by Dima Zales
“Sure,” she says. “That’s why I’m here. I just wanted to see if we could save Isis a trip down here. The bill will be—”
“No need. She’ll be here shortly,” I cut in.
And she will be, even if I have to have the lion drag her down here by her neck, like a cub.
“Got it,” the vampire says, picking up Felix’s chart.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell my unconscious friend and rush back to the car.
Normally, the drive to Midtown would take an hour and a half in the current traffic conditions. Even in the best-case scenario, the trip would take an hour if one followed the speed limits and was sane.
Chester pulls up to my work building in less than a half hour, then parks in a tow-away zone and helps me get Nero out of the car and on his feet.
Leaving Thalia with the car, we go inside, where no one questions our bloody clothes.
Chester must still be doing his luck misdirection thing.
“Stay here,” Nero directs him when the elevator arrives, and Chester nods, not looking the least bit offended.
“Good luck,” he says with a smirk as we get into the elevator, with Nero doing his best not to lean on me and failing.
I press the basement button, and when we step out, Nero guides us through a maze-like corridor.
We find Isis standing next to giant metal doors, her nose in her phone.
“Heal her,” Nero barks, and Isis’s head jerks up. Blinking, she quickly shoots me with her healing energy, and the pain in my ribs disappears.
“Thank you. Now heal him,” I say, nodding toward the bloody mess that is Nero, but Isis ignores me.
Instead, she opens the doors with a flair.
I look inside—and can’t believe what I’m seeing.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
It’s a room full of treasure. Actually, the word “room” doesn’t do it justice. It’s a stadium-sized vault packed to the brim with gold coins, gold bricks, platinum jewelry, diamonds, and other precious stones.
“Get him inside,” Isis says, and I help Nero walk into the place.
Once we’re in there, my brain has trouble coping with the literal mountain of wealth on display.
There’ve been rumors of something like this going around the office. Whispers of a room filled with gold. I always thought it was a joke meant to compare Nero to Scrooge McDuck, who was fond of swimming in a pool of gold.
But this is different. It reminds me of the treasure that Smaug—the dragon from the Hobbit—slept on.
As soon as Nero’s foot lands on the nearest gold coin, there appears to be a spring in his step.
“I got it from here,” he growls. “Let go of me.”
I release him, and he walks farther into the room, then starts to pull off his shirt. For a brief moment, his eyes meet mine, and though he still looks on the verge of passing out, I can’t help but recall our time in that hotel on the Tartarus-ravaged world.
It might be on his mind too, because his limbal rings thicken, and a certain softness appears on his face. In the next second, however, he grimaces in pain and resumes stripping.
Not wanting to ogle his naked body like the apparent pervert that I am, I turn an accusing glare on Isis. “Why aren’t you healing him?”
“I don’t need to heal him,” she says. “Look.”
With a shimmer, Nero turns into his dragon form and starts climbing the giant mountain of treasure.
The wounds that he had in human shape are still there on the dragon—just bigger and bleeding a lot more.
But by the time Nero is perched on the very top of his pile, those wounds begin to knit.
I blink once, twice, but he just keeps healing.
I sneak a peek at Isis to check if she’s doing it somehow, but she’s fiddling with her phone, and there’s no energy flowing from her to Nero.
When the wounds are gone completely, Nero contentedly closes his giant eyes and relaxes, as if to sleep.
“Wait a sec.” I spin on my heel to glare at Isis again. “Nero can heal himself?”
“When in this room, obviously.” She pulls her eyes away from her phone. “Just give him a few more minutes, and he’ll be good as new.”
“Then why did you meet us here and not at the hospital?” My voice rises with every syllable. “Felix can’t do that; he needs your help.”
“First, I provided you with a vampire, so I don’t even need to go to the hospital,” she says. “Second, Nero is the one who pays me, so I had to make sure he—”
“He’s definitely going to be fine?” I look at the slumbering dragon.
“Better than fine,” she says. “He’ll be full of energy and won’t need to sleep or eat for a while.”
Interesting. Is that what’s behind his incredible work ethic? He’s literally super-charged by his wealth?
No time to dwell on that, though; we have to help Felix.
I grab Isis by the shoulder. “Let’s go then. Now.”
Our drive back to the hospital is even faster—and crazier.
“Bertie and I should go,” Chester says when he spots the vampire nurse walking out of the ER entrance.
“Right,” I say. “Thank you. You’ve more than fulfilled your side of our bargain.”
“I did. And just so you know, after today, I’m very happy that Beatrice failed to kill you.” He winks and adds, “Lucky how things can turn out.”
Before I can ask him if he’s implying all the craziness that’s been happening to me is just to appease his luck, he walks toward a random-seeming car, opens the door without a key, and gestures for the lion to jump inside.
Shrugging, I attack the vampire with a bunch of questions, and she informs me that while Felix is not doing better, he’s not in a critical-enough condition to have needed her blood.
She then takes us to his private room, where Isis shoots Felix with her mojo until he starts making disturbingly orgasmic sounds.
