Disclaimer: Still don't own Carmilla (the series), or any recognizable characters.
"It's one thing to go into a fight knowing you'll probably lose. Quite another to be told that to win, you must offer up your throat to be slit."
- Darren Shan, Demon Apocalypse
Heavy silence fell in the wake of Laura's announcement.
Recover the Blade of Hastur? Even if they could somehow do that - it certainly showed all the signs of being an impossible task - that thing was what had started this whole mess in the first place! And even if that did make it appropriate to use it to end things, too... There was also the small matter of the fact that, even if they did somehow manage the miraculous feat of getting the sword back, striking at the Library's host body with it would still kill whoever it was that used it.
Carmilla was seriously beginning to regret ever retrieving it from that underwater cave it had been sealed into. No wonder the Cult of Hastur had buried the damned thing. All it did was cause problems.
"Laura... If we somehow manage to do this..."
"I know," Laura said solemnly.
"It would mean that you'd..."
"I know," she repeated. Right, she had said she'd had access to all of the available research information, hadn't she?
"About what you said before you... died. I..."
"I know," Laura said a third time, warmth seeping into her voice. And if she threw a bit of Han Solo into the words, that only made it clear that she knew exactly what words Carmilla was having trouble saying.
The phone rang.
It was unexpected enough that everyone froze, exchanging looks before glancing at the phone that had been sitting ignored on the desk. Given that no one knew they were there, and no one had really wanted to talk to the Dean when she was alive, so it wasn't likely to be someone who just hadn't heard about her death...
"What is that?" Laura asked, snapping them back to reality.
"The phone," Carmilla said tersely.
"It is?"
"The Library has trouble translating sounds it doesn't recognize itself," JP revealed. "The telephone system in the building was not in any way connected to its consciousness, and no one ever really used it, in any event."
"Huh." It was interesting, but ultimately unhelpful. "So, who's calling?"
"Let's see," Carmilla decided, hitting the button for the speakerphone, if only to avoid being constantly pestered to learn what was being said. "What do you want?" she said by way of greeting.
"So, is this how you're going to be saying hello to me, now, or is this just another example of your poor telephone manners?" Mattie's voice asked.
On the one hand, it was a relief to finally be hearing from her sister. On the other... "No, it was more 'I'm having the worst week of my centuries-long life, and am really in no mood for... anything, really'. I'd ask where you are, but I don't want to risk the Library hearing you."
"The Library?"
"Yeah. Did you know the school's library was actually the Library of Caesarea?"
"Well, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time," Mattie said thoughtfully. "Mother never called it that when I was around, no, but I'm not surprised."
"It also eats souls."
"Oh, of course it does," she said, sounding as caught between annoyance and disgust as any of them felt. It was the first thing they'd ever all had in common.
"Yeah. Apparently, for their memories, collecting them being what the Library's all about. That's also what it wants you for."
"...I see." Understandably, she sounded disturbed by that idea. "From what you said before, though-"
"That wasn't the Library talking. Does the name Jennifer Stoughton ring a bell?"
"Vaguely. Someone I knew in the 1950s, I believe?"
"You didn't just know her." She quickly reminded Mattie exactly what she'd done to Miss Stoughton. "So, oddly enough, she really hates you, now."
"Go figure," LaFontaine added dryly.
"And it takes that level of intense emotion to break through the Library's control of the body. Some of the souls in there managed to work together to take over long enough to let me know exactly how they felt about me, but given that the emotion seems to need to be directed toward whatever the body's dealing with at the time - I can't figure any other reason why there aren't new people popping up every few minutes, given how much they have to hate being in there - only two people have managed it on their own."
"Two? Who's the other?" Mattie asked curiously.
"She was gonna kill Carm," Laura said simply. The interface may not have translated the sound of a ringing phone very well, but it was obviously picking up the conversation just fine. "I had to do something."
"...I see. I did underestimate you, didn't I?" Clearly, she hadn't missed the implications of hearing Laura's voice.
