The Consequences
Title: The Consequences
Author: septemberoses
Fandom: True Blood/En forelskelse crossover
Rating: PG13 for hurt/comfort, vengeful!Eric
Characters: Eric/Carsten/Godric
Word Count: 4600
Summary: The continuation of the story of Carsten's kidnapping, told from Eric's POV in this installment (which skips around in time.) This is a sequel to The Package and will make much more sense if you read that first. There is another excised snippet from this fic here in my journal.
Note: I owe special thanks to keenoled who, in addition to helping with more concrete details, entertained endless questions about broader issues and possible story directions. There will be a third part after this one.
Carsten's eyes were closed, the ghost of a smile on his face. They were in bed. Eric held him as he talked in a low, calm voice into Carsten's ear about Gunnebo Castle. "We walked through the formal garden… you'd brought a flask. You were cold but that soon warmed you up … you'd lost a glove, we went back and looked for it … the moon was up. Everything looked silver …. you were looking at the snow on the yew trees…" By then, Eric could have built his own fucking castle out of his wretched guilt. He'd had another look at the boy's Gothenburg guidebook. Carsten had marked various things with yellow highlighter; then checked the hours; and then he'd meticulously crossed out each place that appeared to be closed before dark this time of year. As if nothing was worth doing unless they could go together, even though Eric could easily have arranged for him to visit anything he'd wanted to during the day.
Eric had been in a meeting, a very important meeting - the reason he'd come to Gothenburg in the first place - when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the number - his driver. The idiot; he'd told him not to phone. Eric had already talked to Carsten earlier, who was enjoying his first-class berth on the train from Copenhagen. The train was on time, and Carsten would be at the hotel already; Eric didn't need the driver to tell him so. He sent the call to his voice mail and got back to business. It buzzed again. The driver, again. He ignored it, gritting his teeth. The third time it buzzed he nodded to the others and stepped into the hall.
"What is it?" he hissed into the phone.
"Eric - Eric, I know you told me not to call you now, but there's a problem-"
"Well, what is it?"
"I can't find him. I can't find Carsten."
"… what the fuck do you mean, you can't find him? Weren't you there waiting?"
"I was - I was early, and the train was on time, and he phoned, and he came right out - I was waiting right here in the pickup zone, I have his bag, he handed it to me - but then he said -- he said he wanted to pop back in for just a minute, he'd be right back, he didn't say why, and I didn't think - it wasn't my place to tell him he couldn't do that, he said he'd be right back-" The man was gabbling like a fool, almost stuttering in fear. It wasn't until later that Eric thought how little he must have wanted to place that call.
"He didn't come back, is that what you're saying?"
"No - I mean, yes -- he didn't come back. I waited ten, fifteen minutes, maybe, I tried phoning him several times, but he didn't answer. So I parked the car in the lot and went in - I've looked everywhere, the bathrooms, the coffee shops, all over the station … Eric, I've looked. He's not here."
"So, from the time he gave you his bag, it's been-"
"-about forty-five minutes," which was what Eric had worked out himself.
Eric thought for a moment. Carsten could have walked to the hotel by then … would he have? No, that was stupid. He didn't know the way, and even if he did he'd have told the driver, not simply left him standing there.
"All right. I'll call you back. Stay there."
He searched through his phone and dialed another number.
"Hello, sweetheart," came the eventual answer, delivered in the familiar deep, raspy growl. It was Karl, Eric's longtime henchman in the old territories - clever, reliable, loyal, and discreet. Karl mostly lived in Gothenburg, preferring its working-class charm and the freshness and infinite variety of its freewheeling university students over the residents of Stockholm. He had all sorts of useful connections here, human and vampire. He sounded like he'd been asleep, although it had been dark for some hours.
"I have a problem. Are you here in Gothenburg? I need something done. Now."
"I'm here." The voice was suddenly all business. "Go on."
"I'm going to give you a telephone number-" He recited the driver's number, knowing the vampire on the other end would remember. "Call him in … two minutes. He'll fill you in on the details. A boy's gone missing. I'm in a meeting. Call me as soon as you know anything." He hung up and called the driver immediately to put him in the picture.
"Tell him what you've told me, he'll come look for the boy. And phone the hotel; see if he's turned up there by any chance."
"Yes, Eric."
He went back into his meeting. Two hours later they'd hammered out all the important details. And nobody had called him.
The Universeum, which had evening hours, was much touted in the guidebook and on its own extensive website. "There was the rainforest - all miserably hot and humid, just the way you like it, those great, dripping trees…. you watched the marmosets playing, there's a family of them now…" Carsten smiled, his eyes open now and fixed in the middle distance. "Then we watched the sharks in the ocean zone for a long time, you were waiting for them to come and feed them… there's the room where you can touch things, the coral, the rays…. you wanted to touch the rays, they're shy, you put your hand in the tank…"
Carsten's bag was there when Eric finally got back to the hotel room. He unzipped it and dug through the contents, and then upended it on the bed, spilling everything out, looking for clues, anything of interest. It was the usual jumble - clothes, running shoes, a couple of paperbacks, binoculars, a textbook, a bag of his favorite candy, another small bag with his toothbrush and toiletries … no iPhone, no camera - he must have his rucksack with him. Eric leafed through the books, then picked up a sweater. It was turned partly inside out, previously worn - it smelled of Carsten, his skin, his hair … Eric closed his eyes and pressed it to his face, breathing in Carsten's scent.
