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Will coiled around his prey.
Sunlight had not yet broken over the horizon, and it was the perfect time for fishing: find his spot while it was still dark, watch the morning rays light up the world, and lie in wait. The water was still cold this early in the spring, near freezing, but Will would bear it for the thrill of the hunt, the catch, and the breakfast that would follow.
For now, though, Will was still warm and comfortable, and the world floated around him in a haze of slumber. Will tightened in and solidified his grip so that he was pressed flush against Hannibal’s chest in bed. Lazily, Will trailed his nose up the curve of Hannibal’s shoulder, along the helix of Hannibal’s body until Will found himself nuzzled comfortably into Hannibal’s neck. The pulse of Hannibal’s jugular thrummed slow and steady beneath Will’s lips, and Will couldn’t resist closing his teeth around it once. Hook, line, and sinker might’ve been Will’s weapons of choice rather than tooth, claw, and nail, but that didn’t mean that Will didn’t indulge himself from time to time, nor that he was any less capable with these instruments of killing. Will luxuriated for a minute in having Hannibal’s life secured fully in his maw, a mere inch from death.
Will wondered sometimes if the urge to kill Hannibal would ever fully abate, if one day he’d wake up and find himself finally domesticated, turned docile by his affection rather than pragmatically merciful due to his endless fascination with Hannibal’s games. If so, the metamorphosis had not come upon him in the last five years. Nor had it, Will was entirely certain, for Hannibal, who still looked at Will like a man starving, desperate to consume Will entirely but perpetually frustrated by the fact that once Will was consumed, what remained of the world would be barren and meaningless.
It was a sentiment Will shared and the reason he didn’t bite down and sever Hannibal’s jugular now. Instead, Will rose and made his preparations to go fishing for real.
The dogs weaved excited paths around Will’s legs when he arrived downstairs, tails beating fondly against Will’s fishing boots. He let them out the back, and they took off in a scramble of scratching claws on floorboards that would’ve had Hannibal wincing in visible pain, had he been awake.
Will headed out, with pole and bait, in the opposite direction that the dogs had run. There was a hint of light at the edges of the sky now as Will made his way down one of his regular trails through the woods to the lake. The birds in the trees were beginning their morning song.
The birds and the woods were still in the process of metamorphosizing into Will’s birds and woods. That had been the most painful thing for him, after he’d dropped out of the world five years ago and eventually landed anew in a different hemisphere. The trees and birdsong that he’d always known had changed subtly around him. That first frantic year, on the run from the FBI and with Interpol hot on their tail, Will hadn’t even bothered to learn the various bolt holes where he and Hannibal had hidden themselves.
This estate, though, had been their home for nearly four years now, and slowly Will had allowed himself to relax and stretch his neck out and just be again. One by one, he’d picked out the species of the native trees so even now, at the first bud of spring with only bark to guide him, he knew the cypresses and the beeches, and the barberry that cloaked the ground beneath them. The songs in the trees were not his thrushes, finches, and flycatchers, but he was learning to identify these new species out one by one: an eared dove and what he thought probably a rufous-collared sparrow.
The fish, Will knew intimately, through and through, as he’d been studying their movements and habits from day one. It turned out that, whenever in the world Will found himself, he immediately had the instinct for where best to catch his fish. Both in the literal sense, and of the more human variety.
Will launched out onto the lake in the canoe he kept by the dock on the near-south end of their property. Bailey had trailed after Will with a hopeful wag, and so Will let him jump into the boat and paddled the two of them towards the far side of the lake to the outlet stream, with Bailey thumping his stump of a tail against the side of the boat the whole while.
Will found his spot and moored the boat – complete with napping Bailey – along a promising bank and stepped out into the stream as the sunlight broke through the branches overhead and lit the waters aglow with embers. Time slowed on a stream, in a lake, in a boat, the same way that time slowed around Hannibal. It seemed impossible to Will that he and Hannibal had only known each other for less than a quarter of their lives. Surely, it must’ve been centuries ago that Will had been adrift, alone, living that shadow of another life, waiting endlessly to emerge from his chrysalis.
Will cast his line and let the woods and the stream and Bailey’s occasional rough snore lull him into the infinite. Once, Will thought, he hadn’t known peace like this. Once, he’d denied himself the pleasure of stalking his prey, luring it in with clever bait, and supping on the results. Hard to imagine now.
The sun had only just risen by the time Will had caught himself two large trout, still early enough to make it back in time for breakfast. Will made his way home, with his catch and his dog, and found himself not regretting his return to the manmade world in the slightest. That was the biggest divergence from Will’s fishing trips before and after Hannibal. Before, fishing was the only reprieve Will got, the one society-sanctioned window for Will to let out his inner hunter and be himself. Now…
“I hope you brought breakfast,” Hannibal called out from the kitchen when Will closed the screen door behind him.
Will made his way to the warmth and light at the back of their villa and found Hannibal, as expected, be-aproned and alternating between heating some sort of wine-scented broth and dicing vegetables.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” Will said with a raised eyebrow, and slammed his pair of trout down on the large cutting board on the kitchen’s central island.
Hannibal appraised Will’s offerings with a self-satisfied smile and got out the scaling knife. “Your deadly efficiency,” Hannibal promised as he began butchering Will’s kill, “is one of the few things in this world in which I have absolute faith.” His eyes darted up to meet Will’s once, and Will leaned in to offer Hannibal the brush of his lips once, briefly. Best not to spoil either of their appetites, after all.
As Will found himself so often doing, he watched Hannibal’s hands as he worked. Deft fingers gutted and flayed, and rich juices clung to Hannibal’s skin, slick and almost alive with death. Will had prepared countless fish in his lifetime, and even before he’d met Hannibal, he’d coated himself up to his elbows in fish guts. However, only through Hannibal’s eyes and mind had Will paused to consider the beauty of innards. Flowers and fruits and vegetables were are put together in delicate, elaborate patterns that were often best witnessed when they were cleaved and severed, but Will had always internalized the rules of civilization that viewed hacked flesh as ugly and barbarous. Now that Will truly looked, though, he’d come to realize that it simply wasn’t true. Meat and organs formed just as beautiful patterns, equally worthy of admiration, and the blood that sluiced through them blossomed bright and vibrant. More beautiful tenfold again when observed in Hannibal’s skillful hands.
Hannibal paused mid-preparation, just before putting the fish in the flying pan, when he noticed how unusually intently Will was watching him this morning. “I trust your faith is not wavering,” Hannibal said wryly, head cocked in question.
Will wet his lips. “Not wavering. Merely hungry.”
Hannibal beamed at him and began frying up Will’s catch.
With nothing else to look at (well, Hannibal’s clothed behind, curtained by the edges of the apron, wasn’t exactly nothing, but it was hardly new to Will anymore), Will turned his attention to other matters. Hannibal had left his tablet out on the breakfast bar, and Will gravitated in that direction. With anyone else the placement might have been meaningless, but Will had long since learned that everything Hannibal did had a purpose and a design – and, most importantly, a game – to it. Will still marveled at the fact that such a tendency in a husband was apparently all Will had ever needed to stave off the ever-encroaching boredom and to prevent his mind from cannibalizing itself in a fevered frenzy.
