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

by Ramy Vance

  “OK,” I said, “so if most people my age go through this, what’s the cure?”

  “Ahh, therein lies the rub,” he said. “There is no cookie-cutter solution. Everyone has to figure it out for themselves.”

  I’ve never wanted to hit someone who was trying to help me so much in my life. That’s a wee bit of lie—I’ve often wanted to hit Egya, but he’s a special case.

  But still, this guy was annoying me with his swearing helps me relate to the kids and his misquotes. So I did what I always do when I’m annoyed: I annoyed back. “There’s the rub,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” He tilted his head in confusion.

  “ ‘There’s the rub’ is the expression. ‘Therein lies the rub’ is a misquote. And also, given you’re a shrink dealing with quarter-life crises, you may not want to use an expression from a speech about suicide.”

  Now he narrowed his eyes, not following me at all.

  “Your misquote is from Hamlet, and the speech is—let me accurately quote it for you: ‘To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come.’ See? Suicide.”

  “Ahh,” he said, putting down his pen and notebook, “but Hamlet didn’t kill himself, did he?”

  “No, but he did get himself killed.” I was annoyed that he wasn’t annoyed.

  “Hmm, maybe. Then again, maybe he died finally doing what he thought was right.” He took off his glasses and bit on one of his glasses’ arms in a thoughtful way before saying, “And given he was probably suffering from anxiety himself, when he finally decided what to do—or rather, what he must do—I believe his anxiety would have finally left him. In other words, he found what he needed, and in finding it, he freed himself from what ailed him.”

  I sighed in frustration. “I don’t get it. I’m here for help and you’re talking about Hamlet.”

  He tsked me. I mean, actually tsked me. “We’re talking about Hamlet because you tried to use my misquote to throw me off.”

  “I didn’t—” I started.

  “Ms. Darling … please, if this is going to work, we need to be honest with each other.”

  You want honesty? How about the honesty of my knuckles cracking your teeth? I thought—thankfully in my head. Out loud, I managed a resigned, “Fine. I was trying to annoy you, but it didn’t work, did it? Clearly your annoyance-fu is stronger than mine.”

  He chuckled and gave a playful bow. “I’ll have to remember that one, too. And no, that’s not exactly true. Your annoyance-fu is strong within you, but I have an unfair advantage that allows me to win pretty much every sparring match.”

  “Oh?” I said, lifting an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

  “I’m not the one seeking help.”

  Ahh, of course, I thought. By admitting I need help, I’m placing myself in a vulnerable position. To use fighting words: I’m the one who’s prone.

  “Exactly.” He snapped his fingers.

  Damn it, my thinking out loud glitch. Getting help is hard enough without inner me complicating things.

  WALKS, FRIENDS AND PARTY PREP

  Emerging from the Student Health Services building, I wondered how much I was getting out of these talks.

  I wasn’t ready to be honest with Dr. Tellier about my past as a vampire, nor did I want to tell him about the raspy man and how he thought I was feeling this way because my soul was trapped in some jar held in a secret location only the GoneGods knew where. Not that I believed raspy man.

  The trouble was, I didn’t disbelieve him, either.

  What’s wrong with me? I thought, and I heard a familiar voice say, “You’re too short, you think you know it all and you’re right even when you know you’re wrong. But other than that? Nothing, girl.”

  Without turning, I said, “I’m not in the mood for your bullshit.”

  “Good thing I’m not a bull.”

  I pursed my lips and nodded, turning toward him. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

  “I’m afraid you did. And before you ask: Yes, girl, I have been following you, too. So you can give me all the rage you want now, or we can talk.” The tall Ghanaian smiled at me, his teeth whiter than snow. If he wasn’t one of my best friends, I’d dye those teeth red with his blood.

  “OK, let’s do the rage part now. ‘Too’? How do you know about that?”

  “I saw Justin—well, the miserable being that was once Justin. He told me about your fight and his oh so stealthy behavior. Thing is, girl, I’ve been following you, too. Mostly because I was worried about you. Partly because I’m a bit of a creep.”

