Mortality Bites Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Vance, Ramy

  “The truth was, he didn’t make his wings out of feathers and wax, and the sun didn’t melt anything. But he did have wings … wings he tortured a poor valkyrie into crafting for him. And he used those wings he hadn’t made or earned—but rather stole—to fly. For a while he flew quite well. But only for a while. Then air current and wings and resistance and just about every other principle of physics came crashing down on him and he lost control and flew into a cliff face at such an incredible speed that there are probably bits of him still there.”

  I watched as his tentacles grew, waiting. The first of them were almost on the closest kids.

  “He crashed, and why? Because power that is unearned—and worse, unpracticed—is also ineffective.” I waited until his little suckers were about to attach … and the split second before, I cried out, “Now!”

  Appearing out of seemingly nowhere, a dozen heroes formed a circle around Wizard Crusader. At the center were my invisible boyfriend and Cassy. Wizard Crusader barely had a second to say, “Holy mythology, Batman!” before Rhino charged, hitting him hard in the chest.

  A girl who must have been made out of elastic flattened herself so she looked like a net and bounced Wizard Crusader back against Rhino. As Wizard Crusader rocked back and forth between those two, his helmet fell off to reveal one very scared … oh shit … Harold Cheer?

  I didn’t have time to register who the villain was because a kid in a monk’s outfit with an arrow tattooed on his head started doing something that looked like a martial arts kata. A hand made of rock came out of the ground and clasped itself around Wizard Crusader.

  And while all that was going on, I vamped out. Well, not blood-drinking vamped out, but using my familiar strength and speed, I grabbed the two ninjas that had been holding me back and threw their racist … ahh, I mean Otherist asses into their fellow misguided friends. Six of them tumbled down and I jumped off the stage.

  I grabbed two more and said, “The name’s Cherub and I’m crazy.” I made sure I had the other ninjas’ attention before I added my final, harrowing blow. Summoning the vampire’s roar—which sounds like a lion growling through an elephant charge—I cried out, “Run!”

  The thing about the vampire’s roar: it’s savage. Not only did the ninjas run … so did practically everyone else who wasn’t a superhero.

  ↔

  “Harold Cheer,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “Not bad, Ka—”

  With speed he didn’t know I had, I covered his mouth and whispered, “Tut, tut, tut. There are rules to this. I only get to say your name because your mask fell off. Mine is still very much on. Break the rules and I break you. Got it?”

  Despite all his powers, Harold was caught and he knew it. He nodded and as he did, the mesh chainmail acting as his helmet’s wig cap shook free and fell off. It was then I noticed an earpiece typically used by security operations to stay in touch.

  “What’s this?” I asked, pulling it off. Putting the earpiece in, I said, “Mayday, mayday—Captain Wizard Crusader is down. I repeat, Captain Wizard Crusader is down.” I waited a few seconds for a response and got nothing. “Seems your minion doesn’t want to chat.”

  He smirked at this. “Not a surprise,” he said, “since you scared all my minions off. But the guy at the other end of the receiver is not my minion, Cherub.” If a word could be poisonous, the way he said Cherub was absolutely toxic. “And he knows all about you.”

  “Really?” I said, lifting an alluring, curious eyebrow—not that anyone saw, since my mask hid all my cuteness away.

  And Harold didn’t care either way; he wasn’t even looking at me. Instead, he scanned the surrounding superheroes and Cassy one by one, as if shooting them with his eyes.

  I turned around to see all the heroes standing in a circle looking at Harold. Most of them didn’t know who this dweeb was, but I could tell a couple did. Their surprise shone with particular brightness as they realized the kid they had dismissed as harmless was actually the most violent of the bunch.

  They were surprisingly restrained, partly because while they were invisible, Cassy and Justin had told them as much as they could about what was going on. But their restraint wasn’t just because they heard Cassy and believed her. We were off campus, so they weren’t being compelled by the conditions of the curse to act in one way or another. And uncompelled, these superheroes revealed themselves for who they truly were … kids who were scared and no more interested in having superpowers than a monkey desires to go to outer space.

  “You know, my whole life I’ve been made fun of for being smaller, weaker, more passionate,” Harold said, shaking his head. “Also for being smart, and none of their mockery ever bothered me.”

  Since he didn’t know most of these kids, I assumed he meant the royal their.

  “The only thing that ever really got me mad,” Harold continued, “was when they made fun of me for playing Dungeons and Dragons. ‘Ohh, Harold the Wizard,’ they’d say. ‘Where’s your dragon?’ ‘Done playing in the dungeon?’ But in all their taunts and mockery, they never got two things: One, Dungeons and Dragons is a complex game that, despite its name, really doesn’t have that many dragons in it. And two, the spells in that game were absolutely inspiring.”

  As he uttered the word “inspiring,” his eyes glowed yellow. Three giant, disembodied hands appeared behind the kid dressed as a monk, Rhino and—gulp—Justin.

  Invisible Hands Are the Devil’s Playthings

  The hands grabbed each of the heroes and the three kids started aging immediately. This wasn’t my first battle with a wizard, so I did what worked in the past with those blowhards: I punched Harold. Square in the nose. I was trying to break his spell and wound up breaking his nose as well. Bonus points: me.

