Valentines Heat I

by Ally Shields, Nessie Strange, Keith Melton, CL Bledsoe

  Also by Keith Melton

  Buy more from the Zero Dog Missions

  Dark Ride Dogs

  Search and Destroy Book One

  Keith Melton

  Death prophecies, ghost clowns, homicidal redcaps…this town has really gone to the dogs.

  Zero Dog mercenary Andrea Walker used to love fortune cookies—until the day she received a death prophecy inside one. Of course, believing a mass produced fortune from a baked good would be insane—until a berserker shows up on her doorstep claiming he’s been sent by an infamous oracle to save her life. She must hire him or die.

  Hell really breaks loose when the Zero Dogs are contracted to stop a ghost-summoning goblin’s plan to bring his Eternal Malevolence Carnival and Incredible Show of Evil to Portland, starring a company of ghost performers—clowns, acrobats, and nefarious balloon-twisting mimes. Meanwhile, Andrea’s normally shy succubus friend seems to be falling for the mysterious berserker. Too bad a malfunctioning charm spell has the redcap goblin yearning for her as well.

  Now Andrea must elude a death prophecy, discover if her new-hire berserker can be trusted, and avert the looming ghost clown apocalypse. Just another mad mission for the Zero Dogs.

  THE NECRO-FILES: V-DAY by CL Bledsoe

  This is a story about the time I almost ended the world with fruit punch. OK, well it wasn’t my fault, first thing, and maybe it wasn’t the whole world. I mean, not like all of it. Just you know, slightly less than half the world’s population, mostly centered in Baltimore. But it could’ve spread to Annapolis or maybe DC. So not my best Valentine’s Day ever. Probably not even top ten.

  I blame Hallmark and Cosmo and the society that spawned them and perpetuates all the crap about what a relationship should be and teaches us to define ourselves according to those standards. And before you try to pin this on sour grapes, missy, just you know that I will cut you, because I was alone and being screamed at by TV, magazines, and billboards that I was deficient because…well, for lots of reasons, but mostly lack of a boyfriend to take me out to a fancy dinner at a too-expensive restaurant where the food’s not good and there isn’t enough of it, or to give me flowers—even though I’m allergic—or any of that other stuff nobody really wants until they don’t have it.

  My roommate, Emily, who is cool and smart and insanely popular and likeable (not jealous) invited me to a frat party that promised to be a major blowout, and I invited my other friend Delilah because her boy-toy—my sort-of ex/long-time friend, Dave—was working that night. I should mention that Delilah is a succubus, which means that if she isn’t careful, pretty much every guy (and a few women) she encounters will fall madly, chemically, pheromonally in love with her. So she doesn’t necessarily do parties that often, but I convinced her, mostly because one of her favorite local bands, the Gits and Shiggles, were playing, and because I was trying to be a normal person who does normal things, even though every day seemed to reveal to me how abnormal the world really is.

  And I was cool with all that, because I’d been meaning to get both my girlfriends together for some fun, so this was a perfect opportunity. So screw you, marketing industry.

  We rolled up to the Johns Hopkins campus, which is in this pretty cool neighborhood in Baltimore. (And when I say “we rolled up,” I mean the transit bus rolled up and dropped us off from Delilah’s house, where we’d gotten ready.) The party was off campus—well, across the street from campus, in a big row house somebody’s dad owned, who would probably be pissed when he found out about it. Or maybe not. Who knows with rich people?

  Inside, it was packed, but it was also exclusive—there was an invite list like it was a club, but Emily’s name was on the list. And let me tell you, the place was pristine, all hardwood and marble like a museum. I definitely wouldn’t have let me in there, much less all those other college kids. The furniture had all been taken out, which was smart, at least. Still, a spray-paint can could’ve done some real damage. Luckily for them, I didn’t bring one.

