Chapter Two

Warning: a fair amount of angst on Gannon's part and descriptions of violence (Gerald at his worst)

Credits: the stuff about not fearing the terror of the night and the pestilence that stalks in darkness is from the Bible, Psalm 91:6. I can't quite tell who first called Jaggonath a 'New Jerusalem', but I think it wasn't in a fanfic but in a review of the Coldfire Trilogy. The mentioned song is the famous 'Jerusalem' by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry who set a poem by William Blake to music. It's the official hymn of the British Women's Institute, the unofficial national anthem of England and one of my all time favourites. The latter part of this chapter (Tarrant's brilliant brains being turned into mush in the wake of his transformation) was influenced by 'A Demon's Gift' by Linaerys (?), a gorgeous story that kind of scared the shit out of me while reading it, lol. 'The woods are lovely, dark and deep' is a line from the poem 'Stopping by woods on a snowy evening' by Robert Frost. And before I forget to mention it, the idea of a vampire 'living beyond the grace of God' was taken from Coppola's 'Bram Stoker's Dracula (quote below). Phew, I hope I haven't forgotten anything of importance...

A/N 1: Sorry for repeatedly mentioning events of Gerald's and Gannon's shared past which none of you has ever heard of. They are part of another story of mine about the way they met, became lovers and so on and so forth. Hopefully, one fine day I can find the time to write the stuff down. But certainly not this year, alas. Yuletide Treasure is just around the corner, not to mention my Halloween and Christmas fics and my ongoing projects. Sigh!

A/N 2: Greetings to Silvereyedbitch, Black Dragon's Ghost, Shadowy Star, Herdcat (a thousand thanks for your kind review; and yes, I'm definitely planning on writing more Gerald/Gannon stuff) and Carpatian Lady! I'm insanely grateful for your feedback, your support and generally for you ladies just being somewhere out there.

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She lives beyond the grace of God, a wanderer in the outer darkness (Abraham Van Helsing about Lucy Westenra)

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Jaggonath Castle, four and a half years later

Muttering a vicious curse under his breath, Gannon shifted the papers boring the hell out of him to a far corner of his desk. Petitions, verdicts, requests for a favour. The whole shebang all over again. Not to mention that he still had to give his blessings to the plans for the celebration of his silver wedding anniversary. If he ever had the nerve to read them in the first place. As for him, there was no reason to celebrate a marriage that had become a farce years ago. A wasteland as barren as their marital bed. But if he was honest to himself, he couldn't accuse his queen of her infertility. Even as newly-weds, her womb hadn't been a field he had plowed with great enthusiasm, to put it mildly.

Too restless to sit still any longer, he got up and walked over to the window. Below the castle hill, the city of Jaggonath was sprawling, a veritable ocean of light points so eerily reminiscent of the star-studded sky denied to them since Ian Casca had sacrificed the technological achievements which had carried their forefathers across space and time. When Gerald had suggested building his permanent royal seat in the vicinity of a conglomerate of miserable shacks without navigable waters in convenient reach, he hadn't thought much of it at first. Seth and Kale had had roughly the same number of inhabitants at that time, but had the advantage of being located along the coastline. But they were lacking an attraction that had doubtlessly tipped the scales in favour of Jaggonath in the eyes of his lover: the oldest church of their faith on their new home planet, currently being rebuilt into an imposing cathedral.

The beginning had been difficult, but in the end the adept's plans to create a kind of New Jerusalem as in one of the ancient hymns people still loved to sing had born fruit. Drawn by the promise of work and the hypothetical safety in numbers alike, more and more settlers had begun to flock to town until new suburbs seemed to spring up like mushrooms every other day. But maybe this shouldn't have come as quite a surprise. He still had to see the day Gerald Tarrant's brilliant brain miscalculated, and as matters stood, said day in all probability now would never come.

