Redemption Alley

by Lilith Saintcrow

  I scanned the whole room once. Everything was frozen in place except the contortionists, twisted into pretzels. One of them distended her jaw with a crack, and made a low groaning sound as her spine extended into a hoop.

  Great. “A waitress.” I kept my tone conversational. “Named Irene.” One thumb clicked back the hammer on a gun, the snick very loud. “Now.”

  A clattering crash, my eyes flicked toward the sound. A black-haired Trader, as thin and beautiful as the rest of them, had dropped her tray. The short black skirt on her French-maid uniform made a starched sound as she backed up under my gaze, blundering into a knot of hellbreed and Traders who scattered in a flash of uniforms—harlequins, maids, one female in a super-retro Batgirl costume—what the hell, I thought, and promptly dismissed it.

  I took two steps forward before a table full of Traders erupted into motion and things got seriously interesting—but not before I got a flash of hellbreed and Traders parting to show a slumped body on a table, blood bright red and human decorating the linen, and Carp’s blue eyes wide open with terror and glazed with either death or unconsciousness.

  Four shots, whip cracking across a Trader’s face and snapping back, I kicked; my steel-toed boot caught the snarling hellbreed just under the chin with a sound like thin glass wrapped in bread dough when you drop a hammer on it. Clearing a hellbreed hole is messy, even with heavy-duty sorcery and silverjacket lead. Thin black ichor coated the floor, not yet ankle-deep but we were going to get there.

  I landed on the table, heels slamming down bare inches from Carp’s head on either side. Stood over him, gun in one hand, whip in the other. Spared a quick glance down—his eyes had half-closed, and his mouth wet-flickered, closing, opened again.

  He’s alive. Thank God. Now to get him out of here.

  The world froze between one moment and the next, every hellbreed and Trader in the place dropping to the ground like they’d all been caught with cyanide Kool-Aid. The doors from the kitchen swung open, a wave of coldness pouring through the room, and the tinkling of the fountain began to seriously get on my fucking nerves.

  Dainty, delicate, and dolled up in a red kimono, Shen An Dua stepped between the doors. They swung shut behind her and framed her with blank industrial steel; it was a good look for her. Catslit yolk-yellow eyes cradled in slight epicanthic folds swept the room, waist-length blue-black hair with the body of well-oiled straw was pulled into some sort of elaborate confection atop her well-modeled head. Probably matches the fountain, I thought with an internal snigger, and the scar on my wrist gave such a burst of burning pain my fingers almost clenched.

  Great. Just great. Her aura was the deep sonorous bruising of a full hellbreed, the taint of Hell warping the strings of the physical world. Plucking, like little flabby fingers, the harpstrings of this place of flesh.

  I pointed the gun, let it settle naturally so the bullet would follow its own path of consequence right between her eyes. Decided that the best defense, so to speak, would be a good offense.

  Hey, it’s my usual method. Along with ripping Band-Aids off in one quick jerk and throwing myself off buildings after hellbreed, you could even call it my job.

  “All right, bitch.” I bit off the end of the sentence. “Irene. The waitress. Bring her out, and maybe I won’t burn this whole pile of bad taste to the ground.”

  Shen placed her small hands together and bowed from the waist, a slight inclination of her upper body. “Kismet. You honor our humble business with your presence.”

  “Can the so-solly routine, Shen. Bring out the fucking waitress, or I start wasting paying customers and staff. Your call.”

  The tip of a tongue, far too pink and far too glistening-wet to be human, crept out and touched her candy-apple lips. “What is the nature of her sin, avenging one?”

  Perry asks me that occasionally. It’s some kind of formula in their weird twisted society, I suppose. Not that I cared enough to ask. “You just let me worry about that, hellspawn.” My pulse eased, settling into a hard rhythm, slower than the energy demand of combat but a helluva lot higher than just lounging on my couch. “Hand her over for questioning. And while you’re at it, sit yourself down and prepare to answer a few questions yourself.”

  Her smile broadened. Her teeth were white bone behind bleeding lips, and her cheeks plumped up adorably. The kimono swished slightly as she settled—maybe on her heels, maybe not. I didn’t know what was under the long skirts she habitually wore, and experience has taught me not to even guess. “I do not think you understand the situation, hunter.”

