The Neverloving Dead (Haunted Hearts)

CHAPTER 4

FOOD

GETHIN

A bout half an hour ago, for the second time in just over a month, Gethin had woken to find the creepy priest reading in the gloom a few metres away: the ‘incubus’, who Gethin was pretty sure had saved him by regurgitating jizz into his mouth. He wasn’t totally sure how he felt about that. He hadn’t wanted the ‘kiss’, but he was still here, wasn’t he? ‘Alive’ in so far as things went. Though weak as a kitten’s mewl – and edgy. Invaded.

As the ghost droned on about caution or something, Gethin reminded himself, again , that the priest hadn’t done anything to his body while he’d been unconscious. Except when he was brimming with anger, he didn’t have a body for the priest to do anything to .

It wasn’t like his murder.

He remembered after he’d first left his body, trying to pick up something in the room – anything – to bash his killer’s head in. Make him stop. His hands had gone through every object. Through . He’d just stood there, helpless. Watching the guy come in his dead arse.

His stomach heaved. Anger began to bubble. It wasn’t just how grim it was, how absolutely depraved and gross. It was the indignity. The helplessness and humiliation. It sounded stupid in his own head – he was dead, what the fuck did humiliation matter? But it whipped up the baloney his parents had always spouted: that he was filthy and worthless; that he deserved to have awful things happen to him.

He tried not to think about the other ghost – Matt. Floating around his bedsit, trembling and crying.

This was why he was here, though, wasn’t it? Because it had all been so utterly, utterly horrible. Because he couldn’t let it happen to anyone else.

The priest had already laid out a whole spiel to do with helping him, gamely predicting Gethin would get himself ‘killed’ before he ever achieved his ‘objective’ if he didn’t pull his neck in, basically, and learn some self-control. Even if he avoided dying again, he’d added, the need for vengeance would drive Gethin nuts or give him ‘obsessive fixations’. To be honest, he’d mostly stopped listening at that point. Partly cos he’d thought the priest might be right about him going completely mental, but also cos the guy did go on. Him having been a minister or whatever made perfect sense.

“Your energy is dissipated,” he was onto now.

“I know that,” Gethin muttered. He could see a line in the dust on the floor under his thigh, so that was pretty obvious. “Stop treating me like a sodding halfwit.”

“And you might think your rage is helping, but it’s only making things–”

“Worse, I got it,” he snapped. “ Duw duw .” Dear God. As if he could stop himself feeling bloody angry after what had happened to him. “Look, Father or Reverend or whatever. All I want to know is how I can be solid and travel all over the city – other than sucking off guys who can’t say no, that is. I don’t want or need any more help from you than that, alright?”

The priest’s expression tightened. “For the third time, I’m not a priest.” He closed the book. “I’m not like you. I’m not here because I have some noble mission to fulfil before melting away into Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, oblivion, whatever it is you dream of getting. I’m here because I’m damned . Without absolution from a priest, which I don’t want and can’t get, I can never move on. Everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve gained in the last two hundred years, has been gained with patience. Rules. Discipline .”

Gethin took a deep, unnecessary breath. Two hundred years in this place did sound fucking terrible. On the other hand, “You sound exactly like a priest to me. Look.” He raised a hand. “You’re right, okay? You’re not like me. But drop the high horse act, alright? You’re an incubus, not Mahatma bloody Gandhi. Again, you suck off unconscious men.” Again, his non-stomach heaved. “As for ‘melting away into Heaven’ being some sort of reward for catching my killer...”

The priest had the brass neck to roll his eyes. “That isn’t what I–”

“I don’t give a fuck. Ordinarily, nothing on God’s green earth could persuade me to stay in this place. It makes my mam and dad’s house look like Saturday night at the KitKatClub. And maybe discipline’s all that’s stopped you going stark raving bonkers, but I never had that, alright? This is all I’ve ever been committed to, in my whole life! And so far the only thing I’ve found that lets me keep doing it is the fact I’m really fucking angry about how I died. I know it drains me – I haven’t got wool for brains, have I? But save your Yoda speech about it all leading to the Dark Side, yeah?” He raised a hand at the dusty corridor. “I’m already here.”

