The Urban Fantasy Anthology

by Peter S. Beagle

  In a corner, another boy—this one with glossy brown hair that fell to his waist—stacked jars of creamed corn into a precarious pyramid.

  “What is this place?” Matilda asked.

  The boy stacking the jars turned. “Look at her eyes. She’s a vampire!” He didn’t seem afraid, though; he seemed delighted.

  “Get her into the cellar,” one of the other girls said.

  “Come on,” said the black-haired girl and pulled Matilda toward a doorway. “You’re fresh-made, right?”

  “Yeah,” Matilda said. Her tongue swept over her own sharp teeth. “I guess that’s pretty obvious.”

  “Don’t you know that vampires can’t go outside in the daylight?” the girl asked, shaking her head. “The guards try that trick with every new vampire, but I never saw one almost fall for it.”

  “Oh, right,” Matilda said. They went down the rickety steps to a filthy basement with a mattress on the floor underneath a single bulb. Crates of foodstuffs were shoved against the walls, and the high, small windows had been painted over with a tarry substance that let no light through.

  The black-haired girl who’d waved her inside smiled. “We trade with the border guards. Black-market food, clothes, little luxuries like chocolate and cigarettes for some ass. Vampires don’t own everything.”

  “And you’re going to owe us for letting you stay the night,” the boy said from the top of the stairs.

  “I don’t have anything,” Matilda said. “I didn’t bring any cans of food or whatever.”

  “You have to bite us.”

  “What?” Matilda asked.

  “One of us,” the girl said. “How about one of us? You can even pick which one.”

  “Why would you want me to do that?”

  The girl’s expression clearly said that Matilda was stupid. “Who doesn’t want to live forever?”

  I don’t, Matilda wanted to say, but she swallowed the words. She could tell they already thought she didn’t deserve to be a vampire. Besides, she wanted to taste blood. She wanted to taste the red, throbbing, pulsing insides of the girl in front of her. It wasn’t the pain she’d felt when she was infected, the hunger that made her stomach clench, the craving for warmth. It was heady, greedy desire.

  “Tomorrow,” Matilda said. “When it’s night again.”

  “Okay,” the girl said, “but you promise, right? You’ll turn one of us?”

  “Yeah,” said Matilda, numbly. It was hard to even wait that long.

  She was relieved when they went upstairs, but less relieved when she heard something heavy slide in front of the basement door. She told herself that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting through the day so that she could find Julian and Lydia.

  She shook her head to clear it of thoughts of blood and turned on Dante’s phone. Although she didn’t expect it, a text message was waiting: I cant tell if I luv u or if I want to kill u.

  Relief washed over her. Her mouth twisted into a smile and her newly sharp canines cut her lip. She winced. Dante was okay.

  She opened up Lydia’s blog and posted an anonymous message: Tell Julian his girlfriend wants to see him … and you.

  Matilda made herself comfortable on the dirty mattress. She looked up at the rotted boards of the ceiling and thought of Julian. She had a single ticket out of Coldtown and two humans to rescue with it, but it was easy to picture herself saving Lydia as Julian valiantly offered to stay with her, even promised her his eternal devotion.

  She licked her lips at the image. When she closed her eyes, all her imaginings drowned in a sea of red.

  Waking at dusk, Matilda checked Lydia’s blog. Lydia had posted a reply: Meet us at the Festival of Sinners.

  Five kids sat at the top of the stairs, watching her with liquid eyes.

  “Are you awake?” the black-haired girl asked. She seemed to pulse with color. Her moving mouth was hypnotic.

  “Come here,” Matilda said to her in a voice that seemed so distant that she was surprised to find it was her own. She hadn’t meant to speak, hadn’t meant to beckon the girl over to her.

  “That’s not fair,” one of the boys called. “I was the one who said she owed us something. It should be me. You should pick me.”

  Matilda ignored him as the girl knelt down on the dirty mattress and swept aside her hair, baring a long, unmarked neck. She seemed dazzling, this creature of blood and breath, a fragile manikin as brittle as sticks.

