The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  “Good for you,” I said. “You deserve another adventure.”

  “Yes. One more adventure.”

  * * *

  Doodad led me through the Jordan-almond colors and textures of Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie’s corridors.

  “Now remember you’re just here to say goodbye,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said. “Don’t upset your grandmother. She’s having some difficulties adjusting and I don’t want you making a fuss.”

  “What do you mean, difficulties?”

  “She’s had some problems with her breathing. We’re working on her diet. She keeps asking for coffee, but I thought it best if we avoid the use of drugs.”

  “Of course she’s having trouble breathing,” I said. “Do you have any idea how much coffee she drinks? It’s addictive. She’s hooked worse on that stuff than anyone I’ve known has been hooked on anything and you’re making her go cold turkey. Coffee has chemicals in it that relax the tubes that go into her lungs. Think of what the opposite of that means.”

  Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie’s image glared at me from a wall monitor. “Your grandmother strongly disapproves of intoxication,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Other people’s intoxication. Enough caffeine to give a rhino a cardiac arrest every day, a little cream sherry or crème de menthe at night, give me a break. Just give her some caffeine and see what happens.”

  “I assure you we know perfectly well what we’re doing,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said as I stepped through an arch that looked like a model of a coral reef made from frosting. “We’ll have her fixed by the time we get home. Now come say goodbye. She won’t be able to say much, but I know she wants to see you.”

  Inside the room was a tub filled with a thick clear fluid. Grandma floated in it, her face barely above the surface. Doodad sat on the edge of the tub and put her feet in the liquid, short shiny skirt showing off her crossed legs.

  “She’s been waiting for you,” Doodad said. “She wants to say something to you.”

  I wasn’t sure about that. Grandma seemed unconscious. She wore a shift that clung to her and showed me the outlines of her body for the first time in my life. The intimacy of the sight made me nervous, made me want to bolt. Her hair drifted free—she’d always kept it bound up, and I was amazed at its length, its wildness.

  I went to the side of the tub, leaned against its thick yielding rim.

  “Grandma?”

  Her eyes went wide and she sat upright, wet hair sleek against her skull. She grabbed at my arm and stared at me, her eyes strange without glasses. Her voice was a goose’s gobble.

  I put my free hand on hers and let her talk. She didn’t blink as she kept her eyes locked with mine, and I finally made out the word she was repeating. “You—you—you…” It wasn’t me she was talking to; she looked at me and saw someone else. Was it my grandfather? I waited until she grew quiet and fell back, exhausted but still clutching my arm.

  “Grandma,” I said. I didn’t think she could hear me but I needed to say the words, needed to make a pretense of being a decent person. “I love you and I always have. You’ve done so much for me and I have no way to tell you how much I owe you. I can’t even understand it myself. If I can ever give to people the way you have….” I held her hand, slick with the fluid from the tub, but she was already a million miles away. “The only time in my life I’ve ever felt safe was with you.”

  Doodad tilted her head and stared at me until I had to look away from Grandma and meet her eyes. She smiled. “That is so sweet,” she said. “What a beautiful moment.”

  Grandma’s hands loosened. Her eyes half-shut, not seeing anything. She lay there and gurgled.

  “Come now,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said. “You’ve gotten her excited enough.”

  As I walked behind Doodad I realized that she was guiding me deeper into Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsey. I passed through a constricted section of corridor into a chamber whose walls were rows of translucent waxy-pink hexagons like the cells of a giant beehive. There were shapes dimly visible inside them, shapes that looked human.

  “I hope you don’t find this upsetting,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said, “but it’s important for me to hear your opinion on this. Please, be honest. Don’t be afraid to be critical.”

  The membrane sealing one of the chambers started to melt, and a thick fluid like that in Grandma’s tub ran down to the floor and was absorbed. The shape inside shuddered and squirmed like a grub. A pair of smooth, pale hands spotted with a pattern of tan ovals gripped either side of the opening, and the thing pulled itself out of the chamber.

  It looked a lot like Grandma, an enameled Grandma whose wet clothes grew from her flesh, whose hair was a smooth silver mass without strands, whose eyes were glossy green surfaces without iris, white, or pupil.

  I clenched my hands and stepped back. I didn’t know what to do.

  The thing walked up to me, blank eyes wide. A smile showed smooth white strips where her teeth should have been. “Don’t be sad, dear,” it said. “God is love. God is love. God is love.”

  “What the hell is this?” I drew back.

  The Grandma-thing smiled and followed me.

  “I know she needs work,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said. “How do you suggest we improve her?”

  Doodad clasped her hands together under her chin.

  “Oh, I want one, I want one,” she said, and rocked from side to side.

  “We can work something out, dear,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said. “But she’s still in progress.”

  “I don’t care,” Doodad said. “I think she’s perfect. She’s God’s image and likeness.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re going to sell knockoffs of my grandmother? Like she was a purse or a pair of shoes?”

  “Don’t be vulgar,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said. “This is the best way for Image-and-Likeness to touch as many souls as she can.”

