Down These Strange Streets

by George R. R. Martin; Gardner Dozois

  “Don’t be angry,” she said. “I needed to ask him if there was a phone.”

  “Who did you need to call?”

  “The police,” she said, and ducked her gaze. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, so I called the police and told them there might be trouble at Murray’s.”

  And there was trouble, and the police had shown up.

  “I’d almost taken care of Blake when the police arrived,” he said. He didn’t say, You should have trusted me.

  She paled. “What happened?”

  “He’s in jail now, but he’s not going to stay there unless they get some proof that he committed those murders. They know he did it, they just don’t have evidence.”

  She paced back and forth along the foot of the bed. Her shoulders tightened, and she hugged herself.

  “I think you should go talk to them, Helen. You can testify, Blake will go to prison, and he won’t bother you again. You’ll be safe.”

  “I can’t do that, Rick. I can’t say anything. He’ll kill me, he’ll—”

  “Not if he’s in prison.”

  “But what if he gets out? The first thing he’ll do is come after me.”

  “I’ll kill him first,” Rick said.

  “Rick, no. I don’t want you to get in trouble over me. I don’t even know why you’re looking out for me, you barely know me—”

  “I’m doing it because I can,” he said. “But if you go to the police, they’ll take care of Blake.”

  She moved close, pressing herself to him, wrapping her arms around him, and resting her head on his chest. This again. She was so close, he could hear blood pouring through her veins, near the surface. She was flushed and so warm. He rubbed his face along her hair, gathering that warmth to him.

  “Helen,” he said with something like despair.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “I’m not . . . right for you. This is dangerous—”

  “Why?” She stepped away. “What’s up with you? You’re so nice, but you’re not afraid of Blake, and you keep talking like I ought to be afraid of you. What aren’t you telling me?”

  Such a large answer to that question. He shifted her, so that he could see her face, trace the soft skin of her jaw, then drop to trace the pulse on her neck. He should send her to sleep and make her forget all this. He never should have taken her on that first date. And life was too long for that kind of regret. It didn’t matter how immortal you were, you still needed friends.

  “Have you ever read Dracula?” he said.

  “What, like Bela Lugosi?”

  “Not quite like. But yes.”

  “Yeah, ages ago. I like the movie better.”

  “Vampires exist. They’re real.”

  She chuckled. “Sorry?”

  He took her hand and placed it on his chest, where his dead heart lay still. “What do you feel?”

  Her smile fell. She moved her hand, pressing it flat to his chest, his ribs digging into her palm. She stared at him. “What am I supposed to say? Tell you you’re crazy?”

  “Lie still,” he said.

  “What?”

  He sat her on the bed, stacked up the pillows, and forced her back so that she reclined against them. He kissed her, and she kissed back, enthusiastic if confused. Taking in her scent, her warmth, and the feel of her blood, he let the appetite grow in him.

  Planting a final kiss on her neck, he held her hand and drew her arm straight before him. No hypnotism this time, no shrouding her memory. Let her see what he was. He put his lips to her elbow—more kisses, slow and tender, tracing her veins with his tongue. She let out a moan.

  He sucked on her wrist, drawing blood to the surface.

  “Rick? What are you doing? Rick?”

  “I said lie still.” He pushed her back to the pillow and returned his attention to her wrist.

  Finally, he bit, and she gasped. But she lay still.

  Her blood was not as sweet as it might have been—she was too wary. But it was still sweet, and she didn’t panic, and when he licked the wound closed and glanced at her, her gaze was clear. Uncertain, but clear. He was relieved. He folded her arms across her belly, wrapping her in an embrace, her head pillowed on his shoulder. She melted against him.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “I don’t expect you to. But do you trust me to look after you if Blake goes free?”

  She nodded. He kissed her hair and waited for her to fall asleep.

