Salvage this, Jill. Assert some control. “Perry. Go after the Weres, and the deal’s off.”
“You should have said that earlier.” He spread his arms, a paleness against the dark cavern of the stage. “All they have to do is hand over your kitten, my dove. Wouldn’t it be nice to see him again? They move him from place to place, but sooner or later they’ll see reason.”
“Fine.” I turned, and the dogsbody lifted its snuffling head from its snack. The piebald ’breed was rotting quickly, and my gorge rose again. The smell was something else, and to have your nose buried in it…“You send ’breed into the barrio, Perry, and you’ll never see them ag—”
“Do you honestly think you can threaten me now?” He had my arm, suddenly, fingers biting in, and the dogsbody growled. “And you’d better leash that thing, before you lose it. There is a limit to what I allow you, Kismet.”
I hit him hard, a good solid crack to the face. His chin snapped back and the gun was level, pointed into his chest. The whip jingled a little, and the dogsbody growled again.
“Shut up,” I said, and the thing that used to be Jughead Vanner did.
The silence was immense. The hellbreed had drained away, and the dripping from Riverson’s outflung hand had stopped. Why kill Riverson? This isn’t like you, Perry.
None of this made sense. Had I just made a huge mistake, or was I doing what I was supposed to? Had I thrown away any advantage over Perry by letting him think I was here willingly? Did any of this fucking matter?
Of course it matters. Melendez’s loa wants the debt repaid, but I can’t do that until I know where and when Perry’s planning his party.
“Sweet nothings,” Perry hissed. He wiped at his mouth with the back of one narrow hand. “Oh, I’ve missed you.”
“You won’t miss me if you declare open season on Weres. I’ll be right up close, once I finish with the hellbreed you send into the barrio.” The shaking had me again, but the gun was solid. Fuck this, fuck everything. I’ll kill them, then I’ll take Saul and—
And what? Ride off into the sunset while Chango got a hard-on for me and Anya braced herself for the next wave of hellbreed to come in? Because there were always more.
Or even, here’s a thought, what if Perry had a little plan for Anya too? Or if something fatal happened to her? Hunters were tough, but also as mortal as everyone else.
And what would happen to my city, all the oblivious who liked signing deals with hellbreed and the others who had no idea they even existed? What then?
Stop, little snake, Mikhail whispered inside my memory. Anger is no good. It makes things distort, yes? It makes you stupid.
Hearing him used to be a comfort. Now it had teeth. I’d signed myself up for the scar because Misha had said it was a good idea.
He hadn’t told me he needed someone to take his place in the deal with Perry. Would he ever have told me? Couldn’t he find the fucking words?
I would have done it anyway, for him. If he just would have asked. Add that to the list of my sins.
I swallowed. Be clear and cold for this, Jill. You have to be. “Besides, what does it matter? I left him, Perry. I’m here.”
“Here, yes. Now.” His mouth was flushed, a bruised scarlet line. “But I want you more than here, Kismet. I will take everything you love, everything that has ever loved you, and I will break it until there is only me. Only me.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Great. He’s gone insane. “Well, that’s a great Christmas list, Perry. Too bad it’s summer. Why don’t you tell me about the Lance instead?”
It wasn’t very elegant, but at least it got his attention. He was still for a full ten seconds, Helletöng groaning and rumbling under the surface of the visible, and I knew I had his complete attention.
“Oh, that.” He waved a hand. “It’s not important. Yet.”
“If you’re wanting me to do something with it, it is.” The gun was level, but he seemed to take no notice of it. My fingers tightened on the whip’s handle.
“Oh, Kiss. Never bored while you’re near me.” The grin was back, and wider than ever. “You may go now, my lovely. Tell your friends I am coming for them. And tell whoever sank that stinking thing in your arm that they are welcome to try and stop me.” He spread his arms. “It is my time, now.”
I backed up a step. Two. My heart beat thinly in my chest, echoing in my wrists and temples. “You seriously want me to leave?”
