Hunter's Prayer

  “Stinks. And a sealed door.” He didn’t sound strained, but I caught the edge of disgust in his voice. “I smell more than one.”

  “How many?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “The wendigo—”

  “I smell it too. But old. It hasn’t been here for a day or two.”

  “Jesus.” I coughed, my eyes watering. “All right. Call Montaigne; tell him we’ve got a scene. I’m going in.”

  “Jill—”

  “Come on, Saul. I’m the hunter. There’s a pay phone on the corner. Or there’s a cell phone in Perry’s limo, if it comes to that. Hurry up so you can come back and cover me.” Though I don’t think the thing’s here. I don’t think anything’s left alive in here.

  His jaw set, hard as concrete. Then he was gone, his coat flapping as he took the stairs with a single bound, brushing past me. Silver chimed angrily in his hair. I waited until he was half a block away before I peeled the leather cuff off my right wrist one-handed.

  Cool air hitting the scar sent a shiver down my spine. I stuffed the cuff in my pocket and closed my left hand around my secondary gun. Then I stepped forward, into the miasma of death.

  Breathe. Dammit, Jill, breathe. The smell will fade.

  But I knew it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t. The receptors in my nose might shut off, but the smell would work its way into my skin. And even deeper, into memory. How many bodies?

  Let it be only one or two. What do you say, God? Even as I crossed the threshold and stepped into the flickering fluorescent light of a perfectly normal waiting room, I knew it wouldn’t be only one or two. No wonder the clinic hadn’t been open.

  The air was stuffy, dead still. I peered behind the nurse’s counter—no, nobody there. A neat stack of files sat next to a keyboard, under a dead dark monitor. I wanted to take a look, but rule one of sweeping a scene is give assistance to the living. Of course, I doubted there was anyone in here alive. Not with that smell.

  I pushed open the swinging door that should lead to patient rooms and the back hallway, and the odor of death belched out, enfolding me.

  I peered into the hall, and my fingers loosened on the gun. “Dear God,” I whispered, then wished I hadn’t because the smell rushed into my mouth and the vision of …

  Sweet Jesus, dear God, it burned its way into my skull.

  How many of them are there? Arms, legs … this is a lair. Or it was. The smell of the creature was fading, but enough remained to make the intaglio of twisted rotting limbs seem to move. Open mouths, eyes torn from skulls, torsos cracked like nuts—

  I backed up, the gun bumping against my leg as my grip slipped still more. Oh, God. God in Heaven.

  The sight scored itself deeper behind my eyes, and the scar on my wrist pulsed, gruesomely warm and wet as if a rough-scaled tongue had licked it. I backed up again, ran into something soft, and leapt, raising the gun.

  Perry’s fingers locked around my wrist. “Just me, Kiss.” His blue eyes glanced past me as the swinging door closed, a soft sheaf of pale hair falling in his face. He looked just the same, and the fringing of his aura had stopped. Of course, there was no sunlight in here. “There is nothing living in this place.”

  “It’s—” Words failed me, and the reek closed thick and cloying. Pressed against my skin like rancid oil. “God—”

  “God is not here. Of all people you should know that.” His fingers tightened on my wrist, the scar gone hot and swollen. “Catholic, weren’t you? A schoolgirl.”

  I pulled against his grasp. His fingers tightened, but I tore my hand away. My grasp firmed around the butt of the gun.

  My shoulder hit his as I pushed past him. He didn’t even bother to pretend I could move him, I bounced off and stumbled. I aimed for the door, a rushing sound in my ears and the back of my throat suddenly whipped with hot bile.

  “Jillian.” Perry’s voice echoed with soft chilling glee in the still, muffled air. “You do know that, right? God is a fiction. There is nothing godly about this.”

  Shut up, Perry.

  I made it outside before I threw up. The air was cold and full of knives; I hung over the spindly iron railing and lost everything I’d ever thought of eating.

  Perry held my hair back, ignoring the silver charms. His fingers rubbed soothingly between my shoulderblades until the sirens started in the distance and Saul came back.

