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Book3-Jasper-ch.4
Jasper's POV:
The girls continued to visit me and they brought the pack full of blood once every twelve visits. It still only held six units, and the twins were no longer full so I had to give them each one while I drank, so I only had four units left to myself. It was enough to placate the constant burn in my throat and keep me going, but it never truly satisfied me and I never felt full on the restrictive diet.
I spent most of my time signing with the girls and as time went on I began to notice that they no longer understood the language as fluently; they no longer knew every word I signed and their grammar became more like English and less like American Sign Language. And they could no longer answer when I asked, "Old you?" I was not sure if it was because they did not understand the sign, the meaning of the phrase, or if they simple did not know how old they were right now.
And then one day they each arrived wearing a button that read, "It's my birthday, I'm 3." They still could not answer my question that day, but the next day when I asked, they both put two fingers up, and so I decided that they understood the question, but no longer knew how old they were because they had just turned three. But then they would only know that they were two now if I had already taught it to them, so I set about teaching them how old they were.
A few days later they arrived with two backpacks instead of one and I finally understood why the note I had written myself in the future referred to two packs when there had only been one; there had originally been two but one had broken, and judging by the fact that it was gone yesterday, it must have broken today. I reached down to remove Kair's pack before it could tear, but she was faster than me and ripped it off before I could get to her. Oh well, I cannot change the timeline so I might as well stop trying.
I then removed Kare's pack, before it too could be damaged. When I opened it up and looked inside, I saw that it contained the usual six units of blood. Then I looked down at my feet to see that Kair had torn her pack to shreds, exposing another six units of synthetic blood. That meant there were twelve units of blood this time and I smiled as I realized that my family had sent me enough blood for a feast.
"No, wait," I signed, grabbing the units of blood that Kair and Kare had each been about to bite into. They had grabbed them when Kair tore open her pack, but I did not want them to make a mess or worse, possibly ingest plastic fragments.
Not having cups, I made my usual small tear in the plastic and held the unit out to Kair, who greedily accepted it. She gulped it down quickly, destroying the neat hole with her sharp razor teeth, while I repeated the process with Kare, handing her the second unit. And then they were both feeding and I was free to open a unit of glorious blood for myself. I inhaled it and went for another, while Kare and Kair discarded their empty packets and began to lick the blood droplets from the floor of the wormhole.
We feasted that day and it was a wonderful time of celebration and happiness. I drank seven of the blood units and the girls each had two and a half; it was finally enough to fill my stomach to the brim and stave off the incessant burning in my throat. I am not sure of the reason behind the sudden increase in blood supply, but I was more than happy to take advantage of it and continued to gorge myself on blood every twelve visits when the twelve units reappeared in the backpacks like clockwork.
Seeing the second backpack reminded me of the letter I had sent myself, so I took it out of my back pocket and reread it. One thing in particular caught my eye: the bit about the vampire leather coming from Jane. Kair had told me before, on the day we met actually, that Jane would be the only member of the Volturi to survive our war and that she would die at a later date for future crimes.
Jane had survived our attack on Volterra simply by not being present when our bomb was dropped, because she had been off on her own visiting a friend in France. We thought about waiting to drop the bomb until she came back, but she had the appearance of a twelve year old girl and none of us really wanted to murder a child, especially because we all had children of our own that age. There was some talk about postponing the blast until Alec, her twin, was out of the way too, but he had no plans to leave the city and we had a bomb to drop, so in the end, he died and she survived.
Jane was not happy about her twin's demise or that of Aro, who she considered her father, and she was all alone in the world and without a powerful coven to back her up for the first time in her existence. At the time she had conceded defeat and agreed to stay with her friend in France and was even adopted by the French Coven and so we had forgotten about her. But now that I reread the letter, it occurred to me that we should probably check on Jane and make sure she was not planning her revenge. If she was, then she would have to be executed and I would be able to harvest her skin to make the leather before her execution. I did not particularly want to torture the child-like vampire, but I needed the leather and I was willing to make her suffer the way she had made so many others suffer in order to get it. I would have to track Jane down and find out what she is up to just as soon as I get out of here and back to the present.
I put the letter into my back packet once again and went back to enjoying my time alone with my girls. It was during this period of time when Kair and Kare first led me back in time. I still could not walk forwards in time, but I realized that I could easily go backwards on my own and I did not even require their presence to do so. The biggest problem with going backwards was that I could not go forwards into my own time. I could go back to unyesterday, but then I would never be in untoday again. I could keep going and go into un-the-day-before yesterday, but then I could never get back into unyesterday again.
While I was in unyesterday, I could see myself trapped in my wormhole, but I could not interact with myself. It was as if I was in a dimension located outside of the typical four dimensions of space-time and outside of the four dimensions of my original wormhole, but in fact I was sharing the dimension of time with my original wormhole, because the tunnel looped around so that it was in unyesterday twice. It was confusing even with my gigantic vampire brain, but it gave me new insights into how Kair and Kare traveled.