“Take your dog. That’s a nice trick, too, I’ll ask how you did it sometime. Later, when I’m not so busy.” He watched me as I took another step. “Yes, I want you to go. It’s Wednesday now. Come back tomorrow, we’ll dance and dine. The world will end, and you will help me end it.”
Fuck it all. I can’t do it. “I should kill you now.” My finger tightened on the trigger. I knew exactly how much pull would send a bullet through him.
But one bullet wouldn’t do it. I’d have to start shooting, then I’d have to hack him in pieces, and call the banefire. And hope to hell it put him down.
Don’t. You can’t kill him yet, there’s something even worse waiting in the wings. Play along, Jill. “I should,” I repeated. “I should ventilate you right fucking now.”
His grin turned savage, and the shadow of handsomeness was back, burning away the screen of blandness. “Likewise, I’m sure. But my primrose path, my darling, you can’t afford to. You don’t know nearly enough about what I want, or how I’m going to get it. So run along and ask some questions, and meet me tomorrow. About dusk, I should think.”
This is not going well at all. “Perry—”
A thin tremor passed through him. A draft of spoiled honey brushed along the tense air between us. “For the love of your pale little God, my darling, go. I find myself growing murderous.” Perry headed for the second door, the one leading to the red-neon hall. He left a scar behind him, viscous darkness peaking and eddying. The Monde grumbled, settling lower into itself, like an animal in a dark cave.
You’ve only got one more, Jill. Make it good. “Why Riverson? Perry, why Riverson?”
He snarled, a deep throbbing noise. “Go. Away.”
“Why Riverson?” I yelled. “God damn you, answer me!”
“Because he robbed me of you! ” Perry screamed, and the whole place shook. Dust pattered from the ceiling. His head dropped forward and his shoulders heaved, linen stretching and rippling as it fought to contain him.
For a second I was sure he was going to turn around and leap on me, and that would have made it all right to kill him according to the abacus inside my head. The conscience. The thing that kept poking me no matter which way I turned, the stranger who had made me a hunter in the first place. And then I would go tell Melendez that Chango should be satisfied, collect Gil, and go find Henderson Hill’s caretaker, with his blue eyes and his vanishing scars.
And I would get some answers. All the answers he would give me willingly, and any others I felt like beating out of him.
“He robbed me of you,” Perry said again, but very softly, like a killing frost creeping down from the desert. “There is my first warning, Kiss. All your friends. All. Even those who are not quite your friends. Everyone you have cast your eye upon, they are marked for death. You will have only me.” His tone dropped, confidential and musing. “And I will have everything.”
He stood there for another moment, while everything around him shook, spiderlines of reaction etching themselves on the Monde’s floor—concrete covered in hardwood, the dance floor something else entirely, glimmering black.
I waited, hoping. And I was right. Perry had to throw one more bone in the pot to make it boil.
It was a good one, too. “And when you see my brother Michael, ask him about your resurrection. Ask him about the game you’re so blindly stumbling through.”
Call me Mike. The hornets buzzed, speaking to me with their pinprick feet, a tattoo of warning.
I got out of there. The dogsbody padded after me, and the sunlight didn’t smoke on i
ts wiry blond hide.
* * *
“Oh, thank God,” Galina breathed. “He’s gone mad, Jill. I can barely—”
“Shut it.” It was rude, but I was beyond caring. “Where’s Devi?”
Sound of movement. “Here,” Anya Devi said, carefully. “Jill?”
“Perry’s got something big planned for tomorrow night.” I braced my hand against the phone booth’s scratched, clear plastic. Sarvedo Street was deserted even this far up, and the sunlight was too thin. I kept seeing odd shadows, my blue eye hot and dry.
“Hutch is running on coffee and nerves. He says he’s found an old etching or something, prior to any knowns. Saul’s tearing up whatever room Galina locks him in—”
“Devi.” My throat was dry. “Tell Hutch to drop everything. Instead, get him on the horn and call every hunter we know of. Everyone, do you hear me? Every single one of us. This thing Perry’s planning has something to do with a portal to Hell, possibly huge, and have him cross-check with a ’breed called Halis, spelling unknown. And something else. La Lanza de Destino, Spear of Destiny. Lance of Destiny. Whatever.”
