by Vance, Ramy
I tried to get to my feet, but before I could, powerful hands lifted me up. “Are you hurt, milady?” Deirdre asked.
I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I said to my changeling roommate who stared at me with deeply concerned eyes.
Deirdre stabbed her broadsword into the snow and left it standing as she helped me to my feet. Upright, the sword was taller than me. She wore a tank top and a pair of tights, pink running shoes and nothing else, and I marveled at this gorgeous creature who was almost totally immune to the cold.
“Thank you. I’m fine. Really,” I said, pulling off my cherub mask. I had gotten some snow under it and my cheeks were beginning to chill.
She nodded and picked up her broadsword. Staring up the hill where the ghoul had fled, Deirdre growled. “Good to hear, but that ghoul will still pay dearly for his transgressions against my—”
“We’re on a capture mission—not kill,” I said. Deirdre didn’t look my way, her ire still directed up the mountain. I grabbed the changeling warrior’s face and repeated, “Capture mission. No killing … got it?”
Telling a changeling warrior not to kill was akin to asking the Terminator to chill out and have a beer. It just wasn’t in their nature. But Deirdre had sworn her sword arm to me—an oath the fae take very seriously.
She begrudgingly nodded, and the three of us made our way up the mountain.
↔
The ghouls had been spotted at the Mount Royal Cemetery digging up some graves. As far as culturally appropriate behavior goes, that was a big no-no. Not that they’d gotten the memo.
Since the gods left four years ago and expelled their denizens onto Earth, mythical creatures like ghouls, changelings, dragons, wendigos, kirins—and just about any other creature you once thought of as not real—have had to figure out how to live by human rules.
But human rules can be confusing, and not digging up the dead and eating them wasn’t culturally inappropriate for a ghoul. Hence why this was a capture-only mission. Well, more like a humanitarian mission; we needed to explain to these creatures that what they were doing was disturbing the metaphorical villagers.
That was the plan, at least. But the plan had one hitch: we had to get them to listen.
It doesn’t matter … we have to try, I thought.
“What doesn’t matter?” Deirdre asked.
“Deirdre,” Egya cackled, “don’t mind her musings. She’s just ‘thinking on the outside’ again.”
It was true. I did have a nasty habit of airing my thoughts. And the more inappropriate they were, the louder they aired.
“Ahh, I see,” Deirdre said, knowing my quirk well. She bent down, gesturing for us to stop. The tracks led up the mountain, which was strange; ghouls liked graveyards and tended to live there. It was their equivalent of living in a grocery store. But these creatures were running away from the cemetery. But then again, it also made sense they were trying to put as much distance between us and their home: they didn’t know that we’d already scoped them out and knew all about their families living in the tombs of Mount Royal Cemetery. They were running away from the cemetery because they were trying to protect their families from … well … us.
Deirdre gestured for us to come to her side. She put a finger over her lips, asking us to be silent, and pointed up. That’s when I saw what she was looking at. The tracks led farther up the hill, but the ghouls weren’t there. Either they had doubled back or burned a bit of time to create false tracks, but they weren’t there.
They were up a tree.
Without warning a—what do you call a group of ghouls? A gang? A gouging? Ahh, got it—a funeral of ghouls dropped from the trees, surrounding us.
There were six of them, all brandishing scimitars typical of their Arabian heritage.
Egya, Deirdre and I stood back-to-back, readying ourselves for battle.
“Still a capture-only mission?” Deirdre asked.
“Yes,” I said, holding my dirk in a defensive position. “We can do this.” Then calling out to the ghouls, I said, “We’re not here to hurt you. But you guys can’t keep doing what you’re doing. Listen, there are facilities that can help you. Places where Others like yourselves can go to learn how to be mortal. Put down your—”
But before I could finish my sentence, we heard someone cry out, “When criminals in this world appear, and break the laws that they should fear, and frighten all who see or hear, the cry goes up both far and near …”
“Underdog?” I said, staring up as the human-looking boy lowered from the sky in his red leotard and fluttering cape. The letter ‘U’ was monogrammed onto his chest. He also wore a black mask that was more the Dread Pirate Roberts than Underdog.