Hannibal’s tablet was biolocked, of course. Fortunately, Will made a habit every time Hannibal acquired a new device of sneaking out of bed some night when Hannibal was sound asleep and applying Hannibal’s fingerprint so that Will could set his own bypass and PIN, which he used now.
“Someday, I do wish you’d tell me the backdoor password to my own device,” Hannibal called out behind him. He hadn’t turned to look at what Will was doing. He hadn’t needed to.
Will, likewise, felt no need to spare Hannibal a look. He knew Hannibal’s position as if it were an extension of his own body after all these years hunting together. “If you haven’t yet figured it out yourself, you’re not trying hard enough,” Will said half-heartedly, and focused his attention on the browser page that Hannibal had left up. Tattle Crime.
Will was nearly tempted to close the browser immediately in disgust. He considered it a failing, both personal and professional, that no one had managed to separate Freddie Lounds’ body from her head during the intervening years. However, the headline, as all Freddie’s headlines were wont to do, caught Will’s eye before he could give Hannibal a suitably rude response.
Wendigo Kills Again! Grisly Corpse Display in Grizzly Country
Is No One Safe?
“Huh.” Will scrolled down.
In classic, classy form, Freddie Lounds had pictures of the aforementioned corpses, seemingly obtained either by illegally crossing the police tape or by absconding with police photos. The far-too-unburied lede photo showed four men splayed out on their backs, their arms and legs extended like snow angels, forming a circular mandala with their heads at the center. The men had been stripped bare of all equipment and clothing, so that their skin was a greyish-blue against the brown leaf litter. All four had their abdominal cavities sliced open, and their entrails encircled the display like a pink ring of garlands. Above each head rested a carefully placed pair of deer or elk antlers, such that each of the men looked like the mythological monster that had haunted Will’s subconscious back in Wolf Trap.
Will’s eyes glanced over the image before turning to the article below:
Terror resonates throughout the foothills of the Rockies as America’s most gruesome serial killer struck again last night. The monster known by locals and authorities only as the Wendigo added the corpses of four local hunters to his trophy case sometime between 3 and 8 PM Saturday evening, according to the coroner’s report. The Wendigo has now racked up (literally) a total body count of 14, and the FBI is no closer to stopping him.
When Mike and Sylvia Travers piled their two children, Marcia (10) and Aidan (7) and shepherd-mix, Lucky, into their truck bright and early Sunday morning, they planned for an idyllic hike in the woods. Little did they know what horrors lay ahead. According to Sylvia Travers, the family walked one of the hiking-club trails until midmorning, when they stopped by an old weathered picnic table for their lunch. While Sylvia Travers built the fire, her dog, Lucky, scouted the area and soon began barking frantically.
“It was like the scene from a horror movie,” Sylvia Travers said, noticeably shaken, after the police had arrived on the scene and questioned the family. “This was supposed to be our dream vacation: peace, quiet, and fresh air. A way to get away from it all. You try to protect your children from the world and then this...”
A source close to the family claims that the youngest son, Aidan, hasn’t spoken since seeing the body. Police counsellors and public-liaison agents were thick on the site, both around the family that found the bodies and for the families of the four men killed.
The victims have been identified as Tom Reynolds (48), Brian Carver (44), Sam Alvarez (44), and Juan Alvarez (19). All four men were employed at Reynolds Garage and frequently went on hunting excursions together. Although initial reports indicated that Sam Alvarez’s younger son, Carlos (17), was also part of the doomed hunting party, Carlos Alvarez was later found to have instead spent the afternoon with fellow students at the local high school, and thus escaped his father and older brother’s gruesome demise.
Reynolds’ and Carver’s families have placed a joint reward of $50,000 for any tip that leads to the identification and capture of the Wendigo. “This man is clearly a monster,” said Ryan Carver, uncle to the deceased. “He better hope the FBI gets him first before the family does and we string him up like he deserves.”
“Vigilante justice only sets the FBI investigation back,” said Special Agent Jack Crawford, FBI lead investigator. “Not to mention, it’s illegal. We all want this killer found, and the FBI is taking this case very seriously. We’ve developed a clear profile of the killer and have several promising leads.”
The FBI issued a public statement with their profile on Sunday afternoon. Per the FBI’s profilers, the Wendigo is “male, 30-40 years of age, local to the area, likely with military or paramilitary training, may be suffering from PTSD or similar mental-health issues, and lives alone in a remote location. He is approximately six-feet tall with dark hair and strongly built.” Anyone who can identify the Wendigo should contact the FBI report line at 1-800-555-5923.
What the FBI has failed to explain is how the Wendigo has eluded capture up until now, if these leads are so promising. “Where’s vengeance for my Ronnie?” asked a sobbing Patrica Stone at today’s press conference. Ronald Stone was one of the Wendigo’s first batch of victims, found just west of the district state park, on September, the 14th. At the time, the FBI issued similar statements that they had narrowed down the Wendigo’s identity via their profile and evidence obtained at the crime scene, but three weeks later an arrest has yet to occur.
“We are still pursuing all avenues of investigation,” Special Agent Crawford announced. “We’ve got all our best profilers on it.”
And what of the victims and the innocents in the meantime?
“You could see blood and guts everywhere!” said Marcia Travers, of her family’s discovery of the body. “It was just like in a video game! So cool!”
Until the FBI’s investigations bear fruit, young minds will continue to be traumatized, and the hunting community lives in fear.
Will snorted once, inelegantly, as Hannibal set a plate before him.
“Criticism of Ms. Lounds’ journalistic integrity?” Hannibal inquired, and sat himself opposite Will at their breakfast table. The sunlight streamed through the open blinds and obscured the crime-scene photos when Will set Hannibal’s tablet back down on the table so that he could eat. “Or perhaps you scoff at the quality of Uncle Jack’s latest profilers?”
“More of your choice of reading material.” Will cut off a bite of his trout with the edge of his fork and met Hannibal’s eyes provocatively as he brought it up to his lips. Hannibal did so love to watch Will consume things.
“I confess an invariable weakness for the macabre.” Hannibal, likewise, placed fork to lips. “It’s one of my greatest failings.”
Will tasted the last biting chill of winter, and the frantic rush of life so recently snuffed out, in his first bite of fish. As fresh as it could get and, of course, Hannibal knew how to cook Will’s catch to perfection. Will refused, with a lifetime’s worth of obstinacy, to let his pleasure show on his face. “There’s a weakness for the macabre, and then there’s sleazy tabloids,” he retorted.
“I feel any so-called ‘sleaziness’ is abated by the fact that I am well-acquainted with the parties involved. Bad news delivered directly by friends and family is hardly equivalent to gawking at strangers’ misfortune.”
Will’s eyes narrowed. “So, you think it’s deliberate, too.”
“Deliberate?” Hannibal said with such faux innocence that Will could gleefully have strangled him. But not during breakfast. (Maybe an idea for their anniversary, though…)
“Even Jack can’t miss that I’d want this one.” Will tapped the tablet on the table between them with one index finger, while he continued to ponder Freddie’s article over his breakfast. “A hunter of hunters, the woods as his killing ground, the victims laid out like stags.”
