Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

All of this was sparked by Anonymous, who the left the following comment on Bonnie’s blog entry about Monica Jackson:

I would make a suggestion to Candy that if she wants to avoid bringing AAR “catfights” onto her turf, she should stop eviscerating AAR posters, something that inevitably seems to result in a deluge of ass-kissing, sycophantic comments and rampant AAR bashing from the small but dedicated cadre of SB fangirls.

This was in response to my comment explaining why Sarah and I shut down the comments to this Smart Bitch rant when it started devolving into the age-old Monica Jackson vs. AAR feud, which, as I’ve told Monica, makes me want to weep tears of blood when it comes up. It’s a long-standing battle that shows no signs of letting up, and HOT DAMN I don’t want to be caught in the middle of it. Anonymous decided to move it from the realm of the very, very specific (Monica and AAR) to the very general (AAR catfights), a leap in logic that made me go “What the fuck?” But I’ll address this point a bit later.

Further on, Anonymous goes on to say (among other things):

I’ve got nothing to hide, Candy. But the next time you ridicule an AAR poster at your site, have the courage to post a link at AAR so your victim will know exactly what you and your followers say and have the opportunity to defend herself. Not to mention, I daresay, bring along with her those who share her viewpoint. (You’re not accustomed to dissenting opinions at SB, are you?)

OK, I guess I’ll address the points in reverse order, and we’ll see if my thoughts become more organized as I go. Forgive any repetition, because I did cover some of these points in Bonnie’s blog.

The AAR messageboards have very specific rules. Most of them concern what should be discussed on which messageboard, but there are also rules about posting links. None of the boards allow links to other websites that review romance novels--I thought one of the boards did, but I was wrong. Don’t believe me?

The Reviews Board, Reader to Reader board, At The Back Fence messageboard, Potpourri Messageboard all contain this sentence in the “What Posts Don’t Belong Here” section:

Posts including links to other romance review Web sites.

This would include Smart Bitches, no? I mean, I know we provide a lot random crap like rants (a.k.a. “What sand has gotten up Candy’s vagina this morning?"), mad libs and man-titty, but a decent chunk of our content is taken up by book reviews.

But even if the book reviews didn’t exist on this site, it would never have occured to me to provide links on the message boards to my three blog entries about specific posts on the AAR messageboards (please, PLEASE note: specific posts on AAR boards != AAR).

Why?

Because that’s not the way it freakin’ works. Do newspaper columnists notify politicians about upcoming editorials and opinion pieces disagreeing with their policies before publishing their articles? Do the people at Snarkywood or Go Fug Yourself notify celebrities before shredding them to a fare-thee-well? Did the Nielsen Haydens e-mail Vox Day when they ripped him a new one for being a stupid, sexist asshole? Shit, does anyone, anywhere on the Internet warn people they disagree with that hey, they’re about to do some disagreeing?

No. The only courtesy that needs to be extended when talking about opinions you disagree with is to provide links to the source of your disagreement. By doing so:

1. It allows the people who read your article to view the source material, complete and in context; and

2. In some cases, it allows the person being disagreed with to track down the discussion via their referrer logs. This latter point doesn’t apply for messageboards and forums, of course, since posters don’t have access to referrer logs unless they’re also admins.

If you put something out there on the Internet--or hell, in any sort of medium that can be publicly accessed--you can expect someone to comment on it. Sometimes you’ll be able to track the person down, and other times you won’t. C’est la vie. Frankly, I’m curious about what a host of closed-off sources are saying about Smart Bitches, because there’ve been days when we get a flurry of referrals from sites that aren’t available to the general public, but ultimately, it’s no big deal. Sarah and I put out our opinions (though of the two of us, I’m by far more scrappy, bitchy and just all-round ornery), and people will disagree. If they don’t want to be found out, that’s their bidness.

And now on to the second point: the “SBTB hates AAR” vibe I’ve been getting.

Again, I say, “What the hell?”

I linked to three very specific posts on the AAR messageboards. All three addressed issues that made me feel like ranting--the sand in my vagina, if you will. (Sorry for the mental picture this provides you. This is the risk you run when you read this website on any regular basis.)

