by Laura Legend
“Riiight,” Zach said, recognizing the problem. “Everyone does include Kumiko.”
“Oh,” Cass responded, excited, “I’ve got an idea. We’ll head back to the monastery, catch her first thing in the morning, and then you can tell her.”
“Hold on, now—” Zach started, but Cass had already rolled to her feet and was running back in the direction of the compound.
Zach struggled to his feet and gave chase. Cass made sure he didn’t fall too far behind. By the time they entered the courtyard, the sun was up and their cheeks were flushed. They tossed their coats in Cass’s room, tried to clean up a little, and then headed to Kumiko’s rooms.
Kumiko was already about her day, having morning tea with Dogen and Grey.
Lurking outside the door, looking for a good moment to interrupt, Cass overheard their discussion. They were talking about the Lost.
Grey was speaking, his gravelly voice easily recognizable. “The Lost have taken the bait. They seem even more desperate than expected and have bitten hard on the false news that the Holy Coat is already here at the monastery and in our possession.”
“Good,” Kumiko said, “well done. This will certainly delay their finding the real thing. And we have prepared, have we not, for their arrival?”
“Yes,” came Dogen’s quick reply. “The scout report this morning indicates they have sent an exploratory team to assess a potential recovery of the relic. Then they will begin to gather in force within a week, but given our past experience with their offensive strategies, I am confident they cannot muster the numbers for a true attack for at least ten days.”
“And this exploratory team. Have you prepared a welcome for them?” enquired Kumiko.
“Yes—I have laid the plans to lead them to expect the Holy Coat in the assembly hall. They will take the bait. Grey will be able to continue to direct the mission from here with their attention divided.”
“Thank you, Dogen,” Kumiko said. “Are we any closer to an actual location Grey?”
Grey cleared his throat. “The research has been promising, but at this point . . . there are still a few details in need of . . . clarification.” Grey paused uncomfortably.
“Ah. Yes. I see,” replied Kumiko, clearly disappointed.
The conversation fell into a lull for a moment. Cass could hear Dogen trying—and failing—not to slurp his tea. The man’s hands weren’t sized for tiny Japanese tea cups.
“Also,” Kumiko added when Dogen had gone quiet, “we will need to speak with Cass and Zach today.”
Cass and Zach froze and, ridiculously, flattened themselves against the wall outside the door.
“Why don’t we do that now?” she continued. “Cass? Zach? Would you like to join us?”
Cass poked her head around the door jamb and waved shyly at Dogen and Grey.
“And Zach?” Kumiko added.
Zach poked his head around the corner and mimicked Cass’s wave.
Dogen waved back. Grey adjusted his pink eyepatch.
“Come in, come in,” Kumiko called, “let’s have a look at you.”
Hand in hand, Cass and Zach entered the room and stood, blushing, for inspection. They were— obviously, embarrassingly—in love. Kumiko’s eyes immediately flashed to the rings on their fingers and, in response, she pursed her lips sternly. Dogen watched Kumiko’s eyes and, in response to her pursed lips, raised a disappointed eyebrow. Clearly, he wanted Kumiko to be favorably disposed, at least in the abstract, to the idea of love. Everyone was well aware—Kumiko included—of the torch her carried for her.
“Care to explain yourselves?” Kumiko asked.
Cass and Zach both started speaking at the same time. Then they both stopped.
“Anyone?” Kumiko asked again. “Zach?”
“Well,” Zach began, “when a man and a women love each other very much—”
Cass rolled her eyes and jumped in.
“We’re getting married!” she blurted out, holding up her hand and showing the ring.
Now Kumiko laughed and clapped her hands. She jumped up from her seat and, without even straightening her kimono, she hugged them both. Then, before either Cass or Zach knew what was happening, she pulled their heads down close to hers and whispered a blessing in some elemental language, lost to time. The blessing was short but, in reaction to it, Cass felt time slow to crawl. She felt the whole world wind down to the pure presence of that moment, and she felt, in its raw simplicity, what it meant to not be alone.