  So let me say, I hadn’t been to a lot of parties. Pity parties, sure. Gatherings of nerds watching cheesy movies and eating pizza, check. The odd Dungeons and Dragons campaign, perhaps. But this was an actual party, like out of a movie, except you know how in movies the stars can have all these pithy conversations? Yeah, no: at this party, the stereo was so loud, we couldn’t hear anything.

  Aside from my two girlfriends I came with, I didn’t recognize anyone. We went in and stood around for a little while, off to the side so we weren’t in anyone’s way, as people jostled us and danced. There were snacks set up on corner tables that I had the feeling weren’t the usual decor, and I admit I was the first to get some chips. Pretty soon Emily and Delilah were munching away, just to have something to do.

  “This sucks,” I said. Neither of them heard me, so I tried to mime it out, which was a mistake but did raise some eyebrows.

  “This sucks,” Emily said, directly into my ear, somehow overcoming the noise—I guess by dint of her coolness. She took our hands and led us to a table that had some punch on it. “Let’s get our drink on!” she yelled. We each took a cup. That’s where it started.

  There were some guys sort of eying us as Emily ladled the punch out for us. They came over to talk to us, but luckily the band started just then. We rushed closer to the stage, which was just some rugs laid out in front of this massive fireplace, but the guys followed us.

  The band started playing, and I don’t know if it was being with my friends or not being stuck in my dorm room alone, but I started feeling really good, really getting into it. We all did, because we started dancing. The band was heavy as hell but also really groovy. The bass just carried the songs, and it was funky as all get-out. The singer was this cute blonde woman with short hair and lots of black leather and red touches, which I normally wouldn’t have cared about, but after they played for a while, I couldn’t stop staring at their clothes. We were all swaying and singing along, even though I was usually more of a stand-there-uncomfortably-and-nod-along kind of listener. It was only my first glass of punch, but I started feeling really wasted. And I didn’t care.

  All around us, everyone seemed happy. It was like all the BS about Valentine’s Day just evaporated, and we were there to rock. And rock we did. Folks were just going nuts; it was like those crowd films from concerts in the ’60s, with all the hippies with flowers and crazy clothes, not so much dancing as projecting their acid trips outward. I was tripping on them, just laughing my butt off watching all the college kids dancing like crazy—’cause kids don’t so much dance these days, but these guys did—and then the music got to me, and I started just silly wiggling. The music would stop, and we’d keep dancing, and I felt so good. And Emily and Delilah were crazy-dancing, too, just having fun, screaming and being wacky, until these two guys near us started trading punches. I couldn’t hear over the music to figure out why, and I really didn’t care. It was funny, actually, watching them grab each other and push their fists into each other’s faces. And then a couple other guys by us started fighting, and then more. And then the band stopped, and a bunch of people started screaming and running away, but even though there were I don’t know how many guys trying to kill each other, I just couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Um, guys?” Emily said.

  She wasn’t laughing, and Delilah and I started laughing about that. I threw my arms around Delilah, and I felt really weird, like I kind of hated her and wanted to run away, and then I started thinking she might kill me.

  “Guys!” Emily said. She grabbed me and started shaking me, which made me forget about the weird feelings, so I started dancing again. “We’ve been drugged,” she said.

  “Whoo!” I said, because, you know, drugged.

  “I’m serious!” She grabbed my shoulders and pulled me right to her face.

  “I’m serious!” I mimicked her. Her eyes were wide and dark, and I’ll give her credit, she held on to her faculties for several moments before guffawing in my face.
/>   It seemed like every guy in the place was going bonkers; the two guys in the band were shoving each other around while the two women hit them with things to make them stop. Guys kept getting shoved or knocked into us, which was kind of annoying.

  “I don’t remember getting drugged!” I said.

  It took Emily a couple seconds to stop laughing from that. “It was the fruit punch,” she said.

  “It did taste like horse tranquilizers,” I said. That set her off again.

  “I’m serious,” she said, with more laughter. “I think they put Rohypnol or something in the fruit punch.”

  It took me a second to process that. “Are you going to try to seduce me?” I asked.

