Halloween With the Boys

[KonThaak]

KT, you have mentioned that you are caused pain by light. Does anything else that you know of cause you pain?

Nothing that I know of at this time...

How large is your present form?

How large do you need it to be...?

Do you have any needs for consumption?

No...

Ok, where did the battle take place exactly?

At the site where the sanitarium that Ron was held at was... I think...I think that was in Virginia, about an hour south of DC...? I dunno... I was...not entirely with it when Ron drove us all home...

Who took KT's body after it was over? Willie? Eilonwy? Caliburn? If you say "No One" I'm kicking your asses.

As...as far as I can tell...Gabe took it... You'll understand...or maybe you won't, any more than we do...when we get to that part of the story...

The long and the short of it is...my body wasn't there to be taken after everything was said and done...

[Bert_the_Turtle]

Oh Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.



Good news Bad news time.


I know a guy that can make you a brand new body.



Bad news, he's diabolically evil, a psychopath, sociopath, if he wanted to he could disembowel us with his bare hands.

[KonThaak]

Bert...no. Just...no. Thank you... I appreciate it...but I can't accept that.

I'm...I'm going to try some things. Eilonwy's right; I'm not giving up hope.

[Bert_the_Turtle]

I'm gonna track down Kalim. He likes to set up shop in small towns and villages. I just hope he's in the Americas somewhere.

[DroopyDawg]

KT, the reason I ask is that I have a safe room in my basement that is light proof, as is my basement itself. I could let you room there until more can be done.

I asked about your size because I can come and get you, but we would need to devise some kind of container to carry you in to protect you from the light. If you can get down to a cubic foot in volume or less I can have something built in a day or two.

Droopy Dawg

[Bert_the_Turtle]

If he can shrink down enough we could stick him in a thermos. I fail to see how that is really an issue.

[Ron Caliburn]

Right now he alternates between living in a jar and living in a closet. Hannah is making some black out curtains for the den for him.

[KonThaak]

I'm...I'm fine where I am right now, guys... I just...wish things were a little better in this household.

Ron...I'm still sorry. I'm sorry things worked out the way they did...

[Bert_the_Turtle]

What have you guys told his wife as to hwhy her husband isn't home yet!?

[KonThaak]

We called her... I...talked to her... I told her what's going on... I...I told her we'd figure something out... She was upset...obviously...but she said she'd wait for me...

[Bert_the_Turtle]

For the love of, what, how, ugh. I don't suppose you keep a vial of your own blood in the freezer.

[KonThaak]

Bert...please stop. I know you're upset about what happened... You wish you could've been there, you think you could've made a difference... I don't know whether or not you could've...

What I do know is that getting this upset won't help anyone, and will upset more people than just yourself... I know you mean well, but please... I was just about through hurting today when Hannah gave me a bit of a surprise gift... What it was doesn't matter. what matters is that I made up my mind that no matter what, I was going to move on...

But seeing how upset you're getting over this now...it hurts, man. And I'm not the only one... I'm sorry, but please...don't make this into more of a problem than it already is.

For me...just...take a few deep breaths, calm down...and don't do anything rash... Please do this, for me... None of us like it, but some of us would like to try and move on...

[Shadowstalker]

Josh when you say "move on." just what are you saying?

At present you still exist, even if not in your original form. There may yet be options.

[KonThaak]

I mean move on with my life! Whatever form it may take.

[Bert_the_Turtle]

I can't accept that. Its restoration or bust.

[Ron Caliburn]

So you'd rather kill him in the process than restore him?

[KonThaak]

Or even just to leave me be than let me pick up the pieces and try to rebuild what I can...?

[Bert_the_Turtle]

I'm not gonna be satisfied until Josh is at least human again, if that means I need to march to the ends of the Earth to do it. If someone wants to help that's fine. If not I can put my research towards ressurecting Celeste to use and see what I can find.

[GhostSpider]

One problem Bert, KT isn't dead. You can't ressurect a soul that isn't dead. Also, lets not forget that it is KT's choice as to what happens to him. We should respect his decision, whatever it may be.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

Bert, I think you owe Josh an apology. And . . . I owe everyone else one, too. It is time for me to relate what happened when I disappeared. I apologize for slacking off on this, but I’ve been . . . well. I’ll get this story done as soon as I can . . . .


Willie and Ron continued their argument with heated passion. Well, at least Ron did. He seemed on the verge of having a nervous breakdown; I had never heard him use such foul language. I listened to his swearing and bit my lip, anxious to get moving. While Hannah’s presence here was a major drawback, I believed we could deal with it. I checked my watch, and prepared to voice my concern. “Guys? It’s getting late. Maybe we better . . . .”

