“It’s not a virtue,” the lioness added. “It’s a survival tactic.”
That caused a ripple of laughter, and the kid laughed too. It wasn’t the type of nervous laughter you get in an autopsy room, but its intent was the same. To bleed off a little steam, make the waiting palatable.
I set my back against the bole of a cottonwood and closed my eyes. My heart was thumping a little harder than I liked. A rebuilt heart, shattered by a bullet less than half an hour ago. Good thing I was a domestic model, maybe they had a hard time getting import parts for a ticker.
Get it, Jill? Arf arf. You’re a regular comic. Should go on the circuit.
Now think about something useful. What the hell is going on here? A blue Buick, Theron had said, speeding away down Macano Street. Nothing but shell casings left on the roof, some of them jingling in my coat pocket. And a smell. Male, Theron had said, human, and sweating. But a professional, to pump me full of lead and get the hell out of there.
Or very lucky.
Why? If I knew the why I’d know the who, wouldn’t I.
Pure lead bullets and a professional hit. My life was certainly never boring.
The air pressure changed and my eyes snapped open. Every Were in the clearing was standing poised and looking in the same direction, the same way a flock of birds will wheel with tremendous in-flight precision. As if by prearranged signal they broke, some running, others merely loping, Theron glancing over his shoulder at me.
No muss, no fuss. The trackers had found something, and communicated in that way Weres sometimes have, through instinct, pheromones, or just sheer air.
No more time for thinking. The hunt was underway.
Chapter Ten
Running with Weres is like hunting on full-moon nights, when everything goes just slightly sideways and it can either be dead quiet… or a sliptilting screamfest from beginning to end, not even stopping at dawn. There’s the same breathless expectation, the same pulse in the air, hitting the back of the throat like copper-tinged wine.
I know almost every hollow and corner of my city, and it’s that knowledge that lets me keep up. Even hellbreed speed has a hard time when it comes to Weres in full asshaul mode. They run like quicksilver, not like the hellbreed’s habit of blinking through space too fast for mortal eyes.
Pounding feet, exhilaration, the heat of the day shimmering off pavement, alleys and fire escapes flashing past, we swept through the industrial district in a tide of half-seen shapes. Most hunts are run at night, when there’s less chance of normals out on the street.
When there’s a scurf infestation, the Weres run by day. They use that little don’t look here trick they’re so fond of, the same trick animals use for camouflage. It’s more of a blending-in, really, but it makes the eye slide right over them.
Me? I rely on sheer outrageousness. People don’t want to see violations of the laws of physics. They don’t want to see anything un-ordinary. Their brains will convince them their eyes aren’t telling the truth. It’s part of what makes eyewitness testimony so tricksy. Given enough time, people will talk themselves out of seeing just about anything—if they’re lucky enough to survive seeing it, that is.
And if they’re lucky enough not to crack under the strain.
So we ran, me skipping and skidding, not as graceful as the Weres but just as fast, until they coalesced around me and there was a pause, my ribs heaving, silver shifting and chiming in my hair as I took a deep breath and peered off the roof of a dilapidated trucker’s depot right on the river’s edge.
“Goddammit,” I breathed. I’d’ve suspected someone’s nose was off, but hunting scurf is a Were specialty. “Near the water?”
“Funny.” Theron crouched in the shade of an old HVAC unit. “They usually hate water. And the place is up on stilts, for Chrissake. Hard to keep warm.”
“Not in summer.” My coat flapped as I shrugged. “It’ll be a regular tinderbox in there.”
“I hate getting sweaty.” He actually delivered the line with a straight face, too, damn him. “Whenever you’re ready, Jill.”
I don’t think you can ever be ready for this, Theron. “Let’s not burn any more sunshine.” My fingers tingled, aching for a gun, and my mouth turned dry and slick again.
Chapter Eleven
It wasn’t just a nest. It was a full-blown nightmare.
