Amazing Grace
Disclaimer: I own neither the Coldfire Trilogy nor 'Amazing Grace', and no profit whatsoever is intended.
Warnings: just seasonal sentimentality, a purring kittycat and mild slash
Acknowledgements: the stuff about many plans being in the mind of a man is from the Bible, proverbs 19:21 (English standard version). Damien's sermon was inspired by 'A new year without fear' by Dr. Adrian Rogers (respective Bible chapters: Hebrews 13:5-6). 'What God has joined together...' is also from the Bible, Mark 10:9.
Background information: Where I come from, the so called 'Rauhnächte' (Nächte = nights) last from the 24th December to the 5th January, ending with the 'Twelfth Night' which marks the coming of Epiphany. Since the early modern age, it's a time supposed to be suitable for the exorcism of malicious entities, the contacting of animals and fortunetelling, but its origins are much older. In the midst of the period, at New Year's Eve, the Wild Hunt was presumed to walk abroad. The realm of the spirits was standing wide open, and the souls of the deceased, demons and ghosts alike were roaming the lands. Even now, in the eastern Alps a folk custom called 'Perchtenlaufen' still exists. Several hundred young men wearing gruesome masks rush about the streets, driving out evil spirits with bells and whips.
A/N 1: Of course I know that I already used 'Amazing Grace' for my X-mas story 'Under the mistletoe' two years ago (and that I had Gerald singing in 'Silent Night'). But it's so very fitting that I simply couldn't replace it with something else.
A/N 2: I don't know whether many of you still remember the Advent Calendar Silvereyedbitch and I posted last year. One of my drabbles centered around Damien 'adopting' a kitten. Since then, I've been wanting to elaborate on the plot, give it a twist, so to say, and now the time has finally come for a bit of a 'Rauhnacht' fairytale...:-D. See quote below for a memory aid...
A/N 3: A happy New Year to all of you!
A/N 4: Well, Shadowy Star, this is my belated 'whiskered' X-mas present for you. Somehow, it still leaves a lot to be desired, I'm afraid, but I hope that you'll have some fun reading it, nonetheless.
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A pitiful meowing penetrated the haze of Damien's grief, rooting him on the spot. Bending down, he came face to face with a half-starved, shivering furball. The nocturnal streets were a bad place for an unkitten in the deep of winter, but despite his miserable condition, the silver tabby returned his gaze utterly undaunted, his huge, grey eyes flashing in the moonlight like precious gems. Soundlessly, Vryce moved his lips, praying for the salvation of another lost soul who had roamed the darkness for centuries. Then he gently picked up the kitten and tucked him into his coat.
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Jaggonath, 31st December 1250 A.S.
As Gerald was hissing right into his ear, the tip of his long, striped tail impatiently tapping his human perch's chest, Damien Kilcannon Vryce resurfaced from his microsleep with a start. After browsing through the Prophet's Bible in search for a certain quote he needed for his New Year's sermon for hours now, it was already half past ten, and he simply couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. Considering that his work was almost finished, it wouldn't hurt to have a nap and continue his research first thing in the morning.
Yawning, he stretched his stiff limbs and set about getting up, but froze when sharp claws were being unsheathed, denting his skin without actually piercing it yet. "Hey, what's come over you, pal?" he asked the silver tabby currently curled around his nape like a furry shawl, his most favourite spot other than the foot of the bed. "Let me get up. I'm tired."
But he could just as well have addressed the wall. The long, curved claws stayed exactly where they were, and when the warrior knight carefully turned his head, he saw that the tomcat's huge grey eyes were fixed on the vulking book, shining with an intelligence that surpassed anything he had ever witnessed in his conspecifics. Frowning, Damien put on his reading glasses, a grudging concession to the passing of time, and bent over his read again. And there was the quote he had been looking for all evening, right in the centre of the page. What the hell...?
With the consummate grace of his kind, the adept's namesake jumped to the floor and sauntered casually towards the bedroom door, but turned back to him at half the distance and darted him a glance over his shoulder that in a human could have been only interpreted as sardonic amusement. Then he vanished into the darkness, his low purr suspiciously reminiscent of a chuckle.