Then time snapped back into its normal rhythm and Kumiko was crying and Zach was crying and Cass was laughing. Dogen breathed an audible sigh of relief at the fact that Kumiko’s stern face had been a façade. Grey congratulated them and wished them many, many children. Both Cass and Zach blushed deep red in response. In the past six hours, neither of them had gotten so far as to consider what it would mean to have a family.
Kumiko dismissed Dogen and Gray, but kept Cass and Zach back for a moment. She went to her room, looking for something. Considering how spartan her belongings were, she returned almost immediately.
“I have a gift for you,” she said, dangling a rusty skeleton key. “This key opens the door to a small cabin high in the mountains above the monastery.”
Zach held out his hand to accept it. Kumiko smiled and handed the key to Cass instead.
“Go and find the cabin,” Kumiko said with a twinkle in her eye. “Go and find each other. And don’t come back until you do.”
“But what about the Lost? We know they’re on their way—” Cass began.
“A seer must see herself—all parts of herself—clearly. Surely your training has taught you this by now. We will find you when we need you. Do not worry, Cassandra Jones. Not yet.”
Cass hesitated half a heartbeat more, then turned towards Zach.
He was already halfway out the door.
12
KUMIKO POINTED THEM in the right direction, but she didn’t tell them exactly where the cabin was. Within the hour, Zach and Cass had both filled a backpack and, hand in hand, started up the mountain in search of it. They followed a trail familiar to Cass, but when a smaller path forked off the main trail about a third of the way up, they took it instead. The path was rocky and narrow and winding. The day was cool, but not cold. The trees bent gently in the wind. Occasionally, a flurry of snowflakes would fall from high in the gray clouds and stick to Cass’s long black eyelashes.
They hiked for several hours, their path forking twice more as they climbed higher, before coming to the fold in the mountain’s face. They expected to find the cabin tucked away from weather and wind. But when they didn’t immediately spot it, they stopped for lunch.
Zach dropped his backpack in a small clearing and Cass dropped hers. He looked up through the trees into the sky. Fat flakes of snow were starting to fall more heavily now. This would, doubtless, be the last clean snowfall of the year in these mountains.
“You hungry?” Zach asked.
“Yes,” Cass said, kicking her pack aside and pressing Zach against a tree. “Starving.”
Zach kissed the snow from her eyelashes. Cass murmured into his ear and unzipped his jacket. Zach pulled her tight against him, the tree bark digging into his back. The clearing turned white with snow. Cass pulled off her own jacket, then Zach’s.
They were cold, but didn’t care. The snow melted when it touched them. Their fingers interlaced and Cass could feel the cool metal of her grandfather’s ring on Zach’s hand. She ran her hands up his ribs and pulled his shirt off over his head. Zach shivered in the cold air, but his skin was burning hot. He slipped his hands under Cass’s shirt, trailed his fingers up her spine from the small of her back, and unhooked the eyes of her bra. Cass shivered, but not from the cold. They flipped positions; now Cass’s back was against the tree. She bit Zach’s bottom lip and unbuckled his belt. Zach’s hands distracted her for a moment but when she opened her eyes again, she spotted the cabin over his shoulder, just a hundred feet away.
&
nbsp; “There!” she said.
Zach was intensely preoccupied.
“The cabin!” she clarified.
Cass fished in her pocket for the skeleton key, found it, and then, for good measure, checked Zach’s pockets, just in case he had it.
They ran for the cabin through thick flurries, leaving their jackets and gear. The door to the cabin was already unlocked—that’s not what the key was for. The key was for locking the door behind them.
They tumbled through the door, arms reaching and hearts pounding, the spare but orderly space of the cabin scarcely registering.
This, Cass thought. This moment of time, this now, this is what I want. She was momentarily surprised by the strength of her emotions and the surety of her conviction—and then she was grateful for their confirmation. She had made the right decision.
Zach caught her chin and deftly tilted her head up toward his. “I love you, Cassandra Jones,” he breathed as his lips caught against the exposed hollow of her throat, applying pressure.
A shivering moan was all Cass could muster in reply.
