One (Rules Undying Book 6)

by R. E. Carr

  “He’s still in love with Georgia and in a lot of pain. Can’t you feel that? Now he’s gone off to do god-knows-what because he is still in pain, and no one is doing a damn thing to stop him! I couldn’t stop him because he has the fu . . . the whammy voice, but you—”

  “I see. You clearly don’t care.” Mina blew her granddaughter a kiss. “I should leave you. I’m not sure when I will be back because now I must do something quite stupid. After all, Steven may try to do something rather foolish to poor Geoffrey, and that simply will not do.”

  “What about Lorcan?” Gail moved to block Mina from the door. She hugged Gail and easily moved around her. “He’s still—”

  Mina put a finger to Gail’s lips. “I have done all I can do for him. The different pieces of his soul need to figure out the rest. I can help inspire him to greatness, nothing more, nothing less. My miasma is singularly potent in that regard. Perhaps one day, you will gain this power as well.”

  Gail waited for Mina to pull on her coat and raise her hood. She sprayed her face with sunscreen, then wrapped herself in a scarf and shades. She blew Gail one last kiss then pulled on her gloves.

  “Does he know?” Gail asked suddenly.

  Mina looked towards the darkened bedroom. Gail stepped forwards. “Does Lorcan know about—?”

  “But of course. After all, we thought he was sterile for fifteen hundred years. He’s not an idiot—he was just a proud, loyal husband. Don’t look so shocked, petal. Oh, and we made confusing, complicated, borderline hatred work for a millennium.”

  “Borderline hatred?”

  “But of course. I’ll never forget that Lorcan was the only man who ever understood me enough to know that it wasn’t that I didn’t love him. It’s just that I didn’t love the chains. I would do absolutely anything for that man. It’s not about romance, it’s about something far greater.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Quite simply put, we understand each other—much as you understand that idiot I’m about to go and save for you. Ta-ta for now!” And with that, Mina disappeared from view, leaving Gail to flop on the sofa while the multiple voices of Lorcan argued about something inane in the back bedroom.

  33

  “For the love of all things holy, can I please just have an iced coffee?” Georgia yelled at the top of her lungs. The two young women behind the counter continued to load up the early morning batches of donuts and bagels—oblivious to a red-faced, teary-eyed female Frankenstein’s monster wearing a flannel and a bedsheet toga. Georgia let out a despairing scream and collapsed against the fake wood paneling, while Javier merely slipped around back and made up two drinks as the humans continued their routine. He peered down at her. “Milk and sugar?” he asked innocently.

  “I’m right . . . here,” Georgia whimpered as she looked up on the monitor and saw herself flopped on the floor. An early commuter walked right in front of her and found himself handed his usual without a second’s hesitation by the friendly staff. She gave the customer a weak kick in the shins. He shifted awkwardly but didn’t look down. “I said, I’m right here!”

  “What part of the living won’t notice you failed to sink in, amiga?”

  “Bam-Bam said that if you do something to make them notice you, they will. I’m not dead, you . . . you assholes!”

  “Not dead, merely lost. Now, do you want to continue to have a temper tantrum in a Dunkin’ Donuts or actually join me for desayuno? The choice, as always, is yours.”

  Georgia kicked the commuter one more time as she struggled to her feet. He leaned down to rub his shin but still didn’t notice Georgia. She let out a frustrated growl before shambling to the booth by the window. Her eyes widened as she saw Javier’s floppy hair clearly reflected in the glass. He smiled.

  “Once you are truly in the land of the weird, you see everything, no?” he asked nonchalantly, handing her a coffee and a bagel. She tore into the bread with surprising ferocity. He passed her a cup of water as well. “Easy there, tigre. You haven’t had solid food in a long time.”

  She slumped in her seat and nibbled on her blueberry bagel. Her first sip of creamy, caffeinated goodness brought a genuine smile to her lips. Javier puttered away on his appropriated laptop, while Georgia stared at the people. Most paid more attention to their phones than anything else, and the few that did bother to look up seemed to pointedly not look at the booth in the corner. “Why can’t they see me?”

