by RJ Blain
It had taken me less than an hour to create a monster, and I expected there would be cars, trucks, and other vehicles littering the lawn and parked on the street within a week. I understood how obsessed men with money operated. When they decided they wanted something, they bought it.
Common sense need not apply.
“That’s a very expensive gift, Eoghan.”
“And I’m an arrogant asshole who will make you earn it through monotonous tasks, if that makes you feel better about now having a truck in your name you bought with my money.”
Damn. At his current rate, Mr. Arrogant Asshole would work his way under my skin by the end of the week and make me like it. “I can agree to that.”
It took a few minutes for them to remove the stickers, and once they waved for me to go, I put the truck into gear and eased it out of the parking lot. It handled a lot better than my parents’ rust bucket, and I pondered what excuses I could make to drive it around. I had no idea how far a full tank of gas would take me, but I wanted to find out.
“Excellent. We must now address your phone situation.”
“The mall.” I rarely got to go to the mall, and it would be an adventure in teaching Eoghan about the modern world. “The mall has some rules.”
“What sort of rules?”
“We do not make fun of, attack, or annoy the gorgons, the centaurs, the pixies, or any non-humans that may be present. We also do not stare at them as though they are critters in the zoo. Lycanthropes are common elsewhere but fairly rare here. As long as you don’t sleep with them or get into a fight with one, they’re mostly harmless.”
“I cannot contract lycanthropy.”
Right. Eoghan looked human but wasn’t one. “Well, I can. I’m just a human, so I’d rather not end up mated to some lycanthrope because you picked a fight with him.”
“Pardon?”
“If a woman gets infected with a male lycanthrope’s virus, the virus typically attempts to form a bond between them. It can become a fight between multiple lycanthropes over a woman, but if the woman sticks around for too long, she gets to keep the lycanthrope permanently. So, don’t pick any fights with lycanthropes.”
“I find this to be unacceptable.”
“Lycanthropes are monitored fairly closely to prevent it from happening accidentally. And when the woman wants it to happen, it’s legal as long as she consented to it. There’s usually a waiver.”
“Ah. I see. And your opinion on lycanthropes?”
“If I meet the right furry gentleman, I see no reason to be concerned about a virus that guarantees his loyalty, lengthens my general lifespan, and otherwise benefits me in all ways except a hotter temper and a tendency to sprout fur.”
“Interesting. You are open about this? In my day, most were not.”
“In your day, lycanthropes were viewed as an abomination.”
“You would be correct. The CDC agents told me there are more than wolves now, too. In my day, they were only wolves.”
“Well, yeah. Turns out the virus can turn you into just about any mammal. There are even a few avian lycanthropes. Don’t ask me what. I just read about them. To date, there are no cold-blooded lycanthropes. Nobody knows why.”
“Interesting. And they teach this to everybody?”
“For the most part, I assume? I learned about it in high school before I started working at the funeral home. Sunset is more superstitious than most places, so I think it’s more about keeping us scared of the big, bad, and scary monsters of the world. In my case, I found them interesting.” Driving with a shredded arm hurt, but I kept both hands on the wheel until I got a better feel for how Lady Luck handled. “How about you?”
“I never minded lycanthropes all that much, but most were wise to fear them. They are excellent predators. They always have been.”
“They always will be. I mean, they become huge wolves or other animals, and the hybrids can bend metal—or rip someone they don’t like to shreds.”
“Hybrids? What are those?”
“When a lycanthrope can become a mix of man and their beast.”
“Ah! Wolf-men. They’re lycanthropes? They were always rare. I’ve never met one.”
“They’re just lycanthropes. They have really strong viruses or something like that. You could ask someone in the CDC for more information. It’s public information. Hybrids are prized.”
“They are? Why?”
“Hell if I know. That’s what we were taught.” When I reached the first stop light, I tapped on the truck’s navigation panel, input the mall’s name, and giggled when it offered to guide me to my destination. Then, because I could, I selected a female voice for Lady Luck.
“Turn right at the next set of lights,” Lady Luck ordered.
Eoghan’s eyes widened. “She talks!”
“It’s a computer. I put the address for the mall into the navigation panel, and she’s going to give me directions on how to get there.” I obeyed Lady Luck, turning right at the next set of lights.
“Continue for three miles. Your destination will be on your right,” Lady Luck instructed.
“She seems like a competent guide.”
“She is until she develops a severe case of stupid. I’ll show you some videos on the internet of the navigation systems losing their minds. There was one incident where a system tried to instruct drivers to drive off a bridge. Most were smart enough to avoid obeying.”
“Most implies not all were.”
“It didn’t end well for the driver. The system was fixed for that stretch of road, but you shouldn’t blindly trust the navigation systems.”
“I will keep this in mind.”
If the navigation system blew his mind, the mall would finish him off, and I intended to enjoy every minute of it.
Seven
I’m in a mood tonight, so call me Lucy.
The parking lot gods mocked me, and I had to make three circuits around the mall before I found a space capable of handling my new truck and Eoghan’s ego. His ego might spill over, possibly contaminate the tiny cars I parked between, and drive me insane, but I’d cope somehow.