Gannon heaved a sigh from the bottom of his soul. Throughout his adult life, he had never been prone to crying over spilled milk or sinking into the depths of depression no matter how dire the circumstances. A man did what he had to do and molded the world to his liking, and if someone pissed on his parade, he stood up and came back stronger than before. Plain and simple. Only during the last years he had realized how much of his strength he had owed to the universal genius at his side. Scholar, warrior, writer of both secular and religious books, master-builder, sorcerer and figurehead of their faith, just to mention a few of the scopes the most fascinating human being he had ever encountered had excelled in. Since the adept's still unaccounted for disappearance, his life had become a series of dreary days and lonely nights, nights wherein he still woke up with his lover's name on his lips, his hands groping for a tall, lean frame which would never lie at his side again. Outside, spring was just around the corner. The birds were already chirping in the trees, and the first vernal flowers were sticking their heads out in between the last patches of snow. But in his own fallible human heart eternal winter was reigning supreme.

At first, he had tried to convince himself that Gerald would turn up again one fine day, alive and unharmed. Due to his stellar climbing up the food chain, he had alienated many people who begrudged him his success. Maybe a group of hired assassins had invaded Merentha Castle through a secret passage on that fateful night nigh to five years ago, had killed his family and abducted him for whatever sinister purpose. But there hadn't been a single sign of life ever since, no ransom demand, no claim of responsibility, simply nothing whatsoever to hint at his survival. No, the adept had to be dead. If there truly had been a bunch of killers involved, intent on framing him for a crime he hadn't committed, they had very likely disposed of his body at the next opportunity. Perhaps they had buried it somewhere in the woods or had dumped it into the ocean, never to be found again. What he had seen - or believed to see - hiding under the alteroak trees on the night of Almea Tarrant's burial had to be an outgrowth of his imagination, a faeborn chimaera created by his hopes and fears if it hadn't been a hallucination outright. Sometimes, in the deep of night, he prayed that this had been the case. The alternatives, the dismal thoughts plaguing him when he was laying wide awake once again, staring at the ceiling with burning eyes, they were too ghastly to contemplate.

For what felt like the umpteenth time, Gannon wished that he would have certainty of what had happened to his lover. If he had to face Gerald's corpse one day, or what was left of it by then, it would be a terrible blow. But at least there would be a grave to mourn at his death, and the comforting knowledge that the immortal soul of the man he had loved more than anything else in his entire life was far beyond any harm.

Tearing up very much against his will, he buried his face in his hands. At the very next moment, the door to his study was torn open, and his valet stumbled over the threshold, a candlestick in his shaking hand. "Baronet Marshall is dead, my Lord," the old man blurted out all in a flutter. "Captain Moffat heard it from his sister who works for a family which..."

"WHAT?" Suddenly torn from his already unpleasant musings just to be confronted with another piece of Job's news, he could hardly believe his ears. "Kindly repeat this for me, Arthur."

"Raynor Marshall is dead. Seems he went out in the deep of night, tried to climb over the fence surrounding his estate and impaled himself on a spike. Quite a strange way to make your exit if you ask me. Especially with regard to the fact that he used to be so very afraid of going outside after dark."

Aghast, Gannon stared at the bearer of the bad tidings. The world surely wouldn't be poorer without the bastard who had made his youngest brother's childhood a living hell. When Gerald had confessed the whole extent of what his siblings had done to him, he had come an inch short of ridding Erna of their taint for good himself, as he had done later in the case of their brutish father. Even after all these years, he didn't regret his deed. Quite the contrary. Sometimes, he couldn't help but wishing that God would bring the son of a bitch back to life just that he could kill him all over again.

