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

by Ramy Vance

  “Please do.”

  “Only certain beings could speak to the gods, and only under certain circumstances. I was one of those beings … a creation who moved through the ages, speaking on behalf of the gods.”

  “So what are you saying?” I leaned forward. “You were a professional prophet, spreading the good word in various guises?”

  “Oh please. Do not think so little of me.”

  “What, you’re offended that I called you a prophet?”

  “Prophets are human. I am nothing so debased.”

  “But you’re human now.”

  “Indeed.” He laced the word with genuine frustration.

  “So …” I gestured for him to finish the thought.

  “So what?”

  “So if you’re human now, that means you were born a human. That’s what happened when the gods left. Vampires, werewolves, zombies—they all reverted back to their human selves. Given that you are human now, that means you were born a human. And judging by how forlorn you are, I’m guessing that was a long, long, long time ago.”

  He nodded. “Indeed.”

  “So why all the hatred toward humans? I mean, I spent three hundred years as a vampire and now that I’m human again, I’m really trying to make a go of it. You, on the other hand, are all ‘Bah, humbug’ about it.”

  He paused, considering my question. When he did answer, it was no knee-jerk reaction, and what he said next stilled my blood with fear.

  “Because, unlike you, I didn’t spend my time here on Earth amongst the other humans. At least, not all of it. Most of my time was spent … elsewhere.”

  “OK, I’ll bite. Where did you spend it?”

  “Why, in Heaven, my dear. By God’s side.”

  THE MOST POWERFUL HUMAN EVER

  “Holy shit,” I whispered in unabashed awe. And then it hit me exactly who this guy was. I mean, how could I not know? I spend my formative years as a young, faithful Christian girl in Inverness. Pretty much the only reading available was the Bible, and Sunday church was 90% of my socialization.

  “You …” I stammered. “You’re Enoch, aren’t you?”

  Raspy Man gave me an appreciative smile. “Now that is the Katrina Darling I have been longing to meet. Smart, deductive and reverent. I do not approve of your use of language.” He stood up and ran his hands over his head before adding, “Then let us drop the façade. I am Enoch.”

  “So if you’re Enoch, why use the name Tomás, then?”

  “Enoch is a … complicated name known and feared by many. Not your average human, mind you. But to you average Other … that is another story. So I borrowed the name Tomás from a man I used long ago when I was trying to set things right. Tomás de Torquemada was one of the greatest Inquisitors and a true man of faith. He was one of the few humans I could converse with without all the drooling insanity that usually followed.” He chuckled at his little joke.

  Not that I heard any of it. I was sitting in front of Enoch. Enoch the prophet … the one whom God had plucked from Earth and transformed into the Archangel Metatron (not to be confused with Megatron from Transformers … Although, given this guy was transformed, the similarities were undeniable).

  Few people know this, but the three most important people in the Bible, in descending order, are Jesus, Isaiah and Enoch. Why? Because all three did not die when they were taken to Heaven. Granted, Jesus was a bit of a special case, but still …

  What’s more, this guy had two whole Biblical texts named after him. Of course, neither text was canonized or official doctrine, but I had lived long enough to know that so much that really happened was never officially recognized as true.

  And seeing this man before me, I figured the stories about him must be true. Here was the human hand-picked by God to become an archangel so that he could witness … well … everything.

  According to both canonized texts and the ones never officially recognized, Enoch was in the prime of his life when he was enlisted by God to help judge the angels who were doing all sorts of nasty stuff on Earth. Fornicating, teaching humans stuff they shouldn’t know … fornicating some more.

  “When the gods left,” Enoch continued, “they did not take me like the other prophets. They cast me down here, in this form.” He balled his hands into fists as if experimenting with his “new” body. “They made me less, and why?”

  “Because you never died.”

  “Indeed. I never died. An angel with a soul, and since they couldn’t separate my soul from my body, I was left behind.”

