Chapter 428: So Warm (Part Two)

For Ignatious, the moment his tongue first tasted Heila’s blood, he realized that nothing he’d ever been told about the power of a witch’s blood compared to the reality of what she offered him. The taste of her blood was sweet, cool, and soothing, like a cup of crystal clear water from a mountain spring on a hot summer day.

The first mouthful he swallowed eased the pain of his burns and soothed the raw, sharp hunger that burned within him, but it did nothing to slake his thirst for more. It was the second mouthful of blood, however, that made him pause with the realization that Heila was feeding him more than just her blood.

Tears burst unbidden from his eyes as Heila’s soft, cleansing energy washed over parts of his innermost being that he’d thought long buried and burned to ash by the torture of time. Ghosts of his victims drifted behind his dark eyes as he relived the maddening days when Hamdi drove him to the drink of starvation before hurling a fresh, innocent victim into the dark cell he’d been trapped in.

And as the ghosts appeared before Ignatious, they appeared in Heila’s eyes as well. Cecile had once warned her that a healer must experience the pain of the wounds they wished to heal as part of the price of curing that which nothing but a witch’s magic could cure. At the time, she’d thought it applied only to physical wounds, but it seemed like she would have to face Ignatious’s ghosts along with him.

"This isn’t you," Heila whispered softly as she directed more of her healing waters toward the painful stains of guilt and self-recrimination that haunted him. "You didn’t choose this," she added in an even softer voice that only a vampire’s hearing could have heard over the bitter winds sweeping across the mountainside.

Ignatious made a soft, helpless noise as he swallowed again, taking in both the strength that Heila offered and the gentle waters of absolution that soothed his wounded soul. Again and again, they faced the ghosts that haunted the fallen Inquisitor, whether they were the victims who fell to his claws and fangs as a vampire or the innocent humans caught up in the Inquisition’s relentless search for wickedness, they faced them all together.

Beside them, Kurtz watched in open-mouthed amazement as the powerful vampire wept in the diminutive witch’s arms. He didn’t understand what she was doing to him to cause the older man to weep like a babe, but whatever she was doing, it went far beyond simple tears.

Already, the burns on Ignatious’s neck had vanished, replaced by flesh so smooth and perfect that it looked like it had never been touched by the horrifying flames of the Holy Flame Blade. Even the vampire’s arms had begun to recover. Bone was no longer visible underneath the blackened flesh, and his muscles and tendons were growing back fast enough to be seen by the naked eye.

Unfortunately, Heilas outpouring of cleansing water could only do so much for the injured vampire, and she was already approaching her limits after scrubbing away less than half of the filth and soot that clung to the fallen Inquisitor’s heart. Some stains had been ground so deeply into him that they seemed to have become a permanent part of who he was, and even if she wanted to, there was nothing Heila could do to wash them away.

"Show me something else," Heila whispered as she tightened her grip on the feeding vampire. Her body had grown colder and colder as she used the frigid water energy of the mountainside to wash away what hurts she could, but now she desperately needed to feel more of Ignatious’s warmth.

Her arms felt heavy as lead, and the hand not currently offered to Ignatious’s fangs had begun to tremble uncontrollably. Each beat of her heart now seemed to come slower than the last, pumping blood that felt thin and cold through her increasingly pallid flesh.

Dark spots danced at the edges of her vision, and it took all her concentration just to maintain the connection between them. The air around her no longer felt cold, her body had grown too numb to register the difference between the cold within her and the chill of the mountain air.

At this point, she knew that she could pull back before the faint warmth of Ignatious’s bite turned into unbearable pain. The healer in her, however, refused to give up when she had yet to give him the strength he truly needed. Everything she’d done so far was little more than washing a wound, there was still more that he needed before she could stop and rest.

