Lewis Fic: Ghost Man (Part 2)
Aug. 27th, 2014 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kat_lair***
Part 1 and header information here.
A few minutes later, they are sitting in Laura’s office, Lewis with both of his hands wrapped around a glass of brandy, Dr Hobson and Hathaway with mugs of coffee. James doesn’t really want it but he had accepted the drink out of solidarity and in the hopes it would warm his hands.
Unfortunately, the effects are minimal. The cheap crockery lets the heat through to burn his skin, but it somehow doesn’t register beyond the physical level. His hands still feel cold. Everything does.
They sip their drinks in silence, James tapping his ring against the mug absentmindedly, the steady clink-clink-clink of metal on porcelain the only sound in the room, measuring time like a tiny bell.
It’s Robbie who speaks first. “Clisk’hein,” he mutters. “That’s what the tattoo means. Travis White was a member of the clisk’hein.”
James and Laura stare at him. “And what is...” She falters and Hathaway picks up the question: “Clisk’hein?” stumbling over the term only slightly.
“The stuff of legends,” Lewis answers. “The... Well. Not quite the impossibility, clearly, but not something I ever expected to see.” He glances at Hobson, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry for almost losing control like that. I...”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says firmly, clearly more stunned by Lewis’ rare show of vulnerability than by anything else. “Judging by your reaction though, these legends aren’t exactly happy stories.”
Lewis exhales, something like shaky laughter lurking in the edges of his expression. “So few of our stories are,” he says and for some inexplicable reason his gaze seeks out James’, locking for one long heartbeat before falling away. It feels like electricity, like flying through a storm cloud, and for a moment the constant noise at the back of his head grows silent.
“Tell me,” Hathaway says. Not ‘us’, ‘him’, he wants Robbie to tell him. It may be selfish but when it comes to Robbie Lewis, that's exactly what he is.
Lewis sighs. “I don’t know much,” he starts, but then he launches into an explanation anyway, of sorts. It doesn’t take long, which is probably just as well since Hathaway doesn’t think either he or Laura breathe during it.
“So...” Hobson hazards after Lewis has fallen silent again, her hands crossed neatly in front of her, resting on the desk. “Clisk’hein are some kind of... secret organisation. Illuminati of the Dragon world?”
Robbie nods and then shakes his head immediately after. “Yes... and no. They’re shrouded in mystery.” He grimaces at the overdramatic expression, but doesn’t amend it. “I’m no expert,” he admits, “I don’t even know if anyone is. If someone had asked me yesterday, I would have said they’d be more likely to run into a practising Jedi-knight.”
“The latest census showed over 176,000 people stating that as their religion,” James injects, partly to break the tension, partly because he’s never been able to resist an opportunity to share the useless trivia his brain stores without any conscious effort or choice on his part. Thankfully, the other two occupants of the room are used to it and continue the conversation without blinking an eye.
“Nobody knows what the grand clisk’hein conspiracy is,” Lewis is saying. “Or even if there is one. But bad things happen whenever they’re around: assassination, revolutions, nations crumbling to smoking rubble...” He shifts in his seat, obviously uncomfortable. “Or so the stories go.”
“So...” Hathaway frowns. “Travis White is a dragon?”
“Not necessarily,” Robbie says just as Laura answers the question with a definitive: “No.”
She shrugs. “The first thing I check now,” she admits, “when it’s you two.”
Hathaway can’t exactly blame her although he is relieved that at least they don’t have another dead dragon on their hands.
“Alright, a man then,” he says, before turning to look at his boss. “Then how come you be so sure he really is one of these clisk’hein?” The word becomes easier to pronounce each time he says it; the strange combination of sibilant and glottal sounds rolling off his tongue with strange familiarity. “Couldn’t he just be a... I don’t know, an enthusiastic conspiracy theorist who’s had the symbol tattooed to appear cool among his conspiracy theorist friends?”
“I guess that’s possible but...” Lewis’ whole face seems to crease as he thinks. “Why would some random guy from Hackney know the symbol in the first place? There must be some connection. To dragons at least.” He looks distinctly unhappy about it.
“Not to mention that those tattoos are a hell of a commitment, just to gain some cool points,” Laura adds.
“Well, maybe... Hold on.” Hathaway frowns. “Tattoos? As in plural?”
“There’s more than one?” Lewis too asks, sitting up straight and putting his glass on the table – mostly untouched, Hathaway notices.
“Oh yes,” Hobson says. “If you feel up to it, I’ll show you.”
***
Soon they are back in the autopsy room, Travis White still lying in the same position they’d left him in, which... should in no way be surprising. Hathaway rubs his cold hands together, dismayed to find that some part of him had almost expected the body to have moved. The ringing in his ears is worse again and there’s a headache lurking not far behind it.
Laura angles the adjustable overhead light closer to the table until it illuminates Travis’ death slack face in unforgiving detail. Then she grabs something from the nearby table, brandishing it like a sword. It’s a magnifying glass. “This is what I wanted to show you before we got... distracted.”
Without further explanation, Laura pulls open Travis’ left eye and then the right, turning the lids inside out as far as they go and securing them with metallic clamps. It looks grotesque; the pale unmoving stare of Travis’ eyes contrasting with the almost violent pink of the inside of his eyelids.
“Look,” Laura says and Hathaway focuses his attention from the general horribleness of the sight to what Dr Hobson is showing them.
The magnifying glass, it turns out, is necessary. Without it, he probably would have dismissed the discolouration as nothing but a burst vein. With it, however, he’s able to make out the two other tattoos; incredibly small and detailed, and inked on the inside of Travis’ eyelids. The symbols are different than the one on his arm, but clearly the same language.
“Thier’rah, mi klierk!” Robbie breathes and if before his curse had been tinted with fear, it is now one of awe, almost religious in its purity. Hathaway thinks that if he ever saw Archangel Michael in the flesh, he would probably sound much the same.
Laura looks like she’s about to say something but then visibly stops herself, simply focusing on undoing the clamps, closing Mr White’s tattooed eyelids and covering him with a sheet once more.
For the longest time no one speaks. James keeps a worried eye on Lewis but he doesn’t seem to be in any danger of either running away or shifting forms right in the middle of Laura’s autopsy room. He just looks as if he’s deep in thought. And a little like someone just handed him a gift that is simultaneously the best and worst thing he could’ve possibly received.
“Can you keep this to yourself?” Lewis finally asks, turning to Laura. “Just for a little while?”
Dr Hobson doesn’t look happy about it but she nods. “We’re running on low staff anyway,” she says. “I can decide not to work overtime. It might buy you a couple of days.”
“Thank you. Really, I...”
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about then?”
Robbie shakes his head. “I don’t even know myself yet.”
“And when you do?” Laura asks, and then answers herself: “Not even then.”
“I don’t want to put you in danger,” Lewis all but pleads. “Believe me, whatever this is, it’s better that you don’t know. Better if you don’t even mention these other tattoos at all in your report. Just... forget what I told you.”
Hathaway fully expects her to argue. It’s a lot Lewis is asking and Laura’s mouth certainly thins into an unhappy line but in the end she only nods curtly. “Fine,” she says. “Fine.” Her expression is shuttered and James feels infinitely sad, knowing that something of the easy connection between the three of them has been irrevocably lost by Lewis’ decision to exclude her, never mind that it is to protect her.
“Thank you,” Robbie says and James can tell from his voice that he knows it too.
