Stamps, Vamps & Tramps (A Three Little Words Anthology)

by Rachel Caine

  When Adriana stepped out of the car wearing her short-shorts and Calla-the-Snake coiled around her neck, every male gaze in the parking lot snapped to her, and the girls weren’t exactly ignoring her either. It was like something out of a music video. Emily and I might as well have been invisible behind her, which was annoying when we tried to pay to get in, but once we were inside, it worked out exactly how we wanted.

  “Have you ever tried talking to her about the way she dresses?” Emily whispered to me as we slipped behind the amphitheater where the bands played on weekend nights.

  Really? Now? “It’s not my business.”

  “Yeah, but she seems to look at you as a mother figure.”

  “It’s still not my business. She can have her fun.”

  “It seems like people might get the wrong idea, though. I did.”

  “Your idea. Your problem.”

  She looked like she wanted to say more, but I’d spotted the trap door right where Calla had said it would be. It was a little rusty, and it shrieked when I opened it—no, that was whoever had been caught in a shaft of sunlight and turned to ash as I lifted the door away. According to Calla, there were plenty of weak little minor vampires like that hanging around, but they wouldn’t really be a problem so long as we hit them with sunlight or silver. It was the Overlord we were after. And with any luck he wouldn’t be in.

  I’d put on every ring I owned, and borrowed Adriana’s big chunky death heads and poison rings as well. All Emily had was her silver Star of David pendant. But she jumped out in front of me as the next vampire approached, a strange creature that looked like a long-dead Don Knotts, and swung the pendant in his face even as he tried to lean in at her. She was pissed. She let out a little yell when the vampire crumbled and punched the air, and this unexpected side of her distracted me until it was almost too late—another rat-faced vampire was coming at me from the left. I clipped him across the ear.

  Once we got the hang of it, it was like we were in a video game, mowing down stooped corpse-looking things. I kept an eye on that shaft of sunlight, though. Calla and Adriana were supposed to join us as soon as they could, and I didn’t like the thought that maybe they couldn’t.

  We made our way to the main room, huge and full of old books and papers and an incongruous fish tank full of plecos along the back wall. The other walls were lined with doors, which I wasn’t very happy about.

  “How do we check all of these without exposing our backs?” Emily asked, echoing my thoughts.

  “I’ll check. You cover me. It’ll take a while”—I thought about Calla’s reassurance that we’d recognize the heart as “something odd,” which didn’t seem at all helpful—“but these guys aren’t so tough. If more show up, we can handle it.” I didn’t say anything about what we’d do if the big boss showed up before Calla and Adriana did, because I had no plan for that.

  “No.” She looked over at me, and I must have frowned, because her voice got more insistent. “I have some range with this pendant. And I’ve studied jiu-jitsu. I should take point.”

  I wanted to argue, but I had to hand it to her. She really did love Scott. Also, she had scored more vampire kills than I had in the corridor.

  Emily opened the first door to the right. It was your basic walk-in closet out of an episode of Hoarders—filled with a pile of tangled scarves and jackets, ball caps and single shoes. A cheap promise ring fell out and rolled towards us, but it didn’t look odd at all, it was one just like all the churchy girls in high school wore. It would have been funny if the whole heap hadn’t smelled like rotten meat.

  Emily looked back at me, grimacing. “Do we have to dig through all of this? Forget vampires, we’ll die from the stench.”

  “It can’t be buried in there if he’s getting it out every time he kills someone. Try the next one.” She shut the door in a hurry, and I was glad, because I thought I’d seen the brim of a familiar hat—the one I’d given Cody for Christmas two years ago.

  The next door was more of the same, and the next. When I spotted the singed sleeve of Eric Anderson’s old Grateful Dead hoodie, I started not looking into the closets at all.

  As Emily opened the sixth door, I heard a noise behind me and spun. Adriana caught my fist without any trouble. Grandma’s cane made for good practice.

  “Where’s Calla?”