His mouth hanging ajar, Damien couldn't help but stare. Something definitely was very strange about the creature he had picked up from the streets of Jaggonath a year ago and called Gerald in honour of his deceased friend. The miserable little furball teetering on the brink of starvation had grown into an imposing tomcat of roundabout thirteen pounds, all sleek muscle without an ounce of fat on his body. A merciless hunter, he was the terror of the rodent population of the entire quarter. But he never devoured his quarry, just toyed around with for a while as those of his kind were wont to until he tired of the game eventually and broke their neck or spine wit one single bite. But here all similarities to a 'normal' domestic uncat ended.
Damien didn't know much about either cats or uncats. Legend had it that the latter had been bred from a local rodent species by the Prophet himself and that, other than being both mammals, they weren't related to the rakh at all. About the felines on their mother planet Earth even less was known. But be that as it may, he was damn sure that neither had ever insisted on a diet of the finest gastronomic specialities in town, not to mention having a say in their owner's choice of clothes. Sighing, he remembered many a shirt with just a small hole in it or his favourite pair of corduroys, a bit worn through at the knees but still savable with a patch or two. After Gerald had been through with sharpening his claws on them, they hadn't even been suitable as cleaning rags anymore.
And there was more to it. From acquaintances, Vryce had heard that uncats were prone to the annoying habit of laying down on the book their owner was trying to read, a simple, instinctive attempt to gain attention which resulted in ugly dog-ears and hairs where they didn't belong. His own furry companion had never tried to ruin his reading sessions so far. Quite the contrary. Instead of doing usual tomcat business like marking his territory and lavishing his attentions on the female members of his kind, the silver tabby preferred to spend long hours in his study. In itself, it was nothing to worry about. After all, the room was by far the coziest in the ramshackle hut he had paid down with the last coins of the late patriarch's allowance. But Damien could have sworn that Gerald had quickly closed a book with his paw on his entrance on more than one occasion, and this manner of seemingly sentient behaviour utterly unbefitting a however clever pet was giving him some food for thought, indeed.
It was uncanny, to put it mildly, although not in the least as uncanny as his whiskered housemate getting him a job that had finally reunited him with the church he had left before he had set out for his last suicidal mission in the Hunter's company. During the first weeks since Tarrant's death, he had drifted aimlessly, had drunk way too much and even contemplated suicide for reasons he didn't want to think about too closely. Not even now. But having to care for the kitten had brought some meaning to his life again, a sense of being needed he had direly missed.
At first, he had made but minor progress. A few glasses of booze less, an odd job every now and then, a night he didn't wake up screaming, his pillow drenched in sweat and tears alike. But slowly but surely, he had recovered from his depression, and when he had dreamed of the adept's severed head again every now and then, held up in triumph by his blood-matted hair, there had always been a tiny furball in his arms, purring and treading until he had smiled through his tears and thanked the God of his faith for granting him this however small consolation.
On Yule Eve, the two of them had been on their way in the neighbourhood, enjoying a nice stroll before bedtime in spite of the temperature rapidly approaching freezing point. Trying to accustom Gerald to walking on a leash had been love's labour lost right from the beginning. The tabby didn't waste his energy on fighting him, standing still like a numarble statue while he closed the clasps, a twinkle in his fathomless cat eyes. But however insistent Damien was pulling at the leash or dangling the tom's favourite treats under his nose, his four-legged companion didn't budge an inch. Said occasion hadn't been an exception of the rule. But as soon as the offensive device around his neck had been gone, the creature no less stubborn than his namesake had shot him a disapproving 'why not right from the start?' look and had fallen in at his side with an air of utter naturalness.
Usually, Gerald didn't stray more than a few feet from him during their common walks, but that night had been different. Very much to his dismay, Vryce had barely been able to keep up with him until they had reached a small chapel about a thirty-minute march away from his modest dwellings. The tabby had darted inside like a bolt of lightning, his ears and whiskers eagerly pricked forward as if an entire army of his archfiends aka unmice had been up to no good within the weather-beaten stone walls.
Muttering a vicious curse under his breath, the warrior knight had dashed after him, just to freeze on the threshold. Since he had handed in his resignation eighteen months ago, he hadn't entered a house of God ever again. The mad race to their supposed meeting with eternity on the slopes of Mount Shaitan hadn't allowed for quiet times of prayer, and in the wake of the demise of the first Neocount of Merentha, he had been avoiding everything connected to his former life like the plague.
