After the Calling

<<The Lie: Part I

Layne stared over his glasses at the two women who had somehow managed to end up in the middle of this disaster.

“Who are you?” he asked them for the fourth or fifth time.

The red-headed woman who called herself Harper frowned at him. “How many times do you want to hear the same fucking answer? Because, if you’d like, I can start making shit up.”

“Harper,” the dark-haired woman, Troy, spoke up quietly. “This is all confusing enough. Just chill out, okay?”

Layne continued to study them under a creased brow. “Tell me again, what you’re doing here.”

“This fucking douche,” the red-head threw up her hands and shook her head in annoyance.

Troy’s head shot up. “Harper!” she exclaimed, grabbing Harper’s arm roughly. “He’s trying to help us!”

Harper paused for a moment, her eyes moistening. But her anger quickly dispatched with her would-be tears. “Aren’t we so lucky?” she spat back. “Who’s helping Salem? Or Roux?”

The two women glared at each other for a long moment before Troy released Harper’s arm and sat back.

“Don’t make this worse, Harper,” Troy said sadly.

“Fuck you,” Harper replied. She stood up angrily and stormed off to dark corner of the abandoned church.

Layne remained quiet through their argument, but it only made him more curious about where they had come from and how they had wound up ankle deep in one shit storm of a psychic fight.

“I’m sorry,” Troy said to him. “This has been…We’re both feeling a bit vulnerable right now.”

“Don’t apologize.” Layne said, watching the sulking red-head out of the corner of his eye. “I’m not trying to be inconsiderate, but I need to fully understand exactly how you two are involved in all of this.”

Troy shook her head. “I’m not sure I know myself. All I know is that we were looking for Aeryn, and our search led us to you all.”

“How did you find us?”

“It wasn’t easy. I can tell you that. But we got a tip from a connection I had on The Fringe.”

“Who knows us on the Fringe?” Layne clenched his jaw. “Are you on the Fringe?”

“I used to be,” Troy nodded.

His opinion of her was falling like a rock off a cliff, but he tried to keep it from showing. “Who told you where we were?”

“Raleigh. Raleigh Wilde.” She looked down, seeming to sense his disdain.

“Raleigh,” Layne sighed. He was an associate of Dresden’s. Occasionally, they ran a drug circuit together. Petty narcotics, marijuana, meth. Raleigh was a shady character, a definite loose end, but he tried to stay out of Dresden’s business. He hadn’t known that Raleigh was a Fringe member. If he had, there was no way he would have allowed Dresden to keep this guy as a contact. Those fucking cowards couldn’t be trusted.

Layne leaned back, suppressing another sigh. “What did he tell you?”

“Only that Aeryn was staying with a family of cognitives. He gave me a name. Jericho Lee. That’s it.”

Clearly, that was enough. She had found them. Well, she had found Ryan anyway. Layne leaned over to try and catch her eye. “What happened out there?”

Troy looked up. “We were being followed. I mean, I didn’t know it for sure, I just had a sneaking suspicion of it for a long time. It was this only way this all could have happened. I had been kicked off of the Fringe because someone was watching me. They saw me speaking to Salem, and then outed me. That’s how this whole thing started. That’s why we had to find Aeryn. Someone was getting too close.”

Layne could see the emotion rising to the surface of her face.

“But I kept ignoring my instincts. I wasn’t paying attention,” she continued, her voice shaking. “This whole time, I couldn’t sense anyone, so I thought we were in the clear. I’m a fucking telepath. I can hear everything, but… God, we led them right to you.”

Layne looked away to think for a moment. He wanted Troy’s story to make sense but it didn’t. He had seen what had happened out there. It had become a veritable war field. More psychics than he had ever seen in one place. But something off.

Yes, the minute Troy and her group had come into contact with Ryan and Dresden, they had been attacked. It had definitely been Rowanne’s suits who had started the fight, but another group, an unidentifiable group had appeared out of nowhere and had caused enough confusion for them to escape. Had they not shown up, whoever they were, everyone would have been dead. But it had been made obvious that their rescuers were not heros, but opportunists. Whoever Rowanne’s suits had been after, they had been after also.

