It was the mental scrabble that lights a ratlike gleam in a quarry’s eyes. The how can I make this work for me gleam, the one my mother used to get when her boyfriends got too drunk or too loud and she started thinking about how to make their attention fasten on something else, anything else.
Even me.
My right hand flicked forward. I grabbed the bottle, slid it out of his hand, and took another hit. The glass was too warm, body-warm, and the thought that his lips had touched it sent a bolt of hot nausea through me.
I tipped the bottle further. Liquid chugged and churned. I kept swallowing, and Perry’s gaze dropped. Not high enough to be watching my mouth, not low enough to be watching my chest.
He was staring at my throat as it worked, the liquor sliding down and exploding in my stomach, a brief heat lightning. The tip of Perry’s cherry-red tongue poked out, for just a bare second, gleaming wet and rough-scaled.
The last of the vodka vanished down my throat. I slammed the bottle down, a gun crack that managed to cut through the music. My apprentice-ring spat a single spark, bright blue and quickly snuffed.
“Do svidanye,” I yelled, and I grinned with all the sunny good humor I could muster. “Hello and good night!”
Perry cocked his blond head. The light ran over him, the tiny skulldapples screaming as they touched the pressed linen of his suit. He was even wearing bleached suede wingtips, for God’s sake.
You’re carrying this much too far. Maybe the vodka was affecting me after all. But no, I just felt cold all the way through. Making myself ice, the real me curling up inside my head and a stranger taking over.
The stranger was hard and cruel, and she had no trouble surviving. She’d shot Val in the head, and she was the one Mikhail had rescued from a snowbank that night. It was probably her who made me refuse to die. Certainly she’d been the one who had pulled the trigger in that circle of banefire, breaking my skull and brain open for the hornets to devour.
I might be weak, but that bitch never gave up. And I was going to need all of her to pull this off.
Okay, Jill. It’s time to start the game.
Still grinning like a goddamn fool, I reached out.
And I grabbed Perry’s hand.
25
The room upstairs was no longer so white. Maybe I was just seeing it through a screen of vodka heat, or my own hopelessness. The carpet was softer, dove gray, and the bed was still crisp but cream instead of a bleached cloud. The mirrors all looked dimmer, not hurtfully clear and bright, but the television screens still held their familiar news feeds, static crawling from one to another in blinking, random loops and whorls.
I let go of Perry’s feverish, marble-hard fingers and took perverse pleasure in stamping smeared tracks across the carpet. Vaulted the mirrored bar, my dirty hand leaving a streak on its surface, and examined the bottles. “Not much of a choice here, you know. I’ve always wanted to ask what’s in these.” Talking too much, Jill. Bring the focus back to him. I looked over my shoulder.
Perry shut the door, and his fingers flicked. There was the chuk of a lock engaging, and he stood for a moment with his pale head down. The hand I hadn’t touched was in his pocket, and for a moment he almost looked human.
Almost. Except for the little ripples passing through him, as something else twitched under the surface.
I selected one bottle, full of shimmering sapphire liquid. It looked oily. I touched its slim neck, pulled it forward a little. A little more. It teetered on the edge of the glass shelf for a long heart-stopping moment, plummeted.
The crash went right through the room. Perry didn’t move. Blue liquid spread out slowly, gelatinous. Steam lifted from its surface.
I selected another bottle. This one held shifting gray smoke, a screaming face in its depths becoming a picture of dismay as I tugged, sliding it exquisitely slowly across the shelf. Again, the teetering, the will-she-won’t-she.
Oh, she will. She always will, but on her own terms.
It was so easy to break. I flicked a dirty, chewed-down fingernail, the bottle plummeted, and the smoke oozed up with a small sound, like a cricket’s breathless chirrup in the distance.
“Stop,” Perry said mildly.
But he didn’t move, so I did it again. This time I selected a tall thin bottle full of a milky white liquid that spun strangely when I scooped it up and hurled it across the room.
Before it hit the wall he was suddenly there, but I’d anticipated and was on the bar again, boots grinding as I landed cat-footed, and he skidded to a stop.
