Chapter 24
Prompted by a recent comment, I’ve been thinking a bit about the whole, destroy all humans missions statement Neferet has. Which isn’t uncommon in vampire fiction, the other big theme being “we’re superior to humans and should rule them” I’ll have to talk about someday.
Destroying humanity is one of those things you can sort of justify in a robot apocalypse, a la Terminator, by saying robots don’t want to share resources with the bony fleshbags whose major talent seems to be the manufacture and consumption of Cheetos. Vampires though have zero to negative reasons to wipe out humans. For one, we’re their food source most of the time. Some books skip on this and have vampires able to survive on animal blood which would allow them to kill humans and keep on unliving. That would be like deciding to wipe out all cows because someone got kicked in the head once.
Secondly, we’re also their source of new blood. Especially in this series, without humans, there are no new vampires. And maybe Neferet is immortal but a few thousand years post victory and she’ll only have trees to talk to and eat. Which makes the only explanation for her plan is she’s evil and stupid because the plot demands it.
As if to add evidence to this, we’re with Neferet who’s chatting with the white bull. She’s having a meeting with him in some place with a statue. She uses her magic to sex herself up for reasons I’d rather not think about while giving him an update. Her seeding chaos across the land is going great. She rerouted dozens of Amazon shipments across all of Oklahoma. Upwards of two dozen people will be forced to return the incorrect merchandise and await replacement packages.
Wooly Bully asks how Aurox is doing. Neferet says fine. Wooly warns her again that he’s imperfect and may be cracked. Neferet says, no worries, he’ll either serve her or be destroyed. Bully takes offense, Neferet says they should talk about something else and Wooly says he wants to show her something.
Neferet climbs on his back and they travel to the forest where Kalona spends his days whacking it to ancient, discarded Playboys. Wooly asks what she sees, Neferet doesn’t see anything though and Wooly says Kalona is missing someone. Bully says it’s Rephy and Neferet says that means Kalona has a major weakness. You mean besides the attraction to the vapid, soulless husk of Zoey?
Over to Rephy who’s talking to Stevie about the prophecy from Aphro. It wasn’t enough for PCK to tell us that Rephy is in danger through an exposition drop. No, we had to then watch the villains talking about how Rephy can be used against Kalona. How and why Neferet cares is baffling. Now we get to sit through a pointless discussion about a near certain event upcoming in the book.
Rephy says he won’t hide because then it will never end. Stevie says she’s worried, otherwise we wouldn’t know. Then they talk about Kalona for a bit. Stevie, once again, whines about how Kalona isn’t good for him and he hurts Rephy. Rephy, again, ignores her. He says he’ll be back come evening and walks off.
Rephy then runs into Butthead who’s moving her stuff in. For no reason, she talks about Game of Thrones and how awesome it is. Again, PCK, that show doesn’t exist in your universe. I didn’t start until 2011. This is set in 2009, period. The damn thing is just beginning casting and location scouting. Stop fudging time so you can name drop shit!
Over to Kalona who’s becoming the author’s mouthpiece for their take on the modern world.
The iPhone was in his hand. He considered the modern world and the strange magick it had developed. He couldn’t decide if he liked it better than the ancient world. Certainly, it was more comfortable. Absolutely, it was more complicated. But better? Kalona tended to believe it was not.
Yeah, things were better back when you had a fifty fifty chance of shitting yourself because you drank tainted water. Kalona then senses darkness and knows Wooly Bully and Neferet are there. He thinks that Neferet is stupidly drunk on power and doesn’t realize Wooly only wants to destroy the black bull.
Deciding that Rephy may be in danger, he read ahead in the book, he flies over to the depot. He arrives just in time to see Rephy transform, then follows him around for the day. Rephy comes back to Stevie and Kalona whines that it’s not fair Nyx forgave Rephy but not him.
Chapter 25
Over to Zoey who’s riding the bus to school. She’s busy talking with the slaves about how Aphro doesn’t look good. She’s looking frumpy and wearing sunglasses at night. She’s just doing that to keep track of the visions in her eyes.
Zoey then looks over at Butthead who’s also sitting alone and digging through her purse. She pulls out a MAC lipstick tube and Zoey rants about how they discontinue colors they love because they hate them. See, audience, PCK totally gets you! You watch ”nerdy” things like the most popular shows on TV and wear expensive makeup! Buy more of their stuff so they can keep vacationing in the Caymans!
Krammy dares to talk to Aphro who says Darius is fetching her coffee and cake. Someone says that’s a lot of calories and Aphro dares anyone to try and stop her. Then Krammy says Aphro’s hair still looks good though its in a ponytail. Then Stark apparently feels good and slept well. Zoey says he was zooming around and being a “total guy”. So not one of those partial guys who is only one side of a human, hopping around ontheir one leg?
He was the cutest thing I’d seen since that Trololo Cat YouTube video.
And that was the point where an artery burst in my brain and I had an aneurism. We get it, PCK, you have a vague cultural awareness. Zoey is having a mild panic attack because she’s going to be used as the example in class with Thanatos. Which I thought was only supposed to be on Mondays but who’s keeping track these days? Thanatos calls Zoey up to talk about loss as that was the most common question.
See, Thanatos may have an affinity for death, which is still unclear, but Zoey has seen vampire heaven. Thanatos prompts Zoey to talk about how nice vampire heaven is and how, even though there were evil things, they weren’t “of the goddess”. Which means there’s no vampire hell. That explains why Nyx had to make do and banish Kalona to Oklahoma. Otherwise, vampire heaven is awesome.
Thanatos asks Zoey what the hardest part is about losing her mom. Zoey says because she doesn’t know what happened and someone needs to pay. Ah, good old fashioned vengeance. When Thanatos says this, Zoey says no, it’s justice. Thanatos says that there’s a difference between wanting to exact pain in vengeance or to make “truth shine” to expose justice.
I’ll have to update my definition of justice then. Note to self, justice just means that the truth is known. No punitive action need be ever taken or retribution received. Now I’m off to court to argue that as soon I confess to beating that mailbox to pieces, nothing else need be done.
Thanatos says that the fifth day past Zoey’s mom’s death, that’s a mouthful of possessives, is coming up. The number five is special to vampires because of the number of elements. PCK just realized this which is why no one mentioned it before. They’re going to do a ritual with Grandma soon and Zoey’s magic will somehow reveal the truth. Also, they all have homework to write an essay about loss.
Thanatos says that she knows it’ll be hard for Zoey to do the ritual. What with the complexity of spells. Zoey may even have to light a bundle of dried kale on fire and wave it around. Thanatos mentions Dragon will be there unwanted. Zoey ensures Dragon will crash the party univinted and attempt to kill Rephy.
Over to Neferet who’s waiting outside of class. Being in charge of a busy school full of young vampires and having plans to take over the world leaves her with a surprisingly large amount of free time. She orders Aurox over and asks him if anything unusual happened. Being as he’s been conscious for less than a week, he has plenty of context for what unusual is.
Neferet hears about them leaving to do the ritual tonight and curses, vaguely, all the immortals. She figures it must be an earth ritual for revealing because it happened on earth. That means Stevie must somehow be disrupted but Aurox can’t kill her because that would be inconvenient to future books.
Neferet writes down an address and sends Aurox off there. Does she often carry a notepad with her? Then she orders some wine with blood in it but yells at the vampire who brings it. She wants virginal blood next time because the first one was too common. Then she thinks about how they’ll one day call her goddess and laughs. Cue echoing, maniacal laughter as we cut to our heroes.
Vivisector's Writ 