If there’s any doubt about how I feel about AAR, here it is now, in black and white, forever and ever amen:

1. The reviews are an invaluable resource. When there’s a book I want to check out, I go to Amazon.com first to see if the title in question has that nifty “Look Inside!” feature so I can check out an excerpt on-line. If it doesn’t, I’ll give a quick look at the Amazon reviews, then head over to AAR to see if they’ve reviewed it.

2. Smart Bitches are not trying to compete with AAR. We are trying to fill a niche in the on-line romance community. To be honest, there weren’t any romance websites out there that said “cuntmonkey,” “queefweasel” or “buttpirate,” and Sarah and I set out to correct this tragic lack.

3. In no way do we think the AAR boards are full of wacky-ass religious fundamentalist kooks. Not even close. If anything, AAR seems to lean a bit left compared to other romance messageboards. I happened to link to ONE post from someone who made what was (in my opinion) a really retarded assertion about Smart Bitches. A few of our regular commenters think differently about the AAR = full of assholes issue, but their opinions are their own, not Sarah’s or mine.

4. Here’s my opinion of the AAR boards, quoted verbatim from a comment I made: “Actually, the AAR boards are the site of some of the most interesting discussions around. The only reason I don’t visit them is because I don’t have enough friggin’ hours in the day. The few posts I’ve linked to here are not necessarily representative of the usual content on the messageboards. Yeah, there are some kooks there, but that’s sort of the unavoidable consequence of having a public messageboard on a site as big and popular as AAR.” This was in response to Bam, who commented on how AAR seems kinda scary.

But in case that’s not clear, I’ll say it YET AGAIN: AAR boards in general, awesome and full o’ much good stuff. A few people on it? Their views, as expressed on the board, chapped my ass. I’m really sorry if the impression given has been a place of scary wildnerness, but really, it’s not. The people there are mostly polite and reasonable, but sometimes a few go off the deep end (like the person who compared Robin to a member of the KKK for enjoying and defending To Have and To Hold). This is an immutable law of the universe, to wit: Some people are assholes. Oh well.

What I don’t get is how me addressing a few specific AAR posts by very specific people becomes conflated into me attacking AAR messageboards, or AAR in general. Or even how my leeriness about the AAR/Monica Jackson brouhaha translates to “AAR catfights.”

This is, in fact, directly analogous to my post about people getting their panties twisted about Smart Bitches’ alleged anti-Christian slant. I was addressing specific posts made by specific people on a public messageboard. How this translates into disdain for AAR in general, or even all of the messageboards in particular, I have no fucking clue.

Well, OK, I did say this in the heat of the moment, while feeling really fucking pissed off at Anonymous: “...I couldn’t give a flying shit about most of the posters on the AAR messageboards, especially dumbasses who make sweeping statements that can’t be backed up adequately...”

OK, that? Was a stupid asshole statement. I apologize for said stupid asshole statement. Well, not for the not giving a flying shit about dumbasses who make sweeping statements, but that applies for all dumbasses, all the time, regardless of forum. Really, I don’t know a fraction of a fraction of the people who post on AAR regularly any more, so I don’t have any opinion on them, period. I do know that some SB regulars are also AAR messageboard regulars, like Sunita and Robin (everybody join in the refrain: When I grow up, I want to be like Robin!).

I just want to nip this weird SB-against-AAR pissing content in the bud RIGHT NOW. We think the AAR site as a whole rocks, and there’s no rivalry on our part. If this imaginary contest did exist, then AAR wins, hands down. If you’re a romance reader and have to pick only ONE romance-related site to visit regularly, I recommend AAR over Smart Bitches. Seriously.

So on to another point: the “deluge of ass-kissing, sycophantic comments and rampant AAR bashing from the small but dedicated cadre of SB fangirls.”

Was there really a deluge of AAR bashing? The statistician in me wants to know. In the blog entry about AAR that generated the most dialogue (the “We Hate Christ, Not Just Man-Titty!” post), here’s a breakdown of various topics covered by the 119 comments:

Comments that straight-up agreed with Sarah and me without bashing AAR: 27
Comments about (the Church of) Man-Titty: 15
Monty Python References (mostly to man-titty): 3
Negative comparisons of AAR to SB, or negative comments about AAR: 18
Defense of AAR, or comments about AAR without bashing: 9
Negative comments about specific posts or posters on the thread I linked to (NOTE: NOT AAR): 6
Hell, and which level various among us belong to, plus how we think we got there: 19
Flying Spaghetti Monsterism: 5
Monica vs. AAR: 15
Assorted miscellany (mostly related to assorted politicians and/or the nature of religion and religious fundamentalism and/or fangirl squealing over Doug): 36

Please note that many comments overlapped in terms of topic; for instance, Robin noted that she was likened to the KKK by an AAR poster, which counted towards “negative comments about AAR,” but then in the same comment she noted that many of the people there are awesome, which counted towards “Defense of AAR.” Some of the “Monica vs. AAR” posts counted towards AAR negative comments and defense of AAR, too.

