Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

“Stay away from me! Stay the fuck away!” Wild, silvery eyes glowed in the dark from where Barletta crouched in the corner of his cell. “Don’t touch me!” A sob ripped from his chest, and he clawed at the wall, his back hunched further than the last time I’d fed him. Dried blood coated his nails, the tips of which had broken off with his scratching. His body held long, red marks–slices he must’ve somehow made in his skin.

Frowning, I scanned over the room, finding nothing but the mattress, the Bible he’d requested on my last visit, and a small, plastic comb filled with hair that’d fallen out. “How did you get those marks?”

A whimper echoed in his cell, as he shook his head and scratched at the walls harder than before. “Please,” he whispered in a shaky voice. “Please don’t hurt me.”

At that point in the infection, I’d have expected more hostility out of him. More desperation for escape. The cowering in the corner was something new. “Would you like some water?”

He breathed hard, clearly scared shitless for some reason, as he clung tighter to the wall, his eyes shifting.

Impatient, I strode toward the hose and filled a cup halfway, just like last time. When I returned to his cell, he didn’t bother to come closer when I held the paper cup through the bars, so I set it down on the floor and stepped back.

He took an uncertain lurch forward, then halted, eyes flitting from me to the cage, as though gauging the distance. His behavior reminded me of a small animal, like a rodent.

“I’m not going to touch you. I’ve no idea why you’re so skittish, all of a sudden.”

Scrambling on all fours, he drove forward, swiped up the cup, and gulped back the proffered fluids. A long scratch ran the length of his wrist, from the bottom of his palm to his elbow, as if he’d toyed with the idea of cutting deeper.

Again, I scanned over his cell in search of whatever he might’ve used to cut himself, but still only found the comb as the sharpest object.

Just as before, he lowered the glass on a gag, and palms flat against the concrete, he retched. Blood-tinged fluids expelled from his mouth, splashing onto the concrete. The movement in the puddle directed my attention to about four worms wriggling there.

Moaning, Barletta backed himself to the wall again. “Fuck! Fuck!”

“Tell me how you got those cuts on your skin.”

“Are you crazy?” A cross between a sob and laughter reverberated off the walls. “You put them there! You crazy son of a bitch!” He dug his fingers into his forearm, scratching and scraping, until the first red drops appeared. “Just like you put the worms in me. It was you!”

Self harm wasn’t unusual in the infected, though only to a certain degree, and as I examined his flank, I supposed it was possible that, with some impressive twisting, he could’ve done it to himself. With the hallucinations he suffered, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d gotten caught up in a scene inside his head, of something attacking him that way.

As much as I would have loved to end his suffering and get on with harvesting the toxin, though, it was important to let nature take its course.

And it seemed nature had already decided the man’s fate.

Staring down at the papers strewn across my desk, I tried to make sense of Barletta’s behavior. He’d begun to enter the stage of aggression in his illness. The effects of the organism tended to make its victims combative and violent, but his earlier reaction baffled me.

My cellphone rang and, recognizing the number as one of my contacts, James, a fellow Rook I’d gotten in touch with a while back, I answered it. “Yes?”

“I have to admit, Devryck, this task of finding Angelo DeLuca was probably the most challenging yet.”

“How so?”

“There’s really nothing on this guy. Spent some time in prison. Seems his family cast him out for being something of a loose cannon. Had a few jobs–odds and ends. But his last known location was New York about four years ago.”

Four years ago. Great. The asshole could’ve been anywhere. Easing back into my chair, I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a groan.

“Not sure if you saw the news a couple weeks back?” James asked, but as of late, the barrage of political bullshit, along with my own preoccupations, had kept me away from television. “He was apparently involved in the murder of some bigwig investor out of Massachusetts. Guess his name was smeared in blood on the walls.”

“You got a picture of this guy?”

“I got an older mugshot of him. Looks like he was imprisoned for some drug charges a while back. He was also charged with human trafficking, but prosecutors apparently dropped that because the victim was unwilling to cooperate.”

I blew out an exasperated breath. “So, you have nothing recent?”

“Aside from that murder a couple weeks ago, no. Sounds like he fucked with the wrong person, and my guess is he got himself killed.”

My feelings were mixed on that. Partly relieved that I wouldn’t have to track him down and deal with dragging him back here, but also disappointed that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to kill him myself. “If you could send over the mugshot, that would be great.”

“Yeah, no problem. Sorry I couldn’t scrounge up more than that, but it sounds like the FBI can’t even track the asshole down. I’m thinking he’s dead.”

“What a shame that would be.”

“Yeah. One less scumbag in the world.” He had no idea the level of scumbag the guy was. That I suspected he’d been the one to ultimately murder my brother. The one who’d tormented Caed with a blowtorch.

How miserably I could’ve made him suffer for it.

“I appreciate your efforts. If you manage to come up with anything else, don’t hesitate to contact me.”

“Always. Take care.”

On those parting words, I hung up the phone. Fuck. Was probably for the best that I hadn’t found him. Getting involved in FBI matters would throw a bullseye on my back, and I certainly didn’t need that right then. Not when I already held a man skating the edge of death. It would only be a matter of time before Barletta succumbed. Besides, I’d done enough to exact my brother’s revenge, hadn’t I?

