A shrill pierced the quiet night of the Sanctuary. It was almost an animal sound, visceral. Helen felt it echoing through her womb, and she was up and in the contiguous room in less than a heartbeat, her gun pointed at the shadow leaning over Sophie's bed even before her brain had fully registered what was happening.
She lowered her gun when she realized the shadow was Nikola's, and they exchanged a worried look. The utter terror inhabiting his eyes tore Helen apart. Ever since their daughter was born, she had got used to relying on him for emotional support when it came to the little girl. But that night, he was as clueless as she was.
She kneeled on the opposite side of Sophie's bed. The seven years old's brow was sweaty, and when she turned the bedside lamp on, Helen realized she was as pale as death itself.
« Mommy! » Sophie cried again, her eyeballs turning frenetically under her lids, tears rolling down her sweet, still baby-like face.
Helen placed the palm of her hand on her daughter's brow. She was hot, but not enough to be considered feverish. That was a relief, and she shook her head at Nikola who sighed. They didn't yet know the full extent of their offspring's vampiric traits, but illness would definitely be terrible news.
« Sophie, honey, I'm here. » the mother whispered in a soothing voice, stroking the child's light-brown hair.
« You don't have to die. » Sophie's voice died in a sob, and she sniffed loudly.
« Shhh, it's a nightmare baby. Darling, wake up, it's only a nightmare, we're here. » Helen said, this time louder, shaking Sophie lightly.
Nikola was paralysed by fear. The verb « to die » in the mouth of such a young being was bringing back memories from a far back past, another life, back when his brother had passed. Please Sophie wake up. He prayed silently.
The nightmare got all too real when Sophie's eyes opened, black and red as coal in fusion and her back arched against the mattress. When her vampiric gaze caught Helen's, the old woman jumped back, suddenly feeling threatened.
« Sophie? » She asked, her voice shaking with terror.
She was not supposed to be able to morph. Not until she was all grown up anyway. Something was terribly, awfully wrong.
« Mom? »
Helen stared at her daughter with horror. That was not Sophie's voice. That tone was a young woman's. A young woman Helen had no issue recognizing.
« Ashley? » She asked, her throat clenching around the syllables she had not uttered in quite a while now.
It went by way too fast, and Sophie morphed back, once more becoming a small child having a nightmare.
« What's happening? » Nikola asked, completely panicked.
« I wish I knew. » Helen snapped, trying hard to compose herself.
The apparent peace the child had found did not last, and when she started convulsing, both of her parents kneeled on the bed.
« Sophie! Sophie, don't you dare play tricks on us! » Nikola screamed, his fist closing on one of her small arms.
Helen pushed him out of the way, none too gently, her doctor's instincts back on track despite the trouble Ashley's voice had raised inside of her heart.
« She's having a seizure; we have to place her on her side. » She ordered.
Nikola collected what was left of his nerves and helped Helen pick up their convulsive mess of an offspring to place her comfortably on her side, making sure she would not choke on her own fluids during the time her seizure would last.
«Nikola, can you feel her brain wave? » She asked.
Nikola was taken aback. Of course... He had never thought that he could actually act like a medical device. He had never tried to sense one's brain's electric signals, but he could try. He placed the palm of his hand on his daughter's brow and closed his eyes, focusing hard.
Helen's heart was crumbling down fast at seeing Sophie's body convulsing painfully. She was having a hard time trying to push her feelings to the side to focus on what could cause exactly this. What would have easily passed as an intense case of night terror a few minutes before was now getting way beyond what Helen had ever seen.
Nikola shook his head.
« It's crazy in there but I have no point of reference. » He explained.
Hectic brainwaves, seizures, Ashley's voice… The pieces of the puzzle started falling into place in the doctor's mind: Was it possible that…?
Her trail of thoughts was interrupted when an intense blue light illuminated the floor of the room, coming from under the bed, and as suddenly as Sophie's seizure had started, her body clumped down on the mattress, facing Helen.
