Working for the Devil

by Lilith Saintcrow

  He was right. I’d gone positively nocturnal the last few months. I shrugged. “Things change.”

  “Well, take it easy.”

  Finally, I had the place to myself. I dimmed the lights so the control board glowed, the dials and switches futuristic and sinister. I pulled my blond hair into a ponytail. I was wearing jeans and an oversize sweatshirt that had been through the wash too many times. One of the nice things about the late shift at a radio station: I didn’t have to look good for anybody.

  I put on the headphones and sat back in the chair with its squeaky wheels and torn upholstery. As soon as I could, I put on my music. Bauhaus straight into the Pogues. That’d wake ’em up. To be a DJ was to be God. I controlled the airwaves. To be DJ at an alternative public radio station? That was being God with a mission. It was thinking you were the first person to discover The Clash and you had to spread the word.

  My illusions about the true power of being a radio DJ had pretty much been shattered by this time. I’d started out on the college radio station, graduated a couple years ago, and got the gig at KNOB after interning here. I might have had a brain full of philosophical tenets, high ideals, and opinions I couldn’t wait to vocalize. But off-campus, no one cared. The world was a bigger place than that, and I was adrift. College was supposed to fix that, wasn’t it?

  I switched on the mike.

  “Good evening to you, Denver. This is Kitty on K-Nob. It’s twelve-oh-twelve in the wee hours and I’m bored, which means I’m going to regale you with inanities until somebody calls and requests a song recorded before 1990.

  “I have the new issue of Wide World of News here. Picked it up when I got my frozen burrito for dinner. Headline says: ‘Bat Boy Attacks Convent.’ Now, this is like the tenth Bat Boy story they’ve done this year. That kid really gets around—though as long as they’ve been doing stories on him he’s got to be what, fifty? Anyway, as visible as this guy is, at least according to the intrepid staff of Wide World of News, I figure somebody out there has seen him. Have any of you seen the Bat Boy? I want to hear about it. The line is open.”

  Amazingly, I got a call right off. I wouldn’t have to beg.

  “Hello!”

  “Uh, yeah, dude. Hey. Uh, can you play some Pearl Jam?”

  “What did I say? Did you hear me? Nothing after ninety. ’Bye.”

  Another call was waiting. Double cool. “Hi there.”

  “Do you believe in vampires?”

  I paused. Any other DJ would have tossed off a glib response without thinking—just another midnight weirdo looking for attention. But I knew better.

  “If I say yes, will you tell me a good story?”

  “So, do you?” The speaker was male. His voice was clear and steady.

  I put my smile into my voice. “Yes.”

  “The Bat Boy stories, I think they’re a cover-up. All those tabloid stories, and the TV shows like Uncharted World?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Everybody treats them like they’re a joke. Too far out, too crazy. Just mindless trash. So if everybody thinks that stuff is a joke, if there really is something out there—no one would believe it.”

  “Kind of like hiding in plain sight, is that what you’re saying? Talk about weird supernatural things just enough to make them look ridiculous and you deflect attention from the truth.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “So, who exactly is covering up what?”

  “They are. The vampires. They’re covering up, well, everything. Vampires, werewolves, magic, crop circles—”

  “Slow down there, Van Helsing.”

  “Don’t call me that!” He sounded genuinely angry.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s— I’m not anything like him. He was a murderer.”

  The hairs on my arms stood on end. I leaned into the mike. “And what are you?”

  He let out a breath that echoed over the phone. “Never mind. I called about the tabloid.”

  “Yes, Bat Boy. You think Bat Boy is a vampire?”

  “Maybe not specifically. But before you brush it off, think about what may really be out there.”

  Actually, I didn’t have to. I already knew.

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  He hung up.

  “What an intriguing call,” I said, half to myself, almost forgetting I was on the air.

  The world he talked about—vampires, werewolves, things that go bump——was a secret one, even to the people who inadvertently found their way there. People fell into it by accident and were left to sink or swim. Usually sink. Once inside, you especially didn’t talk about it to outsiders because, well, who would believe you?

  But we weren’t really talking here, were we? It was late-night radio. It was a joke.

  I squared my shoulders, putting my thoughts back in order. “Right. This raises all sorts of possibilities. I have to know—did I just get a call from some wacko? Or is something really out there? Do you have a story to tell about something that isn’t supposed to exist? Call me.” I put on Concrete Blonde while I waited.

  The light on the phone showed an incoming call flash before the song’s first bass chord sounded. I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to call. If I could keep making jokes, I could pretend that everything was normal.

  I picked up the phone. “Hold, please,” I said and waited for the song to end. I took a few deep breaths, half-hoping that maybe the caller just wanted to hear some Pearl Jam.

  “All right. Kitty here.”

  “Hi—I think I know what that guy’s talking about. You know how they say that wolves have been extinct around here for over fifty years? Well, my folks have a cabin up in Nederland, and I swear I’ve heard wolves howling around there. Every summer I’ve heard them. I called the wildlife people about it once, but they just told me the same thing. They’re extinct. But I don’t believe them.”

