Title:  Darkness of Companions

Based on:  Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde

Summary:   A sequel to Companions of the Night.   Kerry's life is threatened by an unidentifiable source Ethan/Michel seems to understand.   He becomes her champion as she recedes farther into the darkness.

Rated: PG13

Author's Note:   I do not own any characters.  WOOOO!!! LAST CHAPTER!!!   This was so much fun to write and all that other crap authors say for their last chapter.   This chapter is fast paced and very likely confusing as heck.   Ask any questions you want, and answers you shall receive.   As long as I receive review… you know how it works.

~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[~:[

Michel had her by the hand and was leading her through the woods behind his lodge.   They were both wearing snowshoes, which made holding hands difficult.   She kept stepping on the back of his snowshoe and he would almost fall over.   She figured he'd only take so much of this before he killed her or picked her up and carried her.   She was hoping for the latter.

Michel stopped dead, causing Kerry to run into him.   She fell on her bottom, and couldn't get to her feet because of the bulky snowshoes.   He looked at her flopping in amusement for a minute before lifting her easily with one arm.    She found they were on the ridge of a cliff overlooking inky blackness.    A small town twinkled gaily far in the distance, a beacon in the wilderness.   The sight was eerie.

Michel put his hand on the small of her back and pushed her forward.   For a moment she thought he was going to push her right off the cliff.   He stopped when she was just in front of him and snaked his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder.   They stayed in that position until Kerry could no longer feel her toes.    Her leg cramped and she fell forward, bringing a startled Michel with her.   He caught his balance at the last moment and pulled them both away from the edge.

Sitting in the cold snow with one of the snowshoes stuck under her, Kerry faced him.   Michel was looking at her with more emotion than she had ever seen on his face before.    She wasn't some weirdo who claimed she could read emotions; she could just tell that he wasn't unemotional.   He looked regretful and resigned.  

For no reason tears began to trickle from her eyes.    "Kerry."    He reached his hand towards her, not close enough to touch.   His arm was suspended mid-air for a moment before he withdrew it.    "There's something I should tell you."

"Hmmmmm?"  Snow was melting under her butt and she was pretty sure it was refreezing her jeans to her snowshoes.

"There's a sect of vampires called the neovirgus who have been trying to kill me for years."   He looked so sincere, this had to be a joke.

"Neovirgins?"   She snorted.   "Are these vampires trying to avenge people you killed, Gaston?"

He looked at her as if she was insane.    "They are after me because I dishonored their queen in public."

"Wow, what did you do?"   She could play along with his little game.

"Hit her in the head with a loaf of French bread."   Michel ran a hand through his hair.   He was lucky he didn't age, or that endearing habit would have caused him to go bald centuries ago.

"That's it?    They want to kill you for that."   She was inwardly snickering.   He was getting worse at these tall tales. 

He paused for a moment.    "After their queen sent an assassin after me, I killed her."   He worked some snow in his hand into a snowball.    "So they have been murdering every human I ever fed off of.   Everyone I've ever… got close to."

"So they'll try to kill me?"   She almost smiled.   She had gotten close to Michel.

"Oh, they will kill you."   He threw his hard packed snowball over the cliff.   Kerry briefly wondered if it would start an avalanche.    "I'm only telling you this so you'll understand my next move."

"Don't."    She stared at the handgun he took out of the back of his jeans.   Her brain suddenly clicked.   He had brought her here to kill her, and then dump her body over the cliff.   That was why Jesse had hugged her on their way out, and why he was suddenly opening up to her.

"It's either one of us or the other."   He looked despondently at the gun.    "I really did care about you, but I don't suppose that will matter now."    He leveled the gun at her as she looked tearfully into his eyes.    "Please, don't pull a Relena on me."   

Since she had watched the 'cartoon' a few times, she knew he was referring to the way Relena looked in Heero's eyes defiantly before he tried to kill her.   She also knew that Heero could never kill Relena.   "You don't have to do this.   Why kill me if you are trying to save me from being killed?    If I really must die, why not turn me into a vampire."   There it was.   She had finally made her decision to become a vampire.   Of course it was under duress, if she was going to die anyway, then why not?

"You don't understand."   He snapped.   "You deserve much more than that.   I'm giving you the most painless death I can offer."    He made a tight fist with his other hand.    "They'll torture you before they kill you.    Every single one of them will feed off you.   I couldn't take it if you were hurt.  Goodbye Kerry."

