“This will only sting a tiny bit,” Tansy Mossbrook murmured, her voice a practiced balm, though the syringe glinted menacingly in her hand. Its precious cargo – the annual vaccine – was ready.

  “Ouch! That really hurt!” Blaze Reddington roared, flinching as the needle withdrew.

  Tansy sighed, a quiet exhalation of long-suffering. “Aren’t you supposed to be the toughest of the Reddington sisters?”

  Blaze’s retort was a crack of thunder. “I’m the toughest of everyone here, but that still hurt like a son of a… well, it hurt a lot.”

  “You do get a stronger dose, seeing as you had the most exposure.” Tansy’s tone was weary.

  “But that was a decade ago! Do we really need to do this every year?” Blaze grumbled, hitching her pants up, a faint throb already blooming in her gluteus. She didn’t wait for an answer, stomping out and slamming the clinic door with a report that rattled the glass vials on Tansy’s desk.

  Another sigh escaped Tansy. Hers was a thankless existence. She was pain incarnate to many, the target of crude jokes and resentful glares. Yet, without her annual vaccines, Cape Lumous would be a charnel house, a city of shambling horrors.

  Tansy had always been the sharpest of the Mossbrook sisters, a fact that, she knew, chafed Lexa’s scholarly pride. It was Tansy who had unraveled the grim truth: the fallout from the Great Calamity had ravaged everyone’s bone marrow. Without specific Polysaccharides to shield hematopoietic stem cells, blood cells would inevitably mutate, transforming the living into ravenous zombies. For men, the affliction had been instantaneous, a swift descent into monstrousness. For those over thirty, a fatal, rapid decline. But for everyone else, the disease’s insidious crawl had granted Tansy precious time to forge a solution. She had meticulously documented every finding, every delicate step in the vaccine’s creation, ensuring its legacy should anything befall her.

  She had foolishly believed Lexa would be grateful when she delivered the completed tome to the grand library. Instead, her sister had seen it as an act of intellectual vanity, another attempt to flaunt Tansy’s superior intellect. In her book, Tansy had carefully noted that the vital Polysaccharides could be found in certain mushrooms. What she dared not reveal was the source of those mushrooms, for that would implicate another sister, Flora. Instead, she spun a delicate deception, convincing Flora that she needed Buchu leaves, when the truth was that the critical extract could only be procured from Flora’s rival, Floris Veilstorm.

  Technically Floris was a wanted criminal, for her illicit extractions and sales of countless forbidden substances from mushrooms and plants. But to arrest Floris was to condemn the entire city to a zombified hell. Floris, a true Veilstorm, understood this precarious balance, and capitalized on it with ruthless efficiency, the price for Polysaccharides was ridiculously high. Fortunately, the Petalcrests, in their civic benevolence, covered the prodigious medical bills, allowing Tansy to dispense the annual vaccine free of charge..

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Tansy loathed her ignorance. She didn't know where Floris sourced her mushrooms, nor the intricate processes by which she extracted the Polysaccharides. Unlike Tansy, Floris would never write a book that might liberate the city from its dependence on her. Perhaps she is smarter than me, Tansy mused, then immediately blushed at the unethical implications of such a thought. No, Tansy was resolute. One day, she would unravel Floris’s secrets, enabling Flora to continue the vital work, and allowing Floris to face the justice she so clearly deserved. Until then, however, Floris was an indispensable evil.

  A tentative knock at her door preceded the entrance of her nurse, the only helping hand Tansy possessed. Nurse Nora had mousy brown hair and intelligent green eyes, leading many to mistakenly assume she, too, was a Mossbrook. Sadly, she was sisterless, an unaligned soul in a city defined by noble lineage.

  “I have something for you, Doc.” Nora deposited a package onto Tansy’s desk with a soft thud, then hurried away.

  Tansy noted the attached letter, but her curiosity, a burning ember within her, compelled her to open the package first. Inside, nestled amongst protective moss, were three purple crystals, throbbing with an inner luminescence. Ether. She recognized them instantly from the incessant news reports, the city abuzz with their discovery. But why had they been sent to her?

  She turned to the note, hoping for a clue. The handwriting was shaky, almost desperate, but the words coalesced into a chilling plea: “Forget Floris, forget vaccines, this could be a forever cure.”

  Tansy didn't hesitate. She snatched a sample of infected bone marrow from her cold storage and exposed it to the nearest crystal. Nothing. Under the microscope, the purple shard merely shimmered, inert. Then, a flash of insight. She grabbed a dark, unlabeled container, its contents a viscous liquid. A tiny drop mingled with the crushed crystal. An expected effervescence, a violet foam, rose up. Tansy applied it to the infected bone marrow.

  Eureka! The bone marrow sample was cured.

  Magic? Tansy thought, before her scientific rigor reasserted itself. Should I test this on myself? No. She should wait, establish a proper trial, follow protocol. Yet, a powerful, almost primal urge pulsed through her veins, a magnetic draw to the crystals. She mixed another batch of the concoction.

  And then, without conscious thought, she drank it.

  Was she mad? Why take such an insane risk? But a deeper certainty settled within her, a profound rightness. Suddenly, a power she had never conceived of surged through her, a raw, untamed energy. She stretched out her hand, and pure, violet energy pulsed from her fingertips, arcing across the room, knocking over vials, sending glassware crashing to the floor.

  “Is everything okay in there?” Nora’s voice, laced with concern, came from behind the clinic door.

  Tansy leapt, slamming her shoulder against the wood, holding it fast, preventing entry. “Everything is fine!” she lied, her voice strained. But everything was far from fine. This concoction… it might be a forever cure. But no one in this city, she realized with a dawning, terrifying certainty, should ever wield the kind of power that now crackled within her. A new confidence, cold and exhilarating, settled in her bones. She, Tansy Mossbrook, was now surely the strongest person in the city. Not Blaze. And for all the hells, there was no way she was writing a stupid book for Lexa about this.