The Urban Fantasy Anthology (44 page)

Jesus had been the first White Man!

Tawana kept rocking the two Brown children, and sneaking sideways glances at the crucifix, and wondering who in the world she could ever tell about her incredible insight, which kept making more and more sense.

The priests, the nuns, the missionaries! Hospitals and health clincs. The crucifixes in everybody’s homes, just like the story of Moses when the Jews in Egypt marked their doors with blood to keep out the Angel of Death!

Everything was starting to connect. Here in America and there in Africa, for centuries and centuries, it was all the same ancient never-ending struggle of good against evil, human against vampire, Black against White.

On July 3, in preparation for the holidays, the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Cooperative once again changed its window display in the store that was never open underneath the All-Faiths Tabernacle. The old ENTERTAINMENT IS FUN—FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY! sign wasn’t taken down. Instead WAR was pasted over ENTERTAINMENT, and the mannikins who had been sitting around the imaginary living room watching Gene Kelly on tv had been dismembered, their detached limbs and white clothes scattered around a cemetery made of cardboard tombstones and spray-on cobwebs. A big flag rippled in a breeze supplied by a standing fan at the side of the window, while the hidden sound system played the Jimi Hendrix version of the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Tawana’s first reaction, as for the earlier displays, was a perplexed indignation, a sense of having been personally violated without knowing exactly how. But now that she had become more adept at unriddling such conundrums the basic meaning of the display in the window slowly became clear like a face on tv emerging from the green and grey sprinkles of static. This was the cemetery that the vampires lived in, only they weren’t home. The White Man was hunting for more victims. The limbs beside the gravestones were the remnants of some earlier feast.

It actually helped to know what the real situation was. When there is a definite danger it is possible to act. Tawana went round to the back of the building. The Arts Cooperative people always used their back door and kept their front door locked, and Rev. Blount did just the opposite. There was no doorbell, so Tawana knocked.

Mr. Forbush answered the inner door and stood behind the patched and sagging screen, blinking. “Yes?” he asked, stupid with sleep.

“Mr. Forbush, can I come in and talk with you?” When he seemed uncertain, she added, “It’s about Rev. Blount, upstairs.”

Tawana knew from Rev. Blount there were problems between the Arts Cooperative, who owned the building, and the Tabernacle, which was behind in its rent and taking its landlord to court for harrassment and other reasons. And sure enough Mr. Forbush forgot his suspicions and invited Tawana inside.

She was in a space almost as jumbled and crazy as the shop window out front, with some of the walls torn down, and drywall partitions painted to look like pictures, and rugs on top of rugs and piles of gigantic pillows and other piles of cardboard and plastic boxes and not much real furniture anywhere. Tawana had never been anywhere vampires lived, and this was nothing like she would have expected. She was fascinated, and a little dazed.

“What are you looking for?” Mr. Forbush asked. “The bathroom?”

“Are we by ourselves?” Tawana asked, running her fingers across the top of the gas stove as though it were a piano.

Before he could answer, the phone rang. All the tension inside of Tawana relaxed away like a puff of smoke. The ring of the phone was the sound of heaven answering her prayers. Mr. Forbush swiveled round in the pile of cushions he’d settle down on, reaching for a cell phone on top of the CD player that sat on the bare floor.

Tawana grabbed hold of the cast iron frying pan on the back burner of the stove, and before there was any answer to Mr. Forbush’s “Hello?” she had knocked him over the head. The first blow didn’t kill him, or the second. But they were solid enough that he was never able to fight back. He groaned some and waved his arms, but that did nothing to keep Tawana from slaying him.

Outside, along the driveway, there was an old, old wooden fence that hadn’t been painted for years. That provided the stake she needed. She didn’t even have to sharpen the end of it. She drove it through his heart with the same frying pan she’d used to smash his head in. She was amazed at the amount of blood that spilled out into the pile of pillows. Perhaps he had been feasting through the night.

There was no use trying to mop the floor, no way to hide the body. But she did change out of her bloody clothes, and found a white dress that must have belonged to one of the mannikins. She wore that to go home in, with her own dirty clothes stuffed in a plastic bag from CVS.