11:25 p.m. October 31, 2007 . . . Halloween night.

And then all was silent.

Nothing. Not the whir of the air conditioner, not the protests of Ron worrying about Hannah like a dog over a bone . . . nothing.

Eilonwy . . .

My head snapped up, though it wasn’t my ears that caught the sound, but my mind. It called me twice more.

Eilonwy . . . Eilonwy . . . .

Was it really that time already? I had told him I trusted him. Now was the time to prove it. As though in a dream, I got out of the car and followed the voice, the silence of my surroundings seemed to pulsate. The ground was even and soft, as though walking through stiffened mud. The air was not chill, it was not warm, it was just there. I felt like I was walking forever and felt my watch again. It read 11:51 p.m.

And then I collapsed.

[KonThaak]

Ei... You weren't walking...as long as you think you were walking... A...a lot of that walking was done inside...inside wherever it was that Gabriel took you...

[Eilonwy Solstice]

I thought that might be the case. I . . . was there a lot longer than seemed real. I forgot to check my watch again after that until the next morning. It had stopped.

[Celeste Darken]

I woke slowly; the ground was hard and flaky as I shifted. Something was wrong, something didn’t feel right. For starters, my thoughts were jumbled and difficult to straighten out. Secondly, the clothes I wore weren’t my own; they were tight . . . all encompassing. And . . . wait a second . . .?

I brought my fingers and slowly pressed my eyelids.

I had eyes again.

Cautiously I worked my limbs beneath me and got to my hands and knees. And then, almost fearing what I’d see, I opened my eyelids. It was like an out-of-body experience. I saw a woman in a tight black catsuit also on her hands and knees below me. Though I had never seen the woman, I knew instinctively who it was. Her hair was dark brown-nearly black and down to her neck. I shifted my weight, and as I did so, she mimicked my motion exactly. And then I understood.

The woman was me.

I was Celeste.

I moved my eyes experimentally. It was almost as though I was looking over her shoulder now. It reminded me of a shoot ‘em up game I had seen Chad play once, while he was viewing it in the third person. . . . The woman’s body responded to my thoughts, and for a moment I glanced at my hands, ran them through my shortened hair. My thoughts wandered to the back of my mind. Then I noticed the more obvious differences. I could feel myself breathing . . . from far away. I could feel my body . . . my true body breathing from a long way off. It was the same with my heart; beating but from a distance immeasurable in the physical world. The body that responded to my thoughts was dead, in a dead world. My own body felt separate and detached, while I was left in the freezing chill of undeath.

I was Celeste again . . . but not really her. I had eyes again . . . but not really. I was a vampire again . . . but not really. With sudden realization, I knew where I was, and I knew what had happened. Like two water colors of differing shades mixing together, I was in a realm that bridged across the Dreamstream and the Astral Plane. The sensations were so familiar I almost expected to glance behind my shoulder and find . . . but no, I was alone.

The landscape was barren, dead, flatlands. The sky was that reddish hue of a sunset falling, but there was no stars, no sun, no anything. If ever there was a world made to house dead things . . . this world was deader. I took several moments to adjust my strange vision. In the distance I saw a wasteland of lifeless, barren earth, dried and cracked like skin whose blood had leaked out through all the pores. But . . . I was not alone . . . not quite. Holding back the bile was easy; nevertheless, I wanted to cringe as I recalled what unlife was like. And I got to my feet and started walking, eager to follow through with the voice’s instructions. Somewhere in this deceased world was someone I needed to find . . . and I needed to find him before someone else did. I walked, I changed my view, soaring higher and revolving around in order to see what had become of the woman that had been lost to my vision ever since I had died . . . wow.

So that’s what she looked like. Celeste Darken was beautiful in a dark, twisted way. She seemed sharper and more angular than the girl I remembered being. She seemed somehow leaner, though maybe it was just because of her harried movements. There was something disturbing about seeing the fangs bared from the peeled back lips in what was unmistakably a friendly smile. As Eilonwy, I was generally always smiling. I tried to recall the visage I had adopted as Celeste and molded her face to that.

. . . when I wasn’t an emotionless blank, I was scowling or angry. I don’t know what Benjamin had seen in Celeste, but he had obviously looked deeply. I blanked her face and continued onward.

A sharp cry took me out of my musings and turned my head in that direction. Two men were in the process of forcing a woman. She was screaming and struggling heroically, but it was no use; the men would have had her . . . at least, until I interceded on her behalf. The first man put up a struggle . . . the same kind of struggle a Chihuahua might put up when confronted with a saber tooth tiger. Whatever world I was in, it had granted me my vampiric powers as well as the vampiric body. However, the moment I had driven off her tormenters, she turned on me. I had been used to this sort of attitude as Celeste, but this seemed different. She wasn’t attacking out of fear . . . she was attacking out of hatred. She lashed out maniacally, and as Celeste I parried stoically. My vampiric prowess was only slightly faster than what I was at the present, but she was immeasurably stronger. Celeste knocked her out and left her there . . . I apologized to her.

