The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (12 page)

We had a late lunch at one of the most
beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Picking up burgers and fries from
another Mom-and-Pop shack by the road we’d used as a restroom stop,
Ceinwyn Dale held back until we found a lake, where we parked and
ate right near the miniature, wind-borne waves. Silver Lake, a
little hidden treasure that reflects blue sky and is surrounding by
green fields. It’s quiet, peaceful. I barely even tasted the burger
it was so enchanting. There’s not even much traffic, just the
occasional car when you forget the road exists a few yards away
from you.

I grew up in a city. Noise is what I’m used
to. Silence was different.

“Badass,” I whispered.

Ceinwyn Dale smiled a bit more than usual.
“Sometimes a water
fairy
forms at the bottom of it.”

“Really?”

She nodded, crumpling her wrapper and
tucking it away in a plastic bag she’d brought along. “Most lakes
form one from time to time. Tahoe has a number that jockey for the
favored spots . . . some live for years. A great deal of anima has
collected there . . . time and nature will do that.”

“Anima? You’ve said that before too.”

She took my wrappers away from me and added
them to the bag. With my hands free, I dug through my pocket, found
my packet, and I lit up a cigarette. Blessed relief.

Ceinwyn Dale looked out over the lake,
ignoring my puffing. “Think of anima as a power source with
thirteen colors. Both in nature and inside of humans. When you use
the Mancy, it’s from you focusing anima within you and then letting
it out on the world. Legend says that the
elves
—before they
died—tapped into the natural world . . . but we can’t. Only what’s
inside of humanity. We can store it in items called artifacts for
specific uses, but we can’t pull it from other places. As you
train, you’ll learn to feel it inside of you and to control it and
then use it with meaning instead of on instinct.”

“So, the Force meets some crazy Japanese
Anime?”

“Something like that . . . just remember:
it’s easier to imagine something happening than to actually do
it.”

A flock of ducks circled the lake. First
time I’d ever seen a duck in the wild. I remember watching them
skim the water and go back up, only to do it again. They weren’t
fishing, hell if I knew what they were doing though. Maybe it was
futile avoidance of a predator that’s not there. I like
futility.

I took a long drag, a bit full of myself. “I
broke the child-lock just fine. Didn’t seem that hard.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“I did it the moment I knew you had me
locked up like a kid,” I muttered around the cigarette, the
smoldering end swaying.

“Did you?”

“Are you trying to piss me off again? I
stopped the ‘
fuck you, bitch
’ stuff but I can go back to it
if you want.”

“Think about it, King Henry. When did you
first want to break something?”

I thought about it. “Oh . . .”

“Yes.” Ceinwyn Dale wasn’t watching the
ducks but the clouds. Winddancer, that’s what aeromancer Ultras are
called. I’ve never found out if they can actually fly or not. But
Ceinwyn Dale’s expression said she thought about trying it over the
lake that day. “Not as easy now, is it?”

The ducks landed, flapping water all over
themselves with their wings and making little quacks. Even animals
only have so much room for futility. “I got mad when the music
stopped.”

“Yes,” she repeated.

“But that was like five minutes before I
broke the child-lock.”

“Correct.” Ceinwyn Dale reached out to touch
my shoulder, forgetting the clouds. “What we do isn’t easy. It
might get easier, but it will always take effort. Five minutes for
one little tiny child-lock. You have to fight for it.”

“For what?”

“That . . . is the wisest question you’ve
asked.”

Her phone rang. Damn good reception I must
say. Wonder what plan she was on . . . She answered it and I
listened in since I’m pretty nosy to begin with and every word
Ceinwyn Dale spoke was gospel at that point in my life.

“Dale . . . Yes, I have him . . . yes, like
I expected . . . I’d put money on it.” A ‘
ha!
’. “Tomorrow .
. . he’s rough but smart . . . Any problems? He’s a Welf, it’s
expected . . . did the Mabanaagan girl arrive yet? Good . . . and
Reti? Very good. You’re doing fine, Russell, stop hyperventilating
. . . she’s a Firestarter, deal with it . . . well, keep her calm,
once she learns control in a few months you can put away the
extinguisher . . . I know you’re busy. I know four-hundred new
students. I owe you one . . . I need to go, tell the Lady she can
come for breakfast tomorrow and meet him. Yes, Russell . . .”

