Holidays Are Hell

by Kim Harrison

“Not a witch, a shape-shifter, you fool,” John snapped.

  “Right, whatever,” Nick said with a meaningful look at his brother-in-law. “And he wants to kidnap her, take her back to his home and torture the evil out of her. He probably has a cage and everything.”

  “The cage is just to keep her from escaping,” John said quickly. “And I wouldn’t torture her, just study her. I’m a scientist and we need to experiment on her, do empirical studies to see how her cells respond to various stimuli like cold, heat, or being cut off.”

  “Cut off!” Jill squeaked with horror.

  John nodded. “Yes, painful but necessary. I’ll have to cut parts off and see if they change on their own or die and see if the appendage will grow back or your cells simply displace to replace it.”

  “Well, I’ve heard enough,” Mac said dryly.

  “Hmmm,” Lou murmured. The psychiatrist came to his wife’s side and whispered something that made her nod and move silently out of the room. The moment she was gone, Lou offered John a smile. “These sound like fascinating experiments, John. Science has always fascinated me. Would you tell me more?”

  He moved carefully forward as he spoke, his movements slow and cautious, his expression nonthreatening.

  John frowned, looking uncertain, but it seemed keeping this all to himself for so long had been terribly difficult. He was eager to tell someone.

  “I have a whole list of experiments I wish to try,” he blurted, excitement edging into his expression. “I need to test her in cold temperatures and hot to see if it affects her ability to change, and see if she can now withstand freezing temperatures better than normal people. I had a huge walk-in freezer installed for that one,” he admitted proudly.

  Jill shuddered at the thought. Cutting parts off, freezing her…None of it sounded appetizing. She was doubly glad she’d escaped him that morning.

  “And then there’s fire. We have to see if her cells can now withstand flames.”

  “Jesus.”

  Nick’s soft horrified whisper drew her gaze to see that he’d gone pale. It seemed he was equally distressed at the “tests” she’d barely escaped.

  “Yes, of course,” Lou was saying solemnly, his gaze moving to the door as Maggie slid back into the room. She nodded at her husband and his gaze then slid meaningfully to Mac before he put a hand on John’s shoulder to turn him away. Walking him toward the windows, he said, “I can see how these would all be necessary. Tell me more.”

  Jill watched as Maggie and Mac started to move silently forward. It wasn’t until they moved past her and Nick that she spotted the syringe the woman held in the hand that had been behind her back since entering. Eyes widening as understanding sank in, she glanced back to John as the man continued his explanations.

  “Well,” he was saying, “I’ll have to see how chemicals affect her now too: poisons, radiation, etc. We have to know just how her cellular basis has been altered and—Hey!” John tried to whirl around but Lou and Mac both grabbed him and held him in place as Maggie pushed down the plunger on the needle she’d just jabbed into his arm.

  “What are you doing? Stop that!” John tried to struggle free, but it was too late, Maggie had finished administering the shot and now backed away, leaving the two men to hold the struggling scientist.

  “It’s all right, John,” Lou was saying soothingly. “This is just something to help you relax.”

  “I don’t need to relax. What did you give me?” he asked, his eyes widening with horror as his words began to slur.

  “As I said, it’s just something to help you relax.”

  “But you said you understood. You wanted to hear about—” He gasped as his legs suddenly gave out. If not for Mac and Lou holding him, he would have fallen, she was sure, but the men were holding him and shifted their holds to catch him under the arms and half drag, half carry him to the couch.

  “I am most interested in hearing what you have to say, John,” Lou assured him. “And we’ll have plenty of time for you to tell me all your plans and tests at the hospital when you wake up.”

  “Wake up? Hospital?” John’s voice was soft and confused, then his eyes blinked closed and he appeared to go to sleep.

  “Well,” Mac said, straightening slowly away from the now unconscious man. “It’s handy your being the head of a psychiatric hospital, Lou. I can’t think of a better candidate for the place.”

