A Lasting Sacrifice

13 - Marco

"What the fuck is happening to her?" I yell at the three of them.

Holding Aaliyah in my arms, her body convulses, worse than before. I've never seen her body do this before, not even when I drained her the first few times. I can hear bits of her thoughts and the one thing that is consistent is the fact that she is gaining her memories back. Everything we tried to erase before is coming back with a vengeance.

"The memories coming back to her are overloading her mind. If it continues, she could become comatose or even die," Jenna says as she gets on her knees and lays a hand on Aali.

"Why would she die from this? What can we do to stop it?" I ask hurriedly.

"Her mind is splitting in two, the only thing we can do is ease the flow of memories and hope she doesn't get lost in them. She has to work this out herself. Messing with her mind too much will surely turn it into mush."

"No... th-theres gotta be something I can do. You said the power I have is ancient and strong, right?" I ask, speaking rather quickly and panicked.

Jenna looks at me with conflict in her expression and also guilt.

"I can teach you a spell for telepathy. But... it could kill her and you. As strong as you are, there's only so much magic practitioners can do with the mind. The most skilled among us don't like to do what I am going to teach you," she says as she pulls her back in a ponytail and kneels by us both. "What I need you to do is kneel by her head and keep your hands on either side of her head. I'm going to have to hold her down for the next step. This is going to cause her a lot of pain. So, before that happens, I need you to fully comprehend the risks," she says, looking at me with solemn eyes.

"I understand that you all put us in this situation. I've only been putting up with this because I need to keep Aali safe. But, in the few days I've been so called immortal, we've done more harm to her health than good. So, I think I understand the risks better than anyone. I'm the one who loves her, not you. Whatever we can do, we're gonna do because she's already dying; I can feel her life slipping," I say with venom in my voice, impatient with her.

Jenna frowns slightly before averting her eyes from me.

"Fine... since it seems we have no choice, I'll tell you what you need to do," Jenna says as she straddles Aali's hips and pins her arms to the ground. "Very carefully, you need to grow your nails out, a vampire's nails hold the infection of our kind. Small cuts and piercing of the flesh can allow us to covertly drain victims and control them to a degree.

"Some vampires, in ancient times, would use this process to manipulate a person's memories. They could change them, fix them or take them. But fixing memories is dangerous. It requires that you focus solely on their life story and keeping the mind linear. Humans typically don't think of only one thing at a time, especially women. So, she could send you into a different memory within the memory she was already in.

"This spell lets you see from.her point of view and since you two have been in each other's lives since you were young, it's hard to distinguish your memories from hers. It's inevitable but, stay focused. You can't stay inside too long either; if done wrong you'll both be lost in her mind until you're both dead. In you case it'll take long after she's dead for you to die. You could be stuck in an infinite loop. That's why I'm going to help you. We all will, in order to do that, we'll have to pierce her flesh in her core areas. You, the one entering her mind, have to pierce her skull," Jenna explains.

Jenna nods for Trevor and Zeke to come kneel on the floor with us. Zeke uses his nails to dig into Aali's arms; Jenna stops pinning her down. Instead, she grows out the nails on her right hand; she says her part comes at the end of the ritual. Trevor digs his nails into Aali's calves as he pins her legs so she can't move. I hate seeing her skin defiled by any of them, but... I have to look past it if I'm going to save the woman I love.