Hand in hand
From here.
They were running through the strange Other-space, watching reality flow by them like a raging river. There was no up or down, back or forwards, at least as far as Sunshine could tell. She hoped Con could tell. All she could feel in this space was the alignment, the only direction in directionless madness. It was a lot worse than the shortcut Con had used to take her home, a lot worse than the void of Nowheresville, for that matter - though at least she existed in this Other-space. She had feet, and, bonus, she got to keep her clothes!
She knew her mind was still silently raving, trying to reject what was happening, what they were doing. They ran in silence, reality occasionally rising in a wave so that a few of their steps might come down on pavement, or sidewalk, maybe lit by the passing flash of a streetlight. When Sunshine's foot came down on a manhole cover, the suddenness of the noise nearly made her stumble and fall. Once, in one of the flickers of reality, she saw an actual street sign. Garrison street. They were in No Town.
They flickered more steadily into No Town as they went on, the skipping between the Other-space and reality giving Rae difficulty in keeping upright. There started being people around, occasionally, when they warped back into reality. Club-goers, derilicts, druggies. She wanted to tell them they didn't need drugs - that there were spaces between worlds that would mess you up just as well if not worse. Sometimes, the more strung-out junkies would look over at them, so possibly the two of them actually existed for those few steps of reality. Or were just part of the junkie's hallucinations.
Rae noticed that soon she was seeing fewer humans, that she was seeing vampires looking back at them as they ran between the worlds. She didn't notice when the first one did more than look until Con had... she wasn't thinking about it. He did it with his other hand. It left blood on his face, which he wiped off with his arm. But there was blood on his arm, too. Sunshine didn't look at him. Perhaps she was afraid she'd see him lick it away.
She was alive, human, with a beating heart. And here, she was all alone.
The next time, there were several of them. Con jerked them back into reality, out of the chaos-space, because he needed both hands. Rae didn't know what she was meant to do - everything was happening too quickly, faster than she could follow - faster than she wanted to follow. In a back corner of her mind, she made a note to ask Axel for more training for battle. Lots more training. (Another part of her mind, a part she wanted desperately to ignore, asked, "Like the note will help. We aren't going to survive this.")
There was blood, again, and lots of it, but there was also one vampire left over when Con was otherwise occupied. Sunshine's mind and hand were going towards the knife in her pocket when he turned towards her. He looked at her. Rae looked at him, eyes wide in terror, unthinkingly meeting the vampire's gaze-
-and she saw him falter-
-right before Con turned from what he was doing and... took care of that one too, too quickly for Rae to look away.
There was so much blood, mixed with bits and pieces. So much blood. Blood on her. Con took her hand before she could even register it, saying sharply, "Come." She didn't dare stop, didn't dare look at him. There would be no comfort there.
When they began running again, her shoes squelched and slipped. There was so much blood on their hands that as they ran it dried and caused their hands to stick together. The smell of it was like a miasma, sticking in her throat.
Rae had half-forgotten her alignment. But it was still there. It had grown, as they had run and fought. Now it felt like a leash about her neck. A choke-chain about the neck of a dog whose master didn't like it that much. She didn't have to worry about losing the alignment. It had her more than she had it.
They ran on. She could hear the steps of their pursuers keeping pace with them.
Con said, as they ran, as though there were no urgency at all- "Bo will not be able to say your name. Either of your names."
What? Rae didn't see the usefulness of Bo not being able to say her names - he wasn't going to need to say her name to kill her. So what if names were power? Fangs were more power.
"You feel the pull strongly?" Con asked as they ran. "Bo has connected to our presence here. If we get separated, continue on. Follow the connection to its end."
Sunshine wished he would have said aim instead of end.
"And," Con continued, "if we do get separated, I recommend not retreating into any kind of Other-space, including the way I have brought us here. To do so would just be to draw some of Bo's creatures after you, and there, their advantage would be greater than yours."
Right, Rae wanted to say. Like their advantage wasn't greater everywhere. They ran on through the intermittent light and great swathes of darkness of the worst Wars-hit areas of No Town. Con seemed to be about to say something more, when they ran right into a fresh seethe of vampires.
