Vampire Warfare

by Dominica Dark

  It was a fascinating place. Rosalie heard snatches of conversation, saw floating images of schematics, felt the silken feel of warm seawater, tasted rich meat, smelled incense. There was no sense of time passing, just sensations. She was intrigued, and wanted to stay longer, but she was distantly aware that her time was short. Whenever she went deep-sea diving into any consciousness, the demands on her physical body was always considerable. For what she needed to do, she had to conserve her strength until she finished the job.

  Rosalie accordingly turned away from the level of senses and plunged deeper, brushing away tendrils of different experiences and emerged into a place that gave her a feeling of arrival.

  There was no tidal pull at this level. This was a strangely still place that neverthless seemed to shift subtly. It was richly textured and colored, like seeing through a kaleidoscope that was turning ever so slowly. But the colors were not static. They seemed to bleed into each other as they touched, and formed new colors as they completely merged.

  It was a world of intentions, where events were waiting to develop as circumstances and passions dictate. It was difficult to make anything out clearly, her sight dazzled by the flashes of color. She had to go to a higher plane.

  Rosalie concentrated, letting the random colors turn ghostly. She was looking for something that behaved differently from the other elements. Slowly, she isolated a purple ribbon that maintained its integrity as it undulated from the farthest extent of the vista and seeming to intertwine right through to the unseen end. She studied the ribbon intently, then made a tentative move towards it.

  Immediately, the colors solidified and exploded all around her, and she instinctively wrapped herself in a protective coccoon of white, deflecting darts of light of different colors that rained furiously down at her. Flinching but untouched, she sought out that purple ribbon and with some difficulty found it again. She stretched out a hand and touched it.

  Rosalie felt herself pulled in inexorably, shield and all, and the colors disappeared abruptly as she was enveloped by a purple haze that seemed to whisper at her in a strange language.

  Rowina was watching from the monitoring booth through a one-way glass. Rosalie was still, her hands on Helen’s head, but emotions chased each other across her face. Helen was stirring restlessly, and a grimace marred her sleeping face.

  Cole was also still, observing the mind travel of the 16-year-old from the sidelines. At one point her aura disappeared from sight, like a submarine plunging into the depths. He tensed, getting ready to go in and pull her back.

  Rosalie shook off the feeling of lassitude that was stealing over her, and expanded her protective coccoon to encompass and capture the purple ribbon, which coalesced into a solid, pulsing ball. It sent off waves of evil like heat from a newly-baked pie and it hurt her mind to keep it contained but she held on grimly.

  Rowina watched as Rosalie’s face tightened with effort, and the first tremors visibly coursed through her body. She was failing fast, Rowina thought, and made a move to rap on the glass, then stopped. Cole’s face was also contorted with effort, and Rowina had an idea that any distraction could spell the difference between success and failure. Perhaps life and death. Rowina slowly dropped her curled fist.

  Cole plunged in after Rosalie, but he couldn’t see her. Her aura had completely disappeared from his mind’s sight. But he could still feel her presence.

  Rosalie was vaguely aware that Cole was looking for her at a lower level, but she couldn’t break her concentration. If the purple ball was released, she would not have the strength to contain it again. It was struggling, shooting off poisonous darts of doubt and misgiving, wearing down her determination to sever the connection. It was warning her that it would end badly for Justin, and Rosalie herself would not be able to go back unscathed.

  Ignoring the attacks, Rosalie narrowed her focus to pinpoints, seeking to pierce the ball, the idea being that it would pop like a balloon and dissipate harmlessly.

  What happened next was a complete surprise.

  The ball didn’t burst. Instead, it began to take human form. Rosalie expected to see Helen, but the woman that stood before her mind’s eye was not her.

  It was a woman from the past.

  The image of a burning pyre, and the scream that had drilled into her brain. The Seeker burned at the stake as a witch. She was in Helen Foster’s mind. In her hand, she was clutching a smaller purple ball that was streaked with a rose pink thread.

