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Breaking into the palace had been easier than Julian had anticipated. The guards’ patrols were easy to track, their shift change predictable and, of course, being reckless to the point of negligence helped. He wasn’t ready to be caught quite yet, but he wouldn’t be all that disappointed if he was discovered. Same ending, either way.
He considered marching straight up to the countess but was held back by a last shred of doubt. He was sure of his guilt, branded into his soul as deeply as his murderer’s mark, but his memory of the murder eluded him. His headaches denied him the ability to search back, correcting him, as if his mind had worked against him to repress every memory of that night.
It was troubling. But despite the dread and fear that thudded in his chest he knew he had to take this chance to try and settle his doubts once and for all. If not for his sake…
The halls and passages of the palace came back to Julian as he sulked through them, unfolding in his mind’s eye before him. His heart pounded against his ribs as he found the stairs, bounding up them two at a time, wondering wildly if this was how he felt the night of the murder.
Lucio’s wing opened and swallowed him like the maw of a death mask. Tossed from the dazzling well-lit halls into a cold, dusty abyss that almost seemed to claw at Julian as he stood gasping for breath among the count’s many portraits. A lump grew in his throat, thick, even as he coughed on the dust that swirled around in the darkness around him.
But it was more than that. The darkness sat heavy on Julian’s chest, dread pushing through the gloom and silence and directly into his very nerves. This was it, wasn’t it? He was about to come face to face with his crimes, the murder he committed even if he couldn’t remember it for the life of him. A murderer’s guilt thickening in his bone marrow, sluggishly dragging at him as rope-like cobwebs as he made for the door to Lucio’s wing and pushed it open with a flourish.
Julian half expected someone to be on the other side of the door, but of course, it was empty. He dropped his hands to his sides, exhaling a long breath as he cast a cautious eye around the room. Everything in the room seemed to be frozen in time as if Julian were the first person since the murder to crack the door of this tomb open. There was an empty jeweled glass by the bedside, the red remnants of wine dry and streaked within. An unworn masquerade costume was laid over a chair to one side of the room, as if Lucio was about to put it on and join the party himself- As if he- Lucio couldn’t because-
Julian hissed as a sharp pain stabbed through his temple. He held his face in his cool, gloved hand as he tried to organize his thoughts. The murder, the one he had committed, had happened here. And yet, when he looked back around the room with his head thudding dully, he could not recall a moment of it. He did not feel anything.
Well, except for the disgust and dread that had knotted in his stomach. There was certainly something off about the room, not that Julian hadn’t seen his fair share of bodies or places where people died, but something almost sinister seemed to lurk where Lucio had once existed.
“Good riddance,” Julian muttered quietly. Even if he couldn’t remember the murder, he knew that Lucio deserved nothing more, no matter how detestable it was.
The empty and dusty room held no answers. Held nothing but prying headaches and the ghosts of bad memories that Julian’s couldn’t quite conjure up. Perhaps he was missing something, something he had forgotten or overlooked. He pondered the thought as he turned to leave the room behind him.
“ Just making a little house call, doctor? ”
Julian’s fingers froze above the doorknob as an icy chill ran through him. He whipped his head back, searching the empty room with his one good eye. He was alone. But he could have sworn…
“ You’re a bit LATE aren’t you, Jules? I thought I told you not to come back until…. ”
Julian’s breath escaped him in a small cloud of cold air as something brushed up against his back. He whipped around, the empty room stretching out before him, he was alone. No one was here, what- how was he- it sounded so much like…
“ Oh do come closer, can’t catch what you already have, can you? ”
The voice was sharp in his ears. Raking, grating and visceral, as if Lucio had manifested to sneer directly into Julian’s ears. Julian stepped back against the door, his back flat against it as sudden something caught his throat. An invisible hand tightened under his jaw, pressing mercilessly down as he gasped for breath.