A vampire’s prowess became evident after Celeste had defended herself from three other attacks as time wore on: one by an angry man whose intents had been the same as the men before; the next was a mob of no fewer than thirteen people; last was a beast that resembled a grizzly bear.

And in each altercation, in their eyes I saw only death.

While Celeste might have been the only dead one physically, the others’ had lost all hope. They lived their lives like zombies, without a care in the world, bogged down by unyielding despair. They had forgotten how to feel.

Therefore . . . no difference.

[Bert_the_Turtle]

Bert, I think you owe Josh an apology.

You just gave an account of men who've given in to despair and tell me I owe Josh an apology because I refuse to let him be stuck in a body where he can feel only PAIN!?

One problem Bert, KT isn't dead. You can't ressurect a soul that isn't dead. Also, lets not forget that it is KT's choice as to what happens to him. We should respect his decision, whatever it may be.

Consider what resurrection is in theory, when boiled down. Taking a soul from point A and putting it where you want it. That the soul should have connections to its body would only theoretically make it easier, which is why Gabe might have been able to do it to Josh, swapping their bodies, because they were linked.

If we can find Josh's body and Gabe's soul we might be able to sort things out. If not we may be able to place Josh's soul into some other physical body before or after it is transmogrified into something appropriate.

What the hell are you in now Josh? A construct of darkness?

Can anyone run a trace and see where Gabe in Josh's body went after he died? Remember: Matter and Energy can't be destroyed. It can be moved or transformed, but it can't be destroyed.... in theory anyway. So where did they go?

I could also use some help understanding these books. They don't make a Cliff Notes version of this shit.

[KonThaak]

You just gave an account of men who've given in to despair and tell me I owe Josh an apology because I refuse to let him be stuck in a body where he can feel only PAIN!?

Those men weren't real, Bert... They existed within Gabe's subconscious. They didn't actually feel pain or despair because they didn't exist...but Gabe did, and they were acting out Gabe's emotional state.

I *DO* exist, and to my knowledge, nobody ever put up this kind of fuss about Gabriel not being able to feel any *physical sensation* but pain. He made a niche for himself on that alone, and so can I.

I'm not dead, so where there's life, there's hope. Bert, please just let it go for right now... As soon as a viable and certain option presents itself, I'll be the first to say, "Hey! There may be a chance for me to become human again!" But until then, man... Just let it go. Please.

[DroopyDawg]

Bert,
I think the best option for you and KT at the moment is for you to continue your research, but back down on the agressiveness of your position. Give KT time to come to terms to where he is at this time. Maybe switch to another topic to discuss the viability of your research. Right now though, it maybe best to back down a little.

Droopy Dawg

[Celeste Darken]

If I had allowed myself to think at the back of my mind, I would have been desperate. But as it was, I was a hunter again, and thus I did not let my feelings touch me. As painful as it was, I didn’t come to the rescue of the dead people; that would have taken time. Time that had fled long ago. Luckily in the three weeks since returning to undeath, I had not fed once on anything and still felt as strong as I had been since entering, nor did I feel the pangs of hunger; an impossible feat.

He had been right. This was only in his subconscious.

But I had to be fast, or that would quickly turn.

* * *

The city was lifeless and still. The buildings were faceless edifices, lost in ruin, the slow decay of time, and crumbling because of it. Stalking on cat’s paws, I sniffed the fetid, poisonous air and glanced inside the empty doorways.

Nothing. They were more shadows than human, bereft of hope and eyes dead as abandoned windows. They were meant to watch for me, nothing more. Even if they dared attack, they wouldn’t have. He just wanted to know if I truly was here. He liked to press others into his service. It wouldn’t have been hard to do to force them into his service. Accordingly, once the zombies had spotted me, they retreated into the shadowy confines of the shelled buildings and sprinted away to inform their master. I followed them from a distance, through the moldering spaces between walls standing up like fingers in the grasp of rigor mortis, over cracked, wilting fences, and under toppled buildings fallen into their sides and held up by the foundations of others, forming tunnels. Everywhere I looked, there was nothing but deprivation, hatred, and greed. The listless people glared at me hungrily, full of malice and despondency; I understood why I had been sent to this place as Celeste and not as Eilonwy. Eilonwy couldn’t have helped these people . . . they didn’t want to be helped. It was as though the very air in this place was poisonous, and the blind psychic would have no part in this post-apocalyptic horror.

