Author’s Note:  This short little story is the result of reading the latest vampire novel I managed to get my hands on directly after watching The Patriot.  Trust me, having two of my favorite things in the world collide like this was SCARY.  I had a hard time deciding whether this should go in crossovers or not.  All of the vampire lore I used here was lifted from Buffy, because that’s what I know best, and I think most of it is pretty standard.  However, no actual characters from the series appear. 

 

Disclaimer:  I do not own The Patriot, or any characters associated with it.

 

 

 

Do Not Go Gentle

 

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Rage, rage against the dying of the Light.

 

                                                - Dylan Thomas

 

 

A shadow blacker than the night walked through the darkness and death of the battlefield.  The corpses of the dead surrounded her, but she could feel the feebly beating hearts of the gravely wounded.  Carefully, she picked her way around the bodies, glancing at Continentals, militia, and Redcoats with equal distaste.  On the slope of what that morning had been a grassy hill, she stopped and knelt beside the man she sought.  The hooded cloak she wore billowed for a moment in the wind, then came to rest on the ground, perfectly concealing her form and her face.  The object of her attention lay prostrate on the ground, the bayonet that had mortally wounded him only a few feet away.  On his other side, a wickedly curved officer’s saber, coated in dried blood, glinted dully in the feeble light. 

 

            Gently, she pushed errant strands of hair out of his face, which was the pasty white of a man about to meet Death.  New blood mingled with the old that soaked his side and torso every time he took a breath.  At her touch, his eyes opened, and she noted with delight that even though they were clouded with pain, the coldness that had drawn her was still there. 

 

            “How are you feeling, Colonel?” she asked.  Her voice was soft and childlike, but there was an undercurrent of power that throbbed in her words. 

 

            “I’m dying,” he rasped.  Even as he admitted his mortality, his spirit railed against it.  Earlier, during the battle, he had held the life of his most hated enemy in his hand, just as he had held the lives of Benjamin Martin’s sons.  But, it was he, William Tavington, who was laying on the grass bleeding to death.  In one moment, all had changed.  He would never settle the score with Martin; never feel the rush of victory as he struck down the man who had shamed him. 

 

            “I know that,” the woman responded.  “Every beat of your heart is weaker than the last, and soon it will stop completely.”  He forced his eyes to focus on the figure that knelt beside him, this woman who could speak of his death with such poise and calm.  In response to his searching gaze, she pushed back the hood that kept her face in shadow.  Tavington gasped, and the action caused a fiery burst of pain to sear through his body.  She was beautiful, unearthly.  Her face was as pale as the moonlight that caressed it, and her hair as dark as the night surrounding her. 

 

            “What are you?” he asked, when he could summon the will to speak the words.  The fact that he had said what instead of who was not lost on her, and she smiled.  He was a smart one, her warrior was.  She had seen him fight, seen him kill with the grace, speed, and intensity that befitted one she would make her own.  She moved from her kneeling position into a sitting one, and cradled his head in her lap.

 

            “My name is Tabitha,” she told him.  Her fingers ran lightly over the skin of his neck, tracing the veins.  “I can save you.”  He looked up at her face, and forced aside the mists of pain that clouded his vision.  As his eyesight cleared, her face changed, the perfect beauty of her features contorted itself into a grotesque mockery of her former appearance, her eyes took on a yellow cast, and cruel fangs protruded over her lower lip. 

 

            “You’re a demon,” he accused her.  Come to take me to Hell, he thought. 

 

            “I am,” she admitted, “but I bring you life, not death.”  The hunger in her yellow eyes was a waiting wolf, an arrow held taut against the bowstring.  She put her face near to his, and inhaled the scent of blood, life, sweat, and death that hung about him.  Then, she whispered in his ear, “Before you die, William, I will feed on you.  That is not your choice.  Your choice, my darling one, is whether or not you will stay dead.  Accept what I offer you, and you will rise up, strong and immortal.”

 

            “But not invulnerable,” he added.  Again, she smiled.  He is intelligent enough not to take what I say on faith.

 

            “True, we have our weaknesses.  Fire can destroy us.  Crosses and holy water burn us as if they were hot coals.  A wooden object through the heart can kill us, and the sun causes us to burst into flame,” she told him, long ago having decided that honesty would be her best weapon against him. 

 

            “Is that all?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her. 

 

            “Before you reject us for our weaknesses, look at our strengths.  That is all I ask of you,” she answered.  “A vampire, if he is careful, can live indefinitely.  We are many times stronger than a human, and any wounds we receive heal with incredible speed.  Look...” she drew a knife from her belt and made a slit in the palm of her hand.  She held the cut in front of his face, and Tavington watched as the skin seemed to knit itself back together, until it was as if the cut had never existed. 

 

            “Why me?” he asked, and Tabitha saw that she was very close.  All she needed now was a bit of flattery, a bit of truth.