Karl had heard the story from the driver, such as it was, and gotten busy with whatever he thought would be most productive. He called Eric shortly before dawn. He'd had a look at the security tapes in the rail station.
"Their security's for shit," he grumbled. "You could run a horse through parts of that place and never see it on camera." He'd watched Carsten on the tape as he headed out of the building, then back into the building, then out of camera range, before vanishing from the face of the earth - he was nowhere else, on any tape. But Karl had seen something else, a tantalizing clue. There'd been two vampires there, "low sort," he said, pickpockets, working the crowds. Humans wouldn't notice the difference, in the station or on the tape, but a vampire could; minute variables in movement and speed and gesture. The camera resolution was poor. He couldn't see their faces the way he'd have liked, but he thought he could find out who they were. More relevant was the fact that, while they'd been there for almost an hour before Carsten arrived, they'd vanished from the tapes at roughly the same time he did.
"On Wednesday we went to the City Museum, they're open late then. You wanted to see the viking ship they have on display, and the building's interesting, it's the old warehouse of the Swedish East India Company… you asked me about the inscriptions, and how they sailed, you were comparing it to the ones you'd seen at Roskilde…"
Early the next night Karl arrived at the hotel with Carsten's rucksack, which had been under a table next to a coffee kiosk in the station. Some well-meaning soul had apparently spotted it and turned it into the lost and found. His wallet wasn't in there - it was in his pocket, most likely - but it didn't appear anything had been stolen. His iPhone was there, along with a long-sleeved shirt, a paperback, his allergy medicine, tissues, a few other things, and his small iPod, which he liked better for listening to music when he ran. Eric plugged the phone into his charger and checked it immediately; he knew the password, which had his own name in it, and Carsten hadn't changed it. He spent most of an hour looking for clues in the various messages on the phone, and in the contents of the rucksack itself, but there were none.
After a few days the boy's mother called, irritated, wanting to know why they'd not heard from him. Eric listened to the voice message a few times and sent a carefully crafted SMS from Carsten's phone in reply, in the middle of the night, cheerful and apologetic - he'd been busy having a dandy time on his vacation and would check in with them later, etc. At that point Eric was desperate not to involve the human authorities, who might spook the vampires into doing something sensible - like get rid of their captive. Which allegedly they had not done.
What did the vampires want with Carsten? He still had no idea. The most obvious choice would have been ransom. It had been some time since anyone had been stupid enough to try to shake Eric down directly. But with that lot, anything might be possible - they'd been foolhardy enough to take him in the first place, after all. And yet no demand had been forthcoming. Eric was chasing rumors all over Sweden. They knew he was on the hunt for them, and their own masters were looking as well. If … if Carsten was still alive, they would have to weigh the odds and decide whether it might be wiser after all just to give him back in hopes of avoiding worse fates. If the rumors were true. If the boy wasn't dead already.
He hoped with all the hope left him, in spite of the odds. He'd known it from the beginning, that there were risks. The boy was mortal. He might be mowed down by a bus in Copenhagen at any time, after all, or die in a car accident, and there was nothing Eric could have done about it except grieve quietly. But he couldn't help but feel at fault here. He could have gone to Copenhagen instead as they'd originally discussed. He could have changed the meeting time, changed the ticket, gone to the station himself. He'd marked the boy, hoping to protect him. If they'd taken Carsten in spite of that, or because of that, whatever their reasons, then they were worse than fools, but it was still his fault.
"That feels nice." Carsten was smiling at him. He was stroking the boy between his legs, gently, slowly. It felt so wrong, doing this, like this - but all of it was flowing like a stream into Carsten's memories of the week. It would seem strange if they'd not made love.
There were half-eaten plates of food strewn all about their room at the Elite, adding to the general mess - he'd not let housekeeping in once since he'd brought Carsten back. They were no doubt displeased, but for what he was paying they'd put up with it. He'd shove a trolley or two back out in the hall later. He'd been trying to stuff the boy as much as he could, he looked underfed, which he was, for reasons that made Eric both furious and deeply sad each time he thought of them, so he tried not to. It interfered with what he was doing.
He'd never glamoured anyone like this. He'd taken away memories before, of course, many times - of an hour, or a few hours, a strange blank space on the tape of human memory that mostly he didn't concern himself with. But this was almost a week - six days - and he'd never attempted to remove something so extensive - so awful - and replace it with something else.
Carsten pushed up against his hand. He wanted this. He was enjoying it. And it was wrong. Carsten's eyes were glassy, his gaze soft - Eric had kept him in this state for more than a day now, working on the lie. Each piece he added, each false memory he implanted, made him feel more guilty. If Carsten found out - if he realized what Eric had done, regardless of why, Carsten would never forgive him. Eric knew that. But he couldn't see any other way.
The drive back to the hotel had been horrendous. Carsten stared out the window at the darkness, quiet as a stone, bathed and dressed in his own clothes which Eric had brought along. He wouldn't eat, just shook his head whenever Eric brought it up. He'd said almost nothing. He kept his head down. Eric knew what that meant; once humans had been sufficiently terrorized they never looked you in the eye again if they could avoid it. He'd stopped crying, but he was in some sort of shock. Eric, still grieving, had begun to grasp how terribly the boy had been wounded in his mind. He could never send him home like this, with what had happened eating at him night and day.
