Holy fuck, what is wrong with my brain?
Can’t steal them . . . then they’d know. Just the knowledge, only the knowledge.
Took a picture of the wings while letting out a deep sigh of regret.
“You got to stay, beautiful baby, but maybe one day I’ll make something in your image.”
Spectro-anima like that . . . that’s interesting. Cuz it’s so light anima-wise maybe?
“Hey sweet-cheeks! I found something on the Divines!” Val called as she popped up above me at the second floor balcony.
“Yeah, well . . . I found lots of old, useless stabby objects, so there.”
She was excited. Bouncing on her feet and even clicking her teeth like she does when she’s thinking through an idea. “Was it a competition? Is that why you sabotaged me into library land?”
“No, I sent the best woman for the job,” I told her as I enjoyed the view. Used to her being taller than me, but a whole floor is a bit much.
“Are those wings?”
“Yes, and I can’t steal them. It sucks!”
She nodded towards the stairs. “Move it, sweet-cheeks.”
“You punishing me for saying your ass looks so good in that skirt?”
“No, that’s why I bought it. But if you bring up the parts of me that you like, well, I’ll just bring up my second favorite part of your body as revenge.”
Her energy was infectious . . . what had she found? “Guessing Prince Henry is the first?”
“Nope. Top five . . . maybe,” she gave me a hard time.
My expression was wounded. “Really?”
Her lips twitched. “Not very big and oddly misshapen once I’ve finally compared it to my nine new guys a week, isn’t it?”
“Fine, be that way. I’ll be up in a second, if only to make you stop torturing my manhood,” I complained. “Oh, and just so you know: your vagina is crooked.”
Val didn’t miss a beat. “I know. I had a couple weeks where I did some same-sex experimentation. It was quite educational.”
Damn . . . call her Boomworm and now she’s dropping bombs all over me.
[CLICK]
I figured she might have found a book or something.
She found a whole shelf.
“Fucking overachiever,” I told her.
She grinned like someone just earned a gold star. “It’s not ordered or labeled, but I think I’ll need a second pair of hands and it didn’t look like you were too busy drooling over that girdle.”
“That girdle seduces men with menti-anima and then guarantees the woman gets pregnant with hydro-anima; trust me when I say that wasn’t drool, just a look of mind-shattering fear.”
“I suppose we never did talk about kids when we were together,” Val teased me as she picked out a book from the shelf. It wasn’t just books. Scrolls in containers, parchments covered with plastic sheets, even little boxes with opened letters.
“Rate we were going, we weren’t hitting the kid talk for another decade or two.”
Val turned a few pages. “Do we care about vampire anatomy or did you figure out enough about it when you slept with Anne?”
I gave her a look.
She smiled mischievously. “You’re the one who asked me to tag along.”
Trying to ignore her, I picked up a box of letters and shuffled through them. “Don’t suppose you read French?”
“Learned a number of foreign phrases while recruiting, but no,” Val whispered, finger flipping page by page. “There’s a bit here about how vampires find anima distasteful, and a second on cannibalism. They did a study that found the more cannibalistic vampires started to develop a resistance to anima and savored mancer blood as much as mundane blood . . . disgusting.”
“Speaking of Annie B . . .”
“Oh . . . eww.”
“Always seemed to like mancers, Weres, and her own kind more than was normal for the others,” I said, putting down my box of letters and picking out a book at random.
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Once,” I hedged. “Was a very bad idea.”
“No girdle needed that night, I take it?”
“I already told you that I’ve been like a monk—” I started before I saw the twinkle in her eyes. I sighed the sigh of a suffering male. “You gotta stop riling me up or someone will hear me yelling through the Vault door.”
“If I wanted them to hear something through the Vault door it wouldn’t be you yelling,” she whispered.
“Val!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop teasing you.” She slapped me on the shoulder with the anatomy book before putting it back on the shelf and choosing another. “A Study of the Vampiric Migration from Constantinople to Paris and its Effect on Renaissance Europe, now this might be interesting.”
