The phone was ringing. I tried not to feel like an idiot as I reholstered my guns. It never rains but it pours. Black humor tilted under the surface of the words. I made it to the kitchen, letting the phone ring, the noise sawing across my nerves. A cupboard squeaked when I opened it, and I lifted down the bottle of Jim Beam as carefully as if it was a Fabergé egg. Jesus. Jesus Christ. The habit of drinking helps more than you’d think with something like this. The ringing stopped. The answering machine clicked on. The same few seconds of silence as always, then a hiss of inhaled breath, static blurring over the line as he started to speak.
“Kiss.” Carp sounded ragged. “Goddammit, Kismet, answer your fuckin’ phone. Pick up if you’re there.”
Sorry, honey. No can do. I uncapped the bottle, took a healthy draft. It burned all the way down, but the heat helped to steady me. My metabolism burns off alcohol like nobody’s business, but it’s still… comforting.
“Things are gettin fuckin’ ridiculous,” he continued, the words spilling over each other. “Jesus. There’s a lead. If you’re there, if you get this message, there’s this place downtown on First and Alohambra. It’s a club, the Kat Klub. I got a line on someone who knows something, she works there. A waitress named Irene. I’m goin’ in.”
My heart did its best to strangle me by climbing up into my throat. I slammed the bottle on the counter, sloshing the amber liquid inside, and bolted for the bedroom.
“Carp!” I yelled, pointlessly. “Goddamit!” As if he could hear me. But he hung up before I could scoop the handset out of its cradle.
“Shit!” I yelled, and almost hurled the damn thing across the room. “Oh, fuck. Fuckitall, no.”
I barely paused to grab a dose of ammunition, wriggle into a fresh T-shirt and leather pants—the ones I wore smelled of hellbreed, gas, and burning vinyl, as did my coat—and to take another long jolt off the bottle before hitting the door at a run.
Please, God, don’t let me be too late.
18
First and Alohambra is a ritzy northern part of downtown. Despite spending most of my time in alleys and on rooftops, I also know where to find gentrification if I need it—upscale eateries, boutiques, art galleries, and the smell of money. A fair amount of the nightside has its fingers in high-cash trades; the rich can pay for pleasures that might not be strictly earthly.
I like to think it doesn’t matter, that I pursue every criminal equally. God knows I try to care a bit more for the poor, since they get shafted most often. What’s that old song? It’s the rich what gets the pleasure, and the poor what gets the blame.
Truer words never spoken. No matter how hard I try to even the score, basic inequality looms over human life from cradle to grave.
Getting more pessimistic all the time, Jill. Why is that?
I crouched on the rooftop, watching the front of the Kat Klub, a long-time fixture of downtown Santa Luz. Its current incarnation dates back to the Jazz Age. The normals think it’s just a restaurant with a cabaret dinner show that turns into a nightclub at about midnight, shutting down just before dawn in merry defiance of the liquor laws. It’s a venerable institution, housed in the bottom of the granite bulk of the Piers Tower, 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.
One thing is for sure, there is no sacredness left in those walls.
The heat of the day had run out like the heat of the Beam in my belly. I crouched, and considered. If I went in my usual way, guns blazing, there would go my advantage in being thought dead. On the other hand, if Carp was in there he needed all the help he could get. And hellbreed would know better than to think a burning car would do me in.
The thought that any hellbreed would know that one punk scarecrow wouldn’t be enough to do me in, either, was not particularly comforting. Something about this was stinking even worse than the mess left on my floor. That was going to be a pain in the ass to remove.
Why are you dilly-dallying, Jill? If Carp steps inside that place, you’ll have to do more than bleed to get him out.
I weighed every possible alternative. Cold hard logic said to just keep watch, see what happened, and return once I’d developed some other leads—with the benefit of whatever cops involved in this thinking I was dead, so I didn’t have to worry about more bullets flying my way from that quarter, at least. It was the way I was trained to think, a straightforward totting up of averages and percentages, the greater good balanced against personal cost.
Screw that. Carper’s in there.
You don’t get to be a hunter without knowing when to buck the odds.
