Teeth, Long and Sharp: A Collection of Tales Sharp and Pointed Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD BY ILONA ANDREWS

  IVORIES

  NIGHT TIDE

  THE NOISE OF FUR

  VENETRIX

  THE VAMPIRES OF MULBERRY STREET

  VOICE OF THE KNIFE

  TEETH, LONG AND SHARP

  a collection of tales sharp and pointed

  Ivories

  © 2008 by Aria M. Jones

  Night Tide

  © 2016 by Grace Draven

  The Noise of Fur

  © 2016 by Jeffe Kennedy

  Venetrix

  © 2016 by Antioch Grey

  The Vampires of Mulberry Street

  © 2013 by Aria M. Jones

  Voice of the Knife

  © 2016 by Mel Sterling

  All rights reserved. No part of this anthology/book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher and authors, except where permitted by law.

  Teeth, Long and Sharp © 2016 by Grace Draven

  Teeth, Long and Sharp Cover Design © 2016 by Grace Draven and Isis Sousa

  TEETH, LONG AND SHARP

  a collection of tales sharp and pointed

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  by Ilona Andrews

  IVORIES

  by Aria M. Jones

  Eleanor resents the afternoons sacrificed to piano lessons and a disagreeable teacher who gloats over her failures and humiliations. Today, it’s Mrs. Lundemann’s turn for a sacrifice of a very different nature…

  NIGHT TIDE

  by Grace Draven

  Something hunts the surf at night, luring villagers to their deaths with a lullaby of sorrow and the torture of nightmares. Blessed with the gift of water-sight, Zigana Imre senses the presence of an ancient predator possessing a taste for human flesh sweetened by grief. With the help of a child of earth, she will battle a spawn of the sea to protect a loved one and save a man who will one day save a world.

  THE NOISE OF FUR

  by Jeffe Kennedy

  The first time, it came at night...

  In the forest, a Thing prowls, picking off the members of young Raven’s tribe. If they flee their home, they face starvation. If only Raven can answer the question of what kind of fur makes that noise.

  VENETRIX

  by Antioch Grey

  A merchant and a poet come to the City, seeking justice for the murder of a relative, and if justice cannot be found, they will have revenge. They collude with vampires, negotiate with mermaids, share ale and meat pies with gargoyles and navigate the prisons, waterways and court system of a city ruled by a Master possessing long life and even longer teeth.

  The City will make your fortune, or it will kill you, but it will always change you.

  THE VAMPIRES OF MULBERRY STREET

  by Aria M. Jones

  Living the simple life in small town Indiana, Mrs. H has everything she could ever want: a cozy house, peace and quiet, and a garden that is the envy of Mulberry Street. But when sinister outsiders disrupt the tranquility of her neighborhood, it might be time for her to come out of retirement and take up tools more deadly than pruning shears and a trowel.

  VOICE OF THE KNIFE

  by Mel Sterling

  Biologist Charles Napier doesn’t mind getting lost in a Florida swamp—it’s part of a scientist’s job. Logic and training will get him out safely. Except lurking in this swamp, there’s a monster Napier's science can't explain...a lonely, exquisite, desperate monster.

  FOREWORD

  We are all fascinated by things that lurk in the darkness, things that are dangerous and yet sometimes beautiful. They manage to capture our attention, ripping through the thin veil of civilization straight to some hidden primitive part of ourselves. We see the long sharp teeth and the fiery eyes, and we know we should run, yet somehow we can’t look away. That’s why I’m so excited to introduce to you the six stories in this anthology. They all give us that glimpse of the dark from the safety of the book page and they make us shiver, sometimes in the best possible way.

  I loved them and I hope you will enjoy them as well.

  Ilona Andrews, Author of the Innkeeper Chronicles

  On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast.

  But Dina is...different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself. Meant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight. Under the circumstances, "normal" is a bit of a stretch for Dina...

  For more information on the Innkeeper Chronicles, please visit Ilona Andrews’ website.

  IVORIES

  by Aria M. Jones

  Eleanor resents the afternoons sacrificed to piano lessons and a disagreeable teacher who gloats over her failures and humiliations. Today, it’s Mrs. Lundemann’s turn for a sacrifice of a very different nature…

  To everyone who’s ever had to spend their afternoons trapped in music lessons they didn’t ask for, and to my mother who said one day I’d thank her for making me learn the piano.

  IVORIES

  Eleven year old Eleanor bit her fingernails not out of nervousness, but necessity. There was a trick to it: you used your teeth like shears, snipping through the nail and following the curve from left to right. Done properly, it felt good, even better than removing a splinter or peeling off a ripened scab. As her mother’s car pulled out of the driveway, she spat out the ragged crescent into her palm and flicked it onto Mrs. Lundemann’s manicured lawn. Her piano teacher’s white and green house stood at the end of the block, with a pink crab apple tree out front. Clusters of yellow day-lilies grew by the front door, but all the windows had their curtains tightly drawn against the light.

