Dead and Loving It

by MaryJanice Alongi

“There’s that tender side again. My, Richard has been quite the good influence.”

  “Oh, shut up. So what are you going to do?”

  He sighed and shifted his weight. “Hope she flies back to me, I suppose.”

  “Lame.”

  “Mature.”

  “I kicked your ass all over Faneuil Hall, you know.”

  “Then my girl kicked your ass.”

  “Oh shut up.”

  Janet and Richard left, but Crescent refused. He’d tried to explain why she should go, but she wasn’t having it. “What, is this that dumb ‘if you love something let it go, if it comes back blah-blah-blah’ thing? Because that sucks. You said I could stay as long as I wanted, you welsher.”

  He tried to disguise his joy. “Crescent, there’s something you should know—”

  “Later. God, I’m starving. Listen, I’m going to run up ahead and see if those guys are serving breakfast yet.”

  “It’s four o’clock in the morning.”

  “I know, that’s why I want to check. Be right back.”

  He shook his head as she hurried away, and then he realized they were quite close to the shelter where she’d been living. Maybe it was foolish to be concerned—she was a tough one to hurt, after all—but he decided to catch up with her anyway.

  That was the last rational thought he had for a while. Stupid, really—the punk shaking Crescent like a maraca looked far worse for the wear. An obvious beta type—he needed to be led and, in abandonment, he couldn’t take care of himself. He certainly wasn’t worth getting worked up over. He supposed Nick and what’s-her-name had gone on to greener pastures…or easier marks.

  “Jimmy, you idiot,” Crescent was saying, prying his fingers off her arm, “will you give it up? Grabbing me is not going to fix your life. Now buzz off.”

  “It’s all your fault,” Jimmy was insisting. “Nick and Maria took off because of you.”

  “My ass! They took off because you can’t walk ten feet down here anymore without tripping over a cop. Too bad they didn’t bring you with, huh, Jimbo?”

  Jimmy’s eyes flashed murky murder, and Drake moved quickly, spinning him away from Crescent. “Just once I’d like to take a walk with you without being assaulted,” he muttered, carefully examining her arm.

  “What can I say? I’ve got a dark past. He’s harmless. Let’s go eat.”

  He ignored her. Then he whirled and grabbed Jimmy by the throat, lifting him in the air as easily as a mother picked up her toddler.

  “Did you really,” he began. He was so angry, it was hard to talk. He wanted to growl and bite. “Did you really think you could put your hands on my mate and live to see the sun come up?”

  “Whoa!” Crescent said, tugging on his arm. Before them, the punk squeaked and kicked, his face turning an interesting shade of purple. “Let go, Drake. He’s just an asshole.”

  He was shaking the man—really just an overgrown boy, but surely old enough to know better—like a dog shakes a rag doll. “Did you really?” he said again. “Did you?”

  “Drake! You are freaking me out, dude!”

  You’re a doctor.

  She’ll have bruises. He actually marked her—marked her with his filthy hands!

  But you’re a doctor.

  “Drake, will you put him down already? He’s already passed out, for Christ’s sake. And I really don’t want to finish the day at the Cop Shop.”

  He growled and then flung the man away. They both watched the unconscious tough sail through the air and hit the street like a sack of sand. Jimmy groaned but didn’t regain consciousness.

  “Jeez, overprotective much?” But she was smiling. “Remind me to never tell you about my years on the streets.”

  “You will tell me.”

  “Later. After that vein in your forehead isn’t throbbing. Yuck, by the way.”

  “He touched you. He should never have done that.”

  “Yes, and I think he gets that now! Your mate?” she added, teasing. “Is that what I am?”

  He put his arms around her. “Yes. That’s what you are.”

  “Well, all right. Let’s go eat.”

  “If I have to look at another pancake, I may well vomit.”

  “Dude, it’s fine. I’ll get waffles,” she added with a wicked grin, and stretched up and kissed him.

  “I have to tell you something. No waffles. I’ve put this off long enough—”

  “What, no waffles, like, ever?”

