XXXIV. All That Was And All That Will Be

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Pain. It was – and always would be – the daughter of suffering, and fostered by this innate, insatiable need to punish the wicked. For most people, pain is just a temporary dull; a throb you breeze through. But for Macbeth, pain had such more intimacy. He liked flirting with pain more than the average being; loved the feeling of ripping the flesh from someoneʼs bones, loved seeing how pain could make any strong and sturdy man mindless and mad with need. And with every slew of pain, it was an orgasmic combination; torture and pain in a dingy, dimly-lit backdoor office, fashioned for his delight.

In the shrillness of the night, Marcella screamed...

And the pain was glorious.

"Let me go! Let, me, go!" she thundered through clenched teeth, struggling against the wall. In the backroom of the club, Macbeth had the bolted Marcellaʼs thumbscrews that glued him to the wall. As electric currents that surged through her, just as he was promised, Marcella hung limply from the desiccated wallʼs panels and sobbed – the splintered wood jutting through her skin. Bronze with the jealous envy of the sun, light curls lavishing every edge of pulpy, muscly meat that the chimera scarred her with. Eyes that were soft and warm, but poetic in their maroon anguish. Macbeth stood back, got a hand of his crafty work, and watched Marcella beg.

"Please, I donʼt know anything," she sobbed. "Iʼm just here on a college visit, I swear. Do...do you want money, sir? I can give you money, please–"

"That mouth will get you nowhere, my dear," Macbeth chastised, tskʼing.

"Please," Marcella choked, shuddering breaths wracking her petite body. "Please. My mom has money. We have money."

"Please–"

He clutched her; his fingers digging into her gums. She gasped, flailing and undulating and crying and sobbing against him, and that pushed him to tighten his grip around her. To feel her pulse skip against his fingers; to feel her throat bob against his cupped palm, to feel her muscles scrape against his callouses and for the pressure to dig into her skin as the meat dug into his. Marcella winced, grimacing against him, and let out a staggering cry when he let go. Her body tightened; a steel band writhing in pain when she doubled over, crying.

"Oh god," she belched, sobbing.

"Iʼve killed women biggerʼn you for less, sweetheart," Macbeth crooned, tongue poking out of his mouth as he stifled a laugh.

"The chains are Illyrian steel, forged from the flames of Cnut the Greatʼs jabberwhocks. Iʼm sure youʼre familiar with them, mʼdear, so, if you make a sound, I will rip your bones from your flesh and wear it as a necklace ʼround me neck with them."

Macbeth ground his teeth together.

"I have done more than pay for the privilege of chopping you into itty-bitty pieces, so you speak when you're spoken to, Marcella."

She nodded wordlessly, tears licking her neck as groaned against the panels of wood, glaring.

"Now," Macbeth mused. "Where is Marjorie?"

When Marcella went silent, Macbeth spat. Spraying her cheek with bloodied saliva and the anger that welled up inside his core, and when he slammed her head back, he choked her. Her pulse jackhammered against his fingers, her throat clenching in pain. Crying out, Marcella squirmed against his grip and gasped, the veins protruding from her head straining against her skin, and as Macbeth choked her – he screwed. Screwed the thumbscrew into her skin: onto her stomachʼs edges, the pads of her fingers, onto her feet.

"I am not a fool, girl," he growled. "Where is Marjorie?"

"Please, I donʼt–"

"You beg one more time, little girl, and I swear Iʼll watch you choke down every one of your fingers, come hell or high water–"

"–who, who the hell is Marjorie?" Marcella howled.

A beat.

Macbethʼs mouth clamped shut when she spoke. Watched her sculpted face – seasoned with the perfect mix of bloody scars and bloody scratches – unhinge as sobs and her growls and yells grew deafening. Watched the way the thumbscrews tore and gnawed at the flesh until blood: thick, copious ichor, drenched her Latin-American skin.

Do not lie to me," Macbeth snarled.

"Look, sir, I donʼt know who the hell Marjorie–"

"DO NOT LIE TO ME!"

