"You think it's too late?" Asula stared at Father Patrick, worry lacing his question.
"I don't know," he said, his tone carrying the same grave concern. "Three nights is an eternity for a vampire who has been wounded and cannot feed himself."
Manuel looked stricken. "I thought we came to kill it, not revive it with witchcraft!"
"Calm yourself," Lin warned as they flipped open the trunk. "This is no witchcraft - it's donated blood from our order."
"Since when does the church authorize - "
"This did not go through normal channels," Father Patrick said, cutting him off.
"Obviously not!"
Father Patrick sighed. "Think of it this way. If we were the government, this would be considered a necessary black ops mission. But we work for the highest realms, and this is a white light mission of salvation. Therefore it's a very discreet white ops mission." He studied the young man for a moment, and then went back to the task at hand.
"How so?" the young priest whispered, taking a cautious step backward. "You come with bags of blood to revive a creature of the night... our church does not know about this... You have the gall to carry it in a Vatican silver chest with the holy crucifix on it - "
"Enough. We do this because the warrior angels wrested this creature's soul from the pit, and it is now in Purgatory," Asula said calmly, lifting out a bag of blood and tossing it to land near the vampire's face. "The dark side violated supernatural law, took him too early in accordance with the three-day laws of transformation. He was immediately turned, and his choice was stolen from him. This entity did not willingly give his soul - he was deceived. And now he is on our side."
"As long as his soul is in Purgatory," Father Patrick said, "Carlos Rivera still has a choice, has time. He has not fed from an innocent human victim, yet. Our job is to see that he doesn't."
Lin cut the top off a container and threw it toward the vampire's ravaged body, splashing his face with its contents. "But I fear we're too late. If he were stronger, he would have awakened to attack us, smelling our blood, or the blood we carry." He then looked at Father Patrick, ignoring the alarmed young clergyman. "If the blood doesn't revive him..."
Father Patrick and Imam Asula nodded and spoke in unison. "Then we're too late."
"The merciful thing to do would be to behead him," Monk Lin said upon a whisper.
The smell. Obviously he was hallucinating. Carlos inhaled the sweet elixir of life and licked his parched lips. A series of sharp pains about his mouth made him tentative about exploring the pungent scent further. It had to be a starvation-induced hallucination, anyway. Why waste the energy or endure the agony?
He was so close to extinction that he could feel warm bodies close by and hear the clamor of men debating in low tones. He stuck his tongue out and lapped at the sticky, cool fluid on his face, unable to resist the survival reflex to seek blood. The salty, thick liquid burned the open wounds on his face. Blood should be warm, not cold.
Another cold splash hit his face, and a smooth pouch landed against his clenched fist. Plastic blood bombs from above? Carlos laughed inside his mind. Yeah, right... But the taste and the smell of life were all around him. He opened one puffed, battered eye and squinted.
The young priest stared in horror as the creature before him opened one glowing red eye that intermittently flashed gold. "You have awakened the beast! Now kill it, before it's too late!"
"No!" Asula argued, and flung another bag of blood toward Carlos. "We told you! This one was once a guardian, and was destined to be paired with the Neteru - "
At the mention of Damali, Carlos struggled to push himself up. All the men before him drew back, weapons raised, dead silence enveloping them. He could hear their hearts beating loudly within their chests, their pulses racing, their lungs slowly expanding and contracting with small, terrified sips of air. Be afraid, he Warned within his mind. Be very afraid. Even a few swallows had revived him enough to imperil a human. He reached his hand toward the scent of blood and snatched it, splashing the cold substance against his fist and on the ground with his tight grasp, then sucked as much as he could from the bag. His body began to heal itself.
He snatched another bag in one deft motion as it hurled toward him. He tossed the drained bag away in frustration, narrowing his gaze on the four warm bodies before him. Yes... be very afraid.
"Carlos," a familiar voice said, "we have come to help you. Here is more. Regenerate quickly. Heal yourself. We have less than an hour to get you to a lair." Another bag hit Carlos in the chest.
Carlos caught the bag before it dropped to the ground, snarled, and drank down the contents, feeling a surge of energy as some of the pain abated.
"He'll need all of it," another voice said, "if he is to completely heal."
"And, if that's not enough? What then?"
That voice was younger, higher. He gave off the delicious scent of fear.
"Then, you'll be the first to go," Carlos said in a low warning.
"No," the older familiar voice said firmly. "He is an innocent. A cleric. Kill him, and my warriors end this while you're still wounded."
The familiarity of the voice, talk of innocents, and clerics... It forced Carlos to focus, to strain to see the blurry shapes around him as he drank. Templars? Still not sated, but much improved, he held onto his near-amputated arm with his good hand and leaned against a column of rock.
The electric blue robes worn by the human with the familiar voice held his attention, and he studied the strange crucifix that had a bleeding heart surrounded by thorns in the center of it. The white-haired cleric slowly lowered his sword, and the glint of the silver in the dim light brought it all back for him. Father Patrick, the blue knight of the Covenant. The seer who had told him of his fate and fought side-by-side with Damali and the guardians against his predecessor, his nemesis, Fallon Nuit.