I rose to my feet slowly, breathing. Just like burning a hellbreed hole, Jill. Go fast and deadly, you don’t have Saul with you this time. You did it on your own before he showed up. My fingers crept to the leather cuff over the scar; I undid the buckles and peeled it away.
Cold air mouthed my skin with hundreds of vicious little wet lips. I let out a soft breath, every muscle tightening as the welter of sensation spilled through nerve endings already pulled taut with worry and stress. It’s gotten stronger. Hasn’t it? Oh, God.
The cold machine inside my head jotting down percentages replied that if it had, that was good; it would give me an edge I sorely needed. I would worry about the cost later. Story of my life. I was mortgaging myself by inches—the most dangerous way to do it.
Well, I never did like doing things by halves. Go for the quick tear, Jill. The rooftop quivered slightly, the world flexing around me. I was pulling on etheric force, the scar moaning and thundering against my wrist. Too much power for me to really control, it wasn’t obeying my will. A piece of my own flesh, turning traitor. My aura sparkled in the ether, a sea-urchin of light. I leapt out into free air, physics bending and the pavement smoking under a sudden application of strain. I hit the street like a ton of bricks, bleeding off some of the etheric force boiling through me and leaving behind a star-shaped pattern of cracks; streaked through a gap in late-night traffic toward the door—a massive, iron-bound oaken monstrosity, guarded by two bouncers just this side of gorilla with flat-shining Trader eyes behind smoked sunglasses and the taint of Hell swirling in their once-human auras. A waitress named Irene. But first, we get Carper, and we make a statement. The only question was whether or not to shoot the bouncers. I was already going too fast; I hit the door with megaton force, sharp-spiked edges of my aura fluorescing into the visible as blue sparks crackled off every piece of silver jewelry I carried. Oak splintered, iron buckled, and my boots thudded home, I rode the door down like a surfboard, my knees bent when it hit the parquet inside; I was already leaping, a compact ball of bloodlust and action, my coat snapping like a flag in a high breeze.
The restaurant was down a short hall behind swinging soundproofed doors. A skinny hat-check girl with the brackish aura of a Trader bared her teeth, cowering back into the plush darkness of her booth. Three more bouncers converged on me, I shot two, pistol-whipped the third, and plunged down the hall. I hit the swinging doors so hard they both broke against the walls and was suddenly in an oasis of silk palms, hanging fake greenery, and the quiet tinkling sound of a fountain made of whipped glass and creamy spun metal. Glass eyes regarded me, shining in the soft light. There were at least a hundred stuffed cats, maybe more, draped in the greenery, their fur brushed and glossy and their fangs exposed. From little calico housecats to sleek stuffed panthers, even four or five (I shivered to see them) cougars arranged artistically on branches with bark too rough and shiny to be real.
The place was stuffed with hellbreed and Traders. Linen-draped tables in nooks shrouded by false plants clustered around a wide glassy dance floor, currently hosting a set of contortionists in spangled costumes—
three unbreasted girls and two stick-thin boys, tall and stretched-out, all with blank dusted eyes and empty loose mouths—writhing around each other. They didn’t even pause when I shot the maître d’. Murmured c
onversation stopped. The maître d’ collapsed, half his head blown away and the sudden sharp stink of hellbreed death exploding with the oatmeal of his brain.
I eyed them all, they watched me. The scar thundered and prickled, running with sharp diamond insect feet against my skin. “Huh.” My voice was unnaturally loud in the stillness. “Must have forgotten my reservation.”
Forks hung, paused in midair. The fountain plashed, sequins on the contortionists’ costumes scratched, and the sounds of clinking and cooking came from the open kitchen, set along the back wall. Later on in the night it would convert to a bar, and ranked bottles of liquor glowed mellow behind a counter where hellbreed bellied up, the old-fashioned equipment of a soda fountain gleaming as it dispensed booze—and other liquids and powders.
I scanned the whole room once. Everything was frozen in place except the contortionists, twisted into pretzels. One of them distended her jaw with a crack, and made a low groaning sound as her spine extended into a hoop.
