Nos Faux Ratu Ch. 07

"I just want you to know," she said, glancing towards Avery, "that I'm feeling very demeaned right now."

Avery just grinned, then pulled onto the street.

"Who the fuck are you people?" the boy asked groggily. His head was spinning, and the inside of the transport was being annoyingly unstable in his vision.

"Believe it or not, we're the good guys," Nigel responded.

"Not."

"Excuse me?"

"You said 'believe it or not,' so I'm choosing not." He flopped against the door and tried to open it.

"Yes," Death said, "because locking the doors would never have occurred to us." He sighed. "Mr. Monroe --"

"I am telling your girlfriend all about you," William growled, trying the door again. "And the security forces. Why the fuck are you kidnapping me?"

"So no one else can."

William snorted. "Yeah, like there's really a line forming to kidnap a high school student."

Avery spoke up from the front. "We're being tailed."

Caitlin looked out that back. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. That hover did a full u-turn and started to follow as soon as we pulled out onto the main drag."

"Who the hell would be following us? The . . ." Nigel stopped and looked at William. "The employer of those last two gents we dealt with would have stepped up earlier, and --"

"It's one of . . . uhm, MY employer's adversary's men. They would know whose vehicle this is. The question is, why are they following us?" He got a bad feeling, and turned on his ear communicator. On the handset, he dialed the number for the Stone Table, Nessa's restaurant. It took a while for anyone to pick up, but when it did, he got a frantic voice, and his face grew grim as he listened.

"This isn't good," Nigel muttered as he glanced at Caitlin.

"Okay, what the fuck is going on?!" William said, strangely offended that he was being ignored when HE was the one being kidnapped.

His three captors exchanged glances, then the two men shrugged and woman rolled her eyes and sighed. "First, we're not going to hurt you. No matter what. We WILL," she said knowingly, "incapacitate you if you make a bother of yourself. There are forces at work beyond your comprehension, and beyond our paygrade to explain in full. What you need to know is that the people we kidnapped you to get away from will probably not be as nice as we are. These other guys . . . well, we have no fucking idea what they want."

"I think I know what they want," Avery growled. "I'll explain later."

Caitlin nodded. "Anyway, if we didn't pick you up, some guys that we left lying in an alley would have tried again. Possibly tonight at your home."

William's eyes opened wide. "Mom? Dad? I have to --"

"We're going to call in your kidnapping, and then the police will be all over the place. The guy that we're having issues with is practical. Since your folks won't know where you are, he'll leave them alone. It's you he wants," she said, then thought, 'Sort of.'

"Why me?"

"Can't say?"

"Who can say?"

"Can't say."

"What CAN you say?"

"I already said it. And even some of that was probably pushing it."

William closed his eyes. "I can't believe this is happening."

"If it makes you feel any better," Caitlin started to explain, "this will probably increase your popularity at school tenfold."

"If I live through it."

Caitlin glanced at Nigel again, and they shared a thought. If William did not survive this, then they sure as hell knew that they wouldn't. She scooted forward and whispered to Avery. "So what happened?"

"Garon Pegg went nuts. After Nessa provides him shelter, he realizes just how much face he's lost by getting out dominated by another werewolf in the field of battle. So he loses it. He gutted one of Nessa's kitchen staff, beat up a waitress, then took off with as many men as will still follow him. The kitchen guy will live, since he's a were, but the waitress will be out of action for a while."

"What an ass!" Caitlin hissed.

"And the idiot just signed his own death warrant. Nessa granted him sanctuary. The moment she tells the Council, then Pegg's life won't be worth a hill of dirt. My guess is that he's going to try and take Nessa out so that she can't."

"But that clown isn't capable of going against the Fool and he knows it! He'll never succeed without --"

"I know that, and you know that. But he's desperate, and that never ends well for someone like him." Avery glanced at mirror again. "I'm going to call ahead. I don't know exactly what they're up to, but it's not going be good. Let's just hope Nessa wakes up in a good mood."

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Deep beneath Devil's Night . . .

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Nessa had awoken in a now-familiar place, namely the bleak and featureless plain that made up Jenna's soul. The three castles still sat at the 120, 240, and 360 degree marks on a great stone circle, with a single doorless tower sitting right in the middle of it all. That was where Jenna kept the memories of her son, and protected them fiercely. There was no door because Jenna would not allow herself to interact with William. She would only watch.

