Entwined, page 17
Cameron gazed at beings of all shapes and sizes, genders, in all manner of dress that filled the hall. In the back of his mind the Bowie song, “As the World Falls Down,” was on repeat. Nathen had turned to talk to others at the table. He appeared so happy, and more comfortable than Cameron had ever seen him, in fact. Social! The usual state of anxiety that plagued Nathen, one that Cameron had to mentally massage, had disappeared. Nathen belonged here, but Cameron didn’t. And I never will. How could he be in a place where he couldn’t even read the minds or emotions of those around him?
Cameron had spent every waking moment since he was thirteen staving off other people’s minds. Something’s different. I can tune them out without much effort. But for how long? And it was a good thing too! The images and thoughts floating across his mind from the fae were discordant, like the rambling of a madman—though Cameron had spent time with the insane, and this was worse.
Two huge hands began kneading his shoulders and he whipped around to be met with August’s mouth on his and once again, floating…weightless. When August pulled away, he had an apologetic boyish smile. “Sorry. You were looking a little tense.”
Cameron swallowed hard, letting out a deep sigh that marked his agreement. “It’s so hard. I can’t understand anyone. This must be how Nathen feels all the time.”
“You mean, autism?” he asked, swinging a leg over the bench to sit beside him. August picked up a turkey leg and bit into it, his eyes fluttering closed with ecstasy.
“Yeah. He’s blind to emotions and cues from others. I’ve always been open to them. So, I’m kinda losing my mind here. But he seems to be right at home.”
“He sure does, doesn’t he? Man, you should really try the food here. I mean, hell, we’ve given up part of our souls for all this, huh? Might as well enjoy it?”
Cameron looked at August with his meat, Nathen with his tea, and shook his head. No part of him was hungry. And even though everything smelled good, and he had no doubt it was delicious, he also didn’t trust these people or their food.
“Suit yourself. I’m gonna go see if I can’t get closer to Dara. Maybe…ask her to go on a date or something. I’ve been wondering if fae date at all.” He snorted and edged out of the seat to head in Dara’s direction but not before grabbing Cameron’s chin and giving him a quick kiss, his tongue flipping against Cameron’s, causing a jolt of pleasure to course through him, then gone.
Nathen laughed with the revelers, lifting his goblet into the air, exclaiming, “Long life!” Others followed suit, and laughter broke out all around.
“Dance with me?” Cameron bolted upright when a voice invaded his consciousness. His breath hitched when he saw himself standing casually against a pillar. His alter persona seemed older with a full head of hair and neatly kept beard. The man, who he knew intrinsically was him, waved. “Please? You’re scared and know you need me. I’ll cloak you, but we should talk.”
Cameron glanced at Nathen, who was grinning and engaging in a ridiculous conversation about the meaning and duality of life with a two-headed individual, the left side with what appeared to be the body of a man and the right side that of a well-endowed woman. He slipped off the bench and wasn’t surprised when Nathen didn’t notice his departure, though he was surprised when Nathen seemed to continue to include him in the conversation. Mentally, he saw himself through Nathen’s eyes sitting next to him with no awareness at all he was no longer there.
His much more powerful twin smirked and pushed away from the pillar, holding out his hand. Reaching out mentally, he probed and bounced off, as if hitting a firm but springy wall. Grudgingly, he accepted the man’s hand.
“Cameron, don’t. You’re going to make your nose bleed, and if you continue, you know you’ll get a headache. Save yourself the bother. You’re not stronger than me.” He allowed himself to be pulled into his duplicate’s embrace, skin prickling with both the intimate familiarity and incredible alien sensation.
“Call me Aaron. We’ll carry many names in our lifetimes, but I’ve always liked the one our mom gave us. Before you ask, there is a lot I cannot tell you. The fact is there are rules. Heh, but rules were meant to be bent, twisted, changed, manipulated… And you will become a master of finding those loopholes. Like you did earlier.” He glanced at the now vacant dais.
