Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

Some more of the children are here. Melanie sees Anne and Kenny and Lizzie in a single flash of one of the swinging lights. But now there’s a shout and Sergeant is fighting with somebody, right there at the door where they just climbed in. The men with the knives and the sticks have gotten there, too.

Sergeant gets off one more shot, and all of a sudden one of the men doesn’t have a head anymore. He falls down out of sight. Another man knocks the gun out of Sergeant’s hand, but Sergeant takes his knife from him somehow and sticks it into the man’s stomach.

The woman inside the copter slaps the ceiling and points up—for the pilot, Melanie realizes. He’s sitting in his cockpit, fighting to keep the copter more or less level and more or less still, as though the ground is bucking under him and trying to throw him off. But it’s not the ground, it’s the weight of the men swarming on board.

“Shit!” the woman moans.

Miss Mailer hides Melanie’s eyes with her hand, but Melanie pushes the hand away. She knows what she has to do, now. It’s not even a hard choice, because the incredible, irresistible human flesh smell is helping her, pushing her in the direction she has to go.

She stops pleading with the hunger to leave her alone; it’s not listening anyway. She says to it, instead, like Sergeant said to his people, Pick your target .

And then she jumps clear out of Miss Mailer’s arms, her legs propelling her like one of Sergeant’s bullets.

She lands on the chest of one of the men, and he’s staring into her face with frozen horror as she leans in and bites his throat out. His blood tastes utterly wonderful: he is her bread when she’s hungry, but there’s no time to enjoy it. Melanie scales his shoulders as he falls and jumps onto the man behind, folding her legs around his neck and leaning down to bite and claw at his face.

Miss Mailer screams Melanie’s name. It’s only just audible over the sound of the helicopter blades, which is louder now, and the screams of the third man as Melanie jumps across to him and her teeth close on his arm. He beats at her, but her jaws are so strong he can’t shake her loose, and then Sergeant hits him really hard in the face and he falls down. Melanie lets go of his arm, spits out the piece of it that’s in her mouth.

The copter lifts off. Melanie looks up at it, hoping for one last sight of Miss Mailer’s face, but it just disappears into the dark and there’s nothing left of it but the sound.

Other men are coming. Lots of them.

Sergeant picks up his gun from the ground where it fell, checks it. He seems to be satisfied.

The light swings all the way round until it’s full in their faces.

Sergeant looks at Melanie, and she looks back at him.

“Day just gets better and better, don’t it?” Sergeant says. It’s sarcasm, but Melanie nods, meaning it, because it’s a day of wishes coming true. Miss Mailer’s arms around her, and now this.

“You ready, kid?” Sergeant asks.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Melanie says. Of course she’s ready.

“Then let’s give these bastards something to feel sad about.”

The men bulk large in the dark, but they’re too late. The goddess Artemis is appeased. The ships are gone on the fair wind.

Faith Hunter writes urban fantasy: the Skinwalker series, featuring Jane Yellowrock— Skinwalker , Blood Cross , Mercy Blade , Raven Cursed , and Death’s Rival in October 2012—and the Rogue Mage series, featuring Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a postapocalyptic, alternate reality— Bloodring , Seraphs , Host , and Rogue Mage RPG and World Book . This short story, “Golden Delicious,” takes place in the Skinwalker series, after Raven Cursed , and between the short story in the e-compilation Cat Tales and Death’s Rival . When she isn’t writing, Faith likes to make jewelry, run whitewater rivers (Class II and III), and RV with her hubby and their rescued Pomeranian dogs.

Rick’s face was still tender, though the bruising was already yellow and the scabs had fallen off, revealing pink, healed skin. When he was human, it would have taken days to reach this stage of healing, but it had been less than twenty-four hours since he was sucker-punched. There were very few good things about being infected with were-taint, but fast healing was on that short list.

“He was trying to hurt you, yet you held back.” Soul glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. “It didn’t go unnoticed.”

He pushed on his teeth. They were no longer loose. “I’m betting he was a bully in high school,” he said. “Not used to a guy forty pounds lighter and three inches shorter taking him down.”

Soul’s full lips lifted slowly. “Without breaking his jaw, his knees, or dislocating his shoulder, all of which you could have done.” She made a left, turning onto a side road. Shadows covered them in the dim confines of the company car. “You taught him a valuable lesson. There are things out there that are bigger, faster, and won’t care if he carries a PsyLED badge.

“Speaking of things bigger and faster than human, walk me through it again,” she said, shifting their discussion as easily as she shifted gears.

“Human-sense evaluation, initial technology, followed by enhanced senses,” Rick said. “Then the pets and more tech as needed.”

From the back, Pea twittered and Brute growled. Pea was a juvenile grindylow, Rick’s pet and death sentence rolled up in one neon-green-furred, steel-clawed, kittenlike cutie. The werewolf taking up the backseat was stuck in wolf form, thanks to contact with an angel, and he didn’t like being called a pet, which meant that Rick did so every chance he got. The wolf hated leashes, his traveling cage, and eating from a bowl on the floor, but it wasn’t like he had a choice. Since Brute couldn’t shift back to human and had no thumbs, he had two options: accept the leash and being treated like a dangerous dog, or sit in a cage all day. He’d gone for the partial-freedom route, which meant partnering with Rick LaFleur. Rick, who hadn’t been human in two months himself, was at the training facility for the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security—called PsyLED Spook School by the trainees.

The three composed a ready-made unit, a triumvirate of nonhuman specialists. If they could learn to work together. So far, that didn’t look likely. The werewolf might not be responsible for Rick’s loss of humanity, job, and girlfriend, nor for the total FUBAR’d mess his life had become, but Brute had been part of the pack that kidnapped and tortured him. Rick didn’t like the wolf or want him around, but like Brute, he had no choice right now. PsyLED had specifically requested them together, and had refused to accept Rick as a solo trainee. It was a package deal or no deal.

Soul said, “Treat this as if it’s a paranormal crime and you’re the first investigator on-site. If you spot something out of the accepted order, hold it for the proper time. You’ll find that by training your investigative skills to work to a specific but fluid formula, you’ll actually gain a freedom of thought processes that will work well in the field.” Soul pulled into a driveway.

“This training site is the most difficult you will encounter during your time here. In the last two months, three students signed their Quit-Forms and left the program after seeing the site.” Her eyes narrowed, the skin around them crinkling. “And I can’t explain why this particular crime scene has been so difficult on them.” She turned off the car.

The small ranch house was dark, crime-scene tape over the sealed doors, plywood over the windows. The grass was six inches high, the flower beds needed weeding. “Assuming that the grass was cut in the week prior,” Rick said, “we’re looking at maybe eight weeks since the crime.”