They'd arrived at the hotel and promptly gone to bed. The boy woke up once, weeping, but had gone back to sleep in Eric's arms. When they awoke again, it was nighttime, and Eric had made up his mind what needed to be done. And how he would do it.
"Do you love me?" A question asked innocently, the way a child would ask.
"Very much so," he answered. He kissed Carsten on the forehead. That was the other thing about glamouring - it took away the inhibitions while you were doing it. Carsten, in that state, became even more tender and boyish, as if whatever ideas he had in his head about what constituted suitably masculine behavior were gone. He'd always been an odd mix of young and old. He could be very silly, playful - young even for his age. He could also be thoughtful and quiet, behavior that might register between shy and standoffish among his friends but that Eric found strikingly mature in so young a human. Carsten could be silly, but he was never foolish, and he sometimes had a hardnosed, unsentimental outlook that startled Eric.
But not now. He'd closed his eyes, his head pressed back into the pillow. Along with the rest of the week's revelations had come Eric's own discovery, now obvious not just to Godric but to the others: how truly, desperately and deeply he loved the boy, against all reason. Delivered at the same time he was faced with his terrible choice, it felt like a stake through his heart.
Eric picked up the phone from the bedside table and glanced at it as it vibrated, the familiar number on the display. The boy was sleeping, sated now, and Eric didn't want to wake him. He stepped into the bathroom, shut the door, and answered it. There could be only one reason for the call, which came sooner than he expected.
"Greetings, brother." Karl sounded cheerful. He'd been working on the identities of the Gothenburg gang while sneering at their bosses' incompetence. They couldn't find their own cocks with their right hands, he'd said. He was stooped and scarred and mean as a snake, and Eric could have kissed him for all he'd done, although Eric hadn't. Instead he'd given him quite a lot of money, for services rendered and those still to come. Like the one Karl was performing now.
"I have -- sorry, bit of noise, let me step away -- I have three of those things you've been looking for," Karl said into the phone. Eric could hear a hoarse scream in the background, suddenly cut off. "There's been a struggle with the mathematics," the gruff voice continued. "I think we're talking thirteen, fourteen or thereabouts. We'll know soon enough …." There was a pause. "A couple of the others, they're part of that sorry lot, but I'm not sure how much they were really involved."
There was a clock striking somewhere near the hotel. Eric said nothing.
"Understood," came the reply. "Also, the item. I haven't come up with that yet. Lots of long faces and blank looks … they said they'd tossed his things in a bin. They're not recalling the item."
It must be a church. Eric hadn't listened carefully.
"They're lying," he said decisively. "I know he was wearing it. They might have thrown the rest away, but they'd have kept that, or sold it. They'd have known it was worth something." He felt the rage flash through him. He'd get that amulet back if he had to come over there with the bolt cutters himself. "I want it," he said, his voice soft. "I want it for the boy, he's missing it."
"Right you are, then. I'm sure one of them'll recollect after a bit more chatting. I'll get back to you." The line went dead.
It was finished. Eric was restless, unable to sleep himself, although he needed to, he was exhausted and distracted. He would let the boy sleep. Tomorrow Carsten would be going home. How it would all play out, Eric hadn't the first clue. Instead he let his mind wander again to the place it kept returning to, over and over.
He couldn't say that what they'd done to Carsten was a shock. There'd been no ransom demand; they weren't planning to give him back. There were rumors that the gang had snatched other humans in the past, although nobody could say for certain, or why. Then Godric had returned from his meeting with the go-between with the news that Carsten was alive and would be returned shortly; and they were being offered an enormous cash incentive by Gothenburg to overlook the offense. Godric had been quietly matter-of-fact about what offense might require such a bribe, since the boy wasn't dead. That he was injured was a given; that he was alive at all, miraculous. Eric should bear that in mind during the nights ahead. Maybe they'd been feeding off him, possibly even drugging him beforehand. Eric knew the chances that they'd done those things - if they'd done those things -- and not raped him were essentially nil. He'd kept Godric's admonitions firmly in his head on the night he'd gone to retrieve Carsten. That he was angry would be natural, even expected; but he could not be seen as having lost command over himself. He was to control his temper. He was to collect the boy, heal him, and leave as quickly as possible. Other things would be dealt with later.
But he'd not been prepared for the horror, and his own shock. They had used Carsten in various ways. There were places his skin had reddened, become raw. They had kept him for days, yet given him no way to tidy himself; he was filthy, he'd smelled appalling. Normal vampires had an acute sense of smell. Eric couldn't have touched him like that, and he was hardly finicky. Did those vermin actually prefer their humans soiled? Or were they immune to it?
Eric could not forget. The nape of Carsten's neck, so soft and warm, where the wounds had been. Eric's lips pressed to his biceps - the bruises. So many bruises, some small like fingerprints, some larger. Perhaps he'd struggled, as absurd as it seemed. His torso - the moles, the larger one near his nipple, the smaller one further down and on the opposite side. Eric had kissed his way down Carsten's chest earlier, down his stomach. And at each place, for each kiss, Eric had remembered some now-vanished mark on the spot he was kissing. His back, his legs, his thighs; the tender, pale skin on the insides of his arms, even the soles of his feet; other, more private places. Puncture marks and tooth marks and bruises and scrapes, a blackened bruise in the perfect imprint of a hand on his backside (who would hit the boy like that? why?), and those were just the marks. That wasn't the rest of it.
