#I am not marketing this fanfic on the Apple store and therefore am not bound by restrictions on profanity

[ollieofthebeholder]

to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest): a TMA fanfic

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Chapter 8: January 2016

It hurts.

That’s the first thing Gerard thinks when he becomes aware. Complete pain, like every bone in his body has been broken and replaced with acid. His joints ache the worst, throbbing and pulsing under the eyes tattooed on each one, as if the protective charm eked into them is fighting with whatever is around him. It’s excruciating.

And, since he’s pretty sure he’s dead, it’s also really fucking annoying.

Gerard takes several deep breaths, which he also shouldn’t be able to do (since he’s, you know, dead). His hands curl into fists, fingernails digging into his palms, trying to distract him from the overall pain by adding new pain…

“Bloody hell.” The voice is wholly unfamiliar to Gerard, a deep Mancusian accent with a chronic smoker’s rasp, and sounds awed. “What is that?”

“Are you Gerard Keay?” It’s another unfamiliar voice, this one female and strident.

He opens his eyes and looks around. He’s standing in what looks like an abandoned shack. In front of him are two people, an old man and a young woman, both staring at him with a mixture of shock and disgust. The woman has short-cropped blonde hair and hard green eyes; the man’s hair looks blond too, at first, until he bares his teeth and Gerard realizes it should be somewhere between grey and white, but is stained yellow from a heavy nicotine habit. Probably they both smoke, if the pack of cigarettes in the woman’s jacket pocket is any indication. She looks about Gerard’s age, maybe a little older, with a sturdy denim jacket and a pair of tan hiking boots, and on the surface looks like the sort of person Neens would hang out with when she wasn’t doing her show. There’s a hardness to her face, though, a kind of scary spark, that makes Gerard want to keep her as far from his sister as possible. The man has the appearance of a tramp, with a long tan trench coat that’s seen better days and a scraggly beard, but there’s a gleam in his eyes that makes Gerard want to run and never look back.

It’s that feeling, that and the sudden throb of pain from the eyes tattooed on his knees, that tells him who—or at least what—these people are. “You’re Hunters,” he says, and his voice surprises him. It doesn’t sound hollow or echo-y or faint—it sounds just like he normally does when talking to his siblings, or haranguing Gertrude, or—shit, Gertrude. What have these two done with her?

The woman’s eyes flash. She reaches under her jacket and half-pulls an object—a gun, Gerard realizes—then slides it back in, either like she doesn’t think it’ll work or like she just wants him to know she has it. Or maybe both. “I asked you a question. Are you—” She points at a table near her. “Are you Gerard Keay?”

Gerard’s eyes focus on what she’s pointing at, and his stomach lurches. Lying open is a too-familiar book, the pages in different shades ranging from ivory to ebony, a bit of charring visible just before the spread the book is open to. The handwriting on the open page is too familiar…but it’s not his mother’s.

Gertrude. Gertrude put him in the Book. He should have guessed his mother might have told her how to do it before she destroyed her.

Part of him is no longer worried about what these two might have done to her. The greater part is more worried.

“Who’s asking?” he says instead.

“Got a lot of cheek for someone with no pull,” grunts the man. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter—flicks it so the flame comes to life—waves it in the direction of the book. “You come out of that book, did you? What would happen if I were to…?”

Gerard doesn’t know, but considering how careful Gertrude was about destroying his mother’s pages without damaging the rest of the book, he doesn’t want to risk it. Every single eye tattooed on his body flares with pain, and he swallows the instinctive wince. Sadly, he’s got a lot of practice with that. “All right, all right,” he says, holding up his hands in what he hopes is a placating gesture. “No need to get threatening. Yes, I’m Gerard Keay. Who are you?”

“Like you said. We’re Hunters.” The woman folds her arms. Gerard knows he’s not getting any more out of them than that. “You know what we hunt?”

“What?” Gerard asks with some trepidation, even though he’s pretty sure he knows the answer.

The man smiles slowly. “Monsters. And you look like a right dangerous one.”

They always start off that way, Gerard thinks distantly. Or at least they usually do. Those Marked by the Hunt—at least, those that aren’t marked as prey—always seem to convince themselves they’re doing the right thing. They’re chasing down monsters, criminals, things that go bump in the night. A good portion of them end up as police officers, or bail bondsmen, or bounty hunters. They always start out thinking they’re doing the right thing, and then they end up committing the worst crimes imaginable.

“I’m not dangerous, mate,” Gerard says, trying his hardest to look nonthreatening. “I’m just…” He waves his hand at the table, hoping against hope, and sure enough, his hand goes right through it. “Besides. You summoned me.”

“Those were the only pages we could read.” The woman flips back through a couple pages. “What is this, Martian?”

“Sanskrit,” Gerard says shortly. His dislike of the pair notches up a bit. Anyone that derisive of languages other than English, or alphabets other than the Roman alphabet, is probably not a great person.

“Do they all summon…things like you?”

“Probably. If you read it properly.” Gerard reads Sanskrit well enough to understand it, maybe even to translate it, but his pronunciation is iffy at best, so he’s never tried actually activating one of the pages. Partly for fear of accidentally bringing an unholy abomination into the world, partly because, well, he really didn’t want to. He might have if his father had actually been in the book, but surprisingly, his mother hadn’t actually put him in there. She’d just killed him. Apparently she didn’t think he was worth the effort.

There was one page he’d thought about reading, but he’d never quite been able to bring himself to do it.

The man looks interested. “You know about these things. Monsters.”

Gerard nods. “Spent most of my life studying them. Fighting them.” Well, sort of, but he doesn’t think these two are interested in the nuances.

The pair exchange a look. Gerard realizes what it means, and his heart sinks. They’re going to be the latest in a long line of people who use him, without regard to what he wants or what he needs. And there’s not going to be anywhere for him to run. Even if he could, with as much pain as he’s in, he doesn’t think he’d get very far. He’s tied to the Book now. His mother could manifest at will, but that was all she could do; she could never go very far from it. At best, he might be able to make it to the other side of the shack, but…

“Well, Gerard,” the woman says, her voice full of malicious satisfaction, “I think we’re all going to be very good friends.”

“Yeah,” Gerard says, resigned…for the moment, anyway. “I’ll just bet.”