“That’s not the whole story,” Layne said, voice low.

Troy shrugged sadly. “I don’t know the whole story.”

“I know.”

At that moment, Ryan walked into the church. “Layne,” she called him over.

“Excuse me.” He pardoned himself from Troy and walked over to Ryan, following as she motioned him towards a corner cluttered with miscellaneous debris.

“Dresden found us another vehicle. We’re leaving,” she told him.

“I should stay with you,” Layne replied.

Ryan shook her head. She looked over his shoulders at the distressed women. “Don’t worry about us. You should take care of them.”

Layne lowered his eyes. “They’re Fringe.”

“Not anymore.” Ryan threw him a disapproving look. “And that’s not the attitude to have right now. Fringe or not, they’re in this with us.”

Layne wanted to argue, but he knew it’d be pointless. “Then you and Jericho should stay with me,” he said after a beat.

She shook her head. “No. You have enough to worry about. Jericho’s visions and Dresden’s intuition can keep us ahead of any danger until we can regroup.”

Layne grimaced. “Jericho’s visions are hardly predictable and Dresden doesn’t have intuition, he’s just –”

“He’s just lucky,” Ryan cut him off gently. “Whatever you want to call it, it’ll help.”

“Ryan, all I’m saying is that this isn’t the time to be relying on a future that you can’t guarantee.”

“Even the most powerful precognitive in the world can’t guarantee the future. You can only have faith, Layne. We’ll be alright.”

She moved to walk past him, signaling the end of the conversation, but then paused. She turned back toward him, gently tapping his chin so he’d look at her.

“You’re an excellent caretaker, Layne. You’re also an excellent sourpuss,” she said softly. “Don’t let whatever obligation you think you have to Jericho Sr, get in the way of… well… of living. Even if it is only some semblance of a life.”

“I promised Jericho that I would – ”

“Jericho is dead, Layne,” she cut him off. “We’re just going to have to make due with those of us who are still alive. Now you help these girls, and hopefully we’ll all see each other soon.”

Layne didn’t bother to watch her leave, as his head was already bogging itself down with a number of ‘worse possible scenarios’. He shook his head as if to shake off his thoughts and then returned to the pew where Troy was sitting forlornly.

She jumped when he lightly touched her back.

“Sorry,” he said. “But we need to leave.”

_____________________________________________________________________

“Can you put that out?” Monroe asked from the lid of the coffin. “I have asthma.”

Tobias looked up at her from the damp mausoleum floor. “Asthma? You’re a pyromantic. You’re around flames and smoke all the time.”

“Pure flames, pure smoke,” she said. “Not Marlboros.”

Tobias took another drag of the cigarette before letting it fall to the ground. “Mickey can’t heal that?”

Monroe shook her head. “Mickey can heal the psyche, which is vital for the survival of the body. So in a way, it helps the body to heal itself, but she cannot directly heal any biological problems. There are people like that who exist, but Mickey isn’t one of them.” Monroe sighed. “Besides I wouldn’t want to be cured of asthma.”

“Why not?” Tobias asked.

“It reminds me that I’m human.”

Tobias smothered the lit end of the cigarette with the tip of his toe. “Sorry.”

“You didn’t know,” Monroe replied.

“No, I mean… I’m sorry about… this. What happened here.” He let guilt spread over his face. “I don’t know what I was trying to prove.”

“Nothing. Neither of us was trying to prove anything.”

“No. I was. I was hell bent on… doing… something…. Foolish. I took advantage of an impossible situation.”

Monroe shook her head. “Don’t blame yourself. Remember I was a willing participant.”

“No. No, I shouldn’t have… I mean I took advantage and I – ”

“What do you think you are, a siren?” Monroe cut him off. “I mean, you’re cute, but you’re not that cute.” She let the silence engulf them before letting out a heavy sigh. “Look, okay, I’m in the same position that you’re in. And I’m in it for the same, stupid reason. What just happened wasn’t about attraction or lust or seduction. It was about…”

“Hurt,” Tobias finished her sentence. He closed his eyes. “I see how she looks at him… Layne.”

