Orphaned Follies: An Urban Fantasy Thriller (Mortality Bites Book 4)

by Ramy Vance

  Still, I had tormented enough humans to know how Ester worked. First she’d figure out what you loved the most, and then she’d take it away.

  “What is your worst nightmare?” I asked the room. “As a group, what is the one thing that would hurt you the most? Think about it. All nine of you risked so much to avenge your lost king. I know Ester, and I know how she thinks, what she wants. She wants to hurt all of you as badly as she can. And not just hurt you—destroy you in such a way that you would welcome death. That’s when she feeds, and that’s why I believe it’s Ester’s magic that brought King Aelfric back from the dead, not Ankou. She did it so she could kill him in some spectacular fashion right in front of you all.”

  “Never,” growled Remi.

  Jack-in-Chains smashed his fists together.

  And it wasn’t just the two warriors. All the fae stood up, ready to fight for their king. Even Deirdre.

  Especially Deirdre, who grabbed a stainless steel wok and twirled the giant pan to get a feel for its weight.

  So they were going to fight.

  Good. And then, remembering how much the dybbuk liked to toy with her prey, I thought: for Ester.

  Once More … With Feeling!

  The impromptu fae army armed themselves with whatever they could find. Redcap grabbed two peelers—nasty fellow—as Krelis armed himself with two heavy rolling pins.

  Jack, as if his fists weren’t enough, equipped himself with a meat hook from the freezer.

  And just when I thought that was it, I saw three corn cob skewers float over the counter past me. The abatwas were dressed for war.

  King Aelfric, who knew a battle was coming, picked a long knife for himself and a butcher’s cleaver for his daughter. “Redcap and Krelis,” he said, “you shall fight by Sonia’s side. Jack and Remi, with me.

  “Mentan, Coso and Quep,”—three shrieks answered; I guess their names weren’t Snap, Crackle and Pop after all—“find a way out of this place. And if that is not possible, then the best vantage point from which we can defend ourselves.”

  “What about us?” Deirdre said, placing a fist over her heart.

  “My changeling friend,” he said, “it would be an honor if you and your human friend should fight by our side.”

  Deirdre gave me a sidelong glance and I nodded. She smiled before pursing her lips once more. “As you command.”

  Everyone was ready. Everyone but Ankou, who continued his impassive stare.

  “You might want to gear up,” I said.

  “He will not,” Sonia answered. “He is a reaper, and must remain impartial to any battles that come.”

  “I get that he used to play Switzerland, but reaper or not, he’s mortal now. We all are. And whatever Ester has planned for us will cut him just as deeply as it will us,” I said to the room. I turned to the former agent of death. “You really want to die just standing around? Or do you want to die doing something?”

  Ankou’s eyes flickered almost imperceptibly, but I was close enough to notice. Then he resumed his thousand-mile stare. “Fine,” I said, forcing my knife into his hand. He took it, but only because I wasn’t giving him a choice. “Your funeral.”

  I grabbed another knife. Armed, I turned to my commander in this battle. “Now what, my king?” I said with far less sarcasm than I’d intended.

  “You said we are under assault from a nightmare demon?”

  I nodded.

  “It is my experience that malevolent spirits such as these must be nearby. We must find her and end her.”

  Again I nodded, seeing where he was going with his plan. But as good as the plan was, I couldn’t let it happen. Not the way he intended, at least. “Yes, but there are two problems with your plan.” I lifted a finger. “She’s possessed my boyfriend—”

  “Your betrothed?”

  “Fine, my betrothed.” I sighed. “So killing him is a no-no. Got it?” I scanned the room. They had all heard me, but with the exception of Deirdre, every single one of them would do what was needed to protect the king. So be it. I’ll do what I must to protect Justin.

  “And second,” I said, displaying my other nine fingers, “Ester has unlimited magic—don’t ask how, long story—and is seasoned at this kind of game, and is as evil as f—”

  But before I could finish, there came a groan I’d heard before—back when I was with Ester.

