by P. S. Power
"It doesn't work for me. I think it's because I'm an incarnation of death, not life. I mean, I can do that, but if I pull too much, or try it for too long, things around me will start to die. In a pinch, a fight or emergency, I could. Before you ask, if I try for a life link, or a blood link, the same thing happens. I killed a cow the other day, doing that. Even just sipping a tiny bit of life away, less than what you do most of the time, is too much. The death seeps into them."
It had been more than just one cow in the line, but he'd managed to stop in time for the other four to live. Sighing he shook his head. The Vampire girl sat across from him, under the starry night sky, and glanced up at the clouds, the few wispy ones, that artfully crossed in front of the Moon above.
"You can still get power from Anne though, even if she isn't doing most of it?"
"Oh, yeah. She hasn't even complained about it. Most of what I eat goes to her, so it's kind of fair, I guess. I just don't want to be a burden forever. I know, I'm strange, but-" He wanted to be free, but couldn't be. So Tyler was trying to get as close to that as he could in life.
It was a thing that he wanted Eve to understand. She wasn't like him though, and probably couldn't, in the end. Oh, she was smart. A lot more than he was probably, and her ability to comprehend what he was going through, to even empathize with him, wasn't in question. There was a difference in the end however, between understanding what another went through, and living it.
Not that he was going to knock anyone who tried to get it.
Eve, for her part, nodded. It was a gentle thing, that, if he didn't know better, he would have thought of as caring. Like she wanted him to do well. Maybe even to be happy, in his un-life.
"No one sane and good wants to be a burden to others. We all are, in the end, but the goal should always be to move past that, if we can. Anyway, you have the basics of magic now. There are some hurdles for you, and you should practice every day from now on, but you've got this. It's kind of clear that you need to put most of your effort into low energy applications. True, it won't make you as awesome as me, but few are. You'll just have to struggle along, trying to be yourself." Then, in a friendly way, she reached out and touched his arm.
Given the mental state he was in, and how he had to be so very aware of things now, he could see the massive differences between them. It was more of a knowing, but it was clear to him. She was, after a strange fashion, alive. Life flowed to her in thin, fine, and well organized strands.
Death rushed around them, to collect inside of himself now. It was plenty of power, but harsh, rough and blunt, comparatively. It didn't want to make him move, he had to command it to do his bidding. She was, Vampire or not, dead or not, simply far more alive than he ever could be. Like a shining beacon, now that he knew how to see it.
Sure, he could kill her by taking those lines away, or polluting them, but it would be a shame. Not just for her, but to break up anything as lovely as a collection of pure life energy like that. Steve, his human model for that kind of thing, was even worse that way. Better. He made the stuff inside him, and was nearly blinding. How he didn't understand his impact on the world, Tyler couldn't tell. The kid walked around blasting everything with power and life.
Calley did too, of course. It was interesting to see that, since with her small tendrils of the stuff leaked out, and tried to touch everyone she met. To connect with them. Scotty did that a bit too, though he was weaker that way. Older, and dead, so the energy he had to use wasn't as fresh and lively.
All of them were alive. Compared to him.
Snapping out of it, he made himself smile, which took a lot less effort now than even a few days before. He was, he realized, becoming himself again. Moving was nearly automatic, and he could do complicated things without stumbling too much now. Fight, make love and play music. Even sing. Actually, once he got used to it, he found that his range had improved that way. No one had said anything about it, but they weren't practicing every night.
He'd been in to the embassy a few times, since people had managed to start nearly two wars in the last few weeks there. On the good side, the others had worked it out for them. Only once did it actually involve half the ambassadors actually sitting on one of their fellows until he gave over and played ball. He hadn't been there for it, and had been told that only five of them had literally done it, but Ty had a strange feeling that the U.N. didn't work that way.
"I need to get Kaitlyn in for a while. So she can take a turn running things." He spoke out loud, but Eve didn't respond to it. Actually, she just looked up again, and shook her head, softly.
