A Vision of Vampires Box Set

by Laura Legend

  It didn’t take long for Zach to catch up. He kicked aside the last of the debris in his path and approached the cornered man, pounding his fist in the palm of his hand threateningly.

  “Jinn?” Zach asked.

  The man couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. At barely five feet, his arms were like sticks and his collarbone was sharply defined at the neck of his greasy shirt. The sweat pouring off his forehead meant they’d probably better give him full credit for all one hundred pounds. He nervously pushed his thick glasses back up the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand.

  “Maybe,” Jinn said, scrunching down in the corner and flinching as Zach advanced.

  “No need to bruise your knuckles, Zach,” Richard countered. “I’ve got a better idea.”

  Richard pulled out his wallet—which was not empty—and counted out ten one hundred dollar bills.

  “Are you Jinn?” Richard asked again, waving the money.

  The man straightened up, his courage restored.

  “Definitely,” Jinn said, taking the wad of bills from Richard and counting them again. “Depending on the bidder, I can be whoever you want.”

  “Right. Let’s have you be Jinn. You recently custom-made a ‘device’ for a client with urgent needs?”

  “Maybe,” Jinn repeated, staring up at the ceiling and rubbing his chin, “I’m trying to remember.”

  Zach casually socked his fist into his palm again. The man looked nervously from Zach to Richard, as if he expected Richard to protect him again. Richard shrugged.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s right. It’s coming back to me now,” Jinn suddenly remembered. “I finished the device yesterday and delivered it to a drop point ahead of schedule. I never met anyone in person, but the deadline for delivery was tomorrow night.”

  Richard had hoped to learn more, but this might be enough.

  “You’re sure about tomorrow night?” Richard asked.

  “I’m sure,” Jinn said, nodding his head enthusiastically.

  “Then we’re going to need the address for that drop point.”

  18

  Cass’s head snapped back. Sweat and spittle sprayed outward. Her vision blurred. Her skull rang like a bell. Getting clocked in the side of the head was not a great way to start her first official bout.

  Cass had been nervous and tight since before the first bell rang. She’d kept her gear simple, sticking with just the black athletic bra and yoga pants. She was barefoot but her hands were taped, the tape extending halfway up her forearm.

  She was fighting a crowd favorite, the previous champion from fifty years ago, and the audience had let her know about it. They’d thundered in approval when his name was announced and then muttered gloomily in response to hers. Cass had to admit that, even though her opponent had been alive for more than a century, he didn’t look a day over thirty. He was a Lost vampire fighting under his own banner. He showed signs of going feral—his spine was ridged, his eyes slightly yellowing, his eye teeth extending out over his bottom lip—but he wasn’t all the way there yet.

  Even without those signs, though, Cass could have pegged him for a vampire: he was wearing nothing but a pair of black leather boxing shorts.

  The man was built like a heavyweight boxer and he fought like one, too. He was muscled and wide, his neck swallowed entirely by the upward slope of his trapezius. His nose was flat, crooked, and scarred, like it had been broken and reset dozens of times. He didn’t subscribe to the body waxing creed of many contemporary athletes, and his arms and torso bristled with a thick pelt of dark hair.

  He snarled with satisfaction as Cass rocked backward, retreating. His breath whistled through a chipped front tooth and, unless she was going crazy, Cass could have sworn that he was actually whistling “Eye of the Tiger” to himself. He reveled in the crowd’s cheers and egged them on.

  Cass spat out some blood and rolled her shoulders, willing herself to focus on the job in front of her. She took a deep breath and tried to zero in on the spark of heat that usually lay dormant just behind her weak eye.

  She couldn’t afford to lose this fight.

  This wasn’t about her. This fight was, in a very real way, about the future wellbeing of both the Underside and Overside. She needed to secure that relic and keep it out of the hands of the Lost. This guy just happened to be the first in a long line for a beating.

  Excellent, Jones, she told herself, just focus on the fact that the fate of the world hangs in the balance. No pressure here. That will really help.

