Redemption Alley-Jill Kismet 3

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Blond stubble covered his cheeks. He looked like a watered-down version of Hutch, weak-eyed as a mole. The lab coat covered a frame that wasn’t even wiry-strong, just wiry.

  Still, he knocked me over. Must be something in there. Looks can be deceiving, especially when it comes to Traders. And what’s the story with him and Irene?

  “The Summoning,” he whispered. “They’re not due for another week. When the moon’s dark. Then they…

  they—”

  Oh shit. A summoning? “They what?” I had a sneaking suspicion I knew. Argoth. Or other seriously bad news.

  “They won’t tell me.” He cringed against the surgical table we’d laid him on, instruments rattling. It took me a moment to figure out why he looked familiar—there was the same ratty little gleam in his eyes as in Irene’s, a gleam I wasn’t sure I liked. “Only that he is coming, and he wants this place. I keep my ears open, so does Irene. When he comes… they have the formula, they’ll make as much of it as they want—”

  “Formula for what?” And why do I have this sinking feeling like I know who “he” is?

  “For the sickness.” He cringed again as I loomed over him, even though I hadn’t moved. “For Dream.”

  I frowned. “What sickness?”

  He made a short sketching motion, arrested when I twitched, a hair away from breaking his arm.

  “Bioweapon. They came to me with samples. I thought they were from the government. They said, what can you do with this? It was a good job, I took it—and then they took Irene. Said I had to start working, and working quick, or Irene would be dead before—”

  Bioweapon? Oh Christ Jesus. “Samples?” Keep him on track, Jill.

  “From—” His eyes flicked nervously to one of the green tubes. But his face had lit up, just like a mad scientist talking about his monster. “From them. They got live ones from somewhere, a lot of them. Finally figured out to put ’em in the xarocaine and the cellular burn stops, they die but don’t rot. It’s a preservative. Used the same process for—”

  “There’s some Day-Glo purple powder over here, Jill.” Leon’s tone cut through the Trader’s babble. “All in little Ziplocs. Looks ready for shipment.”

  The Trader nodded jerkily, his hair flopping. “It is ready. It starts changing on the first hit, you can deliver it through the water supply; it could possibly go airborne if I had enough time. But I can’t figure out how to stop the replication yet. The side effects—”

  Dear God. The smell was worse now, because drafts of fresh air were spilling in the open door. A fresh gout of stench hit each time the wind shifted, and the breaths of not-so-bad air only served to underscore the reek. “Side effects?” It was like questioning a waterfall, hard to keep him on one topic, words spilling out past those sharklike teeth.

  Oh yeah. Definitely Dr. Frankenstein material.

  “These things, whatever they are… the viral replication is just endless, it remodels the genetic code and eats up hemoglobin like nobody’s business. So the Dream—that’s what I call it—hits hard and fast like a Mack truck, but the side effects, they can’t go out in the sun, their pupils get all dilated, and they get thirsty. They tear each other up, and when one of them starts to bleed—” His shudder echoed mine. “It’s in the blood. I could engineer the effect for just a quick death and stop the mutation if they would give me more time. But they said—I thought they were from the government. Who else would want something like this?”

  “Holy shit.” I eyed him. Is this for real? “You’re kidding.”

  “Once it’s perfected—”

  “Shut up.” Men like you made the atom bomb, you waste. I didn’t need any help putting together the consequences. No wonder hellbreed were crawling all over this, it had all the things they like in a weapon. But what was the connection, where was the other half of the puzzle? The sense of a missing puzzle piece returned, nagging.

  Was it just because it would cause enough death to feed a hungry high-class hellbreed just out of Hell?

  Something even worse than a talyn?

  I hate those sorts of questions.

  “I say we put a fuckin’ bullet in his head and burn this place to the ground.” Leon racked Rosita, but his eyes were steady.

  The Trader squealed like a rabbit in a trap. “Nooo! Please, no don’t kill me, please—”

  “For Christ’s sake.” I’d heard enough. “Shut the fuck up. I’m not going to kill you yet. You said something about subjects. What subjects?”

