Mortality Bites Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Vance, Ramy

  “You have ten minutes,” General Shouf said as she exited the room.

  World War Other

  “How could you betray us?” Kenji growled (which, given it was a wall, sounded more like a creak than a roar).

  Those words stung me to the core. The last thing I was doing was betraying Kenji. The world was on the brink of war and the only thing standing in the way of that was the morphing map on my arm.

  A map that led to an arsenal of magical weapons, which were making the humans very nervous. If the Others got their hands on the place, then the humans would attack without hesitation. But if the humans got there first, then at least they’d be comforted by the knowledge that the Others hadn’t gotten their hands on a mythical suitcase nuke.

  That might have been enough for the humans to listen to their better angels and not go all out against the Others. And it was the only path I saw to avoiding all-out war.

  But I doubted my morphing map would show me the way unless I got closer to the entrance or some event triggered it into a more helpful mode.

  I, also, understood where Kenji was coming from. From the nurikabe’s perspective, I was betraying Others. I was choosing a side that wasn’t theirs. I was leading the divine into mortal ruin.

  And the thought that Kenji could think so little of me really pissed me off, so instead of explaining any of that in a calm, rational way, I spat out, “ ‘Us?’ ” I knew exactly what Kenji meant by us. “Exactly who do you mean by ‘us?’ ” Angry me and diplomatic me don’t speak to each other anymore.

  Kenji didn’t seem to notice that I was being mordant (or it did and didn’t care) because the wall drew a series of thumbnail-sized photos of Others on its surface.

  “Oh,” I said, “you mean Others. So, what? You think I’m an Other because, once upon a time, I was a vampire? In case you haven’t heard, there are no more vampires or werewolves or half-breeds. We’re all just human. HUMAN! That’s what and who I am now. Human.”

  The wall went blank in answer, its surface taking on a rock-like texture.

  “Oh no, you don’t get to stonewall me now. Not with so much at stake. You saw the feeds—you know what’s going on. There’s a war brewing between Others and humans. A war that neither side can win without major casualties. And if some Other asshole gets access to the museum, said asshole will use whatever is inside to decimate the human race.”

  “And what do you think humans will do if they get access?” Kenji asked. “Use the items within for benevolent purposes? Turn it into an actual museum? Or will they take every weapon at their disposal and try to kill every Other that stands in their way?”

  “At least the humans won’t know how to use the items,” I said.

  “Baka janai?” Kenji spat. “That’s your defense? The humans are too stupid to use the items held within Kami Subete Hakubutsukan halls? OK, let us assume that you are correct and that humans are too stupid to figure it out. What about traitors like the aigamuchab? Or is it only stupid Others who betray their own?”

  I shook my head. “Kenji, please, they are going to torture you and kill you for the map. Please, tell us what you know, help us find the place. Live. Remember what you told me during the war? You are a survivor. Survive this.”

  The wall didn’t move, its surface becoming more stone-like as if transforming into the outer wall of some medieval castle.

  “Kenji, be reasonable. You said it yourself, there are all these foreign Others showing up with seven words on their lips: the Three Who Are One is—are?—coming. You know that’s not good. And you know that these Heralds, as you called them, they’re looking for the Kami Subete Hakubutsukan as well. Whether the Three Who Are One is a creature or an event, it doesn’t matter. The Heralds will use whatever cockamamie scheme they can think of to usher him, her or it in.

  “Others and their rituals,” I continued. “When did one of those ever happen without a lot of blood being spilled? We could be saving a lot of lives. Other lives. Human lives.”

  “But the Kami Subete Hakubutsukan will be in human control,” Kenji said.

  “It will—if we find it. But I have thought this through. Human control is better than Other control because the humans won’t know how to use what they find. Think about it: what does a human know about Odin’s Eye or how to really use something like that?”

  “They will find a way to use such things. They always do.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, but the alternative is that it gets into Others’ hands … and those guys absolutely know how to use the horrible shit inside for maximum devastation.”

  Kenji didn’t say anything, his surface turing brick red. I tapped Kenji’s surface four times like I had done once before when we first met. “Please.”

  I don’t know if it was the familiar way I touched it that brought back memories of when it trusted me, or if it was the comment about survival. Either way, its surface gradually went clear and it revealed the outline of one of the outer islands surrounding Okinawa.

  “Here,” it said. “This is where legend says the entrance to the Kami Subete Hakubutsukan is located.” Kenji’s surface showed all of Okinawa and its several outer islands, highlighting an island I’d never seen on any map before. I had a perfect memory and this place was off the charts. Literally.

  “Kakusareta Taiyo Shima,” it said. “This is the island where Kami Subete Hakubutsukan is supposed to be, but where on the island, no one knows. But this knowledge will do you no good. This is a sacred island for the noro, a place where no unwelcomed human or Other is permitted. And it is filled with beings and powers who will not take kindly to the human military invading their home. Go. Go and die.”

  Maybe, I thought, but no one else has a mystic, invisible map tattooed to their arm.

  Then again, if he was right about the Others on the island, then map or no, there wasn’t much hope.