He was still talking when she hung up.

“My girlfriend would never shut up either,”
I said.

Ceinwyn Dale’s smile got a bit frosty. “That
was Russell Quilt; he’ll be testing you for placement
tomorrow.”

“So you think I’m smart, huh?” I teased
her.

“I couldn’t say you are a thief, vulgar,
barely look like you’re twelve, have a problem with authority, and
represent the worst aspects of the Scots-Irish borderman American
after I spent this time finding you, could I?”

“Ouch . . . well, at least I’m a smart thief
. . .”

“Get in the car, King Henry.”

I did.

Heading deeper into the mountains for a
swing around Carson City, Nevada and towards the Institution of
Elements, it would take us a few more hours to get there. Ceinwyn
Dale and I didn’t talk much for the next hour.

I was pretty shocked when she up and stabbed
me in the neck with a giant needle.

“You fucking bitch!” Yeah, probably
predictable.

“Sorry, King Henry. It’s a policy to keep
you from finding the school until you’re graduated. Most come
inside of buses where they can’t see outside,” Ceinwyn Dale
explained, acting like it wasn’t a big deal.

“You fucking bitch! You just stabbed me with
a giant needle!”

“Go to sleep, King Henry.”

I did. I didn’t have much choice. Can’t
blame her though. I keep telling you, fourteen-year-old-me was a
little shit. But he was a
smart
little shit. Ceinwyn Dale
said so.

It’s a damn shame that I’ve made it to
twenty-two and still haven’t broken a car axle. And the sad fact
is: I wasn’t going to that night either.

I woke up in a trunk. Which ain’t exactly
the place you want to be when you’re enduring a car crash. Car
companies don’t design around protecting grocery bags, they design
around protecting the driver. If I’d broken the axle, King Henry
Price would have been smashed into King Henry Pulp.

These thoughts came long after I realized
where I was. At first . . . it was pathetic. I went from
unconscious to conscious with a whimper, a slow rise from the dark
of sleep into a different dark. My eyes opened to nothing. Sight
had no use to me. Car companies also don’t care if your grocery
bags can see.

Feel worked best to reorient me. First my
body. The pains where Annie B had punched and kicked and thrown me.
My back ached down the entire length of my spine. I was on my side,
thrown in like a test dummy, no care taken for how I was lying or
what would happen to my muscles if I stayed in a cramped position
until I woke.

I let out a breath, eyes adjusting some more
but revealing only more dark. Underneath me, I felt the soft
vibration of highway driving—that straight ahead, no stoplight
speed. My hands reached up to run along the unforgiving metal of a
trunk top and my feet banged against the sides. Being short worked
to my advantage, keeping me from being cramped into a vice. I could
just barely move if I pulled my body in tight. Shift to one side,
shift to the other side. Feeling my prison.

My neck and throat hurt the worst of
anything. I’d been choked out by super-condensed blood formed into
a noose. That took a special kind of idiot. My own Cold Cuffs had
probably even helped her do it.

Cold Cuffs
, I thought with a sudden
spike of realization.

My hands went from pushing against the metal
of my prison to feeling my person. Jeans, shirt, and my geomancer
coat were still on me. Static ring—gone . . .
shit
. The
cuffs too.
Double shit . . .

I felt my pockets, found my wallet with the
same contents I always had: about forty dollars in cash, my
California ID, my mancer ID, and the key to my motorcycle . . .
which was probably getting stolen outside of my shop right about
now.

My other jean pocket was empty, like it
always was. But in my coat pocket I found the anima vial T-Bone
donated earlier in the day. Pulling it out, I ran my hands over it.
Triple shit
.

Oh, I could use it as a weapon. Not like an
electromancer could, shaping the bolt into to something lethal, but
I could break the seal and unleash pure anima into the bitch, which
would be the anima burn to end all anima burns. Wouldn’t kill her,
but it might buy me the time to escape. Only . . . the vial was
worth about five-thousand dollars. I had a hard time convincing
myself my life is worth five-thousand dollars. The poor kid with
the hand-me-downs didn’t like it.

