Shelby wore wings, a jewel spattered contraption coated by the colorful feathers of the rarest of birds. His mask was of the eloquently painted on, glittery variety. The eyeshadow was dusky blue. His attire included a simple summer vest of cotton. It was white, with spaghetti straps. A crimson sash secured his matching slacks at the back. It wasn’t the first time that he’d had the gall to step into that color or such dainty slippers, with their straps of canvas that knotted into bows at the root of his toes.
Joss, the dark half of this Fae pair, watched Shelby from the other end of the alleyway. He’d forgone the ridiculous footwear, and was impatiently smashing a rotting apple core into the wall with the steely stub of his boot. His feathers were stolen from ravens. They glistened in the glow of the pale moon, reflected in the black depths of Shelby’s greedy irises. He was halfway jealous, screw duty and what-not. He watched Shelby’s unhurried motions with growing ire. The way he pressed up against the drowsy eyed party-goer, who was masquerading as a cop. The dark shirt was undone. The man had a nice body under there. Shelby was lapping delicately at the gushing punctures in his neck.
Joss swallowed, hard. So much of it was flowing down, past his glistening belly and down to where Shelby’s wandering hand slipped into his waistband. Joss’ sharp tooth worried at his lower lip as he contemplated this mild dilemma. Which one of the two--exactly, was he supposed to be more jealous of?
“Really,” Shelby murmured absently as he eased away reluctantly. “He does switch me on.”
Joss heaved a sigh, dredging up a reasonable tone. “I was trying to have a conversation with you about something.”
Shelby’s prey sank to the ground with a sigh and a thud. He bent down over him. His finger pressed at the pulse in the man’s neck. Still alive. Good. That was good, he supposed. He cast a Joss a distracted glance. “Hmmm? Which thing was that again?”
Joss bent over the man, directly across from Shelby. The blood that had spilled was becoming sticky. The raw scent of it wafted up in the air, surrounding him. He struggled to ignore the mad pounding in his ribcage, the hunger and need welling up inside.
“You know,” he smiled slyly at his sibling. “What if Newton stole the apple he used to discover his theory about gravity?”
“Huh?”
“Well? Does the accomplishment diminish or exacerbate the crime?”
Shelby’s head surged upward. His teeth were a little runny with red, eyes glassy and mildly perplexed. He scowled after a few seconds of intense mental scrambling. “That’s not what were were talking about.”
Joss shrugged, hungry eyes fixed on the slowly closing wounds in the pretend cop’s neck. The steady pounding of the heart was almost deafening now. He reached out, without realizing it, fingers tracing a path through the blood across the unconscious man’s torso.
His mouth twisted petulantly. “I want some of yours, Shelby. I don’t think I like mine.”
Shelby frowned. “Hell no. We’re not out to lunch. This is a mission. Did you forget--wait." Shelby frowned. "What’s wrong with yours?”
Joss’ glance skittered over the the prone form a few yards away in a dark corner of the alleyway. He eyed the pale and skinny, scruffy man with growing distaste.
“I don’t know. He tastes funny.”
He leaned forward obediently when Shelby crooked his finger at him, trembling slightly as his partner’s tongue probed his mouth. Shelby backed away with a thoughtful frown.
His brows narrowed into an accusing vee. “He’s dead, you moron.”
Joss flinched. His mouth twisted at Shelby’s rebuke. “Not that. There’s something else. Isn’t there?”
Joss watched Shelby hurry over toward the corpse. He hated this. Now he was the one pouting and feeling like an idiot. He followed and bent to watch his brother examine the body. He shrugged, sliding his gaze away from the tail of Shelby’s pristine shirt. He hadn’t noticed yet that it was stained with clotting trickles of red.
Joss decided not to bring it to the airhead’s attention, since he was being such an arrogant ass. Maybe he’d just let him walk around like that for a while, at least until the ick set. He hated Shelby’s stupid choice of colors, anyway. Who the hell wears white to go hunting on Halloween?
Shelby’s nose twitched. “He stinks to high heaven. Where the hell did you find him?”
Joss pointed in the general direction of the wharf.
“This is what you call hunting? Picking up a dumb junkie that overdosed?”
