IMPOSSIBLE MONSTERS

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A Caliban Story from the World of the Cal Leandros Novels

by Rob Thurman

“Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters. ”

—FRANCISCO DE GOYA (1746–1828)

Firstborn

(Present Day)

I changed my mind.

It wasn’t something I did often. It wasn’t something I did even rarely. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not thanks to the fact that most of my decisions—fine, all right, any of my decisions—are well thought out. Sure, I could tell you they are, but it would be a lie—not that I had a problem lying. I didn’t have a problem with the truth, the hurtful kind, either. Sometimes you should lie. White lies. I know that. I do.

It’s on the list.

I have two lists, if you’re counting. One was given to me the moment I learned to read my first word. It was of things I should or shouldn’t do, and, sadly, limited my entertainment value considerably. The second list I’d made myself. Its purpose was completely different, and its entertainment was opposite in that it was prime. There were no dos or don’ts on it, only names. It was also the one that might have me changing my mind, as unlikely a scenario as that has ever been.

As for the reason why I didn’t change my mind often, it simply wasn’t that much involved in, hell, my life as a rule or, in this case, my decision-making process. Or the lack of it. I didn’t think about what I said or what I did for more than a fraction of a moment, if I thought at all. Why bother? Whatever I ended up saying, whatever I ended up doing, it came from the same place. It wasn’t from my conscience. I didn’t have one—or, more accurately, I did, but it wasn’t the norm. Society wouldn’t recognize it, but a lion would. In my gut, my instinct—that’s where my decisions were born.

As a system, sometimes it worked out and sometimes it failed. Other times it failed spectacularly. Either way, right or wrong, I didn’t second-guess myself. What was done couldn’t be undone. If everything turned into a train wreck despite my giving it my best shot, well, shit happens. Why would I waste time on guilt when I could waste it on something like the newest porn mag?

With that outlook, there was no need to worry about changing my mind.

My phone buzzed for the second time.

Until now.

This time, I was second-guessing. With good reason. This was on me. This was my fault, because I wasn’t actually second-guessing. That’s what I’d done twelve years ago, by not acting on what my gut and instinct had been telling me. I hadn’t had proof, but neither had I doubts. But I did have the first do-or-don’t list. The Commandments, but considerably more than ten. I’d followed them more strictly at that age, whether I had misgivings or not.

Those misgivings were how the second list, my list, had been born. I’d written down a name, one to keep an eye on, instead of doing what I should have done. What needed to be done. Thinking a watch list was a good-enough substitute. It wasn’t. That after-the-fact, second-run list only emphasized the simple truth. . . .

I’d fucked up.

The phone’s alert went off for a third time, twice as loud, with the buzz-saw whine of a pissed-off rattlesnake, to remind me of how unforgivably I’d done just that.

I switched off the prompt without thought as I rested an elbow on the stained, spiderweb-cracked surface of the bar. The first alert was what had started this whole train of thought. It was my yearly prompt to myself to check my list. And I had. I dove in expecting to speed down it in minutes, same as every year, but this year that hadn’t happened. Fifteen minutes had passed and I couldn’t get past number one. I kept on, Googling hell-for-leather, before I’d found the end of the string and began yanking, unraveling an unholy knotted mess. Due diligence was what my brother called it. He cared about things like innocence and guilt, when, let’s face it:

We’re all guilty of something.

“I said, I want my fucking whiskey, you half-breed freak. Piece of shit mother—”

Rude.

Without raising my gaze from my phone or moving off my elbow, I used my free hand to shoot the Wolf twice in the throat before he could finish spraying me with spit and aggression. I had my Eagle back in its holster before the Were realized he’d been shot.

I packed a Five-seven under one arm and a Desert Eagle under the other in a double holster. It wasn’t my fault that some, mostly Wolves, didn’t take that as a red flag. It was in plain view, as all I wore while working besides the holster was a bar apron, jeans, and a T-shirt. Today’s was black (be real: they’re all black) with an invisible, impossibly wide Cheshire cat grin that showed nothing but a curving double row of far too many pointed white teeth and the slogan in dark red that read, YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE BAD WITH THE GOOD. And then below the grin: I, MOTHERFUCKER, AM THE BAD. You’d think that’d be a second red flag, but maybe this Wolf had been too lazy to read it.

This particular one, mirrored pretty well in a puddle of water I’d yet to wipe off the bar top, had wolfed out enough from the anger or the pain or both to be in half-and-half form. He had the muzzle, the fangs, the claws, the dirty cream and brown fur, and the snapping jaws, but he was standing upright like a human, with long human fingers, his eyes, filled with fury or not, a common human hazel. He swayed to one side and listed back to the other before combining a cough, a howl, and a strangled choking into a gushing spray of blood on the bar top. Then. . . then he finally dropped.

Figured. Rude, and couldn’t take a little maiming with grace. Had to leave a mess to piss me off further. But, mess or not, I didn’t change my mind over shooting him.

See how that philosophy normally worked out so well for me?

I also had no regrets and the best of reasons for that.

I’m a monster.

And, make no mistake. . .

I like it.

My kind, the Auphe, had been the First.

Enough to make it an official title. The first murderers to walk the earth. The first to kill for shits and giggles, not survival. The first of the perverse.

The first to be shunned by other monsters. The bogeymen to the bogeymen. And one of whom had been Daddy fucking Dearest. I came by my club membership honestly.

The Wolf was gurgling out of sight, half drowning on his own blood from the sound of it. Tougher than cockroaches, but they hate the throat shots. He would live, though. The dead don’t generate much revenue for the bar, as said, and they damn sure don’t tip.

Ishiah, my boss and the owner of the bar, was abruptly beside me out of nowhere. I felt a cool gust of air against the top of my head as I stayed bent over my phone. Peri, ex-angels, or whatever they wanted to call themselves, ran cold for some reason, and I refused to believe it was from floating around in the clouds and playing harps before they retired. The boss did have the smiting look to him, though—tall, blond, a heavily scarred jaw, and eyes the color of an uncertain sky, clouds a heavy threat ready to roll in and turn the world into a non-OSHA-approved water park. WHERE it’s THE END and EVERY END is the DEEP END! For all but Noah and his SS Minnow, at least.

“Do you have any idea how high the rent on this place is? Do you? So, why? ” You would think it would be impossible to hear an eye twitching in spastic frustration. You’d be wrong. “Why did you shoot the Wolf, Caliban? ”

Yeah, Caliban. Mom had a helluva sense of humor, a fuzzy knowledge of Shakespeare, and a vicious glee when it came to naming her half-human, half-monster kid. She wasn’t a witch, like in the play, but she had been a bitch, and that was close enough in my book to be the fucking cherry on top of that heartwarming family story.

“I’m on break, ” I replied absently. “And he didn’t respect that. ”

Ah, there. The knotted Internet ball untangled and the information spooled free. Names, locations, dates. Addresses. I smirked triumphantly at the come-and-go of red sparking in the small screen. Done. Time to go.

