by Garon Whited
Mary gently took my hand in hers and stroked my fingers for a moment, then pressed sharply down on the base of my index fingernail. I howled and yanked my hand away as the pressure caused a sharp popping sound.
“Oh, you big baby,” she complained. “Shut up and give me your hand.”
“No!” I cried, cradling my hand and shielding it from her.
“You’re not hurt.”
“How do you know?” I demanded, examining my finger. The fingernail angled up slightly from the nail bed. It looked worse than it felt. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as I would have expected. Mary made a rude noise at me and took my hand anyway. With a somewhat more delicate touch, she moved the index fingernail back into the finger. It didn’t precisely feel like having something jammed up under the fingernail, but it reminded me of the sensation.
“See?” she said. “You can retract them.”
I examined my other fingers in more detail. Yes, if I pressed down on them, they popped—not actually painfully, more like popping a knuckle—and I could pull them a little bit back into the finger.
“Well, crap. I’ve been grinding these things down forever. Why haven’t I been able to retract them before?”
“Can you wiggle your ears?”
“Huh? Of course.”
“When did you learn to do that?”
“When I was a kid. Another kid could wiggle his ears, so I tried it.”
“That’s how it usually works,” Mary agreed. “When was the last time you saw another vampire retract claws?”
“Never. Not until now, anyway.”
“There you go. You haven’t tried it because you didn’t know you could do it.” She shrugged. “It’s what you get for not playing well with others. At least you learned to retract your teeth.”
I practiced with my partially-retractile claws for a while. It wasn’t easy to control them, but I got better at it quickly. Fully retracted, they merely needed a manicurist. Fully extended, the back section rose from within the fingertip and locked them in an extended position. If I painted them, I could dress in drag and nobody would look twice. Well… not at my fingernails, anyway. When I paid close attention, I could even pop them from their locked position and pull them back, but they tended to slide out whenever I got excited.
I apologized to Mary and applied some first-aid sprays. She didn’t even accuse me of doing it deliberately. She seemed to enjoy it immensely when I accidentally put cuts down her back. She did mention it wasn’t something she wanted to do regularly.
“I’d say something about how you know how I feel about it,” I offered, “but you might think it wasn’t an accident.”
“I would never.”
“Roll over.”
“I think the sheet is stuck to me.”
“I’ve got the first-aid kit.”
“What about the blood? We don’t need to scandalize Ludmilla.”
“I’ll lick the sheet after sunset.”
“You’d make a fantastic post-murder cleanup crew,” she suggested, peeling herself slowly from the bedsheet.
“I hate mopping. Hold still.”
As I spritzed her, I recalled something she said the other day.
“Mary?”
“Hmm?”
“You mentioned you didn’t want to go down on the cable.”
“That’s right.”
“You also said someone needed to stay on the boat and keep the humans from getting nervous, or something like it.”
“That’s right.”
“What do they have to be nervous about?”
“They don’t—ow!”
“Sorry.” I applied another spritz of analgesic.
“They don’t know how you manage it. I’ve implied you have a new invention in your diving helmet. I haven’t made up anything specific, since you don’t have one, but they’re actually quite impressed.”
“Isn’t technology grand?”
“They certainly think so. I left out the part about magical nexuses and Ancient Evils from the Dawn of Time.”
“Is it nexuses or nexii?”
“How should I know? You knew what I meant, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but sometimes languages bother me.”
“If I’ve communicated successfully, then I’ve communicated correctly, which is the purpose of language.”
“I guess that’s fair. So they think I’m a crazy inventor?”
Mary turned around to look at me.
“Aren’t you?”
“You may have a point. I’m glad someone is diverting attention from my paranormal activities. I’m not used to having human minions. Now, turn around, bright eyes. I’ve got another layer of sprayskin to apply, then you can get dressed,” I told her. She turned around and leaned forward. I fixed her back.
“The hell you aren’t,” she countered. “You have human minions all the time. You’re just not used to hiding your bloodline from them.”
“I stand corrected.”
“Point of fact, you hate keeping secrets from everyone except yourself.”
“How do you mean?”
She stood up and reached for her robe. I helped her into it.
“How long did you love Tort?”
“In one way or another, most of her life.”
“How long did it take you to tell yourself?”
“Hmm.”
“You might want to think about it. You’re not very good at telling yourself the truth.”
“How about I tell you the truth and you can tell me?” I asked. She flashed me a smile.
“I can do that. But only if I get to call you a moron occasionally.”
“You drive a hard bargain, lady.”
“And you have to hold me down and beat me for it.”
“Not while you’re injured. And preferably not on a big sinking thing.”
“The boat isn’t sinking.”
“Not yet,” I replied, darkly. “It’s okay for Bronze and Firebrand—Bronze can eventually walk to shore and bring Firebrand with her, but we have some very limited time constraints. That’s one of the big issues I had to work around for dealing with Johann.”
“Spoilsport. Even if we sink the thing, we could share a survival capsule.”
