Raymond leaned closer, inhaling the heady aroma of the blood trickling from the head wound he had inflicted. He ran his tongue over extended fangs as he carelessly flipped the dazed hunter onto his stomach allowing easy access to that glorious red liquid beginning to stain golden blonde strands of hair.
Gabriel had been watching in horrified fascination as his partner faced off with the thing that would be Raymond Travers. He had complete confidence in Brendan's abilities; he had seen them in operation often enough, but there was something about this supernatural creature. Perhaps it was his age. Perhaps the added strength from Sarah's blood. Perhaps it was the magic in the room and the powerful residual emotions of the surrounding land. Whatever it was that was fueling Travers, it was beyond the young hunter's experience.
Gabriel felt a brief glimmer of hope as the sword that Brendan carried - and which he did not recognize - sliced deeply into Raymond's leg. But such hope as he felt quickly died as Raymond, angered by such impudence, flung himself at Brendan, knocking him down and pounding his head into the floor. Yet, still, Gabriel felt certain of the young hunter's talents. Until Raymond flung a dazed Brendan onto his stomach and moved in, fangs extended, to finish what he had started.
That could not be allowed to happen.
Struggling to his feet, Gabriel stumbled across the room, intent on finishing what his partner had begun. He allowed his still-healing legs to give out just as he came upon Raymond's back.
"No more killing!" Gabriel cried out as he wrapped sore arms around Raymond's neck.
The reconstructing vampire bucked and twisted as he straightened up, but he could not dislodge the thing that clung to him as he had clung to so many others during his misbegotten existance.
"For Karen," Gabriel said as he dug fingers into the still-incomplete flesh beneath his hands.
Raymond roared in anger.
"For Sarah," the fingers began to pull through the gelatinous mass of flesh.
Raymond ran backwards, slamming Gabriel into the wall in an effort to dislodge him.
The angry, hateful screams of the vampire he hunted pierced the fog that Brendan existed in. Ignoring the pain in his head, the hunter struggled to his knees and opened his eyes to look for weapon an odd providence had provided him. But everything was in twos and doing the backstroke.
"Lord, help me," he said as he gained his feet, legs wavering beneath him.
"Rene," Karen urged weakly from the relative safety of her corner, "the sword!"
Rene looked in the direction of Karen's voice and noticed the weapon within kicking distance. He reached out a foot and sent it flying to thud dully against Brendan's legs.
"Pick it up!" he called out.
Brendan had felt something strike his legs and bent down, vision drawing in upon itself to pick up what lay at his feet. A wave of strength washed over him as his hands recognized the hilt of the sword that his eyes could not pick out. And where eyes were still failing, ears did not and Brendan moved towards the din made by two fighting vampires.
"I'll finish you!" Raymond screamed.
"It's you who are doomed!" Gabriel replied with a whoof as he was slammed yet again into the wall.
"Arrogant fool!" Raymond said as he bent over and flung Gabriel over his head.
"Raymond! You bastard!" Brendan said as he lashed out at the blurry figures. He heard the wail of agony, the cry of disbelief from a corner of the room and the amused laughter of Raymond.
"I don't have to destroy you, you'll all destroy each other!" the vampire bellowed.
Brendan shook his head and saw his sword imbedded in the side of his partner.
"Gabe!" he cried out as he fell to his knees.
Raymond threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, this is too easy! Pathetic fools, to think you could stop my rebirth!"
Brendan raised glowing eyes towards the vampire over him. "You ..." he spit out.
Andrew had seen Gabriel go down.and lunged forward. "No damn you NO! This ends now, Raymond!"
He rushed past Brendan and Gabriel, pushing Brendan to the floor.
"Brendan," Gabe said between clenched teeth as he reached out for his partner.
The hunter looked up to see Andrew just about to strike Raymond. He made a strategic decision and looked at his partner, gripping the handle of the sword; Gabriel nodded. Then the sword was out and Brendan was dragging Gabriel to the safety of a side wall.
Andrew ignored what was going on around him and leapt on Raymond, fingers curving into claws. The force of Andrew's rush sent both of them tumbling to the floor.
Raymond only laughed coldly. That was just what Andrew had said fifty years ago. "Predictable old man! You will not kill me again, fool. This time I shall destroy you!" he hissed as they clawed and kicked at each other.
