Down These Strange Streets

by George R. R. Martin; Gardner Dozois

  Salvador drew breath in, held it, let it out. “Okay, I get it: I’m supposed to believe you’re a good monster.”

  “Oh, he’s a great monster, believe me. But all mine.”

  Salvador jerked at the other voice, looked down at the pistol, then dropped it to the table he was sitting on. A copper box had spilled open, full of slim cigarettes. He took one out and lit it; some distant part of himself was proud of the fact that his hand didn’t shake. The second voice belonged to a woman. Tall, blond, dressed in dark outdoor clothes and boots, with a knit cap over her head and a rifle cradled in her arms—he recognized it, big Brit sniper job, long scope, aircraft-alloy body.

  “You’re . . . Ellen Tarnowski.”

  “Technically, Ellen Brézé, now. No, I’m not one of them. You don’t catch it from getting bit.”

  A sudden charming smile. “And believe me, I know! Not even from getting married to one.”

  “I get the feeling you’ve changed.”

  “I had to . . . ah . . . take a couple of levels in badass, let’s say.”

  “You killed her.”

  His eyes went back to the puddle of blood; there wasn’t a body.

  “Oh, yes.” Her eyes were large and turquoise blue; for a moment they held a hot satisfaction. “There’s a body, probably a long way away, but it’s empty now.”

  “That . . . that wasn’t his sister, was it?”

  “No. That was Michiko. She’s a friend of his sister. Sort of a wannabe Mistress of Ultimate Darkness.”

  Brézé was back. Now he was dressed, in the same sort of clothes; a light jacket covered a shoulder rig with a knife worn hilt-down on one flank and a Glock on the other.

  “All right,” Salvador said, taking a pull on the cigarette. “Fill me in. I know I’m really somewhere under heavy meds, baying at the moon.”

  For some reason, that made Adrian Brézé smile. “I’m a Shadowspawn . . . that’s what we call ourselves, mostly. But . . . well, I try not to be a monster. It’s complicated. You can choose to learn, or you can choose to forget. If you forget, you can make yourself a new life. If you learn, it’ll probably kill you—but at least you’ll know why you’re fighting, mon ami.”

  “If you offer me a blue pill and a red pill, I’ll fucking kill you!”

  The couple laughed. “It’s actually two file cards. Take your pick.”

  “Knowledge—and you can try being the guerrilla. Ignorance—and long life.”

  Salvador looked at the butt of the cigarette. Then he tossed it accurately into the blood; it hissed into extinction.

  “Like that’s really a choice?”

  IT’S STILL THE SAME OLD STORY

  by Carrie Vaughn

  Bestseller Carrie Vaughn is the author of a wildly popular series of novels detailing the adventures of Kitty Norville, a radio personality who also happens to be a werewolf, and who runs a late-night call-in radio advice show for supernatural creatures. The Kitty books include Kitty and The Midnight Hour, Kitty Goes to Washington, Kitty Takes a Holiday, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand, Kitty Raises Hell, and Kitty’s House of Horrors. Vaughn’s short work has appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, Wild Cards: Inside Straight, Realms of Fantasy, Paradox, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and elsewhere. Her most recent books are Steel, her second venture into young-adult territory; After the Golden Age; and two new Kitty novels, Kitty Goes to War and Kitty’s Big Trouble. She lives in Colorado.

  Here she takes us into Kitty’s world for a poignant look at how you don’t abandon old friends, even if—or maybe especially if—you’re immortal.

  RICK AWOKE AT SUNSET AND FOUND A PHONE MESSAGE FROM AN OLD friend waiting for him. Helen sounded unhappy, but she didn’t give details. She wouldn’t even say that she was afraid and needed help, but the hushed tone of her voice made her sound like she was looking over her shoulder. He grabbed his coat, went upstairs to the back of the shop where he parked his silver BMW, and drove to see her.

