Those Who Fight Monsters Part 15

"No, I'd know if she was a demon." After Leah and the Demongate, if there was one thing Tony could recognize, it was a demon. "I said she was something like a succubus. All her victims are men, probably men s.e.xually attracted to her but..." He waved a hand. He didn't have a lot of actual fact although the show's writers had come up with a lot of theories. "Anyway, she's definitely sucking the life out of them and she wants Lee."

"Who doesn't," Amy muttered, using her grip to fling him toward the door. "Don't just stand here talking, move!"

The sandwich shop was not the place Lee would have chosen, but Valerie seemed comfortable there, so he tried not to think about health code violations.

"Why don't you want me?"

The upper curve of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s was creamy white.

"I do want you."

She gave him a twisted smile and stood. "Then why don't we..."

Lee reached out and pulled her back down into her chair, trying not to think about the feel of her skin. "Look, I want to help you. You can get out of this life. I know people ... a person ... who has."

It wasn't until she glanced down at the bracelet his fingers made around her wrist that he realized he was still holding on. When he let go, she frowned.

"Why are you doing this?"

He shrugged and went with the truth. "I can't stop thinking about you."

She licked her lips and he couldn't look away from the glistening moisture her tongue left on the pink flesh. "We should deal with that."

He gave her back a twisted smile. "I'm trying to."

Her laugh stroked him. "Not what I meant."

"I know. Why are you doing this?"

Suddenly, she was only Valerie again. "What?"

"You asked me, I'm asking you."

She stared at him for a long moment, and, just as suddenly, she wasn't Valerie, she wasn't anything he knew. To begin with, she was one h.e.l.l of a lot older than mid-twenties and when she spoke, her voice sounded as though it came from very far away as well as from inside his head. "I take them into me but it never lasts and I'm alone again."

Over the last few years, Lee had seen a lot of things that terrified him. This wasn't one of them. "...maybe it's just that she's so vulnerable, in spite of ... everything." What he'd said to Tony still stood. A word like everything covered a lot of ground.

"You don't have to be alone." And he was back in the sandwich shop again, sitting across a grimy, laminate table from an attractive woman in a blue dress. "I think you could use a friend."

"A friend?" This expression, the staring like she couldn't believe what she was seeing, he recognized although he was usually the one wearing it. "You don't know..."

"I have a pretty good idea." He shrugged. "I'm the second lead in a vampire/detective show. I read some weird s.h.i.+t. Not to mention, my life has gotten interesting lately."

"And you still think we could be friends?" She stared at him like she couldn't believe what she was seeing. All things considered, Lee found that kind of funny. "I'm a..."

"Hooker." He grinned when the corner of her mouth twitched. "Yeah. I know people who've got out of ... that."

"That?"

"Something very like that. My partner's ex is kind of..." It was as if thinking of Tony magically made him appear. There he was, suddenly standing on the other side of West Cordova and even through the sandwich shop's filthy windows, he looked...

Terrified.

"There's something wrong." Lee shoved his chair back and tossed his card onto the table. "That's got my cell number on it. You can call any time. We'll work this out. But I've got to..."

"Go."

"Yeah." He gripped her shoulder as he pa.s.sed, and ran out the door. "Tony!"

Tony'd found the car but he couldn't find Lee and his hand was shaking too much to use his phone and...

"Tony!"

He turned in time to see Lee start across the road toward him.

To see the SUV come out of nowhere.

To hear the impact.

To see Lee flung into the air. To see him land crumpled by the curb in a position the living could never hold.

Tony knew dead.

He froze. His heart shattered like Lee had been shattered. Then he took one step. And another.

She reached the body first. Stood there for a moment, searching Tony's face. Then she dropped to her knees, gathered Lee up onto her lap and pressed her mouth to his.

"Oh my G.o.d! I didn't see him."

Panicked hands grabbed Tony's arms, fingers digging painfully deep in a grip he couldn't break.

"He was just there."

All Tony could see was a red face and wide eyes and a mouth that wouldn't stop moving.

"I swear I didn't see him. I wasn't going that fast. He didn't look. He was just there!"

Then other hands grabbed and other voices started to yell out words that stopped making sense and Tony finally managed to break free.

He found Lee sitting on the edge of the road, his jeans were torn and there was blood on the denim, blood on his s.h.i.+rt, and a smear of scarlet lipstick on the corner of his mouth.

