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    Unexpected Monsters
    Unexpected Monsters
    Unexpected Monsters
    Ebook152 pages2 hours

    Unexpected Monsters

    By Annie Reed

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    About this ebook

    Vampires and werewolves and zombies, oh my!

     

    But not how you'd usually expect them.

     

    How about a retelling of The Three Little Pigs were the wolves aren't exactly what they seem? Or a warrior who's getting a little long in the tooth facing an unbeatable elder foe? Or a blood-sucking fiend who'd like to tell you her origin story—if you can believe a word of what she says.

     

    Award-winning writer Annie Reed puts her unique twist on these updated stories of classic monsters seen in a whole new light.

     

    Enjoy this latest edition in the Unexpected series.

     

    "One of the best writers I've come across in years." --Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThunder Valley Ink
    Release dateNov 15, 2020
    ISBN9781393099130
    Unexpected Monsters
    Author

    Annie Reed

    Award-winning author and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch calls Annie Reed “one of the best writers I’ve come across in years.”Annie’s won recognition for her stellar writing across multiple genres. Her story “The Color of Guilt” originally published in Fiction River: Hidden in Crime, was selected as one of The Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016. Her story “One Sun, No Waiting” was one of the first science fiction stories honored with a literary fellowship award by the Nevada Arts Foundation, and her novel PRETTY LITTLE HORSES was among the finalists in the Best First Private Eye Novel sponsored by St. Martin’s Press and the Private Eye Writers of America.A frequent contributor to the Fiction River anthologies and Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Annie’s recent work includes the superhero origin novel FASTER, the near-future science fiction short novel IN DREAMS, and UNBROKEN FAMILIAR, a gritty urban fantasy mystery short novel. Annie’s also one of the founding members of the innovative Uncollected Anthology, a quarterly series of themed urban fantasy stories written by some of the best writers working today.Annie’s mystery novels include the Abby Maxon private investigator novels PRETTY LITTLE HORSES and PAPER BULLETS, the Jill Jordan mystery A DEATH IN CUMBERLAND, and the suspense novel SHADOW LIFE, written under the name Kris Sparks, as well as numerous other projects she can’t wait to get to. For more information about Annie, including news about upcoming bundles and publications, go to www.annie-reed.com.

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      Book preview

      Unexpected Monsters - Annie Reed

      Vampires and werewolves and zombies, oh my!

      But not how you’d usually expect them.

      How about a retelling of The Three Little Pigs were the wolves aren’t exactly what they seem? Or a warrior who’s getting a little long in the tooth facing an unbeatable elder foe? Or a blood-sucking fiend who’d like to tell you her origin story—if you can believe a word of what she says.

      Award-winning writer Annie Reed puts her unique twist on these updated stories of classic monsters seen in a whole new light.

      Enjoy this latest edition in the Unexpected series.

      One of the best writers I’ve come across in years.

      Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Introduction

      Brick Houses

      Rites of Passage

      Bait

      Hunters

      They Lie

      Big Bad Wolf

      Copyright Information

      About the Author

      Introduction

      Fairy tales, not to mention nursery rhymes, are basically horror stories. At least the ones I remember from my childhood.

      I mean, who didn’t empathize with the three little pigs in their defense of hearth and home from the big bad wolf? Did we ever really think about the meaning of ashes, ashes, all fall down when we were five years old and giggling as we tumbled on the grass at the end of the rhyme?

      And what about all those Disney movies meant for kids? The ones with dead mothers (who for the most part conveniently died off screen)? Or evil stepmothers? Or… or… or…

      You can see how a child born with a vivid imagination might not take those things at face value.

      Or how they’d influence her writing as she got older and learned about writers like Lovecraft and Poe, and read classics like Dracula and Frankenstein, and watched shows like Buffy and The Walking Dead. And how all of that combined might lead said writer (me) to put her own unique twist on classic monsters.

      Well, you’re about to find out, thanks to this latest issue in the Unexpected series featuring short stories I’ve written over the years. (And some new ones here and there.)

      Thanks to my publisher, I’m finally able to showcase these stories and offer them to my readers at a terrific price. This is the second collection in the series, and we’ve got a bunch more in the offing over the months to come. I’m excited about this project, and I hope you are, too.

      What will you find in Unexpected Monsters? Werewolves, yes, but not the kind you might expect. A vampire story from an entirely different perspective. A zombie tale that will pull at your heartstrings. And even a nod to the horrifying, tentacled creatures who inhabit an otherworldly dimension—and those who hunt them.

      I’m writing this introduction the day before Halloween, which seems entirely appropriate for this particular collection. If you celebrate the holiday, enjoy! If you don’t, I hope you enjoy this fall season, which is so decidedly different in this decidedly different year.

      Most of all, I wish you health and safety, and that all the monsters in your life are only fictional.

      —Annie Reed

      October 30, 2020

      Brick Houses

      Lettie topped off the beer for her last remaining customer of the night, put a fresh napkin down on the polished surface of the bar, and plopped his glass on top.

      Yanno, he said, slurring his words into near unrecognizability, fact’s a fact, Jack, and that’s a fact.

      He snickered, but his half-assed smile had no humor to it.

      Two hours ago he’d been sober and straight as a rail, just another customer in the decent sized mid-week crowd at the Brick House Bar. Now he sat slouched on his stool, his tie loosened, and his shirt collar unbuttoned far enough that wisps of dark chest hair poked through the open V.

      What facts are we talking about? Lettie asked.

