Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1523765.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Hannibal_(TV), LOVECRAFT_H._P._-_Works
  Relationship:
      Will_Graham/Hannibal_Lecter
  Character:
      Will_Graham, Hannibal_Lecter, Alana_Bloom
  Additional Tags:
      dub-con, Gore, Cannibalism, Necrophilia, erotic_birth, Bestiality,
      attempted_suicide, dark_rituals, Creepy, really_creepy, Mating, Monsters,
      Lovecraftian
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-04-26 Completed: 2015-04-16 Chapters: 6/6 Words: 15221
****** Night Brood ******
by FireFleshAndBlood
Summary
     Hannibal has sussed out the cause of his patient's distress. Too bad
     Will Graham doesn't want his help. Too bad that Hannibal has
     discovered his secret. Too bad that the darkness at the edges of
     Will's vision is closing in and he's getting hungrier by the day...
Notes
     Welcome to a really creepy fanfic.
     I'm going to slap you all with a big fat warning. Here it is; this is
     a really messed up story even by canon standards. The tags are for
     the whole story, not one chapter so I wanted to give you all a heads
     up in case some of you wandered in without reading them. Let's get
     out the laundry list - dub-con, gore, violence, mating, breeding,
     erotic birth, mpreg, cannibalism, bestiality, necrophilia (bones
     only), attempted suicide, dark rituals. Probably a six chapter long
     feast.
     Phew. That covers it all I think. If any of that makes you want to
     run screaming from this fic, I can't blame you. But if you are in for
     the Lovecraft and the horrible goings on, welcome to a very
     satisfying (dark) place. Enjoy.
     Or not.
     Reach me on dreamwidth
***** Chapter 1 *****
                                  Night Brood
 
                                       I
 
It's Will's sixteenth birthday and unlike most teenagers who are preparing for
an evening out or a party with their friends he's in his room alone thinking
about the horrible night to come.
 
In his hands is a ritual robe and on his nightstand a book full of words he's
supposed to say when the darkness comes to the ritual grounds and Will would
give anything not to be himself at that moment. To not hear his father say
'it's time, Will' in the kindest way he could muster.
 
He wore a matching robe, that was what had stood out to Will. They had gone out
to face the horrors as a team but only one of them had made it through the
night.
 
It was supposed to have been Will who was touched and judged by preternatural
standards. He still suffers guilt over it years later though it's irrational
and stupid.
 
They lead him to a stone alter in the middle of the woods. He barely remembers
the walk there but he remembers the way they disrobed him until he was nude,
the proffered sacrifice shivering and waiting for the worst.
 
If there is one thing that has remained a constant in Will's life it's a
conscious niggling fact in the back of his mind that he's a surviving martyr.
Something meant to suffer in the stead of someone else. It wouldn't take a
psychiatrist to figure out why it developed into a full blown pathology in his
twenties. Or why it led to a brief incarceration in a psych ward.
 
Especially not when they find out what happened next.
 
Will laid down on the stone alter scared and cold but knowing what was supposed
to happen wouldn't be so bad. And yet, it all went bad. Terribly. In a way none
of them could have predicted.
 
Half the town had turned up in their own dark robes and had begun chanting in a
circle around him. The creature from the stars would fall down slowly, touch
Will in the centre of his forehead and then he'd either go mad or accept
whatever message came with them. It was his coming of age ceremony. His right.
A gift from chthonic space.
 
But that wasn't what happened. Instead the clouds rolled in and the voices
around him grew warped and strange and then the screaming started and didn't
stop.
 
A full twenty-four hours later Will was wandering naked and blood soaked in the
hills, frozen to the bone. The officers from the local jurisdiction who usually
ignored the cultists in good faith (tradition went a long way in the south)
couldn't ignore what they had found. And what they had heard.
 
They wrapped him in blankets and took him to the hospital and didn't tell him
for days that his father was missing. Half the village was, and the rest...
 
They had been spread all over the hills in pieces.
 
Something had gone terribly wrong.
 
“Did you give up religion before or after the revelations at the hospital?”
Hannibal asked.
 
“I gave it up the moment my father put on a dark cloak and told me what my
'heritage' was and how proud I would make my absent mother if I was chosen to
ascend,” Will said, “the lousy codeword for human sacrifice.”
 
Will was watching the snow slowly falling past the window in Hannibal's office.
Hannibal regarded his new patient with the utmost curiosity. The man in his
thirties was a marvel, a survivor, and curious in his habits, words and deeds.
Empathetic to a fault, miserable from a tragic past but not beaten by what he
had seen, things lesser minds would have been wrecked even considering.
 
The cases the FBI had him consulting for were the grimmest, most mysterious and
most brutal. As though now they knew Will couldn't break they would bend him as
far as he would go.
 
Hannibal longed to see him break. He wanted to see what would happen. But not
today.
 
“And now you profile monsters,” Hannibal said.
 
“In some ways it's better than being a cop,” Will said, “in others, it's
worse.”
 
“Far less emotional attachments working in the police,” Hannibal politely
supplied.
 
“It wasn't a problem before,” Will said.
 
“The man you killed arguably deserved his end,” Hannibal countered, “but not
his daughter.”
 
“Her case is being debated,” Will said, “the cannibalism is the 'x' factor.”
 
“Devouring human flesh opens doors inside,” Hannibal said, he knew this
information firsthand, “that cannot always be closed.”
 
“So it goes,” Will said quietly.
 
“They won't let you see her,” Hannibal said, it wasn't a question but a
statement of fact.
 
“They're keeping me away,” Will said, “because they don't really know what
doors I've opened.”
 
In his mind palace Hannibal could imagine the young Will Graham arms extended,
gloriously nude on a foreboding hill whipped wild by the wind. His pale arms
would have trembled in the moonlight and his expression would have wavered
between frank terror and confusion. The grey slate of the alter would have made
Will's skin the more porcelain and translucent and his blue eyes would have
appeared all the more innocent. The unknowing sent to sacrifice.
 
“Or what you will open,” Hannibal said.
 
As Hannibal observed Will Graham the air around him shimmered with a sinister
power. And suddenly as the dank smell on Will's clothes washed over him,
Hannibal began to understand where Will's fears came from and the origins of
the doubts the FBI had concerning his state of mind. It became apparent that
Will was desperately trying to avoid a known inevitable event but instead it
was bleeding out.
 
Hannibal quietly moved towards Will and inhaled above his left shoulder. What
he caught on the high notes of his scent was a spectacular surprise.
 
“Did you just smell me?” Will said, incredulous.
 
“Difficult to avoid. I really must introduce you to a finer aftershave. That
smells like something with a ship on the bottle,” Hannibal said.
 
Will Graham smelled like blood and darkness, like a hellscape wrapped up in
pomegranates and death. Like the fresh clean scent of broken earth made ready
for limitless graves. Perched in Hannibal's mouth was the name he would call
when the gates were opened. Ia, Shub-Niggurath the Black Goat of the Wood with
a Thousand Young!
 
“I keep getting it for Christmas,” Will admitted.
 
They were still in Hannibal's office, their safe space away from the FBI and
Will's difficult cases. But with Hannibal's discovery the sacrificial alter now
stood in the space between them as though it were real. With blade, bells and
flame. The opening of the circle would begin soon, the calling of the four
corners. The ritual would begin and then the gates would open, releasing the
desperate truth Will was hiding.
 
Hannibal was more than willing to help speed up the process.
 
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
     And the first warning appears.
     Bestiality, fantasized non-con and murder. Yeah I'm starting hard out
     of the gate with this one (and it's probably the least disturbing
     thing in this fic).
     Four more parts of pure filth and weirdness after this. Enjoy!
 
                                      II
Most days Will taught at Quantico unless Jack pulled him in for a special
assignment. The last few days he had been pulled from the classroom to hunt a
man who made angels out of demons. Or what he had assumed were demons, Will had
his own set of devils who looked nothing like the Judeo-Christian variety. He
had been requested to give his final word on the morgue report, usually he was
in Jack's office but this time he was leaning up against the cold, sterile
walls in the examination room.
 
The body had been laid out in the morgue earlier and examined by the forensics
team Jack preferred. Will was on nodding terms with Katz but preferred to keep
his distance from the other two. Zeller had taken an immediate dislike to him,
whether it was from a superiority complex or his sixth sense working a little
better than the rest, Will couldn't say. Price was far too obnoxious for his
own good, well meaning though he was.
 
It didn't come as much of a surprise to Will that Elliott Buddish was not just
a possessed man but a sick and dying one too.
                                        
“It wasn't a brain tumour,” Zeller said excitedly, “it was a tiny Shoggoth
growing in his head. Which explains our slow, creature induced insanity. He
must have swallowed some eggs. I found a black, fatty mass in his brain with a
lot of eyes and a real gross slime around it. Luckily, it died when he did.”
 
Zeller pushed the petrie dish over to Katz and she looked at it with disgust.
 
“Well,” Katz said, “I'm glad I skipped breakfast.”
 
“We'll call that one a parasite,” Price replied, “on the medical record.”
 
“What do you think,” Jack said to Will, “a parasite, or pathology?”
 
Will considered the creature, he considered his own miserable transformation.
He recalled the righteousness in which Eliot Buddish murdered his victims.
Their bodies transformed into beautiful angels who would save him from the
demons lurking just under his skin.
 
“A little of both,” Will replied.
 
He didn't mention what he saw when he had found the body. That Buddish had
found him out in his dying breath in a barn in Baltimore. That his soul though
poisoned by the monster in his brain was still a golden shimmering light
against Will's all consuming darkness. That Buddish's noble sacrifice had
indeed freed him from the beast that was consuming his mind. To a heaven or a
hell exactly, Will couldn't say. His sight didn't extend that far.
 
