Angel Blood: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance Novel

by Jae Vogel

  Solis Red Light District is interesting, in that it is built on one of the largest hills in the city. In addition to the elevation change, the illusion of grandeur is also promoted by the excessively tall buildings that litter the landscape. The end result is a multi-tiered sort of deal where each corporate master underneath the grand Solis does its best to present a masturbatory image of power to the remaining peons, who exist and support their way of life. One might look at the Red light district as a tip of the hat to the interests of the mensch who make up the lower classes. Sort of like a nod to the base drives of humanity and the services which cater to them.

  The drugs, the sex, and the alcoholism, if you could classify those as different things, were all a means of achieving intoxication of a sort. Beyond that, there were more privatized luxuries available for those with more money to spend. Symbolic indulgences of a kind.

  On the other end of things, you had Gratis, which essentially took care of all of the casualties that were created by the voluntary system of indulgence, which composed the pulse of the city. Every aspect worked together to create a whole where a citizen had no choice but to enjoy themselves, get sick and die. Throughout all of it, you had a hand full of people who benefited, I’m sure. But in order to really be one of those people, you had to maintain a level of perspective that was far beyond that which the rest of the people maintained. Everyone else was looking for an immediate fix, and if you wanted to get ahead, you had to keep your focus long enough to be able to work under the premise that immediate gratification was not going to be a very wise way to live. At least that was the inspiration that came to me during my walk.

  I couldn't tell you why. There was no reason for it, I just felt unreasonably empowered. The fog which I had tried for so long to place over my mind had been lifted beyond my normal state of occlusion. In spite of my best efforts, I saw things now in a long view that I hadn't even considered before.

  The city felt vampiric, in the most severe sense possible. For sure, I was walking lucid through a nightmare that so many of the people who slept around me might never wake out of. Just because I felt like I knew what was happening around me, didn't mean that felt normal. I was disoriented in a near perpetual sense. I wanted to die, but I knew it wasn't a reasonable action to take, given the circumstances.

  I found myself wandering toward Solis Peak, the high end gated community in the center of the downtown development. At the peak there were mansions for all of the top employees of both major corporations - Solis and Gratis. They liked to have their position of dominance over the rest of their environment. I walked through the final corporate neighborhoods, where the skyscrapers all existed. The banks, and government buildings; the high tech industries and even the fucking hospital.

  Everything was clustered around this neighborhood, muted in the haze that settled over the ground just before dawn. The neighborhood itself was surrounded by a fence, with iron points, security bunkers and cameras. Of course, that didn't mean that it was impossible to get into the community. All anybody with any sense of willpower had to do was find one of the weak points in the fence and either hop over or crawl underneath; that was the problem with providing your isolated community a place to be in the center of downtown. Inevitably, some drunk, courageous asshole is going to want to climb your towers, just because they are there.

  I found a recent foxhole, and got on my hands and knees. With my belly to the ground, I managed to push myself through to the other side.

  Within a short time of moving my body around the outer periphery of the houses, I was able to climb my way up to one of the lesser peaks. When I got there, I wanted some kind of cigarette, but that impulse only lasted for a moment. I watched as it arrived, and then faded away afterward, leaving me to sit by myself with my own consciousness and the impending sunrise.

  I began to feel a vibration at the base of my skull, and a heightened pain in my chest. The change in sensation came about so suddenly, that I was caught off guard. I didn't know what to make of it. I tried breathing through the sensation, but it only increased in intensity the more I paid attention to it.

  As the severity grew, I began to regret that I didn't take that shot from Hep.

  Anxiety is never an enjoyable thing to deal with, and anxiety that is brought about by stress and drug abuse is especially unpleasant - mostly because the drugs are often times both the cause and the cure of the issue. My entire nervous system began to flare up, causing my muscles to tense, and my heartbeat to soar.

  So this is it, I thought, looking into the sky through pupils that had dilated beyond their usual capacity.

  I grit my teeth and stared into the clouds, pushing through whatever complicated, chemically induced, latent seizure had decided to claim me. The light was soothing, and unreasonably bright. The fact that it existed, seemed to indicate a sense of promise and warmth, but the cold surface of the concrete and metal below my body relentlessly reminded me of my own discomfort.

  Death comes to claim me on a sewer grate...

  There was the impulse toward laughter, but to even laugh meant to tighten my chest, which was already constricted to the point where it was difficult to breathe. The light at the horizon began to grow, and my priorities began to shift away from any priorities which might have resembled that of a regular human.

  The clothes needed to come off immediately. I needed to piss, and I couldn't be bothered to move myself into a position of decency.

  I found myself on all fours, naked, clutching the edge of the sewer grate, urine dripping freely from my body into the infrastructure below, my eyes wide the entire time, staring unblinkingly into the dawn of a new day.

  A carrier tone began to sound off somewhere around me. I couldn’t tell exactly where, but it didn’t really matter because soon enough, the sound completely enveloped my mind. Both my fingers and toes dug themselves into the concrete and metal beneath my body to such an extent that I could actually feel the change in temperature of their bloodless state.

