The Neverloving Dead (Haunted Hearts)

CHAPTER 11

RULE 6: KNOW WHEN IT’S TOO LATE

PATRICK

P atrick watched as the hotchpotch of buildings outside Gayles lit blue almost in rhythm with the music spilling from the bar. Hope, relief and victory flooded Gethin’s face. There was no concern about moving on. No mixed feelings. Just delight at achieving what he’d wanted to at last.

It was good to see. Patrick couldn’t begrudge him his joy. It wasn’t often a ghost managed to resolve whatever they’d bound themselves here to do. But Gethin hadn’t been like the others. Those who had loved life usually moved straight on from it. Free, Patrick had always thought. Not Gethin. Gethin had been free. And he had loved life: that was, Patrick now realised, the brightness he’d always seen in him.

Gethin had stayed for others.

And now he’d saved them, and Patrick knew – just as Gethin had never clung to life, he wouldn’t cling to limbo either. He’d go. Peaceful and happy, as he deserved.

It was all Patrick had hung around for: the entire reason he’d kept watching Gethin after telling him he was through. Or perhaps not the entire reason, he thought. Perhaps there was a part of him that had also wanted to keep seeing him for as long as possible. Or perhaps he’d just wanted to make sure the Welshman really was going this time – that he wouldn’t turn up in another few months, disrupting Patrick’s plans all over again.

His one chance.

But he’d seen the killer go into the bar, and now the police were here and Gethin was celebrating.

So he wouldn’t have to worry about that, would he?

Dampening some pain or another, he floated through the window of the clothes boutique in which he’d installed himself since vacating Gethin and Stuart’s flat, heading down the street into the quieter shadows, in the opposite direction. Away. The last place he wanted to be was anywhere near Gethin as he fragmented into oblivion.

Maybe he should find someone to feed from, he thought, a little sourly. He hadn’t been able to since that day. He knew it was costing him, that every day without meals was just delivering weeks and months of the same bleak solitude he’d endured for so long already. He didn’t care. Limbo had never felt this flat. His future had never felt this hopeless. He’d been so dedicated to his long quest And now it seemed nothing more than a silly fantasy for which he was fundamentally ill-equipped. Gethin had proven in months what Patrick had avoided for centuries: men didn’t want men like Patrick. They wanted men like Gethin.

It was why he’d goaded Gethin about failure. Because Stuart, a living man, had chosen him .

And it was why he’d stayed away since. Shame.

Staying insubstantial to preserve what energy he had, he turned onto a residential street lined with cars shining beneath white xenon streetlights or shadowed beneath the odd sycamore. Ahead, a gaggle of girls in tiny dresses and huge heels teetered along, tugging hemlines, giggling and catcalling a lone man on the other side of the street. Patrick melted into a doorway across the pavement from a hire van, waiting for them to pass, not wishing to drain himself further.

It didn’t matter that Gethin didn’t want him, he told himself, or even that Stuart didn’t. It didn’t mean no one in his new life would. Gethin wasn’t litmus paper just because he was experienced and beautiful and Patrick was neither. The fact was he’d always known Gethin was out of his league – not just physically, but in every single way. Patrick should never have let the idea of him get any deeper than that.

The girls passed. Patrick stayed where he was, pushing down the ache. He was two streets from the bar by now and it was quiet here. A faint breeze lifted the leaves, the pleasant hiss just masking the hum of the city. Music leaked from a nearby house. A cat yowled somewhere. A rat scurried under the van.

He would be okay, he thought. It really was better that Gethin was leaving. Look what getting involved with him had done to Patrick’s plans: the things he’d worked towards for centuries . This was why he’d needed to remain detached, wasn’t it? Because emotions were dangerous. They ruined everything . How had he ever forgotten it?

He raised his eyes to the sky, gritting his teeth over the pain to wish Gethin well as his soul moved on. Forwards. As his gaze came down, he looked to the rat – a scavenger like him – exploring a drain near the van’s tyre. The words on the side of the van read: Hire Purpose .