“Oh, are they not wendigos?” Hannibal asked infuriatingly.
Will glared at him and didn’t deign to grace his question with a response. “Your weakness may be the macabre, but mine – unfortunately – seems to be serial killers who view people as animals.”
Hannibal gave Will a bright smile, and his chest seemed to puff up with his delight. “A rare compliment.”
“You would think of it like that.” Will placed another morsel of fish in his mouth and chewed slowly, let the juices sink into his tongue and tastebuds. “Jack’s an old dog,” he concluded, “and he’s past the age for new tricks. I taught him this one long ago: leak an infuriating story to Freddie Lounds, and wait for the sharks to circle in.”
“Jack wants this killer caught. He always does.”
“Jack wants you caught. He always has.”
“Jack wants you as his leashed bloodhound. He’s attempting to tempt you.”
“Jack wants me caught just as much as he wants you. He wants to…dissuade me.”
“We are agreed that this is a trap, then,” Hannibal concluded.
“A competently laid trap,” Will conceded.
Hannibal’s eyes didn’t yet betray his game as he took a sip of his orange juice. Knowing Hannibal, it was probably fresh squeezed. “And who would walk willingly into such a trap?” he asked rhetorically.
If Hannibal was going to start games, then Will considered it his moral and intellectual obligation to play dirty. “I want this one, Hannibal,” Will half-purred, fluttering his eyelashes deliberately. He reached across the table and laid his hand over the back of Hannibal’s. “Please?”
Hannibal’s twitching lips hinted at the laughter Will had lit within him; however, his voice was deadly fervent when he spoke. “Anything you desire,” he promised, for what must’ve been the thousandth time.
Sometime over the last five years, Will had come to genuinely believe in that promise. He raised his orange juice in mock-toast to their newest hunt and took a long drink.
As expected: fresh squeezed.
***
The sedate pace of Will and Hannibal’s domestic life belied how quickly they could move, when pressed upon. They divided and conquered: Hannibal for their travel arrangements, and Will to impress upon their neighbors at the bordering farm to take care of the dogs and property while Will and Hannibal were away. “We’ve just heard from an old friend,” Will explained to ears that didn’t know how to read between the lines. “The state he’s in, I doubt he’ll last more than a month.”
The morning after that, Will found himself bundled into a cargo plane at eleven o’clock at night, much to his disgruntlement, which he expressed directly into Hannibal’s shoulder as the two of them settled in for the long haul. Hannibal pretended to read something pretentious, in Greek, while in actuality he spent every moment basking in Will’s attempt to fall asleep upright with his cheek resting on Hannibal’s shoulder.
Hannibal really had gone soft these days; Will could’ve killed him in a heartbeat.
They had two stopovers along the route, but didn’t need to deplane either time, and Will managed not to sleep a wink on any of the three legs of their journey. When they finally disembarked in a small airfield in Canada, at 2pm local time, Will was feeling distinctly tetchy. Hannibal knew by now to keep one eye open at all times when Will was feeling tetchy.
Will got the first part of his revenge at the car-rental agency while Hannibal was fussing over their luggage. Hannibal raised one eyebrow when the vehicle Will directed them to was not the luxury sports car Hannibal had requested by instead the biggest, ugliest asshole-mobile truck Will had found in the agency’s catalog.
“Really, Will?” Hannibal huffed with mild exasperation.
“It’s camouflage,” Will insisted. “Backcountry through Canada?” As the coup-de-grace, he plopped the baseball cap he’d found at the gas station atop Hannibal’s head, which now proudly proclaimed Hannibal a Buffalo Bills fan. “I’d like to see the FBI identify you now.”
Hannibal gave Will the same smile that he gave exceedingly rude restaurant patrons (and subsequent entrees). Will shivered in anticipation and got in the driver’s seat.
Will made a solid, marathon drive south to the border, where they detoured around some dubious backroads to cross over at the least-guarded post Will had ever seen. The detour had taken them a good hour and a half out of their way, so it was getting dark by the time they neared the foothills.
Will pulled over into the sketchiest roadside motel he spotted. Hannibal raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say a word when Will checked in, other than the odd affirmation. Hannibal’s accent could have the misfortune of making them stand out, and at this point in their venture, neither of them wished to stand out.
They got two rooms but completely ignored the one.
The instant Will closed the door to their motel room behind them, Hannibal pounced. Will objected only mildly, with teeth, until Hannibal properly pinned him into submission. At that point, Will let Hannibal have his way. After all, for what other reason had Will been such a deliberate asshole thus far?
And, given the way Hannibal snorted in distaste at the squeaking mattress of their bed, Will doubted this would be the last he heard of it.
***
They awoke bright and early the next morning and arrived at their base of operations, which turned out to be a cabin, if one used Hannibal’s definition of “cabin” rather than Will’s. The not-cabin’s kitchen was approximately the size of Will’s entire house back in Wolf Trap.
“You exaggerate,” Hannibal said, and immediately fussed about reorganizing everything.
“Where did you even find this place? I refuse to believe that you own a luxury chateau with built-in professional kitchen in every 100-square-mile radius on the planet.”
“Airbnb,” Hannibal answered smugly.
“Are you kidding me?”
That made Hannibal smile smugly, too.
Will grumbled under his breath about insufferable cannibals and could actually feel Hannibal’s smugness radiate against his back as he stalked away. Will settled himself instead into the study, where he began printing off a series of maps from various national and state parks’ websites. Hannibal joined him in less than half an hour’s time, apparently having finished perfecting his kitchen.
“There’s a seasonal snowmobile trail that’s not regularly maintained this time of year. This far into fall, the undergrowth should’ve gone down enough that it won’t be unpassable. If we cut through the woods here”—Will pointed to a spot on the map—“after a few hundred feet, it will back us up onto the trail by the latest kill site. We’ll bypass any gawkers.”
“Ideally, any police as well.”
“Ideally,” Will agreed. It was a pain in the ass stationing anyone an hour’s hike into the woods. Even if Jack somehow had the budget to bring in an FBI agent to do it instead of a local, nearly anyone would choose to instead stake out the entrance/exit to the trail loop by the park building rather than sit all day in the middle of nowhere with no indoor plumbing or vending machines.
Hannibal kitted himself out for a hike in the wilderness about as well as he ever did, which was to say that a lot of tweed was involved with a passing nod to designer outdoor-wear. At least Hannibal had gone for decent hiking boots, undoubtedly due to the first few times Will had deigned to allow Hannibal to accompany him on his wilder sojourns and, when Hannibal had turned up in his loafers, Will had taken unholy delight in trailblazing directly through the muddiest paths available.
Will snorted once at Hannibal’s attire and then began phase two of his revenge, which involved a neon-orange vest with the words ‘NOT A DEER!’ printed in tall block letters on the front and back. Will could actually feel the endorphins flood his brain when Hannibal’s lip curled.
“It’s deer-and-elk season,” Will insisted, “and we’re outside the park.”
“Surely, we’ll hear gunshots well in advance,” Hannibal attempted his usual devil’s bargain.
“Guns are later. Right now, it’s bow season.” Will tossed the monstrous vest directly in Hannibal’s face. “Vest up.”