Mr. Forbush’s death received a good deal of attention on WCCO and the other news programs, and Rev. Blount was often on the tv to answer questions and deny reports. But no charges were every brought against him, or against any other suspect. However, it was not possible, after so much media attention, to deny that Minneapolis had a vampire problem just the same as Malawi. There were many who believed that Mr. Forbush had been a vampire, or at least had been associating with vampires, on the principle that where there is smoke there is fire. It was discovered by a reporter on the
Star
that the Arts Cooperative was a legal fiction designed to help Mr. Forbush evade state and local taxes, that he was, in effect, the sole owner, having inherited the property after the bankruptcy of his father’s mattress store and the man’s subsequent suicide. It was rumored that the father’s death might not have been a suicide, and that he had been the first victim of the vampires—or, alternatively, that he had been the first of the vampires.

None of these stories ever received official media attention, but they were circulated widely enough that the All-Faiths Pentecostal Tabernacle became a big success story in the Twin Cities’ Somali-American community. Rev. Blount received a special award for his contributions to Interfaith Dialogue from the Neighborhood Development Association, and even after the protests that followed the “Mall of America Massacre” and the effort by the police to close down the Tabernacle, he was saluted as a local hero and a possible candidate for the State Senate.

Tawana was never to enjoy the same celebrity status, though as a member of All-Faiths’ choir she had her share of the general good fortune, including her own brief moment of glory in the spotlight. It was during the NBC Special Report,
The Vampires of Minnesota
. She was in her red and white choir robes, standing outside the Tabernacle after a Sunday service. The camera had been pressed up to her face, close enough to kiss, and she’d stared right into it, no smile on her lips, completely serious, and said, “They said it could never happen here. They said it might happen somewhere
primitive
and
backwards
like Malawi, but never in Minneapolis.”

Then she just lowered her eyes and turned her head sideways, and they started to roll the credits.

Gestella

Susan Palwick

Time’s the problem. Time and arithmetic. You’ve known from the beginning that the numbers would cause trouble, but you were much younger then—much, much younger—and far less wise. And there’s culture shock, too. Where you come from, it’s okay for women to have wrinkles. Where you come from, youth’s not the only commodity.

You met Jonathan back home. Call it a forest somewhere, near an Alp. Call it a village on the edge of the woods. Call it old. You weren’t old, then: you were fourteen on two feet and a mere two years old on four, although already fully grown. Your kind are fully grown at two years, on four feet. And experienced: oh, yes. You knew how to howl at the moon. You knew what to do when somebody howled back. If your four-footed form hadn’t been sterile, you’d have had litters by then—but it was, and on two feet, you’d been just smart enough, or lucky enough, to avoid continuing your line.

But it wasn’t as if you hadn’t had plenty of opportunities, enthusiastically taken. Jonathan liked that. A lot. Jonathan was older than you were: thirty-five, then. Jonathan loved fucking a girl who looked fourteen and acted older, who acted feral, who
was
feral for three to five days a month, centered on the full moon. Jonathan didn’t mind the mess that went with it, either: all that fur, say, sprouting at one end of the process and shedding on the other, or the aches and pains from various joints pivoting, changing shape, redistributing weight, or your poor gums bleeding all the time from the monthly growth and recession of your fangs. “At least that’s the only blood,” he told you, sometime during that first year.

You remember this very clearly: you were roughly halfway through the four-to-two transition, and Jonathan was sitting next to you in bed, massaging your sore shoulder blades as you sipped mint tea with hands still nearly as clumsy as paws, hands like mittens. Jonathan had just filled two hot water bottles, one for your aching tailbone and one for your aching knees. Now you know he wanted to get you in shape for a major sportfuck—he loved sex even more than usual, after you’d just changed back—but at the time, you thought he was a real prince, the kind of prince girls like you weren’t supposed to be allowed to get, and a stab of pain shot through you at his words. “I didn’t kill anything,” you told him, your lower lip trembling. “I didn’t even hunt.”