  “No,” Keiko said, “she will not die. She will have me.”

  ↔

  “Keiko,” the wall said, “please stay out of this. There is no need for you to place yourself in danger. Think of your grandmother. Think of—”

  “It is precisely because of grandmother that I offer this service,” she said. “I will be your guide and protect you as you search for Kami Subete Hakubutsukan.”

  I looked at the five-foot-nothing, wafer-thin girl. “I appreciate the offer,” I said, “and your driving skills aside, how exactly will you protect me?” I knew I was being a hypocrite given I, too, was five-foot-nothing.

  Keiko bowed and said with reverence, “My grandmother grew up in this world and in Yomi. Those doorways were opened to us because of Kenji-sama. My grandmother spent a lifetime sharing our culture with them and they, in turn, shared theirs with us.” Keiko pulled what looked like a handkerchief from her pocket and placed it around her forehead.

  I didn’t need her to tell me what the cloth represented or who she was. I had seen that white cloth worn in exactly the same manner before, at the end of the war.

  Keiko was a noro.

  ↔

  Keiko was a noro, which made perfect sense. It was why the Okinawan guards had refused to point their guns at her. It was also why she was immediately notified when we entered Kenji’s izakaya.

  She was an Okinawan priestess for a religion that had been struggling to maintain its traditions since World War II, when mainland Japanese soldiers outlawed their language and religious practices, doing their damndest to erase that part of the island’s culture.

  Noro priestesses carried immense respect, officiating all aspects of life from blessing births to preforming final rites at death. But it was more than that: they also stood between the mystical and human worlds. When a yokai terrorized the mortal realm, noro were called to help. And when a human somehow offended the divine … well, noro were there to defend the hapless mortal.

  Their religion was never about worshipping gods, per se. It had more to do with respecting the unseen world of the yokai; they saw these Others as part of
the natural order of things that existed in parallel with the human world.

  And they were female, which was refreshing given that ninety-nine percent of world religions were dominated by men.

  Now that the gods were gone, it made perfect sense that the priestesses’ role would be more pronounced. After all, the line between Others and humans was blurring, and that fuzziness was only getting more and more confusing as Others tried to figure out how to be mortal.

  Given that they had always served as mediators between the divine and mortal worlds, not much had changed for them. Except now the yokai were a physical presence who needed help with more mundane matters, like getting a lease or figuring out how to operate their oven. The noro had international respect amongst Other communities, species and sects, and what had once been a dying religion was reinvigorated with renewed interest and deference.

  Now it was my turn to bow to Keiko. “I had no idea.”

  “My family has had so many blessings because of what you did for us. It will be my honor to aid you.”

  “Keiko,” Kenji said, “the humans cannot get their hands on what the Kami Subete Hakubutsukan holds.”

  “I do not know if I agree with you, my old friend. There is wisdom in what Katurina-sama says. Both sides will use the Kami Subete Hakubutsukan for evil, and it is only a matter of time until the halls are found by one group or the other. The humans will not know how to use what is inside, and control of the place may very well be what the world needs to forge peace.”

  “I do not agree,” Kenji said. “I believe that—”

  An explosion shook the room we were standing with such force that both Keiko and I both fell over.

  Kenji nearly fell on Keiko, but I managed to get my footing in time to dash to her side and prop the nurikabe up. He was surprisingly light for a wall.

  “Seems the time for discussion is over,” a voice shattered as General Shouf entered the room. “Now is the time to act.”

  End of Part 2

  Part III

  Intermission

  Okinawa - World War II

  Decades ago—

  Just what I need, I thought, a little human brat who’s too cute to eat.

  “Eat-to?” the little girl said.

  “Eat-to?” I repeated, immediately regretting that I had thought that out loud. Thankfully the little human couldn’t speak English and I had only thought out loud in English … I think.

  “Eat-to,” she repeated and raised a cupped hand to her mouth like she was scooping water from a river. Then she touched her belly and gave me a groan that clearly said, “If you’re here to take care of me, then take care of me. And FYI, I could eat.”

  The little brat was hungry. Hell, I was hungry. And given that she was my food, I could kill two birds with one pair of fangs. Me—no longer hungry. Little girl—no longer anything.

  As I looked down at those big brown eyes, considering how good she’d taste, I shook my head. She wasn’t food. I had decided that when I saved her from a quick death by a bullet. To kill her now would be cruel, and although I was an evil, human-eating vampire, I wasn’t cruel.

  Never cruel.

  I lifted a one minute, please finger. “Chotomatte kudasai,” I said, and left the cave looking for food for me and the little brat.

  ↔

  I returned an hour or so later with rations I had taken from a Japanese soldier who was foolish enough to think he could eat in peace in the Okinawan brush. Poor guy. Then again, I’d seen that his bento box—definitely not army issue—had goya inside, and I put two and two together.

  He’d stolen it from a farmer. Probably killed the poor guy for his lunch.

  So I stole it back and had a little nibble of my own.

