by Ramy Vance
And as the earth drew closer, I thought that dying this way wouldn’t be so bad. I would have died trying. And what’s more, I would have died trying even though I was a vampire now. I was both proud and saddened by this thought.
Proud because I had fought the demon within so that I could do the right thing.
Saddened because now that I knew the beast could be tamed, I wished I had tried to many centuries ago.
Oh well, I thought in that last second, no point in crying over spilt blood now.
↔
I hit the ground with a muted splat.
And the first indication that I hadn’t died was seeing Deirdre and Egya sitting by my side as I came to. My head rang so loudly I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the worried looks in their eyes told me everything I needed to know. They cared. Deirdre cried, which was to be expected; as powerful as the changeling was, one of her most endearing qualities was that she always expressed her emotions … good, bad or confused.
What was unexpected were Egya’s tears. During the months I had gotten to know the Ghanaian, he had never expressed any emotions besides anger and laughter. This … this was new.
I tried to sit up, meaning to walk it off, but neither of them would let me stand. So I lay there as my body rapidly repaired itself. And it was fast, faster than it had ever been in the past for lesser injuries.
“Girl,” Egya said, “you got something in your teeth.” I barely heard him through my ringing ears, but the gesture that went along with his words was enough for me to touch my lips.
Blood.
More specifically, Harold’s blood. Things started to click. Drinking blood didn’t give you your victim’s powers and abilities (if it did, I would have had a real taste for angels), but it does give you their resilience, and the combination of Justin and Rhino’s resilience was probably what saved me.
“The ghouls—” I started, but Egya hushed me.
“They got the crusader fellow in one of their tombs. They’ll hold him until he is human. They said they owe the angel who cannot fly for saving them from the dog who could.”
“Good,” I said, laying back down and letting my body do what it must.
↔
I must have lay there for an hour or so before I was whole enough to get up. The ringing had subsided and, after refusing Deirdre’s offer to carry me for the dozenth time, I started down the hill back toward the cinema. Deirdre and Egya tried to come with me, but I insisted they stay. I couldn’t risk Harold escaping.
I needed Wizard Crusader detained because the real doom was yet to happen. And Cassandra couldn’t warn us … so I needed everything to be as uncomplicated as possible.
They resisted, but ultimately agreed.
That done, I walked down the hill. I needed to figure out what that “doom” was, but more importantly, I needed to get back to Cassy and her superheroes.
Lead for Your Heart, Pennies for Your Eyes
Returning to the theater, I saw the superheroes mulling about. The group (what do you call a group of superheroes? Assemble? Power?) of superheroes had splintered into small groups, speaking in hushed whispers among themselves. There were no normals around. I guessed the sight of Harold and his tentacles was enough to send all of them packing.
Cassy was walking among them, comforting them as best she could, and also telling them as much as her curse allowed.
I approached the Prophetess of Doom. “Harold has been taken care of … he won’t bother us again tonight.” She nodded, breathing a sigh of relief that I’ve seen on aid workers in war zones. It was the relief that came from one less thing to deal with. Sure, that doesn’t make all the chaos go away, or even make life particularly better or easier, but it was still one less thing. “So, I guess all we have to do—”
My words were cut off when I saw a very old man sitting on the stage, being propped up by several cushions gathered from the GoneGods know where. He was bald, liver spots replacing what had once been a skull filled with lush black hair. His blue eyes were replaced by a depressed gray-blue, and his once flawless skin that had hung tight on his cheeks now looked like a cotton shirt left too long in the washing machine.
Justin. And he looked old.
Older than what I should look like.
I walked over to him and took his frail hand in mine. I had been around enough humans at their different stages of life to know he didn’t have long on this Earth. Even if the curse was broken, he wouldn’t revert back to his nineteen-year-old self.
He wouldn’t revert because Cassandra’s curse had nothing to do with aging. That effect had been part of Harold’s powers.
Justin was old and would remain old for the rest of his days … as few as they were.
He was going to die. Maybe not right now, but I was sure he wouldn’t see the New Year’s bells ring and there was nothing I could do about it.
No—that wasn’t entirely true, was it? I was a vampire now. I could bite him, sire him, rip away his soul and infect him with a demon that would allow him to live forever. I could …
The demon might have been inside me. It might have stripped away my own soul, slowly turning me into an uncaring, hateful person. But I wasn’t lost to it yet. I still had much of what made me, me.
And I would hold onto that for as long as I could.
That meant no spreading my vampiric disease no matter the circumstances. That meant no turning Justin no matter how much I wanted to.
“Hey,” he said, his voice as foreign to him as it was to me. “How are you?”
“I had a tumble, but other than that I’m fine.”
“I can see that,” he said, picking a blade of grass off my sweater. “You must have really fallen a long way to get through all the snow and stuff.”
“Yeah, you could say that …” I went silent, not sure what else to say.
“Cherub,” he whispered, “I don’t suppose you’d help an old man backstage? I need to talk to you and my knees aren’t what they once were.”
