Shifting Heroes

by Francheska Fifield

  "Do it."

  I regret the words the second they are out of my mouth but I don't take them back. I am not sure why Charlotte thinks the adrenaline is a good idea but she has a medical background and she has much longer to study than I have. Perhaps she knows something I do not. Perhaps she knows something these scientists and doctors do not. While some of them are human some are vamps. I can only hope that she really does know what she is doing.

  I watch as they injected the adrenaline directly into her vein, no IV is hooked up right now. There is no way there could be one with all the thrashing she is likely to do when she gets shocked. It will just come flying out causing more damage. More damage that will mean they have to give her more blood to heal and we are keeping her on a low blood dosage right now… or as much as possible and still healing broken bones she keeps giving herself.

  Continuality giving her blood doesn’t help keep building costs low, all her breaking shit, but we can’t let stuff heal wrong. We have to reset it and quickly heal it. It is such a mess. I am so stressed I have barely gotten any sleep these past few weeks. My head is already spinning with worry and I am so nauseated I can barely drink blood anymore. I probably don’t look much better than Beth does.

  Brian the walking dead, first a vampire then a zombie…how quaint. How typical. I need to pull myself out of this and be strong. If food has lost its taste it doesn’t matter. It is for nutritional value only, to keep me going so that when Beth is alive and well once again I will be here to help her get back in shape.

  My head snaps up and my eyes fly open when I hear the first screech. It sounds like an animal being tortured in the forest, the echo in the room makes me want to plug my ears. My poor brave Beth sitting there strapped down, adrenaline rushing through her body, followed by electrocution. Electricity enters her body with no place to go except through her some more.

  Blood pours from her eyes nose, ears, and the corners of her mouth. Dripping down onto her clothes. Her nails burst forth, her fangs follow. She is tearing up the padded parts of the chair that her arms are tied too. I can’t watch but I can’t look away my eyes refuse to close no matter what I want. So I stand there staring as her hair collects the air around us rising up as she screeches and screams in misery. After a couple of minutes I notice something. It is not just blood coming out of her eyes anymore it is tears. I hold up my hand and leapt forward.

  "Stop! Turn it off now! Stop!"

  They don't wait to confirm. My growling voice warning them that they have to do this, they have to listen. The machine turns off, the screeching turns into wailing. She is crying. No matter how much she has injured herself before beating on the walls and the doors, destroying the barriers we put up between her and the others down here she has never cried.

  I walk over and kneel down in front of her and put my hands on her knees ignoring the smell of her blood. "Beth…Beth is that you?"

  I know my voice is hopeful, scared, and timid, not at all what a big strong vampire should sound like, but I am so hopeful I want nothing more than to get her out of these sterile rooms with their test tubes and note takers, the poking and the prodding. I want her to be free again, to be my Beth, to come home with me.

  She sniffles and looks at me and for the first time in a long time I see the Beth I fell in love with…sanity resides in her eyes.

  "Brian…"

  "What do you remember?"

  She tries to raise her hand to rub her head, to rub her eyes, to get the goo out of them. She can't. She looks down up and around at everyone gathered. I follow her gaze. Jason is back his eyes clear of demonic power but trying to hold tears back. Charlotte is there relief in her eyes. Her face says she dares to hope that this will last. At the same time I can sense the doubt creeping in. I can see it in the corners of her eyes. We have tried so many things and failed. She is afraid to hope.

  Brisa is there relief and happiness shining out of her. She carries herself like someone who is about to throw down and thank God for a miracle she has witnessed. And those that Beth doesn't know. She won't know the team that captured her, guns all trained on her. They are all filled with tranquilizing darts, which she does not know. They all have live rounds in handguns in case she loses it. Also the scientists who, if Beth has any memory of will be totally subconscious. Hopefully those memories stay buried because I doubt any memories with the scientists would be good ones.

  But she doesn't look away; she takes them all in one by one, and looks back at me. My eyes are there ready, waiting to see the clarity in hers. See if it is still there.

  "What's going on?"

  I stroke her hair, the skin of her face, trying to be gentle. She is so weakened.

  "You don't remember the spell? Sending the demons home? Or what happened after you closed the portal?"

  She closes her eyes and her brows knit together, almost to the point of creating one, she thinks so hard.

  "I remember the trip with Jason and Brisa… the air Fae… and… and we… we found the demons. We banished Kyle…Brisa got so powerful. We sent the demons home… and they… I don't remember what happened next. Brian… Brian… what happened? Where are we? What's going on?"

  I sigh and look down. I don’t think she will really want to hear, but she needs to know. It will alleviate some of her fear if she knows that we are keeping her here for good reason.

  "Beth after the demons left here your drug addiction, the vampire psychosis, it took over."

  Shock and horror fill her eyes, her mouth forms a perfect O, and both of her hands lift. The restraints stop them from reaching her face however and she shakes her head and squeezes her eyes closed tears pouring down her face.

  "No…no please tell me I didn't do something horrible! What did I do? Did I hurt anyone? Brian tell me please!"

