Lady of Blades

by Saje Williams

  "Another lifetime ago,” she replied. “These days I'm the acting President of the Vampire Conclave."

  "Equal rights for the undead. Of course.” Jaz took her hand, no longer surprised by the coolness of her grasp.

  "This is Rio,” she said, indicating the familiar dusky woman behind her. Unlike Caucasian vampires, those with darker bloodlines didn't stand out so much in a crowd. Her skin was the shade of very light mocha rather than the fish-belly white of most of the vamps Jaz ran across. “Rio has developed a blood substitute we believe will go a long way toward normalizing relations between us and the mortal world."

  "Really? Congratulations,” Jaz said to her. She didn't miss the fact that Rio neglected to extend a hand in greeting. Don't like to shake hands? No problem. I'm not a big fan of the habit myself. “I'd expect you're going to make a lot of money with that one."

  "I imagine so,” Rio answered back, clearly amused. “Last time I saw you, someone was trying to kill you."

  Jaz chuckled. “That happens a lot."

  She spun the chair so the back was to the table and straddled it, leaning her elbows on the table. “I suppose you didn't just call me over to make introductions, Renee. I'd already met Rio, anyway."

  "And you'd be right,” the vampire matriarch replied. “I called Gina in on this because it's as important to her as it is to us. We now know who killed those people and why."

  "Oh, really? Pray tell.” Jaz leaned forward a little more.

  "Thoth arranged a spell for Jason Keening—Gina's son."

  "Amanda's brother. I got it."

  "The purpose of this spell was to transport him back in time. To a point before the immortals arrived."

  "He wanted to be the most powerful thing on the planet."

  "Pretty much, yes. The only problem was the spell took a tremendous amount of energy to generate—more than Thoth and Jason could provide by themselves. In fact, had they cast it using their own life energies, it could have killed both of them, snuffed them out like a couple of candles. So Thoth had Jason find and sacrifice five innocent people so they could cast the spell without endangering themselves at all. He stored their life energies in a piece of black crystal Thoth called a soul gem."

  "So the spell was successful."

  "You raided the place within minutes of him sending Jason back."

  "We almost stopped him."

  "Almost isn't good enough."

  "You're telling me? Is there anything we can do about it now?"

  "Send someone back in time to try to intercept him before he gets started fulfilling his agenda—whatever that might be?"

  "I know what it is,” Gina sighed. “He and I have argued about it often enough. He doesn't like the idea of the Conclave, a democratic movement among the vampires. He prefers the idea of a more feudal arrangement. That's what he went back to set up. He means to be the first vampire."

  "Chaz says that whatever he does back there won't affect our universe at all. He's started a new timeline by going back."

  Jaz nodded at Renee's comment. “Or fused onto another timeline."

  "So going back ourselves—"

  "—probably won't help at all,” Jaz finished. “If anything we'd generate more problems by creating more alternate universes to contend with."

  "We already have our plate full with the Centian threat and the fact that the Tyrant Deryk Shea knows about us now. I doubt he's going to just swallow his humiliation and defeat and forget about what we did to him."

  "We can hope,” Gina said, “but I'm afraid you're right."

  "Where's your ‘little buddy?'” Rio asked in what Jaz took to be a rather strange tone.

  "Somewhere. I don't keep him on a leash."

  "Maybe you should.” She turned and walked away.

  Jaz fired a glance at Renee. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "Somehow she picked up the notion that Quickfingers is somehow responsible for her turning into a vampire,” Raven said, his first comment since she'd joined them.

  "What? Why the hell would she think that?"

  "You know—I'm not really sure. But I do know one thing. She's right."

  Jaz stared at him with her jaw hanging. “What do you mean, she's right?"

  "Rio is a biochemist whose specialty happens to be designer drugs. She's very good at what she does. As things stood before, she was under the jurisdiction of the DEA and FBI, if anyone. Athena asked Quickfingers to ‘arrange’ for that to change. He did so by deliberately infecting her with a deadly disease and a specific strain of the vampire metavirus."

  "What? Why didn't I know anything about this?"

  "You might want to ask your imp that question, Jaz,” Renee said. “Do you happen to know where he is right now?"

  "Nope. You know how he is. Hair-raising today, goon tomorrow."

  No one laughed. Okay, so that wasn't my ‘A’ material. It was at least worth a chuckle. “It's a little hard to believe he'd do something like that without telling me."

  "How does she know that's how it happened?"

  "Her lab was under video surveillance. Something I arranged, actually,” Raven said. “She'd just invented a drug designed specifically for vampires—that warranted some observation by PARD, in my book."

  "So you told her?"

  "No. She found the cameras, correctly analyzed their origins, then broke in and searched my office. She found the disks herself."

  "Resourceful."