But Celeste . . . she was right at home, where she belonged.

It was these thoughts in mind when I suddenly saw him, prepared to feast on the one last hope these people had and didn’t know it. The boy was held prisoner in strong arms, his spine bent backwards over a harsh knee, stick-thin hands held away from his body and crushed in an iron left hand. The right hand pulled the blonde head back by the hair, exposing his throat. The boy’s eyes were like that of a bird of paradise’s feathers, fading fast into colorless orbs, his tongueless mouth wide open in a silent, horrified scream, while . . . .

Khavik, the points of his teeth touching the white throat, drank in the fear of the boy with relish.

[Celeste Darken]

“Khavik!” I cried out. “Release him!”

The bladed teeth paused over the white throat. I forced my gaze to meet the two twin pools of hellfire glaring at me coldly.

“Tell me one thing,” he said slowly, his composed tone layered with seething insanity. “Is that really you . . . or are you a part of this hell?”

“I am no part of this,” I replied calmly.

Khavik nodded. He stood up and tossed the boy aside callously. I resisted the urge to rush to the boy’s aid. Khavik would be at my neck in an instant if I did.

“So you survived our last meeting,” he said, his tone placid.

“As did you.”

He nodded again. “I always survive. You know that, bloodletter.”

I didn’t say anything. Several tense moments passed; he was scouring me with those vivid coals he had for eyes, he could sense something different about me, my demeanor and bearing had shifted since we had last crossed fangs, so to speak, in the cathedral.

“So, the human you had been with,” Khavik broke the silence with a cunning look in his hell-spawned eyes, “Mordecai Grant, I believe his name was? I suppose he healed back to normal? How long did it take, child killer? Eight weeks? Nine? And does he walk with a limp now? Well, I shall have to change that. Bite off his legs at the kneecaps, I suppose . . . .”

I politely listened, grateful Celeste’s stomach didn’t get sick from his colorful and macabre descriptions of how he would torture my friends, in great detail. He quieted and a crease appeared between his eyebrows.

“Are you finished?” I asked calmly.

Khavik’s eyes thinned to the width of a dagger’s edge. “You are . . . different.”

I nodded. “I let neither hate nor guilt rule my life anymore. I have repented of all the evils I have done.”

He smiled. “Well, if that is the case, let me add to your desire to mourn with those that mourn.”

He moved like lightning.

[Ron Caliburn]

Leg's fine Khavik, I know your reading, so thanks for asking . . . it got tuned up quickly after it got busted . . . I just kept with the cast and such because I was hoping to catch someone off guard.

Too bad you didn't take the bait . . . I have a solid silver stake with your name engraved on it.

[Celeste Darken]

But I moved faster, throwing myself in the way of the vampire and his victim, the tongueless boy. I staved off the blows he sent for me; we had read each other’s intentions perfectly. He leaped away, laughing in black amusement.

“It seems I can get to you still, Miss Darken,” he sneered obliquely. “Do you think I was here by chance? Gabriel told me if I came here, you would, too. He played you right into my trap. He used you, and now you will be mine, widow maker.”

I shook my head. “No; you were mistaken.”

“Believe what you will, Miss Darken; I care not. Do you think I care to play his little game? Do you think I didn’t know he was getting me out of the way? I would have sat back and enjoyed the show anyway had Windner not approached me; the idea of the Lazlo Society falling pleased me, especially his method of applying it. And Gabriel added a new slant to it: you. When I heard you were alive . . .” his sneer was disbelieving. “I couldn’t resist.”

A panning up of Celeste’s gaze, with Khavik still in the corner, revealed the boy had cautiously gotten to his feet, though now he stood stock-still. And I could see why.
Prowling in a circle around him were no less than half a dozen . . . things. They looked half dog, half human, and . . . all wrong. The wide, pointed ears of a Great Dane topped their heads, while they had the monstrous jaws and snout of purebred boxers. Nearly twice the size of a Saint Bernard, they had massive shoulders, misshapen claws, no fur, and white, milky bodies. But the thing I found most disturbing was their eyelessness. They weren’t like Eilonwy . . . like me. Where their eyes should have been, there was only blank, smooth, skin. However, they seemed to have other sense to rely on. Ugly noses to the ground, they snuffled grossly. Ears twinged, and they raised their enormous heads if the boy even twitched.

I hurriedly returned my attention back to Khavik. But he hadn’t moved in my momentarily distracted state.

“They’ll kill him, you know,” he said, smiling horribly. “I’ve watched them before. They tear him to shreds if he ever moves. But he regenerates.”