Except for my teapot.
You can bet I’ve never ever wanted to have to utter those words.
Except for my teapot.
I chucked the teapot at her the same time she jumped. I’d meant to take her in the head but because of her leap it nailed her in the chest, five pounds of pain. It didn’t break apart. Nice. Once upon a time they made products to last. The teapot stopped Annie B cold, her punch left swinging wildly in the air as she crashed to the ground.
My feet sped up, running me towards my back room.
FYI . . . teapot was red with a yellow chicken on it.
Old ladies will buy anything . . .
[CLICK]
I figured I had time to make a grab for one artifact before she followed me through the door into my shop. I didn’t even think about which one until I stood over them. It’s not like there were tons. Geo-anima, cryo-anima, aero-anima, floro-anima, and fauna-anima were the types I had steady supplies for. Everything else I had to buy and everything else I was out of.
It’s not practical to make artifacts if they cost me too much. Supply/demand, all that stuff you slept through during your Economics class. I used most of the bought anima for experimentation, but so far, other than the static ring, my experiments weren’t going anywhere unless they exploded first.
The static ring. I had it, full charge. I had enough anima built up in my body to do something with the Mancy. I had my artifacts. Only one of which was going to be of use in a fight. The first one I ever made . . . I grabbed it.
They were metal cuffs, lined with a glowing white light to let you know there was something going on inside. Cold cuffs, I’d called them back at the Asylum. Slap them on and watch cryo-anima cool down the person’s body temperature until they could barely move, too busy fighting off hypothermia. With a charge long enough for one hour of use before they ran out, that’s more than enough time to figure out what to do with the vampire. Or at least call Ceinwyn and have her figure out what to do with the vampire.
Ceinwyn . . .
Volunteered . . .
She wouldn’t . . .
Annie B burst through the door with enough impact to crack one of the hinges. She blinked, taking in the room to line up where I was at. There was a nasty look on her face. It was the only warning I had before she threw my teapot back at me with so much speed it would have killed me.
Only she missed.
Not by accident. She’d meant to miss.
Hitting my wall at Mach 3, the teapot finally broke. The shards of ceramic clattered all over the floor, a dust of red mist spraying over the room. Poor chicken . . .
She wanted me alive to use the Mancy for her. Couldn’t be good, vampires being vampires. It was never supposed to be good with the Vampire Embassies. Infighting and personal feuds going back thousands of years. Bad mojo to be a part of. Especially for the food. But whatever she wanted from me, no matter how bad it was, it meant she couldn’t kill me.
I can win this shit.
“It’s cute you’re fighting back, King Henry,” Annie B told me, “but you’re making this much harder on yourself than it needs to be. I’m not making you into a slave . . . more like an indentured servant. Two days, your opinion, maybe a bit of Mancy, that’s all. Am I really so scary?”
“You want to fuck me and then eat me,” I growled at her from across the room, my worktable the only obstacle between us. “Of course you’re scary.”
“Now, now,” she whispered as she strode forward. “No reason we can’t do both at the same time, is there?”
“Leave, Annie B, last time I’m telling you.” The Cold Cuffs clicked in my left hand, the ring sat ready on my right hand, and anima bubbled in my chest. “I ain’t your normal mancer.”
“No . . . you’re far more fun.” Her hand flicked at her face where the cut had been and now very much wasn’t. “Have you ever had a woman inside you, King Henry? Slipping in, running through your veins, tasting every part of you as her body rides on top of you? It only takes two small cuts on our hands . . . I promise it won’t even leave a scar . . .”
My dick hollered from where it had run away to hide, “I ain’t ever coming back, I hope you know that!”
For once, I was speechless.
Annie B started circling the table. I circled it with her, the opposite way. “No answer?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Final answer?”
“You come at me again and I’ll do everything in my power as an Ultra to destroy you, Annie B,” I told her, feet still circling.
With another lick of her lips, she made the mistake I’d been waiting for. She hopped up on the table to try to get to me. She’d kind of done a sloppy free-running move to get over it. Hands down, butt sliding forward, legs out in front to make sure I didn’t rush her. Only I didn’t need to rush her.