His heart starting to beat again, Tony bent and picked the blue dress up off the pavement.

Together, they watched a cloud of fine silver ash blow away on the breeze.

Tanya Huff lives and writes in rural Ontario and is probably best known for her Vicki Nelson Blood books - although there's another twenty novels out there including Smoke and Shadows, Smoke and Mirrors and Smoke and Ashes, the Tony Foster books. The Enchantment Emporium is her most recent. She maintains an active LiveJournal page at andpuff.livejournal.com Tony Foster is the second a.s.sistant director on "Darkest Night", the most popular syndicated vampire detective show on television. He's one of only three wizards currently practicing in the world and he intends to keep practicing until he gets it right. Given the amount of supernatural flotsam showing up in Vancouver lately, he's being given a lot of opportunity.

Soul Stains: A Vampire Babylon Story.

by Chris Marie Green.

A chill was trying to worm past her skin and deep into her bones, but Dawn Madison didn't even s.h.i.+ver. She'd first learned how to handle the w.i.l.l.i.e.s as a Hollywood stuntwoman, and her later "career" as a vampire hunter had taught her the rest, even if it'd been a while since she'd been in the hunting game.

"Something's sure as s.h.i.+t here," Kiko said, sensing her disquietude. The psychic PI was more than a foot shorter than her, a little person, former actor, and former hunter. Today he was garbed in his version of a business suit: cargo pants and a white dress s.h.i.+rt covered by a dark pea coat. Since their last and final hunt together, he'd grown out his blond hair a bit, grown back the soul patch on his chin.

The old Coconut Coast showroom was quiet now that the staff had wrapped up their post-show duties and left. With its faded burgundy velvet-curtain glamour, booth seats curled around scratched mahogany tables - your basic old school luxury and tackiness rolled into one - the Bahia Resort and Casino was one of those Vegas stalwarts on the north end of the Strip that cried out for a corporate takeover. But the owner, "Tigerman" Lee, had held on to it, even though the place had to be on its last legs.

They called him Tigerman, apparently, because of the gray sideburns he wore like feral slashes under his cheekbones. He may have been over sixty years old, but as he stood next to Kiko, he still seemed like someone Dawn wouldn't want to mess with in a dark alley. Actually, he didn't seem all that keen on her, either, what, with the marks on her face. Gifts from her final hunt.

His voice was a cigarette-hewn rasp. "The past two years, there've been a few sightings here in the showroom, but Gigi Calhoun's more active backstage."

A ghost haunting the Bahia.

Or maybe it wasn't that at all, and that's why Kiko, the PI, had come here - and why Kiko had brought in his old friend Dawn.

They'd already done their own background check on Gigi Calhoun. She was a secret vampire who'd sold her soul in preparation to recycling her declining Hollywood career after she'd "died" spectacularly in the auto accident that had supposedly decapitated her. With the help of the vampires and their servants, her body had sure looked headless enough to the Coroner and Medical Examiner; the Underground had fooled the press, fooled everyone into thinking she was dead and gone. Gigi's legend grew as she wiled away her time Underground. But, unfortunately for her, Dawn and the team had wiped out the Hollywood hive before the actress and singer could complete her release cycle; that would've included plastic surgery, a name change, then reemergence Above as a similar star - but one who only used vampire Allure to remind everyone of the original Gigi Calhoun.

Tigerman's gaze had taken on a longing softness, just like every other fan who'd nursed a fervent need to never see his idols die. "When Gigi first headlined here in the early Seventies, Vegas was like a woman just finding out how powerful she could be, wearing her neon like jewels she got from all the men buzzing around her. Gigi opened this place, sang and danced on this very stage. Then she..."

"Died," Dawn said, going along with the lie.

Tigerman sighed.

"That's why you think she came back here," she added, "even in the afterlife? Because she had a special attachment to the Bahia?"

"I like to think so. And, pretty soon, ghosts might be all that's left. Maybe I'll even be one myself when they finally strong arm me into giving up this place."

Kiko was wily enough to walk past Tigerman, "accidently" brus.h.i.+ng his hand against the owner's. He was trying to get a reading with his psychometric abilities while the elderly man's mind was on Gigi.

When the psychic frowned, Dawn knew he'd come up blank.

