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Damien had learned long ago to wake before nightmares could become severe enough to bring forth real demonlings of their own.
The Eastern Church trained sorcerers. The blessed tutors equipped them with a solid foundation in the Prophet’s dreams, the theoretical basis of human power on Erna, before teaching a single Working key. Damien had been chosen for his strength in both: sorcery came to him as naturally as faith, and the theology and rituals of the Church strengthened his studies with meaning. A mere boy, he’d been among the strongest in his class. When puberty brought night terrors along with new reach and strength, he’d learned: wake early, wake swiftly, and rise ready to fight.
Those habits served him as he sought his knighthood, and were now ingrained. The Knights of the Golden Flame were demon hunters, first. That duty was no more a relic than his title. How ironic, then, that he needed the services of a near-demonic adept. He’d agreed, in fact, to feed the man, to spare their traveling companions. The priest had steeled himself to offer blood or the like, even in quantity enough to weaken him.
No simple bodily substance would do, but emotion. Gerald Tarrant fed like one of the higher demons, on fear and despair drawn from a human soul. Surely that was too abstract to maintain a human form, and yet the sorcerer was as physical and real as he, himself.
“It’s been a long time since I tasted a cleric’s blood,” the Hunter had said. Damien dared hope, at the time, that the faeborn bond permitting the Hunter to feed on him would be a thing of only blood and fear. He was long since accustomed to that emotion. Most of his fears were quantified, fuel for swift action in the face of risk. It could be little packets of demonic sustenance, as impersonal as a travel rations, parceled out with enough space for him to recover between the Hunter’s meals.
They agreed on specific measures: one Worked nightmare every other night, at most. If Tarrant required more, he would ask. If Damien needed more sleep, he would ask. They would balance their needs, in order to ensure the success of their errand.
It was not so easy. In retrospect, the priest might have preferred simple vampirism.
Damien slept, tucked into the shallow rakhlands cave that served as shelter for the little group.
A beast lunged at him, teeth like needles and smoky black fur, too many eyes and too-long tongue; he woke, looked around, and returned to a fitful sleep.
The earth shook in his dream, and he woke with the phantom ringing of Ciani’s screams in his ears, Senzei’s sobs as he watched the adept try and fail to harness an impossible surge of fae -
Senzei was breathing deep, his own sleep undisturbed. Ciani was on her watch, evening light striking crimson from her hair. He settled again. Damn the Hunter, if Damien couldn’t get any sleep he’d be useless for traveling after sunset-
The unnatural speed of his descent into slumber was, in retrospect, a clue.
It wasn’t until he dreamed of Earth - or Tarrant’s hellish conception of it - that the true taste of terror began to taint those dreams. Even those began to pale after a few repetitions, as his own habits of defense against nightmares found the common elements and denied them power. Seeing Tarrant return to the brilliant, waspish sorcerer he had been before the Canopy crossing was thin consolation. Damien could, at least, pride himself on how quickly he recovered from the bouts of sleeping terror and helplessness.
Their traveling companions began to figure more and more prominently in the nightmares, as the Hunter played cat and mouse with his sleeping mind. It was necessary, it was chosen - it was torturous.
“Leave Ciani out of it,” he snarled, after too short a time. Lack of sleep, and the feeling of waking with his heart in his throat, despite what he had to assume was the Hunter’s soporific Working, made him punchy.
“What would you prefer?” the Hunter asked, languid pale eyes on his face. The contentment in him had been jarring enough the first night, but now it was beginning to grind on Damien’s nerves like the whine of bloodsucking rakhland insects. “Not Earth, and not her?”
“You’re already Working my sleep. Keep me down unless you need me.”
“As you wish. And the dreams?”
“Get personal,” Damien said, and stalked off to prepare for the night’s travel. The riverbank was not kind. Rakhland cliffs of pale granite revealed no secrets at night, and the stones would turn underfoot without warning. Damien would be fine. He could handle one night every two or three of nightmares. The arrangement would hold; there was no other choice.
Another night of difficult terrain, the constant sound of Senzei’s Working, and the phantom gazes of distant rakh. Another day of sleep, wrapping his eyes in the predawn dimness so that full daylight would not wake him.
