Blood Lite II: Overbite

by Kevin J. Anderson

  After much coaxing, Todd stripped down to his shorts. While he drank a soothing herbal tea, Lila covered him in spicy ointments and buttery creams. By the time she was done, he smelled like Christmas morning.

  They helped Todd into their largest tanning bed. Todd chose a recording of ambient forest sounds and they all bid him sweet dreams.

  Night birds sang sweetly, but it was the crickets Todd found soothing, restful. He suddenly felt a longing for home and . . . and . . . But the feeling was gone as quickly as it had come, and he thought of sweet Mandy and their date when he emerged bronzed as a jaguar warrior.

  As it grew toasty warm, Todd felt a sharp pain in his gut, and then along his spine. As he was about to panic, a warm calm settled over him, and he thought he remembered his father, lifting him high, high up in arms, long and strong.

  Todd drifted off to the sounds of a tropical rainstorm, thinking of his father, his dinner with Mandy, and custard pies, his most favorite dessert. Something large and dark flew across his memory, and then was gone.

  Soon Todd was asleep, and they could all hear him snoring, a ratcheting worthy of a frontier logging camp.

  Derrick locked the tanning bed securely and turned the temperature up to 350°F. Mandy put out the “Closed” sign and locked the front door, then began setting the table in the employee lounge. Lila called the rest of the clan at various salons in the Valley.

  They arrived quickly. Clients like Todd were all too rare, even in a big city like Los Angeles.

  Like Mandy, Lila, and Derrick, they were all tanned and dark, with fine physiques and easy smiles. Contrary to popular legend, they weren’t bald, or scabrous, or pale. They didn’t lurk around cemeteries or avail themselves of raw flesh. Oh, they had certain cousins who practiced this, some even sophisticated enough to act as though theirs was a refined palate, like a Japanese noble dining on sushi.

  Disgusting.

  They played the old songs and games, and some moved off into other rooms for liaisons with cousins not seen in many months.

  Soon Todd’s snores stopped, and a delicious aroma filled the salon. Everyone laughed when Mandy drooled on her new blouse, and she was the subject of good-natured ribbing for much of the afternoon.

  Then came the ritual “Baring of the Teeth,” where they removed their carefully crafted bridgework to reveal strong white teeth filed to points. They played Slash Tag and Bite the Blindman for another hour, then got down to serious drinking and carousing.

  Twelve hours later, with hula music playing and all the guests happily drunk, Derrick opened the tanning bed with a flourish.

  Everyone stared.

  Todd was gone.

  In his place was a six-foot lozenge of copper-colored chitin, rounded with hemispherical protrusions at one end, tapered and segmented at the other. It looked like a kind of sarcophagus.

  “What the . . .” Derrick exclaimed, but by then the pupa was splitting open, and new Todd emerged. Famished from his change, he devoured every screaming one of them, his stinger paralyzing them, then his razor-sharp forelegs and crushing mandibles more than equal to the task of devouring flesh and bone.

  Todd saved pretty Mandy for last, her blue eyes wide with a terror that seemed to his new eyes like love. His venom turned her organs and bones into jellied confections, sweeter than anything he had ever tasted . . .

  Even custard pie.

  Tastes Like Chicken

  JORDAN SUMMERS

  1

  I became a detective after I ate Miss Marple.

  Nobody tells you when you’re a fresh, prepubescent ghoul that you have to be careful about how much you eat. When you spend your twelfth birthday scooping handfuls of brain from the gaping skull of the next-door neighbor (Miss Mullens, not Marple, but the effect was much the same) the unpleasant surprise is that your peculiar biochemistry will do its level best to amalgamate what you just fed it. In this case, cupfuls of frontal lobe, corpus callosum and snowflake-unique collections of synapses that led Miss Mullens to curse out loud with words like “poot” and “jiminy” and yet have internal dialogue like a motherfucking stevedore, as I was to find out to my displeasure when her consciousness exploded into mine as I was lying in the attic, replete, about four hours later. That’s the thing about being a ghoul, there aren’t any manuals to follow.

