Zero Sum Advanced Review Copy

by Shier, B. Justin

  “Insolent, twit,” Rei grumbled. She bit into her bendy straw and sipped furiously. I did my best to ignore the pint of oh-so-not-tomato-juice sloshing around in her cup.

  Taking advantage of Rei’s absence, Anna plopped down beside me. “So, what brings you two to town?”

  I looked over at Rei. She shot me a warning glance.

  “Fireworks. We’re here to study fireworks. Magus Resnick is something of an expert.”

  “Fireworks?” Anna looked at me quizzically. “Is that so, Dieter?”

  I felt the push that accompanied her words. It pressed in against me like a wave of velvet. Anna’s glamour wasn’t at all like Rei’s. This was smoother, more practiced, and totally engrossing. Before I even knew it, I was sitting in a pleasant park with my mother. She was cutting slices of watermelon and asking me how my day was. The sun was warm. A fine breeze was blowing through my hair. I smiled benignly—and imagined a bucket of ice water toppling onto her lovely head. The fantasy shattered. Anna flinched backwards, recoiling from the shock.

  “Yep, I absolutely love fireworks. And I understand Las Vegas is the place to be this year.”

  Still flummoxed, Anna flicked back her hair. She looked about as happy as a cat in a tub. That’s the problem with mind magic. Prodding someone else’s noggin’ requires exposing your own. Back-flows are the sucks.

  “Is something wrong, Anna?” Rei asked. Her glee was poorly masked.

  Anna gave Rei a look that would have wilted a mere mortal. (I was getting the sense that the two of them didn’t like one another much.) “Of course not, but unlike some carefree debutants, I have work to attend to before I retire.” She rose and motioned to Trey and Hans. “Young Master Resnick, it was so refreshing to meet you. I hope you enjoy an exceptionally close view of the fireworks. They shall be truly spectacular this year.”

  Remembering my manners, I struggled to my feet. Fending off Anna’s probe hadn’t taken much energy, but—being a moron—I’d gone ahead and counterattacked. Big mistake. “Duchess,” I said, bowing ever so slightly. I nearly teetered over as I did.

  “Bye-bye, Magus Resnick!” Hans said with a wink. “Let’s do lunch sometime.”

  I collapsed back onto the couch as soon as Anna and friends exited.

  “Well that was fun,” I grumbled.

  Rei hushed me and motioned toward the ceiling.

  I looked up nervously. I’d never been in a bugged room before.

  Rei finished the last of her blood slurpie and returned to the kitchen. “I’m getting take-out.”

  I struggled to my feet and followed her. People food, first aid supplies, and equipment for transfusions lined the kitchen’s shelves. This condo wasn’t so much a residence as a way station. Vampire hostels…I wondered how many of these places they had set up across the country, and why, if the Magi hated the Nostophoros so much, the Department ever allowed it.

  Rei grabbed a soft cooler out of a cabinet, added some ice packs, and filled it full of those large aluminum pouches I’d first spotted on our bus ride. I picked one up. The bag read: “Red Cross.” It came packaged with a straw. Rei snatched the bag from me and dropped it in her cooler.

  “Excellent, this shall last me the rest of our trip. Are you ready?”

  I looked at the door. “Ready enough.”

  Rei cocked her head. “You are a member of my party. None of my kind will harm you.”

  My jaw tightened. Rei didn’t have a clue. Somehow, that made it even worse.

  “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

  I had prayed that the passage would be easier the second time, but knowing what was coming didn’t make it any easier. Rei’s cold hand around my own, I dared another glance at the girl lying on the velvet bench. She still lay prostrate on her back. Her glazed eyes hung loose in their sockets, and her arms sagged limply at her sides. The vampires had moved on. The poor girl wouldn’t be able to offer anything to anyone anymore. She had been drained dry. But what truly galled to me was that she hadn’t been like that when I came through the first time. She had passed the point of no return while I sat comfortably on a couch engaged in a casual conversation with her killers. I nearly gagged at the thought of it. This was someone’s child. Someone’s pride and joy. A little girl who had learned her ABC’s, laughed with her friends, made plans for her future, and set out into the world. Her everything had been taken from her—and these monsters had tossed her aside like an empty can of Coke. I ground my teeth. They haven’t even bothered to move her body.