"Something is coming." Her words were dark, but he got the idea well enough. He'd felt it too. It was stronger now, than before. She explained anyway. "I don't mean right now, today, or even in the next few weeks, but... It's like a darkness is closing in over the world. I... it's hard to explain. I'm probably being stupid."
"Except that I feel it, too. It's like something is pressing against the fabric of reality itself. We should get with Zack on that. It seems like the kind of thing he'd be good at understanding. I can chat up some of my, um, other sources." Ty tried to be shifty about that, but Eve, not being a Greater or even a Lesser, Demon, smiled.
"Angels. That sounds so stupid. I mean, I met one, and it still seems so unreal. Like a joke or game. Plus, God is a douche bag. That bastard let me be raped for years, you know that? He probably got off on it. Jerking his tool to my pain, or whatever he does." There was no bitterness to the words, on the surface, but she didn't take them back, or make a joke out of it.
That was, Tyler knew, a real problem. God was real, not just a fantasy that someone had made up. Oh, sure, the Christians, the followers of Islam, all of the religions, were wrong about the particulars, but the actual entity was there.
Except that he was different than anyone had ever told them.
"Yep. I can't back this, but I don't think we matter much at all, to the greater scheme of things. I mean, we have our little parts to play, but God would no more care about you or I than we do about a pancreatic cell. Even if we love the whole, and see the use of each tiny bit, that doesn't really change that way. I mean, have you checked the happiness of the cells in your kidneys lately? I haven't."
Almost as a lark he turned his mind inward, and cast it at his lower back. There was a sense that he was familiar with, but that was a bit dark to think about. He had cells there, but they were all dead. Not even hunks of protein all the time. Calcified things that were hard and stone like. Ones that moved, on command, but did nothing on their own. They didn't live, or work. They just sat there. Being not alive.
That got him to shake his head, though Eve smiled at him, a bit.
"No shit, right? I guess I can't blame the guy then. Pancreatic cell Eve just doesn't rate that much attention. Thing... I don't know if we can survive what's coming. That's weird, right? I shouldn't feel that way. I'm pretty close to immortal. I know that I'm not that old, but..."
"All we can do is check on that. I'm sure that it will work out, in the end. For now, I just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop in my own life. For The Storm to come and try to take me again. I probably won't survive that one, myself, so the rest of this isn't that big of a deal for me. Though, no one else has mentioned the gathering darkness, have they?" He hadn't asked, but the Vampire girl shrugged.
"Lyn doesn't feel it. Ben, oddly enough, kind of does. He asked me about it, a little over a week ago. Kait is acting funny. Nervous and like she keeps expecting to be eaten, and not in a good way. I haven't checked with the other Greater Demons."
That got him to sigh and look away. The world was lovely, like always, and the particular surroundings were nice, but now he could feel the rest of it. The world was, in the end, made up of a constant battle between life and death. Creation and destruction. It came into being and out of it, without ending.
Which was a happy and dismal thing to think about, so he plucked a bit of grass from the ground, and stole the tiny flicker of life e
nergy from it. Not to waste it, he sent it along to his mother. The green strand turned first brown, then into a fine dust that couldn't hold together.
"Well, it won't be happening tomorrow, whatever is coming. Maybe not for a long time. Years, if we aren't just being gloomy. There are always beginnings and endings to everything. That's the way the world works. Maybe all the worlds. Which is kind of cool. Zack can go to a lot of places. He's mentioned it a few times. We should get him to take us to a few of them, some day." It was an idle comment, trying to take the conversation in a different direction, since being maudlin wasn't going to help anyone.
Eve brushed at her hair, her pale skin shining slightly under the nearly full Moon as it popped out from behind the clouds.
"Yeah. I'll get with him on that. You're right. We need to go and see some things. What exactly... I don't know. It is kind of a neat idea. A multi-verse filled with infinite versions of me. Can you imagine that? A world where I'm a pirate, and another where I'm the daughter of the President? Maybe even one where I'm the President myself. One where you're the actress you secretly long to be..." She tossed a handful of grass at him, which he didn't let hit him. Instead he stole the life from it, until it puffed into a fog in the air.
