Blood Lite II: Overbite

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Take me to JFK,” she said.

  After a terrifying ride filled with unexpected jolts, random noises, and a great deal of cursing in a tongue unknown to Filiméala, the driver pulled to a stop and said, “You probably want Aer Lingus. That’s this terminal.”

  She gave him one of her hundred-dollar bills, and he drove away very happily.

  It took a quarter of an hour for Filiméala to get to the front of the Aer Lingus line.

  “What is your final destination?” asked a pert lass behind the counter.

  “I just want to go back to Éire,” Filiméala said.

  The lass’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have a ticket?”

  “No.” Filiméala dropped the rest of the money Meara had given her on the counter. “Is that enough?”

  After counting the money, the lass typed at her keyboard. “You’re in luck. There’s a seat available on our five forty-five flight to Dublin for seven hundred forty dollars. Will that do?”

  “Yes.” Filiméala sighed with relief. Everything would be better once she got back to Éire.

  “I’ll just need to see your passport,” the lass said.

  “Em . . . my what?”

  “Your passport.”

  “I don’t have one. Can I buy one here?”

  The lass got a strange look on her face and excused herself to go talk to an older man.

  After several frustrating conversations during which Filiméala was forced to explain over and over to each new person that she came to America years ago without a passport and that all she wanted to do was go back to Éire, they put her in a room to wait for someone from the Irish consulate.

  She had a feeling the explanation that she had come across the Atlantic one hundred and sixty years ago was not going to go over well. They would never let her go back to Éire.

  A television on the wall cycled through news stories. She let the babble fade into the background as she wallowed in her misery, until she heard a familiar song. She looked up to see on the screen something she had seen on YouTube: a middle-aged woman singing before an audience that went wild with applause. She began to listen to what the newsman was saying.

  “While in the past their show has focused on singers under thirty, the producers of American Idol have announced that they would also like to find the American equivalent of Susan Boyle, the forty-eight-year-old Scottish singer who became an overnight Internet sensation. So for all you older singers out there, maybe this is your opportunity to make it big. The open auditions start tomorrow at Giants Stadium.”

  Harry had told her this was the land of opportunity. Maybe it was time to stop feeling sorry for herself and start making a new life for herself. If a Scotswoman could become a star, why not an Irishwoman—and one of the Bean Sídhe, no less?

  Just as she stood up to walk out, the call of death hit her. Somewhere, five members of the O’Grady mob were about to die.

  Harry had dismissed her from her service to the family—there was nothing to bind her to the O’Gradys any longer.

  But the call was too strong. Dapper Donny had never been one for mob wars, so she hadn’t sung for more than two deaths at once in decades. Filiméala tried to resist, but her knees buckled. The keening tore at her throat until finally she stopped resisting and let her voice burst forth.

  The television screen shattered.

  A uniformed man opened the door. “What are you—”

  She directed her keening at him, and he grabbed his ears.

  Filiméala walked past him and out of the airport terminal. She no longer needed an aeroplane. Her life had a purpose now: to become an American Idol.

  • • •

  Filiméala could not count how many people were in line to get into Giants Stadium, but surely it was thousands. Some of them even had tents. A lad with a clipboard handed her a sheet of paper with a series of questions to fill out, including date of birth. Filiméala first decided to make her age forty-eight to match this Susan Boyle, then after eyeing the youth of the other contestants, changed it to thirty. She gradually shifted her appearance to be more youthful, turning her silver hair to golden blond and smoothing the wrinkles of her skin. The persona of an old woman had served her well in a culture that valued age, but that time seemed long gone. America valued youth and beauty, and she needed to be more American if she wanted to be an American Idol.

  Just to be safe, she de-aged herself down to twenty-five, then twenty.

  “Whoa!” said the lad behind her in line. “What happened to the old lady?”

  “Em,” Filiméala said, “my grandmother held my place in line until I could get here. You won’t tell anyone?” And she gave him a wink.

  “Secret’s safe with me,” he said. “I’m Kip.”

  “Filiméala,” she said. The name would have to be thrown out with her age, she realized with regret. “Call me Fi.” And she wrote Fi O’Grady on the form.

