Weres are touchy about things like that. “Always am. Do you need me?” Say the word, Saul. I can’t leave now, but I will if you ask me to.
Should I feel grateful, or more guilty, that he understood and hadn’t asked? That he had insisted I stay in Santa Luz, because he knew my responsibility weighed as heavily as his?
“I do, but I’m okay. They need you more.” A long pause, neither of us willing to hang up just yet. He broke it first, this time. “I’d better go back in.”
“Okay.” Don’t hang up. Perry called me, and I’m scared. Come home. I swallowed the words. “You take care of yourself, furboy.”
“You too. Tell everyone hello for me.”
“I will.” I waited another few moments, then straightened my arm to put the phone down. He hated saying goodbye.
So did I.
I laid the phone in its cradle and watched as the light winked off. Let out a long breath, muscles twitching and sore under my torn, blood-stiff T-shirt. My pants were shredded—the arkeus had just missed my femoral artery in its dying desperation, brought to bay and made physical enough to fight at last.
I lifted my pager. The number on it was familiar, and I scooped up the phone and dialed again without giving myself time to think. It rang twice.
“Montaigne,” he barked.
“You bellowed?” I even sounded normal, sharp and Johnny-on-the-spot. All hail Jill Kismet, the great pretender.
“We got another disappearance on the east side. And there’s something else. Can you come in?”
My entire body ached. I hauled myself up from the bed, looked longingly at the rumpled pillow and tossed blankets. Saul was the domestic half of our partnership, I’ve never been good at that sort of shit.
The hurt in my heart hadn’t gone away. It was still a sharp piercing, like a broken bone in my chest. I made it over to the dresser, wincing as my leg healed fully and the scar flushed under the damp leather cuff. The urge to tear the cuff off and make sure it wasn’t spreading suddenly ignited, I pushed it away.
“Jill?” Monty sounded halfway to frantic.
I snapped back into myself and jerked a dresser drawer open, scooping up a black Frodo Lives! T-shirt. “I’m on my way.”
The message light on the machine was blinking. I ignored it and bolted for the bathroom, another pair of leather pants, and quite possibly a sleepless day.
5
Michael Spilham.” Monty laid the file down on his cluttered desk. “Vanished from a bus stop out near Percoa Park last night. We have a verified sighting at ten-fifteen, when a coworker drove by and saw him waiting for the bus due at ten-twenty-six. The driver on that route doesn’t remember him, says she wondered about that because he’s a regular. His mother filed a missing-persons when he didn’t come home on time; says it’s not like him. It might be nothing, but it’s in the same area as the other disappearances.”
I nodded. Percoa Park. A brief cold wave slid down my spine—we’d found bodies there before. “That’s a small window.”
“The bus might have been off by five minutes or so. Still, you’re right.”
If Monty hadn’t had something else up his sleeve he would have given me the location over the phone, and I’d already be there searching for clues. The other disappearances on the east side were all the same—people vanishing without a trace, outside, often in very short spaces of time. Small windows in disappearances are common enough, but this one smelled fishy to me.
It stank of hell, actually. Or something unnatural. Still.… “I dunno. Everything about this fits except the gender of the victim.”
But that meant very little too. Women are just bigger targets of opportunity most of the time.
“Can you look at it?” He stared down at his desk. The bottle of whiskey was down by a quarter.
“That’s the plan. Want to tell me what’s bothering you?” I hooked my thumbs in my belt, my dangling fingers brushing the bullwhip’s oiled curve. The precinct building quivered, phones ringing and thin predawn wind boiling against the windows. Monty’s office didn’t have any outside portholes. It was more of a luxury than you’d think—on a summer’s day, the air conditioning didn’t have to fight for primacy.
“I got autopsy reports on the widow.” His shoulders dropped, and he cast a longing look at the Jack Daniels.
I picked up the bottle, uncapped it, took a swallow. It burned on the way down. I used to drink a lot of this stuff, before Saul happened along. “And?”
“Hyoid crushed and damage to the strap muscles, but no cervical vertebrae snapped and no rope burns.” Monty dropped down in his chair. “We’re waiting for toxicology, but there was… she was… there was vaginal bruising. And semen. We might get DNA.”
