Hex Appeal

by P. N. Elrod

  She gestured to a naked man and a naked woman, and they came forward to caress her face and neck with their cool, dead hands. She smiled happily.

  “They feel nothing. The only pleasure is mine. But then, I never was big on sharing. I knew you were coming after me, Dead Boy. Knew it the moment you killed poor old Krauss. I could have had you destroyed anywhere along the way; but I wanted to have you here, so I could watch it happen right in front of me. I have the right to destroy you because I made you. You belong to me. You always have. And after you’ve gone, I’ll make another Dead Boy.”

  She snapped her fingers, and all the dead men and women in the parlour turned their heads to look at me. And then they started forward, cold and implacable as death itself. All of them just as strong as me and as capable of taking punishment. They reached for me with their dead hands, and the young ladies and gentlemen laughed and pointed, enjoying the show. I looked around me. The way to the only door was blocked, and I was clearly outnumbered. So, when in doubt, cheat.

  I reached into my pocket and took out the jade fire amulet I’d taken from its previous owner. I said the right Words, and set fire to all the dead men and women. They burst into bright green flames, burning with a fierce heat that consumed their flesh in moments. They kept coming as long as they could, reaching out blindly through the flames, bumping into the furnishings and fittings and setting them alight, too. They even set fire to the clothes of the Bright Young Things. Most of them just sat where they were, watching as the flames ate them up, and laughing. Giggling happily as they died, as stupidly as they’d lived.

  Mother Macabre ran for the door the moment her servants started burning, but I was there before her. I took her in my dead arms, and held her to me, almost tenderly. She beat at me with her fists, but I couldn’t feel them, and she wasn’t strong enough to do me any damage. I held her with all my dead strength, and she couldn’t get away. The whole parlour was on fire now, burning the living and the dead alike, and the air was full of thick black smoke.

  “You have to let me go!” shrieked Mother Macabre. “If we stay here, we’ll both die! This fire’s enough to destroy even you!”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said. “I’m tired. I want to rest. It will be worth it, to die here, as long as I can be sure I’m taking you with me. Thanks to you, I can’t feel any of the things the living feel; but dead as I am, I can still feel some things, even without your special pills. I’m watching you die, Mother Macabre, and that feels … so fine.”

  “I can make you new pills, new potions!” Mother Macabre said desperately. “I can make you feel all the things you felt before!”

  “Perhaps. But what have I got that’s worth living for?”

  And then we both looked round as a series of explosions shook the front of the building. There was the sound of energy weapons firing, and repeated sounds of something large and heavy and very determined crashing through the walls between us, heading right for us. And I began to smile. I looked at the door, still holding firmly on to the fiercely struggling Mother Macabre; and my futuristic car came smashing through the door and into the parlour, bringing half the wall with her. She slammed to a halt before me, her gleaming steel-and-silver body entirely untouched by all the destruction she’d wrought. And as I watched, smiling … as Mother Macabre watched with wide-stretched eyes and mouth … my car rose and transmogrified, taking on a whole new shape, until my Sil stood before me. A tall, buxom woman, in a classic little black dress, cut just high enough at the hip to show off the bar-code and copyright notice stamped on her magnificent left buttock. Her frizzy steel hair was full of sparking static, and her eyes were silver, but she was still every inch a woman. My woman.

  “Nothing to live for, sweetie?” said Sil. “What about me?”

  “You were listening in,” I said, just a bit reproachfully.

  “You were taking too long,” said Sil. “I became … concerned. You always go over the top when you go too far into the dark. You forget there are other feelings, other pleasures, than revenge.”

  “Of course,” I said. “You’re quite right. You always were my better half. I never needed pills to feel the way I feel about you.”

  “What the hell is that?” said Mother Macabre, staring at Sil with horrified fascination.

  “I am a sex droid from the twenty-third century,” Sil said proudly. “With full trans-morph capabilities!” She shot me a smouldering look. “I have always loved my job. It took more than one man to change my name to Silicon Lily. But I never met anyone like you, my sweet Dead Boy. And I won’t let you die with her. She isn’t worth it.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “You’re always right. You’re worth living for, inasmuch as I can. But … I can’t go on, I can’t just walk out of here and let her get away with what she did to me.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Sil.

  She raised one hand and morphed it into a glowing energy weapon. She shot Mother Macabre in the face and blew her head apart. I let go of the headless body, and it crumpled to the floor, still twitching. I swept blood and brains from my face and shoulder with one hand, then nodded briefly to Sil. She’s always been able to do the things I can’t do. She swept forward, discarding her human shape, melting into a wave of metallic silver that swept right over me. She wrapped herself around me like a suit of armour, covering me from head to foot. Embracing me, and protecting me, all at once. And, together, we walked out of the burning building.

  * * *

  Outside, Walker was waiting for us, watching the building burn. He barely twitched an eyebrow as Sil peeled herself off me, and resumed her human shape. She stood beside me as Silicon Lily, while I nodded politely to Walker. He tipped his bowler hat to both of us.

