Title: Bring Me To Life.
Point
of view: Jack.
Time
frame: During Episode 18 “Dust
Part One: Frog on the
The
quote in the first section is from “The Old Boys”, by Runrig, on their album
“Recovery”.
Bring me to life
In
a few months’ time it will be my four hundred and twenty-first birthday. I’m not the oldest sentient being to walk the
planet, but there are not many older.
Those that were older are dying off.
“The old boys are leaving
Leaving one by one
Where young birds go flying
Spread your wings and run…”
The
oldest vampire I ever met was Heinrich Nest, who called himself The
Master. Nearly two thousand years old,
originally a Germanic tribesman who’d fought against the Romans. We chased him out of
His
consort Darla was pretty much the same age as me. Buffy killed her too, or possibly Angel
did. I heard that she’d been brought
back from the dead, but then she got killed again anyway.
I’ve
met plenty of vampires who claimed to be older still, but they were just
pretentious wankers.
A
few years ago I met a master vampire who said he was from the Ancient Greek
colony in
I’ve
met plenty who claimed to have been at the Crucifixion, none of whom spoke
Latin, or Greek, or Aramaic. They all
came apart easily, too.
Dracula’s
older than me by a century and a half.
Born 1431, vamped sometime in the 1460s, “died” officially in 1476 but
that was just a put-up job to disguise his immortality. Been there, seen it, done it, got the
T-shirt.
It’s
the reason why it ended that is preying on my mind now.
I don’t
want to go the way she did.
I
don’t mean the way she died, decapitation is quick and clean – well, perhaps I
do mean the way she died. Lost in blood-lust, feeding, and oblivious to the danger because of
that.
A mindless predator.
The
thought of turning into the same thing terrifies me more than anything else
ever has.
Not
that it would be an imminent prospect.
Rosa was getting on for seven hundred when she started deteriorating,
centuries older than me, and the other girls say that it was her getting
involved with the massacre at Ouradour-sur-Glane which started the change. It’s still a grim prospect, even if it is
centuries away. Worse
than death by a long way.
And
now I have the chance to avoid it.
More. The chance to have what I thought I had lost
for ever. A normal relationship, growing
old along with the woman I love. I’ve
had long-term relationships with human women before, and they’ve been wrecked
by the inexorable march of time. Now I
could join Cass on that march. “Grow old
along with me, the best is yet to be”. Maybe.
Children.
We
could have children. Strong
sons, delightful daughters. I
could make love to Cass, fill her with life, watch her
belly swell with child, play with my children and watch them grow.
Something
I never thought possible. Never realised
how much I wanted it until it became a possibility.
And
all I have to do to get it is to put the safety of the entire world in
jeopardy. At least that’s how some of
the Roxettes seem to see it.
If
I take the Mohra blood and become human, I’ll lose my vampire strength, speed,
and virtual invulnerability. It made
little difference to Gabriella and Teresa, but they are Slayers. I’m not.
I’d be a normal human. Strong for
my size, but I’m only five foot six. I
could take on a middleweight boxer, but not Lennox Lewis,
and one of those hulks from the WWE would crush me. A normal vampire would become a serious
threat, rather than being a toy for me to pull apart at will. It might make the difference between victory
and defeat.
Still,
I’ve got four hundred years of combat experience. I’ve studied martial arts in depth, not just
picked it up as I went along. I’ve
studied under masters in
As I could break a normal human, even without the
vampire strength. In a boxing ring Lennox Lewis would pulverise
me; in a street fight I’d kill him. I’ve
fought plenty of vampires who matched me for strength, and broken them apart
with little difficulty.
I’m
a genuine Ninja. Trained in
I
know a thousand ways of killing with bare hands, with swords, with knives, and
with guns. I’ve heard Teresa moping
about her bloody past, saying that if all the people she’d killed were laid end
to end the line would stretch for forty miles.
That don’t impress me much. How many people have I killed? I lost count before I even became a
vampire. There have been nights
in which I clocked up a couple of hundred, and I was killing people for a
living for four hundred years. A hundred thousand? Quarter of a million?
A third of a million? Four hundred thousand? My line of corpses would stretch for hundreds
of miles. Almost all of them were trying
to kill me at the time. They weren’t
good enough.
If
I’d never come to
I
wouldn’t be useless. Far
from it. But I wouldn’t be as
powerful as I am now.
