This is a sequel to "Confession", which was posted last month. You don't really _need_ to read it for this to make sense, but I would highly reccommend it. You can find "Confession" (as well as this story in its entirety) at http://home.earthlink.net/~kusine/ I wrote this for all of you who sent me nice comments about "Confession." You know who you are!In any case...Enjoy! ********************************* Rating Information: This story is being posted under the "Adult" label for subject matter and some brief descriptions of graphic violence. Legal Stuff: I don't own the Forever Knight characters or universe, and that just sucks. I'm just using them for fun and not for profit. Spoilers: Up to and including "Ashes to Ashes" This story may be archived on Mel Moser's http://www.fkfanfic.com. It will also be availiable at http://home.earthlink.net/~kusine/ Please send all comments, bottles of a nice Merlot, and requests for missing posts to cerk@rocketmail.com. All flames will be used to toast marshmallows. ********************************* Revelation 01/03 "Remember." The priest cried out as the night came back to him. The vampire Lucius, the confession, the reprieve. The fear and horror he had felt swamped him, a whole night s emotions in a single, stunning instant. His hands shook on the book in his lap as he remembered the pain of the vampire, grieving for a daughter--a lover--long gone. He looked up and knew it to be her. It was Gwynedd, the other vampire. Were it not for her eyes and her unnatural stillness, she would look like any well-brought up teenage girl. She wore a long, loose, light green dress than matched the color of her eyes. Her long blond hair was unbound and reflected and glowed with the dim firelight in the room. Like the vampire had said, she shone like the sun. A star was captured behind her eyes, trying to escape. "I can see you know who I am," she said. "That is good." She spoke with the precise, formal intonation of someone for whom English is not the native language. Her voice had a soft lilt, almost Irish- or Scottish-sounding. It was soft but held an edge of menace. "What can I do for you?" he asked, consciously trying to still his quivering hands. "Lucius came to see you. I heard what he told you," she said, still standing perfectly still. "Never once has he mentioned my name to anyone else." She suddenly was across the room and seated in the leather armchair next to his. She sat as if she had always been in the chair before the fire. Only the settling of her dress around her ankles indicated that she had moved. "After more than fifteen hundred years, his shame was over-powered by his guilt," she said, staring into the flickering fire. "It was interesting to hear his view of it." "Isn t that what happened?" the priest asked. "In a way," she said and turned her eyes to him. "Lucius has always had a selective memory." At first, he thought the fire was reflected in her eyes. Then he noticed that the color was wrong; it was too gold and not enough orange. Her eyes had changed color, as the other vampire s had. Was she here to kill him, then? Was she here to finish what the other vampire had left undone? "I am not here to bring you death," she said, as if she read his thoughts. "I am as old as Lucius, but I spend less time among mortals. I do not put on a mask of mortality when it is not required. You know what I am; I need not hide." As she spoke, he could see the glinting of long canines behind her lips. Her skin seemed paler as well, as if she had cast off a glamour. She no longer looked like a teenager at all, but some sort of ancient alien being...which, after all, she was. "Why are you here?" he asked the creature before him. "To tell you my side of the story, of course," she said, a slight smile flickering across her lips. "Lucius told his tale; I wish to tell mine." She gazed at him as if she were waiting for something--permission, perhaps. He had no doubt he could be made to listen--the other vampire had done that with his threats--but she seemed to _want_ him to hear her tale. And, even knowing that he could be killed for it, or never remember it after this one night, he discovered that he wanted to know. She nodded her head, again anticipating his thoughts. The vampire turned her eyes to the fire and lost herself in the contemplation of the flames. She did not move--her eyes never blinked or flickered, she made no nervous, fidgety movements. She was a statue. When she finally spoke, it was unexpected. "I had sensed him outside of my home for hours. I could not tell you how I knew he was there then any more that I could now. His presence was simply obvious to me," she said, only her lips moving in her uncanny stillness. "I do not know why I waited for so long to come out. Perhaps I was afraid. "I had known no others of my kind save my ancient master. He had been a good, kind man, but he had warned me that not all of our kind were such. There was another, his brother, who was as evil as my master had been good. This other vampire had worshipped death and pain, and my master showed me his face through his blood, that I would know him if I ever encountered him. I did not know if this vampire who lay in wait for me was this evil one. "But I grew hungry and bored underground. I had not fed for several nights, being too busy with healing peasants to take time out to feed. I finally decided to leave, regardless of who I would face. In any case, I sensed no evil, no harm from the one above...only curiosity. "This decision made, I put on my cloak and was in the clearing in the time it would take a mortal to