Straightening, I stripped off my blood-speckled apron. Blowback was a bitch. Tossing it aside, I grabbed my jacket from under the bar and shrugged into it, covering up the holster, as outside the door was human territory. While no one in here cared if I carried two guns or twenty, those outside might. This was a bar for those in the know about Big Bad Wolves, the not-quite-Fallen, and a hundred other different species straight out of your average fairy tale or mythology book. You’d never find a human here, same as you’d almost never find a human anywhere who knew about any of the rest of us. “I’m taking a long weekend, boss. Take it out of my vacation time. ”

I jumped up and slid over the bar top, avoiding the blood. This was my last pair of unstained jeans. “Long weekend? Vacation time? ” His clenched hand pounded on the bar and, unlike me, he didn’t miss the blood. Fist painted crimson, he aimed it in my direction. “It’s not the weekend, and you do not have any vacation time. In fact, you owe me close to five months’ sick and vacation time. ”

“Protecting the innocent can’t be scheduled. You, in particular, should know that. ” I waved a hand over my head in a casual farewell salute. “Remember that one time, at monster camp, ” I mocked with all the fake cheer I could gather up to push in his face, “when I saved the world, saved your life, saved everyone you ever knew or will know? ” I let the cheer dissipate. “And I didn’t even need a goddamn flute. You’re welcome. Employee of the fucking century. Still waiting on the plaque. See you Monday. ”

“Monday? I told you already, you lazy ass. It’s not the weeken—”

The door at the front of the bar closed, cutting off the rest of his rant. I had no time for anything but the name on my list. Checking annually or not, I suspected with this one certain name I’d been sloppy. I think I’d known all along how badly I’d screwed up, and denial makes for piss-poor research. This year I’d gotten an immediate, if vague, hit that even subconscious self-defense couldn’t overlook and that made me examine the hit and everything else closer than I had the previous twelve years. It had me digging down farther, and down I did go. When I was done, I’d dug several virtual holes, all six feet deep and all filled.

All but one, and I had a name ready to slap on the marker.

I’d recognized predators when I’d been thirteen—make no fucking mistake—but I had the first list, the one my brother gave me. It was to keep the lion in me—he refused to call me a monster—safe from an inability to understand human motivations and human rules. I knew what they were, their rules; I wasn’t an idiot. I just didn’t know why they were. Sometimes I still didn’t, but I had known that’s precisely why the list had been made for me.

It was also why I’d let it guide me that one time, in the sweat stink of a school gym, instead of going with my gut. Since then I’d learned better. I didn’t always need the human definition of “proof. ” I seldom did, in fact. I knew when someone lived where I did. All of the predators—the lions, the carelessly eager, the cold-blooded, the rabid—we spent our lives in the tall, tall grass. Twelve years ago, I’d recognized a wild distortion of my own reflection in the unblinking black-glass stare of a human snake, yet I let it go.

I’d fucked up but good back then. How about I didn’t fuck up again?

So. . . I did it.

My once in a blue moon.

I changed my mind.

First Day

(Twelve Years Ago)

“Do you have your list? ”

He asked me every day, but he asked twice on first days. We had enough first days that twice was closer to being the rule, not the exception.

I rolled my eyes. I was thirteen. I could still do that if I wanted. Pulling the laminated rectangle out of my jean pocket, I held it up in front of his face. “Abra-fucking-cadabra. Is this your card, sir? ”

“Language, Cal. ” He lightly swatted the back of my head.

“I know it is. Want to hear some more? ” I smirked, annoying, sarcastic shit that I was. I’d barely been a teenager for four months now, but I knew the obligations that went with it. That, added to the duties of all little brothers to drive their older ones bat-shit crazy, was going to make Niko’s life hell from now on.

Who was I kidding? His life had been hell since the day he’d been born. It had gotten worse when I’d been born, for so many reasons. He’d raised me because, if I’d been smaller at birth, Sophia probably would’ve flushed me, goldfish style, down the toilet. He raised me starting when he was four and someone should’ve been raising him instead. From my very first diaper, he was my whole family and my only family. He was all I had. Which was good by me. He was all I wanted or needed.

He’d asked once when I was around seven if I missed having a real family. Did I miss having parents that made sure we were fed, warm, and safe—the kind that cooked meals, paid the bills so we had electricity and water more than half the month, who cared where we were after dark or cared if we came home at all? Did I miss that over the one who didn’t know if we went to school or not; who didn’t shop for food, much less cook it; who threw whiskey bottles against the walls and brought strange men home for twenty minutes before pushing them back out the door?

“She’s a drunk whore, ” I remembered interrupting him to say, because Niko had tried to pretty things up for me. I wasn’t a baby. I was seven. That was plenty old enough to already know what the woman everyone called my mother really was. I also remembered thinking he could talk forever when he could say it in four words, and I could go back to watching cartoons.

Although seven or not and no baby, I hadn’t understood the question. Have more people? Even people with food? Why? People weren’t the same as me. Niko wasn’t the same, either, but he understood me, how I was on the inside, how I. . . worked. He wasn’t like me, but he wasn’t one of them. He was between. I liked things the way they were, him and me. It was how it should be.

I hadn’t been able to explain it better. There weren’t words that fit. It was the sun always rising. It was the sky being up and the ground under you being down. It was just. . . right.

Niko hadn’t understood “right. ” He understood brothers, protecting them, caring about them, that I was his and he was mine. He’d gotten that and he was the best brother, but he hadn’t been able to get the rest. How all of those things were good—they were—but they were. . . small. Next to right. Right was everything there was, the world, the universe, and then everything past that. Everything we didn’t know about now, but was out there waiting to be found someday. I’d tried again to explain it and had given up halfway through. I didn’t have the words I needed.

People hadn’t made those words yet.

Right might be too big for people thoughts and people minds, but the idea of having anyone but him at seven had been weird, was still weird today. People living with us. Trying to be part of us? That had been beyond weird. Weird but not because it was wrong. Weird because it was impossible. Sharks and lions didn’t live together. That was crazy. They couldn’t if they wanted to, and I’d been pretty sure they didn’t want to. I’d known I hadn’t wanted to.

Six years later, I still didn’t understand the question.

I shrugged off the memory as easily as I shrugged my backpack over my shoulder. I could hear the bus coming. Time to go.

“List? ”

I nodded.

“Note? ”

“I’m ready. ” I grinned at him, the grin no one but him had or would see. “Why so jumpy? It’s been years since you worried about me having to put up with someone’s shit or that I can take care of myself. ”

“First days, ” he said ruefully. “And, yes, it’s infinitely better worrying you won’t put up with someone’s crap”—he aimed a narrow-eyed look at me sharp enough to get his point across—“and that you can take care of yourself or take care of someone else. Several someones, if you have to. Just don’t, please, end up at the police station. ”

He couldn’t fool me there about the cursing. He’d heard worse from me when I was younger than ten. Sophia was all sorts of educational when it came to any and all curse words that existed. Worrying about me, though—that wasn’t fake. He did it every year on this day, the first day at a new school. There was always a new school. First days for their usual students, first days for us; middle of the semester for them, yet still another first day for us. I’d lost count of how many schools there’d been, how many first days.

This was just one more.

The junior high school was square, brown, and ugly. All schools were. There was a giant factory somewhere stamping them out on a conveyor belt. Floor was the usual puke green tile, the walls were the shade identical to the walls in every school in every state I’d been. Nothing. They were the color of nothing. Not white, off-white, beige, or gray, not any of those yet not outside of that boring cluster. “Nothing” was the only label for it, simple as that.

The gym was no surprise, either.

The teacher? Coach? Both? He was curious though, a little. Heavy with a gut—all male gym teachers were; it was the law—he had hair black as mine although he was starting to lose it, the top of his head covered in a sparse, dying lawn. The hair on his arms was thick and coarse, though. Come Easter, little kids could hide eggs in that shit. Despite being in what I guessed was his early thirties, he had the start of a double chin and no neck; not a great combo. He looked slow and clumsy. Should’ve been slow and clumsy, but I watched him move back and forth through the kids playing basketball. He slid, quick and focused, like a hungry snake.

