Now Evil Hat is going for The Big Stretch.

If they hit $15,000, they’ll be producing a stand-alone SotC pulp fiction novel by Atomic Robo creator Brian Clevinger. Brian will be writing about Benjamin Hu–think Sherlock Holmes from Hong Kong, running around like Indiana Jones as an olympic-class fencer.

And if they hit $20,000, I get to write the next one.

My character is Amelia Stone, the Spirit of Justice! She’s tough as nails, lives by her fists and her wits, and is so full of pulpy goodness I could squee. I’ve been desperately wanting to try my hand at crazy in-your-face no-holds-barred no-apologies-given pulp since I started reading the ERB Mars books, and this opportunity was too awesome to pass up. I cannot *wait* to give this a shot, and, well you guys aren’t going to let me down, right? You’re, er, going to go forth and, er, make me write another novel this year, right? You’re, um…

…I’ve done it to myself again, haven’t I. :)

No, really, I actually have the time to do this and I’m tremendously excited about the chance, so please! Go forth and help make it happen! There are loads of awesome rewards and exciting potential, and this is a crazy fun chance for me to do something I will probably never have another opportunity to do, so, um, I’m gonna be over here in the corner holding my breath while we wait to see what happens.

Watch the skies!

All of you please email me at cemurphyauthor AT gmail DOT com with your snail mail addresses, your username if that’s what you’ve won under so I know who you are, and whatever name I should sign the books to. :)

First up: “No Dominion”!

Project Proposal: I set out with a goal to raise $4000 through Kickstarter.com to fund the writing of a Walker Papers tie-in novella about Gary Muldoon, Joanne Walker’s septuagenarian sidekick:

Recently widowed after nearly fifty years of marriage, Gary Muldoon had given up on adventure. Then shaman Joanne Walker climbed into the back seat of his cab, and since then, Gary has trifled with gods, met mystics, slain zombies and ridden with the Wild Hunt.

But now he must leave Joanne’s side to face a battle only he can win. Because as their long battle against a dark magic-user races toward its climax, it becomes clear that it was not illness that took Annie’s life, but their enemy’s long and deadly touch.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not…

     …AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION.

Project Conclusion: Over 500 patrons contributed over $20,500 to the “No Dominion” campaign, earning them the following:

3 novellas
5 short stories
3 chapters of a book that doesn’t exist
& 1 CE Murphy photographic calendar

…which, frankly, was rather more than I expected. :)

Proof of Fiction Committed: There are two pieces of free fiction associated with the “No Dominion” campaign. Neither is actually from the “No Dominion” novella, because that novella begins in the middle of RAVEN CALLS, the 7th book of the Walker Papers series, which isn’t due out until March 2012, and I didn’t want to spoil anything. Instead, I’m offering up the following:

Magic Hath An Element, the first chapters of URBAN SHAMAN, as seen through Gary’s eyes instead of Joanne’s, and Forgotten But By A Few, the first “No Dominion” campaign short story.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Kickstarter says that 70% of projects that are 30% funded in the first 48 hours will succeed.

“No Dominion” currently stands at just shy of 150% funded after 48 hours. Presumably if we extrapolate from this, there’s a fair chance of reaching the astounding $12K mark which would get a limited edition trade paperback for the Kickstarter backers. That would be very cool, and I’m very interested to see how it goes. :)

At the moment, backers have commissioned the following:

- “No Dominion”, a novella about Gary Muldoon, due April 15

- a “thank you for supporting this Kickstarter campaign, here’s something to tide you over til April 15″ Gary short story, due November 15

- a totally unplanned bonus short story for funding the campaign in the first 24 hours, due, um, between November 15 and April 15 O.O

The campaign is less than $200 away from earning a second Gary story for all backers subscribing at $10 or more.

Nevermind in terms of dollar amount, which is obviously already a runaway success: this is also the most successful crowdfund I’ve run in terms of number of backers. 192 people have supported this campaign in the first 48 hours, which is 5 more than bought into the “Year of Miracles” crowdfund event–which ran for six weeks, and it’s something like 50 more than the Old Races Short Story Project, which has been running since January of this year. It seems there’s something to the Kickstarter aspect of getting the word out. (Either that or the Walker Papers are really much, much more popular than the Old Races…)

Anyway, thank you. This is really cool, and I’m really excited about it!