Julian’s hands went to his throat immediately, scratching at untouched skin as the grip increased. There was nothing there. There was nothing holding him. But there was . As quickly as it had clamped around his neck, it dragged him forward. Julian’s boots slid against the carpet before he kicked out, choking and gagging for air as he threw his body against the invisible force that was dragging him straight for-
The bed was covered in a layer of black ash, Julian hadn’t noticed, the smell of charred flesh singed behind his mind, deep in his memories. It flashed for a second as he was thrown against the silk bedspread, ash and dust flying up in a cloud as the grip on his throat finally released him.
Julian coughed and gasped for breath, eye wide as terror spiked through his limbs. He was going mad. That was the only explanation. He had to get out of here. He had to confess, he had to have this done with, whatever it was inside of him that was causing these delusions. He was not hearing Lucio’s voice, he was not being manhandled by thin air, there had to be another explanation…
“Where do you think you’re going? ”
A shimmer caught the light, shifting the swirling dust as something moved towards Julian.
“Y-you’re-” Julian’s throat tightened, aching from the choke hold and rejecting the idea that he was talking to what could only be a ghost . “You’re dead. You can’t -”
Julian’s bravery faltered and died as what he could only imagine to be claws gripped the side of his face and pulled him upwards. His feet barely caught at the foot of the bed, held at an angle only possible if something much larger and stronger than him had a hold of him. But, as before, he couldn’t see anything.
“ What’s the problem, Jules? Can’t quite see me can you? Doesn’t help that you seem to be missing something…”
The thin strap of Julian’s eye patch snapped in his hair, the patch tossed aside as his second, contaminated eye flew blindly open against the dust and light.
“Ah, much better. Can you see me now, doctor?” Something shifted in the air, as if the motes of dust moved together for a moment to almost create a body. A pair of dull red lights caught Julian’s eye, as insubstantial and painful to look upon as the signature the sun left in one’s eyes. “Do you think it's fair that you got off like that, while I have to suffer this form? You FAILED and you are the one who gets to reap all the rewards?”
A thousand memories flashed in Julian’s mind, fragmented and shredded as the claws holding his face sank in. Invisible, needle-sharp points broke skin from where he hung in the air. Julian cried out, limbs jerking on the bed in an attempt to get away as blood poured freely from the wounds.
Julian was let go, falling back on the old bed with a soft thud as he gasped and shuddered. What in the hell was happening? Was this some sort of divine punishment? Was this really some ghostly apparition of Lucio, returned from the dead just to torment him?
God, where was the witch when Julian really needed him?
“Lucio?” Julian gaped, despite everything inside of him yelling at him to keep his mouth shut. “This is insane, you can’t be-”
A screech like nails on a chalkboard and Julian clapped his gloved hands over his ears. The bed trembled under him, bowing as the barely-visible weight shifted upon it. The wounds on Julian’s face were closing, slowly knitting skin over the wells of blood. The room shook, shuddering with a selfish rage that Julian recognized. Whatever this was, it was most certainly Lucio.
“ WHAT DID YOU DO? ” Lucio screeched above him, the burning insubstantial red glows thinned into murderous slits. A sharp wind slapped Julian’s face, his head whipping from the blow with a devastating ring of pain. The wounds broke open again. Julian tasted blood in his mouth, his lip split and stinging. “ How are you DOING THAT? You CHEATED! You STOLE that from me, didn’t you? A murderer and a THIEF.”
Julian grinned and huffed a laugh despite himself, his teeth clapping as another blow came down on him. He searched the air above him for the slight, shifting of air and dust, found the burnt-out suns glaring down from a cool white fog. A chill of horror ran down his spine, but his grin remained firmly in place.
“Absolutely,” He confirmed, laughing again. It was a lie, of course, the curse was not something he had taken from the Count. It didn’t make any sense. Whatever apparition it was that saw fit to torment and punish him was mad, as mad as Lucio had been. But he wouldn’t give up a chance to rub salt in the wound, even if it reduced him to petty insults at a ghost . “And I would do it again, I would snuff you out and take everything you held precious. Look at you, a cloud of dust, pathetic.”
