The Broken, Ruined Boy
Contains references to the naked female form as well as brutal descriptions of bodily violence and trauma.
Darragh's hands trembled as he entered the France house, the one that they had lived in for eighty years now. Despite not living it, he could remember the night that they had left London. He could remember the blood of the brothel workers on his skin and down his throat. The rich, earthy taste of the blood of the Coranus hunter as he and Malloy indulged in draining him.
He remembered being so gloriously giddy that night when they returned home and then the crushing disappointment of Mother. Ebio. Gods, Ebio.
Once upon a time he had had a mother and Ebio was not his mother. She had stolen him like a thief in the night from his life and had let him...she had let him become a monster. Allowed his not-brother (yet his brother still because Daman was long dead) to steer him towards greater and great bloodshed until Gnaea came. Gnaea who had told him the truth. Who he could look back now and see that she had been guiding him like how one trained a hound but he couldn't blame her.
She had been right. He had been no better than an animal.
That...beast...was still inside of him. It's heart beating in time with his own. He could still feel it inside of him like a festering wound leaking pus and ooze into what shreds were left of his soul. If he even still had one now.
His hands closed into fists and Darragh lifted his chin to shout his sire's name through the house as the door clicked shut behind him. It rattled, echoing through the halls, and she would surely know by the use of the name alone that he was...different.
Before the girl in the street, she had been Mother.
Now the title tasted like ashes on his tongue.
She appeared above him on the balcony of the upper floor stairs, her brow furrowed slightly as she looked down at him. "My son?" she murmured, obviously confused.
His lip curled into a sneer and Darragh spat, "You aren't my mother."
And Ebio instantly knew. Her shoulders slumped and there was a look of...acceptance...on her features. As if she knew this day would eventually come, when he would remember who he had been before and rage at her. Part of him hated her for knowing and for letting it happen.
She had claimed to love him and she had let him become this?
Ebio looked down at him and sighed, before asking, "Why have you come back home, Darragh? Is it for love? Affection? Or do you wish to see my blood stain the boards of this floor?"
Glaring back at her, he snarled, "You've always claimed to know my mind oh so well. You tell me what I've come back for."
"My blood on the floor. Of course."
"More than that!" Darragh shouted, even as Malloy and Xiang appeared in a downstairs doorway from another part of the house to his right, bedsheets wrapped around their bare shoulders. Then, from behind Ebio, there was a shadow from another of the upstairs rooms that he knew was Trjónn inn Hǫggvinkinni. He had been visiting for the past few days, a brief stopover before he continued on to Italy to visit his sire Gnaea.
Darragh could remember hunting with him only a day before, both of them grinning at each other with blood-smeared teeth. Then he had felt triumph and pleasure at having another to share so much of his bloodthirsty nature with. Now all he felt was disgust.
"I want you dead!" he screamed, feeling as if the whole of his lungs emptied into the sound. And he did, God, did he want her dead.
But he wanted himself dead more.
Yet Ebio's sad expression never changed as she stepped forward to the press her body against the balcony railing, opening the top of the dressing gown she wore to expose her pale skin. "Then come," she stated simply, "child of mine, and take my life."
He had the brief, delirious thought that they were both going against the laws of their kind with him wanting to do harm to her and her allowing him to. Then the anger and the fury snapped back into place and Darragh moved at the same time that he saw his bro - Malloy - surge into motion.
Grabbing onto the back of one of the heavy chairs sat against the wall downstairs, he swung it into his brother. Despite the hardiness of their forms, there was nothing in them that could deny the rules of the world around them. The force that Darragh put into his swing was greater than his brother's forward momentum and the chair slammed into him with enough force that he flew into the wall with a harsh crunch of bones. Xiang cried out his name and rushed towards him, her eyes fully on Malloy and not on Darragh at all.
Good. That would keep them both out of the way.
Sprinting up the stairs, taking them two at a time and at a speed that would have been a blur to a mortal, Darragh came skidding to a stop on the balcony. Ebio had turned, simply changing the direction that she was facing, and still stood there with her chest half-exposed. Her hands rose slowly to frame just over her heart, curled as if she was cupping it in her palms instead of them hiding the curve of her breasts.
His sire lowered her chin slightly, her dark eyes hooded as she looked at him expectantly.
"Strike, child," she intoned, her voice low. "I'm giving you the chance for the first blow."
If he struck out at her, would she fight back? Kill him? Darragh was young - the youngest of any of them currently in the house - but he was strong. If he hit her in the right place, with the right amount of force, he could cave her chest in. Crush her heart in a blow. He knew how to do it, he could remember doing it to a hunter, could remember the blood on his hands and how it burned his tongue but tasted like a fine whiskey.
If he hurt her too much in the first blow, she wouldn't be able to hurt him.
