AfterLife (9 page)

Wes thought about how dangerous it could be if Mortuis were
able to influence an antemort’s thoughts. It might even be worse than taking life
from them. It was taking away their free will. “Don’t worry. I don’t intend to
control anyone’s thoughts.”

It wasn’t much longer before Emily pulled up in front of a
small building off the main road of a small town. “This bar is usually pretty
busy. There’s a university down the street and a lot of the student housing is
around here.” They parked in a poorly lit corner of a small parking lot next to
the building.

Emily turned to Wes after she had pulled the keys from the
ignition. “Okay Wes, now before we go inside, I want you to practice
soul-syncing with me a few times.” She leaned over the center console and
looked at him. At first it seemed as though she was going in for a kiss.
Startled, Wes pulled back slightly toward the passenger side window.

“You’re never going to get fed like that, mister,” Emily
said, laughing at him. “You gonna starve.” She leaned back in her seat and
looked at herself in the rearview mirror. She rolled her upper lip under,
leaving some lipstick on her teeth. “Is it my lipstick?” She smiled, revealing
her covered teeth. “Too much?” She made a face, laughed again, and then wiped
the lipstick off her teeth with her finger. “I haven’t been rejected like this
in a long time.” She looked at Wes and pouted.

Wes chuckled.

“Okay, I’m a nice gal so I’m gonna give you another chance.”
Emily leaned over the center console again.

Wes knew at some point he’d have to take this seriously so
he moved toward Emily and leaned forward to look in her eyes. As soon as Wes
had lined his eyes up with Emily’s, she went cross-eyed. Wes fell back in his
seat laughing.

“You gonna starve, Wes. I’m telling you. You gonna starve.”
After a moment, Emily sobered and touched his sleeve. “Okay, okay, I’ll quit
teasing. For real this time.”

Wes leaned toward Emily and aligned his eyes with hers. “Now
look directly into my eyes past the reflection you’ll see of yourself,” Emily
said, staring right back at Wes as he looked into her eyes. “Once you’ve done
that you’ll look into the darkness of the pupil and then you’ll sense the
connection.”

Wes immediately understood what she was talking about. The
iris around the pupil disappeared, and Wes felt as if he was moving into a
black tunnel just as he had the first time they’d soul-synced.

He continued through the blackness until he was standing
with Emily. No beach this time. They were surrounded by nothing. It was just
the two of them facing each other.

“Good job, Wes, I’m impressed,” Emily said. “This is a full
connection. This is the type of connection you would make when you’re doing a
major feeding. Just remember never to feed for too long.”

“Where’s the beach?” Wes asked, looking around at the
absence of surroundings.

“My mind is closed to you, sweet Wes. The beach was a
special place for your first day. You synced with me so, if anything, I should
be upset that you didn’t have something better planned than, um, nothing.”

“Hmmm, didn’t realize it was my responsibility to entertain
tonight.” Wes thought about changing his surroundings. Apparently he could make
the black void into anything he wanted, and he quickly racked his brain for
ideas. Then he had it. Immediately, they were standing in the middle of the
Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. It was nighttime and the park was empty.
Everything was lit up as if the park was open to guests. “How’s this?”

“I like it.” Emily looked around, smiling. “Is this the
place you consider your sanctuary?”

“Yeah, I guess it is. When I was a kid, we went to Disney
World about every other year. My brother and I would usually take off on our
own – we had our very own favorite spots, but one year my Dad and I stayed
late…until after the park had closed. My mom and brother had already headed
back to the resort, but we wanted to be the last ones in the whole park.” A
smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “We were, too.”

“This should be your place then. When you need to get away,
come here. It’s a good place to go,” Emily said as she turned around to look at
everything Wes had created with his mind. After taking it all in, she turned
back to Wes. “Okay Wes, let’s practice breaking the connection. Just as you
made all this appear, imagine nothing and then push the nothing away.”

Wes did as he was told, and first the Magic Kingdom
disappeared followed by the nothing as he mentally pushed it away. As quickly
as he had moved toward Emily’s eyes, he was out again and back in the passenger
seat of the Camaro.

