Hex Appeal

by P. N. Elrod

  The vamp we’d brought in was not Kellie Ann Donner but did look like her, right down to the mole off the corner of her mouth. She’d searched far and wide for a patsy and found her working the night shift in that franchise gas station.

  The vamp had kidnapped the poor girl, forced the change on her, and buried her deep in a box in that old cemetery. The box was big enough for two. The vamp had doubled up for the day with Kellie Ann’s corpse, waiting for her to revive, knowing that somewhere a Company seer would pick up on it and send a registration/recovery team.

  The media frenzy and the reward money? All backed by the Dracs. The intent was to get the Company so worried about the number one rule being breached that they’d miss the real goal.

  Those SUVs were stuffed with explosives. With them, plus the fake Kellie Ann and other Dracs killing or incapacitating anyone they found, they’d inflict enough damage on this branch of the Company to virtually wipe it out. Computer records would have survived in backup form, but all those signed registration agreements down in the vaults would have been wholly destroyed.

  Free of magical restraint, any vamp who felt like cutting loose would be able to do so.

  Not smart. Humans in the twenty-first century are infinitely more dangerous than their ancestors, though some of the really old vamps like to think otherwise.

  Morons.

  Ms. Vouros and others in the skeleton crew in the main building had a bad time of it from the fake Kellie Ann’s assault. She was a good shot but hadn’t stuck around to finish them off properly. They’d been hurt but eventually recovered. Most, including Ellinghaus, had to have surgery to get the slugs out, but it was done during the day while they were dead and unaware. A quick vanishing, and they were ready to get back to kicking rogue Drac ass and taking names.

  The forensics team that had been sent out to process the burial found the real Kellie Ann Donner. The fake one had snapped her neck right after revival; that was the sound Ellinghaus had taken for breaking wood.

  But even young Dracs are tough as hell and hard to kill a second time. The team tried standard first aid, and damned if it didn’t work. Her first accidental vanishing healed her up physically, but they had their hands full calming her down and getting her back.

  To my surprise, Vouros did not take the easy way out and disappear her. Rogue vamps were behind the disruption and damage to Donner and her family, and Vouros felt a responsibility to try to patch things back together. She used the penitent kidnapper story, and eventually it worked. Post processing and orientation (with ongoing therapy), Kellie Ann went home. She and her family refused offers of book and movie deals, though I heard she accepted a job at the Company’s Birmingham branch.

  Ellinghaus and I got the Jekyll and Hyde treatment: We were unfairly blamed for bringing in the fake Kellie Ann but also hailed as heroes for stopping her.

  After that ear-shattering maneuver, no one ever again gave my partner flack about his favorite obsession.

  I asked for a raise. Nothing unreasonable, just something in keeping with cost-of-living expenses.

  Better believe I was pissed off when Vouros turned me down, citing from memory the clause in my contract that covered the limits of pay to apprentices. In turn, I cited my brilliance while under pressure in slowing down the fake Kellie Ann, so she could be stopped; and then I asked for a promotion.

  Vouros said she’d think about it and said no in the next breath she drew.

  “It’s just another two years to automatic promotion and a doubling of your check,” she reminded me.

  Being a vamp, she had quite a different view of time than I, a short-lived human.

  Grumbling, I went to the staff cafeteria and, in a fit of self-destructive rebellion, grabbed one of their infamously bad-for-your-figure desserts. It was a tower of chocolate brownies layered with chocolate ice cream, chocolate chunks, and hot chocolate syrup on top and as many cherries as you liked. As a coping mechanism for job frustration, it did the trick.

  I was halfway through it when Ellinghaus came by and sat opposite me in the booth. He was back in his favorite black suit, tie, and hat, shades firmly in place. He sat straight up, hands clasped neatly on the table.

  “Good evening, Miss Goldfarb.” He’d said that to me countless times, but tonight it seemed tinged with an uncommonly cheerful tone that made me want to brain him one. “Are you ready to get back to business as usual?”

