by Dima Zales
Would it help if I screamed?
Probably not.
When we get to the end of the corridor, I spot Eric—Nero’s teleporter ally.
Yes!
If anyone can get me out of this mess alive, it’s him.
The best part is that I don’t need to break the “good daughter” act. He’ll know to save me on his own.
“Ready?” Lilith says to Eric.
“At your command,” he answers in that robotic speech pattern everyone under glamour exhibits.
Oh no. Is this why Nero couldn’t reach the guy? Because he fell into Lilith’s clutches?
“Not fair,” I say to Lilith, continuing my act. “When I tried to glamour this guy the other day, he said, ‘Your vampire mind tricks won’t work on me.’”
“A shame,” Lilith says as Eric places a hand on each of our shoulders. “Just goes to show how urgently we need to grow your powers.”
Before I can ask for a clarification, Eric poofs us away.
When we reappear, I recognize the entrance to the JFK gate hub.
The nearest gate is a leap away, but I know Lilith can catch me without breaking a sweat, so I don’t bother with the futile gesture.
“Thank you,” Lilith says to Eric. “Now you will teleport back to your little apartment and forget this ever happened.”
“I will forget,” Eric says, then poofs away.
Except I doubt Nero will let him forget.
They will figure out Eric is missing time—and hopefully why.
Of course, by the time they do, it might be too late for me.
“Through there, dear,” Lilith says, pointing at an unfamiliar gate. “We have a trek ahead of us.”
I walk to the gate and gesture for her to enter first—figuring once she does, I can dive for the nearest gate and hope it doesn’t lead to a nuclear wasteland.
“You first,” Lilith says, crushing my hopes.
“No, after you,” I say, doing my best not to sound pushy.
What I almost said was, “Age before beauty”—but I’m glad I didn’t. I have seen her rip people apart with her bare hands before, and don’t want to be on the receiving end of something like that.
Besides, she doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.
Lilith’s lips tighten anyway. “I insist.”
Crap. Better walk in on my own than get sire-bonded into it.
“Thanks,” I say lightly and leap into the gate.
Lilith stays on my heels, and the world we end up in is a barren wasteland that doesn’t present any opportunity for escape.
In my head, I repeat the color and location of the gate we just entered. When I escape, I’ll need to know the way back.
“Can you tell me where we’re going?” I ask Lilith politely. “As fun as it is to just hang out with you, I was in the middle of something super-important when you showed up.”
She pouts, then heads for a green gate. “What could be more important than spending quality time with your mommy?”
“Saving the world,” I say, mentally updating the route I’m trying to memorize. “Nostradamus told me how to defeat Tartarus, and I was about to train for it with Nero.”
“What a coincidence.” Lilith gestures for me to enter the gate. “Training you and then killing Tartarus is exactly what this little trip is all about—only we’ll do all that without meddlesome Michel cramping our style.”
Oh yeah. She calls Nostradamus “Michel.” Maybe I should also be on a first-name basis with the guy. After all, he’s the source of a lot of my headaches.
The world on the other side of the green gate has a veritable rainbow of colorful moons in the evening sky, and in a far distance, I see some sort of giant creatures walking about. All this, I file away for the return trip.
“So we’re going to your world?” I say with fake excitement. “That’s where Tartarus will attack, according to Nostradamus.”
“Yes and no.” Lilith walks toward a purple gate at our two o’clock. “We’re going to a place Tartarus will attack, but not my world. According to Michel, the attack you speak of is slightly further in the future. Before attacking my world, Tartarus is going to destroy another—one more like Earth. That is where we’re headed.”
“But why?” I ask. “Why don’t you want to follow Nostradamus’s plan to face Tartarus on your home turf?”
“You mean besides the billions of people we’ll save on the world we’re heading to?” She lifts an eyebrow. “They’ll all die if we don’t show up, you know.”
“Right.” I suppress the urge to say that she didn’t strike me as someone who gave two craps about some distant world being sucked dry.
“Besides, if we follow Michel’s stupid plan, all the years of hard work I’ve put into my world will be ruined,” she says, gesturing for me to enter the purple gate. “Worlds with humans but without Cognizant are pretty rare.”
We step out of the gate into a snowy cave and get blasted with a freezing cold.
Lilith points at a yellow gate nearby and continues. “Also, being a goddess comes with certain responsibilities to my worshippers. I doubt Michel mentioned how many of them will survive his plan, but that number is pretty close to zero.”
“He didn’t go into that much detail,” I say, memorizing the next step of our path. “Don’t take it the wrong way, but I didn’t think you cared about your people this much.”
That’s putting it mildly. She’s enslaved them, and has drunk their blood and fed them lies for generations.
She shrugs. “Well, it’s like having a pet—or cattle. I don’t want someone to just come and harm them.”
Can that be true? Does she have something resembling a conscience? If she cares about her people at least a little bit, there may be more to her than just the thirst for power.
Then again, she did just compare them to cattle.
We walk through a red gate onto a watery-looking world with a pink sky, and she adds, “Also, Michel’s original plan would’ve brought Earth’s Cognizant to my world—and even if we’d defeated Tartarus, I might not have been able to get all of them to leave.”
