Streets of Shadows Read online

  Copyright Page

  “What I Am” is by & ©2014 Tom Piccirilli

  “A Game of Cards” is by & ©2014 A.C. Wise

  “Shooting Aphrodite” is by & ©2014 Gary Kloster

  “Santa Muerte” is by & ©2014 Lucy A. Snyder and Daniel R. Robichaud

  “Morrigan’s Girls” is by & ©2014 Gerard Brennan

  “Such Faces We Wear, Such Masks We Hide” is by & ©2014 Damien Angelica Walters

  “The Man Who Has Been Killing Kittens” is by & ©2014 Douglas F. Warrick

  “The Large Man” is by & ©2014 Paul Tremblay

  “Unfilial Child” is by & ©2014 Laurie Tom

  “Street Worm” is by & ©2014 Nisi Shawl

  “Der Kommissar’s In Town” is by & ©2014 Nick Mamatas

  “The Shadow People” is by & ©2014 Brandon Massey

  “Hand Fast” is by & ©2014 Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Beware of Dog” is by & ©2014 WordFire, Inc

  “Stay: A Tale of the Spellmason Chronicles” is by & ©2014 Anton Strout

  “God Needs Not the Future” is by & ©2014 Jason Sizemore

  “Relics” is by & ©2014 Tim Lebbon

  “Cold Fear” is by & ©2014 Lucien Soulban

  “In Vino Veritas” is by & ©2014 Tim Waggoner and Michael West

  “Best Served Cold” is by & ©2014 Seanan McGuire

  “Toby’s Closet” is by & ©2014 Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC

  This book would not be possible without the generous support of the Kickstarters who forked over their hard-earned dollars to fund this descent into supernatural crime. We would like to thank them; our slush reader, Rodney Carlstrom; our publisher, Steven Saus; and our wives, Sally and Jill, for giving us an excuse to work and play together. Finally, our deep thanks to the twenty-three writers that brought their words and unique vision to this anthology. We hope you’re pleased with the final result.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  Your purchase of this book directly supports the author. Thank you for your support.

  It is strongly encouraged that you enable “publisher defaults” for styles in order to experience the work as close as possible to the author’s intent.

  Kickstarter Exclusive cover art by Atomic Fly Studios

  Retail Cover by Rhys Griffiths

  Published by

  Alliteration Ink

  PO Box 20598

  Dayton, OH 45420

  alliterationink.com

  Streets of Shadows

  eISBN 978-1-939840-22-6

  pISBN 978-1-939840-21-9

  Limited Print: 978-1-939840-24-0

  Hardcover 978-1-939840-23-3

  September 2013

  Our Backers

  This work could not exist without the backers on Kickstarter. Thank you all.