They didn't seem to want to connect with Sunshine - lucky her. She twitched out of the way of anything she saw - anything she half-saw in the madness. She'd stopped trying to see things, and had let her instinct, whatever instict it was, take over. She could tell where Con was in the surging mass of nightmarish shapes, without looking for him (when there's only one person on your team, he's the one everyone else is jumping on). The chain about her neck was a band of radiant heat against her collarbone, as were the knife and seal in her pockets. They were trying to keep her alive. That was nice of them, she thought, below the steadily raging fear. Con, too.
Still, in the confusion, someone or something crashed into her, tore her away from Con and out into the seethe. She dodged away from this new terror automatically, but it was insistent. It's balance was off, though - the vampiric grace unusually absent. It missed its grab when it lunged towards her - its teeth tore along her arm and she had a strange, hysterical moment of wanting to say, "Hey buddy! Jugular's up this way!"
If instict had a part to play in what happened next, Sunshine didn't want to think about where the instinct came from. She thrust her hand into her pocket, pulling out her shining pocket-knife. She didn't stop to open it, just held it with the blunt, thick end of it sticking up between her fingers like a single, big brass knuckle, and swung it with all her paltry human strength at the vampire's chest.
It connected. As it did, it sank in, flaring golden, sunlike, a tongue of flame that leapt from the golden lattice in her skin to her knife and into the vampire's heart.
Rae had an instant to remember what happened last time - before the wet splat of parts exploded from what had been the vampire's form. She could feel it matting her hair, on her skin and soaking through her clothes. The splatter hit the pavement and nearby walls with the sound like an over-ripe melon doing the same. Somewhere, clouded, in her mind, she thought: they're not even a little bit human anymore, when they explode... and they shatter so easily.
She could feel the beginnings of shock, like cobwebs at the edges of one's sight when one is nearing exhaustion.
Out of the diminished seethe, Con caught her hand again and pulled her along. His face was twisted in a continuous snarl. Rae did not gibber. She didn't collapse or throw up. She didn't think. She stuffed her knife back into her pocket, and went.
Sunshine wished she could ignore how it felt, as they ran and fought. Her hair was matted to her head with blood. It ran down inside her clothes in gummy blobs, invading all privacy, decency, humanity, until it chafed with every breath or movement. It was in her mouth, and she could not ignore the taste that she couldn't get rid of. Blood stings when it gets into one's eyes, but it wasn't likely that the stinging was why Sunshine was weeping.
There are things you don't want to find out that you can do - that you will do, if you must. If you're lucky, you don't ever find them out.
Sunshine found out too many of them, all at once, that night.
She stopped using her knife, having realized that she could just use her hands. They didn't explode when she used her hands, shoving them up under a vampire's breastbone to its heart and pulling.
It was still mostly Con. Rae was slower and weaker than the slowest and weakest vampire, even warded and webbed as she was, but the vampires they faced didn't seem to want to face her. They saw her, faltered, and chose to try and tackle Con, despite the trail of body-parts that marked how well all the previous attempts had done.
It may have been mostly Con, but Rae still lost track of how many fell with her hands in their chests. One would think that offing vampires would feel like community service. Like doing Good. It didn't.
There was always blood. Everywhere. She hated it, hated what she was doing, was ready to be killed just to get away from it - if anyone would just promise that if she died, that death would be final.
("Just keep it in mind. If you die while you're in my realm, you get to hang out with me forever.")
She didn't want to be in this corrupted body any longer. She didn't want to be herself. She didn't want to even know herself. She wanted to give up, meant to give up. But she couldn't. Maybe like she couldn't stay home, or at Milliways, and keep her head stuck in the sand. Maybe it was the promise to Con to stick around as long as she could. 'Stick' being the appropriate term. Their blood-soaked feet pulled away from the blood-spattered pavement with a sticky, ripping sound with each running step.
Very suddenly, as the latest ambush was thinned out, everything went quiet. The only sound was Sunshine's labored breathing, a lonely, living sound. When a looming vampire approached silently behind her, she knew it was Con. Rae wouldn't have been able to say how she could tell where he was in relation to her, throughout the madness, but she could. Con was a strange island in a very strange ocean.
Well, well, said a silent voice into their minds. This meeting has been much more amusing than I had anticipated.