But be that as it may, something certainly was uncanny about this fatality. Eight brothers, and all had met a more or less violent death within the time span of roundabout fifty months. Jeremias Marshall, lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs with a broken neck. Benjamin Marshall, trampled to death by his favourite unhorse in the small hours of an icy winter night. Only God knew what kind of business he had had in the stables at the time. Seamus Marshall who had been found in his bed without a visible wound on his body for a change, but his face contorted in such a blood-curdling grimace of sheer, unadulterated horror that his servants swore they would have nightmares about it for the remainder of their days. The list went on and on. The notion that every single one of them had died at a time when Erna's central star had sunk beneath the horizon and darkness had spread her velvet cloak over the lands sent a cold shiver down the king's spine. As much as he wished otherwise, this couldn't be a mere coincidence anymore. Something nocturnal and very, very vindictive seemed to have it in for the male members of the Marshall clan.

"May I ask what you're planning to do about it?"

The familiar voice of his long-serving valet brought Gannon back to the here and now. 'Do about it?' Well, arriving after the funeral just to dance a jig on the freshly filled up grave sounded a rather tempting idea. But of course, this kind of behaviour would be utterly unbefitting a king. Or any other halfway normal human being, for that matter. "Send for my scribe, Arthur," he said after a while. "He can prepare a letter of sympathy for the bereaved family. I'm not in the mood for writing."

"As you wish, my Lord. But this is not what I've wanted to get at. Forgive me for speaking openly, but you certainly realize that this wasn't an accident, don't you? Rumours are already spreading like a wildfire, suggesting that Baronet Marshall's death was the doing of the Neocount of Merentha, his brother. We both know that he had good reasons to exact revenge on his family."

For a few seconds, he felt like throwing a tantrum born from sheer despair, but thought better of it. His staunch valet didn't mean any harm. Aside from his missing lover, he was the one and only human being on Erna he had ever really trusted. Being in service of the royal family for nigh to five decades now, Arthur Drummond had watched over his first steps, had consoled him when he had landed flat on his nose and later kept a lookout when he had experienced his first sexual encounters with his father's groom in a quiet corner of the stables.

In his comforting presence, he didn't need to pretend that Tarrant had just been a cherished courtier. The domestic who was much more a father to him than his own had ever been had witnessed the blossoming of their relationship right from the beginning. Accompanying him on the fated visit to the Marshall estates during the first months of his reign, his valet had stood at his side when a grey-eyed, delicate boy resembling more a legendary silvan elf than a member of the human race had saved his life by performing an unheard-of miracle. He had heard what the healers had said about the gruelling cause for his new protégé's sudden collapse on their journey home. And later, when his lover had very nearly died in the dungeons of his father and he himself had been half out of his mind with grief, Drummond had shouldered the burden of the invalid's care without so much as a whiff of complaint. In spite of being as straight and conservative as they came, the man had never condemned them for their 'sodomy', had always accepted Gerald for what he was instead of considering him a freak of nature or worse like so many others, and Gannon was infinitely grateful for his unwavering support.

"I don't know what to believe anymore," he whispered. "They say that he snapped, that he vivisected his family and went straight to hell for his crimes. And to make matters worse, now his last surviving brother died a horrible death. The gossip-mongers will have a field day. But it couldn't have been him, could it? He's dead. Has to be dead after all those years. And if he were still alive against all odds, I refuse to believe that he would be capable of committing a cold-blooded murder."

Drummond rested a hand on his trembling, velvet-clad shoulder. "Maybe we'll never know what truly came to pass, but I liked the Neocount," he said placatingly. "Without him, those rebels from the North might have succeeded in dethroning you back in 281. But he taught them manners. A formidable warrior he was, his Excellency, and a good man. The troops he led into battle would have died for him."

"And as a reward for saving my crown - and very likely my hide - I royally screwed it up and threw him to the wolves!" The king's harsh, bitter laugh was devoid of any genuine mirth whatsoever. "We can sugarcoat the truth to our heart's content, but I let him down, Arthur! I should have never listen to his bullshit about saving his most treasured creation from a schism. Very funny! Those bastards lost no time in striking his names from the books and demolishing each and every picture of him. May their bloody fingers rot off as a punishment for this outrageousness!"

