by Dima Zales
In the distance, Kit scrambles to her feet.
Tartarus stops draining me and focuses on Kit instead.
Kit turns into a white dove and rushes my way.
One of Tartarus’s spawn—the one who looks like Lance Burton—stops advancing on Lilith and snatches Kit from the air.
Once she’s in his grasp, he tries to snap her neck.
The real Lance Burton is famous for his dove act and would never treat a bird that way.
At least, I hope.
Before Lance can succeed, Kit turns into an angry rhino.
Tartarus leaps toward them.
The rhino-Kit rams her horn into Lance’s stomach, killing him instantly.
But she misses when Tartarus catches up with her and lands a devastating blow to the side of the rhino’s head.
The beast turns back into Kit’s human form, and she slumps to the floor, clearly dead.
A few minutes later, a fully drained Nero joins her.
I strain and bring up the probability strands, then chose one I can wield.
Below me, Nero comes to and tries to pull away.
To my horror, I latch on to him, like some stubborn leech.
I wish I didn’t force this outcome. Killing Nero as he tries to free himself is worse than when he was just letting me take his blood.
Come on, Nero. At least grab that gate sword.
He doesn’t. Instead, he passes out again, already too drained by both me and Tartarus.
He doesn’t move again as I suck out his life.
A probability strand makes the Lance Burton lookalike change his goals. At least I assume so, as he stops fighting Lilith and turns my way.
He doesn’t get as far as a step, though.
Lilith uses his distraction for a savage attack, and he ends up in a pool of his own blood.
And Nero still dies.
In the next vision, another magician/spawn tries to do the same, and Lilith kills him just as viciously. Same for another. Then another.
In another string of visions, one of the still-surviving vampires stops attacking Tartarus and tries to come to my aid—but that gives Tartarus the opening he needs, and he breaks the vampire’s neck.
The same thing happens to another vampire. And another.
I give up on people and use a probability strand to control the environment around me.
A chunk of the ceiling above me breaks, and the debris smacks me on the head.
It’s pointless.
I instantly heal—and resume drinking from Nero until the bitter end.
I strain to find a strand that would make it so I don’t kill Nero.
Wishing with all my being, I grab one that’s slightly thicker than what I think I can handle—and it works.
Except the probability manipulation makes my wish come true in a roundabout way.
Tartarus stops draining energy from me, and channels his attention on Nero instead.
A couple of minutes later, Nero’s blood flow stops, and he looks like a shriveled raisin.
I guess in the strictest sense of the word, I wasn’t the one who killed him—Tartarus did.
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that Nero’s dead.
A series of visions follow. In one, I use luck to make myself choke on the blood, but then I recover and resume drinking. In another, an arcade game short-circuits and hits me with a spark of electricity—not really doing much more than tickling my skin.
All the visions end in the same way.
Nero dies.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The visions end, and I’m back in the real world.
Instead of futilely using probability manipulation as I did countless times, I jump into Headspace again.
Floating there, I struggle to understand what just happened.
I was able to use probability manipulation, but it didn’t help—not when I used the people around me, nor the environment itself.
Though truth be told, I didn’t try to use everyone.
There was no vision where Chester got up to help, or one where Lilith decided to simply relent.
Is it because they’re also probability manipulators?
That’s likely true in the case of Lilith, but when it comes to Chester, there’s another, darker possibility. Maybe he’s not just unconscious, but dead?
I sure hope not.
Having just learned about our blood ties, I’d love to get to know him better—despite what he did to me in the past.
So, what do I do now?
I can’t just let myself kill Nero.
If I have to, I’ll locate the outcome where my own vampiric heart stops—though I imagine the probability of that happening is low, especially given all the power I’m getting from dragon blood.
Still, there has to be a way.
I just have to think outside the box, as the saying goes.
Wait.
That’s exactly it.
Everything I attempted was constrained to objects and people in this one arcade room. But what if there’s a way to draw a new variable into this equation?
Someone or something from outside the building?
Like, say, what if there’s a drone flying over us at this very moment? Could I cause it to malfunction and smack me in the head?
Wait, no. There are no drones in this world—all the tech here is decades behind. I guess there’s a more horrific version of this idea. If I were willing to kill the innocent, I could make a plane crash into me—assuming one were flying above us, that is.
But no.
Given Nero’s weakened state, that could kill him as well.
The best thing would be if a person came to save the day.
But who? And how?
I guess I can start by checking on everyone I know to see what they’re up to. Maybe one of my friends is just outside this arcade and can be probability-manipulated to come rip me away from Nero?
To that end, I attempt to bring to mind the essence of “everyone I know.” I do so by focusing on the sense of familiarity.
Nothing happens. Even with TV-boosted seer powers, “everyone” might be too vague of a target.
An idea occurs to me, and I perform the mental gymnastics necessary for probability manipulation.
To my shock, it works.