Gabriel hissed as his back met the wall, and then he had Brendan's wrist in an unsteady grip. "Brendan," he said, "be careful. Belle ... would never forgive me if ... if you were damaged."
Brendan's smile was feral, and his eyes were tinged with red as he loosened Gabriel's grip upon his wrist. "I'll be fine," he promised as he headed back to the fray. And with that, Gabriel had to be content, for he couldn't seem to find the strength to rise again.
Blood, warm and still scented with the human's essence, flowed from the wound in his side. Gabriel felt along its length. He hissed as his fingers encountered rib bones, then a strange calm came upon him. He could no longer help Brendan in any physical way, but there was something he could do, and it would be somehow fitting to do it now. And to break the cycle, as much as anything would.
He straightened his head and back as best he could against the wall and closed his eyes, shutting out all the blurred action that was going on in the room. Then he began to breathe, slowly, in and out, bringing all the force of his will to one point of concentration. As he breathed, the noise slowly faded, faded ... and so did the pain ... and finally, there was nothing but silence... not even the sound of a heartbeat marred the silence... Gabriel reached out then... into the darkness with the trust and the confidence that he'd so painfully learned in the last year...and...
The light was golden. it bathed him in warmth and peace and gentleness beyond anything he'd known before, and for a long and timeless aeon he knew .... the all ... was one with it ... but then ... it turned its attention to him... *?* it asked.
"I give you myself," he said, suddenly aware that he was Gabriel and this All was not. Separate again. It hurt. More than physical pain, more than heartbreak, but ... now was not the time to examine his own pain. "For ... judgement ... for death ... but in return ... save Brendan and Sarah and the others. I beg you, if you are the Good which I have always tried to serve, save them."
The light considered his words. It shifted in hue and intensity as it did so, and Gabriel held his metaphorical breath as he awaited its judgment.
It was made.
* * *
Meanwhile, outside...
"What...?" Francis began, and then his voice cracked. He placed both hands on the floor to push himself to his feet again. An unspeakable sliminess squirted through his fingers. He gagged reflexively and vomited what was left of the food in his stomach.
"Somebody stick a dummy in his mouth and put him in a sand pit." Subira flared her nostrils in disgust. As two team members moved to help the pale Englishman to his feet, she spat at him, "You will do well to mark my words, young Cullen. Remember this thing. He is our Lord. We are sworn to honor and protect him. You mock us, question us, and you doubt us, but can you know how it feels to us, to witness the suffering of our most holy Lord's Son?"
Subira beckoned to the two others, and they joined the squad of hunters assembled at the odd door. She stood in front of Francis, and held him at arm's length. His inexperience was straining what little patience she had left.
"If we must, we will fight. Take a place near me. Stay close if you do not wish to die, young Cullen. Use this." She handed him a heavy-handled metal dagger. The silver of the blade flashed, even in the dark hall. She could see the horror in his face; and, another, more hidden affectation. Her intuition told her that Cullen was planning something.
"Will you use this, or not?" she wanted answers. There was no time for a mystery.
He took one step closer to her and stared directly into her dark eyes.
"Where are we going to go after this? What happens if we're all hurt and can't get away with ... him?" Francis' voice quavered like an adolescent's. He cleared his throat and continued, "Haven't you even thought about how we're going to get away?"
"It has already been planned, young Cullen." She turned quickly and took a scrap of paper from the small, yet stocky, woman behind her. "Your uncle has learned from that machine he calls a Telegraph where our Lord's loved ones are located, and he has sent the location to us."
"Well, where is it?"
Subira shoved the paper into his hands.
"See? This ... Moundsville? ... West Virginia? This could be hours away from here. You remember the roads we took getting here from Lourdesmont?"
Subira was beginning to become annoyed with his explanation. She held a small palm up to his face to stop his jabbering.
"Tell us what you will do, young Cullen."
"I'll make some calls, from the car ..." he flashed a quick glance at the hunters behind him, "... and get us a plane, or helicopter. I'll make some calls, and pull some strings...."
"My sisters and brothers believe you are a coward. I will tell them that you are not. You have Good Heart."
"I'm not a fighter, and I would not serve your god honorably in that service. I can do this, and it's the only way we'll have a chance of protecting him." He gestured at the door in front of them.
"You will go, then. Take one other with you, and be quick. There will not be much time."
