Blood Lite II: Overbite

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “What if the water flushes it up under my eyelid? It could slice my eye all up! Oh, crap . . .”

  “Stop being such a baby. It’s just a tiny little speck of eggshell in your eye.” I took a dishcloth out of the sink, ran it under some cold water, and twisted the corner. “Don’t move.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna scrub your eye out with a scouring pad. What do you think I’m gonna do? I’m going to flick the shell out.”

  “Be careful.”

  I poked at the corner of his eye with the cloth. I could no longer see the piece of eggshell.

  “It’s out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can still kind of feel it.”

  “Well, it’s not in your eye anymore.”

  Dave rubbed his eye. “Thanks, dude.”

  “No problem. Can we go back to making the cake now?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure thing.”

  I stirred until the batter was completely mixed, then I poured it out into the pan. “When should we add the tarantula?”

  “I’d say now.”

  “How do we kill it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How. Do. We. Kill. It.”

  “Just bake it.”

  “We can’t just throw a live tarantula into the oven! That’s cruel!”

  “Dude, it’s a bug.”

  “I don’t care. You don’t cook things alive like that. It’s uncool.”

  “That’s how they boil lobsters. And I think it’s how they cook deer.”

  “Well, it’s not gonna happen in my oven.”

  “Maybe it’ll drown in the batter first.”

  “Shut up.” I peered at the spider, which was crawling around on a miniature plastic log. “So what’s a quick and humane way to kill it?”

  “Stomp on it?”

  “Get the hell out of my apartment, dumbass.”

  “What?” Dave asked. “I wasn’t saying that you should stomp it flat and scrape the mess off into the batter. But you could, y’know, stomp on it gently and break its back or something.”

  “No.”

  “Cut off its head. It’ll still look like a tarantula.”

  “This would’ve been a lot easier if you had just brought home a dead one in the first place.”

  “They don’t sell dead tarantulas locally! I already told you that! Maybe we could poison it.”

  “The cake?”

  “The tarantula. To kill it.”

  I considered that. “I don’t think I have any spider poison.”

  “Do you have any ant poison? That would probably work.”

  “No. I don’t keep a lot of poison in the apartment.”

  “Do you have any cigarettes? We could blow smoke in there until it chokes to death.”

  Instead of calling Dave a moron, I gave him a look that said “You’re a moron.”

  “Fine. You’re the leader of the Be Humane To Cuddly-Wuddly Spiders movement, you decide how to kill it.”

  “I don’t know! I have no idea how to kill a tarantula without squishing it. Screw it. Let’s just bake the stupid thing.” I turned on the oven.

  “We should name him.”

  “Yeah, sure, let’s give a name to the creature that’s going to die a horrible, agonizing death because of us. Let’s call him Timmy the Tarantula and paint a smiley face on his back.”

  “We could name him Eight-Legged Vengeance.”

  “Don’t be such a frickin’—actually, that’s pretty cool. Let’s go with that.” I tapped on the aquarium. “Hello, Eight-Legged Vengeance. How’s it going?”

  Eight-Legged Vengeance did not respond.

  “Maybe we should feed it a mouse as one last meal,” Dave suggested.

  “Do you have a mouse?”

  “No. But I could go get one. I think the pet shop had mice.”

  I started to give him another “You’re a moron” look, but decided that it wasn’t worth it. “Let’s just put him in the batter and get it over with.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I lifted the top off the aquarium. “Okay, reach in there and grab him.”

  “Yeah, that’s gonna happen.”

  “What, you’re scared?”

  “It’s a tarantula! They’re venomous!”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “You do it.”

  I reached inside the aquarium, stopping a few inches away from the arachnid.

  “So pick it up,” Dave urged.

  “I’m going to.”

  “I hope it doesn’t take your hand off.”

  “I hope it takes your mouth off.”

  “Pick it up.”

  “I will.”

  “Time’s a-wastin’.”

  “Why don’t you go home? You’ve served your purpose.”