Three days after my 73rd birthday, a leggy brunette climbed into my cab and changed my life.

She was rude, snapping, “Drive,” without even lookin’ at me. That kinda fare always set my teeth on edge, superior and holier-than-thou. Never judge somebody by how they treat you, judge ‘em by how they treat the cabbie.

Still, drivin’ paid the rent. “Where to?”

“I don’t know. Northwest.”

I eyed her in the mirror. There was me, pretty hale for a guy that age, with all my hair and teeth I wasn’t sayin’ either way about, and there was her, twenty-six and pretty in the way women who don’t know how well they’re put together can be. She wore her hair real short, which I thought most dames should. What with her doin’ something on a notepad, scribbling and muttering, I couldn’t see her eyes to tell the color. She looked tired, though, like she’d come off a European flight, not just something continental. I said, “Northwest, the airline? It’s just a couple feet up the term–”

She snarled, “To the northwest.” I glared at her and drove. A minute later, as if she hadn’t started out rude, she asked a favor: “You got a map?”

No self-respecting cabbie would admit it if he did. “What for?”

“So I can figure out where we’re going.”

I turned around and stared at her.

“Watch the road!”

Watching the road was for sissies. I twitched the steering wheel and cars merged around us, safe as houses. The fare slumped in her seat, green eyes wide, and got politer: “Do you have a map, please?”

“Yeah, yeah, all right.” I threw a city guide over the seat and listened to pages rattle as she shuffled through them. A couple minutes later she said, “Okay, we’re going to Aurora.”

“You sure? That ain’t such a good neighborhood, lady.”

“I’m sure. I’m trying to find somebody who’s in trouble.”

I lifted my eyebrows at her in the mirror. “Good place to start.”

She scowled at me. I smiled back, my best patented seen-it-all smile that told pretty young things not to mess with me, and instead of messing, she asked if I
had a cigarette. I shook my head. “Those things’ll kill you, sweetheart. My wife died of emphysema on our forty-eighth wedding anniversary. You want a smoke, kid, find it somewhere else.”

She looked embarrassed, but didn’t have the smarts to quit while she was ahead. She muttered, “I’m not a kid,” and I eyed her in the mirror again.

“You’re twenty-six, doll. From where I’m sittin’ anybody less than fifty is a kid.”

Her jaw dropped. “Nobody ever guesses my age right.”

“It’s a gift. I can tell how old people are.”

“Some gift.”

“Gets me good tips, especially with women in their forties. I give ‘em a big story ’bout how I always get ages right, and then I lie. Works like a charm.”

“You guessed my age right.”

“No point in lying. I never met anybody who didn’t want to be in their twenties. Look, why’re you headin’ to Aurora, doll? Nothing there but trouble, and you don’t look like the type.”

“I told you.” She put her head against the window. “Somebody’s in trouble. I saw her from the plane.”

That made my life a lot more interesting. I put my arm over the passenger seatback and twisted to stare at the fare. “You’re trying to save somebody you saw from an airplane? What the hell, you got some kinda hero complex? How the hell’re you gonna find one dame you saw from the air?”

“It’s basic math, for God’s sake. I got the approximate height and speed we were traveling from the pilot, so figuring out the distance wasn’t that hard, and I saw a modern church on a street with only one amber streetlight. If I can find it before the lights go out–”

“Then you’ll be the first one on a murder scene.” My day was gettin’ a lot more interesting. The guys back at dispatch would love this one. I was gonna get free coffee for a week off this story. Couldn’t let her know I was lookin’ forward to whatever came next, though, and it was only God’s own truth when I said, “You’re nuts, lady, and desperate for thrills.”

She snapped, “Like it could possibly be any of your business,” which was true enough, but I never met a cabbie who didn’t think everything his fares did was his business.

“Relax, sweetheart. A pretty girl like you oughta be on her way home to her sweetie, not–”

“I don’t have one.”

“With your personality, I can’t figure why not.”

The fare put her face in her hands. “Haven’t you ever just really felt like you had to do something?”

“Yeah, sure. I really felt like I had to marry my old lady when she got knocked up.” It wasn’t true, but the fare had gotten in my cab, not the other way around. She got whatever story I felt like tellin’ today. That was the beauty of driving fares. Them, me, we were all different every time. “I never felt like I had to go chasing broads I saw from airplanes, though. I got troubles of my own.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ve got enough that I need somebody else’s to make the load seem lighter.”

