Two shots popped off, both of them good solid hits. Perry’s head snapped back, a gush of thin black ichor hanging in the air as time slowed down and details stood out sharp and clear. Still moving back, flicker of motion in the corner of my eye, I threw myself aside as a stick-thin male Trader in a black T-shirt and jeans leapt for me.
A dark blur hit the Trader from the side, a coughing roar cutting the sonic wall of music. Spatters of leprous light flicked as the ball overhead swung, and the mood of the crowd tipped crazily.
Theron had the Trader down, blurring through panther form into humanoid, claws tearing. The shape-between isn’t anyplace Weres linger, but even there they are beautiful, and he’d just saved my bacon.
Except I’d been planning for that hit, and now I was scrambling to recover as Perry’s head tipped back down, the ichor closing over the hurt and sealing it away. Without silver, bullets would barely slow him down.
Great.
Perry twitched his shoulders again, grinned murderously, and launched himself for me with the eerie stuttering speed of hellbreed. The crowd exploded away, the grace of confusion vanishing as awareness of the fight raced through them like ink dropped in water.
“Jill! ” Theron yelled, and I had at least the satisfaction of him knowing who I was. If we got out of here, I could ask him some questions, too.
Like how I’d ended up dead. Who had buried me. And what the bloody blue fuck was going on.
“Get out!” I screamed. “Theron! Get the fuck ou—”
Perry arrived, blinking through space, and my right wrist sent a spike of clear, hot pain all the way up my arm, detonating in my shoulder, tearing across my ribs, and jerking down my legs in one swift lunge. I spun, hip twitching out to provide momentum, my foot coming up as the gem in my flesh let out a high, crystal-stroked sound. My sneaker crashed into Perry’s jaw, force transferred and the jolt snapping something low in my right leg; red pain bolting up to my hip. Knees pulled in, the world turning over as I pushed off, deflecting him by critical degrees, and at least I was light without weapons or anything else hanging on me.
I flew.
Landed hard, breath driven out of me in a howl as my abused right leg gave way, and Theron was suddenly there. Skidding to a stop, fingers tented on the floor, bruised face a mask of effort as he snarled. I almost overbalanced, but he uncoiled with sweet grace, legs driving him up as his hand closed around my left arm and Perry tumbled through the crowd, knocking over Traders and other ’breed like ninepins. He hit them hard, too, the crunching of bones breaking and screams of the wounded drowned out the feedback squealing of the music.
Theron left the ground in a leap of such effortless natural authority I half-expected it to be easy for me too. I pushed gracelessly with both legs, trying to help, ignoring the bones grinding together in my right shin, a red firework of agony.
His grip popped my shoulder out of its socket with a high, hard burst of pain, my head snapping aside and tendons screaming, the rest of me a boneless flag flopping in the wind. We tore through the moth-eaten red velvet curtain and burst out into the cool darkness outside just as the music juddered to a halt behind us and Perry’s cheated howl shattered several chickenwire-laced, painted-black windows.
The parking lot reeled drunkenly as Theron yanked me again. A submachine gun opened up in a burst of deafening chatter, glass shattering and metal pop-pinging as bullets dug a sewing-machine trail behind us. My stretched shoulder gave another flare of deep-purple pain, a symphony of damage playing colors behind my eyelids as I tried to return fire.
This ammo won’t do any good. Been lucky so far, but luck won’t hold. Goddammit.
We hit yet again, Theron compressing like a spring, and plunged into the scrub brush at the edges of the lot. He cursed, the whisper-screaming of obscenities over a deep rumbling groan. Nobody knows where a feline Were’s purr comes from, but this was a warning growl, shaking my bones and sending a deep pulse of heat through torn muscle and abused flesh.
Behind us, screams and cries lifted into the chill night air.
Now they were hunting us.
* * *
Being carried along by a cat Were is an exotic experience, even if you can understand what’s happening to you. Being dragged by a cursing, slowly healing, very angry Werepanther was a new one even for me.
Or at least, it felt new. I hoped it was.
He skidded aside, and the dark of an alley swallowed us. I hung, almost limp, in his grasp. My entire body twitched, the meat senselessly protesting a brush with its own mortality. Stupid body, getting all worked up because I could have died.
