The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

beside me.

We watched Cain flail in the water below.

She glanced at me. “Good enough?” her eyes asked.

I studied him for a moment, then grunted, not quite willing to commit yet. An answering chuff and she loped off across the bridge. I went the other way.

We toyed with Cain for a while, running along the banks, lunging at him every time he tried to make it to shore. When he finally showed signs of exhaustion, Elena gave the signal and we left him there.

A lesson learned? Probably not. Give him a year or two and he’d be back, but in the meantime, he’d have to return to his buddies with a shredded ear and without McKay, and no matter what slant he put on the story, the meaning would be clear: situation normal. I wasn’t suffering from a debilitating injury or settling into comfortable retirement with my family. I’d bought myself a little more time.

Elena lifted her head peering into the bushes that surrounded us.

“Don’t worry,” I said “No one can see.”

“Something I really should have checked about ten minutes ago.”

She pushed up from my chest, skin shimmering in the dark. She sampled the air for any sign of Cain.

“All clear.” A slow stretch as she snarled a yawn. “One of these days, we’re actually going to complete an escape before we have sex.”

“Why?”

She, laughed. “Why, indeed.”

She started to slide off me, but I held her still, hands around her waist.

“Not yet.”

“Hmm.” Another stretch, her toes tickling my legs. “So when are you going to blast me?”

“For taking off and running down alleys at midnight?”

“Unless you slipped something past me in the wedding vows, I think I’m still entitled to go where I want, when I want. But do you really think I’d go traipsing down dark alleys in a strange city for a bottle of water? Why not just stick a flashing ‘mug me’ sign on my back?”

“Well, you did seem a bit bored…”

“Please. That mutt’s been following us since this morning. I was trying to get rid of him.”

“What?”

“Yes, I know, I should have warned you. I realized that later, but you worked so hard to plan our honeymoon and I didn’t want this mutt ruining it. I thought I’d give him a good scare and send him packing before you noticed him sniffing around.”

“Huh.”

I tried to sound surprised. Tried to look surprised. But her gaze swung to mine, eyes narrowing.

“You knew he was following us.”

I shrugged, hoping for noncommittal.

She smacked my arm. “You were just going to let me take the blame and keep your mouth shut, weren’t you?”

“Hell, yeah.”

Another smack. “That’s what you were doing at dinner, wasn’t it? Breaking his jaw. I thought it looked off, and I could swear I smelled blood when we were walking back from the restaurant.” She shook her head. “Communication. We should try it sometime.”

I shifted, putting my arm under my head. “How about now? About this trip. You’re bored.” When she opened her mouth to protest, I put my hand over it. “There’s not a damned thing to do except hole up in our hotel room, run in the forest, and hunt mutts-which, while fun, we could do anywhere. So I’m thinking, maybe it’s time to consider a second honeymoon.”

She sputtered a laugh. “Already?”

“I think we’re due for one. So how’s this? We pack, head home, see the kids for a couple of days, then take off again. Someplace where we can hole up, run in the forest and not have to worry about tripping over mutts. A cabin in Algonquin…”

She leaned over me, hair fanning a curtain around us. “Wasn’t that where I suggested we go when you first asked?”

“I thought you were just trying to make it easy on me, We can rent a cabin anytime. I wanted this to be different, special.”

“It was special. I was stalked, chased, attacked… and I got to beat the crap out of a mutt twice my size.” She bent further, lips brushing mine. “A truly unique honeymoon from a truly unique husband.”

She put her arms around my neck, rolled over, and pulled me on top of her.

Corpse Vision by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Joe Decker couldn’t remember who poured him into the taxi that brought him to Le Cafe du Dome. Either way, it had to be one of the Midwestern boys-gangly Jim Thurber or the new guy-whatsisname? William?-Shirer. Neither of them knew Decker had a room at the Hotel de Lisbonne-him and everybody else at the Trib except that old stick Waverly Root. Of course, without that old stick, the paper wouldn’t get out every day for the ex-pats and tourists to read in their little Left Bank cafes. Some were saying- mostly the folks over at the Paris Herald-that an alcoholic wave was sweeping through the offices of the Paris Tribune, making it damned impossible to get anything out, let alone a daily paper.

Like the deadbeats at the Herald could talk. What they said about the Trib applied to the Herald as well: Each and every day, a goodly proportion of the staff was insensate due to drink-half because it was there and half because it wasn’t.

Joe Decker didn’t drink when he worked. He drank after he worked, and then only because he didn’t want to face his typewriter in that little room off Boulevard St. Michel. If anyone had told him he’d be writing hack in Paris while he was supposed to be writing his brilliant first novel, he would’ve laughed.

He’d come to Paris with $300, his typewriter, and one tiny suitcase of clothes, figuring that, with the franc worth damn near nothing against the dollar, he could afford one year, one year of typing, one year of thinking, thinking, thinking. Six months later, he had 5,000 words of unadulterated horseshit and fifty dollars, barely enough to pay for the room which he was heartily sick of.

Besides, no one in Paris had heard of Prohibition or if they had, they thought it one of those crazy American ideas that would never work.

Oh yeah sure, it would never work. It had never worked him into a huge thirst, which he tried to slake on nights like this when he’d turned in his copy on some stupid tourist gala no one here gave a good goddamn about but which actually got sent home because the folks back at their parent paper, the Chicago Tribune, thought such things were the important goings-on in Paris.

He remembered heading down the twisty back stairs of the Trib building, the presses thudding, the air hot with fresh ink. Funny man Thurber had come along and Whatsisname Shirer, still all googly eyed because he hadn’t seen anything like this back in Ioway or Illanoise or wherever the hell he was from, and they’d planned one drink, just one-and the next thing Decker knew he woke up in this taxi with a throbbing headache and a mouth that tasted of three-day old gin.

In his exceedingly bad French, he’d asked the cabby where they were going. The cabby just waved his hand imperiously and said, “Le Dome, Le Dome,” and Decker wasn’t sure they were heading to the Dome because Thurber or Whatsisname had told the cabby to go there, or because the cabby, like every other French taxi driver, knew the Dome was the place to take drunk Americans so that they could get home.

Decker’s head was too fuzzy to conjure the words to get the taxi to the Hotel de Lisbonne. Besides, he wasn’t sure he had the scratch. The ride to the Dome was gratis-or would be if he couldn’t find a franc or two-because