  “Great,” I said, staring at the barricaded door. “Zombies.”

  Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?

  The thing about Ester’s zombies: they’re not your typical groaning, rotting flesh, humans-ravenous-for-brains type (as if that’s not scary enough). Sadly, this dybbuk prefers something with a lot more ahhh!

  And as the zombie mass banged on the barricaded door, I heard their cries … cries that made this particular brand of zombie special. It started simply enough, with a voice yelling, “I just wanted a taste of yer twat. Surely that was nae worth mee death.”

  I recognized the old Inverness accent immediately. Gareth. First guy I made out with—as in ever—on the night a vampire turned me and killed him. And he wasn’t the last guy to die after kissing me, I sighed.

  The next voices were a hodgepodge of memorable victims I’d eaten as a vampire, as well as friends, foes and a smorgasbord of people who died by my hand.

  But that was what I heard. From the pained expressions on the others’ faces, I knew they’d all gotten their personalized version of hell. And from the way most of them were covering their ears, I knew the cries they heard on the other side of the door were simply awful to them.

  Part of me wondered what they were hearing. A bigger part of me hoped I’d never find out.

  “You killed me with a kiss,” said the voice of a beatnik poet I met in Soho decades ago. He was talented, and after I killed him, I sent his poetry for publication. It was picked up right away, which just made me all the sadder. I had ended a great talent.

  “I trusted you,” said another.

  “I loved you.”

  “All I wanted was to be with you.”

  And on and on it went.

  “Great,” I muttered to myself, “my nightmare is a family reunion of lives I ruined and can never make up for.”

  “Milady,” Deirdre said, her eyes wide as she heard the voices of what she most regretted or feared. But although her eyes glistened with the sheen of trapped tears, she was remarkably well-composed. Whatever she heard she took in stride.

  Come to think of it … so did I. I wasn’t falling apart or raging with world-crumbling guilt. I heard the groans and anger, the laments and curses of people who had died directly or indirectly by my hands, and it didn’t really affect me.

  For one thing, I knew Ester’s tricks. These weren’t the real people I had hurt, just Ester digging around in my brain, trying to find something to break me with. Knowing this took away a lot of the sting.

  But it shouldn’t have taken away all of it. And given that I was more annoyed than anything, I knew what was happening: my missing piece, my lost soul—without it I could meet the pain and guilt in stride. As if the pain was being dampered by the emotional equivalent of morphine.

  My emotions were stunted, dulled, muted. And that pissed me off more than anything else. I wanted to feel this. I deserved to feel it. This was an agony I should have bathed in, relished every punishing moment of.

  “The voices,” I said, “they’re tricks. Your worst nightmares are behind that door, but they’re not real. Those voices are the lies she’s using to try to paralyze you.”

  Everyone was scared. Remi kept pacing, looking over at Sonia every few seconds. Redcap and Krelis held each other as they backed away from the door. Sonia was probably taking it the hardest, because she stood perfectly still. Fae are creatures who love to dance and sing, and just generally to move. If you ever encounter a fae who is perfectly still, they’re either terrified or dead.

  Even Ankou wore a frown, which was the most expression I’d seen from the reaper since meetin
g him.

  Redcap and Krelis, who stood hand in hand, cried out, “We had nothing to do with her death! We never let the mortal in. Leave us in peace.”

  King Aelfric put a hand on each, and their fear immediately left them. “I know that is true,” he said, “and those voices are liars.” He addressed the room. “The human vampire is right: those voices are tricks by a witch who wishes to use our fear to create chaos. I hear the voices of a hundred human soldiers I once killed. They can no more be outside that door than ogres can fly.”

  “Your version of flying pigs?” I asked.

  The dark elf lifted a curious eyebrow. “Human humor?”

  “Very good. Deirdre there could take a few pointers from you, and—”

  I was cut off by an all too familiar voice. “Kat, my child, you should never have disobeyed your mother and me by sneaking away that night. If you had only listened, we would all be alive today.”

