A Sudden Dismissal

There was an interminable stretch in which no one seemed to be moving. Jason's arm remained outstretched toward Layathel, whose pretty face was twisted in pain. Dracula's expression was unreadable. Then Jason felt it. The thread against his chest pulled taut, thrumming. An indescribable swelling somewhere in his awareness alerted him to something, then the link between him and Layathel erupted like a geyser. It wasn't painful, but intense and terrifying, as if his chest had just painlessly exploded and were ejecting itself.

Layathel's eyes went wide and she moaned in what was either pain or fear. Then the sensation ended abruptly. Jason had his arms spread away from his chest; his legs were parted wide, knees bent, bracing. He stared down at the invisible thread at his chest where the pressure had returned to the previous gentle tug.

Dracula still had his teeth sunk into Layathel's neck. He slowly withdrew them and stepped from behind her. With a calm, casual tone, he spoke. "Jason. What did you do?"

With heavy breaths, Jason said, "I didn't do anything." Too many things had happened at once. Should he be running to the rescue now or continuing to stand around like a dumbstruck idiot?

"Leave."

"Huh?" Had he heard that properly?

"Egress. Depart. Exit the premises. Am I not making myself clear?"

Layathel moved first, crossing to Jason and taking his hand. "Come on."

Jason rubbed at his chest as he allowed himself to be led from the drawing room. The last thing he saw was the door closing on the Count standing silently in the center of the room, blood on his lips.

In the car the doors closed and the weight and warmth of Layathel settled upon Jason's neck as she reached across the center console to embrace him in a hug. "You're my hero," she whispered, only partially making a joke.

"I didn't do anything." Confusion and numbness made his voice lack expression. "I'm just glad you're alright."

They backed out. The gate opened for them. On the road they were both silent. For his part, Jason wanted to know what had just happened. A single bite and Dracula had changed his entire demeanor. Could that spell Layathel cast have something to do with it? It was no coincidence that Jason had felt such a burst of. . . of power. Was that the word? It was right at his chest, and that thread had spread, gushing. What did that even mean? He knew the exact words to describe the sensation, but no clue what those words were defining. Just a force of some sort, backfiring. Something caused the spell to react. Could it be that Dracula had tried to enthrall Layathel when he bit into her neck, and the link between them stopped it? That was the whole point of the spell, after all, according to what she'd said before they'd started the ritual. It had seemed so absurd at the time.

The thinking exhausted him. He found it easy to dismiss the thoughts and just focus on the driving. He glanced over at Layathel who was staring out the window. Noticing she was still in the duds she'd gotten from the Count, he allowed himself a grin. "Hey," he said.

She looked over at him, looking like a dark angel with her wispy dress fluttering in the wind. The evening shadows on her face blinked away as they past under street-lamps, then reappeared as quickly, making an ethereal strobing effect. "Hey." She gave a soft, gentle smile. Or maybe it was just a tired one.

"I like the outfit."

Three days later, the orange Tiburon with the pumpkin swinging from the rear-view mirror swerved into the parking lot of the local library. Pebbles crunched under tires.

"Oh, stop it," Layathel was saying as Jason feigned terror every time she stopped, started or turned. "How many times have I crashed?"

"Never," Jason admitted.

"See there?"

"Maybe you're due." He smiled at her glower.

Jason usually preferred to drive but Layathel had just washed her car and wanted to, well, he wasn't sure. Show it off? To whom? Anyway, he obliged her, and only slightly regretted it. She got too close to stopped cars in front of her before slowing, and it took her a second to recall her left from her right so he had to point while saying the direction if he wanted to make the turn. They'd arrived safely, and Jason was trying not to think of the return ride.

They hopped out and looked at the old library edifice while stretching their legs. It was a long building, laying horizontally before them with a sloped roof and an unremarkable pale red color from top to bottom. It isn't a surprise that they were there for information. Both of them were curious to know what they spell did specifically, and why Dracula might have been affected by it the way he was. Jason had initially asked her to look in the original spell book, but Layathel had already tried that. The spell was there, and a general description of what it did, but that was it. Something more detailed would be required, and that's why they were there.

Inside, they both became quiet. The cool air whispered past the hairs on Jason's arms as he walked. As he approached the shelves of books it occurred to him that he had no clue how they'd find anything even remotely related to what they needed. At least, they wouldn't find it randomly searching. The library was only loosely organized by genre, with a kids and adults section, a fiction section and a non-fiction section, and then there were some unrelated sections for magazines and cookbooks and the like. After staring at the shelves in distress, he spied a computer and made for it. Layathel came up behind him.

"What are you going to search for?" She whispered.

"I don't know. Spell books?"

That yielded a few results, but more than that, it gave them an idea of what section to look in.

"This is a shame," said Layathel with her hands on her hips. "Putting these beautiful tomes in the fiction section."

"Yeah, well, I'd have put 'em there too, a few months ago."

They began tapping spines, reading and sliding out volumes to assess further. The spell they wanted was called Thread Bearer. They grabbed any potential candidate for information and loaded it into their arms until they could find no more, then brought them to a wood table and sat to study. Jason picked books with an index first, and set aside ones with no index for later since they'd take a lot longer to go through. They went through a dozen books or more when finally Jason set aside the one he was reading and slid a thick, leather-bound volume in front of him and flipped open the heavy cover. The flyleaf slipped by with a light scratch, and there in the index was the very spell he wanted, on page 86. The subtitle was in Latin. When he flipped a big block of pages over and leafed his way to the correct page, he saw that the rest of the page was written in Latin, too. He past the book on to Layathel. "This is what we need," he said, "but it's in Latin."

"Do you know Latin?"

Jason reached across where he had another copy of the same book. He opened it and saw that this was indeed translated to English. "Only if it's de facto, de novo, de jure, habeas corpus or amicus curiae, et cetera."

Layathel looked askance. "Are those spells?" she asked with evident skepticism.

"No, they're legal terms."

"I knew amicus curiae sounded familiar, you dog!" She hissed while he stifled laughter. She put a finger on the Thread Bearer index entry of her own, untranslated copy. "How are we going to read this? There must be some way to determine what it says. Maybe we can hire a translator!" She said this with a snap of her head toward Jason.

"Let's just use this translated version that I have here."

Layathel drew back the heavy Latin copy she was holding, lips pursed, sucking a breath through her nose. She didn't end up hitting him but Jason flinched pretty hard, managing to bang his knee against the underside of the table. Layathel was pretty pleased with that.

They slid the English translation between themselves and began reading silently. It was interesting at first, learning that they were bound souls, as if one, something stronger than even marriage, or you might say it was "true marriage." According to the book, if they were apart for too long, the bond would begin to fade, which would result in some nasty side effects between the first and second years of being away, including deep depression, uncontrollable pining and susceptibility to sickness. Sounded like normal depression, only worse. Interest turned to sober contemplation as the two began to comprehend the significance of this. On the one hand, Dracula had broken the contract because he had hurt family. Layathel and Jason may not have signed the legal contract, but they were bound as deeply as one could be without being physically sewn together. It seems that it was enough. On the other hand, they'd only known each other for a few months, and neither had intended on making this kind of life decision yet.

So, they asked each other in silence, with staring eyes, now what?