Amelie's pov
I sat there, holding what remained of her lifeless body in my arms, and cried. I actually, truly cried. Not sobs or a few glassy tears, but streams and streaks and canals of tears racing down my face. This was not pretty crying, this was nothing-being-held-back crying and I was sure it looked very unlike me.
I wasn't used to this. I was old, very old and a vampire, a combination that was cause for callousness. I didn't feel like this, I was incapable of it, or so I thought.
The pain itself was considerable and was something that I welcomed. It was like someone was tearing at my chest and stomach, trying to yank me down and I felt like I was choking on air as I desperately tried to stop the oncoming rush of tears that seemed like a never-ending waterfall. I wasn't made for this, this, this utter break-down, this total collapsing of walls that I had spent centuries perfecting. Claire, like my only daughter now lay dead , cold as ice.
Myrnin's pov
The voices had stopped for awhile now, but I was afraid to move, afraid that if I moved they would know I was alive and they would come back. No, it was much better to stay still, to stay play-dead.
Claire.
Her name brought back shocking bolts that seared into me, it made me remember. How could I ever even forget? She was everything, my literal everything. I loved her with all my dead heart. I had even told her that much. Why didn't she say anything? Why wasn't she responding?
I love you, I love you, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, CLAIRE, I LOVE YOU! I shouted over and over and over. Why wasn't she answering? I loved her! Why couldn't she love me?
Oh right, because she was dead.
Claire. I love you. I love you, Claire. I'll save you. I promise.
I uncurled myself from my little ball and pulled my bloodied fingers out of my torn hair. I could tell I was a mess, but I really couldn't care less. I had to find what I was looking for. I was convinced that this was the only thing that could save her, could save that mutilated, destroyed body. Images flashed back into my mind, her leaving, heading for the stairs, a dark, black flash moving fast, too fast for even my vampire eyes to see and then red, blood red, red blood, red roses, she was dead.
Where was it? Where was that goddamned machine? It was small, so small. Why did I have to make it so small? Ah, so many questions, so little answers, too much time, too much love. When had life become this complicated?
In a box, in a drawer, around the corner and behind the door, it was nowhere. Gone. Vanished. Dead. NO! It had to be somewhere! I wouldn't lose it, couldn't lose it! It just as tied to me as Claire was. Oh Claire, oh poor sweet, innocent Claire!
I mourned for a moment, shaking with grief. Too much emotion, I'd always had it and I always would. It would kill me. Eventually.
But not today and not as long as I had Claire! Which I didn't now, but I would and soon! Grr, rawr, bite, I wanted to bite. Where was it? Why did it have to be so damn small? Oh, wait. It wasn't small, not at all! It was big, huge even, almost as big as Ada's machine. Ada.
I distinctly remember what it felt like to lose her the first time and the second even more sharply. It had been terrible, painful, agonizing in ways that were unknown to almost all because so few had ever caused it. Few had lost control of that madness that hunger and killed someone so loved, so cherished. Sure, it had been an accident, but not in the way that mattered. I had ripped her open with my hands, my teeth. I had killed her and hadn't cared, not for hours, not for days until Amelie came to find me.
I think that's the first time that she was truly afraid of the disease. Before it had been real enough, sure, but only a nuisance, a flitting bug to swat at. It had been years away from destroying anything and vampires are simply terrible at planning for the distant future. Until then it had been a distant future.
I swayed and leaned against the table, momentarily losing myself to the past. Pasts were awful things! It had always been my deepest advice not to have one. Best to forget, to move on, to grow in a sense. Remember the lessons and forget the teacher. Argh, pasts! Who needed them?
Well they were certainly good at reminded, good at reminding pain. Pain.
Claire!
I need to work, work faster, find. Find that machine thing-y. Now where was it? Big, yes. It was large, it was commodious. Which made perfectly perfect sense because you were, well, in it. Well, sort of.
Aha! I found a key of sorts that really wasn't a key.
BTGD, LTGU.
