Blood Lite II: Overbite

by Kevin J. Anderson

Suddenly her heart pounded uncontrollably. Her blood heated, raced, her brain was about to explode. She grabbed her head and screamed, but no sound came out.

  Slowly, her heart returned to normal. Her head no longer ached. She was still hot—too hot—and feared she was sick.

  You’re not sick, sweetheart, it’s just me.

  Vi rose from the ground, looked at her torn, bloody dress. But her stomach—her intestines were back where they belonged. There was no mark from the knife. She’d believe it was a hallucination, except for the blood.

  Let’s get you cleaned up and then we’ll have some fun.

  And Vi knew that she’d better ensure that the golden-haired woman had fun, or she’d be dead.

  “So when you said you wanted my body, you meant it . . . um, literally.”

  Of course.

  “And what happened to Justin?” Did she really want to know?

  He drowned. Fifty-fifty chance the police will think suicide . . . or an accident. He did have drugs in his system, after all. No more questions. Questions aren’t fun.

  “What do you think is fun?”

  Getting what I want when I want it. I’m a lot like you that way. Which is why I picked you. Aren’t you lucky?

  Lucky. Right. She’d avoided arrest for Justin’s death, in exchange for her life. An exchange . . . why did she feel she got the bad end of this deal?

  “Because,” Violet said out loud, her voice sounding normal, like it used to before the guy strangled her, “with your body comes your soul. You people never think of that, which really helps keep me in nice bodies. Look, I’m not going to get bored if you keep it exciting. Let’s change and hit up a club I’ve heard about. Then we’ll really have fun.”

  Vi started walking. She didn’t have a choice.

  No, you don’t, not if you don’t want to bleed to death all over the street. But cheer up, sweetheart, you haven’t seen anything yet.

  A Wing and a Prayer

  SHARYN MCCRUMB

  “There is a precedent for it, you know,” said the dean. “And think of the money we’ll save.”

  Henry Garner was still staring at the bare desk and empty chair in Dr. Lamplough’s former office, vacant since the old man’s not-unexpected death near the end of the fall term. Above the smell of institutional furniture polish and ammonia, he thought he could still detect a faint whiff of the elderly professor’s beloved peppermints and the spectral fumes of stale office coffee. Martin Lamplough had been with the university nearly as long as grade inflation. His name was still painted on the frosted glass of the office door, above the words “Folklore Department—Chairman.”

  “Money that we do not in fact have,” said the dean, jingling the keys. “The recent state budget cuts have made it impossible to fill the position, anyhow—unless someone would like to take on the job without an increase in salary?” He stopped, peering hopefully at Henry.

  “No, I quite see your point,” said Henry hastily, backing out of the empty office. “We are all teaching the maximum load as it is, because, of course, Dr. Lamplough’s classes had to be parceled out around the department. So nobody really has time to assume the duties of department head. All those reports to fill out, the record keeping, the faculty senate . . .” He almost succeeded in repressing a shudder.

  “There you are, then. It’s really the best solution. I’m sure you’ll agree. After all, it is a very small department. Just the six of you. Well, five now. I like to think of this appointment not as a fiscal necessity, but as a memorial to dear old Lamplough. After all, he was a scholar of Native American folklore, first and foremost. And who knows, it might get us a bit of publicity, which is always useful.”

  Yes, thought Henry, nodding glumly. If your idea of publicity was derision. Still the only way to deter the dean from taking this step would be to assume the bureaucratic duties himself in addition to his already ludicrous workload, and that was not to be thought of.

  “So you’ll share our decision with the rest of the faculty, Dr. Garner? Good man.” The dean wandered away, a budgetary Jack the Ripper, in search of fresh victims.

  Thus it was that at the afternoon department meeting the following afternoon, Henry Garner faced his colleagues and made the announcement, trying to be, if not enthusiastic about the plan, at least carefully neutral. In a faltering economy, it did one’s career no good to oppose the administration.

  “He’s mad,” said Alvin Hillenberg (Norse studies and Tolkien). “He ought to be locked up. We should hold a press conference and expose him.”

