10.

“Spontaneous Human Eruption: Fact or Fiction?” by Stacey Adams.

I hit the enter key one final time on this article, then put it to the side. It would sit for another day or two before I went over and cleaned it up. Then I’d send it to Gabe, who would put sarcastic quips in the sidebar, who would sometimes be more than a little insulting with his feedback. But it was fine. That was how we played, after all. Something constructive came from the process, at least. And then we’d upload it to the internet, and a thousand or more people would read it at 7 AM over their morning toast.

I stared out at the Chicago skyline from my office. The darkness had gone down over the city. Out there on the streets, weird things were stirring. It was my job to find them. To chronicle them, in some way or another. My job was to take what they were doing out there—to make it palatable for human consumption—and keep it compelling.

I started a new document and then centered the heading.

“The Imperium: An Ancient Magician’s Secret.”

I thought to myself: I may as well. After all, it’s just a bunch of myths, isn’t it? Didn’t everything I find boil down to a paranoid old woman in a tower in a jewel? Wasn’t it important to give it a rational look?

I started writing, not knowing, even then, that I was fanning the flames of a long-simmering conflict that had gone on since the beginning of time.

I am not a hero. I am just a woman who sees stories. I am not an Avatar. I’m a lady with a birthmark and more sass than is probably responsible. I’m a creature with dark appetites. I cannot be sated with one man; one relationship; one normal chance at a normal life with two and a half kids and a dog and a house in the suburbs. Maybe it made me just enough outside of normal to see outside of the lines. Maybe I was just lucky. Maybe it was just my birthmark, and maybe my birthmark was just a birthmark, that happened to look like something else, something from long, long ago, and maybe I was just odd enough to fit into this hole in the story that someone else seemed to have concocted.

Dr. Kaz was gone when we got back to the ‘real world.’ Clemenza wasn’t charged. The people would never be brought back to life—but a smoking crater where Dr. Kaz’s apartment was, told us she’d likely torched all traces of her tracks, and took her dissolving chemical with her. According to the Hag, and according to Clemenza, Dr. Kaz was just trying to set the prophecy in motion—to start a story, hook the Moon-Kissed into caring, and wrap her into the mythology itself.

How much of these stories do we put ourselves in? How many times have we walked into someone else’s story, and found ourselves staring from the outside in? Everything happens around us. And we keep accidentally falling into the same patterns—fulfilling other people’s expectations for that role.

That was me in a nutshell. Andy Brewer—my Boss at Feedworthy—wasn’t looking for me. He was looking for a woman, looking for someone experienced, but I had walked in, and fit the hole, and then stretched the spot and made it mine.

The boys—the ones on the Chicago Council—the vampires I called my lovers. They were looking for something. Something that they could rally around. I felt like an excuse, maybe, some force summoned by them. Something for the four of them to love. I knew they were the flames that kept Chicago safe.

Even the Hag. She had heard of the Moon Kiss—maybe she was like me. Maybe she had wandered into that White Tower that held back the Boughs of Heaven and decided that it was her duty. That she wasn’t The Avatar, but she was something, someone that could fulfill that role. Isn’t that what destiny really is? Not something that someone’s foretold—but people’s expectations that you step into.

Whatever was coming, I thought to myself. Whatever it is. I’ll find whatever hole I can find in the story. Step inside it and tear it open until it fit me.

But the Hag. She’d told me to keep tending them. The flames. So I decided I would do what I needed to do. I would keep Chicago safe. I would be the thing they wanted to keep safe, the flag that waved, the banner that they rallied behind.

“Let’s take a roadtrip,” I said, in the group chat. “It could be a real fun bonding exercise. All five of us. The fresh air of the forest. A cabin in the woods. Time for all of us to stop being people who fight and be more of a family.”

Chicago had a bright future, with the five of us.

FIN