I was still screaming as the bullets tore through her and the egg as well. The collar made a zinging, popping noise, the golden runes shutterclicks of racing, diseased light. Her body shook and juddered as she forced the thing behind the rip in the world back, and the physical fabric of the place humans call home snapped shut with a sound like a heavy iron door slamming. The bristling, misshapen appendage thumped down to the floor.
Belisa’s fingers, human again, plucked weakly at the collar. She was a servant of the gods who were here long before demons, the inimical forces the shadowy Lords of the Trees trapped in another place long ago. It was a Pyrrhic victory; the Imdarák didn’t survive, either. And the Sorrows are always looking to bring their masters back. The ’breed? Well, they’re always looking to bring more of their kind. It’s like two different conventions fighting over the same hotel.
If anyone could have slammed a door between here and Hell shut, it was a Sorrow.
But why? And the caretaker, what was he—
My knees folded. I hit the ground. Henderson Hill whispered around me like the end of a bell’s tolling, reverberations dying in glue-thick air.
Oh, no.
Belisa folded over. I’d emptied a clip. Sorrows can heal amazingly fast, but she was probably exhausted after all the fun and games.
Her knees hit the concrete in front of the altar. Blood flowered, spattered on the floor. She shook her head, tangled hair swaying. The golden runes on the collar snuffed out, one by one.
“Ahhhhh.” It was a long satisfied sigh, escaping Perry’s bleeding lips. “Oh, yes. Yessssssssss.”
The scar drew up on my wrist and began to ache. This wasn’t the usual burning as I yanked etheric energy through it. I tore my eyes from Belisa’s slumped form and turned my right wrist up.
The print of Perry’s lips was not a scar, now. It was black, as if the flesh itself was rotting, and it pulsed obscenely. As I watched the edges frayed, little blue vein-maps crawling under the surface of my flesh.
And I knew why. I could have shot around her.
But I’d chosen not to.
Melisande Belisa’s body hit the floor too, next to the swiftly rotting hellbreed appendage. The last rune on the collar winked out. There was a terrible mortal stench—even a Sorrow’s sphincter relaxes when death takes them. The blood spread out from her body in little tendrils. Soon it would make a pool. A lake.
The tendrils made a screaming face for a moment, traced on the cracked and blackened floor, before a wash of bright-red blood poured over and obscured it. I sagged, my mouth open and the gun falling out of my right hand.
“At last.” Perry, on his feet now. He danced a little capering jig, and I saw one of his shoes had been lost somewhere. His sock was pale cream, and absolutely filthy. “A hunter of my very own. My darling one, my Kiss, we are going to—”
I don’t know why he forgot I had another gun in my left hand. I raised it, and the shot took him right in the chest.
The scar shrieked with agony. But each time he’d fiddled with it over the years, each time he’d used it to fuck with my nervous system, he was training me to disregard it. My right hand curled up into a seizure-lock, but the left was fine. I got him twice more in the chest before he snarled and was on me, knocking the gun away. His free hand closed around my throat, and my back hit the floor. He snarled into my face, his breath an exhalation of spoiled honey, and I heard the buzz of dead metallic flies in a chlorine-painted bottle, bashing at the sides as they tried to escape.
I fought for leverage, but he was too quick and I was exhausted. And damned besides. The knowledge beat inside my head like a drum, robbing me of the clarity of a hunter’s reactions. All I had left was…
… what?
Saul. It was like breaking water and taking a breath. “You. You have him. All the time, it was you.”
He’d played both me and Julius. The rest of the pattern came clear now. He hadn’t been trying to bring a higher-up hellbreed through; he’d been stringing along the other ’breed trying to bring Argoth out. And Perry had set out to kill his immediate superior with my help as well—or with Belisa’s. The whisper of Argoth was to keep me chasing my tail while he worked me into a corner—with the Talisman to knock me off balance and the revelation of Mikhail’s bargain to keep me there. It was all a game, every set of obstacles balanced against the others and working at cross-purposes.