Violent, Macbethʼs nails plunged into her chest. Tearing, clawing, aching. She howled as the vibrations of her heartbeat against her chest grew erratic, as her body battled ruthlessly against his nails. The beats of her chest grew more frantic as the electricity, meshed with the sweat and blood that poured down her body and the force of Macbethʼs claws rained their fresh dose of fresh hell, and to that, Macbethʼs eyes grew darker.  Angrier. Her skin stretched, gloriously sizzling as it expanded, and as her muscles knotted and convulsed, she sobbed.

"As much as I would love to watch you, the pretty little vixen oʼ your prized family of Order power-mongers, skip into the sunset with all of our happy endings, I enjoy you here. On your hands and knees, begging for my mercy. Do not play dumb, Miss DeMarcus, because you and I both know youʼre much smarter than that. My wife took great interest in you thousands of years before you were born, and a thousand years later, I come back from the dead and your wh*re of a mother and your lecher of a father are all thatʼs whispered about. On the tongue of every demon, every ghoul, every newly bred fae and every foul witch. Whispers about how youʼre Isabelleʼs ghost come to life, my-flesh-and-my-blood, staring back at me with a different name."

A beat.

"You have value to the supernatural, value to my wife, so you can die or you can confess. Itʼs your choice, little girl, but do remember this: nothing is coincidence and I do not have the patience I used to. Start talking."

Macbeth pulled his elongated nails out of his skin, torturously, seamlessly, blood gushing from the seams. Humming again, the thunder crashed forcing the rain to thrash in couplets, scuttling down the edges of the windows like little ants. It lashed at the concrete as Marcella howled to the moon. Sobbing, crying.

"Okay, okay, I skipped town, ditched the Dragonsguard detail in Memphis, but I swear to God, I d-donʼt know who Marjorie is, or who you are," Marcella, whimpered. "I came to Chicago to visit the University of Chicago. To check on my aunt, Teresa Mendoza. To meet up with a few friends. See my boyfriend. I d-donʼt know want you want, sir, I really donʼt."

Macbeth smiled.

"Lies come easily to you. Tell me, do you get that from your mother?"

He upped the ante.

Screaming, Marcella thrashed against the thumbscrews, and Macbeth turned up the heat – electrical bolts of pure, unadulterated, shock racing up Marcellaʼs body in response. Marcellaʼs eyes were murderous despite the skin scabbing against the rusty bolts, despite the flesh burning against the electrical currents, and to that, Macbeth grinned. Toothy, baring his animosity for all to see.

"Sadism comes easily to you. Tell me, do you get that from your mother?" she parroted, growling.

He laughed.

"Thatʼs it," Macbeth said with a breathless whisper, smile wide with sharp teeth. "Thatʼs the Shakespearean ruthlessness we know and love."

Marcella growled again and spat with venom. It was a grating sound, cold as the saliva against his skin, but she did it anyway. Spat with the cruelty of laughter an ebbing sound in her throat, weak and maligned and stagnated by the coughs and the gaps and the squelching of her labored breath, but he laughed with condescendence. With arrogance. With so much goddamn control, and Macbeth watched. And waited.

And wondered how it would feel like to rip her apart from the inside out.

"Eat sh*t, you son-of-a-b*tch," she growled, each word a staccato against her lips. "Eat sh*t."

"Gladly," Macbeth murmured, laughing profusely. "But now that I think about it, I think Iʼd like to eat yours."

He snapped.

He broke.

His self-control was flayed with his skin.

Peeled, desecrated, ripped off like a mask oʼ

maggots.

And in the haze of his madness, he lunged.

Grabbing a sharpened, barbed fire stoker that he had measly prepared, Macbeth charged Marcella and jerked the stoker up her *ss, listening to the hiss of the flame and watching droplets of blood tear down her rectum the way his screams did. Twisting it, feeding the fire the skin its hellish teeth tugged at, Macbeth smiled wryly and tilted his head at her. The blood hissed as it surged out of her ass, with a mixture of feces and wet food, and to that, Marcella howled. Thrashing, gritting her teeth, sweat licked her body as quickly as the pain did. Diving deeper, her v*rginity stripped with a vengeance she had always been sheltered from. Abuse was the cuff of his jeans chafing against her bloodied skin, the agony that painted her lips burning brighter than the crass words that spilled from his tongue, and he wore that abuse the way she would any tattoo. With a rough visage, and a tormented soul.