“Actually,” the boy said, “I was going to go for Underboy or Underman, but neither quite worked. And since Underdog is already taken, I’m Underdawg, as in d-a-w-g.” He emphasized the “awg” part of his secret identity.
“Not really much of a difference,” I pointed out.
“Oh, it is. One is an actual dog.”
“Cartoon dog,” I added.
“But I’m a ‘dawg.’ As in down with the peeps, hip and human. In other words, I’m cool.” His hands folded into the hang loose gesture.
“I’m not sure you know what cool is—”
But before I could finish, he whooshed down faster than an archangel and … well, tried to save the day.
↔
Underdawg yelled, “Speed of lightning, roar of thunder!” and showing off that “speed of lightning,” flew in a circle and tackled all six of the ghouls.
Although he was lightning fast, I couldn’t help but note that he didn’t fly in a straight line. And I didn’t think that was on purpose: it was almost as if he couldn’t fly in a straight line.
Straight line or not, he was fast, and the six ghouls didn’t know what hit them as he cartoonishly wrapped them in row after row of rope.
Once he tied them up, he started pulling them up into the sky while singing, “Fighting all who rob or plunder … Underdawg. Underdawg!”
“What the—?” I said. “You’re not going to hurt them, are you?”
“Ma’am,” he said with a little airborne salute, “they are fiends of the night. I will dispose of them as is worthy of their ilk. By the way, totally dig the mask.”
“Thank you, but not an answer. What are you going to do with them?”
“I was thinking about dropping them in the St. Lawrence River.”
“And what? Drown them?”
He gave me a slurred, “Sure, why not?”
Why not? I thought with indignant fury. Not. A. Good. Answer. I threw my dirk, and luckily for the ghouls, my aim was true. My blade sliced the rope and they dropped into a nearby snowbank.
“Hey!” Underdawg cried out.
“Hey nothing. You’re a red-underwear-wearing, poor excuse for a hero,” Egya said. Good—the Ghanaian was distracting him.
“Deirdre!” I yelled. “Free them.”
The changeling warrior moved forward without question, cutting their bonds.
“Scatter,” I yelled. The ghouls didn’t need to be told twice, and as they ran away, I cried out, “And no more grave-robbing!” Then I pointed up at Underdawg. “As for you. Superheroes don’t drown anyone, let alone Others just trying to make their way on this Earth.”
“Whatever,” Underdawg said with a shrug. “I was just going for a test flight anyway.” And before I could say anything, he flew up, up and away.
Superheroes Aren’t Real
“Superheroes aren’t real,” I said.
“Are you sure?” my boyfriend Justin asked, kissing me on my forehead. He pulled me in close, our naked bodies joined in post-coital entanglement. (So much for taking it slow, then again, we’ve been dating for three months and he has lips to die for, so …) This was my favorite part, because after three hundred years of having nasty, just-for-kicks vampire sex that usually ended with me eating the person, it felt great to cuddle.
Amazing, actually.
“I am sure,” I hummed. “Very sure.”
“How?” he said, sitting up slightly so he could look at me better. “How can you be so sure?”
“For one thing, I’ve been around a long, long time. For another, I’m not crazy. Superheroes don’t exist.”
“Sure they don’t exist, but then again, neither did Others five years ago. And now the world is filled with all kinds of creatures I once thought were just in fairy tales. So if they’re here, why can’t superheroes be here, too?”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But still …”
“Also, are you sure he wasn’t just an Other burning some time to look like a super-strong boy who could fly?”