  Cass snuck a glance up at Richard’s box. It had been empty just before the fight began. Where were Richard and Zach? Had they decided to catch a movie together? Were they sharing a large popcorn? Enjoying some bonding time?

  But when she checked now, there they both were.

  Zach was leaning all the way forward, half out of his seat, squeezing his plastic water cup. Richard was attentive, but sat back in his chair with a glass tumbler. Zach looked energized, ready to jump down and rush to her side. Richard looked confident and unruffled. Cass could use both Zach’s energy and Richard’s confidence.

  She felt better just knowing they were there.

  Kumiko was stationed on the sideline, still and calm. Her hands were folded in front her, disappearing into the sleeves of her kimono. She nodded to Cass, as if to acknowledge that, now that Cass had been bloodied, she ought to be ready for the real fight to begin.

  Cass drew strength from Kumiko’s stillness. Her own worries receded. She went on the offensive with a flurry of punches and kicks. The hairy champion countered her blows, giving ground. Cass, though, was just feeling him out and gathering momentum. A hint of smoky white light trailed from the corner of her weak eye—Finally! Now she was in business—and her attacks picked up speed. She could feel time begin to run hot, phasing from solid to liquid.

  So she let him have it, her hands a blur.

  A hush settled over the crowd. They weren’t sure what to make of this tiny woman laying into their burly champion.

  With a fist, Cass split his brow and blackened his eye. Blood poured down the side of his face. With a knee, she broke a pair of his ribs.

  He retreated, wiping blood from his eyes, guarding his side, and baring his teeth. His yellow eyes burned with anger and a touch of fear. As with his fans, this wasn’t going the way he’d expected.

  Cass, too, was pleasantly surprised. Her confidence grew. She released a slow, deep breath and felt a subtle stream of light course through her veins. She felt like she was on the brink of something, but wasn’t sure what.

  Kumiko sensed it, too. She decided to give Cass a little push. When Cass advanced again, Kumiko violently clapped her hands and sent a tremendously loud crack echoing through the arena.

  At the sound of this crack, time split straight down the middle.

  For Cass, time forked.

  She had experienced something like this before, in the catacombs beneath St. Paul’s Cathedral. Now, as with the first time, she hadn’t been able to control this effect or its arrival. Rather, when she was primed, it just happened to her.

  Standing outside the flow of time, Cass witnessed two separate futures unfold in front of her like two lines of dominoes. Either of them could come true. Down one line, the vampire got her in a headlock and took a bite out of her neck. Down the other line, she nailed him in the head with a sharp elbow and he crumpled to the ground, finished.

  Given these options, it wasn’t a hard choice to make.

  Encouraging herself with a mental “You can do this!”, Cass chose which line of dominoes to set in motion, willing her victory. But her note of self-encouragement didn’t ring entirely true. It snagged on a shard of doubt she’d been trying to hide from herself.

  If she’d failed to save Miranda, how could she be sure that she’d succeed this time? How could she be sure that she could do this? Like a drop of ink in a clear glass of water, her guilt bled through the whole of her heart.

  Miran
da was Lost and Cass was to blame.

  Cass’s powers faltered and the stability of time’s clean split between winning and losing collapsed, leaving the future an undetermined jumble.

  With a wrenching jerk, Cass was spat back into the normal flow of time, awkward, doubting, and disoriented. The boxer—still whistling “Eye of the Tiger” under his breath?—seized the opening. He kicked Cass in the knee, hobbling her, then captured her with his good arm in a headlock. He squeezed mightily and Cass could already feel the edges of her vision growing fuzzy, stars exploding across her line of sight, and darkness pushing in from the corners of her eyes.

  Cass struggled against his grip, twisting in his arms, but he held tight and brought her to her knees.

  Shit, she thought, not the first damn round.

