Heaven's Spite jk-5

by Lilith Saintcrow

  It wasn’t time to play the biggest card I had, yet. Instead, I reached up and touched the Talisman. It arched up under my fingers, cool metal that somehow conveyed the impression of faraway flame, a heat not quite felt against my skin. “Who has him now?”

  The strap across his forehead was as tight as it would go. He tried to move his head, couldn’t, and rolled his eyes, still grinning. “Now why would I tell you that? With him out of the way, you’re so much more amenable. So much more pliant.”

  That’s what you think. I turned away. Headed for the table. The rosewood was slick and satiny as I opened the case.

  The flechettes lay arranged neatly against dark-blue velvet, each one a razor gleam. There were tiny ones that fit over the fingertips, curved and straight ones as long as my hand, other assorted shapes and sizes. The largest was as long as my forearm, its cutting edge curved slightly and a blood-groove scoring down its fluid length.

  “Ohhhhhhh…” Perry sighed. “How much will you hurt me, Kiss? You see what a good little hellspawn I am. I take things from your hand I would take from no other.”

  Don’t tempt me. But it was too late for that. I took my time, running my fingers over the flechette handles, considering each and every one.

  I’d used them all. Before Perry had welshed on his end of the deal by playing with Sorrows, I’d been in here every month. More often than not he had me strap him into the frame and start cutting. Sometimes it was a beating, and he grinned each time I broke his pale, hard hellbreed shell. Once he lounged in his bed, narrow pale hairless chest exposed, and toyed with a dish of strawberries while he asked me questions. What my favorite color was. What I wanted to be when I grew up. What I thought of politics.

  All a game, to get me to respond. Gathering up little bits of psychology, storing it up for the day I stepped over that hairline crack and into his world.

  The day I was damned. The day he owned me.

  It might end up being today, if you let it. Careful, Jill.

  I picked up the largest flechette. The metal handle, scored for traction like a gun butt, was ice-cold. The scar chilled, too, a warning.

  My face settled against itself. My pulse dropped, as if I was waiting on a rooftop for a target to show. I wasn’t as calm as I could be. For one thing, the skin of my right cheek was twitching as if a seamstress was plucking at it with a needle.

  For another, the Talisman was rumbling too. Louder than the Helletöng, the subsonics striking the tiled walls and reverberating. The Eye’s song swallowed the unmusical nastiness of Helletöng, turning each limping broken hiss and groaning curse on its head, blending it into an even greater theme.

  Something about that helped, though I don’t know why. I let out a sharp breath and was suddenly, mostly, back in control of myself.

  Except for another worried little thought. Why would Perry give it back to me?

  When I turned, I found Perry considering me. The indigo had bled out of his eyes, and they were bright, glowing blue around the too-dark pupil. The border between pupil and iris shifted, each an amorphous blob of darkness with a red spark buried in its depths.

  He’d never done that before.

  The tip of his tongue crept out, wet cherry-red, and touched the corner of his mouth. “You look lovely.”

  I felt the smile pull up my mouth, baring my teeth. An animal’s grimace as I crossed the room. “Why, Perry. Thank you.” The tip of the flechette caressed his cheek. I considered it, drew it up his smoke-tarnished skin to the corner of his left eye. “How would you like to be blind?”

  Not a twitch of uneasiness, but he was so very still. “You can’t.”

  “I can put silver in the holes once I’ve dug your baby blues out.” I cocked my head. “Wouldn’t that be interesting.”

  His expression—interested, avid—didn’t change. “Then I could no longer see your beauty, Kiss. I would miss that.”

  The tip dug in a little. There was nothing human under that shell, but I was fairly sure if I twisted my wrist and scooped, the eye would pop out. I knew the blade was sharp enough to cut him, whatever metal it was. No silver, because it didn’t fire with blue sparks when it got near him.

  “Last chance, Pericles.” The calm descended on me. “Saul. Who has him?”

  He grinned. Like a skull.

  And then he told me. I didn’t even have to cut him once.

  22

  I gunned the engine. Beside me in the passenger seat, buckled in like an unresisting doll, Melisande Belisa swayed. I wanted to keep an eye on her. And leaving her with Perry seemed… wrong.

