Down at First and Alohambra the granite bulk of the Piers Tower rises, one of the oldest skyscrapers in Santa Luz. Mikhail told me once that the property had been a mission long ago—before the town got big enough to attract hellbreed.
In other words, back when it was just the mission and a couple of chicken coops. And maybe a pig trough if the padres were lucky.
A gaudy sign shouting UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT had glared across the street for a couple weeks while the infighting went on. When the dust settled, I’d walked in and found that bastard Rutger supervising a small horde of contractors.
He’d gotten sassy. I shot him two or three times just to make him sit down and listen. Shen had been the eminence grise of Santa Luz, the only serious contender for Perry’s position and a thorn in Perry’s side. Rutger had big dreams, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to teach him who was boss. It was either that or have to kill him later and play roulette with whoever his replacement was.
So the Kat Klub was now the Folly. It kept the same hours—a cabaret changing to a nightclub at about midnight, rollicking along until dawn in defiance of the liquor laws. Which is no big deal; most nightside places wink at those kind of regulations. Cash changes hands, and the authorities wink, too. Of course, the cash mostly goes toward a hunter’s salary. The municipal check every month, in fact.
I think that’s called irony.
Instead of the stuffed cats and opium den vibe Shen An Dua had gone for, the Folly’s décor was choke-a-baroque French bordello, with a side of lace and fringe.
It was just before midnight, so the cabaret was winding down. A female Trader in a painted-on latex outfit brought the cat-o’-ninetails up. Fluid spattered under the pulsing red lights. The cat’s tails were wire, studded with barbs. Whatever she was whipping had six misshapen limbs and was the size of a tall man, stretched on an iron rack. It whimpered as the cat came down again with a sound like dissonant wind chimes.
The wires and barbs bit deep. The thing opened a hole at the top of its vague mass and howled. Hellbreed tittered. The Trader pivoted on her stiletto heels, brought the whip back and down again with an expert flick. There was a ripping sound as wet, pulsing flesh parted. A long vertical tear opened in the thing on the rack, and something white showed.
The collected ’breed and Traders stilled, expectantly.
A slender white hand rose. More wet sounds. A thin, curving arm. A knob of a shoulder. The Trader in black vinyl reached forward, the cat dangling in her other hand, and laced her fingers through the questing white hand like a girl grabbing a basket. She leaned back, hip jutting out, and pulled.
More wet tearing sounds, and a pale nakedness rose from the pile of steaming, lacerated flesh. High shallow breasts, wide dark eyes with the flat shine of the dusted, a cherry mouth, long wet strings of hair. Another Trader. Markings that could have been scars, tiger stripes on that dead-white, waxen flesh.
Polite applause. I had my back to the bar, a monstrous thing of mahogany and curlicued iron, silk scarves tied into the grillwork and fluttering upward in merry defiance of gravity. Sorcery and contamination crawled over the cloth, dripping onto the slowly corroding iron. The seaweed scarves flinched away from me, as every piece of silver I carried ran with blue light. Sparks didn’t break free of the metal, but it was close.
The Talisman was still on my chest, like an alert little animal, frozen into immobility. I’d only seen Mikhail use it once or twice, when the situation was desperate. It was like the long, slim shape under its fall of amber silk in the sparring room—not to be touched until the need was dire.
But he’d worn the Eye everywhere.
Talismans are like that. You can’t just leave them in a box. They get irritable, and then you have an even bigger mess to clean up. I’d heard of a hunter in Kansas who had left a Talisman at home for too long and got three tornados in one day to show for it. At the same time he was working a string of disappearances and almost got his ass blown off by a Middle Way adept.
Embarrassing. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t lived that one down yet. Still, considering the Talisman he’d been left with, I didn’t blame him for thinking that maybe he shouldn’t touch the damn thing any more than absolutely necessary.
The bartender was another Trader, tall and big-eyed, broad-shouldered—and with a messy line of vertical stitches closing his lips together. One of Rutger’s little jokes.
Two vodkas, brief stings relished but gone by the time they hit the back of my throat, and I waited. Rutger was up in his office, probably watching the closed-circuit television. I could go up there and drag him out, but what would be the point?