“And sink the capsule, too?”
“Sometimes, you’re depressingly practical,” she complained. I hugged her carefully, avoiding her cuts, and smacked her behind.
“Then again,” she added, smiling, “you do adapt well to changing circumstances.”
I took my trip down into the abyssal darkness and went mountain climbing again. My spells made immense progress while I was gone, but they were still limited by the amount of power radiating from the closed nexus. I hadn’t considered that as a limit; I’m more used to a whole world full of energy. The spells had some powerful containment circles surrounding everything already, but the most potent iteration was taking quite a while to construct with the limited power welling up.
Well, crap. I really didn’t want to sail all the way back to the pyramid, build some shielding spells, cloak them, and sail all the way back. Was there a way to provide more power? Of course!
My tendrils can reach down to the nexus—with a little spell-enhanced help, that is—and touch it. Instead of relying on what it radiated all the way up here, I could snag more of it by reaching closer to it. Kind of like a small solar panel. The gadget it’s on might not work so well sitting on the desk, but if you move it closer to the light, everything is fine. Same principle.
I think. I haven’t actually tested magical radiations to see if they diminish with the square of the distance, but they seem to behave similarly. If it’s not precisely the same as the standard model, it’s close enough.
So I cast my spell, reached down, and gently brushed my tendrils over the metaphorical skin of the nexus. Power belted up at me, surged through me, and flooded out into my spells.
I make that sound easy, don’t I? Imagine standing neck-deep in a swimming pool when
someone opens one end of it like a drawbridge, letting the water out in a massive wave. I felt my tendrils vibrating like bridge cables in a high wind. My internal organs matched them, thrumming along at about ten cycles per second—perhaps more like a rapid throb than an actual vibration. I held on, concentrating on amping up the newest spell being formed, held on until it was completed, and let go.
Small bubbles of steam rose off me and dissipated in the icy waters. I felt my body regenerating. I’m glad I was underwater. I might have burst into flames.
Okay, important life lesson for any wizard who wants to keep it: Don’t do that.
Right. Maybe there’s another option.
The existing spells were already containment circles; so far, nothing I’d done had breached them. From a magical perspective, there was nothing to see here. Was it possible to partially open a nexus? If I could give it a pinprick, rather than stabbing a spear into it, the current containment—especially after my most recent efforts—should hold it. The process could then produce more powerful containment spells in a timely manner, as it was supposed to.
Judging by the feel of the nexus point, it wasn’t like a bubble, ready to be popped. Drilling a tiny hole in it should be doable. Whether it would erode itself open over time or heal itself was an open question, but if I lived long enough, at least I’d find out.
Again, a spell to extend my reach. A single dark strand, stretching downward. A light touch, a careful examination, a delicate point pushing into the surface…
Technically, I seem to have an infinite number of psychic tendrils. It’s not like I’ve ever run out of them. It still stings like hell when something burns one off.
Yeah, this is not Johann’s nexus. This is a big one, naked and uncontained by Atlantean technology.
But the tendril did its work before it flash-fried all the way back to me. Power poured from the pinprick like the water in a water knife. The containment spells suddenly kicked into high gear, all of them combining their efforts to build a stronger containment.
I watched it for most of the night, evaluating the rate of spell creation, poking the nexus again whenever the progress slowed. Before sunrise, the nexus had a dozen pinpricks and a power-containment shell I felt might actually hold the whole thing.
One more day here.
Monday, February 1st
I was right. One more day of building and a few more pinpricks. I started peeling open the nexus with tendrils—a tricky operation that involved creating defensive spells like armored gloves for psychic tendrils.
Let me tell you, those took some careful thought, a lot of failures, and more than a few headaches. At least my hair didn’t catch fire. There are advantages to being miles-deep in a freezing ocean.
I wound up with things like lengths of pipe with tools on the end. The tendril reached into the spell structure as though reaching down the pipe, gripped the handle on the inside, down at the tool end, and then reached into the all-consuming power flood of the nexus point. The protective spells were only good for one use before they disintegrated, and I had to be quick about it. I couldn’t reach into the furnace of power at all with an unprotected tendril, and the spells saved me from the psychic burns that come from vaporizing a tendril.
I’m not sure if I can reach into the Vatican like this and I’m in no hurry to find out.
With the steadily-rising power inside the containment shells, I started wiring my anti-Johann spells to the power taps. If this all held together, he was going to have an extraordinarily bad day.
I added a secondary function to the later containment spells. Once formed, they lanced into the nexus to open it further. This provided a higher power flow for the building of the next containment spell. I should have done that in the first place, I suppose, but nobody thinks of everything!
Of course, I did think to build a series of heavy-duty containment spells to take with me. There was another major nexus on our route. If it didn’t have a pyramid, I didn’t want to spend three days slowly building up to opening it.
