Kelley Armstrong - Blood Lite

Andi leapt onto Mouse's back, fangs ripping, but my dog held fast to Kirby—buying me a couple of precious seconds. I seized a bit of chalk from the basket by the door and, choking on smoke, ran in a circle around the embattled trio, drawing a line of chalk on the concrete floor. Then I willed the circle closed, and the magical construct snapped into existence, a silent and invisible field of energy which, among other things, completely severed the connection between the psychic parasites in the Never-never and the werewolves whaling on my dog.

The fight stopped abruptly. Kirby and Andi both blinked their eyes several times and hurriedly removed their fangs from Mouse's hide. A few seconds later, they shimmered and resumed their human forms.

"Don't move!" I snapped at them, infuriated to no end. "Any of you! Don't break the circle or you'll go nuts again! Sit! Stay!"

That last was for Mouse. Mostly.

I couldn't see what Molly had done to my lab, but the fumes down there were cloying and obviously dangerous. I hauled myself over to the trapdoor.

Molly hadn't made it up the folding staircase, and just lay sprawled semiconscious against it. I had to grab her and haul her up the stairs. She was undressed from the waist up. I spotted her shirt and bra on the floor near the worktable, both of them riddled with acid-burned holes.

I got her laid out on her back, elevated her feet on a stray cushion from the smashed easy chair, and checked her breathing. It didn't take long, because she wasn't, though she did still have a faint pulse. I started rescue breathing for her—which is a lot more demanding than people think. Especially when the air is still thick with the smell of God only knows what chemical combinations.

I finally got her to cough, and my racing heartbeat sub­sided a little as she began breathing again, raggedly, and opened her eyes.

I sat up slowly, breathing hard, and found Anastasia Luccio standing in the open doorway to my apartment, her arms folded over her chest, one eyebrow arched.

Anastasia was a pretty girl—not glamorously lovely, but believably, genuinely pleasant to look at, with a fan­tastic smile and killer dimples. She looked like someone in her twenties, for reasons too complex to go into right now, but she was an older woman. A much older woman.

And there I was, apparently sitting up from kissing a topless girl, with a naked couple a few feet away, and the air thick with a pall of smoke and the smell of noxious fumes. For crying out loud, my apartment looked like the set of some kind of bizarre porno.

"Urn," I said, and swallowed. "This isn't what it might appear to be."

Anastasia just stared at me. I knew it had been a long time since she'd opened up to anyone. It might not take much to make her close herself off again.

She shook her head, very slowly, and the smile lines at the corners of her eyes deepened along with her dimples. Then she burst out into a hearty belly laugh. "Madre di Dio, Harry. I cannot for the life of me imagine what it does appear to be."

I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. "You aren't upset?"

"By the time you get to be my age," she replied, "you've either worked out your insecurities, or they're there to stay.

Besides. I simply must know how this happened."

I shook my head and then smiled at her. "I ... my friends needed help."

She looked back and forth between the Alphas and Molly. "And still do," she said, nodding sharply. She came in and, as the only one actually wearing shoes, began pick­ing up pieces of fallen glass from the broken window, liter­ally rolling up her sleeves as she went. "Shall we?"

It took most of the day to get Molly to the hospital, gather the materials needed to fumigate Kirby and Andi's auras, and actually perform the work to get the job done. By the time they left, all better and psychophage-free, it was after seven.

"So much for our day off," I said.

She turned to consider me. "Would you do it differ­ently if you had it to do again?"

"No. Of course not."

She shrugged. "Then it was a day well spent. There will be others."

"You never can be sure of that, though, can you?"

Her cheeks dimpled again. "Today is not yet over. You mourn its death somewhat prematurely."

"I just wanted to show you a nice time for a day. Not get bogged down in more business."

Anastasia turned to me and put her fingers over my mouth. Then she replaced her fingers with her lips.

"Enough talk," she murmured.

I agreed.

KELLEY ARMSTRONG is the author of the Other-world paranormal suspense series. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she still lives with her family. For more on Kelley and her work, check out her website at www.KelleyArmstrong.com.

JOE R. LANSDALE is the bestselling author of thirty novels and numerous short stories and articles. His work has been turned into film, most notably with the cult classic Bubba Ho-Tep and for Showtime's Masters of Horror series with his story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road." Forthcoming from Knopf is his new novel, heather Maiden.

LUCIEN SOULBAN is a flight of God's fancy. He doesn't exist. He doesn't live in Montreal and he certainly didn't write for Horrors Beyond 2 or for video games like Rain­bow Six: Vegas. At best, Lucien is a rote, grabbing random words and sequencing them like some form of literary eugenics. By reading this, you're feeding the delusion of his existence: that he has substance. Great... now you've done it. Are you happy? He thinks he's real. P.S.: Lucien also never wrote four novels, including Desert Raiders and Dragonlance: The Alien Sea ... the smug bastard.

CHRISTOPHER WELCH is a happily married freelance writer, reporter, and reviewer originally from Akron, Ohio. He currently lives in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where he works for the local newspaper and news radio station. He earned a BA and an MA in English from the University of Akron, with a minor in creative writing. Welch's creative works have appeared in various small press and professional publications. His most recent fiction has appeared in Dark Wisdom magazine and the anthology Catopolis. His story in Blood Lite is more autobiographical than he likes to admit.

MATT VENNE received his BA in English from UCLA, and his MFA in Film from USC. His screenplay for Near Dark is being produced by Michael Bay (Transformers), and his Masters of Horror episode "Pelts" (based on the F. Paul Wilson short story) was directed by Dario Argento (Suspiria). Matt is currently adapting Stephen King's Bag of Bones for Mick Garris (The Stand) to direct and Guillermo del Toro {Pan's Labyrinth) to produce, wrote an episode of Fear Itself "entitled "Spooked" for Brad Ander­son (Session 9) to direct, and is writing the next install­ment of the Rambo franchise for Sylvester Stallone. Matt and his wife, Brynna, live in Los Angeles with their two daughters.

DON D'AMMASSA is the author of Blood Beast, Ser­vants of Chaos, Dead of Winter, and four other novels, as well as three nonfiction books and more than one hundred short stories. He was the book reviewer for Science Fiction Chronicle for almost thirty years. Don is currently writing full-time, at least when he's not reading.

MARK ONSPAUGH is a native Californian who grew up on a steady diet of horror, science fiction, and DC Comics. He's written a whole lot of screenplays, and was one of the writers of Flight of the Living Dead. He knows people expect horror writers to be lurking misanthropes, but hasn't lurked since leaving LA. He lives in Los Osos with his wife, author/artist Dr. Tobey Crockett and two off-kilter cats. He hopes that, by the time this book is published, he has retired to a private island in the South Pacific.