by Lee Isserow
“This is a bloody wild goose chase,” she grunted, casting for a door.
“Only because we're tracking where he's been. . .” Rafe muttered.
“What?”
“We're tracking his movements, not the. . . not its movements.”
“We don't know what it is.”
“But somebody does, somebody has to. Reva said she had seen something like this, others will have too.” He threw his hands in the air, calling through to Tali, adding Ana into the call as it connected.
“Tali, need a favour.”
“You always need a bloody favour!” she grunted.
“It's for me,” Ana added.
“Oh,” her tone shifted instantly, the malice replaced by friendliness. “Of course, what can I do to help?”
“Need a hand with a mystical ailment,” Rafe said, with a sigh.
“I've told you a thousand times, there's no such thing as magickal viagra.”
“Wish this were a joking matter. . . Ana's friend is sick. Something I've never seen before.”
“What kind of something?”
“Writing on the skin, possibly sexually transmitted.”
“Ew.”
“Results in explosion.”
“How big an explosion?”
“Blood everywhere, floor to ceiling.”
“Right. . .You'll want Doctor Phileas Damocles,” Tali suggested, pulling the name from her encyclopaedic memory of Circle and Circle-adjacent operatives.
If this was any other time or place, and any other case, Ana would have laughed out loud at the name of the physician. But she was all out of laughter.
Chapter 35
Spirited words
Mallory was overjoyed when Ana returned. Having spent the afternoon alone was not healthy, it had sent her in a spiral of fear and anxiety. As if that wasn't bad enough, her anxiety was magnified every time she found a new piece of writing on her skin, which just served to dig in the knife a little deeper, reminding her of Peter, reminding her of his explosive death.
The three of them took a door through to the waiting room of the doctor's office, which to Mallory's surprise looked just like any other doctors she had been to. There was nothing about the place that indicated anything mystical or magickal was going on.
“The doctor will see you now,” said the buxom redhead receptionist, before they even had a chance to announce their arrival, let alone offer their names.
They walked through the door she indicated to, and found themselves alone in an examination room. Mallory glanced over to the other two, but they seemed just as perplexed as she was.
“Where is. . .”
The three of them turned back as receptionist left her desk and walked towards the examination room. Her fingers danced through the air as she stepped across the threshold, pulling a glamour back. Her dress folded in on itself, curves of colourful fabric being replaced by the straight lines and dark grey of a suit. Large cleavage becoming alabaster white, straightening out, buttons appearing between the breasts as the flattened into a white shirt. The woman's long, straight red hair began to curl up, losing its colour as it coiled into tight springs that went wildly in every direction.
“Phileas Damocles,” she said, her voice shifting from high pitched and ladylike to deep and masculine. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance!”
“I. . . but. . .” Mallory started, but she couldn't even begin to process the thoughts that were swirling around her head.
“Keeps the riff raff out,” the doctor explained.
“Do you spend all day out there?” Ana asked.
“When I'm not with a patient, yes.”
The three visitors exchanged glances, but none of them decided to question the logic of the gender-shifting physician.
“Now, what seems to be the problem?” he asked, reaching to his lapel, finger grasping for something that wasn't there. His eyes darted down, then to the left, and the right, a look of consternation on his brow. He closed the door, revealing a white lab coat hanging on a hook, and gestured towards it. The coat lifted itself through the air and came towards him, slipping on to his arms.
Now that he was fully dressed, he reached to the lapel, and his fingers met with the mouth of a pocket, from which he retrieved a pair of thick, round spectacles. He placed them on his nose and turned from Rafe, to Ana, to Mallory, staring at her with big owl eyes.
“You're the patient, I take it?”
She nodded, anxiously.
“Well, let's have a look at you. . .” He leaned in closer, eyes narrowing as he looked her up and down. “I think I see the problem!”
“You know what it is?” Ana asked.
“Yes! Your friend here is frightfully mundane!” He stood upright, a triumphant smile fixed on his lips.
Ana glared at him. “We know she's mund―we know she's not magickal. . . That's not the problem―”
“It is rather a problem, I'm not an ear nose and throat doctor. . . My speciality is―”
“Look at this,” Ana pointed to the writing on Mallory's neck.
'This doctor is weird'
“Well, that's just rude!” he shrieked.
“I'm not doing it!” Mallory protested.
“She's thinking or feeling it,” Ana explained. “And frankly, she's not wrong.”
The doctor pursed his lips, ruminating on the malady. His hand navigated to the lapel of his lab coat, and he pulled out a set of spectacles, placing them on his nose in front of the pair he was already wearing. Once again, he leaned in to get a better look at Mallory.
“Hmm. . .”
“Is that a good 'hmm'?”
“I've never hmm'd a good hmm in all my life, young lady.”
“Have you seen it before though? Do you know what it is?”
“Not know, per se, but it does seem familiar. . .”
He turned on the spot, white coat trailing behind him, whipping through the air, sending examination equipment flying across the room. He strutted over to a bookshelf and began looking at each of the titles in turn, starting at the left and moving to the right.
