“It wants your blood,” Lisa said. “It’s weak, and your blood would make it stronger.”
“It wants to eat me?” Ashlyn whispered.
“Pretty much. Look, I never had a problem with you. I’m just tired of being Lisa the Dud.”
“How did you make the deal?” I asked her.
“I let it out of the Mage Academy,” Lisa said. “My dad showed it to me. The mages trapped it during the last magic wave and gave it some trees, to keep it alive while they studied it, but the trees weren’t enough. It wants a forest and I want people to take me seriously. It’s a win-win.”
“Except for Ashlyn, who will be eaten alive. No biggie,” I said. Bitch.
“What am I supposed to do?” Lisa’s voice went up really high and I saw that same fear I glimpsed earlier. Except now it was in her eyes and written all over her face. “I didn’t know what it wanted when I took it out. The deal was, I carry it out inside me and it gives me powers. I didn’t know it was going to kill her!”
“Are you a total moron? That’s the first thing they teach you in any school,” I growled. “Never make deals with magic creatures. It’s a spirit of the damn forest! Do you know how powerful it is? What the fuck did you think would happen?”
“I’m tired of listening to you,” Lisa snarled. “This is over. Nobody asked you to stick your nose where it didn’t belong. I told you to leave and you didn’t listen. You can’t fight it. And now you’re both going to die, so who is a moron now, huh?”
“You’re a terrible person,” Ashlyn told her.
“Whatever . . .” Lisa’s arms snapped up and out, as if she was trying to keep from falling. A scream filled with pain and terror ripped out of her. A phantom wolf burst out of her chest, huge, shaggy, glowing with green magic. It landed on the grass, towering over us. Its fur turned gray. The wolf’s cavernous mouth gaped open, suddenly solid. Monstrous fangs rent the air.
“Now!” I yelled.
Yu Fong stepped through the ward into the clearing. His irises glowed with orange and in their depth I saw tiny spirals of flames.
The wolf spun to face him.
Magic unfurled from Yu Fong like petals of a fiery flower. It shone with scarlet and beautiful gold and shaped itself into an outline on a translucent beast. It stood on four muscular, strong legs, arms with huge claws rippling with flames. Scales covered its body. Its head belonged to a meld of Chinese dragon and lion, and long whiskers of pure red streamed on both sides of its jaws. Spikes bristled among its crimson mane and its eyes were pure molten lava. Within this beast Yu Fong smiled, a magic wind tugging at his hair.
Wow. He was a dragon.
The wolf charged, aiming for Lisa. Yu Fong stepped into its path, knocking Lisa out of the way. She fell on the grass. The dragon opened its mouth. Flame burst with a roar, like a tornado. The fire engulfed the wolf, and the shaggy beast screamed, opening its mouth, but no sound came.
The wolf lunged at Yu Fong, biting at the dragon with its enormous teeth. Yu Fong clenched his fists. A wall of towering flames shot out from the dragon and wrapped itself around the wolf.
Heat burned my skin.
The wolf writhed in the cocoon of flame, biting and clawing to get free. Yu Fong’s face was serene. He leaned back, laughed softly within the beast, and the fire exploded with pure white heat, singeing my hair.
Ashlyn hid her face in her hands.
The wolf burned, crackling and sparking. I watched it burn until nothing was left except for a pile of ashes.
The dragon melted back into Yu Fong. He stepped to the pile of flames and passed his hand over it, so elegant and beautiful, he seemed unreal. The ashes rose in a flurry of sparks, up into the sky, and rained on the courtyard beyond the wards, settling to the ground like beautiful fireflies.
“Well, that’s that,” Brook said, at the outer ward. “Ashlyn, I have this blanket here for you.”
Yu Fong stepped toward us, and Ashlyn took a step toward the tree.
“Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice soothing. “Come, let’s get you dressed.”
Around us, the world clenched. The magic vanished, abruptly, like a flame of the candle being blown out by a sudden draft. The wards disappeared. The garden seemed suddenly mundane.
Well. How about that?
