Redemption Alley

by Lilith Saintcrow

  On the side opposite the cages were huge industrial refrigerators, their slick chrome sides dewed with scurf slime… and blood. The scurf powder was running in thin crackling trails across the tacky-wet handprints and whorls of human claret. I knew what fridges this size were used for, but I was still miserably compelled to open one cautiously, with Leon and Rosita covering me.

  Racks and racks of bottled blood. Hanging corpses, just like sides of beef, swaying gently when I touched them. Each fridge could hold about twenty bodies on neat rows of hooks, each cased in crackling plastic—and each with brown skin, an undertone of gray death to them. When I approached I could see the neat excisions—organs taken out, the cavities of the belly and chest opened with surgical precision, the rest of the body just plain muscle mass to be disposed of. The thighs were flayed, probably for bone marrow harvest.

  “What the fuck?” Leon was having a little trouble with this.

  So was I. “These are probably all illegal immigrants. The manifests up in the office have them shipped over the border by coyotes, by the truckful. They’re transferred to a rail line and shipped in. Held in the pens with the doors there. We’ll find surgical facilities here—”

  “For what?”

  “Organ donation, definitely unwilling. The scurf take care of the remains. They were in the other pens. There’s hellbreed involved, and cops. The organs are taken to an airfield about twenty miles out in the desert if the gasoline receipts are any indication. With the initials ARA. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

  “Huh.” He didn’t ask the next question, knowing I’d answer it anyway.

  “Selling to rich people who don’t like waiting in line for transplants.” My stomach twisted again. Each crackling plastic bag was a life, goddammit, someone who had wanted the American dream badly enough to risk being shipped over the border one way or another. If they hadn’t ended up here, they probably would have ended up working dead-end jobs, trying like hell to keep their heads above water. Maids, construction workers, fruit pickers, yardworkers, carwash hands—all those jobs people with my skin color couldn’t be bothered to do for themselves or pay someone decently for.

  And this is where it ended up. Used and discarded one way or another, human beings reduced to empty soda cans.

  “Why the scurf, though?” Leon shuddered. “There has to be more. Has to be.”

  “Getting rid of evidence? And it’s a good way to keep me occupied and off their back. Not to mention if someone has a grudge against me.”

  “And the cops trying to kill you?”

  “Probably without the hellbreed’s knowledge, whoever it is. If the ’breed knew they’d have ’em use silver bullets and I’d’ve been in much worse shape.” My own shudder ran below the surface of my skin. “Let’s finish checking and get the hell out of here.”

  “You got it, darlin’.”

  Checking the other fridges was a matter of minutes and nausea. Leon was definitely green by the time we finished, and I wasn’t far behind.

  I stepped out of the last fridge, my eyes on the pen opposite, its gaping door. The padlock was busted—probably Weres. If anyone survived this mess, the Weres would test them for scurf, and probably try to get them home.

  Not that it mattered much. Whoever was locked in these cages would have nightmares the rest of their lives, survivor’s guilt, and probably be back over the border within a month working at a low-paying dead-end job because their family had to eat.

  Jesus.

  “I’ve heard of some goddamn stupid things in my life, but this takes the cake and the whole fuckin’ picnic too. What sort of shortsighted idiot would ship scurf into a clean territory? Even hellbreed ain’t that stupid.” Leon touched a busted padlock, watched as the whole chain-link cage shivered.

  I closed the fridge door. The sound of it clicking shut was loud in the stillness. Something still isn’t right here. Something—

  I’d opened my mouth, but Leon and I both froze, our eyes meeting. I didn’t have to ask if he’d heard it.

  A footstep, sliding and soft, and definitely not human. Instinct placed it—around the corner of the L, someone had come in the main door and was picking their way, quietly, over the rubble.

  I slid a gun easily from its holster. Drew silence over myself like a veil, and started considering my options just as other sliding sounds told me our guest, whoever and whatever it was, had brought company.

