He shook his head. “Not tonight.” He went into the hallway, and then raised one finger. “By the way,” he said. “What’s your name here?”
“Samantha,” I said. “Call me Sam.”
The man in black nodded. “See you around, Sam.”
The door opened, the wind and the snow came in, and the man in black left with what he came for.
10.
Betty and I stood at the bus stop on the side of the highway, a little bend in the road carved out of the frozen fields. The cold cut through my thin coat and boots, and I smoked just to keep warm.
“Where are you headed?” Betty asked me. Her face was still blue and bruised across the cheek and jaw on one side, and her wrist was in a sling. Doc Pritchard got there in time to take care of her internal injuries. I’d let him work out his payment with May. I was already packing my things.
“I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t. I never had, and it had worked out with varying degrees. There was the body I’d left by the side of the highway outside Topeka. The bodies I’d left at May’s.
Betty had cried at night for weeks afterward, long shuddering sobs, her whole body shaking with remembered pain. I’d crawl out of my own narrow cot in Doc Pritchard’s back office and curl up next to her, petting her hair until she went back to sleep.
“I’m going home,” she said, putting out her cigarette in the snowbank on the side of the highway. “No goddamn snow in Louisiana, that’s a fact.”
“Amen,” I said.
“You know, I never thanked you,” Betty said. “May and Angie told me it was you got that ape off of me. Glad every last one of ’em is roasting in Hell.” She lit a fresh smoke with a crisp snap of a lighter. “Good riddance.”
“Good,” I agreed. “You don’t have to thank me, Betty.”
She reached out and squeezed my hand. “I know,” she said. “I know you were my only friend in that place, Sam. I never thought you really gave a good damn about any of it, but you did a terrible thing for me. I ain’t gonna just let that roll on by.”
I looked down the road. The silvery hulk of the Greyhound bus was approaching, chrome glinting in the sun. I could go on and find another whorehouse, or another bar, another place to be anonymously human. But I’d never forget that night in May’s farmhouse. Memories were indelible in my shadow-body’s mind. The centuries no longer bled together like a ruined painting.
I pulled Betty close, by the nape of her neck, before the bus got any closer. I brushed her lips, just the slightest touch, light and dry like a summer wind. She smelled like gardenias and tobacco. She was blushing when I stepped away.
“I’d do it again,” I said. “It’s my nature.” That much, I knew, was true. I wasn’t a seraph. I wasn’t a human. I was fallen, but I had plenty of time to figure out what that meant, if I could do things like I’d done to Gil again, if the man in black had passed me by because there was something else here in this mean, bloody, earthbound little place that I had to do.
The bus rolled to a stop, steam ripping a hole in the freezing air. The placard in the windscreen said los angeles.
Betty waved goodbye at me once I’d gotten a seat and the driver had started us rolling again. I waved back.
“Next stop, Junction City,” the driver hollered. “Final destination, Los Angeles, California.”
I leaned my head back against the vinyl seat, and let the rumble of the engine lift me out of Kansas, out of myself, and into a place where I could float and think.
Los Angeles.
The City of Angels.
That sounded all right for now.
* * *
CAITLIN KITTREDGE writes adult and young adult novels about such varied topics as werewolves, demons, British mages, superheroes, and steampunk. She collects comic books, does pinup modeling and photography in her copious spare time, has partially purple hair, and lives in a real-live crumbling Victorian manor. Find her blog and other eldritch horrors at www.caitlinkittredge.com.
When I asked her for a few words about this story, she provided the following:
* * *
I was raised a Unitarian, so the fire-and-brimstone version of Heaven and Hell was, in my youth, a story for other people. I’ve used all sorts of mythology in my novels: Irish, Russian, Japanese, and even the Lovecraft mythos have made appearances. But I never really forgot paging through my mother’s theology textbooks when she was in grad school and marveling at the complex myth base of the Judeo-Christian faith. So when I had a chance to write something new, something unconnected to any of my series, I thought “fallen angels.” And naturally, you can’t have fallen angels without some demons, something I was accustomed to using in my fiction. As you can see in “Born Under a Bad Sign,” Sam’s version of Heaven and Hell isn’t exactly like the Biblical stories, either. But all stories are interpretation, so for my purposes, Sam’s version is the right one. As for putting my heroine in a brothel—postwar America was a very different place, and a single woman with no past had very few options. I’m a huge noir buff, and I wanted a fallen angel, who, let’s face it, is the ultimate noir-style protagonist, in a situation that could easily have unfolded in a B picture, circa 1947. Falling from grace isn’t just for crooked cops and nasty gangsters, and Sam’s story fit perfectly into the noir mode.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
David Drake provided his usual invaluable guidance to this still-learning editor.
My business partner, Bill Catchings, has as always both done all he could to encourage and support my writing and been a great colleague for over twenty-five years—even though this book will almost certainly not be to his taste.
Elizabeth Barnes fought (and continues to fight) to tame the library portions of my home office, an effort that helps me calm myself for the work.
As always, I am grateful to my children, Sarah and Scott, who continue to be amazing and wonderful people despite having the Weird Dad and needing to put up with me regularly disappearing into my office for long periods of time. Thanks, kids.
Several extraordinary women—my wife, Rana Van Name; Allyn Vogel; Jennie Faries; and Gina Massel-Castater—as ever grace my life with their intelligence and support, and I remain surprised and thankful that they do.
Thank you, all.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION: TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
SONGS SUNG RED
CARELESS OF THE NIGHT
FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL . . .
FINE PRINT
UNAWARES
OF SEX AND ZOMBIES
LOVE KNOT
BEAUTY IS A WITCH
THE LONG DARK NIGHT OF DIEGO CHAN
BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge Page 30