  Maybe I should have been grateful. But I wasn’t.

  20

  They were stuffed everywhere. Bodies and bits of bodies, in varying stages of decomposition; there was not an inch of carpet that wasn’t soaked with blood and fouler things. Maggots exploded from torn flesh, noisome liquids ran, and the techs brought the remains out in bags much too small for a human corpse. There was only so much piecing together of individual corpses that could be done at the scene. The rest had to wait for the lab.

  The only thing worse than the stench inside was the smell of vomit outside. Even the hardened forensic techs who had seen the worst stumbled out to void their stomachs and staggered back in, grimly determined to do their work. Voices were hushed, even the most cynical and jolly of the homicide deets taking hats off and speaking as if we were in a church.

  The whole building was cordoned off, thank God we didn’t have to worry about a crowd. This was a quiet part of town. Quincoa was a limbo that only happens in cities—a long seedy street zoned for both industrial and residential and holding precious little but vacant buildings and the occasional professional office lingering from better days, when it had been a thriving highway. Perry’s limo sat sleek and black across the street in a parking lot, not idling but simply … sitting. Perry himself stood off to one side, watching the human hubbub while the sun went down. Most of the paramedics, cops, and forensic techs instinctively avoided him, as if he was a cold draft or a nasty smell. His hair glowed, and his suit was still immaculate.

  The almost-worst had been finding the operating theater, scrubbed and glistening; there was a close narrow back hall that gave onto a haphazard bay where they had most likely pulled the van in. A stack of Styrofoam coolers; a supply of dry ice, scalpels and clamps laid out with gleaming precision. Everything you needed to harvest organs.

  Especially if you weren’t too concerned about the owners of those organs surviving the experience.

  The medical examiner’s office was not going to be happy with this.

  What was even worse than the operating room were the fading marks of violence, the etheric strings of souls torn and violated as surely as the bodies had been. My blue eye could see those marks, where a Sorrows adept had performed that most foul and tricky of feats: eating a soul. Taking the psychic energy of death, harvesting it to fuel something unspeakable.

  An evocation of the Nameless, powered by this kind of terrible agony and brutality, would tear a hole sky-deep in the fabric of reality. We were looking at a psychic wound the people of this place would probably never recover from—and God help us all if the Nameless was set loose. It would mean three and seven-tenths years of indescribable corruption, agony, and degradation, a cancer eating its way into the heart of the world.

  Not here, goddammit. Not in my city.

  I sat on the curb, my head on my knees. The last failing vestiges of sunlight fell across my shoulders, edging with gold the weeds forcing up through cracked and failing sidewalk. I heard the faint roar of traffic and the mutter of official activity, pencils scribbling and the faint sounds of flashes going off. Footsteps. The dry heaves of someone who had seen all they could take for the moment. The paramedics, talking in hushed tones.

  They were treating some of the officers for shock.

  I pulled further into myself, forehead pressing into my knees, my arms wrapped tight around my shins.

  Since spring. God knows how many there are in there. Right under my nose, a Chaldean whore and a wendigo.

  Right under my goddamn nose. Some hunter I am.

  Saul sat next to me, close enough I could feel the heat of him. He di
dn’t touch me, though. He knew enough to leave me alone, silently offering his presence while I suffered the worst wound any hunter could ever suffer.

  Guilt.

  God. Under my very nose. How could I overlook something like this? And the not-so-comfortable thought, in my city. My city. Why?

  The images were burned into the darkness behind my eyelids. A cavalcade of horrors, Hell reproduced in miniature, and Perry’s soft corrupting voice, smooth as velvet and so, so amused.

  God is not here. Of all people you should know that.

  Dark exhaled up from the cold pavement, the sun sliding below the rim of the earth. “How is she?” Rosie’s voice, soft and respectful.

  “Quiet.” Saul’s deadpan reply held no trace of levity. “Taking it a little hard.”

  “I brought some coffee.” Wonder of wonders, Rosie sounded shy. “Jill? Want some coffee?”

  Get up, Jill. Mikhail’s voice, the harshly weighted syllables, as if he was tired and wounded. Get up, and do your duty. You are hunter. This is what you do.