“I see how he looks at her,” Monroe replied.

“I watch her when she doesn’t think I’m watching her. The way her eyes follow his every move. And then she’ll catch me staring and get flustered, nervous, as if I caught her doing something terrible.”

“He tries to avoid her, and then suddenly he’ll seek her out, wherever she is, just to look at her. Tells her the most insignificant things, just to talk to her.” She sighed. “He used to do the same thing to me.”

“I know she won’t do anything. She’s too strong willed. She’s too stubborn.”

“He wouldn’t dare. He knows I’d see it. He’d walk past a lit candle, and I’d see it. I’d look into his eyes, and I’d see it.” She paused. “What he doesn’t realize… is that I already see it, and I don’t need fire to tell me.”

Tears were welling in Tobias’ eyes. “I just love her… so much. But clearly it doesn’t count for anything.” He leaned forward. “I eventually have to tell her.”

Monroe sat up abruptly. “It’s better for everyone… if this stays between you and me.” she said firmly, glaring into Tobias’ back.

“No, it would have been better for everyone if we weren’t assholes,” he said.

Monroe flung her legs over the edge of the coffin, watching as Tobias stood up. “This was stupid enough. Don’t make it worse. Loving her and hurting her are two different things.”

Tobias sniffed, walking towards the doors to the crypt. “I need to smoke,” was his response. “Let me know when we can get the fuck out of here.”

Monroe looked away, shaking her head angrily. “That’s not fucking love. That’s resentment. You’ll only tell her because you want to hurt her. You think you can make her feel whatever it is that you’re feeling,” she spat. “You’re selfish.”

Tobias stopped in his tracks, his face contorting into a scowl. “You have some fucking nerve. You don’t know the first thing about resentment,” he said, and then walked out of the mausoleum.

_____________________________________________________________________

Mercer heels clicked menacingly on the tile as she quickly made her way down the hall and to the source of all the ruckus.

“Why hasn’t she been sedated?!” Mercer asked angrily as she made her way into the holding room.

Every object that hadn’t been bolted down to the floor was in flight, whizzing dangerously through the air. Two orderlies were struggling to restrain a teen girl who was screaming profanities at the top of her lungs.

“We tried!” One of the orderlies yelled back to Mercer.

“We don’t have time for this!” Mercer huffed. She focused on the girl’s energy cloud and pushed it back with a heavy blow. The girl went skidding backward and slammed heavily against a wall.

She doubled over and gripped her stomach painfully before she toppled over limply and landed, face first, on the floor. As she did, the whizzing objects stopped dead in the air, hovering for a moment, before falling to the ground.

Mercer closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m having a bad day,” she said through clenched teeth. “Clean up this mess.”

The orderlies didn’t hesitate and began putting the room back together.

“Rai,” Mercer said, turning to leave

Yes, Rai’s voice filled Mercer’s head.

“Get Kensee in here. Now.”

Of course.

_____________________________________________________________________

Kensee tilted her head to the side, watching John lovingly run a brush across a horse’s back. He clicked affectionately at the horse, smiling as it neighed back a response.

“I never pegged you as a farm boy, John,” Kensee mumbled to herself. “Shows what I know.” She sighed sadly, not bothering to move as John walked past her and began working the ground.

She knew he couldn’t see her. She didn’t want him to. But even if he could, she knew he wouldn’t recognize her. He wouldn’t recognize his own mother if she didn’t want him to.

“It didn’t have to be this way, John,” she said, looking up at him sadly. “I’m sorry I’m so stupid.”

John kept working the ground obliviously. Happily.

Kensee continued to watch until she began feeling a familiar pressure in her chest. Rai was calling her. Waking her. The world of darkness was once again pulling her from her world of light. She stood up obediently.

“John,” she said moving close to the man, who didn’t pause in his gardening. “I’ll be back.” She stared at him for a moment, as if daring him to sense her, to have some small inkling of awareness that she was there. But he was completely engrossed in his farming, not at all conscious of her presence. She watched him for another quick moment, and then she was gone.