The prize wasn’t any power or position game among ’breed. He wasn’t playing to get any higher in the hierarchy.
No. I was the prize. And I’d fallen right into his trap.
He’d won. At last.
“Oh, darling. Not personally, of course.” He leaned in and sniffed, taking a good lungful. It couldn’t be pleasant—reek of hellbreed death, blood and human death, corruption and whatever foulness was spread all over me. “This has been so entertaining. And there’s more to come.” He grinned, a terrible grimace. “Via Dolorosa, my darling. At dawn. Don’t disobey—or that black rot will start to spread. You won’t like it.”
I heaved up, but he shoved me back down. The extra strength from the scar had deserted me now. I was only weakly human, hunter or no, and my body started reminding me I’d been abusing it far past the norm, even for me.
Perry leaned forward. His tongue snaked between his bloodless lips, wet and cherry-red. A drop of clear liquid hung trembling at the tip. Little bits of blue hellfire danced and dazzled in whatever that liquid was, and I was suddenly very certain I didn’t want it touching my skin.
The drop slid back up his tongue, hellfire crackling in the spaces between the scales. The rough tongue tip touched my cheek, flicking along the skin. It caressed my jawbone, slid down to touch the pulse beating a frantic tattoo in my throat. Rasping, dryly.
It reeled back up between his lips with a snap. The Hill shuddered again, and I exhaled. My right hand was still cramped up, my fingers an absurd claw.
But my left curled around a knife hilt. I braced myself slowly, tensing muscle by recalcitrant muscle.
“Come see me at dawn, my darling.” He breathed in my face again, a hot dry draft from a desert of powdered bones. “I’ve waited for this so long. Best savored, don’t you agree?”
I exploded into motion, slashing. But he was already gone, glass shattering and his footsteps a rapid light beat. The Hill shuddered, settling in itself, and little sparkles began as my aura pushed against the psychic soup spilling into the nerve center of the hill like wine into a glass. The force that had been gathered, held to open a gap and feed a fresh hungry ’breed, was exploding out from confinement.
I had to get out of here.
I rolled to one side. Pushed myself up. A single drop of blood fell from my nose. It hit the concrete, flowered into a star.
I looked at the black traceries defiling the clean red. Melisande Belisa’s body still slumped, the bruising of Chaldean settling in to do its work of erasing her from the world. They were dead the moment they took vows. Most of them had no choice, they were born into the Houses—a Mother impregnated by a soldier drone, bred like cattle.
Had I been aiming at her?
Why do you ask, Jill? You know you were.
Scrambled to my feet. My right hand relaxed slightly, fingers shaking out. I felt a plucking at the scar, but nothing else. No etheric energy swelled through it to mend my body, nothing. It might as well have been a rotting lump of flesh.
That’s exactly what it is, Jill. The truth of what I’d done hit home. I’d solved two problems at once, but it hadn’t been clean vengeance. I’d killed her because the entire time she’d been in the car, she’d been wearing on my nerves. It didn’t matter that she was Perry’s servant in all this.
I had killed her while she was helping to seal the rip in the world. And I’d done it not because she was a threat, but because I couldn’t stand to have Mikhail’s killer breathing one more moment.
I had damned myself.
The Talisman was a warm weight on my chest. It hadn’t tur
ned on me yet. How long would it last?
Just long enough, I promised myself.
My left hand could still make a base for the banefire. I concentrated, hard, as the flaming blue wisps fought me in a way they never had before. But they came, moaning and crying, and they burned. Bubbling, blistering the skin.
That sacred fire burned me.
I cast the banefire. It hit the altar and roared up in a sheet of cleansing flame. I could have stayed and let it take me too.
But I had things to do.
28
The sky had cleared, bright diamond points of stars glaring through the bowl of night.
The warehouse was echoingly empty. The Weres had cleaned up and restocked the fridge. The food probably wouldn’t go bad—they’d gather here afterward for Saul, if I succeeded.
