What a strange old woman. I gestured for Richard to unload. I took a pocketknife and tucked it into my waistband, because it made me feel more at ease and if, by some strange new height of idiocy, the fellow in the barn was actually a human, and a vampire hunter, a knife would be preferable to a wreath of garlic. I picked up a stake and a mallet. Richard put a crucifix in my palm and I let out a yelp when it burned my skin. Ha ha. Very funny, thrall. I hung it around his neck.
“Richard. Set up the sun lamp by the front door, but don’t turn it on until I’m inside. Then you come in behind me, after fair warning. If we can get the vampire to run outside, he’ll be burned to ash and save us a lot of piercing and grunting and beheading.”
“Yes, Master. If I do a good job, will you make me into a vampire?”
“Perhaps.”
Mother Holmes sat down on a stump. “I’ll wait for you boys here, to make sure it’s dead before you get your money.”
I nodded to Richard. “I’ll see you inside.” I slipped the bar up from the latch and then, quick as a shadow, stepped into the barn. The odor of rot overpowered the smell of hay and cow.
In the darkness I saw a large body, and not human. I tiptoed over to it. It was a cow, its guts torn away, the smell of manure and charnel house battling for dominance and largely coming to a draw. The cow lowed mournfully. It tried to drag itself toward me, its mouth working as if chewing cud, reaching out for me like so much rancid grass. I crushed its skull and the cow fell silent.
I heard a shuffling in the darkness near the stalls. Something pulled itself up from the floor. I readied the stake in my right hand, the hammer in my left.
“Master! I’m coming in. Shield yourself!”
I ducked into a stall across from the shuffling thing. Richard threw the door open and a brief, scalding light burned through the barn, momentarily searing my skin. And also, momentarily, revealing the gigantic bear which reared up in front of me.
The door slammed shut. I could hear Richard’s panicked breathing and a curious whine from the bear. “Boss?”
I debated whether to answer. Richard turned on the overhead light, a set of bare bulbs hanging from the loft. The bear seemed fine despite the direct hit of the sun lamp, possibly because of its thick, matted fur. It turned and saw Richard and let loose with a terrible groan.
“Boss? A vampire bear is lumbering toward me.”
“You’re the one always begging to get bitten,” I called, leaning against the stall and re-settling my grip on the stake. “And call me master.”
“I changed my mind, Master. I don’t want to be a vampire.”
The bear staggered toward him. I was fascinated by its lack of mobility. Human vampires became faster, better predators, our senses heightened, our intellect more keen. This bear seemed…drunk.
I waited until I was certain that Richard had peed his pants, then leapt on the bear from behind. It shrugged me to the floor. Richard had a manure shovel in his hands, and he swung and hit it in the side. The bear stood on its hind legs, easily nine feet tall, and came down on top of Richard, pinning him. I heard the half-eaten cow moo again, but by then the bear had its jaws set firmly over Richard’s face. Richard had the shovel between his face and the bear’s gullet, and was screaming for me to save him, while the bear chomped monotonously on the blade of the shovel, as if it couldn’t understand what barrier stood between it and Richard’s face.
I kicked the bear in the side, and it turned toward me. It crunched down again and the shovel splintered to pieces. Mother Holmes called in asking if we were all right. “Right as rain,” I said, and kicked the bear in the jaw. It reared up again and I jumped into its arms. I hammered with all my might, and the stake went in deep, like a thermometer into a turkey breast. I popped it one more time, just to make sure, and the bear let out a long and horrible sound and then swatted me to the ground, dropping its front paws onto my chest. Inexpressible pain shot through my body.
“The crucifix,” I gasped.
Richard ran over and pulled the gigantic crucifix from his shirt. He wedged it between me and the bear. My skin began to blacken from the proximity of the cross, but the bear didn’t mind, his hungry maw coming after my face. “Holy water!” I shouted, slightly panicked. My father would be so embarrassed if I botched my second vampire killing.