Well what did that mean? B,B,B…B, B,B,b,b,b,b,B,B! Yes, B, Big! As in, big things go down. Down down down down, always down. So down I went, ripping at the carpet covering the entrance to the basement and grinding my teeth while I waited for the hand scanner to go, then jumping, falling, landing, running.
Moving past the really big machine with all its lovely clacks and clanks, I headed towards the back, looking for a hidden door. I spotted it without much looking, I did put it there myself after all, and attempted to open it and OW!
Silver handle. Smart for me, stupid for me, pain for all. Except those pesky humans, nothing worked on them. Well, except for bullets. Those tended to work with rather satisfying results!
Covering my hand with my sleeve I again tugged on the door, relying on my surprising strength to wrench it open. Inside it was dark and dusty and cobwebs hung from every nook and cranny. I held out my fingers to a frightened spider that hung from the rafters and reminded me so much of dear Bob, but it skittered off into the shadows and out of sight.
The state of the room was decay, which really didn't bother me much since my lab went through several phases of it, and most of it contents fit right along with it. All the junk shoved into crumbling heaps and dirty, muddy puddles of disintegrated mass. All except for a shining metal box that shone like diamond among rocks, glowing almost, in the center of the room.
The box was about seven feet in height, just large enough to stand in and about ten feet long and two feet wide. A metal grate closed off the inside of it, but you could see through to the paraphernalia inside.
On one end was an engine of sorts, filled with bubbling green liquid that oozed and burped in a disgusting way and held cables and wire in all sorts of shapes and colors. They were all connected to the center which was magnum hot, kept at the perfect temperature to turn the gold bars that had been placed in there centuries ago into a molten syrup that rose and fell as if pushed by an unseen tide. The other end held a massive control table full of knobs and bronze gears that were purely for looks of course! In between were five red velvet seats that I had stolen from a king some eight hundred years ago in France, I believe. He hadn't been a very good one. Amelie hated him, killed him.
I ripped open the grate without pause and sat down in the seat closest to the control panel and pulled a lever on my right. The machine hummed to life under me and emitted a welcoming whir.
Yes, yes, yes, YES! It was working! It would work! It was going to work! Everything was going to be fine and I was going to save Claire. Again!
Eve
Amelie stood blocking my path in her fragmented state with a look in her eyes that told me everything. Everything I didn't want to know.
"What-" I stopped, my voice breaking. I already knew what had happened. "She's dead isn't she." It wasn't a question. I knew.
This time, somehow, was worse, way worse, than the first time and I stumbled back, stunned. I felt numb, cold. It didn't feel real... yet. It was like a nightmare, just another stupid nightmare that had haunted my dreams for years now. I couldn't accept this as reality. It had already happened, she was fine now. This was all just a dream.
Amelie nodded her head in a brief, curt nod and then... lost it. She slumped down, grasping the banister with all her strength and fell to the ground in an ungraceful heap, sobbing and choking with tears. "Amelie?" I called out, afraid to approach her. Her head shot up to stare at me with wild eyes that held such pain. "Amelie!" I was yelling at her now, begging her to get up. No, no, no, no! It had to be a dream!
But it wasn't.
I too collapsed, crying uncontrollably. Not Claire, not again! I was crying too hard to see, all my sarcasm and wit gone. I had nothing to left to protect me; my usual goth armour felt only like a useless facade.
I was helpless, hopeless. It was much too obvious now that Claire wasn't going to magically spring up as a ghost this time; this was really the true end of her. I knew!
Leaving a still sobbing Amelie, I fled the stairs, running straight for the front door only pausing to grab my keys before I was out and down the street, almost into my car.
I had seen Claire for the last time.
Myrnin
Still vibrating with my sudden on take of euphoria, I was soaring above everything, buzzing on an emotional high that I so often found in the other direction. So sad down things are, so boring. Too much pressure. Too much pressure up. The world's difficult.
