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Inside Marketing: One Is The Loneliest Number
BY DIANE JORTNER
Writing is a Lonely Business. But does it have to be?
The one complaint I hear from writers is that it is such a solitary career. Often novice and established writers complain that even family members don’t get excited about what they are doing or the fun twists in their story arcs or new conflicts and how their characters face them. No one want to hear their clever turn of a phrase nearly as much as they want to hear about the latest million-dollar sale or how a life was saved with a successful operation. They feel alone, but nothing will get them to quit writing, as they love it in spite of the isolation.
Let me suggest a solution, one that lets writers be writers but adds a cheering team: submit a story to an anthology. There are many publishing outlets looking for short works of fiction, or nonfiction. Some, like Xchyler, pay a portion of the sales revenue to each writer, while others pay a fixed award. Still others are created to support a charity. Some charge a small fee, and use the fees to either pay the judges or to award the winners. No matter what, you will not likely get rich writing for an anthology, but you will reap several benefits.
1. You will not be alone. You will be working with editors and other writers, bouncing around ideas and helping one another.
2. You will get published. Oft times, getting into print is the step many novice writers need to keep them going. You can add author pages to Amazon and GoodReads, and share with your family and friends.
3. You will learn a lot, especially if you are a novice writer. Working with editors and publishers, you will not only learn about crafting a tight story, but you will learn about the process of bringing a book from words on a paper to print (or ebook).
4. You will make new friends who understand what you are going through.
5. You will have your name associated with other authors.
6. You will have a great gift to give for birthdays and other holidays, and it won’t look to self-serving, as it will have several other names on it too.
7. You will grow as a writer.
There are several ways to find places looking for short works for their anthologies. Of course, Xchyler has contests three times a year. We just completed our Steampunk competition. Our next will focus on paranormal tales. That contest commences March 31st. And we are releasing a fantasy anthology this month: The Toll of Another Bell.
Here is another great source for finding places to publish. You can also try Twitter, searching #submissions #stories #anthology. Of course Google searches under terms like ‘short story submissions’ bring up many options.
So, if you just feel alone, or want to take a break in your full-novel writing, try searching the Internet for writing competitions and try a submitting a short story.
*The one thing to remember, though, in submitting short fiction, is to follow the guidelinesfor each publisher. You don’t want your hard work kicked out, unread, just because it was submitted incorrectly.
Xchylery Publishing’s next short story competition invites paranormal writers to submit their stories 5,000-10,000 words in length, beginning March 31, 2015 through April 30, 2015. Theme: Losers Weepers.
Marketing Research Specialist Diane Lee Jortner fell in love with the media as a high school newspaper editor. With BA in Journalism/Public Relations from Bowling Green State University and a MALS in English from Valparaiso University, she brings her fifteen years’ experience teaching English Composition and her extensive personal social networking experience to The X Team.
In the past year, Diane launched Kids #5 and #6 who graduated from college, #6, the youngest from high school, written a YA mystery novel, and started to blog. In her free time, besides reading almost all types of fiction, she likes to travel with her husband and children.
Editor’s Notes: Rewriting History, part 2
BY MERILYN OBLAD
Accuracy in Historical Fiction, Part Two: Shifting Mental Gears
In my last post , I wrote about how to do proper research for in-depth historical novels. But what do you do for backdrop historical novels, ones that take place in the past but the story itself is not bound to that time? Well, to be blunt, you do more research, and you learn to think differently about your time setting than you do right now.
The past is like a foreign country, and the farther back in time you go, the more foreign it becomes, even if it’s your home nation. Like any foreign country, the past has a different language, different customs, different ways of thinking, a different sociopolitical landscape, and a different economy. The very things we most take for granted in our lives today can be poles apart from what people experienced, say, 150 years ago.
The degree of research you need to do depends on your story. Some people really have to spend significant amounts of time researching a specific period before they start writing. Others may only need to run a few fact checks as they go along, pulling the odd colloquialism that pops up and inserting slang from the right time and not the present.