Great. “A waitress.” I kept my tone conversational. “Named Irene.” One thumb clicked back the hammer on a gun, the snick very loud. “Now.”
A clattering crash, my eyes flicked toward the sound. A black-haired Trader, as thin and beautiful as the rest of them, had dropped her tray. The short black skirt on her French-maid uniform made a starched sound as she backed up under my gaze, blundering into a knot of hellbreed and Traders who scattered in a flash of uniforms—harlequins, maids, one female in a super-retro Batgirl costume— what the hell, I thought, and promptly dismissed it.
I took two steps forward before a table full of Traders erupted into motion and things got seriously interesting—but not before I got a flash of hellbreed and Traders parting to show a slumped body on a table, blood bright red and human decorating the linen, and Carp’s blue eyes wide open with terror and glazed with either death or unconsciousness.
Four shots, whip cracking across a Trader’s face and snapping back, I kicked; my steel-toed boot caught the snarling hellbreed just under the chin with a sound like thin glass wrapped in bread dough when you drop a hammer on it. Clearing a hellbreed hole is messy, even with heavy-duty sorcery and silverjacket lead. Thin black ichor coated the floor, not yet ankle-deep but we were going to get there. I landed on the table, heels slamming down bare inches from Carp’s head on either side. Stood over him, gun in one hand, whip in the other. Spared a quick glance down—his eyes had half-closed, and his mouth wet-flickered, closing, opened again.
He’s alive. Thank God. Now to get him out of here.
The world froze between one moment and the next, every hellbreed and Trader in the place dropping to the ground like they’d all been caught with cyanide Kool-Aid. The doors from the kitchen swung open, a wave of coldness pouring through the room, and the tinkling of the fountain began to seriously get on my fucking nerves.
Dainty, delicate, and dolled up in a red kimono, Shen An Dua stepped between the doors. They swung shut behind her and framed her with blank industrial steel; it was a good look for her. Catslit yolk-yellow eyes cradled in slight epicanthic folds swept the room, waist-length blue-black hair with the body of well-oiled straw was pulled into some sort of elaborate confection atop her well-modeled head. Probably matches the fountain, I thought with an internal snigger, and the scar on my wrist gave such a burst of burning pain my fingers almost clenched.
Great. Just great. Her aura was the deep sonorous bruising of a full hellbreed, the taint of Hell warping the strings of the physical world. Plucking, like little flabby fingers, the harpstrings of this place of flesh. I pointed the gun, let it settle naturally so the bullet would follow its own path of consequence right between her eyes. Decided that the best defense, so to speak, would be a good offense. Hey, it’s my usual method. Along with ripping Band-Aids off in one quick jerk and throwing myself off buildings after hellbreed, you could even call it my job.
“All right, bitch.” I bit off the end of the sentence. “Irene. The waitress. Bring her out, and maybe I won’t burn this whole pile of bad taste to the ground.”
Shen placed her small hands together and bowed from the waist, a slight inclination of her upper body.
“Kismet. You honor our humble business with your presence.”
“Can the so-solly routine, Shen. Bring out the fucking waitress, or I start wasting paying customers and staff. Your call.”
The tip of a tongue, far too pink and far too glistening-wet to be human, crept out and touched her candyapple lips. “What is the nature of her sin, avenging one?”
Perry asks me that occasionally. It’s some kind of formula in their weird twisted society, I suppose. Not that I cared enough to ask. “You just let me worry about that, hellspawn.” My pulse eased, settling into a hard rhythm, slower than the energy demand of combat but a helluva lot higher than just lounging on my couch.
“Hand her over for questioning. And while you’re at it, sit yourself down and prepare to answer a few questions yourself.”
Her smile broadened. Her teeth were white bone behind bleeding lips, and her cheeks plumped up adorably. The kimono swished slightly as she settled—maybe on her heels, maybe not. I didn’t know what was under the long skirts she habitually wore, and experience has taught me not to even guess. “I do not think you understand the situation, hunter.”
Oh, you did not just start this game with me. I didn’t lose my temper. Instead, I squeezed the trigger. The report smashed all the air in the room, silver in my hair alive with blue sparks, their crackling suddenly a counterpoint to the dishes crashing in the kitchen.