If it were possible to eviscerate someone by staring at their back as they hiked through unforgiving terrain, Will figured he’d have used up at least a dozen lives by now. It was turning out to be a beautiful day.
Will stopped halfway up a rocky incline and sat on at old log to drink from his water bottle and watched Hannibal huff up the hill behind him.
“If you make one comment about the effects of a red-meat diet...” Hannibal snarled in warning when he finally reached Will’s location.
Will patted the spot beside him, and Hannibal hesitated only for a second before inflicting dirt and bark and probably bird shit upon his trousers. “Only indirectly,” Will promised, and handed Hannibal the water bottle. “I was just thinking... Would you want to lug four adult bodies up this trail?”
Hannibal’s eyes sharpened when he realized the direction of Will’s thoughts. “It hardly seems ideal.”
“I’m not even sure it’s possible,” Will said, “not for one killer, at least. But the victims were a hunting party. They would’ve been on this side of the park boundary. Presumably, they came up the same road we did.”
“How peculiar,” Hannibal conceded. “Did our Wendigo of the woods lure them onto park land somehow and kill them there?”
“I wonder...” Will said, and got up. “Come on. We’re almost up this hill. According to the elevation map, there are only three more ascents left. If we make good time, we can reach the display site in two hours.”
Will, once again, was graced with a look that could kill.
***
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
Will had spent a pleasant morning hiking through the woods, watching Hannibal suffer, and thinking about the crime scene. As expected, they’d been able to scramble through the underbrush from the snowmobile trail over to the hiking-club park trail with only a minor ravine and some brambles intervening, which had caused Will no trouble at all and Hannibal a delightful amount.
Now, however, as Will stood inside the half-ripped police tape (natural abhorred a barrier, most especially a flimsy one that floated in the air and was made of red tape), the sheer wrongness of the murders struck him fully. The crime scene was a mess – boot prints, tire tracks, and police chalk scattered everywhere – but even beneath that, Will could sense the wrongness of this place. The pendulum swung in his head once, twice, and then silence.
“I...do not move these men here. I can’t move these men here. Nor can I kill all four of them. They’re armed. Even if I do have military training like Jack says, they’re all big guys. They’re physically fit. If I try to fight and kill them, I’m going to end up injured. No one gets that lucky, sneaking up on that many people, that many times. The fact that I’ve completed four group kills is...” Will shook his head and turned to Hannibal. “We’re thinking about this all wrong.”
“Do tell.” Any irritation Hannibal felt with Will’s more petulant behavior had dissolved the moment he got to watch Will at work.
“Look at it from the other direction,” Will said, “Jack’s direction.”
“The not-so-subtle ploy to draw our attention to this crime scene.”
“Exactly. How does this crime scene exist? It’s in the middle of the woods. The victims are hunters: predators of a sort. The corpses are adorned with antlers. What’s the meaning to all that? Who was this display for?”
Hannibal sat back on the picnic table, on top of a suspiciously red stain in the wood. He seemed either not to notice or not to care. “You think the Wendigo is calling out to you, specifically?” Hannibal tilted his head to one side skeptically and considered the site with his own hunter’s eyes.
“If a serial killer wants to make a splash, he’s not going to bury his masterwork out in the middle of the woods like this. If he doesn’t want his kill found, he’s not going to put it by a picnic table in the middle of a state park. He both wants to be seen and doesn’t want to be seen. It’s contradictory.”
“Unless he wants to be seen by a very specific person,” Hannibal conceded.
Will ran his hands through his hair and paced back and forth. The pendulum was swinging again, but this time it was swinging within the pendulum vision he was already experiencing. “I have no design, not of my own. My purpose is not these killings. They are entirely secondary. My true target is...”
Hannibal licked his hips. “He wouldn’t dare,” he pronounced.
“We walked into this saying it was a trap,” Will retorted, and met Hannibal’s eyes across the police line. “Jack’s already stolen one of the last tricks I taught him. What if he’s also borrowed another?”
“You mean the one where he releases one killer as bait to lure in the killer he’s truly hunting.” Hannibal considered this for a moment. “It’s quite the risk.”
“Too much of a risk,” Will agreed. “Something’s different; something’s changed. And the answer’s not going to be found in the bodies in these woods.”
“Perhaps, then, it’s past time we caught up with dear Uncle Jack.”
***
All things changed, except for the fact that the FBI purse strings were always pulled tight. Hannibal might’ve found them a luxury Airbnb with a four-star kitchen, but Jack’s accommodations would, by necessity, be much humbler.
Will knew how to identify the usual suspects for an FBI budget, even after all these years, and the third motel they tried had its lot half full of black cars with government plates.
“Thoughts?” Will said as he leaned back in the driver’s seat of their truck and watched the scene from where he’d parked in the Taco Bell lot across the way. Even Will was starting to concede that, if Hannibal murdered him for this venture, it was probably justifiable homicide.
“This is your hunt,” Hannibal said. “I will do whatever you request of me.”
“The wilderness is my hunting ground,” Will corrected. “This – civilization – is yours.”
Hannibal snorted with distaste at Will’s categorization of this place as civilization. “You’ll follow my lead?” he asked experimentally.
“Within reason.”
“You should know by now, Will, that I rarely do anything within reason.”
“Ouch, tell me how you really feel about me,” Will said, with an insouciant look that was only half as insufferably smug as Hannibal’s worst, even after all these years of marriage.
Hannibal pursed his lips in minute annoyance. And then laid out their plan of attack.
A reasonable plan of attack would’ve had them wait until Jack left the viper’s nest of FBI vehicles and then corner him at some other destination. A gas station or restaurant, perhaps. But Will had the distinct impression that Hannibal was getting cockier over the years, quite possibly the more confident he grew in Will’s unwavering – if biting – back-up.
The motel was single-story, and they could deduce rooms fairly simply by where the cars were parked. At 2:30 Jack emerged from the door of unit 109 and strode to one of the vehicles with his old bluster but, Will thought, a hint more age to his step.
Will ducked down in his seat as Jack drove past, but Hannibal smiled and waved boldly to Jack. Jack, presumably unable to see them clearly through the reflection off the windshield, waved back perfunctorily.
“There are times when I still fantasize about killing you with my bare hands, you know,” Will said, as he pulled around the block to park out of sight of the motel, in such a place that they had a clean line of escape through a copse of trees and a nearby garage’s driveway.
“Save it for tonight,” Hannibal said, and fished around in the back for his backpack. “We have work to do.”
They walked up to the back of the motel together, and Hannibal counted windows until they found 109. Each of the rooms had a back sliding door and patio with a white-plastic outdoor chair that looked out over a lawn and the copse of woods with the mountains in the background. The lawn was obviously supposed to be an inviting and enticing place for motel guests to enjoy the outdoors, so naturally no one was using it and all the units had their curtains pulled shut tight. Will watched Hannibal Lecter stroll across a wide lawn in broad daylight and pass the rooms of half a dozen FBI agents without anyone noticing.
“Unbelievable,” Will grumbled in disbelief.
“Not everything needs to be as complicated as you make it out to be,” Hannibal informed him, and pulled a small zip-up case from within his bag. He opened it to reveal a lock-picking set, one of at least four that Will was aware of him owning.
