Chương 68: Chapter 61 - Us, Volume I

The mosque turned out to be an excellent place to think. Nobody bothered me, the architecture didn't remind me of anyone, and the acoustics made my own thoughts sound more organized than they actually were. By noon, I had a plan. Cassandra taunting me about the lock was a challenge. One I was going to participate in. The one thing worse than losing a game was not playing it. I found Kareem, and got supplies. Garlic.

Silver chains—since he couldn't get silver barbed wire—blessed crosses, holy water, rock salt, wooden stakes, hawthorn, and mirrors. Large mirrors, everything to be delivered later today. After the delivery, I redecorated my place. Garlic braids came over the door, the windows, and the AC intake, because mist had to come in from somewhere. Salt lines across every threshold, thick enough to qualify as landscaping. Silver wire woven through the door handle and across the window latches.

The mirrors went up facing the entrances, on the theory that she might find them existentially annoying. Crosses on every wall. Stakes arranged in an accessible fan on the nightstand, like the world's worst bouquet. I prepared to sprinkle the holy water everywhere before going to sleep. For the garrison, I summoned Ashy and Yushi. They cost like nothing to summon and upkeep, anyways. Ashy popped into existence in a pink flash, took one look around, and her tail went stiff.

"Why does your house smell like a pizzeria that found God?"

"Guard duty. Round two."

"No! Nope! Absolutely not!" She crossed her arms in an X.

"Her mind control is unfair! Last time I got tied to a fan! Do you know what it's like hanging from a fan all night? It's boring! And humiliating! And she didn't even let me watch!"

"This time you have backup." I pulled on the second connection. Yushi waved at her from within a puff of cold mist.

"Yushi assumes this is about the pale princess."

"She's been breaking in every night."

"Yushi is aware. Ashy told us everything." I glared at Ashy.

"I was traumatized. I had to talk to the girls to let it out. Plus, it's not like I saw anything important. I had the blindfold, remember?" Not the point. I rubbed my face with my palm.

"Both of you, try to ward off Cassandra and if you can't, wake me up." Yushi bowed slightly.

"We will protect the sanctity of your sleep."

"Right! Nobody gets past us!" Ashy spun into her sword form and switched to silver, taking up patrol by the door. I went to sleep. I woke up to sunlight, a headache, and a large bottle of water on the night table. The garlic braid over the door had been rearranged into a decorative wreath, tied off with a silver ribbon. The salt line at the threshold had been swept into a large, tidy heart.

The mirror facing the door had a message written across it in dark red lipstick: 3/10 <3 Ashy hung from the ceiling fan, hogtied with the same leather ropes, ball gag in, blindfold on, drooling from the corner of her mouth. On the floor beneath her, precisely forty centimeters out of reach, sat an open bag of gummy bears. I could practically see Cassandra catching her, tying her up, opening the bag of gummy bears, giving her one to taste, putting them under her, and blindfolding and gagging her.

And on the wall above my bed, where a crucifix used to be, hung a new piece of art. Two plates of glass, pressed together, edges clamped with silver wire, suspended from the ceiling hook on a tasteful ribbon. Between the plates, flattened into two dimensions like a pressed flower, was Yushi. All perfectly preserved, three millimeters thick. Her flattened eyes tracked me across the room. Well, that didn't work. I freed them both, gave Ashy the gummy bears, and unsummoned them.

On my nightstand, next to the untouched bouquet of stakes, stood a second bottle of water, a blister pack of iron supplements, and a pharmacy box of blood regeneration accelerant, the expensive mage-grade kind. I drank the water, took both pills, and headed out. Standard vampire folklore failed me. So, I needed something born out of experience. And the only person that I could go reasonably ask and have a chance to succeed was Mina. The walk to the Lucielle Legal section took the usual fifteen minutes.

I stopped at the kebab stand on the way and bought six lamb doners, one for me, the rest as tribute. Her place sat at the edge, by the water, cables still torn out of the ground in front of it. Still no lock on the door. I knocked. Nothing. I knocked again.