That was fine with Carmilla. Spelling it out would have meant acknowledging aloud that her love was trapped within the Library along with the rest of the legion of souls, and that hadn't stopped hurting even a little. "You see why I'm worried the Library might hear you, then," she said instead. "So, as vaguely as you can manage, what have you been doing?"
"Recovering some of the Library's rare tomes that I'd sold."
Carmilla blinked. "I thought you didn't know that-"
"I didn't," Mattie interrupted. "I was hoping that they might give me some idea of what it was that you were facing. Unfortunately, given the few details I had to try and narrow things down with, they gave me too many ideas."
"We hadn't been having much luck, either," Carmilla admitted.
"Not until Miss Karnstein made a clever deduction," JP added.
"My subconscious keeps poking me about things," she said with a shrug. "If I can keep my id and super-ego from fighting, and avoid getting lost in any Lovecraftian nightmare cityscapes, I can usually manage to work something out."
"Did anyone ever tell you that you've got a twisted imagination?" Laura asked archly.
Carmilla went still. "Not while I was awake," she said carefully. Also... It had been partly obscured by static, but she'd heard Laura refer to the Library as a 'sentient Escher painting with shelves'... exactly what she herself had called it in that first odd dream.
What was it Laura had said in that last dream? Believe me, I'm quite aware that you can be dead, but still dream. She could have been referring to Elle and the rest of the anglerfish's victims, or that vampires were technically dead, themselves. But Laura - the real Laura - had seen Elle because she'd been reaching out from within the Light, begging for help.
It was tempting to think that maybe, just maybe, some part of Laura was doing the same thing. Far, far too tempting. But she didn't dare let herself really believe that. Getting her hopes up like that... It was a recipe for massive disappointment, on a scale even she had trouble conceiving of. Besides, she wasn't likely to be sleeping again before they made a move on the Library, so it ultimately didn't matter, did it?
"This is pointless," she snapped. "We have to figure out how to get the sword away from the Library. Laura's body is already dead, so we can't even count on it using the damn thing doing anything to it."
"Not like that, anyway," Laura said. "There's a book in here - somewhere - written by someone in the Cult of Hastur, way back when the sword was first forged, and they learned what it could do. He never saw anything like this situation coming, but he theorized that if some kind of homunculus were given the Blade - I guess remote-controlling corpses was big, back in the day? - the sorcerer's control over the body would be briefly disrupted each time it was used. They were trying to find a way to safely use it, I guess, but even that approach didn't pan out, so they just buried it where they thought no one would ever find it."
"So, if we could get the Library to use it on something, we'd have a window to knock the sword away from it?" Carmilla frowned thoughtfully. "Or use it on your body."
"I don't know. That was just one person using magic to control a body, not... this." Laura sighed. "Not to mention, the effect it has on the wielder is somewhat proportional to they're doing with it. When you used it on the Light, you didn't actually kill anything, so you didn't die. I mean, you might have if you were human, but vampires can take more punishment. The Library, being what it is, would have an even higher threshold. I have no idea what would happen if someone like Jennifer used it, but since she's locked up just like I am, chances are we won't be finding out."
"So the Library would have to kill someone for this idea to even have a chance."
"Sorry."
"Not your fault, Cupcake." She still had a pensive look on her face. It was probably for the best that Laura couldn't see it. Aside from Mattie, she was the only one there who might be able to figure out what Carmilla was thinking.
They had to destroy Laura's body in order to set the souls free. They could only do that with the Blade of Hastur. They needed to get the sword away from the entity in order to use it themselves. Given the abilities it had demonstrated so far - there was no way Stoughton was even remotely in the same league as the Library when it came to the power she would wield, and even she'd been too much to handle - the only way to do that was to let it kill someone.
And her existence had become so meaningless that she was willing to let that someone be her.
It wasn't entirely because Laura was dead, though that was certainly a factor. It had been building for a while, her growing ennui. There was no reason for her to exist; she should have died centuries ago. She was just... tired. Tired of everything. Laura had been a breath of fresh air, a splash of color in her dark and dreary world... but that also meant that now, with her gone, Carmilla knew what she was missing.