  That set us both off. I turned to Delilah, to see if she was sharing in our laughter.

  Delilah was dancing in a little circle by herself. All around her, I started to realize, the groups of fighting guys circled. There were several guys on the ground, bloody and barely moving or not moving at all. Some of them looked really hurt. I snickered at that for some reason (drugs) but then saw how they were really going after each other.

  “Um,” I said.

  “See?” Emily said.

  Delilah was still dancing, without music, like a spinning planet with bloody, fist-fighting moons orbiting her.

  “They’re fighting over her,” I said.

  “What?” Emily giggled. Pretty much every time either of us said anything, the other would giggle.

  “Look.” I pointed. She scanned the room and realization widened her eyes.

  “Why?” she asked.

  I was too cloudy-headed to think of a lie. “Pheromones,” I said. “They smell her. The drugs must have…made them smell her…”

  She was looking at me like I was crazy.

  “Look,” I said. “I have to tell you something, and you have to believe me.”

  She nodded, serious as a little kid.

  “Delilah’s not human. She’s a…succubus.”

  Emily clapped a hand over her mouth, too stoned to even consider doubting me. “No!” she said.

  “Yeah, and I think that’s why they’re fighting. I think they’re fighting over her.” I struggled to keep enough focus to explain this without confusing her. “She emits these pheromones that make men, you know, love her, but she can usually control it. But I think the drugs…you know?”

  She nodded slowly. Someone pushed a guy into her, knocking them both over. He got back up and clambered over the top of her to get back to his fight.

  “Rude!” I said and pulled her back to her feet.

  “What do we do?” she asked. Her eyes went wide. “Are we going to start fighting?”

  “I don’t think so. Let’s see if we can talk her down.”

  Imagine two very stoned young women tiptoeing—I’m not sure why we tiptoed, but we both did, independently—through the middle of a bar brawl in a really nice house, with marble columns that people were being thrown into. So it took us a minute to get to Delilah. She was still dancing. She was kind of beautiful, really, just smiling and spinning one way, then back the other.

  I reached for her, and cautiously, like I thought she might explode, tapped her shoulder.

  She actually looked at me, which scared the hell out of me and made me almost run away until Emily grabbed me and pushed me forward.

  “Whatcha doing?” I asked.

  She shrugged, smiling. It made me want to, I don’t know, rip her face off and frame it. Which was not a cool way to feel.

  “Thinking about Dave?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. I wish he didn’t have to work.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled and looked back at Emily, who nodded in reassurance. “Um, I think we’ve all been drugged, and you’re losing control of your power, and it’s making everyone kill each other.” I smiled real big after I said it.

  Her face was like an avalanche in slow motion; she kept her smile for a moment, and then the sides of her mouth started to drop into a frown, her eyes got wide, and she started to really lose her shit. She began to hyperventilate, and this is the really scary thing: the guys in the room all stopped fighting for just that one moment until the smell of her fear pheromones, or whatever, hit them. I could see it wash over them like a wave. And then they just went full-bore crazy, like ten times worse than before.

  “Aah, calm down, Delilah!” I said.

  “Why did you tell her?” Emily said. “I knew that would happen.”

  “I thought she could control it!”

  “Quick, get her a paper sack!”

  We both frantically started searching for paper sacks, which was, as you can imagine, fruitless.

  “OK, OK,” Emily said after we regrouped. “We need to calm down. I’ve had bad trips before. We just have to be calm.”

  We grabbed Delilah and pulled her back closer to the door.

  “Hold up!” I said. We all froze. “Look.” I pointed at the far side of the room, by the fireplace, where the band was long since unconscious.

  “What?” Emily said.

  Guys were still beating each other to death. “Shit,” I said. “Nothing. I thought maybe we’d gotten her out of range or something.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” she said. We were about halfway to the door. There were lots of guys between us and it, most of them on the floor but some still whaling away on each other. When we tried to get to the door, a few of them turned on us, but when we backed off, they went back to beating on each other.