blink. I closed the door behind me and turned to where the other presence was. "'Well,' I called out, 'have you sat out there long enough? I will hunt; do you wish to join me?' "When there was no response, I wondered if he had understood me. I had used the Latin that I had learned from my master, as it was the common language of that time. It was unlikely that he would know my language, unless he were one of my people. Even then, fewer spoke it each year, and even the peasants speech was laced with Latin. "I was about to call out again when he stepped into the clearing. He was a tall man, taller than I, unusual for the Roman that his face and bearing showed him to be. He was dressed in Celtic wool trousers and tunic; that was unusual as well. His eyes were a pale blue and betrayed his every emotion. He feared me, but was not accustomed to that sensation. I judged him to be a warrior rather than a noble. It was not the face I had seen in my master s blood. "He looked as carefully at me as I did at him. I smiled at him, reminding myself to appear unruffled by his presence in my clearing. He slowly moved toward me, stopping several feet away. He peered so intently at me that, at first, I wondered if he were simple. Then, I looked into his softened eyes, and I realized that he found me beautiful. I knew not how to react to this knowledge, so I made a joke. " Do I pass inspection? I asked, laughing. You do: it is much more sensible to wear trousers than a toga, do you not think? "He looked down at himself, as if he had no idea what he wore. He did not speak, but pulled his cloak around himself. I was hungry still, and I could feel the hunger in him, as well. We would feed together, I decided. "Oh, come on," I said, and launched myself into the air. "He followed me after a few moments. When I had taken off, I had not decided where I would feed. Once I was in the air, however, I knew where to go. "There was a town a day s walk from my clearing, one that housed a Roman garrison and Roman politicians. I hated soldiers, Roman ones especially, the ones who had been the monsters of my people s stories for so many years. I would take this Roman vampire to slaughter the soldiers. If he would do that with me, then I would call him my friend. "When he realized what I meant to do, he told me no. I laughed at him and slipped inside the barracks anyway. If I had to, I would kill him when I had gorged myself on the blood of these soldiers. "I fed. I ripped out their throats but the soldiers died happy. They believed me to be a goddess, and I took no pains to disillusion them. Blood pooled on the ground, the scent of it intoxicating me, driving me to kill even after I was sated. Soon, I could hear the other vampire feeding as well. I was relieved; I would not have to kill him. "The twenty soldiers were dead within minutes. The other vampire stood stunned, as blood-drunk as if it were his first kill. I kicked over the coals of the fire and the straw on the ground caught fire immediately. I dragged him after me and we fled into the fields. I stayed him in the middle of a snowy field, past the light of the fire. My master had died for my careless killings, and I was now sure to leave no evidence. When I saw that the fire could not be stopped, I tugged the drunken vampire into the sky..." ****************************************** Continued in Part 2 ********************************* Revelation 02/03 The vampire paused and the priest looked at her. They had both been staring into the fire while she spoke. Her eyes were closed and a fleeting shadow seemed to cross her face. When she opened her eyes, they seemed to shimmer between gold and green like taffeta dresses he remembered from his youth. She glanced over to him, then began her story once more. "I could have sent him away then, and I did ponder it. I was content with my life as a village witch. The peasants feared me and that kept me safe. I missed the company of my own kind, though. That must have been why I invited him into my underground home. "The flight seemed to have cleared his drunkenness, and he looked approvingly around my large room. It was furnished with stolen pieces rescued from buildings that I d burned to hide kills. It was not lush, but I considered the confines of its dirt walls to be my home. "I told him my name and he told me his: Lucius. I had been correct about him being a Roman. "We were both caked in blood from our feeding. I dropped my cloak to the floor and moved to take his, meaning to put them aside for cleaning. Before I knew it, I had removed all of his clothes, as well as my own. I pressed my body against him, surprised by my own desire for him. He trembled and held me tightly, as hungry for I as I was for him. I threw my head back, baring my throat to him, and after a moment of hesitation, he sank his fangs into my neck. "I believe Lucius explained to you what that experience is like." The priest felt his face grow hot as he remembered the other vampire s description. "Yes, you know. Nothing I ever felt as a mortal can describe what it felt to have him drink my blood and to drink his in return. To _become_ another person... You cannot even imagine the intimacy. "He was untaught in the way we have of lovemaking. However, as in mortal sex, brute force can be arousing. His memories were violent and confused, each tumbling into the next, with only a moment spent on each one. I caught only brief images at first: being whipped, running a sword through a fallen foe, standing in a bright hall, sobbing in a strange tomb. "That night and day, I taught him how to control the