Promises to keep
Disclaimer: I don't own the Coldfire Trilogy, and no profit whatsoever is intended.
Credits: The title was taken from Robert Frost's marvellous poem 'Stopping by woods on a snowy evening'. Gerald's 'you will pay for this indignity' was borrowed from BSR, p. 584. I really don't know which of my fellow authors came up with the idea first, but what Damien says about the reason for Tarrant not hunting men was inspired by her story. I hope you don't mind me recycling the plot bunny, love.
A/N 1: For a change, I opted for writing this particular story in the present tense. It's just an experiment, intended to emphasize the dreamlike atmosphere.
A/N 2: After contacting the mod Oxoniensis, I learned that the this year's porn battle had to be cancelled. In preparation for the event, I had already begun several ficlets, knowing full well that I very likely would end up writing for my own prompts (last year, none but me requested or wrote for the Coldfire Trilogy). As matters stood, I decided to post my humble efforts on this site, instead. All of them won't have much of an elaborate plot, I'm afraid. The prompt for this one would have been something like 'promise, compact, downfall, worst fear'. Or whatever. It doesn't really matter now, does it?
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The delicate but unbreakable strands of power woven around his mind leave him just enough tolerance to suspect that the man can't be there for real. Even if Vryce had been victorious over the manifold predators of the biological citadel he has so painstakingly created, he would have never been able to find the entrance to his secret resting place. But yet the priest is gazing down on him with a sneer, his usually so very kind hazel eyes cold and hard.
A big, calloused hand closes tightly around the flame-patterned hilt of the sword of their Order, and the Hunter doesn't doubt anymore that his enemy turned ally has come to kill him at long last. A surge of terror welling up inside him, he struggles against the invisible shackles binding him to the counterpart of the rough numarble slab whereon he vivisected his wife Almea so many years ago, but it doesn't do him any good. Try as he might, he can't move, can't even Work the currents for whatever reason, and he realizes that death has finally caught up with him.
But instead of drawing his sword and sending him straight to hell, Vryce lets go of his weapon and places a hand on his silk-clad chest. "You shouldn't have told me, Gerald," he chuckles. "But you were so sure of yourself on board of the Golden Glory. So convinced that I would be much too honourable to use this knowledge against you. But this one time, your vulking brilliant brain miscalculated. What could be better than having a bit of fun along the way while keeping my promise to rid the world of your taint forever? You've tantalized me long enough."
All of a sudden, their clothes are gone as if they had never existed, and the warrior knight's hand starts to explore his paralyzed body ever so slowly. After teasingly circling his nipples, his fingertips trail a hot line of pleasure and pain across his abdomen, gliding past his navel and flaccid penis until they come to rest at a spot nobody has ever dared to touch in a thousand years, not even he himself. "This is what you truly want, isn't it?" Vryce breathes like the lover he isn't and can never be. "The reason why you don't hunt men. They're too much of a temptation to you."
The Hunter opens his mouth, but as the thick middle finger is entering him without further ado, his intended protests come out as a moan. The human heat spreading from the digit inside him is so utterly alien to his undead body that it seems to scorch his innards, a grim reminder of the fate laying in store for him if he can't stop this act of madness. But very much against his will, the sensation of being filled stirs up memories he wrongly deemed forever dead and buried along with the only man whom he has ever allowed to lay with him. Dangerously arousing images from across an ocean of time are appearing before his inner eye now, Gannon mounting him from behind and slowly riding him into oblivion on a lazy summer afternoon when the world was still young and the sun seemed to shine for them alone.
It mustn't be. What used to be a celebration of love and life will be his downfall under the restrictions of his compact. But to his utmost horror, he can't help but responding to the devilish cocktail of sweet reminiscences of days long gone by and Vryce's skilled manipulations. Having read his mind like an open book on more than one occasion, it's beyond dispute that the priest is a complete novice in what he's doing. But wherever he has gained this particular piece of information, the man knows which button to press in the most literal sense of the word, knows how to stimulate the round bulb of tissue at the front of his rectum he had almost forgotten over the passing of centuries until the breath he doesn't need anymore is coming in short, ragged gasps.
And Damien isn't finished with him yet. With a wicked smile, he pulls out his finger and replaces it with a much larger part of his anatomy, burying himself inside him to the hilt in one single, fluent motion. It hurts, and Gerald clenches his teeth, dead set on denying his tormentor the satisfaction of hearing him voicing his pain. But then the warrior knight starts to thrust, and the burning sensation quickly gives way to something altogether different.
This isn't the tender love-making his royal paramour used to prefer. Most of the time, anyway. There are no terms of endearment, no kisses and caresses, just the rock-hard phallus inside him and two rough hands lifting his legs so that his calves come to rest on Vryce's shoulders. The priest's hips are pumping faster and faster with each passing second now, and Tarrant realizes that he's close. He can feel his own orgasm building up deep down in his abdomen, accompanied by a surge of red hot heat foreshadowing the dire things to come. Then his worst fear but one comes true. The very moment his nemesis convulses with a loud groan and his rectal muscles start to pulse around the twitching cock inside him, he bursts into flames as if exposed to the lethal sunlight.
All at once, the spell condemning him to immobility is broken, and he can finally move again. Screaming in pain, he thrashes around until the momentum carries him over the edge of the numarble slab and he hits the floor with a resounding crash. The last thing he sees before his eyes melt in their sockets is Vryce's grinning face, slowly morphing into something insectile out of the abysses wherein the nightmares dwell.
When the Hunter comes to his senses again on the naked stone beneath him, he's all alone, fully clothed and completely unharmed, at least in terms of his physical integrity. His pride is an altogether different kettle of fish, though. By now, he doesn't harbour a sliver of doubt concerning the identity of the master of illusion who managed to get the better of him once again. "You read me well, Calesta," he whispers, his voice no more human than the hiss of a snake. "But you will pay for this indignity. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but the time will come when I make you regret that you've ever dared to take me on. You have my word on it."