2 A. M. Visitor

Part 1 : 2AM Visitor

The rain was coming down in sheets that Tuesday night across London. Val stood with a glass of water in his small kitchen.  His thick fingers holding the glass as if it were a lifeline to some unseen creature.  Ten deaths, bodies ripped apart, the wings of each fairy consumed on sight.  He had been wracking his brain as to why for days.  All since he had met That Man.  Donovan Roe, tall, muscular and above all beautiful with those sad gray eyes.  Val had been so sure he had been the monster he had chased through brothels, tea rooms, opuim dens and back alley surgery theatres. But he had been wrong, all he had found with Donavan had been a scared twenty three year old on the run from that same killer.

Taking a long drag of the water he thought about those gray eyes pleading with him to let him go.  Donovan was an incubus who had a few times gone to far in feeding.  Left corpses in cheap hotels, by all rights Val should have brought him before King and the Council of Life.  But something about those eyes had caused him to pause.  Incubuses weren't like other creatures, they couldn't live without taking life.  He knew that, had seen the bodies that Donovan had admitted to being his victims. No sign of a struggle, no bruises, just looks of pure pleasure burned into their final moments.  He had brought Donovan to the Castle morgue under a false name and with a hood over his face.

Had he known then, that he would let the boy go? Even at twenty three Donovan seemed like a boy to him in his early forties.  But what had done it? What had caused him to turn his back on the law, on the Council and let the man out at the Globe Theatre? He had driven them there, the drive silent. Silent save for Donovan's sobs.  The young man may have grown into a tall muscular man, but in the face of his own passive brutality he was nothing more than a scared child. The car had idled there for a while, he had waited hoping Donovan would run into the night. But instead he had been forced to turn the motor off. Get out and walk around the car to the passenger side and yank him out.  

Donovan was a foot taller than him, but he was a stout man with more muscle than fat on his body. So getting the larger man out wasn't a hardship.

"Please help me." That request from the weak, labored by guilt voice had been too much for him.  He had shoved the man away and got in his car and driven away.  Looking in the rear view mirror, watching the man crumple to his knees on the sidewalk.

The water gone he went to the sink and crouched low. He only wore an undershirt over his expansive chest and tapered waist and blue boxer briefs. His vanilla skin beneath the overhead light glowed as he dug around the cleaning supplies in the kitchen cupboard for the tall bottle of vodka.  Standing again he got a few ice cubes into the glass.  A frown etched across his square sparsely bearded face that had once been a five o'clock shadow. 

He poured the vodka half way up the glass and watched the ice cubes float a bit then dunked low and settled at the bottom of the glass.  Val closed his eyes and thought of his daughter. Barely six years old who still believed his wife was on holiday.  She had been the third victim of the killer, how would he form the words to convey hope to his Abigail? Sighing heavily he lifted the cup to his lips and drank.

A soft tapping at the door drew his attention from the glass and his thoughts. He glanced at the stove clock with it's green numbers against the black plastic and glass. Two A.M. it read. He padded across the hardwood floor on long pale bare feet to the door and peeked through the small gold rimmed peephole.  It took him a moment to focus with the darkness and rain but when the tall man came into view, he yanked open the door after unlocking it.

"Get in here," he hissed, keeping his voice low.

Looking as pitiful as a puppy left out in the rain, Donavan slowly and timidly walked over the threshold.  His thick soled boots creating noise Val did not want Abigail to hear.  He glanced back into the house and waited but heard nothing as he closed the door.