Coming Out of the Dark
Cold...
I wrap myself in the blanket of night
Breathe in the sleet heavy wind
And hold it in my frozen chest
The air swirls -- tainted by my lifeless touch
I release it back into the night, colder than I found it
Warm...
A taste of copper
Gentle heat floods my mouth
Spreading down my throat – radiating to my fingertips
The illusion of life lifts me from the cold
For a brief moment I am the life and the warmth
I am a sieve -- the heat flows through me
Abandons me
Until only the night remains
Hold it close – the night is my constant
I am the night
Chapter 1 Lost Boy
Lucinda Roberts, an older lady with mouse-brown hair and hard gray eyes, slammed the door on her little gray Mazda. She adjusted her old brown purse, straightened her denim jacket, and headed into Mission General Hospital. Making her way purposefully through the busy little lobby, she didn't make eye contact with the sick, the waiting. The souls out here weren't her concern. Lucinda was a social worker, and she saved her worrying for those she could actually help, the children.
"Hey Ms. Lucinda, Dr. Boyd is expecting you. He's in observation 3," the older nurse behind the reception desk said. She smiled and waved Lucinda on.
Like a soldier preparing to do battle, Lucinda squared her shoulders and tried to steel herself for whatever might lay ahead. She'd seen a lot of things in twenty years of social work: broken bones, burns, rape. At least this call wasn't sending her to a trauma room or an ICU. "Evening Doctor," Lucinda said.
Dr. Boyd looked up from the chart he was scribbling on and smiled from behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Like an absentminded grandfather, he pushed his glasses up on his head and set aside his paperwork. "That was fast as always, Lucy. Have you peeked in on the patient yet? He looks to be about 15, no ID, but quite a few battle scars. I thought you might recognize him."
Lucinda shook her head and followed Dr. Boyd into the little hospital cubicle. The patient was handsome with a mop of black hair and dark smudges under his eyes. Like most children, he looked angelic, sleeping quietly. "I'd remember this one. I don't think he's been through the office. Did you already document the signs of past abuse?"
"I'm not sure if it's abuse." Boyd started shuffling through the chart at the foot of the bed for the documentation Lucinda would need.
The patient moaned and rolled in his sleep exposing his neck. Lucinda felt a quiver of pity at the scars flowing like a twisted purple river over his neck and up his left jaw. It was a shame, not quite handsome after all. She took the photos Dr. Boyd presented her with and scanned them critically. Similar marks to those she'd seen first hand on his neck also marked his chest and shoulders. "They aren't burn scars."
"It almost looks like an animal mauling, but something should have been done to prevent some of this scaring. A few stitches before this healed would have worked wonders, not to mention what could be done now with reconstructive surgery," Dr. Boyd said. He started patting at his pockets, ending his search by dropping his glasses back onto his nose. "He hasn't regained consciousness yet, but there's no reason he shouldn't."
Lucinda refrained from snorting at Dr. Boyd's mention of reconstructive surgery. If the kid's parents hadn't seen fit to get him stitched up after something attacked him, they weren't likely to spring for a plastic surgeon. If he ended up as a ward of the state, he wouldn't be any better off. In the foster system, things that weren't bleeding or fevered didn't get fixed. "Who found him? Has he been conscious at all? Do you have anything else for me to go on Doc?"
"A ranger found him in the snow out near Crested Butte. He couldn't have been there for very long or we'd be having this conversation in the morgue. Kid didn't have a coat or boots. I'm shocked we're not having to treat for frostbite. Someone had to have dumped him. There's no way he could have made it out there on foot, not equipped like he was."
Lucinda pulled up a seat and covered her unconscious kid's hand in her own. It seemed too cool and she rubbed at it gently, working up a bit of warmth. "I'll take care of him, doc."
Alex closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath of damp stale air. He could feel his gray behemoth of a friend, Ekimus, hovering over his shoulder, waiting for him to take the next step, push the last lever, open the last door, and end each of their Hells. Alex opened his eyes and stared up at a granite gargoyle carved out of the mountain wall. It stood guard over a pair of massive doors. An intricate inlay of patterns covered the doors, and if you stared to hard you'd almost say the pattern shifted, danced before your eyes. The doors caught the light from Alex's torch and almost seemed to reflect it back intensified.
"This is really it?" Alex whispered. The cave seemed to swallow the words and his companion made no reply. "What now?"
"Now? Now we finish it," Ekimus said. He guided Alex's hand forward to a tiny stone handle. "A gentle turn... Redemption... Life... Death..."
A pair of sharp intelligent blue eyes stared up at Lucinda and she tightened her grip on the patient's hand. "You're awake. Welcome back to the land of the living," she said. Carefully, she modulated her voice to be both soothing and authoritative. "What's your name, kid?"
My name? A shiver raced down the boy's spine and he held tighter to lady's hand. She was pretty in a motherly way. She felt strong through her hand, and he couldn't help trusting her. My name... I don't know my name. "I don't know my name. I don't know anything." He pulled at the bedclothes with his free hand, yanking them up to his chin. "I'm so cold." I'm so scared.
Lucinda stared at her hand where it was resting over the boy's hand. He was colder than when he'd been asleep, too cold. "Hey, you're okay. I'm going to get the doctor."
Gripping her hand tighter the boy shook his head. "Don't leave me. I think I'm dying. I'm so cold. It hurts." Perfect freezing agony, like standing in January wind without the protection of clothes gripped him. "Why is it so cold?" This cold wasn't attacking from the outside though. It was singing in his bones, burning in his skull.