  The little girl scooped the lunch box out of my hand and ate its contents with such fervor that I began to wonder if she didn’t plan to stop with the goya and might eat the woven bamboo of the box itself.

  When she was done, she looked at me, her hunger subsided enough for her to notice that my little food hunt had gotten me shot. A bullet hole had ripped the gingham dress I’d gotten from Harrods a few years back. I lamented the damaged dress because, given how much bombing the Germans were doing, Harrods—let alone London—probably wasn’t even standing anymore.

  She poked a finger through the hole, feeling the still wet blood on my shirt. She moved her finger around the hole, looking for my wound and when she didn’t see any, she lowered her hand. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen me wounded. Hell, she’d practically watched as I burst into flames from exposure to sunlight.

  But that had been just after watching her parents die. Now was different. Now she had some distance. Some clarity. And that clarity caused her eyes to widen as she looked at me with abject horror. “Yokai,” she said.

  ↔

  Yokai, the Japanese word for demon. Boy, it didn’t take her long to peg me for exactly what I was.

  I had expected her to run or cry or fall to her knees and beg in a fury of multisyllabic words, but she didn’t do any of that. Instead, she stood before me and bowed deeply, a sign of extreme respect. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Okinawans’ approach to demons was one of fear that was tempered by respect, accepting them as part of the natural order of things.

  Westerners tended to just go for the fear. And as for acceptance, well, the Bible is filled with examples of prophets and heroes chasing demons away from the mortal plane.

  As a vampire, I much preferred the Japanese way of doing things.

  The little brat was still bowing and I put a gentle hand on her chin, lifting her face until our eyes met. “Yokai,” I confirmed, putting a hand on my chest. “Watashi no namae wa Katrina Darling.”

  “Katurina Daruringu,” she said, somewhat butchering my name with the Japanese absolute obsession with adding syllables to everything. She bowed again, this time pointing at herself. “Aoi Uehara.”

  Humph, her name translated to Blue High-field. Hell of a name.

  Then again, mine was Cat Loved One (well, sort of), so I guess it made sense we got along.

  I bowed to the child, calling her Aoi-chan—chan being the common moniker for the young—before pointing at the sky. “You know, Aoi means blue in English.” The child tilted her head as she tried to comprehend a language that she’d probably never heard spoken before. So I said it in Japanese. “Aoi wa eggo ni wa ‘blue’ desu.”

  “Buru?”

  “Close enough,” I said before poking her nose. “From now on I’m going to call you Blue Sky. No, that’s not right—how about just Blue?”

  “Buru,” she said, a little more smoothly now. As it dawned on her that I’d just given her a new nickname, her face beamed as she giggled.

  I swear to everything we vampires hold holy that I felt my dead heart beat within my chest when I saw that beautiful child’s grin.

  ↔

  Over the next few weeks, Blue and I found a rhythm. I ate naughty soldiers (she never let me eat the good ones) and stole their food for her.

  It was June 1945. I didn’t need to see the news to know that the war was wrapping up.

  During the last days of the war, the U.S. Army was sweeping through Okinawa, fighting the remaining soldiers who couldn’t accept they had lost. But for the most part, there was very little fighting, with most choosing to surrender to the inevitable.

  Unfortunately, surrender didn’t always mean a white flag and your hands up in the air. Often, surrender meant death.

  And that’s exactly what happened. Soldiers and civilians alike committed suicide. Soldiers did so by fighting a battle that could only end one way. Civilians did so by taking their own lives rather than being captured by the gaijin barbarian hordes.

  Of course, it didn’t help that soldiers (falsely) spread rumors that the American soldiers would torture and rape you, subject you to worse kinds of humiliation. That being taken in by these monsters was not only a fate worse than death, it was also a betrayal of everything you once
stood for.

  I’m not here to paint a pretty picture of the invading American army. They did horrible, unforgivable acts during that war. But they weren’t the monsters the rumors made them out to be. If anything, they were trying to stabilize things by setting up internment camps that offered food and shelter to anyone who would take it.

  But when it’s been drilled into your head that evil is coming and you’ve been told that nothing will save you from the horrors that evil has in store for you, and when those messages come on the heels of defeat after years of war … well, the end doesn’t sound all that bad.

  It sounds peaceful, even.

  Of course, Blue and I didn’t know any of that while wandering the tropical forests of Okinawa. All we knew was that American boots on the ground meant the war was ending, and that end meant that Blue needed a home.

  A home I stupidly thought I’d found one evening near an abandoned goya field a few miles outside of Naha.

  Boom, Boom, Shake, Shake the Room

  Present Day—

  Leaving Kenji behind, Jean led us through the base, rushing toward the corridors of the bunker. “What’s going on?” I said.

  Jean led us down an underground passageway that connected bunkers and buildings on the base. Below was a maze of gray-painted walls and acronyms I didn’t understand. We ran until we hit a junction that led up a stairwell labeled A.O.A.

  “A.O.A.?” I asked.

  “Anti-Other Armory,” he said, opening a door with a passkey and leading us into a warehouse with row after row of shelves filled with stuff that hurt, incapacitated or outright killed Others.