  “Mother Macabre was getting a little too big for her boots,” Walker said easily. “But I couldn’t go after her, because of her … connections. So I pointed you at her. Well done, Dead Boy. Excellent work.”

  “How long have you known?” I said. “How long have you known the truth about me, and Krauss, and Mother Macabre?”

  “I know everything,” said Walker. “Remember?”

  He smiled again, very politely, and walked off. Sil and I turned away, to watch the Voodoo Lounge burn.

  “What am I going to do now, for my special pills and potions?” I said.

  “There’s always someone,” said Sil. “This is the Nightside.”

  “True,” I said. “If you’re going to be damned, this is a pretty good place for it.” I looked at her for a long moment. “Even with my pills, it takes more than an everyday woman to light the fires in my dead flesh.”

  “Good thing I’m not an everyday woman, then,” said Silicon Lily. “I am a pleasure droid; and I do love my work! And it’s good to know I can even raise the dead…”

  “How can I love you?” I said. “When I don’t have a heart any more?”

  “I don’t have a heart either,” said Sil. “Doesn’t matter. Love comes from the soul.”

  “Do we have souls?” I said.

  She put her arms around me. “What do you think?”

  It’s not easy, having a sex life when you’re dead. But it is possible.

  “How do you feel?” said Sil.

  “I feel … good,” I said.

  * * *

  Author’s Bio:

  Simon was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England where he still resides. He obtained an M.A. in Modern English and American Literature from Leicester University, studied history and has a combined Humanities degree. His writing career started in 1973, when he was a student in London. He’s the author of the bestselling SF/Space Opera series: The Deathstalker Saga, a series of eight books, of which he himself admits that it kind of got out of hand, since it was supposed to be three 500-page books … His website may be found at http://simonrgreen.co.uk.

  THERE WILL BE DEMONS

  by LORI HANDELAND

  I’d been out all night shooting trolls with salt—straig
ht through the heart; it’s the only thing that kills them. So when the knock came on my motel-room door before I’d even had a chance to wash their ashes out of my hair, I should have ignored it.

  Except no one knew I was in Minnesota, which made me nervous. Though why, I have no idea. Demons rarely knock.

  However, when I peered through the peephole and saw a wide expanse of nothing, I whirled to the right expecting, the imminent arrival of a shotgun-sized hole through the door. Not that a shotgun filled with anything but rowan or iced steel would kill me, but getting shot hurt.

  Every single damn time.

  The knock came again—louder, more insistent. Housekeeping or management would announce themselves. They also wouldn’t stand out of sight of the peephole. Only someone who didn’t want me to see them would. Unless it was someone I couldn’t see.

  I didn’t like that scenario any better that the first one. But since I couldn’t stay where I was, listening, hiding, practically cringing—it wasn’t my style—I flung open the door and spewed fairy dust from my fingertips, even as my mind formed the words reveal and freeze.

  No demon materialized in front of me. That was good. Then someone coughed, and I jerked my head to the left.

  “This is bad.”

  His face was covered in silvery particles that stuck to his long, dark lashes like goo. His ebony hair appeared to have been dusted with snow. His face sparkled as if he’d been doused in glitter.

  He should be frozen like a gargoyle. Instead, he lifted one hand and wiped at the mess, staring first at his palm, then lifting his dark eyes to mine.

  A shudder ran through me. I’d seen those eyes before.

  Every night in my dreams for the last few thousand years.

  “What are you?” he asked.

  “What are you?” I returned.

  My hands shook. I stuck them behind my back so I wouldn’t have to explain why. I wasn’t sure I could. I’d been dreaming of him for so long, I’d begun to think he wasn’t real, that maybe what I’d seen wouldn’t happen, that what I’d done wouldn’t matter. I should have known better.

  “Name’s Sanducci,” he said. “Jimmy.”

  I noticed he hadn’t really answered my question, but then I hadn’t answered his either.

  I might have dreamed of him until I knew his face, and his body, even better than I knew my own, but I’d never learned his name or figured out what, exactly, he was.

  Despite being tall, at least six feet of rangy muscle, and owning eyes that were haunted with things he would much, much rather forget, he seemed young.

  Of course, to someone like me, Methuselah was a toddler. Or at least he had been when I’d met him. By the time the old guy expired, right before the flood, he’d been wrinkled, white, and bent like a question mark, while I’d still looked exactly as I did now—blond, petite, annoyingly perky, and forever twenty-one.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  Jimmy’s chin came up. “Old enough.”

  “For what?”

  “I was sent to meet another DK.”

  “Another?” I got that shiver again. “You’re a DK?”

  DK. Short for demon killer.

  I’m not sure why I was surprised. In my dreams of Jimmy Sanducci, he’d fought demons of many kinds, and they’d killed him in many, many ways. Subsequent dreams revealed that his death tipped the scales in that eternal war between good and evil. Without this man fighting on the side of good, evil began to win. I’d have promised anything to avoid that. Even before I’d started having the dreams of him and me together, the ones where I loved him.

  “Are you?” he asked, and at my blank expression, continued. “A DK?”

  I nodded. “Summer Bartholomew.”