This aversion notably applied to the Church of Unification. Whatever the justifications for the crusade, he had never forgiven the institution which had been his home for more than fifteen years for affording Andrys an opportunity to act out his thirst for revenge. Admittedly, there was no denying that the unholy activities of the Prince of Jahanna had got to be stopped. He simply couldn't have been permitted to continue torturing and killing innocent women for his pleasure for all eternity. Vulking hell, he himself had sworn to be his undoing before he had set eyes on him for the first time in the dae in Briand. The man swaying on his feet with utter exhaustion hadn't been an undead abomination anymore but a mere mortal, though, a human being who had just sacrificed an existence of nigh to a thousand years for the sake of mankind. But even this act of compensation hadn't saved him from his merciless pursuers.
But who was he to judge? He had committed the greatest crime of all. Instead of protecting Tarrant, he had deserted him in the bowels of the Hunter's black keep like the most despicable coward, had let him die at the hands of his last living descendant as if he had temporarily lost his wits. What other explanation could possibly exist for an act so vile that it defied description?
A piercing meowing had brought him back to the here and now, and his heart in his mouth with sudden fear, he had pushed down his feelings with all his might and main and had followed the escapee into the dimly lit building. Once inside, it had felt surprisingly like coming home. His nostrils flaring at the so very familiar scent of not incense, his eyes had feasted on the elaborately carved pulpit and the two golden interlinking circles on the altar, the symbol of his faith. Tears had welled up in his eyes, and after making sure that Gerald was alright in spite of his recent caterwauling, he had knelt down and prayed for the immortal soul of the man who had meant so much more to him than a mere ally in the end. Or even a treasured friend.
"Are you alright, my son?"
Looking up with a start, his gaze had locked on a venerable old man wearing the robes of a priest. For a moment, the warrior knight's heart had hardened again at the thought of the crusaders who had raided the Hunter's domain, destroyed his irreplaceable storeroom of knowledge and laid the foundation for his death. But the cleric's smile had been so radiant, his pale blue eyes so very kind that he had heard himself answering very much against his will. "I don't know, Father. Once, I used to be a priest like you, firm in my beliefs, so sure I knew the line between right and wrong. But now it seems that I've lost everything. My vocation, the human being I should have died for instead of abandoning him to his enemies. The very pillars of my soul. The only thing left to me is this furball currently twining around your legs. I hope you don't mind him being here."
"Why, of course not." The old man had bent down and scratched Gerald behind his ears. The tomcat usually wasn't given to tolerating the caresses of a stranger, but to Damien's astonishment, he had leaned into the touch with a contented purr. "We're all God's creatures, are we not? And whatever has been done to you and the one dear to you, you'd better keep in mind that the instigators of your bereavement were human beings who knew no more about the Lord's resolutions than you. Don't hold Him responsible for their deeds."
"What... what do you know about it?"
"Enough. I know your soul, Damien Kilcannon Vryce, and I think you've been sent here tonight for a purpose. As my time in this body has come to an end, this congregation will soon need a new shepherd. Who could be better suited for the task than you? Gerald Tarrant wouldn't want you to squander your talents, would he? And if you're still doubting my words, you'd better remember that some things aren't quite what they seem and nothing happens without a reason. Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand."
Shell-shocked at hearing the adept's name from a complete stranger, Damien had buried his face in his hands and wept like a child. When he had come halfway to his senses again, his conversational partner had disappeared without leaving a trace of his existence behind. It was as if he had dreamed the entire encounter, but strangely, it had served as a kind of long overdue catharsis. The very next morning, he had poured his supply of spirits down the sink, shaved properly for the first time in ages and sought an audience with Solomon Donahue, the new head of the Church of Unification on the eastern continent.
Vryce hadn't harboured a sliver of doubt that his alliance with the Lord of the Forest had landed him on the church's black list. But very much to his surprise, His Holiness hadn't just instantly received his unexpected visitor but had welcomed him back into the fold with open arms. His reappointment in office had been a mere formality, and before he had been able to count to three, he had found himself the priest responsible for the parish of Eastgate.