John continued to farm, noticing only that a slight breeze had picked up. A storm might be coming.

_____________________________________________________________________

Aeryn sat unsteadily on the bed, shaking from a mixture of anxiety, confusion, and fear. She was only half-sure of what she had just seen. She knew one thing for certain. The man that Mickey was with was vampiric psychic. That was an understatement. Although Mickey had explained to Aeryn that there was psychic energy in the blood, known as purana, and that eventually most vampiric psychics graduated to taking this form of energy to fulfill their need for it, she never thought she would actually see it happen. Nor did she think that anyone would willingly allow it to happen. Practically force it to happen.

As she relived the entire event in her head, she realized why the man’s dark, frigid, muddled aura seemed familiar to her.

It was almost identical to how Hadrian’s had been the last time she saw him. The night when he had nearly killed her. This whole time, she had been sure that he hadn’t turned, but in this one moment, seeing how needy the man’s aura had been, how quickly it had latched on to Mickey’s psyche, the losing battle he fought against it, and how starved the man had seemed when he bit into Mickey’s neck… she had been watching what her brother had become.

Hadrian had turned. He was a vampiric, and she had simply denied it. She wondered if that was what Roux would become.

She sat in her thoughts for a long while, remembering her life from a completely new perspective.

She was startled out of her head and nearly off the bed when the door opened suddenly, and Mickey walked in, looking disheveled. Aeryn realized that the sun was rising outside and glanced over at the clock. 6:45 am. She was more surprised that Mickey had been out with the vampiric man for so long than the fact that she had been sitting in her head, losing track of time, for over five hours.

Although Aeryn was not sure what she was looking for, she gave Mickey’s aura a once over. It seemed fine, if only a little weak. It was glowing orange, although not nearly as brightly as it had been when she was with the strange man outside, but Aeryn could tell that it was healing itself. Mickey herself looked a few steps over exhausted and maybe in need of a hairbrush, but other than that, she looked completely fine.

“You’re awake,” Mickey said to Aeryn, although her voice held no hints of surprise. She had simply made a statement.

“Yes,” Aeryn replied quietly. “So are you.”

“Yes,” Mickey mimicked her.

They fell into an odd silence, Aeryn staring expectedly at Mickey, and Mickey appearing to be almost unaware of Aeryn.

“I need to shower,” Mickey suddenly broke the silence. “We have a car now. And we can go someplace safer than this.” She spoke again without much emotion, as if her statements were the most common things to say in the world.

“Where is that?” Aeryn asked, a little too quickly.

Mickey eyeballed her lazily. “Ten hour drive north. Up towards the hills.”

Aeryn swallowed, before asking, “Will we be alone?”

For the first time since she walked in the room, Mickey’s eyes seemed to focus. She looked down at Aeryn, studying her with a hint of curiosity. “I need to shower,” she said. “Then we can… talk.”

Aeryn sat and fidgeted on the bed while Mickey spent an entire hour in the shower.

When she finally came out, she looked drastically more aware of herself and her surroundings. She frowned down at her dirty looking clothing. “There will be clothing where we are going,” she said more to herself than to Aeryn.

“How safe is where we are going?” Aeryn asked simply to keep Mickey talking.

“It’s the safest place we can be until we can meet back up with Layne.” Mickey leaned against the bedframe and rubbed her back nervously. “I’m not hurt,” she said. “You can stop examining me.”

Aeryn jerked slightly in surprise and furrowed her eyebrows.

Mickey looked down, and gave a small half-smile. “I thought I had sensed you last night,” she said knowingly. “At first I wasn’t sure, because I was… well, I was distracted. But your actions now have pretty much proven that you heard or… you’ve seen something that has you, I’m guessing, confused. Maybe a little frightened.”

Aeryn opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She was almost sure she would have to some how prod a confession out of Mickey, but here she was laying it all out on the table. Aeryn was completely speechless.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Mickey offered.

Aeryn shook her head vigorously, her speechlessness disappearing immediately. “No, no you – we need to talk about – that… it… what ever happened, because I’m not sure what I saw. I mean I think that I saw a man… who was… who was…”

“Feeding on me?” Mickey finished for her.

