Urban Allies: Ten Brand-New Collaborative Stories

by Joseph Nassise

“He will be shunned.”

  The way Patience said it, it didn’t exactly sound like he’d just be given the silent treatment. It sounded pretty final, actually. Maybe a lot worse than what Jack had been thinking.

  He decided maybe he didn’t want to know.

  They left the man to his fate with Patience and drove back down the ridge toward civilization.

  Laura took Jack back to the motel so he could get his rental car. When he got out, she did too, and walked him to his car.

  “Are you going to be all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he told her.

  “You don’t have to act tough for me. I’ve been through what you have. I know what it does to your soul.”

  “I’m fine,” he repeated.

  He wasn’t, though, but he was closer to being fine than when he’d arrived. As crazy as it sounded, communing with the ghostskin had helped him. He’d been able to say the things he’d needed to say, even if he hadn’t really been speaking to Jen. It was a type of closure. Then, as he’d almost killed the motel manager, he’d realized another thing. The ghostskins had been used as well. Jen had died after her body was transformed into one of the beasts of the Wild Hunt. The ghosts in the motel might not be human, but they’d never asked to be skinned and hung on a wall.

  Jack stared at Laura for a while, not sure what else there was to say. They were two of a kind, he knew that now. Tough mothers. Maybe he was a sailor, maybe she was a cop, but they had something in common. Sand, grit, whatever you wanted to call it. A need to serve something greater than themselves, even if they didn’t want to. A grudging responsibility that only a damned few were haunted by.

  He didn’t have to say anything. One look in her eyes and he knew that she knew. With nothing to say, he held out a hand. She shook it. Then she turned around and walked back to her car and drove away.

  He glanced once at the motel, then reached into his pocket for the keys to his rental car. As he pulled them out, another key fell to the ground. He crouched down and picked it up. It was the room key, the number 19 stenciled on the green triangular plastic key fob. Flickering blue memories slammed into him, the sickness of communing with the ghosts, and the terrible hole he still had in his soul from losing Jen. He found that he’d been squeezing the key painfully. He reared back his hand to throw it away, but then stopped halfway through the motion. After a beat, he shoved the key into his pocket, got into his car, and drove away.

  The motel receded into the distance, but he never once looked back. Instead he looked forward, past the barns with hex symbols, past the rolling fields with deep shadowed grottos, past the crowded interstate, past the rental car return sign. He had to look past these things. He couldn’t not look forward. For to look back was too damn hard.

  On the way through security, as Walker was about to walk toward his gate, a TSA agent stopped him.

  “Excuse me, sir. I think you forgot this,” he said, holding out a round white tray. Inside lay the room key.

  Walker stared at it for a hard minute.

  “This is your key, isn’t it, sir?”

  Walker looked into the eyes of the agent. African American. Tall. Stubble burn on his neck. Bright eyes that had never seen the things Walker had seen.

  “Sir? Are you okay?”

  Walker snatched the key and mumbled a thank you.

  Looking forward was what he had to do, but it might be okay to look back a little. After all, it was important for one to know where he’d been, to know what he’d lost, and to know the price of it all.

  Blood for Blood

  CHARLAINE HARRIS AND CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

  The screaming got old by the second day. On the first day, Peter Octavian was too battered to do anything more than wish the screamer would shut up. She would be silent for maybe eight hours, but then she’d start again. He was lying as still as he could on the stone floor, the chill creeping through his bruised skin and flesh and digging into his bones. He could have sworn those were bruised, too.

  Time crept by, as it does when you’re in excruciating pain. Octavian slowed his thoughts to a crawl as he concentrated on his recovery. After so many years as a sorcerer, he had grown so used to being able to summon magic on a whim that he’d taken its presence for granted. Not here. In the midst of his pain, he kept searching within himself and reaching out into the world around him, but he could not feel much magic at all. Yes, he was in a strange land powered by a strange magic, but it felt as if his cell was lined with some substance that sapped his own sorcery.