  His head rocked back, but looking over my shoulder, I saw that his spell held. This might not have been my first fight with a wizard, but it was my first fight with a wizard imbued with the powers of a half-dozen superheroes.

  I punched him again, this time not holding back any of my vampiric strength. My fist connected with a sonic boom and I justified the very real possibility that my punch could kill him with thoughts of saving Justin.

  His head snapped back and for a second I thought I had punched it clean off.

  But he lifted it again, smiling as the blood from his nose ran down to his lips and painted his teeth crimson. I had just drawn my fist back for a third strike when Harold said, “Uh, uh, uh. Two is all I need.”

  “For what—?” I started, but when I saw the purple currents running through him I knew what he was about to do.

  How could I have been so stupid? was my last thought before Harold unleashed the kinetic energy I’d put in him with those punches. Using the power he had stolen from Justin, he sent pieces of the stone hand that had been holding him in every direction.

  I was thrown across the room, but because of my vampiric agility—and staying true to my name—I managed to land on my feet.

  Harold, freed, used Rhino’s power to charge, though not at me or any of the other heroes, but rather the back stage and brick wall behind him.

  I chased after him, only sparing a second to watch my once young boyfriend curl over with arthritis and the pockmarks of age.

  ↔

  Harold might have had superpowers and the ability to fly, but I was a vampire, which meant that not only was I fast, but I was also an incredible climber.

  Outside, Harold took to the air, but from the awkward way he lifted off the ground I could tell he was hurt. No, more than hurt—he was using Underdawg’s flight ability, not Comet Boy’s, and the only reason I could think of for him to be doing that was because Underdawg’s powers came with the pain-numbing effects of marijuana.

  I guess my punches got to him after all.

  Jumping onto the wall of the adjacent building, I scampered up until I was on its rooftop. Then charging forward with agility and speed that would make any parkour enthusiast positively die with envy, I manag
ed to latch onto Harold’s leg before I got onto his back and rode him like an angry Swedish masseuse with a chip on her shoulder.

  He tried to buck me off, but I dug my nails into his plate and mail armor. He’d need to strip naked to get me off, and even then, I was determined to latch onto whatever dangling appendages he had under all this armor.

  Bucking, dipping up and down, he flailed mid-air, and I used his distraction and panic to steer his flight toward Montreal’s mountain … and more specifically, right over Mont Royal’s Cemetery. Once we were headed in the right direction, I bent over and whispered into Harold’s ear, “You’re going to have to go much faster than this to rid yourself of me.”

  Then I unleashed my inner demon and bit down hard on Harold’s neck.

  ↔

  In Islam, comets, meteors and shooting stars are not space rocks entering our atmosphere and burning up on entry—they are angels being kicked out of the Emerald City of Qa, the home of jinn.

  Whereas I believe most streaks in the night sky are probably debris entering our atmosphere, not all of them are. Some are indeed angels getting the boot from one of God’s heavenly bouncers.

  And the thing about getting the boot: your punishment doesn’t just stop at entry denied. That would be too easy and thus, God and his smokeless jinn created Earth-bound beings that would wait below to continue the torturous festivities.

  Ghouls.

  They were to jinn what orcs were to elves. In other words, the jinn’s ugly cousins. But unlike orcs, who were simply agents of chaos, ghouls were the second part of the kick ’em out, punish ’em below cycle.

  How did they do that? Well, it started with the ghouls capturing these poor, hapless falling angels and then imprisoning them until they got a sign from up above that their captives were to be set free.

  And it just so happened that there was a comet-catching family of ghouls below who owed me a favor.

  Giant grappling hooks shot to the sky and embedded themselves into Harold’s armor and flesh, and with a mighty yank, they pulled his golden, glowing ass down to Earth.

  Harold fought against their hooks, and in his enormous efforts to break free managed to dislodge me. I came tumbling down to Earth ahead of him, and this time there was no one to leap up and save me.

  Vampires can die. I know—I’ve killed a couple myself. It takes a lot and you really have to come after them, but if you’re able to deliver enough damage to their bodies, they will cease to be.

  As I fell, I didn’t know if a fall from this height was enough to kill me. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see, I thought as I fell.

  And as the earth drew closer, I thought that dying this way wouldn’t be so bad. I would have died trying. And what’s more, I would have died trying even though I was a vampire now. I was both proud and saddened by this thought.

  Proud because I had fought the demon within so that I could do the right thing.

  Saddened because now that I knew the beast could be tamed, I wished I had tried to many centuries ago.

  Oh well, I thought in that last second, no point in crying over spilt blood now.

  ↔

  I hit the ground with a muted splat.

  And the first indication that I hadn’t died was seeing Deirdre and Egya sitting by my side as I came to. My head rang so loudly I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the worried looks in their eyes told me everything I needed to know. They cared. Deirdre cried, which was to be expected; as powerful as the changeling was, one of her most endearing qualities was that she always expressed her emotions … good, bad or confused.

  What was unexpected were Egya’s tears. During the months I had gotten to know the Ghanaian, he had never expressed any emotions besides anger and laughter. This … this was new.

