Redemption Alley

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Amen, darlin’.” He sighed, copper clinking as he settled himself in his seat. The look on his face told me he was wishing for another beer.

  I waited for him to add more, but he didn’t. So I dropped the car into “drive” and hit the gas, glad to have him with me.

  Dust rose in a choking swathe as I worked the steering, swinging the rear end out and standing on the brake. I bailed out as Leon did, and we both scrambled for the defensible angle between the back of the car and the farthest hangar. From here we had a straight shot down the runway or a good chance of cover while bobbing and weaving to the new buildings.

  When no shots rang out and nothing happened, it was absurdly anticlimactic.

  I crouched, my coat hanging behind me. The copper in Leon’s hair chimed. “Go,” he whispered, Rosita socked to his shoulder, his keen eyes alert down the alley for any muzzle flash.

  I moved, etheric force pulled through the humming scar on my wrist, almost faster than I could control. It’s acting up. Dammit, Perry. The thought was gone in a flash. I reached cover, pointed my guns down the way, and found no breath of anything stirring. It was as quiet as a grave.

  Get it, Jill? Quiet as the grave? Arf arf.

  I whistled, and Leon tore down the same path I’d taken. We covered each other, leapfrogging, because it was goddamn evident there was nobody here. I couldn’t even hear a heartbeat. Just the rasp of sand sliding over the desert, carried on the back of an oven-hot wind.

  Just like scales moving in a dark hole.

  “This is creepy,” I muttered. Then I shut up, brain working overtime. It had to be a trap. Had to be.

  The largest of the new buildings crouched under a shiny tin roof, and Leon and I both stopped, considering it for a moment. There was a door, a nice double-reinforced number, on the side of the prefabricated trailer. A brand-spanking-new set of wooden steps and a ramp large enough to wheel a forklift up led to the door, its latch and padlock glimmering like fool’s gold.

  “Are you—” he began.

  I noticed it too. “No windows.” I answered. “And locked on the outside.” Just like the Winchell murder site. Gooseflesh rose cold and hard under my skin, and I made another one of those wrenching mental efforts to stay clear. Leon was depending on me, dammit. So were my Weres and my city.

  But what’s behind that door, Jill? Hm? You’re so smart, what’s behind that door?

  “Yeah,” he breathed. “You go first.”

  “Sure you don’t want to take this one?” Black humor at its finest, I glanced at him and Rosita. The spark was back in Leon’s eyes, and high hard color stood out on his cheeks. Otherwise he was dead white. A sheen of sweat not from the incidental heat of the day—because as a hunter you learn to regulate your body temperature pretty thoroughly—touched his forehead.

  “Aw hell, darlin’, ladies first.” His attention never wavered from the padlocked door.

  I grinned, a fey baring of teeth Saul would recognize as my get ready face. “Age before beauty.”

  “Pearls before swi—”

  But I was already moving, bolting out of cover. The sun lay in a white glare like a hot sterile blanket over a corpse, and I hit the door like it had personally offended me. It gave, buckling, built to withstand more than ordinary pressure, but the extra force I pulled through the scar blazed through my arm and it crumpled like paper. I landed hard, weight on the balls of my feet, and swept with my guns.

  The Trader hit me just as hard, knocking me ass over teakettle down the three wooden stairs I’d just bolted up. I landed on my back, already firing, and heard Rosita roar.

  At the apex of his leap, the dirty-blond Trader, wearing an eerily gleaming long white coat, was tumbled sideways by a load of silver ammo punching into his side, curling up like a spider dropped into a candleflame. His screech tore the simmering air, and I was on my feet again in a moment—pull the knees in, kick, use the momentum to jackknife and get your feet under you, then leap sideways as well, get on him Jill, take him down are there more Leon cover me goddammit—

  “Mercy!” the Trader yelled, and I landed with one gun trained on him and the other on the door of the trailer. “Mercy don’t kill me Kismet don’t kill me please!”

  Whafuck? I replayed it in my head and decided that yes, he had really said it. “How many more?” I shouted. “Who else is in there?” I felt naked, horribly exposed, no cover, if they wanted to open fire on me like they did at Galina’s I was right in the crosshairs.

  No heartbeats. There’s nobody here but this Trader. But you didn’t hear him, you might have missed someone else, dear God—

  The Trader moaned. Bright blood welled between his fingers, clamped to his side. The white was a lab coat, now grinding into the dirt and fouled with blood. Lots of blood, only faintly tinged with black corruption. “Mercy…” The sibilant at the end of the word trailed between a ridge of triangular teeth sharp as a shark’s. “Irene… Irene—”

  What the hell? I eyed him. Nothing happened for a long taffy-stretching moment. Hellbreed crawling all over my house and now this Trader moaning a Trader waitress’s name.

  Hang on a second. Hold the phone for just one goddamn minute here.

