by DD Barant
“We’re hard to come by?” I’ve already done the math. “One percent. That’s all that’s left of us, you bastard? One percent?”
“Less than that,” he says quietly. “Your species numbers under a million. And one of them is slaughtering my people.”
“Why should I care?”
“Because catching this madman,” Cassius replies, “is the only hope you have of ever seeing your home again.”
Suddenly I don’t feel so well. Nauseous, dizzy, one step removed from reality. Which is exactly right, I think and a huge wave of relief surges through me. This can’t be real, because I feel like I’m about to throw up and I never, ever do the Technicolor yawn. Not when I saw my first floater, not when they hazed me at the Academy, not when we opened that root cellar outside of Augusta. Therefore, this is something simple—a brain tumor, maybe—and not the horrifying predicament the Vampire Surfer just described.
I sigh happily, throw up all over my panda, and pass out.
I wake up in a hospital bed. I put a checkmark in the “Brain Tumor” column and look around for professional corroboration.
No one in the room but me. Vomit-stained panda shirt replaced by standard-issue green hospital gown. No plastic ID band on my wrist, though. Odd.
Also, I’m strapped to the bed. Maybe I should have mentioned that first.
The door opens and a doctor walks in. He looks like a doctor, anyway, white coat over blue scrubs, with a stethoscope slung around his neck and a clipboard in his hands. He’s in his thirties, clean shaven, with shaggy brown hair and a face that reminds me a little of a young Harrison Ford.
“Ms. Valchek,” he says, smiling at me. “I’m Dr. Adams. Sorry about the restraints—you were convulsing when you were first brought here, and we didn’t want you to hurt yourself.” He starts undoing buckles.
“Where am I?” I ask, resisting the urge to grab him by the throat. Ask questions, then shoot. As soon I find out where my gun is.
“St. Francis Infirmary.” He finishes unbuckling the straps and steps back. “How are you feeling?”
I lift my hand and put it to my forehead. “My head hurts. I’m a little queasy. And I think I may have had some kind of hallucinatory episode.”
He nods. “The nausea and headache are common in cases of RDT—though there aren’t that many case histories to study. Hallucinations are a more severe symptom, though; they usually only manifest in the later stages of the syndrome.”
“So I guess my RDT is pretty bad. What’s that stand for—Raging Doom Tumor?”
“Reality Dislocation Trauma. To put things simply, Ms. Valchek, you come from another universe, with a different set of physical laws. Your body doesn’t like it. It’s trying to reject what it’s being told on a very basic level, but there’s nowhere to go.”
I stare at him. I like to think I’m adaptable, but I kind of had my heart set on the whole brain cancer thing. Rational, tragic, possibly fixable—all I had to do was pick out some fashionable head scarves for my post-operative look. And now?
Now I don’t have to worry about any of that. Just vampires, werewolves, and being allergic to existing.
“I know it’s a big shock,” Dr. Adams says. “But it’s not as bad as it sounds. There is a treatment available; it’s effective and noninvasive. I was just waiting for you to wake up before administering it.”
“Does it involve ruby slippers?” He gives me the blank look I often get when I’m trying to be funny. “Never mind.” A sudden and very nasty thought strikes me. “Wait a minute. Does this mean I’m going to be developing a sudden aversion to sunlight and/or silver?”
Now he’s the one who looks shocked. “Of course not! Ms. Valchek, we have something here called the Hippocratic oath, and we take that very seriously. Turning a human being against their will is a Federal crime, not to mention extremely rare. No, the treatment you’re going to receive—”
The door opens and a nurse enters, holding a white mug with steam rising from it. She doesn’t seem to have fangs or claws or an excessive amount of body hair, but I study her suspiciously just the same; she’s young, Asian, and has blue streaks in her short dark hair. She hands the mug to Adams, giving me a curious glance in return.
“Ah, thank you,” he says. I guess in this reality nurses are expected to bring doctors their coffee, or maybe Miss Blue Streaks is just a suck-up.
