Nos Faux Ratu Ch. 04

"Hot and horny? Not all of them, but certainly more sexual than average. Hell, my line give the succubi and incubi a run for their money. Before you ask, those are female and male sex vampires. Instead of feeding on blood, they feed on sexual energy and lust."

"There's a lot more to your world than I'll ever understand," Jenna said, lying back on the bed.

"You'll understand, especially if you stick around. But let's worry less about my world and more about yours. Are you ready?"

Jenna nodded, her pulse quickening. Even after what they had just done, this bite . . . this penetration of Nessa into the plain of her soul, was the most intimate thing she had ever experienced. The soft kiss on her neck, the prickling sensation on her skin, following by that cool, brief intrusion --

"Amazing," she whispered as she fell into the shadows behind her eyes.

Nessa was not sure what had changed, but things did not seem quite so dark. The wind that had savagely whipped across the plains was much more manageable and much less bitter. The chains around the playhouse remained draped around its plastic walls, but the padlock on the front door was gone. Jenna had separated again, with the child part of Jenna available, but still shy. Still in hiding.

The church was fully unchained, but still conveyed an uneasy, uncomfortable dread. The front gate looked like a hungry mouth, and the steeple windows glared down on the spirit Jenna who stood just outside the grounds. She looked frightened, and the church looked ready to devour her. But this time Jenna was also standing her ground.

Nessa looked toward the cold, glass and steel castle on the third point of the circle. That was where she would find the rest of Jenna, the part of the woman that had begun after she had been rescued from the messenger. 'How do you see yourself now?' Nessa thought. 'With all the excuses stripped away, what do you really think of yourself?' Then she glanced at the tower in the circle's center, with its lone lighted window far overhead.

As soon as Nessa's eyes fell on that window, storm clouds started to brew, lighting flashed, and thunder roared over the plains.

"I won't invade that," she said out loud. "I won't look there until you want me to."

Almost immediately, the storm dissipated. Jenna's soul would protect the secrets and memories of her son, even more fanatically than her waking mind would do. Nessa started walking toward the third castle, pausing outside the black glass doors. She pulled one open and saw . . . nothing.

The inside of the building that represented Jenna's present, there was nothing. The floor was bare concrete, and there was no furniture, pictures, lamps . . . nothing. There was no obvious source of light, but Nessa could still see. Then she discovered that she was wrong. There was something there.

The Jenna of this place was even more translucent than the church Jenna was. She appeared in the middle of the room and, paying no attention to her guest, began to run. Nessa was confused for several moments as the spectral Jenna turned, ran in a new direction, then turned again. Sometimes she seemed uncertain, but she kept moving.

'It's like the maze security at the church,' Nessa realized. 'Even in her head, she runs this stupid thing. Why?' Nessa was not sure how long she stood and watched the ghost Jenna turn corners, sprint down invisible hallways, and generally just look --

'Lost,' Nessa thought. 'She's absolutely lost. She's in a maze with no beginning and no end.' Nessa pushed forward, but could not advance into the maze on her own. She wailed against the wall, but it held fast. How could she help Jenna out if she was trapped in the middle. Then Nessa slapped her own head.

'You TOLD her that she was lost because she had cut herself off from her own memories. Yes, she needs an end to this maze, but she lost her beginning.' Nessa ran out of the building and across to the plastic castle. She knocked on the door.

Young Jenna peeked out through a crack in the door after a moment.

"Jenna, I need you to come with me. Please?"

"Can't," came a younger voice than Nessa was used to hearing. "Can't leave. That was the rule."

"What rule?"

"The rule I made. None of Me can break the rule. I stay here, I stay there, and I stay over there," young Jenna said.

Nessa was perplexed for a second, but then she saw it. This Jenna saw "I" as three different people. In her mind, this all made sense. "You made that rule for a reason," she started, "but you have to break it now. You are lost, and I need your help. All of you. Jenna, you brought me here. You asked me to come, and I think I know you want to get better. But I can't force you to do this. I promise though, it can be better. Please, come with me."

For a long moment, Nessa thought that it would be a lost cause. This fracturing of Jenna's psyche was a organized thing, made more solid by years of rehearsal. Fifteen years earlier, one personality became three but unlike those with disassociate personality disorder, two of those personalities never emerged. They stayed trapped of their own volition in accordance with some bizarre agreement they made with themselves.

Then young Jenna opened the door and peeked out. She had been out the other night, probably for the first time since the incident. She was obviously scared, but just as obviously determined.

"Thank you," Nessa said. "Now, we need to go get the You out of the church --"

"No no no," young Jenna babbled. The fifteen year old girl started to backpedal. "I told Me to stay out of there. If I go in there, bad things will happen to me."

"No, it won't. The monster died fifteen years ago. This one is just a shadow. He can never hurt you again. If he tries, he'll have to go through me."

Young Jenna stopped moving backwards. The beautiful young lady allowed herself to be coaxed forward on hesitant feet, her skin trembling. They approached the church, but Nessa did not need to knock this time. Spirit Jenna came out, and she looked angry.