I grunted, surprised. Usually kids in their twenties were way too young to realize that helpin’ somebody else eased their own burdens. I warmed up to the fare even if she was rude, and nodded at the rear-view mirror. “Arright, lady. Let’s go find your corpse.”

I got the fare to Aurora in record time, even if I had to say so myself, which I did, because she didn’t even say thanks, just looked out the window and said, “Streetlights are still on. We’re in time,” as I pulled into a gas station. She gave me an unfriendly look in the mirror. “I’m not paying your gas bill, buddy.”

“Aurora’s a big neighborhood, doll. Maybe somebody knows where your church is.”

Her eyebrows went up. “I thought men couldn’t ask for directions.”

“I ain’t askin’,” I said with aplomb. “You are.”

She got a kind of “well don’t that beat all” look on her face, and went to get directions from the skinny kid in the station. She even pulled cash out of her wallet and waved it at him, just like in the movies. If she didn’t leave herself enough to cover the fare, I guessed I knew where to come back to get it from. A minute later she came out looking triumphant and said “East three blocks, and if that’s not it, he says there’s another A-frame church about half a mile southwest of here. Hurry, it’s getting light out.”

I’d never met a dame as macabre as this one. “What, you want to get your hands in the blood while it’s still warm? You need help, lady.”

“For God’s sake, do you call everybody ‘lady’ and ‘doll’? My name’s Joanne, and you’re the one hung up on corpses. I’m hoping she’s still alive.”

“Yeah? You an optimist or just dumb?”

The fare–Joanne–fumbled putting the seatbelt on. All the sassiness went out of her and she turned her face away like a little girl. “You have no right to call me dumb.”

She was right. My wife woulda been ashamed of me. “Hey, look, lady. Joanne. You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“Yeah, whatever. Just drive.”

I shut up and drove. Took about two minutes to head east, but when we turned down the street the kid had directed us to, its streetlights were already out. Joanne whispered, “Fuck,” and me, still feelin’ like a jackass, offered, “That one’s still on.” Just one light, ugly and orange against the sky.

Joanne stared at as we went by, then flung herself around in the seat. “Oh my God, that’s it! Holy shit, that’s it, there’s the church! Stop! Stop the car!”

A guy as old as me shouldn’t get his heart rate up with excitement like that, but for a second I was just as pleased as she was. I hit the brakes, slamming her around in the back seat a little, then backed us into an empty church parking lot. “Maybe you’re not dumb, doll. Maybe you’re lucky.”

“Yeah, well, God watches over fools and little children, right?” She tumbled out of the cab and me, I put the parking brake on and charged after her. She slowed down and looked back at me. “What, you’re coming?”

“You just made me drive from Hell to breakfast, sweetheart. I’m not missin’ the grand finale. Besides, I never seen a fresh murdered corpse before.”

She muttered, “Have you seen stale ones?” then gave me a look like she was really seeing me for the first time. I was taller than her, not by much, which was sayin’ something, as I’m six-foot-two. She got done looking me over and said, “You look like a linebacker.”

Now there was a compliment to turn an old man’s head. I waved it off, tryin’ not to feel too pleased. “College ball, back before it turned into a media fest. It’s all about money and glory now.”

“It didn’t used to be?

“Nah.” I gave her my best grin. “Used ta be about glory and girls.”

She laughed, which was a whole lot better than the tight face and almost-cryin’ from a minute ago. Feelin’ better about myself, I headed for the church–big A-framed thing, nothin’ like the one-room plain wood church I went to when I was a kid–but the fare took off down the parking lot. I bellowed, “Thought your dame was inside!”

“Well, I hope she is! I just want to make sure there’s no blood.”

“Blood?” I’d been teasin’ about a corpse, but I sure as hell didn’t really want to see one. I bet Joanne didn’t either, even if she was hell bent for leather tryin’ to find one.

“If the guy with the knife caught her–”

“What guy with a knife?” This was gettin’ a whole lot more serious than it had seemed five minutes ago. I followed the fare down the parking lot, where she was lookin’ over the cement. “You didn’t mention nobody with a knife.”

“Didn’t I? I said somebody was chasing the woman–”

“You said somebody was in trouble. You didn’t say nothin’ about a knife!”

