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

by Ramy Vance

  I practically burst into her workstation, crossing behind the desk in two strides (Man, being tall had some perks). A stack of papers sat at one corner, which I lifted and began sifting through.

  I needed to find that manila folder.

  “You need anything else?” Professor Allman asked from the doorway, where he hovered in a bout of nervous fidgeting. “Coffee?”

  I glanced up, my fingers still rifling through the papers. “I’m good. Thanks, Steve.” I added a wink, and I swear, I might have made the man’s knees wobble.

  Ah, if only I could tell him how truly evil I was. Well, how evil Serena was. Maybe another time, after I’d done what I needed to do.

  He disappeared out of the doorway, and my search became less dignified. I set my thumb on the edge of the pile and flicked through it. No folder.

  I straightened, spun in a half-circle. To my left sat an elegant white filing cabinet with three drawers. I pulled open the top one. Empty. I pulled open the middle one.

  Bingo. Manila folders.

  Except there were about thirty of them.

  I reached in, grabbing up the closest one. When I opened it, an image of something horrific stared back at me. It looked like a woman’s head, but with tentacles for a body. A different Other, but with a full file of documentation.

  And probably an unfertilized embryo in a petri dish somewhere in this lab.

  I put the file back in, moved to the next one. Another Other, this one also female, but with the lower body of an arachnid. Arachne.

  Each file I looked at contained female Others, most of them stupidly powerful.

  When I’d gone through eight files, I reached into my purse to see my phone. I had ten minutes. When I glanced over my shoulder, everything seemed as normal. No other Serena—yet.

  Five more files. More Others. I pushed the second drawer shut, opened the third drawer.

  Even more manila folders.

  And it occurred to me: why was ultra-classified information like this being kept on paper? It should be locked away on a computer. Well, it probably was, but Serena Russo was a technophobe.

  I had noticed it right away. She didn’t have a computer. She didn’t carry a smartphone or a tablet. She wore a wristwatch. When she and Allman had set up a meeting in my presence, she had written it in a paper planner.

  If you were working for the World Army, technologically-averse was a terrible thing to be. Especially when one overly curious encantado decided to stick her nose in.

  After three more folders, I finally found Empusa’s.

  I had five minutes left, which meant I had to move fast. I shut the door and laid the file open on Serena’s desk. I pulled out my phone from my purse and started taking pictures.

  Then I heard it: tap-tap, tap-tap. Those heels.

  “Serena,” came a muffled voice, “you surprised me.”

  I spent a second frozen, and then I flicked my phone over to text messages, shot off my pre-written text. It disappeared into the ether, and a second later read as delivered.

  I only had two bars of reception. Please, I thought like a teenager waiting for her crush to acknowledge her text. Please.

  I closed the folder, set it in the drawer and pressed it silently shut. Then I ducked down and waited. And prayed to the GoneGods for a miracle.

  Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

  Serena’s shadow was at the door. She was rustling in her purse.

  A swipe, and the double-chirp of the keycard entry. With that, the door began to open and I wondered if waterboarding would be effective on an encantado in her natural form.

  But I wasn’t going to find out—not today.

  With a burst of sound and light, the fire alarm went off. Somewhere in the building, Steve Allman was rushing to find his volunteer fire responder vest. But here in the biology lab, Serena let the door shut, and I was again alone in her office.

  “Obrigado,” I whispered. Thank you, thank you.

  I had minutes at most. Fortunately, resuming an old illusion wasn’t nearly as taxing—or as time-consuming—as taking on a new one.

  Thirty seconds later, I rolled the hems of my fancy pant suit up so I could run barefooted out of Serena Russo’s office. I pushed my red hair out of my face as I navigated past the empty workstations and out of the lab, which had cleared at once.

  Ahh, the good old threat of burning alive. Worked every time.

  I ran down the hall and into the bathroom. I changed into my regular clothes and came out at a jog, bursting through the main doors of the biology building and crossing down the steps toward Aimee.

  “Another stupid fire drill,” I said, turning back to look up at the building.

  She rolled her eyes. “What a waste of time.”

  CHAPTER 22

  We dropped into our chairs, and I set my phone on the table between Aimee and me. My hands trembled at either side of it.

  “I don’t think it’s safe enough here.” I glanced around the little deli we’d ducked into after leaving the biology building. We were only a couple blocks from the scene of our crime, and I was pretty sure the tap-tap of Dr. Russo’s shoes was going to be a trauma-trigger for the rest of my mortal life.

  “Isa, there’s no one here except us.”

  I pointed. “And that guy behind the counter.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “He’s got earbuds in. And he’s jamming out.”

  The Brazilian in me surfaced. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “OK.” She sighed. “He’s shuffling his feet and bobbing his head. Happy?”

  I nodded, forcing a little smile. Faking it was making it, right? Even if I felt like a live wire on the inside.

  “So, are you going to look at the pictures?” Aimee said.

  I turned on the phone and unlocked it. As soon as I did, the last image I’d taken appeared on the screen. Aimee angled her head, and the two of us read what I’d captured from Empusa’s file, picture by picture.

