Whatever you fancy - enthralling epic fantasy or spine-tingling ghost-story, mythical thriller or riveting alternate history - Jo Fletcher Books has it all. Here at Jo Fletcher Books we pride ourselves on publishing high quality fantasy, science fiction and horror, of all types (we don't like to be bored). To demonstrate this, we've put together an anthology featuring a collection of short stories written by our wonderful authors. The Jo Fletcher Books Anthology includes stories from award-winning and bestselling writers including Lisa Tuttle, Alison Littlewood and Christopher Golden as well as many others: a showcase of the fantastic talent contained within this small but perfectly formed Imprint. Whatever your taste, there is something in here for everyone
Release date:
November 3, 2016
Publisher:
Jo Fletcher Books
Print pages:
327
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As the first shadows of evening deepened over a surviving clump of wild woods, a fox scented its prey. Its nostrils twitched, amber eyes alert and glowing amidst a jumble of lichen-encrusted stones. In the cruel dance of hunter and the hunted, a field mouse scurried through brambles and bindweed, while rain pattered against the stones in a staccato rhythm.
These stones were ancient ruins: hammered, but in too rough a way to indicate a iron mason’s chisel. They were what you might find at the centre of a small stone circle, if the standing stones had long since fallen, or been taken, and the central mound and surrounding ditch were all but obliterated.
For four-thousand years or so the sacred ground around these particular ruins had endured its neglect. Now, the air crackled with a blue-green electrical charge. It was as if the sudden lunge of the fox, the heart-stopping squeal of the mouse, and the dripping blood were capable of evoking deeper memories of what had been commemorated here; the lingering echoes of a long-ago battle, warfare savage and devoid of quarter, ending in banishment . . . entombment . . .
Just a few droplets of blood over a stone! The fox could not know that the stone on which he caught the field mouse was a pentagonal capstone over a minuscule sepulchre, any more than it might be expected to recognise the stone as jet, known for its ability to store a curse. The pentagon bore the carved image of a skull-like mask with empty eyes – a ward etched into the jet by a bronze-bladed dagger. The fox was startled, and reared back as the capstone fractured with a sharp crack. And now – the seal broken and the ward lifted by the offering of blood – a vaporous exhalation, no more substantial than smoke, rose out of the crack and gusted and whirled about the mossy stones.
For several minutes its existence was a mere confusion of rage – all that had nurtured it during its age-old imprisonment. The emergent being had no eyes to see with; it had no physical senses at all. What flesh it had previously gathered about itself was long rotted away, clawed back by the unstoppable cycles of nature. Yet it retained an elemental awareness; enough to suggest that a living creature was nearby. The fox was entranced by the strangeness of the swirling cloud of greyish vapour sending out tentacles of mist in various directions, as if probing the rain-soaked world about it. The tentacles came close enough to be sniffed at by twitching black nostrils and then to be swiped at by a resentful paw.
In that shocking moment, as first physical contact was made, there was time for the fox to squeal – but the pain and fright were quickly silenced by the alien whisper that had taken hold of its mind. The paw was consumed as if a virulent acid had swept over and through it, absorbing its physical substance and form. Slowly – the pleasure was not to be hurried – the emergent being subsumed its living meal. It exulted in the growing awareness of its nature and the insatiable need that was its being.
Even as it assumed a more solid form, it sniffed through borrowed moist black nostrils. It accustomed itself to the scent of dirt and nature, to the pattern of the rain on living flesh, to the taste, on a lolling tongue, of alien chemicals that polluted the air it now breathed. A thunderous bedlam in the near distance afflicted its hearing, a noise so offensive to its new-found hearing that it suggested a very different world from that which it had been forced to abandon long ago.