  For all I knew, Perry was still strapped in that rack. God alone knew how he got unstrapped at the end of our long-ago monthly sessions, but then he’d had flunkies. There was nobody in the building to come get him out.

  I hoped he’d stay there for a while. Long enough for me to get this done and figure out a way to deal with him.

  The tires squealed as the car spun, a roostertail of golden dust rising. The car leapt forward obediently. The day was well underway, noon past and the sun sinking from its apex. The chain hanging from Belisa’s collar clanked as I hit the corner coming out of the Monde’s parking lot and stepped on the gas. There wouldn’t be many people on the street, but—

  My pager buzzed. I dug it out, one hand on the wheel and the pedal to the floor. Intuition tingled along my nerves. I hit the brakes and narrowly avoided a pickup truck running a stop sign on Soledad Street. The driver was obviously drunk, careening away in a flash with ranchero music blaring.

  One look at the number on my pager convinced me to pull over. There was a phone booth at Soledad and 168th. I cut the wheel hard and Belisa slumped in the seat. The chain jingled musically, a queerly wrong clashing, and I wondered where Riverson had got himself to. If, that is, Belisa had left him alive.

  One more of those questions I had no time to answer. I pulled over, hit the parking brake, and took the keys with me.

  Galina’s phone rang twice before Hutch picked up. “Jill?”

  “It’s me. Is Gilberto there?”

  “I thought he was with you. Anya Devi came through, she’s looking for you. But there’s something else. Listen, Jill—”

  I cursed. Considered putting my fist through the plastic shell of the booth. Stared at the car. Belisa was deathly still, slumped against the window, and the Chaldean running through the chain flickered gold.

  Yes, I parked where I could keep an eye on her. Just because she hadn’t been any trouble so far was no indication.

  “Shut up.” Hutch actually snapped at me. I shut my mouth. “Listen, Jill. This Julius, the hellbreed? Likes virgins, looks like a manlier version of Buster Keaton, according to the description—”

  “Cute,” I muttered. “What about him?”

  “He’s already out. He surfaced two and a half weeks ago. In Louisiana.”

  There was a glimmer inside my car, a foxfire glow fighting with the sunlight. It was the golden glyphs, brightening. Was she struggling against the chain?

  I should kill her. It would be so easy. Just a moment’s worth of work and I could be done with the whole thing.

  Then what Hutch had said hit home. “Oh, shit,” I whispered.

  “Yeah. I called Benny Cross again, on a hunch. He’s madder than a wet hen, there’s a full-scale war between the Sorrows and Julius’s henchmen spilling over onto civilians. Julius is nowhere to be found. Benny says to be fucking careful.”

  “Hutch.” I struggled to breathe. “What kind of chain binds a Sorrow? What does it look like?”

  He was silent for a full five seconds. “Meteorite iron, I guess. It has to be bloodworked and runed; they use them for the Pas’zhuruk, where they eat their own. Expensive, it’d cost you an arm and a leg to get one, assuming you could pry it out of a House. Regular pin and lock on the collar, and once the collar’s on the Sorrow’s a slave, but has some agency. Add a chain of the same stuff and they’re catatonic.”

  Pas’zhuruk. “Isn’t that w
here they sacrifice a Grand Mother to one of the Elders?”

  “Yeah. Um, listen. Gilberto’s not here. Thought he was with you.”

  Fuck. “Any Weres showed up yet?”

  “No, none of them either. What the fuck is—no, scratch that. I don’t want to know. What do you want me to do?”

  Wise man. “Call my house, see if you can raise Anya. Or get her pager. If all else fails, she’ll check in with you.” I shuffled priorities. Evocation altars meant they were planning on bringing someone through. It was too expensive a ploy to waste just to keep me chasing my tail… or maybe not. Still, I couldn’t take that chance. “Tell her to evacuate my house pronto, and that Gil’s been snatched, unless he shows up with the Weres. Tell her not to send any more Weres to Galina’s or after me, that I have a line on Saul, and that Julius is out and making trouble. Tell her to find and burn those evocation sites as fast as she can. I don’t have locations.”