He couldn't stop thinking about the boy's hysterics, the state he'd been in, the marks … the way he'd cried about the amulet. The way he kept saying, through his sobs, I was waiting, I kept waiting for you to come, I didn't know where you were, I was waiting...
He hadn't been able to escort Carsten back to Copenhagen after all - the boy's mother had absolutely insisted that he change his ticket and take an earlier train, an afternoon train, since he had school tomorrow, and Eric could tell she was already annoyed. He'd done his best to keep up appearances via SMS, but the woman was no fool. She knew something was up.
Carsten had told his parents the usual falsehoods before he left - he was visiting Gothenburg with (unspecified) friends for his winter break. He'd been sneaking off like this for months, he wasn't concerned; but Eric had his own private thoughts on the matter. Carsten was intelligent but not an adept liar - he tended to lie by omission rather than outright whenever possible, then move on quickly to other topics. Eric, with his vampire hearing, having listened to both sides of past telephone conversations, and having formed a basic impression of the mother, with whom Carsten was close, was pretty sure she knew she was being bullshitted.
Why she hadn't confronted Carsten, Eric could only guess. He was a good boy and a very good student, and perhaps she'd decided it wasn't worth rocking the boat over. Or maybe she had an inkling, not about Eric, but why her son might be skulking off periodically on overnights and holidays. The boy had messed about in the past with girls; sexuality was fluid, but Carsten was clearly interested in men. Eric had no expectations whatsoever about Carsten's monogamy (the lad was seventeen, after all) and had told him so. But he thought it not impossible that Carsten had chosen to keep to himself except for Eric. If Carsten's mother had noted this new void in Carsten's life - and she would - she'd draw her own conclusions. Carsten felt such things were none of his parents' business; Eric wondered if Carsten would be so coy if it was another human boy he'd been shagging. Doubtful. It was only a matter of time before the boy's mother got fed up and asked him directly. Eric hoped it wouldn't be after this particular trip. Carsten was very fragile at the moment, underneath the glamouring, and Eric knew it.
But that, and the rest of it, he couldn't control, so he'd pushed it to the back of his mind, sending Carsten along under the discreet care of two reliable humans. He wondered - he hadn't had his night report yet - how things there in Copenhagen appeared to be going.
He'd been juggling things, many things, different things, the entire wretched week. He was good at playing the angles, dealing with complexities, anticipating problems. He'd managed to keep the ball moving forward on his fucking business deal, which he knew very well he couldn't walk away from, not even in the middle of that shitstorm. That the others thought he was daft regarding his lost boy he took for granted; but to turn his back on such a deal as they had would have shown weakness. And showing weakness of any sort was dangerous and not an option. Let them think he was daft, as long as he came through reliably. He was doing everything he could - he'd done everything he could - and while it was hardly perfect in some respects it would have to do for the time being. He'd deal with the loose ends later as they cropped up. Right now, he had a little free time on his hands, and he was making use of it.
They were lined up in a ragged row, the whole pathetic lot of them. Eric was standing behind them, sorting them, some to the left of the room and some to the right.
He moved quite close to the vampire in front of him, his nose almost touching the greasy hairs on the back of the other's neck. Worm. Little fucking insect. He waited there, savoring the moment, knowing how the vampire hated having Eric behind him like that, an inch from his dirty gray skin. Would he flinch? No. Eric breathed in again, slowly, smelling his vampire stink, thinking. Recalling.
"Get over there," he said, tilting his head slightly to the right where Karl was standing, impassive. The vampires on the right would be Karl's to deal with. The ones on the left were his. The two vermin who'd grabbed Carsten from the railway station were over there on the left already, along with the one with the missing fingertip. The vampire with the missing fingertip had loomed large in Carsten's anguished memories of the week, odious even among the other horrors. Eric had quite specific plans for him.
Carsten had told him much of what happened, although he was so upset at the time Eric doubted he'd remember doing so even if Eric hadn't glamoured him. It had poured out in random, hideous detail that first night. He hadn't been bathed until Eric did it. Each of the vampires had his own smell, and Eric knew what smells, and whose, were on the boy. Some of these creatures hadn't touched him at all - not from any kindness on their part, to be sure. Perhaps they didn't care for boys. Perhaps they'd been too disgusted. Or maybe they hadn't been by the warehouse that week. It didn't matter now, and Eric didn't ask.
He walked around in front of them slowly.
"Which one of you is Nils?" he asked.
A boy stepped forward - he'd been a boy, that is, when he'd been made. Twenty, if that. He was thin as a hay-rake. Carsten only knew a couple of their names, and Nils was one of them. He'd brought Carsten bottled water and sandwiches most nights, and let him out to use the toilet, before he raped him. Eric had seen the grim little room. The mattress. The dim fluorescent light high up that never went out. The rest of it.
"I'm Nils," the creature said. His eyes were vacant; he looked soft in the head. Did he even understand why he was here? Eric studied him, weighing his choices. If it weren't for this one feeding him occasionally, Carsten would most likely be dead.
"Over there," he said, nodding in Karl's general direction. Nils shuffled over.
Eric walked behind them again. He was in no particular hurry.
"Does this mean … you think he's going to let us go, then?" he heard Nils whisper to the one next to him, as if everyone in the room couldn't hear.
That vampire barked a short, unpleasant laugh.
"Christ, you really are retarded, aren't you?"
