(MxM)Tales Of A Shifter (P2) - The Clan Celebration

Chapter 37 - Cold

Short Chapter Sorry!

Chapter 37

"No!" Brandon screamed and reached out.

The Ghoul hooked its talons around the Guardians neck and Ezekiel fell back. The bloody dying beast put the last of its strength into putting Ezekiel down, but its moves were clumsy and slow.

Ezekiel broke its hold around his throat easily. And after a moment or two he soon overcame the beast and managed to get behind it and twist back its gangly left arm. The Ghoul screamed as bones gave way with a mighty pop. The battle continued...but the outcome was assured as Ezekiel methodically destroyed the Ghoul in such a way that it should have been frightening to witness, but to Brandon it was simply a good show.

He wanted to get up and help somehow.....but the simple agony of breathing, or turning around in the dirt was impossible to ignore. He couldn't fight, he could barely crawl.....and.....the Child.....Could he still save the Child?

Torn, but quickly realizing that the child a few feet across from him needed him more than Ezekiel did in that moment. Brandon clawed his way across the earth back to the little Leopard Shifter. Sobbing in agony as Brandon felt blood welling up in his lungs and dripping down his back Brandon forced himself to raise up on his hands and knees and tend to the child. Swiftly realizing that he only had seconds left to act.

The boy shook like dead pine needles in the wind. His skin was as white as the moon above and his mouth and chest were covered in bloody vomit. He was dying a painful death.

And Brandon....knew he could do....something...use the Flame.

But would it do anything to truly change the little boy's fate?

Brandon had been taught long ago that there were only two ways to safely get the power inside of him out into the world without instantly killing every living thing in his vicinity.

He could pour the power into his own body, use his body as the Flames personal playground, so that he got a sort of contact high.

When he did this Brandon was stronger, faster....and he even managed to heal.......sometimes. But in doing this he risked losing control. By letting the Flame out even a little bit...he risked letting it break free of his hold at any moment.

IT was dangerous....but this method had saved....and ruined him may times before, because not only did the power empower him. IT drained him, even as he used it.

But beyond this, the second way of releasing his Flame, of using it.....was just plain unnatural. And extremely hazardous to anyone who tried it.

The second method involved ingesting Brandon's blood. Putting the Flame directly into a person's body, but almost anyone that tried....almost always perished.

Except for the monsters on Brandon's tail, the monsters that controlled the Ghouls.

THEY wanted to taste the Flame. They used it to feed their greed. They had enjoyed watching it burn the innocent test subjects. THEY liked watching the weak ones die.

Gulping down bile Brandon turned his mind back to the child dying in his arms. The second option...was too simply too risky and because Brandon feared making the child worse Brandon stuck with the first method.

He tried to use his own flesh to direct the flame. He took the convulsing child into his lap and put his bare palms flat against the boy's small rattling chest. He felt the thread-y pulse beneath the child's bloody clothing.

Brandon felt his breathing becoming more and more erratic and fast. And the moment he touched the child....The flame reached out of his fingertips. With every fiber of his being Brandon felt the little boy's life burning beneath his bare palms.

Instantly the Flame rose up and started trying to tug on the boy's energy, it tried to suck on the edges of his fragile life, but Brandon didn't want to take energy....he wanted to give it.

He wanted to give his own essence to the boy. He hoped to heal the child or strengthen him in some way so that he wouldn't die.

So Brandon pushed the Flame away, and instead he pushed that wild energy into his fingertips, he pushed all of the amazing energy burning in his veins down into his palms, shoving it out towards the child....but in seconds he knew he would fail.

Brandon had never done this thing before. He didn't know how to make the Flame obey him.

He felt insane, fevered and driven. He felt a terrible weight on his heart and mind, like he was cracking. Hundreds of nameless faces danced through his vision. Men and women and children; lives he couldn't replace. So many things he couldn't fix or repair.

And just like that.....something slipped out from beneath him. It was his control. So fickle and unforgiving. The Flame rose over him then, like a tidal wave, it jerked his strength away and turned on him.

Instantly Brandon tried to curb its desires and make it flow into the child, instead of latching on to the child and...eating him. God he tried!!!

But the flame.....rebuffed him. It was like trying to move a steel cloud in one direction.....when all it wanted to do was move in another. And that is exactly what the flame did. Instead of moving with Brandon it moved against him, it didn't flow. It took, it clawed and it ripped into the life lying before it.

With a scream Brandon shoved....he pushed....he wrestled trying to get the flame to course through his body, to fill his fingertips. To lend itself to him for his own desire.....but....

The child was dead. He had in fact died seconds ago. He had been dead from....the moment the Ghoul had bit him. With that poison in his small body.... death was all but assured....

But for one second Brandon had wanted....he had hoped to save him....but before he had even really tried.....the darkness had risen.

The truth of what he was wouldn't be denied. He was hungry. He was a killer. A monster.

The delicious warmth of the child's essence flowed into him. It was good, like a quenched thirst and assuaged hunger and good sex wrapped up all in one. In seconds he felt every ach lessen in his body. Brandon felt the cuts in his head and arm and collar and back fade away as if he had never been struck by vicious talons.

The flame roared inside of him like a crack of thunder in his soul....and then it let go of him. With a shuttering scream Brandon was finally able to wrest control back from the Flame.

He shoved it down and locked it back in its cage where it belonged. Then he snatched his hands back from the child. There was nothing he could do now....and suddenly Brandon was holding him.

He was sobbing on his little quite chest....because he could still feel the boy slipping away, sense what little life remained in the child, flowing off into the unknown....and Brandon could have saved him. The boy may only have lived a little longer....if Brandon hadn't lost control, but he would still be alive all the same.

I should have been able to save him.

Why?

I don't want to kill people!

Why am I sitting here alive....While this beautiful child is cold and silent to the world!?

The last thing Brandon felt was giant gashes in his back knitting together, the blood on his skin soaking away...disappearing back into his body, pulled back into his veins to feed his weak heart by the Flame. His lungs no longer felt like they were submerged in water. He had healed. He would live. He always lived.

Escaping from that moment seemed all to fair, so he did Brandon forced the Flame to fade away. He pushed it back into his core and as it tucked away into his soul, it left him feeling more exhausted....more drained....more sickly then he had ever been.

So Brandon escaped into the darkness that was waiting on him.