  I don’t believe in an afterlife. To me, death is final and absolute. Our bodies birth our minds. When death claims our bodies, so too must it claim our minds. Life is a precarious gambit. A rapidly shrinking tether suspends us from nothingness. Once that line snaps, it’s all over. There’s no pause. There’s no rewind. You can only look forward and never look back. Its fragility is what makes life so precious. There’s no putting a life back together once it’s broken, no recovering a soul once it is lost, and they haven’t even bothered to move her body…

  Rei tugged at my arm. My legs had stopped moving. She could probably sense the cogs turning. A desperate urge trickled through the link. Concern, confusion, and dread washed over me.

  “Leave it,” she snipped. “You promised.”

  I placed my free hand on Rei’s forearm. “It? That is a human being, not an it.”

  “I…” Rei frowned. She took a deep breath, and transition occurred in her features. It was like she grew two inches taller. “Be quick about it. I don’t want my ice pack to melt.”

  The ten feeding vampires jerked to attention the instant Rei released my hand. Their killing intent smacked into me like a ton of bricks—but I couldn’t just leave the girl. Ignoring them, I knelt down in front of her.

  I swallowed. Stars above, what a mess…Her breath came slow and ragged. Her vision was unfocused. Razor-like cuts covered her body. Her nipples were shorn off completely, and her genitals were a dried mess of blood. I counted over two-dozen wounds. The girl wasn’t bleeding from any of them; she no longer had any blood left to bleed.

  Behind me, I could hear whispers rising. Be they gangs of people or animals, no one likes it when you fuck around in their lair.

  I just didn’t give a shit. I lifted up the girl’s cold, naked body and laid her down properly. Her skin felt clammy; her body was shutting down. I collected the wayward sheets and draped them over her. It was a pathetic attempt at modesty, but it was all I could manage. Finished, I cradled her head in my hands. She’d wanted to tell me something, and it’d been gnawing at me ever since. I wondered if her voice would even come. I stared into her dim eyes and pushed.

  A glimmer of awareness answered. Nasty things flooded into my Sight, things you never wanted anyone to see or feel, things you wouldn’t even wish on your worst enemies. I cut out my emotions, bound them up, and stowed them. I’d left this girl to die. This wasn’t my time to feel. This wasn’t my time to cry.

  “Can you hear me?” I asked.

  She tried to nod—failed.

  “You know you’re dying?”

  A single tear beaded up in her left eye. All her body could spare…

  It was unbearable. I wanted to run away screaming. I wanted to jump off this cursed building and die. I bit deep into my cheek and pressed on.

  “I can take your last request.”

  “My sister…” she whispered. “…the tower.”

  A shiver ran through my body. I glanced over at Rei. She looked as surprised as I was.

  My concentration broken, the girl sagged in my arms. She was slipping away. Slipping away before she could explain. I looked around in desperation. What had she meant by that? There had to be a way to buy a few seconds. I couldn’t let her die. I couldn’t just let her fade away.

  Her hand flinched—a dying muscle’s last salute. I opened up my Sight again. It was so frustrating. Yes, her aura was in tatters, but there was still that faint quiver of life at her core

  And we can use
it, my child…

  I swallowed. It would work. It was just like with Jules’ circles. That stupid screw-up I kept committing over and over again—I could turn it to my advantage and buy the time I needed. I took the girl’s left arm in my hand and placed my right palm on her mangled breast.

  “What is he doing?” a male Nostophoros asked from behind me.

  An icy voice crackled back at him. “It is not your concern. Be silent or I shall dash you like glass.”

  There was no time to wonder what the hell was going on behind me. I formed one of the transmutations Jules taught me. It was the most basic spell in the healing canon. I would have to use myself as the conduit. That meant the product would be sloppy—but that didn’t matter. I didn’t need to save this girl’s life. I just needed to extend it. I drew out the images for the spell: memories of the vitality of summer, the fatigue of fall, the rotting of winter, and the new budding of spring. The transmutation ready, I opened up my extraction field. Under my left hand, the girl’s arm withered away in the cold.