Author: septemberoses
Fandom: True Blood/En forelskelse crossover
Rating: PG13 for hurt/comfort, vengeful!Eric
Characters: Eric/Carsten/Godric
Word Count: 4600
Summary: The continuation of the story of Carsten's kidnapping, told from Eric's POV in this installment (which skips around in time.) This is a sequel to The Package and will make much more sense if you read that first. There is another excised snippet from this fic here in my journal.
Note: I owe special thanks to keenoled who, in addition to helping with more concrete details, entertained endless questions about broader issues and possible story directions. There will be a third part after this one.
Carsten's eyes were closed, the ghost of a smile on his face. They were in bed. Eric held him as he talked in a low, calm voice into Carsten's ear about Gunnebo Castle. "We walked through the formal garden… you'd brought a flask. You were cold but that soon warmed you up … you'd lost a glove, we went back and looked for it … the moon was up. Everything looked silver …. you were looking at the snow on the yew trees…" By then, Eric could have built his own fucking castle out of his wretched guilt. He'd had another look at the boy's Gothenburg guidebook. Carsten had marked various things with yellow highlighter; then checked the hours; and then he'd meticulously crossed out each place that appeared to be closed before dark this time of year. As if nothing was worth doing unless they could go together, even though Eric could easily have arranged for him to visit anything he'd wanted to during the day.
Eric had been in a meeting, a very important meeting - the reason he'd come to Gothenburg in the first place - when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the number - his driver. The idiot; he'd told him not to phone. Eric had already talked to Carsten earlier, who was enjoying his first-class berth on the train from Copenhagen. The train was on time, and Carsten would be at the hotel already; Eric didn't need the driver to tell him so. He sent the call to his voice mail and got back to business. It buzzed again. The driver, again. He ignored it, gritting his teeth. The third time it buzzed he nodded to the others and stepped into the hall.
"What is it?" he hissed into the phone.
"Eric - Eric, I know you told me not to call you now, but there's a problem-"
"Well, what is it?"
"I can't find him. I can't find Carsten."
"… what the fuck do you mean, you can't find him? Weren't you there waiting?"
"I was - I was early, and the train was on time, and he phoned, and he came right out - I was waiting right here in the pickup zone, I have his bag, he handed it to me - but then he said -- he said he wanted to pop back in for just a minute, he'd be right back, he didn't say why, and I didn't think - it wasn't my place to tell him he couldn't do that, he said he'd be right back-" The man was gabbling like a fool, almost stuttering in fear. It wasn't until later that Eric thought how little he must have wanted to place that call.
"He didn't come back, is that what you're saying?"
"No - I mean, yes -- he didn't come back. I waited ten, fifteen minutes, maybe, I tried phoning him several times, but he didn't answer. So I parked the car in the lot and went in - I've looked everywhere, the bathrooms, the coffee shops, all over the station … Eric, I've looked. He's not here."
"So, from the time he gave you his bag, it's been-"
"-about forty-five minutes," which was what Eric had worked out himself.
Eric thought for a moment. Carsten could have walked to the hotel by then … would he have? No, that was stupid. He didn't know the way, and even if he did he'd have told the driver, not simply left him standing there.
"All right. I'll call you back. Stay there."
He searched through his phone and dialed another number.
"Hello, sweetheart," came the eventual answer, delivered in the familiar deep, raspy growl. It was Karl, Eric's longtime henchman in the old territories - clever, reliable, loyal, and discreet. Karl mostly lived in Gothenburg, preferring its working-class charm and the freshness and infinite variety of its freewheeling university students over the residents of Stockholm. He had all sorts of useful connections here, human and vampire. He sounded like he'd been asleep, although it had been dark for some hours.
"I have a problem. Are you here in Gothenburg? I need something done. Now."
"I'm here." The voice was suddenly all business. "Go on."
"I'm going to give you a telephone number-" He recited the driver's number, knowing the vampire on the other end would remember. "Call him in … two minutes. He'll fill you in on the details. A boy's gone missing. I'm in a meeting. Call me as soon as you know anything." He hung up and called the driver immediately to put him in the picture.
"Tell him what you've told me, he'll come look for the boy. And phone the hotel; see if he's turned up there by any chance."
"Yes, Eric."
He went back into his meeting. Two hours later they'd hammered out all the important details. And nobody had called him.
The Universeum, which had evening hours, was much touted in the guidebook and on its own extensive website. "There was the rainforest - all miserably hot and humid, just the way you like it, those great, dripping trees…. you watched the marmosets playing, there's a family of them now…" Carsten smiled, his eyes open now and fixed in the middle distance. "Then we watched the sharks in the ocean zone for a long time, you were waiting for them to come and feed them… there's the room where you can touch things, the coral, the rays…. you wanted to touch the rays, they're shy, you put your hand in the tank…"
Carsten's bag was there when Eric finally got back to the hotel room. He unzipped it and dug through the contents, and then upended it on the bed, spilling everything out, looking for clues, anything of interest. It was the usual jumble - clothes, running shoes, a couple of paperbacks, binoculars, a textbook, a bag of his favorite candy, another small bag with his toothbrush and toiletries … no iPhone, no camera - he must have his rucksack with him. Eric leafed through the books, then picked up a sweater. It was turned partly inside out, previously worn - it smelled of Carsten, his skin, his hair … Eric closed his eyes and pressed it to his face, breathing in Carsten's scent.