“Gestella, darling, I know. That wasn’t what I meant.” He stroked your hair. He’d been feeding you raw meat during the four-foot phase, but not anything you’d killed yourself. He’d taught you to eat little pieces out of his hand, gently, without biting him. He’d taught you to wag your tail, and he was teaching you to chase a ball, because that’s what good four-foots did where he came from. “I was talking about—”

“Normal women,” you told him. “The ones who bleed so they can have babies. You shouldn’t make fun of them. They’re lucky.” You like children and puppies; you’re good with them, gentle. You know it’s unwise for you to have any of your own, but you can’t help but watch them, wistfully.

“
I
don’t want kids,” he says. “I had that operation. I told you.”

“Are you sure it took?” you ask. You’re still very young. You’ve never known anyone who’s had an operation like that, and you’re worried about whether Jonathan really understands your condition. Most people don’t. Most people think all kinds of crazy things. Your condition isn’t communicable, for instance, by biting or any other way, but it is hereditary, which is why it’s good that you’ve been so smart and lucky, even if you’re just fourteen.

Well, no, not fourteen anymore. It’s about halfway through Jonathan’s year of folklore research—he’s already promised not to write you up for any of the journals, and keeps assuring you he won’t tell anybody, although later you’ll realize that’s for his protection, not yours—so that would make you, oh, seventeen or eighteen. Jonathan’s still thirty-five. At the end of the year, when he flies you back to the United States with him so the two of you can get married, he’ll be thirty-six. You’ll be twenty-one on two feet, three years old on four.

Seven to one. That’s the ratio. You’ve made sure Jonathan understands this. “Oh, sure,” he says. “Just like for dogs. One year is seven human years. Everybody knows that. But how can it be a problem, darling, when we love each other so much?” And even though you aren’t fourteen anymore, you’re still young enough to believe him.

At first it’s fun. The secret’s a bond between you, a game. You speak in code. Jonathan splits your name in half, calling you Jessie on four feet and Stella on two. You’re Stella to all his friends, and most of them don’t even know that he has a dog one week a month. The two of you scrupulously avoid scheduling social commitments for the week of the full moon, but no one seems to notice the pattern, and if anyone does notice, no one cares. Occasionally someone you know sees Jessie, when you and Jonathan are out in the park playing with balls, and Jonathan always says that he’s taking care of his sister’s dog while she’s away on business. His sister travels a lot, he explains. Oh, no, Stella doesn’t mind, but she’s always been a bit nervous around dogs—even though Jessie’s such a
good
dog—so she stays home during the walks.

Sometimes strangers come up, shyly. “What a beautiful dog!” they say. “What a
big
dog!” “What kind of dog is that?”

“A Husky-wolfhound cross,” Jonathan says airily. Most people accept this. Most people know as much about dogs as dogs know about the space shuttle.

Some people know better, though. Some people look at you, and frown a little, and say, “Looks like a wolf to me. Is she part wolf?”

“Could be,” Jonathan always says with a shrug, his tone as breezy as ever. And he spins a little story about how his sister adopted you from the pound because you were the runt of the litter and no one else wanted you, and now look at you! No one would ever take you for a runt now! And the strangers smile and look encouraged and pat you on the head, because they like stories about dogs being rescued from the pound.

You sit and down and stay during these conversations; you do whatever Jonathan says. You wag your tail and cock your head and act charming. You let people scratch you behind the ears. You’re a
good
dog. The other dogs in the park, who know more about their own species than most people do, aren’t fooled by any of this; you make them nervous, and they tend to avoid you, or to act supremely submissive if avoidance isn’t possible. They grovel on their bellies, on their backs; they crawl away backwards, whining.

Jonathan loves this. Jonathan loves it that you’re the alpha with the other dogs—and, of course, he loves it that he’s your alpha. Because that’s another thing people don’t understand about your condition: they think you’re vicious, a ravening beast, a fanged monster from hell. In fact, you’re no more bloodthirsty than any dog not trained to mayhem. You haven’t been trained to mayhem: you’ve been trained to chase balls. You’re a pack animal, an animal who craves hierarchy, and you, Jessie, are a one-man dog. Your man’s Jonathan. You adore him. You’d do anything for him, even let strangers who wouldn’t know a wolf from a wolfhound scratch you behind the ears.