Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead

by Unknown

  “Well, maybe not this February night.”

  “Vicki…” He paused and searched her face. Hospital rooms were never entirely dark and she had no idea how much he could see. He often saw more than she wanted him to. If he asked for her version of the story, she wondered what she’d tell him. Finally, he sighed, yawned, and said, “I’ve been lying here trying to figure out why Damon Shea of all people would grab me. I mean, there’s a lot of low lifes out there who might want to get their own back, but Shea? It doesn’t make sense.” He met her gaze then, one of the very few who still could, and said, “You have blood on your sleeve.”

  That was impossible, she’d changed her…

  When Mike’s brows rose, she sighed.

  “That’s what I thought.” And she was just as glad he didn’t say exactly what he thought, given the blood that wasn’t on her sleeve. “Shea was using me to get to you.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “This time. But I’m a danger to you.”

  “Given that you were the one grabbed and drugged…” Seemed reasonable to skip telling him about the gun to his head. “I’d say I was a danger to you.”

  “So…” He dragged her hand over onto his chest, “what are we going to do about it?”

  She supposed she’d always known it would come to this. It wouldn’t be easy finding another territory but she’d have to get out of the city entirely to put enough distance between them.

  To her surprise he laughed before she could say anything. “You’ve always thought too loud, Vic. And you’ve always been my weakness, from the moment I first met you, same way that I’ve been yours. And we’ve always lived the kind of lives where people could use that against us. So, we’ll do what we’ve always done.”

  His heart beat slow and steady under her hand. “We’ll watch each other’s backs.”

  “We’ll watch each other’s backs,” he repeated. With that settled, his eyes started drifting closed.

  Vicki glanced over at the clock. If she stayed another twenty minutes, she’d still have time to get to her office before sunrise. As she watched him sleep, she realized that Shea had entirely missed the point. Mike was her weakness, but he was also her strength.

  He kept her Human.

  And should she ever be threatened the way he’d been tonight, he’d kill to keep her safe. She just prayed he never had to.

  Biographies

  Artist

  Ex-gravedigger John Kaiine self trained professional artist/photographer is also the author of the critically acclaimed metaphysical thriller Fossil Circus and various short stories, including the now filmed short feature Dolly Sodom. He lives in a house by the sea with his wife, Tanith Lee and two black and white cats.

  Editor

  Nancy Kilpatrick has edited ten anthologies, two involving the subject of vampires. She has published eighteen novels, four of them in her vampire series Power of the Blood, and three stand-alone vampire novels. She wrote four issues of the VampErotic comic series, and has published two novellas featuring the undead. In addition she has quite a few vampire stories in print, a small number of which are included in her collection The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick from Mosaic Press. Her most recent vampire short story “Vampire Anonymous” can be found in The Moonstone Book of Vampires. Lest anyone think she only writes about vampires, check out her website: www.nancykilpatrick.com

  Translator

  Sheryl Curtis lives in Montreal, where she works as a professional and literary translator. Since 1998, her short-story translations have appeared in Interzone, On Spec, various Tesseracts, Year’s Best Science Fiction 4, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 15 and elsewhere. Her first book-length fiction translation, Of Wind and Sand (Terre des autres by Sylvie Bérard) was released by EDGE in 2009.

  Authors

  Kelley Armstrong is the author of the “Women of the Otherworld” paranormal suspense series, “Darkest Powers” YA urban fantasy trilogy, and the Nadia Stafford crime series. She grew up in southwestern Ontario where she still lives with her family. Armstrong first introduced the character of Toronto vampire Zoe Takano in her 6th Otherworld novel, Broken, and has since featured her in several pieces of short fiction.

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  Colleen Anderson resides in Vancouver, BC where vampires live the high life. “Ember” was a spark on the back burner that came to life — a tale of morality and what happens when a vampire breaks the one taboo. Anderson has published numerous poems and stories, with other vampire fiction “Hold Back the Night” in the Open Space anthology and “Lover’s Triangle” in On Spec and Dreams of Decadence. New work is forthcoming in Shroud, Crucible and On Spec. There are a few more vampires lurking in coffins in her attic, waiting for release.

