The Greater Darkness

  As Geoffrey tried to carefully back out of Melody's thoughts, a subtle change coursed through them, a quickening that fascinated him. It was almost like she was waking up, but not quite. The link hadn't severed, so Geoffrey was still privy to her thoughts. Melody was just as amazed by the sudden happiness as he was. What was more, she somehow knew that the feelings had originated from outside her.

  The thoughts, which up until now had been soft and yielding, took on a firmer, sticky nature, and the vampire suppressed panic as his efforts to disengage became largely futile. Melody's thoughts keyed in on his efforts, strengthening the force immobilizing him.

  As Geoffrey gathered his energy for one final exertion to free himself, an incredible force reached out and ripped away the shadows that separated him from Melody. A brief flash of recognition flared through the girl's thoughts, followed by an astonishment that almost exactly mirrored his own.

  Chapter 12

  Geoffrey looked around the hospital waiting room and tried very hard not to be depressed. It helped a little that he was there to try and help, even if there ultimately wasn't much that he could do.

  Although he'd been able to finally free himself from Melody's mind without waking her up, the experience had left him once more unsure of his abilities. Venice had deftly ignored his attempts to get her to teach him anything other than weapons play, so Geoffrey had been forced to strike out on his own.

  Simply reading the thoughts of whatever random passerby happened across his path started feeling wrong after only a couple of hours. Not only that, he'd needed to practice more than just the ability to spy on those around him. Given that, there had been just one place that made logical sense for him to visit.

  New York-Presbyterian Hospital had been a tough nut to crack, but careful use of his abilities had eventually conditioned all of the orderlies and doctors not to notice his presence and Geoffrey soon had the run of several wings. Most importantly, he was able to sit for hours at a time in the sterile, inhospitable waiting room of the temporary psychiatric ward. It was a decidedly uncomfortable set of environs, but it situated him such that he could work on the one or two patients who happened to wander close enough that he could reach their thoughts through the wall.

  His time wasn't always spent in the manner he intended. Sometimes the minds he was able to reach were too far gone to risk any kind of substantial contact, but even then the trip wasn't wasted. There was always a worried relative or two who could be calmed and reassured during the time that the vampire had allotted himself at the hospital.

  Now wasn't one of those times. In fact, Tim seemed like one of the more normal people Geoffrey had so far met. Everything about this particular patient had been enviably normal until three men had kicked his door down. There hadn't been anything Tim could have done to save his wife or daughter. Geoffrey could easily see that from his perusal of Tim's memories, but Tim wasn't able to believe that himself.

  Geoffrey hadn't spent much time inside those terrible memories. He'd learned just enough to determine where Tim's self-loathing came from, and then moved on. More time there wouldn't have helped. Instead, Geoffrey's focus was helping Tim understand that what had happened hadn't been anyone's fault.

  Geoffrey smoothed over the most jagged edges of pain, leaving the sense of loss intact but speeding the natural healing process which would have slowly removed some of the immediacy and strength of the memories. It wasn't enough for Tim to notice the change, but it would hopefully be enough for the other man to finally start healing rather than continuing to damage his mind.

  The next hour was tiring, if not nearly as much as it would have been a few weeks ago. By the time Geoffrey was done for the night, the quivering, pain-filled desolation that was Tim's mind had been subtly transformed into something endurable, if still not completely sane.

  Geoffrey pulled himself to his feet and left, pleased that no one had interrupted his work with questions about why he was there or requests that he leave.

  The vampire had been carefully avoiding thinking about Melody for a while now, but something in the way Tim had remembered his late family brought Geoffrey's thoughts back to the spunky eighteen year-old. He couldn't risk going back inside her mind, at least not until he had a better idea as to what had happened the last time he'd been there.

  Given that, there wasn't any point in visiting her--or so he'd been trying to convince himself for the last several days. As he walked home, Geoffrey was so involved with trying to come up with reasons not to visit Melody that he didn't notice the muscular teenager walking towards him with all of the classic signs of someone looking for a fight.

