Shit. I hadn’t meant to kill him so completely—I’d thought he was more durable. Now who was I going to question?
Wait a second, Jill. This guy’s all wrong.
I struggled free of the swiftly decomposing remnants of the body, black silk sizzling a little as the ichor worked at it. The mask was a twisted rag, and his eyes were now collapsing holes. But something was wrong, very wrong, and when I raised my head, the silver still buzzing in my hair, I finally realized why he hadn’t eviscerated me.
He’d been too busy knocking me into the trap.
What had seemed a random jumble of metal had fallen from the ceiling, fresh weld spots glowing with the peculiar white gleam of orichalc. Part of it fitted over the empty altar, caging it securely, and the entire thing quivered around me like it wanted to take flight. The metal had driven deep into the concrete, like fingers sinking into butter.
The body on the floor really started to stink. I froze, examining the tangle of metal now webbing us both.
An orichalc-tainted cage? What the—
A faint movement, silk against inhuman skin. I cleared leather in an instant, and the guns didn’t dip as the clarity of battle left me and I began to suspect I was in deep fucking shit.
The ’breed melded out of the gloom, at the far end of the dance floor. The bezoar twitched in my pocket again, demonic little fingers tugging at my coat. Same compact build, same flutter of black silk, and maggot-white skin. The mask moved slightly as whatever was under it gapped its wide mouth, breathing softly.
He was white, not copper-skinned.
Oh, fucking hell.
I took two steps forward. It brought me closer to the crazycrack jumble of steel, and the metal moved. Runes crawled over it, visible only to my blue eye—weird, angular writing, curved only in specific spots. It glowed a sickly gold, moving like a spider’s scuttle when the web is touched.
Chaldean. Just like Belisa’s new necklace.
Think, Jill. Think fast. I drew back. Saw my whip handle on the other side of the bars, just barely in reach, the rest of the leather and silver jangles stretching out across the floor in a ribbon of stars. I leapt for it, because the ’breed at the other end of the dance floor twitched. If I could reach the whip I could—
POW!
My fingertips scraped concrete before I was flung away. I hit the cage on the other side, and the Chaldean struck again like a snake, tossing me down to the floor. The screaming I heard from far away was me. My voice cracked, raging in a high unlovely torrent of obscenities.
The ’breed hissed as he twitched my whip out of the way with the tip of one slippered foot. I realized the other masked ’breed hadn’t been wearing those goddamn tabi footies, either. He’d been a double.
I cursed myself for running on emotion instead of brains right before the cold concrete darkness reached up to swallow me.
16
I came back to consciousness slowly and piecemeal. Lying on my side, cheek against a rotting piece of cardboard, my entire body felt pulled apart and put back together wrong. I lay completely still, my breathing not changing as I surfaced. Hard things dug into my ribs, stomach, arms—my left arm twinged faintly, but the scar was humming with deep etheric force. Like a flash flood rumbling through an empty canyon, moments before the wall of water crashes into you.
So. I had my guns, my knives, the grenades. My arm was healed up and the scar was awake and angry. The bezoar was still vibrating in my pocket. I’d been taken in by that masked bastard and was now in an orichalc-tainted cage crawling with Chaldean.
Belisa. Did she know I’d leave her at the Monde? Jesus.
That’s the thing with Sorrows. They are masters of the mindfuck; they make even hellbreed look simple. What was that collar on her for? I didn’t know nearly enough.
And speak of the devil: “I know you’re awake.” A soft whisper, still as if she was in the incense hush of a House.
I kept my eyes mostly closed. The world was a soft blur. It still smelled like the same warehouse, and I kicked myself for not realizing the tang of incense was a Sorrows blend instead of the heavy noxious reek ’breed use for their rituals. Sorrows use perfect-tallow too, it’s one of the few overlaps between their different sorceries.
I could have kicked myself six ways from Sunday. Running on emotion will fuck you up big time and leave you trapped.
Slight huff of breath, a sigh like a teacher with a difficult student. “Jill. I know you’re awake.”