Despite the rage and the anger howling in his head like a tempest, Darragh didn't strike to kill or crush. The blow did knock Ebio back through the balcony in a crunch of wood and her sternum broke underneath his knuckles and part of him screamed in agony. There was a part of him that loved her still, this damned monster who had invaded his life. Who had torn him away from his true family.
Who had made it so he could never tell his father that he was sorry for being a terrible son. That he could never promise that he could be better.
She had made it so he could never tell Daman how ridiculously proud of him that he was. Never pull him close and ruffle his hair affectionately ever again. Never see him beyond a gangly boy of fourteen who was going to be taller than him by how quickly he was growing out of the trews Darragh had worn years before.
Screaming suddenly in fury for the life he lost, Darragh plunged over the edge of the broken balcony and down, landing in a crouch on top of Ebio where she lay on the floor. Her dark eyes peered at him from under their lids and she looked...utterly unconcerned. If anything, it infuriated him more.
"Fuck you!" he screamed as he slammed his fist down into her chest, hearing bone crackle and crunch beneath the blow. She let out a grunt of pain in response but otherwise just continued to lay there. Darragh hit her again, this time harder, and her ribs snapped like dry wood underneath the blow. "You stole me!" he howled in fury as his fist lashed out again, though this time his target was her face. As her head rocked to the side with the blow, he snarled, "You made me a monster!"
"Brother!" Malloy cried out from nearby but Darragh didn't even turn to regard him. His vision tunnelled down to one thing and one thing only...and that was lashing out with all of the violence burning in his chest at the woman lying underneath him. Each blow rained down like a thunderclap, fast and furious, a snap or crunch of bone following behind the hefty weight of each blow.
And, through it all, Ebio simply closed her eyes and took it
He didn't understand. He was trying to kill her and she refused to fight back.
"Fight me!" Darragh howled as he punched her in the jaw, blood arcing from her mouth with a grunt of agony to spatter on the floor. "Fight me, damn you!"
Kill me, he screamed silently with every inch of his being.
Then, Ebio's bloodied, broken hand slipped past his flailing fist and cupped his cheek. Darragh froze as the broken, battered fingers curled against his skin, blood smearing even as he hear the faint sound of them healing. The grinding crunch of bones slowly knitting themselves back together amongst the squelching sound of flesh shifting back into place. He slowly brought his gaze down to her, to see the ruin that he had wrought of his sire and that part of him that loved her still howled in agony.
Her face was broken and crushed, cheeks caved in, eyes half bulging out of the sockets even as they still looked at him with affection and her jaw hanging at a disturbingly off angle. Below that, her chest was hollowed into itself, the center looking as though it had collapsed into her body. In truth it was crushed to pulp and was exposing the faintly pumping muscle of her heart, nestled amongst the open, bristling nest of the shards of her broken rib cage. Blood pooled underneath her and coated her skin, turning her beautiful dressing gown into a macabre shadow of itself as it spread and spread and spread.
There were bruises on her arms where she had caught stray bows from his fists and her hands were crushed, almost all of the fingers broken. And, yet, she lifted one of those broken limbs fast enough to get past his flailing limbs to cup his cheek.
Blinking slowly, Darragh's chest heaved with exertion even though he didn't need to breath, hadn't felt the need to pretend for years. Ebio's broken jaw opened crookedly into a smile and she breathed, "I can't give you what you want, my son." As her pointer finger straightened, snapping itself back into place against his jaw, she spoke again. "You may hate me; despise me, even. Yet I still love you with a mother's love...and it won't let me hurt you. Not even to save myself."
The last words were a whisper that somehow caressed and grated against his ears at the same time and Darragh heard Malloy called his name. Slowly, shock still rattling through him, he lifted his head and looked at the man who was and wasn't his brother. He was on one knee just out of arms reach, one hand extended towards Darragh and the other towards Ebio with a pleading expression on his face. "Brother, please," Malloy said softly. "Don't. I will kill you if you end her. I promise you I will."
Part of Darragh's heart soared at the words - at the death that he so wanted - but then it crashed down. It wasn't Malloy's hands around his throat that he wanted. He wanted Ebio to take back the life that she had given him and she refused.
His chin quivered and he slowly stretched out blood soaked fingers to brush his blood brother's outstretched hand. "I'm not your brother," he hissed, even though it felt like all of his anger had suddenly drained out of him now. "My brother died."
Malloy's fingertips pressed into his and the older man gently said, "And yet my brother still. Let her go, Darragh."
He stared at the man - who had been the one to teach him how to hunt, how to stalk, how to feed - and felt torn between the clear hatred in his heart that warred with still clearly obvious affection. They loved him in their own twisted way. Or, at least, they had loved the monster he had been.