  After several hours, she and Kip, along with two other aspirants, were ushered into one of several large tents being used for auditions. A gray-haired man sat behind a folding table.

  “Okay, let’s hear what you’ve got,” the man said.

  Filiméala sang, her voice converting the silly required pop number into a powerful ballad filled with longing and hope. She continued to sing past the specified twenty seconds, filling the tent with her song. As she let the final notes drift away, the man wiped tears from his eyes.

  “Wow,” he said. “I can’t wait to see what Simon—”

  Filiméala was so caught up in the moment that the call of death caught her completely off guard. The lament for twelve O’Gradys burst forth from her mouth, and everyone in the tent grabbed their ears to seal out the sound, then fled.

  Something within her had changed. Filiméala’s keening had never been so powerful before. It was as if she had tapped a new source of power—and unfortunately, she was not used to handling it. Before she could get it under control, the fabric of the tent was torn to shreds, which whirled around her in a tornado of cloth.

  Amid the screaming, panicked chaos of thousands of aspiring singers, Filiméala walked out of the stadium.

  She would never be an American Idol. But perhaps it was time to show Harry just how useless a Bean Sídhe was.

  Harry sat behind the mahogany desk in what had been Dapper Donny’s study. He didn’t look up from the papers he was reading when his men escorted Filiméala in.

  She sat in a maroon leather chair and waited.

  Without looking up, he said, “Your message said you had found a way to be useful?”

  “Yes.” She spoke meekly, like a penitent child.

  He looked up, then started as he took in her new appearance. “Like the new look. Maybe I can find a use for you as something other than a banshee.”

  Filiméala felt the call of death, and a moment later tinny music began to play in Harry’s pocket. He pulled out his iPhone and stared at it.

  Suppressing the desire to keen, she leaned forward. “Does the voodoo in your phone tell you the name of who is going to die?”

  “No.”

  “I can tell you,” she said, her voice a rough whisper as she held back the song.

  He snorted. “You said before that you couldn’t.”

  “Things are different now. I think after all these years in America, my Bean Sídhe power is tapping the strength of America, rather than Éire.”

  “Right, then,” he said. “Is it one of the O’Malley boys? I sent them to deal with some Italian troublemakers.”

  “’Tis neither of the O’Malley boys,” she said. “The name of the one who will die is Harold Standish O’Grady.”

  His eyes widened as Filiméala unleashed her full voice. He leaped from his chair and clapped his hands to his ears while screaming an inaudible order to his guards. The force of the song slammed him back against the oak-paneled wall and pinned him there.

  The flesh of his face rippled, then piece after piece tore away. The bones of his skull fr
actured, then refractured again and again until they were ground to powder, held in place only by the standing waves of sound produced by Filiméala’s keening.

  She stopped, and the remains of Harry “Hair-Trigger” O’Grady collapsed into a wet heap on the floor.

  Filiméala became aware that the guards had their guns pointed at her. They were repeatedly pulling the triggers, resulting in ineffective clicks since they had run out of bullets. Metallic dust lay on the floor a few feet in front of them, remnants of the bullets shattered by her song.

  “Now, now, lads,” she said. “I have nothing against you. And if you behave yourselves, it will be a good many years before I sing for your deaths.”

  They stopped pulling their triggers but continued staring wide-eyed at her.

  She walked around the desk and poked at Harry’s corpse with her toe. “It seems the O’Grady mob lacks a head, and somebody needs to stop the mob war the late Mr. O’Grady began.” In a whisper, she added, “You’re the one who told me this was the land of opportunity.”

  Filiméala sat down in what had been Harry’s chair and swiveled to face her guards. “Tell the rest of the clan that I’m in charge now.”

  “What should we call you, ma’am?” one of them asked.

  “Filiméala O’Grady,” she said. The continuity of the surname was important. But she also needed a nickname, so she added, “The American Banshee.”

  The Epicurean

  AMY STERLING CASIL

  By summer’s end, Vanpirs had grown somnolent, not leaving his flat for days before the Schlachtfest was to begin in the Alter Markt. He sat at a small yellow table by the iron hearth, reading a French tourist guide about the preparation of Pomeranian Tollatschen, a dish rich with pig’s blood, bacon drippings, and raisins.