Aeryn paused before slowly nodding her agreement.

Mickey climbed on the bed and pulled her legs in under her. “His name is Chauncey Bouchard,” she said, humanizing the man. “and he is a vampiric. A Marked One, actually, but he was able to get out and disappear before Rowanne completely lost her shit. He’s managed to isolate himself, more or less. He survives on… I don’t know… the life energy of animals. Plants, maybe.” Her eyes seemed to soften as she spoke of him, but her voice held an air of frustration. “But whatever he’s doing, it’s not sustaining him very well. I try to help him when I can, but he usually refuses me. Unless it gets bad… ” She looked up at Aeryn. “It had gotten bad.”

Aeryn balked, not expecting to get so much information up front. “But he… he bit you…”

Mickey turned her head, looking off into space, unknowingly revealing a set of red dots on the side of her neck. It was a while before she spoke again. “His biting me was unplanned. I don’t think he meant… ” She fell silent again, thinking. “He may have been trying to prove a point… I think.”

“And what point was that?”

Mickey took a while to answer. “That he’s dangerous. That he’s… no different from Arden.”

Aeryn lowered her eyes, trying to keep from staring at the two deep red puncture wounds that were decorating Mickey’s neck. She remembered what Ryan had told her about Arden. He had held Mickey captive for months when she was barely a teen, using her as an unlimited supply of life energy, as she was able to restore her own aura at a supernatural speed. He had taken both auroric energy from her psyche and puranic energy from her blood. Although Mickey seemed to hold no hard feelings against him, citing his vampiric disability as his motive, the almost year that she spent with him had definitely left its mark.

“Well,” Aeryn spoke up, “From what I saw, maybe he’s right.”

Mickey shook her head mildly. “Do you know how they found me? How they were able to get me away from Arden? Chauncey. He led them to me, and he was the only one strong enough to hold Arden off. Vampirics, when they are in top form… even when they’re not in top form, they become incredibly powerful. Driven by …” She let go of a sigh and shrugged. “I don’t know. But Chauncey, he wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

Aeryn’s anxiety and fear were beginning to fade, being replaced by her usual self-confidence and a hint of over-protectiveness. A billion questions were bubbling in her brain, but she tried to whittle them down to the least offensive ones. “How much did he take from you?”

“Nothing I can’t regenerate in a day’s time,” Mickey answered

“But if he had taken the same amount from someone who wasn’t you? From someone who wasn’t a healer. From someone who wasn’t a psychic? Would that person be able to recover in a day’s time?”

“No. They wouldn’t recover at all.” Mickey shifted uneasily, “He needed it, and I could give it. That was all that mattered,” she said quietly. “And you see I’m okay.”

Aeryn was about to mount a full on interrogation, but something in Mickey’s voice stopped her. “Well… do you feel sick? Weak?”

Mickey shook her head with a smile. “I swear I’m fine.”

“Well, when you came in, you didn’t look fine. Hell, you looked drunk!”

“Maybe I was,” Mickey chuckled. “It’s a feeling you get when they take from your aura. More so if they drink from you. Much more so. It’s something like daze, a sedation… no… a high. I can’t really describe… I don’t know how to explain. The entire experience of sharing energy, really, can be indescribably pleasant,” she frowned a bit before adding, “if done by a conscientious individual.”

“And all of this is okay to you?” Aeryn blurted out. She wished she could take it back the moment she said it, and looked away from Mickey’s gaze. But Mickey didn’t seem to be phased.

“It’s a shock to encounter them, and especially shocking to encounter what they have to do to survive,” Mickey said, shrugging. “Trust me, I know. I guess maybe I thought that you’d be more likely to understand. You know, with your brother’s situation and the girl you were telling me about, Roux. But I can appreciate your apprehension.”

