rainjoyswriting (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rainjoyswriting) wrote2017-10-19 09:00 pm
rainjoyswriting) wrote2017-10-19 09:00 pm
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Stupid exorcist fic: it lives!
The Day Shift, a men in hats short set in the stupid exorcist AU. I felt the need to write this despite being exactly one (1) (I) (only one more than zero) fic away from finishing the affinityverse, and now you know everything you need to know about how my brain works.
Rating: NC-17 for violence. That shit needs to be rated way higher than porn does.
Disclaimer: I don't even own enough willpower to finish one damn fic at a time.
Warnings/spoilers: Always refer to part one, but this part has some really nasty gore in it (Hallowe'en month anyone?) so if you are not good with blood, really, it's not for you. I can write a summary of what you need to know in the next part promise <3
Summary: The worst part of the best damn job in France.
Note: So after being *really* ill all summer, I thought as I began to come out of it that I was getting better; it turns out that 'better than death warmed up' is not by any objective standards *better*, and I really fucked myself up by being out of the house for I think a grand total of six hours today. I know I owe comment replies (sorry) but I'm feeling proper sorry for myself tonight and will get back to you soon. Legs very painful. Sulking with fic.
D'Artagnan was not raised Catholic, and the language Aramis speaks his rituals through is in no way natural to him the way it is to Aramis. And yes, d'Artagnan has struggled to think that the man who shares his bed with two other (strictly non-human) men and acts like it's really nothing to fuss about has to go sit in the confessional every week with at least one of his lovers out there in the church to mind him - how Aramis' priest copes with it all d'Artagnan has no idea, not from everything he's ever believed about Catholicism. But then, that Aramis carries holy water and wears a cross and sleeps with two men is perhaps an indication that d'Artagnan may have formed some beliefs but he really he doesn't know all that much about Catholicism after all.
Which is a problem, Aramis mused early in their studies in one of the chairs in d'Artagnan's room, pulling his beard as they looked over Aramis' kit on the desk beside the window. "Almost all of us use salt," he said. "And the bell, and the blade. And all of us need circles or we'll be suffocated by spirits very quickly. But all the rest - there's no point in you reciting a prayer you don't believe in, it won't do a thing. Damp squibs don't come close."
D'Artagnan had felt, mostly, embarrassed. "I could - try to -"
Aramis glanced across at him, grinned. "I'm not trying to convert you. You need a language. A language you can translate protection and attack and communication through. Mine -" He shrugs, eyebrows raised, like it's so obvious he's simply never had to consider it - "I have prayer, and the Lord for strength, and because I know the Lord is my strength I really can be strong against things that, in all fairness, should flay and chop my soul to messy bits. You need a language you know to be true. I've known Buddhist exorcists, Muslims, Jews. The atheists . . ." He contemplated the ceiling, a sight, d'Artagnan thought with a certain sort of sigh, he could hardly be unfamiliar with; he previously occupied this bedroom and lay on the bed he shared with two other men underneath that ceiling.
"I've known them use all sorts of things," he said, "They borrow a lot from - all sorts of Pagan things. Old countryside rituals, hedge magic, whatever they particularly like or feel drawn to. I knew a woman who used coloured thread and sand, someone who used herbs . . . you need a language, this for protection, this for cleansing, this for clarity, you need a language. We need to find you one."
"Colours and herbs," d'Artagnan said, arms folded; being uncertain always makes him feel defensive.
"You could use anything, that's the point. Runes, scents, even. Constance could help," he added, smile turning wicked in his cheeks. "Witches know a lot of symbolic languages, Constance may be able to suggest something perfect for you. We should ask her, in the garrison, tomorrow. We could call and ask her now -"
Through gritted teeth d'Artagnan said, arms folded tighter and cheeks burning, "Tomorrow is fine."
Aramis only said as if so understanding, "The patient heart is wisest." and d'Artagnan raised an eyebrow at him, and flicked a piece of his chalk across the desk.
But the next day in the garrison, while d'Artagnan is standing with his coffee cup talking to Porthos, he makes the rookie error of losing track of Aramis - exorcists are watched like someone might try to steal them on the streets, but in their own offices they're much more relaxed - until he sees the man walking towards him grinning darkly, Constance curious at his side. D'Artagnan's cheeks flame hot; Porthos checks the direction of his gaze and grins deeply, raising his own coffee cup to hide it.
In the department library, sitting side by side underneath one of the muted green glass lamps - the gold of the bulb glows Constance's skin and hair to particularly lovely casts of amber - she shows him some books, talks him through the languages witches use. He traces the pattern of a rune on an alphabet laid out, and she watches him in silence before she says, "Thurisaz." She looks down at the alphabet, and says, "Yes, that one does suit you."
She talks him through the Elder Futhark, the meanings of the runes - "They made them up, mainly, for divination, but it doesn't matter how old it is if it works." - the layering of the meaning, the things witches can use them for, though it would be different for exorcists . . .
D'Artagnan traces the shape of Othala, and thinks, Yes.
So when he has free study time - when Aramis doesn't set him anything to work on in particular, though he keeps the stack of books beside the desk topped up for him - d'Artagnan studies runes, practises, learns, until Aramis can sit beside him and knock on the desk and say, "How do you tell a spirit that you can hear them and you want to talk?"