  Faery.

  He hated the Fae. He hated Faery. He hated the mission that had brought him here. He hated the dungeon he was in, and the woman screaming next door.

  He was sure it was a woman. He formed a picture of her. She was aged, with ragged graying hair and a bony frame, and she was hurting as much as he was.

  But by the third day, Octavian decided she deserved it.

  Food would come at intervals, and Octavian made himself crawl to the door and consume everything they slid through the space at the bottom of the door. He needed the strength. As he was eating the second meal, Octavian couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t heard a food plate being delivered under the door next to his. At first he didn’t understand what that meant, but the second time he was alert enough to listen and comprehend that the screamer was not receiving food. Maybe a cup of water? It was hard to tell.

  After that realization, Octavian cut her a little more slack. He wondered, How does she have the energy to scream like that, if she’s not getting any food? But mostly, he worried about himself.

  Maybe for once, he was in over his head. Maybe this would be the end of him. A strange thing after so very long, to imagine an ending.

  The third day, he decided to speak to the screamer.

  “Shut up long enough to answer a question. Why aren’t they feeding you?”

  The screaming was cut off as if he’d sawed it in two.

  “Because the spell wore off,” a voice said, slowly and carefully, as if she were having to remember how to speak English.

  “What spell?” he asked.

  “To make the smell of Fae less intoxicating to me,” she said, still pausing between words.

  “What are you?”

  “Vampire,” she said, with just an echo of pride in her voice.

  Everything made sense now. The (more or less) eight hours of silence fell during the daytime, when she slept the sleep of the dead. Octavian had a long history with vampirism and vampires—he’d been one for centuries, before he’d been to Hell and things had . . . changed—but this one sounded a little different from the bloodsuckers he was used to.

  “And the Fae are very good blood for vampires?” he asked. This was an unfamiliar fact, and Octavian tried to fit it into his world.

  “Oh,” she said longingly, “the blood is like cake and honey. I am so hungry.”

  “Where are you from?” Octavian asked quickly, before she could start screaming again.

  “I live in the Rhodes nest,” she said.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, since she couldn’t see his blank look.

  “What’s to understand? I live in America, in the city of Rhodes. It’s not far from Chicago. It’s a large city. I live in a vampire nest, and Joaquin is my sheriff.”

  She might as well have been speaking Greek. Which was what she did next. It seemed as if she didn’t expect him to comprehend, and given the string of insults she was hurling at him, he decided to go along with that presumption.

  “I’ve never heard of vampires living in nests or having sheriffs. And Rhodes isn’t on my map of America.”

  She fell silent. Then she said, “What are you?”

  “I’m a sorcerer,” he said. “Peter Octavian.”

  “A sorcerer.” She said it slowly, thoughtfully, as if speaking the word for the first time. “I know there are witches. Do you know the legend of Circe?”

  “I have heard of it.”

 
“I killed the last Circe,” she said. “For murdering my husband.” She was absolutely matter-of-fact.

  “Understandable,” Octavian said. “But I haven’t murdered anyone belonging to you, and I don’t intend to.”

  “Are vampires citizens, where you come from?” she said.

  “For a time it looked like they might be, but no. That’s never going to happen now.”

  “And yet, in the United States where I live, we are,” the woman said. “And by the way, other-worldling, my name is Dahlia Lynley-Chivers.” She sounded proud she’d remembered it.

  “How long have you been down here?” Octavian asked. He was chewing over the implications of her being from another world.

  “I came in two days before you. I was charged with a mission by my sheriff. I was armed with a spell so I could resist the blood of the Fae until my mission was accomplished. But just as I found my target, the spell wore off and I am now the pitiful and ravening thing you hear.” Her self-contempt was scorching. This was a proud woman.

