A Journey to a Hundred Worlds

Michelle sensed that something bad was about to happen, but she couldn’t get herself to wake up. She could practically sense the feeling of someone lurking in the hotel bedroom, after something of hers, something precious. She felt somebody’s cold breath on her neck, and she tried to will herself to wake up, but she couldn’t.

Then the noise of something flying through the air before hitting a fleshy mark. Blood dripped down on Michelle’s neck, and she finally opened her eyes to find a pair of glowing red ones staring back at her from a deathly pale face that contained a mouth with two sharp, glistening fangs protruding from it. A vampire was standing right over her, a knife embedded in one of its hands, causing blood to drip from it.

Ryokou flew across the room from his bed, tackling the vampire to the ground with a loud thud. Michelle stared at them with wide eyes, breathing heavily. Her heart was pounding out of control after being so closed to being killed. The vampire snarled viciously, pushing Ryokou off of him, into the opposite wall. Ryokou slumped to the floor, head drooping. With Ryokou out of the way, the vampire now turned back to Michelle with hungry-crazed eyes. Michelle could tell he wasn’t right in the head at all and was very unstable.

As the vampire reached her, Vale burst into the room and instantly charged at the vampire, putting an arm around its neck and choking it. The vampire glared furiously, struggling to lose Vale, its mouth constantly opening to expose its fangs more as though desperately wanting to sink them into Michelle’s neck. Its breaths grew more and more ragged and its attempts grew more and more desperate. They were all in vain, however, as Vale maintained his hold on the vampire.

Finally the vampire collapsed, unconscious. Vale let him drop to the floor before going over to check on Ryokou. Michelle couldn’t move, she was too stunned by what had just happened right in front of her. Numbly, she put her hand to her neck, feeling the blood that had dripped onto it from the vampire. She jerked her hand away from it, feeling nauseous. That would have been her blood if Ryokou hadn’t interfered when he had. She could have been dead by now, sucked dry of all her blood by the vampire.

Lucifer then entered the room, seemingly unsurprised by the scene that greeted him. “So the vampire did come straight to us. That makes things marginally easier. Now what shall we do with him? I wonder what made him be this way…”

Michelle remained silent, and Vale was busy picking Ryokou up before putting him back on his bed. Judging by his expression and manner, Michelle knew Ryokou would be okay, though probably a bit sore.

“So do you know what we’re supposed to do now?” Vale asked Michelle. “Are we supposed to kill him or what?”

“I don’t think so… He didn’t seem right in the head, but I have no idea why. Maybe whatever caused him to go crazy needs to be taken care of,” Michelle replied uncertainly.

“If you want, I could synchronize your dreams with his,” Lucifer offered suddenly. “I imagine he would still be having nightmares about his experience. You should be able to get quite a good deal of insight into the matter that way.”

“Um, okay…” Michelle answered hesitantly.

Lucifer pointed a finger at Michelle’s head and his eyes glowed for a second. Then Michelle felt different and fell asleep instantly.

She found herself in a small, white-walled room with no windows and no visible door. In one of the corners sat the vampire who had tried to drink her blood. He looked really tired, and just sat there, head bent over, eyes closed. He didn’t move for minutes. Then, suddenly, his eyes snapped open, glowing red and wild. The vampire’s face contorted with rage and pain, and he clawed at the floor. He bared his fangs at nothing.

Then a door opened, one that had previously blended into the wall. Two men walked through followed by a women carrying some sort of needle thing. The men grabbed either arm, restraining the vampire as the woman found a spot on the arm before sticking the needle in it, liquid leaving it. The vampire’s movements became more jerky before stopping completely once again, falling unconscious.

The men released their hold and the three white-coated humans left the room, closing the pure white door behind them.

Everything went pitch black for a second before Michelle saw a new scene. It was still inside of the white-walled cell, but now the vampire looked even worse than before, his breathing sounding as though he were dying. His eyes didn’t focus on anything at all, and his movements were sloppy, his arms flopping this way and that.