I couldn’t pin down the location of the voice. It could be a speaker system or a very slight sorcery to misdirect. Either was a good idea, especially since I still had my guns. They might have me trapped, but I was carrying a lot of ammo. I could probably figure out something with the grenades, too, to bust myself out of this predicament.
At least she wasn’t calling me a dead girl’s name anymore. Small mercies.
I lay there for a few more moments. My right wrist was under me, the scar twitching in my flesh. The stench of rotting hellbreed coated the back of my throat.
No sign of Saul here. My innards whirled violently for a moment. I suppressed a retch.
Another small sigh. “Come now, child. This is not especially mature of you.”
It could be a recording, filtered through different speakers so I couldn’t get a lock on it. And why was she talking to me like I was one of her cursed initiates? The other Sorrows bitch—Inez—had done that, too. They probably had a file a mile thick on me. Did every female hunter have trouble with the goddamn termite queens, or just me?
That’s a dangerous thought, Jill. Prioritize. You’re lying here on the floor. That won’t help you find Saul or stop this evocation. It doesn’t matter who they’re bringing through, it’s your job to get to the bottom of this and stop it posthaste.
There was more, of course. Riverson had done his job well, planting a seed of doubt. I still couldn’t bring myself to believe Mikhail’d had a hellbreed mark. The very thought tried to send a shudder of loathing through me. I clamped down on everything—heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, all my training narrowing to a single point.
“I offered to tell you where your cat was,” Belisa breathed, and it sounded like she was standing right over me. A faint touch of air against my cheek, spiced with incense, like a single paintbrush hair drawn along my dirty skin. I was beginning to think I’d never be clean again.
It was a trick. It had to be.
The pressure intensified, became metallic. As if a scalpel was gently touching me, just before a whisper of more pressure is applied and the skin splits along the razor edge. It drew itself up my cheek, over the hill of my cheekbone, and dipped down into the valley of my eyesocket.
I lunged up and away, the sensation fading like cobwebs and Melisande Belisa’s genuinely amused laughter ringing all through the warehouse. I did not draw a gun, but ended up kneeling as far away from all the sides of the cage as I could. This put me at the edge of the lake of black hellbreed scrim, my boot toe touching it.
A bright idea crawled through my head. I froze, my eyes moving over every surface. Both my hands were fists, and a chill slid over me. Like I’d just been doused in cold water, or like a fever had just broken. Sweat greased my skin, and a thin tendril of it kissed the scar’s pucker. The too-intense wash of hellbreed-amped senses was beginning to seem almost normal, just like every time I had the cuff off for a while.
The warehouse was dark. How long had I been out? The altar, under a mass of twisted, jagged metal, throbbed a single dissatisfied pulse. It wasn’t empty now, no sir. Chalice, claw, and candles, not to mention lumps of human organs, scattered across its surface. I wondered briefly, pointlessly, how many of those organs had been in the charred bodies near the freeway, or if there was another mass grave waiting somewhere for me to find it.
The thought of being unconscious so close to the altar—not to mention while someone laid the altar, though they could have done it with sorcery, I supposed—was enough to give me the willie
s. If, that is, I didn’t already have so many other problems that one looked like a cakewalk. Tiny sounds—chittering, nasty, whispering laughter—filled each corner. It was meant to be disorienting, but my blue eye wasn’t fooled. It’s disconcerting to hear things running for you while your eyes swear you’re alone and in no danger. Even more disconcerting to feel the brushes against you, ripples of Chaldean glyphs sliding through the cage’s physical structure pushing air around.
“The blind man wasn’t lying,” she whispered. “Mikhail did have a scar. Star-shaped, inside of the right thigh. It was full of their corruption. He was worried he would die before he could find someone to take his place and the corruption itself. That’s how it works, my dear. Haven’t you wondered why your zilfjari’ak watches over you so assiduously? Yours is a soul he has no intention of losing. The others, well. He could wait, and watch, for you.”
Gee, I’m honored. Of all the things that have ever happened to me, having a Sorrow whisper sweet nothings about a hellbreed’s motivations has to be one of the weirdest. And that’s really saying something.
