Chapter Twenty-four
You spend a lot of time on rooftops as a hunter. The high ground is always best, it's another cardinal law.
Of course, when you're tracking someone else who hangs out on the roof as a matter of habit, it can get a bit tricky. But my quarry didn't even look up. He glided through shadow and streetlamp light, flickering through belts of orange glow, pausing only to catch the rhythm of a street before sliding along on the tangent least likely to draw notice.
When you have the preternatural sensitivity of a hellbreed, you can afford to stay far back. But the scar burned and prickled so much, the welter of sensation so deep and terrible each time, Mikhail had suggested covering it up. Galina had copper cuffs, and they seemed to work just fine… but I could still hear the slight scrape of Mikhail's boots against concrete, his pulse hammering. I could almost taste his pheromones on the air, a lingering trail of phosphorescence.
I hung back, just at the very edge of his sensing range.
But he wasn't watching for a tail— who would follow him?
Nobody except a stupid girl, that's who. Just finished with her training, and curious about where her teacher had taken to disappearing so frequently. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back— that was one of Val's sayings.
I tried not to think about Val.
The new coat made a slight flapping noise and I cursed silently, stopping still. But my teacher didn't even break stride. He had a bounce in his step, and plunged into a network of alleys at the fringe of the barrio.
What was out here for him? I fell further back, following him only as a faint faraway song, more a pressure against sensitive ear membranes than music.
It was wonderful, and I couldn't wait to surprise my teacher with this new dimension to the mark we'd bargained so hard for. Although how I could do that without him knowing I'd tracked him … that was the question.
I was so busy thinking about it I almost stepped over the silent edge of Mikhail's field of awareness. He had stopped in a deep well of shadow in the lee of an alley, and the air itself listened when he told it to.
Silence folded itself around me, my heartbeat smoothing out. I dropped into a crouch and drew that silence like a blanket around my shoulders. It was a trick he himself taught me, and the small burst of pride inside my chest from performing it so successfully warred with caution and growing unease. What was he doing?
Did it matter? He had a right to privacy, didn't he? That was why he wasn't sleeping in the same bed with me anymore. I had my own room and my own blankets now.
A slim shadow unmelded itself from the end of the alley. I would have held my breath, but training had me in its grip— you do not rob yourself of the advantage of oxygen while you're on a rooftop watching a shadow in an alley.
You just don't.
She swayed toward him, blue silk whispering, and my mouth gaped open, both to provide me with soft shallow breaths and also so the shock could escape my throat in a soundless puff. Long dark hair and pale, pale skin, she was willow-graceful and must have smelled of incense and honey.
Under that smell of female attractiveness was an edge. It was rusty, blotted with old iron blood, and somehow wrong. My left eye twitched and watered, seeing the strings under the surface of the world resonate in response to sorcerous pulsing.
Whoever she was, she wasn't wholly human. But Mikhail stood still, light gleaming in his pallid hair, as she swayed toward him, moving so supple and soft I could imagine anything but legs under her skirts. A faint murmur reached me, satin-soft; she was talking to him.
My hackles rose.
Mikhail reached for her like a drowning man grabbing at buoyant wreckage, and they drew back into the alley's shadow. The clink of his belt buckle unloosing under those pale fingers was as loud as a shot to my tender ears, and I looked away, my face and ears burning with a shame that poured down my throat in a river of bitterness.
The soft sounds— her murmurs, his gasping for breath, the wet sound of lips and tongues meeting— tore across my eardrums like copper spines. Heat and shame alternated with burning cold, laid on my skin like a heavy fur coat.
The scar prickled, running with gleeful vicious pain.
Was it my anger? Or was it that I was even now, nailed to the edge of this rooftop in an easy crouch, obeying my training and staying quiet and still as an adder under a rock?
Mikhail's little snake under the rock. The trouble was, there were more things under this rock than just snakes.