  “Hmm.” Lou nodded solemnly. “The man is obviously delusional. Has he always been?”

  Jill’s eyes widened as the two men turned in her direction in question. She quickly shook her head and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know him. I’ve heard of him, but never met him before today.”

  “How did you hear of him?” Mac asked with a frown.

  Jill glanced nervously at Nick. When he nodded encouragingly and squeezed her hand, she said carefully, “He worked with my brother several years ago on some experiment, but it didn’t work and they closed down the lab.”

  “Hmm.” Lou turned back to the man. “Well, his attacking you, plus what he said here is enough to lock him up for seventy-two hours observation. I suspect what he says once he wakes up will be enough to keep him locked up for a while, at least until we can find a drug treatment plan that will stabilize him and rid him of the delusion that you’re a witch or shape-shifter or whatever it is.”

  “But why you?” Mac asked quietly.

  Jill glanced sharply at the officer and swallowed thickly. The man was looking suspicious and she suddenly felt terribly guilty, though she had nothing to feel guilty for.

  “If he’s never met you before, why did his delusion fixate on you?” Mac asked.

  Squeezing her hand again, Nick jumped in to say, “Jill didn’t know him, but he told her that he’d been watching her brother Kyle for a while and her as well, didn’t he Jill?” he prompted.

  “Yes.” She nodded quickly. “This morning, when he first tried to kidnap me. He said he’d been watching my brother Kyle and his family since the project ended all those years ago and started following me after he saw me leaving and…er…finally decided that I was the one he should turn into a shape-shifter and experiment on.”

  “He tried to kidnap you this morning?” Mac asked with surprise. “Did you make a report?”

  “I—No, I—I tried to call my brother right afterward to tell him, but there was no answer and I had promised to be in the parade…” She let her words fade to silence, knowing how lame they sounded.

  “She thought it was a joke,” Nick said, helping her out, then gave a laugh and a shrug. “What else was she supposed to think? She recognized his name from when he worked with her brother, but he was claiming she was some ‘creature’ and he was going to lock her up and experiment on her.” He shrugged. “She thought it was a joke. It was only when he tried to get on our float at the end and then started chasing us around that either of us took it all seriously.”

  “Ah.” Lou nodded as if that all made perfect sense. Even Mac relaxed a bit, though he wasn’t looking wholly satisfied.

  “The ambulance is here,” Jay announced from the doorway and Jill shifted uncomfortably as she was reminded of the presence of all the partygoers. None of them were looking at her with anything but sympathy, however.

  “Right,” Lou said, drawing her attention back to the two men by the couch. “Let’s get this fellow on his way to being settled in the hospital then, shall we.”

  Nick drew Jill back out of the way as the ambulance attendants entered with a gurney. They lifted John’s unconscious form onto the wheeled bed, strapped him down and then took him out with Lou, Mac, and Maggie following.

  Jill felt her shoulders sag as the room immediately began to clear.

  Nick drew her against his chest. “How are you holding up? Shall we leave and go someplace and relax?”

  Jill nodded with relief. “My place. I’d like to bathe and change.”

  Nick smiled wryly as he took in the ruined dress she wore. “It didn’t last
long, but it did look good on you while it lasted.”

  Jill smiled faintly and leaned her head into his chest for a hug, murmuring, “I suspect it may be a good thing that I own a clothing store.”

  “And I a shoe store,” he agreed with a grin and she glanced down to see that she’d lost her shoes once more.

  Wrinkling her nose, she peered around the room and then slipped from under his arm to move around the couch. A relieved sigh slid from her lips when she spotted the shoes he’d bought her.

  “Here they are,” she announced, bending to pick them up and slip them on.

  “So it’s only your clothes, my coat, and this dress that were lost or ruined in today’s excitement,” Nick commented. “Not bad all things considered.”

  “Yes, I could be locked in a cage right now being burnt or frozen,” she said with disgust and shook her head at the madness, not to mention cruelty, of John’s Heathcliffe’s plans for her.