Karl had heard the story from the driver, such as it was, and gotten busy with whatever he thought would be most productive. He called Eric shortly before dawn. He'd had a look at the security tapes in the rail station.
"Their security's for shit," he grumbled. "You could run a horse through parts of that place and never see it on camera." He'd watched Carsten on the tape as he headed out of the building, then back into the building, then out of camera range, before vanishing from the face of the earth - he was nowhere else, on any tape. But Karl had seen something else, a tantalizing clue. There'd been two vampires there, "low sort," he said, pickpockets, working the crowds. Humans wouldn't notice the difference, in the station or on the tape, but a vampire could; minute variables in movement and speed and gesture. The camera resolution was poor. He couldn't see their faces the way he'd have liked, but he thought he could find out who they were. More relevant was the fact that, while they'd been there for almost an hour before Carsten arrived, they'd vanished from the tapes at roughly the same time he did.
"On Wednesday we went to the City Museum, they're open late then. You wanted to see the viking ship they have on display, and the building's interesting, it's the old warehouse of the Swedish East India Company… you asked me about the inscriptions, and how they sailed, you were comparing it to the ones you'd seen at Roskilde…"
Early the next night Karl arrived at the hotel with Carsten's rucksack, which had been under a table next to a coffee kiosk in the station. Some well-meaning soul had apparently spotted it and turned it into the lost and found. His wallet wasn't in there - it was in his pocket, most likely - but it didn't appear anything had been stolen. His iPhone was there, along with a long-sleeved shirt, a paperback, his allergy medicine, tissues, a few other things, and his small iPod, which he liked better for listening to music when he ran. Eric plugged the phone into his charger and checked it immediately; he knew the password, which had his own name in it, and Carsten hadn't changed it. He spent most of an hour looking for clues in the various messages on the phone, and in the contents of the rucksack itself, but there were none.
After a few days the boy's mother called, irritated, wanting to know why they'd not heard from him. Eric listened to the voice message a few times and sent a carefully crafted SMS from Carsten's phone in reply, in the middle of the night, cheerful and apologetic - he'd been busy having a dandy time on his vacation and would check in with them later, etc. At that point Eric was desperate not to involve the human authorities, who might spook the vampires into doing something sensible - like get rid of their captive. Which allegedly they had not done.
What did the vampires want with Carsten? He still had no idea. The most obvious choice would have been ransom. It had been some time since anyone had been stupid enough to try to shake Eric down directly. But with that lot, anything might be possible - they'd been foolhardy enough to take him in the first place, after all. And yet no demand had been forthcoming. Eric was chasing rumors all over Sweden. They knew he was on the hunt for them, and their own masters were looking as well. If … if Carsten was still alive, they would have to weigh the odds and decide whether it might be wiser after all just to give him back in hopes of avoiding worse fates. If the rumors were true. If the boy wasn't dead already.
He hoped with all the hope left him, in spite of the odds. He'd known it from the beginning, that there were risks. The boy was mortal. He might be mowed down by a bus in Copenhagen at any time, after all, or die in a car accident, and there was nothing Eric could have done about it except grieve quietly. But he couldn't help but feel at fault here. He could have gone to Copenhagen instead as they'd originally discussed. He could have changed the meeting time, changed the ticket, gone to the station himself. He'd marked the boy, hoping to protect him. If they'd taken Carsten in spite of that, or because of that, whatever their reasons, then they were worse than fools, but it was still his fault.
"That feels nice." Carsten was smiling at him. He was stroking the boy between his legs, gently, slowly. It felt so wrong, doing this, like this - but all of it was flowing like a stream into Carsten's memories of the week. It would seem strange if they'd not made love.
There were half-eaten plates of food strewn all about their room at the Elite, adding to the general mess - he'd not let housekeeping in once since he'd brought Carsten back. They were no doubt displeased, but for what he was paying they'd put up with it. He'd shove a trolley or two back out in the hall later. He'd been trying to stuff the boy as much as he could, he looked underfed, which he was, for reasons that made Eric both furious and deeply sad each time he thought of them, so he tried not to. It interfered with what he was doing.
He'd never glamoured anyone like this. He'd taken away memories before, of course, many times - of an hour, or a few hours, a strange blank space on the tape of human memory that mostly he didn't concern himself with. But this was almost a week - six days - and he'd never attempted to remove something so extensive - so awful - and replace it with something else.
Carsten pushed up against his hand. He wanted this. He was enjoying it. And it was wrong. Carsten's eyes were glassy, his gaze soft - Eric had kept him in this state for more than a day now, working on the lie. Each piece he added, each false memory he implanted, made him feel more guilty. If Carsten found out - if he realized what Eric had done, regardless of why, Carsten would never forgive him. Eric knew that. But he couldn't see any other way.
The drive back to the hotel had been horrendous. Carsten stared out the window at the darkness, quiet as a stone, bathed and dressed in his own clothes which Eric had brought along. He wouldn't eat, just shook his head whenever Eric brought it up. He'd said almost nothing. He kept his head down. Eric knew what that meant; once humans had been sufficiently terrorized they never looked you in the eye again if they could avoid it. He'd stopped crying, but he was in some sort of shock. Eric, still grieving, had begun to grasp how terribly the boy had been wounded in his mind. He could never send him home like this, with what had happened eating at him night and day.