"Don't, my Lord. You shouldn't torment yourself with self-reproach, nor should you rage against the church your partner held in such high esteem. It does you bad, and the Neocount wouldn't approve of it."

"You don't know what it's like," Gannon went on as if he hadn't heard a single word, hanging his head in shame. "There isn't a night I don't wake up from terrible nightmares, just to ask myself if everything could have been avoided if I hadn't allowed Gerald to retire to Merentha Castle. He sacrificed himself for the dream we both dreamed, but without him to fill it with life, it soon became utterly stale to me. You might not believe me, but I'd give the entire damned church and my kingdom as an extra if I could see his face once again."

"There's an ancient proverb," the old man replied very quietly. "Be careful what you wish for or you might just get it."

Registering the strange undertone in his valet's voice, Gannon looked up with a start. "You know something, Arthur. Out with it!" he commanded, every inch a king at a moment's notice.

"I know nothing, my Lord. But there are very unsettling news regarding the Forest of Brocéliande about twenty miles away from the port of Merentha. You went deerstalking there once while visiting the Neocount, remember?"

As if he could ever forget this particular visit. They had been separated for several weeks, and within the castle walls it hadn't been altogether advisable to celebrate their reunion in the manner they both had been envisioning. But the woods had been lovely, dark and deep and the forest soil so very soft beneath them. For once, Gerald hadn't minded getting dirty. Rolling around on a bed made of the first fallen leaves of autumn for hours, they had caught up on everything they had missed, and when they had finally been able to let go of each other, dusk had already fallen. But safely cradled in the bliss of loving and being loved in return, he had feared neither the terror of the night nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness.

Considering that Drummond averted his eyes and cleared his throat, something about his train of thoughts must have reflected on his face, let alone having a rather inspirational effect on certain body parts located a bit further southwards. "It's alright, old friend," Gannon said with a faint smile. "Don't pay attention to a dirty old man dwelling on sweet reminiscences of his past. Gerald truly was one of a kind in every respect of the word. But now tell me what's going on in the Forest of Brocéliande."

"It seems that the bloodsucking fiend which caused a lot of problems in the last few years has returned to the area. But this time, it's worse than ever. Entire families have been slaughtered in the settlements nearby, woodcutter camps been wiped out to the last man. From what I've heard, the demon usually leaves no survivors. Those of its victims it doesn't suck dry to the last drop are torn limb from limb. If this goes on, the first wave of refugees will soon arrive in Jaggonath."

"So we need to put a stop to its activities at long last. Moffat can round up a posse first thing in the morning. It should be a piece of cake for him to..."

"My Lord, there's more to it." The domestic's voice was so very grave that Gannon's guts twisted into a tight knot of apprehension. "I should have told you before, but I... I simply didn't have the heart to do so. You've already suffered enough."

"Never mind, Arthur. Just spill the beans and don't keep me in suspense any longer."

Drummond drew a deep breath. "To all appearances, there's indeed always an exception to the rule", he muttered miserably. "One man survived the last massacre. A master carpenter from Merentha. From what I could gather, he and a few of his colleagues were on their way to Jaggonath in order to attend the annual meeting of their guild. I don't know what went wrong, but nightfall caught them by surprise out in the open, close to the borders of Brocéliande, and they decided to make camp instead of stumbling about in the darkness. It goes without saying that they stationed a sentry, but it didn't do them any good. Mer Myers only lived to talk about it because the... the monster which had already pounced on him was banished by the rising sun."

Mer Myers. Although he couldn't lay a finger on it yet, the name struck a chord with him. "How do you know about all this?" he asked somewhat bewildered. "And why on Earth and Erna does it bother you so much? You're white as a sheet, Arthur. Of course it's very unfortunate that the men were killed, but demonic attacks occur every day."

"Concerning your first question: I know because I've visited the carpenter at the hospital today. Forgive me for my highhandedness, my Lord."

Gannon blinked. "He's here? In Jaggonath? But why didn't they transport him back to Merentha? It's a lot closer to Brocéliande, I dare say. And why the heck did you pay him a visit?"