  « Let me go, » the woman said in a low, intense, terrifying voice.

  « Who are you ?» Rosalie asked « Why are you here ? »

  The woman gave a soundless laugh, and Rosalie’s mind filled with images. She again saw the woman tied to a stake, surrounded by pale-faced people who seemed terrified of the bound woman. She was screaming as the flames licked at her feet, but the scream was not of fear and pain but of fury, and Rosalie saw among the swirling smoke and leaping flames that a dark light had flashed upward from the woman’s insane eyes, and then the figure slumped forward.

  The landscape changed and Rosalie saw what seemed like a sunny living room. She watched a very pregnant Helen humming contentedly as she settled down for her daily mental exercsies, much as Rosalie did to hone her own skills. For a while after she had closed her eyes, Helen was still, and then her brows twitched together as if she had found something unusual.

  The scene switched to what was obviously a mindscape. Rosalie had been on this plane before where auras mixed and mingled, much like a cocktail party, but she had not lingered as she was intent on getting to a higher level. It was higher than the Seeker working level, but was more like the corridors of a large building where people passed each other by and maybe exchanged a few words, but where not much work was done. Helen spent a lot of time here because she was exploring, and she found the auras she met here interesting.

  But this time, Helen saw something that wasn’t familiar. It was a pulsing dark cloud, repelling the other auras around it, but seeming to call to her. Curious, Helen approached and put out a hand. The cloud immediately engulfed Helen’s aura and an immediate struggle was evident, Helen’s rose-colored aura pulsing like lightning through portions of the choking black clous. After a while, the mass stilled, and the cloud solidified into a purple ball.

  « Let me go, » the woman said again.

  « No, » Rosalie said, but she was wondering what to do next. This was clearly beyond what they had expected to find. It wasn’t simply a matter of severing a link. This was a possession. And she didn’t know how long she could hold the containment field.

  « You can’t stop me, » the woman gave a smirk, arrogance in every line of her. « Nobody can. »

  A flash of negative light flared out, cancelling out the white field so that it stuttered frantically. Rosalie moaned as the dark light swept forcefully over her, but she kept her grip. Barely. She sensed Cole stagger as the dark light filtered down the levels.

  Helen’s eyes opened suddenly, but they were sightless. Her lips moved, and her voice was not her own. “You can’t stop me. Nobody can.”

  Rosalie and Cole swayed at the same time, and Rosalie uttered a low moan. She shuddered as if from a blow, but seemed to recover. She was as pale as a sheet, and Cole’s eyes began rolling up into its sockets.

  Rowina moved swiftly, swinging out of the monitor room and seizing her father by tbe arms. She shook him vigorously, but he remained out of it.

  “Sodium thiopental!” she barked at the nurse who had entered behind her. The nurse quickly filled a syringe with 2 mg of the barbiturate. Rowina prepared to plunge the needle into Helen’s arm.

  A hand shot out and grasped her arm in mid-plunge. Rowina looked up, startled. Cole was back, pale but smiling slightly. “Wait.”

  Rosalie knew she would not be able to withstand another dose of the dark light. Gathering herself up, she shot up and out of the field, grabbing at the purple ball in the woman’s hand as she did so. It seemed to burn her hand, but she ign
ored it, rushing through the layers of energy while towing the containment field with the woman behind her as if it was a laundry sack. She caught a glimpse of Cole as he faded from her consciousness.

  It seemed to take a long time, but she finally broke through to the black velvet plane.

  With a tremendous effort, she pitched the containment field as hard as she could, hearing a riii-ii-p as the woman struggled to escape her prison , but it was too late. With deep satisfaction, Rosalie watched the white blur mingled with dark light hit and sink into the deeper darkness. The drilling scream, excruciatingly loud at first and fading with distance, was suddenly cut off as if with a knife. Then she felt herself falling for what seemed a thousand years.

