“Karril said he’d protect us,” Damien reminded him. “He can’t stop Calesta from misleading us, or from making others try to kill us, but he won’t let you walk into the sun. He promised.”
The Hunter’s voice, like his manner, seemed infinitely weary. “And what about Iezu law? What about the rule their creator set forth, that there was to be no conflict between brothers?”
“Maybe,” he said quietly, “there are things that matter more to Karril than that.”
“Like what?”
“Like friendship, for one.”
He dismissed the possibility with a wave of his hand. “The Iezu aren’t capable of friendship. Their venue is limited to one narrow range of emotion, and their only motivation is a hunger for—”
“Oh, cut the crap, Gerald! You know, you’re a brilliant demonologist in theory, but when it comes down to facing facts you can be downright stupid.” He leaned toward the man, as if somehow proximity could give his words more force. “Was it Iezu nature that made Karril take me down to Hell to rescue you? Where does pleasure fit into that? And was it Iezu nature to do what he did last night: defy the law of his creator to step into the midst of his brother’s war, at the risk of angering the one creature on this planet who can kill him? He did that to save you, Gerald Tarrant. For no other reason. Just to save you.” He leaned back on his heels. “That’s friendship by any standard I know. To hell with who or what he is. I’d be damned proud to have a friend that loyal myself.”
“You wouldn’t have said that once. You’d have damned yourself for even entertaining such a thought.”
“Yeah. Well. We’re worlds away from that time now. I may not like that fact, but I accept it.” He studied the Hunter-his wounds, his weakness—and then asked, “You need blood, don’t you? Blood to heal.”
The Hunter shut his eyes, leaning back against the stone. “I drank,” he whispered.
“Warm blood? Living blood?”
Tarrant said nothing.
“I’m offering, Gerald.”
Tarrant shook his head; the motion was weak. “Don’t be a fool,” he whispered hoarsely. “You need your strength as much as I need mine.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “The difference is that my strength can be renewed easily enough. Or don’t you think that a Healer would know how to accelerate the production of his own blood?”
“You can’t Work here,” Tarrant told him. “Not even to heal yourself. Shaitan’s currents would swallow you whole.”
Damn. Damien drew in a slow breath, trying to think. Were there alternatives? “What about fear? I don’t mean a nightmare this time. The real thing. Straight up.” He managed to force a laugh. “God knows there’s enough of it inside me right now for both of us.”
But the Hunter shook his head, dismissing the thought. “Without an artificial structure? The channel between us isn’t strong enough for that. That’s why I used dreams.”
The words were out before he could stop them. “Then make it stronger.”
Slowly the Hunter looked up at him. Those chill eyes were black now, bottomless, as dark and cold as the fires of Shaitan were bright and hot. “And could you live with that?” he demanded. “Knowing what I am, understanding what such a channel would do to the two of us? Could you live with yourself, knowing that a part of me was in your soul, and would be until one of us died?”
“Gerald.” He said it quietly, very quietly, knowing there was more power in such a tone than in rage. “I knew when we came here that we probably weren’t getting out of this mess alive. So what are we really talking about? A day or two? I’ll deal.”
Tarrant turned away from him. Maybe the channel between them was already stronger than he thought, or perhaps Damien simply knew him well enough to guess at what he was feeling; he could feel the sharp bite of hunger as if it were his own, the desperate need not only to feed, but to heal. Damien reached out and grasped the man’s arm, as if somehow that would lend his words more power. “Listen to me,” he begged. “Deep inside there’s a part of me so afraid I don’t even like to think about it. It’s in that place where you store hateful feelings and then bury them with lies and distractions, because you can’t bear to face them head on. Because you know they’ll eat you alive if you try.” He whispered it, pleading; “Why waste that, Gerald? It’s food to you, and the strength to heal yourself. Take it,” he begged. “For both our sakes.”
For a long, long time the Hunter was silent. Then, ever so slightly, he nodded. Just that.
Damien let go of his arm. His heart was pounding. “What do I have to do?”
Silence again, then a handful of words whispered so softly he could barely hear them. “Complete the bond.”
“How?”
Slowly, the Hunter then reached into the pocket of his tunic for the knife he carried there. Not the same one he had used so long ago to open Damien’s vein, establishing the channel between them in the first place-that had been lost in the eastern lands-but one very much like it, that he had purchased afterward. He opened the blade partway and then quickly, precisely, pressed its point into the flesh of his fingertip.
“Here,” he whispered. Raising up his hand, so that the tiny drop of blood might be visible. Black, it seemed, and so cold that its surface glittered like ice. Or was that only Damien’s expectation, playing games with his vision? “Only once in my long life have I offered this bond to another man ... and that one betrayed me.”
As vulnerable as this will make you, it will make me equally so. The words rose up out of memory unbidden, and for a moment Damien understood just how desperate the Hunter must be to offer such a bond. You fear this more than I do, he thought. Reaching out to touch the glistening drop, gathering its dark substance onto his own fingertip. Damn Calesta, for making us do what we fear the most.
As the Hunter had done to his first offering years ago, so now Damien did to this. Touching his tongue to the cold, dark drop. Forcing himself to swallow it, as one might a bitter pill. Forcing his flesh to take the Hunter’s substance into itself, so that a deeper link might be forged—
—And the monster within him rose up with a roar from those hidden places where it had lain shackled, its bonds shattered, its howling triumphant. Fear: pure and terrible, agonizing, undeniable. Fear of dying in this place. Fear of surviving, but as less than a man. Fear of returning to a world in which he no longer had a purpose. Fear that Calesta would claim his soul, or else leave him unclaimed—the ultimate sadism!-to witness his final holocaust. Fear that the Church would fail and mankind would be devoured by the demons it had created ... and fear that it would succeed, and the world would become something unrecognizable, that had no place for him. Those fears and a hundred more-a thousand more, ten times a thousand-roared through Damien’s soul with such horrific force that he could do no more than lie gasping on the floor of the cavern, shaking as they exploded one after another in his brain.
Then, at last, after what seemed like an eternity, the beast’s roar quieted. He could still hear it growling in the corners of his brain-it would never be wholly quiet again, not while Tarrant lived-but if he tried hard enough, if he focused on other things, surely he could learn not to hear it. Surely.
“You all right?”
He managed to open his eyes, amazed that his flesh still obeyed him. For a while it hadn’t. “Just great,” he whispered. It seemed there was an echo in the chamber, that it took him a minute to place. Tarrant’s perception. The thought sent a chill down his spine. I’m feeling him hear me. Fear uncoiled anew in his gut, rising up to—
He choked back on it, hard. His whole body trembling, for a moment he could do no more man lie where he was, struggling to get hold of himself. Then slowly, very slowly, he rose up to one elbow. Tarrant offered him a hand for support, and he grasped it in his own. Not cold, that undead flesh, but comfortable in its temperature, comforting in its strength. That, too, made him shiver.