When the Villian Comes Home Read online

  WHEN THE VILLAIN

  COMES HOME

  Edited by

  Gabrielle Harbowy and Ed Greenwood

  Copyright

  When the Villain Comes Home

  Copyright © 2012 Dragon Moon Press with the authors holding copyright to their individual stories:

  “Pinktastic and the End of the World” © 2012 by A. Camille Renwick, “Hunger of the Blood Reaver” © 2012 by Erik Scott de Bie, “Villainelle” © 2012 by Chaz Brenchley, “Oranges, Lemons, and Thou Beside Me” © 2005 by Eugie Foster. Originally published in Apex Digest, #4, 2005, “Prometheus Found” © 2012 by David Sakmyster, “Happily Ever After” © 2012 by Marie Bilodeau, “The Little Things” © 2012 by Richard Lee Byers, “Heels” © 2012 by K.D. McEntire, “The Sunshine Baron” © 2012 by Peadar Ó Guilín, “Daddy’s Little Girl” © 2007 by Jim C. Hines. Originally published in If I Were an Evil Overlord, “Than to Serve in Heaven” © 2012 by Ari Marmell, “The Bleach” © 2012 by Karin Lowachee, “The Woman Who Shattered the Moon” © 2012 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr., “Charity” © 2012 by Julie E. Czerneda, “Maddening Science” © 2012 by J.M. Frey, “Birthright” © 2012 by Clint Talbert, “Broken Clouds” © 2012 by Rachel Swirsky, “The Miscible Imp” © 2012 by Tony Pi, “Manmade” © 2012 by Leah Petersen, “Lord of the Southern Sky” © 2012 by J.P. Moore, “Back in the Day” © 2012 by Ryan T. McFadden, “Robin Redbreast” © 2012 by Todd McCaffrey, “Cycle of Revenge” © 2012 by Erik Buchanan, “The Presuil’s Call” © 2012 by Gregory A. Wilson, “The Man With Looking-Glass Eyes” © 2012 by Rosemary Jones, “Starkeep” © 2012 by Gabrielle Harbowy, “A Lot of Sly Work Ahead” © 2012 by Ed Greenwood, “Heir Apparent” © 2012 by Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon, “Home Again, Home Again” © 2012 by Chris A. Jackson, “The Best Laid Plans” © 2012 by Steve Bornstein

  Cover Art © 2011 by Scott Purdy www.scottpurdy.net

  All rights reserved. Reproduction or utilization of this work in any form, by any means now known or hereinafter invented, including, but not limited to, xerography, photocopying and recording, and in any known storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without permission from the copyright holder.

  ISBN 13 978-1-897492-49-9

  Printed and bound in the United States

  www.dragonmoonpress.com

  Also edited by Gabrielle Harbowy and Ed Greenwood

  WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME (2011)

  Editors’ Note

  Once a villain, always a villain...truly?

  You can never go home again...or can you?

  Every life is filled with all too many questions, and all too few answers.

  This book holds some answers about villainy. As a shiftier character once remarked, in a scene wherein he was backed into a corner and pressed for the truth: “Don’t like that answer? Pick another—I’ve plenty on offer!”

  There are plenty here, in stories that are wildly different from each other.

  In the end, it all comes down to intent: A hero can be born from a single deed, but villainy—true villainy—is born of intent.

  The heroes in our first anthology, When the Hero Comes Home, were shaped by a great range of heroic deeds, and their stories explored how that heroism changed them; how it changed their ability to return to a quieter life. They were shaped by their circumstances.

  The villains in these pages have shaped their own destinies.

  Villainy takes many forms. The reluctant villain, who takes up a mantle out of obligation or necessity; the team player; the mastermind; the everyday person who has resources and a grudge; the person so intent on an agenda that they don’t even notice the many lives they ruin on the way to their goal. The person who simply happens to have ended up on the side—of a war, or border, or social issue, or argument—that isn’t yours. The madman, or the embittered person who sees their own doom and doesn’t want to go down alone while hated others flourish.

  Here we explore the diversity of villainy, and also revisit the many forms of homecoming. Returning from extended travels; the long trip back to the places of our childhood; the more spiritual homecoming that is finding rightness and belonging; and the simpler retreat to comfort and safety at the end of the day. In the following pages, you’ll find all of these.