The light was familiar but not in the least reassuring as it dawned on them that the Praxian storage device that supposedly held Ashley's consciousness was currently under their daughter's bed.
"Helen, when you said you'd take care of the damn artefact…" Nikola started, shooting a quizzical look at her.
"I don't get it, it was locked up in my safe, in the storage facility." She answered.
"Well well, forbidden places and magnetic locks. Two of the things our daughter has found an interest in these last few months." He sassed.
They had spent countless hours in his lab trying to understand the mechanism of the damn device while pregnant, to no avail. At the time, it had seemed to them as if that thing had played with them. They had somehow established a connection between the device and their mind, only to relive their own memories together, effectively walking down memory lane hand in hand, or rather mind in mind. Never had anyone experienced something similar. They had lived each other's defining moments from their perspective, as vividly as the first time around. Nikola had lived Patricia Heathering Bancroft's death from Helen's brain, while Helen had embodied him during the arson of his lab, or the first time he had undressed her with trembling hands.
After months spent trying to break into the safe burial ground of Ashley's consciousness, they had decided it was messing with their heads, haunting their nights and picking at their sanity. What should have been as simple as plugging a USB key in a laptop to read its contents had turned into a walk inside a fortress, with traps lying around each corner.
Additionally, they had felt something there. Sometimes, it had felt as if Sophie, then a mere foetus, was using the device to learn from them. Nikola had speculated that maybe this connection to the Praxian technology was enabling them to actually live the encapsulation of their memories into their child's genes. Some days though, and whereas they had never dared talk about their impression, it had seemed to them as if they had been watched inside their own memories by some not so benevolent form of energy. At last, with no sign of Ashley in months, and not without a good amount of disappointment, they had given up, a taste of defeat on their tongues.
That day, Helen had sworn to take care of the device.
Back then, Nikola had interpreted her words as a promise she would destroy the object of so many sleepless nights. But that night, bathed once again in that sweet blue light, he was forced to realise she had a more liberal meaning to the words.
Helen did not have the leisure to defend her decision. Indeed, Sophie opened two very vampiric eyes again.
"Sophie?"
She was about to touch her face when her daughter's face turned, darkened with a malignant grisly smile she had only ever seen in horror movies. Helen jumped back, her eyes wide.
"Ashley?" She tried, desperate to see something familiar on her sweet angel's face.
The thing – one could only speculate as to the nature of it – winced in disgust.
"Pathetic old bitch."
Sophie's mouth was moving but the voice was clearly not hers. And the black eyes staring at Helen with devilish delight, relishing in the hurt she saw on her face were not a young kid's. The entity smiled again, malignant, showing small but pointy teeth.
"Ashley, I'm afraid" The thing cried, mimicking Helen's desperate voice from so many years before.
She then proceeded to burst out laughing, letting out an almost metallic sound which made Helen's blood run cold and her nerve endings cringe.
"Your stupid Ashley is dead, mommy. And you were foolish enough to let me inside your precious little girl. What a nice gift. What's with the compulsion to reproduce and then kill your offspring?"
Helen's body was frozen, the words echoing through her mind like sucker-punches to her stomach. She could feel her tears rolling freely down her cheeks, unashamed to show her weakness.
"Helen, catch!"
Nikola's voice took her back to earth and she met his gaze.
Taking advantage of the entity's monologue, he had retrieved the Praxian hardware from under his daughter's bed and was now rotating it in his palm.
"I suggest you take care of it once and for all." He added before throwing it her way.
She caught the object singlehandedly, nodding at Nikola.
"Hey, beastie, come to daddy." He said, morphing, effectively getting the entity's attention.
"You should really watch your language." He added, offering it a sinister vampiric smile.
