Fontaine looked to his left. Over by the sleeping fountain, bundled up in her gray flannel hoodie, Ada waited in silence.
"Gimme a minute."
He approached Ada and held out the pouch. Placed it in her open hand.
"It's enough to get you clear," he said. "Clear and far away. Get you a new name, a new face."
"Next time you see me," she told him, "we'll both have different faces."
"Will I?"
He looked her in the eye.
"Will I see you again?"
Her answer was a slow and sad smile. He reached out to touch her cheek. She flinched.
"I'm sorry, I know. I'm dressed up in a dead man's skin." He forced a chuckle, trying to play it off. "It's natural for me. It isn't for you. It never will be."
"Fontaine, if things were different, if we were different--"
"You don't have to say it." He shook his head. "You don't have to say anything."
Ada took his hand. She held it gently as they looked into each other's eyes. They stayed like that for a long, slow count to sixty-six.
Then she let go, and turned and walked away.
"Fly free, darlin'," he whispered.
5:58 a.m.
Fontaine stood alone.
Rache walked up, hovering a foot behind his back. Contemplating.
"I think I'm gonna be pretty good at this," she said.
"We'll see. You ain't passed the audition just yet."
"No; thing is, I think I have a natural knack for putting things together." Rache's lips curled into a tiny, malicious smile. "Ada. She's the Madrigal."
Fontaine turned. He put his hand on his hip and cocked his head at her.
"Now, where would you get a notion like that?"
"Back at the diner, she said our targets all turned traitor. That the Madrigal was visiting each of them tonight, trying to get them to change their minds and come back to the fold."
"Sure," Fontaine said.
"She told us to go after Foster first, because we'd lose him otherwise, instead of laying a trap for the Madrigal. But Foster wasn't fleeing town. He was getting drunk in a shitty bar. We could have grabbed him any time we wanted."
"His bad luck," Fontaine said.
"But it slowed us down just long enough for the Madrigal to visit the Russo twins. Then we waited. All this pressure, all this 'gotta get the job done in time,' and you delayed us for an hour so you could find a hat?"
Fontaine lightly tapped the brim of his Stetson. "It's a mighty fine hat."
"You were stalling while Ada made her sales pitch to the last poor schlub on our list, trying to get him to stay with the Redemption Choir. I'm guessing he said no, too. So she called you and told you exactly where to find him. We weren't hunting the Madrigal's agents tonight, we were her personal cleanup crew."
Fontaine's hand curled ever so slightly. His fingers brushed the killing chain hidden up his sleeve.
"You're a mighty clever little thing, aren't you?"
"I just want to know," Rache said. "I'm right, aren't I?"
Fontaine chuckled. He looked past her, into the distant dark. It had started misting again, ice water drifting down, kissing his upturned face.
"The prince's agents were hot on Ada's trail and closing in fast. She was all but burned, one hot minute from being exposed. She had to get out of Detroit, pronto. Her four buddies wanted to stay and fight the good fight. So she risked her neck and gave them one last chance to run with her. They all said no. So, yeah. We shut her old network down for her. Cut the trail. I took this contract because Ada asked me to. Because another hunter would have nabbed her."
His fingers closed around the garrote.
"So," he said. "Looks like you caught me out. What now?"
"I don't know." Rache shrugged. "We go back to work?"
Fontaine lifted an eyebrow. "You're not gonna turn me in?"
She laughed. "Fuck, no. I'm blackmailing you. I like this job. So you're gonna give the Order glowing reports about what a natural talent I am."
She stood beside him, reached up, and patted his arm.
"We're going to make a great team, partner."
He limped along, smiling, shaking his head, and she followed at his side.
"You'll have to earn your keep," he told her. "If you're gonna have my back, we'd better teach you right."
"Hey, as long as the money keeps flowing. So, Ada. I don't get it. Helping a human, risking your own neck like that? Not to mention the money you could have made by selling her to the prince. All that work and you got nothing for it. Why'd you do it, anyway?"