  “You know,” I said. “It’s kind of a good thing that these are such preppy dudes. If they knew how to fight, they’d really be doing some damage.”

  Emily shook me. “Snap out of it!”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Delilah had sunk to the floor and was curling herself into a ball, sobbing.

  “We’ve got to bring her down so she can control her power,” I said, which I was pretty pleased to have the presence of mind to say.

  I sat down beside her and put my arms around her. I had an instant desire to rip her hair out, but I fought it down. Emily put her arms around Delilah, also.

  “Ugh, I hate this bitch!” she said.

  “It’s the power,” I said. “It makes us hate her.”

  “Well it works!”

  “Fight it.” I started cooing and trying to make calming sounds. “Hey, girl,” I said. “Hey, it’s OK.”

  “No, no, no,” Delilah was mumbling. She shook her head.

  “It’s all right. You can control this.”

  “Yeah, you totally can. Bitch,” Emily said. I gave her a dirty look and she shrugged. “You’re totally in control of this.”

  “I can’t. I can’t,” Delilah said.

  I don’t know how long we were huddled on the floor with her like that, but we thought we were making some progress because the guys weren’t really fighting much anymore. This was probably because they’d all knocked each other out, possibly with some extreme injuries, but I, for one, wasn’t really in the position to look a gift horse in the mouth. Then I started to hear some more noise and see lights. It took me a minute to register what was going on. There were flashing lights everywhere and a lot of noise, and then the door burst open, and a pair of cops ran in and started beating on the last few guys left standing. We were still more or less in the middle of the floor, and everyone was flowing around us like we were stones in a river. When they’d beaten down those last few probably already exhausted kids, they started beating on each other. I don’t know how many people were still fighting, because I was trying to keep my head down and continue comforting Delilah. Emily was watching them, though.

  “How’s it going?” I asked her, taking only a momentary pause in my attempts to soothe Delilah.

  “There are a couple of female cops, I think. One of them just beat the hell out of two guys. The other one tried to stop her, and she just obliterated her. They’re not shooting each other, though.”

  “Maybe it’s too animal of a response, you k
now?” I said. “Maybe they can’t clear their heads enough to shoot.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “One of them has a gun, and he’s using it to beat another one with.”

  Delilah sobbed after that.

  “Maybe we should just get out of here,” I said. “The door is clear. We could make a break.”

  Emily agreed, so she and I hauled Delilah to her feet and carried her, stepping over downed cops and frat boys, to the door. As soon as we got outside, a couple more cops showed up and ran inside.

  “You don’t want to do that!” Emily said, but they didn’t even listen.

  “Nice night,” I said as we carried Delilah along the sidewalk. There was a little deli ahead. As we walked, a car passing us screeched to a halt. The driver got out and threw himself onto the windshield of another car. That driver jumped out, and the two started fighting while the passengers of one of the cars tried to pull them apart, except for one little boy, who kept kicking both fighters in their ankles.

  “I love Bmore, even in winter,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s so stark and beautiful.”

  We stopped to admire the architecture, because you know, stoned, while people around us tried to kill each other.

  “Hey,” Emily said, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. Delilah and I tripped over her. “Didn’t you say her boyfriend’s a cop? Maybe we should call him.” She looked around conspiratorially, but of course no one was paying any attention to us.

  “I need a phone.” We searched ourselves, but between the three of us, we’d all managed to lose our phones. We were passing a pizza place. “There,” I said.

  Delilah sat on the sidewalk, playing with some weeds.

  “Honey,” Emily said to her, “we need to go inside there to use the phone.”

  Delilah grunted.

  “Sweetie,” Emily said. That prompted Delilah to swipe at her.

  “We’re going to call Dave,” I said. She perked up. “So he can come see you. You want to see Dave, right?”

  That got a reaction. She struggled to her feet and straight-lined it for the door of the place. Emily and I exchanged shrugs and followed her.