  “Not so long as I live and breathe,” Nick assured her quietly and slid his arm around her again the moment she straightened.

  Jill didn’t know if it was because he was finally free to do so, or simply a reaction to the fact that he’d nearly lost her to John Heathcliffe and his madness, but Nick seemed to need to keep her close now, and was always touching her. He had his arm around her as he made their excuses to his sister and promised they’d come back in the next day or so for a meal, then held her hand in the SUV all the way to her place.

  Once they’d reached her home the touching took on a different tone. Nick started out just trying to be caring by running her bath while she collected a robe and towel, but then his efforts to help her get the ruined dress off saw them lip-locked. This time there were no sudden bursts of laughter or talking to force them apart and they ended up making love right there on the bath mat. A memorable first time to be sure.

  A memorable second time followed when he joined her in the bath.

  They were out and drying off when the phone rang. Pulling on her robe, Jill left the towel for Nick and rushed out to the end of the hall to answer the phone.

  “Jill? Are you all right? I got your message when we got back. It was followed by a bunch of hang-ups I worried might be you.”

  “Yes, the hang-ups were me too,” Jill admitted with a little sigh, glancing over her shoulder to see Nick walking up the hall to join her with only the towel wrapped around his waist. She smiled softly and relaxed back against his chest as he stepped up to wrap his arms around her from behind.

  “What’s happened?” Kyle asked worriedly. “You sounded pretty upset in the message.”

  Jill opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again as all she had to tell him rolled through her mind. This was going to be a long conversation and Jill simply wasn’t up to that right now. All she wanted was to collapse into bed and sleep in Nick’s arms…and…she decided she could. John Heathcliffe was safely locked up for at least seventy-two hours. Tomorrow morning she would get up bright and early and go over to her brother’s house and tell him everything. For now it would wait.

  “Jill?” Kyle asked. “What’s happened? What were you calling to tell me?”

  She opened her mouth, but again paused, this time because Nick had started to nibble at her neck even as his hands slid around to tug her robe open so his hands could run freely over her body.

  “I called to tell you…” Jill paused on a soft gasp as Nick’s hands closed over her breasts, then finished breathily, “Mr. Handsome Shoes isn’t gay.”

  “Mr. Handsome Shoes?” Nick asked with amusement, pinching her nipples lightly for punishment.

  “You were calling to tell me Mr. Handsome Shoes isn’t gay?” Kyle asked with disbelief and Jill heard Claire squeal in the background and then cry, “He finally asked her out, didn’t he?”

  Rather than answer either question, Jill laughed and pushed Nick’s hands away, saying, “I’m coming by tomorrow for breakfast.”

  “Nice of you to invite yourself,” Kyle said dryly.

  “Trust me, you owe me,” Jill responded just as dryly, fending off Nick’s roaming hands as she added, “I might be bringing Nick if he wants to come, and believe me, you owe him too. We have quite a bit to tell you.”

  “I heard that,” Claire cried, obviously having picked up another phone in the house. “You can’t say something like that and then just leave us in suspense. What do you have to tell us?”

  “Tomorrow,” Jill said firmly and hung up.

  “Hmm…Mr. Handsome Shoes,” Nick murmured as she turned in his arms and slid her own around his neck. “No wonder your brother thought I was gay if you’ve been calling me that.”

  “I didn’t,” she assured him, pressing her body close to his. “Claire did.”

  He grinned. “You talked about me to Claire, did you?”

  “And you talked about me to your family,” she pointed out, reaching down to undo the towel around his waist.

  “Yes. Maybe we should have done a little more talking with each other.”

  Jill laughed at the claim and began to press kisses to his chest. “Talking is all we did, buddy. It’s the other things we should have done more of.”

  “Oh? Such as?” he teased.

  Smiling, Jill pulled away and caught his hand as she began to back her way down the hall. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  Smiling, Nick allowed her to lead him into the bedroom, murmuring, “Somehow, I think this is going to be the best Christmas ever.”

