A/N apologies for this chapter taking so long! I'm working on a particularly horrible essay - my last! - at the moment, as well as my strange research project about the paranormal. Various other, nicer things involving going out for meals and having people stay also intervened. Anyway, I hope it's worth the wait - it's the longest chapter so far!
Thanks hugely to everyone for their reviews, I really appreciate them :-)
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"Carl? Are you all right? Can you hear me?" Van Helsing held his friend gently by the shoulders as Carl retched, bringing up water, shivering violently against Van Helsing, who despite his relief was gripped by a new terror – what if this was Tallander? What if he hadn't really been expelled? Perhaps he had been faking – he might be capable of stopping his heart of his own will, for all Van Helsing knew. Tallander's power was in fire, and fire had destroyed Reicher and Father Michael. Van Helsing had to know that man he had brought back really was Carl...the thought of killing him again was unbearable.
Unable to stop himself, Van Helsing pulled Carl onto his back and shook him sharply.
"Talk to me! Are you all right? Carl!"
The friar's eyes had been tightly closed, but now they opened, fixing after a dazed moment on Van Helsing's face. Carl simply stared at him, no expression on his face save mild confusion. He looked somehow diminished, as though he had lost weight in the last ten minutes, and his eyes were bloodshot and clouded.
"Carl," Van Helsing said again, gently this time. He could not imagine Tallander looking so desperately vulnerable as this. The friar's cracked lips moved, and he rasped weakly,
"Van...Van Helsing?"
Smothering a sigh of relief, Van Helsing pulled his friend into a sitting position, supporting his back with one arm, smoothing wet hair out of Carl's eyes with the other hand.
"Are you all right?"
"I...I don't know," Carl half-whispered, his blue eyes widening as he slowly took in his surroundings.
"How much do you remember?"
The frightened eyes fixed on Van Helsing, and Carl's voice rose, almost shouting, as he said,
"Everything!" softer, he repeated, "I remember all of it...oh, my God."
"Nothing that happened was your fault," the monster hunter was quick to reassure him. "You have nothing to feel guilty about. Including...er..." he trailed off, unable to bring himself to mention either the young woman at the tavern or his own intense experience with Tallander. Carl, obviously realising what he meant, managed a weak, embarrassed smile. He glanced around the church, tiredly, almost absently – and his gaze fell upon the charred ashes which were the remains of Father Michael.
"Michael," he murmured, the smile fading. "He should never have been involved in this."
Van Helsing followed his gaze. "There was nothing I could do. He just – exploded into flames. A final attack from Tallander..." he phrased it half as a question, and Carl answered, though not as Van Helsing had expected.
"An attack, yes, but not in the way you probably think. Tallander wasn't expelled from me – when he realised all was lost, he used his remaining strength to leave my body and enter Michael's. He fought Reicher directly...and the resulting exodus of energy destroyed poor Michael completely."
As if exhausted by this speech and what it meant, Carl sank back against Van Helsing's arm, and closed his eyes once again. The monster hunter stared in horror at Michael's sad remains.
"Are they both dead, then? Reicher and Tallander, I mean."
"Possibly both. Probably neither," Carl murmured, with his eyes closed. "Please...I want to leave here."
"I'm sorry. Of course," Van Helsing helped the friar to his feet, but Carl slumped against him helplessly, too weak to walk. The larger man lifted his friend easily in his arms, noticing again that he seemed to have lost weight compared with earlier that day – he looked thin and pale, with black circles under his eyes. Van Helsing touched his forehead lightly – it was too hot.
"Come on," he said, carrying Carl from the church in his strong arms. "You need to get some sleep. And I'm sure the landlady will get you a meal."
"Not in the small hours of the morning," murmured Carl, half-smiling, his head against Van Helsing's broad shoulder. He seemed to have no objection whatsoever to being carried like a child.
"I'll get you a meal, then. I stole some bread and cheese from the kitchen earlier."
"Sounds delightful," mumbled Carl, half asleep already, despite the rain pouring down his neck – the storm still raged, though now it seemed far less ominous than before. Thunder and lightning had both ceased, and the rain's pattering seemed more gentle and soothing than discomforting.
Once back at the inn, Van Helsing carried Carl up to their room, laid him on the bed, and began to gently strip him of his wet clothes, while the friar lay supine and drowsy. He opened one eye when the monster hunter removed his underwear.
"Sorry," murmured Van Helsing. "But if after all this you got pneumonia, I'd renounce the church and become a heretic. I don't think Cardinal Jinette would appreciate that."
"Probably not," murmured Carl. "Anyway, it's not as though I have anything you haven't seen before," he winked, and Van Helsing smiled back wryly, relieved that his friend's sense of humour at least was intact. He found Carl's aged grey nightshirt, and put it on him. Again, the friar was completely pliant, and flopped down on the bed again as soon as Van Helsing had dressed him.
"Supper," the monster hunter said, collecting the slightly stale bread and hard cheese. The beer at least was still fairly cold – the room was decidedly chilly.
"Breakfast," countered Carl, sleepily, glancing at his pocket watch, which lay on the dusty bedside cabinet. "It's almost four in the morning."
"You have breakfast at four in the morning at the abbey?"
"Actually, I usually do have supper at about this time," Carl had wakened up a little at the sight of the food, basic as it was. "Thank you."
Van Helsing sat and watched his friend eat, filled with such an intense sense of relief mingled with exhaustion that it manifested itself as a kind of deep contentment. Carl, for once, was not talking ten to the dozen, being far more interested in his food, and except for the soothing sound of rain against the window, the night was very quiet.