  “No way. I want to see this.”

  “Well, be quiet.”

  “Pick it up.”

  “I am.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re being motionless and cowardly.”

  The tarantula moved toward my hand. I let out a shameful cry and yanked my hand out of the aquarium so fast that I bashed it against the corner. Dave found this to be extremely amusing. I did not.

  “Grow up,” I told him.

  “Oh, God, I wish I’d been taping that! I’d give anything to have been taping that! You looked like such a chickenshit jackass!”

  “You suck.”

  “Reach in there again. It might growl at you this time.”

  I opened one of the drawers and took out a long wooden spoon. I poked the spoon into the aquarium and tried to scoop up the tarantula, but it kept scurrying away. “Dammit!

  “It probably doesn’t like that flavor of cake. You should have bought chocolate.”

  “I’m just gonna dump it out.” I very, very, very quickly reached into the aquarium and removed the plastic log. Then I picked up the aquarium, turned it over, and shook it over the batter. The tarantula didn’t fall out.

  “He’s got some seriously sticky feet,” Dave noted.

  “Smack the plastic.”

  Dave knocked on the aquarium. The spider still didn’t fall out.

  “Shake harder.”

  I shook harder.

  “Maybe you should just pour the cake mix into the aquarium and cook it that way.”

  “C’mon, keep smacking the plastic. It’s just a spider. It can’t hang on forever.”

  “You actually have to admire its resilience.”

  “I don’t have to admire shit! Keep smacking!”

  Dave hit the plastic over and over while I kept shaking the aquarium.

  “Do you have a squirt gun? We could squirt it off.”

  “No.”

  “There was a toy store next to the pet store.”

  “Keep smacking!”

  Finally the spider dropped out of the aquarium and into the batter.

  “Thank God,” I said. “Open the oven.”

  Dave opened the oven. I picked up the pan as the tarantula waded through the batter, moving right toward me. I hurriedly slid the pan into the oven and slammed the door shut. We breathed a sigh of relief.

  Dave flipped on the oven light. “I want to watch it burn.”

  “That’s messed up.”

  “How often do you get to watch a tarantula die in an oven? Never. I’m not going to let this opportunity slip by. Oh, crap . . .”

  “What?”

  “It crawled out of the pan.”

  I opened the oven. The batter-covered tarantula was on the bottom. “Give me the spoon! Hurry!”

  Dave handed me the spoon. I frantically scraped the tarantula off the bottom of the oven and onto the open door. It scurried across the door and onto my kitchenette floor.

  “Stomp it! Stomp it!” Dave cried.

  “Don’t stomp it!”

  Dave quickly backed away. “Where is it? Where did it go? Is it on me? Get it off me!”

  “It’s
not on you. It’s crawling on the cabinet door.”

  “Did it get cooked?”

  “Not too much. It’s still moving. Let’s just kill it. I can’t have a tarantula running around my apartment.”

  I swung the wooden spoon but missed the spider. It dropped onto the floor next to my foot. I backed into the oven door, lost my balance, and fell. I threw out my arms to break my fall, and my hands came down on the hot metal door. I cried out in pain as I landed on my butt.

  The tarantula crawled onto my leg. I yelped and tried to shake it off.

  “It’s eating me!” I shouted. It wasn’t actually eating me, but I can be forgiven for exaggerating my situation in my cloud of panic.

  Dave crouched over me. “I don’t see it!”

  “Kill it!”

  “But I don’t see it!”

  “Kill it!”

  “There it is!” Dave slammed his foot down, missing the spider but hitting my shin.

  “You dick!” I shouted.

  “It’s too fast!”

  “Get something to murder it with!”

  Dave glanced around the kitchenette for an effective weapon, then slid a butcher knife out of the wooden holder. I mentally acknowledged that this was not a wise selection, but then the tarantula scurried up my leg and I batted at it in a frenzy.

  “Don’t move!” said Dave, crouching down. “I’ll poke it!”

  “Don’t poke it!”

