The Devil Eats Here (Multi-Author Short Story Collection) (16 page)

“This is Ms. Laura Barber,” Mr. Beaumont said. “You two know each other?”

“Right.” Recognition dawned in his amber eyes, followed by a slight tension to his jaw. Remembering, no doubt. Her skin went from warm to burning. By now, her face would be a bright pink.

He recovered quickly, the smile returning. He still had perfect teeth, of course, and perfect skin. Only his too-large-ish ears kept him from total perfection, but flaw made him all the more attractive.

“It’s been a while,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

From the urban fantasy novel
Chasing the Trickster
by April Grey

You know when something goes wrong in your life? Really Wrong?

Sometimes you don't. Sometimes it takes a wakeup call.

Mine was from an ancient fertility god who called himself Joe.

It was Saturday night at Mickey's. Noisy, even raucous at times, the place was filled with mostly young professionals ready to party. Our old fashioned Irish saloon had upgraded to a boutique martini and wine bar. Just another part of the gentrification infesting our 'hood in recent years.

Rich Flannery, "the Geekboy," my friend and next door neighbor of many years, sat with me. Rich used to weigh 350 pounds, but about two years ago he joined the local dojo. He went every day, worked hard and had transformed into 210 pounds and six feet one of pure muscle. Still, you can change the packaging but inside there remained a comic book reading, Internet surfing geek.

Then again, those geekish vibes were persistent. He could break your neck with two fingers, but he'd always be the Geekboy. At that moment he was telling me about his latest loser acquisition.

"So, he was the star of that television series about twenty years back and now he's in Alcoholics, Gamblers, and Narcotics Anonymous." Rich's dark blue eyes sparkled with fan-boy delight

as he tossed back his thick, blond hair and, I kid you not, chortled.

"So, Old Murphy hired him on your say so?" I asked with some disgust. "Great; an alcoholic super-he can clean up after he pisses in our hallway." Bitchy? Yes, but standards even in a rundown, old Hell's Kitchen tenement needed to be maintained. Unfortunately, Murphy would do anything for his grandson, Rich.

"Nina, that's not the point. He was a star. He hung out in Hollywood. You should see his memorabilia."

"He's a broken down has-been who worked in a space western.

For crying out loud, Rich-" I was about to whine about his lilywhite, liberal soft-heartedness when I looked up and saw him for the first time.

Not particularly tall-I spotted the cowboy boots, which in New York City is a dead giveaway for either an out-of-towner or a poseur with aspirations to height. He had high, wide cheekbones and long, glossy black hair. His eyes surprised me, even in the dim light of the bar they were a startling green. He wore faded blue jeans and a black tee shirt under a blue denim shirt tucked into his jeans. There was an abstract clump of silver inset with turquoise on his belt buckle, continuing the cowboy motif. Thank goodness, no Stetson. That would have been too much. Now, I don't normally make a fuss over men, but I felt my attention waiver from the conversation because he was staring at me. My entire body caught fire and I hoped Rich wouldn't notice my fevered face.

"Nina-"

"It's bad business to put someone with that kind of history in a position of responsibility. He'll have access to all our apartments."

My eyes were still on the mystery man and he still watched me.

My heart started going tippet-thump.

"Earth to Nina. Earth to Nina." Rich snapped his fingers in my face. "What's going on behind me?" Rich turned around just as the man came over. A rich herbal scent surrounded the stranger, reminding me of new mown fields or dark, mossy glens. Whatever he used as an aftershave could make a person millions.

"Excuse me, were you working in the Quasi Gallery?" said Mister Not-So-Tall, but still Dark-and-Handsome.

I deflated. Right. Not interested in me, they never were.

"Yes. The hours are posted on the door." I tried to return my attention to Geekboy.

"I'm interested in one of the artists there, Nina Weaver?"

"Really? Well, she's-" Rich began, just before I kicked him under the table, effectively shutting him up. I'm lucky he's too much of a gentleman to ever kick back. If he should ever change that policy, I was in big trouble.

"She's one of our hottest new talents." If I was going to make a deal, it was better outside of the gallery. Kelly, the owner, took a hefty percentage of whatever I sold there.

