Horror Urban Fiction

Prince of the Carpathians Mikhail Dubrinsky has witnessed numerous mysterious events during his many centuries on Earth, but now he is faced with the ultimate horror: the extinction of his species. The Carpathians' enemies salivate at the thought of a final victory, but all hope is not lost. The Carpathians gather, united in a desperate hope. And no matter the outcome, blood will be shed and limitless passion unleashed.

What do you do after you’ve saved the world and nobody believes you? Amber is a teenage runaway, hiding out in Los Angeles, who is also a daughter of the wolf kind. And, not long ago, she had her own personal demon. Richard was her servant, her lover, and a hellish force bound to the Earth against his will. Together they turned back the World Snake that threatened to destroy the city and she had granted Richard his freedom. Now Amber is alone, but nobody accepts that she has truly shed her demon.

Michael Gallatin is a British spy with a peculiar talent: the ability to transform himself into a wolf. Although his work in North Africa helped the Allies win the continent in the early days of World War II, he quit the service when a German spy shot his lover in her bed. Now, three years later, the army asks him to end his retirement and parachute into occupied Paris. A mysterious German plan called the Iron Fist threatens the D-Day invasion, and the Nazi in charge is the spy who betrayed Michael’s lover. The werewolf goes to France for king and country, hoping for a chance at bloody vengeance.

A week before Lenore Warwick's 21st birthday, she's kidnapped by the brooding and dangerous stranger with cold eyes and a lethal touch, who has been stalking her on San Francisco's fog-shrouded streets. Absolon "Solon" Stavig isn't your average criminal though. He's a centuries-old vampire who's caught between wanting to kill Lenore and wanting to save her.

James Stark, a.k.a. Sandman Slim, crawled out of Hell, took bloody revenge for his girlfriend’s murder, and saved the world along the way. After that, what do you do for an encore? You take a lousy job tracking down monsters for money. It’s a depressing gig, but it pays for your beer and cigarettes. But in L.A., things can always get worse. Like when Lucifer comes to town to supervise his movie biography and drafts Stark as his bodyguard.

Jonny and Hunters for Hire are quickly making a name for themselves in the monster-hunting world. Life is good, but all good things must come to an end. Frankie is about to get a call she feared was coming, a call that alters the trajectory of her relationship with Jonny. In the meantime, the Court procures Hunters for Hire's services to investigate how the Sphere was broken into and who helped Dr. Frankenstein escape. If this wasn't enough, Jonny uncovers more secrets as to what being a hybrid means to him and a foreboding warning from an Archangel.

In 525 BC, the Persian king Cambyses sent 50,000 soldiers across the conquered Egyptian desert to take an oasis city not far from where the Libyan border stands today. According to Greek history, a hurricane-force sandstorm struck near the end of their 600-mile trek. The army - all 50,000 men - vanished without a single trace. Fast forward to 1986. A British archaeological team, sent to the edge of the Great Sand Sea to exhume evidence of the incident, has also gone missing.

There's a maniacal murderer on the loose, brutally slaughtering young women with a ferocity that rivals that of vampires Harry Koegh has spent his life combatting. The Necroscope's been asked to solve the crimes...asked by the dead spirits of the madman's victims. Harry cannot turn down a request from the dead...even if it costs him his soul. In the climactic battle with the vampires, mankind prevailed and purged the vampires from earth - thanks to Harry, his team of psychically-gifted spies, and Faethor Ferenczy, long-dead "father" of the world's vampires, who betrayed his own kind.

As a newly appointed junior manager within the Laundry - the clandestine organization responsible for protecting Britain against supernatural threats - Bob Howard is expected to show some initiative to help the agency battle the forces of darkness. But shining a light on things best left in the shadows is the last thing Bob wants to do - especially when those shadows hide an occult parasite spreading a deadly virus. Traders employed by a merchant bank in London are showing signs of infection.

