Carson Evolved Ch. 14

She considered her options. The truth was, she had no idea if what he said he'd done was even possible. She was inclined to believe him, but the pace at which he was picking up the basics was a little frightening. I don't know if it's wrong, Carson. I've never heard of anyone taking that approach. Most people try to change the pattern on the stream or envision some sort of clamp on the stream they want to convert. How did you know to do what you did?

I don't know. I guess it just felt like that was the right way to go. In a way, it almost felt like I'd done it before. Weird, huh?

Maybe not. Your kind are supposed to retain their knowledge in subsequent generations. Maybe you remembered doing it in a former life. Never mind, you can ask your dad about it later. Since you did that so easily, I think you might be able to do what I was hoping to get to easily as well. Remember when we met, and I said that you were radiating energy?

Yes.

Magicians have a kind of resonance to them as the move through the world. It's unique to the kind of magic they possess, and the more powerful the individual, the stronger the resonations. Your signal is the strongest I've ever felt, which either means you're extremely powerful, or others with our power keep it masked. Could be either or both. The point is that practitioners often create a kind of filter or dampener to prevent others from sensing them or how much power they have. With practice, it's not even a conscious thing to maintain. Some people, though, can create an illusion for other people to see. They draw energy from their surroundings to add to their own resonance and turn it into a physical representation. Others are constantly bleeding energy into other projects, like spells or artifacts that can store the energy, so that their resonance is reduced in strength.

Your ability though, might be better than anything I've ever heard of. I want you to imagine yourself surrounded by a sphere that takes your own resonance energy and makes it look like mine.

He reached out to get a feel for Siubahn's signature. It wasn't all that different from when he tuned into any of the women in his life. It was a little more difficult to sense his own signature, but eventually he got it. Just as with the prism before, the conversion actually went very quickly. How about this? he thought.

Siubahn took a look and gasped aloud. That's incredible! I can't believe you learned that so fast. This doesn't solve the problem completely, but it could be handy if you decided that you needed to be someone else for a while. Now, I want you to imagine that sphere again, but this time, it needs to function like a speaker system with a microphone. Essentially, the microphone is going to pick up the resonance that you're emitting, and the speaker is going to play the same signal but inverted. It's like destructive interference in an audio signal. Give it a shot and tell me when you think it's working.

Okay. As before, the process seemed intuitive to him, which was a little disconcerting. Even with all the abilities that he'd exhibited before, the idea of magic was too abstract for his normally concrete mind. Thus, he couldn't have been more shocked to find it coming so easily. It was only a couple of minutes before he pronounced himself ready.

Siubahn opened her senses to look at the magical field. Once again, she gasped aloud. Carson was effectively invisible to her senses. She opened her eyes briefly to make sure that he was still seated before her. Closing her eyes, she once again sought to distinguish him from the background but could only sense a mild distortion in the field. It wasn't enough to draw attention unless someone already knew that he was a practitioner. Okay Carson, you can relax now. Immediately, he popped into existence, pulsing larger than life in her mind's eye. Amazing. You basically disappeared. If I hadn't known you were there or that you had magic, I would have never noticed.

I'm getting a little tired. I don't know how long I could actually hold that.

We're basically done tonight, so this is your homework until we can get together. Each day, I want you to practice holding that shield together for as long as you can. Do your best to hold it, even if you're doing other things or feel like you're in a safe place. The more you use your gifts, the easier things will become. At some point, erecting that shield will be so effortless that you'll feel naked if you don't put it up.

They both opened their eyes and grinned at each other. "Is this really happening?" he asked.

Nodding, Siubahn said, "Not only is it happening, but you are picking things up frighteningly easy. It took me hours to figure out how to shield myself."

Carson stood and offered her a hand. Pulling her to her feet, he caught her off guard when he pulled her into a hug. Overcoming her shock, she rested her hands on his back. "Thank you," he murmured. "Thank you for helping me. If there's ever anything that you need, just name it."

"You're quite welcome, Carson. As I said before, I don't know much of use to you. What I know, though, I give to you freely. I can't shake the feeling that you're going to be someone very important in our world."

He released Siubahn and held her by the shoulders at arm's length. "Are you sure I can't do anything for you?"

A look that he couldn't decipher came across her face. "Well...there may be something. It has to do with my clan back home."

"Whatever it is..."

"Don't be so hasty," she cautioned. "It's not something to be undertaken lightly."

He smiled at her. "So melodramatic. Are you going to tell me what it is?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it, shaking her head. "I need to speak to the clan before we go any further. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have even mentioned it."

"That's okay. Just know that I want to help you if I can."

"Thank you, Carson. You really are quite impressive for a man your age. If I were but twenty years younger, I think I might have trouble keeping my hands off you."

He smiled at her and with a wink said, "Age is just a number to me. If you ever fancy giving it a shot, I'm sure the Pride could be convinced to agree."

She gasped but couldn't hide the smile that formed on her face even as she looked down in embarrassment. I'll think about it, Maighster Jayne.

