The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (86 page)

Except they aren’t guys—they’re True Bloods. Tall and handsome, maybe, but with a cruel light in their eyes and knives in their hands. Now I know why the dog’s bleeding.

“The big thing to remember,” River told me this morning, “is you won’t get in over your head if you mind your own business. You especially don’t want to get on the wrong side of the True Bloods.”

Screw that.

I open my jackknife and snatch up the metal lid from a garbage can.

“Get away from the dog!” I call to them.

They start to turn in my direction and I can see them smiling at the thought of some new entertainment. But I learned a long time ago that if there’s going to be trouble, you don’t stand around and talk about it, working up your courage. You just go for it.

I’m already in motion when I call out to them. By the time they turn around I’m close enough to hit the front guy in the face with the garbage can lid. I’m not ready to cut yet, but I aim the hilt of my knife at the head of the guy on my right. It never connects. He’s fast. They’re all fast. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.

The guy on my left moves in and his blade punches me in the side, going in up to its hilt before he rips it out. The guy I missed ducks under my swing and he stabs me in the chest. The one I hit slaps aside the lid. I have the momentary satisfaction of seeing the blood spilling from his broken nose before he knifes me as well.

Fast.

So fast.

The jackknife drops from my fingers to clatter on the cobblestones. My mouth fills with the taste of copper.

They each get a couple more stabs in before I’m falling to the ground beside the dog. The one with the broken nose drops down, sleek as a panther. His face is inches from my own.

“You think this was a game, human?”

He spits the words into my face. I’m trying to focus on him but my gaze is swimming. I know I should be in a world of pain, but I can’t seem to feel my body. I think he’s licking my blood from the blade of his knife, but that doesn’t make any sense.

“No one interferes with us. Too bad you had to die to learn that.”

Except he doesn’t look sorry at all. Then he’s standing again—so fast I don’t see him move. They kick me a few more times before I hear them leaving the alley.

I drag myself to the wall. I’m bleeding out, but there’s nothing I can do. I’ve been cut too many times. I still don’t feel the pain. I pull the dog’s head onto my lap and stroke his bloody fur.

“Sorry, buddy,” I tell him. “I wish I’d gotten here sooner, but it probably would have ended just the same. Though maybe you could have had time to run off.”

I would have had your back,
a voice says in my head.

“The hell . . . ?”

I look down into the dog’s face. His big brown eyes are looking up into mine. I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s like the dog was talking to me.

Their generosity is legendary,
the voice goes on,
but so is their cruelty.

I look around. My vision’s been fading in and out, but there doesn’t seem to be anybody else here but the dog and me. I look back at him.

“Are you—are you talking to me?”

I think it’s just the two of us here, so I must be talking to you.

“Yeah, but dogs can’t . . . ”

What makes you think dogs can’t talk
?

“I didn’t—I mean, it never occurred to me one way or the other.”

Maybe the ones you knew didn’t have anything to say. Or maybe you just didn’t know how to hear them.

“I never thought about it. They were just always around on the rez.”

And yet without stopping to consider the consequences, you gave your life for me.

That brings me right back down to earth.

“So we’re dying . . . ?”

I’m afraid so.

“I don’t feel any pain.”

Some of the Bloods coat their blades with poison to guarantee the death of their foe. But it has the side effect of numbing the pain.

“I can’t die. I mean, I’m not supposed to die. Not yet. I was supposed to rescue her first.”

Why don’t you tell me who she is and what you were rescuing her from
?

“I wasn’t there for her when she fell,” I say.

Time is crawling by in slow motion. I don’t know if it’s from shock, or something in the poison. But somehow I manage to tell him about Juliana and how she died.

What makes you think she wants to be rescued
? he says when I’m done.

I remember Seamus asking me the same thing, but I still say, “What do you mean?”

Death is only a passage to another world. We leave this place and go to what you call the Summer Country, but eventually we leave it as well and go somewhere else. That is how it is forever. Your mate has finished the journey she had in this world. Why would she want to return to travel the same road again
?

“She said we’d be together forever,” I say. “She said whichever one of us went first would be waiting for the other.”

And you doubt it
?

“I—I don’t know what to think. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does now.”

I will tell you what always matters,
the dog says.
Shining a light into the darkness. Standing up to injustice. Just as you did earlier this evening. There aren’t so many willing to offer help as selflessly as you have.

“Except we’re both dying.”

It doesn’t have to be that way.

“I don’t get it. And Juliana . . . ”

No matter how long you live, she will always be waiting for you. You do believe her, don’t you
?

“I still don’t get what you’re saying.”

Just as your friend pushed you from the train into Bordertown, I can push you back from death. Choose life and see what happens.

“But without her—”

She will be waiting for you. She promised. But go only when your work is finished.

“What work?”

The work of living, and showing other how to survive. They come here to this city because they have nothing left in the World to comfort them, but they don’t always find comfort here, either. You saw it yourself this evening. Bordertown can be a harsh mistress to the unwary. You can
s
tay and be a strength for others, or give up and go to her. But ask yourself, will you be proud of your choice? Will she
?

He’s right. Juliana would want me to stay and make myself useful. I know that because it’s what I’d want for her. I’d want her to live.

“So how do you push me back?” I ask.

There’s no reply for a long moment, and then I realize that the dog’s gone. He passed away between one breath and the next. I stroke his fur.

“Thanks for the company, buddy,” I say.

I shift my position a little and something digs into my back. My jacket got twisted around when I pulled myself up to lean against the wall. What I’m feeling is the acorn I carved while watching the Mad River.

Choose,
the dog told me.

Now I know what I’d choose, but it’s too late.

I pull the acorn out of my pocket and turn it over in my hand a few times. Then I toss it away and listen to it bounce down the alley.