True story: there’s an author I’m a fan of who writes Regency romance but tends to include the phrase “cut to the chase” in her books. “Cut to the chase” hails from the 20th century movie-making industry, particularly westerns, where the director would decide that too much dialogue was happening and instruct the editor to cut off the dialogue and move straight into the chase scenes, which were more popular with audiences. So “cutting to the chase” has no business showing up in 1805 England. Makes my inner historian moan in despair every time I see it.
And now, because I’m feeling indulgent towards that same inner historian, I’m going to share with you some of the foreignness of the past, just so you can see how very much you need to question your own assumptions once you’ve written your story out. Please note that I’m not telling you interrupt your writing. If you’re in the middle of your plot and events are flying thick and fast, for pete’s sake don’t stop! Editing comes later.
Every age of every country, no matter how golden, has a seamy underbelly of distasteful behavior. I know how many of you steampunk fans love the Victorian Age, but the prim propriety of that time was just a front for rampant pornography, opium use, and sexual escapades. Incidentally, condoms, though invented much earlier than the Victorian Era, were manufactured in greater numbers than ever before by the Victorians. They were called French letters and packaged in tins stamped with the picture of Queen Victoria herself or one of her Prime Ministers. Which, to me, sounds like more of a deterrent to sex than an encouragement of safe intercourse, but whatever.
Chinese blacksmiths used a double-action piston-bellows, starting in the 5th century B.C., which enabled them to create hotter fires and stronger steel because it gave a continuous stream of air. Unlike the western pump-bellows which alternately delivered a stream of air, then sucked it back in again, depriving the fire of the necessary oxygen to burn hotter, if for just a moment. The technology spread throughout Asia and eventually reached Europe by the 15th century A.D. The Asian bellows did twice the work with half the effort, saving both time and energy, but allowed for the creation of far superior metal works than their European counterparts.
The terms pagan and heathen are originally geographical rather than religious. Pagan comes from the Latin word pagus, which is a teeny tiny village situated far from the main Roman roads. Because the roads of the Roman Empire functioned as communication networks, any villages not close to said road were among the last in the empire to receive news. Such as the switch to Christianity, for instance. Thus, the people of those villages, or pagans, continued their polytheistic religious practices and nature-worship long after the people of Rome started worshiping Jesus Christ. Heathens were people who lived out on the heath, again, far from the main roads and news of any changes. So, calling a person a pagan or a heathen was more or less saying that they were redneck hicks and lived out in the boonies.
Even as late as the 1960s, when my mom was in nursing school, there was a belief among doctors that women could not and did not have heart attacks. No joke. I’ve seen medical books where it says that a woman had palpitations but not a heart attack.
And speaking of doctors . . . When Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis discovered in 1847 that medical personnel who washed their hands before and after treating obstetric patients reduced the amount of deaths due to childbed fever, he was soundly ridiculed. He directly challenged the belief and claim that doctors were gentlemen and a gentleman’s hands were clean and therefore not in need of extra washing. In fact, the backlash from his insistence on hand washing was so bad that it later broke Semmelweis. He died in 1865 after being committed to an asylum for severe depression and shot nerves. He only lasted two weeks in the asylum and was a mere 47 years old at the time of his passing. Germ theory and hand washing would take decades more to be firmly established in the medical profession as standard practice and belief.
In colonial America, a woman’s legal right to her children was through her marriage to her husband. She “owned” her children because she was her husband’s wife and not because she was the children’s mother. So if her husband died while the children were still young and if he left a will dictating guardianship to another man, then the mother had no legal right to keep her children because her husband’s death ended their marriage and her legal motherhood. Morally, I suspect this was of little consequence in situations where the mother tended and provided for her children competently, but if the morals of the mother were in question for any reason, then there was legal recourse to remove them from her care. I don’t know how often this happened, but a named male guardian could claim a dead man’s children and win custody fairly easily. Oh, I almost forgot—children without fathers were considered orphans even if their mothers were alive.
The “Dark” Ages (yes, the quotes are necessary), which started when the first Roman Empire collapsed and ended around 1000 A.D., were not as dark as most people assume. The beginnings of the modern university system started then. Fair laws, the beginnings of scientific discovery, the development of some astounding architecture, and the unity of religion among Christians are all signs of a thinking and at least somewhat progressive people. Furthermore, Charlemagne, King of the Franks and later Holy Roman Emperor, who ruled from 768 to 814 A.D., was the force behind an early renaissance. Admittedly, it didn’t last as long as THE Renaissance, but Charlemagne’s still saw the flowering of art and literature and thinking that are all hallmarks of the later version we all know and love. Not so dark after all, huh?