“Wesley Lohmann,” Emily said in an announcer voice, “you
have just successfully completed your first soul-sync. What are you going to do
next? You’re going to Disney World!”

They both laughed.

“Honestly, Wes, that was fantastic. You’re a quick study.
Very nice.”

“Thanks, I’m glad you weren’t disappointed.”

“Not one bit. Okay, now real quick before we go inside, I
want you to try grazing on me. It’s simple. Make eye contact like we just did
but when you see that you’re moving toward the darkness, don’t. Understand?”

 Wes nodded and did as he was told. As soon as the
connection was made he broke it. “How was that?” he asked.

Emily smiled and nodded. “It was good for me if it was good
for you.” She winked at him. “I think you’re ready. Here’s the plan because I
want you to have as much practice tonight as you can. First, I want you to
practice a little grazing. Then, I want you to pick up a girl and bring her
back to the car for a full sync. Do you think you can handle that?”

“I don’t know,” Wes said, “I’ve never picked up a girl at a
bar before.”

Emily chuckled. “Of course you haven’t, I’m sure you were
always the gentleman with the ladies. Don’t worry. You’re good-looking and the
girls will be drinking. You should have no problem. Oh, and just be ready for
how antemorts react to soul-syncing. You’ll get the hang of it after a while,
but remember it’s much different than it is with a Mortui.” Emily opened the
car door to get out. “Watch me do a couple to show you how I handle it and then
we’ll let you try some grazing.”

Emily and Wes got out of the car and started walking toward
the bar. Behind the building was a back patio surrounded by white privacy
fencing and Wes could hear the conversations and laughter of what sounded like
a few dozen people. They walked around to the front entrance.

Before they went inside, Emily turned to Wes and handed him
the keys to the car along with a driver’s license. “You’re going to need
these,” she said, and walked into the bar.

Wes looked down at the license she had given him. The
picture on it was his own, red hair and all, but his name and address were
different. Where did she get Carter from? “I guess that’s my new name,” he
thought.

Wes followed Emily inside. It was fairly crowded, but not as
busy as the amount of noise had led Wes to believe. He joined Emily at the bar.
She’d already purchased drinks for them and Wes was slightly disappointed that
nobody asked to see his new ID.

“Can I drink this?” Wes asked after Emily slid his drink
over to him.

“Sure you can. It won’t affect you one way or the other, but
you can drink it. You can expel it when we get back to the Hub.”

“Expel it?”

“Yeah. You know, use the facilities, go to the bathroom.
Whatever you wanna call it.”

“Okay.” Wes took the drink and sipped it. It had no taste at
all. He thought it might taste like water, but now he realized even water had a
taste. This had nothing.

“Okay Carter,” Emily whispered, calling him by his alias,
“watch your sister Karla go to work.”

Wes assumed that Karla was the alias Emily had chosen and
nodded. He watched as she walked to the other side of the bar where a young
college guy was sitting by himself at a small round table. Emily pretended to
flirt, and when the guy responded to the conversation he watched Emily sync
with him for a brief couple of seconds. Quickly, she broke the connection,
faked laughter and hit him on the arm, which seemed to shake him out of the
confusion from the sync. Emily excused herself and walked back to the bar where
Wes was still seated.

“That was one example.” Emily sat down next to him at the
main bar. “Okay, now watch this.” She turned to the guy sitting next to her who
was waiting on the bartender to make him his drink.

“Excuse me, handsome,” Emily said. The guy looked up at her
and as he did Wes watched as the man suddenly looked like he was in a trance.
“Can you hand me that bowl of nuts please?” The trance was broken as quickly as
it had begun. Emily thanked him and then turned back to Wes. “See how fast that
was? Enough of a connection to take a couple days, but he never knew. Quick and
easy.”

“Yeah, quick and easy.”

“Now it’s your turn.” Emily’s hand motioned to the room. “Go
graze.”

Wes took his drink and walked away. Where would he go first?
He had already scanned the room a couple of times in the short time they’d been
there and had seen some opportunities. Talking to girls was easy for him
because he’d never felt like he had to impress them. This situation was no
different. He just needed to make a few quick seconds of eye contact with a few
of them and he would be finished.