  By the time Geoffrey noticed someone ahead of him, it was too late to avoid the collision that the teen had engineered. Geoffrey was taller, but he hadn't been expecting the impact so it sent him stumbling backwards.

  "What the hell are you doing here, whitey?"

  Geoffrey's mind was still trying to catch up to events, but the words registered just in time for him to duck the punch headed toward his face.

  The vampire's left hand caught the fist as it recoiled back through the space he'd just vacated, and followed it back to the teenager.

  Geoffrey's opponent clearly hadn't been expecting the vampire to close with him, because his follow-up attack with his left hand was weak and off balance. Geoffrey easily deflected it too as he brought both hands up to the back of the teen's neck and tugged.

  The technique worked exactly as Venice had promised, and a split second later the teen dropped to the ground unconscious and bloody as a result of his face impacting with Geoffrey's knee at high velocity.

  A peculiar, muted metallic sound as the body hit the ground caused Geoffrey to pause and frisk his opponent rather than continuing as he had planned. A gun wasn't exactly a common thing to see in New York, but it shouldn't have surprised Geoffrey as much as it did. Maybe Venice had a point after all. If Geoffrey hadn't neutralized the teen so completely, he could have ended up being gunned down from behind as he'd walked away.

  The sight of so much blood awakened even the jaded consciences of the few pedestrians near Geoffrey, and soon the vampire was sprinting down an alley trying to leave behind the screams of people calling for help.

  **

  Eluding whatever police response had been mustered proved ridiculously simple now that Geoffrey could implant suggestions in various people's minds; it was only a matter of making each of them call 911 and report seeing a suspicious individual in five or six different locations.

  If only he could make his personal demons disappear so easily.

  Just to be safe, Geoffrey found a relatively secluded park bench and waited for forty-five minutes before deciding he'd escaped unwanted attention. The wait proved too much, and by the end he'd convinced himself that if he were to pay a visit to Melody's, he might overhear something that would tell him how she was doing.

  The trip to Melody's went surprisingly quickly and Geoffrey soon found himself in his usual position on the fire escape. The lights were on, but Melody didn't seem to be in her room.

  Geoffrey debated his options for a few seconds, but he couldn't bear to leave without any kind of contact with Melody, so he finally, tentatively reached out with his thoughts.

  There were two minds in the room next door. One was bright and vibrant, but yet oddly muted in comparison to what he'd expected. The other, however, really surprised Geoffrey. Melody's mother's mind was dim and guttered, like a candle nearing the end of its life.

  Despite the voice inside his head that told him he was being extremely foolish, Geoffrey brushed the surface of Melody's thoughts. He found more worry and fear there than he remembered from the last time he'd been there. Worse, there was an almost overpowering sense of impending loss.

  The glow from Melody's mom momentarily flickered, and he realized the cause of Melody's distress. Working quickly so as to deny himself time to reconsider, Geoffrey shifted his body to bring himself closer to Melody's mom and then threw
himself into the sluggish current of her thoughts.

  Sluggish wasn't quite the right word. The thoughts moved slowly, but were much more powerful than he'd expected. It was almost as though the medication she was on suppressed all but the most basic needs. That hadn't surprised him, but he hadn't expected the way that those suppressed thoughts were lending such strength and mass to the few things that she was still capable of feeling.

  The surface thoughts were overwhelmingly focused on pain, so much so that Geoffrey had to penetrate deeper than normal just to learn Debbie's name. The vampire tried to soothe the edges of the pain, but his work was immediately carried away, even before he had a chance to finish constructing the suggestions.

  Growing more and more frustrated, Geoffrey sent out additional whisker-thin probes looking for some kind of safe haven in which to work, driving them even deeper into the murky tides below when they failed to find what he needed.

