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

by Various

  Fuck you all for not having the decency to help one screwed-up kid, I thought, thinking about the others I’d called, those I’d reached out to for help. Rage started to burn away the fog of guilt and fear. They were so much better equipped to handle this, so much more prepared. They weren’t something barely more than human with a knack for turning invisible.

  Fuck this. And fuck them. I’d find Mandy, and I’d get her out of here.

  No sooner had that thought circled through my mind than I saw the pale, strawberry gold of her hair streaked with bright, cotton candy pink. She was snuggled up against the pale, skinny chest of some guy with a scraggly goatee and hair that needed to be washed. Even from here, I could smell the drugs in her.

  That would be her Lothario, then. Man, I ought to kill that bastard, too. I reached up, touched my bow. There was enough light in here. I could see well enough to use my bow, and the arrows were silver-tipped, hollow-pointed. A family design, you could say—filled with something that would kill the weaker shifters and slow the stronger ones for days. Silver nitrate.

  Should I?

  Could I?

  In the back of my head, I heard a mocking, chiding voice. You are such a poor, sad excuse of an aneira—why were you sent to us? In the days of old, one as weak as you would have been strangled with your own cord.

  It was the voice of my Aunt Helene. My mother’s sister.

  She would have stood there and killed every last one of the shifters, and hell, Mandy, too. A kindness—she is already dying, it would end her suffering.

  I swallowed the bile churning up the back of my throat and moved to stand closer to Mandy, thanking whatever weird quirk of fate had her and her boyfriend lying off to the side instead of in the strange doggie—or rat—pile most of the others were in.

  Now… how in the hell did I get her up and out of here?

  That was when the drugged-up shifter finally figured out his sleeping buddy wasn’t sleeping.

  He started to wail. That was all it took. In the moments it took for the other shifters to wake, the first one’s grief bled over to fury and he started to shift.

  Fuck.

  I backed away and sheathed my sword.

  Okay, so maybe I couldn’t shoot a bunch of sleeping shifters. But if I had to, I could shoot them while they were awake.

  My heart knocked against the wall of my chest, and I could see several pairs of beady eyes swinging my way.

  Calm down—

  I am aneira. My blood is noble. My heart is strong. My aim is true. I am aneira—

  Five seconds into the stupid little mantra and my heart rate leveled out, but I couldn’t count on them not noticing me if I stayed on the other side of the room. They’d pick up on the strange, single heartbeat.

  Then again, I didn’t want to get any closer, because my bow and arrows weren’t as useful at close range and we were already too close.

  Once more, a whisper of cold wrapped around me—all around me, it seemed. Pressing tight, almost a physical touch. It was enough to make my heart slam once more against my ribs.

  IamaneiramybloodisnoblemyheartisstrongmyaimistrueIamaneira—

  That cold, viselike pressure eased just a bit.

  Oh, holy fuck what was this?

  I felt a pressure against my mind.

  *Little warrior.*

  It was a fucking voice.

  In my head.

  In my total and utter shock, I almost screwed up completely—almost let go of the magic that made me invisible. At the very last second, right as my hands and feet were wavering into focus, I snapped myself together. Shit.

  *Be at ease, little warrior…. I mean you no harm. But do you want to live or not?*

  Well, that wasn’t a hard question. Living was good, in general.

  *Then stop panicking. For the love of all that’s holy, do not get any closer to the rats. And stay here.*

  Then, just that easy, that cool touch was gone.

  And so was the voice in my head.

  Stop panicking—that was good advice.

  Not getting closer to the rats—that sounded good, too.

  But staying here? No. Especially not as there were two slinking close, too close, their bodies a strange mix of human and rat. I drew my bow, notched an arrow. Aimed, released. The first one was barely on the ground and convulsing before I did the same to the second rat.

  Then I moved.

  All hell broke loose about the same time.

  None of the rats were sleeping now. Those who hadn’t changed were in the process, all save for the rat king.

  Eddie Avila was standing in the middle of the lair, his arms hanging loose at his sides and an icy look of rage on his narrow, handsome face.