The priest frowned. Gethin guessed he hadn’t spent any of his two hundred years curling up with families at Christmas to watch Star Wars . “This isn’t any side,” he said eventually. “Detachment is just the only way to get what you want here.” He gave him a bit of a sarky, pointed smile. “And to not become monstrous while you seek it.” He slowed down to say ‘monstrous’, like he was making a point.

Gethin couldn’t see what. He didn’t remember calling the ‘priest’ a monster, but it was totally possible he had. Since he was an incubus who preyed on men as they slept.

The priest stood, gazing at the wall like he thought he might have more luck lecturing it instead. “ Any strong emotion temporarily strengthens your form.” His jaw tensed, sharpening his bony profile. “But they all consume your energy. To build enough energy to maintain solidity, you must consume it from outside yourself. That means blood or semen. Any species will do – though I stick to humans. And sperm. Too much energy around you will drain you, too, so a tranquil setting is best.” He turned to Gethin, raising an ashen hand towards the wall. “A lone sleeping man is ideal.”

“And there we are. Back to unconscious men.” The priest flinched. Gethin folded his arms. “I’m not sucking Stuart off. And by the way, he’s straight, so I don’t think he’d appreciate you sucking him off either, if he knew, which he doesn’t. And it’s moot anyway,” he widened his eyes, “since I’m too weak, aren’t I? I can’t get close to the living.”

“You could if you built strength. It’s why I can travel further than you.” The whole city and beyond , he’d said. “Though I am impressed you managed a mile.”

“Jesus. Can you stop patronising me?”

The man seemed to get even colder than he had been. “Then decide what matters more to you – moral prudery or what you’re trying to achieve.”

“ Moral prudery ? You think this is about–”

“You said your murderer’s going to kill again.”

The statement threw Gethin completely. Not just the whiplash change of subject, but the fact he’d no recollection of saying that at all.

He must’ve looked as blank as he felt, cos the priest said, “Look. You asked how I can move around and I told you. I’ve been alone for a long time, doing exactly that, and I’m not interested in anybody’s judgements about how. So... Can you tell how long before he does it? Do you get a sense of where he is? Who he is? Anything that might help?”

Gethin stared for a few seconds, pressing down the anger that had been bottlenecking its way up. The priest was right that he should focus on the task in hand, he told himself, even if he was a joyless, sober bastard who was wrong about everything else.

He rubbed the back of his head – another old habit – trying to soothe himself so he could tune into the feeling he sometimes got from the killer: a boiling, imploding feeling, like a kettle rattling on a hob.

He waited, focusing.

He wished he’d stop feeling so nauseous. In life, you could at least throw up. Here, the nausea just lingered like a bad sodding smell. “There’s nothing right now.” The priest seemed to be expecting something, so he added, “I dunno. He’s probably asleep. And ‘no’ to where he is and who he is. Other than him maybe being called Mike.” Which he’d already told him, though he hadn’t told him what the killer had actually done. “As for when it might happen, the feeling’s been getting worse over the past month, but it comes and goes, you know? The last couple of times, it took two... three months, maybe.”

“Well, then that’s what you have – one or two months to build your form.” He did his weird drift towards the bedroom wall, pausing then stepping halfway into it before he looked back, expression still a bit uptight. “Can you move?”

He wasn’t suggesting they go and bother Stuart... was he?

“I already told you I’m too weak to be near anyone who’s alive.” He’d also told him he wasn’t into blowing his flatmate while he was passed out. Or anyone. He’d meant that too.

“I can see that.” His gaze slid down Gethin’s barely there form.

Gethin half-expected him to add, “Or not.” He seemed like the type that might get a kick out of belittling Gethin’s transparency.

He didn’t. He just looked back up again, expression twice as cold as when he’d looked down. “But, as I’ve no straws of sperm to hand, I’d have to feed you myself should you require rescuing again – and believe me, I’d want that even less than you would – so you’ll be pleased to hear I want you to stay out of the way by the wall. I’m not expecting you to fellate Stuart.” He emphasised the final word just slightly, then stepped through the wall.