When he wasn’t trying to drive me crazy, I liked his company. I could only assume I’d already lost my mind. That I was proving to be my mother’s daughter annoyed the hell out of me, but I would do my best to enjoy the advantage while I still had it. I expected life would backhand me soon enough.
“Does everyone have a car?” Eoghan asked, sliding out of the truck and eyeing the junker parked next to us. “This one is a rather sad vehicle compared to the ones I saw where we acquired Lady Luck.”
“Lady Luck is new. That car is probably close to twenty years old. That’s the kind of car the mechanic in Sunset sells. Trust me on this one. You don’t want a car like that. The owner probably can’t afford something newer, so they dump a lot of money down the drain keeping that one running. That’s the problem with being poor. You can’t afford something newer, but you can’t afford to fix what you have, so you run it into the ground and then scrape together enough to get something else you can run into the ground. I couldn’t afford anything at all, so I walked or took the bus.”
“The bus?”
“Think of it as a very large car that can move a lot of people at one time. People who don’t own a car ride them to stops to get where they need to go. I would take the bus to work on rainy days but walk the rest of the time.” I hopped out of the truck, grunted when I landed harder than I expected, and grimaced at the throb in my arm.
Some mistakes I wouldn’t repeat, and the next time I got out of my truck, I’d be a hell of a lot more careful.
“This is more complicated than I anticipated.”
“Just wait until you see how we do our taxes.”
“It is not a flat rate per person?”
“Nope. It’s based on how much you’ve earned in the year, and it’s complicated as hell to figure out. You have a tax accountant, so you won’t have to do too much, but it’s not goin
g to be fun for me, who’ll have to make sure everything is prepared for the accountant.” I didn’t look forward to figuring out what I needed to give the accountant. I had enough trouble with my own taxes, which was simple enough.
Being dirt poor and only having one job helped with that.
I locked the truck, gave her a fond pat, and gestured towards the mall’s glass entry. “There are a lot of stores inside.”
“Like a bazaar?”
Fortunately, I’d paid attention in history class and understood what a bazaar was despite never having seen one. “Somewhat, but the stores are contained and separated rather than a bunch of stalls crammed together. You’ll see soon enough,” I promised.
In the time it took us to cross the parking lot, dodging cars coming in and out of the mall, Eoghan got a close look at several lycanthropes, a quartet of gorgon women wearing veils, and an entire flock of pixies, who shed pink, sparkly dust everywhere they went.
Security would have a field day with the pixies, who were supposed to keep their dust to themselves, although it didn’t take long for me to clue in they weren’t packing much of a punch in the magic department. At most, it took the edge off, which put them at E or D grade.
“They’re dusting the ground?” Eoghan asked after the winged menaces disappeared into the mall, leaving a glimmering trail in their wake. “Are they supposed to be doing that?”
“Nope.” I lifted my hand, which had a pink shine to it after exposure to the dust. “They’re low-grade pixies, so at most you’ll feel a little better about life for a while before it wears off. No big deal. They might get scolded by security, but that’s it, unless the security guards are having a bad night. If they call the cops, I guess it’d be a misdemeanor.”
“Misdemeanor?”
“Low-ranked crime.”
“I see. And how are these crimes punished?”
“Community service, usually. The government doesn’t like jailing people because people started using jails as a way to get free board and meals, so they’d commit crimes to be imprisoned. It beat starving on the streets. Now the community service still comes bundled with lunch, and if homeless, they’re sheltered. It’s cheaper that way—and benefits the community.”
“So thieves don’t have their hand cut off?”
“No.”
“Pity, that. It usually helped keep people from stealing.”
“I understand what it’s like to starve, and when you’re starving, pilfering beats death. I just can’t blame someone for stealing food to survive.”
Eoghan made a thoughtful noise in his throat. “Have you stolen food?”
Being honest only hurt my pride, so I shrugged and replied, “No, but I’ve thought about it.”
“That is something you will not have to worry about anymore.”
“After we get a new phone for me, I plan on hitting a grocery store.”
“Your refrigerator has been fully stocked. Gordon took care of that last night.”
“But did he stock my refrigerator with honey rocks?”
“With what?”
“They’re a type of melon, and I swore the next time I got extra money, I was buying them for myself.” I marched to the doors, ignored the pink shine covering everything, and pushed my way inside. “If you think the mall is bad, wait until you see the grocery store.”
“Should I be concerned?”
“Only if you get in the way of me buying my damned honey rocks.”
“I’m concerned that you want to eat rocks.”
“Melons, Eoghan! They’re a melon.”
“But what are melons?”
I stopped, turned, and faced him, my mouth dropping open. He’d never had a melon before? I would blitz through the mall, acquire what I needed in record time, and rectify the situation. “We are going grocery shopping when we are done here, and we will go to every fucking store in the city until I find honey rocks.”
He smiled. “If that makes you happy.”
“Fixing that travesty will make me happy,” I muttered. I spun and pointed. “To the cell phone store!”