  Tiny golden hairs tickled Matilda’s nose as she bit down.

  And gulped.

  Blood was heat and heart running-thrumming-beating through the fat roots of veins to drip syrup slow, spurting molten hot across tongue, mouth, teeth, chin.

  Dimly, Matilda felt someone shoving her and someone else screaming, but it seemed distant and unimportant. Eventually the words became clearer.

  “Stop,” someone was screaming. “Stop!”

  Hands dragged Matilda off the girl. Her neck was a glistening red mess. Gore stained the mattress and covered Matilda’s hands and hair. The girl coughed, blood bubbles frothing on her lip, and then went abruptly silent.

  “What did you do?” the boy wailed, cradling the girl’s body. “She’s dead. She’s dead. You killed her.”

  Matilda backed away from the body. Her hand went automatically to her mouth, covering it. “I didn’t mean to,” she said.

  “Maybe she’ll be okay,” said the other boy, his voice cracking. “We have to get bandages.”

  “She’s dead,” the boy holding the girl’s body moaned.

  A thin wail came from deep inside Matilda as she backed toward the stairs. Her belly felt full, distended. She wanted to be sick.

  Another girl grabbed Matilda’s arm. “Wait,” the girl said, eyes wide and imploring. “You have to bite me next. You’re full now so you won’t have to hurt me—”

  With a cry, Matilda tore herself free and ran up the stairs—if she went fast enough, maybe she could escape from herself.

  By the time Matilda got to the Festival of Sinners, her mouth tasted metallic and she was numb with fear. She wasn’t human, wasn’t good, and wasn’t sure what she might do next. She kept pawing at her shirt, as if that much blood could ever be wiped off, as if it hadn’t already soaked down into her skin and her soiled insides.

  The Festival was easy to find, even as confused as she was. People were happy to give her directions, apparently not bothered that she was drenched in blood. Their casual demeanor was horrifying, but not as horrifying as how much she already wanted to feed again.

  On the way, she passed the Eternal Ball. Strobe lights lit up the remains of the windows along the dome, and a girl with blue hair in a dozen braids held up a video camera to interview three men dressed all in white with gleaming red eyes.

  Vampires.

  A ripple of fear passed through her. She reminded herself that there was nothing they could do to her. She was already like them. Already dead.

  The Festival of Sinners was being held at a church with stained-glass windows painted black on the inside. The door, papered with pink-stenciled posters, was painted the same thick tarry black. Music thrummed from within and a few people sat on the steps, smoking and talking.

  Matilda went inside.

  A doorman pulled aside a velvet rope for her, letting her past a small line of people waiting to pay the cover charge. The rules were different for vampires, perhaps especially for vampires accessorizing their grungy attire with so much blood.

  Matilda scanned the room. She didn’t see Julian or Lydia, just a throng of dancers and a bar that served alcohol from vast copper distilling vats. It spilled into mismatched mugs. Then one of the people near the bar moved and Matilda saw Lydia and Julian. He was bending over her, shouting into her ear.

  Matilda pushed her way through the crowd, until she was close enough to touch Julian’s arm. She reached out, but couldn’t quite bring herself to brush his skin with her foulness.

  Julian looked up, startled. “Til
da?”

  She snatched back her hand like she’d been about to touch fire.

  “Tilda,” he said. “What happened to you? Are you hurt?”

  Matilda flinched, looking down at herself. “I …”

  Lydia laughed. “She ate someone, moron.”

  “Tilda?” Julian asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Matilda said. There was so much she had to be sorry for, but at least he was here now. Julian would tell her what to do and how to turn herself back into something decent again. She would save Lydia and Julian would save her.

  He touched her shoulder, let his hand rest gingerly on her blood-stiffened shirt. “We were looking for you everywhere.” His gentle expression was tinged with terror; fear pulled his smile into something closer to a grimace.

  “I wasn’t in Coldtown,” Matilda said. “I came here so that Lydia could leave. I have a pass.”

  “But I don’t want to leave,” said Lydia. “You understand that, right? I want what you have—eternal life.”