  “Still being a distraction. Half the park employees seem to be keyed in specifically to keep her from getting here, like they’re programmed or something. So I dropped her and she turned back into a human to lead them away.” She rubbed her neck wearily. “She’s heavy.”

  “That’s funny,” someone drawled. “You’d think that with all the time she’d been locked away, she would have lost some weight.”

  The redheaded man had gotten between us and the exit in the brief time that I’d been focused on Adriana. I raised my hands but I knew that silver wasn’t going to cut it here.

  “Where’s Scott?” Emily asked. As if that was going to help.

  “The fellow I grabbed from the parking lot? I’m still working out what kind of accident he’s going to have when I’m done with him. I’ve gotten bored with traffic and fires, and we’ve already had a nice dramatic beheading this season. As I’m sure you remember,” he said, turning to Adriana. I was afraid for a second that she’d jump him right there and get killed. If she did, I would too.

  While he was busy being an asshole, I scanned the room. He wasn’t actually paying a lot of attention to us—I’d noticed that with Calla, too: that when she started talking, she sort of got lost in her own voice. He’d even shifted so he wasn’t between me and the door any longer.

  If we made a run for it, though, he’d catch us in a second. And we wouldn’t get what we’d come for. Either of the things we’d come for.

  “I suppose with so many of you I could make it look like a serial killer is on the loose. That would really stir up the local yokels. Your fear and anger are better than your blood, you know. Even when those stupid rides actually do malfunction, it’s all to my benefit.” He laughed. “Do you remember that fellow with no legs who insisted on riding the log flume and fell out and drowned last summer? Lap bars don’t work without legs, you see. Entirely his fault and none of my doing, but it was delicious.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” I wasn’t sure that Emily was trying to keep him talking on purpose, but I had to admit, she’d hit on an excellent question.

  “Oh, since I locked Calla away, there’s basically no one to talk to, and I’m so bored. I’d hoped to take over a real city, you know, or at least someplace interesting. Now I’m stuck here. One grows weary of bottling it all up.”

  I did not, by any means, want to feel like I could relate to this vampiric asshole. I just wanted to find the damn heart. Was anything odd? Aside from a vampire keeping tropical fish in an otherwise ridiculously gothic lair?

  “Honestly. I mean, why do you think someone two hundred years old is still going to places like the Alligator Bar and Grill to play mind games with tawdry, gum-chomping waitresses? Is that the behavior of a man who’s satisfied with his life?” I slipped my heaviest ring from my hand. Then I glanced across at Adriana and saw how tight her fists were clenched.

  “Have you tried deep breathing exercises?” I asked him. “They really do help.”

  “I don’t breathe anymore,” he said, deadpan.

  “My bad.” I tried to make it sound like what Adriana would have called a sick burn, but it didn’t seem to help.

  “But back to the subject at hand, yes, I think serial killer for you three. Well, you two. I can’t really feed on you thanks to your stupid tattoo,” he said to Adriana. “And I won’t get much out of your new friend since she’s not from around here. In fact, you’re all going to die, but Miss Deep Breathing here is the only one who is going to be at all satisfactory.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said, and hurled my heaviest ring at the glass of the tank.

  It barely cracked. The vampire laughed. “
You small-town girls with your tempers! It’s like my own private Jerry Springer set.”

  I watched the crack. If it was as full as it looked… yes. It began to get bigger. Dickhead vampire would have noticed if he hadn’t still been laughing.

  I pulled off another ring. He saw that, and the laughter stopped, but by the second throw it was too late—the new crack joined the widening one and the entire front shattered. Fish and water and gravel spilled out on the floor, a plastic castle, a bunch of plants.

  One of the fish looked… odd.

  If I was frustrated with Calla for that description, I couldn’t be any more. My first impression was that it was an albino, but it was the same color as all the others. It was the same size, the same basic shape. It flopped the same, only perhaps a bit less randomly, a bit more in the direction of the vampire.

  I didn’t have time to analyze much more than that. I grabbed the fish, squeezed it with my ring-clad hand. The redheaded man lurched towards me, but Adriana grabbed him long enough for me to really clamp down. His face went somehow even paler, and he began to pant.