  “Don’t move!”

  “If you stab me I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”

  “I’m not gonna stab you! I’m gonna stab the spider!”

  “Put the knife down!”

  “Trust me!”

  “I don’t trust you! You’re not trustworthy! No knife!”

  Dave held the tip of the knife above the tarantula. “I’m gonna poke it! Don’t move!”

  I froze.

  Dave winced and clutched at his eye with his free hand. “Ow! The eggshell is still there!”

  The tarantula crawled out from beneath the knife and went underneath my shirt. I flinched so violently that my upper leg slammed up onto the knife tip. I reacted poorly.

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Dave insisted, still clutching his eye. “I didn’t do anything!”

  I slapped my palm against my shirt, squishing Eight-Legged Vengeance onto my belly button. Dave pulled the knife out of my leg and stood up.

  “Did you get it?” he asked.

  I pressed harder until I was positive that my navel was covered with tarantula guts. I yanked my shirt up and wiped the goo off.

  “Sorry about the knife,” Dave said.

  I kicked him in the shin.

  He dropped the knife.

  It hit my other leg, burying itself about an inch into my flesh. It hurt like hell and I kicked the son of a bitch again, as hard as I could.

  He stumbled backward, slipped, spun around in a failed attempt to regain his balance, and struck the corner of the counter with his face. His eyeball burst upon impact. I wasn’t immediately sure if it was the one with the eggshell or not.

  Dave silently dropped to the floor, blood and slime oozing from his ruined orb.

  “Oh, jeez, I’m so sorry!” I said. “I didn’t mean to!”

  “That . . . that was . . . that was . . . ow . . .”

  I yanked the knife out of my leg. “You’ll be fine,” I promised. “We’ll get you to the hospital.”

  Dave let out what I’m pretty sure was supposed to be a battle cry and dove at me. I instinctively held the knife out in front of me to protect myself (although, in retrospect, my hands would have worked just as well) and an instant later my buddy was skewered through the throat.

  He said something. The gargling made it difficult to determine exactly what it was, but the tone was not complimentary.

  I pulled the knife out. The huge gout of blood that came out of his neck made it clear that an ambulance would probably not do him a whole lot of good.

  So I didn’t call one. I held him, crying softly, until he was done bleeding and living.

  The apartment manager called and asked if I would please turn my damn television down because it was disturbing my neighbors. I said that I would.

  In the middle of the night, I dragged Dave out to my car, drove eighty miles out of town, and buried him in a shallow grave. I drank a bottle of beer to honor his memory. I drove back home, climbed into bed, remembered that I’d left my fingerprints on the beer bottle, drove the eighty miles back to the grave, retrieved the bottle, and drove back home.

  Since Dave had given his life for revenge on Erica, I vowed to complete my plan so that his passing would not be in vain. The next day, I bought a rubber spider from a toy store, baked it into a cake, and decorated it nicely with a “Happy Labor Day” message, even though Labor Day was two weeks away.

  That night the news reported that she had choked to death on a rubber spider leg.

  Dave would’ve thought that was kind of funny. So I laughed.

  I laughed and laughed and laughed and even kept laughing when the very polite men loaded me into the white van.

  Hell, I’m laughing as I type this.

  Hee hee hee.

  Revenge is fun.

  Lucifer’s Daughter

  KELLEY ARMSTRONG

  Nothing gets my blood pumping like a museum. Millennia of murder and mayhem gathered under one roof. A delicious banquet of guilt-free chaos custom-made for an Expisco half-demon.

  I leapt from the car as Karl handed the keys to the valet. Then I saw it.

  “No,” I whispered. “I’m having a vision, right? A horrible vision.”

  Karl slid an arm around me. “Actually, I think she’s quite beautiful.”

  We were staring up at a banner announcing tonight’s event—the opening of a new exhibition sponsored by my grandmother. She’d said it was a display of World War II memorabilia, in memory of my grandfather. It wasn’t.