Learning that the community chapel was no other than the very edifice where he had met the old man had been somewhat unsettling, but this hadn't been the only eye-opener laying in store for him. On his inquiry, Donahue had informed him that his predecessor had died of old age nigh to three weeks ago, a disclosure that had sent a cold shiver down his spine. Somehow, deep down inside him he had already suspected that he hadn't talked to a living man. But whether the benevolent entity reconciling him with the Church of Unification at long last had been one of the faeborn, a ghost in the old Earth sense or a messenger of the Lord Himself, sent in order to offer him a second chance, a somewhat presumptuous notion, as far as he was concerned, he would very likely never know. In the end, it didn't matter. Fact was that he was back to his old vocation against all odds and preparing for the first sermon he would preach in four years, something he hadn't thought possible in his wildest dreams a mere fortnight ago.
Yawning again, Damien let his gaze wander around the room. His travels at the behest of the church hadn't allowed him to settle down, let alone decorating his previous dwellings with the usual pure, unadulterated Yule kitsch in form of baubles and tinsel. But when the tabby had been staring in rapt attention at the shop window of Miller & Sons recently, a certain sparkle in his grey cat eyes so eerily reminiscent of the Hunter's molten pools of silver, he hadn't been able to resist the temptation. Living like a hermit at a time when everybody else seemed to celebrate the coming of brighter days and the turning of the year didn't necessarily mean depriving oneself of each and every joy. Hence, he had purchased a box full of the stuff and hadn't regretted it ever since. The heart-warming sight of Gerald pawing the golden strands and chasing the shiny substitute unmice all over the place as if he were a kitten again surely justified the expense.
The priest nodded off as soon as his head had hit the pillow, but woke up with a start when the clock was striking midnight. Since his early childhood days, he'd been preferring taking a nap on his belly, one leg tucked up and his head resting on his forearms. But he must have rolled onto his back in his sleep, and his tom evidently had lost no time in making himself comfortable on his bulky chest. Bad luck for him. Knowing from experience that there was no chance in hell of throwing himself into the arms of Morpheus again in his current position, Damien decided to push him off his current resting place, a course of action that would doubtlessly earn him an indignant glower at the very least.
But before he could put his plan into action, Gerald jumped up with a pained meow turning into something disturbingly akin to a human scream. Whatever mishap had befallen him out of the blue, it didn't sound good, didn't sound good at all. Alarmed, Vryce intended to come to his aid, but it was to no avail. Try as he might, he couldn't move a limb, couldn't even blink his heavy upper eyelids open as the weight resting on him seemed to increase tenfold all of a sudden. It felt as if a nightmare demon was sitting on his chest, threatening to suffocate him, but just when he was coming close to giving in to a surge of naked panic, the pressure of his ribs lightened considerably.
At the very next moment, something tickled his nose and made him sneeze. Somehow, he managed to raise his sword hand for a closer examination, counting his blessings that the strange paralysis condemning him to utter immobility seemed to have at least partially lifted up. But instead of the bristly whiskers he had expected, he touched what was feeling suspiciously like silky human hair. What the hell...?
Not quite trusting his senses, Damien let his fingers wander until they came to rest on no less soft skin utterly unblemished by the faintest trace of fur. The shock finally caused his eyes to fly open, and when he realized who was gazing down on him with a strange mixture of lingering pain and sardonic amusement on his striking features, he forgot how to breathe.
The man straddling him was no other than Gerald Tarrant, as breathtakingly beautiful as he remembered him and wearing nothing but a rather predatory smile. Merciful God in heaven, this couldn't be true, had to be either a dream or an incubus intent on draining him of his last drop of pleasure until nothing remained of him but an empty husk. The former Prophet of the Law had been decapitated roundabout eighteen months ago, and no known power on Erna, not even the progenitor of the Iezu, could resurrect a headless corpse from the dead.
Not for the first time since he had picked up the kitten and tucked him into his coat, the crazy notion of reincarnation crossed his mind. The time span would doubtlessly fit. After all, the tabby had been about three months old when he had found it shivering in the snow on a cold January night. But even if there was such a thing as metempsychosis and the adept's soul had been reborn in an uncat, a somewhat fitting vessel considering his innate grace and fastidiousness, this wouldn't in the least explain the strange transformation which had just taken place.
'That's a pagan notion utterly unbefitting a reinstated priest, Vryce,' a dry, so very familiar voice whispered inside his head all at once, and something inside Damien snapped. Realizing that he was truly beholding the very same human being he had been mourning like a lost limb for so many months, he started to cry as he had never cried before, neither on the slopes of Mount Shaitan when he had believed that death had finally caught up with the Hunter nor when he had witnessed a severed head being thrown onto a pyre. "Merciful God in heaven, Gerald, you're alive," he sobbed out, only marginally aware that he was clinging to the adept like a lifeline to sanity. "I don't understand how this can be possible. What on Earth and Erna..."
