Hangry, the second vampire wouldn't listen.
“Look out!” Peggy yelled. Her warning came in time, but fangs flashed much too close to my exposed neck.
Spinning in place, I swept the ground with my leg, knocking the monster off balance. I barely managed to guard myself from the scarily fast attack.
Without hesitation, the second vampire came at me. Spite, malice, and primal hunger all bottled into one venomous sack. And he had all the time in the world. Compared to him, I was as slow as a snail. Afterall, I was mortal.
I never had a chance. Not in one-on-one combat.
The vampire, with his immortal powers, he and his kind would always win. He jumped for my throat.
I parried with my arm, blocking his teeth.
He slashed, opening a cut down my arm from wrist to elbow.
Wounded, I cringed. But the scent of blood cause both vampires’ eyes to turn flaming red, like staring into the fires of hell. Instinct kicked in, the creatures immediately lost what little logic was left in their minds. Primal need took over.
Together, they sprang at me, aiming for my exposed neck.
Peggy—they disregarded. Peggy was safe.
I wasn't.
Just then, shadows brushed past me, faster than I could process. I even felt the wind cross my cheek before I saw Josiah and Davan, my two best dojo students, fighting hand-to-hand with the savagely hungry vampires. Wait. How did they find us?
No clue.
Obviously, something brought them to the fight. They protected me when I expected no loyalty from any corner.
Equals in battle, superior in defensive knowledge, my students fought with every skill I had taught them over the last three years. They fought to save my life, with bravery and courage. Three of us now, we managed to just hold our ground. Still, their intervention only bought a few precious moments of time.
The saddest thing? It was never going to be enough. That was the brutal truth that became more clear with every drop of sweat from their brows, every drop of blood from my arm. Mortal versus immortal only ever had one conclusion.
Eventually one of them would fall.
Then, my students… their fangs came out as well.
Vampires.
Celestine had turned my students into monsters. This is who they were now, what they were. She would have released them, if she was alive. Her death would have released them too. But now, improbably—they were here, protecting me.
I snarled at the horror that stood between me and certain death: undead against undead.
Vampires or not, I felt responsible for my dojo students. In those walls, they were promised discipline and safety, order and control.
While I was grateful for their help, the thought of them never seeing the sunlight again made me cringe. The loss of their Humanity made me cry. And yet, the way they fought the vampires as vampires themselves, made me proud.
“We have to get to the alleyway.” Urging me to focus on the immediate goal, Peggy ran, streaking past them all as vampire fought vampire. Like a bounding doe, she reached the exit. And right before she opened the door, she paused.
Turning back, she shouted, “Run!”
The two vampires who had been my students listened, even in the middle of battle. They heard when I directed them, “Your sensei says you must run. Now!”
Even deep in bloodlust and battle rage, they listened. Quick as a strike of lightning, they ran back the way they came, down the dark hallway. They disappeared so quickly that their leaving stunned their opponents. Those two vampires grappled the air where Josiah and Davan had been. The monsters of shadow and stealth only had a split second to react before Peggy open the door.
Pure sunlight split the darkness around the doorway.
At least six feet inside the room, the afternoon sunlight fell. A very bright ray touched the hands of one of the feral vampires—the one not quick enough to move.
Sunlight kills every kind of germ out there—including whatever magic made vampires. Instantly, his hand cracked like a vase falling onto concrete, turning gray and then black.
Within seconds, it turned to dust.
The vampire looked at me—surprised, as that sunlight traveled up his arm. Too late, he yanked his body away, retreating into the darkness. He hid from the light in the nick of time. Confounded, injured—he looked at me, miserable. His arm was gone up to the shoulder.
Now, he was rage-angry.
“It's your fault,” Peggy snarled at his shock. “You knew. We warned you. Celestine needs us to get to the alleyway.”
Furious, the female vampire did not strike. That was no comfort.