  "Absolutely. It also tells me our security arrangements suck."

  "It's hard to guard against vampires,” Renee admitted. “We still don't have any real notion of the limitations of our powers. Maybe someday we'll find a way to quantify and catalog the different vampiric abilities. But for now..."

  "We're probably more dangerous than even the mortals who hate us can imagine,” Raven finished.

  "It's a good thing we have vamps like you and Renee, and Gina, as well, on the side of the white hats."

  "Yet the black hats can recruit their own. I'm just thankful Jason was more interested in leaving than in forging any kind of lasting alliance. I can't imagine much worse than a rogue mage teamed with a rogue vampire."

  "Except a rogue mage who is a vampire,” she pointed out.

  Raven winced. “You had to bring that up, didn't you?"

  "You should have excised Jason when you had the chance,” Gina said, shaking her head sadly. “I know that's a hell of a thing for a mother to say—"

  "But it's better the mother of a dead man than a monster, isn't it?” Raven's eyes were haunted as he fought to get the words out. He spoke from somewhere deep in his heart, that much Jaz could tell just by watching him.

  Yes, even vampires had fears, she realized. No one was immune. The great equalizer.

  Twenty-four

  Another Earth

  Tacoma, WA

  Jaz's Suite

  Sept 14, 2018

  7:00 AM

  The buzzing just wouldn't stop. Jaz rolled over and threw a pillow in the direction of the front door. “Go away!” she yelled. “I'm sleeping!"

  Like most immortals, she didn't need to sleep much, but Jaz found that after everything that happened in the past few weeks, her brain needed some serious down time. They'd come out ahead again, but this time they'd lost more ground than they could have imagined. Jason Keening running wild somewhere in the timelines. Thoth in custody but not completely controlled. They kept him in check by keeping him on drugs, but Jaz wondered how long that could last.

  She threw her legs off the bed and sat up, trying to ignore the incessant buzz from the doorbell. She slept nude, but she didn't even think to get dressed on the way to the door. There was no way in hell she was going to let anyone in.

  She activated the door viewscreen in one-way mode. She groaned when she saw who it was. What the hell does Deryk want at this ungodly hour?

  She reached out with a mana thread and called her bathrobe. “Hold on, Deryk. I'm coming,” she called through the d
oor.

  She tied the belt around her waist and ordered the door to open.

  As it slid aside, she met Shea's eyes and realized, to her shock, that he had tears in his eyes. She'd never seen the man cry before, but he was certainly crying now. “Deryk—come in."

  "Thanks,” he said in a rasping voice. He didn't sniffle. He just cleared his throat and walked to the black suede couch in her living room and fell into it. “I never should have done it,” he stated firmly.

  "Done what?"

  "I should never have let my feelings get in the way of my better judgment."

  "Could you be a little more obscure, please. I'm starting to get a clue about what you're talking about."

  He snorted. “I can always expect you to be irreverent and shake up my view of things. Nemesis is pregnant!"

  "What? That's great!"

  "Is it now? Since the beginning of our time here, not one of us has engendered a child. We've had a birthrate of exactly zero. Which means that it can't possibly be my child. Which leads me to wonder—whose child is it?"

  "Oh, shit."

  "Oh, shit ... is pretty much my reaction as well. What should I do now? Should I confront her—tell her I know for sure that she's been cheating on me?"

  Oh, Deryk, I am so not good at this, she thought. You should have gone to anyone but me. “I don't know, Deryk. I really don't. I've never even had a relationship like that. I can't even imagine what it's like."

  "That certainly provides a certain outsider's view, doesn't it?” Deryk let out a harsh, barking laugh.

  And this isn't a time when the outsider's view is going to do us any good. Jaz shook her head. “You'd better have a talk with her. And go get the baby checked out by a doctor. I think they can do DNA checks long before the baby is born now. Get it done. That way there can be no questions."

  He stood abruptly. “I can't believe this is happening."

  "Stay calm. Flying off the handle isn't going to help anyone."

  "You're right, of course. I know that.” Deryk began to pace, shaking his head at intervals and muttering under his breath.

  Jaz sighed. First step—get him down to the lab for a DNA sample. Then, go have a talk with Nemesis. Oh, what fun.

  Okay, I guess there's a downside to being his adopted daughter. I'm getting a taste of that right now. That'll teach me.

  * * * *

  On her way out the door for lunch, Nemesis Breed managed not to emit a screech of terror when Jaz came walking out of cloakroom mirror. She simply stepped back and let the woman into her office. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  "You can explain to me how you came to be pregnant,” Jaz told her simply.

  "The usual way,” Nemesis replied, sounding a little irritated.

  "I imagine that. Who, besides Deryk, have you engaged in ‘the usual way’ with?"

