Night Shift

by Lilith Saintcrow

  In other words, I'll catch you later, go see the Feeb.

  "Hey, Harp. What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" It bolted out of my mouth, and her quick smile was iron-tense, a mere flicker.

  "The usual. Blood and chaos. Smells like you just had dinner." Her eyebrows lifted a bit. "Sorry to miss it."

  The edges of her tan jacket fluttered a bit as I hopped up the steps and got a nose-watering dose of the smell from the open front door. Rogue Were, hellbreed, and death; the mixed reek scraped across my nerves and turned them even more raw. It was the only nice part of the night, sweets. You won't believe who's in town."

  "At this point I'd believe just about anything. Come inside, I want to show you something."

  "Harp." I couldn't put it off any longer. "Navoshtay Niv Arkady's here from New York; I came across him while I was cleaning out a Trader hole. Perry's off making amends and smoothing the troubled waters, since Saul knifed Arkady and I clocked him with a sunsword. The hellbreed we're looking for—our pretty blonde girl—is Navoshtay Siv Cenci. Navoshtay's daughter." And I am going to have hell to pay the next time I visit Perry. Maybe even sooner.

  Harp actually went pale. Her eyes flickered up to Saul, who made some slight movement, having climbed the steps after me. Maybe a shrug, since his coat creaked a little. He moved closer to me, looming behind me and actually bumping into me again, softly.

  Harp's eyes got as big as the plates down at Micky's. I moved away, irritably, and peered in the front door. "And there's even more, Harp. Hang onto your hat, because this one is weird."

  She still stared over my head at Saul. I waited a beat for her to give her next line—something like well, life around you is never normal, Kismet. But she didn't give it. Instead, she looked at Saul like she'd caught him eating babies.

  The Were behind me responded by moving even closer, crowding me so I felt his chest touch my back. I stepped away, to my left, taking in the front door's white paint and two deadbolts. Whoever lived here had been cautious.

  Fat lot of good it had done them.

  Saul moved in on me again. "Quit it," I snapped over my shoulder. "What is wrong with you? Harp, did you hear me? The head hellbreed on the East Coast is in my city, and he's after his daughter. Who, I'm told, has been a very busy girl."

  Harp shook her dark head, the feathers in her braids fluttering. Her mouth opened, shut as if she couldn't find the words.

  I could relate. I dropped my other bombshell. "I also know why she's hanging around with Our Boy Carnivore. If another hunter hadn't told me I wouldn't believe it."

  That seemed to shake her loose. "Jill—" But she stopped, still staring at Saul.

  I've had about enough of this. It isn't like you, Harp. "Come on, Agent Smith. You show me yours, I'll tell you mine—and we might have a chance at stopping this thing."

  Dominic greeted me with a nod. He crouched, low and easy, in front of the cellar door. I took in his stance and the alert shine to his eyes, the way he settled into immobility after the quick sharp movement.

  He was standing guard in case the rogue came back to his little nest and found a bunch of humans here. I felt a chill trace down my spine at the thought.

  The ground floor of the house was oddly pristine. Here in the kitchen, where the door to the cellar stood wide open, stairs going down and that smell belching up in waves, there were clean white countertops and a rack full of washed dishes with a thin layer of dust on them. A blue washrag lay folded over the arch of the faucet, dried stiff.

  The table was layered with papers. The garage, visible through a wide-open door leading off the kitchen, held two cars—one of them a minivan with car seats.

  I didn't want to think about that.

  The only sign of violence was one of the chairs pushed over backward and a single smear of dark liquid on the clean floor.

  "Family of four," Dominic said when my eyes fastened on the chair. "Near as I can figure, someone opened the front door and got subdued, then was brought back here to where someone else was doing bills. Everything on the table's dated for last month. I think this family was the first to go down, and he's probably been dragging kills back here—there's another entrance to the cellar out back, Theron's out there. He's the one that found a trail in this neighborhood."

  I nodded. Theron was the bartender at Micky's, a lean, dangerous Werepanther. Good backup, even if he was an arrogant twit. If he was out in the backyard, I didn't have to worry about the people out there. It was a relief to know.

  Harp's voice came from the living room, slightly raised. Dominic's eyebrow twitched, an eloquently inquiring look expressed in a fraction of an inch.