"Come in," came from inside, muffled. I pushed the door open and walked into sauna heat and the smell of fur and woodsmoke. Mina lay sprawled across the fur pile that functioned as her bed. All seven feet of her. Completely naked, on her stomach, chin propped on her forearms, watching the door with drowsy interest. I spun to face the wall so fast my neck cracked.

"I can come back."

"Why?"

"You're naked. Why did you tell me to go in?"

"It's already hot in here. Clothes make it worse." Furs rustled behind me, which I chose to interpret as her getting comfortable rather than getting up.

"Do I smell food?" Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"Five kebabs. Figured you might want some. They're delicious." She patted the bed next to her.

"Take a seat and hand them over." I sat on the edge of a bear fur, fixed my eyes on a fascinating knot in the wall planks, and held the bag out sideways. Long fingers relieved me of it. Unwrapping followed, then the unmistakable sound of someone demolishing a doner.

"So," she said around a mouthful.

"What do you need?"

"I've got problems with Cassandra. I need advice on how to handle her." Mina chuckled.

"You're at the right place. I'm the expert at it."

"Are you?"

"Literally got a lifetime of experience." A fur shifted.

"The key is inconsistency. Chase her like she's the only thing in the world, then ignore her for a few days. Repeat it a few times, and it's guaranteed to make her go absolutely wild. How they're all so pretty, the high vampire girls are used to being obsessed over. Both in good and bad. Also, they've got a natural instinct to hunt. Since they all get blood by buying it from blood banks, they don't satisfy that instinct at all. Tickle that predatory instinct a bit, and you'll have her in your bed soon enough.

And then it's easy, because she's got six hearts pumping blood into one pussy. She really wants someone to play with it." I rubbed my face with my palm. That wasn't the advice I was looking for. Hell, I've done that already, starting by flirting with her, then ignoring her because I was busy with something else, then continuing the pursuit only to get busy again.

"I'm not looking to seduce her. I've done that already. I need to get her off my back."

"Oh. Congratulations then. I've got no advice for that other than to enjoy it. Why would you ever want her off?"

"What do you mean you have nothing? Weren't you the expert a few seconds ago?"

"Expert at getting laid with a vampire." She chuckled.

"Cassandra's mom can write a seven-volume epic about it." Both my palms found their way to my face.

"Thanks."

"No problem. Just make sure to drink a lot of water, and take long naps during the day. They make nights unrestful." Yes, I could confirm that. Shaking my head, I left. The next night, I didn't bother. Might as well save mana on the summons. I just set an alarm for the morning climb, and passed out on top of the covers. I woke to intense heat and a click. Cassandra lay in my bed, pressed against my side, tucked into the crook of my arm, silver dress and all, holding her phone above us, taking pictures.

Moon still hung outside the window. Click.

"Good morning," she said, reviewing the shot.

"You sleep with your mouth open. It's in the album now." I stared at the ceiling and counted my options. They came to zero.

"What album?"

"You know how girls take a picture of their meal to post it on Instagram? I also like to take pictures. Plus, they might well become the foundation of our future family album." She turned the screen toward me. A gallery folder, neatly titled Us, Volume I. She scrolled with her thumb. Me passed out drunk with the tequila bottle. The salt heart. Ashy on the fan. Yushi mid-lamination. Me again, drooling, with a small heart drawn on in edit mode.

"Every relationship needs documentation. When we are old, we will look through these together and laugh." Ah, for fuck's sake.

"You don't age."

"Neither will you after you become a demon in Hell." She re-aimed the phone. Click.

"Smile a bit."

"No."

"If you want to look grumpy on all pictures, that's your call." She set the phone on my chest and propped her chin on her hand, crimson eyes lit up with something that a court of law would be forced to describe as affection.

"You stopped defending the room. Shall I take it as your unconditional surrender to my will?"

"Just took a break for the night. I'll have a ditch dug up for tomorrow."

"Shame. I'd already designed tonight's countermeasures." She walked two fingers up my sternum.

"Are you up for a bit of fun before late-night dinner?"

"Cassandra, I'm climbing today, and you're still married to someone else." She rolled her eyes.

"I'll put it on your tab for later then." She slid up, lips brushing my jaw on the way to my throat.

"I see consent is high up on your list of priorities." She rolled her eyes.