Which felt a little ironic for an ex-priest. Especially one whose two-hundred-year mission was on the ropes.

The rat scurried away. Patrick was about to move off too, when the houses lit slightly, then again, then again, each time a little stronger. Blue. The police, evidently taking the subtler residential route back to Walworth Road. He drifted onto the pavement. If Gethin’s killer was being taken away at last, Patrick wanted to see him too – to see whether there was any remorse on his face, any fear for his soul.

The lights flashed over the hire van’s windscreen, illuminating a cross hanging from the rearview mirror.

The cars drew nearer still.

A cross ? some part of him registered.

He dismissed it. It was nothing. Perfectly normal. He’d seen hundreds of crosses hanging from rearview mirrors. It just went to show how much Gethin had got under his skin that he’d imagine, even for a second, that this one might be anything other than a lucky charm for driving.

The first car went past. In the back was a man. Dark grey hair, neat beard, medium build. He was side-eying the window anxiously. Something – the rat, possibly – caught his attention. His face turned towards Patrick, splashed by cool light from a streetlamp.

Patrick felt a flash of satisfaction, then...

The second car went past, replacing the view. There was no one in the rear seat. It had plainly been meant as backup – in case the killer put up a fight or pulled weapons or took hostages or ran. In case something went wrong, in short.

Which it had, he thought.

They had Jonno .

How many times had Patrick seen him when they’d been watching the bar?

The cars drifted away, indicating at the end of the street, turning onto Walworth Road. Patrick stood there.

After a while, his gaze travelled back to the van. Hire Purpose . The cross, hanging there.

It didn’t mean anything, he told himself again.

As he stared at it, it occurred to him that Gethin had been about to move on. From the expression on his face when Patrick had left, he’d certainly believed he’d done what he’d meant to do. Succeeded.

What if he’d already gone?

He looked back the way he’d come, throat tightening.

He shouldn’t get involved, he thought. It was getting involved that had cost him all of this already. He had to remain detached. Disciplined. He mustn’t have anything to do with this. He turned away, began drifting towards Walworth. There were rows of flats there – there was a reasonable chance he’d find a meal in one of them.

He’d gone perhaps three hundred metres when his conscience caught up.

If Gethin had moved on and the police had the wrong man... He thought back to before the police had arrived. Gethin had looked agitated. Frantic, even.

Had he sensed the murderer was about to kill?

Tonight?

As he floated there, seconds turning into minutes, the van seemed to grow larger in his mind. If the killer was going to attack tonight, could Patrick really leave him to do it? Not just kill a man, but kill a man in the way Gethin had been...

Again, there was the cursed tightening at his throat. His death. His future, shrinking.

If he’d been too ashamed to go back before – to apologise for the spite he’d thrown at Gethin about having sex rather than ‘working towards what matters’ – how could he go and feed now, as if his own appetite was more important than a man’s life?

He turned, heading back for the bar, wishing he either hadn’t been such a fool as to keep walking in the first place, or that he could go faster now. After months of semi-starvation, he was weaker than he’d been in years. Decades, possibly. And if Gethin had gone, it would be down to him to stop the murderer.

Patrick hadn’t prayed in two hundred years, but he did now. He prayed the presence of the police might have made the killer think twice: that he, Patrick, would get to feed – to strengthen himself – before anything happened. Why hadn’t he stayed just a little longer at Gayles ?

Braved watching Gethin leave.

He’d only just passed the van again when he saw his prayer wouldn’t be answered. Not fifty feet away, two men rounded the corner, an older one in baggy Oxford trousers supporting a younger one in skinny jeans as they headed towards him, back in the direction of Walworth Road. They were trailed by a third man, who was tugging at the younger one and shouting at him to run. Patrick recognised him immediately: short, muscular, blond, handsome, the Welsh accent clear as a bell.

Relief exploded through Patrick, chased by hope; then horror. He pushed them all away, annoyed with himself. He was too drained already. Feelings were the last thing he could let himself have. He knew how this worked.

The young man’s hand kept flopping from Gethin’s grip as Gethin flickered in and out of solidity, emotions all over the place. The chap looked too drunk to register Gethin at all. He lurched, knees softening.