  Oh, you did not just start this game with me. I didn’t lose my temper. Instead, I squeezed the trigger. The report smashed all the air in the room, silver in my hair alive with blue sparks, their crackling suddenly a counterpoint to the dishes crashing in the kitchen.

  “Huh. Will you look at that.” I sounded damn near gleeful, a laugh riding the razor edge my voice had become. “A thousand apologies, most honorable Shen An Dua. I must have become irritated. Do you want to see what’ll happen if you make me angry?”

  Black strings of hair fell in her face. I’d shot whatever architecture underpinned her elaborate coiffure—a trick no less amazing because it was only half-intentional. It had occurred to me at the very last moment that maybe just killing her would be a tactical error in here.

  But oh, it would be so satisfying.

  That was a bad thought to have, because it was treading right on the edge.

  I didn’t care as much as I should right now. Getting killed a few times will do that to you.

  Carper made a thin moaning sound. I didn’t want to think about what had probably happened to him before I quit dithering and busted down the door. Instead, I shook the whip a little, its flechettes jingling. The circle of hellbreed and Traders around the table, like darkness pressing against a sphere of candlelight, shivered at the tinkling sweet sound.

  The situation quivered on the edge of violence. If I was going to really get into it here, I would have Carp to protect. It would handicap me.

  Deal with it, Jill.

  Shen’s fingers flicked. I tensed, but a blood-haired female—the mop was really amazing, crimson hair to her nipped-in waist, a sequined maroon sheath just like Mae West’s hugging dead-white curves—was pushed forward out of the crowd. She had a pale, hard little face with the rotten bloom of hellish beauty on it like scurf powder on blood, and her eyes were dark and liquid under the flat shine of a Trader.

  “This is the one you seek.” Shen hissed.

  Great. Now I had to figure out how to get us all out of here.

  “Now we’re all going to be civilized, aren’t we?” The whip moved, tick-tock, just like a clock pendulum, before it coiled almost of its own accord and was stowed in its proper place. My free hand now touched a gun butt, but I didn’t draw just yet. “I’m taking the waitress and this—” My heel gently prodded Carp’s temple, he made a thin moaning sound of a man caught in a nightmare, “with me.” My gun eased away from Shen, the assembled hellbreed flinched under its one-eyed stare. Then it came back to the mistress of the Kat Klub, settled on her forehead. If I kill her, the rest of them will swarm me. She knows it. Think fast, wabbit. “Anybody have any problems with that?”

  Dead silence. The kitchen had quieted too, maybe finally noticing something was amiss out here in the dining room.

  Shen made another quick movement, her dainty hands fluttering. I almost pulled the trigger—but no, the assembled damned pulled away, crawling or skipping, pressing back as if I had the plague.

  Leaving a nice clear corridor between the mistress of the Kat Klub and yours truly.

  Great. Wonderful. Jill, this is going to hurt.

  “You and your master will pay for this.” Fat, oily strings of black hair writhed over Shen An Dua’s face, tangling together like live things. She didn’t look half so pretty now, her eyes alive with running egg-soft flame and her upper lip lifting like a cat smelling something awful.

  My maste
r? Mikhail’s dead. “My teacher’s in Valhalla.” Nothing in the words but flat finality. If Shen thought mentioning Misha would yank my chain enough to get me to make a mistake, she was either stupid—or holding something in reserve. And whatever else Shen An Dua is, she’s not stupid. “You can’t touch him, bitch.”

  “His is not the hand that holds your leash, hunter.” Her razorpearl teeth showed in a snarl, all the more chilling because of the full-cheeked sweetness of her face. The kimono’s skirt rustled, shapes bulging underneath it. “Tell the master of the Monde he will pay for this.”

  It was so out of left field I almost couldn’t connect the words together. Perry? Oh good God. Please. “If you think I’m here for him, you’re wrong. Perry has no hold on me.” Other than the fact that I’d rather deal with him than you any day of the week, since he has a vested interest in keeping me alive so he can fuck with me. I hopped down from the table, the gun tracking smoothly. The waitress flinched, cowering, I eyed her. “Pick him up, Trader.”

