The little red car—I could identify it now, it was a Honda—chugged to a stop in front of Harvill’s house under a big old elm tree in full leaf. The engine shut off, and the door opened, squeaking. A slim male shape rose from the tiny front seat, and I smelled someone familiar. I had trouble matching it to a face for a few seconds.
Gilberto Rosario Gonzalez-Ayala went up the front walk. He checked the house number, then rang the bell. Jesus. What the hell?
Two full minutes ticked by. He pressed the bell again.
A light came on.
Twenty seconds later the door opened, a rectangle of golden light. Harvill stood in the door, a manmountain in pajamas. He looked ruffled and sleepless, and my blue eye saw a faint stain of Hell’s corruption on him. He wasn’t a Trader, but he’d been fucking around with a hellbreed. Gilberto said something I didn’t catch.
“Who the hell are you?” Harvill’s voice carried across the street, the stentorian tones of a man used to the courtroom and television appearances.
The gun spoke, a faint pop. He had a silencer.
Harvill went down hard. I reached for the door handle.
Gilberto stepped forward, fired twice more. Stood watching. I heard a slight sound, like an exhale. Like someone sinking down into a bed. The breath of corruption intensified, taking hold as the soul fled the body and quit fighting to reclaim the flesh.
Do I have to kill him too?
“That was for my brother, you piece of shit.” Gilberto’s young voice broke on the last syllable. I slouched further in the seat. So Gil had been conducting his own little war, and found the hand behind his brother’s killer in his own way.
It all made sense—Harvill putting whatever cops he was sure of on me, and using his position to start a little gang war on me too. I wouldn’t be able to question him and find out exactly who opened fire on me, though. Life’s not perfect, Jillybean. Take what you have.
The 51 retraced his steps. He stopped by his driver’s side door, eyeing the Charger. I touched a gun butt, ran my fingers over it, and was glad I was in deep darkness.
I didn’t want to kill this kid, no matter how scary his flat dark eyes were.
“Eh, bruja, ” the young man whispered. “Still on the job, me.”
I can see that, Gilberto. I turned into a stone, drawing silence over me like a cloak. Could he sense the change in the night, an absence where before there had been listening?
How much did he know about the nightside?
Just who was this kid, anyway?
He dropped down into the Honda. The sewing-machine engine started up again. He backed into Harvill’s sloping driveway and pulled out, heading away down the street. Somewhere in the deep water of darkness a dog barked.
Before he turned the corner I saw a brief flare of orange light. Gilberto had just lit a cigarette. Jesus. A shudder worked its way down my body. I stroked the Charger into starting again, watching the street. Not a hair out of place, except for that faraway hound. Everyone sleeping the sleep of the rich and untroubled.
Jacinta Kutchner’s neighbors hadn’t heard anything either.
I put the car in drive and pulled out. Took a right on Fairview. The city stayed quiet. Darkness beat at the edges of my vision again, my body reminding me that it had put up with a lot of shit from me in the last forty-eight hours.
I made it to Galina’s, parked drunkenly crosswise in front of her store because I couldn’t see well enough to do more than bump the car up against the curb. I fell sideways across the cushioned center console and darkness finally took me. I struggled on the way down—there was more I had to do, wasn’t there? There was always more to do, and something I’d forgotten.
I dreamed of yellow hellfire chuckling and groaning to itself. I dreamed of scuttling, crawling things that forced themselves through cracks in the walls and licked up the corruption running from the corpses left stacked in a ten-by-ten basement room, runnels of foulness seeping through the walls. I even dreamed of the time before I’d become a hunter, curling up in a small space while adults fought outside and someone cried softly into a teddy bear’s wet fur.
I struggled a quarter of the way into consciousness while someone carried me, the heat and a deep rumbling purr reminding me of Saul. But my body mutinied again and dragged me down, and in this fresh darkness there were no dreams.