  I knew Eddie.

  We both hated each other’s guts.

  If he suspected I was in here, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill Mandy.

  I had to do something before that happened.

  Planning—not my strong suit. I’d been taught sword fighting, hand-to-hand, and although I was nothing compared to the real aneira, I could fight. I just couldn’t form a plan of attack—they’d kicked me out before I’d gotten around to that part of my training.

  Please don’t let Mandy pay for my screw-ups. That’s all I wanted, right then. If I died, fine. But not the kid. Her life had already been hard enough.

  To focus their attention away from the girl, I started taking down rats at random.

  In between the fourth and the fifth, I felt that cold wrap around me again. *What part of “stay” did you not understand?*

  I didn’t know how to answer. If I just thought, would he hear me?

  *Yes.*

  I had the strangest sense that he sighed. I didn’t hear it, but I felt it.

  *Be grateful none of them can read minds, little warrior; otherwise, you would have died in the tunnel.*

  Great. A mind reader. I sighted on another shifter. Aimed. Before I could loose the arrow, the cold tightened—wrapping around me until I couldn’t have moved to save my life. Or Mandy’s. *Stop killing them. You’ve already taken out ten of his men—I’m going to have my hands full keeping Avila from killing you over that.*

  There’s a girl here. A human. If you know a damn thing about Avila, you know what will happen to her when the sun sets tonight. It’s a full moon.

  *I know. I received your message. And if you would have just waited a few hours…*

  He’d received my message?

  Who the hell…?

  But before I could finish that question, Eddie bellowed out, “Enough!”

  The power in his voice, the command, was enough to have every last one of his people cowering. They were bound to him, by blood, by oath. The madness and the fury I saw in his eyes might have been enough to make me cower if I hadn’t been so worried about Mandy.

  As he started to prowl the lair, his eyes paused here and there to linger on the bodies of the dead.

  That was when I realized the arrows were visible.

  And he recognized them, too.

  Eddie grabbed one and ripped it out of the chest of the dying man. The man screamed, but it was lost in the sound of Eddie’s roar. “You fucking cunt—where are you?”

  A cold trickle of sweat rolled down my back. What in the hell did I do now?

  The temperature in the lair bottomed out.

  The rats didn’t notice, but I sure as hell did. Trying not to let my teeth chatter, I found myself staring hypnotized at the space right in front of Eddie. The space that had been empty just a few seconds ago… but wasn’t now.

  Now it was filled with plumes of smoke.

  No, not smoke… mist. It was mist, and that mist was rapidly becoming man-shaped.

  A shape that now looked terribly, terribly familiar.

  The trickle of sweat rolling down my spine might as well have been a flood.

  If that was who I thought it was, I was so terribly fucked.

  Jude.

  I’d met him before, and there was no
mistaking him. He wore his pale blond hair pulled back into a short tail at the nape of his neck. His body was deceptively lean, and power hung around him like a cloak.

  The vampire master did not like being pulled into the politics of petty, lesser creatures. And compared to them, all creatures were petty and lesser… at least in the eyes of vampires.

  Yes, I’d put in a call to him, but it had been a last-ditch desperation sort of thing….

  Of course, I was desperate.

  “Hello, Eddie,” Jude said, his voice polite, friendly.

  Eddie, still holding one of my arrows in his fist, stared at Jude. Even from where I was standing, I could see how pissed he was. His eyes, normally brown, had gone black and beady—rat’s eyes. But when he spoke to Jude, his voice was almost as polite and cool as Jude’s.

  “Jude. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Jude cocked a blond brow. “I’ve got to say, that surprises me. You should have been expecting me, or the alphas from the shifter packs, at the very least. You have a guest here who shouldn’t be here. Not today, of all days.”

  If I were Eddie, I would have been shaking in my boots. But Eddie didn’t look worried. Didn’t even look disturbed. He gave Jude a toothy smile and said, “The girl came of her own free will. If she wants the bite, who am I to say no?”

