Annotation: When I promised you that I would made steps far from Being Human´s season 3 because I couldn´t go conform with Henry dying from the flu, some readers may have been disappointed by the last part of the chapter before. Sometimes things tend to turn out another way as expected. Nothing is certain in life, even not if you´re a vampire. And here we go on:
"HENRY...!"
Aidan let out a scream and his eyes shot open. Dark, black pools in a fear stricken face. He stumbled over his own feet and almost fell over right onto the carpet when he leaped out of his chair and jumped for the bed. His heart was beating wildly, was in his mouth when he reached the bedside and pulled back the covers. In panic.
Staring blindly at his son´s body...
Vicki was woken up by a scream.
She had been sound asleep after she had been caring for Henry and watching over him the whole day. Fitzroy had urged her to take a rest when he had come in after a hastily taken meal anywhere out there, as he assured her, from a source he knew to be a healthy one. With closed eyes she fumbled for her glasses which she reminded to have put on the table beside the sofa. Her fingers were shaking from the alarm that had given her a shock by it´s desperate intensity.
The lamp was dimmed down and Vicki cursed when she tried to find her way through the poorly lit living room. Her knee hit the corner of the coffee table and she hissed, making her way over to the bedroom and ignoring the pain in her knee.
Another bruise, she stated to herself. Not the first one and it won´t be the last one in her life. She reached the bedroom, staring at the scenario in front of her.
Aidan was beside her bed and his face was white like chalk, his eyes bled black and wide with fear. Even she could hear him breathing in a panic stricken speed. Vicki came nearby.
"What the heck, Aidan? What´s going on here? You almost gave me a heart attack!" she grunted angrily.
Henry was lying in the bed, his chest heaving with his breath. His skin was covered by a thin layer of sweat and hectically Aidan felt for his temperature. It was...
...the same like before.
Henry was still in a fever, his breath came in fast but regular gasps and then his eyes opened to narrow slits. It took him some effort as he seemed to come out of deep sleep. His lips opened and his voice was a whisper due to his drowsiness.
"What...what hap...pened, Aidan...?" Henry brought out.
Aidan almost let out another scream when suddenly hands grabbed for his shoulders. He turned over on his heels, finding himself suddenly face to face with Henry Fitzroy.
" .GOD!" Aidan fought for his breath. "God! Henry! Don´t do that ever again! You almost scared the shit out of me!" He felt his pulse pumping in his throat and it took him some effort to come down from his shock.
Fitzroy heard how fast Aidan´s heart was beating.
"It´s you who almost scared the shit out of me!" Fitzroy gave back, his face full of concern for him. "I´ve heard you screaming over here! What has happened, Aidan?" He could take it by the expression in Aidan´s face that anything terrible must have happened to him. Or Henry. Fitzroy waited a moment before he grabbed for Aidan´s right forearm, carefully trying to find out without pushing the situation too far. He felt Aidan trembling under his hands and decided to direct him back into the chair beside the bed.
"Aidan, please tell me! What happened..." Fitzroy began and he shot a look at Aidan´s son who looked at him with some confusion. For sure the scream must have pulled him out of his sleep violently. Fitzroy´s eyes went over Henry´s body just to make sure that, beside his also hard beating heart, he seemed to be okay what meant that his condition hadn´t gone worse since the last time. Then he turned his attention back to Aidan who seemed to have need for some comfort by now.
"Henry is all okay...so what happened...?" He looked into Aidan´s tormented face and Aidan tried to regain his composure in front of the older vampire. What turned out to be not so easy the hard he ever tried. So he finally gave in. What for? He had shared some secrets with Fitzroy before. Aidan took a deep breath, more to assure himself as anything else and he lifted his face so far he could look into Fitzroy´s eyes. They were cerulean blue. The older vampire was relaxed but for his concerned expression.
"I..I´ve been sitting here...with Henry. I guess...I must have fallen asleep despite the fact that I wanted to wake at his side..." he began.
"I had a certain feeling that you´re very tired but I didn´t want to push this button, Aidan." Fitzroy stated with a calm voice. His hand was still lingering on Aidan´s shoulder. Light and warm just to give certainty.
