Justin Gustainis - Those Who Fight Monsters Tales of Occult Detectives

“Gigi,” Roberto said soothingly, “we’re just keeping you safe.”

Dawn kept sucking in the diseased air, not only to calm herself, but because she’d heard the agony in Gigi’s tone. Felt the despair, just like it was her own.

As it scraped through her, from her awakened dragon-blood skin down to her soul, something consumed the room like a flash and bang of lightning, obliterating Dawn’s vision.

Then it all went into fast-forward.

Nothing but a field of white from the flash bomb — footsteps … running …

It was Kiko — shoving a gun into her hands while Dawn heard Naomi, Roberto, Steve, and Gigi calling out to each other in their own temporary blindness. She could hear him cocking a pistol while Dawn’s vision gradually turned to color, then solid images, again.

The first thing her gaze latched onto was her partner. “ Don’t move,” Kiko said, aiming at the fan club, cool and collected. They’d dealt with a hell of a lot worse on hunts.

The devotees had their hands up, but Gigi…

Gigi was turning around, toward a table where Dawn’s confiscated weapons lay.

“Stop moving!” he yelled. Then to Dawn, “Are you okay? A showgirl saw you and I—”

“Gigi’s not a ghost,” Dawn said. “She’s human.”

Kiko looked sick about that. But Gigi had heard Dawn, too, and her gaze drifted to the corpse on the wall, then back to Dawn and Kiko.

Human? she seemed to ask.

Gigi was already reaching across the table for Dawn’s revolver. Dawn felt like her own soul was lead, an echo of what was in Gigi, and she couldn’t call out for the star to stop because she knew what would make the ex-Elite truly happy now.

Knew all too well.

Before anyone but Dawn understood what was happening, let alone why, Gigi shoved the barrel into her mouth.

Later, Dawn could have sworn that a smile appeared on Gigi’s ravaged face in the half-second before she pulled the trigger.

Chris Marie Green is the author of the “Vampire Babylon” series, which includes Night Rising and A Drop of Red . In 2011, Ace will publish her new postapocalyptic urban fantasy western noir “Bloodlands” series. She has a website at www.vampire-babylon.com

Former Hollywood stuntwoman Dawn Madison is currently in retirement from vampire hunting and resides near San Diego. Kiko Daniels, who lives nearby, runs a paranormal detective agency with his partner, Natalia Petri.

A shadow fell across Pete Caldecott like a bird flickering across the sun. She looked up from her drink, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

The Fae was a head and a half taller than she was. Pete was short for a human, so that likely made him short for a Fae. He tilted his head when Pete made eye contact. “Madam Caldecott?”

Pete straightened up, fixed him with her worst copper stare. “I think you have the wrong Madam Caldecott, mate.”

The Fae spread his hands. “No, miss. I’m quite certain it’s you she wants.” He had pupiless eyes, silver. Beautiful, if you were into that Tolkien bullshit. Or Shark Week.

Pete deliberately put her eyes back on her pint. The Lament was theoretically a neutral zone in the Black, the ebb and flow of magical London that existed out of most people’s sight. No fighting, no magic and no Fae.

Pete told it, “I’m waiting for someone.”

“Sir Jack Winter.” The Fae inclined its head again. It looked a bit like David Bowie and a bit like it wanted to turn her into a skin handbag. Pete felt the back of her neck crawl and a faint scent of orchids and earth crawled up her nose. The Fae had its magic up — it would have to, to cross the iron bands in the Lament’s door and the assorted protection hexes that surrounded the pub like a cocoon of ethereal razor wire. To penetrate it, the Fae was stronger than any Pete had ever seen. Not that her experience with Fae was vast.

“It’s none of your bloody business,” Pete said, “but, yes.”

“He won’t be coming,” the Fae intoned. “Madam Caldecott…”

“Look, if you insist on speaking to me, lay off of that before I call the bouncer and get you thrown right the fuck out,” Pete ordered.

“Petunia,” the Fae tried, her given name looking like it caused it — him? — pain. “I bear a request from the Senechal of the Seelie Court. I need you to come at once.”

The Fae reached for her, and Pete lost what little patience she had for the creatures. “You lay that pretty hand on me and you’re getting a pretty stump back,” she said, swatting. Contact with its skin sent a spiraling jolt of power up her arm and into her heart. Pete didn’t make it her practice to cause a scene in the middle of pubs — at least not when she was sober — and when the Lament’s few patrons looked over, she felt herself flush. “Look, I’m sorry,” she said. “But here, you don’t just swan in and grab people…” she waited for the Fae’s name.

“You can call me Rowan,” it said. Pete crinkled her nose.

“That’s a bit swishy for a strapping thing like yourself.” The expression on Rowan’s face showed he had no idea what she meant. Pete sighed. “Rowan, what do you want? You’re making me conspicuous.”

“You must come,” Rowan said. “If I don’t deliver you…” The magic about him changed subtly, a darkening, a chill across Pete’s bare skin. “If I don’t,” Rowan whispered, “they cut off my head.”

Pete blinked. “How medieval,” she said dryly. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Don’t you know?” he said. “Seelie Fae can’t lie. We are bound by blood. Our very nature forbids it.”

That caused Pete to consider. Jack, the one with actual experience of the pasty bastards, had only spoken of Fae in the most dismissive of terms. She had no idea whether to trust Rowan or laugh at the audacity of his put-on.

“They told me you were smart,” Rowan said. “That you were a detective.”

Pete took a sip of her dark beer. “Used to be. Not any more.” It was hard to reconcile murders and robberies and the orderly procession of the Metropolitan Police with magic and curses and a place like the Lament Pub. Too hard. Six months next week, she’d been off the job.

“That’s why they want you,” Rowan continued. “The puzzle. The bloody business. Human eyes are needed.”

Pete raised her eyebrow at that. Rowan was growing more fidgety by the second, like a first-former itching to tattle on a classmate. “Come out with it!” she said.

“A murder,” Rowan said. “It’s the first in … well, a very, very long time, even for us. Honor killings are one thing. Duels. Assassination. But this…” He scrubbed his hand against his forehead. “It has no sense behind it.”

Pete sighed. “You look for murder to make sense, you might as well be looking for meaning in ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’. Don’t Fae have … I dunno, investigative types?” The idea of Fae police, in everyday Met uniforms, made her smirk a bit. Most of the Black was lawless as the American West, and it was by pure meanness and cunning that you kept your blood and entrails inside your body. Jack had taught her that. Where the fuck was Jack?

“We used to have Inquisitors,” Rowan said. “But the Queen disbanded them, long ago. It’s said … they said Petunia Caldecott was the cleverest human in the Black. And this needs a human’s eyes.”

Pete looked at the door again, at Rowan’s haggard face, and finally back at her mostly-still-full pint glass. “Fine,” she sighed, tossing down a few pounds for it. “Let’s have a look at your corpse, then.”

They left the Lament, which opened onto an alley that was never in the same place twice. Rowan visibly relaxed once they were outside, and Pete felt him shift something, the enchantment that had allowed him inside in the first place, though his magic still prickled her. “Have you ever visited Faerie?” he asked Pete. His voice was stronger, with the clearbell-like quality she associated with Fae.