by Ramy Vance
“Indeed.”
“Sorry,” I muttered. I pointed at the O3 Bro. “So if Justin, your friend, likes me, can I be as bad as you evidently feel about me? Or maybe, just maybe, there’s something wrong going on here.”
He shook his head, then nodded. “Maybe … It’s all so confusing.” He hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. “So muddled.”
“Friends—lend me your ears.”
“Kat …” Egya whispered. “What are you doing?”
“Quoting Shakespeare.”
“You’re quoting a guy who got stabbed multiple times by his friends.”
“Whatever—just shush and let me work my charm.” I turned back to the crowd, lifted my left hand and placed my right hand over my heart. I called out, “You do not wish to hurt me—us. Don’t you see? Dr. Dewey’s killer wants to distract us by causing distrust and anger. There is an evil spell afoot, cast to sow the seeds of distrust and anger. Let us not give him—or her—the satisfaction. Let us walk away and foil this evil plan.”
I turned to my friends. Mergen groaned, but Deirdre was nodding in approval.
Egya, on the other hand, eyed me with confusion. “Why are you speaking like that?”
“Gravitas—more likely to break the spell with it than without.”
“Is it?” he asked. Then, grabbing me with lightning-fast reflexes, he pulled me several inches to the right just as a beer bottle flew by. “Perhaps not as effective as you think.”
I turned to see the crowd shifting their weight from foot to foot as they prepared to advance. Looking over at Justin’s Bro, the only one who expressed doubt, I saw that he had traded his confused eyes for clenched fists. He cracked his knuckles in that I got a tough job ahead of me sort of way and took a step forward.
So much for talking them out of this.
“OK,” I said. “Time for Plan B.”
“Plan B?” Deirdre asked, stepping forward so that she stood shoulder to shoulder with me.
“Yep, Plan B.” I kicked Broken Nose in the shin and, as he went down, I punched him in the broken nose, breaking the plaster cast. The pain knocked him out cold. I looked at the remaining seventeen people and assessed my options.
Then I turned around and ran.
HAVE you ever been chased by an angry mob through a modern city that prides itself on being tolerant? If not, you’re missing out.
There’s a certain brand of ire that rolls off all the citizens like waves of heat as you run past them. First, they watch you, confusion painting their faces, perhaps saying to one another:
“Why are two humans and two Others being chased?”
“Is this right?”
“Aren’t we welcoming to Others?”
“Should we call someone?”
But then, as you pass by them and the hex takes hold, that confusion becomes certainty:
These four are guilty of something—not sure what, but that doesn’t matter.
What matters is they are captured—brought to justice.
Better yet—dealt with.
These four are clearly evil!
And finally: The mob chasing them will need help. Our help.
Which effectively meant the angry mob grew every time we passed a pedestrian, someone sitting outside or a dog walker. I even saw two drivers abandon their cars just so they could chase us on foot.
We ran out of the alley and up toward the mountain. It was night, and I figured that the best place to lose them was up where there were no streetlamps, limited population to fall under the hex and lots of trees casting moon shadows to hide under. Still, that meant running uphill and past Gerts, the campus bar, where a bunch of students who had opted to skip the vigil were standing outside smoking. Before we even passed them, they were flicking away their cigarettes or pocketing their vaping devices and moving to block our way. I had to knee one of them in the—ahem—family jewels, and elbow another's nose to get past.
How many noses does a girl have to break to get left the hell alone?
Egya chose a more elegant solution—he jumped on a parked car and used the height advantage to jump clear over them. Elegant, indeed, especially when compared to Deirdre, who opted to clothesline several guys before they even had a chance to pocket their lighters. Mergen, however, was less suited to get past them. Deirdre and I had to double back, flattening two girls who were literally trying to tie him up with their cardigans.
We got past them just as the main mob caught up.
“We need to get out of the city!” Egya yelled. “Up there.” He pointed at the beginning of the mountain’s treeline. “If we could just get in there before they tear us apart, we might be able to lose them.”
We ran and ran some more, until finally we arrived. There was our potential salvation, a neat line of trees heralding the entrance to a vast forest—and all we had to do was cross a four-lane road … that was currently bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Perfect!
“Jump over the hoods!” I yelled, taking a leaf from Egya’s book.
Egya nodded appreciatively, but Deirdre didn’t immediately understand my reasoning and opted to run between two cars. Before she even got through, the white reverse lights of the lead car lit up and the back car's engine revved. The two cars collided into each other as they tried to pinch her between back and front bumpers.
“Deirdre!” I screamed.
Fortunately, changelings have lightning-fast reflexes. She managed to jump straight up and onto the back car’s hood before she was caught. The driver, who, under the powers of the hex, also had fast reflexes, threw his car into reverse. Deirdre fell. Then he floored the car again, trying to throw her into the car in front of his.
Deirdre managed to get to her feet just as I jumped onto my first hood, where that driver did the same thing, trying to knock me off my feet.
This was the worst game of Frogger I’d ever played—and given that I was helping Mergen cross, it wasn’t loading well for me … at this pace, the crowd would catch up and tear us to shreds.