  When we got to the page detailing how to neutralize her, our gazes locked. “Holy shit,” Aimee said. “This is proof right here the World Army was behind this.”

  “But why?” My eyes flicked back to the phone, then to Aimee. “Why would they do this on a college campus? There are more humans here than Others—in fact …”

  “It’s all humans,” Aimee said.

  “What is?”

  “Everyone who’s been murdered. Not a single Other.”

  My mouth hung open. She was right: at least four murders (that we knew of), and all Other-on-human. Not one instance of Other-on-Other. And while humans did outnumber Others in Montreal, if I had to guess at Empusa’s ratio if she were allowed to go on killing, it would remain 1:0.

  All humans, no Others.

  “They’re trying to instill fear of Others,” I said. “That’s why Tremblay wasn’t taking me seriously.”

  “Who’s Tremblay?”

  “The officer at the police station. He’s been in contact with the World Army.”

  “Isn’t Justin a cadet with them, too?”

  A needle pierced my chest; I set a hand there. “Yes.”

  “Do you think …?”

  “No,” I said. “He doesn’t know about the connection between Empusa and the World Army. He’s not part of this.”

  Her blue eyes stayed fast on me. “Are you sure?”

  I slid my phone off the table, clicked the screen off. “I’m sure.” I dropped it into my purse, reached for my jacket.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m going to work,” I said. “I’m supposed to be in the lab.”

  “If you were going to work, you would have looked at me when you said that.”

  GoneGodDamn, she knew me well. I raised my eyes. “It’s not dark yet.”

  “Don’t go after her, Isa. You and I both read what she’s capable of, and you’re not an Other-slayer.”

  “Maybe not.” I rose from my seat. “But I know birds.”

  She walked with me ou
t of the deli and down the sidewalk. “Where are you going?”

  The blessing and the curse of having a best friend: they don’t mind being clingy when they sense you’re about to do something dangerous.

  “The butcher’s shop.”

  “Uh … aren’t you a pescatarian?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do realize butchers only deal in non-fish?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you give me something more than monosyllabic answers?”

  “Well, give me something besides a yes/no question.” I was being difficult, and I knew it.

  She threw her hands in the air. “Isa, why are you going to the butcher’s shop? I’m really nervous that you’re about to do something stupid.”

  “I can’t tell you,” I said. I didn’t stop walking. “I’m sorry, Aimee.”

  “Come on, without me you wouldn’t have gotten out of Serena’s office in one piece. You’d probably be in a World Army camp with a bag over your head or something.”

  She was right, but that didn’t change things. I stopped, turning to her. Like mine, her cheeks were red and chapped from the winter wind. “Thank you for saving my behind, but please go home. I know you’ll get involved if I tell you more.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You will.”

  She knew I knew, and she stamped her foot on the sidewalk and glanced around. “Swear you’ll text me tonight,” she said. “If you don’t come back to the dorm, text me to let me know you’re all right.”

  I set a hand on my chest, the other raised in the air. “I swear.”

  A minute later, Aimee was walking back toward our dorm, and I stood alone and frigid on the sidewalk. Right up until she’d gone I had felt annoyed by her presence, and now I regretted sending her away.

  I was about to do something very, very stupid. And I was about to do it without anyone else’s help. At this point, I didn’t know who to trust, and beyond that, I didn’t want to get anyone hurt if this ended up not working.

  “It’ll work,” I whispered as I stepped into the butcher’s shop. I knew birds—it would work, even if these birds were older than the Bible.

  Even monsters from antiquity needed to eat.

  I beelined for the counter, where meathooks pierced massive slabs of who-knew-what; I tried not to look too closely. “Hello,” I said to the man behind the counter, who was busily cleaving into a hunk of red flesh. His apron looked like he’d killed a cow right in his lap. “I’d like sixty pounds of pig, please.”

  He lifted his face and set his massive cutting knife on the board. He didn’t say anything.

  “Uh, do you sell pig?” I said.

  “I sell pig.”

  “I’ll take sixty pounds.”

  “I heard you the first time. We sell it in one-pound increments.”

  “Well, I’ll take sixty one-pound increments. In one bag, please.”

  The dull eyes opened wide. “How will you even carry all that?”

  “I’m an Other,” I said, like that explained it all.

  “Oh.” And then, without further question, he started preparing my pig. Thirty minutes later, he’d filled a bag of meat so well he could hardly lift it off the ground. He set it on the counter and rang me up. “That’ll be three hundred and twenty dollars. Do you need help getting it to your car?”

  “Nope.” I hauled the bag back onto my shoulder and turned toward the door. He didn’t say anything, and I realized then how little most humans actually knew about Others, how much they accepted as gospel just based on someone’s word.

  The truth was, being an encantado didn’t give me any extra strength. Lifting barbells at the gym had done that—just like it would for any human.

  And my knowledge about birds? Yes, I had spent five hundred years among them in the rainforest. But that was a subset of birds I’d been exposed to; I knew about species around the world because of my interest and the hours I’d spent reading, like anyone else would. Any human, any Other.

  But what I was about to do … Well, that might qualify as unique encantado recklessness. We were, after all, prone to acting on impulse.

