Mortality Bites - The COMPLETE Boxed Set (Books 1 - 10): An Urban Fantasy Epic Adventure

by Ramy Vance

  Next best thing? Possibly. But just because you’re only meeting a god’s avatar, doesn’t make the experience any less powerful. Or weird.

  And when it came to Mergen, weird was what you got. You see, Mergen didn’t eat food, drink blood or soak up sunrays for nourishment. He ate Truth—the real stuff, with a capital T.

  Tell him a lie—anything, really, that wasn’t the Truth, the Whole Truth, So Help You, God—and he’d groan like he just took a sip of sour milk. Tell him the truth—the Truth—and he’d smack his lips in exquisite joy. The bigger the truth, the happier he is. Same goes for the other way.

  In other words, he’s a human lie-detector.

  I took my mother to the alleyway behind McGill’s bookstore, the avatar’s usual haunt. Sure enough, there was the nearly translucent, white Other sitting on a cardboard slat. He wore traditional Turkish garb that made him look like the father in Aladdin and was reading a stack of Harlequin Romances. Egya asked him about that once. Supposedly those little trashy books contained more truth about love, sex and relationships than you’d think. And judging by how plump he was these days, he was getting a lot of Truth out of this batch.

  “Mother, meet Mergen.”

  She looked at him, then me, before extending a careful hand. “Hello, Mr. Mergen. Pleasure to meet you.”

  Mergen, instead of taking the proffered hand, groaned in dissatisfaction.

  “Interesting response,” my mother whispered to me, retracting her hand.

  “He’s eccentric, Mother, but he is brilliant. No one knows more about magical artifacts than he does.”

  At this, he groaned again, making a “yuk” face. He knew about as much about magical items as I did. I ignored this—my mother wouldn’t know what he meant by that—pulled out the amulet half from my purse and handed it to him. “What can you make of this, Mergen?”

  Mergen looked at it, confused.

  “My mother says it can …” I turned to her. “How did you phrase it?”

  Instead, she glanced at him dubiously. “Are you sure we can trust him?”

  “With my life,” I said.

  At this he smiled, smacking his lips. Which seemed to only unsettle Mother more, much to my delight.

  “Very well,” she sighed. “Once activated it will help us know where the gods went and why.”

  Mergen made a sour face, which my mother hopefully interpreted to mean that he, too, thought the knowledge too great for any one person to have.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to him, playing along. “My mother knows people.”

  “Indeed—my organization will protect it.”

  At this, surprisingly, Mergen smiled.

  OK—so far one in the lie column, one in the truth column. Let’s dig.

  “Mother, do you have any idea how it works?”

  My mother shook her head. “From what I understand, you have to ask it the right questions. It will only answer with the knowledge it possesses, but I’m told this is almost infinite.”

  Mergen rubbed his tummy in satisfaction. Mother took a small step backward, as if sickened by him.

  “I also know,” she went on, “that there is a difference between what you want to be true and what is actually True. It will tell you both—and you have to decide which one you will follow. That is why it is so dangerous.”

  Judging from Mergen’s pleased look, more Truth.

  So far my mother was hitting it out of the park. Everything she said was true except one thing—what the amulet actually revealed. I also had proof that she knew it wouldn’t do what she told us it would … I knew this because Mergen can only tell when you are lying. If my mother actually believed the amulet possessed the knowledge of where the gods went and why, Mergen would not have reacted the way he did at her answer.

  “Mergen,” I said, “any idea how it works?”

  The avatar just shrugged.

  “OK.” I about-faced, facing my mother, and folded my arms. “Mother, one last question … what does the amulet actually do? No more games. And no more lies.”

  ↔

  “DARLING, WHATEVER DO YOU MEAN?”

  “I mean that you are lying to me … well, actually you’re telling me a lot of true stuff … but you’re lying about the knowledge the amulet possesses. It doesn’t know where the gods are, does it?”