"For the same reason the travellers who found him decided to bring him here. Mer Myers insisted that he needed an audience with the king. With you. Learning that the man in question is the very same artisan who used to be in charge of the wainscoting of the great hall in Merentha Castle, and that he had a rather disturbing story to tell, I deemed it better to talk to him beforehand. To see how the land lay, so to say. I wish I hadn't. The poor devil was still half-crazed with terror, and understandably so. I've never seen anything like the scratches on his chest, and I don't want to meet the creature whose claws inflicted them. Tore the flesh right off his ribs. But he was lucid enough to give me a description of his assailant."

"Go on." Dreading what was to come, Gannon was barely able to move his numb lips.

His pale blue eyes glistening suspiciously, the old man approached him and clasped his hands. "You've always been the son to me I've never had," Drummond said, his voice shaking with emotion. "For this reason alone, I wanted to spare you the truth. But now I can't keep quiet any longer. There are some... details that don't match. But as much as I wish otherwise, Mer Myers left no doubt that he recognized his former employer, the Neocount of Merentha."

"Details? What details?"

"The colour of the creature's eyes, for example. They were black, not grey. Completely black. And the teeth. According to our eyewitness, they bore no resemblance to a human denture whatsoever. But of course, the lightning conditions were pretty bad at that time, so we can't know for sure."

"So maybe it wasn't Gerald at all but a demonling, Arthur. A wraith spawned by the imagination of whatever idiot foolish enough to believe that..."

"Gannon." his valet using his given name, an honour just to be used in a very private setting that he had solely bestowed on him and his lover, silenced him. "A wraith wouldn't have worn this."

Drummond pulled a delicate gold chain out of his waist pocket, and recognizing the golden, blood-splattered disc dangling from it, the king wished the ground would open up under him and swallow him whole. It was the Earth. Well aware of Gerald's fascination with their mother planet, he himself had ordered the amulet from the finest goldsmith in Jaggonath. Destined as a surprise for the adept's thirtieth birthday, it had become a farewell gift instead, handed out on the very morning Tarrant had set out for his domain for the very last time.

"How...? Where...?" Try as he might, he couldn't force something even halfway coherent through his constricted throat.

"Fighting for his life, Myers ripped the necklace from his attacker's throat. It was still in his hand when he regained consciousness. I'm so sorry."

For a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath. But then he felt the poisonous snake called blind rage rearing up in the darkest corner of his soul, baring its fangs in preparation for the lethal attack. Suddenly beyond all reason, Gannon jumped to his feet, a red mist clouding his eyesight. "This isn't true! It mustn't be true," he thundered against his better judgement. "It's a trick. Malicious falsehood. Can't even you let him rest in peace, man? I wouldn't have expected that from you."

"But my Lord! I assure you that..."

"Shut up! I won't have any more lies. Consider yourself dismissed, Drummond. You have my permission to leave the castle at once. And now get out of my sight!"

As his valet didn't budge an inch but just stared at him with huge, sad eyes, something inside him snapped. "Have you gone deaf, you old fool?" he yelled at the top of his voice. "How can you dare to disobey my orders? FUCK OFF!"

Teetering on the brink of the abyss, he was utterly oblivious to the fact that everybody within earshot had to be aware of his temperamental outburst by now. His inner demon howled in anger, urged him to find an outlet for the rush of adrenaline coursing through his veins, and all he could do was restricting his destructive impulses on the inanimate objects in convenient reach instead of doing something he might regret later.

A single sweep of his arm sent his ink pot and the papers he had brooded over what felt like an eternity ago flying all over the place, but it wasn't enough. Not by a long shot. Screaming like a man possessed, he picked up the nearest chair and shattered it against the wall. The sound of splintering wood was music in his ears, and he repeated the experience without paying any regard whatsoever to Drummond's desperate attempts to calm him down. Finally running out of seating-accommodations, he turned to ripping the bookcases off the walls with his bare hands, but still the indwelling demon of wrath demanded more. At six feet one inch and weighing roundabout a hundred and eighty rather muscular pounds, Gannon was no weakling. But without the miraculous strength lent by the foul, misshapen fruits of temporary madness, he would have never been able to lift his heavy novebony desk, let alone throwing it halfway across the chamber.

