Pitch Black

"What?!" I yelled, astonished. "You've wasted ten years looking for someone?!"

"I tend to slack off and procrastinate. I was just enjoying my time in the jolly-old land of living." He replied. "But after a while I started to get scared. Extremely scared. So I came to Huntington's, the old bording school I went to around the time Caesar was assigned to me and I was given a second chance, when it was first built. it was perfect. This school eminates darkness, and no one would ever notice it. It was a perfect place to hide from the council until I got myself together."

I remembered somthing else just then... something he had said, and quotes from Moon and Light in what seemed like such a long time ago started to run and jumble themselves in my head...

No one is really who they seem at first... they simply use the darkness of the school to hide themselves, for their own reasons...

Stars fading from a sky as the light became more prominent in the Moon's life... Lynn...

You have something i want and need... and I have something you want and need...

My blood and my soul... my happiness...

I shall hide here, in the dark sky, with you... I've escaped from the Sun... no one looks where it's dark...

The Moon secretly hoped the Sun would not find out that one of his subjects had disapeared, lest they both be punished for it...

You will need me one day, as I need you right now.

"So Caesar really did write your life story..." I said quietly.

"Since this body was created for my life on the land of the living with him, he had a large part in coming up with my fate. He encrypted it in that book." Xavier said with a sad smile, and he suddenly began to unbutton his uniform shirt.

"You know how it said that the Sun was sending an army after the beam of light to recapture him?" He asked. I nodded slowly, and he shed his shirt off and turned around.

He was wearing the gold chain I had seen before, hung with the odd symbol. But, on the entirety of his back, I saw that there was an even larger detailed tattoo on it with the same symbol. It was glowing a fierce red, two large, detailed, and menacing long-nailed and fingered hands encircling a huge flame.

"They are the Sun." Xavier said. "This is the Blood Society's Seal symbol. And the glowing means that they know where I am, like a warning. It's how they find me. I desgined it myself." He turned around, still smiling. "The closer they get, the brighter it glows and the more it burns." He put his shirt back on.

"And are you not scared at all?" I asked him.

"Jack... I'm terrified." He still kept his smile, but it wavered a little, and for the first time that I had ever seen him, a tear escaped his eye and rolled down his cheek. "I've never been more scared in my entire life, and I've been around for quite a while."

I looked at him, feeling my heart break. I wanted to help him so bad, I couldn't stand to see him like this. I would rather him go back to Hell in honors than have him ripped away from me. I took him in my arms and squeezed him as tight as I could.

"Please, Xavier, just take my soul, now." I whispered. "Just take it. I want you to have it. I'd rather be soulless knowing that you're not dead than having a soul and knowing you are."

He shook his head. "I'm not doing that to you Jack, no matter how many times you persist. I love you."

My heart swole.

He said he loved me.

He loved me...

I tried not to let the thought overwhem me. Now wasn't the time to think about it. "We can hide." I said, withdrawing from and looking at him. "We can go somewhere where they couldn't find you."

"It'll never work..." he said, shaking his head. "I thought I could hide from them, but I can't, it's impossible-"

"Nothing is impossible." I said sternly. "We can try. We can obscure the tattoo somehow, remove it if we have to-"

"It's permanent."

"Well then... is there any way we can disturb the connection? To give us time?"

"Well..." Xavier thought. "I'm also binded to them because I was forced to make a Blood Promise with the Master when I first came to hell. If I shed the blood of this body from the seal, it can disturb the connection."

"So, you're saying that you'll have to slit your back and bleed out to avoid them?" I said, alarmed. It seems as if Xavier could never win. Either way, he would still be in pain. He nodded

"School gets out in two weeks." Xavier said. "I'd have to bleed every day to throw off the connection, and that still won't be enough. They'd find me here and terrorize the entire school..." He looked down at the floor. "I don't want to go back... it's like not being able to sleep but still having the same nightmare relived over and over again... every day I see my parents laying in bed with their skin and eyes getting yellower and yellower every day and spreading with the most horrid rashes I've ever seen... vomitting black constantly into buckets.... strange men in white coats coming in to take them to a sick house and qarrantine them away from the world... hearing that they wouldn't survive and two days later getting news that they had fianlly died... that poor little boy I beat over and over again until he stopped moving and blood was... everywhere... and then... I had gotten the yellow fever... and all I could feel was pain and I suffered so much..." it seemed like remembering all this was causing him a great deal of pain itself. "And then the murder of my second father... I... he was all I had and I had destroyed him..." he voice began to break, and tears streamed down his face. I looked at me desperatly. "I don't want to go back. I don't. I would kill myself if that were an option but you have to live forever to suffer... and I've put in over 200 years." He took my hand in his shaking one and squeezed it, as though hoping desperatly that it would give him strength.

"Please... I implore you... help me..."

"Just tell me what to do," I said, feeling myself begin to tremble. "Tell me and I will strain to the best of my ability."

A small and trembling smile took his lips, and he embraced him tightly, his whole body shaking.