The machine kept alive beneath me, making a rather pleasant purr of whirs and clicks and snaps and the popping sounds of boiling chemicals. Home. I suddenly remember the pet name I had so appropriately appointed to my little pet project. Home. Because that's what she was really. A way home. To my home. My real one. My old one. Back to a time of training and leaning and being. Such a nice state. Leaning. Teaching is much too hard. Always best to stick with learning. Learning never did anyone much harm... well except death. But perhaps one should be more careful with the knowledge they learn. Tsk, Tsk, such disrespect for the master.
I almost left right then and there. It was ready, ready to fly in a manner, er, at least ready to run. I could go back and get her right now if I wanted.
Ahh, best not to forget my mistress. She would be quite angered if I left her behind, what's the saying? Ladies first? No? Well, she must go, must come with. Time-tock, ticking fast. Running, losing, tripping, falling. NOW! No, my mistress must stay her anger for surely she will understand the urgency of leaving now! I love her, I love my little Claire. Love comes first. So great is love it must come first. But no!
I staggered out of the machine, nervously rubbing my eyes; out of habit of course. I needed to get Amelie. I couldn't leave without her. Besides I believe I could do her quite a favour that she might intensely appreciate. She's been so kind to me, has put up with so much. I must pay her back. That's the only way to be free of her. I don't like being in debt to someone. She has saved me.
Payment doesn't matter. I love Claire. I need to get to her! Screw rational.
I was pacing now, something I always did when I was on the verge of a pure manic state. That didn't bode all too well. For all possible ways I was cured of this Bishop virus that made me lose all control at sporadic rate, but it didn't cure the monster within, the disease I was born with.
Vampires are purely physical beings. Most think that because of our enhanced minds it's a mental thing, but see, the brain is a physical thing. All things are physical. Even ideas. Vampires, vampirism, isn't mental. Just physical. Can't cure what doesn't exist. I don't. I do. Where's Claire? Where's Amelie? We need to find her soon. NOW!
Amelie
Eve had left me, something I relished and despised at the same time. I wanted my space to mourn of course, but the human feel, the presence, the warmth was always a welcoming thing. So happy, so bright, so alive they were. They were everything I am not. I envied them. We all did.
I was still a crumpled mess; ruined clothes, disarrayed hair, broken nails and blood, blood, blood. Blood in my hair, blood on my clothes, blood on my skin, in my mouth, soaking beneath me on the hard wooden floor. I hated blood, hated the mess it made. Well no, I didn't hate it, just hated the mess.
I sighed. All this feeling and crying and being so emotional wasn't going to get me anywhere. I was a disaster and I had much more to do than sit for hours and mourn over Claire and something I couldn't control.
I jumped up at that moment, overtaken with a sudden thought, What the hell had happened to Claire?
I couldn't believe that all my hazed fear and pain had allowed me to so completely forget what killed her in the first place, or rather the fact that I had no idea what could have killed her, could have destroyed her so quickly and brutally.
My first thoughts were at Oliver, that he believed by assassinating her he might gain something, but that was quickly ruled out as I realized that I hadn't heard and single thing, hadn't smelt any scents, hadn't felt a stirring or a portal opening. All of a sudden something killed my poor, sweet, innocent, dead Claire. Why Claire? I could've actually loved her maybe. Maybe not. I was never good with love.
What we had done washed over me and I began to really sort out coherent thoughts instead of a whirling and twirling mass of pain that grinded against my mind as sharp as glass. I had acted brashly and without reason, partially to prove to Myrnin that she was mine and that I could exert that power in any way I wished, but also based on an adolescent wondering and fascinating that had been haunting me since I had melt the strange, brilliant girl with the red hair.
And now she was gone.
And I had absolutely no idea what had happened.
None at all.
But she was dead and gone and I couldn't afford to continue this brash and reckless behaviour that obviously had caused a serious effect of a amnesia on me, something I and my people could not benefit from. No matter how much I was hurting I still had affairs to look after and certainly Claire's death was a tragedy, but focus must go into finding what killed her and eliminating a perceived threat, if that's what it really was.
Oh god and that was the last thing that I wanted to do. All I wanted was to hold Claire in my arms and tell her that I could protect her and that I really did care and that no matter how callous I have acted it's only the mandatory side of me that comes with my position. I really cared for Claire and now, like all my distant loves and memories, was a thing of the past and gone.