Either it’s gotten completely dark now, or my vision’s gone. It’s really quiet, too. My tongue feels thick in my mouth. I’m falling. I’m in the alley, propped up against a wall, but at the same time I’m falling.

I try to find something to hold onto, but I can’t feel my fingers anymore.

Falling . . .

Something the dog told me . . .

Falling . . .

Then I remember.

Will you be proud of your choice? Will she
?

And as soon as I remember, I think I hear it. I hear
her.
That familiar bell-like laugh. Delicate and intoxicating.

I reach for her with hands I can’t feel, stretching farther and farther until I can almost imagine her fingers close around my own.

The soft laughter is all around me now, just like my Juliana, sweet and happy.

Choose life and see what happens.

I want to be with her so badly.

But I remember walking down that party street. Everybody having fun, laughing and dancing and filled up with the music. But I also remember those kids I saw standing just beyond the noise and light. Came all this way but they’re still just as much on the outside as they were before they got here.

I think of the True Bloods, and the gangs River told me about, pushing their weight around.

If the dog hadn’t died, if I could still make the choice, I know what I’d choose.

I’d do what I could to make things right. That’s what would make Juliana proud. That’s the guy I’d want to be.

But it’s too late.

The sweet laughter grows softer and I hear something else. I don’t realize what it is until the acorn I threw away bounces back against my leg. I reach for it, close my fingers around it.

I can push you back from death.

I open my eyes. I clutch the acorn tight and lift my free hand to my chest. My shirt’s still all cut up and it’s soaked with blood. But the wounds are gone.

Juliana’s presence has completely faded.

I sit there for a long time, aching to be with her.

Finally, I tuck the acorn away in a pocket. I get up and cradle the dog’s body in my arms and go looking for a place to lay it in the ground.

I know that Juliana’s waiting for me, but that’s not going to be for a while.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

The start of something, I guess.

A new turn of the wheel, Uncle Herbert would say.

The promise of hope, Tom Hill would probably say.

Maybe I’ll see if they have any Green Men in this place.

About the Authors

Joan Aiken
(1924-2004) British writer and daughter of Conrad Aiken, Joan Aiken worked as a librarian for the UN Information Committee and as features editor for
Argosy.
Her many books for children include
All You’ve Ever Wanted,
The Kingdom and the Cave,
Tales of Arabel’s Raven,
Voices Hippo,
and
Dangerous Games.
Among her adult novels are
The Silence of Herondale
and
Mansfield Revisited.
A 2011 posthumous collection,
The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories,
published by Small Beer Press included six never-before published stories.

Kelley Armstrong
is the author of the Women of the Otherworld paranormal suspense series and the Darkest Powers YA urban fantasy series. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she still lives with her family. A former computer programmer, she’s now escaped her corporate cubicle and hopes never to return.

Adam Callaway
was born in 1989 in Madison, Wisconsin, and has slowly migrated north to his current home in Superior, where he lives with his wife and two small dogs. He read Gene Wolfe’s
The Shadow of the Torturer
when he was nineteen, and it has driven him to write and write and write in his attempt to reverse-engineer genius. You can find him at www.adamcallaway.net.

Tananarive Due
is an American Book Award-winning,
Essence
best-selling author of
Blood Colony,
The Living Blood,
The Good House,
Joplin’s Ghost,
and, most recently,
My Soul to Take.
She is also co-author of the NAACP Image Award-winning Tennyson Hardwick mystery series. She lives in the Atlanta area with her husband and co-author Steven Barnes. Visit her at www.TananariveDue.blogspot.com.

Dennis Etchison
’s stories have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies since 1961. He is a three-time winner of both the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Award. His collections include
The Dark Country,
Red Dreams,
The Blood Kiss,
The Death Artist,
Talking in the Dark,
Fine Cuts,
and
Got To Kill Them All & Other Stories.
He is also a novelist (
Darkside,
Shadowman,
California Gothic,
Double Edge
), editor (
Cutting Edge,
Masters of Darkness I-III,
MetaHorror,
The Museum of Horrors,
Gathering the Bones
), and scriptwriter. In 2002 he began adapting the original
Twilight Zone
television series for radio, followed by further scripts for
The New Twilight Zone Radio Dramas
and
Fangoria Magazine
’s
Dread Time Stories.
Forthcoming are a career retrospective from Centipede Press’s Masters of the Weird Tale series and a volume of new short stories from Bad Moon Books.

Paul Finch
is a former cop and journalist turned full-time writer. He cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the British TV crime drama, The Bill, and has written extensively in the field of children’s animation. To date, he’s had twelve books and nearly three hundred stories and novellas published. His first collection,
Aftershocks,
won the British Fantasy Award and he later won the award for his novella,
Kid.
He is also an International Horror Guild Award-winner for his story,
The Old North Road.
Most recently, he has written four
Doctor Who
audio dramas. His horror novel,
Stronghold,
was published in 2010,
Doctor Who
novel,
Hunter’s Moon,
in 2011, and 2012 will see the publication of his novel,
Dark North.
Finch has also written scripts for several movies. The most recent of these,
The Devil’s Rock,
was released in 2011. He lives in Lancashire, UK, with his wife and two children. His website is paulfinch-writer.blogspot.com.

Jeffrey Ford
is the author of the novels,
The Physiognomy, Memoranda,
The Beyond,
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque,
The Girl in the Glass,
The Cosmology of the Wider World,
and
The Shadow Year.
His story collections are 
The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant,
The Empire of Ice Cream,
and
The Drowned Life.
His new collection,
Crackpot Palace,
will be out in August 2012. Ford is the recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Nebula, the World Fantasy Award, and the
Grand Prix de l’imaginaire.