From my tally, there were more posts that talked about which level of Hell we’re going to end up in than posts that bash AAR. Unfortunately, it did seem that the defense of AAR was outweighed 2 to 1 by AAR bashing--but people DID defend AAR. I was one of them. Did it twice, actually. And two of the people who made negative comments about AAR were people who had never commented on SB before, namely ADWOFF and Sunita, so I’m not sure how they qualify as fangirls. And Monica made about half of the negative comments about AAR, and she made those comments not necessarily because she’s a fangirl of SB, but because of the bad blood in the past between her and LLB/AAR.

So anyway: deluge? What freakin’ deluge?

But much as I hate to admit it, Anonymous had a point: the issue of dissent on Smart Bitches.

Personally, I think there’s a pretty healthy amount of dissent. Check out our Chick lit rant, Sarah’s F review of The Demon’s Daughter, our post about love triangles, or hell, even Sarah’s B+ review of Time Off For Good Behavior.

But I talked to other regular readers this weekend, and they agreed that yeah, there’s been a decrease in dissent on Smart Bitches. People who disagree just don’t speak up as often any more.

And that worries me. One of the aims of Smart Bitches was to provide an open avenue of discussion, and disagreement is welcome. Rampant idiocy WILL be poked at, of course, but it’s always so much more interesting (and enriching, and educational, and oh gag me now I sound like some kind of after-school special) when people have a lively, snarky but largely polite debate.

So to encourage dissent, we’re going to try a little experiment today: The comments to this post are open only to people who disagree with us. Today is your free pass. Vent all your bile here, or express your ladylike disagreement, and do it about anything. Think we doth protest too much? Think we look ugly? Hate the layout and color scheme? Disagree violently with our reviews or rants? Think we just suck in general? Go right ahead and have your say. No repercussions, and we won’t try to rebut any of the comments made, nor will we use them as fodder for future blog entires or rants. Any non-dissenting and assent-disguised-as-dissent comments will be deleted.

The ONLY condition is that the comments can’t be anonymous. I mean, hell, make up a fake name on the spot if you have to, but if you want to mouth off, have the balls to post it under a name. We want only a name; e-mail address and website are strictly optional.

Sarah and I are interested in what people think we’re doing wrong as well as what we’re doing right, and even if we think someone is tres, tres full of shit *waves to Anonymous*, they might very well have a point.

There are plenty of reasons why I should choke on the green-eyed monster over this book, too, and specifically want to snarl at the author. The first draft was a Nanowrimo book. People actually Finish and then PUBLISH their nanowrimo manuscripts? It’s enough to make me think, “Well, shit, I can do that.” Ha. In November of this year, G-d willing, I will have a newborn. Ain’t no novel writing going on in my house unless the world wants sleep-deprived Sarah between early-am feedings writing a screed about the completely insane thoughts in her head.

Lani Diane Rich’s first book, which won the RWA Best First Book RITA award, is a cleverly constructed novel that explores the process and ramifications of changing your life around entirely, and reconstructing it after finding yourself in misery with a life you don’t enjoy. Wanda, the heroine, lies in a coma in the first chapter after trying to punch a smarmy attorney in the head after he calls into question her integrity on the witness stand. Wanda, never one to have a thought and leave it unexpressed, awakes from her coma and finds another attorney has been sitting by her bedside, offering her the opportunity for litigation in response to the accident in the courtroom. She has had more than enough of lawyers and sends him on his way, even though he’s really freaking cute.

Wanda is a fabulously faceted character: she’s got at least six dimensions, and is what I call a Cilantro Person. People either love cilantro in their salsa and Mexican food, or think it tastes like soap. I’ve never met anyone who thought, “Meh. Cilantro.” I’m sure no one in the backstory of this novel ever met Wanda and thought little about her afterward.

