Triquetra

by Marguerite Labbe

  Fine. If she wanted to discuss philosophy, then we could argue it as long as it got me what I wanted in the end. I could play scholar to her teacher. I’d had enough practice at it. “What is our purpose then if nothing matters?” I asked, my voice as emotionless as hers. “Everything has to have meaning or else nothing does. Isn’t that what you once taught me?”

  “Knowledge, Kristair. You’ve always enjoyed learning, though you were as stubborn about it in Rome as you are being now. There’s a whole wealth of knowledge that you have barely tasted waiting for you: other dimensions, whole civilizations come and gone. We could spend our eternity studying and still not touch the surface.” For the first time, something almost passionate colored the threads of her words.

  “That doesn’t answer the question, Mistress. If we can do anything, then why don’t we? We have the power of gods and you want to merely sit back and watch as things unfold?”

  “Why must you always question me? And cease calling me Mistress. You make a mockery of it, and such titles have no meaning here.”

  I paused, mulling over her words. In the beginning she had insisted I call her Mistress. I had always done so, but with an undertone of derision, even after we had reached somewhat of an accord. And when she had asked me to use her given name I refused. I suppose it was my own petty way of revenge. However, now that the tables were turned once again and I was forced into a position of subservience to her for the second time, I could not refer to her as Nerissa.

  “I don’t like being pushed into a corner, you know that. Yet it’s the tactic you like to use on me. You also were the one who taught me the value of questioning, of not taking things at face value, and looking for the deeper meaning.” I grinned. “I’m only following your teachings.”

  “We suppose we must acknowledge your point, though you would’ve argued anyway just for the sheer joy of vexing me.”

  I shrugged and the distinctly human gesture of it reminded me of those I’d left behind. “And your answer?” I prodded.

  “Balance must be maintained, child. Everything we do must shelter that balance. That is why we exist. That is our purpose. Balance is the key to nature, whether it’s destructive or constructive.”

  I laughed, the sound rich with contempt. “Our very existence is an imbalance, Mistress. From the moment we’re created as vampires we’re an aberration of nature, living beyond the span allotted us, preying off of other life. Now that we’ve evolved we’re even more unnatural. We threaten the balance if what you say is true. Therefore shouldn’t nature call for our destruction?”

  “Nature probably would if we didn’t keep ourselves in check. I have no doubt we would be destroyed. That is why when we were vampires we were careful about whom we fed from and how much. We were careful to remain quiet.”

  “Not all of us.” Some enjoyed the thought of the lifestyle too much, wallowed in it, destroying without care. Ones like that were quickly destroyed, either by other vampires whose territories they encroached upon, or by the bands of humans who hunted them down. “But, I concede your point.”

  “You should’ve realized that not all who join our ranks were once vampires. There are psychics, sorcerers, beings from places long since turned to dust. Anyone who has trained their mind and will enough to have earned the right to become one of the Ascended. You would know this if the boy had not blinded you. That is why you must give up your connection to your lover. He ties you down to emotions you no longer need. They will cloud your vision and judgment. Jacob is holding you back.”

  She stepped forward and laid a hand on my arm. “It’s not that we’re without sympathy, Kristair. You’re in a situation none of us have ever dealt with before. When we evolved, our earthly cares fell away with the destruction of our bodies. Your body isn’t completely destroyed. It lives on in Jacob, and that has to end.”

  I knew she was only speaking the truth. I sensed the difference between myself and the other Ascended and sensed their distaste for the havoc my presence brought them.

  It should be easy to sever the link between myself and Jacob. In his mind I was already dead. He was young. In time he would heal and move on. And Kayla was strong; I had no doubt she would thrive. As for myself, well, once the last tie was gone I would be free in a sense. No more worries or cares pressing upon me. In my new state, thoughts of Jacob and my former life would merely be another curiosity to observe. I’d had an inkling of what it would be like before Jacob’s pull had separated me from the Ascended. In its own way it had been glorious. A life I would’ve quickly embraced at another time, before Jacob.