D'Artagnan draws his breath in, and draws a circle, laying his runes around it. "Perthro, Mannaz, Dagaz . . . Ansuz." He taps each in turn with the tip of his pencil. "Mystery, uncertain meaning. Mannaz -" He waves his hand unhelpfully between himself and Aramis. "People. The way people . . . the space between people." It's the rune he most connects with Porthos, curiously. He moves his pencil on. "Breakthroughs, awareness . . . Ansuz, that's for communication."
"And it definitely doesn't summon any sort of hellbeast," Aramis says. "You have double-checked. Because they're honestly a dick to get rid of once they're here."
"I - don't think it -"
Aramis smiles one of his infuriating smiles - d'Artagnan is slowly, jaw-tighteningly getting used to everything being a joke with him - and says, "I believe you've found your language."
Berkano, for Aramis, because there isn't an 'infuriating lunatic' rune and Aramis is rather given to mothering anyone who will stand still long enough for it, whether they want it or not. For Athos, Tiwaz, for authority and leadership. And for himself he prizes the rune he feels that Constance gave him; Thurisaz, for the god Thor, powerful, purging, fertilising; now, why would she think of him . . . ?
*
Porthos picks up the call, first thing on the morning shift, d'Artagnan's still shuffling his coat off. Aramis rolls his eyes and swings the end of the scarf he'd been untwining back over his shoulder, and Athos with only the merest pause to indicate weariness at the situation pours his takeaway coffee back into its cardboard cup from the nice white one he keeps in the office, because he hates drinking through a plastic lid. It's not often they get called out before they have the time even to take care of last night's emails.
D'Artagnan likes the purposefulness he feels, though, as they all act so weary of the matter, he likes feeling how normal it feels to do something genuinely important, normal enough to be bored by it. Not that he's bored by it yet. Paris is exciting enough, dealing with undead and otherwise supernatural chaos keeps him alert, fascinated - exhilarated, in the same way he sees Aramis coming down from their life-or-death moments, the grin on him once they're certain they're not going to die, and he takes a breath like breathing is brilliant. D'Artagnan likes getting to feel like that, like there's nothing humdrum about breathing, like life deserves the living of it.
This is the best damn job in France.
The police have called them out to a murder scene they say looks like it wasn't done by anyone human. "There have been hoaxes," Aramis says in the car, eyes closed on the seat beside d'Artagnan as if meditating, or just dreaming of not having yet left his bed. "Nice way for humans to get away with something, if they can pin it on someone supernatural instead."
"Multiple fatalities," Porthos says from the front seat. "Brilliant way to wake up."
Athos says, "Humans can still kill many at a time if they have a weapon."
"Anyone placing bets?" Aramis says, nuzzling himself down comfortable in his scarf.
Porthos makes a humming thinking noise, and Athos says as if only tired of the entire business, "We'll find out when we get there."
It's an office building, off a main street, not especially noteworthy - the entire street is made of similar businesses, and the coffee shops that feed their workers during the day. The only strange thing is the police car outside the door of one building, and the fact that Porthos sneezes before they even get the car doors open, and d'Artagnan immediately knows why: he looks down at the broken bottles on the ground, surrounded by the high, astringent scent of vinegar.
Up the stairs, warm indoors and Aramis tugging his scarf loose, d'Artagnan unzipping his coat. The police woman leading them up the stairs past a lift shaft says, "Fourth floor, we've found six bodies."
Athos, who rarely visibly breathes, inhales through his nostrils and then doesn't, impassive face turning stonier. Porthos rubs his nose and wrinkles his face, he's looked like he's struggling with his sense of smell since they arrived here, and he says through his hand, "S'the lift out?"
"It has a body in it. It looks like he tried to run and got caught up with in there."
"And you think it's supernatural."
"Well, they ripped the lift doors open with their bare hands, so I'd guess it." There are blood stains, smeared hand prints, on the white door off this landing, and the sleek black sign beside the door labelling the office has been blood-painted, it's hard to read. It looks like someone wiped their hands clean on it. D'Artagnan looks at the open lift next to the staircase, the slumped body of the man in it, one of his - he looks away quickly. One of his arms has been torn out.
"Forensics have been sent for," the police officer says, and Porthos mutters through his hands, "Don't think it's gonna be hard to see what's happened."
Athos stops Aramis unpeeling his gloves with a hand on his arm, and gestures at the door. Aramis, looking at that gruesome door warily but not as if upset by it, pushes it open with gloved fingertips, and so he steps in first.
The smell washes over d'Artagnan like a wave of shampoo in the shower, Jesus, no wonder Porthos can't stand it . . . Athos stands back a little, looking if anything embarrassed, and Aramis quickly steps back out, holding the door for Porthos but stopping d'Artagnan with a hand on his chest; "I don't think you need to go in there."
Porthos ducks under his arm to walk in, and Athos, moving a little too precisely, follows. D'Artagnan can see, over Aramis' arm, a rainbow of blood flung across a wall and its windows, a slow-fading dribble down. "Why can't I -"
"I'm not saying can't," Aramis says. "I'm saying - needn't, and may be lucky to be that."