  Smiling down from the banner was a face that horrified me as no vision of death and destruction ever could—my byline and photo under the True News masthead.

  “The Hope Adams Exhibit of the Inexplicable,” Karl read. “Sounds . . . intriguing.”

  “I can’t believe Gran would do this.”

  “No? Isn’t this the same woman who used to take you to churches with brown-skinned icons to prove that God loves you, even if you aren’t white? Of course, that was easier than finding horned icons, to prove God loves you even if you are the devil’s spawn.”

  I glared at him. Of course my grandmother—like everyone in my family—had no idea I was a half-demon. But I suspect if she did learn the truth, she’d find a way to convince me that was okay, too.

  I loved my grandmother. Sure, she could be a bigoted old battle-axe, but it couldn’t have been easy when her son—one of Philadelphian high society’s most eligible bachelors—announced he planned to marry an exchange student from India. Gran accepted his choice, though, and accepted all of her grandchildren, including the one born after the marriage broke down. She was determined to prove her love, even if it meant sponsoring an exhibition to say, “My granddaughter investigates Bigfoot stories for a supermarket tabloid and, damn it, I’m so proud of her.”

  Karl’s attention had wandered to another sign. This one announced a traveling exhibit featuring the Amulet of Marduk. I wasn’t the only one who liked museums.

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “You know the rule. No stealing at any event where we are invited guests.”

  He walked over to the sign.

  “Karl . . . We had a deal . . .”

  “No, I believe the deal is that I may not steal jewels from guests at events to which we are invited.”

  “Okay, but then taking the amulet would break your deal with Clayton, which says—”

  “That I can’t steal artifacts of historical significance. The Amulet of Marduk is an Egyptian reproduction. Bling. Very old . . .” He looked at the sign again, and his blue eyes gleamed, the wolf in him spotting prey he liked far more
than rabbits. “Very valuable bling.”

  “No.”

  “If I’m not breaking the rules . . .”

  “Sure you are. Remember the one that says, ‘Thou shalt not steal’?”

  A faint eye roll at such a bourgeois notion.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll go in to the party. You sneak in the back and do your thing, while I hang out with Nelson Graves. Remember Nelson?”

  Karl gave a rumbling grunt that sounded suspiciously like a growl.

  “Gran says he asked if I was coming tonight and if I was still with you. He said he’d see what he could do about that.” I pursed my lips. “It’s tempting. He’s attractive, under thirty, rich and, best of all, has a job that’s unlikely to land me in a prison visitor’s room anytime soon.”

  He put his hands on my hips. “Start that and you won’t get to your party anytime soon.”

  “I mention another guy, and you feel the need to assert your property rights? A little medieval, don’t you think?” I stepped away. “But if that puts you in the mood, think how much better it’ll be after a whole evening with Nelson. Provided, of course, that you don’t steal anything.”

  He arched a brow. “Threatening to withhold sex if I misbehave? A little medieval, don’t you think?”

  Before I could answer, a Town Car pulled up to the curb, my mother in the passenger seat. Karl strode over to open the door. I couldn’t see the driver, and tried to remember whether she was coming with the Democratic congressman or the Republican one. I could never tell them apart, and it was so embarrassing when I got it wrong.

  As the congressman talked to the valet, my mother pointed to the banner. “For the record, I had no idea she was doing this.”

  “I know.”

  “She’s just trying to be supportive.”

  “I know. I just wish she’d find a less”—I looked up at the banner and cringed—“public way to show it.”

  She hugged me. “I know.”

  As we climbed the steps, she asked me how my work was going. She never asked about Karl’s. I think she knew he wasn’t really in the import-export business. She didn’t care. As she’d said even before we were dating, “He’s good for you, Hope,” and to her, that was all that mattered. For Karl’s part, even when she wore her most valuable jewels, that gleam never entered his eyes, which for him was a sign of unparalleled respect.

  The congressman—Democrat, Karl mouthed—was waylaid on the steps, and Mom waved for us to go on inside while she joined him.