  "Don't ask me." I spread my hands, indicating innocence. "I don't know what the hell's going on. Your friend Saul seems to have a gift for pissing Harp off." And I've got other problems. "So there's car seats in the garage. What's upstairs?" Please tell me I'm wrong. Tell me we've found the kids alive.

  "Three bedrooms. Two decorated for cubs, both with beds messed up like the little ones just got up for a drink of water." He tilted his head back slightly, indicating the cellar. His eyes glowed briefly, very sad. "My guess is, down there. I'd love to be wrong."

  But it's not fucking likely, is it. I swallowed something suspiciously hot, tasting of bile. "Scene's been held for me?" What else is down there, Dom? Drop the other shoe.

  The look he gave me qualified as scathing. "Of course. Harp and I took a look at it from the stairs, that's all.

  Something down there stinks of sorcery, and that's your job. There's enough in the yard and around the door to keep the humans busy for a while. Take your time."

  My, that's awful sweet of you. But I just eased past him and through the door. Wooden steps went down, concrete walls dry-gleaming with oil under the gassy reek of bodies. The smell of dandruff and hot spoiled musk was eyewatering. I was glad I had stopped for a fresh copper cuff, the air itself was caustic.

  Add the sweetish rot of hellbreed, and I suddenly wished very hard that I hadn't eaten dinner.

  The memory of Saul's mouth on mine rose. I pushed it away with an almost-physical effort. Distraction was the last thing I needed. Shelves on my right held cans and jars—nonperishables, laid in for a rainy day. I caught sight of a can of Chef Boyardee and my stomach turned hard, thinking of two small rumpled beds upstairs.

  My heart pounded thinly. Of all the things about this job I hate, that's the worst. Kids are the worst.

  I wasn't the only one to feel that way. The hardest cases, and the ones the psych officers worked the hardest on, involved the very young. No matter how hardened or seasoned the cop, kid cases can cut you right down to bone and bleed you for months, if not forever, afterward.

  I swallowed, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. I kept an eye out for critters—they weren't likely down here in a concrete cube, but you never know.

  The steps turned to the right, a one-eighty that slowly revealed a dusty disused cellar. In the back left corner, as far away from the stairs and the door to the backyard—a trapdoor, just like Auntie Em's—as possible, was a tangled mess of shapes.

  Oh, God, White bone peeped through, glimmering in the dark. One electric bulb in the ceiling did nothing to dispel the darkness. A curtain of glaucous night shielded the corner, a shimmer like heat off pavement mixed with night's obscurity only pulling aside to show small glimpses of whatever lay beyond.

  Tangled over the bodies was a sorcerous shell of concealment, laid with power and exquisite care. The shield drew tight, humming with alertness as my aura fluoresced in the ether, random points of brilliance swirling around me as the sea-urchin spikes of my personal borders poked through, sparked against the contamination of hellbreed, and retreated.

  It nagged at me. Even with what Clarke had told me, something was wrong here. One instrument was out of tune, screwing up the whole symphony.

  Deal with what you've got in front of you, Jill Analyze later when the scene's safe.

  The ruby
warmed at my throat. Silver chimed in my hair, shifting and heating up.

  I shut my dumb eye, my blue eye piercing the strings of sorcery, a shifting pattern of darkness and occasional bloody flashes. She did good work, this Cenci.

  The copper cuff snapped free of my wrist of its own accord, tinkling down the stairs. The scar turned into a brand, wet heat tracing obscenely up my arm, following the branching channels of nerves and veins. I lifted my right hand, black fire twisting around my fingertips, crackling as I pulled etheric force through the scar and down my wrist, a low humming cycling through the concrete.

  Pitch a levinbolt low enough, and you can actually shatter glass or work a hole in pavement. The drawback is, it takes a lot of energy—energy I had to burn now. One reason to be glad that I'd made my bargain with Perry, no matter how much I cursed it while I was in the Monde.

  Oh, very nice work. If I push there, it traps me. If I take it apart here, the backlash knocks me down. Huh. You're a sneaky bitch, aren't you? Daddy must have taught you well.