I guess even if you’ve done it once, it’s not something you want to do again.
“Jesus,” he kept saying. “It’s you. It’s you.” Like he couldn’t believe it. Like he was relieved.
I seconded that emotion. Except I was tired, and hungry, and nothing about tonight was going in a way that could remotely be considered well.
But I knew who I was. I knew who he was, I knew what we both were, and I knew enough about Perry to guess we should keep running.
I just couldn’t figure out how I’d ended up dead.
Theron propped me against the alley wall, long sensitive fingers feeling for my shoulder. “This is gonna hurt,” he announced, and I nodded.
“Do i—” I began, but he popped the balltop of the humerus back into the socket before I could finish. I swallowed a half-scream, my teeth driving hard into my lower lip and bursts of color exploding behind my closed eyelids again.
“Sorry.” He sounded genuinely sorry, too. His breath touched my cheek, I found out my head was lolling. “Jesus Christ, Jill. It’s you.”
“So they tell me.” I tilted my head, straining my ears. They’re going to be after us. Everything on me hurt savagely, muscles twitch-screaming and bruises rising for the surface of my skin. My right wrist burned, a live coal pressed into the flesh—but the heat was strangely soothing. It didn’t feel normal. Yeah. Normal. We’ve missed that train by a mile. “We can’t stay here.”
“Where have you been?” He still had my arm, as if I might disappear if he let go. “You tell me that. Where have you been? Saul…”
I perked up at the sound of that name. “Saul? Is he all right?”
His eyes flashed gold-green for a moment, rods and cones reacting differently than a human’s at night. Then a brief sheen of orange—when Weres and ’breed get excited, the eyes get all glowy. The knowledge slid into place like I’d always known. Maybe I had.
It didn’t disturb me. Weres were safe.
I was sure of that much, at least.
“He’s…” He stared at me for a long moment, his jaw working and the bruises crawling up his face livid even in the gloom. “You…don’t remember?”
“I woke up last night in my own grave, Theron. I’m not sure what I remember. Or who.” My knees felt suspiciously weak, I leaned back into the wall. Whatever was dumped in the trash piles here reeked to high heaven, but at least it might cover up our smell. Neither of us were too fresh right now. I reeked of gunfire, rotting Trader blood, and effort, Theron of musky, unhappy cat Were and fresh blood. We both carried the sweet whiff of hellbreed corruption.
It was a heady mix, but not a particularly nice one. My shoulder throbbed, but I took stock and discovered I could fight. If I had to. And he was moving okay for a Were who’d been taken in by hellbreed.
Lucky. We were both goddamn lucky. I holstered the gun. It was next to useless against ’breed without silver-coated ammo.
But I’d find a way to make it work.
I searched for a way to explain where I’d been. I didn’t even know how to explain it to myself. “I remember some things. Others, not so much, and some things I only remember too late.” Like hating Perry. He seemed so familiar. I was too tired to even shudder. “Glad I found you.”
“Me too. They were about to…look, you don’t know anything? Where have you been?”
My pulse dropped, breathi
ng evening out. It wasn’t relaxation—my jacked-up hearing caught the pitter-patter of hellbreed feet, too light or too heavy to be human, too fast or way too slow. Probably some Traders, too, and drawing close. “Dead, Theron. Weren’t you listening? We’ve got to get out of here, they’re looking for us.”
“You even smell different,” he muttered, but he grabbed my arm again. “I can run. You just hold on.”
“I can run—” I began to protest, but he simply yanked at me while he turned, a graceful, complex movement ending up with my arms around his throat. He straightened, and my legs came up instinctively around his middle. Just like an uncle taking a kid piggyback riding, and I was breathing in his hair.
“We’re running for the barrio,” he said over his shoulder. “Relatively safe there, even with the war.”
“War?” I took a deep breath. Cat Were, musk and wildness—familiar, but it wasn’t him I was thinking of.
Saul. Where are you, catkin?
The last thing I remembered was Galina’s face when she told me he’d been taken. By hellbreed. But there was a maddening blank spot after that, bruise-colored, aching, and blank as a dead TV monitor. I had no time to settle down and think and try to figure out what to do about it.
