Bleeding Black Heart

It was with a casual and routine stride that James stepped into Sweeney’s Second Hand Shop on the cloistered and clandestine street market known simply as The Brix. With one hand, he carried a pair of body bags slung over his shoulder, and in the other, he held a carrying case filled with an assortment of human organs.
James was no stranger to the red market, either in general or this one in particular, and he stood cool and collected in spite of the appalling amount of contraband he was laden with. Even the physical weight of the corpses didn’t seem to bother him, despite the fact that he was hardly a large man.
He was slim of build and at best average in height, but that only made his unflappable countenance and display of strength all the more imposing. His slicked-back black hair, cashmere Peabody coat and shiny Italian shoes made it clear that he was no hired goon there to do the dirty work of someone more important. He was someone important who didn’t mind getting their own hands dirty. Preferred it, even.
He turned his head slowly from side to side, his brilliant blue eyes darting left and right as he scanned the room for any potential threats. In his periphery, he caught the outline of a woman slipping down an aisle and then vanishing into shadow. He thought nothing of it, as Sweeney and his clientele knew him well. And even if they didn’t, the bagged corpses on his back made it clear that he was someone to avoid.
“Daddy Darling, is it all right if I go and look at the stuffed animals while you have your business meeting?” his daughter Sara asked sweetly. “It’s so rare these days to find stuffies made out of real animals, and I appreciate the artisanship that goes into desecrating a carcass into a caricature of life.”
“Of course, Sara Darling,” James beamed down at her, the warm smile finally breaking his cold demeanour. “Just be sure to mind your fingers. Some of the wares in here aren’t as dead as they seem at first glance.”
“I will, Daddy Darling,” Sara sang, merrily skipping along to the display of taxidermied animals.
James shifted the weight of the body bags on his back and began making his way down the hardy wooden shelves of pickled organs and body parts towards the front counter. Standing behind a somewhat flimsy-looking set of brass bars was a hale and ruddy Irishmen with sweptback auburn hair and a set of blue eyes as cold as James’.
“Mr. Darling; a pleasure as always,” came the perfunctory greeting in his rustic Irish brogue. As always, he did his best to sound nonchalant, but James knew that the man was terrified that he would kill him for any and no reason.
“Mr. Sweeney. If this is a pleasure, then you need to get out more,” James replied, unslinging the body bags onto the long counter with a hefty thud.
“Two then, is it?” he asked, eyeing the bags over with a detached analysis.
“The two cleanest kills from our last hunt, saved just for you,” James nodded. “It’s amazing how precise Mary can be with her knives when she wants to be. She can kill a man with a single surgically precise strike, minimally invasive while putting him down before he can put up a fight. Not much fun, obviously, but she can be pragmatic when need be.”
“Mmhmm. Hell of a woman you’ve got there, James,” Sweeney nodded, knowing full well what James did to people who spoke ill of his sister. He glanced up at a scale and some other analogue gauges attached to the counter and began striking keys on a large, mechanical calculator. “What’s in the bag?”
“Oh, the usual assortment of leftovers; three hearts, three ovaries, six eyes, two brains, a skull, a spinal column, a hundred and some teeth, a virgin’s womb, a whore’s womb, a fetus – no points for guessing which womb it came from – and a penis whose sexual history is completely irrelevant because old occultists are rarely concerned with such double standards,” James replied. “Though if I were to hazard a guess based on my impression of its original owner, nothing too impressive. Oh, and of course, the gratuity!”
He unzipped the bag and reached in. Amidst the clutter of eviscerated innards, James managed to pull out the bottle of his homebrew whiskey on the first try.
“Mr. Darling, you really are too kind,” Sweeney said with a wistful grin as he accepted the bottle, reminiscing about all the other bottles that James had given him over the years. “If you wanted, you could go legit and make a living just selling this stuff.”
“But then what would I do with all the dismembered corpses cluttering up my home?” he asked rhetorically. “Just hand them over to you, free of charge? Are you saying you’d rather I give you free stock than free booze? That’s an Irishman’s bullshit if ever I heard it.”
“Aye, you’ve got me there, Mr. Darling. You’ve got me there,” Sweeney confessed, still sounding oddly wistful. He briefly looked up over James’ shoulder before looking back down at the whiskey. “Well, this may not sound any less like Irish bullshit to you, but I’m going to keep this bottle, Mr. Darling. For old times’ sake.”
James cocked an eyebrow at him in confusion, before feeling a large, curved blade impale him from behind.
He went stiff, the attack catching him off guard. He immediately thought back to his earlier scan of the shop, frantically reviewing it for anything he might have missed. The only thing he could think of was the woman he had dismissed as irrelevant, the woman he had dismissed as fleeing from him, the woman he had dismissed as prey.
The woman he had seen vanish into the shadows.
He looked down at his chest, and saw that the blade sticking out of it was made from vitrified Miasma; as black and shiny as obsidian. He knew at once who his attacker must be.