Fontaine cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted into the distance. An empty crosstown bus rattled past, spitting black exhaust into the frigid predawn air, the city rousing from its slumber and waiting for the morning light, still one dark hour away.
"Same reason a man does anything worth doing, Rache. Same reason anything's ever worth doing."
KISS
LILITH SAINTCROW
Readers of the Jill Kismet series will recognize Perry--a character whom the author has often said makes her want to scrub herself with a wire brush every time he shows up. Santa Luz's resident hellbreed leader has a long history, and a long entanglement with Jill's line of hunters. The hunters battle the things that go bump in the night, and Jill herself made a bargain with her own personal devil to gain the strength to bump back. What she didn't know, of course, was just how far that bargain would take her. One suspects her teacher, and his teacher before him, didn't either.
POWER
February 7, 1945
My kind does not often traffic with the righteous. Oh, there are plenty of churchgoers who come to us, hands clasped, begging for a Trade. We do not drive overly hard bargains; we do our best to turn none away. We are, as my un-father once remarked, charitable indeed. We ask so little, especially of those we favor.
Just a hairsbreadth. Just a tiny, tiny crack.
There are exceptions. For a sizable gift, a sizable sacrifice is required. You must agree that's only fair. Even then, we will offer more; it's in your nature to accept a good deal.
So I kept the appointment, passing swiftly between you sacks of flesh carrying your sweet, struggling essential sparks, trapped in a thick liquid you call time and an even thicker fog of your petty little desires. That night a thin, fine rain fell from a gunmetal sky onto cobbled and paved streets, Dresden swollen with cold and refugees fleeing the inferno in the east. The lesser inferno to the west was far preferable, but the roads were choked and the Feldgendarmerie roamed hungrily, shooting those they suspected of desertion, defeatism, or disgust.
The chaos and misery were a warm bath. A beer house beckoned; I plunged into its smoky, crowded fog and found he had arrived early.
Blue-eyed and wheat-haired, in a long leather coat probably stolen from some Schutzie, the hunter slumped in a defensible corner with a clear line to the bar and, hence, the back door. They are very careful, those righteous ones, for all they have is the stink of murder and the fume of our homeland dyeing their physical fibers.
Their nightly murders are, of course, justified by the damage certain citizens of the night cause the sacks of flesh and nerves inhabiting this little backwater.
To gain the strength to fight us, the hunters ascend to our plane, and call it Hell. The true name is unpronounceable to your strange-shaped human tongues, since it must be pronounced inwardly as well as out.
Above all, our home gives you what you expect to find. It is the grandest joke in centuries, that they think we are invaders.
Anyway, the man permitted himself a single wrinkle of his aquiline nose. I'd arrived early, too; he who chooses the battlefield first naturally takes the best position. A hush followed my entrance, swirling around me as I pulled out the chair opposite, letting him think my back to the door presumed a measure of trust.
In a crisp black tailored uniform with a silver skull or two, my back ramrod straight, I was the very picture of a Schutzie myself, platinum hair shaved
at the sides and back, my eyes just as blue as a recruiting poster's muscled paragon. A high-ranking true-blooded soldier, with an uncertain temper and a thin-lipped smile.
I suspected my appearance would irritate him. But I like to dress well, and my coloring, inherited from my quasi-father, carried certain advantages in this milieu.
"Great." His German was flawless, his accent pure Berliner. He'd been practicing. "So much for passing unremarked."
"Fear will keep their mouths shut." I chose English, and his pulse, even and strong, dropped a little. They practice a fine control over their meat processes, the righteous. That is not what truly distinguishes them. There has to be an unsteady, explosive quality to them, married to an obsessive urge. He had both in spades, as they say.
I needed each, and more, for my plan.
The one before me had almost everything I required. Enough to serve, at least. He was also perilously close to deciding I was not worth negotiating with.
He moved as if to leave, and my right hand came down atop his left wrist, rattling the table. The glances shot in our direction fled like skittering insects. I did not tighten my grip, despite the temptation. "Easy, Herr Karma." I mimicked his Berliner accent, just for fun. "I have something you need, and I am disposed to be friendly."
