While I wait to get my hands on the next novel (grrr to anyone who gets in my way) I decided to flesh out how the character's arrived at the "After Death is called the AFTER LIFE" realm.
Author: WARFANG
SAGA OF DARREN SHAN: DO NOT OWN (if I did, then Crepsley would have spanked Steve and set him on the right path with some old fashioned discilpine (Note: That ends all suffering! Wel, okay, the Vampeneze would then captureSteve, reveal him to be their new leader, torture him to accept his role, and all the vampires led by Mr. Crepsley and Darren would save him.) A/N: Dangerous to leave me alone with my thoughts. And no, that is not the story plot)
Chapter 2
The Lake of Lost Souls was not such a dreary place, Darren decided. The people here just were not used to company.
Not caring to be left alone in here for eternity, Darren swam (ran, jumped?) up to the nearest soul.
"Hey!" He greets. "How are you? I'm Darren."
The spirit springs from the crouched position and hugs Darren. Then Darren felt a weight on his chest, then nothing. The spirit had vanished.
"Uh…what?"
"You noticed her."
Darren got whiplash from twisting around to see the speaker. THE voice chuckled. "You can't see me. And that is just fine. I am composed of what cannot be seen."
"Such as honesty and virtue?"
"….maybe."
"THAT which is not seen but the effects of are?"
"Close enough."
"So you are not all good."
"Highly perceptive. Why do you say so?"
"Well," Darren replies, kicking off (Of what?) to the next spirit, "Steve had an illness in his heart. One was from jealousy. I never suspected and sometimes brushed it off as just needing someone, attention, since he lavished me with anything that I wanted. But no one seemed to want Steve."
Darren lands near the spirit, and had the curious sensation of wading towards the figure.
"Also, the last time I had a voice in my head, I wound up killing Steve. Funny how such small choices lead to huge disasters."
Darren glanced up where he wanted to go and noticed a physical change. Spirits in the Lake looked very much like ghosts, except that the light here, not spectral glowing, highlighted the pale looks.
"He was starved of love."
Turning to the spirit, Darren focused on reaching this new person.
"Are you scared?" The spirit cocked a head at him.
"Of being alone? Yes." Darren replied.
"I was left alone. You will be too."
"Well, I just noticed that there were so many people here, and well….I need help finding someone. I was hoping that I could get some help."
"You are such a greedy little brat, only thinking of yourself."
Darren reeled from the venom.
"No. I just need help."
"And you offer some form of temporary alliance to others to get your ambitions?"
"That wasn't what I was-"
"Go away. Your kind sickens me."
Darren swelled up at this. Helping others in need was a decent virtue. He wasn't coercing the guy or anything.
"Do you have no shred of humanity left?! I just asked for some help. A 'Sorry, I can't.' would have been understandable! There is no need to bite my head off. Now, you may be having a bad time- I know I am- but some decent civility would be preferable."
The spirit settled into the clothes and twitched towards Darren. The air of one ready to strike back, to propagate a fight was in the air. Darren remembered the feeling from his adventures against Murlough. He swallowed his anger.
"I'm sorry."
The spirit flinched.
"I shouldn't have yelled at you. The guy, Steve, as in male, that I am looking for has long silver hair and piercing eyes. If you see him, please call me. Thank you."
Darren bit back the bile of 'Or not, if you have that disposition', and turned to leave.
"No…"
Darren turned around, the plaintive note resounding as the thunder clap from one streak of lightning, an odd motion of jerking his shoulders to one side, and then throwing the same leg out to catch himself.
"I should not have taken out all these years in here on you. When you stay for a while, you see others arrive, see them wear down, and after awhile, you stop caring. On of the Cardinals of being lost is despair. I gave up the fight. In fact, I remember overhearing some others older than I that this was originally a purgatory, a place to reflect and move on."
The spirit snorts.
"Well, you can see what happened."
Darren peered around himself. The space he was suspended in contained many levels, much as the sky does after dark. Darren connected that the physical and real dimensions of the lake were two separate areas.
"What, did they forget to add an exit?"
"I do not know. But, I will keep an eye out for your friend. And be careful. Spitefulness is a kinder version of the madness infesting this place. You-just be careful."
