by L.J. Hayward
Chapter 36
I medicated myself very carefully after speaking with Erin. She was alive and well enough to know that I was bad business. She hadn’t forgiven me, not unexpectedly, but at least she hadn’t been screaming mad at me. Gotta look at the bright side. So I measured out just enough morphine to cut the edge off the pain but not enough to knock me out.
Got some sleep though. On the back patio, in the sunlight. With the sun burning the inside of my eyelids to red and the warmth baking deep into my bones. It was a deep, exhausted sleep, and dreamless, thankfully. Or not.
At some point, I began to hear my neighbours, Charles and Sue. And in my sleep befuddled way, I realised very slowly that their voices weren’t raised. They were speaking calmly together, their words little more than mumbles. How I knew it was them I wasn’t sure and decided it was just the vagaries of dreaming. Rarely did anything make logical sense in dreams and yet we grooved along well enough. Hence I wasn’t all that concerned with this strange turn in my subconscious. Frankly, all things considered, Charles and Sue muttering in my inner ear was about the best I could’ve hoped for in the dream department.
So when the words began to take on substance, there was no sense of trouble.
“—had you only just listened to me earlier.” Sue sounded triumphant.
“Oh come on. I don’t think it was that bad. This…” Charles’ tone was a peculiar mix of frustration and strangled relief. “It was just, I don’t know, temporary. Sure of it. This wasn’t necessary.”
“Not necessary? Did I mistake that look on your face this morning when you woke up?”
Charles grunted. “No, but—”
“No buts about it, mister. Last night was fantastic. It hasn’t been like that in years.”
“Not years!”
“Yes, poodle, years. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a thumping good—”
“What about that time at the coast? You disturbed the people in the next unit.”
“Oh, poodle.” Sue sighed. “That was fake.”
I had to share Charles’ shocked silence. Fake? God, women could be so… so… Even if they were as sexy as hell in that tousled teddy and tangled silk sheet.
“And that time in the casino?” Man, I shared Charles’ dread.
Sue made a noise that was undecided as to whether it was a confirmation or denial. “Well, I was nearly there, but you didn’t quite deliver… enough. It was good, but open ended.”
“Jesus, Sue.”
“But last night…” This noise was very definitely a confirmation, in the most satisfied, deliciously sensual manner. “I thought my teeth would rattle out of my head.”
Charles’ surprised laugh was cut off when Sue kissed him. It was sweet and soft, her lips still swollen from the previous night’s escapades, banishing thoughts of the burgeoning argument. Then even that thought raced away as she crawled on top, pressed herself against his skin, the thin film of satin moving between them.
Oh. God. Her tongue brushed his lips. He opened his mouth to her and the kiss deepened, became something hungry and desperate. His hands slid over her body, crushing the satin into bunches and rubbing them against her sensitive breasts. Moaning into his mouth, she wriggled her hips. Mind whiting out with need, he reached for her thighs, clamped them to his and rolled her over. Beneath him, she gasped with surprise and pleasure, wrapped her legs around him and pushed up into him.
It was about then that I began to question the dream. Surely I wasn’t that screwed up I was having a pornographic dream about my neighbours. And even sadder, the dream I’d had about Erin had been nowhere near this definite, this solid.
Ah shit. It wasn’t a dream.
Realisation gave me some control and I pulled away from my neighbours just as things got to a point that was past voyeurism and well into the realms of seriously unhealthy perversion. Porn was one thing. This was a ménage à trois where one of the combatants wasn’t invited.
Whether it was the morphine playing havoc with my control, or simple exhaustion, I couldn’t wake up, or rise from this trance, whatever it was. Somehow I was reaching beyond my physical body without the benefit of meditation or desperation. That was a bit scary.
Floating in a place I tended to call ‘null space’, where I was merely perception with no physicality at all, I took stock. I wasn’t in Invisible Matt, meaning I hadn’t progressed to the point of being able to manifest a real effect on the world on a whim. That, at least, was a bit reassuring.
The link to my body in this form did not come from the same place as the link to Invisible Matt. That one came from my solar plexus. This one came from the crown of my head and wasn’t so much a cord as it was more like pushing out with my aura. It was a hard start to attain, at least for me. Crafting up a body of air molecules and plugging it into the body-battery was far simpler. This was like peeling your skin off and stretching it in new and interesting ways. The cons of this compared to Invisible Matt was that I couldn’t ‘see’ anything, I could only sense minds. I hadn’t actually heard Sue and Charles through my ears. I’d just been in the vicinity while they’d been throwing thoughts at each other. All those fascinating sensations of touch and heat and soft, warm… Ah hem. All that, just me riding their mental waves. Bit more intimate than watching a home movie.
So. Here I was, all astral-planed up and nowhere to go. I decided to see just how far this unconscious utilisation of my growing and totally sweet psychic powers would go.
I dropped in on Mercy first. Her mind was locked away, suffocated under layers of tiredness and pain and that inscrutable blanket of emptiness that sapped energy from vampires with the rising of the sun. It was a deep, murky pool, the bottom of which was where the vampire mind fled to when dawn came. I could have swum down and down and found Mercy, just as she could, with sufficient prodding, reach back up with limited ability. Even though I knew reaching her in this state was possible, I hadn’t yet tried it. I mean, all those warnings you grow up with about not diving into water you don’t know the depth of are hard to forget. Even when you know that these waters are concealing a violent instinct attached to a mind with psychic abilities. With that down there, you kind of have to wonder what else might be lurking in the sewers.