  “Ugh. Look, if you—”

  Before I could start in on some tirade I’d probably regret later, Egya stepped in front of me and gave me a deadly serious look. “I followed you, and you didn’t know because I didn’t want you to know. But I am a hunter with centuries of practice at such things. Justin, as sweet and handsome as he is, could not follow a toddler in a jungle gym without being noticed. And you didn’t know. That causes me great concern, Katrina.”

  “Oh.” I realized he was right. I didn’t know I’d been followed, and I should have. The only way someone like Justin could have tracked me without my knowing was with a drone or magic, and in both cases, my spidey senses would tingle. And yet when Justin said he was following me, I was totally caught off guard.

  “ ‘Oh’ is right, girl,” he said. “Now, for all the battles we have fought side by side, for all the laughter we have shared and all the tears both cried and held back, please, tell me what’s going on.”

  It was just like Egya to invoke our entire history together. He was a friend. He and Deirdre were the only real friends I had in this world. Them and Justin, when he wasn’t annoying me. And here I was, not telling them a thing, just like I wasn’t telling Dr. Tellier anything.

  Way to lean into your vulnerability, Kat, I thought—in my head.

  “OK,” I said, “do you want to know what’s happening?”

  “Yes, girl. I do.”

  “I’m sad.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know, but I’m sad all the time and nothing I can do shakes this feeling of loneliness. Ever since I was turned human I’ve been sad.”

  “Turned human when the gods left, or when that curse was lifted a few weeks back?”

  I shook my head. Before the gods left I had been a vampire, just as Egya had been a were-hyena. But when the deity bastards packed up and left four years ago, they’d transformed how magic works. Part of that transformation was that Egya and I (and those like us) lost our Other halves. In other words: we were turned human—again.

  It took a while, but I eventually got used to being human again. And being transformed into a vampire again, like I was a few weeks ago—even for one day—was enough to throw me off.

  But not this off. This was something else.

  “I think,” I said to Egya with a trembling voice, “I think when the curse was lifted my soul didn’t find its way back to me.” And barely holding back tears like a dam to an overflowing river, I told Egya everything.

  ↔

  “DAMN, GIRL,” he said when I finally stopped talking. “When you have a problem, you don’t mess around.”

  “That’s me,” I said giving him a ta-da gesture.

  “So what do we do about it?”

  We. Always ready to help, no matter the danger. That’s why I love Egya.

  “First of all, we don’t know that’s what’s happening to me. We only have a maniac’s word. A maniac who, by the way, tried to have me killed. So right now we celebrate Christmas as best we can. Then we hit the books, research as much as we can to see if there’s any validity to this weirdo’s claims, and if there is, we go looking for my soul. As cheesy as that sounds.”

  “There is something missing in your plan.”

  “What?”

  “Justin.”

  I sighed. “I know. I’m just working up the courage to call him—af
ter Christmas. I don’t want to get into another fight and ruin his holidays more than I already have.”

  “Promise, girl?”

  “The 26th. Cross my heart.”

  “Good. Now onto Operation Soul Woman.”

  “We’re giving it a name?”

  “Girl, I give everything a name,” he said. “I like the plan, but I don’t like the timeline.”

  “It’s a few days. Besides, I promised Deirdre,” I said, walking away from him. I must have walked ten steps before I turned around and said, “You know, I have an extra ticket if you like.”

  “Girl,” Egya said, pointing at the swollen, gray sky, “do you see what’s coming? I’d call you a fool for going to your event in a storm like this, but I know it would change nothing.” Egya cackled at this, his dark face almost hidden by the continuous snowfall. “Besides, I got a job.”

  “Really? What?”

  “Snow removal,” he said, giggling in that way he did when he was relishing the absurdity of the situation.

  ↔

  DESPITE THE CONSTANT SNOWFALL, I made it up the hill without any more stops, forgotten appointments or friends stalking me. I walked down to my room in the basement where Deirdre stood in the hall with two suitcases.

