Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [167]
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