"It's a meta-power?"
"Yeah. What else would it be?"
Jaz didn't bother answering that. To be superhuman these days involved either infection with the transformation metavirus—the metavirus, as far as the normals were concerned, or something else entirely. She knew about the werewolf because she'd seen him in action. Vampires were a pretty tough sell, but she'd seen one herself. She knew about mages from what Baraz had told her. If anything else existed out there, she didn't know what it was. Wouldn't have surprised her much if there were. This was a strange world, getting stranger all the time.
* * * *
Pack thrown over one shoulder, Ben strode confidently into the adult wing lounge. He paused in the doorway, gaze strafing the room. A fifty-three inch HDV unit sat against one wall, nestled between two speaker stacks that rivaled anything he'd ever seen on a concert stage. A bank of computers sat against the wall to his left, four brand new Shea-WyMax 4300s. Top of the line, Ben thought. Of course. 50 GhZ quantum-enhanced machines. They were considered the ultimate gaming machines, as well as the ultimate hacking devices.
In front of each machine was a high back leather chair, probably half as expensive as the computers themselves. Two of the machines were running, networked into some sort of fantasy simulation game. “Hello?"
The scene on the right-hand machine froze—a dragon rearing back, preparing to unleash some sort of breath weapon. The chair swiveled, revealing a young African-American woman with flawless ebony skin, wide jaw, and eyes as deep and dark as black velvet. She smiled up at him. “Took you long enough,” she said, in a whiskey-rough voice.
Ben shrugged, saying nothing.
"The silent type, are you? I can live with that.” She stood up and stretched, cat-like. “Come on. I'll get you set up with a room."
Ben followed. They only walked a few yards down the hall before Sharice stopped in front of an open door. “This one good enough?"
He glanced in, saw a small bedroom with a single bed, a small bookshelf, a walk-in closet, and, judging by what he could see from this angle, a small bathroom. A small window, too small to even consider crawling through, hung on the wall over the bed. “It'll work,” he told her.
"Make yourself at home. This will be the only place you'll have to call your own for the next couple years. Be glad you're coming in as an adult. The kids have to share."
"Oh, I am glad,” Ben said. “You have no idea how glad I am."
* * * *
"It's barely bigger than a closet,” Baraz grumbled, tossing his duffel bag onto the bed. The narrow steel frame creaked in protest. Sharice, still standing in the doorway, frowned quizzically.
"What the hell do you have in that thing, an anvil?"
Baraz fired off an amused look and shook his head. “Just a few creature comforts,” he told her. “So when's wake-up around here?"
"Six-fifteen. Breakfast is served in the cafeteria at six-thirty and eight. Six-thirty for the students, eight for the instructors and the rest of the staff. Exactly what position will you be filling?"
"Not sure yet. Might be teaching the martial arts, though."
"Taking Avatar's job? You're a brave man, Baraz."
His eyebrows shot upward. “Avatar? What kind of a name is that?"
"What kind of name is Baraz?"
"Good point. Do you have a map of this place? It seems a lot bigger on the inside than it is on the outside."
"You noticed that, did you? Some kind of wacky thing the mages managed to put together. Don't ask me how. They call it extra-dimensional space. Don't even ask me how they do it. I don't know ... and I don't want to know."
"Don't like magic?"
"Not so much that I don't like it,” Sharice replied. “It just makes me uncomfortable."
"Uh-huh."
Eleven
Carth had become a master at keeping his emotions from his face. He sat there, apparently impassive, as his companions spoke casually of destroying the world.
He loathed them all, but none as much as this newcomer, this muscle-bound ogre of a man, straw-colored hair cropped close to his skull, lantern jaw thrust outward in a gesture of continual arrogance. Carth imagined drawing a blade across his throat, watching his eyes pop in shock, and seeing him bleed out on the table in front of him.
It was fantasy, of course. Carth was allowed no weapon that could truly harm Hades. He was an immortal, a servant of the Ceniad. He could heal from any blow not delivered by a crystal weapon, and, of all of those gathered here, only Hades himself carried such a blade.