“The Zen of Cannibalism?”
Hannibal hummed to himself, jimmied the lock for a few seconds, and then smiled broadly when the door opened. “After you.” He waved Will inside Jack’s motel room gallantly.
Will preceded him in a sulk, hands buried deep in his jacket pockets.
Once inside, Hannibal opened his backpack on the desk and began extracting a series of needles and surgical tools one by one and laying them out in neat order on the desktop. Will strolled casually about the room to observe the changes Jack had made. They consisted entirely of an unzipped suitcase atop the motel’s unfolding luggage rack, with the lid dropped back to show a disorganized pile of socks, underwear, and two paperbacks; two suits hanging in the closet; and a spare pair of shoes, one beside the bed and the other kicked halfway across the floor. Will picked up the stray shoe, set it beside the second one, and sat on the edge of the bed.
Hannibal pulled a long coil of rope, suitable for mountain climbing, out of the bag and set it beside his medical instruments. “I believe we’re ready for our little reunion,” he declared with self-satisfaction.
Will looked up at him askance.
Hannibal frowned slightly in confusion.
Will raised his eyebrows.
Hannibal’s breath caught in a mixture of hope and doubt.
Will, deliberately, waggled his eyebrows twice in a come-hither gesture.
Hannibal’s eyes narrowed, a snarl escaped his lips, and he lunged across the motel room to tackle Will back across Jack’s bed. As Will cut his lip on the hungry teeth of Hannibal’s kiss, he considered that letting Hannibal fuck him on Jack’s bed was probably unnecessarily spiteful, even for him.
But, on the other hand, unnecessarily spiteful had a nice ring to it, and when was Will ever going to get a chance like this again?
Will bit back and twined his legs around Hannibal’s waist, yanking him in.
***
Say what one might about Will and Hannibal, but they were still professionals; they did not sleep through the afterglow and get caught unawares upon Jack’s return.
Will sat back against the headboard, squinting at the shitty thriller Jack had packed in his bag. Will probably needed reading glasses, but Jack’s spare pair on the nightstand were obviously the wrong prescription. Will looked up when the doorknob turned, and Jack was half in the room when his and Will’s eyes met.
Jack froze.
“Will?” he said in something like awed disbelief.
Then, the next second, Hannibal emerged from behind the door and stuck a needle in Jack’s neck, at the exact same moment that Jack seemed to realize that Will’s presence likely indicated that Hannibal was hiding behind the door waiting to attack. Hannibal got half the sedative – at least, Will presumed it was a sedative; with Hannibal, more creative options were always on the table – injected into Jack before Jack thrust back forcefully and slammed Hannibal between his body and the wall. Jack might’ve aged, but he was still a big guy, and Will winced when the impact obviously knocked Hannibal’s breath from his lungs.
Jack ripped the needle out of his neck gracelessly, causing a bloody line to run down his throat and stain his white shirt collar. He staggered, managed to turn, and then punched directly where Hannibal’s face was.
Will watched with more than mild interest as Hannibal barely twisted to the side in time, still struggling for breath. Jack’s fist met with the wall and punched a neat hole in the motel’s cheap drywall. Jack winced with pain and shook his hand, and Hannibal decided to tackle him from behind and try to choke him with a stranglehold.
Jack staggered backward in response, towards the bed, and Will hastily drew up his feet just as the back of Jack’s knees collided with the bed, and he fell back onto it, crushing Hannibal beneath him.
Will winced inwardly. This just wasn’t Hannibal’s today.
Hannibal kept his vise-grip on Jack’s neck, although whether out of survival instinct or sheer stubbornness, even Will couldn’t guess. Jack jabbed behind himself with his elbows and caught Hannibal squarely in the ribs at least twice. Will scrambled further back up the bed and then off to the far side, as Jack and Hannibal wrestled around on the mattress a few times.
Jack’s motions were growing messier, though, more languid. Jack’s last action was to pry Hannibal’s hand – painfully, from Hannibal’s shout – off his throat before whatever bit of sedative Hannibal had successfully gotten into him earlier finally took effect.
Hannibal breathed a huff of relief, winced at the motion of his ribs, and shoved Jack to the side off of him. Jack let out one loud, truly impressive snore.
Hannibal glanced up at where Will had retreated into the corner of the room, cheesy paperback still in hand, hair still thoroughly disheveled and falling into his eyes, and informed Will tersely, “Not. One. Word!”
“Who, me?” Will asked, and vowed to needle Hannibal about his crushing near-defeat by an unconscious man for the rest of their lives.
***
When Jack awoke again, Hannibal had seen to it that he was much more amiable.
“Wuzzat?” Jack said groggily, and half-blinked awake to find himself tied to the cheap white-plastic lawn chair Hannibal had brought in from the patio. He struggled uselessly in his bonds for a few seconds before falling still. Had Hannibal not drugged him to the nines, Will had no doubt Jack would have ripped the entire motel apart before giving in.
Hannibal caught Jack’s chin in one hand and pointed a small pen light in each of Jack’s eyes, in turn. Will felt a moment’s odd sympathy for Jack: Will had been in Jack’s position countless times before (and, in fact, was currently having odd flashbacks to his and Hannibal’s honeymoon, half of which Will still didn’t remember fully).
“I believe we are ready to have a civilized conversation,” Hannibal announced.
“Ima finish this just as soon as the room stops spinning,” Jack informed him, impressively murderously given all the happy shots Hannibal had given him.
“Undoubtedly,” Hannibal agreed pleasantly. “Will?”
Hannibal stepped away from Jack, so that Will could seat himself on the edge of the bed facing Jack directly.
“Hello, Jack,” Will said more calmly than he felt.
“Will...” Jack’s voice practically broke on Will’s name. The happy shots apparently didn’t stop Jack from tearing up. “You’re alive,” he half-sobbed.
“More alive than I’ve ever been,” Will agreed. “And more alive, I think, than you want me to be.”
Jack sniffled twice and shook his head. “The cliff... The blood... There were reports of sightings, but...”
“But you needed to know for certain,” Will said. In general, Will had avoided mirroring Jack whenever possible in the past. Jack’s unique blend of self-righteous manipulation coupled with his seemingly endless well of guilt settled sourly over Will’s senses. Will needed to read Jack clearly now, however, so he spared the effort. “Why now?” Will asked. “What changed?”
Jack let out a wry laugh. Whatever Hannibal had put him on had his emotions all over the place; Will just hoped that the sedative exceeded Jack’s anger, because there was no way Jack’s anger wouldn’t spike sharply over the course of this conversation.
“Those assholes upstairs,” Jack answered, “they’re cutting the Behavioral Science Unit’s budget. End of year. Too much risk for too little gain. All the real money’s going to anti-terrorism these days.”
Will knew the asshole species in question well enough to guess where this was going next. “And that leaves the question of what the FBI will do with you. You’ve just hit your pension this year. A graceful, forced retirement – I’ll bet that’s how they sold it to you.” A half-smile curled Will’s lips. “How did you manage to refrain from punching them in the face?”
“Hey, I still have my dignity,” Jack joked back.