31
Sunlight poured through the window. I lay and stared at it for a long time before moving, wincing a little bit as my head and body both protested. Even hellbreed strength has to be paid for, and I’d cycled enough etheric force through my body to give myself a hell of a hangover. Get it, Jill? “Hell” of a hangover? Arf arf. I groaned, stirred slightly, and pushed weakly at the covers. I was tucked into Galina’s own bed, the huge mission-style monstrosity she’d hung with white netting to make a sort of cloud to sleep in.
I heard footsteps. Voices. Nobody was yelling, and one of the voices was Galina, calm as always. So she was okay.
Good.
I lay in the bed a few moments longer, staring at the fall of sunlight through the window. My trench, battered and still smelling of smoke, was draped over a high-backed wooden chair. It was cool in here, air conditioning soughing through a vent near the door. Mellow hardwood shone through layers of polish and care.
My fingers were back to their regular size. I was still filthy with crusted blood and smelling of smoke, and my head ached, ached, a pumpkin on the stem of my neck. I felt the bruises from Shen’s narrow delicate hands still digging into my throat.
How long was I out? Is it darkmoon yet? I killed that evocation site, but maybe Shen had another one. Irene didn’t think so, but she could have been lying.
Coherent thought halted. I didn’t have enough energy for it.
I blinked. My cheeks were hot and chapped. There was grime ground into my face and under my nails. I almost never fall asleep without washing my face, even if I’m covered in guck I like scrubbing my shiny little flower smile, as Sister Mary Ignatius called it in kindergarten.
I tried moving again. Rolled over on my back.
Get up, Jill. Get moving. You’re not done yet.
Footsteps on the stairs. I listened—Galina’s softly distinctive tread, and someone else’s. Probably Leon, the way he pushed lightly off of each step was familiar. I pressed myself up on my hands, ignoring the shaking in my arms, and found out I was wearing a T-shirt reduced to bloodsoaked, bullet-holed rags, and my leather pants stank of hellbreed guck.
And here I was in Galina’s nice clean bed. Why hadn’t she put me in the spare room? Was Carp still in there?
Rest easy, Carper. It’s all tied off. Well, mostly. I hoped he was sleeping. I hoped he’d pulled through.
“You’re awake.” The Sanctuary’s sweet face was solemn. “I’ll have to let Theron know. He threatened to kill you as soon as you woke up.”
I cleared my dry throat. Leon came into sight behind her, expressionless, with a beer can in one hand and a bottle in the other. The copper in his hair gleamed, and Rosita was snugged safely against his back.
“Charming.” My voice was a dried husk of itself. I coughed, and Leon slid past Galina, offered me the chilly bottle of microbrew. Why he drank canned piss when there were better things around was beyond me. “How long was I out?”
“Don’t worry.” My fellow hunter settled himself on the end of the bed with a sigh, easing down as if he hurt all over too. “We found a primary evocation site at that nasty-ass nightclub. I took care of it.”
I sagged in relief. So the one at the airfield had been Shen’s backup. One worry down.
“Jill—” Galina began, but Leon interrupted her.
“Why don’t you go get her somethin’ to eat, darlin’? I’ll make sure she doesn’t hurt herself. You go call Theron too, so he can stop worryin’.” Leon’s dark eyes were steady, and his mouth was drawn in a tight line. Oh, shit. What’s gone wrong now? “More scurf?” I hazarded, but Leon shook his head. Copper chimed in his hair. T
here were dark circles under his eyes.
“Naw. Town’s clean as a whistle. Go on now, Lina.” He toasted her absently with the Pabst can, and she made a face as if he’d told her to drink it.
“I’ll bring up coffee.” She cast one short, troubled glance my way, but I was too aching and muzzy-headed to decipher it. Instead I took a pull off the bottle and winced at the havoc it was going to play with my headache.
We listened to her go down the stairs. Leon shifted a little bit inside his clothes. Copper clinked, and he touched one of the amulets hung around his neck, then put his hand down with an effort. “Talked to that lieutenant. Your contact.”
“Monty,” I supplied. Thank God he’s okay.
“Big fucking mess for him to clean up. I guess this Harvill asshole came down with a serious case of the dead.” Leon’s tone was a careful nonquestion, and my silence a careful nonanswer. “Dangerous, being in bed with hellbreed.”