  “I packed for you,” she said.

  “You did what?”

  “Packed. Pajamas, underwear with matching bras because you like that, three pairs of pants, four blouses, two sweaters, five pairs of shoes, seven pairs of socks and—”

  “A partridge in a pear tree?”

  She shook her head. “Your toiletry bag.”

  “Thorough.”

  “I had to be, milady. I didn’t wish to waste any time. We must go, as the festivities start soon.”

  “They don’t start until tonight. We have hours.”

  “But given how busy it is bound to be, I want to make sure to claim a good room and front row seats for Oighrig End’s lectures. Please, let us hurry.” She picked up the two suitcases filled with my stuff and blinked. Rapidly. The fae way of insisting.

  “OK, OK,” I said, pushing past her and into our room. “Let me just check that you didn’t forget anything.”

  Entering the room, I saw that she had really gone to town on my stuff. My clothes were everywhere. Normally I’d be furious at her disregard for my things, but right now I couldn’t be bothered. Instead, I picked up my iPad—the one thing she did forget to pack—and put it in my purse.

  It clicked against the earpiece, and I briefly thought about putting that thing in my desk. A vacation isn’t a vacation when your stalker can still reach you, after all.

  Given that, I left the damn thing behind.

  LET THE FESTIVITIES BEGIN!

  Douglas Hall was the first dorm you saw when walking up the hill to rez. Unlike the other halls, it wasn’t a seven-story modern build (well, modern for the ’60s), but had more of a Victorian mansion feel to it. Three stories, with a main building in the center and two wings at either side with a snow-filled garden in the middle.

  We walked up the central path (which was hard to find, given how much snow had fallen) and through the front doors. There was a small, empty reception, which I guessed meant they weren’t ready to receive guests. There was, however, a flyer reading: Oighrig End: Myth retold from the perspective of mythical creatures.

  We walked into the lecture room, only to find it empty as well. Because Deirdre was so keen on not being late, we arrived early. As in, they weren’t even starting to think about setting up early. The room had chairs and tables stacked against the wall. The A/V equipment sat in closed boxes, and there was no podium from which Oighrig End was going to deliver his speech. Presumably that was still in storage, too.

  The worst thing about being this early was that registration wasn’t even open. Which meant there were no bedrooms for us to retreat to, no seating area where I could unsocially stare at my phone. It was just us in an empty room, waiting for someone to show up.

  “Come on, Deirdre,” I said, “let’s go back home and return in a few hours when they’re actually ready to receive us.”

  “No,” Deirdre said, defiantly shaking her head like some young actress who had just gotten off the bus in New York, determined to make it here no matter what.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” I was going to lose this fight with gusto.

  “They will be setting up soon,” she said. “We can help when they start.”

  “Deirdre, I don’t think they want our help, and even if they did, I didn’t pay close to ten thousand dollars to line up chairs and—”

  I was just getting into the groove of my tirade when a chair started moving across the room seemingly by itself. From the way it floated, it didn’t look like it was hovering, or like an Other was moving it telepathically. Rather, it stood at an angle, as if some very small creature was carrying it by one leg.

  “Very small creature indeed,” I muttered as I walked over to the moving chair and got down on my hands and knees. Close to the ground, I saw what was carrying the chair: an abatwa. It was a fae creature about twice the size of a large black ant, but as strong as a full-grown human.

  The abatwa gave me a scowl and said something in a voice so high-pitched I couldn’t make out a word of it. The thing about abatwas is, their vocal cords are so small and they speak so quickly that they sound like Alvin the Chipmunk on high speed. But I gathered her meaning from the context. She—no, upon closer examination, I was pretty sure this abatwa was a he—he was annoyed that I was in his way.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  The abatwa gave me a nod and continued carrying an item easily a thousand times bigger and heavier than himself into the room. He placed it very carefully down and lined it up before jogging to the wall to do it all over again.