  The summer night was still, ordinary. Downtown Denver blazed. To his eyes, the skyscrapers seemed like glowing mushrooms; they’d sprung up so quickly, overwhelming everything that had come before. Only in the last forty years or so had Denver begun to shed its cow town image to become another typical metropolis. He sometimes missed the cow town, though he could still catch glimpses of it. Union Station still stood, the State Capitol of course, and the Victorian mansions in the surrounding neighborhoods. If he squinted, he could remember them in their glory days. Some of the fire from the mining-boom era remained. That was why Rick stayed.

  Helen lived a few miles south along the grid of streets around the University of Denver, in a house not quite as old or large as those Victorian mansions, but still an antique in the context of the rest of the city. She’d lived there since the 1950s, when Rick bought her the place. Even then, Denver had been booming. The city was an ever-shifting collage, its landmarks rising and falling, the points around which he navigated subtly changing over the decades.

  Points like Helen.

  He parked on the street in front of her house, a single-story square cottage, pale blue with white trim, shutters framing the windows, with a front porch and hanging planters filled with multicolored petunias. The lights were off.

  For a moment, he stood on the concrete walkway in front and let his more-than-human senses press outward: sight, sound, and taste. The street, the lawn, the house itself were undisturbed. The neighbors were watching television. A block away, an older man walked a large dog. It was all very normal, except that the house in front of him was silent. No one living was inside—he’d have smelled the blood, heard the heartbeat.

  When he and Helen became friends, he’d known this day would come. This day always came. But the circumstances here were unnatural. He walked up the stairs to the front door, which was unlocked. Carefully, he pushed inside, stepping around the places on the hardwood floor that creaked, reaching the area rug in the living room. Nothing—furniture, photographs, bookcase, small upright piano in the corner—was out of place. The modernist coffee table, a cone-shaped lamp by a blocky armchair, silk lilies in a cut-crystal vase. They were the decorations of an old woman—out of place, out of time, seemingly preserved. But to Rick it was just Helen, the way she’d always been.

  His steps muffled on the rug, he progressed to the kitchen in back. He found her there, lying on the linoleum floor. Long dead—he could tell by her cold skin and the smell of dried blood on the floor.

  Standing in the doorway, he could work out what had happened. She’d been sitting at the Formica table, sipping a cup of tea. The cup and saucer were there, undisturbed, along with a bowl of sugar cubes. She must have set the cup down before she fell. When she did fall, it had been violently, knocking the chair over. She had crawled a few feet—not far. She might have broken a hip or leg in the fall—expected, at her age. Flecks of blood streaked the back of her blue silk dress, fanning out from a dark, dime-sized hole. When he took a deep breath, he could smell the fire of gunpowder. She’d been shot in the back, and she had died.

  After such a life, to die like this.

  So that was that. A more than sixty-year acquaintance ended. Time to say good-bye, mourn, and move on. He’d done it before—often, even. He could be philosophical about it. The natural course of events, and all that. But this was different, and he wouldn’t abandon her, even now when it didn’t matter. He’d do the right thing—the human thing.

  He drew his cell phone from his coat pocket and dialed 911.

  “Hello. I need to report a murder.”

  SHE WALKED THROUGH THE DOORWAY, AND EVERY MAN IN THE PLACE looked at her: the painted red smile, the blue skirt swishing around perfect legs. She didn’t seem to notice, walked right up to the bar and pulled herself onto a stool.

  “I’ll have a scotch, double, on ice,” she said.

  Rick set aside the rag he’d been using to wipe down t
he surface and leaned in front of her. “You look like you’re celebrating something.”

  “That’s right. You going to help me out or just keep leering?”

  Smiling, he found a tumbler and poured her a double and extra.

  “I have to ask,” Rick said, returning to the bar in front of her, enjoying the way every other man in Murray’s looked at him with envy. “What’s the celebration?”

  “You do have to ask, don’t you? I’m just not sure I should tell you.”

  “It’s just not often I see a lady come in here all alone in a mood to celebrate.”