  “Crescent…this may be hard to believe—”

  She kissed him again. “Your intolerance of starchy foods?”

  “Be serious. I’m talking about—”

  “The fact that you can see me?”

  He blinked. “Well…yes. You’re not surprised?”

  “Of course not.” She smiled at him, and he swore he could almost see her glowing. “I granted your wish. Apparently, it’s what we do.”

  “News to me! What exactly did I wish for? To have you in my life, or to see you?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s kind of nice that you got it all in one package, isn’t it?”

  He supposed it was.

  A Fiend in Need

  Author’s Note

  The events of this story take place in February of 2006, following the events of Undead and Unreturnable.

  Also, I have changed Chicago’s Chinatown to suit my needs. It’s a wonderful city, but I just couldn’t leave it alone. That’s a failing in me, not the city of Chicago.

  I did the same thing, again, with Summit Avenue in St. Paul. A lovely city. Just couldn’t leave it be. Sorry.

  “We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman.”

  —COLLEY CIBBER, Love’s Last Shift, Act 2

  “Like a fiend in a cloud

  With howling woe, After night I do crowd,

  And with night will go.”

  —WILLIAM BLAKE, from Poetical Sketches

  “Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.”

  —BILLIE HOLIDAY

  Prologue

  Bev Jones took a deep breath and stepped out onto the roof. She’d snuck to Chicago’s Chinatown on her lunch break because she wanted to die with the smell of fresh potstickers in her nose.

  She walked slowly to the edge of the roof and peeked over. The winter wind ruffled her short, dark hair, but for a miracle, it was almost a nice day—nice for Chicago, anyway.

  It was a typically busy Friday afternoon…the Friday before Valentine’s Day, in fact. And if she had to spend one more Valentine’s Day alone—or worse, with only the company of her psychiatrist—she would kill herself.

  People said that a lot, but Bev never said anything she didn’t mean. And so here she was.

  She put her hands flat on the ledge and got ready to boost herself up. Given that she was wearing snow pants and a down-stuffed parka, it might take a while—say, her entire lunch break. Ah, well. If nothing else, she was mildly curious to find out if there was an afterlife. Would there be potstickers and noodle nests in the afterlife? She didn’t—

  “Bev! Hey! Wait up!”

  She started—the last thing she’d expected on a rooftop was to hear someone calling her name—and turned around. And instantly assumed she’d gone crazy: there was a woman running toward her, a woman who—whoop!—just jumped over the Chinese arch separating the two buildings. And now—was she?—she was! She was hurrying right over to Bev.

  “Thanks for waiting,” the strange woman who could jump like a grasshopper said. “I was running a little behind this morning and was worried I’d miss you.”

  “Miss me?” Bev gasped. Holy crow, it was like Touched by an Angel! “You mean you’re here to—to save me?”

  The woman—a tall, lean brunette with striking dark eyes and the palest, softest-looking skin—blinked in surprise. Bev had never seen such skin before; maybe the grasshopper/angel was also an Irish milkmaid.

  Then she laughed. It wasn’t, Bev th
ought a little sullenly, a very nice laugh.

  “Save you? Save you?” Again, the laugh. The woman actually leaned on the ledge so she wouldn’t fall down. “Honey, you’re such a dope you actually showed up for work the day you planned to kill yourself.”

  “How did you—?”

  “I mean, of all days to call in sick to your dreary, hated job, don’t you think today’s the day? And you know damn well the fall won’t kill you. What is it, like two stories? If you really wanted to ice yourself, why not use the shotgun you keep in your closet? Or one of those Japanese sushi knifes you saved up six months for, really do the job right?”

  “I—I—”

  “No, you have this stupid idea in your head that swarms of people will gather on the street below, and some good-looking Chicago P.D. monkey will coax you down and fall in love with you. Among other things, you watch too much television.”

  Bev stared. She was mad, and getting madder, but the grasshopper/angel/demon had said nothing that wasn’t true. Hearing it out loud made her feel like a real pigeon turd. It was more than attention, right? Wasn’t it?

  “Save you! You don’t want to be saved! You want a date for next week! Ha!”

