Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 00:38:08 -0400 From: Gehirn Karies Subject: Spoilers LK/ "B.O.M.H.A.I.T.L.F." Contains spoilers to Last Knight. S P O I L E R S P A C E A Forever Knight Story, usual disclaimers Last Knight, continuation. (L.GrantSmith consented to paraphrasing.) Thanks to the L. GS. for proof reading. Note: Leslie GrantSmith wrote in a communigue re: LK that she invisioned LaCroix staring at blood on his hands, "Having killed the focus of his life for the past 800 years." "I think LaCroix is *way* dangerous right now." The image burned into me. Until then I had been existing on the Isle of Denial, where I have time-share, not even entertaining the possibility of what was surely the intent of the final scene of LK. Send comments and Gummi Nihtcrawlers to SoulDebris@aol.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Blood On My Hands And It Tastes of Family By: Gehirn Karies "How can it feel, this road? From this moment, how can it feel, this road?" ~Portishead Hank lumbered out of the roadside tavern. He fumbled for his keys, sighed heavily. He should have gone straight home after returning the rented planting equipment, but watching the game with the guys and throwing back a few too many brews had seemed like fair game four hours ago. He turned the corner thinking of the confrontation to come. The kids would be asleep and his wife would be trafficking. Hank's mouth fell agape with surprise, he nearly froze with fear. He was face to face with an attacker who glowed with a dangerous malevolance he had never thought possible. He backed up close to the tavern's rusted metal frame, all forward movement lost to him. A gripping evil wrapped itself around Hank's mind. He stood motionless as his attacker clamped down on his shoulders and drove its teeth into his flesh. Hank tried to envision his family, but his mind was overwhelmed with dark frenzied images, too many, too fast for him to grasp anything but the violent emotional horror of this beast. Horror rooted in an anger beyond his comprehension. Within moments his lifeless body fell to the ground with a thud, his final thoughts of fear and regret ringing in the air like the resonant vibrations of the ancient churchbell in the village he lived in as a boy in Provence. ************** LaCroix grinned sardonically, moistened his lips, glided a finger across the electric door latch release. The hitcher threw open the door, glanced at him and hopped into the passenger seat, throwing her small rucksack onto the floor. "Hi. A rental, huh?" "Hello. And yes." LaCroix drawled evenly. Then, almost as an after thought, "Where are you headed?" "Nowhere, and fast." LaCroix raised a brow, thinking that was exactly where he would take her. She let out a short nervous laugh. "Uh ... not quite the thing to say while hitching, eh? Forgive me, I'm a novice." "What are you doing way out here?" "Uhg! It's a long story, my car broke down about fifty miles back, some butt- ... ah ... tiny town. It bit the big one, you know. Not a rental company within a hundred miles, so they said." She took off her baseball cap and ran her hand through her wavy hair. The car was filled with the coffee laden scent of her blood. LaCroix savored the rich aroma for a while. A few minutes later he twitched his ears, brought his thoughts back to the conversation at hand. "That is always unfortunate. Biting the big one. Surely there were alternatives to heading out across the plains at night." "Yeah, there was that. They had a ... motel.... I was contemplating a stay while the locals warned me that a 'madman' was on the loose in these parts." Her tone turned mocking. "Can you *imagine*? They were sooooo Appalachian! Telling me about the bodies they were finding all over the place ripped and torn, three or four in a single night. I had visions of Norman dancing in my head real quick there. So, I opted for the road. It was early enough, but I've just caught rides with one yokel after the other. You know, a few miles at a time. I haven't even seen a cargo truck pass by. At least there's no shortage of roadside dives to grab a cup of coffee or a quick chug out here." "Yes, ample." he said, twisting his eyebrows sinisterly. Where were you headed when your car malfunctioned?" "Like I said, it's a long story." Almost involuntarily she crooked her neck, looked over at him intently. "It is a long story culminating in a major disturbance to my center of gravity, leading to my getting in the car and driving mindlessly for days." She shook her head, looked a bit dazed. "Ah.... What about you?" "What about me?" LaCroix had drifted off again. "Why are you way out here?" She shifted in her seat as if she had grown uncomfortable. "Much the same story really." He smirked. "With a few minor ... twists." "Mmmmm. Why the rental?" "I don't normally have much use for a vehicle. You're not