No. I wanted this public, but I also wanted him to come to me. That would make the game mine, on my terms.
Admit it, Jill. You want to beat the shit out of someone. That’s what you’re aching to do, and if you do it in public you might not go over the edge. That edge that gets closer every time you do this.
Philosophizing in the middle of a hellbreed bar is a dangerous occupation. The risk of getting distracted is high. Still, I didn’t jump when he appeared out of thin air with a sound like little voices tittering.
They like doing that.
“Ah, Kismet.” Rutger’s oily tenor, dripping with saccharine. “An honor to see you again. Enjoying the show?”
He was lean, and had a full head and a half on me. His skin was spilled ink. Not human-dark, or ethnic. No, his skin was literally black. It swallowed light with no sheen of human at all on its surface. A pointed chin, wide cheekbones, the slightly yellow cast of his too-sharp-to-be-human teeth, and a fluff of white thistledown hair all competed to add creepiness. The final touch was his irises. A deep throbbing hurtful magenta, the pupils X-shaped. In the crux of the X lurked a leering, sterile point of red-purple light.
He liked velvet coats and ruffled-front shirts, breeches in odd gemlike colors, and high-heeled, shiny-buckled, pointy-toed shoes that should have looked absolutely ridiculous.
On this hellbreed, they looked very sharp. You could just imagine the edges of those shoes, heel or toe, slicing flesh. While he grinned with that V-shaped mouth, showing those shark-row teeth.
“No.” I eyed his bodyguards—slabs of Trader muscle almost too dumb to be breathing. They looked like Frankenstein’s monster crossed with a steroid burner’s dream—even their muscles had lumps of muscle on top, like overyeasted bread.
And they were too far away, hanging back and staring at me with little piggy flat-shining eyes. I could have killed him twice before they got to me.
I bared my teeth, a bright sunny approximation of a smile. My left hand rested on the whip handle, and Rutger’s eyes blinked—first one, then the other. Just like a lizard.
There was a crack of bone and a scream from the stage. It sounded like a peacock’s cry, or a sexless being in fullthroated orgasm. Then it shaded up into agony before it was cut short on a gurgle.
Everyone else let out their breath. One Trader whistled, a keen piercing note that belonged more in a strip club than a murder cabaret.
Some people have no couth.
“Trevor Watling.” The name fell into a well of silence. A single spark cracked from the carved ruby at my throat, and one of the bodyguards flinched. My smile widened just a trifle. It felt unnatural, a layer of paint over my skin.
Rutger shrugged. “Never heard of him.”
I was kind of glad we were going to do this the hard way. He might have been, too, because he thought he was fast enough to jump me.
The corruption in them makes them easy to track. That’s why hunters are human. We can track what we’re akin to.
Quick as they are, a hunter’s quicker. Especially with her reflexes amped up by a hellbreed scar. My boots hit the bar’s shiny surface, and I pivoted slightly on one foot. My other lashed out, steel-shod heel cracking him square on the chin. The whip flashed, too, catching one of the bodyguards across his wide sweat-greased face. Rutger fell in slow motion, black ichor spraying in a wide perfect
arc. I cleared leather, had the gun pointed at the next bodyguard, my foot coming back, touching lightly.
The bartender, down at the other end of the curlicued monstrosity, cowered. He didn’t have a gun, but I couldn’t bet on it staying that way. On the other hand, here I had the high ground.
And every eye was on me. The seaweed scarves dribbled, streaming away from me as the silver in my hair, at my throat and fingers and weapons, hissed and sparked. Each spark died quickly as it left my aura.
Up on the stage, there was a pool of waxen white striped with sluggish black, the slim body broken like a flower. The Trader in vinyl crouched, her hand on her cat-o’-nine, in a pool of garish spotlight that turned her eyes into blank holes. Some of the ’breed had half-risen from their seats, the waitstaff all stood, tense and ready. Some of them had hands inside their white jackets.
“Ah-ah-ah.” Hard and bright, my voice rang out. Like a teacher admonishing a room full of third graders. “Now, now. Let’s not be hasty. That’s the penalty of lying a single time to a hunter in Santa Luz. Want to go for more?”
