Down These Strange Streets Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  THE BASTARD STEPCHILD

  DEATH BY DAHLIA

  THE BLEEDING SHADOW

  HUNGRY HEART

  STYX AND STONES

  PAIN AND SUFFERING

  IT’S STILL THE SAME OLD STORY

  THE LADY IS A SCREAMER

  HELLBENDER

  SHADOW THIEVES - A Garrett, P.I., Story

  NO MYSTERY, NO MIRACLE

  THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PUZZLE AND A MYSTERY

  THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF THE DEODAND

  LORD JOHN AND THE PLAGUE OF ZOMBIES

  BEWARE THE SNAKE - An SPQR Story

  IN RED, WITH PEARLS

  THE ADAKIAN EAGLE

  Epilogue

  CREDITS

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Collection copyright © 2011 by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

  A complete listing of individual copyrights can be found on page 479.

  The Edgar® name is a registered service mark of the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  p. cm.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54459-4

  1. Fantasy fiction, American. 2. Mystery fiction, American. I. Martin, George R. R. II. Dozois, Gardner R.

  PS648.F3D59 2011

  813’.0876608—dc23

  2011027173

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To our friend Jack Dann,

  who has walked down some pretty strange streets himself

  THE BASTARD STEPCHILD

  There’s a new kid on the shelves in bookstores these days. Most often he can be found back in the science fiction and fantasy section, walking with a certain swagger among the epic fantasies, the space operas, the sword-and-sorcery yarns and cyberpunk dystopias. Sometimes he wanders up front, to hang out with the bestsellers. They call him “urban fantasy,” and these past few years he’s been the hottest subgenre in publishing.

  The term “urban fantasy” isn’t new, truth be told. There was another subgenre that went by that name back in the 1980s; it mostly seemed to involve elves playing in folk-rock bands and riding motorcycles through contemporary urban landscapes—usually in Minneapolis or Toronto, both of which are very nice towns.

  The new urban fantasy may be some kin to that 1980s variety, but if so, the kinship is a distant one, for the new kid is a bastard through and through. He makes his home on streets altogether meaner and dirtier than those his cousin walked, in New York and Chicago and L.A. and nameless cities where blood runs in the gutters and the screams in the night drown out the music. Maybe a few elves are still around, but if so, they’re likely to be hooked on horse or coke or stronger, stranger drugs, or maybe they’re elf hookers being pimped out by a werewolf. Those bloody lycanthropes are everywhere, though it’s the vampires who really run the town . . . And don’t forget the zombies, the ghouls, the demons, the witches and warlocks, the incubi and succubi, and all the other nasty, narsty things that go bump in the night. (And worse, the ones that make no sound at all.)

  Try being a cop in a town like that.

  Try being a private eye.

  The bastard subgenre that is today’s urban fantasy is the offspring of two older genres.

  Horror is the mother that gave it birth. (And that’s horror, if you please, don’t give me any of this “dark fantasy” claptrap, that’s just a feeble attempt to pull a cloak of respectability down over the grinning skull of a genre that traces its own roots back to penny dreadfuls and Grand Guignol.) The vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and ghouls that roam the alleys of today’s urban fantasy all started out in the horror ghetto originally, given form and voice by Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and the generations of writers who followed in their twisted, misshapen footsteps.

  The father of today’s urban fantasy, however, is the mystery story. And not just any old kind of mystery story. The so-called cozy story of detection, where little old ladies puzzle out who killed the curate in the snuggery with no weapon but a lace doily, is not part of its heritage. No, we’re talking noir here, we’re talking the strong stuff, raw and dirty. The ancestors of Harry Dresden, Anita Blake, Rachel Morgan, Mercy Thompson, Jayné Heller, and the rest of that hard gang of demon hunters and vampire killers who populate the alleys and byways of urban fantasy can be found in Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Travis McGee, Mike Hammer, and Race Williams . . . and, of course, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s iconic private eye.

  In his classic essay in Atlantic Monthly, “The Simple Art of Murder,” Chandler wrote:

  Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.

  The heroes and heroines of urban fantasy fit Chandler’s prescription perfectly . . . though I expect that even Marlowe himself would be surprised at just how unusual some of them can be. But maybe not.

  Truth be told, the private eye of Chandler and Hammett and their hard-boiled successors has more in common with the vampires and werewolves of horror fiction than with most real-life private investigations. Whereas their fictional counterparts are solving murders, unraveling plots, and walking through the bad neighborhoods that even the cops dare not enter, the real-life PIs spend their days documenting adultery for sleazy divorce lawyers, dealing with corporate security and industrial espionage, and investigating fraudulent insurance claims. The urban fantasists are only taking the trope one step further. Sam Spade has more in common with Harry Dresden than either of them do with the people you’ll find listed under “Private Investigators” in the yellow pages.