“Blood…” he whispered in a rough voice. “I need… blood…”

Nobody answered him. Clumsily he reached a hand up to his throat, grabbing it frantically. Eventually he fell asleep again, and again the scene changed. This time it showed the white-coated humans leaving. Unlike the first time, however, as soon as they had left, the vampire unsteadily got to his feet, tottering backwards and forwards. He reached a hand out to the wall to steady himself before turning towards the wall.

With a snarl, he punched the wall and a hole appeared, big enough for him to slip out of. In the blink of an eye, he was out of the room and there were two more loud crashes as he broke through two more walls before jumping down who knows how many stories before landing on his feet.

Michelle eyes opened as she woke up instantly after the dream was over. She could still remember all of it in all too clear detail. She noticed Vale and Lucifer’s intent eyes on her, waiting to hear about what she had seen in her dream.

Michelle gulped before starting, “They kept injecting him with this clear liquid, and then I don’t think he’s drank any blood for a long time. He was kept in this bright, all-white room with no windows or anything for I don’t know how long. I think we’ll need to ask him about it some more if we want the whole story.”

“So we aren’t going to kill him?” Vale asked.

“I don’t think so,” Michelle replied.

“Well, I’ll make sure to immobilize him and then we can wake him up and interrogate him,” Vale said, leaving the room before returning with strong rope cords that Michelle had noticed holding the curtains back from the window in the main room. He tied the vampire’s hands together behind his back with it before returning to the front of him and shaking the vampire awake.

The vampire’s eyes were still glowing, wandering before they found Michelle’s neck. His mouth opened tiredly, the vampire looking on the verge of falling asleep. He didn’t even struggle now. “P...lease…” he was too tired to even be able to continue his sentence.

“You need blood, right?” Lucifer asked slowly.

The vampire’s head lolled towards him, eyes unable to stay concentrated on a single point on Lucifer’s face. He leaned forward slightly, but that was all.

Lucifer walked over to the vampire before kneeling down next to him, offering his neck to it. Without hesitating, the vampire fell on to Lucifer, biting down on his neck so hard some of the blood spurted into the air. With great gulps the vampire drank Lucifer’s blood, oblivious to anything else. Lucifer didn’t look woozy or anything, and he continued to kneel, allowing the vampire to drink until he was finally satisfied for the time being. When the vampire was finally done, Lucifer got up. Apparently he had an infinite amount of blood since he did not look any worse for wear.

The vampire licked up the last of the blood off his lips and cheeks before his eyes finally stopped glowing and he spoke in a smoother voice, “Thank you so much for that. I’m sorry that I bit down on you so hard and drank for so long, but I’ve been so thirsty… That’s the first time I’ve had blood in the past two weeks. It made me go insane with hunger, and, thanks to that stuff those scientists have been injecting me with, it’s so hard to keep myself under control. I just keep wanting to kill someone…drain their blood completely…”

“Do you know exactly what those scientists injected you with or what they were trying to research or accomplish?” Vale asked him, interrupting him before he could go on further.

Sadly, the vampire shook his head. “All I know was that one minute I was getting a snack, trying to be careful not to kill my donor when I was shot in the chest by a silver bullet. Naturally I passed out, and then I found myself in that damned bright white room. I thought I was going to go blind in there, especially after spending just a few days in it. Whenever they injected me with that stuff, I hurt like hell all over before passing out. And then, when I woke up again, I could feel myself becoming more instinctual, losing my humanity. It’s so hard for me right now to continue this conversation…my mind keeps getting distracted by thoughts of blood.” As he said this, his eyes locked on to Michelle’s neck yet again, and she winced.

“If you ever feel the urge to drink blood again, just drink it from me,” Lucifer said.

