Chapter 22 – Surprise Apati

The store’s front window was lit up with a dazzling display of spirits. They illuminated a heaping pile of books – the release of a new-yet-somehow-strangely-familiar bestselling series. I knew that was the case because the sign beside the stack of books said so. Also, there was a huge line of people that stretched down the street, all of them waiting impatiently to get inside.

“Oh, my gods!” I murmured, abandoning the wagon as I raced over.

“Nick, stop! Nick!” Fang hissed impotently from the wagon, his eyes darting nervously to the crowd – you know, the hundreds of savran who were still staring.

But I ignored it all, smooshing my face up against that glass to get a better look.

“Love and World Domination.”

That’s what the title said. My title.

The acronym was LaWD. Yeah, I did that.

“What is this?” Fang hissed, reluctantly emerging from the wagon and eyeing the crowd warily. He must have been worried someone might try to steal something from the wagon. Which was silly. No one seemed too keen to get near it. “Why did you run off—?”

Then he saw it too, those glowing yellow eyes turning into twin moons.

“This… this is not possible,” Fang hissed. “Is this Horus’ journal?”

It was. It is. It had to be.

“Emporos got the cover perfect,” Lili gushed.

She was right. Horus was smack in the middle, wearing a suit and tie – Eris facing him, wearing a form-fitting pencil skirt and blouse and dagger-length stilettos.

And beneath them? A pile of corpses. I knew he would love it.

“But it has only been weeks. How is this possible?” Fang continued, shaking his head and eyeing the line of people nearby – the really, really long line.

And they were mostly women. Maybe. It was hard to tell the genders of some species and Fang had told me it was rude to ask. Also, like I said before, I don’t see species or gender, only the success of my horny buddy’s new book… no, his new-yet-instant bestseller.

“Don’t you remember?” I asked, peeling my face from the glass, my smile etched permanently into its surface. “Emporos loved the book so much that he offered us the premium publishing package.”

However, I hadn’t realized it came with a full cut out of Horus – like the one inside the store. Woah, he looked good. Like he’d seen a stylist or something? I mean, the sweater-vest was an A+ choice and they topped it off with a scarf. And were those… glasses?

I’ll admit, it sounds strange, but I felt a tingle.

Fang frowned. “Premium? You spent our drug money on this?”

It was my turn to glare – finally. “The fact that you don’t even remember tells me you were already snout deep in your drugs. But… yeah, he said if we paid him a couple extra coins, he could go back in time and pick the perfect moment to publish – you know, really take the romantasy genre by storm.”

“Romantasy?” Fang echoed.

“It’s a combination of fantasy and romance,” one of the customers spoke up, eyeing Fang like he was stupid. Probably because he was.

She was right. I should know. I’d invented a whole new genre, after all. All me!

I was smiling so hard right now. It hurt a lot.

“And it worked,” I offered before Fang could complain. “Just listen to them!”

Fang’s jaw snapped shut and he eyed the other customers. Specifically, the ones nearby talking animatedly about Horus’ new book.

“It took ages to make its way to the Outer Reaches. Luckily, the last ship that made it into the harbor was carrying a pallet – the only one we’ll be getting for a while now that the harbor wall has been closed off.”

“We’re so fortunate! I can’t wait to get my copy.”

“I know, it’s supposed to be the greatest romance story of our time.”

“Sure, but… what is it about?” That was a smaller vulpin girl.

“You don’t know?” Half the crowd turned on her, glaring with glowing snake eyes.

Which left the little fox girl trembling and shrinking back. One of her friends stepped in smoothly. “It’s okay. She’s just not much of a reader. I’ll explain.”

Disappointed hisses met this announcement, but the others backed down.

Which was weird. Why were they all so on edge—

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to ponder on that mystery.

The fox-girl’s friend quickly came to her rescue. “It’s about a divine-rank tavros general that dies of natural causes after defeating an entire army singlehandedly. Except his vessel doesn’t die! It became so powerful that it transcended even death. Instead, he’s reincarnated as a sapian in a strange new land – a world without spirits.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

This got a few incredulous laughs from the crowd. Which was a bit hurtful, even though I knew they weren’t talking about me – not specifically, anyway.

Although, the heckling didn’t help…

“Right? Can you imagine? A bunch of hollow, useless vessels just wandering around and getting killed off? It’s a wonder they didn’t all go extinct.”

See? I didn’t love that… even if it was true.

“Except the twist is that Horus still has his weapon spirit,” the fox girl’s friend continued in excitement, ignoring the crowd. “So, now he has to work his way up the sapian power structure one step at a time as something called an “office worker” while keeping his powers a secret. At least, that’s the plan until he falls in love with his boss—”

The savran abruptly cut off, letting out an excited hiss as the bookstore’s staff began unlocking the doors. Which, uh, took a while. Why were there so many locks? Also, wasn’t the door kind of overkill? It looked like it was made of solid metal and weighed two tons. Like several savran had to work together to push it open even a few inches.

Which led to other questions. Like why were the staff wearing armor and wielding weapons, their spirits already suffusing their bodies in a dull glow?

Huh, and had the line of customers always been so heavily armed?

Although, the answer soon became obvious.

A moment of silence – of stillness.

The crowd watching the bookstore staff.

The staff forming a protective, defensive formation around the door.

Then it began. All it took was one shout.

“LaWD have mercy!” one of the customers shouted.