Not if, Jill. When. You’re just damned, not out. But then I would move, and the leather cuff on my right wrist would rub against the blackened scar. A jolt of sick pain would go through me, and I would almost flinch.
I walked from room to room, stashing ammo, touching things. I’d never noticed how bare and drafty the entire place had looked before Saul moved in. The weapons and the clothes were mine. Everything else… well.
The sheets were still tangled from the last time we’d rolled out of bed to catch Trevor Watling. Saul had slipcovered the old orange Naugahyde couch in pale linen, stocked the kitchen with cooking gadgets, arranged little things on shelves and even hung an ailing wandering Jew up in the living room, in a fantastically knotted macramé holder complete with orange beads and the faint smell of reefer—a thrift-store find he’d been so proud of. The laundry room was arranged the way he liked it, the detergent within easy reach and the eight different kinds of fabric softener sheets ranked neatly on top of the dryer.
Everywhere I looked, there was something he’d touched. I opened the kitchen cabinets, ran my knuckles over the fridge’s cool white glow. The dishwasher had finished running, and it was full. The drying rack was full of the last load of pots and pans from breakfast, not arranged the way he would have, but still.
I filled up on ammo. Loaded a couple more clips. Considering writing a note. Decided it was a cliché. Anya would piece it together, one way or another.
Before I left, I stood for a long time in our bedroom door, looking at the peaks and valleys of the sheets and thin blankets. He ran warm, and I never needed much in the way of covers. We slept during the day, the bed set out in the middle of the floor so I could see anything creeping up on me.
The low hurt sound I was making shocked me back into myself. There were still other things to do. I’d just meant to come here to get some ammo, and…
The Eye twitched on my chest, a tiny dissatisfied movement. I wiped my cheeks and touched it with a tentative, tear-wet finger. No crackle of electricity. It wasn’t going to get rid of me just yet.
But under the cuff, the blue veining was spreading from the blackened lip print. Up my arm, in tiny increments.
“God,” I whispered. “You bastard.”
I wasn’t sure who I was talking to. Mikhail? Perry? God Himself?
I didn’t have nearly enough time with him.
But I couldn’t bitch about it. There was nobody else to blame. I’d damned myself.
The clock next to the bed showed the time in pitiless little red numbers. My car was dead, and I had to get to Via Dolorosa. I ached all over, healing sorcery crackling through me in little blue threads. It didn’t burn like banefire, but it was probably only a matter of time.
Only human strength and healing.
It would have to be enough.
I made sure I had enough ammo. Stalked into the weapons room, stared at the long slim shape under its fall of amber silk. I couldn’t take the spear—it was just asking for trouble. The sunsword might help, but one look at me and Galina would know there was something wrong. Plus, why drag more trouble to her door? She and Hutch were safe, and that was where I wanted them.
After all, I’d sucked at protecting Gil and Saul. Now every innocent in my city was going to be at risk. Perry had to have more of a plan, and without me to keep him in check…
Goddammit. There isn’t any way out. There hasn’t ever been.
I couldn’t even blame God. I’d done it.
I came back to myself with a jolt. The clock read five minutes later. I’d just checked out, like a CD skip.
Can’t afford to do that. Something left to do, Jill. Then you know what’s going to happen.
I turned on one steel-shod heel. My coat flared out. I realized I was running my fingers over gun butts, checking each knife hilt, my hands roaming over my body like I was in a music video or something. I dropped them with an effort just as my pager went off.
I fished it out, gingerly. It was Badger again.
She could wait. Dawn was coming soon.
The cab let me off at the end of the Wailer Bridge, made a neat three-point, and drove away maybe a little faster than was necessary. The driver wasn’t Paloulian—it was a big, thick good ol’ boy in a flannel shirt and greasy jeans, with a ponytail under his bald spot and the radio tuned to AM talk.
It just goes to show you can get a cab to anywhere, even Hell. If you know how.