  Emily squeaked and turned her eyes away. I kept telling myself it wasn’t a real fish. That was the part I felt bad about.

  When the fish stopped squirming, so did the vampire. And that was around the time that Calla strolled in.

  “Everyone trying to stop me from getting here suddenly dropped their guard and looked confused. I figured you’d found it.”

  I held out the dead fish to her. As she held it in her palm it transformed back into a heart, oozy and deep red. She dropped it to the floor and squashed it beneath her shoe.

  “Excellent,” she said. “And now, to look over the papers and see what I’ve just become overlord of.”

  “Like Hell,” Emily said. “Like Hell you get away with that.” She held up a bug, like a cicada before it molted but huge and pale. “His isn’t the only heart that’s breakable. I found this at the foot of your tree.”

  Calla frowned and reached out her hand. “Come on now. Don’t be silly.”

  “Why should we let you wreck people’s lives any more than we let him?”

  “Because if it’s not me, it’ll be some other vampire in a few months. Towns like this draw us. I mean, I’m sure he gave you a good line of talk about how in charge he was, but let’s face it, no one could work up a level of slow carnage and popular indifference to all the accidents if there wasn’t a pre-existing curse.”

  “That’s such a load of crap.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure it’s true.” Emily wasn’t looking at me, and it was easy to snatch the bug from her hand. She looked at me as though she’d been betrayed, but I had other things on my mind.

  “He said he wouldn’t get much good out of Adriana because of the tattoo. What did that mean?”

  “Well, just that she’s one of mine now.” Calla smiled. “He knew what the tree meant, of course, but even with vampires I’ve never met it should serve as pretty good protection from now on. Because I could always talk to and through anyone near the tree, and now she’s always near the tree.”

  “One of yours to protect. Not to eat yourself.” Please say yes, because otherwise I just made the biggest mistake of my life.

  “Of course not! That would be like eating your poor dog.”

  I looked down at the bug in my hand. It was chitinous and yellow and gross enough that I really would have wanted to squash it even if I hadn’t known what it was.

  “Just one more thing, then. Where’s Scott?” I stared at Emily. She stared back, but she didn’t say anything or move towards me.

  “Probably tied up in one of these closets.” Emily hesitated a moment longer, shrugged, and started opening doors again. The smell billowed out, and Adriana gagged.

  “So. Never fuck with my family.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Look out for them?”

  “Of course.”

  “And if you get so bored that you start wanting to turn serial killers and things loose, just call me to chat or something.”

  Calla nodded. I crossed the room and handed her the bug back.

  She smiled. I could see the tips of fangs, but it looked genuine.

  Scott recovered fast enough to start complaining about losing his deposit at Angelica Blue by the end of the night. I had a feeling when I watched him and Emily drive away that she’d never, ever be spending any holidays at his folks’ place.

  Adriana looked at the back of my head as I watched them go, until I had to turn around and talk to her. “We didn’t lift the curse,” she said. “We’re not heroes.”

  “Of course not. But we made things a little better for everyone. And a lot better for us.”

  “Do you think she’ll actually call you, ever?”

  “I think so. Vampires seem chatty.” I didn’t want to admit, even to Adriana, how much I hoped she would.

  “Well…” Adriana shrugged. “We did avenge Cody.” She was holding the hat that we’d retrieved from the closet—it still stank, but out here in the open air it didn’t seem so bad. “So there’s that.”

  “There is that.” I put my arm around her. We didn’t say anything else as we walked to the back forty.

  It wasn’t much of a ceremony—I would have felt goofy about that, and we’d already gotten through one funeral—but I stood with Adriana as she flung Cody’s hat high into the lightning tree, to catch on a snag. We leaned Grandma’s second-best cane against the trunk, too, just in case it might help. One of Adriana’s hemp necklaces, an old pair of my glasses, a letter from Mom. I even added a lock of Ronin’s fur that I’d saved.