*****

Thomas sniffed the air speculatively before following his quarry around the corner. It's going to rain tonight. That'll come in handy.

Even from a block and a half behind the couple, his sensitive hearing picked up the tinkling giggles of the woman. She has no idea the danger she's in. She wasn't the problem, though. He was. Typical of his kind, he was charming to a degree when approaching his prey. Contrary to legends of ugly, sewer-dwelling creatures, Thom knew that if he passed them on the street, he'd find a tall, healthy, attractive young man with dark brown—bordering on black—eyes at her side. No matter how old the creature actually was, he was eternally early-20s to everyone around him.

There was one truly distinguishing mark, though. The signature trait of his kind was the absolutely bald scalp. Not shaved or thinning hair—hairless. Once they matured, their hair simply fell out, leaving not a trace of it ever having been there.

How women never picked up on the slightly elongated ears and skull in the hairless expanse, Thom had yet to figure out. But they didn't.

This made the fourth Nosferat he'd followed in the last couple of weeks. The first three had been drones, nothing more. Thom was beginning to get frustrated. He needed to find one of Silas's minions with a stronger constitution; drones broke too easily, before he could extract the information on the clutch's location.

So far, the creature was following a familiar modus operandi. He'd charmed his way into her friend circle at the bar, his aura preventing her friends from questioning it when he offered to escort her home. At some point, he'd managed to dose her with the potent secretion of aphrodisiac and hypnotic components. Produced in a small gland under the fleshy pad at the heel of the hand, a single drop of the concoction was applied to the top of the spinal column and rapidly absorbed through the skin. Hardly noticeable, it steadily lowered her inhibitions and ramped up her libido, while simultaneously opening her senses to his specific pheromones.

It was the best date-rape drug to ever exist, and it inevitably led to a scene very much like the one Thom was observing now. The woman was completely under his thrall, and he would visit her home for a night of passion, regardless of her marital or relationship status, or even her sexual preference. In the morning, she would wake with only vague recollections of taking a man home and scenes from the events that followed. Maybe she'd feel guilty or a little sheepish about her foolish actions. Then she'd get up and move on, never knowing that her fate was already sealed.

Within her womb, a monster was growing. A monster destined to prey on other women.

If she lived alone, she might also be a little weak, feeling under the weather. Nosferatu, like other vampires, needed to feed, and this kind would take their nourishment from their victim's bloodstream. If she had a male around, though, things were even worse. After all, they couldn't take much from the incubator for their offspring.

The men, though, they could be drained more heavily. Thom had seen the wedding ring on her hand earlier, and he knew that this was the route things would take tonight. Watching the pair enter the front door of her tiny little house, he could almost watch in his mind what was now taking place. Moving like lightning, the creature would attack the man. His fangs were covered in a mild sedative that seemed to affect men much more than women. His victim would cease struggling, even feeling a sense of euphoria, as a large portion of his vital fluid was drained from his veins.

After that, the impregnation would take place.

Thom could have killed the creature in the street. It was difficult and dangerous, but not impossible. In his long history, though, he'd found that the vampires suffered a side-effect of the typical sequence of events. Drunk on the blood and dulled by the soporific effect of sex, they were slower and less coordinated, and thus were easier to manage.

Thom needed this specimen in that state if he was going to be potentially useful to the greater goal: eradication of the infestation of vampires here. He also knew that he could administer the abortive potion that would kill the monster growing in the woman's womb anytime within about 4 hours of impregnation and achieve the desired result. So, he settled down to wait.

In a surprisingly short time, the creature emerged from the home, staggering in his drunkenness. The golden rings of Thom's eyes flashed and he sank into the shadow formed by the roof of the porch where he'd been waiting across the street. He emerged from a shadow projecting from a massive oak tree in the woman's front yard, behind the vampire.

Conveniently behind his target, Thom pulled a long iron needle, shaped like those used in knitting, but much, much heavier, from the lining of his duster. The creature sensed his presence a split-second too late to prevent Thom from deftly driving the needle through the gap between the C5-C6 vertebra in the creature's neck. Collapsing immediately as the resulting quadriplegia removed his control over his limbs, the blood-drunk creature showed a mixture of panic and confusion on his face.

He'd ended up lying on his side, so Thom squatted before him. Recognition flashed through the creature's eyes. "You!" he hissed. "Silas has been looking for you wizard."

Thom smirked. "I'd tell you to let him know that I'm looking for him too. Sadly—for you, I mean—you won't be making it back whatever shithole you've infested tonight. Or ever."

Arrogantly, the creature said, "Your spell can't last that long. Even now my body is healing the damage you've caused. In a few moments..."

"You'll be dead," finished Thom. "You see, that's cold iron that's jammed through your spinal column. Whatever magic animates the disgusting symbiote that creates your kind is repelled by it. It would probably hurt like hell right now if you weren't paralyzed from the neck down."

Resigned, the creature asked, "What do you want, wizard?"