Having assimilated this new host form, the fox-being began to move, clumsily at first, but adapting to the surety of sensitive paws. Darkness was rapidly falling; still, it kept close to the shadows. It slipped through an even darker tunnel in a tree-lined hedge to confront the source of the bedlam. A continuous stream of chariots charged by at extraordinary speed over a broad series of smooth blue-grey glistening tracks. Horseless chariots, with piercing eyes of blinding light and billowing stinking exhalations in their wake. Instinct bade it crouch low in the tall grass of the verge, eyes wide with alarm, nostrils twitching with the rank chemical smell. The shock of the spectacle caused the fox-being to retreat, its belly to the ground. Such a violence of speed, faster than any horse could possibly achieve, even the mightiest in full battle charge. And yet . . . It paused, now all the way back within the enclosing hedge. Now it had time to observe more closely, within each chariot were beings that looked cursedly human.
It crouched low in the verge, trembling and twitching, and all the while it continued to observe, welcoming the turn of evening into night.
One of the chariots came to a stop a short distance ahead, with two crimson eyes directed backwards, burning unblinkingly in the squalling rain. Consumed with curiosity, the fox-being slid through the grass to discover a human male outlined in a harshly bright light through the open door of the chariot. It peered up into the human’s face; a long face whose eyes were shrouded by rings of horn in which crystals were fixed. The human was consuming something: crumbs remained on its lips and fell over its lap, where fragments that smelled of meat lay discarded in a crumpled sheet of brilliant silver. Long-fingered hands now patted pockets within its covered thighs, discovering an oblong box from which it extricated a small white cylinder. Taking the cylinder to its mouth, it ignited the end with a flame and then inhaled the smoke. Slinking closer, adopting the host creature’s instinctive patterns of behaviour, the fox-being entered the outer halo of yellow light, to gaze aslant up into the smoke-shrouded face, its eyes alert.
The face of the human was periodically reddened by the glow of the cylinder, which it retained with marvellous balance within its lips. Only when the cylinder was consumed was it withdrawn from the mouth, to be discarded, in a fiery arc, into the surrounding dark. The fox padded closer, entering the oblong of bright illumination falling through the open door. It peered up at the bemused human within the chariot, at the discoloured tablets of its teeth, among which tiny tendrils of smoke still eddied.
‘Hello there!’
The fox blinked, whiskers twitching.
‘What you up to? Come for a little nibble?’
An arm was reaching out, those long, brown-stained fingers offering a fragment of the meaty food. They dropped it, with a gentle flick, so the morsel landed at the fox’s feet.
The fox sniffed at the food. It edged still closer, its head uplifted, every muscle trembling, ears erect.
The human reached down to brush the fur between its ears. The amber eyes of the fox gazed up into the blue of the human’s, watching for the change. They widened in concert with those of its new host in the moment the agony registered. The scream was lost in the thunder of the passing chariots.
Assuaging its appetite, it took longer to assimilate the human male, absorbing new knowledge, new memories. There was wonder to be gathered in this strange new world, with its extraordinary changes from the old – this world of machines! New opportunities were already presenting themselves. Another chariot had halted close by, a larger chariot that was a lurid orange in colour. In the looking glass above its human head, the being that was now part fox and part human watched as another human emerged, approaching the open door.
It was pleased to confirm that this host was a female. Her hair was tinctured an impossible shade of purple and bunched at the back of her head – like a closed fist – with a purple band. The foxy part of its being inhaled the curious mixture of odours that exuded from her presence – the hint of flowers mixed with the sweat of labour.
It spoke with the voice of the consumed man: ‘What you up to? Come for a little nibble?’
Her smile turned to a frown as she gazed in through the open door. ‘What’s the trouble?’
The man-face smiled.
It was close enough now to witness its reflection in her eyes. It saw its own pallid face, white as candle wax, and the circles within it that were its eyes. It spun the head through half a circle, to witness the woman’s head jerk in a frightened movement, as she stared at the fox’s face, with its amber eyes aglow with anticipation. A single long-fingered hand reached out . . .
The female screamed even before the shock of contact was made.
There was no rush to ecstasy this time. It savoured the pain of a much slower, inescapably messy consummation, the frenzy of terror that embroiled the mind. In time a third face was added to those of the fox and the man, the new face caught in what was now a never-ending scream. The compound oozed out of the chariot in a fluid amoeboid motion, discarding the coverings of male and female, which lay crumpled in the dirt.
Within its head a voice was calling. The response of the emergent being was still weak as a mewling new-born, lost in a world of incomprehensible change.