Darragh looked down as his hands, soaked in Ebio's blood, her hair and flesh and other bits clinging to his skin and underneath his nails. Tears welled in his eyes as he realized that he was the same. There wasn't really any difference between him and the monster that he remembered, was there? They were the same broken, ruined boy.
The only difference was that now he was fully aware of how broken he was.
Suddenly there was fire blazing in a line down his right arm and Darragh screamed, howling in agony as he tore his left hand away from Malloy's to lunge at whatever had hit him. Trjónn grinned mockingly at him as he danced backwards away from him, mockingly waggling a bloodied blade at him. A hunter's blade, the man had proudly proclaimed it, taken off the body of a Smith that he had killed years ago and still imbued with the energy that some Hancóc witch had poured into it more than a century before.
"Back off, pup," the man growled. "You lot apparently don't know how to take down a whelp that's grown too long in the tooth to know his place in the pack."
"Stand down!" Malloy bellowed as Darragh slumped onto his left side, everything else background now as the latent magic of the Hancócs in the blade burned into his skin. He could feel his skin blackening and puckering, flesh pulling away from the gaping open gash of the wound that ran from the top of his shoulder all the way down his arm to his wrist. The blade had knocked the bones there and he felt as if they were melting inside of him as he curled his body around the wound.
He had been hit by hunter blades before...but this was so much worse.
A desperate whine rose in his throat as the pain washed over him like a tide and it was all he could think of now. Darragh felt a broken-fingered hand gently cup his cheek and looked up to see Ebio crouching over him. Her face was slowly putting itself back together as she looked down at him with obvious concern and anger in her dark eyes.
"I will protect you," she promised softly, even as in the background Malloy wrestled with Trjónn for the knife, shoving the smaller man roughly against a wall.
Shaking his head, he choked out, "I tr-tried to kill you," through the agony wracking his body.
"I know," Ebio replied, her touch gentle as she moved her hand to stroke his forehead, leaving bloody streaks behind. "And I was going to let you."
That was love. She loved him and Darragh didn't know what to do with that. Not with the pain clawing at him as the flesh of his arm gaped open and felt like it was ablaze with fire. He closed his eyes then, a scream tearing its way out of his throat as the wound burned as hot as a roaring forge, and lost all logic and reason for what was happen.
Up was down.
Down was up.
And underneath the pain and the agony, Darragh Ó Conaill realized that he wanted to live.
Timeframe: 1781
Location: Paris, France
Event: Darragh Ó Conaill returns to the home that he shares with his sire, Ebio, as well as his bloodbrother and his child, after abruptly regaining his memories. After revealing this fact dramatically, his sire invites him to attack her to release his rage - as she told Malloy long ago that she would.
Consquences: While Malloy is trying to convince Darragh to not kill Ebio after she allows him to beat her quite extensively, their bloodsister Gnaea's child Trjónn inn Hǫggvinkinni - who is visiting - wounds Darragh with a hunter blade. Due to the properties of that specific blade itself and Darragh's own hunter lineage, he is incapacitated. Eventually, the wound will scar and be a reminder to him...but first he has to make it through being tried for attacking his sire.
The third child of the vampire Ebio, he lost his memory of who he had been when he was turned in the 1660s and became little more than a killer driven by intense bloodlust. By the 1780s, he regained his memory and has since struggled to control the aftermath of his years of bloodthirsty killing and figure out a place to belong. Taking a myriad number of jobs since then, he's spent his long life trying to make up for who he was for more than a century, including taking up the position as a consultant to the FBI that led him to moving to the town of Bigby Fork.
The favorite of the Elder Issuru's children, it is known that she was born in Egypt and that she and her sister, Abana, were turned at the same time. In her life, she has garnered a brutal reputation that makes hunters usually whisper her name and has sired three children, loving them as if they were her own by birth.
Once a proud warrior amongst his people, Itztli was dying in the streets of Tenochtitlan when Ebio came upon him. There he became her second child and intensely loyal to her when she helped him slaughter the Spaniards that had ruined his people. For centuries, he and his child Yen Xiang Jun remained at his sire's side until she told them to go live their lives.
When Ebio and Gnaea Abella were travelling through what would eventually become Norway with Elisabeth Bongam, they came across a ship that had been wrecked in a storm. And the lone, injured but still walking man who was methodically cutting the throats of his shipmates who still lived. Gnaea saw something that she respected in that need to do what needed to be done and turned the man, who's name was Trjónn. Despite that beginning to his life as a vampire, he eventually showed himself to be a schemer who would do whatever he needed to stay alive - and had been killing his injured shipmates to take their supplies. Though she still claims him, Gnaea does not appreciate the irreverent behavior of her son. His favorite claim to make is that he is the one who saved Ebio when Darragh Ó Conaill was attacking her.
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