Negative Space Ch. 11

"So what? You're just going to stare at me? I come here all the way from fucking LA and you can't even open your goddamn mouth to say something to me?"

I couldn't let her intimidate me, so I smiled. Whatever this girl thought she was must be something special. I knew she'd just keep reading me and figuring out my moves before I could do them myself, so I closed my eyes for a moment and started building a wall, pulling in my emotions, my awareness, my personhood that had been floating out in all directions, and I locked them into me and away from her. I heard her jingling and I opened my eyes immediately—she was standing now, leaning close to me, her palms flat on the desk.

"How the fuck did you just do that? I just lost you completely!"

Deep breath. Forget the fact that this teenager was probably born centuries before I was even a figment in my parents' imagination.

"Excuse me, ma'am. Please sit back down, and lower your tone in my office. I don't care who sent you. If you can't offer me any common courtesy, I will have you kicked out of my clinic."

The teen smiled, baring particularly sharp teeth.

"Oh yeah? You think you deserve my respect cause you're some old hag?" She let her fangs drop down just enough to scare me.

"I think I deserve your respect because you're a guest here. I know you're probably older than I can even conceptualize, but I don't take kindly to threats."

Her grin widened, and she began to walk around my desk, dropping her fangs all the way. Her glee at having a chance to challenge me was clear, but I didn't agree. I knew I was nothing against her physically—why did things always have to be harder than they needed to be? I thought Prometheus was supposed to send me a teacher, not a teenager.

I backed up, but while I was doing that I pressed at her with my mind. She frowned. I must have been doing something right. I pushed even harder, following my instincts. I had no idea what I was doing, or how I could even begin to describe the action I was taking, but it was instinctual. The need to protect myself was foremost in my conciousness, and suddenly she shouted, gabbing her head. She backed up away from me, clutching her temples and moaning.

"Stop...this...now." She pushed the words out of gritted teeth, but I didn't do anything. I simply watched her, wondering if she would stop threatening me, or just actually hurt me now.

"Please! I can't...hold off...ugh...this pain...any...longer."

I pulled back from her in my mind, and looked to see if it made a difference. My instincts had helped me hurt her, but I had no reflex to guide me to heal her. What was I, though, if not a healer? I did what I had done for Elliott, taking a pinch of my molten core and passing it over her, covering her in it.

"Thank you." She collapsed into the chair she had been sitting in before. I didn't move to help her though.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Florence." She pinched the bridge of her nose, shook her head, and sat up straight, dropping the teen shtick for the first time since I'd come into my office to find her here. In a very businesslike way she continued, "I was sent here by Prometheus since his progeny, Theodore, requested it."

I nodded. This much I was already aware of.

"I am a historian of sorts, you might say. I study the history of humanoid variations. Those would be the different races that have evolved to cohabitate with and survive off of humans. So werewolves, vampires, succubae, fae, etc. There are quite a few."

"And you're here to study me, I guess?"

"Well, you certainly have a fascinating ability. And it's not the only one, I'm certain. Do you know anything of your parentage?"

"I'm sure Prometheus has already passed on the information to you that I've recently discovered that like in any good story, I'm more mysterious than I thought. I was adopted, I suppose."

"Right. Well, we'll figure that out. Now, I have to apologize for provoking you so, but I needed to see what you would do. Anyway, it tends to give most humans the chills if I don't act more the way I look."

I nodded, anxious to hear if she had any idea what I was.

As if she knew what I was thinking, she made direct eye contact with me, and spoke again. "So here's what I'm thinking. We'll have to set up a few tests, but I certainly know we can rule a few races out right off the bat. You're not a vampire, not a werewolf, and not a banshee. Do you feel an overwhelming urge to be in water all the time?"

"No..."

"Well then you're not part of the esteemed family of Merpeople. Which, I'd have to say, makes things much easier, as most vampires are uninterested in spending much time underwater."

She ruffled through her snake skin purse and pulled out a salt shaker and a little leather pouch. Dumping the contents on my desk, she organized a flat, square black stone, an even smaller leather pouch, a knife, a curl of cinnamon bark, star anise, and a mysterious root.