  The September heat left the dark tangle of Eleanor’s hair damp and sweaty. She lifted it off the back of her neck and bit off another nail. The curtain in the front window twitched, then settled as if stilled by an invisible hand. Swinging the bag that contained her sheet music, she took the long way around the garage to the back door, past the bird feeders and painted wooden lumberjacks windmilling their arms in the afternoon sun. She walked slowly, stepping on each crack in the sidewalk, fingertips pressed hard against her lower lip.

  Her piano teacher always insisted upon short fingernails for all her students. If they were too long, Mrs. Lundemann required they be trimmed back to their proper length, right then and there as they sat at the piano. Eleanor dreaded this, a hushed performance punctuated by the staccato snick of a nail trimming flying off and burying itself in the blue shag carpet.

  “You cannot play with nails like that, dear—always clicking, clicking on the keyboard. What will your audience think?”

  The last remark was always delivered in a mocking trill, as though Mrs. Lundemann gloated over her pupil’s carelessness—one more black mark against Eleanor’s record, along with her creased and dog-eared sheet music. Just a few months ago, her teacher had brandished the clippers playfully and announced that she’d cut them herself if necessary. Eleanor barely repressed a shudder at the thought. Her teacher’s nails were always trimmed to the quick with no white showing. V
eins like milky blue creeper vines snaked along her wrists and up her arms. Her hands were slippery and hairless and strong, exercising a pincer grip on the back of her student’s neck. Eleanor did not like them touching her.

  In spite of all that, she had forgotten again. On the car ride from school, she’d begun on her left hand, gnawing furiously and hoping she would finish before the lesson started. Eleanor glanced down at her watch. She was five minutes late. Still chewing, she scattered the rest of the clippings in the petunia bed. The thumbnail went last, but in her haste she bit off too much. The flesh beneath was pink and tender, a sliver of red now unprotected. Eleanor scowled. It would hurt each time she hit the D key during the Bach prelude, and because it was Bach, she would need to hit it often.

  The house smelled like Mrs. Lundemann herself, of talcum powder laced with lilac. With the curtains closed—to prevent fading of the carpets, her teacher had explained—only a small lamp shed a weak pool of light over the piano. The relative darkness made the living room look cave-like and mysterious, and at the far end crouched the piano like a three-legged beast, lid agape and the pedals thrust forward like a single heavy arm.

  The kitchen rang with a hollow echo when Eleanor shut the door. By the entrance was a low counter with a chair and a squat little bookshelf full of children’s games and books. She hadn’t always been the first student of the afternoon; on some days while she waited for her turn, she’d paged through the yellowed copies of Garfield comics, ignoring the wooden tic-tac-toe set with its one missing black peg. Once, she’d opened the set of pick-up sticks and spilled them out over the cool formica counter, only to have Mrs. Lundemann scold her from the living room for making noise. Eleanor didn’t see the point of having games that weren’t meant to be played.

  “Come in, dear. Have you washed your hands?”

  Her teacher’s voice drifted from another room, disembodied in the quiet house. Eleanor let the faucet run for a full minute, soaping her hands twice and stretching on her tiptoes to reach the paper towels. When she walked back to the living room, her teacher was already seated beside the piano in her low-backed chair, legs crossed at the ankle.

  “Shall we start with the prelude?”

  Mrs. Lundemann had been a concert pianist in her day and still dressed the part. Her grey hair lay in even curls across her forehead, and around her neck she wore a pale green scarf with blue roses, fastened at the shoulder with a coral pin. Eleanor took her time adjusting the piano bench so that her feet rested flat upon the floor. She spread out her sheet music, moving as slowly as she dared.

  Mrs. Lundemann was not fooled. She picked up the long bamboo back scratcher she used to tap the back of her students’ wrists as a reminder to keep them straight, and a small smile played around her lips. “Begin.”

  After the warm-up scales, Eleanor’s playing went remarkably well. She liked this piece, and she liked how the notes danced up and down the length of the piano in rapid succession. Here came a rippling arpeggio, played hand over hand with graceful ornaments, there went a melodic third, golden and even in its harmony. The old piano sang, strings vibrating deep its in dark frame like the thrum of a beating heart. From the corner of her eye, she saw Mrs. Lundemann nod in approval. Eleanor even made it past the difficult bits she stumbled on last week. It seemed almost effortless, her fingers flowing over the black and white keys without conscious thought.

  Presto, prestissimo, molto vivace, she thought, liking the way the words rolled around her mouth like melted chocolate.

  The bamboo back scratcher descended upon Eleanor’s hand in a stinging rebuke. “Don’t speed up, dear. You must never rush Bach.”

  Forceful taps emphasized the last three words, and a wave of heat rose past Eleanor’s cheeks to the tips of her ears. She bit down hard on her lower lip.

  The bamboo back scratcher retreated. “From the beginning, please.”