Friday, February 5th
Our last three stops were somewhat east of the Dominican Republic and Nassau. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. The trip was lucky up to then. The northern Atlantic is not known for its calm, placid waters and pleasant weather. We were paying for that luck with the whole latter portion of the trip. Stormy weather churned along all over the place.
I wondered briefly if Johann was on to me and deliberately causing trouble. I dismissed this idea for two reasons. First, Captain Tillard assured me these weather patterns had been developing for quite some time. Second, if Johann wanted to, he could sink every ship in the Atlantic. In fact, he might enjoy doing so—sitting on a balcony, having breakfast, zooming in with a magic mirror on anything with a wake, poking it with a finger, watching it explode, and chortling over his waffles. I wouldn’t put it past him.
I considered other options. How desperately did I need another three nexuses? Two major nexuses and five medium ones might be enough. They probably were, but I’m a coward. Johann scares me right down to the bottom of my black little heart.
So, instead of cruising to a spot about five hundred miles east of the Virgin Islands, we headed due south. One more major nexus—also on the Atlantic’s mid-ocean ridge—sat on the equator and out of the bad-weather zone the Captain so disliked. The weather wouldn’t really bother the Princess, but all that bobbing around with wind and wave would translate to a highly-mobile cable on the sea floor. Getting back to the boat could be a problem and he didn’t want to take that sort of risk with my life. I appreciated it. It was refreshing, really.
He parked the boat at the equatorial major nexus, I went down, did my work, and was hauled back up. Nothing to it. At least, nothing unexpected. Dangerous, inconvenient, and unpleasant, yes, but routinely dangerous, inconvenient, and unpleasant. No kraken, no leviathans, nothing out of the ordinary. Just your typical harnessing of a major power center of magical force.
Now we’re headed for someplace called Cayenne, the capitol of French Guiana. It’s in South America and we can refuel there. That’s about all I know about it. Hopefully, our detour and stopover will allow the weather to lighten up in the places I want to go.
Once we get ourselves sorted out, we can head north again. After a few more nexus points, we can head for my launch coordinates. There’s a point where two of the circular dome-fields intersect, out in the ocean, about a hundred miles east of Trenton, New Jersey. That’s our point of closest approach to Johann’s personal nexus.
Then I’ll piss off Mary, Firebrand, and Bronze.
Monday, February 8th
Cayenne is actually a nice little town. We missed a city-wide party of some sort, though. They were still cleaning up on Monday morning when Mary and I disembarked.
Mary took my arm and squeezed it.
“Where are we going to eat?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Pick any place in the city.”
“Sorry, I meant where are we going to drink our dinner?”
“Oh! Hungry?”
“More than a little peckish, yes. I’ve been on a diet of human food for the better part of a month. That’s a record, for me. I usually get hungry more along the lines of once a week.”
“Blame your infusion of blood from the Ancient Evil from the Dawn of Time,” I told her.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Yes, but not too much. I’ve been expending mystic forces, not physical ones, and constantly resupplying from the passing ocean life. I could easily go longer, but I’m more than a little snackish, myself.”
“All right. Do we want to go alley-fishing? Rich tourists can be good bait to the criminal classes.”
“I hate to keep repeating like that, but it’s effective. Let’s hope the place has a lot of violent crime. In the meantime…”
“…second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, tea, high tea, dinner, and supper?” she suggested.
“Have I told you I love yo
u?’
“I’ve had some vague hints.”
“I love you.”
“All it took was a Lord of the Rings reference?” she asked, cocking her head at me.
“I’m a nerd. Weird things catalyze my thinking.”
“Then I’ll take you to second breakfast. You need fattening up if you’re going to be a hobbit.”
“I’m too mean to be a hobbit.”
“Then you’ll be a hard hobbit to break.”
I groaned. Mary laughed.
After several meals and some subtle discussion with the wait staff, we discovered one of the few exports from Cayenne is meat. The soils aren’t especially good for farming, but they raise cattle and pigs. Local restaurants get most of their meat from local fishermen and local slaughterhouses.
As we sat in one of the finer restaurants in Cayenne, Mary gave me a significant look. I assured her we’d go for a walk in the evening, but just in case, we needed a backup plan. I could tell she didn’t like the backup plan. Remembering the occasion we broke into a slaughterhouse to feed, I didn’t blame her. She has to actually taste what she’s drinking, while I can soak up blood through my skin. Drinking blood is faster, yes, but I don’t have to. Tasting it is optional.
Which made me pay attention to my food. It didn’t taste bad. That is, it was good, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly powerful. I could taste it without feeling as though my mouth was invaded by fully-automatic assault flavors. I tried several different things in a hurry and the problem persisted. Was my sense of taste going numb? Or was my brain finally getting a handle on being wired into supernaturally acute senses? My Ring of Hygiene used to include my sensory-damping enchantment, along with the skin color-shifter and cleaning spell. Did I not need the spell anymore?
“Something wrong?” Mary asked, watching as I chewed thoughtfully.
“I may be starting to master my overactive sense of taste.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I thought you built a ring for that.”