Let me tell you how much I dig Wanda, and Rich’s writing style. It’s taut – not a word wasted in revealing Wanda through Wanda’s own first person observations. And she’s freaking funny, too. For example, Wanda ponders the possibility that a former classmate has found happiness as a stay at home mom with her children:

The possibility occurred to me, for a brief moment, that it might be actually attainable, this sense of purpose and fulfillment that Dr. Phil and Oprah keep talking about.

And then Bill O’Reilly came on, and I realized the whole world was a bottomless pit of crap, just like I’d always known.

From writing the dialogue of people who speak? In questions? By ending their sentences with question marks? to locating the plot in popular culture references that highlight how hard it is to embark on honest and difficult self-discovery when it’s the stylish thing to do, Rich’s writing is fun, savvy, and genuine, and I loved it like I love chocolate chip cookies.

If you read the Amazon reviews of this book, some people loved it, and some people found Wanda monstrously unlikable. I made the mistake of looking at the Amazon listing before I got into the book, and worried that I’d react to Wanda like I reacted to Seinfeld. I hated that show – they were all so unlikable! They were mean and petty and self-centered and stupid and yet they were the…heroes? What the damn hell? I spend most of my working day with 9 million largely unlikable people; why would I spend my leisure time with four more hateful butt-munches as well? So if Amazon reviewers, who I should know better than to listen to half the time, thought Wanda was a heroine that they couldn’t root for, would I feel the same?

Nope. She is not often nice, and it’s frustrating to see her repeatedly push away people who are trying to be kind to her, but once you understand the motivations driving that habit, you empathize with her and, in my case, cheer her on, particularly as she starts to rebuild her life.

Wanda leaves the hospital, returns to work only to find out she’s been fired from her job selling television advertising for really stupid ass reasons, and then receives more phone calls and threats from her abusive ex-husband. She sinks into a dramatic depression and resists any and all attempts of help from Walter, that cute attorney in her hospital room, until he realizes she’s in danger and has her move into his apartment for safety.

Rich constructs several clever and thought-provoking events to drive the plot, not the least of which is a newspaper ad that says, “Do Something Meaningful.” Wanda responds with an ad of her own, asking who the hell would say such a thing, but through the course of over-editing, Wanda ends up not with the answer to her question, but phone calls from random people telling her who they are. One of them, Elizabeth, becomes Wanda’s friend and guide as she navigates herself back into a life she wants instead of the life she finds herself in, and gives her the tools to constructing that new life.

As Wanda moves from task to task in that reconstruction, the reader gets to know a person who is very, very prickly on the outside, who the reader might want to smack upside the head for her obstinate rejection of all overtures of friendship and kindness, but who at the core is a good person trying to overturn a lot of injustice in her life. It’s almost like watching someone meander through a 12-step program, only instead of following a prescribed set of steps, Wanda has to pick the issues she most struggles with, and correct them. From finding a job to patching up relationships, Wanda goes on the attack to adjust a life that seems to have attacked her from all sides. Of course, part of that rebuilding is acknowledging her own responsibility in what happens to her, and recognizing the motivations that drove her there.

As with any book that deals with a character’s self-realization and personal growth, the difficulty comes in finding balance between the need for making changes to one’s attitude, and the realization that one’s attitude towards oneself might have been the only thing that needed changing in the first place. Wanda’s choices that led her to a life she didn’t like stemmed from a critical element of her attitude toward herself, and once she adjusted that, she learned to act differently. 

ARGH! Here Be Vague Spoilers:

My problem with the ending, and what prevented me from giving this book a solid A, was that her realization to restore the balance between “keep fixing me” and “I’m damn fine as-is” came out of nowhere, it seemed to me. Without giving away the ending, she never acknowledges that she realizes she was worth the many gestures of friendship all through the story, but at the end, in the final scene, pronounces herself a fool for pushing herself towards a goal of self-recreation when from the start was a good person as-is. She needed to adjust her attitude certainly, but to stand up suddenly and say “Oh, I was fine all along and I never realized it!” had a patina of afterschool special moralizing to it that seemed to come out of left field instead of developing from her growth and increased self awareness in the last few chapters of the book. After such a fight to get from misery to happiness, I didn’t expect Wanda to take that happiness so quickly and wrap it up in a nice bow to finish it off.

