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

by Ramy Vance

  In the end, I went sleeveless. The sacrifices I made for fashion.

  That done, I sat on the (extremely plush) bed, planning on chilling for a bit before going down.

  Of course, chilling after hours of hiking turned into a nap that would have lasted through the New Year if it wasn’t for an annoying man knocking on my door.

  ↔

  “WHAT?” I growled as I opened the door. Jean stood there in army fatigues that he wasn’t wearing ironically. Still, his muscular frame filled the outfit and I fear that I was momentarily guilty of being one of those girls who likes a man in uniform.

  Then he spoke, curing me of any potential lapses in judgement. “Cute,” he said. “Not the direction I would have gone, but not bad considering.”

  “Ah, huh,” I said.

  He held out the crook of his arm. “Care to join me downstairs for the festivities?”

  “Festivities?”

  “Yeah, it’s an hour before the new year and from what I’ve gathered, the party is thumping down there.”

  “Party?” I looked at my arm. The map hadn’t changed.

  “Still nothing?”

  “Nothing. For all we know, we’re nowhere close to the place.”

  “Then we have nothing to lose.” He held out his elbow, extending it farther.

  “Come on,” he said when I didn’t take it, “it’s not like we’re going anywhere tonight and we’re in a ‘no violence’ zone, so we don’t have to worry about watching our sixes for once. Plus, in case you haven’t heard, there’s a party down there. A party!” he did a little jig before offering his arm again.

  I felt my stomach growl. “Party means food, right?”

  Jean nodded.

  “And where’s Keiko?”

  “I knocked on her door. No answer, which probably means she’s downstairs.”

  “Fine,” I said and took his arm.

  ↔

  WE WENT downstairs and were hardly halfway down when we saw one of the most diverse collections of Others I had ever seen in one place. There weren’t just yokai and other Japanese Others—there were mystical creatures of all walks of life from diverse traditions.

  This would have been a comforting place if it wasn’t for what Kenji had said earlier: the Others were gathering for the Three Who Are One’s arrival. And given that the Others who attacked the base flew under the same banner, I didn’t think the Three Who Are One—whatever it was—was a good thing.

  Masamitsu was waiting at the stairwell. As soon as we made it to the bottom step the nuppeppo animated, extending a hand that gestured for us to follow blob.

  We did. As we weaved our way through the crowd, I saw several of the Others wearing the same hoop necklace I’d seen around the yeti’s neck at the airport. There was even—

  “Harry?” I said.

  The yeti had ditched his Blue Jays bed sheet, going au naturel. “Kat?” he said affectionately, bending down to kiss my cheeks. “I had no idea you were a part of these circles.” He gestured around him.

  “Ex-vamp,” I offered.

  “Of course—I knew there was something special about you. So how are you enjoying the festivities so far?”

  I gestured with a wavering, horizontal palm. “I’ll enjoy it more when I get some food in my belly. It was quite the journey getting here.”

  “Tell me about it,” the yeti said. “I had to burn seven hours of time to get to this place. Small price to pay for a night like this. I mean, look around. So many Others in one spot. I haven’t attended a party like this since the wedding party that sank Atlantis five thousand years ago.”

  “You were …” I started, but shook my head. There were more important things to focus on than pressing Harry for details about Atlantis. “That long,” I finally muttered.

  “That long,” he repeated.

  Jean whistled from across the room. “Kat,” he said, pointing at an empty table, “come on.”

  “Your boyfriend is impatient.”

  “My boyfriend isn’t even my friend. Just a travelling companion that helped me get here given I don’t have any time to burn.”

  “Ahh, I see. Still, he looks like he really wants you to come over.”

  I sighed as I watched Jean continue to play his game of charades even though I’d gotten it seven seconds ago. “Yeah, I better go. If I don’t see you before the countdown, Happy New Year, Harry.”

  “You too, Ms. Darling. You, too.”