  I shot him a suspicious glare. “Were you listening outside when I talked to Vouros?”

  “That would be completely unprofessional, Miss Goldfarb.”

  “Don’t avoid the question.”

  But he made no response. I mined ice-cream-soaked brownie from the bowl, and he watched, apparently fascinated.

  “What?” I asked.

  “My ambulance has been judged to not be up to Company standards because of the bullet holes.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “But rather than get a replacement, I have opted to buy it from them. They’ll paint out the logos, of course.”

  “Okay.”

  “Once I get the holes patched, it will make a dandy home on the road.”

  “I’m happy for you. Wait—are you leaving?”

  “I’ve asked for and been given a sabbatical. Thought I’d go up north and check out the music.”

  “Oh.” I felt a strange and heavy letdown at the news. “How long a sabbatical?”

  “A few years.”

  By the time he got back, I’d be locked into another contract. In the meantime, they’d team me with some other vamp. Ellinghaus was eccentric, but I was used to him. He was a positive distraction from the routine, and I knew for a fact I could trust him with my life.

  “Well, we’ll keep in touch on Facebook.”

  “Actually, I was hoping you might consider something else. I would be pleased and honored if you would come along. Nothing improper, just two coworkers taking a sabbatical in the same place.”

  I dropped my spoon.

  “We could watch each other’s backs, same as usual.”

  “But I … two more years…”

  “If I may be allowed to ask a personal question, are you happy here, Miss Goldfarb?”

  “Uh…”

  “Do you see yourself advancing as far as you’d like on your current career path?”

  “Um … when you put it that way … no and no. But if I left I’d need a job.”

  “There are excellent opportunities to be had for a crafter of your talents.”

  Work was available for those with magical training, but you had to have connections or a really good résumé. I lacked both. “Oh, Ell, I’m a one-, maybe two-trick pony with the bounding spell and aura-reading.”

  “Which has it all over the ponies who have no tricks.” He tilted his head. “Your heartbeat’s gotten very fast. May I take that to mean you might be interested in discussing this further?”

  “Maybe. This is a big thing.”

  “Indeed it is, Miss Goldfarb.”

  To my shock, he took off the glasses. I wasn’t used to him without the shades. He seemed almost naked.

  Damn, but he had beautiful eyes.

  * * *

  Author’s Bio:

  P. N. Elrod is an award-winning author and editor, best known for her ongoing urban fantasy series, The Vampire Files. She’s sold more than twenty novels to various publishers with translations into several languages. A hopeless chocolate addict, she’s hard at work on a new Steampunk series. More info on her toothy titles may be found at www.vampwriter.com.

  HOW DO YOU FEEL?

  by SIMON R. GREEN

  It’s not easy having a sex life when you’re dead.

  I was sitting at the bar in Strangefellows, the oldest pub, night-club and supernatural drinking hole in the world; smoking and drinking and popping my special pills … Trying to feel something, anything at all. I don’t need to drink or eat, any more than I need to breathe, but I like to pretend. It makes being dead easier to b
ear. Without my special pills and potions, I don’t feel much of anything. And even with the pills, only the most extreme sensations can affect me.

  So I drank the most expensive Napoleon brandy and smoked a thick Turkish cigar threaded with opium. Still, all I felt was the barest shadows of sensation, pinpoints of pleasure flaring briefly in my mouth, like stars going out. I was on the last of my pills, and my body was shutting down again.

  I looked at myself in the long mirror behind the bar; and Dead Boy looked back at me. Tall and adolescent thin, wrapped in a heavy deep purple greatcoat with a black rose at the lapel, over black-leather trousers and calf-skin boots, the coat hung open to show a pale grey torso, pock-marked with bullet-holes and other wounds, old scar tissue, and accumulated damage. Including the Y-shaped autopsy scar. Stitches, staples, superglue, and the odd length of black duct tape, held everything together. A large, floppy hat, crushed down over thick, curly, black hair. A pale face, dark fever-bright eyes, and a colourless mouth set in a flat, grim line.