Without warning, she collapsed, the stoker clobbering the floor, and Macbeth smiled.

"Not so chatty now, are we?" Macbeth said in a stark voice.

And when he chucked the stoker to the side, his fingers carved. Clutching her chin with a teasing, longing for the taste of her blood. For the familiarity.

Isobel. Mi leanabh caileag.

Isabelle; my baby girl.

As Macbeth drank in the resplendent, repulsive waves of Marjorieʼs blood – pungent in its chokehold – the stink of his smoldering body was all he could fathom. All he wanted to inhale, to consume, instead of...the grief. The thunder still sang its sordid song, and the blood smothered his arms in a slick warm, crimson glove of silken rubies that stabbed him the way he stabbed Marcella. Pierced him the way Macbeth pierced her. The cross branded into his cheekbone glistened under the bane of the Chicagoan moon, and he simply stared.

Macbeth always stared. Too long, too intently. Because in that moment, he knew. He knew that she knew. Knew he was looking for her.

Macbeth gripped Marcella cautiously, the look of intent still painstakingly hungry as he clutched her face.

"Sheʼs good. Dangling you right in-front of me knowing Iʼd come crawling here. Wanting to know where she is; a distraction compared to what comes next. From the moment I laid eyes on you...I was a pawn. A sheep."

A beat.

"Sheit, sheʼs good. I forgot how good she was."

It dawned on him then; that Marjorie didnʼt want him to find out what happened to her; to find out what she had doing. She would have sought him out; drew him into the open if she wanted to see him. But instead, she was using him. As a ploy, as a ruse, as a distraction for the Hellbender mercenários and Orderly operatives. She was using him.

She was always using him.

Macbeth sighed, letting go of Marcellaʼs chin.

"You really donʼt know where she is, do you? You know things, but not things about her."

Marcella huffed.

"Like I said, Iʼm here on a c-college visit," she choked, shaky.

Macbeth scoffed at that.

"No," Macbeth murmured, smiling nostalgically at her ability to hold her own. "Youʼre not."

He hummed a hymn from Barbados, then. A bicultural one, and as he hummed with the thought of Ozymandias burning in his skull, he found solace in barren chill of the night. Smokinʼ and drinkinʼ it in, his vices mounting into the curdles of the clear sky where the numbness met the lonely. He watched the transparent, fleeting whiffs of fleecy light mounting towards the sky in fire. The chimeras ate at the bar, ate at Chicago, just as Marjorie said it would.

"She said I would be a God," Macbeth whispered, shaken. "She gave me a daughter, she gave me a son, and I...fell for it."

Macbeth stared at the sky, solemn.

"Who?" Marcella asked, skeptical.

"Lady Macbeth," Macbeth replied stoically, her name softly rolling off his tongue. 

"She said I would be a God because in the Western world, it is God who is revered. The prophet, the saviour, nailed to the wood of Christ with the taste of victory honeyed ichor on my lips. She said I would be a God because there is no other God...God is immovable, impenetrable. The tormentor, the seducer. She said I would be a God, but God is neither infinite or immortal. God, God was the bottomless pit between her legs. And she knew that. God was...the wetness of her warmth against mine own tongue, the prayers she would scream in feverish woe, a three-personʼd beast with two backs. God was a lecherʼs lust, doomed and pitiful in its desirous breaks, and its blows, and its burns within the throes of passion. God was Scotland, oʼerthrowing me during the witching hour, an usurpʼd town full of the disgusting smear of vanity. God was an enemy, an enemy with love so vain, so foul, betrothʼd unto forget-me-not promises and the stink of perversion. She said I was a God, but God was my fingers licking those sons and daughters and queens and kings and pale, pitiful princes from the beautiful, weeping juices of her body. In the darkness I ate the heirs of her ancestors, the way. I ate their flesh as I carved it into their screaming bodies. Goring them, one-by-one, as a boarʼs tusks tore at the flesh from groin to throat to heart. And yet, I never became a God. She would cry for God when I was inside her, but I was never God. But she promised. She said I would be a God. She was illiterate for a slave, dirt polished into the most exquisite diamond, but she said I would be a God. She promised me. With every effervescent night, every craving for skin, every bloody kiss. But God was empty promises, and dolorous anger, and an ill-contrived thirst for love in the most desecrated places, a hunger for love in the most unholiest shrines. She said I would be a God, but I became nothingness. Boundless and bare. As Ozymandias became. She said I would be a God, and she the slave. And instead, I became the slave. And she became God."