flow of his thoughts and memories. At first, he was not as good at it as he thought, but I did not reveal that. Immortal, as well as mortal men, have their pride, and for some reason, I did not want to injure his. Maybe I was glad to have a friend after so long. Perhaps I was afraid he would leave. "But he did not go and after a few years, we were more than friends. I loved him, and he loved me in return. He planted roses for me, white ones that he said looked like me in moonlight. I taught him all I knew, hiding no knowledge from him. We lived as husband and wife, though there were no gods or laws to witness our union. "We were happy there, but after twenty years, the mortals began to fear us more than was safe. They had noted our failure to age, and our lack of food or children. It was time for us to move on. "We did. Our travels took us to many places that I had never been. Lucius had traveled widely, and I had seen the world through his blood, but it was completely different to experience it for myself. I was used to small towns and few mortals, all speaking the same tongue. However, we journeyed to cities, teeming with chattering people, all intent on their business, ignoring us unless they though that we had money or valuables to give them. "This was when I truly became a woman. I had not yet seen sixteen years when my master had found me near death at my mother s side. She had died of a fever, and I would have soon followed had my master not brought me across. I had always sought knowledge, but as we traveled, I drank it down like blood. I learned languages and science, philosophy and mathematics. "Lucius was pleased; he acted as if these cities and these people were a gift for me of his own devising. That irritated me, but I loved him so that I ignored his arrogance. We stayed in no one place for long, and at first, we were happy. "Not all that I saw was good, of course. I had known that evil existed, had seen it on a small scale it my own world. That, though, did not prepare me for what I saw. I saw children starve while the wealthy ate so much they vomited, then ate more. I saw women raped repeatedly then tossed a small coin in payment. I saw politicians take taxes from the poorest, and give them to the richest. And soldiers. Soldiers were everywhere, but I had always known what they could do. "I was never as capricious in my killings as Lucius was. He would kill anyone for any reason. He told you that I would kill for a dress or a knife, but he was wrong. That was what I told him, yes, but he had never understood my desire to kill only those who deserved it. To him, bringing death was our right. To me, it was a duty, a responsibility. It was the beginning of a rift between us. "We took to hiding things from each other, after a century together. It was never as idyllic as Lucius remembered it. We argued continually in Athens, for three years. I nearly left him then, but I loved him too much..." The vampire stopped, and when she didn t begin again, the old priest opened eyes that he hadn t even realized had been closed. She was still staring into the fire, but tears made red tracks down her cheeks. Digging in his pocket, the man pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to her. She took it, and for a moment, her eyes turned toward him in smiling gratitude. He sat perfectly still, stunned by the light of her beauty. She was a fallen angel: a child of light living in the darkness. To look on her was to look upon every fantasy and nightmare he had ever had. After wiping her cheeks, the vampire balled up the scrap of cloth in her tightly clenched hands. She nodded her thanks, then resumed her story. "His treatment of me changed as well, and I chafed against it. When we had lived alone together in the forest, we had been equals. However, when we moved in the mortal world, he treated me as a mortal woman. That meant I was property, chattel. He seemed to forget that I was intelligent and articulate. He loved me, I knew that, but after centuries together, I began to wonder if that was enough. "He felt the need to protect me, to shelter me from the world. Once, I m unsure of where we were, we were returning to our lodgings after a particularly brutal feeding. We had killed an entire den of thieves in one hour and bathed in their blood, laughing. On our walk home, he insisted we take a ridiculously long route home so that I would not have to walk through the part of the city that housed the brothels. I said nothing to him, merely smiled. By this time, I was tired of arguments. "Finally, I decided that perhaps if we were to live in one place, as we had in Gaul, then our life would be happy again. Lucius agreed to a home, and I was so happy that I let him chose the place. Soon, we were installed in a house outside of Rome. "It did get better between us. Not as perfect as it had been at first, but Lucius again began to look upon me as an equal. He still sought to protect me, but, after a time, I realized that he did it out of love. I forgave him his faults, as I was sure he did mine, and we lived in relative peace for over half a century..." ***************************************** Continued in Part 3 ********************************* Revelation 03/03 Again, the vampire paused. Looking at her, the priest could tell she did not want to tell the next part of the story. The other vampire had stopped at this point as well. "Go on," the old man whispered. "I returned home just after sunset, Lucius told you that. I went into our bedroom to wake him. As soon as I entered the room, however, I was stopped by my love for him. I saw