The spirit made shooing motions at Darren. "Do you really want me to leave?"
The spirit nodded. "Okay. I'll be back."
THE spirit ducked its head and grimaced, an expression of how unused he (it?) was unused to politeness. The spirit then turned around and motioned to a nearby spirit….
Darren left, talking to the new Voice.
"Okay, this place is really starting to be strange. First, I am having an irrational fear f being alone after having everyone with me. Now I am talking to a voice that I don't know where It comes from, I can't find Steve, and he's the reason I'm here."
"No he isn't."
Darren glared at where he hoped the Voce was located.
"Yes, he is."
"You are wrong."
The voice was patient, a parent waiting for an erroneous child to realize their own mistakes.
Darren scowled at his feet and resumed walking, which was funny, as he had been drifting along the whole time.
"Of course Steve is the problem. He-" Darren bit his tongue.
There he was! Down there, talking to people clustered around him, drawn by the motion Steve filled the abyss with.
"STEVE! HEY!"
Darren jumped and waved his arms. Steve did not react. The others around him looked up. Their faces held sorrow. A truth they knew and couldn't bear to share with him. They shook their hands and curled further away, knowing what had happened to them was transpiring again.
"He can't hear you."
"Why not?" Darren was frustrated. Steve was down there. Laughing, and ignoring him. The masses would soon obscure Steve from him. To Darren, the people were dragging Steve further down, farther away….
Darren attempted to jump off and follow, only to find he was moving backwards.
"Dammit!"
Darren meandered back to the talkative spirit. "Hey, remember me? I'm back!"
The spirit looked up.
"I found Steve, but I can't get near him. Why?"
The spirit gave him a long look.
"That is, what is physically keeping me from him? I mean, after all we went through together and apart, I was hoping to talk to him. Everything may not work out, but I want to take that chance. I want him with me."
"Oh?" Asks the voice. "Then what are you doing here?"
The memory of his time in the Lake vanished. He had not meant to leave Steve, but he had been physically removed. No! I have to help Steve! I won't let the darkness engulf his soul, he wasn't all bad, just driven! He has to come to me! I have to help him. Because…because…
Darren woke up screaming "Because I need him!"
Panting, he looked around the hospital bed.
"Darren! You're up!"
"Where-Where is Mr. Cre- Larten?"
"Oh, the guy who brought you here? He's waiting to come in. You're at the hospital, dear!" The nurse beamed at him. "Apparently you fell from quite a height."
"Yeah, everything's fuzzy." Darren agreed, and still beaming, the purple-skinned nurse skipped out to get the vampire.
Darren Shan rested his head in his hands. He had been experiencing weird dreams about everyone lately, about places he had never been too, and faces that certainly were in no paintings that he knew of, other than the ones he tried to do. When he finally connected his past life to his current state, Darren wandered into the city.
And than he had met Larten Crepsley.
Larten had recognized Darren and rushed to bring him in. The outskirts of the dimension were inhospitable to vampires ('Now we know how humans feel' some joked.) Larten had been bringing Darren to meet everyone, carrying him like old times. But Mr. Crepsley still looked like old times. Darren had shoved this observation to the back of his head, and nearly flipped when he saw that some of the patrons to a shop had purple skin. "New arrival!" was hollered up and down the street.
When Darren craned his neck to get a better look at one building, he had somehow become unattached to Mr. Crepsley and fallen, leading to the rather disturbing nightmare.
Crepsley explained that PARADISE was not a term that vampires used.
"We have our standards, Darren. But we are not a religious cult or devoted followers. Many people who hurt others have moved on, forever atoning for their sins, and lately, I have become of the mind that they need to stop beating themselves up. What happened happened, you are sorry, you have atoned, move on. Some never change. Those are the ones that do not make it to this dimension; their souls are trapped in running water."
"So in short, humans have no full and true concept of how a vampire minds' works."
"Correct."
"Well, duh. If I remember correctly, you dangled a chance for me to kill you to find out if you needed to kill me."
"And you have proven yourself admirably over our time together." Crepsley smiled at Darren, the warmth of a proud father etching his face. Then the reality came flooding back in.
