Mortality Bites Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Vance, Ramy

  “Sadly, no.” She shook her head to chase away the sad thoughts. “My turn. Question seven: Are you an Other?”

  “Half-breed. But unlike you and your fairy godparents, mine was more like a creepy uncle situation.”

  She understood what I meant. “Were?” she asked.

  “Vamp.”

  “Makes sense,” she said. “You move too fluidly to be a were.”

  “Oh, how do you figure?”

  “Weres are too reliant on their alternate selves. Vampires are essentially one form all the time, so they never have to practice moving in two forms. The way you dodged those guys’ attacks on campus shows how practiced you are.”

  “Those guys—and this is my question eight—they’re human?”

  “Yes.”

  “Question nine: And you gave them superpowers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ten: Why?”

  She sighed and looked up and down the street. It was empty—no people walking, no cars puttering along. We were basically alone, with only a couple cars buried under the snow sitting silently on the road. Then she leaned in and screamed, “Because—”

  But before I could catch what she was saying the car alarms went off, ringing with obscene loudness given that they were covered in about six inches of snow.

  The timing was uncanny. Beside me, all Cassy could do was shrug in response.

  “I think I know what’s going on here … and how to get around it. Do you trust me?” I asked, reaching out a hand.

  She looked at it for a long, long time. Just when I was beginning to think she wouldn’t take it, she reached out, clasping her fingers around mine.

  “Thank you,” I said, squeezing her hand and pulling her down the hill.

  Some Truths Give You a Stomach Ache

  I led Cassy to the alleyway between the bookstore and the Desautels building, where a man-looking creature whiter than snow sat on the ground reading a pile of recycled cardboard cereal boxes.

  He looked pleased as he mumbled the words: “bulking agent,” “polydextrose,” “raising agent,” “sodium hydrogen carbonate,” “magnesium carbonate.” He ran a sensuous finger down a box of krispies. “Mmm … thiamin hydrochloride. Folic acid.”

  “Tasty?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Very. FDA requirements are so … delicious.”

  “I know,” I said, “but do you know what’s even tastier than the back of the box? What’s inside.”

  At this he groaned and shook his head in vehement disagreement.

  “Never mind all that. Cassy, meet Mergen. Mergen, meet Cassy.”

  “Hi,” Cassy said, giving the pale creature a wave. “Aren’t you cold?”

  Mergen shook his head. “The truth keeps me warm.”

  “Speaking of truth,” I said, “we wanted to see if you would hear some now.”

  Cassy looked at me with confusion. “I’ve seen a lot in my days, and yet I don’t know who or what is before us.”

  “The Avatar of Truth and Wisdom,” I said. “He eats truth. Think of him as a human lie detector, only better. And he works on Others—even touched ones.”

  Cassy nodded in understanding.

  I’m beginning to enjoy how easy it is to speak to someone who just gets all this stuff without needing an explanation. Like sharing a kitchen with someone who knows their way around one. You never get in each other’s way, you can anticipate each other’s needs. It’s just easy.

  Not like with Justin. Cassy would have understood immediately how dangerous the dybbuk is and kept her mouth shut. And given how pretty she is …

  “Excuse me?”

  I knew I should’ve been embarrassed at my little out loud thought, but I wasn’t, merely adding (out loud on purpose this time), “Just thinking how easy it would be if you and I were a couple. You know, two ancient beings making our mark in this crazy GoneGod World.”

  She giggled at this. “True, but given how young you are compared to me, it would be like cradle robbing.”

  At this Mergen smacked his lips, evidently seeing her comment as truth.

  “OK, shall we get to it? Question eleven: Are people compelled to tell the truth around you?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “But they are compelled to tell me their role in …”—she hesitated—“upcoming events.”

  Mergen rubbed his tummy.

  “Your turn,” I said.

  “OK, this is my last question for you. Depending on how you answer, it’s possibly the moment I walk away. Got it?”

  I nodded.

  “Question thirteen: Are you here to help?”

  I thought about the implication of the question. She wasn’t asking if I was a good guy or trying to do right. She was asking if I was here to help. Help who? Her? Others? The students? Knowing she would be particularly sensitive to my answer, I said, “I’m here to do what I believe is right. Often that means helping people. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

  Mergen licked his fingers, and Cassy smiled.

  “Did I answer well?”

  “Well enough,” she said. “I believe you have a pertinent question to ask. One that was so rudely interrupted before.”

  “I do, but before I ask that one, I’ve thought of a couple more. Do you mind?”

  She shook her head. “Ask away. You have my trust.”

  “Good,” I said. “Are you cursed?”

  At this, Cassy’s already light skin lost all color. “I cannot speak of it,” she finally said.

  Mergen was picking his teeth.

  OK, I thought in my head. Most people who are cursed cannot speak of what happened, or how. So that will be as close to confirmation as I can get.

  “Have you aged since they … you know … went bye-bye?”

  “No,” she said. “As best as I can tell, not a day.”

  “But you can burn time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you give those students their powers?”

  She nodded.

  “How many?”

  “As many as needed,” she answered. “As of now … twenty-two.”

