Zero Sight (21 page)

I narrowly avoided spraying coffee all over the car.

“
The taste does grow on you,” she said. “It’s not my favorite hot beverage, but it does perk me up.”

“
Cool,” I responded meekly. I really didn’t like being the other beverage.

“
Maybe it will keep me from yawning,” she said earnestly. “That always gets me into trouble.”

“
Good point,” I replied.

There was a moment of silence before we both started laughing like idiots. I loved the sound of it. It was light and warm. Nothing like the side of her I’d seen in the warehouse. But even when she laughed, Rei was careful not to open her mouth. In truth, her fangs weren’t incredibly noticeable, but I guess she still had to be on her guard. I frowned. That kind of vigilance must be exhausting.

“
You know,” I said, “not being able to open your mouth must really suck.”

“
Oh!” she said between gasps. “It totally sucks! I didn’t know you were so
punny
!”

Punny?
I stared at her in disbelief. Was this the same chick?

“
Seriously, though, how do you deal with it?”

After a few more gasps, Rei got a hold of herself. She looked at me quizzically. “Me? Please. How do
you
deal with it?”

“
Deal with what?”

A flash of color rushed directly into my Sight. I had no time to react. Her fist was already flying at my face. I could tell she intended to stop it short, but the speed of it was astonishing. If it were for real, that blow would have sent me flying into the adjacent row.

Rei cocked her head to the side. “I mean, how do you deal with such vulnerability?”

I shrugged. “One punch at a time, I guess.”

She nodded in agreement. “And for me it is one smile at a time.”

“
Fair enough.” I guess it was a stupid question.

Rei tossed the plastic-wrapped danish onto my lap. “Since you have not eaten all day, I inspected the packages,” she said matter-of-factly. “This one contained the highest number of calories. Oddly, it was not nearly as expensive as the sandwiches. I do not understand this, Dieter. Was this an oversight of some sort? Why do the calories not correspond to cost?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t eaten since last night, and my stomach growled its approval. I was already tearing into the package when I remembered my manners. No matter how hungry I was, it was rude to not offer her some…and then I remembered. I put down the danish and turned to her.

“
Rei,” I whispered, “are you, like,
really
what I think you are?”

She took a sip of her coffee and smiled.

“
Of course, magus…and of course not.”

Magus
? I shook my head. “It’s unbelievably weird to hear that out loud. Magus? So, they’re real too?”

Rei giggled.

“
Indeed. You are quite real. And so are quite a few other things.”

I looked down at my danish.

“
And, Rei? Um, your diet…Do you actually, um…”

“
Um, do I, um?” She rolled her eyes. “Do I need to spell it out for you?”

I nodded.

“
My diet is human blood. I can make due on other sources for a while, but in the end, I need human blood to survive.”

I frowned. “It’s just weird. Here we are, talking normally, but I’d have expected your kind to be amoral killing machines. Lestat-style, you know?”

Rei cocked her head and the blue faded from her eyes. “That would be a very healthy assumption to make.” She gazed into me, and my heartbeat started to race in reply. Rei’s face had changed. The softness was gone. It looked like it was etched out of marble rather than flesh. She was cold. Lifeless. The voice that leaked out of her lips was devoid of humanity. The melodic timber was gone, replaced by that silky hiss. I could hardly draw breath, and an unreasonable terror clamped down on my body. An ancient part of my brain yelled shrilly: That predator. You prey. Back the fuck off.

But despite the fear, I felt like I was missing something. Something glaringly obvious. Something important. Earlier that day, I had been able to hear Rei’s thoughts. I decided to will open my Sight. Let it consume my other senses. Maybe her aura would help me understand.

