Down These Strange Streets

by George R. R. Martin; Gardner Dozois

  “You’re using money?”

  “I got a news flash for you, kid; that whole loaves and fishes thing . . . complete bullshit. And another thing. I knew your name because your stepmother told me. No mystery. No miracle.”

  Sean stopped dead and stared at Cross suspiciously. “You’re not my savior.”

  “Actually, kid, I probably am. Look, I know that thing on stage is not your dad. It’s something else wearing his skin.”

  The boy let out an explosive sob and dissolved. No longer on the cusp of manhood, Sean was a child again. Cross handed him his handkerchief. After a few minutes, the boy regained control. He mopped at his streaming eyes.

  “I couldn’t tell anybody. They would have thought I was crazy, and she . . . she was my stepmom.”

  “Yeah, kid, I know. It’s a bitch when a cliché turns out to be true. Now take me to where you’re staying.”

  SEAN DIDN’T HAVE A KEY. “KEEP A LOOK OUT,” CROSS ORDERED AS HE PULLED out a lock-pick kit and knelt down in front of the door. The hotel was a modest affair a few blocks from the lake.

  “You’re going to break in?”

  “No, I’m going to pick the lock. Breaking in would be noisy.”

  Sean tittered, betraying his nervousness. “You’re not nothin’ like what I expected.”

  “Anything,” Cross corrected automatically as the delicate tools caught the mechanism and the lock clicked open. “You sound like a hick, you’re going to end up a hick, and I think you’re brighter than that.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Cross slipped the tools back into their case, returned the case to his pocket, and stood up. He pushed open the door, and he and the kid entered the room.

  A carpetbag sat on the floor beneath a luggage stand that held an open suitcase. An iron bedstead was against one wall, and a flimsy chest of drawers against another. There was a mirror over the dresser, and the glass was occluded because of the Old One. A folded trundle bed filled the remaining space in the small room.

  The top of the dresser held the various mysterious potions that constituted a woman’s war paint. Cross didn’t see a box. Maybe she kept it with her. That would make things harder.

  “What does the box look like?” Cross asked.

  “Metal, but it had holes, kind of like a net.”

  Cross searched through the drawers. No box. Cross turned to face the room and studied the sparse furnishings. Cross checked under the mattress, inside the carpetbag, and in the suitcase. Sean watched him intently. Finally Cross moved to the trundle bed and thrust a hand into the folded mattress. Felt metal. He pulled out the box. Opened it and inspected the chocolatecolored hair inside.

  He snapped shut the box and held it tightly in his hand. Considered what he knew. The Old One had inhabited a human body. Interesting that it hadn’t just built one the way Cross had. But that might indicate that it had limited power, which was one small bright spot in a giant shitstorm. At the mission, Cross had sensed that something was trapped. He had thought, mistakenly, that it was Sharon, but now he guessed that it was the electrical impulses that formed the essence of Marshall Hanlin.

  So, all he had to do was force out the Old One. Restore the husband to his body. And deal with the Old One and Sharon.

  Easy as pie.

  Yeah, right.

  “So, what do we do now?” Sean asked.

  Cross swallowed the cold lump that had invaded his throat. “We go find your wicked stepmother.”

  The theater was empty. A few pamphlets flapped sadly in the gutter as a breeze off the lake kicked down the street. Cross cursed. Having brought himself to the sticking point, he wanted to get it over with. Match his strength against the other Old One. End this nightmare for the boy at his side.

  Sean looked at him with a combination of awe and trepidation. “Are those all cuss words?”

  “Yeah, now forget you ever heard them. Where would they have gone?”

  “Probably to the convention. Sharon wanted to see all the famous, rich people,” Sean replied.

  “Okay. You want to see some famous, rich people?”

  The kid shrugged. “Pa took me the first day we got here. They just looked like regular people, only in fancier clothes.”

  Cross reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair. “You’ll do, kid.”

  FARLEY HAD DONE AS PROMISED. CROSS WAS ON THE LIST TO ENTER THE stadium. He told them Sean was his son. The statement had the kid turning red, then white, then red again.