D'Artagnan just glares at him, then ducks under his arm, even though Aramis has lowered it into a more obvious blocking motion. He steps in. He regrets immediately not sucking in one last lungful of clean air out there where he wasn't surrounded by corpses.
It's just an office; two rows of facing desks with computers at them, room for six people, notice boards, it looks like a startup. And there are people dead tangled in their chairs where they clearly didn't have the time to stand, the woman closest to the door has her arms outstretched for it, face down in a pool of her own blood. D'Artagnan's stomach balks, he didn't know bodies contained this much blood, whatever scene was in his head when he imagined this - at least everyone still had their head attached -
Athos has picked up a business card, looks at Aramis - behind d'Artagnan, at his shoulder - and says, "Get him out of here. Porthos, can you smell anything?"
D'Artagnan says, "I don't -" and feels so sick he can hardly stand.
"Hard to tell around all the fucking blood but I'm getting a vampire." Porthos says. "Probably more'n one, just by how many got killed at once."
Aramis puts an arm around d'Artagnan's shoulder and begins to lead him out. "Come on," he says. "All we're doing is messing up the scent trail anyway."
There's a throbbing in the air. "Someone's -"
"They're trying to," Aramis says in his gently-gently voice. "I don't think they had the time to pin themselves properly here before they died. I'll go back in and try to help them on, they haven't left enough of themselves behind to help us."
"What - why would - why this office? Why would vampires attack this office, why didn't anyone hear?"
"Happened late last night," the police woman on the landing says, watching d'Artagnan shrug his coat back to hang off his shoulders, sickly-hot now. "Only ones in the building at the time."
"The night shift," Aramis says quietly, letting the door close behind himself, glancing involuntarily at the blood-painted plate beside the door, naming the business. D'Artagnan squints at it, he'd never read beyond the largest letters before, those slightly easier to make out through the blood; Martin-Beaumont, and below, smaller, Exorcists.
D'Artagnan says, "They're exorcists."
Aramis sighs, quietly.
"They killed-"
"You didn't need to see that."
"I deserve to know."
Aramis shrugs; he hadn't stopped him, after all, though d'Artagnan feels sick on this knowledge, the difference between knowing and knowing. "That's why you said I couldn't go back to the countryside," he says. "Because they find - any of us they can -"
"They weren't department exorcists," Aramis says. "This was a private firm. So this is new, and unwelcome. Before this we were just being paranoid, now it turns out we're welcome to the worst 'I told you so' in the world."
The policewoman says, "Your department?"
"It looks like it is," he says gloomily. "We're obliged, officer."
D'Artagnan feels queasy, remembers that faint pulse of presence he felt in there. "You're sending them on."
"It's cruel leaving them like that, it's like they only left a part of themselves behind, an eyeball or something. You don't need to be here for it."
"I want to be."
"D'Artagnan, that room is worth avoiding just for the smell of it."
"I never get to see you send anyone on. I need this."
Aramis looks back at the door which Athos opens as if on cue, looks immediately at Aramis then relaxes a little, and d'Artagnan realises that in dealing with the horror of that room, they forgot to leave their exorcists guarded, and realising that in that room probably came with a bump. But it's true, regardless, d'Artagnan thinks. The thing exorcists do the least of, in one sense, is exorcising, the exact thing that other people think they do. D'Artagnan has never seen Aramis send a soul along its way, though they've talked about it and he's read the books. This is work, good work worth doing, and he's doing it.
Another wave of the sticky smell of what he now knows is drying blood surrounds him, and he looks at Aramis who shows no sign of trouble at that - he was a soldier, and he's been a department exorcist for years, and probably minds that smell less than any of them, given what it does to both Porthos and Athos - but there's trouble in his eyes on d'Artagnan. Sadness, more than anything.
D'Artagnan sets his neck steady, and looks right back at him.
*
In his bedroom that evening d'Artagnan sits beside Aramis at the desk, his hands pressed together, fingers folded, so he can keep squeezing at them, as memory and anger rise. He says, "Does it help, to do it slowly? Do they fight if you go faster?"
Aramis, playing with his athame between his fingertips, wrists on his knees, just keeps his eyes on that, and shakes his head. "You can fight them if you like, they can't stop you, and if you're powerful enough you'll win. It just seems cruel, that's all. Everything they've been through, there's no need for your bad manners on top of it, rushing them before they're ready. If they've ever deserved courtesy it's in that moment."
They'd sat, in that awful fucking room, on the scratchy-carpeted floor (on the least blood-spattered part they could find), facing each other in a circle drawn of salt, candles marking its four quarters, and Aramis set a Bible in front of himself, his bell on top of it - he held the tongue as he removed it from his bag, to keep it silent - and then he just closed his eyes. D'Artagnan, who knows him well enough by now, knew that all he was doing was praying.
His fingers flickered but he kept himself from tracing them, not wanting to interfere; Raidho, Jera, Ehwaz, Laguz . . .
Aramis didn't move, just sat, eyes closed and legs crossed as if at peace in a room full of bodies. D'Artagnan had swallowed, and been over-aware of the bodies - Porthos leaning against the wall, arms crossed, Athos standing and gazing expressionless out of one of the windows - and he had drawn on the inside of his own wrist, the back of his neck felt alive in this room full of dead exorcists, Algiz, Algiz, Algiz . . .