  “Er—the dean is already holding his own press conference,” said Henry. “And he’s right. There is a precedent. I looked it up. In 2008, the Sardar Bhagat Singh School of Business in India appointed the monkey god Hanuman to their faculty. Office and everything.”

  Jeremy Cole, the Graeco-Roman mythology specialist, said: “I suppose he works for peanuts.”

  Dr. Acharya smiled, her dark eyes sparkling. “No. That would be Ganesh. Of course, the appointment is purely ceremonial. For luck, I suppose.”

  “Because they can’t afford to pay anybody,” said Henry. “And as I understand it, the actual work will be done by Mrs. Ingram and the office staff. Not that much of a change from Dr. Lamplough’s final years, really. But I suppose the administration felt that, nominally, we ought to have a chairman, and so they appointed one.”

  “And didn’t let us vote,” said Dr. Hillenberg. “Typical.”

  “Well, Alvin, who would you have suggested?” asked Dr. Acharya, tapping him playfully on the arm. “Some hairy linebacker of a Norse deity? Thor?”

  “Well, definitely not one with an elephant face or six hands, Apoorva. I can certainly picture that image in the college brochures!”

  Henry cleared his throat, and—probably coincidentally—the bickering subsided. “Because Martin Lamplough’s specialty was Native American folklore, the administration thought that it would be fitting to choose a deity from somewhere in that pantheon. And I believe in these days of political correctness there were other considerations, too. To choose a male deity would leave them open to charges of sexism; a hunter god would offend the animal rights people; they didn’t want anyone who was associated with violence.”

  “That leaves Tinkerbell,” snapped Professor O’Meara (Celtic Studies).

  “That’s funny,” said Dr. Hillenberg. Like many people who lacked a sense of humor, he was making a diagnosis rather than actually appreciating the jest. “Oh, I do hate changes, especially in the middle of term. I almost wish Old Lamplough hadn’t died. Well, not that—oh, you know what I mean!”

  Henry summoned a wan smile. “In the event—and not that it matters, I suppose—they went with the Raven, revered by Pacific Northwest tribes. Apparently he goes by many names, none of which are easy to spell, so the dean found a photo of the Raven totem online, and he has asked one of the art majors to copy it onto the office door.”

  Dr. Acharya nodded slowly. “So . . . our new department head is . . . the Raven? The god Shani travels astride such a bird.”

  “It’s not a bad choice,” Professor O’Meara conceded. “In Celtic mythology there is the war goddess Morrigan, who took the form of a raven, and, of course, there are the ravens of Bran.”

  “And in Norse myths we have Huginn and Muninn,” said Dr. Hillenberg. “Odin’s ravens.”

  “Quite a multicultural choice,” murmured Henry. “How about you, Cole?”

  “Nothing special in Greek or Roman lore that I can recall, but I suppose a bird would be as good a department chair as anything. What about you, Henry?”

  Henry Garner sighed. “Well, I do fairy tales, you know, and general mythology. Oral histories, urban legends, and so on. Ravens are always turning up, but then so are frogs and cats and everything else you can think of. I am taking over Dr. Lamplough’s Native American mythology class, though, so I expect I’ll be learning as I go.”

  And that was that, really. The university saved thousands of dollars that it di
d not, in any case, have to spend, and the Folklore department got a new chairman, who was only slightly less vague and out of touch than the previous one had been. A senior art student, whose specialty was anime, graciously consented to stretch a point and copy the red and black Inuit raven totem on the office door: a stylized rendering of the raven spirit, executed in slashing lines and an inlay of intricate patterns, which, when you stood back and looked at it, formed the approximate shape of a bird. It bore no resemblance to any corvid that had ever lived, but somehow the lines managed to convey an expression of fierce intelligence.

  “Very—er—picturesque,” said Henry, who was called upon to pronounce the work satisfactory.

  The young man in acrylic motley rubbed at his nose with the tip of a paintbrush. “Thanks, dude. You got a tissue? I splotched the paint a little on the beak and had to scrape it off the glass with a razor blade. Nicked my finger. But, hey, the paint’s red there, so it doesn’t show.”