"I...oh I think I was sleeping and...oh my goodness! It must have been one of these terrifying, horrible dreams..."
"Crap! Another vampire with...dreams! As if one..." Vicki spat in with an angry and resigning voice but before she could went on, Henry shot her a look out of darkened eyes that made her stop silent. She sighed under her breath and decided that it would be better to let Aidan go on.
"I was sitting at Henry´s side and he started to cough and to choke. I tried to calm him but it went worse. He...his skin...it turned...Gray! He...oh my God! Oh my God!" Aidan stuttered.
His voice became nearly inaudible when he brought out in a whisper; "Henry...he died!"
Fitzroy felt him shiver almost convulsively and Aidan put his palms up into his face to hide his tears from Fitzroy. But the vampire bent down, crouching down beside him and his hands went up his arms, holding him by the shoulders.
"That has been a terrible dream, Aidan! Henry is okay...he is as steady as before! All okay with him so far but for the fact that he´s still in the fever."
"I...I know..." Aidan´s voice was trembling, he stopped than he went on; "I´ve seen...I...only...it was so real! All too real, Henry!" He looked at Fitzroy as if searching for any rational explanation, for any help.
"So...you´re dreaming, Aidan...!?"
"Yes...and when I´m dreaming...it mostly has to do with...with what I´ve gone through and with...what I´ve done. In the past. Or what I might do! It really scares the shit out of me when in my dream I´m going...going...to kill someone! It...it looks so damn real! So real..."
Fitzroy nodded.
"I don´t dream...much. As normally I´m falling in kinda death like sleep when the day rises, so I don´t dream. Usually. But...but I have dreamed. Some time ago." Fitzroy took a deep breath now by himself. The memory wasn´t comfortable. "I was dreaming of a God from Peru, a mummy like one. He came for me and I started to have dreams of the sun! What means that I would die from it! I was dreaming that the sun came into my room and I started to burst into flames! He wanted my immortal soul. It´s really scary when you start to dream about your own death, seeing yourself dying in sunlight!" Fitzroy looked at Aidan.
"But it has only been dreams...?" Aidan carefully asked in a low voice. Fitzroy had told him about his faith in God and that he believed in God because God could protect them from the forces of hell. Aidan had seen Sally being brought back in flesh and bones after she had been a ghost. A witch had done this by magic. So maybe there was something more to it...than could be seen by the normal eye.
"Partial, Aidan. Partial. I had dreams of the sun burning me up. But this mummy...he had been real! Vicki tilted him from the surface of earth. I don´t like to remember how she did it but she did." Fitzroy´s voice had become a low whisper.
"A mummy? I mean...any of these...things that are normally lying in coffins or a sarcophagus? You mean...you literally mean he...it...walked around, going to haunt you? I can´t believe this! This is madness. If it´s real...!" Aidan stared at him in disbelief, but in the same moment it hit him, that even Sally was a...walking corpse...Body. To some certain degree. She was...she was...kinda. Unnatural. People usually weren´t risen from the grave as a halfway rotten corpse, restored by whatsoever and then walking around in a restored body among the living.
"Sadly yes! It happened some years ago, here in Toronto. A box was stolen from the transport to the Royal Ontario Museum. It came over from Peru and the thieves broke it open, stealing a golden medallion that had been put onto his chest for no other reason than to keep him sealed into his coffin. Guess you can imagine what happened!"
"They better should have staked him! That would have kept him down forever!" Aidan gave back.
"Freed from the medallion he could rise from his coffin and he began searching for me because he needed a strong soul that would be immortal. He was always coming for me in my dreams when he walked Toronto, meanwhile feeding on the life force of innocent unhappy people. But he had been out for me! With my soul he would have become immortal! By my soul and by me being a vampire!"
"Uhm, normally people are hunting vampires because they want them to turn them into vampires or they want to stake them to eradicate us from the surface of earth. Not for taking over our soul! That´s strange, Henry!"
"Among the first nations, the natives, there is strong believing that one can take over a soul. They fear these...things. It´s called a soul taker!" Fitzroy explained.