  Rick brought her to Murray’s the next night, and Detective Simpson was waiting for them. Her hands were trembling, but Rick stayed close to her, and she stood tall and spoke clearly. Simpson promised she wouldn’t be charged with any of the petty crimes she’d committed, in exchange for her testimony. The case against Blake went to trial, and Helen was the prosecution’s star witness. Blake was convicted and sent away for a long, long time. Rick was sure he’d never see the guy again.

  HE ONLY NEEDED A LITTLE DIGGING—A VISIT TO A PAROLE OFFICE, SOME obfuscation and inveigling, a deep look into an informant’s eyes—to learn which halfway house Blake was staying at, east of downtown. He drove there with a single-minded intensity. He wasn’t often wrong these days, but he’d been wrong about Blake, and he’d failed Helen. Petty revenge wouldn’t make that right. But it might help tip the scales back in the right direction.

  The house was back from the street, run-down and lit up, and gave no outward sign of what it was. Rick wondered if the neighbors knew. He parked his car on the curb, stuck his hands in his pockets, and headed to the front door.

  The house pressed outward against him; his steps slowed. The place was protected—he wasn’t sure it would be, given its nature, and the fact that people were always moving in and out. Did that make it a public institution, or a home? But here was his answer—this was a home. He couldn’t enter without invitation. By the time he reached the front door, the force was a wall, invisible; he could almost press his hands against it—but not through it.

  Well. He’d have to try normal, mundane bluffing, wouldn’t he?

  He knocked on the door. A shadow passed over the peephole, and a voice called, “Who is it? What do you want?”

  “My name is Rick. I’m an old friend of Charles Blake, and I heard he was here. Can I see him?”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Yes—sorry about that. I just got off work. Bartender.”

  “Just a minute. I’ll get him.”

  “Mind if I wait inside?”

  After a brief, wary moment of waiting, the deadbolt clicked back, and the door opened. A gruff man in his forties stood aside and held the door. “Come on in.”

  Rick did.

  The living room was worn and sad, with threadbare furniture and carpets, stained walls, a musty air. A bulletin board listed rules, notices, want ads, warnings. The atmosphere was institutional, but this might have been the first real home some of these men had known. Halfway house, indeed.

  “Stay right here,” the man said, and walked to a back hallway.

  Rick waited, hands in pockets.

  The doorman returned after a long wait, what would have been many beats of his heart, if it still beat. Behind him came a very old man, pulling a small oxygen tank on a cart behind him. Tubes led from it to his nose, and his every breath wheezed. Other than that, he had faded. He was smaller than the last time Rick had seen him, withered and sunken, skin like putty hanging off a stooped frame. Wearing a T-shirt and ratty, faded jeans, he looked sad, beaten. The scowl remained—Rick recognized that part of him.

  The old man saw him and stopped. They were two ghosts staring at each other across the room.

  “Hello, Blake,” Rick said.

  “Who are you? You his grandson?”

  Rick turned to the middle-aged doorman and stared until he caught the man’s gaze. “Would you mind leaving us alone for a minute?” He put quiet force into the suggestion. The man walked back into the hallway.

  “Bill—Bill
! Come back!” Blake’s sandpaper voice broke into coughing.

  “I’m not his grandson,” Rick said.

  “What is this?”

  “Tell me about Helen, Blake.”

  He coughed a laugh, as if he thought this was a joke. Rick just stared at him. He didn’t have to put any power in it. His standing there was enough. Blake’s jaw trembled.

  “What about her? Huh? What about her!”

  Rick grabbed the tube hanging at Blake’s chest and yanked, pulling it off his face. Blake stumbled back, his mouth open to show badly fitted dentures coming loose. Wrapping both hands in Blake’s shirt, Rick marched him into the wall, slamming him, slamming again, listening for the crack of breaking bone.

  “You thought no one would know,” Rick whispered at him, face to face. “You thought no one would remember.” Blake sputtered, flailing weakly, ineffectually.

  The front door crashed open. “Stop!”

