Reality Crisis

The petite vampire didn't go directly to her human. Instead, she fed elsewhere, found her spot for the day's rest, and thought about things in solitude. Perhaps, the mutant felt her absence; perhaps, the mutant liked the moment alone, if she were at all.

The next evening, as the sun went down even with the world imploding or bits of it disappearing, Pam rose from her hideaway and went hunting for the dark woman she'd claimed. They didn't have the same connection that other vampires seemed to have with their humans. Instead, she hunted as Eric first taught her when they needed to be careful, when they were in the wilds of humanity or just the wilds. Eric had insured his Progeny's ability to look after herself.

"Hello." She found the woman in her home away from Mayor's dwelling. She stood just inside the door, not waiting to be invited in but waiting all the same.

Most would expect the two women would be busy working up a bit of power swap, pushing Melody's boundaries as far as control went while she lost control. Many in the house had gotten quite used to the pair making all sorts of noises, locked away in the petite vampire's room. Yet, what they couldn't seem to get used to were those times when there was little more noise than the flipping of a page.

Pam sat quietly near her mutant. Her hands held a copy of what was called a graphic novel, and she was currently reading over something that seemed...interesting. She'd yet to bring it to Mel's attention; frankly she wasn't sure she was ready for any drama or other reaction that might come from the revelation.

Mel had been allowed certain books - Pam did not let the woman into the library. She didn't think Eric would appreciate it. But, Pam did find a few books on genetics and death that she felt the woman would like or find somewhat interesting.

Pam's blond head rested on Mel's shoulder as they read. Or as Mel read and Pam thought through what she wanted to do with the information she had in her hands. The two women probably looked like two young women studying for school rather than two dangerous killers who could take lives so very easily.

Pam had been quiet. It wasn't normal, but it wasn't abnormal either. She'd pulled away from her Maker in the past, as well as those in her nest. She was much like her Maker in that she needed to find her place in the world, on her own, and thankfully Eric had never pushed or pulled hard to keep her with him. It wasn't as if she were going to go far far away, not this time.

She'd not necessarily avoided her brother, or their human. The necromancing mutant had become theirs in a way, even if Pam hadn't voiced it. Given Pam's easy going ways; she may have allowed the pastor to claim the human completely, if it seemed that was what the dark woman wanted. Pam had lived too long to become that attached to a human, no matter how long lived he or she may be.

The petite vampire wasn't afraid of death, but something about that blackness had not been comforting. It was so empty, and empty was not what she had expected. She was curious, and as she wasn't prepared to experiment to find answers, not knowing if something she did would be permanent even if it were possible, she thought. She also hid away in the library, looking for some answer while she worked on the collection.

But, nothing gave her the solace. Had she slipped into a deeper sleep than she thought possible? Or had she contracted a disease much like narcolepsy? Had she been dead? It was hard to know anything, but she didn't wish to talk to anyone. Not at first.

Finally, she slipped from her quiet place within and without, and started hunting. She never denied herself blood, that was a waste of time. No, she hunted the female human. She needed to know had the dark woman made a choice.

Melody slept fitfully.

It was difficult to change her sleep schedule to match that of the vampires, but she wanted to spend time with them, and so she was doing her best. Her body disliked that she slept through the bright daylight hours, and her mind often showed her strange dreams to compensate. Eventually, she knew, everything would adjust.

A scene unfolded before her, that of fighting. It wasn't an all out war, or even what she would call a battle. There were a few of them, and her with somebody else. She turned to see who the presence was that she felt, and saw John with her. Something in her heart told her that somebody was missing. Somebody that she cared about deeply.

She reached out with her powers, feeling stronger than she ever had, and tore the life out of a man who was running directly toward her. She reveled in his death and felt herself fill up with every ounce of the death energy he held. She'd been able to tell, so easily, that he'd already been dying. And it had taken her so little effort to push him over the brink. To claim him as her own. His lifeless body lay in a crumpled heap where he'd fallen. Melody knew that she should feel something about this, yet she did not.

It was as if the loss she felt had made her stone.

Mel looked back toward John again.

Eric normally slept quite peacefully. This day, his slumber was disturbed by strange dreams that didn't feel exactly like dreams. They felt like he was living them. They weren't of his past, which would have made more sense, given the overreaching feeling he was getting. They certainly weren't of the present.

Because Pam was dead.

