by Vance, Ramy
So is this what he wants—Charlotte Darling?
“You mean Charlotte Darling … she’s changed her name when the gods left.” Elizabeth voice trembles as she speaks.
“And …”
“And I … I don’t know where she—”
“Too bad,” he says, and he leans in once again with the fishhooks.
“But … but … I know where she is going!”
The fishhooks hover mere inches from her vision. “Where?”
“She’s gone to visit her daughter. Katrina Darling. She’s a university student at McGill. She’s a—”
But her words are wrenched from her throat when the man removes his cherub mask and reveals the face beneath. It’s twisted, deformed in such a way that means he once suffered for a very long and painful time, every scar earned thrice over.
“Katrina is still alive? Interesting, very interesting. What’s the old saying? Two birds, one knife …” His voice trails off as if he’s contemplating some long-distant memory, then his attention returns to her. “Oh dear Elizabeth, first sire of Charlotte McMahon, now known as Charlotte Darling … I apologize. My mind does wander these days. Shall we commence to the business at hand?” At the mention of the word hand, the fishhooks glint, so close now that she goes cross-eyed trying to keep them in sight.
He leans in. “Don’t worry. This will be over soon. You could say I’m somewhat of an expert at this. Well, ‘expert’ may be inflating my skills a bit too much. I’m relatively inexperienced when it comes to inflicting pain as I was often the one on whom pain was inflicted. Still … I have thought about all the ways to hurt a person for a long time. A very, very long time, indeed.”
The hooks glint again.
And she screams.
Part I
A Beginning of Sorts
I was turned into a vampire on my fifteenth birthday. Happy birthday, Kat Darling—or rather, Happy undead-day. At the time—so long ago—I was young enough to still need my parents, but old enough to find them embarrassing.
Now, three hundred years later—give or take a decade—I’m nineteen (well, three hundred and nineteen), human again and still embarrassed of my mom.
I guess some things never change.
To be fair, even if I weren’t a few centuries old (a few centuries undead?), I think I’d be embarrassed of her. I mean, who wouldn’t? Enter a woman in her early forties, wearing a nearly fluorescent purple skirt and matching blazer, with a scarf that must have been purchased from Harrods in the 1930s, oversized sunglasses that would have suited a young Audrey Hepburn, round, chipmunk cheeks of a woman past her heyday and long, clearly dyed blond hair tied in a bun so tight I keep expecting her hairline to disappear when the roots snap free from her scalp.
Can you imagine? Being seen next to someone like that?
Alas. Can’t choose your family, I suppose. All that could be forgiven, too, if she wasn’t standing right here, right now, in the foyer of the Other Studies Library, yelling my name at the top of her smoked-out lungs.
“KATRINA!”
This must be my punishment for everything I did as a vampire, I thought as I looked for a hole to crawl in and die.
I smelled Obsession for Women and menthol cigarettes a full three seconds before she ran over and hugged me, wiping away a tear.
“Darling, darling. How is my Katrina Darling?” She laughed at her own joke. I don’t know why—it wasn’t as if she hadn’t said it, oh I don’t know, a million times before. When I didn’t laugh—and no one else did—she summoned every ounce of her motherly melodrama, looked around the room at the students trying to study and said, “It’s funny because her name is Katrina Darling. Get it? Darling, darling?”
A few students gave her a sympathy chuckle before—embarrassed for the stranger with the unfortunate name and even more unfortunate mother—shoving their noses back into their books.
“Mommm,” I said, shocked that after all these centuries I still used the same wary tone that was one part begging, two parts death-inviting embarrassment. Was that how I sounded on my fifteenth birthday so long ago? “Stop it, please. You’re making a scene.”
“Pish, posh,” she said, a fake upper-class British accent punctuating the words like faux crystal. “Come here and give your old Mama another hug!” And before I could protest, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in. Tight. I gagged on the smell.
And I mean really tight. I tried to break free, but she wasn’t letting go. For a moment I thought that she really missed me—that this embrace was a long-overdue connection after years of being enemies and then decades of being estranged. Should have known better. “Older and wiser” doesn’t apply to the undead, even if they do come back to life.
Can you blame me? I began to lean into the embrace, remembering what it was like to be a pre-teen and needing Mom to chase away the bad dreams or fix up a scraped knee. Remembering how she could make everything OK when we were human—
And then she destroyed it all by whispering in my ear, “I fear, darling, that you and I are in danger.” She pulled away and gave me that serious look of hers, the one she’d given whenever she “meant business,” and added, “Both of us are in danger, darling.”
Good ol’ Mom. Well, at least good ol’ pre- and now post-vampire Mom. When she was turned, she became the Queen Bitch. Heartless, ruthless, selfish. And even though her own daughter was a vampire, too, and the two of us could have had an eternity together, she didn’t seem to care. I was a drag on her new undead life. So she walked away from me the second she could.
And now that she was back? It was because she was in danger and needed my help—or so she claimed.
But that was Mom. Always looking out for herself. So why was I so surprised?
Mom pulled away and leveled a heavy gaze at me. “Excuse me, darling?”