Annoyed, Joss hefted the man up by the collar. He was shaking him like a rag-doll. “Haah? He wasn’t dead when I caught him, was he?”
Both brothers stilled suddenly. There was a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the atmosphere. They both glanced backward. Joss flushed guiltily. Shelby stared at the lanky man scowling down at them. He was the only one he knew of, who could make raggedy jeans and a tee shirt look like haute couture. The thing about Seefra Hanouri was that he seemed so ordinary and harmless but you don’t get to be renowned in the underworld as Prodigy of the Rath or head hunter-executioner for the Council of Ancients for being a nice guy. At a glance, he was just a good looking and good natured guy. Shelby and Joss knew what a crotchety bugger he was at heart. Catch him on a bad day and he would rip your heart out if you so much as blinked at him the wrong way.
“What the hell did you do?” He demanded. Judging by the impatience in his tone, it was probably the second time he was asking.
Joss dropped the cadaver like it was a hot potato. “I didn’t do it.”
Seefra blinked. “Huh?”
“He went and died all on his own. I swear.”
Shelby grinned at Seefra. Their elder seemed like he might be in a bad mood tonight. The wild light in his eyes suggested that it might be more than just the moon making him unsteady.
“It’s true,” he flicked a nod towards Joss. “The guy was already three quarters dead when old Lame Brain over there picked him up.”
Seefra bent down beside them. “What’s that smell under the dead-smell?”
“That’s what I wanna know,” Joss muttered.
Shelby pulled away the collar on the guy’s shirt, revealing a triangular tattoo. He inclined his head over to the guy he’d just fed on.
“My guy over there, he’s got this mark too. Beside his belly-button though. And you know,” he continued thoughtfully. “He kinda had the same taste but not so much.”
Joss stood, surveying their surroundings with new eyes. Somewhere in the urban maze of boxy buildings, a rogue den of vampires were getting their jollies from pumping hapless humans full of drugs before feeding on them. Joss wasn’t too concerned about the morons who were stupid enough to get taken in but those “made” mongrels were drawing too much attention to themselves. They needed to be shut down, firmly and painfully.
He suddenly realized that Seefra was staring up at him with a bemused expression. “What?”
“What’s with the Prince of Darkness, Prince of Light costumes?”
Joss blinked. “Huh?”
Shelby scowled. “Isn’t it obvious? We’re fairies.”
“Fairies? How the heck did you come to tha--” Seefra fished his buzzing phone out of his pocket. “Yeah?”
Shelby and Joss seized the opportunity to put some distances between themselves and the werewolf. Still, they only went to the rooftop of the next building. Their acute hearing gave them the benefit of eavesdropping on parts of both sides of his conversation with Dominik Locke, interim head of the Rath--antecedents of the werewolves. The Rath were matriarchal but dwindling in numbers and a shortage of true-blood females had left them without a clear leader for nearly a century already. Curiosity had won out over the need for self preservation.
“Just tell me when and I’ll be there,” Seefra was saying.
“I guess Misha’s finally making his move.” Shelby murmured.
“Looks like,” his brother murmured, distracted. His attention veered in the direction of the wharf.
Politics had never been much of an issue for the Rath before. Now that Dominik’s son was pushing the envelope and involving the Council of Ancients in their feud, there was bound to be a lot of confusion all around. This didn’t just concern the pure bloods. If this crap started trickling downward, even the hybrids-- werewolves, like Seefra would start taking sides. It was bound to be a violent, bloody mess.
The power vacuum caused by the loss of the matriarch almost a century earlier was finally beginning to chip the armor of the Rath and from the inside-out, at that. Dominik’s daughter, Mikki was the only viable candidate for Matriarch but she was too young and forcing a premature ascension wouldn’t do the Rath any good.
“Where is Mikki, anyway?” Joss asked.
“Tokyo goth parade.”
“Huh-what?”
There was a huff of breath. “Don’t ask. I didn’t.”
Joss frowned, picking up a new and unwelcome scent in their air. It was coming from the general direction of the wharf. He hadn’t picked it up when he was there earlier. Was the coven masking their presence somehow? Hopefully, he hadn’t just been too distracted by the night’s silliness to notice. Seefra would hardly forgive a lapse like that.
