A foul stench roiled out. I plunged into its depths, skipping down a set of sloping concrete stairs—my fist flashed and caught the mortal before he could even lift the gun. He flew back, hitting the wall with a sickening crack.
I hit him too hard. Then the smell hit me in return—I dropped down into a crouch, recognizing it, atavistic shivers running through ageless flesh. The lykanthe hung on the far wall, a writhing mass of fur held fast in silver chains, ivory teeth wired together by a muzzle cruelly spiked on the inside with more silver.
It was no threat, but still. For a moment I hesitated. Then I turned back to the human, who was making a thin high whistling sound. One of his arms hung at an odd angle.
They are so breakable.
My fingers, slim and strong, tangled in the front of the mortal’s black turtleneck. There were leather straps too, holding knives and other implements. He was still trying to gain enough breath to scream.
I selected one knife, slid it free. Broad-bladed, double-edged, it gleamed in the cellar’s gloom. Would anyone hear him? It was not likely; the alley and the blind walls above would mock his cries.
Good, I thought, and rammed the knife through his shoulder. He whisper-screamed again.
I closed off the scream with my free hand, clamping it over his mouth. Hot sweat and saliva greased my cold hard palm. I found words, for the first time since I had left Leonidas’s nightclub.
“I will ask you questions.” My voice was soft, my native tongue wearing through the syllables. “If you answer, I will not hurt you more.”
It was only half a lie.
* * *
I did not drink from the filth. I was still gorged from last night’s hunting. As fitting as it would have been to drain him, no cursed drop of his fluid would pass my lips.
His scarecrow body hung against the wall, twitching as the nerves realized life had fled. The lykanthe on the other wall moved slightly, silver chains biting its flesh. But it made no sound, not even whining through the muzzle.
I should have left it there. Their kind is anathema.
But I am a Preserver, and the waste of anything irks me. Especially any part of the twilight world where I fed and sheltered my charges.
There was a long table full of silver-plated instruments, gleaming in the low sullen light. The ones closest to the thing on the wall were crusted with blood and other fluids. I allowed myself a single nose-wrinkle. The stews I had found Virginia in had smelled worse.
A glimmer of eye showed between puffed, marred lids. It was madness to consider letting the thing free. There was probably nothing human left inside that hairy shell.
As much or as little was left human inside my own hard pale shell, perhaps.
The silver-coated metal of the manacles crumpled like wet clay in my fist. Raw welts rubbed the hair from the skin everywhere they touched. They are dangerously allergic to the moon’s metal, a goddess’s curse. Or so I have always heard.
I twisted, and one collection of bright amber claws dangled free. One hand. I bent and soon the legs were free as well, hanging bare inches from the floor. I glanced up—yes, the hook in the ceiling, there, they had hoisted it to deprive it of leverage. It hung like a piece of Amelie’s washing—she had not yet lost the habit of cleaning her clothes after every night’s rising, though her body did not sweat or secrete.
Now that body lay in perishing earth. A sob caught at my throat. I denied it.
My voice sounded strange. “I hope you can understand me. I am not your enemy. I hunt those who did this to you. Go to ground and sleep until you become human again, if you can.”
It made no reply, merely hung there and watched me. Or perhaps it was dying, and the gleam of eyes was a fever-glitter. The shoulder looked agonizingly strained, sinews creaking.
“Mad,” I muttered. “I am mad.”
But I freed the last manacle anyway, the silver-plated trash bending and buckling. By the time its heavy body thudded to the ground to lie in its own filth, I was already gone. Straight up the brownstone’s wall and over the rooftop.
Behind me, a long inhuman howl ribboned away. So it was alive, after all.
* * *
Uptown. I climbed carefully, fingers driving into the spaces between bricks where putty crumbled. The street below was deserted, and in any case, who would expect to see a woman in a dress going directly up a brick wall? Human beings do not see what they do not wish to see.
Each floor held a comfortable ledge right under the windows, as if the building were a lunatic belted tightly against himself. Or as if it were a worm, each segment caked with exhaust grime, rising above the ground before it dove.