"Your servant is quiet today,” creaked the old human, the one named Thomas Gray. Carth entertained himself by imagining what it would be like to push against the old man's throat with his thumbs, hearing him gasp for air and seeing the horror in his eyes.
Grey sickened him. So afraid of death that he would sell out his people for the mere promise of immortality.
"He's right,” Hades rumbled. “You've said nothing of our plans, Carth."
He teetered dangerously close to truth. He seized his tongue in a relentless grip until the impulse passed. I think you should all die. Painfully. Gibbering in terror. He felt as though he were going mad.
Carth was the last of his kind, the last pureblood Fey, even though his birth had been no more natural than the others. Hades, the fiend, had constructed him in a lab a full two centuries after his parents had died. He didn't even know how many parents he actually had.
The Abyssians, those mockeries of a true race, were closer to being a natural creature than he was himself—or any of his kindred, for that matter. No Fey had been born naturally, of a union between male and female, in over a thousand years.
And to think they thought Hades would save us. His internal laugh was mocking and bitter. He's damned us. He sometimes felt more kinship with the goblins, those twisted mutations of human children, than he did his own kind. He dreamed of death. Of murder. Of bathing in the blood of his Lord and Creator, and all the vile creatures he allied with. “I would not presume to critique your strategies, My Lord."
Hades laughed, a sound that made Carth want to vomit. “Isn't he a good minion?” he asked the others.
The immortal who called himself Armageddon laughed as well, his amusement apparently genuine. “As is only fitting,” he said. “I would not presume to question my masters’ strategies."
They all knew what he referred to, without him having to draw a map. The Ceniad and their servants hated anything to do with magic. They did not have it, and did not trust it, but they made common cause with Hades—who was both a scientist and a mage. They promised him dominion over the Earth once they had taken it.
How he felt he could trust them to keep their end of the bargain Carth didn't know. Perhaps Hades was simply insane—too insane to know any better.
Hades opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by the arrival of one of his human servants—the one named Gavin Chase. Once allied with his enemies, Hades had turned him by capturing his wife and infant child.
Carth felt pity for him, and despised himself for it. He did not have the luxury of pity, least of all for a human too stupid, or too deluded, to realize how evil Hades was. His wife was long dead, her body animated by foul necromancy. The creature Chase received in his room at infrequent times—when Hades found it amusing—was little more than dead flesh kept uncorrupted by spellcraft. The soul of the woman who'd once occupied that body had long since fled, escaping beyond even the long grasp of Hades’ evil magic.
The fate of his infant son? He'd become the first of a new race of human/animal hybrids. Ordinarily the work would have been done just after conception, but Hades had wanted to discover if it could be done on a living, breathing child. Using what he'd learned in the creation of his goblins, he'd warped the child's genetic pattern into what he wanted. It had to have been agonizing. Carth had nearly smashed down the laboratory door and gone after Hades himself. Death would have been preferable to one more moment listening to the in
fant's agonized screams.
This had all happened when Chase was in Oregon, chasing down a vampire. When he returned with the kid vampire, Hades seemed almost remorseful.
That didn't last long. Studying the vampire had amused him for a while, but ultimately he found it frustrating. He now knew how to make other vampires, but that hadn't been his goal at all. He wanted to control those that already existed.
The teenage vampire was no help at all. He knew little more than the obvious—that he'd been bitten, left in a hole somewhere, and awoken several days later as one of the undead.
* * * *
Gavin Chase wasn't nearly as clueless as Carth supposed. He knew very well that the thing that came to his room was not his wife, despite inhabiting her body. He was not a mage, so he couldn't see the spell that animated her, but he could taste the magic through the gems he hid beneath a clever illusion cast over the palms of his hands.
He also didn't know what had become of his infant son, but he had his suspicions. He'd long since surrendered any hope he had of rescuing either of them, replacing it with a burning desire for revenge. And he knew that, eventually, he'd have it.