  “Darling—again, what are you talking about …?” Her voice trailed off as she looked down at Mergen. “You, ghost man … who are you?”

  “Mergen. I already told you.”

  “Not you, darling, him. Answer me.”

  Mergen just looked up, sucking air between his teeth. It took me a long time to know how to talk to this guy. It would take my mother even long—

  “My name is Charlotte Darling,” she said.

  Mergen narrowed his eyes.

  “Fine, my name was Charlotte McMahon, but some years after turning into a vampire, I changed it to Charlotte Darling so that my daughter and I could still have … a connection. After all, vampire or not, we were still flesh and blood.”

  He smacked his lips.

  “I’m a famous ballerina.”

  At this Mergen crunched up his face in distaste.

  “I see …” she said. “You are a clever little girl, aren’t you? Using this poor creature in our little games. You are so sure I’m lying to you that you will stoop to all manners of deception yourself to just catch me in a single half-truth.”

  At this Mergen began chewing—loudly—before belching—also loudly.

  “Very well, my precious little darling, you want the truth, you shall have it. This amulet is a map, and when I said it will tell us about where the gods went, that was half the truth. It will, more accurately, indicate where the magic they left behind is—”

  Mergen began to make dissatisfied noises, but before he could grace us with a full reaction, my mother held a finger up to his face and snapped, “And before you give us your reaction, let me finish. It will indicate where some of the magic is. In other words, it will allow its user access to a well of magic that can be used for evil.”

  At this Mergen’s face relaxed and eventually brightened.

  “This map, in the wrong hands, can disrupt the balance of power.”

  Mergen gave us an appreciative sigh.

  “And, before I get accused of lying again, let me say that it might be a significant clue into where the gods went and why.”

  I looked down at Mergen and noted that not only did he look like he was having the best meal of his life, but he was also holding his hand out, gesturing like he couldn’t eat another bite.

  Seeing his reaction was like a slap in the face because it meant that I was wrong.

  My mother was telling the truth.

  Miracles really did still happen.

  ↔

  THERE ARE few tortures I can’t take. I should know—I’ve been drowned, skewered like a kabob with red-hot metal, punched, kicked … I’ve even had my nails pulled out by a particularly nasty pixie in Dublin one drunken night about forty years ago.

  I would happily trade any of those with the look of “I told you so” my mother was currently throwing at me.

  “Satisfied?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Satisfied?” Her voice was louder now.

  I nodded. Reluctantly.

  “Good. Do you have anything to say to your mama?”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, looking at the ground.

  “Come again? I didn’t hear you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, louder.

  My mother looked over at Mergen, who was busy picking his teeth. “Yes,” she said, “I can see that you are. Very well—would you like to know how you can make it up to me?”

  I nodded, not sure if I really did. Thankfully she didn’t look at Mergen for confirmation.

  “Come with me. We’ll make it our little mother-daughter bonding road trip.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let me just call the boys and check up on them.�
��

  I pulled out my phone and, groaning at how early it still was, dialed Justin’s number. No answer. I dialed Egya’s, and it rang four times before someone picked up.

  And it wasn’t Egya.

  SOMETIMES ALL IT TAKES IS A PHONE CALL

  “Who is this?” I asked, putting the phone on speaker.

  “Who do you think this is?” the voice hissed back. “We have your friends, which puts me in a strange situation. You see, at first I thought I’d interrogate them to find out where you are. But then I saw how much the two of them did nae want to tell me anything and figured that you tricked them into loving you.”

  “Did nae”? Who still talks like that? Shaking aside the thought, I growled into the phone, “If you hurt them—”

  “Good—that’s all the confirmation I need to know that you care about them. We’re at the Rust Yard. From what I know, it’s a pretty famous place. Come and get them. You have three hours and then you need not be in a rush anymore, if you catch me meaning.”

  Click.

  He was gone.