  Raymond Chandler also wrote:

  The pri
vate detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.

  The heroes of urban fantasy come out of the hard-boiled mystery, while the villains, monsters, and antagonists have their own roots in classic horror . . . but it is the combination that gives this subgenre its juice. For these are two genres that are at heart antagonistic. Horror fiction is a fiction steeped in darkness and fear, and set in a hostile Lovecraftian universe impossible for men to comprehend, a world where, as Poe suggested, death in the end holds dominion over all. But detective fiction, even the grim, gritty, hard-boiled variety, is all about rationality; the world may be dark, but the detective is a bringer of light, an agent of order, and, yes, justice.

  You would think this twain could never meet. But bastards can break all the rules, and that’s half their charm. The chains of convention need not apply.

  Consider, for example, a case wherein a dead body is found drained of all blood.

  If a reader comes upon that scenario in a horror novel, he knows at once that there’s a vampire lurking about somewhere. The cops may or may not twig to it, depending on the world the story is set in, but the reader knows the answer: the book says HORROR on the spine.

  If a reader comes upon the identical scenario in a mystery novel, though . . . Well, now he knows it is definitely not a vampire, no matter what it looks like. Some psycho killer who thinks he’s a vampire is about as far as any “realistic” mystery novel will go.

  In both cases, genre expectations define and shape our reading experience and color the ways in which we will perceive the events of the story.

  It is only when the bastard stepchild takes the stage that real uncertainty sets in. Now we’re dealing with a hybrid form: part fantasy, part mystery. All the conventions must be called into question. Suddenly the puzzle is a puzzle again. Maybe it’s a vampire, maybe it’s a psycho, maybe neither, maybe both, maybe something else entirely. Better keep reading to find out.

  “Better keep reading to find out” are the sweetest words any writer can hear.

  Of course, today’s urban fantasists are by no means the first to cross the classic private eye story with fantasy and horror. Poe himself did it, with those murders in the Rue Morgue. Arthur Conan Doyle confronted Sherlock Holmes with the Hound of the Baskervilles . . . and though, in the end, the hound proves no more supernatural than Lassie, the story’s frisson all comes from the possibility that he may be something much darker and more frightening.

  And then there is Robert A. Heinlein, the most unlikely proto–urban fantasist of all . . . but what else is one to make of my favorite Heinlein story, “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag,” wherein the mousy Hoag hires a husband-and-wife team of private eyes to investigate what it is that he finds under his fingernails when he wakes up every morning. Is it blood, or . . . something else?

  (I won’t spoil the story by telling you. The Bird is Cruel.)

  That’s the great thing about this bastard stepchild. The streets he walks are just as mean as those that Spade and Marlowe walked, but considerably stranger . . . and they can take you most anywhere. As the book that you hold in your hand will show.

  My partner in crime Gardner Dozois and I did not restrict ourselves to a single genre or subgenre when assembling this table of contents. Instead, we reached out to fantasists, mystery novelists, crime writers, romance authors . . . and some of the top names in contemporary urban fantasy. All we asked of them was that the story involve a private detective and a case with a fantastic slant, be it real or . . . less so. Whether you’re a fan of mystery fiction, urban fantasy, horror, or science fiction, you should find some of your favorite writers in these pages . . . and other writers you may never have heard of who we think you’ll enjoy just as much. So come walk these strange streets with us, and let’s see where we’ll end up.

  George R. R. Martin

  July 1, 2010

  DEATH BY DAHLIA

  by Charlaine Harris

  New York Times bestseller Charlaine Harris is the author of the immensely popular Sookie Stackhouse series about the adventures of a telepathic waitress in a small Southern town, a series that includes Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas , Club Dead, Dead to the World, and seven others. The Sookie novels have now been adapted into a popular HBO television series called True Blood as well. To satisfy the curiosity of her fans, Harris has edited a guide to the Sookie series, The Sookie Stackhouse Companion. Harris is also the author of the four-volume Harper Connelly paranormal series (Grave Sight, Grave Surprise, and two others), as well as two straight mystery series, the eight-volume Aurora Teagarden series (consisting of Real Murders, A Fool and His Honey, Last Scene Alive, and five others, recently collected in The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries Omnibus 1 and The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries Omnibus 2) and the five-volume Lily Bard series (consisting of Shakespeare’s Landlord, Shakespeare’s Champion, and three others, recently collected in The Lily Bard Mysteries Omnibus), as well as the stand-alone novels Sweet and Deadly and A Secret Rage. She’s also edited the anthologies Crimes by Moonlight, and, with Toni L. P. Kelner, Many Bloody Returns, Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, Death’s Excellent Vacation, and Home Improvement: Undead Edition . Her most recent novel is a new Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Reckoning.