When he came to his senses again, he was crouching in a corner of his ravaged study, most of his fingernails broken and his hands raw and bloody. Drummond's slender arms were around his shoulders, anchoring him in a world which had lost every appeal to him. "Oh God, Arthur, I don't know what has come over me," he apologized for his hysterical fit. "The appalling things I've said to you... can you ever forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive, my Lord. It was the shock. You don't have to feel bad about it."

Still trembling in every limb, Gannon fought to regain at least a semblance of self-control. "To be honest, it wasn't that much of a shock. Not really," he whispered dejectedly. "I tried to be in denial for as long as possible, but a part of me has always known that something more horrendous than mere death ripped him from my side. I've never talked about it before. Not even to you, my friend. But on the eve of the Neocountess' burial, I thought I saw someone hiding under the alteroak trees in the castle grounds. A man. Tall, pale as death and his silver eyes glittering like diamonds. But when I investigated the place, he was already gone. Just left a piece of silk behind. Midnight blue, Gerald's favourite colour, as you very well know."

"But how can this be possible? His Excellency was a mortal man, not a faeborn vampire. What power on Erna could have transformed him into a demon? And why?"

"I don't have a clue. But I remember a conversation I had with him once. He said something about the planet favouring sacrifice and that almost everything could be had if you were willing to pay the price for it. I'd say killing your own family was a hell of a price. Maybe he paid it in the hope of cheating death and gaining immortality. Considering his strange behaviour after his heart attack, I wouldn't put it beyond him."

Drummond shuddered. "May God have mercy on his soul. But what now? You surely aren't planning on sending a posse after him, are you?"

Gannon's handsome features hardened. "And what would you advise me to do?" he choked out between gritted teeth. "Let the matter rest? Allow him to run rampage under the cover of darkness, killing dozens of my subjects? Hundreds? I love Gerald and will continue doing so until my last breath. But I'd rather drive a stake through his heart myself if that's what has to be done to give him peace than enduring the thought that he's condemned to lead such a ghastly unlife. It would drive me to distraction. Hence, tomorrow morning I'm going to send Moffat and a handful of his most trustworthy men to the Forest of Brocéliande, disguised as woodcutters. With me to keep them company. Incognito, of course."

On hearing about his king's plan, Drummond very nearly choked on his own breath. "I don't want to be disrespectful, but you can't be serious," he spluttered. "This could be dangerous. Very dangerous. If the Neocount has truly turned into a vampire... it makes me shiver just to think about it. Please, my Lord, don't do this to yourself. Nothing good can come out of it."

"But I have no choice. What would you do if the 'monster' were someone you loved? If it were your king, for example? Would you ask for my severed head on a platter outright? No, Arthur. I don't doubt that Moffat can finish the job on his own. But I need to be there, to see with my own eyes. Maybe there's still a possibility to redeem Gerald. And if not, if it comes to the worst, I'd like to... to deal with him myself. I owe him this. May the God of our faith whom he served for so many years have mercy on both our souls."

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Sitting bolt upright, his shaking hands twisted into his sleeping bag, Gannon cringed at the blood-curdling screams of agony ringing out outside their tent. When they had set off to their destination, their spirits boosted by the bright rays of the midday sun, his impromptu plan had sounded quite promising. But awaking from a bad dream just to find that reality was very likely considerably worse than every horror vision his mind could conjure, he was forced to reconsider his wisdom.