“She’ll forgive you,” Hathaway comments a moment later as they are walking to the car. He feels immediately warmer once back outside despite the wind. The ringing in his ears has also stopped, like someone had slammed a door on the noise as soon as they left the morgue. It’s a shock to realise that barely an hour has passed.
“Yeah,” Lewis says. His hands look old, resting on the steering wheel, worn but strong. “But that won’t make it any better.”
James silently agrees.
***
His silence lasts until the station and their office. Then he closes the door determinedly, leaning on it. “Talk,” he says, crossing his arms as Lewis slumps into the chair as if someone had cut off his strings. It’s a disconcerting sight.
Lewis regards him quietly for a few seconds and then sighs. “Alright,” he says. “There’s no need to guard the door like I’m a convict with a high flight risk.”
“You’re a dragon,” James says. “There’s always a high flight risk.” It’s a stupid joke, borderline offensive even and if anyone else had said it Hathaway would have been sorely tempted to punch them in the face. As it is, he’s not altogether sure whether Lewis is feeling the same urge right now.
Apparently not, because he only snorts. “Cheeky sod,” he says, pointing at the other chair until Hathaway relents, sitting down.
Lewis doesn’t give him a chance to even draw breath. “Se’clisk’hein,” he says. “Secret within secret, shadow within shadow.” It’s clear he’s reciting a quote. “You have to understand, there’s even less actual knowledge about them than clisk’hein and what there is, is speculation and rumour at best, outright fiction at worst.”
Hathaway nods, fascinated despite the gravity of the situation, or perhaps because of it. There is a reason he joined the police and it wasn’t purely out of altruism.
Lewis continues: “The name means...” He hesitates for a moment, clearly struggling to come up with an English equivalent. “Hunter of hunters,” he says finally. “It’s difficult to translate but you get the idea. The story goes that they were originally a splinter group; people who didn’t quite agree with all of clisk’hein’s agendas and methods. It was a quickly squashed rebellion and supporters vanished overnight. Either dispersed or killed completely if you believe one version, or moving to operate in secret if you believe the other.”
“Seems like the empirical evidence supports the latter hypothesis,” Hathaway remarks, thinking of Travis White and his tattooed eyelids.
“Seems like,” Lewis echoes, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t think you understand how... big, how incomprehensible almost, this is,” he says, sounding frustrated. “This is like a fairy-tale coming alive. Like...” He casts around for a human equivalent, “...like if you suddenly learned that Santa Claus was real. Or that Dan Brown was actually onto something.”
Hathaway swallows the diatribe that tends to follow whenever someone’s mentions the man’s name. “Stuff of legends, huh?” he asks, contemplatively.
Lewis nods.
“Like finding the Holy Grail? Or learning that... fairies are real?”
Lewis frowns at his tone, his head tilting to the side in that clearly non-human way he has. “I guess, a bit, I...”
“Oh how about discovering that dragons exist?” Hathaway asks then. Lewis has the decency to cringe at least but James is far from being done. “I’m thinking that all of humanity can relate to that feeling. Or what about finding out that sometimes, sometimes, dreams aren’t just dreams? That sometimes, when you wake up with a taste of blood in your mouth it’s...” He stops himself there, breathing hard. That was more than he’d meant to say, more than he’d even realised he’d been thinking. “Somehow,” he finishes, struggling to make his voice calm and even, “somehow, I think I understand just fine.”
Lewis doesn’t say anything, just watches him, something indefinitely sad in his eyes.
***
They may have a couple of extra days until the official autopsy report is released but they don’t actually know how to best use the extra time or even what, if anything, will happen when it runs out. In absence of better ideas, they work the case like any other. Hathaway calls the Met, asking them to keep an eye on Travis’ mates just in case one of them does something out of the ordinary. When asked just what kind of ‘out of ordinary’ they’re looking for, he evades the question with a long ramble about network analysis, leaving the DC at the other end probably thinking they’re after organised crime.
Well. He’s probably not entirely incorrect about that, Hathaway silently admits to himself.
They go through the notes again, listening to the interviews and looking at the crime scene photos. It’s useless and so too is Lewis, clearly unable to concentrate. He keeps drifting off in the middle of a sentence, staring into thin air and muttering in Dragonese. James only recognises a word here or there though even that is more than he reasonably should.
That too is something he ought to talk Lewis about. Later, he thinks, all the while knowing he’s lying to himself now too.
“Let’s just go home,” Hathaway says, irritated both at himself and Lewis. “You obviously have some... thinking to do.”
Robbie blinks at him, looking so dazed and approachable that James gets up immediately, grabbing his coat, suddenly needing to be anywhere but here. He can’t deal with this right now, the air too warm and close, almost choking him with all the things unspoken.
“Hold on, we’ve got work to do,” Lewis says, frowning. “You can’t just leave.”
“That doesn’t usually stop you,” Hathaway snaps, unable to regret the words even when Lewis looks like he’s been slapped. “In fact, maybe you should do that. Go talk to Khe’e’laf’in again, perhaps they can shed some light on this.” It’s part a dig, part a genuine suggestion because James’ mood aside, they still have a murder to solve. And it had worked the last time. Sort of.
But Lewis almost recoils in horror at the words, starting on the same old litany about how they need to keep the existence of a dead se’clisk’hein under wraps for now. Hathaway points out the Khe’e’laf’in probably already know all about it, possibly first hand, which causes Lewis to bristle and more or less suggest that Hathaway shouldn’t assume he knows anything at all about dragons.
Things go rapidly downhill from there.
“I may just be a dumb human, but even I know that sitting around twiddling our thumbs is not going to do anything,” James says. His voice is harsh and cold now, as cold as a grave, as cold as his bones.
Lewis grits his teeth almost audibly and idly Hathaway wonders just how blunt and human they are anymore, hopes they aren’t. “Listen to yourself,” Robbie says, “You’re the one usually suggesting caution. We’ve got to think about this, can’t just go haring out with questions and accusations.”
“Well we have to ask someone,” Hathaway spits. “Since – as you so delicately intimated – I know fuck all.” Lewis flinches and something dark and twisted inside James is glad for it. “And since you’ve just more or less admitted you don’t know anything more than what you’ve already told me. Unless you’re lying.”
Robbie inhales sharply, standing up. “I have never lied to you.”
“Lie of omission is still a lie.”
“You would know all about it,” Lewis says.
And James does, oh he does know, in exquisite, damning detail. A part of him is horrified at himself, at what he’s doing; every word out of his mouth driving another wedge between them, widening the chasm until it’s like a gaping wound, too big to close.
Robbie too seems to have come to the same conclusion. His expression crumbles, face lined with regret and seeing that hurts, knowing it’s because of him hurts even more. James turns away, toward the door.
“Don’t,” Lewis says, moving to touch him and he can’t abide it, not now. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Robbie says. “I don’t know what I meant, only that… You shouldn’t be part of this.”
James reels back as if struck. Robbie’s eyes go wide. “No, no, not like… I don’t want you hurt,” he pleads, reaching out, but it’s too late.
“You can’t stop it,” James says, and it comes out too much like a sob, “Can’t you see? No one can. It’s beyond either of us,” spiralling out of control; dead dragons, dead humans, NDA, dreams, the ring, secrets and half-truths and too many things unsaid between them.
Hathaway leaves, knowing it solves nothing, but too tired to care. Lewis lets him.
***
Despite his exhaustion, James doesn’t expect to sleep but he does. He dreams about flying again but this time he’s not alone.
James wakes up. The flat is silent. Groggily, he reaches for the mobile which is resting on the night stand. The display shows five missed calls, all from a blocked number.