 

            “You are strong, a warrior.  I have watched you for months now, and you have the pure darkness required to be a truly Great One,” she promised.  He regarded her carefully.  He had never believed in the existence of such creatures, always thinking them to be conjurations of the suspicious minds of the uneducated.  However, being faced with the real thing was enough to bring him to belief, and he processed this new information using the same cold, ruthless rationality with which he approached everything else.  Finally, his green-grey eyes met her yellow ones. 

 

            “Your Making of me, that will give you power over me,” he stated.  He knew it to be true without even asking. 

 

            “A Sire will always feel a connection between those they have sired, but you are too precious to me to be cowed into submission.  What I offer you is a partnership, not servitude,” she assured him.  “I will teach you all that you need to know, but you will find me an easy schoolmistress.  Choose quickly, William,” she urged him.  “You don’t have long.”  For Tavington, the choice had been made long before, when she had first offered him her Gift.  His will to live was too strong to turn down her offer, and the added pleasures of her beauty and her company were no more than pleasant extras. 

 

            “Do what you must, Tabitha,” he said.  Her undead heart thrilled and the sound of his voice speaking her name, and she leaned forward a few inches and sunk her fangs into his neck.  As he felt his remaining life draining from his body into hers, Tavington was sure he had been tricked.  I am going to die; she will drain me and leave my body with the others.  But, it soon became apparent that the vampire lady intended to keep her promises.  Before she finished, she broke away and reached again for her dagger.  With careful precision, she made a thin cut in her neck, just above her collarbone. 

 

            “Drink, my warrior,” she whispered, and pressed his head to her shoulder.  The life-giving redness flowed back into him, and he could feel his strength returning.  At last, she pushed him away, and the last thing he saw before his heart beat its last was her face, perfect and serene in the moonlight.

 

.................................

 

            Tavington was jarred from his sleep by a ravenous hunger that gnawed at him painfully.  He sat up, and took in his surroundings.  He was lying on a bed of earth piled against the back wall of a cave.  Tabitha stood at the entrance, and hurried to him when she saw he had risen. 

 

            “Come, we must hunt soon,” she told him, “while you still have the power and strength of the newly risen.” He accepted her word without question, and soon they were moving silently through the forest.  “There,” she whispered, pointing through the foliage at a scattered group of campfires.  As they approached, he saw that Tabitha’s intended victims were a group of British soldiers. 

 

            “Not them,” he said firmly.  “If I am going to kill, they will be rebels, not my countrymen.” Tabitha’s eyes sparkled with silent laughter.

 

            “Ah, human loyalties... How very charming,” she said, amused.  “Very well.  The colonials aren’t far.”  She ducked back into the forest, expecting him to follow.  He ran after her with a speed and strength that surprised him, and he reveled in it.  Though it was dark, his eyes could easily pick out Tabitha’s graceful shape ahead of him.  He became entranced with her movements, how effortless each step seemed to be for her.  Gone was the flowing dress and cloak she had been wearing the night before.  Tabitha wore close fitting breeches, a black shirt that enhanced her figure rather than obscuring it, and a blood-red vest.  Even in such manly attire, she was alluring.  Tavington ran even faster to catch up with her. 

 

            At last, she fell into a cat-like crouch behind a group of bushes, and motioned for him to do the same. 

 

            “Wait here,” she instructed him.  He watched her move stealthily over to where a sentry stood at the perimeter of the rebel camp.  Her face Changed, and she quickly grabbed the young man from behind, and, without hurting him further, held him.  The sentry struggled, but Tabitha managed to hold him with only one arm.  With the other, she beckoned Tavington.  “Sometimes,” she said, “you can take them from behind, and they will not even know what happened.  But, the fear can make the kill sweeter...” She grabbed a fistful of the young man’s hair and drew his head down to where she could reach his neck.  He died quickly, and when Tabitha released him, she pointed into the shadows.  “There is another one,” she told William. 

 

            Still surprised at the silence of his own passage, he crept up behind the rebel, scarcely more than a boy, and placed a hand on either of his victim’s shoulders.  Tavington felt his own face Change, and the hunger he had felt back in the cave hit him again, a thousand times harder.  The boy’s blood was young and sweet, and as his life ebbed, the Colonel could feel his own life beginning.  The years stretched before him, endless nights of the hunt, the chase, the kill...

 

            When he finished with the boy, he felt a cool hand on his shoulder, and he let the body drop to the ground.  Tabitha stood behind him, her face glowing with pride and bloodlust. 

 

            “You do well,” she said softly, and drew him to her.  He could taste the life of the first sentry on her lips, and responded to her kiss with a passion such as he had never felt.   Finally, she pulled away from him and sprang over the bodies of the men they had killed, back onto the forest track.  “Come, my darling, the night is still young,” she called, looking over her shoulder at him.  Tavington, testing the boundaries of his new powers, took a flying leap and landed squarely on his feet next to her, and the two shadows disappeared into the darkness.