Like a predator.

Huh.

Halfway through the game, he pulled one guy out. He had to be in the ninth grade—it was the highest the school had—but he had to have flunked a year. . . or two. He was sixteen at least, six feet tall, and weighed 230 pounds; all muscle, more than any other kid down there. Topped his cereal off with radioactivemutagen–powered steroids instead of sugar for breakfast; ate a cow for supper and got up in the middle of the night to shit T-bone steaks and a leather jacket.

The gym teacher took him off to the side and, head-to-head, murmured something to him. After a few minutes, Godzilla straightened, gave a nasty grin—I appreciated the nasty ones as I had my own—nodded, and headed toward the bleachers. Toward me. The coach’s eyes were on me, too, the bright and cold shine of black glass. Then they were back on the game. If I hadn’t already suspected when I’d seen how he moved, it would’ve been fast enough for me to miss. And I didn’t miss shit like that. Ever.

Clattering up the bleachers, two at a time, the freak of growth development gone wild bumped me hard, brutal enough to bruise. He paused in his pass and hissed, “Guess what, new kid? You’re meeting me after school today for the worst ass-kicking of your puny life. If you don’t, asshole, tomorrow I’ll bend you over the bench in the locker room and give it to you like the pathetic little bitch you are. ” Then he was past me and gone.

First days.

I gave one of those nasty grins I liked so much. It was a helluva lot more fun if they went for you on the first day, made the lesson really stick, when everyone was checking out the new kid. Everyone seeing the same thing—a boy, thirteen, a year too young to be in the ninth grade, thanks to a brother’s relentless tutoring. Hair shoulder length but pulled back in a short ponytail. Bet his parents are vegan hippie weirdos. Gray eyes that blended into the general gray of school life all around, making him barely worth noticing. Barely, but someone had to take one for the team. The new kid was voted for that position every time. Last, they saw someone shorter in inches, smaller and slighter in build, and pale, nearly enough to seem too anemic to live. I wondered if any of those watching me had seen the same shade in the white lining of the spread jaws of a striking water moccasin.

This was going to be a good first day.

Shocked I was not that it was this jock asshole, who was almost two of me, to be the one taking the first run. That’s what jock assholes did. But I wasn’t sure it was all him. He’d have gotten around to me sooner or later, yeah, but there was something that had made certain it was sooner. That whispered talk the gym teacher had pulled him into, the glance at me that had casually slipped away. Too casually. A wolf staring to the side at nothing, definitely not the rabbit crouched ready to run. Don’t look at me, bunny. I don’t see you. I’m not even here.

Chomp.

I didn’t bother to move from where I was sitting and, as I knew he would, Goliath’s juiced big brother slammed into my shoulder again on his way back down to the gym floor. He handed off a pile of towels, nice excuse if anyone was playing hard enough to sweat, to the coach. Good doggy. Woof, woof. The teacher—what the hell was his name? Mr. C. was all I’d caught. Mr. C. dumped them on the floor with no further need of them than an empty candy wrapper.

That was that.

I knew what he was.

Not me, but he lived hidden in the same tall grass.

Do you have your list?

Groaning at the familiar echo of my brother’s voice in my head, I dug in my pocket. When I pulled it out, the note was wrapped around it. The note was what had me up in the bleachers rather than down on the floor with the other students. A doctor’s note as fake as the diagnosis of mild epilepsy controlled only partially by diet and meds was met with less alarm than the one I wanted: A thirteen-year-old borderline sociopathic half human disconnected from societal and social cues who will not only catch the basketball your Lord of the Flies student bully throws in his face, but then will deflate it enough with the knife he has on him at all times to shove in your best point guard’s mouth, make him chew it up, and swallow every bite.

I’d be doing them a favor, perfect for gym class. A little panic with running and screaming is good exercise. Better than push-ups any day.

I tossed the note in my backpack and went on to the list. 1. Watch for the monsters. Check. Done it every day of my life since I was five and found out there were monsters. 2. Do not bite off anyone’s body parts. He was never going to let that one go. And it had been only half an ear, not even the whole thing. If the kid grew his hair out one, two. . . four, four inches, no one would notice. Besides, if he’d been better at dodgeball, it wouldn’t have happened. 2a. Do not play dodgeball. God. What the. . . Never mind. Just never mind. 3. Do not bite anyone, then tell them you wanted to know how they tasted. That had been in kindergarten. Although it probably didn’t help when I’d told them afterward that they tasted like the really good kosher beef hot dogs. 4. Do not bite, period. Jesus. Okay. I got it. 5. Do not set buildings, trailers, or cars on fire. That—that was not fair. It had been a medical emergency. I was not taking the rap on that. 6. Do not investigate houses when you smell dead bodies in their basement. Yeah, whatever. Blame the victim, not the serial murderer who lived next door. That was a lesson for us kids.

The list, updated every month, had gotten long, now covering the front and back of the card in tiny print. That didn’t strike me as leaving a lot I could do. Grumbling, I started to skim faster, since everything I’d already done I was beginning to suspect topped the list. Yep, 15. Do not blackmail. Victimless crime. Well, technically there was a victim, but because they’d done something bad enough to deserve being a victim. Like a nurse who lifted narcotics from the hospital. 15a. Regardless if they are addicts who steal drugs from their place of employment. Damn it. Resigned, I skipped an entire chunk to get into things maybe I hadn’t done yet. 37. When you are much older and certain urges become stronger, do not sexually molest livestock as a reaction to your phobia of passing on your difference by (due to birth-control failure) impregnating a girl. That was wrong. That was so wrong. I knew that and I was half-monster. Did he really think I’d. . . Nope, wasn’t going there. I skipped again, and there it was.

43. Do not kill unless in self-defense or the defense of others.

Fuck.

I didn’t need to kill the jock asshole to take him down. And he wasn’t smart enough to use other kids as personal attack dogs. He wasn’t smart enough to have killed and gotten away with it, either. He was a bully and lived to hurt anyone or anything—a predator, but there were different leagues. He was an amateur. Not even JV. Barely more than a benchwarmer. Mr. C. was varsity. MVP. Playing for fun. Playing for the adrenaline rush. Playing for the love of the game. Beatings wouldn’t be enough for him. They’d be a side of fries. He’d want the whole buffet. He’d want the kill. And he’d want it hands-on, no attack dogs there. If he hadn’t done it yet, he would.

That’s what my gut told me.

I looked away from the card and down at him. A man with a beer gut and the soul of a snake, but no visible blood on his hands. I wasn’t a killer without rhyme or reason, but I was a born predator. When I killed. . . if I killed. . . I’d have a reason. One that I could give my brother and look him in the eye when I did. That was the whole point, I supposed, to the list.

Putting it in the backpack with the note, I fished around more. Soon I had a sheet of paper ripped out of my notebook. Less soon and a crap load of cursing later, I had a pen. I started writing, beginning with a lopsided number 1.

No one said I couldn’t make my own list.

Two hours later, Lord of the Flies was surprised that I was waiting in the parking lot, just as he’d told me. He was more surprised I’d found his douche-bag Lexus. Other students were already gathering. Everyone had heard, and when I asked if he had a car, at least twelve fingers had popped up to point it out to me. They either didn’t like him or wanted me to piss him off enough that he’d actually tear off one of my limbs and try to beat me to death with it.