  “You could say I came here on a mission, too,” Octavian said slowly. He pressed his face against the bars and looked to his right as much as he could. He was in a corner cell. The corridor stretched to his left five more cells. He had heard a faint moaning coming from that direction, and once he’d heard a man cursing, but other than that, nothing. He looked at Dahlia’s cell, the first one to the right, at a forty-five-degree angle to his. Though it was awkward, he could catch a glimpse through the bars of the next cell, just enough to tell Dahlia Lynley-Chivers was short—much shorter than he’d envisioned. And young, very young. At least in appearance.

  “What was your mission?” she asked. She was pressed forward, too, and their eyes met.

  Octavian felt a jolt down to his bones. She was old and strong beyond anything he’d anticipated. Though Dahlia looked perhaps twenty, her eyes were centuries old. She was also, undoubtedly, standing on her tiptoes to reach the barred aperture. Octavian found that amusing. Almost.

  “I don’t see any point in keeping it a secret, considering it’s looking fairly likely we’ll die here,” Octavian said after a moment’s thought.

  Dahlia waited without speaking, her large brown eyes curious. Octavian was glad that the curiosity was keeping the screaming at bay. He also suspected that her pride had been piqued, now that she had met the prisoner beside her. She had a face to keep, now.

  “I was sent to extricate a half-demon, half-Fae portal traveler named Ripley,” he said.

  He hadn’t expected the shock and suspicion that transformed Dahlia’s face.

  “You’re a plant,” she said, snarling, and she vanished from the barred window. Seconds later, the screaming resumed.

  It was another day before he could persuade her to talk to him again.

  Three more meals of grilled meat and a salad pushed under the door. Hours of listening to her weakening voice.

  “Peter Octavian,” she said, on what had to be the moment darkness fell outside. She was whispering.

  “Dahlia,” Octavian said. “I’m guessing from your reaction that you were sent here on the same mission?”

  “I was,” she said. “And unlike you, I was very close to success when I was captured.”

  Octavian bristled at her needling, but he had to admit that if she had gotten close to the objective, she had gotten further than he had.

  “Do you know where Ripley is?”

  “I do.”

  Octavian waited until it was obvious Dahlia was not going to say anything else.

  “What is your price?” he asked.

  “Your blood.”

  Octavian sighed. There was no way out. He could not reach her to force her to speak. Though he felt stronger now that his body was healing, and he could feel the power in him beginning to regenerate in a small portion, his magic was not as strong here in Faery as it had been in his own world. Not by a fraction. It might not have been the cell he was in after all; it might have been Faery itself.

  “How?” he asked.

  “Our cell doors are close together,” she said. “If you lie on your back as close to the corner as possible, and reach out through the slot at the bottom of the door, I think that your arm might be close enough for me to bite.”

  “How do I know you’ll let go?”

  “For one thing, I’m too weak to hold on to you,” she said. “For another, I have honor.”

  This was the last word Octavian expected to hear from a vampire. Octavian was still doubtful about Dahlia, and he thought if she died—as she might, perhaps, after prolonged starvation—he would at least have silence. But he had to begin taking some kind of action, however dubious, because he was sure it wouldn’t be long before the Fae decided to make an example out of him. And from what he knew of the Fae, that wouldn’t be a pleasant process. The Fae were universally beautiful, strong, and pragmatic. Cruelty didn’t seem to be a fault from their perspective. They had their own brand of honor, but it wasn’t the sort that included keeping their word to outlanders. They cared only about their own kind.

  Resigned to the experiment, Octavian lowered himself to the floor. Instead of the traditional slot jailers used to slide plates under, the whole door was raised about four inches. Octavian lay on his back and worked his arm out through the gap. He could hear that Dahlia was on the floor too, and he heard her crying. She was doing everything she could to suppress her hunger, but it was overwhelming her.

  “My mouth can’t reach your wrist, Peter Octavian,” she said. “I am going to puncture your arm, and the blood will flow to me. I’m sorry. This will hurt.”