“Sounds dull as shit.”
“I’m sure yours is filled to the brim with dirty pictures.”
“No . . . not quite. Really happy Smith made us read Chaucer that one time though, cuz now I can understand this Old English shit. Sort of . . .”
“What is it?”
“A collection of nursery rhymes and stories they told mancer children to make them fear vampires.”
“Stories for children . . .”
“Mythology is always the place you find real truth with this stuff. But you keep up with your scientific essays and we’ll see who figures more out about the Divines in the next hour.”
“Oh, so it finally is a bet, is it?”
“What else would I be after?”
“The way you keep bringing up children, I thought you might want me to go grab that girdle.”
King Henry Price very much glared at his Boomworm for once.
“I know, I know, it’s not fair of me to say we have to stay broken up while teasing you about having sex, but . . . our relationship has never been fair, has it?”
“Can we agree that us having children would be an awful idea?”
“Yes, we can. As you said, if we’re actually in the same city a decade from now we can bring it back up for discussion.”
“Also, I don’t need that girdle mind-fucking me to tell me I desire you. Not tonight, not a decade from now, not a century from now,” I told her seriously.
“A century from now?”
“Never know. We could end up like the Lady and Samson.”
“Which of us would be the Dean of the Asylum in this future?”
“You.”
“Never.”
That surprised me. “ . . . really?”
“I can barely stand the administrative red tape I deal with doing this job. I’d Fireball of Doom half the Learning Council if I had to put up with them every day.”
Silence as we read a few pages.
“You think anyone has ever had sex in here?” I couldn’t help myself.
Now it was Boomworm giving me the look.
“What?”
“Not happening despite all the unfair flirting and teasing.”
“I would never try . . . just asking.”
“Good. And no, I don’t. Mostly since there has never been a female Counselor or Guild Master.”
“I don’t know . . . I could see Massey bringing a chick in here just so he could spank her on the ass with Excalibur.”
She smiled but still told me, “Stop it.”
“Not to mention the freaky shit he gets up to with them Icarus wings right on the ceiling.”
“We only have a couple hours more,” she tried to remind me.
“The phrase of the vanquished,” it was my turn to tease her.
She smacked my shoulder with her book again as she changed it up for another one. It was thin and red, with gold lettering. Didn’t look too old, but pre-Asylum for sure. “The Epic Poem of Acharon, Guardian of the Atlas Ruins.”
“Give!”
She swatted my hand away. “Is Acharon a Divine?”
“Never heard of him, but I’ve heard of Atlas before. Was some big city that fell apart or someth
ing.”
“As in . . . Atlantis?”
“Oh . . . well, ya know, I never really put that one together, but now that you mention it . . .”
“Mr. Mythology Is the Way sucks at knowing his mythology, doesn’t he?”
“Who knew all those fantasy novels you read would be useful, right?”
“Don’t mock the fantasy.”
“Not that they’ll be accurate, since dwarves are six feet tall, black skinned, and have a thing for banging priestesses, but I’m sure it wasn’t all an escapist waste of time.”
“Says the man who owns a comic shop.”
“I knew it!” I dramatically proclaimed. “That’s the real reason you dumped me, ain’t it? Can’t live with the indignity of dating a guy running a comic shop. Everything else was an elaborate ruse!”
“Acharon,” she repeated slowly, “should write it down.”
Two hours of searching and it wasn’t just Acharon I had names for. Names, plural, for each one. The Divines are old. Have effected a lot of different areas and civilizations on the globe too. Mythology and science both working together, just like me with my camera and my Lenses. Two hours, but we could’ve spent two weeks cross checking it all. Two hours and I knew more than almost two years of wandering and wondering.