  I don’t know why I couldn’t let go. That life was over with even if the ending had come too fast upon me. When I had been created as a vampire, I had found it hard to let go then too. Not this much, though. To turn away from Jacob and what we had seemed a travesty to me. To remember him, but not be able to recall the feeling of loving him, the wealth of emotion between us…. To turn my back on it and give it up would be like turning my back on him. Even if he would never know I had, that was something I couldn’t bring myself to do.

  All of that aching pain came rushing back in: the longing to be with him, the need to tell him I still loved him. My Mistress stepped back, removing her hand from my arm, an expression of baffled distaste crossing her hazy features. I wrapped the pain around me, savored it and let it remind me who I still was, despite what I had changed into.

  “Mistress, I understand the reasons why you say I have to give him up. I do understand.” That was the screwed-up part of it all. Here I was stuck in limbo and more likely to do myself and the Ascended harm. And it wasn’t as if I had a real choice in the matter. I had already changed. One of the few absolute truths I’d learned was one could never go back. Right now I just couldn’t accept it.

  “Yet, you’re going to continue to fight us, every step, as you did when I turned you and you had to give up your human life.”

  “You always did know me well.” It was a relief to have her understand even though it wouldn’t stop us from battling each other. “If I had had my epiphany a couple of months earlier than I did, things would be different.”

  I paused, studying her with almost pity. “You don’t remember what it’s like. You can’t as you are now, without emotion. I will admit, what you offer is very tempting: unlimited knowledge, the chance to study and observe for the rest of my existence.” The possibilities made me hungry for it, answers to all the questions I’d had, to be a part of a whole that was similar to me instead of seclusion. I would still be on the outside looking in, but not alone. Never alone again.

  “Only the cost is too high. Maybe if I had succumbed to the same ennui that happened to so many of us toward the end of our lives. I never really understood that. I always thought it was laziness on their part, content to merely exist instead of looking for something new. There is always something new to explore, but I suppose it made the change easier to bear.”

  “That is why you belong with us, Kristair. You are a seeker, a questioner like the rest of us. You are finally home,” my Mistress persisted.

  “Knowledge isn’t the only thing I’ve sought.”

  “We know. We’ve watched you, both when you were under my care, and after I’d changed. Then you were afraid of being alone, yet you isolated yourself too. The logic escapes us now as it did then. Just as your refusal to merge with us now makes no sense. You’ve experienced the joining with the whole. You know you’ll never be alone again.” If she had been my Mistress of old, her frustration would be almost palpable.

  I smiled. “That’s because logic had nothing to do with it.”

  I thought of Jacob and everything he had given me in our time together, his complete trust, his loyalty, and how he had the unique ability to draw me out from behind my walls. It was rather difficult to hold myself back when he fiercely fought every barrier and knew when I was trying to put one up. I ached with the memories. Being with him had been a true joining and, for me, the Ascended could not
begin to compare, despite what wonders they offered.

  “You cannot understand, Mistress. You, with all your wisdom, your knowledge, this is something you can’t ever hope to comprehend, no matter how much you study. You may have evolved into something higher, but you lost a piece of yourself in the process.”

  “Every birth is painful. And you don’t have a choice whether or not you’re going to be born; it is thrust upon us all. You know that. The same thing happened when we became vampires and you enjoyed your existence as one. You reveled in it.”

  “Eventually, I did.” In truth, I hated more where I was taken, so far from home, so different. I hated that more than I did becoming a creature of the night. Becoming a vampire had opened me up to my true potential and, perversely, I could see how I was holding myself back from something more once again. But matters were different this time.

  “Without change we become stagnant and wither,” my Mistress continued. “Some never survive the first stage and at each rebirth there are fewer of us who go on. That is the way of things, the way of nature.”