***
It’s barely past seven in the morning when Hathaway gets to Chu Min’s house. The weather is cool and damp like a grave and the mist reminds him of ash. He could have called first but he’d been unable to pick up the phone. He certainly should have called Lewis but that too had felt impossible. He didn’t know how to explain this visit to himself, at least not in words he was yet willing to say out loud, so how could he justify it to his boss? Besides, getting the door slammed in his face was a distinct possibility.
That is, in fact, exactly what happens. However, rather than shutting, the door slams open, hitting Hathaway in the face just as he’s about to ring the bell. A large man rushes out, as surprised to find someone on the other side of the door as Hathaway, judging by his startled expression. He doesn’t stop and James is too busy holding his nose – bleeding and bruised but hopefully not broken – to even think of doing that himself. There’s something about his retreating back that strikes him as familiar but that pain is too distracting to dwell on it long.
“Fuck!” he curses, struggling, and failing, to find a tissue or a handkerchief to clean his face.
The front door is still hanging open and there is no sign of Chu Min. It’s odd that she hasn’t come out to see what the commotion was about. Odd... and worrying.
“Chu Min?” Hathaway shouts, belatedly knocking on the doorframe. “It’s Sergeant Hathaway. I wondered if I could use your bathroom...” James makes his way inside, more concerned by the second as there is no response.
His instincts are proven correct and he finds Chu Min on the kitchen floor, barely conscious and bleeding far worse than James’ nose. Training takes over. Hathaway rips off his jacket and presses it hard against the wound with one hand while he uses the other to call 999.
“Hold on,” he says, feeling worse than useless. “Help is on the way.”
Chu Min drifts in and out, crying out in a mixture of Dragonese and Mandarin.
“Who did this to you?” Hathaway asks, “Who was that man?” and all the while Chu Min’s blood seeps through his jacket until his palms are warm and sticky with it.
“James,” she says, her hair like the night against the floor tiles.
He cannot ever remember telling her his first name but somehow the fact that she knows it doesn’t surprise him. “It’s alright,” he says, “The ambulance is here.” He can hear the sirens now, coming closer by the second.
“James,” Chu Min whispers again, looking as young as her sister like this, features smooth, blood everywhere. “You have to answer.”
Hathaway swallows, the understanding hard and cold like a sliver of ice lodged in his throat. Outside the house the ambulance comes to a halt, sirens cutting off and doors banging.
“Who’s calling?” James asks, urgent now and strangely unafraid because he thinks he knows the answer already.
Chu Min looks at him then, at him and through him, somewhere beyond, and her eyes are dark and without an end. “The dead,” she says. “The dead are calling, Gwai Lo. You must answer.”
And then the paramedics are there, shoving him out of the way, barking questions that James answers mechanically, his gaze not on Chu Min but on the blood stained snake circling his finger.
***
Lewis finds him on the front steps. The place is already crawling with uniforms and SOCOs and Hathaway is in the middle of giving his statement for what feels like the fifth time.
“And if you don’t mind explaining again why you were here in the first place?” PC Herriot asks, adding: “Sir,” as an afterthought.
Hathaway sighs, flicking his eyes over Lewis but not otherwise acknowledging him. Robbie’s face is set in a grim mask and James honestly can’t tell how much of it is worry and how much lingering, or perhaps new, anger. Lewis chooses to hover nearby, close enough to listen but not interfering although James knows it’s only a matter of time.
“As I explained before,” he says, “I was here to talk to Ms Chu regarding a case. She has been... of help on previous occasions.”
PC Herriot nods, making a note in her pocket book which Hathaway is sure is nothing but a doodle. “And why did you—?”
“That’s enough, lass.” Lewis steps in. “Very thorough technique,” he compliments her, “but I need to talk to my sergeant now, I’m sure you understand.” His voice is affable but firm and Herriot almost squeaks in surprise. Sometimes the rumour mill surrounding Lewis and his more-than-human status is useful: PC Thorough leaves them alone. Hathaway is almost sorry to see her go.
“Come on,” Lewis says. “You can clean up at mine.” Worry and need to know what happened are warring on his face, and his hand on Hathaway’s arm is steadying.
James flinches away like he’s been burned. “That’s alright,” he says. “I’ll just go home and change.” He just needs to get into his car.
Hathaway starts walking toward the street.
“James,” Lewis hisses, dogging his heels. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Chu Min was attacked. It’s all in my statement.”
Robbie practically growls in frustration and for a fleeting moment James thinks he’s going to push him against the car and physically force him to explain. But no, Lewis visibly reins in his temper and keeps his hands to himself.
The disappointment tastes sour, making James hunch his shoulders further.
“James,” Lewis tries again. “Talk to me. Why were you really here? Something is clearly going on. “
“You’re right,” Hathaway snaps, holding the car door open, ready to make his exit. “Something is going on. And I need to deal with it on my own.”
With that he gets into the car and drives off, determinedly not looking in the rear view mirror or at the confused, lonely figure slowly growing smaller. Fitting somehow, isn’t it, James thinks. It feels like Lewis has been fading away from him for a while now. James clings to his anger like a safety blanket. It’s the only way he sees getting through this.
***
He calls in sick, going right over Lewis’ head and ringing Innocent directly. She’s not happy about it but clearly decides to believe Hathaway’s excuse of ‘needing to process’ witnessing an attempted murder and gives him until the next morning to do so. James doesn’t think he’ll need longer than that anyway. Whatever will happen, will happen soon.
He showers and changes into clean clothes. His flat feels empty and cold, unfamiliar somehow even though nothing has changed. James touches the guitar leaning against the sofa but the wood feels cool and unresponsive under his fingers, like handling an instrument in a store, not something that he has cradled next to his heart for years.
He goes to the kitchen and drinks a glass of water, his stomach too knotted for food. It’s not hunger that’s troubling him anyway, even though his whole body feels concave, curved inward like a beggar’s bowl.
Waiting to be filled.
James sits on the sofa and puts his phone on the table in front of him. If begging would help, he would do it.
***
The phone doesn’t ring until quarter past ten in the evening. Hathaway startles awake, his eyes automatically falling on the clock for the time. He’s been asleep for hours judging from the way his back protests as he sits up, but he doesn’t remember dreaming of anything. Unless this here is the dream and he’s not really awake at all.
It almost feels like one; a certain sense of detachment to his thoughts and movements as he reaches for the mobile, still vibrating across the table.
“Hello,” he says. As usual, there’s nothing but silence on the line; silence and the distant cry of the wind. James gets up, limbs heavy, and walks to the window. Behind it the street is quiet, rain lashing the parked cars, trees bowing to the weather. He presses his palm against the glass and on other side, the night presses back.
“Hello Travis,” he says, no use pretending any more. “What can I do for you?”
Silence. And then a sigh; a long release of breath, a last one. “He’s coming,” a voice says, calm and without colour. James looks outside, sees no one. On his finger, the silver ring burns. “Gwai Lo, he is coming right now.”
The line goes dead.
Someone shoots the lock on his front door.
***
Everything slows down. James turns around, sees a man, the same man who’d stabbed Chu Min, who’d killed Travis White, coming through the door. He’s big; as tall as Hathaway and twice as broad. But he seems afraid.
James breathes in and the air feels like molasses, sliding sweet and thick down his throat. He’s still not entirely sure he’s not dreaming but when he blinks the man is still there, the gun still in his hand. Hathaway watches him raise it as if in slow-motion although it must be quick and smooth. After all, this man is a professional, the familiar tattoo on his bare forearm attesting to that.
