Fantasy For Good: A Charitable Anthology

by George R. R. Martin

  Most of my friends drank beer all through the game, even though the concessions overcharged for it. I mean, seven-fifty for one lousy bottle poured into a plastic cup! As the designated driver for myself, Angela, and Cody, I stayed sober. When I’m out and about, I need to keep control of myself at all times. In fact, I did my best to drink nothing, not even water, because even though a set of women’s restrooms were close by on the concourse above our section, I hated using them. When women fans drink too much, they forget to use the paper covers. They perch and they miss, if you know what I mean. Yuck!

  Valdez never drank booze. He did buy nachos now and then. I knew this only because Angela ran into him at the concession stand during the game against the San Diego team. She came hurrying back and handed Cody a basket of garlic fries before she slid into her seat next to me. Through her leopardish face-paint I could see her grinning.

  “Valdez asked me if you had a boyfriend,” she said.

  “I hope you told him no.”

  “I did. Hah! You’re interested in him, aren’t you?”

  “I am totally uninterested in any male companionship, as you well know.”

  She made a very rude snorting sound.

  “Or female companionship, either,” I went on. “My life’s too busy as it is.”

  “Oh yeah sure.” Cody leaned in front of her and breathed garlic in my direction. “Live a little, Rita!”

  I would have stuck my tongue out at him, but doing so would have smeared my make-up, so I didn’t. “I hope,” I said to Angela, “that you didn’t tell that guy my name.”

  “Of course not.” But she was grinning. “None of my business.”

  After that little incident, I tried to refrain from looking in Valdez’s direction. But you know how it is. Try not to look at someone or something and your eyes wander that way before you can stop them. Most times when I slipped up I found him looking back. This little glance dance went on for two full home games while the ‘Pards slowly, ever so slowly, improved out on the field. Not that they won a game, mind. They did come close once, only to lose in overtime when our kicker missed an easy field goal.

  Finally, in late November the Leopards were slated to play on Thursday night, an inconvenient time, but that dedicated football channel had promised them a televised game to help generate interest. Thanks to that, the team sold a bunch of walk-up tickets. Everyone in Los Angeles wants to be on TV, even if it’s only in a thirty-second shot of the fans at a football game. Our section with all the costumes figured to be a camera target. For a change, there were no empty seats. Valdez took his usual place on the aisle.

  That night the ‘Pards played a team even lamer than they were, the Ospreys, let us call them, from way up north. On the very first play, when the Leopards kicked off, the Osprey return man muffed the catch. One of our guys scooped up the ball and ran for the end zone. He reached it without fumbling. Were our fortunes were turning for the better? I felt a flash of hope. When our defense forced the Ospreys to go three and out on the next possession, the flash turned into a spark. We scored a touchdown as soon as we got the ball back. The spark became a blaze within my fannish soul.

  It wasn’t until late in the game that I realized I was in deep trouble. The ‘Pards were leading the Ospreys by two touches and a field goal by then. Cody leaned over in front of Angela and yelled, “Feathers all over the field!”

  “Yes!” I yelled back. “Yes!”

  The crowd around us was screaming and roaring too loudly for eloquence. The stadium glowed with light, while overhead and all around, the dark night ruled, as if we were a pocket universe, sealed away from all the troubles on Earth. I felt myself part of a pack, a glorious troop of fans, swaying, chanting, exulting while out on the field our warriors fought on. I’d like to say they fought on brilliantly, but at the beginning of the fourth quarter they began to blow it. The defense must have been overtired, poor babies, because the damned Ospreys scored one touchdown on an interception, and then another by running the ball into and through our porous secondary. Our lead shrank to three. The screams around me changed to agony. I joined in.

  By then I was sweating in rivulets. I ached all over and felt hot pain in my knees, hips, and shoulders. My joints were beginning to soften. I felt my body swelling, perceived the telltale itching that signaled fur trying to grow along my arms and down my back. Oh Goddess no! I thought. Be calm, Rita, be calm! It’s just a game. You can’t change here! Just a game, just a game!

