I strangled the urge to get the last word in. It would take me about a half-hour to get home, longer if I had to wait for a cab. I might as well use my own share of preternatural speed.
What I hadn’t said hung in the air. Hunters depend on the police, they are our eyes and ears. What we do is law enforcement, in its strictest sense. And as Carp had pointed out, we didn’t have some of the restrictions ordinary cops had. No hunter was ever hauled into court.
When you couldn’t depend on your backup, where did that leave you? Fucked was the only term that applied. And until I knew more about who was trying to do me in, I couldn’t even answer my pager. If someone else went missing or a new case popped up…
Then you’d better finish this quickly, Jill. Start thinking about how you’re going to do just that.
17
I hate having guests. Especially uninvited guests.
And most definitely, especially, uninvited guests who barely wait until I’m through the door before they try to kill me.
Word of advice: If you are looking to catch a hunter by surprise, don’t do it in her house, for Chrissake. Any place a hunter sleeps is likely to be well-defended, and if it’s easy to break in you should be wondering how hard it’s going to be to escape. A hunter does not sleep somewhere without knowing every crack and creak in the walls—which includes knowing when some sloppy-ass hellbreed has slithered through a window and is breathing heavily behind your door.
So I was ready when I stepped through and dropped down into a crouch. The dirty-blond ’breed hesitated, flew over my head and smacked himself a good one on the jamb. Wood splintered and I drove upward with the knife, the silver laid along the blade hissing with bluespark flame as it met Hell-tainted flesh.
The ’breed twisted on himself in midair with that gut-loosening spooky agility they all have. The hardest thing to get used to is how they move, in ways human joints can’t and human muscles never would. I spun a full one-eighty, bootsole scraping the linoleum just inside the door, and went down flat on my back in the entry hall.
Come to Mama, you stupid fuck. The bleeding ’breed didn’t disappoint, dropping down with claws outstretched, face twisted into a grinning mask of hate. Maybe he thought I was vulnerable, since I was on the floor.
I spend half my fighting life on the floor. Judo’s not just fun, it’s a lifesaver. Once you ground a ’breed or, say, a Possessor, their advantage in speed is gone and their edge in strength is halved if you know anything about leverage. But I had no intention of wriggling around with this jerkwad.
No, I shot him four times, punching through the shell of hellbreed skin, and flicked a boot up to catch his wounded belly, deflecting his leap by a few critical degrees so he sailed over me and splatted, screaming like a banshee, onto the hardwood floor.
I was on my feet again in a trice, knife dropped chiming to the floor, kicked away so the ’breed couldn’t reach it, and my fingers closing around the bullwhip’s handle. A quick jerk, a flick of my wrist, and braided leather snapped through the air, the tiny sharp bits of silvery metal tied on the end of the whip breaking the sound barrier and scoring hellbreed flesh.
This is why hunters use whips. It gives us reach we otherwise wouldn’t have. I was already pulling the trigger, firing twice more, the reports booming and echoing through my silent house. I was only a half-inch off on the right shoulder, but my first shot took him right through the ball-joint of the left. That took some of the pep out of my unwanted visitor—but not all of it.
The whip flickered again, like a snake’s tongue weighted with razorblades. It tore across the ’breed’s face, and by now I’m sure both of us had figured out I wanted him taken alive.
I wanted answers.
He still put up a fight, but when I broke his left arm in three places and got him down on the floor, the silver-loaded blade of another knife to his throat, the squealing from him took on an animal sound I was more than familiar with.
I didn’t recognize this chalk-skinned scarecrow of a ’breed. He was definitely male, catslit blue eyes glowing even in the wash of electric light. Fucker left my lights on. How stupid can you be? “Do I have to cut your throat?” I whispered in his ear, knowing he would feel the brush of my breath through the matted fringe of blond hair. He was bleeding thin black ichor, a wash of the stinking stuff all over my dusty wooden floor.