him lying there asleep, and I could see how he had looked as a little boy. His hair was mussed from sleeping, and one arm was thrown over a pillow, holding it close, as he did me. I was amazed that after centuries, I still loved this man. "I took off my clothes and carefully crawled into bed beside him. Pressing myself against his blanketed back, I bit into his neck, thinking to be romantic. "I was instantly assaulted with his uncontrolled memories. They pounded at me through his blood, and I was unable to pull away, though I tried. Scenes from different times jumbled together, and I saw and felt my mother being raped by him while a young girl begged: Make love to me, Father! I was horrified, and in my struggle to push away, I bit my own lip. My blood mingled with his, and he pushed me away. By the look on his face, I could see that he recognized the woman as my mother. I should have guessed sooner. After all, we had, upon occasion, passed ourselves off as father and daughter during our travels. "I was crying and he only stared at me. That he was my father meant nothing to me, but I knew it did to him. That young girl had been speaking to him, and he had been appalled, disgusted. I reached out to him across the bed, but he threw the blankets at me. " Cover yourself, he hissed. Leave my sight, devious beast. You are no better than she was. "I did not know of whom he spoke. My mother? The girl whose voice I had heard? I was still to stunned to move, to do anything, so I only sat there with my hand outstretched toward him. "After a moment of tense silence, he stormed from the room. I followed, leaving the blanket where it lay. I could feel his anger like a blow, and I knew of no way to soothe him. Even in our worst confrontations, he had never been like this. Not once had he ever turned his back on me. He always insisted on fighting face-to-face, pulling me back to him any time I moved to leave. I knew not what to do when he was the one to turn away. " Lucius, we didn t know. It s not our fault, I said to his back. None of it matters now; I love you! " It _does_ matter! he raged and vaulted out of the window into the night sky. "I stood there and stared out the window after him, but I did not follow. I could have caught up to him: I had always been stronger than he. But after an initial moment of panic, I was not sure I wanted to catch him. What would I say? Had he stayed and argued with me, we probably would have survived together. We were skilled at confrontation and after so long, that was our preferred method of resolving problems. However, with him not there, I had to _think_ about it, rather than just blindly react and scream. "Did I truly want the man who had raped my mother? I cared not that he was my father; I had seen enough simple and deformed infants when I was a forest witch to understand why incest was taboo. Offspring were not a concern for us... But could I truly love the man who raped my mother? I did not know, and I stared out the window all night, trying to decide. "When the sun began to rise and Lucius had not returned, I went into our bedroom. I could not bear to sleep in our bed, so I spent the day on the ceramic floor. That was how I spent the next week: nights at the window, days on the floor. I thought constantly, trying to decide what I would do if Lucius came home. "After a week, I had made no decision, and that, in itself, was decision enough. If the decision was that difficult to make, then I knew that I could not love Lucius enough to stay as his wife. "I called the slaves to me and freed them. I hypnotized them to spread horrible stories about the place, in hope that it would keep our home untouched until Lucius returned. I left, taking only what I needed, and I never looked back. "I went to what is now India. I used my strength to protect people by killing those who would harm them. I moved from village to village, trying to save everyone. I could not, of course, but that only spurred me on to more desperate and bloody measures. I slept in the cremation pits, huddled under the ashes from the sun, and rarely washed. My skin was almost always covered with streaks of black ash and blood, and soon, they worshipped me as the goddess Kali. "I spent hundreds of years there, I think. I really have no idea how long it was. After a while, though, I began to miss the forests of my home: the smell of pine and the feel of snow. I returned to the west. "The world was not as I remembered it. It was dirty, dark, and ignorant. Vampires were everywhere, but I hid myself from them. I was more powerful than all of them, and they never knew I existed. I found that there were no longer any ancient ones. I and Lucius, if he still lived, were the oldest vampires. "I know not why I hid myself from these new vampires and Lucius. In the new vampires, I felt an echo of the evil I had seen years before in my master s blood. He had always warned me against that, and I still believed him. As for Lucius... I simply could not face him. I do not know if I still loved him then or not. I knew that he had sought me out, over a hundred years before, when he had returned from wherever it was he had gone. I told myself that I was done with him, and I went to the forests of my home without seeing him. "It was over a century before I saw Lucius. Now he called himself Lucien, the same name in a different language. It was in Paris, and he had just brought across a beautiful prostitute. I watched her make her first kill, and I saw how proud Lucius was at her ferocity. "I was not sure how I felt to see him again. Our time together had been so long