I didn’t go for the whip.
He was on the other end of the counter, his wingtips placed just so on the glass surface, solemn-faced as he hardly ever was. That was wrong—I wanted him smiling, but still. I’d rattled him.
Good for me.
We examined each other, standing on the bar like a couple of cheesy B-movie gunfighters. The indigo was gone from his eyes. They were very blue, shadows moving in poisonous depths. “Dangerous,” he said, again very quietly. “For you. Here.”
Well, let’s see if we can’t get you interested. “I’m for sale, Pericles. Bid high.”
His gaze had fastened on my throat again. “What is this, Kiss? A misguided attempt at sacrifice?” He cocked his head, his cheek twitching just slightly before it settled. “What do you remember of the last time you tried?”
All of it. The hornets buzzed and prickled, pinprick mouths chewing at my flesh. Eating my brain, scouring my skull. “Enough.”
“Really.” His fingers flicked, and a silver chain dropped from them, running with blue sparks. His face was set in a grimace, like he was smelling something hideous. It was in his shadowed hand, the one he’d tried to reach through the banefire circle with.
I wondered how long it had taken for the fingers to uncurl and uncramp, if it had hurt when the skin started to grow back.
The chain held a rose-carved ruby as long as my thumb. I’d used it as a key for the sunsword after Mikhail was dead and the Eye of Sekhmet stolen by his killer. The stone was cracked now, but still alive with clear crimson light. It sizzled, still vibrating with the shock of its wearer’s death.
My death. I tasted vodka fumes and bitterness, the sharp metal tang of fear. If you’re not afraid when dealing with hellbreed, you’re not paying attention. Inattention is just asking to get fucked up six ways from Sunday, and all the way to breakfast too.
“For you,” he said lightly. “A memento, worn next to my heart. The only thing I allowed myself to keep.”
You buried me. Well, isn’t that sentimental of you. For a moment we stood, sizing each other up.
“I remember enough,” I repeated. “Come on, Perry. I’m sure there’s other buyers. I’m a useful tool.”
“How do I know you’ll stay bought?” Whimsical, now. “Oh, darling Kiss. Don’t play this game with me. You’ll lose.”
That’s yesterday’s news. I already lost. But we’ve already established I don’t know when to fucking well quit. “You don’t know what game I’m playing, Perry.” It was time for a bit of truth turned sideways. That was a hellbreed specialty—just enough honesty to bait the lure. You can’t deal with them, night after night, and not know it. Know it—and know how to do it yourself. “I spend my nights killing hellbreed, but there’s always more and more of you. And all of them, all those oblivious fucking people I kill you to protect, they fall all over themselves making deals with you night and day. The world threatens to end and I yank it back, I break every bone in my body, I even put a bullet through my own head and you know what? Even then I’m not allowed to rest. I’m tired.”
He dangled the necklace, ignoring the silver biting at his hand. Sparks popped. “As are we all. The point?”
Shit. “You’re not interested. Fine.” I hopped off the counter.
Or at least, that’s what I had planned. He hit me in midair and we slammed into the wall near the door with a rattling crunch. The gem hummed on my wrist, sleepy under the weight of honeye
d etheric corruption.
Perry inhaled, his nose buried in my throat, his hands clamped around my wrists. He only had an inch or so on me, if I dropped my knee and brought the other one up I could nail him pretty hard, or I could kick and take out his knee and wrench myself sideways, breaking free, my hand slapping on a gun butt.
But I didn’t. I just hung there, silver pressed against my right hand dangerously warm, responding to hellbreed contamination. The ruby dangled, scorch-bright, and my breath came in shallow rasps. Heat rolled off him, a terrible cold fire, and even if the thing inhabiting his skin wasn’t human it felt like he had a pretty respectable hard-on. Shoved right up against me.
Oh, we’ve been here before. At least he’s interested, right? Good sign, wouldn’t you say?
I told that rabbit-jumping part of me to shut the fuck up and struggled to control my pulse. My heart settled into a high, hard thumping, ready for fight or flight, adrenaline touching the back of my tongue with a copper finger.
