Reclaiming

Chapter 3

Nicholas screamed as the wood penetrated his heart, his hands instinctively flying up to grip the intruding object. Agony crackled through their bond. LaCroix stared into Nicholas' face and fought to control the raging sense of death and decay that threatened to swallow him. He held fast to the object protruding from his son's chest.

As Nicholas' primal scream softened to a wail, LaCroix composed himself enough to kneel down, one hand still steadying the wood that was killing his son. Tears ran down Nicholas' temples, dampening his hair; sweat covered his forehead and neck.

LaCroix noticed the gray tinge of Nicholas' skin and the already ashy color of his lips.

...no not supposed to happen this fast...

Nick's mouth opened wider. His agonized wail choked off, he hissed silently as if he no longer had the energy to scream. He strained to look at LaCroix, his face twisting into a mask of pain and horror.

LaCroix' every instinct tore at him to alleviate his son's pain, but he held fast to his decision. And momentarily hated himself for it. Unflinching, he stared into Nick's eyes and struggled to speak slowly and calmly.

"Tell me, Nicholas. How does it feel to die?"

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Nicholas tried to scream but could manage only soundless cries. Every inch of him felt as if it was being sucked toward a fire in his center, through the hole punched in his heart and whatever darker hole might lie beyond. He gripped the wood above his chest, held fast by LaCroix, only because there was nothing else he could do. He was being pulled in and devoured by an agony that was spreading and burning and tearing and eating him alive.

"Will the pain free you? Will it save you?"

Nicholas looked through his tears into LaCroix' hard, cold eyes. His master knelt over him, their faces only several inches apart. Nick tried to tell him, to plead with him not to do this, oh please not now, LaCroix, but he couldn't speak.

"So when the good doctor awakes to find only a pile of ash, how will she feel about your faith, then? Are you sure this is the way?"

Nick squeezed his eyes shut to block out the condemning expression, but LaCroix was there, even in the darkness, and could not be blinked away.

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Spinning, falling backward, air buffeted his skin, and suddenly he was no longer on the floor, but standing behind a dusty couch, looking at his dying Father. A Father who'd just agreed to let him move on, alone, for one last crucial favor.

LaCroix, prone on the couch, regarded the wood protruding from his chest. His face, ashen, clearly showed his pain, his fear. "Nicholas. S'il vous plait."

Nicholas walked around the couch, and made an effort not to bristle at LaCroix' swiftly decaying appearance. Bracing himself with a foot on LaCroix' shoulder, Nick jerked the stake free. LaCroix screamed.

Nick's body spun with the effort of pulling the wood from LaCroix' chest. Colors swirled before Nick's face, colors of heat and flame and death. As he regained his balance, realized he was sitting, leaning up against something smooth and hard. He flinched from the burning plank of wood embedded in the wall mere inches from his face. The loft was in flames.

Confused, he squinted against the smoke and fire when he heard a woman cry out, then gasp. Across the room he could see LaCroix licking the slim length of her neck . . . Alyce! LaCroix looked at Nicholas with smug triumph and anticipation before he sank his teeth into her exposed throat.

Nick jerked the burning plank from the wall and hurled himself in LaCroix' direction, knowing he was too late even before he began. As he impaled LaCroix with the burning wood, pinning him to the loft door, he spat out the words: "Burn in hell. Va au diable."

LaCroix' blood-coated mouth worked silently as the flames stretched, and swallowed him.

Nicholas held Alyce's limp body close to him as he looked at the burning door and the pile of smoking clothes on the floor. Crying into the dead woman's hair, he closed his eyes and fell, spinning downward now without displacing air, smells of dirt and blood and sweat passing through his skin until he slammed onto his back on concrete, his head cracking into the floor. He felt cold steel slide under his arm, fling it out and away from his body.

He struggled to open his eyes. Finally, he saw LaCroix looming over him, a cleaver raised overhead, fangs dropped, blood dripping off his chin. Before he could jerk away, his master hissed:

"Decapitation!"

Fully vamped, Nick snapped his eyes open and projected himself upward. LaCroix was hurled backward, impaled. With a clink, the cleaver dropped from his hand. Nick gingerly fingered the blood-wet point of metal protruding from LaCroix' chest, looked at the slack face, and walked away.

As he reached the door, he looked back, and felt his feet fly out from under him as he rose higher and higher in a blinding circle of light. He spun through water, cloud, rainbow, then he stood, looking back just to be sure LaCroix hadn't moved. He hadn't; his master was still in his chair, his back to Nicholas.

Nick spun the chair and gasped when he saw the ornate knife handle jutting from LaCroix' chest. Turning, he reached for the phone but it melted and wrapped around him, spinning him faster, faster than before, finally dropping him through what felt like a net of broken glass. He composed himself just in time to see LaCroix pick up a barstool and crack off a leg.

"I'm going to help you with your guilt, Nicholas."

LaCroix snarled and advanced on him with preternatural speed. Nick screamed as the makeshift stake pierced his heart, the force of the blow sending him backward through a wall of glass. He jolted back to the present, spinning, falling, spinning . . . .

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As Nick screamed, LaCroix pushed his son's damp hair away from his face and forehead. It was time.

"Oh, Nicholas. This is so unnecessary."

Nick's shudders rattled the wood in his hands.

"It's not the pain anymore, is it? It's the knowledge that in a few moments," LaCroix gestured, as if tossing something invisible from the tips of his fingers, "poof."

He lowered his face a few inches away from Nicholas and held his eyes with his own. His whispers came stressed and separate.

"You...won't...exist."

Nick's head shook violently back and forth, his mouth opening and closing. He was fighting, fighting the pull of death.

