The Monster's Corner

by Christopher Golden

  It never would be. Not if I relied on Catherine.

  There were many things Daman and I agreed on, as partners in life, in love, in ambition. One was that—despite the teachings of the Brahmins—all men are created equal. Each bears within him the capacity to achieve his heart’s desire. He needs only the strength of will to see it through.

  Daman’s story was an old one. A boy from a family rich in respect and lineage, poor in wealth and power. His family wanted him to marry a merchant’s daughter with a rich dowry. Instead he chose me, a scholar’s daughter, his childhood playmate. I brought something more valuable than money—intelligence, ambition, and a shared vision for what could be.

  A hundred years ago, when my ishas lived in England, one saw the play Macbeth, and forever after that he called me Lady Macbeth. I found the allusion insulting. Macbeth was a coward, his wife a harpy. Daman did not need me to push him. Every step we took, we took as one.

  In our twenty years together, we recouped everything his family had lost over the centuries. Our supporters would say that we brought stability and prosperity to the region. Our detractors would point out the trail of bodies in our wake, and the growing piles of coin in our coffers. Neither is incorrect. We did good and we did evil. We left the lands better than we found them, but at a price that was, perhaps, too steep.

  I do regret the path we took. Yet if given a second chance, I would not sit in a corner, content with my lot. My ambition would merely be checked by a better appreciation for the value of human life. That appreciation has stayed my hand in this matter. Which has gotten me nowhere.

  My next assignment came nearly four months later. That is typical. While one might look at the world and see plenty of wrongdoers, it is a rare one that must be culled altogether. Jonathan needs to search for a target. Then he must compile a dossier and submit it to the council, who will return elimination approval or request more information. After that comes weeks of surveillance, at which point my participation is required, my talents for illusion and shape-shifting useful.

  Jonathan is supposed to assist with the surveillance work. He claims he’s conducting his own elsewhere, but when I’ve followed, I’ve found him in coffee shops, flirting with serving girls or working on his novel.

  He is supposed to supervise me, in case I shirk my duties and find a coffee shop of my own. I’ve considered it. I even have an idea for a novel. While it amuses me to think of this, I cannot do it. I enjoy the unsupervised times too much to risk them, and I do not have the personality for lounging and storytelling.

  However, this time when I did my surveillance I was … less than forthright about my findings.

  The target was yet another financier. Unlike Morrison, this one had been the subject of death threats, so he employed a bodyguard—a young man he passed off as his personal assistant.

  I learned about the death threats by eavesdropping. I left them out of the report. I discovered the assistant’s true nature only by surveillance. I left that out of the report as well. My official conclusion was that this man—Garvey—was no more security conscious than the others, but that his assistant was rarely away from his side, so I would lure the young man away, then let Jonathan subdue him while I dealt with Garvey.

  It went as one might expect. Separating the two had been easy enough. Such things are minor obstacles for one who has spent hundreds of years practicing the art of illusion.

  I got the bodyguard upstairs, where Jonathan was waiting. Then I hurried back to Garvey.

  Jonathan’s cries for help came before I reached the bottom of the stairs. They alerted Garvey, as I knew they would. My job, then, was to subdue the financier before he could retrieve his gun. After that it would be safe for me to go to my isha’s aid.

  It took some time for me to subdue Garvey. He was unexpectedly strong. Or so I would later claim.

  By the time I returned upstairs, the bodyguard had beaten Jonathan unconscious and was preparing the killing blow. I shot him with Garvey’s gun. Then I left Jonathan where he lay, returned to Garvey, and carried on. This was my mission, which superseded all else, even the life of my isha.

  When I was finished with Garvey—after he confessed to killing his guard, then taking his own life—I drove Jonathan to the hospital. Then I called Catherine.

  “I take responsibility for this,” I said to Catherine as we stood beside Jonathan’s hospital bed. “My job was to protect him. I failed.”

  “You didn’t know about the bodyguard.”