Didn’t know which; didn’t care. I had promptly swiveled sideways as taught by my brother and his teachers at the dojo, knocking off the driver’s-side mirror with one snap kick. Picking it up, I had bounced it from one hand to the other before tucking it under an arm and giving the asshole a one-fingered wave when he showed up.

Before he could get past the disbelief of what I’d dared to do, I took him down with one sweep of a leg to both of his while avoiding a sluggish swing of his fist. The juice makes you slow. “What the f—” he began, before I cut him off by slamming an elbow into his diaphragm to drive every breath out of his lungs and render them wheezed and worthless.

That’s when I did what I had done at every new school. Showed them who stood at the top of their food chain. With this dick and this school, I did it by pounding his crotch repeatedly with his own car mirror. He would have screamed for his mommy if he had breath to do it.

We’d been circled by the usual crowd. There were the identical boring shouts of “Fight! Fight! Fight! ” as soon as he’d hit the ground. I thought that was hilarious at every new school I heard it. Fight?

There never was a fight.

“New kids are bitches. Isn’t that what you said? ” I hammered another blow directly to his balls, the bigger target, this time. His dick, what little his shorts had showed him having, had retreated for cover. A walking slab of meat, but none left over for the sausage. Sad.

“Bitches who are bent over benches in locker rooms to get what’s coming to them. ” The next blow, number six, was the last, as his balls had swollen to elephant size, large enough to show below his basketball shorts by inches and mound beneath the rayon, making him the picture of an idiot who thought smuggling melons over the border was a great idea. He was able to get enough breath back to make hunh-hunh sounds, hitching in his throat. Sobbing. He’d call it moaning, if he could talk, but, as predicted, he was crying for his mommy. Without actual words, yet that was what he was doing. That, with the snot everywhere, rivers of it, made the entire deal disgusting.

You could bet I wouldn’t be biting him to see how he tasted.

I leaned in and showed him an extranasty grin, the type of nasty he hadn’t dreamed existed. “But take away your weapon of choice, what little of it you had, and then what? I bet you’ve pissed off a shitload of us ‘bitches. ’ When they get smart, they might go to a sporting goods store, buy a Louisville Slugger, thinking about you when they pay for it. Deciding they don’t like how you treated them. Decide they don’t like your asshole, bullying attitude. Decide they don’t like how you talk shit to them while shoving them against the lockers. Decide they don’t like how you walk around like you own the school, or how the teachers grade your illiterate crap like you’re a college professor because you’re king of the basketball team. ”

Moving in farther until we were face-to-face, bare inches between us, I could see the blood bursting in the whites of his eyes. His heart was in overdrive, beating too fast for the small vessels to handle. “Sooner than you think, they’ll decide they don’t like anything you do or say. Decide they don’t even like the way you breathe. Notice how you’re alive. Decide they don’t like that, either. ”

There was a shifting in the crowd, and the yelling had gone to dead silence three blows in. This wasn’t how things went. This wasn’t how scrawny new kids acted. Was it? Now there were low and frightened but also vengeful whispers racing around the circle. And they weren’t aimed at me.

“How are you going to fight back when you’ll barely be able to stand? How will you run away when you can’t even walk? And how long before you find out if you can ever get it up again? Or if your dick is as useless for good as your brain? ” I sat back and let the mirror fall on his chest. Tilting my head slightly to the side, I aimed my unblinking gaze at his reddened, wet one. Prey, but only just. He’d turned out to be more of a bug. There’s no fun in squashing a bug.

What a waste of a first day.

“Last question: Do I care about any of that? Do I care if they come for you like you came for me? Take those bats and break every bone in your body? ” My new grin wasn’t nasty now. There wasn’t any emotion behind it. It was a functional baring of teeth with only one purpose: ripping out throats. That was how we were made, those of us who lived in that tall and endless grass. “Hell, no, I don’t care. I’m not a bitch, asshole.

“I’m a fucking lion. ” I stood. “I hope they eat you. ”

In the First

(Present Day)

I built a gate. I tore open a hole in the world, and the world screamed in agony. It did with every gate I made. No one could hear it but me. Not that I knew. It was possible the Auphe had been able to catch it. If they had, they’d never said, but, then, the First hadn’t been big talkers if it didn’t involve telling you how they were going to play cat’s cradle with your intestines, flay you inch by inch, and let your skin fly up and skate on the air, a homemade kite, a toy. That’s all you were to them: a toy. Brand-new, bright and shiny.

And this was the beginning for you, a raw piece of meat with your guts in your lap. Just the beginning because the Auphe loved their toys. They played hard with them, but they knew how to make them last until they’d taken everything from them. They took your arms and legs and what was between them, as you had no use for that now, did you, little toy? The only thing they didn’t take from their toys was their tongue, so they could scream, and their hearing, as it’s no good if your toy doesn’t know how much fun it is playing with it and how much longer the playing will last.

No, the First hadn’t been much on talking, but when they had, you’d have ended up saner if you hadn’t listened. Or less insane. It didn’t matter in the end. If the Auphe had been talking to you, you were likely fucked a thousand and one times over with no way out. I’d been lucky. I hadn’t been a toy. I’d been a tool. I hadn’t been born, but had been intentionally bred like a damn dog—best in show, a half-breed experiment. I’d managed to keep all my parts, my dick in particular, which I did have use for and would’ve missed like hell.

I’d opened the gate as soon as I’d left the bar and walked to turn into the alley where we dumped the garbage. The gate itself was a constantly shifting circle about twelve feet in diameter, with the seething ring a roiling mix of the murky gray of a tornado-spawning storm, a slick oil-spill black, and the dark, dusky blue of a bruise with the sizzling flash of livid purple-edged lightning racing around the circumference.

This was my toy. If you survive being an unwilling guest of the Auphe, you deserve one incredible fucking prize. Learning how to gate was mine.

Fun and useful; I could travel from place to place, but they had to be places I’d been before, knew, or could see. That was good enough for me. I gave it the same look you’d give a well-trained pet, fond and proud, then stepped through. I stepped out more than seven hundred miles away, in Kentucky. Lots of little four-way-stop towns, but also an ocean of horse-country money. Kentucky was one was the biggest producers of two things: expensive racehorses and more pot than almost anywhere else in the country. Half the farmers, it seemed when I was thirteen, drove cars that cost more than houses. Millionaire-nice houses.

We’d lived in Lexington, a college city, racetrack city, but surrounded by velvety green fields with grazing-sleek, coated-muscle flesh. Wind captured in the body of horse. I’d seen horses before, chunky farm horses, but when I’d seen my first Thoroughbred run, I’d thought it was an entirely different animal, different species. They might not be as fast as cheetahs, but they were silk and lightning and thunder—a cyclone exploding into motion. It was amazing. Not much impressed me at thirteen, or any age, but that first run was a frozen snapshot in my mind. That the majority of them ended up as dog food when their racing days were over made me hate that place more than a good deal of worse ones where we’d lived as kids.

People: I didn’t understand them, and that was one more reason I didn’t feel any urge to try.

I’d gated to the parking lot of the junior high I’d gone to for a few months before we moved on—Sophia, one step ahead of the cops as usual, had maxed out her anonymous new presence with enough stealing, conning, and whoring. There was always a new city, always a new school, always another first day.