“I didn’t say I had no interest,” Perry breathed against my throat, obscenely warm and wet. Condensation gathered on my skin, and every inch of flesh on me crawled. “I didn’t say that at all. Please, continue.”
Sure instinct ignited in my head. Now I could bite back. I gave him a love tap to the knee and shoved him, and he stumbled away. I punched him, too, a good hard crack that snapped his face aside, and I finished with a ringing open-handed slap on the other cheek. Just like I hadn’t taken the next step to turn this into more of a fight, now he did not. He simply stepped back another foot or so, making a quick sideways motion to resettle his jaw. Then he dropped his chin and looked at me.
The dirt on me had smeared on his linen, too, but the grin was back. It was wider than ever, his patented old I-could-buy-this-if-I-cared-to expression, its sheer amoral good will capable of sending a shudder up even a hunter’s spine.
I met it with my own fey careless grimace, defiance and terror gasfumes just looking for a spark. My pulse settled down, dropping into the high-spaced gallop of impending action, and I knew he could hear it. The music thudded away underneath us, but neither of us paid any attention. I straightened, shook my right hand out once, fingers loose and easy. The gem had gone quiescent, but etheric force hummed through my bones.
“Don’t fuck with me,” I said tonelessly. “I’m this close to walking out, Perry, and you’ll never see me again. I’ll retire to fucking Bermuda while you’re still here thumbing your ass and playing little hopscotch games with whatever hunter comes along to replace me.”
He took this in. Swung the ruby in a tight, tense little circle. It sparked, once, a bloody point of light. “What am I buying, my lovely? I seem to remember being cheated once before.”
“You welshed. Not me.” It was out before I could stop myself, but his grin widened. He spun the ruby, the chain making little groaning noises as it whirred, faster and faster. “Don’t you ever want to find out what would happen if I was willing? Or are you one of those stupid bastards who just likes the chase?”
A little moue now, the flush on his cheek where I’d hit him dying down and leaving him pale and perfect again. “It has been a long chase. And full of such tender moments. I find your homicidal little displays charming, darling, and you know how much I…love…you.” The snarl drifting over his face sent a ripple through the entire room. Behind him, television screens fuzzed with static.
Oh, good Christ, if this is love, I don’t want to see hate. “It’s not love.” I folded my arms and raised my chin. The air tightened, and I knew this dance. If he jumped me again we were going to have a hell of a tango. It wouldn’t stop until one or both of us were bleeding, and once I started beating on him, I wasn’t sure I would stop.
Or vice versa.
So I pulled out my last card and threw it on the table. “You’re the only one who understands, Pericles.” Soft, as if the admission was pulled out by force. “A fucking hellbreed, and you’re the only one. You know me.”
And like all good lies, it was true. I hadn’t gone on mortgaging bits of myself for the glory of it. Sometimes I hadn’t even for the speed and strength a hellbreed scar could give me.
No, sometimes—plenty of times—I’d done this just to see if I could. To walk right up to the edge, to prove I was different from him, to make him respond. To get out the razor and make the mark, and laugh at the sting.
There was no way he could play with me so effectively, otherwise.
Idiots, Mikhail sneered in my memory. They think we do this for them. Is only one reason to do, milaya. It is for to quiet screaming in our own head.
Every time I walked away from Perry breathing, it was like walking away from a car wreck, leaving an old life behind and striking out for parts unknown. Like being pulled out of a snowbank by a pair of hard callused hands and told Not tonight, little one.
Maybe it took shooting myself in the head before I could admit I liked having the power to play with him, too.
God help me. But there was no help for this. I was on my own. Like always.
Perry stared. The tip of his wet, red tongue slid out again, touched the corner of his bloodless lips. His eyes glowed, twin blue infernos casting shadows down his cheeks, and the air behind him ruffled into two points of disturbance high over his shoulders. The reek of spoiled honey trembled around us both. A buzz of chrome flies in chlorinated bottles mounted, matching the wasps’ singing as their little mouths and feet prickled all over me. The cracked ruby swung, its circles shrinking as his slim hard fingers curled.