Two, unless I missed it, there’s a storyline left unfinished, where the reader doesn’t find out what happened to Elizabeth and her ex-husband. The ex hubby has the same problem as Wanda – he destroys his happiness because he doesn’t think he truly deserves any and is more content to fail than risk not succeeding as everyone expects he will. But while Wanda realizes correctly she is responsible solely for her own life, Rich leaves Elizabeth’s storyline unfinished in such a way that I didn’t feel invited to create my own ending so much as I thought, “Hey, wait a minute, what about…?”

Arrrgh! Here End the Vague Spoilers!

I’ve been asking myself since I finished this book if someone with a different attitude would find Wanda unredeemable. It is difficult to set the limit for a character who has to descend into a miserable situation and then climb back out, I would think, because some people would find the actions that led to that descent so distasteful that there’d be no redeeming her, while other readers may be able to relate to shooting oneself in the foot repeatedly before eventually learning better aim. I related to Wanda because I have done some seriously boneheaded things in my life based on a belief of self-worth that was completely incorrect, and I can appreciate how hard it is to change a fundamental value of one’s attitude.

So while the ending seemed neatly drawn together from very ragged seams at the very last moment, I truly wanted to see that happy ending. Especially because it is a difficult thing to take a cranky, ornery, and very unfiltered person and have them find happiness and embrace it without having that same happiness change their entire demeanor to pink throbbing hearts and fluffy bunnies. Wanda remains who she is, only better. Well done. 

Chapter 2

Of all the days to leave the sword at home...

Kahiro gripped the gun in his hands, bracing himself against the tremors shaking the floor, palms sweating a little. Demons hated sunlight, but it wasn’t fatal to them. They were capable of showing up at high noon if they had to. This one apparently hadn’t been too bothered at the thought of gaining a bit of a tan.

Picturing the geyser of blood that had erupted from Ramzi’s body, Kahiro fought the urge to hunch his neck protectively.

The deep rumbling abruptly stopped. A soughing sound replaced it, like a massive beast breathing. Hot wind stirred against Kahiro’s neck and cheek. He relaxed his muscles as much as he could and unfocused his gaze just slightly, all his senses alert, looking into the Middle Distance the way Andreas the Greek had taught him so many years ago.

The slight distortion he caught from the corner of his eye warned him. He dove for the floor, rolled onto his back and fired off a few shots, aiming for the faint ripple above him. A deep-throated roar tore through the air, the demon’s rage and pain a palpable pressure in the room. The ripple retreated.

Kahiro scrambled back on his feet, dizzy with a potent combination of adrenaline and relief. His silver hollowpoint bullets filled with holy water worked on some demons, but not all; he was glad that this particular demon was susceptible.

He noticed a large puddle of dark brown fluid on the floor. Seemed like he’d done more than nick it. Good. The more it bled, the more effort it would take for it to remain invisible.

He glanced around, trying to keep his gaze relaxed while fully opening the hidden eye, the one that allowed him to see things that would drive normal people insane.

There, to the left.

He took a few more shots at the faint, warped shape. Some of them hit their mark, judging by the enraged howl, but he tried too hard to focus on it. It completely disappeared from his field of vision.

He looked around, forcing his gaze to unfocus again. He couldn’t see anything, though the sound of its breathing filled the room. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. He had to fight the urge to hunch his neck again.

A slight ripple appeared right next to him. He jumped away, but not quite in time. Something invisible and extremely sharp made a long, shallow slice along his torso.

Instinct made him chop down his left arm down while chanting an incantation of power. Warmth tingled in his palms as a burst of energy surged up through the soles of his feet and down his arms, and his forearm made jarring contact with something hard and burning hot. With an audible crack, the demon’s limb broke. The pain in his own arm hit him at about the same time a violent blow to his side sent him flying through the air and slamming into a pile of boxes stacked against the wall.

Kahiro lay on the floor, surrounded by crumpled cardboard and limp from the after-effects of the incantation. He tried to catch his breath, praying he hadn’t broken any bones. By some miracle, he’d managed to hold on to his gun.

Across the store, the air shivered violently, distorting his view.

It was moving towards him: a massive, half-coherent shape. Baleful red eyes appeared and disappeared one moment, a hint of silvery scales the next. Suggestions of strangely-jointed limbs snapped in and out of view.  Its roaring was an unholy boom now, the vibrations shaking pottery, statues and fake papyrus scrolls off the shelves and onto the floor.