  “I should have. That, too, is my job. We are both to conduct a proper survey—”

  “If Jon didn’t find out about him, there’s no reason you would.”

  I fell silent. Stared down at Jonathan, still unconscious after surgery to stanch the internal bleeding. I snuck looks at Catherine, searching for some sign that she would secretly have been relieved by his death. I’d seen none.

  She claimed to love him. She did love him. I could still work with this.

  “It’s becoming so much more dangerous,” I murmured. “There have always been accidents, but it is so much harder to keep an isha safe these days.”

  “Accidents? This—this hasn’t happened before, has it?”

  I kept my gaze on Jonathan.

  “Amrita.”

  I looked up slowly, then hesitated before saying, “The council has assured me that the rate of injury on my missions is far below that of most.”

  “Rate of injury?” Her voice squeaked a little. “I’ve never heard of an isha being seriously injured. You mean things like sprained ankles and bruises, right?”

  I said nothing.

  “Amrita!”

  Again I looked up. Again I hesitated before speaking. “There have been … incidents. Jonathan’s great-uncle’s car accident, it was … not an accident. That was the story the council told the family. And there have been … others.” I hurried on. “But the risk with me is negligible, compared to others.”

  Which didn’t reassure her in the least. I said nothing after that. I had planted the seed. It would take time to sprout.

  A week later, Jonathan was still in the hospital, recovering from his injuries. I had not yet returned to my apartment—once I entered, I wouldn’t be able to leave. Catherine had to retrieve my food and drink from the refrigerator. She didn’t like that, but the alternative was to sentence her only helpmate to prison until Jonathan recovered.

  The day before he was due to come home, Catherine visited me in the guest room.

  She entered without a word. Sat without a word. Stayed there for nearly thirty minutes without a word. Then she said, “Tell me how to release you.”

  We had to hurry. I could only be freed without Jonathan’s consent if he was unable to give consent.

  We withheld his fever medication until his temperature rose. While befuddled by fever—and a few of my illusory tricks—he parted with the combination to his safe.

  I retrieved what we needed, and fingered the stacks of hundred-dollar bills, but I took none. I had no need for them.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?” Catherine asked as I prepared the ritual. “They say that when a rakshasi passes to the other side, there is no afterlife. This is your afterlife. There’ll be nothing else.”

  “Peace,” I said. “There will be peace.”

  She nodded. My death was, after all, to her benefit, meaning the council would not judge her or Jonathan as harshly as if they’d freed me.

  I drew the ritual circle in sand around Jonathan’s bed. I lit tiny fires in the appropriate locations. I placed a necklace bearing one half of an amulet around my neck, and the other around his. I recited the incantations. Endless details, etched into my brain, the memories of my kind, as accessible as any other aspect of my magic, but requiring Jonathan’s assistance. Or the assistance of his bodily form—hair to be burned, fingernails to be ground into powder, saliva and blood to be mixed with that powder.

  Finally, as Catherine waited anxiously, I injected myself wi
th the mixture. The ritual calls for it to be rubbed into an open wound. I’d made this modernized alteration, and Catherine had readily agreed that it seemed far less barbaric.

  Next I injected Jonathan. Then I began the incantations.

  Jonathan shuddered in his sleep. His mouth opened and closed, as if gasping for air. Catherine grabbed his hand.

  “What’s happening?” she said.

  “The bond is breaking.”

  Now I shuddered, feeling that hated bond tighten, as if in reflexive protest. Then slowly, blessedly, it loosened.

  Catherine started to gibber that something was wrong. Jonathan wasn’t breathing. Why wasn’t he breathing? His heartbeat was slowing. Why was it slowing?

  I kept my eyes closed, ignoring her cries, and her tugs on my arm, until at last the bond slid away. One last deep shudder and I opened my eyes to see the world as I hadn’t seen it in two hundred years. Bright and glimmering with promise.

  Catherine was shrieking now. Shrieking that Jonathan’s heart had stopped.