He jerked the gun towards her head and she slammed her eyes shut.    She inhaled shakily as the thought came to her that with all her powers, she should be able to stop a gun.     The gun was cocked and she mentally snapped the firing pin.    That probably wouldn't work since she didn't even know what a firing pin looked like.   Wrenching open her eyes she found Michel holding the nozzle to his own temple.  

She screamed for him to stop as her vision became slow motion and he sluggishly pulled the trigger.     She dove for him, her jeans making a ripping noise as they became unstuck from her snowshoe.    She landed on top of him.   His arm jerked up and the shot echoed through the trees.   

"Jesus, you could have killed yourself."   His eyes blazed.   His hands reached towards her and she was sure he was angry enough to truly kill her this time.   He hands entwined through her hair and leaned forward to kiss her.   A body fell on them from the trees.    Kerry screamed and Michel surged to his feet.    They were suddenly surrounded by men digging up through the snow and climbing down trees.   One man dressed completely in white stepped out from behind a bush and grabbed Kerry.    As Michel leapt towards them, twenty-some brown-clad minions pointed their weapons at him.    Michel only stopped dead when whitey swung a machete up to Kerry's neck, nicking her.

"You should have killed yourself Paresse, then maybe we would have let this lovely mortal live."   He then chuckled cruelly and licked her neck.   "Probably not."   Kerry shivered in revulsion.  

"Let her go Ucido.   She didn't kill anyone."   Michel was tired of trying to persuade these people, it was the same argument over and over.    "It was centuries ago, I think its time you gave up trying to avenge your people.   They killed my family first."   Michel tried to take a step forward; Ucido dug the blade a fraction deeper into her neck.    Kerry could now feel the warm blood seeping into her blouse, and a drop trickled down her bra.    She watched helplessly as the underlings all attacked Michel.    She fainted due to lack of blood just as Michel loped off the head of one of the vampires.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

She awoke feeling weightless and cold, but very much alive.    She groaned and in the haze of her grogginess she heard Michel frantically calling her name.    She tried to turn her body toward him, but he yelled for her not to move.    Something about his hysterics quickly woke her up.   Her eyes blinked open and she found herself looking at the view from the cliff.    She tried to rub her face, but her arms wouldn't move.

Her brain finally began processing things sluggishly.    She could feel the wind jerking her and realized she was suspended over the side of the cliff.    Again she tried to turn to where she sensed Michel's body beside her.

"Don't move!"   His growl was almost animalistic, and she was taken back by the savagery in one small command.   She had almost forgotten he was a man to fear, if he could even be called a man at all.

"What's going on?"   Kerry tried to keep calm faced with Michel's deadly vampire side once again.  She glanced down, needing to look at anything but his looming shadow out of the corner of her eye, and panicked as she caught sight of the drop below her.   "How high are we?"   Her voice was a tiny squeak even to her, but she knew beyond a doubt that he heard her.

"I told you they enjoyed torture."   He paused for a second, debating whether to go on.   Deciding she would find out eventually, and there was no need for prolonging, he continued.    "When the sun hits, I'll die agonizingly and then with my weight no longer balancing us, you'll fall to your death.    That is if this shoddy little pole doesn't let go first."   His voice was laced with bitter dread and pain.   Kerry gazed at her surroundings the best she could without stirring.    Above her tied arms was a poorly constructed pulley attached to a metal rod that appeared to be falling out of the snow it was imbedded in.

The wind stirred them dangerously and they swayed for precariously on the slight perch.   The pulley creaked, but maintained their combined weight.    Finally, she could see Michel.   It was almost impossible to tell where one wound ended and the next began through all the blood.   A nasty cut on his forehead trickled a stream over his dark eyebrows and over a blinking eye.   A drop dripped off his nose and fell down, and down.   His shirt was slashed in deep stripes, and his collarbone protruded at a sharp broken angle from his hands being brutally bound like hers.    Michel's longish black hair was matted with drying blood, and as she stared at him the popping and grinding of bones trying to knit echoed through the sharp air.

"Are you in pain?"   She felt like fainting at the sight of his beautiful body mangled.  