  “The test subjects. Some of them just get addicted to the Dream, they don’t die. They exhibit side effects. They’re in the east building.” He flinched again, cowering, even though I hadn’t moved. “They had Irene, I had to do what they said, I had to! ”

  Fax might know, I don’t, I heard Irene say, in her flat little voice. Definitely more to this than what Mr. Skinny was telling me. On the other hand, Irene wasn’t the most dependable source either. So, two lies to choose from?

  That’s not the issue, Jill. The issue is what we’re going to do now. Leon and I locked eyes for a long moment, weighing the situation. When he nodded, fractionally, I knew his mental calculus was the same as mine. I stepped back from the surgical table. “Cover him. I’m going to check the other buildings.”

  “Have fun.” Leon drew a Glock from a hip holster. “If I hear any ruckus, Doc-Boy here gets one in the cabeza. ”

  “I’m sure there won’t be anything.” I looked down at the Trader. “Am I right?”

  As good-cop-bad-cop routines go, it was a good one. If Fax could have lost any more color without turning transparent, he would have. “Just the subjects,” he whispered. “They… you won’t believe it until you see it.”

  Leon snorted. It was unintentionally funny, and I found myself wanting to smile too. Dispelled the urge. You have no idea what I might believe, kid. I turned on my heel, sharply, and headed for sunlight. The water on my cheeks dried as soon as I checked the angles and stepped out into the harsh glare of daylight. The fresh air was a balm after the reek of scurf, hellbreed, and lies.

  28

  Ten minutes later I stumbled back out into the glare and made it, then grabbed at the side of the building and retched, my eyes spouting water. Again, a tearing heave that came all the way from my toes. One last time before control clamped down, stomach cramping, aware I was making a low hurt sound and hating it. Focus, goddammit! It wasn’t Mikhail’s voice in my head this time, it was my own, harsh as if I had a throatful of smoke. Get a handle, Jill. Any handle will do.

  I made it to the laboratory. Leon barely glanced at me, did a double take. “Jill?” For once, all Texas bluster and drawl was erased from his voice.

  I had to try twice to speak. “Get him in the car. Take him to Galina’s and chain him the fuck up. ” I wiped at my cheeks. “I’m going to stay here and rip this fucking place apart.”

  “We been havin’ a little chat in here.” Leon’s eyes were watering from the stink too, and he looked none-toohappy. “It’s worse than you think. Some guy named Harvill—”

  My brain shuddered with what I had seen inside the south building. Dear God, their eyes… their arms, and the smell—

  I lunged into the present. Harvill. The District Attorney. Big fat redhaired good ol’ boy. Ran last year on a tough-love, three-strikes ticket. You voted for the guy, remember? “The DA is in on this?” The H. in the file. A big-time cop, one of the witnesses said. But I didn’t think of the DA’s office. Jesus. It makes sense. It makes too much goddamn sense.

  That’s the trouble with hellbreed. Sooner or later they find someone high-up to seduce. It never fails.

  “I don’t know who he is,” the Trader whined. “Just that he was a bigshot, he came in with—”

  I found myself at the side of the table, the Glock out of its holster and pressed to his forehead. “Shut. Up.”

  He did this. Willing or not, he did this. He made those… things. Dear God. “I should kill you now, for what you did to those people.”


  The weak blue eyes shimmered with tears. But under the gleam there was that hardness, the animal calculating how to survive. I’ve seen it too many times in Trader eyes—the little gleam that says everything is disposable to them, as long as they get what they want.

  I’ve seen that gleam in ordinary people too. I grew up with that avid little light shining at me from the faces of people who should have loved and protected me. I hit the street to get away from it and found out it only got deeper. I hate that queer ratlike little shine in people’s eyes. And sometimes I wonder if my own eyes hold that little gleam. When I’m considering murdering someone, Trader or criminal or hellbreed. When I’ve got my toes on the cliff edge and am staring down into the abyss. Get a hold on yourself, Jill.

  Tremors ran through my arms and legs. Don’t kill him. The voice of reason in my head was Saul’s, and I was grateful for it.

  If it had been any other voice, I’d’ve spread his brain and bone all over that fucking table.