Coughing howls, barks, growls and the exploding sweetsick smell everywhere, sinking into hair and clothes and even the boards of the decrepit building. No time for thought, only motion, because I’d popped the hatch on the roof and dropped straight down into a pile of scurf, Weres suddenly swarming through the boarded-up windows and kicked-in doors, more tearing off the HVAC vents on the roof and boards from the windows, letting in sword-shafts of sunlight as the scurf began screaming their keening glassine cries.
Theron landed lightly, half-changed, the cat in him overcoming the man as he dropped. They are creatures of power and grace, and no matter where on the continuum between human and animal they are they still express the best of either. His claws sprang free, the cat rising to the fore like smoke, and he unzipped the scurf leaping for me in one graceful motion. I spattered bullets through it, missing him by a miracle of reflex, and clocked a scurf on the head with the butt of my pistol. Another Were leapt with a spitting snarl, colliding with the scurf and knocking it away.
Most fights, a hunter takes point and the Weres watch her back. Facing down a rogue Were or scurf reverses that—a hunter is there to coordinate, to provide a leader who doesn’t have to function by consensus, and to clean up any problems with the authorities afterward.
In the middle of a fight with scurf—especially full-blown scurf with cartilaginous bones, powdery-slime acid coating, and active viral agents in their saliva and coating, even in their exhalation and pheromone wash—you want Weres. Because they do not hesitate, and they are largely immune to the viral agents, their systems peculiarly antithetical to scurf infection.
It mostly falls to a hunter to give the coup de grâce, and keep out of the way otherwise. It’s only a little harder than it sounds.
The smell coated everything. Cloying burnt sugar and illness, like the breath of a dying child given a lollipop. And there were so many of them—fifty at least, drifts of them jammed into corners, wedged between boxes, waking to find Death moving among them with fangs and fur, claws and lambent eyes.
That was the first wrongness. There should not have been so many. People go missing all the time, it’s true, it’s a fucking epidemic, but a nest this big should have made a huge pattern of disturbance.
The second wrongness was how old they were. Scurf get more bendy and vicious the longer they survive, and these were full-blown, two weeks to a month old, the scurf equivalent of Methuselahs. Their skin glowed with pallid moonsickness, and their bodies had become humanoid instead of human—potbellied, loose flaps and wattles under hyperdistending jaws, skinny arms far too long and attenuated to be as strong as they are, spindly legs that bend in ways no human’s would, and new tadpole legs beginning from the muscle mass of what had been the glutes and also to a lesser degree from the groin, sexual difference only showing itself in the savagery and thrust of a scurf’s attack.
Those that used to be male go for your throat. The used-to-be-female go for the chest or the gut, impatient to get at the entrails.
Battle of the sexes, right there. If it wasn’t so deadly, it might even be funny.
I jammed the muzzle against a hairless skull as the scurf screeched, its cry like a rabbitscream, and pulled the trigger. No time to think—Weres were pouring into the building’s wide-open inner space, reinforcing their brothers and sisters.
The sense of wrongness grew as I killed another wounded scurf, poisonous fluid spattering, acid hissing on my sleeves and against my pants. My boots slipped and slid in powdery slime, and I choked on hot candied fumes as the warning crested, running down my back in rivers of sharp metal insect feet.
I jerked around to see a slice of floo
r opening, darkness at its mouth as more scurf boiled out from the trapdoor and leapt for me, and I fell back, firing, as the Weres wheeled and poured past me, a tide of glowing eyes, feathers, and fur. The noise was incredible, and I was just beginning to think that maybe we had a handle on this one when the world turned over, the scar clotting with iron prickles on my wrist and burrowing into the bone.
Another hole stove itself into the wall, sunlight streaming as a body hurtled through. A male hellbreed with a glaring white stripe in his black hair hit me so hard my teeth snapped together, I twisted in midair and the knife was in my hand, a natural movement, I rammed it forward and it hissed as it touched Hell-tainted flesh. Wood snapped as we shot sideways, the ’breed’s teeth champing scant millimeters from my cheek and the smell, the sweet corruption of its breath and the sick candy of scurf mixing to bring up everything my stomach had ever thought of digesting in a painless mess, but I couldn’t throw up—I was too goddamn busy.