“Oh. Well, there was a knife. A guy with a knife, and he was good, graceful with it, like he’d learned to use it on the street.”

She didn’t look crazy. She looked kinda like a supermodel, with the long legs and arms and a kinda big nose that made her interestin’ instead of gorgeous. I guessed nobody said supermodels couldn’t be nuts, though, and if she thought she’d seen all that, a woman and a guy after her and a knife, from a plane, then I figured she was nuts. “Lady, you better have 20/200 vision or somethin’.”

She stood up from surveillin’ the parking lot. “I wear contacts.”

“Yeah, well, get ‘em checked, ’cause you mighta seen a guy from a plane, but you missed the tooth fairy’s visit.” I stomped past her to prod a bloody tooth another fifteen feet away.

Joanne said “Ew,” which was pretty fastidious for a dame lookin’ for a corpse. She came past me, looked over the ground, and pointed. “Somebody got cut, too. There’s spatter like blood off a knife.”

“From your dame in the church.”

“Maybe. I hope not.”

“Lady, if your broad’s in the church, what’re we doin’ lookin’ around out here?”

She wrinkled her nose, and kinda hopefully said “The light’s better over here?”

I couldn’t help but grin. “That joke was old an’ dumb when I was a kid, doll.” I threw her a quarter and we both went into the church.

It was worse inside than out. There was nothin’ homey about the place, nothin’ welcoming. Christ on the cross hung up there like an accusation above a plain white pulpit and an altar that looked big enough to sacrifice a bull on. Joanne tip-toed like she was afraid to make any sound on the hardwood floors. Me, I wasn’t so fussy. A house of God had to be either older than me or have some heart to get respect. I stomped along behind her, makin’ extra sure be noisy and off-set her quiet.

There wasn’t a soul in the place besides the two of us, though, which didn’t seem too positive for the broad she’d seen. She caught my eye, and, lookin’ none-too-happy about it, said, “I don’t know. I thought she’d be here. Hello? Hello?”

Turned out the church had one thing going for it: great acoustics. Joanne’s voice bounced to the rafters and rang around up there. She looked up like she could see the words themselves. “Wow. I’d love to sing in here.”

“You sing?” Dunno why it surprised me. She just didn’t seem like the singing type, not with the crazy gotta-save-the-girl thing she had going on.

She shrugged. “I don’t scare the horses.”

The way she said it made me think she probably had a great set of pipes and didn’t like admittin’ she was proud of it. People were funny like that. No skin off my nose either way. I took a look under the pews. “Yeah, well,maybe you can sing yourself up a dame, ’cause there’s nobody here, Jo.”

Her spine stiffened like somebody’d pushed an iron rod up it. “Nobody calls me that but my dad.”

“Yeah? What, did he want a boy?”

“Not exactly.”

Compared to that, the scarin’ the horses tone of voice had been just beggin’ me to ask questions. I leaned on a pew, looking her over. Poor kid was all but bristling, waiting for me to push it a little too far. I was a nosy old bastard, but not dumb. “So what do they call you?”

“Joanne. Or Joanie. Sometimes people call me Annie, but not very often.”

My back reminded me I was an old man. I straightened up, rubbing the middle, and shook my head. “Not Annie. My wife was named Annie. You don’t look like one.”

She relaxed a little. “What’d your wife look like?”

“’bout four eleven, blonde, brown eyes. Petite. You gotta be at least a foot taller than she was.”

“Yeah. So call me Jo, I guess, if you want.”

We ain’t gonna be bosom buddies, the undertone said, and I figured she was right. Didn’t matter what I called her. But if I was givin’ her nicknames she didn’t like, she probably oughta know my name, at least. I stuck out a hand. “Gary Muldoon.”

She glanced at me, then shook my hand. “Yeah, I know. Your license said so. I mean, it said Garrison, but I never met anybody who went by that.”

“Me neither. I think my ma saddled me with it ’cause she hoped I’d be President.”

Joanne grinned. “President Garrison Matthew Muldoon. Sounds pretty good to me. Except, no offense, but they don’t elect guys as old as you anymore.”

“And when they did I wasn’t this old yet.”

Her mouth twitched like a laugh was tryin’ ta get out. “You realize that makes almost no sense.”

I leaned against a pew, arms folded smugly over my chest. “You understood.”