  I turned toward the door. She lunged at me, crutches falling as she grabbed my shirt with both hands.

  “He’s dead!” she cried. “It’s supposed to be you, not him. Something went wrong.”

  “No,” I said. “Nothing went wrong.”

  She screamed then, an endless wail of rage and grief. I picked her up, ignoring her feeble blows and kicks, and set her gently in a chair, then leaned her crutches within reach.

  She snatched them and pushed to her feet. When I tried to walk away, she managed to get in front of me.

  “What have you done?” she said.

  “Freed us. Both of us.”

  “You lied!”

  “I told you what you needed to hear.” I eased her aside. “I do not want annihilation. I want what I was promised—a free life. For that, I need his consent, and the council to provide the necessary tools. There is, however, a loophole. A final act of mercy from an isha to his rakshasi. On his deathbed, he may free me with his amulet and that ritual.”

  “I-I don’t—”

  “You will tell the council that is what happened here. The poison I injected is the one we’ve used many times on our targets, undetectable. The council will believe Jonathan unexpectedly succumbed to his injuries.”

  “I will not tell them—”

  “Yes, you will. If not, you will be complicit in his death. And even if you manage to convince them otherwise, you will forfeit this house and all that goes with it. It is yours only if he dies and I am freed. They may contest that, but even if they do, you will have already removed the contents of his safe. I left everything for you.”

  That was less generous than it seemed. For years, I’d been taking extra from our targets and hiding it in my room. I would not leave unprepared. I was never unprepared.

  Now that the bond was broken, there was nothing to stop me from entering and exiting my apartment, and taking all I had collected. I passed Catherine and headed for the door.

  She was silent until I reached it.

  “What will I do now?” she said.

  I glanced back at her. “Live. I intend to.”

  BREEDING THE DEMONS

  by Nate Kenyon

  FOWLER’S PINK, chubby face glistened, and he wore the hungry-dog look of a man waiting out his obsession.

  “Been here long?” Ian said.

  Fowler grunted and motioned for the photographs, his eyes glazed and mouth stained red from drink. He smelled of sweat and cheap cologne. Three Bloody Marys lay drained upon the nightclub table, and Fowler had loosened his tie.

  Ian slipped into the booth and put his leather portfolio on the table, enjoying making the man wait a little. But Fowler would not be denied. He grabbed the portfolio and rifled through its contents, and his breathing quickened as his eyes devoured the pictures within.

  Finally he sighed and straightened his head. He removed the photos and slipped them into a plain manila envelope, which he stuck inside his jacket. “You are a fucking genius,” he said.

  “I had to give bribes. It’s expensive—”

  “Your business.” Fowler waved a sausage-fingered, jeweled hand. “Keep it to yourself.”

  Ian shrugged. He had expected this. Fowler didn’t want to know how he did it, any more than the purchasers of a pornographic magazine wanted a detailed description of how the models were selected and positioned, lighted, and airbrushed. “When can I have the next set?”

  “I need some time. And I can’t keep paying everyone off and expect to get away with it.”

  “Well, come up with something else, then.” Fowler looked irritated that he had to offer advice. “I don’t have to tell you what happens if you just stop. I’m barely keeping them satisfied as it is.”

  “I’ll get it done as soon as I can.”

  “Have a new batch by the end of the week.”

  “The end of the week? How the hell am I supposed to—”

  The envelope appeared as if from nowhere. It looked thick tonight; a good ten grand, if his eyes served him right. More than enough to put him back to work. At least for now.

  “All right,” Ian said. “End of the week.”

  Fowler hadn’t always been that way. Ian remembered a slimmer version, eager for nothing more than his next square meal. But he catered to a very eccentric group of customers, and their money was a powerful drug. And they were insatiable. If the eyes were windows to the soul, then Fowler had been blinded long ago. It would not be long before he crossed over completely and became like those he chose to serve.

