Jimmy - The Weight of Blood
Chapter 7 - Revelations
Jimmy stood in front of the door to Sashka’s apartment. The corridor felt too quiet. He stared at the plain wooden surface for a long moment, hand hovering.
Julie stood beside him. She gave him a gentle, encouraging look. Moral support, as always.
The last few days had been a blur of blood, paperwork, and decisions he never asked for. Mithrod was alive and stable, but they had not been able to save his right arm. The amputation had been necessary just above the elbow. He remained unconscious. The hospital slowly returned to some kind of order. People had started coming to Jimmy for answers. He had no legal authority, yet somehow, he had become the one in charge.
He and Sashka had both been too busy to talk about what happened that night. He had the strong feeling she was avoiding him. And he could not stop wondering about her power. Who was this woman?
Julie looked at him with quiet remorse. He answered as if continuing an old argument. “Yes, I know, honey. I will talk to her. I promise.”
He took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and raised his hand to knock.
The door opened before his knuckles touched the wood.
Sashka stood there in oversized t-shirt and sweatpants. They eyed each other for a long moment.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
“We need to talk,” Jimmy replied.
She stepped aside with a small welcoming gesture.
Jimmy and Julie entered.
Family in excile
Long before Torn City, before the name Jimmy or the title of doctor, there was Jacques. Or Iakopo.
His bloodline began in fire and fracture. The family fled France as the Revolution burned itself out. Smoke, screams, and the metallic smell of blood lingered in their memories. Survivors, not heroes. Fear followed them across the cold, salty ocean.
In the new world the family split. Elders chose quiet stability in growing settlements. Two brothers went into the wild as trappers — endless forests, the crack of axes, the scent of pine and animal hides.
One brother died in a clash with natives — shouts, the wet thud of weapons, silence after. The other was taken. Captivity became transformation under foreign skies and unfamiliar stars. He adapted, married the daughter of a tribal leader, and rooted himself in that soil.
From that union came a boy with two names: Jacques (his father’s choice) and Iakopo (his mother’s). Never fully one thing, never fully the other. That fracture ran deep — like a scar that never healed, a constant whisper of divided blood.
That fracture became the root of everything that followed.
Apartment
Sashka wasn’t surprised to see Jimmy.
If anything, she looked prepared.
She crossed the room without hesitation and handed him a glass filled with a dark, thick liquid. From the corner of his eye, Jimmy caught Julie making a small, dismissive gesture — she didn’t want anything — but he said nothing.
Jimmy lifted the glass, expecting the familiar pretense of a Bloody Mary.
Instead, the scent hit him first — rich, unmistakable. Real blood. And not just any. High quality.
His eyes flicked to Sashka.
She gave a faint smirk. “Yes,” she said, answering the thought he hadn’t spoken. “I can add two and two.”
He took a slow sip, buying himself a moment, and let his gaze wander around the apartment.
It wasn’t what he expected.
Soft pastel colours wrapped the space in a quiet calm. Plush textures, warm blankets draped carelessly over furniture. Everything curved — gentle lines, no sharp edges, no corners to hide in.
And yet…
“It suits you,” he said.
Sashka raised her own glass in a small salute. “You wanted to talk,” she reminded him, already settling onto the sofa — right beside Julie.
Jimmy hesitated for a fraction of a second, then began to pace.
Words didn’t come easily at first. He moved as he spoke, circling the room, as if motion might help him assemble the pieces. His thoughts spilled out unevenly — fragments finding their place only once they were spoken aloud.
Why he hadn’t reached out. Why he hid what he was. Why trust had never been an option.
And then — the massacre. Something shifted there. Something broke open.
Julie’s name surfaced more than once, woven through his sentences without him noticing. A constant. An anchor.
Neither woman interrupted. They simply listened.
By the time he stopped, the room felt different — heavier, more honest.
“Somehow,” he finished, quieter now, “that hospital… it became part of me. And whatever is going on between you, Father Mithrod, and Viktor Jodr —” He exhaled. “I want to help.”
For a brief moment, his eyes shifted — just enough to find Julie. She was watching him with something soft, almost warm. Pride. She gave a small, approving nod.
Jimmy looked away, as if nothing had happened.
Silence settled.
Sashka studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable.
“Okay,” she said.
She leaned forward and set her glass down on the table.
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand.”
A beat.
“Who is Julie?”
Love Story
Their story began on a quiet street one night.
Jimmy was newly turned, unstable, feeding on rats and stray animals in the shadows. Pale. Withdrawn. More animal than man.
Julie saw someone hurt.
She approached anyway.
At first, he gave her a false name — Jacques, or one of the others he used then. She simply called him Jimmy. It started as a joke, a simplification. It became habit. Then it became the only name that felt real.
Their love grew slowly. Quiet. Built on presence and routine rather than grand gestures. He studied her. Learned how to be gentle. Learned how to mirror humanity. He fed before he saw her. Disappeared when the hunger grew too strong. He was always one moment away from failure, yet he held on.
She believed he could be saved.
He wanted to believe it too.
For a time, that belief was enough.
Apartment
Sashka’s question settled into the room, heavy and unmoving.
Jimmy didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he looked at Julie.
She met his gaze without hesitation. There was no fear in her, no doubt — only that same quiet certainty she had always carried. She gave the smallest nod, as if nothing in the world had changed, as if this was simple, manageable, survivable.