"I wanted to purchase one of her Spiritus series." The Cowboy ventured a nervous smile and my mouth went dry.

"A good choice. I definitely can help you with that."

I felt funny, like I was a kid again, having my first crush. It was getting very warm in the bar.

"Yes, I was wondering if the only ones were in the gallery?"

"Um, no, there are five others in the Spiritus line. I have them at home."

He raised his eyebrows at that. I felt myself go even redder and extended my hand. "I'm Nina."

He took my hand and instead of shaking it, kissed the back. A very damp spot grew on my underwear. I swallowed hard.

"Joe Guzman," he said, slowly letting go of my hand.

"I'm Rich. I live with Nina." My neighbor took Joe's hand and gave it a firm shake. I made a mental note that I'd have to have a little talk with Rich about 'us'.

"He means we live in the same building." I smiled and tried to kick him again, but Rich had moved his leg out of the way.

"Ah, I see," he said slowly, looking from him to me. Though there was no trace of an accent, something in his manner was foreign, old world, perhaps.

"Are you from around here?" I asked.

"No, Santa Fe."

Bingo on the boots, not a pretender but the real Western deal.

"Are you here in the Big Apple for business?" asked Rich. What was Rich still doing here? I wondered. Couldn't he just have been noble and left?

"Very good, Rich." He smiled a bit too broadly. "Yes, I am here doing business and I spotted Nina in the gallery earlier today. She was busy though with a customer."

"Even if I was, I can't imagine not noticing you. I'm sorry." I resisted the impulse to bat my eyelashes, barely.

"I'm not. Could I buy you a drink?"

I giggled like a schoolgirl.

"Sure, I'm having Scotch and she's having Sex on the Beach,"

Geekboy said through gritted teeth.

"Rich."

"Just joking, Sweet Pea."

Geekboy took my hand possessively and I made another attempt to kick him, only to wind up stubbing my toe on the leg of the chair instead.

"Such a kidder. I'm having Chablis."

Joe nodded politely and left.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Rich?"

"I might ask the same." He started playing with a bead of water on the table. "I've never seen you throw yourself at any guy."

"Well, you're seeing it now." I kept my voice low. "So, take the hint."

"Nina?" There was a hurt look in his eyes, which pissed me off even more.

"Rich." We glared at each other. We had a friendship, a simple, platonic relationship. Period.

"I'm just protecting you."

"I don't need protection. I want-" I had to admit it, at least to myself. I wanted him, mysterious cowboy Joe, some guy I didn't even know ten minutes ago.

"Fine, Nina. If there's a problem, just remember I'm always there for you." He scraped his chair back and left. Geekboy had grown himself a spine. I felt bad, but not bad enough to stop him.

"'Use the Force, Luke'," I murmured. Joe returned with a confused look on his face.

"Did I miss something?" He sat down in Geekboy's seat.

"No, nothing. I hope you like whiskey because Rich remembered he had to be somewhere. So, you're interested in my Spiritus work?"

"Yes. What are those things? Are they ghosts?"

Right,

I am a very average person. Completely average: boring brown eyes, brown hair that frizzes in humidity, average height. Problem was that my work wasn’t—recently things had been showing up in my photographs. Don’t ask me why, cuz I don’t have a clue. They just show up. Mostly it’s people who have passed on, but other times arcane messages appear. When they’d first happened I’d airbrushed the damned nuisances out. And I spent several hundred dollars in trying to find the defective material or equipment causing them. But the gallery owner liked them, and so my Spiritus collection was born. I’m a good photographer and don’t need hokey Photoshop tricks for my work; however, it was usually the novelty stuff that sold to very happy and excited customers who were willing to pay anything to get their hands on the photos. In my less secure moments, I resented it.

From the fantasy novel
Elijah's Chariot
by Douglas Kolacki

Openers

First the Reverend saw his own slumped body, its right temple shattered, from about eight feet overhead. The hand still clutched his Smith & Wesson Model .22 revolver; blue smoke curled up from the muzzle. Later on he would remember thinking how much he really did resemble a marionette with all the strings cut. He looked ridiculously fat around the waist. Not as much blood as he'd expected; it trickled down the side of his neck and stained his second-hand Brooks Brothers shirt dark red. The eyes, unsynchronized once the bullet drilled his brain, stared off in different directions.

