Down These Strange Streets

garments, one by one.

“Cedric, I believe these are yours,” he said.

“That’s not true,” Cedric said calmly. He swept a hand down his chest. “Someone is trying to incriminate me. This is what I have been wearing all evening.”

“Not so,” retorted Dahlia. “The flowers on your vest were golden at the beginning of the evening. After the death of the human, the flowers were blue.” She was almost sad to have to say the words, but out of spite Cedric had almost condemned the whole nest to hours in the police station, days of bad press, and the end of the regime of Joaquin before it had even really begun. “The clothes you have on now are your clothes you wear when you garden, the clothes you leave hanging on a peg outside. Including the boots.”

Everyone looked down at Cedric’s scruffy boots. They were certainly not footwear anyone would choose to wear to a reception, not even Cedric.

For a second, fear flashed in Cedric’s blue eyes. Only for a second. Then he charged at Dahlia, a wild shriek coming from his lips.

She’d been expecting it for all of a couple of seconds. She stepped to the left quicker than the eye could track her, seized Cedric’s right arm as he went past her, twisted it upward at a terrible angle, and when Cedric screamed she gripped his head and twisted.

Cedric’s head came off.

There was silence for a moment.

“I’m so sorry,” she said to Joaquin. “I didn’t intend his decapitation. The mess . . .”

“He’ll flake away and we’ll get out the vacuum cleaner,” Joaquin said, with a good approximation of calm. Before his elevation to the sheriff’s position, Joaquin had been in body disposal, Dahlia recalled. “If the stain won’t clean out of the rug, we’ll buy another.”

That was something Cedric would never have said, and Dahlia brightened. “Thank you, Sheriff. He almost surprised me,” she said, and she could barely believe the words were coming from her lips. Perhaps she would miss Cedric more than she had realized.

“When the humans charge the police in order to be shot, they call it ‘suicide by cop.’ ” Katamori bowed to his new friend. He said gallantly, “We will call it ‘Death by Dahlia.’ ”

THE BLEEDING SHADOW by Joe R. Lansdale

Music may have charms to soothe the savage breast, but as the down-on-his-luck private eye in the gritty story that follows learns, it also has charms that can open doors—including doors to places where nobody ought to go.

Prolific Texas writer Joe R. Lansdale has won the Edgar® Award, the British Fantasy Award, the American Horror Award, the American Mystery Award, the International Crime Writer’s Award, and eight Bram Stoker Awards. Although perhaps best known for horror/thrillers such as The Nightrunners, Bubba Ho- Tep, The Bottoms, The God of the Razor, and The Drive- In, he also writes the popular Hap Collins and Leonard Pine mystery series— Savage Season, Mucho Mojo, The Two- Bear Mambo, Bad Chili, Rumble Tumble, Captains Outrageous—as well as Western novels such as Texas Night Rider and Blooddance, and totally unclassifiable cross-genre novels such as Zeppelins West, The Magic Wagon, and Flaming London. His other novels include Dead in the West, The Big Blow, Sunset and Sawdust, Act of Love, Freezer Burn, Waltz of Shadows, The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels, and Leather Maiden. He has also contributed novels to series such as Batman and Tarzan. His many short stories have been collected in By Bizarre Hands; Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back; The Shadows Kith and Kin; The Long Ones; Stories by Mama Lansdale’s Youngest Boy; Bestsellers Guaranteed; On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with the Dead Folks; Electric Gumbo; Writer of the Purple Rage; A Fist Full of Stories; Bumper Crop; The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent; For a Few Stories More; Mad Dog Summer: And Other Stories; The King and Other Stories; and High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale. As editor, he has produced the anthologies The Best of the West, Retro Pulp Tales, Son of Retro Pulp Tales (with his son, Keith Lansdale), Razored Saddles (with Pat LoBrutto), Dark at Heart: All New Tales of Dark Suspense (with his wife, Karen Lansdale), The Horror Hall of Fame: The Stoker Winners, and the Robert E. Howard tribute anthology Cross Plains Universe (with Scott A. Cupp). An anthology in tribute to Lansdale’s work is Lords of the Razor. His most recent books are a new collection, Deadman’s Road; an omnibus, Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal; and, as editor, a new anthology, Crucified Dreams. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.

I WAS DOWN AT THE BLUE LIGHT JOINT THAT NIGHT, FINISHING OFF SOME ribs and listening to some blues, when in walked Alma May. She was looking good too. Had a dress on that fit her the way a dress ought to fit every woman in the world. She was wearing a little flat hat that leaned to one side, like an