  “Well, how would you react if you saw a monster in the room? Miasma allows creatures like us to move around unseen. It protects us.”

  “But I’m not a vampire. It shouldn’t work like this. I’m not dead, or lost, or whatever the hell you want to call me. Damn it, even if I was blasting the forget-me-fog, I touched that guy. He should notice me. Damn it, someone should notice me!”

  “You underestimate the power of miasma on the everyday man and woman, señora. These people have no connection to you. You are beyond their limited field of concern. Why would they risk the madness of seeing a monster just for you?”

  Georgia set down her breakfast and looked Javier right in the eyes. “What am I, Javier?”

  “You are a woman who does not know how to die. I must say, it is delightful to see how you vex Imhotep. His notes are full of epithets and profanity that I don’t think have been heard for thousands of years, mi amiga. In fact, I am quite sure that he hates you by now.”

  “The feeling is mutual.” Georgia gave a weak smile. “How can I not know how to die, Javier? Surely there must be something in his notes—”

  “That is the literal translation of his notes. He has a bunch of scribbles talking about a diseased ka or soul that seems to perpetually restart the body at the moment of death. Oh, this is interesante—”

  “What?”

  “He was working on a Project Zero, no? To bring back his son, Arthur—”

  “I was at the last meeting about it. I saw the PowerPoint and everything.”

  “There was another part to his notes, a part that I do not think el alguacil grande managed to steal. He has all of these blah-di-blah records on the nature of the soul, the ka, and how the personality is set when a man is born but that it can be reforged through great effort—blah, blah, blah . . . Long story short, I think our good friend Arturo may have been a little damaged after his few-thousand-year siesta. Imhotep wrote about recreating the ka, and he had hoped that familiar places and faces would help in the restoration of his son. You, on the other hand, were listed as ‘an obnoxious distraction determined to facilitate the unneeded personality of Ren Matsuoka’. He had hoped to use you but eventually decided that you were an uncontrollable variable, so he euthanized you and dissected you instead. You can only imagine his surprise when your heart spontaneously started beating less than sixty seconds after he stopped it.”

  Javier paled a little as he read further. Georgia turned green. “So . . . you’re saying that Merlin . . . euthanized me?”

  “Lethal injection, it says right here—but it’s in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, so it actually looks rather pretty—”

  “I’m immune to lethal injections?”

  “No, it killed you, but you just . . . reiniciado. He may have taken out a few parts to get samples, but he left the room for a moment, came back and your body parts were right back where he found them. He even cut out your beating corazón, but it . . . devuelto. I mean it returned.”

  “That’s impossible,” Georgia said, clutching her chest.

  “Says the girl who insists that she is not dead. Now you can see why the universe is having a hard time believing you, señora.”

  “Merlin killed me—”

  “Sí.”

  “But I’m not dead?”

  “So you claim.”

  “It must have been the Sock Monster,” Georgia whispered in awe. “I remember someone weighing my heart against a feather and my heart didn’t sink, and this creature, he, um, apologized to me and said I must be worthy. Javier, are there other los
t creatures like us? Maybe creatures that could be more powerful than even vampires like Merlin?”

  Javier smiled. “Now you are beginning to comprende, mi amiga.” He let her compose herself and drink a little more coffee before he continued. “The world as we know it is like an eggshell—hard and delicate. It is all most humanos ever see. There are creatures who live on the edges, in the shadows. These are the vampiros and the lob hombres that you know of today. A long time ago, I had the rare privilege of seeing something beyond the shadows and those mysterious edges. It was a different time, when it was not so strange to think of monsters and magic. It was also a time when I could hide anywhere. I learned that no one wants to see a cripple, so I learned to be invisible even in plain sight because with my miasma I could, um, how you say, amplify that desire in men to not see the deformed and the weak.”

  “Like me?”