Zhen held that the ancient world smelled better. I disagreed. Even with the reek of smog, there is no contest between my city and, say, Rome or Paris in their ancient, fouler days. Mortals have at least grown cleaner.
In some ways.
The fourth floor. My boot-toe gripped the ledge, I pulled myself up. Eased along it, weight balanced, velvet scraping brick. There was a smear of dried blood on the back of my left hand, other crackling bits on my face and neck. I would not wash until vengeance was complete.
It wasn’t hard to find the window. It was half open, and the reek of adrenaline and bloodshed billowed out like red dye in water.
Nine-man teams, he had told me, choking as my fingers tightened on his throat. Three Burners, three Fighters, a Sensitive, and the captain and his lieutenant. That’s all, I swear.
After I had cut off three of his fingers and he still swore, I believed him.
At the very edge of the window, I held my skirts back. Leaned forward and peered in.
The room was dark. A table stacked with odd shapes, a chair, a television blindly spewing colored light. On the bed, a stabbing motion, buttocks rising and plunging down.
The Burner had company.
A slightly acrid scent—the reek of a slightly dominant male. Cheap perfume mixing with aftershave and sweat, the musk of sex. The window did not creak as I eased it wider, wider. My shadow moved on the floor, I hopped down light as a leaf while the rhythm of creaking bedsprings became frantic. Softly I stepped across the thin carpet, avoiding a pile of clothing. Smoke-scent rose in simmering waves.
He had not even washed the stink of murder away. Loathing choked me. I glided to the bedside and looked down just as the man stiffened, his head thrown back. The woman’s eyes were closed, her long pale hair spread on the pillow and her painted face garish even in the dark.
My claws sank into flesh and I ripped him up and away, viselike fingers clamped at the base of his neck. Just like a mother cat chastising a kitten—or a Preserver teaching a new charge to control the Thirst.
He flew across the room, hit the television on its low dresser. Glass shattered, wood splintered, and the woman inhaled to scream.
“Shhh.” I laid my finger against my lips. She swallowed her cry, staring. My eyes would be glowing yellow by now. “Gather your clothes, child, and flee.”
Her raddled face crumpled, but she did not make a sound. I turned my back on her and found the man crawling for the table and his weapons—I saw hilts and ugly penile gun-shapes. I caught him halfway there with a kick that threw him into a flimsy chair he’d set in the corner, the sweet sound of ribs snapping echoing off every wall. The tank settled in the chair toppled, liquid splashing, and the cap on its top bounced away. I smelled petrol and that same odd cloying additive.
The Burner lay moaning. Short dark hair, a hefty build. He was probably light on his feet, though, he would have to be. If they hunted anything other than a Preserver’s helpless charges, they needed speed and ruthlessness.
Not that it would help him.
I was on him in a moment. Naked flesh, veined and crawling with the incipient death every mortal was heir to. One arm cracked with a greenstick snap. He howled. The tank glugged out a small lake of cold liquid. Soaking the carpet, splashing. I grabbed his short hair and ground his face down. That cut off the howling, and I do
not deny a savage satisfaction. His hands flapped, long white fish.
My arm flexed, I pushed harder. His skull creaked, and I had to restrain myself. I didn’t want to, but breaking his head open was too quick and easy.
The door opened as the woman fled. She had not stopped to clothe herself, and she was screaming as well. A slice of golden electronic light from the hall narrowed. I flexed again, dragging the man’s face along the sodden carpet. Then I pulled his head up and rose, claws digging. He screamed, scrambling to get away, and I flung him across the room again. He hit the wall over the bed with a sickening crack, dislodging a forgettable, mass-produced painting. Not like Amelie’s exquisite color-drenched canvases.
Fury poured through me. I leapt on the bed almost before he landed, broke his other arm. He could not get in enough air to scream, was making little whispering hopeless sounds.
Had Amelie made those sounds? Had she pleaded for her life?
The smell—petrol and that additive, and the bright copper of blood—maddened me. I thrust my hand into his vitals, another layer of stench exploding out, claws shredding. I was aiming to pierce his diaphragm, tear through lungs and hold his beating heart in my palm before I crushed it.
