Return Of The Cannibal(Hannibal x Reader)(Book 2)

Chapter 12

If there are depots on the way to Hell, they must resemble the ambulance entrance to Maryland-Misericordia General Hospital. Over the siren's dying wail, wails of the dying, clatter of the dripping gurneys, cries and screams, the columns of manhole steam, dyed red by a great neon EMERGENCY sign, rise like Moses' own pillar of fire in the darkness and change to cloud in the day.

Barney came out of the steam, shrugging his powerful shoulders into his jacket, his cropped round head bent forward as he covered the broken pavement in long strides east toward the morning.

He was twenty-five minutes late getting off work - the police had brought in a stoned pimp with a gunshot wound who like to fight women, and the head nurse had asked him to stay. They always asked Barney to stay when they took in a violent patient.

You peered out at Barney from the deep hood of your jacket and let him get a half-block lead on the other side of the street before you hitched your tote bag on your shoulder and followed. When he passed both the parking lot and the bus stop, you were relieved. Barney would be easier to follow on foot. You weren't sure where he lived and you needed to know before he was you.

The neighborhood behind the hospital was quiet, blue-collar mixed racially. A neighborhood where you put a Chapman lock on your car but you don't have to take the battery in with you at night, and the kids can play outside.

After three blocks, Barney waited for a van to clear the crosswalk and turned north onto a street of narrow houses, some with marble steps and neat front gardens. The few empty storefronts were out. Trucks parked overnight on both sides of the street blocking your view for half a minute and you walked up on Barney before you realized that he had stopped. You were directly across the street when you saw him. Maybe he saw you too, you weren't sure.

He was sanding with his hands in his pockets, head forward, looking from under his brows at something moving in the center of the street. A dead dove lay in the road, one wing flapped by the breeze of passing cars. The dead bird's mate paced around and around the body, cocking an eye at it, small head jerking with each step of its pink feet. Round and round, muttering the soft dove mutter. Several cars and a van passed, the surviving bird barely dodging the traffic with short last-minute flights.\Maybe Barney glanced up at you, you couldn't be positive. You had to keep going or be spotted, When you looked over your shoulder, Barney was squatting in the middle of the road, arm raised to the traffic.

You turned a corner out of sight, pulled off your hooded jacket, took a sweater, a baseball cap and a gym bag out of your tote bag, and changed quickly, stuffing your jacket and the tote into the gym bag, and your hair into the cap. You fell in with some homeward bound cleaning women and turned the corner back onto Barney's street.

He had the dead dove in his cupped hands. Its mate flew with whistling wings up to the overhead wires and watched him. Barney laid the dead bird in the grass of a lawn and smoother down its feathers. He turned his broad face up to the bird on the wire and said something. When he continued circling the body, pacing through the grass. Barney didn't look back. When he climbed the steps of an apartment house a hundred yards farther on and reached for keys, you sprinted a half-block to catch up before he opened the door.

"Barney. Hi." You said. He turned on the stairs in no great haste and looked down at you. You had forgotten that Barney's eyes were unnaturally far apart. You saw the intelligence in them and felt the little electronic pop of connection. You took off your cap and let your hair fall. "I'm Y/N. Remember me? I'm-" You began. "The G," Barney said, expressionless.