  “You’re not infected,” Matilda said. “You have to go. You can still be okay. Please, I need you to go.”

  “One pass?” Julian said, his eyes going to Lydia. Matilda saw the truth in the weight of that gaze—Julian had not come to Coldtown for Matilda. Even though she knew she didn’t deserve him to think of her as anything but a monster, it hurt savagely.

  “I’m not leaving,” Lydia said, turning to Julian, pouting. “You said she wouldn’t be like this.”

  “I killed a girl,” Matilda said. “I killed her. Do you understand that?”

  “Who cares about some mortal girl?” Lydia tossed back her hair. In that moment, she reminded Matilda of her brother, pretentious Dante who’d turned out to be an actual nice guy. Just like sweet Lydia had turned out cruel.

  “You’re a girl,” Matilda said. “You’re mortal.”

  “I know that!” Lydia rolled her eyes. “I just mean that we don’t care who you killed. Turn us and then we can kill lots of people.”

  “No,” Matilda said, swallowing. She looked down, not wanting to hear what she was about to say. There was still a chance. “Look, I have the pass. If you don’t want it, then Julian should take it and go. But I’m not turning you. I’m never turning you, understand.”

  “Julian doesn’t want to leave,” Lydia said. Her eyes looked bright and two feverish spots appeared on her cheeks. “Who are you to judge me anyway? You’re the murderer.”

  Matilda took a step back. She desperately wanted Julian to say something in her defense or even to look at her, but his gaze remained steadfastly on Lydia.

  “So neither one of you want the pass,” Matilda said.

  “Fuck you,” spat Lydia.

  Matilda turned away.

  “Wait,” Julian said. His voice sounded weak.

  Matilda spun, unable to keep the hope off her face, and saw why Julian had called to her. Lydia stood behind him, a long knife to his throat.

  “Turn me,” Lydia said. “Turn me, or I’m going to kill him.”

  Julian’s eyes were wide. He started to protest or beg or something and Lydia pressed the knife harder, silencing him.

  People had stopped dancing nearby, backing away. One girl with red-glazed eyes stared hungrily at the knife.

  “Turn me!” Lydia shouted. “I’m tired of waiting! I want my life to begin!” “You won’t be alive—” Matilda started.

  “I’ll be alive—more alive than ever. Just like you are.”

  “Okay,” Matilda said softly. “Give me your wrist.”

  The crowd seemed to close in tighter, watching as Lydia held out her arm. Matilda crouched low, bending down over it.

  “Take the knife away from his throat,” Matilda said.

  Lydia, all her attention on Matilda, let Julian go. He stumbled a little and pressed his fingers to his neck.

  “I loved you,” Julian shouted.

  Matilda looked up to see that he wasn’t speaking to her. She gave him a glittering smile and bit down on Lydia’s wrist.

  The girl screamed, but the scream was lost in Matilda’s ears. Lost in the pulse of blood, the tide of gluttonous pleasure and the music throbbing around them like Lydia’s slowing heartbeat.

  Matilda sat on the blood-soaked mattress and turned on the video camera to check that the live feed was working.

  Julian was gone. She’d given him the pass after stripping him of all his cash and credit cards; there was no point in trying to force Lydia to leave since she’d just come right back in. He’d made stammering apologies that Matilda ignored; then he fled for the gate. She didn’t miss him. Her fantasy of Julian felt as ephemeral as her old life.

  “It’s working,” one of the boys—Michael—said from the stairs, a computer cradled on his lap. Even though she’d killed one of them, they welcomed her back, eager enough for eternal life to risk more deaths. “You’re streaming live video.”

  Matilda set the camera on the stack of crates, pointed toward her and the wall where she’d tied a gagged Lydia. The girl thrashed and kicked, but Matilda ignored her. She stepped in front of the camera and smiled.

  My name is Matilda Green. I was born on April 10, 1997. I died on September 3, 2013. Please tell my mother I’m okay. And Dante, if you’re watching this, I’m sorry.