  “Darwin would’ve loved this conversation,” I murmured. “So is this the end then? Or is there another life awaiting us?” I couldn’t imagine there being anything else, but then, before I’d become this new entity, I hadn’t been able to imagine this life either.

  “You know we’re not permitted to tell you that.”

  I hid a smile at her prim tone. It meant she didn’t know, and not knowing, wondering, rankled my Mistress. “I know, but I had to try.”

  “Come, Kristair. Now that you are truly awake, let us show you what this life can give you.”

  The easy camaraderie I was beginning to have in my Mistress’s presence fell away as my suspicion returned full force. “I am not going back into that prison you’ve all been holding me in.”

  I grabbed a hold of Jacob’s fury and pain and hurled it at her mind, all of it with full force. In her moment of surprise, the bonds around my mind weakened and I tore free from her grip, forming a picture of Jacob in my head. The world blinked and I found myself staring at him, no more than a foot away from his face.

  If I had breath it would’ve frozen. He was here, really here right in front of me. I wanted to weep. If I still had the capacity for tears they would be falling, endless rivers of sorrow coursing down my cheeks. Only I had no eyes from which to cry, no outlet for my grief. Nothing.

  Still, I reached for Jacob with phantom fingers. Or at least tried to, and was met with the same barrier that had prevented me the last time I’d attempted to make contact with him. I couldn’t remember when it was—time had no meaning where I was—but it couldn’t have been long ago.

  Jacob stared at me, or to be more accurate, right through me. Shadows darkened his once summer-bright eyes, circles marred the finely etched skin below and spoke of tormented nights where sleep proved to be elusive. Jacob, mo chroí. As I had no eyes to shed tears, or hands with which to touch him, I also had no lips to speak, so my lover didn’t hear me.

  Instead, he turned from the mirror and headed out of the bathroom. Panicked, I followed, terrified of losing sight of him and having him slip away yet again. I reappeared in the reflection in his window. There was a familiar reassurance to watching Jacob from this vantage point. I used to perch for hours on the other side of a pane of glass similar to this one as he slept, or ignored me, or tempted me, depending on his mood or how exhausting his day had been.

  Jacob paced his room, muttering under his breath and clenching his fists. I couldn’t read his mind; either he or the Ascended kept me from that final link. Nor could I read his emotions, not like how I used to, but his frustration and upset reached across to me, even without the link.

  He sat down on his bed and grabbed one of the books littering its surface, pulling it toward him with a notebook and pencil. His brows furrowed as he bent over his work. Within moments the pencil found its way between his lips, and he gnawed absently on it as he read. The familiar gesture filled me with longing.

  Just to be able to sit beside him as he studied, to respond to his occasional comments or gripes, would have been a blessing. To distract myself, I looked around the room I found myself in. It wasn’t Jacob’s old apartment. There was no iron fire escape behind me, merely a long fall to the ground. It looked to be one room with no connecting bath, smaller and more cramped than his old place.

  Late into the night, I lingered as he worked with dogged determination on whatever assignment it was he was doing. Several times his phone rang, but he ignored it, only the clenching of his jaw to show he’d heard it at all. It was so much quieter than the past when either Tony or Steve would barge in at one point or another. Jacob’s door was shut, instead of open as he used to have it so he could talk to whoever was in the living room or kitchen at the time.

  It almost seemed as if Jacob had locked himself in a self-imposed cage.

  Tony. I had forgotten about him. Oh, how his memory must haunt you, Jacob. I wondered what had happened to the boy. Everything had been so chaotic when the Ascended claimed me. I didn’t know what happened to him or Steve. One had betrayed him and the other had been threatened with harm. Which brought to mind, I didn’t know what had happened to Kayla either; whether or not she’d been hurt that night and if she was doing well now.

  It hurt to think Jacob and Kayla might be all alone now. Well, not entirely. I knew my daughter well enough to know that she would attach herself to Jacob, whatever he had to say on the matter or not.