  “Like us, amiga,” Javier corrected. “It was a cold winter’s night, rare on España’s coast, and I was hiding inside an inn. That is where I first noticed him. He wore the disguise of a leproso, the only people hated more than cripples in this village. He was quite surprised that I noticed him. I could feel that something was not right, but I have always been drawn to a good story; and believe me, señora, he told me so very, very much. It was as if history itself had a spine, and this creature danced along it—seeing great things from the dawn of mankind to what was at the time the present day. I could have listened to him para siempre and a day.”

  “A vampire?”

  “A vampiro, as you know it, to him would be like a perro to a lobo—a dog to a wolf.”

  “I took Spanish in high school, amigo. I got the analogy.”

  Javier laughed a little. “Sí, habla Español? I should have guessed. Well, this creature, he told me of the distant past and of vampiros who did not hide in the shadows but reigned as kings. There were no laws for the undead back then, and they spoke of powers that seemed fantástico even to me. Powers to bring back the muerto were mentioned.”

  “Is it possible that one of these creatures could still be around, and in Boston, and potentially interested in me, interested enough to bring back a muerta?”

  Javier scratched his chin and thought about it for a while. “No sé, señora. However, I would be worried if a creature such as the one I met takes an interest in you. The only stories that vampiros still speak of from this old time are of La Bestia—the greatest vampiro of all, the son of the first vampiro and the one who likes to end the world. He is one of those ancient creatures, and I would not want a monster such as him to ever notice me.”

  “This monster apologized a lot and wore a sock on his junk. He didn’t seem to be the world-ending type, Captain Fabulous.”

  Javier nodded a little. “True, true, but I have always thought that the greatest trick a monster can ever pull is to convince the world that he is indeed harmless. A big, bad beast is easy to find and to hunt, perhaps even to slay—but a truly cunning monster could hide right in front of you and you would never know it, no?”

  A chill ran down Georgia’s spine. “Well then, I’m glad he’s hiding again. Still, I don’t know what it is about this creature, but I wasn’t afraid of him. I felt like he was afraid of something else.” She let out a deep sigh. “I just want answers, Javier. Well, maybe I want answers and a shower.”

  “At least one of these can be arranged. Come with me, señora.”

  Less than an hour later, Georgia found herself sitting on a bench in the locker room of a twenty-four-hour fitness emporium. She flipped her damp hair out of her eyes and stared at the scar running from ear to ear and the stitches that all but cut her face in half. Watching over oblivious shoulders had gotten her access into a few lockers and her pick of shampoos, conditioners, and body washes. Her height and coma-induced weight loss, however, left her in saggy, capri-length jeans and a baggy camisole. She dragged her aching arms back into Javier’s flannel, and buttoned it up to cover the giant Y etched in her chest.

  A couple of sweaty ladies stared at the bag left on a bench but took no notice of Georgia staring at her gruesome reflection. “I’m right here,” Georgia called weakly after them. A flicker of motion caught her eye. She whirled around to see a buck-naked man rooting through a locker. As he turned, she breathed a sigh of relief to see that he at least wore a pink sock with white hearts on it.

  Her heart skipped a beat. She struggled for the right words as he smiled awkwardly. He gave a little wave. “Hello, my friend.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Things to do, warnings to give,” he said, more fascinated with a jingling set of keys than Georgia. “I cannot be seen by those who would do great harm. If they were to find me . . .” he trailed into a series of warning clucking sounds. “Very bad. Things are very bad indeed.”

  “Very bad?” Georgia retorted. “What the hell did you do to me?”

  The Sock Monster looked very confused. Georgia pressed on with, “Did you take my heart out and weigh it?”

  “Oh, yes—but to be fair, I did put it back. I put all your pieces back when, you know, he took them out. I distracted him from time to time so that you recovered. Did I put everything back correctly? Well, except for the toe—”

  Both Georgia and the Sock Monster looked down. Georgia gasped as she counted only nine toes. The Sock Monster smiled again. “But I am very sure I got everything else!”

  “Who . . . are . . . you?”

  “I am me, and I am lost, as you are lost,” the Sock Monster replied unhelpfully. “Soon, I must hide again. The many are coming together, and when they are one, there is trouble. The Beast is trouble.”