So I did the only thing I could think of—I jumped back off the car and opened the driver’s door. I yanked the driver out and, pushing Mergen through to the passenger’s side, made an impromptu tunnel for us.
Then I grabbed the next driver and, using a kickboxing move I learned in Bangkok, swiped her feet and knocked her to the floor of the car. I gestured to Mergen to move his ass and we burrowed through the second car.
Two lanes crossed. Frogger Level 50% Complete. Only two more cars and we’d be at the treeline.
Except, by now, the two other cars were savvy to my strategy and had simply locked their doors to foil me.
Mergen and I were trapped, with the angry mob only yards behind us. I was looking for an escape when I heard a deep honk and saw that, several cars back, Egya had hijacked a city bus.
He slammed on the accelerator and the two cars in front of us smashed into each other, which stopped the cars from doing their back-and-forth trick. He’d also managed to use the sheer size of the bus to do the same thing to the cars in the fourth and final lane. This made jumping over their hoods relatively safe. Mergen and I, thankful for the assist, wasted no time getting across the other two lanes over the tops of the cars.
“Thanks!” I yelled as we made it to the treeline. Egya honked his reply.
Once inside, we ran up the middle of the woods. My plan was to get to Beaver Lake, where there were a few buildings for us to break into and hide. I turned to see the angry mob bursting through the treeline. We were only about forty feet ahead of them, but at least, being in this brush, we were out of their line of sight.
“Come on—let’s move,” I whispered.
Deirdre grabbed my arm and stopped me. “No,” she said. “I have a better idea.”
“What are you doing? We’ve got to keep moving,” I said.
But Deirdre didn’t budge. She just placed a calm finger over her lips, shushing me. She faced the road. I could hear the angry mob only yards away. A few more seconds and
they’d be parallel with us. All it would take was one of them to look to their right and we’d be sunk.
But Deirdre just stood stock-still, almost defiantly so. I suddenly worried that she was planning to do something stupid and attack the human mob. But Deirdre didn’t attack. She … swooned—as in lightly swayed back and forth, her feet planted firmly in place. Then, fanning out her fingers and twirling them so it looked like she was playing some invisible piano, she began to hum.
“Deirdre! Be quiet,” I whispered harshly, taking a step forward. If she wasn’t going to shut up, I’d have to shut her up.
Egya stopped me. “Kat … look.” He pointed at the ground.
What I saw was nothing short of a miracle.
The earth around us began to move. No, move was the wrong word … moving implies that something shifts from one place to another. The brush didn’t just shift. It grew and expanded and intertwined itself until it formed a canopy in front of us that blocked the view from the road—but what was even more odd was that we could still see the road. Like window blinds, the leaves had angled themselves so we had a one-way view out while blocking the view in. And what was most spectacular about what was happening was the brush didn’t make any noise as it twisted and angled, grew and intertwined.
It was utterly silent.
The angry mob ran past us, completely unaware. I could hear Ponytail call out, “They must be at the lake.” The rallying cry of determined and violent humans followed, and we heard the scamper of feet continue along the path.
After a long minute, the footsteps faded into the darkness, and we were alone.
Deirdre turned to me, smiling, proud of what she’d just done. “Camouflage—fae-style,” she said simply.
I nodded curtly. “How long?”
Deirdre tilted her head to one side in confusion.
“You burnt time, right? To create the magic that did this?”
She nodded.
“How long?”
She didn’t answer.
“How long?” I growled.
“Twelve hours.”
I stared at her. “Twelve hours? Do you know what you can do with twelve hours? And you wasted them—threw that precious time away—and for what? We could have outrun them.”
“Kat,” Egya interjected, “I disagree. We were pretty far away from them for a while, and we’re even farther away now, but they’re still an angry mob. Even outside of the hex. They wouldn’t have let us just run away.”
I looked around at my hapless crew. “That doesn’t justify what Deirdre did, Egya. She wasted twelve hours of her life. For nothing.”
Mergen groaned.
“Shut up—just because you don’t like the taste of something, doesn’t make it a lie.”
Mergen smacked his lips.
“We could have outrun them,” I repeated, my rage bubbling.
Deirdre stared down at the ground.
“Kat,” Egya said. “The girl did what she thought was best. She sacrificed her time to save us. You should be more—”
“What? Grateful? Grateful that I’m on top of a volcano with you? Grateful that someone is trying to kill me? Grateful that my fellow students want to string me up?”
“The hex will wear off by morning.”
“But how do you know? You just said they’re outside the range of the hex. So how do you know?”
Egya’s cold glare was all I got as an answer.
“Fine—it will wear off by morning. What do we do until then?”
Without turning around, Egya pointed up toward the huge neon cross at the top of the hill, to the right of where the mob had run. “We rest.”
“Oh, great,” I said, pushing past him. “We rest.” I trekked up the hill toward the neon cross and my bed for the night.
Here I was—an ex-vampire—sitting under a Christian crucifix, the symbol that I had feared for three hundred years and now used as sanctuary, on top of a GoneGodsDamned volcano and waiting for dawn so that an angry mob hexed out of their minds wouldn’t kill me.