I remembered my first day here; I wouldn’t have if not for the first name on my list. First days all had blended together. However, thanks to this being the birthplace of that list, thanks to Mr. C., I remembered.

Studied the school, brown, boxy, and ugly as before but older and with more grime. I smiled. I’d never done a first day over in the same place. This was the exception. This time I was getting it right. “Mr. C. Coach Lee Callahan. No more hiding in the tall grass for you. ”

I couldn’t gate to his house, although I had to give credit to the Internet for being as invasive as kudzu with tendrils that refused to stop spreading. Thanks to it, I had his address. I had that and a damn good deal more, but there was something I wanted from the school first. Breaking in was easy. I could’ve gated, but I liked to keep my whole range of skills up. Bypassing simple security systems, and they didn’t get any simpler than the one they had: lock picking. I’d learned those by watching Sophia. She sure as hell hadn’t taught me anything on purpose. She didn’t bother wasting her breath to even talk to me if she could avoid it, unless she was feeling especially spiteful, then it was an all-day monster marathon.

I was a monster, a thing, a freak, a living disease, a nightmare that had washed out of her womb and had been planted there by a worse nightmare.

That had bothered me some when I was little, and bothered me more when, at five, I’d seen my first monster peering with eyes the color of blood through the kitchen window at me. Surrounded by empty night, it had tapped the glass with a pointed black nail that contrasted with its transparently pale skin, and then it had grinned wide, wider, wider still, until I’d thought the expression would wrap around its head.

How could a grin be so big?

It had teeth that were the same as the metal needles at the clinic where my brother took me for flu shots. Bright silver needles, hundreds and hundreds. I’d run and hid under the bed, letting my brother crawl under to curl around me as I shook. In the morning when it was gone, I’d pushed the fear down, putting it in a toy box I kept in my head, and locked the lid. I’d seen the toy box in a store window once, painted bright green and blue with dinosaurs. It cost a lot. I’d wanted it, but I’d known even before then that wanting and getting weren’t the same.

Instead I’d built one inside my head. When things scared me or made me feel stupid because I didn’t understand, I’d locked them in the box. Like I’d done now. It let me think, and I had. I’d thought hard. Sophia had only sex stuff for money. Living with a whore, by five years old or earlier, you know something about sex stuff. She called it fucking and made it sound ugly, but Niko said to call it sex stuff.

She’d said it before, too, and I hadn’t understood then, but I did now. “It gave me gold and diamonds, ” she’d muttered, hunched over a Scooby-Doo glass of whiskey. Whiski? “Hundreds and hundreds of necklaces and rings, ” she’d slurred, “but now they’re all gone, and you’re here instead. You’re still goddamn here. ”

If I was a nightmare, what did it mean that she’d let something that was a bigger nightmare, and looked like one, pay to put his thing in her and put me inside her stomach?

It meant if I was a nightmare, it was her fault because she’d fucked one for money. “Fucked” because what she’d done, fucked a nightmare, was ugly. Ugly and wrong, but she’d done it, anyway. So she should shut up about what she called me before I got the kitchen knife and made her.

I hadn’t appreciated at five what a cool little kid I was.

Those were the days.

Once inside I roamed around, looking for the library. A half hour later, I’d found it and everything I wanted from it. Sitting at a table with a pronounced lean, I had five yearbooks spread out. I played a small flashlight over them. I was able to get the names and bare-bone details off the Internet, but only half of the pictures, and then some of the details were too glossed-over. They didn’t like to mention suicide in obituaries, and not every kid who kills himself is considered worthy of a news article. Cause of death tended to be “taken too soon. ” If you died between twelve and fifteen years old, the age range of these yearbooks, whether by a rope or a brain tumor, “taken too soon” covered pretty much anything.

All had dedications, and everyone had mentioned “shy, ” “talked so little yet said so much, ” “you didn’t know how you depended on seeing his smiling face every day until you didn’t see it again. ” The customary bullshit for “that geek, weirdo, freak, bat-shit kid who tried to sit by me, as if I want his crazy getting all over my new outfit, God, who had gone and killed himself. Now we have to come up with something nice to say for the yearbook, when no one ever talked to the loser. Let’s make it short. I have cheer practice in half an hour, then I need to hit at least three stores to find a dress for homecoming. Life is so hard when you’re popular. ”

The kids—the dead ones, not the ones the world would be better off for if they were—were similar. Nothing close to identical. They were all boys. Some had fair skin, some darker. Their eyes weren’t the same color, but they did all have black or dark hair, and all, from what you can tell in a yearbook pictures, were on the smaller side. Either short or skinny or both. Two wore glasses. None of them were smiling but one, and it was a smile so false it shouted “misery” twice as loud as the blank faces. At thirteen, when I’d gone here, I’d have fit right in with them. . . except for their unhappy and lost expressions. I’d never had a yearbook picture. We were Rom. We lived off the grid, and we didn’t do pictures, real addresses, anything that could lead someone of the lawful nature to Sophia’s door. But if I had, I wouldn’t have the label these kids virtually stamped on their forehead.

Vulnerable.

Mr. C. had an acquired taste, and he stuck with it. I did have access to the news article telling me where he’d acquired that particular taste. He just hadn’t looked me over as closely as he should have. Sloppy for an otherwise efficient predator.

I ripped the pages from the books, which I left scattered on the table, and was outside in less than a minute. I’d walk a few blocks, steal a car, dump out the window on the road the surgical gloves I’d fished from the depths of my jacket, and pay the coach a visit.

Talk about the old days.

Say, “What about that jock asshole you sicced on me? Did his dick ever work again? No? Had to have his balls amputated. Isn’t that a fucking shame? ”

Good times.

The house was outside the city on the far edge of a smaller town. Surrounded by acres of trees and unmowed fields. If you had a hobby, a noisy hobby, no one would hear anything. And screams, electric saws, breaking bones, that sort of thing, were noisy. It was a happy man who indulged in a good hobby.

I liked mine.

Circling the house, I could see his shadow moving in a window on the second floor. It was close to ten, early for bed, but he was a hardworking teacher and coach. He was probably brushing his teeth, and twelve years after I’d noticed his thinning hair, he absolutely had a helluva Rogaine monkey on his back by now. I came through the back door. It wasn’t locked, which meant no bodies in his basement, but it remained wildly naï ve. It made me want to pat him on his medicated, slicked-up head or pinch his cheek—you know, before I went about shooting him in the face.

Making myself comfortable on a saggy couch, I put my feet up on the coffee table, crossing them at the ankles. The impact of the combat boots against the wood made enough noise that he couldn’t miss it. I waited for him to come down, with either gun or bat. Just move it. I’d put this off for twelve years, and I wanted it done. I wanted it fixed. I wanted to do what I should’ve done then.

Put the bastard down.

A cop, a lawyer, a jury, a human: they would all call it premeditated.

Murder in the first degree.

I wasn’t a human and this wasn’t murder. This was taking out a rabid coyote. I was killing what couldn’t be cured and protecting the defenseless herd. Also, as part of my hobby, I was removing a subpar predator from the grass. Subpar or skilled as hell, I’d kill you either way, but the subpar ones irritated me. If you’re going to be a murdering dick, be the best murdering dick possible. I’d respect your intelligence, if not the monster under your face, when I pulled the trigger.

The coach brought a gun to the party.

More ambitious than a baseball bat—hallelujah for the minuscule challenge. It’s the little things in life you have to learn to appreciate. Often there are days when the little things are all you’ll get.

