Bullets

by Joanne Anderton

It had once been a sheep, and it wasn’t dead yet. A mangle of smouldering wool, scorched skin, and cooked meat, breathing in puffs of hot ash. Outrun by flames, tangled in underbrush, or crushed beneath a falling tree, who could tell? Everything was charcoal now.

I pull the mask from my nose and mouth and breathe the warm smoke in. Load the rifle, aim between what’s left of the poor thing’s ear and eye, and give it peace with the slow squeeze of the trigger. Try to ignore the shakes, the tears stinging my eyes. I’m soaked in sweat and covered in ash, but supposed to be grateful that I’m still alive. At this point, it’s hard to even give a shit that the house is still standing.

Thank god, mum. We thought you were a gorner this time.

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Thirteen Bullets

by Laurence Raphael Brothers

The stagecoach lurches to a halt in a clearing beside the road. Four wild-eyed black geldings rear up and whinny as the top-hatted stage driver cracks a whip over their heads.

“Nous sommes ici,” says the driver. “Cimetière. La fin de la ligne!”

The coach door slams open and the No-Good Kid clambers out, bleary-eyed, cursing, unsteady on his feet. His blond hair is tousled and mussed. He had to leave Albuquerque without his hat but it’s obvious what color it was because all the rest of his gear is white. Or it used to be white. Now it’s dingy with the dust of the journey. Not the best choice for hard travelling, but then he didn’t have much time to pack. His luggage consists mainly of card decks and empty whiskey bottles.

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What the Fires Burn

by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

It’s near dusk when VanDrake Tage Rannheim trudges into the city to meet a friend. He sticks to the lee of buildings, smog and shadow wrapping his coat. Don’t like a lot of attention. Can’t help it, mostly, but he keeps his greatcoat pulled closed to conceal weapons. Ain’t wiped the mud off the back sigil, either.

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Dragon Girl

By Cat Sparks

I fell in love with a dragon boy when I was seventeen. The dragon train—five creatures long—camped near Grimpiper in the days before it crossed the Great Divide. Beyond the stones lay the Dead Red Heart. Our ’stead nestled in amongst the shadow dunes. Close enough to the Sand Road, not too close to its bandits and its warlords.

We’d been pushing our water wheels across miles of stone when the kite went up. Blue tail flags might mean many things but this time blue meant drag­ons. We dropped the wheels and ran up Puckers Ridge. Right to the top and there they were, five dragons chewing through wild melon fields below. Thick-set creatures, bellies low to the ground.

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How I Became Coruscating Queen of All the Realms, Pierced the Obsidian Night, Destroyed a Legendary Sword, and Saved My Heart’s True Love

By Baker & Dovey

No shit, there I was, knee-deep in necromantic weasels in the lair of the mad wizard-king, when Korgar and Elutriel both decided it was time to win my affections once and for all.

Elutriel had summoned an aura of resistance, an iridescent bubble free of weasels. He struggled forwards, heaving against the weight of their wasted furry bodies.

“Push them into the flames!” I shouted, pointing with Hrrnngnngrrrndr, the Sword of a Hundred Thousand Agonies, at the fire-trap Korgar had triggered as we entered the room.

But Elutriel ignored me and waded toward Korgar instead. He used the aura to shove a wave of writhing, stinking flesh before him until it piled up and over the granite-slab shoulders of the Vhunken warrior.

Korgar burst out with a mountainous effort and grabbed a gnashing undead weasel with a hand like a boulder. His huge arms straining, he forced it through the aura and toward Elutriel. The weasel’s rotted body twisted and deformed under the pressure, but its teeth still gnashed as Korgar bent it toward the healer’s neck.

Typical.

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Needle Mouth

by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

When Hana Samsa woke from a fevered nap one afternoon, she found that she had been transformed into an enormous mosquito. At the foot of her bed, her tiny legs thumped against an empty bottle of Becherovka; she’d pushed it there that morning after licking the last particles of bittersweet liquor from the cap. Her head pounded in the faint light of the gas lantern by the bedside, but when she raised her new insect arms to massage her temples, they wouldn’t bend. She felt quite sure that, when she had escaped Anastázie’s embrace that morning in order to retrieve the Becherovka from beneath the bed, she had been human, had used her human tongue to lap the inside of the cap, had nudged her human head back under Anastázie’s arm and rested it on her chest, had breathed with human nostrils the sunshine smell of Anastázie’s skin. Now Anastázie was gone, likely off to work at the school, and Hana had gained four extra legs and a mouth like a needle.

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