  Dead Boy.

  I toasted myself with the brandy bottle. I like brandy. It doesn’t mess about, and it gets the job done. With the pills to push it along, I can almost get drunk; and, of course, I never have to worry about hangovers. I indulge my senses as much as I can, for fear of losing them. I sometimes wonder whether my human emotions might start to fade, too, if I didn’t remember to exercise them frequently. I may be dead; but there’s life in the old carcass yet.

  I put my back to the unpolished wooden bar and looked around me. The place was packed, and the crowd was jumping. All the flotsam and jetsam of the Nightside, that dark and magical hidden heart of London, where the night people come out to play. Lost souls and abandoned dreamers, gods and monsters, golden boys and red-lipped girls, all of them hot in pursuit of pleasures that might not have a name but most certainly have a price.

  It seemed like there were lovers everywhere that night, and I looked on them all with simple envy, jealous of the everyday joys I could never experience. A young man sat smiling happily while a female vampire chewed hungrily on the mess she’d made of his neck. If he could see past her glamour, and see her as I saw her, he wouldn’t be smiling so easily. Any vampire is just a corpse that’s dug its way up out of its grave to feast on the living.

  Not far away, a couple of deeply butch ghouls in bondage gear snarled happily at each other over a finger buffet, playfully snapping at each other’s faces with their sharp, sharp teeth. Two lesbian undines were drinking each other with straws and giggling tipsily as their water-levels rose and fell. And a very ordinary young couple, with Tourist written all over them, were drinking a glass of something expensive through two heart-shaped straws, lost in each other’s eyes.

  Young love, in the Nightside. I wanted to shout at them, to tell all of them: do something, do everything, while you still can … Because at any time, any one of you can be snatched away. And then it’s too late to do and say all the things you meant to say and do.

  Off to one side, my gaze fell upon an off-duty rent-a-cop, still wearing his gaudy private uniform. Huge and stocky, he’d clearly been using knock-off Hyde extract to bulk up his muscles. He was having a good time yelling at his girl, a slender blonde upper-class, up-herself, business-woman type. She finally shook her head firmly; and the Hyde slapped her. Just a casual blow, but more than enough to wrench her head right round and send blood flying from her mouth and nose.

  The Hyde looked around, daring anyone to say anything; and then his gaze fell upon me.

  “What are you looking at, corpse face?”

  I wasn’t going to get involved. I really wasn’t. But there are limits.

  I got up and strolled over to his table. People and others hurried to get out of my way, and a kind of hush fell over the bar. Followed almost immediately by an expectant buzz, as everyone started placing bets. The Hyde looked uneasily around him. He was new here. But he still should have known better. I stood over the Hyde and smiled slowly at him.

  “Say you’re sorry,” I said. “Doesn’t matter what for. Just say you’re sorry, and you can still walk away.”

  The Hyde lurched to his feet. His size made him awkward. He snarled some pointless obscenity at me and punched me in the head. The blow had a lot of weight behind it, but not enough to move my head more than an inch. There was a sound like a fist hitting a brick wall, and the Hyde yelled in surprise as he hurt his hand. I sneered at him.

  “You’ll have to do better than that if you want me to feel anything.”

  The Hyde hurled himself at me, hitting me again and again with fists the size of mauls. I let him do it for a while, just to see if he could hurt me. When you’re dead, one sensation is as good as another. But the pills were wearing off, and the blows were as distant to me as the sounds they made, and, soon enough, I got bored. So I hit him, with my dead hands and my dead strength, and he started screaming. His bones broke, and his flesh tore, and blood flew thickly on the smoke-filled air. We crashed back and forth among the nearby tables, and other fights sprang up along the way. With cries of “You spilled my drink!” and “You’re breathing my air!” the bar regulars cheerfully went to war with each other. Chairs and bodies flew through the air, and all through Strangefellows, there was the happy sound of fisticuffs and people venting.

  And behind me I could hear the Hyde’s girl screaming at me, “Please! Don’t hurt him!” Which was typical.