  I set my feet on the last stair. My coat flapped, a hot breeze lifting from nowhere, teasing my cheeks and the silver weighing down my hair. Sparks crackled, Mikhail's ring burning on my left hand, the ruby at my throat spitting again and again, warning me.

  Levinbolt flames swirled counterclockwise, coming to a tapered point like a narwhal's horn. Cupped in my palm, the spire of etheric energy trembled, cycling up to a moaning cry of torched and distressed air.

  More, Jill. Give it more. The whisper burned under my conscious thoughts, my attention centered on the levinbolt straining to wriggle free. It takes a particular relaxed fierceness to hold this much energy still, corralling it to one's will; sorcery isn't for those who can't relax and concentrate.

  If Harp and Dominic had come down off the stairs, they would have triggered the trap. I'd have been looking at a severely wounded pair of Weres, maybe even critically damaged.

  Good thing they've got me. I bent my knees, sinking down, compressing myself. The levinbolt whined, my fingers scorching where it pulled on the nerves and yearned to fly free. My coat pooled behind me, clinks and clanks and sparks trembling in the air as the silver in my ammo, knives, and jewelry responded to the contamination of a hellbreed curse in the air, straining toward me just as the bolt strained to escape my control.

  Do it fast, Jill. Go for the quick tear.

  I leapt, uncoiling, right hand flung forward, the bolt crackling through the first few layers of the sorcerous shield and piercing, stuck fast—then, explosion, all that contained force suddenly finding itself free. Potential became kinetic, like a lightning bolt lancing air and producing a sonic boom. The psychic thunderbolt smashed the shield wide open, and I landed, driven to one knee by the backlash of energy bouncing off concrete walls and buffeting my aura. A shower of sparks fell from my hair, one huge bloody point of light from the ruby at my throat, and I shook the deep hideous noise out of my head. It was like the world's biggest gong vibrating inside my skull.

  Easy as cake, Jill. Your usual fine work.

  A low thrumming growl slid under the ringing in my ears, my right hand spread against the cold concrete floor, my leather-clad knee soaking up a chill too. My coat pooled behind me, and I raised my head slowly. Very slowly.

  Oh, shit.

  It hadn't been a shield to keep the bodies from being found. It had been a protection laid on the rogue Were, sleeping in his nest of meat and snapped bone.

  He wasn't sleeping anymore.

  His eyes were flat with beastshine in the dim light, and he crouched on the slope of mounded bodies. He was halfway between his animal form and human, neither one nor the other, and as a result… well, most Weres are beautiful and graceful in their human forms, and just as beautiful in their animal forms. The state in-between is never someplace they linger, and it is just as graceful as the rest of them—but subtly wrong. Wrong like a nonhuman geometry. Wrong like a note no human instrument can produce.

  Wrong like a hellbreed's face, when they drop the mask of humanity.

  Wrong like something spoiled, gone rotten, all a Were's power and glory thrown away for the lust of the hunt and the consummation of murder. That's what going rogue means.

  I stared into the rogue's eyes for a long moment, the bizarre insanity of its gaze terrible because of the near-humanity of its suffering.

  Then it leapt for me, and I had no time to jump free. A hunter takes on hellbreed, that's true. But a Were gone rogue, gone berserk, is different. Just like for a Were, taking on a Trader is one thing, but fighting a full-fledged

  'breed is something else.

  Rogue Weres move with the speed that pulls muscle free of bone, a thoughtless scary speed married to weight and momentum that isn't trackable like a hellbreed's tearing through space. On most hunts, Weres run backup for hunters.

  On a hunt for a rogue, hunters most definitely run backup for other Weres. Because if we don't, we tend to catch flak and die.

  He collided with me, his claws out, the impact so immense I didn't even feel my ribs snap as I was flung against the concrete wall and into momentary, star-filled black unconsciousness.

  Chapter Twenty

  Shouts. Screams. The coughing roar of a Were in a rage. Cold concrete against my spinning, motionless body. A shattering sound, another scream, I was picked up and tossed again, bones snapping as I hit another unforgiving surface.