I shrugged. Took another pull off the bottle. Waited for him to get to the point.
“Your town should be clean, but you know how scurf are.”
I knew. I nodded. One of my earrings was lighter than the other; it had probably broken sometime or another. My skin crawled. I couldn’t wait to get cleaned up.
“That cop you brought in from that nightclub.” Leon sank a little heavier into the bed, took another long swallow from his can. Condensation beaded on the aluminum, I could hear the liquid going down his throat. Downstairs a refrigerator door opened, and Galina began to hum.
My heart turned to a stone inside my ribs. Oh, shit. “Carper? Is he okay?”
Leon sighed. “He talked Galina into letting him go home yesterday. Waltzed out, went home, and ate his Glock.”
No. Oh, no. “What?” I sat bolt upright, then wished I hadn’t because my head immediately started pounding.
“What the fuck? ”
“Galina blames herself. Said she never should have let him go. I was with the Weres, cleaning out that nightclub.” His shoulders hunched. “She said she figured the cop was up and walking around, and everything was tied off…”
“Carp?” I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. “Andrew? It can’t… he wouldn’t…”
Leon’s face set itself. “He wasn’t too tight-bolted, Jill. Sometimes when civilians see the nightside, they go nuts. He was in that hole run by that Asian bitch for a while and they played with him, Lina said.”
While I sat outside and worried over who would report me as not dead. “Jesus,” I whispered. “You’re sure it was suicide?” Because Kutchner’s death looked like a suicide too, but maybe someone pulled the trigger on Carp too. Because… oh, God. Carper. Why?
But I knew why. Sometimes, when you pull a civilian out of a tangle with the nightside, they don’t stay out. They go into the black hole. A peek under the surface of the normal world throws them off the back of reality, and they never return.
Leon spread one hand, made a helpless gesture. “I’m sure, Jill. That’s where I talked to that lieutenant—
Montaigne. Good ol’ boy, that one. Worried about you.”
“I’m sure he was.” The words tasted bitter. I drained the bottle in a few long, long swallows. It was ashes going down. The carbs would give me a quick flush of strength, but I needed protein if I was really going to bounce back. “Jesus Christ. Carper.”
“Funeral’s this Saturday. I got it all written down if you want it.” His shoulders slumped for a moment, and so did mine. Silence rose between us, under the safety of sunlight.
He knew what it feels like to lose one of your own. Only another hunter understands. We are here to protect, and when our protection fails sometimes we don’t pay the cost. Others, less trained, less equipped to bear the strain, pay what we should.
And oh, God, it hurts.
There was nothing he could really say.
So he was quiet.
I rested the chill of the bottle against my forehead. The thick brown glass came away spotted with flecks of dirt and dried blood. A sharp bloody stone lodged in my throat, with beer carbonation trapped behind it. My eyes were hot and dry.
“He was a good cop,” I finally whispered.
Leon eased himself up to his feet. The sun brought out highlights in his hair, made his copper charms shine. The amulets around his neck clicked as he shifted his weight, and Rosita’s blued-steel barrel shone with a fresh application of oil. “I gotta get home. Some things to clean up back there. You gonna be okay?”
No. I guess so. What choice do I have? I made another one of those physical efforts to focus. It came a little easier now that I’d had some rest. “I’m not sure I’m done yet. Harvill might not have been the only bigshot involved. But I’ll keep digging.” Andrew. You shouldn’t have. Why couldn’t you have waited?
He balanced on the balls of his feet. “Good fuckin’ deal.” A nervous glance toward the door. Galina was still humming downstairs. “Thought you were a goner, darlin’.”
“I could have been.” Two steps behind an arrogant hellbreed and a stupid-ass set of Traders the whole time, and Carp paid the price. I should turn in my badge. If I had a badge. “Leon?”
He grunted, a truly male sound, and took another shot of his piss-masquerading-as-honest-beer. I had to settle for two of the most inadequate words in the English language, words too pale to express what I needed to say. “Thank you.”
“Aw, shit, girl. We all do what we can.” His shrug was a marvel of indifference. “Be cool.” I’m sorry, his eyes said.
