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Pure adrenaline raced through Beverly’s veins as her hands shook. Her fingers were white with pressure around her gun.
The room was pitch black, illuminated only by her pistol’s muzzle flash. Every gasp of air felt like it was made of knives.
She’d come to Lecter’s house on a whim, field by the last refuges of her fondness for Will. Beverly accepted that Will had fully lost himself to whatever madness had consumed him. She intended to flush out Will’s suspicions to give him at least some form of peace. Then, she’d found a secret murder-meat dungeon.
Now, Doctor Hannibal Lecter was racing at her, in the complete dark, armed with a knife.
This is the last time Beverly wanders into a gourmand’s wine cellar.
Recoil shook through her arm as she unloaded the last of her rounds. The final shot hit with a wet crack.
Beverly fumbled with her phone, turning the flashlight on to see Lecter, clutching at his guts as blood seeped through the wound.
She had barely enough time to reload her pistol before Lecter launched himself at her, ferocious as an animal. He buried a knife into her hip, snarling like a big cat. Beverly fired indiscriminately down at him.
Lecter tumbled back, applying pressure to his wounds. His eyes met Beverly’s, and they were completely hollow. His pupils swallowed his iris, empty and hungry. Lecter’s lids slid to cover his eyes, yet Beverly couldn’t be sure he wasn’t faking.
Her fingers trembled as she called Jack, begging him to get there as soon as he could while she kept her gun loaded on Lecter’s head.
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Jack’s mouth was dry, his lips pursed so tight they felt as if they might splinter and bleed. His eyes ached as they flicked across the dark room. The soles of his shoes had liquified and melted to the blood-speckled, concrete floor. His body had turned to stone as the FBI agents fluttered around him, tagging evidence and taking photos.
“I feel like we owe Will an apology,” Beverly announced, voice breaking Jack from his stupor. She sat on the ground as she was tended to by a severe looking ER nurse.
Jack glared at her for a moment, before he glanced up to see an agent pull open one of the large, floor-to-ceiling freezers to reveal vacuum sealed bags of ambiguous meat.
Images of elaborate, exotic meals made with succulent red meats served on Doctor Lecter’s table flicked through Jack’s mind. If he hadn’t had decades of training with the FBI, he would have vomited.
Now cameras and flashlights illuminated the room, causing dark, cruel shadows to catch on the walls. They stretched, ominous and pitch black across the agents handling evidence.
Jack’s mind turned to his Bella, vividly remembering every time she and Lecter had been alone. All the therapy appointments where he could have killed her. He wondered if Lecter had ever fed her human meat.
Lecter sat under Jack’ nose for over a year, killing countless people. Shame bubbled up through his throat as he remembered Will’s vulnerable psyche.
Lecter had been rushed to a hospital, handcuffed to the stretcher. He’d remained eerily still and silent, moving as if he was a statue. Lecter had remained stone-like yet pliant until one of the officers had wandered close to the wall furthest from the door. The alpha had leaped at the officer, ripping his arms free of the cuffs. He ran at the agent, teeth bared, until he was subdued with a taser.
His reaction drew Jack’s attention to that wall. He strode through the room. The alpha stared at the area, until he saw an offset line. He brushed his fingertips against the raised metal plate, only for it to spring open, leading into a tight tunnel.
Beverly followed him into the darkness. The lights flicked on as they stepped inside, illuminating the room.
Disgust hit Jack like a freight train. His head swiveled, taking in every grotesque detail. Beverly sucked in a breath as she did the same.
“We really owe Will that apology now,” Beverly announced, shock turning her tone blasé.
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Alana had cleared her calendar for the day as soon as she’d gotten a call from Jack.
It was never good when Jack called her. When he needed something, it was almost always bad and painfully time consuming. They hadn’t talked for almost two weeks, after Jack had asked her to go see Will again, to see if he’d be mentally competent enough to help on a case. She’d just about lost it with the other alpha, incensed that he could think it was at all acceptable behavior. Alana had hung up on him, then broke down, overwhelmed and still mourning her lost friend.
Alana had nearly dropped her phone when Jack had told her of Hannibal’s arrest and the things they’d uncovered under his townhouse. She would have accused Jack of making a cruel joke if he hadn’t sounded so deadly serious.