Ana stared at him incredulously as he reached the end of the shelf, which only had fifteen books on it, and started going through them all again from the far left, through to the right. He moved to the left yet again, and half way through a third cycle of the books, reached for one. “There we go!” he said, tugging the tome from the shelf.
As he removed it, the cover changed, from a bright modern medical book to the dark brown leather of one that was old. An arcane text with a title on the spine that Ana couldn't even begin to attempt to pronounce.
He placed it on the counter, and opened the thick cover. The smell of musty old paper filled the air―the same aroma that was filling Ana's house from all the books Rafe had lent her.
He reached to his lapel and pulled another set of glasses, balancing them haphazardly on top of the other two sets already on his nose.
“Ah yes,” he said, with no sign of a smile. His eyes narrowed yet further as he turned pages, scanning the content with an increasingly furrowed brow.
“What's the book?” Ana whispered to Rafe.
“In English? Translates to something like The Book of Ethereal Venereal Diseases.”
“When this is done,” she growled, “I'm going to shout at you about how terrifying that is as a concept, and how you should have told me such things exist on day one.”
“It's best to practice safe sex and not think about it.”
“I'm still going to shout at you.”
“Ah ha!” the doctor declared. “Ferocibus Dictis!”
“Angry penis?”
“Spirited words,” Rafe translated.
“Also known as Interior Scriptura, the inside writing. . . very interesting indeed. One's inner most thoughts come to the surface, quite literally. On the skin. . . Marvellous little blighter, very clever.”
“Don't give my friend's disease compliments.”
“Consider i
t not so much a compliment as a great respect. It's rather rare that one speaks one's mind, and the Scriptura does exactly that. Until, you know, it runs out of space―”
“And the victim explodes? Yeah, we saw that for ourselves. What's the cure?”
“That's where things get a little complicated. . .”
“Complicated how? There is a cure, right?”
The doctor sighed. “Well, the Scriptura is rather fiendish. . . If caught early enough, it can be passed along via sexual contact, and is then no longer harmful to the initial carrier. The ink simply melts away from the skin and―”
Ana grabbed Mallory and pulled her close, planting a long, deep kiss, forcing her tongue into her friend's mouth until it became mutually agreeable.
“Oh my!” the doctor shrieked, pulling off all three pairs of glasses and glancing to the floor, cleaning each of them in turn.
Rafe tried his hardest not to stare, but found himself doing so anyway.
“Ah, if I might. . .” the doctor offered. “You see, that's not quite as. . . helpful as you might think. . . and although you seem to be. . . enjoying yourselves. . . It's not actually going to cure anything.”
Ana pulled away from Mallory, who had a stunned expression carved on her brow. “Wow.”
“Yeah, they all say that,” she scoffed. “What do you mean it's not going to cure anything―you said sexual contact. . .”
“Yes, but, you see. . . it's a rather heteronormative condition I'm afraid. . . As open as we might be to all manner of sexual inclination, I'm afraid the Scriptura is a little more. . . bigoted, shall we say. And also requires a much more. . . intimate connection.”
“So, you're saying we need to find some poor, hapless, handsome shlub for Mallory to. . . infect?”
“No!” Mallory barked. “I'm not going to infect anyone! Not on purpose! That's horrible!”
“I'm not going to let you die!” Ana shouted back. “You're going to have great sex with some beautiful bastard, pass the damn thing on, even if I have to physically get him hard and shove him inside you myself!”
Mallory stared at her. “I. . . know you mean that in the nicest possible, friendly, life-saving way. . . but you've gotta know how creepy that sounded.”
“I'll do it! You're not going to bloody die!”
“You really think I can just have sex with someone? Let alone have sex to kill someone in my place?!”
“He'll do it.” Ana said, pointing at Rafe.
“Excuse me?” he coughed.
“He knows the score, knows what he's in for. Gives us more time to work on the cure.” She swallowed over a lump in her throat, trying to ignore the shivers that were running up her spine at her own suggestion.
“I can't. . .” Mallory protested.
“He's perfect,” Ana croaked. “Not some hapless guy, you know him, so it's not awkward―”
“It's pretty awkward,” Rafe muttered, resulting in Ana jabbing him in the ribs.
“But you. . .”
“I care more about you than anything. Any-damn-thing. I'm not losing you, I'm certainly not letting you bloody explode everywhere!” She glared at Rafe. “You're doing this.”
Rafe couldn't believe what Ana was asking of him. “Can I be the voice of rationality and―”
“You're. Doing. This.” She spat out the words, a steely insistence in the tone.
Silence hung in the air, as Rafe and Mallory stared at Ana. She had made the decision for the two of them, whether they wanted to have a say in the matter or not.
The doctor slipped on a pair of glasses, cleared his throat, then put another pair of glasses on. “There is also the matter of. . . whether young miss here has had the condition too long. . . If it's already started scribbling on her bones and organs, we might―”
“We're not too late,” Ana insisted. “We're not.”