Once the hard shell is broken, the bad in a hellbreed leaks out. Once that shell is breached with silver, an allergic reaction sets in too. The blade ran with blue sparks, reacting to the brackish foulness of Hell the scarecrow exhaled. He wore a black silk button-down and designer jeans, but his battered, horn-callused feet were bare, the toes too flexible to be human and graced with curling yellow nails.
He went still. I bore down with all my hellbreed-given strength. The scar pulsed, sensing something akin to its corruption. He whined, right at the back of the throat, and went limp, the subvocal groaning of Helletöng rattling in my ears.
“I don’t speak anything but human, asshole.” I kept the whisper down, my breath heaving. My head hurt, a pounding stuffed between my temples. Hell of a day. Stay focused, Jill. “You going to settle down?”
He writhed a little, testing, but subsided. I was braced and exerting leverage on the broken arm, grinding both shattered shoulders into the floor. He was losing a lot of ichor. Don’t you dare fucking die before I find out who sent you.
A long string of obscenities, made all the more ugly by the tenor sweetness of his voice. The damned are always beautiful, or the seeming they wear to fool the world is. I’ve never seen an ugly ’breed—except for Perry, and he wasn’t truly ugly.
Did Perry send you? “Who sent you?” I ground down again, was rewarded by a hiss of pain. My arm tightened, and the silver-loaded knife pressed lacerated skin.
The hissing yowl of his pain was matched only by the sound of sizzling. It ended on a high almost-canine yip when I let up a bit.
“I’ve got all night to make you talk.” My throat was full of something too hot and acid to be anger or hatred. The smell was eyewatering, terrific, colossal, burning into my brain. I ignored it, braced my knee, and tensed. “And I enjoy my work, hellspawn.”
“Shen,” he whispered. “Shenan—”
Oh holy shit. But there was no time, he heaved up and my grasp slipped in a scrim of foul oil. I set my teeth and my knees and yanked, twisting; an easy, fluid motion and a jet of sour black arterial spray. His cry ended on a gurgle, and his rebellion died almost before it had begun.
Cold night air poured through the open door, cleaner than anything inside. I coughed, rackingly, my eyes burning as I struggled free of the rapidly rotting thing on the floor. A young, hungry blond ’breed, maybe thinking to prove something.
But. Shen. Shenan.
There was only one thing that could mean.
Shenandoah. Or, if you had your accent on right, Shen An Dua.
In other words, seriously fucking bad news. If Perry was the unquestioned leader of the hellbreed in Santa Luz, keeping that position through murder and subterfuge, Shen was the queen, or an éminence grise. She was the biggest contender for replacing Perry if he ever got unlucky or soft—and that thought, friends and neighbors, was enough to break out any hunter in a cold sweat.
Gender means less than nothing when it comes to ’breed, but all in all I’d rather deal with a male. Female hellbreed just seem deadlier.
I coughed so hard I retched. The stink was amazing. It had been a day of varied and wonderful stenches, that was for goddamn sure. Theron was due to come back and find this mess lying around. If there’s anything I hate more than cooking, it’s cleaning up hellbreed mess from my own goddamn floor.
I toed the door closed, wishing I wasn’t silhouetted in the rectangle of golden electric light. Locked it, and stood for a moment. Fine tremors began in the center of my bones, the body coming down from a sudden adrenaline ramp-up and successive shocks. I shook so hard my coat creaked, responding to my weight shift
s. An internal earthquake, and me without any seismic bracing.
Jill, you’re not thinking straight. You could have handled him, gotten more information. You’re beginning to blur under the pressure, who wouldn’t? You have got to get some rest.
Yeah. Great idea. Unfortunately, like all great ideas, this one had a fatal flaw. There was no rest to be had.
Not if one of the most powerful hellbreed in the city—and one that had a reason to bear me a grudge—was sending ’breed to kill me in my own house. But why would she send a callow idiot like this, one who didn’t know the first thing about hunters?
One who hesitated before attacking me?
It didn’t make any sense.
I gathered my dropped weapons with shaking hands, tacked out across the broad expanse of floor for the kitchen. A sudden shrill sound yanked me halfway out of my skin, guns clearing leather with both hands and fastened on the disturbance—that is, in the direction of my bedroom.