Now the truth comes out.
Her world is an all-you-can-eat blood-and-power buffet that she doesn’t want to share.
I make a mental note of the next gate she walks toward and say, “Are you sure Tartarus can be defeated on this alternate world you’re taking me to? Nostradamus said—”
“That the chances of killing Tartarus are better on my world,” she says. “I couldn’t help but notice how he never said my chance of survival was greater in that circumstance.”
“So you think Nostradamus wants to get rid of you and Tartarus at the same time? Why would he do that? I thought you two were pals.”
We step through another set of gates. “He and I are allies in that he really, really hates the guy who is prophesied to kill me,” she says. “I long suspected Michel would double-cross me in a heartbeat if that meant Tartarus would die—and my intuition recently told me I was on my way to a sacrificial slab.” We walk up to a lavender-colored gate. “No thanks.” She gestures for me to walk in. On the other side, she continues. “As you have no doubt learned by now, you can never trust a seer. Present company included.” She winks at me. “I’ve made use of Michel for as long as I could, but now I have to make my own plans.”
Real lesson: you can trust Lilith even less than a seer.
“Why steal me then?” I ask. “Why not come to the Councils and convince them to help on the world we’re going to?”
“They’d sooner kill me than listen,” she says. “But also, if we do defeat Tartarus and play our cards right afterward, this juicy world full of humans will be ripe for a takeover.”
“As in, you again don’t want to share,” I blurt out, forgetting the good daughter act.
“You got it,” Lilith says after we pass through another hub and enter the next gate. “Something else too: thanks to their level of technology, the world in question provi
des more opportunities for a fast power-up.”
Oh? I resist the temptation to clarify or ask any more questions in general. It’s getting hard to keep the route in my short-term memory as is.
In fact, if we go through a few more gates, I’ll start losing track of our path—if I haven’t done so already.
Maybe I could risk Lilith’s ire by taking out my phone and making notes?
I could palm it and—
“We’re here,” Lilith says as we enter a hub that looks a lot like the one at JFK.
“We are?” I sigh in relief and rerun the route we just took in my mind.
“Yep.” She looks at an old-fashioned wristwatch. “We better hurry. Your big TV appearance is in an hour.”
Chapter Seventeen
“My big what?” I shout, walking fast because she’s herding me like a pig to slaughter.
“Didn’t I mention it? You’re going to be famous on this world.” She grins. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? To be a TV phenomenon?”
“Err,” is all I can say. Taking a breath, I try again. “I wanted to be a famous TV magician. On Earth. And that was before I knew Tartarus was coming to kill everyone.”
“Well, this will be pretty much what you’ve wanted, and this is the best way to get you ready for Tartarus.” Lilith leads us into a corridor. “Now focus on thinking up tricks that will convince people you’re a vampire, a seer, and a probability manipulator.”
“Wait, you knew I was a trickster? Am I the last to know these things?”
“Michel told me,” she says. “He saw a vision of you and dear Chester speaking about it. How is he, by the way? I hear I now have a granddaughter. Foxy, was it?”
“It’s Roxy, and she’s in her teens now,” I snap, then take another breath. “Wait. Don’t change the subject. Why am I going on TV?”
“Remember how you boosted your seer powers? That earthquake prediction?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is the same thing,” she says. “The more humans believe in your powers, the bigger the boost you’ll get.”
My head spins.
In one way, this is a dream come true.
In another, this is my worst nightmare—to have to perform in front of a large audience unprepared.
Maybe I should run?
No. Bad idea. I’ve gone this far without getting sire-bonded, so I might as well keep up the pretense.
If this works and I do become more powerful, it should make it easier for me to escape—and deal with Tartarus as well, on whichever world.
A part of me isn’t even sure Lilith is wrong.
Maybe this world is a better place to fight Tartarus.
Regardless, what I need is to notify Nero and the others of my whereabouts. Lilith didn’t include them in her plans out of greed for the spoils of this world, but I don’t have her ambitions and I think more people mean a better chance at winning.
Except I don’t know how to reach anyone.
If I could go into Headspace, I’d ping Rasputin, or the bannik, or even Nostradamus, but I’m all out of juice.
Or am I?
I check for the umpteenth time and verify that Headspace isn’t reachable.
Maybe Rasputin will see a vision of this? He is on a faster world now, so his powers might’ve recovered.
Then again, as a probability manipulator, Lilith can shield us from seer eyes, and she’s probably doing that.
We get to a door that leads out of the secret hub corridors, then follow a path until we reach the main lobby of the airport.
Except I realize this isn’t an airport.
It’s a giant train station, like New York’s Grand Central Terminal, only a hundred times bigger.
The place is teeming with strangely dressed people with haircuts heavily inspired by the eighties.
To continue the eighties theme, most teens are walking about with gizmos that look eerily like Sony’s Walkman cassette players. In their ears are little orange headphones attached with wires—no Bluetooth in sight.
“Do they have internet on this world?” I ask Lilith in mock horror.