  Then, as we watched, the black-and-white woodpecker landed on the tree. After a moment, a second bird joined him.

  FOLLOW ME

  By Christine Morgan

  Cool blew the breeze from the wine-dark sea. Rosy-fingered Dawn touched her fingers to the sky. In Piraeus, port of Athens, the marketplace awoke.

  This was the great agora, the city’s bustling heart. Here, shopkeepers displayed their wares and artists hawked their trade. Here, priests, poets, and politicians orated, displaying their wares and hawking their trades as well.

  As did the prostitutes, Euterpe among them, though morning was not the best time for their particular business.

  In the early hours, men were more concerned with commerce. Once they’d made their money, they’d be more eager to spend it. Conversely, those who’d done poorly in their dealings would seek solace to forget.

  She walked nonetheless, walked through lines of sun and shadow in the marble colonnade. She smiled. She cast sidelong looks from beneath half-lowered lashes. She arched her long swan’s throat and swayed her hips.

  Her hair, tinted henna-red, piled high and pinned, let a few loose-coiled locks dangle to her bare arms. A fine linen chiton, held at one shoulder by a bronze and coral brooch, fell in drapes and folds that caressed her body, low-girdled with a cord. She’d dusted her face with white lead powder, and outlined her eyes with ink. Her lips and cheeks were mulberry-stained. So too were her nipples; they pressed against the cloth, sheer enough to offer tantalizing glimpses.

  Cleverest of all, however, were her sandals, which had inverted lettering embossed deep into each leather sole. Whenever she gained a likely customer’s attention, she made sure to place her steps with deliberate care. In loose dirt, sand, soft soil, or wet clay, the soles left clear impressions.

  Follow me, invited the message stamped into the earth by her right footprint.

  Lotus Street, directed the message of her left sandal’s sole.

  And, upon the heel of each print, was marked her name. Euterpe.

  This meant that many of her customers would be literate, therefore more learned… and therefore, usually, wealthier, and better able to afford her services. They could follow her close-on if the trail was recent enough, before blown dust or the passage of others obscured her steps. If not, they would know where to find her, or ask after her by name, when t
hey had time for a moment’s diversion.

  So, she walked, leaving her line of stamped footprints, her message repeated over and over. Follow me.

  The agora filled more and more with voices—haggling, laughter, shouting; poetry and speeches—and activity. Scraps of news and rumor flew about like dry leaves, growing greater as they went. Sickness on Mud Street became a plague scare, beggars dropping like flies and the whole city in danger. The mention of a Peloponnesian ship turned into the imminent threat of invasion and war. Yet more tragic cradle-deaths couldn’t be mere coincidence, but had to be proof of a murderous mother-cult. Rain was likely… no, a spell of bad weather… a storm… a flood that would wash waves to the very steps of the Acropolis.

  Three ragged children, working as a team, stole eggs one after another from the baskets of a woman who chased them angrily back and forth. A bearded old man in a loincloth stood on a woven mat, waving his scrawny brown arms, raving that a curse was upon them, the strixoi were coming, and the end times was near. The dispute between a dung-cart’s driver and that of a hay-cart came to blows, prompting spectators to gather and wager and cheer.

  Just another day at the agora. People of Piraeus, people from great Athens, travelers from around the Aegean and across the Mediterranean, from Egypt and Phoenicia, from Byzantium and Gaul… people of all kinds and colors made the crowds grow steadily thicker.

  Euterpe and the other prostitutes, in their distinctive cosmetics—garish, one poet had mocked, probably after finding himself too poor to afford or too impotent to enjoy their services—drew considerable attention.

  Some glanced, some gazed approvingly, some glared with approbation as the women passed. Most of the glares came from other women, free but poor, plain but hardworking. They were the wives or servants of merchants and fishermen, farmers and potters. Those who stole surreptitious glances were, more often than not, those selfsame women’s husbands.

  Many of those good wives and daughters of Athens might have switched places with her in a heartbeat, though few of them would admit it.