Guess which side my warehouse sat on. Still on the wrong side of the tracks, even after all these years.
Around the bend, a sudden knot of activity swallowed me. More forensic techs, snapping pictures, triangulating.
Montaigne, in a gray suit and a brown tie I knew his wife hadn't picked—it was far too ugly—stood sourly to one side, his hands dangling by his sides. He saw me, and I watched as if from behind myself the curious relief, then even more curious flash of dread cross his haggard face. "Jill!" He almost slipped on a loose patch of gravel, his wingtips not meant for grubbing out here in the brush. "You look—" He pulled himself up short, and I felt a click in my head, a door shutting away the feel of Perry's lips on my skin and the shaking temptation to just start killing until there was nothing left that could hurt me.
It was a good thing, that switch. I felt cleaner, though I knew I would strip down and scrub myself raw as soon as I could get home. It took a lot of harsh scrubbing and the water turning pink-red as it went down the drain before I ever felt clean after a visit to the Monde.
I don't keep a wire brush in the house because I'd be too tempted to use it.
"Hi, Monty." I squinted against the hot oven glare of sunlight, shifted inside my coat. When I lifted my left hand to push a strand of hair weighted by a silver horse-shoe back, the charm glittered in my peripheral vision. Like a mirage. "Just tired. What do we have? Foster said three, maybe more."
I spotted Harp up further on one side of the gully, bending down to examine something, her braids fastened back.
Dominic stood next to her, his hair bound and his shoulders straight.
"It's over there." He pointed at the beehive of orderly activity. Half-moons of sweat darkened his suit under his arms. "Jesus. Do you have anything yet, Jill? Anything at all?"
I nodded. "Some things." Not nearly enough. A runaway hellbreed and a rogue Were. If ever there was an unlikely combination, that's one. "How's your man? The rookie?"
"Still in critical." Monty sighed. It was a weary sound. "Jesus fucking Christ. Sullivan and the Badger are next up, do you want them on this?"
I shook my head. The last thing I wanted was a Homicide detective or two dealing with a rogue Were. "The feds over there are my people, I don't want any more of yours getting killed."
He took it better than I thought he would. He only paled more, and shivered despite the heat. Indian summer had struck with a vengeance this year. "It's bad, then."
Worse than you can probably imagine, cheesecake. "I'll go take a look." I wanted to touch him—clap him on the shoulder, maybe. Offer some comfort. But if I did, he'd just flinch away from my essential difference.
My essential taint.
She stinks of hellbreed. It hadn't been so much the words as the tone in which they were delivered. What should I care what a country-boy Were thought of me?
Because of the other voice whispering in my head, bland and weighted with terrible finality, as if he considered the deal already struck—a newer deal, one Mikhail hadn't approved. I've broken stronger Traders than you.
It wasn't so much that he said it. It was that I suspected, deep down, that he might be right. Without the steady compass and experience of my teacher, things were getting more precarious by the day.
I was getting more precarious every day. Out on the edge with nowhere else to go.
I flinched inwardly as I inserted myself into the dance of gathering evidence. A few of the techs looked a little green.
The bodies were tangled together in a messy heap under torn-down branches that had wilted in the heat. I saw a long scarf of brown hair crusted with sand, and thought maybe that one was female. But they were such a mess I couldn't tell for certain. Some of the bigger bones—femur, humerus—had been gnawed, sharp splinters worried up. The faces were marred with deep claw marks.
I looked again at the brush cover. The techs were photographing, picking up, and bagging each torn branch. The ends were ripped, not broken with leverage but torn straight out from the tree or bush that had hosted them. The tougher ones—juniper, sage, pine from the park, probably—were still springy and sap-full.
They were fresh.
So were the bodies. Really fresh, even though they stank in the heat.
Had the rogue just blown into town, killed a few cops, and started on an orgy of murder? It was a distinct possibility. The usual rogue Were rules—a kill every few days, mostly for food, a pattern of familiar places—
wasn't holding true. What other rules was this case going to break?