He felt the hole that had opened up when she'd been taken from him. He felt the vast loneliness of a world that didn't include his progeny. John was still out there somewhere, he knew that much. But John had not been his for very long, and certainly wasn't his favorite. It had taken him a very long time to find the right person to bring into his world, and she had been his companion for a very long time. She was very special.

It enraged him that he was without her. That somebody had taken her away.

Eric realized that he was standing over a table and speaking to somebody. He glanced down to see that the table held a map. Not very detailed, but enough for him to know what was going on. His finger was on the spot where die Festung would be. His anger seemed to be aimed there, though he couldn't say if there was the original cause for it. It was just where he would direct his ire for the time being.

He looked up again, leaning forward to get a better look at the being on the other side of the table, and it wasn't at all who he expected it to be. Not John standing there, but Melody. Pam's human. The living vampire. She had a dark look about her. A determination that he hadn't known the fragile thing could carry with her. She was nodding at something that he had said.

Her arms lifted a bit, like she was presenting something to him. He looked on either side of her and saw them advancing. More zombies. He was about to be angry with her for doing such a foolish thing again, but the creatures halted when she lowered her arms. Instead of yelling at her, he watched. When she directed, they listened. And it sounded like they were saying her name.

"...as many as you need, I can make." Her voice sounded in his ears and Eric figured that he must have asked her how big the pack of them were.

It took him no time at all to figure out what was going on. He was getting ready to wage a war, and he was using Melody to create the soldiers. A band of already dead soldiers that would not only scare the living shit out of those they were attacking, but could be sent to whatever destination they were needed at by one simple command. And it wasn't like they would run out of bodies to reanimate.

Eric looked into the pair of dark pools that were Melody's eyes. "And you can control them? All of them?"

"I just need to give them the command to attack, they won't waver from that. I don't have to go anywhere near the battle."

"Good." He didn't want to risk her, and not just because she was one of the only two links that he had to his lost child, but also because she was highly useful.

Despite the sun still being up, Eric's eyes woke in the blackness that was his day spot. He could hear the sounds of the house moving around him. The staff going about their routines. But most importantly, he could still feel Pam.

Every day she had left New Troy, feeling the need to practice her newfound ability so that Eric wouldn't yell at her again. Also so that Pam and John wouldn't get into trouble because of what she could do.

Melody never ever wanted to see what Eric really really mad looked like. After discussing it with Pam, she'd come to realize that on the scale of one to enraged, what she'd seen was aggressively annoyed in comparison to the anger that he could build up in him.

The first couple of times, she'd had to put down the zombies she raised in a more traditional way. Ending their lives completely by damaging the brain. That had been kind of sad, almost. She'd raised it up, after all, it was kind of cruel to turn around and destroy it. But she did. She couldn't risk the things getting into New Troy or Eric somehow finding out what she'd been doing.

She hadn't told anybody. She wouldn't, until she was sure that she could control things.

Over time, Melody realized that the zombies also obeyed her. They followed her around, but they also did what she said. If she pointed to an area and told them to go stand there, they did it. If she told them to try to attack something, they gave it their all. Often, though, they couldn't really move fast enough to get the things she pointed at, which she'd done on purpose.

Eventually, she figured out that she could suck back out the animating force and render the zombies just corpses once more. If she brought them back again, they seemed to remember the previous time. As much as a zombie could remember, anyway. They seemed more used to the idea of being the walking dead the second time.

The way that they called her name was a little sad. And unnerving. Like little baby ducks looking for their mamma. As disturbing as it might have sounded to anybody else, Melody did feel like the zombies were her children.

She was reaching the end of her death buildup, though. By taking back from this zombie what she had given to it, she would be able to go another couple of days before she had to eat normal food again. Mel felt empty. She'd been very careful to not take anything from the vampires since they'd all raised an army together. But maybe now, since she had full control over the strange power, she could have a little snack at least.

Eric had been mad.

Melody had not realized at first that she was the cause of the zombies that popped up, but it took her no time at all to feel herself in the raised corpses. It didn't hurt that when she got near them, they all turned to her and started to chant her name. Then follow her. Chanting her name.

He told her that she wasn't allowed to feed off of any vampire within the walls of New Troy until she figured out what had happened and how it had happened. If it wasn't something that she could control, Eric said that she was going to have to leave. He didn't seem to care that Pam had made a claim.

Mel didn't want to leave New Troy, and she didn't want to deprive herself of the wonders of the two younger vampires, either. She also didn't want Eric mad at her again. He was old. Powerful. She could feel it in him. More than Pam and John combined. Melody was a little afraid of him, curious and attracted, but afraid. She had no doubt that the leader of New Troy could end her in a heartbeat. She wouldn't even know what was coming.