  Some you may find familiar, or unsettling. Some, we hope, will strike you as intriguing, or entertaining. Some may even offer you comfort.

  We ride into villainy, cloaks swirling. Coming along on the ride?

  Gabrielle Harbowy

  Ed Greenwood

  June, 2012

  PINKTASTIC AND THE END OF THE WORLD

  Camille Alexa

  Gretchen waited while the random old guy locked the community garden gate and packed his hoe and spades into the trunk of his car, pressing herself against the chain-link fence near the riotous green tangle standing vivid and lush beside the neighboring plots’ scraggly broccolini and limp arugula. The car growled to life, backfiring once, sending Gretchen hunching lower into the shrubbery. If she’d paid attention to exactly which of the dozens of long narrow plots had been that old dude’s she could’ve sent a little zap in there, wiped out some snap peas or something for making her wait an hour for him to leave, maybe flooded a couple rows of his strawberries, washed them all into the gutter.

  But it wasn’t worth it. Wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught. Wasn’t worth missing her chance to water Pinktastic’s tomatoes.

  The old guy and his jalopy’s rumble faded into the evening quiet. Gretchen stood, brushed leaves off her rear and shot a cursory glance up and down the darkening street. Lights were winking on in houses along the lane, warm gold squares behind which, Gretchen imagined, people were probably sliding steaming dishes onto polished wood tables covered with shiny silverware and surrounded by smiling family or friends or spouses and whatnot. Whatever.

  Wedging her boot in the fence, Gretchen hauled one leg up over the spiky top. Stupid city bureaucracy, to put some dinky little barrier around a place if they didn’t want people to climb right over it. Fence like this practically begged to be climbed. Who wanted a few lousy old turnips and raspberries and squash anyway? Who even ate turnips on purpose?

  Well, Pinktastic apparently did, or at least sold them at her organic vegetable stand at the market. Gretchen heaved her other leg over the fence and dropped onto the rich soil. The sky was clear, starting to dot with pinprick stars, the air crisper than it had been in weeks. Gretchen breathed deep, letting the humidity, the slight salinity, the ions in the air tingle through her body. Nobody else would be able to practically taste the cool front rolling in, though there might be a couple other weather Supers along the coast. Apparently some joker in Cleveland could draw down lightning nearly as well as she could, but only if it was already occurring naturally.

  Whatever. Any idiot with a little zing in his fingers and a goddamn cape could call himself Thunderpunk and whip up a freaking light show. Let him try to get the exact balance in moisture and temperature and sunlight for a two-hundred square foot garden plot for an entire summer—a whole freaking summer!—and see how well he did then. That stuff took finesse, yo.

  5

  Saturday market. Stalls crammed with shoppers and lookie-Lous, yupster couples with stroller tanks, suburban indie kids sporting dreadlocks and tattoos loading up on free samples of kombucha and vegan baked goods. Gretchen crouched between a Victorian baby carriage and an enormous wrought iron bird cage, trying to get a clear line of sight to the other end of the market where Pinktastic’s vegetable stall shone with rainbowed greenery plumpness. Pinktastic herself was radiant, all apple cheeks and rose-tinted
hair and smiles for everyone. Gretchen couldn’t quite make out details from her lurking spot, but she’d come so often to watch the girl from afar she could picture the whiteness of her teeth as she smiled, practically smell her honey shampoo.

  “Destructova! Haven’t seen you in, like, forever!”

  Gretchen cringed, scanning the aisles past the rack of vintage aprons and the shelf of scuffed antique cowboy boots to see if anybody had heard. Smash Chick clapped her shoulder and Gretchen reluctantly turned. “It’s Gretchen,” she said, keeping her voice down, hoping the other girl would get the hint. “Destructova’s lying low at the moment.”

  Smash Chick nodded slowly. “Oh yeah...you guys disbanded after that whole public transit fiasco. Wow. Epic fail there, huh?” She laughed, a big crunching sound that made Gretchen cringe again. “Whose brilliant idea was it for the Dastards to destroy every bus in town? Got yourselves on the feds’ domestic terrorist list for that one, eh?”