Wood splintered and crackled as I was rammed through it, splinters popping up. Hellbreed hate Weres, and the feathered and furred return the favor. But while a Were is built to handle scurf, it takes something different to deal with a hellbreed’s stuttering, awesome speed, not to mention the corruption that fills them.
Yeah, for scurf you need Weres. But for hellbreed, nothing but a hunter will do.
The problem was, I had just been tossed into a natural enclosure, wooden boxes stacked up on three sides, the hellbreed coming in fast—and scurf on every side, hissing as they bared their teeth and scented me.
Thin blades of fire ran up my leg and I made it upright, reflex moving my entire body with jerky, fantastic speed. The knife was still buried in the skunk-haired hellbreed’s chest, and my free hand came up with another one, the gun still in my left hand speaking as the ’breed jerked and twisted in midair, coming down on me, claws out, and the oddly narcotized flood of hot blood as scurf teeth clamped in my calf and the hellbreed collided with me, flinging me back even as it bled runnels of dying foulness. The corner of something clipped my head hard enough to break a human neck, and consciousness left me all in a rush. I didn’t even have time to worry about what would happen when the scurf swarmed my unconscious body.
“… jill…”
Drifting. Patches of glaring white. The smell of blood and roasting sugar.
Whafuck?
“… hold her head…” A deep thrumming, like a Were in distress. Sounds came in shutterflashes—cries, moans, the high yip of hurt animal. No nails-on-slate squealing of scurf, though. That was good.
… bit me. It bit me. I’ve got a bite. I tasted blood and foulness, then something heaved off me and I could breathe again.
Pain broke over me. It was red and smoking, the flesh of my calf boiling as the viral agents worked their way up. The scar ran with sick hot delight, burrowing into skin bubbling with heat, and the agony became immense, compressed, a point of hurtfulness in the gloom of twilight consciousness.
I hate this part. Coherent thought snagged, turned into a soup of confused reaction as etheric force slammed through me again, spiraling out through broken bones, fusing them together, rebuilding tissue. The low deep hum of the Weres gathered around me helped, taking the edge off the pain, smoothing sonic jelly over my flesh as the scar fought with heaving infection running up my leg. The garlic should have been helping too, but I couldn’t feel it.
I was bitten.
I moved. Silver chimed, hitting the pavement—my hair, flung around as I tried to leap up and failed. I blinked, finding I had eyelids after all. Consciousness returned along with sound and color, rushing into the cup of my brain. I wasn’t ready for it—who is?
But the pain receded a little bit, and that meant I could function. And if I could function, I had to.
My lips refused to obey me, but I made a garbled sound anyway.
“Jill.” Theron, as close to frantic as I’d ever heard him. “Stop it. Calm down. We’re trying to help.”
I’m not moving. It was a lie as soon as I thought it, and I pulled the punch even before strong fingers twisted on my wrist, pushing the momentum of the blow aside. The rumbling didn’t die down.
How bad was I hurt? It was hot, heat like oil against the skin, a nova of pain exploding as my entire leg cramped. This is ridiculous. Can I go home now?
The cramping eased slightly. I went limp.
“Something is not right,” Theron said grimly.
No shit, you think? I couldn’t say it, my mouth refused to work. Even for a hunter, dying twice in one day is a little too much. I’m tired. So tired.
“Where’s Dustcircle?” A female Were, the voice hushed under a thrumming purr.
“He’s on the Rez. His mother has the Wasting.” Theron braced me, his hands on my shoulders oddly familiar for a stranger’s touch. It felt like Saul holding me, the purr he used when I was really hurt but the danger was past resonating in my bones.
“We should call him.”
No. I opened my eyes. “N-n-n—” My mouth still refused to work.
Even if the body is patched up after something like that, the psyche shivers and jolts like a junkie doing cold turkey. The human animal isn’t built to take this type of damage and live, and it can shake certain floor-deep bits of your mental furniture around and around until you’re no longer sure who you are.
“Easy there, hunter. Relax.” A sharp edge under Theron’s tone, he was worried. “Just give yourself a second, Jill. Lay back, or I’ll sit on you.”