Zach increased the pressure, sliding down slowly along her neck and chest as he maneuvered them across the room and toward a small futon piled high with worn blankets and faded quilts. Cass closed her eyes, feeling the utter rightness of this moment.
The insistent pressure from Zach’s lips distracted Cass, pulling her out of her head and back into her body. She laughed, pressing against him just for the pleasure found in feeling his closeness. She caught a glimpse of the snow, falling faster now, through the room’s tiny window just before Zach pulled a large orange quilt out and over their heads, covering them in a dim, warm light.
***
The snow kept falling all afternoon and into the night. Eventually, Cass and Zach also needed a fire to keep warm. Wood was stacked just outside the door. Cass laughed when Zach almost scorched his arms lighting an excessively large fire; Zach stopped her laughter with a hungry kiss that quickly generated a passionate heat of its own.
The days passed in a hazy, dream-like glow, somewhere in between desire and satisfaction. While Cass was no stranger to sex, she was amazed to discover a new dimension in the spider-silk strength of the delicate, fine-wrought intimacy she and Zach spooled about themselves. When she remembered to, Cass went outside and collected their gear. Late that afternoon they warmed some cans of soup over the fire, grinning at each other through bouts of inexplicable laughter. Cass had never felt her own awareness of her emotions with such precision—even the simplest gesture or whispered comment left her dizzy with joy.
On the morning of the third day, they got around to finally pulling some clean clothes out of their bags and put them on. A couple of inches of snow had accumulated. The whole world was white. Cass found a battered copy of Plato’s Symposium in a desk drawer and read it out loud to Zach. Just sitting on the edge of the old wooden bed caused its frame to creak and groan. Birds, startled from their perches, didn’t return to their nests for hours. Daylight waned. They warmed more soup and, sometimes, resorted to making additional fires.
Late in the evening of the third day, Cass stepped outside in just Zach’s coat for more wood.
The snow was patchy and slushy now. The moon was waning.
Staring for a moment into the spread of trees that fanned out in front of the cabin, Cass thought about Richard and about how his impromptu proposal had given her this gift. She thought about how he had, in a sense, given her Zach. She owed him a debt she could never repay.
She stacked some wood into her arms. Her toes were already getting cold. But as she turned to go back inside and lock the door, something caught her attention from the corner of her eye.
Her weak eye snapped into focus, the fog that normally shrouded its vision burned away in an instant.
There, racing through the woods—loping down the side of the mountain—was a Lost vampire, half-feral, teeth bared.
Cass sucked in a lungful of frigid air and dropped her stack of wood.
Then she saw five more Lost vampires, hard on the heels of the first.
Shit, she thought to herself, they’re early. The honeymoon’s over already.
13
CASS SPRINTED BACK inside and tossed Zach’s jacket in his general direction. Zach was lying in bed, dozing. He cracked one eye to see what Cass was doing.
When he saw her standing there, breathless and jacketless, he said, “Uh, Beautiful, I’m going to need a couple more minutes—”
But Cass had already slipped into a bra and panties and was looking for some pants.
“Tough luck, lover-boy,” Cass replied as she jumped into a pair of jeans with both feet. “The honeymoon is on hiatus. The world is ending.”
Zach tried to jump out of bed but, tangled in the sheets, tumbled to the floor instead, butt waving in the air.
Cass refrained from making a corny joke about the unexpected moon. She could feel the last dreamy tendrils of their time in cabin loosen and wind away, replaced by the cold, hard certainty in the pit of her stomach that the Lost’s unexpected early arrival was going to be only the first in a whole host of unanticipated complications to Kumiko’s plan. She shook her head, forcing herself to focus. “Let’s go. We’ve got to warn the others.”
“Right,” Zach said as he wrestled with his pants. Cass was already dressed. She grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it over his head for him while he buckled his belt. “How exactly is the world ending this time?”
Cass pulled him out onto the porch as he laced up his boots. Dozens of feral vampires were streaming past the cabin now.