Now that I’ve inundated you with random historical facts, let me give you some practical advice on how avoid anachronisms. If you find yourself writing present day phrases and ideas in settings where they don’t belong and you can’t or haven’t yet found an appropriate replacement phrase, then try writing out the description. For my Regency romance author, I’d tell her to write the meaning of cut to the chase, get to the point, if she couldn’t find the early 1800s equivalent. Actually, “come to the point” is more likely than “get,” showing how much patterns of speech shift over time.
And, as I mentioned last time, read up on the literature of your time setting. It’ll give you a good sense of the idioms, euphemisms, and other colloquialisms that were used, as well as the word choice and social niceties that define your era.
So, keep an eye out for the assumptions you make the next time you write anything in a historical setting. You may find yourself cutting to the chase when you should be coming to the point.
MeriLyn Oblad lays down the grammar and content law from her home in Southern Utah, with an MA in History from Brigham Young University. (Don’t be fudging the facts with this girl!) Her latest project, The Toll of Another Bell: A Fantasy Anthology, will be released January 31, 2015, at a tremendous launch party, which you can attend here.
Editor’s Notes: Top o’ the mornin’ from the Emerald Isle
BY SARAH-BETH WATKINS
I am delighted to be a new assistant editor for the mad world of Xchyler, so I thought I’d better introduce myself and let you know a little bit about me before I attack your work!
I began writing many moons ago—fantasy stories to utilise my creative side and articles to pay the bills. I ended up writing hundreds of articles on things as diverse as the benefits of buying a remote controlled car for your son’s birthday gift to how to start dating in your fifties—I know, exciting stuff!
I had several fantasy short stories published including The “Apples of Sol” and “Woodland Born”, but then, needing to earn a steady wage, I started teaching in community centres and colleges, working with women’s groups and community activists.
I wrote a fantasy novel, Altora, during this time and shoved it in a draw as my career changed and morphed. Working in the community sector is a tough call, but I was delighted to be chosen to document the work of African women’s groups in 2007, and was sent over to Tanzania to meet the women and record the journey.
Then I lost my job—the funding was cut—poof! Gone! But I knew I now had time to do what I loved most and that was write. Altora came back out of the draw and was self-published as a Kindle book.
Over the past few years I’ve also written four how-to write guides for Compass Books and two history books, Ireland’s Suffragettes and Lady Katherine Knollys: The Unacknowledged Daughter of King Henry VIII. As a lover of history, I also work for John Hunt Publishing managing Chronos Books, their history imprint, copyediting and proofreading for them too.
I’m outlining a book on Charles Brandon, Henry VIII’s best buddy at the mo. I grew up close to Hampton Court Palace in the UK and spent my childhood running around palaces, manor houses and ornate gardens. There was a 17th century manor house just down the road where I grew up, and when I wagged from school, I used to head there and talk to the guards about the ghosts that haunted the buildings, pretending I was doing a project for school. I didn’t know then but my love for history and fantasy was combining to give me the interests that I love today.
But, as well as history, my other main love then is fantasy. My mom used to read me Tolkien for bedtimes stories and I was hooked from an early age. Now I’m working on an urban fantasy story set in Ireland with all its myths and legends. I’ve made Ireland my home and find inspiration from living in the countryside close to the beach and a bird-filled estuary. I live in a little stone cottage up a long muddy lane that’s named after a place in Jack Vance’s Lyonesse trilogy, Thripsey Shee—meaning fairy glen.
I’m dabbling with a horror screenplay, teaching creative writing, working with an author services company to help local writers and now helping out with Xchyler. I look forward to reading all your stories and novels. Bring ’em on!
We folks (wee folks?) at Xchyler are delighted to welcome Sarah-Beth and can’t wait to see what magic emerges from her fairy glen. She is currently working on several fantasy projects with Xchyler authors.