  ↔

  “LET’S GO, DARLING,” my mother said, gently grabbing my arm. Her “I told you so” tone had vanished.

  “This makes no sense. Divine Cherubs don’t hurt civilians. Why would they take Justin and Egya?”

  “A lot can change in a few hundred years. Rogue factions can emerge. Man’s heart is corruptible … is it really that hard to imagine that the Cherubs would become more violent, more”—she searched for the word—“evil?”

  “But …” I narrowed my eyes. “And that accent—did it strike you as familiar?”

  She shrugged. “We’ve both spent many lifetimes traveling. All accents are familiar in some sense.”

  “He also said … ‘did nae.’ You heard that, right? Who talks like that?”

  Another shrug. “Scots, Irish—romantics.”

  I shook my head slowly, thinking. “No, it’s more than that. I sensed a bit of Scottish twang there.”

  “Like I said—Scots, Irish, romantics.”

  I shook my head more vehemently. “You don’t understand. I didn’t just hear a Scottish accent. I heard an Inverness one. Just like the one from home … but not Inverness now. Inverness from when we were human.”

  “We are human, darling.”

  “No, Mother. From when we were human three hundred years ago.”

  At this my mother scoffed. “Darling. A Scottish accent I can give you. I’ll even go along with Inverness, although I doubt that. But Inverness from when we were first human? That’s ridiculous. Patently absurd! You don’t even have an accent from Inverness anymore. Neither do I.”

  My mother was right. Over the centuries I’d lost my accent, turning it into a hodgepodge of dialects from around the world. I doubted I could turn on my childhood accent even if I wanted to.

  “Darling—come, let’s go.”

  I nodded. “OK, but the Rust Yard is an hour by bus. We’ll need a car—”

  “No, darling, not the Rust Yard. To Lizile. She’s only six hours away.”

  “What? We have to save—”

  “You said it yourself. Cherubs don’t hurt civilians. They’ll let the boys go once they know we’re not coming.”

  “Divine Cherubs don’t kidnap civilians, either. Egya and Justin are in real danger—”

  “And you will only get them into more trouble by trying to help.”

  I turned my hard eyes on her. “You mean like you did by showing up?”

  She sighed and stopped trying to pull me along. “Darling, I didn’t know I was being stalked by those unbalanced hunters. If I had, I would have been more cautious.”

  “But you said that you were in danger. That people were following you.”

  “And they are, but they are months behind me. I made sure of it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s reassuring.”

  She gave me another, more patient sigh. “Look, I’ve changed. In the game of cloak and dagger, I am more cloak these days. You live longer.”

  “OK—so the danger you thought was trailing you isn’t here. But danger still followed you and you’re responsible for helping settle the consequences.”

  “I might be, darling, but I’m also responsible for getting the amulet and helping many more people than just Justin and Egya—as handsome as the former and charming as the latter may be.”

  It was in that moment that literally hundreds of years of frustration came pouring out of me.

  “I thought you changed, Mother, but clearly you haven’t. Always looking out for yourself, throwing others in prison in your place and throwing away the key once you’ve had your way with them.”

  She blinked. She looked genuinely confused—which wasn’t the emotional response I was looking to elicit.

  “No, darling, I am thinking. Something you should try, I might add. And before you can come back at me with some platitude,” she said, lifting a silencing hand, “here are my thoughts. Divine Cherubs do not hurt civilians. We have no reason to think that this particular group is anything more than slightly more enterprising, gung-ho Cherubs who will do the right thing and let them go.

  “But even if they are not, my mission will save thousands of lives. Possibly more. To put my mission and the amulet—half it may be—in danger would be irresponsible.”

  Great, my mother is lecturing me on being responsible.

  “I am, indeed,” she said, either reading my thoughts or benefiting from my mind-mouth filter.

  “I don’t need your lecture—nor do I need your help,” I said, fishing for the amulet in my pocket. I threw it at her and stalked away. “You go be ‘responsible,’ if that’s what you call it. I’ll go do what’s right.”