  22

  Down!” I yelled, and Leon dropped as I opened fire, silver-laden bullets punching through the shell of the third hellbreed. Two down, six to go, and things weren’t looking good even before the whip crackled; Leon rolled and I already knew he was going to be too slow, too slow as the ’breed snarled, thin black ichor splattering in a high arc as I brought the whip around, the strike uncoiling from my hip as chain-link rattled under my boots. Not the best footing in the world, but the chance bounce propelled Leon on his way as I leapt, my focus narrowing to keeping them off him.

  It was a mistake, one I realized even as I was in the air, committed to the movement and turning to present as small a target as possible, my boot solidly cracking against the ’breed’s already-lacerated face. Kinetic force transferred, I stopped dead and dropped down to land splay-footed. The brunet ’breed went flying back, crashing into two of his fellows with a sound like sides of beef flung together hard enough to crack steel-reinforced bones.

  I caught my balance and heard Leon scrambling to his feet behind me. My lips peeled away from my teeth, a silent snarl that shook the whole building, light fixtures swaying and making the shadows do a knife-edged dance.

  No. It wasn’t my snarl. It was someone else’s, thrumming subsonic like tectonic plates grinding together.

  “Hold!” The command spilled darkness like wine through the air, and the ’breed all dropped, cringing, flattened under a wave of Hell-tainted power. “Stay your hand, avenging one. We are not your enemies.”

  Of all the things you could say, that’s probably the biggest, fattest lie. I froze. I knew that voice.

  “Shit,” Leon whispered, and I wholeheartedly agreed.

  The whip coiled, stowed safely in a half-second. I had both guns out and trained on the corner when he stepped into view, his cream-pale hair catching the light. It wasn’t the hip super-short cut he’d sported last time I saw him but slightly longer, just as expensively trimmed, and it still did nothing for his expressively bland face.

  Most of the damned are beautiful. The owner of the Monde Nuit is merely average, and that dries up the spit in your mouth like desert sun dries up a single lone drop of water.

  Especially when his eyes are eaten alive by an indigo stain swallowing the whites, leaving the irises burning gasflame-blue. Eyes should not look like that.

  He held his hands up, a classic hey man I’m harmless stance that didn’t fool me for a second. His suit was pristine, gray wool instead of his usual white linen, sharply creased in all the right places. His shoulders were a touch broader than I remembered, and something new glimmered at his throat—a metal chain, with a small gem set in iron filigree flashing under the swinging, dancing light. It was a red-tinted diamond, and I would have bet everything I owned that it held a flaw like a screaming face in its blood-gleaming depths.

  I swallowed dryness, settled my guns—one covering him, the other one covering the group of hellbreed, spilled or standing, he’d brought with him. “What the fuck are you doing here, Pericles?”

  His hands dropped a fraction, the indigo swirling through his eyes like ink through water. “Why, my darling Kiss, helping you. What else would I be doing?”

  “There’s hellbreed stain upstairs, and this is right up your alley. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t ventilate you now. Didn’t you learn anything from last time?” Calm down, Jill. You’re sounding like a fishwife instead of a goddamn hunter. Chill out.

  He didn’t shift his weight, but all the bloodless shark’s attention was on me. “Oh, I learned, my sweet. It was a truly
regrettable series of events, but so far in the past. I think we have other problems now, don’t you?” A slight, expressive movement, indicating the shambles all around us, and the indigo stain retreated from the whites of his eyes, like the tide along a wreckage-filled beach. “You have not been keeping a clean house.”

  “You have ten seconds to tell me what the fuck you’re doing here, Perry. And even less than that to convince me you don’t have anything to do with this.” My guns clicked, a nice piece of theater. Leon’s breathing evened out, and I knew without looking that he was covering the other ’breed. The one I’d shot lay moaning on the floor, and Perry didn’t spare him a single glance.

  “This place is mine; it belongs to me. Why would I invite such filth in?” A shadow of distaste crossed his blandness. “They foul the carpet and stain the very air. Give me some credit for business sense, as well. There is no profit in having such things contaminating my territory—as I would have told you, had you bothered to speak to me.”