Aeryn pulled her knees into her chest, unsure of what to make of Hadrian and Roux being bought up in conversation. But she knew that Mickey was right. She had been Hadrian’s biggest defender, and she was one of the few people that had even been willing to go near Salem and Roux. At the same time, she realized that she had not at all understood the gravity of their situations. She had never seen a vampiric psychic before tonight, at least not knowingly. And somehow she had always believed that both Hadrian and Roux would be cured. That somehow their ailments would reverse themselves. That the serums would kick in and they’d go back to being normal again. She had held her own deep internal prejudices against vampirics and hadn’t even known it.

“I’m… I’ll get over it,” Aeryn said guiltily. She turned the conversation back around to Mickey. “You promise you’re okay?

Mickey’s smile returned. “Really, I’m fine. I gave up a lot, but it only took me about an hour for me to get back to equilibrium.”

Aeryn did some mental math in her head. Mickey had spent that recovering hour showering. Did that mean that Chauncey had been feeding on her for most of the night? Up until the moment she lazed her way into the door? Aeryn realized that she was deeply disturbed by the idea of it. “I don’t know what to make of this,” she said.

Mickey shrugged. “I’m in the position to help the man I love. I don’t think there should be much to make of it.”

Aeryn glanced over at her. “You love him?” she asked.

“Desperately. Since the moment I laid eyes on him. I was just a girl and even then I knew that I’d never be free of this man.” She laughed. “Or maybe that he’d never be free of me. But when we move, he moves. He’s never a next door neighbor but he’s always in my reach.”

“So Ryan and everyone else… they know him?”

“Yeah,” Mickey nodded. “Chauncey has helped us in the past. He’s helping us now. We can stay with him until Layne signals us that it’s safe. Chauncey’s place is out of the way, and he’s also better equipped than any of us to keep watch for danger. We’ll be safe with him.” She sat still and seemed to consider Aeryn for a moment, as if she wanted to tell her something, but wasn’t sure if she should.

Aeryn turned her head suspiciously, peering at Mickey from the corner of her eyes. “What?”

Mickey bit her lip before answering. “Well, being completely honest, everything that happened last night was more for your benefit than for anyone else’s. It had to happen if we were going to stay with Chauncey.”

“How’s that?” Aeryn asked, confused.

“I have to bring you somewhere, and his home is the safest place that I know,” she smiled. “That is, unless there is a ravenous vampiric roaming around.”

Aeryn’s raised her eyebrows. “Oh,” she said, shocked. “Oh,” she repeated as she fully grasped the implication.

“Like I said before, he’s incapable of hurting a soul. He would hurt himself before hurting you, or me, or anyone. But it was better if he didn’t have a reason to be tempted.”

The anxiety was slowly creeping back into Aeryn’s chest. “Well, how long will his aura stay… full?”

“It depends,” Mickey said, thinking. “He’s got a lot of methods of keeping his psyche in check, so he’ll be fine for as long as we need to stay with him. You’re in no danger.”

“Okay,” Aeryn squeaked. The dirty motel room was looking cozier and cozier by the minute.

“Hey, listen.” Mickey scooted across the bed and put a comforting hand on her knee. “I’m sorry you had to see what you saw last night. That was not how I intended to introduce the two of you. And I will admit that things may have gotten a bit out of hand, but I promise, in grand scheme, Chauncey is the least of our worries.”

 

Aeryn cleared her throat and tried to regain some resolve. “I know.  Maybe this was something I needed to witness. I’ve been spending my life in ignorance. It’s time to take the blinders off… I guess.”

Mickey sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. “I don’t know if that was the best way to have the blinders taken off, but I’m glad you can see it that way.”

“It’s either that, or freak out.”

“Well, don’t freak out.” Mickey laughed and stood up. “We should leave. Layne only paid for one night anyway, and check out is at noon.”

“Alright.” Aeryn climbed down from the bed, and followed Mickey to the door. Outside the motel room was the car that she seen from the night before.

“Is this Chauncey’s car?” she asked from the door.

“Yep,” Mickey said, approaching the driver’s side.

Aeryn looked around for the man she had seen the night before.  But he was nowhere to be found, and the car was empty. “How is he getting around?”

Mickey just grinned. “He’s got his ways. Come on. Let’s go.”

The Lie: Part III (A) >>