Would
I be good enough? Would I be letting
them down if I turned human? Breaking the
Fellowship? Betraying
But
I want to be human so bad that I can taste it, and if I let this chance slip I
might never get another.
There
might be a way to prove myself. With the
Ring I am a normal human in sunlight. If
I could take on a Slayer in those conditions and beat her, or at least make her
work really hard to beat me, it would prove that I could still be useful as a
human. Prove it both to them and to me.
It
would have to be Roxy. Teresa’s too
close to my own skill level; I wouldn’t last thirty seconds against her without
vampire strength. Gabriella has never
reached that level, she’s always used guns first and close
combat second, but she’s still pretty good.
The snag with her is that I think she might well hold back against me,
so it would prove nothing. The snag with
Roxy is that she’s got a vicious streak a mile wide. She’s a good kid, and I love her, but she’s a
lot nastier than Louise and I could get hurt.
Still, no pain no gain.
All
this planning, all this thinking, all this discussion with myself, and I’m
still avoiding the really big question.
What
will it do to my Shadow magic?
I’ve
never really understood the rules which govern my powers. They just are. In the beginning they worked only in Catholic
countries. However I still had my powers
in
When
After
that, the only places where my powers didn’t work were the Orthodox countries
which had kept the Julian calendar. They
worked perfectly in non-Christian countries.
Then,
after the establishment of Greenwich Mean Time in 1884, the whole world lay
open to me. I could enter the realm of
Shadow anywhere on Earth.
Could
I cope without Shadow?
I
fear it, but I could do it. I don’t want
to lose it, but I don’t want to lose the chance of humanity. It is a hard decision. If I knew for sure that humanity would lose
me Shadow, I don’t know if I could go through with it. But I don’t know. My Shadow powers may be completely
unconnected to my vampire status. I will
take the risk.
Decision
made. I will pass the test, and
diminish, although not go into the West unless there is a specific reason to do
so (like a
Provided
I can beat a Slayer.
Well,
that’s the “beating a Slayer” part out of the way. Or at least proving my point, I certainly
didn’t conclusively beat her. I hit her
a dozen times, and a normal human would have been on the ground bleeding
internally and moaning through a broken jaw, but Roxy just kept on coming. Without the vampire strength I just wasn’t
doing any real damage. I definitely had
the upper hand, but one good hit from her would have swung it the other way.
I
called the fight off as soon as I’d demonstrated that I could hold my own, and
before Roxy had the chance to do me any serious harm. If looks could kill I’d have died there and
then; the glare she gave me had Paddington Bear’s Hard Stare beaten hollow.
Anyway,
it worked out okay. I made my point
without suffering too much pain, which brought me to where I am now; sitting on
the toilet in my boxers with a
I’m
expecting pain, but that’s not what I get.
First there is a wave of heat rushing through me, then a roaring noise
rising to a deafening volume, then nausea, and then a dreadful choking
sensation which gets worse and worse until it feels like I’m being strangled to
death.
“Oh,
God, I’ve lost the breathing reflex over the centuries,” I think, trying to
force myself to breathe, but the sensation continues to get worse until
suddenly I start coughing and retching.
I make it to the washbasin and spew out black slime. Jet black. Finally I manage to take a breath, a painful
breath which burns in my throat but which is incredibly welcome. The choking feeling diminishes, but the
coughing starts again immediately, and I spit out another
gout of black slime.
“Jack! Jack!
Are you all right?” Cass is
banging on the door, and she sounds terrified for me. I draw another painful breath, and force out
a reply.
“Yes,
pet, I’m okay. Just
coughing.” Speaking brings the
coughing on once more, bringing out more of the slime. What the fuck is this stuff? Teresa didn’t cough up any slime. She’d vomited up some of her last meal of
blood, which is why I’d made sure I hadn’t eaten for hours, but no slime. Had the Mohra blood deteriorated? Was I human?
I look at the mirror out of habit, and then remember that the ring makes
this useless as a method of telling human from vampire. The need to breathe, which was dominating
everything at the moment, was probably evidence enough; also there was the
noise, which now that it had faded down to near imperceptibility I realised was
my heartbeat. I am human, just a human
whose lungs are full of black gunk. Like
a chain-smoker, or a – miner?