  “What the hell’s wrong?”

  “I can’t be your son! It’s sacrilege.”

  “No, it’s just lying.”

  “You still shouldn’t say it. And lying is wrong.”

  Cross gave up. “You’re right. Now can we please go find them?”

  It was hot in the stadium, the air heavy with competing scents—sweat, aftershave, and hair pomade. Men huddled in clumps speaking in low, urgent tones. Ties had been loosened, shirt collars were limp. Up in the bleachers sat the women, fanning themselves, their white gloves flashing like signal flags. They looked like a flock of birds in their feather-adorned hats.

  Cross scanned them, searching for Sharon. Sean tugged on his sleeve. “There’s my pa,” he said, and pointed. The Old One in a people suit was talking with Farley.

  “Sharon’s the key. Help me find her. Try the other side of the stadium.” The boy headed off with one last look of longing at his father’s carcass.

  Cross hoped that extracting the Old One wouldn’t kill the human vessel. Sean was a nice kid and deserved a happy ending. Pity they came along so rarely. Because in truth, no universe gave a shit about the lives of the creatures crawling around inside it.

  Cross headed off in the opposite direction, and then he saw her. Or rather, he recognized the swaying hips and the shapely calves, and those perky red shoes climbing the stairs. Cross vaulted the railing and climbed. She turned, speaking to the women to either side of her, and started to sit down. Then she spotted Cross, stiffened, and remained standing.

  Cross reached into his pocket and took out the box. Fury and alarm warred across her features. Slowly he reached into his other pocket, pulled out his Unique lighter, and slid his thumb across the roll bar. The horizontal flint struck and a steady flame burned. Panic washed across her face. Awkward in her haste, Sharon started to run down the stairs toward him.

  “No! No. Don’t!”

  He had the box open. Even though she was still ten feet away her hands stretched out to him as if she could somehow snatch back the box. Cross laid the flame against the hair. He had witnessed many battles and many autos-da-fé in his long existence. It wasn’t so much the smell of roasting human meat that he remembered as the sweet/harsh scent of burning hair. The smell killed any chance that he would feel pity for her. She had made compacts with creatures bent on causing human suffering and death.

  Sharon let out a scream of terror and pain. The glove on her right hand was charring. The material fell away, and Cross saw flames licking up around the amber ring as the braided band burned like the hair in the box. Sharon ripped off the ring and threw it to the floor. The last of the hair turned to ash. The metal box was hot in Cross’s hand, and the cheap metal had softened. He crushed it and dropped it.

  Sharon let out a keening cry, knelt on a step, and gathered the amber piece in its silver setting in her hand. Cross reached out with his power. The shadows that had swirled around the ring and around her were gone. The inside of the ring glittered as if it held captured fireflies.

  There was a stir on the floor of the stadium. He heard Sean’s voice, shrill with fear, crying, “Pa! Pa!”

  Cross leaped up the stairs and snatched the gem away from Sharon. He then ran for Sean and the man who lay on the floor, choking in his son’s arms. The Old One was exacting revenge and feeding off the son’s grief and fear, and growing stronger with each psychic gulp.

  In the face of such power, Cross felt helpless. He couldn’t fight the other. He would fail and
be shattered. It would be a disaster for Conoscenza if that happened in such a public venue. And he didn’t think that he could face the pain. He started to back away. The boy looked up at him, tears clouding his eyes, but his expression showed total trust and confidence.

  Cross stopped his retreat, reached out, and touched the boy’s feelings about his father. He drank deeply of those more complicated emotions—respect, love, admiration. He delved into the ring and sensed the electrical impulses that made up the man. Felt his emotions—worry for the son, sorrow that he wouldn’t see him grow to manhood.

  Cross summoned every ounce of power. He gripped the other Old One, and it felt like icy talons gripped back. But the boy’s father began to breathe again as the Old One turned its attention to Cross. Next, Cross reached into the ring and secured the man. Cross felt the bonds that held his body together weakening as he struggled to make the switch. The Old One was fighting wildly. It was going to be a near thing.