Once my wormhole was bent and convoluted from traveling backwards in time, I had a new perspective with which to view Kare and Kair's regular arrival and departures. They were not in the same wormhole as me, but were crawling in on a separate wormhole that linked with my own. And this knowledge helped me understand why it was that the girls could only be present twice at any one point in my wormhole; it was because there simple was not enough room in physical space for more than one of their wormholes to dock with mine and without a second docking site, they could not enter a second time. So their embryos could be present, because they entered the wormhole with me and one copy of their baby selves could attach on their wormhole and be present, but their older selves were permanently blocked out and therefore unable to assist me.
But there was nothing I could do about being stuck in this wormhole until after the babies grew younger and stop visiting me, so I let them lead me further back in time. We journeyed to when we first moved to Houston to be with my brother Peter, which was a little more than a year ago. I could hear Alice and me speaking upstairs in our bedroom, but the only two vampires present in the living room, where my wormhole was located, were Ashley and Scryan. Ashley and Scryan were engaged in typical behavior for them, which meant that they were hanging upside down from the ceiling.
I wanted to call out to them and see if they could hear me, but I stopped myself before I made such an egregious mistake, because there was still no nitrogen or oxygen molecules present in my wormhole and I would not be able to refill my lungs in this vacuum once they were emptied. It was beginning to become increasingly uncomfortable and painful to hold my breath and I began to wonder how much longer I would be able to hold it, because I had never held my breath for this long before. It was not even close. Allison said that we can hold our breath forever as long as we have fresh blood in our system and I guess that this will be the proof of principal for that hypothesis.
Maybe that was even why my family was sending me more blood now. Maybe the increased blood was to compensate for my decreased oxygen levels. I certainly seemed to keep up with the bloated diet without ever feeling too full, so my body must be using all of the blood. But then that got me thinking about where the blood goes once my body finishes with it. We do not defecate and I remember Allison explaining that the excess weight of the blood is converted into carbon dioxide and water, which we exhale. Maybe that was why my lungs were burning so badly even though I had plenty of blood coursing through me. Maybe I needed to exhale in order to divest my body of its waste products.
But in the end, it did not matter how much I wanted or needed to breathe, because without air, it was an impossibility. If I opened my lungs and exhaled I would empty them and be unable to refill them, which would be even worse than the heavy weight of excess carbon dioxide and water molecules. So I held my breath and decided to try to contact Ashley with empathy again. I called out to her with mischievousness, playfulness, and happiness.
"Dad's calling me," Ashley said, jumping down from the ceiling. I was so excited that she had felt me when she had not been able to feel me before that I got my hopes up and started thinking about going home.
"I don't feel anything," Scryan replied, staying put on the ceiling.
"Yeah Dad!" Ashley called. "What do you want?"
I tried to call out to her again, but she was not paying attention to me, because the other me was there and answering her much more forcefully than I could.
"Nothing, I didn't call you," past me replied, coming into the room and leaving Alice alone in our room.
"But I can feel my name," Ashley countered and I forced out the mischievousness, playfulness, and happiness harder, so that she would not think it was a figment of her imagination.
"I feel it too," past me said walking around the room and obviously trying to locate the source. "I think it's coming from Scry." My wormhole was relatively close to Scryan's location, with the major difference being that he was up above and I was down below, so I could understand how I could make that mistake. I started trying to push my wormhole away from Scryan so that Ashley and past me would be able to differentiate the two of us, but it was no use and I just could not move it quickly enough. I was getting weaker trapped in this vacuum prison, so I was not even able to move it as far as I was last time I had tried.
"I'm not calling Ash; I can't call anyone that way," Scryan replied.
"You're not feeling particularly mischievous, playful, and happy today? I also sense a great deal of hope, with a foreboding sense of dread. How unusual," past me said.
"Nope, that's not me," Scryan replied.
"Well then the ground beneath you is feeling that way. Maybe there's an animal under the house," past me said.
"If there was an animal there, we'd hear its heartbeat," Ashley said.
"I don't hear anything or feel anything. I don't know what you two are talking about," Scryan insisted, still clinging to the ceiling.
"Well it's gone now, so I guess we'll never figure out the mystery," Ashley replied before doing a backflip and catching hold of the ceiling. She planted her hands and feet back against the flat surface and resumed her earlier position.
Past me left without figuring out that I was even here and Ashley and Scryan went on with their day. I tried calling out to Ashley a few more times, but she must not have been able to feel me. I thought for a moment that she might be ignoring me on purpose, but if that was the case I would be able to feel annoyance from her, which was not present. And then there was the fact that I could remember this day from when I had lived it the first time and I had not figured it out then, so I gave up and stopped trying to alter this timeline.
Kare and Kair were waiting for me, ready to lead me on, further into the past, so I followed them and left my own time far behind. I saw Peter and Charlotte fixing up this house before we moved in and then I saw the Texas grassland before the land was disturbed. From here I could see across the field to where Peter and Charlotte's house stood. I saw them coming out at night to hunt or to check on their hosts, but as I went further back in time, I saw them moving into their own house.
I was reluctant to keep going back so I lingered, watching them paint their house under the cover of the moon-lit night, because the days were too sunny for vampires. And then Kare and Kair's lights began to blink and they went back to their own time.