“War on Weres, Jill. You’ve been out a while. Things are…complex.” He tilted his head and tensed.
The skittering footsteps drew closer. The night pulled itself taut, a drumskin over vibrating hatred. “I can fight.” But I held on.
He burst into motion, bolting for the blind end of the alley. Up the wall in a breathless rush, and the city yawed underneath. Fur scraped my arms, he dropped halfway into catform, and I hugged him as tight as I could, my right wrist coming alive with sweet piercing pain. I hoped I wasn’t throttling him—and I hoped he could run fast enough.
Because a choked cry rent the darkness behind us, and I knew they’d found our trail.
11
We almost made it. The edge of the barrio was temptingly close, but there were just too many of them. They were between us and safety, and we crouched on a rooftop in the lee of a billboard for car insurance. Traffic crawled along Lluvia Avenue below, rubies one way and diamonds the other, civilians with no idea a running battle was going on above their heads.
I slid from Theron’s back as he gasped, his sides heaving. Hauling my ass around probably hadn’t done him any good.
“Catch your breath,” I told him, and slid the gun free. Even if the ammo was no good, it would at least slow the Traders down, and if I could bleed them out badly enough the corruption of their bargains would finish them off.
Hellbreed were a different proposition. But I’d think of something. “Run for the barrio. I’ll draw them off.”
“You…and your…Lone Ranger…shit.” He didn’t look good—cheesy-pale, those bruises, and if my eyes weren’t fooling me, thinner than when we’d started this whole barrel of fun. His metabolism was at scorch level to heal him and provide the speed he’d just used to cart me halfway across the city. “Never…ends…well.”
Now that sounds familiar, too. I cast an eye out over the rooftop. “Quit talking. It’s wasting breath, and I need you ready to run when I make a diversion.”
He gulped, his sides heaving, and shuddered. His breathing evened out, and he closed his eyes. “You have…no weapons. How…are—”
“I’ve got a weapon, I’ll think of something.” I checked the gun, my fingers moving with ease. The ammo clipped to my new belt, worse than useless, was still comforting. “More than one way to skin a hellbreed, Theron.”
“What do you remember?” He was perking up. This was a good hiding place. I almost didn’t want to leave it, but sooner or later they would find us. When they did, it would be ugly. He needed food, and rest, and the cold machine of calculation inside my head piped up with the thought that maybe he could tell someone who would care that I was walking around…alive? Kind of alive? Undead? Not-dead-anymore?
Did I have any friends?
“I sort of remember Galina telling me hellbreed took Saul. Not much after that. Or before, for that matter.” I sounded flip and casual, unconcerned. Don’t let him know you’re worried, too. Scanned the rooftop, crouched in a well of shadow, my ears perked for any faint hint of the things I’d spent the years since Mikhail’s death hunting. I remembered now, murderous nights and adrenaline-soaked cases, the world skating close to the edge of apocalypse with distressing regularity, and the Traders and ’breed working, busy as beavers, to send it careening over that edge.
I couldn’t kill them all. For one thing, more would replace the ones I put down, just like pimps and dealers moving into suddenly vacated territory. Always more where those come from, and hungry, too.
But I managed to kill enough to keep them slinking in the shadows, instead of swaggering. No wonder they’d all snarled at me.
And Perry, what had he been planning to do with me?
Don’t worry about that right now. Keep your attention on the roof.
To give the Were credit, he didn’t look very surprised. “Saul’s…alive. Last I saw.”
Relief exploded inside my chest, so hard I almost sagged. “Oh. Okay. Good.” But something bothered me. “Last you saw?”
“He’s in the barrio.”
Well, that wasn’t bad. Weres ran herd on the barrio’s seethe, since a girl with my skin tone could catch too much flak there. “And?”
“It’s complex, hunter. Listen—”
“Hold that thought.” I tensed, prickling silence closing over me. The first thing any apprentice learns, I heard Mikhail murmur, way back in the soup my head was threatening to become. To be quiet little snake under rock.