I sighed again, out of human habit for external emotion and retreated back into my bleak thoughts. Slinking back into a slouched sitting position I figured I could afford to forget the rest of the world for a few more hours.
~XXX~
At a later time I was unaware of a hand shook me awoke.
"Amelie! Amelie! We need to go. It's solved, it's fixed! Depart! NOW!" Myrnin called to me, rudely shoving me into the harsh reality of being awake and aware. My heart ached for Claire.
"What Myrnin? I don't-I can't- I- I don't have time for another one of your useless experiments. I have things that need accomplishing," I said rather sharply and without real reason beside that I wanted to drift back to a fake realm.
"No Amelie, I'm up-DOWN! I'm down, I went down. It was there, we can work use! It works and well that's all really," Myrnin blathered on like a total fool, barely being able to form a single organized thought. I pushed myself up off the cold hard wood, now sticky with old blood and focused on the ragged face of my old and dear friend. My only trustworthy ally left.
He was in that manic state that I had come to recognize as him coming on to something, of that brilliant mind sparking into full inferno. He was almost literally glowing, vibrating with an unseen energy that wound around the entire universe. It was from this look that I always gained hope. Once he had this look I knew deep in my soul that everything would be alright because Myrnin had the answer to the problem. I dreaded the day when he couldn't solve one. That would really be quite an end, as much of an end as an immortal can have. A figure of speech that was really. I love his hope. It's so adorably human of him.
"Myrnin, be still and put words to it," I stated calmly.
Clires pov
He was weirdly calm. There was no way she could resist that pull. It was like a black hole, and she was standing on the event horizon.
"Claire."
It was a whisper in the hurricane that roared around her, but she recognized the sound. Myrnin. That was Myrna's voice.
"Here!" She screamed, as the void pulled her away. "Myrnin, help me! Help!"
The spinning peaces of reality around her seemed to slow down. She saw herself reflected in one side of a jagged shard, and then it turned, and she saw Myrnin's face in it. He looked worried, and there were lines of of effort around his mouth that she had never seen before.
His hand reached out to her, but it was as if he was trapped behind the glass; his hand slapped against it, and then the spinning shard turned again, and she lost him.
Claire twisted. There, in another piece, she saw him again, reaching out.
"Take it," He was trying to tell her. It wasn't a voice-it was something else, a kind of whisper moving inside her, like blood in her veins. Only she no longer had blood, or veins. This was cumming out of her very core, the thing that had survived her body.
Her soul.
"Take my hand."
She couldn't. He was on the other side of that glass, and the pieces were moving, and she was being dragged inch by inch into the dark.
Then she saw Shane in one of the spinning, glittering shards. He was on his back, propped up, staring out of the shred of reality, and he looked so agonizingly alone.
"Take my hand, Claire-do it now! " Myrnin's whisper sounded desperate now. Anguished. This was hurting him, too.
She kept her gaze on Shane's face , but she lunged for Myrnin's hand as another piece of reality slid past her.
Her fingers broke the cold, icy surface and touched his.
And reality came back together. She could still see the cracks, hear the awful noise of the darkness beyond that, but Myrnin's hand twisted and closed around her wrist in an unbreakable hold, and she fell, and fell, and fell. . . .
And took a breath.
A real breath.
It hurt.
Claire hurt.
Her heart beat, and it was like wave after wave of fire. Her breath scraped against her lungs, and it was like sandpaper against her throat. Pain. Her life was giving her pain. And there was something cold moving through her veins, soothing her pain. Cold and foreign. It had stillness like death, the promise of eternity. But the vibrancy and passion of life. It didn't feel bad. Just different. But she knew it had a dark side to it, because she knew what it was.
It was Myrnin's blood.
*She could almost see him. Not him, physically, but his mind. His consciousness. His soul. The thing that made Myrnin, Myrnin. It was too much. Too much pain, too much color, too much sorrow, too much joy and loneliness and hunger and love. Too much of everything. This was the landscape he lived in, this was the wonderland behind the looking glass that made him what he was.