They'd arrived at the hotel and promptly gone to bed. The boy woke up once, weeping, but had gone back to sleep in Eric's arms. When they awoke again, it was nighttime, and Eric had made up his mind what needed to be done. And how he would do it.
"Do you love me?" A question asked innocently, the way a child would ask.
"Very much so," he answered. He kissed Carsten on the forehead. That was the other thing about glamouring - it took away the inhibitions while you were doing it. Carsten, in that state, became even more tender and boyish, as if whatever ideas he had in his head about what constituted suitably masculine behavior were gone. He'd always been an odd mix of young and old. He could be very silly, playful - young even for his age. He could also be thoughtful and quiet, behavior that might register between shy and standoffish among his friends but that Eric found strikingly mature in so young a human. Carsten could be silly, but he was never foolish, and he sometimes had a hardnosed, unsentimental outlook that startled Eric.
But not now. He'd closed his eyes, his head pressed back into the pillow. Along with the rest of the week's revelations had come Eric's own discovery, now obvious not just to Godric but to the others: how truly, desperately and deeply he loved the boy, against all reason. Delivered at the same time he was faced with his terrible choice, it felt like a stake through his heart.
Eric picked up the phone from the bedside table and glanced at it as it vibrated, the familiar number on the display. The boy was sleeping, sated now, and Eric didn't want to wake him. He stepped into the bathroom, shut the door, and answered it. There could be only one reason for the call, which came sooner than he expected.
"Greetings, brother." Karl sounded cheerful. He'd been working on the identities of the Gothenburg gang while sneering at their bosses' incompetence. They couldn't find their own cocks with their right hands, he'd said. He was stooped and scarred and mean as a snake, and Eric could have kissed him for all he'd done, although Eric hadn't. Instead he'd given him quite a lot of money, for services rendered and those still to come. Like the one Karl was performing now.
"I have -- sorry, bit of noise, let me step away -- I have three of those things you've been looking for," Karl said into the phone. Eric could hear a hoarse scream in the background, suddenly cut off. "There's been a struggle with the mathematics," the gruff voice continued. "I think we're talking thirteen, fourteen or thereabouts. We'll know soon enough …." There was a pause. "A couple of the others, they're part of that sorry lot, but I'm not sure how much they were really involved."
There was a clock striking somewhere near the hotel. Eric said nothing.
"Understood," came the reply. "Also, the item. I haven't come up with that yet. Lots of long faces and blank looks … they said they'd tossed his things in a bin. They're not recalling the item."
It must be a church. Eric hadn't listened carefully.
"They're lying," he said decisively. "I know he was wearing it. They might have thrown the rest away, but they'd have kept that, or sold it. They'd have known it was worth something." He felt the rage flash through him. He'd get that amulet back if he had to come over there with the bolt cutters himself. "I want it," he said, his voice soft. "I want it for the boy, he's missing it."
"Right you are, then. I'm sure one of them'll recollect after a bit more chatting. I'll get back to you." The line went dead.
It was finished. Eric was restless, unable to sleep himself, although he needed to, he was exhausted and distracted. He would let the boy sleep. Tomorrow Carsten would be going home. How it would all play out, Eric hadn't the first clue. Instead he let his mind wander again to the place it kept returning to, over and over.
He couldn't say that what they'd done to Carsten was a shock. There'd been no ransom demand; they weren't planning to give him back. There were rumors that the gang had snatched other humans in the past, although nobody could say for certain, or why. Then Godric had returned from his meeting with the go-between with the news that Carsten was alive and would be returned shortly; and they were being offered an enormous cash incentive by Gothenburg to overlook the offense. Godric had been quietly matter-of-fact about what offense might require such a bribe, since the boy wasn't dead. That he was injured was a given; that he was alive at all, miraculous. Eric should bear that in mind during the nights ahead. Maybe they'd been feeding off him, possibly even drugging him beforehand. Eric knew the chances that they'd done those things - if they'd done those things -- and not raped him were essentially nil. He'd kept Godric's admonitions firmly in his head on the night he'd gone to retrieve Carsten. That he was angry would be natural, even expected; but he could not be seen as having lost command over himself. He was to control his temper. He was to collect the boy, heal him, and leave as quickly as possible. Other things would be dealt with later.
But he'd not been prepared for the horror, and his own shock. They had used Carsten in various ways. There were places his skin had reddened, become raw. They had kept him for days, yet given him no way to tidy himself; he was filthy, he'd smelled appalling. Normal vampires had an acute sense of smell. Eric couldn't have touched him like that, and he was hardly finicky. Did those vermin actually prefer their humans soiled? Or were they immune to it?
Eric could not forget. The nape of Carsten's neck, so soft and warm, where the wounds had been. Eric's lips pressed to his biceps - the bruises. So many bruises, some small like fingerprints, some larger. Perhaps he'd struggled, as absurd as it seemed. His torso - the moles, the larger one near his nipple, the smaller one further down and on the opposite side. Eric had kissed his way down Carsten's chest earlier, down his stomach. And at each place, for each kiss, Eric had remembered some now-vanished mark on the spot he was kissing. His back, his legs, his thighs; the tender, pale skin on the insides of his arms, even the soles of his feet; other, more private places. Puncture marks and tooth marks and bruises and scrapes, a blackened bruise in the perfect imprint of a hand on his backside (who would hit the boy like that? why?), and those were just the marks. That wasn't the rest of it.
