by Ramy Vance
But of course that was centuries ago when mythical creatures—good and evil—were hidden from humans. A time when most believed that beings like dragons, fairies, angels, devils and vampires were just the stuff of stories, old wives’ tales.
That all changed, of course, about four years ago when the gods left, their last message to the world being a voice broadcast for all the world to hear: “Thank you for believing in us, but it’s not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck.”
The second that “Good luck” rang in our collective heads, the skies and ground and oceans and just about everything else opened up, and out came all those mythical beings that no one really believed in—out in the open for everyone to see. It was raining cats and dogs and angels and trolls and everything in between.
I wish this were the setup for some joke, but my dorm roommate is a changeling. That’s it. No punchline. As in creature-of-nature, fae-warrior-with-a-broadsword, changeling. But who was I to act surprised? I was a vampire.
Was being the operative word. Seems that when the gods left, not only were we overrun with creatures once thought of as legend, but their departure also altered the way magic worked.
For one thing, creatures with magical talent now had to exchange bits of their life-force to get their mojo working. In other words, should a valkyrie wish to cast a fireball or a tunda wish to shapeshift, they would have to give up a bit of their life to make it happen. A week, maybe a month. Creatures once immortal—they call themselves OnceImmortals, original, right?—are terrified of death, and would need a very good reason to give up a second of life—let alone longer.
The other change to how magic worked was half-breeds—beings that were half-human, half-something else—reverted back to being fully human. Werewolves, werehyenas, weredragons, were-whatever—human. Zombies and ghouls—human.
Vampires? Human.
“I wonder where his mask is …” my mother said.
I blinked, coming back to reality. “Mask? Oh, mask … you mean his cherub’s mask. It’s, ahhh, in the back, I think. Being cleaned.”
“And his dirk?”
“Ah, yeah, that too. Real nasty, it was.”
She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me. And she was right not to. Both items were currently hidden in my dorm room. They probably did need a good cleaning, though.
I grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the display to distract from my lie. “You said something about danger?”
“I did—it seems that we’re being hunted.”
“By who?”
“By whom, darling. Don’t tell me that the centuries undid the classical education your father and I gave you.” She gave me an appraising look. And by appraising, I mean, a ‘this item is broken and therefore requires a discount’ kind of thing. Then she shrugged and sighed before going on, “Not sure yet. All I know for sure is that we’re being hunted by the same people.”
“Who?”
“Whom. Like I said, I’m not sure.”
Well, this sounded promising. “Why are we being hunted? Unless you’re not sure of that either.”
“Oh, I’m very sure of the why. You for a different reason than me.”
“Which is …?”
She sighed, looked into the nearest display and said, “Not here, darling. Let us go for a walk.”
It was my turn to sigh. And this time I really did roll my eyes.
Good ol’ Mom.
IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T HEARD—THE GODS ARE GONE
M y mother and I left the relative quiet and security of the near-empty Other Studies Library for the hustle and bustle on lower campus. It was a large open area between the university libraries, the buildings that housed the Science, Arts and Business classes, and Student Admin. To the south was the university’s main entrance and city.
This was my home: McGill University. It was one of the few universities that accepted Other submissions, and the only place of higher education that had an entire library dedicated to the study of Others. Everyone else that studied Others tended to do so in military bunkers.
This particular spot on lower campus was where everyone gathered between classes to play Ultimate frisbee, pretend to study, smooch (how 1930s of me) and just generally hangout. For some reason that predates me (as a human student, that is), everyone calls this area The Quad.
For the life of me, I have no idea why. My best guess is that some Star Trek geek pointed out that it was in fact shaped in quadrants (quad for short, obviously) where everyone was supposed to divide into cliques, and it caught on.
I don’t mind. I have to admit … I do love Star Trek.
On the grassy fields stood every manner of student this GoneGod World had to offer. Humans, dracons, yetis, fairies, pixies, houri, raiju, baku and clurichaun all hung around, either waiting for their next call or ditching a class in favor of some fun in the sun.
It was good to see so many different species getting along, to be honest. Not three months ago, an old librarian (the guy who used to be in charge of the Other Studies Library, and a bit of a friend) was killed, and one of the mythical creatures—an Other—was, of course, blamed. This nearly caused a civil war between Others and humans, but thankfully things got sorted out when it was proven that a human was behind the killing.
Still, it could have been bad—
“Darling, you’re muttering to yourself.”
“I am? Er, I am,” I said, silently admonishing myself for talking out loud again. My mother was giving me that disapproving look she gave when I was doing something she didn’t like, but wasn’t bad enough to outright punish, much to her chagrin. Like eating my vegetables too slow for her liking.
But her eyes (paradoxically, she’d stowed her sunglasses in her purse as soon as we stepped into the sun; but when a vampire has missed the sun for three hundred years, you tended to stop trying to hide from it) also betrayed that she hadn’t quite heard me. She’d heard something, but not everything, and it clearly vexed her. Her old age was finally catching up to her.