"The funniest part about human vampire lore is that we need to be invited to enter a building. That's such a cute attempt to make my kind less monstrous. But reality is that monsters exist, and I'm from among the hottest and the thirstiest of them all. Look at this." She opened images on her phone, and enlarged an image of a blond man in a suit, and a gorgeous black-haired woman in a red dress.

After a few blinks, I realized I was looking at a picture of my brother with what looked like a somewhat even hotter Cassandra with black hair. A text from an article above the image read:'This month's hottest couple,' and the text underneath it, above the read more button, read:'The hottest cougar of our jungle has sunk her claws into fresh prey.'

"That's your brother with my sister," she said, venom dripping out of her voice.

"She's having the time of her life, with Sorcerer's Monthly writing articles about how she's getting railed, while I'm listening to you whine about bullshit. This was supposed to be us. And it will be us, as soon as you stop being stubborn." She bit me. The usual haze crashed over me, terror and dying and magic-laced euphoria all shaken together, except this time she didn't stop at a polite sample. She drank longer this time, and with her free hand, raised the phone.

The last thing I heard before passing out was one more shutter click. I came back online to my alarm screaming and sunlight at the wrong angle. Nine forty. I sat up too fast, and the room applied for a restraining order. Another bottle of water on the nightstand. More iron supplements. Two boxes of the blood accelerant this time. With a sigh, I drank the water in one go, swallowed the pills dry, showered on legs made of overcooked pasta, and put on the suit.

In the mirror, the man looking back was slightly pale, though my head cleared up. She didn't drink all that much. She just made so much more of a show out of it. I headed to the pods. Today, I was going to end the entire Paradise operation and rescue Sarah. And tomorrow, I was going to march into the Church section and sign up for radical Christianity plus ultra, the anti-vampire pure silver edition.

There was no way that the Christian Church, in its two thousand years of history of dealing with vampires, didn't come up with a way to make someone undrinkable. The dome was the fullest I'd ever seen it. Tribunes packed to standing room, camera cranes sweeping, every screen on the tower wall lit. The host's voice rolled over the crowd at maximum professional wattage.

"… the vanguard, ladies and gentlemen! The deepest climbers of the human race! Zhao Liang and Adaeze are pushing floor forty-one, and today, three more elites challenge the frontier beyond floor thirty-seven!" The crowd roared. On the main screens, the vanguard walked the stage in slow motion, portraits and floor counts stacked beside their faces like military decorations. Perfect. Every eye on the islands, every analyst, every spy, and every feed pointed at the main stage.

A staff member found me at the edge of the dome and guided me away from all of it, down a service corridor, to a door I recognized. Side stage four. The classroom-sized room, the pods against the far wall. No tribunes. No cameras. No host. Last time, being shoved back here had offended me to my core. Funny how things changed. Six pods stood ready today instead of three, and the tea was already poured. Liu Wei knelt by the pot in his flowing robes, serene as a postcard.

Henrik sat against the wall with his tablet, glasses shimmering with a fresh scan. Aurelio Conti stood by the pods in his black plate, arms crossed, silent. Yukiko sat folded on the floor, katana across her lap, eyes closed. Chen Yi leaned against the far wall, warhammer across his shoulders.

"Fellow anti-daoist." Liu poured a sixth cup.

"The heavens gather us once more." I sat and took the tea. Henrik gave me one look over the glasses, and the scan shimmered.

"You don't seem to be in the best of shape."

"Not enough time to rest." I wasn't even lying all that much. Three nights, seventy a pop, plus thirty, so I had about two hundred and forty million mana. Enough to summon the whole gang, including Elsha, but not enough for recharges. The tea was excellent, as always. I drank it, and the bell rang. Time to dive. We all got up.

"Our destiny awaits," Liu said as he headed for his pod. We all went to our pods. I lay myself down. The pod interface lit up: Damian Gabriel O'Connor. Level: 36. Tower perks: 1. Artifacts: 1. Highest floor: 33. Darkness took me. I spawned onto floor 33, at the spot near the rocks where Liu hid the beacons. He and Liu spawned next to me. No sign of Chen, Yukiko, or Aurelio. But next to us spawned Mina, Verchiel, and Gilgamesh.