In the Blood by Nancy A. Collins Page B

horns grew from the creature's sloping forehead.
    The succubus hissed, her lipless mouth hinged like a piranha's. She stepped forward, growling a challenge to the mirror-eyed intruder that had dared steal her evening's repast.
    "Jamara!"
    The voice was as loud as thunder and so deep the speaker sounded as if he was at the bottom of a well. The succubus cringed, automatically turning her flank in submission.
    Palmer turned and saw the boy called Malfeis rise from his booth in the back. But now he was no longer a boy. The demon stood well over six feet tall, although the curvature of his spine made him stoop. The demon was covered in coarse, brick red hair, like that of an orangutan, except for his twin-pronged penis. His features were porcine, complete with curving boar's tusks. His feet were cloven.
    Malfeis shouldered Sonja and Palmer aside, jabbering in a language that consisted largely of squeals and grunts. He reached behind Jamara and grabbed the succubus's tail, twisting it viciously. Jamara yelped and tried to break free of the demon's grip. Mai propelled the protesting succubus out the door and onto the street. When Malfeis turned back around he was a skatepunk again.
    "I'm sorry about that. New girl. Actually, she's family. I promised one of my sisters I'd break her in, but I'm afraid it's just not working out."

    6
    Palmer shifted in his seat and tried to ride out the nicotine fit.
    The flight was under six hours and therefore, according to FAA regulations, smoke-free. Palmer could feel the pack of Shermans calling out to him from inside his breast pocket, nestled against his heart like the picture of a loved one.
    Sonja Blue sat beside him, mirrored shades in place, nonchalantly paging through an in-flight magazine. His companion was an up-to-date vampire-no crates packed with native earth for her. She believed in traveling first class.
    "We should arrive at the airport within the next two hours. Pangloss said he'd have his car there to meet us. I have no reason not to believe him," she said without looking up from an article on Fun-Filled Florida Family Vacations.
    Palmer nodded without saying anything. Personally, he considered Sonja's decision to meet with Pangloss something close to suicidal. At first he thought she'd used a devious form of mind control so he'd agree to come along, like she'd used on the security guards at the airport. The ones who'd demanded that she take the switchblade out of her pocket.

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    "What switchblade, officers?" she asked, holding up the ornately decorated knife.
    Her voice had been steady, without a tremor of fear.
    "We're terribly sorry, ma'am. Our mistake. Have a nice flight," the security guards said, in unison, doing everything but tugging their forelocks as they backed away.
    Palmer wanted to believe that his decision to become involved had been shaped by forces outside himself, that he had no say in what was happening around him, but that would be lying to himself. Like it or not, he needed her.
    Disgruntled by where his thoughts were taking him, Palmer glanced at the night sky on the other side of the window and immediately wished he hadn't.
    There were things sitting on the wing of the airplane.
    At first he mistook them for children, although he had no idea what kids would be doing clinging to the aluminum skin of a DC-10, fifty thousand feet in the air. Then one of the frail figures stood up, unfurling its batlike wings as it embraced the jet stream, and shot up and away.
    No, not children. At least not human ones.
    There were at least six of the grayish-white creatures crawling up and down the length of the wing, their arms twice as long as their bodies. Their skulls were long and bullet-shaped, the bodies devoid of hair. As Palmer watched the things scuttle along, bellies pressed against the plane's vibrating skin, one by one they surrendered themselves to the winds. He was