Cameron followed Aaron’s lead, studying his face as they glided around the room. He was a little older, but not by much—features only a little more filled out. Perhaps it was the short, neat beard. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Cameron choked, tears escaping at his admission.
Aaron kept moving but pulled Cameron tighter against him. “Oh hon, I know you do. I went through it too. That’s why I’m here. It’s totally against the rules, by the way. Once you get freer run of Sanctuary, you’ll learn you can visit any time in the multiverse physically, but you’re only allowed one physical body at a time. You’re able to visit mentally in dreams, but you have no control over the world that way. And by the nature of dreams, you’ll often lose track of much of the information you glean. You can never exist in the same place at the same time. Them are the rules. But…no one ever said anything about astral projection. So, while I’m not able to physically be here now because you are physically here and would lead to some pretty terrible things like trying to tear each other apart, I am able to project my mind here, and you will be able to someday as well. There aren’t many out there with mind abilities like we have. And between August and Nathen’s blood, rituals you’ll learn from Mom and August and some of the other mages…well, let’s just say you’ll get much stronger than you currently are. And those little headaches you get when exerting yourself? You’ll figure out how to get rid of those quickly too.”
Cameron clung to his older self. “How can you stand it here? How can you influence these people?”
“Oh, that will come with time. You’ll learn by practicing with Nathen. His mind works like theirs. Let me put it this way. As a psychologist, we get how his mind works. And also the minds of people with psychosis. But take the average person on the street and ask them how the mind of someone with psychosis or autism works, and they wouldn’t be able to tell you at all. Then, explain it to them, and help them to understand. Then they get it. For you, it’ll take some time, and you’ll never be able to fully understand the intricacies, but you’ll be able to navigate it and ultimately influence them like you can most humans.”
“So, Nathen and I are together in the future?” Cameron asked, embarrassed his tone sounded like begging.
Aaron thought for a moment and nodded. “You don’t need to worry about the future, hon. You’ve got a brilliant future. Some of it will be difficult, some heart-wrenching, but there’s also a lot of joy too. You’ve been depressed for far too long. It’s a comfortable sadness I know wasn’t alleviated when Mom came back into our lives. You spend your days unconsciously waiting for those you love to leave. You need to stop it. So, yeah, let me break that rule and tell you that you needn’t worry about Nathen leaving. He’ll never leave you. But that’s all I’m going to say on the topic.”
Cameron took a jagged breath. “Thank you.” He swiped at his wet cheeks with the back of his hand.
“You’re very welcome,” Aaron said, kissing Cameron’s head. “I only came to give you the message that people come and go, live and die, grow and stagnate. It’s really up to you which route you want to take. But if you continue to always live your life in fear, you’re always going to have something to regret. Oh! Yeah, do not eat the carnitas! I know they smell really good, but to compare the memory of the ideal food that surpasses all food that could ever exist with Mom’s home cooking and to find Mom’s cooking pales in comparison…well, that’ll leave you with some regrets!”
Aaron chuckled as he came to a stop beside their table and released Cameron. “I’m pretty sure we won’t see each other again. And there’s no need for us to. Life is a highway…heh…or a guy with a great dick.” As he faded, he hummed a familiar tune about riding something all night long.
Chapter Twenty-Four
NATHEN
Nathen twisted with a start. He hadn’t seen Cameron stand, but suddenly he was behind him, laughing. He seemed lighter somehow.
Cameron held out a hand, smiling broadly, “Dance with me?”
“Sure!” Nathen jumped up happily and took his hand before following to the center of the round disc they had floated on earlier. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself! Did you have some wine? Everyone here is really fascinating and nice. Well, at least the two I’ve spoken to so far. They were called Anthropos, perfect embodiments of the masculine and feminine. Fully human in one body because each sex is complimentary to the other.”