Damn it—talking out loud again. Nasty habit, that. It came from centuries of haunting an old Scottish castle up in the highlands. When you spent 99% of your time alone, you tended to keep yourself company—which usually meant talking to yourself. Old habits died hard, just like me.
“Nothing, Mother,” I said, trying to throw in as much disappointment as I could. I wanted her to hear my eyeroll. I was becoming—or rather reverting—to a right stroppy teenager. Good. She missed those years anyway, so why not give her a dose now?
“I’m serious, darling. We are in grave danger. And given that neither you nor I have our old”—she looked around to see if anyone was listening and then leaned in to whisper—“abilities, I think we best find a place to speak.”
I nodded. She was serious. There was a danger—to her, at least. I doubted I was in danger. If history were anything to judge by—and we had plenty of it to judge—she was the only one truly in danger and was about to use me to save herself. In fact, she probably put me in danger by coming here.
Not that she cared that her daughter was in harm’s way. She never was the kind of person to say, “Go on without me,” or “Stay away, I’ll only bring you harm.” She was more of a, “Get me out of here! Carry me if you have to!” kind of gal.
Still … she was my mom. Blood thicker than water, or whatever (that expression kind of lost its meaning when I started drinking blood as a snack). Plus, I owed her for—
“Darling, you’re doing that thing you always do.”
Pulled out of my own thoughts, I shook my head and, clamping my jaws tight so I wouldn’t speak even the body language out loud, shrugged a What are you talking about?
“That thousand-mile stare of yours as you contemplate some random thought. You know—that you’re pretending to listen even though anyone with half a brain knows you’re not.” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear as she spoke and then adjusted my collar. I knew it was all a show.
I pulled away, pretending not to like her touch, when really, if I were honest with myself (and that’s something I’m really trying to do lately, promise), I enjoyed it and longed for more.
�
��OK, fine. I’ll listen. Let’s find somewhere quiet to talk,” I said, and led her away from the main study area to the little museum that was in the back of the library.
Great start to a family reunion.
↔
Once we were in the back area, I lifted a hand to my ear and pushed it toward her. “OK, I’m listening.”
She shook her head and gave me a tisk of the tongue as she walked to the back display. “You don’t have to be so snarky, darling.”
“I don’t?” I said, imbuing the words with as much snark as I could muster.
“No, you don’t. I know that we’ve had our differences, but—”
“You tried to kill me. Not once, not twice—but more times than I have nails to paint.”
“When we were vampires, darling. Not as a human. Never as a human. Besides, you have to admit that I was only trying to … you know …” She let the words hang in the air for a moment before waving a hand like she was waving away some smoke. “But that’s all history now. History, and water under the bridge. Let’s let bygones be bygones and all that good stuff,” she said as she continued to the back of the display area.
I knew where she was going, but I followed anyway. It really was like riding a bike, this mother-daughter thing—not that I knew much about riding a bike; it had been decades since I’d tried, and that expression never really cut it for me. But still. It was almost good to have my mother back.
Once at the back she pointed at a large framed costume—a kilt complete with fur sporran and Brogue shoes—before stopping. “They put it up for display for all to see,” she said in a voice dripping with accusation, then, pulling out a tissue from her gaudy, golden purse, raised her sunglasses so she could dab the corners of her eyes.
I genuinely couldn’t tell if she was actually wiping away tears, or if this were some melodrama to elicit sympathy from me.
“Do you know how many times I had to sew that kilt for your father?” she said. “He was always snagging it on some branch or fence or whatever while doing his chores. So clumsy, that father of yours. I wonder who fixed it after I was …” Her voice trailed off to nothing again, and dab-dab came the tissue.
She didn’t need to finish for me to know what she meant. After I turned you into a vampire, I thought, pausing to make sure I was actually saying it in my head and not out loud. I was—thank the GoneGods for small miracles. I would have finally died from the awkwardness if she’d heard me say that.
I walked over to the display and touched the glass, and a flood of unwelcome memories assaulted my already overtaxed brain. Memories like the one of my fifteenth birthday. Turned into a vampire at an age where I was still young enough to need my family. A young, frightened girl not wanting to be alone, turning to my mom. And turning my mom.
Then I tried to turn my dad, too, but he refused, fighting me off like I was some sort of demon.
And I was.
It would have been fine if it had ended there, but he became obsessed with hunting my mother and me. He even formed his own clan—the Divine Cherubs—where members wore cherub masks (in other words, baby masks—they looked ridiculous) and hunted vampires. Just vampires at first, and then all sorts of demons as time progressed.
Over the years I saw my father turn into legend, then myth. Amongst those who had brushes with demons, dark magic and other clandestine members of the Underworld, my father was a hero and symbol of what was good and right.
But of course that was centuries ago when mythical creatures—good and evil—were hidden from humans. A time when most believed that beings like dragons, fairies, angels, devils and vampires were just the stuff of stories, old wives’ tales.
That all changed, of course, about four years ago when the gods left, their last message to the world being a voice broadcast for all the world to hear: “Thank you for believing in us, but it’s not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck.”