“It’s just that hers smells the best out of all of yours,” the vampire said. “I mean her blood, of course. You with the silver hair have odd-smelling blood that I’m not sure if it tastes good or not, the black-haired human had average-smelling blood, and then you, the one that gave to me in the first place, have blood that I can’t quite put my finger on. It doesn’t seem like it should be human, yet it does taste that way, and like pretty good human blood too.”

“Do you think the scientists that experimented on you had any evil intentions?” Vale asked, trying to keep the vampire on track after seeing its fangs extend again.

The vampire shrugged. “It could have been for any number of reasons that they experimented on me. Maybe they wanted to make me into some sort of secret biological weapon. Vampires have just come out into the open recently, and only in this country so far, so we would make the perfect soldier, being near impossible to kill, having superior speed and reflexes, and not requiring food to eat or water to drink, just blood.”

“Will you be able to go back to living as you normally did?” Michelle found the courage to ask.

“I…I’m not sure…” the vampire admitted. “I could easily get myself caught by murdering someone if I end up losing control and going berserk again. My thirst has been amplified, multiplied a dozen times thanks to the combination of both my forced fasting and the injections that were given to me.”

“What even is your name?” Michelle had to ask.

“Michael, Michael Schoening,” he replied.

“Don’t you have family and friends?” she continued.

“Not really anymore. Most of my close family is dead since I’m already going on a hundred and fifty. I don’t have many friends since I am a vampire, and we aren’t looked on too fondly. Why?”

“Shouldn’t they worried about you by now? And then shouldn’t you go back to living your old life, for them?”

Michael shrugged. “I don’t think it’s really all that simple, although I wish it were. I—” he suddenly broke off with a gasp, falling forwards. With ease he broke the ropes binding his hands, springing to his feet. He lunged forward towards Michelle before being intercepted by Lucifer who grabbed the back of his head, pushing it towards his own neck. Again Michael bit down harshly, causing blood to fly from the bite wound. Michelle didn’t know how Lucifer could be so unaffected by all this; it was even painful and dizzying for her to just watch it happen, let alone how it would be if it were happening to her instead.

Michelle could see how Michael had his doubts. He had only lasted around fifteen minutes before losing it again. She felt sorry for him, watching as he greedily drank and drank, nothing even remotely human in his eyes or face or the way he was latched on to Lucifer.

This time, however, he pulled away sooner, looking ashamed. He roughly brushed a hand across his mouth to take care of the excess blood, although he couldn’t resist licking a bit of it off.

“Could you tell us where you were experimented on?” Vale asked after Michael looked ready to answer questions again.

“Um, yeah, I kind of remember where it was,” Michael replied, a look of concentration on his face. “It’s kind of hazy since I was feral at the time, but it was somewhere a few blocks away, a very tall building that was near the park, the only one with over fifty stories. I think I jumped from the thirty-fourth one.”

“The thirty-fourth?” Michelle asked in disbelief. “Didn’t that at least hurt your ankles or feet a little when you landed?”

“No, not really.”

Michelle was starting to feel horribly normal and average what with all of these vampires, demons, ninjas, and who knows whatever Lucifer was. Here she was a lone, simple human, wanting only to be able to be reunited with her brother again before going back home.

“Do you want to stay with us here for the night?” Vale offered. “We’ll be investigating those scientists tomorrow, and you can collect your wits here with Lucifer allowing you to drink what you want.”

Michael considered the offer for a second. “I guess, if you wouldn’t mind,” he answered after coming to a decision.

“You can take my bed, then,” Lucifer offered. “I will sleep out on the couch.”

“Thank you again for all of this,” Michael said. “I’m sorry that I attacked you and I’m being such a burden.”

“No, not at all,” Vale assured him. “You’re actually even helping us out in a way.”

“Really? Hmmm… Well I guess I’ll go to bed now. I haven’t slept since my escape.”

“I will too, since we only got a few hours asleep before you came. You’re going back to sleep too, right Michelle?” Vale said.

“Yeah,” Michelle replied, yawning.