“Shit,” Zach said, frantically finishing his double-knot. “They are not supposed to be here yet! We need to warn the others.”
“Excellent idea,” Cass deadpanned. Cass could feel her hand itching for her sword, but she hadn’t brought it along. It was back at the monastery. They would have to improvise. She spotted a rusty axe next to the pile of wood and tossed it to Zach.
Then she started to run. This was going to be more of a race than a battle, anyway. Zach was right behind her. With his boots and axe and a couple days’ worth of beard, he looked like an angry, sprinting lumberjack.
“Cass,” Zach shouted after her, trying to keep up. “We don’t have to make it all the way down to the monastery to warn them. There are ancient signal bells scattered around the valley for just this purpose. We just need to get to one before they reach the compound itself.”
“Right,” Cass responded, ducking a tree branch and bleeding off a little speed for Zach’s sake, “so where would we find one of those?”
Zach caught up and gave her a wink, paired with a quick smile.
“Follow me,” he said.
With Zach in the lead, they bore to the right and, almost immediately, drew the attention of two feral vampires loping in the same direction. They ran like wolves, their spines bent and ridged, their eyes dark, their mouths full of teeth.
The pair of them veered in their direction, aiming first at Cass.
Cass felt strong and light on her feet. She could probably outrun them, but that wouldn’t really help Zach. The first of the two, though, was already nipping and snarling at her heels. Cass spotted a tree up ahead and gauged the height of its lowest branch. She took two more steps then leapt, grabbed the branch with both hands, and swung herself around in a tight circle so that she landed feet first—and with her full momentum—on the head of the vampire that been hard on her heels. She felt her weight crack his head against a stone, his teeth shatter, and his skull split open. His head, though, came to such an abrupt stop that the rest of his body was slow to get the message. Cass couldn’t avoid getting tangled up in the mess of his arms and legs that, of their own accord, rolled forward. Twisted together, they tumbled down the side of the mountain until they crashed into a tree trunk. Cass had used his body to shield her from the brunt of the blow, but it still took her a moment to get back to her feet, scratched and bruised for her trouble.
The s
econd vampire had already peeled off and was aiming for Zach. Cass took off in pursuit.
“The bell’s not much farther,” Zach called back to Cass.
“I’m coming,” Cass shouted in response.
The remaining vampire was sandwiched between them. They were getting closer to the bell now, but they were also starting to attract a lot of attention. Three more vampires were angling for them. And these seemed faster—or hungrier—than the first two.
Cass had almost caught up when the vampire on Zach’s heels gathered himself and leapt, hoping to ankle-tackle Zach to the ground.
“Zach!” Cass cried out.
Zach, though, had already seen. He swung his lumberjack axe in a wide arc behind him, catching the vampire in the side of the head with the blunt end and sending him sprawling. The vampire, though, still managed to snag Zach’s ankle and trip him up. Cass hurdled that vampire, snagged Zach by the hand, and pulled him back to his feet without missing a stride.
“Did I mention that I love being with you?” Zach asked her.
“You mean you love being with a seer,” Cass corrected, realizing with sudden clarity exactly where they were on the side of the mountain.
“Well, that too,” Zach admitted, trying to catch his breath as Cass pushed their pace.
An additional trio of vampires was baying at their heels. They didn’t look likely to fall for the same tricks as the previous two.
Cass recognized their location from her experiment with free climbing a few days ago—though, in some ways, that felt like a lifetime ago. They were hurtling downhill straight toward the top of the cliff face that she’d scaled. The signal bell, she realized, had been just off to the side.
A plan formed in her mind.
She pushed their pace a notch faster and, to make may sure that Zach kept up, took his hand.
“Just follow my lead,” she said.
The vampires were almost on top of them, snarling and gnashing their teeth.
At the last moment, as they broke free of the tree line above the cliff face, Cass slid, pulling Zach down with her. At the same instant, the trio of vampires launched themselves like missiles. But, instead of connecting with Cass and Zach, they flew over their heads and off the edge of the cliff, plummeting hundreds of feet to the ground, and landed with a disturbingly squishy sound.