  Georgia buried her face in her hands, then laid back on the bench with her knees up and stared at the ceiling. A moment later, the hazy face with black eyes and shining fangs leaned into view. “You seem upset.” Georgia’s jaw dropped.

  “What do I even say?”

  “I sense confusion and anger—”

  “You think?” she snapped as a bit of color returned to her cheeks. “What did you do to me?”

  “I put back the pieces—”

  “I should be dead! Normal human beings don’t survive having their organs removed and shoved back inside by a strange vampire. I was given a lethal injection, but here I am, arguing with you. Does that make any sense at all?”

  “Well, when you put it that way, it is slightly unusual.”

  “Did you bring me back from the dead?” Georgia snapped.

  “Yes . . . and no,” the Sock Monster confessed as he kneeled beside her. “Many things in this universe are complicated. Living things have a cycle—they are born, they grow, they fade, then they die. Your cycle has an . . . interruption. My kind also has that interruption. Our pieces rebuild before they can fail and rebuild the shell before it fails. This is hard to explain.”

  “Am I a vampire?”

  “Oh, heavens no! That would be simple.”

  “Heaven forbid anything in my life would be simple,” Georgia muttered, tears welling up in her eyes. The Sock Monster seemed genuinely moved, and his own eyes grew moist. He took her hand.

  “I am sorry about the toe.”

  “This isn’t about a damn toe! I need to know who I am, what I am. Please, just tell me why I’m like this? Why can no one see me? What are you, and why did you do this to me? Please!” Her begging devolved into sobbing. The strange vampire gave her an awkward hug.

  “Life is a fight against nothingness. All life must choose between existence and oblivion, perhaps doing the impossible along the way. Life is a burning flame that eventually goes out, but if there is an ember left inside, it can reignite, yes?” He pointed to her heart. “You have an ember inside and as long as it has a chance, it will start to burn again.”

  “An ember . . . in me?”

  “You could have any modern wizard break down the mix of chemicals that spark to life when you try to die, but you will be no closer to understanding the truth than if you think of it as an ember
in your heart. For all of Imhotep’s experiments, he could not find the reason he failed.”

  “So, I get close to death . . . and I just reboot? Is that what you are saying?”

  The Sock Monster nodded gravely. “When your time is finally right, I would suggest cremation. It will not be pleasant while it happens, but it will allow you to end—”

  Georgia gagged and dry heaved as she collapsed to the floor. “That is not the advice I needed to hear! What I need to know is why? Why did you put me back together so that I could be a . . . a monster like this?”

  “He asked that too,” the Sock Monster said softly. “The ember is so rare. He had to do the impossible, but the consequences . . . and then the ember found you . . . oh dear—”

  The world shifted abruptly, and Georgia gasped as she saw the gaping wound in her stomach. For one moment she saw a hazy figure standing over her. Howls echoed over the battlefield as a jet-black werewolf dropped to his knees—Excalibur driven through his chest. She turned her head and saw Arthur collapse into the mud, blood pouring from his mouth as a spear pinned him to the ground. “I should be dead,” Georgia said softly in Lorcan’s voice.

  The world shifted back. “Let me guess, Lancelot has the same problem that I do,” Georgia choked out. The Sock Monster gave her a sad nod. “Why did you do this to me?”

  The Sock Monster pointed to her chest again. “Already there, I am afraid. I only helped when it was almost too late. There is an unbroken chain that links you to the original flame.” He looked over his shoulder furtively. “I must go again. You now have the same choice as any other living creature, friend. You can do the impossible or fade into oblivion. I know it may not seem like it now, but there are beautiful creatures that believe in you. I believe in you, too.”

  “You believe in me? Really? I can’t die—”

  The Sock Monster raised a finger as if to correct her. “You—”

  “Sorry, I reignite when I’m close to death?” The Sock Monster nodded. She let out a deep sigh. “So, what now? I’m just supposed to exist with a vampire tumor and be ignored by the rest of the world until I give up and get my ass cremated?”