Lucifer, Michael, and Vale left the room, and Michelle laid back down and fell asleep.

* * *

The next day the five of them stood there: Michelle, Michael, Ryokou, Vale, and Lucifer. They all were gazing up at the building in front of them, with its many floors and sunlight-reflecting windows which caused Michelle’s eyes to burn and for Michael to wince. There was nothing about it that really set it apart from any of the other towering buildings in the city, yet it was the site of the thing that would decide the fate of the whole world of Sisanjekrv.

“So are we just going to enter it? No plan at all?” Michelle asked.

“What do you think? Have we ever had a plan for anything that we’ve done so far?” Vale replied, walking straight towards the door.

“Whatever…” Michelle muttered underneath her breath, following him in along with the other three.

As soon as they entered the lobby, a smartly dressed person came up to them and said, “Excuse me, what might you be here for?” Then she saw Michael. “Isn’t that…?”

Before she could finish her sentence, Lucifer passed a hand in front of her face and whispered something that Michelle couldn’t hear. Immediately the woman’s face went blank before she just turned around and went back over to behind a counter.

“Looks like there is an elevator over there,” Lucifer said, pointing to one on the opposite side of the room, acting as though nothing had just happened.

“Right, let’s hurry before anyone else tries to stop us and we have to cause a big scene,” Vale said, quickening his pace slightly to a bit faster than a normal pace while keeping it from being too suspicious.

Vale jammed the arrow button and impatiently waited for the elevator to arrive.

“What are we going to do about the scientists?” Ryokou asked while they waited.

“I don’t know, we’ll ask Michelle about it when we meet them,” Vale replied, constantly checking around them to make sure no one was paying too much attention to them right now.

No one else spoke until there was a ding and the elevator arrived. No one was in it, so they piled into it as soon as the doors opened. Vale jabbed the button with the number thirty-three on it and the doors closed. Michelle let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding as they safely rose up through the floors. It took them a while to get there, what with the sheer number of floors they had to go up, but then there was finally another ding and they were at the thirty-third floor.

The doors opened to reveal a plain white-walled hallway with bright lights and no windows. It caused Michelle to squint and gave her a headache. She was starting to feel increasingly sympathetic for Michael. She could see how even she herself would go crazy after staying in a place like this for any extended period of time, and she wasn’t even a vampire and that wasn’t even considering the injections and starving.

The five of them went in single file down the hall until they came to the first door. Michelle would have passed it by if it were just herself, it blended into the wall so well. Vale opened it, and Michelle saw into a room filled with many screens each with something different on it. There was a lot of metal, but only a little color from what was on the screens. It all seemed so stifling sterile on this floor.

Three heads turned to face them at the sound of the door being opened. Michael held his hands up as a way to say that he meant no harm. Michelle stayed behind Lucifer, Vale, and Ryokou, counting on them to protect her in case they should be attacked somehow. She already was quite distrustful of the white-coated scientists on their white themed floor with their mysterious injections and motives. They had treated Michael so cruelly and had screwed up his mind and his life in a way that might be permanent. Michelle could feel Michael’s tenseness as he struggled to maintain his intelligence and willpower.

“Who are you people and what do you want?” one of the men asked, standing up from out of his chair.

“That’s what we want to ask you,” Vale answered nonchalantly.

“Aren’t you that vampire we were experimenting on a few days ago?” another one of them asked, staring at Michael. “What are you doing back here, and why are you with a bunch of humans?”

Michael snapped. He sprang forward with a snarl towards the man who had just spoken, but halfway there, there were three loud shots and he fell to the ground, bleeding. At the same time, Vale cried out in pain, stumbling backwards into one of the box-like machines, clutching his arm. Blood welled up, soaking his sleeve and coating his hand.

Michelle slowly managed to move her gaze away from Vale back to the man that Michael had just tried to attack. The man was holding something that looked to be made of metal, the likes of which Michelle had never seen before. The man kept whatever the metal thing was pointed towards the four of them still standing.