It was too easy to fall into this, back into the Will that Jack had once known. They’d been friends once, trusted each other. “So, you were running out of time. And I know you: you’re like a dog with a bone. You couldn’t leave without knowing.”
Jack chuckled, and there were tears at the corners of his eyes again. “You know, the hardest thing was that I didn’t even know what I was hoping for: whether you were alive or whether you were dead.”
“From your perspective, I suppose I’m both. Lucky you, you get to have it both ways.” Will sighed. “Who’s the Wendigo?”
It was gratifying that, after all these years, Will could still surprise Jack. “How did you know?”
The pendulum swung freely now, once Will had stopped looking for a serial killer and started looking for a trap gone awry. The pendulum swung for Jack, and Will told Jack exactly what had happened. “You needed to see for your own eyes that I was alive, but I’d vanished completely, and even Hannibal had gone entirely off the grid for years. So you knew you had to lure me out of hiding. And the only thing you knew that was sure to entice me was a fish: a big one, worth catching.”
“I knew I didn’t imagine that part,” Jack said, tone pleading now, trying to rationalize Will’s continued survival at Hannibal’s side against the friend he’d once known. “You cared about catching murderers. It’s your calling.”
“My calling,” Will conceded, “although probably not in ways you’d approve of, not anymore.” Will sighed. He felt odd and wrung out. It was strange: Jack did know him, in a way, but only a side of Will that Jack had ever wanted to see. Not the complete Will, but the Will he’d once striven and pretended to be and denied vehemently that he could be any other. A ghost from Will’s past. “You found a fish, one who offered you a bargain.”
“He said he knew exactly what would catch your eye,” Jack agreed.
Will snorted. “He wasn’t wrong. But I don’t think this is the bargain you agreed to. You wouldn’t let a murderer loose like this; your conscience couldn’t bear it. At heart,” Will conceded, “you still try to be a good man, Jack. Maybe that makes you better than me at this, after all.”
“You wouldn’t have let him get away like this,” Jack said.
Will’s eyes darted over to Hannibal, who was lurking in the background outside of Jack’s line of sight where Jack would be less aware of Hannibal’s presence and thus less likely to become overly agitated. “I’ve let big fish get away before,” Will admitted ruefully. “Multiple times, even.”
“But you caught ‘em in the end,” Jack insisted, with faith that Will still felt as a weight on his shoulders even all these years later.
“How did it happen?”
“We were supposed to fake the prison escape. Put out a manhunt, have Freddie Lounds write her usual smear-campaign about FBI incompetence,” Jack said. “I still don’t know how he got word out, got someone hired to interfere with the transport. It wasn’t supposed to be real.”
“The very definition of insanity,” Hannibal purred from behind Jack. “Repeating history and expecting the outcome to change.”
Jack managed to crane his neck enough to cast a disdainful glance Hannibal’s way. “With all due respect, Doctor Lecter, kindly fuck off.”
Hannibal’s pupils dilated: both with killing intent and with genuine delight.
Will cut in to nip that in the bud before it could devolve into more busted walls or furniture. “Your devil’s bargain escaped. And yet he felt compelled to carry out his half of the deal, after all. He did what was necessary to lure me out.”
“As soon as I heard about the first kill site, I knew it had to be him, for you,” Jack said.
“Someone well versed in all my favorite things,” Will agreed. “I knew it was too good to be true. Tell me: did you actually try to catch him, or did you hold back, just a little, to see if I’d come running to help you the way I used to?”
Jack’s nostrils flared, and he looked away. This was what was different, then. Jack had always been willing to stretch the bounds of ethical means to reach his end, but never to this extreme. And Will had always been willing to call Jack out, but not this harshly.
“Both of us have evolved,” Will informed Jack, “metamorphosed beyond our original forms. I’ve found acceptance in that, absolution from guilt. Have you?”
“You know,” Jack said, “I always knew that if you were alive, still out there somehow, that you’d be different. But I never let myself admit that the difference would be that you’d come to sound like him.” Jack’s glare in Hannibal’s direction came this time with a rattle of the ropes against his chair.
“It’s only to be expected.” Will set his hand very pointedly on his knee. “Between husbands.”
Jack’s eyes fixed on Will’s wedding ring for the first time. “You’ll forgive me if I can’t congratulate you.”
“Still seeking your absolution, then,” Will concluded. “Would you like me to give it to you? After all, that’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”
Jack gulped and then nervously nodded, just once.
“Go ahead,” Will offered. “I promise you the unvarnished truth.”
Jack wetted his lips, hesitated, and then met Will’s eyes square on, a hint of that old fire and confidence behind him once more. “Did I do this to you?” he asked, point-blank. “Did I turn you into him? Is this my fault?”
Will sat back and considered the question carefully. From the corner, Hannibal seemed as curious about Will’s answer as Jack was anxious.
“Have you ever had occasion to study the mating habits of snails?” Will asked.
“Who hasn’t?” Jack said sarcastically, and then: “No. Of course not.”
“It’s an elaborate construct. Of any given species, the vast majority of the species will coil their shells one way: clockwise, say. But one in ten-thousand snails is born differently. A backwards design: counterclockwise. And when snails mate, all their organs connect in a cyclical pattern. They curl into each other’s shells. A snail that coils the wrong direction can’t connect, is doomed to be forever alone.” Will leaned forward on his elbows and worried his wedding ring between his thumb and forefinger. “I was born a left-coiling snail. I tried to pretend most my life otherwise – was still pretending when you and I first met – but this was not something you, or anyone else, could do to me.”
Jack let out a long, slow breath of relief.
“You did, however,” Will added, “find a me a second left-coiling snail to mate with. Whether that makes you guilty, I’ll leave it for your conscience to decide. But I, at least, am eternally in your debt, and that’s why, this one last time, I’ll hunt your killer for you. Clean up your mess.”
Will deliberately did not look Hannibal’s way. He didn’t need to, to know that Hannibal’s eyes were dancing with unspoken emotion.
Jack clenched his jaw but bowed his head in defeat. “You want to know who the killer is.”
“I already know who the killer is,” Will corrected him. “There’s only one person you had in custody who could’ve convinced you that he could lure me out; there’s only one person whose design is solely to please me with his kills. I’m not the one who racks up acolytes.” He cast Hannibal a sly glance and got a deadly smile in response. “I only have the one.”
Jack grimaced in agreement.
“What I want,” Will said, “is for you to give me all the details of the crime scenes, all the police reports, everything, so that I can catch him.”
“A second devil’s bargain?” Jack asked.
Will smiled a smile that could charm even Hannibal. “Better the devil you know.”
***
Hannibal was silent most of the drive back to their home base, after they’d thoroughly drugged Jack out of the picture, hopefully for at least a day (although Will wasn’t betting on that). As they pulled into the drive, Hannibal finally spoke and rubbed tellingly at the faded scars on his wrists.
“And how do you intend to find Matthew Brown?”
“Yelp,” Will answered.
“Yelp?” Hannibal repeated.
“You heard what Jack said: Yelp.” Will couldn’t deny that he took vicarious pleasure in befuddling Hannibal like this.
Hannibal seemed even more perturbed when Will’s first action upon arriving home was, indeed, to check out Yelp reviews.