The older man was taking most of his weight, urging him to keep walking, promising he’d get him safely home if he’d just tell him his address. He looked stressed and harassed, as if the evening wasn’t going at all as planned. But feverish too. It was a look Patrick had seen on ghost after ghost during their long descents into madness: the obsessive fixation he’d told Gethin about. Desire gone mad. The man wouldn’t stop. He’d reached a point where the only thing he could see was the thing he was about to do.

The drunk man murmured something that sounded like, “Home.”

“Yes, where?” the other one said.

“Run!” Gethin yelled, noiselessly to all but Patrick. Again, the younger man’s hand slid through his grip. Gethin would be losing energy every time it happened. Getting weaker and weaker...

Weaker even than Patrick, most likely. What on earth had Patrick done ?

The young man didn’t look able to run anywhere. The thought struck Patrick that all the men had been killed in their homes.

“Gethin, stop,” he managed. He’d barely got the words out. If Gethin was too weak to stop the man, it was Patrick’s fault. He’d left Gethin to catch his killer alone, knowing he was about to kill again. After two centuries and seeing thousands of men together, he’d seen two together and lost all reason. He’d doomed this man himself.

Killed another man, after all. Again, horror rose. Again, he pushed it down. His energy lurched.

Gethin’s eyes widened as, finally, he saw Patrick, standing there, dithering. His expression said he didn’t believe it. “Patrick, it’s the killer, he’s–”

“Gethin, stop. This is pointless, you have to calm down. Here, let me try.” He made himself as solid as he could and went to grab the younger man’s hand instead. He didn’t think it would work, but–

Gethin roared. “It’s not pointless and don’t bloody tell me to calm down! ”

Before Patrick could so much as look at him again, Gethin shoved him, so hard he crashed into the wall of someone’s house, losing yet more energy. The two living men just kept hobbling down the street, unaware. If the van was the killer’s, they’d be there any second. “Gethin, what are you–”

Gethin ignored him, running after the men, trying again to grab the younger one’s hand, plainly focusing everything he still had on solidity. His emotions were too wild, though. He was dry-sobbing with fear and frustration. His hand slipped through again. The killer pressed an electric key fob. Lights at each corner of the hire van flashed.

Patrick wished he’d just waited there: his instinct had been right after all. And he’d dismissed the feeling. Of course he had.

Because it was a fucking feeling.

He dropped his solidity, trying to keep his energy. By now, the killer had opened the passenger door and was ‘helping’ the younger man in, clipping the seatbelt while Gethin tried to fight his way through them both, succeeding only in draining himself more. The killer hurried around to the driver’s side and got in.

“I suppose we’ll go to mine, then,” he said, closing the door.

“Gethin, quick!” Patrick ordered.

Gethin stopped, staring at Patrick as if he was only just now noticing him, despite the wall.

The engine started.

“Gethin, into the van!”

“Patrick, what the sodding–”

Patrick charged, hoping Gethin would remain insubstantial, scooping him up and leaping through the metal panel with him. “Turn solid,” he snapped as they landed in the van’s rear section, letting go of him immediately, “or you’ll fall out of the back.”

He waited until Gethin had done it before doing the same himself. Gethin did so, then sat up, staring at Patrick like he was an alien.

Neither of them spoke. The van began to move.

Calm. Professional. Detached , Patrick told himself. Emotions were dangerous. The mantra didn’t seem to help. What in all hell were they doing? Why had he pushed Gethin into the van? What did he imagine either of them could do to stop anything? Patrick had lost a ludicrous amount of energy and Gethin... well, Gethin looked almost as weak as the first night they’d met.

The Welshman looked away. Around. There was nothing to see: metal walls and a moulded metal base. No windows. A plywood partition separated them from the front, so they couldn’t see either of the living occupants. Gethin’s gaze drifted to it.

“Gethin, you can’t do anything now. You could cause a crash. That could kill them both.”

Gethin’s eyes flicked back to him. After what felt like Patrick’s centuries all over again, he said, “You came back.” Beneath them, the floor vibrated.