‘I’m sorry,’ James thinks, just as the man’s finger squeezes the trigger, ‘I’m so sorry.’ The shot is loud, echoing like a thunder clap, but the lightning never comes.
Hathaway looks down at himself, sees no blood, feels no pain, his breath escaping in a stuttering exhale. When he looks up the man is a man no longer.
“I told them,” he growls through elongating face, through fangs and flame, “I told them you can’t use human weapons to kill someone who isn’t human.”
But James knows that he didn’t survive because of that, but simply because the bullet never reached its target. There’s a girl between him and the clisk’hein, a young girl dressed all in red, her loose tunic and long black hair rippling slightly as if moved by a wind only she feels. On her open palm rests the bullet meant for Hathaway and as he watches it crumbles to dust, blowing away.
The clisk’hein doesn’t see her but it doesn’t matter. When he charges, more dragon than man now, she stops him all the same, her wings unfurling like sails of a great ship, like the morning sun cresting the horizon.
The dragon sent to kill him roars, filling Hathaway’s small living room, knocking over bookshelves and lamps. He can’t change completely; not enough space, not enough time, and a ghost of a girl some sixty years dead in his way.
And not just her either. Here’s Travis now, tall and determined, and Alan West and Martha Rowell, Simon who died in his car, and others, countless others whose murders James has investigated, standing between him and death. Jissah’glek’lieskren’sayiss – Lisa Johnson’s true name still etched in his memory, clear as a day – rears back, fierce and beautiful, and the line holds. There are so many of them now, humans mostly but dragons too, some he recognises, some he doesn’t.
Hathaway is on his knees, pushed low by the sheer power in the room, the deafening cacophony of hundreds of voices in his ears and the cold fire that burns inside him. Soon, he thinks, it won’t matter whether the clisk’hein will get through or not; the dead will consume him anyway, dragging him over by their mere presence even if they don’t mean to.
“James!”
He hears him even above the noise, the frantic beat of his heart. Lewis bursts into the apartment like a flame leaping at dry wood, the fire he brings spreading everywhere. Hathaway knows he doesn’t see anything except him and the clisk’hein but that’s more than enough. With a sound like the sky rending apart, full of rage and grief, he jumps, fully human at the start and something much more than that by the time he lands on the other dragon.
It’s not so much a fight as it is an execution. Lewis has the advantage of surprise and for all his experience the clisk’hein is disoriented from fighting an invisible enemy and so doesn’t respond in time to defend himself against the one he can see. And Lewis doesn’t give him the opportunity to rally. He goes straight for the throat; clawed arms pushing the dragon’s head up, teeth – long and sharp and coming out of a face that James still recognises even though it bears no resemblance to a human one – taking hold and sinking through hide, into the carotid artery beyond. Then there is nothing but a tearing sound and a flash of heat, the stench of burning flesh filling the sudden silence that descends on the room.
And then it’s just the two of them: James still on the floor and Robbie kneeling next to him, his face covered in blood.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, frantic. His eyes are still too golden and too large on his human face, and yet perfect. “James, talk to me! Are you alright?”
“Yes,” James says. With shaking hands he pulls off the ring, lets it clatter to the floor. The real world comes crashing down and weighted by it all, yet suddenly feeling so light he could just float away, he reaches for an anchor.
As always, Robbie is right there; the one thing that holds him in place and lets him fly, at the same time.
***
A few weeks later, they are walking through Rose Hill Cemetery. Autumn has mellowed out into something almost friendly; the sun warm despite the underlying crispness of the air, the trees dressed up in a riot of colours, like ladies at a ball.
It’s quiet, but the kind of quiet that is still full of life despite the setting; a good place for a walk, although Hathaway is not sure why they are having one here. They had met up for an afternoon pint despite it being a day off for both of them, and afterwards, instead of driving them to his, Lewis had turned the car toward the cemetery.
The aftermath of the Travis White case had been surprisingly uneventful, even when the NDA and Williams had shown up, full of bluster. Killing the clisk’hein had clearly been an act of self-defence. Besides, it’s not like Williams had a leg to stand on when it came to that. They had considered removing the tattoo from the body – a tired discussion had in the minutes before Lewis had rung the station, both of them still on the floor and clutching each other – but with Travis’ tattoo already part of the autopsy report, that cat was well and truly out of the bag.
Chu Min was out of the hospital. She claimed to have no memory of what she’d said to James after her attack, and no idea why the clisk’hein had gone after her. He knew that she was lying, and that she knew that he knew, but Hathaway let it go. She had done enough. More than he would ever know.
Why the se’clisk’hein had been here in the first place and why he’d been killed, no one knew for certain. Although they had their suspicions.
Instinctively, James’ hand brushes the ring. He still wears it but not on his finger, not all the time. The ouroboros hangs on a chain around his neck; a constant, oddly reassuring presence against his skin – there but not consuming him, not pulling him too close to the line unless he chooses to put it on.
“You were fading away,” Lewis says then as if reading his thoughts. “Little by little.” He glances at James and his eyes are still golden. It’s a thing he does now; letting part of the dragon bleed through whenever they’re alone. Hathaway is glad of it, make him feel… included.
Wanted.
“Yeah,” he agrees. They’d talked this through already, more or less. How James had thought it was Robbie who was building the distance between them when all the time it had been him who had been drifting away, like a leaf on the wind, as the ring had drawn him closer to the dead.
“I was losing you,” Robbie says then, fierce and choked, like it’s a confession torn out of him under torture, “and I can’t…” He breathes harshly, wood smoke and sulphur scenting the air briefly.
“You won’t,” James says, promising the impossible because Robbie makes it feel like anything but.
They’ve stopped now, standing face to face over a grave. James knows what Robbie is going to say before he says it, his gaze falling to the unadorned headstone. “Lost her,” he sighs, his expression etched with old grief.
Hathaway shakes his head, reaching over to touch the back of Robbie’s hand, watching the scales ripple to the surface under his fingers; smooth and tan and beautiful. “No you didn’t,” he says, remembering the pale blue dragon at the edge of the defence line, part of those keeping him alive. “Not really.”
The wonder on Robbie’s face is like the breaking dawn. “Now then,” Hathaway smiles, turning to look at the grave of a woman, a dragon, he already has a lot in common with. “Tell me about your wife.”
Lewis does.
***
End note: You may have noticed that amidst the made-up Dragonese there are a few Chinese terms and names included which are a mix of Mandarin and Cantonese. While I’m by no means any kind of expert on either (far, far from it), there is, hopefully, a kind of internal consistency to this. Mandarin is the most common form of Chinese and Chu Min’s native tongue. However, in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the most commonly spoken form of Chinese and so e.g. the term Gwai Lo comes from that. Chu Min would have spent some years in Hong Kong and thus speaks Cantonese as well. However, it is likely that my research has failed somewhere so please, if you notice some glaring inconsistencies, do let me know!
Part 1 and header information here.
A few minutes later, they are sitting in Laura’s office, Lewis with both of his hands wrapped around a glass of brandy, Dr Hobson and Hathaway with mugs of coffee. James doesn’t really want it but he had accepted the drink out of solidarity and in the hopes it would warm his hands.
Unfortunately, the effects are minimal. The cheap crockery lets the heat through to burn his skin, but it somehow doesn’t register beyond the physical level. His hands still feel cold. Everything does.
