Karl drinks and drinks, taking in the Ghoul's life as his heartbeat hastens faster and faster. With every beat comes a greater sense of knowing the man, as the vampire consumes him. The sweet life force is seasoned with memories, emotions, personality, coming in stronger and stronger the farther Karl goes in consuming his friend. Gabe's heartbeat begins to beat so rapidly that it is more like a constant desperate flutter, than a paced out rhythm, as he collapses in Karl's arms to be laid across the bed.

Karl continues to feed, taking more and more of the man, perhaps consuming Gabe's soul. The final rush brings complete satisfaction, however temporary. Gabe's blood spreads through Karl's dead body, bringing warm life into every cell till it feels like the vampire's entire body is warmed with it. Pulling back, Karl sees his friend collapsed on the bed, more ashen and cold than he had ever seen him, even at the worst of the man's battles with cancer. He was not breathing, and even though Karl knew this would happen, it still brings a terror and a fascination that the Mekhet had not expected. Gabe was dead. Karl had killed him. Karl had taken every last bit of the man's life into his body. It felt like Gabe would permanently be a part of Karl for the rest of his unlife, and like Karl knew and understood the man better than he ever had.

Then it was time to give back life. Karl moved as if on autopilot, slashing his wrist open with a fang without even registering the sharpness and the pain. He forced the wound between Gabe's now cold unmoving lips and willed the Vitae to begin to flow. It was more by feel than by sight, but Karl observed as the blood seemed to crawl its way into Gabe, forcing itself down the man's throat, invading his dying tissues. The vampire waited, forcing more and more of the stolen life back into his friend, waiting for the man to arise.

But even when Karl withdrew, knowing he had given his friend more than enough, Gabe did not startle. Karl sat beside the corpse. Gabe's dead eyes remained open, staring blankly into the beyond. Thirty seconds trickled by, then a minute; an eternity perhaps. Karl watched as nothing happened.

And then the change began, transformations in the flesh so subtle that Karl was not sure if he was imagining them. Gabe's cold pale skin took on a sheen, as if the cells of the man's skin were being replaced with an artificial but near perfect replica. Small blemishes on Gabe's face and burst vessels seemed to fade and resolve themselves. The man's eye's fluttered, then he inhaled to allow himself to moan; low, guttural, inhuman. Gabe's eyes were like shadows now, the light seemed to avoid the man's face in the way it did with Anna and with Karl himself. The man's hands balled up into fists, unknowingly gathering up the bed sheets, as he drunkenly struggled to rise.

(OOC: Karl's humanity is now dropped to 4. Karl's Blood pool is updated to 7/10)