Chapter 59: Who was hunting me
A long, dark tunnel, and nowhere to go but towards one end or the other.
Light only in puffs of green and purple, gone before they could show more than a vague path.
Ah, sorry.
Vlad didn't need light right now, as redness had invaded his eyes.
There still wasn't much to see.
"Ah."
It wasn't his voice.
Vlad turned around, looking – but nothing, only him, only the tunnel, only the puffs of faintly glowing smoke. He was still alone, and yet...
"Someone dead."
He knew that voice, and it was behind him, again.
"Where are you?"
The echoes in the voice, the way it gave him chills – but Vlad's body didn't react as one should, because of course it knew those echoes, obviously it didn't fear the dead anymore.
Still no one.
A puff of cold green silently exploded next to Vlad, and something flickered to his left.
"Don't pretend to be a little maggot, ghost, it doesn't suit you."
The voice was to Vlad's right, now. A bit too close to his ear for comfort, a bit too sneering for peace of mind. The words it used were specific, easily recognizable.
"Show yourself."
Laughter – further away, somewhere before him, and then again, closer, and finally, the words again, just there, less than an arm away.
"Drop the human pretense, child. This skin of life, this voice from the rotten world of maggots. I can feel you in here, hidden, I know what you are."
Vlad gritted his teeth – too sharp, just like his eyes, too red, or like his flesh, too cold – and raised a hand as he grew irritated with the specter haunting his steps in this never-ending corridor.
Pink fire burst out of his palm.
"Ah, yes. Now I can see your face."
Red eyes glared at him, fangs glinted with the moving light.
The face that appeared in front of him was his own – too pale to be real, tinted blue around the eyes and ears, frigid lips revealing a vampiric mouth, and the eyes dissolving in scarlets and crimsons. Something wasn't right, he was neither in his human appearance nor in his ghostly form, stuck between the two in a way he'd never had to deal with before. No ghostly glow, no obvious ectoplasm running darker blue under his skin, and yet he certainly didn't seem human right now.
The fire grew bigger in his hand – and this was a mirror, actually, running on the entire length of the tunnel's left side, Vlad felt its cold hard touch with his right hand.
Fingers red and grey and dark, nails too sharp if not quite claws this time.
Not exactly a ghost, not exactly human.
The voice – but the mirror didn't show anyone, only himself – grinned against his neck, low in whispers and slow in delight:
"Tell me, have you heard of the dead soul? Tell me, what do you know of the corpse on a tree? Did it have feelings once, was it gentle? Did it close its eyes and believe in waking up again?"
It spoke with the voice and the words of the ghost that had escaped, and yet, Vlad was the only one here. So close, he'd feel its presence, even should it be invisible, and here...
"Tell the dead soul to look inside, tell the corpse to close its eyes."
Alone.
Like a nightmare.
"Let it linger, let it fester."
Vlad's pink fire went out, taking with it the image in the mirror.
Vlad opened his eyes, his heart beating too fast in his chest, the distinct feeling of having fallen through the bed during his sleep – but at least it had only been a dream, and no one would be able to tell.
Aside from a disquieting sensation of wrongness – typical of a nightmare-fuelled fast awakening, nothing surprising here – and the stiffness in his neck because he'd spent the last hour or so on the ground, Vlad felt fine.
Not sick, not about to throw up, not unable to control his powers and transformation.
It was a good thing: he'd be leaving the clinic in a few hours, and sure, he'd slipped up in his sleep, but that didn't count as a relapse in his health. If anything, the anticipation had caused that nightmare, because Vlad had been counting the hours and hoping nothing would go wrong – again, always, as usual. A bit of anxiety, some stress, raw nerves, and here it'd been: a nightmare.
No, really.
Given his situation...
Everything was fine.