Waste not, want not, after all.
"Oh, sure. Or the one where Steve is a world saving superhero? Or where Ginger is Kaitlyn's mom. Everything should exist after all. A billion, billion worlds, each stranger and more wonderful, and awful, than the last. Well, enough for dreaming. You set that up, and I'll take a tour with you. We can all go. I'm sure Zack won't mind. Even if it is vast amounts of work for him."
Eve gave a tiny snort, and then took a deep breath.
"I... Everything is about to change, isn't it, Ty?" She didn't let him go on, her voice sounding just a little stressed suddenly. "When I became a Vampire I felt a little like this, but I was kind of ready for it. Everything that I'd done for years had led to a specific end point. Now... it's like I don't have control over what's going to happen. Like the world, like... Everything, might end."
He nodded then.
"Which probably means that a Greater Demon is screwing with us, doesn't it? That, or some being with psychic powers. Making us feel like that, in order to... Oh, I don't know. Maybe they want us to do something? To steal our tasty snack cakes?"
That one earned him a grin, at least.
"On that note, a certain lovely Vampire needs to be off. I have a six o'clock shift at Westfield. You should come in there soon. Just to make sure no one forgets you. During the day. Lisa still needs to pay off on that sex with you, if nothing else."
He shook his head at her, and stood as she did. He rose into the air, with a sense that he might just float upward, but he didn't. It was a graceful thing though, compared to how he used to move.
"You keep pushing her that way. Why? That guy, um, Warren? You said that he mind controlled her and had sex with her. Raped her. I can see her being uneasy that way."
Eve nodded, and patted his left arm.
"Because of that. She can either get past it and stand on her own, or collapse, and I'm not really certain what she's going to do yet. It's been a while, but she isn't getting a lot better. Or worse, so there's that. It doesn't have to be you, but she needs to face her demons. The ones in her head. Living in fear all the time sucks too much to let anyone else do it, if you can stop it. In the end it has to be her choice. So, I push at her, and keep suggesting people for her to do things with, in the hope that someday she'll try one of them." Leaning in he got a gentle and dry kiss on the cheek. "Later, Tyler G. You know, if you live through the thing with The Storm?"
He winked at her, practicing the unfamiliar move. She did it all the time, so it made sense to follow along, given that they were on the same team.
Team dead people.
"I'm already gone. I may be turned to dust, or thrown into a different dimension, but I can't die. Even less than you could, or one of the Greater Demons. Besides, I'm ready now. Like you said, living in fear isn't a good thing. I should probably just send her a text message and set up a meeting. We could televise it. Pay-per-view. I'll be rich. I mean, if I exist after. If not, well, then it won't matter, will it?"
"That's the spirit. Well, let me know when, and I'll try to watch it. I haven't been doing a lot of that. Television is so boring now. I know too many cool people. Like you."
Then, she moved off, using speed that had to be painful, from what she'd said to him before. Tyler just looked up at the Moon above for a while, watching the clouds roll in on the horizon. A storm was coming, it was clear. What that would end up being he didn't know, but he blocked out the sense of foreboding that Eve had mentioned. It really was there, but also off in time.
He needed to get past the next hours, and days, if he wanted to be there for whatever else might happen. It was, he realized, life happening. That should have been funny to him, but it wasn't. No matter how he functioned, he was a force in the world, and that was enough. It was also all he could be, for the time being, so had to be good.
It was late by the time he went inside. The others were there, and most of them had probably heard what he and Eve had been talking about. Thunder crashed in the distance, and the sky lit. The rain wasn't coming down yet, but the air smelled of dampness and ozone.
In the living room Steve was cuddling with Ginger, which was a relationship that Tyler hadn't seen coming. She looked up at him, a bit guiltily, since Steve had his hand under her shirt. It could have been a fight, he knew, but he shrugged, and walked over, settling on her other side. No one else was there. To his credit the red haired guy looked a bit panicked then.