As I touched her, I concentrated on tasting her aura. Aurum had made his point very well and it stuck in my gullet like a barbed fish hook. I could pinpoint Red vampires with little effort. They were the most prolific around the place. Yellows and Blues were about the same for numbers, with Oranges a distant fourth. Greens I had no personal experience with but Jacob suspected they were out there. My work didn’t usually call for touching human auras, but from my limited experience—being the sum total of Erin—human auras were a messy, troubled mix of flavours. Her sweet and bitter taste was not as easily quantifiable as a vampire’s. And despite Jacob’s faint ability to sense vampire flavours, he had never been able to touch mine.
Just like it’s a physical impossibility to lick your own elbow, you can’t touch your own aura. So I had no idea about mine. As vampires take on the flavour of the clan that turns them, I would presume, if Aurum was, you know, possibly, right about me and Mercy, then I wouldn’t get a flavour from her.
Perhaps that was something Aurum could clear up for us, if I let him near Mercy, that is. But, in truth, it was an academic question. Mercy and I did just fine without him trying to add complications. We were more than capable of making our own trouble.
Giving up the attempt, I left Mercy behind and travelled.
In the past, I’ve pretty much been able to cover the block. For an up market suburb, and apart from Chuck and Sue, my fellow canal lifers were a boring bunch. They weren’t all the carelessly rich folk their houses and boats would have you believe. Some struggled for the lifestyle, concerned more with image than quality. It was a sad place to contemplate on this level, so I suppose I was keen to reach beyond it.
And for once, my rubber band-esk aura didn’t snap me right back on
ce I got past the end of my street. It grew tighter and strained, but there was still give in it. What the heck. I floored it.
Holy guacamole!
By the time I could slow down and regain some control, I had no idea how far I’d come. See earlier dialogue about what one can and can’t sense while riding the astral express. The only touchstone I had was the sparks of individual minds in the pulsing, seething mass of urban living. Drifting toward a mind that shone brighter than those around it, I dipped in to get a location.
“– here today to witness the joining of these two souls in Holy Matrimony.”
A priest. Rightio. Where was he? But he was fixated on the ceremony at hand, determined not to stumble over any of the words, especially the self-scribed vows of the couple before him. Silly notion, writing your own vows. Weren’t the Lord’s good enough?
I shook off the priest and touched off the happy couple—she was smug, he was scared shitless—and floated amongst the not-so-innocent bystanders to this merciless torture. The front rows were just one great mass of joy and/or sympathy. Those in the middle tried to be good and concentrate on the ceremony, but restless kids and groaning grannies pulled at their attention. Pay dirt was in the last rows. The folk there mainly so they could get a free meal at the reception afterward and maybe pick up. Score.
A quick scan got me one bored woman dreading the long drive back to Logan late at night. Maybe she would leave after the main course, unless dessert turned out to be something more than a slice of wedding cake and a sugared almond. Prodding a bit further let me know we were in Boondall.
Boondall? Really? That was just across the way from the ’Cliffe. Man, it had felt like so much further. Had it turned out to be the Gold Coast, I would have been satisfied, but Boondall?
Lifting back up to the airy heights above human thought, I sped on. This time, with some idea of distance, I let myself ride for a bit longer and touched down in the city centre. Wow. Talk about loud. A couple thousand minds yelling at me about lunch choices, mammograms, the fifty dollars they took from the till, that one line of that song you just can’t get out of your head, the best way to beat the traffic to get to the footy game on time and about a million other minutiae of life. It was overwhelming and chaotic, thousands of ethereal faces turned to me all at once, demanding attention.
Retreating from that mess ASAP, I hovered, thinking that while this was a cool experience, it wasn’t really gaining me much. Wondered if I could actively search for someone. It would be a handy skill base. This was a lot faster, and cheaper, than driving around.
There was no choice, really. Being the most recent aura I’d touched, I concentrated on Erin. I remembered her flavour. The heady mix flooded through me, wrapped around me and pulled.
And bang, there I was, lying against her sleeping mind. She was dreaming, a disturbing mix of fear and longing, wickedly sharp blades of happiness cutting deep to leave wounds of painful ecstasy. I didn’t think it was a result of the events of the night before. This was something older, a mature fear living deep within her like a tumour the body slowly adjusts to even while it eats away at the healthy tissue and slowly spreads its poisons. Something she fled from with all her strength when awake, but couldn’t escape in sleep. Yet in sleep, she could embrace this dread, make it her own and gain sustenance from it. It lifted her above the drudgery of life, gave her a purpose to fight, to drive forward. She hated it, but was scared of what would happen when it finally went away. It was the basis of her life, the foundation she worked on. Without it, and it would one day be gone, she would fall and fall and maybe she wouldn’t crash, but just keep falling. And that was a true terror.
Shaking, I pulled away from her, drifted on the very edges of her mind. With a little work, I was certain I could find out what was the source of this exquisitely balanced madness. Maybe I could help her with it, be a support, possibly find her a layer below this rocky level she currently stood on so that when it was ripped away, she wouldn’t fall far. But she didn’t want me in her life anymore. I was a danger to be around. There was a definite hint I could make it worse for her. After all, I was the one in therapy. That didn’t qualify me to go around offering aid to others.
So I pulled away completely. I would honour her decision. When she recovered and made contact to return my gun, that would be it.
Once again high above casual contact, I took a moment to gather up some calm. I had proven I could home in on someone’s aura. Good to know. How else could I apply this?
Big Red.
I’d been saturated in his aura more than any other, ever. Should be an easy thing to find. I concentrated on that musty, dry cab sav touch.
And nearly tore myself apart.