“My job,” they said—also simultaneously.
“What?” (Again in chorus).
“This is all a very amusing study in synchronicity,” said Andre, crouching just behind Harrison, bowler tipped and sword from his umbrella out and ready, “but I suggest you both pay attention to that most boorish party-crasher over there—”
Something very large occluded the light for a moment in the next room, then the lights went out, and Di distinctly heard the sound of the chandelier being torn from the ceiling and thrown against the wall. She winced.
There go my dues up again.
“I got a glimpse,” Andre continued. “It was very large, perhaps ten feet tall, and—cherie, looked like nothing so much as a rubber creature from a very bad movie. Except that I do not think it was rubber.”
At just that moment, there was a thrashing from the other room, and Valentine Vervain, long red hair liberally beslimed, minus nine-foot train and one of her sleeves, scrambled through the door and plastered herself against the wall, where she promptly passed out.
“Valentine?” Di murmured—and snapped her head towards Harrison when he moaned—“Oh no,” in a way that made her sure he knew something.
“Harrison!” she snapped. “Cough it up!”
There was a sound of things breaking in the other room, as if something was fumbling around in the dark, picking up whatever it encountered, and smashing it in frustration.
“Valentine—she said something about getting some of her ‘friends’ together tonight and ‘calling up her soul-mate’ so she could ‘show that ex of hers.’ I gather he appeared at the divorce hearing with a twenty-one-year-old blonde.” Harrison gulped. “I figured she was just blowing it off—I never thought she had any power—”
“You’d be amazed what anger will do,” Di replied grimly, keeping her eyes on the darkened doorway. “Sometimes it even transcends a total lack of talent. Put that together with the time of year—All Hallow’s E’en—Samhain—is tomorrow. The Wall Between the Worlds is especially thin, and power flows are heavy right now. That’s a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one.”
“And here comes M’sieur Soul-Mate,” said Andre, warningly.
What shambled in through the door was nothing that Di had ever heard of. It was, indeed, about ten feet tall. It was a very dark brown. It was covered with luxuriant brown hair—all over. Otherwise, it was nude. If there were any eyes, the hair hid them completely. It was built something along the lines of a powerful body-builder, taken to exaggerated lengths, and it drooled. It also stank, a combination of sulfur and musk so strong it would have brought tears to the eyes of a skunk.
“Wah-wen-ine!” it bawled, waving its arms around, as if it were blind. “Wah-wen-ine!”
“Oh goddess,” Di groaned, putting two and two together and coming up with—she called a soul-mate, and specified parameters. But she forgot to specify “human.” “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
The other writer nodded. “Tall, check. Dark, check. Long hair, check. Handsome—well, I suppose in some circles.” Harrison stared at the thing in fascination.
“Some—thing—that will accept her completely as she is, and love her completely. Young, sure, he can’t be more than five minutes old.” Di watched the thing fumble for the doorframe and cling to it. “Look at that, he can’t see. So love is blind. Strong and as masculine as you can get. And not too bright, which I bet she also specified. Oh, my ears and whiskers.”
Valentine came to, saw the thing, and screamed.
“Wah-wen-ine!” it howled, and lunged for her. Reflexively, Di and Harrison both shot. He emptied his cylinder, and one speed-loader; Di gave up after four shots, when it was obvious they were hitting the thing, to no effect.
Valentine scrambled on hands and knees over the carpet, still screaming—but crawling in the wrong direction, towards the balcony, not the door.
“Merde!” Andre flung himself between the creature’s clutching hands and its summoner, before Di could do anything.
And before Di could react to that, the thing backhanded Andre into a wall hard enough to put him through the plasterboard.
Valentine passed out again. Andre was already out for the count. There are some things even a vampire has a little trouble recovering from.
“Jesus!” Harrison was on his feet, fumbling for something in his pocket. Di joined him, holstering the Glock, and grabbed his arm.
“Harrison, distract it, make a noise, anything!” She pulled the atheme from her boot sheath and began cutting Sigils in the air with it, getting the Words of Dismissal out as fast as she could without slurring the syllables.
Harrison didn’t even hesitate; he grabbed a couple of tin serving trays from the coffee table, shook off their contents, and banged them together.
The thing turned its head toward him, its hands just inches away from its goal. “Wah-wen-ine?” it said.
Harrison banged the trays again. It lunged toward the sound. It was a lot faster than Di had thought it was.
Evidently Harrison made the same error in judgment. It missed him by inches, and he scrambled out of the way by the width of a hair, just as Di concluded the Ritual of Dismissal.
To no effect.
“Hurry up, will you?” Harrison yelped, as the thing threw the couch into the wall and lunged again.
“I’m trying!” she replied through clenched teeth—though not loud enough to distract the thing, which had concluded either (a) Harrison was Valentine or (b) Harrison was keeping it from Valentine. Whichever, it had gone from wailing Valentine’s name to simply wailing, and lunging after Harrison, who was dodging with commendable agility in a man of middle age.