"Are the yellowed, brittle edges curling in on you?"

LaCroix steadied Nicholas' chin with his free hand and captured his eyes. The uncontrollable shaking in his son's body jarred LaCroix to his very center.

"Nicholas. Oh, Nicholas," he said, taking on his most entreating, gentle tone. "Do you really want to die, here and now?"

Nick's dry, gray lips formed a tiny circle. LaCroix watched his whole face strain with the effort of puffing out one soft syllable: " . . . n-nuh . . . ."

No, thought LaCroix. Refusing death isn't good enough. Won't be good enough for him. You must embrace life, Nicholas.

"Mon fils, tell me. Do you want to live?"

Nick's eyes closed as sobs racked his body. His chest heaved as his eyes flew open and LaCroix felt the icy pull in his own chest, the pull of Nicholas leaving this world.

As Nick's mouth worked around the word he was trying to form, his chest heaved again and LaCroix gasped with the near tearing of their tether. "Please, Nicholas. Your answer, I must have it now!"

Nicholas clawed at the wood protruding from his chest and dug at the floor with his heels. His legs and arms twitched. LaCroix could feel the strain in Nicholas face. His son's mouth quivered, as he struggled to speak between sobs and gasps of pain.

"Yuh-- y-yyu-- aaaaaaahh--"

"Nicholas!" LaCroix jerked Nick's head again to face him directly, squeezing tightly. An arctic ball was building in LaCroix' chest--a spreading emptiness left as Nicholas was pulled away from him.

Finally, the wail broke free from the dry mouth.

"Y-ye-aaaaaayes, yeeeeesssss--" Nicholas cry was choked off but his mouth remained open. His shudders slowed, his eyes closed.

Nick's body lurched as LaCroix tore the knobkerrie from his chest and hurled it across the room. LaCroix dropped his incisors and tore at his own wrist, nearly severing his hand from his arm.

He placed the open wound firmly over Nicholas mouth, knowing this is what he'd hoped for, yet dreading the knowledge Nicholas would acquire from his blood.

Blood ran in thin streams down each side of Nick's face. "Nicholas, take what you need. You must survive." Running his fingers into the hair on the top of Nick's head, LaCroix tilted his face back to further open his mouth and throat. "Drink," he whispered, as he pressed his flayed wrist again the slack mouth.

LaCroix stretched himself across the brittle filament that was left of their connection, willing Nick to stay with him, come to him, willing Nick to drink.

A tongue flicked gently against the wound. Nick's throat flexed as he swallowed, coughing and wheezing.

"Yesss, that's it, Nicholas. Drink." LaCroix held Nick's face and adjusted his wrist atop the mouth again.

After several small swallows, LaCroix felt the firm pressure of Nick's lips struggling for purchase on the almost-healed wound. Without warning, Nick's fangs punctured his skin and tore his quickly-healing veins once again. As Nick gulped the offered blood, the icy cavern in LaCroix' chest slowly withdrew, a familiar warming growing at the edges as Nicholas slowly returned.

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After drinking from LaCroix and regaining the strength to speak, Nicholas had asked for bottled cow's blood from his refrigerator with one rasped word: "Bottle." But it hadn't satisfied him. He'd been forced to drink human blood to quell his need -- he had a few bottles hidden away . . . just in case. Now he sat, only occasionally sipping from the last bottle, with his back to LaCroix.

He hadn't spoken, or even looked at LaCroix, since that one-word request.

LaCroix sensed that Natalie would sleep for some time still. He was willing to wait, as long as they had time. He knew what forces must be warring within Nicholas now. He'd known when he'd decided this course of action. That didn't make him dread the possibilities any less.

Finally, Nicholas stood a bit uncertainly, and raised watery eyes to LaCroix.

"I tasted it in your blood, LaCroix."

"Yes."

"You, you made me say it. You . . . ."

"Yes, Nicholas."

"If I hadn't, you were going to . . . .you had every intention of pulling out the stake -- you knew you were going to remove it before you staked me."

"I knew you would say it. I knew you wouldn't choose to die."

"No, you couldn't know. You had no intention of letting me die. Why? Why did you put me through that?" Nicholas stared.

"You're still weak, Nicholas, or you would already know the answer to that question."

"JUST ANSWER ME! Why did you make me ask, beg, for my life, when all along . . . . you had no intention of letting me die?" Nick's voice cracked with emotion.

"Because, Nicholas, life is a gift. Not something I burdened you with -- not something forced upon you unknowingly. I wanted it to be clear to you that when faced with the alternative, you chose *life*. Freely. Again."

Nicholas remained motionless for several seconds. His voice belied his calm exterior. "I'm moving on. Don't follow me. Don't." Then only air remained where'd he'd stood.

LaCroix had known he'd go as soon as he felt strong enough. But he also knew he'd easily be able to follow, and convince Nicholas that he'd made the right decision. On his own. At least he'd finally realized the necessity of moving on. Nick would understand LaCroix' decision in time. The anger, the hurt would fade and he and Nicholas would settle into an uneasy peace once again. LaCroix only hoped it wouldn't take as long as it had in times past.

"Forever . . . ." Natalie whispered in her sleep, wrinkled her brow and gently tossed her head from side to side.

LaCroix circled in front of the couch and regarded the doctor. He pitied her, in a way. He knew the pain she'd feel when she woke to find Nicholas gone. Forever, indeed.

He leaned over her, brushed a stray hair from her cheek, and softy kissed her forehead. Then he lowered his mouth, and brushing his lips to ear, he whispered.

"He was always mine . . . ."

The air rippled as LaCroix disappeared through the skylight.

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End Chapter 3 of 3

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