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She put her arms around me. “What do you think?”
It’s not easy, having a sex life when you’re dead. But it is possible.
“How do you feel?” said Sil.
“I feel … good,” I said.
* * *
Author’s Bio:
Simon was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England where he still resides. He obtained an M.A. in Modern English and American Literature from Leicester University, studied history and has a combined Humanities degree. His writing career started in 1973, when he was a student in London. He’s the author of the bestselling SF/Space Opera series: The Deathstalker Saga, a series of eight books, of which he himself admits that it kind of got out of hand, since it was supposed to be three 500-page books … His website may be found at http://simonrgreen.co.uk.
THERE WILL BE DEMONS
by LORI HANDELAND
I’d been out all night shooting trolls with salt—straig
ht through the heart; it’s the only thing that kills them. So when the knock came on my motel-room door before I’d even had a chance to wash their ashes out of my hair, I should have ignored it.
Except no one knew I was in Minnesota, which made me nervous. Though why, I have no idea. Demons rarely knock.
However, when I peered through the peephole and saw a wide expanse of nothing, I whirled to the right expecting, the imminent arrival of a shotgun-sized hole through the door. Not that a shotgun filled with anything but rowan or iced steel would kill me, but getting shot hurt.
Every single damn time.
The knock came again—louder, more insistent. Housekeeping or management would announce themselves. They also wouldn’t stand out of sight of the peephole. Only someone who didn’t want me to see them would. Unless it was someone I couldn’t see.
I didn’t like that scenario any better that the first one. But since I couldn’t stay where I was, listening, hiding, practically cringing—it wasn’t my style—I flung open the door and spewed fairy dust from my fingertips, even as my mind formed the words reveal and freeze.
No demon materialized in front of me. That was good. Then someone coughed, and I jerked my head to the left.
“This is bad.”
His face was covered in silvery particles that stuck to his long, dark lashes like goo. His ebony hair appeared to have been dusted with snow. His face sparkled as if he’d been doused in glitter.
He should be frozen like a gargoyle. Instead, he lifted one hand and wiped at the mess, staring first at his palm, then lifting his dark eyes to mine.
A shudder ran through me. I’d seen those eyes before.
Every night in my dreams for the last few thousand years.
“What are you?” he asked.
“What are you?” I returned.
My hands shook. I stuck them behind my back so I wouldn’t have to explain why. I wasn’t sure I could. I’d been dreaming of him for so long, I’d begun to think he wasn’t real, that maybe what I’d seen wouldn’t happen, that what I’d done wouldn’t matter. I should have known better.
“Name’s Sanducci,” he said. “Jimmy.”
I noticed he hadn’t really answered my question, but then I hadn’t answered his either.
I might have dreamed of him until I knew his face, and his body, even better than I knew my own, but I’d never learned his name or figured out what, exactly, he was.
Despite being tall, at least six feet of rangy muscle, and owning eyes that were haunted with things he would much, much rather forget, he seemed young.
Of course, to someone like me, Methuselah was a toddler. Or at least he had been when I’d met him. By the time the old guy expired, right before the flood, he’d been wrinkled, white, and bent like a question mark, while I’d still looked exactly as I did now—blond, petite, annoyingly perky, and forever twenty-one.