  That last voice stung. My father’s. Normally hearing him would destroy me, but it didn’t. The fact that I could hear his voice and not break down hurt. A lot.

  I loved him. Love him. And I killed him.

  He deserved my tears.

  Growling at the door, I yelled, “We wouldn’t be alive today because we would all have died of old age two hundred and fifty years ago!” I punched the fridge blocking the door.

  “An old voice?” King Aelfric asked.

  “My greatest regret,” I replied.

  The Elf King turned to the others. “Ignore the voices. They are lies, voices of those long dead.”

  Sonia, who had been standing still, said, “But you are a voice that was silenced long ago.” Then she turned as though she’d heard something unexpected. “You shouldn’t be here, and yet you are. Back from the dead. If you can come back”—she turned her head once more, now giving the door her left ear—“maybe others can, too.”

  I was so focused on Sonia and Aelfric, I didn’t notice Jack-in-Chains crying and wringing his hands in the corner. The silent giant had not uttered a word for hundreds of years as part of his penance for failing to guard Heurodis, King Aelfric’s wife and Sonia’s mother.

  I should have known whose voice he’d heard. Whose voice he was resisting.

  And Ester was a devious bitch who loved to stack nightmares. Of course, Sonia would be hearing the same voice. That became crystal clear when she pointed at the door. “Jack, this is your chance. Save her. Save my mother.”

  “No, Jack,” King Aelfric cried out with a voice that could have stopped a tsunami.

  But Jack was no tsunami. He was a giant who had spent hundreds of years wishing he could undo a single moment.

  And once Ester promised him a second chance, I doubted there was a force in this world or any other that could have stopped him.

  Here’s What Happens When a Volcano Meets a Tornado

  With a single word—“Heurodis!”—Jack broke his centuries of silence as he ripped through the stainless steel refrigerator, tossing it aside with such force it cracked the kitchen’s back wall.

  Free of the obstruction, the door burst open and zombies piled in. Not that they stood a chance against Jack’s tornado; he ripped through them, smashing zombies against stone walls, stomping them into the linoleum floor, bashing their bodies into each other.

  The giant made his way through them, rushing toward Heurodis’s voice. But even a giant of unimaginable strength has his limitations, and when he finally made it to Heurodis, what he saw broke him.

  There was no beautiful human with long, cascading amber hair. There was no young woman with bright eyes and a wondrous smile. There was just death.

  Although Death comes to us all, she approaches each of us differently. In that way, Death is an artist, taking each of us with a unique touch.

  Death touched Jack first by showing him Heurodis’s putrefied body. Her bones were covered in flesh so dry and taut, the simple act of moving tore her apart. She pointed an accusing finger at Jack, and I can only imagine what she said to him in his final moments. Lies, I’m sure. He was the reason she’d died. His failure had led to Aelfric’s death, to Sonia’s blinding.

  He was too slow.

  Too weak.

  Too stupid.

  That’s what I guessed she said to him. In truth, I don’t know. While Aelfric and Remi screamed for Jack to return to the room where we battled the zombies, doing everything in our limited power to keep them in the hall, I saw Jack fall to his knees and allow the zombies to swarm over him, ripping flesh and sinew from his body.

  With Jack gone, there was no reason to keep the door open. Aelfric and Remi let out a war cry that would have shaken the pillars of Olympus as they pushed back the horde and closed the door.

  ↔

  As soon as the door closed, Remi fell to his knees and began to weep. “Jack,” he said, over and over again. “Jack.”

  Sonia, who understood how she’d been tricked, ran to his side, stumbling toward him in her darkness, guided only by his wails. “It’s not your fault, my love. It’s not.”

  Remi grabbed her, hugging her with all his might. “I could have saved him,” the ly erg cried out. “I could have saved my brother.” His gloveless hands wrapped around her back and I stared at them as the kaleidoscope of blood stains morphed over his hands like water and two more drops of green appeared in the mix.