  Out on the field, the Ospreys were kicking off. Our return man caught the ball and swerved, dodged, ran down the field in a brilliant series of moves. He made it to Ospreys’ thirty-two before their defense finally brought him down. I yelled and rose from my seat to dance because the itching had reached my butt.

  I took deep breaths. I thought of beautiful meadows with views of mountains. Didn’t work. I could feel my body thickening through the middle, pressing against the fabric of my dress. If the muscle mass kept building up, I’d strangle in my underwear. I handed Angela my beaded bag and yelled, “Got to go to the restroom!” She nodded and tucked the bag under her armor’s breastplate while she kept staring out at the field. I sidled my way past the other fans to the aisle and ran up the concrete steps. The muscles in my legs had grown, turned strong and fierce. I bounded up those stairs. I wanted to drool. I wanted to tear off my clothing right there and then.

  Fortunately, I made it to the restroom first. Equally fortunately, no one else was using it. I ducked into a stall and disrobed barely in time. My fingernails were turning into proper claws, which made rolling up my clothes difficult. I managed to open the door and puddle-jump out to the wash-up area of the restroom. On the wall above a paper towel dispenser hung a small shelf. I reached up with one aching arm and laid the wad of clothes upon it. I prayed to Bast and Sekhmet that no one found it and took it away.

  From outside I could hear cheering. Had the ‘Pards scored? Excitement overwhelmed me in an icy wave. I changed. A glance in the mirror showed me a female leopard tottering on her hind legs with no trace of ape girl visible. I threw back my head and roared. At the sound my human self receded to a little pool of consciousness floating on pure leopard mind. I dropped to all fours. She, the leopard, wanted to run. I ran, and my human nature became a tiny jockey clinging to the back of a powerful animal.

  I raced out of the restroom onto the concourse, a concrete walkway that curved around that level of the stadium. As we galloped past a gaggle of male fans, they yelled in drunken appreciation. “Go, go, yeah, that’s the way, girl!” They frightened her, the leopard. She bounded into the air, dropped again, ran a few steps, and looked wildly around. She raced for a yawning opening in the wall. Stairs down—she roared and flung herself onto the stairway, bounded and leapt and ran down the stairs between two sections of seats. At first no one noticed, but when she—when we—reached the lowest rank of seats, someone screamed.

  “It’s real!” A high-pitched voice floated over the crowd. “Leopard! Help! A real leopard!”

  Screaming hurt her ears. Concrete hurt her paws. Ahead lay a green field of grass. My human mind was yelling, no no no, but she didn’t listen. She rarely does. She ran for the railing, leapt over with no thought for the drop, landed on the wounded-warrior motorized cart, bounced off that, and ran onto the field. Osprey men in white jerseys were racing around, yelling numbers, tossing the brown leather ball that smelled of oil and dead animal. The leopard saw it as a streak of prey flying through the air. She dodged in front of their wide receiver and leapt straight up. Her fangs sank into the ball with a satisfying hiss of air. She landed on all fours just as the yells and screaming broke out in earnest. Some of the noise spoke of terror, but some of it cheered for us.

  For those brief moments I knew how it felt to play. At last I had achieved oneness with my team! The leopard saw burly men in various colored shirts running away from her. She chased them, caught up with them, dodged in and around the fleeing bodies. Two men, huge apes in her eyes
, grabbed at her prey as she raced by. She twisted and leapt and dodged. They missed. We galloped into the endzone to the sound of cheering and hysterical laughter from end zone fans too drunk to know better. “Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown!”

  That’s when I saw policemen, rushing toward us with drawn guns.

  Is this is where I die? Oh shit!

  My human desperation plus the leopard’s sudden fear forced her to obey. Drop the damn ball! She shook her head and threw the crumpled leather right at the pair of cops. Back to the stands! She spun around and ran with the few players still on the field. Under their involuntary cover we angled back across the grass and reached the ‘Pard’s sideline before the cops got a chance to shoot. Players, refs, coaches, TV personnel—they were dashing around, yelling, waving their arms in a total panic that made it far too dangerous for the cops to fire, though I suppose that if they’d shot that lousy QB by mistake, no one would have cared much. We plunged in among the men, knocked over a bench, hit the tub of Gatorade, and with that icy shower got free of the chaos at last. Once again the leopard leapt up on the motorized cart and from there bounded onto the stairs.

