Dirty Deeds by AdmirableMonster

Dirty Deeds

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The sound of the creak and shift of the academy library was usually one that Nimruzimir welcomed.  He had spent so many hours curled up quietly in a corner, a book tucked into his skirts as he waded his way through the information the boys would have received during their day-time studies.  The soft nothing night-noises meant the smell of old books, meant the calm quiet loneliness of study and no one to tell him what a lovely girl he was, or how proud his father was of his charming daughter (charming was always clearly a lie, though he supposed he was not unhandsome in an unfortunately feminine sort of way.)

Generally, he was not flattened against a bookshelf, one hand across his mouth, trying to silence his too-loud ragged breathing while he listened for any sound that might herald the approach of the young man who had lured him here.

He had given his name as Dôlguzagar, and Nimruzimir had met him at one of his father’s acquaintances balls.  Somehow—Nimruzimir suspected that he had imbibed rather more alcohol than he had intended—Dôlguzagar had found out about Nimruzimir’s love of books and had offered to meet him in the library and open the locked inner chamber where they kept the tomes that were not fit for public consumption.  He had sworn he would be able to get his hands on a key.

He had lied.  This, Nimruzimir considered, was probably less egregious than the fact he had lied about his intentions—which at this point clearly included at least rape and possibly lethal violence, either before or after—but he was possibly angrier about the fact that he might die without getting his hands on those books.  It was odd, the things one regretted when one was staring one’s own death in the face.

He strained his ears.  One of the floorboards creaked—he thought it was probably the loose floorboard by the shelf containing the publicly-released historical annals of Númenor from the reign of Tar-Vanimeldë.  Which meant if he were very careful and snuck up the the western side of the library, there was a fairly short length of the room for which he would be exposed before he reached the door.

Well, he could hardly stay here.  His arm was still stinging vaguely, and the sleeve of his highly-impractical blue gown was damp with his own blood.  If he made no move, his situation would become rapidly and unpleasantly fatal, and that was if he were lucky.  Movement gave him a chance.

He set his jaw, gathered up his skirts, and began to tip-toe along the line of windows on the western side of the library, which faced the ocean.  During the day, the view was picturesque; tonight, it was magnificent.  The waves glittered blue, outlined by the undulating motions of a vast sea of bioluminescent organisms.  The pressure had been rising steadily throughout the day, lowering clouds building up, but the creatures in the ocean floated on the choppy waves and did not care.  (They do not care for you either, but I will weep for you.  She is too far for her charcoal gaze to make a difference.)

He slipped like a clumsy ghost along the shelves, listening for any other sounds of movement.  Listening for the rasp of metal or the sound of breathing, even the rustle of pages disturbed by too-close passage.  Nothing.  

Coming to the final shelf before the foyer, he paused, fingertips brushing against the solid wood for an instant to ground himself.  Fool, he told himself, and he could feel his heart pounding frenetically in his chest, blood rushing in a pulse-beat through his temples.  The heavy, ornate door was just there—less than twenty feet away.  

He ought to wait, but something in him spurred him past caution, and he broke from a bow-string-taut immobility into a terrified sprint, feet pounding against the tile floor.  Too loud, and as he ran, an echo rose up behind him, of heavier feet, out of rhythm with his own, attached to too-long legs.

His lungs burned.  He reached the door, hands slamming into the handle, thumb moving instinctively to depress the bottom lever, and yanked.

He nearly pulled his arm from its socket.  The door didn’t budge.  A second later, those thin strong hands had grasped him from behind, around the waist, and he screamed, lashing out and kicking back wildly.

Dôlguzagar was too strong for him; the world swung round dizzily for a second, and then Nimruzimir found himself going face-first into a wall, with a crack loud and hard enough to stun.  He thought he cried out.  He wasn’t sure.  There were hands sliding along his waist, a hand in his hair—he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, a something touched his chest—

Please, something inside him whispered, fear coiling up through his throat until it came out as a reedy shriek of rage.  Hurt him.  Hurt him.

You were supposed to plead for help, Nimruzimir thought dizzily, but the only thing inside him was a burning rage mixed with disgust, agony splintering through his head.  But he only wanted—

“I like the way you fight,” panted Dôlguzagar, and there was a knee between his thighs, trapping him against the wall.  

“Die,” snarled Nimruzimir, with every atom of air left in his lungs.

Dôlguzagar started to laugh, like something wild and joyful—

(I only weep, young one, but perhaps—)

(It is a fine prayer, a prayer worthy of a warrior prince.)