  “She told you she wanted the bite?”

  “The bite. The fuck. We gave her that… and more…”

  Fury erupted through me. Too late, I realized that was what Eddie had been hoping for. But I didn’t think about that until I’d dropped my invisibility. “You child-raping son of a bitch,” I snarled as I shimmered into view.

  Eddie smiled in hot, feral satisfaction, but it only lasted a split second—the arrow I’d loosed right before I let myself be seen was now buried in his crotch.

  Rats lunged for me, and I braced myself for the impact.

  Two seconds later, hard arms came around me and I was airborne.

  *You little fool—he hasn’t touched her. He said that just to anger you.*

  “Well, it worked,” I snarled, struggling to free my hands.

  “Be still,” Jude said.

  “I need my hands,” I said. The rats were boiling too close to Mandy, and she was still sleeping in her drugged daze. Shit, what had she used?

  Eddie was screaming—all but howling down below us. I glanced up and saw that Jude had somehow found a perch, of sorts. He was gripping something that jutted from the ceiling—an iron pipe? I couldn’t tell. He didn’t seem at all concerned with my weight, or with the fact that we were dangling twenty feet in the air above the wererats. The rats were all but foaming at the mouth now.

  After tearing the arrow out of his crotch, Eddie dropped to the ground and curled into a ball. I have to say, the sight of it pleased me. A lot.

  “I’m going to gut you, you little cunt. I’m going to gut you for this,” he panted, glaring at me.

  I bared my teeth at him. “You’ve been saying that for years, sugar. Hasn’t happened yet.”

  Jude murmured, “Well, precious, unless you’ve put an arrow in his crotch before, he probably has new resolve. Now, help me out here and be quiet.”

  I felt the press of his mind again, and although it felt alien as hell, when he pushed inside my head, I let him. *How old is the girl?*

  Fifteen. She’s fifteen years old, and she has leukemia. Her boyfriend knows it, too, because her mother made damn sure to tell him.

  *Fifteen—*

  Suddenly, it was a whole lot colder in there.

  And we were on the floor. I don’t even remember how it happened. We were on the floor, and the guy who’d been lying by Mandy was suddenly flying through the air. I heard a sickening thud as his head struck the concrete wall. As he slid down, I caught sight of blood and other wet things, but I didn’t look too closely. If his brain hadn’t been completely scrambled he’d live, but if Jude decided to go after him, he might not want to.

  I wasn’t going to worry about the shifter, though. I was too busy worrying about the vampire in front of me.

  Suddenly, I was wishing fervently that I hadn’t called Jude.

  That pale, pale skin of his was glowing. So were his eyes. I don’t know what color his eyes normally were, but right now, they glowed red as hellfire and they were focused on Eddie. It seemed Eddie suddenly realized he had a much, much bigger problem than the arrow I’d put in his crotch. He would survive the poison, but he might not survive Jude.

  “That girl,” Jude said, his voice a low, silken drawl. “How old is she?”

  Eddie jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “What the fuck do I care? One of my rats wants to bring somebody to the party, they can. Pussy is pussy, right?”

  Jude bent down and grabbed Eddie by the throat. Eddie tore at his hands and snarled. As Jude lifted him, he started to shift. Jude grabbed Eddie’s crotch. Still using that same silken voice, he warned, “If you go rat on me, I rip it off. And if it happens while you’re in human form, we know it won’t grow back, boy. So… how hurt are you? Can you shift fast enough?”

  Eddie paled, and the black fur that had been creeping over his flesh started to recede. “Look, you got a problem with the girl being here, just take her. Take the girl, take the cunt, and go.”

  I stroked a hand down my bow. I was getting very tired of him calling me a cunt. But at the moment, I was too scared of Jude to say anything.

  I watched as Jude’s hand tightened around Eddie’s throat, tighter and tighter until his fingers actually penetrated the skin and Eddie’s blood flowed in red rivulets. “She’s fifteen, Eddie. Fifteen, and she has a disease.”

