Tor.com Short Fiction January–February 2021 by Richard Kadrey

Eleanor, tonight’s undead dream date, is a good example. They all think they’re Tony Montana with a lightsaber in one hand and a chain saw in the other. The young ones have all grown up watching Slayer videos, Scarface, Halloween, and about a million hours of Japanese anime. All they want is to die quietly and with a little dignity. What I like best about old bloodsuckers is that when you’ve got one cornered and it knows it’s coffin fodder, they’re like noble cancer patients in TV movies. They come off like corporate middle management or the guy who runs the corner bodega. When they’re not hunting, they’re boring, at least to outsiders. The smart ones mostly stick to the El Hombre Invisible tricks that urban monsters have worked out over centuries. A hundred and fifty, two hundred years old, they’re beautiful. A pretty blond cheerleader type with big eyes and the kind of smile that got Troy burned to the ground. In the Xeroxed passport photo Marshal Wells gave me, she looks like she’s about seventeen. It isn’t fun work, but it pays the bills. Right now, though, I’m hunting one that’s trying for a Nobel Prize in getting completely up my ass. Since most of them started out as civilians, the percentage of decent vampires to complete bastards is about the same as regular people. They’re just another kind of addict in a city of addicts. Personally, I don’t have anything against shroud eaters. That’s about how much fun it is hunting a vampire.

IMAGINE SHOVING A cattle prod up a rhino’s ass, shouting “April fool!”, and hoping the rhino thinks it’s funny.

Tor.com Short Fiction January–February 2021 by Richard Kadrey