Part Two: Consequences

Myrnin was not faring well.

"Give me something to do, fool," Oliver said through tight lips. "If I stand here idly any longer, I will be forced to tear something apart."

Myrnin grit his teeth in frustration and snapped a handwritten book shut. He threw it onto the ground where it joined dozens of other volumes that had been discarded out of uselessness. He turned and his eyes were sharp and focused and entirely serious. "Very well. I am searching for a book of spells bound in leather. The words will be in Latin and there are some pressed flowers in the first few pages."

Oliver's jaw clenched and he nodded obligingly. He didn't even waste time to make a flippant quip.

They were tense; so much was at stake for the both of them. Myrnin could feel his hope slipping with each book he looked at that was not the one he was looking for. He didn't even know if he still had it—perhaps he'd burned it when he left London along with the other journals of his that couldn't be taken to the New World.

He opened another and tossed it to the side almost immediately. No, that one was written in Welsh.

Abruptly, there was a burst of energy that pulsed throughout the room and ran down Myrnin's spine. Who was this opening his portals? He didn't recognize the—

A large gust of wind whipped through the lab, throwing book covers open and sending pages flipping about loudly as forgotten leaves flew around aimlessly. A man with ginger hair stepped through the portal carrying a woman in his arms.

Samuel. And Amelie.

Once he was inside, the portal closed and the powerful intrusion of nature's breath ceased. Sam knelt down and laid Amelie out on the Persian rug and there she was, on it again for the second time that early morning. Oliver rushed to her aid and once Amelie was safely out of Sam's grasp, Myrnin flew at him, pushing him onto the ground.

"What are you?" he asked, fangs bared.

Sam's hands were trying to cover his face defensively. "What do you mean?"

"You've been raised from the dead! You're something monstrous. Demonic, even."

"But I'm just Sam! It's me, Myrnin," he insisted.

"How can I trust you? You certainly don't expect me to take your word for it, do you?"

"I don't know. I can't prove it. Just help Amelie. Please. There's something wrong."

That was proof enough. For now, at least.

Myrnin held out his hand to Sam and helped him up. Samuel seemed surprised at his sudden change of heart, but didn't question it further. He fell on his knees at Amelie's side and pushed back hair from her face.

"Amelie? Can you hear me?" he said gently.

Sam was wearing a dark blue sweater vest with his collar sticking out of the top smartly. He had on beige pants that had grass and dirt stains everywhere. In Sam's hair were pieces of soil embedded near the roots of it and it was tousled from the wind. He seemed like Sam. But there must be something wrong with him.

"Would you not just stand there like a lobotomized pup and help me?" Oliver snarled to Myrnin. He was jerked out of his thoughts on Samuel Glass and then leaned down to observe Amelie.

Her pale hair had fallen around her like a river of silver. Her eyes were closed and an echo of a formidable smile was on her lips. Myrnin knelt next to her and opened her eye to check pupil dilation—it was one of the only ways to tell whether a vampire was, for lack of a better word, living or not. However he jumped back the moment he saw the consummate blackness of her eye. Even the sclera was like the sky on a night with no moon.

"Jesu," he cursed quietly.

Oliver and Samuel had seen it too.

"What's wrong with her?" Oliver asked gruffly.

Myrnin crouched back over Amelie and checked both of her eyes this time. As he had expected, both eyes were pitch-black. He folded her hands over one another on her stomach so that she looked as peaceful as she could be, but it did nothing to take away the unsettling qualities of the smile on her lips.

"She's possessed," he ventured, leaning back on his heels.

Oliver looked doubtful. "How do you—?"

"Because she was here earlier and the soul controlling her gave me a warning. 'Those who play in my court shall perish,'" Myrnin said patiently.

Sam nodded and understanding cleared his face of his contemplative scowl. "In the cemetery, someone spoke throughher and gave me a message. It said to leave her because she tried to not give anything in return for taking me back. Also, it said my curses have been taken away, but I was given two new ones." He looked around nervously at things in the lab, and Myrnin watched him curiously.

"Do you have any idea what this voice was referring to?" Oliver asked. Myrnin stared at him and saw that he had his hand on Amelie's shoulder protectively. A muscle at the end of his lips twitched, demanding that he frown in distaste, but Myrnin controlled the urge. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Samuel was not so restrained.

Sam seemed to pause, perhaps in pondering what they could be, but he shook his head. "I—don't know."

Myrnin stood up, immediately consumed by the peculiarity of 'curses' having been removed. He stepped over Amelie carefully and then walked around Samuel, examining the man with a close eye. He seemed completely unchanged.

"I wonder what this could be," Myrnin said. "I—"

Oliver spoke up from the floor where he was still kneeling next to the comatose body. "May we focus on the most important matter, you dimwitted dandy?" he snarled. "Our Founder's body is held hostage by some supernatural force; we need to find some way to reverse this entire thing—put the Glass boy back in his grave, and get Amelie in her normal state."

Myrnin looked at Sam to gauge his reaction at the thought of being forced back into the arms of death, but he seemed altogether concerned with something else in the lab. Myrnin tore his gaze away from Sam—he would care for that once Amelie was safe.

"As always, you are right, Oliver," Myrnin said, his tone laced ever so slightly with venom because of his verbal assault on Samuel. Everything had gone civilly until Oliver had opened his daft mouth. "Pick her up, you two, and follow me."