*He scared her, and charmed her, and made her want to cry.
*There was no way she could do it. No way she could make her heart work through all of this, her lungs breathing. The ice in her held a kind of peace, a release from pain. It was wonderful. Not exactly death, and not exactly life, but something of both, and it had the sharp clarity of eternity. It was so tempting to just fall into it, to see and experience something new, something so few people in history had ever seen.
She just had to let go.
"Then let go. I'll catch you." Myrnin's cool hands were on her forehead, and his cool voice was inside her head. "Let go, Claire. Trust me."
Myrnin. She couldn't do this to Myrnin. Just the thought of him made her heart beat against the cold, pound harder and harder. She sensed this was killing her, but so was Myrnin's blood, in it's own way. She couldn't win.
No matter what, she would end up hurting him.
"Please, Claire. I can't hold this forever. It's already been far too long as it is."
She was torn, but really there had never been any choice. She took one last breath, and it hurt, God it hurt! But she savored the hurt, the hurt with all the pain and beauty and struggle and victory of life, just one last breath, and then. . . .
She fell, her heart stopped, and Myrnin caught her, and she died.
Again.
There is no possible way to describe those first milliseconds as a vampire. There are not words to say the things Claire experienced in that fraction of a fraction of a second. The English language simply did not have the capability.
She opened her eyes, and was struck by the particular way they focused. Instead of having the regular perifical vision, she could now focus on her whole field of vision. For instance, while her eyes were facing directly upwards, she could see all four walls around her with the same clarity and detail as the ceiling. She blinked, although she no longer felt the need to, and had the unique experience of seeing both through and inside of her eyelids with perfect clarity.
"Maybe Myrnin knows a language that can describe this. I'll have to get him to teach it to me sometime." Claire thought. One thought among many. Her mind was not so limited as it had been as a human, and even as she thought a million and one thoughts, she was acutely aware of everything around her.
She could feel tantalizing heat radiating from two other forms in the room, and one cold. . . .no, not cold presence, not exactly. She was the same temperature, after all. It was electricity that burned cold. This was how her mind perceived the unseen presence of vampires now. This was what Myrnin was too her.
The hairs stood up on her body as she observed him in this new metaphysical sense, saw finally how incredibly enormous his. . .his authority? His power? No, that wasn't quite the word for it, but it was close. How enormous his power was. It was what she sensed in the strongest vampires of Morganville when they pulled out all the mojo they had and somehow began a struggle without using their body's. They used their minds.
She understood this was not a result of when their minds had touched earlier. No, that was much more personal. Rather, she would feel this with every vampire she came across.
"This must be what Michele meant," Claire thought. "When he said that vampires had an instinctive grasp of where they stood with other vampires."
All this came to her in less than three seconds.
She herd Myrnin move, he staggered, stepped back, and fell. Strong as he was, what he did was not an easy thing. Claire closed her eyes, suddenly remembering that Shane was there. He had so far done nothing at all. As far as Claire could tell with her new senses, he had just frozen there, not moving the whole time. She didn't want to open them, not yet.
She didn't want to see him see her like this, not when even she hadn't come to terms with it yet.
She could feel Eve's uncertainty. She hesitated, and then she herd her walk over to Myrnin.
". . . Are you OK?"
She could hear the fabric of Myrnin's clothes shift, and the soft smack of skin on skin as he grabbed Eve's arm, vampire fast. Claire's eyes snapped open, and it was the oddest thing, because she could actually see her eyes turn red, as a growl ripped out of her throat, oddly the most natural thing she could have done.
Her body twisted, blurred, and she came up in a crouch, eyes narrowed at her crazy boss, as she prepared to attack him, to defend her friend, her human.
"Mine." Claire thought at him. "Mine. You can't have her."
But then, she sucked in a breath to tell him this, that he most certainly could not have what was clearly her's, but then the smell hit her. Coying, sweet and salty. The blood pulsed just below Eve's skin, flushed and mesmerizing. And suddenly, her aim wasn't Myrnin.