  “Is that how you got that?” I gestured to the slit across his neck.

  Enoch nodded. “I knew the gods were leaving. I was, after all, witness to their plans. I also knew that they meant to leave me behind. So the moment the gods departed—the moment I was transformed into my human form—I sought to end my life so that my soul could join them.”

  “But instead of your soul getting a one-way ticket out of here, it got trapped in the Soul Jar?”

  He shook his head. “That came later. No, I’m afraid that my attempts to end my own life were foiled by …” He paused, shaking his head again. “Let us just leave it at foiled … for now.”

  “How 1970s action-movie-villain-y of you.”

  Enoch shrugged. “Like I said, we have centuries to speak. I will tell you all in due time.”

  “You keep saying that—centuries—but we’re going to die. You know that, right? We’ve got a few good decades in us and that’s it. Then it’s bye bye birdie for us.”

  “Perhaps. But with the Soul Jar, we may circumvent the limitations of our mortality.”

  “How? By becoming vampires again? My mom already tried that and—”

  “I’m afraid that was the lie I told your mother to get her find the … what do you call it? The Soul Jar?” He pulled another lens out of the case. “But the endgame was never to become a vampire, or any other kind of immortal creature.”

  “Then what’s the plan?”

  He popped in the fresh lens and stared at me with his new eye from GoneGod knows which Other or god he took it from. “Why, to follow the gods to their new plane of existence, of course.”

  He closed his eyes like he was preparing himself for what would come next. I’d seen that kind of prep work before. Hell, it was something I did every time I was about to enter an intense training session. Whatever that particular eye did, it was going to hurt him. A lot.

  “Wait,” I said. “Before you do whatever you’re about to do, answer me this. Why do you keep saying ‘we?’ Like I don’t have a choice but to follow you.”

  “There is always a choice.”

  “But you assume I’ll go with you. Why?”

  “Because I will offer you safe passage.”

  “Safe passage?”

  “To follow the gods. But to do so … Well, there is only one way to follow the them to their new home, and doing so requires not only great magic but also great resolve and sacrifice.”

  “I take it that when you say ‘sacrifice,’ you don’t mean sacrificing pizza for boiled chicken.”

  He chuckled, his eyes still closed. “Again, indeed. Now let us get to the business at hand.” He slowly opened his eyes. “My soul, and its whereabouts.”

  ↔

  AS HE STARED AT ME, I realized that I was sunk. Unlike the last eye that gave his retina a gray halo, this one turned it into an unnatural purple. Which was particularly jarring, given that his other eye was more of a subtle gray-blue. So this one did something different. But what?

  I had no idea what that eye did, because if he had an eye that could stir one’s inner desires, who knows what that one could do? A human (and Other) lie detector? Or perhaps it would compel me to tell the truth? Another charm spell?

  I focused on myself to see if my will or desires were being pulled one way or another. I felt nothing. No inner stirring, no So unlike you, Kat desires or needs. I was just me. Of that I was sure. After all, I had centuries of being me.

  So
, no mojo going on here? Right?

  “Shit,” I thought—out loud. “What’s the game?”

  But he didn’t say anything. He just continued to stare at me with that creepy eye.

  In my three hundred years, I’ve been in this kind of situation more times then I care to count. OK, that’s a wee bit of a lie … I’ve never been in this type of situation—Raspy Man was all kinds of weird—but I have been in front of diabolical masterminds hell-bent on something evil that usually included Kill Kat on their to-do list.

  So I did what I always do when put in this situation.

  I ran.

  Very hero-like, might I add.

  RUN, KAT, RUN

  I put both hands on the table and hoisted with all my might. I don’t know what it was about this guy. Maybe it was all the talk about immortality and stuff, but I think I forgot I was human, because I expected to be able to throw the metal table against the wall, flattening him with it as a bonus.

  Instead, my human strength barely managed to tip it before its legs came crashing back to the ground.