The second that “Good luck” rang in our collective heads, the skies and ground and oceans and just about everything else opened up, and out came all those mythical beings that no one really believed in—out in the open for everyone to see. It was raining cats and dogs and angels and trolls and everything in between.
I wish this were the setup for some joke, but my dorm roommate is a changeling. That’s it. No punchline. As in creature-of-nature, fae-warrior-with-a-broadsword, changeling. But who was I to act surprised? I was a vampire.
Was being the operative word. Seems that when the gods left, not only were we overrun with creatures once thought of as legend, but their departure also altered the way magic worked.
For one thing, creatures with magical talent now had to exchange bits of their life-force to get their mojo working. In other words, should a valkyrie wish to cast a fireball or a tunda wish to shapeshift, they would have to give up a bit of their life to make it happen. A week, maybe a month. Creatures once immortal—they call themselves OnceImmortals, original, right?—are terrified of death, and would need a very good reason to give up a second of life—let alone longer.
The other change to how magic worked was half-breeds—beings that were half-human, half-something else—reverted back to being fully human. Werewolves, werehyenas, weredragons, were-whatever—human. Zombies and ghouls—human.
Vampires? Human.
“I wonder where his mask is …” my mother said.
I blinked, coming back to reality. “Mask? Oh, mask … you mean his cherub’s mask. It’s, ahhh, in the back, I think. Being cleaned.”
“And his dirk?”
“Ah, yeah, that too. Real nasty, it was.”
She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me. And she was right not to. Both items were currently hidden in my dorm room. They probably did need a good cleaning, though.
I grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the display to distract from my lie. “You said something about danger?”
“I did—it seems that we’re being hunted.”
“By who?”
“By whom, darling. Don’t tell me that the centuries undid the classical education your father and I gave you.” She gave me an appraising look. And by appraising, I mean, a ‘this item is broken and therefore requires a discount’ kind of thing. Then she shrugged and sighed before going on, “Not sure yet. All I know for sure is that we’re being hunted by the same people.”
“Who?”
“Whom. Like I said, I’m not sure.”
Well, this sounded promising. “Why are we being hunted? Unless you’re not sure of that either.”
“Oh, I’m very sure of the why. You for a different reason than me.”
“Which is …?”
She sighed, looked into the nearest display and said, “Not here, darling. Let us go for a walk.”
It was my turn to sigh. And this time I really did roll my eyes.
Good ol’ Mom.
In Case You Haven’t Heard—The Gods Are Gone
My mother and I left the relative quiet and security of the near-empty Other Studies Library for the hustle and bustle on lower campus. It was a large open area between the university libraries, the buildings that housed the Science, Arts and Business classes, and Student Admin. To the south was the university’s main entrance and city.
This was my home: McGill University. It was one of the few universities that accepted Other submissions, and the only place of higher education that had an entire library dedicated to the study of Others. Everyone else that studied Others tended to do so in military bunkers.
This particular spot on lower campus was where everyone gathered between classes to play Ultimate frisbee, pretend to study, smooch (how 1930s of me) and just generally hangout. For some reason that predates me (as a human student, that is), everyone calls this area The Quad.
For the life of me, I have no idea why. My best guess is that some Star Trek geek pointed out that it was in fact shaped in quadrants (quad for short, obviously) where everyone was supposed to divide into cliques, and it caught on.<
br />
I don’t mind. I have to admit … I do love Star Trek.
On the grassy fields stood every manner of student this GoneGod World had to offer. Humans, dracons, yetis, fairies, pixies, houri, raiju, baku and clurichaun all hung around, either waiting for their next call or ditching a class in favor of some fun in the sun.
It was good to see so many different species getting along, to be honest. Not three months ago, an old librarian (the guy who used to be in charge of the Other Studies Library, and a bit of a friend) was killed, and one of the mythical creatures—an Other—was, of course, blamed. This nearly caused a civil war between Others and humans, but thankfully things got sorted out when it was proven that a human was behind the killing.
Still, it could have been bad—
“Darling, you’re muttering to yourself.”
“I am? Er, I am,” I said, silently admonishing myself for talking out loud again. My mother was giving me that disapproving look she gave when I was doing something she didn’t like, but wasn’t bad enough to outright punish, much to her chagrin. Like eating my vegetables too slow for her liking.
But her eyes (paradoxically, she’d stowed her sunglasses in her purse as soon as we stepped into the sun; but when a vampire has missed the sun for three hundred years, you tended to stop trying to hide from it) also betrayed that she hadn’t quite heard me. She’d heard something, but not everything, and it clearly vexed her. Her old age was finally catching up to her.
“What was I saying?” I asked, both to know what she’d heard and vex good ol’ Mom a wee bit more. What can I say? Daughters—we’re a handful.
“Something about Others and humans getting along. I don’t know, sounds like a load of crock to me. You know, darling, ever since you became a part of this new world and lost your Scottish accent, I find you difficult to follow. Breaks your mother’s heart.”
“ ‘Became a part of this new world’ … interesting choice of words. But what do you mean exactly? The Americas or the GoneGod world?”