Some lingering instinct caused it to spit into the palm of a protruding hand and then wipe it, unconsciously, on the nearby bare flesh of an ample hip.
The composite being of fox, man and woman, gazed up into the night sky through three separate pairs of eyes, seeing not stars but the reflected lights of a great encampment. From the collective minds of its human hosts it had extracted a name: London. It perceived within the corrupting glow a telling conflagration of lines of force, converging onto a single focus . . .
The Sword is calling.
I heed! I come . . .
A Special Taste • by Markus Heitz
A Special Taste
by Markus Heitz
Translated by Sorcha McDonagh
‘Could this be something for us?’ He took the magazine from the top of the pile and threw it across the breakfast table at her. ‘I’ve marked the place.’
Elaine caught it deftly, her dressing gown slipping down one shoulder and allowing him a full view of her right breast. Her flesh was perfect, her whole body flawless, just like his – attractive and oozing sex. When they went out together people of both sexes stopped and stared: Succubus and Incubus.
But they knew each other too well to get distracted. Ignoring her nakedness, she flicked through the magazine Unworld with her slim fingers, until she found the fluorescent yellow marks.
‘A website?’ she asked him, tossing a long strand of black hair over one shoulder.
‘It could be them. The kids’ dad mentioned a similar name.’
Her pale grey eyes skimmed the few lines. ‘Have you checked it out?’
‘You’re our technological expert.’
Elaine took a final bite of her bread roll, picked up her cup and disappeared into the study with the magazine. A series of beeps soon told him she had switched on the computer.
Computers were Elaine’s area. He preferred old-fashioned methods for finding information. Bars, backyards, youth clubs, nightclubs, homeless shelters, neighbours – those were his sources, not the anonymity of an abstract, virtual, parallel world. He found the very idea incomprehensible. Elaine, on the other hand, clicked and hacked. Her online alias was ‘DataDevil’.
Right now, they were looking for a seventeen-year-old girl called Magdalena. Despite, or perhaps because of, her name, she had been taken in by a satanic cult. When her father had found out he wouldn’t stand for it, so she ran away. He was upset and wanted her back. That would set him back €20,000.
He poured himself more coffee and stirred in four spoonfuls of sugar, then dipped a croissant into the dark liquid. The stainless steel coffee pot reflected his handsome features, his dark blue eyes unfathomable and mysterious. Women lost themselves in those eyes, forgot all their inhibitions. He looked marvellous as always.
The bedroom door opened and a sleepy brunette emerged, her clothes a mess. The nocturnal scent of perfume, sweat and fresh sheets wafted out of the room to the breakfast table. She went past him into the toilet and he listened as her urine splashed into the bowl. The flush went and she reappeared in the kitchen.
‘Morning,’ she greeted him. ‘Do you mind?’ She pointed to the coffee.
‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘Help yourself. How was last night with us, Myriam?’
‘Marianne,’ the brunette corrected him sleepily, rubbing her face with her hand. ‘It was exhausting, but cool. Very cool.’
‘It took two years of your life, Marianne,’ he said, smiling at her with his perfect teeth, ‘so we had to make it worth your while. You gave us new life.’
‘Right,’ she smiled weakly, not believing a word he said.
He stood up, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, and pushed her head back to kiss her passionately.
She returned his affections, already groaning unintentionally. She was turned on – her lips parting hungrily.
‘Please leave once you’ve had breakfast. Elaine and I have work to do.’
The brunette looked disappointed but nodded. ‘Sure.’
He left her in the kitchen and – running a hand through his short, dark hair and slurping his coffee – went into the study to find Elaine sitting in front of the three big TFT screens with nine browser windows open at once. The sight always reminded him of a shrine, the modern equivalent of the triptychs that people used to kneel in front of and pray. Only the rituals and saints had changed. Her cursor flitted back and forth, rummaging around in cyberspace and panning for valuable information.
‘There seems to be several of them,’ she murmured absently, her eyes fixed on the monitors. ‘I’ve hacked into their server. The rendezvous is tonight, at 11pm, in the old convent ruins in Wörchweiler.’