Protection. Because every exorcist is in danger, not just department ones, and they all need it now.
He understand what Aramis meant about the half-soul left behind; these people, at least some of them, were exorcists, and they knew how to pin their ghost here if they were going to die. But they'd died too quickly to finish the job, and what remained was a suggestion, a cold touch to the nape of the neck, little more. They could tell them nothing of how they'd died, they could do nothing but be here, half-here, forever. Which offered only two options, and only one for an exorcist rather than a necromancer: either drag them back by this dangling thread, and force them to speak of what they saw in their last moments before death, or help them on, tuck that dangling thread in secure, and let them be silent if they couldn't choose what to say.
It took a long time. Aramis did, as far as d'Artagnan could see, almost nothing. But then the soul slipped away, sighed out, silent as the last grains of sand in the hourglass, and there was stillness in the room. Only them, and the corpses.
"So how did you send them back?" d'Artagnan watches him, doesn't know how to read his silences, they're out of character for him and that makes them unsettling, somehow. "All you seemed to do was wait."
"I suppose that was all I did," Aramis says, watching the gleam of his athame as it spins between the fingertip on its blunt tip and the finger and thumb turning the handle. "I was present. I offered company. People don't like dying alone."
"They were already dead."
"Think of them as on life support," Aramis says, "and just hold their hand, while everything is turned off. I felt my way to them, I felt into the rhythm of their experience, and stayed with them in it, until they felt ready to let it go."
D'Artagnan is silent, then just looks to the side and accepts it; fine. Aramis twirls his athame, eyes dully on that, and d'Artagnan thinks about all those dead exorcists, and the fact that he can use Google.
He says, "That's not the first time you've seen a bunch of exorcists killed."
This is the thing about Aramis, d'Artagnan's seen it before when werewolves lunge right at him and ghosts hammer at the walls: you can confront him with the most shocking thing in the world, but he doesn't even hesitate in spinning the knife. "No," he says, though he must know that he's never said a word himself to d'Artagnan about the massacre at the exorcists' college. "I'd like it to be the last time."
D'Artagnan breathes slowly, and flexes the muscles in his folded arms tight. "Will we ever know who did it?"
It really wouldn't be hard to know, d'Artagnan knows from experience, with a werewolf to scent them out. It really wouldn't be hard in the slightest, if someone hadn't dropped two bottles of vinegar outside the door and ruined the scent trail forever. Every person who walked through it left an acidic smear through the air behind themselves, spreading the cloud of it outwards, making any individual vampire's scent in there impossible to follow.
God fucking damn it, that they actually thought it through.
"They'll dust for prints." Aramis says, not sounding remotely optimistic. "If they wore gloves, they'll look for fibres."
"DNA?"
"Vampire DNA degrades to unreadable when it becomes detached from the vampire for too long. Which is why I always get anxious when Athos goes and gets a bit of himself chopped off."
"So we have nothing. Our literal best case scenario is that we know what the clothes they wore were made from."
Aramis blinks up from his athame, as if coming back from a dream of sorts, and looks at d'Artagnan. "We'll work on any CCTV in the area. It's fine to get angry," he adds. "If you know how to channel it, good. But make sure it is the sort of anger you can channel, because if you rage against every injustice in the world, d'Artagnan, you will make a very difficult housemate."
He bristles. "You're not angry? You're too used to dead exorcists to get angry about a few more?"
Aramis looks at him still with one of his polite looks, it makes d'Artagnan want to get angry at him but he bites his tongue, he does get it, Aramis isn't the one to be angry with. He swallows, and considers it properly, hell; Aramis has seen a lot of dead exorcists, a lot of dead bodies full stop, of course he knows how to deal with it all. D'Artagnan will learn. This will be normal to him, one day. Normal enough to make him roll his eyes when he picks up the call.
Christ. This will be normal.
Aramis says, only honest, and gentle, "I have an apprentice. I'm fucking terrified."
That heralded the end of the lesson, and Aramis stood, tapping the flat of his athame blade off his own shoulder, giving d'Artagnan a look of frank acceptance, near-embarrassment at the honesty of the pronouncement, and then he left. And it's later that evening, once TV has been stretched out beyond any pretence of how interesting it is, once the three of them - even Athos - have retired, and d'Artagnan lays on his side in his bed, and knows he needs to stop his brain replaying nightmare afterimages of corpses in office wear but it's like they're on a loop up there.
Any exorcist in France is in danger now. He kept switching over from the news, of course it's got out, and now any exorcist in France . . .
He might never have come here. If his father hadn't been randomly murdered by a vampire, no-one might ever have known he was an exorcist at all until it was too late. He'd still be back in the countryside, maybe. Alone.
He turns onto his back, stares at the ceiling when really he's staring at the inside of that office, the arc of blood across the wall.
I have an apprentice. I'm fucking terrified.
He traces on the inside of his wrist, Algiz, Algiz, Algiz.
Like hell he's dying, for a lot of reasons but he knows that one of them is this: Aramis has seen a lot of dead exorcists. D'Artagnan isn't giving him another corpse to have to look down at, and walk away from. Aramis has taught him a lot, and d'Artagnan owes him at least his own survival.