The urge to swallow hard rose. I repressed it. Give nothing away, Jill. Instead I turned in a full circle, examining the cage.
“Don’t tell her.” The second whining nasal voice was a surprise. “Let her anticipate the worst.”
“Shut the fuck up, Rutger.” My voice surprised me, echoed oddly against the cage. It quivered as if it wanted to clamp down on me, a gigantic veined hand with leprous-white spots. “The adults are talking.”
Silence crackled. I drew my left-hand gun, holstered my right, and shook my fingers out. Took stock of myself from head to foot.
This might end up hurting a bit.
“Oh, hunter.” Rutger giggled, a high mincing noise. “You and your master are both going to burn. He’ll be demoted to licking boots, and you’ll be dragged to Hell screaming.”
“Been there. Done that. Wiped off with the T-shirt.” I stretched my fingers, tendons flickering in the back of my hand as I wiggled them. First step is getting out of here. But that one’s going to be a lulu.
“Imbecile.” Belisa, very softly. “If he finds out you’re disloyal he’ll make you uncomfortable. You’d better pray your plan works.” A slight scuffle, changing direction in midsound. She had to be using sorcery to disguise where she was. Rutger, however, was not. And he had just moved—away from her, it sounded like.
I stored up their words for later. Interesting. Did the stupid hellbreed not realize she was a Sorrow? You’d think he would be staying as far away from her as he could.
And where was that masked bastard? The bezoar was quiet in my pocket. I could still track him with it, and next time I wouldn’t be so easily taken in.
At least, I hoped.
“Shut up, witch-whore. Just because I’m not the one holding your leash doesn’t mean you can yap.” Rutger was moving again, restless tapping sounds. He was still wearing those sharp-edged heels. I had a vivid mental image of him kicking a body on the floor, shut it away with a physical effort.
My hand relaxed. The scar chuckled to itself, a wet lipless unsound against the flesh of my arm. Silver shifted and sparked. The Talisman pulsed once on my chest, and I considered using it for only a half second.
No. the situation wasn’t that dire yet. I could still recover this. I could.
My fingers tingled.
“You’re simply lucky I have this leeway to act and no more. If you weren’t so useful, or if this damnable thing wasn’t on me, I would…” Belisa, softly, each word coming from a different quadrant of the warehouse.
“You would what? What, exactly, would you do?” Rutger’s sneer was palpable. “Pray to one of your spent, ancient masters?”
A long breath of silence, while I was doing some praying of my own. I prayed for them to be so involved with each other they wouldn’t notice what I was up to. It was hard work, the fierce relaxed concentration of sorcery when my entire body was jittering from adrenaline overload and the thought of Saul trapped somewhere, maybe in a cage as well, beating inside my brain.
The tingling in my fingers crested.
Banefire whispered. Tiny blue sparks wreathed my hand, popping free of the skin, coalescing on my fingertips. You’d think they wouldn’t have left me alive, with my ammo and my guns. They were either monumentally stupid, or they had something nasty and inescapable in mind.
Since Belisa wasn’t stupid, guess what my money was on. There was a third option—that they couldn’t get inside the cage. They were saving me for something.
Like an evocation, perhaps? Something about the situation was off, and if I had some time to think I could tease it out. That wasn’t a luxury I possessed right now.
Stop reacting and start thinking, Jill. Slow and easy, now.
“I do not need to pray to deal with an upstart zilfjari’ak. Even if I am currently unable to do as I like.” Belisa’s dulcet tone turned to a hiss. I had to admit, I liked it better that way.
“Yes, well, one of us put that little necklace on you. It suits you.” Rutger tittered.
A susurrus of silk against unholy skin. My ears perked up. High, behind me, to my left. So the masked bastard was still here, too.
The banefire slid against itself, almost dying under the weight of corruption in the air. Please, no. God, cut me a break on this one, please?
Even hunters aren’t immune to pleading with an uncaring god. The thing is, while we reflexively do so, we know there really isn’t any point.
God’s busy. It’s up to us.