  “Hellbreed,” I rasped. “Who came with Harvill? Which one of the motherfuckers is behind it? Who did you Trade with?” I think I already know. And if you lie to me, so help me God, I will send you to Hell right now. Cringing and sobbing, he told me, and quite a few things fell into place. Don’t kill him, kitten, Saul’s voice repeated. You know what you have to do.

  “Jill?” Leon asked again.

  Daylight’s wasting. I had too much to do, not enough time to do it in. Story of my life.

  “Those things in the east building. Are they vulnerable to UV light like—” I tipped my head back a little, indicating the scurf floating peacefully in their green tubes.

  Oh Jesus. Jesus and Mother Mary. The urge to vomit rose hard and sharp under my breastbone again. I shoved it down.

  “Y-yes—” He looked ready to plead for his life again, but something in the geography of my face changed. I felt it, skin moving on bones, from somewhere outside myself.

  The Trader shut up. Wise of him.

  “And this stuff, Dream, fire destroys it? It doesn’t become toxic in midair?” It better not. If it does, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

  He nodded, a quick little jerk of his head. The movement ended with a flinch, because the gun’s blind mouth was still pressed against his forehead so hard I felt the trembling running through him.

  “One more question.” Every muscle in my body protested when I took the gun away from his head. They know it’s possible now. Some hellbreed somewhere is going to do something like this, unless I can cut it off at the root. “Is this all of it? All the weapon, the drug, whatever it is? Everything you’ve got onsite here? Is there a backup to your research?”

  “Everything’s here—my work, all the computers. No backup, nothing. The first shipment is in planes in the hangars—”

  That was all I needed to know. I dismissed him, looked up at Leon, who stood cradling Rosita. The bright spots of color still stood out on his cheeks, and his aura sparkled through my smart eye, the same sea-urchin shape as mine. A flicker of disgust crossed his face, and I was terribly, sadly grateful that it wasn’t me he was disgusted with.

  My voice didn’t want to work properly. “Get him the fuck out of here. Now.”

  He didn’t think much of the idea. “Jill—”

  I was not in the mood. “If you don’t get him out of here, Leon, I am going to lose my temper.” Flat, quiet, just as if I was telling him what was for dinner. “Stay in touch with the Weres and keep my city together. If I’m not in town by dawn tomorrow—”

  “What the fuck are you thinking of doing?” But Leon was already moving, racking Rosita, sweeping the Trader off the table and onto his feet with a gun pressed to his side. “Give me a vowel here, darlin’.”

  “First, I’m burning down this building.” I have to erase every trace of this, or it’ll be used somewhere else. I holstered my gun with another one of those physical efforts that left me shaking, shook out my right hand, and drew on the scar. A hissing whisper filled my palm, and pale-orange, misshapen flame burst into being between my fingers.

  I barely felt the burn against my skin, I was so cold under my leather and weight of weapons. It was the absolute chilling freeze beyond rage, beyond pain, and beyond fear.

  I could wish it didn’t feel so familiar. “Then I’m burning down every fucking stick of this place, and consigning every soul in that east building to God.” I paused. “If He will take them.”

  Leon had the Trader, was dragging him toward the door. Their shadows moved in the ragged rectangle of clean sunshine, and the flames dripped from my fingers, scorching the floor. The sorcerous flame hunters are trained to call on—banefire—devours all trace of hellbreed and leaves a blessing in its wake, but for this, I needed something more.

  I needed pure destruction.

  The hellfire made a sound like strangled children whispering. Like dead souls filling up a room with angry cricket-voices. Like the click of a bullet loaded into a magazine, over and over again, with a feedback squeal as my fury escaped my control for a single moment, a breath between thoughts. The bookshelves burst into oddly pale orange flame. The hellfire laughed, wreathing my fingers, and I flung it in a wide arc, smashing against the beakers and shelves on the back wall like napalm. Glass screeched and exploded, and I backed toward the door, fire scouring wetly in a trail from my right hand. The frightening thing wasn’t how easy it was to pull that sort of power through the scar, or even the agonizing plucking against every nerve running up my right arm and into my shoulder, branching channels full of magma played like dissonant violin strings.