  A.Chatain, Abigail K., Adam G. Pugh, Alan DeHaan, Alastair Black, Alex Conall, Alex Ristea, Alexander Smith, Ali M, Alice Bentley, Alisa Cohen, Amanda Hoffelt-Ryan, Andrea L. Cook, Andreas Flögel, Andrew Hatchell, Andrew J Clark IV, Andrew Whalen, Aneurin Price, Angela Grant, Angus Abranson, Anna McDuff, Anna O'Connell, Anonymous, Anthony R. Cardno, Anton Cancre, Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Arkady Martine, Artimese de Sade, Ashley Chatneuff, Ashley McConnell, August Grappin, Aynjel Kaye, Benjamin Abbott, Beth & Steve Tanner, Beth Versace, Beth Wodzinski, Bill McGeachin, Blake Skidmore, Brendan Coffey, Brian York, Brian, Sarah, and Josh Williams, Britney Cain, Calle Dybedahl, Cam Mezé, Carol J. Guess, Cat Barth, Celia Voyles, Chadwick Ginther, chaos, Charles Crowe, Christine Bell, Colleen R., Craig, Craig Thornton, Cynthia K. Marshall, Cynthia Ward, D Taylor-Rodriguez, D-Rock, Dale Mazzola, Damit Senanayake, Dana, Danielle B, Darryl Dawson, David Annandale, David Eggerschwiler, David G. Spiller, David Morrison, David Peek, David Ross, David Ting, David Wohlreich, David Zurek, Deanne Fountaine, Debbie Matsuura, Deborah Walker, Deedles, Denise Murray, Diana Castillo, Diane Pekarcik, Dianna Holland LMT, Donaithnen, Doug Bogs, Doug Monroe, Eagle Archambeault, Ed Ellis, Ed Roden, Edward Lipsett, Elizabeth Creegan, Ellen, Emma Bardon, Enrico Barisione, Epiphyllum, Ergo Ojasoo, Eric Beebe, Erik T Johnson, Erin, filkferengi, Floyd Brigdon, Frances Rowat, Gavran, Gemma Noon, Gerard Ackerman, Ginger, Glennis LeBlanc, Greg Vose, Gregory A. Wilson, Gregory Rheam, H Lynnea Johnson, Hamish Laws, Hans Ranke, Haviva Avirom, Holger Bähren, Ian Crawford, Ief Grootaers, J. Lannan, Jaclyn Tan, Jake and Willie, James "@realjimbob" Spinks, James Beal, James Elwood, James H. Murphy Jr., James Lowder, Janet Oblinger, Janito Vaqueiro Ferreira Filho, Jason Brsf, Jason Sizemore, Jay Kominek, Jeff Xilon, Jeffery Lawler, Jen W, Jen W, Jenna Adler, Jennifer Brozek, Jennifer D'Ambrosio, Jenny Barber, Jesse Scoble, Jessica K Meade, Jessica Reisman, Jill Heather Flegg, Jim Ryan, Joanne B, John Devenny, John Eddy, Johne Cook, Jonathan Marcus, Jose Yrizarry, Joseph Horst, Joshua Bowers, Joshua Kidd, Juli Bozak, Juliana Groisman, Julie Brady, K.J. Russell, Kaia Gavere, Karen Mahoney, Karl-Heinz Herrmann, Karli Watson, Kat Reisdorf, Katherine Gendall, Katherine Malloy, KATmyst, Katrina Keller, Keith Teklits, Kelly Myers, Kevin Parker, Kii Bandaru, Kim Hanfelt, Kris Mayer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kristine Kearney, Laura D, Laura Wenham, Lauren M. Roy, Lawjick, Lee Garvin, Leesa Hanagan, Lesley Mitchell, Lianne, Lisa Deutsch Harrigan - Auntie M, Lisa Kueltzo, Liz Harkness, Louise Löwenspets, Lynne Everett, M Rands, Mallory Smith, Mara Belle, Marc D. Long, Margaret Colville, Margaret St. John, Mark the Encaffeinated ONE, Marla Bracken, Marla Desat, Marty Tool, Mary Spila, Matt & Morgan Wagner, Matt Leitzen, Matthew Golden, Matti Rintala, Max Kaehn, Maxwell Heath, Meg Ward, Megan Hungerford, Megan Peterson, Megan Scroggins, Meglet, Michael Bentley, Michael Bernardi, Michael D. Blanchard, Michael Hanscom, Michael Haynes, Michael Hicks, Michael M. Jones, Michael W Lucas, Michele Dainiak, Michelle Dupler, Michelle L., Miles Matton, Mirko Montalbano, Mirtika, Morva Bowman & Alan Pollard, Muriel, Muse, Naath, NAME REDACTED, Nancy DiMauro Greene, Nancy Paulette, Nathan Burgoine, Nathan Seabolt, Nayad Monroe, Nick Lapeyrouse, Nina Niskanen, Noah S. McKinnon, Olivia Gillham, PatK, Patrick Connors, Patti Short, Paul Walker, Paulo Ramos, Pete Newell, Peter Niblett, Philip Barkow, Rachel Gollub, Rachel Sasseen, Rich Gonzalez, Rob Voss, Robby Thrasher, Robert Fleck, Robert M Everson, Robyn "Rat" King, Roel Veldhuyzen, Ron Oakes, Rosemarie Short, Rrain Prior, Ryan, S. Petroulas, Sage Sharpe, Sally Novak Janin, Sammy Morgan, Sara M. Harvey, Sean Collins, Shana, Sharon Wood, Shel Tozer-Kilts, Shervyn, Sheryl Ehrlich, Sheryl R. Hayes, Sian Dart, Sidsel Nørgaard Pedersen, Silence in the Library Publishing, Simo Muinonen, SK Gaski, Sonya Lawson, Stephanie Cheshire, Stéphanie Silvano-Tellas, Stephen Cheng, Stephen Hood, Stephen Kendall, Sterling Jones, Steve Gayler, Steve Lickman, Steve Smoot, Steven Mentzel, Steven Salter, summervillain, Svend Andersen, tanner pomerleau, Tibs, Tim Moore, Timothy Garris, Tina Black, Tomas Burgos Caez, Tommy Lewis, Tony Finan, Wes Rist, Wynne Tegyn, Xap Esler, Yara TRV, Peter Okeafor, David Bell, Zach Hauptman, and Zvi Gilbert

