Strange Candy (Vampire Hunter 0.5)

The little monster made a loud happy snort as it gasped in air. It blinked at me; tiny bristling horns covered a dragonlike head. It was a perfect replica of Irving. Susan surfaced near me and just stared for a minute.

I wasn’t in any pain, no tightness of chest, no muscle cramping; no decompression sickness, lungs okay. We couldn’t have been down more than forty feet for a few minutes. Maybe I worry too much.

I rubbed my hand along the baby’s back, like wet silk. I reached up to scratch a miniature eye ridge. The monster bit me, sinking needle teeth to the bone. I screamed around the regulator that was still in my mouth. The baby vanished into the water, gone.

Susan stared at the spot where it had been, then said, “Irving’s dead. His body started to float down. How the hell did he get pregnant?” She lowered her mask to hang like a necklace. “My God, do you realize we’ve just seen the first birth of a lake monster ever?” Her voice held that hushed awe that you reserve for cathedrals and hospitals.

I held my bleeding hand up out of the water and didn’t know quite how to feel. Irving was dead, and the way he died was awful, but I had held a newborn monster in my arms. I would have the scars to prove that. Even if we couldn’t find the baby to get pictures, the bite radius would prove how small it was. I laughed then, spitting out my regulator. Sometimes I think I’ve been around Susan too long. It hadn’t even occurred to her yet that I was hurt.

Something else had occurred to her, though. She turned in the black water, looking toward shore. The humor, the awe had left her face. Her face was stiff and pale with anger, eyes like black holes.

“Susan,” I said, reaching out to her, trying to touch her shoulder. She moved out of reach, with a smooth flow of ripples. “Susan, what are you going to do?”

She turned onto her back as much as the air tanks would allow, kicking backward. “I’m going to hurt them.”

“You can’t do that,” I said.

“Watch me.”

I started paddling after her, but she was going to get to shore first. My adrenaline rush was over: Irving’s death, the birth, and the bite wound. Blood was running down my hand, and with the blood, pain. I was tired. Susan was still running on rage.

She was sitting down in the shallows taking off her flippers. Priscilla, the other junior ranger, moved over to help Susan take off the tanks.

Priscilla towered over Susan, heck, she towers over me. Priscilla is six foot one and has the strength to match the size.

Susan was free of the tanks and going toward the prisoners. I yelled, “Stop her!”

Priscilla looked toward me, but didn’t move.

“Stop her! Susan!”

Priscilla laid the tanks on the ground and moved toward my wife.

I lay panting in the shallows, struggling one-handed to get out of my diving gear. The shot echoed, loud enough to make me jump. I twisted around, one flipper on and one off.

Susan had Jordan’s rifle. She was pointing it at the two men. Another shot rang out, and the men started screaming. She was shooting into the ground, right next to them.

Jordan was trying to talk to her, but she motioned him away with the rifle.

Priscilla knelt beside me in the water, undoing the last strap of my equipment. “Talk to her, Mike. Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

I nodded, shrugged out of the buoyancy vest, and walked toward Susan. She was firing into the ground, in a pattern around them. So far, I don’t think she had hit either of them, but only skill and plain luck had saved them. Luck would run out. Part of me wanted them bleeding, hurt. Maybe we could hang their dead bodies near the entrance to the park with a sign: “These Men Killed One of Our Animals.” Yeah, maybe that would convince the tourists to behave.

“Susan, give the rifle back to Jordan.”

“They killed him, Mike. They killed Irving.”

“I know.”

One of the men said, “She’s crazy.”

“Shut up,” Susan said.

“I’d do what she says, mister,” I said.

The man huddled against his companion. Both of them looked white in the moonlight. They stank of beer and urine.

“They slaughtered him,” Susan said.

“Give me the rifle, Susan, please.”

“What’s going to happen to them? If I don’t hurt them, what will the law do?”

“A hundred-thousand-dollar fine, or a mandatory ten-year prison sentence.”

“Do either of you have a hundred thousand dollars?” she asked.

The men looked at each other, then at me. “Answer her,” I said.

“Hell, no. We haven’t got that kind of money.”

“Susan gave a thin, tight smile, and handed the rifle to Jordan. “You better pray you get ten years apiece, because if you don’t…” She knelt beside them. “I’ll hunt you down and shoot you both.”

“Hey, lady, it was just an animal.”

I grabbed Susan and pulled her to her feet before she could slug him.

Jordan said softly, “I’ll let you have the rifle again.”

Susan leaned into me. “You’re bleeding.”

“A present from Little Irving.”

She held my hand in her smaller ones, but I knew she wasn’t trying to stop the blood flow; she was looking at the bite radius. My wife the scientist.

I missed Irving when we went down to the barricade. No happy snorts, no bubble blowing, no dragon head butting your ribs. It was lonely. Baby Irving is like most of the monsters, shy. The best picture we have is a night shot of ripples on the water. My bite mark did prove our point. Pictures of my hand will make up part of Susan’s report.

Susan now thinks that all lake monsters are capable of cloning themselves by parthenogenesis. The clone is born at the death of the parent. That would explain why no one has ever seen more than one lake monster at a time. It also explains why both lake monsters that had been autopsied in the past had unborn babies. Pollution killed them all. Irving died from injuries, so his baby lived.

The problem is that cloning leads to mutation and genetic drift. You need sexual reproduction in a vertebrate to keep the species healthy. Maybe centuries ago the lakes were all connected, but as the land closed in and isolated the monsters, they had to survive long enough to reproduce, so they cloned themselves. The individual genotypes were saved, but there is no known natural way for lake monsters to find mates. Without help from man, lake monsters are probably a dead end. If we don’t kill them off first, that is.

Little Irving’s birth put a stop to the Lake Monster Breeding Program. Susan was out of a job, but since she is already living in the Enchanted Forest National Park and has full cooperation of the park service, she has a good shot at new grant money. If she gets it, we’ll be studying the sex life of the red-bearded leprechaun. The real question is, are there any female leprechauns? No one has ever seen one. This problem sounds vaguely familiar.

Susan is happy off on another project to save yet another endangered creature. But I miss Irving, and though Susan would laugh at me probably, I like to think that Irving is somewhere chasing angelic speedboats, or maybe he’s got his own wings. Surely, even God needs a laugh now and then, and Irving is a funny guy, for a monster.

SELLING HOUSES

This story is set in Anita’s world, but Anita isn’t in it. None of the main or even minor characters are in it. One day I wondered: What are people with less dangerous jobs doing in Anita’s world now that vampires are legally alive? How has it changed other jobs? For instance, real estate…

THE house sat in its small yard looking sullen. It seemed to squat close to the ground as if it had been beaten down. Abbie shook her head to clear such strange notions from her mind. The house looked just like all the other houses in the subdivision. Oh, certainly it had type-A elevation. Which meant it had a peaked roof, and it had two skylights in the living room and a fireplace. The Garners had wanted some of the extra features. It was a nice house with its deluxe cedar board siding and half brick front. Its small lot was no smaller than any of the other houses, except for some of the corner lots. And yet…

ABBIE walked briskly up the sidewalk that led through the yard. Daffodils waved bravely all along the porch. They were a brilliant burst of color against the dark-red house. Abbie swallowed quickly, her breath short. She had only talked to Marion Garner on the phone maybe twice, but in those conversations Marion had been full of gardening ideas for their new home.