6 weeks ago

I looked at my fingers.  They were fraying.  Not in the human sense of the word, but magical.  I could see the thinness of my skin, feel how the fibers of my being struggled, see how close it all was to falling apart.

I could barely take in energy anymore.  I probably had two months left, max.  It’s strange, knowing you’re dying with no one else around to see or care.  It’s a strange sense of invisibility, different from what I’d known all my life – that invisibility which came from being a virtual hermit and only popping out every now and then to see the world and remember what the sky looked like.  No, this invisibility came from the realization that soon I’d be gone, forgotten, and even now no one saw me.

I was already gone to most of the world, even while I slowly plodded on, not really sure where I was even going anymore.  This train went somewhere.  Maybe wherever the destination was, I would find some energy that tasted okay again.  Just a little.  Just enough to survive another day.

Or maybe I’d disappear along the way, no one even noticing that one less passenger got off the train than got on.  It was hard to know whether I’d even make it to the destination.

But at least I had to try.

~~~~

3 days ago

I was in an airport, trying to enjoy the energy that comes with the bustle of that many people in one place but it all just felt…blank.  Only the thinnest hints of energy were getting through to me anymore.  It wouldn’t be long now.

With dead eyes, I lifted my heavy head to watch the TV.  The news was on, talking about – talking about another disappearance, it looked like.  Someone from Retherwood, but visiting Avenglade, which was new – before now, they’d all been taken from places they lived or worked, not visited.  Also, this was the third overall from Avenglade, that seemed like a bad sign.  Or good, for the police, I guess.  Because it probably meant Avenglade was the location of the perpetrator.

I watched, barely managing to summon interest as the newscaster talked about the disappearance of a lady involved in building a new operating system that some people thought would challenge the big ones.  She’d come for some big event right before the official drop of their operating system and, like the others, just stopped in the middle of what she was doing, walked out, and was never seen again.  The new station was asking if anyone had leads, please call the number.

If I’d had the energy, I would have snorted.  These people were big energy providers to techno vampires yet they were being unlucky enough to be snapped out of their lives and made to completely disappear without a trace.  You’d think with all their energy output that their luck from any techno vampires would have helped them prevent this.

My eyes widened as it hit me.  My brain was slower than normal, but it still worked – and it finally saw the last piece of the puzzle.

Luck.

I knew why this was happening.

I needed to warn them.

I could call them, but…something in me wanted to see him.  Some part of wanted to see the only friend I had one last time instead of disappearing alone, forgotten.

I was too tired at this point to really resist, even though I knew that physically getting there would be difficult enough.  I needed to focus on the why for this visit if I was going to make it – not just to see Sorrel one last time, but to save someone who didn’t deserve the life they were getting.

I might not know any techno vampires personally and I might use up the last of my energy to even get to Avenglade, but I had to try to help.  I had to save the techno vampire.

~~~~

Present Day

I slowly climbed out of the bus, trying not to stumble on the last step.  I had a plain colorless coat wrapped around me, probably a little weird to others since the weather was getting warmer now.  I didn’t look like myself.  Shapeless unremarkable shirt, nothing interesting about it.  Plain, boring pants, nothing to draw the eye.  Sneakers, something I never wore.  My hair was its natural color, a boring light brown, tied back in what amounted to a tangled mess.  I’d probably have to cut it to get it out.

Plain, boring, completely uninteresting to the eye.  I dressed like what I felt, and I felt – nothing.  There was nothing left to feel.

I almost dragged myself into the vet clinic.  For some reason, I’d decided I needed to see Sorrel instead of Captain Dennis.  Captain Dennis did respect me, he’d probably listen, but…maybe I just wanted to see a friendly face one last time.  I didn’t know.  I couldn’t really think through things anymore.  All I knew is that my mind was set on talking to Sorrel, not Captain Dennis, so here I was, looking half dead and feeling almost all dead, slowly walking through the doors of that vet clinic one last time.

The receptionist this time was a young man, and he looked up brightly, but paused when he saw how I looked.  I no doubt appeared semi-homeless, maybe he was concerned that such a person was walking into the place.  Or maybe he just thought I was about to pass out and was at the wrong place.