  Here she takes us, in company with the powerful vampire Dahlia LynleyChivers, to a lavish party for various creatures of the night, where the festivities get a bit rougher and more deadly than even Dahlia might have anticipated.

  DAHLIA LYNLEY-CHIVERS HAD BEEN A WOMAN OF AVERAGE HEIGHT in her day. Her day had been over for centuries, and in modern America she was considered a very short woman indeed. Since Dahlia was a vampire and was reputed to be a vicious fighter even among her own kind, she was usually treated with respect despite her lack of inches and her dainty build.

  “You got a face like a rose,” said her prospective blood donor, a handsome, husky human in his twenties. “Here, little lady, let me squat down so you can reach me! You want me to get you a stool to stand on?” He laughed, definitely in hardy-har-har mode.

  If he hadn’t preceded his “amusing” comment on Dahlia’s height with a compliment, she would have broken his ribs and drained him dry; but Dahlia was fond of compliments. He did have to bear some consequence for the condescension, though.

  Dahlia gave the young man a look of such ferocity that he blanched almost as white as Dahlia herself. Then she stepped pointedly to her left to approach the next unoccupied donor, a blond suburbanite not too much taller than Dahlia. The woman opened her arms to embrace the vampire, as if this were an assignation rather than a feeding. Dahlia would have sighed if she’d been a breather.

  However, Dahlia was hungry, and she’d already been picky enough. This woman’s neck was at the right height, and she was absolutely willing, since she’d registered with the donor agency. Dahlia bit. The woman jerked as Dahlia’s fangs went in, so Dahlia considerately licked a little on the wound to anesthetize the area. She sucked hard, and the woman jerked in an entirely different way. Dahlia was a polite feeder, for the most part.

  The blonde’s arms squeezed Dahlia with surprising force, and she gripped a handful of Dahlia’s thick, wavy, dark hair, which fell in a cascade reaching almost to Dahlia’s waist. The blonde pulled Dahlia’s hair a little, but she wasn’t trying to pull Dahlia off . . . not at all.

  At Dahlia’s age, she didn’t need to drink much at a sitting (or perhaps at a biting would be a more appropriate phrase). After a few pleasurable gulps, the vampire had had enough. Dahlia didn’t want to be greedy, and she’d taken such a small amount that it would be safe for the woman to donate again on the spot.

  Dahlia gave a final lick, and when the air hit the licked puncture marks, her natural coagulant set to work almost instantly. The blond woman seemed disappointed that the encounter was over and actually tried to hold on to Dahl
ia. With a stiff smile, Dahlia removed herself with a little more decision. The donor turned to the next vampire in line, who was Cedric. She would have to be stopped after that; most people who enjoyed being bitten enough to be listed with the donor agency simply weren’t smart about when to stop.

  “You could be a little nicer,” Dahlia’s best friend Taffy said reprovingly. “Would it have hurt to you tell the breather how good she was?” Dahlia would have ignored anyone else who ventured to give her advice on her manners, but Taffy was within two hundred years of being as old as Dahlia. They were the oldest vampires in the nest, and their friendship had survived many trials.

  Taffy had been practically Amazonian during her lifetime, and she remained an impressive woman even now. She was five foot seven and busty; her light hair exploded in a tangled halo around her head and fell past her shoulders. Taffy’s husband Don was one of the trials they’d survived, and it was because of Don’s preference that Taffy went heavy on the makeup and tight on the clothes. Don thought that was a mighty fine look on Taffy.

  Of course, Don was a werewolf. His taste was dubious, at best.

  Taffy waved at Don, who was over by the food table. Werewolves were always hungry, and they could drink alcohol until the cows came home—and then the Weres would eat them. A party with an open bar and a buffet was like heaven to Don and his new enforcer, Bernie. The two Weres were making the most of the opportunity, since politics demanded they be in the vampire nest for Joaquin’s ascension celebration.

  Dahlia noticed Don and Bernie casting contemptuous glances at the group of blood donors. Werewolves thought humans who were willing to give blood to vampires were from the bottom of the barrel. Any selfrespecting Were would rather have his fur shaved off. Dahlia was sure Don didn’t mind giving Taffy a sip in private . . . at least she hoped that was the case. During Dahlia’s own brief marriage to the previous enforcer, her husband had not been averse to a little nip.