Of course, he has a lot of incentive.
She tried three more dismissals, still with no effect, the room was trashed, and Harrison was getting winded, and running out of heavy, expensive things to throw. . . .
And the only thing she could think of was the “incantation” she used—as a joke—to make the stoplights change in her favor.
Oh hell—a cockamamie incantation pulled it up—
“By the Seven Rings of Zsa Zsa Gabor and the Rock of Elizabeth Taylor I command thee!” she shouted, stepping between the thing and Harrison (who was beginning to stumble). “By the Six Wives of Eddie Fisher and the Words of Karnak the Great I compel thee! Freeze, buddy!”
Power rose, through her, crested over her—and hit the thing. And the thing—stopped. It whimpered, and struggled a little against invisible bonds, but seemed unable to move.
Harrison dropped to the carpet, right on top of a spill of guacamole and ground-in tortilla chips, whimpering a little himself.
I have to get rid of this thing, quick, before it breaks the compulsion— She closed her eyes and trusted to instinct, and shouted the first thing that came into her mind. The Parking Ritual, with one change. . . .
“Great Squat, send him to a spot, and I’ll send you three nuns—”
Mage-energies raged through the room, whirling about her, invisible, intangible to eyes and ears, but she felt them. She was the heart of the whirlwind, she and the other—
There was a pop of displaced air; she opened her eyes to see that the creature was gone—but the mage-energies continued to whirl—faster—
“Je-sus,” said Harrison, “How did you—”
She waved him frantically to silence as the energies sensed his presence and began to circle in on him.
“Great Squat, thanks for the spot!” she yelled desperately, trying to complete the incantation before Harrison could be pulled in. “Your nuns are in the mail!”
The energies swirled up and away, satisfied. Andre groaned, stirred, and began extracting himself from the powdered sheetrock wall. Harrison stumbled over to give him a hand.
Just as someone pounded on the outer door of the suite.
“Police!” came a muffled voice. “Open the door!”
“It’s open!” Di yelled back, unzipping her belt-pouch and
pulling out her wallet.
Three people, two uniformed NYPD and one fellow in a suit with an impressive .357 Magnum in his hand, peered cautiously around the doorframe.
“Jee-zus Christ,” one said in awe.
“Who?” the dazed Valentine murmured, hand hanging limply over her forehead. “Wha’ hap . . .”
Andre appeared beside Di, bowler in hand, umbrella spotless and innocent-looking again.
Di fished her Hartford PD Special OPs ID out of her wallet and handed it to the man in the suit. “This lady,” she said angrily, pointing to Valentine, “played a little Halloween joke that got out of hand. Her accomplices went out the back door, then down the fire escape. If you hurry you might be able to catch them.”
The two NYCPD officers looked around at the destruction, and didn’t seem any too inclined to chase after whoever was responsible. Di checked out of the corner of her eye; Harrison’s own .44 had vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.
“Are you certain this woman is responsible?” asked the hard-faced, suited individual with a frown, as he holstered his .357. He wasn’t paying much attention to the plastic handgrip in the holster at Di’s hip, for which she was grateful.
House detective, I bet. With any luck, he’s never seen a Glock.
Di nodded. “These two gentlemen will back me up as witnesses,” she said. “I suspect some of the ladies from the party will be able to do so as well, once you explain that Ms. Vervain was playing a not-very-nice joke on them. Personally, I think she ought to be held accountable for the damages.”
And keep my RWW dues from going through the roof.
“Well, I think so too, miss.” The detective hauled Valentine ungently to her feet. The writer was still confused, and it wasn’t an act this time. “Ma’am,” he said sternly to the dazed redhead, “I think you’d better come with me. I think we have a few questions to ask you.”
Di projected outraged innocence and harmlessness at them as hard as she could. The camouflage trick worked, which after this evening, was more than she expected. The two uniformed officers didn’t even look at her weapon; they just followed the detective out without a single backwards glance.
Harrison cleared his throat, audibly. She turned and raised an eyebrow at him.
“You—I thought you were just a writer—”
“And I thought you were just a writer,” she countered. “So we’re even.”
“But—” He took a good look at her face, and evidently thought better of prying. “What did you do with that—thing? That was the strangest incantation I’ve ever heard!”
She shrugged, and began picking her way through the mess of smashed furniture, spilled drinks, and crushed and ground-in refreshments. “I have no idea. Valentine brought it in with something screwy, I got rid of it the same way. And that critter has no idea how lucky he was.”
“Why?” asked Harrison, as she and Andre reached the door.
“Why?” She turned and smiled sweetly. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a parking place in Manhattan at this time of night?”