With a gasp, he jackknifes into a sitting position and looks at me. “You used me as a shield,” he says dazedly.
I wince. “Sorry about that. I had no other choice.”
“Sure,” he says grumpily as I help him get to his feet. “So what happened after I passed out?”
I explain on the way to the car, and finish my tale when we get in and Thalia starts driving. We also eat most of the food in the bar and drink a couple of cocktails to calm our nerves.
When we park next to my building, Isis’s phone dings, and she says, “Nero is well enough to text. He wants me to walk you home and tuck you in, so let’s go.”
We leave the car and go up to our apartment without meeting any of the neighbors.
“What happened?” Fluffster asks frantically when he sees all the blood covering us.
“We’re fine,” I assure him, shoving Felix toward the shower.
He needs it, badly, and so do I.
I then offer Isis tea, which she accepts, although she keeps her nose buried in her phone as she drinks it. Is she checking how many likes her selfie got or tweeting about how boring it is to be in my company?
“So, we survived the first world,” I say, launching into the tale of our adventures for Fluffster. I’m about midway when Felix comes in wearing fresh clothes and looking like a new person.
“Now you tell him what happened after we almost got eaten by the sea monsters,” I say to Felix and go into the shower to decontaminate myself.
An hour later, I come out all pruney. Isis is still there, waiting for me, and she walks with me to my room despite my protestations.
“Get under the blankets. I’m going to heal you some more,” she says.
I’m already feeling perfectly fine, but I do as I’m told and she shoots me with her mojo, dropping me into the sweetest and most dreamless sleep I’ve had.
I wake up feeling amazing.
Isis has the coolest power by far. If I were as rich as Nero, I’d have her “heal me” like that every night.
Then again,
if Fluffster learned how much her services cost, he’d turn into his monster form and eat her, so maybe it’s not the best idea.
Yawning and stretching under the blanket, I check whether my powers came back.
With no effort, I leap into Headspace, and for the first time in a while, the shapes that surround me play happy tunes.
Ignoring them, I attempt to reach Rasputin again, so I can tell him what happened. Also, maybe I’ll get lucky and learn about my mother in his memories as we join.
I’m dying to find out who she was.
The call doesn’t connect. Since I’m here, though, I decide to check on Vlad to see how he’s doing.
I find him no longer in the colosseum. This time, he’s actually training some young boys how to wield a sword—which I guess is an improvement on fighting to the death. Maybe he’s moved on to the next stage of grief?
When my vision ends, I go back to Headspace and check on Kit as well.
To my shock, I see the shape-shifting Councilor talking to Ariel in a hallway. Ariel is knitting and puffing on her vaping gizmo as Kit tells her how she finally managed to escape Lola’s sexual clutches and right away checked herself into rehab.
The vision completes, and I find myself back in my comfy bed. I’m about to get up and get on with my day when an idea occurs to me.
It’s been a while since I attempted to see my biological mother via a vision—and Rasputin has told a few tidbits about her recently, which could help.
Returning to Headspace, I dwell on every attribute I’ve learned about. He’d said she was stubborn, like me, and quick-thinking, also like me. Great at deception too—obviously like me as well.
Nothing happens, so I recall Rasputin hinting that she’s not compassionate—in contrast to me—and add that into the mix.
Still no results.
I’m about to give up when I remember a memory of Rasputin that I gleaned the very first time we joined—one where he was brushing a lover’s hair.
That was very likely my mother. She had black hair (like I do), pale shoulders (check), and a graceful back (not sure about the similarity on this one, as I’m not in the habit of staring at my backside in the mirror).
More importantly, in the memory, he’d called her unpredictable—and said that he loves that about her.
I combine all these facts together, then add my deep desire to know who she is, and something clicks.
A new set of shapes shows up in front of me—shapes that aren’t exuding immediate danger but aren’t all happy-go-lucky either.
Can it be?
Will I finally see my mother?
Using my intuition once more, I touch the most promising vision—and nearly explode with excitement as it starts.
Chapter Seventy
I find myself bodiless on a familiar New York street.
A beautiful woman is walking there, dressed in a strappy black dress.
She has the black hair from Rasputin’s memory, and her shoulders—and her everything else—are vitamin-D-deficiency pale. What the dress reveals of her back is indeed graceful, but more importantly, if you took my face and removed any features I have in common with Rasputin, you’d get this woman’s visage.
This is my mother.
I know this beyond a shadow of doubt—despite the fact that she looks too young to have a kid my age. Then again, the Cognizant don’t age the same way.
The woman turns to walk into a building, and I realize why this street looks so familiar.
This is where Nero lives.
Is this some Twilight Zone “Meet the Parents” episode? My father has met whatever Nero is to me and now my mother feels left out?
Then I notice something else, and it sends my mind really spinning.
With her face in a profile like this, I spot a tattoo on her temple.
A tattoo of a moon attached at the top of a cross.
It takes me a moment to understand the implications, and even then I refuse to believe it.
