“I’ll come by as soon as I get back,” Veronica said, almost as disturbed by their pending separation as the vampire was. “I promise. Don’t do anything rash while I’m gone,” she added. She leaned over and they exchanged a kiss that was far too short in both their minds. Then Veronica put her helmet on, revved up her engine and vanished down the road. Eliza couldn’t help but feel a little bitter, having hoped her days of being ‘the one left behind’ were past. But she buried that feeling as deep as she could. “This one is different,” she reminded herself. “This one loves me.” That made her feel better. She went back inside to talk to her team about ideas on how they could find the remaining jewels.
————– ——————
Three days later . . .
————– ——————
Eliza was walking around the property with Dennis and Allyson in the middle of the night. They had all gotten frustrated, unable to find an algorithm that accounted for the distances between the dimensional rift and the jewels that had been found. They had utilized chronological, geometric and linear models, but nothing was working. So everyone had taken a break, and the three of them had decided they need some air.
The vampire was surprised that she hadn’t been sharing dreams with Veronica yet. She guessed that the two of them being together had been a bit of a mental ‘fix’ for both of them. She kind of wished that the dreams would start again. She missed her lover.
Suddenly, a pain unlike anything she had ever felt rocketed through her brain. For one, horrible moment, she ‘saw’ darkness, felt fear, heard a terrible screen and then . . . and then Eliza passed out, crashing into the ground. A panicked Allyson and Dennis tried to revive her, and Dennis began screaming into his communicator about something. When Eliza started to come to her senses, she had a feeling of absolute despair rising up from her gut. Something had gone wrong. She knew it in her bones and in her soul. Something had happened to Veronica. Then she felt a blinding pain to the back of her skull. After that, the only thing Eliza saw was darkness.
————— —————————
Allyson Murgo was scared. Hell, the whole team was on edge. Things had been bad enough before their friend and boss had stopped speaking. Allyson just kept her eyes fixed on Eliza’s rigid face. The vampire was normally so beautiful. But now, she had the look normally reserved for ancient legends of her race; she looked like the walking dead.
Allyson wished she could say something, but all the words that came into her mind seemed trite and insufficient. What must it be like? When the dimensional rift between the world of vampires (Terra) and the world of humans (Earth) had closed, Eliza had felt the pain of separation. She was unable to contact her family, but she had proven to be resilient. Eliza had been part of the campaign to find and protect a number of Living Jewels, one of which could be the ticket for reopening the portal. Then, someone else leaking some valuable information had caused the government to crack down on who had access to the gems that were in captivity. Eliza and her team had been unceremoniously booted off the project, much to the objections of official U. S. Envoy Veronica Adams. That had hurt Eliza’s pride. But her sense of isolation and her wounded ego were nothing compared to what happened when Veronica had been kidnapped.
Veronica and Eliza had become somewhat close over the last several months. The two had fallen into a storybook kind of love. Even after Eliza and friends had been kicked off the military base where the gems were stored, Veronica and Eliza had visited each other in their dreams. They had apparently undergone a process called “linking,” which happens when one vampire drinks the blood of a person whose soul was compatible with that of the vampire. Such couples usually fell in love. And the link between Eliza and Veronica was hyper-developed, well beyond the scope of anything even the most learned of vampire scholars had heard of before. Normally, linked couples just had a good idea of what the other was thinking. What the human and vampire women shared went light years beyond that.
When Veronica had come to visit, the group had a major breakthrough and had found a way of narrowing the search for the remaining jewels. Veronica had flown back the next day to report the news to her superiors. Then, late one night, Eliza had collapsed in puddle of fear and pain. She knew something had gone wrong. The next day, they had received word from a furious Captain Corbin at Fort Crass that Veronica had been attacked and kidnapped on her way to the airport before she could come back to California. Eliza had felt the pain of her lover’s distress. And for the next few days, she had sensed nothing. The vampire didn’t know if the woman she loved was alive or dead. When she had heard the news of Veronica’s capture, she had said something that still echoed in Allyson’s brain.