“We should also go to a proper computer store. I have been told a laptop is a good system for travel, but you deserve a desktop. We may also need to acquire you a desk while we are in the store.”
Ugh. More shopping. With only a few hours before closing, we’d have to hurry—and then I’d have to settle with late-night grocers for melons. “You’re going to need stuff, too.”
“I have been told that.”
With Lady Luck on my side, I could buy everything and haul it home without issue, and Eoghan could do the lifting so I wouldn’t have to worry about hurting my arm. “All right. Phone first, and I’ll look at tablets while I’m there. Tablets can be useful, and I’ve never been able to afford one.”
“Then get a tablet. I’m certain I can afford it.”
“You could afford to buy one of everything in this mall and not miss a cent.”
“That seems wasteful.”
“It would be.”
“Let’s not do that. I will insist you purchase the best phone you can. I have been told there are brand wars when it comes to these things, and that I should encourage you to buy the brand you lust for the most, and get the best one of that brand.”
I needed to thank the CDC for giving him good advice. “I can do that.”
I knew which brand I wanted, as I sometimes blew time shopping for things I couldn’t afford during the down times at work. It would take me less than ten minutes to pick out my desktop, too. If I went for gold, I’d get a television, a gaming console, and a player so I could get all the movies I missed being unable to afford to go to the theater.
With my arm out of commission, I could blow through a lot of hours watching television.
As expected, the mall at night was a zoo, and an entire pack of lycanthropes in their wolf form took over the center food court along with a bunch of centaurs of varying species. Eoghan sucked in a breath, and his eyes widened. “Centaurs? What are those others with them?”
“Also centaurs.” I nodded to the lion centaur who was lounging beside one of the wolves and taking a nap. “Centaurs indicate any quadruped species that blends animals and humans without the lycanthropy virus.”
“Quadruped?”
“Four legs. Shapeshifters include anyone who can transform from a human to an animal without the lycanthropy virus.”
“This is like lycanthropy, then? It doesn’t matter what they actually are, but because horses were the first, the whole species takes their name?”
“Yes. It simplifies things. How are we supposed to name every centaur species? There’s a lot of them.” After a quick count, I spotted seven different species of centaur loitering in the food court. “The food courts in the malls are favored gathering points.” After pointing across the food court to one of the other wings, I picked my way through the crowd, careful to avoid stepping on any rogue tails. “If you want to see all the weird people of the world, you eat at the food court. Within an hour, you’ll see a pretty good variety.”
“This isn’t a pretty good variety?”
I considered the gathering and shrugged. “This is just scratching the surface, I think.”
“How curious. And sorcerers?”
“Sorcerers?”
“Users of arcane arts.”
I frowned, stepping around a few more centaurs of the feline bent. “You’re going to have to help me here. How do they do their magic?”
“Through spell books and spoken incantations and rituals.”
“Those would probably be practitioners. You can’t tell who those are from a glance. You’d have to see their driver’s license. I’m not one, but anyone can learn to be one for the most part. Desperate vanillas will become practitioners to protect themselves if they’re worried. I’ve thought about it, then I could justify that damned ping on the scanners.”
“They are not evil in this era?”
“No. Why would the
y be? A lot of people pick up a few practitioner tricks. It’s convenient when you can draw a rune on a piece of paper and have it glow in the dark, for example. There are rules about what sorts of tricks people should do. They’re on the CDC’s website. That doesn’t stop people from experimenting with magic they shouldn’t, but practitioners are practitioners. They have their purpose, I guess.”
“Priests?”
“That I can’t help you with. I generally avoid religion. An angel appearing on my doorstep is as close to religion as I get, and let’s just say I’d rather skip that again. I’m pretty sure I’d rather deal with the devil after having an angel show up, but I might give his wife a call. She has to be an interesting woman.”
A faint pop behind me and a faint hint of brimstone in the air froze me in place, and every hair on my arm stood upright.
When the angel had warned me that the devil sometimes listened in on people who said his name, I hadn’t thought he’d been serious.
Eoghan turned. “Well, I’ll be.” The antique whistled. “You’re not anywhere near as horrific as depicted.”
“Your people had overactive imaginations,” a deep voice rumbled, and the stench of brimstone strengthened. “As for you, yes, I do have a rather annoying habit of listening in on people who invoke my name, especially when one of my brothers is involved. Which one was talking about me this time?”
“Dimitri,” I answered, taking a deep breath before turning around to face the devil. The devil wore an Armani, gave the incubus a run for his money in the looks department, had skin paler than mine, and sported a pair of ram horns and flaming hair. “I thought you’d at least have a tan,” I admitted.
“When I want to scare people, I go for the ebon look, but right now, I’d rather mesh. I like keeping people on their toes.”
I pointed at his horns and flaming hair. “You’re not going to be meshing with those.”
Both the flames and the horns disappeared. “How right you are. Naughty horns, showing up. I even remembered to skip the hooves this time. And the wings. Nothing turns heads quite like wings. What brings you to the mall tonight?”