They sip their drinks in silence, James tapping his ring against the mug absentmindedly, the steady clink-clink-clink of metal on porcelain the only sound in the room, measuring time like a tiny bell.
It’s Robbie who speaks first. “Clisk’hein,” he mutters. “That’s what the tattoo means. Travis White was a member of the clisk’hein.”
James and Laura stare at him. “And what is...” She falters and Hathaway picks up the question: “Clisk’hein?” stumbling over the term only slightly.
“The stuff of legends,” Lewis answers. “The... Well. Not quite the impossibility, clearly, but not something I ever expected to see.” He glances at Hobson, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry for almost losing control like that. I...”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says firmly, clearly more stunned by Lewis’ rare show of vulnerability than by anything else. “Judging by your reaction though, these legends aren’t exactly happy stories.”
Lewis exhales, something like shaky laughter lurking in the edges of his expression. “So few of our stories are,” he says and for some inexplicable reason his gaze seeks out James’, locking for one long heartbeat before falling away. It feels like electricity, like flying through a storm cloud, and for a moment the constant noise at the back of his head grows silent.
“Tell me,” Hathaway says. Not ‘us’, ‘him’, he wants Robbie to tell him. It may be selfish but when it comes to Robbie Lewis, that's exactly what he is.
Lewis sighs. “I don’t know much,” he starts, but then he launches into an explanation anyway, of sorts. It doesn’t take long, which is probably just as well since Hathaway doesn’t think either he or Laura breathe during it.
“So...” Hobson hazards after Lewis has fallen silent again, her hands crossed neatly in front of her, resting on the desk. “Clisk’hein are some kind of... secret organisation. Illuminati of the Dragon world?”
Robbie nods and then shakes his head immediately after. “Yes... and no. They’re shrouded in mystery.” He grimaces at the overdramatic expression, but doesn’t amend it. “I’m no expert,” he admits, “I don’t even know if anyone is. If someone had asked me yesterday, I would have said they’d be more likely to run into a practising Jedi-knight.”
“The latest census showed over 176,000 people stating that as their religion,” James injects, partly to break the tension, partly because he’s never been able to resist an opportunity to share the useless trivia his brain stores without any conscious effort or choice on his part. Thankfully, the other two occupants of the room are used to it and continue the conversation without blinking an eye.
“Nobody knows what the grand clisk’hein conspiracy is,” Lewis is saying. “Or even if there is one. But bad things happen whenever they’re around: assassination, revolutions, nations crumbling to smoking rubble...” He shifts in his seat, obviously uncomfortable. “Or so the stories go.”
“So...” Hathaway frowns. “Travis White is a dragon?”
“Not necessarily,” Robbie says just as Laura answers the question with a definitive: “No.”
She shrugs. “The first thing I check now,” she admits, “when it’s you two.”
Hathaway can’t exactly blame her although he is relieved that at least they don’t have another dead dragon on their hands.
“Alright, a man then,” he says, before turning to look at his boss. “Then how come you be so sure he really is one of these clisk’hein?” The word becomes easier to pronounce each time he says it; the strange combination of sibilant and glottal sounds rolling off his tongue with strange familiarity. “Couldn’t he just be a... I don’t know, an enthusiastic conspiracy theorist who’s had the symbol tattooed to appear cool among his conspiracy theorist friends?”
“I guess that’s possible but...” Lewis’ whole face seems to crease as he thinks. “Why would some random guy from Hackney know the symbol in the first place? There must be some connection. To dragons at least.” He looks distinctly unhappy about it.
“Not to mention that those tattoos are a hell of a commitment, just to gain some cool points,” Laura adds.
“Well, maybe... Hold on.” Hathaway frowns. “Tattoos? As in plural?”
“There’s more than one?” Lewis too asks, sitting up straight and putting his glass on the table – mostly untouched, Hathaway notices.
“Oh yes,” Hobson says. “If you feel up to it, I’ll show you.”
***
Soon they are back in the autopsy room, Travis White still lying in the same position they’d left him in, which... should in no way be surprising. Hathaway rubs his cold hands together, dismayed to find that some part of him had almost expected the body to have moved. The ringing in his ears is worse again and there’s a headache lurking not far behind it.
Laura angles the adjustable overhead light closer to the table until it illuminates Travis’ death slack face in unforgiving detail. Then she grabs something from the nearby table, brandishing it like a sword. It’s a magnifying glass. “This is what I wanted to show you before we got... distracted.”
Without further explanation, Laura pulls open Travis’ left eye and then the right, turning the lids inside out as far as they go and securing them with metallic clamps. It looks grotesque; the pale unmoving stare of Travis’ eyes contrasting with the almost violent pink of the inside of his eyelids.
“Look,” Laura says and Hathaway focuses his attention from the general horribleness of the sight to what Dr Hobson is showing them.
The magnifying glass, it turns out, is necessary. Without it, he probably would have dismissed the discolouration as nothing but a burst vein. With it, however, he’s able to make out the two other tattoos; incredibly small and detailed, and inked on the inside of Travis’ eyelids. The symbols are different than the one on his arm, but clearly the same language.
“Thier’rah, mi klierk!” Robbie breathes and if before his curse had been tinted with fear, it is now one of awe, almost religious in its purity. Hathaway thinks that if he ever saw Archangel Michael in the flesh, he would probably sound much the same.
Laura looks like she’s about to say something but then visibly stops herself, simply focusing on undoing the clamps, closing Mr White’s tattooed eyelids and covering him with a sheet once more.
For the longest time no one speaks. James keeps a worried eye on Lewis but he doesn’t seem to be in any danger of either running away or shifting forms right in the middle of Laura’s autopsy room. He just looks as if he’s deep in thought. And a little like someone just handed him a gift that is simultaneously the best and worst thing he could’ve possibly received.
“Can you keep this to yourself?” Lewis finally asks, turning to Laura. “Just for a little while?”
Dr Hobson doesn’t look happy about it but she nods. “We’re running on low staff anyway,” she says. “I can decide not to work overtime. It might buy you a couple of days.”
“Thank you. Really, I...”
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about then?”
Robbie shakes his head. “I don’t even know myself yet.”
“And when you do?” Laura asks, and then answers herself: “Not even then.”
“I don’t want to put you in danger,” Lewis all but pleads. “Believe me, whatever this is, it’s better that you don’t know. Better if you don’t even mention these other tattoos at all in your report. Just... forget what I told you.”
Hathaway fully expects her to argue. It’s a lot Lewis is asking and Laura’s mouth certainly thins into an unhappy line but in the end she only nods curtly. “Fine,” she says. “Fine.” Her expression is shuttered and James feels infinitely sad, knowing that something of the easy connection between the three of them has been irrevocably lost by Lewis’ decision to exclude her, never mind that it is to protect her.
“Thank you,” Robbie says and James can tell from his voice that he knows it too.
“She’ll forgive you,” Hathaway comments a moment later as they are walking to the car. He feels immediately warmer once back outside despite the wind. The ringing in his ears has also stopped, like someone had slammed a door on the noise as soon as they left the morgue. It’s a shock to realise that barely an hour has passed.
“Yeah,” Lewis says. His hands look old, resting on the steering wheel, worn but strong. “But that won’t make it any better.”
James silently agrees.
***
His silence lasts until the station and their office. Then he closes the door determinedly, leaning on it. “Talk,” he says, crossing his arms as Lewis slumps into the chair as if someone had cut off his strings. It’s a disconcerting sight.