  ↔

  I WALKED over to the tatami mat with a short table on it that Jean had staked out for us. There was already a plethora of food atop it that Jean had already ordered. I mentally gave him a point for ordering, which put him up to minus about a billion points.

  Still, progress.

  I sat on the mat and immediately started stuffing my mouth. To say I was hungry after our speed boat chase and our seemingly endless walk through the forest would be an understatement. Jean must have been as hungry as me, but was surprisingly more restrained, taking in his surroundings before sitting.

  Eventually he sat down and poured me a sip of Habu Sake from the clay flask on the table. “So, many of these Others are here for the Celestial Solace because they believe in the Three Who Are One?”

  So he had been thinking the same thing as me.

  I shrugged.

  “I guess it’s a good thing we’ve got that ‘no violence’ thing in place, huh?” he said, waving at three wendigos who stared at us with hate-filled, fiery eyes which were all the more pronounced against their snow-white fur.

  If my thermal temperature wasn’t going up so fast from all the food I was putting in me, I might have shivered.

  “Guess so,” I said between bites of edamame and takoyaki.

  “Look at this place. It’s filled with all kinds of Others. I mean, look over there. It’s a peri,” he said.

  “You mean those winged, fairy-like spirits from Persian mythology? You know, the ones that rank somewhere between angels and demons?”

  “Very good,” Jean said, impressed. “Let’s try another one.” He pointed at a little bearded man who was mostly a head on a pair of stick-thin legs.

  “Easy,” I said. “A puk-wudjie. Native American mythology. From somewhere in the Delaware region.”

  “Excellent. How about—”

  “Nope, my turn.” I scanned the room, looking for something that would really surprise him. I finally settled on a creature that looked like a pink dolphin standing on two legs.

  Jean exaggerated a yawn. “Encantado. Amazon River, shapeshifter and a bit of player. They used to lure unsuspecting women back to their lairs to … you know, make whoopie.”

  “Seriously? ‘Make whoopie?’ That was cliché in the ‘60s. I should know—I was there.”

  We both chuckled before Jean shook his head as he continued scanning the room. “The question isn’t what are they, but how did they all get here?” Jean said. “It’s not like there’s an Other TripAdvisor and—”

  Before he could finish his thought, Aki rolled over on his massive testicles. “May I?” he asked. From the way he rolled in, I saw that he’d had a little too much sake already.

  I bowed, gesturing for the tanuki to join us.

  The raccoon creature parked his appendage next to the table, the rest of his body joining us on the mat. “How are you enjoying your stay?” Aki asked.

  “This place is incredible,” I said. “And the fact that you have electricity and hot water out here is …”

  “Yes, it is good for this place to be full again. Since the gods left, we haven’t had many patrons. But not tonight. Tonight, we are full.” Aki lifted his sake with pride and joy before downing it and filling his tumbler once more. “Back before the gods left, this whole place was powered by magic. Now that they are gone, we’ve had to use more mundane methods. It took effort and the aid of several dwarves and ramidreju before we managed to install plumbing and electricity here. We even have Wi-Fi.” He chuckled.

  “Where are y
ou pumping it in from?” Jean asked. “It’s not like there’s a power plant or underground piping to funnel water or—”

  Aki shook his head. “There is. A small one that powers the noro community. It was installed after the war and the priestesses have been kind enough to let us use the infrastructure without alerting the authorities. They also called the Okinawan municipalities to build that tower, claiming this place as an extension of their village—another benefit we get for free because of their generosity. But the noro have always been kind to Others. Even after the gods left, they took in many of the more unique Others who struggled to adjust to mortal life.”

  “Humph,” Jean said. “That may be, but how do you pay the non-noro help? Dwarves aren’t cheap and ramidreju, well, they’re downright criminals.”

  Aki gave Jean a curious look. “You are familiar with the ramidreju?” The tanuki was obviously surprised by Jean’s knowledge.