  Mrs. Lundemann’s metronome sat atop the piano in a black, triangular case. She set its metal arm swinging, the clacking sound like the opening and closing of a tiny steel trap. Eleanor gritted her teeth and began again. This time the music lumbered along, chained to the metronome’s steady beat. That it kept perfect time she did not doubt—that was its job. But it didn’t feel right; the piano no longer sang. To her dismay, tinny notes skittered off into the ether or were swallowed by the ponderous left-hand harmony. Sometimes the metronome’s count forged crazily ahead, dragging the melody behind it. Other times it lagged, dogging her notes with a half-beat delay, all the vivace dissipated by its mathematical precision.

  Mrs. Lundemann called for many more stops and starts, occasionally leaning forward to demonstrate a difficult measure, her hand nimble as a crab. Her lilac perfume grew stifling in the closed room. The entire lesson crept by this way, the hall clock chiming each quarter hour with agonizing slowness. When only fifteen minutes remained, Mrs. Lundemann interrupted her own lecture about dynamics to fan herself.

  “My, it’s stuffy in here,” she remarked breathlessly, “Be a good girl and open the window. We’ll make an exception just this once.”

  Shoving back the piano bench with a squeak, Eleanor swept back the dull brocade curtains. The window latch was sticky and she struggled with it, wrenching it this way and that with both hands until it gave. Dusty shafts of sunlight flooded the living room. On the coffee table, Mrs. Lundemann’s collection of glass paperweights refracted the light, casting dozens of smeary rainbows on the walls and ceiling.

  Her teacher blinked against the glare of the afternoon sun. “There, isn’t that—”

  A gust of wind blew a stack of sheet music off the top of the piano and pages went flying. The metronome toppled over, pinning the swinging arm beneath it. Gears clicking and grinding, it twitched across the piano top like a dying insect before landing on the carpet with a muffled crunch. Mrs. Lundemann’s hand flew to her throat, her long face quivering above her ridiculous flowered scarf. Eleanor couldn’t hold back a giggle.

  “Don’t just sit there gawking, girl,” snapped her teacher, “Pick them up at once. The manners they teach children nowadays...”

  Mrs. Lundemann’s voice trailed off, and she sat with her hands folded tightly in her lap while Eleanor crawled beneath the piano to retrieve the runaway sheet music. It wasn’t hers. She didn’t recognize the piece at all, and the notes seemed so crowded onto the page that they leapt out like angry bees. Arpeggios in running sixteenth notes, the occasional sforzando marked out in dark ink. Across the top of one page was a bold scrawl quite unlike her teacher’s handwriting.

  Con spirito, it read, like an invocation.

  The paper was yellowed and brittle, and it crackled angrily when Mrs. Lundemann snatched it out of Eleanor’s hands. Eleanor looked up to find her teacher looming over her, mouth set in a thin line. The older woman’s bifocals had slipped down to the tip of her nose, and through them, her watery blue eyes looked enormous, narrowed with distaste. She nudged Eleanor’s hip hard with the tip of her sensible shoe.

  “Get up and don’t waste time. These,” she clutched the sheet music protectively to her bosom, “Are far beyond your abilities.” After a pause, her clipped tones softened grudgingly. “Perhaps when you are older.”

  There was an ever so slight emphasis on “perhaps”, as though Mrs. Lundemann couldn’t quite expunge the note of doubt from her voice. She seated herself and adjusted her scarf, patting the wispy fabric back into place. Eleanor crawled out from beneath the piano. She picked up where she’d left off, but the notes were hesitant, resonating from the piano in wobbly plinks and plonks. Mrs. Lundemann waved a dismissive hand.

  “That’s quite enough, dear. Your time is nearly up and I shall have to inform your mother that more practice is required if—child!”

  The last word rose a sharp octave, startling Eleanor so that the bench creaked when she jerked her hands away from the keyboard.

  Across three white keys was a small smear of crimson.

  Eleanor didn’t know how she’d miss
ed the paper cut. It was on her first finger, a neat red slit like a mouth nestled in the crease between one joint and the next. She flexed it experimentally. It hadn’t hurt before, when she didn’t know it was there. It hurt now.

  Mrs. Lundemann swabbed the keys with a tissue, short, angry puffs of breath whistling from between her pursed lips. “So unsanitary... for pity’s sake! Wash your hands before you make a mess everywhere. No, dear, use the bathroom. You’ll find band-aids in the lower right drawer.”

  The bathroom door stood slightly ajar, the light already on. Eleanor shut it behind her and clicked the lock for privacy. It was, she thought, the ugliest room in the house. The sink was shaped like a seashell with scalloped edges and gold-plated faucets, and the wallpaper was a repeating pattern of silver and turquoise ocean waves. A bar of scented soap sat in a pink porcelain dish, still wet with suds clinging to the edges.

  Eleanor twisted the cold water tap, then held her finger beneath the flowing stream until it felt numb and the water ran clear. She hadn’t expected such a fuss. The piano was old, to be sure. It had belonged to Mrs. Lundemann’s great-grandfather’s mother, smuggled out of their homeland before the war and shipped to America piece by piece. The ivory had taken on a yellowish sheen in places, and the wood was a rich brown with a fine, swirling grain. Eleanor supposed that the trees the piano had been carved from were older yet.