  About Lynsay Sands

  LYNSAY SANDS is the national bestselling author of the Argeneau vampire series as well as more than fifteen historical novels and anthologies known for their humorous edge.

  For more information, go to www.lynsaysands.net.

  Six

  Marjorie M. Liu

  To my parents,

  with love

  Chapter 1

  It was an accident that the Foreign Minister’s wife was found—her body had been hidden quite carefully, in several different locations—but the fortuitous combination of the harsh Beijing winter and several hungry dogs made her discovery quite immediate, without time for decay, and once the forensic team had finished analyzing the woman’s remains it was only a matter of time before the military became involved.

  Which explained how, on the eve of Spring Festival, with the thunder of fireworks shaking the streets, Six found herself in a murky massage parlor in the heart of Shanghai, her hands covered in oil as she pounded the brown filthy feet of a man in a wrinkled black suit.

  The air reeked. Cigarette smoke, cheap cologne, a multitude of unwashed bodies that had circulated through the room for hours upon hours, for days on end. The scents made Six’s nose run, her eyes itch, and though she had held her job for only 360 minutes—by her watch, anyway, which was atomic in nature and government issued—her brief tenure here was more than enough. As far as she was concerned, the other girls who worked in this place—legitimately, without pretense—deserved medals.

  Not that Six had met any of them. As per the agreement with the massage parlor’s owner—who, according to his file, had long ago given up his Chinese name for the ridiculous foreign moniker of “Lucky John”—Six had remained virtually locked inside this small room, forced to massage the feet and bodies of one man after another. If any of those paying guests asked for a different girl, Lucky John was to insist all the others were busy. And if he did not do exactly that—or if any one of the men discovered Six’s true identity—the repercussions had been made quite clear.

  Police clear. Prison clear. End of life clear.

  Six rolled her shoulders, glancing at the man reclining in front of her on the wide red chair. His eyes were closed, his breathing deep and even. Not asleep, but certainly relaxed. His face was broad and flat; a large mole, replete with long black hair, made a target of his chin. A toothpick jutted from between his lips.

  Six slid her thumbs along the arch of his foot, pushing between his toes. She pinched hard on t
he bone. He jerked, grunting, and she applied more pressure. The man opened his eyes and kicked at her. Six allowed his big toe to connect with her chin, though she angled her head just enough to make it a glancing blow.

  “Bitch,” he growled, slapping the padded arm of his chair with one hard palm. “Careful.”

  As Six was supposed to be deaf—like all the other girls of Lucky John’s massage parlor—she did not respond. Merely ducked her head, allowing her straight black hair to fall loose past her face, hiding the grim flat smile that passed fleetingly across her mouth.

  Just outside the room’s painted bamboo door, Six heard footsteps. Quick, then slow, accompanied by Lucky John’s shrill voice. The man beneath her hands tensed. So did Six.

  The door opened. Six glimpsed Lucky John’s distraught expression, his eyes large and focused entirely on her—stupid of him, a sure giveaway if these men were in any way observant and paranoid—but her view of the old pimp’s quick retreat was obscured by a broad chest and skinny tie, and then there was another man in the room and the door closed with a quiet click.

  Six glanced up and met a flat gaze, cold as the thick black ice covering the old concrete of her first training installation, a gymnasium near the People’s Hall in Beijing, where she had studied alongside the country’s Olympic hopefuls before being culled young, no older than five. She still remembered. She remembered training on that ice, out in the blast of arctic wind. Toughening herself. Knowing she had to be stronger than the others, and for a different reason entirely.

  The newcomer stared at her. Six dropped her gaze, but not before observing other oddities, such as the man’s utter foreignness, a purely physical difference that nonetheless revealed some kind of Asian ancestor through nothing more than the turn of his dark eyes and the prominence of his cheekbones. There was a hint of red in his hair; white man enough, running through his veins. Six could still feel him watching her when he shifted slightly, turned to the man reclining on the chair, and said, “I told you not to call me, Chenglei.”