“Hellbender” originally appeared in a short story collection calledDown These Strange Streets.  Editors Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin asked a number of writers to do stories of urban fantasy / crime: SciFi noir, hardboiled paranormal, fantasy PI stories—anything in which the investigator (cop, PI, amateur) works a case with supernatural elements. The book’s original title was to beFantastic Dicks, which rather set the tone for the stories, and although they later backed down from the name, by then it was too late: “Hellbender” had already begun to take shape in one writer’s fevered brain.I suspect Gardner and Georgewere expecting a Laurie King story in which Sherlock Holmes met, say, Count Dracula’s granddaughter. Instead, they got a tale in which the investigator himself brings in the supernatural elements.Once people have messedwith a man’s DNA, what can he do but become a private eye? And when agorgeous thing like Elizabeth Savoy comes gliding into his office andblinks her big baby blues, what can PI Mike Heller do but say sure—eventhough he sees just what she is, and knows what a bad idea it could be?Not that Heller has a clue just how bad. But by the time he suspectsthat Lizzie’s troubles might bring the end of life as he knows it, he’salready in far too deep.(Previously published in the short story compilation "Down These Strange Streets")