Julian was thrown to the ground. The back of his head hitting the floor first as his limbs toppled after him. He snatched desperate fingers against the once-plush carpet beneath him, twisting as he blinked wildly up to the door. Scrambling to his feet only to feel an impossibly large and strong grip around his ribs, tossing him as easily as a ragdoll into the center of the empty room.
“ I’ll show you pathetic, Jules,” The sound hissed all around Julian, in through his ears to thread painfully through his brain, inescapable. “You took something precious from me, and now I will take the only thing you have left to give, rightfully MINE .”
Pressure beat down on Julian’s chest, slamming him to the ground from where he had been struggling to collect himself. Pinned like a rabbit in and claws of a hawk. This was it, the ghost was going to kill him. At any other time Julian might appreciate the drama of it but instead, all he could think through his terror was how much he would rather have a noose around his neck.
Julian was flipped flat onto his back, a thick weight pressing into his chest when he attempted to struggle. The dusty apparition had formed into a foggy white mass above him, blurred and wrong, shifting like a cataract as the dull red lights bored into him. It looked nothing like Lucio but something deep inside of Julian knew it could only be him. Long, thick arms lashed out, fabric shredding against Julian’s thighs as Lucio did away with his trousers.
Oh god.
“No, no, no, don’t-” Julian sputtered, hands scrambling uselessly at his sides as he pushed himself against the solid wall pressing down over him.
The claw swiped again and again, catching the hem of his coat and tearing it like paper. Julian’s shirt trailed from his ruined waistband, his trousers discarded in a pile of torn ribbons, falling uselessly from his boots as he kicked out. He was exposed, pinned, blood trickling from his shaking thighs even as the curse pressed the wounds closed as quickly as Lucio could inflict them. Julian’s smallclothes had been caught in the fray, his limp cock vulnerable as he dug his heels into the floor again and again in an attempt to scurry away.
“ I thought you liked rough treatment, Jules! You always LOVED whatever punishment I gave you ,” Lucio snarled, Julian’s legs were spread apart as he groaned in misery. “ Come on doctor, you know I can’t REALLY hurt you anymore.”
Julian’s knees lifted into the air, pulled as if by strings. He couldn’t do anything but watch in horror, the white gloom above him shoving and pulling and now reaching …
“No, no, no, stop!” Julian’s words ran together, his heart beating too quickly. “Please, don’t do this, no, no-”
Lucio cackled, a sound so grating and familiar and tormenting that it rendered Julian completely silent, “ Haven’t you heard of safe words, doctor? All this resistance is just making me want to do it more .”
Julian stiffened as something swiped at his hole. Something made of air, but hot and hefty, impossible to describe even as his mind chased it. It pressed greedily, fighting for purchase as Julian writhed panicked under its insistence. He wasn’t prepared and he knew whatever it was that was attempting to worm its way in had no care for him, not if it had anything to do with Lucio.
Lucio sucked in a breath, a rattling wet sound that could not be associated with anything alive or healthy. Julian cried out as the pressure at his ass pushed harder, breaking past the ring of muscle at his entrance painfully before slipping in fluidly unlike anything Julian had felt.
“ So tight, is it the fear Jules? Or is it that I’m just too big for you ?” Lucio laughed, guttural in a way that distantly reminded Julian of something inhuman, something he distantly recognized.
“You can’t do this- Please don’t-” Julian was cut off by his throat closing painfully around a muted cry. The wriggling, invasive intrusion thickened inside of him. It pressed against his walls, swelling and expanding hot inside of his ass. He was speared, punched through to his gut by something he knew couldn't be solid or even real . “Oh god, no, no, no, please!”
Lucio purred above him, the specter leaning down over Julian’s trembling body possessively, “ I do so love when you beg for me, Jules .”
The great white claws scratched up and down Julian’s chest, shredding his thin shirt and ripping long swallow gashes into his chest. Julian hissed through his teeth, contorting and arching as the instruction - he refused to believe it was actually Lucio’s cock - began to thrash, as if he were a hand puppet. He gripped the rug in shaking hands, desperate to find some sense of gravity as the wriggling, throbbing thing in his hole grew and grew and thickened .