  She’d dressed me down, up, and sideways, blistering my consciousness with expletives until it felt bruised by the mental pummeling. That was twenty years ago. You’d think she’d let it go by now, but not Ms. Mullens. She lives for hating me.

  We were on page ten of the New York Times, when the homicide call came in. Ms. Mullens insists we read the newspaper from cover to cover every day.

  Even the obituaries?

  Even the obituaries.

  At first I’d refused. I wanted to get my news from the internet. My resistance didn’t last long once Ms. Mullens discovered she could give me gas by triggering certain spots in my brain. Gas coming from a human can be eye-watering. Imagine what it’s like when your diet consists of fresh and rotting corpses. No amount of Febreze can combat the odor.

  The phone rang again. I looked at the number and debated whether to ignore the call. It was my day off. I’d planned to finish reading the paper, then hit the cemetery later for a quick bite. I glanced back at the article. The headline read “Billionaire Lawrence Koffman Makes Miraculous Recovery Thanks to New Swiss Treatment.” I scowled and shut the paper, then retrieved my voice mail.

  I wasn’t done reading that article, Ms. Mullens’s disembodied voice said.

  “You can finish it later. Time to go to work.”

  2

  I had no idea when I walked into the room that I’d be staring at a severed ghoul’s hand. Sure, the ghoul could’ve left it behind. It was always possible. But no ghoul worth his salt willingly abandoned a perfectly viable limb, which meant we were looking for a dead ghoul.

  Ghoul-on-ghoul violence wasn’t unheard of. It happened on occasion, especially with the fresher turns, but if that was the case here, why leave the hand behind? There was another possibility. We could be dealing with the other kind of ghoul killing—the for-profit kind. Either someone was in the black-market body-part business or we had a Harvester on our hands. Those two things weren’t mutually exclusive. People who can see through a ghoul’s human disguise often become Harvesters.

  There seems to be something with the genes. When you have the correct ABAAGGT arrangement to spot a ghoul—it’s like smelling asparagus in urine, or so I’m told—you also have the arrangement that makes you a complete whack-job sociopath asshole that has no compunction in using that ghoul’s body for your own bullshit needs.

  Everybody knows the story: young man meets gorgeous girl at a bar. She takes an unlikely interest in the butt ugly fellow. Buys him a drink. Invites him back to her hotel. Another drink. Next morning, he wakes up in a bath of ice. A sign on the mirror saying “Call 911” and a big scar where one of his kidneys used to be.

  Yeah, it actually happens. But you only hear about it when it’s a mistake—if the guy was anorexic or a heroin user and the Harvester thought he was one of us. They only take one because our kidneys grow back and a good farmer always leaves something behind to harvest next year.

  Harvesting has always occurred. Someone figured out that transplanting a ghoul organ into an uninfected person gave the human another twenty years of life—and a very healthy appetite.

  True, it tends to lead to a sickly, pallid look. You know when you see some super-rich Wall Street financier and he’s looked the same since the ’70s, just a little more . . . moist? Trust me: it isn’t from rich food.

  Ghouls tend to view being harvested as a minor inconvenience. That would change if the news spread that Harvesters had started hulling ghouls, raiding their bodies for every salvageable part, leaving only the skin husk behind.

  Humans have bogeymen. Ghouls have Harvesters.

  3

  I scanned the crime scene again, doing my best
to ignore the vomit of color. From the outside, the three-story, red-brick row house had looked like all the others on the quiet Upper West Side block until you stepped inside.

  The purple shag-carpet-covered living room had faux-wood paneling and furniture that could only have been found from Dumpster diving. The carpet had squished beneath my booty-covered shoes as I followed the sound of voices coming from a nearby room. Turned out to be the kitchen or what was left of it.

  The kitchen was one of those 1970s olive-green nightmares with orange accents and a yellow Formica table thrown in to insult the senses. I blinked as my eyes tried to adjust to the contrasting colors. The table had been smashed down the center. Chairs were strewn about the room in various stages of dismemberment. The green doors to the cupboards were hanging from twisted hinges as if someone had tried to rip them off and failed. Glasses and plates littered the area, leaving no discernable trail through the debris.