Lewis regards him quietly for a few seconds and then sighs. “Alright,” he says. “There’s no need to guard the door like I’m a convict with a high flight risk.”
“You’re a dragon,” James says. “There’s always a high flight risk.” It’s a stupid joke, borderline offensive even and if anyone else had said it Hathaway would have been sorely tempted to punch them in the face. As it is, he’s not altogether sure whether Lewis is feeling the same urge right now.
Apparently not, because he only snorts. “Cheeky sod,” he says, pointing at the other chair until Hathaway relents, sitting down.
Lewis doesn’t give him a chance to even draw breath. “Se’clisk’hein,” he says. “Secret within secret, shadow within shadow.” It’s clear he’s reciting a quote. “You have to understand, there’s even less actual knowledge about them than clisk’hein and what there is, is speculation and rumour at best, outright fiction at worst.”
Hathaway nods, fascinated despite the gravity of the situation, or perhaps because of it. There is a reason he joined the police and it wasn’t purely out of altruism.
Lewis continues: “The name means...” He hesitates for a moment, clearly struggling to come up with an English equivalent. “Hunter of hunters,” he says finally. “It’s difficult to translate but you get the idea. The story goes that they were originally a splinter group; people who didn’t quite agree with all of clisk’hein’s agendas and methods. It was a quickly squashed rebellion and supporters vanished overnight. Either dispersed or killed completely if you believe one version, or moving to operate in secret if you believe the other.”
“Seems like the empirical evidence supports the latter hypothesis,” Hathaway remarks, thinking of Travis White and his tattooed eyelids.
“Seems like,” Lewis echoes, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t think you understand how... big, how incomprehensible almost, this is,” he says, sounding frustrated. “This is like a fairy-tale coming alive. Like...” He casts around for a human equivalent, “...like if you suddenly learned that Santa Claus was real. Or that Dan Brown was actually onto something.”
Hathaway swallows the diatribe that tends to follow whenever someone’s mentions the man’s name. “Stuff of legends, huh?” he asks, contemplatively.
Lewis nods.
“Like finding the Holy Grail? Or learning that... fairies are real?”
Lewis frowns at his tone, his head tilting to the side in that clearly non-human way he has. “I guess, a bit, I...”
“Oh how about discovering that dragons exist?” Hathaway asks then. Lewis has the decency to cringe at least but James is far from being done. “I’m thinking that all of humanity can relate to that feeling. Or what about finding out that sometimes, sometimes, dreams aren’t just dreams? That sometimes, when you wake up with a taste of blood in your mouth it’s...” He stops himself there, breathing hard. That was more than he’d meant to say, more than he’d even realised he’d been thinking. “Somehow,” he finishes, struggling to make his voice calm and even, “somehow, I think I understand just fine.”
Lewis doesn’t say anything, just watches him, something indefinitely sad in his eyes.
***
They may have a couple of extra days until the official autopsy report is released but they don’t actually know how to best use the extra time or even what, if anything, will happen when it runs out. In absence of better ideas, they work the case like any other. Hathaway calls the Met, asking them to keep an eye on Travis’ mates just in case one of them does something out of the ordinary. When asked just what kind of ‘out of ordinary’ they’re looking for, he evades the question with a long ramble about network analysis, leaving the DC at the other end probably thinking they’re after organised crime.
Well. He’s probably not entirely incorrect about that, Hathaway silently admits to himself.
They go through the notes again, listening to the interviews and looking at the crime scene photos. It’s useless and so too is Lewis, clearly unable to concentrate. He keeps drifting off in the middle of a sentence, staring into thin air and muttering in Dragonese. James only recognises a word here or there though even that is more than he reasonably should.
That too is something he ought to talk Lewis about. Later, he thinks, all the while knowing he’s lying to himself now too.
“Let’s just go home,” Hathaway says, irritated both at himself and Lewis. “You obviously have some... thinking to do.”
Robbie blinks at him, looking so dazed and approachable that James gets up immediately, grabbing his coat, suddenly needing to be anywhere but here. He can’t deal with this right now, the air too warm and close, almost choking him with all the things unspoken.
“Hold on, we’ve got work to do,” Lewis says, frowning. “You can’t just leave.”
“That doesn’t usually stop you,” Hathaway snaps, unable to regret the words even when Lewis looks like he’s been slapped. “In fact, maybe you should do that. Go talk to Khe’e’laf’in again, perhaps they can shed some light on this.” It’s part a dig, part a genuine suggestion because James’ mood aside, they still have a murder to solve. And it had worked the last time. Sort of.
But Lewis almost recoils in horror at the words, starting on the same old litany about how they need to keep the existence of a dead se’clisk’hein under wraps for now. Hathaway points out the Khe’e’laf’in probably already know all about it, possibly first hand, which causes Lewis to bristle and more or less suggest that Hathaway shouldn’t assume he knows anything at all about dragons.
Things go rapidly downhill from there.
“I may just be a dumb human, but even I know that sitting around twiddling our thumbs is not going to do anything,” James says. His voice is harsh and cold now, as cold as a grave, as cold as his bones.
Lewis grits his teeth almost audibly and idly Hathaway wonders just how blunt and human they are anymore, hopes they aren’t. “Listen to yourself,” Robbie says, “You’re the one usually suggesting caution. We’ve got to think about this, can’t just go haring out with questions and accusations.”
“Well we have to ask someone,” Hathaway spits. “Since – as you so delicately intimated – I know fuck all.” Lewis flinches and something dark and twisted inside James is glad for it. “And since you’ve just more or less admitted you don’t know anything more than what you’ve already told me. Unless you’re lying.”
Robbie inhales sharply, standing up. “I have never lied to you.”
“Lie of omission is still a lie.”
“You would know all about it,” Lewis says.
And James does, oh he does know, in exquisite, damning detail. A part of him is horrified at himself, at what he’s doing; every word out of his mouth driving another wedge between them, widening the chasm until it’s like a gaping wound, too big to close.
Robbie too seems to have come to the same conclusion. His expression crumbles, face lined with regret and seeing that hurts, knowing it’s because of him hurts even more. James turns away, toward the door.
“Don’t,” Lewis says, moving to touch him and he can’t abide it, not now. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Robbie says. “I don’t know what I meant, only that… You shouldn’t be part of this.”
James reels back as if struck. Robbie’s eyes go wide. “No, no, not like… I don’t want you hurt,” he pleads, reaching out, but it’s too late.
“You can’t stop it,” James says, and it comes out too much like a sob, “Can’t you see? No one can. It’s beyond either of us,” spiralling out of control; dead dragons, dead humans, NDA, dreams, the ring, secrets and half-truths and too many things unsaid between them.
Hathaway leaves, knowing it solves nothing, but too tired to care. Lewis lets him.
***
Despite his exhaustion, James doesn’t expect to sleep but he does. He dreams about flying again but this time he’s not alone.
The sky is bigger and the sea closer, and her wings are green rather than golden tan. They fly – she and the other half of her heart – happy to be away from it all, if only for a while. The mountains below are still wild and majestic, despite the fast encroaching towns, despite the smell of smoke, its tendrils snaking around her, pulling her down.
She twists, shrieking, himself again by the time he hits the ash-covered ground.
“Gwai Lo,” a voice says, and when he turns he sees a young girl, no more than fifteen. Her long black hair and delicate features remind him of someone and when she smiles he thinks he almost remembers who.
“Gwai Lo,” she says again, insistent. Her dress is stained red, the blood spreading over her middle, between her legs. “Answer the phone.”