  I tried to sit up, meaning to walk it off, but neither of them would let me stand. So I lay there as my body rapidly repaired itself. And it was fast, faster than it had ever been in the past for lesser injuries.

  “Girl,” Egya said, “you got something in your teeth.” I barely heard him through my ringing ears, but the gesture that went along with his words was enough for me to touch my lips.

  Blood.

  More specifically, Harold’s blood. Things started to click. Drinking blood didn’t give you your victim’s powers and abilities (if it did, I would have had a real taste for angels), but it does give you their resilience, and the combination of Justin and Rhino’s resilience was probably what saved me.

  “The ghouls—” I started, but Egya hushed me.

  “They got the crusader fellow in one of their tombs. They’ll hold him until he is human. They said they owe the angel who cannot fly for saving them from the dog who could.”

  “Good,” I said, laying back down and letting my body do what it must.

  ↔

  I must have lay there for an hour or so before I was whole enough to get up. The ringing had subsided and, after refusing Deirdre’s offer to carry me for the dozenth time, I started down the hill back toward the cinema. Deirdre and Egya tried to come with me, but I insisted they stay. I couldn’t risk Harold escaping.

  I needed Wizard Crusader detained because the real doom was yet to happen. And Cassandra couldn’t warn us … so I needed everything to be as uncomplicated as possible.

  They resisted, but ultimately agreed.

  That done, I walked down the hill. I needed to figure out what that “doom” was, but more importantly, I needed to get back to Cassy and her superheroes.

  Lead for Your Heart, Pennies for Your Eyes

  Returning to the theater, I saw the superheroes milling about. The group (what do you call a group of superheroes? Assemble? Power?) of superheroes had splintered into small groups, speaking in hushed whispers among themselves. There were no normals around. I guessed the sight of Harold and his tentacles was enough to send all of them packing.

  Cassy was walking among them, comforting them as best she could, and also telling them as much as her curse allowed.

  I approached the Prophetess of Doom. “Harold has been taken care of … he won’t bother us again tonight.” She nodded, breathing a sigh of relief that I’ve seen on aid workers in war zones. It was the relief that came from one less thing to deal with. Sure, that doesn’t make all the chaos go away, or even make life particularly better or easier, but it was still one less thing. “So, I guess all we have to do—”

  My words were cut off when I saw a very old man sitting on the stage, being propped up by several cushions gathered from the GoneGods know where. He was bald, liver spots replacing what had once been a skull filled with lush black hair. His blue eyes were replaced by a depressed gray-blue, and his once flawless skin that had hung tight on his cheeks now looked like a cotton shirt left too long in the washing machine.

  Justin. And he looked old.

  Older than what I should look like.

  I walked over to him and took his frail hand in mine. I had been around enough humans at their different stages of life to know he didn’t have long on this Earth. Even if the curse was broken, he wouldn’t revert back to his nineteen-year-old self.

  He wouldn’t revert because Cassandra’s curse had nothing to do with aging. That effect had been part of Harold’s powers.

  Justin was old and would remain old for the rest of his days … as few as they were.

  He was going to die. Maybe not right now, but I was sure he wouldn’t see the New Year’s bells ring and there was nothing I could do about it.

  No—that wasn’t entirely true, was it? I was a vampire now. I could bite him, sire him, rip away his soul and infect him with a demon that would allow him to live forever. I could …

  The demon might have been inside me. It might have stripped away my own soul, slowly turning me into an uncaring, hateful person. But I wasn’t lost to it yet. I still had much of what made me, me.

  And I would hold onto that for as long as I could.

  That meant no spreading my vampiric disease no matter t
he circumstances. That meant no turning Justin no matter how much I wanted to.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice as foreign to him as it was to me. “How are you?”

  “I had a tumble, but other than that I’m fine.”

  “I can see that,” he said, picking a blade of grass off my sweater. “You must have really fallen a long way to get through all the snow and stuff.”

  “Yeah, you could say that …” I went silent, not sure what else to say.

  “Cherub,” he whispered, “I don’t suppose you’d help an old man backstage? I need to talk to you and my knees aren’t what they once were.”

  ↔

  I helped Justin backstage where we could speak in private. Even though we only walked a dozen or so yards, he was out of breath and propping himself up on a table that stood on the stage. “So …” he said.

  Despite his aged voice, I recognized the tone. He was going to say something funny. But what could be funny now? “You know how they say, look at your lover’s parents to see what you’re going to get when they’re older?” He made a ta-da gesture. “Well, what do you think?”

  I gave him an appraising look. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

  “You know, I always thought if I was really lucky I’d get to grow old with you. Of course, when I thought that I kind of guessed you’d be old, too …” He trailed off as he smiled. Even old, his smile was beautiful.

  I forced a chuckle as the irony hit my brain like a barbwire-covered bat. He was old and I wouldn’t age a day. How fair was that?

  Justin’s face went serious. “I’m guessing I’m ninety. Maybe more. I didn’t have much time to prepare this given I generally don’t have much time at all, but …” He groaned as he shimmied off the chair. I helped as best I could, but he pushed me away. “No, I need to do this on my own.”