Immortal Memory (Iris' Atlantis 1)

Timothy: Mysteries

I detached the needle with a hurried, impatient tug.

Yet I was late. The bag above my head had completely emptied itself into my circulation.

Stump was still smiling jovially, quite pleased with his little trick.

"Where are we?" I asked. Instinctively, I was pressing my wrist. The right one. My writing hand was quite safe. Yet I wondered about Stump's riddle.

Whose blood had been in the bag? What had I injected myself with? What was the stuff inside?

"Yes, indeed. Where are we?" He raised an eyebrow at me. "Nice to see you too, by the way."

I felt bewildered. I had drained him of blood. I remembered the tube, not unlike the one that had connected my wrist a moment ago. I remembered the taste. His closed eyes. The moment he had been gone, an aura becoming still and dispersing into the empty air.

"Oh. Just go and drop, won't you? You're impossible to talk to otherwise. And I don't have most of the answers."

I didn't drop. I stared. I was having a conversation with a ghost. But no... no...

I drew in a breath. Cleared my thoughts.

"That's it, son."

Stump had a presence. He was unlike the empty apparition in the Shatter Glass boutique. I took his hand again, feeling the papery skin and bulging veins beneath it. All my senses actually told me he was well and alive.

Unlike myself. As my head cleared, my heart stopped hammering against my ears. Soon it beat so slowly it wouldn't have kept me alive in a deep coma. I had a vampire's heart.

I looked around myself again.

Every detail was like it had been in the Queen's private chamber on the evening of my third dose of her blood. Even the fingerprint on a window pane to my right was the same. I had accidentally sought support from the glass, just before I had settled onto the couch. It was visible, not because of my own grease and sweat, but because I had just matched downstairs with a human link...

Some three years ago, I admitted to myself and rose from the couch. I walked to the table where an hourglass had run its course. I flipped it over and watched the sand stream reach for the lower cup.

I remembered Stump's death, because I had been the one to precipitate it. And I...

I grimaced.

"I am dead?" I tried out. "Or in some kind of a Limbo? Between life and death?"

Stump shrugged.

"We are," he said. It was a statement. It didn't clarify a location for our existence. Just that we existed in the first place.

"Is Mathew here?" I asked suddenly.

"Mathew?" Stump massaged his temple in thought. "Mmm...? A man with a beard like that of Santa Claus?"

I nodded. My heart raced. A pulse beat in me with my agitation.

"No. He went."

Relief washed through me. The heart that had been galloping became drowsy to reflect the change in my moods. I didn't feel it in my chest anymore and briefly wondered if it had finally stopped.

"Went where?"

Stump shook his head. There was a smile on his lips.

"If you cannot answer that, life has made you a simpleton."