  Both Helen and Justin jerked as Rowina and Cole watched, and then slowly settled back. Cole thought he heard Helen give a sigh, and her face settled subtly into softer lines.

  Rosalie remained leaned over for a moment longer, and then she seemed to crumple like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  Chapter Twenty – Awakenings

  Brandon strode rapidly across the foyer, barely aware of Meg and Barbara who were trying to catch up with him as he made his way to the basement. His normally stoic face showed strain, which rippled as he saw Rosalie lying on a third hospital bed. He barely glanced at his mother and younger brother, who were sleeping off the last of the drugs out of their system.

  Rosalie seemed wraith-like, the sheets draped over her chest which barely seemed to be moving. Beside her, a machine was spewing out rolls of paper that showed very little variation in her brain activity.

  Cole came in behind Meg and Barbara, who were talking in whispers near the door. He took one look at Brandon’s set face, and decided not to approach him just yet.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Meg whispered.

  Cole shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure. It’s too soon to tell.”

  “What happened?” Barbara demanded.

  “It’s nothing I’ve ever experienced before. At first everything seemed to be fine. I was monitoring Rosalie when she found the link, and was about to cut it when she was sucked in. I tried to follow but I couldn’t get through, although I could still sense her. And then something was let loose that packed a heck of a wallop and almost knocked me out. I felt Rosalie starting to go higher than I could follow, then I was expelled. After about 5 minutes, Rosalie came back but all the lights were out. I knocked but she’s locked down tight.”

  “So is the link or whatever it is cut?” Meg asked.

  Cole scratched his chin, looking perplexed. “It seems to be. Justin’s brain waves jumped and then settled into a totally different wave pattern. The weird thing is, so did Helen’s. We’re not sure what happened, but it seems to indicate that a third consciousness was involved. We’re waiting for one or both of them to wake up and see what they remember.”

  As if on cue, Justin stirred, and everyone, including Brandon, turned to look. Justin’s eyelids fluttered open, revealing eyes that were unfocused and hazy. The pupils reacted instantly to the light, and he shut his eyes again. But he was clearly awake.

  “Wh-where am I?” he asked thickly.

  Cole strode over, and leaned forward. He looked intently at the boy’s face, seeming to study it for a long moment, before leaning back with a bemused look on his face. “He’s completely wiped. The only memories I can see are from when before his mother disappeared.”

  Barbara looked appalled. “You mean to tell me he doesn’t remember anything at all between then and now?”

  Cole nodded. “Apparently.”

  Rosalie was still falling. She had no idea how long it had been since she left the black velvet plane, but she had an idea that time existed as an afterthought up here. It didn’t seem to matter at all.

  She felt very peaceful following the savage triumph she had experienced after watching that wink of light disappear into nothing. She could drift in this way forever and she wouldn’t mind at all.

  She looked down and saw she was still clutching the purple ball, but it was cracked in places. Black matter was falling off it in large flakes, as if the shell had been flash frozen then hit sharply, and the rose-colored threads began to dissolve into a cloud. Rosalie watched as the cloud seemed to hover over her hand, and then slowly drift away.

  “Go home, Helen,” she thought, then closed her eyes.

  Helen’s eyes flew open, and she began to struggle against the bed sheets and the sensors attached to her head and chest. Her eyes were panicked, and at first she couldn’t take in that she was no longer being choked by the black cloud. Hands were on her shoulders, restraining her with some difficulty. Finally, she calmed down when she realized it was physical hands on her, and not the clutching, suffocating folds of that awful balck aura. Hey eyes cleared and saw strange faces looking down at her. Instinctvely, her hand went to her belly, and was horrified that there was no longer a bulge there.

  “My baby!” she wailed. A hand that was now comforting was laid on her arm. She looked at the face that belonged to it and recognized Gerard Cole. She clutched at the hand convulsively, but before she could articulate her fears, Cole spoke.