  Now, though, she was pointed toward the box seats occupied by Zach and Richard. They were both on their feet, knuckles white on the edge of the box. Zach looked like he couldn’t believe it. Richard looked like he didn’t believe it. Cass tried to grab hold of Richard’s confidence and squeezed her eyes shut, fumbling desperately for a spark. But instead of tapping into something dazzling and supernatural, she latched onto the first tool she could— something raw and animal at the very base of her.

  It would have to do.

  A flood of black anger welled up inside of her and, with a skull-cracking crunch that silenced the entire rowdy arena, she head-butted the boxer, smashing in his jagged yellow teeth. The man’s steel grip loosened and Cass slipped free, delivering a viciously sharp elbow to his forehead.

  The boxer crumpled to the ground.

  Cass had won.

  The crowd, shocked, shot up in an arena-wide chorus of angry boos.

  19

  Cass sat on the edge of a training table in her private dressing room beneath the arena. She could hear the crowd above still rumbling, displeased at her victory. She was, decidedly, not a fan favorite.

  Her feet dangled from the edge of the high table. She stared at a crack in the cement floor with her head bowed, pulled out her hair tie, and let her black hair fall to her shoulders, curtaining her face.

  She’d won, but only barely.

  She felt responsible for almost losing the fight and wished—not for the first time, and not for the last—that she hadn’t begun to unlock her emotions. Actually feeling your feelings turned out to be hard. How did people manage it? How did they avoid being sunk, more or less continually, in the well of their own highs and lows, oblivious to the world around them? Considering the precarious state of the world, Cass supposed that on the whole people didn’t avoid it. They were tossed about by their emotions from one moment to the next like small boats on a stormy sea. And the Lost, teetering on the edge of ferality, staked out the nightmare end of that spectrum where their feelings cannibalized their own humanity.

  Cass did, at least, have this consolation: she was still in the tournament. She could still stop the Heretic from acquiring the relic.

  Kumiko joined her in the room and expelled the handful of arena staff who’d been circulating. She shut the door and let a little silence gather before turning to Cass.

  Cass flexed her hands. They were still tightly bound in layers of tape. The tape was red and bloody. Some of the blood was hers. Most of it was his. She tried to grab the tail end of the tape between her teeth and peel it off, but the wrap was too tight. She couldn’t get a grip on it.

  “Grrr,” Cass grumbled, letting her hands fall back into her lap.

  Kumiko faced Cass, standing close, and took Cass’s hand in her own. She held Cass’s hand with great delicacy, as if she were holding a rare piece of porcelain rather than a bound and bloody fist that had just dismantled one of the world’s greatest fighters. Kumiko turned Cass’s hand over, palm up.

  Cass let her fist open, her fingers uncurl. Kumiko leaned forward and looked closely at the palm. Something about the way that she did it—the tilt of her head? the green glint in her eye?—reminded Cass of Miranda. Kumiko studied the palm of Cass’s hand as if it were a text, as if, through the layers of tape, she could read her palm and predict the future.

  Kumiko held Cass’s hand like this for a long time. Neither of them said anything. The longer she held Cass’s hand, the heavier the silence that gathered around them became.

  “A Seer,” Kumiko said quietly, “is not supposed to be alone. They aren’t supposed to have their emotions locked away and hidden from them. And they certainly aren’t supposed to have to wait more than twenty years before they even discover that they are Seers.”

  Cass shook the hair from her eyes and looked up, making eye contact with Kumiko.

  “I’m sorry,” Kumiko continued. “This was not how it was supposed to go.”

  Cass could feel a sense of warmth and compassion leeching through the layers of tape, into her hands, and up her arms. The heat was soothing, healing. A single hot tear rolled down Cass’s cheek from the corner of her cloudy, wandering eye.

  Cass had been wrong before. Kumiko hadn’t reminded her of Miranda. The glint in her eye had reminded Cass of her own mother.

  “I have been thinking about your mother,” Kumiko said, picking up the thread. “As you know, I loved your mother. But I failed her. I wasn’t there when she needed me most. I wasn’t there when she died. And, more importantly, I wasn’t there when you were born.”