  A sudden jerk on one of the probes pulled Geoffrey mentally off-balance, dragging him deeper into Debbie's psyche than he'd ever been with anyone else.

  Under normal circumstances, Geoffrey would have been working at the edge of his abilities and endurance, but the physical distance between he and Debbie pushed him far beyond the limits of what he would have believed himself capable. As he was sucked further and further under, Geoffrey simultaneously realized that he was capable of more than he'd thought, and that even so he was dangerously overextended.

  Like a swimmer who had spent too long underwater, Geoffrey felt his strength bleeding away at an alarming rate as incredible forces tried to tear his mind completely away from the physical body that housed it. Some half-forgotten memory prodded at the vampire, and he stopped fighting for the surface of Debbie's mind and instead dove deeper.

  Geoffrey's strength was disappearing at a slower rate now that he wasn't struggling, but he could still feel it fading and started to doubt his course of action. The vampire nearly turned around, but he somehow knew that doing so was as good as committing suicide. His strength pouring out of him like water, he rode the increasingly turbulent thoughts deeper, trying to shield himself as much as possible from the dark pain and helplessness that permeated Debbie's being.

  As his mind began to disintegrate from the stresses it was being subjected to, he bumped up against something immobile that somehow still gave the sense of being yielding to the right sort of contact.

  Working more out of a sense of instinct than anything else, Geoffrey matched himself to the barrier so that the next collision threw him through it and into an area of utter calm. It was like the perfect eye to the storm inside her mind. There were still thoughts there for him to read, but they were placid, semi-unformed…almost childlike.

  Almost as soon as Geoffrey arrived, he realized that Debbie blamed herself for her illness. It wasn't rational, but that didn't stop her from feeling it, from believing it. In a way it had become who she was, even in her current state when she was incapable of feeling anything but pain.

  The vampire felt the last bit of his strength slowly ebbing away. He realized that he only had a few minutes, or possibly even just seconds, before working from so far away, even in such complete calm, would be too much for him.

  Working quickly, Geoffrey began spinning out a web of suggestions. He started with the statement that her illness wasn't her fault, moved onto the fact that she wasn't being punished for anything, and then focused on the pain. It wasn't easy to make her feel that the pain was something distant, not with having been immersed in it himself so recently, but he kept at it. He kept pushing and finally created the illusion that the pain belonged to someone else, far away.

  The last message he tried to install was that there was a purpose to life and that she should have hope.

  Geoffrey worried about some of the thoughts he was implanting. The fact that they were being planted in such a calm area should mean that they would have more staying power than his usual work, but they were up against some powerful, deep-seated beliefs that would work very hard to erode these new, alien thoughts.

  He'd already realized from some of his other work that the mind couldn't really hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time, not and believe them both with any kind of permanence over the long term. Either the pain and guilt would win, or his message would win. He just hoped that what he was doing wouldn't have unintended consequences.

  Geoffrey's strength evaporated and something snapped him back to his body as he lost consciousness.

  **

  The pale glow in the eastern sky served to wake Geoffrey from his slumped position on the fire escape where he'd passed out. Counting himself lucky that he'd awakened when he did rather than later when someone would have seen him and called the police, Geoffrey pulled himself to his feet. As he turned to go, he looked into Melody's room one last time and was surprised to see a white rectangle taped to the window.

  It was on his side of the glass and addressed to 'Mr. Dark.' Worryingly, Geoffrey couldn't remember whether it had been there when he arrived or if it meant that she'd seen him while he'd been sleeping.

  Geoffrey stood motionless for several seconds before suddenly tearing the letter from the window and stuffing it into a pocket as he fled up the fire escape.

  **

  Hours later, Geoffrey found himself in the corner of a run-down, but surprisingly clean, diner at the other end of town. He was being irrational. If Imastious had been following him then Melody was already as good as dead, but Geoffrey's first worry had been making sure that Imastious wouldn't be able to follow him to wherever he read the letter.

