This World Bites (Cera Chronicles Book 1)

by Loni Townsend

  Chairs scraped the floor, pushed backward to be vacated. Dropped forks clattered as they struck plates, abandoned with half-eaten meals left behind. Each fleeing footfall was fast paced and directed toward the door. Huh. Guess the bite was a bit more serious than I’d thought.

  The waiter’s face paled and a small frown creased his full, kissable lips. Wait, no, strike that. His face was already pale. “There is no vaccine for a zombie bite. Poor boy. So young too.”

  Zombie, eh? I had a name now, though the condition didn’t sound good.

  Duke dropped his voice and leaned toward me. “Perhaps kill him now, before he turns.”

  I prepared to calm Michael. If there was one thing he hated, it was being treated the age he looked. Guardians stopped physically aging when their elemental master reached maturity. Technically, he was older than I was, but we chose not to broach the topic.

  I gathered my will and pushed down the surge of emotion threatening to explode from the volatile guardian. Controlling my guardians was one of the benefits of the inextricable bond between us. Most of the time, I used it for long-distance requests or voiceless prompting when I didn’t want to look bossy. It was really great when I had a hankering for ice cream.

  “I am not a child.” Michael scowled, the menace diluted by my efforts. “And I am not deaf either, you keltharq.” Being fluent in hundreds of languages meant he could insult anyone in whatever tongue he chose. As remarks go, it was an impressively mild choice, implying Duke was a “three toed son of a purple goat waste disposer who dances naked on leech infested ground.” In short—an imbecile. The hunger must have been consuming most of Michael’s attention.

  Either the waiter understood what he’d been called, or simply received the message Michael’s tone conveyed. My guess was the latter.

  “No need to be rude.” Duke stuck out his chin. “Just saying I’ve seen people turn zombie. It isn’t pretty.”

  I had to agree. The thing that’d bit Michael had seen better, and likely cleaner, days. “I won’t kill Michael.” I reached across the table and squeezed Michael’s arm. Duke didn’t know us. We would overcome this. Just like we would find a cure for my dad. “If he turns into this zombie thing, I’ll be sure he maintains proper hygiene.”

  “It’s more than that.” Duke grabbed a nearby chair, turning it backward to straddle it. He appeared to be in no particular rush to clear the empty tables. We were the only customers left in the restaurant, after all. “It starts with an insatiable hunger to eat anything and anyone in sight. They won’t stop, not even if it means they have to crack open skulls to get to the mushy brains. Then the fever takes them, making them rampage with adrenaline. Next they die—” Die? What?! “—but they come back, still possessed with their obsession to eat. All you have left is a mindless, decomposing shell that racks up the restaurant bills.” He paused and eyed me with mild suspicion. “Speaking of which…”

  “Oh, right, the bill.” We’d discuss Michael’s impending death later, in private. I glanced at Fues’s empty chair and licked my lips. “It would seem our purse has gone looking for other food.”

  As if on cue, the bell attached to the door chimed, announcing the pygmy’s return. “I have meat!” he declared, and slapped several charred steaks onto the table, cooked for our benefit.

  Michael didn’t hesitate to grab the top one. He tore into it with his hands, emitting little grunts of ravished hunger.

  Duke leapt up from the table, chair clattering as it struck the floor during his speedy recoil. He hissed, baring his fangs and covering his nose with one hand. “Where did you get that meat and how dare you bring it into my restaurant?”

  “I get wolf meal,” Fues replied in a calm, civilized tone. His expression reproved Duke’s response but excused it as ignorance after a moment’s consideration. Lucky Duke. If the pygmy had taken offense, Duke would be on the floor with a knife to his throat and would likely be the choice of meat for the pygmy’s next meal. Well, maybe. Fues liked a little fat. He says it adds flavor. That might’ve been why he’d let Duke live.

  Fues climbed into his chair and selected the largest cut, the one entitled to him as the hunter. He stabbed his steak with a small ritual knife and sliced it into strips using a bone-handled dagger with a curved, notched blade.