She broke nearly every speed limit on her way to Baltimore, the world around her went fuzzy with motion blur until she was there, standing on his doorstep. Alana held her breath as she entered the premises, watching various FBI agents dart in and around the house. It felt like a perversion of Hannibal’s normally empty and stoic home.
Alana followed the commotion and climbed down into the basement. She barely had a moment to adjust herself to the blood splattered walls before Jack pulled her over to a small door. It was nearly invisible at first glance, as it was covered in several metal plates so it would blend into the wall.
The other alpha showed her where it opened, then shuffled her in through the door.
Inside was a room, medium sized with a tall ceiling. Every wall was slathered with hundreds of photos and drawings. Each one depicted Will. They contained thousands of images of Will, from every angle. Some were newspaper clippings, some printed photos, and some charcoal illustrations.
Alana could barely believe it was all real. Some photos were from crime scenes, while others appeared to be taken outside Will’s house. A lump formed in her throat as she remembered all the times Will confessed to her that he felt as though he was being watched or was hearing things in his house. She’d brushed him off almost every time.
Others were painfully realistic drawings of Will in various sexual positions, almost all dressed in revealing lingerie or bondage gear. Leather straps and lace criss crossed the drawn Will’s skin, his face a blend of ecstasy and suffering.
The beta woman bit the inside of her cheek as she saw a picture of Will, clearly cut out from his highschool yearbook. It was from his senior year, when Will would have freshly turned eighteen.
Her stomach felt as if it was filled with ice water, as she noticed that several of the images appeared to have been splattered with a white liquid.
“We believe Lecter may have wanted to kidnap Will and keep him here,” Jack said.
In the center of the rooms was a plush nest-bed. It was a thick mattress, raised a few inches off the ground, nearly overflowing with pillows and fuzzy blankets. Everything looked painfully soft and buttery. It would have been an omega’s ideal nest, if it hadn’t been encircled with a metal cage. The bars were thick, glimmering, and made of gold. A literal golden cage, Alana thought.
The cage’s door was open, allowing Jack and Alana to lean over the nest.
Alana startled when she realized that buried in all the pillows and blankets, was a human figure. She hadn’t noticed it earlier because the body gave off no smell. She peeled back the top-most, fluffy blanket, gasping as she saw what was below it.
Laying there, glassy, empty eyes staring upwards, was a life-sized doll that looked exactly like Will. It had the same pale skin, thick brown curls, and sharp jawline. It must have been custom made, Alana thought, as she wondered if it would be more horrific to know that Hannibal had made it himself or if he’d bought it. The figure’s peaceful face and prone figure was drenched in dried cum that had crusted in long, lace-like ropes across its silicone skin. It was nude, aside from a large drawing resting on its chest.
Alana pulled on a pair of gloves and silently moved to take the paper.
“What is this?” she asked.
“I think it was Lecter’s,” Jack trailed off, coming up besides Alana, “plans for Will.”
It was a graphite drawing, painfully lifelike, of Will, limbs stretched out and back arched. Alana thought that if she reached out and brushed the paper with her fingertip, she might have felt a miniature heartbeat.
The face was twisted in almost orgasmic joy while drawing-Will was cut open by hundreds of invisible scalpels. The drawing showed Will’s achilles tendons being sliced. Chunks of Will’s legs, mostly his calves, were removed. Arrows pointed to the removed sections with labels in French.
“What are the words?”
“They’re the names of French meals.”
Alana covered her mouth, “Hanni- Lecter wanted to eat him?”
Jack shook his head, somber, “None of this would have killed him. I believe Lecter wanted to keep him alive throughout it all.”
Alana shivered, but kept looking. The drawing detailed padded leather cuffs trapping Will’s wrists and ankles. His hands were missing their thumbs and index fingers, and the diagram had peeled back Will’s skin to show how several tendons in his wrist had been cut.
His torso had been opened up, then sewn back together. Alana could nearly picture Hannibal reaching into Will’s chest, caressing each organ with hunger and reverence. Four of Will’s ribs had been taken out and his guts had been rearranged.
