Mortal Banshee

by Jonathon Magnus

  Europhette waved her hand with such emphasis that Armaan had to lean away to avoid getting incidentally smacked. She said, “Then of course the sirens won’t help him, so he captured a few and then asked me for some vampires to run experiments on the sirens. I guess it worked some because that’s when he went and got the ogres to help him take Amaranthine—er, WaterCrescent—whatever, and he said the experiments looked good but he needed more sirens so he was going to go capture more. I guess that’s when the war started.”

  Visor said, “So if we go get you the Catalyst, the war would be over?”

  Europhette said, “No doy, or another mana banana.”

  “It will or won’t help?”

  “Oh, like totally.”

  “Which?”

  “What?”

  Armaan said, “You’re going to let them go? They’ve seen your face.”

  “What do you think I’m going to do? Drain everyone? The whole vampire queen thing again?” Europhette shook her head. “You say that every time, Armaan. Don’t worry. You won’t remember this.” She stepped close to Armaan and touched his chest. “You are so like your father.” She spoke melodramatically. “Armaan’s father was mine—the love of my life. Oh, that fate would have been altered. I loved him and he me. But he wanted children, a gift I could ne’er provide. I left him before he would leave me. He never knew why. He calls me cold … frozen. Armaan doesn’t know what he means to me, now a man himself. Beautiful, isn’t he?”

  Armaan put his hands on Europhette’s hips.

  Europhette shook her head slowly and turned back to Sorana, slipping away from Armaan. “I know you think you love him, but you don’t. They will abandon you—the oracle and the Godiva—whether it’s when they discover your nature, lose interest in you, or simply wither and die. You can’t compel them forever.” Europhette took Sorana’s hands in hers. “You should stay with me. We are family. I can’t promise you will like me. I do promise I will never lie to you, and that I will never abandon you.”

  Sorana asked, “Why did you leave him?”

  Europhette asked, “Armaan’s dad? To avoid the drama and a lot of crying. I just figured why go through all the heartache—for him and me. I mean, guh, like what’s the point if you’re going to end up getting dumped anyway?”

  “But you loved him.”

  “Well, yeah, like totally, but that wasn’t the point.”

  “Why not make him choose?”

  Europhette stood stunned for a moment. “Then if he didn’t want me, it would have been on him. See, that’s the sensible sister I never had!”

  “I cannot compel Visor. I am assigned to him.”

  “Au contraire, ma soeur. You totally can!” Europhette backed up to and leaned against Armaan.

  He held and kissed her. His eyes were closed in concentration.

  “You can do whatever you want, sister.”

  Embracing Europhette from behind, Armaan slid a hand under her belt.

  “Whoa there, sailor!” Europhette wiggled out of his grasp and hopped away. “This port is closed, at least until I see a ring on the finger.” She held up her hand. “Well, another one.”

  Armaan looked confused.

  Sorana said, “I told him to.”

  “What’s that, sister?”

  “I told Visor to touch me. He didn’t want to.”

  “Not even! I mean you have one serious ‘girl needing rescue’ routine going on. Guys love that.” Europhette pointed to Visor.

  Visor said, “I probably was just trying to help.”

  Europhette said, “I mean, if it weren’t for the whole ‘introverted assassin’ thing, you’d be the mistress of MILF. Trust me: ‘girl needing rescue’ works way better than ‘Holy crap she’s the vampire queen’. Do you know how hard it is to be attainable as the queen?” She pointed at Armaan.

  Armaan said, “She’s yet to be attained, or so I imagine.”

  Europhette said, “Everyone assumes you’re some kind of sexual predator with dungeons of whips and chains. As if! And, by the way, you’ll have to tell me what he’s like sometime. Well, what it’s like, for that matter. Why are all the good ones bound or insane?” She took Sorana’s hands. “There’s just so much to say and to do, now that you’re here.”

  Sorana shook her head. “Europhette … sister, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say ‘yes’. Promise you’ll stay with me.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t … right now.”

  “I understand. I didn’t know how this would go today. I’m just glad that at least one of us didn’t end up dead.” Europhette laughed and snorted. “But really, I hope that one day you will see that you belong with me. And know that whatever you choose—whatever happens—in the end, I will always love you.” She smiled self-consciously and looked up. “Gag me with a spoon. That sounded way better all the times I practiced. Anyway, I guess you want to go soon to get the Catalyst. But first, I would like to, you know, since you didn’t really get a chance to talk.” She held up her hand near Sorana’s face.

  Sorana nodded and cringed.

  Europhette said, “It won’t hurt.” She touched Sorana’s cheek. “Close your eyes. Do you remember anything of mother?”

  “No.”

  “What is the earliest thing you remember about anything?”

  Sorana considered for a moment. “Mercy was teaching me how to lace my boots.”

  “Wow! Your mind is—talk about ‘here and there, everywhere’. It’s okay, though. I don’t mean anything bad.”

  “Mercy gives me treatments. They help stave off madness.”

  “Oh, Really? Is she a doctor? Never mind. Go ahead.”

  “Okay, there is another thing. I sometimes dream …” Sorana looked at Visor. “They will not remember this?”