Continued here.
They were running through the strange Other-space, watching reality flow by them like a raging river. There was no up or down, back or forwards, at least as far as Sunshine could tell. She hoped Con could tell. All she could feel in this space was the alignment, the only direction in directionless madness. It was a lot worse than the shortcut Con had used to take her home, a lot worse than the void of Nowheresville, for that matter - though at least she existed in this Other-space. She had feet, and, bonus, she got to keep her clothes!
She knew her mind was still silently raving, trying to reject what was happening, what they were doing. They ran in silence, reality occasionally rising in a wave so that a few of their steps might come down on pavement, or sidewalk, maybe lit by the passing flash of a streetlight. When Sunshine's foot came down on a manhole cover, the suddenness of the noise nearly made her stumble and fall. Once, in one of the flickers of reality, she saw an actual street sign. Garrison street. They were in No Town.
They flickered more steadily into No Town as they went on, the skipping between the Other-space and reality giving Rae difficulty in keeping upright. There started being people around, occasionally, when they warped back into reality. Club-goers, derilicts, druggies. She wanted to tell them they didn't need drugs - that there were spaces between worlds that would mess you up just as well if not worse. Sometimes, the more strung-out junkies would look over at them, so possibly the two of them actually existed for those few steps of reality. Or were just part of the junkie's hallucinations.
Rae noticed that soon she was seeing fewer humans, that she was seeing vampires looking back at them as they ran between the worlds. She didn't notice when the first one did more than look until Con had... she wasn't thinking about it. He did it with his other hand. It left blood on his face, which he wiped off with his arm. But there was blood on his arm, too. Sunshine didn't look at him. Perhaps she was afraid she'd see him lick it away.
She was alive, human, with a beating heart. And here, she was all alone.
The next time, there were several of them. Con jerked them back into reality, out of the chaos-space, because he needed both hands. Rae didn't know what she was meant to do - everything was happening too quickly, faster than she could follow - faster than she wanted to follow. In a back corner of her mind, she made a note to ask Axel for more training for battle. Lots more training. (Another part of her mind, a part she wanted desperately to ignore, asked, "Like the note will help. We aren't going to survive this.")
There was blood, again, and lots of it, but there was also one vampire left over when Con was otherwise occupied. Sunshine's mind and hand were going towards the knife in her pocket when he turned towards her. He looked at her. Rae looked at him, eyes wide in terror, unthinkingly meeting the vampire's gaze-
-and she saw him falter-
-right before Con turned from what he was doing and... took care of that one too, too quickly for Rae to look away.
There was so much blood, mixed with bits and pieces. So much blood. Blood on her. Con took her hand before she could even register it, saying sharply, "Come." She didn't dare stop, didn't dare look at him. There would be no comfort there.
When they began running again, her shoes squelched and slipped. There was so much blood on their hands that as they ran it dried and caused their hands to stick together. The smell of it was like a miasma, sticking in her throat.
Rae had half-forgotten her alignment. But it was still there. It had grown, as they had run and fought. Now it felt like a leash about her neck. A choke-chain about the neck of a dog whose master didn't like it that much. She didn't have to worry about losing the alignment. It had her more than she had it.
They ran on. She could hear the steps of their pursuers keeping pace with them.
Con said, as they ran, as though there were no urgency at all- "Bo will not be able to say your name. Either of your names."
What? Rae didn't see the usefulness of Bo not being able to say her names - he wasn't going to need to say her name to kill her. So what if names were power? Fangs were more power.
"You feel the pull strongly?" Con asked as they ran. "Bo has connected to our presence here. If we get separated, continue on. Follow the connection to its end."
Sunshine wished he would have said aim instead of end.
"And," Con continued, "if we do get separated, I recommend not retreating into any kind of Other-space, including the way I have brought us here. To do so would just be to draw some of Bo's creatures after you, and there, their advantage would be greater than yours."
Right, Rae wanted to say. Like their advantage wasn't greater everywhere. They ran on through the intermittent light and great swathes of darkness of the worst Wars-hit areas of No Town. Con seemed to be about to say something more, when they ran right into a fresh seethe of vampires.