Had a list of the Divines. Had another list of Dukes and Duchesses. Val got a kick when we found a small ballad about Annie B and Joannie D being enemies written in French. There were other books valuable enough that I thought about stealing the whole thing over just taking photos of their pages. My nursery rhymes were packed with info that might be useful. A translation of “The Secret History of Augustus Caesar” was filled page by page with mancer history during one of the few times mancers and the Divines truly warred against each other. An essay written by Guild Auxiliary Historian Ryan Vlett used letters to chronicle a group of French vampires treating with mancer London in 1811 on orders from Napoleon.
“Do we have to leave?” Val asked when our time was up.
“We have tomorrow night . . . and maybe a few more after. A week if I can push it and some annoying ex-girlfriend of mine stops trying to get me out of jail.”
“Fine, fine . . . I’ll stop being so forceful with the Guild Master. Tonight’s convinced me that your plan is as brilliant as it is idiotic. You’ll still be on trial soon though,” she reminded me as she slid the last book back into the vampire shelf.
“That’s okay. I don’t plan on playing fair.”
“Ceinwyn however . . .”
“We’ll deal with her when she gets here.”
“And you’ll tell her about Obadiah Paine.”
“I will,” I agreed. “Maybe wait until after we’re done looking things up though . . . since I’ll need use of my legs to get here.”
Val smiled, but said nothing.
“You’re tired.”
“I didn’t get to nap all day.”
“Make sure you get one tomorrow.”
Her smile twitched. “Fine.”
“And if you want I can carry you home instead of us doing some more geo-surfing.”
Her smile disappeared. “If you think I’m giving up more of the most fun I’ve had in months, you’re Anima Mad.”
I reached out and grabbed her waist with one hand, pulling out the World-Breaker with the other. “If you insist, Miss Ward.”
“I do, Mister Price, and try to go faster this time.”
“No kiss for luck?”
“Maybe one at my apartment door for a good night. We’ll have to see if you behave . . .”
[CLICK]
I could tell you so much more about the Divines than he could.
So many of my nightmares stem from them. Those great beasts of blood and need and consumption; who never stop growing, never stop finding a way to expand and conquer and invade their little tendrils ever more into our lives. If only it stopped at our bodies, but it’s more than that. It’s our minds, our history, our societies, our future . . .
Tendrils everywhere.
No place for a man to think freely, surrounded by history and the mistakes of prior generations.
Not fair of me to even butt in like this, I’ve tried so hard to stay out of it, to just remove myself from the equation and be that twenty-four-year-old man, in love, in power, with such a bright future ahead of him. I have moments like that now . . . surely not hours of it like he did in that vault with his Valentine.
The kids, that’s something he doesn’t have. All that talk about not wanting them and now family is what keeps me fighting more than anything else. How foreign that thought is to me. But how free, how . . . blissful in his ignorance as he would say.
No fairness to storytelling to be this blunt, as unfair as Val was with her teasing. What could he tell you of the Divines? What did he learn of them that day?
Only the barest sliver of it.
Only the first tendril driving him towards certain doom.
Not enough, never enough.
He learned of Acharon, Watcher of the Graveyard.
Acharon, bound to an island nation, king and god.
Acharon wasn’t the only name, wasn’t even close to being the most impressive of the Divines, in fact. Was maybe even the lesser of them, the least among blood gods. Acharon’s poem spoke of a war before time, but only with vagueness. That didn’t help at all. It mentioned a city by the circle sea, putting Atlas’ ruins somewhere in the Mediterranean. If you trust poetic license.
He learned of Limkar, the Competitor and Champion. He found mentions of Limkar that collided a bit too close with the tasks of Hercules for comfort and Limkar didn’t stop there. He even found a whole book on Limkar sightings, a number of them at the Olympics, both ancient and modern. He thought, I might have seen the fucker at the Ouroboros and not even been aware of it. Hey, what was the name of that ‘baron’ who won the sprints against the corpusmancers?