“If she dies, so do they. I’ll hunt them all down and rip their hearts out through their throats.”
Allyson believed Eliza would do just that, and it scared her. Things hadn’t gotten any easier when her initial attempts to get a hold of Veronica’s bosses had met with some resistance. Then she had been told something that had enraged her so much that the vampire had stopped talking. The government would not negotiate with the Purity, which was the group of religious zealots that was trying to stop the dimensional rift from being reopened, and they would stop at nothing to succeed in their mission. Eliza’s heart had turned to ice at that moment. The government Veronica had served wasn’t going to do a damn thing to save her. And once again, Eliza had been left feeling helpless.
Eliza had been trying to spend as much time asleep as she could, hoping that her lover might use their link to contact her in their dreams and give her some clue as to where Veronica was being held. So far, her dreams had consisted only of darkness and longing. And that darkness seemed to follow her, even when she was awake.
The group was sitting in silence in their conference room. Wyrm, their computer guru, was looking over satellite maps of Africa, where Eliza had once claimed the Purity had some kind of base of operations. But it was a huge continent, and the Purity had become very good at hiding. Dennis Murgo, Allyson’s husband, was staring over Wyrm’s shoulder, wishing he could be of more help. He was a soldier at heart, but that wasn’t helping him at that moment. Ambassador Kelik of Terra, an old and wizened vampire who had was an old family friend of Eliza’s as well as her childhood mentor, sat next to the silent woman on a sofa. Thug, the eight-foot-plus troll, was patrolling the outer compound.
Allyson glanced over and saw that Eliza had fallen asleep again. She had been taking numerous sedatives over the last couple of days, trying to induce slumber. ‘Where has mind your mind gone my friend?’ Allyson wondered silently. ‘And will it be able to find its way home again? Does it even want to?’
At that moment, Thug opened the front door, and he wasn’t alone. Captain Corbin was with him. Everyone was surprised to see him, as the government had shown little interest in reestablishing ties with Eliza’s group. He looked ready to say something, then noticed that Eliza was asleep.
|| I’LL LOOK AFTER HER, || Thug said to the assembled group, and then turned to the Captain. || TELL THEM. ||
The Captain’s hard face softened as looked upon the almost pained, slumbering countenance of Eliza. He had great respect for that particular vampire. She had had proven her cunning time and time again, and had been rewarded with disdain and heartache. The assorted members of Eliza’s security team quickly moved outside while Thug stayed behind with the almost comatose Eliza.
“Captain,” Allyson started, bypassing formality and giving the man a hug. “I’m glad to see you but why . . .” She looked down the drive and saw a number of military vehicles sitting in the driveway.
“I’m sorry things had to go like this. First, I thought you should know that we found out why Ms. Adams was abducted. It appears that one of the new and “more trustworthy” officials that were sent to Fort Crass after you were fired was working for the enemy. It seems that your departure was something that the Purity had been hoping for. We discovered his identity, but not until after he had informed HIS superiors that Veronica was in Washington with some sort of information as to how the remaining jewels could be located. That’s why they made their play.”
“Damn it! If she hadn’t been there that day . . .” Dennis started.
“She’s a part of this,” his wife pointed out. “She’s part of what’s going on in the world, this group and, more importantly, she’s part of Eliza.”
“How’s she holding up?” the Captain asked.
“Barely,” Allyson whispered. “She had so much fury at first. But recently . . .” She glanced over at Kelik, who just nodded. “You know that she and Veronica had become close?” The Captain nodded. “Apparently it’s deeper than that. It’s something vampires call ‘linking.'”
“It’s rare at best. It’s rarer between same sex couples, and a link between different species is unprecedented,” Kelik said. “They share memories . . . dreams . . . and, unfortunately, they apparently can share pain. I believe Ms. Adams is being tortured, and Eliza is feeling it.”
The Captain blanched. “Then we don’t have much time to waste.”
“Time for what?” Dennis asked.
“To rescue Ms. Adams.”
“What?!?” Allyson was caught between outrage and surprise. “You said . . .”