The laugh almost got out. “So I did.”

“Arright then. Look, lady, either there’s nobody here or you gotta do your thing and find your dame.”

“My thing?”

“You got some kinda thing goin’ on here. Normal people don’t stick their heads out plane windows and see somebody needing rescuing, so do your thing and find her. My meter’s still runnin’.”

“Oh, great. I hope you take credit cards.” She walked all the way to the front of the church and around the pulpit. “Shit.”

I jolted off my pew and long-legged it up the aisle. “What? She dead?”

“No.” Joanne slumped against the pulpit. “There’s nobody here. I really thought she would be.”

“Hah. I won’t ask for a tip, just for the satisfaction of bein’ right.”

“Gee, thanks.” She shoved off the pulpit and stomped circles around the altar, then leaned on it. “Shit. I really thought she’d be here. Churches are supposed to be sanctuary, or something, you know?”

“About a million centuries ago.”

She gave me a dirty look. “Like when you were a kid, you mean.” She thumped the altar in emphasis.

It slipped.

Joanne jumped off like the damned thing had bitten her. I grabbed the pulpit so I wouldn’t grab my chest like some wheezy old guy, and we both stared at the open crack where the lid had moved. “…do you believe in vampires, Gary?”

“God damn it, I was tryin’ real hard not to think that way.”

Her eyes were big as saucers. “Kind of fits, though, doesn’t it? Scary church with a crypt, the living dead ris–”

“The sun already rose,” I said firmly. “No vampires after dawn, right?”

“There’s no such thing as vampires.”

She sounded like she was trying to convince herself. She sure as hell wasn’t convincing me. “Well?” I demanded. “Are you gonna look in it?”

“Yeah.”

I waited a minute. She kept standin’ there. “When?”

“As soon as I get up the nerve.”

I edged her way and prodded her in the back. She inched forward, feet squeaking against the floor. Had to be wearin’ rubber-soled boots to make that sound. I looked down. She was, and they were providin’ plenty of resistance, so I gave her a little more shove.

She glared at me. “You’re a big strong man. Aren’t you supposed to be plunging into danger before me?”

“I’m forty-seven years older than you, lady, and you’re almost my height and in my weight class. And it’s your vampire.”

That put the kibosh on her goin’ anywhere. She turned back to me, all pink-cheeked with offense. “I am not in your weight class!”

Dames, I swear. “How much do you weigh?”

“Isn’t it rude to ask a woman how much she weighs?”

“Nah, it’s rude to ask how old she is, and I already know. G’wan, look in the coffin.”

“Oh. Damn.” She took a half-step toward it, mumbling, “I weigh one seventy two,” like if we talked about her weight she didn’t have to think about vampires.

“No kidding?”

“I’m almost six feet tall. What’d you expect, that I weighed a hundred and thirty? I’d be a stick figure.” She peeked in the coffin’s tiny gap, then shivered. “Give me a hand with this.”

I crept forward, muttering, “I outweigh you by about sixty pounds, doll,” ’cause it turned out she was right, talkin’ about weight was better than thinkin’ about vampires.

“That’s why you’re a linebacker and I’m not. Push on three. One two three!”

Forget linebackers and weight classes, the shove we provided coulda come from a superhero. The lid shot off the box and crashed to the hardwood floor with a bang that shook the rafters. Joanne lost her balance and fell into the damned crypt.

She landed on another crazy lady tryin’ ta get out.

I’m doing an Old Races short story project throughout 2011. This project will deliver 6 Old Races short stories to its patrons. This story of Janx, “Saint George & the Dragons,” is the second story in the project, and has now been delivered to the patrons who have thus far subscribed. I’m pleased to offer the rest of you a teaser for it.

Saint George & the Dragons

At the heart of the River Seine, a dragon. Spoiling waters, fed on sheep, but in thrall to maidens fair. Daughters, never wives; a treasure trove, until the daughter is the daughter of a king, and a kingdom is bereft.

A saint with sword and cross: a princess saved, and a dragon slain. He is Quirinus, he was Perseus, Marduk, Tahrun and Thor; and his dragons Cetus, Tiamat, Illuyankas and Jormungandr. He has slain dragons for a thousand years, and will slay them a thousand more.

