The Mist and the Lightning. Part 19

“Should I leave for you?” Without stopping, Arel asked hoarsely, clearly addressing Nik. Kors understood what he meant – he asked him whether he could come inside Kors or pull out in advance, leaving him not so wet for Nik.

“I’m not your cigarette!” Kors shouted indignantly, instantly losing his mood and hearing how the prince sharply pulled out of him, sprinkled next to him, a little on his thigh and probably on a brocade blanket. He “left”, that’s how it was called.

Nik approached them. Hearing the creaking of the floorboards, Kors jerked himself up on the bed and stubbornly repeated:

“I’m not a cigarette to leave me to each other! I. Am. Not. A. Cigarette!”

“Yes?” Nik asked, as if a little surprised, and pulled Kors by the chain dangling from his collar. “And it didn’t bother you before. Even if we… mmm… smoked you alone for two or at the same time.”

“You loved me then, but now you humiliate me!”

“It seems to you,” said Nik, and Kors felt him pulling him by the chain harder, forcing him to lean forward a little, touching his face and ripping off the plaster with a sharp jerk.

“Oh!” Kors covered his eyes with his palms. “You could be more careful! Not only you have eyelashes!”

He looked up, and when he saw Nik, he literally froze in shock. Nik was not wearing a mask, but his face was tightly bandaged with wide strips of black cloth. He wrapped his head in the same way as Kors once wrapped it, with the only difference that Nik left a narrow gap for himself at eye level, and he also cut the fabric at mouth level, just as Kors did. He looked with horror at the shiny ring sticking out from under the strips of fabric under his nose, at the wrapped chin and the top of his head, on which white hair stood up a little between the bandages. Nik wrapped himself around both the way Kors wrapped him and the way Doctor Cassiel had done in Prince Arel’s estate. The side of Nik’s neck was plastered over.

 Kors swallowed hard, clutching his throat, unable to utter a word. Nik was almost no different from Valentine now. He looked frankly bad and pathetic. Nik unfastened the chain from Kors’ collar and walked away, returning to his couch of skins, laid right on the floor. He obviously didn’t intend to fuck.

Kors, still silently, looked at him. He saw how hard Nik was making his steps, how he barely hobbled to the skins and sank heavily on them. Realizing that he was no longer going to be used, Kors hurriedly pulled on the trouser leg he had taken off from one leg, pulling up his trousers and buttoning his fly.

“Son… what’s the matter with you?” The way Nik looked was depressing. He seemed to break, in an instant, overnight. Kors was discouraged. And this strange dream!

“Nothing,” Nik said. Head low, he rummaged through his bag, and Kors knew what he was looking for there.

“You look terrible. Why did you bandage your face like that?” he asked.

“Well, how? That’s what you did when you treated me.”

“But I…” Kors stammered, he couldn’t tell him now: “But I didn’t really treat you, and there wasn’t a need for such treatment, I just satisfied my vicious fantasies with you a little.” Does Nik really think this is how he should have been treated? Is he so naive that he didn’t understand that Kors wasn’t healing as much as actually playing with him? Limiting him, reveling in his power. Did Nick take everything in good faith? Did he trust Kors? And so, left alone, he repeated the treatment exactly, not realizing what could be done differently? No-o-o! It can’t be! Well, the Demon can’t be so stupid, Kors won’t believe it anymore! Or could it be so? And Nik doesn’t know how to do it in another way, he only knows what his father showed him? Kors tried to quickly analyze the situation logically. Previously, this always helped him in his professional activities. Everything had to be sorted out.

First, his son is in symbiosis with a demonic essence, and this symbiosis is broken and doesn’t bring any benefit to either one or the other. They can harm each other.

Secondly, his son is a man undeveloped and naive, and really may not understand anything in the treatment.

Thirdly, it was forbidden to the Demon to heal and restore the human body of its owner, this is part of the punishment, and Kors understood this. But the Demon could accept treatment from others if they themselves offered. And Kors offered it to him, and the Demon accepted it.

Now he treats himself. But he repeats the actions of Kors and Cassiel! Can he repeat the way others treated him? Reflect their actions? Not anything more?

And Nik trusted Kors. He believed in his authority and accepted treatment from him. And here is the result of the irresponsible actions of Kors! Now Nik is treating himself wrong!

“Son, let me do everything differently now!” Kors exclaimed ardently, overshadowed by his conclusions. “Let me see what’s wrong with you, and now I’ll do everything right. I will choose the right treatment, and then you yourself will repeat after me, as needed, and not as it is now. Let’s fix it, make everything right.”