The two hungry, red eyed vampires turned their gaze on Eve.
She misses by inches as Myrnin slams her body into the ; solid cols hard floor . " I you want blood , just ask , you don't take it from strangers so don't take it from your friend"
His face expressionless , he takes two bags of blood out from behind his back and held it out to her.
Her eyes turned blood red , as her mouth crashes down , splitting the bag in half .
myrnin didn't flinch when Claire darted foreword at vampire speed, grabbed the bag from him, and flashed back to the window. She completely forgot about Shane, amazingly, and found her focus captured by the blood bag. She bit down, noticing for the first time the delicate, feline fangs that extended past her lips. The liquid exploded on her tong, and her eyes widened.
And then drifted closed in ecstasy.
The world was quiet. Quiet and dull. Sensation faded. Nothing was real anymore. Nothing could hold her here anymore. The ties that connected her to this world drifted away, and nothing was left. Just the blood. It was the only thing tethering her to reality anymore.
Imagine the soft brush of silk. Flowers bending in the wind. A baby's first laugh. A butterfly's wing beats. Now imagine your taste buds could experience these sensations. Imagine the sweetest, most sensational thing you've ever tasted, and multiply that by the biggest number you can think of. Do that, and you will come as close as your human mind can possibly conceive of what blood is to a vampire.
It was life. Pure and simple.
Something was off, though. She know it, even in her dazed euphoria. It was. . .stale, somehow. She suspected it was better straight from the source. Her eyes opened, and she dimly noted the film of red covering her vision. Things still seemed slow and faded, the whole of her mind concentrating on the gentile sucking motions of her mouth as she drained the blood, but she fought past that to look around.
Eve wasn't in her sight, but she herd movement in the hallway. The clink of metal, the thump of wood, and . . . . and a rhythmic sort of pounding that she couldn't didn't worry about it, though. There was simply too much other stuff to grab at her attention for her to focus on any one thing for too long. Like the light bulb flickering overhead. Or the taste of blood. Or the shadows cast through the window behind her. Or the taste of blood.
Or the taste of blood.
Or Myrnin.
She noticed him. He was so still. So very, very still. And his eyes were wide and deep and scary. She felt she could drown in them at that moment. He watched her and she watched him, and they both watched each other watching the other.
Claire sucked, blinked, sucked again, and realized the bag was empty. She wondered how long she and Myrnin had been locked together in each others eyes. She didn't look away as she let the blood bag drop to the floor. Time seemed oblivious to them all. She dimly noted that Shane was looking at them now, watching them watch each other, face cast in shadow.
She couldn't bring herself to care.
A small, predatory smile graced Myrnin's lips and his eyes burned red.
Boots stamped in the hall. Eve marched in, a false smile slapped on her face, and dropped a duffel bag on the hardwood floor. Stakes rattled and silver clinked from within.
"OK!" She said, slapping her hands together and rubbing them mischievously. "I'm going out to get Michele."
Myrnin's soft laughter drifted through the air. "Look at the sky, little bird." He whispered, too low for human ears. "Look at the stars."
laire walked out onto the grass, head tipped to the sky. She stumbled backwards, trying to center herself for a better view. This was the first time sense waking up that she felt off balance. "Three, four. . . .five. . . .and that's the Lagoon Nebula." She muttered under her breath. ". . .and . . .and. . . .whats that? Is that. . .? Is that . . .? Myrnin, that's Kowal-Vavro." She said louder, awe dominating her face. "Myrnin, you can't see that without a telescope. You would have to have pupils at least 9 mm wide."
Myrnin was suddenly right next to her, head tilted back with a small smile on his face. "Yes." He said. "I had almost forgotten how beautiful it was. It had become so commonplace to me." He looked at her then as she looked at the sky, that same small smile on his face. "Beautiful." He whispered.
and then he was gone , just like he came. As I walk out to fine him I feel a sharp stabbing pain coming from my chest before I have time to think I look down a see , a stake , his face looms over me.
" I told you I don't like vamps , let alone you becoming one , fange bagging whore".