The tone was so strange, Patrick nearly forgot he wasn’t meant to be having any feelings. Weak or not, Gethin still seemed to pulse with the bright, lively energy he always had. The van stopped, engine idling awhile, then began again, as if they’d waited at traffic lights.

Patrick swallowed needlessly. “You have to get control of your emotions,” he recited, not really sure which of them he was saying it to. “If you want to stop him and leave,” he added, to cover the uncertainty.

Gethin ran his hands over his throat in the way he often did, huffing lightly. He looked as if he might cry. Patrick knew he wouldn’t, since it wasn’t possible in limbo. He wished he could hug him, but he was afraid it might make him emotional. Patrick, not Gethin. Gethin had Stuart now.

“I can’t do this,” Gethin said. “How the heck am I meant to stop him? I’m not strong enough. I can’t even bloody look at him.”

Patrick didn’t know what to say. He knew it was hopeless, even for Gethin, who was so strong that he’d managed to live even in limbo. He’d kept his emotions, started a relationship, organised a meal supply, even managed to get the police to arrest someone – even if it was the wrong person. What had Patrick done? In two hundred fucking years.

“I just can’t hold my form when he’s there,” Gethin went on. “I lose my shit, then all I do is get more drained. What happens when he stops the van properly, Patrick? He’s gonna kill that lad. I can feel it. It’s like... a lust . But for killing .” He looked sickened to his core.

Again, Patrick couldn’t see what to say. His innards seemed to be seething, but he had to stay neutral. Unemotional. “We both have to stay calm.” It was a ludicrous thing to say. Meaningless.

Gethin gave him a look he hadn’t seen in a long time. It was the look his lover, Julius, had given him when he’d said he wasn’t going to flee to France with him. As if he thought Patrick made of stone. Patrick looked away, hating himself. He wasn’t sure if it was the look, hunger, or the fact he knew he wasn’t indifferent at all.

Perhaps it was just the knowledge that he had always been this way. Even before limbo. He felt suddenly like an abominable coward.

“What was it you told me? You thought I’d get drained and you’d have to help me cos I hadn’t learned to control my emotions?” Gethin said, without any harshness.

“I didn’t mean that, I–”

“Yeah, you did. It’s fine. I’ve heard some variation or another all my life. And look.” He threw a futile look at the partition. “You were right, weren’t you?”

He was wrong, actually – since he couldn’t help Gethin. He had scarcely any more energy than the Welshman. “None of that matters right now,” he replied. “We need to sober him up. The lad.”

Gethin just looked more troubled. “Not a chance. It’s not just alcohol – he was spiked. Roofies, probably. He won’t have peaked yet and Rohypnol lasts anywhere up to twelve hours. Not that he’ll survive them,” he added anxiously. After a while, he said, “Did I tell you he said I was a lot of bother? The killer, I mean. He said I fought too hard. I bet he started spiking them after me. Matt said he didn’t remember much.”

“Fought too hard?” Patrick bit back a roil of anger.

“Yeah. Afterwards, when he took his five hundred quid back, he said I hadn’t been worth raping or killing.” He rubbed his throat again then huffed. “He didn’t know I’d heard him, obviously.”

Again, Patrick had the urge to hug Gethin – tell him he was worth so much more than five hundred measly pounds. But he’d told him the same too, hadn’t he? You and Stuart deserve each other. I’m through helping you, Gethin. You’re not worth my time or my energy.

He felt another wash of shame. The by now familiar constriction around his neck.

Gethin and Stuart did deserve each other. It was he, Patrick, who didn’t deserve anyone. No people, no pleasure, no anything. Perhaps he’d never deserved it – perhaps that was why he’d never been allowed to have it. In life or death. “I’m sorry I was such an arse,” he began. “I know this is my–” The sound of the road changed: gravel.

Gethin frowned at him.

The van stopped.

A second later, the engine cut. There was clunking in the front of the van, a click then a steady hushing sound as the seatbelt reeled back into its holder. The sound repeated.

