Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

The cold arrived first.

It came through the metal of the car, through the glass, the temperature dropping so fast that our breath went white in front of us.

Outside, the street began to disappear.

Fog rolled in from both ends of the road at once, low and white and moving with intent, swallowing the street lights one at a time until each of them was just a pale circle floating in nothing.

It came up over the bonnet and around the doors and folded the car into itself. The windscreen went opaque. The side mirrors held nothing but white.

"What the fuck is happening?" Mercury’s hands came off the wheel.

"She’s here."

I opened my door.

The fog took the opening and poured in around my legs. I stepped out through it and the white closed behind me. Visibility dropped to the length of my own arm. The asphalt under my boots was the only solid information left.

I stepped out through the fog.

It broke around me and drew back, and Celestine was standing in the middle of the road.

Black dress. Brown hair swept back tight off her face, not a strand of it moving in air that was moving everything else. Heels on asphalt, and no sound from them at all.

The green diamond on her finger caught the street light and threw one hard point of cold fire back at me. The rest of her was matte black and absolute stillness.

She stood the way she always stood. No weight shifting. No fidget. The body language of someone who had stopped needing to perform presence centuries ago and had never restarted the habit.

A jerrycan of fuel hung from one hand, which was the only part of the picture that didn’t belong. The ordinary plastic of it looked almost insulting against the rest of her.

"Hey."

"Hey." A smile arrived on her face as she held it out to me. "I was expecting your call, actually."

"Thank you." I took the weight of it. The can was full. The handle was cold enough to bite.

"What do you need me to do?"

"There are four people in the stray town." I set the can down beside my boot. The plastic settled against the asphalt with a soft, ordinary sound. "Daphne. May. Becky. And Sherry. I need them protected."

"From whom?"

"Vince."

The fog around us thinned and vanished all at once. The street lights returned to being street lights. The road reappeared in both directions. The cold lifted off the skin of my arms as if it had been recalled.

"Vince has no reason to want four women in a stray town dead," Celestine said. "So which one is he actually going for?"

"Sherry."

She held my eyes for a second longer than she needed to. The green diamond threw its single point of light between us.

"Then I’ll find her and I’ll protect her. You have my word on it."

"Them," I said. "All four. And take Carrise with you."

Celestine smiled. The tips of her fangs caught the street light for a fraction of a second and then were gone again behind the ordinary shape of her mouth.

"I can handle Vincent Vale on my own. I’ve handled worse than him."

"It isn’t a suggestion."

She looked at me. Properly, the way she had at the lake.

Then she nodded.

"All right. I’ll take her. Is there anything else?"

"No."

"What about killing whoever it is that has you standing in a road at this hour, using your brain this hard?" She tilted her head. The motion was slight, almost curious. "Say his name and he stops being a problem tonight."

"I’ve got it."

"Bram." Her voice dropped. The ease left it. What remained was older and closer to the surface. "One word."

"I’ve got this, Lestie. Thank you."

"Okay."

The mist began rising off her skin again, gathering at her shoulders in thin white threads that moved without wind. The cold started returning with it—not the full drop from before.

"How will you even find them?" I asked.

"Finding four strangers is a great deal of work." She said it easily. The mist thickened along her collarbones. "Finding Vincent isn’t. So I won’t look for them at all. I’ll follow him, and he’ll take me straight to whoever he wants most."

"Okay."

She glanced past me at the car.

"So you’re friends with the noble princess now?"

"Which noble princess?"

I turned to look.

The car was dark. Nothing visible inside it but a shape in the driver’s seat that could have been anybody. Mercury’s silhouette, or the suggestion of one, held still behind the glass as if she had decided that whatever was happening in the middle of the road did not require her participation yet.

I turned back.

She was gone. The mist went with her, all of it at once, and the cold lifted off the street and the night was just a night again.

The jerrycan sat beside my boot. The street lights burned in their ordinary yellow pools. The empty road stretched in both directions as if a woman in a black dress had never stood in the centre of it holding fuel.

Noble princess.

Mercury’s door opened and she got out.

"Bram." She came round the front of the car. Her boots struck the asphalt harder than they needed to. "What was that?"

"Celestine."

"That was a fucking vampire."

"Yes."

"Oh my God." She stood in the middle of the road with both hands on her head. The gesture was pure disbelief—fingers in her hair, elbows out, the whole body still catching up to what the eyes had already accepted. "I have just seen an actual vampire. In a street. Handing you fuel." She turned on me. "How the fuck are you this connected?"

"It’s a long story."

I picked up the jerrycan. The weight of it settled against my leg. Full. The most useful object on the street.

"And it’s going to have to keep. Fill the tank. We need to be at that camp before Bagins decides how the night ends."

"Yeah."

She came round to help me with the cap. Her hands found the fuel door. Mine found the spout.

K

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