  Murray’s was a working-class place, a dive by the standards of East Colfax; the neighborhood was going downhill as businesses and residents fled downtown, leaving behind everyone who didn’t have anyplace to go. Rick had seen this sort of thing happen enough; he recognized the signs. Murray wasn’t losing money, but he didn’t have anything extra to put into the place. The varnish on the hardwood floor was scuffed off, the furniture was a decade old. Cheap beer and liquor was the norm, and he still had war bond posters up a year and a half after V-J Day. Or maybe he liked the Betty Grable pinups he’d stuck on top of some of them too much to take any of it down.

  Blushing, the woman ducked her gaze, which told him something about her. The shrug she gave him was a lot shyer than the brash way she’d walked in here.

  “I got a job,” she said.

  “Congratulations.”

  “You’re not going to tell me that a nice girl like me should find herself a good man, get married, and settle down and make my mother proud?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.” She smiled and bit her lip.

  A newcomer in a clean suit came up to the bar, set down his hat, and tossed a couple of bills on the polished wood. Rick nodded at the woman and went to take the order. Business was steady after that, and Rick served second and third rounds to men who’d come in after work and stuck around. New patrons arrived for after-dinner nightcaps. Rick worked through it all, drawing beers and pouring liquor, smiling politely when the older men called him “son” and “kid.”

  He didn’t need the job. He just liked being around people now and then. He’d worked at bars before—bars, saloons, taverns—here and there, for almost two hundred years.

  He expected the woman to finish quickly and march right out again, but she sipped the drink as if savoring the moment, wanting to spend time with the crowd. Avoiding solitude. Rick understood.

  When a thin, flushed man who’d had maybe one drink too many sidled up to the bar and crept toward her like a cat on the prowl, Rick wasn’t surprised. He waited, watching for her signals. She might have been here to celebrate, but she might have been looking for more, and he wouldn’t interfere. But the man spoke—asking to buy her another drink—and the woman shook her head. When he pleaded, she tilted her body, turning her back to him. Then he put a hand on her shoulder and another under the bar, on her leg. She shoved.

  Then Rick stood before them both. They hesitated midaction, blinking back at him.

  “Sir, you really need to be going, don’t you?” Rick said.

  “This isn’t any of your business,” the drunk said.

  “If the lady wants to be left alone, you should leave her alone.” He caught the man’s gaze and twisted, just a bit. Put the warning in his voice, used a certain subtle tone, so that there was power in the words. If the man’s gaze clouded over, most onlookers would attribute it to the liquor.

  The man pointed and opened his mouth as if to speak, but Rick put a little more focus in his gaze and the drunk blinked, confused.

  “Go on, now,” Rick said.

  The man nodded weakly, crushed his hat on his head, and stumbled to the door.

  The woman watched him go, then turned back to Rick, her smile wondering. “That was amazing. How’d you do that?”

  “You work behind the bar long enough, you develop a way with people.”

  “You’ve been bartending a long time, then.”

  Rick just smiled.

  “Thanks for looking out for me,” she said.

  “Not a problem.”

  “I really didn’t come here looking for a date. I really did just want the drink.”

  “I know.”

  “But I wouldn’t say no. To a date. Just dinner or a picture or something. If the right guy asked.”

  So, Rick asked. Her name was Helen.

  RICK ANSWERED THE RESPONDING OFFICER’S QUESTIONS, THEN SAT IN THE armchair in the living room to wait for the detective to arrive. It took about forty-five minutes. In the meantime, officers and investigators passed in and out of the house, which seemed less and less Helen’s by the moment.

  When the detective walked in, Rick stood to greet her. The woman was average height and build, and busy, always looking, taking in the scene. Her dark hair was tied in a short ponytail; she wore a dark suit and white shirt, nondescript. She dressed to blend in, but her air of authority made her stand out.

  She saw him and frowned. “Oh hell. It’s you.”

  “Detective Hardin,” he answered, amused at how unhappy she was to see him.