He woke anyway, at a distant sound of combat. Darting from his bedroll in only the trousers he’d worn to sleep, his sword heavy in one exhausted hand, he saw a blaze of cold blue light. The Hunter’s sword illuminated a chilly scene. Snow (snow?) hid the sharp brown fangs of a mountain pass, somewhere in the crossing to Jaggonath. The familiar smell of frozen pine sap was heavy in the air, and the edged tang of blood told him that someone was injured already.
Tarrant battled for his life, against a quartet of hooded and cloaked attackers. Blood stained his side already, and decorated the snow in appalling quantity. Surely not all of that could be his?
Damien snarled a warning and waded in. A powerful sweep of his blade took one cloaked figure in the ribs, giving the Hunter a chance to step back; the robed one fell, and the hood flew back to reveal sleek feline features, blurred with golden fur. Dark rosettes made it difficult to discern details, but there was only one lineage that could give rise to such a face. It had to be a rakh, seen at last! But what were they doing near the Dividers, deep in the human lands?
One of the rakh leapt at him, long knife in furred hand. The speed and ferocity of its motion left no time to think. Damien parried its strike and lunged, feeling a surge of exultation as the blade drew out a yowl. Beside him, Tarrant was slowing. One of the rakh fell to the coldfire sword, crimson ice clogging a lethal slash. Damien rammed his blade through his opponent’s shoulder and kicked it free. Turned, when his ears told him there was a sudden space at his right side. Where-
Tarrant was on his knees, head forced back by a clawed hand. His own free hand clutched a golden wrist, but had no strength to force it away. The rakh was using its own blade to bind the coldfire sword, angling for the adept’s throat with teeth that would have made a nupard proud. Slick darkness writhed on the ground beneath them, blood or hungry fae come to life and reaching upward to claim the Hunter in his last moments.
A surge of terror carried Damien into a heavy, turning strike. If they lost Gerald here, now-
His moulinet caught the rakh open-mouthed, and sheared through in a spray of gore. Tarrant twisted and fell under its dead weight, and Damien rushed to free his companion. There could be more, and where were-
“You saved me,” the Hunter whispered, and Damien froze.
Without question, on reflex alone, he had. Killed for the very man who fed on him-
Damien woke with the sunset, shaken. Tarrant was deep in the alcove behind him, sitting with his legs crossed and his back to the stone that sheltered him from the sun. His breath was slow, his posture comfortable. One pale eye opened, and the Hunter smiled.
“That’s better,” Damien said.
He could have wished he didn’t hear the soft words of thanks as he turned and left. At least there would be a restful day after the night's travel.
The next day, just inside the gorgeous foyer of the obsidian keep, Damien spared the Hunter from knights of their own order. The collar of the Golden Flame was around Gerald’s neck again, layered over black robes like a mockery of the cream-and-gold his spiritual descendants wore. Helpless to explain why, Damien shouted at them to stop. He needed the Hunter, he was binding evil to a higher purpose! Was it not the creed of the Prophet? Could they not see who stood before them? Would they not spare him to spare Ciani, to help Damien! He all but begged, but the knights drew closer, angry faces over white vestments.
A bitter taste in his mouth, Damien drew his sword against his own brethren. There was Vani, lately of the Matriarch’s cathedral; he fenced with his junior as he so often had, and their voices mingled as Damien struck the younger knight down. Vani groaned out a final breath, and Damien sobbed, once.
The Hunter fought beside him in a whirl of black, sword lashing out with vicious precision. Yet, he only defended himself, and left the killing to Damien. Sadistic, the Hunter made him choose, and choose again: his mission or his fellow knight? Ciani’s restoration, or the life of Lysha his friend, who would not cease the attack?
Darkness puddled around them, and one form after another fell. Grief clogged Damien’s throat and stung his eyes, and still he fought. His cream robes were stained near to black. At last, at last, he cried out “No more!”
White forms slumped into the plush blackness of the carpets. Of course, he was dreaming, it wasn’t real-
He couldn’t wake.
As they sank, the knights discolored. First the pallid blue of death, then deep, eye-numbing purple, they dissolved into seeking currents that ate away at the floor. He turned, and saw the Hunter sinking too, a radiant pool of hungry fae around his feet.