  That was an interesting answer. Twenty-two. Why that number? And what did “as many as needed” mean? Why didn’t more—or fewer—need superpowers?

  I really hoped my next question would shine some light on those questions as well.

  “OK then,” I said with a heavy sigh. Looking up and down the alley and then above, I saw nothing. Only accumulated snow on the roofs of the two building we stood between. Still, given last time’s car eruption, I got myself into a position that would let me pounce at a second’s notice. I also kept an eye on Mergen to see his reaction. By my estimation, a creature who ate the truth could also hear it, no matter the limitations set on it. “Let’s address the elephant in the room, shall we? Tell me Cassy, why did you give those students superpowers?”

  Cassy started to speak, and as she did, a sonic boom shook the ground and buildings around us. The snow slid off the roofs of the buildings, showering us in cold, white powder. And even though I couldn’t hear what Cassy was saying, I knew she spoke on.

  In between watermelon-sized snowfall, I saw Mergen’s reaction. He gripped his belly, his eyes widening, his mouth gaping open. He looked like he was being waterboarded.

  I charged at Cassy, covering her mouth. “Enough!” I said. “Enough.”

  Cassy was crying, her lips still moving beneath my palm. She was telling the truth—her truth. Much as I was compelled to speak mine around her, she too, was compelled to tell all of hers.

  But snow and sonic booms stopped me from being able to hear her. As I tried to get her to stop speaking, I saw Mergen continuing to writhe in pain.

  This lasted for an eternity. In truth she probably only spoke for ten seconds, but ten seconds was enough. When she finished speaking her truth, the snow stopped falling and the sonic booms ceased their explosive noise.

  Mergen was on the floor, eyes wide open and terrified.

  I went to his side. “Mergen! M
ergen, are you all right?” I tried to get him into a sitting position, but he wouldn’t be moved.

  I was going to call for help when he grabbed the back of my head and drew me in close. “She has spoken the truth, and it is horrible.”

  “Mergen, will you—” But I was cut off by Underdawg dropping from the sky and landing right next to us.

  Boggie wasn’t wearing his mask this time. Terror had replaced it.

  “The sonic booms—that was you,” I said.

  He nodded. “Guys, thank the GoneGods I found you. There’s something horrible going on that you need to—”

  But before he could finish, his youthful, unblemished face grew crows’ feet. They jutted from a pair of eyes that had become white with cataracts.

  His hair grayed as his cheeks sagged. He was aging. He turned from young to middle-aged to old to ancient before he collapsed on the ground.

  Behind him stood a kid wearing a metal helmet not unlike a medieval knight’s. On his body, chainmail and a shield with a large red cross.

  “What the—?” I said, as the kid raised a hand and shot a fireball right at me.

  End of Part 2

  Part III

  Intermission

  How cruel the god Apollo had been that fateful day they met. Not that she had meant to draw in the sun with her song. It was not her fault that her voice attracted the god’s attention. Nor was it her fault that her beauty drove him mad with passion.

  And so he came at her like a stray dog in heat, panting and begging. So distasteful. She rejected him, as was her right. Nay, more than her right—it was her nature. For when her father, King Priam, lay with her mother, Hecuba, they had enticed the muse Calliope to touch her soul and the siren Ligeia to gift her with song and beauty unmatched. And as the two divine creatures touched the newly born baby, they set her on a course to be something … more.

  None could deny that Cassandra was the most beautiful girl in all of creation—even more beautiful than her sister Helen, whose face had launched a thousand ships.

  But true beauty is oft accompanied by vile arrogance, and in this way Cassandra was not immune. Suitors would come from far off, lured in by Cassandra’s song, only to be turned away once the hook of her perfection had pierced their hearts, its metal infecting their souls with the rabies of rejection.

  On the island of Troy there is a cliff called Cassandra’s Bluff, its name earned by all the failed suitors who jumped to a watery grave rather than live a life without the woman they loved with all their being.

  And so that became Cassandra’s curse: to love her with undeniable passion, only to find that love unfulfilled and unrequited.

  Cassandra might have continued this way had her song not been heard by the sun god Apollo. Disguising himself as a human, he too sought to win her hand.

  And he, like the rest of them, was refused.

  But in all of creation there is no creature more vindictive than a god spurned, and refusing Cassandra’s refusal, he tied her to a sacrificial altar on Mt. Olympus’s Stefani Peak. There he scooped out her eyes and gouged out her tongue.

  Cassandra, bloodied and in so much pain that she was near death, screamed in agony, pleading for mercy. Apollo, god of music, truth and prophesy, possessed no mercy in his pierced heart.

  He replaced Cassandra’s eyes with two of the all-seeing eyes of the Cyclops, so that she would be cursed with the eyes of foresight, but he made sure that the only future Cassandra could see would be the tragic death of others.

  Once that was done, he sewed the vile tongue of Medacius, the spirit of fraud and deception, into her screaming mouth so that no one would believe her prophesies.

  Born out of love, reborn out of pain, Cassandra awoke. She was no longer the girl gifted with beauty and song, but rather the woman who saw death and could do nothing about it for she was never to be believed.

