by Vance, Ramy
“Oh no, darling, just him. I am a monster, but I do have my limits. I killed his two friends, stripped them of their masks, and put them in his coffin to … you know, keep him company.”
“Ahhh!” I screamed. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing! You literally trapped an immortal being at the bottom of the lake with the dismembered body parts of his friends … for arson.”
“I liked that house.”
“Great, Mom. Thanks for this. He kidnapped my friends, you know. And broke a few of your daughter’s ribs.”
“I’m not proud of it, darling. We all make mistakes.”
That last sentence hit me hard. I couldn’t be certain she had said it on purpose, but it brought a wave of memories back, from my darker days as a vampire. I’d done horrific things, some of which I did for no reason at all other than my being bored with eternity.
But I shoved those thoughts away. “And now he’s, what? Back to get revenge?”
“I assume so. And it does explain his accent. Three hundred years of not hearing others speak would preserve the old Scottish twang, don’t you think?”
“Not to mention stoke the fires of hatred. I hate to say this, Mother, but I’m kind of on his side. I’d want you dead, too.”
“I know, darling, you’ve made that very clear in the past. But you know what it was like back when you were newly made. All these powers. No consequences. I was relishing in my newly made immortality and thought I was above things like morality.”
“And decency. And any sense of mercy.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, waving my words away. “All of that.”
And then she did the last thing I ever expected her to do.
She started crying.
↔
She turned her face away from me as heavy tears rolled down her face. I didn’t know what to do. We weren’t exactly the hugging type.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. We were the hugging type. When we were human, the first time. But that was a long time ago and the three hundred years between being human then and being human now had changed us. Both of us.
But it didn’t have to, I thought. Some things could change back. All it took was that first step.
So I leaned over and gave her an awkward hug. Given that I was leaning over the Prius’s gearbox, I did a pretty good job.
She touched my hand and with tear-laden eyes said, “I just want to go back to the way it was. I hate who I’ve become. Who I am. I want things to just return to normal. Do you think that will ever be possible?”
“In time,” I said, tightening my hug.
Here was a woman struggling to be human again … just like me. Hell, in the four years that I’d been human again, I spent three of them locked away in a castle and one of them being the most awkward freshman on campus. Being human was hard, but as I hugged my mother, I realized it didn’t need to be lonely.
“In time,” I repeated. “We just need to find our way. And that’s something we can do—”
I was going to say together, except we were rudely interrupted by a Dodge Ram that chose that moment to crash into the back of our parked car. Luckily my mother hadn’t turned the ignition off, so the airbags deployed.
Dazed, I looked through the rearview mirror and saw a Cherub’s face behind the driver’s seat.
Part IV
Intermission
Sitting at the bottom of a lake, Simione wonders why he hasn’t drowned yet. No matter how much water he takes into his lungs, he lives on. Well, if you can call being trapped in a coffin at the bottom of the lake living. If you can call being an immortal vampire living, for that matter. But that word is one he is unwilling to consciously admit to himself. Vampire. As a Divine Cherub, he’d once vowed to put an end to such an abhorrence. So how can he admit to himself the truth now? That Charlotte Darling had turned him into the one thing in this world he hates most, only moments before plunging him to his eternal watery grave?
Days pass and he wonders why he doesn’t die of hunger. Or the cold. Or anything else except thirst. Water is the only thing he has plenty of … enough to drown a thousand times over. But he doesn’t die. He keeps living on and on and on. (He secretly knows why, but he will not let that word enter his mind—vampire.)
He wears his Cherub mask for the first decade, but in time the leather straps mold away and he manages to shake it off. He hoped that the same would be true of his chains, but they have only rusted, never giving up their strength so that he could break free of those as well.
During the second decade, he goes a bit mad, talking to the masks that rest in the coffin with him. They once belonged to his friends, after all. Though what remains of his friends rotted away beside him years ago.
He and his mask friends mostly reminisce about the good old days. The hunting days. When they were alive. It does sometimes disturb Simione that no bubbles emerge from him as he speaks, but hey—no bubbles had been emerging from his mask friends, either, yet he can hear them crystal clear in his head.
During the third decade, as barnacles begin to grow on his skin, he stops talking, his mind churning one single thought until it’s polished to a shimmering sparkle. The thought details everything he plans to do to Charlotte Darling when he escapes.
IF you escape, one of the masks says to him.
He doesn’t gratify it with a response.
Perhaps this moment is the downfall for poor ol’ Simione’s mind. For the thought, although completely justified, more than occupies him. It infects him. Possesses him.
And, in time, becomes him.
↔
This continues for yet more years, although how many, he can never say. Then one day, as if by a miracle, he hears a voice other than his own (and he admitted to himself years ago that the masks never actually spoke to him, so this comes as a particular surprise).
The voice says in a very clear and familiar Scottish accent, “Thank you for believing in us, but it’s not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck.”
He isn’t sure who “us” are, but before he can contemplate this further, he feels something grip his chest.
And he begins, finally, to drown.