Nightside
This is the very first attempted professional appearance of Diana Tregarde, my occult detective. I’ve always enjoyed occult detectives, but there is a major problem with them—what are they supposed to do for a living? Ghosts don’t pay very well! So Di writes romances for a living and saves the world on the side. This story was originally rejected by the anthology I submitted it to; it became the basis for Children of the Night by Another Company, and was then published in this form by Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine.
It was early spring, but the wind held no hint of verdancy, not even the promise of it—it was chill and odorless, and there were ghosts of dead leaves skittering before it. A few of them jittered into the pool of weak yellow light cast by the aging streetlamp—a converted gaslight that was a relic of the previous century. It was old and tired, its pea-green paint flaking away; as weary as this neighborhood, which was older still. Across the street loomed an ancient church, its congregation dwindled over the years to a handful of little old women and men who appeared like scrawny blackbirds every Sunday, and then scattered back to the shabby houses that stood to either side of it until Sunday should come again. On the side of the street that the lamp tried (and failed) to illuminate, was the cemetery.
Like the neighborhood, it was very old—in this case, fifty years shy of being classified as “Colonial.” There were few empty gravesites now, and most of those belonged to the same little old ladies and men that had lived and would die here. It was protected from vandals by a thorny hedge as well as a ten-foot wrought-iron fence. Within its confines, as seen through the leafless branches of the hedge, granite cenotaphs and enormous Victorian monuments bulked shapelessly against the bare sliver of a waning moon.
The church across the street was dark and silent; the houses up and down the block showed few lights, if any. There was no reason for anyone of this neighborhood to be out in the night.
So the young woman waiting beneath the lamp-post seemed that much more out-of-place.
Nor could she be considered a typical resident of this neighborhood by any stretch of the imagination—for one thing, she was young; perhaps in her mid-twenties, but no more. Her clothing was neat but casual, too casual for someone visiting an elderly relative. She wore dark, knee-high boots, old, soft jeans tucked into their tops, and a thin windbreaker open at the front to show a leotard beneath. Her attire was far too light to be any real protection against the bite of the wind, yet she seemed unaware of the cold. Her hair was long, down to her waist, and straight—in the uncertain light of the lamp it was an indeterminate shadow, and it fell down her back like a waterfall. Her eyes were large and oddly slanted, but not Oriental; catlike, rather. Even the way she held herself was feline; poised, expectant—a graceful tension like a dancer’s or a hunting predator’s. She was not watching for something—no, her eyes were unfocused with concentration. She was listening.
A soft whistle, barely audible, carried down the street on the chill wind. The tune was of a piece with the neighborhood—old and timeworn.
Many of the residents would have smiled in recollection to hear “Lili Marlene” again.
The tension left the girl as she swung around the lamp-post by one hand to face the direction of the whistle. She waved, and a welcoming smile warmed her eyes.
The whistler stepped into the edge of the circle of light. He, too, was dusky of eye and hair—and heartbreakingly handsome. He wore only dark jeans and a black turtleneck, no coat at all—but like the young woman, he didn’t seem to notice the cold. There was an impish glint in his eyes as he finished the tune with a flourish.
“A flair for the dramatic, Diana, mon cherie?” he said mockingly. “Would that you were here for the same purpose as the lovely Lili! Alas, I fear my luck cannot be so good. . . .”
She laughed. His eyes warmed at the throaty chuckle. “Andre,” she chided, “don’t you ever think of anything else?”
“Am I not a son of the City of Light? I must uphold her reputation, mais non?” The young woman raised an ironic brow. He shrugged. “Ah well—since it is you who seek me, I fear I must be all business. A pity. Well, what lures you to my side this unseasonable night? What horror has mademoiselle Tregarde unearthed this time?”
Diana Tregarde sobered instantly, the laughter fleeing her eyes. “I’m afraid you picked the right word this time, Andre. It is a horror. The trouble is, I don’t know what kind.”
“Say on. I wait in breathless anticipation.” His expression was mocking as he leaned against the lamp-post, and he feigned a yawn.
Diana scowled at him and her eyes darkened with anger. He raised an eyebrow of his own. “If this weren’t so serious,” she threatened, “I’d be tempted to pop you one—Andre, people are dying out there. There’s a ‘Ripper’ loose in New York.”
He shrugged, and shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. “So? This is new? Tell me
when there is not! That sort of criminal is as common to the city as a rat. Let your police earn their salaries and capture him.”
Her expression hardened. She folded her arms tightly across the thin nylon of her windbreaker; her lips tightened a little. “Use your head, Andre! If this was an ordinary slasher-killer, would I be involved?”
He examined his fingernails with care. “And what is it that makes it extraordinaire, eh?”
“The victims had no souls.”
“I was not aware,” he replied wryly, “that the dead possessed such things anymore.”
She growled under her breath, and tossed her head impatiently, and the wind caught her hair and whipped it around her throat. “You are deliberately being difficult! I have half a mind—”
Werehunter (anthology) Page 15