He’s not going to bite. “Fine.” I took two steps toward the door, sliding along the wall. “See you.”
“You actually surprised me.” His fingers flicked, the necklace vanishing into his palm. Now the dark threads were in his eyes, spreading from his irises, eating the whites. “I thought you would love life too much, like all those other insects.” His fist tightened, a narrow artist’s hand clutching at a coin for a magic trick. Shadows slid over the skin like clouds reflected in a glass of milk, and blue sparks struggled between his clenched fingers. “But not you, my Kiss. No. You were already dead, so pulling that trigger was no trouble at all.” Quietly now, the softest and most seductive of all his voices. “You’ve been dead a long time.”
There was no way I could argue. I was dead long before Mikhail plucked me from that snowbank. I’d been born dead, and fighting it didn’t make much difference. The whole thing was pointless, except for Saul.
Oh, God. I couldn’t think about him right now. At least he was safe.
Perry took a soft, gliding step closer, infinitely slow. “They suspect you, don’t they. Your fellow hunter, your Sanctuary, the beasts you call your friends. You can feel the suspicion breathing on your back, and it twists in you, doesn’t it. Knife in the wound.” Another step.
It wasn’t true. It wasn’t.
But I was shaking. Because Anya had checked to see if I was bleeding clean. Theron hadn’t been suspicious at all, Weres weren’t like that. If I’d still been tainted somehow, if I hadn’t had the strength to pull the trigger, it would have fallen to Anya to hunt me. To keep me from doing any more goddamn harm.
It wasn’t true.
So why was I trembling? In great waves, weapons shifting and leather creaking a little as they slid through me. The closer he got, the more I shook.
It was because I knew that tone, the soft reasonableness. He was about to slide the knife in, and I had to stand there and let him do it.
“Or maybe it’s that you suspect yourself,” Perry murmured. “You always have, Kiss. You push yourself so hard, because down at the very bottom, you understand me. We’re twins, my darling, and I waited so, so long for you.” A soft sigh, and he was so close now the exhalation touched my hair, too warm and too damp. “We are the ones crying outside their circle of light. We are the ones they cast away. We are the sufferers, and on our backs they build golden cities.” His fingers were on my shoulders, very gently, and he eased me forward.
r /> It’s not true, I reminded myself. Perry never suffered a day in his hellborn life. Never.
“Do you remember your visits to me?” he whispered into my hair.
Another shudder went through my bones, this one violent, and his heavy, marble-hard arms closed around me, cold water dragging at a swimmer’s boots.
Of course I remembered.
Most often, he would have me strap him into the iron rack in the other room, and the rosewood case with the blades was always on the little gurney. He would order me to start cutting, and he wouldn’t make a sound as the bright metal parted his flesh and made hellbreed ichor run in thin black stinking streams.
“Do you remember what I said, each time you stopped?”
More, he would whisper, or let out with a breath like a sob. More. The shaking had me all over now. Great, clear drops of sweat cut through the filth on me, one of them tracing down my cheek like a tear, another fingering the shallow channel of my spine.
“If I atoned enough, my darling Kiss, do you think I would one day bleed as red as your oblivious ones? I’ve tried. You’ve seen me try.”
Oh, God. The water was closing over my head. He sounded so reasonable, and I was exhausted. There was no way this was going to work.
“You’re hellbreed,” I whispered, but it was the last gasp of a drowning woman.
“Even a hellbreed can dream.” So softly, into my hair, a spot of condensation on my scalp. When he stepped backward I didn’t resist, I came with him. He walked me across the room, and he loosened the coat from my shoulders. It fell away like a heavy skin, and he unbuckled the weapons-harness and let that fall, too. The ammo belt lay on the floor like a snake, and the bed was cloud-soft. I sank into it like I was falling through heavy water, and the mattress didn’t creak as it accepted his weight next to mine.
You can do this. It’s Judas to a hellbreed, you can do this.
But I was horribly naked, and on a bed with him. The worst part was that it felt…familiar.
Not safe. And not comfortable, even though the bed was soft and I was filthy and hungry and so tired. And most definitely not like lying next to Saul—