“Um, hi, can I help you?”  He asked tentatively.  “Do you, uh, need me to call someone for you?”

I didn’t answer, instead reaching for a pen and one of Sorrel’s business cards.  I wrote something on the back of the card, then handed it to the confused receptionist.  “Can you give that to the vet, please?”  My voice was quiet, fading, lackluster.

He glanced down at it, hesitated, and then gave me a nod and hopped up to run to the back.

I sank down into one of the empty seats and tilted my head back, but didn’t close my eyes.  I was afraid to close them, afraid that when I did, the last of my energy would be released.

I couldn’t let that happen yet.  I had to talk to Sorrel first.

Hurried footsteps sounded in the hall and Sorrel burst through the door, his eyes searching the room.  I was the only one in there, other than him and the receptionist – who’d followed him back – so it wasn’t like there was any other option.  I didn’t need to see his face to know that he was shocked by what he saw – more so than either of the times he’d seen me over three years ago now.

“Claire?!”  He rushed towards me.  “You – you’re here!  You look awful, what’s wrong?”

“Thanks,” I mumbled as he placed his hand on my forehead, “you look great, too.”

It dawned on him a second later that he shouldn’t have touched me, but my lack of response – compared to completely flipping out three years ago – made him pause.

“Are you sick?”  He demanded.  “Come on, let me take you to my dad.  Do you mind if I help you?”

I probably should have minded, but at this point I wasn’t sure how much energy I had left, so conserving as much as I could was probably a good idea.

“Fine, but…I’m here about the case.”

“Okay, we can talk about that, but you need help first.”  He turned to the receptionist.  “Benji, we’re closing early – emergency.  Call the later appointments and let them know.”

Sorrel turned back to me and carefully helped me to my feet.  I think he wanted to just pick me up when he saw how sluggish I was, but instead he held onto my arm and offered as much strength as he could as he led me to his car.

I sank into the passenger seat and tried to focus on what I needed to say as he started the car and almost gunned it out of the parking lot.

“I know – I know what’s going on,” I said.  I needed to get this out, needed to make sure he knew while there was still time.

I didn’t know how much time I had left.  I couldn’t wait until we got to his dad – who couldn’t stop what was coming anyway.

His face was pinched with worry.  “That’s – we’ll deal with that later, you look like you’re about to pass out.  Try to rest a little while I drive.”

Not pass out, die.  That’s why I had to say this now.

So I ignored him.  “You’re looking for someone who’s after techno vampire luck.”  That got a startled look out of him.  “But…we can’t control who the luck goes to.  The ones who are most likely to get it are the big producers, like the victims.  It’s like – like a wave.  It comes to us, and the backwash is more likely to catch some luck than other random people.  Then it feeds in a cycle – they become luckier, they produce more energy, they’re more likely to get luck, and so on.”

I slid my hands into my pockets, searching for the last bit of body heat.  “The energy here is weird and – I think I know why.  I think someone is preventing a techno vampire from feeding, forcing them to essentially hold in their luck.  That someone then finds the perfect target, someone who’s likely to get a lot of luck.  Only then do they allow the vampire to feed, and the sudden binging of energy results in a large amount of luck being poured out – a lot to the energy provider.  But before it can reach them, the energy provider is killed, so it finds the next nearest person to where the energy provider had been a moment before – the one responsible for all of this.  The techno vampire wouldn’t go without eating willingly, not for years like this.  They’re – they’re probably being held against their will.  At best, tricked, but I think it’s more likely imprisoned.”

My eyes were feeling drowsy, but I forced myself to keep them open.  “I don’t know who is using the luck or what for, but the energy patterns in this city – it makes sense.  And these victims, they’re of interest to techno vampires but not really anyone else.  The only thing that really fits all the pieces is someone hunting techno vampire luck.”

Sorrel pulled into a driveway of a beautiful house that looked like it had dozens of windows, with a greenhouse out back and a fancy garden.  It wasn’t my aesthetic, but it was beautiful.

I guess if I was going to die somewhere, this was a nice place to do it.

Sorrel came to my side almost before I had unbuckled and this time didn’t ask for permission before picking me up.  Maybe he saw how my energy was slowly ebbing away, or maybe he was just in a hurry.  It didn’t really matter – I probably didn’t have enough to get inside, anyway.