To my surprise, he hands the mug to me. “And here it is. Drink up, but be careful—it’s hot.”
I take the mug and sniff it. It doesn’t smell that bad, kind of like juniper with a hint of ginger. “What—you’re going to cure me with tea?”
“It’s an herbal preparation called Urthbone, specifically formulated to reinforce your connection to this world. It’ll help ground you, physically and psychically—basically, a spiritual immunosuppressant.”
I try a sip. Bitter, of course. But if they were trying to poison me, I’d already be dead. Or undead. Or hairy.
Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I start feeling better immediately. I take a proper mouthful, ignoring the heat—I like my coffee hot.
“Oh, God,” I say.
“What?” He’s closer in an instant, looking concerned.
“You do have coffee in this world, right?”
He smiles. It’s a nice smile, warm, completely unlike Cassius’ relaxed smirk. “Yes, we have coffee. I’ll get you some as soon as you finish the Urthbone. Before you do, though, there are some side effects you should be aware of.”
Of course. I take another swallow anyway—in for a penny, in for a pound. “Go ahead.”
“You’ll experience an increase in empathy as your life force becomes attuned to this plane of reality. You’ll be able to tell what the people near you are feeling—it may even affect your own emotions. If so, let me know and I’ll adjust the dosage.”
I nod. Compared to seizures and hallucinations, a little sensitivity to the moods of others doesn’t seem so bad. My colleagues are always telling me I need to be more sensitive, anyway.
“Where’s my handler?” I ask. “Cassius.”
“He’s a busy man. He’ll be by to debrief you eventually, but he thought you needed a little time to acclimatize, first. I have to apologize for how you’ve been treated, Ms. Valchek—dimensional extractions aren’t done very often, but there are protocols for a new arrival. You should have been eased into your transition, not yanked fully conscious into the Director’s office.”
“Call me Jace. And it’s fine—I’m used to being thown in the deep end of the pool.” I take a long breath and let it out, trying to shift into Active Case mode. In abductions or murders, the first forty-eight hours are always the crucial ones; you have to learn to hit the ground running and go full tilt. I’d gotten through multiple homicide, rape, and pedophile cases—I could get through this.
“If you’ve got any questions, Jace, I’d be happy to answer them. And please, call me Pete.”
“Okay. Pull up a chair—there’s one or two tiny details I might need clarified.”
He grabs a plastic stool from near the door and sits. “Go ahead.”
Where to begin? I think about it and realize just how big a problem this could be. It depends on how knowledgeable he is about not only his own world but also mine. “Let’s start with broad strokes, Dr. Pete. My world doesn’t have magic, yours does. What kind of magic are we talking about? Witchcraft, voodoo, gypsy curses? Gandalf, Dumbledore, or Aleister Crowley?”
His face does one of those things where the bottom half smiles and the upper half frowns. “Most magic is based upon animist principles—the idea that all things, animate and inanimate, have a spirit inside them. Different cultures interpret this energy in different ways, but the principles remain the same. The terms ‘witchcraft’ and ‘voodoo’ are seldom used, but elements of both approaches still exist. The two major forms are Japanese Shintoism and African Shamanism, though there are hundreds of different subdisciplines and offshoots within each. Vampires ten
d to like the formalism of the Shinto, while werekind lean toward the African.”
“How about you?”
“I’m a Shamanist. Guess I like the earthier approach.”
“So you’re a . . .”
“Lycanthrope, yes.”
His brown eyes meet mine. I find it hard to imagine him howling at a full moon—he seems more the milk-and-cookies-before-bedtime type. “Sorry if I seem skeptical. But try to see it from my point of view—where I’m from, this is just flat-out impossible.”
“I get it. I can give you more immediate proof, of course.” He raises an eyebrow—a pretty thick eyebrow, actually.
“Change, you mean? Right here, right now? You can do that?”
