doctor who looked suspiciously like a hobbit.
“I now pronounce you man and wife!” called the Were friend who’d been the “minister” at the ceremony. He was as naked as Todd. He had his arms wrapped around the Amazonian Were woman, who was equally bereft of clothing. They seemed quite happy, but not as happy as Don and Taffy as they kissed each other.
The wedding was pronounced a great success. In fact, though it had been termed scandalous before it occurred, Taffy and Don’s wedding turned out to be the social event of the Rhodes summer season, in certain supernatural circles.
The disappearance of the Lucky Caterer’s entire staff was a nine-day wonder in Rhodes law enforcement circles. Luckily for the vampires and the Weres, owner Lucky Jones had kept the wedding off the books because she expected the humans would kill all the guests.
And it’s true that, as Dahlia had told Glenda, going through a war together breeds comradeship; less than a year later, the same Were minister was officiating at Todd and Dahlia’s nuptials.
The couple wisely opted to have a less formal wedding—in fact, a potluck. Dahlia had decided that, contrary to all social indicators, caterers were simply tacky.
NEEDLES
Elizabeth Bear
Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. When coupled with a childhood tendency to read the dictionary for fun, this led her inevitably to penury, intransigence, and the writing of speculative fiction. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Award winning author of more than twenty-five novels—the most recent is Karen Memory, from Tor—and almost a hundred short stories. Her dog lives in Massachusetts; her partner, writer Scott Lynch, lives in Wisconsin. (She spends a lot of time on planes.)
When Bear dabbles in the vampiric, you can always expect a fresh twist. Her collection of linked supernatural mystery stories, New Amsterdam (2007), and its sequel novellas The White City (2010) and Ad Eternum (2012) feature Don Sebastien de Ulloa, a thousand-year-old wampyr, in an alternative history/steampunkish setting. In her novel One-Eyed Jack, a pivotal character is a vampire named Tribute, who bears a striking resemblance to a certain long-lost icon of popular music. Bear’s short story “Needles” mixes standard vampire themes and Mesopotamian mythology for a darkly memorable story …
The vampires rolled into Needles about three hours before dawn on a Tuesday in April, when the nights still chilled between each scorching day. They sat as far apart from each other as they could get, jammed up against the doors of a ’67 Impala hardtop the color of dried blood, which made for acres of bench seat between them. Billy, immune to irony, rested his fingertips on the steering wheel, the other bad boy arm draped out the open window. Mahasti let her right hand trail in the slipstream behind a passenger mirror like a cherub’s stunted wing.
Mahasti had driven until the sun set. After that, she’d let Billy out of the trunk and they had burned highway all night south from Vegas through CalNevAri, over the California border until they passed from the Mojave Desert to the Mohave Valley. Somewhere in there the 95 blurred into cohabitation with Interstate 40 and then they found themselves cruising the Mother Road.
“Get your kicks,” Billy said, “on Route 66.”
Mahasti ignored him.
They had been able to smell the Colorado from miles out, the river and the broad green fields that wrapped the tiny desert town like a hippie skirt blown north by prevailing winds. Most of the agriculture clung along the Arizona side, the point of Nevada following the Colorado down until it ended in a chisel tip like a ninja sword pointed straight at the heart of Needles.
“Bad feng shui,” Billy said, trying again. “Nevada’s gonna stab California right in the balls.”
“More like right in the water supply,” Mahasti said, after a pause long enough to indicate that she’d thought about leaving him hanging but chosen, after due consideration, to take pity. Sometimes it was good to have somebody to kick around a little. She was mad at him, but he was still her partner.
She ran her left hand through her hair, finger-combing, but even at full arm’s stretch, fingertips brushing the windshield, she didn’t reach the end of the locks. “If they thought they could get away with it.”
She curled in the seat to glance over her shoulder, as if something might be following. But the highway behind them was as empty as the desert had been. “We should have