His fingertips whisper on his own skin, Algiz, Algiz . . .
He needs to work on his shooting.
Rating: NC-17 for violence. That shit needs to be rated way higher than porn does.
Disclaimer: I don't even own enough willpower to finish one damn fic at a time.
Warnings/spoilers: Always refer to part one, but this part has some really nasty gore in it (Hallowe'en month anyone?) so if you are not good with blood, really, it's not for you. I can write a summary of what you need to know in the next part promise <3
Summary: The worst part of the best damn job in France.
Note: So after being *really* ill all summer, I thought as I began to come out of it that I was getting better; it turns out that 'better than death warmed up' is not by any objective standards *better*, and I really fucked myself up by being out of the house for I think a grand total of six hours today. I know I owe comment replies (sorry) but I'm feeling proper sorry for myself tonight and will get back to you soon. Legs very painful. Sulking with fic.
D'Artagnan was not raised Catholic, and the language Aramis speaks his rituals through is in no way natural to him the way it is to Aramis. And yes, d'Artagnan has struggled to think that the man who shares his bed with two other (strictly non-human) men and acts like it's really nothing to fuss about has to go sit in the confessional every week with at least one of his lovers out there in the church to mind him - how Aramis' priest copes with it all d'Artagnan has no idea, not from everything he's ever believed about Catholicism. But then, that Aramis carries holy water and wears a cross and sleeps with two men is perhaps an indication that d'Artagnan may have formed some beliefs but he really he doesn't know all that much about Catholicism after all.
Which is a problem, Aramis mused early in their studies in one of the chairs in d'Artagnan's room, pulling his beard as they looked over Aramis' kit on the desk beside the window. "Almost all of us use salt," he said. "And the bell, and the blade. And all of us need circles or we'll be suffocated by spirits very quickly. But all the rest - there's no point in you reciting a prayer you don't believe in, it won't do a thing. Damp squibs don't come close."
D'Artagnan had felt, mostly, embarrassed. "I could - try to -"
Aramis glanced across at him, grinned. "I'm not trying to convert you. You need a language. A language you can translate protection and attack and communication through. Mine -" He shrugs, eyebrows raised, like it's so obvious he's simply never had to consider it - "I have prayer, and the Lord for strength, and because I know the Lord is my strength I really can be strong against things that, in all fairness, should flay and chop my soul to messy bits. You need a language you know to be true. I've known Buddhist exorcists, Muslims, Jews. The atheists . . ." He contemplated the ceiling, a sight, d'Artagnan thought with a certain sort of sigh, he could hardly be unfamiliar with; he previously occupied this bedroom and lay on the bed he shared with two other men underneath that ceiling.
"I've known them use all sorts of things," he said, "They borrow a lot from - all sorts of Pagan things. Old countryside rituals, hedge magic, whatever they particularly like or feel drawn to. I knew a woman who used coloured thread and sand, someone who used herbs . . . you need a language, this for protection, this for cleansing, this for clarity, you need a language. We need to find you one."
"Colours and herbs," d'Artagnan said, arms folded; being uncertain always makes him feel defensive.
"You could use anything, that's the point. Runes, scents, even. Constance could help," he added, smile turning wicked in his cheeks. "Witches know a lot of symbolic languages, Constance may be able to suggest something perfect for you. We should ask her, in the garrison, tomorrow. We could call and ask her now -"
Through gritted teeth d'Artagnan said, arms folded tighter and cheeks burning, "Tomorrow is fine."
Aramis only said as if so understanding, "The patient heart is wisest." and d'Artagnan raised an eyebrow at him, and flicked a piece of his chalk across the desk.
But the next day in the garrison, while d'Artagnan is standing with his coffee cup talking to Porthos, he makes the rookie error of losing track of Aramis - exorcists are watched like someone might try to steal them on the streets, but in their own offices they're much more relaxed - until he sees the man walking towards him grinning darkly, Constance curious at his side. D'Artagnan's cheeks flame hot; Porthos checks the direction of his gaze and grins deeply, raising his own coffee cup to hide it.
In the department library, sitting side by side underneath one of the muted green glass lamps - the gold of the bulb glows Constance's skin and hair to particularly lovely casts of amber - she shows him some books, talks him through the languages witches use. He traces the pattern of a rune on an alphabet laid out, and she watches him in silence before she says, "Thurisaz." She looks down at the alphabet, and says, "Yes, that one does suit you."
She talks him through the Elder Futhark, the meanings of the runes - "They made them up, mainly, for divination, but it doesn't matter how old it is if it works." - the layering of the meaning, the things witches can use them for, though it would be different for exorcists . . .
D'Artagnan traces the shape of Othala, and thinks, Yes.
So when he has free study time - when Aramis doesn't set him anything to work on in particular, though he keeps the stack of books beside the desk topped up for him - d'Artagnan studies runes, practises, learns, until Aramis can sit beside him and knock on the desk and say, "How do you tell a spirit that you can hear them and you want to talk?"