  The power inside of me grew so strong that I felt as though I was forced to hum along with whatever carrier signal I had invaded my brain. Actually vocalizing my anxiety gave me a bit of an edge on it, and brought things back into control, but there was only so much that could be done in the situation.

  In an ideal world, when you get into something like that, you try to keep in mind the perspective that all things are passing, and that you probably aren’t going to die. Likely it is just a passing feeling that will dissipate as soon as you stop focusing on the pain.

  In spite of the fact that I knew well enough to stay calm, and hold tight until the trip was over, I ended up suffering from a total lack of clarity in my head.

  I was going to die.

  The world was growing brighter, and I was certain at any moment, the light from the dawn would swallow me whole, and my consciousness would meld into the carrier tone that dominated my internal hearing.

  I lost touch with the sensory input from my fingertips and the balls of my feet. The sound grew to an obliterating volume, and my eyes rolled into the back of my head.

  From that moment forward, I am only able to describe the events that took place from a perspective outside of my own head.

  If it’s difficult to follow, I’m sorry. The truth is, there isn’t a more reliable way to convey this information, because from that moment forward, I was no longer Jayne Daux — I became Her.

  The release was unlike any drug I had ever used; nothing can compare.

  Chapter 8

  She looked feral. There really was no other way of saying it.

  It's hard to believe that the very same flesh used to be me. That's how drastically the shell had changed since She took over. There wasn't any room for me any more; at least it didn't feel that way.

  I watched as her eyes came back into focus, but this time, the regular iris was totally gone; replaced by a pure black reflective surface. Even in the harsh light of the dawn, she stared straight ahead, absorbing
as much light as she possibly could.

  Basking, feeling restored… she was better for the suffering, and I could see her relaxing each muscle group in order to find herself a solid place along the sewer grate. The legs went out behind her, and she stretched one after the other. Next was the arms, the neck and the feet. She looked so hungry, malnourished… like she needed something. For all of the nutrients that were offered by the light, there was still something missing.

  When she breathed and let in a yawn, I saw her teeth. They were sharp, but that didn't necessarily mean she had a new set of them. Once more, I think it was a matter of perception. The canines just seemed more pronounced in the moment. The enamel seemed somehow more white and reflective than before. It was easy for me to tell that the body was warming up for her. There was more movement with each passing moment.

  More stretches.

  More shifting of her weight from side to side.

  I watched her become more comfortable with my body, as the sun climbed higher beyond the horizon line. Then, as soon as I noticed movement above her shoulder, she turned around and focused her attention toward the focus of my distraction. Her intuition was linked psychically to my own powers of observation.

  A man in a security uniform had shown up, and was busy phoning in reinforcements over a radio in the palm of his hand. He wasn’t your typical overweight security guard though. This man was armed, and appeared to be physically capable of following through with whatever threats his presence implicitly carried.

  I watched her body set on edge as she and the security guard met eyes. He held his expression in a poker face, and the two stared down one another. The psychic standoff only lasted a moment, until two more officers popped up over the edge of the cliffside, pistols drawn.

  I opened my mouth to try screaming, but found that I could not make a sound. In spite of the lack of physical noise being emitted from my body, it was clear that the screaming was not something that provided any assistance to the woman. Even as she leapt backward off of the concrete sewer platform, I felt a warning shot in my mind.

  A sort of ‘don’t fuck with me’ message filtered through my consciousness, and I realized that unless I was willing to rejoin my body, this was something that she was going to take care of on my behalf.

  I wasn’t clear on the consequences of forfeiting my autonomy, or even how voluntary this possession really was, but I was terrified. The fact that I could see the projectiles from the three weapons firing through the air did little to ease my anxieties.

  Immediately, my heart fell into sadness as one of the bullets planted itself firmly in the muscle tissue of the woman’s right shoulder. I saw the stream of blood shoot out from the wound, while I watched the other projectiles imbed themselves into the soil around the woman’s body.

  She allowed the force of the bullet to pass through her by modifying her motion, and turned her dive into a roll. As her body spiraled down the hill, I found myself dragged along with her in space, away from the men at the top of the hill. They continued to fire, but each fall downward was followed by an immediate springing dive downward toward the edge of the neighborhood.

  She was headed toward the Gratis campus, which was undesirable at the very least, but at this point I doubt could be helped.

  Two of the men attempted to follow, but it became fast apparent that they were unwilling to descend the hill in so cavalier a fashion, and soon had to give up on the pursuit. The other sped away in the security car, likely spreading out in a wide alert that there had been an intruder into the Solis High Rise Community. I use the phrase ‘had been’ because at the rate she was moving, I doubted she would be on the property much longer.

  At the bottom of the hill there were more problems to be found. As if getting shot and voluntarily tumbling your body down a cascading series of terraced levels in a hillside was not enough, by the time she got down to the ground level, the dogs were already loose. Enthusiastic hounds that they were, they bounded to intercept her as she hit the final level.