The unconventional psychiatrist might be helping Jack feel better about putting
him out in the field, but Will wasn't sure how he felt about it.
 
“Where are you heading now?” Katz asked him as she marked the cause of death in
a file.
 
“Home,” Will said.
 
The door closed behind him with a flat thud, muffling any offers for drinks or
company. Will observed the empty hallways and the quiet hush that extended over
Quantico when most of its students and instructors had gone home for the
evening. For some it might be lonely. In Will's case he assumed it was better
to keep his distance so no one's expectations would be damaged when the
inevitable time came.
 
Will returned home to utter darkness. His house had once been his boat on the
water, his illusion of safety. It still was in a way but as Will could see the
swirling nexus above it and feel the darkness growing inside him, it had become
more of a foreboding crypt to hide in. There wasn't any real safety anywhere
from himself. He didn't need to turn on a light or wait for his eyes to adjust
to the deep forest night, another way in which he was changing. He walked from
the car to the dark front door without turning on a single light.
 
The average person never noticed the unseen world, it took trauma or a lot of
training to clearly begin defining the sixth sense into categories plain enough
to make sense. Most people who had the gift or the training could tell there
was something strange about Will but not precisely where the strangeness was
coming from. But Will had known, he had figured it out during his stay at the
hospital.
 
When he watched the walls ooze with blood and the windows bend themselves into
impossible shapes and could hear dark thoughts coming through the grates above
his bed, he began to form his thesis. His body was a portal and darkness was
leaking out. That was his conclusion as he pondered the ritual that had marred
his adolescence and the strange happenings after.
 
The dogs greeted him when he got inside and barked excitedly while their tails
wagged. To a normal person they were normal dogs, maybe a little shabby due to
the hard effects of having been strays for so long. But to Will's hyper active
senses he could see the shadows growing around them. They were big, dark and
black like enormous shaggy phantoms with glowing red eyes. Hell hounds,
monsters, demon beasts. And Will knew it was his fault, his influence over a
number of years that had made them this way. That they had grown in
intelligence in ways normal dogs don't, that they had also developed a taste
for fresh meat that went beyond simple canine fondness. Would it have been
better if Will would have left them to starve or was it better to make monsters
out of normal animals so they survived? He didn't have a direct answer.
 
Will loved dogs supernatural or not, so he had fed them, kept them warm and
slept next to them in his bed. Even if it was a poison to be near him, they
weren't afraid the way other people could be. Will wished he had the same ease
with his transformation that they had with theirs. The clock was ticking though
it moved on its own, warped time and Will was well aware that the question of
what he would become was too wild and untamed to risk allowing. Upstairs in an
unused storage room he had a box in a drawer that was filled with a lethal dose
of morphine. After much consideration, he had decided that if he had to go,
that was the easiest and least painful way to do it. So he kept his backup plan
even as his mind became haunted with urges he couldn't name and his head filled
with murders that didn't belong to him but made him hungry for more. His forts
were eroding around the few kind things in his life that were rapidly
transforming into the unsavoury.
 
He would help the FBI catch killers and teach his classes and pretend for as
long as he could that he was normal, even while knowing he wasn't.
 
After feeding his pack, Will undressed and laid in his bed and whistled for his
dogs to come near. They climbed around his bed and snuffled his hair. He
laughed a little, their breath made him ticklish. He felt their hot tongues
touching the backs of his ears and neck.
 
He once thought it was a grotesque loop, that the comfort he wanted from his
pack had overwhelmed what they wanted. But now he understood. They thought he
was a beast because he was becoming one and they wanted him the way any animal
would want their own.
 
What would his unconventional psychiatrist have to say about this, Will thought
as one of his dogs crawled on top of his back.
 
He could feel the claws sink into his skin and his breath hitched, it made him
feel good. Made him feel alive. It had become a perverse ritual, maybe even a
mockery of a ritual that had happened already that Will couldn't remember. He
wasn't entirely sure what was real, anymore.
 
His newest stray Winston had ambled off the bed and watched with curiosity what
was happening.
 
“It's ok Winston,” Will said, hoping his voice soothed him, “I'm ok.”
 
It wouldn't be long before Winston would want his turn too. His breath hitched
as the monster he had called Buster became more than a little dog, a
monstrously huge demonic wolf. Its paws pressed Will's shoulders into the bed
and its heavy weight nearly crushed his spine but he wanted it, he arched his
back.
 
There was something inside of him that wanted the sexual abuse, that longed for
couplings in dark underground places and forgotten pagan hills. The imaginary
being in his head didn't ask for consent, it just took with the wild abandon
only a beast could have. The dog panted and made a strange growling noise as
its leaking cock searched for Will's orifice.
 
It wasn't a gentle entry, it was a full thrust that had the animal seated
inside of his body. Will's back arched and he clenched his sheets in his fists.
 
The penetration had really hurt at first when Will hadn't been entirely sure
what was going on but it had eased as his insides morphed and changed along
with the rest of him. He could take a rough pounding from his animals without
too much discomfort aside from the first, hard fuck. In fact, he had started to
enjoy it a little too much for his conscience.
 
“Slow down,” Will groaned, “it's too fast.”
 
He moaned and panted as he was filled up by a demon dog's cock who wouldn't
care or listen to his begging. It made him feel animal, it made him feel whole.
 
It made him imagine his rape at night in the fields as a teenager when
everything had gone dark and the taste of blood had lingered in his mouth. When
he had woken up powerful and alive, his village devoured and his skin ravaged.
He wasn't entirely sure anymore that his fantasy hadn't been the truth.
 
Will growled low and dangerous as the dog fucked him, it's hips moving and
thrusting deep inside (but not deep enough, he wanted to be pushed so far he
went over the edge, until he was nothing but beast). He could feel the teeth
scraped by his tongue that had grown in instead of his molars after they had
fallen out one day in the shower. They were sharp like a predator's.
 
Will screamed as the dog knotted him and growled in his ear as a warning to
keep still. He felt the fleshy protrusion spread him wider and lock inside. He
shuddered from his scalp to his toes, yes yes yeshis vile instincts whispered,
it's almost what we want.
 
While the mutant Buster adjusted himself and made Will grunt in discomfort, the
other dogs who had been transformed began circling the bed restlessly. Will
could see Winston watching them from across the room. He was proud the poor dog
hadn't dove under the couch to hide.
 
In the safety of his home and trapped under an animals knot, Will indulged in
the urges his body was screaming at him. He thought about killing. He thought
about killing Hobbs who was, at least, not a very nice person and perfectly
deserving of murder. The gun he had used in reality would be unsatisfying, this
time he would use his bare hands. He thought about Abigail watching while he
ate her father piece by piece. Will considered how the blood might feel running
down his face as he roared with animal rage and power.
His body burned.
The blood was all he could think about. The blood was all he became.
 
 
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Notes
     Here we return with more disturbed happenings. This is where the
     necrophilia tag comes into play, and more bestiality. We're halfway
     through and almost at my favourite chapter...yes, it will get even
     weirder.
                                      III
 
Creating an invitation that would entice a person who was disinclined to accept
one was no small task. It took a great deal of work without the subject being
in any way aware they were being slowly softened to relent. Hannibal had risen
to the occasion and his unofficial patient Will Graham had finally agreed to a
meal at his home.
 
“I've never seen his house,” Alana said, while she helped Hannibal prepare the
vegetable accompaniments, “his address isn't even on file.”
 
“And that disturbs you?” Hannibal said.
 
The bouquet garni he had prepared would go well with a stew made from the flesh
of a particularly rude exotic animal trainer that Hannibal had the misfortune
of meeting at a gala. The trainer hadn't been kind to his charges during his
career, Will might appreciate the poetic justice if he were aware.
 
The meal would be special and although the ingredients were not beyond
Hannibal's exotic fare for his guests, the purpose behind it was entirely new.
 
“Yes,” Alana said, “it's clear that he's deeply troubled over something but I
can't seem to figure out what. I want to be his friend but he acts hostile to
everybody for reasons I can't begin to fathom. It's a defence mechanism that
much is clear.”
 
Her dress was beautiful, Hannibal noted. The royal blue brought out her dark
brown hair and pale features and her face though in a mieux of frustration was
lovelier for it against the dramatic colours.
 
“I want to be his friend,” she said, “not just out of a professional curiosity
but because I do know what he does at the FBI and how demanding that can be on
a person. Someone should care, besides you.”
 
“Are you under the impression that Jack Crawford doesn't?” Hannibal asked.
 
The conversation was going into a very interesting place. Hannibal had no doubt
that his colleague had already confronted Agent Crawford on the matter. She
must be invested indeed in Will Graham's welfare to have even considered it.
 
“We talked,” she admitted, “he wasn't very forthcoming. I know Will's medical
history is spotty, the event on the hill is a matter of public record, at least
parts of it. There's a certain professional distance an investigator has to
take before they can see the situation clearly. But with that distance comes a
passivity towards the victims.”
 
“Will is a victim,” Hannibal said, as he arched his brow, “of the bureau?”
 
“I don't know,” she said, “I was hoping you could help me sort that out.”
 
“I'll try my best,” Hannibal said.
 
Their guest arrived to dinner with his eyes downcast and his jaw set in
stubborn resistance. His grim eyes landed on Hannibal (what a thrill it would
be to watch the man's becoming, to see him flounder and tumble into a madness
so deep there's no way out), and then Alana. They softened slightly.
 
“Good evening, Dr. Lecter,” Will said, his Louisiana accent deliciously
hovered, “thanks for the invitation, though I still maintain that I'll be poor
company.”
 
“We'll decide that for ourselves,” Alana said.
 