Forcing himself to scramble to his feet, Kahiro raised his gun and shot at the coalescing shape. It shifted and ducked, but its progress was steady. Blackish trickles of blood marked where Kahiro had hit it.

Then, for a brief second, its whole body manifested and came into clear focus. It towered about eight feet tall. Its heavy, jackal-like head had a mouth filled with rows of needle-sharp teeth. Its hide was covered in tough silver scales, and its hands were a nightmare forest of blades, though its right arm dangled uselessly by its side, a jagged piece of bone poking through the skin.

Kahiro took aim at its left eye and pulled the trigger.

And missed. Instead, the demon’s cheek and lower jaw exploded in a spray of blood, bone, flesh and gristle. The roaring abruptly stopped, and it fell backwards.

The next trigger pull yielded nothing but a hollow click. “Ah, shit,” he said, as he dropped the gun and ran. He’d have to find another way to put the demon’s eyes out; either that, or behead it. There were other ways to kill a demon, but Kahiro was no necromancer.

He looked around frantically for a weapon, any weapon. At this point, he’d even settle for a pair of nail scissors, but saw nothing except useless bric-a-brac. He could hear the demon moving behind him, pulling itself back on its feet. The bullets had taken their toll, and its movements were sluggish. But then, Kahiro wasn’t in top form, himself. He was quite sure he’d cracked some ribs because breathing and moving felt like holy hell. His whole front felt warm and wet; he was afraid to look down to see exactly how much blood he’d lost from the cut the demon had made. He could move his left arm, but the resulting sensation wasn’t exactly what one would consider pleasant.

He glanced behind, only to see a shredded face snarling at him, almost within arm’s reach.

With a yell compounded of terror and exhaustion, he set his shoulder against the nearest shelf and threw his weight against it. With a long-drawn creak, the shelf tipped and crashed down on the demon. It bellowed and flailed, but Kahiro had caught it by surprise. It went down.

He knew the flimsy shelves wouldn’t pin it for long, though. He ran, panting, heart racing, looking around for a weapon, any weapon…

Then he saw the sword.

It was a genuine antique, one of the very, very few displayed in the store proper. It was kept in a locked glass case against the wall and Ramzi had claimed it dated back to the time of the Prophet. Kahiro sincerely doubted it, but the sword’s pedigree hardly interested him now. Picking up a large stone carving of a fertility idol, he swung it against the case, praying Ramzi hadn’t invested in bulletproof glass.

He hadn’t, may the Gods bless his stingy old soul. Sweeping away the broken shards with his sleeve, Kahiro yanked it out of the case and clumsily pulled it free from the scabbard. Light and gracefully balanced, it had a long, thin, highly-polished blade, with just the slightest curve near the tip. Kahiro could have wept with gratitude. He just hoped its edge was as sharp as it looked.

He hefted the sword and turned around to find the demon only a few feet away. It was staggering a little as it walked, all efforts at maintaining its invisibility gone. Its body was torn and bleeding where the bullets had hit it, but even as Kahiro watched, the wounds were slowly, gradually healing. Shattered pieces of bone and fang gleamed white against the wine-dark meat on the ruined left side of its face. Its pupilless red eyes glared into Kahiro’s, and he felt an almost crushing pressure in his mind as the demon spoke.

“You’ll pay, maggot,” it said in the Old Tongue. Its words were slurred, but the power of its voice still reverberated within Kahiro’s very bones. “I will make you watch as I tear your flesh away, piece by piece.”

It had gathered itself and leapt into the air before the last words left its mouth.

Kahiro knew there was no way to avoid it. Calling out another incantation of power, he braced his legs, grabbed the sword with both hands despite the shrieking pain it caused his left arm and swung with all of his strength just as the demon came crashing down on him.

Being trapped under the demon felt not unlike being crushed by a blazing kiln—if kilns had scales, teeth and razorblade fingers. The sword had bitten deeply into the demon’s neck, and Kahiro, energy from the incantation surging through his body, pain in his left arm temporarily gone, pushed and sawed his way through. Scalding, foul-smelling blood gushed down and made the sword grip slippery. The demon gurgled and snapped with what was left of its muzzle. Kahiro gasped and flinched as its hand flailed, then gripped his right arm. Through the euphoria of the incantation, he could feel the blades sinking into his bicep, trying to pull his arm away.

