Jonathan follows his gaze, then grins back at Geoffrey.

“That’s Lisa.”

“You named your plant?”

“She survived the epidemic with me, Geoffrey, she deserves a name.”

“Really? Through all that chaos? How’d you manage that one, Doc?”

Jonathan hums. 

“It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. Finding fresh, clean water was difficult enough. And then I had to remember to put her out on the balcony before dawn each day, to catch the sunlight.”

He smiles that soft smile and briefly meets Geoffrey’s eyes.

“It’s worth it, though. Every evening when I bring her inside I can smell the sunlight on her leaves.”

Geoffrey swallows.

“What does sunlight smell like?” he asks.

“Warmth, growth, rejuvenation.” Jonathan smiles. “Life.” 

Geoffrey must look doubtful, because Jonathan insists. 

“It’s true.”

He just rolls his eyes fondly at the doctor and lets him go back to dabbing at his scrapes. He’s still smiling while he does it, though.

“What is it?” asks Geoffrey.

“Sometimes I can smell sunlight on people too,” and now he’s looking through his lashes at Geoffrey and he - 

He can feel his heart beating faster and faster. This man, this ridiculous man. 

Jonathan must hear his pulse thundering away, because he looks up with concern creasing his brow. He drops the disinfecting cloth to take both of Geoffrey’s wrists in his hands, holding him with increasing worry in his expression. Geoffrey’s heart just jumps again.

“Geoffrey? I apologize, I didn’t - I didn’t mean to…” he trails off like he can’t figure out what’s gone wrong, but his hands are still holding him steadily. A small part of Geoffrey is glad, because a large part of him wants to run, but he can’t. He can’t run from Jonathan because the man is holding him securely in his hands. He can’t get away from this man holding him so gently, healing him, keeping his men safe, keeping London safe. Telling him he smells like sunlight.

Geoffrey can’t stand the hammering of his heart or the concerned crease in Jonathan’s brow, so he does the only thing he can and he leans in (putting his weight against the gentle pressure of those immovable hands, God those hands) and presses their lips together. He stays frozen like that for an eternity, eyes tightly closed, lips pressed desperately to Jonathan’s, before he groans and moves into the kiss, opening to Geoffrey and drawing his breath away. 

Geoffrey flexes his wrists against Jonathan’s grip, still frozen while the rest of the man has come alive, and God he can’t move them an inch. He’s completely at Jonathan’s mercy and the man is showering him with kisses and tenderness again and again. Geoffrey can’t help it, he’s desperate, all but mewling into this man’s mouth. Jonathan pulls back just slightly to look at him and Geoffrey can’t follow him he’s held so fast, panting and heart shuddering. 

He can see the moment when Jonathan understands, when he puts all of the pieces together like Geoffrey’s some sort of puzzle he’s starting to solve, his pupils dilating like some great cat who’s caught sight of his prey, but Geoffrey can’t bring himself to feel fear. Not now. He screws his own eyes shut and turns his face down and away, he’s too open, too raw, too much, and Jonathan groans low and makes Geoffrey shiver. 

“Oh Geoffrey, oh my darling,” he says and crowds into him, shifting Geoffrey’s hands in his grip so they’re, God, he’s holding them in one hand behind Geoffrey’s back, his grip as immovable as ever. Geoffrey’s gasping for air, and he’s tilting Geoffrey’s head up with a hand under his chin, on his throat, and it’s soft but inescapable when Jonathan opens him up into another kiss. Geoffrey can feel the slight pressure of Jonathan’s hand when his Adam’s apple bobs, trying to swallow the man further into the embrace. Jonathan presses closer, his thigh slipping in against Geoffrey’s groin, and with the shock of that touch he bucks and keens desperately up into the kiss. 

His eyes are still clenched tightly shut, and he lets out a sob as Jonathan abandons the kiss to trace the moisture from his eyes down his cheeks to his jaw. Jonathan bends down and presses his nose into Geoffrey’s throat, breathing deep, scenting him, and Geoffrey is gone. 

“Damn you, Jonathan. Please. Please.” 

Jonathan presses a kiss onto the pulse point, feather light, then straightens up to press his forehead against Geoffrey’s. There are red tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, and it should look menacing, monstrous, but those blue, blue eyes are so soft and tender. 

“Oh my darling, my sweet hunter, I’ll never let you go. Not for as long as you’ll let me love you.”

And he slides his hand into Geoffrey’s hair to tilt him back for another kiss, and Geoffrey’s heart sings.