“I can handle it myself,” Nik answered indifferently, without even looking at his father, and pulled out his black box from his bag.

“Let me order to call Doctor Cassiel…”

Nik just chuckled and shook his head.

“He won’t come.”

“He will!”

“They are three days ahead from us, people have gone far ahead,” Nik opened the box and took out a small metal cylinder from it. Smooth, it gleamed silver in his black fingers, and Kors knew full well what Nik kept in that case.

“He’ll come!”

“No, he won’t. In the Fort, he still tolerated you, but now he is not at all obliged to go to the camp of the unclean ones on the orders of the disgraced black to treat his lover,” Nik unscrewed the lid of the protective case and carefully took out his syringe from it, attached the needle to it.

Kors clenched his teeth.

“I’ll go after him myself and drag him here by force!”

“Zagpeace will quickly put you in a cage there. You’re not going anywhere, and I don’t need any doctor,” leaning heavily towards the box, Nik slightly rattled the bottles of drugs, sorting through them.

“I…”

Nik raised his voice.

“Calm down!”

Kors froze: “I can’t show that I’m afraid.”

Frustratedly turning away from Nik, he took off his cambric shirt and elegant doublet from the back of the chair – the things that Nik had given him yesterday in exchange for wet clothes. Well, what else was left for him? It was cool in the tent, and there were no other clothes nearby. Having dressed, Kors approached the table. The dirty countertop was covered with spilled wine, there were unwashed plates with the remains of meat, pieces of bread were scattered on the table, the ashtray was full of cigarette butts. Kors took the jug and, bringing it up to his nose, sniffed its contents. Again wine, as in a couple of unfinished bottles, and as in a goblet. Well, what a morning! All was going wrong! Kors slammed his goblet on the table with an already barely concealed irritation.

And Nik, who was concentrating on filling the syringe with the drug from the bottle, involuntarily shuddered and turned to him:

“What are you looking for?”

“Water!”

“What?”

“Just water. I’m thirsty, my throat is dry.”

“Have some wine.”

“I don’t want wine!”

“Vitor, stop your whims.”

“I just want to drink a couple of sips of clean water, do you think this is a whim?”

Nik somehow wearily sighed, but didn’t answer. Kors realized that he was mentally calling his Verniy, because very soon he stumbled into their tent. His cloack was wet as the rain still hadn’t stopped. The dog’s head was covered by a helmet. Ver didn’t take it off, he stopped at the threshold. Kors saw his bestial eyes gleam in the narrow slits of his helmet.

“Ver, Vitor needs water,” Nik said without even looking at his unclean habir. He turned his hand palm up, and seemed to carefully examine the inside of the wrist.

The dog turned to Kors.

“What kind of water do you need, sir? Should I bring a bucket of water for you to wash up?”

“Is there any drinking water?” Kors asked.

“I haven’t gone to the spring yet. But the buckets have stood in the rain all night, they are full. Can you bring rain water? She is clean.

“Pour it into the kettle and boil it properly,” Kors ordered, “I won’t drink raw water from a dirty bucket!”

“Okay, sir,” and Ver turned around and left.

“Though I can wash myself, too,” Kors muttered. His mood didn’t improve, and he thought he could still smell the scent of Arel’s body on his skin. The smell left over from the prince’s strong embrace and his hands. It remained on Kors’ body, on his back, his shoulders, his chest. Everywhere that Arel had touched him. Kors looked at Arel. He was half lying relaxed on the trestle bed, the golden blanket almost sliding down to the floor, exposing his muscular torso, his oblique abdominal muscles, and part of his thighs. The prince had another bottle in his hands, and he took a sip from it.

“Arel, don’t mix up the bottles,” said Kors, “I put that one away, of course…”

“Very funny,” he snorted indifferently, and lazily tousled a long lock of his smooth dark brown hair back out of his face.

“Well, I’m just not sure you’d know the difference, it’s just habit, you know…”

But Arel only smirked indulgently with his lips covered with a thick layer of black dye, glinting in contrast with the white jagged edge of a chipped front tooth. He took another sip from the bottle and gave an audible burp, unresponsive to Kors’ jabs, but still as gorgeous and uncommonly attractive as ever.

Kors shook his head judgingly, but habitually:

“A descendant of royalty, indeed.”

He involuntarily continued to admire Arel, knowing that he didn’t give a damn about the impression he was making on those around him.

Kors glanced at Nik. Strongly tightening his forearm with a black cord, he somehow miraculously found a living vein on his arm and managed to inject himself, injecting the drug just below the elbow bend.