Editor’s Notes: Catching the Vision
BY JESSICA SHEN
Vision Boarding:
Oftentimes we may find that we lose inspiration, or have trouble visualizing parts of our story, whether it’s a character, or a room, or the whole scene itself.
For you crazy creative types with overactive imaginations, this probably isn’t ever an issue for you (lucky you!). But if you’re like me, pretty good at putting two words together, but sometimes maybe not so great at picturing exactly what it is I’m trying to say, you may find vision boarding to be helpful.
The term “vision boarding” is typically used to describe a process in which you articulate a vision or inspiration for your life by literally cutting and pasting things to a board—whether it’s a picture of the beach or a pithy quote.
These visions can be anything from “I want a new car!” to “I want to form deeper relationships with my family!” You then choose words and images that help you achieve these goals, and refer back to the board to affirm that vision.
Now, this may sound a little hippy-dippy to you—I know it did to me when I first heard about it—but hear me out. Let the vision for your board be as broad as your story, or as focused as a single character, and you may find that it can help and inform your writing.
If it helps you to be hands-on, go back to your science-fair days and pick up a posterboard from your local drug store, a couple different magazines, some stick glue, and go nuts! If you’d prefer to use a tool from the digital age, Pinterest can be an amazing resource (and it’s free!). One of the authors I am currently working with is using it for this exact purpose—to help her articulate what her story looks like.
If you have the time, I would encourage you to vision board each character. What are his or her likes or dislikes? What does he find inspirational? What actor would you choose to play her?
There are endless ways to make use of a vision board. It may not work for everyone, but the next time you’re having trouble finding inspiration, try it out. It may help you visualize your story in a way that you might not expect. And, as a bonus, when that book gets picked up for publishing, you have ready-made inspiration for your cover art!
Jessica Shen lives, works, writes, and edits from her laptop in northern California. Her latest project, Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia by Pete Ford, was released in October, 2013. Her next project, Kingdom City by Benjamin Ireland, is slated for release in February 2014.
Featured Friday: Sanguinaria
BY R. M. RIDLEY
There was something about the way she moved that made Jonathan sit up and take notice, and it wasn’t the sway of her hips. She had a lithe economy of motion that made his fight-or-flight response vibrate more than a spider’s web in fish-fly season. Perhaps it was that which made him get up, or maybe it was just good manners. Either way, Jonathan was on his feet for his new client.
She introduced herself as Philomena Serkan, and then settled into the chair he offered. She was tense: he could see it in the tightness of her bright red lips, and read it in the depths of those dark eyes, but she waited for him to make the next move all the same.
Jonathan pulled out his silver cigarette case and, flipping it open, extended it towards her. She demurred, so he slid out one for himself. It was tiny and controlled, but the flinch had been there and he’d been expecting it
Forsaking politeness now, Jonathan walked to the window, giving her a view of his back, and him a view of her reflection in the smooth surface of the case—or it would have, if she’d had one.
“I can’t say as I’ve ever had a Strigoi for a client before,” Jonathan said as he turned back to face her.
Unflinching, she held his gaze.
“Is that a problem for you?”
Strigoi feed on the emotions carried in the fluids of humans, fear pulsing through pounding blood being the mainstay, and the addiction to that feast, he understood, was hard to forsake.
“No. I don’t abide killers to live but I’m not speciesist. I can’t afford to be.” Jonathan thought about how much of his own body had been mutated over the decades because of his addition to magic. “It would, in fact, be almost hypocritical of me by this juncture in my life.”
She tilted her head slightly, and Jonathan thought of the cat that hunted the back alley
“Yes, I see your point.” For a heartbeat, the tension in her face was eased by a slight smile.
“Besides,” Jonathan expounded, “you came to me, which means you know who I am, and what I do. If you were the type that took lives to live your own, you won’t have come to me—there are others in New Hades.”
“I’m glad we have an understanding.”
“So, then Mrs. Serkan, why are you here?”
“My—husband—has been taken, Mr. Alvey.”
Jonathan had heard the pause but wasn’t sure what it implied.
“Is he . . . ?”
Her slim chin descended a fraction.
A mated pair: Jonathan was intrigued. It was rare for two abstaining Strigoi to keep company, as they often obtained their sustenance through tears. Though not as bountiful, tears could hold the hunger at bay, which is why they found human partners to spend their time with.
