A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [52]
Where I get a splint, more stitches in the other side, and another prescription for painkillers.
Which I need, since it turns out that the triumvirate was being nice to me only because I woke up while they were stealing my pain pills. Or maybe they were being nice to me because they felt guilty about stealing my pain pills.
It doesn’t matter either way. I’m not going to report them. I want this workshop to continue.
It looked shaky for a few days, but the school psychiatrists said we’d all be better off if we finished our workshop than if we left now. We agreed. Hallerhaven found someone to take over Margarite’s week, and we tried to get back to normal.
Or at least I did.
Because I’m getting out of the assassination racket. In fact, I can’t work assassinating even if I wanted to. I’m short-term recognizable. I’ve been interviewed by all the major networks, asking me why Raj came after me and Margarite. (I don’t know! I claimed in my best damsel in distress voice.)
Then I got an idea.
The western writer called her agent because she wants to write the true crime version of what happened.
I can’t write the true crime version because it would be too true and too unbelievable.
But I can write the fictionalized version.
If I play this right, I can become the new Margarite Lawson. I know of enough mysterious and unsolved crime scenes (not all of them my own) to keep me in novels for decades. I don’t have to go around magicking graduate assistants into forced homicides.
So even with the damaged breastbone and the broken wrist, I’m pecking away at the keyboard. I’m going to learn as much as possible these remaining three weeks.
And then I’m taking the publishing world by storm.
HEART OF ASH
Jim C. Hines
Lena Greenwood poked the vampire with the broken remains of her white ash staff. “She’s dead. Deader, I guess. Help me drag the body upstairs. Come sunrise, she should be nothing but a smear on the library roof.”
Janice didn’t move. “She’s been so strange ever since Thanksgiving break. I thought she was sick. Like mono or something.” She stared at the creature who had been her roommate, then turned to Lena. “You’re hurt!”
Lena grimaced and checked her side. “I’ll be fine so long as I don’t inhale too deeply. A night in my tree and those ribs will be good as new.”
Janice clenched her hands together, clearly trying to stop them from trembling. “I thought dryads were supposed to be flighty and weak. You know, the sex fantasies of Greek mythology.”
Lena smiled and ran her fingers through Janice’s short hair. “I’m a nymph. I’m whatever you want me to be.”
Nine years later, Lena twirled a wooden baseball bat in one hand as she strode through Red Rock Park in Tucson. The night air was dry and hot, though for Arizona in May, this was positively mild. Swing set chains clinked in the distance. The park was empty save for a single group gathered at a picnic table.
Three months she had been tracking them. Three months, and eight victims left scattered through the city, brains rotted to mush. She was getting slow.
She smiled as they noticed her. Most were no more human than she was, but they were still men. Their stares warmed her skin, taking in the heavy boots and tight jeans, moving up to the “Plays well with others” T-shirt and the blood-red leather jacket Janice had bought her last year, the one with Animal from The Muppet Show on the back. Wisps of brown hair teased the smooth skin of her face.
Seven men, only two of them mortals. A pair of jaguars circled the picnic table, one black and the other spotted like a leopard. Neither one leashed or restrained in any way.
Lena reached into her jacket and pulled out a baggie of what looked like ash. She tossed it onto the table. “Humans will do a lot for pleasure. Gods know I’ve seen almost everything. Heck, I’ve participated in most of it. But snorting powdered zombie brains? Really?”
The two humans took off running. Lena ignored them. She wanted the dealers.
They were younger than she had expected. None looked