Sunday 24 June 2012

Billy Came, Chapter 9 (End, Part One)

9.a, Ice on Fire

The very water that idled beneath the bridge began to crackle and freeze under the command of Perveen's hand motion.  At her behest, a plateau of ice began streaking across its surface in tortuous lightning patterns, assimilating quicksilver in both look and speed.

On either side of the bridge, the grasses and trees, brickwork and fretwork grew fast-forming frost that solidified before my awe-struck eyes.  Every surface was sprouting white crystalline spikes, growing at all angles and on top and beneath and through one another.

It was like watching timelapse footage of ivy clambering upwards on an invisible frame: columns of crackling, twisting ice—fibrous chords, wrapping around each other into ropes—reached skywards of their own accord as if seeking and finding succor on a supernatural support.

In the very air about us, sparkling crystals began to form into flakes and fall fast and heavy to the ground.  Every invisible droplet of moisture was crystallising into snow or ice, brightening the blackness of night.  So much of the panorama had turned, or was turning, white, it felt like the dawn had begun to rescind.  Soon, we were in the depth of night again, but the landscape, imbued with the freshness and stark whiteness that only virgin snow can portray, was spectacular.

The spectacle took me back to camping halfway up Mount Snowdon during my early teens.  It seemed so long ago, now.  That night had eventually turned into a washout.  An egotistical leader ("Oops, I 'forgot' to pack my tent!"), a bivouac against a low stone wall and a cloudburst put paid to our nighttime excursion.  Traipsing down Snowdon at 3 a.m., soaked to the bone, carrying sodden tents and groundsheets is no fun.  If I ever hear the clink of dixie cans again, I'll throttle the boy scout making it.

But that undignified retreat was secondary to the main event.  After we'd set up camp for the night (and before the cloudburst), we'd settled along the stone wall to grab a crafty cigarette.

As we sat there, the night seemed to grow light around us.  We, to a (young) man, were astonished by the light show breaking out above us.  What we saw wasn't the pitch black sky with the occasional constellation to which one was privy in the West Midlands' concrete jungle.  The sky above the mountains here was alive!  The heavens were humming with stars, not least with the faint neon pink and peach hue of the Milky Way, which floated like a battleship amongst the lightwaves. 

Looking at the landscape here now with Perveen was like looking into the Snowdonia night sky all those years ago.  Any- and everywhere, from where I stood to as far as I could see to the horizon, twinkled with ice.  It was as if every animate and inanimate object glowed with a star of its own at its heart.  The spectacle was breathtaking.

dark sky stars, snowdonia

Twice now, in a matter of days, I'd been reminded of that trip up Snowdon.  Now, here with Perveen, and that first time I'd looked into the heavens with vampire vision.  How I wish I'd had these eyes back then.  Perhaps I'd have seen the cloudburst coming, thus avoiding helplessly having to watch my cassette albums of Snap! and The Gift go floating down the groundsheet as our tents waterlogged in the flood.

If I thought becoming a vampire meant surrendering my emotions, I was wrong.  On every level.  Not only were the five senses enhanced (six, I guessed, in Billy's case), but you felt them act upon you from outside of yourself so that they became pressing entities, waves of feeling that you either basked or drowned in.

Cutting through the memories and emotions, I felt Perveen tug at me with her arm, which was still wrapped in mine.  Both of my hands had found a way to my hips and I realised I was standing there looking at the land and the sky content, almost as would its maker, feeling proud of the achievement.

Beneath my feet, the frost crunched at my slightest movement; it was a satisfying sound.  My only regret was that I could no longer feel the cold to make this all feel real.  Then, remembering the drenched descent down a muddy Snowdon path all those years ago, perhaps I didn't miss the cold that much.

Under no instruction of my own, my arms swept Perveen up and placed her onto the bridge's thick stone wall, a similar position to when I had first set eyes on her earlier.  But, Lord, how the world had changed in that short space of time since?!

She instantly began drawing me to her, her knees around my waist the leverage, until our cold, dead bodies pressed against one another.  Arching her neck (which I would swear physically stretched) so that her lips whispered a hair's breadth away from mine, she lured me in for our first kiss, the kiss of the vampire.

Every fibre of my being stood to attention; in my mind's eye, I compared the hairs on my neck and arms to the isotopes of frost I'd watched form into being around us.  The essence of her self found what now passed for my heart and kick-started it into feeling after years of impartiality: from idling to idolatry at the flick of a switch.  Not since Louise had anyone moved me as much as this.

Revelling in the non-heat of passion once again, I felt Perveen's razor-sharp nails dig into the hair on the back of my head.  Her thighs squeezed tighter still, her heels digging deep into my hamstrings, forcing me further into the vice that was her body.

My body responded to every touch point, but not, I think, of my own volition, nor in a way I hereto knew how.  This was sensory invasion on every level and, somehow, I just knew how to respond: contain, counter, attack; our discovery of each other was fierce and frenzied.

Her frantic fangs drew blood from my tongue, sending her into convulsive raptures, reacting even more exuberantly than Billy had when he'd first tasted my life force.  My sensory input was again at melting point, overwhelming me as the horrors and beauty of her (chosen) experiences as a vampire over the last fifteen years flooded into my mesmerised, marvelling mind.

Without warning, she broke the spell; her mind let go of mine, but her body still clutched tight.  Our lips crackled apart; she'd drained me of blood to the point of weakness, but had filled my head with such wonders that I hardly noticed.

