Reach Out For The Sunrise Ch. 09

"How are you doing that?" the vampire asked softly. "You're keeping me out, and...you know what I... what I am. Don't you? How?"

He seemed genuinely curious, his questions asked mildly rather than demandingly. Xavier didn't let his guard down though. That cold hand was still restraining him.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he lied, and it sounded flimsy even to his own ears.

"Let's not play, hmmm? You are keeping me out of your head but I can still see a lie."

"What do you want?" Xavier asked.

"As I said, I want to know how you comprehend what I am," the vampire repeated.

Xavier shook his head. "I don't know."

For the first time a little impatience crept into the vampire's voice. "Come now... I have not threatened you, I stopped that man from hurting you... I only want to know how you sensed me. When you looked at me you knew, right away, before you ran. I never met a mortal that could do that."

Xavier swallowed, his throat suddenly very dry. "I told you, I don't know. I mean, how do you know when you're hungry, or when you have to sleep? You just do, right? How do I explain that to someone? I looked at you and just knew. I felt it."

The vampire contemplated this for a moment. "What is your name?"

"Xavier," he answered, just a little reluctant. He supposed giving his name wasn't really a big deal.

"Xavier...?" the vampire prompted.

"Gavrilov."

"Xavier Gavrilov." His interrogator turned the words over in his mouth, savouring them with a curious smile. "Are you a Russian-American then?"

"I was born in east Los Angeles, California. That's about as far from Moscow as you can get, comrade. I'm all American."

The vampire chuckled and it lightened his face; made him look even younger. "Sorry. I have a few American friends that like to trace their ancestry. I know more about transatlantic diasporas than I ever wanted to."

"Whatever floats their boat. Can you let go of me now?" For whatever reason Xavier was rapidly losing his fear. He wasn't sure if it was the way the vampire seemed so mild and puzzled, or if he was just so tired he was beyond the point of caring what happened.

The vampire slowly released his wrist. Xavier refrained from rubbing the circulation back into it, though he flexed his fingers awkwardly.

"What's your name?"

The vampire hesitated just a second, no more. "Nicolas Gulliard."

"Ok, now look Nick..."

"Nicolas!"

Xavier pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He was getting a headache. "Nicolas. I'm really beat. I want to go in and get some sleep. Thank you... for stopping him, in the alley. I'm sorry I couldn't answer your questions better. Can I just...?" He waved toward the door and the vampire nodded his head. Xavier hit the buzzer. A moment later Xavier heard the locks turning. Nicolas smiled but he was gone before Marco pulled the front door open. With a grateful sigh Xavier stumbled in.

His life just kept getting weirder and weirder.

"What are you doing here?" Marco asked. "I thought you'd be out all night with Palo."

Xav shook his head. "Change of plans. You got any aspirin?" He asked, already heading toward the fridge for some orange juice. The thought to tell Marco what Palo had done didn't cross his mind. He was already mentally compartmentalising what had happened and dropping it down a well. All gone! Like it never happened.

Marco brought him a bottle of aspirin and Xavier shook a few out into his palm and swallowed them. Marco was frowning at him and grabbed his chin, turning his face a bit.

"Someone hit you?" the photographer asked, visibly aghast.

Xavier pulled away from him. "Don't worry, it'll be gone by morning. I don't bruise that easy."

He left his empty glass on the counter and headed toward the bedroom. Marco frowned after him but said nothing.

RAYNE:

It was a bit like swimming underwater in the dark. He seemed to have been swimming for hours, trying to pull himself towards the surface. He could see the light, shimmering tormentingly, just out of reach and the harder he pulled to get to it the further away it seemed to slide as if he was a dead weight, sinking deeper and deeper.

He could not breathe. The pain in his chest was too hard and too wide to work around. It was like a boulder between his ribs, blocking all his attempts to draw in air. He felt weak from fighting it, but at the same time he knew that he must. The only thing that kept him swimming desperately minute after minute was the knowledge that Xavier was there, somewhere beyond the surface. He could feel the boy's shock and sadness. There was a numb spot somewhere in Xav's passionate heart that matched the hollow in his own.