  Stupid Franco. That bus thing had been his idea; his dad held the Metro fleet contract with the city. But Gretchen only shrugged, shoving aside a moulting feather boa tickling her where it dangled from a rickety hat stand. “Seemed like an okay idea at the time,” she said. “Seemed like something to do.”

  With a sympathetic moue, Smash Chick patted her shoulder, her hand the size of Gretchen’s skull. “And I was sorry to hear about you and Powerpunch—”

  “Franco.”

  “Yeah, Franco. You guys were a cute couple. And he’s gorgeous! His unauthorized headshots sell like hotcakes at my friend Loki’s stall.” She waved vaguely in the same direction as Pinktastic’s vegetable stand. “I help Loki out sometimes. He’s kind of hard up since the Chromatic League shut down the Deadly Pranksters.”

  Gretchen nodded, distracted, half-turning so she could watch Pinktastic slide zucchinis into a customer’s bag. Huge shiny bright green zucchinis the size of baguettes, plump and flawless from Gretchen’s secret ministrations.

  Smash Chick gave up squinting across the market trying to figure out what Gretchen was looking at. “Well, whatever. You’re between gigs, and that’s cool, but when you’re ready to pick a new band, call me. I’ll put in a good word with the Hacktacious Seven. We’ve got some serious income potential.”

  “But if you took another member,” Gretchen murmured, still watching Pinktastic, “wouldn’t you be the Hacktacious Eight?”

  “Who cares? The band has, like, twelve already. Number manipulation is our racket, baby!”

  “Thanks, Smash,” Gretchen said, forcing her attention back to the other girl. “I appreciate the thought. Not sure hacking’s my thing, but I’ll keep you guys in mind.”

  Smash was pretty, in a hard, rough sort of way. Her forearms were solid as tree trunks, and she had these big grey eyes that kind of melted you if you looked at them for long. Not melted you like The Scorcherizer from the Dastards, where your skin started sloughing off and your organs cooked on the inside, but melted you like you could tell she was way too nice for hardcore villain work. Seriously, the Hacktacious Seven? Not much street cred on the baddie circuit for a bunch of computer geeks siphoning a third of a cent per transaction off millions of ATMs around the world. International Super villains. Sheesh.

  Smash Chick smiled, kind of sad. “You action types, it’s in your blood, huh? Along with your powers. Like, my band built me this special keyboard for these big mitts...” she held up fists like two raw tofurkeys, “...and I was filled with this sense of rightness, you know? Like, I could do evil every day in my pajamas, from the comfort of my own apartment. The best of all possible worlds.” She let her hands drop in an almost-shrug. “Anyways, you have my number. See you around.”

  The big Super turned to squeeze from the cramped stall between two boxy sofas standing on their sides like giant button-tufted bookends, but Gretchen called out, “Hey, Smash.” The girl looked back, something like hope flaring in her big grey eyes. “Smash, don’t you ever...don’t you ever miss it? The hardcore action stuff you did before you got recruited by the Seven? Don’t you miss that rush when like, you’re all out there in the flesh, evaporating the city’s water supply, or mass kidnapping the entire season’s cast of Dancing With the Stars, or whatever? You got your gauntlets on, or your cape or your mask or your infrajet powerboots. And you know the Chromatic League is on their way to stop you, and your vision’s all blazing and your heart’s up in your throat and your blood feels like pumping lava and you know you and your band could crush anything, anything standing between you and your evil deed...”

  The hopeful glimmer had faded from Smash Chick’s face. She smiled again, that same sad little quirk to the lips. “Nah,” she said. “I’m no action junkie. I get the urge to smash something these days, I go out to the woods and find some dead tree stumps or a couple boulders. I love long-distance evil. Don’t miss all that blood-pumping stuff at all...guess I’m just not wired like you are.”

  Long after Smash Chick had disappeared past used furniture and rehabbed power tools and an acre of fresh fruit and mountains of gluten-free baked goods and vegetarian dog biscuits, Gretchen thought about what she’d said. She tried to picture not craving the excitement, the thrill of action when it was on, when things got dire and on fire and you had those incandescent moments of perfect glory between one live-or-die second and the next, when you felt more powerful than anything no matter whether you got defeated this time, or came out on top or barely escaped or made a million or lost your shirt. In those moments, everything was right even if it was all going wrong, and you wanted to laugh out loud at the incredible beauty of everything, because it was all beautiful: even your fellow villains with their unsavory appetites and unfortunate costume choices; even your victims, with their mewling cries for mercy or their impotent blustery threats or offers of cash to let them go. Even your nemesis, with her white, white teeth and her shiny pink hair that smelled of honey and green garden-y stuff, like flowers and clover.

