Excerpt from TWITLOSKA
Written by the Gremlin Gang
Rating: Kid friendly

"I can't do this, Napoleon," Illya abruptly declared. "I will not go into the darkness again. I am a danger to you—"

"Hold on a minute. Let's not get carried away here. We need to think this through—" Solo began soothingly.

"No!" Kuryakin shouted, his words echoing eerily in the chamber.

"Illya!" Solo raised his own voice more than he intended. "Let's be reasonable about this."

"How can I be reasonable when I'm afraid of what I might do next?" Illya countered with a hysterical edge to his yell. "I could tear your throat out! I could—"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Napoleon scoffed. "You're not a vampire!"

"How can we be sure? Look what I did when I encountered genuine bats! Not just figments of my imagination,! Real bats! And the nightmares...I couldn't understand them before, but now it's all coming clear. Do you know what I dream about, Napoleon? Blood. I dream of blood dripping from the fangs of bats. And blood dripping from my fangs, as well!"

"Illya, you are not a vampire!" Solo repeated adamantly.

"I bit you!" Kuryakin yelled.

Solo shrugged in an abrupt change of tactic, lowering his voice before he replied. "My hand got in the way of your teeth."

Kuryakin clutched at his head as if he were being assaulted by the visions of his nightmares. "It's all coming true! You were keeping me from sucking your blood!"

The echo of Illya's guilt-ridden misery rang around the damp, dank walls of the grotto. Wretchedness oozed from his haunted expression, to the reedy quality of his voice. Kuryakin was being consumed by despair.

Solo could easily rationalize logical explanations for the mystifying events. But clinical theories meant nothing while they were trapped here in the midst of an eerie, bat-inhabited complex of black tunnels and inexplicable violent panic from the Russian agent.

"Do you have any idea how ridiculous this conversation sounds?" he asked instead, trying for a lighter note to break the ringing tension surrounding them.

Illya nodded, one eyebrow cocked in non-verbal commentary. "Ridiculous or not, it is real, Napoleon. Frighteningly so. Those 'nightmares' were not mere dreams. They were premonitions."

"No." "I'll grant you had a temporary loss of control back there," the American said slowly, as he pondered his injured hand. "But—You. Are. Not. A. Vampire."

Kuryakin sadly shook his head. Solo paced, stabbing at silver platters and goblets with a cutlass liberated from an owner with no further use for it. Feeling his partner's eyes on him, he turned to face the distressed agent.

"Napoleon…" Illya began somberly.

Solo stared at him, gauging the mournful blue gaze. "Yes?" he asked uneasily.

"You must promise me something," Kuryakin commanded.

"I already don't like—" the senior agent growled.

"Napoleon! Promise me!" Kuryakin's tone was filled with sudden urgency.

"What?" Solo asked, alarmed by his partner's demeanor.

"If I—if it turns out I really have somehow become a vampire…if," he emphasized as Solo was about to object. "If that turns out to be true, I want you to kill me before I hurt anyone. Before I hurt you."

© 2005 The Gremlin Gang

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