Many Bloody Returns

by Charlaine Harris

  “Harry!” Thomas screamed. There was a rushing sound, and a tremendous force pulled the vampire off me. I sat up in time to see my brother drive his shoulder into the vampire’s chest, slamming the undead thing back against the concrete wall between two stalls. Then Thomas whipped out what looked like a broken chair leg and drove the shattered end of the wood directly into the vampire’s chest, a couple of inches below the gold, metallic security badge on his left breast, slightly off center.

  The vampire’s mouth opened, too-dark blood exploding from it in a gasp. The creature reached for the chair leg with its remaining arm.

  Thomas solved that problem in the most brutal way imaginable. His face set in fury, my brother ignored the flames of the vampire’s burning clothing, seized the remaining arm with both of his hands, and with a twist of his hips and shoulders ripped it out of the socket.

  More blood splashed out, if only for a second—without a heartbeat to keep pumping it, blood loss is mostly about leakage—and then the mortally crippled vampire fell, twitching and dying as the stake of wood through its heart put an end to its unlife.

  I felt Drulinda coming, more than I saw it happen, the cold presence of a Black Court vampire in a fury rubbing abrasively against my wizard’s senses. “Thomas!”

  My brother turned in time to duck a blow so swift I didn’t even see it. He returned it with one of his own, but Drulinda, though new to the trade, was a master vampire, a creature with its own terrible will and power. Thomas had fought other Black Court vamps before—but not a master.

  He was on the defensive from the outset. Though my brother was unthinkably strong and swift when drawing upon his vampiric nature, he wasn’t strong or swift enough. I lay sprawled on the ground, still half-paralyzed by the pain in the left half of my body, and tried to think of what to do next.

  “Get out!” I screamed at the bistro. “Get out of here, people! Get the hell out now!”

  While I screamed, Drulinda slammed my brother’s back into a metal security grate so hard that it left a broad smear of his pale red blood on its bars.

  People started hurrying out of the bistro, running for the parking lot.

  Drulinda looked over her shoulder and let out another hissing squall of rage. At this opening, Thomas managed to get a grip on her arm, set his feet, and swing her into the wall, sending cracks streaking through the concrete. On the rebound, he swung her up and around and then down, smashing her down onto the floor, then up from that and into a security mesh again, crushing tile and bending metal with every impact.

  I heard a scream and looked up to see Ennui fall from her impossibly high black heels in her tiny, tight black dress, as she tried to flee the bistro.

  A horribly disfigured hand had reached out from the rubble over the crushed vampire, and now held her.

  I ran for the girl as my brother laid into Drulinda. My left arm wasn’t talking to me, and I fumbled the second canister out of my left jacket pocket with my right arm, then dumped garlic over the outstretched vampire’s hand.

  It began smoking and spasming. Ennui screamed as the crushing grip broke her ankle. I stood up in frustration and started stomping down on the vampire’s arm. Supernaturally strong it might be, but its bones were made of bone, and it couldn’t maintain its grip on the girl without them.

  It took a lot of stomping, but I was finally able to pull the girl free. I tried to get her to her feet, but her weight came down on her broken ankle, and from there it came down on my wounded shoulder. I went down to one knee, and it was all I could do not to fall.

  I almost didn’t notice when my brother flew through the air just over my head, smashed out what had to be the last remaining pane of glass at the mall entrance, and landed limply in the parking lot.

  I felt Drulinda’s presence coming up behind me.

  The vampire let out a dusty laugh. “I thought it was just some poor pretty boy to play with. Silly me.”

  I fumbled with the canister for a second, and then whirled, flinging its contents at Drulinda in a slewing arc.

  The vampire blurred to one side, dodging the garlic with ease. She looked battered and was covered with dust. Her undead flesh was approximately the consistency of wood, and so it wasn’t cut and damaged so much as chipped and crushed. Her clothes were torn and ruined—and none of that mattered. She was just as functional, just as deadly as she had been before the fight.

  I dropped the canister and drew forth my pentacle amulet, lifting it as a talisman against her.