#

“He is a menace!” Outrage, rumbling like thunder through caverns near a shore. Well enough, that: there was little thunder to be had in this land, and the roar of a dragon’s fury might at least be mistaken for heavy seas. Or they could be if the seas were heavy at all, but beyond the cavern mouth they lay serene and calm, cerulean skies reflecting on still waters.

“He is a mortal.” Insouciance, uncaring; even boredom. Not at all the desired emotions, when the question at hand is the survival of a species. But the water was very blue, a jewel in itself, and there should have been a way to claim it.

“He has murdered one of us!”

“It happens from time to time.” Hardly the right answer: new outrage rose from some twenty throats. Janx sighed and turned from the view. Mediterranean blue could neither be equaled nor captured, and the beasts at his back were losing patience. “For the third time, will you not take human form to hold this discussion? How do you think they find us, these dragonslayers? They listen for storms where the sea is calm, they follow stories to cities of gold, they come to where legend claims virgins are sacrificed to mighty wyrms, and there we are, awaiting them in all our ancient, vulnerable glory. Humanity’s guise may be distasteful, but it will also save your lives.”

He had made the argument countless times over countless years, and it had fallen on countless deaf ears. He, at least, took his own advice: lanky with red hair cropped close to his skull, and a beard too tidy and sharply pointed to meet the approval of Roman matrons. There were, after all, limits: he couldn’t bear the thought of his own fine features hidden behind one of the curly monstrosities worn by the wealthy. But details of fashion aside, with his skin warmed to gold by the sun’s caressing touch and jade eyes, Janx was by all immediate appearances human. His brethren knew better; they could sense his dragonly mass, shuffled to some unreachable spot until it was needed. That he chose to wear a human shape did nothing to undermine his presence.

But they, all of them, kept to their serpent forms. It had taken months to find caves large enough to hold them when they would not shift, and even so there was sinuous life to the walls as one dragon shifted and made minute way for another. They did not, as a whole, bear each other’s presences well; dragons were large, and largely solitary because of it.

Large and greedy, and all the more solitary for that. “Virginity,” Janx muttered, “is a stupid thing to treasure anyway. It doesn’t last, you know.”

The Old Races Short Story Project patronage window is now closed.

Please note, for those of you already trying to figure out where it fits into the continuity: it doesn’t. This is a world that wasn’t; essentially fan fiction by the authors themselves. Faith’s world and mine have a lot of similarities, but not enough to pretend even for a moment that they’re actually the same world. So while I hope the story will provide a great introduction to both characters, it doesn’t actually belong in either of our universes.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to find out who’s won the magnificent prizes being given away (details at the bottom of this post)! And now, enjoy!

We got a good six feet or so before I noticed the crowd was parting before us. Not that I blamed them. I would part before us too, because my newfound buddy looked like a badass, which gave automatic street cred to anybody hanging with her. Skinwalker. I hadn’t encountered that one before. I hadn’t encountered much with the kind of confidence she exuded, either. I’d fallen in beside her like we’d been practicing our whole lives. I wasn’t often enthusiastic about going to see what was causing obvious magical awfulness, but Ms. Tall Dark and Yellowrock looked so obviously prepared for anything, the whole idea sort of sounded like fun.

We got about six more feet before I saw the name of the bar we were passing by and let out an amused snort. “Vamp Mojo, huh? I kind of thought New Orleans would shy away from embracing the whole Anne Rice motif.”

Jane slid a look at me. Yellow-eyed look that sent creepies crawling down my spine. No wonder the guys back at my garage in Seattle had stopped talking to me once I went all magic and woo-woo. The golden gaze was just plain unnatural. I was relieved when she answered, because it gave me an excuse to stop meeting her eyes.

Well, it did for half a second anyway, because she said, “In my world it used to be dance club owned by a vampire. Now it’s a vampire bar.” She sniffed indelicately. “A blood bordello.”

I laughed. She didn’t. All the rich delicious smells in the air suddenly turned my stomach, and I swallowed bile. “There’s no such thing as vampires.”

This time Jane did laugh, but it wasn’t a particularly delightful sound. “I think I’d like to come from wherever you did. Vamps are at the top of the food chain, here. Literally.”

My feet lost their enthusiasm for heading toward the magical block party. Jane surged on a few steps ahead of me, only turning back when the crowd started closing in again. They didn’t matter; we could still see each other easily, what with the height advantage over two-thirds of the population. I swallowed. “There are really vampires here?”