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  Montréal author Natasha Beaulieu published many short stories before her dark novel trilogy Les Cités intérieures (The Inner Cities) saw print. The trilogy has been translated into Polish but not yet into English. Her latest novel Le Deuxième gant (The Second Glove) is still on the dark side, as well as her other projects. Even though there has been no true vampire in her novels up to now, some of the characters share similarities with vampires, like immortality or blood passion. But Anton in “Evolving”, is her first true vampire.

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  Born in Quebec City, Claude Bolduc now lives in Gatineau and has been writing horror short stories for twenty years, dozens of which were published in magazines and anthologies in Québec, France and Belgium. His best stories can be found in the collections Les Yeux troubles et autres contes de la lune noire and Histoire d’un soir et autres épouvantes, the latter winning the Grand Prix de la science-fiction et du fantastique québécois in 2007. He says, “If vampires live among us, why should their existence be perfect? Shouldn’t they face the kind of problems any human being might encounter?”

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  Rebecca Bradley is currently based in Calgary, but gradually shifting to Ootischenia, BC. While living in Hong Kong in the 1990s, she co-wrote Temutma, a novel about a Chinese vampire, published by Asia2000. She has also, just for the joy of it, posted a few Buffy fanfics under the name Whinter. Her story is a boomer cri de coeur, written as Rebecca contemplates the approach of yet another damn birthday.

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  Mary Choo was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is a long-time resident of the Lower Mainland. The spectacular beauty of the area forms the backdrop for her story, “Resonance”, which was inspired by her belief in the ability of all things to adapt in the face of adversity. Mary’s dark fantasy pieces have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including two of the acclaimed Canadian Northern Frights anthologies, and her work has placed on the preliminary ballots of the Nebula and Bram Stoker awards (poetry collection), and the final ballot of the Aurora Awards. This is her first published vampire story.

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  Heather Clitheroe lives in Alberta, a part of Canada not generally known for demons or dark, mysterious woods filled with demons. “Come to Me” was inspired by the stories — be they true or urban legend — of the Aikogahara forest at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan where people go to commit suicide, as well as the mythical kitsune. “When they’re good,” Heather says, “fox demons can be very helpful … but when they’re bad, they’re very, very bad.”

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  Kevin Cockle lives in Calgary Alberta He is a published boxing journalist and a frequent contributor to On Spec Magazine. Combining a background in finance with an education in critical theory, Kevin’s work is often concerned with the odd dialectic between economics and the weird. Of his story “Sleepless in Calgary”, Kevin says: “Calgary’s a fast-paced, forward-looking, well-meaning city with all sorts of potential for accidental horror. What happens when people start to fall off the hurtling pace? At what point do people stop trusting their hopes and instead start praying to their nightmares to save them? Calgary’s a good town for vampires; Calgary’s ready.”

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  Born in England and raised in Toronto, Canada, Gemma Files has been a film critic, teacher and screenwriter, and is currently a wife and mother. She won the 1999 International Horror Guild Best Short Fiction award for her story “The Emperor’s Old Bones”, and the 2006 ChiZine/Leisure Books Short Story Contest for her story “Spectral Evidence”. Her fiction has been published in two collections — Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, both from Prime Books—, and five of her stories were adapted into episodes of The Hunger, an anthology TV show produced by Ridley and Tony Scott’s Scot Free Productions. She has also published two chapbooks of poetry. In 2009, her short story “Marya Nox” appeared in Lovecraft Unbound, edited by Ellen Datlow, while her story “each thing I show you is a piece of my death” (co-written with Stephen J. Barringer) appeared in Clockwork Phoenix 2, from Norilana Books. She is currently finishing her first novel, A Book of Tongues.