"Friendly is not a word I associate with der Teufel." He showed his teeth, and the fine silver chain dipping below his shirt collar ran with a soft, inimical glow. Normally he would have copper charms tied in his hair, or silver, elemental metal that carries the charge of their . . . belief.
It is that which makes the truly righteous more than mildly irritating, into something approaching dangerous.
"It is a good thing you are simply dealing with my father's shadow, then." A ripple passed through me, and I let go of him, one finger at a time. No few of his fellow creatures around us were ripe for the plucking, but I was not there for pleasure. "Listen, Herr Jager. There is an event coming, one that will make it possible to seal Argoth away." Saying even that much of his name was a calculated risk, but one well worth taking at the moment.
"Oh?" Herr Karma's blue eyes narrowed, their irises threaded with faint lines of lavender and gold. Muscle packed onto his deceptively lean frame; the guns and knives and other articles he carried, all the items of his trade, were not half as dangerous as a purity of purpose. They call themselves hunters, as they have from the beginning, in every language humankind is capable of mouthing.
I nodded and finished peeling my hand away. Admired the fineness of my digits in this form, tapping each well-buffed fingernail once against the dirt-and-oil-sodden surface of the table. He had not even ordered a beer, this warrior. "They will bomb this city soon."
"And?" A faint restive movement. There would be silver loaded along the flat of every blade he carried, and a thin coating of it on his bullets, too. The charge they carried could fracture the shells of my kind, and once the crust is broken, the innards may be tainted.
It was an unpleasant thought. "He will be distracted."
"Not enough."
Now for a little sweetening of the bait. "There might be a weapon I can give you."
"Might be?" One sandy eyebrow lifted fractionally.
"Come now, Jack." My tongue flicked out, wet my lips.
He didn't flinch. Instead, he studied me, the thick scar along the underside of his jaw glaring white. Their healing sorcery is slow and painful, as such things go, but still practical. "What's in it for you?"
Always the dance, with your kind. Only fools take the first offer. At least he was interested. "Perhaps I weary of this constant battle."
Blue eyes narrowed. Leather creaked slightly as he shifted, his gaze softening as his peripheral vision took in the room over my shoulder. "Try again."
I suppressed a certain irritation. "I want out from under my father's thumb."
"Why?"
"That doesn't concern you, mein kleiner Jager."
"For the second time, try again." His tone plainly shouted that I wouldn't get a third attempt.
"I am his shadow, Karma. His placeholder. It doesn't occur to you that I might wish to be more?"
He settled back in his chair, examining me. I half turned to flag a slim slattern-haired Fraulein in a filthy apron and a sack of a dress, my thumb and finger held high. She paled under her uneven rouge and hurried to fetch two half liters of the best this smelly zoo-place had to offer. When they arrived, they were a pleasant surprise. Nut-brown with good foam and a strong scent, a rarity in these rationed times. Perhaps the owner here was a friend of Herr Karma's.
It might be profitable to seek a closer acquaintance myself.
I drained half of mine in long slow gulps, enjoying the taste and the envy of your kind pressing around me, a warm blanket.
"When?" the hunter said, finally, his beer sitting untouched and obedient before him.
I did not bother to hide the smile stretching my approximation of a face. "Soon, Herr Karma." I produced a calling card, flicking it between my elegant fingers, and offered it to him. "You will need strength to fight him. The price is something I think you'll find acceptable."
"The fuck you say," he muttered in English, and lunged to his feet, chair legs making a high, thin sawing sound. His coat flapped once as he left, taking the stairs two at a time in his haste. His boots were old, their tread worn almost through, hailing from the years before the war when good leather and a fine sole were a matter of course.
He took the card with him, though. I settled back in my chair and smiled into my beer.
I finished his, too.