  The pain crested over me in a wave, and I yanked instinctively at the scar, flesh scorching as for one vertiginous moment I pulled on every erg of etheric energy available to me. The print of Perry's lips on my flesh turned molten with sick heated delight, and I flung my hand out as the rogue came for me again, a bolt of pure power boiling up into the orange spectrum at its edges as it streaked through the potential-path in the air and smashed the rogue ass-over-teakettle into the knot of Weres suddenly crowding into the cellar's dinginess.

  The light bulb broke, smoking dustmotes of glass peppering the air. Sparks hissed and flew, the ruby at my throat singing a crackling note like a crystal wineglass stroked just right before it shatters. Agony raced down my arm, exploded in my chest, tore itself through my belly and detonated in my left leg, where the femur had snapped.

  — ohgodohgodgetupJillgetUP—

  I pulled on the scar again. Did Perry feel it, wherever he was?

  Right then I didn't care, and it hurt too much for me to feel the queasiness that thought called up.

  Bones melded together, all the pain of weeks compressed into a single moment as the scar hummed to itself, chuckling a bass note that sounded so much like Perry my skin turned to ice, great drops of sweat standing out and soaking what was left of my blood-soaked clothing. I coughed, a jet of bright blood from my lungs mixing with fluid as my ribcage snapped out to its proper dimensions, jagged ends of broken ribs sliding free of delicate tissue.

  — hurts it hurts, ohGod, it hurts—

  I tried to get up, to fight, to strike back at the thing hurting me. To meet the pain head-on, to smash at it, batter it away.

  Yet another personality quirk, and maybe the one that made Mikhail choose me. I keep fighting long past the point any sane person would throw up their hands and quit.

  Snarling. More screams, shaking the house. Dirt pattered down. An explosion of noise, snapping wood, a high chilling wolf-cry of agony. The noise was incredible.

  Get up, milaya. Mikhail's voice boomed and caromed through my head, echoing through a corridor of memory turned into a Mobius strip by agony. Get on your feet, and fight.

  I made it to hands and knees. Felt for a gun with my left hand. My right was so hot I was afraid it would detonate bullets in the clip. A stupid fear, but I wasn't thinking straight.

  A burst of fresh air blasted through the cellar, gray light flooding in. Shapes danced, the close thick reek suddenly returning all the stronger for the brief moment of freshness. Shadows fled out against the square of light.

  I coughed, my eyes watering. Tears flew, and bloo
d sprayed from my lips. Losing a lot of the red stuff, Jill. Just think, the Red Cross could follow you around and make a killing. Get it, make a killing? Arf arf.

  Over that hysterical wash of panic, another thought, tolling in my head like a bell. Get up. Get up and fight.

  "Jill." A familiar voice. Someone approaching, crouching down over me.

  The gun came up, my shoulders hitting the wall. My boots scrabbled in blood. My blood, thick and slippery on the cracked concrete floor. Heaving breaths echoed as I shuddered on the knife-edge of murder. Move. Fight back.

  Kill.

  The Glock pointed straight between Saul's eyes, less than an inch from his skin. I drew in huge gasping breaths, my fingers aching to clamp down on the trigger. Adrenaline sang in my mouth, pounded in my blood.

  He didn't even blink. "You okay?" Looking past the gun like it wasn't even there. Like I wasn't crazed with fear and about to snap, sail right over the edge and fill him with silverjacket lead. A shot at this range would kill him, even if Weres aren't allergic to silver.

  And oh, I ached to shoot something. Anything. When you live from one violent fight to the next, it becomes a habit. A need to pull the trigger, an instinctive, life-saving reflex. The animal in you clamors to strike out with claws, teeth, anything at hand.

  He must have seen the murder in me. There was no way he could miss it.

  Saul's eyes held mine for what seemed like eternity. Behind him, more swirling shapes coalesced. Other Weres. I heard a gasp, a murmur, and someone swore in a low fierce tone.

  "It's okay, kitten." Saul's voice was even, soothing. "Everything's under control. It's all fine. It's all right."

  My thumb came up. Clicked the hammer all the way back, eased it gently down. The small sound was very loud.

  The scar throbbed, full and flushed with wet poison heat. I heard a low sob, recognized too late it was my own voice.

  Saul's fingers curled over the gun, pushed it aside. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, he took my shoulders and pulled me away from the wall. His arms folded around me, his purring rumble shaking through my bones again. "Easy," he whispered. "You okay? Say something."