Collide (31 page)

“Does this have to do with the personal
mission you mentioned?” Dellar asked, “because I would like to hear
more about that.”

“I think,” I said slowly, my mind busy trying
to puzzle things out, “that Akira should start, then Maria and
Dellar follow after. And I want to hear about what you were doing
out in the woods with the . . . with the
Oni
, Maria.”

Akira looked at me and dropped his eyes to my
hands. I hadn’t realized that I had started scratching until I saw
the direction of his gaze and I clenched my hands together to stop
the tell tell movement. I felt a little better about the gas
station incident, and knowing I was going to have to talk to a
counselor about the attack in the woods helped even more. Still,
even thinking the word “
Oni
” sent my heart rate into
overdrive and ripping my fingers to pieces was the least of my
concerns when I was worried I was about to keel over from a heart
attack.

I came out of my musing when everyone agreed
with my earlier suggestion, and Akira proceeded to tell them the
same story that he had told me regarding his brother, the
Gaki
, and how he was now on a mission to hunt down said
being before it changed bodies again and he lost track of it.

“He eats souls?” Maria asked when Akira
finished, her face pale. “B-but, if that’s what attacked me, why am
I still here?”

“I remember you mentioning that your attacker
said something about your soul being too strong, yes?” Akira
asked.

“Yeah,” Maria said slowly. “I don’t remember
much, but I do remember hearing those words muttered when my
attacker bent over me to do . . . something. Cut my neck or
something, I remember a knife and then things kind of blank out
until Dellar shows up.”

“What I think happened is that you fought the
Gaki and fought hard physically and psychically. It wouldn’t
surprise me at all if you dug around in your family history and
found some kind of practitioner of the Arcane Arts in your
background, whether it’s a Shaman or a simple herbal witch, there’s
a strong possibility that you have dormant abilities that reacted
instinctively when the Gaki tried to steal your soul and protected
it. Actually, all humans have these abilities, but because they’re
latent, they’re not as strong as if you were actively using them
the way a practicing witch would, so the result is that he only got
part of your soul. He was most likely trying to bring you as close
to death as possible without you actually crossing over, which
would have meant that he lost your soul completely. When your body
is weak, so are any psychic abilities that you may have. He had
probably given up on taking your body at that point, since it would
be too weak to support a possession after the trauma.”

“If he didn’t get her soul, then why the
blank outs?” I asked.

“Because part of her soul is existing outside
of her body right now. That’s the part that the
Gaki
consumed. She’s effectively split between two bodies, her own and
the
Gaki’s
. This is both a good and bad thing. It’s good
because it’s incomplete, so the
Gaki
will be unable to, er,
digest it and, if we’re able, we can call it back and return it to
Maria so she’ll be whole again. The bad thing is that the
Gaki
can most likely control her from where ever it is by
using that to link to Maria’s other half and control her body, see
what she sees, etc. Which would explain the mood swings and the
unnatural behavior, not to mention the memory lapses that Jane told
me about a little while ago. This would also explain your
increasing fatigue. The more the
Gaki
uses the half that it
has, the more it pulls on you, the greater chance it has of fully
claiming it and leaving nothing but an empty husk behind.”

I twitched, and Akira shot me an apologetic
look. “Well, that’s nice and blunt,” I commented caustically and
ground my teeth in frustration.

“I prefer it that way,” Maria said calmly,
“And I think you’re right that it can see and hear the same things
that I do. I think I can feel it when it takes over, because for a
few seconds before I blank out I’ll suddenly feel extremely hungry,
which is odd since I’m no longer living.”

“No, but you’re not exactly dead, either,”
Akira countered. “You’re existing in some form of half life, which
I can only guess is because of those latent abilities I mentioned,
and perhaps Dellar’s presence at the time of your ‘death’. But an
overwhelming hunger fits with the hungry ghost description of a
Gaki
, and it makes sense that you would pick up on that when
it takes control.”