At the very mention of the last word, 'time', all of the hunters began to chant something in a language Francis had never thought to learn. He slid the dagger into his boot and ran back down the gory hallway.
* * *
Dejah leaned back, observing the frenzied fury unfolding in the room. "I have to get him out of here." She mumbled. "The problem is, where?"
_Bedroom! Dejah! The bedroom! Two doors down to the left._ Came a voice, not her own, in her head.
She lit up, "That's it! Danke Raven." She looked across to where Gabriel lay slumped against a wall, eyes closed. That wouldn't do any good. She turned towards Karen. "I'm going to try and get him out of here, but I will be back if things start taking a turn for the worse." The vampire nodded and Dejah propped Kenyon's good side under her shoulder. "Can you walk babe?"
"I can try." Kenyon answered.
Taking a deep breath, Dejah helped Kenyon over to the door and turned the knob. Nothing. She shook the old, embossed metal harder. Still nothing. Dejah just about tore the door off its hinges still nothing.
"Damn," she swore under her breath.
"Problem?" Kenyon managed as he raised his head.
Dejah gave her partner the "You're kidding, right?" look.
_Not kidding and no problem_ a strange voice seemed to whisper in both their heads.
It was then that they noticed a vague shape hovering in front of the door, barring their way.
"He's hurt!" Dejah exclaimed angrily.
_Must contain the damage here._ the voice said. _By the wall. Go to the wall._
"Yeah right," she retorted.
"It's okay," Kenyon assured her. Some sense he had inherited told him it would be okay.
"Fine," Dejah replied in a tone that meant anything but. She looked at the spirit-thing with a look that could have killed -- if it wasn't so obviously already dead. "But if anything happens to him ..."
_Nothing happen ... to the wall_ it urged them.
As Dejah moved her injured partner to the wall, she was brushed against her free side by Brendan as he moved past her, golden-red fire blazing from his eyes.
"Travers!" he roared at the top of his lungs.
The vampire looked up from where he held a weakening Andrew Harrington in a head lock and smiled maliciously.
"You bellowed?" he asked innocently as he began to dig taloned nails into Andrew's chest.
"The killing ends here!" Brendan informed him. "And it ends now!"
Strange light flickered on the tips of the nails that were digging their way through Andrew's flesh.
"Not before this bastard pays for all my years of imprisonment!"
"Stop him ..." Andrew managed from between blood-stained lips as tiny flames began to lick at his shredded shirt.
"Care to be the next weinie roasted?" Raymond hissed as he flung Andrew from him and threw himself directly at the hunter.
But Brendan was prepared this time for the rapid onslaught and lightly sidestepped the flying vampire.
"Rene!" he called out and gestured quickly at Andrew who was beating out the tiny flames licking at his clothing.
"Right!" Rene called back and moved to drag Andrew out of the way.
"Human waste!" Raymond bellowed at the top of his lungs.
Brendan sneered at the taunt. "Let's finish it," he replied in a voice completely void of emotion.
Raymond moved quickly and disappeared from in front of the hunter's eyes. Brendan could hear his laughter echoing off the walls and reached out, using his genetic sense, to locate the missing vampire--and only received a glancing blow from the vampire who tackled him from the side.
Brendan lashed out at the oozing figure who was on its knees, connecting with and slicing into, its lower back. The vampire did not call out this time but hooked taloned fingers around an ankle and yanked, dropping the hunter to his back. Raymond moved quickly and was suddenly face-to-face with Brendan.
"Yes," he hissed. "Let's finish it!" and punctuated his words with a slashing motion of his taloned hand that opened four parallel wounds on Brendan's cheek.
Brendan drew a deep breath and forced his chest upwards, knocking Raymond off. He moved rapidly to a sitting position and kicked at the reforming creature, his shoes making a squishing noise as they connected.
The vampire jerked then laughed cruelly as he grabbed onto the legs of this upstart and began to pull. Using the inhuman strength he felt gathering within, he kept hold of Brendan's legs - and just out of reach of the sword - and in one fluid motion he stood and flung the hunter away from him.
Brendan landed with a sickening thud against the edge of the fireplace and then Raymond was once again on top of him.
"I will have your blood!" Raymond hissed as he continued to claw and pummel Brendan. "And that of that vapid cow who bore you too!"
The blood that was beginning to drip over his eyes was grey compared to the red haze that began in Brendan's mind with those words.