  CHAPTER 23

  When I was immortal, I lived near a small village of humans by the Amazon River. The village had always been slow to develop; until well into the 20th century, it remained small and insular and singularly superstitious.

  In this village, encantado were creatures to be feared. And for good reason: we had a tendency to steal away with their young men. For our part, it wasn’t totally conscious or malicious … we just became infatuated.

  Deeply, obsessively so.

  It wasn’t like human limerence. Our infatuations ran deeper, consumed us so well that if we hadn’t been immortal, we might have combusted from lack of nutrition or sleep or—almost inevitably—broken hearts. We were like the Juliets of Others, except our romances weren’t cut short by poisoning or suicide after three days.

  Well, at least not for our part. It was the Romeos who tended to be problematic. But they just kept appearing, and we just kept falling for them.

  In the village, the men developed a ritual. As a test of manhood, they ventured into the rainforest in search of our home. My community was a small, matriarchal cluster—encantado are never created male—a kilometer’s walk away. We hadn’t built traditional structures; by and large, we lived under the rain and the sun, swam in the river every day. When we slept, it was on the grass. When we ate, we caught fish from the river and respectfully consumed every part.

  No waste. No destruction.

  We were among the original environmentalists.

  The only true markers of our home were the clothes we hung on branches, what we would change into when we took on our illusions. It was our nature which kept us near the human world, our eternal desire for love and fantasy.

  So we didn’t mind the ritual. In fact, we relished it, each of us taking our turns appearing to the villagers who reached our home.

  Of course, some men turned back early. Some didn’t find us at all. But those who did had to approach us like the sirens of Greek lore, to resist what they saw and heard and return to the village as men.

  Some found us and never returned to the village. Some of those men became mine—for a time.

  But only one of those men ever loved me. Really, truly. His name was Marco.

  He came to our home in the forest, and I was the first encantado he met. A young, naked woman, brown curls lapping over my shoulder and down my chest. And though I didn’t cover myself, he didn’t take his eyes off mine. We talked and walked and before he left to return to the village, he kissed me on the cheek. I was charmed, but I didn’t expect him to come back.

  It was the encantado who chose to follow her Romeo, if she desired. It was the encantado who stole her man of choice from the village.

  But the next day, he returned. And because I wasn’t infatuated with him, I didn’t show myself. He met other encantado, but none were me, and he wanted none of them.

  He only wanted the first one. Isabella.

  He returned the next day, and the next. And though I never showed myself to him, he returned. Unflagging, unflappable Marco, calling my name through the trees.

  Then he brought the seed.

  On that morning I woke to birdcall, delighted laughter. The sun pierced the trees in wells of light, and in those pockets, the Amazonian birds flitted back and forth with mouthfuls of seed. Big and small, common and rare, the brilliant and the dull-feathered species together.

  I had never seen so many birds in one place, never seen them intermingle that way. And all it had taken was birdseed, spread and offered on the ground.

  Among them stood Marco, both hands outstretched like Lady Justice, birdseed in the flats of his palms. And that was when I understood the spark versus the slow-burn, the match versus the kindling.

  I walked to Marco, took up a handful of seed, and didn’t leave his side for the next forty years.

  He taught me importan
t truths: first impressions aren’t always ironclad. Acting on impulse isn’t mutually exclusive with exercising judgment.

  And if you ever want to bring all the birds to the yard, don’t forget the grub.

  ↔

  I stepped into the white tree line of Mont Royal, the city slung low behind me and the bag still heavy over my shoulder. In my periphery, the sun demanded attention, willing me to turn my head left for a single, retina-scalding moment.

  Above, the branches rose iced and otherwise bare toward the sky. No birds, but also no creatures. Nothing moved around me except what the wind blew into motion, and though I hadn’t entered this forest before, I knew that wasn’t right.

  In an hour, darkness would envelop this dormant forest. In an hour, Empusa would be dead. She wouldn’t get another night to kill—not one more human, not one more death.

  I crunched through the leaves, trekking deeper. When I had gotten a half-mile in, I heard the first caw before I spotted it.

  I cringed, my ears ringing as I lifted my eyes to the high canopy. A single stymphalian bird, cocking its head to gaze black-eyed back at me.

  No—not just one. The longer I looked, the more I saw. Two, three, five, eight. Another caw, and all at once the whole flock was riled to motion, sweeping up into the air in a vortex. My hair blew up around my face, and I knew if I moved at all, I would lose my nerve. I would run.

  Half a minute later, they settled into lethargy. It was daytime, after all—well, at least for a little while.

  I dropped the bag to the ground, pulled my keys from my pocket and ripped open the top. At once the scent hit me, and it hit them, too. I tried not to retch as they screeched.

  “Hey boys.” I ungloved one hand to the frigid air. I reached into the bag and sank my fingers into the bloody mess. I tried not to retch—we encantados were pescatarians, after all—as I pulled out a handful of pig guts. “Dinner’s come early.”

  I raised the meat aloft, gesturing up at the cyclone of birds before I threw the whole of it on the ground. All at once, their flight pattern changed; where before they’d circled with purpose, now they descended with distinct—and terrifying—intent.