  “Are you sure they’re wolves? Maybe they’re coyotes.” That was me trying to act normal. Playing the skeptic. But I’d been to those woods, and I knew she was right. Well, half-right.

  “I know what coyotes sound like, and it’s not anything like that. Maybe—maybe they’re something else. Werewolves or something, you know?”

  “Have you ever seen them?”

  “No. I’m kind of afraid to go out there at night.”

  “That’s probably just as well. Thanks for calling.”

  As soon as I hung up, the next call was waiting. “Hello?”

  “Hi—do you think that guy was really a vampire?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think he was?”

  “Maybe. I mean, I go to nightclubs a lot, and sometimes people show up there, and they just don’t fit. They’re like, way too cool for the place, you know? Like, scary cool, like they should be in Hollywood or something and what the hell are they doing here—”

  “Grocery shopping?”

  “Yeah, exactly!”

  “Imagination is a wonderful thing. I’m going to go to the next call now— Hello?”

  “Hi. I gotta say if there really were vampires, don’t you think someone would have noticed by now? Bodies with bite marks dumped in alleys—”

  “Unless the coroner covers up cause of death—”

  The calls kept coming.

  “Just because someone’s allergic to garlic doesn’t mean—”

  “What is it with blood anyway—”

  “If a girl who’s a werewolf got pregnant, what would happen to the baby when she changed into a wolf? Would it change into a wolf cub?”

  “Flea collars. And rabies shots. Do werewolves need rabies shots?”

  Then came the Call. Everything changed. I’d been toeing the line, keeping things light. Keeping them unreal. I was trying to be normal, really I was. I worked hard to keep my real life—my day job, so to speak—away from the rest. I’d been trying to keep this from slipping all the way into that other world that I still hadn’t learned to live in very well.

  Lately, it had felt like a l
osing battle.

  “Hi, Kitty.” His voice was tired, flat. “I’m a vampire. I know you believe me.” My belief must have showed through in my voice all night. That must have been why he called me.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Can—can I talk to you about something?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m a vampire. I was attacked and turned involuntarily about five years ago. I’m also—at least I used to be—a devout Catholic. It’s been really . . . hard. All the jokes about blood and the Eucharist aside—I can’t walk into a church anymore. I can’t go to Mass. And I can’t kill myself because that’s wrong. Catholic doctrine teaches that my soul is lost, that I’m a blot on God’s creation. But Kitty—that’s not what I feel. Just because my heart has stopped beating doesn’t mean I’ve lost my soul, does it?”

  I wasn’t a minister, I wasn’t a psychologist. I’d majored in English, for crying out loud. I wasn’t qualified to counsel anyone on his spiritual life. But my heart went out to him, because he sounded so sad. All I could do was try.

  “You can’t exactly go to your local priest to hash this out, can you?”

  “No,” he said, chuckling a little.

  “Right. Have you ever read Paradise Lost?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Of course not, no one reads anymore. Paradise Lost is Milton’s great epic poem about the war in Heaven, the rebellion of the angels, the fall of Lucifer, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. As an aside, some people believe this was the time when vampires and lycanthropes came into existence—Satan’s mockery of God’s greatest creation. Whatever. At any rate, in the first few chapters, Satan is the hero. He speaks long monologues about what he’s thinking, his soul-searching. He’s debating about whether or not to take revenge on God for exiling him from Heaven. After reading this for a while, you realize that Satan’s greatest sin, his greatest mistake, wasn’t pride or rebelling against God. His greatest mistake was believing that God would not forgive him if he asked for forgiveness. His sin wasn’t just pride—it was self-pity. I think in some ways every single person, human, vampire, whatever, has a choice to make: To be full of rage about what happens to you, or to reconcile with it, to strive for the most honorable existence you can despite the odds. Do you believe in a God who understands and forgives or one who doesn’t? What it comes down to, this is between you and God, and you’ll have to work that out for yourself.”

  “That—that sounds okay. Thanks. Thanks for talking to me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  DOPPELGANGER

  Marie Brennan

  Rain pattered steadily through the leaves of the wood and dripped to the ground below. Two figures slipped between the trees, all but invisible in the darkness, silent under the cover of the rain. The one in the lead moved well, but the one trailing him moved better, ghostlike and undetectable, and he did not know she was there.

  Three men waited for him, crouching in a tight clump under an old elm and shivering in the rain. He came up to them and spoke in a low voice. “She’s alone. And looks like she’ll be bedding down soon enough. If we wait, she should be easy to take.”

  Hidden in the trees just a short distance away, the woman who had been following him smiled thinly.

  “I still don’t like this,” one of the other men hissed. “What if she’s got spells set up or something?”

  The woman’s jaw hardened, and the amusement faded from her face.