I must be wrong.
My mother cannot be who I think this is.
Waltzing into Nero’s fancy lobby, the woman takes out a bloody rag from her dainty purse and gives it a surreptitious lick—though it could just as easily have been a sniff. She then frowns deeply.
Whatever she’s just learned, she doesn’t like it.
Spinning on her heel, she rushes for the front desk and faces the security guard sitting there. As she catches his gaze, her eyes turn into mirrors.
So she is a vampire. That supports my crazy theory, as does the bloody rag to some degree, but it just can’t be—
“Did a man recently leave this place?” she says in a voice different from the one I expected, but with a strange accent that’s still dead on. “A good-looking specimen with strange eyes and—”
“You mean Mr. Gorin?” the guard asks. “Nero Gorin?”
“I think I do,” she says. “Where did this Nero go?” She reaches out and grabs the guy by the collar of his uniform.
“He never tells me such things,” the guard replies robotically, oblivious to the rough treatment. “His limo sped away pretty fast, so he’s bound to be far away by now.”
She lets him go, her frown deepening. “Did he have a man with him?” She proceeds to describe Rasputin—another piece of evidence to support my theory.
“No,” the guard says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man with that description show up here with or without a beard.”
“Fine,” she snaps. “Do you have a key to this Nero’s lair?” Under her breath, she mutters, “Since I’m here, I might as well see if he has any clues to Rasputin’s location among all the gold.”
“Do you mean his penthouse?” the guy asks in confusion.
“Whatever you call it.” She peers at him more intently. “Give me the key. Now.”
The guy hands her a key so fast he nearly dislocates his shoulder.
As she walks to the elevator, I cannot deny it any longer.
I now know who my mother is—and I wish it were anyone else.
Literally, anyone.
Unfortunately, reality doesn’t care about my desires, and with a sinking feeling, I process the realization that I’m Lilith’s daughter.
Chapter Seventy-One
I want to deny it, but it makes too much sense.
On Lilith’s world, she’d used glamour to look and sound like a goddess—which is why I didn’t see our resemblance. Here on Earth, however, she looks like a regular vampire, just with that distinctive tattoo.
Itzel, being a gnome, was immune to Lilith’s glamour on her world, and she’d mentioned a temple tattoo. Only instead of describing it as a moon on top of a cross, like a normal person would have, Itzel said it was a parenthesis sitting on top of a plus sign. Oh, and I can’t believe Itzel told us about the tattoo but not the fact that Lilith and I look alike. Then again, she did mention she had trouble with non-gnome faces.
My mother is Lilith.
That explains the bloody rag she was holding in the vision. It no doubt contains some of the copious blood Nero had shed in her world. She’s using the blood to locate him—the person who attacked her castle.
She’s here for revenge.
That’s what Rasputin said would happen, and he was right.
That she’s also looking for Rasputin is further proof of her identity, as is the fact that she’s a vampire.
And not just a vampire. Lilith is also a trickster—which is why Rasputin had said she was so unpredictable. He’d meant it literally.
A lot of other pieces start to fall into place.
Lilith’s world runs about twenty times slower than Earth. A year there is twenty here. Three years and eleven months there is about eighty here—which explains how I was born in beginning of the twentieth century but grew up at the turn of the millennium.
Lilith’s world must’ve been where Rasputin stole me away from—and now that I think about it, his visions of me slicing throats with that knife could’ve easi
ly taken place in Lilith’s castle.
My mother is Lilith.
That explains why Rasputin left me at JFK by myself. Lilith had his hair and could locate him at will. She did find him afterward, and this is why she was torturing him. She must’ve wanted me back, and he refused to tell her where he took me.
But if he’s the father of her child, how could she treat him like that? What kind of a monster—
Wait. Who am I kidding? She made herself a god and uses people like water bottles. It was probably her who would’ve made the child version of me slice people’s throats in the future Rasputin had prevented. No doubt she wanted me to grow up a psychopath, just like Mommy.
Then again, Rasputin had lived in the nicest cell of all the prisoners at Lilith’s castle, and she didn’t mutilate his body or drain his blood. Is that her version of loving care?
The elevator dings, and I examine this monster—my mother—more carefully.
Despite everything, I still want to know her.
But that’s a bad idea.
Must think about something else—like the interesting fact I can now add to my list of vampire trivia.
Apparently, they can give birth. Or at least this one did—I must not forget that she’s very, very powerful and a probability manipulator to boot. Maybe that combo lets her do things that regular vampires can’t do. Like flying, for example. Or possessing the strength to fight a dragon.
Lilith exits the elevator and enters Nero’s apartment.
“Honey, I’m home,” she says tauntingly and sniffs the air.
Does she think Rasputin might be hiding here?
When no one replies, she walks around the apartment at random, first checking the kitchen, then the gym, then the spa-like bathroom I’d used the other day.
A minute later, she stumbles onto Nero’s art studio, where a painting catches her eye.
A painting I’d also found interesting when I saw it.