  The old bit with the crucifix works on the Black Court—but it isn’t purely about Christianity. They are repelled not by the holy symbol itself, but by the faith of the one holding it up against them. I’d seen vampires repulsed by crosses, crucifixes, strips of paper written with holy symbols by a Shinto priest—once even a Star of David.

  Me, I used the pentacle, because that’s what I believed in. The five-pointed star, to me, represented the five elements of earth, air, water, fire, and spirit, bound within the solid circle of mortal will. I believed that magic was a force intended to be used to create, to protect, and to preserve. I believed that magic was a gift that had to be used responsibly and wisely—and that it especially had to be used against creatures like Drulinda, against literal, personified evil, to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. That’s what I thought, and I’d spent my life acting in accordance with it.

  I believed.

  Pale blue light began to spill from the symbol—and Drulinda stopped with a hiss of sudden rage.

  “You,” she said after a few seconds. “I have heard of you. The wizard. Dresden.”

  I nodded slowly. Behind her, the fire from my earlier spell was spreading. The power was out, and I had no doubt that Drulinda and her former security-guard lackeys had disabled the alarms. It wouldn’t take long for a fire to go insane in this place, once it got its teeth sunk in. We needed to get out.

  “Go,” I mumbled at Ennui.

  She sobbed and started crawling for the exit, while I held Drulinda off with the amulet.

  The vampire stared steadily at me for a second, her eyes all milky white, corpse cataracts glinting in the reflected light of the fire. Then she smiled and moved.

  She was just too damned fast. I tried to turn to keep up with her, but by the time I did, Ennui screamed, and Drulinda had seized her hair and dragged her back, out of the immediate circle of light cast by the amulet.

  She lifted the struggling girl with ease, so that I could see her mascara-streaked face. “Wizard,” Drulinda said. Ennui had been cut by flying glass or the fall at some point, and some blood had streaked out of her slicked-back hair, over her ear, and down one side of her throat. The vampire leaned in, extending a tongue like a strip of beef jerky, and licked blood from the girl’s skin. “You can hide behind your light. But you can’t save her.”

  I ground my teeth and said nothing.

  “But your death will profit me, grant me standing with others of my kind. The feared and vaunted Wizard Dresden.” She bared yellowed teeth in a smile. “So I offer you this bargain. Throw away the amulet. I will let the girl go. You have my word.” She leaned her teeth in close and brushed them over the girl’s neck. “Otherwise…well. All of my new friends are gone. I’ll have to make more.”

  That made me shudder. Dying was one thing. Dying and being made into one of those…

  I lowered the amulet. I hesitated for a second, and then dropped it.

  Drulinda let out a low, eager sound and tossed Ennui aside like an empty candy wrapper. Then she was on me, letting out rasping giggles, for God’s sake, pressing me down. “I can smell your fear, wizard,” she rasped. “I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

  She leaned closer, slowly, as she bared her teeth, her face only inches from mine.

  Which is where I wanted her to be.

  I reared up my head and spat out a gooey mouthful of powdered garlic directly into those cataract eyes.

  Drulinda let out a scream, bounding away in a
violent rush, clawing at her eyes with her fingers—and getting them burned, too. She thrashed in wild agony, swinging randomly at anything she touched or bumped into, tearing great, gaping gashes in metal fences, smashing holes in concrete walls.

  “Couple words of advice,” I growled, my mouth burning with the remains of the garlic I’d stuffed it with as she’d come sneaking up on me. “First, any time I’m not shooting my mouth off to a clichéd, two-bit creature of the night like you, it’s because I’m up to something.”

  Drulinda howled more and rushed toward me—tripping on some rubble and sprawling on the ground, only to rush about on all fours like some kind of ungainly and horrible insect.

  I checked behind me. Ennui was already out, and Thomas was beginning to stir, maybe roused by the snow now falling on him. I turned back to the blinded, pain-maddened vampire. We were the only ones left in that wing of the mall.

  “Second,” I spat. “Never touch my brother on his fucking birthday.”