  “That’s it,” Bev snapped. “I’m jumping.”

  “Oh, stop it, you are not.” The brunette pulled her away from the edge with a casual strength that nearly sent Bev sprawling onto the blacktop.

  “I am, too!” She managed to wrench her arm free, nearly dislocated her own shoulder in the process. The stranger was fiendishly strong. “I—I’m clinically depressed, and I can’t take it anymore.”

  “You’re mad about not getting the promotion, not having a date, and your mom forgetting your birthday.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Antonia. And the reason I’m here is to tell you the fall won’t kill you. In fact, it’ll break your neck and you’ll be a quad in a monkey hospital for the rest of your life. It’ll wreck your mom—her insurance company won’t cover you because you’ve been out of the house too long, and your insurance sucks. She’ll spend the rest of her life in debt and visiting you, and you think you’ll be able to get a date from a Shriner’s bed? Bottom line, you think your life is in the shitter now? Go ahead and jump. You’ll see the shit fly.”

  “But how do you know?” Not, “that isn’t true” or “you’re on drugs.” Antonia had the creepy ring of truth in everything she said. Even weirder, Bev had never met someone as obnoxious as she was beautiful. She was like the swimsuit ad model from the ninth gate of hell. “How did you know to come here?”

  “I just did.”

  “And why do you keep saying ‘monkey’?”

  “Because,” Antonia sniffed, “you’re descended from apes.”

  “Well, you are, too!”

  “No, I’m descended from canis lupus. A much more impressive mammal to have in your family tree, in case you didn’t know. Which none of you seem to.”

  “But you’re not here to save me?” Bev was having a little trouble following the conversation. She tried to give herself some credit; it had been a surreal five minutes.

  “Shit, no! What do I care if another monkey offs herself? There’s too many of you anyway. Go ahead and jump, ruin your mother’s life, I don’t give a shit.”

  “Then why were you running across rooftops to stop me?”

  “None of your damned business,” she snapped.

  “There has to be a reason.”

  “Look, are you going to jump or not?”

  “That depends. Are you going to tell me why you came?”

  The brunette rubbed her temples. “Okay, okay. Anything to shorten this conversation. I see the future, all right?”

  “Like a psychic?” Bev gasped.

  “Nothing that lame. I see what’s going to happen. And, file this away, I’m never wrong. But the thing is, when people don’t do what I tell them, when they ignore my advice and sort of plunge ahead on their own, I get the worst migraines.”

  “So you’re here…to stop yourself from getting a headache.”

  “Hey,” Antonia said defensively. “They’re really bad headaches.”

  “And you’re descended from canis—from wolves?”

  “Duh, yes! Do we have to have this talk all over again?”

  “So you’re, like—” It was stupid, but Bev made herself say it anyway. “A werewolf?”

  “You’ve heard this before, right? ‘Duh, yes.’”

  “But—but you just sort of blurted it out! You can’t go around just telling monk—people that you’re a werewolf.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well—you just can’t is why not.”

  She shrugged. “Who are you going to tell? Who’d even believe you?”

  Bev pictured herself explaining that she didn’t jump because a woman claiming to be a werewolf told her the future (after jumping over a roof ) and saw Antonia had a point.

  “Nobody’d believe me, either,” she added, almost as if (ludicrous thought!) she was trying to make Bev feel better.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t Change.”

  “You mean you don’t—” Bev groped in the air, trying to find the words. “You don’t get furry and howl at the moon and steal babies?”

  “Babies! Monkey babies? Ugh! Do you have any idea how awful you guys taste? I’d rather eat shit than an omnivore.”

  Bev, stuck in a job she hated, was nevertheless finding her background in social work quite handy about now. There was a pattern to Antonia’s outbursts. In fact, the snarkier and louder she got, the more painful the subject under discussion was.

  She tried again. “So what you’re saying is, you never turn into a wolf. Never. But you’re a werewolf.”

  Antonia’s lips nearly disappeared, she was pressing them together so tightly. “Yss,” she mumbled. “Tht’s trr.”