  And with that, I left.

  If only I wasn’t so furious, so out of control with rage, I would have paused to look at Mergen in that moment and see what he thought of our little conversation. But I didn’t.

  Had I done so, I would have never given my mother that damn amulet.

  CHANGELINGS, BABY RATS, BROADSWORDS AND BAD-ASSARY

  I returned to my dorm room barely conscious of how I got there. All I could see was a thick fog of red hate.

  Deirdre was there, still nursing her rat-cubs, still buck-ass naked. I paused long enough to wonder if she had tried to nurse them the more natural way, instead of relying on toy baby bottles. Best not to think of it.

  Quickly, I rummaged through the hidden compartment in the false ceiling. I was looking for my dirk and my father’s Cherub mask.

  They weren’t the only ones who could fight like angels.

  Putting on my kilt and leather jacket, I was ready to do some serious harm.

  I turned to see that Deirdre was no longer naked. Instead she was wearing dark green tights and a black T-shirt so tight it left little to the imagination. She had spread mud that she got from only the GoneGods knew where over her face and arms. If that was it, I would have thought she was going out for a walk. No telling what passes as fashion for changelings.

  But the tell-tale, neon-friggin’-sign that she was dressed for much more than a leisurely stroll through nature was the giant broadsword held aloft with one muscle-corded arm.

  “Who needs slaying and where?” she asked.

  University. They say you’ll make your best friends here.

  They were right.

  ↔

  THE RUST YARD was a graveyard for ships just outside of the city. Back in the day, ships would come up the St. Lawrence, dropping off cargo as they went. Montreal, being one of the last stops (or first stops, depending on your direction) also served as a repair dock for big metal cargo boats.

  But back in the 1930s, it was often cheaper to replace than repair, and soon the massive lot near Old Montreal became a place where ships met a landlocked death.

  After the big war—number 2, not 1—industries changed, railways were built, and fewer ships came here. Eventually ports were moved to the north of the city where a convenient highwa
y had sprung up, and this shipyard became a desert of rusting boats—hence the nickname Rust Yard.

  Over the years, people tried to do a lot with this place. Paintball, raves, a museum, an artisan fair … you name it, people tried it. But the Rust Yard was just too far out of the city and didn’t have any four-lane highways going its way, so eventually everything they tried went the way of the ships and died.

  Such is life. And death, I suppose. GoneGods, that’s morbid.

  Deirdre and I made it to the Rust Yard about forty minutes before the three-hour deadline. Good—that would give us plenty of time to scope out the place and decide the best course of action.

  Figuring that they’d have all the gates into the place monitored, we opted to climb the fence. Problem was that a few years back, after some college kid was killed when a boat fell on him, the city erected thirty-foot-high metal mesh fences with barbwire at the top. Granted, the college kid had been tripping on LSD at the time, and had been attacking the boat’s stand repeatedly for hours with a metal baseball bat, but that didn’t seem to matter; they turned a relatively easy place to get inside into a relatively difficult place to break-and-enter.

  Luckily I had the foresight to bring wire cutters with me. Or, in this case, a broadsword-wielding changeling.

  “Deirdre, my changeling warrior, do you mind?”

  “Not at all,” she said, and heaved up her sword with a mighty—

  “Deirdre—quietly. We’re being sneaky, remember?”

  She looked down at her Nikes and said in a very matter-of-fact tone, “I know. That is why I wore my sneakers.”

  I had to restrain myself from slapping my forehead. The changeling was constantly making little mistakes about human culture. Little errors based on assumptions she made or taking things too literally. And for some reason I felt responsible for correcting her.

  “Deirdre, honey—they’re not called sneakers because they’re designed for sneaking.”

  Deirdre looked disappointed. “Was I not funny?”

  “Oh!” I said, now pleasantly surprised. “That was a joke. You said it in such a flat tone that I missed it.”