Besides the usual shapes, I also “see” strands, right here in Headspace.
Wow.
Can I use trickster powers to assist me as a seer?
Quickly locating a strand thin enough for me to handle, I snap it and wait for an outcome.
A moment later, a huge cloud of shapes appears in front of me.
Of course.
What else did I expect? When in Headspace, all I deal with are the shapes.
Oh, well. Hoping I get lucky when it comes to one of them, I examine the cloud carefully.
Where usually clouds of visions consist of identical-looking shapes, each one in this cloud is unique.
Is the one I need among them? Using my improved understanding of Headspace mechanics, I examine the cloud.
Very interesting. Each of these various visions will be of a different person and place, and some will even be set on different worlds.
All right.
Do I just view them all?
Usually, I wouldn’t. With so many, I’ll be lost in visions for a while. More importantly, these visions will eat most, if not all, of my remaining seer juice—or at least that’s what my improved understanding of Headspace makes me think.
Then again, what’s the alternative?
I can’t do these one by one. After each one, I’ll return to the reality of drinking Nero’s blood. Even if I can focus in a moment and get back, a moment will be gone. If I go back and forth enough times, Nero will soon run out of moments.
All of them it is then, but can I even sprout this many ethereal wisps?
There’s only one way to tell.
I strain for each shape—and begin to reach them, over and over.
&
nbsp; If it were possible to faint from exhaustion without a body, I’d be on the verge of that now.
As is, I finally touch my last shape, and the visions begin.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I’m bodiless in the kitchen of our apartment.
Fluffster jumps onto the table and leans the bag of Meow Mix into a bowl on the floor.
When the bowl fills up with enough food, Fluffster pushes the bag back into an upright position and looks down, curiosity in his eyes.
The cat stares back at him a look that seems to say, “Our Majesty will spare you again, fancy rodent. Our mercy knows no bounds. Now we shall feast, and you’ll be quiet… or else.”
Lucifur then walks over to the bowl and starts eating.
As I watch this, I realize I might not have been specific enough when I decided to see a vision about “everyone I know.”
On the bright side, if I perish after Nero is drained—which is likely—at least I got to see my pets one last time.
Eventually, the cat-feeding vision stops, but the next one is just as useless. I see Maya shopping for a present for Felix in a videogame store on Earth.
And the useless visions are just getting started.
In the next one, I see my dad having lunch with wife 2.0. It’s nice to know they get along so well, and that she loves avocado rolls, but I don’t see how that could in any way help break the sire bond.
In another vision, I witness my mom having a video chat with her friend Zamantha, the one she visited in Paris. Mom is explaining to her that she left Paris so suddenly because she’s met a man.
Oh yeah. She’d told me the same thing.
Before I can learn any disturbing details about Mom’s love life, the vision cuts out again. My luck powers at work, maybe?
The next vision starts out seemingly more promising than the others. It’s of my niece, Roxy, walking down the street with her friends/pack/b-hive, Maddie and Ashley.
The street around them is rundown, and there are no cars in sight. It could be the one on the world I’m currently at.
Super unlikely, but it could.
How awesome would it be if they just happened to be outside this arcade? Though only teens, these three girls are werewolves and could probably overpower me if they really tried.
Of course, I would win the worst aunt in the world award if I brought Roxy into this mess.
It all turns out to be moot when I see the building they walk up to. It’s definitely not on this world, as they’re going to Orientation. This street in Queens is just in desperate need of modernization.
An elevator ride later, they walk into class, and I glimpse some of the other kids. Then a person I’ve never seen walks in and says he will be substituting for Dr. Hekima.
The next few visions turn out to be the most useless of them all. I see my old pediatrician working on some paperwork. Then I watch every dentist I’ve ever been to fixing teeth. Then I learn what every trader and analyst in Nero’s fund is doing. Those exciting scenes are followed by those of my college professors grading papers, and countless more that feature every friend and acquaintance from my past doing the most mundane things.
Jeez.
What’s next? A vision of my Facebook feed?
But no.
The next vision is more interesting—in a disturbing way. The bannik is pleasuring himself with a picture of Lucretia in his hand. Things get steamy—literally so—because he’s going at it in the steam room of the banya.
The next vision is not happening on Earth, but it’s also not on the world I need.
It’s Gomorrah, or at least I strongly assume so. In this vision, Bailey, the dream walker, is talking to a hologram of Itzel, the gnome who helped me rescue Rasputin.
“The nightmares are still bad,” Itzel says. “I was hoping—”
The vision cuts off, and I feel a pang of guilt. Itzel’s nightmares are no doubt the result of when she helped me.
The next vision is at least set on the correct world.
I see Pada—the guy who usually cleans up horrific murder scenes for the Cognizant in New York. He’s standing in the meadow on the Pac-Man island among the local Cognizant with his clean-up helpers, Jik and Wen, at his side.