After years of not drowning, the sensation is as unexpected as being struck by lightning in the dead of night. He squirms, desperate to find oxygen to fill his newly alive lungs. There is none—and as the world starts to fade to black, he feels something heavy and monstrous strike his coffin.
Not just strike it—tear it apart.
The old oak coffin rips asunder and the chains that once anchored him slide free. Instinctively knowing that air is up, Simione begins to swim, barely taking note of the giant whale with a very long neck and four dorsal fins that accidently saved him by striking his coffin in its own panic.
Of course, later, Simione will come back to thank Nessie for saving him. But for now, air is of utmost importance.
Car Parks, Airbags and Super Humans
You learn something new every day. Today, it seemed, I was learning many somethings new. Currently, I was learning:
Airbags hurt.
It was like getting punched by a giant’s boxing glove. My whole body got a piece of the impact and, sports bra and witch’s brew or not, my ribs rattled in such a way that made me black out for the rest of the crash.
My first sense as I regained consciousness was my mother, with her healthy ribs, moaning. I opened my eyes just in time to see her get out of the car and run.
Thanks, Mom, I thought as I tried moving—far too slowly, given what was waiting for me outside.
Grabbing my bag, I crawled out of the passenger side door. I was greeted by the smallest of the three Cherubs.
So be it, I thought as I fumbled with my bag and put on my father’s mask.
Then, unsheathing my dirk, I stood and said, “No quarter asked.”
Might as well go out a badass, right?
The guy tilted his head in confusion. He’d obviously never been in a duel to the death before.
; “You’re supposed to say, ‘No quarter given.’ ”
“Oh,” he said, pulling out his telescopic nightstick. “Yeah. That.”
↔
I may have been hurt, but I was far from helpless.
He lunged at me, making the classic mistake when fighting someone my height—he aimed too high. I easily ducked under his swing, ignoring my pain, and slashed my dirk across his chest. My blade hit body armor and slid across, tearing his shirt.
Don’t judge me. If I was fighting fabric, I’d be winning.
He saw his mistake and swung downward. I pivoted to one side and managed to cut his calf. It was a good shot and would slow him down, but he was far from out.
Using a classic fencing offense, he lunged his nightstick at my chest and I was helpless to do anything but take it. Pain reverberated through my body and I almost shut down. I would have, too, had it not been for Lizile’s brew. Whatever it was, the stuff not only helped with the pain—it also blossomed new pain as well.
The Cherub had expected me to go down with his blow, like a real rookie, so he let his guard down. His arm was still extended—and unarmored—so I stabbed my dirk through his wrist.
He screamed like I’d ripped off his arm—pansy—and went down, cradling his wound. Not needing an invitation, I started to run.
Got pretty far, too, when I heard a thud and felt several ropes fly over my body and knock me down to the pavement. I tried to get up despite the pain, but something was weighing me down. That’s when I realized I had been snared by a police net gun.
And just when I thought things were finally going my way.
↔
I tried to will myself unconscious as they dragged me over asphalt and gravel back to their truck. I almost became unconscious when they threw me in, my body literally bouncing as I hit the truck-bed floor. But I positively prayed to pass out when I saw my mother—also in a net—laying beside me with judgmental eyes that said:
You couldn’t even get away, then?
Luckily, we were both too mad and in physical pain to talk.
Thank the GoneGods for small miracles.
Or don’t. I don’t care.
↔
They drove for three hours before finally pulling onto some dirt road and stopping, the truck sliding slightly on the gravel-covered earth. One of them got out and opened a squeaky gate. Then with the slamming of the truck door, he got back in and the truck moved on.
Because they’d covered us with a tarp, I had no idea where we were.
We could be anywhere, and when they finally stopped, pulling us out of the truck, I scanned our surroundings and noted a strange sight: several tree taps stuck in the bark of maple trees with blue hoses that ran from the taps into the warehouse. A maple syrup farm … and given how rundown the taps were, I guessed we were on an old abandoned sugar farm.
My theory was confirmed when they dragged us into a large barn-like structure with a giant copper vat in the middle. Maple syrup—it was big business in the Laurentians, which meant that we were still in Quebec. I filed that away in the “useful information should we not die” column.
The smallest of the three Cherubs bound us to a wooden beam in the center of the room with duct tape before sitting on a foldable chair nearby. The other two were going through our stuff and the largest of the three—Simione, from his accent—picked up my father’s Cherub mask and brought it over to my mother.
“He loved you more than life itself.” Then he pointed the mask at me. “You, too. ‘Ma little angels,’ he’d say. ‘Ma reason for life itself.’ Funny thing about that last statement—seems that your deaths were also his reason for life itself.” Lifting his own mask enough to expose his mouth, he spat in my mother’s face before going to the table with our stuff. “This, I also remember.” Simione picked up my dirk. Stabbing the air in front of him, he said, “Your Eóghan stabbed many a monster with this.”
“Simione,” I said, “you don’t have to do this. We’re not the monsters we once were. Any of us.”
“IS THAT SO?!” he shouted with such ferocity that both my mother and I flinched. “ ‘Not the monsters we once were.’ We. WE?!” Then, taking a deep breath and unclenching his fists, he said, “We … once … were.”