At first, everything had gone well. On their road to Brocéliande, they had encountered nothing more adverse than a few showers of spring rain and sodden country roads. Even their journey into the depths of the forest itself had been utterly uneventful until they had finally reached a deserted lumber camp. There, they had made themselves at home, Arthur Drummond who had flatly refused to let him plunge into disaster on his own acting as their cook.

The very man was cowering right at his side now, panting in sheer, unadulterated terror. Gannon couldn't really hold it against him. In his younger days at the end of the dark ages, he had fought many a battle, and nobody could call him a coward. But listening to hell unleashed in the deep of night was an altogether different kettle of fish.

After pulling his sword from its scabbard very carefully in order to avoid any treacherous noise and unfastening the tent flap, he peeked out of their canvas accommodation. What he could see in the light of the torches they had left burning made his blood run cold with dread. It was a carnage. Body parts of humans and unhorses alike were littering the clearing, and the tents and the equipment the woodcutters had abandoned for good reason were drenched in blood.

Captain Moffat lay no more than ten feet away, a shadowy shape crouching over him like a spectre out of the abysses wherein the nightmares dwelt. The man was still stirring faintly, and Gannon made his decision without thinking twice. His bodyguards had come to this dismal place by this command. He was responsible for them, and he couldn't just sit back and do nothing while they were being ripped to pieces. Not to mention that as soon as the demon was finished with devouring its current victim, it would very likely be on the lookout for an expansion of his menu.

Plucking up courage, he straightened and stepped outside, his fervently praying valet hot on his heels. The screams had died down by now, and the night was eerily quiet other than for a low sucking noise which made his stomach turn with revulsion. Swallowing down a mouthful of bile, he forced his paralyzed limbs to move, but he hadn't come very far when the thing in the clearing suddenly raised its head from the throat of its prey with a bestial snarl bearing no resemblance whatsoever to a sound a human throat could produce. Ever so slowly, it turned towards him and stared at him with eyes as lightless as a true night, and he forgot how to breathe.

After living beyond the grace of God for nigh to five years, there wasn't much left of the ever so fastidious Neocount of Merentha. His matted hair was caked with dirt, his delicate features almost unrecognizable under layers of blood and the earth he had buried himself in to escape the lethal sunlight, and his formerly fine clothes were only rags which barely served to cover his modesty. But drawn to him by a sense much more astute than mere seeing, Gannon recognized him nonetheless.

His mind reeling, he staggered forward without even realizing that he was moving and stretched out a trembling hand, but was stopped dead in his tracks when his vis-à-vis bared his fangs and hissed at him. Behind his broad back Drummond tugged at his cloak, implored him to run for his life and leave him behind, but faced with the horror of his worst fears coming true, he paid no attention to his valet's desperate pleads. "Gerald, it's me, Gannon," he whispered, hot tears running down his face. "Don't you know me anymore?"

The being which had once been Gerald Tarrant tensed up and hissed again, but didn't attack. Its head tilted slightly sidewards, it gazed at him in a grisly parody of the rapt attention the adept had usually reserved for an intriguing scientific problem in his mortal days. The memory was almost more than Gannon could bear, and he thought of his sword, a quick death and the blessed oblivion which would follow this act of utter despair. But he couldn't abandon his mate to his terrible fate without having tried everything in his power. Running purely on instinct, he unearthed the amulet Myers had captured from his pocket and held it up by its chain.

Swinging gently back and forth like a pendulum, the golden disk glittered in the torchlight, and the black windows to hell where human eyes should have been followed its every move. The king held his breath as a hint of awareness was stirring in them, a sense of self which hadn't been there before, and the abnormally dilated pupils were contracting until a ring of pale grey was visible around them. "It's me, beloved," he repeated, praying with all his heart that he could somehow make it through to the human soul hopefully still harboured inside a body which had been transformed into something far beyond the mortal plane. "Do you know this necklace? It's yours. I gave it to you as a present. The Earth, Gerald. Our mother planet. Oh please remember and come back to me."