  For the Schlachtfest, Stralsunders gathered in hundreds, the women in their dirndls and men in old-fashioned suits, gobbling pig knuckle, leberwurst, knockwurst, dozens of waxy, greasy boiled potatoes, and of course, blutwurst.

  It was the smell that brought Vanpirs to loiter near the Schlachtfest in an alley paved with thirteenth-century stones. Standing quietly in his close-fitted black jacket, Vanpirs looked only slightly different from the Stralsunder men. One would only have noticed that his hair was darker and straighter than most, and his face was more chalk than pink. Few Stralsunders could maintain such a trim profile after years of Schlachtfests and, following that orgy of pig meat, Oktoberfest bier, drunk in competitive German quantity.

  Vanpirs spied three Deutsche maidens leaving the Alter Markt, holding each other by the elbows, laughing.

  “Ja, das Tollatschen! Zu viel!” said one of the women.

  “Weit zu viel!” said the one in the middle.

  Even Vanpirs’s suspect German told him that they had eaten a great deal of Pomeranian Tollatschen, the bloody dish he’d been reading about. His nose told him they had washed it down with weissbier.

  After a brief exchange of pleasantries, two of the women stood mesmerized as he fed on the first of them that reached his waiting arms. Ah, the rich sweet-sour flavor of Tollatschen, full to bursting with pig blood, bacon fat, and plump raisins. The late summer beer was also not bad, Vanpirs thought.

  At the end, Vanpirs was as full as the women had been, and he staggered from the alley.

  “Ho! You’ve had a bit much!” called some town revelers.

  “Indeed I have,” Vanpirs called back. “Pommerische Tollat!”

  They laughed. “Ja! Pommerische Tollat!”

  It was not until Vanpirs had nearly reached his flat when he felt the most curious sensation. His limbs were heavy and would not move as he wished. He tried to leap up the steps as was his usual habit, but instead, he found himself lying on his back, staring at a torn veil of clouds wisping across the rising Baltic moon.

  He lay there for some time, slowly moving his fingers and toes but nothing more, until at last his elderly neighbor Herr Kahler arrived.

  Herr Kahler, a stooped and balding man who limped around Stralsund in a black leather jacket studded with Polizei and ABBA patches, leaned over Vanpirs and said, “Eh, what? You’ve had too much bier, young fellow.”

  “No,” said Vanpirs.

  “Moderation in all things, I say!” He poked Vanpirs with his cane.

  In any other circumstance, Vanpirs would have fed immediately on the old gent. But Vanpirs’s limbs would not respond.

  “Please, Herr Kahler,” he whispered. “Help me.”

  “Bah!” Herr Kahler said. “I cannot. My health card authorizes me to lift no more than two kilos.”

  “Please, lend me an arm,” said Vanpirs. He thought he saw the faintest glimmer of the morning sun rising over Stralsund’s ancient spires.

  Herr Kahler turned and saw the flicker of light as well. He bent slowly, and held out his arm.

  “You will forgive me, Herr Vanpirs,” Herr Kahler said. “It is unwise to come too close to a gentleman of your persuasion.”

  Vanpirs grabbed Herr Kahler’s arm. Slowly, he managed to lift himself to a kneeling position.

  “Your condition seems most unusual,” Herr Kahler said. “I would urge you to consult Herr Glücklich, the Apothek, at your earliest convenience.”

  Legs trembling, Vanpirs managed to stand. “Ja,” he said. “Danke.”

  “Now get inside. For myself, I plan to fix a cup of hot tea. I should think by the time the water boils, the sun will have risen over the cathedral.” With a brief nod, Herr Kahler indicated the spire of Stralsund’s oldest structure.

  “Danke,” Vanpirs said, inching toward the door of his flat.

  “You’ll have no trouble seeing Herr Glücklich tomorrow evening. He keeps late hours.” Herr Kahler smiled, and for such an old gentleman, he had remarkably strong white teeth.

