and the smell of my last protégé’s untimely death upstairs.” He folded his arms, still not sparing the hapless, bleeding ’breed on the floor a single glance.
One of the higher-ups wants you dead. I eyed Perry. “You wouldn’t be the only one sending hellbreed after me, would you? What about skunk-haired idiots busting in on a nest-cleaning and trying to kill me?”
“Skunk-haired? His eyebrow lifted. “None of my protégés deserve that appellation.”
“What about a ’breed sent to kill me in my own home and whisper someone else’s name?” I pressed. I got a half-second of some other emotion flickering across his face. Did Perry look, of all things, surprised? “So you ride in to my rescue, huh? You’re helping me. How very congenial of you.” Like shit you are. You’re probably neck-deep in this too, God knows you always are.
My tone must have warned him. His eyes narrowed a fraction, and instead of looking at me like a prize entrée, he eyed me like a cobra eyes a mongoose.
It was a welcome change. Still, it bothered me. What had calmed him down enough that the staining on his whites retreated?
I holstered both guns, though my entire body fought it. They were my protection, and these were hellbreed, for Christ’s sake. “You can start by telling me which of your little hellbreed friends wants me dead.”
“And what will you pay for that information?” He cocked his pale head, still regarding me with that cautious, unblinking reptile stare. His coterie cringed even further.
Jesus Christ, Jill, what are you going to do now? There was only one thing I could do. “I don’t need to pay you, Pericles. You were in violation and we renegotiated. And you can threaten all you want, but if the scar goes sour, I’ll be well within my rights to erase your sorry little ass from the face of the earth and send you screaming to Hell. Your choice.”
There it was, as plain as I could make it. If he made trouble, better it was here with Leon backing me up and the scar still mostly workable.
“And that would reduce your power by an order of magnitude or two.” Perry was very still, a statue carved of gray ice and platinum hair. His eyes had half-lidded, their gasflames burning down. Why isn’t he angrier? “Maybe I’m willing to risk it. What other hellbreed wants me dead, Perry?”
“There are many who wish your death, hunter. Aren’t you happy we have such a marvelous little agreement?”
Oh no you don’t. “The only agreement we have, Pericles, is that you trade information for your continued survival. You’re in this city on my sufferance. This is the last time I’m asking, hellspawn.”
Leon didn’t move, but I could almost feel him tensing. Had I been backing up a mouthy hunter, I would have been getting a little itchy too. This was wrong. All wrong.
Perry didn’t move, but there was a general scurrying and his hellbreed scrambled away like roaches once the light’s on. The moaning hellbreed on the floor tried to scrabble away from Perry’s slow, even footsteps. Perry stopped, looking down at the mess of thin black-welling ichor and torn flesh. “Haasai,” he rumbled in Helletöng, and the injured ’breed drew in a huge hissing breath, as if preparing to scream. The owner of the Monde didn’t even seem to move. One moment he stood, hands in pockets, looking down at a wounded member of his species.
The next, his foot came down, and the injured ’breed’s skull shattered like a watermelon dropped on concrete. I skipped away, guns clearing leather again, and braced myself. Preternatural flesh steamed, scurf slime cringing away from the deeper contagion of hellbreed ichor, and Perry made a short satisfied sound. A low chuckle, to be exact, as if he had just been surprised by something enjoyable. My stomach turned over hard, rebelled against its moorings, and then I was too busy to care, because Leon let out a short sharp garbled word and Perry had taken three steps in a rush, with that same eerie darting quickness.
My left-hand gun spoke, a brief muzzle-flash and a roar. The bullet whined and pinged, and Perry stopped short. The sleeve of his suit coat smoked; a crease not intended by the tailor along his shoulder. It was my night for trick shots, I guess.
“The next one goes in your head.” My heart thundered, the scar snapping and twanging with pain like a rope in a high wind, puckering the flesh of my arm. It’s not doing anything, Jill, you know it’s not, goddammit focus! “Settle down, hellspawn.”
