Hellbent

by Cherie Priest

  PRAISE FOR CHERIE PRIEST’S

  BLOODSHOT

  “Witty, fast-paced, and fabulous, Bloodshot is a refreshing addition to the urban fantasy genre. Priest’s darkly hilarious tale will leave readers anxious for more adventures with the charmingly neurotic Raylene and her unlikely entourage. A vastly entertaining read!”

  —JEANIENE FROST, New York Times bestselling author of This Side of the Grave

  “With Bloodshot, Priest catapults the kick-ass urban fantasy heroine into the realm of the truly bad-ass. Raylene’s fascinating mix of the old ultra-violence with snark and self-deprecation had me riveted. The combination of such an interesting character with a plot that continually out-thunk me makes Bloodshot one of my favorite reads this year.”

  —NICOLE PEELER, author of Tempest’s Legacy

  “Cherie Priest’s urban fantasy debut is a fun, fast-paced adventure with a dash of romance and a heaping scoop of conspiracy. I’m looking forward to more, especially if Sister Rose is onstage.”

  —LUCY A. SNYDER, author of Shotgun Sorceress

  “Bloodshot is, hands down, my favorite urban fantasy book of 2010. By turns frightening, funny, and fabulous, it was a joy to read and damn near impossible to put down. It’s a ton of fun, brim-full of Cherie’s wonderful, quirky voice and deliciously twisted imagination. More, please!”

  —KAT RICHARDSON, author of Labyrinth

  “Cherie Priest delivers a fantastic urban fantasy that takes us back to the genre’s noir roots and proves there’s still new blood to be found in old tropes. The engrossing, complex mystery and smart, refreshing heroine makes this one a must-read for genre fans!”

  —KELLY MEDING, author of Another Kind of Dead

  “Cherie Priest’s Bloodshot is fun from start to finish. A new, unique take on vampires coupled with Priest’s excellent writing makes for something very special. True quality always shows, and Bloodshot definitely shows it. I loved it!”

  —STACIA KANE, author of Unholy Ghosts

  “Wickedly sharp plotting and unforgettable characters make this a standout book. Priest’s novels are a must-read if you like your vampires with fangs.”

  —CAITLIN KITTREDGE, author of Bone Gods

  “A 100-year-old vampire thief runs afoul of secret biological experimenters—first of an urban fantasy series from the versatile author of Boneshaker.… Brutally unsentimental narrator Raylene … makes a quirky and charming if bloodthirsty host. A refreshing and addictive lure for readers uninterested in fangs, bats, capes and hissing.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Steampunk and gothic author Priest dives into urban fantasy with this entertaining conspiracy thriller.… Raylene’s breezy, first-person voice and quirky views on life add plenty of bite to the story.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Priest writes a fast-paced mix of caper novel and thriller that features realistically flawed characters. Plenty of action and a fairly high body count (mostly bad guys) make this a good suggestion for fans of Christopher Farnsworth’s Blood Oath and other crime readers who don’t mind a few vampires.”

  —Booklist

  “Priest at her strongest, combining action with a few laughs and a razor-sharp wit … I heartily enjoyed this one.… Cherie Priest is one of the freshest and most original voices on the shelves today. Bloodshot, which begins a new series, is the perfect introduction to this smart and sassy writer. I’ll be eagerly waiting for the next Raylene story.”

  —Owlcat Mountain Reviews

  “Priest puts enough of a twist on this vampire book to make it a worthwhile read. Perfect for: Fans of vampire books and those who like strong, snarky heroines.”

  —TriCities

  “A great, fun read with a very different take on vampires than most books offer.”

  —Suicide Girls

  “Even if you’ve been experiencing some vampire fatigue lately, Cherie Priest’s smart-mouth, sticky-fingered protagonist is still worth spending 350 pages with. Instead of trying to reinvent the vampire genre, Priest just gives it new life and potency.… This book only needs one thing to be fantastic, and that’s Raylene’s voice. There’s an entertainingly aggressive wackiness about her.… She’s witty and sharp and excellently lecherous.”

  —io9

  Hellbent is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Spectra Trade Paperback Original

  Copyright © 2011 by Cherie Priest

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Spectra, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Priest, Cherie.

  Hellbent / Cherie Priest.

  p. cm. — (Cheshire Red reports ; bk. 2)

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52063-0

  1. Thieves—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. Seattle (Wash.)—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3616.R537H45 2011

  813′.6—dc22

  2011019398

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  Cover design: Jae Song

  Cover illustration: based on Shutterstock images by argo 74 (woman), Velychko (cobbled street), Jason

  Stitt (hand and gun), Ermes (façade)

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  1

  It sounded like a good idea at the time, which is probably going to be on my tombstone—along with a catty footnote about poor impulse control. But when Horace Bishop called me, practically breathless with delight and greed, telling me he was in Portland so we should get together and have a drink or something, I said okay, even though I probably should’ve said “I’d sooner wear plaid.”