Jane came back, planted herself in front of me, and nodded. The whole action was an emphatic statement. I, much less emphatic, pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay. Look, before we go rushing in where angels fear to tread, maybe we should try to get some tiny idea of what we could possibly be facing. I don’t have vampires,” I said. “Werewolves?”

“And werecats. Of the African variety. Lions in prides, Leopards in small groups, though they tend to be solitary hunters. Wolves. All predators. No were-gazelles or were-bovines. Witches. Shamans. You?”

My eyes bugged. I felt them. Another quarter inch and they’d pop right out of my head. “You’re joking. Werecats? Isn’t that, I don’t know, very teenage girl wish fulfillment?”

Jane grunted. The sound was weirdly cat-like, and I got the nervous feeling I probably should have shut up about fifteen words earlier. Instead, I rushed on, answering her question. “Witches, yeah. Shamans, obviously. Sorcerers. The occasional demon. Gods of various sizes.”

“Gods?”

I wet my lips. “I take it you don’t truck with them. That’s probably just as well. Probably that means whatever’s down there,” I said with a nod toward the frothing light of doom, “is coming from something that meets us in the middle. Witches. Shamans.” Except I didn’t have vampires, which probably meant we were already in over my head. I didn’t see the need to mention that just yet.

Jane jerked her head in a way that might have meant “Probably” or it might have meant “Stop wasting time, let’s get a move on.” The latter interpretation was buoyed by her turning on her heel and leading the way forward again. “Come on, Dorothy. Let’s see what Big Bad Uglies this world has to offer us.”

I let her take point again. This was her city more than mine, assuming it was anybody’s city at all, tonight. She did the head-jerk thing again, pointing left. “That used to be a jewelry store. Yesterday. And that was an art gallery, not a restaurant. Not my world, not anymore.”

Her words sent more creepies down my spine. Around us, partygoers, some in feathered masks, danced, screamed, showed their breasts in return for a twenty-five-cent strand of beads, drank, vomited on the sidewalks, and swayed into and out of danger of collision like zombies. I took a moment to make sure they weren’t zombies, and came away satisfied they were just stoned. The smell of marijuana was ripe on the air, and mixed with the other scents it was both heady and rank.

Not as rank, though, as a rotted-meat stench that didn’t so much waft as thunder down the street. I automatically held my breath, and somehow the smell got worse, burning my eyes with its power. I coughed, wiped my eyes, and glanced over peoples’ heads in search of the smell’s source.

Sadly, it wasn’t all that hard to find. Something taller than we were was coming up on our right, and I say something, not someone, because it had horns. I knew at least one guy with horns, and he was a someone, but this fellow also had gills. And scales. And a spreading hood, like velociraptors had. A demon velociraptor. Great. I’d gotten yanked into another world where vampires were real and demon velociraptors stalked the streets. Not just demon velociraptors, but demon velociraptors who hadn’t had a fashion update since the 1980s, because the thing’s flared hood was streaked in vibrant neon shades of red, green, blue, and yellow.

It saw us at the same time we saw it.

Don’t forget there’s a contest running all week! Comment either here on CEMurphy.Net or over on FaithHunter.Net and be eligible to win one of the following prizes:

- a complete set of the Walker Papers (Urban Shaman, Winter Moon, Thunderbird Falls, Coyote Dreams, Walking Dead, Demon Hunts, and Spirit Dances).

- a complete set of the Jane Yellowrock books (Skinwalker, BloodCross, and Mercy Blade {Raven Cursed will be out in January 2012, but it’s not part of the prize package!}).

- an electronic edition of the (tentatively entitled) EASY PICKINGS, a Jane Yellowrock/Joanne Walker crossover story, out sometime this summer!

(Holy cow this is fun!)

Please note, for those of you already trying to figure out where it fits into the continuity: it doesn’t. This is a world that wasn’t; essentially fan fiction by the authors themselves. Faith’s world and mine have a lot of similarities, but not enough to pretend even for a moment that they’re actually the same world. So while I hope the story will provide a great introduction to both characters, it doesn’t actually belong in either of our universes.

That said, please enjoy this excerpt from EASY PICKINGS!