  “Ahh, Deirdre,” I said, admiring how powerful this little guy was, “I think you’re right. We should help.”

  ↔

  DEIRDRE and I helped the abatwa move the chairs, and by the time we finished the first two rows, a pair of large speakers came floating in on the backs of two more abatwas.

  With the help of the two other tiny Others, we managed to set up the room in a matter of minutes, and before you could say “snap, crackle and pop,” we were done.

  The five of us sat down on some of the front row chairs. I tried to ask the abatwas what their names were, but I couldn’t understand their high-pitched, enthusiastic responses, so doing a wee bit of racial profiling, I dubbed them Snap, Crackle and Pop after the elvish cereal mascots. They didn’t seem to mind.

  Snap, Crackle and Pop sat on the velvet-covered chair between us as Deirdre pulled out a lemon drop from her purse and, crushing it between her powerful fingers, distributed the crumbs to the gang.

  I watched as the three abatwas greedily sucked up the sugar candy, my mind going through my Rolodex of fae facts as they did. Once upon a time I dated a dark elf, so I knew more than most. Still, despite my time in the UnSeelie Court, there were vast holes in my fae general knowledge category.

  After a long period of consideration, I turned to Deirdre and asked, “Aren’t abatwas from the UnSeelie Court? I mean, the Seelie Court has their tiny folks too, but they’re pixies who are usually the size of Barbie dolls, not six-sided dice.”

  Deirdre nodded, staring down at her kin.

  “So,” I said, feeling my indignation rising anew, “let me get this straight: the Seelie Court event is run by elves and halflings, but put together by the UnSeelie. As if this world doesn’t have enough discrimination—”

  “ ‘Discrimination’ is a harsh word, don’t you think?”

  I turned to see an immaculately dressed man in a three-piece tweed suit. Behind him stood what I can only assume was a valet, given he carried two suitcases matching the man’s suit.

  “I’m not so sure,” I said, standing. Deirdre started to stand with me, but I gave her a gesture that said this one’s mine, and she plopped herself back into her chair. “I’ve seen some Seelie Co
urt snobbery going on here.”

  “The abatwa custodians, for one?” He removed his hat and tweed overcoat and handed them to his valet. He also removed his blazer and unbuttoned his vest. “But consider this: those abatwas need work, and the FSA was kind enough to provide. They could have employed Seelie Court Others, but they did not.”

  He was down-dressing, giving his valet parts of his outfit as he removed them. The valet, a fae trow whose oversized cap sat in place only by the grace of his oversized ears, took each piece of clothing in turn, folding them neatly over the standing suitcases. The trow’s gray skin and sullen look were a sharp contrast to his immaculately kempt suit.

  The man finally removed his vest before ceasing his down-dressing, which was a good thing, since all he had left to take off were his shirt, pants and gloves. Then again, he was quite attractive, so maybe it wasn’t a good thing after all.

  I had expected him to take off his gloves, but he kept those on, an odd contrast with his white, pearl button dress shirt and crisp black trousers.

  “So I suppose it’s because of some kind of equal opportunity scheme that you have a trow valet?”

  “You mean Jarvis here?” He patted the trow on the shoulder. “This UnSeelie Court creature is not just my valet—he is my friend. A friend, mind you, with whom I have shared many a wild adventure. Isn’t that true, my ol’ buddy, you?” The man giggled as he spoke.

  The trow did not.

  “Evidently.” I decided not to continue down this path, which would only lead to a fight. I’d be stuck with this guy for three days—plenty of time to fight him over Christmas dinner. So I changed tact. “You’re not fae, are you?”

  He snapped his feet together and gave me a playful salute. “ ’Fraid not, ma’am. A fae enthusiast, yes, but my fruit blooms on the homo sapien branch of the tree of life.”

  “Humph,” I said, not returning his salute. “You dress like an elf.” I forced an I’m kidding, but really I’m not smile.

  “I like to think I dress like an aged professor the university can’t remove because I have tenure.”