The phone was ringing. I tried not to feel like an idiot as I reholstered my guns.
It never rains but it pours. Black humor tilted under the surface of the words. I made it to the kitchen, letting the phone ring, the noise sawing across my nerves. A cupboard squeaked when I opened it, and I lifted down the bottle of Jim Beam as carefully as if it was a Fabergé egg. Jesus. Jesus Christ.
The habit of drinking helps more than you’d think with something like this.
The ringing stopped. The answering machine clicked on. The same few seconds of silence as always, then a hiss of inhaled breath, static blurring over the line as he started to speak.
“Kiss.” Carp sounded ragged. “Goddammit, Kismet, answer your fuckin’ phone. Pick up if you’re there.”
Sorry, honey. No can do. I uncapped the bottle, took a healthy draft. It burned all the way down, but the heat helped to steady me. My metabolism burns off alcohol like nobody’s business, but it’s still… comforting.
“Things are gettin fuckin’ ridiculous,” he continued, the words spilling over each other. “Jesus. There’s a lead. If you’re there, if you get this message, there’s this place downtown on First and Alohambra. It’s a club, the Kat Klub. I got a line on someone who knows something, she works there. A waitress named Irene. I’m goin’ in.”
My heart did its best to strangle me by climbing up into my throat. I slammed the bottle on the counter, sloshing the amber liquid inside, and bolted for the bedroom.
“Carp!” I yelled, pointlessly. “Goddamit!” As if he could hear me. But he hung up before I could scoop the handset out of its cradle.
“Shit!” I yelled, and almost hurled the damn thing across the room. “Oh, fuck. Fuckitall, no.”
I barely paused to grab a dose of ammunition, wriggle into a fresh T-shirt and leather pants—the ones I wore smelled of hellbreed, gas, and burning vinyl, as did my coat—and to take another long jolt off the bottle before hitting the door at a run.
Please, God, don’t let me be too late.
18
First and Alohambra is a ritzy northern part of downtown. Despite spending most of my time in alleys and on rooftops, I also know where to find gentrification if I need it—upscale eateries, boutiques, art galleries, and the smell of money. A fair amount of the nightside has its fingers in high-cash trades; the rich can pay for pleasures that might not be strictly earthly.
I like to think it doesn’t matter, that I pursue every criminal equally. God knows I try to care a bit more for the poor, since they get shafted most often. What’s that old song? It’s the rich what gets the pleasure, and the poor what gets the blame.
Truer words never spoken. No matter how hard I try to even the score, basic inequality looms over human life from cradle to grave.
Getting more pessimistic all the time, Jill. Why is that?
I crouched on the rooftop, watching the front of the Kat Klub, a long-time fixture of downtown Santa Luz.
Its current incarnation dates back to the Jazz Age. The normals think it’s just a restaurant with a cabaret dinner show that turns into a nightclub at about midnight, shutting down just before dawn in merry defiance of the liquor laws. It’s a venerable institution, housed in the bottom of the granite bulk of the Piers Tower, one of the oldest skyscrapers in Santa Luz. Mikhail told me once that the property had been a mission long ago—before the town got big enough to attract hellbreed.
One thing is for sure, there is no sacredness left in those walls.
The heat of the day had run out like the heat of the Beam in my belly. I crouched, and considered.
If I went in my usual way, guns blazing, there would go my advantage in being thought dead. On the other hand, if Carp was in there he needed all the help he could get. And hellbreed would know better than to think a burning car would do me in.
The thought that any hellbreed would know that one punk scarecrow wouldn’t be enough to do me in, either, was not particularly comforting. Something about this was stinking even worse than the mess left on my floor. That was going to be a pain in the ass to remove.
Why are you dilly-dallying, Jill? If Carp steps inside that place, you’ll have to do more than bleed to get him out.
I weighed every possible alternative. Cold hard logic said to just keep watch, see what happened, and return once I’d developed some other leads—with the benefit of whatever cops involved in this thinking I was dead, so I didn’t have to worry about more bullets flying my way from that quarter, at least. It was the way I was trained to think, a straightforward totting up of averages and percentages, the greater good balanced against personal cost.