But not everything in this plain had remained stagnant. The chains were gone from around the plastic castle where Child Jenna lived. A pile of toys and other childish things sat in a pile out front. Sitting in plastic chairs next to the pile were Ghost Jenna and Spirit Jenna. These versions of the woman lived in the other castles, but at the moment they were rifling through the pile.

'They're trying to connect with their own past,' Nessa thought. She smiled as all the Jenna's noticed the newcomer and smiled.

"Am I dead?" Ghost Jenna asked. This was the Jenna that lived in the modern castle, the one made of sterile plas-glass that matched the basic design of Jenna's former church home. Visually, she most closely matched the Jenna that Nessa knew.

"Yes, but just for a little while."

"I'm not afraid to die this time," Spirit Jenna said. "None of I is."

Nessa had to do some mental maneuvering to keep up. Even though there were plural Jenna's, they referred to each other as if they were all collectively first-person. "You don't need to be afraid. Not of me."

"I'm not afraid of you," Child Jenna said, skipping out of her castle and kissing Nessa on the cheek. Then she looked alarmed. "Tea!"

"Tea?" Nessa asked with an arched eyebrow.

"I'm supposed to offer you tea," Child Jenna muttered, running back inside.

"I've been like that for a while," Ghost Jenna said.

Nessa went over and peeked inside. Child Jenna was putting a child's tea set on a tray, but kept looking towards the living room. There, both Child Jenna and Nessa saw the ghosts of Nessa's family. They saw Jenna's father sitting at the dining room table while his wife served tea to a guest whose face was lost in Jenna's memory. That was part of her life back then . . . a tradition in their home. Jenna was trying to recapture that. So Nessa returned to the other two Jenna's and sat down in an offered chair.

She took a moment to look around, and saw other positive signs. Things had begun to appear in the mists outside of the circle. Things remembered stood behind the plastic castle, and things desired stood behind the modern castle. Only the castle of stone, that church where Jenna's life was torn asunder, stood alone. Nessa suspected that it always would. That single memory could be deadened, but it would never be destroyed. It would never be merged. It would always stand alone as a defining moment. Nessa promised herself that it would not be the ONLY defining moment of this remarkable woman's life.

"Here," Child Jenna said, offering the tray. Then she whispered, "There's not real tea. It's just pretend."

Nessa raised the glass to her lips. "Best pretend tea I've ever drank."

Child Jenna grinned, then offered cups to her other selves. They smiled at her politely, but went back to rooting through all the old memories. The items and images seemed to haunt the older two versions of Jenna, and it broke Nessa's heart.

"What am I becoming?" Child Jenna asked. She reached into her pile of memories and pulled out a paperback version of Dracula by Bram Stoker. "Am I this?"

Nessa smiled. "It's not as far off as you might think, but we're not monsters. Vlad Dracul, the inspiration for that book, was a very bad man before he was ever a vampire."

"Was he badder than --" Child Jenna paused and looked towards Spirit Jenna's stone fortress. "Than Him?"

"Yes. Even worse than Him."

"I told Me this already," Ghost Jenna whispered. "I'm a little dense sometimes."

Child Jenna, the "I'm" in this equation, stuck her tongue out at her older self. "I just want to know what it will be like. What I will be like."

"And I'm going to show you. I want you all to come with me."

"I can't leave," Spirit Jenna whispered.

"Yes, you can," Nessa replied. "The Man in there is nothing but a ghost. He can't hurt you anymore. I want to show you what your life can be like now. I want to show you mine."

All three Jenna's seemed to consult with one another in a way that Nessa could not identify.

"And He won't get out," Ghost Jenna said firmly. It was not a question. The man who had victimized Jenna all those years ago was being put to rest.

"He won't get out," Child Jenna agreed, then looked to the third.

Spirit Jenna hesitated. She had been the one living with the memory of Him. He was as much a part of her, to some extent, as her other selves. She looked at her home, then her face hardened. "HE . . . WON'T . . . GET . . . OUT!" she bellowed.

A wind came from outside the circle and battered at the stone castle. Nessa actually had to cover her ears to protect herself from the shrieking, howling air that seemed to seek an unnatural vengeance about the structure that stood in its way. Slowly at first, rocks began to come loose. Then the chunks got bigger and were hurled up into the air, crashing down nearby in a symphony of fragmentation.