Yu Fong escorted Ashlyn away from the tree, guiding her toward Brook.
Lisa got up. Her legs shook. She shuddered and limped away, into the courtyard. I didn’t chase her. What was the point?
Brook draped the blanket over Ashlyn’s shoulders and gently led her away. I sat down on the grass and leaned against the trunk of the apple tree. I was suddenly very tired.
Yu Fong walked over and looked at me. “Happy, Julie Lennart?”
“It’s Olsen,” I told him. “I only pull Lennart out of my pocket for special occasions.”
“I see.”
“Thank you for saving Ashlyn.”
Yu Fong reached for the nearest apple branch and gently pulled it down, studying the fragile blossoms, his inhumanly beautiful face framed by the blooms. Somebody should have taken a picture. It was too pretty.
“Of course, now you owe me a favor,” he said.
Jerk. No, you know what, forget it. He wasn’t pretty. In fact, I’ve never seen an uglier guy in my whole life.
“The satisfaction of knowing you saved Ashlyn’s life should be enough.”
“But I didn’t just save her life. I saved yours, too,” Yu Fong said.
“I would’ve handled it.”
The look he gave me said loud and clear that he thought I was full of it. “I expect to collect this favor one day.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“I imagine I’ll have plenty of opportunities, since you will be spending a lot of time here,” he said.
“What makes you think I’ll be studying here?”
“You’ve made friends,” he said. “You will be worried about them.” He let go of the branch and walked away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Julie Olsen.”
“Maybe!” I called. “I haven’t decided yet!”
He kept walking.
I sat under the apple tree. Somehow leaving Ashlyn and Brook to his tender mercy didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
I was pretty sure I could get admitted into this school. It wouldn’t be that hard.
I was right. Kate had set me up.
But then again, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.
An Introduction to Jewish Myth and Mysticism
STEVE HOCKENSMITH
Steve Hockensmith is the author of the New York Times bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. His first novel, the mystery/Western hybrid Holmes on the Range, was a finalist for the Edgar®, Shamus, Anthony, and Dilys awards and spawned several sequels. His next novel, an occult-themed mystery, will be released in 2013. He is a Waspy Midwestern goy but hopes that’s not too obvious when you’re reading his contribution to this anthology.
FRIDAY, 9:47 A.M.
Everyone in the class noticed the woman come in. They would’ve noticed a gnat flying in. Room 202 wasn’t particularly big and it wasn’t particularly full.
The woman took a seat at the back and quietly began to cry.
Professor Abrams went on lecturing in the slow, deliberate, deadpan way that made it so hard for undergrads to drag themselves out of bed for History 340: An Introduction to Jewish Myth and Mysticism. But a little worry-furrow creased his forehead even as he droned on about the Golem of Prague and its influence on later stories of Jewish übermenschen.
For once, he ended class early—at 9:49 as opposed to 9:50. Then he walked to the back of the room and sat next to the woman. She was fortyish, with short, black hair salted gray here and there. Her cat-eye glasses were perched on a button nose speckled with faded freckles.
Some of the students knew her. Professor Mossler. Her class on Hollywood during the Depression was a lot more popular than anything Professor Abram
s ever taught.
“Karen,” Abrams said, “what’s wrong?”
Mossler stole an embarrassed glance at the students filing from the room.
“Robert’s back,” she whispered. She began wiping the tears from her red, puffy eyes. “Cynthia saw him moving things into his house this morning.”
“Oh.” A flush of color came to Abrams’s already swarthy face, and when he spoke again his words had something they usually lacked: emotion. “I’m so sorry, Karen. Have you called the police?”
“You know what they’ll say. As long as he stays away from me, there’s nothing they can do. And when he finally decides not to stay away . . .” Fresh tears trickled over Mossler’s cheeks. “What do I do? Things can’t go back to the way they were. I can’t live like that. If he won’t leave, I’ll have to. I’ll have to give up everything I’ve worked for and pack up and—”
“It won’t come to that.”
“How do you know? How can you say what might happen this time?”