"Doctor! Someone, we need help in here!" Lucinda called. He was getting colder. It was like she was feeling his life ebb away under her fingers. "Help!"
"I can't stand it. Hurts too much." The boy could barely speak as he gasped for air. His eyes rolled back in his head and he slipped into the blessed oblivion of unconsciousness.
Lucinda backed away slowly, sure that she'd watched the unnamed boy die. She bit into her fist and shook her head angrily. It wasn't fair. They didn't even know his name.
A little wooden cup, chipped and worn, stood innocuously next to a gentle little natural spring. The only sound in the dim cave, a gentle trickle of water on stone, seemed loud in this sanctuary. "Some blessed cup in an old cave is going to save us? It still seems a little far fetched."
Eckimus grunted and moved past Alex. "The grace of God is what we seek. The cup is a token, a door, a focus for our faith." Without hesitation he scooped a cup of the water up and held the glass to his lips. "I seek death Alex. Don't be afraid to drink. Whether you are granted life or death, this is the only way out of the half-life you're trapped in."
Alex wasn't sure what to expect. Ekimus drank. He returned the wooden glass to it's rock and he took a seat beside it. "Ekimus? Are you okay? Did it..." Alex came to Ekimus's side and shook him. The ancient Grigori didn't respond or move. This was what Ekimus wanted, craved since time unspeakable, but Alex still felt like he'd lost a friend... a father. "I'll miss you, Eckie." Alex half-expected Eckimus to stand and chastise him for using the nickname, but he was really gone. "I know you're not supposed to have a soul, so you really can't hear me, but thanks. I couldn't have made it this far without you." Could he drink from that cup? What if he died too?
"God, I know you probably don't have time to listen to every jerk with problems, or who's scared, but I'm not ready to die. This little cup here is suppose to be special, a door." Alex dipped the cup into the cool spring water and stared at the clear fluid. "Let me live. Please, let me go home. I promised my sister that I was coming home. Please..."
Dr. Boyd signed a request for lab work and handed the paperwork and samples off to a nurse. He ran his hands through his thinning gray hair and turned his attention to Lucinda. She was standing to the side, white as a sheet, watching him work. He sometimes wondered about her. She could handle the ugliness and the drama that came with her job, but sometimes, when they caught her off guard, she would retreat, fall apart. The kid's strange thermoregulation crisis seemed to have really spooked her. Honestly, he'd never seen anything like it himself. "Lucy, you okay over there? Let me buy you a cup of coffee."
"I could use some caffeine, even if it is the hospital variety," Lucinda said. With a last glance back to the bed and her unconscious charge, she headed out and down the hallway. "Is he going to be okay? What happened?"
"I'm thinking it's hormonal, maybe a steroid imbalance. We're going to keep him on a close watch and under hot water bottles to be safe. Stop worrying, mother hen," Boyd said. He pushed the door to the cafeteria and held it for her.
The blessed water slid down cool. Alex gulped every drop, praying silently. The liquid sat in his stomach, like a tub of concrete. A burning in his chest ripped through him. He hadn't felt this kind of need since he was twelve with a bad chest cold. Vampires didn't need to breathe, but he was starving for air. Alex dropped to his knees and threw his head back gulping in breathes.
Two angels watched silently as Alex struggled. The man, blond and hard, shook his head at his companion. She crouched down to watch Alex more closely.
"He dies here, Gabriel. It's a kindness, to let him die. He'll go to heaven, and it'll be over," Michael said. He couldn't see her face behind the red cascade of curls but she shook her head. "There's no way to burn it out of him completely. There's too much danger in leaving him alive."
"We owe him a miracle. He saved us all." Gabriel's eyes drifted shut and she felt the gentle warmth of God's presence. "He gets to go home, for now."
Pins and needles like his body was awakening from the inside out dropped Alex to the ground. He screamed the agony of his heart's first beat. A rusty pump trying to move heavy dead sludge, his heart, stuttered in his chest. "It hurts too much. Please make it stop."
"He wants to die then," Michael said. "Stop his heart for him, and let's be done with this mess."
"He wants the pain to stop," Gabriel said. She stroked her invisible hands over Alex's face and soothed at the raw agony of rebirth. "Taste peace. Sleep."
Lucinda pushed her way back into her new case's hospital room, coffee cup in hand. Dr. Boyd had been called into a vehicular trauma so she was on her own. Those cool blue eyes were staring at her again. She waited for a long moment to see if he was going to get sick again. "Awake are we? Hopefully feeling better too? I'm Lucinda. Do you have a name?"
"I'm Alex." He stared at this woman with the kind eyes and tried to figure out what to say. "Everything was fuzzy before, but I remember it all now."
"Let's start with the easy stuff. Can you tell me your last name and how you ended up on the mountain with any gear?" Lucinda took a seat and patted Alex's hand.
"No, because I'm not ready to go home. I can't go home unless I'm sure it's over." I can still feel it in me, a tiny niggling worm of hunger. My heart's beating and the air is flowing through my lungs, but I'm not all the way back.
"Until what's over Alex?" Lucinda asked. She leaned forward because Alex was speaking so very quietly.
Alex reached a hand up and ran it over the scars marring his neck and torso. He shook his head sadly. "I wish these hadn't come back with me. I'll probably scare my little sister when she sees me again. I miss my family Ms. Lucinda, and I'm tired of being alone."
"Let me help you."
"You can't."
Author's Note:
Can't say when I'll get chapter 2 up. The chapters to this fic take a lot of tweaking to get into shape.