  So was I. I thought I knew my Others, but I’d never heard of the ramidreju before, and the fact that Jean had meant he’d won our little game. Not that I was going to give him the satisfaction; as soon as he turned his back, I’d jump on Wikipedia and look the damn diggers up.

  “ ‘Familiar’ is a strong word,” Jean said. “I met a couple a year or so back when they were tunneling under Paradise Lot’s downtown. The whole street nearly sank and I had to go down there and get them to stop.”

  “By killing them?” I asked.

  “No,” Jean said. “Not every solution needs a gun. I talked to them. They love mushrooms. Whitecaps, to be specific. We worked out a deal: they’d create subterranean housing for trolls, dwarves and other Others that like to live underground, and I made it so they’d get as many whitecaps as their shovel-like claws could handle. Ever try to pay a creature in mushrooms? We trucked in tons of fungi in from every distributor within three hundred miles.”

  “Intriguing, Mr. …”

  “Matthias. Jean-Luc Matthias.”

  “As in John, Luke, Matthew, only missing the Mark?”

  “Yes. Ha-ha,” he said sarcastically. “I haven’t heard that one before. No seriously, you are the first person to say that to me.”

  Aki chuckled.

  “Aki-sama,” I said, “my sardonic friend here raised a good question before you graced us with your presence. How is it that so many Others know of this place?”

  “Because we are famous.”

  “I never heard of you,” I said.

  “Amongst Others, we’re famous,” giving me a look that I’d gotten many times as a vampire. The one that said, ‘You wouldn’t understand … you know, being a half-breed and all …’

  He must have sensed my annoyance, because he quickly added, “We have existed since the dawn of time.”

  I gathered he wasn’t exaggerating when he said “dawn of time.”

  “We have hosted Others from all walks of life, for all kinds of celebrations. We were where the gods came when negotiating with the Laws of Nature.”

  “Laws?” I asked.

  The tanuki nodded. “Yes. Time, gravity, death, to name a few. At one point or another, all the gods have spent time here. Both living and dead.”

  “Dead? As in dead gods?”

  Again the raccoon-like creature nodded. “Even gods can die, but unlike the rest of us, they do not completely fade away. Their essence remains, like a light that cannot be extinguished. And when a god dies or is killed, it is tradition to host them here for their send-off.”

  “And where do dead gods get sent off to?” I asked.

  “Usually some sarcophagus placed somewhere where they can’t do any harm.”

  “Humph, I see,” I said, looking around. “I do have another question. I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but as lovely as this place is, how is it possible that so many have come here when …?” I didn’t even know how to finish my question.

  “When here is in the middle of nowhere?” Aki offered. “It is because this place wasn’t always here. This hotel moved from domain to domain, both on the mortal and divine planes. These halls have been encased in the flames of Hades as well as the bowels of RE. Never static, never confined to one place and one time. Until, that is, the gods left and we were forced to find a home on Earth.”

  I shook my head. I’d never heard of such a place before, but I did know one thing about Others: there were rules. And as much as this hotel could move from place to place, that didn’t mean they could chose anywhere they liked, all willy-nilly like.

  “Why here?” I asked.

  “Because this was the only plane of existence that remained.”

  “No, why here? Why this island?” I was remembering something the futakuchi-onna on the plane had said. At the time, it didn’t make sense, but now it was all falling into place.

  “The noro, they—” Aki began.

  “Again, no. This place is not arbitrary. The hotel didn’t choose this place just because. In fact, I don’t think this hotel moves at all, does it?” I said, hitting myself in the head with the palm of my hand. Hard. “How could I have been so stupid and not seen the connection? It was staring me right in my face. The museum, this hotel, the Heralds of Three Who Are One and Harry’s hoop necklace … they’re all connected to the human new year and the Celestial Solace.”