Raymond gripped the hunter's throat tightly with one hand as he raked claws down his chest, shredding material and flesh.
"Or, perhaps, I'll just wait for that sister of yours to grow up and take her the way I took Sarah." The chuckle that emanated from his throat was pure evil. "After I take her the way that Gabriel took Karen."
"NO!" Brendan screamed in blind anger as his right hand came up holding a half-charred log from the fireplace and planted it in the vampire's chest.
The howl coming from Raymond shook the very walls of the room. He let go of Brendan, stumbling backwards, clawing at the appendage growing from the middle of his chest.
Brendan scrambled to his feet, sword, transferred from his left to right hand, gripped tightly.
"You bastard!" he yelled as he slashed at the vampire's knees, dropping him to the ground.
Raymond was reverting to form and becoming more and more like an animal, hissing and spitting.
Brendan kicked out again, hitting the remnant of a once-comforting fire and forcing the vampire onto his back.
"The only taking you are going to be doing," he breathed, "is taking your miserable ashes straight to Hell!"
"Pathetic mortal!" Raymond managed from between bloody lips, still struggling to rise.
The hunter's response was to stamp on the end of the wooden projectile, pinning the vampire to the floor.
"Kiss your ass goodbye!" the others in the room could hear Brendan shout over the inhuman sound Raymond was making.
They all watched in horrified fascination as Brendan raised the sword and brought it down in a fluid motion severing Raymond's neck, sending the nearly black blood of the vampire spraying all over the room.
Raymond's body lay in a spreading pool of black blood. For a moment it held the shape it had had during most of the battle, basically as Raymond had been in life and prior unlife with fading hints of gray.
Then it shivered. The gray patches which had been fading as he became more human, suddenly darkened again and spread. Within moments he was again the gray statue like figure.
It didn't end there, though. A ripple shook the body again, then it began to lose definition, shape, to crumble back into the dust from which Giovanni's magics and Sarah's blood had formed it.
* * *
Somewhere else...
"This is she." Morgann sounded a little annoyed at the obvious panic in the voice on the telephone.
As if he understood this, the caller slowed his speech, "This is Francis Cullen. I have been accompanying those looking for Gabriel Tallant."
"Yes, and?"
"We ... erm ... well, we found him. He's in need of hospital attention."
"Has he been released? Do you have him?"
"Well ... no, ma'am. It's magic ... odd ..."
"Where are you?"
"Southwest of Harrisburg. Pennsylvania. We turned off of U.S. Highway 15 south of Gettysburg. It's called Knight Road. With a 'K'."
* * * * *
Back at the farmhouse...
Andrew managed to drag himself to his knees, leaning against an overturned table he watched his childe die a second time. "May you burn in hell..." he whispered, he didn't have the strength to shout, he was fighting to hold himself up. Damn it he'd need blood himself soon, and he didn't want to touch Raymond's--who knew what it might still contain of Giovanni's magics? The smell was almost overpowering.
"Sarah..." he murmured, turning his head to see where she lay, with David, Rene and a woman whose name he hadn't caught working over her, the woman and Rene holding Giovanni's limp body over Sarah.
David didn't know if anything they were doing was having any effect at all. That bastard Giovanni was certainly dead by now, enough of his blood was all over not only Sarah but himself and the other two for that, though most of it had been somehow coaxed into Sarah's throat.
And still she didn't move, didn't show any sign of waking up.
Then, as they heard Raymond's last scream, Sarah's body seemed to stiffen for a moment...then relax. David glanced over that way to see Raymond starting to crumble into dust.
He looked back down at Sarah and that's when he felt something, a slight twitch of her hand, the one that hadn't been cut. "Sarah..." he whispered.
A slight gurgle escaped the parted lips, her eyes fluttered, blinked once, twice, three times, then opened. She gazed up at them, but with her mouth being held open, she couldn't talk. David could feel she was trying to, though weakly.
"Don't try to talk," he whispered. Holding on to her, he looked desperately at the other two, not sure what to do now.
Sarah came out of a dark fog. What had happened? The last thing she remembered was Raymond sucking the life out of her. Was she dead? The blur before her eyes began slowly to resolve into...it couldn't be... David? She tried to speak, but something was holding her mouth...she could feel the warm blood flowing in, the warmth as life seeped back into her, but she was still so weak.