In the darkness, I had time to let my brain
work. I had time to let the lateral thinking come out. In the
near-silence, I outlined my plan of attack. Inside my body, I built
anima. Best of all, I had time to remember what my teachers taught
me about vampires.

[CLICK]

Hello, a bit of out-of-character here with
some information from the old and experienced King Henry, not the
idiot in the trunk who’s been kidnapped.

Just about when I entered into the Asylum in
late 2009 there was a vampire fad hitting the United States at full
tilt. Vampires were everywhere and in everything. Movies, comics,
literature, television shows. Everyone wanted stories about
vampires and every kind of vampire too. You got your regular,
everyday vampire myths thrown into this whirlwind: fangs, silver,
garlic, daylight—all the classic bits of weaknesses and strengths.
But the most popular of the fad was vampires who could go out in
the day . . . that
sparkled
in the sun.

Good vampires
.

The first thing Fines Samson told my class
when we started studying them was to throw all the bullshit we
thought we knew in the garbage, that’s essentially what our
conception of a vampire was worth. My first fight with Anne proves
this to be true. I knew better, I’d been told they weren’t the
boogeyman I expected, and I still got beat up.

To get his point across, the first book
Samson had us read on vampires didn’t have a thing to do with them.
It was Marco Polo, the famous explorer, and his account of his
travels. He also told us the story of the Kingdom of Prester John.
Samson got his point across fast: people love to make stories up.
I’d also add that even more people love to believe in the
make-believe. Fangs, silver, garlic, and daylight . . . it’s all
made up to enchant us with its exotic flare. Only two of these
myths even have a basis in reality. As far as the sparkly
good
vampires
. . . did Anne seem very sparkly to you?

What a vampire really is . . . is a creature
of blood living inside a human body. Think of them as a hermit crab
with a shell. It’s the best analogy I have for you. The body is
just the shell, the actual vampire, the actual creature, is the
blood inside the shell, flowing all throughout the human
circulatory system. Their strength is that they can control the
body to levels humans can’t. They can heal wounds, they can speed
up the heart, they can rebuild bones so their fibers are stronger
than some metals. You realize the advantage? A vampire is a lethal
creature.

Since they’re nothing but blood, they like
the cold. Which is where the partial myth of sunlight comes into
play. They don’t mind sunlight, what they don’t like is
heat
. They’re like supercomputers running on human hearts.
The hotter it gets, the slower the beat. They like the cold. Which
is why Fresno during the winter is such a big hunting ground for
them. Nice and cool but not too cold. After all, blood needs to be
fluid to flow. There’s a small range of temperature where a vampire
can function at one-hundred percent efficiency. This makes them
move around a lot chasing temperatures.

The other myth which has some truth to it is
silver. Not that silver hurts the vampire—notice Anne’s choker is
silver and her neck ain’t being burnt in half—but that vampires
will often keep silver knives on their person when they feed. Vamps
don’t really have fangs, so what they’ll do is a slice job on
themselves and then a slice job on their victim and there is the
opening they need to slide into.

This is about to get even grosser than it
already was. They don’t drink the blood with their mouths. To use
another sea example, like a starfish, they extend themselves out of
their shell and enter into your body to digest your blood
there.

It gets grosser. People threw up during this
class, trust me. Big tough Jason Jackson was spewing all over the
place when the slideshow started. Fines Samson wanted to get his
point across. Sea examples continue to be what works best for them,
since they’re really nothing but a blood amoeba. Besides exiting
their shell to feed, as they get older they learn to multiply, and
the way they do this is to drain a victim of the majority of their
blood, causing death, then they spread themselves between the two
shells and split in two. Just like a simple cell.

The original half goes back into the old
shell, same memories as it had before. The new half crawls into its
new body and races up into the brain, digesting memories in some
way I’ve never had an accurate explanation given, but apparently it
happens. Thus awakes a new vampire, with the memories and thoughts
of the human prey, even the name of the human prey, with all those
defenses built in and prepared in seconds. For a time, they
struggle with not being human, but they ain’t, trust me. They’re
vampires. The body is just a shell to live in, don’t be fooled
otherwise. They don’t sparkle. But they will kill you and then wear
what you leave behind, so nice and comfy.