A slender index finger being pressed to his lips silenced his incoherent ramblings. With a mischievous smile, Tarrant disentangled himself from his arms and focussed his attention on ridding him of his green terry cloth pajamas. The top landed on the floor in a heartbeat, followed by his pants soon afterwards. Still busy with digesting the incredible situation, the warrior knight let it happen as if he were a dress-up doll and not a fellow pushing his forties. But when the adept kissed him, his lips soft and warm and altogether human, his already impaired capacity for rational thinking drowned in a surge of desire so intense that he could barely remember his own name.
From then on, everything became a blur of a determined hand guiding him into utterly unknown territory, of low sighs and moans and the man atop him riding him faster and faster until a shower of stars exploded behind his lids and the world blackened out soon afterwards.
When Damien finally resurfaced from the realms of oblivion, it was still dark outside. Still drifting in the dazed state between sleep and true alertness, he marvelled at the strange trick his subconscious mind had played on him. Dreaming that his tomcat had morphed into Gerald Tarrant of all people - and that said man had spread his legs for him with an enthusiasm belying his usually so calm and composed demeanour - was outright laughable. But it had been a delightful dream, nonetheless, at least a thousand times more agreeable than the sharp burning sensation currently bugging him at every motion of his torso.
Harbouring his suspicions concerning the nature of the discomfort, he struggled to his feet and padded across the room to his heavily carved alteroak wardrobe, an heirloom of the previous landlord, just to freeze to the metaphorical pillar of salt at the sight of his mirror image. Long, vivid scratches were disfiguring his shoulder-blades as he had already suspected, but with regard to their width and the distance between them, there was no chance in hell that they could have been caused by the claws of a cat. Human finger nails certainly came a lot closer to the matter. Along with the undeniable facts in form of a certain stickiness on his abdomen and his discarded pajamas still lying on the floor, this left only one conclusion. As weird as it might seem, last night's love act hadn't been a mere dream at all but wondrous reality.
Shell-shocked by the discovery, Vryce staggered backwards until his calves bumped against the edge of the bed and flopped heavily down onto the mattress, his mind reeling. As a priest of the One God and a Knight of the Flame, he wasn't altogether well versed in pagan customs, but he dimly remembered from one of his lessons at the seminary in Ganji-on-the-Cliffs that the nights from the 24th December to the 5th January were considered very special by a large part of the pagan multitudes. It was a time when the gates to the underworld were standing wide open, when ghosts and demons were roaming the lands in abundance and the Wild Hunt was abducting unwary travellers, bringing them to the otherworld for whatever sinister purpose. When the victims finally returned to the land of the living without having aged a single day during their absence, all their loved ones were either old and grey or had already died.
It was a frightening concept, indeed. To make matters worse, what would have been mere superstitious nonsense on their mother planet Earth could very well pose a real threat on the colonists' new home at the outer fringes of the galaxy. Even eighteen months after the taming of the fae, there were still enough and to spare creatures of the night prowling around, hunting for human sustenance under cover of darkness as they had always done since their forefathers' vivid imagination had spawned the first demonling. But with regard to the sudden reactivation of their unique mind link, not to mention the fact that he had survived the experience without coming to any harm whatsoever, he was ninety-nine percent sure that he hadn't fallen prey to one of the faeborn.
The remaining one percent allowed for the possibility of a Iezu trickery. After battling their archfiend Calesta, he knew very well how perfect the illusions conjured up by them could be, or a man as prudent and wary as the Hunter wouldn't have been almost burned to cinders at the knees of Mount Shaitan, just to mention one occasion. Being acquainted with Karril's weird sense of humour - and his utter lack of morals - he certainly wouldn't put seducing him in Tarrant's guise beyond him.
But somehow, he doubted the involvement of the God of Pleasure or another specimen of his kind, doubted it very much. It was just a gut feeling, a hunch, but Damien had learned long ago to trust his instincts. Assumed that he hadn't gone stark mad literally overnight, there had to be another explanation for what had come to pass, however improbable it might be.