  Rick recognized the footfalls, voices, and the sounds of their breathing. Detective Hardin pounded in, flanked by two uniformed officers. Rick glanced over his shoulder—she was pointing a gun at him. Not that it mattered. He shoved his fists against Blake’s throat.

  Blake was dying under his grip. Rick wouldn’t have to flex a muscle to kill him. He didn’t even feel an urge to take the man’s blood—it would be cool, sluggish, unappetizing. Rick would spit it back out in the man’s face. He could do it all with Hardin watching, because what could the detective really do in the end?

  “Rick! Back away from him!”

  Hardin fumbled in her jacket pocket and drew out a cross, a simple version, two bars of unadorned silver soldered together. Proof against vampires. Rick smiled.

  Blake had to have known he wouldn’t get away with murdering Helen. What had he been thinking? What had he wanted, really? Rick looked at him: the wide, yellowing eyes, the sagging face, pockmarked and splashed with broken capillaries. He expected to see a death wish there, a determined fatalism. But Blake was afraid. Rick terrified him. The man, his body failing around him, didn’t want to die.

  This made Rick want to strangle him even more. To justify the man’s terror. But he let Blake go and backed away, leaving him to Hardin’s care.

  The old man sank to his knees, knocking over the oxygen canister. He held his hands before him, clawed and trembling.

  “He’s dead! Dead! He has to be dead! He has to be!” He was sobbing.

  Maybe leaving him on his knees and crying before the police was revenge enough.

  Rick, hands raised, backed out of the line of fire. “I could have saved you some paperwork, Detective.”

  “You’d just have forced me into a whole other set of paperwork. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  The uniforms had to pick up Blake and practically drag him away. They didn’t bother with cuffs. Blake didn’t seem to know what was happening. His mouth worked, his breaths wheezed, his legs stumbled.

  “I take it you got your evidence,” Rick said.

  “We found the shooter, and he talked. Blake hired him.”

  He certainly didn’t look like he’d pulled any triggers in a good long time.

  “So that’s it?”

  “What else do you want?”

  “I wanted to get here five minutes earlier,” he said. Not that any of it really mattered. It all faded from the memories around him.

  “I need to ask you to depart the premises,” she said. She wasn’t aiming the gun at him, but she hadn’t put it away. “Don’t think I won’t arrest you for something, because I will. I’ll come up with something.”

  Rick nodded. “Have a good night, Detective.”

  He returned to his car and left the scene, marking the end of yet another chapter.

  RICK HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO ATTEND THE TRIAL, BUT HE’D MET WITH HELEN every night to discuss the proceedings. She came to Murray’s, tearing up with relief and rubbing her eyes with her handkerchief, to report the guilty verdict. He quit his shift early and took her back to his place, a basement apartment on Capitol Hill. With Blake locked up, he felt safe bringing her here. He owned the building, rented out the upper portion through an agency, and could block off the windows in the basement without drawing attention. The décor was simple—a bed, an armchair, a chest of drawers, a radio, and a kitchen that went unused.

  They lay together on the bed, his arm around her, holding her close, while she nestled against him. They talked about the future, which was always an odd topic for him. Helen had decided to look for an old-fashioned kind of job and aim for a normal life this time.

  “But I don’t know what to do about you,” she said, craning her neck to look up at him.

  He’d been here before, lying with a woman he liked, who with a little thought and nudging he could perhaps be in love with, except that what they had would never be entirely mutual, or equitable. And he still didn’t know what to say. I could take from you for the rest of your life, and you’d end with . . . nothing.

  He said, “If you’d like, I can vanish, and you’ll never see me again. It might be better that way.”

  “I don’t want that. But I wish . . .” Her face puckered, brow furrowed in thought. “But you’re not ever going to take me on a trip, or stay up to watch the sunrise with me, or ask me to marry you, or anything, are you?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve already given you everything I can.”

  Except for one thing. But he hadn’t told her that he could infect her, make her like him, that she too could live forever and never see a sunrise. And he wouldn’t.