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  Victoria Fisher was born in England but presently lives in Ontario, where she is a student at the University of Toronto. She is distracted from her studies by a fascination for stories of all kinds: past, present and future. In 2006, her short story “Buttons” appeared in Tesseracts Ten.

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  A writer for most of her life, Jennifer Greylyn has only recently been persuaded by the thoughtful but not very subtle prompting of family and friends that other people might enjoy her work as well. Her stories have appeared in, among other places, Abyss and Apex, Malpractice: Tales of Bedside Terror and Lilith Unbound, which features the prequel to her story in this anthology. “Mother of Miscreants” was inspired by her fascination with history and mythology, particularly the way in which the lore of vampires has changed over time. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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  Ron Hore, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, can be found sailing on Lake Winnipeg when he’s not writing or critiquing for an on-line magazine. Two of Ron’s short stories and a poem were published in a collection issued by a writer’s group and he won first prize in a Canadian Authors Association contest for a ghost story published in their 2006 anthology. Supervised by his wife and a large, demanding cat, Ron has “waiting-to-be-published” novels on topics such as reincarnation, alternate history, fantasy, and a detective who tangles with vampires. “Chrysalis” allows him to practice his vampiric urges in a family setting.

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  Tanya Huff lives and works in rural Ontario with her partner Fiona Patton, six cats, and an elderly Chihuahua. Her twenty-fifth novel, The Enchantment Emporium, is out in hardcover from DAW Books, Inc. and she is currently working on a fifth Torin Kerr not-entirely-a-Valor book. She occasionally writes essays for BenBella’s Pop Culture books and once in a while does a review for the Globe and Mail newspaper. While happy to be back in Vicki Nelson’s mythos for “Quid Pro Quo”, she has no idea of what inspired the story.

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  Sandra Kasturi is a poet, writer and editor living in Ontario. In 2005 she won the prestigious ARC Poem of the Year award. She is the poetry editor of ChiZine and the Co-Publisher of ChiZine Publications. Sandra’s work has appeared in various places, including Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, TransVersions, On Spec, Taddle Creek, several of the Tesseracts series, and Northern Frights 4. Her cultural essay, “Divine Secrets of the Yaga Sisterhood” appeared in the anthology Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Slayers, Mutants and Freaks. She managed to snag an introduction from Neil Gaiman for her first full-length poetry collection, The Animal Bridegroom (Tightrope Books). Sandra has spent entirely too much time wondering where the best place would be for vampires to live, before deciding that the dark side of the moon was a fine idea.

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  Claude Lalumière is the author of Objects of Worship, the co-creator of Lost Myths (lostmyths.net), and the editor of eight anthologies, including the Aurora Award nominee Tesseracts Twelve. He lives in Montreal. The first inklings of “All You Can Eat, All the Time” came to him, fittingly, at Nuit Blanche 2009, the dusk-till-dawn event of the annual Montreal High Lights Festival. But, as often happens, the story he intended to tell was not the story he ended up writing, so almost all the elements directly inspired by Nuit Blanche were gradually edited out with each new draft.

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  Kevin Nunn lives in Guelph, Ontario with a supportive wife, son, two dogs and four very unsupportive cats. “The Sun Also Shines on the Wicked” is Kevin’s second published story, and his only one about vampires, which is why when he’s not stealing time to write, he toils away happily as a tradesman in order to pay the mortgage. This story was written because he thinks that no matter what your state — monster or non — you always struggle to be more than you are. That, and he wanted to see if he could write a vampire story that does not use the words vampire, blood or bite.

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  The idea for this story came from a nightmare Rhea Rose had in which the main character maneuvers at night through smog and clouds, unaware of why she is headed to the warehouse, terrified that she will electrocute herself on a power line.