Perry’s head cocked like a lizard’s, a flicker of tongue too red and wet to be human showing between his white, white teeth. Once before I’d seen what lurked under the pretence of bland humanity he wore, and my brain had shunted that memory aside, refusing to hold it. I was goddamn grateful at the time, and even more so now.
We stood like that, Perry’s head not six inches from my right-hand Glock’s muzzle, my left gun settling slightly lower, zeroed in on his mouth.
“Argoth,” Perry whispered. The rumble of Hell’s mother tongue under the word made the shadows turn angular, the lights buzzing and crackling. “Argoth is coming. You should be thankful, my dear one, that I’ve kept this little ant farm safe. You should get on your knees and pray to your bloodless Savior. I can only hold the tide so long.”
“What tide?” Argoth? Nobody I’ve heard of before. I’ll bet I don’t have time to run by Hutch’s and set him to working on it, either. The ’breed behind Perry drew back, with scary nimble quickness, making little inhuman sounds wherever they stepped.
“Silly, stupid little hunter.” Perry leaned forward on his toes, for all the world as if wanting to tango and waiting for a dancer unwary enough to join him. “You truly think you owe me nothing? You think we renegotiated? ”
Don’t fall for it, Jill. But I did. My fingers tightened on the triggers, and the little clicks sounded very loud, especially when echoed by another, sharper, more definite click from Rosita. “Take one step closer, Perry, and fucking find out. ”
We stood like that for five ticking seconds, the scar working a red-hot coathanger up the channels of my nerves and veins, but my arm never wavered. It was only pain, and if it got too bad, I would shoot him now and keep shooting until I was sure the fucker was dead.
If I ever was sure, that is. And it wouldn’t stop me from parting out the body and burning each steak and hamhock down to ash.
And scattering the ash.
Miles apart, continents apart if I could.
The owner of the Monde stepped mincingly… away. He retreated, his eyes still bright blue, and it unnerved me more than if they had been turning indigo with fury.
Six feet away he halted, came back down on his heels, and pointed to the ’breed on the floor, a quick sketch of a movement. “He was becoming troublesome, you know. You killed him just in time.”
“I only wounded him, Perry. You murdered him all on your own. What’s Argoth?” Have I heard that name before? Don’t think so. Shit. Never rains but it pours. My pulse was struggling to thunder again, but control clamped down. The switch inside my head trembled—the one that could flip and make the world into a chessboard, every move clear and clean, with nothing even resembling hesitation to keep me from what had to be done.
The uncomfortable thought arrived right on schedule. Like bashing a hellbreed’s head in? Did that just have to be done? Does Perry think of it that way?
“Not what, but who. He is Death come calling, and you will see him soon enough.” Perry smiled broadly, his teeth gleaming. “You think you can manage without my help? Go and see, my dearest.”
“Don’t even think of welshing, hellbreed.” The switch trembled again, I forced it to stay still. I had never even told Mikhail about that part of me, the way I could lift out of my own body and just do what was needed.
What was necessary.
“Oh, you may have rope to hang yourself and to spare. Have no fear of that.” Perry took a gliding step away, and another, as if it was a dance. Chain-link rattled under his feet like metal bones. “Enough rope, and a noose as well. Goodnight, sweetheart.”
He all but vanished into the sudden darkness, the lights at the
bend of the warehouses failing utterly, and there was a sound like pipe organs chuckling in some deep subterranean cavern while a madman pounded on the keys. I let out a long shaking breath, forcing my arms to come down and rest stiff at my sides, weighed down by the guns and their cargo of deadly silver.
“What. The fuck. Was that?” Leon spoke for both of us.
“I don’t know.” I sounded tired even to myself. “This does not look good.”
“Every time I see that motherfucker he looks like he just won the lottery.”
Just like any other hellbreed. “He can’t cash the check as long as I’m around, Leon.” My eyes dropped down to the quick-rotting ’breed on the floor. The stink had just officially gotten worse. Runnels of decay poured from the smashed head, down the neck and through the chest cavity, fouling the clothes—a pale blue shirt that was Brooks Brothers, unless I missed my guess, and a pair of high-end designer khakis. Alligator wingtips, too.