Macbeth stared, and then?

He plundered.

"I have been at this far longer than you. See, I've got everything else figured out: the s*x, the sodomy, the booze, the drugs, the epitome of damned salvation – Iʼve got it down. The Order is nothing more but an empire of scheming, and money-grubbing, and arse-licking; thatʼs what my legacy has been reduced to. And you may think, that atop these rotting ruins, that you are God, too, because you were able to lie to me. To deceive me, but my dear, even Gods fall. And I–"

He cut her down the way a shepherd would cut a sheep, with cannibalistic deprecation, and when she gushed blood, he ate the remains the way he ate Marjorie's heirs. With a renewed, newly christened lust, with a s*xual prowess that knew no bounds. His mouth watered just as the blood curtained his sides, caressing, cupping, knitting together two sides of a bruised, weakened, old abode of such a godly body. Marcella panted, burying her clammy face in her bicep so the pores could shriek in sorrow, in intentional injury. Just like that, the machismo swagger and the bravado dissolved as his words did. Stuttering into a ruinous pile of ravaged muscle and tortured eyes among the woken dead.

"–am in the business of killing them," he seethed.

Her screams were fire, and she let them burn, and she gasped in staggering gasps, her face burned with the wetness of her tears, her lip trembling in whimpers.

"I donʼt know anything, p-please," she sobbed, begging, his hands carving deep –

"I DONʼT KNOW ANYTHING!"

Her arms were his canvas. Her body, his art. As Marcella shuddered with exhaustion and fear as the chimeras stalked in, screeching, hissing, the night continued to burn like a cigarette and Macbeth knew how to strike his blows. How to shiv her skin off at just the right angle, how to make her veins coil around his knife, how to cripple a Wolf the way dog-fighters would. In the hollow of the night, she leaned against the wall and watched him – masking her shallow pants with the muffled beats of her pulsing heart – hand gripping her head as it shook from the pressure of his knife, his teeth, his thirst for her blood. Her tears were black, blacker than obsidian, blacker than coal – but that didnʼt stop the fear from bleeding into her eyes. She whimpered, bound to the deceit and the depravity of her family, and she watched Macbeth stroll towards her in fascination, in awe, grinning from ear-to-ear.

"Mi mamá, por favor, mi mamá y mi familia,"  Marcella pleaded, choking on her tears.

"I n-need to protect my m-mother and my f-family, please. Heʼll, sheʼll...if youʼre in the picture, theyʼll go after my family. Ingibiorg, the white-haired man. You are a monster who slaughtered millions when he wanted Scotland, and slaughtered more when his wife killed herself, for power. I would take the same risks...for family. This is family. You never had one, so you donʼt...you donʼt know what itʼs like. Macbeth, this is my family."

Macbeth froze.

"Did you say Ingibiorg?" Macbeth asked. 

"Your brotherʼs wife," she whispered.

Marcellaʼs shadow darkened with the fear of blackmail. Of submission, of a ghostʼs prowl. The light created a darker tinge on her face, on Isabelleʼs face, and to that, he froze again. Stilling in the silence. Ingibiorg might have the balls to face him, but she never had the brains. She was a puppet playing puppeteer; a doll whose strings would always be pulled by a higher power. Why Marcella was in Chicago, how she got here, it wasnʼt Ingibiorgʼs doing, even if she orchestrated the entire plan. Someone brought Banquoʼs wife back, brought his Thorfinn – Banquoʼs wife back, and planted the idea in Ingibiorgʼs head to threaten Marcellaʼs livelihood and bring her to Chicago.