"Thank you..." he said over and over again. "Thank you, thank you, thank you..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Xavier told me that there were only a few ways available to him that could save him. Hell had him bound, so he could not be forgiven and go to Heaven. He refused to take my soul now that I was Promised to him, and refused to use anyone else since he no longer wanted to carry out his Society's tradition of ruining lives.

But he said he could attempt to carry out the process the Caesar had gone through to be forgiven and go to Heaven. He said that Caesar killed five men, and had been in Hell for 1,000 years when he was assigned to Xavier as he mentor to carry out his Blood Promises and be forgiven. When they lived a second life together, Caesar prayed every day for two hours about the blessing he must have been bestowed on to be the father of Xavier, and for Xavier himself to live as long as he could and not be sent back to Hell. He did this for seven years straight, and Xavier hadn't seen him when he was sent down again, meaning only one thing; he was with God. Xavier said he was willing to pray for twelve hours straight, and if he did this while shedding the blood from his back, he might be forgiven in a matter of months. He didn't quite understand it himself, but he said that when he was younger his parents would read the bible to him and say that Jesus would sacrifice for people that sacrificed for him. He would bleed from his palms just as God's son had done, sacrificed just as his own father had done for him. I was astounded by this change of heart from him. I used to think of him as the most evil thing on this earth, but now? He was ready to change just so he wouldn't have to go back. It made me proud of him. I could tell he didn't quite understand religion, which was expected, but he was willing to do anything to repent, even if, originally, he was a creature of Hell.

He wanted to do this all in the comfort of his home, and making a small shrine in it would be more beneficial, so he asked me to write to my parents and give them an excuse that I wouldn't be coming home for a few months. I did, telling them that I would be staying at Huntington's for summer school tutoring to younger students. They were suspicious at first, but eventually they warmed up to the idea. We had to be quick, so we both decided we would sneak out of the school early and take an early train to Yorkshire, where his mansion was. That was scheduled to be 9 days before school was out. It would cost me a hefty grade price, but at this point I would do anything.

Xavier and I were soon inseperable. I made sure I was with him as often as I could be, and spent most of my spare time and evenings with him. Of course, I never forgot Brandon, who was still in the infirmary. His beating from Xavier had given him damage to his head and caused him to slip into frequent unconciousness. He had to leave early as well, because he wasn't even fit to go to his classes and pay attention long enough without going unconcious. On the day he was leaving, I visited him, and told him all of my plans.

I received a shake of his head as a response. "So, now you know what he's about, but you still decide to stay with him." He said. "Even after he nearly slaughtered your best friend. Craziness, Jack, you're both insane."

"Well, he's willing to change it," I said. "He said that he couldn't be more sorry about what he did to you. He's going to pray for you too, and try and resolve his violent tendencies. He's a good man now, Brandon."

"Sounds like it, if he's willing to kneel in front of a shrine for twelve hours and pray while getting his back slit. You have quite an influence on him."

I smiled. "Not just that... he doesn't want to return to hell."

"Pretty great that you're doing all this for him though, Jack." He said. "You must really care about him. I'm guessing this means that you two are...?"

"Are what?" I asked, confused.

"Seeing each other?"

"Oh..." I felt my face go red. "Yes, I suppose one could say that..."

"Well, I didn't know that's how you were, Jack." Brandon said, matter-of-factly. He didn't seem phased by it at all, which relieved me. "We've been friends for years now, you never bothered to tell me?"

"I never knew I was until recently." I shrugged. "I guess it's just not the fact that he's male... it's just... him."

"Him, huh?" Brandon chuckled. "Well, personally, I don't like the man since he's costing me to lose a good chunk of my grade behind and I have to do about two weeks of summer school because of it. But, I ask you this... be careful, Jack. What you're doing isn't exactly safe. You're messing around with religious happenings, and the Devil himself, associating yourself with Xavier could be just as bad for you too.

"I know." I said, looking down. "But I have to do it. I want to help him. And if it means that we're both getting sent down, or up, whatever outcome comes... then that's how it'll happen."

Brandon sighed, and said he understood. His parents came in then with a wheelchair, and he wished me luck as I helped them heave him into the wheelchair and wheel him back out. I would miss him immensly, and would write to him as much as I could. Because if things didn't go in my favor, that would probably be the last time I would ever see Brandon Forde, and him knowing that as well put us both is a huge state of worry for each other.

All of this caused me stress, and Xavier saw this. That night, he managed to coax me into relaxation, I relieved my stress on Xavier by his insisting, verbally and sexually. For a while, I did forget my problems, and just focused on being with him, in his arms as he planted soft kisses on my forehead afterwards. The tattoo on his back was burning greatly and I knew it caused him a great deal of pain, but even that didn't bother him at the moment. It felt hot to the touch when my hand brushed against it. It have me a dull reminder that we didn't have much time left before he might be found.

"Are you still sure that you want to go through this?" He asked me in a soft voice. "This is dangerous, and could probably drag ou down with me."

"Yes, of course," I said. "I'll be by your side until the very end."

He smiled, and hugged me closer to him. "I knew there was something about you, but I should have realized I was blessed already with my own angel when I met you, Jack."