D'Artagnan draws his breath in, and draws a circle, laying his runes around it. "Perthro, Mannaz, Dagaz . . . Ansuz." He taps each in turn with the tip of his pencil. "Mystery, uncertain meaning. Mannaz -" He waves his hand unhelpfully between himself and Aramis. "People. The way people . . . the space between people." It's the rune he most connects with Porthos, curiously. He moves his pencil on. "Breakthroughs, awareness . . . Ansuz, that's for communication."
"And it definitely doesn't summon any sort of hellbeast," Aramis says. "You have double-checked. Because they're honestly a dick to get rid of once they're here."
"I - don't think it -"
Aramis smiles one of his infuriating smiles - d'Artagnan is slowly, jaw-tighteningly getting used to everything being a joke with him - and says, "I believe you've found your language."
Berkano, for Aramis, because there isn't an 'infuriating lunatic' rune and Aramis is rather given to mothering anyone who will stand still long enough for it, whether they want it or not. For Athos, Tiwaz, for authority and leadership. And for himself he prizes the rune he feels that Constance gave him; Thurisaz, for the god Thor, powerful, purging, fertilising; now, why would she think of him . . . ?
*
Porthos picks up the call, first thing on the morning shift, d'Artagnan's still shuffling his coat off. Aramis rolls his eyes and swings the end of the scarf he'd been untwining back over his shoulder, and Athos with only the merest pause to indicate weariness at the situation pours his takeaway coffee back into its cardboard cup from the nice white one he keeps in the office, because he hates drinking through a plastic lid. It's not often they get called out before they have the time even to take care of last night's emails.
D'Artagnan likes the purposefulness he feels, though, as they all act so weary of the matter, he likes feeling how normal it feels to do something genuinely important, normal enough to be bored by it. Not that he's bored by it yet. Paris is exciting enough, dealing with undead and otherwise supernatural chaos keeps him alert, fascinated - exhilarated, in the same way he sees Aramis coming down from their life-or-death moments, the grin on him once they're certain they're not going to die, and he takes a breath like breathing is brilliant. D'Artagnan likes getting to feel like that, like there's nothing humdrum about breathing, like life deserves the living of it.
This is the best damn job in France.
The police have called them out to a murder scene they say looks like it wasn't done by anyone human. "There have been hoaxes," Aramis says in the car, eyes closed on the seat beside d'Artagnan as if meditating, or just dreaming of not having yet left his bed. "Nice way for humans to get away with something, if they can pin it on someone supernatural instead."
"Multiple fatalities," Porthos says from the front seat. "Brilliant way to wake up."
Athos says, "Humans can still kill many at a time if they have a weapon."
"Anyone placing bets?" Aramis says, nuzzling himself down comfortable in his scarf.
Porthos makes a humming thinking noise, and Athos says as if only tired of the entire business, "We'll find out when we get there."
It's an office building, off a main street, not especially noteworthy - the entire street is made of similar businesses, and the coffee shops that feed their workers during the day. The only strange thing is the police car outside the door of one building, and the fact that Porthos sneezes before they even get the car doors open, and d'Artagnan immediately knows why: he looks down at the broken bottles on the ground, surrounded by the high, astringent scent of vinegar.
Up the stairs, warm indoors and Aramis tugging his scarf loose, d'Artagnan unzipping his coat. The police woman leading them up the stairs past a lift shaft says, "Fourth floor, we've found six bodies."
Athos, who rarely visibly breathes, inhales through his nostrils and then doesn't, impassive face turning stonier. Porthos rubs his nose and wrinkles his face, he's looked like he's struggling with his sense of smell since they arrived here, and he says through his hand, "S'the lift out?"
"It has a body in it. It looks like he tried to run and got caught up with in there."
"And you think it's supernatural."
"Well, they ripped the lift doors open with their bare hands, so I'd guess it." There are blood stains, smeared hand prints, on the white door off this landing, and the sleek black sign beside the door labelling the office has been blood-painted, it's hard to read. It looks like someone wiped their hands clean on it. D'Artagnan looks at the open lift next to the staircase, the slumped body of the man in it, one of his - he looks away quickly. One of his arms has been torn out.
"Forensics have been sent for," the police officer says, and Porthos mutters through his hands, "Don't think it's gonna be hard to see what's happened."
Athos stops Aramis unpeeling his gloves with a hand on his arm, and gestures at the door. Aramis, looking at that gruesome door warily but not as if upset by it, pushes it open with gloved fingertips, and so he steps in first.
The smell washes over d'Artagnan like a wave of shampoo in the shower, Jesus, no wonder Porthos can't stand it . . . Athos stands back a little, looking if anything embarrassed, and Aramis quickly steps back out, holding the door for Porthos but stopping d'Artagnan with a hand on his chest; "I don't think you need to go in there."
Porthos ducks under his arm to walk in, and Athos, moving a little too precisely, follows. D'Artagnan can see, over Aramis' arm, a rainbow of blood flung across a wall and its windows, a slow-fading dribble down. "Why can't I -"
"I'm not saying can't," Aramis says. "I'm saying - needn't, and may be lucky to be that."
D'Artagnan just glares at him, then ducks under his arm, even though Aramis has lowered it into a more obvious blocking motion. He steps in. He regrets immediately not sucking in one last lungful of clean air out there where he wasn't surrounded by corpses.