A prickle touched the back of my neck, cold even under the sun's assault. Was it just nervousness from dealing with Perry, or was it intuition? As raw as my nerves were, I couldn't tell.
That's bad. You've got to take the edge off or you aren't going to be good for anything. I looked up, shading my eyes, as one of the techs, a slim Asian woman with her hair cut in a sleek bob, approached me.
"Can we move the bodies?" She didn't look me in the eye, rubbing her fingers together against the latex gloves.
Latex was miserable in this weather, with the sweat and cornstarch. "Or at least start to? The Feebs said to wait for you."
I should have been looking at the bodies, marking each one and swearing to avenge them. I should have looked to see what had mangled them so badly, what had stripped the face off each one.
A rogue Were kill, dehumanizing the victims? That was standard behavior for them, but the shape of the marks on the faces were wrong somehow. Another click sounded at the very bottom of my head.
Why would a rogue Were kill cops? But some of them are Were kills, I recognized that claw shape on the others.
And look at the bodies, those are Were claws. Why the different marks on the faces? Dammit. This isn't making sense, and there's a hellbreed in it somewhere.
The prickling at my nape slid down my back, goose-flesh rising hard. The mark on my wrist was a mass of tiny hair-fine needles, responding to the uneasy swirl of my aura as my senses dilated to take everything in.
Something about to happen, Jill. Look around. Be aware.
I looked up. Harp had come to her feet, immobile, even the feathers braided in her hair motionless despite the soft breeze. Her lovely face was set, color draining away and turning her ash-pale. Dominic unfolded slowly, like a cat will rise quietly from its haunches when it sees prey. My blue eye, hot and dry, saw the deep thrumming swirling through both of them.
"Hey." The tech was still trying to get my attention. "Can we move the bod—"
I was already moving, extending in a leap over the pile of bodies, touching down, and bolting for the end of the gully. A few pebbles drifted down, and the slim shape silhouetted against the sky vanished hastily with a flutter of pale hair. I heard scrabbling behind me, and a scream. Didn't care. My skin came alive, flush with heat, leather coat flapping as I sank one hand into the scree of the slope and made it up the hill, throwing up a chunk of gravel as I catapulted over the edge, recklessly pulling etheric energy through the scar.
I'd just paid Perry, I was going to use it.
The whip uncoiled, each individual flechette burning itself into my retinas as metal flashed, the small sonic booms of the crack like a tattoo against my hellbreed-sharp ears.
Improbable became flat-out impossible, gravel shifted under my boots, and I missed.
It was a woman with the full-lipped beauty of the damned, wide liquid dark eyes and a cloud of platinum hair. Her eyes were rimmed in red and her skin flushed from the anathema of the sun, and she wore long sleeves and jeans, the sunglasses she'd been peering through knocked off her face as she scrabbled away.
She skittered back, showing white teeth in a snarl, and spun, her heels digging in as Harp rocketed past me, driving her shoulder into the other woman's midriff. I heard the coughing roar of a panther behind me, and Dominic thundered past me too, engaging with the hellbreed. He had shifted, the sunlight gilding his dark hide as he leapt, with all the grace and authority of a Were. They are a
little bigger than humans in human form, and a little bigger than normal in their animal forms, and when a Were shifts quickly like that he means business.
" No!" I yelled over the noise, yanking the whip back. " She's hellbreed goddammit stop it!"
It was too late. Blood exploded and a high cat-whine screeched across my senses. I was still moving forward, dropping the whip, my fingers closing around knife-hilts, metal singing free of the sheath as I uncoiled in a kick, my boot thudding solidly into Dominic's side. The panther curled away, snarling, and I promptly forgot about him, twisting in midair to collide with the spitting growling mass that was Harp and the hellbreed.
Who was out here in full sunlight, in the middle of the day, at the site of a rogue Were kill.
Or something that had been made to look like a rogue Were kill. Something that had been altered.
I took a hit low on the side, pain spiking up my ribs like oil against the skin, and heard something snap. Harp was flung away, and I drove the knife in my left hand forward, a flickering slash meant to come under the ribs and open up the hellbreed's abdominal cavity.