  "What? Who are you to even be asking that question?” She pulled herself up to her full height and tried to stare down at Jaz.

  Jaz wasn't impressed. “I'm Deryk's adopted daughter, if that isn't enough. I'm also the person whose door he shows up at seven in the morning when he has some particularly hard questions to ask himself."

  "He went to your place?” Nemesis deflated a little. “I know what he thinks ... it's impossible. I haven't been with anyone but him since we started seeing one another. It couldn't be anyone's kid but Deryk's. Dead serious."

  "You know the immortals are infertile, right?"

  "That's what he told me. I know one thing for sure ... one immortal wasn't infertile with me."

  "Would you be willing to get an early DNA test?"

  Nemesis shrugged. “I don't see why not. It can only serve to answer the questions all of us are asking. Let's go."

  * * * *

  It was a boy, and it was Shea's. She was nine weeks along, the doctors said, and would give birth to a healthy baby boy. The first pairing between an immortal and a parahuman had led to a child. Loki had given them all a miracle.

  For the first time since they'd arrived on Earth, the immortals were treating Loki as the hero he was. For the second time in as many days, Jaz was awoken to a tearful immortal. The first one had been sad and confused, the second was deliriously happy. Jaz just couldn't believe Loki had come to her to pour out his heart about how it was nice to finally be appreciated by his peers.

  Since when did she become the mother-confessor for the immortal community?

  * * * *

  The baby's birth was the most celebrated event in the history of the immortals themselves. For three days Tacoma General found itself swamped with the wildest characters imaginable, all claiming kinship with the father of the newborn ‘Justice’ Breed.

  The streets outside the hospital became a free-for-all festival as people discovered that the Rock God himself, Stormchild, was practically living at the hospital until his newest ‘cousin’ was sent home. A group of mages from Japan arrived on the second day, bearing gifts for the newborn immortal child. “He is fated to save the world,” one told his mother.

  The Dalai Lama sent his regards via a messenger, a young shaolin monk from one of the oldest schools. He came to deliver the message but stayed for two years. A promising young agent was sent with a reply and stayed to study under the Dalai Lama for an equal time.

  Even former President Mendoza took time off from her from her work with the Conclave to visit the proud parents and their amazing child. At her side was her escort and personal bodyguard, Raphael Gonz.

  At night the vampires and Abyssians arrived to pay their respects. When Feral Dusk, Queen of the Abyss, strode down the hall with her wings tucked as close to her body as she could manage, workers and patients alike got the hell out of her way.

  Raven made no such fuss. He appeared and disappeared at will, spending several hours in deep conversation with Nemesis.

  Several more immortals came out of the cold to join the growing coalition. Morrigan, the assassin, surprised everyone by petitioning to be included on the new immortal council. Hermes, who'd been holding himself aloof for quite some time, returned to the fold with an enchanting parahuman named Misty on his arm.

  Bast and her islanders continued teaching at the Academy, with Jaz filling in for the occasional lecture.

  But Jaz had more going on than just that.

  Since things had calmed down, Jaz spent a lot of time working on her newest project. She trolled the Dimension of Mirrors, and started pointing out to the Gray Robe all the things she wanted it to watch for. More than once she'd been forced to step through the mirror and rectify a bad situation. Her favorites were domestic violence and child abuse. If she saw either of those, she'd leap through on her own and intervene directly.

  "The only way to right wrongs,” she once said, “is one at a time."

  Twenty-five

  Excerpt from “21st Century Urban Legends,” by Chelsea Freedman

  Used with permission

  Then, somewhere around the late teens, a new mirror-based legend began spreading. Similar to the ‘Bloody Mary’ tale from the mid to late twentieth Century, it involved standing in front of a mirror and repeating the same thing over and over again.

  The one that developed most recently, of course, is the “Lady of Blades” charm that suggests that repeating this particular phrase will call to your aid the powers and protection of the Lady of Blades.

  Whoever she is.

  The most interesting part of this story is, of course, the fact that there have been several cases where child abuse or domestic abuse were said to be occurring where the alleged perpetrator has simply vanished off the face of the Earth.

  One particular case connected to this legend has an infamous sex-trade magnate calling out for the Lady of Blades while mocking something a reporter had said. She'd asked him if he wasn't afraid of the Lady of Blades. He'd gone home and made fun of her, dancing in front of the bathroom mirror and showing off to his latest conquest.

  Mr. Bender was found in his pool the next morning
with his throat cut and his testicles removed and placed in his mouth. His partner was found babbling about the Lady of Blades.

  The police are still investigating.

  Meet Saje Williams

  Saje Williams lives in Washington State with his wife, four dogs, the world's politest cat, a ball python, and a mouse named “Leftover.” He's been involved in canine rescue for years.

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