  The fans in the aisle seats screamed and jumped up, sidled and shoved themselves toward the middle of their sections, but the leopard never noticed or cared. By then she was growing tired, foaming at the mouth, panting, clambering rather bounding up the painful concrete. At last we reached the top of the tier. With a last growl for strength, she lunged into the opening and made it to the walkway. We trotted, gasping for breath, back to the restroom. Just a couple of yards away from the door, the bitch deserted me. I fell forward onto the concrete as a naked woman.

  As I scrambled to my feet, I heard bullhorns shouting alarms and commands. A gaggle of security guards jogged around the curve and started forward. From behind them a big cat roared. I couldn’t see it, but the sound echoed off the concrete. The guards turned and ran back in that direction. I stumbled into the restroom. I was sweating, exhausted, aching in every muscle. A foul taste filled my mouth from the football—leather, oil, and sweat. My make-up had run into nasty gray streaks on my neck and between my breasts.

  My clothes, thank the Fur Goddesses, lay where I’d stashed them. Before I touched them, I washed my face and moistened a wad of paper towels. With trembling hands I wiped the sweat and dead make-up off my body. I heard male voices just outside and grabbed my clothes. I dressed in a hurry, then limped out to face a pair of security guards.

  “Are you all right, miss?” the portly guy said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “What’s going on? I heard all this screaming, so I was afraid to come out.”

  “There was a wild animal on the loose, a leopard. A really stupid move on the team’s part, if you ask me. Maybe a mascot broke out of its cage. Or a prank got way out of hand.”

  I gasped in pretend terror. “It is gone?”

  “We don’t know for sure yet, but we think it’s escaped from the stadium. Go back to your seat. That’s probably the safest place to be. The game’s been called.”

  “Damn! And we were winning!”

  Both guards laughed. “That’s a true fan for you,” the skinny one said. “A real true fan.”

  Little did he know!

  I staggered back along the walkway toward our section. At the head of the stairs I saw Valdez. He was leaning against the wall, waiting for me with just the slightest trace of a smile on his face, a little curve of his lips like a cat’s. That’s when I first suspected the truth, not that it took him long to confirm it. He came to meet me and offered me his arm for support. I needed the help badly enough to take it.

  “Tell me something,” he said, “how do you feel about jaguars?”

  “Wonderful animals. Why?”

  “Huh, like you don’t know!”

  I stared. He grinned.

  “We’ve both got rosettes,” he said, “and a common ancestor.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know to what you are referring.”

  His grin deepened. “You put that dress on backwards. After you got done changing. And yeah, I do mean changing.”

  Damn! I looked down at the neckline and saw the tag sticking out. With my free hand I tucked it back in.

  “Was it you who roared when I changed back?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t want those guards to see you.” He gazed into my eyes. “For weeks now I’ve been smelling leopard every time you walked past me. It’s been driving me wild.”

  As pick-up lines go, this one stank as badly as my alternate nature, but how often was I going to meet a were-jaguar, much less get to date one? If things got really exciting between us, no longer would I have to worry about losing control. If I changed, he’d just do the same. I smiled.

  “Tell me more,” I said.

  “You’re so beautiful when you run,” Valdez went on. “It took every bit of will power I’ve got to keep myself from changing and joining you.”

  I sighed. Deeply. “What’s your first name?” I said. “Mine’s Rita.”

  “Esteban, but call me Steve.”

  So I did.

  I still do, actually. Now that the Leopards are playing well, we no longer go to the home games—too exciting for both of us. The management got into enough trouble with the league as it was, thanks to my escapade. The Commissioner investigated, ruminated, and pontificated, but no one could ever prove that the team had let a wild leopard loose on the field—or a tame one, either, since of course no one ever found the actual big cat. I would have apologized, but how could I? I would have ended up in a locked psycho ward somewhere, for sure, if not the zoo.