  Rhea is a Vancouver, BC writer and a fulltime teacher. Her stories and poetry have appeared in the Tesseracts anthologies, Talebones and in other speculative fiction markets. Many of her pieces have been nominated for awards including the Rhysling award for poetry, and two short stories have received preliminary nominations for a Nebula award. A short story appeared in a David Hartwell Christmas Forever anthology. Her horror story “Summer Silk” made the 2007 Honorable Mention list in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant.

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  Michael Skeet is a writer and broadcaster in Toronto. A two-time winner of the Aurora Award, he has been writing SF, fantasy and horror fiction for over 20 years. “Red Blues” was inspired in part by his career as a disc jockey and jazz critic, as well as his love of movie musicals and the golden age of American pop songwriting.

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  Bradley Somer lives in Calgary. He has had fiction published in many literary journals including Matrix, Qwerty, Carousel, Existere, Filling Station, Grimm Magazine, The Scrivener Review, The Nashwaak Review and in John B. Lee’s anthology Body Language (Black Moss Press). Several of his works have dabbled in dark matters. “Bend to Beautiful” is his first venture into the realm of vampires — in this case the ancient Roman bird-like vampire strix. He says that this story was inspired by a similar vampiric encounter which occurred several years ago, the details slightly altered to maintain anonymity. Read some of his tales of the urban fantastic at www.bradleysomer.com

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  Jerome Stueart is a graduate of 2007 Clarion San Diego. His work has been published in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Tesseracts 9 and 11, On Spec, and other magazines and journals. He has written several CBC radio series, most notably Leaving America, about his immigration from the United States to Canada. Currently he writes and reports for the Arctic Institute of North America, and also teaches writing to teens and adults in Whitehorse. About his story, he says: “I hadn’t written a vampire story before. But the idea of vampires evolving was really interesting to me. After watching the Swine Flu epidemic mania, and remembering SARS, I started thinking about the power of the WHO in our lives, the power of hospitals and medicine, really the power of any institution that can convince people it is right, that they must do something. I wondered how vampires might play a helpful medical role in society — and what might happen if their new status were threatened.”

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  Bev Vincent grew up in northern New Brunswick and attended Dalhousie University before moving to Texas in 1989. He has written two non-fiction books, over fifty short stories, and numerous essays, interviews and reviews. The Road to the Dark Tower, his authorized companion to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. He is contributing articles to the Encyclopedia of the Vampire: The Living Dead in Myth, Legend and Popular Culture. His affection for crime stories ins
pired him to choose a police detective as the protagonist for “A Murder of Vampires”. His web site is www.bevvincent.com

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  Steve Vernon is a writer and storyteller living in Halifax, Nova Scotia who’s been writing horror for over twenty years, with two novels, three ghost story collections, one children’s picture book, five novellas, “more poetry than any practical writer ought to write,” a radio play, and a lot of short stories to his credit. He wrote “The Greatest Trick” with an eye towards some of the real parasites in this society — those who would run it. For more info check his website: http://users.eastlink.ca/~stevevernon.

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  Sandra Wickham was raised in rural Ontario and now lives in Vancouver with her husband and two cats. She has been a Professional Fitness Competitor for many years, but is thinking about retiring to start a family. “Mama’s Boy” sprang out of the hopes and fears that come along with the daunting prospect of parenthood. Sandra has been a coach and fitness trainer for over ten years and has just recently returned to her love of writing, with this story being her second fiction submission and first publication. You can visit her website at www.sandrawickham.com

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  The bestselling novelist Peter Straub has described Rio Youers as “…one of the most vital, most exciting young talents to come along in this decade.” Youers is the author of two novellas: Mama Fish and Old Man Scratch, and the acclaimed vampire novel Everdead. Rio says that “Soulfinger” is inspired by the raw, unforgiving power of music, by his love of the blues, and his fear of strange places. He lives in Cambridge, Ontario with his wife Emily.

  EVOLVE

  Vampire Stories of the New Undead

  Copyright © 2010

  All individual contributions copyright

  by their respective authors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.