It's just an office; two rows of facing desks with computers at them, room for six people, notice boards, it looks like a startup. And there are people dead tangled in their chairs where they clearly didn't have the time to stand, the woman closest to the door has her arms outstretched for it, face down in a pool of her own blood. D'Artagnan's stomach balks, he didn't know bodies contained this much blood, whatever scene was in his head when he imagined this - at least everyone still had their head attached -
Athos has picked up a business card, looks at Aramis - behind d'Artagnan, at his shoulder - and says, "Get him out of here. Porthos, can you smell anything?"
D'Artagnan says, "I don't -" and feels so sick he can hardly stand.
"Hard to tell around all the fucking blood but I'm getting a vampire." Porthos says. "Probably more'n one, just by how many got killed at once."
Aramis puts an arm around d'Artagnan's shoulder and begins to lead him out. "Come on," he says. "All we're doing is messing up the scent trail anyway."
There's a throbbing in the air. "Someone's -"
"They're trying to," Aramis says in his gently-gently voice. "I don't think they had the time to pin themselves properly here before they died. I'll go back in and try to help them on, they haven't left enough of themselves behind to help us."
"What - why would - why this office? Why would vampires attack this office, why didn't anyone hear?"
"Happened late last night," the police woman on the landing says, watching d'Artagnan shrug his coat back to hang off his shoulders, sickly-hot now. "Only ones in the building at the time."
"The night shift," Aramis says quietly, letting the door close behind himself, glancing involuntarily at the blood-painted plate beside the door, naming the business. D'Artagnan squints at it, he'd never read beyond the largest letters before, those slightly easier to make out through the blood; Martin-Beaumont, and below, smaller, Exorcists.
D'Artagnan says, "They're exorcists."
Aramis sighs, quietly.
"They killed-"
"You didn't need to see that."
"I deserve to know."
Aramis shrugs; he hadn't stopped him, after all, though d'Artagnan feels sick on this knowledge, the difference between knowing and knowing. "That's why you said I couldn't go back to the countryside," he says. "Because they find - any of us they can -"
"They weren't department exorcists," Aramis says. "This was a private firm. So this is new, and unwelcome. Before this we were just being paranoid, now it turns out we're welcome to the worst 'I told you so' in the world."
The policewoman says, "Your department?"
"It looks like it is," he says gloomily. "We're obliged, officer."
D'Artagnan feels queasy, remembers that faint pulse of presence he felt in there. "You're sending them on."
"It's cruel leaving them like that, it's like they only left a part of themselves behind, an eyeball or something. You don't need to be here for it."
"I want to be."
"D'Artagnan, that room is worth avoiding just for the smell of it."
"I never get to see you send anyone on. I need this."
Aramis looks back at the door which Athos opens as if on cue, looks immediately at Aramis then relaxes a little, and d'Artagnan realises that in dealing with the horror of that room, they forgot to leave their exorcists guarded, and realising that in that room probably came with a bump. But it's true, regardless, d'Artagnan thinks. The thing exorcists do the least of, in one sense, is exorcising, the exact thing that other people think they do. D'Artagnan has never seen Aramis send a soul along its way, though they've talked about it and he's read the books. This is work, good work worth doing, and he's doing it.
Another wave of the sticky smell of what he now knows is drying blood surrounds him, and he looks at Aramis who shows no sign of trouble at that - he was a soldier, and he's been a department exorcist for years, and probably minds that smell less than any of them, given what it does to both Porthos and Athos - but there's trouble in his eyes on d'Artagnan. Sadness, more than anything.
D'Artagnan sets his neck steady, and looks right back at him.
*
In his bedroom that evening d'Artagnan sits beside Aramis at the desk, his hands pressed together, fingers folded, so he can keep squeezing at them, as memory and anger rise. He says, "Does it help, to do it slowly? Do they fight if you go faster?"
Aramis, playing with his athame between his fingertips, wrists on his knees, just keeps his eyes on that, and shakes his head. "You can fight them if you like, they can't stop you, and if you're powerful enough you'll win. It just seems cruel, that's all. Everything they've been through, there's no need for your bad manners on top of it, rushing them before they're ready. If they've ever deserved courtesy it's in that moment."
They'd sat, in that awful fucking room, on the scratchy-carpeted floor (on the least blood-spattered part they could find), facing each other in a circle drawn of salt, candles marking its four quarters, and Aramis set a Bible in front of himself, his bell on top of it - he held the tongue as he removed it from his bag, to keep it silent - and then he just closed his eyes. D'Artagnan, who knows him well enough by now, knew that all he was doing was praying.
His fingers flickered but he kept himself from tracing them, not wanting to interfere; Raidho, Jera, Ehwaz, Laguz . . .
Aramis didn't move, just sat, eyes closed and legs crossed as if at peace in a room full of bodies. D'Artagnan had swallowed, and been over-aware of the bodies - Porthos leaning against the wall, arms crossed, Athos standing and gazing expressionless out of one of the windows - and he had drawn on the inside of his own wrist, the back of his neck felt alive in this room full of dead exorcists, Algiz, Algiz, Algiz . . .
Protection. Because every exorcist is in danger, not just department ones, and they all need it now.