  “Well, this thing isn’t gonna do the job. It’s nothing like her.”

  “All right,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said. “I think I understand. Let’s try something more involved, shall we?”

  Overhead, a row of projectors blinked their eyes and cast an image on the wall in front of me. It showed handwriting on blue-ruled binder paper, perfect little calligraphic loops with no capital letters. Amy’s handwriting.

  I shook my head. “Where did you get that?”

  “I found it in your room,” Doodad said. “It was under the bed.”

  “Please, work with us,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said. “Just let your grandmother help you.”

  The Grandma-thing set its hands on my arm, its wet touch slick as mucus. “God is love,” it said. I froze. It looked up at me, blinked slowly and repeatedly. Its head sunk so its chin rested on its chest. Then it lifted its head and its eyes met mine.

  “Oh, my,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said. Her voice filled with static.

  The Grandma-thing reached up and touched my cheek with the tips of her fingers. They left cool tracks. “It’s you,” it said. There was something different about its voice. “For a minute I thought you were…”

  “Grandma?” I asked.

  “I know you think you’re the first one who’s ever had their heart broken,” the Grandma-thing said in a tone of flat anger that I’d never heard before. “Well, you aren’t. When I was your age I fell in love with a young man. He was a pilot and that was when pilots were something new, when they were heroes.” I could hear its voice warming at the memory. “He had a mustache and he was… Oh. I loved him so much, and when the war came he went to England to volunteer in the RAF. That’s when my hair went white. When I found out that he’d died. After that I let your grandfather marry me.”

  Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie groaned. The floor tipped a couple of degrees, then righted itself.

  “That’s what life is like,” the Grandma-thing said. “Everything good goes away and you feel sad and angry and it never, ever stops. All you can do is try and be nice. That’s all there is.
”

  I felt a sensation of pressure. The world constricted around me like shrink-wrap around a box, airtight and closing in. Grandma wasn’t supposed to be like me.

  Doodad’s face had frozen. “I don’t like this,” she said without moving her lips. “This isn’t love.”

  The Grandma-thing froze, off-balance and rigid. As it tipped I grabbed at it, but it slipped through my hands and bounced off the deck with a muted thump.

  There were dark spots of fluid on the fronts of other cells. More Grandma-things were ready to emerge.

  I looked at the ceiling and raised my voice. “Did you tell her you were going to do this?”

  “You need to leave, dear,” Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie said. “Now.”

  “You’ve got your whatever-it-is,” I said. “Give me my grandmother back.”

  The fresh Grandma-things crawled down the wet honeycomb wall. The chorus of soft voices formed a buzz as they said, “God is love.”

  They grabbed me. They were strong and I couldn’t bring myself to struggle with Grandma’s image. They pulled me through the ship, murmured God-is-love-God-is-love, and pushed me through the portal.

  Mrs. Outerbridge-Horsie rose slowly and silently. I pinched a spray of sage and held my Thanksgiving-scented fingers under my nose. I watched the glowing shape diminish moment by moment until Grandma drifted away and was lost in the stars. I stared up and let the tears flow.

  …goodbye, goodbye.

  Goodbye.

  Copyright © 2010 Sean Craven

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  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  “…there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.”

  —CORINTHIANS 2:7

  CHAPTER 1

  Evangeline Hollis eyed the hard-hat-wearing kappa demon presently holding two wallpaper samples against the wall.

  “You know,” she said, mostly to herself, “I always thought ‘Sin City’ was just a nickname.”

  “Ms. Hollis.” Raguel Gadara’s voice was laced with the resignation of a long-suffering parent. Softened by the resonance unique to all the archangels, it still chastised effectively. “Focus, please.”

  Eve shot a wry glance at her boss. How the hell was she supposed to focus on wallpaper patterns when there was an Infernal in the room? She didn’t care that the kappa worked for Gadara Enterprises. All demons who’d defected to the Celestial side were secretly on the lookout for anything that would win back Satan’s favor. Knocking out an archangel would do the trick.

  If anything bad happened to the archangel Raguel on her watch…

  Shaking off the thought, Eve forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. Working for Raguel Gadara—real estate magnate extraordinaire and owner of the Mondego Resort in Las Vegas—had once been a career dream of hers. The reality was more of a nightmare. Her years of interior design education and experience had been relegated to the sidelines of her “real” job: demon bounty hunting.

  “The pale blue with lilies,” she decided, cocking her head to one side. In her previous secular life, she’d be sporting Manolo Blahnik stilettos and a pinstriped skirt. As a Mark—one of thousands of sinners drafted via the Mark of Cain to kill demons on God’s behalf—she was wearing Doc Martens and yoga pants. The thick, straight black hair she’d inherited from her Japanese mother was pulled back in a simple, braided ponytail. Those who were unfortunate enough to be “marked” never knew when they’d be called into service. It was best to be prepared for everything, all the time.

  “Serene choice.” Gadara gave an approving, regal nod. “A nice dichotomy to the casino.”

  “A refuge from the insanity. If it takes guests longer to wear out, they might extend their stay. In theory.”