She left the city and found a place just outside the wall to practice. There was a little graveyard out there. Unmarked. She could feel three corpses within. Her goal was to raise just one of them. To master the power that she had just discovered. If she could do that? She thought Eric would be okay with her staying.

The living vampire knelt on the ground to begin her work.

John and Pam both had to split as the dawn began to break. Melody was somewhat glad for that, since she was - in the end - only human, and didn't have quite the energy stores of the two vampires. Even when she was feeding off of them, she couldn't fight the feeling of needing to sleep. Of being exhausted. Of being worn out - but in a good way.

She was left behind in a bit of a rush, but took her time in leaving the little house herself. She made sure that all the candles were out so that it wouldn't burn to the ground, and did her best in making certain that it was closed up. She even spent some time straightening up stuff that had gotten moved or pushed or knocked over.

The walk back to the house in the center of town wasn't long, and Melody was really looking forward to getting into Pam's bed and falling asleep. The thought of the warm covers over her made her even more drowsy than she'd been, which was saying something.

There was a stupid look on her face, something between a smile and a stoner nod-off, as she made her way through the streets. She'd had her fill of death and of sex. For the first time, she'd had them both together. It was a strange sensation, but it felt right. Felt like it fit. Melody knew that she wasn't going to have to eat actual food for at least a week with what she'd gotten from the vampire siblings. She could just exist in a little bubble of death and be a happy girl.

Despite how full she was, her senses woke up as she passed a big vacant area. There was a good amount of active death there. And there hadn't been earlier. She would have remembered that. She would have asked about it. The death there also wasn't just not staying still. It was... moving... fast. Not like how she'd felt it move on the outside of the walls. Not like Pam and John, either. It felt like surfacing, coming into the world from a dark place. Melody changed her direction and went toward it. The big plot of land looking like it had just freshly been created, like there had been something else there before.

She waited for a few minutes, and was just deciding that maybe nothing significant was going to happen at all when she saw the first of them. The hands coming up from the soil. The bodies being pulled up after. Her eyes widened, her body froze.

The dead were rising.

"Oh shit."

John, having thankfully dodged the plague of immaturity that seemed to strike many of the humans in the town, had carefully resumed eating regularly and fully and taken to patrolling the edges of New Troy.

He was enjoying continuing the sparring with his sister, but found himself looking forward to seeing Aidan next, if the other vampire ever returned to New Troy. John was envious of his abilities on some level, but also he was glad to have somebody else who could relate to still being reluctant to fully embrace what seemed like a traditional outlook on vampirism. Somebody who didn't scoff at the other holding onto bits of humanity.

The former soldier looked towards the moon, wondering what Aidan's fighting techniques were. John was itching to go against somebody other than Pam, to see if he really was improving at all in his hand to hand techniques.

Nate had just told her to go home. She had begged him to help, to tell her how to find a way to beat the addiction, that's all she wanted from him. That and his love. And he'd told her to go home. Go home. She didn't have a home, and that was the part that hurt. She'd never stayed in one place for very long. Home had become Nate. Where he went, so had she, for a really long time. But then there was Morbius. Oh, how she'd been attracted to him. He had understood. Relished her. She hadn't wanted him harmed, and so she'd fought with him instead of against him when Nate had come to 'save' her. That had not made him happy.

When he'd left, Madelyne had shown. Looking for him. Melody hadn't exactly had a chance to do much of anything. She'd wanted to fight, wanted to leave, but neither was an option for her. The Pryor woman wasn't fooling around with simple mind control this time. She was just going for a full out attack. Mel could feel what Madelyne was trying to do. She could feel the neuro-locks ripping from her flesh. The pain of it was incredible. They weren't meant to come back off, for one. For another, the power was creeping, overwhelming her. Filling her up. She felt like she was going to explode.

There was a blinding white light. Mel was sure that it was her mind giving out, her life ending. But after a moment, she blinked, and she realized that she was still alive. There was no sign of Madelyne or anybody else. She wasn't in the cemetery anymore, either. There were ruins all around her, nothing that looked like any part of the United States she'd ever been in. Not even the underground parts.

Frantically, she reached up and felt her face. Relieved that she felt the neuro-locks still there, Melody lay back on the ground, not caring who saw her this way. She just wanted to rest. Have a moment of peace. Nobody trying to kill anybody else. Especially her.