“I know that eating the living is gross,” Pada tells them solemnly. “But when all the world Councils ask for a favor, we do it. Besides, the New York people said they’ll work with us exclusively as a reward—so there’s that. We’ll be eating like kings and rolling in dough in no time.”
Well, that’s disturbing in a different way. I know I drink blood now, but still. Doing my best not to gag at the mental images, I focus in on the interesting part: it’s not just the Councils that will help in the fight against Tartarus’s spawn. It’s anyone the Councils could bribe and convince.
That’s good.
That means a lot more help.
The Pada vision cuts out, and in the next one, I’m back to the TV studio where we performed the superpower demonstrations.
Vlad, Eric, and Rasputin are standing next to a clock, according to which this is actually happening mere minutes after Eric took us to the cursed arcade room.
In other words, pretty much now.
“No, I’m going with you,” Vlad tells Eric. “Kit took my place.”
“Oh?” Eric says. “How come?”
“I didn’t ask,” Vlad says. “Maybe Nostradamus tweaked his vision at the last minute, or maybe it was Sasha’s or Nero’s call.”
“Yeah,” Rasputin says. “It’s possible Nero is trying that trick again—like the one he pulled during his war campaign on his home world. He had Kit pretend to be him for a while, and now she’s pretending to be you.”
“She’s a more versatile ally,” Eric says. “It makes sense.”
“Well, I don’t care where I fight. And I actually prefer this”— Vlad shows them a katana that was supposed to be Kit’s weapon—“to that lance.”
So Kit found him and even changed weapons with him before she decided to lie her way into the Tartarus fight.
Thinking about Kit’s switcheroo makes me wonder if everything has gone so wrong because of her.
Maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation if Vlad was in this fight, as Nostradamus wanted.
“Ready?” Eric asks, reaching for their shoulders.
They nod, and he poofs them out of existence. They then reappear in a giant parking lot. Hiding behind the cars there is an army of superheros, all in costumes—and Eric, Vlad, and Rasputin join them.
“Any minute now,” Rasputin says tensely from his hiding place. “A gate will open right there.” He points at the spot everyone else is also staring at—the one someone helpfully outlined with chalk.
The vision ends before the gate can actually show up, and in the next moment, I see Pozoj, the dragon Claudia likes to flirt with.
He’s hiding on a roof with a group of Cognizant without outfits, and they’re also all staring at a chalk outline—presumably where another gate will open any second now.
Does this mean some of the dragons from Nero’s world are here, helping? If so, that should improve the chances of the defense greatly—though not help with my situation.
Or could it?
I guess if a dragon was flying above the arcade at just the right moment, I could get “lucky” and have said dragon fall on my head.
The next vision starts.
Felix has his suit on and is hiding behind a corner of what looks eerily like the Kremlin. The rest of the surroundings support this. They remind me of Red Square in Moscow, just bigger and with more purple and less gold.
Next to Felix is the stocky woman who wore a crimson robe at the Earth Council of Councils meeting—the representative from St. Petersburg. The one who might’ve been Baba Yaga’s old Mentor—or her BFF.
“It’s starting,” Felix says to the woman in Russian.
He’s right.
A gate opens up, and Tartarus’s spawn scatter out of it like rabid quail.
“Defenders’ League, assemble!” Felix rumbles through the speaker in his suit.
The stocky lady rolls her eyes. “How long have you been waiting to say that? I bet the whole superhero crap was your idea.”
My friend ignores her as he makes his robot suit leap forward—and Felix isn’t alone.
A whole menagerie of Cognizant jumps out of their hiding spots all around the pseudo Red Square.
The St. Petersburg Councilor lady points her hand at the first person who came out of the gate—no doubt the teleporter of the bunch. Black, greasy energy hits her target—and he just rots. Literally rots, maggots and all—except instead of the process taking weeks or months, the degradation happens as if it were taped and replayed at high speed.
Gross. This lady goes on my list of people never to piss off. No wonder Nostradamus said Baba Yaga was the nice one on that Council.
That’s the unholiest power I’ve ever seen.
Tartarus’s people must agree with my assessment. They shout something to each other and then jointly point their hands at the lady.
Felix tries to push her out of the way, but he’s too late.
In an eyeblink, she turns into a raisin.
Focusing on only one person, no matter how gross her power, was a strategic mistake for Tartarus’s peeps, as it gives the other Cognizant time to attack unimpeded.
A tall, vampire-looking dude slashes two of the spawn with his sword.
Another, bulkier vampire kills five the same way.
Felix grabs another spawn with the glove of his suit, then tosses him at his brothers or cousins.
“Yeah!” he shouts when the move knocks them over like bowling pins. “You don’t mess with Neo Golem.”
To Felix’s right, one of the invaders starts to suck his energy—but that doesn’t last long. Some round-faced guy I don’t know reaches into the spawn’s chest with an arm that phases like that of a chort.