  Averting his eyes from the sight of the boy’s bleeding index finger, Henry fished a crumpled handkerchief out of the pocket of his jacket and handed it over. “Keep it with our thanks, young man. You’ve done a fine job.”

  Mrs. Ingram, the department secretary, received the news about the new department head with her usual impassive stare. Her attitude conveyed the impression that, after twenty years of employment at the university, nothing would surprise her, except possibly mature and responsible behavior on the part of the faculty members. Henry had informed her of the decision even before he convened the department meeting, because he felt that telling her would be the greater ordeal. Not that she would express an opinion, of course, but there emanated from her waves of tacit disapproval, suggesting that their folly and absurdity had finally exceeded even her expectations of reprehensible behavior.

  “I’m not feeding no birds,” she said when Henry had wound his way through a torturous explanation.

  “No, Mrs. Ingram, of course not. The raven, you see, is symbolic. There won’t be any actual bird in the office. It’s only a gesture—you know, a mythical creature chosen to head the Folklore department. The dean seemed to think it was quite clever.”

  “He would,” muttered Mrs. Ingram. She sighed. “Well, I suppose it won’t make much of a change from the poor soul who had the job last. Might as well have been in a birdcage, that one. So I’ll just carry on as usual, shall I?”

  “Absolutely,” Henry assured her.

  Things went smoothly for the first week or so, but then Dr. Acharya cornered Henry in the hallway after her morning class, her dark eyes blazing with scholarly indignation. “There are thirty-two people in my class, Henry. You can see the roster for yourself here. I thought we had agreed that we would take no more than twenty-two students in a class.”

  “Well, Apoorva, my dear, I suppose you’re a popular instructor,” said Henry, trying to extricate himself with flattery. It did not work.

  “Thirty-two students, Henry!” She shook the roster sheet inches from his nose. “This is a university, not a fast-food restaurant! I have written out a formal protest—”

  “But I am not the department head,” Henry reminded her. “I suppose you could go to the dean, but of course, he’d want to know if you had gone through the proper channels.” Henry nodded at the door across the hall, with the red and black raven totem on the frosted glass.

  Dr. Acharya stared. “You are seriously suggesting that I take it up with him?”

  “Well, you know, for form’s sake,” said Henry, glancing at his watch as he edged away. “I have a class.”

  “You’re all mad!” she called after him, shaking her papers like a battle standard. Then as Henry’s retreating form disappeared around the corner, she shrugged and shoved the papers under the department head’s door.

  Without admitting even to himself that he was doing so, Henry managed to avoid Dr. Acharya for the rest of the week. He hated confrontations, and it seemed to him particularly unfair that he should be subjected to them on account of a situation that was in no way his fault or under his control. When he saw her again in the hall on Monday morning, she smiled and waved at him, so he ventured an inquiry.

  “Er—did you get your class situation resolved?”

  Her smiled broadened. “It resolved itself, Henry. All ten of my excess students took sick within the last two days. Apparently, they are in no serious danger, but they will all be out for the rest of the term.”

  Henry blinked. “Distressing news, of course,” he said. “Very sad for them, but I am glad that you got your wish. Er—exactly what illness did your superfluous students come down with?”

  They both glanced at the image of the raven on the closed door. Dr. Acharya hesitated for a moment, and lowered her voice to a whisper, “Avian flu.”

  The strange coincidence of the reduced class size made such a remarkable story that, without really intending to, Dr. Acharya had told everyone in the department about her good fortune within two days of its occurrence. Everyone laughed and congratulated her on her class reduction, and one or two of them made feeble jests about the new chairman being more efficient than most of his flesh and blood predecessors.

  Purely on a whim, and perhaps because he had not entirely recovered from his morning hangover, Professor O’Meara slid his own hastily scribbled note under the chairman’s locked door. He had been ambling unsteadily down the hall, reluctantly bound for his eight a.m. class on Irish Folklore, when he happened to catch sight of the painted raven, leering at him from the frosted glass. He glared back at it for a few seconds, and then he whipped out his grading Sharpie from the outer compartment of his computer bag and scratched a brief note on the back of a junk mail envelope he found in his overcoat pocket.