One last surge of strength came, on a rising tide of terror. Damien struck away a questing tendril of that dark substance and thrust out a hand. Tarrant didn’t take it, but sank with his head held high. Coldfire was extinguished with a frigid hiss as the dark climbed his blade, his arm! In moments, the Hunter would be engulfed entirely in deep purple murk, and drawn down to God only knew where.
Damien launched himself at Gerald, wrapping an arm around his slim chest. With a mighty wrench, he carried them both free of the filaments. Agony pierced his arm, and he twisted to see the Hunter’s teeth embedded in the thick flesh of his bicep. Was there nothing he could do-
“Vryce. Vryce!”
He’d expected Senzei, called from his watch; or maybe Ciani, whose turn it was to sleep. It was Tarrant’s voice, low, that woke him. Tarrant’s cold hand grasped his shoulder, just where the too-sharp incisors had entered in the dream. Damien stared at him wide-eyed, chest heaving, hands clenched in his bedspread. “You-“
“Calm,” Tarrant told him. “It was only a dream.”
Damien shook his head. “Not every night,” he protested. “We have an agreement.”
Tarrant’s brows drew down over intent silver eyes. “We do have an agreement, priest. If you were caught in a nightmare, it wasn’t one of mine.”
“Like hell you weren’t feeding on that.”
“Of course I was.” Tarrant sat back on his heels, comfortable, too calm. His hand stayed put, oddly comforting in its cool solidity. “But it was not of my causing. Are you recovered?”
“Ugh.” Damien rubbed his forehead, feeling the well-established beginnings of a headache. “I think so.”
The Hunter’s hand pulled back.
“The question, then, is whether it was natural.”
Damien shook his head. “I couldn’t wake up.”
“Not so unusual.” Was that a needling tone, a condescending sneer? No; Damien looked up sharp, and saw the Hunter’s delicate features in a very believable set of sympathy. Could not even the devil be sympathetic, when it suited him?
“You don’t understand. It’s part of my-“ the protest died unspoken. Of his Order’s training. And who had written the protocols his mentor had followed?
A very small smile crossed Tarrant’s lips. Damn the smug sorcerer-
“Not so unusual for faeborne sleep. But whose working, if not mine?”
Damien read a hint of possessive irritation in the level voice. “Think you can find out?”
“If the fae here were better, I would already know. As it is…“ He let the sentence fade, and inclined an eloquent shoulder. “I’d need more to do it.”
“More fae?”
“That, but we will not easily find it. The other option is something more of you.” Damien met Gerald’s impassive gaze, and saw impatience, curiosity. And something else, darker in tenor, that made him shiver.
“Tell me.”
“Simple, priest. I will stay beside you. The channel we share will permit you to carry my influence even into sleep.”
Damien snorted, impatient. Tarrant continued without missing a beat. “When you rest - and I’ll see that you do - my Working will stay with you. If someone, or something, is Working your dreams, you will not face them alone.” His tone made it a clear threat.
“Don’t we need to be moving? It’s past dark.”
“Not yet. If this is natural, it’s worth knowing. If it isn’t…” Tarrant smiled, an expression without reassurance. “Our enemies may be unaware that we’ve sighted them.”
A duel of adepts - or something worse - waged over such a distance, on the battlefield of his dreams. Surely the Church would condemn every step he’d taken toward this improbability. Dread clenched tight in his chest - sleeping, he would be unable to Work to defend himself, and the physical weapons he had so assiduously studied would be of no use. It was a terrible idea.
It would give the Hunter one hell of an advantage on their unknown foe.
“Let’s do this,” Damien muttered.
There was no point to informing the others, unaware as they were of the bond between the priest and the Hunter. Instead, Tarrant informed them in his cool, unbending way that Vryce needed more rest. Senzei’s acceptance was immediate. Ciani asked questions, but Damien heard them turned aside with surprising patience, and soon his hungry companion was back at his side.
Damien laid on his side in his bedroll, head pillowed on a folded arm. Tarrant sat beside him, elegantly upright, the long end of his tunic obscuring most of his folded legs. “How do you want to-“
The Hunter extended a slender finger to lay on his temple, and Damien slept.