I didn’t think he would, but my muscles were limp as wet noodles, the skin over them throbbing as if I had the mother of all sunburns. I could have gotten up to fight, but it would have taken gunfire and some screaming. The entire conscious surface of my brain retreated from the glare of sunlight, seeking a deep dark hole to hide itself in, to wrap itself in velvet unconsciousness until it got over dying twice in less than two hours.
The bite on my calf lost its pulsing heat, the feeling of infection retreating along a map of veins.
“Someone’s trying to kill her,” Theron was saying. “Maybe more than one someone.”
This is news? I wanted to say, but darkness closed over me, my brain finally having enough and shutting off. The party was over.
Chapter Twelve
I came to on my couch, a huge orange naugahyde monster that was actually pretty respectable once Saul got around to slipcovering it with some cream linen he’d found on sale. The warehouse creaked and settled, singing its usual greet-the-dawn production number.
Darkness was kind, but I had to open my eyes. As soon as I did, Theron’s face loomed over me, and I smelled bacon, Were, and a hot griddle.
“Just stay where you are.” His eyes glowed orange in dimness. Gray dawn edged up through the skylights and the lights in the kitchen were on, sharp yellow blocks throwing shadows into the living room. A single lamp burned at the far end of the couch. “I thought I heard you. It’s five A.M., nobody else has died, we’re running sweeps. Your ass stays on that couch, Jill. Clear?”
I blinked. My lips were cracked and dry, I licked them before I could speak. “How many—” How many did we lose?
“Two down. The scurf swarmed your body; we had a hell of a time with it.” He nodded shortly, turned on his heel, and stalked toward the kitchen. “Saul called,” he said over his shoulder.
Oh, Christ. “What did you tell him?” It was hard work to pitch the words loud enough, my throat was dry as desert glass. I felt feverish, my body fighting off the viral infection. But I was conscious and talking, and if Theron hadn’t killed me I wasn’t in any danger of getting chewy and bendy.
Or at least, so I hoped.
“What did you want me to do, lie? He’d skin me.” Dishes clattered, steam hissed. “We’re supposed to look after you, hunter.”
Blankets slid aside as I gingerly levered myself up. I felt like I’d been drawn and quartered, then sewn back together all wrong. Jesus. What the hell is going on? “He doesn’t need to b
e worrying about me, Theron. I can take care of myself—”
“You got bit, Jill. You’re fighting off the infection, but it was close. How many times have you almost-died recently?” It wasn’t like him to interrupt me. An egg cracked, and the sizzling was bacon, I was sure of it. “What the hell’s going on?”
Scurf. And people trying to murder me as if I was a normal human being instead of a hunter. “I wish I knew.” Guilt pricked under my skin—two Weres, probably with families, dead because I hadn’t been fast enough to kill a hellbreed popping up in the middle of a scurf hole. I would have asked Theron who, but it would be rude—they don’t speak much of the dead, and they especially don’t often name them.
I could have asked Saul. If he’d been there, what might have happened?
Theron made a short sound of almost-annoyance. “Well, start at the beginning. What’s been going on?”
Where do I begin? “There was a Trader that burned down a warehouse. An arkeus I killed the other night—last night? Or something. The scurf, those disappearances have only been going on for a week or so.” And Perry called. And Monty. My brain refused to work just right. What was a hellbreed doing there?
“Anything else?”
“A friend asked me to look into something.” Dried blood crackled on my clothes. I held up my hands, tendons standing out under pale skin, the cuff dyed with blood and noisome fluid on my right wrist.
“Like what?”
“Some murders without a nightside connection. So far all I have are three bodies and nothing else.” There was a small pile of silver charms on the coffee table, tangled in red thread. They’d probably fallen out when the hellbreed hit me, or gotten torn off in the heat of battle. I did feel like handfuls of my hair had been ripped out. I almost never get my hair cut. Saul sometimes trims it for me, but I was probably rocking the punk look right about now. The back left of my skull was tender, and I could feel the scab there when my face moved. My neck ached, a vicious dull pain.
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