“And on tonight’s show, we have a returning contestant!” Petra said in a singsong voice, confirming his suspicions. “Hello, James Darling! Remember me? The corpse Emrys stole from you knifing you down in the chop shop you’ve sold so many others to? There’s a nice poetic irony to that, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I’m sorry, James. She tracked me down. She knew I bought bodies off of you. I didn’t want to sell you out, but I can’t stand against Emrys, James! I’m sorry!” Sweeney shouted, watching in horror as the unnatural Black Bile oozed out of James’ chest. He stumbled backwards into his fortified saferoom and slammed the reinforced door shut behind him, just barely conjuring up the audacity to peep through the thick glass viewing port as his old friend and patron was being murdered.
James was too focused on survival to actually be mad at Sweeney, or even Petra for that matter. No, revenge was a luxury afforded only to survivors, and right now, he needed to survive.
“Still conscious, James Darling? You’re a stubborn son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Petra asked. “But there’s still not a whole lot even you can do about a Miasmic blade running through your heart, now is there? Once you pass out, I’m going to tear it right out of you and bring it to Emrys for safekeeping. He’ll be making sure that you don’t come back to life. Then all we have to do is wait for your psychotic, sadistic, vindicative, cannibalistic, knife-crazy, mass-murdering, drunk of a sister to come and try to get you back, and we’ll have put a stop to both of you.”
Despite the lack of circulation to reinvigorate his rapidly suffocating tissues and organs, James still managed to chuckle at her petty little scheme.
“Petra?” he smiled, turning his head enough so that he could just see her in the corner of his eye. “Do you really think that I have a heart?”
Petra flinched as she felt a thudding resume inside James’s chest. It was rapid, but not panicked. It was angry. It beat in spite of the crystal blade running through it, and Petra could tell that its rhythm was meant to pulverize her sword and free James from her clutches.
Since there was nothing she could do to prevent the destruction of her sword, she decided to hasten it. She spoke a spell of command, and the blade shattered into countless tiny shards, some of which succeeded in embedding themselves deep into James’s flesh, including whatever cardiovascular organ he had in place of a mortal heart.
Screaming out in agony, James dropped to his knees and clutched at his hemorrhaging chest, trying to hold onto as much Black Bile as he could. Petra reformed a new Miasmic blade and raised it up to decapitate him in one fell swoop.
“Daddy!” Sara cried from across the shop.
The sound of a child crying out in horror at the sight of a beloved parent being murdered in front of her was enough to make Petra falter.
“What?” she murmured in disbelief, her eyes darting back and forth between the young girl and the murderous abomination she had just called Daddy.
Sara stared her down with a look of cold and absolute hatred in her black eyes, and James… James just laughed, even as he was bleeding out.
Sara snatched an idol of a forgotten god carved from a human femur off the nearest shelf and threw it at Petra so hard it broke the sound barrier. Petra slipped into her shadow form just a fraction of a second before the idol struck her, letting it smash to pieces against the wall behind her as she retreated to a more defensible position.
Sara raced to her father’s side and hurriedly placed her hand on his chest. At her touch, the Black Bile seemed to become reanimated and began slithering back inside of him, slowly but surely going about the business of repairing the damage.
“It’s all right, Sara Darling. I’ll be all right,” he assured her, smiling and gently petting her head.
“The shards,” Sara wept with a shake of her head. “I can’t get the shards out, Daddy. They burn the Bile too much when they touch.”
Petra sighed inwardly when she heard this. So long as James had those shards inside him, he’d be vulnerable to Emrys’s power. She pondered if she was strong enough to kill him with the shards by herself or if she’d have to leave him to Emrys.
Sara’s head snapped away from her father as if she had heard this thought, the grief on her face immediately transmuting into a blind, murderous rage. Her eyes raced across the room, jumping from one shadow to another as she tried to locate her quarry.
“I know you’re still here!” she shouted. “I know what you are! Mommy Darling killed you in our playroom. Why couldn’t you have been a good prole like the others and sacrificed your worthless life for the sake of your betters? You could have been useful! Mommy Darling could have served you to me at breakfast and you would have made me so happy! Now look at what you’ve done! You’ve hurt Daddy Darling. You could have killed him! You meant to kill him, and you’ve made me very, very unhappy! When you find out what I do to things that make me unhappy, you’re going to wish Mommy Darling had just made you into bacon!”
Every door, window, and shutter in the shop slammed shut on their own, trapping Petra inside. Sweeney had evidently made the place ludicrously impregnable, and there wasn’t a single crack that her shadow form could slip through. She tried not to stay in one place, only moving when neither James nor Sara were looking in her direction. She knew that if either of them spotted a shadow moving in any way it shouldn’t – even if it was just for a fraction of a second in the periphery of their vision – she would give herself away.
The Darling Twin’s senses were incredibly sharp, sharper than what should have been physically possible. Part of the reason they drank as much as they did was to take the edge off. Sara Darling, however, was not only more powerful than they were, but her senses remained completely undulled by any intoxicants. She was especially attuned to the physical and emotional suffering of others, and savoured every iota of it. Even so, she could not feel the fear of a shadow, so all she could do was look for movement when there should be none.