The driver’s door opened.

Patrick looked again at Gethin, remembering what had been done to him. Not sure what the hell he could do to stop it happening again. Then, mostly because he couldn’t sit in the van with Gethin, he softened his form and drifted through the metal panel behind him, emerging in a dark yard overhung with yews. To one side, a church loomed. A sign read: Church of St John the Baptist. Not St Michael, after all.

Patrick had got everything wrong.

The killer walked around the front of the van, stones crunching under him as he went. He opened the passenger door.

Gethin followed through this side of the van. The goldenness was gone. He looked pale, even for a ghost. Patrick distinctly saw him falter when he saw his murderer, then swallow nothing at all.

“We’re here, Finn,” the man said, wrapping an arm around the young man’s waist, pulling him to his feet. “I’ve brought you home, as you asked. You just need to walk a little further.”

Anger swelled in Patrick. He supposed he shouldn’t be shocked the killer was encouraging the young man to walk to his own murder – that his tone suggested he was performing some kindness . He’d seen enough deaths, met enough ghosts, to know murders weren’t always wall-to-wall violence. He’d walked coldly enough to his own execution.

Seeing it, though. Watching it. Knowing Finn knew nothing of his fate...

“I’ll bloody kill him,” Gethin snarled, turning himself solid as the priest supported Finn towards a side door. The young man’s feet dragged over the gravel.

Patrick’s hand shot out, turning solid just in time to yank Gethin back by the elbow. “You’re too weak!”

Gethin glared.

“Gethin, I’m too weak.” He didn’t like to admit it since physical strength had really been his sole benefit to Gethin. “If we try anything now, there are two of them. Two lots of living energy. I know you think I’m too careful, but if we rush this, we could lose our chance. Wait for him to set Finn down, and then...” And then he didn’t know what. He only knew it would mean they could focus on the murderer. Not worry about his victim.

To his surprise, Gethin didn’t fight him. His form flickered. “ You’re too...? Shit, Patrick, don’t tell me that. You’re like... well, I don’t even know what you’re doing here, do I? Why you keep bloody helping me. Duw duw .” He rubbed his eyes. “What the fuck am I gonna do?”

“Gethin, I’ll help you,” Patrick said firmly. “We’ll find a way. I mean, I will.” He and Gethin weren’t a ‘we’. They never would be. The best Patrick could do was help him to get closure and go free.

“I told you. It’s not your fight,” Gethin said. “And all I’ve done is cost you.”

Patrick didn’t get the chance to set him straight. The side door opened with a heavy clunk. The priest guided Finn over the threshold into a dimly lit stone corridor. Patrick glimpsed a narrow, dark crimson Persian carpet, then the door closed.

Patrick and Gethin drifted through it.

Patrick seemed to be feeling his body in a way he hadn’t since he’d died. Dread mostly. Sorrow. Anger that someone could treat another person’s life so lightly. He thought again of Gethin, in his flat, dying as the priest...

He pushed down the idea. His throat tightened. The priest opened another door, leading Finn into a chamber, pushing the door shut again.

Again, Patrick and Gethin drifted through.

To one side was another doorway. Through it, Patrick could see a polished mahogany desk with an upholstered chair on each side of it. Books lined the walls. The room looked warm and welcoming. On its far wall was yet another door, presumably leading to the church itself.

The room they were in was, in complete contrast, small and sparsely furnished. To Patrick’s right was a single bed, a bedside table, a wardrobe and a window draped with heavy curtains. To his left, a reading chair hunkered beneath a tall, fringed lampstand. A large, worn rug covered almost the entire floor. Beyond it was a smaller desk with a framed quote above:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil;

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;

And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God,

thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits

who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.

Amen.

St Michael.

Not a church or a name, but Michael himself. Leader of the Army of God against the powers of Hell. Against Satan. Against evil.

Patrick turned. Looked at the man.

The killer had stopped at the bed. He reached into Finn’s rear pocket, removing his mobile phone and a wedge of notes, setting them together on the bedside table. Gethin stared at the notes. Patrick felt a stirring of rage.