  She thought about all these things, hunkered between the bird cage big enough to hold the Police Commissioner’s husband and the wheeled baby buggy straight out of Masterpiece Theatre, and watched Pinktastic gently place little green cardboard pints of strawberries and raspberries into her customers’ eco-friendly market bags. Pints of strawberries and raspberries Gretchen could practically taste on her tongue past market dust and the loose-feathery tickle of the old boa. Taste them from the hundred times she’d illicitly tasted them in Pinktastic’s garden, crouched in darkness between towering tomato vines as small gentle rainclouds formed directly overhead, obscured by twilight and silence.

  5

  The racetrack-wide aisles at the MegaHome Mart were packed. Gretchen shoved her cart along in front of her, cursing under her breath when the defective fourth wheel seized up and sent her careening into a stack of three-for-one sod squares where she collided with a dull thump. So many Supers in this city, the store might as well’ve made a sign in those hot orange bubble letters they liked so much: Backyard Secret Hideaway Camouflage at half the price!

  “Destructova. Haven’t seen you around much lately.”

  Gretchen blinked up from the floor where she wrestled with her cart’s wheel. Franco, of course. With The Succubus hanging on his arm like he was a million-dollar ransom victim.

  After a last wrap of her knuckles against the unyielding rubber as though that fixed the balky wheel, Gretchen stood. “Hi, Powerpunch. Didn’t think the MegaHome was your scene.” Franco preferred Super titles in public. Always said it was kowtowing to the Man to lurk around under civilian names.

  Franco peered off into the distance, looking cool; kind of a specialty of his. “Sale this big,” he said, “every Super in town’s snapping up bargain hideaway and lair stuff. Stupid recession.”

  The Succubus nodded, sending her trademark pigtails bobbing. “You’re so right, Powerpunch; I knew I’d bump into you here.”

  Sheesh. Only Su
ccubus would wear her Super suit to the flipping MegaHome. Shiny plaid skirt, skintight blazer with nothing underneath and straining at the buttons, glossy white knee-highs...she looked like a lifesized Catholic Schoolgirl Barbie dipped in vinyl.

  “Hi, Succubus. Kind of thought you and Franco had already bumped into each other. More than once, in fact,” Gretchen said. “Back when he and I were together.”

  “Hi, Destructova. Glad you’re still out here representing the forces of villainy in your own special way, dressed like a goth librarian. You sure you want her to join our new band, Powerpunch? She doesn’t exactly exude the right vibe.”

  Franco studied Gretchen. “She’s good in a fight,” he said.

  Watching him watch her, Gretchen remembered some of the good things about being with him. She remembered how she felt when he lifted her in his toned arms up into the sky with his Superflight, his trademark black split cape flapping around her like protective wings while she plunged her fists into clouds to send lightning down to crisp entire cornfields, to rattle the earth below with her terrible thunder and scorch it with her searing winds.

  Going solo was lonely. Even though the International Antivillainy Coalition had placed them on the watch list, Franco, Gretchen, Dan and Mike and Lisa and all the other ex-Dastards and their cohorts and minions; even though the Chromatic League was watching for any sign the Dastards might be reforming under a new name or in a new part of town; even though Pinktastic had taken the Hero Pledge along with the rest of her band at the Police Commissioner’s public ceremony last week: even though all that, Gretchen missed the real action. God, did she miss it.

  She took a deep breath. “Franco, maybe...”

  But she forgot what she was going to say. Straight ahead, about the length of three getaway cars and an unconscious sidekick, Pinktastic was standing in the checkout line. Her cart was full of painting junk: rollers, dropcloths, brushes, a small bank vault’s worth of paint cans—okay, maybe only a credit union vault’s-worth—piled in a neat pyramid, each with a rosy smear on the metal lid to show the color inside. And she was looking right at Gretchen. And she was smiling.