“Nik, maybe you can lie down with Arel, cover yourself with a blanket?” Kors suggested. “It’s cold on the floor, I feel it with my feet.”

“I don’t feel cold. I’m not cold,” Nik said. Kors called him Nik, but he didn’t correct him.

“Just because you don’t feel cold it doesn’t mean you have to lie in a draft.”

“I don't feel cold,” Nik repeated, leaning toward his box again.

So he took care of his slaves in their still human bodies, put them gently on the bed and covered them to keep them warm, but he didn’t care about his own body, just lay down on the floor, on the skins.

“Why don’t you feel the cold? You’re human, but you can lie down in the snow, can’t you?” Kors didn’t understand that.

“Yes, I can. A lot of people are used to the cold. It’s a habit,” Nick said faintly, but he did.

Kors watched him sit on the hide, with his head bandaged and his hair tangled, sticking out from under the bandages. Kors watched as he put something back into the syringe. One of his thick white braids, which Kors had so lovingly braided, was now disheveled and sticking out from under the top layer of shorter hair. It was disheveled, and the tip lay on the dirty floorboards. Playing with Nik and decorating him to his liking, Kors had begun to braid the bottom layer of his hair back in Ore Town. He remembered that this was how Nik’s hair had been braided the first time he was brought in for questioning. The bottom layer of his hair had been braided into four braids, one of which was very short, cut by Arel. Kors had ordered Nik to unbraid his hair then, to show him off at the Spring Ball in all his glory, but later he began to braid him himself, fixing his hair beautifully with bobby pins and, in addition, to keep it tousled longer, he bound it tightly with long thin cords adorned with faceted black and turquoise beads. It was probably wrong, too – beads were usually used by girls to decorate their braids – but Nik looked so much like a girl, so delicate and sweet, and Kors liked it when he was neatly combed and tidy. Later he would braid Nik’s hair in the Fort as well, thus trying to pass the time and do something to occupy himself without taking a restorative or drinking too much. Nik never even looked at what he was braiding into his hair, how he was decorating it. He always sat there obediently, not moving, like a doll, and he never minded Kors, letting him braid his hair, put as many different colored beads in it as he wanted, pin it with different pins. Even now he hadn’t taken them off; his hair had just come undone, unraveled, and was now touching the floor. And Nik didn’t pay any attention to it, didn’t take care of himself, didn’t take care of his beautiful hair.

“What are you wearing?!”

Kors saw that Nik was wearing the clothes of the unclean ones again. His leather trousers were visibly frayed at the knees, on the outer sides there was a wide strip of lacing, it seemed, in three rows, one to the other, and maybe more, with some complex intricacies of the unclean ones. Probably, it could have been beautiful once upon a time… but now it was torn, tied somehow into sloppy knots with protruding dangling ends. Moreover, the trousers were sewn over the edge in some places. Kors saw a rough seam under the knee. On the thigh, a torn flap was roughly fixed by lacing, so that the hole was still visible, and through it and loose lacing, Nik’s tattooed thigh was visible, and also it could be seen that he was again without underwear. A short vest was put on his naked body, barely reaching the waist; it didn’t cover his sunken stomach. In general, it was not clear from what pieces it was sewn, on the shoulders there was the shabby fur of some animal, which apparently died at the dawn of time, it was slightly puffed up. Boots were lying nearby, again boots of the unclean ones, with heavy soles and a blunt cape, adorned with a million iron buckles and clasps to the very top.

Kors couldn’t resist:

“What kind of tattered stuff are you wearing? Did Valentine sleep on it at the doorstep? It’s just that you wouldn’t give such shit to your beloved Verniy.”

“These are my clothes.”

“No, Nik, these rags can’t be called clothes. What is that shabby fur on your shoulders?”

“This is my blouse!”

“Is it knitted?”

“Kiss my ass!”

“Nik, this is the edge, don’t wear it ever again. I gave you good clothes! Or do you now refuse to wear them?”

“No, I don’t refuse. Not only your clothes got wet,” oddly enough, but Nik tried to explain.

He carefully peeled the band-aid from his neck, slightly touching the indentation from the healed “well” with his fingertips, and put the needle of the refilled syringe under the hoop of the golden collar.

Kors turned away.

“Nik, let me help you with your treatment,” he said a little later, waiting for a moment.

“I'm fine.”

“Are you taking the medicines I gave you, the ones the doctor gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still have any left?”

“I have.”

“Do you remember that they need to be taken regularly at the same time?”

“I remember.”

“I still have some left to share with you?”

