Disclaimer: Luke, Han and all StarWars Universe belong to George Lucas.

Rating: M

Time period: Shortly after ROTJ

Warnings: Slash. Luke/Han pairing.

Chapter 4: The Horror!

Han was pounding desperately at the window. When he woke up and saw that Luke had gone out all by himself he decided to go after the kid. Even with security system in maximum levels it was no good to wander around alone in the open.

But the door was locked. So were the windows. And when he ordered the central computer to unlock, he found out somebody had overriden it. To make things worse, Artoo was nowhere to be seen.

"Dammit! Luke! Luke!" through the living room window he could see the beach. He could only watch helplessly as the tall man approached the kid, subdued him, and then carried the unconscious boy away. The Corellian all but screamed in frustration.

Come on, don't loose your head now, with great effort he controlled his temper, Think! The guy didn't kill him, if he did he would simply leave the body behind; he didn't kill him, Gods, he didn't, he can't...

Drawing a deep breath, Han headed to the comp terminal with a look of determination in his eyes. You cursed mech, ya ain't keep me busted here, I'm gonna get out no matter what!

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Big, colorful spots were dancing before his eyes. A gentle voice said something he couldn't understand. The bed was warm and comfortable. His fingers felt a soft fur blanket.

"Ah! You're awake!"

Slowly the spots stopped dancing and formed recognizable shapes: a lamp, a bedside table, a holographic picture of a young man that seemed vaguely familiar. It was a large bedroom, decorated in an overrefined fashion. Curiously, it had no windows.

"Where..." Luke tried to move and realized his body was having difficulties to understand what his brain was ordering. Then he saw the Dark Hunter sitting beside the bed and remembered.

"I wouldn't try to escape now." Julian Dronn smirked a little as the boy's blue eyes widened in alarm. "It will take some hours until the drug wear completely off. You aren't able to stand on your feet right now."

"What do you want? Why are you doing this?"

"I told you I had work to do on you, didn't I?"

"Work? On me? What kind of work?"

"This virus you carry, child, will never be off your system." Dronn pointed to Luke's chest. "In one or two days it will reactivate itself and it will take over your body, this time for good."

Luke paled visibly. Somehow he knew the man wasn't lying.

"How do you know that?" his voice sounded pathetic to his own ears.

"I know that because I am the primary source of your little bug. They made it using some unusual bloodcells my kind has."

"Your kind?"

"Dark Hunters. We are few but very well known and hated in Corellia and some other worlds. Do you know why?"

Feeling suddenly cold, Luke pulled the blanket up to his chin.

"I'm afraid I won't like what you're gonna say."

Julian Dronn smiled; this time it wasn't a smirk but a genuine, almost affectionate smile, and the young Jedi was taken aback by how gentle that hard, unnatural face could look.

"You have a lot of spirit; pity it won't help." the tall man took a small memo unit from his pocket and threw it on the bed. "Here. If you show these records to any scientist in the Galaxy he will say the same as I did."

Luke caught the memo unit cautiously, without taking his eyes off Dronn.

"Why are you doing this? Why do people hate you?"

"Answering the first question: it's part of my mission. Answering the second question: people hate us because we prey on humanoids."

"You prey...?"

Seven hells, how could one travel half of the Galaxy, defeat powerful enemies such as Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine and be so ignorant and slow?Julian Dronn leaned back on his chair and gave a small exhasperated sigh.

"We eat human flesh, we drink human blood."

"Oh."

"And once the virus reactivate itself you will either die or become one of us."

It took some seconds until the words actually sank in. Eat human flesh. Drink human blood.

No.

Luke shook his head violently, his eyes wide in panic.

"No!"

"I am sorry, child."

"No, it can't be... it..." the young Jedi shivered. "...but... you said I could die, didn't you? I'd rather die than become a cannibal!"

"Only if nobody takes care of you properly. But I am here, dear Jedi, and my mission is to make sure you will not die."

There was a long, cold silence between the Dark Hunter and the Jedi. For several seconds they remained absolutely still. Finally, Julian Dronn spoke again.

"As I told you, we are few. We are strong and powerful, our lives almost unbearably long... no one can defeat us in a fair combat, not even the Falcons, our most dreadful enemy. But still, we are diminishing. One day, many years before you were born, Palpatine made us a proposal: he wanted samples of our blood for a... scientific project; in exchange, he would exterminate the Falcons and allow us to make ours any survivors of the experiments, so that our kind wouldn't be gone forever."

"I thought the Imperial forces had chased and murdered the Jedi knights."

"Part of them, yes. And some escaped both the Imperials and the virus, like Master Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi. But many of them succumbed to our blood. "

"How did Yoda and Ben escaped?" as usual, curiosity prevailed against fear and distress in Luke's mind.

"I can only guess... Probably plain good luck. They were in pretty isolated places. If you had stayed there in Tattooine certainly you wouldn't have caught this bug. In fact, considering how much you've wandered around during the war, I'm surprised it had taken so long for you to catch it. D-101 can survive virtually in any environment and it was spread around the most strategic points of the Galaxy. "

"And who are these Falcons you talked about? You said Han was one of them."

"All I know about them is that they have been our enemies for ages. I was sure Palpatine had exterminated that cursed race until I sensed your guardian was one of them."

"So you fear them. You fear him." it was a silly provocation and Luke immediately regreted it. In a sudden burst of fury the Dark Hunter slapped his face. The boy fell on the pillows with a bleeding lip and his head reeling madly. For a moment he only saw stars.

"I fear nobody and nothing." Dronn sneered. "What am I to loose anyway? My past is bitter, my present hopeless and my future, dead. I am but a shadow and soon you will be just like me!"