He could see what Hades and his allies obviously could not. They had a viper in their midst. The stretched-out, cadaverously thin Fey Hades clutched to his bosom nursed a hatred for his master at least as well-honed as Chase's own.
"Master,” Chase said, waiting for an opportune moment to interrupt. “Dusk has returned."
"Does she have this ‘Raven's’ head?” Hades asked distractedly.
"No, My Lord.” Chase wanted to bite his own tongue off every time he used one of the honorifics Hades demanded. Hades had to know how he felt about it. Probably got a charge out of it. “She encountered him, but he escaped."
"Tell her,” Hades replied, “that if she dares to return without it again, I will have hers instead."
"Yes, My Lord.” Chase bowed and left the room.
He found Dusk where he'd expected. She stood on the wide expanse of white stone at the top of the winding staircase leading to the beach and the boathouse at the base of the cliff. She didn't turn as he approached, instead watching the moonlight dance across the water of the sound.
Of all Hades’ monstrous servants, Chase liked Dusk the most. Beneath her demonic exterior hid a rather decent person. Or so he thought. And, worst of all, he held himself partially responsible for the position she found herself in.
She'd been assigned the task of tracking down and eliminating Raven—knowing absolutely nothing more than Hades himself knew. Cory was Raven. He'd hidden his magic from Hades and now used it to jump in and out of the compound, destroying the vampires Hades forced him to create. Cory raged at Chase every time he had the chance—said it was his cowardice that was turning him into a killer.
Chase didn't think it was entirely fair, but he had to admit the boy had a point. He was afraid of Hades. Anyone in their right mind would be. Not only was the man completely insane, but he was also an accomplished enough mage that the other immortals thought his power to raise zombies was an innate ability, not a product of spell-casting. Chase had seen him literally suck the life out of one of the Abyssians when the creature had refused an order.
Compared to Hades, even Thoth was a complete amateur. Cory—Raven—thought that his own magic, coupled with Chase's mage gems, could give them enough of an edge to take Hades down. Chase wasn't so sure. When one took into consideration the fact that they had no way to kill him, the whole thing seemed suicidal. Of course, the notion of something being suicidal probably carries a completely different set of meanings when you're already undead.
Not that killing a vampire is all that difficult—as Raven should damn well know.
"Don't bother repeating what he said,” Dusk murmured as he came up behind her. “I already know." She unfurled her wings, spread them out and rustled them gently. “I'm done,” she said. “I don't care if he has me hunted down and killed. I just can't do this anymore."
A single tear, crystalline in the moonlight, trickled down her ebon cheek. I wish I could trust her, Chase thought. But, right now, she might do anything to get back in his favor. She may hate him, but she fears him more. “Go,” he told her. “I will do my best to watch your back."
She gave a quite unfeminine snort and snapped her wings outward as she launched herself over the rail. “Sure you will,” she called back over her shoulder. “Don't get yourself killed, you idiot."
* * * *
The man who called himself Armageddon set a small box on the table. “I bring a small gift from my masters."
Hades leaned forward, a suspicious glint in his eye. “What is it?"
Armageddon smiled thinly. “It's a symsuit,” he replied. “Our most advanced yet."
Hades extended a mana thread and pulled the box closer to himself. He picked it up, turned it over in his hands. “So—how advanced is it? What does it do?"
"It befriends dragons,” Armageddon replied casually.
"Dragons? What kind of bullshit is that? There may be ten dragons alive in the whole world. Hardly a lot of use to us."
Armageddon smiled, though the expression didn't reach his eyes—pale and gray, like little chips of flint. “This is not the only universe with dragons. In fact, there are others where they are much more numerous. One of my jobs will be to open up a gate between this world and that one."
"You can do that?” Grey looked shocked at the suggestion.
"It's a lot easier than you'd think. The Masters control several hundred universes—"
"—No they don't,” Carth interrupted. He forestalled Armageddon's objection with a bland look. “It's ludicrous. They may control a single world—maybe even a couple of solar systems within a universe—but they don't control the whole goddam universe."