“Sure. All lycanthropes assume were form for three days a month, but we can shift whenever we want. There are some disadvantages, though—our mouths aren’t properly shaped for speaking, for instance. But we still have hands, so we use sign language.”
“Okay, go for it.”
“Not until you’ve finished your tea. I want you grounded before I inflict further psychic trauma.” He smiles. “Ask me another question.”
“How much do you know about my world?”
“A little. I was given a dossier by the NSA when they assigned me to you, with a cultural overview put together by government shamans. They defined what they call the cusp divergence at sometime in the twelfth century; before that, our worlds were practically identical. Afterward, not so much.”
“So vampires and werewolves showed up here in the twelfth century?”
He shakes his head, then brushes a shaggy lock of hair back from his eyes. “No, our kind have been around a lot longer than that—but until then, we’d largely stayed underground. It was something that happened in your world that caused the divergence. You developed a technology called firearms.”
“We—wait. Are you saying this world doesn’t have guns?”
“That’s correct. We have weapons, of course—just not that particular innovation. Can’t say I’m sorry—from the description I read, they sound unreliable and potentially lethal to the user as well as the target.”
I’m not about to waste time arguing the merits of sidearms with a doctor. “Okay, so we invented guns and you guys stuck with, what, longbows and swords?”
“Amongst other things. It was around that time that golems started being used for warfare.”
“Golems. Details, please.”
“A golem is an artificial person, usually man-shaped but sexless. Basic animist magic: shape a humanoid form and charge it with life force. Early versions were made of clay and—despite certain legends—usually charged with the essence of some simple but strong animal. The famous Golem of Prague was powered by the spirit of a bull.”
“And they were used as soldiers?”
“Yes, but without much success—they were hard to kill, but moved slowly. It wasn’t until the Song Dynasty in China began building large golems—fifteen feet tall or so—and using them as a combination battering ram and mobile catapult that warfare really started to change.”
I try to wrap my head around that. “Giants made out of clay.”
“Fired pottery, actually, filled with pebbles. The joints were hinged metal. They were incredibly strong—they’d rain boulders of a hundred pounds or more down on the enemy from half a mile away.”
I try to imagine what it would have looked like to a fortress under siege: a row of terra-cotta titans standing back and hurling rock after rock, while three or four of them charge at the front gates, a handy redwood tucked under their arms. No wonder these people aren’t impressed by guns; while we were still experimenting with fireworks, they’d invented a tank that could follow orders.
“If the Chinese had been able to keep the golem-making process a secret, they might have been able to conquer the world—but it wasn’t their discovery to begin with. A sorcerer named Ahasuerus claimed to have perfected the ritual, and disseminated the procedure to most of the civilized world. The shift to golem warfare is what eventually led to the supernatural races coming out of the shadows.”
On my world, we’d started with bottle rockets and wound up with nuclear warheads—I’m almost afraid to ask what golems have evolved into. “I take it the current models are substantially different?”
He chuckles. “Very much. The standard, mass-produced golem today is basically a human-shaped plastic bag filled with sand—cheaper than clay, and more flexible. They’re used mainly for manual labor or clerical work, though law enforcement and the military utilize them, too. They’re animated largely by slaughtered livestock, but not always.”
Ritual sacrifice, check. Barnyard-powered robots, check. Rising sense of unreality . . . hmm. Actually, that’s subsiding. I take another long sip of tea. “So we studied David and built a better slingshot, while you went the new-and-improved Goliath route. How do vampires and werewolves figure in all this?”
“As mercenaries, in the beginning. Hemovores made excellent assassins, while lycanthropes are natural soldiers—fast, savage, hard to kill. After a few hundred years the supernatural races were taken for granted, if not accepted as equals. It culminated in the treaty of 1388, when a universal armistice was declared between the three races—golems weren’t considered people back then. After that, killing a member of another species—for blood, meat, or any other reason—was declared to be murder. Except in times of war, of course.”
“Of course. So vampires stuck to animal blood, werewolves crossed long pig off the buffet menu, and human beings put away the stakes and silver. One big happy. Sure.”