  I frowned at the pygmy’s change in attire. “Where did you get that fur cloak?”

  Fues grinned and glanced at his shoulder where a silky brown pelt hung, nearly twice as long as he was tall. “I get wolf meal.”

  Looking closer at the pelt, I could have sworn I saw a heart and ribbon with the characters M-O-M drawn in ink.

  Chapter 3

  MY TRANSPORT SEAL BYPASSED THE medical facility’s front doors and landed us in a small, dark reference room that smelled like chlorine bleach.

  Green lights blinked on a nearby console, illuminating glass bottles filled with measured volumes of blue and clear liquids. Shadowy forms spread out across a steel table bolted to the floor in the center of the room.

  Seth felt along the wall until he found a switch and overhead lights flickered to life with the hum of electricity.

  Bones, some human and some not, lined the table in neat rows, stamped and tagged with identification numbers.

  “This is this world’s most advanced facility?” I asked. “I expected more.”

  “You always expect more.” Seth checked for any hidden alarm systems using a thievery security device we’d commandeered from another world. Michael had explained how it worked once, but the details were too technical for me to remember. No traps or alarms. Seth made the signal to proceed.

  I hated to admit it, but Seth was right. I continually hoped the next world we visited would hold the cure for my dad’s condition. I was met with disappointment every time. Someday, though, I’d find the cure. And who knew? It might be in one of these unimpressive facilities.

  Rin pressed his hands against the console and closed his eyes in a moment of concentration. “They use electrical impulses for record keeping.”

  I focused on the good news. Being a void elemental, Rin could manipulate anything bearing an electrical signature. Analysis of the data would take a fraction of the time required for traditional methods.

  The drawback with worlds using electricity for storage was the limitation it placed on my ability to help. I don’t play well with electronics. I discovered this after the first few data devices I interacted with exploded. I wasn’t allowed to touch them anymore. I’d have to find employment to pay for the hotel and supplies while the others dealt with data.

  Fues used his spear to vault onto the countertop and then rummaged through glass bottles.

  I eyed Michael, who had taken to chewing on a dehydrated food pack from the previous world. His ability to eat was beginning to rival my father’s. My dad once ate a pot of stew, four loaves of bread, two dozen eggs, a roasted chicken, and seventeen apples. In one sitting.

  “What do we know about the disease Michael contracted?”

  Rin read from the dash. “The Z0 strain of the M813 disease was originally manufactured to create a genetically enhanced human populace with surpassing physical capabilities including strength and speed. It is highly contagious and only requires brief contact with an uninfected bloodstream to spread.

  “The first attempt to combat the disease was the release of V4M classification 91R3. All test subjects with V4M-91R3 in their system experience extreme photosensitivity resulting in an exothermic reaction. They require additional blood to sustain their health and experience a hyper-histamine response resulting in anaphylaxis when in contact with certain strains of dihydrogen monoxide. Many possess an aversion to allium sativum.

  “A second attempt was made by combining animal DNA with the existing disease. This produced the W3R classification 3W01F. This was considered the most successful, though test subjects experienced painful transformation of their skeletal configuration as well as increased hair growth. Subjects with W3R-3W01F also developed elev
ated risk of fatal argyria.”

  I sighed. Gibberish. “Though that is fascinating, I had hoped to hear they had a cure, not another mutation.”

  Rin shook his head. “They have no listed cure within their records.”

  I tried not to let the disappointment show on my face. Forcing myself to keep a positive attitude had become habit. I needed to, with as many worlds as I had searched. I viewed Michael’s situation with more optimism than I held for my father’s condition. The disease was manufactured by humans, meaning we only had to overcome the extent of human ingenuity.

  Michael lifted a glass tray of murky white goo and made a disgusted noise deep in his throat. “It would appear I have bone gelatinization to look forward to.” Fues made a comment in his native tongue, and Michael shot a scowl at the pygmy’s back. “I do not have a handshake like a fish.”