  I've never seen her look so pathetic, so weak, and so terrified. Beth doesn't have fear. She doesn't fear the insane animals she catches. The only thing she fears is becoming one of the insane ones she hunts. That's what I am essentially telling her right now. That she has in fact become one. I don't know how to make it better and I don't want to tell her the truth but I have to. I put my hands on hers and squeeze tightly letting her squeeze back. I don't care if she breaks a bone, she has to know and I have to be here for her when she finds out.

  "You went crazy. You attacked the entire group. Then you escaped before we could get you in the cage. It's my fault. Your grandmother had the cage all ready but you were just standing there and a couple of the members of the group were barely alive after… after the spell was finished a couple of the members were near death. I was the only one that hadn't participated, the only one that wasn't exhausted. I ran over to check on those that were the weakest first, some of them they lost their supernatural abilities. The werewolf was human; your grandmother was no longer an undead. She's a living vampire. She won't become an undead again if she dies but don't tell your family.

  "You were just standing there breathing in and out. You seemed in a state of shock. I thought it would be okay to leave you for a few minutes so I could make sure that those that had had pieces of themselves ripped out didn't die. I didn’t get you in the cage in time. I'm so sorry."

  I am sputtering. Talking too fast. I know and I can't stop. The words just roll out of my mouth like vomit. But it makes me feel so much worse than being sick does. I stop when her hands release mine looking up in her eyes and seeing nothing but fear.

  "Brian what did I do?"

  I close my eyes and look away. Her hands squeeze mine again the nails digging into my palms forcing me to look her in the eyes. She wants to know. She doesn't want the guilt of not knowing destroying her tenuous grasp on reality. I am worried knowing will overcome the sanity she now holds, but I know that I have to tell her. With her personality the wondering will make her much more unstable, guilt we can work through, wondering… well the worst enemy is the one you can't see. Her not knowing left her wide open for fear. Doubt and insecurities wide open for the v
ampire psychosis to come back to take her. So I look her in the eye and I tell her.

  "You killed the human mage, the werewolf that turned human. Both of them lost what made them other. They were the weakest prey. They were side-by-side. I had moved on to check on Jason and you killed them. You tried to attack your brother and Brisa. Brisa put up a shield; she was still strong enough to hold you back, when you went for her, Jason, and your grandmother. But not before you took a chunk out of me, a really good one. The vampire doctor said it won't fully heal…ever. It will always cause me problems. I definitely won't be hunting anymore."

  I pause to take a breath so I can spew out the rest. I am rambling I know but at the same time I can't help it. I just want it over. I want everything over. But the story is not done. I tell her I was with the team that caught her which means and that she had escaped which means I still have to tell her what she did in the meantime.

  "Brian… did I hurt any humans when I was gone… before I was captured did I eat or kill anyone?"

  She stumbles over her words no longer the proud confident hunter that I know. Tears stream down her face as her eyes dart to those gathered.

  "No Beth you only hunted animals. We kept pushing you; animals were easier prey, so you could stay one step ahead of us. You didn't hurt any humans, almost, but they had guns that drove you off until we got there. And then you were severely outnumbered by vampires and werewolves and Fae.

  "Luckily we managed to stay just one step behind you the whole time so you never had the chance to hurt anyone. The human mage and the werewolf… they were almost dead anyway. From the spell. We didn't know if they would've made it, even if you hadn't attacked them. The councils think that they died from the spell, pulling too much from them. That they were destroyed from the backlash. You are safe. It's okay. We just…we needed to find a way to help you to bring you back."

  Tears pour down her face, sad, pathetic, guilt ridden. I fear that with guilt comes cravings. I have seen addicted humans before; though Beth is not exactly human the vampire part of her that craves the drug is very much like an addicted human. Vampires addicted to blood that have lost their sanity are often more human. The very thing that separates us is also the very thing that makes us most like them when we lose ourselves. I am not sure how we can hold them in contempt after that.

  I shake my head to dispel my thoughts. Now is not the time to focus on psychology. The differences and similarities between the supernatural and humans are not important. Beth is. I look back in her eyes and notice they were slightly glazed now.

  She is not going to stay sane. I grab a hold of her forearms and squeeze letting my nails prick her. The pain seems to clear her eyes a bit, she focuses on me, but I know it won't last. She is overwhelmed right now, her feelings are slowly taking over, allowing the psychotic drug thirsty animal to come back.

  "Beth you have to hold on. Do you understand? You have to hold on. We are going to find a way to cure you."

  She shakes her head and looks down too ashamed to look me in the eye anymore.

  "I don't deserve to be saved Brian! I don't. You can't! You can't save me because you love me! I killed people! I know what the Council does to vampires like that!"

  I want to squeeze harder but I have to hold back. I can't break her bones.

  "Beth we don't know what they do to those vampires. Your grandmother not might not be the only one with the secret basement and you didn't kill humans. Even if the spell robbed them of something they were born supernaturals. You didn't reveal our secret to the world. You didn't leave it open to people to find out about us. They were dying anyway."

  I try to stay calm and rational hoping she will as well. She shakes her head and tries to place hers over her ears…or so it seems. She has forgotten she can’t. It is childish but she is being reduced to basic so I don't point it out. Not that it would've been a good idea to do so anyway.