His intestines had been separated above his rectum and rerouted, connecting to a tube embedded in the mattress. His rectum had been sewn closed beneath the tube so Hannibal would still be able to take Will anally. Something similar had been done to his urethra, attaching a permanent catheter.
“He never wanted Will to get out of the nest,” Alana said.
Jack reached into the pile of soft pillows, and pulled out a pair of cuffs, perfectly matching the ones in the drawing.
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An orderly escorted Jack to Will’s cell. His nametag read ‘Matthew’ and he kept glaring at Jack when he believed the alpha wasn’t looking. His shoulders rested comfortably near his ears as he strode down the narrow, dank hallways.
Will was a phantom in his cell, a ghost. He was gaunt and pale, sweating so hard it dripped through his hairline. His rumpled uniform was baggy, oversized, and acted as Will’s only protection from the icy chill of the prison as he slept.
The omega man twitched in his sleep. The orderly unlocked the door, allowing it to swing open. Jack stood at the precipice, wondering how he should awaken Will and if it was right of him to intrude into a space the omega had slept in.
The orderly made Jack’s choice for him, brushing past him and kneeling before the cot. He softly clasped Will’s shoulder, causing the omega to startle out of rest. Matthew gentled Will, speaking to him in a low, hushed tone. Will’s eyes went wide, flying between Jack, Matthew, and the open door.
Will scrambled out of the bed, gripping Matthew’s shoulders as assistance to stand. He stared at Jack, and Jack found he couldn’t look back.
The omega left the cell with shaky legs, his breathing heavy. Jack turned on his heel and began to lead the group out of the BSHCI. Will and the orderly kept several steps behind, whispering to each other until Will sent Matthew away.
“Do you need to get your belongings?” Jack said, in lieu of anything else.
“No, they tossed it all.”
Jack didn’t reply, the hair on the back of his hands feeling like needles. The alpha instincts he’d hid when dealing with Will came rushing back, overwhelming in their intensity. For months, Jack had acted unfeeling, unaffected by his biology. He’d believed he needed a level, impartial head, that he couldn’t let Will’s omega nature sway him into thinking the smaller man was innocent.
Now, Jack’s throat felt tacky as Will, smelling sweet and helpless, walked behind him with his head hung low. It wasn’t a sexual urge that Jack wrestled with, but a protective one. He’d failed someone he should have kept safe, and it burned at him.
They walked in silence, anything Jack could have said in the moment was too flimsy to bother. They reached Jack’s car before he spoke, “I can give you the money for a taxi home.”
“I want to see it,” Will cut in, his eyes glued to his prison-issue, velcro shoes, “I want to see where he killed his victims.
Jack shook his head, “No, you should go home.”
“Jack,” Will sounded like he was forcing the words out as he grabbed the front of Jack’s shirt in his fist, “let me have this. Let me see it.”
Jack’s throat froze at the start of an exhale. He looked at Will, looked away, then nodded.
They climbed into Jack’s car, the icy silence growing around them again. Jack shifted the car into drive and headed towards Doctor Lecter’s former home.
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The basement had been emptied out by the FBI agents, leaving it barren and empty as Jack made their way into its depths. Will remembered being a child and reading about the catacombs in France, about how they had great walls of skulls, stacks of the dead encasing the living.
“You may not want to see any more,” Jack said, tone brisk, “You’ve already been so involved, I don’t want you to get too close.”
Will snorted, “I’m already too close. Just let me see it.”
Jack had looked away, unable to meet Will’s eyes as the omega entered the nearly hidden door.
Will felt thousands of pairs of his own eyes bearing down on him, the weight of their gazes causing his knees to buckle as he entered the room. His empathy ran like a rabid animal, suffocating him in hunger-horny-mate-own-consume. It was love and obsession, hand in hand that turned his throat tacky with their intensity.
The omega had known Lecter had wanted something from him, but he’d assumed the doctor was looking for an entertaining distraction, a toy to play with and discard.
“He wanted all of me. If I didn’t love him, he’d make me love him. He wanted to pollute my mind so thoroughly I wouldn’t know myself from him. He sent me to prison to isolate me, to detach me from my meager support system and life. He wanted me to be lonely and desperate, he wanted to be the only person, the only thing in my life,” Will blurted out, overcome by the revelation.