It pressed against his prostate, hard and relentless as a knuckle punching into him. Julian’s breath escaped him, winded as his cock twitched and hardened. He squeezed his eyes closed, drowned in terror and now shame, as Lucio’s bleating laugh filled the dusty room.
“ Oh, you whore! How dirty, doctor, getting raped by a ghost and still hard,” A flash of gleaming teeth under those burning red eyes, the shape coming in and out of focus as Julian stared on in horror. He tore his eyes away to look down at his erect cock, arched up in the air towards the phantom, trembling between his healing thighs, blood still running in thin stripes. “ I know how irresistible I am, Jules, but I can’t have you being selfish now can I…”
A ghostly tendril wrapped around Julian’s cock before he could respond. It tightened, hot and dry as a desert wind as it gripped until Julian was groaning in pain and wiggling to try and get away from it. His cock did not falter, the intrusion inside of him still kneading hard against his prostate, but the grip on his cock erased any pleasure he would have even hoped to achieve.
Tears were welling hot in Julian's eyes as the thickness in his hole began to shift slowly, sluggishly. He imagined a thick python, slithering where it shouldn’t ever be, grinding thickly against his unprepared walls. Every nerve in his body screeched with pleasure and pain and pain . This was wrong, impossible, impossibly wrong. Lucio picked up speed, his ghostly grip still squeezing and punishing Julian’s cock as he rammed his ghostly prick roughly, a distinct brush of fur at Julian’s thighs.
Lucio leaned over him, looming red eyes borring into him as a faint suggestion of a tongue lolled above Julian’s face. He could imagine spittle hitting his face, wondered if it was actually there, as Lucio rattled a low huffing breath with every painful and possessive thrust. Julian was helpless, pinned under the ghost, Lucio reaching deeper and deeper inside of him on every savage thrust.
This was a punishment, Lucio was claiming him in a way that reeked of his own arrogance and some deeper, more menacing animalistic nature.
Julian squeezed his eyes closed, hot tears streaking down his face. This had to be a dream, a nightmare. This couldn’t be real. This was some manifestation of his guilt and self-loathing, come to rape and scrape out his insides of everything he had left. A grip closed in on his throat and Julian gasped against it, reaching his hands up to feel nothing but a ghostly cool air against his strained neck muscles. It tightened and black spots burst in his vision as he threw his eyes open, gagging and gurgling as he found those burning red orbs searing above him.
“ That’s it, Jules, feel good? ” Lucio mocked, his eyes narrowing into sharp slits. His thrusts became harsher, his phantom hips snapping against Julian. “I’m going to fill you, so full you’ll never live another day where you don’t remember my cock rammed up to your ribs. Remember how I owned you. Destroyed you .”
The specter stiffened, the edges of his shape blurring into the air as he trembled, fur standing on end. Julian gagged against the tight grip on his windpipe. The ghost cock inside of him stilled, swelled in size, pressing on Julian as it burst come in thick spurts. Julian writhed, the liquid inside of him tingling and almost numbing as it oozed along the intrusion. Lucio’s length began to shrink, receding as the seed spread.
The grip on his throat released, the white, foggy figure above him dissipating lazily. The tendril trailed away from Julian’s aching but still hard cock, scratching deep stinging lines down the inside of his thigh as it slowly vanished.
Within a moment, there was nothing left of Lucio but the distant, selfish cackle and the gelatinous seed that Julian could feel ooze obscenely from his wrecked and stinging hole. His breath was ragged, his throat pained and bruised, his cock still standing erect. A flag of shame, Julian whined as he reached for it, despite the loathing he felt at the action. A bead of precome was already running down his shaft as he gently took it in hand, stroked it until he came weakly and brokenly on the floor surrounded by his drying blood and the shreds of his clothes.
He couldn’t help but imagine Lucio’s terrifying, ghostly form watching him from the shadows. Julian held his breath for a moment, closing his eyes, attempting to erase the memory. Trying to force it into the abyss that followed him, eating up every important thing in his life and his recollections. It was fine. He would forget. After all…
Who would believe that Lucio’s ghost had raped him?