  Fues chuckled, amused by his own joke, and barked a quick warning before tossing glass vials over his shoulder, aimed at the younger guardian. Michael’s tray clattered to the tabletop as he tried to catch and juggle incoming vessels. Michael had a quick wit, but the same couldn’t be said about his hands. He fumbled beneath the assault. I rolled my eyes and reached out with water manipulation to save us from a potential mess. Missed vials made a plopping noise as they dropped into floating globes of water. I held them suspended until my guardian gathered them up.

  “What are these?” Michael lifted one to study it beneath the light. Fues clicked his tongue and motioned his hands in an explanation I couldn’t understand. Michael lifted an eyebrow. “No kidding? Worth a try.”

  The rubber stopper squeaked as he worked it free from the neck and it released with a small pop. He lifted it to his lips and downed the contents in one gulp. Pocketing the empty container, he wiped his mouth with a sleeve and waited for something to happen. After a moment, he belched. “Oh, that is better.”

  I eyed the pygmy, not bothering to hide my suspicion. Not that I didn’t trust him. Oh, I trusted him alright. I trusted him to be downright sneaky.

  “Keep him sated.” Fues offered an all-too-innocent grin and jumped off the counter.

  Seth picked up one of the spares and sniffed the clear liquid with a small frown. He dabbed his pinky into it and touched the tip of his tongue, immediately following the action with a spit into the nearby sink. “No more than one dose every six hours. It has two parts maysbee, one part kull, and three parts ployteru.”

  Michael grimaced. “Now you tell me.”

  The ingredients probably went by different names here. Seth referenced herbs from our world, ones Michael would know. Every care guardian possessed an innate healing capacity.

  Our mentor—a man long dead but never forgotten—had trained Seth to wield his intuition of the healing arts as a weapon. He could break an arm as easily as he could set a bone, mix poison from medicinal herbs, stop bleeding or inflict drawn out torture. It used to bother him to kill, back when we were young. That was before he got a sword.

  Kull was a narcotic, lethal in large doses. I narrowed my gaze onto Fues who shrugged. “He have good dreams. No harm.” He’d never do irrevocable harm to Michael, but he certainly enjoyed toying with the other guardian. I was still working on forgiving him for tricking my guardian into the last situation, where Michael ended up with blue skin for nearly half a year.

  Rin withdrew his hands from the console, a crackling ball of golden electrical energy cupped between his fingers. It compacted and solidified into the shape of a small coin before disappearing into the skin of his palm. His eyes closed as he processed the new energy. Finally he let out a long, slow breath. “I have replicated the data. We may leave.”

  ***

  Duke glanced up from the table he’d been wiping down when Seth and I walked back in. “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon.”

  I sat down on one of the swivel chairs at the front counter and propped my chin on the palm of one hand. “I need a job.”

  Duke frowned at me and tossed the rag onto the counter. “Just because I think you’re pretty, doesn’t mean I’m going to hire you.” Ah, more than a simple waiter. The man in charge.

  Seth began a critical survey of the occupants and equipment—his usual method of determining whether the location was a suitable environment for me to work in. He’d go behind the register and invade the kitchen next. People from mundane worlds called him paranoid. It wasn’t paranoia when the monsters were so often real.

  He disappeared behind swinging hinged doors. I saw him through the delivery window where a perplexed cook stared at his presence in horror. He picked up knives and utensils, examining them and testing the edges. Any protests the cook might have had were pointedly repressed when Seth flipped a knife in one hand, caught it by the tip of the blade, and threw, lodging it neatly in the wall. He pulled it free again and nodded his approval.

  Knives weren’t required to stick in walls to qualify for my employment. Threat of harm was a good deterrent for would-be attackers. Metal hinges creaked as Seth opened cabinets and ovens. The cook shuddered and looked through the window at me and Duke. And then he licked his lips.

  I met Duke’s blood-red gaze and put on my most charming smile. “I’m a fantastic cook. I was taught by the best.”