  I reached for my will, lifted my hand, and snarled, “Fuego!”

  Fire roared out to eagerly engulf the vampire.

  What the hell. The building was burning down anyway.

  “Freaking amateur villains,” I muttered, glowering down at the splatters on my car.

  Thomas leaned against it with one hand pressed to his head, a grimace of pain on his face. “You okay?”

  I waved my left arm a little. “Feeling’s coming back. I’ll have Butters check me out later. Thanks for loaning Molly your car.”

  “Least I could do. Let her drive Sarah and Ennui to the hospital.” He squinted at the rising smoke from the mall. “Think the whole thing will go?”

  “Nah,” I said. “This wing, maybe. They’ll get here before too much more goes up. Keef and his folk should be all right.”

  My brother grunted. “How they going to explain this one?”

  “Who knows,” I said. “Meteor, maybe. Smashed holes in the roof, crushed some poor security guard, set the place on fire.”

  “My vote is for terrorists,” Thomas said. “Terrorists are real popular these days.” He shook his head. “But I meant the larpers, not the cops.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Probably, they won’t talk to anyone about what they saw. Afraid people would think they were crazy.”

  “And they would,” Thomas said.

  “And they would,” I agreed. “Come tomorrow, it will seem very unreal. A few months from now, they’ll wonder if they didn’t imagine some of it or if there wasn’t some kind of gas leak or something that made them hallucinate. Give it a few more years, and they’ll remember that Drulinda and some rough-looking types showed up to give them a hard time. They drove a car through the front of the mall. Maybe they were crazy people dressed in costumes who had been to a few too many larps themselves.” I shook my head. “It’s human nature to try to understand and explain everything. The world is less scary that way. But I don’t think they’ll be in any danger, really. No more so than anyone else.”

  “That’s good,” Thomas said quietly. “I guess.”

  “It’s the way it is.” In the distance, sirens were starting up and coming closer. I grunted and said, “We’d better go.”

  “Yeah.”

  We got into the Beetle. I started it up and we headed out. I left the lights off. No sense attracting attention.

  “You going to be all right?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “Take me a few days to get enough back into me to feel normal, but…” He shrugged. “I’ll make it.”

  “Thanks for the backup,” I said.

  “Kicked their freaky asses,” he said, and held out his fist.

  I rapped my knuckles lightly against it.

  “Nice signal. The birthday present.”

  “I figured you’d get it,” I said. Then I frowned. “Crap,” I said. “Your present.”

  “You didn’t remember to bring it?”

  “I was a little busy,” I said.

  He was quiet for a minute. Then he asked, “What was it?”

  “Rock’em Sock’em Robots,” I said.

  He blinked at me. “What?”

  I repeated myself. “The little plastic robots you make fight.”

  “I know what they are, Harry,” he responded. “I’m trying to figure out why you’d give me them.”

  I pursed my lips for a minute. Then I said, “Right after my dad died, they put me in an orphanage. It was Christmastime. On television, they had commercials for Rock’em Sock’em Robots. Two kids playing with them, you know? Two brothers.” I shrugged. “That was a year when I really, really wanted to give those stupid plastic robots to my brother.”

  “Because it would mean you weren’t alone,” Thomas said quietly.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry I forgot them. And happy birthday.”

  He glanced back at the burning mall. “Well,” my brother said. “I suppose it’s the thought that counts.”

  Grave-Robbed

  P. N. Elrod

  P. N. Elrod has sold more than twenty novels and as many short stories and is best known for The Vampire Files series, featuring undead detective Jack Fleming. She’s cowritten three novels with actor/director Nigel Bennett, has edited and coedited several genre collections, and is an incurable chocoholic. More news on her toothy titles may be found at www.vampwriter.com.

  CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 1937

  When the girl draped in black stepped in to ask if I could help her with a séance, Hal Kemp’s version of “Gloomy Sunday” began to murmur sadly from the office radio.

