Chapter 25
"A part-fairy telepath, fraternizing with vampires, weres and living with a demon."
"You've been researching me, then."
I sat on my bed while the changeling, in Diantha's form, paced the length of my room.
"It disgusts me. You disgust me."
"What did you do to Diantha? Is she going to be okay?"
The phone began to ring, and the not-Diantha snatched it from my hand. She/he/it? answered and as it greeted the caller, it transformed into ... into me.
"Hello," it said. My brain tried to make sense of hearing my voice from another source other than my mouth. I winked at me. Now that was a disturbing sight. "Oh, that's too bad." Pause. "No, everything's fine here. Safe and sound." The way it(I?) emphasized those last words caused a shudder pass through me. Eerie didn't cut it.
It said goodbye to the caller, who I figured to be Amelia, and passed the phone back to me. But not before crushing the cordless phone in its hand. Not another phone.
"Your friends are worried," it drawled as me. "It looks as though there's no trace of me in Diamond, and I'm back in New Orleans. What a pickle!" Lord, was that how I really spoke?
"Why are you here?"
"You are immortal."
"You don't know that," I said.
"Yes, I do. I wounded you. Fatally... and yet here you are. Ergo, you can't die."
"I'm not prepared to test that out again." My words came out weaker than I would've liked.
"Good." It smiled at me and reached out to trace a finger across my throat. "It would be a bad idea to alert your two wolfy friends outside the front door."
I leaned away from its touch, forcing my mind to close down so I wouldn't have to listen to any more of its appalling thoughts. To protect it from mine, since in my form it ostensibly had my telepathic ability. I needed to devise a plan to get out of here unharmed.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"To chat. To pow-wow. To ruminate on our shared burden."
"Our shared what now?"
"You know what I mean."
"I really don't."
"Four millennia... It's a long time."
"What do you mean? What's four millennia?" I scooted back on the bed, further away from it.
"Do you know how many lives I've seen come and go? How many civilizations? Theologies? Ideologies? It just repeats. Over and over. Historia vitae magistra." It was pacing again but turned its head to look at me, my blue eyes on its face wide with insistence.
"I'm sorry, I don't follow."
"History is the teacher of life. But what is it for? For nothing! So that I suffer? To what end?"
"What do you want me from?" I asked.
"How old are you?" It resumed pacing.
"Thirty."
It laughed then, low and throatily, and as it tipped its head back, my doppelganger face flickered. Flickered like a television set between stations. It was me, but suddenly it wasn't me. It was another face, and then another, and another.
Flick.
Flick.
Flick.
"Just wait," it hissed. "Wait until you're ten times that. First you'll wish for your own death. And you'll try. A million ways, a million times. But then, when hope is lost, you will wish for everyone else to die instead."
"Is that why you killed all those folks? Because you're sick of being alive?"
"No." It got right up into my face, crawling over me as I scooted up right up to the bedhead, where I could retreat no further.
"I am an abomination. You are an abomination. We would not exist, we would not suffer if not for our rutting, reprobate ancestors who couldn't stop themselves from fucking a species other than their own."
Its flicking features increased like it was in fast forward and when I shut my eyes to it, it gripped my chin so hard I yelped.
"Disgusting," it hissed. "Base." It's breath, warm, was all on me. "Corrupt."
"Stop it. Stop doing that with your face."
A million faces flew over its own. A horrifying Rolodex of beings that morphed and shifted grotesquely.
"You don't like this?" It laughed again. "Be but grateful you aren't me. Billions of beings I have met. Their visages imprinted upon my mind's eye, but my own face? Gone." It snapped its fingers, and I flinched. "Vanished! What cruel fate does father bestow upon me? To languish as this kaleidoscopic abomination?"
"Please!" I begged. "Just stop it."
"Why? Why does it matter? Pain is fleeting. Merely a sensation, nothing more. True pain." It poked me hard in the chest with its finger. "True pain will occur when you realize there is no reprieve. No escape. We will never hold mortality's strong hand; never be ushered by it to the next plane, no, instead we must languish in the interminable night."
