Mortality Bites Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Vance, Ramy

  “You’re welcome,” he called after me.

  I turned. “No, you don’t get to play the ‘ends justify the means’ card with me. Just because stalking us paid dividends doesn’t make it right.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “But I’m surprised you’re surprised. I mean, did you really think we’d offer you safe passage here without surveillance? We’re military, ma’am. We’re not really the trusting type.”

  “I know,” I said. “And neither am I.”

  I tapped the screen two more times, revealing a fourth blip. I had noticed that he’d put the tracker on me back on the boat, just before the meres attack. When I went into the bowels of the boat and saw his pack, I’d paused for a second to take one of his unused trackers. When the hole opened up I’d thrown it in, figuring it would help us find a way down.

  I showed him my planted blip.

  He looked at it and then up at me in surprise before a comprehending smile dawned on his face. “Clever girl,” he said with a chuckle. “Very clever indeed.” And he bowed in my direction.

  ↔

  We made our way to the spot where Keiko had clearly stopped for several minutes before she’d descended. But from where we stood there was no path down. As best as I could tell, we were standing in the heart of a tropical forest that was very much sans a hole.

  And I would know: I was an expert tracker, having spent three hundred years honing my skills by tracking my human prey. If Keiko had been there, she’d left no indication of it.

  There was simply no way for her to have been in that spot without crushing some brush, breaking some branches, leaving behind some sign of her—or human—presence.

  To cover her tracks so thoroughly, she’d have to have burned time. And not just a little bit of it … lots of it.

  Jean was thinking the same thing, because he was looking at his Mickey Mouse watch. He nodded before showing me the clock face. The second hand was spinning round manically, completing a full minute’s rotation in less than a few seconds.

  I scanned the trees, the ground, our surroundings, looking for the source of magic. Whatever burned time had hid itself as well, sacrificing time for … for what?

  The answer was obvious. For Keiko. She was a noro and just as she had summoned the makara—Meres Griffin (hey, I had to hand it to Jean, the name was catchy)—she had summoned something else to hide her tracks.

  Something like—

  I leapt to my right, throwing my body against the tree that stood not three feet away from me. Because I was looking around in a confused manner, I was able to hide that I had caught the glimmer of a kappa sitting so perfectly still in the shadows of the jungle that I might have mistaken the gray, turtle-like creature for a rock.

  I grabbed the kappa and growled, “Stop it. Now!” as I applied pressure to the creature’s neck, forcing it against the tree.

  The kappa gulped but held fast. “Ahh,” I heard Jean mutter from behind me, “He’s not stopping anything. If anything, Mickey’s working overtime now.”

  “Release your magic, foul beast,” I snarled, “lest I show you the final meaning of mortality.”

  The creature’s eyes did not waver and I could see that my threats weren’t going to dissuade it from protecting Keiko. He was willing to sacrifice time for the noro. Lots of it.

  But the mere fact that he wasn’t attacking us also indicated that Keiko had instructed the kappa not to harm us. So whatever her plan was when she went off on her own, killing us wasn’t part of it.

  I felt Jean’s hand on my shoulder. “Um, Kat … I don’t know when we went full Game of Thrones, and as much as I love watching you play bad cop, you mind giving me a shot?”

  I let the kappa go and watched as Jean walked over to the creature and put a hand on its shoulder. I couldn’t hear what Jean said, but I knew he was showing the creature his tricorder device. Jean talked and at one point the kappa even laughed.

  Then Jean put a cross over his heart and the kappa creature nodded.

  Stepping away from the kappa, he turned to me. “There? See, all you need is a little charm and to ask nicely. Point out the pros and cons of their actions and—”

  I bent down, grabbed the largest rock I could find and threw it right at the back of the kappa’s head as it tried to run away.

  The creature fell unconscious. As soon as he was out his magic stopped flowing, revealing the crushed canopy brush and logs that had been hastily pulled over the hole so that anyone accidently stepping over the illusion wouldn’t fall right through. But without the kappa’s magic, even a child could see what could only be described as a human-sized gopher hole.

  “You were saying?” I said with all the charm of a rattlesnake.

  ↔

  We climbed down the hole until we reached a chasm that was easily high enough for Masamitsu the nuppeppo to stand and wide enough for three minotaurs to walk side by side. This tunnel wasn’t naturally formed.

  Someone—or rather, someones—built it so that a small army could march through. The only questions were: who, and why?

  As for the most important question—where did it lead?—that was answered by the ebbing tattoo on my arm. Even though the passage was quite dark (and I no longer had my vampiric see-in-the-dark eyesight … sigh) I could clearly see the map’s fluorescent lines. The gods really had thought of everything.

  Including the multilayered map design, because as soon as we descended into the tunnel the map dropped down, erasing the previous overlay and showing the tunnel we were in. The red arrow pointed firmly in one direction down the hole—and toward Keiko.

  “This way.” Jean was holding a small flashlight in his teeth, looking at his tricorder.

  “I know,” I said, showing him my own mystical tracker, and started down the path.

  As we walked I could feel Jean keeping pace a couple feet behind me, shining his lamp over my shoulder to illuminate the path ahead. How chivalrous of him.