Something red flickers in Nimruzimir’s vision, perhaps his own blood—

The door slammed open with a crack and a hollow boom.  Wind rushed shrieking in, carrying rain and stinging hail—the pressure was dropping, and the storm had broken. Nimruzimir squinted through bloody vision, trying to make sense of the figure backlit by the dim yellow glow of the distant streetlights.  It was a woman, he thought, silhouetted in one of those fashionable hoop skirts, but there was something very strange about her hands.  

Dôlguzagar’s grip on him loosened, and he tried to yank away.  As Dôlguzagar grabbed for him again, the figure moved.  She was just a blur of motion to Nimruzimir’s stunned gaze, but Dôlguzagar gave a strangled gasp and staggered backwards, dropping him.  Nimruzimir went to his knees on the floor, panting.

Drops of blood spattered on the elegant wooden floor.  Dôlguzagar’s hands were up as if to ward off an attacker, and there were black zig-zags across the palms.  Something with claws had marked him.

“Who are you?” the young man croaked.  Nimruzimir scrambled onto his knees.  The door was open.  He could leave.

Someone laughed.  Lightning flashed, illuminating a woman in a fashionably low-cut crimson gown, grinning with a set of teeth as pointed as a shark’s.  When the light faded, her eyes were still there, gleaming a pale luminescent red.

He could leave, Nimruzimir told himself again.  (He can stay, if he wishes it.  He will come to no harm.  The White Lady looks up, up, up, and the waves crash above her head.)

“We were just—it was just a game—” Dôlguzagar choked out.  “She likes it, she likes it rough—”

“Do you?” purred an unfamiliar voice that crawled up Nimruzimir’s spine.  He groped for the lintel of the door, but only to push himself to his feet and lean back against it.

“D-Do I—”

“Because I do.”  Lightning flashed, crimson blurred again, and there were two noises: a wet kind of rending, and Dôlguzagar screaming horribly.  Something thumped to the ground at Nimruzimir’s feet, and he stared in fascination at the ragged bloody edge of the torn-off muscle, the white gleam of the top of the humerus, barely visible from inside its cradle of flesh.  Nimruzimir found he liked the hand much more like this.

Dôlguzagar staggered forward, white-faced, blood-spattered.  “Help me,” he croaked.

Nimruzimir laughed at him.

There was a thump, followed by a squelch.  Hot liquid spattered across Nimruzimir’s face.  The lightning seemed to last for a long few minutes this time, certainly long enough for him to see Dôlguzagar’s eyes go wide and for the triple-jointed fingers of the claw-tipped hand of the woman in crimson emerge from his chest.

Her arm was far longer than it ought to have been, but as Dôlguzagar’s corpse slumped on the end of it, she held out the lumpy, misshapen thing that she had punched right out his chest.  Automatically, Nimruzimir reached out and took it.  It was not still beating, though it was still warm.

“I am not r-r-really an anatomist,” he said stiffly, after a moment.  Then, considering further,  “Th-Thank y-you, though.”

A warm chuckle.  A hand dripping with sticky fluid clasped his shoulder.  “Ah, little prophet, what a shame you are my sister’s and not my own.”

(Nimruzimir’s mother told him, when he was little, tales of the lady in red, protector and killer, with her hands always stained incarnadine.  He does not believe those tales.  He is dreaming, he is dreaming.  The gods of this world are dead.  Years later, he will whisper to Lilóteo that when he woke the blood was gone—it must have been a dream.  Lilóteo will frown at him and murmur, “Isn’t when all those high-born girls were going missing, man?”

“What girls?”

A thoughtful hum. “You know—that shit would have stopped about when you’re saying this happened.” 

“It was a dream.”

It is a dream.  It must be.)

It was such a waste of an evening, Nimruzimir thought.  And he was going to have to shower, and he was certainly not going to get any sleep for hours.

The winds rose, howling.  The lady in red flung back her head and laughed.  “I will be waiting to see when you come into your own, prophet. For now, perhaps a parting gift.”  Her form wavered and lengthened; for an  instant, a tall man stood there, with a wild red beard, draped in a thick ermine cloak.  Then the storm flung itself through the library, catching at Nimruzimir’s dress and buffeting her till she stumbled onwards, all the way back through the library to the forbidden chamber.

The lock had splintered under the force of the wind.  The door hung open.

(I thank you for the life of my prophet, brother-sister in red.  But he is mine, for I wept for him before you laughed.)