Jonathan thought of the old saying, that the eyes were the windows to the soul. If they were, then wouldn’t tears be the soul’s blood? And how heady a drink would that be?
She was watching him and he couldn’t help but feel like a mouse under paw.
He wondered how her desire for the blood, her addiction, compared to his own. Her addiction fed her. His fed off him, slowly changing him, atom by atom, into something—else. It didn’t matter; what mattered was why she was here.
“Tell me how it happened.”
***
Jonathan moved quickly once his client had left. The story she had told was not one he had enjoyed. It wasn’t the tale itself but what it implied: four men, a van, and a net made of silver chain—all this meant they weren’t amateurs. They had done this before, knew what their targets were, and how to immobilize them.
He made sure that his doctor’s bag was properly stocked, then took his shoulder holster off the closet door and strapped it on. Checking the magazine to be sure it was loaded, Jonathan shrugged on his jacket and headed down to the street.
Strigoi were a type of vampyre (one of many—though none were much like the western icons—which made them predators; quick, strong, and agile. It had been this that had tipped him off when she’d first entered his office, the way she moved.
They lived long lives, and he knew the one who that had just been in his office wasn’t as young as she looked—he doubted her mate was either. That he had been caught was just another sign the men who took him were not amateurs.
***
His Lincoln took a few tries to start, but it was early summer and that made it easier to convince the old girl to turn over. He pulled into traffic and headed north.
If Philomena’s husband had been taken—and not just killed, as she said—then there were few reasons to do so, the primary one being, ironically enough, to harvest its blood.
Strigoi had the ability to manipulate emotions in humans, to enrich the food on which they fed. This had lead to a revolting habit, developed by some human vermin, of injecting Strigoi blood to gain the ability to control, or force, emotion in others. It was used primarily as a date rape facilitator and the feeling of power gained by its effects made it addictive, like a psychopath gets addicted to killing.
Like anything else that was addictive, if there was a demand, there was someone supplying. Jonathan had dealt with a group dealing the stuff, many years back; apparently the lesson he had made of them had been forgotten. If anyone was trafficking Strigoi blood in the city of New Hades again, there was only one place they would be doing it: Blacklight. And that’s where Jonathan was headed.
Blacklight was no-man’s land. It was the worst neighborhood in New Hades; a city notorious for its seediness. New Hades city council had done all it could to eradicate the place—short of bulldozing it. In the end, they had turned off the area: stopped the flow of water and power, leaving it a dark blight.
Blacklight—By the gods, he hated that place.
Jonathan didn’t relish going into an area where all you had to do to commit suicide was stop your car but, as it was still daylight, he thought he would be able get in and get what he needed before the residents could gather in force.
He had a reluctant contact there: a dealer who was his source for what happened in that part of the city. Most of the residents wanted to kill him: they didn’t appreciate magic much in Blacklight, and so hated him simply for what he was. They certainly didn’t like people poking their noses in—a habit Jonathan seemed quite unable to quit.
In New Hades, as in most cities, there was a market for illegal goods and there were people to cater to it. But if you were looking for something that was not only illegal, but also unconscionable, then you had to risk going into Blacklight.
The things that were sold on those dark streets, a rotting maggot wouldn’t deign to crawl over. Unfortunately for Jonathan, to find who was supplying those types of goods, you had to go to the ones who were trafficking in them.
Daryl Zadok, his less-than-eager associate in Blacklight, was on the high-end side of what got traded in the area, and although Jonathan knew he wouldn’t stoop to selling Strigoi blood, he would know who was. If Jonathan was really lucky, Zadok might even be able to cut out the middleman and tell him who was supplying.
***
Zadok lived in what had once been a post office. The only way that Jonathan knew of getting into the small building was through the back door. The alley that lead there was choked with discarded wrappers, old cigarette butts, and small bones mostly stripped clean of their flesh. Rot and mould lay heavy in the air, like an abandoned slaughterhouse.
After too many unwanted visits from Jonathan, Zadok had gotten clever: the metal door to his place no longer had a handle—just the key slot—and it now opened out, making kicking it in a futile exercise.