I eased back, one step at a time, but not quickly enough to escape hearing the climax. I knew that full-throated hitch in Mikhail's breathing, the body brought to bay, the way he would stiffen and sometimes drive his teeth into my shoulder to muffle any sound.
Training doesn't stop in the bedroom, either.
I thought it was because of the mark. The thought came from nowhere, rising to fill my head like bad gas in a mine shaft. I thought he didn't want me because of the scar.
A hard, cold truth surfaced underneath it. Is he Trading? That doesn't look like a hellbreed. First you've got to find out what it is, Jill. How would you do that?
I knew how. First a visit to Hutch, the man with the library of rare texts. Then dropping by Galina's and casually, oh so casually, asking a few questions.
Then what? What the hell was I thinking? He was my teacher.
I eased away. Soundless, even my coat didn't flap.
Alternating hot and cold waves started at my crown and ran through to my soles. I was burning and freezing to death at once, but my body kept moving, training becoming instinct I did not run blindly. I just kept moving through the city, leaping from roof to roof with my coat flaring behind me, no sound except a huff of effort when I landed, etheric force pulled tingling through the flushed hard knot of the scar until I ended up under the granite Jesus atop Sisters of Mercy, hunched over, arms crossed tight and squeezing down to hold my heaving ribs in. Hot salt water slicked my cheeks, and now that I was out of the danger zone I heard soft weak sounds spilling from my throat.
I was sobbing.
The terrible thing was, I swallowed each sob, and they sounded like a woman in the ultimate crisis of sex, helpless shudders racking me. Each sound was a weakness, and reminded me of my teacher's body clasped against something in a dark alley, the stabbing motions of any cheap John taking a hooker against the wall.
The shame was worse than the anger, because both were marks of how I'd failed once more to be what a man needed. If Mikhail was Trading, how could I trust him? How could he trust me, with a hellbreed scar turned into a hard knot of corruption on the inside of my wrist?
I never told anyone, but that was the moment I truly became a hunter. Because I suddenly knew I could not even rely on my teacher— if he was Trading with something inhuman, he was a question mark until I figured out what was going on. He had taught me well, and the logic was inescapable. He was hiding something, and I wouldn't be able to rest until I knew what it was.
Until the rock was lifted and I saw the pale squirming things underneath.
I had not been an innocent when he found me, but the last dregs of whatever innocence I had left me under the granite Jesus. Because even while I cried, I was planning.
The tears would not last nearly long enough.
Chapter Twenty-five
I flipped on the radio next morning to hear the bad news, and only relaxed a little when no messages or news of murders came in. Autumn floods had arrived with a vengeance, and the rain lasted long enough to spring a leak in my ceiling. I stuck a large plastic tub I used for soaking blood out of leather under the silvery drops and promptly forgot about it. I had other things to worry about.
Galina was regretful. "I can't, Jill. I've got serious Work to do in my sanctum for the next three days, I'm closed down and tapped out. I would, but this is for the shields, and—"
I said I understood. And I did.
Avery was a bust too. "The exorcisms are kicking my as
s. I'd slip, Jill. I'm not strong enough and you know it. Eva and Benito are out too, we had to sweep the whole city last night. It's turning into a madhouse out here."
Guilt, a hot rank bubble, rose in my throat. "I'm working on it, Ave."
He made a short sound of annoyance. Behind him, phones rang and someone shouted something. It sounded like he was up in Vice, probably bullshitting with his buddy Lefty Perez. "Since when do you stop working on it? Can the martyr trip, Jill. Clear your head out and get this bastard sewn up so we can have that beer together."
I made my goodbyes and hung up, chewing at my bottom lip. Saul handed me a cup of coffee. "No breakfast?" he asked for the third time.
My stomach clenched into an iron fist. "Not before something like this."
"I told you I'd anchor you. I wouldn't be much of a tracker if I couldn't." He'd showered, and his hair lay glistening-dark against his shoulders except for the twin braids on either side. It was a good look for him, framing the classic purity of his cheekbones, balancing out the line of his jaw. He wore the same T-shirt, and I wondered how light he traveled. I hadn't seen a suitcase yet.