  Angela approves of my new boyfriend, by the way, not that she knows why things developed so fast between us. Steve and I see our friends at other times than the home games, so we’re not missing all the fun. Besides, the TV football coverage has close-ups. We can see all the details as we lounge, side by side, paw to paw, on the sofa in our new apartment.

  JACKIE KESSLER is the American author of the Hell on Earth urban fantasy series and is the co-author (with Caitlin Kittredge) of the Icarus Project superhero novels. She’s had numerous short stories published in various magazines, including Realms of Fantasy and Farthing, and she contributed a story for Dark Horse Comic’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer series. As Jackie Morse Kessler, she’s penned four young adult novels in the Riders of the Apocalypse series and a traditional fantasy novel, To Bear An Iron Key.

  Her website is www.jackiekessler.com and she can be found on Twitter: @jackiekessler

  Undying Love

  Jackie Kessler

  The thing about demons? They’re tricky. They lie, they cheat, they ignore any rules that no one’s strong enough to enforce. And they’re unpredictable, except for one thing: they’ll always be true to their nature. No matter what, demons are evil. They can’t help it; it’s how they’re made.

  I should know. I’d been a demon for more than four thousand years. (Currently, I’m human. Well, humanish. It’s complicated.)

  It didn’t surprise me that a demon was lurking in the alley that I passed. Lurking goes with the nefarious territory. I caught a whiff of brimstone, felt that old familiar pang of homesickness, and paused in my stride just long enough to make eye contact. First glance showed me a man in his thirties, more sexy than handsome and putting out serious “Come hither” vibes. Then his aura flared darkly, and I knew the truth of it: he was a vampire, a minor entity at best, barely qualifying as a creature of Hell.

  I smiled. “Dare you to try it.”

  He blinked, then shrank back, hissing. I’d spooked him—all sixty-four inches and one hundred-ten pounds of me.

  Heh.

  Chuckling, I said, “Slink away, sweetie.”

  He slunk away.

  I grinned as I kept walking. A stronger creature would have attacked me on the dare alone; no demon worth its ichor lets a direct challenge pass. But all the vampire had done was spit and cower. Back when I first began hunting demons that entered my territory, I would have
summoned my sword and carved him like a Thanksgiving turkey. But I’d mellowed over the past year. The vampire wasn’t a threat; therefore, he wasn’t worth my time. So I let him go.

  That’s the thing I’d remember, after all was said and done: I let him go.

  Five minutes later, I was in my favorite café, seated at the counter and making yummy sounds as I ate a slice of chocolate cream pie with extra whipped cream. Only a few patrons were in the café this time of night, and I didn’t give a damn if they noticed my foodgasm. Some said that chocolate was heavenly. Me, I considered it one of my favorite sins.

  Behind the counter, Holly gazed at my plate and shook her head, setting her large silver cat’s face earrings to bob back and forth. “I swear, Jesse, if I ate pie five nights a week like you, I’d be big as a house.”

  “You’re pregnant,” I said, pointing my chin at her baby bump. “You can eat whatever you want.”

  “This little guy only gets healthy food.” She affectionately patted her belly. In a squeak that made her sound like a cartoon chipmunk, she said, “Isn’t that right, Honey Bear? You’re gonna be big and strong, and that won’t happen on crap food, will it? No, it won’t!”

  “Yet another reason I’m grateful I’m not reproducing,” I said around a mouthful of pie. “I thrive on crap food.”

  “I don’t know how you do it,” she said, talking to me again in her normal voice. “You’ve been coming here, what, six months now? And you haven’t gained an ounce. How do you keep your figure?”

  “Eh, I teach dance lessons.”

  “Tango, Fox Trot, that sort of thing?”

  “That too.” Most of my clients were into the pole variety. First lesson tended to focus on walking in five-inch platform heels.

  “Sounds fun!”

  “It can be. Plus, I run.” Chasing after demons burns lots of calories. “And a few nights a week, I take sword lessons.”

  Her eyebrows flew up. “Sword lessons? You training to be a samurai?”