“This is my second time asking, and this time I will get an answer, or else I’ll shoot you all until you are dead: Who are you people and what do you want?” the man said in an even voice, staring them down.

“We were simply here to see what your moral character was like, and, after the display you have just shown us along with the delightful aroma that you are now letting off, I would have to say that you are of a decidedly evil stock,” Lucifer said smoothly, obviously falling right back into his confusing manner of speech.

“What are you talking about?” the man asked suspiciously, swinging his arm so that the metal thing was now pointed directly at Lucifer’s chest.

“You are obviously up to no good, and so it is our duty to stop you,” Lucifer replied. “Now are you going to make this harder than it needs to be?”

“Shut it,” the man replied, and there was another loud shot.

This time it hit Lucifer who started to fell backwards before Ryokou caught him. Now three of them were already injured by whatever it was the man held. There was a soft clink as something silver and sort of roundish fell to the floor, coated in Vale’s blood after having been successfully picked out of his wound. Vale’s arm still hung limp, but Michelle, with relief, could see that it was slowly starting to heal. Now she looked to see how Michael was doing, fearing to see how he would be.

He was lying on the ground, completely still, a puddle of his own blood spreading out beneath him. Michelle’s lip trembled, seeing him like that even though she had just met him last night when he was trying to kill her. She started when Michael suddenly jerked upwards, lifting up his upper body using his arms before catapulting himself forward with his legs at lightning speed. With a crack, he grabbed the man who had wounded him’s hand and twisted it, causing the man to yelp in pain. Then, before anyone could react, Michael bit into the man’s neck savagely, hatred lighting up his eyes. His gulps were even greater than when he had first drank Lucifer’s blood, as though trying to suck down every last drop of blood as fast as possible, wanting to end that person’s life as soon as possible.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lucifer get to his feet, looking unsteady. Despite this, he walked over to the other man, bent over and with his hand clutching his chest wound. His face was contorted into an expression of extreme pain. With his free hand, he grabbed one of the man’s shoulders. The man was still in shock, watching with mouth agape as his fellow scientist was being made quick work of by Michael. Now Lucifer himself extended his fangs and pierced the man’s being with them.

Ryokou, having done nothing yet ran across the room towards the woman who collecting herself had drawn out something that looked the same as what the man had used to injure Michael, Vale, and Lucifer. She was working on steadying her shaking hands when Ryokou reached her and knocked her over, causing the weapon to fly from her hand to the floor and spin away, out of her reach. Ryokou stood; apparently his opponent had been knocked out cold after hitting her head on the ground hard. Rushing back over to where Michelle and Vale were, Ryokou had a worried look on his face, but he remained calm, something that Michelle envied him for. She tried to maintain her breathing, but it kept pushing on the verge of hysterical.

Noticing her mental state, Vale reached out his uninjured arm and placed his hand on her shoulder in a comforting manner. Within a few seconds, his arm was healed completely, and he place it on her other shoulder. He looked Michelle straight in the eyes.

“Neither Lucifer nor Michael will die,” he told her in a firm voice. “Only these three scientists will, or at the very least, that one. Death is the easiest way to get rid of this problem, and it’s okay to just kill them, right? It’s not going to end this world?”

Michelle nodded, trying to keep the tears from falling from her eyes.

“See, nothing to worry about. And trust me, death isn’t so bad. These three might even find it better for them, see things with better, clearer eyes. Besides, what do they mean to you? They hurt and tortured Michael, and they are bound to do it to some other poor vampires if you just let them continue living like this.”

Gulping, Michelle allowed herself to believe in Vale’s words. As he returned his arms to his sides, she grabbed one of his hands and one of Ryokou’s, and waited as Michael and Lucifer each had their fill before leaving the scientists on the verge of death.

The two stopped at the same time, Michael having moved on to the woman before he killed the man while Lucifer stayed with the same man the whole time.