He pushed it down.

“I’ll keep these now,” the man said. “It’s hard for a rich man to enter Heaven. You may find this hard to believe, Finn, but your devilry will be forgiven.” He spoke soothingly. “I absolve all the men I choose, so their purity and beauty may shine for the Lord, unblemished by their fleshly sins.”

Gethin flinched.

The man lay Finn on his back, then stood, which showed the bulge in his trousers – the arousal he was already feeling at what he was about to do.

The rage stirred again. Again, Patrick pushed it away. It wouldn’t help him, Gethin or Finn. It would just drain him more.

“I even absolved the one I told you about – the one who did this to my nose.” He sighed, gesturing to it, as if Finn could see anything with his eyes shut. “The truth is you are all victims of Satan’s snares. His wiles. He takes your beauty,” he touched Finn’s face, expression tender, “then uses you for his ends, as Saint Michael says: to wander through the world for the ruin of souls . Corrupting others. My role is to undo his foulness and bring you into the Light. Clean.”

“He’s insane,” Gethin said, eyes round. “He thinks he’s doing good .”

Patrick could only stand there as the man unzipped Finn’s jeans and began to tug them down. He’d killed Gethin because he’d been beautiful ? Because he’d been gay and enjoyed himself? His own bloody life!

It struck him that other than the beauty and the fact Patrick had enjoyed himself so rarely, they were the same reasons he’d been hanged. The same reasons he’d been damned. For eternity . The noose tightened, his future shrinking further as if it were now vanishing entirely. It was all just the same thing, he thought. The same points, around and around. As if people’s bodies weren’t their own. As if their lives weren’t.

He felt his two hundred years like a plague, their emptiness opening out in front of him, instead of at his back. All that time spent trying to have another physical existence, holding himself in near perfect stasis to have it – when bastards like this were still out there, appointing themselves to take it from people. For their ‘own good’.

Because God hadn’t killed Gethin or Matt, had he? He hadn’t even killed Patrick. And he wasn’t about to kill Finn. It wasn’t God. It was people.

The priest unbuttoned his own fly. The Oxford baggies pooled around his feet. He stepped out of them, cock hard, poking out under his long shirt.

“No,” Gethin said, shouting something again about killing him.

Patrick didn’t hear it. A flood of rage welled up inside him at the exact moment a haze descended. A veil. His whole past flashed before him: everything he’d lost, again and again. Everything Gethin had lost. Everything so many had. Wrath solidified him in an instant. He barely had to move. He beat Gethin to the man. He registered the thump his solid form made as it crashed into the priest, the winded expulsion of air from the man, the fact the priest had tripped on something. Was falling.

Patrick didn’t care. He wanted the man to fall. Wanted him on his back. Wanted him to die. Patrick’s outrage, his agony , at everything he’d endured for the last two and half centuries – so meticulously resisted, for so long – outstripped everything. Outstripped him. His own anger was all he could see. All he could feel . And he could feel it. He could feel, at last.

Not just pain. Not just anger.

The need for vengeance.

He didn’t think about how he would kill the man. He didn’t have to. Short of pushing him off a bridge, there was only one way he knew of for a ghost to kill a living man.

The same way he’d killed the man all those years ago – by draining every last bit of life from him. It was the perfect death for the man, the perfect punishment for taking all the life from Gethin, from Matt, from those other men. Just as he’d planned to take it from Finn. Just as the other priest had taken Patrick’s life.

And even better, the priest would be awake for his death. As Patrick had been. He’d see every invisible moment. So he’d be terrified too, certain a demon had caught up with him at last: that he was being savaged and judged. Sucked straight to Hell.

He looked down at the man’s body.

At his dick.

Which was still hard.

Ready for Finn , Patrick told himself. As ready as any man he, Patrick, had ever fellated in the night.

He thought of Gethin’s face. His rage when he’d first seen him do it to Stuart.

His throat tightened.

“Uh... Patrick?”

Gethin’s voice.

Patrick kept looking. It was different, he told himself sternly. He could do this. The priest was a monster. He deserved it. He had raped Gethin with this cock.