  Don’t, Jill. He’s just trying to get inside your head. The scar chuckled wetly, my pulse hammering as a wave of heat jolted up my arm. He liked doing that, fiddling with my internal thermostat when he was in the same room.

  Another of those physical efforts to regain control and get my priorities straight made stress-sweat prickle along the curve of my lower back. The guns, however, did not waver. “You’re just as much an infection as scurf, hellbreed. Start talking.”

  He opened his mouth—probably to taunt me—and visibly reconsidered, calculations crossing his face like the shadows of airplanes over baking sand. “I have been engaged in finding the source of this… corruption… for some time. No hellbreed claims to know about it, and each small marker I sent to be my eyes vanished. Three promising young ones gone without a trace, and I have decided to take personal interest in the matter. I have traced the corruption this far, and arrive to find you here and the work of Weres all over the walls—and the smell of my last protégé’s untimely death upstairs.” He folded his arms, still not sparing the hapless, bleeding ’breed on the floor a single glance.

  One of the higher-ups wants you dead. I eyed Perry. “You wouldn’t be the only one sending hellbreed after me, would you? What about skunk-haired idiots busting in on a nest-cleaning and trying to kill me?”

  “Skunk-haired? His eyebrow lifted. “None of my protégés deserve that appellation.”

  “What about a ’breed sent to kill me in my own home and whisper someone else’s name?” I pressed. I got a half-second of some other emotion flickering across his face. Did Perry look, of all things, surprised? “So you ride in to my rescue, huh? You’re helping me. How very congenial of you.” Like shit you are. You’re probably neck-deep in this too, God knows you always are.

  My tone must have warned him. His eyes narrowed a fraction, and instead of looking at me like a prize entrée, he eyed me like a cobra eyes a mongoose.

  It was a welcome change. Still, it bothered me. What had calmed him down enough that the staining on his whites retreated?

  I holstered both guns, though my entire body fought it. They were my protection, and these were hellbreed, for Christ’s sake. “You can start by telling me which of your little hellbreed friends wants me dead.”

  “And what will you pay for that information?” He cocked his pale head, still regarding me with that cautious, unblinking reptile stare. His coterie cringed even further.

  Jesus Christ, Jill, what are you going to do now? There was only one thing I could do. “I don’t need to pay you, Pericles. You were in violation and we renegotiated. And you can threaten all you want, but if the scar goes sour, I’ll be well within my rights to erase your sorry little ass from the face of the earth and send you screaming to Hell. Your choice.”

  There it was, as plain as I could make it. If he made trouble, better it was here with Leon backing me up and the scar still mostly workable.

  “And that would reduce your power by an order of magnitude or two.” Perry was very still, a statue carved of gray ice and platinum hair. His eyes had half-lidded, their gasflames burning down.

  Why isn’t he angrier? “Maybe I’m willing to risk it. What other hellbreed wants me dead, Perry?”

  “There are many who wish your death, hunter. Aren’t you happy we have such a marvelous little agreement?”

  Oh no you don’t. “The only agreement we have, Pericles, is that you trade information for your continued survival. You’re in this city on my sufferance. This is the last time I’m asking, hellspawn.”

  Leon didn’t move, but I could almost feel him tensing. Had I been backing up a mouthy hunter, I would have been getting a little itchy too. This was wrong. All wrong.

  Perry didn’t move, but there was a general scurrying and his hellbreed scrambled away like roaches once the light’s on. The moaning hellbreed on the floor tried to scrabble away from Perry’s slow, even footsteps.

  Perry stopped, looking down at the mess of thin black-welling ichor and torn flesh. “Haasai,” he rumbled in Helletöng, and the injured ’breed drew in a huge hissing breath, as if preparing to scream.

  The owner of the Monde didn’t even seem to move. One moment he stood, hands in pockets, looking down at a wounded member of his species.

  The next, his foot came down, and the injured ’breed’s skull shattered like a watermelon dropped on concrete. I skipped away, guns clearing leather again, and braced myself. Preternatural flesh steamed, scurf slime cringing away from the deeper contagion of hellbreed ichor, and Perry made a short satisfied sound. A low chuckle, to be exact, as if he had just been surprised by something enjoyable.