  Streets of Shadows

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Front Matter

  Our Backers

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  What I Am

  A Game of Cards

  Shooting Aphrodite

  Santa Muerte

  Morrigan's Girls

  Such Faces We Wear, Such Masks We Hide

  The Man Who Has Been Killing Kittens

  Th
e Large Man

  Unfilial Child

  Street Worm

  Der Kommissar's In Town

  The Shadow People

  Hand Fast

  Beware of Dog

  Stay

  God Needs Not the Future

  Relics

  Cold Fear

  In Vino Veritas

  Best Served Cold

  Toby's Closet

  A Note From The Publisher

  Also From Alliteration Ink

  Introduction

  The epiphany that would become Streets of Shadows struck me about a year ago. I was already itching to do a follow up to the Dark Faith anthologies, but I wanted to carve out new territory. My Knights of Breton Court series had just been re-released in a beautiful omnibus edition, and as I placed the new book on my shelf, I realized it joined an overwhelming number of my favorite crime and fantasy authors. Mixing the two genres in an anthology seemed like a perfect extension of what I’d done with the book series. But could I rope Jerry into doing it with me?

  Maurice and I have the benefit of similar tastes. Our bookshelves are tributes to Elmore Leonard, Neil Gaiman, Cormac McCarthy, N.K. Jemisin, Walter Mosley—you get the idea. Maurice didn’t have to work all that hard to get me on board. He knew the idea of blurring the line between crime and urban fantasy would appeal to me. At their best, both genres explore the deeper meaning lurking behind the façade of polite society. And both offer the opportunity to showcase magic realism, which I love. But would Maurice be up for mixing modern with traditional crime noir, and what about all those wonderfully strange stories that defy labels?

  Anyone who is familiar with the kind of stories we gravitated to in the Dark Faith series could probably guess the answer. Traditional crime/private investigator-type stories have their place, but there also had to be room for stories with new or different interpretations of noir and urban fantasy. To get the right mix of stories, we had to cast the net wide. Authors with followings for their own brand of private detectives, like Jonathan Maberry, Kevin J. Anderson, and Anton Strout. Authors with divergent takes on crime and fantasy, like Tom Piccirilli, Paul Tremblay, Nick Mamatas, and Doug Warrick. Authors with diverse visions, like Nisi Shawl, Brandon Massey, and Laurie Tom.

  The end result? Eliot Ness and Al Capone face off against the supernatural answer to prohibition in the same book where prostitutes inject sacred blood into their bodies to joyride as Gods. Grizzled detectives, living and dead, share space with gang-banging witches, homicidal AI, and a man who has been killing kittens. The blend follows, subverts, and occasionally ignores traditions and tropes. Hopefully, along the way, it plows some fresh ground in the much loved fields of urban fantasy and crime.

  Maurice Broaddus Jerry Gordon

  * * *

  Maurice Broaddus has written hundreds of short stories, essays, novellas, and articles. His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, including Asimov's Science Fiction, Cemetery Dance, Apex Magazine, and Weird Tales Magazine. He is the co-editor of Streets of Shadows (Alliteration Ink) and the Dark Faith anthology series (Apex Books) and the author of the urban fantasy trilogy, Knights of Breton Court (Angry Robot Books). He has been a teaching artist for over five years, teaching creative writing to students of all ages. Visit his site at www.MauriceBroaddus.com.

  Jerry Gordon is the co-editor of Streets of Shadows (Alliteration Ink) and the Dark Faith and Last Rights anthology series (Apex Books). His fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Shroud, and the Midnight Diner. When he's not writing and editing, he's teaching college classes and running a software company. You can find him blurring genre lines at www.jerrygordon.net.

  What I Am

  Tom Piccirilli

  I know what I am.

  I am Big Apple. I bear witness to struggle, to tragedy small and enormous, to daily happiness, madness, and vengeance. I am gas leak, rent hike, and sewer blockage. I am five-alarm fire. I am subway strike, rat infestation, rabid raccoons in the Cloisters. I am ten foot stacks of garbage. I am old lady purse-snatch, I am drunkard and drug-addled, dead beneath river rock bridge in Central Park. I am the Mexican cartel cutting deals with the Russian mafia. I am cold wind and icy stone. I am rumbling subway and crazy serial killer pushers dropping strangers onto the tracks. I am long-forgotten statues and arches.

  I am museum, I am priceless art and knowledge. I am East River, Hudson River, Harlem River, Ellis Island, and Mid-Town Tunnel. I am Metropolitan Museum of History and Science. I am MOMA. I am Holland Tunnel, I am Brooklyn Bridge, I am Knickerbocker. I am Liberty Island, I am Verrazzano Narrows, Washington Bridge, both upper and lower decks. I am bank robber dead inside the lobby of Citibank down in East Village.

  My soul has gone to where New Yorker souls go.

  I am the city now. My name is Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Trump, Lennon, Dakota, Chelsea, Waldorf Astoria, Plaza, Wickquasgeck Trail, West End Highway, Fifth Avenue, and St. Mark.