As if to say: go on.
Jimmy drew in a slow breath. It caught halfway, then steadied. He nodded once, more to himself than to her, and finally turned back to Sashka.
“Julie is—”
The word faltered; broke against something he couldn’t quite force through.
He tried again.
“—was my wife.”
Silence answered him.
He reached for his glass too quickly, took a sharp swallow. The liquid burned, or maybe it didn’t — his hand trembled anyway, just enough to betray him.
“And she died,” he continued, quieter now, the control slipping at the edges, “over fifty years ago.”
A beat.
“Because I couldn’t save her.”
Broken dreams
The attack came on a quiet street, late enough that the city had already begun to empty.
There were two of them. Knives, and a gun.
Jimmy noticed them too late to prevent it, but not too late to end it. The violence was quick, efficient, absolute.
It did not matter. A bullet had already found Julie. She was dying in his arms when he made the decision.
There was no time to weigh it, no space for doubt. Only the certainty that he would not let her slip away — not like this, not when something could still be done.
So he gave her his blood. For a moment, it seemed enough.
Her breathing steadied. The colour returned, faint but undeniable. Hope came easily then, too easily.
It did not last. The turning failed in the worst way possible.
Julie lived — but not as she should have, and not as he had intended. A rare disorder in her blood resisted the change, rejecting it quietly and completely. It kept her alive, but only just. From that night onward, something in her began to unravel.
Not quickly.
Not mercifully.
Jimmy never told her.
Not what he was. Not what he had tried to make her. Not that the slow erosion of her strength began with his choice on that street.
He carried that truth alone, and in time it reshaped everything. The decline stretched across years at first. Then those years stretched into decades.
He had once been a medical student. After the attack, it became something else entirely.
A vow. An answer. A way forward. He would find a cure. He made a promise.
He studied with a focus that bordered on obsession. Learned faster than most, worked longer than anyone should. Medicine became structure, purpose — something that could be controlled, understood, mastered.
Or so he told himself. His travels grew more frequent with time. Longer absences, broader searches, better institutions. Always another lead, another theory, another possibility just out of reach.
He called it research. It was, in part. But distance made certain things easier.
Julie remained. Growing weaker by degrees so small they were almost invisible — until they weren’t.
She adapted to it with a quiet grace he never managed to understand.
When the telegram came, it was brief. There was no need for more. He left everything behind and returned without delay.
This time, he did not arrive too late. She died in his arms. Only then did he tell her.
Everything he had kept back — the truth of that night, of what he was, of what he had done in the name of saving her. The guilt he had carried, the certainty that her suffering was his doing.
He expected fear. Or anger. Or something that would finally make sense. Julie only listened.
And when he was finished, she told him she had always known. Worse…
She forgave him. Without hesitation. Without condition.
It broke something in him more completely than blame ever could.
Her last request was simple.That he remains a healer. That her death means something.
That he not loses himself to what he was.
He promised. Of course he did…
And he kept that promise in the only way he knew how. Which was not the way she meant.
Years wore that promise down into habit.
The work remained, but the purpose behind it thinned, then hollowed. His career drifted, slowly and without resistance, toward smaller places, quieter roles, fewer expectations.
Until eventually, it led him to Torn. To a hospital no one fought to reach, and few cared to leave. He still returned to her case, from time to time. Out of routine more than belief.
He no longer thought he could cure her.
Or anyone.
Or himself.
Until now.
Apartment
They sat in silence for a while after Jimmy finished.
Sashka did not speak immediately. Her expression remained composed, but something in her eyes had shifted—measuring, weighing, fitting his words into a shape that made sense.
“And how did you become…” she began, then paused, choosing the safer path around it, “like this? In the first place?”
Jimmy let out a quiet breath, something almost like a tired smile touching his lips.
“A vampire?” He shook his head. “That’s a different story. For a different night.”
Sashka inclined her head once, accepting the boundary without pushing further.
The quiet settled again, softer this time. Jimmy glanced toward Julie.
She was still there, seated as she had been, her posture relaxed, her expression calm—almost… content. There was something in her eyes he hadn’t seen in a long time. Not relief, exactly. Not happiness.
Something gentler.
She met his gaze and smiled. It was small. Familiar. Enough…
When he looked back, the space beside him felt… lighter, emptier. But somehow, it was ok. It was time.
Sashka began to speak.
She told him her story without dramatics—how she became what she was, how she escaped Viktor, how Father Mithrod found her when others were already closing in. How he gave her direction when survival alone had stopped being enough.
She spoke of pressure, of fear, of the slow tightening grip of people who believed themselves untouchable. Of the moment when he, too, chose to stop running and start resisting.
Jimmy listened without interruption. Somewhere along the way, something settled into place.
The hospital—until now just a location, a routine, a place to exist without purpose—shifted into something else.
Not refuge. Not obligation. Something closer to ownership.
When Sashka finished, she studied him for a moment.
“You really want to get involved in this?” she asked.
There was no hesitation this time.
“They attacked my hospital,” Jimmy said quietly. A small pause.
“My people.” The words seemed to anchor themselves as he spoke them.
His gaze lifted, steady now. “Of course I want to know who’s responsible.”
Another beat.
“So what we are going to do about it?”
Something sharp flashed behind Sashka’s eyes.
This time, her smile didn’t bother pretending to be polite.
“And now,” she said, leaning back slightly, “we hunt.”