It wanted to escape the room. Escape this creature. Escape the meaning of its words. It was dreadful. I'd never asked for this. Never wanted immortality. "No, you're wrong," I moaned.
"You understand. I may cause pain with my actions, but it is for the greater good."
I wanted to force myself away from its grasp. I wanted to stop looking at its horrific, flickering face. It was like a car crash, I couldn't look away. But I couldn't bear to lose myself in the horror of what it was saying. I needed to check on Diantha. I needed to get us out of here.
"Why did your own face vanish?" I asked. "You don't remember what you look like?"
"Nay," it said.
"How is that even possible? Don't you have a default setting with your abilities?"
"It is possible—when you've transformed so many times that the memory of your true self has disappeared from your mind's eye."
"Just stop. Just stop it with your face." I closed my eyes, I couldn't visually take it anymore. Its rotating features were making my vision bug out like one of those magic eye books. I couldn't handle what it was doing to my sense of depth perception… to my sense of self. "Why are you harassing me?"
"I'm not harassing you," it scoffed.
"No, you're just pinning me to the bed for fun?"
"I could be." Its voice had changed.
I opened one eye to see it had taken the form of Eric, and I made a sound of disgust and shut my eyes again.
"So what if you're immortal? Or... or if I'm immortal," I said, the words bitter in my tongue. "Doesn't mean you get to go around and kill people. There are plenty of immortal creatures out there."
"Vampires. And they may be immortal, but death is still coming for them one way or another."
"You don't know that."
"Their every action is governed by their fear of death and avoiding it."
I had no response to that. I had to agree. I'd always harbored a secret theory that the true cause of vampire's generally violent natures was rooted in fear of an unexpected death. They cheated death and were awaiting the final bell toll. They lived in absolute fear of it, but acted as if they did anything but.
"If a vampire wishes to die then they may do so. That is the difference," it said. The words took a moment, but when they sunk in, the notion rocked me.
"Oh, God." I felt a tear slip out from under my eyelid. I'd never thought of it like that. Would I really never die?
"You see!" it hissed. "This is why. This is why."
"Why what?" I choked out.
"Why I extinguish the life of every foul beast that fraternizes with other species. To prevent such a cruelty from happening again. Like how I suffer. How you suffer."
I made a sound of disgust. "That's flawed thinking. Racist. Species-ist. Lydia couldn't have even had a child with Floyd. Neither could Rosa with Veronica."
It pushed off my chest hard enough to practically wind me and got back to its feet, pacing my room. It flickered back into Diantha's form. I gasped for air and tried to get a read of Diantha's mind from where she lay in the bathroom, using my ability was a little harder with her than most, but all I felt was static fuzz. Unconscious.
"You don't get it do you? I'm doing the world a favor. A favor!" It gesticulated in a wide sweeping arc of its arm. "Us half-breeds. We are degenerate. Profane. Victims of debauchery. It must stop. The longer I exist the clearer this fact is."
It continued on ranting, and I struggled to grasp what it was saying until I finally relented and sought its thoughts.
Its thought pattern was scatty; it jumped from idea to idea, and I saw pictures too, much like I did with weres. I got the gist of it. This changeling saw itself as a sort-of supernatural eugenicist. Trying to keep the races pure. I wanted to barf. It hated its existence. It turned that hatred outward, punishing other mixed-species couples for the supposed misdeeds of its fornicating parents.
"What's your name?" I asked.
It stopped and looked at me. It blinked as if flummoxed by my words. I repeated my question.
"I am named Set-Amem," it answered.
"Set-Amem. How old are you?"
"I am from before the time of the first Egyptian dynasty."
That made it damn old. Older than the oldest vampire. Maybe even twice as old as the oldest vampire. I pulled myself up to sitting. If it was a changeling, a demigod, did that mean they were half-Pharoah? Whoa. Was I understanding that correctly?
"It doesn't matter how many people you kill. You can't stop people falling in love," I said.
"Watch me try," it snarled.
"I don't even know if you're a man or a woman," I said, ignoring its words. I got to my feet and approached it slowly.
"I was female," it said. "But now..." It gestured to its form which flickered again into someone else. "I am nothing. My true self is lost to the annals of history."