  I have my satchel filled with about a quarter mill. The intel Zacko and I received was faulty. I suspected it would be. It didn’t cost us much. The juggers we got it from were ex-cons. When an ex-con tells you he’s got all the goods on a heist, punch his fucking teeth down his throat. If they had all the goods they wouldn’t have been to prison. Despite knocking over banks, gas stations, gun shops, and liquor stores, I’d never been to prison. Not until now, surrounded by bedrock, iron, electricity, and water mains.

  There were four guards on the lower level of the bank, not three. One was working the safe-deposit boxes and flirting with a customer. She was pretty and I didn’t blame him, not even after he killed me.

  According to his name badge, his name is Lou. He called the woman “Joycie.” I pointed my gun but the fucker had been practicing quick-draws since he’d retired from the NYPD. He barely cleared his holster before firing and caught me high in the thigh. Direct tag on my femoral artery. I could calculate the odds because I am also computer, I am accountant, I am ten billion stacks and volumes of library and history. I bled out before Zacko could make it down the steps. I heard him fire his shotgun twice and wanted to tell him to stop.

  I am Columbus Circle, Times Square, Broadway, the heart of theater, the spleen of the arts, a hundred million lights and broken hearts, the Great White Way. I am Damn Yankees, The Misanthrope, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, A Doll’s House, Uncle Vanya, Hamlet, True West. I am ambulances blazing by on the streets during quiet periods of drama, I am shrieking police cars to tighten your rectum between acts. I am Playbill, I am poster art, I am standing ovation, I am 58 week runs. I am two-show shutdowns, I am opening night jitters and final wrap-up rehearsal.

  I am already fading into the floor.

  I am a millisecond dead. There is no point to breathing anymore, lungs straining bellows. Maybe he could get away, but Zacko is very stupid without me. He’ll be caught long before he gets back to the Bronx. He’ll take 9 and go through the toll. They’ll have pictures of him and the car everywhere.

  I am now part of the Indians, their foolish jewelry, the graves of a hundred thousand tribesmen and Amsterdam explorers. I am dust and brick and beautifully hand-crafted gurgling gargoyle rain gutters.

  The name I had is only a whisper on the wind, calling me. I am a widening pool of blood, already full of flies, much too sticky for an easy cleanup. I am janitorial staff working through the night. I am guilt, I am not a bad guy. I feel sorry for my sins. I float through the walls and see Zacko panicking, screaming for me.

  I am Empire State Building, I am ruins of towers, I am rebuilding, I am a billion metric tons of bone meal. I am ten thousand shit-shops selling tourist-trap crap. I am I HEART NY t-shirts, posters, bumper stickers, little King Kong salt and pepper shakers, mouse pads of Liberty. I am South Street Seaport, Thanksgiving Day Parade, Halloween traditions, bars, gentlemen’s clubs, strip clubs, gay gathering spots, echoes of lost public bath houses, Plato’s Retreat, dead disco, 54, skyline, s
pires of beauty and riches and top line technology. When I was human this made me sick with jealousy and hate. Now, I am what I was driven to want.

  Zacko, the moron, is still yelling my name. If I wasn’t already gone I’d be headed for the can. Before we got out of the getaway car I reminded him not to use names. I wore a monkey mask, Zacko was some super-hero I didn’t recognize.

  Lou is a pro. He checks my pulse. He doesn’t find anything and sits back and sighs. I appreciate that sigh. It is a very sincere and human sound. It is like the whisper of my name fluttering away. Joycie turns the corner of the small area where she was going through her safety deposit box staring at her jewels, the over-estimates on her insurance papers. She will claim I got to the jewels and stole them. She puts them on now. She is as bad a crook as Zacko. Diamond bracelet, string of pearls, Lady’s Rolex. All the flash blinds my dead eyes.

  Lou says, “Twenty-four years on the force and I only fired my gun once on duty. Now I’ve killed a man.”

  I want to tell Lou not to feel bad. He’s a lifelong New Yorker, which means he’ll wind up here with me eventually. He will lose his guilt and conscience as it serves no purpose to granite and towers and the King Tut exhibition. After all, this is the greatest city in the world. Of course we all wind up here. Who could ever believe in another kind of heaven or hell?

  I am fleets of Persian and Armenian cab drivers, dying squeegee men pushing shopping carts, picking up cans and spritzing windshields at red lights. I am cinema, sea, and graveyard. I am precincts solving heinous horrors. Lou worked out of the 1-6 most of his career, before he slipped back and forth to Bed Stuy, where he helped to perfect the “Brooklyn Bounce.” Evidence would go missing and the cops would sell tons of drugs back to the dealers. A faint remnant of my criminal self gives a mental nod of recognition to Lou.

  The first time I drew down on a store owner was a liquor store in East Harlem. My first partner was a Puerto Rican banger named Caesar. He liked to think he was a king, but he thought a lot of stupid things, just like I once did.