Chapter 3
On the threshold to darkness
He didn´t look for how much time they needed and didn´t even care for when they finally reached their home.
Henry whispered something, his voice was weak and tired beyond imagination. Not only this drug that circled through his system but his enormous loss of blood made his whole body trembling with weakness. At least whatever Aidan had shot him tilted his excruciating pain enough that he could walk slowly step by step.
Aidan´s voice came from far away. His head felt numb and strangely enough his gums too. His lips seemed to have gone to the size of a pillow. Numb, fluffy and cold. His head was drifting and the blood whooshed in his ears in an unsteady rhythm. His lids stuck to the corners of his eyes and a thin layer of red liquid shaded his eyesight. He fought for breath, trying to hear himself breathing just to make sure he could hear or feel anything. The wind was hissing in the folds of whatever Aidan must have pulled over his head and it felt as if the whatever was the only reason that his head was not falling off his body, not any longer being fixed to his shoulders. His whole body, if still existing, was falling apart.
Aidan was speaking to him but the words dissolved into fog, pumping fog, pulsing back and forth by some force that seemed to be connected to his heartbeat. His feet made shuffling noises which seemed to reverberate from the sidewalk flagstones. He couldn´t remember to have gotten out of the car. If there ever had been a car. The stairs seemed to pile up to an endless passage upon a mountain and he almost missed the gesture with which Aidan meant him to stop finally. He was shaking but he was afraid that he would stuck to the railing when he would try to get hold of the cold iron. That it would turn into glowing heat under the bloody claws into which his fingers had turned.
"Don´t worry Henry! I´ll get you inside. Josh is a good friend of mine and he knows what we are. He´s very friendly...", he answered in a whispering voice.
Aidan took a deep breath and pressed the door bell.
The sound of the bell was pounding in his ears, in his head. Frame...any green frame was in front of him and a glistening surface. He would drop to the ground by now, the ground that made some efforts to jump right into his face... The sounds around him dissolved into a hollow humming, growing louder and ebbing away again.
Once. Twice.
Nothing happened.
God! Josh was at home for sure. His shift was over and normally he always went home first after work.
He pressed the door bell button for the third time.
Inside the house Sally sat on the large couch. The door bell rang multiple times. Impatiently. Josh came sped down the stairs from the upper bedroom.
"What´s up? Who´s that? Did you check the door?", he asked her while he went for the front door.
"Don´t know! Sally didn´t check! Old Sally checked", Sally shrugged her shoulders.
Josh reached out for the door knob. Aidan should have made use of his key, he thought. He wanted to ask him for it later. He opened the door and found Aidan standing outside, beside a some...thing, some...one? covered in a blue biker´s cape.
Josh indicated the hooded unknown.
"Who...?"
"It´s a good friend of mine. I need you invite him in..."
"Invite him in? We don´t do that...!" Josh protested. When Aidan begged him for an invitation, there was only one possibility left; a vampire! Who else would need his invitation as he was a human. To some certain degree at least, even if not entirely...for the wolf part.
"It´s different! This is Henry. It was a long time ago...I made him, Josh. He´s my son!"
Josh got a slight sight of what was hidden under the rain cape for good reason.
What he saw made his heart waver for a moment. His look went down the hidden figure. Blood covered every inch, every limp. Blood soaked slippers covered feet that were not only naked but stripped off skin.
"Did you make him without skin?" Josh spat at him, his voice risen. His view changed from Henry to Aidan who gestured to him to low down his voice.
"Must you be that loud? Don´t wanna hear us everybody around!", he growled with an angry voice.
He didn´t want the whole neighborhood to become witness of what was going on here.
"Please let him in!", Aidan urged.
Josh muttered anything under his breath. He was rather restrictive to that since Bishop tried to kill Aidan.
He looked at Henry whose hands were trembling violently. Clearly he was short before collapse. The minimal parts of his body that were visible indicated that he must have lost a very large amount of blood if this was his whole body´s condition. Henry would go right into volume loss shock and he wondered how in heaven he came up to here from where ever he was brought by Aidan.
Josh made a step back, tilted his head slightly to one side, indicating the inside of the house;
"Fine!"
Aidan stared at him somewhat bewildered, bowed slightly and waved his right hand in demanding circles.
"Please a little bit more, Josh!", he begged to his friend. A simple fine wouldn´t do.
Henry peered at Josh from under his hood, his eyesight shaded by a fog of morphine and weakness. What does it take so long? He felt like he would drop to the ground any second. His strength had gone with the first screams of agony when Suren started her vicious work with that damned Viking knife. Excruciating agony that had taken away his breath, made his heart falter and he had begged to God for his death before finally his body pulled the emergency brake and he had lost consciousness.