Aidan nodded, "I´ve heard of this...imagination among them. But never believed it to be true...probably. But looks like it might be, at least in your case. Guess when he was from Peru he had been an Inca...a native."
"Indeed. They call him Pachacamac, the god of the dead...he´s one of the gods they used to sacrifice captives to."
"Shitty believing! Human sacrifice. It´s like...ya know...this movie! Apocalypto. Where Mayas start to hunt down a peaceful folk in their neighborhood to sacrifice them to their God of the sun the very day a solar eclipse takes place!" Aidan remembered to have seen the movie together with Josh and Sally one day. When it ended he had been glad that these people had been vanished from earth. Going into war to make captives for killing them on top of a damn temple...This had happened really but the Spanish conquerors had ended this. Despite the damage they had done to a foreign culture in their greed for gold, this had been something...if the only...good thing they had done back then, Aidan thought.
Then a sudden thought hit him full force; Sally! She had been brought back into her restored body by kinda black magic! What would happen if this witch Donna was out for her soul as she had held power over the soul during the transformation. Sally had a conscious mind and she had kept her memories and her feelings, emotions, contrary to the normal image of brainless and numb Zombies, who were stalking around with no own will... All these due to her soul remaining in her physical body!
But neither Josh, nor Nora nor him could estimate to the slightest what forces of darkness might be lingering on from the process. Just in case the witch had made any connection to Sally´s soul...? Aidan didn´t dare to let his imagination run wild as he had grown up in an age in which the believing in witchcraft had been strong among the people...
He forced his mind to distract from the nightmare and with a sigh he got up from the chair and bent over his son again. Vicki had gone to the other side of the bed and she wrung out a washcloth and carefully moved it down Henry´s legs.
"Henry! It´s me...!" Aidan tried when Henry opened his eyes with much effort. He seemed to be tired beyond imagination. His breath was steady at least and the lesions looked as if they had dried over a bit, less bloody and there had been no new lesions appearing on his skin. They looked dark, more like bruises, not like the ones he had seen on other vampires when the flu was in progress...
Henry looked better than two days and nights before and when the doctor was right, he had a chance to make it through this. Dr. Mohadevan couldn´t tell how long it would take for him to recover completely because this was her first case of flu on vampires.
Hope dies last, Aidan thought with some pragmatism.
Fitzroy saw that Aidan had regained his composure now that they had talked out his nightmarish dream and Aidan had seen that his son was any better now. Dr. Mohadevan would come back later and look for him again, maybe preparing another injection of the antiserum if necessary. And he could feel the sun creeping up from below the horizon.
He would have time enough to make it home to his daytime refuge safely as he know that it would take more than one hour until the sun would rise above the horizon, at least astronomically as it was still raining outside.
Can´t hope for a solar eclipse to walk home after sunrise, he thought with a silent smile.
"I have to leave now, Vicki! Aidan!" he turned over to Aidan; "I´ll be back in the evening as fast as possible! If there´s any need you can call Dr. Mohadevan, she will come any time you call for her!"
"Okay, Henry!" Aidan turned away from the bed and followed him to the door of Vicki´s home and office. Before he opened the door for him he bent nearer to Fitzroy.
"I...I want to thank you, Henry! For your help and for...for...You really helped me when you were listening to me, Henry! I don´t and I didn´t always have someone around to talk things out, especially among vampires..." Aidan brought out with a thoughtful voice.
"You´re having friends, Aidan: your friend Josh and Sally...is it her name, Sally? And you have your son, he should understand you the best, Aidan..." Fitzroy gave back with a soothing voice. "So you´re not all alone..."
Aidan nodded; "I know, but sometimes it´s good to talk with somebody from...outside the family circle...Okay, see you later, Henry..."
Henry smiled at him and Aidan let him out, closing the door behind him again. For a long moment he looked through the milky glass, clinging to his own thought before he turned around and went back into the bedroom. It would be daytime soon and Fitzroy had to go for his sleep. For Aidan it felt strange that a vampire´s sleep and wake rhythm was depending on sunrise and sunset. But Fitzroy belonged to another species. Good luck, Aidan thought, otherwise he won´t have been able to help with his blood for a cure against the deadly flu!
to be continued