  Leaving her bleeding body, which because of Apollo’s Frankenstein-esque tampering was no longer wholly hers, he cursed her with these final words: “Cassandra, ye shall walk this Earth never to be heard, never to help a single soul, never to die.”

  To be cursed with eyes not her own and magic that could not help those condemned to death—that was her punishment for denying the god Apollo the taste of her love.

  If these had been the only tragedies he bestowed upon her that day, she might have found a way to accept these gifts.

  But Apollo was a cruel god indeed, for he bestowed upon her one last curse, one last condition that Cassandra would find the most difficult to accept: that of life eternal.

  ↔

  But that was then and this is now. Now Cassandra lives in a world without gods. She walks among the humans, trying to find a way to be. But being is hard, and the one thing that Cassandra hates more than anything is being ignored. It’s not that she hates the feeling you get when someone is not listening—she hates being ignored.

  It is akin to not existing, and that is exactly what happens every time she speaks. For Cassandra knows things, sees things, but every time she tries to tell someone what she sees, no one hears her.

  Things are different now. Although she is still mostly unheard, she is not unseen. She has found a place among the humans (well, the normal, un-cursed humans), a place of learning, a place of enlightenment. A place that accepts those who are not quite like everyone else.

  A place humans call university.

  She likes her new life. She is happy to live with these youthful humans as they go about just being.

  She has friends, one of whom—a boy named Bogdan, referred to by friends as Boggie—has even renamed her: Cassy. It is a good name that does not hold the burden of who she was.

  Cassandra—Cassy—is the happiest she has been in as long as she can remember. But happiness is oft short-lived for most and shorter-lived for those cursed. And her prophetic eyes see death.

  And not just anyone’s death. It will come to so many of her friends.

  She tries to warn them, but as is her curse, no one hears her.

  Desperate but not entirely helpless, she has an idea. If she cannot warn them—cannot save them—then perhaps she can empower them so that they can save themselves.

  Behold, It Is I! The Villain!

  (Or … Enter Villain, Stage Left)

  A fireball shot in my direction. Luckily Mergen had been reading a stack of cardboard crap that was all soaking wet from the snow. I grabbed a pile and used it as a shield. The fireball hit my makeshift shield and it went up in a burst of steam.

  Shieldless and annoyed, I looked at the runt in armor. “A crusader? Seriously? Do you have any idea how much death and destruction they caused? Despite any romanticized notions you might have, let me assure you, those guys were anything but good.”

  I couldn’t see the kid’s face, so I had no idea if he was smirking or scowling. I did hear a muffled, “You talk too much,” as he summoned another fireball.

  So scowling, then.

  The fireball grew in his hand and I had exactly two seconds to make my move. Good—two seconds was all I needed.

  Most people run away from a guy with a gun. This is almost always a mistake, because running leaves you unguarded, blind and gives your enemy a nice linear target to shoot—let’s say, a fireball—at.

  If you’re untrained, the best thing for you to do is make yourself as small a target as possible. Turn sideways, find cover—even if it doesn’t cover your entire body. Standing sideways behind a four-inch-thick birch tree trunk means there’s four fewer inches to hit.

  The second best thing to do is to make your movements as unpredictable as possible: zigzag, slide, serpentine … anything to make yourself difficult to track.

  But if your enemy has a fireball and you’re in a narrow alleyway with virtually no cover, then you only have one option.

  Luckily, that one option is also your best option—if you’re trained, that is … and I had all kinds of training in me.

  I somersaulted forward, and as my feet touched
the ground, I used my momentum to dive into the crusader.

  The result was that he dropped his half-formed fireball, which caused the snow and water around him to erupt into steam.

  The crusader and I barreled out of the alleyway and onto the adjacent road. Because he was wearing heavy armor, he crashed into a snow-covered, parked car.

  Peeling himself off, he left a weird, standing version of a snow angel on the car’s side.

  Allowing myself two seconds I didn’t have, I looked over my shoulder and cried out, “Mergen, Cassy—get Boggie to safety. I’ll deal with Mr. Knight Templar here.”

  Cassy and Mergen nodded, each throwing one of Boggie’s arms over a shoulder and trotting down the alleyway.

  Which left me alone with the crusader.

  ↔

  I had a problem, and it wasn’t just this LARPing nightmare trying to fry me with magic he shouldn’t possess. My problem was that I was living in the modern age.

  There were cameras everywhere and if I, a supposedly normal girl, did stuff I shouldn’t be able to do … that might cause some people to ask questions.

  Questions like, who was I and how did I know how to do all that stuff? I might be human now, but I knew more about handling myself than any human should. And given that I wasn’t ready to let the world know I was an ex-three-hundred-year-old vampire, I had to hold myself back.

  That, and the small detail of this kid probably just doing whatever the cursed magic that had enchanted on him told him to do.

  Still, he was different than the other heroes. He’d hurt Underdawg in a way that the superhero battle of earlier today hadn’t. He had aged the poor guy to the point of near death like some sort of soul-sucking wizard, and—

  Wizard Crusader, finally on his feet, swung an angry fist at me. Using my aikido training, I tried to defect the blow so it would fly harmlessly away from me and, if I was lucky (I was beginning to think I had used all my luck up), the momentum would throw him off balance.