I shouldn’t have worried. Those employees don’t bat an eye. I guess no matter what I looked like, they’d seen worse. After getting an eyeful of the crowd waiting to scramble on in and get their cheap shit even cheaper, I won’t exactly say I was heartened—but I was feeling a little more anonymous.
I remembered my shoe size, at least, but the sneakers felt weird, too light and flexible. The holster for the .45—I’d stuck it in the waistband of my ruined leather pants while shopping, just like a good American—didn’t quite do it, but a little duct tape fixed that right up. The .45 ammunition had been reasonably cheap, and as soon as I put it in my basket I’d felt soothed.
Whoever I was, I didn’t like being unarmed. Or short of ammo. I was hoping the modifications on the gun hadn’t made it unable to fire a basic clip, but there it was.
I found a place on the edge of the barrio. Some clear instinct warned me not to go any further into that tangle of streets, so I just picked a likely-looking hotel and paid for two nights. Cash up front, no ID requested or given. It was the kind of place usually rented by the hour, and after about 2 p.m. it started doing a brisk trade. Footsteps, soft cries, some screams, doors opening and closing. I didn’t listen too close. It was bad enough that my hearing was jacked up into the red, and I could smell every single person who had ever used this tiny room.
Sirens. Jackhammers. Traffic.
At least the shower worked. It was tepid, but there was decent water pressure. The drain almost clogged, sand and gunk sliding off me in sheets. I didn’t bother with the towels. Who knew what vermin they were carrying? Instead I wrung my hair out and air-dried. The wheezing air conditioner didn’t help very much against an egg-on-the-sidewalk sort of day, a glare of heavy sunlight golden against the barred window. It was like being in prison, only with a door that locked on your side.
Which meant it wasn’t very much like prison at all.
Once I was dressed and the gun was checked, cleaned with a just-bought kit, and set on the flimsy bolted-down nightstand, I lay down on top of the cheap chintz bedspread and let out a long sigh. The ruined, filthy clothes were in a plastic bag; I’d dump them elsewhere. Something told me it was best to leave no traces.
My hair was already drying, raveling up into dark curls. I was pale, and the face in the mirror was nothing special except for the mismatched eyes. Long, thin nose, mouth pulled tight and thin, bruise-colored shadows under said eyes almost reaching down to the prominent cheekbones. I looked half starved. I was hungry again.
Who the hell am I?
Evidence: one silver ring with Cyrillic script inside, one gun, one weird gemlike thing implanted in my right wrist. Speed and strength enough to take on four men without breaking a sweat. Of course, there was the little matter of Martin Pores and his vanishing Mercury, but if I had just dug my way up out of a shallow grave maybe I’d hallucinated that bit and just wandered around dreaming of diner food.
I couldn’t rule that out.
The only other thing was the tattoo. A black tribal-looking scorpion, high up on the inside of my right thigh. It itched and tingled, but maybe that was only because I’d scrubbed at it, thinking it was dirt.
My hands were capable and callused. My battered feet were healed, too. No sign of the bloody mess they’d been after walking miles of highway. Even if I’d just been wandering around in a hallucination, I’d been shoeless and bleeding. But now you couldn’t tell.
For some reason, I turned my head and looked at the window. My hair felt weird. Like there should have been something in it. Lots of little somethings digging into the back of my head. Tiny gleams, little hard things.
For just a moment I had it, but it slipped away again. Frustration rose hard and hot in my throat, I swallowed it.
I knew my first name. I knew I didn’t have a problem killing someone, but I preferred not to.
At least, not when they’re human. When they’re something else…
Something else?
“Maybe I’m insane.” My own voice caught me off guard, hit the flimsy walls and bounced back to me. “That’s an option, too. Consider all the alternatives, Kismet.”
Kismet?
Another light turned on inside my head. Jill Kismet.
That’s who I am. But who is she?
I waited, but nothing else came up. It was daylight. Sleepytime, because daylight was…safe.
I tested that thought. It felt right. “Daylight’s for sleeping,” I whispered. “Night is when I work.”