  “I promise, sister. They’re like totally wasted.”

  “Okay.” Sorana closed her eyes. “I was at a well—no, a bridge. There were rocks below.” Sorana gasped and pressed her hand over Europhette’s. “It’s so clear—like it is happening right now. It’s not actually a bridge at all. It is a stone wall, at the edge of a rock quarry. I am walking—headed home. A child, my little brother, is following me. I am looking back at him. He slipped on a loose stone. He fell into the quarry. He is hurt—bad.”

  “-ly.”

  “I don’t go to help him, though. I look down at him. I look at the bridge with the loose stone. Now I’m back, where I’d be if I’d been following him the whole time. I’m confused—guilty, somehow.”

  Europhette said, “Bogus. But it’s fine, pretty sister. Let me give you something. I bought this retro-prediction. We are at the edge of Marinet Lake. The lights reflecting in the water are from a symphonic forge. The woman is our real mother. We are the babies she’s holding.”

  “She’s beautiful.” Sorana placed her hand on Europhette’s face. The sisters sang together:

  On this shore, I rest and hope,

  Under Aurora’s Bridge, whose radiance chose you

  Chose you both

  Europhette said, “That was one expensive memory. Let’s see, what did he say … ‘We only give away dick and bubblegum, and we’re fresh out of bubblegum.’ Anyway, your turn. You were headed back to town. You are there. Then what?”

  “I’m walking, minding myself. People are looking at me. I’m afraid—so very afraid—of being …” Sorana went on to describe the experience, becoming ever more agitated as she continued. Her body was tense—shaking and sweating. She cried out and struck the vampire queen hard enough to knock her back. Sorana’s eyes shot open, wild and dilated. She crouched defensively and looked around at the others. “What! What are you looking at?”

  Armaan shook his head slowly … sadly.

  Visor reached for Mercy’s salts. “Velsignet, calm down. We need to get back to reality here.”

  The dragon
crept closer to Sorana.

  Europhette was crying, covering her mouth. Her cheek was dripping red fluid from a deep, bleeding cut. “I’m sorry. I’m sooo sorry.”

  “Stop it! Stop looking at me!” Sorana touched her forehead and inspected her glove, straining to focus.

  Visor crouched. “Sorana, sweetie, have some water.”

  Europhette said, “Sister, I swear, I didn’t mean to.”

  Sorana hyperventilated and passed out. She fell into the waiting arms of the dragon.

  Chapter 63

  Veils of Gray

  “And then we just followed the river until we got captured by your vardal friends.” Visor, walking along beside the dragon, rebalanced the unconscious Sorana in her saddle. They traversed the precipice, overlooking the dim city of Eurydice. “Your ride looks lighter than I’d imagined. Her scales are so fine and smooth.”

  “Leigh keeps the heavy scales shed ’cuz I’m always taking her for the long flights. She’s the fastest bird in the fleet.”

  Dragons shed their scales. That makes so much sense. That’s how they can fly, yet also be perceived and recorded as heavily armored creatures. Visor stroked Sorana’s leg. “I didn’t think she could faint, after the things I’ve seen her do.”

  “She’s just a girl.” The vampire queen adjusted her cloak, fastening her broach. The cut on her cheek had quickly clotted and was already beginning to heal up. “Just like me.”

  Visor tripped over something. “It’s a little dark for me.”

  “That’s why you brought the pixie?”

  “He’s still around?” Visor kept pace with the dragon. “I haven’t seen him since we got captured.”

  “Here and there. He’s hiding.” She waved her hand dismissively.

  “Probably waiting for an opportunity to rescue us.”

  “So your plan was like to just follow the river?”

  “Yeah, take the ship, go to the river, and follow it here.”

  “And before the ship, you came from a forest.”

  “Through Skarholt Forest.”

  “Where that tower witch lives.”

  “Mercy.”

  “So over the river?”

  “Yes.”

  “And through the woods?”

  “Exactly.”

  “To the vampire queen you go.”

  “That wasn’t exactly intentional.”

  Europhette varied her pitch as she spoke. “Mercy knows the way, to guide the Blade, through the god-forsaken drow.”

  “That sums it up rather succinctly, though I don’t know if ‘drow’ is accurate.”

  “It’s slang.”

  “Like a racial epithet?”

  “Like a get-punched-in-the-face racial epithet.”

  “I see. So, you and Sorana regenerate?”

  “We do all kinds of things, except predictions of course, since we’re not boys—oh, and not some other stuff. Well, I guess it’s just some things.”

  “Like a troll’s regeneration?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “And telepathy, of course. Though I guess I already knew that.”

  She was silent for a few steps, then turned and gripped his face.

  The dragon positioned its bared teeth near Visor’s neck. Its warm, moist breath bathed his throat.

  Visor held still.

  Europhette’s eyes stared into his, flaring to a familiar copper tint. In an instant, Sorana’s sister was every bit the terrifying vampire queen of legends. She was linked to his mind, but it wasn’t the shared exchange of verbiage and visions he’d experienced with human telepaths. This was a raid. She tore through is his mind at will, searching. Nightmares and dreams blended together with memories in an overwhelming torrent of images and words.