The revenge in her eyes promised a coming payment that we would not be able to afford. “Whath in the alleyway that you wouth neeth?” Extended, her fangs slurred her words. Still her intent was crystal clear—as was her disdain. “Our mistress hath no need for trash. We could bring our queen all the humans that she desireth. Starting with you two.”
The rudeness in her smile promised more than a painful death. but Davan and Josiah stood at the back of the hallway, their arms folded. I was just pleased they were whole and hale, at least as far as vampires go.
“There will be a reckoning. You’ll pay,” the first vampire said to me as she limped away with the one-armed vampire. “A reckoning,” she promised.
One I did not look forward to.
In the doorway Peggy stood, clad in the full light of the sun.
Well, she isn't a vampire. Nice to have that confirmed. Her daughter remained as much as a mystery as Celestine. Didn't know what she was, not really.
Wasn’t sure she did either.
“Come on!” she beckoned, her whole body glowing in a halo of sunlight. I walked into the afternoon sun. The surge of warmth felt good. Reaching her side in time to hear my companion ask, “You wouldn't happen to have a can of tuna fish on you?”
I had to smile.
She didn’t. The frown made her face as deadly serious as the vampires. We both knew Celestine didn't have much time.
“We're close to Chinatown,” I suggested as we walked out of the alley. “Fish heads aren't that hard to find. I know a shop that makes the most amazing sushi.”
“Isn't that Japanese?” Peggy laughed lightly.
“Uh. Yeah, it is. Sorry, I must be hungry.” This time Peggy followed me, as I got my bearings and headed down four streets to my favorite Chinese restaurant. A block before we even saw the shop sign, the smell of the cooking filled the air. I breathed that scent in deep. The food items offered were amazing but we didn't go in the front door. My stomach growled.
I was hungry, past hungry.
Keenly, I felt for the vampires: living like this every day, every night with an unending thirst that never slaked? That was truly the worst trade-off: immortality for the emptiness of eternal famine.
That sucked.
Leading the way around the side of the restaurant, Peggy and I found the dumpsters and one full of fish heads and guts. Things that no customer ever wanted to know about the restaurant business. We found it all, including the rats and the cockroaches scurrying in the back alley. Trash piled above our heads.
Concentrating on our needs and not on the revulsion my stomach felt, we gathered up fish entrails, heads and tails. Whatever we could find. And then we went a block away behind some stores that sold pet grooming supplies. I sat down for a moment, catching my breath.
Peggy looked up and down the street, staying in the sunlight.
“H-how do we call a goddess?” I asked trying to keep my stomach settled. I gulped back bitter bile. “Is there some prayer or ancient offering that we make? How does she know that we need her?”
For the life of me, I didn't understand why she would help.
And then Peggy called out, “Here, kitty kitty kitty. Here, kitty kitty kitty kitty!” Her voice perfectly pitched to carry up and down the alleyway. “Kitty,” she called again, “Here, kitty kitty kitty...”
A couple of s
cruffy kids were fighting and insulting their way down the alley, but that was it. I could handle them.
For an hour, Peggy and I stood there, calling the goddess of the cats, next to dumpsters of kitty litter and empty cartons of cat towers. In the stench we waited, armed with day-old Chinese food and bits of fish.
I know, right? Sounds like a winning recipe.
Glaringly exposed, I abruptly realized the stark truth: I’d sunk as low as I could go, calling to stray cats in the middle of a filthy backstreet.
Reality jolted me out of the wild places my heart had traveled in the last few days. A rush of doubt surrounded me. What the hell am I doing? Vampires? Cat goddesses? Magic, for frell’s sake...
In my desire to finally live, I’d completely lost my mind.
I looked at the young woman who stood nearby, cooing at the empty streets and shook my head. We were both the same kind of crazy.
But I admitted the cold fact to myself: I was ready to quit. Wanted to, even.
Mourning Marian was easier than this. Who was I, rescuing a vampire from poisoned silver?
What kind of fool really believed in magic? It was easier to retreat, back to my comforting sorrow blanket, back to dullness, back to repetition with no change from the familiar.