"No."   He winced, obviously lying.   "They wanted me to go out with as much pain as possible, but I can deal with the pain.   What I can't deal with is the fact I'm taking you out with me."   They hanged in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

"So there really was a 'they' who was trying to kill me.    I thought it was…"   She quickly trailed off, not really wanting to get into this during their last moments.   Already the gleam of predawn light was strong enough to allow her to see him perfectly.

She could feel him turn sharply before he remembered he couldn't.    The rod in the snow jerked downward another inch.   She gasped and noticed a sharp pain in her shoulders.   Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things.

"Who did you think it was?"    He inquired sharply.    She fell silent for a moment, realizing how foolish her hypothesis sounded.   She replied in a soft voice that was carried away with the wind.

"I thought it was me."   A tear trickled down her face, freezing halfway.   Now would be one of those times you stared at your hands, or picked at fingernails in order to avoid meeting someone's eyes.   She could feel him stare at her.    He didn't answer for so long she was quite sure he didn't hear her.

"How did you figure it out?"   She almost jerked towards him.   This wasn't the best place to play revelations, soon one of them was going to say something so shocking, that they both would die.

"It's all a game my mind was playing with itself.   I was the real danger.    You were only trying to save me from myself."   She began to cry.   "I just can't figure out if it's also my mind doing this, and if the only reason you are here is because that's what I wished for more than anything."   There, she had gotten the plaguing worry off her chest, or should she say mind?

"No."  His eyes turned from their unemotional shell, and became tender for a moment as he glanced at her.   They turned back to their original everything-amuses-me, yet-I'm-amused-but-nothing façade, once again only letting her see a glimpse into his soul.  "Oh Kerry, I'm here because you needed me, and I owe you so much more than my life."

She could detect a small difference in the darkness surrounding her and she realized the sun was about to rise.    The tears began to freeze to her cheeks.    "I love you."   Her voice sounded feeble.

"We should have had sex."   A defense mechanism.   Turn the conversation to humour when it was threatening to become too uncomfortable.   She used it enough to recognize it and was almost thankful for him changing the subject from all these death-bed revelations.

She let out a half sob-half laugh.    "I guess now those vibrators won't be used.   Maybe Lestat and Jesse can find a way to employ them."

"You're sick minded.   I don't want to think of those two having sex.    I was hoping my last thoughts would be of us."   She could almost feel him smirk.

"Sorry.   Leave it to a man to think of sex as he dies."    The first rays of light could be seen coming over the horizon.    Michel jerked sharply as he felt the heat kiss his skin.   She sickenedly  waited for the hiss of burning smell and his screams of pain.   He tentatively opened his eyes and looked at her in shock as his skin absorbed the heat like a mortal.

"You are her."   She knew exactly what he was saying.   Somehow, she had become the enigma who is the Quhadila.   All this time, she was the one with the powers- making things happen to everyone she loved around her.   All this time she had slowly been killing herself.   She had unwittingly caused herself and Michel so much pain, but in the end, she had managed to save him.

The rod collapsed.    It no longer mattered.   They were floating over the side of the cliff as she experimented with the influx of her powers.   The knots binding her hands slowly unraveled themselves and she was free to throw herself into Michel's arms.    Michel had a look of pure awe on his face, finally able to face the sun after so many years.   He reminded her of a child waking to stacks of presents under the tree Christmas morning.

Michel held her against him as he rotated his left shoulder.   She tried to ignore the crunching sound of his bones realigning themselves.   The wound on his head had healed into a pinkish scar, and soon would fade forever.   He brought his left hand up and traced a finger over her cheekbone.

"I can finally see you in the light, where you belong."   He gave her a genuine smile, and though it was laced with hidden sorrow, she couldn't help but smile back.   A smudge of his blood danced across her cheek, marking her skin, as she herself was marred.

{+}{+}{+}{+}{+}{+}{+}{+}{+}{+}{+}{+}  ~ Fini

Hey!   I'd like to thank all the people who stayed with this story through thick and thin, stupidity and brilliance.    How about everyone who read the story reviews this last chapter so I can see how many people actually read it.  In the end, all I am is an author who wants reviews as much as the next person.   If you're a writer, you know how this works; it's like a contest you yearn to win.   Yes, I do try to mooch them off you continuously, but I've never threatened not to write more if I don't receive.   So… please?

----Wait!  Where are you going?  Reviewing is that way----

---------------------------------------------------

A sequel is in the works… any ideas?