A simple fine.
Not enough to make sure that Henry could enter safely and seek shelter without at last got burned down to ashes by being uninvited.
"Enter... I invite you...mi casa e su casa...", Josh said and stepped back with his hand waving Henry inside.
"That´ll do!" Aidan turned to Henry, waved him inside, crossing the threshold. Josh gave in with a sigh and a thought came to his mind.
The bonds you form with some people will make you look past anything...ignore what they´ve become...You´ll hang onto the version you wanna remember, not the one in front of you now. Friends, parents, mentors; we hold onto that idealized image of them...even it´s an illusion, because if we can´t believe in them, what does that say about us? Remembering that best version of our friends remind us that we were that promising once...that strong, that alive.
Henry felt Aidan softly shove him inside the house by his arm. So carefully Aidan acted it almost made him cry out irrespective the morphine he had gotten. Henry knew from own experience that there was a slim line between an analgesic dosage under which one could move without losing consciousness and the simple narcotic state that would send even him straight down to the ground.
Sally stared at Henry for a moment, then she grunted at Aidan: "I'm not baby-sitting your meatsicle."
Might gonna kick your ass, Sally, if ever you would have one! Aidan thought angrily. The iron poker was out of reach and he had other business to do now! Sally could be so cheekily sometimes.
Aidan led him over to a staircase and Henry found himself confronted with an almost impossible to manage situation. To climb up stairs again...a No Go! Why in heaven didn´t he simply let him fall onto that couch here on the first floor? He could simply die on a couch too! On the battlefields of WW 1 soldiers had died in mud, smoke and blood and among bodies torn to shreds! Instead...
"Sorry! You have to climb upstairs to be safe. Where I can help you...", Aidan whispered into his ear when he saw Henry stagger and hesitate out of reason.
Henry will have to feed to heal, he thought. I will have to get blood inside here for him. Henry wouldn´t be able to go out for his fill. Hopefully he will make it upstairs...
Josh stood on the first floor, his eyes full of concern. He shook his head in slightly disagreement to what was going on in his house. Of course!. Aidan was his friend but bringing in another vampire... A vampire who was seriously hurt... A vampire who would need blood to heal. Blood in an amount beyond normal. That tended to go wrong...
Josh had a bad feeling about that and decided he didn´t want to become a witness to it.
"I´ll go for work...", Josh sounded uncertain, slightly disgusted and then he made it for the door to leave. His face was split with discrepancy.
Aidan was too much fixed onto Henry to care for how Josh reacted. He could imagine what was going on in his friend´s mind but whatever it was...he had to ignore it now.
He had started it. That was the point of no return now!
He couldn´t step back from it now, neither could Henry! Aidan felt a knot in his throat and it tightened around his heart like a steel band. He could only hope that Henry would make it through this without ending up in a disaster. Why in heaven and hell have I not thought about it earlier? Why the heck didn´t I bargain for another option for Henry? What shit had Suren spit in my mind that I only could give in to this? A wave of hatred for her swept over him and for a moment it could banish the iron knot in his throat. Iron! Heaven! The whole air in the room smelled of iron, the scent was so strong that it was filling all his senses down to the core. Shaking the iron bars of the cage that held back the animal, the vampire within him. The scent was hanging in the air like a cloud, spreading all around this one moment when Henry had crossed the threshold.
It was so intense that Josh might smell it even though it wasn´t the wolf time of the month; the days before full moon when his senses became sharper, his ability to smell, to taste and to sniffle around intensifying..
Henry climbed up the stairs, his bloody skinless fingers not able to cling to the wooden railing. He heard and felt Aidan behind him, supporting him.
Words were in his ears but the pain made his blood rushing in his ears. Humming and vibrating. The walls moved in and back and fog was hanging in front of his eyes. His knees threatened to give in and he gasped when his head seemed to fall off his shoulders. Unbearable heat was crawling up his spine, grabbed for his head and suddenly his head became cold as ice. The wall in front of him almost disappeared when a black cloud shaded his sight and in a reflex he wanted to grab for a hold. There was none... Aidan! Help me! His voice was strangely hollow and the words drifted away into a black hole...
Aidan opened the door to the bedroom and Henry staggered inside with last strength. Light burned in his eyes and there was a massive beige and brown anything in front of him and all he wanted was to get to it. Anything within him was telling him with a nasty, angry voice that he should make it for the whatever...whatever it was! Call it instincts, call it...hunger. The room was wavering around him and he felt himself stumbling. The brown wall seemed to jump away and anyway he reached the beige surface. Where´s Aidan? Aidan, help me! A foggy shape that seemed to belong to what? What was it? His mind fought to remember. Wood...? Any wood? A wooden bed frame. His breath was hissing in his ears and he stumbled.