  I raised my head. Slowly. The sun was on her tired way back down under the rim of the earth, and night was rising.

  Rosie’s freckles stood out garishly against the paleness of almost-shock. Her hair was pulled sleekly back, but she still looked tired and frazzled. Carp was talking to a forensic tech, leaning against a squad car, a defeated slump to his shoulders. He looked a little green, and his hair stood up as if he’d run his fingers back through it more than once.

  “Thanks.” The word cracked, my voice as dirty and disused as an empty room. I took the Styrofoam cup of coffee sludge Rosie offered. The laces of her white canvas sneakers were dirty, and that one small detail suddenly filled my eyes with tears. “I’m sorry, Rosie.”

  “For what?” She shrugged. “Better we find these people now. We have a chance of identifying them. Hopefully, that is.” One side of her mouth pulled down. “You look like hell.”

  Not yet I don’t. But soon I probably will. I took a sip of the burned coffee. “Thanks.”

  “You gonna be okay?”

  No. Not even close. No way. “Fine.”

  Saul leaned over, bumped me with his shoulder. The coffee splashed inside the cup, its surface oils swirling.

  “What do you want us to work on, Carp and me? We’ve been getting up to speed on this organ stuff with Badger and Sullivan.”

  I returned to myself like a heavy sigh, sinking back down into my body. Leather creaked as I sat up straight, I heard a car door shut quietly. Someone else started to heave. I took another swallow of the liquid masquerading as coffee. “You and Carp can process the scene and keep on the lookout for another one. Other than that, nothing. It’s too goddamn dangerous to have you guys poking around, I don’t want to lose either of you.”

  I suppose I should have taken it as a compliment that she didn’t argue. “What are you going to do?” She sounded less like a seasoned detective and more like a teenager frightened to death by ghost stories told around a campfire. It just showed how sane she was.

  “Find the Sorrows bitch responsible for this,” I answered quietly. “Take her out. And her entire happy crew of helpers. Kill them and leave them in stinking gobbets somewhere, and curse their bones so that their souls find no rest in this world or the next. Nobody fucks with my city.”

  A short pregnant pause was broken only by the sound of someone still heaving. Quiet murmurs.

  “Well,” Rosie said finally. “Nice to know you have a plan. Anything we can do?”

  “Keep your heads down.” I rocked up to my feet, my knees protesting. I felt bruised and tender all over. “One way or another this is all going to be over soon. Either I’m going to kill them all… .” I glanced at Perry, who had finally moved and came silkily through the organized chaos of processing one of the worst murder scenes in Santa Luz history.

  “Or?” Rosie prompted. “Do I really want to know?”

  “Or you’ll need a new hunter, and quick. Not to mention you’ll want to get as far away from this fucking city as possible.” I handed the coffee cup back.

  “Lovely, Jill. That’s really reassuring.”

  “Not my job to be reassuring. You’re a good cop, you know that?”

  “Coming from you, that means something.” A tired, sour smile lit her face. “I’ll go tell Carp the good news. You might want to slide away before he decides to corner you and tell you not to do anything stupid.”

  “You’re not going to tell me that?”

  “He thinks you’ll listen; I know better. Be careful.” She looked up at Saul. “You too, Tonto.”

  He nodded, silver chiming in his hair. Perry reached us as Rosie stepped away, heading back to Carp.

  “Jill—” Saul began, rising like a dark wave.

  “Hang on. Perry?”

  “Kiss.” A tilt to his chin, a raising of one blond eyebrow, and his eyes began to glitter. He looked far more like the hellbreed I was used to seeing inside the walls of the Monde Nuit.

  “Find Melisande Belisa. Bring her to me.”

  He was about to protest, I suppose. At any rate, he opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, then stopped, studying me intently. I was safe enough right now, if the wendigo was going to attack me it would have to find me first. Which wasn’t a comforting thought, but we needed someone on our side who knew what this other Sorrows bitch was up to.