  You’ve probably seen lots of video feeds from inside Coldtown. I saw them too. Pictures of girls and boys grinding together in clubs or bleeding elegantly for their celebrity vampire masters. Here’s what you never see. What I’m going to show you.

  For eighty-eight days you are going to watch someone sweat out the infection. You are going to watch her beg and scream and cry. You’re going to watch her throw up food and piss her pants and pass out. You’re going to watch me feed her can after can of creamed corn. It’s not going to be pretty.

  You’re going to watch me, too. I’m the kind of vampire that you’d be, one who’s new at this and basically out of control. I’ve already killed someone and I can’t guarantee I’m not going to do it again. I’m the one who infected this girl.

  This is the real Coldtown.

  I’m the real Coldtown.

  You still want in?

  Talking Back to the Moon

  Steven R. Boyett

  Out of the Santa Monica Mountains they walked south through the San Fernando Valley on the broken thoroughfare of I-5, threading their way among corroded cars and shattered pavement. Worn-down houses and burned-down condos and broken-fronted convenience stores to either side. The shorthaired girl sunbrowned and thin in baggy cargo shorts with bulging pockets, nylon backpack with toy figures dangling from the zipper pulls and a bedroll tied beneath. A worn and faded black babydoll tee shirt with a glittery rabbit iron-on gone dull in strips where the outer coating had peeled. Sheathed bowie knife half the length of her arm hanging from her cabled belt. Bright yellow wraparound sunglasses. Multicolored Adidas walking shoes and mismatched socks. A different color of nail polish flaking on each ragged nail. The centaur huge and gaunt beside her like a stick-figure drawing of a mythical centaur. Dark and angular and alert. Tapered head not much wider than the muscular stalk of neck. The mouth a line sawn into the dark face like a healing scar from ear to hard triangular ear. Javelin in extra-jointed hand and pannier occasionally clinking with the gait of his odd tricornered feet. Not hooves and not paws but something in between, as if some reptile had evolved to something equine.

  The girl pulled a roadmap gone furry at the folds from its backpack pocket and turned her back to the wind and leafed through it without unfolding it. She looked south as if to match what she saw to what her map depicted.

  Do cities all look the same to you? she said. I mean not the same, but like any one place you are, you can’t tell where you are cause it looks like all the other places.

  Don unnastan.

  Yeah, okay. She folded the map and returned it to its backpack pocket and they resumed walking. Santa Ana winds sent ripples through the freeway grass.

  She sat up in he
r sleeping bag. The faceless dark above her. The bowie handle in her hand. She hadn’t been aware of reaching for it.

  Chay stood watch near the vinecovered overpass support. They’d lit no fire and would not while they were in the Valley. Bottled water mixed into an MRE pouch was good enough for now.

  She drank flat soda water and got out of her sleeping bag and went to pee. She came back and stood silent near Chay unmoving as some roadside sculpture. She set a hand against the centaur’s flank. The pebbled hide warm. Neither of them spoke here where the underpass would echo and a normal voice could carry a quarter mile. The moon already set and concrete ghostly in the starlight. Nightsounds in the darkened world. Derelict cars on the freeway like foundered boats rotting on some bedroughted reef.

  She moved her hand to her chest and closed her eyes. No moon out to call forth her former wildness. Was it there to answer, any part of it? Could it be restored? This is why we’re heading south.

  Next day Avy called lunch in Sunland and stood looking over the freeway railing at some old overgrown and half-collapsed warehouse district and ate rehydrated mac and cheese. Chay had killed a raccoon with a rock and as he dressed it with a filleting knife he asked her what it had felt like when she changed.

  You’d get hungry as shit a couple days before, she said. Dad said it burned unbelievable calories when you turned.

  Calree?

  Like wood your body burns to keep it going. He said just changing could starve you to death if you didn’t eat enough before. We used to have to stock up like crazy every month. And then after you changed you were starving again. I don’t really remember much about what it was like after I changed or what I did or anything. It’s like trying to remember when you were a baby or something. Like the parts of your brain that do the thinking and remembering aren’t there any more. The human parts. But I remember being really hungry. Half our runs were looking for food.