Mortality Bites Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Vance, Ramy

  But neither happened. Instead, when I grabbed his forearm to deflect the blow, it just kept going. I ended up flying to the side and through the window of the McGill Bookstore.

  I crashed through along with a thunderstorm of McGill-branded calendars, notebooks, sweaters and t-shirts that came tumbling after me. I had just managed to get a crescent-branded flag off my face when Wizard Crusader flew through the window, landing right next to me.

  “Super strength and flying ability? I could get used to this,” he said, removing a glove and hoisting me up with his now naked hand. “And as for you, Katrina Darling …”

  And as he held me, I felt the strangest sensation flow over me.

  It started with the tips of his fingers. I’d been hoisted off the ground by super strong creatures before. I’d felt fingertips clasp my throat. They gripped so tight that I could feel the flats of their fingers on my neck. That was what I felt at first.

  Then I felt the flats open up, holes appearing where skin should be, and if that sensation wasn’t enough, sharp spikes came out of them and stabbed into my neck.

  Let’s just say that one hurt. It hurt a lot.

  He held me there for a long moment, the pincers digging deeper into my neck. After what felt like an eternity, the pincers retracted and the flats of his fingers returned. “Interesting,” he said. “Perhaps that weird guy was right about you, Kat: You’re not a superhero or an Other. You are a human girl who knows and can do more that she should be able to do.”

  “What ‘weird guy?’ ” I said with gritted teeth, grabbing at his hand. My blood made his fingers too slippery for me to get a good grip.

  “Some weirdo who told me some interesting things about you and your long, long past. I didn’t believe him at first, but now I’m starting to.” Wizard Crusader let out a long sigh. “Not that it matters. I’m not going to make the classic villain mistake. You know, reveal my plan, devise some complicated way to kill you, only to give you time to escape. I hate it when they do that, don’t you?”

  “I used to, but given the position I’m in, I’m kind of hoping you’ll do it just this once.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “In another life I would have enjoyed debating you. But alas, some things are not meant to be. How would you like to die? Broken neck? I could rip you in two. Perhaps punch a hole through your chest.”

  He paused and I suddenly got that his questions weren’t rhetorical. He really wanted to know how I would like to die. If I had a chance to get away, it was this … but I didn’t have much time to think this through. Another second or two and he’d make the decision for me.

  I thought back to what I knew about the superpowers and those pincers and in a flash of divine inspiration, I had the inkling of a plan.

  A terrible plan that would probably get me killed regardless of whether I managed to escape Wizard Crusader, but a plan nonetheless.

  Up, Up and Get Away?

  “I want you to drop me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your powers, the ones you stole from Underdawg—”

  “Earned. Not stole. I do not steal what is not mine.”

  “Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes—a feat not easily accomplished with someone crushing your larynx. “Whatever. But if these are my last moments, I want to spend them soaring through the air.”

  “Interesting,” he said, amused. He giggled at the thought.

  “And one more thing. Because this university has caused me nothing but misery, I want you to drop me onto The Three Bares statue. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

  “You mean that piece of concretized porn on campus? The fountain with three naked men holding a shell?”

  “That’s the one. I want to die plummeting into three naked guys as my final fu—”

  “Language,” he said, tightening his grip.

  “Sorry. My final f-you to this place.”

  “Milady,” he said in a mocking tone, “your wish is my command.” And without another word, he took to the sky.

  ↔

  Wizard Crusader flew out of the smashed window and up above the campus until we were hovering right above the statue. From that high, I could see it was not a shell at all, but rather a rock with a concave basin where the fountain’s inner workings popped out.

  Once he was above the damn statue, he flew straight up. “You know,” he said, “I don’t know if you’ll fall straight down. Wind and all that. But I guess we must do the best we can with what we have. All of which is to say, if you miss the statue, I do apologize.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’ll have done your best.”

  He chuckled. “I will have, won’t I?”

  “Oh yes,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “You’ll do your best and I’m not going to miss. I’ve skydived before. I’ll hit that statue if it’s the last thing I do. I will destroy those damn three bares.”

  “Quite loud, aren’t you?”

  “Just psyching myself up. I’m going to destroy that statue. I’m going to kill The Three Bares,” I sang as loud as I could.

  Wizard Crusader tilted his head at me. “What are you doing?”

  “Singing a song.”

  “A song?” he said, his voice distant.

  “Yeah, a song. It’s my ‘Destroying The Three Bares’ song. I’m going to destroy that statue. I’m going to kill The Three Bares,” I sang to the tune of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” “I’m going to destroy that statue. I’m going to kill The Three Bares.”

  Wizard Crusader nodded his head to my tune as he continued his ascent. Then he started singing along until the two of us were belting out “I’m going to destroy that statue. I’m going to kill The Three Bares” at the top of our lungs.

  He kept going up as he sang, and for a moment, he seemed to have forgotten what he was doing. Then he suddenly stopped singing, instead muttering to himself, “Oh, yeah. That’s right …” before looking down and giggling to himself.

  We were way up high. High enough that The Three Bares statue was practically a dot below.