The door to the hall burst open, and the little pocking sounds around me were bullets plowing into the bed. I felt the stings and hissed, fangs distended and hot streams of stolen life I had meant to bring home to my charges tracing little fingers over me.
Instinct took over. I am a Preserver, not a Promethean. I leapt for the window, leaving the Burner choking on his blood, his body twitching as his comrades’ bullets plowed through it. Down I fell, landing cat-light on the street and bolting.
Two dead, seven to kill. I could find them again with little problem, but now my prey would be wary.
I retreated across the street, black blood and other liquids fouling the dress Virginia had made for me. On a rooftop with a good view I crouched, and I watched.
I did not have to wait long.
* * *
Sirens rose in the distance. Exactly three and a half minutes after I’d fled through the window, four men carried the body of a fifth out of the brick hotel. None of them held the scent of dominance, but all of them reeked of petrol and fear. An anonymous navy blue minivan accepted the body as cargo, and they crowded in after it. One, a slim dark youth, took the driver’s seat. He paused before opening the door, his curly head cocked, and I had the odd thought that he could feel my gaze.
That was ridiculous. No mortal could possibly …
And yet. Sensitive, the first man had said. I had not questioned further. Now I wondered if I should have.
I became a stone, sinking into the rooftop, my vision gone soft and blurring as I pulled layers of silence close.
The youth shook his head, opened his door, and hopped nimbly in. The vehicle roused from its slumber, and I shook off the silence just as a soft footfall sounded on the stretched-tight drumhead of the roof behind me.
Quinn? I turned, my ragged skirt flaring.
It was not Tarquin. Of course not. He would be silent.
The shaggy-haired man crouched, naked except for a rag clout the color of dirt. His torso rippled with lean muscle and scars glinting gray-silver. The reek of wildness and moonlight hung on him, like the brief tang of liquor before a Kin’s metabolism flushes through it.
I dropped down into a crouch. They do not usually run by night, and I had never glimpsed one without clothes or fur. My claws slid free, and I hissed, baring fangs. It would distort my face, I would not have done so in front of my charges. Now, I cared little—except he was interrupting. My prey might well go to ground, I could possibly lose them if I was delayed here.
The lykanthe did not snarl. He merely cocked his head. His eyes were bright silver coins, the pupils wavering fluidly between cat-slit and round. He made a low sound, back in his throat.
An inquisitive sound.
I straightened, slowly. My claws retracted. The purr of the minivan retreated, almost swallowed up in the hum of traffic.
I pitched back, grabbed the waist-high edge of the rooftop, and plummeted. It is no great trick to land softly from a height. The sound of cloth tearing was lost in the backwash of sirens as the mortal authorities arrived to wonder at the damage caused.
* * *
When there were no traffic laws, sometimes a vehicle could escape. They were lumbering-slow, true, but the flux and pattern of other crowding carriages sometimes provided cover. Nowadays, though, if you stalk a metal carriage through the streets, there are only certain choices at each intersection. If you can keep the sound of the engine in range, even better.
I did not worry about the padding-soft footfalls behind me. If the lykanthe had meant to attack, he would have. I cared little about his intent, as long as he did not rob me of my revenge.
The van was aiming for the freeway, a cloverleaf looping of pavement. It slowed, straining and wallowing through a turn. I leapt, catching the overpass’s concrete railing, velvet snapping like a flag in a high wind as I soared.
Thin metal crunched as I landed hard, claws out and digging through the van’s roof. It slewed, wildly, more predictable than a frightened horse. I am small and dark from childhood malnutrition even the Turn could not completely erase, easier for me to curl in tightly and hold on.
How Zhen had laughed at me. Tall lean Zhen with his grace. I was gymnastic, he told me in his mellifluous native tongue, not a dancer. I laughed with him, for it was true. But it was I who brought home stolen life each night, to fuel his leaps and turns in the mirrored room given over entirely to his dancing. Shelves of CDs and the equipment to transfer music from one form of storage to another, all burned and dead now, and dance was an evanescent art. He would never discover another movement, another combination, inside his long body now.