“Dad!”  Sorrel called as he entered the building.  Flowers, here.  Lots of them.  Looked like a shop, I guess.  But Sorrel went past that, through an archway into another room.  This must be the clinic he mentioned, the one his dad ran.  It was partitioned off into small rooms, but the walls of each room were made up of living tree trunks rather than the more traditional dividers.

Sorrel gently placed me on the bed in one of the rooms and then turned to probably go find someone when he nearly ran into another man, one who looked similar to him, but older – ageless, almost.

“Dad,” Sorrel motioned to me, his face now looking almost scared more than simple worried, “help, please.  She’s looking really bad.”

Sorrel’s dad sat down on a stool next to the bed.  “I’m Adair.  Do you know what’s wrong with you?”  He made to listen to my heart with this stethoscope and I didn’t need to see his face to know what he heard.

My heart was moving very, very slowly.

“Genetic defect,” I said faintly.  “Techno vampires are a race that never should exist.  We all – we don’t live long.  50 years, on average.  I’m 62, I’m old for a techno vampire.”

Sorrel, standing by the foot of the bed, was frozen, horrified light dawning in his eyes.

But I continued.  “At some point, the energy we need – it turns on us.  We start…we start to feel too much and lose our minds, or feel too little and lose ourselves.  The end result is the same, we begin to lose the ability to feed on energy.  When that starts, the clock starts ticking.  There’s no stopping it, no turning it back.”  I sighed deeply as if somehow my lungs even cared about air anymore.  “It started for me about 14 months ago.”

“When you stopped contacting me,” Sorrel whispered.

I gave a tired nod, then looked at his dad’s grim face.

“You can’t fix me,” I murmured.  “There’s nothing to do.  We’re like – like butterflies.  We live short lives, loud, vibrant lives because we know they’re short.  But we fade, and there’s nothing to do about it.  It’s the life of techno vampire – short, sweet, bitter.

“That’s why,” my eyes roamed back to Sorrel, “I need to ask a favor.  Somewhere out there is a techno vampire being held prisoner.  Please – please promise me you’ll free them.  They don’t deserve to spend their short life in captivity.  You’ll need…need to find another techno vampire who can stay here a while, feel for the energy binge that happens when they’re allowed to eat.  When they feel it, they can find them.  It’ll likely be a while, since a victim was just taken, and,” my eyes darkened a bit, “I don’t know how to find them without another human being taken, but please.  Please promise me you’ll find them and free them.”

It was a lot to ask of him, but I did know one thing – Sorrel had a squishy center.  He wouldn’t want someone to be suffering in captivity if he knew about it.

Sorrels hands gripped the end of the bed tightly, his knuckles turning white as he stared down at my feet for a moment before looking up at me.  “I – I promise.  But…you can’t do it, can you?  You can’t be the one to stay and find them?”

I managed to get out a tired shake of my head.

“How long do you have?”  Sorrel’s dad asked quietly, his face a mixture of compassion and sorrow.

Could I lie, to spare Sorrel the pain?  Could I convince him to leave me here, go find the techno vampire, unaware that I wouldn’t be here when he got back?

“Days, at best,” I answered, my voice falling even softer.

Sorrel’s dad nodded, but his sharp eyes were fixed on my face.  “And at worst?”

I paused.  “Minutes.”

That wasn’t the answer Sorrel wanted.  I could see the pain and frustration in his eyes, the confusion in the way he hunched his shoulders.

“I wanted to spare you this,” I told him.  “I didn’t want you to know.  You…signed up to help me have a friend.  Not to lose one.  That’s why…why I stopped responding once I knew.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut, and while I didn’t see any wetness, I got the impression he was trying to hold back tears.

Then he came over and sat on the edge of the bed, taking my hand.  “I can’t regret it,” he told me, looking into my eyes.  “I didn’t want you to be alone, Claire.  And I think it’s most important to be with someone – with people who care – at a moment like this.”

I smiled at him with the last bit of energy I possessed.  “Thank you, Sorrel.  You’ve been a good friend.”

And then I closed my eyes for the last time.