Well, that was comforting to know. Or not.
I closed my eyes, told the gnawing in my belly to go away, and waited for dusk.
It was as good a plan as any.
5
I reached down with my left hand, slowly. Pushed my right sleeve up, heavy leather dried stiff with blood and other things. Unsnapped the buckle. Dropped the cuff on the floor, and turned my wrist so she could see.
The air left her all in a rush, as if she’d taken a good, hard sucker punch. “Jesus,” she finally whispered, the sibilants lasting a long time. “Jill—”
“This stays between us.” I was now back to sounding like myself, clear and brassy. All hail Jill Kismet, the great pretender. “I’m going to take care of it.”
She didn’t disbelieve me, not precisely. “How the hell are you going to do that?”
I shrugged.
She read it on my face, and another sharp exhale left her. “And if…”
I suppose I should have been grateful that she couldn’t bring herself to ask the question. So I answered it anyway. “If it doesn’t work, Anya, you will have to hunt me down. No pity, no mercy, no nothing. Kill me before I’m a danger to my city. Kill Perry, too. Burn him, scatter the ashes as far as you can. Clear?”
She grabbed the absinthe bottle. Tipped it up, took a good, long, healthy draft, her throat working. “Shit.”
“Promise me, Anya Devi. Give me your word.” Now I just sounded weary. My cheek twitched, a muscle in it committing rebellion. The scar cringed under the assault of sunlight, I kept it out. The pain was a balm.
She lowered the bottle. Wiped the back of her mouth with one hand. “You have my word.” Quietly.
I dropped my right hand. With my left, I pulled the Talisman up. Freed the sharp links from my hair, gently. It was hard to do one-handed, but I managed. I took six steps, laid the Eye on the table. The sunsword quivered. “For Gilberto. Will you…”
“You don’t even have to ask. I’ll train him.”
Then she offered me the bottle.
Tears rose hot and prickling. I pushed them down. Took a swallow, the licorice tang turning my stomach over and my cracked lips stinging. When I handed it back to her, she didn’t wipe the mouth of the bottle. Instead, her gaze holding mine, she lifted it to her lips, too.
I bit the inside of my cheek. Hard, so hard I tasted blood. The thought that it would be tinged with black made my stomach revolve again. There were so many things I wanted to say. Things like Thank you, or even, I love you.
Because I do. We are lonely creatures, we hunters. We have to love each other. We are the only ones who understand, the only ones who will ever understand.
Except I wasn’t a hunter anymore, was I?
“I need a car,” I croaked. “It won’t be coming back.”
* * *
When I woke, the dream faded. For a second I had everything, it trembled inside my head…then it was gone. And I needed to go, too. Dusk was rising, and something told me the hotel might not be…safe. The need to get out and move itched under my skin.
I found out something else, too: I liked heights. I especially liked gliding along rooftops like a ghost, peering into the streets below. Looking for something I couldn’t define while dusk rose from every corner, cloaking the city in peculiar static heat, the rising wind bringing me an oddly familiar tang of river as everything exhaled.
Preparing for the plunge into darkness.
Everything about it was familiar. Even the shapes of th
e city streets, the arterial bloodflow of traffic, the quiet neighborhoods and the back alleys, the parts that lit up only when the light failed. And yet, everything was unfamiliar—the sneakers were too light, and I felt oddly naked. Like I should have more, a heavy weight on my shoulders and something flapping at my ankles, something on my face and those little weights tied into my hair. Not to mention the fact that my left hand kept dropping to my side like it expected to find another gun. Or something else.
The city revolved inside my head. I knew the street names, sometimes only after I dropped down to their level and looked around a bit. The town clung to the banks of the river, a big granite Jesus on top of a hospital downtown spread his arms in a menacing blessing, nightclubs pounded and weird things skittered in the shadows. Every building greeted me with a secret smile, little bits of the geography whirling like snowflakes until they settled against the rest of my mental map.