He woke to a creeping feeling of dread. Gerald was beside him still, slumped against the stone, the hand that had touched him loose. It was much too quiet. Where was the soft breath of a nearby sleeper, or the shuffle of a watchful friend? Not even an insect sounded. A chill ran up Damien’s spine. Could he be the only one awake? Had some hostile Working taken them all, and Gerald’s influence somehow alerted him alone?
His sword lay sheathed beside him. In his bedroll, Damien wore trousers and a loose shirt. He could be on his feet and fighting in the time it took to draw a breath. Best to stay still a moment, and let whatever had attacked the group think it was safe. His eyes flicked about without a motion of his head, scanning for any tiny thing out of place. Anything to tell him it was a dream. His side and leg prickled with immobility.
Gerald stirred, and subsided again when Damien raised a single finger, the signal clear. Wait. Slitted silver eyes watched him from beneath long lashes. To all other angles, the adept appeared to sleep; Damien wondered in the part of his mind not devoted to alertness if sleep were a state he could achieve by nature.
There.
In the deepest corner of the cave, a glint of reflected light. No piece of equipment they’d brought should gleam like that, a black mirror turned to the embers of the cookfire. An eye?
Silent, his hand curled around the hilt of his sword. He jerked upright and pain seared down his side. The movement did not carry him far enough. Damien flopped, bound to the earth by a line of thin tendrils, each one seemingly rooted into his bones. Agony! The thing in the corner turned, and he glimpsed a humanoid form, outlined in glassy reflection. Terror took him. Whatever it was, it was closer to Gerald and Ciani than he was, and it could move! Animal fear and pain flooded him, and he battled them back. Dreaming. He was dreaming!
Damien couldn't Work, not dreaming, not safely. Yet what else could he do? Helpless terror spiked as the black thing in the corner turned.
Sadistic need shook him next, like a hungry void opening in his core. He was immersed in that which he craved, like a swimmer tormented by thirst. It would be so easy to reach out further, to take and take until the source was gone, to rip away the moorings of the mind and taste the last moments of despair- when had he last drunk in the life of a stubborn cleric? Blood was an aperitif, nightmares only tidbits. Here was the feast, laid before him. Would it not be sweet, would it not be restoring, to consume the last remnants of dying faith?
His head swam. The moment of bottomless desire ended as swiftly as it had begun, replaced by a furious, cold calculation. He could not afford a slip, not when he was already so deeply imperiled. The hunger was external, a foreign influence fanning his own need. It had not conquered him for these many centuries; it would not do so now. His will would not permit it. His integrity demanded no less than total control; it was the last bastion around the flickering light of a struggling soul. The deepest purple wreathed the foundations of that edifice, steadily sinking into the bedrock of will and personality. Steadily etching at it, until solidity gave way to pits and gashes. The nameless dark would not win tonight-
A jarring shock of recognition. The embattled soul was not his. It was not Damien who the dark yearned to consume. The priest snapped back to himself, shaken.
Tarrant! Weakened and pained, Damien could neither point a warning finger nor speak the name aloud. He held the image of the rotten foundation, and shouted it in the silence of his mind instead.
Cold lanced through his head, counterpart to the tight soreness already present.
Damien woke, panting in remembered pain and present terror. The Hunter’s hand rested on his temple, source of that piercing chill. Was it imagination that made the fingers move, a seeking circle? His head was too close to the Hunter's knee, and the beautiful face was bent close.
Silver eyes met his. “Demons, Vryce?”
An hour of travel time, at least, was lost. Damien fretted over his bedroll. Tarrant seemed unimpressed with his efforts, but Damien thought the man had not looked away for so much as a minute. The constant observation was unsettling.
“What do you mean, demons?”
“That Working was definitely demonic in nature. Iezu, if I hazard a guess; they possess greater subtlety and power than most.” The offhanded tone was a convincing facade. If he’d not known to look for it, Damien would have missed the subtle fear in Tarrant’s eyes, and the too-tense set of his lips. Gone was the connection that their cooperation had forged, replaced by the usual chill. Just as well, Damien chided himself. There was no point in letting his guard down.
Stop thinking about it, priest. Iezu were rare - less so in Jaggonath than in the East. Damien struggled to recall what he knew of them. “Passion eaters.” It was half statement, half question. “Each one unique to some facet of the human psyche.”