"I don't know you that well. No offense."
An easy shrug, as if I couldn't offend him. "None taken, but it looks like I'm all you've got. Harp's not a tracker, and Dom's her mate."
In other words, she wouldn't like it if Dom got close enough to anchor me. I could call Theron, I supposed. I could even scare up a few more people if I had to, including Father Guillermo down at Sacred Grace.
But Gui wasn't strong enough for something like this. Anyone else I could call in would be a risk—and at risk, not only because I'd be vulnerable, but because the process itself was so dangerous.
I studied Saul in the fall of sunlight through the sky-
lights. It was pale, washed-clean light, fresh and bled white by the storm last night. The weather report said the storms were moving in, coming from a ridge out in the desert meeting another ridge coming up the Luz River's broad slow muscular bends. We'd have heat lightning tonight and more rain tomorrow when the weather finished rolling up like a parade of barrio low-riders.
Saul's jaw was set, his eyes sleepless and fierce. The silver twisted tighter against one of his damp braids pulling the hair out of his face. I didn't ask him where he'd slept last night, because my bed had smelled like both of us this morning. I smelled a little like him too, the tang of Were mixing with cordite and silver and leather, and the faint trace of hellbreed and death that clung to my skin. It was a heady mix.
The bracelet was unrecognizable now, twining through his hair like a morning-glory vine through a fence. I stared at the gleaming metal for a moment, memory boiling up under my skin.
He paused in the act of taking a sip from his own coffee cup. Steam drifted up, touching his face. "What?"
The blonde hair, and the red hair, twisting around each other. I set my coffee cup down and bounced to my feet from the rumpled bed. I moved in on him so fast I half expected him to flinch, but he kept still, watching me. His eyes were very dark, and very deep.
The silver was warm from his heat, a Were metabolism bleeding warmth into the air. I touched the metal, running my fingers over the tight curves married to the silky texture of wet hair. "Did you do this? Make it bend like this?"
"It happened." He didn't move, but I sensed a shrug.
"It happens. So what?" The faintest hint of a challenge, his chin lifting just a fraction. Mulishly defiant, and a startlingly young look for a Were so contained. How old was he?
I ran my tongue along the inside of my teeth, shelving the question. Something else bothered me, the shape of an idea just under the blanket of my consciousness.
He isn't my father's … he's mine. "So what does it mean, Saul?"
His fingers flicked. He caught one of the charms tied into my hair with red thread and gave it a slight tug, his eyebrow quirking meaningfully and his mouth firming into a straight line.
Knowing Weres, that was the only answer I was going to get from him. I'd have to talk to Harp about it.
Something about the two hairs twining together bothered me. Or not precisely bothered me, but gave me the tail end of an idea I didn't much like, one I had to tease out with an hour or so of hard thinking. An hour or so I didn't have right now. The unsteady feeling behind my pulse told me this thing was wending its way to a conclusion, and not a pleasant one.
You don't live with adrenaline and intuition, not to mention sorcery, for very long without getting a feeling about when a situation's going to blow sky-high. I let out a soft breath, frustration blooming sharp under my breastbone.
My palms were damp again. "All right. You'll anchor me. I hope to hell you know what you're doing."
"I usually do." He let go of the charm, patted my hair back into place. The look of defiance was gone, replaced with calm steadiness. "Don't worry. I won't let you fall."
It was oddly comforting to hear him say it.
"It's not the falling I'm worried about. It's the climbing back up out of between." I eyed the coffee cup longingly, heat from the mug burrowing into my fingers. Handed it back to him. "Let's do it before I lose my nerve."
"I can't imagine that happening," he muttered as he turned away.
Ridiculously, I was hard-pressed not to smile.
I rarely used this narrow room, as the padlock and the chain on the door proved. It was little more than a closet set to the side of my practice-room, the empty wall opposite that had held Mikhail's sword lying under a rectangle of thin sunlight. I made a mental note to pick up the sunsword from Galina's and led tire Were through the door.