  The frightening thing was that the hellfire turned yellow, a clear pure yellow like sunlight, and I jerked my hand away from me, toward the green columns of floating dead scurf. Glass shattered and slime flooded the floor, bodies falling with wet thumps as the backdraft pushed me out the door, just in time too. I landed sprawled on the wooden ramp, hearing the Charger’s engine rouse itself just as the first explosion—of course, there were stocks of chemicals in the building, I was basically torching an ammo dump of viral weaponry—rocked the desert air and the fire took a deep, vast, hot breath. A belch of greasy black smoke rounded itself like bread dough rising and flared for the sky.

  Burn, someone whispered inside my head. Burn it all. And this last voice sent me scurrying, trying to shake the yellow hellfire away from my hand like hot grease, because it was Perry’s voice, and I knew that for once I was going to do exactly what it said.

  Smoke rose in a huge black smudge, a beacon underlit with bright yellow leaping flame. I shot the last mewling, crawling, burned-black thing skittering in the ashes in its approximation of a head. My gorge rose again, pointlessly, receded with a sound like a choking-dead laugh. The hangars were burning, sharp guncracks of explosions sending flaming debris arcing across the runway. The entire place looked like a bomb had hit it, except the last building. The sun hung low in the west, a gigantic bloody eye. Someone has to have noticed this by now. A tired sound escaped my lips, sounding suspiciously like a giggle.

  The only building I’d left almost untouched was the southerly new one. The Trader said the evocation was due in a week, and a glance inside the kicked-in door had shown me a fresh concrete floor with a pentagram carved deep—and it was definitely a penta gram, not a penta cle— inside a circle and square, candles ranked on fluted iron holders, and the reek of hellbreed so strong and thick it almost knocked me over despite all the varied and wonderful stenches that are a hunter’s life.

  The hellfire, burning steadily on my fingertips now, running from the scar like greasepaint, had turned green at its tips. Most sorcerous flame works on a spectrum, and I shouldn’t have been able to produce more than red flame tinged at the edges with a little orange.

  Instead, I was cycling up through the spectrum. I’d seen Perry produce blue hellfire once or twice, and it made me wonder. How much of this could he feel, sitting in his office in the Monde? Was he curious about what I was doing? Was I u
sing up all my stock of preternatural power in this one futile gesture?

  If I was, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. There were more immediate problems to solve. They have a backup somewhere. They would be stupid not to. Or this is a backup. Still, the statement I was making might make any hellbreed think twice before visiting my town. Even the ones still burning in Hell’s embrace.

  Even one who had killed my teacher’s teacher? Wasn’t that the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question? If they released Dream—drug, bioweapon, whatever it was—on my city as this Argoth climbed free of Hell, the massive suffering would be a huge banquet. It would feed him, and with that sort of energetic jolt he’d become a very serious proposition indeed.

  And I wasn’t a Jack Karma, capable of containing that sort of thing. Not even close. Not even with Perry’s scar on my arm—a scar that might turn into a liability if Perry was ordered by a much stronger hellbreed to Do Something About Me.

  Get cracking, Jill. There’s work to do.

  In the center of the pentagram the altar stood, a chunk of wood probably from a hangman’s tree under draped black satin stiff with noisome fluids. Various implements, hissing with malice, scattered over the altar’s surface. I took them all in with a glance, shaking my hand. The hellfire didn’t want to go away. It kept popping and hissing, chortling at me, drawing strength from the contagion in the air. Each piece of silver I wore spat blue sparks. I shut my eyes, my smart eye piercing the meat of my eyelid to show me the shape of things under the surface of the world. The evocation was indeed very close to being finished. Had this continued, on some night under a dark moon the walls between the physical plane and Hell’s screaming, shifting flames would have gapped for just the tiniest moment, and something could have slipped through, not just as a bad dream or a walking shade like an arkeus, only able to coalesce into physical form when someone bargained with it and gave it a toehold.

  No, something real would step through. It only took a moment, a knife’s-edge worth of time. And what would a creature like Argoth want with my town? Revenge on a hunter of Karma’s lineage? Something coincidental? A darker purpose?