It just made him feel even less inclined.

If he didn’t do something, though... what about Finn?

The killer gasped, arms and legs moving, staring around wildly as he tried to propel himself away, half-naked, from a force he couldn’t even see.

Patrick just stood there, panic beginning to grip him. He hadn’t even realised he’d wanted vengeance – and now he’d nearly killed a man because of it.

Killed a murderer , he reminded himself.

Except he was a murderer too. And a monster. Wasn’t he?

“Patrick, he’s getting up!” Gethin yelled. Patrick hadn’t even been looking at the man.

The priest scrambled to his feet, crossing himself, spit spraying as he started muttering something: “Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour.”

Did he mean Patrick? The priest was surely the devil. The priest was the monster.

The man pushed the curtain half-open, reaching behind it to grab a wooden box. Whether through the intensity of his arousal about Finn or outright terror, his cock was still sticking out rigidly in front of him, swaying in mid-air as he pulled up the lid.

Gethin turned away, retching.

Patrick couldn’t move. He knew he was still solid. He couldn’t be anything but solid: his entire form was pulsing. Not just with rage, but with fear : Of what might happen to Finn if he, Patrick, failed. Of what might happen to Gethin. Would he just stand there retching until he lost all his energy and died, without achieving his aim?

And of what might happen to him. The noose tightened. He was back on the gallows, throat being crushed, black pressure building in his head, panic in his heart as his future tapered into nothingness.

The same thing he’d kept feeling ever since he’d met Gethin.

The priest had taken the lid off a thick, glass bottle. Without a word, he sloshed it in Patrick’s face.

Patrick watched the man’s face morph, eyes widening, a strange rabidity filling his features.

This again.

“Demon!” the killer snarled, shaking the rest of the bottle in his direction, slopping more water on him. It didn’t burn. Water didn’t. Even supposedly holy water. But it would show the priest someone was there. Someone invisible. It would show him where they were standing.

He slung the empty bottle at Patrick then launched himself after it.

Patrick didn’t feel the floor hit his back. He was back to feeling nothing at all. All he knew, as the man landed on top of him, savage and enraged, was that he had to stay solid. If he didn’t, the priest would have all his energy in seconds.

Patrick wouldn’t die, of course – not completely – but Finn would. And Gethin would fail. And Patrick would go out of his mind for the next two centuries, blaming himself for all of it. Losing all control. He knew what he was capable of when that happened. He had to stay solid.

Vaguely, he saw Gethin straighten up, heard him roar something. He couldn’t focus on it. Hands gripped his throat. Squeezed.

Patrick struggled, trying to push the man off.

“Demon!” the man spat again. All Patrick could see was every priest who’d ever snarled it at him – face after face, beginning with this one, flicking back, back, back, ending with the one who’d hanged him. The one who’d watched Patrick choke to death. Patrick had no air to lose this time, but his energy was draining so fast, he might have been sand in the man’s fingers.

Hands appeared – Gethin’s, he supposed – slipping through the priest’s head, trying to drag him away, again and again. The Welshman looked out of his mind, Patrick registered. Probably, he could see his own death happening all over again too. The throttling. The priest’s half-naked body. Finn on the bed.

“Jesus, Patrick, what the fuck can I do ?” Gethin yelled.

Patrick couldn’t answer. He already knew he couldn’t keep this up. He was going to be drained into the nearest thing to non-existence possible. And there was nothing he could do. He wished he could have told Gethin before it happened that he was sorry for storming off, that it hadn’t been Stuart he’d wanted, that he’d known Gethin wouldn’t want him so he’d let his emotions get in the way. His jealousy. Because of that, Gethin would have to watch Finn die too – in exactly the way he’d died. Gethin had deserved better than that. He’d deserved to bring his killer to justice.

The killer’s head jerked violently to one side. Out of nowhere, glass showered down.

There was a loud roar Patrick knew, dimly, was Gethin’s. Then a dull, grim crackling sound.

The priest’s glare intensified eerily.

Blood slid down his cheek, dripping into Patrick’s face. Spattering his lip.