Abrams drew in a deep, deep breath, as if trying to suck in enough air to last him the rest of his life. When he exhaled, there was a smile on his face. It was a “C’est la vie” smile—small, sad, resigned.
“Tell you what,” Abrams said. “You already had plans to see Wally and Leslie this weekend. Go. Enjoy. Forget Robert. When you get back, maybe things will look different.”
“That’s your advice? Go on a road trip? ‘Enjoy’?”
Abrams nodded. “Yes. That is my advice. While you’re gone, I’ll poke around. See what I can do.”
He placed his hands over hers.
Mossler looked down at them in surprise. Then she tilted her head and gave Abrams the kind of look a mother gives her four-year-old when he offers to protect her from the bogeyman.
“Oh, Andy . . .” she said.
She didn’t go on, but it was obvious what her words would have been if she had.
What could you do?
They talked a little longer after that, only getting up to leave when students started drifting in for the next class. Mossler had a lecture of her own to give downstairs, in one of the big halls. After that, she was going to take her friend’s advice. She would hop in her Prius and get out of town.
“It’ll be good practice,” she said. “I mean, if I’m going to run away, I might as well start getting used to it.”
Abrams shocked her by leaning in to give her a hug. He usually wasn’t the hugging type.
When the awkward embrace ended, she left.
Abrams sat back down. He didn’t move—didn’t even blink—until another professor spoke a few minutes later. The man was behind the table at the front of the room.
“Will wonders never cease? The eminent Professor Abrams seems to be auditing one of my classes!”
“Oh . . . sorry, Paul,” Abrams said, chuckling dutifully as he rose to go. “You caught me daydreaming about a new course I’m planning.”
From there Abrams went straight to the nearest grocery store, where he bought two bottles of wine and a six-pack of beer.
FRIDAY, 5:53 P.M.
There was a knock on Robert Ramsey’s door. Half of him thought it would be the police. No part of him at all was expecting Andy Abrams.
“What are you doing here?”
Abrams held up a six-pack of beer that was missing a bottle. “We’re your welcoming committee.”
“Unbelievable.” Ramsey snorted and shook his head in disgust. “I wouldn’t have thought you had the balls to come here.”
Abrams shrugged. “Yet here I am. Can’t I come in for a talk? Man to man?” Abrams gave the six-pack a little wiggle. “Beer to beer?”
His eyes were droopy, his words slurred. Ramsey could tell he’d already put away a lot more than that one missing beer. The little guy was lit.
Even when things had been at their worst, Ramsey had never feared Andy Abrams. He saw no reason to start now.
“Suit yourself.”
Ramsey reached out, plucked a beer from the six-pack, then turned and stalked off into the house.
Abrams followed.
The first hour or so was all stilted chitchat. They sat in the living room, surrounded by dusty boxes and jumbled furniture fresh from the U Store It, and talked about everything except what mattered. Ramsey’s wanderings during his yearlong “sabbatical.” The history of American labor he was working on. The college kids he’d rented his house to who’d seemed nice at first, but you know how that goes. . . .
Abrams nursed his beer, taking a sip every five minutes, saying just enough to keep the other man talking. He’d needed the booze to goose up his nerve, Ramsey figured, and now he was letting his host catch up. Fine.
Abrams had taken her side—had been one of the key players on what Ramsey thought of as Team Bitch. So he was happy to down the little bastard’s beer now. Abrams owed him a lot more than a few Leinenkugels.
“Tell me what you’ve been up to, Andy,” Ramsey said when he finally tired of talking about himself. “Still working on that book about how Dracula was really Jewish?”
Abrams offered him a prim little smile. All Abrams’s smiles were prim and little. Like the man himself.
“That’s not quite the gist of it, Bob. It’s an overview of Jewish vampire traditions stretching from the Testament of Solomon and the Lilith myths all the way to . . .”
Abrams paused and looked back at the picture window behind him. The blinds were drawn, and no more light bled in around the edges. Outside, night had fallen.
He turned back to Ramsey.
“You don’t really want to hear about my book, do you?”