"Are you excited for the fun part?" She smiled at me, a little wickedness glinting in her eyes. "I have to admit I get very few chances to actually use all this stuff, but don't worry. I'll explain everything to you as we go along." She shook salt out in a circle around the black stone, and began cutting pieces of all the herbs and roots and set to grinding them into a paste on the stone with a small pestle. After a moment she grinned at me and asked for my hand. I held it out for her, somewhat unwittingly, and in one swift moment she pulled my wrist to her mouth and used a tooth to slice open my radial artery.

"Oww! What the fuck was that for?" I cried out as she held my bleeding wrist over the herbs. Instead of any cool magic tricks, though, they just turned sort of muddy brown with my blood and Florence just leaned over and licked my cut shut.

"Now for the final addition." She opened the small leather pouch and pulled out five stones, each with a symbol engraved. The first one had squiggly lines drawn over it, and Florence placed it next to the black stone and inside the circle of salt.

"That's water. And this one is earth," she said, placing a stone with many sized splotches carved into it a few inches away from it around the black stone. "After that comes fire," a stone with fire etched in, "then air," this stone had the curley cues of wind, "and last, but not least, is Khrusos." The last stone had a simple star in its middle.

"What is Khrusos?"

"It would take way to long to explain now, but I suppose you could call it magic, for lack of a better term. It's that which is life, that which creates, and that which destroys. If humans encounter it in a true form, they call it "god" and reinvent it as an old white man in the sky to make it easier to believe. I don't quite understand how that makes it more palatable, but at least makes our lives easier. Honestly, the beauty, elegance, and mystery of Khrusos is so much more breathtaking than the human god ever could be. Sometimes it makes me quite angry, but then I meet someone like you, who is so tapped in... it's amazing." She took the knife and laid it on top of the blood soaked herbs. "Okay, now hold my hands, and close your eyes. I'll guide you, but let yourself fall outside of your body. Let the barriers of your skin, clothing, and culture all fall away from you."

Her voice was so soothing I fell almost instantaneously into a trance after I close my eyes. Like she said, I let my consciousness leave my body, and as it expanded out and away from me, in my mind's eye, everything it covered turned to gold. Something began to whir, so I opened my eyes to see the knife spinning wildly on top of the pile. Florence was staring at it steadily, muttering something under her breath. Her hands were squeezing mine uncomfortably and I thought about pulling away from her, or at least rearranging them, but I didn't know what would happen to that highly unpredictable knife if I did so. I closed my eyes again and decided to let things move on their own.

After a moment Florence made a curious noise in the back of her throat. I looked down and saw the tip of the knife pointing to the fire stone. Florence was nodding and pulling her hands away as it began spinning once more. The shock in her eyes told me this was not something that happened often, or ever. This time the knife tip ended pointing at the star, or the Khrusos stone. One last time it spun, rapidly and dangerously, and landed on the stone decorated with air symbols.

After it had been still for quite a few minutes I nervously pulled my fingers out from between Florence's. Mine were sweaty pale even though hers were still the beautiful tone and warmth of all vampires.

"Well I've certainly never seen that before, but I think it makes it easier for us to figure this out. We know now that you're some sort of mix. I'll do my research, but I think I can say pretty strongly that you're at least one part succubus."

"Oh my goodness, really? Is that something you could tell from the stones?"

"Actually no. I just have been finding myself more and more attracted to you since I stepped in the room, and every time our skin touches I just feel like I want to surrender to you. It's pretty potent magic you have there, even though a little unusual, so as I research the rest of it, you should try really hard to learn ways to control it. You're all over the place."

"I know, but I don't know what to do! How can I control it if I don't even know what it is?"

"We'll figure it out together. We'll practice, I'll research, and hopefully it'll become easier for you to control yourself."