"Why do you think Gigi waited so long to show up here after all these years?" she asked. "Why didn't she come to the Bahia to hang out just after her death?"

"I thought that's why you two were here - so you could ask her about that stuff. That's what most of you paranormal types do, with your societies, right? But I don't mind. Gigi's been a draw, bringing us a little more business since word got out about her."

Kiko wandered toward the stage, avoiding this subject. He'd told Tigerman that he was a garden-variety paranormal enthusiast, creating the impression that there'd be some free publicity from an article Kiko said he'd write for a trade journal.

Bulls.h.i.+t. He and Dawn were only here to find out if Gigi was the last surviving remnant of the vampire Underground they'd destroyed in Hollywood. If she was, they'd deal with her.

Dawn felt her skin p.r.i.c.kle on her right side. She waited for the heaviness in the middle of her own body to weigh her down, too, just like it had before she'd gone into self-imposed exile after the last Underground - the one in London - had been vanquished.

Rehab. That's what her lover and companion, Costin, called it.

As a former vampire who'd been turned human again with the termination of her maker, Dawn knew just what it was like to feel the darkness as it tried to drag you under.

The chill came to her again, but this time, there was valid reason for it.

A curtain by the stage.

A hand that appeared briefly before disappearing behind the velvet, leaving it stirring.

Adrenaline rose in Dawn, leaving her heartbeat sharp and fast.

But no one else had seen. In fact, Tigerman left Dawn standing there as he caught up to Kiko, then began leading them backstage. Kiko slowed down to talk to Dawn, c.o.c.king his eyebrow as she sent one last look to that stilled curtain. Maybe she'd just been imagining things, if Kik hadn't sensed anything amiss.

"Tigerman was closed off," the psychic whispered to her. "He blocked out my touch reading."

"Not everyone is open to them."

"Bad guys never really are."

As they followed Tigerman out a side door, Dawn's skin kept crawling, and it wasn't just because of what she thought she'd seen back in that showroom.

They'd agreed that Kiko's hotel room was the best place to talk in private. Dawn perched on the king-sized mattress, opposite where the psychic was leaning against the dresser. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and didn't much care for what she saw. Dawn didn't look like a normal person, even with makeup covering the black marks on one side of her face - her very own physical manifestation of the anger in her soul. The splotches of red on the other side were a souvenir from the dying high master of the Undergrounds, who'd splashed her with his blood. Thank G.o.d they just looked like inexplicable tattoos.

"So how're ... things ... right now?" Kiko asked.

"Things?"

"You know."

Dawn shot him a sarcastic glance. "All we've done so far is tour the showroom and backstage. Things are cool."

"But we'll be going back to get readings with my equipment. I just wanted to see if you need ... well, rest. Stuff."

"Kik, this isn't so bad when you consider that my days used to consist of slicing off vamp heads."

"Are you sure that-" Kiko started.

"Hey - I won't turn into a raging monster that'll bite your head off because Costin's not around to temper me." She took a long breath and made herself relax. "Besides, before he got me to the airport this morning, he took care of me."

Just like every morning, they woke up before sunrise and Costin had used his psychic energies to push back the dragon's blood that always threatened to join with the vampire darkness inside her. With the death of her own maker, she'd gone human again, but the heaviness within had remained, growing in force and hunger until Costin had found a way to curb it. He kept the dragon away from the soul stain, because they feared a collision would resurrect the big master ... in her.

"I'm sure you're as mellow as ever, Deepak," Kiko said, "but I'll get you back to San Diego by tomorrow morning so you can be with Costin anyway. I just wanted your take on Gigi here."

"If she turns out not to be a ghost, Costin's gonna join us, you know."

"Yeah." Kiko didn't sound happy. Not because he didn't like Costin, but because if Gigi wasn't a ghost, that'd throw a curveball into their new lives.

"Before Tigerman gave us the tour," he continued, "I didn't realize that Gigi has been appearing to everyone in her prime, just like she never aged a day past her supposed death decades ago. But I guess her looking that way would make sense if she's a ghost now. I mean, there've been plenty of reports of spectral Elvises and Marilyn Monroes who show themselves at the peaks of their gorgeousness, before they went downhill."

"So that proves Gigi's a ghost, and not a humanized survivor of the Underground?"