Far simpler to cling to the old than to hope for a chance at happiness...
But desperation breeds a certain kind of brilliant insanity.
Peggy didn't stop.
Even after fifteen minutes. After an hour. After two hours, she kept trying, calling out to any nearby cats.
I'd given up hope and climbed back into the old pattern dictated by sorrow.
And then a distinct meow answered her call.
Out of the shadows, one cat wandered over, a silver and grey tabby walked up, curious at Peggy’s constant requests. Ears pitched forward, golden eyes wide, each paw set in a silent-step forward with the grace of a hunter, a feral cat answered her call.
Jumping up on the boxes nearby, the cat was that our eye level. It sniffed the air, walked to the middle and leaned toward us.
Peggy held out some fish.
The cat sniffed it and then hesitantly accepted the scales, the tail, and then the head. Licking its muzzle, it ate all the scraps. There was a lot of slurping and crunching. When it finished the offering, the cat cleaned its ears and muzzle, completely disinterested in the alleyway or us.
Peggy looked at the wild cat creature and plunged into a request, “Cat, we need to speak to Bastet. It’s important. We need to find her quickly. Do you know where she might be?”
The feline stared at both of us, its wide golden eyes unblinking. Then in one movement, the cat jumped off of the boxes. Its furry body sailed right in between both of our surprised faces.
Without looking over its shoulder, the cat wandered back down the alleyway.
“I don't know what you expected, Peggy.” I remarked as the cat’s tail flicked into the darker parts of the back streets. “It was just a feral cat. We need to find an ancient Egyptian cat temple.” Grasping at straws, I suggested, “Probably take a long plane ride to Egypt, frankly. We need to find Bastet. And asking the cats, one at a time? Well, that will take the rest of our lives. Our brutally shortened lives that will end when the vampires overtake the world or the vampire hunters think up an appropriate revenge.”
Down the alleyway, the feral cat stopped.
Far away from us, far enough that the cat itself was safe from any harm, the feline turned in the middle of the next alleyway, looking back at Peggy and I.
Impatient.
I looked at Peggy. She shrugged.
Down the alleyway the cat meowed again, insistent. Peggy and I took her bag of fish guts and severed heads and, well, we followed the cat's call.
Through three different city blocks and down one sewer tunnel, we followed that yowly cat. Until the wild creature led us to a wooden crate.
It disappeared inside.
Cautiously looking in the crate’s interior, we saw kittens and a mother feline but not the cat that we had followed. Carefully, we handed out some of the fish to the mama cat while the kittens suckled. She was most grateful, starving with many mouths to feed.
After the famished cat had finished the food, Peggy whispered, “Cat? If you could, we need to speak to Bastet. Do you happen to know where we may find her? We urgently need her help.”
The cat stared at the girl, still as a statue. And then the nursing cat blinked three times. Shrugging off the kittens, the wild creature turned three times in her wooden crate and completely disappeared.
“Why are you looking for me?” came a voice from behind me.
Startled, I must have jumped a foot in the air.
I spun around, my hands falling naturally to a defensive posture.
Peggy smiled. Both of us stood there, completely overwhelmed.
There was a woman standing there, facing us. Extraordinary. Indescribably beautiful. Her hair braided in gold and beads of lapis. Her long, lithe neck adorned with a carnelian necklace, dangling beads of aquamarine and opal. Her dress was the purest white linen and the makeup on her eyes the blackest kohl. Even her pointed teeth and her rose bud lips were perfection. She looked almost human except for the whiskers on either side of her tiny pink nose.
“Mistress,” Peggy said bowing low, “Mistress, Celestine the Ancient One needs your help.” Peggy did not raise her gaze from the ground.
I was a bit more of a fool.
I couldn't keep my eyes off of this woman. This goddess.
“Bastet?” I asked, certain that this had to be a prank. Torn between a plain and simple reality filled with sorrow and the death of Marian, and this new magical world of possibility in which vampires and cat goddesses came when you called them and vampires tried to save the world, I stood on the razor-thin edge.