Jonathan wondered at just how clever the bastard had become and scrutinized the door for wards. He was actually shocked to find one scratched a bit down from the lock.
Like most protection wards, it was scratched partly on the door and partly on the frame, so that if the door opened, it would break the ward and cause a nasty side effect—in this case, a bolt of energy equivalent to licking a defibrillator.
There was a small gap between the frame and the door, not much use for a pry-bar but enough that it had need to be filled in with a bit of putty for the ward to connect frame to door.
Zadok’s upkeep of his protective measures left something to be desired however. The putty linking door to frame was cracked, causing the ward to flicker like a light bulb with faulty wiring.
Jonathan knelt down and opened up his doctor’s bag of tricks. He took out a piece of chewing gum and popped it into his mouth, enjoying the spearmint flavour as he ripped a sheet of paper from his small notebook.
He opened a jar of petroleum jelly that was infused with silver dust, and dipped the tip of his finger in. Onto the scrap of paper, Jonathan carefully traced the part of the ward that connected to the door. Satisfied that it was a match, he stuck the gum on the back of the paper and stood up again.
With infinite care, he brought the paper perpendicularly towards the ward on the frame. Slowly, he brought the two together and sighed when he felt the ward on the door connect with the stronger half he had just drawn on the paper. Making sure he kept contact, Jonathan lowered the paper until he was able to stick it to the frame with the gum.
“That’s the ward. Now how the hell am I going to open this damn door?”
Jonathan hated standing out there. He felt exposed and knew that it wasn’t just his paranoia that made him think he was being watched. He was running through spells in his head when the door flew open, almost cracking him in the face.
A man darted out the door and ran full speed down the alley: he hadn’t even noticed Jonathan, partially obscured by the door as he was. Jonathan hadn’t gotten a good look at the man who had dashed away but it was good enough for Jonathan to know it wasn’t Zadok. Daryl Zadok didn’t have the flat faced, bulging eyes, and thin lips most Blacklight denizens seemed to possess.
Jonathan drew his gun as he stepped inside, easing the door shut with his fingers. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but finding Zadok tied to a toppled chair wasn’t really it.
Zadok looked up, his face set in a snarl, but his eyes betrayed the fear he felt.
“Oh, it’s you.” Zadok slumped. “Never thought I’d say it, but thank the gods.”
“Seem to have caught you at a bad time.” Jonathan didn’t bother to smother his laughter.
“Don’t suppose you stopped the guy?” Zadok growled.
“And get the neighbourhood to hate me even more? Why would I want to do that?”
“He stole, four pounds of—” Zadok snapped his mouth shut. “You going to help here?”
“What’s that famous line . . . quid pro quo, Claris?”
“For hell’s sake, Alvey, at least prop me back up.”
Jonathan ignored his request and started snooping around, giving Zadok time to appreciate his current predicament.
“Fine. What is it you want?”
“Someone’s dealing Strigoi blood.”
“That’s awful news.” He almost sounded sincere.
Jonathan crossed the room and pointed the gun towards the floor. “Yeah, Zadok, it is.”
“What makes you think I know, anything?”
“You’re a lowlife who deals to lowlifes. I’ll enjoy shooting you, Zadok, but if I’m wrong, and you don’t know anything, I’ll be the bigger guy and dial nine-one-one for you. If you’re lucky, maybe you can drag yourself, and that chair, far enough out of here that the ambulance will actually pick you up.”
“You’re a heartless bastard.”
“That’s what the prosecution said at my murder trial, so I guess it must be true.”He answered, knowing Zadok would catch the reminder that if Jonathan were willing to kill his own father, he wouldn’t have any qualms over a snitch.
“I tell you anything about the operation, and they’ll know it was me.”
Jonathan gritted his teeth. Until now he had tired to ignore his gut instinct as to why Serkan’s husband had been kidnapped, hoping he was wrong about the blood harvesting, Zadok’s reference to an ‘operation’ made it clear his guts had, regrettably, been right.
“It isn’t like you’re subtle about shaking me down, Alvey. You know a little discretion would really help me out.”
“Yeah, making sure I’m not hampering your ability to perform transactions is what keeps me up at night.”
“Hey, it would help you too, you know. I mean people didn’t know I talked to you, I would be able to tell you more.”