Something pulled the priest’s head back a bit, then a broken bottle, jagged edges crimson with blood, clunked to the floor beside him, as if dropped there. As if Gethin hadn’t been able to hold it anymore.

From the corner of Patrick’s eye, he saw ribbons of bright energy begin to spill.

Above him, the flow of blood intensified. The killer’s grip tightened, as if he were panicking. Patrick tried harder to focus, to save Finn for Gethin, to stop the priest before it was too late. He knew he was losing. The difficulty of holding his form together under the priest’s body was just too much.

Patrick had lost too much strength. He was too hungry.

The blood was coming in rivulets now.

Don’t lick it , he told himself. Not drinking blood was the only barrier he still had between himself and utter inhumanity. He closed his mouth to resist it, thinking of Gethin, of how disgusted he’d been at Patrick feeding from men. Of how hard Gethin had fought to stop this man. Of the fact that if the priest survived, Finn would die.

The blood just pooled along the seam of his lips.

The priest’s fingers loosened slightly, head sagging a little, which made the blood spill faster down his cheek. Patrick still couldn’t move. Nor could he drop his form. As long as the killer was alive, he was stuck here, being bled upon until he couldn’t hold his form anymore.

At which point, his death – or the closest thing to it – would be instant.

He turned his head, trying to see Gethin one last time. He caught the edge of a fading ribbon then the killer’s head fell on his face. The man gave an odd little grunt, like he was pulling himself together. Blood poured over Patrick’s mouth.

Patrick was so hungry.

He didn’t want it, he told himself. Of all the blood in all of Britain, the blood of Gethin’s odious, priestly killer was the last blood he’d choose. He wanted nothing from it, any more than he’d wanted anything from the man’s cock. Even his death.

But if he didn’t...

A bright ribbon swirled beside him. Gethin, still hanging on .

As if he’s waiting for something , Patrick thought.

To be able to die free, perhaps. Resolved.

For the first time in his death, tears pricked his eyes.

He knew Gethin wanted to move on. He’d always said so, hadn’t he: stopping his killer was the only thing that had ever held him here.

This , now, was the only way Patrick could help him.

The priest made another noise.

Patrick barely heard it. His lips opened. Liquid spilled in.

There was less than he’d thought, and he was far too weak to feel any warmth from it. There was no taste – or if there was, he couldn’t taste it – but it was thinner than come. Smoother. Deeper.

Different.

The hunger grew. The desire.

For just a second, he resisted it: an automatic response by now. Then he thought of Gethin, and turned towards it, into it, burying his face in the man’s hair as he’d once buried his nose in Stuart’s. Pulling at the source. Drinking.

The ribbons danced a little, beginning to fade. Breaking the bottle had been Gethin’s last act. He’d summoned his very last bit of energy to save Patrick . And now, it was leaving. All of Gethin’s colourful, beautiful energy, disappearing, at last, from life.

If not resolved, then trusting Patrick to finish it at last.

He closed his eyes against the pain, focusing on the blood, continuing to pull it in, to drink it down. Incredibly, he could already feel it lighting his cells, filling him, rejuvenating everything. It was, he realised, far stronger than semen. He’d had no idea he was this thirsty. So in need.

Gethin’s death was a good thing, he told himself. Gethin would be free now, as he always should have been. He should never, ever have been here. He was too good for limbo.

Patrick was the only one who’d stay.

Without Gethin.

He didn’t stop. He pushed in harder, the skull giving easily, which meant Gethin had broken it. Blood gushed over him, swamping his vision. He let it, since not being able to see was less painful. It spilled around him, too much for his mouth to hold. He began to guzzle, sobbing, pressing even deeper, welcoming it into his throat. It was like an epiphany: two hundred years of effort and penance, of composed, measured, joyless patience. All that time and now he saw: he could have just done this.

If only he hadn’t cared so much about being human.

The blood was flowing now, streaming and pulsing. More and more. Blood everywhere, burying the agony, which was like nothing he’d ever known.

And Patrick drank – losing himself in it.