  “It’s enough,” she said, hugging him. “At least for now, it’s enough.”

  THE LADY IS A SCREAMER

  by Conn Iggulden

  Historical novelist Conn Iggulden is the author of the bestselling Emperor series— The Gates of Rome, The Death of Kings, The Field of Swords, and The Gods of War—detailing the life of Julius Caesar, as well as the Conqueror series—Wolf of the Plains, Lords of the Bow, Bones of the Hills, and Empire of Silver—exploring the life of Genghis Khan. He is also the coauthor of the bestselling nonfiction books The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Dangerous Book of Heroes, as well as Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children. His most recent book, written with Lizzy Duncan, is Tollins 2: Dynamite Tales.

  In the flamboyant story that follows, he takes us on the road with a raffish con man who discovers a new profession—ghostbuster—but who learns that some ghosts are harder to bust than others.

  I SUPPOSE I THINK OF MYSELF AS RUNNING A SMALL BUSINESS, PROVIDING a necessary service. I’m just one of a hundred million guys, paying the bills with the talents God gave them. I don’t have a fancy name for what I do. I’m not a stage magician and to be honest, the kind of clients I get aren’t impressed by that sort of thing. If I called myself Afterlife Inc., or something, well, it wouldn’t get my car there any faster. Not that car. I’m part of the backbone of America, my friend. Anyway, out of the four of us I’m the only one drawing a salary, so my costs are pretty low.

  I started this to make a record of a few odd years, but I’m not really interested in passing on my pearls of wisdom. Not so someone else can wade through this kind of crap on a daily basis. If I had kids, I wouldn’t recommend it as a line of work, you know? It was all right in the beginning, when it was just checking the obits and knocking on doors. Everyone wants to say a few last words to the recently departed. If you’re interested, the number one choice was “Sorry,” closely followed by second prize: “I should have told you I loved you more often,” and my personal favorite, which was always some variation on “Are you happy?” No, my dear grieving widow with the sprayed hair still up from the funeral, he’s dead, of course he’s not happy. I’ll admit I hadn’t the first idea back then whether he was happy or not. I know a bit more these days, but I’ll get to that. I just used to assure her that poor Brian was just fine, that he missed her and he was looking forward to seeing her in heaven. If I handled it right, I’d also get a couple of juicy hits. S
ure, as I’m already talking, I’ll tell you. Hits are when you get a detail right that they think you couldn’t possibly know. “He says he remembers that time in the Maldives, does that mean anything to you?” It’s a golden moment and you never get tired of watching the last trace of cynicism drain away from them. All it takes is a couple of Barnum statements and a little research.

  Maybe I do have a little knowledge worth passing on, at that. P. T. Barnum made them famous, but it all started with a lecturer named Forer, back in the forties. I can start the list from memory, so here it is:

  “You have a great need for others to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.” And so on. You get it? They apply to everyone. Couple a few of those to some personal research and you have a cold reading they’ll remember forever.

  They never think I could do some actual work before turning up at the door. The Internet is good for that, though my favorite was the old microfiches they had in libraries. Newspaper records were useful, but the gold was often in court records and voting rolls. It’s all public. These days, half the people I read about are still the Google and microfiche crowd—too old to have heard of Facebook. The rest are low-hanging fruit. Facebook don’t dump a page for about a week after a death and their privacy policy is, well, the difference between me scoring and not, most of the time. You’d be amazed what you can find out in ten minutes.

  You only need one proper hit and it’s all they remember when you’re gone. You’re in their house and you’re reading like crazy, taking in every tiny detail. With the old ladies, you ask to go to the bathroom and you check the meds. I had a lovely one at the beginning when I found a collection of insulin bottles and needle packets. I checked her name on the unopened boxes, then all I had to say was, “John says to remember your injections,” and she was a goner, full-blown tears like it would never stop. When it was over, I’d made a sweet two hundred for an hour, including the drive. I think it was then I realized I didn’t really need to go back to work. I could do it full-time.