At least this way, she'd be able to accomplish something meaningful.
"Well, before we can do anything else, we need to find the damned thing," Carmilla stated. "If we can offer it its books back, maybe make it seem like we could be convinced to hand Mattie over, it'll hold still long enough for us to try something." She turned toward the phone. "Which books did you manage to get back, anyway?" Mattie listed off the titles for three books, which JP dutifully copied down. "Okay, letting it know we're having someone ship those back here should at least catch its attention. We can do that, right?"
"I probably can," Laura volunteered. "It's not really listening to me right now - probably because I kept yelling at it, before - but I'm pretty sure I can catch its attention, especially if it does know I'm talking to you right now."
"Good. Let it know we'll meet it..." After a few moments of consideration, she continued, "...where the building itself used to be. There shouldn't be anyone else around to get in the way, there."
"I doubt it'll show up based on empty promises," Mattie interjected. "Especially since you've no doubt made it clear that you wouldn't hand me over, under any circumstances."
"I... am kind of in the minority of people who'd believe anything you said, in here," Laura added apologetically.
"Even using the fastest methods at my disposal, it'll be a few hours before I can get even one of the books back there," Mattie continued. "If you wait until... seven PM, your time, you'll have something to back up your claims."
"That'll give us time to work out a few things," LaFontaine decided, giving Carmilla a look that suggested they had some suspicion about what she was thinking.
"There... aren't exactly any clocks in here," Laura said hesitantly.
"That's okay," Carmilla said after a moment's thought. "Perry can stay here and let you know when it's time."
"She can?" Perry, who hadn't really been part of the conversation, was understandably surprised by that.
"Unless you wanted to be part of the confrontation with the entity...?"
"No, no, I just... Are you sure you don't want to-?"
Carmilla shook her head. "I have to be there. Given my reputation within the collection of souls, I'm the only one any of them would believe would betray someone, even my own sister, to the Library to save myself."
"They... probably would believe that," Laura agreed sadly. "I guess it's just as well so few of them were listening to me. Though, there was at least one person who was listening to everyone and not speaking up at all, lurking in the section that houses the spellbooks. None of them made any sense to me, even with the Library translating, so I can see how someone would be distracted, but still, that seems kind of rude, and-"
"Laura," Carmilla interrupted, a wistful smile on her face. God, she even missed Laura's babbling... "Just be ready when we give you the signal."
"Uh, right." Had she been physical, Laura might have been blushing. "Fair warning: I'm not sure exactly how long it'll take to get this thing's attention. Probably not more than a few minutes if I really set my mind to it, but still..."
"Don't worry, we're not gonna get bored and wander off." As much as she wanted to keep talking to Laura - and she really, truly did - the longer she did so, the greater the chance Laura would pick up on what she had planned, and simply refuse to cooperate. Given that she was the only one who could get the Library's attention and convince it they were serious... She hated to do it, but she was going to have to mislead Laura one last time.
Maybe that was also appropriate. That was how their relationship had started, after all. And it was how it would end.
She was starting to hate symmetry.
"Okay. Mattie, hurry up and get that book here. The rest of us need to go find an appropriate target for the Library - or whoever's in charge, just then - to use the sword on."
"And a volunteer to use the sword on the Library?" Mattie asked in a tone that suggested she also had an idea about what Carmilla had planned, even if it wasn't the right one.
"If we can stick it in the ground and let Laura's body fall onto it, that should be a non-issue," she said dismissively. It might well even work, so she hoped JP, at least, would remember it after... Well, after. With her gone, he'd be the only one there fast enough and strong enough to pull it off. "Let's get moving."
"I can't help but feel that there's some part of this plan you haven't shared with us," Danny said, eyeing Carmilla carefully.
She hadn't really wanted to bring Xena in on things, but LaFontaine had pointed out that, since this was something that affected the entire university, they kind of had to have the Summer and Zeta reps there for it. Also, since there was so little outdoor lighting on campus, and none at all where the Library building used to be, it was decided to set up a number of torches (Carmilla had decided, just for the hell of it, to arrange them in the shape of a large pentagram), and she was fully willing to let Danny and Kirsch handle the manual labor. "Really? Such as?"