He ached to just reach out and touch that sweet, sorrowful, lovely face; to brush the tears away; to kiss him gently even if it was for the last time. If he died, would Xavier just carry on? Might he meet someone else who would care for him and love him like he deserved; the way that Rayne Wylde had not been able to? Would he forget in time how much they had shared and how sweet it might have been if they could only live a life untouched by horror and death and the dark shadows of the past?

Rayne hoped so, fervently. But still he kept on swimming. He would not give up just yet, even though his limbs were so cold that he could not longer feel his hands or his feet. It was darker now.

Soon the light would go out and he would finally be able to rest.

PARIS:

As a couple of young men from la Griffe were helping to load Rayne's body into the back of a small, black Daihatsu van, Mikka took a moment to call Patrick and deliver an update, which was received with sombre optimism. His lover wanted to come straight to Paris but Mikka talked him out of it. The journey to Napoli had already taken more out of PJ McNamara than he cared to admit and Mikka had no desire to see him get sick because he was overdoing things. He promised to ring again in the evening or as soon as there was a change in Rayne's condition.

He then called Dominic Warren, who had been checking out a couple of the other clubs. Warren was understandably elated at the news that the vampire had been found but like Patrick his mood sobered as Mikka relayed the circumstances in more detail.

"You said they were moving him. Where to?" Dominic sounded anxious.

"We have a studio in an old warehouse about a kilometre from the hotel," Mikka told him. "I was going to take him there. We have the space to hide him."

"Do you know where the Institut Curie is?" Warren asked him.

"I think so. South of the river, isn't it? Near the Sorbonne?" Mikka ran a hand through his hair.

The boys had Rayne in the van now and were looking at him expectantly. He held up a hand, asking them silently for five minutes.

"Take him there, I will meet you," Warren said breathlessly. He sounded as if he was on the move.

"I think that maybe Henning was right," Mikka told him as he waved the van driver towards the front of the vehicle and climbed in beside him, scribbling their location down on a piece of paper from his diary and watching distractedly as the young Frenchman programmed it into his sat-nav. "He could be healing himself."

"What makes you think so?" Warren asked him curiously.

"I was just checking on him before they put him the van. His skin feels warmer. I'm sure I am not imagining it."

For a moment Warren said nothing. Mikka could hear him breathing hard and felt his heart stop. He did not like that portentous silence one little bit.

"What?" he asked ominously.

"I've know Rayne Wylde for a lot of years," Dominic Warren said, tersely. "He is never warm. Oh, Bright Lady, this is bad!"

"Bad?" Mikka made a circling gesture with his free hand telling the driver to get a move on. It earned him a dirty look but the youth did at least start the engine.

"What is it?" Mikka asked, when Dominic did not speak right away, feeling real fear now.

"Mikkal, you need to get him to the institut as soon as possible, do you hear me?" the older man's voice instructed in his left ear.

"Why would we...?" Mikka broke off as Warren continued like he had not spoken.

"We need to bring his body temperature right down. Ideally we need a cryonic chamber but a chest freezer would probably do in the short term. He mustn't get any warmer, Mikkal."

"Are you going to explain why?" the Finn asked him irritably.

Again there was a brief silence. The van pulled out into the busy evening traffic and set off towards the river.

"He is beginning to decompose," the vampire expert replied at last, in a slightly strained voice. "That is what you could feel. The heat is a part of the process, his body is breaking down slowly. We need to... to cool him to a degree that kills the bacteria completely. That will stop the rot and maybe we can get him to take blood then. If his body accepts new blood then it may try to heal itself."

"That is more than one maybe," Mikka ventured, sounding worried. "What if none of that works?"

Again Lord Warren was silent but Mikka could hear him struggling for breath as if he was trying not to shed tears.

"He will die?" Mikka felt the quiver at the edge of his own voice as he asked the question. He and Wylde had not always seen eye to eye but the news of his death would destroy Patrick and he could not bear that.

"He is already dead, Mikkal. If we cannot get his body to heal naturally, in a little more than a couple of days he will be bones and a few scraps of dried flesh, nothing more." Warren took a long, determined breath. "I never believed I would live to see this."

"Where would we get the blood from?" Mikka asked practically. "And how do we get him to drink it if he can't even swallow?"