Rafe glanced from Mallory to Ana. He knew it wasn't what she wanted, that was clear from her expression. It was the pre-emptive grief talking, the overwhelming fear of losing another loved one. She had lost so much in all the time he knew her, and the idea of being without the one part of her old life she still retained, the only friend she had left, it was skewing her judgement.
He wanted to object, not only because there was no way to know whether intercourse with Mallory would actually cure her. He was hesitant because he knew that if he agreed, things would be different between the two of them. . . Not that they were intimate―not that he believed they could ever be intimate―but there was something about it being a possibility that had spurred him on, and he couldn't bare the idea of losing that.
The idea of him having casual sex with her friend, even if it were to literally save her life. . . he couldn't imagine that Ana would ever look at him, let alone feel the same way about him, ever again
Hesitantly, Rafe glanced over to Mallory. Her gaze was skirting the floor, afraid to look in his direction. In his periphery, he could see Ana's eyes thick and glassy with tears. A part of him knew it was because her friend's life was at risk. But another part, one he didn't want to admit existed, was hoping those tears were for him, for them. For what could be, and how 'what could be' would instantly become 'never going to happen' as soon as he was intimate with her best friend.
“Fine,” Mallory muttered, meeting Ana's gaze. “Let's get this over with.”
Reticently, Ana conjured a door. She knew it was the only way to save her friend, even though her stomach was tying itself in knots at the prospect.
The doctor waved them off with a goofy expression. “Don't forget not to use protection!” he shouted.
It felt to them like he had been waiting all his life to turn that phrase on its head, but it didn't bring a smile to any of their faces.
Chapter 36
Mixed emotions
Ana sat in Rafe's living room, trying to deal with the wealth of mixed emotions that were running through her head.
First her thoughts took her one way, to the positive: her conscious mind insisting that this was the only way to save her friend's life. Then the thoughts shot back around to negative: her subconscious nagging at the idea of Rafe, inside Mallory, sharing something so intimate together. She couldn't help but fear that what the two of them had, as platonic as it was, would change as a result.
She was already feeling different towards him, not hating him as such, but there was a bubbling sense of betrayal that she couldn't justify. There was no way to justify it, not truly, as this was her damn idea. Yet the feeling was there, simmering away, no matter how much she tried to quell it.
Staring into middle distance, she could picture it in her head, her oldest and dearest friend naked, those words over her skin, yet more writing appearing, spelling out her most intimate thoughts whilst he slipped inside her. She could imagine his scarred, muscular body writhing against Mallory's thin frame, her hands tracing the leylines across his body. His breath on her neck, his tongue meeting hers. . .
She tried to kill the narrative playing round and round in her head, remind herself yet again that this was what had to happen. It was the only way Mallory could be saved.
But if she was completely honest with herself, as much as she didn't want to admit it, she was jealous.
Chapter 37
Weirdest of weird
Rafe and Mallory sat at the foot of the bed in silence, a solid two feet of space between them. Both staring at the floor, neither quite able to look the other in the eye.
Mallory coughed up words, in a hoarse voice. “We should probably―”
“Yeah. . .”
“Do you want me to. . .“ She motioned taking her clothes off.”
“No. I mean, I can. . .” He leaned over towards her, then pulled back. “We could just, y'know, stay clothed. . .”
“Slip in and out.”
“Exactly, get it done sooner rather than drag it out.”
“Yeah, that might be better.”
“Less intimate.”
“Less confusing.
”
“Functional.”
“Yeah.”
“It's not that I don't think you're attractive!” he blurted, trying his hardest to not offend her.
“Same, yeah. You're obviously attractive too.”
“It's just that I don't, y'know, want to complicate things. . .“
“Of course.”
Their gazes dropped back down to the floor, silence returned to the room.
“So we should probably. . .”
“Yeah. . .”
Neither of them moved. Neither of them knew how to proceed in the weirdest of weird mating rituals they had ever experienced in their lives.
Chapter 38
An aide
Ana had been waiting for close to twenty five minutes before the door opened. She was surprised―and also relieved―that it was over so quickly.
The thoughts she tried to suppress had been assuming that they would be at it for a while, and although she tried her best not to think about it, Rafe looked as though he had stamina.
“This is more complicated than we thought,” Rafe said, as he stepped out of the bedroom, walking across the room, going through the shelves, as if looking for something.
“Complicated?”
“It's. . .” Mallory started, trying to find the words. “We're having trouble with, y'know. . .”
“You can't get it up?”
“More than that. It. . . well, neither of us really want to do this, so it's. . . well, it feels a little forced, and neither of us are comfortable with that. . .“
“It's to save her life!”
“It's still forced,” Mallory spat. “And as much as Rafe is a lovely guy, you making us have sex is. . . a little rapey, for both of us.”
“It's to save your life! You don't have to enjoy it, you just have to do it.”
“Yeah, that's why Rafe said it'd help to have a. . . uh. . . an aide.”
“Like, an assistant?”
“Rafe, What did you call it?”
“She knows it as the haunted condom.“