They didn't seem to want to connect with Sunshine - lucky her. She twitched out of the way of anything she saw - anything she half-saw in the madness. She'd stopped trying to see things, and had let her instinct, whatever instict it was, take over. She could tell where Con was in the surging mass of nightmarish shapes, without looking for him (when there's only one person on your team, he's the one everyone else is jumping on). The chain about her neck was a band of radiant heat against her collarbone, as were the knife and seal in her pockets. They were trying to keep her alive. That was nice of them, she thought, below the steadily raging fear. Con, too.
Still, in the confusion, someone or something crashed into her, tore her away from Con and out into the seethe. She dodged away from this new terror automatically, but it was insistent. It's balance was off, though - the vampiric grace unusually absent. It missed its grab when it lunged towards her - its teeth tore along her arm and she had a strange, hysterical moment of wanting to say, "Hey buddy! Jugular's up this way!"
If instict had a part to play in what happened next, Sunshine didn't want to think about where the instinct came from. She thrust her hand into her pocket, pulling out her shining pocket-knife. She didn't stop to open it, just held it with the blunt, thick end of it sticking up between her fingers like a single, big brass knuckle, and swung it with all her paltry human strength at the vampire's chest.
It connected. As it did, it sank in, flaring golden, sunlike, a tongue of flame that leapt from the golden lattice in her skin to her knife and into the vampire's heart.
Rae had an instant to remember what happened last time - before the wet splat of parts exploded from what had been the vampire's form. She could feel it matting her hair, on her skin and soaking through her clothes. The splatter hit the pavement and nearby walls with the sound like an over-ripe melon doing the same. Somewhere, clouded, in her mind, she thought: they're not even a little bit human anymore, when they explode... and they shatter so easily.
She could feel the beginnings of shock, like cobwebs at the edges of one's sight when one is nearing exhaustion.
Out of the diminished seethe, Con caught her hand again and pulled her along. His face was twisted in a continuous snarl. Rae did not gibber. She didn't collapse or throw up. She didn't think. She stuffed her knife back into her pocket, and went.
Sunshine wished she could ignore how it felt, as they ran and fought. Her hair was matted to her head with blood. It ran down inside her clothes in gummy blobs, invading all privacy, decency, humanity, until it chafed with every breath or movement. It was in her mouth, and she could not ignore the taste that she couldn't get rid of. Blood stings when it gets into one's eyes, but it wasn't likely that the stinging was why Sunshine was weeping.
There are things you don't want to find out that you can do - that you will do, if you must. If you're lucky, you don't ever find them out.
Sunshine found out too many of them, all at once, that night.
She stopped using her knife, having realized that she could just use her hands. They didn't explode when she used her hands, shoving them up under a vampire's breastbone to its heart and pulling.
It was still mostly Con. Rae was slower and weaker than the slowest and weakest vampire, even warded and webbed as she was, but the vampires they faced didn't seem to want to face her. They saw her, faltered, and chose to try and tackle Con, despite the trail of body-parts that marked how well all the previous attempts had done.
It may have been mostly Con, but Rae still lost track of how many fell with her hands in their chests. One would think that offing vampires would feel like community service. Like doing Good. It didn't.
There was always blood. Everywhere. She hated it, hated what she was doing, was ready to be killed just to get away from it - if anyone would just promise that if she died, that death would be final.
("Just keep it in mind. If you die while you're in my realm, you get to hang out with me forever.")
She didn't want to be in this corrupted body any longer. She didn't want to be herself. She didn't want to even know herself. She wanted to give up, meant to give up. But she couldn't. Maybe like she couldn't stay home, or at Milliways, and keep her head stuck in the sand. Maybe it was the promise to Con to stick around as long as she could. 'Stick' being the appropriate term. Their blood-soaked feet pulled away from the blood-spattered pavement with a sticky, ripping sound with each running step.
Very suddenly, as the latest ambush was thinned out, everything went quiet. The only sound was Sunshine's labored breathing, a lonely, living sound. When a looming vampire approached silently behind her, she knew it was Con. Rae wouldn't have been able to say how she could tell where he was in relation to her, throughout the madness, but she could. Con was a strange island in a very strange ocean.
Well, well, said a silent voice into their minds. This meeting has been much more amusing than I had anticipated.
Continued here.