  He started giggling uncontrollably. “You know,” he said between chortles, “your song was so catchy that I would have flown straight to the moon. Luckily, I got me a solid brain.” He tapped the top of his helmet with his free hand. Then in a chivalrous tone, he gave me an awkward bow—given he still held me by the neck—and said, “I fear, milady, that I must bid thee adieu.”

  And before I could utter a word in protest, he dropped me.

  ↔

  The only time I have ever been truly terrified as a vampire was the night a valkyrie took issue with me eating a human traveler she had taken to. Apparently, I had eaten the descendent of some great viking warrior whom the valkyrie had not only fought with, but whose family she had vowed to protect for all time.

  Whoops. Silly me for not knowing that.

  The avian warrior had grabbed me and taken me straight up to the sky, dropping me from a height of at least a mile.

  As I fell, I’d had no idea if my vampiric body could withstand such a fall. I felt that this was truly it, and I was terrified. In the end I survived that fall, although my healing ability—which normally healed any wound in a matter of hours—took three weeks to make me whole again.

  Now that I was human I knew this fall would kill me, but for some reason I was less terrified of dying. There was a part of me that knew this was how I was meant to die. Not being dropped by a maniac crusader onto a statue of three naked men, but as a human trying her darndest to make up for the shit-ton of wrong she’d done.

  Dying would suck, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  So I spread my arms and enjoyed the rush of wind on my face as the ground came closer and closer.

  I gambled and lost, and somehow that’s OK, I thought to myself, knowing those words to be true because I had uttered them out loud. I only ever speak the truth; my lies tend to stay in my head.

  The Three Bares came rushing toward me. I had seconds left.


  But as is true with all best-laid plans, sometimes they don’t pay off, and sometimes they do.

  There was a whoosh as a powerful hand grabbed me, and before I could say “kamehameha,” I was whisked away in a golden comet of whatever is the opposite of irony.

  ↔

  The Dragon Ball Z-obsessed superhero flew me to the top of the Faculty of Engineering building, where he gently put me down. “Are you OK?”

  He looked right at me and, because I wasn’t wearing the cherub mask, he didn’t recognize me as the girl he had been trying to kill only this morning. “I am. Thank you,” I said.

  Comet Boy looked up at Wizard Crusader, still hovering above us, and muttered, “He tried to hurt the campus using your body.”

  “Ahh, I would think the more pertinent point would be, ‘He tried to kill me.’ ”

  “That, too,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Whoever he is, he’s going to pay.” Then the kid’s golden halo surged around his body as he prepared to take off again.

  “Wait, wait!” I cried out. “That guy up there, with the armor—he’s got weird powers. I wouldn’t go up there. The last superhero he fought—”

  But before I could finish my warning, the kid let out a ridiculous, anime-esque war cry and shot up into the sky.

  ↔

  I watched helplessly as the golden comet zipped up and met the silver streaks of the crusader. The two zigzagged in the sky, Comet Boy’s streaks of light linear and purposeful. Wizard Crusader, on the other hand, bobbed back and forth like a drunk trying to walk the white line.

  For a moment I thought Comet Boy would take this guy down without a problem, but as he flew by Wizard Crusader, the poor excuse for a knight reached out a hand and grabbed Comet Boy.

  They floated there for a long moment, hand in hand, before Comet Boy’s glow fizzled out and he started to fall to the ground. Wizard Crusader’s body became enflamed in gold as the other boy fell.

  ↔

  Watching someone fall is as terrifying as falling yourself. All I could do was point and scream as the kid plummeted to the earth. I had braced myself for the ugly thud of a body hitting concrete when a girl dressed in black leapt into the sky and caught the boy, gently bringing him down to the ground.

  I looked down from my perch on the engineering building’s roof and spotted several more heroes showing up. They were all staring up at Wizard Crusader with growing anger.

  For a second I thought there would be an epic showdown, but Wizard Crusader did the smart thing: he took off, leaving a golden streak in his wake.

  The Geriatric Ward of Heroes

  I kicked in the locked rooftop door and made my way down the stairs to where the heroes were gathering. They all stood around Comet Boy, who lay there as human as the day he was born. Well, that’s not quite right. He was old, and I don’t mean grandfather old. I mean forgotten-in-a-home old.

  Liver spots, wrinkles, moles and skin tags plagued his face. His nose had grown three times larger and was covered in deep holes … a whisky nose, as we’d say in Scotland. Seemed that Comet Boy, if he had had a chance to grow old, would have done so with a wee bit of an affinity for drinking.

  The girl in all black gently hoisted the old man up so that his head lay on her lap. “Dustin? Dustin—what happened?” she said between confused tears.

  “I … I don’t know—” Dustin started to say, but when he heard his own voice, he paused. “Why do I sound like that?”

  A dozen superheroes all stared down at him, not one of them wanting to tell him. He looked at his girlfriend. “Mary, what … what’s wrong with me?”

  “I … I don’t know how to tell you.” She started to pull out her phone, presumably to show him what happened. At least I hoped that was her purpose and not to take a selfie for Instagram.