Akira turned to the vampire that had been
quiet through the entire exchange, and I sat up straighter when I
realized that questions I had been sitting on would finally,
hopefully, be answered.

“What happened that night?” Akira asked.

Dellar was silent for a moment, sighed and
said, “I was out combing the woods to see if I could run across any
fresh deer carcasses. It had been a few weeks since I last fed, and
while I really do like this area it lacks the violent crimes that a
vampire like me tend to rely on in order to survive. We resort to
animals if we have to in order to get by, but human dead is what
provides us what we need most. Anyway, I heard noises, scuffling
and a muffled cry. I followed the noise, but they were further off
than I had originally thought due to the sounds being distorted by
the pond. By the time I got there, Maria was on the ground and the
Gaki
had bent over her and was slicing into her neck. The
blood was thick in the air and made my stomach churn.”

I raised an eyebrow. A vampire who got
nauseous at the scent of blood? But then I reminded myself that it
had been Maria’s living blood he had smelled, which made some
strange sort of sense but made me feel sick to my own stomach
thinking about it at the same time.

“I couldn’t stop what the man, the
Gaki
had done,” Dellar corrected himself, “But I could at
least keep him from defiling her any more than he already had. I
knew there was something very wrong with him, he was a paranormal
and wasn’t just a danger to her life, so I made my presence known.
I was shocked when he immediately stopped what he was doing once he
looked at me and ran off.”

“This
Gaki
is pretty old,” Akira said,
and his hands clenched. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew just
exactly what you are, and knew it didn’t stand a chance. It’s
survived this long being cunning and not stupid.”

“Why does it matter if Dellar is a vampire or
not?” I asked.

“This
Gaki
eats
human
souls,”
Akira explained, “And Dellar here has a very vampire soul, and yes,
there is a huge difference. If it had tried to consume Dellar’s
soul, it probably would have died, or at least had some severe
complications from it.”

“Wait,” I said. “If a vampire has a vampire
soul, wouldn’t your brother have had a
tengu
soul?”

“No, because Hajime was adopted by my family
when his parents were murdered in their forest. He was studying to
be a Shinto Priest, which was another reason we went to that
temple. If only I had been more alert.”

That last part Akira muttered under his
breath, but I was close enough to catch it and the bitterness that
laced his words. I wanted to at least help ease the pain a little,
or share it, I don’t know, but I reached out and took his hand. His
fingers squeezed slightly, then he shifted his hand a little so
that he could lace his fingers through mine. His fingers tightened
again, and for a moment it felt like I was his anchor as he brought
himself back from his painful memories.

“What happened next?” I asked to give Akira
more time to come back from his dark thoughts while getting more
answers.

“I knew Maria was dying, there was too much
blood for me to have been able to either move her or run for help.
She was incoherent, had been screaming but had stopped, and I knew
she was getting weaker. I’ll be honest, I don’t know why I did what
I did, but I sat down next to her and held her hand. She watched me
the whole time, talked a little about you, Jane, when she could get
the strength to speak, and told me some of what she had wanted to
do beyond high school. I thought to myself that it was a waste of a
life to be snuffed out like that when there were human monsters
that deserved that fate more than she did.”

“I don’t remember much about it,” Maria said
when Dellar lapsed into his own dark thoughts. “I vaguely remember
seeing Dellar standing over me and I recognized that he was another
predator, but I had no idea just what he was. I remember him taking
my hand, but the rest of it is all foggy and fuzzy.”

“That was the first time that I ever made a
wish at the same time that I fed off someone,” Dellar said, his
voice distant. “Her heart had completely stopped before I bit her,
so I was shocked when five minutes after she died she opened her
eyes and sat up. She was completely disoriented, no idea what had
happened, what was going on and her neck wound had healed. I didn’t
know what to do, I couldn’t leave her to wander around the woods in
that state and I didn’t understand just what she had become, but I
took her to the studio apartment I’m renting on the edge of town.
After about four days passed she seemed to fully return to
herself.”