“What was I saying?” I asked, both to know what she’d heard and vex good ol’ Mom a wee bit more. What can I say? Daughters—we’re a handful.
“Something about Others and humans getting along. I don’t know, sounds like a load of crock to me. You know, darling, ever since you became a part of this new world and lost your Scottish accent, I find you difficult to follow. Breaks your mother’s heart.”
“ ‘Became a part of this new world’ … interesting choice of words. But what do you mean exactly? The Americas or the GoneGod world?”
I wince at hearing myself say that. I hated how she referred to this entire continent as the Americas. But she comes by that word honestly—it was the term used in our time. I let it slip by habit, which was becoming a … habit … around this woman.
“Both—but mostly I mean the GoneGod World.” She stopped walking and turned to me, taking my hand. “Oh darling, I’m falling into old habits of not saying what I mean and still wanting you to understand me. I am so sorry.”
Old habits. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose?
She took my hand in hers and for a long moment, I stared at it, not sure what to do. In the three hundred years and change we’d both been vampires, we were constantly at each other’s throats—literally—always trying to hurt one another with words and with teeth.
And here I was—newly human and holding the hand of the woman who both gave me life and tried to take it back.
But that wasn’t the most confusing part. She’d just apologized. To me. Without me holding an axe to her neck (long story). She never apologized. Not as a human and certainly not as a vampire.
Although my brain told me that this was an act, my heart said it wasn’t. I know my heart—after three hundred years you get to know yourself in a way no self-help book or shrink could do for you—and it both told me what I should believe and what I wanted to believe.
Trouble with should and want is that neither of them mean true.
S
till. I clasped down on her hand and said, “So what do you mean?”
“I mean me, darling. Me. I’m the one who is struggling with this new GoneGod World. Ever since I lost my powers, I’ve just been … floundering. Before I could hear your every thought, whether you were speaking out loud or not. Now, I can barely hear you when you are standing right next to me.” She scanned the Quad. “I could sense danger before it was anywhere near me, I could hardcore-parkour myself from here to the top of that building without breaking a sweat.”
“Hardcore parkour?” I asked. She’d clearly picked that up from a college kid on the way to the library.
She ignored me. “I could see a bee’s ass from five hundred meters away. Now I can’t do any of that. I’m just … just …”
“Human?”
She nodded, pulled away her hand and dug into her purse, finding a cigarette. Lighting it, she inhaled a deep breath and slowly blew out a menthol-filled puff of smoke. She calmed down, whether with the nicotine, menthol, simple act of smoking or all three.
“Mom,” I said in soft voice that surprised even me. “You shouldn’t smoke—those things will kill you.”
“Oh darling, darling,” she laughed, “you always did care for others. Must’ve gotten that from your father.” Then, looking at the cigarette as if appraising a diamond, she sighed. “Alas, I just can’t kick it, darling. I have been smoking for nearly two centuries without consequences … and now that there are consequences, I frankly don’t give a damn.”
“You could vape,” I offered.
She gave me a blank look that simultaneously conveyed that she didn’t understand what I meant, nor did she care too. I let it go. I was used to that look.
“I get what you mean,” I said. “To lose all that strength … all our abilities. But it’s not all bad.”
She tilted her head, narrowing her eyes, challenging me to prove it.
“For one thing,” I said, “we can get our food from a grocery store instead of … you know.” I made a chomping noise.
She raised one eyebrow, as if to say that wasn’t a positive life change at all.
I added, “For another thing, we’re standing outside. In the sun. Together.”
At that she looked up at the sun and smiled. “True. So very true.” Then her face went somber again. “Darling, I’m afraid I have put you in grave danger by being here … and if I had any other choice I would have stayed a million miles away.”
“So you’ve mentioned. Can you tell me what this is about?”
“The gods are gone.”
“I know,” I said, feeling my old teenage anger flaring up at my mom’s ability to state the obvious and prattle on without actually saying anything at all.
“Ever wonder where they went?”
“No, not really. Golf resort? I just figured that the gods were being selfish pricks by going and causing all this trouble.”
My mom, a devout Catholic despite the Scotland of her childhood being Presbyterian, would have never let me get away with using the word “god,” or even “gods,” and “prick” in the same sentence.
But instead of the expected tirade, she just nodded. “You might not have wondered or cared, but do you think that is true of those around you?” She gestured at my fellow students on the Quad.
I looked over the crowd of Others and humans and knew that most would love to know where the gods went. Their departure—their GrandExodus (who names these things?)—was so sudden, and the appearance of the Others was so unexpected, that the world was thrown into chaos. And even though this university had opened up admissions to all species, I knew I was living in a bubble.
Elsewhere, people were suffering. Violence had never been higher, and was only rising. People were dying. And all because their once loved gods didn’t care enough about them to stick around and keep the world in line.
I was sure that many would want to know where the gods went. And why they left. Not because the knowledge would change anything, but because it would offer some semblance of closure. Perhaps even peace.
Returning my gaze to my mother, I nodded. “I suppose many would want to know.”