  Then Cross staggered as he was struck by a bolt of power. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Sharon, swaying drunkenly, coming onto the floor. It was taking all his energy to hold both the Old One and Marshall Hanlin, and keep himself together. He had nothing left for speech. Cross rolled an eye at Sean, who knelt on the floor holding his father in his arms. The boy looked from Cross to Sharon and down at his father.

  He gently laid his father down and stood. Hurry! Cross said mentally. Sean ran at Sharon and slapped her hard. Her assault on Cross frayed and died. He took a tighter hold, gathered his strength, and made the switch. To his eyes, which could see beyond the normal dimensions, it looked as if Marshall Hanlin’s body was washed with a net of electricity. And the inside of the amber was no longer clear. It roiled with shadows.

  Slowly, Hanlin sat up and placed a hand against his forehead. “Sean?” he said weakly.

  “Pa!” The boy was fighting back tears, trying to be a man. He ran to his father and embraced him.

  Cross sank down on one knee and panted. Sharon! He forced himself back to his feet and looked for her. But like any grifter, she had good survival instincts. During the confusion, she had slipped away.

  TWO DAYS LATER, FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT SECURED THE DEMOCRATIC nomination for president, but he did it without the vote of the alternate from Oklahoma. The original delegate had recovered and returned to the convention. Hanlin hadn’t seemed too upset to learn that the mission had burned. He and Sean had decided to head for California and a new life. “Preferably one with no preaching,” Cross had told Sean.

  Late that night, Cross and Conoscenza stood at the edge of Lake Michigan, watching wavelets run up onto the rock beach. Cigar smoke wreathed them like gray halos.

  “Are you pleased?” Cross asked.

  “I’ll be pleased when he wins the election,” was the reply. “So, what are you going to do with that thing?” Conoscenza added, with a nod at the amber.

  “Damned if I know.” Cross regarded the sullen gem. “Drop it in the lake?”

  “Things have a way of getting fished up. I’ll take it, put it in a safedeposit box.”

  “And banks don’t fail?” Cross asked.

  “Not my banks. And once you locate a new paladin, it’ll be destroyed.”

  “You need to add that tear in Oklahoma to the to-do list,” Cross said.

  “Noted, but its priority is low. The news out of Germany is . . . disturbing. I’m sending you to Europe.”

  “Unh-unh, not right now.”

  “Why? You have something more pressing?”

  “I’ve gotta find Sharon.”

  “And do what?” Conoscenza asked. “Without a paladin, we can’t remove her ability for magic. And you’re not going to kill her.”

  “I could.”

  “But you won’t, or our deal is off.”

  Cross sighed, took a final drag on his cigar, and tossed it into the water. “Guess I better go pack my lederhosen.”

  THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PUZZLE AND A MYSTERY

  by M. L. N. Hanover

  Big-city police detectives have to get used to dealing with killers and junkies and whores. Dealing with demons, however, is definitely raising the bar . . .

  New writer M. L. N. Hanover is the author of Unclean Spirits and Darker Angels, the first two books in the Black Sun’s Daughter sequence. Hanover’s most recent book is Vicious Grace. An International Horror Guild Award winner, Hanover lives in the American Southwest.

  THE GUY WASN’T WHAT DETECTIVE MASON EXPECTED. GIVEN EVERYTHING about the case, he’d figured on someone with a big black trench coat, maybe a priest’s collar. An air of mystery anyway. Instead, he got this chubby guy in his forties, balding, with an uncertain expression that he’d worn so long it was etched in his skin. His button-down shirt had fit him about fifteen pounds ago. The knot in his tie was so tight, it had probably been there for years, lifted over his head and put back on without ever being remade. When the desk sergeant brought him back, the guy had bumped into Winehart’s desk hard enough to splash coffee out of her mug, then apologized like he was afraid she’d mace him. Now he sat down across from Mason at Anderson’s empty desk, put his hands between his knees like a kid in school, and smiled nervously.

  “You’re Detective Mason, then?”

  “Am. And you’re the exorcist.”

  The man bared his teeth and shook his head.