She twisted, snarling, and the world turned over, the side of my head ringing with pain. Gravel boiled up and I made it to my knees, panting, scooped up my left-hand knife. No blood or ichor on it. Warm wetness spilled into my eyes, ran down my neck. I blinked it away, irritably.
I'd missed again. The sun beat mercilessly down, and I heard the retreating drumbeat of the hellbreed's footsteps.
Filled my lungs with the spoiled, delicious, unique smell of a hellbreed, let the smell sink below the conscious level. Without the other reek of death and Were, it was easier.
I could track her now, if I could get close enough to break through whatever masking-sorcery she was using to cover her scent. My head felt light, strange, stuffed with cotton.
A low whining sound of pain intruded. I gained my feet, shaking gravel out of my hair, heard shouts and scrabbling below. Harp was bleeding badly, and Dominic had shifted back, rumbling the low throbbing distressed note of a cat Were whose mate was injured.
Goddamit. Fucking around with a hellbreed can get a Were killed. I decided now was not the time to tell him so.
They were scrabbling up the slope behind us. Dominic glanced up, the lambent glow in his gaze warning me. I could either pursue the hellbreed, who was too far away and probably had enough breath to cloak herself now, or I could defuse Dominic and keep the humans away from him. He might not hurt anyone, but he'd make them awful uncomfortable, and forensic techs don't deal well with that kind of discomfort. They like more conventional uncertainties, probabilities, percentages.
Not the crazy logic of the nightside when it erupts in daytime. Most human brains stall when presented with something like that.
I blinked away more wetness, heard liquid pattering on dry dusty ground, and ignored it. The copper reek of blood boiled up.
I swore viciously, shook more gravel out of my coat, and edged past him, not turning my back. Harp would be all right, she'd already stopped bleeding but lay pale and gasping-still. Weres don't often come away breathing from tangling with hellbreed.
Especially hellbreed who don't need night's cover to come out and cause havoc. That meant she was high up the chain of Hell's citizens, capable of doing a lot of damage and possibly unfettered by feudal obligation. Was a hellbreed looking to horn in on Perry's territory?
You know, I almost wouldn't mind that. Even if he is the devil I know.
I almost didn't see it. A thin glint caught my eye, and I bent down, picking out a long platinum strand. It twisted around a red-gold curling hair, twined tight, and curled in on itself even as I watched, the hairs tangling together.
More wetness fell in my eyes, and I couldn't seem to take a deep breath.
Curiouser and curiouser. Nothing about this is making sense.
Blood sliding out from the ragged claw gashes along my ribs pattered on dry dusty ground in an almost-painless gout. The world turned over, and I pitched headfirst off the drop and into the converging cops.
Chapter Twelve
Mikhail's hand spread against my belly, calluses scraping. The carved chunk of ruby at his throat glimmered with its own secret life, and sweat dried on his forehead. "What is best way to kill utt'huruk, you think?" He hadn't smoked a cigarette yet, so the day's lessons weren't over.
I lay on my back, looking up at the skylight full of afternoon gold. A hard nugget of silver pressed into the back of my head; I shifted so the charm wasn't digging in. Mikhail had started giving me the charms one by one, mostly when I'd performed well, and I'd taken to tying them in my hair with red thread, just like he did.
Hey, anything helps.
"Holy water? After you've punctured the shell?" I thought about it some more as his fingers tapped my belly idly, obviously unsatisfied with my answer. Of course. I'd been caught assuming again; assuming Assyrian bird-demons had a shell, like hellbreed. You can't ever assume, so I asked the question I should have asked straight-up. "What's the weakness in their anatomy?"
He shifted a little under the covers. The air conditioning was on, but even so sweat cooled on my skin and my body sparked pleasantly. Four years ago I'd've called Mikhail an easy dime— street lingo for a John who wants vanilla, straight-up, and doesn't get nasty with you. They're also called milks— as in, you milk them and go home.
