The Rescued

He sat there in the King's Arms, drinking an espresso and staring thoughtfully at the table. His eyes travelled intently and endlessly around the rings and scratches in the over varnished wood. I watched him and I remembered my last email to him.

"I'm going to come home. I miss London. I understand if you don't want to see me. I don't know why I keep sending these emails. I don't even know if you read them.
I need to explain what happened but I can't. It's beyond explanation. You know that. What you said when I left is true, of course. I was a coward then and I still am.
But I need to see you. I need to see that I didn't ruin your life. And I'm not real until you see me."

I couldn't blame him for not replying to that email or to any other that I had sent. I hadn't been able to stop sending them though, from tiny French internet cafes, from smoke filled rooms in Moscow, from strange little hotels in Prague. I was prepared to be near him any way that I could and to be grateful and not ask for more. Until now. I had to try and meet him. I couldn't settle back in London without trying. So I had asked him to meet me in Stoke Newington with no idea as to whether he would come.

But there he was, against all probability, staring at the sticky pub table. Flashes of our past battered at my mind, made me reel. If I walked into that pub would he look at me and remember the same things? Me pushing him against a cold wall, that shocked, disgusted look on his face. Me full of the shrill bells of hunger, watching the pulse in his neck, wanting to taste him. Him struggling, his mouth held tight in panic and fear. Me sinking my fingernails into his skin, stilling him brutally. That tiny voice inside my head screaming at me to stop.

Me sliding my teeth into his warm neck. A feeling inside like I was broken. An endless frozen second before his blood began to move. That nauseating taste, so hot, so ecstatically perfect. Me drinking his life away, making it mine. Maybe I had always wanted him this way. His breath coming ragged, dragged through pain.

Then a screeching car crash of realisation, a thought hurled outwards by the last desperate sense of myself still remaining. 'If you carry on, he will die, he will die.'

'I'll make him a vampire then.'

'But what you make won't be him and you know it.'

A fluttering heartbeat in my ears. The sickly sweet taste of contempt in my mouth. I wanted more of him, all of him, forever. There weren't going to be any more problems with loneliness. I would take him with me. Then a whisper bit into me.

"Just get on with it. But I am warning you, if you turn me the first thing I will do is kill you."

I tore my teeth from his throat, sick with horror, and staggered back, overwhelmed, saturated with reality again.

I had become a monster.



I shook my head, not to dismiss the memory because there was no chance of that, but to stop myself from wasting time. 'If I stand out here much longer,' I thought, 'he'll give up and leave.' So I forced myself to walk into the pub, forced myself even harder to walk up to him. At once I looked at the white scars on his neck. It looked like some kind of animal had tried to tear his throat out. He saw me and his fingers tensed spasmodically, as if he was reaching for an invisible weapon. I was sickly aware that he was afraid of me.

I sat down, my mouth paralysed by shame. What could I say? 'How have you been?' Ridiculous. 'I'm sorry.' We were so far past that point now. In the end he was the one that had to speak.

"What do you want to drink?" he asked me, coolly. His voice sounded the same as ever but he wouldn't meet my eyes.

"I don't care." I said, "You chose."

He nodded brusquely and got up. It seemed that he couldn't get away from me quick enough. This meeting had been a terrible mistake. I should have left him in peace.

Soon he was back with a glass of red wine. I found myself staring at it nervously. In the dark of the pub it looked like something else. I felt that dart of appalling, unsatisfied hunger. I cringed too; I had become a bad cliche. I tried not to dwell on this example of my real, rotten self and endeavoured to catch his eye.

"Why did you come and meet me?" I asked him.

He stared at me with those bright blue eyes. He was so beautiful that my chest tried to constrict. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me.

He probably just saw the man who tried to kill him once.

"I wanted to see if it's true, if you really are cured." he replied, at last, his tone a little satirical.