  He flashed a smile that nearly blinded her. His pearly white teeth were brilliant framed by his chocolate-hued skin. For a moment, Eve was arrested by his appearance. His dark flesh was burnished by the golden sheen that distinguished archangels, making him beautiful to look upon. Awe-inspiring, and sometimes frightening. Celestial power thrummed through the air around him, creating a nearly irresistible compulsion to cede to anything he requested.

  She shook that off, too.

  The kappa lowered the wallpaper and popped a bubble of gum. Since Marks weren’t vigilantes, working with demons who hadn’t yet “crossed the line” was inevitable in the course of conducting secular business. But she didn’t have to like it. The stench of their rotting souls was worse than decomposition. Without the Mark of Cain, she’d be queasy now. One of the boons of the mark was the precision with which her body functioned—she no longer had physical reactions to most stimuli, emotional or otherwise.

  “I also prefer the solid gray-blue carpeting,” Eve went on. “It’ll need to be cleaned more than a patterned pile, so we should restrict its use to the suites, but the color will add to the feeling of serenity.”

  “Did you gravitate toward blue in your own home decor?”

  She shook her head. “I used a lot of neutrals. I didn’t want anything to compete with my view of the beach.”

  Her oceanfront apartment in Huntington Beach, California, was her refuge from the world at large, a world in which Infernals lived alongside mortals who were blissfully ignorant. Such was the life she lived now, having her Big Mac served by faeries and her car detailed by werewolves.

  “Understandable.” Gadara’s smile widened. “The hand of God is incomparable.”

  She let that little dig roll off her. As a former agnostic, she was now forced to acknowledge a higher power. However, she certainly didn’t fall into the ranks of the devout. Too many of the Lord’s decisions were ones she disagreed with, and his lack of attention to detail chafed. The oversight of the day-to-day operations of the marked system was left in the hands of the seraphim. Like the American judicial system, there were bondsmen (the archangels), dispatchers (malakhim), and bounty hunters (Marks like her). God was content with occasional vague memos.

  Gadara gestured for the kappa to proceed with Eve’s selection. Then, the archangel set his hand at the small of her back and urged her toward the open door leading to the corridor. “Will dinner at seven be acceptable?”

  He wasn’t coming on to her or making a request. Gadara liked to keep her close for the same reason all angels and demons went out of their way to get to her: they wanted to irritate the two men in her life—Cain and Abel. The brothers went by the names Alec Cain and Reed Abel in present day, but they were the infamous siblings of biblical legend nevertheless. Gadara was as ruthlessly ambitious as the other archangels, and she was a unique advantage to him because pulling her strings kept both Cain and Abel toeing his line.

  “She’s not available tonight, Raguel.” The low, deep voice that intruded sent a mental shiver of awareness through Eve.

  If not for the mark’s regulatory effect on her body, she’d have goose bumps. Alec Cain was her mentor in the marked system and the love of her life. He’d roared into her life on a Harley when she was almost eighteen, and by the time he left her behind she was madly in love and no longer a virgin. She’d still been comparing other men to him ten years later when Reed Abel entered her life and branded her with the Mark of Cain. That started a triangular relationship she’d once thought would be impossible for her.

  Actually, she thought wryly, it was i
mpossible. In every way. Being the latest point of contention in the oldest sibling rivalry in history was a tremendous pain in the ass.

  Turning her head, Eve watched Alec approach with his quick, sure-footed stride. Of course he suffered none of the effects of teleportation that she—a lowly Mark—did. That would be fair; God didn’t play fair.

  “Why are you here, Cain?” Gadara couldn’t have sounded more reproving.

  “With all the Infernal activity in the area, you have to ask?” He raked Eve with a blatantly sexual glance. “More importantly, I miss my girl. You’ve monopolized her long enough. Tonight, she’s mine.”

  She smiled at the way he purred his last sentence. He was trouble and made no effort to hide it. His well-worn jeans, scuffed steel-toed boots, and overlong hair warned women to tread carefully where he was concerned. The “bad boy” look wasn’t an affectation by any means. Alec was the original and most ferocious of all the Marks. He was also God’s primary enforcer. Every other Mark took orders from mal’akh “handlers,” but he took his orders directly from the Almighty himself.

  Gadara bared his teeth in a gesture an idiot might think was a smile. “I believe Ms. Hollis intends to be present at the pre-opening of the Two to Tango club this evening.”

  “It’s done?” Alec wrapped her in a bear hug. “Can’t wait to see it, Angel.”

  Evangeline. Eve. Angel. A nickname only he ever used. He still said it with the seductive rumble that had landed her in this Mark of Cain mess to begin with. There were a lot of reasons why she loved him, but that nickname and the way he showed such pride in her accomplishments were definitely at the top of her list.

  “And I can’t wait to see you in a tux,” she teased.

  He groaned. “The things I do for you.”

  The thought of him in a tuxedo made her hot. Alec was like skydiving—the thrill of the fall was addicting, despite knowing the ground was rushing up to meet you.