The table was metal.
Yeah, motherfucker. Metal. My favorite. Better than soil, better than stone, better than glass. Wonderful meee-ee-e-e-eetal. Oopsie daisy, Annie-bo-fanny.
Anima burst from me, ten full minutes of build up. A lot more than a little trick. More than we were ever allowed to hold at the Asylum actually. Ten minutes. Would have been something . . .
Anima poured into the table, manipulating the metal. Some types of mancers can actually create with their anima, Firestarters as the ultimate example, but not Artificers. We have to use what’s there. But . . . boy, could we use it. I could have made a spike of steel flash straight up into her head. Probably should have. But I went the other route. Which was to make the metal flex and form around her hands and thighs, becoming fluid, molding like liquid water, then returning to a solid state in a second. Nice and easy. One trapped vamp.
She could have been modern art.
Annie B glared down at the table with a grunt. She pulled at it, but it didn’t give. “Kinky, King Henry.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Just shut up.”
“Perhaps not the best position,” she decided. Her arms were deep into the steel, holding up her chest, while her legs splayed out in the middle of her slide, twisting her frame so she couldn’t lie down or sit up all the way. Had to be hell on her back. “And you’ll have to rip my pants to get at all the really good parts.”
“I told you to shut up,” I repeated, leaning in closer than I ever would have if she was unbound.
She didn’t shut up. “A wonderful show of anima manipulation, however. Which only confirms that I need your skills to help with my not-so-little problem . . .” She pulled at the metal one more time.
“Has to be thick enough to take any accidental explosions,” I explained, banging the table with my knuckle. “You’ll never break it. Even you, fanged lady.”
“I told you . . . we don’t have fangs.”
“But you still bite,” I said seriously.
“Only for foreplay,” she teased, tongue riding the line of her teeth. “Would you like to see a trick?”
“I’ll pass.”
I heard her thumb break itself a split second before her hand was free of the metal and wrapped around my throat. “I’ve had fun teasing you,” she panted as she choked me, “But this game is at an end, I think . . .”
Thank the Mancy I hadn’t set down my Cold Cuffs. They clicked around her wrist with a nice finality. A yank of my arm and her hand was off my throat, another yank and the other half of the cuffs locked in place around her second wrist. The cuffs flashed white, then the anima inside them released.
Cold flooded into Annie B. Cold like an iced-over lake. Cold like a snow-bath. The cold to make a human being try to cover themselves, more worried about getting warm than trying to hurt a person. The kind of cold that makes you shiver and shut up.
Of course, Annie B wasn’t human. She was a creature living inside a human body. That wasn’t warm-blooded but mega-blooded, that lived in environments never reaching over seventy degrees. They liked the cold.
They really like the cold.
A moan escap
ed from Annie B, the first sign she wasn’t reacting the way I’d planned. Her body twisted against the cuffs, against the metal still holding her thighs. Hands free, she flopped over backward on the table, back arching. Her black sweater road up her body, revealing a stomach that even hours of crunches would have envied. She moaned again, hips pushing. Her eyes were wide, flashing toward my face.
“My God . . .” she whispered. “You do vibrate . . .”
The white light on the cuffs faded, anima drained. She’d burned up enough cryo-anima to put down a human for an hour in about thirty seconds.
“Son of a bitch . . .” I growled. “Did you just . . . did you?”
Her thumbs broke in a crunch, Cold Cuffs flopping to the floor. Annie B didn’t rise from where she was lain out, like she’d been worn out by hours and hours of good ol’ grunting and humping. “Please tell me . . . are they for sell?” she asked.
King Henry Price. I either created the first vampire sex toy or what was essentially vamp-nip. I don’t know which is grosser.
Okay, I do . . . definitely vampire sex toy . . . but I was trying not to think about it . . .
I smiled down at her. Two strikes, one to go.