It was next to the granite Jesus, looking out over all those tiny dots of light, that something else stirred inside my aching head. I crouched in Christ’s spreadeagle shadow, watching the very last dregs of light swirl out of the sky, and sniffed the wind. Even in summer, nights out in the desert can get chilly. No trace of moisture in the air, but a thin faint thread of something candyspiced and wicked tickled my nose.
What the hell’s that? Half-rising from the crouch, keeping to cover, I almost swayed because I didn’t have a counterweight hanging behind me to keep me steady. A cloak of stillness folded over me, my pulse dropping, my entire body chilling. Gooseflesh rose hard like little rubbery fists under my skin, I ignored it.
Follow that. It’s not supposed to be here.
I was moving before I knew it, bolting across the rooftop, the world around me blurring. Hit the edge going full speed, a moment of weightlessness, and smacked the pavement stories below with a crack like a shotgun and a breathless feeling of holy shit did I just do that?
I would’ve been laughing with crazy joy, if not for the gun unholstering itself and the sudden fierce buzzing in my right arm, like a band of metallic flies was breaking for the surface of an infection. Right at my wrist, too. It pulled me along on a reel of silk, I flashed through a deserted alley and straight up a brick wall, barely touching the rough surface, my left hand catching at the top and heaving me over with little effort.
It was like flying. And I might’ve liked some time to enjoy it before I collided with a long tall thin thing out of a nightmare, its flesh glowing waxen-pale as it snarled, flying backward with its legs and arms drawn in, spiderlike. Its eyes glowed with a powdery sheen, and the thing it had been crouching over was a rag of bloody bone and meat that had once been a human being.
Trader. Put him down quick, Jill. But not so quick you can’t question him.
Well, at least now I had a goal.
He smashed through two struts, snapping them like matchsticks, and the strength flooding my veins was definitely bolting up my right arm from the…thing, the gem, whatever it was. I was on him in a hot heartbeat, punching him twice and something cracking in his torso; we skidded and a lick of hot pain went up my arm. Skin erased by concrete, the smell of blood, and the Trader’s chin jutted forward. His teeth were sharklike points, steaming saliva dripping and foaming, and we hit a retaining wall with a sound like a good hard break on a pool table. Something snapped in my side just like the struts, the pain was a spur. His teeth buried themselves in my shoulder, grating on bone, I screamed. Not with the pain.
No. I screamed in pure frustration. I knew what to do, but I didn’t have the tools to do it. I didn’t have my knives, or my coat, or—
The gun bucked in my hand, its roar oddly muffled. A hole opened in his back, the exit wound blossoming obscenely. The Trader howled through his mouthful of my flesh, blood squirting and whatever venom he had on those sharp triangular teeth burning as it sizzled, spattering my neck.
He didn’t quit.
I shot him again, twisting, and the thought—thank God for judo, Jillybean, get him good—seemed completely normal. Another hole opened in his back. Why was he still moving? Squeezed the trigger again, and his torso was mangled now. Another hole opened in his back, this one spattering and spraying wider than the first two. A mist of copper droplets hung in the air.
I got lucky.
The flat, shine-dusted eyes glazed. He twitched, teeth grinding in the ruin of my shoulder, and I let out a sound that probably would’ve haunted a nightmare or two if there was anyone around to hear. It took working the gun barrel into his mouth and cracking the jaw to get the teeth to loosen up as his body twitched and jerked. I jammed it further back—he was still twitching—and squeezed the trigger again, the roar way too close for comfort.
The back of its head evaporated.
Corruption raced through its tissues, little veins of dust spilling from a crackglaze like fine porcelain glued back together and unceremoniously busted again.
Would’ve been easier with my knives. Where are my fucking knives? It didn’t matter. I scrambled out of his slackening embrace, my sneakers squishing and sliding in a tide of brackish fluid. It was blood. But the edges of the red fluid held a taint of black, hungrily threading through and turning it to dust as the body twitched and jerked, heels drumming in a weird dance against the rooftop, the mangled head spilling brainmeal as the neck twisted. My ribs flickered; heaving breaths shaking me like wet laundry. I hit one of the listing iron struts reaching up like fingers—it was bent crazily where he’d gone right through it.