  I don’t wear plaid. Ever.

  I don’t wear orange, either—not that there’s anything inherently wrong with it. Really, it’s more of a coloring thing. I’m a solid winter—blue-black hair and so fair I’m practically translucent; it comes with being undead. Orange always makes me look like I’m having liver problems, so I skip it—just like deep down I suspected I ought to skip that date with Horace, but what was I going to do? He already knew where I lived (roughly), and he already knew my price scale (more or less), and he was practically my agent. Or my pimp.

  Anyway, Horace was vibrating—talking so fast I could hardly understand him. And what was he doing on the West Coast? He promised to tell me in person, and since he was flying back to New York from the Seattle-Tacoma airport, it wasn’t terribly far out of his way to bounce into town for a conspiratorial adult beverage.

  I waited for him at a bar on Capitol Hill. I don’t live in that neighborhood anymore, but that’s the point. He knows I live in Seattle, but the less specific his knowledge is, the happier I am. The truth is, I kind of trust him. I mean, if I were wounded and bloody and practically dying in New York City and I had no place else to go, I could probably fling myself onto his couch and generally assume that he wouldn’t
stake me in my sleep. After all, I’ve earned him a metric assload of money over the years. And money has to mean something, doesn’t it?

  Yes, I totally laughed a little, just now.

  I know good and well he might sell me out for the next best offer that presented itself, but I’d like to think he’d hesitate. Just for a second or two, if for no other reason than the fact that I’m very, very good at my job—and that I’m excessively vindictive. Even if he could reliably replace me, he couldn’t assume I wouldn’t track him down later and peel his toenails off.

  Maybe I’d better give you some context for this contentious relationship, before you start thinking I’m completely unhinged for hanging out with this asshole.

  Horace is a director of acquisitions for a prominent NYC auction house that will go unnamed here, for the sake of discretion. Basically, it’s his job to scout for expensive objects for museums, private collectors, and other assorted people and institutions with more money than common sense. He deals in everything from paintings to gemstones, archaeological finds to vintage paperwork. And sometimes, his clients want a piece that is not, shall we say, strictly for sale. But for the right price, Horace will find it anyway, and he’ll acquire it, and he’ll pass it along. Usually, this process requires me—somewhere right in the middle, doing all the dirty work and collecting a hefty finder’s fee.

  So you can see where I get off calling him my agent. Or pimp.

  I’m a thief, though I shine it up with an assortment of euphemisms. I’m in antiquities acquisitions. I’m a collection consultant. I’m in the security analysis business. But the bottom line is that I freelance, and if you have to ask how much I charge, you can’t afford me.

  Horace can afford me, and he pays up front in cash—or after the job, depending on the circumstances. He’s one of the only people on earth who gets away with paying me on delivery. We’ve built up some trust on that front, at least. It’s a sacred deal between us: I always produce, and he always pays. We have yet to let each other down, and I know of few married couples who could say the same.

  So you see, it’s not like we hate each other. It’s like … our love is very specific. And limited. And confrontational.

  Even so, I’ll confess to feeling a tiny thrill of novelty at the prospect of setting eyes on him again. It’d been several years since we’d been in the same room, due to nothing more enormous than the physical distance between us—though it also serves to keep both of our asses covered from a plausible deniability standpoint. If something ever happens and he’s caught, or (God forbid) I’m caught, there’s virtually no physical evidence to tie us to each other.

  This imparted a slightly illicit feel to the meeting.

  And anyway, hell. He’d be more normal company than I’d been enjoying for the previous few months. If you’re familiar with my previous adventure, then you already know some of my story. But in case you aren’t, here are the CliffsNotes.

  One: I’m a vampire. In the words of the immortal Bauhaus (you see what I did there?) “Undead undead undead.” I don’t turn into anything cool (or anything uncool either, for that matter), I don’t fly, and I don’t have a funny accent. I do drink blood, move really fast, look really pale, and have permanently dilated pupils—which makes me look a little like one of those creepy paintings of big-eyed kids from the seventies.

  Two: I’m often mistaken for a man. Not because I’m particularly dude-like, but because international intelligence officials find it difficult to believe that a thief as accomplished and sneaky as yours truly could possibly be a woman. Far be it from me to remove any heads from asses on this point.

  Three: I live in downtown Seattle, in the old quarter called Pioneer Square. Which is a fancy way of saying I live in the decrepit industrial ghetto, except that’s not really fair. It’s the kind of place where you can go a couple of blocks in any direction and land in a different neighborhood entirely—a tourist district waning out near Elliott Bay, the old merchant and fishing district on the port end of the coastline, or of course the blocks of decaying warehouses and factories that haven’t seen any action since the Depression.