  The Hyde hung limply from my blood-soaked hands. I shook him a few times to see if there was any life left in him, then lost interest. I dropped him carelessly to the floor and went back to my seat at the bar. The business woman crouched, crying, over the broken Hyde. You just can’t help some people. The bar fight carried on without me. I couldn’t be bothered to join in. It’s hard to work up the enthusiasm when you can’t feel pain or take real damage.

  I drank some more brandy, and it might as well have been tap-water. I drew cigar-smoke deep into my lungs, and they didn’t even twitch. The pills’ effects never last long. Which is why I always make a point of enjoying what I can, when I can. I was just getting ready to leave when Walker came strolling casually through the bar towards me. Walker, in his smart City suit and his old-school tie, his bowler hat, and his furled umbrella. The Voice of the Authorities, those grey background figures who run the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone does, or cares to. Walker moved easily through the various fights, and not a single hand came close to touching him. Even in the heat of battle, everyone there had enough sense not to upset Walker. He strode right up to me and smiled briefly; and if my heart could have sunk, it would. Whenever Walker deigns to take an interest in you, it’s always going to mean trouble.

  “Dead Boy,” he said, perfectly calmly. “You’re looking … very yourself. But, then, you haven’t changed one little bit, since you were murdered here in the Nightside, more than thirty years ago. Only seventeen years old, mugged in the street for your credit cards and the spare change in your pockets. Left to bleed out in the gutter, and no-one even stopped to look; but then, that’s the Nightside for you. Very sad.

  “Except, you made a deal, to come back from the dead to avenge your murder. You’ve never said exactly who you made this deal with … It wasn’t the Devil. I’d know. But anyway, you should have read the small print. You rose up from your autopsy slab and went out into the night, tracked down, and killed your killers. Very messily, from what I hear. So far, so good; but there was nothing in the deal you made about getting to lie down again afterwards. You were trapped in your own dead body. And so it’s gone, for more than thirty years. Have I missed anything important?”

  Walker does so love to show off. He knows everything, or at least, everything that matters. In fact, I think that’s part of his job description.

  “I killed the men who killed me,” I said. “They didn’t rise up again. And after all the terrible things I did to them before I let them die, Hell must have come as a relief.”

  “Well, quite,” said Walker. “Except �
�� they weren’t your everyday muggers. Your death was no accident. Someone paid those three young thugs to kill you.” He smiled again, briefly. “You really should have taken the time to question them before you killed them.”

  I stared at him. It had never even occurred to me that there had been anything more to my death than … simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Who?” I said, and my voice sounded more than usually cold, even to me. “Who hired them to kill me?”

  “A man called Krauss,” said Walker. “Very big in hired muscle, back in the day. You’ll find him at the Literary Auction House, right now. If you hurry.”

  “Why?” I said. “Why would anyone have wanted me dead? I wasn’t anyone back then.”

  “If you’re quick, you can ask him,” said Walker.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked him, honestly curious.

  He gave me his brief, meaningless smile again. “You can owe me one.”

  He tipped his bowler hat to me, turned away, and looked at the mass of heaving, fighting bodies before him, blocking his way to the exit. They were all well into it now, too preoccupied with smiting the enemy to pay attention to Walker. So he raised his Voice and said, “Stop that. Right now.” And they did. The Authorities had given Walker a Voice that could not be denied. There are those who say he once made a corpse sit up on its slab to answer his questions. Everyone stood very still as Walker strolled unhurriedly through them and left. And then they all looked around and tried to remember what it was they’d been fighting about.

  I sat at the bar, pondering the nature of my dead existence, and my past. I’ve been dead a lot longer than I’d been alive, and it was getting harder to remember what being alive had been like. To have a future, and a purpose, instead of just going through the motions, filling in the time. Had it really been more than thirty years since anyone had said or even known my real name? Thirty years of being Dead Boy? I’d never made any attempt to contact my family or friends. It wouldn’t have been fair on them. They all thought I was dead and departed; but they were only half-right.