Will smiled hesitantly and allowed Hannibal to take his coat. It's obvious the
agent is smitten by his colleague but Hannibal can't blame him in the
slightest; Alana is charming and beautiful and seemed very far away from the
horrors of the world despite her intimate understanding of them. Hannibal took
the coat to the hallway closet and once he was sure no one was watching,
pressed his nose gently to its folds. He smelled the cheap cologne, the poor
laundry soap and the scent of motor oil. But he also smelled Will's skin
underneath of it all, quivering and fresh. He smelled the dogs, a strange acrid
scent. He conjectured what Will had been up to. Hannibal smiled at the thought,
a real smile. The kind with teeth.
 
At the dinner table Will was quiet and Alana careful. Hannibal swirled his wine
in its glass, a beautiful Oddero Barolo and is slightly amused the way Will
drank his in quick gulps with little time between to let it breathe. A whiskey
man if he ever saw one, forced to make do. It would not surprise him to
discover that Will had a drinking problem off hours. But lately, Jack had been
keeping him busy and away from his bottle.
 
“Why won't they let me see her,” Will asked.
 
The conversation Alana had been skillfully avoiding the entire night had
finally made its appearance.
 
“The first person she talks to can't be you,” Alana said, “she needs a safe,
clinical environment-”
 
“With all the occult protection the FBI can provide,” Will said bitingly, “if
she is changing there isn't anything anyone can do about that. The Old Ones
will come back and collect their own protection of the FBI or not and if she
isn't released to the wild, things could get ugly.”
 
“I know,” Alana said, “and I understand how you feel. But the fact remains her
status is in question right now.”
 
Will froze under her concerned gaze unsure if she had guessed his situation or
was merely making unrelated allusions. His shoulders tightened, then gently
relaxed. All of these things took only a few seconds but Hannibal watched the
performance eagerly.
 
“Justice is a night light,” Will said, his voice shook slightly, “at best. If
the FBI serve her up as part of a ritual to appease the Old Ones no one would
complain. That isn't justice, it's an execution.”
 
“She could survive the test,” Alana said, “she's smart and resourceful.”
 
Will laughed coldly, “no one really survives the test Dr. Bloom. They either
live or die in various screwed up ways.”
 
“You survived,” she said quietly.
 
Will had taken his napkin wiped it aggressively across his face and then threw
it in front of him as though it had been the one to slight him.
 
“I think we're done here,” Will said.
 
Hannibal had been waiting for this moment. The look on Alana's face was one of
perplexed shock.
 
“Will!” she cried.
 
Will had staggered to his feet, his arms trembled as he gripped the table white
knuckled. Hannibal rose himself, he knew what would come next.
 
“If you want to lure someone into your experiments-” Will said it viciously, as
though he could tear the word down as much as its owner, “next time tell them
in advance so they won't have to bother to show up.”
 
Will stood too fast and his body toppled over against the wall. Shocked and
embarrassed, Will made an effort to right himself while Alana leaped from her
seat to his side.
 
“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice filled with concern.
 
Will flushed charmingly along his neck when her hands touched him.
 
“I'm fine,” he croaked out.
 
“Wine on an empty stomach,” Hannibal said, “is never recommended.”
 
“I'm leaving,” Will said.
 
“You can't drive like this!” Alana said.
 
“I'll drive,” Hannibal said, “if you'll allow me an hour to allow the alcohol
to leave my system.”
 
“No,” Will said, “I know the way your kind works, Dr. Lecter. One drive and
then it's a favour in return and I'm right back where I started with you.”
 
Fortunately, Will was referring to Hannibal's predilection for psychiatry and
not his other, more unscrupulous hobbies.
 
“I don't think you have a choice,” Alana said, her lips in a thin line.
 
She was loveliest when she was angry, it was really quite becoming, though
Hannibal was thankful he hadn't often been on the other end of her ire. She was
a strong colleague and wasn't to be underestimated, her means were occasionally
underhanded despite her insistence on ethics being the highest of priorities.
How quickly they went when her ambition was threatened. All of Alana's little
contradictions made her so intriguing. And Hannibal had no doubt she would help
him, in the end.
 
“All right,” Will acquiesced miserably.
 
The sweat was beginning to collect under his collar, Hannibal could smell it.
 
“Sit, Will,” Hannibal directed, politely.
 
Will Graham did as he was told and slouched like a boy caught at school for bad
behaviour. His expression was mulish, taciturn. Hannibal quietly loved it.
 
“Thank-you,” Alana said.
 
She gave Hannibal a look that spoke of her immense worry for Will's mental
state and then quickly flicked her gaze back to the man who was glaring at her
now.
 
It took both Hannibal and Alana to manhandle Will into the Bentley. His legs
were unsteady and the flush across his skin though beautiful, was also
feverish. Once in the vehicle, Alana bade them goodnight and headed towards her
home.
 
“I hope you're up for the drive,” she had said to him, “I heard Will lives
somewhere near Wolf Trap.”
 
With slurred speech Will gave Hannibal power over him and the ability to find
him anytime he liked. They began their long journey through Baltimore, towards
the edges of the city and into the dark streets lined with more and more trees.
It was well into the country before Hannibal checked on his companion.
 
“How do you feel?” Hannibal asked Will.
 
“I feel,” Will appeared to struggle for the right words, his forehead wrinkled
in consternation when he found them, “good. Very good.”
 
Hannibal looked at him fondly, his wayward charge.
 
They arrived at the house. There weren't any lights on outside but Hannibal
hardly expected there to be. Will stumbled from the car and turned on a dim
porch light as Hannibal followed.
 
“You don't have to come in,” Will said, his pupils blown wide and his voice
mildly slurred, “if you don't want to.”
 
“I'd very much like to,” Hannibal said.
 
Hannibal entered Will's home and he was assailed by two scents; the
overwhelming smell of dog and the stale smell of death.
 
The dogs were evident, where the other smell came from had Hannibal looking to
the ceiling and imagining beyond the bare bulb that hung there. The house was
in disrepair, it would have begun as a restoration project but quickly would
have become destructive. It was a natural effect from attempting to build a
lair without knowing anything about suitable locations or even how to begin.
 
The sound of creaking upholstery suggested Will had slumped into a worn chair.
When Hannibal pressed his fingers to Will's throat he came alive again with a
gasp as his eyes fluttered like butterflies.
 
“You drugged me,” Will slurred.
 
“The meal on your plate was the same as everyone else's,” Hannibal said
reasonably.
 
“I know you drugged me,” Will said with emphasis, “I don't normally feel like
this.”
 
“And how exactly do you feel?” Hannibal asked.
 
“Drugged,” Will snapped, he licked his lips then said softly, “I feel like the
scales have fallen from my eyes.”
 
“Concerning?” Hannibal said.
 
“What's happening to me Dr. Lecter,” Will said, “I can't tell where I begin and
where this thing ends.”
 
Will Graham's pale fingers twitched listless against the worn arm of the chair
and Hannibal knew they were the motions of a man who wished desperately for a
gun between his hands.
 
“I hardly know what you're talking about,” Hannibal said, “you seem perfectly
normal to me.”
 
“I'm not normal,” Will said, voice cracked, “somebody normal doesn't...”
 
Will stuttered and then his eyes closed.
 
“Go up to the second floor and see,” Will whispered.
 
Hannibal held his expression of concern on Will while the other simply closed
his eyes and waited. The possibilities were intriguing, Hannibal quietly made
his way towards the unfinished stairway. Up the stairs he went into the dark
until he reached the landing. There was an ugly light bulb on a string of wire
and Hannibal turned it on with a flick of the switch. The walls when
illuminated were an ugly yellow with worn flower wallpaper that licked and
curled along the room. Dampness had stolen the life from the pattern but there
was something unsettling about its kaleidoscope design. There were two rooms
down the hall, a derelict bathroom that was filled with plywood and then
another empty bedroom. Hannibal flicked on the light and he couldn't contain
the jump his eyebrows made as they recognized their contents.
 
There were tax filing boxes, the kind lawyers used to store their papers,
filled to the brim with great quantities of bones. Hannibal eyed their contents
and picked one up out of its box, it was a human femur. There must have been
hundreds crammed into the tiny room, clean and white like they had been boiled
or scrubbed. Hannibal could recognize the handy work from medical institution,
they must have been stolen from their original hiding places and brought to the
house piecemeal over a number of years.
 
It isn't a surprise that the nest hasn't been built yet as Will must have been
compelled to collect the bones without any idea what to do with them when he
brought them home, besides hiding them from those who would take them away.
This is why his address wasn't in his files and only dispersed among the few
FBI credentials he needed to be inducted into the field. One visitor who
noticed his unusual 'collection' and they'd send him in for an evaluation,
something neither Will nor Jack could afford to have with unusual cases piling
up and only one agent able to discern them.
 
From the boxes Hannibal selected a long, tapered thigh bone. It's slim, the
size of an adolescent female, something Hannibal thought Will would like. He
brought it downstairs where Will was still sitting with a glazed, far away look
on his face.
 
“That's quite a collection,” Hannibal said, “it must have taken you many years
to achieve it.”
 
“I can't stop taking them,” Will said, “I don't even know why I do it. Every
damn hospital and morgue in the city is missing...parts. I spent months scoping
them out, slipping them away.”
 
“I'm curious how it gratifies you,” Hannibal said.
 
He placed the slim thigh bone on the glass table and sat next to it, letting it
hover between them both as a physical object and a concept.
 
“Desire actualized,” Will said, quietly.
 
“Afraid of being actualized,” Hannibal said, “what sorts of terrifying desires
are in you, Will?”
 
Will licked his lips.
 
“Come to my bedroom,” he said, “and find out.”
 
The bedroom was behind a half wall past the kitchen. The bone was clutched in
Will's hands and he strode with purpose to his bedside table. Hannibal noticed
a few dogs came over to his side and he offered them a hand to sniff. They
butted their noses against him and then sat in a neat pile on their dog cushion
across from the bed.
 