  Back at his studio apartment, Ian searched for his muse among the shadows that lined his walls. He had cleared most of the central space for his work. He had kept only a bed and two ragged chairs in one corner, and installed a slightly concave sheet-metal stage with a drain in the middle of the room.

  The floor he kept bare and polished in case of spatters. The large, two-story-high warehouse windows let in plenty of light when he wanted it. But for the most part he kept the monstrous blinds drawn, preferring to work by candlelight, or the dark.

  One of his two walk-in freezers still held a few loose ends, but nothing spoke to him as he stood within the drifting mist. It wouldn’t do to throw something together with spare parts. He had something in mind, but he needed to gather the right materials.

  He stopped first at Anna’s place. She lived in a brownstone overlooking the river, and the stench of industrial waste wafted up through closed windows and doors and into kitchens and bedrooms and clung to the clothes hanging in closets. But tonight the air was clear, and Anna answered his knock in nothing but a nightshirt and the black silk underwear he’d bought her for her birthday three weeks before.

  “Want a drink?” she asked him as he followed her smooth, bare legs into the kitchen. “I was just going to mix up something fun.”

  “I’ll take anything wet.”

  She took ice from the freezer, threw tequila and a sweet mix into a shaker, and poured liquid over misted glass. He heard a soft pop as an ice cube cracked, and took a sip through slightly tender lips.

  “Business?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  She shrugged. “You’re busy. My sister’s in town next week. Will you be too busy for that?” She leaned back against the counter. A slight arch in her spine outlined her nipples against the fabric of her shirt. He took a long, slow look, from blood-painted toes and shapely calves past round hips and tapered waist, up to a face that held a full Spanish mouth and almond-coffee eyes.

  “God, you’re something. How did I get so lucky?”

  “I’m not all that much. And don’t try to change the subject.”

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I’m a frog and you’re a princess.” He took another mouthful and held it, set the glass on the counter, and pulled her shirt up to her shoulders. She shivered as he held an ice cube in his cheek and bent his head to trace a breast with his tongue, blowing frigid air gently across pucke
red flesh.

  Later they lay in darkness across tangled sheets. Ian’s sweat trickled down into the hollow of his throat. The air smelled of sex. His lungs burned with every breath.

  Anna twisted a strand of hair in long, slender fingers. “I saw ants in the kitchen today,” she said. “They were marching in a line from somewhere under the fridge, up and over the counter, and carrying some dried rice from a bowl I’d left out last night. Two of them started fighting, so I squished the bigger one with my thumb. And you know what the other one did? He grabbed the dead one by the head and dragged it back down to the floor and out of sight.”

  “That’s gross.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “I kept wondering what he was going to do with the body. Do they eat each other or something?”

  “Knock it off, will you?”

  “What are we doing, Ian? We’ve been seeing each other for three months now. I really like you. But you shut me out. I bring up something like my sister coming for a visit and you just fuck me to shut me up.”

  “It isn’t like that at all.”

  “You have secrets. Where were you tonight? I called your place, the place I’ve never even seen. I don’t want to stalk you. But you’re taking this mystery man thing too far. Maybe I’ll lose interest.” She slid a sweat-slick leg out from under his and wriggled up on one elbow to stare at him.

  “It was nothing. I sold some more pictures, that’s all.”

  “Really?” She hunched a little closer. “That’s great. Can I see them?”

  “Nothing to see. They’re just environmental shots, boring stuff.” He stood in the dark and put on his shirt and pants. You wouldn’t understand. What an understatement. “Why don’t you make a lunch date with your sister and let me know the time? Call me tomorrow.”

  Hours later he drove back across town, cemetery dirt clinging to his clothes and his new materials safely packed away in the rear of his van. He wondered how he slipped so easily between two worlds. A starving artist given an offer he couldn’t refuse? But it had been more than that. Years ago he had held several shows in little galleries in New York, mostly mixed-media exhibitions staged by old college friends, Warhol-style trash reshaped and resold, recycled. He had never had Warhol’s vision, and the public knew it. His true tendencies were darker and more disturbing.