“No,” she replies. “But thanks to that, more people than ever will be tuned in to see you on TV.”
Oh, right. I almost forgot I’m about to perform.
Now that I recall that, monster stage-fright jitters settle in my stomach.
“When is this show?” I ask, dodging a lady with a mullet who’s wearing a jacket with giant shoulder pads.
“In an hour,” Lilith says.
“And how far is the studio?” I ask as we exit onto the street, and I see cars that look like they came out of the 1985 portion of Back to the Future.
“Ten minutes walking distance,” Lilith says and starts jaywalking in the middle of heavy traffic. “We’re in the center of New Langdon.”
Not a single car hits us as we cross, which gives me an idea for how to pull off some of the effects.
“I need a convenience store and a hardware store,” I say, thinking fast. “And your help with the show.”
“Of course,” she says. “Whatever you need.”
We walk to a grocery store on the corner, and I ask the young clerk if they sell lottery tickets.
“We do, miss,” he says with a strange accent that reminds me of a mix between British and Australian. “They will announce the numbers in fifty-five minutes or so.”
I’m not surprised things are falling into place so well. Lilith is helping me already.
“Can you use your powers to choose the winning numbers?” I whisper to her.
“Does a drekavac make you shit in the woods?” Lilith whispers back, then starts to confidently name numbers at the clerk.
“What is it for?” she asks when we exit the store, with me clutching the hopefully winning ticket. “Unless we stop Tartarus, this world won’t last long enough for you to collect the winnings.”
“You’ll see,” I say. “Now we need a hardware store.”
We walk by antiquated stores that include a VHS tape rental place that’s clearly the local version of Blockbuster, then another store that sells music on cassette tapes, and yet another that looks like Radioshack’s evil twin.
The hardware store is normal enough, though, and it doesn’t take me long to locate what I need—the scariest-looking nail gun they sell.
“What’s this for?” Lilith asks, looking over the device while I grab a box of nails. “I know plenty of creative torture methods that don’t require props.”
“I’ll have someone shoot me with this to prove how lucky I am,” I explain as I walk to another shelf and pick up a welder’s mask. “I assume you can use your powers to make sure every nail will miss my body?”
“Of course.” She grins. “You won’t need that mask.”
“The mask is to make that part of the performance more dramatic,” I say. “It will heighten the sense of danger.”
The mask is also there because I don’t trust Lilith not to let a nail hit me in the eye for laughs, but this I keep to myself.
“You have a great instinct for drama,” she says, eyeing the mask approvingly. “I have a feeling you’re going to make me proud today.”
“I hope so. Now, next stop should be an office supply store. I know some mentalism routines that—”
“No time,” Lilith says, looking at her watch. “We’re late as is.”
She proceeds to drag me through this town’s equivalent of Times Square and into a skyscraper with the fanciest lobby I’ve ever seen.
“We’re here for the Pacifica’s Got Talent,” Lilith says to a burly security guard.
“You’re too late,” the guy says. “Contestants were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
Lilith’s eyes turn into mirrors. “You will take us there. Now.”
Glamoured, the guy leads us to the elevator. When we reach the studio floor, Lilith has to repeat the glamour trick a few more times until I’m rushed into makeup.
“Make her
look even paler,” Lilith says, looking me over disapprovingly. “More regal, if possible. More like a vampire should look.”
“She’s already sickly looking,” the makeup lady says with the accent everyone here seems to have. “I think she—”
Lilith uses glamour yet again, and I’m made to look so pale some folks might think I’m wearing a porcelain mask. Afterward, the hair girl does her own thing, ending the treatment by emptying a bottle of hair spray onto my head.
“Let’s go. You’re on soon,” Lilith says, dragging me out of the makeup room.
In front of us stands a line of other contestants: one looks like a singer, one like a juggler, and the last one has creepy clown makeup on.
This is when it hits me again.
I’m not just going on TV.
I’m going to participate in a competition.
If this show’s format is similar to the talent shows on Earth, I have to worry about getting scored by judges on top of being stared at by hundreds of spectators.
I didn’t think my heartbeat could speed up further, but it manages somehow.
“I’m famished,” Lilith says, and before I can make a snide comment, she glamours the clown in front of us and tells him not to scream.
The other contestants are so preoccupied with their own stage fright, they don’t notice when Lilith bends over the clown’s neck and sinks her fangs into it.
They also don’t pay attention as she gulps down copious amounts of the poor guy’s blood.
Her luck at work, maybe?
Done with her grisly task, she detaches the clown’s red sponge of a nose and wipes her mouth with it. “You should feed,” she says to me. “You’ll be stronger if you do.”
“I think I’m okay,” I say.
“Don’t be overconfident,” Lilith says. “Drink him.”
Before she uses the sire bond to insist, I bite into the clown voluntarily. At least this way, I can be sure he’ll be alive after my meal.
A few sips later, I let him go.
“So.” Lilith looks at me with a deadpan expression. “Did that taste funny to you?”
I resist a groan. She no doubt chose the clown just to make that corny joke.