The beside drawer was yanked open and Will took out a squeeze container of KY
lubricant. With an indifferent look, he picked up the bone and slathered it
with the jelly.
 
“Allow me,” Hannibal said, as Will reached for his own fly.
 
Deftly, Hannibal unbuttoned Will's trousers and peeled the denim slowly down
his legs. Heady musk from days spent sleeping in sweat and a general unwashed
male smell assaulted Hannibal's nose but the other, deeper odour was much
sweeter and more pleasant. Will began to tremble, possibly from embarrassment
or shame. They both knew what was going to happen and both wanted it, though
Will's need had become desperation from a place he was barely aware of.
 
“Lie down,” Hannibal said.
 
Will shakily took his shirts off, dropped them and sat uneasily on his bed in
his faded boxers.
 
In the strange glow of a single bed lamp Hannibal took in Will Graham's glazed
countenance, each breath that passed through his lips and the sweat that clung
to every inch of his skin. The mattress was faded and the sheets stale from
weeks without being changed but it was beauty Hannibal saw in Will Graham,
laying on his back his thighs spread, panting and waiting.
 
“I'm going to help you, Will,” Hannibal said calmly.
 
Hannibal pressed his hands to Will's thighs who jolted at the sudden touch. He
helped Will from his boxers, revealing a perfect if shockingly pale male body.
He admired his pleasantly formed penis and testicles, the way the whiteness of
his skin had washed out his flesh until the veins both blue and red could be
clearly seen with so much blood pumping through them. Will was erect but
Hannibal knew attention to that area was not what he wanted.
 
Hannibal picked up the bone from the bedside table and Will watched with half
lidded eyes as he rested his hand on the side of the bed by Will's hip and
gently began to position the bone at Will's orifice. All muscles gave some
resistance, Hannibal knew to go slowly and allow Will's body to adjust. The
greater trochanter would have to slide into him first and the bend would be
challenging but with Will's extreme arousal loosening his internal muscles
Hannibal had no doubt he would be up to the task.
 
“Hannibal,” Will said, in a reverent tone.
 
The sound of his voice trembling was enough to make Hannibal want to do more
than be a passive observer but at this point in time, it was not wise. Hannibal
held back and focused on Will's experience instead.
 
Gently they made it to the lesser trochanter and though it was difficult to
slide the bone in and out Will was already so far gone he might as well have
been on some other planet. Hannibal watched Will's abdomen swell and tighten
with each breath, the muscles covered in a sheen of sweat, his mouth nearly
slack with pleasure. Hannibal glanced back at Will's face and to his delight
noticed his eyes had changed from their ordinary blue to a crystalline aqua.
 
The dogs had begun to swarm around the bed, possibly lured by the smell of
Will's arousal. Hannibal gently removed the bone from Will's body, allowing his
orifice to relax and the greater trochanter to slide out. Will's body shuddered
as each inch was removed his cock bouncing on his stomach his pale flesh
speckled with wet precum.
 
“What's happening?” Will said, his voice thick.
 
Hannibal gently guides Will onto his stomach stroking his hands down the long
pale expanse of his back.
 
“I'm giving you what you want,” Hannibal said, he turned to the dogs, “up to
the bed.”
 
One dog took the lead, obviously the largest of Will's small pack. It expertly
climbed on top of Will who whimpered hoarsely while his mouth slackened and
blood drooled from the edge. He spat two bloody pink pieces from his mouth and
Hannibal had no doubt they were small molars. The spit leaves a trail across
the bed not unlike high arching arterial spray. The dog eagerly mounted Will
who groaned and panted, his harsh breath sending saliva spattering across the
once white sheets in tiny red drops. His spine is a perfect arch to accept the
dog's frantically working hips and while Will's orifice is hidden from view
Hannibal has no doubt it's an angry pink, flushed and full from a rough
opening.
 
Hannibal resisted no longer the desire to move closer. He pressed his hand
gently on the exposed flesh of Will's upper thigh, careful to avoid the dog. It
growled a warning at Hannibal but relented as it encountered no reprimands from
the rival in the room. Will gasped, his body being pleasured by the animal
mounting him with the twin confusion of a more human body caressing him.
 
“Why,” Will panted, his voice stuttered with very thrust, “won't you fuck me?”
 
An admission would give the game away too early. Hannibal said nothing and
stroked along the pale flank that was so tempting.
 
“Beautiful,” he said softly, instead.
 
Hannibal saw the whites of Will's eyes as they rolled back into his head. The
dog rapidly reached climax and knotted itself in Will's transformed body.
Hannibal stroked along Will's sides and watched his hands against the pale
flesh. There was no response, Will's eyelids only fluttered and his body
twitched under the weight of the dog but no more. His skin had changed from an
ordinary healthy colour into a shocking, white sallow pallor. The greens of his
veins were much more visible and to the untrained eye, it looked like a corpse
had been bedded by the demon canine instead of someone very much alive.
 
“Tomorrow,” Hannibal said.
 
Hannibal smiled lovingly at the unconscious form of Will Graham.
 
 
 
***** Chapter 4 *****
Chapter Notes
     Warnings for this chapter are as follows; mpreg, monster sex, womb
     distention, tentacle non-con, monster bestiality non-con and underage
     (teenaged Will), attempted suicide and impregnation.
     I added an underage warning for the whole fanfic, even though it's
     only in one chapter.
     Enjoy!
                                      IV
 
The dogs were fed and the garbage was taken to the box at the front Will's
driveway that he's required to use according to a town by-law shoe horned into
his rural area. The morning sun was high in the sky despite the chill but Will
had known before morning that something had changed because he felt the sharp
teeth grow in his mouth fresh and copper tasting, born from ravaged gums. It
was two days until he had to show up at Quantico to teach unless Jack called
him to assess a new case, which gave him plenty of time. Will had put down
extra food bowls for the dogs and made sure his fridge was mostly empty which
was a far easier task than it should have been, due to poor personal habits and
bachelor lifestyle.
 
Considering his career at the FBI and his studies in psychology (abnormal and
otherwise), Will understood all the signs better than most. He knew he was
undergoing a ritual fixation, which was a common impetus in suicide cases. If
he were to be absolutely cruel, he would argue that at least he had a better
reason than many. There wasn't a question anymore. He was turning into a
monster. His preparations were not out of a genuine desire to die but a
desperation to take back some control before it was too late.
 
“Good boy, Winston,” Will gave a pat to his newest stray as the dog gobbled
down his food.
 
Will had some reservations due to the dogs because they were different now too.
It would almost be worth it to live on with them in the wild. But with all of
the patrols and jurisdictions dealing with monsters that have run amok,
realistically he knew it would only be a matter of time before they were found
and the FBI wouldn't spare canines from execution even if they were protecting
their masters.
 
There were no regrets about the previous night. Will was just glad he hadn't
managed to maul Dr. Lecter to death beforehand because the man had drawn
something out of him, something primal and free. Satisfied that his life hadn't
entirely been wasted on cold cases and pursuing unnameable evil, Will went
upstairs to the spare bedroom full of plywood and took a medical box from a
cupboard and brought it downstairs into the living room. The box had come with
him to training at Quantico, it had been with him during his tenure as a cop
and even has a lonely, underfed college student. It was his emergency kit, the
one thing he hoped he'd have no reason to ever use.
 
As he loaded up the syringe Will thought he heard a car pull in. He knew the
faster he hit the plunger the easier it'd be and he wasn't entirely sure with
his new physiology how much he had to take, he wasn't a doctor. But the dosage
list said it was lethal so he went for it and plunged the syringe into his arm.
He had barely taken it out before it hit him, a hard drug haze.
 
Will watched his dogs as his vision went blurry. And then before going under
he's positive he heard a car door slam. Will tried to remain conscious but
blacked out instead, hopeful that he wouldn't leave the world murdering any
would-be visitor.
 
“Hello, William,” the voice was accented but familiar.
 
Before he could register that Hannibal Lecter was in his house, he sank under.
 
It wasn't Will's expectation to wake up but he did. He also unfortunately woke
up sick as one of his mutts after eating a dead badger in the woods. He had no
concept of where he'd gone except that there was a bucket beside him that he
gratefully expelled his vomit into.
 
“It wouldn't have worked,” Hannibal's voice smoothly told him, “not at a dose
that small after so much transformation.”
 
“What's happening,” Will had barely got the words out before he'd been bent
over the bucket again.
 
“They would have killed you,” Hannibal said, “I can't allow them to do that.
You're a precious beast Will Graham, not to be wasted in the charnel houses at
the FBI.”
 
Will spat the vomit and watched it slide down into the bucket in great black
clots.
 
“I'd argue that,” he gasped.
 
When his body finished expelling everything it could, Hannibal injected him
with something else before he'd had a chance to ask questions or fight back.
Weak as a kitten already, he blacked out again.
 
When Will woke up next, he could tell he was in a barn or a utility building
but not much else. The cold air and the fields he could see through the cracks
in the ceiling had confirmed his suspicions. He crawled onto his fours and
tried to clear the cotton from his head. Despite his best attempts at snuffing
himself out, he wasn't entirely disappointed to be alive but he was
terrifically confused. Dr. Lecter had apparently kidnapped him, taken him to an
undisclosed location and left him there for reasons unknown. Perhaps the good
Doctor wished for an experimental subject but Will had an instinctual notion
that it wasn't the case.
 
“Hello?”
 
A voice.
 
Will considered it. It was a female, maybe his age or younger.
 
“Are you ok?” the voice again, “I can't...hear very well. If you're alive-”
 
It's with a thunderous recognition that Will recognized the voice as Miriam
Lass.
 
“I'm over here,” Will said, the sound from his throat raw and scratched.
 
