Airborne Blight.

I barely was even scratching the surface of it all, and yet already I was deep in muck, submerged in the intricacies and complications of things I could barely comprehend.

First, it was just the voices of the dead, then it became a gooey, sticky bloody biohazard with the introduction of rot and decay - now all of a sudden the goddamn thing turned black and its particles are swirling in the air getting all chummy with Nitrogen and Oxygen.

I'll just save myself the headache and just go along with it. Fine, now the entire city is blighted regardless of whether contact was made or not - whatever….

The question now was -

"Why did it put them to sleep?"

And also -

"Are they ever going to wake up?"

Adalia, in turn, answered them both, lumbering herself closer towards us. Slow movement. Quiet mutters.

"The Void calls for them… it welcomes them… it welcomes me too… because those like us… we are vulnerable..."

The Void? Is that the Afterlife?

"Waking up… I'm not sure… not on their own… I… I don't… I don't think - "

Adalia lurched forward, her words abruptly cut, stumbling - nearly falling, her hands stretched out, keeping steady… faint breathing in palpitating quivers.

I reached out, thinking she'd actually fall but there were no heavy thuds, nothing in front of me to actually reach for.

As fast as it had happened, Adalia became still.

A blink. Her eyes stared, but they don't seem to see - my concerns, they looked right into them, yet somehow I feel like I was staring through her. There was no eye contact between me and her.

Where have I seen those eyes before?

Slowly, she drew her arms back, whispering quietly a feeble, "I'm sorry…"

Her veins showed. A visible line of webs from her forearms to her neck. Skin paling to a sickly white.

Uh oh…

"Sorry's right," I said. "You're going to frenzy again."

Had no sleeves to roll up with the shirt I'm wearing, so baring my arm was as easy as simply walking up to her, which I did so in a frantic hurry.

I stepped forward.

She stepped back.

Way back.

"Adalia," My voice was a mixture of feelings I liked to call: Confused urgency. It sounded out, and it sounded aloud. "What are you doing? You gotta feed."

She shook her head. Slower, weaker than before. "No…"

No?

"Why not?"

I got nearer again, she went further again. Okay, deep breaths.

"Right, you don't act like this usually. Got no reason to. Something happened - you went somewhere, now you got a reason," I lowered my arm and stretched our distance even further. "So… is it a good enough reason to risk going absolutely mental?"

An instant answer wasn't what I was waiting for here. I anticipated for some sporadic pauses in between sentences, shortness of breath here and there all strewn into a long, convoluted explanation as to why she refused to feed.

I didn't expect for her to only muttered out two words. I also didn't expect myself to immediately be swayed by those words.

But hey, Adalia just had a way with words, didn't she? Ever the eloquent speaker, she was.

Two words… and a solemn stare.

"My sister."

The way she said it - no nearly indiscernible whisper can detract from the feelings woven within them. The less said, the more I understood.

"She's Blighted too?" I asked but I already knew the answer. Doesn't take a psychic to read between the lines. Just some eyes, ears, and a little bit of context.

Adalia nodded her head.

"You found her?"

Another nod.

"So that's where you ran off to then," I said, funneling out a sigh of realization. "You went to go see her."

"I can always sense her… so I looked… found her… the top floor… building…" Adalia hung her head. "Couldn't…. wake her…"

Never have I ever heard a sentence that was spoken so indifferently and yet at the same time also brimming with so much sadness.

Sympathy for the vampire. We come a long way.

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" I asked.

"I… didn't think to…" Another quivering breath. "I never had… to… before... I'm sorry..."

Mmm. That's going to need some rectifying sometime in the future, for now though, we still had many elephants in the room that needed addressing.

"Won't drink my blood - hadn't yet explained why," I said, taking a much-needed sit-down at the foot of the stairs.

"The Black Blight… the call of the Void… it only comes to you the moment… you fall… asleep," She explained, wobbling unsteadily in place. "Your blood… makes me… sleepy… I can't risk... because..."

"if you sleep again…" I finished for her, shifting my glance to the figures in slumber. "You'll end up just like them."

"Yes…"

A sigh. I noticed that I keep sighing a lot when I'm feeling helpless. Hopefully, they'll come a time when I stop feeling that way.

"I don't suppose wearing a mask and distancing ourselves will help much, would it?"

Adalia slowly batted her eyes at me. "It's not… a virus…"

I think a virus would have been much easier to contain, honestly…

"Even so, Adalia… we can't just let you go frenzy again, you know?" I said.

I'm starting to sound like Amelia here back in that building - and just like back in that building, Adalia remained as adamant as ever.

"I still have time… before that happens..." Her words spoke one thing, yet the dwindling strength in her voice spoke another. "Trust… trust me…"

"Adalia, I - "

"Please…" The shaky tone in her voice, the desperate shape in which her eyes took, they both had me shutting right the hell up. "My sister… I don't want to sleep… yet… if we fail… if you fail… I won't know that you did… I'll just be… asleep... forever..."

Another sigh. That helpless feeling once more. Fuck - now I have two ticking time bombs to deal with here, and frankly speaking, I didn't know which was worse.

It seems even in her encumbered state, Adalia could sense the raging war of indecisiveness waging within me, her perception still as keen as ever…

She spoke again in what I guess is an attempt to clear away the doubts I held for her.

"We can… wake them…" She took a step forward. "The Void's Call works similarly… to a trance… so… it just needs to be… broken… then everyone… my sister… will wake up again..."

"To do that, we need to cleanse the Blight, don't we?" I narrowed my lips. "You got a Speaker here, but you're short of a Listener and somebody with experience that can teach us. Can't break the trance with the way things are."

Adalia shook her head. At first, I wasn't sure if that just another attempt to sway me to her tune, but as I continued to listen to her speak, I could feel the internal conflict inside of me gradually die down.

"Not... necessarily…" She said. "it's just a trance… so all that means is that we… overwrite that trance… with… another trance of… our own… now, it won't cleanse… the Blightfall… it will still remain… but everyone… will wake up..."

I could see it already, understand it already - her train of thought and my own - both of them were now chugging on the same track, arriving together at the same station.

"And that'll actually work?" I asked. "In case you haven't noticed, Adalia. We have girls here, not guys.

"Provided… the trance… is strong enough…" She said. "It still… will work…"

Oh, it'll be strong enough, alright. If she was thinking what I was thinking, then yes… I'm all for it. Wouldn't hurt at all to try.

There was only one individual shared between the both of us that we knew of that would be capable of such a feat - I, personally… can speak for its potency, having been the subject to its, uh… effectiveness many times over.

A walking, talking pheromone bomb. I'm surprised her face hadn't crossed my mind at all up to this point.

Stern raven-black eyes on an even sterner face. Prim and proper, as serious as serious could be… yet with a smell, with the looks that are literally to die for.

"Call… the… Succubus…" Adalia muttered to me.

Didn't even need to say it. Before Adalia could even fill in the pauses in-between her words, I already had my phone whipping out from my pants pocket faster than a texas-boy at high noon.

Snapping the girls out of their endless slumber didn't seem like something that could be resolved by just shoving the equivalent of morning wood up their nostrils. Had the impression that maybe the method to go about it would involve something a little bit more mystical and grand.

But heck - what the hell do I know myself about these things anyway?

If the vampire here says that horniness is gonna work, then damn it, who am I to say otherwise?

Horniness it is.

Flicking to my contacts list, I tapped the call button on the only name there was on the "I' category.

>