ago that it had ceased to seem real. It was almost a story, a myth. I believed him in love with the beautiful Janette, and I was happy for that. How could I be jealous? He was courtly to her, if a bit cold. She seemed to enjoy his company. I was curious, however, and I found myself following them, shadowing them as they moved. Lucius never noticed me, and he never said my name. "It was not long before I knew that the relationship between these two vampires was that of a father and daughter. Strangely, for that, I was envious. I wondered what it would have been to be raised as his daughter, to be doted upon as Janette was. To have lost our passionate love would have been tragic, but, then again, I would never have known him as such. "It was a difficult time. I was confused and disturbed. I believe now that I may have been insane. I spent too much time alone, watching through windows. I lived vicariously through them, taking no pleasure in my kills, no joy in art or music or learning. I was becoming careless of my safety, and I would have soon been killed had they not brought Nicholas across. "To see him with two children that he loved was almost unbearable. I stopped following them, then, and it was suddenly 1228. I went to Egypt, where Lucius had always refused to go. "I remembered the tomb that I had seen in his blood our first night together. Somehow, I knew it to be connected to the girl I had seen centuries later. He had hidden them both from me, so I knew them to be important. "I m not sure why I searched for the tomb, and the girl I was sure was buried in it. It gave me something to do, and eternity requires an occupation. I searched for hundreds of years, and I truly loved my search. It was a mystery, and I was enthralled with the idea of unraveling it. I rarely thought of Lucius. He only came near once, and that was when he followed Nicholas, who sought a cure for vampirism. "Soon after that, I switched from proper study to grave-robbing. It had always been a lucrative trade, but I had never been interested in the money. However, I was finding it more difficult to get access to tombs. To mortals, I appeared to be a young girl, not the archeologist I had become. I found it much easier to employ mortals to search than to do it myself. I used my illegitimate gains to fund legitimate research in France and Britain, hoping to find some traces of my history. I was content. "Then, three weeks ago, two of my best robbers found for what I had searched so long. They contacted me for instructions on how to continue, and I directed them to proceed into the tomb. I still am not sure why I did not go myself. Perhaps things would have been different, if I had...but perhaps not. "I could feel her as my robbers released her: the young girl was my mortal half-sister, Divia. She had survived, evil and angry, for nearly two thousand years. I could do nothing but track her; she was older and stronger than even I. In dread, I followed her here to Toronto, and watched as she taunted and killed those who would be close to Lucius. I did nothing until she killed Nicholas. "When she finally left him, broken and poisoned on the sun-image she could not touch, I fed him my own blood to revive him. I am not sure, even now, why I did that. Perhaps it was because he had inadvertently saved me when he chose to be a vampire. I did not censor by memories as I let him feed from my wrist, and his eyes grew wide with the story my blood told. By his reaction, I knew that Lucius had never told him of me, and I was, strangely, hurt. "I made him promise not to reveal me, and sent him after Divia. I could not kill her myself, though she needed to die. Her love and hate were all that had fueled her for millennia, and maybe I saw myself too much in her. Maybe I could not kill my own sister. Maybe I wanted Lucius to continue to forget me. Maybe I had no reason. But I could not do it. "She died and I watched her ashes scattered to the wind. I watched and Lucius never sensed me, though Nicholas did..." A log shifted on the fire, and the vampire paused. Her eyes were closed now, no longer paying any attention to the priest who sat beside her. For a long time, neither moved. The old man had nothing for this confession: no absolution, no words of easement. But she did not seem to require any. She only needed to be heard. Suddenly, she was looking at him. He had not seen her move, but she had. "I have told you this to be sure that there is someone who knows the truth of us. You have heard both of our stories now. Each is true and each is false: Lucius and I each only saw what we wished to see." She slowly stood from her chair and leaned close to the priest. "I give you my thanks. I will not make you forget; your life is nearly ended. I could give you death now, if you desire it." He looked into her eyes of golden fire, inches from his own. It was a tempting offer. She would not hurt him, and he would die peacefully in his chair by the fire, a book of poetry on his lap. He was tired. His bones ached and he no longer slept. It would be a good way to die. But he was not yet ready. He hadn t finished his book of poetry, and he still wanted to understand these two stories. He could not die yet. The vampire smiled at him, seeing his refusal of her offer. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek gently with cold lips. "Thank you," she whispered, and was gone. ************************************* End. Kusine. === cerk@rocketmail.com - Cousin, NA, FK Mail Loop FK Fan Fic writing resources at: http://home.earthlink.net/~kusine/ http://www.cybercomm.net/~mickey/fk.html