"What are you doing? You can't bring Me in here! The rule --"

"Screw the rule. You need Your help." Nessa was getting confused attempting to keep using the same reference for multiple people, but that was the way it worked in Jenna's brain.

"But he'll hurt Me," spirit Jenna shouted, pointing at young Jenna and looking over her shoulder at the doors of the church. "He said he would."

"He's dead, and the worms have had their way with him. He --"

The bells of the church began to ring and the doors exploded outward. Thick black smoke came out, its tendrils reaching like some great sea monster for its prey. And it was reaching straight for the two Jennas. Young Jenna screamed, and spirit Jenna stood between the monster and her younger self, looking hopeless. Nessa was not sure what possessed her, but she moved between her friends and the thing that had tormented Jenna for so long.

Spirit Jenna yanked Nessa out of the way. "No, this is for me. You can't --"

"I won't let you do this alone. Not again."

"You don't understand," spirit Jenna whispered over the screaming smoke and the clamoring bells.

When the smoke reached them, Nessa began to understand. She had been expecting pain, but that was not the first experience that tore through her mind. Fear. In all of Nessa's long life, she had never experienced fear like that before. It crept through her veins, oozed through her pores, and invaded her nostrils. It made Nessa's knees give out, and all she wanted to do was go cower in the shadows.

"Leave her out of this!" spirit Jenna screamed. She grabbed Nessa's arm and pulled her away from the smoke, but she started to scream when the monster concentrated on her. Nessa could not tell where the young Jenna was. She just prayed that the girl was safe.

"It's just fear!" Nessa screamed over the cacophonous sounds. Saying it and feeling it were two different things, but she understood the truth of it. "This is your mind. It only has the power that you give it."

"I can't stop it!" spirit Jenna screamed, her eyes tearing up as the darkness overtook her and threatened to drag her back into the church.

Then, a hand reached into the smoke and took spirit Jenna's hand, while another pulled Nessa away. Nessa looked up and saw young Jenna, but that did not surprise her as much as seeing ghost Jenna holding spirit Jenna. The Beginning had gone and gotten the End. Now, for the first time since they were divided, the three parts of Jenna Owens were together.

Young Jenna stood and faced the doors of the church. She looked terrified, but she also looked angry. The frightened spirit Jenna put herself between her youngest self and the thing she had tried to protect it from for all those years. But her youth . . . her innocence . . . was apparently tired of being afraid. And then the confused ghost Jenna, a creature who had been adrift for those fifteen years, placed a hand on the youngest Jenna's shoulder.

The monster howled as a new and fearsome wind blasted it back towards the church. It's smoky tendrils grasped at the pavement and the gate and the door frame, trying to pull its way back into Jenna's mind. But the linked parts of her, young, spirit, and ghost, met the monster with a single gaze, and it was devoured by the structure that it haunted. The doors slammed shut, and then there was silence.

Nessa lay on the cobbled circle ground. It had just lasted a moment, but she had finally understood what it must have been like for Jenna when she had been captured. That much fear and hopelessness was something no living or undead creature should ever go through.

It was ghost Jenna, the one who had been running an invisible maze, who offered her hand to the vampire and helped her to her feet.

"I know you," the modern version of Jenna said, confusion crossing her face. But she also looked . . . happy. She was glad to see Nessa.

"Yeah, you do. But it's not me you need to get to know."

She looked at her spirit self and her young self, totally perplexed. She reached out and touched her young self's face, then gasped. The young self took the spirit self's hand, forming a tentative but necessary chain between the three of them. Nessa just watched for a moment, then willed herself out of her friend's mind. This was a private moment for Jenna.

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Elsewhere . . .

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"Are you sure?" the Fool asked. "We really should try this on one of the Minor Arcana."

"The captive indicated that the ability to morph was greatly influenced by the will of the infected. We of the Major Arcana achieved our rank through force of will." The Hanged Man turned his masked face towards his commander, who held a syringe filled with a thick liquid.

The Fool nodded. Their captive werewolf had given them a great deal of data before he expired, including clarifying some of the intel about his kind gleaned from legends and myth. "Still --"

"You cannot be the first to try sir. Protocol dictates that the risk be mine."

"This time," the Fool muttered. They were on the verge of trying something that even the scientists behind the Nightwalker program could never have envisioned. "I've got the rest of the Nightwalkers on patrol except for the Rods, and they're on sentry. No one will come near this cell. Based on the data, the silver on the door handle and bars should keep you from attempting to bend them directly, and the rest of it is glas-steel a foot thick."

"And the dead-man protocol?"

"If I feel you're going to succeed in escaping, the gas that floods that compartment will kill anything and break your physical structure down into goo."

"So we're set." The Hanged Man turned his mask towards his commanding officer and waited. The Fool stepped backward and closed the cell door behind him, staring through the observation window as the Hanged Man tied a band around one muscular arm, found a vein, then stuck the needle in without so much as a sound.

"Here but for the grace of God --" the Fool muttered. Werewolf saliva, captured directly from the source, was now flowing through the Hanged Man's body. He faced an army of werewolves and vampires. If this worked as expected, he would have both. And then the enemies of the Nightwalkers . . . the enemies of his country . . . all would be reminded of what a superpower really was.

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To be continued . . .