'When one is in the presence of the seemingly impossible, that which is merely unlikely becomes more plausible by contrast' (BSR, p. 481), the Prophet of the Law had written roundabout nine hundred-and-fifty years ago. Remembering quoting the the very same famous statement back in the rakhlands, he very nearly broke out into a fit of hysterical laughter. How he wished that the man were at his side now, analyzing the problem with that brilliant brain of his until the solution seemed so very plain and simple that his less ingenious contemporaries couldn't help but wondering why the heck it hadn't come to their own minds. But the adept was notably absent, as was his furry friend who had been brightening his dreary existence for nigh to a year now.
Realizing how oddly quiet it was, Vryce's breath caught in his throat. Naturally, a predatory animal relying on stealth didn't make much noise, but there was something about the silence, the way it was speaking of utter forlornness, that caused his hairs to stand on end all over his body. And it wasn't like the tom at all to make himself scarce so early in the morning. He was wont to stay in his bed until his master - or rather humble servant from the uncat's point of view - opened his eyes. If the process of waking up was taking too long for his liking, it was usually assisted by a cacophony of caterwauling and not too gentle nips at his big toes until the warrior knight grudgingly traipsed into the kitchen in order to refill the empty feeding dishes with fish fillet or similar, no less costly treats. Only then, Gerald left himself out through the cat flap for an early morning inspection of his territory.
But today, the silver tabby was making himself scarce so far. An eerie sense of foreboding flaring up inside him, Damien jumped out of the bed and started to search first his house and then the garden, yelling himself hoarse with rising despair, but it was to no avail. Not a single whisker of his companion of many a lonely night was to be seen, and after about half an hour of fruitless running around like a man possessed, he had to realize that his pet had disappeared without leaving a trace of his existence behind other than a litter box and the vulking dishes.
The anewed loss proved to much for the priest. Shaken to the core, he sat down at the kitchen table and buried his face in his hands, cursing the fates for robbing him of the last being he was holding dear. But maybe he has fulfilled the task he had been sent for, a small voice suddenly piped up in his mind. Push down your emotions and think, Damien. Weren't there a few strange coincidences too many which finally reunited you with the church you had left in a huff? The helpless kitten seemingly waiting for you in the streets of Jaggonath, the old man in the chapel... perhaps he had a point in reminding you that it's the purpose of the Lord that will stand and not the plans of man.
This train of thought had Vryce on his feet in a blink. With regard to the dim daylight shining through his kitchen window, it had to be already close to nine o'clock, and he was due to hold church service at a quarter to ten. Still unwashed and wearing just joggers and a jumper, he didn't stand a ghost of a chance of putting the finishing touches to his sermon, but it didn't really matter. Even if he had had all the time in the world, he wouldn't have been able to think straight in his state of utmost agitation, anyway.
Moving as if in a trance, the warrior knight went upstairs, payed a short visit to the bathroom and donned the robes of his office plus a warm winter coat. Then he picked up the papers he had left on his desk and headed for his workplace. Solving the mystery, if it was possible to shed some light to the uncanny incidents at all, had to wait until his return from his pastoral obligations.
On his entrance, the parish church of Eastgate was already packed to such an extent that a few dozen worshippers hadn't even managed to get a seat but were standing in the the side aisles and the nave close to the doors. The short distance from the sacristy to the altar seemed like a thousand miles of bad road he weathered with a forced smile which didn't reach his eyes. It was cold within the ancient walls, so very cold that Damien could see his breath in the frigid air and the parishioners were sitting tightly huddled into their coats, but his forehead was beaded with sweat. It wasn't a bad case of stage fright. While travelling with the Hunter, he had endured worse than performing the sacred rites in front of an audience. Much worse. Feeding his blood and fear to a vampiric demon, the death of cherished comrades, the betrayal of everything his faith was standing for for the sake of the greater good - all this crap had left scars on his soul that would probably never fully heal.
Desperately trying to keep up appearances in spite of his emotional turmoil, Vryce went through the service like an automaton until the time came for his sermon. After climbing the alteroak stairs to the pulpit on wobbly legs and shuffling his papers about for a few seconds, he addressed the congregation. "Please open chapter twelve in the Prophet's Bible," he said, his rich baritone trembling ever so slightly. "I'd like to talk about the subject 'A New Year without Fear' today. Most humans are afraid of the unknown, and none of us knows what this year is going to bring. In my youth, I was told a story about a bunch of sailors who had signed up on a leaky old vessel. In the middle of the ocean a terrible storm came up, and in their dread of finding a wet grave far from home, they..."