  From where I stood, I could see both Jude’s face, and Eddie’s. I watched as Jude closed his eyes, watched as he breathed deep. When he opened his eyes, they were still glowing, but there was a sadness there under the anger. “If you had bothered to look, just once, you would have known she was ill. If I can smell it in this vile pit you call a lair, then you would have smelled it as well.”

  Eddie gurgled out something, but the words were garbled, unintelligible. Disgusted, Jude dropped him to the ground.

  Thanks to the poison I’d pumped into him with my arrow, he was slow to heal, taking almost five minutes before he could speak. When he did speak, his voice was rasping and harsh as he said, “If she’s sick, it doesn’t matter to me. If she wants the bite, she wants the bite.”

  “Her being fifteen does matter, though.” Jude glanced at me, and then at the girl, who still slept. “I think I’m going to do the rest of us a favor and just challenge you. You’ve broken too many laws, and it’s time you were dealt with.”

  Yes. Were we finally going to be done with this piece of shit?

  The color leached out of Eddie’s face, but then he narrowed his eyes and looked at me. “Fine. But as the cunt killed ten of my men without provocation, she’s to face me first—her offense is more grievous than mine.”

  Well, fuck.

  I didn’t let that bastard see the fear curling through me. I put my bow away and drew my sword. The blade glinted in the dim light as I lazily spun it in the air. “Come on, rat-boy. Forget the challenge… we can dance here.”

  “Oh, no, cunt. I want this done right and proper—and when you’re on your hands and knees, begging for your life, I might let you have it—after I’ve made you my little cunt,” Eddie sneered.

  I barely saw Jude move. Then Eddie was peeling himself off the floor, staggering a bit. “We’ll renegotiate the terms.” Jude’s tone was bored, but his eyes were icy. He stared at me, all but daring me to say anything.

  Oh, I wouldn’t dare. He scared the shit out of me.

  Eddie, despite the blood pouring from a gash in his temple, smiled. “I’m not surprised, Jude. What are the new terms?”

  The amount of blood a shifter’s throat could put out was amazing. It painted a red arc across the dingy room. I was still gaping as Eddie’s body toppled to the side. His head was still attached, barely.

  But
his eyes… they were lifeless.

  “You die now.” Jude’s voice rang through the room with resounding finality. Blood splattered his face, but he didn’t seem to notice. “It seems easier, I think.”

  Shit. Holy shit.

  “I never did care for his attitude,” he murmured. At the sound of his voice, I tore my eyes away from the dead rat king and stared at the vampire.

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew a snowy white handkerchief, then wiped the blood from his face.

  Okay, so he had noticed the blood.

  I heard something snarling, hissing, somewhere near my feet.

  “Move over beside me, if you please,” Jude said, his voice still calm and level. Like we were talking about something trivial at afternoon tea.

  Staring at the center of his chest, I moved toward him. I could feel the hot, panting breaths of angry rats at my back. Big angry rats. The moment I was next to him, he shoved me behind him and started backing toward Mandy. “You’re a lot of trouble; do you know that, little warrior?”

  “I have a name,” I muttered.

  “Do you?”

  I curled my lip at him. Hell, we’d met four different times. It had been mandatory that we meet at least once. Since I wasn’t entirely human, I’d been forced to “announce” myself to the other nonmortals when I moved to Orlando. As the oldest being in the city, and certainly one of the most powerful, Jude was one of the unofficial people in charge.

  Yes, we’d met. And yes, he’d been told my name—I just wasn’t important enough for him to remember, I guess.

  And it was easier to think about that sort of thing than the fact that we had about nine shifters heading right for us. He could handle them. Mandy and I couldn’t.

  “So, little warrior, what is your name?”

  I frowned at his broad back. “It’s Kit.”

  “Can you lift the girl, Kit?”

  I could. As I was crouched down, I caught sight of the furry tide of death rolling closer and closer. Black, angry eyes stared at me.

  They all wanted me dead.

  “Yes, they do. But that’s too bloody bad for them,” Jude murmured. “Get the girl now, Kit.”