He was my teacher, not a John, and falling into bed with him felt more than natural. Here was no sparring and no hurt. Here, in this queen-sized, hip-high monstrosity covered in threadbare red velvet, with the iron lamps standing guard on either side, was the place where I became more and more thoroughly what Mikhail made me.
To hear Mikhail talk, it was normal for two reasonably heterosexual people so close in such extreme circumstances to end up in bed. It was even to be encouraged, the sex made the bond between teacher and student stronger and balanced out the harshness of training.
I didn't care. I just liked that… well…
Me. Of all people. He'd chosen me.
"There is seam that runs through their heads." His fingers left off my belly, touched my forehead and ran down my nose. "Like so. Hit them there, and head explodes. Very dramatic."
I laughed, pushed my hair back with my right hand. Mikhail caught my wrist and turned it, looking at the bracelet of pale skin. I'd taken to wearing a copper cuff over the mark.
The lip-print was a bruised purple now, the color slowly leaching away, but thankfully not into the surrounding flesh. I held very still, watching the skylight Golden sunshine filled my eyes, safe warm light.
"Does it hurt?"
"Burns sometimes." I settled my naked hips, my salt-touched shoulders. "But it's okay. It just looks funny." And I had to be careful, having a hellbreed-strong fist was… interesting, to say the least. I was still getting used to it.
"Eh." He let go of my wrist, one finger at a time, and settled down next to me. Then came my favorite part, his arm over me, and we cuddled together. The feeling of safety returned, palpable enough to set a lump in my throat.
"Woman always has edge in bargain like this, little snake. You remember that when old Mischa is gone."
The lump got bigger. "You're not going anywhere, Mik. You're too nasty."
He pinched my arm, but gently, and I giggled. It was a little-girl sound, a laugh I only heard here in the bedroom with the silkscreened Japanese scrolls on the walls. Only in Mikhail's arms.
" Someday, milaya. It comes for us all. But we have a choice of how to meet it."
This one I knew. "Head high," I said.
"Guns out," he answered. "Good, little snake. Now rest. Night soon, time to work."
It came sooner than either of us thought, but after that day we never spoke of it again. I fell asleep easily in his arms, but I don't know if Mikhail slept. I rarely saw him relax, and he was always awake when I dropped off, and awake again when I surfaced.
Of all the men I ever knew, all the men whose bodies pressed over or i
nto mine, he was the only one I ever felt safe with. He was also the only one who held me in the middle of the day when I woke crying from nightmares I remembered all too clearly.
More and more, the longer I go without him, the more I wish I could have seen him sleeping.
Of all the things I expected to smell, frying bacon was the very last.
My head boiled with pain. I groaned, turned over, and buried my face in my pillow, which smelled different.
Like… fabric softener?
It was fabric softener. I didn't use frocking fabric softener. I had a hard enough time running the damn washing machine without frou-frous like that.
What the hell? I lay very still, my awareness suddenly dilating. The last thing I remembered was falling headlong off the high drop into the crush of people struggling to find some way up the almost-vertical slope. I dimly remembered Montaigne yelling, and Harp's voice, thin but determined.
Sleep beckoned, warm and wide and full of welcome oblivion.
It was no use. I couldn't crawl back into unconsciousness. I had too much to do.
I rolled slowly, lethargically, onto my back. Blinked at the angle of sunlight. It was all wrong—low and gray, with the peculiar translucence that meant morning. How long had I been out?
What had happened out there on the streets while I'd been out? How was Harp?
I pushed myself painfully up to my elbows. My belly was tender, as if I'd taken one hell of a sucker-punch. My scalp itched and smarted too. But that wasn't what surprised me the most.
I was on my mattress in the middle of my bedroom, but the sheets were on the bed instead of tangled and wrecked, clean and smelling freshly washed. The messy pile of blankets had been washed too and the bed, despite my usual thrashing, had obviously been neatly made. The blinds had been dusted, and the hardwood floor looked suspiciously shiny. On top of that, the maddening smell of bacon in the air was joined by the smell of coffee brewing.