He couldn't stop thinking about the boy's hysterics, the state he'd been in, the marks … the way he'd cried about the amulet. The way he kept saying, through his sobs, I was waiting, I kept waiting for you to come, I didn't know where you were, I was waiting...
He hadn't been able to escort Carsten back to Copenhagen after all - the boy's mother had absolutely insisted that he change his ticket and take an earlier train, an afternoon train, since he had school tomorrow, and Eric could tell she was already annoyed. He'd done his best to keep up appearances via SMS, but the woman was no fool. She knew something was up.
Carsten had told his parents the usual falsehoods before he left - he was visiting Gothenburg with (unspecified) friends for his winter break. He'd been sneaking off like this for months, he wasn't concerned; but Eric had his own private thoughts on the matter. Carsten was intelligent but not an adept liar - he tended to lie by omission rather than outright whenever possible, then move on quickly to other topics. Eric, with his vampire hearing, having listened to both sides of past telephone conversations, and having formed a basic impression of the mother, with whom Carsten was close, was pretty sure she knew she was being bullshitted.
Why she hadn't confronted Carsten, Eric could only guess. He was a good boy and a very good student, and perhaps she'd decided it wasn't worth rocking the boat over. Or maybe she had an inkling, not about Eric, but why her son might be skulking off periodically on overnights and holidays. The boy had messed about in the past with girls; sexuality was fluid, but Carsten was clearly interested in men. Eric had no expectations whatsoever about Carsten's monogamy (the lad was seventeen, after all) and had told him so. But he thought it not impossible that Carsten had chosen to keep to himself except for Eric. If Carsten's mother had noted this new void in Carsten's life - and she would - she'd draw her own conclusions. Carsten felt such things were none of his parents' business; Eric wondered if Carsten would be so coy if it was another human boy he'd been shagging. Doubtful. It was only a matter of time before the boy's mother got fed up and asked him directly. Eric hoped it wouldn't be after this particular trip. Carsten was very fragile at the moment, underneath the glamouring, and Eric knew it.
But that, and the rest of it, he couldn't control, so he'd pushed it to the back of his mind, sending Carsten along under the discreet care of two reliable humans. He wondered - he hadn't had his night report yet - how things there in Copenhagen appeared to be going.
He'd been juggling things, many things, different things, the entire wretched week. He was good at playing the angles, dealing with complexities, anticipating problems. He'd managed to keep the ball moving forward on his fucking business deal, which he knew very well he couldn't walk away from, not even in the middle of that shitstorm. That the others thought he was daft regarding his lost boy he took for granted; but to turn his back on such a deal as they had would have shown weakness. And showing weakness of any sort was dangerous and not an option. Let them think he was daft, as long as he came through reliably. He was doing everything he could - he'd done everything he could - and while it was hardly perfect in some respects it would have to do for the time being. He'd deal with the loose ends later as they cropped up. Right now, he had a little free time on his hands, and he was making use of it.
They were lined up in a ragged row, the whole pathetic lot of them. Eric was standing behind them, sorting them, some to the left of the room and some to the right.
He moved quite close to the vampire in front of him, his nose almost touching the greasy hairs on the back of the other's neck. Worm. Little fucking insect. He waited there, savoring the moment, knowing how the vampire hated having Eric behind him like that, an inch from his dirty gray skin. Would he flinch? No. Eric breathed in again, slowly, smelling his vampire stink, thinking. Recalling.
"Get over there," he said, tilting his head slightly to the right where Karl was standing, impassive. The vampires on the right would be Karl's to deal with. The ones on the left were his. The two vermin who'd grabbed Carsten from the railway station were over there on the left already, along with the one with the missing fingertip. The vampire with the missing fingertip had loomed large in Carsten's anguished memories of the week, odious even among the other horrors. Eric had quite specific plans for him.
Carsten had told him much of what happened, although he was so upset at the time Eric doubted he'd remember doing so even if Eric hadn't glamoured him. It had poured out in random, hideous detail that first night. He hadn't been bathed until Eric did it. Each of the vampires had his own smell, and Eric knew what smells, and whose, were on the boy. Some of these creatures hadn't touched him at all - not from any kindness on their part, to be sure. Perhaps they didn't care for boys. Perhaps they'd been too disgusted. Or maybe they hadn't been by the warehouse that week. It didn't matter now, and Eric didn't ask.
He walked around in front of them slowly.
"Which one of you is Nils?" he asked.
A boy stepped forward - he'd been a boy, that is, when he'd been made. Twenty, if that. He was thin as a hay-rake. Carsten only knew a couple of their names, and Nils was one of them. He'd brought Carsten bottled water and sandwiches most nights, and let him out to use the toilet, before he raped him. Eric had seen the grim little room. The mattress. The dim fluorescent light high up that never went out. The rest of it.
"I'm Nils," the creature said. His eyes were vacant; he looked soft in the head. Did he even understand why he was here? Eric studied him, weighing his choices. If it weren't for this one feeding him occasionally, Carsten would most likely be dead.
"Over there," he said, nodding in Karl's general direction. Nils shuffled over.
Eric walked behind them again. He was in no particular hurry.
"Does this mean … you think he's going to let us go, then?" he heard Nils whisper to the one next to him, as if everyone in the room couldn't hear.
That vampire barked a short, unpleasant laugh.
"Christ, you really are retarded, aren't you?"