  I watched her roll along the ground and nearly stumble as she tried to catch her balance once more. Approximately fifty yards of a dead sprint lay in front of her with the dogs closing in from the left hand side.

  She cut a straight line for the fence, hell bent on scaling the perimeter, even if the fence was superficially too high to be conquered by the average citizen. Shaggy, attentive, and eager to bite, three German Shepherds quickly closed the distance and made a final dive to seize her right before she made it to the gate.

  The right foot pivoted, and the left launched directly toward the trajectory of the dog closest to the fence. I watched the dog’s face and spine smash toward the ground under the weight of her body. The momentum was enough to give her a solid jump toward the fence, though she actually launched her body in a cartwheel.

  Like a pole vaulter, she cleared the fence, just scratching the underside of her relatively flat chest on the ornately barbed barricade. Her shirt was ripped, and she was bleeding from both her shoulder and her chest. She fell backward, gasping for breath, and stumbling onto the hillside which separated the gated community from the hospital.

  I watched breathless, hardly recognizing myself. Then I watched her cough and vomit onto the hillside.

  Sheer admiration and respect for what my own body was capable of overwhelmed me in that moment.

  “Go!” I urged, not wanting her to get caught after such a daring escape.

  She held her arm for a moment, and glared at me with sadness in her eyes. Turning then, she fled into the hospital campus, leaving the dogs barking at the gate. Of course, the vehicle would be approaching at any moment from within the hospital campus.

  Going directly into Gratis was a terrifying move from my perspective. When I looked into the campus, all I could see was death. Behind us, the three dog heads barked and gnashed their teeth through the gate. I became immediately aware of the surveillance cameras that were placed everywhere, and a thought came to me, that while I was here, I might as well attempt to provide her with a more active form of surveillance.

  My form as a disembodied spirit was easy enough to move around in, though I seemed to be attached to her by a cord that dragged me about by the navel. The cord itself was elastic, and I found that I actually had a fair amount of room to move, if I focused intently enough on increasing the distance between us.

  I used that willpower to project myself upward so I might be able to get a glimpse of the approaching vehicle. Sure enough, the security car was headed straight for the front parking lot. I felt my eyes being accessed by some external force, while a divine intelligence overtook my mind. The officer was out of the car in no time, with two other vehicles screeching to a halt beside his own car. A series of weapons was trained at the courtyard of the hospital, and general panic ensued from the surrounding people.

  I was pulled inside of the building beyond my will, and watched while she blew off the administrative desk, shoving a doctor who stood in her path to the floor. She pushed into a dead sprint down the hallway, and used her good shoulder to lean into an emergency stairwell.

  "Suspect is on the first floor of the Gratis Building. Should be considered a danger to both patients and doctors. Subject is to be detained on sight. Use of force is permitted."

  The words came through my mind in a digital soup of information. The frequencies of radio transmission replaced my own thoughts, and were summarily transmitted to Her. I watched her pause in the stairwell, and spread her consciousness throughout the building. The meditation appeared strenuous, and intentional. She was vulnerable in that moment, and it gave me an intense form of anxiety to see her in that state. I could sense her light, expanding outward, and sensing through the entire building. There was a critical question implicit in her search.

  Records.

  Transcripts.

  Psych Ward.

  Classified.

  The words rebounded within my mind and consumed me entirely. Suddenly, I became aware th
at I was the light spreading outward through the space in the hospital. I was no longer focused on her vulnerability in the hallway, but in the minutia which pertained to her query.

  Electronic files passed through my mind in a stream of ones and zeros. I understood none of it, and yet that didn't seem to matter. I realized that she was using me, both as an Avatar, and as a psychic instrument.

  Immediately, a map of the hospital flashed in front of my mind. I could have reached out and touched it, if any sense of physicality remained within my body. The map was three dimensional, and contained a seemingly infinite depth of information. The Psych Ward was isolated on levels Eleven and Twelve, while the Thirteenth floor was restricted to administrative access. Beyond the Admin floor, there was a roof, and little else.

  "Archive Server: Dates: Nov. 5th. - Keywords: Solis Ent. Jayne Daux, Aggravated Assault."

  At some point in the search, there was a flag followed by a sequence of characters that made even less sense to me than the data streams that came into my head only moments before. The only way for me to make any sense of the difference in information was the awareness that my cognitive load had increased from confusion to a state of paralysis from lack of comprehension. This pain lasted a few moments longer, and then some sort of resolution came about within my mind. As soon as the resolution arrived, I was immediately dragged back into context by the slam of a door being kicked open on the thirteenth floor of the building.

  She was sprinting now toward the location of the server, as a group of armed officers proceeded up the stairwell behind her.

  "Suspect has made it to the thirteenth floor. Be advised, that officers have been injured. An escalation of force has been recommended. Shoot to kill."

  Sweat poured from her body, and my own consciousness began to drift between my incorporeal form, and the form of my own body. The distance between the two of us had closed, and I was now within my own body, though completely absent of control.