Coal dust. It’s bloody coal dust. Those times I spent down the mines in the nineteenth
century, earning an honest living between wars, must have filled my lungs with
the stuff. With none of those wavy cilia
things in my airways operating to carry it out, and get it coughed up a bit at
a time, it’s been lying there all this time. Fucking great. I’m probably going to end up with anthracosis
and die before I’m old. Or just be too
handicapped by not being able to draw a proper breath to be any use in the
fight.
The
Mohra blood does seem to have restored those cilia things to good working
order, they’re doing a grand job cleaning the stuff out of my lungs, but will
it be good enough? I need Shadow. Time to find out if I still
have my powers.
The
bathroom door would be the easiest source of shadow, but I’m not ready to face
Cass yet. The shower
curtain? No, too translucent, but
the towels are opaque and I can hang them from the shower curtain rail. I might as well have a shower while I’m at
it; some of the black slime ended up sliding down from my chin and onto my
chest.
I
know Cass is still just outside the door, waiting to rush in if she thinks I
need help, so I call out to her, “I’m just going to take a shower, pet.” Then I put the shower on and step in. For a minute I just experience the hot water
on my skin; it’s an entirely different feeling to what it was when I was a
cold-blooded vampire. Then I reach out
with my mind and immerse myself in Shadow.
It
still works. I am everywhere and nowhere
(baby), I am part of the Shadow and it is part of me, and I let the water flow
through my Shadow self and wash away the coal dust and the slime.
When
I step out of the shower I feel great. I
also feel hungry. Starving. Ravenous.
I
leave the bathroom with a towel around me; I hadn’t thought of a shower, so I
hadn’t taken any clean clothes in. Cass is all over me straight away, wanting to know how I am, and
suddenly I feel hungry for something other than food. Yes, that important part still works. However, food has to take priority; the
hunger pangs are getting worse.
We
eat in the hotel restaurant, and it’s a revelation. I’d eaten normal food often enough as a
vampire, but it had never been really satisfactory. It had always tasted somehow faded, not quite
real, especially the sweet things. Now
it is sheer delight.
Delight that pales by comparison with how I feel back
in the bedroom, as I strip Cass of her dress, revealing a lacy purple bra and
matching knickers, and cover her with kisses. Her hands are
exploring me at the same time, and she giggles as she frees my cock from my
boxers.
“My
God, Jack, you’re bigger and harder than you’ve ever been before,” she tells
me, awestruck. I think she’s right. A real, working, heart must pump the blood
more powerfully than the demon does. No,
that can’t be right, thinking about the strength the demon gave me. Perhaps it’s the pheromones, I might be more
sensitive to them than I was as a vampire, or perhaps it’s because I’ve now got
actual hormones buzzing through me. Whatever. Anyway, I’m
more turned on than I’ve ever been in my life, or unlife, before.
We
fall onto the bed, shedding clothes as we go, and I run my mouth down her body
in a trail of kisses, from her neck to her belly. I pull her knickers aside and kiss her pussy,
plunging my tongue inside and lapping eagerly, and the taste is beyond
delicious.
I’m
getting even more turned on, even though I’m already cranked all the way up to
eleven (as Spinal Tap would say), and getting even harder. When Cass takes me in her mouth it is almost
unbearably good. I start worrying about
coming too soon, and then think the Hell with it.
“Yes! Go for it!” Cass urges, and her hand moves on
my shaft, and her tongue moves in mysterious ways, and she presses her knockers
against my balls, and suddenly Krakatoa no longer holds the all-time eruption
record.
When
the sensations ease off to the point where I can think again I look at Cass,
who is playing with her new pearl necklace and giggling, and there is no way
I’m not going to shag her right now. I
pick up the packet of condoms from the bedside cabinet. Not something I’d ever had to use as a
vampire; no chance of getting a lass pregnant, immune
to STDs; so I wasn’t used to them.
However, I’d been doing some practising in the past few days, didn’t
want any fumbling spoiling the moment, so I know how to put one on. Ah’m smart, me.
Jocasta
gives me a knowing smile. “You’ll have
to wait a while to recover now you’re human,” she advises me, laughter in her
voice. “You can’t put it on while you’re
floppy.”
“Oh, no?” I raise my eyebrows, look at the bedside
lamp, and calculate angles. “Sit up a
bit, pet.” She obeys, still
laughing. “Lean a touch forward.” The shadow of her breasts falls directly onto
my cock, and her laughter changes to
astonishment. “Floppy?”
I tease her. “Ah’m
hard, me.”
FIN
On
to next fic – Breathing
Space