The van slowed, still swerving wildly, and I held, wrists aching where the spurs responsible for claw control moved under the skin. When I had the rhythm I would lift one hand and tear the top of the minivan open like one of Amelie’s cans of—
Pain. Great roaring pain.
I flew, weightless, the egg in my chest cracked as my heart struggled to function, its bone shield almost pierced. The thudding was agony, I twisted as I rolled, glare of light and horrific screaming noise before I was hit again and dragged, the stake in my chest clicking against the road. My arm was caught in something, mercilessly twisted and hauling me along, shoulder savagely stretched.
A heavy crunch and a snarl. The dragging stopped short. Little hurt sounds, I realized I was making them. And bleeding, a heavy tide of stolen life against unforgiving stone.
Not stone. Concrete. Bleeding on concrete. A stake. I ached to pull it out, but my hands were loose and unresponsive. My claws flexed helplessly, tearing at the road’s surface.
Footsteps. “Be … still.” Halting, as if the mouth didn’t work quite properly. “Not … hrgh … enemy.”
Twisting. Wrenching. Each splinter gouged sensitive tissue as he pulled it free. A gush of blood, steaming in the chill night air. Too much, I was losing too much, I would not be able to feed them when I returned—
I remembered they were dead just as the stake tore free and was tossed aside. Then I was lifted, limp as a rag doll, and the night filled my head.
* * *
Daylight sleep is deep and restorative. It is a mercy that it holds no dreams. Though I could swear I saw them all printed inside my eyelids. Each one of my charges, my wards, my war against Time.
My battle to preserve.
The older you become, the incrementally earlier you rise. Purple and golden dusk filled the vaults of heaven, a physical weight as I lay on my belly, flung across something soft and smelling of dry oily fur and musk. There was weight curled around me, heavy and warm. As if Amelie had crept into my bedroom again, but it could not be her. It was too big. Zhen, perhaps? But he was past the time of needing reassurance. Virginia? No, she prized her solitude. It had to be Peter. If he
had finished a miniature, or broken something, he would want comfort.
I rolled, slowly, sliding my arm free. My fingers rasped against fur—no, hair. Shaggy hair, not Peter’s sleek silken curls.
The lykanthe lay half across me. His face was buried in my tangled hair. His throat was open, chin relaxed and tipped up. He was much heavier and bulkier than he looked, or he’d had a chance to eat. How long had the humans had him, torturing him in that dank hole?
The throat was inviting. And blood from another denizen of the twilight would strengthen me immeasurably.
His eyes opened, and he tensed. But he did not drop his chin. Finally, he spoke. It was the same halting slur as before. And he used only one word.
“Fr … Fr-friend. Friend.”
I swallowed. My throat was dry. It was not the Thirst. His kind was an enemy. A pack of lykanthe could destroy many of the Kin during a daylight hunt.
And yet, he had pulled the stake from my chest. What had it been? I had to know.
“The stake?” I whispered.
He thought this over. Finally, a light rose behind his silver-coin eyes. His pupils were still flaring and settling. How much damage had they caused him?
“Gun,” he finally said, and flowed away from me. The bed creaked. I blinked. My hair was wild, a mass of dark smoke-tarnished curls. I had cut my braid, it was buried in Amelie’s … grave, behind the charred hulk of my house.
My house no longer.
I pushed myself up on my elbows. The windows were dark, blankets taped over them.
It was a small efficiency apartment. There was a large white fridge. The lykanthe opened it and stuck his head in. He made a snuffling sound of delight. I sat up and looked at my hands.
I would need to hunt. Then I would track them.
“What is your name?” I did not know why I asked. A lykanthe’s name would mean less than nothing to me.
And yet.
He stiffened. “Don’t. Know.”
“You need more food. And rest. I must hunt.”
He slammed the fridge door. A ripple ran through him. “Hunt. Good.”
Chicks Kick Butt - Rachel Caine, Kerrie Hughes (ed) Page 9