  He hesitated, glanced toward the kitchen, and finally shook his head. “No. I can’t afford to change staff in the middle of the busy season.”

  Disappointing. I had counted on quick pay without much searching, but it appeared I wouldn’t be so lucky. Seth made his way for the door and I slid from the chair. “Thank you for your consideration. I’d better go.”

  “Hey, wait.” Duke closed the distance between us and grabbed my arm. His eyebrows went up at the contact. “Wow, that feels…different.”

  The power of pleasure ran through my veins—one of the passive traits of my Miasho heritage. It usually manifested in a tingling sensation.

  Duke’s fingers curled, wanting to draw me in. Pleasure was a dangerous gift. It can be as simple as the innocence in a child’s laugh or a warm blanket on a cold night. The longer someone went without it, the tighter they clung and the harder they fought.

  “Was there something you wanted, or are you going to continue standing there touching my arm?” My elemental powers also came with a set of passive traits, including super strength and immunity to human weapons, which came in handy when people reacted negatively to my Miasho power.

  “Oh.” Duke shifted awkwardly and dropped his hold. His handsome face broke out in a bashful grin. “I was wondering if you might want to go out with me tonight.”

  I put a finger to my chin, as if considering. When it came to the choice between job hunting and going out, there was no competition. But job hunting wasn’t my only responsibility. “I don’t know. It’s not fair to my friends if I go gallivanting across town while they’re stuck at the hotel doing all the research.”

  “Research?” Duke raised an eyebrow.

  I responded with a level look. “We need to find a cure for Michael.” I didn’t mention we had other business with the data. People tended to get particular when it came to sharing information. More productive to ask for forgiveness than permission, and even better if they never knew we took the information at all.

  He pursed his lips and studied me as if I were a few stones shy of a riverbed. “Victims don’t usually last more than twenty-four hours, even less for children.”

  Twenty-four hours? My throat tightened and the edges of my vision turned black.

  “But I can help.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “I’ve helped people before. My cook was dying, but I found a—” He licked his lips. “—solution. My connections might be able to buy your young friend more time.”

  I drew a deep breath and eyed him. “You’d do that?”

  “In exchange for a date.” He grinned, flashing those pearly fangs. “You have to go out with me. Then I’ll take you to my contact.”

  I glanced at Seth. I could go without his permission, but I d
idn’t want to feel his annoyance transmitting across the guardian bond all night. He circled Duke, scrutinizing everything from Duke’s perfectly placed hair to the toes of his shiny shoes. Finally, he nodded at me. “Might as well. Your emotional turmoil would only distract Michael. Go out. Think of something else.”

  Despite the hard-ass, brooding exterior, he could be quite the cupcake—squishy on the inside with a dab of frosting on top.

  Duke had taken intense, if not hostile, interest in Seth’s proximity to me.

  Ah, male jealousy. How delicious.

  I leaned into Duke and circled his neck with my arms, letting my fingers tangle with hair at the nape of his neck. “In that case, I accept your offer. I would love to go out with you.”

  His body hardened and his muscles flexed in anticipation. His hands slid over my hips and cupped my bottom, pulling me closer. With a shuddering breath, his gaze flicked to my throat, pupils dilating. “I…” He licked his lips, his expression hungry.

  Seth cleared his throat. “Bite her and I will pin you to the wall with this spoon.” He held up the wooden spoon in question, stolen from the kitchen at some point for a reason I’m not entirely certain of.

  Duke stiffened. I struggled to keep a straight face. Seth was a bit protective of me. Some have called him homicidal. He’s impaled, decapitated, and even disemboweled a few men who disregarded him. He meant well, though.

  Duke dropped his arms and backpedaled out of my grasp.

  This time, I did smile. “See you tonight?”

  He nodded. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  Chapter 4

  THE CLUB WAS SURPRISINGLY UPSCALE compared to Duke’s restaurant. It was located on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise building that overlooked the entire city. Glass fixtures glittered from gold chains that were fastened to the mirrored ceiling. Lighted posts segregated the dining area from the dance floor.