Great advice to stay, Medusa, I thought, not caring if it was in my head or aloud.
As I reached the cross, I wondered if there was a worse place for me to be.
END OF PART 3
PART IV
INTERMISSION
“This may come off as arrogant … but I know why the gods left.”
Cue the dramatic pause, look around the audience, make eye contact. That’s very important—eye contact. That’s the one commonality between Others and humans—neither group can ignore eye contact. Then take a deep breath. Give them your best wicked smile. You know the one—the golden smile that has gotten you your way so many times before. The smile that says you are smart but down-to-earth. Beautiful, but somehow still approachable. Young, but wise.
“I know what many of you are thinking. How do I know something that so many scholars, philosophers, scientists, politicians and theologians don’t know? The answer is simple—they know, too. They just don’t have the balls to say it.”
Cue the fencing—just so the audience knows there is no escape.
“The gods left because we disappointed them.”
Begin the incantation. Evoke Huitzilopochtli. Evoke Shang Ti, Moloch, Kū, Re—even Yahweh. After all, the Old Testament was full of animal sacrifices. What is a human but an upgrade?
“They left because we forgot who they were.”
Push the scared little students into the center of the field. Then randomly point at someone young and frail—but pick carefully. You need the first sacrifice to be a screamer. Wait silently as the first sacrifice is tied to the tabernacle—the stone lip of the dried-up fountain. Once the virgin is secure, resume your speech.
“They left because we forgot who we were.”
Pull out the knife. The virgin will scream, so wait it out. If he or she doesn’t stop after, say, ten seconds, gag them. Remember: at this point, the party will probably think this is all part of the show. It won’t be until the blood starts flowing that they’ll realize what’s truly going on. Realize that they are all doomed to the same fate.
“Well, it’s time to remind us all—god and mortal alike—just who and what we are.”
Run the knife’s tip along the virgin’s body. Take it slow.
“Once that happens, they’ll come back.”
Stab, stab, stab.
“Did I mention my speech was going to kill?”
ON A HILL, BENEATH A NEON CROSS, WAITING FOR DAWN
Day One of University: Witness a gruesome murder and defeat a giant bulldog.
Day Two of University: Spend the morning hours being interrogated by a detective and the nighttime hours being chased by an angry mob.
And before Day Three even begins, I’m hiding out beneath a giant neon cross crowning an inactive volcano. My companions include a changeling, the physical representation of Mergen the Turkish god of War and Wisdom—a creature who feeds on, might I add, the Truth—and some guy from Ghana who thinks he knows me.
“I do know you,” Egya called out. “I know what you were and who you are.”
GoneGodsDamn it—talking out loud again. “Private thought,” I yelled back.
“I also know what you will become if you don’t face your past.”
“Oh, and what’s that?” I hoisted myself off the mesh fence that surrounded the base of the cross and walked up to Egya. I might not have had my vampiric strength anymore, but I still knew karate, kung fu, Krav Maga, Brazilian jujitsu, as well as Scottish and aikido-based swordplay … and I was looking for a fight.
Egya made a growling noise. Not like a dog. This sounded more like someone trying to suppress a laugh. A menacing, scary, soul-shaking laugh.
Deirdre stood behind me. “If you lay a hand on Lady Darling, I shall—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Egya said, stepping back. “I won’t touch her. I don’t hit girls.”
Mergen groaned at this, clutching his stomach in pain.
“Sentient lie detect
or,” I said, pointing at the avatar.
“Fine,” he said. “I don’t hit girls … unless in the heat of battle, and said girl—” he pointed at me “—is an ex—”
“Don’t you say it,” I warned.
“—something-or-Other,” Egya said, giving emphasis to that last word purposefully, “who is more than capable of defending herself. But I would never, ever hurt the defenseless or weak.”
At this Mergen hummed and rubbed his belly in satisfaction.
I looked at Mergen, the sentient lie detector. How can that be the Truth? I thought.
“I’m not the hapless agent of chaos you think I am,” Egya said. “Believe it or not, I want to help you.”
Mergen licked his lips.
“See?” Egya said, pointing at Mergen.
“Help me? How? You mean like you did on campus?”
“I saved you.”
“Again—how? Were you the one who had to re-break a nose that probably looks like a dumpster fire by now?”
“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have noticed the hex. And before you say anything—we all know you know exactly what a hex is … so don’t play stupid with us.”
Mergen sucked on his fingers one at a time, as if licking off barbecue sauce.
“You—” I pointed at the ghostly white avatar “—stop that. And you …” I looked back at Egya. “Why do you want to help me so badly?”
“Because,” Egya said, “I know the cost of running from your past.”
“I’m not running from anything.”
“So that wasn’t you going to Student Admin to drop out just two days into the semester?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Mergen groaned and made a face like he had just accidentally drunk sour milk.
Deirdre looked at me, a look of hurt surprise on her face. “You are leaving?”
“No.”
Mergen spat on the ground.
“I mean, yes.”
I looked at Mergen, who continued to make a disapproving face.
“Maybe,” I said.
At that, Mergen smiled.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I admitted. “But it’s hard. I mean …” I gestured around us. “This is only my third night here.”