↔
I helped Justin backstage where we could speak in private. Even though we only walked a dozen or so yards, he was out of breath and propping himself up on a table that stood on the stage. “So …” he said.
Despite his aged voice, I recognized the tone. He was going to say something funny. But what could be funny now? “You know how they say, look at your lover’s parents to see what you’re going to get when they’re older?” He made a ta-da gesture. “Well, what do you think?”
I gave him an appraising look. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“You know, I always thought if I was really lucky I’d get to grow old with you. Of course, when I thought that I kind of guessed you’d be old, too …” He trailed off as he smiled. Even old, his smile was beautiful.
I forced a chuckle as the irony hit my brain like a barbwire-covered bat. He was old and I wouldn’t age a day. How fair was that?
Justin’s face went serious. “I’m guessing I’m ninety. Maybe more. I didn’t have much time to prepare this given I generally don’t have much time at all, but …” He groaned as he shimmied off the chair. I helped as best I could, but he pushed me away. “No, I need to do this on my own.”
He lowered himself onto one aged knee. “My friend, my lover, my superhero … you are the best thing that has happened to me and if you will only say one simple word, I can die happy.” He pulled out a ring from his shirt pocket and presented it to me.
I felt tears roll down my still youthful cheeks as the word he longed to hear tried to find its way out of my mournful throat and into the world.
But before I could utter that one simple word, I heard a yell.
↔
“We’ll get back to this,” I said, putting my mask back on. “Stay right there and … we’ll get back to this. Promise!”
I ran back to the auditorium, only pausing to look back to see one very old, very disappointed Justin.
Shit, I’m such an asshole, I thought as I propell
ed myself into a room full of superheroes.
In the middle I saw Cassy crying as she tried to scream something that no one could hear.
We couldn’t hear it because overhead lights kept falling, the sprinkler system had gone off, the theater floor cracked in with a loud thud … as every possible and impossible catastrophe happened in that room all at once and all with the single purpose of preventing us from hearing what she had to say.
But from the way she wailed I could tell she was screaming one word over and over again. One single word that meant the difference between life and death … one word that the gods thought would be funny if no one could hear.
Screw that, I thought. The gods are gone and so are their crap rules.
Using my vampiric strength and speed, I leapt from the stage, landing right next to her. She looked down at me, her eyes filled with dread and panic as she screamed that word again. As the word tumbled out of her lips, the theater screen ripped with a loud zzzzippp, drowning her word again.
She started to point, but as she raised her hand, a friggin’ piece of ceiling plaster fell on her arm, forcing it down.
I didn’t know what to do and thought about how in the last twenty-four hours I’d had fireballs and fists and super-speed freaks attack me … and survived. I’d fallen from impossible heights and survived.
And now that I couldn’t hear one word, I was probably going to die.
If only the world would stop breaking and the ground she stood on would stop shaking, maybe I could …
How could I be so stupid? I thought. Her curse, what was it again? Cassandra shall walk this Earth, never to be heard, never to help a single soul, never to die.
Curses are cryptic, but they are also specific. And it is in the small print that you can break a curse.
I somersaulted toward Cassandra and tucking in low, I placed her in a fireman’s hold as I leapt forward and as high up as I could.
Thank the GoneGods for vampiric strength, because we managed to latch onto the velvet walls lining the old cinema auditorium. And it was there, with Cassandra’s feet dangling ten feet above the ground, that I heard her.
“Run!” she cried.
“Run,” I repeated.
Cassandra’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You can hear me?”
“Yes. Run. Where?” I said, conscious that time was of the essence (yuck, what a cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason).
“Run out the back. He’s almost here. Run!”
I dropped down with Cassy in my arms and yelled, “Everyone—out the back! Now. Those who can help the old ones, do so right away.”
The superheroes hesitated and I screamed using my vampiric roar, “NOW!”
The superheroes didn’t need to be told a third time. They all rushed out the back, the two superfast kids grabbing Rhino Boy and the monk as Cheetah Girl helped Justin.
In a flash the heroes were gone and with their disappearance, the room went silent.
Only Cassy and I remained, our ears adjusting to the absence of sound.
And it was in that absence we both heard the click of a gun.
Click, Clack, Bang, like It Ain’t No Thang …
Except It Is a Thing—a Very Big Thing, Indeed
I knew that click. I’d heard it before, during a brief stint I spent in Okinawa. During the war. I was there because I’d figured war meant lots of dying humans, which meant easy hunting grounds. I wasn’t wrong. What I hadn’t taken into account, though, was the advancement of human guns and how much more destruction they were capable of. When I was a young vampire, I only had to worry about muskets and other flint-based weapons. Hell, even a cannon in the 1800s did less damage than a machine gun in the 1940s.
Machine guns are probably one of the few things I feared as a vampire, so I got to know their sounds well. That click belonged to someone pulling the hammer back on a monstrosity that could spew out dozens of specially-designed-to-kill bullets per second.
Without hesitation, I grabbed Cassy, hugging her as dozens of steel-tipped bullets ripped into my back.