Darkness swallowed us, broken only by a faint silver glow.
The altar was at the other end of the room, and the walls were covered with an intaglio of spray paint, blue and black, protection-symbols from almost every religion since the dawn of time. Fat lines of paint shifted like tentacles, responding to my presence, and the air hummed as my eyes adapted, pupils flaring wide.
Cut into the hardwood floor was a double circle, spiky symbols carved between the inner and outer rings. The pentacle, inscribed just as deeply, glowed with silver hammered into its sharp lines. Hardwood inside the circle was stained darker than the surrounding floor, the silver pale and drained but glittering faintly, like a half-busted neon sign.
"Huh." Saul peered over my shoulder, his heat burning through his T-shirt and mine. "Nice."
If you think so. My fingers tightened on the knife I carried, the only weapon I had on me. I felt damn near naked.
"Mikhail did it. As a present." And also so I don't have to use a church to go between, since most churches are tactical nightmares when it comes to defense and I'm vulnerable while I do this.
It was the last present he'd ever given me. The warehouse, and this little room, hours of work and love I hadn't thanked him properly for. Three days later, he'd been dead, bleeding out through slashed jugulars in a cheap hotel room as the Sorrows bitch he'd fallen in love with fled with his amulet and I kicked in the door just a quarter-minute too late, unable to save him.
Oh, Mikhail. The familiar bite of shame turned bitter in my throat.
"He must have spent some time on it." Saul pushed past me, lingering for a little longer than absolutely necessary as he touched me, and stepped away to examine the circle, giving it his full attention. There was barely enough room for it, but it was complete, the carved lines deep and still fresh.
A swift pain lanced through my heart. I could remember Mikhail with his arm over my shoulders. Is for you, milaya. Use wisely. Some day old Mischa might not be here to protect his little snake under rock, eh?
I missed him. I missed him so much, even the slaps and the kicks as he trained me. Even the fear in the middle of the night. You must love your teacher as deeply as you hate him; the love will bring you back from Hell while your teacher holds the line. That love will also save you if you lose your way in the shifting forests of suicide and screaming that are the border between He
ll and our world of flesh and light. The love is necessary.
The hate is to make you strong. Out in the wilds of the nightside, there is no second chance, and your teacher has to make sure you can survive on your own. It's bad to lose a fellow hunter, there are few enough of us as it is.
Losing an apprentice is much, much worse.
So it's love, and hate, and need. All twisted together and made into a rope, a bond, a chain. A fetter each hunter wears with pride, and the reason why we don't lie to each other. You can't lie to someone else who's been loved like that.
No matter what secret your teacher keeps from you. No matter how deep the betrayal.
"He did," I whispered. He spent weeks on this. Did he know he wouldn't be here forever? Sure he did. He was already old, and he had to know…
Had he known the Sorrows bitch would turn on him? He had to have known, Mikhail taught me everything I knew about the Sorrows and their worship of the Elder Gods, their Houses where incense hung heavy in the air and women became hive-queens, their collective energies focused on bringing back the Elders through the veils that kept them from the "real" world. I had to go to Hutch only because I hadn't smelled one before.
Mikhail had to have known. So why had he trusted her? Why hadn't he told me?
Deal with what you have in front of you now, Jill. Quit stalling.
Saul stepped into the bare space in the middle of the pentacle. I inhaled, deeply. Then I reached up and unclasped the ruby from my throat. Its sharp edges dug into my sweating palm as I slid past the Were. I stepped delicately over the double circle and turned to face him, my back to the altar. His face was shadowed, only the glitter of eyes and the glint of silver in his hair reflecting the spent light from the pentacle below.
I held up the chain. The ruby dangled, bloody sparks drifting in its depths as it sensed the event looming toward me. "This is my line back." My voice sounded normal, except for the pain riding each word. "It'll get slippery, and it'll fight you. Don't let go. If you let go, I'm lost."