  “No, not really. I wouldn’t put it that way. Richard Scarrey. Like the children’s writer, but with an extra e.”

  “The who?”

  “Children’s writer. Illustrator too. He wrote the Busytown books? Pigs in lederhosen, things like that? He spelled it with the double r, but I also have an e. Still pronounce it ‘scary,’ though.”

  “Okay,” Mason said. “I’m Detective Mason. Chief told you about me?”

  “A little. He said you’d arrested a man, and that he thought I might be of some assistance.”

  “Nothing more than that?”

  Scarrey shook his head again, more firmly that time. Mason leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. Winehart’s phone rang, and she took it out of her pocket and walked away with one hand over her free ear.

  “So five months ago, this girl Sarah Osterman goes missing,” Mason said. “College age. Had a fight with her boyfriend, stormed out of the house, never came back. He’s freaked out, but it just looks like a bad breakup. No one pays a lot of attention. About a month ago, her body shows up in a warehouse down by the rail yards. She’s been dead about a week, but she wasn’t having any fun before that.”

  “I’m sorry, Detective,” Scarrey said, and the way he used the words made it seem like he really was sorry. “I appreciate your professional reserve, but I will need the details. Had she been tortured?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Um. Assaulted?”

  “Raped, you mean? I’ve got the coroner’s report. Chief said you might want it.”

  “Thank you then, yes. That’s fine. Go on.”

  “The scene had some elements that made us suspect there was an occult angle. Writing on the walls. Wax from a black candle. And there was some blood spatter, and the forensics guys said there was a clean spot in it where maybe someone had an inverted cross, then took it away again after.”

  Scarrey was nodding with every detail, his head almost vibrating, but his eyes were flickering now, moving across the air like he was reading. It was what Mason saw people do when they were trying to remember something. When they were making things up, their eyes were stable.

  “How old was the girl?” Scarrey asked.

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Was she pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “On her period?”

  “What?”

  “Was she menstruating when she died?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s in the report.”

  “We can ask if it isn’t. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “We start investigating. Turns out the girl’s been seen wi
th this scumbag, Maury Sobinski, so we find out where he is. We lean on him. He’s one of those assholes who’s read a book about cops and thinks he knows everything. Acts like he’s practically on the force himself.”

  “Talks too much?”

  “You know that whole give-a-man-enough-rope-and-he’ll-hang-himself thing? This son of a bitch would have strung himself up on dental floss. He screws up everything. Practically makes our case for us, doesn’t even know he’s doing it.”

  “But not a confession.”

  “No. Just stupid things. Saying he wasn’t with the girl on a particular day when we hadn’t asked him yet. Talking a lot of shit about how some people invite bad things happening. Hanging out big neon I-did-it signs. We ask for a DNA sample for elimination purposes, he finally figures out that we’re not just there because we enjoy his company, he stops talking. Can’t remember anything. Hears his mommy calling. Like that.”

  Winehart came back to her desk, her expression sour. He tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at him. Mason felt a pang of anxiety. Had it been Anderson? Or, worse yet, the assholes from Internal Affairs?

  “And then?”

  “What? Oh, yeah, we get a warrant, go through his house. He’s got all her stuff there. We know he knows her, but there’s nothing conclusive. No witnesses, no forensics that we can take to a jury. We know he did it, and we need a confession. So we bring him in.”

  “And he lawyers up?”

  “Lawyers up,” Mason said, pointing a finger at Scarrey. “That’s good. That was the kind of term he’d throw in too. Show us he knew how it all works.”

  Scarrey blushed and tittered.

  “It’s just something I picked up. Television or . . .”

  “He doesn’t, though,” Mason said. “Ask for a lawyer, I mean. He starts talking funny. Starts moving weird. We’ve got a camera on him, and he’s not just doing it when he knows we’re watching. Does it all the time. Calls himself Beleth, the King of Hell. Every now and then, he stops doing the whole voodoo thing, sounds like himself again, and he says he’s the victim of a huge satanic conspiracy. Asks us to help him. Begs, cries, shits himself. Then Beleth shows back up, and . . .”