"What do you know about it?” Armageddon snarled.
"He's right,” Hades cut in. “If the Ceniad even have space flight, it's from a civilization they've conquered since they destroyed my homeworld. Controlling a universe's version of Earth does not mean they control the whole universe. Hell, if you take into consideration that there might be whole other universes the Ceniad don't even have access to—universes generated by a different sentient species located out there somewhere—” he pointed skyward, his meaning perfectly clear to everyone—"trying to make the case that they're all-powerful just makes you look like an idiot."
Armageddon shot a look of pure hatred at Carth. “If I can continue on my original point..."
"Go ahead,” Hades directed, with a casual wave.
"Thank you. As I was trying to say, my masters have been traveling between universes for some fifty thousand years. Fashioning even a permanent gateway isn't all that difficult. The dragons will be looking to extend their personal territories and it's only a matter of time before they come through and begin staking their claims here. That's where the dragonfriend sym comes in. It gives you a much better chance of approaching them as potential allies rather than as probable enemies. You're going to need the dragons."
"Point taken,” Hades said. “I'll figure out who to give it to later."
"If there's nothing else,” Armageddon said stiffly, “I think it's time I got Grey back to his estate. He's looking a little peaked."
"Be my guest,” Hades said. “I've got plenty to do myself."
* * * *
Later Hades caught up to Carth in the library. He threw himself into a chair and stared at him for a long moment before speaking. “That was good work at the meeting,” he told him.
Carth stifled his surprise. Hades wasn't in the habit of giving positive feedback. He wasn't exactly sure what Hades meant, so he waited him out.
The Dark Lord seemed to be waiting for a response and, when it wasn't forthcoming, gave a little grunt of displeasure. “The Ceniad, and their servants, need to be reminded from time to time that they're not omnipotent. I much prefer bargaining from a position of strength. In the end that will spell the difference between
actually ruling this world in their name or simply being a puppet king.
"You've made an enemy in the process, though."
Carth shrugged. He honestly didn't care. He'd grown increasingly fatalistic of late. Death held no particular terror for him anymore.
Hades smiled, rarely a pleasant expression. This time was no exception. “I have a gift for you. Armageddon is an immortal. An ordinary weapon might hurt him, but it won't kill him.” He reached into the empty air and pulled out a wide-bladed sword nearly as long as Carth's arm. The blade seemed forged out of green glass, glittering strangely under the overhead lighting. “If it came down to it, I'd rather you survive.
"Put that somewhere safe. Create your own dimension pocket for it. I don't want it falling into the wrong hands."
It already has, Carth thought, with just a touch of guilt. Just a touch, though. In seven centuries this was the first time Hades had shown the slightest interest in Carth's continued existence. As far as he was concerned, it was a matter of way too little, way too late.
"You're also my most likely candidate for the Dragonfriend sym,” Hades added, as Carth took the weapon, weaving himself a dimension pocket with the other hand. “I simply can't trust anyone else.” The blue-haired Fey slid the weapon into the pocket and nodded as if he understood.
Maybe he did. “Why not just take it yourself?"
"It's called delegation, Carth. I can't handle everything personally."
More likely he suspects some sort of hidden trap in the sym, Carth thought cynically. He'd never known Hades to delegate anything before. Unlikely he'd start now. “You're the boss."
"That's right,” Hades replied. “I am. And I'm damn well going to make sure Armageddon understands that, too."
Uh-huh. Carth made no audible response. Seemed pointless. Hades had just made his first major mistake, trusting Carth enough to give him a weapon capable of killing him. The time wasn't right, but, when it was, he wouldn't live to regret it. The Fey made himself a silent promise to see that bit of prophesy fulfilled.
His people had once placed great stock in prophesy, a fact Carth now found bitterly ironic. It had been prophesy that had delivered them into Hades’ hands in the first place. Of course, he'd turned around and used it to destroy them.
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