The Ruby Tear, by Suzy McKee Charnas

The Ruby Tear

Tor Books
ISBN: 0812571320
Paperback: April 1998

Forge
Hardcover: April 1997
ISBN: 0312861656

An Excerpt

Tonight the gate hung open, and as she hurried by, quick hands reached out and snatched her into the darkness with a suddenness and violence that left her sucking vainly for air to scream with.

Someone pinned her against his chest, with his arm tight across her throat. Another closed in, breathing hard, hissing breaths as he fended off her frantic kicks. Something flashed from his upraised fist: a blade, keen and pale.

She uttered only strangled gasps as she twisted in her captor's grip with the convulsive strength of panic. The knife whipped harmlessly past her face, bu hard fingers dragged her head back by the hair, immobilizing her. The man behind her snarled, "Take it easy, you want to cut my damn ear off?"

"Hurry up, somebody's coming!" came a whispered warning from nearby — a female voice. With incredulous horror Jess saw the glint of silver eyebrow rings as the lookout at the mouth of the alley turned her head. it was the girlfriend of the two leather boys who held Jess trapped between the high, blind walls where no one could see or hear what happened.

Jess croaked wildly and kicked with all her might, snapping her knee up into the body of the boy with the knife. He turned and blocked the blow with his hip, and the knife swept up again, toward her face. Flooded with fear too strong for thought, she writhed and strained to turn away despite the agony of her hair that the other held fast.

Impossible things happened, one right after the other. Close in front of her staring eyes, the hand that held the weapon seemed to explode open with the fingers splayed wide. She heard a guttural cry of pain, and the blade flew into space and hit cement with a faint ringing sound.

The other man gasped and shoved her forward, reeling away from him. Jess staggered to the opposite wall and turned, breathless and stupid with shock.

A figure dense as ink stood holding her captor overhead at the full stretch of his arms, gripping him at belt and collar. For an instant, the suspended punk threshed arms and legs in nightmarish slow motion. He uttered a gargling wail as he was swung through the air and released as if from a catapult. Out of sight in the darkness, he landed with a crashing impact.

Jess gasped, excited and terrified, her body tingling and her mind wide and uncritical like a child's.

She knew Ivo von Cragga by the sweep of his brazen hair, the glint of his tilted eyes, and the swaggering swirl of his coat skirts as he backed a step and swung one foot forward. There was a terrible, ripe sound of impact. She saw the lift and the flopping arms of the figure sprawled below him on the floor of the alley: the one who had had the knife.

Von Cragga stooped over him, destructive energy evident in every line of his body.

Jess found her voice. "The lookout's gone. She'll bring people."

He glanced at her, a flash of tigerish teeth and eyes, and bent deeply over the writhing punk. All doubt of his true nature vanished. She thought he was going to feed right in front of her. She gagged silently and clutched at the bricks behind her for support.

But he only slapped the face of the leather boy with wide, hard swing of his hand, and spoke to him harshly: "Who sent you against this lady? Tell me now, or I rip the face off your skull. Hurry up."

Jess heard a whimpering reply, a plea, sobs.

"The name," Cragga snarled. "Quick!"

More whimpering, faint sibilants in words Jess could not make out. She felt dizzy and sick and almost fell, but someone caught her, someone held her up. Shock, she thought, deeply disappointed in herself. I am going to faint.

She was walking, half carried by a companion, toward her own building. The vampire — what else but a supernatural monster could have taken on and beaten two thugs armed with knives, and thrown one of them bodily through the air? — the vampire von Cragga knew where she lived.

Sensations washed over her in rapid succession: headlights passing, a dog barking somewhere, hands seizing her purse and rummaging impatiently through it, the stale warm smell of the foyer, the steep, steep stairs. She thought the stairs would never end. He fumbled at the apartment door, suddenly, oddly clumsy.

"Let me." She took the keys from his hand that was smeared, she saw, with dark blood.

Somehow she opened the door but could do nothing further — her legs would not obey her.

Without turning on the light he picked her up and carried her, held tightly to his chest, over to the big chair by the living room windows. He groaned a little, straightening up. She blacked out.

When she woke, there were still no lights on in the apartment, but she knew he was still there.

"Ivo? What happened?"

"One of your colleagues, unable to drive you away with stupid tricks, hired those savages to drive you off."

"A knife," she gulped, shivering violently. "Jesus! They came at me with a knife!"

"It was a straight razor."

She gasped involuntarily and cried, "They tried to cut my face!"

Silence.

"Who would do that?" She punched the arm of the chair in impotent rage and pain. "I don't know people who would do a thing like that, I don't work with people like that!"

A creaking sound came as he moved, shifting his weight.

"What time is it?" she said.

"Late," he murmured. "The bitch-thug has of course not gone to the police. She is off saving herself, no doubt, so I think we are secure here for now. Jessamyn, she hurt me. I must lie down awhile."

"Hurt you?" She squinted woozily, seeing more than she had before now that her eyes were used to the scant illumination from the streetlights outside, the dim reflections of headlights gliding across the ceiling. "How could she hurt you?"

A beat of silence, two beats. "She had an ice pick."

What Reviewers Have Said about The Ruby Tear

"Charnas... plays unique variations on the vampire romance ... She injects notes of humor amid the suspense... "

— Lord Ruthven Society Bulletin

"... balances the excitement and sometimes-paranoia of the theater backstage against the dark, grim weight of history... a bittersweet conclusion, satisfying as no fairy tale ending ever could be."

— Deja News and The Vampire's Crypt

"... great characterizations... fast paced, moving, and very symbolic (ancestral hatreds are ridiculed) ... a first class reading experience that fans of horror and romance will both want to peruse."

— mindspring.com

"... a highly atmospheric, low key supernatural thriller with a conclusion that wasn't at all what I expected. This one's not just another vampire novel."

— Science Fiction Chronicle

"There's some comfortably warm sensual writing, as well as a candid treatment of real sex. Characters who at one time came across as not terribly deep gain another level of interest. And the climax of The Ruby Tear will modestly rip your heart out."

— Ed Bryant
Locus