He leaned close to the edge of the hole and pressed his hand against the wall.
He could hear the movements better from the right side so he assumed that
Miriam was in the tunnel next to his.
 
“Boy, am I glad to hear you,” her voice trembled, “I haven't heard another
voice in a long, long time.”
 
“The FBI searched for you,” Will said, “they didn't think you were alive. When
I get out of here-”
 
“Are you with the FBI?” Miriam asked.
 
Will paused.
 
“I was a teacher,” he said, “but now, I think I'm out of a job.”
 
“I was a student,” Miriam said, “you probably know more about me than I know
about you but that's okay. I'm just glad for some company.”
 
“Me too,” Will said, quietly.
 
“I think I can-,” Miriam said, “oh! I've got it! I can climb out!”
 
“Quickly,” Will said, excitedly, “before he comes back, we can get out of
here!”
 
As thankful as he was for the rescue from his own self destruction, languishing
as Dr. Lecter's prisoner wasn't an appealing prospect.
 
“I can almost,” she said, “make it!”
 
Strange sounds came from the tunnel next to his and he heard a disarming
scraping sound as Miriam made her way to the surface.
 
“Up here,” she said, the voice now echoing from directly above him.
 
Something was dropped from above, it looked like a slimy rope. Will reached out
to grab it but it writhed when his fingers touched it and he became aware that
it wasn't a rescue operation at all.
 
“Shit!” Will said, with emphasis.
 
Despite the poor, fractured lighting Will could easily see the thing above him
wasn't human at all, it had multitudes of eyes and was dripping slime from its
black, writhing mass.
 
“Drat,” it said, sulkily, “you're not human either. What am I supposed to eat?
He never brings anybody here anymore...”
 
It slithered away pulling up its tendrils but Will still clung to the opposite
side, breathing hard from panic.
 
“You're Miriam Lass?” Will said shakily.
 
“I was,” it muttered, as the scraping noises started up again, “but I'm not
really the same person anymore.”
 
“Yeah,” Will said, “right. I can see that.”
 
“It's what he does,” the thing said, “makes you find out what you're really
made of.”
 
“Who does,” Will said, his mind tripping over itself trying to put the pieces
together, “what do you mean?”
 
“Dr. Lecter,” it said, “he's a real nasty one too. Probably ancient, might have
been around even before people were ever people at all.”
 
“He's an Old One,” Will said, brokenly.
 
“Sort of,” the creature shuffled, “I think he's more of an artist, really. Or
what would pass for one in that terrible world. It was really clever when I
thought about it- masquerade as a man and a psychologist, turns people into
their worst nightmares.”
 
“What's his real name,” Will said, “I mean, what's he called by human beings
when he does his work?”
 
“That's the brilliant part,” the monster sighed, “everyone thought he was just
an ordinary, if exceptionally brilliant, serial killer. He's the Chesepeake
Ripper and he caught me when I investigated his connections to a certain
emergency room.”
 
Will felt the world tilt. His last big case, the one left unfinished. And he
had solved it by nearly dying and getting kidnapped.
 
“And what happened to you,” Will said.
 
“He was fond of me,” it said, the voice wavering, “cut off my arm when I was
still- more or less- human and sent it to his old friend. I figured that had to
be Agent Crawford.”
 
“You'd figure right,” Will said.
 
At the bottom of his hole, Will curled into himself and wrapped his arms around
his knees like a lost child.
 
“I wonder about you,” the creature previously known as Miriam Lass said.
 
“And why would that be,” Will said, then continued pressing his head against
his knee caps.
 
“Because the way you act, you weren't even close to human when he brought you
here,” she said, “and you kind of smell like him. So I wonder if you're the
same species.”
 
“We're not,” Will snapped, “not even close. I've never done terrible things to
people without reason.”
 
“Then I guess terrible things were done to you,” it said, “to make you like
that.”
 
Will blinked against his knees. Why did it always come back to that?
 
“Yeah,” Will said, and made no further efforts towards conversation.
 
After several house of uneasy sleep, Will woke up and made use of the nasty
looking bucket in the corner. What would have been much more unpleasant was
rendered tolerable since his body wasn't exactly expelling anything approaching
human waste but instead, a vile looking tarry substance that didn't smell at
all. A small mercy in such a small space to be sure but rather worrying. It was
followed up by the awful urge to vomit and he did, repeatedly.
 
“Everything hurts,” Will murmured, relieved to hear any voice that wasn't
Miriam, even his own.
 
Briefly, Will wondered if the poison had worked itself from his system because
every muscle in his body had decided to ache and he had to curl up into the
fetal position beside his bucket to get any relief at all. His hands were
nearly stuck in a curled shape and his tongue felt heavier than ever before. He
did feel alert, however, which was a small mercy as he heard Dr. Lecter's
arrival quite clearly.
 
The door opened far above him and he heard tools and things being jangled. Once
the shuffling was done, fine shoes clipped along the worn boards that made up
the barn floor until they stopped at the hole next to Will's.
 
“Miriam,” Dr. Lecter said in a kind tone, “I've been waiting for just the right
moment to invite you to dinner.”
 
“What?” Miriam said, surprised, “But-I can't possibly go like this! I'm not
ready to go, yet.”
 
“On the contrary, you've done very well and made remarkable progress. It's high
time you left my care,” Dr. Lecter said, “and travelled more widely. But I
shouldn't be so cruel as to let you free without a last fine cooked meal.
There's a very limited guest list Miriam, just you and I and an old
acquaintance who has made himself a liability in these troubled times.”
 
It wasn't hard to come to the conclusion that Hannibal liked to leave his
charges hungry just for such occasions.
 
“All right,” Miriam said, “but what about him? Is he okay down there? I think
he's sick, I heard him throwing up.”
 
“Will is the unfortunate by product of modern society, he hates what he is.
However, by this time tomorrow,” Dr. Lecter said, “he'll be much improved, I
promise.”
 
From the opening above him Will could see the wall opposite the doorway. The
hulking shadow of Miriam Lass moved itself around above him and then he saw
another shadow that Will knew logically should be Hannibal but it wasn't
anything like the Dr. Lecter Will had known. It was a dark shape, like
something made of black smoke and it had enormous stag-like horns. Red eyes
glowed from the shadow in a way that should have been impossible and Will bit
his wrist so hard he tasted blood to avoid screaming.
 
That night Will curled in on himself as his body wracked itself with pain,
patently aware someone was being devoured by an enormous, monstrous creature
that had once been a human being. He considered the possibilities for escape
and quickly realized he would have to wait for an opportunity when Hannibal
returned for whatever dread purpose he was no doubt planning.
 
Will had always wondered in an abstract way what beings both terminally evil
and potentially billions of years old called fun. His answer while he worked
for the bureau was an arbitrary if highly destructive series of events that
culminated in getting humans to worship en masse and sacrificial orgies. Of
course, Hannibal's interests seemed almost genteel by comparison.
 
“Miriam called you an artist,” Will said.
 
The light of morning had returned and with it, Hannibal Lecter who had scaled
down a thin rope ladder as easily as a cat climbed a tree. Not a shred of the
monster Will had glimpsed at the previous night remained, Hannibal was dressed
impeccably in a plaid suit that Will was sure wouldn't be out of place during
one of their appointments. He even wore Italian leather shoes despite the filth
and grime carpeting the hole Will was languishing in.
 
“She is a very intelligent young woman,” Hannibal said, “and gives me far too
much credit. After all, as any painter will tell you the materials that beget a
work of art are just as important as the final piece.”
 
“I wonder how she can call what you do art,” Will said, “considering what you
made her into.”
 
“I merely opened her eyes to the painting in front of her very own face,”
Hannibal said.
 
Will said, “that may work if we're talking about psychiatry but I'm talking
about- something else.”
 
“I am as inhuman as you are,” Hannibal said, with mild reproach, “in a way,
we're a lot more human than some individuals who wear that particular
designation in the FBI.”
 
“It's a clever disguise for what you do,” Will said, “I think- I knew about you
even before but it was hard to see.”
 
“You didn't want to see,” Hannibal said, “there is a difference because you
have always been fully capable of seeing the truth, even when it's well hidden.
And your empathy disorder is a boon-”
 
“I'm not going to murder anybody,” Will spat, “I don't care what you try and
make me do, it's not going to happen!”
 
Hannibal smiled, it was probably the first time Will had ever seen a real one.
It was a bleak and ugly thing.
 
“I would never ask anything like you to hunt its own food,” Hannibal said,
“that would be insulting. I will provide you with everything.”
 
From inside one of his suit pockets Hannibal pulled out a carefully wrapped
rectangle no bigger than his palm and no thicker than an average steak. Will's
entire body twitched, he could smell the contents.
 
“Take it,” Hannibal said, holding it out to him in cupped hands.
 
It was some kind of ritual offering, Will could tell and he shouldn't take it.
But he couldn't help himself, he felt like he was starving to death just laying
there, without moving. If he ever wanted to get out of the hole, he had to
conserve his strength. So he went for it, quick as could be and snatched it
from Hannibal's hands.
 
Unwrapped it was as Will had suspected, a fine cut of raw meat. It hadn't
smelled like any animal Will had ever tried and it was bloody and sodden as
though it had been purposefully butchered to keep the blood in when usually it
was drained away. The first bite was the best and the rest Will gnawed
viciously like an animal denied food for ages. All too soon, the small square
was devoured and Will's throat began to close off.
 
“I can't-,” he gasped, “can't breathe!”
 
In the blink of an eye Hannibal was there to help him. He unbuttoned Will's
filthy, flannel shirt and helped him wriggle from his trousers and the rest of
his clothes. Finally the air touched his skin and Will felt a keen sense of
relief. His skin had begun exuding a slime and the dirt and waste fell from it
as though it was a natural repellant. Mud couldn't cling to his flesh or
anything else, he writhed in the moisture at the bottom of the hole but still
flinched when Hannibal reached out to touch him.
 