They heard Seefra chuckle. “The archangels? Mike, maybe could tolerate training them but Gabriel would definitely kill them. He’s already at his wits end with Nefir, as it is. Well, Shelby’s iffy but Joss... you know, he just tried to feed on a drug-soaked corpse? Stupid, right? Hell, I might kill...”
Joss leaned a bit further off the edge, straining to hear. He lost his balance and would have been able to catch up, except that Shelby got annoyed with him all again, for what had happened earlier and kicked at him. He tumbled over with a yelp.
Seefra stopped in his tracks at the sound of a loud crash followed by a muffled yell of dismay, in the distance behind him. “I think he just fell into a dumpster.”
Seefra laughed again, at something Dominick said. “Well, contrary to human myth, it’s the just idiots that roam on All Hallows Eve. This is better than when they do get serious, though. Plus, they are a few ounces of fun to toy with.”
He leaned against the wall and shrugged. A fleeting smile ran across his face. He motioned in the general direction where he sensed Shelby watching from, silently instructing him to start moving downwind of the wharf area. He propped the costumed sleeper against the wall and was in the middle of tagging the dead one for retrieval when a loud bang resounded, followed by a massive explosion.
Moments later, Shelby and Seefra were standing--slack jawed, before the building that had gone up in flames. Joss was covered in soot and his wings and hair were singed.
“This is the place, isn’t it?” Seefra asked quietly. “The one we’ve been searching for all night?”
Joss held up a staying hand at him. He took a few steps back and to the side, putting some distance between himself and his mentor. “Before you go all ballistic and try to kill me, I just have to say one thing.”
“Is this the part where you explain how the hell we’re supposed to investigate a pile of ash? You--”
“I didn’t do it.”
Seefra stared in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?.”
The brat really had some nerve, didn’t he? He reached for him sidearm, seriously contemplating pumping the idiot full of bullets. It wouldn’t kill him but it would definitely hurt like hell. Who knew? Maybe he’d learn something from it. Experience argued otherwise. Still, he’d be getting a little satisfaction from raining down a little pain. Or a lot. Maybe, a lot of pain.
Joss must have seen murder and rage in Seefra’s eyes because he was shaking his head emphatically. “It’s not my fault! All I did was stand right here. That building exploded all on its own. I swear!”
"It happened... just like he said... saw the whole thing.” The choking sound beside Seefra was Shelby trying his very hardest to not laugh. He was failing.
Seefra groaned, shaking his head at Joss. “You must have the worst luck in the world.”
Shelby gave up, doubling over and cackling. There were tears coming put of his eyes. When he finally caught his breath, he smirked. “It’s true. Honestly, I’m beginning to think he’s Cursed.”
Joss became incensed at Shelby's mockery. “Shoot him,” he hissed, pointing at his brother. “If anyone should be killed, it’s him!”
Seefra shoved his sidearm back in its holster. Rage caged, he grinned. “Oh, come now. Would I kill my own subordinates?”
Joss and Shelby exchanged dubious looks and wisely declined to respond.
Short Stories
Scary Fairies
Tightrope Cat
Masika sat in her apartment, cowed by the gloom and dirty-gray walls. That old fashioned clock in the kitchen was ticking so loudly it scraped at her nerves. Her fingers itched to rip it down. Her toes curled into the fabric of her couch. She pondered the problem, biting the nail of her thumb, all the way down to the nub.
Gatherer
At first, it didn’t seem so strange, waking up by the sea. I thought I’d simply fallen asleep after my usual swim again. The damp sand was itchy, crackled bits of seashells were cutting into my skin. I was tired to the bone, so I didn’t mind that too much. Waves were idly lapping at my toes. There was a nice breeze rolling over the water.
Sweet Belladonna
Capella: the tiny planet languishing in the soft crimson glow of her dying star had been a late bloomer, coaxed into habitability by human colonists only a few centuries earlier. The tiny body was nestled among a dusty smattering of moons and asteroids that awkwardly wobbled along the outer edges of the Magellanic Spiral. Cappella boasted no major goods or tourist attractions, and was more often overlooked than not, by most respectable commercial enterprises throughout the known worlds.
Ghost & Hammer
John Miller entered the bridge of the Dawne Empress and sat in the pilot's chair. He winced a little at the toll it took on his knee and grinned as he switched off the autopilot, adjusted their course, and initiated a routine systems check.