  I hadn’t noticed the hand on the white linoleum floor at first. The explosion of color had blocked it from view. Gray and slightly shriveled with dark blue veins that ran from wrist to knuckle, the limb’s long fingers appeared to be in working order.

  My mouth watered as I looked at the hand and wondered what the forensic guys would do with it once they were done examining it. They’d assume the limb came from a corpse. And they’d be right . . . now, since ghouls don’t survive with outer parts missing for long. But it hadn’t been a “dead” corpse when the limb came off. I could tell by the scent. Ghouls have better olfactory senses than a bloodhound.

  I stared longingly at the limb. Could always use an extra hand. Never knew when one might need replacing or when hunger would circumvent my better judgment. My fingers twitched as I fought the urge to pick the limb up and shove it into my pocket.

  Detective Cory Harris saved me from acting on the impulse when he walked into the room. He hunched down and touched the hand with a gloved finger. A paper clip of a man, Cory finished examining the hand, then looked at me. “What are you doing here, Max? I thought it was your day off.”

  I shrugged. It had been my day off, and I hadn’t asked for overtime. With all the budget cuts, we barely got paid for the hours we put in. I didn’t know why I’d been assigned to this case. “Captain called me. Told me to take point.”

  Cory’s gray eyes narrowed, pinching his face into an angry exclamation point. Blond hair frisked his pointy ears but never reached his neck. His oversized brown suit sat forlornly on his narrow shoulders, making him always appear as if he were playing dress up in his father’s clothes. He was too cheap to get a custom job or maybe he was just self-conscious about his lanky body. I never asked which it was. Didn’t really care. He’d disliked me from the get-go. And I was okay with that. It’s not like I’d taken this job to make friends.

  The only reason you have this job is because of me, Ms. Mullens said. Without me, you’d be living in some rundown cemetery, digging for scraps.

  “Shut it,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” Cory asked.

  “Nothing.” I waved my hand to dismiss the comment. “Where’s the body?”

  “It’s up here,” he said. “But I have to warn you, it’s been here awhile. A month at least, if the level of decomp is any indication. You’re never going to believe where we found it.” His voice rose with excitement as he led me up the stairs to the first bedroom on the right.

  A bed sans frame had been shoved against the far wall away from the lone window in the room. Rumpled clothes lay on the floor and in overflowing baskets, but none hung in the closet. A massive grandfather clock had been wedged into the corner. The forensic team stood around it, along with a few uniforms that had first arrived on scene after the neighbors complained about the smell. The uniforms couldn’t seem to control their snickering. I pushed past Cory and the men in blue to take a closer look.

  Someone had folded the body in half and shoved it into the clock. The pendulum had somehow skewered the man’s right eye in the process. My gaze landed on the victim’s face and I froze. The forensic guys thought the body had been here for a month.

  I knew better.

  I was talking to it four nights ago.

  4

  Benny was why I kept a photo of a boa constrictor in my wallet.

  Benny Frost, or Benny the Bean, had been a useful informant and a pretty crafty ghoul. He was a native New Yorker whose point of pride was that he never stepped foot off the island. He kept his ear to the ground and was always good for a tip, especially when a trail ran cold. Had a bizarre bat-shit fear of snakes. Never seen anything like it, but his extreme phobia occasionally came in handy when he was feeling less than cooperative. Benny would crawl up a wall if you even mentioned a snake, and the photo would send him into a panic attack. Miss Mullens found this highly amusing. It was one of the few things we agreed on.

  Benny had been harvested a few times—which was unusual, but he’d taken the personal invasions in stride. It had helped that the parts had grown back. That was the big difference between being harvested and being hulled. One you could recover from; the other got you escorted out in a body bag.

  The coroner finally arrived. “Detective Goodman,” he said, acknowledging me before doing a quick visual exam on Benny. He ordered the body removed from the clock.

  I watched Benny’s chest deflate as they laid him flat. “What’s missing?”

  The coroner glanced at me. “Can’t be sure, but it looks like every organ. I’ll know more once I get him back to the morgue. We’ll figure out the cause of death then.”