  “Fairfax?” I hazarded, not lowering my guns. Every hair on my body stood on end, quivering, scouring the air currents for the next weird happenstance. Wait a minute. I thought I killed you. But I just said blond, and Irene…

  Caught assuming. Again. Goddammit. And Irene had looked relieved when I insisted the blond was hellbreed—I hadn’t said Trader.

  The Trader froze. His eyes, blue under the flat shine of the dusted, half-opened. “Nobody… here,” he gasped, and took in a huge sucking breath. “Just the… the subjects. And me.”

  “Jill?” Leon was getting nervous.

  That made two of us.

  “Subjects?” The hammer on the gun pointing at the Trader clicked up. “And how the fuck do you know Irene?”

  “The subjects!” He whisper-screamed it, losing air. “She’s my wife, goddammit!”

  I holstered a gun and hauled him up from the crumbling dirt by his lapels, dragged him toward the blown-out door, his body in front of mine like a shield. “Move.” I prodded him, both guns back out. “Inside. And if there’s someone in there, you die first.”

  “They say you help—” He stumbled. He was losing a lot of claret through that hole in his side. When Rosita talks, she’s not to be taken lightly. “Help… people.”

  They certainly say that. What they don’t say is that I’m a right bitch. “Sometimes.” I stepped in front of the open door, prodded him again. He stumbled, took two steps inside, and dropped down in a heap, his eyes rolling up inside his head.

  The smell boiled out and hit me. Candied, foul, rotting sweetness. My hackles rose, adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream like pollution into a river.

  “Jill?” Leon, getting even more nervous.

  I scanned the inside of the building. “Jesus,” I whispered. “Jesus Christ.” Then, over my shoulder, “Come on, Leon!”

  And I plunged into the smell, stepping over the unconscious Trader. I didn’t even cuff him. He was losing blood too fast to need it.

  27

  The tanks were huge glassy cylinders of greenish liquid. In each clear tube, a scurf floated, in varying stages of maturity. The smell was enough to make my eyes run even with the door blasted open and sunlight scouring a rectangle of yellow linoleum.

  There were two rows of the green tubes, each lit with ghostly non-UV light. There were dissection tables, and a long bookcase along one wall, stacked with reference works and binders.

  Leon helped me drag the Trader to a table and bandage him. Leon also snapped silver cuffs on him, just in case. Meanwhile, I stared at the closest tube full of green viscous stuff, and the scurf floating, eyes closed. “They’re preserved.” My gorge rose, hot and hard at the back of my tongue. “Jesus.”

  Leon gave them barely half a glance and turned an interesting shade of pale. Hi
s amulets clinked. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Check the books.” I tipped my head at the bookcases and holstered a gun, then set about trying to wake the Trader up. It was hard—he’d lost a lot of blood, but he was tougher than the average human. Then again, it didn’t look like he’d Traded for anything good, like superstrength or invulnerability.

  But then, there were those teeth. And his hands looked funny, bonelessly flopping and too delicate. Strangler’s hands.

  “Virology. Chemical composition of antidepressants. The Anarchist’s Cookbook, even.” Leon snagged that one, it vanished into his coat pocket. “Looks like a first edition too.”

  “Kleptomaniac.” One whole wall of the trailer/hangar was taken up with chem-lab equipment. They’d been cooking something up, out here in the desert. The Trader started to come around, his eyes rolling back down in his head. He shifted uneasily, the silver cuffs clanking, and cringed when he caught sight of me. “He’s waking up. Check that stuff over there, will you? Didn’t you take chemistry?”

  “Once in m’benighted youth, darlin’. Left as soon as I figured out how to make beer and fertilizer explosives.”

  “Now there’s a combination.” Both of us took care not to turn our backs to the door. The scurf floated eerily in their green tubes. They didn’t look dead, just… sleeping, caught in a moment of rare immobility, like during daylight when they pack themselves together like sardines.

  I shuddered. Leon was all white now, pale even under the fishbelly of “night-walking hunter.” His eyeliner had turned garish against the new pallor. From the cold feeling in my cheeks, I probably wasn’t far behind.

  The smell was incredible. Fresh tears trickled down my cheeks—and the scar puckered itself up into a tiny mouth, a thrill of painful heat running up the branching channels of my nerves.

  “Irene…” the Trader moaned. He woke up all the way and blinked at me, like a six-year-old coming out of a nightmare.

  This is goddamn ridiculous. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty. Start talking.”

  “You’re her.” He gasped in breath again. He really did sound awful, but then he’d taken a load of silver in the side from Rosita. I wouldn’t be too peppy myself under those circumstances. “Kismet. You’re actually her.”

  “No shit.” Who else would be doing this? “The question is, who the fuck are you? But that can wait. Is there anyone else here? Anyone at all?”

  “J-just the subjects.” He winced and the cuffs clanked, blue sparks running just under their surface, responding to the contamination of hellbreed on him. As Traders went he was a lightweight. “They’re in the east building, two down. It’s not due in the s-south building for another week—”

  Another week? “What’s in another week?”

  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-too-happy. “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—