There were dark, brooding clouds, and it occurred to me only secondary that it was light out, and I was outdoors. Something quite unusual these days. Still, it wasn't quite sunny—the whole sky was a deep, charcoal grey, and as I looked up and down the New York streets I was standing on something else occurred to me—it was silent. Much too silent. Not a soul, human or otherwise, was on the street or in the shops or windows of the apartments above. I felt an immediate rush of terror—what did this mean? Was I in some sort of danger? As I began to run down the street, frantically searching for somebody to talk to, to ask for help, I felt a deep, rushing dizziness, and as if someone grabbed my belly button through my back I was jerked backward and up into the sky. Gasping for breath I opened my eyes. Sandra's comforting, cool hands were touching my forehead, wiping away my sweat.

"You okay, lady?"

"Oh, I'm alright." I closed my eyes, trying to push away the wave of nausea that had refused to dissipate with the dream. "What time is it?"

"About 8pm. You've got an hour before the clinic opens, and Elliott asked me to wake you up—he has important information, I guess."

"Right. Okay. Let me change and I'll head over to the clinic as soon as possible."

Ever since Florence had appeared in my life I'd been closing the clinic early to train with her and anyone she could convince to act as my punching bag. In the few minutes in between sleeping, training, and working in the clinic, I would drop in to check on Elliott as much as possible. He was heading the research team, and every time I talked to him it sounded like they were closer. Last week they had identified, by some method entirely mysterious to me, where the first breakouts of the bacteria were. Apparently they started out in Washington DC and had spread from there and appeared in NYC within the month. All in all it had been almost 4 months since the first cases, and already vampires were dying. I'd been fielding visit after visit of people showing symptoms, and since I felt awful about having nothing to do for them, I started a newsletter of sorts sending out updates and encouragements. It was after my third newsletter update that I got the call that Helena, the first vampire I'd seen with this sickness, had died the true death. It was horrible. There was no service, just a mourning coven, so I went and sat shiva, spending the night with them, hearing their stories of her life, her good deeds, and putting an arm around whomever needed it. It was sobering, to realize that this illness, the plague as we'd begun calling it, was affecting real people. Well, real vampires. But valuable souls nonetheless.

I ran down the steps from Sandra's apartment and hopped into the car that Theo had been providing for me since I'd decided to accept Florence's help, even though I refused to move back in with him. It had been a tense moment, and we did our best not to touch one another, even though the yearning grew deeper and deeper every time I saw him. There was just something about it that made me feel like he belonged to me, that I could tell him what to do, and it would be alright. I fought against that yearning, the desire to take from him what I wanted. I told myself over and over again that if I couldn't make the commitment to give back to him everything that I took, and I certainly wasn't ready to be in any debt to him, then I wasn't going to take anything at all. Well, except for the car, and the clinic, and maybe a few extra supplies every here and there. But in those cases, I told myself, it was alright, justified. He was getting a very valuable service for his subjects, and I was getting a business. Vampires had been coming even from other states to visit me, and it gave him quite a leg up in political negotiations when he was able to bring up the fact that his Kingdom had certain very necessary resources.

The car dropped me off in front of the clinic, as usual, and I rushed up the elevator and almost straight into Elliott as he was about to close the door behind him.

"Oh! Sorry. Where are you going?"

"I was just coming out to find you. Did Sandra tell you what I wanted to talk to you about?"

"No. Is it something serious?"

"Well, it seems so. Come on in, let me show you what we've been working on."

I followed Elliott back into the lab and greeted the other vampires slaving away there. Instead of the single cot, there were now four, a clothing rack, and a mini fridge stocked full of blood. It seemed like they rarely left the lab anymore.

"So here's the thing. You know already that we've been able to track the plague back to DC, and it has led us to wondering what caused it to begin with. The thing is that these bacteria, they're highly unusual. They don't function the way we'd normally expect, and no antibiotics we can find will work on them. Nothing will. The only thing we've been able to use so far is fire, but only if it lasts for longer than an hour, and burns at a temperature of at least 450 degrees Fahrenheit. You know that fire kills vampires too, though, so we can't very well just burn everyone."

I was silent for a moment. Fire. Interesting. "Okay, what else?"