“I suppose. But the amount of power he displayed …” I trailed off, considering the implications. Every mythical creature had magical powers, but after the gods left, those powers were directly tied to their age. In other words, cast a fireball and you’d lose an hour or two of life. Fly like that … that would cost days—if not weeks—of time. “If Underdawg is an Other, he was burning through a hell of lot of time for nothing. And for what? A few ghouls in a forest? It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe, but you’ve told me before that so many Others are lost. Maybe this particular Other is looking to go out with a bit of a bang. Save some lives, do some good, check out with his account well in the black.”
Sitting up, I stared into Justin’s impossibly beautiful eyes and raising a curious eyebrow at the expression, said, “Check out?”
“Yeah, check out. It’s an expression for … you know, dying.”
“I know. From the 1990s. I was around then, you know. I helped a lot of people ‘check out,’ and—” I stopped talking. I had meant that as fun banter, but there’s nothing fun about all the lives I ended when I was a vampire. Nothing.
Justin must have sensed my change, because he shuffled down in the bed so we were face to face and gave me a hard kiss. “Balancing the account,” he said. “That’s what you’re doing now. You’re making up for all the wrong you’ve done.”
“I can never make up for it all.”
“No, you can’t,” he said. “But trying even though you know you’ll fail is the best thing you can do. Heck, it’s the best any of us can do. Which, if you carry that logic to its inevitable conclusion, means that you are the best of the best and—”
I kissed him. Hard. “Are you sure you’re only nineteen?”
“Twenty in two months,” he said.
“Well, I’m way more than twenty, and sometimes I absolutely marvel at your wisdom.”
He giggled and placed a hand over his heart. “Old soul.”
“Very old soul, indeed,” I agreed, and gave him a kiss he’d remember (and by kiss, I mean more than a kiss. But I’m a lady, and ladies don’t … ahem … kiss and tell).
↔
Once that was done, we fell into our cuddling position again, his arms around mine, silently breathing. Just when I thought he had drifted off to sleep, he whispered, “I wish I was a superhero.”
“Why?” I asked, pulling his arm tighter around me.
“So I could go on missions with you guys.”
It was a sore point for him that we wouldn’t let him come along when we were trying to deal with some rogue Other or fix some misunderstanding between species. But it was for a good reason: I had three hundred years of experience as a vampire and a huntress. Egya was an ex-were-hyena, which meant he was annoying, and always had some stupid joke in the chamber, but he was also an incredible tracker and warrior.
And as for Deirdre, well, Deirdre was a changeling warrior. In the fae world, she’d be the equivalent of an elite warrior. Think Navy Seal, Marine, Ranger and MMA fighter all rolled into one, and you still wouldn’t be close.
I touched my chest. “You’re here. I carry you in my heart.”
“Oh, ha ha. How very cheesy of you. But seriously, if I was a superhero, I’d be by your side. Doing good, righting wrongs. Battling the forces of Mordor on campus.”
“Hmph. Righting wrongs and fighting the forces of Mordor, eh? And tell me, superhero … what would your superpowers be?”
“I don’t know. Invisibility, for one. And the ability to turn kinetic energy into a blast …”
“Like Black Panther.”
“Black Panther and Harry Dresden’s rings.”
I nodded in approval. My super-hot boyfriend was a super geek, too. Definitely lucked out with this one. “Great. And your name would be …?”
“Kinetic Man.”
I turned around to face him. “Kinetic Man.” I giggled. “That’s a terrible superhero name.”
“Good terrible?” he asked.
“Terrible, terrible.”
“Still—”
My dorm room opened wide as Deirdre walked in, her barely clothed body covered in snow. “Sorry, milady,” she said. “I saw the forewarning sock-on-door and knew not to enter, but there is something that requires your attention.”
“What?” I said, sitting up and pulling the bed sheet to cover my more precious bits and bobs.
“Seems that Underdawg is in the halls of our residence.”
“Here? Why?” I thought about all the Others living in Gardner Hall. There were a hell of a lot of people he might try to drop into a river.
“Excellent question. Underdawg is rather inebriated, and understanding his slurred speech is quite difficult. But from what I’ve gathered, he claims to live here.”