"Better?" asked the monster hunter presently, when Carl had finished the food and beer – and was looking slightly tipsy.
"Much," the friar mumbled, falling back on the bed. "I suppose I ought to go to sleep now," he added.
"Sounds like a good idea," Van Helsing agreed – but Carl appeared to be asleep already. Smiling to himself, Van Helsing made for his own bed, preparing by the simple process of removing his outer garments and throwing them on the floor.
"Where're you going?" murmured Carl, surprising him. The friar opened his eyes, looking afraid for the first time since they had left the church. Afraid of sleeping, Van Helsing realised – dreams, after all, had started this whole horrible experience.
"I'm not going anywhere," the hunter replied. "I'm right here, in the next bed. You can wake me if you need anything."
"Am I a terrible coward?" Carl murmured.
"Not at all," Van Helsing firmly answered. "On the contrary, you're one of the bravest men I've ever met." He sank down wearily onto his mattress and pulled the scratchy woollen blanket over him. "Sleep, now. Everything will be all right."
Carl smiled again, thankfully, and closed his eyes.
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Van Helsing awoke a few hours later, when life began to stir in the old building – he could hear the landlady shouting at a barmaid, the rattle of bottles. He glanced over at Carl's bed and saw the friar still sleeping peacefully despite the racket from downstairs, his hair falling messily over his eyes, his cheek pillowed on his hand. He looked quite well for a man who had been possessed, died and been resurrected all in an evening.
It was noon before Carl finally awoke, glancing bemusedly around the room for a moment before sitting up in alarm.
"It's all right," Van Helsing soothed him. "Take it easy."
Carl relaxed slowly, gave a weak smile. "I was...I was waiting for Tallander to say something. It's strange...I feel almost lonely without him. I know that's absurd," he added, as Van Helsing stared.
"You're a strange man," the monster hunter shrugged, trying to keep his tone light. He was determined not to ask Carl any questions until the friar was ready to answer, but Carl answered them anyway.
"Tallander is definitely gone, but he isn't dead, I don't think. He's somewhere out there, in spirit...perhaps he'll find the strength to take a corporeal body again, perhaps not. Reicher was destroyed, I think."
Van Helsing grimaced. "Is there anything we can do about it?"
"We can burn down all the churches he defiled and salt the earth," Carl said, in a grim, almost bitter tone. "But it won't destroy him. It might stop him drawing strength from his congregation, though – and those unfortunates should be buried in consecrated ground. As should poor Father Michael's remains," the friar added, sadly. He plucked at his blanket, hesitating, and Van Helsing, guessing what was on his mind, said,
"There was nothing you or I could have done about Michael."
"I know...I know."
Van Helsing moved to sit on the edge of Carl's bed. "Hungry?"
"Not really."
"There's a first," the hunter joked weakly, but his smile faded at the sight of Carl's grief-stricken face.
"He was my friend, and a good man. I should have tried to stop Tallander."
"Would you have been able to?"
"No. But I should have tried," Carl sighed, leaned back against his thin pillow. "You know, I actually felt rather sorry for Tallander, in the end. In some ways...we were alike."
"You were nothing like that monster!" Van Helsing was quick to reassure, but Carl simply smiled at him sadly.
"But he wasn't always a monster, Van Helsing. He was once a man – a priest. Well, you know that. He lived in the sixteenth century, in the time of Queen Elizabeth. He was a good man – tormented, confused, but good. Tallander was condemned to death for his faith, but escaped, and took refuge in a country house, where the squire and his family were secretly practising Catholicism. They hid Tallander in a priest's hole behind a bookcase in the library, but only a week later, the family was discovered, the head of the household arrested, and the house searched. The priest's hole was found, but instead of taking Tallander for execution, his enemies simply blocked the door, trapping him inside – a tiny room, barely two feet square. Deprived of food and water he prayed to God that he would be rescued – but no one came, and Tallander took this to mean that God had forsaken him. He turned to the Devil instead, and made a pact – that when he died, he would continue to live by feeding on the lives of others."
Carl paused, but Van Helsing said nothing. He had not expected this; not expected that it might be possible that Tallander had once been something other than a cursed demon living only to destroy others.
"You said he was like you," the hunter said, eventually, very quietly. He felt oddly humbled. "In what way?"
"Tallander was tormented by his own mind," Carl said softly. "His heart told him that God existed and made the world; his brain told him something else. He was a born scientist, a pragmatist, a rationalist. He had no proof that God existed and yet was expected to believe, and did believe – and it tortured him. He was half-insane, I think, before he was murdered. I think he chose me precisely because of that. He had resolved his conflict by convincing himself that God was dead. He wanted desperately to understand how I could dedicate myself to both God and science."
Carl looked up at Van Helsing, and smiled sadly. "In some ways, he was pitiable. He destroyed himself through his own logic."
The hunter shook his head. "It isn't an excuse, Carl."
"True," the friar replied, simply. He looked very tired, but glad to have unburdened himself on the subject of Tallander. His eyes were brighter, his face more relaxed than Van Helsing had seen since before Tallander's invasion.
"So – what's for breakfast?" the friar asked, quite cheerfully. Van Helsing smiled at him. Tallander had certainly been right about one thing – his little friend had an extraordinary mind.
The landlady left a tray of slightly unpleasant looking food outside the door, and Van Helsing retrieved it, placing it on Carl's lap; the friar looked amused to be waited on. The hunter ate nothing himself. He would let Carl eat before telling him about the new problem – the telegram that had arrived that morning, while the friar slept.
The cable from the Vatican.