She twists, shrieking, himself again by the time he hits the ash-covered ground.
“Gwai Lo,” a voice says, and when he turns he sees a young girl, no more than fifteen. Her long black hair and delicate features remind him of someone and when she smiles he thinks he almost remembers who.
“Gwai Lo,” she says again, insistent. Her dress is stained red, the blood spreading over her middle, between her legs. “Answer the phone.”
James wakes up. The flat is silent. Groggily, he reaches for the mobile which is resting on the night stand. The display shows five missed calls, all from a blocked number.
***
It’s barely past seven in the morning when Hathaway gets to Chu Min’s house. The weather is cool and damp like a grave and the mist reminds him of ash. He could have called first but he’d been unable to pick up the phone. He certainly should have called Lewis but that too had felt impossible. He didn’t know how to explain this visit to himself, at least not in words he was yet willing to say out loud, so how could he justify it to his boss? Besides, getting the door slammed in his face was a distinct possibility.
That is, in fact, exactly what happens. However, rather than shutting, the door slams open, hitting Hathaway in the face just as he’s about to ring the bell. A large man rushes out, as surprised to find someone on the other side of the door as Hathaway, judging by his startled expression. He doesn’t stop and James is too busy holding his nose – bleeding and bruised but hopefully not broken – to even think of doing that himself. There’s something about his retreating back that strikes him as familiar but that pain is too distracting to dwell on it long.
“Fuck!” he curses, struggling, and failing, to find a tissue or a handkerchief to clean his face.
The front door is still hanging open and there is no sign of Chu Min. It’s odd that she hasn’t come out to see what the commotion was about. Odd... and worrying.
“Chu Min?” Hathaway shouts, belatedly knocking on the doorframe. “It’s Sergeant Hathaway. I wondered if I could use your bathroom...” James makes his way inside, more concerned by the second as there is no response.
His instincts are proven correct and he finds Chu Min on the kitchen floor, barely conscious and bleeding far worse than James’ nose. Training takes over. Hathaway rips off his jacket and presses it hard against the wound with one hand while he uses the other to call 999.
“Hold on,” he says, feeling worse than useless. “Help is on the way.”
Chu Min drifts in and out, crying out in a mixture of Dragonese and Mandarin.
“Who did this to you?” Hathaway asks, “Who was that man?” and all the while Chu Min’s blood seeps through his jacket until his palms are warm and sticky with it.
“James,” she says, her hair like the night against the floor tiles.
He cannot ever remember telling her his first name but somehow the fact that she knows it doesn’t surprise him. “It’s alright,” he says, “The ambulance is here.” He can hear the sirens now, coming closer by the second.
“James,” Chu Min whispers again, looking as young as her sister like this, features smooth, blood everywhere. “You have to answer.”
Hathaway swallows, the understanding hard and cold like a sliver of ice lodged in his throat. Outside the house the ambulance comes to a halt, sirens cutting off and doors banging.
“Who’s calling?” James asks, urgent now and strangely unafraid because he thinks he knows the answer already.
Chu Min looks at him then, at him and through him, somewhere beyond, and her eyes are dark and without an end. “The dead,” she says. “The dead are calling, Gwai Lo. You must answer.”
And then the paramedics are there, shoving him out of the way, barking questions that James answers mechanically, his gaze not on Chu Min but on the blood stained snake circling his finger.
***
Lewis finds him on the front steps. The place is already crawling with uniforms and SOCOs and Hathaway is in the middle of giving his statement for what feels like the fifth time.
“And if you don’t mind explaining again why you were here in the first place?” PC Herriot asks, adding: “Sir,” as an afterthought.
Hathaway sighs, flicking his eyes over Lewis but not otherwise acknowledging him. Robbie’s face is set in a grim mask and James honestly can’t tell how much of it is worry and how much lingering, or perhaps new, anger. Lewis chooses to hover nearby, close enough to listen but not interfering although James knows it’s only a matter of time.
“As I explained before,” he says, “I was here to talk to Ms Chu regarding a case. She has been... of help on previous occasions.”
PC Herriot nods, making a note in her pocket book which Hathaway is sure is nothing but a doodle. “And why did you—?”
“That’s enough, lass.” Lewis steps in. “Very thorough technique,” he compliments her, “but I need to talk to my sergeant now, I’m sure you understand.” His voice is affable but firm and Herriot almost squeaks in surprise. Sometimes the rumour mill surrounding Lewis and his more-than-human status is useful: PC Thorough leaves them alone. Hathaway is almost sorry to see her go.
“Come on,” Lewis says. “You can clean up at mine.” Worry and need to know what happened are warring on his face, and his hand on Hathaway’s arm is steadying.
James flinches away like he’s been burned. “That’s alright,” he says. “I’ll just go home and change.” He just needs to get into his car.
Hathaway starts walking toward the street.
“James,” Lewis hisses, dogging his heels. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Chu Min was attacked. It’s all in my statement.”
Robbie practically growls in frustration and for a fleeting moment James thinks he’s going to push him against the car and physically force him to explain. But no, Lewis visibly reins in his temper and keeps his hands to himself.
The disappointment tastes sour, making James hunch his shoulders further.
“James,” Lewis tries again. “Talk to me. Why were you really here? Something is clearly going on. “
“You’re right,” Hathaway snaps, holding the car door open, ready to make his exit. “Something is going on. And I need to deal with it on my own.”
With that he gets into the car and drives off, determinedly not looking in the rear view mirror or at the confused, lonely figure slowly growing smaller. Fitting somehow, isn’t it, James thinks. It feels like Lewis has been fading away from him for a while now. James clings to his anger like a safety blanket. It’s the only way he sees getting through this.
***
He calls in sick, going right over Lewis’ head and ringing Innocent directly. She’s not happy about it but clearly decides to believe Hathaway’s excuse of ‘needing to process’ witnessing an attempted murder and gives him until the next morning to do so. James doesn’t think he’ll need longer than that anyway. Whatever will happen, will happen soon.
He showers and changes into clean clothes. His flat feels empty and cold, unfamiliar somehow even though nothing has changed. James touches the guitar leaning against the sofa but the wood feels cool and unresponsive under his fingers, like handling an instrument in a store, not something that he has cradled next to his heart for years.
He goes to the kitchen and drinks a glass of water, his stomach too knotted for food. It’s not hunger that’s troubling him anyway, even though his whole body feels concave, curved inward like a beggar’s bowl.
Waiting to be filled.
James sits on the sofa and puts his phone on the table in front of him. If begging would help, he would do it.
***
The phone doesn’t ring until quarter past ten in the evening. Hathaway startles awake, his eyes automatically falling on the clock for the time. He’s been asleep for hours judging from the way his back protests as he sits up, but he doesn’t remember dreaming of anything. Unless this here is the dream and he’s not really awake at all.
It almost feels like one; a certain sense of detachment to his thoughts and movements as he reaches for the mobile, still vibrating across the table.
“Hello,” he says. As usual, there’s nothing but silence on the line; silence and the distant cry of the wind. James gets up, limbs heavy, and walks to the window. Behind it the street is quiet, rain lashing the parked cars, trees bowing to the weather. He presses his palm against the glass and on other side, the night presses back.
“Hello Travis,” he says, no use pretending any more. “What can I do for you?”
Silence. And then a sigh; a long release of breath, a last one. “He’s coming,” a voice says, calm and without colour. James looks outside, sees no one. On his finger, the silver ring burns. “Gwai Lo, he is coming right now.”
The line goes dead.