They tore me apart with such ferocity I feared they would fly through me and into her. I suspected if I wasn’t a vampire with hardened skin and tougher-than-normal internal organs and bones, they would have. The destructive power of that machine was incredible.
Within seconds that felt like an eternity, the clip emptied and the gunman needed to reload.
That was our chance and, as hurt as I was, I pushed Cassy to run.
She hesitated, but I didn’t give her a choice. “Now it’s my turn, so hear me and hear me well … run.”
“But he’ll kill you,” she said.
“He’ll try,” I replied, extending my fangs under my mask. “Now run!”
And Cassandra, Prophetess of Doom cursed never to be heard, did exactly that. She ran.
↔
With Cassy gone, I allowed the pain of the bullets to hit me. I fell to my knees, panting. It was difficult to kill a vampire, no doubt about it, but do enough damage to our body and we’re dead. That was the other thing about Cassy’s curse … she only saw visions of what was going to happen, but not necessarily how they happened. She had no idea that gathering the kids here was probably the worse thing we could have done. Like shooting fish in a barrel … or rather, superheroes in a theatre. If I hadn’t been able to break the curse and hear her, they would all be dead. And given how bullet-ridden my body was, so would I. But I heard her in time to warn them. They got away. For now.
But I knew that was only a temporary solution. Prophesies, especially the vague, devoid of details ones, tended to find a way to come true. And everything Cassy and I did … the superheroes, stopping the Crusader, this party … they were all steps that delayed the fruition of the prophesy, but did little to actually stop this killer from showing up with his tools of destruction.
We only delayed him. But he would keep coming until he found a way to kill those kids. He was the mystical version of the Terminator and unless I stopped him right here and right now, he would keep coming after them until the prophesy was fulfilled.
I doubted I could survive another clip unloaded in me. But I was also too weak to do anything but talk. My body needed time to heal and as heavy footsteps approached, I feared that I wouldn’t get the time I needed.
“Cherub girl,” I heard a familiar voice say. “I thought you were one of the good guys.”
“I am,” I said, the effort causing me to spit out blood. Internal bleeding. That sucks, too.
Another click as the machine gun’s hammer cocked. “It’s amazing you’re still standing after all that.”
“And yet here I am.”
“So you’re an Other, huh? Should have figured. It’s a shame to kill you, but …”
“Hold on,” I said. “Before you do it, can I at least see your face?”
“Interesting. Is this some kind of noble death, need-to-see-the-face-of-your-killer kind of thing?”
“Not really. It’s more of a I-want-to-see-who-I’ll-be-waiting-to-meet-in-hell-so-I-can-kill-them-there kind of thing.”
“There is no hell. Not anymore.”
“Fair enough. But still. Grant me this one wish.”
There was a hesitation, then heavy steps walked in front me and I saw a tall man with a bandana over his face. He was wearing a black hoodie, making his face unrecognizable, but I still knew who he was. “Andrew,” I said. “Didn’t think you were the trigger-happy type.”
He paused, turning his head to one side in confusion. “What gave me away?”
“Your fingernails.”
He lifted a gloved hand that covered only four fingers. He had cut the trigger finger off his glove. “Observant.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He chuckled. Using his exposed finger, he lowered his own mask. “So what do you say, an unmasking for an unmasking?”
“Sure,” I said, my body mending but still far from useful. I didn’t need seconds to heal—I needed hour
s. Somehow I doubted I would get that. I lifted my mask up. “Ta-da.”
Andrew smiled something wicked. “The gods may be gone, but karma is still in full effect.”
“I don’t catch your meaning,” I said, coughing more blood.
“When you quit the race, you made it to the top of my list. I had thought about hunting you down just to make sure I got you before—you know,” he made a gesture as though shooting himself in the head. “But when I saw all these so-called superheroes in one place, all those phonies who pretend to care, but really don’t … I realized it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
“So you went home to gear up.”
“And gear up I did,” he said, lifting the nozzle of his gun to my forehead. “So before you go bye-bye, what kind of Other are you anyway? I mean, you look so human …”
“That’s because I am.”
“Sure you are.”
“I am. At least for now.”
He shrugged. “Human or not, doesn’t really matter. You’re a phony like all the rest of them. A phony who deserves to die—”
There was a thud as a rock hit Andrew on the shoulder. “Ow,” he cried out, turning to look up as another rock fell from the upper auditorium. Looking up, I saw a very old Justin and a very angry Cassy hurling rocks from the theater’s upper balconies.
Thank the GoneGods for small miracles, I thought a split second before Andrew’s machine gun started to roar.
↔
Andrew fired up toward the balcony. Cassy was fast enough, pulling back from the balcony so she couldn’t be seen.
Justin wasn’t as fast and a bullet ripped through his ninety-year-old shoulder, knocking him over.
Seeing my boyfriend fall gave me the strength to lunge forward, and biting into Andrew’s ankle, I said, “No one shoots my boyfriend but me.”