  He drew in a breath. I had spent enough time around humans to guess exactly what was coming: he wanted to defend why he was tracking us and put any negative feelings I had about him to rest.

  “You know, I’m not such a bad guy,” he started.

  Nailed it.

  “Nailed what?” he asked.

  Talking out loud again—not that I cared. It had been pointed out that my nasty talking-out-loud habit seemed to coincide with the truth bursting out of me. And I didn’t care if he heard my truth or not, especially when it came to him.

  If he was curious as to what I’d nailed, he didn’t pursue it further. “Actually,” he said, “I am a bad guy. But I’m a bad guy doing the right thing. I’m trying to keep casualties to a minimum here and—”

  “Casualties to a minimum,” I snorted. “That’s rich coming from the guy who took down two dragons with a harpoon gun.”

  “Hey, they knew exactly what they were getting into when they attacked the base. And yes, I did keep causalities to a minimum by stopping those dragons from taking more human lives. Also, if you recall, I kept the suffering to a minimum by stopping my jerk comrades-in-arms from torturing the poor beast.”

  I thought back to how he had stopped the other humans from tormenting the dragon and how, in as merciful a way as possible, he had ended the creature’s life. It had been a point for him. A big one.

  But I shook my head. “Just because you showed a moment of compassion doesn’t make you a good guy. Or—how did you put it?—‘a bad guy doing the right thing.’ ”

  “How do you figure?” he said, the light temporarily shooting to the tunnel’s ceiling as he lifted his hands up in exasperation.

  As soon as the light was back on the path, I answered him. “Because you’re trying to claim the museum and all its contents for the human army.”

  “Actually, I’m trying to stop a bunch of badass magical items from getting into the hands of Others who know exactly how to use them. And that is … how did you put it?”—he paused before he echoed my own words—
“rich coming from the girl who’s ‘after her soul, no matter the cost.’ ”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. You’ve got a map to this place on your arm. A map, by the way, that you never told me how you obtained. For all I know you killed a litter of cynocephalus puppies to get it.”

  Before I could think of some witty answer about the origins of the map that involved the words, “None of your business,” he continued, “If you were such a good girl, then you wouldn’t be here with it on your arm for any creature with fangs to rip it off you.”

  “First of all, I had no idea this museum was such a damn popular place. I thought I was going to do a little private tomb raiding and be done with it. Secondly, you guys are the ones who forced me to come here.”

  He nodded. “That we did. With almost no resistance from you.”

  “Resistance?” I twirled around to face this jerk, still walking backward just in case my abrupt stop would cause any unwanted bumping into each other. “You’re the guys who are holding my friends captive and—”

  And just as I was about to hit him with a retort worthy of the Retorting Hall of Fame, I took another step back and my foot slipped on something unnaturally smooth given that we were in an underground cavern.

  I fell forward as my body slid back. I reached out for Jean, but it was too late—I was already sliding down a path that was growing increasingly steep.

  As I rushed down toward whatever was waiting for me below, I heard Jean yell after me, “You were saying?”

  Jerk.

  ↔

  I slid down the pathway on what felt like marble until I fell into a black, cavernous pit with a painful thump. I couldn’t see anything, but I could smell it. This place smelled like … like … the Catacombs of Paris.

  Not an entirely unpleasant smell, but an unusual one. The Catacombs of Paris were a series of underground crypts with thousands of human skeletons decorating the walls. The old bones, stripped of flesh and the meat of muscles and veins and sinew, had a distinct smell to them, something akin to a dusty old attic and that new car smell.

  Like I said, not unpleasant, but distinct.

  There was also a hint of fresh, non-human blood (after years of drinking human blood, I could not only distinguish human blood from Other blood, but I could also tell you a lot about a person from how their blood smelled. In the vampire communities I was somewhat famous for having a particularly refined nose).

  I stood, but I was terrified that I’d fall down another slide or fall deeper into an already deep hole, so I didn’t move. I looked at my map tattoo, the red, neon glow of an arrow that pointed straight ahead no matter what direction I faced. There were no more blue and orange cavern lines, which meant that I had fallen into a hole within a hole. Unfortunately, the neon glow wasn’t strong enough to illuminate my surroundings at all.

  Great.

  I looked straight up. In the far, far distance, I saw the glow of a hole. The hotel’s entrance, but it was so far up that the light from the hotel itself didn’t reach down here to illuminate the ground.

  This place was pitch black, but not silent.

  I could hear breathing not far from where I stood.

  “Keiko,” I said, “are you hurt?”

  There was an almost imperceptible sigh as Keiko’s voice said, “No, I am fine. Demo watashi wa baka desu. Stepping so carelessly and falling here.”

  “I wouldn’t beat yourself up about falling. I was careless and fell, too. But even if I had been careful, with the way that incline suddenly appeared, I’m pretty sure that was a trap set up by a god (who probably had a minotaur consultant or something).”

  Keiko didn’t answer, apparently not taking solace in me falling, too. I guess misery doesn’t always love company. “Fine,” I said. “Bruised ego aside, are you hurt?”

  “Bruised pride and hip, but yes, I am well.”