“It's extraordinarily rare that someone involved in that kind of rite ever
survives the process,” Hannibal said, “and it takes years to awaken again after
the first time. Do you remember what you did in the woods so many years ago?”
 
Will squirmed on the ground and tried to remember.
 
“After they laid you out on the stone table there must have been several beasts
that came calling,” Hannibal said, “how they would have used your body to sate
their crude lust. It would have been terrifying to recall, worse to remember
every detail of your transformation afterwards.”
 
With complete horror Will felt the stirrings of a memory snapping at his mind.
 
“And such a memory you were gifted with as a boy,” Hannibal said, “it's no
wonder you wiped it all from your head and tried your hardest to be as ordinary
as possible. Then everyone would have thought it was simply a terrible rite
gone awry, even when the bodies were found.”
 
He couldn't have.
 
“Out in those woods alone your infant children died,” Hannibal said, “lost
without their mother. You abandoned them when you returned to human life that
night and suffered ever since from a guilt impossible to explain. But the
maternal instinct that was denied merely laid sleeping. The dogs were close but
not quite enough, they began to change.”
 
On hands and knees, Will tried to crawl away. He couldn't go very far since the
hole was only a few feet long.
 
“Come closer, Will,” Hannibal said.
 
The voice speaking to Will was warped and changed and Will panicked, knowing if
he looked behind him he'd see a Hannibal more monster than man. His head
pounded with memories scrambling to get out but he didn't want to see...he'd
never wanted to see.
 
Will turned his head. His vision exploded and the Stag-Man blurred and warped
in front of his eyes as though his visual cortex couldn't have hoped to keep up
with what his mind was interpreting.
 
“Come closer.”
 
It was a hum in his head. Will got down low to the ground and writhed as his
skin oozed and bit his own tongue hard when he felt his body literally open up
in a deeply personal place. His tongue then split down the middle and snaked
between his sharp teeth. His face must have been a mess of pale slime and blood
and pink coloured spit. He was terrified. That thing was moving towards him,
its blurred form taking on a more solid shape. It was phantom and it was solid,
like smoke and darkness and red, evil eyes.
 
“Closer,” it whispered in a thousand different voices.
 
The Hannibal that had worn the suit was no more and in it's place wasn't the
stag-man from before but a new, fiendish looking beast. An enormous raven
coloured stag.
 
No matter how hard Will clawed at the rocks and dirt that made up his prison,
he couldn't make purchase and climb out.
 
With a sound that was closer to an inhuman scream than an animal one, the
gigantic black feathered stag mounted him. Its hooves cut into his back and
forced his body to bend. Will's face was pressed to the filthy ground and his
mouth tasted like his own blood as it scrambled to gain its footing on Will's
slipper skin.
 
Unbidden from the deepest, darkest parts of Will's mind came memories that were
frighteningly similar.
 
Nude and scared he waits for them and they come, from the darkest part of the
stars. Gigantic crawling monstrosities.
 
Will groaned as the raven coloured stag finally climbed on him sufficiently
enough to press Will into a receptive position for its smoky, black tendrils.
They writhe into him slowly, thoroughly opening up the wet, vile space created
earlier.
 
He thinks he's going to die but that's not what happens to him. They hold him
down and with appendages Will can't even describe they penetrate him in every
open orifice they can find.
 
It was supposed to be a scream that came from his throat and not a lustful
sound that was inhuman and strange echoing in his ears. His back arched and he
knew what to do to encourage the beast to mount him harder, he'd had a lot of
practice with his dogs...and before.
 
He's filled with their slime, choking on it and he screams and writhes and
tries to get away but they keep coming, more and more of them until it's an
orgy of writhing masses and Will can barely see his own millk white skin under
the wriggling green mass.
 
“Hannibal,” Will groaned from under the monster's weight.
 
It's the last human sound he uttered before his tongue split its last solid
length and Will found himself unable to utter anything approaching words at
all. He felt what passed for a stag's penis enter him harder, deeper from
behind in a wild thrusting motion and he knew with clarity that his body wasn't
like an ordinary man's at all anymore because he could feel it stretch wider,
what was once his human anus and rectum had been changed into a warm, liquid
oozing womb for innumerable hideous offspring he'd be sure to produce in only a
single day. And that thought sent his body convulsing backwards and squirming
hard against the feather soft fur to get more length into him. As Will torqued
his body as much as he could, he finally managed to sink hard all the way down
to the base.
 
They won't stop and Will doesn't want them to after a while. What they've done
to him is unspeakably awful but they fill him up and make him like it and after
a while they don't have to force him to do anything anymore.
 
The creature screamed a horrible, inhuman noise. It filled him up with
voluminous quantities of black tarry substance that spilled down Will's legs in
a sticky torrent. And then his body convulsed with it, an ecstatic climax that
shook Will and made his abdomen ripple until he felt it into his bones.
 
He couldn't stop himself if he wanted to and when they finally, finally let him
go he's so used and hungry and full of wriggling babies...
 
His womb was so full it was slightly distended. Will wasn't entirely sure if it
was all semen or a mix of the creature's fluids and Will's own blood but it
felt like the only thing that mattered at all, anymore.
 
But miraculously as he feels his teeth growing sharper, there are all of these
people just standing around in robes, stock still, waiting for him to start...
 
 
***** Chapter 5 *****
Chapter Notes
     I wish I could offer a reasonable excuse why this took me so long.
     Anyway, there's one more chapter left after this. Please be aware
     this chapter has erotic birth, bestiality, more monster sex and blood
     and gore. I hope you've enjoyed this surreal descent into a monster
     Hannibal/Will relationship.
 
                                       V
                                        
The hole was only the beginning.
 
The rapidity of the transformation and how it effected his instincts was
something Will would have loved to write a paper about if it were happening to
someone else. Instead, the nightmare was happening to him.
 
Only a few days spent in the hole and Hannibal released Will to a deeper
interior laboratory inside the barn. There was a bed in the corner, some
buckets graciously left for Will to use (the disgusting tar was something he'd
never get used to, he wondered if all monsters expelled that way) and there
were other gifts, like books to read and a constant horrible sound that began
at the back of Will's brain and spread to every nerve if he even contemplated
going outside.
 
“Hormonal leashing,” Hannibal calmly explained to him, when he saw Will's gaze
quickly flit towards the door that rapidly closed and vacuum sealed.
 
The meat Hannibal brought Will daily was clearly not an animal, it was human.
And he found himself torn each time between rejecting it and devouring it until
his mouth filled with saliva and his body quivered with need.
 
“Eat as much as you like,” Hannibal said as he delivered the daily 'meal' with
an amused smirk, knowing Will wouldn't be able to fight the temptation to
snatch the flesh from his hands.
 
Will couldn't stop the way he held the meat close to himself and ate quickly
either, as though he imagined it would be taken away by some other creature.
After all, technically Hannibal was predator and Will was predator; in the wild
that meant competition.
 
“i see the caterpillar and I can whisper into the chrysalis,” Hannibal said,
chuffed at Will's latest battle between instinct and rationality, “but it
always surprises me what comes out.”
 
Will would have answered with a bitter retort but his mouth had become
different and he hadn't been able to form human words at all for the last few
blurry days. He shrieked at Hannibal instead, a nasty, bleating sound somewhere
between a lizard-like hiss and a dolphin's screech. It was harsh to his ears,
it would likely deafen human beings nearby. Worse yet, it always came out
sounding like a pathetic plea for help.
 
“I have made you a new home,” Hannibal said, “we'll go there, tomorrow. After
our liaison.”
 
The thought of being filled up with breeding fluid made Will's heart race and
thighs clench eagerly even while his very much rational mind was disgusted.
 
Hannibal undid his suit jacket, then his tie and sat them both on a wooden
table dyed maroon from all the washed and dried blood soaked into it.
 
“Come closer,” Hannibal said, his human voice making a mockery of such a
command, “I'd like to see how far you've come.”
 
Even if it was inherently repulsive, Will knew his instincts liked the way
Hannibal smelled, like death and darkness and deep, blood soaked earth. He had
always assumed Hannibal's sharp nose had come from the culinary arts but now he
knew different, that Hannibal was actually a monster in human disguise. He
could have probably smelled Will's entire history the moment he stepped into
his office
 
Will's back was straightening into an odd position and the shifting bones left
him hunched over and crouching. He crawled pitifully towards Hannibal, his
mouth already open in an obscene pant and his tongue lolling uncontrollably out
of his mouth. What his eyes looked like, he didn't know but he wondered if they
were the blood coloured swirl he had seen on the other monsters that terrible
night as a teenager.
 
“Absolute perfection,” Hannibal said, his eyes darkening and body changing into
shadow, “it's as if you were designed by my own hand.”
 
“Egoist,” Will wanted to say, instead he made an awful noise that hurt his own
ears.
 
“I can almost understand the tone,” Hannibal said, his twisted mouth quirking
upwards into a gruesome smirk.
 
The shadow form moved lightning fast and loomed like dark water over Will until
he felt the claws touching his thighs and spreading him apart. The move forced
him onto his back and his head leaned backwards as his pelvis tilted forward,
aching and open. His penis was barely erect but that didn't matter much these
days, the rest of him was alive and sensitive, alight with alien wants. The
erect horns on Hannibal's head were a testament to his vitality, the strange
smokiness that obscured his body hiding something big enough to fill Will up
and not leave him wanting.
 
It was better than the dogs but somehow, even stranger.
 
Hannibal was a man and a beast all at once. His spindly fingers held Will down
as his body morphed and thrust into him, making Will ache all over and his back
arch. When Hannibal was the stag-man Will could grab Hannibal's arm and lean
against the mess of blankets in the makeshift bed Hannibal provided for him and
ride the hardness that bored into him. Will could lock his legs around the
wraith thin waist and press up and up, until the black fluid spilled over and
dripped underneath him. Until the thrusting filled Will's wet quivering insides
and pressed its way deep into his womb.
 