  My stomach turned over hard, rebelled against its moorings, and then I was too busy to care, because Leon let out a short sharp garbled word and Perry had taken three steps in a rush, with that same eerie darting quickness.

  My left-hand gun spoke, a brief muzzle-flash and a roar. The bullet whined and pinged, and Perry stopped short. The sleeve of his suit coat smoked; a crease not intended by the tailor along his shoulder.

  It was my night for trick shots, I guess.

  “The next one goes in your head.” My heart thundered, the scar snapping and twanging with pain like a rope in a high wind, puckering the flesh of my arm. It’s not doing anything, Jill, you know it’s not, goddammit focus! “Settle down, hellspawn.”

  Perry’s head cocked like a lizard’s, a flicker of tongue too red and wet to be human showing between his white, white teeth. Once before I’d seen what lurked under the pretence of bland humanity he wore, and my brain had shunted that memory aside, refusing to hold it. I was goddamn grateful at the time, and even more so now.

  We stood like that, Perry’s head not six inches from my right-hand Glock’s muzzle, my left gun settling slightly lower, zeroed in on his mouth.

  “Argoth,” Perry whispered. The rumble of Hell’s mother tongue under the word made the shadows turn angular, the lights buzzing and crackling. “Argoth is coming. You should be thankful, my dear one, that I’ve kept this little ant farm safe. You should get on your knees and pray to your bloodless Savior. I can only hold the tide so long.”

  “What tide?” Argoth? Nobody I’ve heard of before. I’ll bet I don’t have time to run by Hutch’s and set him to working on it, either. The ’breed behind Perry drew back, with scary nimble quickness, making little inhuman sounds wherever they stepped.

  “Silly, stupid little hunter.” Perry leaned forward on his toes, for all the world as if wanting to tango and waiting for a dancer unwary enough to join him. “You truly think you owe me nothing? You think we renegotiated?”

  Don’t fall for it, Jill. But I did. My fingers tightened on the triggers, and the little clicks sounded very loud, especially when echoed by another, sharper, more definite click from Rosita. “Take one step closer, Perry, and fucking find out.”

  We stood like that for five ticking seconds, the scar working a red-hot coathanger up the channels of my nerves and veins, but my arm never wavered. It
was only pain, and if it got too bad, I would shoot him now and keep shooting until I was sure the fucker was dead.

  If I ever was sure, that is. And it wouldn’t stop me from parting out the body and burning each steak and hamhock down to ash.

  And scattering the ash.

  Miles apart, continents apart if I could.

  The owner of the Monde stepped mincingly… away. He retreated, his eyes still bright blue, and it unnerved me more than if they had been turning indigo with fury.

  Six feet away he halted, came back down on his heels, and pointed to the ’breed on the floor, a quick sketch of a movement. “He was becoming troublesome, you know. You killed him just in time.”

  “I only wounded him, Perry. You murdered him all on your own. What’s Argoth?” Have I heard that name before? Don’t think so. Shit. Never rains but it pours. My pulse was struggling to thunder again, but control clamped down. The switch inside my head trembled—the one that could flip and make the world into a chessboard, every move clear and clean, with nothing even resembling hesitation to keep me from what had to be done.

  The uncomfortable thought arrived right on schedule. Like bashing a hellbreed’s head in? Did that just have to be done? Does Perry think of it that way?

  “Not what, but who. He is Death come calling, and you will see him soon enough.” Perry smiled broadly, his teeth gleaming. “You think you can manage without my help? Go and see, my dearest.”

  “Don’t even think of welshing, hellbreed.” The switch trembled again, I forced it to stay still. I had never even told Mikhail about that part of me, the way I could lift out of my own body and just do what was needed.

  What was necessary.

  “Oh, you may have rope to hang yourself and to spare. Have no fear of that.” Perry took a gliding step away, and another, as if it was a dance. Chain-link rattled under his feet like metal bones. “Enough rope, and a noose as well. Goodnight, sweetheart.”