Inside Straight

Lilith rushed forward, but he turned to face her and drew the ceremonial dagger he wore in his leather belt. The hilt might be jewel encrusted, but the blade was all business, and a good deal longer than Lilith’s knife. They circled each other in the knife fighter’s hunched and forward-leaning stance.

“Who sent you?” His voice was rough, like an old crow. Once it had been liquid velvet and had enthralled thousands.

“The world.” Lilith shifted sideways as he made a quick lunge. She slapped aside his hand, and let her knife slide up his arm to cut the tendon above his elbow. The wound made it almost impossible for him to keep hold of the knife. Thundering kicks set the bedroom door to shivering.

“You can kill me, but you cannot destroy what I’ve built here.”

“You’re right. But we can own it.” She allowed a tinge of her accent to color her perfect Arabic. It had the desired result.

“Infidel! Crusader!” He lunged for her again.

“Don’t forget imperialist.” She kicked a small ottoman in front of him. It tangled between his feet, and he went crashing to the floor. She let him get to his knees then darted behind him, drove the knife into his chest, and tipped it upward searching for the tough muscle that was his heart. The steel found its mark. Blood, warm and sticky, poured across her hand, and its tangy, sweet scent filled the room.

The bedroom was off-limits to security cameras. She had to find some way to shift blame. Five for one. She remembered the old motto of the Black Dog and his joker terrorists. The Djinn had seen her eyes. Knew she was a wild card.

The door was almost down. “The Black Dog sends his greetings,” she shrieked in a high-pitched voice. For an instant the blows on the door stopped, then renewed with increased fervor.

Lilith picked up the Nur’s pistol, and teleported away. She needed four more victims. The final misdirection.

Daniel Abraham Jonathan Hive

2: Jonathan hive sells out!

Jonathan went over the release form again, flipping the paper back and forth. The time he’d spent trying to parse memos from Senate campaigns just didn’t help much when it came to these West Coast entertainment wonks. The whole point of the exercise, after all, was to get something he could write about. If the first thing he did on day one was sign away his rights, he might as well go fill out an application at Starbucks and be done.

He looked up and down the parking lot. Great silver buses and trucks filled the place, sound equipment and shoulder-mounted cameras making their way to the secular cathedral of Ebbets Field on the backs of scrungy-looking technicians. A folding table had been set up with a tarnished coffee service and a few boxes of donuts. Several of the other prospective contestants were milling around, trying to size each other up.

“Is there a question I can help you with?” the flunky asked through a practiced smile. She was early twenties, long-faced, and mean about the eye. Normal-looking people who lived in the beauty pits of Hollywood too long seemed to get that feral I’m-not-a-supermodel-but-I-might-kill-one look after a while.

“Oh,” Jonathan said, whipping out his own smile, “it’s just… I’m a journalist. I have this blog, and I don’t quite know what I can and can’t talk about there. If I did get on the show, I couldn’t really afford to take however many months just off.”

“Of course not,” the flunky said, nodding. “This is just the release for the tryouts. If you’re chosen for the show, there’s a whole other process.”

Which didn’t even sort of answer Jonathan’s question. He smiled wider. They’d just see which of them could nice the other to death.

“That’s great,” he said, shaking his head. “I just had one or two tiny questions about the wording on this one?”

“Sure,” the flunky said. “Anything I can help with. But it is the standard release.” Meaning move it, loser, I’ve got a hundred more like you to get through.

“I’ll make it quick. I really appreciate this,” Jonathan said. Meaning suck it up, jerk, I can stall you all day if I want to.

The flunky’s smile set like concrete. Jonathan killed half an hour niggling at details and posing hypothetical situations. It all came down to the same thing, though: If he wanted in, he’d sign. If he refused…well, the field was full of aces who were there for the express purpose of taking his place. He kept up the tennis match of cheerful falsehoods until the flunky’s smile started to chip at the edges, but in the end, he signed off.