  I flattened out a napkin and, using a chopstick as a pen and soy sauce as ink, drew the hotel in the center. “This point is here. This hotel. But there is a network around it. An invisible, shifting plane that rotates like the sun does around the Earth.” I drew a ring with the hotel at the bottommost point. Then evenly spacing the circles, I drew another circle and wrote the name of another plane of existence on it. Heaven, Hell, Hades, Yomi, Elysium, all the heavens and hells, and then … Earth.

  “This place is a static point on a spinning wheel. As the wheel rotates, the hotel ‘moves’ into another plane of existence. Heaven”—I pointed at the circle labeled Heaven—“then the circle rotates, and now the hotel is in Hell.” I pointed at the next point on my circle. “Right? That’s how this works?”

  The part I didn’t say out loud was that I had an invisible map which only showed the outline of this island. It wasn’t giving me any more specifics because there were no specifics to give. The museum wasn’t even on this planet—yet. But come New Year’s Day, the rotation would be complete. And for however long the rotation lasted, the museum would be on Earth.

  Aki looked at my napkin, then me. “Yes,” he said. “It is more complex than that simple circle, but yes. That is exactly how this works. Different domains find—well, found—their way to us, thus letting us overlap for a few days. By Earth’s standards, of course. After all, eternity can be caught in a single second, can it not?” The tanuki looked at me, waiting for a reaction, but since I wasn’t sure if he was being profound or making a joke, I just stared at him with a confused, blank expression.

  Jean leaned in and whispered, “Clever girl.”

  ↔

  “WHEN THE GODS LEFT, the rotation—to use your analogy—ceased and the hotel found itself on Earth, on this island, at this time,” Aki said.

  “And what about the ‘rotation?’ Does it continue? Do the other planes continue to appear?”

  The tanuki nodded. “It does, but every realm is closed and even though we may have entered the ‘circle of Heaven’ or ‘Hell’ or ‘Nirvana,’ the hotel does not move.”

  I was starting to understand better. Aki meant that, while the rotation still occurred, the hotel would not be possessed, for lack of a better word, by that realm any longer.

  “But not all the realms are realms, are they? I mean, it’s not just heavens and hells and purgatories, is it? There are other divine places not owned by a particular god or pantheon. Places that may have been shared by all of them, perhaps? For example, the museum.”

  The tanuki nodded again. “But such knowledge is dangerous. Especially in a godless world.”

  “Yomi … that’s where those who follow Shinto go when they di
e. Well, went,” I said. “And that domain is closed like everywhere else.”

  Aki took a long draw from his sake.

  “Kenji told me that Yomi is also where the Kami Subete Hakubutsukan resides and because the rotation is going to align with that plane of existence, these Others believe it will actually appear.” I stared hard at Aki. “But you don’t, do you? I mean, if you did, you would never have opened this place up, would you?”

  The tanuki nodded. “Just because you believe something is going to happen does not make it so. They are holding onto a past that will never be again.”

  “So they are waiting for the museum to come. Why? What are they hoping for?”

  The tanuki nodded as if defeated. “The return of a god. Or I should say, the resurrection of three.”

  “But the gods are gone.”

  “Not all of them. Some remain.”

  “Bullshit,” Jean said, his voice both harsh and quivering.

  I understood where his anger and confusion came from; many humans didn’t believe in God or the gods to begin with, and to be presented with undeniable proof they existed was hard enough. But to have that proof coupled with their abrupt and unexplained departure was a whole new level of existential fuck-uppedness.

  Most of us spent years coming to terms with their existence, disappearance and the impending consequences of both. And now this drunk tanuki was telling us that all the gods weren’t gone. That at least one of them still remained. Well, that wasn’t something easy to accept.

  “Like who?” I asked, my voice trembling.

  “Not one,” Aki said. He lifted three fur-covered fingers. “Three dead gods remain. And they hope that these gods shall live once more.”

  10, 9, 8 … REALLY? THIS COULDN’T HAVE WAITED UNTIL NEW YEAR’S?

  “Hold on,” I said, “I thought you said that the dead gods were usually shuffled off to some sarcophagus where they couldn’t do any more harm?”