“Yes. They feed upon emotion, and are skilled in the arts of illusion.” Tarrant’s tone suggested the priest was remiss in his lessons; Damien ignored the provocation.
“Then, our enemy is Iezu?”
“More likely than not. That dream was a potent creation. Even I was drawn in, at first.”
“Great.” Feeling the curmudgeon, Damien recalled at once what had woken him, and regretted his harsh tone.
“We need to inform the others that you were attacked.” Tarrant showed no sign of offense, but only moved to the next facet of the problem. Damien could almost sense the wheels turning; how to frame the attack and the discovery. How to retrieve the information they so desperately needed. How to do it all without betraying the existence of the bond they shared, and the means of the discovery.
“Tarrant.”
The look the Hunter gave him would have been chilling, had he not just seen the man’s soul and understood the depth of defenses surrounding it. Had he not just glimpsed a spark of humanity behind the monstrous appetite, the vicious nature; and the thing that besieged it, born of dark fae. What must it take to withstand such an assault? To throw back the hunger he’d felt, time and again?
Damien could not but respect him for that.
“It’s not only the Iezu who feed on passions, is it.”
“Do you think me a demon?” The question could have been sharp; instead, it was a near whisper. Tarrant’s face was a careful blank, but Damien saw the turmoil beneath the surface. Would it hurt the Hunter, if he did? Bind him closer, by mere belief, to that endless hunger? God, but the Hunter was vulnerable to him.
“I think you feed like one, and I’d like to know where you learned it.”
Like a duelist marking a touch, Gerald sketched a bow. “You’re right,” he whispered. “An Iezu taught me, when I preferred blood.”
It had been soon after his murderous transformation that Karril found the Hunter. In those days, blood had been his life. How many had he hunted, in the overgrown patch that would become his own Forest? How close had he come to losing what he had only so recently gained, because his human mind could not compass such bestial hunger? His own sacrifice had nearly driven him past even the illusion of humanity; so early had the rot set in around the foundations of his soul.
The Iezu had come to him draped in furs, drawn by the violent delight he had taken. Blood soaked the rich hem, and crept up the cloak the demon wore. Bones glittered from every ring, and a gilded fang hung at his throat, tipped in ruby. The Hunter had scented prey, rich with life; it was only the recent satiation that kept him from lunging then and there, and attempting to devour the source of the sensation. Pleasure washed over him at the very thought, and that as much as anything stayed him. Pleasure came only with a successful hunt - or with a successful Working.
Karril had offered him a deal. Permit the Iezu to shape his delights, and the hunger would be lessened. No, not the change the nature of the Hunter - he would not dare, a mere demon! - but to enable it. To feed on the Hunter, he would elevate the pleasures of the Hunt. To learn the Hunter’s ways, he would make trade in the ways of demonkind, and ease the passage into immortality.
Thus had he learned: to claim first pain, then fear and despair, an ethereal feast. To step away from bloodshed, and instead to sap vitality, by precisely the same mechanism as the self-proclaimed god of pleasure. The demon had made him more than a vampire. Karril had granted him the means to maintain himself.
He had preferred blood, like a mere vampire? Hardly. Neocount of Merentha. Prophet of the Holy Church. Premier of the Order of the Golden Flame! He would never again be what he was, but neither had his innermost being surrendered, and Damien could not believe it had ever been reduced so far as that. His head spun from possibility as much as excitement. What had changed once, could change again. Could he alter Tarrant's nature in truth? Could the Hunter be turned from viciousness entirely - or at least bound to use it in benefit of humankind?
That ambition was tremendous. He could use something smaller - like dreaming of something other than the Hunter, whether it was successfully saving his body, or failing to save his soul. Like restoring Ciani’s memory.
Sure. Walk halfway across the rakhlands; hunt one particular nightborn predator; walk back. That would be a decent warmup for finding a way to bind the Prophet with his own words.
“Even if you hunger like one, you’re no demon, Tarrant. But our enemy is. We need to tell Ciani and Senzei.”
The Hunter gave him a shallow bow, and Damien thought it less a display of sarcasm, and more a gesture of true respect. “Shall we?”