Down These Strange Streets

Ten shots. Five hit. Five more punched the great window behind, starring it, then collapsing it out in a shatter of milky fragments.

“Ooooo, ooooo, you’re so rough,” the thing laughed as it advanced on him, laughing.

A hand reached out toward his neck. Then jerked back as she hissed:

“We really have to do something about those silver chains. Maybe we could make people think they cause cancer?”

She dabbed at the blood on the side of her head and stuck the fingers in her mouth for a moment, tongue curling around them.

“Mmmmm, tasty! But you want to take that stupid chain off, don’t you . . . that’s right . . .”

The eyes grew, the yellow flecks drawing together like drops of molten gold, running into two lakes of fire. Depth, depth, drawing him into a whirling—

She screamed, pain and rage. The great ten-foot wings beat behind her as the talons slammed home and the hooked beak drove into her neck. The snow-leopard rolled over and over—

—leopard?—

its paws striking in a blur of speed and claws. The eagle dropped out of the air into a huge tawny something and the big cats rolled over and over shrieking and striking and lunging for each other’s throats as furniture smashed and broken glass crunched under their weight. Then the man was standing with his back to Salvador, every muscle in his lean body standing out like static waves as his thumbs dug into her throat. She was making the same bestial snarling sound as she reared back with a knee braced against his chest and her hands driving up between his forearms—

CRACK!

Much louder this time. The double splash of impact and her skull started to deform under the huge kinetic energy, and then a sparkle, and she was gone. Blood fell to the floor, with a sharp, sour, iron-salt smell. The man went to one knee for a second, panting, then rose and turned.

“You’re Adrian Brézé,” he said, trying to make his mind function again.

The gun came up, almost of its own volition. The slim dark man pointed a finger at him.

“Don’t. Just don’t. It’s been a long day.”

He cast a glance over his shoulder; the first paling of the night sky showed that dawn was coming, and he winced a little.

“I’d better go corporeal. Right back, Detective Salvador.”

Salvador looked down at the pistol. Why the hell not? he thought, and began to bring it up toward his mouth. That’s safer. Only amateurs try to shoot themselves in the head . . .

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Why don’t you kill me? Why don’t you kill me?” he screamed. “Why don’t you just fucking kill me?”

“That’s why don’t they fucking kill you,” the man said. “I can tell you, if you want to know.”

“You’re one of them.”

Brézé was slight, a bit below medium height, pale olive skin and dark hair and gold-flecked brown eyes . . .

“You’re Adrian Brézé!”

“Yes.”

Salvador drew breath in, held it, let it out. “Okay, I get it: I’m supposed to believe you’re a good monster.”

“Oh, he’s a great monster, believe me. But all mine.”

Salvador jerked at the other voice, looked down at the pistol, then dropped it to the table he was sitting on. A copper box had spilled open, full of slim cigarettes. He took one out and lit it; some distant part of himself was proud of the fact that his hand didn’t shake. The second voice belonged to a woman. Tall, blond, dressed in dark outdoor clothes and boots, with a knit cap over her head and a rifle cradled in her arms—he recognized it, big Brit sniper job, long scope, aircraft-alloy body.

“You’re . . . Ellen Tarnowski.”

“Technically, Ellen Brézé, now. No, I’m not one of them. You don’t catch it from getting bit.”

A sudden charming smile. “And believe me, I know! Not even from getting married to one.”

“I get the feeling you’ve changed.”

“I had to . . . ah . . . take a couple of levels in badass, let’s say.”

“You killed her.”

His eyes went back to the puddle of blood; there wasn’t a body.

“Oh, yes.” Her eyes were large and turquoise blue; for a moment they held a hot satisfaction. “There’s a body, probably a long way away, but it’s empty now.”

“That . . . that wasn’t his sister, was it?”

“No. That was Michiko. She’s a friend of his sister. Sort of a wannabe Mistress of Ultimate Darkness.”

Brézé was back. Now he was dressed, in the same sort of clothes; a light jacket covered a shoulder rig with a knife worn hilt-down on one flank and a Glock on the other.

“All right,” Salvador said, taking a pull on the cigarette. “Fill me in. I know I’m really somewhere under heavy meds, baying at the moon.”

For some reason, that made Adrian Brézé smile. “I’m a Shadowspawn . . . that’s what we call ourselves, mostly. But . . . well, I try not to be a monster. It’s complicated. You can choose to learn, or you can choose to forget. If you forget, you can make yourself a new life. If you learn, it’ll probably kill you—but at least you’ll know why you’re fighting, mon ami.”

“If you offer me a blue pill and a red pill, I’ll fucking kill you!”

The couple laughed. “It’s actually two file cards. Take your pick.”

“Knowledge—and you can try being the guerrilla. Ignorance—and long life.”

Salvador looked at the butt of the cigarette. Then he tossed it accurately into the blood; it hissed into extinction.

“Like that’s really a choice?”

IT’S STILL THE SAME OLD STORY by Carrie Vaughn

Bestseller Carrie Vaughn is the author of a wildly popular series of novels detailing the adventures of Kitty Norville, a radio personality who also happens to be a werewolf, and who runs a late-night call-in radio advice show for supernatural creatures. The Kitty books include Kitty and The Midnight Hour, Kitty Goes to Washington, Kitty Takes a Holiday, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand, Kitty Raises Hell, and Kitty’s House of Horrors. Vaughn’s short work has appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, Wild Cards: Inside Straight, Realms of Fantasy,