“This is who you are,” Hannibal hissed from his abyss crack of a mouth, “who
you've always been.”
 
I know who I am, Will wished he could hiss back.
 
Instead he clung tighter to Hannibal's waist and witnessed the man and the
monster combine into a love no human could hope to understand.
 
It was strange being in Hannibal's house after so much has happened but
Hannibal lead him easily, leashing his instincts in the car's backseat as they
drove carefully, cautiously. Will was covered by blankets, moistened with a
spray bottle and made comfortable. When they arrive, he's carried blanket and
all until they make their way through the front door and down, down into the
basement. He's gently plunked on a bench as Hannibal makes himself sure the
doors are locked and closed behind them.
 
Will immediately recognizes the basement for what it is once Hannibal sees fit
to unwrap him; it's a kill floor. The manacles and clean gurneys and autopsy
tables were probably quietly purchased and fitted through the many hospitals
Hannibal worked in over the years. He must have been so careful, picking them
out one by one without anyone noticing the extra supplies on the floors that
mysteriously disappeared.
 
The Ripper's many virtuoso performances must have begun in the basement but the
real Ripper was much worse than a man who killed.
 
Will was almost a little let down. The singular motive he had assumed was
almost on target but not quite. Human curiosity was one thing, the monsters
that thrived in absolute darkness quite another.
 
Through rubber flaps and down rickety stairs, Hannibal carried Will until the
walls became earth and the sound of water was the only ambient noise heard.
 
“It is best for you to give birth underground,” Hannibal said, “the young can
flee into these tunnels. They stretch all across the city, I have no idea who
made them but I wish I could thank them for their ingenuity.”
 
Will looked with his fresh, new eyes into the darkness and could see every
mound of earth and every leaking pipe. It was possible they had begun as
plumbing tunnels or an aborted subway but now they were abandoned and had
become the realm of a monster.
 
“It is also possible that I may try to eat my own young,” Hannibal admitted,
almost bashful, “that would not be ideal, so I will return for you after the
act has been done. I have left your old nesting material and some warm
blankets. I will return in a few days with some nourishment and then leave you
to the rest.”
 
The boxes of bones were neatly stacked in an offshoot cavern that led away from
the main tunnel. It was quiet and dark and damp, Will nearly fled into its
confines relieved to get away from Hannibal. When he turned around he could see
Hannibal's red eyes as they glinted in the dark, his horns reflecting in the
light as they vanished into the tunnel.
 
As promised, Hannibal didn't come back for a few days. Will built his nest out
of the human bones he had painstakingly collected from osteological collections
and the FBI's on site mortuary services. He made them into patterns using the
muck he carefully scraped from the walls and his own, sticky excrement to hold
them in place. The skulls peered out like silent witnesses and the bones almost
seemed to vibrate with barely contained life.
 
Will's stomach swelled and writhed, and he grew strange, black protrusions from
his chest that bled and trickled blue slime. At the same time, the bones were
spiralling like a nautilus and took shape and pattern becoming an elaborate
twining shelter within the cavern itself.
 
By the time Hannibal reappeared, the bone nest was complete. Will felt tired
but ready for whatever course nature would take.
 
“I brought some supplies,” Hannibal said, “and a few friends.”
 
The dogs that ran out from behind Hannibal in a barking, cheery brood were a
surprise and Will was so grateful it was disgusting. He had wondered what had
happened to his loyal pets, if the FBI had neutralized them or found them
starved to death. Instead they crowded around his newly changed form without
judgement, happily lapping at his face. Will hated Hannibal desperately for
giving him something so wonderful.
 
“They'll help you when I cannot,” Hannibal said, “I'll leave the food, if you
need more I'm sure your dogs can hunt quite capably.”
 
Perhaps that was the difference between their two genders, Will thought wryly,
Hannibal worked alone whereas Will had created his own support network by
tainting everything he loved. He wondered what Abigail was doing, where she
was. If she were all right. If he had perhaps caused her death incidentally by
poisoning her with his presence.
 
“Nature is a struggle,” Hannibal said, “it is incredibly beautiful to see it
happen to someone as interesting as yourself.”
 
Hannibal leaned down and gave Will a kiss hard enough to cause his own teeth to
cut their lips.
 
“I'll come back in a few weeks,” Hannibal promised.
 
The horns and black skin bled over Hannibal's pale, civilized human suit like
ink on paper until he was nothing but a shade, a strange tremulous presence in
the dark underground. His red eyes blinked in the darkness and then vanished,
disappearing into the cavern leaving Will to himself.
 
Will crawled over to his food and set about feeding his animals. They snapped
at the human flesh eagerly, their furry bodies black as pitch and teeth rolling
in their mouths. They didn't look anything like their normal canine selves any
more, rather they had changed as Will had changed and were monstrous beasts.
Fiends in the darkness, horrors to behold. With some regret knowing the source
of his meal, Will ate some small morsels and made his way into his bone shelter
where he had folded and bunched all the blankets. He gracelessly fell over onto
the pile and closed his eyes.
 
It was the dream about Abigail that woke him up. He was having dinner with
Hannibal and Alana and his sad, doe eyed surrogate daughter looked at him as
though he were the one responsible for everything. Though, logically, he knew
it was unhappy chance that had brought them together, the fiend inside wailed
at the missed chance to drag Abigail into his pit. A sharp pain in his stomach
had Will looking down at himself while Hannibal and Alana placidly looked on,
the beasts that crawled out were far from human.
 
“I have made a dinner suitable for the new arrivals,” Hannibal said, in a
strange faraway voice, “it was caught with great care.”
 
On a delicate, silver serving tray was the human hand of Miriam Lass. Abigail
screamed and hid her face in her hands while Alana watched her carefully,
scrutinizing her for cracks. Will slowly stood up from the table as his
children fell wetly from his stomach, onto his plate and took a steak knife
from his setting. He walked quickly towards Hannibal and stabbed him in the
neck.
 
“You are beautiful,” Hannibal whispered in his tremulous, stag-man voice, “so
wonderful to look at.”
 
“I forgive you,” Will said, in a voice broken and tired.
 
Hannibal returned Will's love with a knife to the stomach.
 
Waking up rather sharply, Will realized that while the wound had been dreamed
the pain was real. Groaning he could barely sit up, his back bending and body
contorting to prepare itself for what was to come.
 
Yipping wildly the dogs surrounded Will as he groaned and panted, his mouth
dripping slime and body sticky with sweat. The ripple he felt through his body
forced him to his hands and knees with his hind quarters in the air, while his
thighs clenched and quivered. As his knees dug into his blankets he felt his
hole open up in a way it hadn't even with Hannibal's monstrous form. The ache
however, was startlingly similar.
 
If Will could have screamed, he would have. Instead his throat produced the
humiliating, plaintive bleats that echoed in the cavern and made his dogs swarm
around him in a protective circle. His body clenching he gasped into the ground
as the first round of his children were forced from his body. His orifice shook
and clenched until the first was spat out, then the second. Impossibly it
seemed, the third. Then fourth...then too many to count.
 
Will felt the shudder roll up his back each time the pain hit him and rubbed
himself frantically against his blanket nest. The slime covered, oozing
creature that he managed to expel wasn't holding his attention but the orgasmic
bliss he experienced each time he managed to force one out certainly was.
Aching with want, he groaned and managed what he hoped was the final round.
 
Weak from exertion, his body shuddered and he came wretchedly against the
cloth, his flank shuddering and his lower body expelling the last of the fluids
that had held his children inside his womb for all this time. Collapsing onto
his side, he felt he scrabble of tiny claws and teeth against his abdomen and
chest. The profusions had shown their uses. But the multitudes of children were
fighting and clawing at one another to get to their nourishment.
 
A few drinks and the creatures scurried away one by one into the dark. Will got
a good look as they came closer and sorely wish he hadn't. They were monstrous.
No eyes, skin wet and milky and nubs growing from the top of their head. Their
limbs were spindly and long, almost human but not quite. What they would look
like when mature, Will had no desire to find out. He was too weak to kill them
and too tired to push them away. He let them have their last meal before they
made their way into the deeper caverns and left Will a sodden, exhausted heap.
The dogs came closer and began licking him clean, he let them attempt to clear
the mess but eventually gave up when the largest (Winston, perhaps? It was hard
to tell as their coats had all become pitch black), became interested in
mounting his prone body.
 
It was something he had no strength left to fight against. He reached down and
grabbed his penis and jacked off frantically, aroused to the point of pain
while his dog mounted him in sheets musty with the smell of bones and death.
The others gathered around wagging their tails, waiting their turn.
 
It almost made him feel human.
 
 
***** Chapter 6 *****
Chapter Notes
     The final chapter is here and this story is complete, rejoice! It
     means I can move onto other things. I hope you enjoyed this horrible
     little adventure and monster Hannigram. Thank-you for reading, as
     always. And if you'd like more monsters in the future, leave a
     comment below.
                                      VI
                                        
Will pressed his face to the finest wooden floor he had ever lain against and
wondered why he could hear the classic music louder than the guests' voices. It
was perhaps because his new hearing was attuned to a different frequency than
his old one and the soft wails of a violin were closer to the cries he was
accustomed to coming from a dark, dank tunnel under the earth.
 
“I never took you for a derider of Chopin's excesses,” a woman said, rather
loudly, “after all the flowers you sent me, Hannibal!”
 
Polite laughter followed and the conversation dimmed.
 