On and on he went with his prepared speech, talking about God's grace which would never forsake them no matter how dire the circumstances, but his thoughts kept straying to issues utterly unrelated to religious topics. Apart from the fact that he in all probability had lain with the very man last night who had penned the words constituting the basis for today's sermon in an era long gone from living memory, just to end up walking their planet in the shape of an uncat, that is. The mere idea was sufficient to drive even a mentally stable fellow over the edge, but it paled in comparison to the soul-crushing knowledge that he was condemned to utter loneliness once again.
As hot tears were welling up Damien's eyes very much against his will, the faces of the faithful staring up to him blurred into an indistinct mass. Try as he might, he couldn't go on, couldn't even force a single further word through his constricted throat. His hands shaking and the blood pounding in his temples, he was only marginally aware of the uneasy shifting and hushed whispers of the people entrusted to his care. A song, Damien, he thought to himself. For heaven's sake, pull yourself together and announce the number of whatever vulking song that comes to your mind first. It will buy you some time for regaining your poise.
But it was as if his head were filled with air instead of a to all intents and purposes rather efficient brain. As the awkward silence was dragging on, the harrumphing of the crowd became louder by the second. But just when he was coming within a hair's breadth of fleeing the place of his humiliation and to hell with the consequences, a clear, light tenor he would have recognized among thousands raised effortlessly above the background noise. "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, Was blind, but now I see..."
After a short moment of hesitation, the congregation joined in a piece of sacred music that had already been ancient when their forefathers had left their mother planet thousands of years ago. Blinking through his tears like an owl, Vryce's gaze at once locked on the man who had bailed him out as if magnetically drawn to him by a force stronger than fire, water or the tempest of the equatorial region which would have devoured them if the Hunter hadn't forced the Worked fae right into its heart. And there was Gerald Tarrant just as he had seen him in the Lord of the Forest's audience chamber, clad in the flowing silken robes of an age long gone by and the flame-patterned collar of their Order resting on his strong shoulders.
In the cold, clear light of the winter morning filtering through the plain church windows, he rather resembled one of old Earth's legendary angels than a mere mortal. Feasting his eyes on a sight he had believed never to see again, Damien stood perfectly still for a while, fearing that if he moved only a single muscle, he would wake up in his bed just to realize that everything had been nothing but a dream. But when the singers were intoning his favourite lines 'Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come, 'Tis grace that brought me safe so far, And grace will lead me home', he simply couldn't hold himself back any longer. Yelling the adept's given name, he rushed down the stairs, crossed the short distance to the object of his desire in a blink and flung his arms around its comfortingly solid frame without giving a damn for the bewildered stares all around him. "You vulking bastard," he croaked, his voice thick with emotion. "I don't deny that I'm glad to see you, but sure as hell you'll have a lot to explain as soon as we're out of here."
The corners of Tarrant's mouth turned up into an amused smile. "That goes without saying, Vryce. I suppose I won't get a moment of peace and quiet until I will have satisfied your curiosity, but this is neither the place nor the time for it. For a start, it will have to suffice that the combined prayers of the faithful succeeded, indeed, and that there was a price to be paid for my redemption. I paid it willingly. Compared to what you did for me, it was but a small sacrifice. But let me tell you one thing." Gerald's mien darkened to a scowl all of a sudden, and the priest held his breath. "If you ever again try to feed me the ghastly rubbish you're mistaking with decent cat food, be prepared for a nasty surprise."
In utter disregard of his surroundings, Damien burst out laughing. With regard to his already somewhat unconventional debut, a further minor transgression in all likelihood wouldn't make any difference, anyway. And he wasn't quite finished with defying conventions. Not by a long shot. Still grinning like a Cheshire cat, he hugged the adept even tighter and kissed him squarely on his mouth. Without a sliver of doubt, they had a lot to sort out, and sharing his life with someone as headstrong and arrogant as the former Hunter wouldn't always be a bed of roses. But after all the manifold dangers, toils and snares they had come through, the Lord's amazing grace had finally granted them a reunion, and what He had joined together, man should not separate.