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Geoffry looked around the hospital waiting room and tried very hard not to be depressed. You aren't here for yourself . You're here to try and do what little you can to help.
Although the vampire had 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. So much for thinking I was getting the hang of things. Venice had deftly ignored his attempts to get her to teach him anything other than weapons play, so Geoffry had been forced to strike out on his own.
Simply reading the thoughts of whatever random passerby happened across my path started feeling wrong. Besides, I need to practice more than just my voyeuristic abilities. This was the logical place to come if I wanted to learn how to implement mental commands.
New York-Presbyterian Hospital had initially 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 Geoffry 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. Here I'm close enough that I can work on the one or two patients who happened to wander close enough for me to be able to reach their thoughts through the wall. Of course some of the minds that I lightly touch are too far gone to risk any kind of substantial contact.
Even then, there was always a worried relative or two who could be calmed and reassured during the time that the vampire had alloted himself at the hospital.
Now wasn't one of those times. In fact, Tim seemed like one of the more normal people Geoffry had so far met. Everything about you was so enviably normal until those animals kicked your door down. There wasn't anything you could have done to save your wife or daughter, but you're unable to believe that.
Geoffry hadn't spent any more time inside those terrible memories than had been necessary to determine where Tim's self loathing came from. No, that wouldn't help you. Instead I have to help you understand that what happened wasn't your fault.
Geoffry smoothed over the most jagged edges of pain, leaving the sense of loss intact, but speeding the natural process which would have slowly removed some of immediacy and strength of the memories. Not enough for you to notice, but enough that you'll finally start the healing process instead of further damaging your mind.
The next hour was tiring, if not nearly as much so as it would have been a few weeks ago, but by the end the quivering, pain-filled desolation that was Tim's mind had been subtly transformed into something endurable, if still not completely sane.
Geoffry slowly rose to his feet, pleased that no one had interrupted his work with questions why he was there or requests that he leave, and exited the building, silently slipping into shadows between streetlights.
The vampire had been carefully avoiding thinking about Melody for a while now, but something in the way Tim had remembered his late wife had pulled at Geoffry bringing his thoughts back to the spunky seventeen year-old.
I can't risk going back into her mind, at least not until I have a better idea as to what happened. That being said, there isn't really any way that I can share her life, so visiting her, let alone thinking about her is a futile exercise.
Geoffry was so involved with trying to come up with reasons not to visit Melody as he walked home, that he missed noticing the muscular, black teenager walking towards him with all of the classic signs of someone looking for a fight.
By the time Geoffry noticed someone ahead of him, it was too late to avoid the collision that the teen had engineered. The vampire was slightly taller, but being unprepared for the impact combined with his slightly lesser weight to send him stumbling backwards.
“What the hell are you doing here whitey?”
Geoffry's mind was still trying to catch up to events, but the words registered just in time for him to duck the punch headed towards 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.
Geoffry'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. Geoffry to easily deflected it 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 Geoffry's knee at high velocity.
A peculiar, muted metallic sound as the body hit the ground caused Geoffry to pause momentarily and frisk his opponent rather than continuing as he had planned.
He had a gun, it's a good thing I neutralized him so completely, or I could have ended up shot in the back as I walked away. Maybe Venice has a point after all.
The sight of so much blood, and someone apparently being robbed served to awaken even the jaded consciences of the few pedestrians near Geoffry, 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 Geoffry could implant suggestions in passerbys' minds, making them call 911 and report a sighting of a suspicious individual at five or six different locations.
If I could only make my personal demons disappear as easily.
Just to be safe, Geoffry found a relatively secluded park bench, and waited for forty-five minutes before finally deciding he'd escaped unwanted attention. I suppose I may as well go now, she might even be awake still, if I can't risk entering her mind, at least I may overhear something.
The trip to Melody's went surprisingly quickly, and Geoffry soon found himself in his usual position on the fire escape. The lights are on, but she doesn't seem to be in her room.
Geoffry 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.
Two minds in the room next door. One bright and vibrant, but somehow slightly muted in comparison to normal, the other dim and guttering like a candle nearing the end of its life.