Richard threw the holy water at the bear, and the glass vial exploded against its face. The bear hardly noticed, but the water dripped from its snout and onto my face, which set off the uncontrollable screaming. I said some unpleasant things about Richard, his parentage and his intellect. I suddenly realized that this creature on my chest—the one who was not afraid of sunlight, had a stake in its heart and kept coming and was impervious to both holy water and the holy cross—might not be a vampire. The still animate cow lowed, trying to crawl toward me.
“Zombear!” I shouted.
Richard gasped.
“My knives, Richard!”
“No! If that bites me I’ll become the shambling, rotten dead. I want to be the svelte, lovely dead. Zombies never get the ladies.”
The bear roared in my face, saliva infused with the unmistakable smell of rotten flesh dripping from the zombear’s blackened tongue. I still had the small, eight-inch knife at my belt. It took me nearly thirty minutes, holding the bear by the throat above me with my right hand and sawing through its neck with my left, roundly cursing Richard as I worked. Richard encouraged me from the sidelines but refused to help. When its head came separate from the body, I tossed it several feet behind me, and its body collapsed onto my chest. It had broken my ribcage, but that would heal quickly enough. Now I just needed help getting out from under it.
Richard appeared beside me. “Hello.”
“You worthless thrall. Get me out from under this bear.”
“Are you going to turn me into a vampire now, Master?” He put his shoulder to the bear. I had enough sludge and offal covering me that I could barely stand to speak.
“After that performance? Hardly.”
Richard paused. “I thought so.” He pulled a two-pronged fork from his belt.
“What is that?”
“My resignation.” He stabbed it—not gently—into my neck. I tried to move away but the corpse of the zombear didn’t budge. Blood started to pulse down my throat. “I don’t feel comfortable with this, Richard. What about my two weeks notice?”
“I can’t wait around forever, Isaac. I’m not getting any younger.”
He put his mouth to my neck. I squirmed away, but he forced his mouth over my wound. “Richard. I feel violated. Stop this now.”
He pulled away long enough to say, “The irony. You’re going to make me laugh and get blood up my nose.” He kept drinking.
“It doesn’t work this way, you know. Stop now, before I get angry.”
He stood up straight, wiping the blood from his chin. He hefted his fork. “The wound closed already.” Then he shouted, cursing and tearing at the crucifix around his neck. He hurled it across the barn and laughed maniacally. “It worked already, you liar. I’m a vampire!” He looked at his watch. “And less than an hour until sunrise. I’d best be on my way.”
“Richard!” He looked at me, the disdain already on his face. “Run as far and as fast as you can. I will destroy you.”
He sneered. “Don’t worry ‘Master.’ I’ll run far and wide and tell everyone what I did.” He laughed. “You’ll be humiliated. Assuming you ever get out from under that corpse.”
“There are downsides to being a vampire, Richard. Help me out. I’ll be your mentor.”
“You’re fatherless, motherless, and a failure in death and in life. I’ll take my chances on my own.”
With that, he turned on his heel and ran out the barn door, laughing. He didn’t laugh long, though, because he had forgotten that he couldn’t run out through a sun lamp now that he was a vampire. There was a brief scream, cut short by his body bubbling away into ash.
Safe in the shadow of my zomb
ear, I shook my gore covered head in silence. Richard had always been a mediocre man, a terrible thrall, and an annoying person. But it seemed a waste for him to become a vampire and commit unwitting suicide when I could have killed him myself months ago, and at least gotten a meal out of it. Now, here I was, alone again. No family, no thrall, my only companion an undead cow inching ever closer. And the old lady. I forgot about her.
I cleared my throat. “Mother Holmes?”
I heard her get up from the stump and walk to the edge of the barn door. “Yes, dear?”
“Could you turn off that sun lamp and pull me out from under this bear?”
She walked over to get a closer look at me and clucked her tongue. “I’m sure my services could be arranged. How much?”
“To turn off the sun lamp?”
“Yes, my boy. I’m thinking…a hundred dollars.”
“That’s ten percent of my entire fee.”
“I could leave it on.”
