Author Archives: (Not actually a Lady) Ruthless

They got to Blood Keep by sundown, which was, as the rumours went, the only time that you could approach the barbed wire fencing without being shot at by the guards hiding grimly along the perimeter. Even then, people were sometimes turned away at the door for reasons only the Keepers knew. They had developedContinue reading “The Red Beginning Of The World”

It was the October of 1921 when I killed my father. I remember the rain, blowing sideways against the farmhouse like God was spitting on all of us foolish enough to be out there in so wretched a climate. I remember the horses screaming over the wind, and how sometimes the wind sounded so likeContinue reading “SWINE”

I shouldn’t have gone home that night.The party would have trailed on for at least another three hours; drinks were still flowing copiously, and as I attempted an Irish exit through the front door half a dozen hands caught me in an attempt to coax me back into their raucous company, all present red-faced withContinue reading “The Deep”

“You wanna hear how I know there’s something after you die?” I didn’t. It was the night after our best friend’s funeral. Anna Tavera. Car flipped on a wet road. Dead instantly, age twenty nine. That was the news report, and forever how I’ll remember it. The service was nice, but the wake was better,Continue reading “After The Wake”

The chrysalis hung as Thomas had left it, quiet and unmoving in the humid darkness of the basement. The room had been a wine cellar back when the farm was still up and running, and on warm days it still smelled thinly of fermented apples, the ghosts of enterprise past. Now the weather was turningContinue reading “THE LEPIDOPTERIST”

The day Laney discovered the ouija board in the attic was the first and last time she would ever play with it. It wasn’t even a board at all, precisely, merely a grid of letters chalked beneath a flap of loose carpet. A floating ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ sprung in an arch over the configuration, eachContinue reading “THE BOARD IN THE ATTIC”

winter was the nightI went to take my wife backfrom the witch snow broke its backunder my bootsas I trod outacross the wastelandunder the mountains with me I had my swordand whale-tooth knife and braided the hairwore down my back I blacked my eyeswith war paint fear was all I knewof the magicthat made baremyContinue reading “Witch Wife”

At first, I didn’t believe that it was her; it couldn’t have been, not the girl I’d seen drinking champagne on a balcony overlooking the sea, her dark hair running through the sky like a crack in sea glass, smelling of cinnamon and salted breeze. Not the girl that had held me with hands softContinue reading “Giada”

My Sire had once made me the promise that She would never take a second human lover, that She would have no contact with those She drank from beyond their sustaining Her unlife. But, in time, it seemed that vow did not exist to Her, nor had it ever; it was a misremembering on myContinue reading “Blood Oath”

Elsdeth heard of the iron champion long before he arrived in the kingdom, his reputation a bard’s song on the wind. He had many names—the Black Giant, the Forged Knight, Scourge of Warriors, Wolf Lord–but the Armoured Death was what most folk called him, and as Elsdeth knew him thenceforth, until she learned of hisContinue reading “The Armoured Death and The Dragon Obsidian I: Parting As Friends”