“And what would that knowledge—if it fell into the wrong hands—do?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“Think about it, darling. If some master manipulator or fantastic liar were to get this knowledge, can you imagine the harm they could do? Force people into believing something that isn’t true. Develop a new religion based on getting the gods back—or keeping them away forever. Force Earth’s resources into developing technology to follow the gods to whatever golf resort they fled to.”
I stared at her, not responding.
She forged on. “Use it as leverage to take control, darling. That is the power of that knowledge—of the greatest unanswered question—should it fall into the wrong hands.”
At first, my natural inclination was to insist that she was wrong, that she was just being dramatic. But as soon as my knee-jerk, parents-don’t-know-anything reaction subsided, I thought about what she said carefully and couldn’t deny that she was absolutely right. There is no telling what Others and humans alike could be manipulated into doing or believing if they knew where their gods went.
And knowing where they went was one step before knowing why they left. Why was far more dangerous than where. Why would carry all sorts of implications with it—we weren’t good enough, devoted enough, powerful enough. Entire cults had already sprung up, either to atone for driving the gods away or to appease them enough to return, or, in some cases, with a level of cognitive dissonance only achievable by religious nuts, somehow both. And all of it was built on baseless speculation.
Give them a reason that was real and—
I shook my head. “I doubt most would believe them.”
“Ahhh, you were always a sharp one, my dear. But what if I told you that we could not only find out where they went, but also verify the absolute truth in that knowledge. This isn’t a ‘maybe’ or ‘possibly’ scenario. This is a without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt situation.”
“How?”
“Magic, darling. Magic.”
“Magic comes with a price.”
“But think of the knowledge, darling. Knowledge, mind you, that would have proof behind it. Knowledge that would be absolutely verifiable. I know it’s a lot to take in. But it’s true. And what’s more,” my mother said, leveling me with an ominous stare, “you have the key to unlocking this knowledge.”
DANGER, LOST GODS AND BOYFRIENDS
What a load of centaur shit.
“You’re thinking out loud again, darling.”
I glared at my mother. Good ol’ Mom, piquing my interest despite myself. “Key?”
“Well, from what I understand it’s more like an amulet—”
“OK, OK, slow down for a second,” I said, trying to remind myself that I was staring at a woman who had done a heck of lot of evil in her life. Granted, all of that was as a vampire, and she was human now—as far as I could tell—but I had once been a vampire, too, and I can honestly say with firsthand knowledge that losing your soul doesn’t change who you are.
Not entirely.
It just removes the consequences of your actions, which in time whittles away your guilt. After all, if you were going to live forever and it was virtually impossible to kill you, why care about what you do? And what’s more, if all that power depended on you sucking some blood out of normal people who didn’t have any power—well, after a few decades, you start to have as much regard for them as one might a slab of steak bought from a grocery store (and before you ask—I have never met a vegetarian vampire, partly because blood is simply too tempting, but mostly because if you didn’t drink, you didn’t live).
A slab of meat … yikes. Sorry for the visual.
Anyway, now that I’m human again, I really don’t feel that different. Sure, I don’t need blood and I’m no longer super-strong, super-fast or super-anything. But it’s mor
e than that. It’s not like my personality changed. Well, completely, anyway.
That’s the hardest part about being human now. Deep down you always knew killing was wrong, but you did it anyway. You did it because when given the choice between killing and dying, you chose killing. And now all that blood followed you around in life, and this time it wouldn’t quench your thirst.
That was what it was like for me.
But my mother—she was something else. Someone else. Free of consequences she did as she liked when she liked, no matter who was hurt, and she never blinked an eye weighed down with an ounce of remorse. At least that’s what I saw.
Thinking all this and still trying to find my mom’s angle, I said, “So you’re one of the good guys … trying to keep the amulet out of the bad guys’ hands.”
“Oh darling, you always ask the question behind the question. You should be asking how it is that you have the key—”
“Kat. Kat!”
I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. I could recognize that Ghanaian’s voice in the middle of a hurricane.
“Hi, Egya,” I said, not turning around.
Caught at college with my mother. How embarrassing.
↔
“KAT, where have you been? You missed Psych class.”
My eyes opened wide and I think my pupils must have shrunk because my mom put a concerned hand on my shoulder. “Shit,” I muttered.
“We reviewed for Tuesday’s test. Lots of good information,” Egya said, his white teeth accented by his dark skin. Tall, muscular and handsome, Egya had all the signs of a strong, stable man. Then he spoke and almost everything that came out of his mouth was a joke or game.
But me missing Psychology 101 was no joke. I was barely passing the class and if I didn’t get at least a C on the test I’d flunk and be forced to repeat it or change majors. Right now that didn’t seem like a bad thing—why did you need Psychology in Business School, anyway?
“I totally forgot …” I started.
Egya ignored me, pushing past and extending his hand to my mother, his voice suddenly as formal as Cinderella’s ball. “Hello, Ms. Darling—I am Egya-Boi Awoonar. Katrina’s classmate, friend and person who bails her out with his most excellent notes.”