  I don’t want to teach an eight o’clock class.

  It made him feel better, anyhow, he told himself, squinting through his headache, as he wobbled away down the hall to the classroom.

  Two days later, it snowed fifteen inches.

  In deference to the off-campus students, and, of course, to the professors and campus workers, the chancellor cancelled morning classes. In a memo to the faculty, he said that while he could not condone any more class cancellations, he did recommend, in view of the icy road conditions, that professors endeavor to reschedule their early morning classes. Chris O’Meara sent an email to that effect to the students on his class roll, and discovered that every one of them had a two p.m. time slot free. At the next class meeting they voted unanimously to meet at that hour for the remainder of the term.

  This time there was no pretense of discretion. O’Meara told his colleagues and anyone at the bar who would listen about the marvelous new department head and the wonders he had wrought. He even affixed a little bag of sunflower seeds to the doorknob of the Raven’s office. The next morning the sunflower seeds were scattered across the hall, and in his office mailbox, Dr. O’Meara found a photocopied Internet article on the dietary habits of corvus corax. Mrs. Ingram disavowed all knowledge of the memo.

  “But they eat grains and berries,” O’Meara insisted. “In addition to carrion. It says so right here.”

  Mrs. Ingram shrugged and went back to her word processing. “Apparently, this one doesn’t.”

  Young Jeremy Cole, who hated to be left out of anything convivial, made a great show of writing up his request on departmental stationery, and collecting a little crowd of admirers in the hallway to watch him submit it. He even made a little ceremony of reading it aloud first. “Dear Chairman Raven,” he intoned. “I, Professor Jeremy Cole, instructor in the Department of Folklore, respectfully request that I be given a new Mercedes-Benz, and this week’s winning state lottery ticket worth seven million dollars. I shall be ever so grateful for your kind assistance in this matter.” He acknowledged the scattered applause with a mock bow and slid the paper under the door with a flourish.

  Nobody really expected anything to happen regarding Cole’s flippant petition, and nothing ever did. “After all,” Dr. O’Mear
a was heard to say, “department heads are not responsible for matters in our personal lives.” The Raven was judged to be entirely within his rights to ignore Cole’s frivolous requests, as any other department head would have done. Cole tried again later, with a less public but equally silly request, but since no one reported any sightings of Angelina Jolie anywhere near the campus, or indeed in the entire state, this effort, too, was deemed a failure.

  There was a postscript to this incident, which did not become fodder for the faculty gossip mill. A few days after Jeremy’s second facetious attempt to petition the department head, he was working late in his office, and he chanced to go to the supply closet to refill his stapler. There on the floor of the closet was a sprung mousetrap, its tiny victim still warm but quite dead. On impulse Jeremy abandoned his stapler, carefully lifted the mousetrap, and set it down outside the Raven’s door.

  He admitted all this privately to Henry a week later. “It was just an impulse,” he said. “I suppose I was curious.”

  Henry nodded sympathetically. “And did anything happen?”

  “Well, when I came in the next morning, the trap was gone. That could have been the cleaning crew, I suppose. I didn’t like to ask. But then yesterday I got a phone call from someone in Hollywood. Someone famous. They’re planning a picture set in ancient Rome, and the star had a technical question for a mythology expert.”

  Henry stared. When he could trust himself to speak, he said, “Jeremy, do you mean to tell me that Angelina—”

  “No. No. Russell Crowe.”

  Henry, whose office was across the hall from the Raven, now kept his door open most of the time. He found himself keeping an eye on that portal, half expecting to see someone—or something—go in or out, but nothing ever did. He did sometimes get the feeling that the painted eyes of the Raven were watching him, but he dismissed this as a fancy born of his own uneasiness. When his colleagues laughed and bragged about the marvelous Raven and drew up silly wish lists, he did not join in the merriment. Henry was not amused. His mild dismay had progressed from misgivings to alarm.