“I told you, I still have some!”

“Can you show me your face?”

“What? No!”

“Show me what’s wrong with your scar!”

“Nothing.”

“What happened to your face?!” Kors couldn’t hide his excitement.

“I said nothing!”

“Is the scar inflamed? Yes? What’s happening? You bandaged your face too much. What’s up with your scar?”

“Nothing.”

“But you bandaged your face for some reason!”

“I got a tattoo on it, okay? Is that all?”

“What?!” Kors froze, shaking his head. “No, no, this is stupidity. Are you kidding? You’re lying? Is this a stupid joke? Don’t joke like that, I’ve always said that humor is not for you!”

“Leave me alone!”

But Kors couldn’t stand it:

“I can’t take it anymore! My strength is gone! I’ll break all your needles! I’ll pour out all your colors! Do whatever you want with me! Blind, humiliate, beat me, I will endure everything, but I will deprive you of the opportunity to disfigure this body, at least now, while we are on the road!”

“I can do it with my own syringe if I want to. Soot, urine and a needle from a syringe – that’s all, I don’t need anything else,” Nik answered calmly, not reacting in any way to the fact that Kors switched to screaming.

“No! You can’t lie, I’m about to die! Be honest! I can’t stand it if you get more tattoos! I still can’t come to terms and accept that your face has a brand on it, like cattle!”

“Yes…”

“People write with ink on paper, and not on the forehead, it would be better to learn this!”

“I can write on paper!”

“Yes?”

“Yes!”

“I didn’t notice that you wrote at least something at least once on one piece of paper during this time!”

“It’s just that you never asked me to write. I can write!”

“Come on, write then!”

“Now I won’t write anything for you!”

“You only know how to write on your forehead! Admit it, you can’t lie to me, were you joking about the tattoo?”

“Yes, I was joking,” Nik agreed.

Kors breathed a sigh of relief.

“Don’t joke like that anymore, it’s stupid. Poison began to come out of your scar, as Cassiel had warned? Answer me!”

“It constantly flows from it,” Nik reluctantly answered him and bent to his leg, slightly lifting up his trouser leg.

“Oh,” barely calming down that Nik was joking about the tattoo, Kors got nervous again, “what is flowing out?”

Nik didn’t answer, carefully examining his leg.

And even now, in spite of everything, Kors wanted to educate him, give Nik a good beating and properly punish him for all the nonsense that he had done. For the fact that he never really obeyed, stubbornly doing everything as he liked. For blinding him yesterday and letting him be hit. And for the way he looked now: sloppy, dirty, dressed in God knows what. Ill, with a bandaged face, but at the same time stubbornly continuing to stick to his line. He jokes stupidly, knowing that he will cause a surge of emotions in Kors with just the word “face – tattoo.” He sniffs with his ringed nose and constantly brings his hand to it, touching and tugging at it.

Ignoring Kors and apparently not listening to his emotions and thoughts about himself, Nik tried to put the needle to his leg. Kors looked at his black tattooed skin and the wide black band of the “bracelet” that went around his ankle just above his foot. The shameful slave stripe was clearly visible and stood out, even though the patterns of other tattoos. Something like sharp teeth was closely adjacent to it. Teeth on the leg, well, only Nik could do such a thing, Kors was no longer surprised. To destroy himself every second was an irresistible craving for his son and the Demon. Slightly turning his foot to the side, Nik injected the drug into the inside of the leg just above the ankle.

“What is the number of injection you have already given yourself?” Kors asked. The way with which maniacal persistence and without respite Nik poured substances into himself began to frighten Kors.

Silence. He was stoned. Already in the morning. How to make him obey? Unfortunately, no way.

“Do you want to overdose again?”

“No,” Nik slightly shook his head in a negative gesture and lay on his back, “I also need water, only another, not rain.”

“Again?!”

“What do you mean again?”

“Didn’t you say you injected it in your Limit?”

“So what? How much time has passed?”

“No, it will never end!”

“It will end. Soon the body will stop rising.”

“I won't survive if you die!”

“I have been dead for a long time.”

“Nik! Why are you making me emotional?! You endlessly take emotions out of me! Stop eating me!”

Nik lay motionless, his good leg bent at the knee and his bandaged head slightly thrown back, a tousled braid with beads woven into it sweeping the floor beside him. He didn’t answer Kors, as if he didn’t hear him.

Without thinking, in some kind of frenzy, Kors rushed to him, and, grabbing his forearm, jerked him up from the skins. Nik quickly glared at him from the gap between the bandages, but said nothing, remained seated. But that look… Kors’ insides went cold.