The topic draped over them like a thick cloud. Darren stared at his feet for a while, and then lifted his face to Mr. Crepsley.
"…What will happen to Steve?"
The silence stretched on and on in the hospital. Darren had a mixture of feelings in his gut. He cared for Steve. He hated Steve. Steve had taken away Mr. Crepsley, who sat before him now, on the stool pulled next to the bed.
"I do not know the answer. But based upon our beliefs, what do you think will happen?"
Darren's understanding was that the Vampire Gods had indeed given a new place to their entire race. Petty wars were not a deciding factor on the new life, from who won, lost, was right or wrong, but in how one died was teh admittance to this new life.
"I think that I hate and love Steve. I hate that I love him too. He is my brother. And I hate that. I hate the bond that ties us, that can be severed so easily. I keep beating myself up for not listening to him, or just talking to him. I want you both by my side. I want you to be okay with Steve around me. You- you!"
Darren stopped short and choked, horror filling him, until his body shook. The heart monitor registered the staccato beats of his heart from the feeling.
"Yes, Darren. I would have made a far better father-figure to him that Mr. Tiny ever was. I should not have turned Steve away. It is rare to meet a child so enthusiastic about the vampires. I panicked."
"Meaning?" Darren prompted, after a pause.
"Steve is beautiful, Darren. Vampires are intrinsically built to admire feats of strength, cunning, and even beauty. Steve and you, you both had the attributes. But I tasted insanity in Steve. No- not insanity. Loneliness. He could not handle the admiration that he so desperately craved. I feared to make him a monster."
Crepsley snorts.
"If we had gone back for him….faked his death by having him trip in the graveyard…well, it is too late now for regrets."
Darren studied Mr. Crepsley's face for a long while.
"You admire him." Darren whispered. "He killed you and you-"
"I feel the lure of the power, the grace and ferocity that Steve embodies. If raised as you were, with love and hope, instead of that BITCH-"
Crepsley's voice turns ragged with raw emotion, his claws gripped the side of the bed.
"I saw what that woman did to her own flesh and blood and my skin crawled. Evil comes from somewhere, and not always a dark, or direct place. Should Steve ever tell you," Mr. Crepsley inhaled slowly, "I hope you will love Steve all the same. I understand him better now. Charna's guts. To be killed by Steve…I see now that while he was rude, spoiled, attention-seeking, reckless, dangerous, free, that above all, he was a child." And children are emotional, selfish creatures that know love intimately and are viral in their actions. Steve had no one to show him how to grow up.
"But I do not regret my death. I was furious that Steve separated us, but I see that it was nothing, now. "
Silence reigned in the room. Mr. Crepsley retrieved a glass of water for Darren, and then stepped into the hallway to call the rest of the vampires to report that Darren was fine.
When he came back in, the nurse explained that Darren could leave once the saline solution had finished feeding into his veins.
After a while, Darren caught something Mr. Crepsley murmured into his book.
"Even in death, may you be triumphant.." he had murmured.
"Will he be coming too, then?" Darren asked, curiosity lighting up his face. Hope, fear and apprehension mixed on his face.
"Yes. Steve should arrive one day. But until then, we have a new life."
"Are we still vampires?"
Mr. Crepsley raised an eyebrow.
"Well, I don't have any super-strength, spit, flitting, and I fell from two stories and passed out."
Mr. Crepsley stared at Darren.
"….Will I eventually become a vampire again?"
"We shall see."
Authors' Note: Go read FRUITS BASKET. Or a story written by CLAMP. Broaden your minds.
Sorry. I just got done reading some articles that totally bashed Steve or worshipped the ground he walked on. But really, has anyone thought about how Crepsley felt on all this? Unless there is textual support I have not read yet, Mr. Crepsley most likely pities Steve, a warped, twisted young man that could have been so much better. Frankly, I am doing this story with the fact in mind that a vampire is fundamentally different from humans, and while may be emotionally charged as we are, they most likely are similar to DROW in mind-set. Minus the whole approving of backstabbing.
Not to mention, put yourself in Steve's shoes. Would you have been any different?
Also, review and tell me if this plot line does not flow. I can work on details if I am lacking in that too.
Thanks for reading!