  Meager pickings…but enough…

  Her spent life coursed through me like morning sunshine. I shunned the urge to cling to it, and pushed the jolt of energy straight into her chest. With a gasp, the girl’s eyes shot open. I’d done it. It had worked. I felt that familiar heady rush—it was like when I created a new strain of yeast—but this success was a mirage. Dizzy and exhausted, I gave the girl a sad smile. She was merely the woken dead.

  “Your words,” I whispered. “We have only a moment.”

  Her eyes told me that she understood. That killed off the last of my pleasure. “My sister…they still have my sister,” she rasped through her bone-dry throat. “Her name is Angela Hawthorn. She vanished on the way to school. She was the first of our line to qualify. I used our blood. I traced her…traced her to the tower. You’re an agent, aren’t you? You have to save her!” The girl’s eyes bulged. Her hand shot up and snatched a tuft of my hair. “She’s still—” A violent seizure shook her from head to toe. Foam surged from her mouth. Blood trickled from her nose. Her hand fell away, taking a tuft of my hair with it. A few twitches later, her body shuddered still.

  Her heart hadn’t just seized…it had blown to pieces. Shocked, I stared at my own shaking hands. What a monstrous end. I had turned the craft Jules taught me into an obscenity. If she ever learned what I had done, she would probably never speak to me again. If this wasn’t blasphemy, I didn’t know what was. I closed the poor girl’s eyes and covered her savaged corpse. But her words…she had to have been referring to an initiate. What the hell was Carrera up to?

  The strange noises rising up behind me broke my focus. I would have time to run through possibilities later. Right now, I had more immediate problems. Rei looked a bit preoccupied. Arms spread wide, she was hissing at ten pairs of angry eyes. She looked ready to claw right through them.

  A short male pointed at her. “A Dealer?” he growled. “You brought a Dealer here?”

  I struggled to maintain my feet. I should have never self-conduited that spell. It had left a trail of debris behind. That was one of the many reasons why Jules preferred circles. Now my psyche was an unstable mess. I needed a few minutes to center myself, and those were minutes I probably didn’t have.

  Rei slid her foot forward and snarled. “Yield, yeoman.”

  Some of the Nostophoros scurried back, but the vocal one didn’t budge.

  “With all due respect, Lady Rei Acerba—we are not yours to command. Theodus’ orders are clear. We must guard this house from that filth.” I looked at the butchery around me. Filth? Me? Seriously?

  The human pincushions that could still walk gathered up their clothing and hustled out of the room. Despite being drained of vital fluids, they could still smell trouble. I re-checked my balance. I couldn’t do much more than wobble, and no matter how strong Rei was, she couldn’t possibly take down ten of her peers. We were totally going to get jumped…Then a spark went off in my head. I looked at the vampires in front of us. If there was one thing I understood, it was gangs. Rei and I were outnumbered, but the vampires hadn’t attacked us yet. I could only think of one possible reason why: they were uncertain.

  But why?

  They probably could gage Rei’s strength—but what about my own? They had mistaken me for something called a Dealer. I had no idea what a Dealer was, but apparently they considered that creature both formidable and distasteful. My presence was making the vamps angry, but it was also making them hesitate.

  My mind raced. Back at Elliot, Rei had referred to her home territories as “the Fiefs.” From what I had gathered in the last fifteen minutes, Rei’s people were organized into some sort of rigid hierarchy. These vamps viewed me as outside of that hierarchy. That wasn’t good. It probably made me fair game. It would only take them a few probing strikes to discover I had no mana, speed, or hidden bazookas in my trousers. Once they realized that I wasn’t much of a threat, I was screwed.

  But what if they thought I was inside their hierarchy? The yeoman had called Rei a “lady.” That gave me something to work with. Back in the olden days, lords and ladies owned their subjects like lawnmowers and dishrags. And because their subjects were viewed as property, they were considered a part of said royal entity. An attack on a subject was considered an attack on their lordship. I wasn’t a vampire—but neither was that Trey guy. Trey was still serving Anna, despite his lack of fangs. I nodded to myself. If Anna had humans serving her, so could Rei. She was a lady, right? Ladies needed staff.