‘Oh, please. Deconsecrated holy ground?’ he laughed. ‘I wonder if they think it works better that way?’ He touched her pale shoulder gently, leaning forwards and pulling the dressing gown to one side to nuzzle her flawless neck. ‘We’ll be there in any case.’
‘Not now, Gedeon.’ She said, pushing him away. ‘Do you have everything you need?’
‘No. I still need to get a Molotov cocktail ready.’ He straightened up, grinning. ‘See if you can find out anything more about them while I get the materials. Send them our email.’
In the bedroom, he put on his work clothes: simple black leather trousers, a white latex t-shirt and a shoulder holster for his sawn-off shot gun underneath a mid-length, wide frock coat made from dark synthetic nappa. His special sheath, containing a dagger with an engraved blade the length of a forearm went underneath his left armpit.
He took out the blade and examined it in the morning light that shimmered through the cracks in the shutters. It was a special weapon; both holy and unholy at the same time. It contained opposing forces, burning with guilt but also imbued with the purest power imaginable. He’d killed everything with it, good, evil and everything in between. Nothing could withstand it.
The brunette had disappeared, taking the memory of her name with her. He didn’t care what they were called. No matter how beautiful they were, they remained interchangeable, random. Disposable. But Elaine wanted them.
He left the apartment they had been living in for the last three weeks, picking up a plastic five-litre canister from the hall as he passed by and walking down ten flights of stairs.. The apartment was near the university clinic, cheap and anonymous. He had made sure of that.
*
He drove to St. Michael’s Church in their dark green 4x4. The main entrance was locked, so he found a side door and forced it open. He didn’t have time to wait for a priest to haul himself out and open up for him.
Inside, it was cool and dry, redolent with incense. Summer never penetrated these thick sandstone walls.
He began his hunt for ingredients. He found a container in the sacristy that someone had written ‘baptismal water’ on with a marker and poured it into his canister. He added the hosts and transubstantiated wine and shook the container, mixing the contents into a pale pink, sacred liquid with soggy nuggets in it. The Molotov cocktail was ready.
Satisfied, he took a seat in the front pew. His dark blue eyes contemplated the bright portraits of saints in the stained glass windows, the sun making their colours vibrant and bringing them to life. They looked benevolently down at him, blessing him with their glass fingers and unknowingly justifying what he was doing. He enjoyed the sight of them.
‘You have been stealing,’ came a voice from behind him, the sound echoing in the high-ceilinged space.
Gedeon didn’t flinch. ‘It’s for a good cause.’
‘No, it’s not good. It’s making it worse.’
He finally tore himself away from Paul, Peter and Hieronymus, turning to look at the priest standing behind him in the aisle. ‘If it worked, I would tell you to go to hell.’
The man in the black soutane smiled. ‘No, it doesn’t work. You know I was sent by a someone else.’
‘It’s nothing to do with him.’
‘It does concern him. I’m meant to talk to you.’
‘It’s pointless. Tell him I’m saving a girl’s life. An innocent soul will be kept from damnation and her father is paying me €20,000. I’m freeing her from the clutches of evil people,’ he laughed wickedly. ‘The one who sent you ought to be happy.’
‘He would definitely think that is good. But your general behaviour is making him . . . uneasy. You are upsetting the balance and destroying order.’
‘Uneasy?’ He was silent and as he stared at Hieronymus, he seemed to wink at him. The saint was on his side. ‘I doubt it. He has no reason to feel uneasy. He’s safe from us.’ Gideon smiled at the priest. ‘Anyway.’ He stood up and stepped onto the polished marble slabs of the central aisle.
The clergyman blocked his path. ‘Think of the consequences!’
‘I couldn’t care less.’
‘Then I can’t let you leave.’
‘Try it, priest. You wouldn’t be the first I’ve had to kill.’
They stood facing each other, neither of them moving. Peter, Paul and Hieronymus held their breaths; their enamel faces looking scared and threatening to jump.
Suddenly the clergyman began to glow, giving off beams of his immeasurable love and getting brighter and brighter, hurting Gedeon terribly.
Half blind, he tore his dagger from its sheath and thrust it through the priest’s robes, slicing the man open from navel to gullet.