  Four: I used to have a warehouse in this same quarter where I stashed all my orphaned goodies, collected over the years. It got raided by the feds. So I abandoned it and bought another one, about six blocks away because I’m a creature of habit. This new base of operations is much nicer than the old one; I renovated it from top to bottom before giving up on my condo (which was also raided—long story, see previous adventure) and moving into one of the top-floor lofts.

  Five: The other two top-floor lofts are occupied by other people. On one corner I have Pepper and Domino, last name unimportant since I don’t think they’ve ever told me what it is. Domino is a fourteen-year-old jackass who drives me up a goddamn wall, but his little sister Pepper is about eight years old and as cute as a bunny in a sweater. They’re sort of my pet people. This is to say, they squatted at my other warehouse so long, I eventually figured out that I’d inadvertently adopted them. At the other corner of the floor lives Ian Stott, who serves as a buffer between me and the kids. He’s a vampire, too, and he’s blind. He’s also preposterously good looking, and we have a very awkward but not entirely unpleasant relationship. We’re friends who make out every now and again. And now he lives with me.

  I didn’t plan this family-style arrangement. I didn’t even want it, but things just happened this way and then I didn’t know what to do, so I ran with it. I fear change. But it turns out that I’m not quite as good at saying no as I’ve always considered myself to be.

  Besides, Ian used to have a ghoul who helped him find his way around—I jokingly referred to him as the “Seeing Eye ghoul”—but then he got killed, and it wasn’t really my fault but I still felt responsible. Despite being blind, Ian’s a total badass in his own right, as I learned the scary way. But he still needs help buying clothes, writing checks, and locating stuff.

  Sometimes I pawn him off on Domino and Pepper. Domino doesn’t much mind it—and Christ knows the little shithead needs to learn some responsibility before it’s too damn late—but Pepper took to it like a duck to water. She loves feeling useful, and she loves helping Ian go through his clothes, sort his socks, and learn his way along the stinking, damp alleyways that make up most of our neighborhood map.

  Then, of course, there’s the fabulous number six thing you ought to know about: The only other member of my circle is either a first-rate ex–Navy SEAL named Adrian deJesus or a divine drag queen called Sister Rose, depending on the wardrobe and the wig.

  Oh yeah. Thing number seven: I digress. A lot.

  So those are the only people I see on a regular basis, and they are fairly new additions to my life, so I’m still getting used to all the socializing.

  Horace Bishop, on the other hand, I’ve known for over a decade.

  And believe it or not, he’s more ordinary than all those yahoos I just listed above. I think. But like I already confessed, it’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to sit down for a face-to-face.

  I checked my watch.

  He wasn’t late, but also wasn’t as early as I would’ve preferred. This is unfair, I realize. Just because I’m a crazy person who has to be twenty minutes early for everything doesn’t mean other people must live by the same standard. But knowing this didn’t stop me from glancing down at my watch again, then reaching for my cell phone to make sure that my watch wasn’t wrong, because sometimes it is, okay?

  But the watch wasn’t wrong. Not according to my phone.

  The bar was starting to fill up with the usual Cap Hill mix of gays in couples and strays, twenty-something hipsters, and homeless people who hadn’t yet been pegged as such and asked to leave. When the lone waitress gave me a look that told me to place an order or get out, I asked for a cup of water I wasn’t going to drink and a glass of red wine that I planned to down.

  I didn’t like the pressing nearness of all the people, and if I’d had any idea the joint
would be so very hopping, I would’ve certainly picked someplace else—even though I’d originally chosen it precisely because I suspected Horace would hate it. Call me antagonistic, but his natural habitat is more “minimalist, with a splash of snobbery” than “Pacific Northwest logger wannabes and their strung-out beards.” By “beards,” of course, I mean their fake girlfriends. And also their Castro fanboy face-lawns.

  But given my druthers (and what precisely does that mean, anyway? I’ve always wondered) I would’ve liked something equally lowbrow and gauche, but less densely populated.

  Too late to change my mind.

  And just when I was thinking the little scumbag was going to be late, purely to torture me—as if I ever did anything to him—the door opened with a digital chime that almost no one else heard over the shouted orders for beer or fruity drinks and the busker somebody’d ill-advisedly brought indoors and given a microphone.

  I heard the chime. I craned my neck to look around the ass of the single serving girl, and there he was. All five-foot-six of him, impeccably dressed in a pin-striped Brooks Brothers suit and a pink tie, because yes, he is that secure in his masculinity.

  For a long time I thought he was gay. Then gradually, over the years, I realized that he’s not attracted to anything on earth except money. And maybe himself.

  He saw me and his freshly threaded eyebrows lifted in a chola arch of … something. It wasn’t surprise, obviously. And it probably wasn’t delight, though it might’ve been amusement, or maybe curiosity. I haven’t changed any since last he saw me. For that matter, I haven’t changed since 1921.