While they were lifting Amelie into the air with the care only two lovers could, Myrnin opened a drawer in one of his cabinets and took out a ring of keys. He looked back and saw that Sam and Oliver were awaiting his instructions and he motioned for them to bring her his way. He went into the hall containing his many rooms in the back of his lab. Passing doors for his unfinished inventions room, the small kitchen, and several other rooms that contained boxes of his and Ada's and even some of Amelie's old things, he reached a door with a giant padlock on the outside. He inserted a key into the padlock and it clicked open. Myrnin undid several other locks that ran down the length of the door and finally twisted the knob and pushed the heavy metal door inward.

A nicely made bed was in the corner that had gone unused for quite a while now. Myrnin stepped into the space and hoped Oliver's level of intelligence was low enough not to notice the scratch marks on the cement walls and the bloodstains on the floor.

"This is your bedroom?" Oliver said snidely, looking around the place with disgust. Myrnin shot him a look, but only Sam caught on.

"Here, let's put her on the bed," he said, cutting off anymore remarks from Oliver. They moved to the small mattress and laid her out on it nicely.

Once that was done, Oliver's eyes roamed around the space. "I don't think we should leave her here."

Myrnin rolled his eyes. "If you have a better place in mind, please—by all means—contribute your idea and Samuel and I will determine how worthless it is on a scale of one to ten."

"Why should my idea be—"

"Where else are we going to put her?" Myrnin shot, losing the short amount of patience he could ever have for Oliver. "This is the safest, most isolated place that she could possibly be."

Oliver's volume level lowered, but his anger did not subside. "There aren't even any windows in here."

"For the sake of all that's holy, of course there aren't, you cretin. We're underground!"

In a flash, Myrnin felt the impact of Oliver tackling him onto the cement floor. Something in his midsection snapped and his head hit the floor with a sharp crack. Myrnin was dazed long enough that Oliver pinned him down and hissed, "It would behoove you to mind your tone with me, fool. Like you, I only want what's best for her. Our interests are one in the same."

Myrnin regained his right state of mind and turned his face to the side to spit out blood from an internal wound that was probably already healed. His eyes flashed crimson as he looked up at Oliver looming over him and holding his wrists to the ground so that his bones were almost at breaking point. "Get off of me. You are absolutely useless to me right now and the only thing your emotionally unstable self has brought to this concoction of madness is more madness. I suggest you either decide to help us or crawl off to go sodomize a dog, as you are used to doing when you are unwanted."

Unfamiliar laughter came from the corner—it was menacing, pitiless laughter from Amelie's grinning lips. Samuel was by her side in an instant and Oliver lifted himself from Myrnin. Myrnin stood up, wiped blood from his mouth, and then joined the three others at Amelie's sickbed.

She was sitting up, staring at them all with her soulless eyes that made Myrnin have to suppress a shudder.

Her lips began moving. "What an interesting bunch that is acting as heroes. It shall be most intriguing to watch you all try to save your beloved Amelie." The voices were many and spoke in unison, their discording tones causing the most unharmonious of sounds. "The book which you seek was hidden long ago" —Amelie's head turned and those eyes bore deep into his—"by you, Myrnin." Her eyes went to rest on all of them. "That is all the help I am willing to give; I don't want this to be too easy for you."

Amelie's eyes closed and the smile disappeared. She had begun her fall before Sam, the one closest to her, caught her head and eased her back down onto the pillow.

A silence lapsed through the room as they all watched Amelie lying motionless on the bed.

"Well," Myrnin said, his word breaking the somber atmosphere like a chisel slamming into ice, "I suppose we should continue our search for the book."

They started toward the door and Oliver went out first, followed by Myrnin, and then Sam. Myrnin turned back and saw Sam about to touch the back of the door—the face of it that was on the inside—to close it and Myrnin shouted.

"No! The back is coated in silver—"

But he looked unfazed. His hand was even making contact with the silver finish and he seemed not at all bothered. Sam removed his hand, finally realizing that pain should be registering. He looked down at his hand and Myrnin didn't see the telltale signs of burned flesh or charred skin. His brows furrowed.

Myrnin grabbed his hand and looked at it closely. There was nothing, not even a mark. He entered into the room once more and set his gaze upon the door. The silver that protected others from Myrnin's escape when he had been insane was still there, still shiny and not at all chaffed. "I don't understand," he muttered.

Myrnin reached out and touched the silver paint and jerked his hand back quickly when it sizzled at the contact. "Samuel, place your hand here," he said.

Sam did.

There was nothing. He even pressed his whole palm against the back of the door and there was no reaction at all.

"He's human." That was Oliver who must have been watching.

"Obviously not," Myrnin said, shortly. "His heart is still." He looked back to where Amelie was unconscious on the bed. "Come, we shall discuss this in the lab."

Sam was having a hard time keeping up with everything that was happening. There was so much going on, but there was also the fact that there seemed to be things whispering to him and project emotions onto him that weren't his own.

The moment he'd stepped into Myrnin's lab, his head had almost exploded at all of the feelings he was experiencing at once: rage, power, clarity, determination, illuminated, creative—every feeling imaginable. The sensation dimmed after several moments of concentration, but had persisted dully the entire time.

And then there were the voices.

He killed me, that spider of a man.

Can you hear us? Can you help us?

Stay away from him—he's a monster.

When the thing possessing Amelie spoke up, the voices scattered and left him alone. But now, in the lab, they had started back up again.

"Samuel?"

They were calling out to him, asking him to help them and if he could do anything. One of them even asked if he could get revenge on Myrnin for killing them in the first place. It was then that Sam finally accepted that he was hearing the voices of the dead.

"Samuel! Are you all right?"

Sam blinked and his eyes focused on Myrnin.

"I can hear them."

Myrnin's face twisted into a concerned mask. "Hear whom?"

"The ghosts."

Pleaaaaaaaaaaaase review!