"That bit is easy enough," Dominic said more decisively. "There is matched blood in an ice box at the Institut Curie. I have a friend who works there," he added pre-empting the next question. "The important thing is to stop the decay first. Then we can try and revive him. If we can get his body to heal naturally it will combat the decomposition without our help."

"And if it can't?" Mikka sounded doubtful.

"Then we will have to be resourceful and think of something else." Dominic's tone of voice now defied arguments. Wisely Mikka kept his mouth shut on the myriad reasons why this was already a lost cause. The van took a corner on two wheels and he grabbed at one of the door handles and glared at the driver but did not say anything at all.


Warren was already at the Institut by the time the van had fought its way down a narrow Parisian back road beyond the Parthenon. He was waiting outside the modern multistory block of the Hospital with a man in a green smock and they waved Mikka's driver through to the back of the building right away.

Within minutes the black bodybag was on a gurney and they were in an elevator on their way into the heart of the facility. Dominic was already conversing in urgent French with the dark, handsome, Arabic-looking fellow in doctor's scrubs. The van driver had departed without a word or a backward look, only happy to get the task over with.

Mikka felt suddenly superfluous as Lord Warren took over, handling the situation as smoothly as a born diplomat. His French was fast and very good. If the doctor was at all bemused by anything Warren was telling him it did not show on his face. In fact nothing showed up in his expression at all until they had the bodybag on the table and he slowly unzipped it. Even Mikka understood without needing a translation.

"Il est mort, totalement," the doctor said, without even a cursory application of the stethoscope.

Dominic said something rapid and soothing and the young doctor looked at him with raised eyebrows. Lord Warren kept talking as his medical companion continued his cursory examination of the corpse. The look of incredulity did not leave the young man's face but nor did he stop what he was doing; carefully lifting Rayne's hands and moving his fingers to assess the state of his body, then investigating the wounds on his torso.

"How long did Szarbo reckon he'd been down?" Dominic asked quietly in English and it took Mikka a couple of seconds to realise that the question was aimed at him.

"Ummm... since the night before last," he said awkwardly.

Dominic translated and the doctor looked at them both again, eyebrows raised. He shook his head a couple of times. At once Dominic was arguing with him; not violently but in a relentless, soothing tone that was designed to be persuasive in any tongue. Mikka let a humourless smile twitch the corners of his mouth as he watched the doctor fall to that beguiling manner.

He still wore an expression of disbelief as he turned away to make some arrangements but Dominic looked satisfied and Mikka asked; "Will he help?"

"I think so. This is a scientific research hospital, how could he resist something like this? A genuine vampire on his operating table? How many scientists would kill for the chance to examine one of the Undead?" Dominic flashed a tight smile.

"And what happens next? Will they ever let him go, even if he does revive?" Mikka asked sceptically.

"We'll cross that bridge once we've saved his Unlife," Warren said tersely. "For now, we let them get on with the serious business. They have the facilities here to freeze him and kill the bacteria that is making him... warm. When he comes out of the cryo-chamber they can thaw him gently and start the transfusions. Then we see if we can start his heart."

"And if we can't?" Mikka asked, still unconvinced.

"We will," Dominic insisted. "If these guys can't do it, no one can."


RAYNE:

It was a different kind of cold that he was experiencing now. Suddenly the darkness was not so intense but the cold was like millions of tiny knives sliding into his veins. It numbed everything, leaving him feeling drowsy and distant. Maybe this was it, the end of everything, at last. All his hopes, all his desperate desires were slowly fading, as if they had been mothballed; wrapped up in bubble wrap and put away one by one. The pain was sliding away, replaced by the peculiar pricking in his blood that seemed to be spreading right through his body.

No more pain. No more worry. No more tears or laughter. He would not be needing them any more. Nothing he could do about it now.

Nothing.

It would be nice to sleep. To stop.


PARIS:

In the end they did not keep Rayne in the cryonic chamber for very long at all. As the vampire was manoeuvred in and out of the small, glass-walled room on a gurney, one of the medical assistants explained in broken English what was going on.

"He will freeze no more over five minutes," the young man said earnestly to Mikka.