  “You will not—” Shen began, and my heartrate eased, smoothing out, as I lifted my head and regarded her again. They could all hear my pulse, and the sudden calm washing over me was as ominous as a thunderstorm.

  Talk your way out of this one, Kismet. “This is one of mine, hellspawn. You don’t get to eat him tonight.”

  There are six pounds of center-trigger pull on a Glock and I was at about four and a half. The world had turned into a collection of edges too sharp to be real, all my senses working overtime and amped up into the red.

  Shen’s face contorted once, smoothed out, crumpled again. The bruise of her aura tightened like a fist. I watched, waiting. If Shen was more than normally upset at Perry or needed to regain some face in front of her minions and clients, this would get ugly really quickly.

  “You are only one, hunter. And we are legion.” The black strings of her hair rubbed against each other, squealing as she subvocalized. Helletöng rumbled through the floor, vibrating against my bootsoles.

  “That does not particularly bother me.” I sounded like it didn’t, too. “I’ve killed more in a night than you have in this dining room, Shen.” I paused. “You, Trader. I told you to pick him up.”

  The Trader squeaked as if she’d been pinched and moved to obey. I kept both guns on Shen. I might get out of this alive. All hail the poker-faced hunter and her ability to talk smack.

  Shen took two long strides forward, the fabric of her kimono’s lower half moving in odd ways, silk groaning and stretching. “You will not leave this place alive,” she promised, and the helltainted on every side moved closer. A rising growl slid through them, Helletöng rubbing at the walls.

  Oh, so that’s the way we’re going to do this? My free hand was suddenly full of Glock. “Outside, Irene. And gently. If he dies, you’re fucking next.” I waited until I heard her start moving, Carp’s shapeless groan as he lay cradled in her stick-thin, dead-white arms, her purple satin gloves now stained with blood. This I took in through my peripheral vision, my heartrate cool and steady, both guns still locked on the mistress of the Kat Klub. “Is that the way you want to play it, Shen?”

  Nothing human lived under the skirt of that antique kimono. The scar prickled, a mass of hot needles burrowing into my wrist, and the world got very still again, clarity settling over each edge and curve. The contortionists were still writhing on the stage, joints crackling and sequins scraping.

  “Take her,” she whispered. But none of the assembled ’breed or Traders moved.

  Apparently, right at this moment, even fear of Shen An Dua couldn’t make them swarm me. It was an indirect compliment.

  I showed my teeth. My entire body relaxed into the flow of the moment, the absolute chilling certainty of violence taking all indecision out of the equation. “Bring it,” I whispered. My forearms tensed, cords of muscle standing out as I edged toward that last pound and a half of pressure on the triggers.

  A new voice cut across the warp and weft of the interior, slicing cleanly even if it was loaded with Texas so thick the drawl dripped over the sides. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ. What the hell’s this?”

  I almost twitched. Relief threatened to unloose my knees, and the situation tipped from ohmyGod I am not going to survive this to Thank God someone else is going to die with me.

  Shen’s head turned, a slow movement like a servomotor with oiled bearings. I kept both guns trained on her. I’d once seen her unzip a Trader’s guts and lift a double handful of wet intestine to her plump little candy-apple-red mouth.

  Things like that will make a hunter cautious. Add to that the fact that I’d wanted to question the Trader about a certain stable of high-priced underage sex slaves, and Shen’s calm inscrutable smile as strings of human gut hung from her mouth, and you had bad blood between us. I knew she’d been in it up to her eyeballs, but I hadn’t been able to make any of it stick. I couldn’t prove it to my own satisfaction.

  I could prove little of what I suspected when it came to her. Which meant I couldn’t kill her with a clear conscience. Or even just a reasonably clear conscience, which, some days, is all you’re going to get in this line of work.

  “Hi, Leon,” I said. “Nice to see you.”

  “You’ve got crappy taste in restaurants, darlin’,” Leon Budge drawled. “Why don’t we go somewheres civilized where I can get me a got-damn drink?”

  Shen surged forward again, and there was a familiar, ratcheting sound. Leon had worked the bolt action on his rifle. “Oh, now, sweetie-pie, don’t do that. Me and Rosita here, we gets nervous when a slope-eyed gal like you gets twitchy.”