Which was a line from the book. Sorry, you’d get it if you’d read it…

Anyway, that was the signal. The result was complete chaos. Scrambling, rushing, running, stabbing, punching, kicking, cursing, screaming, biting, and backstabbing. Three women died before the throng even passed the bookstore’s threshold, their vessels bleeding out in the street. But the fighting didn’t stop there. In fact, it only intensified as they made it inside the store, the occasional explosion rocking the entire structure.

The staff didn’t even try to stop it! Just kept the brawl contained. They had smashed the bookshelves up against the walls, several vulpin shielding them with their hearth spirits as they huddled in the back, the other employees protecting them.

Which left a single table in the middle of the store.

One filled to the brim with those books.

The one right beside the cutout of “sexy Horus.”

Precious, titillating loot for an army of cold-blooded sociopaths.

I saw one woman stab another in the throat to steal her book. Another took her opponent’s infant vessel and flung it out of the store to distract her. Which, uh, didn’t work? Although, the baby got some good distance…

Wait, why would anyone bring a baby to this?

Ahh, I know, meat shield.

“Smart move,” Lili added.

I agree. I mean, she could always make another.

Plus, the mother had used that opening to snatch a book and then disappear.

Then Fang was grabbing my shoulder and hauling me away from the launch of Horus’ incredibly popular new book and the ensuing bloodbath. “We need to go… now,” he hissed, glancing nervously over his shoulder.

“Why? We’re totally safe as long as we aren’t holding a book.”

He whirled, stabbing a claw at me. “Because you published that book!”

“Uh, no, technically Emporos did… at some point in the past.”

“But you asked him to. You even gave him the—”

“Copulation Cookbook.”

Another long hiss. Like he was in pain.

“Although, I guess you’re right. I did include a few small, minor edits. Just helped to clean up the continuity and grammar and narrative structure…”

I trailed off because Fang was glaring even harder.

“Exactly,” he hissed, jerking a clawed thumb over his shoulder. “Look at them. If they go this crazy over some stupid book, what if they knew where it came from?”

Oh. I got it – I think. “So… you’re worried about my safety?”

“No, I’m worried about my safety.”

“Then why are you yelling so loud?”

Fang froze. Probably because he’d noticed the screaming and fighting had stopped. Moisture suddenly broke out across his scales, growing thicker even as he swallowed hard.

“They… they are behind me, yes?”

“Uh, yeah. They’re all looking at us.”

Fang turned then and witnessed the third impossible thing of the day.

A horde of maybe-women of a probably-unrepresentative-sample-group of shapes and species brought together by their appreciation for quality literature. The survivors anyway. Each one clutching that sacred tome to their chest. Each one staring at us – those eyes carving straight through our skull and attempting to rip out our secrets with their eyeballs.

Fang and I met each other’s eyes, held hands, and did the only thing we could.

Specifically, Fang made the biggest Misty ever – like his life depended on it.

Because it probably did.

Okay, it definitely did.

Mist bloomed out across the street in a sudden tidal wave. Fang’s clones ran in two different directions. One screaming, “I know what happens in book two.” And the other, “I have the author’s home address.”

And the two of us? We took off for the weird factory building with the Fin-Fan logo. See? You don’t even care about that now, right? Pretty lame, honestly.

Uh, what was that? Why the handholding?

So, we could keep track of each other in the mist, duh.

“Yeah, except I can sense his nimbus,” Lili offered.

Okay, fine, maybe it was because I just liked it.

“What? I thought it was because you couldn’t see,” Fang hissed, trying to let go.

A futile gesture. I’d really been working on my grip strength lately – you know, all those wagon pulls? So, he didn’t have much choice.

And then we were slamming through the doors of that massive building and into—

Huh, actually, this wasn’t what I was expecting at all.

It didn’t look so much like a factory as, well… a tavern? I mean, not that I’d even seen one before, of course. But it matched the description from Elder Gracen’s stories. Huh, he even got the location of the bar and kitchen right. Although, I guess that wasn’t much of a coincidence. There weren’t really that many walls in a room, right?

Probably because of the screaming outside and people beating against the door.

Also, maybe because Fang had built a mountain of furniture.

This… this was it, wasn’t it? This had to be it.

All that nonsense at the gate? The trek through the city? Horus’ new bestseller?

That had all just been the warmup. The pre-pre-pre-Apati.

Which meant this was finally my surprise—

One of the savrans stood up – the one sitting at the head table; the one with fiery ribbons running down pitchblack scales. The one that didn’t even bother to draw weapons. The one that radiated heat so intense that the drinks around the room were beginning to evaporate into steam. Yeah, that one looked like a boss.

“Uh, Fang?” I offered.

He whirled, glaring and about to say something hurtful I bet.

But he didn’t get the chance. Instead, Fang’s eyes came to rest on that boss creature and the color suddenly drained from his scales, green fading to a sickly white. Even his mist evaporated, leaving him looking… well, pretty drained, honestly. Not his best, certainly.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered. Like he recognized that dangerous-looking savran.

Wow! Which meant I was right! This was my surprise party!

Remember? He told me he “knew a person.”

Which must mean it was this person, right?

“Who is that?” I whispered to my trembling bromate.

However, he seemed to have lost the ability to speak, his mouth moving but no words escaping – only a soft gurgling sound.

“Yes, tell him. Who am I?” that fiery creature demanded, stalking forward with a deadly grace, traces of molten energy dripping down its claws.

Yet I was wrong about one thing.

The surprises weren’t over – not yet.

Not by a fucking longshot.

“She’s my… my mother,” Fang hissed.