The motive for Caedmon’s kidnapping had been clear to me all those years ago, when I’d first learned of how important my father’s discovery was, and to what lengths he’d gone to protect it. The ability to cure the incurable amounted to millions of dollars. Even in the incapable hands of criminals, the science could’ve been sold. Replicated. If not for the protection of The Rooks and the university, I’d have probably been just as much at risk as my brother had been. It was a shame my father had never acknowledged the ruthlessness, the depraved lengths others would go in order to claim his discovery. Perhaps if he’d extended the protection offered to him, my brother would’ve still been around.

For the sake of not drawing any attention to myself, I decided to pause my pursuit of Angelo DeLuca. I’d soon have a dead body to deal with, anyway.

Barletta was enough. For now.

My phone buzzed again, and I looked down to see a text from Lippincott:

I hope to see you at this evening’s gala.

Groaning, I sent nothing more than a thumbs up in response. I hated the fucking dog and pony show of academic funding. Why the rich couldn’t quietly hand over their money without the need for caviar and banal conversation was beyond me.

Before packing up and heading back to my campus quarters to get ready for the evening’s crap crusade, I decided to check on Barletta one more time.

The quiet, as I made my way down the dark corridor, marked the first sign that something was wrong. The sound of my footsteps against the concrete should’ve surely triggered his moaning and pleas. It was the blood pooling out of the cell into the corridor that had me slowing my steps. I finally reached his cell, where he lay slumped to the side, his back pressed against the bars of the cage. Frowning, I withdrew the key and unlocked the door, rounding his body to find an absolute macabre scene. One mangled eyeball lay popped from its socket against his cheek. The other had been gouged, completely mutilated, oozing blood down his face. Clutched in his hand lay a crude looking tool–a sharpened piece of stone in the same aged shade as the surrounding walls. I flicked on the light of my phone and trailed it over the cell, not finding any divots or broken stone. How he’d gotten his hands on it left me puzzled. At the same time, it made sense how he’d managed the scratches on his body, even if finding him this way didn’t add up. Suicide of this manner was extremely uncommon. The worm sought water to mate and reproduce. To live.

I thought back on the coroner’s report for Lilia’s mother, and how she’d slit her wrists. Was this evolution? Or was something sinister at play?

As I crouched beside him, the stone in his hand snagged my attention again. Earlier, when I’d offered him the drink, I’d noticed a long scratch on his inside wrist. From the angle he faced, he would’ve tipped the cup back with his right hand. I’d also seen him write with his right hand. Double checking, I twisted his wrist to confirm the scratch there. Yet, the stone to gouge his eyes rested in his left hand. Just a theory, on my part, but it seemed his right hand was dominant and would’ve been the one to gouge his eye, had he done it to himself.

“Fuck.” I had to cast my inspections aside and hustle, as the parasites would only stay contained within the body for so long before escaping for a water source.

Grabbing a stretcher parked at the opposite end of the corridor, I hustled back to the room and awkwardly hoisted Barletta’s body onto it. A glance at my watch showed it was just after seven. Enough time to deal with Barletta and head to the dreaded gala.

I wheeled Barletta to a separate room down the hallway–one that housed a large, silver hydrotherapy tank I’d purchased. A hose sat just inside of it, and I cranked on the water, allowing it to fill. I flipped on the naked bulb overhead, then slid Barletta’s body from the stretcher and into the tank, where he slumped to the bottom. The water rose quickly, swallowing his legs, arms, and, finally, his face. Angling my cellphone’s flashlight over the water, I watched as, without fail, small black objects wriggled out of his mouth and nose. A few down by his legs had undoubtedly emerged from his anus, somehow finding their way out of his clothes. Over a dozen parasites emerged from the corpse, darting around the water in frantic search of a mate. His belly shifted with more of them.

As I stared down at the horrific scene, I couldn’t help but think of how far I’d come from the boy who’d cowered in the supply closet, hearing voices of the dead. The frightened teenager who couldn’t stand to be in the same room as a corpse. It was my brother’s demise that had pulled me from those fears and into the macabre fascination I’d developed with death. My curiosities had led me into that cold refrigerator, where my father kept bodies he’d been asked to examine. And it was there, staring into the eyes of one of the decedents, that I imagined my brother laid out. The visual had somehow humanized the monsters inside my head, and I no longer feared them. The more I learned about the human body, the less I heard those terrifying voices, until at some point, they faded entirely.

Only a blissful silence.

After a good couple of hours, most of the worms will have escaped into the water, which I would collect and allow them to mate with the other worms I’d harvested. I’d then take him to the autopsy room and open him up, to collect brain and liver samples, where the toxin would be most potent for isolation and purification.

Each time the worms infected, their toxins became more specific for human genetics, and the elixirs became more effective. The effects lasted longer.

Unfortunately, I was running out of test subjects. I’d been able to justify tracking down the men who’d taken my brother, but with news of Angelo missing, I could only pray that the latest elixir was successful. Otherwise, I’d have to seek another victim.