"Not as spry as I used to be am I, old girl?"
His matter of fact murmur was met with a soft beep that he could swear was the ship answering. He was a relic - a treasure hunter of sorts.
Bird of Paradise
Midnight was always Gabe's favorite hour. There's a pulse that flows in the air, making everything – even inanimate objects seem to move like predators. Trees sway with attitude in the spring breeze. If you peer intently enough through the soft glow of lamps, you can see the streets are littered with dreams.
The woman was waiting, as promised in the cryptic message she received in her mailbox. She was an angel, a bird-of-paradise that must have fallen from heaven.
Unthinkingly, Gabe looked to the night sky. "... or from somewhere else up there."
She didn't realize that she'd spoken out loud until she noticed LaSalle staring at her in consternation. LaSalle, of the golden hair and catty eyes, her intrepid assistant, who had at some point made keeping Gabe tethered to reality, her life's mission. Gabe shrugged and bent over the lovely corpse, tugging on a pair of those latex gloves that she hated so much.
“Careful not to touch the ground,” LaSalle hissed as her knees brushed the ground.
Gabe tossed her a slightly bruised scowl. “This isn't my first crime scene, you know.”
The not so gentle reprimand sailed right over LaSalle's head. “Hurry up!” she snapped. “We don't have much time remember?”
Terry's latest victim was a pretty girl. Like some mythical angel-bird, she had classic Romanesque features, strong cheekbones and pouty lips. The eyelids were heavily kohled. Even in death, her skin seemed so warm and inviting, dewy even. Gabe's eyes drifted down, closing and skipping away from the neck area. She couldn't look at that – not just yet. The body had been meticulously and perfectly dressed in a dark purple ball gown of silk and some kind of sea-foam delicate fabric. The dainty slippers on her feet must have been stolen from some sort of fairy princess. The one on the left foot hung slightly askew. Strapped to her back, by delicate spaghetti straps over the shoulders; her velvety wings fanned outward, crimson and black tips fluttering flirtatiously in the mid-spring breeze. She finally swung her eyes back to the cruel ligature marks on the neck. The woman had been garroted. Savagely. Carefully. Gabe squeezed her eyes shut. Something dark bubbled forth into the back of her throat. It might have been rage but she could never tell anymore these days. It was too hard to differentiate with all the turmoil inside.
With a resigned sigh, she examined the nameless girl's left hand. The nails were torn and raw. She had fought, Gabe realized with some satisfaction. The body had been cleaned, dressed and so elegantly made up. Afterwards, she had been posed every so carefully on the wrought iron park bench. Still the bastard hadn't been able to completely eradicate the fact that mere hours before those ragged nails had bled, and this odd little angel had fought for every inch of her life. Lips pursed, Gabe looked up to LaSalle - unaware until she saw her assistant's teary grimace, that her eyes were wet too.
LaSalle's throat was thick when she spoke. “Did he leave you anything?”
Gabe cleared her throat and turned back to the body. The note was in her right hand. She carefully removed it and stuck it into her pocket.
“You're not going to read it?”
She shook my head, “not yet.”
“All right, then move,” LaSalle ordered.
Gabe stood and moved out of her way, as she went to work with her neat little digital camera.
Moments later, a dark SUV pulled up behind them. Jamie, a dark eyed college grad and latest addition to Gabe's staff poked his head out the window. “Let's move it, you two! The cavalry arrives.”
They hopped in, and as Jamie slid the car out into the anonymity of the night, Gabe saw the flashing lights of a patrol car in the distance behind them. Her breath blew out of nervous whisper, “Wow, that one was really close this time.”
“Well?” Jamie's eyes shifted to the two women in the rear view mirror. “How did it go?”
“Did you get what you needed?” Gabe asked LaSalle instead, of answering him.
She nodded quickly. “I think we can really use these pics. We might even be able to identify her. Find out where she came from.”
Gabe's brow furrowed doubtfully, “I don't know. You know how he operates.”
“He might have taken her from Timbuktu for all we know and by now, he's probably a thousand miles away,” LaSalle added. “I know, I know. Still, it might give us something to work with this time.”
“Timbuktu?”