  Great … so much for my dramatic exit. I only managed to move the table a couple inches, inconveniencing him not at all.

  “Come now, Kat. Do you really think such dramatics are necessary?” He was still scanning me. His eyes rested on my reasonably substantial chest and they widened.

  A bit of a dramatic response, given I was wearing a blouse that showed practically no cleavage. Which meant that he wasn’t looking at my boobs … He was staring at the pendant hanging under my shirt. The Soul Jar. Shit, I should have given the damn thing to Deirdre.

  “So you do have it,” he said, his voice a whisper.

  Shit, shit, shit … “Shit!” I said, considering my next move. The table might have been too heavy to lift, but not everything in this room was made of sturdy metal.

  I grabbed the chair I sat on, and with one graceful pivot that would have made a golfer green with envy, clocked him on the head with it.

  He went down, which was the only reassuring thing about our whole exchange. That, and the fact that the chair’s leg caused him to bleed red. As in, human-blood red.

  Whatever this guy was, he was human. Right now, at least.

  I didn’t wait for him to get up and do whatever evil geniuses did when knocked over by a five-foot-nothing, hundred-and-one-pounds-of-kick-ass-dynamite did.

  Heading for the door, I ran.

  ↔

  THE OKINAWAN AIRPORT was surprisingly big, given it was built for such a tiny island. But it was a resort area—the Hawaii of Japan—and thousands of tourists visited the archipelago every year. And I was in its bowels, the back rooms purposely placed out of the way so that any escaping prisoners, like little ol’ moi, wouldn’t terrify the tourists.

  Plus, I was a terribly cute, auburn gaijin girl running out of one of those out-of-the-way rooms. I stuck out like a sore yara-mah-ya-who (a bright-red, thumb-like creature, for the uninitiated). I tried to act cool as I hurried through the corridors, but I didn’t get five steps before someone from Japanese airport security put a hand on my shoulder. “Chotomatte-kudasai.” One minute, please.

  Even in a chase scene, Japanese were polite.

  I lifted a wagging finger, and forcing out fake tears I’d used more than once as a vampire when luring in unsuspecting prey, cried, “Sca’bei.” Pervert.

  I pointed at the door that I had just exited. My hope was that the guard would assume I had been assaulted by Tomás, and his righteous indignation would distract him enough for me to keep running.

  Great plan … And to accentuate my claim, out came the bleeding Tomás. Thank the GoneGods for perfect timing. Things were going my way.

  Except the guard only looked at Tomás, his eyes widening in shock as he cried out, “Torukumada-sama.”

  Sama. A term of respect in Japanese culture. So much for the man of the law protecting innocent little me.

  The guard’s hand tightened on my shoulder, and seeing that he meant to subdue me, I sent a roundhouse kick into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him with a satisfying oof.

  The guard went down, releasing me. And although I was free of his grip, I saw dozens of shocked eyes look over at me.

  I think this is where the expression “Out of the frying pan and into the fire” comes from.

  ↔

  LITERALLY THE ONLY thing I had going for me was the fact that Japanese police do not carry guns. What wasn’t going in my favor was the terrifying fact that most police were extensively trained in the martial arts—specifically, aikido.

  Which meant they were experts at subduing. And grappling. And generally incapacitating.

  Turning on my heels, I ran in the direction I had come from.

  Two guards tried to stop me, and using a technique I had learned from multiple martial arts masters through the ages, I kicked the first guy in the balls before dropping to one knee and punching the next one in the exact same spot.

  Sometimes I wonder why the gods gave them such an obvious weakness.

  They both fell to their knees, and I ran past them and into the main area of the airport. Ahead of me I could see the doors to the outside. I just had to get through security—in the opposite direction as was intended—and out the door.

  I ran to the baggage x-rays, where a female guard with a baton swung at me. Seeing that her anatomy didn’t allow for the same trick, I ducked under her swing and kicked her in the shins. She went down with a yelp, but recovered with surprising quickness as she swung her baton, cracking me on the shoulder.