Oh, Christ. “So we’re looking at a murder here, not a suicide.” I said it so he didn’t have to.
“Whoever set it up didn’t work that hard. There was nothing for her to stand on to get up there. The rope was tied to the—”
“I saw the scene, Monty.” I didn’t want to revisit it. As gruesome as hellbreed get—and they get pretty damn gruesome—I’m still more upset by things human beings do to each other without needing any extra help. It’s in a hellbreed’s nature to be vicious, just like a cancer cell or a rabid animal.
I’m still not sure why people do it.
Monty stared at his desk. “Her bedroom was torn apart. Looks like someone was looking for something, or maybe the attack started there. Carp and Rosie are betting on both. The screen in the master bathroom window was torn loose, but it’s too small for anyone but a five-year-old to shimmy through.”
That was odd, too. I replayed the scene in my head. Something about that bathroom nagged at me. “Who sleeps with their window open in that neighborhood? Even with bars on the window.” And why not tear up the rest of the house if they were looking for something?
“The neighbors aren’t worth jackshit.” Monty smoothed the fresh manila folder on his desk, the one with Jacinta Kutchner’s name on the tab. “Nobody can remember anything out of the usual.”
I exhaled sharply. “Monty. This isn’t my type of case. There’s no inhuman agency at work here. I’ve got those disappearances to look into and—”
“Jill.” He dropped down into his chair and glared at me. “I never asked you for anything like this before. Marv was my partner.”
I looked down at the file. Lots of people don’t understand that about cops. The partner isn’t quite a spouse, but they’re the person whose head you think inside of, whose judgment and reactions you trust your life to, the person you spend so much time with you might as well be twins.
It may not be love, but it’s close.
It wasn’t Monty’s tender feelings that made me reach across the desk and tug the file out from under his hand. It was the vision of Jacinta Kutchner’s body, gently swinging just the tiniest bit as her empty house breathed around her.
Hyoid crushed. Vaginal bruising. Bedroom ripped to shreds.
“I’ll look into it. Can’t promise anything.” Even though I already had.
Monty almost visibly sagged. His chair creaked, and he dropped his gaze to the top of his desk, drifted with paper. Silence bloomed between us, a new and uncomfortable quiet.
Finally, he shifted and his chair creaked sharply. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” What are friends for, Monty? And if you’ve got one, you might as well use her. “I’ll check in.”
“Yeah. Try not to destroy any property, will you?”
For Christ’s sake. I was already at the door. “I can’t promise anything, Monty. See you.”
His curse was like a goodbye.
The plastic of the bus shelter’s window-walls was scarred and starred with breakage. I examined it minutely. Cigarette butts, an overflowing trashcan, the smell of despair.
Just like waiting for the bus anywhere, really. Dawn was coming up fast, the sky full of scarves dyed indigo, rose, streaks of gold and soft threads of orange over the furnace in the
east. There was a blank brick wall behind the bus shelter, and a drift of paper trash in an alley to the side. Across the street, Percoa Park simmered under a pall of early morning half-vapor, trees breathing in relief as the sun rose.
Michael Spilham. Thirty-four, college dropout, living with his mother and working in a shipping warehouse four blocks away from here. He’d be tired at the end of his shift, overtime wearing down his feet and shoulders. So, he’d probably stand here, leaning against the shelter’s support post. A nonsmoker, the file said, so he didn’t light up while waiting. He probably just stared down the street, thinking a normal man’s thoughts.
I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. Smelled exhaust, the odor of poverty and footsore wandering, trash and concrete.
A sudden cessation of subaudible buzzing made my eyes fly open. The streetlamp to my left had switched off. I glanced down the street to my right. Edges of broken glass glittered like diamonds as the star we all roll around lifted itself higher over the horizon.
I left the shelter, cautiously. Intuition tingled and prickled down my spine, raised the fine hairs on my nape under the weight of silver-laden hair. My trenchcoat, still damp from hosing, whispered and fluttered. Time for a new coat; hellbreed claws are death on leather.