“Think about it,” Will explained. “The FBI profile was all wrong. Matthew Brown’s not a local, and not military, and doesn’t have some weird fetish for deer hunters. He’s an outsider, a hospital orderly, and his only interest in antlers is that he knows they’ll catch my eye. Someone like that goes about these killings in a completely different way. The only way that makes sense, given the nature of the crimes.”
“Do tell,” Hannibal said, almost solicitously, as he sat next to Will on the sofa.
“You did it yourself,” Will said, “city slicker. Your background parallels Matthew Brown’s more than it does mine. When you need to take down big prey—”
“Our Jack,” Hannibal chuckled.
“—Did you put on camo gear and run about playing soldiers in the woods? No, you used your medical knowledge to sedate your prey. At that point, you’re in control and you can do anything you like to them.”
Will paused over the latest review page and reread it slowly.
“A state park ranger station?” Hannibal asked skeptically.
“Exactly. Who bothers to give one-star reviews to a ranger station?”
“...People on Yelp.”
“Multiple people on Yelp who are all complaining that this particular station was closed for multiple days when the posted hours said it was supposed to be open, so that they had to truck over thirty miles to the next available spot to get their deer permits. What does that tell you?”
“One hunter stands little chance against four able-bodied, armed hunters...”
“...But a park ranger could come up to a group of hunters, say, at the outset of their trip. Just letting them know about fallen trees or rockslides, nothing suspicious.”
“Strike up a friendly conversation. But surely not drug them so easily?”
“Contents of the stomachs,” Will said, “from the file Jack showed us. Beer.”
“Hunters drinking beer. Truly, a unique occurrence.”
“It’s how I would do it, if I had the know-how. Ingratiate myself. Say ‘hey, I’ve got a few extra beers in the back, you guys want one?’ Innocent, natural.”
“Wait for them to lose consciousness.”
“Fit them in the back of the truck. Maybe kill them first, rather than at the display site, just to be safe. If I’m only killing them for the splash they’ll make and not for the thrill of the hunt, the act of killing itself doesn’t matter. Then drive them straight into the park, up the trail.”
“That’s why you think it was a park vehicle. An official vehicle is the only one allowed on those trails.”
Will nodded. “No one would look twice. It’s how the trails are groomed. We even saw the tire treads at the kill site. No need to overpower your victims, and no need to lug them through brambles and up ravines.”
Hannibal cast Will a wry look. “You seemed to enjoy dragging your victim through brambles and up ravines,” he said peevishly.
“What can I say? It’s a good look on you.” Will smiled back. “So... Want to suit up?”
Hannibal’s eyes darkened. “I thought you’d never ask.”
***
The ranger station with the recent string of terrible Yelp reviews was up a short gravel drive at a secondary entrance to the park, well back off the highway. It wasn’t the same park where any of the bodies had been found, but to Will, that pointed even more in its favor. Matthew Brown wouldn’t have wanted to draw the investigation close to his base.
Will parked around the back of the building and watched Hannibal pull several weapons from his bag and conceal them discretely upon his person.
“Seriously, a garrote? We’re not the mob.”
“Best to be over-wary than under,” Hannibal said simply and slipped another knife into his hiking boot.
Will was starting to suspect that he’d turned Hannibal around on the topic of footwear; boots sure were comfier when trekking after serial killers through back country. “He won’t fight us,” Will said. “After all, he’s been waiting over ten years for me to come to him.”
“You speak only of one acolyte, but he’s not the first who’s waited years in prison for the very sight of you,” Hannibal said.
“Flatterer.” Will quirked a smile Hannibal’s way. “After we’re done here, if you want to offer yourself as sacrifice, I promise not to object.”
Hannibal smiled back. “Flatterer,” he said, equally fervid.
They both opened their truck doors simultaneously and exited the vehicle. The ranger station was, in theory, open, but as the Yelp reviews had ranted, the door was locked when Will tried it. Will breathed in the chill afternoon air and felt his mind wander into a sort of dreamlike state, and then he banged on the door, just once, and shouted, “It’s Will Graham.”
Will blinked slowly, almost hazily, three times, and then sound came from within the cabin of bolts being unlatched. The door slid open, and Will could sight only the silhouette of his next victim where he hid in the dark while the bright October sun haloed Will in gold.
“You’re here,” came Matthew Brown’s voice from within. “I called, and you came.”
“I did,” Will agreed, and stepped aside. “Now, show me the place you’ve chosen to die.”
***
Matthew Brown drove the three of them in his park vehicle up a washboard trail higher into the mountains. The pick-up only had a front seat, so Will sat in the middle, sandwiched between Michael Brown and Hannibal, still breathing slow, even breaths. Time still seemed slowed down to Will, as he fell into the same sort of trance he did when he fished in the river back home: perfect peace in killing.
Hannibal had not spoken a word since this ritual had begun. He followed behind Will, a solid, menacing shadow. If Will’s grasp on reality were tenuous at all these days, he might wonder whether Hannibal was really there or he was another of Will’s hallucinations. Will glanced over once, just to check: no antlers.
Matthew Brown noticed, of course, and he licked his lips nervously as he drove them up the escarpment. “W-Will you have him do it?” he asked, looking anxiously over at Hannibal. “The way you sent me to him?”
Hannibal, uncharacteristically, didn’t attempt to menace Matthew Brown in the slightest. He understood, then, that this was Will’s hunt and Will’s kill.
“Would you prefer that I did it myself?” Will asked instead of answering.
He could see the pulse pounding at Matthew Brown’s throat when he nodded roughly. “Yes,” Matthew Brown said.
“I can give you what you want,” Will promised, and while he directed it to Matthew Brown, the words were meant for Hannibal as well. This was one thing he could do as a gift to both of them.
Finally, Matthew Brown pulled them off to the side of the road. The forest cleared here slightly, and there was a patch of grass and rock to the right that extended a few hundred feet perpendicular to the road.
“What do you think?” Matthew Brown asked nervously, anxious for approval.
Will looked up at the sun overhead and around at the surrounding trees. “It’s a good spot to hunt. Off the beaten track. Clear lines of sight.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Matthew Brown agreed.
The three of them got out of the truck and headed to the other end of the clearing, furthest from the road. Will reflected that maybe Hannibal hadn’t grown fond of the hiking boots, after all; maybe he’d just anticipated more of this terrain.
Will led the way, and the same dreamlike, slanting light filtered through the clouds and the leaves and the trees until Will came to a sudden stop where a section of rock from the mountain lay exposed in a sharply slanting slab, circular in shape and at least ten feet in diameter. Mosses and lichens dappled the stone’s gray palette, but very few larger plants managed to find roots in its cracks.
“A clean cutting board,” Will concluded. He turned to face Matthew Brown. “Are you ready?”
Matthew Brown nodded, and then Will stepped in closely, intimately until the ghosts of their breaths mingled and dissipated into the air.
“Understand this,” Will said, “I promised the FBI that I would deliver you, and I plan to do so, with a neat red bow. But also you succeeded in finding me when no one else could, and for that, I will honor your sacrifice. Do you accept?”
“Show me,” Matthew Brown agreed. “Show me what you’d give him.” He spared one last look to Hannibal and then met Will’s eyes head-on.