Henry let himself sink down on the corner of the bed. He expected new pain but the bed was soft and a comfort to his tortured body in difference to the make shift torture table he had been placed on at Suren´s House.
Aidan carefully peeled the hood of the rain cape back from Henry´s head. Under it was a layer of large sized aluminum covered sheets, used for severe burns.
Even this material stuck to the surface when Aidan carefully tried to uncover Henry´s head. He felt so sorry for him, causing additional pain now.
Henry´s teeth clenched and he let out a loud groan, his face tensed with pain what caused new pain when muscles tensed under the skinless surface.
"Be careful...can´t...Didn´t ya learn...a thing?" Henry choked. Tears started from his now bled black eyes.
"I know but you have better to be strong now..." Aidan tried to soften him. He knew pretty well that he was rising new pain but the faster they went through undressing the better for him. He was kneeling in front of Henry and carefully opened the folds of the rain cape, peeled it down the shoulders and then down his arms. Then he found himself confronted with getting him out of the hospital shirt. Wouldn´t it have been for getting Henry in and out of his Volvo under the eyes of the public, he could have covered him with a rescue foil instead.
The light material was stained with blood that glistened in the light of the lamp under the ceiling. It was soaking wet. The scent of it was nearly overwhelming and Aidan felt his hunger rising by instinct. The intense smell of blood was always a trigger for his basic vampire instincts. Even in the hospital it was difficult to control them when he was hungry and confronted with large amounts of blood, working in the Emergency Room.
Aidan pressed his teeth together, swallowed hard and his fingers were slippery from blood within seconds when he peeled the shirt down from Henry´s shoulders and arms. He had to pull carefully where the material stuck to the muscle tissue. Aidan hissed with disgust under his breath. This was worse than what he had imagined before.
Henry moaned deeply and the moans became screams when Henry´s walls broke. His face torn with pain, his fangs bared and his eyes bled black and wide. Aidan almost stopped but forced himself to go on. The faster he would be the better for his son.
Eyes stared into Aidan´s. The gaze so tortured, so desperate it nearly broke Aidan´s heart. Henry´s lips moved and little drops of blood appeared on the split surface. Words. Almost inaudible.
"Plea...se!" Breathing. Pause. "Stake. Me!"
Aidan felt a hot flame burning through his heart, his pulse speeding up and a wave of hot nausea swept over him. Almost pulling his legs away under him at the sheer thought of it.
No! No! He would never do that! Not to Henry! His Henry! His son! He had lost a son once before.
Aidan stared into the black eyes that were pure begging.
Henry was begging for his...death.
"No! No!" he answered with grim determination.
Henry groaned and his head fell back in despair. To reign himself in, Aidan dressed him in the dressing gown that hung from a hook at the wall near the door. It would get soaked through within short time but there was the need to give Henry a hint of unsuspicious of normality Henry was a shivering picture of misery.
Henry rose a hand to touch his temple that was oozing with blood, but he stopped dead in his movement.
"You made it eighty years...", Aidan said to him. He felt himself trembling and his face was near to break out in tears, but with much effort he kept control.
"Can´t live like that...it´s worse live...like that..." ,Henry moaned.
Aidan knew what he meant. It sounded so hopelessly as to go on like that. Living like that. Without skin. His face was contorted with inner pain and he didn´t know how to comfort Henry. Aidan tried to ignore the hurtful moaning that came out of Henry´s sore throat, helped him to sink back on the bed, his back upholstered by a pile of cushions.
"Okay, that´s it. You made it Henry...", he said softly. "Relax and try to sleep...if you can. I couldn´t shot you more of the morphine out there. I´m sorry but otherwise you wouldn´t have been able to walk to my home."
Bloodied lips moved when Henry whispered anything. Aidan merely heard the word.
"Wa...ter...I´m...thirsty..."
Aidan nodded.
"I will bring you blood and some water now..."
Aidan filled a glass with water and placed a straw in it.
Henry´s eyes got a hungry glare. He must be thirsty beyond imagination. Don´t dare to think about how much liquid he´d lost. Normally I should get him an infusion, he thought. Maybe later on when he would have fed.
Aidan shook his head and sank onto the edge of the bed, his hand lifted the glass and he carefully placed the straw between Henry´s dry and bloody lips.