"You were proud of your flames once, weren’t you? Show me that," she whispered as she closed her eyes and rested her head on his freshly healed neck and shoulder. Her diminutive body lacked the strength to keep her head up, and even keeping her eyes open felt like too much effort. Thankfully, the things she needed to see were sealed deep within Ignatious’s heart, and so she let her eyes drift shut, and her mind sank fully into his memories of the past.

Slowly, a new scene began to form in Heila’s mind. She was on a street corner in a city that she’d never seen before, standing next to Ignatious, watching an opulent-looking building wreathed in flames as it burned to the ground.

"This place was filled with wicked men," the vampire in her vision said as the shadows cast by the burning building flickered across his youthful features. "Women who went missing in ’demon attacks’ wound up here, forced to... you can imagine what they were forced to do," he said, unwilling to sully Heila’s ears with stories of the nightmares he’d witnessed when he followed the trail of ’demons’ back to this corrupt den of filth and perversion.

"You burned more than just the building," Heila said, turning her eyes to the Vampire’s expressionless face. "Are you really proud of this?"

"It needed to be done," Ignatious said in a voice that was flat but filled with conviction. "Without the flames to light their way, these men’s victims would never find their way to the Heavenly Shores. If I couldn’t save their lives, at least I could do this for their souls. And those men will never harm another soul."

Slowly, as he spoke, Heila added a bit of her own wood energy to the fires burning within Ignatious, stoking the embers of his heart with the fuel to burn brighter.

"What else? Even if you didn’t use your flames, you did things that you were proud of, didn’t you?" she asked.

"Before I was an Inquisitor," Ignatious said as the scene shifted around them. This time, he was much younger, wearing the pure white robes of a temple acolyte and standing beside a giant hearth where similarly dressed boys turned several spits of roasting meat or tended giant cauldrons of soups and stews.

"This way," Ignatious said, leading Heila outside to a large open area where crowds of people gathered, sitting on the grass and holding out their hands to receive loaves of bread or holding up hollowed-out bread as acolytes ladled hearty stew into the edible bowls.

"You like to cook?" Heila asked, giving Ignatious a strange look.

"No, not really," Ignatous said. "But it brought them warmth," he said, guiding Heila to a stack of simple wool blankets and passing her several before he took a stack for himself. "This was part of the Harvest Festival in the Holy City. People could come from anywhere to receive a meal, medicine, and blankets for the winter," he explained as he began passing out the warm wool blankets to eager-looking people wearing threadbare clothing.

"My father was a wood cutter," Ignatious explained as the scene shifted again, this time to a simple hut near the forest where an even younger Ignatious helped a strikingly similar-looking man to pile stack after stack of freshly chopped wood into an ox-drawn cart. "For every eight carts we filled, we filled another for the baron’s manor and another one for the church. The church shared that firewood with families who had nothing to heat their homes with through the winter."

"This is you," Heila said, wrapping her arms around the childish Ignatious, who smiled proudly at the cart he’d finished filling. Finally, she had found the heart of the flame that needed to be nurtured. Reaching out with one hand, she touched a broken, splintered log and let the feeling of rich, wooden energy fill her heart before she gave it to the feeding vampire, reignighting a flame that had been smothered for so long that only the dimmest embers remained.

"So warm," Heila whispered as the vision faded away, and she found herself held tightly in Ignatous’s arms.

The vampire pulled his lips away from her wrist, licking the last drop of her sweet, healing blood from his lips as he stood, cradling the diminutive witch to his chest. The flesh of his arms had healed completely, appearing perfect and pristine underneath the burned and tattered sleeves of his red and gold robes, and he used those arms to hold Heila as gently as he’d hold a priceless relic made of the most delicate porcelain.

"Rest now," he whispered to her as he began to draw deeply on the flames she’d reignited within him. The energy that coursed through his veins was different than anything he’d felt before, but even as his heart sang with joy at the feelings of miraculous healing that swept through his body and soul, he hadn’t forgotten why Heila went so far to make him whole again.

"Rest, and I’ll rescue Lady Ashlynn," he promised with passionate flames burning in his eyes.