“Coach. ” I raised my hand and offered a lazy smile. “Long time, no see. I like your gun. That is as old-school as it comes. A Dirty Harry–style Smith and Wesson twenty-nine. Chambered forty-four Magnum? Oh shit, I get it. Coach Callahan. Dirty Harry Callahan. You are just fucking making my day. That—” I laughed. I couldn’t stop myself if I’d wanted. This was not a challenge after all, tiny or not, but I didn’t mind. It was the funniest shit I’d seen in forever.

“That is. . . I don’t know if there’s an actual term. Wait. Wait. Not calling anyone, swear. It’s you and me, Coach. No one else. Just. . . Wait. ” I tried to hold back another laugh and ended up choking on it as I retrieved my phone. A few seconds, and I blinked. “Shit. There is a word. Obscure enough I’ll bet only the British know it: Ludicropathetic. Ludicrous and pathetic. Huh. ”

I dropped the phone on the couch beside me, and the humor and laughter vanished instantly. “But that is you all over. Ludicrous and pathetic. Every kid killer is, but you are something special in the category. If there’s one as fucking-incompetent wannabe as you, I’ve yet to see them. ”

Twelve years, but he wasn’t that different. Five to ten pounds heavier, in faded navy blue sweats, less hair, as I’d already predicted, average and unnoticeable as before—if you didn’t watch the eyes. The unnatural shine of black glass, and with a presence in them as shallow. He was empty of the numerous peculiar but generally harmless feelings humans have. The sole emotion I saw was less of a feeling and entirely about need. Hunger. There was nothing inside him but hunger. If you didn’t see that, you’d have to depend on noticing how he moved. He was the same snake he had been, gliding, quick motions. Fast as hell and an unbreakable fixation.

I had a demonstration of that when he pulled the trigger the moment I said “kid killer. ” He hadn’t tightened his lips, hadn’t flushed with guilt, fear, or anger. Not the top of the field in killing kids or brain cells, but he was an excellent snake. No tells at all.

I had expected it, though. I’d come across too many killers to not know what would set one off. Someone revealing what they were was big. I didn’t wait for any tells. I gated as I said the words, but this time I built the gate around me. I didn’t need a door to walk through. I enjoyed seeing them as art lovers enjoyed looking at a painting, but I didn’t need them. I could, in a manner, make myself into a gate.

I came back into the world inches behind him on the stairs. Finishing the rest of my accusation there, I’d snatched his gun and landed a vicious kick behind his knees. It sent him down the stairs face-first to hit the bottom hard, wheezing for breath. Snake or not, that extra weight wasn’t good for the heart or lungs. He should’ve traded the gun for a treadmill. If he dropped thirty pounds, he’d be almost inhumanly fast. But “almost” was for horseshoes and hand grenades. Not serial killers.

He managed to roll over, staring at me with a nasty case of carpet burn on one side of his face and nose. “Who the fuck are you? How’d you get behind me? ”

“You don’t remember me? That makes me sad. ” I tossed the gun behind me, hearing it hit the second-floor hall. “I have filled out. Finally hit a growth spurt about three years later, to put me up there with other sixteen-year-olds. Put on muscle. I do a lot of running in my business. A lot of chasing. ” I grinned before adding, “I like my job. It’s important to like your job, isn’t it? It’s important to have other outlets, too. Hobbies. But you know that. ” I crouched on the mustard yellow–carpeted stairs. My stairs. A lion watching a snake.

“Forget my name. Who knows if you ever knew it? I was this kid. ” I threw one of the yearbook dedication pages wadded into a ball at him. This wasn’t SHO. I didn’t have a budget for a sterile room and PowerPoint presentation of the asshole’s sins. “Or this one. ” I tossed another ball of paper at him. “This one. ” The third one hit him on the carpet burn. “This one and this one. ” Running out, I tacked on, “Or that’s what you thought. ”

He had sat up, black eyes flickering from me to the paper he held in his hand. He straightened out the crumpled debris of a life extinguished and stared at the photo. “I don’t know what you’re—”

I sighed. “Shut up. I knew when I was thirteen and I know now. I don’t want alibis or character references or arguments on how suicide can’t be murder. I don’t care. ” And I didn’t, not one damn bit.

“I’m pretty certain that half those kids at least did kill themselves because their lives sucked. The other students made it worse, ignored them, called them names, shoved them around. But I’m absolutely certain it was you setting one of your faithful dogs on them that was the final push over the edge. ”

I shook a scolding finger at him. “Naughty, naughty, ” I said, the words casual, but the force behind them caustic enough to sear my own throat. “You had one of your brainless walking carcasses of steroid-injected beef beat them half to death. If they told their parents, a teacher, anyone, maybe someone would do something, but it would get out first. And when your dog would hear, he’d beat them the rest of the way to the morgue. Might go through with that sick rape threat your one dog liked to use to scare them out into the parking lot in the first place. They couldn’t know. ”

I shrugged. “So, yeah, I believe they killed themselves. But you let your dogs off the leash and gave them the target. You were the belt, the rope, the razor blade, the overdose of drugs, the bullet.

“The others, I’m positive, were direct, hands-on. Killing vicariously isn’t enough, not for long. The drowning? The alcohol poisoning? ” I nodded at the far wall of his living room, with the liquor cabinet the dimension of a full-sized kitchen refrigerator. “Sympathy from a teacher who promises not to tell. Promises it won’t get back to the dog. Or you didn’t use your dog at all. These kids were already on the ledge. Offer them any scrap of kindness. Hell, acknowledge they exist, and they’d willingly crawl right into the palm of your hand with hope, not realizing you were closing that hand to crush them. ”

“I didn’t do anything to any kid, asshole. You’re fucking crazy, and I’m going to call the cops to throw your goddamn ass in prison or the psych ward. ” He was on the offense now and he was snarling, spittle flecking his lips, down to the level of the dogs he made out of stupid bullies. It was a mistake. Snakes are calm, cold. They can be lethal. Not Dirty Harry here, but in general.

“Those kids, ” I said, ignoring him. “Skinny, small kids—the kind that bullies see as weak and vulnerable. Those kids with black hair, miserable smiles, they reminded me of your son. ”

“My son? ” Stunned and worried for the first time since I’d showed up. Mouth hanging open, he sucked in a breath and another; then he questioned in a milder, more calculating tone, “What about my son? You don’t know him. You don’t know anything about him. ”

“Shane Callahan. ” I reached into my jacket pocket and pitched the last paper at him. I’d printed it off the Internet when I’d been in the library. “Nope, I don’t know him. Nobody knows Shane now. Being dead doesn’t make for an active social life. But I do know about him. ”

The article said it all. Seventeen years ago, the coach’s kid runs away, steals his dad’s car, and drives it to Louisville, a city a few hours away. He’s fourteen but no one notices. He doesn’t get pulled over. He ends up at his aunt’s house, saying his dad is too strict. They don’t get along. They fight all the time. It read as “fight” meaning “argue, ” but knowing Coach and seeing the picture of his son, in appearance a member of the society of the other dead kids, it was plain that “fight” was “fight. ” Add to that the physical difference in size, and “fight” was “my dad beats the living shit out of me. ”

Sweet Auntie May, or whatever her name was, didn’t kick him to the curb, but only because she didn’t let him in the house. She slammed the door in his face. Louisville’s a big city. Interstates and overpasses everywhere. Shane had jumped off one of those overpasses into the speeding cars below. He was hit by five of them before the traffic managed to come to a halt. In a coma for a week before he died. A week after jumping that far and being mowed down by five cars. . . Who could say all those bruises and shattered bones didn’t come from that, or if they hadn’t covered up older bruises and breaks? He would’ve been blotched purple and black from head to toe, held together by wire and glue.