  He was scratching furiously on a pad of paper again. “Anything else?”

  “Call the Badger. Have her check every John Doe homicide in the last three weeks for anything funky. And do not step foot outside. I don’t want to rescue you, too.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s—come on, Jill. I don’t go outside when you tell me to stay in. I just don’t.”

  “Good. Make sure Galina stays undercover too. And keep digging—cross-reference for any other hellbreed with a link to Perry that would need or just like virgin flesh to break out of Hell.”

  “You got it. Anything—”

  “No. Stay inside.” And pray for me. I didn’t add that. He didn’t need the stress. I did hang up, and leaned inside the pay phone for a moment, watching my car.

  Belisa was helpless. It was the best shot I’d get. And she killed Mikhail.

  I turned my right wrist over, looked at the scar. It was just the same—the print of Perry’s lips, now flushed because of the etheric energy humming through it.

  Mikhail.

  “I don’t care.” My voice took me by surprise. “He must have had his reasons. He had to have his reasons.”

  Had Belisa killed him before he could find the way to tell me?

  It doesn’t fucking matter. Perry’s out of the way for the moment. You’ve got a line on Saul. Go get him, then you can get to the bottom of the rest of this. And when it’s over, you’re going to seriously consider killing Perry. I don’t care if the scar is useful, this is Too Far.

  The nasty little idea that this was just what Perry would want me to think so he could damn me—or so he could help me damn myself—just wouldn’t go away. So I ignored it.

  Big mistake.

  23

  It was just as Perry said—a nice three-story in Greenlea, never my favorite part of Santa Luz.

  Greenlea is just north of downtown, in the shopping district. If you’re really looking, you can sometimes catch a glimpse of the granite Jesus on top of Sisters of Mercy, glowering at the financial district. But Greenlea’s organic froufrou boutiques and pretty little restaurants don’t like seeing it. Sometimes I think it’s an act of will that keeps that particular landmark obscured from certain places in the city, especially around downtown.

  The last time I’d been down here, I’d been tracking down a voodoo queen’s rage before it could unleash a hellbreed’s idea of a circus on my town. That would have been unpleasant, and Perry had been up to his eyebrows in it as well.

  Crackerbox houses, postage-stamp yards, yuppies and the upwardly mobile jealously watching for any sign of weakness in their neighbors. The bitch who used to live out here—Lorelei—had made quite a living for herself from their petty squabbles, for a very long time.

  Her bakery and coffee shop was now a place claiming to sell vegan Thai and Indian food. I shuddered at the mere notion, and Saul had looked puzzled when he saw the sign.

  You can’t explain vegan ethnic to a carnivore. You just can’t.

  The entire neighborhood—centered around one street with two high-end bookstores, vegan eateries, a coffee shop, and a couple of kitschy-klatch places selling overpriced junk—was quiet. There’s a few antique stores down at one end, and a fancy bakery and two pricey bars at the other. This particular house was at Seventh and Mariposa, a high wooden fence around its tiny yard and every window glazed with venetian blinds. Everyone was at work, looking to afford the property taxes, and the main shopping drag was two blocks over. The street was quiet, but it wouldn’t stay that way when quitting time arrived and the hipsters came home.

  I parked two blocks away behind a closed-down whole-foods warehouse just to be sure, then pushed Belisa into the backseat and laid her down, making sure the pin holding the collar closed was secure. The chain rattled. She sighed. Her flayed feet were healing. Long tangled dark hair, and if she closed her eyes you could see where she would be pretty. The exotic sort of woman a man would look twice at on the street.

  But those black eyes were holes into another place. She didn’t close them. I had to watch for a few seconds to make sure she was blinking.

  My right hand moved. The gun was out of its holster in a hot heartbeat, barrel pressed against her forehead. It would be so easy, and the mess in the backseat wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve ever cleaned up.

  No, Jill. Don’t do it.

  She blinked again. Utterly helpless. Revulsion twisted my stomach.

  Not this way. If you kill her, make it clean. Don’t be like what you hunt.