I kept my right hand low and close to my side, in the folds of my tattered, torn coat. The scar twinged sharply. I exhaled, a slow, soft breath. Concentration came in fits and starts, and the banefire sang a sad little dirge in a chorus of dead children’s voices.
More sounds—scuffles, a wet ripping. Good news for me.
Another soft sliding of silk. How could I have been taken in by a stupid double? Because I was running blind. All someone had to do was take Saul, threaten to hurt him, and I—
The banefire blazed up. My hand jerked away from my coat, and the shadows were suddenly cutting sharp, like a photo flash, every surface the bright blue-white light fell on bleached and curling with steam. Someone yelled, a long low rumble of Helletöng, and metal screeched and tore.
I threw myself backward and cast the banefire straight at the altar in one motion. It would hit the stored-up corruption there and consume it, and then once it had a good hold it would go for the bars.
I could only hope the resultant explosion wouldn’t kill me, too. But better to die here than at the mercy of whatever Belisa—or whoever was holding her leash—had planned.
17
The altar went up in a gout of brilliant blue, screaming faces in the twisting flames. Grasping fingers of fire caressed the cage.
Metal screamed, deafening, as if it were a living thing being tortured. The concussion knocked me back, and I had time enough for a split-second, hopeful thought—maybe the Chaldean sorcery on the bars would be spent now?
If it hadn’t, I was looking at being the ball in a giant game of tennis between razor-studded rackets.
Impact. Red-black pain jolted through me. I lost consciousness briefly, stars whirling through my skull, and I wondered if I’d been too smart for my own good.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Shutterclicks of red and bright blazing blue. The banefire had a good purchase now, and was roaring. Regular orange flame was twisting, too, a clean and normal light under the black belch of smoke. The iron was curling like paper. So that was what it did to Chaldean sorcery impregnating orichalc-tainted steel. I should have Hutch write that down—
Get up, milaya. Mikhail’s voice. Get up now. Or I will hit you again.
When he said that, he always meant it. It made me move when nothing else could.
I scrambled, my body not obeying me quite right. My left arm felt like it had broken again and I was swimming through molasses. I knew
the pain would be right behind me, and I just had to move fast enough for it to stay behind me and not catch up.
Moving, though, would be the problem. Great chunks of burning stuff fell from the ceiling, orange and blue flame mixing in long banners. My feet went out from under me, slipping on a wash of something bubbling and foul, and it was a good thing, too. If I hadn’t slipped, going heavily to my knees and almost biting a chunk out of my tongue, Rutger would have collided with me. As it was, every inch of silver on me fluoresced with blue sparks, banefire howled, and the edge of one of his sharp little shoes clocked me on the back of the head. I rolled, tucking everything in.
The pain caught up with me. Every joint, muscle, and bone in my body screamed, the scar a dumb lump of burning meat on my right wrist, and I fumbled for a gun.
The inside of the warehouse was alive with leaping blue flame. Banefire squealed and cried, the children’s voices rising in a glassine chorus. And other sounds, ones I couldn’t quite make out because my ears were full of something warm, trickles of fluid sliding down my neck. Even that touch of moisture couldn’t cool the heat. The Eye on my chest throbbed, and it took effort I couldn’t afford to quiet the thing.
Howls. Cries. Gunfire. Someone yelling my name—a human voice, young, breaking in the upper registers.
What the hell?
I floundered on the floor. Get up. Jill, get UP. I made it to hands and knees, coughed. An amazing jet of bright-red blood splashed on the floor. No trace or taint of black in it.
Every time I bled red it was a relief. Except there was so much of it.
Why was the entire warehouse burning? The banefire should have just busted the cage. It must have reacted with the Chaldean. I really needed to get Hutch on that to figure it out.
I should have been healing. The scar should have been pumping etheric energy through me. Instead, my arms almost failed, slipping on the blood and the bubbling mix of foulness coating the floor. Smoke roiled, coating the inside of my throat. A hellbreed screamed, the cry rising up to earshattering volume before it was cut short on a gurgle.
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