      She didn’t expect a coherent answer. She’d never met a werewolf who could hold his liquor worth a damn, and this guy was no exception.

      Not that he’d wolfed out or anything. She’d just known a lot of werewolves in her time. Some of them were even family, and this guy had all the classic signs.

      Take his hair. Sure, he’d had it expensively cut and styled with enough product to tame the mane on a lion, but it hadn’t taken much—just a couple of rakes with his long, thin fingers—to make him look like he’d been caught outside in a stiff wind. And that chest hair was another clue. Not that every guy with chest hair had a were of some type lurking in his gene pool, but combine that with his eyes, and it was a dead giveaway.

      Her customer’s eyes were a unique shade of golden brown flecked with specks of deep, deep red. When weres wolfed out, the red in their eyes took over. She’d seen it happen once or twice over the years, and if she never saw it happen again, it would be too soon.

      Luckily, drunk weres rarely wolfed out. It had something to do with the concentration necessary to make the change happen. Alcohol interfered with that. Kind of the universe’s way of protecting drunks and fools from themselves, not to mention the fools who happened to be around drunken werewolves. Or weremonkeys. Or wereferrets.

      Yeah, she’d seen a couple of those, too. Terrifying little things.

      At least her drunken werewolf was a handsome drunken werewolf, not to mention a werewolf of means.

      She’d been a little wary of him when he’d first sat down at the bar. She’d pegged him as an uptown type—banker, lawyer, investment advisor—who’d had a really, really bad day, otherwise he wouldn’t be in her bar. His suit and his shiny black shoes and the watch on his wrist had probably cost him more than her bar netted her in a month. The smoothness of the skin on his face told her that he’d recently had a shave that came from a barber shop where the razors were straight, beards got soaped with a little round brush, and the customers had hot towels wrapped around their faces to make their skin behave.

      But all he’d been interested in was drinking his way to oblivion, and he had the cash to do it, so she’d let him be.

      She didn’t get many werewolves of means—or werewolves period, for that matter, which suited her just fine. The Brick House catered mostly to blue collar workers, and most of them were human. She didn’t have a humans only policy, but in her experience magic folk—even those who hid their true natures in order to get along with the rest of the world—tended not to hang out in places where the majority of customers were strictly human.

      Like sticks with like, her grandpa used to say.

      Not that Lettie believed that. Neither had her grandpa in his earlier years, as it turned out, but that was ancient history.

      The expensive suit jacket her customer had been wearing when he came in the bar was now draped over the empty stool next to him. Lettie had rescued the jacket from the floor a half hour ago after he’d taken it off and not bothered to look where he’d dropped it.

      The floor was messy with spilled drinks, cigarette butts, and bits of bar food—greasy fried pickles and French fries and something the guys in the kitchen called an onion bomb, which was currently the bar’s best seller. Lettie had saved her customer’s jacket from the worst of the crap on the floor, and she hoped she’d saved him from a hefty dry cleaning bill.

      Not that he’d noticed or bothered to thank her. He was too busy drinking like it was going out of style.

      The beer he’d been swilling down wasn’t the cheap stuff either. This particular brand came from a local microbrew—some type of apple ale. She’d taste tested it before she’d placed an order. It wasn’t bad for an ale, just a little on the sweet side, but it had a cutesy name and her regulars didn’t want to try it. She’d been thinking about making it a nightly special just to use up her supply, but thanks to this guy, she might not have to.

      Yanno, her customer said again, this time leaning over the bar to get closer to her, like he wanted to impart some great mystery of the universe. Facts don’t give a crap if you believe in ’em or not.

      She thought about telling him this was a bar, not a political rally, but when the hell. He was drunk, and all the rest of her customers who might object to whatever rant her customer was about to embark on had gone home or wherever the hell they went when they weren’t spending grocery money or rent money on alcohol and bar food. This close to closing time the place was quiet enough now she could hear herself think, and the little clouds of cigarette smoke that hovered over the booths in the back where smoking was allowed had begun to dissipate.

      Even the guys in the kitchen had finished up and left a half hour ago. The cleaning crew—a couple of ogres in a work release program for ex-cons—wouldn’t be in until an hour before sunrise. She didn’t care if her customer ranted a little while she did her last little bit of work for the night. Let him work whatever it was out of his system so he wouldn’t say the wrong thing to the wrong person out in the real world where most people seemed to have lost their frigging minds.

      Ain’t that right? her customer asked, stabbing the air with an index finger pointed in her general direction.

      Facts can be stubborn, Lettie agreed.

      People could be, too, but she didn’t mention that.

      And unfortunately, she said, one irrefutable fact is that I’m closing up here in a few minutes. Time to settle up your tab, fella.

      He’d started out the evening by placing a fifty dollar bill on the bar and telling her to keep the drinks coming. He’d gone over that fifty a couple of rounds ago.

      In response, he leered at her. The wolfish grin convinced her that yeah, this guy definitely had a werewolf in his family tree, if not in his own closet.

      The leer caught her off guard, even though it shouldn’t have.

      Nobody ever came on to her unless they were drunk.

      Lettie knew she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world. She was solid and muscular and not all that tall, where the feminine ideal—epitomized by women who graced magazine covers and movie posters and the evening news (such as it was)—specified that women be lean and tan and willowy, if not necessarily tall. Letti’s face was round, her cheeks chubby, and her dark brown eyes a little too close set. Her strawberry blonde hair was curly to the point of

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