Chuck Dutton built Music City Salvage with patience and expertise, stripping historic properties and reselling their bones. Inventory is running low, so he's thrilled when Augusta Withrow appears in his office offering salvage rights to her entire property. This could be a gold mine, so he assigns his daughter, Dahlia, to personally oversee the project. The crew finds a handful of surprises right away. Firstly, the place is in unexpectedly good shape. And then there's the cemetery, about 30 fallen and overgrown graves dating to the early 1900s.

Bethany Anne has started to make a difference in the first week of being awake. Now, America has been losing good men since their teams don't have a vampire to help them. Frank is hoping Bethany Anne can, and will, help. Further, the American Pack Council is having internal problems with their own young-and-dumb weres who want to ignore Michael's strictures. With no one seeing Michael, the fear of the Boogeyman is starting to recede.

Ville-Marie, petite ville sur les bords du lac Témiscamingue, dont tous les habitants connaissent Daniel Verrier: il vient de perdre ses deux enfants en bas âge, morts par noyade. Miné par le remords - il est en partie responsable de leur mort - , délaissé par sa femme et aux prises avec de graves problèmes psychologiques, dont une amnésie partielle, Verrier sombre lentement dans la folie.

Erika est une étudiante ordinaire, enfin presque ! Invivable, puérile et pleine d'humour sarcastique, c'est avec surprise qu'un homme la connaissant vient la voir un soir. Rapidement elle apprend qu'elle est une sorcière ! Mais les bonnes nouvelles ne s'arrêtent pas là ! À peine a-t-elle pu se faire à l'idée qu'elle meure. Transformée en vampire par un proche, elle va désormais devoir dompter ses pouvoirs incontrôlables. Si seulement personne ne cherchait à la tuer... Rapidement Erika perd pied.

It is the spring of 1895, and more than a decade of combating eldritch entities has cost Dr. John Watson his beloved wife Mary, and has nearly broken the health of Sherlock Holmes. Yet the companions do not hesitate when they are called to the infamous Bedlam lunatic asylum, where they find an inmate speaking in R’lyehian, the language of the Old Ones. Moreover, the man is horribly scarred and has no memory of who he is. The detectives discover that he was once a scientist, a student of Miskatonic University, and one of two survivors of a doomed voyage down the Miskatonic River.

When Bonnie Grayduck relocates from sunny Santa Cruz California to the small town of Lake Woebegotten, Minnesota, to live with her estranged father, chief of the local two-man police department, she thinks she's leaving her troubles behind. But she soon becomes fascinated by another student - the brooding, beautiful Edwin Scullen, whose reclusive family hides a terrible secret. (Psst: they're actually vampires. But they're the kind who don't eat people, so it's okay.)

Just when I thought it was safe to step onto my porch, the power of the Oracle has sent another person in need to my stairs. He thinks he's searching for his missing husband, but the moment I smell him, I know he's dragging along a curse from a necromancer with a stench strong enough to curl the leg hairs I haven't had time to shave. Which reminds me—I should probably do some grooming before my date. Did I mention I have an arraignment in court? For murder? It's all I can do to put this legal nonsense to bed before the rotten bouquet of necromancy wafts into my world yet again.

Johannes Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy, has come into possession of a vital clue that may lead him to his ultimate goal: a cure for death. The path is vague, however, and certainly treacherous as it takes him into strange territories that, quite literally, no one has ever seen before. The task is too dangerous to venture upon alone, so he must seek assistance - comrades for the coming travails.

This issue of Weird Tales presents a variety of stories, essays, and poems about cryptids and urban legends. Not to dispel, but to reveal.

The village of Saint-Ferdinand has all the trappings of a quiet life. Though if an out-of-towner stopped in, they would notice one unusual thing - a cemetery far too large and much too full for such a small town, lined with the victims of the Saint-Ferdinand Killer, who has eluded police for nearly two decades. It's not until after Inspector Stephen Crowley finally catches the killer that the town discovers even darker forces are at play.

After stumbling upon the algorithm that turned him and his fellow merchant bankers into vampires, Alex Schwartz was drafted by The Laundry, Britain's secret counter-occult agency that's humanity's first line of defense against the forces of darkness. Dependent on his new employers for his continued existence - as Alex has no stomach for predatory bloodsucking - he has little choice but to accept his new role as an operative in training.