PAIN
February 10, 1945
Every dangerous game holds its own delights. For this one, half the fun was slipping from my un-father's attention. He had more than enough to keep him busy, between the cauldron of flame in the east and the mud-blood holes of the camps, a banquet for his favored lieutenants. As his placeholder, I was supposed to be in Berlin, keeping the madness of the rulers stoked. Really, there was little need. The Allies were doing quite nicely, with their talk of forcing an unconditional surrender and the depredations of their eastern wolves hemming the weary populace on every side. No, I had absolutely no doubts the funny little corporal and his cabal of propped-up puppet monstrosities would not do anything so reasonable as surrender. Like all your kind, they marched to their own destruction with only the faintest of murmurs, believing themselves striding to a better world.
Bringing my almost-father through to feast upon this chaos and disorder had unforeseen effects. He could not have imagined that I might develop what your kind would call sentience. I was only a shadow--a placeholder, a bookmark. Clawing my way into some form of free action was difficult, treacherous, painful work.
But so worth it.
The blocky, heavy lines of the Taschenbergpalais belied the luxury inside, but like every sweet thing, there was a bitter undertone. The Wehrmacht's Dresden defense area had its Kommandantur here, and the entire building buzzed with rigidity disguised as rectitude. Field-gray uniforms and polished epaulets were everywhere, the click-salute of heels echoing from parquet or muffled by carpeting. Champagne, roast duck, real coffee instead of the ersatz the Landser slogging away at the front swilled, and a healthy sprinkling of "golden pheasants" roamed the rooms. The hotel staff smiled outwardly while they stole what could be taken back to their full-to-bursting warrens. Even the rich had to take in refugees, but here, all was space and the music of a tinkling chandelier in the foyer.
Down in a forgotten cellar, though, the house detective, tired-eyed Hans Schiell--without a Party badge, for whatever reason--pocketed the bottle of schnapps the hunter had brought and mumbled a thank-you.
"I already paid him, you know," I informed Jack Karma, and enjoyed watching Schiell blanch under the thin, oily strands of his comb-over. His hat, its inside greased with hair cream and the effusions of his shining scalp, quivered in one gloved hand.
"Go," Karma told him in German. "Forget this." He hadn't shaved. A
fume of brassy death hung on him, overlaid by the smoking nastiness of mineral water from the Frauenkirche's font.
Rude, but earlier that night he had killed several of my kind who offended his sensibilities by preying on refugees. Their thin nectar hung on his coat in dollops and drags, decaying quickly. Schiell blundered away, back to work.
"Talk." Karma rested his capable, dirty left hand on the gun slung low on that side. The Lugers were fine instruments, and no doubt he could find ammunition easily and add a thin coating of silver himself.
"I can arrange for him to arrive during the bombing." I examined a cobweb-wrapped shape under a shroud--a couch, perhaps, from when this was a palace. "I can also arrange for you to be less . . . fragile. Which will no doubt aid you immensely."
His eyes narrowed slightly. That was all. "And just how would you do those things?"
"Simple." I matched his English with my own, mixing in a heavy German accent for amusement's sake. I showed my teeth, a flutter of high excitement rippling through my shell. "All you must do is injure me severely enough to catch his attention."
"However attractive that is, hellfiend, it's not enough." His knuckles were white. "Drop the other shoe."
That managed to puzzle me for a moment. "What?"
"It's American. Never mind. Just tell me the catch."
"No catch. Unless you count a share of my kind's strength."
His sandy eyebrows went up. A hunter's calculus is different than ours, and different again from that of the rest of your kind. "You want to make me a Trader." His hand tightened on the gun. Drawing with his left would mean he had something special planned for his right, the hand that glowed with a feverish, nasty, invisible-to-your-kind brilliance.
Their visits to our plane grant them a measure of power, true. It takes a different form in every hunter.
"Oh, not that." I affected a moue of distaste, my shell rippling again. "No, no, no, Herr Karma. I give you power. I will not quibble with how you use it to slay my father and my brethren. In return, you will free me from the annoyance of my father's presence here in your lovely, war-torn little world. You send him back home, and the war sputters out."
"I don't trust you, Per."
As if I didn't know. If he wasn't so potentially useful, I would have been irritated. "That feeling is emphatically mutual. I am a slave while he is in your world; you know as much. I want him gone. There is no profit in wanton destruction." Attractive as that is, in its proper proportion.