He learned of Rennya and Cherya, the Twins. Neither are mentioned much for themselves, only referenced as guardians and protectors of crossroads and bridges. What he saw were a lot of warnings about how to avoid them, how he should keep on the path and not wander where he didn’t belong. Not heeding this warning was about to cause him some trouble very soon. More interesting to him was the legend of their mother, a Divine herself named Reyencha, who was so brokenhearted during some ‘time of the gods’ that she didn’t carry out the standard vampire spawning, but found a pair of twins and split both parts of her body into two new shells, killing herself and creating two vampires. His thoughts on this were, so Vamps can be brokenhearted . . . suppose it’s nice to know Annie B ain’t the only one with feelings.
He learned of Pwent, the City of Gold. There’s a familiar name. Pwent, he had a dark-skinned face bathed in golden eyelashes and golden lips to call on when remembering her. A study of heat’s effects on vampires mentioned Pwent ruling an ancient city in Africa, famous for its gold and diamond mines, for the slaves that worked them and guarded them. A carving was recreated in the pages and translated, lauding her for ‘civilizing’ mankind in the region and for the series of pipes that pumped water to cool her palaces. Yes, plural, Pwent never does anything small, even he knew that by now. What he didn’t know was how much she could accomplish with nothing more than a small pile of gold and a few false promises.
He learned of Jinn, Enemy of the Elemental. Dead. Augustus killed Jinn over two-thousand years ago when mancers and vampires were at the heart of the Roman civil wars. Score one for the not-so-bad-as-the-bad-guys, he thought. The most interesting fact about Jinn was that he was the father of a number of vampires who went on to be great magicians and assassins. He thought that sounded a whole lot like his Curator-hunting-buddy Falschein and in this he was correct.
He learned of Moshi, Crafter of Man. Moshi was a Divine and scientist-warrior long before he started up his stables to breed humans. He found mentions of Moshi stealing mancer babes to experiment on them, or raising them long enough to warp their minds and s
et them on a community. Paine makes Boris Hunting seem like an ethical scientist, reading about Moshi does the same for Paine. Worst my main man Boris ever did was genetically engineer his daughter, hard to compare that to breeding humans or keeping mancers locked up in a real asylum.
He learned anew of Eresha and Inanina, the Sisters of Love and War. Many mentions of these two. He realized that even with the Divines it seemed like there were tiers and levels denoted by age and strength. Acharon, Limkar, Rennya, Cherya, Jinn, Pwent, and Moshi were the bottom tier. The youngest, granted with ages that were still counted by millennia, not even centuries. Eresha and Inanina on the other hand, were spoken of as vampire royalty, born of a father named Kien. They weren’t so much soldiers as champions and spent their whole lives playing with the mundanes. Fifty thousand years or more to use us as toys in their games, dragging whole nations and tribes to fight each other and destroy, all so they could have the high ground in their eternal feud. Annie B getting glassed for it or not, every day of my life I’m glad I didn’t have enough in me to save Eresha, just enough to make sure she died with what killed her.
He learned of Nii-Vah and Paa-Hsi, Halves of the Whole. Sometimes they were mentioned as lovers, sometimes they were bitter enemies. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle. There argument isn’t about which is the stronger of the two, but in how vampires should treat with mankind. Nii-Vah believes we should be nurtured and civilized in a process of continual growth. Paa-Hsi believes we should be dominated and smacked down to our knees at every opportunity. Not sure which has the right of it . . . probably somewhere in the middle on that one too.
Even with that upper level of Eresha, Inanina, Nii-Vah, and Paa-Hsi, mentions of them still felt like they were tangible parts of history, living beings no matter how old and powerful. That can’t be said of the last three Divines he found information on.
Kien.
Amarusa.
Balhad.
He found wild tales about building pyramids, of blotting out the sky, of plagues, of invincible armies, of time before there was time . . . nothing to understand them. Even today I don’t know if I can say I understand them. But I’ve stood in the Puppet Village, I’ve watched cathedrals of blood and steel rise into the sky, and I’ve seen the Army of One battle an Army of Light.
The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6) Page 25