Long, curved claws retracted from the corpse they had been digging into with a vengeance, morphed into dirty but very human fingernails in the blink of an eye, and then slender digits reached for the piece of jewellery and closed around it in a rather possessive fashion. Somewhat heartened by this small success, he let go of it and gently caressed the back of the adept's hand instead. The pale, blood-spattered flesh radiated an unearthly cold which threatened to freeze the marrow in his bones, but overjoyed at being able to touch his lover for the first time in years, he couldn't have cared less.

"Gannon."

It was just a single word, a hoarse rasp produced by vocal chords long weaned from human speech, but to the addressee it was the sweetest music imaginable. "Yes, beloved. I'm here. Now everything is going to be alright. Whatever has been done to you, we'll find a way to reverse it. I won't let you down ever again."

Registering the heartbreaking expression of anguish passing over the face so very dear to him, the king's heart clenched painfully inside his chest. Without wasting much thought on the possible consequences of his advance, he went down on his knees and pulled the man he had missed like a lost limb for so many months into his arms. For a few seconds, Gerald yielded to his embrace, nestled up to him as he had been wont to in far happier times. But then he stiffened and drew back. "Thirsty," he breathed.

Looking at him, Gannon couldn't help but shuddering. All traces of humanity were extinguished from the adept's eyes now. Blazing like a black fire kindled by the essence of night itself, they were fixed on a spot at the crook of his neck, the very spot where the large blood vessels were running right underneath a thin layer of skin. At this very moment, realization hit him with the force of a quake, and his futile hopes for the future crumbled into dust. From where Tarrant had gone, there was no way back. He would never rise an eyebrow in sardonic amusement again while making fun of those members of the royal court whose incompetence was only rivalled by their pompousness, nor would he moan his name in the throes of passion. The light of his life had plunged into darkness for all eternity and had left nothing behind than an emotional desert bereft of any joy.

Once again, Gannon thought of ways and means to put him out of his misery. A stake through the heart, a sharp blade for severing the slender neck he had so often kissed, and then the purging fire just to make sure that no however faint spark of unlife had survived. The only problem was that he couldn't harm what had become of his lover any more than he could have stopped breathing on his own account. But he wished he could have done the latter, wished it so very much. As far as he was concerned, the adept didn't have to go hungry that night. Death couldn't come quickly enough for him. "Is this everything you want from me?" he sobbed out. "My blood? You can have it, Gerald. Take what you need and kill me. I don't give a damn anymore."

Still staring at his throat as if in a trance, Tarrant slowly bent closer, magnetically drawn to the object of his desire by a force exceeding even the most burning mortal desire by far. A chill mouth came to rest on Gannon's sweaty skin, thin lips parted with a low, wistful sigh, and at the next moment, he felt the pressure of teeth so much sharper than a living man's could have ever been. Whispering a last prayer for their salvation, he put his fate in God's hand. But the piercing pain he had expected didn't come. Confused, he opened his eyes just to catch a glimpse of a tall frame moving with utterly inhuman speed and fluency in his peripheral vision. Then there was just the moaning of the night wind in the trees and the lonely cry of a winged nocturnal predator. Gerald was gone, had left no trace of his existence behind other than the shredded mortal remains of his victims and a broken heart.

In a blink, the king was on his feet, dead set on following him to the end of the world if need be. But Arthur Drummond held him back, clinging to him with amazing strength for a man so old and frail. "Don't, my Lord. Let him go," he said beseechingly. "His Excellency had the resolve to do what's best for both of you. May God reward him for this act of love. Because that's exactly what it was all about, or he would have never spared you in the state he was in. I hope you can find comfort in this truth. And now you need some rest. Soon it will be dawn, and it's a long way back to civilization by foot."

Feeling absolutely shattered, Gannon allowed his valet to lead him to their bivouac and tuck him in as if he were still five years old instead of forty-three. But he didn't get a wink of sleep in those darkest hours before sunrise. Burying his face in the crook of his arm in order to muffle his sobs, he cried his heart out until he had no more tears to shed.