  “Oww,” I said. It took every ounce of my will to not curl into the fetal position and whimper.

  She might have been trained in aikido, but so was I … and I had centuries to practice it, too. Using a fairly common wrist technique, I managed to get the baton out of her hands and knock it to the ground, where I was able to pick it up.

  I crashed through the human metal detectors, which rang with baton-inspired alarm. Two more guards charged at me, and I could see several police gathering at the front entrance.

  Escaping a place with so much coordinated security wasn’t going to happen. Not without a miracle. And those disappeared the day the gods left.

  Seeing that I was beat, I got to my knees, dropped the baton and lifted my hands up in surrender.

  At least this way, I might escape any beatings from more batons.

  But not all the miracles were taken, it seemed. There were still a couple around. And a miracle came swooping in, grabbing the two security guards that had been descending on me and throwing them both at the baggage x-ray with an alarm-beeping crash.

  A hand hoisted me to my feet as a concerned voice uttered, “Milady. Did they harm you?”

  Deirdre. My fae miracle incarnate.

  AIRPORT SECURITY REALLY SUCKS

  Deirdre offered me a hand and said in a completely unfastidious, deadpan manner, “Come with me if you want to live.”

  I had known my fae warrior friend long enough to understand that she had never seen any of the Terminator series, nor understood the joke. She was serious—as in, deadly so.

  I took her hand.

  She hoisted me to my feet with an effortless pull and turned to face several guards who had appeared on the scene. As far as I could tell, they were all human, normal-looking Japanese security. None of them had a Raspy-Man’s-henchmen vibe to them.

  “They’re civilians,” I said.

  Deirdre nodded in understanding. “Hospitalization only. I understand.”

  I groaned. I’d preferred that no one got hurt, but the reality was you didn’t escape an airport without someone getting hurt. My only hope was that anything the fae warrior broke would be mendable with modern medicine.

  Three male guards charged at us, and Deirdre picked up one of the metal tables used to repack your stuff after the x-ray. It was bolted to the ground—not that it mattered to her.

  With a single pivot that made my chair-golf-swing from earlier look positive
ly amateurish, she swung it at the guards, sending them flying. None of them looked too hurt (thank the GoneGods for small miracles).

  But after that little display of power, none of the other guards dared charge at her. Instead, they tried to form a human shield of sorts, preventing our exit. They were buying time, and given the current state of affairs, I knew what their play was.

  They were waiting for some of the anti-Other weaponry to appear on the scene. Since the Others arrived, so had a whole new industry centered on Other-defensive weapons. Nets for valkyrie and angels, supercharged cattle-prods for minotaurs and centaurs, and souped-up tranquilizers for just about everyone else.

  We needed out, and we needed out now.

  Deirdre knew it too, because without asking, my little fae warrior did something that hurt me in unfixable ways. She picked me up like a football and—quite literally—ran me through and onto the other side of security and out of the airport.

  The sun hit a relatively unbruised, unhurt body … but my ego? Boy oh boy, my ego ached.

  ↔

  OUTSIDE, I scanned the area for our next move. I was considering … ahem … “borrowing” a car conveniently left by one of the many drop-offs that were happening.

  My attention was caught by a red Toyota I had never seen before (probably a Japanese-only product). It looked fast. And best of all, it already had Egya in the driver’s seat. Go team!

  “Here I am again, thinking and saving. Saving and thinking.” Egya leaned over and opened the passenger-side door. “Your chariot awaits.”

  “Yeah … thanks,” I said, mentally groaning. Egya was going to lord this one over me for months to come. “Come on, Deirdre,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Deirdre didn’t move.

  “Come on, girl. We got an out,” I repeated.

  But the fae warrior didn’t move, her back to the road as she diligently watched the insides of the airport. She was quite literally watching my back.