  I pushed my way through the crowd and bent down next to him. Grabbing Mary’s phone out of her hand, I shook my head. “We need to do this right,” I said.

  Twenty minutes ago he’d been eighteen, maybe nineteen. Now he was older than sin, which meant his heart was ancient as well. The shock could kill him.

  Holding the phone with two hands, I said, “First of all … Anton, is it?”

  He nodded.

  “I want you to know this is reversible. There are ahh … treatments that can be done and magic that can be used.”

  “Magic?” he asked.

  “Yeah, magic.”

  “Why do I need magic to fix my voice?”

  “Because,” I said, clicking the phone’s camera function on, “something unusual has happened to you. Something terrible. But—and I can’t emphasize this enough—it is reversible. Remember that.” I handed him the phone.

  He looked at himself and pulled the phone away. “Oh, ha ha. This is some new app effect, right?”

  His eyes darted between Mary and me, and when he saw that neither of us were smiling, he groaned “Oh Jesus, I’m too young to be old,” before fainting.

  ↔

  We didn’t know what to do. The old-young guy (young-old guy?) was out cold, and for all we knew, heading toward the light.

  We called an ambulance, which swiftly arrived and picked him up. There was a brief discussion about his name and stuff, and given that they would never believe his ID belonged to this old guy, we said he had none. They took him without a second question.

  Thank the GoneGods for Canada and their universal healthcare.

  ↔

  I went to the alleyway, hoping to find Cassy, Boggie and Mergen—or at the very least, Mergen—but none of them were there. Instead, there was a cardboard sign with three words on it: Royal Vic, Bogdan.

  The Royal Vic was the hospital that was so close to McGill’s residences that Gardner Hall practically shared a backyard with the place. Evidently Cassy had the same idea of getting her old guy to the hospital as well.

  I trudged up the hill and made my way to the hospital lobby where Mergen sat outside, still groaning and clasping his stomach.

  I have only ever seen Mergen groan in discomfort when he was forced to digest some particularly terrible lie. That he was still hurting meant that whatever Cassy had told him was practically food poisoning for the poor guy. “Did she lie to you?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. There was far too much meat on his bones for him to have been lied to.

  Mergen shook his head. “No. Her truth is not meant to be heard.”

  “She’s cursed?”

  He cupped both his hands together and mimicked eating heartily out of them.

  “So, big time cursed?”

  He nodded again.

  “And whatever she has to tell us—about the superheroes and what she’s up to—you can’t hear it, either.”

  Mergen paused and shook his head. “Heard it.”

  My eyes widened in surprise. “You heard it? Then what is it?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Why not?!” I yelled, then realizing where I was, caught myself and counted to ten before saying in a far more civil tone, “Why not?”

  “Because … ” He gestured vomiting and then stuff coming out of the other side, before placing a hand over his stomach and mimicking a scene from Aliens.

  “It will kill you, eh?”

  “Not just kill. Devastate.”

  I imagined the scene out of Monty Python where the fat man ate so much he literally exploded, and I looked at my friend with sorrow. As much as I wanted to know Cassy’s secret, I wanted to know that my friend was safe and healthy. Taking his hand in mine, I said, “Then never tell. Not one word to anyone. Ever.”

  He nodded.

  “They’re inside. I should go.”

  I pulled away but Mergen held onto my hands. “What?” I asked. “Is there anything you need?”

  Letting go, he pointed to his stomach and groaned. “The truth.”

  Mergen was in pain and needed a bit of truth to offset whatever Cassy had done to him.

  “OK,” I said. “You want some truth? Here you go. When
I get to the bottom of this, someone is going to pay—dearly.”

  “Mmm, yes,” Mergen said. “Such lovely truth.”

  ↔

  “Ahh, hi,” I said to the nurse at the help desk. “I’m looking for my grandfather … Bogdan. He came in a bit earlier. You might remember him—he was dressed in a red superhero costume, complete with a cape and all.” I made like I was Superman (or, in my case, Superwoman) flying through the sky in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  The nurse didn’t smile. “What’s going on today? Your grandfather is the fourth elderly man dressed up as a superhero to come in.”

  I had feared this but wasn’t entirely surprised. Wizard Crusader’s powers were too eclectic and I figured he had stolen a few superheroes’ powers. Now I had confirmation that he had stolen at least four.

  “Comic-Con … with an emphasis on superheroes of the past.”

  “I hope they sell insurance with their entry tickets,” she said, laughing at her own joke. (Which was disappointing … mine was funnier.)

  Now it was my turn not to laugh. The nurse tapped on her computer. “Third floor—room 319.”

  With a “Thank you,” I made my way to Boggie, only to find the kid wizard, Spider Guy and Cheetara prone on their own hospital beds, still wearing their costumes which were now far too big on their brittle frames.

  Someone’s going to pay. And pay very dearly indeed.

  Sorrys, Sirens and Songs

  Have you ever truly explored the ravages of age? I don’t mean looking into your grandfather’s eyes or running your fingers along your grandmother’s wrinkles. And I certainly don’t mean discussing with some friend or relative about how time has caught up with them and whether they need more help now.