After a minute, Nessa opened her eyes and looked out to see the stone castle had been reduced to its component parts and was lying in a heap upon the ground. Nessa turned to see what Spirit Jenna thought of what she had wrought, but she was gone as well. In fact, only Ghost Jenna remained.

'No,' Nessa realized, 'That's not quite right.' For a moment, she saw Ghost Jenna flicker, and hiding inside was the Child.

"I feel . . . better?" Ghost Jenna mumbled, looking curious.

'She's become whole again,' Nessa realized. "Okay, time to go." She stepped forward and took Jenna's hand.

"No biting this time?"

"I think that there's another woman out there who would like to nibble on your neck," Nessa said with a chuckle, "so this will have to do." As she sank her fangs into Ghost Jenna's wrist, a figure wafted across the courtyard. A memory of Caitlin, or maybe a fantasy of her. Either way, the Nightwalker had gotten under her skin. Deep, deep under. Nessa felt a little jealous, but mostly she felt joy. Her little girl was growing up. And apparently, her little girl was picturing Caitlin in a slinky black dress.

Once Nessa's fangs went all the way in, she and Jenna were transported to a world as different from the one they had just been as the blackness of space was different from the sun. Jenna gasped as she looked out onto a plain that stretched for so far in every direction that there seemed to be no end to it.

At the moment, they were standing in front of a primitive hut made of sticks and mud, and the sound of people talking emanated from inside. The door opened and a three-foot tall, red haired girl came charging out holding some kind of meat, still on the bone, high over her head. Soon after, a posse of young boys and an older woman came charging out after her, each trying to catch the little hellfire and reclaim what was probably supper.

Ghost Jenna glanced over and saw a strange, almost sad smile play across Nessa's face. "You?"

"Yeah."

"So you've always been a trouble maker?"

"From the moment I was born."

Jenna looked back at the hut, seeing a gruff bearded face poke its way out and mutter something in a language that Jenna could not even recognize. "Your father?"

Nessa nodded. She rarely got to see her memories this way. She knew that she never actually forgot something but, with so many memories, it was hard to keep all of them in line.

"You miss them, don't you?"

Nessa's smile dipped slightly. "Every day. Things were so simple back then. All we needed was each other."

"You lost your family," Jenna whispered. She understood that.

Nessa embraced her friend. "It's okay. I remember them, and that's what matters. And I made a new family."

The world blurred as they followed Nessa's life path down to the spot where she had been discovered by her maker. The memories of him were less fond, but still poignant. Jenna watched the man of Asian descent wheedle and seduce a now ravishing young Nessa.

'This was when you were still human,' Jenna thought. It was a bizarre thought for her, since "Nessa" and "vampire" were firmly attached in her head. She watched him take her to a cave somewhere and give her eternal life.

They skipped forward again, and Jenna got to see her mentor meet Anabella for the first time at a swimming hole near where Nessa and her "master" were staying. They had gotten into an argument that Jenna was unable to follow but assumed it had to do with who had gotten their first, and had spent the next thirty minutes dunking each other. They had been best friends ever since. It was Anabella who had uncovered the plot of Nessa's creator to dispose of her when she ceased to be interesting. It was Anabella who had beaned Nessa's creator over the head with a rock so that the younger, less powerful vampire could drive a steak through his heart. And another through his skull. She was getting ready to drive a third one in when the memories shifted again.

"Don't need to see that," Nessa said, almost embarrassed. "To be fair, I was just making sure."

This time, they had flown down what looked like a Roman road until they were on a cliff, looking out over the water under a beautiful night sky. A fully vamped out version of Nessa was being quite amorous with quite possible the most beautiful, physically perfect human male that Jenna had ever seen. And considering she had accepting that she was a lesbian, it was impressive that he could have that kind of effect on her.

"Marcus," Nessa whispered. "My oldest."

There was something in her voice that made Jenna turn and look. There was a longing there, and more than a little lust. "This was?"

"Two centuries after I had been turned. It was in Sicily around the time that Rome began to fall."

"Two thousand years?"

"Just about," Nessa murmured fondly. "He was the most perfect man ever, so I couldn't let him go."

"Perfect?" Jenna asked, her lips curling up in a well-meaning smirk.