“You too, Leon. Get your truck looked at, will you?” Me too, I thought. I’m sorry too. I can’t call this a win. Can’t even call it a tie.
“All right. Goddamn nagging.” He waved his beer can, slopping the liquid inside, and stumped for the door. Stopped halfway there.
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. Just squared his shoulders and walked away without a backward glance. Classic Leon.
Then again, most hunters aren’t much for goodbyes. You never know which time will be the last. Better to just walk away and carry on the conversation the next time.
If there is a next time. It’s superstition, but you take what you can get. I pushed the covers away. Someone had taken my boots off; they were in a puddle of stink right next to the bed. But I padded in sock feet across the room, stopping when my head started to spin or my legs threatened rebellion.
The bedroom window overlooked the street. Galina’s humming stopped, and I heard low voices again. Leon’s question, her soft reply. Then his footsteps, speeding up. The door to her shop jingled a few moments later, and Leon headed across the street to his truck.
My entire chest hurt, a pain that wasn’t physical. The copper in his hair caught fire. He got behind the wheel and the engine turned over.
I lifted my hand to wave, found it full of the empty beer bottle. He wasn’t looking anyway. The air in the room changed imperceptibly. I lowered my hand.
“Just like that,” Galina said. “Jill—”
“He told me. It’s not your fault.” It’s mine. I was too far behind the game. Should have done something more, seen something more. The heavy weight of responsibility and disappointment settled on my shoulders.
Galina sighed, the sound hitching in the middle. “I shouldn’t have let him go. I thought the danger was past.”
It was and it wasn’t. “It was.” The carbonation crept past the blockage in my throat, I exhaled beer and the taste of failure onto the glass. Faint condensation swirled. “Sorry about your bed.”
She was quiet for a long few seconds. Nerving herself up to it, probably. “It’s what it’s there for. Jill—”
Christ, Galina, if you apologize one more time… “Did you say something about food? I’m starving.”
“Coming right up.” Mercifully, she left it at that. “Theron brought you some clothes. He says your house is clean, no more hellbreed. I’ve got to call him and let him know you’re awake.”
“That’d be good.” I kept my stiff
back to her. Exhaled again on the window and watched the condensation fade, like a ghost. My head ached. “You got any coffee?”
“I’ll bring some up to you. You know where the bathroom is.” Again, she hesitated.
“Food, Galina.” I said it as gently as I could. “I’m not done yet.”
“You got it.” She turned quick and light as a leaf, and was gone down the stairs. I tipped my head back, looking at the slant of the roof. Across the room, the mirror atop her antique cherrywood vanity held my reflection like a black stain. The plaster on her ceiling was in whorls, spiraling in and out.
The tears trickled from my eyes and vanished into my filthy hair. Jesus. Carp, you asshole. Why didn’t you wait for me?
When the pressure behind my eyes faded a bit and the smell of something good frying began to waft up the stairs, I tipped my head back down. The street was full of hot liquid sunshine, and there was light traffic. The Charger sat across the street, behind the empty spot that had held Leon’s truck. It was a fine-looking piece of heavy American metal. It needed a bit of work to get it into shape, sure, and Monty would roll his eyes when I asked to requisition the car. But there was no reason to let it go into impound.
No reason at all. Except I didn’t want to drive it, now.
I turned away from the window and hobbled on my stiff legs toward the other door. Galina had a shower in there, and I needed one. Then as much food as I could stuff into the bowling ball my stomach had become. After that, on to the next thing.
And if the tears came when I was standing under the hot water, if I made a low hurt sound like a wounded animal, if I scrubbed at my flesh like it was an enemy with her pretty pink floral-scented soap, it was nobody’s business but mine. It was between me and the water, and the water wouldn’t talk. It would carry my tears along with the dried blood, the dirt, and the beer I vomited back up down below the city into the dark.
32
It felt strange to walk into the precinct house again. Nobody said a word, but conversation failed when I appeared and turned into a tide of whispers in my wake. I stalked up to Montaigne’s office, ignoring the nervous looks and whispers both.
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