Henry began to suck up the water. In a reflex he tried to take hold of the glass, but his fingers were slippery and he looked at his hands with a deep moan. His face, would he have been able for an expression, got a helpless expression when he gave up. Henry tried to rise his hand but it sank down with weakness.
"Is there still pain, Henry?" Aidan´s voice was full of sorrow when he forced himself to look into the ruined face of his son.
The Yes was whispered so weakly it was barely audible.
"Ne...need...blood! Gim´me blood..." Henry choked. He stared at Aidan, his view wavering, his lips trembling. It took him a strenuous effort to form some words. "Need...Please. So...hurts...Ca...Can´t!
His lips went bloody when the delicate surface split and little drops of blood, equal to a sparkle, appeared on the surface. Henry seemed to be at the end of the line.
Aidan glared at him, his view uncertain and his mind was racing. Henry needed blood. He needed to feed at any cost.
He couldn´t get him blood from the hospital. He was cut off from that source for himself since they changed the key card code and had installed a camera to guard the entrance of the blood bank in the Boston Suffolk. Why for hell didn´t I think about this most important question before I decided to take Henry with me? This question tortured him and finally the moans that were coming from the bed woke him out of his thoughts.
He lifted his head and looked at Henry. For seconds their eyes met. The incredible cerulean ones of Henry bled black when he tried to move his head. Bled black not by hunger but from pain. Aidan could see it in his whole features. The moaning that came out from between his lips made Aidan moving merely by his own will.
His hand moved into the pocket of his hoodie. His fingers felt the little box he had shoved into his pocket when the guardian and even Suren hadn´t looked at him.
Henry´s eyes clung to his hand. He seemed to know or at least to have an uneasy sense of what it contained.
The black pools of his eyes a plea.
Aidan dropped his view, turned aside.
God! Henry had tried to provide him with morphine when he was brought into the field hospital before he would start to get the bullet out of his leg and care for his injuries...
Aidan closed his eyes for a moment then he took out the box and filled a new syringe. He turned around and came to Henry´s side.
No! I won´t let you suffer anymore!, he thought. Then he bent down and carefully grabbed for Henry´s arm, ignoring the tremble and the pain ridden moans, placed the needle into the raw flesh where he knew to be the line of the vein.
It seemed to be so crazy to pierce a vein as almost every vein that once had been under the skin was now lying on the bare surface, pouring out its content, adding to the wet glistening that covered Henry from his head to his toes.
´Please!´ Henry´s lips formed the word inaudible but Aidan understood without hearing.
Henry gave a deep sigh when the morphine flooded his arm.
"Pst...relax...relax...it´ll better soon. You know this..." He would have liked to touch his temple, would have liked to comfort him, to tell him that everything will be better as soon as he would drink enough blood.
To drink blood!
I can´t feed him! Not with my own blood. He needs more than a normal fill to heal. More than I would be able to give! Even if I would go up to the border.
Henry´s head sank back and his eyes fell shut when the morphine finally took effect. The moaning subsided and his body went numb.
"Need...blood..."
Aidan nodded.
"I´ve promised you to care for you and get you blood! I´ll do so! Being back soon, Henry!" He helped him back into the cushions, then, after a last look, he left the bedroom and sped down the stairs.
Sally looked at him.
"What are you going for? What´s about him?" Her thumb directed upstairs.
"He´s not getting any better and he needs food."
"Oh, we are talking take out that comes in a bag or the kind with a pulse? You know what? Bring him a whole herd of cattle, what do I care?"
Aidan softly shook his head and left through the door. What the hell was going on with Sally? The normally jokey and always being up to fun ghost was dripping with cynicism.
Downstairs a door banged shut in his ears. The sound was only curbed by the distance and the dullness which filled his head.
Henry was lying on the bed. His mouth was slightly open and he breathed fast and flat, every breath a gasp.
At least the morphine had reduced the excruciating pain down to a level of still strong pain. He felt unbearable tired and despite the fact that he couldn´t move his head, the less his body, because of his condition, he felt dizzy like when he had drunken way too much back in his mortal time.
He gasped and his lips burned like fire. In a gesture of grace that was more to be called a mockery, Suren had spared them by exactly cutting down the delicate line where lips and normal skin met.
Aidan had provided him with some water to tilt the strongest urges but all of this was no substitute for…
…Blood
Henry tried to move his tongue over his lips in a reflex, but in his semi-unconscious state his mind was far too slow and the pain it caused woke him out of it for a moment.