"The location where your clutch hides out," came the reply.

As haughtily as possible, the creature pronounced him out of luck. "I'll never tell you that. Go ahead and kill me because Silas surely would if I talked."

An evil grin affixed itself to Thom's face. "Oh, I don't need you to talk. I just need you to lie still."

With that he moved behind the vampire and began to work. The creature could feel only a slight, momentary pressure at the top of his neck, then nothing. Thom was humming to himself as he worked. "You should really be thankful, you know, that you can't feel what I'm doing right now."

Worried, the creature whined, "What are you doing?"

Thom held a small, but very ornate ring knife with a wickedly curved blade before his eyes. The first flash of lightning split the darkness at just that point, making a series of rune etched into the blade standout. "This," Thom said, "is what I just used to part the skin the entire length of your spinal column from shoulders to pelvis. It's a silver alloy of my own design. As you know, silver burns the flesh of your kind. So, the skin is now cauterized. Even if I were to let you go—and I'm not—but even if I did, it would never heal." The creature heard a tinge of sorrow in Thom's voice when he said, "No, it's really better for you that it ends tonight."

"Why do this?"

"Oh. That's a good question. You see, every clutch of your kind has a kind of hive-mind that connects you to your alpha. And that's because you all have part of a single organism within you. Running through your spinal column is a series of incredibly fine tendrils that monitor your body and help it to run. But there is a central node that collects information and transfers it to the collective mind periodically. And I just...found it. It looks like a globular mixture of phlegm and mercury, to be honest. Not attractive at all.

"Now, I'm going to attempt to hijack the signal from your symbiote to the collective to see if I can get an update on the clutch's whereabouts. So, I need you to stop talking so that I can concentrate."

With that, Thom sat cross-legged. Reaching into yet another pocket in his duster, he pulled an odd contraption from it. It looked a bit like a ball-and-cup-on-a-stick toy, if those had been made of translucent crystal for the bowl, a heavy brass handle, and with rather sharply pointed ruby at the end of the handle. He prepared himself mentally. This needed to go quickly. The symbiotes seemed to have some sort of self-destruct mechanism as a defense against unwanted intrusion. The idea behind the item in his hand was to cause physical distress to the organisms, prompting an update to the collective in case of damage or death. Thom intended to latch onto that packet of information and follow the signal back to the collective. Hopefully, he'd be able to mask his presence long enough to glean the information he needed.

Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and pressed the end of his device to the creature. Immediately, he sensed the shifting of energies that indicated a signal was being generated. With a pulse, it was sent, and Thom's mind followed along.

In an instant, he was dumped into a vast space that resembled a kind of control room with numerous displays stacked atop each other haphazardly at one end, while the other was more like a Victorian library, with heavy tomes of information and gas lamps throughout. Thom was in awe of the vast amount of information that seemed to be contained within and had almost no idea of where to search for the information he needed.

Fortune was smiling on him though, and before he'd even begun, one the Nosferatu began speaking from the largest monitor. The words that emerged were in a language that Thom had never heard before. He searched his own archive, and to his surprise, came up empty there as well. How was it possible that in all the lifetimes of his existence, he'd never encountered the language spoken by the Nosferatu?

Learning nothing from the conversation, Thom instead focused on the background of the speaker. It appeared to be speaking from a corporate conference room. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Thom could see the flashes of lightning as the storm gathered, confirming his suspicion that they were in the heart of the city. As his eyes scanned for any scrap of information, his eyes alighted on a small, iconic image of some distant buildings at the corner of the field of view.

He smiled to himself, realizing that for the first time, he had a fixed point of reference. It's only a matter of time now. No sooner had he had the thought when a red light began to flash on the control panel. He took a step towards it, hoping to see what was happening.

As he did so, however, he sensed the wisps of another consciousness brush against his own.

Ahh. Welcome wizard. Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

I don't think so, Silas. A slight movement caught his attention, and he realized that the blocky structure in front of him was not a computer bank or something. Instead, it was a captain's chair. And languidly stepping from it was a malevolent presence, the likes of which Thom had rarely encountered.

I see you, Wizard. Why don't you come a little closer and we can settle our differences?

Thom shook his head. I think not, Dark One. Our time is coming though. After all, I see you too. Then he took one more glance at the screen where he'd gotten his reference before withdrawing his mind.

Returning to his body, the vampire remained exactly as he was. The symbiote, however, was a charred spot in the body. That was close, he thought, looking at the damage. He needed to clean up after himself. With so much wild energy floating around in the air, Thom had little trouble redirecting and transforming a fraction of a lightning bolt into enough heat to vaporize the creature. He remembered to take care of the victimized couple inside as well.

Walking away, Thom's thoughts kept returning to the twisting towers he'd seen in the distance while in the collective mind of his adversaries. He recognized them, of course, but he couldn't figure out if the proximity was a coincidence, or if there was some significance to it. He needed to reconnect with his son, and he needed to do it sooner, rather than later.