  “She ain’t a witch,” someone else said, with the tone of a man who’s said it several times already. “You saw her in the tavern. She damn near cut that fellow’s throat when he called her one. And Tre would have said if she’d been singing when he looked in on her.”

  “She wasn’t,” the spy confirmed. “Just talking to her horse, like anybody does. And besides, witches don’t carry swords, or play cards in taverns. She’s just a Cousin.”

  “We’re wasting time,” the last of the men said. “Heth, you go first. You make friends with the horse so it don’t warn her. Then Nessel can knock her out. Tre and I’ll be ready in case something goes wrong.”

  “Some help that’ll be if she is a witch,” the fearful one said. “How else did she manage to get five Primes in one hand?”

  The leader spat into the bushes. “She probably cheated. Don’t have to be a witch to cheat at cards. Look, there’s four of us and one of her. We’ll be fine.”

  Ten of you wouldn’t be enough, the woman thought, and her smile returned. Not against a Hunter. Not against me.

  Mirage didn’t object to being accused of cheating at cards, especially not when it was true. She did object to being called a witch—or a Cousin, for that matter. And she objected to being driven out to sleep in a rain-drenched wood, when she’d been hoping for a warm, dry inn. Now these idiotic thugs were planning on jumping her?

  They deserved what they were going to get.

  She slipped away from the men and returned to her campsite. Surveying it, she calculated where Heth was likely to come from, and Nessel, then arranged her bedding so it would look as though she were in it. The illusion was weaker from the other direction, but with the fire in the way, any scouts on the other side shouldn’t be able to see anything amiss.

  Then she retired to the shadows and waited.

  The men took their time in coming, but Mirage was patient. Just as her fire was beginning to burn low, she heard a noise; not all of the men were as good at moving through the forest as Tre. Scanning the woods, she saw the spy nearby, already in place. She hadn’t heard him get there. Not bad.

  Quiet whispers, too muted for her to pick out. Then one man eased up next to her horse.

  Ordinarily that would have been a mistake. Mist was trained to take the hand off any stranger who touched her. But Mirage had given her a command before leaving, and so the mare stood stock-still, not reacting to the man trying to quiet the noises she wasn’t making.

  Mirage smiled, and continued to wait.

  Now it was Nessel’s turn. The leader, who had slid around to the far side of the fire, gestured for him to move. Nessel came forward on exaggerated tiptoe, club in his hands. Then, with a howl, he brought the weapon crashing down on her bedding.

  Tre went down without a sound a half second later. Fixed on the scene in front of him, he never noticed Mirage coming up behind him.

  “She’s not here!” Nessel yelled in panic.

  Mist, responding to Mirage’s whistle, kicked Heth in the chest and laid him out flat. Mirage stepped into the firelight next to the horse. “Yes, I am,” she said, and smiled again.

  Nessel, a credit to his courage if not to his brain, charged her with another yell. Mirage didn’t even bother to draw a blade; she sidestepped his wild swipe and kicked him twice, once in the chest and once in the head. He went down like a log. Mirage, pausing only to give Heth a judicious tap with her boot, leapt over the fire in pursuit of the last man.

  He fled as soon as she appeared, but it wasn’t enough of a head start. Mirage kept to an easy pace until her eyes adjusted once more; then she put on a burst of speed and overtook him. A flying tackle brought him down. She came up before he did and stomped on his knee, ending any further chance of flight.

  Then she knelt, relieving him of the dagger he was trying to draw, and pinned him to the ground. “What did you think you were doing?” she growled, holding the dagger ready.

  He was trying not to cry from the pain of his injured knee. “Gold,” he gasped. “Only that. We weren’t going to kill you. I swear!”

  “I believe you,” Mirage said. “And for that, you live. Provided you learn one little lesson.”

  He nodded fearfully.

  “I,” Mirage said, “am not a witch. Nor am I a Cousin. I have nothing to do with them. Can you remember that?” He nodded again. “Good. And be sure to tell your friends.” She stood and tucked his dagger into her belt. “I don’t like people making that kind of mistake.”

  Then, with a swift kick to h
is head, she knocked him out.

  Out of the Night

  ROBIN T. POPP

  (0-446-61626-5)

  First came the hunger.

  Lanie Weber isn’t afraid of danger. As a volunteer firefighter, this seemingly mild-mannered librarian has faced life-or-death situations before—and survived. But she has no idea what’s waiting for her in the dark Amazon jungles . . . in the staring eyes of a mysterious statue . . . and in the strong arms of a seductive stranger.

  Then the desire . . .

  Veteran pilot Mac Knight has vowed to help Lanie find out what has happened to her scientist father. But at Dr. Weber’s secret research lab, they find only five dead bodies—and a creature believed to live solely in legends. The nightmare, however, is real. When Mac is attacked and bitten, Lanie fights to keep him alive. When he presses his lips to her throat, she yields to his touch. And when his teeth graze her flesh, she hungers for more . . .

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  on TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN

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