His smile turns wry. “I’m not trying to sugarcoat the situation, okay? But what happened after that wasn’t genocide, it was evolution. Vampires did what they did best—which was get craftier as they get older—and weres did what they did best, which was breed, hunt, and eat. Hemovores insinuated themselves into hierarchies where they could take control from the top—turn a King and his court and you pretty much have yourselves a country—while weres took a slower but just as effective approach.”
“Have lots of kids and feed them people?”
He pauses. Though his expression doesn’t change, I can feel his reaction—a spike of anger that seems completely at odds with his personality. I almost expect the next thing out of his mouth to be a snarl. “No,” he says, his voice calm. “They converted.”
“What, to vampires?”
“No. Catholicism.”
“How did that work?”
“It was a better fit than you might think. Werewolves are animals, and animals are creatures of God—that’s the theological argument. We don’t have a problem with the crucifix—as long as it’s not made of silver—and the Catholic Church has always encouraged procreation. It took a few generations, but by the end of the Renaissance even the Pope was a lycanthrope.”
“And most of the royals were vampires—so basically, civilization was being run by the nonhumans by that point.”
“Not yet. We were still in the minority, and many countries had instituted laws designed to keep us “nonhumans” in check. But hemovores and lycanthropes aren’t “nonhuman”; we’re just a different kind of human. One that’s better suited to survive certain things . . . like the Black Death.”
I see where this is heading. “Got it. Millions died, but not vamps or weres. I’ll bet recruitment hit a new high, too—better undead than bubonic, right? And the fact that plague was carried by fleas would have worked out nicely for the fur-enhanced, too.”
“Nobody knew that at the time. But yes, it was no doubt a factor.”
“Let’s skip ahead, okay? I’m guessing that after that, it was pretty much downhill for us nonfanged types. How long did it take? Was it a gradual decline, or something more dramatic?” I try to keep from sounding bitter, but that’s never been a skill I really developed.
“World War One. Most people agree that’s when things really changed.” He sounds different now, less removed; he isn’t discussing
history anymore, he’s talking about something he has a personal connection to. I suddenly realize that a werewolf’s life span is probably a lot longer than a human’s.
“The war itself killed millions, but the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed killed even more. Humans accounted for around fifty percent of the global population before the war, and they were firmly in the minority by the end. The last human-only government fell in 1918. Over the next twenty years, their numbers plummeted as many chose a new life as a vampire or lycanthrope.”
“The tipping point,” I say. “A lot of people saw the writing on the wall, and just gave up.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
The last of the tea’s gone cold in my hand. I slug it back with a grimace, then hand him the mug. “Rats deserting a sinking ship is another.”
“Maybe just rats learning how to swim,” he offers. “But that doesn’t really work, either. The ship is still here, Jace—”
“You know, I think I’ll skip that coffee,” I say. “I’m tired. Get the light on the way out, will you?”
He doesn’t argue. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll be back after you’ve gotten some sleep.”
I slide down under the covers and turn my back to him. A moment later, I’m alone in the dark.
Really alone.
TWO
Morning. I open my eyes and the last minuscule hope that everything was just a dream evaporates with a tiny, melodramatic scream. Good riddance, I think. I’d rather deal with reality—no matter how bleak—than have some ridiculous, forlorn hope distracting me. Yeah, and I hate kittens and puppies, too.
I’m a little testy before that first hit of caffeine.
I sit up and look around. Same hospital room, same plastic chair, same wardrobe. There are two doors but no window. I get up and investigate—the one Dr. Pete came in through is locked and the other’s the bathroom. I use the facilities, and note that a toilet is pretty much a toilet, no matter what universe you’re in.
They’re probably watching me, but I can’t spot the cameras. I check the wardrobe and find clothes in my size: underwear, socks, black slacks and a black turtleneck sweater, black leather loafers with rubber soles. I shrug and get dressed; everything fits.