Um … clearly this guy had left his marbles at the bottom of the lake.
He walked right over to me so that his face was no more than a few inches away and pulled off his mask. “Tell me—when you look at me face, you don’t think of monsters?”
I looked into crisp green eyes that were very human, as was the scar running above the left one … but that was the only part of him that was. The rest of his face was covered in crusty barnacles that created little craters a centimeter wide all across his face. The barnacle shells had imbedded themselves in his skin. In the few places beneath his chin where he had tried to remove them, I saw deep holes that could easily engulf my pinky finger. It must have hurt getting those out, and I guess after a few of them he stopped trying.
“They go all the way down, lassie,” he said, removing his gloves and revealing hands that were more shell than skin. He gestured to his whole body, before stopping where his … ah … pride was. Then, thrusting his pelvis out, he said, “Either of you care for a ride on the barnacle express?”
At this the other two started laughing.
“Simione …” I said, but my voice trailed off as words failed me.
He, on the other hand, had plenty of words left. “Do you know what your bitch of a mother did to me?”
I did, but the question seemed of the rhetorical variety, so I waited for him to give me a recap.
“She turned me into a vampire, locked me in a coffin—along with an arm and a leg and a few other scraps of what was left of my only friends in the world—and she threw us to the bottom of the Loch Ness. The last thing I heard besides the rushing water was, ‘Say hi to Nessie for me.’ If it hadn’t been for the gods leaving and Nessie showing up in the loch with such a rush and force that it tore my coffin apart, I would have drowned.”
GoneGodDamn, I thought. My mother didn’t just embrace evil. She was evil. But then again, I couldn’t help but think that in a way, I had done the same thing to my mother. I turned her and left her … but I hadn’t imprisoned her in a coffin and left her for the fishes—so, yay me?
Either way, I wasn’t about to throw stones in glass houses. I was just going to stand in my glass house and hang my head in shame for all to see.
Still, looking at him, I couldn’t blame the guy wanting revenge. Hell, I wanted to kill my mother for a lot less, and she never bound me and threw me in a lake.
My mother, sensing that there was nothing she could say to ease his anger, was uncharacteristically silent. I guess she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. Smart move on her part, but it was quite a few decades too late.
Simione gave me a pursed, uneven smile, his barnacled lips together in such a way that it looked as though he had crooked teeth on the outside of his mouth. He waved the dirk in my face then walked over to the table and looked at the rest of our stuff.
It was mostly the contents of our combined purses. Lipsol, lipstick, lip gloss—a lot of lip stuff in general—and, of course, the amulet. “What’s this?” he asked, picking it up to appraise it.
“Nothing,” my mother said—a bit too eagerly.
“Nothing, huh?” He looked at it more closely before saying, “I tell you what—you give me the truth on this thing and I’ll cut your suffering by, let’s say, two hours. Sound fair?”
Neither of us spoke.
“Don’t tell me and I’ll increase your time on this Earth by three pain-fueled days.” He lifted four fingers. Poor guy.
I considered my options. Tell him about an amulet that answers your biggest, most desired question—or don’t. I figured that there was little harm in doing so—I doubted he cared where the gods went, anyway—and considered that if it distracted him from torturing us for a few minutes, well, that was a good thi
ng, right?
“Ask it a question—”
“Darling. Shut up—”
“YOU DON’T TALK, BITCH!” he screamed. Then, looking at me and speaking in a voice that was calm and even: “Come again?”
“It will answer any question you ask it. So, ask away.”
“Any question? Humph.”
He turned the amulet over and over in his hand then turned to my mother. It was clear his voice was addressing the amulet.
“How should she die?”
Nothing happened. No noise, no change in the air, nothing. But something was happening for Simione—that much was obvious from the way his face turned from surprise to shock, and then to anger.
Whatever the answer was, it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
His rage manifested in him kicking the table over before slamming barnacle-covered hands against the wall in an all-out tantrum. The blow was severe enough to splinter the wood, and I could see from this vantage point that beneath his long-sleeved shirt were gears of some sort. So he wasn’t super strong. He had one of those exoskeletons that augmented your strength. These exoskeletons were becoming increasingly standard issue for the military and police, which also explained the police-grade net gun from earlier. In a world filled with minotaurs, angels, draugars and hydras—all super strong—I guess you took any advantage you could get.
After several more punches, he stopped and, still breathing heavy, said, “Come with me. Now!”
The other two followed him outside, leaving my mother and I alone.
Confessions of Love and Confessions of … Well, Let’s Just Say Confessions
Whatever the amulet told Simione must have been bad—severe enough, at the very least, for him to leave my mother and me alone. Normally that would be a bad James Bond villain move, but I wasn’t going to complain. We immediately tried to take full advantage by wiggling and worming, trying to get out of our damn bonds. But the duct tape held, and no amount of straining was going to free us. If we had a few hours, we might have been able to loosen the tape enough to free ourselves, but I could see the three of them just outside, discussing whatever evil plan they had in store for us. I knew it was futile.