Wes walked up to a trio of girls who were talking. While
scanning the room earlier he noticed that one of them had dropped something out
of her hand-held purse when she went to pay for a drink. He bent down to pick
it up – a lip liner – and stood back up. The girl was looking at him. “Hi,” she
said.

He locked onto her eyes. The sync happened quicker than he
expected and as the darkness of the pupil expanded he gazed into her energy.
Emily was right. The connection with an antemort was much different. The girl
was vulnerable, he could feel it. He could also feel that she had a lot of life
in her, and he could feel that energy transferring from her to him. It felt
exhilarating! Then Wes caught a glimpse of a memory of the girl as a child
crying over the loss of the family dog. He felt her grief. Next he saw a memory
of her reading her college acceptance letter to her parents. He felt the
feeling of optimism she felt as she read it. Wes broke the connection. He
hadn’t expected to see the images. “Here, you dropped this.” He put the lip
liner in the girl’s hand to break her trance, and then turned and walked out of
the bar, dropping his drink in the trash on the way to the parking lot.

“Are you okay?” Emily asked, catching Wes just outside the
door.

“I can’t do this…”

“You saw some memories didn’t you?” Emily asked, hugging
Wes. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react so I didn’t tell you.”

“I can’t do any more. It was fine when she was a stranger
and what I was taking from her didn’t mean anything because I didn’t know her.
Now I know her. I know that she hopes for great things in her future, a future
I’m taking away from her.”

“Oh honey, I know. I completely understand, but this is what
you have to do to survive. It’s a rough existence for someone like you –
someone who has a heart. That’s why you’ll always be looking for ways to pay
back what you’ve taken.”

“How do you give back time?”

“You try to make the time a person has count more.” Emily
pulled Wes’s forehead down and stood up on tip-toes to kiss it. “You are a good
person, Wes. I could always feel that about you.”

Emily reached down and took Wes’s hand in hers, pulling him
back in the direction of the bar. “It will get easier, Wes, you just have to
keep doing it.”

Wes unwillingly followed Emily back into the building and
they resumed their place by the bar.

“So, now I need to see you do a full sync,” Emily said.
“Pick a girl and go for it.”

Wes swiveled on his seat, placed his back to the bar, and
looked around the room. The thought of doing a full sync was less than
appealing. If he had seen so much from a half-second glance into a girl’s eyes,
he could only imagine how much more he might see though a stronger connection.

He picked a cute girl in her early 20s who had just come out
of the ladies room and moved toward her. She hadn’t made it back to her party
yet, and she looked like she’d been drinking for a while. “Hi,” Wes said, smiling
to her as she walked unsteadily back toward the group of friends she’d been
sitting with. “Can I buy you a drink?”

The girl stared openly at Wes, looking him up and down a few
times. “You’ll do,” she said. “Is your place close?”

“I’ve got a car,” Wes said, not knowing what else to say.

“Then to the Batmobile.” She giggled slightly and fell onto
Wes’s arm for support.

Wes led her to the Camaro and unlocked the door, holding it
open for her.

“Wow, when I said Batmobile,” the girl said, running her
finger along the hood of the sleek car, “I didn’t think you actually had the
Batmobile.”

Wes smiled and helped her into the seat, then walked around
to the driver’s side and got in. He was impressed and appalled at how little
effort it had taken to pick the girl up. She must be pretty stupid or pretty
drunk. Maybe both. Either way, he was certain she was easy. She had definitely
made this feeding easy for him.

After adjusting himself in the seat that had been pulled
forward to accommodate Emily’s shorter stature, Wes turned to the girl who was
already running her hands up his shirt.

“You’ve got a great body.” She tugged up on the shirt
bottom, which Wes interpreted as her way of telling him to take it off. He felt
uncomfortable.

 “Wait, wait, wait,” Wes said, smoothing his shirt down and
holding her hands in his. “Let me look at you first.”

“What ya wanna see?”

“Just your eyes.”

She raised her upper lip and made a sour face as if she was
bothered by what Wes said, but he didn’t care because she was looking at him.
He could see her eyes and that’s all he needed. He focused on them, the pupil
expanded, and he walked into the darkness as it closed around him.