  “But then…how do you know you’re—”

  “Because my mom’s a werewolf, okay? And her dam, and her dam, and her dam, going back about eighty generations, okay? I’m a right line descendant of the She Wolf Rayet, and my dad being a monkey doesn’t change that. I am so a werewolf, I am, I am, I am!” She smacked her fist on the ledge for emphasis, and Bev was astounded to see a chunk of concrete fly off in the distance.

  “Well, okay,” she said, trying to soothe the younger woman. “Nobody said you weren’t, all right?”

  “You did,” she sniffled.

  “No, I just questioned the logic of running around blurting it out to monkeys. Dammit! Now you’ve got me using that odious word.”

  “Sorry,” she said, but she seemed to be cheering up. “It’s a sore spot, I admit. There are lots of hybrids in the pack—my alpha sired one, for Rayet’s sake. They can all Change. Everybody can Change but me. And monkeys.”

  “So did they—did your friends kick—ask you to leave? Because you don’t, uh, do the Change?”

  “You mean, did my pack boot my ass because I’m a freak?” She smiled a little. “No. I came west because I—I saw something.”

  “Was it me?” Bev asked eagerly.

  “No, it wasn’t you, greedy monkey. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you. Giving you the 4-1-1 was sort of a side trip. I’m really on my way to Minneapolis.”

  “What’s in Minneapolis?”

  “That’s enough sharing with strangers for one day,” she said, kindly enough. “Because we both know you aren’t going to jump, why don’t you come down?”

  “I’ll come down after you tell me why we’re going to Minneapolis.”

  “We’re?”

  “Sure! I’ll be your cool sidekick. We’ll have adventures and—”

  “Stop. Go ahead and jump.”

  “Awwwww, come on, Antonia,” she whined. “It’s just the thing I need.”

  “It’s the last thing I need. And I don’t bargain with monkeys on Chicago rooftops, okay?”

  “Okay, okay, calm down. Just tell me why you’re going and then I’ll clim
b down. Otherwise, if you leave, you don’t know if I’ll jump or not.”

  “You won’t—”

  “Just think, you could be minding your own business—”

  “It’s what I should have done this morning, by Rayet!”

  “—when bam! Giant killer migraine. All because you didn’t hang around and finish a conversation.” Bev slowly shook her head. “Tsk, tsk.”

  Antonia scowled down at her. Bev pushed her reddish blond bangs out of her eyes so she could see if the woman was going to dart off over the rooftops to avoid communicating.

  “Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll tell you why I’m going and then you climb down and go back to your life and stop with the goofing around on rooftops.”

  “Deal,” she said promptly. “So why are you going to Minnesota?”

  “Well…the pack lets me hang around because I’m full of useful little tidbits, you know?”

  “I can imagine,” Bev said, impressed.

  “But the problem is, I think some of them are, um, scared of me. And the ones who aren’t scared don’t like me.”

  “I can imag—uh, go on.”

  “So there’s the mate thing.”

  “You mean, finding a husband?”

  “Yeah. It’s a real drive among us, because compared to you guys, there aren’t hardly any of us. And the thing is, nobody wants to be my mate. They don’t know if their children will, um, be like me. And it’s not like I haven’t tried to be nice to guys, right? Even though, if I fooled a guy into mating with me I wouldn’t have much respect for him. But still. It doesn’t matter if I’m nice or awful. Nobody wants to take a chance on a deformed cub.”

  “Oh.” Bev’s heart broke a little for the beautiful woman leaning against the ledge. If someone that thin and that pretty can’t get married, there’s no hope for the rest of us, she thought grimly. “So maybe you’ll meet someone in Minneapolis?”

  “Well, all my—my visions, I guess you’d call them. All my pictures of the future—and it really is like there’s some sort of divine camera in my head, and the pictures she takes are never wrong—anyway, they were always about somebody else. Michael, your future wife is going to be on the third floor of your building on such and such a day. Derik, you have to go save the world. Mom, if you go out driving in this weather you won’t come back. But they’re never about me, you know?”