With some difficulty, Will lifted his head from the floor and considered his
current prison. Hannibal's guest bedroom had been outfitted especially, the
attached bathroom even had a beautiful claw foot tub half filled with murky,
swampy water hauled from a dank well. The bubbling sound from the corner was a
humidifier that had been placed to offset Will's unique environmental
requirements. The bed had no frame, instead the mattress was close to the
ground and the room stripped nearly clean. It was possible it was the only room
in the house that lacked ornate decoration. Instead the closet had been
carefully filled with blankets and sheets that Will could easily push aside to
find a false back. Behind that false back was an old servant's hall that lead
deep down under the ground for miles. If Will followed its twisting turns he
would eventually find his bone nest and the children that still needed him to
survive.
 
Today however, he had been pulled from his nest and deposited in the guest
room. Hannibal was having a dinner party downstairs and Will was his silent,
secret guest.
 
The worst thing about being a monster, Will thought, was that he couldn't seem
to read human words any longer. There had been books in the room at first but
Will had shredded them in a furious tantrum when he realized he couldn't
understand the words on the page. It wasn't enough to be bored to death in a
prison that Hannibal made for him, it was worse that he couldn't do anything to
alleviate it. That he couldn't seem to write, or speak and all human
communication was cut off to him.
 
Earlier that afternoon, he had papered the unadorned walls with the torn of
pages of Hannibal's gifted library using his own sticky excrement; furiously
and with incredible purpose he had built a spiralling decoration on Hannibal's
previously pristine walls. He marvelled at his own grotesque decor, and
appreciated the rotten smell that began to permeate everything in the room.
 
“This is very interesting,” Hannibal had said as he examined Will's frustrated
exercise, “did you realize you had wall papered Sartre's Being and Nothingness
directly beside Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling? ”
 
Will glared at him and bleated, hoping he'd get the message. It was supposed to
piss him off, not amuse him.
 
“I know it must be very difficult,” Hannibal said, gently, “as a man of
learning I understand how painful it must be to have that particular outlet
denied. But consider this a second childhood; eventually speech and writing,
along with reading will be returned to you. You must re-learn everything for
your new body.”
 
It wasn't very comforting but very little was, especially when he knew what was
on the fine china plate Hannibal laid onto the floor next to the bed. Will had
hurled one at him the day before and Hannibal had only tutted and mentioned how
rare and expensive bone china had become and that it would only be fair if he
had collected some bones of his own as payment. With a sudden nervousness Will
had felt irrationally protective of his bone nest. He had refrained from
breaking any more dishes, just in case.
 
The fiend knew him better than he knew himself, at the moment.
 
“I will return after dinner,” Hannibal said, “you may wish to retire to the
bath, I believe the guest I have in mind will be sensitive to such pungent
smells.”
 
With that last remark he had left Will to listen carefully, his ear against the
wood floor and curiosity nearly smothered from an all encompassing boredom.
Hours of conversation later and the other guests began to disperse until there
was only one. Will couldn't hear their voice from the floor but he could hear
the low baritone of Hannibal's replies, unclear but certainly conversational.
 
The footsteps grew louder and the hallway creaked, it made Will terrifically
nervous. Who was Hannibal bringing to him? Was he going to try and convince him
to eat them, or perhaps...his heart sank and fluttered. Was it Abigail
transformed?
 
“The change may be quite startling,” Hannibal said, “please, keep that in
mind.”
 
The guest room door creaked open and a gust of fresh scented air blew into the
room. She had raised a hand to her face at the strange, fetid smells but
finally dropped it with wide and surprised eyes.
 
“Will,” Alana said, the person he had least expected, “is it really him,
Hannibal?”
 
Earlier Will had looked into a mirror and regretted it. His face was still
relatively the same but his tongue and teeth were wickedly pointed. His skin a
ghastly, clammy colour and his veins starkly visible under his slightly moist
skin. His eyes were also slightly swollen, swirled and red. He had two lids
now, instead of one, the other appearing when the air became too dry. He
wondered what Alana had seen for herself, how she catalogued his strange body
with the protrusions along his chest and the bent, arched back.
 
“See for yourself,” Hannibal said.
 
The human form he wore shimmered under Will's gaze but Alana hadn't noticed,
she was staring at Will instead. Her graceful form leaned over, examined him
distantly. He writhed on the mattress, feeling painfully exposed. His arm
reached out, whiter than it had ever been, his blue veins showing harshly under
such translucent flesh. She took his hand.
 
“It's really him,” Alana gasped, “oh, Will! Who did this, Hannibal? What
happened to him!”
 
“I found him,” Hannibal lied smoothly, “wandering in the countryside near his
home.”
 
“The FBI searched his house,” Alana said, “and the grounds.”
 
“I believe he came back,” Hannibal said, “the dogs were never found.”
 
The dogs had of course been living in the tunnels with Will's recently born
offspring, but Hannibal had omitted that. Will curled himself under a blanket,
his nudity suddenly becoming embarrassing with Alana so poised and well
dressed. She was an echo of a humanity he had lost.
 
“He's distressed,” Alana said, her voice cracking, “what are we going to do? Do
you think he's- should the FBI be contacted?”
 
“I believe he's been bred,” Hannibal said.
 
Yeah, Will thought bitterly, by you, you monster.
 
“I'm not sure what happened to the children,” Hannibal said.
 
Alana exhaled heavily, “if he's bred they'll execute him. Or keep him for
personal captive study in the archives.”
 
“You don't want that,” Hannibal said calmly.
 
“No,” Alana said, “of course I don't. Ethically I'm required by law to report
this, to turn him in. But I-”
 
Alana looked at him with sad, beautiful eyes. Will writhed a little harder on
his mattress, he still wanted her, just a bit differently from before.
 
“I can't-” Alana said distantly, “I don't know why...”
 
It was then that Will noticed the ripple around her form, the shimmer in her
nature. Hannibal watched Alana eagerly, as though waiting for the exact moment
when the shift would occur. It became clear that Will had helped along
Hannibal's plan for Dr. Alana Bloom, it had perhaps been an opportunity he had
been waiting for. A different kind of get for his collection. Like Miriam Lass,
Hannibal had been feeding Alana a particular kind of meat and coercion, waiting
until he had the perfect moment to begin her change.
 
Will's mouth watered and his thighs clenched. With some more time behind them,
it was possible Alana could breed him, if she took to the transformation.
 
No Will thought desperately, you can't do this to her.
 
When Alana reached out and gently touched Will's cheek, Hannibal smiled behind
her at Will.
 
It was an ugly, monstrous thing.
 
Apparently their species wasn't as isolated as Will had been prone to think.
They were a pack animal and Hannibal was carefully curating his favourite
members.
 
Will let out a violent, shrieking bleat that made Alana jump in surprise.
 
“Is it possible for him to communicate?” Alana asked.
 
“Not in a way humans understand,” Hannibal said, “I believe with frequent
exposure, body language can help.”
 
Run away, Will wanted to scream at her.
 
“Do you think he...understands,” Alana said.
 
“Very little,” Hannibal said.
 
Will gave him a sharp look, Liar.
 
“He doesn't seem very happy,” Alana said.
 
She reached out for him and Will almost backed himself up into a wall, until
her warm arms closed around his cold, clammy skin and she pressed his head
against her chest.
 
“I'm going to help you, Will,” Alana said, while stroking his damp hair, “we're
going to find out what happened to you.”
 
“Do you think it was done to him,” Hannibal said.
 
“He was a victim of an assault,” Alana said, “as a teenager. I found it in his
records when I went snooping. Jack cleared him to be a special agent despite
knowing about his history, he was a ticking time bomb and they pushed him to
the very edge. I'm not turning him in, I can't in good conscience. It's not his
fault.”
 
“Do you feel the same about Abigail?” Hannibal said.
 
“The jury is still out on how complicit she was in her father's
transformation,” Alana snapped, “and in her own. We won't know anything until
the trial.”
 
Will tensed up but Alana's warm hands soon had his muscles involuntarily
relaxing. She smelled good. Almost human.
 
“I think we should bring Abigail to see Will,” Hannibal said.
 
“Are you crazy?” Alana said.
 
“I believe they may both be able to heal from the experience,” Hannibal said,
“it would be easier before the trial began. No awkward explanations to Jack
Crawford.”
 
“I'll consider it,” Alana said, “but don't expect miracles.”
 
Will made a strange noise against Alana's soft bosom as she stroked his hair,
it almost sounded like a sad, rumbling purr.
 
Deep underneath Baltimore in the early morning hours, Will crept through his
tunnels with his back so bent he was almost on all fours. The creatures in the
dark came out out of their dark corners and climbed down around the piles of
spiral shaped bones until they found Will, who offered up the sores on his
chest as sustenance.
 
Laying down in his nest Will considered the patterns of bones above him and let
the children have their fill. When their creeping bodies fled into the dark
caverns once again, he closed his eyes and tried to relive the soft, sweet
smelling strokes he'd received that evening. Glancing at the last of his
children scurrying into the dark, Will also thought about Abigail. She was as
much his child as any of the awful horde that roamed in the dark tunnels,
quickly growing into their own teeth and claws. Soon they would be self
sufficient and Will would have no more work to do with them. He wanted
desperately to teach Abigail how to be self sufficient, too. Far away from
Hannibal and his machinations.
 
“I thought I would find you here,” the filmy voice whispered in the dark, “have
our children grown strong? I think it is time for them to leave the nest and
for you to return to our home until the next birth.”
 
Will rose from his blanket nest and crept towards Hannibal's shadowy, horned
figure.
 
“I-,” Will hacked out, choking on his own tongue, “know, who I am.”
 
They were almost words, buried under wet sounds and throat gurgles. Nothing a
human could have ever made.
 
Hannibal smiled indulgently at Will, his mouth a gaping black hole.
 
“So do I.”
 
Ia Shub-Niggurath, the black goat of the wood with a thousand young!
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