The world faded away as my Sight flickered on…and I let out a tiny gasp. The auras I had seen in the past were small ephemeral clouds. What I was looking at now was on a vastly different scale. Rei’s aura outsized her body by three fold. It looked like a monstrous grey cloak. At its ends, long cloth-like scraps fluttered about. They moved like living creatures with wills of their own. Her aura seethed with power. Buzzed like a high-voltage power line. I gained a firm understanding of my place. She could tear the life from my body in an instant. It would be over before it started. But my Sight told me that wasn’t the whole story. Yes, her aura was overpowering, but it looked worn and tattered as well. A hulking beast that had been rent by decades spent in the elements. A tired thing. A wounded thing. There was no killing intent. It sat at ease, fluttering peacefully. It was scary, yes, but not aggressive.

Curious, I reached out to it.

My Sight obliged, but Rei’s aura did not. My efforts were met by a numbing emptiness…this aura didn’t like to be touched. It wasn’t used to it. I closed down my other senses and let my intuition guide me. I was drawn in by a strange need, and I wandered onward as though an invisible hand was guiding me. The effort was taxing. I was crawling further and further out onto a wavering branch. Soon, I sensed, it would no longer support my weight.

As I neared my goal, my Sight faltered. The budding intuition faded. The hand fell away. I flung the last of my will forward in desperation and staggered through a wall. My instinct had been true. I found something special, a true feeling buried deep down in her psyche. A simple need. A single faint hope. She wished I wouldn’t be afraid.

A warmth enveloped me, and my fear melted. It was a wish every being could understand. I smiled into her cold grey eyes—but before I could say a word, there was a shift, a blurring of colors, and I was standing in a hallway. I looked to my left and right in confusion. Where did my seat go? Where did the train go? More importantly, where did my coffee go? It was quiet in the hallway. No one was around. The hall was lined in rich, dark wood worn by decades of polishing. Mahogany, I guessed. Rare stuff. Expensive stuff. Portraits stretched the length of the hallway. The figures sat in regal poses; pale faces looking down at me with in disdain. The mere idea of sharing this hall with anyone else seemed to repulse them. Growing up in Vegas, I was familiar with big egos. These folks had them in spades. I walked over and looked at a few of the portraits. They shared Rei’s dark glossy hair, narrow nose, and faint blue eyes. Some wore clothes from the Middle Ages. Others, more modern dress. All were very pale. They looked like they could use a pint or two.

But how had I gotten here? I was supposed to be on a train, wasn’t I?

It wasn’t so clear to me anymore. The train seemed so far away, so foreign.

I went to take a deep breath, but with a shock, I realized I couldn’t. In fact, I wasn’t breathing at all. I tried to pinch myself, but discovered I lacked the necessary appendages. Looking down, I figured out the problem. I wasn’t exactly whole. The me in this place wasn’t corporeal. It was just a mere shade of my former self. A vague outline of my body was all that remained. That gave me a pretty good scare (metaphysically speaking).

I chuckled. Ghosts weren’t supposed to be scared of ghosts.

I was pondering the new lightness of my being, when I heard muffled noises coming from further down the hall. What were they going to do, vacuum me? I prayed it wasn’t Bill Murray and the rest of the crew, took a deep non-breath, and floated towards the sounds.

Halfway there, I ran across a massive tapestry. I’d never seen art like this outside of a textbook, but I recalled from AP World History that they were all the rage during the Middle Ages. The detail was fantastic. To think it was made up of threads of silk…

The tapestry portrayed a grand battle. A small battalion stood inside the walls of a castle on a hill. A black and white flag flew on their tallest bastion. I recognized the pattern. It was called the Crusader’s Cross—a relic from the Christian conquest of Jerusalem. Below the flag, at the center of the piece, stood two bulky men. They looked down from upon their battlement at the horde of men besieging them. The two must have been the main characters of this story. The first wore a set of scarlet armor and held an enormous black sabre. The second was dressed in heavy gray robes. He clenched a staff and pointed it at the heavens. I followed his hand into the sky. A horrific vision played out above them. Demons and angels clashed. Winged beasts swooped through the air, slashing at one another as they passed. The sky was a mixture of orange and red flames. Smoke and debris clouded most of the view. I stood transfixed by the scene. The tapestry drew the eye like a magnet. The artist must have been fantastically skilled…and I wondered who the two men were. They seemed reasonably badass.