  Jessi Hardin pointed at him. “Wait here.”

  He sat back down and watched her continue on to the kitchen.

  Half an hour later, coroners brought in a gurney, and Hardin returned to the living room. She pulled over a high-backed chair and set it across from him.

  “I expected to see bite marks on her neck.”

  “I wouldn’t have called it in if I’d done it,” he said.

  “But you discovered the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what were you doing here?” She pulled a small notebook and pen from her coat pocket, just like on TV.

  “Helen and I were old friends.”

  The pen paused over the page. “What’s that even mean?”

  He’d been thinking it would be a nice change, not having to avoid the issue, not having to come up with a reasonable explanation for why he knew what he knew, dancing around the truth that he’d known Helen almost her entire life, even though he looked only thirty years old. Hardin knew what he was. But those half-truths he’d always used to explain himself were harder to abandon than he expected.

  With any other detective, he’d have said that Helen was a friend of his grandfather’s whom he checked in on from time to time and helped with repairs around the house. But Detective Hardin wouldn’t believe that.

  “We met in 1947 and stayed friends.”

  Hardin narrowed a thoughtful gaze. “Just so that I’m clear on this, in 1947 she was what, twenty? Twenty-five? And you were—exactly as you are now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you stayed friends with her all this time.”

  “You say it like you think that’s strange.”

  “It’s just not what I expect from the stories.”

  She was no doubt building a picture in her mind: Rick and a twenty-five-year-old Helen would have made a striking couple. But Rick and the ninety-year-old Helen?

  “Maybe you should stick to the standard questions,” Rick said.

  “All right. Tell me what you found when you got here. About what time was it?”

  He told her, explaining how the lights were out and the place seemed abandoned. How he’d known right away that something was wrong, and so wasn’t surprised to find her in the kitchen.

  “She called me earlier today. I wasn’t available but she left a message. She sounded worried but wouldn’t say why. I came over as soon as I could.”

  “She knew something was wrong, then. She expected something to happen.”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill an old woman like this?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  ONE NIGHT SHE CAME INTO THE BAR LATE DURING HIS SHIFT. THEY HADN’T set up a date so he was surprised, and then he was worried. Gasping for breath, her eyes pink, she ran up to him, crashing into the bar, hanging
on to it as if she might fall over without the support. She’d been crying.

  He took up her hands and squeezed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Rick! I’m in so much trouble. He’s going to kill me, I’m dead, I’m—”

  “Helen! Calm down. Take a breath—what’s the matter?”

  She gulped down a couple of breaths, steadying herself. Straightening, squeezing Rick’s hands in return, she was able to speak. “I need someplace to hide. I need to get out of sight for a little while.”

  She could have been in any kind of trouble. Some small-town relative come to track her down and bring home the runaway. Or she could have been something far different from the fresh-faced city girl she presented herself as. He’d known from the moment he met her that she was hiding something—she never talked about her past.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you everything, just please help me hide.”

  He came around the bar, put his arm around her, and guided her into the back room. There was a storage closet filled with wooden crates, some empty and waiting to be carried out, some filled with bottles of beer and liquor. Only Rick and Murray came back here when the place was open. He found a sturdy, empty crate, tipped it upside down, dusted it off, and guided her to sit on it.

  “I can close up in half an hour, then you can tell me what’s wrong. All right?”

  Nodding, she rubbed at her nose with a handkerchief.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Bottle of soda? Shot of whiskey?”

  “No, no. I’m fine, for now. Thank you.”

  Back out front, he let his senses expand, touching on every little noise, every scent, every source of light and the way it played around every shadow. Every heartbeat, a dozen of them, rattled in his awareness, a cacophony, like rocks tumbling in a tin can. It woke a hunger in him—a lurking knowledge that he could destroy everyone here, feed on them, sate himself on their blood before they knew what had happened.

  He’d already fed this evening—he always fed before coming to work, it was the only way he could get by. It made the heartbeats that composed the background static of the world irrelevant.