Screw that. Carper’s in there.
You don’t get to be a hunter without knowing when to buck the odds.
I rose to my feet slowly, breathing. Just like burning a hellbreed hole, Jill. Go fast and deadly, you don’t have Saul with you this time. You did it on your own before he showed up. My fingers crept to the leather cuff over the scar; I undid the buckles and peeled it away.
Cold air mouthed my skin with hundreds of vicious little wet lips. I let out a soft breath, every muscle tightening as the welter of sensation spilled through nerve endings already pulled taut with worry and stress.
It’s gotten stronger. Hasn’t it? Oh, God.
The cold machine inside my head jotting down percentages replied that if it had, that was good; it would give me an edge I sorely needed. I would worry about the cost later. Story of my life. I was mortgaging myself by inches—the most dangerous way to do it.
Well, I never did like doing things by halves. Go for the quick tear, Jill.
The rooftop quivered slightly, the world flexing around me. I was pulling on etheric force, the scar moaning and thundering against my wrist. Too much power for me to really control, it wasn’t obeying my will. A piece of my own flesh, turning traitor. My aura sparkled in the ether, a sea-urchin of light.
I leapt out into free air, physics bending and the pavement smoking under a sudden application of strain. I hit the street like a ton of bricks, bleeding off some of the etheric force boiling through me and leaving behind a star-shaped pattern of cracks; streaked through a gap in late-night traffic toward the door—a massive, iron-bound oaken monstrosity, guarded by two bouncers just this side of gorilla with flat-shining Trader eyes behind smoked sunglasses and the taint of Hell swirling in their once-human auras.
A waitress named Irene. But first, we get Carper, and we make a statement.
The only question was whether or not to shoot the bouncers. I was already going too fast; I hit the door with megaton force, sharp-spiked edges of my aura fluorescing into the visible as blue sparks crackled off every piece of silver jewelry I carried. Oak splintered, iron buckled, and my boots thudded home, I rode the door down like a surfboard, my knees bent when it hit the parquet inside; I was already leaping, a compact ball of bloodlust and action, my coat snapping like a flag in a high breeze.
The restaurant was down a short hall behind swinging soundproofed doors. A skinny hat-check girl
with the brackish aura of a Trader bared her teeth, cowering back into the plush darkness of her booth. Three more bouncers converged on me, I shot two, pistol-whipped the third, and plunged down the hall. I hit the swinging doors so hard they both broke against the walls and was suddenly in an oasis of silk palms, hanging fake greenery, and the quiet tinkling sound of a fountain made of whipped glass and creamy spun metal.
Glass eyes regarded me, shining in the soft light. There were at least a hundred stuffed cats, maybe more, draped in the greenery, their fur brushed and glossy and their fangs exposed. From little calico housecats to sleek stuffed panthers, even four or five (I shivered to see them) cougars arranged artistically on branches with bark too rough and shiny to be real.
The place was stuffed with hellbreed and Traders. Linen-draped tables in nooks shrouded by false plants clustered around a wide glassy dance floor, currently hosting a set of contortionists in spangled costumes—three unbreasted girls and two stick-thin boys, tall and stretched-out, all with blank dusted eyes and empty loose mouths—writhing around each other. They didn’t even pause when I shot the maître d’.
Murmured conversation stopped. The maître d’ collapsed, half his head blown away and the sudden sharp stink of hellbreed death exploding with the oatmeal of his brain.
I eyed them all, they watched me. The scar thundered and prickled, running with sharp diamond insect feet against my skin. “Huh.” My voice was unnaturally loud in the stillness. “Must have forgotten my reservation.”
Forks hung, paused in midair. The fountain plashed, sequins on the contortionists’ costumes scratched, and the sounds of clinking and cooking came from the open kitchen, set along the back wall. Later on in the night it would convert to a bar, and ranked bottles of liquor glowed mellow behind a counter where hellbreed bellied up, the old-fashioned equipment of a soda fountain gleaming as it dispensed booze—and other liquids and powders.