“There’s so many—” she began. She was about to say there were plenty of things masquerading as Spears of Destiny, and some of them were even Talismans. Every long piece of wood around in the Middle Ages with some etheric force in it was a goddamn “Spear of Destiny,” it was a needle in a historical haystack.
“I know there’s a million of them knocking around, but have him dig. And there’s…” I almost choked. How could I even begin to explain? “Never mind. Get everyone we can for tomorrow before dusk.”
She swore, but under her breath. “What else?”
Of course, you knew there had to be more. “The hellbreed are moving to take the barrio. Get everyone under cover. The Weres on Mayfair, too.”
She cursed again. “Of course. Perry’s been trying to get his hands on Saul for months, and now that you’re back…Jill, what is it with you and that hellbreed? Mikhail had a deal with him and you took it over, sure, but he never played for Mikhail this way—”
“I don’t know.” The words stung my chapped lips as they slid free, and I didn’t sound truthful even to myself. Oh, you know all right. It’s because deep down, you’re the same thing. Twins. You proved it yourself, didn’t you? “Did the Badger come up with anything?”
“Vanner’s cars? Let’s see. A red Dodge pickup, two motorcycles—he was a Honda dude, fucking poser—a blue Buick four-door, a—”
“Blue Buick. Four-door. License plate?”
She reeled off a string of numbers and letters.
It matched up. One more question, then, to keep me warm. “When did he get rid of it?”
“A couple months before you disappeared. You need the date and the buyer?”
“No.” I shut my eyes briefly, leaning against the phone booth’s shell. My memory was cruel now, showing connections in a pitiless white glare, like the sun beating down or the wide white carpet in Perry’s bedroom. “Jesus,” I whispered. That tied up that loose end. Vanner hadn’t been nervous around me all the time because he had a habit of walking in on the weird.
He’d been nervous because he’d tried to kill me once, during the case that lost me one of my cops and almost, almost turned my city into a wasteland. Only the ’breed pulling the strings hadn’t warned him to use silverjacket ammo on a helltainted hunter. And doubly nervous afterward because he hadn’t killed me, and he was in deep to that same hellbreed. I hadn’t smelled any corruption on him, but it wasn’t out of the question. Most likely he’d been full human and angling for a Trade…
…and that was a question mark, too, wasn’t it? Perry’s enemies were likely dead by now, if his treatment of Halis was any indication. Shen An Dua—the ’breed who I would’ve pointed the finger at—was dead, and so were Rutger and that pajama-masked psycho who’d been trying to kill me last time. There was nobody left to send a poisonous hellhound after one crooked cop.
Except Perry. Who would have wanted me down but not out, since my agreement with him kept him at the top of the hellbreed food chain in Santa Luz. He very well might not have warned a stupid human slave to use silverjacket. And Perry could always use a pair of eyes on the police force, couldn’t he.
Or maybe Vanner had just been a crooked cop, tried to kill me, found out he couldn’t, and went looking for something on the nightside that would keep him safe in the event that I kept digging and found out who’d been driving that blue Buick. Especially since Harvill, the DA who had been the prime node of corruption on that case, had ended up dead, too. Just how Vanner connected to Harvill I didn’t know, but someone could probably tell me if I cared to find out. Now that I knew where to look.
I glanced out into the street, where the dogsbody padded back and forth, sunlight drenching its blond hide, its colorless jewel-eyes glittering. I tasted bile, and the gem on my wrist twinged sharply.
Why was a hellhound chasing him? Unless Perry wanted him back. Or maybe…
Devi’s tone crackled with thinly controlled impatience. “Jill? Throw me a bone here. Give me something, anything, come on.”
I’m having hallucinations about Henderson Hill’s blue-eyed caretaker. Only they’re not hallucinations, because he bought me breakfast and gave me a gun. “If I could, I would. Just get everyone you can, Devi, and watch your ass. Put Saul on the line.”