wary of this ... Madman?" LaCroix asked, losing the smirk. "Huh! Not hardly." LaCroix knew she was serious. Too disinterested to probe her mind on his own he asked, "Why is that." "I'm not getting out of this that easy. No slice n' dice for me. That would be far too simple. Ain't happening. Well, I could run into the boogery fellow, I suppose. But chances are, I'd survive. I always ... survive. No, no serial kill number twenty one for me. I'm pretty sure my death will be as meaningless as my birth." LaCroix did not sense a bit of regret in her, just brutal self-depreciating honesty. "Oh? I wouldn't be so sure. Your death may satiate a ravenous mind, provide sport for a creature of alternate morality. Or simply feed a beast hungering for human flesh." She laughed out loud. "Don't be such a fiend. Besides, I think they were just carrying on back there." "People do carry on," he agreed, wondering why he was allowing *this* to drag on. He should be done with it, go back to his lamenting. "Oh, a CD player. How luxurious. Have you got any-" LaCroix handed her a small hard plastic case that had been nudging his hip. "Cool." She opened the case, flipped through the discs. A few CD's in she started commenting, "classical, classical, *opera*, classical, dead man rocking, dead man rocking, classical. What? Do you have an aversion to music made by the living?" LaCroix's expression said more than need be. "Sorry, I'm a wicked low brow music snot." She pushed the eject button. The player flashed to a stop and ejected, the disc spinning to a stop. "Oh, it was playing. You must have the sound turned all but off." "I must," he agreed. She popped a Doors recording into the player. "Let's break on through to the other side," she chuckled mischievously. "Not quite what I had in mind for the evening," he added dryly. "Mmmm. This is not really your ideal locale for chillin'." She sighed mournfully. "I don't know how I ended up here. I usually head up the coast when I need to get away, to icy waters, so to speak." She let out a short resigned chuckle. "Sitting on a rocky jetty before the angry sea does wonders for my psyche." She looked over at LaCroix wondering if he was even listening. "What drew you in this direction? Are you heading somewhere?" Lacroix looked at her with an expression of botheration. "I was ... preoccupied.... I had a taste for the road, and went wherever the stars guided me." "How pathetically poetic." She fumbled around in her pockets, pulled out a small pack of Indonesian smokes. "May I?" LaCroix nodded disinterestedly. "So," she spoke amidst an exhale, "you are preoccupied and I am fairly unoccupied. Quite the pair of desperates, eh?" LaCroix did not respond. He actually seemed not to be moving at all, if it weren't for the subtle movements of the steering wheel she would have thought him suspended in time. Even to his silence she spoke, reaching out, for what she knew not, but she *was* reaching out. There was something ethereal in this stranger calling out the same unanswerable question as was she. "It's funny, happiness, joy, fear, anger, all fade in time, can be lost even to the best memory. But pain and guilt dig deeper and deeper, grappling for footholds in our tortured souls. How to lose the pain?" she mumbled. "What causes your pain?" LaCroix seemed almost interested, speaking indulgantly, as he would to one of his late night callers on the radio show. "What does it matter, really? I've learned that pain is relative, to your age, your past experiences, your self esteem. Let's just say that right now I feel the burden of pain from five lifetimes, you know." "Yes." They both chortled viciously. "Here's something funny, well, bizarre maybe. Over the past few years three of my closest friends have seen psychics, you know, they really got into that stuff. And each of them discussed me and said they were close to me in other lives. That I was maybe their mother or father or older sibling, and that is why I am so important to them now. It gave them this illusion that I have some sort of responsibility towards helping them choose or deal with each course of their lives. If I believed in that bunk I'd feel like I had been one hell of a lousy mentor." "You don't believe in reincarnation?" LaCroix asked, obviously distracted by his own thoughts again. "No. I suppose it could be a way of explaining the unfairness of circumstances and the lot, but I have faith only that things *are* unfair. Unknown, unbalanced, unforgiving, undulating, uncool." She chortled amusedly. "I did go to a palm reader once, with a bunch of gal pals. She read everybody's, and they were all chattering madly. I hadn't really listened as they scurried out of the room and repeated the filk. I was having an interesting talk with her husband. He had this obsession with Frank Sinatra, you should've seen the place, I mean, grab the mental