Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives

He found Lee sitting on the edge of the road, his jeans were torn and there was blood on the denim, blood on his shirt, and a smear of scarlet lipstick on the corner of his mouth.

His heart starting to beat again, Tony bent and picked the blue dress up off the pavement.

Together, they watched a cloud of fine silver ash blow away on the breeze.

Tanya Huff lives and writes in rural Ontario and is probably best known for her Vicki Nelson Blood books — although there’s another twenty novels out there including Smoke and Shadows, Smoke and Mirrors and Smoke and Ashes, the Tony Foster books. The Enchantment Emporium is her most recent. She maintains an active LiveJournal page at andpuff.livejournal.com

Tony Foster is the second assistant director on “Darkest Night”, the most popular syndicated vampire detective show on television. He’s one of only three wizards currently practicing in the world and he intends to keep practicing until he gets it right. Given the amount of supernatural flotsam showing up in Vancouver lately, he’s being given a lot of opportunity.

Soul Stains: A Vampire Babylon Story by Chris Marie Green

A chill was trying to worm past her skin and deep into her bones, but Dawn Madison didn’t even shiver. She’d first learned how to handle the willies as a Hollywood stuntwoman, and her later “career” as a vampire hunter had taught her the rest, even if it’d been a while since she’d been in the hunting game.

“Something’s sure as shit here,” Kiko said, sensing her disquietude. The psychic PI was more than a foot shorter than her, a little person, former actor, and former hunter. Today he was garbed in his version of a business suit: cargo pants and a white dress shirt covered by a dark pea coat. Since their last and final hunt together, he’d grown out his blond hair a bit, grown back the soul patch on his chin.

The old Coconut Coast showroom was quiet now that the staff had wrapped up their post-show duties and left. With its faded burgundy velvet-curtain glamour, booth seats curled around scratched mahogany tables — your basic old school luxury and tackiness rolled into one — the Bahia Resort and Casino was one of those Vegas stalwarts on the north end of the Strip that cried out for a corporate takeover. But the owner, “Tigerman” Lee, had held on to it, even though the place had to be on its last legs.

They called him Tigerman, apparently, because of the gray sideburns he wore like feral slashes under his cheekbones. He may have been over sixty years old, but as he stood next to Kiko, he still seemed like someone Dawn wouldn’t want to mess with in a dark alley. Actually, he didn’t seem all that keen on her, either, what, with the marks on her face. Gifts from her final hunt.

His voice was a cigarette-hewn rasp. “The past two years, there’ve been a few sightings here in the showroom, but Gigi Calhoun’s more active backstage.”

A ghost haunting the Bahia.

Or maybe it wasn’t that at all, and that’s why Kiko, the PI, had come here — and why Kiko had brought in his old friend Dawn.

They’d already done their own background check on Gigi Calhoun. She was a secret vampire who’d sold her soul in preparation to recycling her declining Hollywood career after she’d “died” spectacularly in the auto accident that had supposedly decapitated her. With the help of the vampires and their servants, her body had sure looked headless enough to the Coroner and Medical Examiner; the Underground had fooled the press, fooled everyone into thinking she was dead and gone. Gigi’s legend grew as she wiled away her time Underground. But, unfortunately for her, Dawn and the team had wiped out the Hollywood hive before the actress and singer could complete her release cycle; that would’ve included plastic surgery, a name change, then reemergence Above as a similar star — but one who only used vampire Allure to remind everyone of the original Gigi Calhoun.

Tigerman’s gaze had taken on a longing softness, just like every other fan who’d nursed a fervent need to never see his idols die. “When Gigi first headlined here in the early Seventies, Vegas was like a woman just finding out how powerful she could be, wearing her neon like jewels she got from all the men buzzing around her. Gigi opened this place, sang and danced on this very stage. Then she…”

“Died,” Dawn said, going along with the lie.

Tigerman sighed.

“That’s why you think she came back here,” she added, “even in the afterlife? Because she had a special attachment to the Bahia?”

“I like to think so. And, pretty soon, ghosts might be all that’s left. Maybe I’ll even be one myself when they finally strong arm me into giving up this place.”

Kiko was wily enough to walk past Tigerman, “accidently” brushing his hand against the owner’s. He was trying to get a reading with his psychometric abilities while the elderly man’s mind was on Gigi.