  You don’t live long as a hunter if you’re not willing to just get the fucking job done, with whatever means are to hand. But there is a line you cannot cross, and the only guide for where that line is rests inside your skull. You could call it conscience, I guess. It’s not your teacher or your lover, it’s not even God. Because you can fool all of them, some of the time. When it counts.

  The only person you take accounting with as a hunter is yourself. And I knew as surely as I was breathing, if I pulled the trigger on Melisande Belisa right now, I would be damning myself. It would be easy for Perry to own me after that step.

  I breathed out a soft curse. I was wet with sweat, the way I never am unless I’ve been fighting hard. The clammy-cold film reeked of adrenaline and a bitter copper tang.

  Fear.

  It was a struggle to put the gun away. My arm actually physically resisted, muscles locking. I tipped my head back and swore, and finally got the .45 back in its dark little home.

  I closed Belisa in the car and left her there. It would get hot with the thin winter sun beating down, but I found I didn’t care.

  I shimmied up over the board fence from the house next door and dropped down cat-soft. Drew my right-hand gun again, surveyed the backyard. The grass hadn’t been cut, and the entire house was a brackish bruise of etheric contamination.

  Oh yeah. We’ve got hellbreed. Hang on, Saul. I’m coming.

  No cover. It was bare as a bone except for metallic trash cans clustered near the high wooden gate to the front. Coming over that way might have caused a racket.

  Three concrete steps up to the back door. My blue eye caught no betraying quiver of ill intent, nothing to suggest there were hellbreed here beyond the thick etheric bruising. No hint of Saul.

  But then, they would want to keep him well hidden. In a basement, probably, since the picture had shown him on concrete.

  Hold on, baby. I’m on my way.

  A thin high horsetail cloud scudded in front of the sun, the light darkening a bit. It was a bad omen, but it was still daylight.

  The doorknob was ice-cold. I exhaled softly between my teeth, sorcery tingling in my fingers. The scar tensed, sensing something it was akin to. I wondered if Perry had managed to get out of the iron rack yet, banished the thought. Sorcery requires fierce, relaxed concentration, and if I kept thinking about Perry and what he’d told me I was going to be anything but relaxed.

  The deadbolt eased free with a snick. I winced, waited. No sound. It was child’s play to undo the other lock, and I twisted the knob a little at a tim
e. It eased free.

  I shoved it open, stepping to the side in case they opened fire, then stepped back and dove through, rolling to come up in a crouch. It was a hall that had been turned into a utility room, a washer and dryer standing to attention and a little bamboo-mat thing to clean your shoes.

  Dead silence, sunlight falling through windows. The gun tracked, every inch of me alert and quivering, ready for all hell to break loose.

  Nothing. Not a peep. A tang of hellbreed corruption, sick-sweet, and a fading ghost of dark spice and clean fur, familiar to me as my own breath.

  Saul.

  Nothing. No betraying creaks or little whispers, no sense of breathing habitation houses get when someone’s around. I braced my back against the wall, drawing my other gun. My stomach turned over hard as I gapped my mouth, tasting the air. There was another smell under the perfume of supernatural. It was the gassy note of mortal death.

  No.

  The kitchen was as empty as a dry well, all the cabinets closed and the sinks clear. Whoever lived here was a big believer in minimalism. Either that or they spent so much money affording the house they couldn’t buy more than a cheap round table and two scavenged chairs.

  There was the door that probably led to the cellar, open just a crack. Nothing but darkness beyond. I ghosted up to it through two bars of wintry sun, toed it until it swung wide and disclosed wooden stairs going down into absolute darkness. There was a light switch, difficult to flip with my elbow but I managed it. The little sound it made was loud in the thick silence.

  I was suspecting there weren’t any hellbreed in the house. If there weren’t…

  The stairs were solid, at least. I hate going down cellar stairs, they’re often open and something reaching through to grab you isn’t just for horror movies. So I went down fast, easier to keep my balance and gave me an edge if anything was waiting to trip me up.

  But there was nothing. I reached the bottom, slid along the wall, and ended up in a defensible corner.