Yes, I could see now it was a he. He’d been naked, and his genitals were altered, too. Barbed and spiked, like…I don’t even know what like.
They always go for body mods. Part of the personality of someone who’ll trade their soul away. I know that. It was a relief to find something I did know for sure. Even if this was weird as fuck.
I was making a whistling sound. Hyperventilating. Something inside me clamped down, made my pulse and respiration calmer, my eyes locked on the twitching, disintegrating body.
You must watch death you make, a man whispered from my soupy, darkened memory. Is only way, milaya.
Mikhail. I remembered his name, now, with a lurching mental effort. Sweat stood out, cold and slick, all over me. The gun was steady, pointed at the swiftly rotting corpse as if it might take a mind to get up for round two.
You never know. You just never know.
My shoulder burned, but I ignored it. The gun didn’t waver. So this was what I did. I leapt off multistory buildings like I was stepping off a patio. I found weird smells. I got into fights on rooftops.
I killed things that shouldn’t exist.
The gem on my wrist glowed softly.
When you’re ready.
Is that what he’d meant, my blue-eyed breakfast-buying hallucination? Was I having another hallucination now?
That’s the trouble with waking up in your own grave. A whole lot of weird shit suddenly seems pretty reasonable.
Maybe that wasn’t your grave. Maybe your name isn’t Jill. Maybe Mikhail is something else. Can’t assume. That’s what he said, all the time. “Do not ever assume. Is quickest way to get ass blown sideways.”
I stared at the bubbling mass until it was clear it wasn’t going to get up and come after me again. The night air was full of traffic sounds, faraway sirens, whispered secrets. My shoulder had stopped bleeding. When I looked down, craning my neck, the bubbling pink froth squeezing out of the flesh as it knit itself back together sizzled a little, eating at the T-shirt. Bile whipped the back of my throat, I forced it down by swallowing. Bad idea, because then it hit my stomach and revolved. I was kind of glad I hadn’t eaten anything, because I heaved once before I got myself back together and used the spar behind me to muscle my way back to standing. My knees definitely felt gooshy.
The next step was examining the victim and looking for evidence. Like a cop.
Not a cop. A hunter. You do what the cops can’t.
My own voice, hard and clear, addressi
ng a class of bright-faced boys and girls in blue dress uniforms.
I will be blunt, rookies. You’ll all be required to memorize the number for my answering service, which will page me. Pray you never have to use that number. Three or four of you will have to. A few of you won’t have time to, but you can rest assured that when you come up against the nightside and get slaughtered, I’ll find your killer and serve justice on him, her, or it. And I will also lay your soul to rest if killing you is just the beginning.
“Holy fuck,” I whispered. The city whispered and chuckled.
I shuffled like an old woman, back to the victim. There was a pile of clothing—workman’s boots, overalls, a red plaid shirt, a billfold in one of the pockets. A nice wad of fifties and hundreds that I took without compunction, ID showing a sullen, lean face—it was dark up here, but I had no trouble picking out the features of the thing I’d just killed. Back when it had been human, its name had been Eric Allen Dodge, and he lived in the Cruzada district. Staring at the address gave me a map of the city, different routes I could take to get out to his house if I needed to give it a looksee. There was one more thing, and I held it while I crouched to look at the rag of meat and bone he’d been hunched over when I hit him.
The victim was female. There was enough of her left to tell, mostly because the breasts were chopped free and laid to one side and her plumbing was oddly untouched.
He must’ve been saving that for last. My gorge rose again. What did it say about me that I could guess?
Not enough blood on the roof, so he’d killed her elsewhere and brought the body here. Her heart, a fist-sized lump of flesh, was set neatly aside with her tatas. There were other bits, something that was probably her liver, long strings of guts. Her face had been savaged. About all I could tell was that she’d probably been dishwater blonde or light brunette; her shoulder-length hair was matted with clotted blood and filth. White slivers of teeth poked through the hamburger of what was left of her features.