Apprentice. Gilberto. Lank hair, acne-pitted skin, dead eyes. My apprentice. The chain of memory pulled taut, the curtain in my head rippling, but I had no time to follow that chain into the cold deep and see what it dredged up.
Because there, at the edge of the rooftop, a shadow slunk. Lifted its wax-bald head, sweat gleaming over its naked hairless chest.
It crouched. The snuffling sounds carried clearly, and Theron had become a statue next to me, the way a cat will pause with a paw in the air when something catches its attention.
Are there more? My eyes moved, silently, the blue one hot and dry as it looked beneath the visible. The strings under the surface of the world resonated, each quivering individually as the tension in its neighbors communicated itself. Can’t see them. Doesn’t mean they’re not there.
The Trader hunched, and sniffed again. It was on all fours, its haunches higher than its head and encased in a ripped pair of faded jeans. Its face was damn near buried in the floor of the roof, and those snuffling sounds were wetly suggestive.
I couldn’t even tell if it had originally been male or female, and at this distance only a suggestion of the body modifications it had Traded for could be picked out, even with my vision on overdrive and my left eye suddenly feeding way more information than I needed directly into my brain.
“Theron,” I whispered, barely mouthing the words. “When I move, run for the barrio. Don’t argue.”
He said nothing. My right wrist hummed, a subaudible warning.
The thing snaked its head, muscle rippling oddly up its bare back. A flat shine reflected from its eyeballs, like a drift of pollen on stagnant water under a strong light. Dusted. Trader, not ’breed.
Hellbreed eyes actually glow. If you can call that diseased shine a form of “light.” There aren’t proper words for it.
Thank God.
I was barely aware of moving, streaking across the rooftop, sneakered feet slapping. The Trader’s malformed head flung up, and I saw the dustshine runneling over eyeballs dried and useless as raisins. The nose was a ruined cavity, double sinus-dishes like sinkholes, the mouth wet and open to take in more air. That mouth was slit on either side, cheeks gashed so it could open even wider. A spiked collar strapped around its skinny throat, leather and brassy metal both glowing with unholy foxfire.
/>
That’s so it doesn’t swallow the prey, like a cormorant. I had enough time to think that before I hit with a crunch, tumbling it off the roof. It shrieked, a high panicked cry, and I shot it four times while we were still in midair. Bleed it out, rip its throat out if you can, brace yourself, Jillybean, this is gonna hurt.
I hoped Theron was running.
* * *
Hit hard, spilling to the side in a tangling roll to shed momentum, bones snapping, and the Trader’s cry cut off midway. Made enough noise. My right leg crunched with agony, my tender shoulder gave a high, sustained soprano note of overstress, my head hit concrete with a stunning crack, and I yanked on all the etheric force I could reach.
It jolted up my arm, hot and pure, a completely different sensation from the hot twisted flood of Perry’s mark. Add that to the list of things I didn’t have any goddamn time to figure out—I jackrabbited to my feet, the shattered edges of my right femur grating together, and the pain was a spur as the gem on my wrist lit up like a Christmas ornament and etheric force tied the bone back together. The sea-urchin spines of my aura, hardened by countless exorcisms, lit up, too. The points of light swirled around me in a perfect sphere, and brakes squealed. Tires shredded as the ’breed closed in, traffic snarling around me.
I’d landed right in the middle of the goddamn road. An ungodly screech, and the first hellbreed jagged toward me from the right, leaving the ground in a leap that violated physics and sanity all at once. It was a female, long golden hair in dreadlock snarls and her too-white teeth bared as they lengthened, her eyes full of low red hellfire dripping, riding the updraft of her rage and crackling out of existence. She wore fluttering orange silk, a loose shirt and pajama pants. Her claws were bony scythes.
Think fast, Jill. I threw myself aside, a nail of red pain in my thigh, my feet thudding onto the hood of a big red SUV oddly slewed in the road. A teenage boy in the driver’s seat gawped at me, and I leapt again, straining, the gem on my wrist feeding a burst of controlled fire through me. Blue light flashed—another spark from the ring—and I was still gawdawful fast, almost hellbreed-fast, especially when I wasn’t weighed down by weapons and a long black coat.