Ramsey barked out a bitter laugh. “You called my bluff. No. I don’t want to hear about it. To be honest, Abrams, I could never take you seriously as a historian. When you first came along, all I could think was, ‘Where did Conklin dig this stiff up?’ Yeah, you always had the nitty-gritty down cold. The dates and people and places. The details of daily life in thirteenth-century wherever. Enough to convince Conklin and Katz and the rest you were something special. But you always managed to make it so deadly dull. And then when you started mixing in that Kablahblah nonsense—”
“Kabbalah,” Abrams corrected mildly.
Ramsey kept talking as if he hadn’t heard.
“—it was just insulting. That stuff doesn’t have any place in a history department. I mean, no one was going to let me teach a course on Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”
“That’s a rather offensive analogy, Bob.”
“And the really amazing thing,” Ramsey plowed on, “is how tiresome you still were. You’d think all the pseudo-magical hoo-ha would’ve made you interesting, in a pathetic kind of way. But no. You were still the biggest bore in the department. I mean, no wonder you’re interested in vampires. You could suck the life out of anything.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Bob.”
A muscle just under Ramsey’s right eye twitched.
Nobody called him “Bob.” He was Robert Ramsey. Professor Robert Ramsey. Or at least he had been once.
“Karen always felt that way about you, too, by the way,” he said. “I’m sure she’s been all sweetness and light to your face. She needed your help with Conklin and the tenure committee. But do you know what she used to call you, Andy? When it was just her and me snickering in bed?”
Ramsey let the question hang there a moment, hoping to savor Abrams’s humiliation. But the man refused to squirm.
“Oh . . . are you waiting for me to guess?” Abrams said. “I assumed it was a rhetorical question, Bob.”
The muscle twitched again.
“‘Mr. Spock,’” Ramsey said.
Abrams enraged him by having the gall to look pleased.
“Really? How ironic.” He held up his right hand, his middle and ring fingers parted to form a V. “Did you know that the Vulcan salute is actually based on an ancient Kabbalistic blessing meant to evoke the Hebrew letter—?”
“Oh, shut up, you ped
antic twerp.”
If passive-aggressive wouldn’t get Ramsey the reaction he wanted, he’d just drop the “passive.”
He took a quick swig of his beer, then jabbed the bottle at Abrams like a pike.
“I know your secret, Abrams. I’ve known it all along. I saw the way you used to look at Karen, when you thought I wouldn’t notice. You’re not all robot.”
“I think you’re confused, Bob,” Abrams said. “Mr. Spock wasn’t a robot. Perhaps you’re thinking of Mr.—”
“You want her for yourself,” Ramsey spat. “That’s why you pried her away from me. But you’ll never have her. Not for a second. She could no more love you than she could love an encyclopedia. And when I get her back, there you’ll be, eating your shriveled heart out because I’m the one she . . .”
Ramsey locked his bottle to his lips again even though there was nothing left in it but foam. He had to shut himself up.
Coming back had nothing to do with Karen—that’s what he’d meant to tell everyone. He just wanted to stop drifting, get as much of his old life back as he could. Karen wouldn’t be a part of that. Couldn’t be. He’d accepted that . . . he would say.
And now, one day back and he’d already said otherwise. Already said too much. All because a backstabbing S.O.B. had showed up on his doorstep with some beers.
Why did people always mess with him? Why did they push him like this—and then blame him when he pushed back? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.
“Damn it!” Ramsey leapt up and threw his bottle across the room. It smashed into a framed Le Chat Noir poster propped against the wall. He took some satisfaction from the way the explosion of glass made the little man on the couch flinch.
Abrams said nothing for a moment. He just tipped back his head and took his first real drink since coming inside. When he was done, his bottle was empty, too. He bent over to place it oh-so-gently on the floor, then looked up into Ramsey’s eyes.
“You’re wrong on a few counts, Bob,” he said calmly. “I didn’t have to pry Karen away from you. She ran, remember? And you’re not getting her back. Ever. Because now she’s with me.”
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