  “He’s in Lindenstrasse?”

  “Ja,” Herr Kahler said. “Please be kind enough to let me know what he says. I shall be taking a brief trip tomorrow, but I’ll be curious to find out your prognosis after that.”

  Vanpirs looked up at the clouds sweeping across the moon. To the casual eye, it would have seemed a full moon, but Vanpirs saw that it was waxing gibbous. He suddenly understood the true nature of his neighbor, wondering how he had not noticed before.

  “Herr Kahler,” Vanpirs asked, “Why it is that you seem so enfeebled?”

  “Ah,” Herr Kahler said without turning. “Some of us know how to thrive in the present day.”

  Vanpirs, wondering whether Herr Kahler had meant his hideous jacket or aged appearance was the secret to successful lycanthropy, entered his flat just as the sun began to rise and fell to the floor in a heap.

  The shop of Herr Glücklich the Apothek looked like an ordinary pharmacy to Vanpirs, but he entered anyway, as he felt so wretched that he would have snorted packets of Dr. Oetker’s dried custard if it could have improved his condition.

  To the young, pimply man behind the pharmacist’s counter he said, “Wo ist Herr Glücklich?”

  “I can help you,” the young man replied.

  Vanpirs reached across the counter and grabbed the young man’s jacket. “Herr Glücklich,” he growled.

  “Oh, Ja!” replied the young man, and he craned his pocked neck, calling, “Herr Apothek!”

  A tidy man of about fifty emerged, straightening his glasses.

  “Danke, Herman,” he said. “Go and clean the klo.”

  After two or three rabbitlike blinks, Herman scrambled away and disappeared to the rear of the shop.

  “I come on the recommendation of Herr Kahler,” Vanpirs said.

  “You’ve been attending the Schlachtfest?” Herr Glücklich asked.

  “Ja,” Vanpirs said.

  “And you did as all others do, I suppose,” the Apothek said. He busied himself with arranging a display of ribbed condoms on his counter.

  “I don’t feel I did anything out of the ordinary,” Vanpirs said. “But as I went home, I found myself unable to climb the steps to my own flat.”

&nb
sp; The Apothek looked sharply at him, and Vanpirs said, “I needn’t tell you how unusual that is for a man of my . . .”

  “Proclivities? Hmmn,” said Herr Glücklich in a businesslike tone. “Roll up your sleeve.”

  Vanpirs undid his cuff and complied with the Apothek’s request.

  “Press the flesh with your fingers,” he said. “Just so.” He lifted the loose sleeve of his pharmacist’s jacket and pressed his own forearm with two fingers.

  Vanpirs frowned but pushed his left forefinger into his wax-pale arm.

  “Now take the finger away,” Herr Glücklich instructed.

  Vanpirs removed his finger. A neat dent remained in his flesh.

  “How long has this been going on?” asked Herr Glücklich.

  “I don’t know,” Vanpirs said, staring at the dent.

  “It is the curse of our modern age,” the Apothek concluded.

  “I don’t—” Vanpirs thought he knew all imaginable curses and this was not one of them.

  “You should be aware that I am a senior authority in my field,” Herr Glücklich said.

  “That is very good,” Vanpirs said, staring at the dent and feeling faint.

  “Gentlemen such as you are not immune to the complaints suffered by the general population.”

  “But I am immortal,” said Vanpirs.

  “We are all dependent upon our environment, Herr—”

  “Vanpirs.”

  “Herr Vanpirs,” the Apothek repeated, not unkindly. “This is why I asked about the Schlachtfest, although I was quite certain that you had attended, merely by examining your color.” He leaned across the counter and took Vanpirs’s dented arm, holding it up and turning it this way and that.

  “So,” said the Apothek. “Here you clearly see an abnormality. And I will tell you its source.”

  “Please,” Vanpirs said. What would cause such a dent! In his perfect flesh!

  “Cholesterol,” the Apothek concluded.

  “What?” cried Vanpirs.

  “Ja,” Herr Glücklich said. “Although your metabolism would seem flawless, maintaining you through dozens of ordinary lifetimes, even it is no match for today’s high-fat diet.”