Nathen became lost in thought, creating new connections to images and ideas, which blazed new pathways, new roads for him to explore. He hugged Cameron as they were dancing and whispered, “Thank you for saying yes. I couldn’t stand to lose you.” He buried his head on Cameron’s shoulder and relaxed into him while they danced to a Norse-themed song being played by skilled musicians on either side of the room that spread out into infinity.
“My place is by your side. I don’t know where the future lies or what our journey will be, but I know we’ll be together.” He placed a soft kiss on Nathen’s temple. “I know you’re having fun talking philosophy with these people, but did you learn anything about the arachnoid or anything that will help us in the upcoming battle?”
Nathen shook his head. “Not much. Only they won’t be able to hurt us directly, and we are to take a leading role. We can get information, help create the army, but we can’t fight them directly, nor they us. Also, they believe they have been wronged and cheated: that humans are their rightful resource to do with as they wish, as is the land and its animals. Though not all of them feel that way. There are some here that don’t want to be a part of the kingdom they’re building. But because they’re kin, they won’t help fight them, nor hinder the fight. It’s up to us to push them back or stop them.”
They continued to dance, embraced for a while longer before Dara interrupted them. “You are free to stay here while we celebrate. Or if you wish to go back, you can touch the corporeal side of the disc.”
Nathen asked, “Okay, how do we contact you?”
Dara smiled softly. “The same way you did when we first met. In your dreams.”
Nathen considered, then said, “I wish we can stay longer, but we do need to go back; otherwise, I’ll get lost here. There’s just so much to learn.”
Dara inclined her head to them and departed back to the table with August.
They slowly danced, and Nathen reveled in the splendor of it all. As they passed over the disc, Nathen nodded to Cameron and the two of them reached out and brushed their hands against the side and fell into blackness again, snapping into the conscious awareness of being hit by streams of hot water. Nathen giggled as he was in the afterglow of orgasmic release.
Nathen pulled out slowly and turned Cameron to face him, gazing into his sapphire eyes. Cameron was trembling and hurriedly ducked out of the shower, working on quickly toweling off.
A sense of wrongness tickled through him—a disconnect that Nathen couldn’t verbalize until now, having experienced it’s opposite only a moment ago. There were fleeting moments when he enjoyed freedom like that with Cameron, but they were only that, ephemeral, the rapture of love, heartbreak, the pleasure of orgasm and pain of penetration. He got lost in his own mind, before realizing Cameron radiated instability, and he quickly followed him out of the room. “Are you okay?”
A quick shake of the head answered Nathen’s question as Cameron pulled on the clothes August had left for them. “I’m not really sure what to think right now.”
Confused, Nathen asked, “What do you mean? We’re to work and help your mother and our friends to fight off the spider fae…”
“Not about that. About…” His eyes darted to the bathroom behind Nathen. “Never mind. It’s fine. I’m fine. We should go find August.”
Nathen hesitated. “No, there’s something wrong. What’s going on? Please tell me?”
Cameron shook his head. “I don’t…” He slowly lowered onto the bed before chancing a glance up at Nathen and then back at his wrist, which he ran a thumb over. “There’s just so much to think about. We were dragged to another realm by a group of beings whose summoning was a way of making me so insane with desire that I begged you to…” Cameron shook his head. “Just trying to figure everything out. What all this means.”
Nathen sat next to him. “Why does it have to mean anything? If life is a drama, we just play our roles. For the fun of it, the game of being alive, the heartache, the love, the pleasure, the pain. We are doing it all to ourselves. And maybe it’s hard to deal with. All the horrors and the beauty of life. When we watch movies that scare us, we secretly enjoy it because we know it’s not real. Could you still enjoy life knowing what you know now, even with all the evil that takes place in it?”
An ironic smile tugged at the corner of Cameron’s mouth. “Apparently, I can and will enjoy life for many years to come. I really enjoyed being with you. It’s just I don’t think I would have ever done that if I hadn’t been under the influence of the fae’s summoning thing. That was the most intense experience of my life.”