"More than that and they cannot work on him without doing more damage," Dominic added, never taking his eyes off the small body on the trolley beyond the glass partition. Lord Warren had been talking to the medical team and now he watched, transfixed as they wheeled him into the aluminium pod, sealed the doors and liquid nitrogen was pumped through the tiny, enclosed space.

It seemed like the longest five minutes of his life. Mikka exhaled a shuddering breath when finally a bleeper sounded and a small green light came on above the door. Dry ice billowed out into the room as they opened the chamber and the gurney was removed by men in heavy coveralls and gloves.

"Process has only prior use in freezing ones already dead," the young medic explained awkwardly. "We have not cause for revive anyone before. This is never tried before this day."

"They never tried to freeze the Undead before though," Dominic mused, tapping a long finger nervously against his lips as he watched them begin to slow process of feeding pre-warmed blood into Rayne Wylde's veins.

Initially they injected about a litre of O negative into him, whilst the team wired him up to a set of machines that would basically act as a life support. Mikka chewed on his lower lip as the young medic said; "This machine here nearest is moving blood through his body. When circulation is complete then they will try to mend heart."

"He's full of holes," Mikka said distractedly. "Just as soon as they pump it into him he's gonna bleed out."

"The blood will begin to heal him," Dominic said, sounding more certain than he looked.

"You hope!"

For a moment now the older man turned his head, looking critically at Mikka. In a tight little voice he fired back; "If you can't pretend to be optimistic, perhaps you would like to go and be a pessimist somewhere else. The negativity coming off you is ruining my concentration."

"What exactly are you concentrating on?" Mikka asked bitterly. "I mean, it's all out there. Literally!" He waved a hand towards the surgical team now at work on Rayne's damaged stomach and ribs. "You can see it!"

"I am communing with my Goddess," Dominic told him, very stiffly. "Now if you have no faith of your own I suggest that you at least try to hope that something is out there looking after him!"

They bristled at one another in hostile silence for a little longer, then Mikka inhaled a long breath and let it out all at once in an explosive sigh. He rose to his feet and left the room without a word. Dominic turned back towards the glass panel dividing the area in which they had been waiting from the space below where the medical team were still struggling to keep Rayne Wylde from bleeding out all over the floor.


Over the course of the next few hours, the team of doctors and scientists wrestled with the problem of how to keep their patient's circulation flowing when his heart and lungs were beyond normal function. He was on artificial bypass, a system used for patients awaiting a heart transplant. A prosthetic balloon was used to inflate the punctured left lung so that another machine could breathe for him. In the meantime the doctors got to work stitching him up as well as they could in an attempt to make him retain the blood they were transfusing into him. So far nearly ten litres had hit the deck. But the rate of spillage was slowing.

How much of that was down to their attempts to repair the damage and how much was down to Rayne it was hard to say.

Dominic's eyes were closed now and his lips moved in a silent prayer, repeated over and over, as his fingers moved around the perfect ring of sandstone hanging from a silk cord around his neck. It was gone midnight when Mikka finally cooled down enough to return and just the sight of the disconsolate Englishman, sitting huddled in a chair, trying not to weep, melted his bitterness. He bent and put his arms around Dominic, pulling him close and the other man turned hungrily toward him, sobbing in his arms like a child.

Mikka took him out once he had calmed down and brought him a styrofoam cup of disgusting coffee. Sitting across from the older man he held up a couple of miniature bottles of alcohol purchased from a shop across the street.

"Vodka or whisky?" he asked and smiled as Warren reached automatically for the little bottle of scotch. "I was hoping you would say that!"

Dominic decanted the whole bottle into his coffee and threw it back with a grimace. "That improves it slightly. Do you have any more?" he asked in a hoarse-sounding voice.

Mikka took a swig from the vodka miniature then offered it, but Warren shook his head. "I should try and keep a clear head."

"When did you last sleep?" Mikka asked him sympathetically. He was thinking that this morning, lying sprawled in bed with Trent, talking to PJ on the phone seemed a lifetime away.

Dominic Warren had been in Paris by breakfast time so he must have set off at the crack of dawn. He smiled weakly now. "Just before PJ woke me in the middle of the fucking night and sent me out on this wild hunt!"