He was annoying as fuck, Gethin decided. He couldn’t believe that of all the ghosts in London, this was the one whose help he seemed to need. It wasn’t just the fact he was a bloody incubus – a sex ghost who wouldn’t give a fuck about Gethin having been, well, raped – it was his whole complacent attitude. The fact he seemed determined to make Gethin feel as worthless as anyone ever had.

Suppressing another curl of anger, first at his parents and then at his killer, Gethin rose – carefully, in case momentum or emotions destroyed the tiny morsel of solidity he had. He didn’t miss the familiar urge to let it be destroyed – to move on and away, to forget. It would be so much easier. He felt as tough as a will-o’-the-wisp. He thought of the five hundred quid... and concentrated.

The priest was his best bet. He knew that. He just thought he was a pompous prick and hated what he did. How he did it.

He was probably doing it now.

Telling himself not to react whatever he saw, Gethin stepped warily through the wall into Stuart’s bedroom, drawing his energy as near to him as he could. He could see little strands unravelling from his arms and hips, and there was a thin but steady spill of colour from the red boots he’d died in. When he stopped, it made him look like he was standing in a pool of his own blood.

The incubus was standing to one side of the bed, skeletal hands folded in front of him, looking like the evil vicar in a Hammer Horror movie.

One eyebrow was raised, like he’d proven a point brilliantly. The point, presumably, being how amazingly solid and in-control he was. Not that he was touching Stuart.

Probably because Stuart wasn’t asleep.

His laptop was open on the bed beside him. He was watching something – some woman being royally gangbanged, by the sounds of it. His cock was in his hand, where it was getting vigorously throttled. The woman was loud.

Gethin grimaced. “I’ll stick to the sperm bank, thanks.”

The priest’s eyes narrowed faintly. “I thought your moral issue was with him being asleep.”

“My moral issue ,” Gethin pronounced it back to him, “is with him not bloody consenting.”

“To ghosts taking a few drops of his spends?” He looked, if possible, even more patronising than usual. “Now. It is of course more difficult to hold your form around someone who’s awake, so you will have to foc–”

“It’s not right.” His stomach seemed to heave again. Stuart’s hand was making wet, slapping sounds: another, another, on and on.

“You think a sperm bank’s better ?”

“I do, actually. Stuart can’t see you, so he can’t fucking consent.”

“And he can’t hear me, so I can’t fucking ask,” the priest retorted, which might have been the first time Gethin had ever heard him swear. It suited him. “I don’t do it for pleasure and I’m not harming him,” the ghost added.

Bloody nausea. What he wouldn’t give to chuck up his guts. “You’re watching him without him knowing.”

The slapping sounds intensified. “Nngh, yes,” Stuart muttered to himself. Or so he thought.

Gethin gritted his teeth.

The priest actually looked pissed off. “Do you think the men in the sperm bank consented to their ‘efforts’ becoming drinks for the dead? Every straw we drained had been chosen by someone as their chance at having a child. One ejaculation,” he indicated Stuart, who grunted and huffed like he was demonstrating the priest’s TED Talk on wanking, “is divided into between five and twenty straws. That’s five to twenty chances. Whereas this man,” Stuart’s hand was going like the clappers now, “is going to wipe his up with a tissue and throw it in the bin.”

“Then let him,” Gethin snapped. “I’ll find another way that doesn’t involve using people when they can’t sodding agree.” He looked down, mostly so as not to look at Stuart. There were no ribbons drifting from him anymore, anyway, he noticed. He was looking more solid by the second.

Stupid , he thought. The anger’s going to drain you .

He was hardly there as it was.

Stuart started to come, grunting loudly, jizz splashing up his belly and chest. Loads of it.

“Well, now you’re just finding things to moralise about,” the incubus said, lowering his head and trying to catch some in his mouth as it flew through the air. A white string splattered across his lips.

“Jesus,” Gethin mumbled queasily. The thing was, the priest was right. He was. Gethin needed to build his form to catch his murderer and, short of a summoning, this was about as much ‘consent’ as someone in their position could get. But Stuart’s grunts seemed to be morphing into the memory of his death: the killer grunting over his bleeding body as he kept fucking, Gethin hearing it all, screaming at him to stop, even though he was dead already. From the laptop, the woman was practically shrieking her orgasm.