"You can't remember yourself at all? No childhood memories?"
She narrowed her eyes at me and shook her head. I narrowed my eyes right back. From her thoughts, I gleaned this wasn't quite true. She possessed a number of memories from her youth. Her identity might be lost, and maybe her ability to change back into her original form, but she somewhat remembered herself as she was when she was whole.
"I might be able to give you your identity back." I reached out and took her hand between my sweaty ones. "You have to stop killing people though."
"What are you doing?"
Taking a risk, that's what.
"Close your eyes," I said firmly. "Think back to a time when you remember yourself being whole. Being in your true form."
"It is not possible."
"What if it were?"
She paused, I felt hope flicker within her.
"I will make no such vow," she said.
"Well, I don't have to help you." I withdrew my hands. But the temptation, it was there, I had cast the lure. Now if she would only bite...
"Fine." She placed her hand back in mine.
"The vow must be true. I can see into your mind. If you're not being truthful, I won't help you."
My statement elicited a long pause.
"Very well," she finally said. It was just like Eric had predicted; she was capricious like a god, like Callisto the Maenad had been... her resolve that had killed so many now readily turned with the mere temptation of being given her heart's desire.
I felt a jolt of triumph. Maybe we couldn't kill this creature, but perhaps reform wasn't off the table. I didn't know if it would be possible to imprison her, and if not, well, I'd sleep better at night knowing I'd tried my best to make sure she wasn't impersonating others and killing their loved ones.
I asked Set-Amem to close her eyes and think back to a time as a young adult, to recall a memory, picturing it from a bird's eye view. The image formed in her mind, fuzzy and out of focus, but I closed my eyes also and began to describe what I saw.
She was seated at a feasting table, with many around her. Her family and peers. A handsome man to her right was courting her, and her sisters were gathered around some instruments taking turns playing. The air was thick with incense. I described the furnishings of the room, the lighting, the food on the table. I then began to describe what I saw when I focused on her. Dark elongated eyes with a slight upward tilt in the outer corners, olive skin, a pronounced mole on her left cheek. Her hair—long and dark and straight, went past her shoulders. Upon her head sat a gold and enamel diadem, her sisters wore identical ones also. The more I spoke, the clearer the picture became. A nose, rounded at the tip with an angular patrician bridge. Round jaw. Another freckle beside the right brow. I opened my eyes and led Set-Amem to the mirror.
"Ah," she said with a hushed sigh. "Not quite."
"What did I get wrong?"
"My chin is more..." She lifted a hand to touch it and her face flickered. Flickered into the visage of someone similar, though this face showed evidence of thoughtful lines etched in the corners of her mouth and eyes, and it reflected the sort of beauty that hinted to a depth of intelligence. "This is me." She smiled and placed her palm across her cheek. "Yes, this is me."
I felt the deep-seated relief reverberate through her, when suddenly the room came alive with noise and light. Eric blasted through the door, Amelia is his arms.
"Sookie!" she shrieked. Her words were followed by a loud bang and eruption of sulfurous smoke.
"No!" I yelled and in the confusion another explosion went off. Something wet and hot blasted all over me.
I shrieked too, my ears ringing. I stumbled back and tripped over the corner of my bed. Smoke billowed through the room, acrid and thick, though I had no sense of heat like you might from a fire.
"Are you injured?" someone asked me. I was sitting on the floor, and Eric was kneeling in front of me, fangs down. His eyes, wide and intense, revealed a dangerous combination of hunger and violence.
"Fine," I croaked. I reached to wipe my face and caught sight of my hand. It was absolutely coated in blood. I looked around me wildly. The smoke was rapidly receding. The only people in the room were myself, Eric and Amelia. Set-Amem was gone.
I pulled myself to standing and stumbled the mirror. Through the smoke I caught sight of myself. I was covered head to toe in blood and viscera.
I wasn't sure if I was going to barf or faint. My stomach made the decision for me and dinner came up in a rush.
• •
Two hours later, I was showered, dressed in my best suit, and inside a small conference room in New Orleans' FBI headquarters, surrounded by my old pals Agent Weiss and Agent Ray. Also joining our little party was Thalia, Eric, Fernanda and President Alpha Ryker—along with two of his entourage.