I tried to throw my hands up in disgust but of course they were still pinned. “A hundred it is.” Plus another hundred for helping dig me out from under the bear. Plus, much to my chagrin, three hundred for my supplies. Which meant that I counted out a full half of my fee to Mother Holmes, just as the sun began to rise.
The mayor only reluctantly agreed to pay when I explained the barn should be burned down because of the zombie bear (and cow). He had agreed to pay for a vampire, he said, but then Mother Holmes explained about the nice young man who had exploded into dust as he ran through the sun lamp and the mayor started counting out bills.
“Besides,” I said bitterly. “You never mentioned that it was a bear. I didn’t go in properly prepared.”
The mayor shrugged. “We thought it might cost more to kill a vampire bear.”
“What made you think it was a vampire, anyway?”
“It tried to bite someone.”
I frowned. The sun was rising, and he didn’t seem interested in a lesson on identifying supernatural predators.
“I don’t have time to make it back to my coffin,” I said. “Perhaps there is somewhere here I could stay.”
The mayor shook his head. “We don’t much care for supernatural creatures around here. I’d feel better if you moved along.”
“What about that werewolf?” one of the townies asked.
The mayor waved him off. “Oh, we only see him once a month. It’s nothing to worry about.”
I fingered my five hundred. Full moon was only two weeks away. Maybe I could make another thousand off these people.
“I have a place you can stay,” Mother Holmes said, peeling two more hundreds out of my hand. “For room and board,” she said, smiling.
“But I don’t even eat,” I protested, weakly.
“Come along. You’re too skinny, anyway. You need to put some meat on your bones. We need to get you out of those disgusting clothes, and try to get you some color in your cheeks.”
“I can’t go in the sun.”
“I have some rouge.”
Some time the next night, just after sunset, sitting at a simple wooden table with a bowl of inedible tomato soup in front of me, a Christmas sweater with a reindeer and a red nose on my torso and a hand-knitted wool cap on my head (because I “seemed cold” to Mother Holmes), I recognized my confused mix of feelings: loathing, claustrophobia, nostalgia, and a smothering kindness all overlaid with a gauzy contentment and a desire to leave as soon as possible.
I was home.
Mother Holmes patted me on the hand and ladled more soup. “Don’t you like it, dear?”
I sighed. Only two weeks until the full moon.
WORM’S EYE VIEW
Jody Lynn Nye
Detective Sergeant Dena Malone looked with horror at the meter-long, tubular, rose pink creature swimming in the medical examiner’s sink. Every so often, it turned large, dark eyes like those of an octopus in their direction. She could see herself reflected in them: slim, thirty, brown hair razor-cut around an oval face. About thirty centimeters from the creature’s eyes was a squarish bulge and a faint white scar showing where the object beneath the skin had been implanted. The creature seemed, otherwise, featureless, but that didn’t make it any less disgusting. She stepped back and glared at the three men.
“With respect, captain,” she said, “that’s not in my job description.”
“Witness protection?” Captain Potopos said, falsely hearty. He was a big man with a ruddy complexion. “Sure it is.”
The slim, gray-haired man almost eclipsed by the senior policeman’s burly body smiled at Dena in a way that reminded her of defense attorneys and confidence tricksters, neither of whom she trusted. The austere woman in the suit at the gray-haired man’s side looked like his conscience.
“Think of it as good public relations for the department—not that you may reveal K’t’ank’s location until after the culprits are apprehended—but it will give a real boost to Human-Salosian relations,” Mr. Tiedler said. “You’ll hardly know that K’t’ank is there.”
Of course I’ll know! Dena wanted to shriek, but she kept her voice level. “Mr. Tiedler, you want me to investigate the murder of Professor Omar Derbayi with that thing swimming around in my peritoneum?”
“Why, yes,” Tiedler said, smiling at her. “It’s a privilege. I’m sure you’ve read the heartwarming stories of how our alien friends and their human hosts bond, forming lifelong friendships that will help forge alliances across the cold void of space.…” He waved his hands, describing lyrical arcs. Dena cut him off.
“Yeah, but this is police work, not Readers’ Digest! I can’t!”
“But your planet needs you!” Tiedler said.