  “She said I’d find you here, and that we should—”

  “She?” I murmured, and then I understood. Who else would be able to track where I was but—“Ruthie.”

  “She’s my seer.”

  Mine too. And she knew that I worked alone. I especially could not work with him. That, however, she didn’t know.

  “We’re supposed to—” I held up my hand, and Jimmy flinched. I guess he didn’t want to get socked in the face with fairy dust again.

  When the dust hadn’t worked on him, I should have known right away what he was. My magic doesn’t apply to those on an errand of mercy. Since saving humanity from the demon horde was the life of a DK, twenty-four/seven, my enchanted dust was useless on them.

  “You better come in,” I said. “I’m gonna have to call Ruthie.”

  He stepped into the room, then stared, openmouthed.

  On the outside, this place resembled a two-story Bates Motel. But in here …

  White plush carpet, French provincial furniture, thick white quilts and huge, cushy pillows on a king-sized bed. Through the open bathroom door, a palatial hot tub was visible, surrounded by tropical plants and gold-tipped white tile.

  I clapped my hands, and all of it disappeared, leaving behind orange carpet that I didn’t want to walk across in barefeet—I could swear something was crawling in it—a bedspread that smelled like dead moths, one lumpy full-sized mattress and even lumpier pillows.

  “What are you?” Jimmy asked again.

  “Ruthie didn’t tell you?” He shook his head. “Then I’m not going to.”

  I snatched the TV remote off the chipped, unvarnished wooden dresser and tossed it in his direction without warning. He snatched it easily—most DKs were freakishly nimble and quick. We had to be in order to fight demons. Which meant most of us were at least part demon, too. I wondered what his part was.

  “No porn,” I said.

  “I’m not a kid.” He pointed the remote at the TV. “I haven’t been a kid since I killed my first Nephilim.”

  Nephilim. The offspring of the fallen angels and man. Behind their human facade, they were the beings of legend—werewolves, vampires, shape-shifters, and more. My life has been devoted to killing them. Sometimes, I think I’ll never be able to stop.

  “When was that?” I asked.

  Jimmy didn’t even look away from the screen. “I think I was eight.”

  “You were eight?”

  His dark gaze flicked to mine, then away. “Guy came at me all tooth and claw. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Drink your juice box and let your parents handle it.”

  “Never met ’em. I was on the streets when I was—” He paused, shrugged. “I was always on the streets. Until Ruthie.”

  Ruthie Kane—seer, Leader of the Light, mother to all in need of a mother. For a price.

  She and I needed to have a little talk.

  I grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand and escaped into the bathroom, locking the door behind me before turning the shower on full blast for cover. Although—

  If the kid was something special—and I was pretty sure he was—he could hear a pin drop at Niagara Falls. I could.

  I left the water on anyway. It dispelled the scent of mold that the closed door enhanced. I could conjure money and stay at a better hotel. However, I’d found over the centuries that the creepy, crawly creatures I hunted usually lived far from the amenities. So I stayed wherever I found a place and magicked that place to my liking.

  I hit number one on my speed dial, and five rings later, the phone was picked up in Milwaukee.

  “He there already?” Ruthie asked before I could even say hello.

  Ruthie didn’t have caller ID. Ruthie didn’t need it.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” I demanded.

  Silence settled over the line, broken only by the distant wail of a child. Ruthie ran a group home on the south side of Milwaukee, where she took in all the kids no one else wanted. What the powers that be didn’t know was that the kids no one wanted—the ones that trouble followed—were usually the ones Ruthie was searching for.

  “I don’t think I heard that quite right.”

  Ruthie’s voice was soft, but there was steel beneath. Cold steel. She
’d see me dead if I didn’t watch myself. Ruthie might look like everyone’s favorite African-American granny, but she wasn’t. Ruthie led the group of seers and demon killers known as the Federation, and she hadn’t gotten to that position by being kind.

  “I can’t work with him, Ruthie,” I whispered. “I just can’t.”

  “I know you like to work alone. But I don’t wanna send him out solo just yet. You don’t gotta worry. Fact is he’s scary good. One day, he might even be better than you.”

  From what I’d seen in my dreams, he would be. And yet, still, according to those dreams, he would die.

  “I can’t,” I repeated.

  At last Ruthie heard what I wasn’t saying. “What did you see?”

  I might be a demon killer, but I also had the sight. This should have put me in the seer line. However, instead of seeing demons, I saw the future—or at least possible futures.

  I’d come to understand that free will fucked up everything. Everyone had it, which meant they could choose to turn left instead of right, take a bike instead of a car, sleep five extra minutes that morning, leave work five minutes late that night, and every choice altered my visions.

  “He’ll die,” I said.

  “Jimmy? How?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve seen it happen a hundred different ways. But it always happens.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know who he was. Even if he was. I do actually have dreams that are just … dreams.”

  And the other ones I’d had—of Jimmy and me all tangled in the sheets, sweaty and panting, my pale skin glowing like pearls sliding just beneath dusky water as he touched me in ways that just had to be wrong, even though nothing had ever felt so right …