  King Aelfric stood over them, using his immense strength to stop the horde from breaking into the kitchen. From the strain, he wouldn’t last much longer, but rather than kicking the ly erg and halfling into action, he let them mourn. A good commander knows that a great loss must be felt, even in the heat of battle.

  But only for a moment.

  And as that moment passed, he gave silent commands to the rest of us to get into position. Then, looking down at his captain and daughter, he yelled, “To your feet, soldier. Jack’s death will be avenged. This I swear. So to your feet, for they will break through, and we must be ready to fight. We must …”

  King Aelfric’s voice trailed off as his gaze focused on a point on the floor at the back of the kitchen. I followed his eyeline to see what had caught his attention.

  If it wasn’t for the corn holders, my human eyes wouldn’t have been able to see what he was looking at. But corn holders, small as they are, are quite attention-grabbing when they seem to be floating in the air.

  The abatwas. They had found a back door.

  Back Doors and Magnet’s Helmet

  King Aelfric leapt into action, commanding Deirdre, Redcap and Krelis to find as much loose and heavy kitchen gear as they could to block the door. They didn’t hesitate, gathering everything they could find.

  Remi, Sonia and I arrayed as much stuff on the ground as we could to obstruct the zombies’ attacks. As intelligent as they sounded, they were still zombies, so cans of food, pots, syrup and oil were great to trip them up. And once a zombie fell, it took them a while to find their feet again.

  We were incredibly fast, given how much we were trying to do, but then again, a swarm of the undead is a great motivator (I could just see some jackass putting this in his self-help book). Once our obstacles and traps were in place, we made our way to the back, where Crackle and Pop were smashing through a weak spot in the wall using a meat cleaver and a rolling pin.

  These guys were strong.

  We finished off their little demolition job with kicks and punches of our own until the hole in the wall was large enough for us to get through one by one.

  Sonia was first, followed by Ankou, Remi, Redcap and Krelis (so much for ladies first). I was next, and as Deirdre and King Aelfric made their way through the hole, the zombies were already at our backs.

  We all squeezed through by the skin of our teeth (but given how banged up my legs were after crawling over all that loose rubble, the expression should have been “the enamel of our knees”).

  We found ourselves in one of the basement storage rooms. Cubby hole after cubby hole of student lockers lined the maze. The do
or to the main hallway was set into one of these walls, not that any of us rushed to find it. We were probably safer in here than out there.

  “How do we stop her?” King Aelfric whispered.

  “We don’t,” I said in a low voice. “She’s a cursed creature trapped in a box. She’s using my boyfriend to carry her around. The first step is to separate them, then bury the box.”

  “Destroy the box,” Remi said, wiping away a tear.

  “No!” I whisper-screamed. “That will release her. You think she’s bad now? Freed, she’ll be unstoppable. Believe me, the only reason we’re alive now is because we’re fighting the lite version of this spirit.”

  “I can destroy the box,” the ly erg said. “I can end her.”

  King Aelfric put a hand on Remi’s chest and pushed him against the wall. “You will do no such thing.”

  Remi pushed against the dark elf’s hand, but couldn’t move the king. “I … I will do what I must.”

  “I will not lose anyone else this day,” King Aelfric hissed, each word laced with venom. “Swear to me.”

  “But—”

  “Swear to me!”

  Remi pursed his lips before diverting his gaze and nodding. “I swear.”

  “What’s that all about?” I whispered to Deirdre, figuring she might have some insight into that little exchange.

  “He is ly erg, a soldier of the UnSeelie Court. Soldiers have many powers, but perhaps the greatest of them all is that of sacrifice.” She gave me a solemn look like that explained everything.

  Which, if her goal was to confuse me even more, it did.

  ↔

  “So separate the boy from the box.”

  “Well that’s a bit cruder than I’d like, but essentially, yes,” I said to a confused group (flutter?) of fae. “But we have to find them first and—this is crucial, so listen up—not die in the process.”