There was something weird about crossing the city lines into New Orleans. Not just that the Big Easy was by anybody’s standards–in fiction, anyway–the center of all things supernatural in the States. It was bigger than that, a nasty jolt that wrenched everything a couple steps to the left. Even the city’s aura looked different from inside than it had from a few miles out, and I had absolutely no clue why.

The exciting thing about my life was that I’d probably find out.

For all my traveling around as a kid, I’d never gone through New Orleans. N’awlins, the way the natives said it. I loved that sound, like it was a word to be rolled around in and licked off the skin. So I did what any tourist would do upon arriving in the heartland of American Weird.

I hit the French Quarter.

Three days before Mardi Gras, the Quarter was hopping. It was probably the worst time of year to visit if I actually wanted to see New Orleans, but it was the best time if I wanted to throw myself eyeball-deep into beads, streamers, costumes, half-naked girls–Gary was going to deeply regret not having come along–parades, parties, obscene amounts of incredibly good food, and bourbon. I’d never actually tried bourbon and was kind of looking forward to it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t indulge right away, because the fish-hook sensation in my belly, the one that had been hauling me around ever since my shamanic powers had awakened, was getting tighter and more uncomfortable the deeper I got into the Quarter. I didn’t think my magic would give me an even break–let me heal up from a hangover, in other words–if I ignored it in favor of tying one on.

The city was a veritable teeming mass of humanity. Scent bombarded me from every direction: booze, perfume, pot, food, oh, God, the food, and the pervasive stink of sweat that no amount of deodorant or cologne was going to drown. Voices rose and fell in shrieks of laughter, joy, dismay; shouting was the only way to be heard, even if you were talking to the guy standing next to you. Everyone was beautiful in that flush-of-life way, though here in the heart of the city, so close to Mardi Gras, there were an unnatural number of genuinely beautiful people. They ran the color spectrum from rich blue-black all the way through to translucent white, with me thrown in on the whiter end, though when one of those really white girls stumbled into my arms, the skin tone comparison made me look rich and gold beside her. It was only back in Qualla Boundary, surrounded by others of Cherokee descent, that I felt stand-out pale. I pushed the girl to her feet and watched her trotter drunkenly away.

Maybe it was thinking about North Carolina and the life I’d left behind there that made me notice her. There were too many people to explain it otherwise, though the fish-hooks in my gut pulled so hard and sharp that they might’ve been an explanation on their own. It didn’t matter: she was half a block away and visible for about five seconds through a break in the crowd. She wore black leather damned near head to toe, all of it so snug against her body it had to be custom-made. Silver sparkled all over it, zippers and guns and blades and silver stakes in her hair like an Oriental fan of death. She looked hot, both literally and figuratively, and I thought the reason I’d glimpsed her at all was everybody else thought so too, and was backing up to get a better look at her.

She had to be at least my height, just a hair under six feet tall, even without the shit-stomping motorcycle boots she wore. And speaking of hair, if you took my crop cut and her four foot braid and divvied them out, we would both end up with what society considered a normal amount of hair for a woman. She was even built a lot like I was, rangy long limbs, though I thought I carried more muscle across the chest and shoulder from years of working on my car. Her skin tones were darker than mine, more pure Indian, but if somebody’d told me we were sisters, I’d have been inclined to believe them.

Particularly when she glanced my way and a flash of light caught the color of her amber eyes.

In my world, yellow eyes meant magic user. I should know: my own eyes were probably gold as sunrise just then, as the Sight kicked in to study one of the most complex, gorgeous auras I’d ever seen. Earthy colors tangled with something absolutely inhuman: dark, sleek, sentient and dangerous. A hunter, sharing body and soul with a human, and just ever so slightly bubbling with resentment over it.

I sure as hell knew what had brought me to New Orleans, now.

Don’t forget there’s a contest running all week! Comment either here on CEMurphy.Net or over on FaithHunter.Net and be eligible to win one of the following prizes:

- a complete set of the Walker Papers (Urban Shaman, Winter Moon, Thunderbird Falls, Coyote Dreams, Walking Dead, Demon Hunts, and Spirit Dances).

- a complete set of the Jane Yellowrock books (Skinwalker, BloodCross, and Mercy Blade {Raven Cursed will be out in January 2012, but it’s not part of the prize package!}).

- an electronic edition of the (tentatively entitled) EASY PICKINGS, a Jane Yellowrock/Joanne Walker crossover story, out sometime this summer!