"Or what? You're going to kill your precious baby vampire? The sole hope to revive your race? Please…"
Helen was fumbling the box, as if she could find a switch to it now, after decades of studying the damn thing. Inside, she was bloody frantic. What if Sophie's consciousness had just been switched against that parasitic entity? Would she risk frying her brain by destroying the device? What was she supposed to do?
When Sophie's body rose from the bed and extended talons towards Nikola, rage filled her and she let it fuel her movement, throwing the Praxian device against the opposite wall. The blue light flailed, and Sophie cried out, morphing back to the appearance of a seven-year-old girl, just enough time to comfort Helen in the idea she was still there.
The shock of the fall was not enough to sever the bond though, as in the blink of an eye, the entity was back, and electric sparkles were flying from her fingers. Sophie's body turned to Helen, the monster inside well decided to get her away from the box that it was still tethered to.
"What, you think you're impressive? You're in the body of a small child who peed her pyjama's pants. What do you think you are, one of the Power Puff girls?" Nikola yelled, yanking his daughter's body by the arm, earning Helen more time to grab the wooden stool Sophie used as a nightstand.
She did not let the rattle of her daughter's belonging falling to the floor trouble her. Taking the stool by its feet, she abated its rough corner on the Praxian device with all her strength. Once. Twice. Then again and again as Nikola was distracting their guest.
She did not stop until the was broken up into pieces that she was just about sure would not work together and even less on their own. She did not stop when the blue light crackled and died. She didn't stop either when Sophie's body collapsed in Nikola's arms, or when he shouted that her brainwaves were way less intense and supposed that the entity had leaved their daughter's body for good this time.
She did stop when the broken pieces were so thin that the stool was starting to mark the floor upon impact. She threw her weapon aside, panting with exertion, and turned to the bed, where Nikola was sitting next to Sophie's seemingly sleeping form, his hand quietly stroking her hair.
"You're hot when you defend our kid." He stated mechanically, without the hint of a smile.
"How is she?" She asked, falling to her knees next to the small bed, her fingers closing on her daughter's shoulder.
"She looks like a normal seven-year-old sleeping girl, but I don't know."
Helen stroked her child's face with her lips, whispering her name softly in the shell of her ear.
Sophie's eyes fluttered open slowly, as if she had slept through the night and was perfectly rested. But then a single teardrop fell on her pillow, and she looked deep in her mother's eyes, letting her see all the sadness inhabiting her young body.
"Shh, it's alright baby, you've had a nightmare. It's alright now." Helen whispered, drying Sophie's tears with the pulp of her thumb.
The child shook her head.
"It wasn't a nightmare. It was real. Ashley said she didn't have enough strength left to force me back inside my body and somebody would have to break the shiny box for me to wake up."
Nikola's body tensed instantly at that.
"Wait, Ashley was in there?" He spurted, pivoting on the bed to face his daughter, bringing his body closer to Helen's.
Sophie nodded, and her mother gasped. Ten years. Ten years she had tried to understand how to penetrate the damn device or materialize Ashley's consciousness. Even Nikola Bloody Tesla had been clueless as to what was wrong with it. He had almost convinced her that Ashley was not in there. She had almost believed so herself.
"She said she knows you tried to save her, but there was a real monster in there too. She said…" Sophie frowned, trying to remember exactly what she had been told to repeat. "She said she couldn't let you inside the box or the monster would have escaped."
Helen lifted her chin, trying hard not to collapse instantly under the weight of her crushing despair. She would have the rest of the night to quiver and shake and hide her tears under her pillows but before, she had to know everything.
When she felt Nikola's fingers dig into the naked skin of her shoulder, she laid her own fingers on the back of his hand, grounding herself.
"Did she say anything else? I suppose so, as you were in there for a…" Helen shot daggers at him, and he closed his mouth. She was right, there was no need to scare their offspring more than she surely already was.
"She was angry that I got in there. She tried to hide it, but she does that thing with her foot, and she crosses her arms when she's mad."
Helen huffed and closed her eyes, fighting a fresh flow of tears.