Fuck. This is going to hurt.

The brief surge of power the incantation produced was fading, bringing with it the unnatural exhaustion that almost always followed. Kahiro gritted his teeth and ripped his arm free, grunting at the pain of torn skin and muscle. With the last of his reserves, he pushed the blade all the way through, screaming with the effort.

The demon’s head thumped on the floor next to them, and Kahiro averted his face from the spray of blood. He kicked, pushed and wriggled out from under the monstrous body pinning him, but once freed, he had didn’t have enough energy to crawl more than a short distance away.

Blackness swallowed him.

***

Kahiro woke up slowly. He wasn’t quite sure where he was. He faced a dirty white wall, and he was laying on a multitude of lumpy objects. He registered that his head was buzzing, and that he hurt. Everywhere.

He tried to sit up and huffed in pain. His ribs. His right arm. And Gods, his left arm. He could barely move it. What had he done to it?

He turned around and saw the demon’s headless body. He stared at it for several seconds, feeling numb inside even as his body felt too much, and remembered the fight. He couldn’t have been unconscious for too long; the imps hadn’t arrived yet to collect the corpse.

He looked down at himself. His shirt and jacket were sliced open and black with blood, both his and the demon’s. Ramzi’s too, no doubt. His face was crusted with the stuff. He struggled to his feet, trying not to allow the darkness lingering in the periphery of his vision overtake him again.

Suddenly, the sound of wings and a noise not unlike chattering crows filled the store.

They fluttered down from the ceiling, poured down the walls, crawled over ruined shelves and strewn boxes. Dozens of them, none of them taller than his knee, most of them a good deal shorter. Pitch-black skin, narrow faces with hungry, hollow cheeks that were at odds with their squat, sturdy bodies, wide mouths filled with sharp little teeth, faceted eyes on swiveling stalks. Many of them had bat-like wings that allowed them to glide through the air and carried them for short distances.

The imps had arrived.

They flocked around the body of the dead demon, crying out to each other, poking and prodding, lifting parts of its body to test the weight. Two of them picked up its head and hefted it onto their shoulders, staggering under their burden.

The leader, distinguished by its unusually large set of wings, toddled up to Kahiro. Its eyes blinked slowly, stalks swiveling to take in the full sight of his battered body.

“You!” it said in the Old Tongue. Its voice was unusually deep for a creature so small. “I should have known you were the one to slay Bil’Azmul.”

“Greetings, Shum’Miznash,” he replied. “Did you perhaps think somebody else in Cairo was capable of killing it?”

“No, no,” Shum’Miznash said grudgingly. “And I’m sure Bil’Azmul did not expect to find you here when he was tasked with taking care of the short, old one.” It sighed gustily, and a very strong smell of rotten fish reached Kahiro’s nose. He was faintly shocked he could smell anything still, given the stink of the demon and its blood. For the first time since the whole mess started, his stomach roiled.

“Do you know who had set Bil’Azmul on this task?” he asked abruptly.

Shum’Miznash smiled, exposing yellowed fangs. “No, Demon Slayer. All I know is that he had been tasked to kill the old man if he talked to certain people. But even if I knew, I would not tell the likes of you.”

Kahiro shrugged. “Fair enough. I supposed you want your usual payment?”

“That would be nice, yes,” Shum’Miznash replied. It held out its four-fingered hand, small and delicate as a tulip. Paying the imps for their services was a courtesy that guaranteed they wouldn’t swarm the demon-killer. They weren’t hard to kill, but there were many of them, and they were fast, with retractable claws hidden in their deceptively fragile-looking fingers. Their bites were also legendary for their nastiness; falling dead from septicemia a few hours after an untreated imp bite was the rule, not the exception.

Kahiro dug around in his pocket, wincing in pain. He pulled out a gold coin and flipped it at the imp, who plucked it from the air with great dexterity. It tested it briefly with its teeth, then bowed in a mocking salaam. With a guttural cry to its underlings, it turned around and walked back towards the body., which a few dozen imps had hoisted onto their shoulders. When their leader reached them, they started trudging away, singing a piercing funeral dirge for the fallen demon. Kahiro watched as they brought the body and head towards the back of the store, where they disappeared through the wall, one by one. The imps who weren’t helping with the carrying scurried up the walls and disappeared through the ceiling.