My revere was shattered by a young girl’s screams. I left the tapestry and headed toward the source of the noise. Her shouts were coming from one of the rooms up on the right. As I closed, I heard some of her muffled words.

“
No, no, no!” the girl pleaded. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry, Nana!”

Arriving at the door, I paused. I felt a strong urge to withdraw. This place was private. It felt like I was invading it. I hesitated until another roll of cries erupted from within, and the need to intervene overcame me. I went to grasp the door handle, and my hand went straight through. Visually disturbing, yes, but it didn’t cause any pain. I gave a spiritual shrug and walked straight through the planks of polished wood. The scent of blood smacked into my nostrils. Apparently my sense of smell still worked.

Why did it always have to be blood? I wondered.

Tyrone Nelson’s corpse flashed in front of me, but I fought the vision off. It wasn’t so hard; there was already a nightmare playing out in front of me. The little girl knelt on the floor. Her face, her long black hair, her light-yellow sundress—everything was covered in blood. She clutched the opened neck of a maid with burnt orange hair. In rhythmic pulses, blood surged past the girl’s little fingers to paint the room in red. Transfixed, I watched as the pulsing flows formed Rorschach blots across the young maid’s crisp white apron.

“
I didn’t mean to!” the young girl said. “I’m sorry, Nana. I promise I’ll be a good girl. Just wake up, okay? Nana? Wake up, Nana.”

The young maid raised her hand to touch the little girl’s cheek.

“
Nana?” The little girl froze.

The maid stroked her hair gently, soothing the little girl’s cries. Then her pulse lessened, and her hand faded back to the ground.

“
Nana?” the little girl whispered.

No voice answered. The room became deathly quiet.

She laid her ear upon the young woman’s breast, listened intently, switched ears, tried again—and then burst into a stream of tears.

I stood frozen in place as the moments past. How had this happened? Why was I witnessing it?

Noises came from behind me, footsteps coming down the hallway.

Thank goodness, I thought. Someone had finally arrived.

The door opened and a woman gasped. “For crying out loud, Rei! Don’t waste it!” the melodic female voice scolded.
Rei?
I started to feel dizzy. I didn’t understand. Rei Bathory was an adult. Rei Bathory was my age.

The little girl started shaking. Her hands still cradled the young maid’s opened throat. She looked up and glared straight through me at the person at the doorway. Her face locked into a snarl.

“
Never!” she screamed, white fangs gleaming. “Never, never, never!”

A cold blue surge of light shot across the room. My bones chilled. My ears popped. The wave touched me and I screamed. I stumbled backwards at the tremendous change in pressure, and with a rush of whiteness, my existence imploded.

+

It was like I’d been caught in a bomb blast. I flew backward through a roar of light and sound. I tumbled past things I couldn’t comprehend, let alone classify. What was left of my being twirled about in a helpless spiral. I despaired, assumed all was lost, until, just as suddenly, I slapped into a liquid-like barrier with a huff. My flesh stung from the impact, like after a belly flop off the high dive. And just like that, it was over. I was back on the train, sitting in a chair, holding a crushed Styrofoam cup.

I felt a remote pain issuing from my hand and pants, and I noticed that I was staring into a set of very confused blue eyes. She looked so old. What had happened to her? Rei Bathory was a young girl. Rei Bathory was like a little sister. What had happened to her body? It was so big now…

No, I corrected myself. This was Rei too. This was the Rei that shared the time and place of my body. I recognized the sensation. My head had cleaved into two parts. I had been in two places at the same time. Now the two pieces were trying to come back together.

The Rei that sat next to me drew back. Her body was trembling.