Petra knew that she couldn’t stay ahead of her forever. Her best chance to escape was to attack, and if it had only been James, she wouldn’t have hesitated to finish him off. But Sara was still something completely unexpected to her, and she couldn’t bring herself to kill something that at least looked like a young girl without a better understanding of what she actually was.
“Petra, deary, I don’t believe Sara Darling is in the mood for hide in seek at the moment,” James called out in a cheery tone, his hands patiently clasped behind his back as he stood straight up, as if the blade through his chest already counted for nothing. “That’s bad news for you, since it means she’s not even going to try to draw it out. Once she finds you, she’ll tear out that fancy new mechatronic heart you’ve got and bring it back to Mary Darling for safekeeping. She’ll be making sure that you don’t come back to life. Then all we have to do is wait for your ancient, treacherous, pompous, sanctimonious, deicidal, egregore-eating, corpse-stealing, tv-stealing adoptive father figure to come for you, and we’ll have put a stop to both of you.”
He took a step forward, and Petra noticed he was now standing in the puddle of Black Bile that had coagulated on the floor beneath him. She remembered what Sara had said about the Miasma burning the Bile, and the inklings of an escape plan began to form in her mind.
Creeping as close to James as she dared without being seen, the instant their eyes were off her she returned to her physical form and shot multiple splinters of vitrified Miasma into the puddle before vanishing back into shadow.
James shouted out in surprise as the Bile at his feet began to smoulder and burn away at his shoes. Sara bolted off in the direction the splinters had come from, but Petra had already skirted around behind her. She became flesh and blood once again to grab hold of a jar full of formaldehyde and threw it towards the ground by James’ feet as hard as she could. It shattered, its contents instantly catching fire and spreading rapidly as the force of the impact sent the fluid splattering across the floor.
Transitioning between physical and shadow forms too quickly for James or Sara to catch her, she grabbed as many jars as she could and continuously threw more fuel on the fire.
“Hey! Hey! Stop that, you crazy bitch! You’re going to burn down my whole shop!” Sweeney shouted, pounding his fist on the door of his saferoom.
“Damn it! Sara! Sara, he’s right!” James shouted over the sound of the now roaring flames, jars on the shelves already exploding from the heat. “This place is going to burn down, and shadow isn’t flammable. If we don’t leave now, she’ll gladly watch us burn alive.”
Sara considered the possibility of telekinetically manipulating the air to snuff out the fire, but with so much flammable material in the shop, such a vortex would probably only make things worse. Screaming in frustration, she instead simply blasted the front door off its hinges. Grabbing her father by the hand, they raced out of the burning building, but not before seeing a shadowy humanoid figure beat them to it.
The moment they were back out onto The Brix, the shadow was gone, already vanished into the labyrinthine alleyways that surrounded them.
Once they were a safe distance from the smoke and flames, Sara came to an abrupt stop and glared out into the sea of countless shadows that lay before her.
“She got away,” she growled through her teeth, tiny fists clenched at her sides as her black eyes swirled with preternatural fury. “When we get her back to the playroom, I’m going to make sure that she burns forever!”
“Sara Darling, I realize you’re upset, but we mustn’t speak that way; that is your Mother’s prey and she will be the one who decides what we do with her,” James playfully chided her. “Is that understood?”
“Yes, Daddy Darling,” Sara sighed. She turned around, and as she gazed upon the now-raging inferno ravenously devouring the building, the rage in her eyes finally yielded to her usual state of childlike delight. “Such a beautiful thing to see a man’s life’s work and livelihood brought to ruin in so short a time. Do you think Mr. Sweeney will starve now, Daddy Darling? Do you think the fire will leave him a useless and penniless cripple? He deserves a slow and painful death for his dastardly complicity in Petra’s Plot.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve had business partners who’ve done a lot worse than just stand by while I get shafted,” James considered. “I can hardly fault a man for having a self-preservation instinct. Considering how much it just cost him, I’m willing to call it even for now. Sara Darling, I think it’s time we retreat to higher ground before too many looky-loos come snooping around. We can still watch the fire for a bit, and when we get home, I’ll play any game you want as a reward for being so brave and helping me today.”
“I didn’t just help you, Daddy Darling. I saved you,” Sara reminded him with a slight roll of her eyes.
“Now, now. Let’s not blow things out of proportion,” James laughed. “Petra caught me off guard and ran a sword through my chest, and that still wasn’t enough to finish me off. Even if you hadn’t been there, she still wouldn’t have been anything that I couldn’t have handled on my own.”
Though he said this with the utmost confidence, he could still feel the dull, receding, but still all-too-present burning of the Miasmic shards. The shrapnel of Petra’s shattered blade had buried itself deep inside his chest, and it was an injury that would not let him forget that he was far from indestructible.
Category:The Vesper's Bell