This lamp was busted, broken glass on the pavement. A star-shape of expended force glittered, bits and pieces arranged along rays of reaction. Intuition turned chilly, raising prickles along the backs of my arms. A faint distinct perfume evaporated as soon as I got a whiff. Corruption, and sweetness like burned candy.
Huh.
I crouched easily, my bootheels digging into the pavement and my leather pants making just the faintest noise as dead cowskin rubbed against itself. My smart eye saw the strings under the surface of the world resonating to a powerful burst of bloodlust and fear.
My dumb eye wasn’t so dumb. Streaks and smears along the base of the streetlamp gleamed. Blood dries fairly quick out in the desert, but this close to the misty park it wasn’t completely flaking off yet.
Huh again. These were transfer prints. Someone with bloody hands had clasped the bottom of the streetlamp. Now that I was crouched down I could see smears on the filthy sidewalk too, oddly pale—pink instead of red.
Blood shouldn’t look like that. Another chill touched my nape, tickling little fingers. “Shit,” I breathed, reaching down to touch the smears on the post’s concrete base. “Shit.”
My fingers came away with powdery pink clinging to them. As I lifted my hand, I turned a little so the sunlight hit my skin.
The powder vanished, little puffs of steam rising from my fingertips. “Goddamn shitsucking son of a bitch,” I whispered. “Motherfucking hell.”
There’s only one thing that dries blood to powder evaporating in the sun. And as much as hunters hate, hunt, and loathe hellbreed, there’s only one thing that a hunter fears enough to cross herself and shiver, one thing that sends us looking for backup and polishing whatever weapons make us feel a little safer.
I settled on my haunches, my right hand dropping to the butt of a gun. “Shit,” I breathed one final time, before rising slowly to my feet and looking down at the long jagged wet-looking marks on the sidewalk. They pointed toward the mouth of an alley, yawning and shadowed even with the clear light of dawn coming up.
No time like the present, eh Jill?
I headed for the alley as traffic ran like water in the distance. The next bus wasn’t due for about ten minutes and the street was deserted. A ruffle of paper twisted in the intersection two blocks away, and I eased a gun out with my right hand and a knife in my left. Wish I had a flamethrower. Dammit.
The alley swallowed me with shadows you only get in the morning—knife-edged and clear, like stiff black paper cut into animal shapes. A dumpster loomed in the alley’s throat, and I sniffed cautiously, seeking that perfume of burnt sugar and weirdness. Should have recognized that first-off. Goddammit. My heart kicked up, high and wild in my throat, a bitter taste in the back of my mouth. Training clamped down on my hindbrain, regulating the cascade of adrenaline through my system. Too much and I’d be a jittery mess, and if this turned ugly…
I eased into the dark maw, clicking the hammer back. They’re not going to be in the alley, not with day coming on. But they dragged him back here, you might find something. Pray you don’t find something.
One step. Two. Easing down the side that held a little more light, though the entire alley was shaded. The dumpster was full of garbage, and as a stray breath of breeze touched my cold cheeks, the smell strengthened.
Oh God. Please. I quelled the tremor in my hands by the simple expedient of putting it out of my mind. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. Nothing to be done about it now.
I stepped toward the dumpster. It was a big green number, half its heavy plastic lid closed and the other half open, resting against the wall of the alley. At the end of the alley’s confined space was a huge rolling door, probably for whoever took out the trash. I scanned the alley again—no, it was a blind hole. No place else to hide.
Don’t let me find anything, God. Please. Cut me a break on this one.
Unfortunately, God wasn’t in a giving mood today. I saw telltale frosting along the metal edge of the dumpster, a fine powdery substance drifting in complicated whorls. And I heard, straining the preternatural acuity of my senses, a faint rustling.
Yup. God’s not in a good mood today, Jillybean. You’ve got a scurf infestation on your hands.
6
Scurf aren’t like Traders or hellbreed. There’s no pattern to their movements, no training, no instinctive predator’s grace. They’re just engines of messy hunger, ravenous and unpredictable.
And contagious.