  And it did. Her thumbnail was like a knife, a dull knife, and it took all the self-control he had to stay still while his blood flowed out. He could hear her eating, the eager, urgent sounds of her lapping up his blood as fast as it ran over the irregular bricks of the corridor floor.

  When the dull ache had gotten to be more than Octavian could endure, he said so. “Wait for a second,” Dahlia said, and he made himself stay still. Then he felt pressure on his wrist, and moisture. “All right,” she said.

  He pulled his arm back under the door and looked at his wrist. It was already healing.

  “How did you do that?” he asked.

  “My saliva,” she said. “Now that I have some. Thank you. That was so good.”

  She sounded almost dreamy with delight. After a moment, she added, “Stay on the floor for a while, wizard. You will regain your strength.”

  “Probably lucky for me that you aren’t free,” he said.

  “Yes, lucky for you,” she agreed. After a few seconds in which her relief practically hummed, she said, “Ripley is up two floors. He’s the only hybrid demon-Fae, and though the Fae find that abhorrent, they also think there may be a use for him. They are putting him through whatever paces he has, but at any moment, they may decide that he is worthless.”

  “How far did you get?”

  “I came in through a portal in the backyard of a house in Louisiana. A woman Niall is fond of lives there. I had heard there might be a way through, someplace close to her.”

  “Niall?”

  “The king.” Her voice added silently, You idiot. “Niall is strong and ancient, but there has already been one attempted coup, and who knows how much longer he will last?”

  “And why do you want Ripley?” As long as she was answering, he might as well ask another question.

  “We want his blood, of course. Not even all of it! A few vials full. It’s terrible being a slave to the smell of the Fae. Now that they have retreated to Faery, for the most part, it’s not as much of a problem—but to have immunity, that would be best of all.”

  “The Fae have retreated in my world, too,” Octavian said thoughtfully. “In fact, maybe that is where our worlds join . . . here.”

  “And you need Ripley because?”

  He hesitated, then shrugged. “Medea’s Disease.”

  “What is that?” He could tell she really didn’t know.


  “It’s a sickness that targets the magically gifted.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes. Like me. And other sorcerers. And witches. For centuries, magicians thought it had been eradicated, but now it’s reappeared. It’s spreading. Ten people have already died. The last time it was active, the blood of a creature half-fairy and half-demon was used to cure it, but nothing like that exists in my world now. A group of sorcerers and witches came together to search for something comparable. The most powerful seer I’ve ever met had a vision of this guy, Ripley. Sensed his blood from a world away. Even she doesn’t know if it will work, but he’s the closest we’re going to get, so we have to take the chance.”

  Dahlia went quiet for a bit, and Octavian could practically hear her ruminating.

  “Do you need all of his blood?” she asked.

  “Not necessarily, though we’d like to have him alive so he could keep producing blood, in case the first attempt to make a cure doesn’t work.”

  “My sheriff would also like Ripley alive. But he doesn’t require it.”

  “Then maybe we can work together.” Octavian felt a flash of hope, which was more than he’d had so far.

  “Yes. Maybe.” She was doubtful, but interested. “I feel better already. If I can get back to my full strength, and you can regain some of your magic, maybe we can survive to escape. Though I would rather get out of here with Ripley in tow, dead or alive.”

  “Me, too.” Octavian didn’t like to think how many other magic users that he knew might have sickened since he’d been down here.

  That night, Dahlia didn’t scream. Instead, he could hear her move. He was tempted to ask her what she was doing, but he was so tired from his blood loss that he slept instead. He was terribly thirsty, and when she slid her cup of water over to him, he drank it as well as his own.

  The guards who came through the corridor that day seemed suspicious, and Octavian wondered if they could smell his blood. But he took care to lie still at the back of his cell, and of course since it was daytime, Dahlia was silent in hers. He could hear the two guards, a man and a woman, muttering to each other in their own language. The woman said, “Maybe she caught a rat,” and the man laughed. “That’s appropriate,” he said. Then they continued on their way.