Andrew gritted his teeth. He *had* to get over there, see how Sarah was, but he ached all over and his limbs felt like rubber. The Hunger burned inside him even as he fought to keep it in check, he couldn't give in to it now.
He dragged himself to his feet, though that was only by using a broken off table leg as a walking stick and leaning against overturned pieces of furniture.
It was the longest ten feet he'd ever walked in seven hundred years...but finally he reached where Rene, David, and the dark woman clustered around Sarah. "Please...is she..."
Brendan still stood, looking down at the thing that had been becoming Raymond Travers, through a hunter's red gaze. He didn't feel the cuts on his face or neck or chest, the bruises beginning to colour arms and legs and ribs. He was not even aware of the head injury he had received or the pain it was causing. The only thing he knew was that he still smelled vampire blood in the air surrounding him.
Vampires.
Evil, horrid things that had always threatened the poor humans who should hold the place of honour in the world.
He turned around, the room swimming under what looked like the Red Sea without a Moses to part it.
Vampires.
One of those horrid things had taken advantage of his mother and that was why he now spent his life hunting them down and making them pay for such a glaring error.
He gripped the sword tightly, nostrils flaring, as he saw the evil creatures bending over two prone figures - one of them human.
Vampires.
He had been ordained from nearly the moment of conception to rid the world of them.
Why fight it now?
Brendan's feet moved of their own accord towards where Andrew was anxiously bending over Sarah, concern on his face. But Brendan did not see concern, all he saw was the vampire.
"Hey!" Capri called out indignantly.
The hunter turned toward her, golden-red flames lighting his eyes and flaring from his fingertips. Brendan raised his right hand and Capri went flying across the room as the energy struck her full in the chest. She thudded dully against a wall, dazed from the blow.
"Protect Sarah!" Andrew said as he forced David to cover her still too thin body. He stood painfully. "Brendan ... Rhys ..."
A vampire! One of those unclean creatures actually had the gall to utter his name! And the name he used in the business he did not mention.
"Aarrgghh!" Brendan said as he lashed out with the sword that connected with Andrew's hip, felling the vampire.
"Oh God," David whispered as Brendan stepped over his still body.
"Christ on a crutch!" Dejah said from where she hovered protectively over Kenyon.
"He's out of control!" Kenyon whispered through clenched teeth.
"God in Heaven, give me strength," Gabriel whispered as he tried to stand. Even though he recalled that he shouldn't be able to move this easily, he was up and moving in seconds.
"Brendan," he said, as he neared the center of the room. "Stop. It's all right now," he continued, keeping his eyes on the Hunter and trying to project all of the concern that he felt for him through the link which they shared in the future ... though did they now, in the present? Gabriel shook his head. No time for thinking of inanities. He had to reach Brendan.
Andrew was crawling away from Brendan's advance, unable to avoid the sword that slashed down at his unprotected back and sliced him from shoulder to hip... and then Gabriel was there, stepping over Andrew's convulsing body, and facing Brendan with open hands. "Brendan, it's over," he said again.
Gabriel put one pale hand over Brendan's on the sword handle. "It's all right, my son, remember that," he said...
"It's not over, it will NEVER be over," Brendan said, his voice a rasp of fury. "You UNCLEAN bastard! You will DIE." And he swung the sword in an arc that went into Gabriel's rib cage and stuck as it struck his heart.
David looked up in horror as Brendan threw Andrew to the side.
"Protect...Sarah..." Andrew gasped from where Brendan had flung him.
David looked from Andrew to the crazed-looking sword-wielding man now bearing down on him.
And Sarah.
"No!" he shouted. "You came to *save* her you said...please..."
He flung himself over Sarah's body even as she moaned. Damn it, she *was* starting to come around. What a time for that!
David could only stare upwards as that golden blade descended.
Now Sarah had begun reviving, and as she drank, Capri was talking quietly to her, "Atta girl, drink it down."
But there was no time to let the guard down because Brendan suddenly seemed to go bananas. Travers and Giovanni were dead, and Brendan was going out of his mind! Then David flung himself in a protective position over Sarah, but it wasn't enough. Capri watched with horror as Brendan descended on them. What kind of craziness was this?
Finally she had to resort to a magic blast. Being careful that it wouldn't touch Sarah or David, she blasted Brendan, throwing him backward. "Can it Brendan!" She yelled at him. "What the heck's wrong with you?"