  Geoffrey took one last look around him to make sure he wasn't being watched and then carefully pulled the envelope from his pocket and smoothed it out, blinking as the glare from the sun on the white paper made his eyes water.

  He felt a pang of sorrow at the state of the letter. It was wrinkled to the point of making some of the words hard to make out, but he hadn't been able to shake the worry that Melody's message was going to somehow disappear before he had a chance to read it. Its current state was the unavoidable consequence of his frequent checks over the last few hours to make sure that the letter had still been safely in his pocket.

  As the vampire opened the letter, he couldn't force his hands to stop shaking.

  Dear Mr. Dark,

  I feel more than a little silly doing all of this. It is like when I was a child and would have a dream and be ever so convinced that it was real, that there were monsters under my bed, or that something terrible had happened to Daddy. Mom would always have to convince me that none of it was real.

  Just when I'd finally believe her, and promise that I wouldn't be scared anymore, I'd have another oh-so-real dream, and the process would start over again.

  As real as those dreams felt, this was a hundred times more vivid. Even after I woke up, I just couldn't quite shake the feeling that it all really happened.

  Maybe it is just that I want to believe it so badly, but the dream that I was almost raped, the girls at school suddenly being nicer to me, that dream where you were somehow inside my head asking about those girls…all of those things happened in the last little while and they all seem to have some kind of common thread running through them.

  With everything that's happened with my parents, I feel like an old person trapped inside a young person's body. Sometimes I'm not sure whether old me or young me will show up in a given situation.

  Are you really out there watching over me? I hope you are. The child inside me still prays that you are.

  Melody

  Geoffrey read through the note several times and each time the number of thoughts running through his head increased. The possibilities and options before him had suddenly gone from nothing to almost limitless. Melody needed him, and he had the very real ability to make her life better.

  As Geoffrey left the diner, he felt a new bounce in his step that he couldn't remember ever experiencing. He could only attribute it to the fact that, for
the first time he could remember, he was actually feeling hope for the future.

  Chapter 13

  Venice had arrived unexpectedly at Geoffrey's apartment an hour ago and told him to get comfortable. "Imastious will be along sometime tonight, and he won't want to have to track you down, so just sit tight until he arrives."

  Geoffrey had half-expected Venice to stay, but as soon as she'd delivered her message, she'd bid him goodbye and headed back out the door.

  It wasn't the kind of announcement designed to make waiting an easy prospect. Imastious had left Geoffrey entirely alone since the hit on the drug dealer. The likely cause of the impending visit was that the older vampire simply had someone else he wanted killed, but Geoffrey couldn't escape the worry that Imastious had somehow found out about Melody.

  Geoffrey knew that giving way to panic and fear was completely irrational, but the feelings kept bubbling up to the surface despite his best efforts to keep them under control. It was as if some gibbering part of his psyche, untouched by any sense or intellect, had taken over the reins to his mind.

  Geoffrey suppressed thoughts of what would happen to Melody and her mother if Imastious had discovered them, and instead tried to practice his mental techniques. Just as the vampire calmed himself enough to regain the level of control required to cast his thoughts out, his probes ran into a mind surrounded by what he could only describe as a flawless wall.

  His first thought was that it was a little like what Venice did to keep him out of his mind, but that was wrong. It was exactly like what she did, this was just the work of a master who understood what he was doing rather than a neophyte just doing by rote what she was told would protect her mind.

  As soon as Geoffrey realized who must be behind that impenetrable shield, he attempted to pull his probes back. He was too late. Faster than he could follow, something grabbed the tendrils of thought, feeding just enough energy into them to make it impossible for Geoffrey to break contact, and then followed them back to Geoffrey's mind.

  Before Geoffrey was fully aware of what was happening, Imastious was inside his mind, trying to sift through thoughts and memories. The older vampire was slower now that he was inside Geoffrey's mind, which offered the slightest bit of hope that they might be on more equal footing now than the speed of that first response might have suggested.