My right hand reached out, touched her face. Annie B sighed, nuzzling it. It might not have knocked her out, but in the process of whatever else it had done to her, the Cold Cuffs had caused lethargy to sweep her body. She pulled her head back, exposing her throat and offering a chance for me to sweep my hand down it. Her choker glinted once more. If there’s a greater sign that she didn’t fear me, I don’t know what it is.
Don’t fear me at your peril.
I kept smiling as I activated my static ring and electrocuted the bitch.
Moans turned into screams. Her back arched in pain, not pleasure. Her hips fought against their holds. Her arms flopped useless as the current raced through them. Her head clanged against the metal. Lethargy was replaced with a stunned body.
Cold. Crossed out. Electricity. Check mark, motherfucker. “That’s more like it!” I yelled at her.
Her velvet eyes hadn’t left mine. “You asshole . . .”
“I know. I’m an asshole,” I said. “But who’s sparkling now, bitch?”
If only I had remembered about keeping my mouth shut . . .
That’s when the crimson string of blood flew from where her cut cheek had not quite as disappeared as I thought. Only it wasn’t as weak as it had been before. The blood was thick, pulsing, and powerful as it lunged up my arm, snake-like in the time it took me to blink. It wrapped itself around my throat and squeezed, a constrictor.
My air disappeared. My strength as I tried to pull it off got me nowhere, and only got weaker as seconds ticked by without oxygen. My feet went out on me again. I leaned against the table, face close to Annie B’s.
She pouted her lips, rope of blood hanging from her cheek. “Go to sleep, King Henry. We have a long drive and no more time for games.”
The blood gave a final squeeze and I dropped to the ground.
I’d learned my first lesson of fighting a vampire. The blood . . . that was Annie B. The body . . . that was only where she lived.
Don’t forget it.
Session 3
Ceinwyn Dale and her new car showed up the next morning, early enough that she waited in the kitchen—hanging onto an I Love Mom mug some teacher forced me to make in Elementary School—while I took a shower. In case you’re wondering, Elementary and Elementalism school don’t have a whole lot in common.
Morning in the summer is about the only time you felt cool in that house, by 11AM some days the temperature would already have passed ninety, which means there ain’t a whole lot of relief. Even the people with AC complained—for us it was torture. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, so much pollen in the air during the spring and autumn a normal person’s nose stops working. All of it locked in a box with a pair of drunks and unable to escape. No relief—that was my life. Trading stained strings for silk ones.
And the minute I got my relief, Ceinwyn Dale sitting out there like the fairy giant she wasn’t, I was scared to death. Cutting off a gangrene foot can be considered relief if you see what I mean. But you still miss the foot.
I think I spent an hour in the shower trying to convince myself it was just a normal Saturday. Get out of the shower, put some clothes on, and run off to find Sally or some of my bet-on-me-buddies. That’s all I had to do . . . right . . .
Mom decided on a ‘Bad Day’ and was comatose on her bed, eyes blinking along to some psychedelic forced-happy morning show, but Dad sure yelled at me to hurry up every other minute. He was some kind of manager at the warehouse and usually worked a couple extra Saturdays a month, but he’d given up the hours so he could have the day to see me off.
Eventually, I faced up to reality and got out of the shower, dried myself to the sounds of Al Roker giving the weather like the fairy giant he was, and dressed myself in some of my new clothes—shirt with a heavy metal band on the back. Probably the first new set of complete clothes I’d had in three years.
When I walked out, Mom was lying there. Only shower in the house was in the parents’ room, no way around seeing her. ‘Bad Day’ alright.
“Bye Mom,” I told her, with a little half-hearted wave.
Wasn’t expecting a reaction and didn’t get one. Might have been an extra blink or two. It hurt, fuck it hurt, but I was used to it, so I refrained from having my last words to her in probably four years be my usual favorites. Instead, I manned up with, “I love you, I’ll write.” Both lies I thought.
0The suitcase was already in the car, I guess. It was just me and my empty room. Hadn’t bothered to clean it. Guess Dad did eventually. Of course, my sisters’ room still had their stuff in it too, so who knows if he ever got around to it or they just walled the door up.