Kahiro slumped against the wall and slid to the floor, drained by his brief conversation with the imp. He didn’t have it in him to move at the moment. His mind, however, was now re-living the events, jumping from point to point.

A demon attack in broad daylight was rare. Bil’Azmul must have been presented with strong inducement indeed to risk the agony of sunlight. It was difficult enough as it was to bend a demon to one’s will without throwing a daytime mission into the bargain.

That wasn’t the part that really disturbed Kahiro, though. What shook him most was how there had been no warning.

Ramzi was greedy, but he wasn’t stupid. Working in the business he was in, he had the shop and his house well warded against demons and spirits. Even if the demon had been powerful enough to breach the wards, its entry should have at least tripped one of the many alarms Ramzi had placed all over the store. It hadn’t.

Why hadn’t it? Somebody must have removed or deactivated the wards and alarms. Somebody human. Somebody who really knew what they were doing, because Ramzi had wards that prevented tampering with the demon wards as well.

The question was, who?

Then it hit him.

The strange Ingleezi whore.

The coincidence was just a little too neat. Minutes after she left the store, empty-handed and seemingly in a hurry, Ramzi was dead. Kahiro’s instincts were screaming at him again, and this time, he didn’t ignore them. She was the key. He still didn’t know what it was about her that bothered him, but now, it didn’t matter. He had to find her.

He dug through his pocket again and found his cell phone, a tiny, sleek black thing. It was completely undamaged despite the brawl--he’d made a point of buying a model that guaranteed itself as being virtually bomb-proof. He flicked it open and put it against his ear. “Power on,” he said, and heard two soft beeps as the voice recognition software registered that it truly was him and turned the phone on. “Andreas,” he said, and heard the phone dialing.

Andreas picked up almost immediately, his gravelly voice music to Kahiro’s ears. “What is it? Where are you? I’ve had a very, very bad feeling about you for the past hour.”

“I’m at Ramzi the Flea’s shop. I just got done with a fight.” Kahiro thumped his head back to the wall and closed his eyes. His head was starting to swim again.

“A fight?” Andreas’ voice sharpened considerably. “Who did you fight? Surely not Ramzi?”

“No, not Ramzi. He’s dead, by the way. Beheaded by a demon. An upper-echelon beast, but not an Elemental or an Angel. Shum’Miznash said its name was Bil’Azmul.”

Andreas sighed, then coughed. Emphysema could be such a bitch. “I’ve heard of it. Big, ugly, jackal-headed bastard. Can turn invisible at will. And you didn’t bring your sword, did you?”

Kahiro chuckled bitterly. “No. It’s broad daylight. Ramzi’s shop is warded. Or at least, it used to be warded. I thought I was safe, which was stupid of me. Something big is going on, Andreas. To send a demon like Bil’Azmul in broad daylight merely to kill a dried-up peddler like Ramzi…the person who has the book is obviously not taking any chances. And he’s afraid of something.”

Andreas sighed again. “What a fucking mess. You need help getting out?”

Kahiro laughed outright. “Yes, you can say that. Bring the car. I don’t think I can even walk right now. Oh, and Andreas?”

“Yes?”

“There was a strange woman who was in the store right before me. Tall, Ingleezi, dressed like a whore from the House of Suffering. She seemed to be in the pistol-whipping discipline. Carried a big plastic gun. Very pale-skinned, probably a redhead. I need you to track her down for me. Talk to Edouard, he owes me a few favors, and he has more connections with the House of Suffering than most.”

Andreas cursed. “You know how many tall Ingleezi dominatrixes there are in Cairo?” he demanded.

“Yes, I have a good idea. This one is new, though. And young.”

“You know she might not even be a whore?” Andreas asked.

“It has occurred to me, yes. But she has the tattoo. Somebody in the House sanctioned that tattoo, even if it’s a fake. She wouldn’t have made it two steps in the quarter alive if it hadn’t been sanctioned. Either way, somebody in the House of Suffering knows who she is.

“And I intend to find out.”

Yeah, I’ve never tried to write a drawn-out action sequence before. COULD YOU TELL? Feel free to tell me how much this sucked in the comments. Anyway, stay tuned for the concluding part of Chapter 2, coming soon. Ish.