"Hey. So, I think that a thing is about to happen here. Can you get everyone out? The embassy should be safe enough. The Storm is coming, I think." Not a storm, but something bigger than that. More impressive. Almost as if trying to make a point of that, the world shook. It was more than lightening being close. At least ten strikes had hit all around them, almost at once. "Everyone? I think that's the sign to clear out."
There were more people there that had to leave than he thought there might be. After a few minutes though, they all collected in the front, by the door.
Rebekah looked at him, her face scared and a bit drawn.
"We can call someone? Keeley will help you. Or, your mom?" She didn't mention any of the others as being willing to aid him, but then, they probably shouldn't. It was The Mistress of Souls' territory, and he worked with her, so that made it her business. His mother, well, he was her property. Her slave.
She'd be with him, no matter what.
"I'm good. Get Marissa, Calley and Ginger out of here? Scotty, Steve..." He smiled and started shaking hands. Scotty gave him a hug.
"I... Don't die too easily, Tyler of the Nations. If this was any kind of normal threat, I'd say to run, but I know you won't. Don't die. Or, if you must, may you take your enemies with you into whatever lies beyond this life."
It was good advice, even if he didn't think he was going to be able to control all of that.
"I'll do that. Now, you should all leave, before the power goes out. There's a car?" There were actually several in the garage now. Ones that had been bought for them to use by Rebekah, herself. Tyler could drive, and had a license, though he hadn't switched over to Nevada yet. His was still for Washington State.
It wasn't important, but the thoughts filled him anyway. Memories of his life came flooding back. How strange he must have seemed to everyone around him in school. How he'd been alone so much of the rest of the time. Practicing music, and teaching himself how to fight from books. Things that he'd been told to do. Without using any magic, he held several concepts then, pushing himself into being something different than he really was.
Filling himself with death, and allowing it, making it, flow like a river into him. It was enough that everyone there, alive and dead alike, shivered and hurried to exit.
"I love you all. Now, go. I'll try not to trash the house."
That was about the least he could do. So when they left to go out the garage exit, to the right, he went outside into the rain that had started to pour from the sky, and moved left. Like he had when Michael had called for him.
This time he simply walked though, getting ready.
Tyler didn't bother with magic. That was of life, and he was, as he kept thinking, simply not.
That got him to fix a smile on his face, and keep moving. He didn't have any thoughts that a Greater Demon couldn't find him. The easy thing to do for her would have been to hit him with lightning bolts, over and over. It wouldn't stop him now, but that kind of thing had to be disruptive. For his part, he drank the darkness from the world. After a while, walking along, he realized that he could store some of it. Oh, not life, but this kind of thing, as rough and jagged as it felt, was his.
It came at him like the rain did. Hitting him hard, and soaking his very being. It was probably cold out, even though it was only Fall now. He didn't feel it. Tyler could have, or at least convinced himself that he did, but didn't bother. The world could affect him, but the rules were different, where he was concerned.
The storm grew in size and power then. Objects that had no business leaving the ground flew upward. There weren't a lot of trees in the area, but the bushes that clung to the ground barely held on as the wind started to scream at him. Calling to him. Suggesting that he die.
"Too late for that now." He smiled, objects bouncing from him nearly unnoticed. He held himself to the ground with a thought. The dead, it seemed, didn't fly easily. Not his kind.
For a long time he simply stood in place, a vortex of clouds in the sky coming toward him. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they were going to meet in the eye of the thing. It was a bit dramatic, but so far The Storm had been. Really, if the Greater Demon had a subtle bone in her body, she hadn't told him about it yet.
The Moon was framed inside the clear patch that settled above him. It was actually pretty. Impressive, given the flickering glow of the rest of the world. That part was so constant he could have read a book by it, if the thing wouldn't have been torn to shreds by the wind and rain.