“Bye, you piece-of-shit squeaky bed . . . you too, clangy fan.” The clothes didn’t even deserve comment, raggy corpses of those that were getting left behind on the battlefield, victims of all the tears and cuts we’d taken together in our fist fights. Pocketing my iPod and grabbing a stack of comics, I left the room, then my house.
Bye, piece-of-shit house.
Ceinwyn Dale and Dad had moved outside. I remember my fourteen-year-old thought, Holy crap, this is actually going to happen. Ceinwyn Dale smiled at me, but when didn’t she?
Dad . . . he was a bit more communicative than Mom, the bed, or the fan. “You be good, boy.”
Who did he think I was? A queer-ass Jonas brother? “I’ll try.”
“Miss Dale reminded me that if you’re good you might get to come home in the summer for a month, maybe even Christmas. Try not to mess it up.”
One thing about my dad, he always thought I was capable of being better than I ever actually managed growing up. Maybe that’s why he got mad and whipped me with the belt. Mancy knows I disappointed him enough times to earn it. Not coming home would just be one more time. Not like I wanted to go back anyway, even if I got a promise it would be a whole month of ‘Good Days’.
“I’ll try,” I repeated.
“No fights, no stealing. Fresh start.”
I nodded and got in the car before either of us started crying. I knew I couldn’t take that emotional shit after being raised on repression. That was my goodbye. I was in Ceinwyn Dale’s hands just like that. And if you don’t think my parents are screwed up enough already, might I point out they had the judgment to sign me over to Ceinwyn-fucking-Dale and her freaky ass smile.
[CLICK]
Inside of the car, sitting on the nice leather seat and enjoying full blown AC, I continued the well-practiced teenage art of pretending the world doesn’t exist, with a bit of no-one-can-understand-what-I’m-going-through for fun.
My weapon of choice was my iPod and an Iron Man comic. Despite what my present twenty-one-year-old self would call an odd correlation of profession, fourteen-year-old-me hated Iron Man. Billionaire whose parents died. It was like my dream and all the je
rk-off did is brood about things and treat his friends and girlfriends like crap. Give me that life, I thought more than once, won’t see me whine at all.
I don’t know how normal, caring parents go about getting a child’s attention when they’re plugged into earbuds. If I guessed, I’d say loud yelling or hand gestures, maybe a tap on the shoulder. Heck, I could even get slapping the back of the kid’s head. I went to school with teenagers. They were little assholes just like fourteen-year-old-me, they could probably use a slap on the back of the head.
Ceinwyn Dale would never win a contest for either normal or caring. I’m pretty sure she views other people as disturbances to be studied as they get in the way of her precious air flows.
My music blared, head nodding along in a little trance for over half an hour before it stopped with a sudden silence—that alert silence where you hear everything and I heard nothing. Picking up the iPod, I tapped the screen trying to figure out what was wrong. It worked fine. But no sound.
Ceinwyn Dale smiled like she had a private bet to see how long it would take me to figure it out. Anyone who had five minutes won. When I pulled my headphones off I noticed they weren’t connected to each other or the main cord snapped to my shirt. She had used a slice of air or air friction or something else I haven’t thought of—I’m not an aeromancer, I don’t do flows, I don’t do tools that are here and gone again—to sever the wiring.
How cruel is that shit?
Still smiling, she watched me cradle the worthless plastic earbuds in my hands just as much as she watched the road. Expensive, modern machinery made worthless by a ten dollar piece breaking . . . and like I had an extra pair.
Stop ignoring me, King Henry.
I wanted to ask her why she’s so mean. Wanted to ask her how she did it too. How I did what I did, what it was all about?
Forget that, it was war.
My finger found the window controls. Child-locked. Insulting. A solid piece deep inside me tumbled and whatever part of the car that controlled the child-lock, specifically the metal pieces of it, went crack. The window rolled downward.
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady Page 7