Rutger surged up from the floor. The gun settled on him. At my chest, the Talisman throbbed a little, a sore tooth. A thin curl of smoke rose from my T-shirt. I wasn’t imagining it, but there were other things to worry about.
I’d broken the hellbreed’s nose. Thin rivulets of black ichor threaded down, glittering against the odder darkness of his skin. His teeth champed. “Bitch,” he hissed.
Like I hadn’t heard that one before. “I repeat. Trevor Watling.”
“The Trade was legitimate,” he hissed. Ichor bubbled down his chin.
He’d admitted it. Now we got to the fun part. “He stepped outside the rules. You’re liable.”
A ratlike little gleam surfaced from the center of his pupils. I know that gleam.
The how can I make this work for me look. The one my mother had whenever one of her boyfriends got out the belt or the fist. The one in the eyes of the man who put me on a street corner to shiver. The one in the eyes of every single john on that corner, in a car, in an alley or a cheap hotel room.
I hate that fucking look.
“Stay still.” I didn’t have to look at the second bodyguard to feel the way he was tensing up, getting ready. “Now, Rutger. Let’s just say I don’t want to have to train your replacement not to piddle on the floor.” I stared at the bridge of his nose, knowing it would make my mismatched gaze piercing. And that the focus would warn me before he decided to move.
“You want something.” It’s hard for a hellbreed to look shocked. He managed it. A caricature of a human emotion, like every expression on a hellbreed’s face. Except greed and sadistic pleasure, I guess.
I made a little beeping noise. Every nerve under my skin dilated, alert and quivering. “Wrong. You want something. You want to stay alive and continue your games in this tacky little nest. Now, I’m willing to think that your Trader didn’t check in with you before committing his murderous little rampage. The only thing left for you to do is to prove your good faith. Give me a reason to decide your successor would be a bigger problem than you are.”
Instinct alerted me. I dropped to one knee and fired in one smooth motion. Recoil jolted up my arm, almost too much for even a measure of superhuman strength. The bartender, a sawed-off shotgun in his stealthy little clawed hands, dropped like a stone. Half his head had evaporated.
Why I didn’t switch to the bigger custom guns sooner was so beyond me.
Rutger had taken a half step forward. I trained the gun on him again. “See? You’re just jumping at the chance to help, aren’t you.”
Another thin curl of smoke drifted up from my torn T-shirt. Rutger’s pupils flared with diseased red-purple light, a bruise on the air. “What guarantee will you give?”
Please, you think I’m new at this game? “I don’t give guarantees to hellspawn. You tell me about Perry’s new houseguest, and I may decide to be charitable and overlook your Trader’s stepping outside the bounds.”
As soon as I said it, I knew I’d guessed right. Rutger stiffened, and the ratty gleam intensified. He telegraphed like a four-year-old reaching for candy. As soon as he twitched he knew he’d made a mistake, too, and I lowered the gun. The silver in my hair shifted, rattling. A blue spark popped from my apprentice-ring, and the hellbreed actually flinched. The scarves tied to the bar in front of me lay dead and dark now, bleeding clear fluid across the mirror-polished surface. A ripple ran through the assembled ’breed, and the Traders moved back in one clockwork motion.
“Oh, hit a nerve there, did I? Thank you.” I sounded completely insincere. “Pleasant dreams, hellspawn.”
When I hopped down from the bar, I expected him to jump me. Instead, he stepped mincingly aside. His shoes clicked like a woman’s heels, but oddly. Hellbreed footsteps do not sound the same as human movement. They’re too light, or too heavy, different musculature producing something that shivers the skin with its wrongness.
“He said you’d be here.” A ripple ran through the assembled ’breed and Traders at the words. Rutger tried out a smile, light dancing oddly over his skin. The black bulged and rippled oddly, trying to contain whatever lived under the shell of human seeming. “And he said to tell you this: he cannot hold back the tide forever.”