Nessa grinned then pointed her chin towards the table where the memory of Nessa and Marcus were enjoying themselves. "I haven't seen a better body on a man in all that time, and I've seen a few."

"He is impressive."

"Now I KNOW you're gay," Nessa said. "If you had a straight bone in your body, so to speak, you'd be drooling."

The memory showed Nessa leading a temporarily spent Roman god back into the depths of the villa-like structure they were near.

"I was so afraid I wouldn't do it right," Nessa admitted.

"But you did."

"I did. And he's been my strong Roman warrior ever since. But taking the first step is always hard. Being a grownup is hard, whatever that entails." She took Jenna's hand. "I want you to meet the others."

Down a rocky trail, Nessa began the journey through her memory to see the dozen of Nessa's "children" who wandered the earth. They literally came in all shapes in sizes, from her Roman warrior to a Japanese sumo wrestler to a Dutch milkmaid to a geeky computer programmer from upstate New York. All of them had found their ways, by hook or by crook, into Nessa's life and heart. And then she had taken each of them into the darkness, and they had risen again.

"Nessa, have you . . . have you lost any?" Jenna asked quietly as she viewed the memory of Lawrence rising from a tomb very similar to the one she knew that she was in now.

"A few," Nessa replied sadly. "Some were hunted, some died in the course of Night Breed politics and --"

"And?"

"I had one dark daughter who simply decided that eternity was too long, and she missed her mortal loved ones too much."

"What happened to her?"

A single tear materialized on Nessa's cheek. It was more a memory of her grief, but she knew that she would feel the loss when she woke up. "She sent me a letter, knowing it would not arrive until it was too late. Then she lay on the side of a mountain, took a strong pain-killer, and waited for the sun."

"Would you have stopped her?"

Nessa looked away, and for a moment she saw a beautiful, slim woman from northern Africa drift in and out of her sight. "I would have tried. But in the end, it was her life. I had no more right to force it prolonged as I would have to end it prematurely. I can give second chances, but I can't force people to take them."

Jenna straightened up a bit. "How long did it take you to forget her?"

The elder vampire put a hand on Nessa's face. This was not entirely a question about Nessa's loss. It was Jenna looking for some glimmer of hope that her own memories would be easier to handle. "I never forgot," she said. "I just decided how I wanted to remember her. She did not die because she had to. She did not die because she deserved to. She died because sometimes, living is just too hard. I don't fault her for that, but I do miss her." Nessa wrapped her arms around Jenna as the woman with an angel's face began to cry.

"I miss them so much," Jenna whispered.

"But missing them doesn't have to hurt like this. It's time for you to live again."

Jenna's eyes matched those of her friend. "Now?"

"Now."

Jenna's eyes opened, and it took her a moment to realize that it was so dark because she was in a grave. A very pretty, very comfortable grave, but a grave nonetheless. It did not bother her though, since she had slept in a sensory deprivation tube for years. But she had never woken up in one with a beautiful woman nursing on her neck. Had she been like that all the time?

It was then that Jenna realized that she was not hurting anymore. She was not tired or dizzy like she had been. She was hungry. Very hungry. But otherwise, she felt . . . fantastic. Her eyes drank in the darkness as if it were a liquid. The blackness that inspired terror in children now comforted the brand new vampire. And the fabric that lined the coffins before had felt soft. Now, it felt soft and cool and gentle and . . . and she could almost feel the thread count. It felt so decadent against her skin that it bordered on arousing.

Nessa's fangs retracted. "You're awake?" she asked.

"I can feel everything," Jenna murmured.

The woman next to her chuckled. "Welcome to life after death. And it can be beautiful, I promise you." She felt around and found the controls for the lid, which began to rise after the push of a button. "Cover your eyes."

Jenna was almost too late. As soon a sliver of light from the exterior room appeared, it was like a spike of ice aimed at her eyes. She had walked out of dark places into the sun before, but never experienced anything like this.

"You'll learn to flex your lenses to help control that," Nessa explained. "For now, it'll become bearable slowly and --"

"Beautiful," Jenna interrupted. She was peeking at Nessa, and it was like seeing her for the first time. She could see every ripple along the skin, the outline of every muscle, the way her red hair reflected light like a rich wine. And the smell! Nessa smelled like earth and roses and –