Despite the little voice inside his head that told him doing so was foolish in the extreme, Geoffry brushed the surface of Melody's thoughts. Worry, fear of the future, love, impending loss.
The glow from Melody's mom seemed to momentarily flicker, and he suddenly realized the cause of Melody's distress. Working quickly as if to deny himself time to reconsider, Geoffry shifted to bring himself slightly closer to Melody's mom, and then threw himself into the sluggish current of her thoughts.
Sluggish, but more powerful. Almost as if the medication she is on suppresses all but the most basic needs, but those suppressed thoughts in turn lend their strength and mass to their more powerful brethren.
The surface thoughts were overwhelmingly focused on pain, so much so that Geoffry had to penetrate deeper than normal just to learn Debbie's name. The vampire tried to soothe the pain away, but his work was immediately carried away, even before he had a chance to finish constructing the suggestions.
In frustration, Geoffry 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 seemed somehow to pull Geoffry mentally off balance, dragging him deeper into Debbie's psyche than he'd ever been with anyone else.
Under normal circumstances, Geoffry would have been working at the edge of his abilities and endurance, but the physical distance between he and Debbie was enough to push him far beyond the limits of what he would have believed himself able. As he was sucked further and further under, Geoffry simultaneously realized that he was capable of more than he'd thought, and that even so he was dangerously overextended.
Like a swimmer that had spent too long underwater, Geoffry 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 suddenly stopped fighting for the surface of Debbie's mind, and instead dove deeper.
Geoffry's strength was disappearing at a slower rate now 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 seemed to permeate Debbie's being.
As Geoffry felt his mind begin to disintegrate from the stresses it was being subject to, he bumped up against something immobile that somehow still gave the sense of being yielding to the right sort of contact.
Working once again more out of a sense of instinct than anything else, Geoffry somehow matched himself to the barrier so that the next collision threw him through it into an area of utter calm.
It's like the eye of the storm. There are still thoughts here, but they are placid, partially unformed, almost childlike.
The thought was followed almost immediately by the realization that Debbie somehow blamed herself for her current state of illness.
It doesn't make any rational sense, but that doesn't stop her from feeling it, from believing it, from it in a sense becoming who she is, even now when she's almost completely incapable of rational thought.
The vampire felt the last bit of his strength slowly ebbing away, and realized 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, Geoffry began spinning out a web of suggestions. Your illness isn't your fault, you aren't being punished for anything. The pain is far away, almost as if it belongs to another person. There is hope, life has purpose.
Geoffry worried about some of the thoughts he was implanting, the fact that they were being planted in such a relatively 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.
The mind can't truly hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time, not on a long-term basis. One or the other always wins out, the question is whether or not any of this will have unintended consequences.
Geoffry'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 Geoffry from his slumped position on the fire escape where he'd passed out.
I have to get out of here before it gets light enough for someone to see me.
As the vampire pulled himself to his feet, he looked into Melody's room one last time, and was surprised to see a white rectangle taped to the window.
It's on my side, addressed to Mr. Dark. Was it there when I arrived tonight, or did she see me here while I was asleep? Is it even meant for me?
Geoffry 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 Geoffry found himself in the corner of a run-down, but surprisingly clean, diner at the other end of town. He can't have followed me here, if there is anywhere in this city where it will be safe to read whatever she has left me, this is it.
Ignoring the fact that it was far more likely Imastious had ordered someone to follow him to Melody's than it was that anyone had gone to the effort to trail him halfway across the city, Geoffry carefully pulled the envelope from his pocket and smoothed it out blinking as the unaccustomed glare from the sun on the white paper made his eyes water.
It's all crumpled now. I shouldn't have kept putting my hand inside there to check that it hadn't fallen out, but I just couldn't seem to shake the irrational fear it would somehow disappear.
As the vampire carefully opened the letter up, he found that his hands were 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.
It seems like 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
Geoffry read through the note several times and each time it seemed the number of thoughts running through his head increased. It was as if the number of possibilities and options before him had suddenly gone from nothing to almost limitless.
She needs me, I could help her, could make her life so much better.
As Geoffry left the diner, he felt a new bounce in his step that he couldn't remember ever experiencing. So this is what hope feels like.