“I’m not your fucking secretary.” But she laid the phone down, and I heard Galina’s murmured questions, Devi’s sharp reply. “She wants to talk to him. If it’ll stop him doing this crazy shit, I’m all for it.” Bootheels coming down hard as Devi stamped away. “Hutch! Get your skinny ass up here!”
I waited, breathing deep. Fed another eight quarters into the phone. Devi had probably tucked a phone card into my coat, but it didn’t matter. The coins dropped in, pieces of silver to pay the ferryman.
Cells are expensive and finicky, and the more advanced they get the more sorcery messes them up; once pay phones were a thing of the past I was going to have to figure something else out. Right now, breaking and entering to use someone’s phone sounded like the most satisfying option. As well as the most educational and entertaining.
Always assuming I survived long enough.
Static burst over the phone line. Then a listening silence. I could hear him breathing, deep even swells, a sound of effort temporarily checked.
“Saul?” I always sounded breathy and silly over the phone with him. “Saul, please. You’ve got to calm down.”
“Where. Are. You?” The words vibrated over the lines and carried all the fury in the world into my ear, and gooseflesh spilled down my back.
“Galina’s going to keep you there, Saul. I can’t afford to lose you.”
“I told you—” he began, and it wasn’t like every other fight we’d ever had. Usually I was the one losing my shit while he tried to stay rational. This time it was him losing his shit, and if he lost it enough, it wasn’t going to be easy to slow him down.
I had to get it all out at once, before he got his head up. “Saul. Perry will kill you. If he does, I’m damned and he will have no trouble getting me to do anything he wants. You are the only goddamn thing that matters to me, all right? The only thing. I don’t even care about my fucking city, Saul.” I let that sink in, and wonder of wonders, he was quiet. I swallowed, expecting the world to rock out from underneath me from the blasphemy.
What did that say about me? Santa Luz could get wiped off the map, and as long as Saul was alive I’d count it chump change. That was wrong, because I was a hunter…but that was the way it was. And if it stopped him long enough for me to get a word of sanity in edgewise, I didn’t care. “Just stay put and when I’m done with this, you can yell at me all you want. But I need you to rest, I need you to eat, and I need you to be strong so that when this is done you can load me in a car and get me the hell out of this godforsaken town. Please.”
Silence. The rage crackling over the line didn’t abate.
/>
“Please.” It was a little girl’s whisper. “Saul, please. I came back from Hell for you.”
And here I was, racking up the lies. I didn’t remember where I’d come back from. I had a suspicion that I didn’t want to, and another sneaking suspicion that it hadn’t been Poughkeepsie.
Hell was as good a guess as any.
Besides, I know Hell exists. The evidence is all around, every day, rubbed in your face. And the descent into hellbreed territory is the final step that makes a hunter—no, wait. The final step is the return, with your teacher holding the line and the souls of the damned screaming in your ears.
Heaven? Never been there. Unless being in Saul’s arms on a sunny afternoon counts. Which it probably does, if I’m lucky.
If I deserved it. If I pulled this off and saved the weary world for him one more time.
A clatter. Footsteps stamping away. A low, rumbling growl dying out.
“Jill?” Galina, softly. “He’s calmer. Theron and I are taking turns cooking; now he might even eat. I won’t let him out. Are you all right? Is Gilberto okay?”
She was such a gentle soul. My stomach turned over hard. The dogsbody lifted its head, crystalline eyes fixed on the middle distance down Sarvedo Street.
“Gil was fine when I gave him his marching orders. Galina, keep Saul there. I don’t care what you have to do, just keep him safe.”
“I already promised.” Solemn now. “What’s going on? It’s Perry, isn’t it. What’s he doing?”
Taking me apart one piece at a time. And repeating the worst part of modern history, thank you very much. “Something big. Look, I need you to do something for me.”
“Of course.”
The dogsbody slunk closer, still staring down the street. Under the golden wires of its hair, sharply defined muscles moved under black skin. “Start making silverjacket bullets. Get the Sanctuary ready for all the hunters who can reach Santa Luz in the next twenty-four hours. And Galina?”