The blade did its job. The blinding light abruptly went out, the priest’s innards plummeting to the floor in a surge of blood. The priest fell to his knees and landed face-first in his own entrails.
Gedeon walked back into the sacristy to wipe himself clean – one of the benefits of Latex clothing. Then he left the church.
*
‘All ok?’
Elaine nodded, holding a hand to the wound in her stomach.
Gedeon had found her sitting on the floor of their living room, surrounded by four dead bodies. Beneath the torn sleeve of one of the corpses, was a symbol, inexpertly tattooed onto once tanned skin. The seal of their enemy.
Two of the attackers had been armed with pistols, the others had automatic rifles; all fitted with silencers. This was an execution squad, trained to act discreetly. Creating a sensation helped nobody.
The assailants had underestimated her, like so many others before. A single bullet casing lay on the carpet. That was the only shot they’d had time to fire before she’d torn their throats to shreds with her fingernails and teeth.
‘He sent them,’ she said and coughed up blood. He couldn’t tell if it was hers or her attackers’ – she sometimes got carried away and drank too much. ‘And shit, they’re getting better – they’ve never managed to get a shot off before. Shit.’
Gedeon knelt down in front of her, pulled open the blood-soaked dressing gown and examined the wound. ‘Brace yourself,’ he implored her, his hand gliding over the inner side of her right thigh and creeping promisingly close. ‘I’ll bring you the prettiest woman in town this evening,’ he promised in a whisper.
It worked. The finger-wide hole next to her navel began to close – slowly but surely. He kissed her as a reward and jumped up. ‘I’m going on the hunt.’ Gideon checked his watch. ‘I’ll be back in three hours, you have until then to clean up.’
Elaine smiled weakly and waved him away as she hauled herself up and staggered into the bathroom to pour acid into the bathtub. They always had acid on hand. There would be nothing left of the attackers when he returned.
*
The girl he found her was called Sabrina. She was sweet, eighteen years old and pretty as a picture. She had so much fun they were afraid her screams would frighten the neighbours. Elaine couldn’t get enough of her – Gedeon barely had to do anything.
When the brunette fell asleep three hours later, exhausted after giving six years of her life to them, they packed their suitcases, loaded the 4x4 and set off.
They drove away from Homburg, heading towards Wörschweiler. When they reached the car park in front of the old schoolhouse, they pulled in and waited.
‘By the way, he sent another one.’
‘Again?’ She was silent as she fished a cigarette out of the half-empty packet. ‘Where?’
‘In the church today. Where I made the Molotov cocktail.’ He took his dagger, pierced the plastic casing of the canister and taped up the holes with dark brown duct tape without losing a drop, just as he always did.
‘And?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing special. But still . . .’ He grinned. ‘He must be worried.’
Elaine lit the cigarette and put on her sunglasses. ‘A good sign. We’re making progress.’ She puffed the smoke towards the roof of the car. ‘I sent them an email and got them worked up in an online chat,’ she said after a long pause.
‘So they’ll try it out?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ She watched a pedestrian walk along the pavement with his dog and glare at the 4x4 in annoyance. In a small village like this, unfamiliar vehicles stood out immediately. Elaine ginned wickedly at him and lifted her t-shirt up over her breasts, exposing her black underwear and a lot of flesh. The man shook his head and hurried away, dragging the panting, choking dog behind him.
‘We’ll try another time. It’s obvious they don’t want to stop their incantations. Works for us, right?’
‘Yeah,’ she murmured unconvincingly, taking a drag on the filter of her smouldering cigarette
‘But it’s taking such a long time, Gedeon, and he’s escaped before.’
He ran a hand over her long black hair. ‘I know,’ he whispered, ‘I know, my dark angel. But I know we’ll get him this time. I can feel it.’
They lasted until 10pm, but then Elaine couldn’t sit still any longer. They grabbed the sports bag and the canister and left the car, walking up the rest of the hill on foot.
As soon as they were out of view of the houses, she opened the bag, handed Gedeon an automatic rifle taken from her assailants, grabbed a second one for herself and d. . .
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