The gun spoke again. I dropped, rolled, came up and the whip flashed out. The second bodyguard fell like a stalled ox between one step and the next, and Rutger let out a long rumble-roar of Helletöng, glasses chattering on the iron shelves behind the bar. The seaweed scarves, dripping with corruption, flattened and swayed. The ones that had cringed away from me shriveled, blackening afresh. The curse missed, flashing by like a freight train at midnight, and the whip spoke again. I didn’t dive away, like he was obviously expecting. No, instead I pitched myself straight at the hellbreed and cracked him a good one with the gun butt after the flechettes finished tearing a chunk out of his chest. Blessed silver spat and crackled. Rutger howled, glass shattered from the sound, and while he was on the floor I kicked him twice, both good solid blows.
He curled like a worm on a hook, still screaming. The gun swept the massed ranks of hellbreed and they drew back, eyes shining, lips pulled up in snarls, and the scrim of beauty they wear faltering for a heart-stopping second.
“That makes it three times I’ve visited here and had to shoot an uppity ’breed or two. I wonder if maybe this place needs to be cleansed.” I had to raise my voice to be heard over Rutger’s yelling. But you learn pretty quick to aim for a tone that slices through noise without seeming like you’re yelling. I kicked Rutger again. “Shut up.”
“Pay.” He bubbled and blurbled through ichor. “You’ll pay for this, Kismet.”
I swept the massed ranks of hellbreed one more time. They made no move. “You are so not in the position to be threatening, Rutger. Ta-ta, boys and girls. I’ll be back.”
When you’ve just put down the owner of a hellbreed nightclub, the right kind of exit is a sort of insouciant amble that is much faster than it looks. You don’t want to give them time to think. But it is imperative not to look weak.
Or they will be on you in a moment.
“Kismet!” Helletöng rumbling under my name. “I will kill you for this!”
The Talisman on my chest gave a thud like a sledgehammer hitting the side of a refrigerator, and I turned on my heel. Retraced my steps, and the smoke coming up from my chest wasn’t an illusion. It stung my eyes, and I had the sudden lunatic vision of my T-shirt burning off me in the middle of the Folly.
That never happened to Mikhail. What the hell?
The ’breed were all still as death. Bright eyes, painted lips, the shadows of what they really were rippling under their flesh.
I halted. Looked down at Rutger. Painted with hellbreed blood, down there on the floor, sniveling and whining. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
Do not ever underestimate, milaya. Mikhail’s voice inside my head. Is fine way to get ass blown off sideways.
&
nbsp; “Come and try it.” I didn’t have to work to say it flatly. “Anytime, Rutger. That goes for every single Hell-trading one of you in this entire building. Whenever you’re brave enough, come and fucking try it.”
To really finish it off right I should have kicked him one last time. But it was more of an insult to leave him there and saunter out the front door like I had all night, the smell of burning trailing in my wake.
And a very, very bad feeling starting in the middle of my chest.
5
Beaky, skinny Hutch sat up and rubbed at his hazel eyes. He didn’t quite squeal, but it was close. “What are you doing?”
I hadn’t been in here for very long. Maybe twenty seconds, hearing him sleep and regretting that I was going to wake him up. I know what it’s like to wake up with someone in the room, when you thought you were alone.
Hutch was lucky, though. It was just me.
“Same thing I do every time I wake you up in the middle of the night. Light.” I flipped on the bedside lamp, almost forgetting how I looked. Hutch squeaked and fisted his eyes even harder.
His living quarters were up above the bookstore, and his bedroom was full of extra shelving. Clothes hung next to bits of high-priced computer corpses, ready for him to strip out and use at a moment’s notice. He’d just come back from vacation two weeks ago, sunburnt and rested, and I’d met him at the airport with our local FBI liaison, Juan Rujillo. I’d finally gotten everything smoothed over from Hutch’s last escapade—the one he wasn’t covered for in court, because he hadn’t been hacking at my request. No, he’d just been proving he was still bulletproof in cyberspace.
I guess I hadn’t been keeping him busy enough. That was about to change.
“Jesus!” Hutch grabbed at the blankets. “Is it the cops? I haven’t done anything, I swear!”
“You know, every time I hear you say that, it fills me with despair. Because I know you’re lying or about to lie to me.” I tried not to sound so grimly amused. “Wake up and get your glasses on, Hutchinson. I need you.”