"She said lots of cross words but she was happy to meet me. She said she was glad to see you had moved on. She wants you to be happy mommy." Sophie counted.
She yawned when she finished, and stroked Helen's hair.
"Mommy, Ashley is not really dead you know?" She asked, burying her gaze in her mother's.
Helen shivered. Her daughter's gaze was intense, haunted by her experience.
"She's still here." She went on, placing her small hand on her mother's heart space. "and here" she finished, showing her own skull.
Nikola raised an eyebrow.
"What do you mean, dove?"
Sophie grinned.
"Ashley thinks some of her memories were put in my head." She explained. "I will always have my sister with me."
Nikola and Helen exchanged a panicked look.
Of course, the device had a failsafe that would transfer its data on the nearest 'disk' available in case it should malfunction or be destroyed. It made perfect sense now. Why Sophie spaced out sometimes, told them about people she could not possibly have met, recognize places she'd never been to. Nikola covered his face with his hands, hiding his defeated expression. That explained why all the anachronic memories his daughter possessed only seemed to relate to no more than thirty years back in the past. Genetic memories my ass. He thought.
"I'm very tired now. I want to sleep." Sophie declared.
Helen nodded.
"Sure. We'll talk about all of this tomorrow." She assented before kissing her daughter on the forehead.
"How could we be so recklessly stupid?!" He raged. "Back in Oxford we were pedantic know it all thinking we could face the consequences of our actions. And it was fine, so were we all in those days. But now? Now we run headfirst to the next adventure, not caring about the consequences because any danger is just a thrill to our everlasting butts. Who cares if we die? We've lived a long and fruitful life, so whatever!" He spat, gesturing wildly with a hand as the other was pulling on his jacket. "But Helen, it's not just us anymore. I won't risk our lives if it means exposing Sophie to any danger our stupid minds find attractive." He ranted.
"Are you quite finished?!"
Her icy tone froze him instantly and for the first time since they had got out of Sophie's room, he pushed his own feelings aside and looked at Helen.
Her face was stoic, but he could see right through her expression, down to the core of her being. Her hands were shaking against her better effort to make them stop. And her eyes were filled with… So many feelings that their weight crushed him instantly. It dawned on him that she had just destroyed whatever was left of Ashley to save Sophie. And yes, by doing so, Sophie's brain had been transformed into a recovery disk. She was quite aware of it and the guilt was there, consuming her from the inside.
Tonight was for mourning. Tonight was for bidding farewell to the past and building their present with burning stones and without plans.
The assault of her lips against his was fierce and his hands instantly found her hips, pressing her against him as if wishing to mattress her fall. Her fingers grazed his scalp, anchoring herself to the knowledge he was there no matter what. His tongue found hers, furiously repeating that tango they had danced times and times before.
Even though their bodies could not be closer, her deft fingers found the buttons of his shirt and blindly worked their way up, revealing the pale expense of his chiseled chest.
Nikola could taste the salt of her tears on her lips and that brought him back to earth. He clasped her arms and stepped back ever so slightly.
"Helen, are you sure you want this?" He whispered, his grey eyes searching her gaze.
She growled. Really growled.
"Nikola… I can't – deal with my darkness tonight." She whispered, closing her arms around his neck in an effort to bridge the distance he had created by stepping back.
He had never been able to say no to her anyway. But the pleading voice was too much, the hurt she felt was breath-taking and he understood. She was an expert at beating herself up, and she wanted him to take control, get her weapons away from her and use them for something that felt good.
He instantly crushed their lips together again. He understood her need, and he could still feel the rush of adrenaline he had experienced back in Sophie's room.
His human nails dig into the soft skin of her hips and she exhaled sharply, letting the physical pain replace her emotional one.
Tonight, they'd let the house burn. Tomorrow, they would collect all the broken pieces and build something new, Nikola thought, walking Helen backwards to her bed.