God! He couldn´t go on like this anymore. This wasn´t life but sheer torture. The remaining blood in his body was insufficient to heal him and his body seemed to have gone down to pure survival state. He weakly reminded that in a state of shock, the body concentrated on sustaining basic functions by reducing the blood circulation to organs that were essential for life like heart, liver and lungs.
He didn´t know how much blood he had lost but it must have been a large amount, far beyond what was acceptable even for a vampire, the less to speak of a human being. Strangely enough, there had been these softly dripping, wet noises which his sensible vampire hearing had caught up when at any time he had woken up, out of the merciful blackness to which his brain had shut down. Suren must have finished her brutal work and Henry had desperately hoped to slip back into unconsciousness again. The room had been utterly silent for a moment but for her breath that had been calm and regular. Her task seemingly hadn´t cost her any effort, as if she was a well trained…butcher. That damn bitch.
Seconds had stretched into an eternity and the dripping noises of his blood that fell down to the ground, building up dark glistening pools, were pounding in his ears with unexpected sharpness. Strange to notice which strategies the body developed to distract itself from unbearable situations like excruciating torture. When Henry´s mind drifted back to it, he couldn´t understand why. All his education as a medic in World War One could not prepare him for what he was going through now…
The pain in his lips subsided a bit and he felt an overwhelming tiredness that threatened to pull him down into the abyss of unconsciousness again. Henry felt the urge to give himself over to it. His body screamed for relief and when it only would be a deep sleep or better...unconsciousness.
He had hold onto himself with all remaining force of will when he and Aidan had been in the large conference room, and she had offered him the only way to come back into the family which she had thought to be adequate for what he had done to her some eighty years ago…
It had needed him all strength not to let go and letting his face show his deadly fear in front of her. His heartbeat had gone straight through the ceiling and only the fact that he had to undress, had prevented his hands from shaking so wildly, that he wouldn´t have been able to keep them still.
Henry closed his eyes and the dim light in the room changed into darkness. Every breath, every slight movement took so much effort it almost drove tears into his eyes, but he doubted that his bled out body that was hovering at the edge of shock state could give any. All he knew from the past was that he lacked of any liquid; blood and water! Any corner of his mind that remembered what he once had learned about it, told him to save his strength for the moment when Aidan would come back with blood. Any which way. If in a bag or that with a pulse…
When it only would be fast and soon.
All his last strength had gone with the stairs he had climbed up, the few steps it took to reach a room that obviously was a bedroom. Aidan´s? It didn´t matter by now, only that he was placed onto a soft bed instead of the hardness of a wooden table. The blood was humming in his ears and with closed eyes he felt like tumbling around. The soft dressing gown began to stick to his body and turned partly red where blood soaked through. His fingers were too stiffened from pain and dried blood to peel it back and so he gasped deeply and let out a groan.
How should he ever be able to feed? The less taking blood from a living source. Aidan could not bring in a captive, pulling him in like a pig for the slaughter. He ever had fed on willing women and men, the point was lying on willing. Everybody who would enter the bedroom would run away in shock the very moment Henry came into sight. No one but hospital staff would be used to the sight of a bleeding, ninety-nine percent dead and skinless being…
Why couldn´t Aidan simply provide him with transfusions? Didn´t Aidan ever think about it before he decided to bring him over here? He had to stay awake under all circumstances when Aidan would return sooner or later. And he begged it to be soon.
Henry doubted that he would stay alive much longer. His heartbeat sped up when he thought about a stake.
A simple stake would do.
A leg, broken from a nearby chair. To be driven through his skinless chest into the only weakly beating heart. He had been afraid of for eighty years when he had hidden from everyone, how it would be when the sharp tip went right into his heart, stopping it and he would finally dissolve into dust.
The dust he should have been now since decades, counting onto a mortal life span.
The room was wavering around him and his sight was shaded by the morphine. He won´t even made it up from the bed and over to the corner where a small chair was standing at the wall. No chance to get to it, the less to break off a leg for a stake...
enabling him to impale himself and to be released from the agony...
God! Show me mercy! Only this once! And let me die... Et dimitte nobis debita nostra...Libera nos a malo...
Strange enough the words from the Pater Noster (* Our Father) came to his mind, the prayer he once had been taught by his father.
His father who never got a chance to learn what his son had become. His father...his father...had been such a kind man. His father never had beaten him up, never punished him for mistakes or misbehave but tried to taught his son to become a man of honor and kindness. What a mercy that his father had died in the 50s and never learned to know which sins his son had committed since he was turned vampire. It would have broken his father´s heart...
His lids closed again and Henry almost lost consciousness finally when the morphine pulled him down with the force of a sledgehammer…
to be continued