  And Belisa, damn her eyes, was the only one I could think of. Besides, if she gave me any trouble I’d have Saul and Perry hold her down while I took her spleen out the hard way.

  And I would enjoy every goddamn moment of it.

  I am not a nice person.

  I held Perry’s gaze for a long, restless eternity. Then I folded my arms, the ruby at my throat beginning to vibrate. The scar, slumbering since I’d found the bodies, tingled. His aura tightened, the bruised sludge that marked him as hellbreed. Funny, but nothing with an aura like his should be able to produce hellfire in the blue spectrum.

  Just what was Perry, anyway?

  He dropped his eyes. “Certainly, my dear. Anything for my Kiss. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Good.” I watched him turn with an oddly uncoordinated grace, and begin walking away. “I want her alive, Perry. But I want her frightened.”

  He waved one hand above his shoulder, as if I was bothering him with trifles. Saul bumped into me, crowding; I bumped back. The taste of ashes, burned coffee, and sourness still hung in my mouth. The scar on my wrist pulsed, but quietly, a soft mouthing caress, scales rasping seamed and puckered skin.

  “Saul.” My voice sounded strange, as if I was several miles away and hearing myself talk. Pushing everything else away, boiling everything down to the simplest possible essence.

  Distilling it.

  “Right here.” And he was. I could feel his attention like sunshine on my face—but from far away.

  From very far away. I focused on the gleaming paint of Perry’s limo as dusk spread over the sky, turning the blue to purple and tinting the clouds with pink in one last gasp of brightness. “I need you to go down into the barrio and find out what kills a wendigo. Keep digging until you find something, then come back to me. Take the car, I won’t need it.”

  “Jill—”

  “No. I need you to do this for me.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Some things.” Things I don’t want you to see me do, Saul. I love you.

  “What kind of things?”

  Bloody, screaming things. I watched as the headlights turned on and Perry’s limo smoothly banked out of the parking lot, heading north on Quincoa. “Please, Saul.” Don’t make me say any more.

  “Try not to get into trouble,” he said, heavily. “Give me your keys.”

  I dug in a pocket and handed them over, still staring at the spot where Perry’s limo had sat. My eyes blurred, and I felt the final click that meant I was lifting off, sliding away from the earth, into the space where there was no room for wh
at I was feeling. The space that would hold me until it was safe to feel something again.

  I have had enough. My city. They are trying to do this to my city.

  “Jill?” Saul bumped into me again. Just like a Were, crowding me so I knew he cared. “I’ll come find you as soon as I know how to kill it. I promise.”

  That made me smile, a gentle abstracted smile I could feel against the foreign material of my face. I turned my head and looked up at him. “You don’t need to promise.”

  “I like to. So you know I’m serious.” His dark eyes scorched mine for a moment, and feeling threatened to come back. I shoved it away. “Jill?”

  “Go. Find out what kills the thing.” I pushed him, gently. “Then come get me. Okay?”

  “Okay.” A short nod, his hair falling forward over his shoulders. Silver glittered, and his high cheekbones caught the last of the dusky light. He always looked good in dimness, and even better in strong light. “You got it.” He turned and headed for the Impala. I don’t know if he looked back, because I took the opportunity to fade into a pool of shadow between the unnecessary SWAT van and an ambulance, then ran soft and light for the alley that cut between an old abandoned grocery store and a newer but equally abandoned building that had been an auto parts supply store. I could cut over to 142nd and get a cab there. I had enough cash for anywhere I would need to go tonight.

  I did not look back. I kept going.

  21

  The flesh gallery was just starting to pulse with nightlife. Long legs in ragged fishnets under short skirts, the motion of hips back and forth, the glitter of eyes under mascara and thick eyeliner, cheap jewelry and the ubiquitous jackets now that the wind had risen. Coming down off the mountains, the winter wind was cold, full of the smell of sage and stone. It whistled in the canyons between skyscrapers, and here on Lucado it filled the night with knives.

  The girls were nervous, and I didn’t blame them. I examined the street from a good vantage point on the roof of a tenement, pulling my tattered coat around me. I waited, taking deep lungfuls of the cold wind.