  “Good. Then perhaps you can tell me what in the blue flames of Tartas you’re doing here?”

  Another sigh before Keiko growled, “My grandmother told me that you are an honorable person. But what I see is one who only cares for herself.”

  “Not you, too,” I said. “Let me guess, how could I work with the Americans and lead them to this place? Right?”

  Silence.

  “Right?” I said with more emphasis.

  “Hai,” she said.

  “Well, what if I told you that I was using them to find this place? That my plan is to get my soul and then shut down the whole operation?”

  “Plan?” she said. “Please explain.”

  “Sure,” I said, “I’ll tell you my genius plan if you tell me yours. You know, let’s have a little quid pro quo or tit for tat or whatever.”

  Silence, followed by another “Hai.”

  “Jean planted trackers on us. That’s in part how we knew you were trapped.”

  “Mukatsuko.”

  “Exactly. Still, it was predictable, and during the meres attack I stole a couple of his trackers to put him off our scent. As soon as I got my chance, I was going to attach them to a monkey or a mokumokuren or whatever I found and send him on a wild goose chase while we—and note I am saying we—found the place. Pretty straightforward plan.”

  “And if he followed us?”

  “Knock him out, tie him up. That kind of stuff. Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I hadn’t calculated everything.” I looked up at the hole. “In fact, I miscalculated a shit-ton of stuff. There was a lot I didn’t know about the museum, like that it exists on a completely different plane, so I’m improvising here. But I can promise you this: no matter what happens, I will do everything in my power to make sure the military doesn’t get their hands on the place. Both the human and Other ones,” I added.

  Keiko was silent and because I couldn’t see her, I had no idea how she was reacting to my little confession. Whatever her reaction was, she was weighing my words against whether or not she believed them enough to trust me with her secret.

  “We noro knew of this place for centuries,” she said.

  Evidently she had decided to trust me.

  “When the god Izanagi-no-Mikoto locked Izanami-no-Mikoto away here because death had already ravaged her body, he entrusted us with a lock of sorts. He made us promise that we would never let anyone but the gods enter this place. I am here to fulfill that promise.”

  I paused, taking this all in, marveling at how everyone and their mother had an interest in the museum. The human and Other armies were trying to find it. The noro were trying to stop that from happening.

  Then there was the matter of the nio and shisa guardians, and given that they had also tried to kill Keiko, I figured the noro weren’t responsible for them. Then there was the yokai, who seemed determined to help me get here.

  “So if you’re so hell-bent on stopping me, why did you help us with the meres? Or guide us to the hotel?”

  “I owe you a debt for what you did for my grandmother. Also …” her voice trailed off.

  “Also?”

  “You had the map and I needed it to find this place.”

  So that was it. She was another person in the long list of peeps who wanted to use me for my arm. I was starting to feeling like Google Maps.

  “So you found it without me. How?”

  More silence.

  “Come on, Keiko. We’re probably going to die in this cavern. No point in holding back on me now.”

  “I could—I could always see the map.”

  “What? How?”

  “Not me, but the mokumokuren.”

  “So you’re behind the yokai?”

  “No,” she said. “The ghosts are being summoned by something else. But the mokumokuren, they are friends of the noro and they can see all.”

  “And let me guess: those little bastards figured out that the map was in 3D and that the blue and orange lines weren’t decorative, but deeper pathways in. And as soon as we were close enough, the map updated itself, showing you enough about how
to find this place that you came here on your own.”

  “Hai.”

  “Sneaky.”

  “Necessary. I must close this place once and for all.”

  “With the lock from Izanami-no-Mikoto?”

  “Hai.”

  “Great plan. Too bad we’re stuck here.”

  “Perhaps I can help with that, ladies?” a voice said as a light shined on us.

  Jean.

  ↔

  “So, I guess I’ll add eavesdropping to your laundry list of virtues,” I said. “How much did you hear?”

  “I don’t know. I showed up just at the point where you were talking about monkeys and wild goose chases,” he sneered, turning the light on himself so we could see his face.

  Then he tossed the light to me, the flashlight landing a foot in front of me. I picked it up and what I saw was a graveyard of the dead. Others, but also humans littered the ground, and not just from earlier today. Their blood was fresh, but there were plenty of bones from creatures who had fallen into this hole years ago. Centuries ago. There was so much death here that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the fine dust covering the ground was just the ancient remains of those who died long, long ago.

  I wasn’t allowed to wallow in my shock at the macabre for long before Jean said, “I also heard about her lock and I think it’s a pretty good deal. I’d like to help.”

  “Help with what?” I asked.

  “Help lock this place down.”

  “Usuki,” Keiko spat.

  “I concur—liar. You just want us to lead you to the place and—”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” he said, pulling out a second flashlight and turning it on. He threw it to Keiko. “Believe it or not, I also think this place falling into human hands is a catastrophic mistake. Don’t get me wrong: given the choice between human and Other hands, I pick human. But given the choice between human and no hands …” He turned on a third flashlight and pulled out something from his backpack. He lit what was in his hands so that we could read the C4 printed on the front of the pack with an explosives symbol under it. “I pick no hands,” he said.