A surge of panic made me put my glass down too heavily and an internal crack appeared in the base, radiating outwards. In my emails to him I had said over and over that I was cured. I had filed down my teeth. I spent hours in daylight. I abstained from meat. I was desperate for him to believe that I was Crowley again, that it was over. I had come here fully intending to continue to tell him that.

Except that it wasn't true and he deserved truth at least.

"No." I said, my voice empty, all hope and pretence gone now."It's never going to be completely gone. I still feel...hungry sometimes."

"Sometimes." He repeated.

"Every day, yes."

He looked doubtful and he circled his empty espresso cup round and round in its saucer. The china scraped.

"What prevents you from giving in?" He muttered.

"I remember you, the way you looked at me when I tried to help you up and the way that you said that you would rather die on the ground than have me touch you again."

"And what happens if remembering that stops working?" He didn't trust me as far as he could throw me, that was clear.

"It's unlikely to prove a problem," I told him, "I suspect that I will be dead by the end of the year anyway."

I said it as a statement of fact, not expecting much of a response but he made a quiet sound of pain and gasped out,

"Why?"

"My body has changed. It needs it now. After a few months without it I'll get ill and then more ill and then that will be it. Done. I don't mind. I'm used to the idea."

I couldn't understand why tears were dripping down his face. I was astounded when he took my hand and held it so tight that his fingernails broke my skin.

"Can't you just steal it, break into a hospital, I'll help you do it." He exclaimed too loudly, causing some nearby drinkers to glance at us. They soon turned back to their drinks. After all, you hear stranger things in London than that. My heart was in my throat. His hand was warm, warmer than mine.

"That stuff is too old. It has to come straight from...source."

He bit his lip.

"How much would you need?" He said. My eyes were helplessly drawn back to the marks on his neck. I shivered.

"I don't know," I answered, "Not much, now and then. But I don't want to talk about this. It's not important. It's not why I came here. I wanted to see you, to see that you are alright."

"I am not alright," he hissed, "How can you even ask me that?"

I nodded, that was fair enough. How could he be alright after what had happened?

"I'm sorry." I whispered; that useless, meaningless word.

"I'm not alright," he breathed, angrily, "Because if you die, I'll..."

My head snapped up, "What?"

"I can't stand it," he exclaimed, his voice tainted with rage,"You sitting there, talking calmly about the fact that you're dying as if I wouldn't care, wouldn't notice. You arrogant bastard! I'm not letting this happen, Crowley."

"You can't stop it!"

"Can't I?"

He stood up and left the pub. I followed him, wincing a little in the daylight, fighting the order to go back into the dark. He stood on the pavement, the August sun beating down like fury, and stared at me.

"Take mine," he said, "Take my blood."

"No." I wanted very much to throw up as a thrill crept in my skin like a dirty burrowing creature.

"Come to me and take it when you need it. I won't let you die, Crowley."

"No."

"Why not? Do you think that you deserve to die? Are you afraid to live? Why not?"

I snapped and grabbed his arms and held him tight, held him still.

"You wouldn't offer if you knew."

"Knew what?" he demanded. He was frighteningly near me. I could feel his breath on my face. I knew that I shouldn't be touching him. It wasn't safe. He made me feel the way that he always had, like I was in big trouble and about to tumble into something too dangerous. I had felt like that the first night we met.

But he had pushed me past endurance and the whole truth came seeping out. I took a deep breath.

"Because I still want you, in my veins. The memory of you that night, of what it was like, doesn't just horrify me. It should only be an evil memory but I remember and I want it again. It's all that's kept me alive some nights. It's too easy for me to get out of control around you. What I took nearly killed you. I know that would happen again. I know it."

He stared at me, shocked, glazed with doubt and emotion. I let go of him and carefully stepped away. I sighed.

"I wouldn't stop. I wouldn't be able to stop. I would take it all."

He leaned into me suddenly; his hot heart thudded into my chest. He kissed my mouth softly and ran his fingers into my hair. Then he tugged my head painfully to one side and whispered vehemently in my ear,

"I would make you stop."