  I rather think removing all his innards and folding him in half might have a teensy bit to do with it, Miss Mullens added.

  I ignored her. I didn’t like the idea that a Harvester had suddenly turned greedy. I couldn’t afford to have more dead ghouls turn up. Eventually someone would notice a pattern and order an investigation into the deaths. How do you explain ghoulism to an organization that didn’t know that ghouls existed?

  Benny and I weren’t what anyone would call friends, but I did like the guy. He had a way of getting under your skin and he was always good for a laugh. I had no idea how he’d ended up inside the clock or in this home, for that matter. As far as I knew, Benny was homeless. And this wasn’t exactly the kind of neighborhood that courted squatters.

  I turned to Cory. “Do you know who owns this place?”

  He shook his head. “We’re trying to find out now. How do you know it’s not the victim?”

  I watched the coroner zip up the body bag. “Because he’s one of my informants—was one of my informants.”

  Cory’s gaze sharpened. “Was he working with you on anything specific?”

  “No.” Whatever had happened to Benny had nothing to do with my caseload. How had the Harvester found him? And why not properly dispose of the body? Discarding it like month-old rubbish was bound to draw unwanted attention. The clues were few—

  Maybe for you, Miss Mullens said. Some of us have already formed a theory. A rather good one, if I do say so myself. I wouldn’t expect someone whose brain requires pictures with captions to understand. Tell me, along with regenerating your organs, does being a ghoul thicken your skull?

  Closing my eyes, I counted to ten slowly, then asked, “What’s your theory?”

  Cory blinked. “I don’t have one yet. Let’s see what the coroner gets off the body first.”

  I clamped my jaw shut and nodded. I couldn’t exactly tell him I’d been talking to a dead octogenarian.

  5

  You really don’t remember, do you?

  “Remember what?” I said, as I navigated my car through midafternoon traffic. Ms. Mullens and I had been playing this guessing game since I left the crime scene. Foot patrol had canvassed the neighborhood, but no one reported hearing anything. Unusual for the neighborhood, but not for New York. I wasn’t surprised. Harvesters were quick, efficient, and silent.

  She sighed. The article in the paper.

  “What article?” I l
aid my hand on the horn as a taxi cut me off.

  Ms. Mullens huffed. Now you’re being purposely obtuse.

  “Listen, old lady, I don’t even know what that means?” I couldn’t see her shake her head, but I felt it inside my cranium. “Knock it off. You’re making me dizzy.” She shook harder and faster, giving me internal whiplash. I pulled the car over. I barely got out the door before I puked. A knuckle bone shot out of my mouth and bounced off the curb before landing near the sewage drain. Gasping, I stumbled out of the car and kicked the finger the rest of the way in. People on the sidewalk ignored me and kept walking.

  I win! Ms. Mullens shouted.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve. The last thing I needed was to have my dinner clinging to my face. A ghoul’s digestive system wasn’t built to expel food. The mouth worked as an intake-only valve, which made throwing up painful. “You happy now?”

  6

  I climbed back in the car and waited. Ms. Mullens couldn’t go long without talking. It wasn’t in her nature. My patience paid off.

  Fine, she said. I’ll give you a hint. He made a miraculous recovery.

  “You think Lawrence Koffman is involved in Benny’s death. The billionaire? Why?” I asked. It seemed unlikely that someone like Benny would ever come in contact with Koffman. They didn’t exactly run in the same circles.

  It’s logical, really. A couple of months ago we read that he was terminally ill. Now suddenly he’s better. You said so yourself that a Harvester was involved. A billion dollars can buy a lot of body parts.

  I looked up the phone number for Koffman Funds and managed to bullshit my way up to the assistant of his assistant’s assistant, but no further. It was enough. My phone rang thirty minutes later. Surprisingly, it was Koffman himself, launching immediately into that offensive that rich assholes specialize in, threatening to sue the city and get me fired if I didn’t stop harassing him. Innocent people don’t act that way. His behavior was especially telling since I hadn’t mentioned why I’d phoned. I waited for him to finish, then quietly said, “We need to talk about Benny Frost.”