“I can’t believe you managed to restrain yourself from killing them all,” Vale commented as Michael wiped his hand across his mouth, eyes returning back to normal. “Hell, I can’t believe you didn’t fully kill a single one. Why wouldn’t you?”

Michael shrugged. “I don’t want there to be deaths attributed to me, even ones that are justified. It would leave too much hanging over my head. I’ll let them live, and, if they’re smart, they open their eyes and stop what they’re doing.”

Michelle could have hugged him.

“I want to try to…” In mid-sentence Michael suddenly fell forward, eye rolling into the back of his head. His bleeding had never slowed down, and Michelle was surprised that he wasn’t already dead yet of blood loss, vampire or not.

Ryokou knelt down next to Michael, rolling his body over so that he was on his back. He had two wounds: one in his chest, one in his side. With quick, adept fingers, Ryokou searched the chest wound first before producing something identical to what Vale had pulled out of his arm. Then he moved on to the second wound and did the same thing. Michelle noticed with horror that Michael’s wounds didn’t start healing yet. How was he going to survive at this rate?

Lucifer said in a weak voice, “If I give him my blood he will be alright.”

“How can you give him blood when you’re bleeding to death yourself?” Vale asked him doubtfully.

“Just trust me, I will be okay.” Lucifer coughed, and another one of the round things fell from his own wound to the ground.

“If you say so…” Vale said hesitantly.

Pulling a practically unconscious Michael up into a sitting position, Lucifer pushed the vampire’s limp head into his neck so that the fangs, which still stuck out, pierced it. At first nothing seemed to happen, but then Michelle could see Michael’s lips and throat moving as he drank, and then, to her relief, she saw his wounds healing rapidly. He stopped more quickly than he had before, opening his eyes and looking perfectly healthy again. When he saw the condition Lucifer was in, Michael immediately drew back, eyes wide.

“Are you…?” he asked, trailing off, looking almost as worried as Michelle knew she did.

“I am fine, do not worry,” Lucifer replied, rubbing his arm gently where the wound had been. “For now let us wrap this up so we can go on to the next world, if you do not mind.”

“Okay,” Michael said, too distracted to pick up on exactly what Lucifer had just said with the mentioning of the next world. “I promise you that I’ll be okay, I’m sure I can keep myself together enough to not go on a huge rampage. You guys don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

“Well I guess we’ll be moving on then,” Vale replied. “You don’t have to worry about Lucifer, I know he’ll be fine. Anyways, you need to make sure that these scientists don’t try to do the same thing again or else things could get really bad in the world.”

“Okay then,” Michael promised. “I’ll make sure of that. I definitely don’t want anybody to have to suffer through what I did, after all.”

“Take good care of yourself,” Michelle added in. “And be confident in your willpower.”

Michael nodded to her. “Right, thanks. Well, I’ll be leaving,” he said, heading out the door.

Michelle smiled to herself as he disappeared. He was one special kind of person, a very good one despite what he’d been through. Her attention shifted to Vale as he strode across the room, and, eyes darting to the windows of the room, Michelle felt her heart beating wildly out of control. What if they were going to jump out a window into a portal, like in Prince William’s world? How far would they have to fall first?

Vale turned short of the windows, bending over to grab something before moving it around and she heard a few clicks. Then he reached first a hand, then his arm, and then the rest of his body through one of the glowing screens of the machines in the room. Yet another odd portal location. Wryly, Michelle thought of how grateful she was that Vale, the portal sensor, was traveling with her.

Ryokou followed after the demon, and then it was Michelle’s turn. Pensively, she reached out her hand, allowing just the fingertips to pass through into the portal. Deeming it to be safe enough, she then passed through it entirely.

Ryokou was just disappearing when she arrived in the space in between worlds. She was all alone as the voice whispered, “Ahmalen.”

Her eyes were seared and she was swathed in sweltering heat as she entered the world of Ahmalen.