Gethin closed his eyes.

After a while, the grunts began to wane. He could feel himself slipping apart, something within him straining back through the wall – not just into the dusty emptiness, but further. Beyond it. A feeling of darkness descended.

Forgetfulness.

He had nothing to stay for, he thought, vaguely. Some nonsense about a man he had no way of catching. It didn’t matter. He thought of Matt again, crying and shaking. The killer’s grunts. Over and over.

Agony rose. His eyes burned.

He had to hold himself together, he told himself. Just a little longer. Not bloody drift away. He had to try, didn’t he? He’d fucking committed to it. He forced his eyes open. Everything was shifting around him: colours, light, shadows, form. He took a massive breath, which made no difference at all, cos obviously he didn’t have any breath, did he? He reached for the wall behind him.

Ribbons spilled from his arm like inks in water. He had to calm down. He wasn’t strong enough to survive getting upset again...

Briefly, the room slid back into focus: the incubus had stepped back from Stuart and was looking askance at his own arm. The woman had stopped screaming. Stuart was frowning at his belly, where his cock lay thick and dark. Gethin had a fleeting impression of come glistening on his abdomen. He supposed the priest couldn’t lick it off him while he was awake.

The come just reminded him of his murderer orgasming.

He was going to die, he realised. Die properly. Without getting his killer at all. Without doing anything good for anyone. All because he couldn’t stop having feelings about his horrible fucking death. All because this – jizz , of all sodding things – made him so sick and angry that he dissolved . It was crazy. He’d loved jizz in life.

Just another thing to hate his bastard bloody killer for.

For two seconds, he wondered if he should try blood instead. It just made him think of it spilling from his neck as the murderer had fucked him, though. His energy lurched violently, scarlet swimming around his legs.

You have to bloody stay , he told himself. He wouldn’t let there be another Matt. He saw again the five hundred quid. Focused on it. Focused harder.

The room spun lazily, juddering.

The killer, the killer , he told himself, repeating it in his head like a mantra. That was what mattered. He wasn’t going to catch him from Stuart’s bedroom, was he? And he might not be able to ‘feel’ the murderousness right now, but he knew it was escalating.

Stuart rolled over, glancing at the incubus – or through him, Gethin supposed. The movement made his wet, darkened dick flop to one side, still half-hard. Gethin bit back his queasiness. This was exactly why he’d been in the sperm bank: not because it was more moral – the priest had peeled that argument apart in about a second – but because the sperm was in straws.

It didn’t remind him of anything.

You have to be reminded , he thought. What if he did find his killer and when he got there to stop him, he was raping someone else? If Gethin fell apart, he’d fail. It was as simple as that, wasn’t it? Another man would die. He looked down at his boots, at the crimson lapping around his shins. How the sodding heck was he going to do this?

Without sucking cocks or jugulars...

The priest’s words threaded back through him – what he’d said just before he’d disappeared through the wall from the cwtch into Stuart’s room: I’ve no straws of sperm to hand, I’d have to feed you myself – and believe me, I’d want that even less than you would .

Had he been saying there was another way to build strength? One that didn’t involve living people?

Believe me, I’d want that even less than you would.

Like, Gethin doubted that. The last thing he wanted to be anywhere near, in his state, was a sodding incubus. On the other hand, he didn’t know what the priest had meant – what feeding a ghost involved . And if he didn’t at least find out, he’d just be letting the killer kill again, wouldn’t he, since there was bugger all that he could do otherwise. He’d tried, hadn’t he? Over and bloody over.

It struck him that the priest had just said something. Asked him if something was wrong, maybe. Probably cos Gethin was still leaking rainbows all over the flipping place.

Stuart clunked the laptop shut, reaching for some tissues and wiping his belly, folding the tissues around the jizz, frowning again.

Gethin looked back at the priest, hoping whatever it was wasn’t too, well... incubussy. “What did you mean,” he asked, “when you said about feeding me yourself?”

In thirty-six years of life and three years of death, Gethin had never seen a flatter look from anyone.

“No,” the priest replied. “Absolutely not.”