No doubt I had inadvertently passed a version of my life back to her (or she had taken a facsimile of it of her own accord) at the same time as she had exchanged hers with me.  If so, I had no cognitive recollection of returning that favour, only a sense of being emptied only to be refilled.

The surrounding air was now literally exploding into snow.  Perveen was sapping all the moisture from the trees and waterside plants and grasses, which now grew brittle and crisp to the point of dessication, to satisfy and support this encounter.  I had understood the process of what was happening in my weakened state; that was something, at least.  This entire passage had been conjured by her rare ability to command not only her own form, but also that of nature around her.

There was much more to it than that, but I was fighting fatigue as well as trying to digest the dew-like freshness of this new life.  Still, I delved deep inside my mind to evaluate further, but doors slammed inside there, echoes of the cast iron clanging of prison doors in their rigid iron frames reverberated through every synaptic nerve.  I was too exhausted, so made a mental note to come back to the quandary another day.  Or night, as the case would be.

When I turned to look back upon her face, it implied one instinct: hunger.  Which, I'm glad to say, I could see her battling to contain.  Hers was an appetite hopelessly insatiable in my fledgling state.  Despite being on the very edge of collapse, I managed to muster a question.


9.b, The Vampire Mind-Connection Paradox

"What does this mean for us now, Perveen?  You have drunk my blood.  Will that not isolate us from each other?" I asked, unable to keep the concern from my voice.

"No," she replied.  "The mind-connection only ever breaks between the maker vampire and his fledgling.

"You are not yet strong enough to fully understand," she said, "so I'll simplify it.  (I'm not patronising, you, honest. Not this time, anyway.)"  She smiled the playful smile I remembered when she used to wind me up at school.  It soothed me like a cold, damp cloth on a fevered forehead.

"The maker," she continued, "first shares a connection with the person while they're still alive, albeit often not for very long, especially those who are no more unto us than a meal.  We have to connect mind-to-mind in order that the human can physically acknowledge our vampire presence.  Without that connection, the human would remain oblivious to our very existence.  We latch onto that link to pull us through from our dimension into theirs.

"It's a quirk of Nature, I suppose, but if someone's cognisance was sufficiently underdeveloped—small children and some animals, for instance—they are safe from our kind.  The ostrich would be so jealous!" she said, laughing out loud, whilst simultaneously allaying my concern.

"But, once having shared the connection with the person as a human, they cannot share a similar connection if they turn them into an undead.  It's difficult to explain, but the essence of it is that the soul of the new vampire latches itself onto the maker's soul.

"And never underestimate a soul's ambition to survive, which sometimes manifests itself in a pernicious human host if they have the gumption.  The soul contains the very essence of life itself.  If you believe your Einstein, nothing ever really dies, just takes on a different form at the end of one cycle.  But don't be fooled into thinking the soul wants to change!

"Thus having attached souls, neither the maker nor the fledgling can discern their soul from the other.  In effect, neither can acknowledge the other soul's individual existence, snipping that mind-connection for good.

"Twinned, maker and fledgling may be for all time.  But just as the two currents that make up a live electrical charge, maker and fledgling daren't cross each other without risking destroying the very fabric that contains them.  Together they survive, achieve symbiotic synergy in that they elevate the power of our species.  Mostly.  But they remain wholly independent of each other when it comes to the psyche.

"The other downside—or Nature's safety mechanism, if you will—is that the maker forever bears the weight of the soul of each human they make vampire.  Perhaps now you'll realise and appreciate Billy's undertaking when he accepted my request to make you Brotherhood.

"For us, a clingy soul helps keep our hereditary chain alive.  It also explains why it's imperative we catch and neutralise rogue vampires, but we'll leave that for now.  That can get deep.

"That's the simplest way I can explain it," she said.  "But you will be strong enough to understand more fully, and soon.  When you make your first vampire, you'll be keenly aware of the vastness of the responsibility that will fall upon you.

"Our task at hand is, primarily, to get you to that stage.  And if I want to drink more of your blood, which, as you might tell, I crave just a tad," she said, smiling at me both desperately and somewhat disappointedly, "then we need you to feast.  And feast you will!"

Seeing her so down after the high we'd just experience was hard to take.  No doubt it was no picnic for Perveen, either.

I thirsted to know everything about both the undead lifestyle and my new mate in this life.  I wanted Perveen "mind, body and soul", also, with a need equally matched to her desire to know me completely.

Everywhere in my mind there were doors slamming as I broached this question or that.  But I also knew that attempting to take in any more until I had the capacity to do so would send me to the brink of a madness too deep to ever rise up from.

Perveen could tell I was getting restless.  "Rest a while," she coaxed, holding my head to her shoulder, stroking the hair that she had grasped furiously just now downwards.

"There is no rush to get you back.  Here and now, you and I stand outside of the world and its time constraints as you know it.  No one will find us here, as long as I can support this pocket.  And I have strength enough for an army in my blood."

That made a strange type of sense.  It at least explained why dawn had disintegrated into darkness.

Without realising how I'd got there, I was lying on the wall of the stone bridge, my cheek in her lap.  I dozed, dreamt of home, of new lands in the heavens, of time itself and, most of all, Perveen.

Were she and I now somehow betrothed?  I sensed that's what she wanted more than anything.  But also that there was much more ahead if I was to prove my worthiness of her.  On some deep level, I understood that my trial was about to begin in earnest.

End of Part One


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Image (modified): Royalexander101 / CC BY-SA

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