Someone shoots the lock on his front door.
***
Everything slows down. James turns around, sees a man, the same man who’d stabbed Chu Min, who’d killed Travis White, coming through the door. He’s big; as tall as Hathaway and twice as broad. But he seems afraid.
James breathes in and the air feels like molasses, sliding sweet and thick down his throat. He’s still not entirely sure he’s not dreaming but when he blinks the man is still there, the gun still in his hand. Hathaway watches him raise it as if in slow-motion although it must be quick and smooth. After all, this man is a professional, the familiar tattoo on his bare forearm attesting to that.
‘I’m sorry,’ James thinks, just as the man’s finger squeezes the trigger, ‘I’m so sorry.’ The shot is loud, echoing like a thunder clap, but the lightning never comes.
Hathaway looks down at himself, sees no blood, feels no pain, his breath escaping in a stuttering exhale. When he looks up the man is a man no longer.
“I told them,” he growls through elongating face, through fangs and flame, “I told them you can’t use human weapons to kill someone who isn’t human.”
But James knows that he didn’t survive because of that, but simply because the bullet never reached its target. There’s a girl between him and the clisk’hein, a young girl dressed all in red, her loose tunic and long black hair rippling slightly as if moved by a wind only she feels. On her open palm rests the bullet meant for Hathaway and as he watches it crumbles to dust, blowing away.
The clisk’hein doesn’t see her but it doesn’t matter. When he charges, more dragon than man now, she stops him all the same, her wings unfurling like sails of a great ship, like the morning sun cresting the horizon.
The dragon sent to kill him roars, filling Hathaway’s small living room, knocking over bookshelves and lamps. He can’t change completely; not enough space, not enough time, and a ghost of a girl some sixty years dead in his way.
And not just her either. Here’s Travis now, tall and determined, and Alan West and Martha Rowell, Simon who died in his car, and others, countless others whose murders James has investigated, standing between him and death. Jissah’glek’lieskren’sayiss – Lisa Johnson’s true name still etched in his memory, clear as a day – rears back, fierce and beautiful, and the line holds. There are so many of them now, humans mostly but dragons too, some he recognises, some he doesn’t.
Hathaway is on his knees, pushed low by the sheer power in the room, the deafening cacophony of hundreds of voices in his ears and the cold fire that burns inside him. Soon, he thinks, it won’t matter whether the clisk’hein will get through or not; the dead will consume him anyway, dragging him over by their mere presence even if they don’t mean to.
“James!”
He hears him even above the noise, the frantic beat of his heart. Lewis bursts into the apartment like a flame leaping at dry wood, the fire he brings spreading everywhere. Hathaway knows he doesn’t see anything except him and the clisk’hein but that’s more than enough. With a sound like the sky rending apart, full of rage and grief, he jumps, fully human at the start and something much more than that by the time he lands on the other dragon.
It’s not so much a fight as it is an execution. Lewis has the advantage of surprise and for all his experience the clisk’hein is disoriented from fighting an invisible enemy and so doesn’t respond in time to defend himself against the one he can see. And Lewis doesn’t give him the opportunity to rally. He goes straight for the throat; clawed arms pushing the dragon’s head up, teeth – long and sharp and coming out of a face that James still recognises even though it bears no resemblance to a human one – taking hold and sinking through hide, into the carotid artery beyond. Then there is nothing but a tearing sound and a flash of heat, the stench of burning flesh filling the sudden silence that descends on the room.
And then it’s just the two of them: James still on the floor and Robbie kneeling next to him, his face covered in blood.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, frantic. His eyes are still too golden and too large on his human face, and yet perfect. “James, talk to me! Are you alright?”
“Yes,” James says. With shaking hands he pulls off the ring, lets it clatter to the floor. The real world comes crashing down and weighted by it all, yet suddenly feeling so light he could just float away, he reaches for an anchor.
As always, Robbie is right there; the one thing that holds him in place and lets him fly, at the same time.
***
A few weeks later, they are walking through Rose Hill Cemetery. Autumn has mellowed out into something almost friendly; the sun warm despite the underlying crispness of the air, the trees dressed up in a riot of colours, like ladies at a ball.
It’s quiet, but the kind of quiet that is still full of life despite the setting; a good place for a walk, although Hathaway is not sure why they are having one here. They had met up for an afternoon pint despite it being a day off for both of them, and afterwards, instead of driving them to his, Lewis had turned the car toward the cemetery.
The aftermath of the Travis White case had been surprisingly uneventful, even when the NDA and Williams had shown up, full of bluster. Killing the clisk’hein had clearly been an act of self-defence. Besides, it’s not like Williams had a leg to stand on when it came to that. They had considered removing the tattoo from the body – a tired discussion had in the minutes before Lewis had rung the station, both of them still on the floor and clutching each other – but with Travis’ tattoo already part of the autopsy report, that cat was well and truly out of the bag.
Chu Min was out of the hospital. She claimed to have no memory of what she’d said to James after her attack, and no idea why the clisk’hein had gone after her. He knew that she was lying, and that she knew that he knew, but Hathaway let it go. She had done enough. More than he would ever know.
Why the se’clisk’hein had been here in the first place and why he’d been killed, no one knew for certain. Although they had their suspicions.
Instinctively, James’ hand brushes the ring. He still wears it but not on his finger, not all the time. The ouroboros hangs on a chain around his neck; a constant, oddly reassuring presence against his skin – there but not consuming him, not pulling him too close to the line unless he chooses to put it on.
“You were fading away,” Lewis says then as if reading his thoughts. “Little by little.” He glances at James and his eyes are still golden. It’s a thing he does now; letting part of the dragon bleed through whenever they’re alone. Hathaway is glad of it, make him feel… included.
Wanted.
“Yeah,” he agrees. They’d talked this through already, more or less. How James had thought it was Robbie who was building the distance between them when all the time it had been him who had been drifting away, like a leaf on the wind, as the ring had drawn him closer to the dead.
“I was losing you,” Robbie says then, fierce and choked, like it’s a confession torn out of him under torture, “and I can’t…” He breathes harshly, wood smoke and sulphur scenting the air briefly.
“You won’t,” James says, promising the impossible because Robbie makes it feel like anything but.
They’ve stopped now, standing face to face over a grave. James knows what Robbie is going to say before he says it, his gaze falling to the unadorned headstone. “Lost her,” he sighs, his expression etched with old grief.
Hathaway shakes his head, reaching over to touch the back of Robbie’s hand, watching the scales ripple to the surface under his fingers; smooth and tan and beautiful. “No you didn’t,” he says, remembering the pale blue dragon at the edge of the defence line, part of those keeping him alive. “Not really.”
The wonder on Robbie’s face is like the breaking dawn. “Now then,” Hathaway smiles, turning to look at the grave of a woman, a dragon, he already has a lot in common with. “Tell me about your wife.”
Lewis does.
***
End note: You may have noticed that amidst the made-up Dragonese there are a few Chinese terms and names included which are a mix of Mandarin and Cantonese. While I’m by no means any kind of expert on either (far, far from it), there is, hopefully, a kind of internal consistency to this. Mandarin is the most common form of Chinese and Chu Min’s native tongue. However, in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the most commonly spoken form of Chinese and so e.g. the term Gwai Lo comes from that. Chu Min would have spent some years in Hong Kong and thus speaks Cantonese as well. However, it is likely that my research has failed somewhere so please, if you notice some glaring inconsistencies, do let me know!
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on 2014-08-31 11:30 am (UTC)