  Coincidences annoy me. A mournful song for a dead sweetheart put together with a ceremony that’s supposed to help the dead speak with the living made me uneasy—and I was annoyed it made me uneasy.

  I should know better, being dead myself.

  “You sure you’re in the right place?” I asked, taking in her outfit. Black overcoat, pocketbook, gloves, heels, and stockings—she was a walking funeral. Along with the mourning weeds she wore a brimmed hat with a chin-brushing veil even I couldn’t see past.

  “The Escott Agency—that’s what’s on the door,” she said, sitting on the client chair in front of the desk without an invitation. “You’re Mr. Escott?”

  “I’m Mr. Fleming. I fill in for Mr. Escott when he’s elsewhere.” He was visiting his girlfriend tonight. I’d come over to his office to work on his books since I was better at accounting.

  “It was Mr. Escott who was recommended to me.”

  “By who?”

  “A friend.”

  I waited, but she left it at that. Much of Escott’s business as a private agent came by word of mouth. Call him a private eye and you’d get a pained look and perhaps an acerbic declaration that he did not undertake divorce cases. His specialty as an agent was carrying out unpleasant errands for the unable or unwilling, not peeking through keyholes, but did a séance qualify? He was interested in that kind of thing, but mostly from a skeptic’s point of view. I had to say mostly since he couldn’t be a complete skeptic what with his partner—me—being a vampire.

  And nice to meet you, too.

  Hal Kemp played on in the little office until the girl stood, went to the radio, and shut it off.

  “I hate that song,” she stated, turning around, the veil swirling lightly. Faceless women annoy me as well, but she had good legs.

  “Me, too. You got any particular reason?”

  “My sister plays it all the time. It gets on my nerves.”

  “Does it have to do with this séance?”

  “Can’t you call Mr. Escott?”

  “I could, but you didn’t make an appointment for this late or he’d be here.”

  “My appointment is for tomorrow, but something’s happened since I made it, and I need to speak with him tonight. I came by just in case he worked late. The light was on and a car was out front….”

  I checked his appointment book. In his precise hand he’d written 10 am, Abigail Saeger. “Spell that name again?”


  She did so, correct for both.

  “What’s the big emergency?” I asked. “If this is something I can’t handle, I’ll let him know, but otherwise you’ll find I’m ready, able, and willing.”

  “I don’t mean to offend, but you look rather young for such work. Over the phone I thought Mr. Escott to be…more mature.”

  Escott and I were the same age but I did look younger by over a decade. On the other hand if she thought a man in his midthirties was old, then she’d be something of a kid herself. Her light voice told me as much, though you couldn’t tell by her mannerisms and speech, which bore a finishing school’s not so subtle polish.

  “Miss Saeger, would you mind raising your blinds? I like to see who’s hiring before I take a job.”

  She went still a moment, then lifted her veil. As I thought, a fresh-faced kid who should be home studying, but her eyes were red-rimmed, her expression serious.

  “That’s better. What can I do for you?”

  “My older sister, Flora, is holding a séance tonight. She’s crazy to talk with her dead husband, and there’s a medium taking advantage of her. He wants her money, and more.”

  “A fake medium?”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  I smiled, liking her. “Give me the whole story, same as you’d have told to Mr. Escott.”

  “You’ll help me?”

  “I need to know more first.” I said it in a tone to indicate I was interested.

  She plunged in, talking fast, but I had good shorthand and scribbled notes.

  Miss Saeger and her older sister, Flora, were alone; their parents long dead. But Flora had money in trust and married into more money by getting hitched to James Weisinger Jr., who inherited a tidy fortune some years ago. The Depression had little effect on them. Flora became a widow last August when her still-young husband died in a sailing accident on Lake Michigan.

  I’d been killed on that lake. “Sure it was an accident?”

  “A wind shift caused the boom to swing around. It caught him on the side of the head and over he went. I still have nightmares about the awful thud when it hit him and the splash, but it’s worse for Flora—she was at the wheel at the time. She blames herself. No one else does. There were half a dozen people aboard who knew sailing. That kind of thing can happen out of the blue.”