Drunken Underdogs, Dorm Rooms and Suspicious Characters
Deirdre led us to Gardner Hall’s fifth floor, where we found a very drunk, very incoherent kid dressed up as Underdog banging on the bathroom door, crying, “Let me in!”
There were several kids standing around giggling at Underdawg, taking pictures and generally being unhelpful. So much for university camaraderie.
Then again, given how he was dressed, I didn’t blame them for not … ahh … engaging.
I, on the other hand, was already desensitized to a boy dressed like a 1970’s cartoon. “Hey kid,” I said, walking up to him, “what’s the problem? It’s unlocked.” I was wary of getting too close. After all, he was super strong and it was only by the grace of the GoneGods he hadn’t smashed through the wall.
“I want to get into my room, but they won’t let me in.”
“Kid, I don’t know where you think you are, but you’re banging on the bathroom door. And again, it’s unlocked.”
He took a step back, peered at the universal symbol for a bathroom—which, being co-ed, had both a little man and woman on it—and shook his head. “That’s not my room.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you. Where’s your room?” I got close and could smell cigarettes and the sweet, skunk-like smell of something a little more potent than tobacco. Made sense this kid liked the wacky tobacky. I imagine the cartoon Underdog is a lot of fun when you’re high.
Underdawg looked around and shook his head as he thought about it.
“Do you know where your room is?” Justin asked, stepping forward.
I put a hand out, cautioning him not to get any closer. This clearly annoyed him, because he pushed past me and put a hand on Underdawg’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “do you know where you are?”
“I’m …” Underdawg started, but his voice trailed off.
“He’s on the fourth floor,” said a voice behind us. I turned to see a girl standing in her comfy flannel pajamas and, despite a fair amount of confidence I was only attracted to men, my jaw dropped.
To say she was beautiful would be akin to claiming that Adele is OK at singing. Words just don’t do them justice. She was more than beautiful, even standing in probably the ugliest pajamas possible. I found myself swimming in her pristine eyes. And that was what made her truly unique: her eyes didn’t match. One eye was ocean blue, and the other was mercury silver. Her hair was a rainbow of silver that cascaded down to the small of her back, each strand a slightly differ
ent shade of gray. And as for that smile … ships have been lost at sea looking for that smile.
And it wasn’t just me; Justin had stopped moving, too. So had Deirdre, who simply muttered to herself in Elvish. I couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying (my Elvish is rusty), but it was something along the lines of giving up her left thumb for a night with the silver-haired goddess. Then again, she might not have been saying “thumb” …
“Sorry,” I said after a long moment of gawking.
“That’s Bogdan—Boggie for short. He lives on my floor.” She held up four fingers. “Fourth floor. Come on, Boggie.” She held out a hand.
Boggie smiled when he saw the goddess. “Hi, Cassy,” he said with an uncoordinated wave of his hand.
↔
I sent Justin back downstairs with Deirdre before his tongue tripped over his … well … tripped him up. Given how gorgeous and obviously turned on Deirdre was, I wasn’t sure that was my best move. But hormones be damned—I needed a few answers, and those two weren’t helping.
Cassy and I helped Underdawg back to his room, and given how he was moving, I could tell he wasn’t very strong. Not at the moment, at least. He was too malleable, too easy to manipulate. Drunken creatures with immense strength often forget themselves and break walls with a careless toss of the arm. Or split a pool table into two by accident (a long story from my vampire days).
But this guy, he was flailing and falling and nothing was breaking. Hell, I was able to hold his arm down with barely any effort. It just didn’t make sense after he’d taken down six ghouls by himself. Ghouls were Arnold Schwarzenegger strong—and I mean the Terminator, not Mr. Universe Arnie.
Whatever gave him strength has worn off. Or maybe it was an illusion, I thought.
“What gave him strength?” Cassy asked.
GoneGodDamn it! I was thinking out loud again. It was a nasty quirk I’d inherited from my vampire days. All that skulking around in an empty, dark castle got lonely, and talking to myself was one way to pass the time.