  Now it was Kumiko’s turn to wipe away a tear.

  “At the time of your birth, I was . . . sidelined for several years and lost contact with your mother. (What happened to me is, I fear, a story for another day.) When I reconnected with Rose, you were already three years old. I could tell immediately that in my absence something had gone terribly wrong. But whatever the problem was, Rose refused to talk about it. And when I pressed your father for details, he would simply say that he’d promised Rose and that I would have to talk to her.”

  Cass leaned forward, listening with great intensity. Kumiko began to carefully unravel the tape from Cass’s arm.

  “Whatever the trouble had been, Rose seemed increasingly worried, and the more worried she became, the more secretive she became. She kept me at arm’s length for years after that. I don’t know if she feared me or was trying to protect me.”

  Kumiko paused. “Or, perhaps, both.” The tape was rolling off, layer by layer, exposing pink flesh beneath.

  “And then your mother died and your father walled you off and there was little I could do.”

  Kumiko was working up to something.

  Cass waited, giving her space to say whatever came next.

  “I said before that the injury to your eye, the sequestering of your emotions, your limited access to your powers, and your mother’s death were all surely four loops in a single knot.” Kumiko paused again, weighing her words. “But what I didn’t say at the time was that your own mother was almost certainly responsible for tying that knot.”

  Instinctively, Cass flinched, withdrawing her hand, leaving the tape only partially unraveled. Kumiko’s grip was firm, though, and she didn’t let go.

  “I don’t know what terrible thing happened at the time of your birth. I don’t know why it changed everything for your mother. But I am confident that, whatever it was, it didn’t stop there. Your mother feared its consequences more with each passing year.”

  Cass relaxed her hand, turning it back over to Kumiko.

  “I think your mother was afraid. And, out of fear, she locked your emotions away. Out of fear, she short-circuited your powers by way of your eye. I think your mother was trying to protect you, like this tape protects your hand. I think she was trying to buy herself some time. But then she ran out of time. And once she was gone, you were left in the middle of things, empty and bereaved, without any guide or explanation to fend for yourself.”

  Kumiko unraveled the last layer of tape.

  “But now our job is to work together to peel away those layers of protection. We will reconnect you with your powers and give you back your life.”
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  Kumiko held Cass’s bare hand in hers. She massaged the strong young palm with her soft, wrinkled thumbs, then kissed the back of Cass’s hand.

  “Will you let me in, dear girl? Will you stop fighting me and let me help you?”

  Cass looked at her hand in Kumiko’s, then met her eyes again.

  “Will you trust me?” Kumiko asked.

  20

  Cass and Zach went back to the apartment alone. Cass was in desperate need of a little quiet time. As soon as they came through the door, she dropped her gear and pressed Zach against the wall. In addition to some quiet, she needed a kiss. She needed someone to hold her tight.

  Zach obliged.

  As soon as he pulled her close, Cass leaned into him, letting him bear her weight. She was running on empty. Her day had drained her dry. She’d survived her first fight, but she needed to rest for the next one. And, too, she needed a chance to process everything Kumiko had said.

  Could Kumiko be right? Could her own mother have done this to her? And could these things be undone? Could she be set right?

  Cass just wasn’t sure. She wasn’t even sure what that would entail. Would a Cass “set right” still be Cass?

  She nuzzled her head under Zach’s chin as he gently ran his fingers through her hair. Cass pulled back, kicked off her shoes, and took him by the hand, leading him back to his bedroom.

  While Zach untied his shoes and set them neatly in the closet, she collapsed on the bed, face down, with her feet hanging off the edge. Zach pulled a blanket off the back of a chair, wrapped Cass up in it, and pulled her the rest of the way onto the bed, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder.

  “You’ve had a hell of a day,” he said.

  Cass wrapped the blanket more tightly around her and snuggled in closer.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she answered, yawning. “Though, to be fair, I think the other half will have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “That’s fine,” Zach said. “I’d probably better save the other half of my day for tomorrow, too.”