Will’s knees tremored, and Jack placed a hand on his back, gently easing Will down onto the edge of the nest bed. The omega leaned against the open bars of the cage and wondered how firmly they’d shut and how arduously Doctor Lecter would have guarded the key.
An aching loneliness filled Will, so pure he was unsure if it was his feeling or Hannibal’s. It was a tragedy to make such a lovely nesting room, such an extensive courting gift, and to leave it unfilled and ungiven. Will felt cold as he realized that this bed would never have an occupant.
“Can you give me a moment?” Will asked.
Jack stiffly nodded, and strode out of the room. His discomfort was physically palpable to Will.
Heat and cold pulsed through Will. The omega should have felt terrified, and yet, melded with the horror was an uncomfortable feeling of arousal. Hannibal’s devotion, his obsession, left Will wanting. He could have had the full attention of a top predator, of the most dangerous man he’d ever met.
Will saw a drawing of himself laying on the bed, and grabbed it, folding it gently and tucking it into his pocket.
He stood up and stared, almost forlorn, at the nest and pushed the door to the cage closed with a reverence it didn’t deserve. He left the room and told Jack he was ready to go home, and would appreciate it if he’d lend Will the money for a taxi.
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Will had come back to a shell. While in prison, he’d spent countless nights mourning his home and the warmth contained within. But now that he was back, it felt like a ghost house. All life was missing, everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. The produce in his fridge had rotted and his pantry was overcome with mold. His dogs were still with Alana, leaving the entire house oddly quiet.
He thought of the warm nest bed, buried in Hannibal’s basement and the gourmet food the alpha would have made, and felt his eyes prick with tears.
Will laid down on his pull out bed, upset to find that his sheets and blankets no longer smelled like him and his pack. He reached into his pocket and fished out the drawing Hannibal had made, relieved to see it hadn’t been damaged.
Will sighed and stared at his face on the paper. The drawn picture of him was so joyful looking, so overcome with pleasure. Will soured with jealousy, he’d never been absorbed with suffocating ecstasy.
He wondered how long it had taken Hannibal to create the illustration, how long had he hunched over the paper, delicately adding and removing graphite? Had his long, dexterous fingers been stained with gray-silver powder? Had he observed Will in life, waiting until he wasn’t looking, to make the drawing as accurate as possible? Had he stayed up, working into the late hours of the night, to perfectly capture Will’s likeness?
How would it feel if Hannibal were to trail those same fingers over Will’s living flesh?
Goosebumps erupted across Will’s flesh, he screwed his eyes closed and imagined the touch. Will imagined those soft fingertips trailing lower, brushing against Will’s hard cock and wet cunt.
Will opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He felt like a monster, getting aroused at the idea of a murder. Yet, Will didn’t grow wet at the idea of Hannibal’s other kills, somehow, it was only when the alpha turned his knife on the omega that his cock began to weep.
It wouldn’t hurt anyone to jack off, no one would know, Will assured himself.
The omega closed his eyes again, submitting to desire. He wrapped his hand around his dick and pumped.
He bit his lip as he slipped three fingers into himself. His cunt wasn’t stretched, so it ached, a shar, intense pain. But Will wanted the pain, Will wanted to be fucked.
The omega snarled as he jackknifed his fingers into himself, shoving a fourth finger inside without waiting. His uncut nails caught on the soft-slick walls of his cunt, scraping and sending electrical shocks up Will’s spine.
Will’s hand clenched around his cock, squeezing almost uncomfortably tight, as he forced his hole to yield. He forced his thumb inside himself and slid his entire hand inside.
His body was contorted, twisted into a knot as Will thrust his fist into himself. He pulled his other hand away from his cock to lick at two of his fingers, coating them in spit, before he reached down and shoved the digits into his dry asshole.
He shouted and convoluted at the pain-pleasure that rocked through him. Will dug his fingers into his prostate, jabbing at it with his nails.
Will’s vision went white. His entire body felt as though it was filled with pins, hundreds of little metal pins pressing out from inside his skin. He came, hard, splattering his stomach, chest, and the underside of his jaw with spend.
He panted, and reverently moved the drawing away from the bed. Will stared out through the window, watching the moon, and wondering what Hannibal would think if he saw the omega now.