"Well, the thing is that we can only imagine these bacteria functioning this way by the hand of a person. Either a vampire with a vendetta, or well, anyone with a vendetta. These are not natural bacteria. There is something very clearly magical about them."

Elliott paused a moment, ready for me to laugh or scold him, but I'd seen enough magic in the past few days that it didn't even phase me.

"Do we have any idea who could have done this? I'm no fool, I'm certain vampires have many enemies, but which of these enemies would have the power, resources, and abilities for this?"

"That does make an interesting point. I don't know who would be able to craft magic at this skill—it is really amazing. Most spells work for a short period of time, or make a single, irreversible change, but this is a growing, mutating, hungry magic, and it has a plan."

"Yeah, it certainly seems so." I sat down and thought about what he'd said about fire. Fire could kill these bugs? This was certainly something that I'd have to talk to Theo about. Maybe he could help me figure out what about this sounded so... apt.

"Well, back to work then," I said, smiling. My arms twitched as if to give Elliott a hug, but I needed to stop touching vampires...the resulting desperate hunger and almost incompacitating starvation pangs weren't quite worth it. I thanked him heartily instead, and got to work setting up the clinic.

***

Staring at the impressive doors of Theo's building made me nervous. It wasn't just the indimidating wrought iron or the way it seemed to be more of a dungeon than a home, it was more about what I was going to do. It was nothing new, going to talk to Theo about updates, just always a challenge. Ever since we began working together again to try to fight the plague I'd had regularly scheduled meetings with Theo. Every time I'd calm myself before hand, practice a little of the medication techniques Florence had taught me, and try to go in confident, assertive, and concentrated. It was impossible though. The minute I saw him those pangs came back—Florence thought maybe it was because we had already had sex.

"Because Succubae can take possession of their prey, you know, sort of like how vampires can mark humans. You might have done it accidentally, but I think you made him yours." She had looked at me sort of curiously at that point.

"I don't know, I'm not sure I could do that, Theo is an incredibly powerful vampire. He has abilities I haven't even seen, and control over himself in a way that still baffles me."

"But didn't you say he began to lose control when it came to you? He began to get obsessive and protective? Whether you admit it or not, I think you were causing him to forget everything but you, to be dependent entirely upon you."

I had denied it fervently when she said it, but something rang very true. Although we hadn't yet figured out what the rest of me was, the simple knowledge of having Succubus in my blood was a weapon in and of itself. It made it easier for me to understand the deep cravings—I could probably survive off of sexual energy alone if I wanted to, but I simply didn't have the time for it. However, I'd practiced my power over people in the street, and found that it was way more potent than I'd expected. I actually had to get one of my body guards to intervene at one point and stop a man from giving me his bank account number. It was all very exciting, but at the same time I felt as if these powers were sort of cheating. I'd grown up without them, expecting to have to pay for everything I wanted, having to walk everywhere I went, having to do things the hard way. What did it mean about me if I started cheating? Asking for a little something extra here, skipping a step there...it made me nervous. I was determined not to use them on Theo, but that was when the urge came the strongest. I just felt such a strong pull to him.

The door swung open. I followed Stevens in, making myself as comfortable as possible in Theo's office before he arrived. My heart was pounding—I felt it move up into my throat. No. Deep breaths. Meditation. Calming thoughts. But again the door swung open, and Theo walked in.

"Lana," his voice carried through the room, resonating in my chest. "It seems like I have some good news. We've managed to find the missing persons report for a Kate Peterson who attended the same college as your mother. The timing works out just right. I think we've found your birth mother."

I took a moment to inspect my fingernails and tamp down the sudden rush of emotions. I needed control.

"Oh, okay. Wow. Thank you." I allowed myself one deep breath, and tried to ignore Theo's smell of leather and dusty books. "So did she ever return?"

Theo sat down on the edge of his desk facing me. He glanced at a sheet of paper. "My people are working on it now, but it seems like she may not have." The little shoot of hope that I had been trying desperately to hide withered. "At least," Theo picked up again, "not in the same place as the same person. If she is non-human, the way it seems she might be, she won't have simply disappeared. We have a network for this sort of thing, and I'm looking into it."