  Europhette found what she was looking for. She studied the instant that Sorana pried into his mind, back on the Virtuosa. She replayed the scene from different perspectives—from Ranie’s and Sorana’s point of view. Sorana’s point of view was distorted and discolored—probably sensory information that Visor’s brain couldn’t interpret.

  Europhette relaxed, once again the bubbly, vibrant sister. “Shut up! She totally restored your memory, obviously, duh. I didn’t know she knew how. Does she even know what she did?” She removed her hands from Visor’s face.

  The dragon relaxed and backed away.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Europhette opened a water skin on the dragon’s pack, and splashed some water on her hands. “And she removed the link block.”

  “She did? How would that work? She didn’t link with me before Ranie did.”

  Europhette wiped her hands on her clothing. “You weren’t awake when she did that.”

  What? Oh … oh, wow, no wonder the dream about Talon seemed so real. And that meant she had already known about Ranie. And she knew—

  “You have been kind to her.”

  “But you weren’t so kind to me. Why did you attack me—back in Raykez?”

  “Yeah, that, so I was all like looking for Sister and then Tyrion’s like ‘I’ll show you Fatale now’ and I’m like ‘okay’. So then I see you and that’s where Snowman attacked Sister psychically and made her kill you and then she went all cuckoo.” Europhette put her hands on her hips and stared off. “Hugh … unless that was me. Anyways, I don’t know how accurate it was though ’cuz those other guys you have back there weren’t in it, and there was a dwarf and alfanar chick and your pixie was buzzing around and it was a frosty cave. Anyways, I thought maybe you’d know where Sister was so that’s why I looked through your head, but you didn’t know her so I had spies check on you on occasion.”

  “Fatale is from Tyrion?”

  “No, tard! He’s not an oracle, but Tyrion shared it with me.”

  “Okay, so you checked my memories, but why break my oracle ability?”

  “Oh, yeah, that. Well, that was just one of those things, you know.”

  “An accident?”

  “Yeah, I just didn’t want you to remember me ’cuz you mightta made Fatale happen and then it would be partly my fault if Snowman destroyed Sister. Well, not literally destroyed. Well, I guess literally spiritually, just not literally as in really dead, you know? But that’s how I found out about Rap.”

  “What?”

  Europhette sighed. “So like Fatale leaves you asking ‘what the hell’ about the psychic assault, the thing that made Sister kill you, so then I get you to show me what happened inside her head and that’s where I first saw Rap and all of those predictions are grouped as Fatale-infernal.”

  “Rapture was part of—you had me do a prediction—wait, did you attack Rap?”

  “Oh, you did not! What kind of ogre do you think I am? Oh ‘vampire queen’—of course she’s going to drain sirens!” She rolled her eyes. “Nooooo. I got permission from miss ‘I’m so pretty’ Lara first and all I did was search for leads on my sister and implant some suggestions to alter the outcome of Fatale-infernal in case, you know, it actually happens and so now I owe Lara all these grody-to-the-max birds that poop everywhere.”

  “The albatrosses?”

  “She wants to be able to ride them.”

  “That’s why she’s starving herself.”

  “Probably—like she’s not skinny enough. She’s too skinny, miss ‘I’m so pretty’. Ug.”

  “The birds aren’t big enough?”

  “Well, I have a twenty-footer that can carry the lightest Xandrians with no saddle or gear, but it has to have a headwind and run downhill to lift off. I’m thinking a twenty-three foot wing span will do what Miss Pretty wants. Then I can get back to the riding snakes.”

  “You made the riding snakes. That’s how you paralyzed them.”

  “Hello, okay, if you grew giant snakes, wouldn’t you like totally leave an off switch?”

  “Do vardal have an off switch?”

  “All conjoins have one.
And nooooo, I didn’t make vardal.”

  Armaan asked, “Why not dragons?”

  Europhette asked, “What’s that, sweetie?”

  “Leigh can carry two, easy. Why not use dragons?”

  “Because she paid for birds.”

  Visor asked, “You get to ride dragons?”

  Armaan said, “And I get to drive.”

  “He has to drive. When he sits behind me, his hands wander like way too much.”

  Armaan said, “I thought the dragons would make rather effective chaperones.”

  Visor asked, “You literally turned your sister into a dragon? Um, totally literally?”

  “It seemed the thing to do at the time. She was hunted and tired of running—tired of life, yada yada yada.”

  “What suggestions did you give Rap?”

  “What?”

  “When you were trying to prevent Fatale.”

  “Oh, the ones that I needed to.”

  “Did you program her to bind to me?”

  “I made a few modifications. Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it does to me.”

  Armaan said, “If you’re getting the milk for free, you shouldn’t ask where the cow came from.”

  Sorana sat up. “There is no way to know.”

  Europhette helped Sorana regain her feet. “All wrong. Here’s a hint. It’s not philosophical. It’s like way fifth dimension.”

  Visor said, “Of course, in the fifth, the answer is ‘no’.”

  Armaan said, “Of course … so obvious.”