The eastern horizon was paling, scudding clouds over the mountains breaking up in cottony streamers. A faint glow of pink showed where the sun would crown and push itself up.
A long, long night was ending.
The bridge is a concrete monstrosity with high gothic pillars, built during the big public works binge of the thirties to try and keep Santa Luz from bleeding to death. Every once in a while someone would make noise about renovation, and about whose job it was anyway to pay for said renovation, and on and on. Then there would be a big public outcry about the homeless who lived under the bridge’s glower on the river’s banks, especially the ones you could see trudging over every morning, heading for downtown. They shuffled like the hopeless, and sometimes one of them would go over the side and into the water’s uncaring embrace.
They were mine just like everyone else in Santa Luz. There were predators even here, and I’d chased cases over on this side of the river before.
Today, though, the Wailer stood empty. There wasn’t even a stream of traffic for the industrial park and docks on the other side. I kept thinking that someday they were going to zone in some residential and spread up into the canyons like Los Angeles. But no, why do that and worry about landslides during spring downpours when you had the rest of the desert stretching away from the river’s artery to fill up? There were a couple retreat mansions up there, mostly people with more money than sense, but nothing else.
Four lanes. A yellow line down the middle. The city really needed some dividers out here, but they were engaged with a running fight with county over who was going to pay for that. It’s the oldest story of bureaucracy—who’s going to foot the bill?
Except I knew who was going to be paying on this bridge today. It was yours truly.
I went slowly, looking for traps. Nothing on this side of the bridge, but it made an odd sound—humming a little, as if it was cables instead of concrete. The water underneath, and the rebar inside, would make it an excellent psychic conductor.
I stopped halfway, scanning with every sense I owned. Having the scar gone was like being blind; I hadn’t realized how much I depended on hyperacute senses and jacked-up healing. I was back to being an ordinary hunter—about as far away from a normal person as possible, but still. I was used to so much more.
Nothing. Even my blue eye was oddly clouded.
The wind came off the river, ruffling my hair. I wondered what would happen when the silver started to burn my skin.
You’ve got a while, Jill. Use it.
This could have been just another ploy. But I didn’t think it was. The glyph on the letter, tucked safely in one of my pockets, had to be Perry’s name in their language. Or another lie—maybe Julius’s. Perry had neatly double-crossed Julius as wel
l. That’s the thing about ’breed—they can’t even trust each other.
What, after all, do you think Hell is?
The image of Belisa’s body, slumped in front of the altar under a pall of bruise-dark Chaldean, rose up in front of me in vivid detail. I could have counted each of her tangled dark hairs and named every bruise and cut. Memory is a curse.
I’d known as soon as I fired that I’d done something wrong.
What the—
I whirled. Footsteps. Lots of them, and the sky was darker than it had any right to be. Dawn wasn’t far off—but the closer to dawn, the harder the fight. And if what I was hearing wasn’t just a trick of sound bouncing off the waters, I was in even deeper shit.
They massed at either end of the bridge. Hellbreed and Traders, a crowd of them. Bright eyes, painted lips, curve of hips and glimmer of dewy skin, the beauty of the damned on display. On the city side of the river, shapes appeared. I had to blink a couple times before they resolved into a coherent picture behind my eyes.
Crosses. They were carrying two twelve-foot crosses. A slight figure on one, a heavier male figure with silver in his hair in the other. My blue eye turned hot and dry, and I did not let out the breath I was holding until I could focus… and saw the glow of living creatures around both of them.
Gilberto slumped against whatever was holding him to the rough wood. Saul’s head was down, his hair hanging. I saw lashings, instead of nails. They were only tied to the things.
The mockery made my stomach turn over hard. I swallowed hard, and almost wished I hadn’t.
The Talisman made a low angry noise against my chest. A curl of smoke drifted up, tickled my nose. I eased my right-hand gun out. My hand might cramp up again if Perry wanted to play a little game, but I still had my left. Which closed around the bullwhip’s handle, and I set my feet against the bridge’s surface.
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