“I really freaked out when I found myself in
a stranger’s apartment. It took Dellar the better part of two hours
to get me calmed down enough to realize that he was going to let me
walk out. I thought he was some kind of deranged kidnapper. Once a
few memories came back and I realized he wasn’t going to hurt me, I
thanked him for saving my life. That’s when he dropped the
bombshell that a) he wasn’t human, b) he was a vampire who drank
the blood of the dead and c) he hadn’t actually saved my life. He
told me that he really had no idea why I was still walking around
since he had been able to drink from me without any problems, which
wouldn’t have been the case had I still been alive. I didn’t
believe him until he had me look for my heart beat. When I wasn’t
able to find it, I fell apart. I threw so many things and cried so
much that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the cops had showed up.
He stayed with me the whole time, let me throw and break things and
cry. After about twenty-four hours I realized that I couldn’t
change what was done and I told myself to suck it up and move
forward. I honestly don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t
been there those first few days. I was completely lost, I didn’t
know what I was, what had happened and there wasn’t anyone else I
could talk to about it. I wanted to tell you, Jane, but I just
didn’t know how, and then you started talking about mood changes
and blanking out, and I had no idea what you were talking about and
that scared me even more. That’s when I pushed you away, I just
didn’t know how to tell you what was happening. I had no answers,
Dellar had no answers, it was all just so messed up.”

Dellar had kept his eyes on Maria the entire
time she talked, offering her his strength and support as she
choked her way through some of the more difficult parts of her
story, and it was at that moment that I fully realized just how
much he cared for her, and her him. It was odd to me, because I
didn’t know the full history and I felt that there was more to
Maria’s story that she didn’t want to talk about, at least not in
front of Akira, but I knew that the attraction was mutual. And it
was attraction, there was a glow around her as she spoke about him,
and when she looked at him her face softened into a smile. I
promised myself at that moment that I would try to be nicer to the
pale man for Maria’s sake, even if I did think that he was a
judgmental prick. But Maria cared a lot for him, it shone out of
her eyes for the world to see, and once Maria set her heart on
something, nothing would sway it.

“Ok, so we know what happened and we know
that we need to stop this
Gaki
and get the other half of
Maria’s soul back. Easy. Right. Is that what you were doing in the
woods the other night with the
Oni
?” I asked, unable to
prevent a shudder as my stomach lurched in remembrance. Akira’s
fingers tightened again on my hand, and I squeezed back in
thanks.

Maria exchanged a look with Dellar and
nodded. “We had decided that since it had attacked me once, it
would try to go for me again. We didn’t know what it was at the
time, but Dellar figured that it hadn’t gotten whatever it was
after, and we hoped that if I were out and vulnerable in the area
where it had attacked me the first time, it would be tempted to
come after me again. Dellar was going to stay in the background and
attack when it went after me, but the . . .
Oni
? Got to us
first. He knocked Dellar out and grabbed me, and before I could do
anything, I felt that rush of hunger right before I became unaware
of everything, until I returned to myself to find you fighting him
off. Thank you for that, Jane.”

“Yeah, well,” I said and waved my free hand
in the air as I cleared my throat. “Akira actually took him out. I
just provided a distraction.”

“No, you saved me, Warrior Lady, and I’ll
never forget it.”

“Well, you’re my best friend. I wasn’t about
to let that asshole touch you the way he touched,” I broke off and
started to cough, but I was too late, Maria had caught my fumble
and narrowed her eyes at me.

“You already knew him?” she asked
suspiciously, and I mumbled something and turned my face away.
Maria had always been quick to pick up my moods, so she didn’t
press the matter but I knew from the look on her face that we’d be
revisiting this discussion again sometime soon. Great.

“Now what?” Dellar asked after the room had
lapsed into silence for a few moments.