I emptied two clips into the motherfucker and ended up burying my knife in its side. Brick puffed into dust and the dumpster’s side was stove in, garbage spilling out into the alley, body-sized dents in the walls, and blood everywhere. My blood, which just served to drive the thing into a feeding frenzy.
They can smell it. And even though they like it fresh from the vein, so to speak, they’ll lick it up from concrete if they have to.
In the end, I drove the skinny naked thing out of the alley, my fingers clamped in its throat and its claws tangling in my ribs. He wasn’t fully changed yet, the virus hadn’t turned his bones all the way to flexible cartilage or given him the thick slimy coating that makes scurf so slippery. But his eyes were blank pale orbs without iris or pupil—they don’t need to see—and even though he was newly infected and didn’t have the developed instincts for carnage, he was strong and desperate.
When they’re newly changed, they’re even more unpredictable than usual. It snarled and champed, teeth snapping with a sound like heavy billiard balls smacking together; foam splattered rank and foul, burning the skin of my hand and smoking on my leather sleeve. I cried out, miserable loathing beating frantically under my heart, as we tumbled out into the street and a flood of early morning sunlight.
The scurf screeched, damage runnelling its face and its blind pupilless eyes popping, smears of buttery eyefat glistening down its gaunt cheeks. Thin acrid smoke gushed, pale powdery drifts rising as the thing that used to be Michael Spilham squealed and imploded. The smell was gagging-strong, the reason most hunters don’t like cotton candy or caramel. Burnt candy, sweetness, and bad, all rolled up in one pretty package.
It screamed again, foam splattering in harsh droplets that sizzled where they landed. It took every ounce of hellbreed strength I had to hold the thing down, even as its flesh began to run like plastic clay, stinking and smoking. I held it, held it, and heard far-off traffic under its screams, the sound of the wind in the park trees.
Lord, take this soul into Thy embrace. I couldn’t help adding my own little touch to the prayer—and will You do it quickly, please?
Its throat collapsed into stinking sludge, powder lifting on the wind and sparkling in the sunlight. I coughed, deep and racking, struggling for p
urchase on the still-moving mass of almost-liquid ooze. Keep it in the sun, ohGod Jill keep it in the sun, for the love of Christ don’t let it go now.…
It squirmed and heaved, almost squirting free. If I lost my grip now it would scurry off into the alley and I’d have another fight on my hands. The longer I fought, the bigger the chance of a bite.
The scurf that had been Michael Spilham collapsed into final true death, and I let out a whispered prayer that was half a sob. Got off lucky. It was only then I realized I was bleeding from its claws, the gouges whittling deeper as acid in the powdery slime exhausted itself. The charms in my hair ran with blue sparks and the scar on my wrist throbbed. The dead body subsided, bubbling into powder, and I scraped both palms on the pavement as I backed away hurriedly, staring at the smear. Lucky, lucky, lucky.
“OhGod,” I whispered, as my left hand grabbed a gun and I cleared leather, pointing it at the stain on the pavement.
That’s the trouble with the damn things. Sometimes scurf just don’t stay dead.
My heart leapt and shivered inside me. I coughed, tasting blood and adrenaline, stripes of fire along my ribs as acid hissed and bubbled in my flesh. There was another clawstrike on my thigh, and one down my back. Hot blood dripped down my cheek. It had damn near taken out my eye.
Lucky. Jesus Christ I’m lucky. The scar pulsed, pulsed under the cuff. The burning bubbling went away, preternatural healing replacing tissue faster than the acid could burn. Most hunters are walking factories of scar tissue, healing sorcery notwithstanding, I should have been glad I don’t need healing spells.
I wasn’t. I almost never am.
After a little while I decided the flood of sunlight was enough to take care of the scurf. Besides, I couldn’t sit here with a gun out all day, could I? I cautiously hefted myself to my feet, and forced myself nearer the bubbling grease spot.
My tiger’s eye rosary bumped against my midriff. The chunk of carved ruby at my throat was warm, humming with power. The scar throbbed. Silver clinked and chimed in my hair. Everything was present and accounted for.