The others lay strewn about in the shadows. One man had draped his arm around a woman's waist. From somewhere came a faint gurgling, someone still convulsing, but quietly now...

He fell through a black-tornado vortex. He saw flames. They reminded him not so much of hell as of forest fires, and the conflagrations that swept through Japan in 1945. He might have been inside the sun. Maybe he was? Hell in plain view all these centuries, warming humanity with the burning of lost souls, and no one ever knew it...

No. These flames were not the oxidation of fuels into light and heat per the physical laws of earth, but living spirits erupting in hyper-definitions of red and yellow. They did not sear, did not destroy; that was not their purpose. They had no mouths, yet they spoke, and made themselves understood.

They had been waiting for him. They would purge and reshape him. They would birth him, like the phoenix, anew.

His time on earth was not finished. It was just beginning.

Chapter One: All Hallow's Eve

The bus's rear doors hissed open and Dexter James Williamson sprang off, glancing up and down the street.

Careful! Mind the time and place. Downtown, Fourth and Broadway to be exact, and close to midnight. He drew his denim jacket tighter around him, the one with the crossed American-Australian flag pins on the collar. Not just another stroll home from the call center, no!

See those two beggars huddled under the bus stop shelter with those packed-full garbage bags? Think it's just the usual clinking bottles and cans in those bags? Not tonight it ain't.

Dex stepped around them and hurried on, past the expensive steakhouse where he'd watched the Super Bowl. The crescent sliver of moon glowed over Point Loma and the Cabrillo lighthouse, brighter than usual it seemed, as if to remind everyone of the occasion.

The 20 Express bus was done for the day; Dex was always the last passenger to disembark. It rumbled on toward the garage. He watched its red tail lights and thought of the twenty-minute uphill trudge home to his worn sleeper couch. He made it every night without incident, yes, after getting off the two to eleven-thirty shift—but none of the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four evenings of the year were:

All Hallows Eve!

The cute little costumed elves, ghosts and fairies had dashed home with their chocolate treasures to tear off the wrappings and fill their homes with candy scent. Now the hour was late, and this was the one night of the year no black cats were released for adoption because of things that were...done to those animals. When the city darkened not into the silent, holy eve of Christmas but the setting for a Poe story: the emerald-spire hotel into the dark tower, the beggars into dumpster-spawned mutants ready to slash off your head and add it to the ones already crowding their trash bags. As well as the zombies who should have been decaying peacefully underground, but try telling them that!

Dex marched past the locked restaurant doors with his long-legged stride. People in the windows laughed and swigged from bottles. Didn't they know that on Halloween, anything can happen?

Halfway across the bridge where Fourth Avenue crossed Interstate 5, he put his hands to the concrete rail and scanned the freeway. From below came the usual sighing of cars winding south. Or was it the moans of rising ghosts?

Around the next corner, behind that liquor store with the neon-lightning Chargers helmet glowing in its window, a thing like an unwrapped mummy lurks! And skulking in the shadows outside that two-story house so old and battered it's just gotta be haunted—

"Woah!" He jolted. Someone was there.

The intruder was turning the corner off Fir Street, breezing out from under the shadow of a lacebark elm. Dex saw him clearly, somehow, in the darkness. The night appeared not to touch the man, as it would not touch a star if it drew close to earth; the darkness would part to let it pass.

"Ah." Dex screwed up his face. "Hi?"

The man had freckles and sandy hair. Fairly young, but not far behind Dex's own thirty years. He wore ordinary jeans and a cotton shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Nothing unusual about him, save the translucence of his skin and the absence of a jacket in late October.

The man continued on. Dex watched him for a moment, then turned and strode across Fir Street and into a parking lot with a guard shack and a few scattered cars. He planned to cut across the lot to Third Avenue, then on to First and the white Spanish building where he had lived since getting out of the Navy.