  Jacob sighed, his shoulders slumping. Damn the entire lot of them for keeping me away from him. I watched with impotent fury and helplessness, wanting to run my fingers through Jacob’s unkempt hair and pull him close, as he shoved his books and papers onto the floor and shut off the light.

  In the darkness I could see him lying back, staring up at the ceiling and brooding. I hated it. Jacob didn’t brood. He sulked, he got angry, he threw fits and then got over it. He had changed. There was suppressed anger in every line of his tense body. I could sense it despite our severed link.

  Wait, that couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be entirely broken or else he wouldn’t have been able to reach out to me with his pain. Unless Jacob had learned some new tricks. Oh, but if I was right, if a thread still remained…. Hardly daring to hope, I reached out with my thoughts, chaotic emotion playing a madcap dance in my mind, and encountered yet another wall.

  Seething, I walked out of the window, disappearing and reappearing in a frame on his desk. Jacob was so close, had I form, I could reach out and brush my fingers across his cheek. I snarled. I was so damned close. The barrier was thin, some spots weaker than others. I struggled to pierce through, throwing myself at it again and again, sensing victory when he stirred and his face turned toward me.

  Then my world turned topsy-turvy as I fell end-over-end only to reappear in the window again. Stunned, I watched Jacob lean over the side of the bed. Then he straightened and replaced the picture on his desk. He glanced around the room, his brows furrowing before slowly laying back down, his tension stronger.

  Perhaps I wasn’t as powerless as I seemed. Maybe if we both reached out to each other…. I raised imaginary fists, prepared to pound them against the window. Jacob had seen enough odd occurrences; he might just take it as a sign instead of becoming scared. Instead, at the gentle rattle I managed to produce, he merely wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and curled up on his side.

  I had watched him fall asleep many times and it never failed to amaze me how quickly he could drop off. It didn’t matter how upsetting his day had been or how much there was on his mind. Jacob could fall asleep anytime, anywhere.

  I waited until I sensed his dream consciousness and then pushed myself out to merge with him as his defenses lowered. Jacob’s dream wrapped around me and enfolded me within its colors and nuances of emotion. I lost myself in the wash of abstract and disjointed thought. Even here during his sleep, he was still tormented.

  It was a struggle to no
t allow my own frustration to take over and influence Jacob’s fragile balance. He was walking a razor-thin edge between crushing depression and self-destructive rage. The wall he had erected against the seething morass on either side was a thin veneer at best, but somehow he clung to his façade of calm with dogged stubbornness and kept the insanity at bay.

  “Jacob, mo chroí, I’m here. Please, talk to me.”

  The images in his mind froze and my lover’s heart picked up speed, thundering in his chest. He stirred, sheets whispering against his skin as he rolled over onto his other side and curled up even tighter. His shields battered at me, trying to force me out of his mind. If he had conscious control over such skills, he would’ve been able to do so with ease. It seemed that what he had learned in the months since my passing hadn’t been limited to pushing his body to its limits. His mind had grown as well. It seemed that all the barriers between us were not only those created by the Ascended.

  It was hard to wait until he had settled down again. I didn’t want to scare him out of his wits, or make him think he was going insane, as unsettled as his emotions were. I considered waiting until he was awake to try to contact him again, but then immediately rejected the idea. Too crazy. No, it was better to introduce the idea now.

  I caught the thread of his dream and began weaving my way into it. Bit by bit, I unraveled the tangled skein of his emotions, becoming the warp and weft until I became a part of the whole. This time when I intruded on his thoughts, he didn’t try to shove me out. What he had been dreaming about scattered away as I built a different illusion, one of us naked in his bed, the sheets tangled around our waists. We lay there, our heads on the pillows, arms casually draped across each other, and just looked. I found that now that I was here and he was accepting me I couldn’t speak.

  My eyes caressed Jacob’s face, the lines of weariness around his mouth, the way shadows lingered in his eyes, clouding their usual crystal-blue clarity. I moved my hand, cupping his face, and then slid it into his hair.