There was a sound logic behind Zadok’s argument, but Jonathan frankly didn’t care. Zadok would keep his ear to the ground no matter what because it was who, and what, he was. Jonathan didn’t have to make it easy for him.
“I’ll make this simple: you tell me who’s dealing the stuff, and I won’t shoot you in the knee and then do my Sammy Davis Jr. impression on it.”
“What if I don’t know, huh? Ever thought of that?”
“What if I paint you with grave mould and virgin blood and call up a revenant to tear the flesh from your bones? Ever thought of that?”
“You’re not well, you know that? How can you even threaten that?”
“We’re talking about sick freaks harvesting Strigoi blood for a date rape drug. In comparison to that, I think I can live with just about anything I can imaging doing to you.”
***
Zadok talked. In the end, Zadok always talked, and he knew more than just who was dealing—he knew where they were holding the Strigoi. A short drive to one of the old warehouses that made up the borderlands between Blacklight and the city proper, and he was there.
The people who had taken the Strigoi were not as good as Zadok about keeping people out. The door not only had a handle, it had no wards or alarms—it also opened in.
Not knowing what he was facing in there, he couldn’t ready a spell, so Jonathan drew his weapon, clasped it two-handed, and took a deep breath.
A well-placed kick and the door cracked open, with Jonathan moving through it a second later. He quickly scanned the room: two men were sitting to his right at a dilapidated kitchen table, one was standing by the back wall by a half open door, and a fourth was crouched in the grim beside the Strigoi, who was restrained in a heavy wooden chair.
The man by the back started to move towards him, even as the two rose from their seats, revealing the small vials they were filling with blood from a larger container.
“I wouldn’t try it. I can shoot a fly off dog shit. Think what I can do when I’m aiming for the shit.”
The men paused and Jonathan had time to notice more details; the way one of the men working at the table hands shook—withdrawal but not from blood use, that the other had latex gloves on, afraid of getting the blood on him—of experiencing what he supplied. He also saw that the room behind the half closed door was a filthy washroom. Jonathan checked that man’s bare arms and saw the scars.
He didn’t hesitate in shooting the man.
The man went down with a scream. Jonathan had pegged him high on the left side, avoiding anything critical, but making sure he didn’t have the concentration to use the foreign blood now coursing through his veins.
“Get up.”
The glared at him and Jonathan felt the tug in his head but it was faint and only lasted a second.
“Try that again the next one is through your skull. Now get up. ”
Once the man had managed to get to his feet, leaving a smear of blood on the doorframe, Jonathan motioned, with the gun, for the man to join his two friends. When the two had become three, he nodded at the one on the floor.
“Your turn. Back up three paces, then get up and join your partners.”
The man shuffled back, revealing the gallon bottle on the floor that was slowly filling with blood from a tube in the vampyre’s arm.
The Strigoi himself sat taunt with pain. The hallow dark splotches under his eyes and the way his lips were drawn tight made his face looked cadaverous. The ends of the chair arms were grooved and bloody from were he had clawed at them.
Jonathan approached the Strigoi as the fourth man backed up. When he was close enough, Jonathan took one hand from the gun and began to unwrap the chain from around the creature’s wrists.
The Strigoi gave a hiss of pain and Jonathan stopped what he was doing.
It took him a second to remember that he still had the petroleum with its magically charged silver on his finger, which was now smeared lightly over his entire hand.
Apparently, even with sliver wrapped around his wrists, the charged stuff bit a little deeper. Jonathan stored that piece of information in the back of his mind as he wiped his hand on his pants as thoroughly as he could.
“Sorry, Mr. Serkan” he apologized, “Had to do a bit of spell work earlier.”
A moment later, the first chain fell to the floor. It wasn’t thick chain, it didn’t have to be, it was the silver that had kept him there. When both arms were free, the Strigoi tore the tube from his arm. The wound healed too fast for Jonathan to even see.
“Can you get up?”
“I can walk, as long as it’s out that door.”
“Then do so. Once you’re out, wait for me. I’ll bring you to Philomena.”
The Strigoi rose unsteadily but, after resting a hand on the chair for balance, kicked out his foot, sending the gallon jar into the air momentarily before crashing into a jagged puddle of dark red.