Will’s hands came up to circle Matthew Brown’s throat and then, slowly, he began to squeeze the life out of him. Matthew Brown’s eyes rolled back in his head in ecstasy, and the little gasp Will heard from Hannibal behind him let him know that Hannibal felt the same.
Will watched Matthew Brown’s eyes bulge and his skin start to turn purple. At the last moment, when bright flashes of doubt began to shoot behind his bloodshot eyes, Matthew Brown reached up to grasp madly at Will’s choking hands, whether to fight at the last minute for his life or surrender completely, even Will didn’t know.
Will didn’t offer him the chance to find out. Will pulled the fishing knife from his pocket, flicked it upon, and sank all six inches of steel into Matthew Brown’s abdomen, just beneath his navel. Matthew Brown’s eyes widened, and then Will pull the knife up in a long, clean cut right up to Matthew Brown’s ribcage, exactly the way the Wendigo had gutted his victims: like a fish.
Blood gurgled up out of Matthew Brown’s mouth and dripped down onto the one hand that Will still kept to his throat. Gently, almost lovingly, Will lowered Matthew Brown’s body to the stone canvas he’d chosen. The light didn’t leave Matthew Brown’s eyes immediately. It was long, protracted, painful. It wasn’t sadism on Will’s part, simply the extended death the man had earned.
When the light in Matthew Brown’s eyes finally died, Will heard a sound from Hannibal that he recognized only too well, the pure, abandoned elation of orgasm.
“This is my design for you,” Will said, and while he looked down at Matthew Brown, the words were meant for still-living years. “If only I could bear to live beyond you.”
In echo to the words Will had granted Hannibal once in answer to a courtship and proposal unfathomably monstrous: “It’s beautiful,” Hannibal breathed in hushed awe.
“This part,” Will said, and smiled unconditionally, lovingly up at Hannibal, “we do together. Help me out.”
Hand over hand, they pulled the entrails out of Matthew Brown’s body, until they had a red ribbon long enough to tie around him, as a present for Jack. Hannibal retrieved a pair of elk antlers he found in the back of Matthew Brown’s truck, and together they crowned his brow. Finally, the Wendigo that had haunted Will’s vision all those years ago – the denied, repressed, stunted mirror of himself – stared back up at them and out into the still of the woods.
“And how will you devour me?” Will asked Hannibal in return.
Hannibal took Will’s hand almost tenderly and guided him to the bare patch of stone beside Matthew Brown’s corpse. With practiced, patient hands, Hannibal stripped Will as naked as Will’s victim. At Hannibal’s guidance, Will lay back in total relaxed submission and looked up at the wispy clouds passing overhead in the blue autumn sky. Will could feel the leaves and moss beneath his body, like he was some kind of dead thing, and the wetness at his back and hair as Matthew Brown’s blood sank into him. Truly, if Will ever killed Hannibal, this was how it would happen: with Will soaking up as much of Hannibal’s blood as he could until he ended his own life.
Hannibal’s method of killing Will was as indirect as Will’s had been.
Hannibal’s mouth consumed Will’s cock first, sucking Will in dark and deep on the first pull. Will glanced down briefly to see the expression on Hannibal’s face – the rapture of a true gourmet – before Will closed his eyes and let himself be devoured.
Hannibal drank down Will’s cock like a starving man – like he always did – without any sign of hesitation, shame, or gag reflex. Hannibal’s throat burned like the inferno, and Will never lasted long against the experienced slow swallows, the ever-present threat of sharp canines, the knowledge that this wasn’t a mere act of pleasure for Hannibal but a ritual killing.
Will died the first time, sharp and quick, providing Hannibal with the promised meal.
Hannibal crawled up Will’s body once he’d had his fill and devoured Will a second time. This time, his mouth enclosed delicately around Will’s jugular. Still limp from his own orgasm, Will could barely find the energy to tangle his fingers in Hannibal’s hair and urge him on.
Hannibal’s tongue traced a circle on Will’s throat, like a surgeon drawing his cut lines, and then just once Hannibal let his teeth sink in, only a few millimeters, just enough to draw blood but not to kill for real.
Will wouldn’t have described it as an orgasm in the traditional sense. His cock was not involved in the slightest, nor was Hannibal’s: both of them already entirely spent. Yet Will’s body shook with ecstasy, and his eyes rolled back in his head, and he could see this moment in its entirety. His death and Hannibal’s, intertwined, indivisible, one beast with two backs in more sense than one.
Just as Will had given Hannibal his death, so Hannibal gave Will his. Maybe, if they continued on like this, it could last forever, each of them killing the other a thousand different ways.
They ended this unspoken but implicit pact with a kiss, soft and nearly human. And then they rose from the blood of their shared creation and headed home.
***
The return trip was a second honeymoon, and this time Will was much less drugged. Whether that made it more or less enjoyable was debatable, but it certainly made it more memorable.
“It’s good to get away every once in a while,” Will said to their neighbors down the road when he went to retrieve his pack. “It allows one perspective, renewal, a different way of seeing things.”
Will’s neighbors found him baffling most of the time when he talked like this, but Will was always helpful in fixing their tractor without asking anything in return, and dogs were excellent judges of character. So, they smiled and nodded and lived out the rest of their lives in peace.
Will returned home to find Hannibal back in his kitchen domain, fussing between the oven and a sauce pan in turn. If Hannibal offered a moue of annoyance when the dogs circled his legs in reunion, it was minor and he sent them off to their food dishes with a sharp word.
“A feast for all,” Will said. “No doubt, they missed your cooking. You spoil them.”
“Not all offal is fit for human consumption,” Hannibal defended himself. “It’s merely efficient.”
Will sat at the table and took a sip of the Sauvignon Blanc Hannibal had set out. A subtle flavor flooded Will’s mouth, and he said, with fond nostalgia, “Next time, it’s your turn to choose the menu.”
Hannibal smiled softly, maliciously, lovingly, and promised, “Next time.”
“Now,” Will agreed, “what’s for dinner?”
“Escargot, baked in the shell, and coated with garlic herb butter,” Hannibal announced, and presented a plate before Will that, through Hannibal’s culinary wizardry did, indeed, look exactly like snails in the shell. Will had seen Hannibal carve out the muscle and knew the shells must’ve been formed somehow from the ribs Hannibal had extracted, but still the effect was: “Remarkable.”
Will lifted the first ‘snail’ to his lips and sucked out the flesh into his mouth.
“And,” he added in rare compliment, “delicious.”
After all, even Will could learn to be a gracious husband, when the occasion particularly called for it.
***
It took several days for Jack to find the body. In that time, the ravens had pecked out Matthew Brown’s eyes, and the vultures, wolves, and wildcats his entrails. But still, amidst the remains, Jack found a bloodstained envelope with a stock-paper card inside, which had written in Will’s clear, firm block print, an offering of – if not absolution – then at least something very close to it:
One counterclockwise snail is a tragedy.
Two is a miracle.
A third is superfluous.Thank you for my miracle. Please refrain from any future superfluous acts.
Perhaps it was time to retire, after all. Clearly, Jack was getting too old for this bullshit.