“That’s right, Malone,” Potopos put in, putting on the paternal expression that he used for ass-kickings and firings. “It’s police work. We’re trying to solve a murder. We got the eye witness right here.” He pointed toward the sink, then snatched his hand back as if the Salosian might jump up and crawl inside him.
“We didn’t know it was in there when we opened the victim,” the coroner said, cheerfully. “I thought it was one of the intestines until it moved! He was pale from cold—well, the body wasn’t holding heat any longer.” He looked as if he considered that bad manners. “We popped him into a sink of warm saline, and he pinked right up! What an honor to have a Salosian in my lab! Uh, alive, I mean.”
Dena looked down at the victim, who lay on the slab beside the sink. No longer holding heat was a mild way to put what had happened to a human being. Only the corporeal statistics of this case were normal. If the man on the slab had been upright, clean and, above all, alive, he would have been a slender, ascetic man in his sixties or seventies, thinning, longish hair beginning to gray, no rejuvenation treatments that she could detect, beaky nose, bright blue eyes, smile lines that ran from the corners of his nose to the bottom of his chin. Instead, what lay on the slab was a hideous, partly-disassembled mannequin dipped in ketchup. She glanced at his wrist. A purple bruise half-encircled the man’s forearm.
“What happened to him there?” she asked.
“His bracelet,” Tiedler said. “All Salosian-hosts are required to wear one. It must have been removed. It’s made of platinum.”
“Well, that explains it,” Potopos said. “With the precious metals at ten thousand an ounce these days, he was a potential victim, walking around with a fortune like that in plain sight!”
Tiedler regarded him with shock. “Captain, all a thief would have to do was mug him. This was all very unnecessary.”
“I’ll tell the perp when we catch him,” Potopos said, dryly. “What’s special about the bracelet apart from the material?”
“It’s the most modern of identification devices! It contains DNA from both host and parasite—I mean, guest, as well as their full names and legal certificate of occupancy.”
Dena frowned. “Occupancy? Like a house?”
Tiedler looked resigned. “Yes. Once the Department of the Interior unde
rstood that the host became the alien’s legal domicile, they insisted on it. Salosian-hosts are filed under the same statutes that govern mobile homes. Professor Derabyi was K’t’ank’s legal residence.”
“Bureaucrats,” Dena said, scornfully.
“…But most importantly, the bracelet also allows the Salosian to communicate with the outside world. It amplifies his voice, and provides him with full connectivity. Salosians are very social beings. In their native habitat, they roil in enormous colonies. Rather like eels.”
“Connectivity? Like the Internet?”
“Why, naturally. All civilized beings want access to the Internet.”
Dena looked from one man to the other.
“Does that mean that that thing might be up all night looking at skinny alien porn while I’m trying to sleep?”
“Uh…” Tiedler replied weakly. “We work with the hosts and guests to make sure of mutual cooperation and consideration.”
A man whose black hair shot through with silver would have made him look venerable and trustworthy if Dena had run into him on the street rushed into the room. He lowered a hand-sized device into the water.
“…Concealment is vital! Host fearful, panic-stricken, pain, agony!” A voice exploded into the air. Dena winced at the sound. The black-haired man calmly made an adjustment, and the volume sank. “Then, nothing. Cold, cold, cold, I felt my life begin to seep from me. Isn’t anyone listening to me? Hello? Is this thing on?”
The man smiled. He spoke into a silvery bangle, the size of the bruise on the victim’s arm.
“You’ll be all right now. You are K’t’ank?”
“That is correct.” The voice calmed immediately. “Knowledge of superficial personal nomenclature suggests a person of authority. Who are you?”
The black-haired man glanced at Dena, who favored him with her usual non-committal, professional face.
“Sardwell Barin, deputy ambassador of Alien Relations. Is this your original host?”
“Ridiculous question! Do I look as if I live in a sink?”
Barin shot the merest glance at the austere woman. She reached into a side slit of her slimfit black dress and withdrew a thin tablet device from it. Dena raised her eyebrows. She had never suspected its existence.
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