What do I want believe? What do I fight for? My heart asked.
Looking straight through my fear and wonder, the goddess peered directly into the deepest chambers of my locked emotions. She answered my questions with some of her own.“What do you look for, mortal? Why are you here?” Bastet’s voice was sandpaper on my ears, rough as a cat's tongue across my skin. And yet, not unkind. She challenged me, the way every cat would, ignoring all manners, disdaining my discomfort.
I found myself answering her before I could compose a rational denial. Before even I knew what I would say, I spoke, calm and clear: “I want Celestine.”
That was it.
All I had come pouring out of me in those three words. Then, overcome with a rush of relief, I felt like a burden was lifted, like the heaviest of clouds had finally burned away.
I needed Celestine to live. She was exactly what I needed.
Somewhere, the ghost of Marian wailed. Somewhere, the cautious martial arts teacher who clung to a dull and sorrow-filled human existence broke into a thousand pieces and then, the ghost I had become vanished.
“I want to be the warrior that she needs, to be enough for her.” How could I ask a goddess for the impossible if I won’t reach for it myself?
I blanked out the rest of what I said. No idea what she heard.
But, eventually, she nodded. Leaning down in the muck, searching in the dirt of the alleyway, the goddess picked up one pigeon feather. A longer, wing feather, full of light and color. Bastet handed it to me.
With a wink, she remarked, “Then, this is all you need.”
Peggy overcame her shyness just in time.
“Mistress,” she asked, “Can you help us save her? Celestine said you might know where the chain of Icarus is? She said that Diana had worn it to the hunt. That's what the painting showed. And you would know where such things fell.”
Bastet stared at us both, considering. “Your lives unravel like balls of yarn in my hand. You never understand the path until you walk it. The vampires seek for things that will never fill them. Dragons fly only when they are loved. All magic comes at a cost. The price is life.”
With that st
range pronouncement, the goddess spun in place, a whirlwind of magic and then a flash of light. Startled by the explosion of a star next to my face, I blinked.
Just like that, She was gone.
Then the mama cat jumped from the ground back up to the box where the kittens lay. They meowed for her.
I looked at Peggy, confused.
Begging to be petted, the mama cat meowed loudly, calling for my attention, demanding a snuggle. Which made no sense at all. If this was Bastet, she didn't clearly didn’t need me or any cuddling.
At least, not from dunces or mortals.
Still, the kittens were adorable. And the mama cat was so tired, I couldn’t help myself. Picking up one of the kittens, I played with the little furball for a moment. Then I picked up another and another. Soon, I held an armful of kittens. Mass chaos. I fumbled about helplessly, trying not to drop any.
Peggy laughed at my discomfort. She reached down to the mama cat, which meowed low and growly as she settled into Peggy’s arms. Scratching her ears and the back of her shoulders, the girl and the cat were both purring within moments.
Only then did Peggy look in the box that had held the little cat family.
Inside, under the pile of rags where the kittens had lain, something caught her eye. A bit of sparkle, nothing more. She reached in cautiously, curious.
“Would you look at that?”
Peggy stared right at me as she pulled out linked bits of metal with elaborate charms attached that jangled when it unspooled. That could only be one thing: the chain of Icarus.
Lately, I seemed to always be following women.
It's not my fault. I'm not some crazy stalker. It's just that Peggy, Celestine, and Marian—all three of them were elemental forces of nature. Early in my life, I found that in a relationship it was better to let the tornado spin, rather than try to stop the elemental forces of a woman’s heart from ripping me to bits and throwing me to the far reaches of Texas.
Peggy was like that.
Being with Celestine was like that.
And Marian? Somewhere Marian was laughing.
In her hand, Peggy held an impossible chain. In fact, the exact chain that we needed. Precisely the item that could heal Celestine of the terrible damage that the vampire hunters’ weapon inflicted.
Rebels and Realms: A Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection Page 68