  Jesus, Leon, how much of a racist cliché can you be? I took two steps, sidling away from the table. Helletöng crested, the sound of skin slipping as drowned fingers rubbed together, chrome flies buzzing in chlorine-laced bottles—the scar sent a wet thrill up my arm, hearing its language spoken.

  Two more steps. I took a quick glance, made certain I was out of Leon’s field of fire.

  He stood in a battered leather trenchcoat, plain dun instead of black, his hair a crow’s nest of untidy brown waves, copper charms threaded on black heavy-duty waxed thread and clinking slightly as a breeze ruffled his hair. The wreck of the swinging doors smoked around him, and he held the rifle like it wasn’t capable of blowing a ’breed in half with the modifications he’d put on it.

  Chubby cherub’s face, wide shoulders, a body kept in shape by a hunter’s constant training but still managing to give the impression of pudginess. Leon looked like a newscaster trapped in goth-boy drag, an impression helped along by the eyeliner scoring rings around each hazel eye and the clinking mass of amulets around his neck on cords, thongs, and thin copper chains. Four plain silver rings on his left hand ran with blue sparks, echoing the silver in my hair. One of them was the apprentice-ring his teacher had given him.

  Leon was smiling under a scruff of dark stubble, white teeth peeping out. “Should I put ’er down, Kiss?”

  Don’t call me that, dammit. “If she moves.” I turned my back on Shen An Dua and her assembled footlickers and customers, guns sliding into their holsters. “Or hell, even if you don’t like her hairstyle.”

  “It’s somethin’.” The cheerful, thoughtful tone never wavered, and he didn’t blink. The bandoliers crossing his chest held small silver-coated throwing knives, each one sharp enough to take a finger off.

  Or pop right into a ’breed’s eye and pierce the brain with blessed metal.

  “Well, the barber was an amateur.” I shrugged, my knees threatening to buckle with each straight, strutting step.

  Rule of dealing with murderous hellspawn: try not to look weak. It gets them all excited.

  “You have earned my hatred,” Shen was back to whispering. “Hell and Earth both witness my vow, hunter. You will pay for this.”

  Yeah, one way or another. Sure. “You already said that, most honorable Shen An Dua. Don’t be boring.” I would have pantomimed a yawn if my hands weren’t quivering with the urge to
take the guns out again, turn around, and put this murderous hellspawn down like the parasite she was.

  Leon’s gaze flicked to mine for a fraction of a second. It was a purely professional look, gauging what I was likely to do next. I sounded cool and calm, but something in my cheek twitched like a needle was plucking at the flesh. The glance was also a communication, one I heard as clearly as verbal speech—are you gonna throw down, darlin’?

  If I did, he was willing to back me. But Leon knew just as surely as I did it would be a terrible mistake. These hellbreed and Traders weren’t surprised anymore, and they’d had plenty of time to think about how to take the two of us apart. Shen could threaten all she wanted now and still retain some semblance of face, but if we killed her it wouldn’t be a free-for-all that would allow us to divvy them up and pick them off. No, if we insulted her, then killed her, whoever wanted to step into her shoes would have to kill us to prove they were worthy of taking Shen’s place.

  Well, Jill, you fucked this up six ways to Sunday. Cool night air poured down the hall, touching Leon’s hair. He backed up, covering me with the rifle as I retreated from what had certainly been a bad idea in the first place.

  We made it through the hall, past the crumpled bodies of the bouncers. The hat-check girl was nowhere in sight. Sirens wailed in the distance, and I was suddenly struck by an entirely new feeling.

  I was used to the sound being a relief, as in the cavalry’s on its way. Now I felt the way any criminal feels—like the sirens were baying hounds and I was the fox.

  The crowd out front had vanished. Most of them were likely to be Traders and hellbreed, probably thanking their lucky stars they hadn’t been inside.

  “Fucking hell.” I restrained the urge to kick something.

  The blood-haired Trader was gone.

  So was Carp.

  19

  Leon drove, of all things, a big blue Chevy half-ton. The interior smelled of grease and jostled as the engine labored.