I felt a momentary flash of guilt. It hadn’t been necessary to kill them, if Perry was telling the truth and he’d come here to help.
Get real, Jill. What kind of “help” do you think Perry’s going to offer you? Nothing you’d want to accept. You made the deal with him because Mikhail said it was a good idea, and now you’re sitting pretty. As pretty as you can sit with a hellbreed mark on your wrist and Perry laughing at you. Cold fingers touched my spine as I stared at the collapsing face.
It was a relief it didn’t look human. Well, much.
You’re not thinking straight. Focus.
Just as I prepared to make another of those gut-clenching physical efforts to tear my mind out of a psychological dead end, I froze and tipped my head back, staring up at the fixtures slowly losing their dangling momentum.
“Jill?” Leon was getting to the edge of not-quite-frantic-but-definitely-uncomfortable. “I’d like to buy a fuckin’ vowel, please.”
Me too. But I think I just got one. “Shhh.” The thought circled, returned, and I leapt on it. Irene’s voice floated through the cavern of my skull. The name on his credit card was Alfred Bernardino. Italian, greasy, built wide and hairy.
Echoing against it came Carp’s voice, from a few days and a wide shoal of darkness away. They won’t talk to me or to Bernie—his partner—but it doesn’t seem possible that one of them pulled the trigger on him. Bernie, in Vice. Italian, built like a dockworker, with a foul mouth—always an asset in the Vice department—
and stubby fingers always holding a filterless cigarette. Pedro Ayala’s partner. The insight hit me in a flash of blinding white, the fluorescents overhead beginning to buzz again, the warehouse brightening as hellbreed contamination ebbed.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “Leon, I’m an idiot.”
He magnanimously refused to comment on that. “Can we get the fuck outta here now?”
“Sure thing. Let’s go back to Galina’s, I need to talk to Carp.”
23
Dawn leached gray through the sky. Galina’s eyes were smudged with sleeplessness. “Thank God you’re here,” she greeted me. “Your detective’s all right, but that Trader—”
Oh, Jesus. What now? “Do I have to kill her?” I only sounded weary, which was a bad sign. Leon sighed, leaning against the door, and Galina handed him a cold can of Pabst.
That’s your local Sanc. On tap with whatever you need. Galina made a slight moue of distaste. “She’s up in the greenhouse, crying. Tried to get out, but you said you wanted her here. Something about Fairfax, and—”
“I can kill her,” Leon volunteered hopefully, popping the top and taking a slurp. The eyeliner turned his eyes into dark holes, and made the smudges of exhaustion under them deeper. “Put a real capper on my night.”
It’s not like a Trader to cry, unless there’s an advantage in it. Still, she saved Carp. Under threat of death, but still. I let out a sigh that was mostly weariness, with a soupçon of irritation thrown in. “Not yet.” Not tonight, at least. Or today, since it’s dawn. “Where’s Carp?”
“In bed. He’s sedated. I think he’ll be fine, if he can get over the nightmares.” Galina sighed, too. She really was a gentle soul.
It made me wonder sometimes. If I’d ever been a gentle soul, would my life have knocked it out of me?
Would I have survived hunter training and the nights afterward if I’d had any gentleness left in me?
Stay with the here and now, Jill. “Can he talk?”
Galina shrugged, slipping her hands in the pockets of her gray knit hoodie. She looked like she could use a night or two of rest as well. “Depends on what you want to talk to him about. He’s not going to be doing quadratic equations, but he’s coherent.”
Upstairs, in the spare room over the shop, Carp lay still as death under a vintage yellow counterpane. He was cottage-cheese pale, his sandy hair a bird’s nest, and even though the blood had been washed off the wound on his head was glaring. He stared at me through the gray light spilling through windows humming with a Sanctuary’s powerful defenses, and I knew that look in his eyes.
Carper was now haunted. He’d seen the nightside up close. Not just the fragrance of difference that hung on a Were, not just the bodies left after a nightside eruption into the civilian world. He’d been in the nightclub for forty-five minutes or so—more than enough time for him to see up close what lurked under the fabric of reality.
They just wanted to play with him before Shen came down, Irene had said. God alone knew what game they had played. One that involved taking a bite out him, apparently.