“Huh. Will you look at that.” I sounded damn near gleeful, a laugh riding the razor edge my voice had become. “A thousand apologies, most honorable Shen An Dua. I must have become irritated. Do you want to see what’ll happen if you make me angry? ”
Black strings of hair fell in her face. I’d shot whatever architecture underpinned her elaborate coiffure—a trick no less amazing because it was only half-intentional. It had occurred to me at the very last moment that maybe just killing her would be a tactical error in here.
But oh, it would be so satisfying.
That was a bad thought to have, because it was treading right on the edge. I didn’t care as much as I should right now. Getting killed a few times will do that to you. Carper made a thin moaning sound. I didn’t want to think about what had probably happened to him before I quit dithering and busted down the door. Instead, I shook the whip a little, its flechettes jingling. The circle of hellbreed and Traders around the table, like darkness pressing against a sphere of candlelight, shivered at the tinkling sweet sound.
The situation quivered on the edge of violence. If I was going to really get into it here, I would have Carp to protect. It would handicap me.
Deal with it, Jill.
Shen’s fingers flicked. I tensed, but a blood-haired female—the mop was really amazing, crimson hair to her nipped-in waist, a sequined maroon sheath just like Mae West’s hugging dead-white curves—was pushed forward out of the crowd. She had a pale, hard little face with the rotten bloom of hellish beauty on it like scurf powder on blood, and her eyes were dark and liquid under the flat shine of a Trader.
“This is the one you seek.” Shen hissed.
Great. Now I had to figure out how to get us all out of here.
“Now we’re all going to be civilized, aren’t we?” The whip moved, tick-tock, just like a clock pendulum, before it coiled almost of its own accord and was stowed in its proper place. My free hand now touched a gun butt, but I didn’t draw just yet. “I’m taking the waitress and this—” My heel gently prodded Carp’s temple, he made a thin moaning sound of a man caught in a nightmare, “with me.” My gun eased away from Shen, the assembled hellbreed flinched under its one-eyed stare. Then it came back to the mistress of the Kat Klub, settled on her forehead. If I kill her, the rest of them will swarm me. She knows it. Think fast, wabbit.
“Anybody have any problems with that?”
Dead s
ilence. The kitchen had quieted too, maybe finally noticing something was amiss out here in the dining room.
Shen made another quick movement, her dainty hands fluttering. I almost pulled the trigger—but no, the assembled damned pulled away, crawling or skipping, pressing back as if I had the plague. Leaving a nice clear corridor between the mistress of the Kat Klub and yours truly. Great. Wonderful. Jill, this is going to hurt.
“You and your master will pay for this.” Fat, oily strings of black hair writhed over Shen An Dua’s face, tangling together like live things. She didn’t look half so pretty now, her eyes alive with running egg-soft flame and her upper lip lifting like a cat smelling something awful.
My master? Mikhail’s dead. “My teacher’s in Valhalla.” Nothing in the words but flat finality. If Shen thought mentioning Misha would yank my chain enough to get me to make a mistake, she was either stupid
—or holding something in reserve. And whatever else Shen An Dua is, she’s not stupid. “You can’t touch him, bitch.”
“His is not the hand that holds your leash, hunter.” Her razorpearl teeth showed in a snarl, all the more chilling because of the full-cheeked sweetness of her face. The kimono’s skirt rustled, shapes bulging underneath it. “Tell the master of the Monde he will pay for this. ”
It was so out of left field I almost couldn’t connect the words together. Perry? Oh good God. Please. “If you think I’m here for him, you’re wrong. Perry has no hold on me.” Other than the fact that I’d rather deal with him than you any day of the week, since he has a vested interest in keeping me alive so he can fuck with me. I hopped down from the table, the gun tracking smoothly. The waitress flinched, cowering, I eyed her.
“Pick him up, Trader.”
“You will not—” Shen began, and my heartrate eased, smoothing out, as I lifted my head and regarded her again. They could all hear my pulse, and the sudden calm washing over me was as ominous as a thunderstorm.