“Without Shane around, your toy too broken to glue back together, you had to get new toys. Being a teacher gave you easy access to the toy store. You could even get toys that were like your first and favorite toy. Then what was once tension release became a genuine hobby.

“And now here we are. ” I smiled wide, wider, wide enough to wrap around my head, identical to what I’d seen through my kitchen window when I’d been five.

“You don’t understand. . . . You don’t know what stress is like. ” He was inching back on his ass as I let my eyes flood red. The shade of freshly spilled arterial blood, I knew. I’d checked in the mirror once or twice.

“I understand, ” I assured him, and I felt my gums split and the row of teeth, hundreds and hundreds of bright silver needles, drop through to cover my human ones. “Shane and I, we both have our daddy issues. ”

He pissed himself, but there was none of the usual “What— What— What. ” They didn’t often get past that to “are you? ” Coach didn’t manage a “what. ” Didn’t manage a single word. And the snake in him had curled up to hide. It was what it was: a disappointment. It was that jock asshole all over again. A waste of potential entertainment. Predator against predator—that was entertaining. Predator against a bug, and now predator against what I’d thought was a snake but was merely an ill-tempered worm—that was not. I went ahead to provide assistance in getting this show over with.

“Remember when you were a kid? ” I asked. It came out as a hiss. When the lion, all of him, came out, I couldn’t pass for human any longer. “How your parents told you the bogeyman would come out from under your bed or slide out of your closet and gobble you up if you didn’t eat your veggies? If you didn’t stop pushing around kids smaller than you? If you weren’t a goood boy? ”

I prowled down the steps. “You should’ve listened to them. They weren’t wrong. And you are not a goood boy. ” The hiss shifted into the shattering of glass and broken shards ringing against each other. “And I’m your personal bogeyman. ” I was on him now, close enough for his panting breath to mingle with mine. I could smell the mint of his toothpaste; the fear flowing from each pore in a waterfall of sweat; the ammonia of where he’d jacked off after instead of before he showered; the fresh, bright tang of blood from where he’d bitten his tongue and gnawed at the inside of his lip, shredding it. “Coooach. ” He wouldn’t meet my eyes, wouldn’t look at my face.

“Coooach, ” I repeated, the title becoming the metal warp and tearing of a car crash, “be a goood boy. I like goood boys. ”

I patted his cheek as he began to cry. It was inevitable, the crying.

“Coooach, telll meeee. . . ”

I gave him one last pat, almost cheerful in its reassurance.

“Where do you keep your shovel? ”

He didn’t try to run. He did try to crawl across the avocado green living-room carpet, as god-awful as the urine color of the stairs. He’s packed on more weight than I’d guessed, I thought as I dragged him with one hand around his neck through the house, toward the garage.

What a chore.

I could’ve shot him. Broken his neck. Torn open his throat. Gated him a hundred feet up in the sky and watched him fall as his son fell. But I didn’t. I thought about all the graves dug because of him. I thought of lonely kids taking their lonely lives or having them taken from them, and how they were in those graves. I wondered whether they were lonely there. I didn’t know. I thought Coach should have the chance to find out. It was the best way of fixing what he’d done over and over, and what I hadn’t done years ago.

I dug the grave and put him in it.

I buried him.

Alive.

Then I waited by it in case the snake inside him woke up, tried to worm and wind its way out through the soil. I was curious, too. Could you hear screams from six feet under? I’d wrapped him in plastic that I’d found in the garage with the shovel. I didn’t want one scream filling his mouth and airway with dirt, asphyxiating him in minutes. Kid killers don’t get off that easily. I didn’t hear anything, though, and he was screaming. That was unavoidable. The stench of terror on him, even through the plastic, had been profound when I’d kicked his wrapped body into the grave. Welcome to the other side. The boy you drowned. I was willing to bet he had felt the same terror.

It was a long night. I played solitaire on my phone. Marked Mr. C. off my list. Added that new word I’d learned to a file. I was a monster, but I tried to be an educated one. Now and then. Yeah, it was a damn long and boring night when I could’ve taken two seconds, shot the son of a bitch, and been home. I didn’t regret it. Slow suffocation wasn’t a comfortable way to die, but Mr. C. had earned it. Earned his own long night of screaming, and when the air finally ran out, he’d earned that agonizing trip into the infinitely longer night.

No, I didn’t mind the lost hours.

I didn’t regret not choosing one of the other ways to make him pay.

One with my gut and instinct, I felt good.

I felt certain.

I felt right.

And this time. . .

I didn’t change my mind.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Kevin J. Anderson isn’t always serious. Yes, he has published 130 books, fifty-four of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has more than twenty-three million copies in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for numerous awards, and he’s best known for giant science fiction or fantasy epics such as his Dune or Hellhole novels with Brian Herbert, or his Saga of Seven Suns or Terra Incognita books. They told him he couldn’t be stupid, but he proved them wrong with the Dan Shamble, Zombie P. I., series. He has published four full novels in the series—Death Warmed Over, Unnatural Acts, Hair Raising, and Slimy Underbelly—and numerous short stories (many collected in Working Stiff), all featuring a detective who is back from the dead and back on the case. He intends to resurrect the character yet again for a new novel.

Erik Scott de Bie is a thirtysomething speculative fiction author, game designer, hand-to-hand combat enthusiast, and all-around geek. He has published novels in the storied Forgotten Realms, his World of Ruin epic fantasy setting (Shadow of the Winter King, Shield of the Summer Prince, and the forthcoming Mask of the Blood Queen) through Dragonmoon Press, as well as for Broken Eye Books (Scourge of the Realm) and the Ed Greenwood Group, aka Onder Librum (Hellmaw: Blind Justice, Storm Raven, among others). His short work has appeared in numerous anthologies and online, and he is the author of the multimedia superhero project Justice/Vengeance (including fiction, spoken word, and comics), of which Vivienne Cain is one of the title characters. In his work as a game designer, he has contributed to products from such companies as Wizards of the Coast and Privateer Press, and he is a lead creative consultant on Red Aegis from Vorpal Games. He is also entirely too tall. Check out his Web site, erikscottdebie. com; he can also be found at facebook. com/erik. s. debie, and on Twitter: @erikscottdebie.

Jim C. Hines is the author of more than fifty published short stories and a dozen fantasy novels, the first of which was Goblin Quest, the humorous tale of a nearsighted goblin runt and his pet fire-spider. Actor and author Wil Wheaton described the book as “too f***ing cool for words, ” which is pretty much the best blurb ever. After finishing the goblin trilogy, he went on to write the Princess series of fairy tale retellings, followed by the Magic ex Libris books, a modern-day fantasy series about a magic-wielding librarian, a dryad, a secret society founded by Johannes Gutenberg, a flaming spider, and an enchanted convertible. He’s also the author of the Fable Legends tie-in Blood of Heroes. Jim is an active blogger about topics ranging from sexism and harassment to zombie-themed Christmas carols, and won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2012. He has an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s in English, and lives with his wife and two children in mid-Michigan. You can find him online at jimchines. com.