Though the players were different, it was a scene I was familiar with. I was surrounded by those who thought they were more knowledgeable than me, talking over me, and only pausing long enough to ask me a question if they felt I had something they needed.
"So, she provided no information on other crimes she committed?"
"No." I'd already been over the events backward and forward.
I knew they knew I was hiding something. They knew I knew they knew I was hiding something.
"I'm sorry," I said looking to Ryker. "She didn't confess, not directly. Just talked about why she did it."
"Convenient," said Weiss.
Thalia and Fernanda interjected, Thalia with some sort of cursing in Ancient Greek, and Fernanda shouting about the death of untold numbers and all we had to show for it was a pile of 'bloody goop' and the word of a 'psychic'.
Ryker lifted his hand and everyone quietened. Even Thalia.
"Do you believe this Set-Amem is deceased?" he asked.
"I'm not sure."
"If she found her true form before death, it's possible it made her vulnerable to dying," Amelia said.
Ryker glowered at her, and she dropped her head and mumbled an apology. She was to blame for blasting the being out of existence with some overpowered spell.
"You're not sure?" he said to me once more.
"I can't be sure, no. There certainly are a lot of... Remnants, but she was pretty specific that she had attempted death many times, and in many ways, and it hadn't been successful. So, I guess there's a chance."
"Very well."
I felt the question hovering above him, like a fuzzy cloud he couldn't quite bring himself to articulate.
"I know she was responsible for your daughter's death. And if she is in fact death, then..."
"Then this matter is settled." He sighed heavily, and the shadows under his eyes seemed to deepen, though maybe it was just a trick of the light. "Very well. We can wrap this up. I will make sure the agents here will arrange for Veronica Williams in Dallas to be released from jail to her coven. I suppose I'll need to talk to the the Dallas pack leaders to prevent any acts of retribution."
"A press conference with both you and Thalia may be wise," Eric said to Ryker.
"I agree," Ryker said, nodding to Eric before looking back to me. "On behalf of the two-natured community in the United States, I thank you for your help in this investigation. My people will be in touch regarding compensation."
I didn't want it. I didn't need it. I didn't think I could take money for this whole sorry, terrifying ordeal. I thought I might need to donate it to some charity. Maybe the same one Ms Latour had made Walt Buhler donate to.
Agent Weiss pulled me aside as we shuffled out of the conference room.
"If you think I believe a word of that crap..." she said.
"Respectfully Agent, will you please can it? I haven't seen any of your people lift a finger to the extent the twoeys or vampires have in this case. Swooping in at the last minute making accusations is a bad look. Maybe if you had listened to your partner, this would've been solved earlier. Blood is on your hands."
I pushed past her and Agent Ray, whose mouth had dropped.
Eric, Thalia, Amelia and I waited outside for a cab to take us back to the city. I hugged my arms around myself and regarded them all coldly.
"Whoever's bright idea it was to make the changeling explode is going to be paying to have my room and belongings deep cleaned and or replaced."
Amelia avoided my gaze. Eric held mine, however. I knew he sensed I was hiding something, and he was wise enough not to ask. I wasn't sure how to articulate it, anyway.
When Set-Amen had exploded, her bodily form gone, I still sensed her presence in the room around us. Her physical form had eviscerated, though I was sure that somehow her spiritual form had remained.
I wasn't sure what to make of that. Perhaps her corporeal form was gone now but her spirit went on? That was certainly a form of immortality, was it not? And couldn't that be said for all of us that move on to the afterlife? All I could do was pray that if she had somehow survived, she'd keep her word.
"You can crash at my place until your room is clean," Amelia finally said meekly.
A/N: Two more chapters left before this fic wraps up. I will upload them over the coming week. After that, there is one more story in this series, which I'll begin posting in late-Feb, early-March.
Thank you for all the wonderful reviews, follows/faves, and PMs that you've sent. I'm sorry if I don't respond to you all, but just know I am grateful for your words (the good and constructive) and love sharing my stories with you!