I dragged a straight-backed chair over to the side of the bed. “Hey.” Even though I needed words out of him, needed them quickly, I spoke slowly, softly. “How are you?”
He managed a harsh little thread of a laugh. “Kismet.” It wasn’t an answer. “Jesus.”
“Just the former, Detective.” A little humor, to set him at ease.
Who was I kidding? No way was Carp going to be set at ease. He’d seen under the mask. I decided to get down to it. I couldn’t make the shock any less, but I could at least get usable information out of him if he was coherent. “Bernardino, Alfie Bernardino. Ayala’s partner. What do you know about him, Carp?”
Still, even as I said it, I hated myself. He needed sedation and a therapist, not me digging around and reminding him of things he was probably goddamn eager to start forgetting. He blinked. Made an internal effort, things shifting behind his eyes. “Ayala. His partner. Slippery fucker.”
Man, this just keeps getting better. “He’s in it up to his neck, and probably deeper. But then you know that, right?”
“Credit card statements about this waitress—Irene. She—” He coughed, weakly, his eyelids falling down.
“Kiss, their eyes. Their eyes were glowing.”
They always do, Carp. I laid a hand against his forehead—my left hand, since the right was humming with fever-hot hellbreed-tainted force. “Just rest. It’ll fade.”
I was lying. Things like this don’t fade. They come back in nightmares and in waking dreams, flashbacks and stress disorders you need antidepressants for—or something stronger.
Something like a steel-cold barrel in the mouth, or the bottle in the hand, or pills you can’t get in the States. Something, anything, to make it go away so you can face the normal world. Except sometimes you can’t.
“Do you have anything else on Bernardino?” I didn’t want to push him… but I had to know. I had to.
“File. Maybe in the file… their eyes. And the teeth…” His eyelids drifted down, and Carp took refuge in the sedation.
I didn’t blame him.
I sat there for a long few moments, gray gathering strength through the windows, dawn coming up. My left hand lay human-cold and limp on Carp’s sweating forehead, under the gash that ran along his hairline and jagged into his temple, sutured up and quiescent under a dabble of green herbal paste running with the clear gold of Sanctuary sorcery. Galina’s work, fine and gentle, stitching together damage. I wished she h
ad something that would stitch up the damage inside him. I’d have to get him to a trauma counselor; there were a few on call that took care of things like this and billed the police department. What comes next, Jill? Come up with a plan. Your brain works just fine, now for God’s sweet sake, use it. I took my fingers gently away from Carp’s feverish, damp, human skin. It took longer than I liked, breathing deeply and staring at the gray filling up the cup of the window, for my mental floor to clear. I needed sleep, and food, and a good few hours of hard thinking. So many things I needed. What I was going to get was a long mess before this was all through. When I finally pushed myself up, leather creaking, I stood looking down at Carp’s slack face. He was still shocky-pale, but breathing all right. He might wake up not remembering much, the brain outright refusing, to keep the psyche from being further traumatized. Or he might wake up reliving every single second of it, replaying it like a CD on repeat until he had a psychotic break.
It was too soon to tell.
“Jill?” Leon stood in the door, the copper tied in his hair clinking and shifting as soon as he spoke.
“Where’s the Trader?” I kept staring at the planes and valleys of Carp’s unhandsome face, as if they would turn into a map that would lead me out of this.
The amulets around Leon’s throat jingled a bit as he touched them, his version of a nervous tic. “Up in the greenhouse, Galina says. Are we sitting tight or moving out?”
I swallowed hard, juggling priorities. Rest easy, Carper. I’m on the job. “Moving in fifteen, Leon. Get what you need.”
“Where we going?”
The next step is to find Bernardino—after we visit Hutch. “Hutch’s, to find out what we’re up against. Then we’re going cop-hunting. Leave your truck here.”
24
Hutch pushed his glasses up on his beaky nose. “Oh, Christ.” At least he didn’t try to slam the door in my face. I pushed past him and into his bookshop, the familiar smell of dust, paper, and tea enveloping me. “I hate it when you do this.”