  Crouching, Rei growled back at the other vamps (which was kinda cute when it wasn’t directed at you). I killed my smirk before it gave me away. I needed to demonstrate respect—a foreign concept, I’ll admit. Keeping my pace smooth and steady, I strode forward.

  Did you know a growl can transition into a “huh?” Me neither.

  Rising, Rei looked as surprised as everyone else. I walked right past her and stood off to her right. Forcing my posture loose, I focused my attention on the yeoman and let some of my mana leak out onto the floor. The tall man had given me some good pointers on the Art of Badass. I presumed the vamps weren’t stupid. I presumed they knew there were only two reasons for an opponent to waste firepower like that:

  Option A: The opponent is unskilled and/or stupid.

  Option B: The opponent doesn’t give a shit. The opponent has plenty of mana to spare. The opponent spends mana like billionaires spend Benjamins.

  Predators like sure bets. My little display had raised the ante. I was suggesting that I was no limping fawn. I was suggesting that I was a Tyrannosaurus rex on steroids. Now the question posed to the vampires was whether or not they wanted to risk their semi-immortal asses calling my bluff. And I wasn’t done just yet. I turned to Rei and pulled something straight out of Sir Dirty Harry.

  “Are they troubling you, milady? Shall I destroy them?”

  An awkward moment ensued in which Rei tried very hard not to laugh.

  The vamps looked at one another in confusion.

  I nearly shat my pants.

  “Tempting,” Rei answered coolly. “However, I would prefer to leave this consulate intact.” She’d picked up on my strategy with frightening speed. Now they had protocol to worry about.

  “But, milady, we’re on the top floor. The collateral damage would be minim—”

  “Silence,” she barked. I hoped I was the only one detecting the amusement in her voice.

  The dark-haired yeoman cocked his head. He was still eyeing me like a snack. “Lady Rei Acerba, if the Dealer is truly yours, why did he mourn the sac’s demise?”

  Sac? I near burst a vein. If I had enough mana…

  But, my child, why limit yourself to mana?

  My jaw tensed. That thing was back in my head.

  In your head? Please. We are more like…what is the term you humans use nowadays? Ah, yes, roomies.

  I brushed the extremely creepy voice aside. Killing these bastards hadn’t been that girl’s last wish. She�
�d wanted me to save her sister. Lives were at stake. My whole freakin’ city was at stake. This was no time for a pissing match.

  “Mourned?” I looked at the yeoman with disdain. “Since when did mourning involve draining a sac of life? I merely extracted the information milady required. It was your lack of control that left me so little to work with.”

  “And what information was that?” the yeoman asked. The mousy looking bastard looked angry, but the others looked a bit more uncertain. It struck me that gaining immortality must be a bit like hitting the lottery. Once you obtain it, you probably spend all your time worrying about losing it.

  “None of your concern,” Rei answered sharply. “Come, magus.”

  I bowed and fell into step beside her.

  +

  “Well, my minion, that certainly was reckless.”

  “Sorry, milady.”

  “I could grow accustomed to that,” Rei said with a smile. The three pints of blood in her belly seemed to have left her more chipper. She slung the cooler back and forth as we walked down the web of sidewalks leading back to our apartment. I wasn’t in such a great mood. I was wondering what that girl’s name was. I’d forgotten to ask her. Rei paused to look at me. She cocked her head and frowned. “Why are you so troubled?”

  I grimaced. “Rei, to see that sort of thing…” Made me want to scream. Kill stuff. Hunt every last one of your kin down and burn them to cinders. “It hurt, Rei.”

  “It…hurt?” Rei looked as though I had spoken in a foreign. “But the chattel were imported. You didn’t even know them.” I’d never really thought about why I sympathized with people I didn’t know. It just came…naturally.

  “They weren’t my kin, but I saw pieces of my friends and family in them.”

  Rei nodded, but I recognized that glassy-eyed expression. It was the look kids gave me when I tutored them in calculus.