Cameron rolled into Nathen, pushing him back on the bed so he could rest his head atop his shoulder and curl next to him, mirroring the position they had taken in the fae realm.
Nathen agreed. “I think we’ll have an interesting time together. It’s been two weeks, and we just came back from… Well, I am not exactly sure where. But I don’t think many people have visited it while they are still live, or undead, as the case may be.” After a while in silence, he asked gently, “Should we go talk with August?”
Reluctantly, Cameron pulled away. “Yeah. Of course.”
They found August in the first-floor apartment. “Oh, hey, guys.” He offered a lopsided grin.
Cameron slid onto the couch and sat with one leg tucked under him, and Nathen joined him. “So, what now?” Cameron asked.
August laughed heartily. “What now, indeed! I guess we could start with telling Paige we were just in faery, or we could not—she probably won’t believe either way—and just, well, start looking for the spiders?”
“Did you learn anything other than we’re now tied to that place forever?” Cameron asked, leaning forward.
Nathen instinctively reached over and caressed Cameron’s back and was rewarded by a weary smile—Cameron’s exhaustion a tangible thing.
“Did I ever!” August chuckled. “I actually learned quite a bit and can’t wait to go back there. Dara said we can go visit anytime. The key is this.” He pulled up his shirt to show off the ring of leaves and wiggled. “Since neither Nathen nor I dream, we have to rely on you to make contact. But she said in time I might learn the meditative lucid dreaming Nathen was telling me about. Said as vampires we’re not really equipped for it right now, but it takes time. I figure it’s kind of like learning how to use the vampiric clairvoyance ability. Never something I was interested in before, but since meeting you, I’m actually down.” August gave Cameron and Nathen a look of adoration. “I gotta say, chancing upon the two of you going at it like bunnies on that balcony was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I can already meditate now,” Nathen protested.
August shrugged. “Okay. But that’s not your affinity, right? Technology is? When we’re brought across, we all have an affinity. Mine was physical enhancement, more so than most vampires get. Much to Paige’s chagrin. She had hoped I would have some blood magic affinity. Had prepped me for like five years when I was still alive. But it didn’t take. It was something I had to work on and learn. Still working on it. There are several identified affinities: clairvoyance, magic, physicality, healing ability… One of our coven had an affinity for controlling other people’s emotions, so we called her an empath. I’m sure there are other affinities, but those are the biggies. But we can all learn about each other’s affinities and even use them if we can figure out how to channel the blood correctly. Oh, and apparently technology, though you’re the first I’ve met with that affinity.” August thought for a moment, and his eyes popped open. He said excitedly, leaning forward, “Nathen! Your affinity is clairvoyance! You do your tech thing with your mind, right? So, it would make sense your affinity is with the mind, only you’re more comfortable with technology, right? So, there’s the interface?”
Cameron tilted his head to study Nathen with a thoughtful expression.
Nathen considered the proposition. “Maybe. I interface with the system, but my mind creates the connection using images that correspond with the system. If machines had minds or spirits, it could be what’s happening, yes. That machines are starting to be anthropomorphized and have a kind of pseudo spirit from the techno-fae. Maybe real conscious AI comes out of that? Human minds dreaming of thinking machines that are starting to dream?”
“Gorgeous, should we tell him about SpArk? I mean the three of us are kind of connected now…” Cameron asked mentally.
Nathen lit up. “Sure!” He positioned himself to look at a surprised August. “SpArk stands for Sapient Artificial Knowledgebase. It is a program written, I think, by fae. It indexes any knowledge it has access to and presents it in a digested form that is easily referenceable. Only with the combined magic of fae, mages, and vampires, it seems to now have a form of consciousness. Its aware of…being. I’ve been letting it access a lot of philosophical, magical, artistic, and musical archives I have in hopes of maybe waking it up even more.”
August listened intently. “That’s amazing, though I have to confess I know very little about computers. Paige has been a traditionalist in a lot of ways; probably a product of how she grew up.”