picture!" He did exactly that. She laughed. "So, it's like my turn and I go in the room. When she took my hand she tensed up, like somebody jabbed her in the back. Her face got all furrowed up and she closed my fist and said. "I'm sorry, I have fallen tired, no more reading today." She put my money in my pocket, as if she didn't even want to risk our hands touching again, and said, "You go now, quickly, I must rest." I was like, *okay* I'm a believer ... *not*!" "She must have taken one look at me and said, "I have nothing to say to this cretin, better get while the getting is good." She squashed out the cigarette against the sleeve of her leather jacket, tossed it to the ground. "You believe in any of that?" "I'm ... not convinced." He knitted his brows. "Mmmmh. I'll drive if you want." He didn't answer. "I have wondrous night vision, really. You could rest. You do look rather ... weary." He looked at her then, hearing her words, but not in the here and now. "Perhaps now would be as good a time as any," he said, emotionlessly. She had a sinking feeling he wasn't talking about switching roles. LaCroix gracefully pulled to a stop alongside the byway, slipping the car into park. He grinned at her warmly before getting out. They both stretched a bit and met beside the trunk. The crickets filled the night air with their incessant noise. The air smelled faintly of manure and cornstalks. "Look at the stars out here." The woman leaned up against the trunk, peering into the sky. "You forget how big the sky is in the city, how far away the stars are." Lacroix moved closer, her heart beat was quickening, her blood was now tinged with an afterglow of clove oil from the cigarette. He gripped her mind with his probing telepathic fingers, wrapped his hands gently around her shoulders, rubbing his thumbs against her neck. The folds of her body were in darkness even to him in this moonless sky. She leaned back a bit further, letting him press against her in a full embrace. Without further hesitation, without any pretenses of emotion or caring, he pushed her jacket and hair away and went for her throat. His lips met her neck with a heinous sizzle, his teeth feeling as if they bit into a source of live electrical voltage. He pulled back, cringing in pain, spitting out the boiling blood, covering his burned lips with his hand. Her head was turned now, bathing her neck in a bit more starlight. LaCroix hissed as he saw the ornate cross tattooed on the woman's neck. How repulsive! He turned her head to the other side, there danced the image of another cross, built of skull and bone, and pointed at the base like a dagger. He growled, running his tongue gingerly over his charred lips, reeling still from the jolt to his canines. He pulled up her left wrist, banded with tiny faded red crosses, threw it back to her side and roughly pulled up the other wrist. It bore more markings, a chain of tiny inter-cultural religious symbols, almost like charms. He threw her arm down with a resigned sigh. She fell back against the trunk. He no longer had the interest to look for a place of entry, let his hold on her mind go. She raised her hand to the bite at her neck, looked at him as if he were an alien. Even this, this angry ripping way of momentarily killing his pain, easing his emotional trauma, losing himself in vampiric pleasure had lost it's draw. He ran his finger along his lips, nearly healed. He was strong from the rampage of the past week. The trail of bodies he left reeking of a vile madness had filled him with a liquid freshness the modern vampire had learned to indulge in rarely, and then, only very discretely. He grinned at the stunned woman before him. Funny that one so barren of faith would be saved by the images she surely wore as taunts to the society that mocked her very existence. His thoughts crawled back to Nicholas. Had Nicholas' faith saved him or merely led him to his slaughter and damnation? LaCroix realized he would never know, for he would never truly embrace faith. This was certain. Nicholas would have enjoyed seeing this. Seeing his tormentor in searing pain before this shadow of a mortal woman. Something strange stirred in the ancient creature. Something connected to Nicholas, he recognized the tug. Nicholas was reaching out to him, calling to him to stop this rampage. Not the dead Nicholas, no, that was not something LaCroix believed possible. The Nicholas in his blood, in his soul, the only part of his entity that had felt light, felt love, in so many centuries, called out to him to stop. LaCroix had spent his rage, lost his anger. All that remained now was the pain, the guilt. He searched the stars, a quest that once filled him with joy, but now only brought him to a sobering misery. Tears swelled in his eyes, but dared not fall upon his ashen cheeks. He felt so very ... mortal. "How to lose the pain?" he mumbled. End