“Don't mock me. It's an analogy.”
Gabe raised a brow, “An analogy?”
“Yes!” Her eyes glittered in annoyance.
Jamie groaned. “Don't start with the nervous bickering again. I'm not in a mood to play referee. Was there a note or not?”
“Yeah.” Gabe answered at length, albeit a tad huffily.
He didn't understand. How could he? He hadn't been right there staring down into dead eyes. How could he even begin to understand why they were trying desperately to be so cavalier about it. They couldn't let it matter. They couldn't let it, not yet. They had done that before and lost. Not this time. LaSalle and Gabe had made a pact. This time, they would keep their cool. She dug around in her pockets, fished out the note and read the killer's message out loud.
“Liberate this, bitch.”
Nothing more. It was signed “T” for Terry. Terry for Terror. No one knew his real name. Somehow he had figured out her little nickname for him.
“Very clever, Terry the Terrible,” Gabe muttered to no one in particular. “Dumb fuck.”
She sighed heavily and stared sullenly out the window. The messages were getting more and more personal with every kill. All directed at her – the one who got away.
“I don't like this,” Jamie grumbled. “I keep saying we should go to the police.”
“And what?” Gabe demanded. “Get arrested for interfering with multiple crime scenes? Stealing evidence?” She waved the offending note at him. “At worst we would be accused of being accomplices to a flipping serial killer. At best...” She trailed off tiredly.
She didn't have to finish that sentence. The police protection that had been foisted upon Nan, Terry's sixth victim had propelled her directly into the grave ten month's earlier. It hadn't been the cops' fault, really. No Sleepy-Town-Anywhere's police force was staffed or equipped to deal with the likes of Terry. The trio were much better off handling him on their own terms.
“I know,” Jamie capitulated after a few moments of driving in silence. “I knew that; when I decided to join your rag-tag little team of supposed crime-fighters. I don't intend to back out or anything, you know. I just think we're getting in a little over our heads.”
“Oh we are, Jamie. We're way in over our heads. Plus,” Her lips curved into a slight smile. “I don't think we can actually be a crime fighting team if we we're only looking for one guy.”
“What then?”
There was a soft whirring sound when LaSalle turned the digital camera back on. She squinted at the tiny screen as she flipped from one image to the next.
“Vigilantes, darling.” she murmured absently answering Jamie's question. “It would make us vigilantes.”
Gabe's fingers stirred, skimming the lines of her own scarred neck. How long had it been? Two years? Two hundred? It might as well have been yesterday. It might as well have been her sprawled on the damn park bench just now. In her never ending nightmares, she relived every moment of those days that Terry had kept her. The way her skin crawled when he touched her and called her Gabriella. The way she burned with wrath she never knew she possessed when he showed her his pictures all those dead girls. The way he smiled when she wept for them. The way it stuck in her craw that a limp haired, rheumy eyed pissant was doing that to her. She remembered how he gloated when he thought that she was finally broken. But she also remembered weeping for gratitude when she realized that he was injecting less and less of that poison in her veins. He wanted her lucid when the time came but she was the first that he had taken for so many days.
He'd made a major mistake. He'd untied her. He'd been too confident that she was too weak and terrified of him to move. Her entire life before the moment she had woken up in a strange room, bound, gagged and terrified out of her mind, had vanished into the distance. After he had tortured and almost strangled her so many times, nothing she had ever been or done before those five awful days mattered anymore. That was an inescapable and ugly truth. She had barely escaped alive. Alive she was, but he had indeed, taken her life from her. She was going to make him pay for that, if nothing else.
“Liberate te ex inferis.” Save yourself from hell.
“What?” LaSalle head swung toward her. She blinked owlishly. “What did you say?”
“He told me, that no one would hear me screaming. When he cut into my flesh. He told me that no one would come to save me,” even now, Gabe could still hear it, the shakiness in her voice from remembering. She'd used that same knife that he cut her with to stab him in the belly.
“I told him, 'Liberate te ex inferis' – right before I smashed a chair over his head. How perfect is that?” She giggled a bit. “The words just popped into my head right then and there.”
“Wow.” Jamie whistled. “Then the note...”
“Yeah. I guess he's still pissed.”
LaSalle raised a sarcastic brow. “You don't say.”
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