  “He’s okay. He’s right here,” he indicated the bed to her left, and she looked. A young man seated on a chair was looking at her with curiosity. Helen’s eyes expressed her confusion, and she searched her mind for the answer. How could this young man be the child she had been carrying in her womb not ten minutes ago?

  Cole didn’t have the answers, but he did tell her that the young man was Justin, he was sixteen years old, and that he was her son. Helen sampled the truth of these statements, and couldn’t find anything to refute in them. The young man was of a more masculine mold, but his facial resemblance to her was unmistakable.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Cole asked gently.

  Helen told him about the black cloud, and her struggle to get free, and then waking up here. She could feel Cole searching her mind for some subterfuge, and she opened her mind up for his exploration. She wasn’t hiding anything. As far as she knew, it was 16 years ago and she was pregnant with her second son.

  “Where’s Brandon?” she asked sharply, looking around for the 4-year-old who had been in the living room with her playing with toy soldiers while she did her mental exercises. Another young man stepped forward, and she saw that this could be Brandon all grown up. She remembered the somber little boy with the rare sweet smile. The sombreness was there, but not the smile.

  “What happened to me?” she whispered, horrified by the long, blank space in her memory. “What have I done?”

  Cole glanced back at two women who were standing by a third bed, where a girl was lying. One of them shook her head, slightly, and Helen clutched Cole’s hand again. “I have to know!” she said fiercely.

  “You will,” Cole said, patting her hand. “But not right now. You need to rest.”

  All at once Helen felt immeasurably tired, and she only had time to think with some humor The Vulcan sleep hold before she drifted off.

  Cole, Meg and Barbara were in the library, and their mood was gloomy. Rosalie had been in a death-like state for two days, and showed no signs of coming back.

  “We have to tell Frank and Moira,” Meg insisted. “They have a right to know.”

  “Physically she’s fine,” Cole argued. “She probably had to shut down all the circuits to keep from blowing up. Whatever was in there with her had immense power.”

  “Well, she’s having a hard time finding the restart switch,” Barbara said in a tired voice.

  “She needs a jolt,” Meg mused. “Like those paddles you use to restart the heart.”

  “I don’t know if there’s a defribillator for the brain,” Cole pointed out with wry amusement.

  Barbara sat up straighter. “Maybe there is.”

  Brandon was a constant presence in the hospital room, which was now empty save for Rosalie. Justin and Helen had been moved to regular rooms in Eden, and were havi
ng regular sessions with a psychiatrist to cope with the gaps in their memory.

  Brandon had quickly accepted that his mother had been replaced that afternoon 16 years ago by something he didn’t understand, and that his brother had ever since been under its control. He realized he would have to build relationships with two strangers, and that it would be a difficult process, but that would have to come later. Right now, his whole concentration was on Rosalie.

  He wasn’t sure what he could do to help her. Even Cole was unable to penetrate the blank wall that was Rosalie’s mind, and there was an unspoken fear that there was nothing beyond the wall. Her body was on auto pilot, but there was no one in the driver’s seat. But he needed to be here, if not for her, than for himself.

  Both Brandon and Justin knew that Justin and Rosalie had been matched by the council; such arrangements were common because it increased their chances of keeping the coven’s population stable. Too many vampires married outside the coven, and the elders feared that special abilities like that of the Seekers and Soldiers would die out. He also had a marriage arranged for him to a girl with no abilities but from a good line of Seekers, but neither of them had been in any hurry to marry.

  It was these arrangements that had made him draw back from his attraction to Rosalie, and even Justin’s apparent betrayal had not released him from his sense of obligation to his younger brother. At their last encounter, Brandon had given in to an impulse in an effort to break his fascination with Rosalie, and it had backfired on him. When Rosalie moved closer into his kiss, he knew the strength of his feelings for her was stronger than he thought. It took all his will to break away, and he had not dared to look at her again.