After looking at each of the four men as though to burn their images into his brain one last time, the Strigoi nodded and headed for the door.
Jonathan stood between the door and the men, his gun raised and sighted. They each, all four of them, twitched, caught between action and inaction, fear and courage. And that was what inspired him: them being caught by fear.
These men, who captured the things that had spawned stories of terror, and used their blood to do terrible things, they spawned fear, and he would use their own fears to undo them.
“Now each of you drink one of those vials.” the effects weren’t as strong, or fast, ingesting the stuff but it worked, and Jonathan wanted that.
The man he had shot looked suspicious but grabbed the nearest one and drank. Reluctantly, the other did as well, but the man with the latex gloves looked at the vial before him like it was Ebola.
“Drink up or I’ll put a hole through your gut and pour it in myself.”
With a trembling hand the man brought the container to his lips and squeezing his eyes shut, emptied it into his mouth.
Jonathan switched his grip and held the gun one handed in his left. He wasn’t as good left-handed, but he’d be able to drop the first one who moved.
He raised his right hand in front of him and brought his ring and middle finger together. Slowly, he began to rub them against each other, his summoning gesture, and before he even began to speak, the power seared through his bones.
Adrenaline- ecstasy born of fire – pumped through his arteries, and his drug that was magic spiked his veins, blooming in his brain like a wild rose, petals of blood red.
In ancient Greek, he summoned Deimos – bringer of dread – and smoke wreathed around his fingers. He moved his digits faster and black lightning speared through the cloud of smoke that now engulfed his hand.
The men swallowed hard. Stared with eyes wide and glassy. They were unable to look away from the energy Jonathan was summoning. Fear—primal and raw—flooded their minds, driving out the ability to think.
Jonathan came to the end of the curse and the smoke whipped out in four separate tendrils to wrap around each man’s head. One scream, voiced by four throats, filled the warehouse. The sound tore at the walls, scratched at the windows, and rent the air.
Jonathan turned away, and flinging open the door, strode into the night. Serkan stood only a few steps away, his eyes looked beyond Jonathan, to catch a glimpse inside his prison before the door swung shut again.
“What did you do?”
The Strigoi’s tone was controlled, emotionless, and Jonathan knew he was fighting the urge to rush in there, and feed off the emotions surging out of the men.
With a gentle hand on the back, Jonathan turned him and they both walked to the car.
itself but what may be hiding in it. It is not the creatures which scare man the deepest, but his own fears of them. I gave them that. I fed them your blood, showed them their fears, and magnified them a hundred fold. They are prisoners now to their own minds—and thanks to your blood—each others.”
Behind them, the door open and they both swung around to look. The man at the door suddenly clung to the frame as a drowning man would to a buoy. He slowly began to sink to the ground, eyes wide, his whimpers audible in the still night air. Slowly, inch-by-inch, the man pushed himself back into the warehouse, until he couldn’t be seen any more.
“What was that?”
Jonathan opened the car door for his guest and as he crossed to his side of the vehicle replied, “I believe that was agoraphobia.”
He got in and started the car. “Time for you to go home, Mr. Serkan.”
As he hit the gas, the magic was already fading—blooms withering while the thorns grew. The need to call up the power, the irresistible pull to use, throbbed deep within his bones. He grabbed at a pack of smokes on his dashboard and fished out a flattened cigarette.
The first inhalation calmed his nerves just enough that he could push back; temporarily burying one addiction under an other. It wouldn’t last long but it covered the immediate pain.
Jonathan looked at the Strigoi sitting beside him and wondered about the cravings hidden there.
“Are you alright to drive?” Serkan asked, turning his head only after the words were spoken.
“Yeah.” Jonathan looked away, “Yeah, I’m a functioning addict, don’t worry.”
“Aren’t we all.”
For now. Jonathan thought. For now.
The End
R. M. Ridley lives with his wife on a farm in Ontario, Canada. The X gladly announces their contract with Ridley to bring his whole series of Jonathan Alvey works to print, the first volume of the series to appear later in 2014.
Ridley’s first short story, “A Case for Custody,” appeared in Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology, released in October, 2013.