“Don’t touch,” said Nik very calmly, and this made his voice sound even more terrible.

“I’m sorry…” Kors whispered, but immediately shouted again in despair:

“How long are you going to torment me, Black Demon?! Seeing how you destroy this body, I am dying together with you!”

“Go away, I won’t touch you, you yourself are rubbing the skin around me!”

“What?”

“You come to me. Why are you here? Do you understand what you are doing now?”

“Yeah, damn it, I can’t get off! Knowing what kind of rubbish you are, I still can’t! You tied me well! Insatiable fucked up rubbish!”

“Go away,” Nik said.

“But you’re sick!" Let me help you!”

“I am the Demon that eats you and torments you, who took away all the people close to you and ruined your life, whom are you going to help?!”

“My son.”

“Your son? A lame fool with a shameful… brand on his face? He doesn’t deserve you. Get out!”

“But where should I go?”

“Wherever you want!”

“Are you letting me go?” Kors didn’t believe it.

“No. I won’t let you really go, don’t hope. Just get out now, otherwise I’ll beat you, I’ll just kill you! Don’t you believe me?”

“You said that you didn’t stop loving me, despite my imperious character, and now it means that you still stopped loving me? Don’t you love me anymore?”

“What the difference?”

“If you reflect my feelings, hear how you torment me. You’re torturing me!”

“Do you think you’re suffering? Am I torturing you? Well, then you still have a lot of surprises waiting for you! And now get out!”

Nik suddenly began to wheeze in a strange way, as if he was choking, and made a sharp movement of his head, as if he was about to vomit, grabbing his throat. Kors watched in horror.

“Get out and don’t show up until I call you!” Nik croaked.

“You’re Chasing me like a dog?”

“Don’t provoke me!”

“I don’t give a fuck! My son lives in you! You are in symbiosis with a human, and you are half a man, you feel bad! What’s wrong with you now?!”

Nik jerked sharply again, holding his throat, as if he was trying to expel something from himself, one, two, three times. Kors remembered too well how sick and nauseous he himself once was.

“Nik, you have overdosed! Damned addict!”

Nik fell back, covering his face with his hands.

Kors was shaking:

“Nik, you’re being mean to me because you’re essentially a child! You have not developed as a person and personality! I have seen you! I have seen how your so-called mother treated you! Little lonely abandoned boy! Nobody needs an orphan, defenseless from the cruelty of adults and their arbitrariness. Dependent on them in his childish weakness. This creature tortured you! Kept you in some kind of closet, as if in a grave!”

“A-a-a-ah…”

“I’m really sorry! You began to take drugs and alcohol in order to forget about the dislike and indifference of others. You never found a core inside yourself, you didn’t even learn how to comb your hair! You are a lost man of the social bottom, and you will never be able to rise to a normal society without support! Drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, perversions, cruelty, lack of honor and dignity…”

“Stop doing that!” Nik literally howled and covered his ears with his hands hidden by bandages.

“Look at yourself! Who do you look like? Who have you become? You stopped listening to me and instantly rolled back into the pit. Without my support, attention and education, you immediately sank down and gave up. Not a couple of weeks have passed since our quarrel, and you again rolled back to where I pulled you from! Instead of stupidly devouring me, evoking emotions and feeding on them and on my blood, you should have obeyed me! A bad demonic essence merging with an equally bad human, why don’t you listen to your father? If you listened to me, everything would be fine!”

“Leave.”

“Okay, I’ll leave, but you know…”

“Get out already, fuck you!” yelled Nik, and, abruptly sitting on the skins, he threw one of his heavy unclean boots in Kors.

Kors barely dodged, rushing out the door.

He was very offended.

Chapter 4

Trembling with resentment and anger, Kors was standing at the threshold of their camping tent in the drizzling rain. In lace and a half-buttoned luxurious camisole, decorated with buttons with precious stones and gold embroidery on the lapels, in pants made of expensive suede leather, and at the same time barefoot. He looked down at his feet. A true black, noble gentleman, the elite of the World without a sky, standing barefoot in the mud, in a rain puddle. Kors didn’t remember at all when the last time he walked the earth barefoot, probably, it was in his long forgotten childhood. And now he was in complete shock. He was simply kicked him out, barefoot, in the rain, in the mud, not really dressed, and dressed not at all according to the situation. Nik kicked him out like a dog! He doesn’t listen to anything! He threatened to kill Kors! And where should he go now? But he won’t come back, if so! To ask to be taken back, to ask for forgiveness, to crawl on his knees again – no!