Tanya Huff lives in rural Ontario, Canada, with her wife, Fiona Patton, two dogs, and, as of last count, nine cats. Her thirty novels and seventy-five short stories include horror, heroic fantasy, urban fantasy, comedy, and space opera. She’s written four essays for BenBella’s pop-culture collections and the occasional book review for the Globe and Mail. Her Blood series was turned into the twenty-two-episode Blood Ties, and writing episode nine allowed her to finally use her degree in Radio & Television Arts. Her latest novel was a new Torin Kerr book, Peacekeepers 1: An Ancient Peace (2015), and her next will be Peacekeepers 2: A Peace Divided (2017). She can be found on Twitter @TanyaHuff and on Facebook as Tanya Huff, and she occasionally blogs at andpuff. livejournal. com. Four collections of her short stories as well as six of her older novels are available pretty much wherever e-books are sold.

Seanan McGuire writes a lot of things, including two ongoing urban fantasy series (October Daye and InCryptid), uncounted works of short fiction, and everything published under the name “Mira Grant. ” She lives in California in a crumbling old farmhouse that she shares with her enormous Maine Coons and her collection of creepy dolls. When not home, she can be found at conventions, comic book stores, and Disney Parks. We’re still not sure where that last one came from. Seanan regularly claims to be the vanguard of an invading race of alien plant people, and has thus far given little reason for people to doubt her on the matter. Keep up with her at seananmcguire. com, or on Twitter as @seananmcguire.

Kat Richardson is the bestselling author of the Greywalker novels, as well as a small tantrum of short fantasy, science fiction, and mystery stories. She is an accomplished feeder of crows.

Web sites: katrichardson. com and greywalker. com

Facebook: facebook. com/Kat. Richardson. Writer

Twitter: @katrchrdsn

G+: plus. google. com/111032806480382192972

International bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes under a variety of pen names, from Kris Nelscott in mystery to Kristine Grayson in romance and several others, and is a decorated writer in fiction. In 2015 alone, she won the Anlab award for Best Science Fiction Short Story, given by the readers of Analog magazine, for her short story “Snapshots. ” Her novel The Enemy Within won a Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History (long form). Her novel Street Justice, written under her Kris Nelscott pen name, was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best Paperback Original Private Eye Novel. She published a lot of books in 2015, finishing her bestselling, award-winning Anniversary Day Saga in June, and publishing three books in the Interim Fates series under her Kristine Grayson pen name. She also takes part in the quarterly Uncollected Anthology of urban fantasy fiction, published online. In 2016 Baen Books published Women of Futures Past: Classic Stories, a highly anticipated anthology featuring stories by the women of science fiction. With John Helfers, she has edited The Best Short Mysteries of the Year through Kobo Books. The inaugural volume has just appeared. Along with her husband, Dean Wesley Smith, she acts as series editor for a bimonthly anthology magazine, Fiction River. To find out more about her work, please go to kristine kathrynrusch. com and sign up for her newsletter.

Lucy A. Snyder is a four-time Bram Stoker Award–winning writer and the author of the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess. She also authored the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide and the story collections While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has been translated into French, Italian, Russian, Czech, and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Nightmare magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Steampunk World, In the Court of the Yellow King, Shadows Over Main Street, Qualia Nous, Seize the Night, Scary out There, and Best Horror of the Year, vol. 5. She writes a column for Horror World and has written materials for the D6xD6 role-playing game system. In her day job, she edits online college courses for universities worldwide and occasionally helps write educational games. Lucy lives in Columbus, Ohio, and is a mentor in Seton Hill University’s MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. You can learn more about her at lucysnyder. com and you can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.

Fantasy author Anton Strout was born in the Berkshire Hills, mere miles from writing heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, and currently lives in the haunted corn maze that is New Jersey (where nothing paranormal ever really happens, he assures you).

He is the author of the Simon Canderous urban fantasy detective series and the Spellmason Chronicles for Ace, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Anton is also the scribbler of short, mad tales published in a variety of anthologies.

The Once & Future Podcast is his latest project, where he endeavors as Curator of Content to bring authors to listeners’ ear holes one damned episode at a time.

In his scant spare time, he is a writer, a sometimes actor, sometimes musician, occasional RPGer, and the world’s most casual and controller-smashing video gamer. He currently works in the exciting world of publishing and, yes, it is as glamorous as it sounds.

Rob Thurman is the New York Times bestselling author of the gritty urban fantasy series the Cal Leandros Novels: Nightlife, Moonshine, Madhouse, Deathwish, Roadkill, Blackout, Doubletake, Slashback, Downfall, Nevermore; the contemporary fantasy series the Trickster Novels: Trick of the Light and The Grimrose Path; the technothrillers Chimera and its sequel, Basilisk; and the paranormal thriller All Seeing Eye. The author is also included in anthologies such as Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner’s Wolfsbane and Mistletoe; Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis’s Courts of the Fey; and Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price’s Kicking It. For sample chapters of all books, videos, and downloadable wallpaper, or to contact the author, see robthurman. net.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Jim Butcher is the author of the Dresden Files, the Codex Alera, and a new steampunk series, the Cinder Spires. His ré sumé includes a laundry list of skills that were useful a couple of centuries ago, and he plays guitar quite badly. An avid gamer, he plays tabletop games in varying systems, a variety of video games on PC and console, and LARPs whenever he can make time for it. Jim currently resides mostly inside his own head, but his head can generally be found in his hometown of Independence, Missouri.

Jim goes by the moniker Longshot in a number of online locales. He came by this name in the early 1990s, when he decided he would become a published author. Usually only three in one thousand who make such an attempt actually manage to become published; of those, only one in ten make enough money to call it a living. The sale of a second series was the breakthrough that let him beat the long odds against attaining a career as a novelist. All the same, he refuses to change his nickname.

Kerrie L. Hughes has edited fourteen anthologies in addition to Shadowed Souls; these include Maiden Matron Crone, Children of Magic, Fellowship Fantastic, Dimension Next Door, Gamer Fantastic, Zombie Raccoons and Killer Bunnies, A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters, Love and Rockets, and Westward Weird with DAW; Chicks Kick Butt with TOR; and Hex in the City, Alchemy & Steam, and Haunted with Fiction River. She has published eleven short stories: “Judgment” in Haunted Holidays; “Geiko” in Women of War; “Doorways” in Furry Fantastic; “Travelers Guide” in The Valdemar Companion; “Bog Bodies” in Haunting Museums; “Pennyroyal” in The Courts of the Fey; “Corvidae” in The Beast Within 2; “World Building: Magic Systems” in Eighth Day Genesis: A Worldbuilding Codex for Writers and Creatives; “Do Robotic Cats Purr in Space” in Bless Your Mechanical Heart; “Give a Girl a Sword” in Chicks and Balances; and “Healing Home” in Crucible: All-New Tales of Valdemar. She has also cowritten with her husband, John Helfers, “Between a Bank and a Hard Place” in Texas Rangers; “The Last Ride of the Colton Gang” in Boot Hill; “The Tombstone Run” in Lost Trails; “Bucking the Tiger” in Risk Takers; and “’Til Death Do Us Part” in Last Stand. Kerrie has also been a contributing editor on two concordances: The Vorkosigan Companion and The Valdemar Companion. You can follow her at geekgirlgoddess. com, on Twitter as @kerrielhughes, and on Facebook using her full name, Kerrie Lynn Hughes.

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