To bring her to him.

No. It was a dance of dragons, a marionette and a ventriloquist trying to get his attention.  The...white-haired man.

He was behind all this. He made Ingibiorg still believe she had power; made her believe she had control. But Ingibiorg was never in-control, Marjorie knew that, he knew that. The only thing sheʼd managed to seduce was the fortune she inherited and the old, fattened lords in Cnut the Greatʼs court. Ingibiorg might have put things in motion, might have been holding the gun that would make sh*t hit-the-fan, but she wasn't pulling the trigger.

The white-haired man was.

The white-haired man, he put The Scottish Playʼs most fearsome cards on the table. He controlled his brotherʼs wife. He was on Marjorieʼs payroll. He drew his spade.

And now, it was Macbethʼs turn to play.

"I want a name," Macbeth settled. "The person that brought you here. This...white-haired man. The person that used you as bait; Marjorieʼs b*tch. Give me a name. And donʼt say Ingibiorg, because darling, it was not her."

Marcella sniffled.

"Thatʼs n-not how this works," Marcella murmured, her voice trembling. "You want information from me, you let me g-go...and you get me out of this chap-shoot. When Iʼm calm and know my familyʼs safe, Iʼll talk. I swear."

Macbeth scoffed, thoroughly entertained.

"Youʼre a brave little girl, arenʼt you now?"

Marcella shook her head at him. With hate, with spite, with her motherʼs steely eyes peering back at him through flushed tears.

"Iʼm the daughter of one of the most influential men in the country. I know my worth," she whispered, guarded, eyes never leaving his.

"That you do," Macbeth murmured solemnly in response, cheeky. As the chimeras stalked towards them, Macbeth snarled in the devilʼs tongue again. Guttural, low, and harsh.

᛫ ᛁᛏ ᛫ ᚻᚣᚱ᛫

Eat her, he deadpanned.

"No," Marcella ground out. "No!"

The night slept.

But he never did.

As the chimeras crouched towards her, wrapping their the arms of the teasing day and the cotton sheets of the stars, he listened to Marcella scream as the flesh of the chimeras burned into hers. They snarled, their blood singing with the wolves, his bloodlust hungry for the rhythm in the air, and his patience was vengeful. Adrenaline and testosterone were highs even he couldnʼt back out of, and the destitution of a world forsaken by its creators was all he heard here. In this damp, damp, place oʼ hell. In every rattled of the rich coffered ceilings, in every screech of the wooden bar, in every crescendoing scream and filthy moan that perfumed the wooed starving lips, he watched as Marcella was eaten alive.

The night slept.

And there was no rest for the wicked.

"Shakespeare!" Marcella choked.

In the blackness, he stood. Stopped, stared, sore, sordid. With narrowed eyes, lingering, blindingly still, and the sky above shot to kill. Petrified, his nails scraped against his hands as he motioned for the chimeras to stop, and as he melted into Nyxʼs folds as a lover, he stayed there to reign her in. Lock her down.

He froze at hearing Shakespeareʼs name, and when he did, the epinephrine was illustrious.

"What did you say?" Macbeth asked.

He clutched her chin, trailing his coarse thumbs along her smooth cheekbones, and the muscle grew flustered. Reddening with every touch until he squeezed her cheeks. Puckering her lips.

"What, did, you, say?"

Fire. The chimeras and their old heat burned like new blood heʼd spilled in Chicago with the help of fire. Pure fire, shrieking against the blackening sky; swallowed by the storm clouds with a sharply resounding crack. The sky filled with smoke as it filled their lungs, and Macbeth watched them all burn under the bane of the lifeless moon. Flares mounting towards the clouds, a plume of smoke and ash rose to the sky in a mushroom cloud, seeking, taking, claiming lives in its wake, and in the wake of the chaos, Chicago burned. Red in every shade crackle against the ocular curve of his obsidian-black eyes. Glossing into piles of ash and bone and flesh in his eyes.

One-by-one.

Drop-by-drop.

"Shakespeare," Marcella rasped. "Master Shakespeare convinced Ingibiorg to bring me to town."