He understand what Aramis meant about the half-soul left behind; these people, at least some of them, were exorcists, and they knew how to pin their ghost here if they were going to die. But they'd died too quickly to finish the job, and what remained was a suggestion, a cold touch to the nape of the neck, little more. They could tell them nothing of how they'd died, they could do nothing but be here, half-here, forever. Which offered only two options, and only one for an exorcist rather than a necromancer: either drag them back by this dangling thread, and force them to speak of what they saw in their last moments before death, or help them on, tuck that dangling thread in secure, and let them be silent if they couldn't choose what to say.
It took a long time. Aramis did, as far as d'Artagnan could see, almost nothing. But then the soul slipped away, sighed out, silent as the last grains of sand in the hourglass, and there was stillness in the room. Only them, and the corpses.
"So how did you send them back?" d'Artagnan watches him, doesn't know how to read his silences, they're out of character for him and that makes them unsettling, somehow. "All you seemed to do was wait."
"I suppose that was all I did," Aramis says, watching the gleam of his athame as it spins between the fingertip on its blunt tip and the finger and thumb turning the handle. "I was present. I offered company. People don't like dying alone."
"They were already dead."
"Think of them as on life support," Aramis says, "and just hold their hand, while everything is turned off. I felt my way to them, I felt into the rhythm of their experience, and stayed with them in it, until they felt ready to let it go."
D'Artagnan is silent, then just looks to the side and accepts it; fine. Aramis twirls his athame, eyes dully on that, and d'Artagnan thinks about all those dead exorcists, and the fact that he can use Google.
He says, "That's not the first time you've seen a bunch of exorcists killed."
This is the thing about Aramis, d'Artagnan's seen it before when werewolves lunge right at him and ghosts hammer at the walls: you can confront him with the most shocking thing in the world, but he doesn't even hesitate in spinning the knife. "No," he says, though he must know that he's never said a word himself to d'Artagnan about the massacre at the exorcists' college. "I'd like it to be the last time."
D'Artagnan breathes slowly, and flexes the muscles in his folded arms tight. "Will we ever know who did it?"
It really wouldn't be hard to know, d'Artagnan knows from experience, with a werewolf to scent them out. It really wouldn't be hard in the slightest, if someone hadn't dropped two bottles of vinegar outside the door and ruined the scent trail forever. Every person who walked through it left an acidic smear through the air behind themselves, spreading the cloud of it outwards, making any individual vampire's scent in there impossible to follow.
God fucking damn it, that they actually thought it through.
"They'll dust for prints." Aramis says, not sounding remotely optimistic. "If they wore gloves, they'll look for fibres."
"DNA?"
"Vampire DNA degrades to unreadable when it becomes detached from the vampire for too long. Which is why I always get anxious when Athos goes and gets a bit of himself chopped off."
"So we have nothing. Our literal best case scenario is that we know what the clothes they wore were made from."
Aramis blinks up from his athame, as if coming back from a dream of sorts, and looks at d'Artagnan. "We'll work on any CCTV in the area. It's fine to get angry," he adds. "If you know how to channel it, good. But make sure it is the sort of anger you can channel, because if you rage against every injustice in the world, d'Artagnan, you will make a very difficult housemate."
He bristles. "You're not angry? You're too used to dead exorcists to get angry about a few more?"
Aramis looks at him still with one of his polite looks, it makes d'Artagnan want to get angry at him but he bites his tongue, he does get it, Aramis isn't the one to be angry with. He swallows, and considers it properly, hell; Aramis has seen a lot of dead exorcists, a lot of dead bodies full stop, of course he knows how to deal with it all. D'Artagnan will learn. This will be normal to him, one day. Normal enough to make him roll his eyes when he picks up the call.
Christ. This will be normal.
Aramis says, only honest, and gentle, "I have an apprentice. I'm fucking terrified."
That heralded the end of the lesson, and Aramis stood, tapping the flat of his athame blade off his own shoulder, giving d'Artagnan a look of frank acceptance, near-embarrassment at the honesty of the pronouncement, and then he left. And it's later that evening, once TV has been stretched out beyond any pretence of how interesting it is, once the three of them - even Athos - have retired, and d'Artagnan lays on his side in his bed, and knows he needs to stop his brain replaying nightmare afterimages of corpses in office wear but it's like they're on a loop up there.
Any exorcist in France is in danger now. He kept switching over from the news, of course it's got out, and now any exorcist in France . . .
He might never have come here. If his father hadn't been randomly murdered by a vampire, no-one might ever have known he was an exorcist at all until it was too late. He'd still be back in the countryside, maybe. Alone.
He turns onto his back, stares at the ceiling when really he's staring at the inside of that office, the arc of blood across the wall.
I have an apprentice. I'm fucking terrified.
He traces on the inside of his wrist, Algiz, Algiz, Algiz.
Like hell he's dying, for a lot of reasons but he knows that one of them is this: Aramis has seen a lot of dead exorcists. D'Artagnan isn't giving him another corpse to have to look down at, and walk away from. Aramis has taught him a lot, and d'Artagnan owes him at least his own survival.
His fingertips whisper on his own skin, Algiz, Algiz . . .
He needs to work on his shooting.
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