  "No Brian it doesn't matter! I killed them!"

  "Don't you think you should keep your ass sane so that you can atone for what you did? Instead you go back into insanity lose yourself so you don't have to feel the guilt! Is that fair to the ones you have wronged? Is it Beth?!"

  Her head jerked up and I see some of the anger in her eyes. Anger is good. Anger will drive her. I can deal with that.

  "That's not fair! You know that's not what I'm trying to do!"

  "Isn't it? It's exactly what you're trying to do! Embracing it so you don't have to feel guilt for what you've done! Because your psychotic vampire there doesn't feel guilt or pain! It's so much easier to just turn off your emotions and let the other take over! Hoping that will kill you and put you out of your misery! It would be much harder to hold on and atone for what you've done, to go to those families and apologize for them dying in the field during that spell, for your part in it, to make sure that they're safe!"

  Her eyes fill with tears and they pour down her face as she silently glares at me. Half angry, half afraid, all guilt. I am not sure which way it is going to go but it looks like she is now trying to hold on but I don't think she is going to succeed. Already the glossiness of unawareness is overpowering the sanity she grasps. We don't have much time. So I do what I have to do and grab her arms and squeeze.

  "Beth look at me. We need you to fight this. Tell me how you came to awareness. Was it the pain? The shock? What happened? We need you to give us as detailed an analysis as you can of how you came to be conscious and aware?"

  "I…I just know the pain was so intense! I don't… I don't know why… the hunger…the fear. Everything pushed back. The pain was so intense it pushed through everything."

  I turn to Charlotte desperate. "Is there any way to implant a chip in her brain that can give a mild electric shock continuously so that she is aware?"

  Charlotte looks to her doctors and scientists and they shrug. That is not a very promising gesture.

  "It is possible but it will kill her. She would last longer than a human because of her vampire blood but the shifter blood will weaken her so it is still like doing it to a human. An object on her brain for long periods of time would cause the brain to fail. The stress would kill her in the end."

  Well that is a dud of an idea. Little did I know the demon would be the one with a valid idea.

  Chapter Nine

  "What if I were to reside inside of her?"

  We all turn to look at the demon. He is back in control of Jason's body. Beth's eyes are on him confused, confusion won’t help things.

  "One of the demons that resided in you liked you enough to stay on our plane. He has been inside of Jason trying to help us catch you and then trying to help us figure out a way to save you. He wants to use you as a host again. But he wasn't strong enough alone to push back the insanity."

  "Yes but that was a temporary bond. I was pushed out of her and resided in this one during the sending spell. The bond we had before was temporary just like when I jumped inside of her for the capture of the Fae we banished. I'm talking about creating a permanent bond."

  The swirling power vortex disappears and Jason is there once again.

  "I think he means something like what I had with my demon. For the enhancements, knowing every language in the world, in exchange for me being a host so he could experience the world as it was now not being struck sleeping."

  The power swirls again and the demon comes back. It is like talking to someone with multiple personality disorder. It is odd for all of us. Beth however seems to take it in stride. Of course the one thing that makes the rest of us all shiver with the heebie-jeebies is no skin off her back.

  "No. It is a much deeper pledge than that. I will bolster my power and then I will use it to create a permanent bond. It will not ever be broken. Even should someone successfully do another summoning spell they would not be able to separate us. It would be permanent; she would acquire some of my demonic traits, thoughts, power. And I would be a permanent voice in her head. It would be almost like having another personality. She would
call upon my power much easier but then again when I took over the body I could call upon hers as well."

  That's just what we need, the demon in Beth's body with access to her vampiric and shape shifter powers. As well as his own powers. It doesn't seem like there will be much of their choice in the end though. We have no other ideas.

  "What's required?" I am staring him head on but feel Beth flinch. She doesn't comment though so I am not sure how she feels about it. And sadly right now I am not sure if I care.

  "It will not be easy. It will require many things. Will take some time to gather them. Both parties have to be perfectly willing to do this. If either party has any doubts the spell will fail. It's a very complicated spell as is and it will take a lot of power. I will have to bolster my power first which means draining quite a few supernaturals of their power. Depending on what type of beast they are the power will return to them. Werewolves might lose the ability to shift, shifters as well. The Fae would be able to recuperate their powers they are not like others. Vampires would likely end up as weak as humans for a while even become human in the worst cases. However most would just end up weaker to everything they are normally weak against. Drinking blood from the vein before and after I drain them decreases the likelihood of any lasting symptoms."

  I look to Beth…she has to be willing. I squeeze her hand hard enough to force her gaze from her demonically possessed brother to myself. She gives a slight nod of her head. She is willing.

  "Beth none of us want to lose you. We are here because we all want to save you. There would be more people here if your grandmother trusted them. You need to do this. Remember you still promised to find out what happened to Rick. You still don't know where he is or what happened to him. Do you want to die not knowing if he's okay or not? Do you want to leave me behind to spend the rest of my undead life alone? Do you want to die and leave your brother with no little sister? He promised to protect you can you really just leave us all here alone?"