Danny's hair seemed even redder than usual in the flickering torchlight. "Such as what you plan to have the Library use the sword on, for starters. Or did you expect one of us to volunteer?"
Carmilla was looking at her watch as the time ticked closer and closer to seven. "One of you? No."
"Then wh-" She jerked in surprise. "Wait, you can't just-"
"If getting the body to fall onto the sword doesn't work, I'll be counting on you to end this." They were speaking quietly enough that no one, aside from JP, could hear them... and she was pretty sure he was listening. "Smash the prison, set the souls free, and let Laura rest in peace. That's the only thing that matters." It went without saying that doing so would kill Danny... and that, for Laura, she'd probably do it.
"Well... Figures we wouldn't agree on something until the end."
"Heh. Yeah."
They were silent for a long while after that.
It wasn't until 7:15 that the entity showed up, literally just appearing at the very center of the pentagram. Carmilla and Danny had been standing nearby, just in case, so it quickly focused on them. "You wished to speak with us?" It was another new voice - female, with a definite Austrian accent, meaning she was likely a local - and not one anyone present recognized. It did, at least, mean they wouldn't have to speak to the Library itself, which their eardrums certainly appreciated.
"Laura told you why we're here?" Carmilla countered. The tome Mattie had sent via special courier had arrived at around 6:30 or so, and was firmly clutched in her hands.
"She did. I must say, that you're selling out your sister left many of us unsurprised."
She shrugged. "What else can I do? We can't fight you, she did betray and steal from you, and this is the only way to keep the students of this university safe."
"You expect us to believe you care about them?" the voice asked scornfully. The body's face remained neutral, though, which was curious.
"Laura did. She died for them. For her sake... I'd do a lot of things. Can that damned building even understand that? Or are emotions like that simply too much for it to comprehend?"
"It has many, many minds within it. It understands human emotions because we understand them." The body's eyes narrowed. "And we believe you are attempting to deceive us."
"Do you?" She held up the tome she had for it to see. "I've lived up to my part of the bargain so far."
"Offering a book and offering your sister are not the same." Nevertheless, the entity was walking forward, clearly intent on claiming the book.
Carmilla handed it off to Danny and pushed the girl behind her. "And you won't be getting either until we work out an understanding."
"There is nothing to work out. You will surrender the books. You will surrender your sister. If you do not, every single one of the students you claim to be protecting will die."
"If you're just going to take them anyway, what incentive is there for us to cooperate?" Carmilla challenged, stepping closer. JP, you'd better be ready... "Be honest. You plan on killing or absorbing everyone here anyway, no matter what we do, don't you?"
They were standing close enough to each other that, had Laura been herself, Carmilla could easily have leaned down and kissed her. This being, however, only made her stomach clench. "If you believe that, then why are you here?"
"Because I have to try." She grabbed for the Blade of Hastur.
Things happened very quickly, even to her vampiric senses.
The entity... moved, somehow... and she found herself flat on her back, left cheek throbbing as if she'd been struck. (Odds were good she had been, but too fast for even her to register. Not a good sign.) It raised the sword to smite her... and froze. JP, lurking behind it and waiting for his chance, shot her an uncertain look.
Carmilla was confused, herself. There was really no way Laura could have assumed control again - not with the Library taking special precautions to keep that from happening. Maybe the Library itself had stepped in? That would make sense, given that it most likely did want her memories for its collection. She scrambled to her feet as the entity shivered, then lowered the sword. "Look at yourself," another voice said, and Carmilla felt her blood turn to ice.
No. No, no, no, no...
"See what's become of you? Where that girl lead you? I did warn you, my dear. But then, even diamonds will shatter if struck just right, won't they?"
No, God, please, anyone but her...
"Clearly, it's time we had another little talk."
Trying to shake too obviously with fear, Carmilla managed to force one word out.
"Mother..."