Long dark hair, spangled with silver.
The storm descends, ripping trees apart. The souls of the damned explode with screams that would turn the world to bleeding ice, if the world heard. And the ashes of their destruction will sink into the carpet on the floor of the woods, each separate particle growing another tree.
For there is always more agony in Hell.
The net collapses, silvery filaments winding themselves in. It shrinks to a point of brilliance, and the shadows that light casts are somehow cleansed. They etch themselves on the ash, and under the wrack of the storm is a sound like a soft sigh.
The light… winks out.
A few tiny, crystalline-white feathers fall, but they snuff themselves out before they reach the heaving ground.
The white tree no longer stands. It is gone.
And Hell itself shakes.
Buzzing. In my head. All around me. Creeping in.
No, not a buzzing. A rattling roar, filling my skull. Crawling into my teeth, sticky little insect feet all over my face, feelers probing at my lips. They move, hot and pinprick-tiny, and that sound was enough to drag me screaming out of…
… where?
Dark. It was dark, and there was no air. Sand filled my mouth, but the little things crawling on me weren’t sand. They were alive, and they were droning loud enough to drown out everything but the sounds I was making. Terrifying sounds. Suffocating, it was in my mouth and my nose, too, stopping everything, lungs starved, heart suddenly a pounding drum.
Scrabbling through sand, dirt everywhere, the buzzing turning into a roar as they lifted off me. The insects didn’t sting; they just made that horrible sound and flew in disturbed little circles.
I exploded out of the shallow grave, my screams barely piercing the rumbling roar. The little bits of flying things buzzed angrily, flashing lights struck me like hammers and I fell, scrabbling, the wasps still crawling and buzzing and trying to probe through my mouth and nose and ears and eyes and hands and feet and belly.
They were still eating, because it had rotted.
I had rotted.
I scrubbed at myself as the train lumbered past. That was the light and the roaring. My back hit something solid and I jolted to a stop. The wasps crawled over me, and when I forced air out through my nose it blew slimy chunks of snot-laced sand into the night air.
I collapsed against the low retaining wall, breath sobbing in and out. My head rang like a gong, I bent over and vomited up a mass of dark writhing liquid.
The stench was awesome, titanic, a living thing. It crawled on the breeze, pressed against me, and I vomited again. This time it was long strands of gooey white, splatting. Coming from nowhere and passing through me, landing in twisting runnels.
Just like cotton candy! a gleeful, hateful voice crowed inside my head. The eggwhite was all over me, a loathsome slime turning the sand into a rasping dampness.
I squeezed my knees together, bent over, and whooped in a deep breath. The wasps crawled, and other bits of insect life clung to me. Maggots. Other things. Of course—out here in the desert, the bugs get to you after a little while. Especially in a shallow grave, when there’s been trauma to the tissues.
I grabbed my head. The sound was immense, filling me up, the roaring swallowing my scream. Gobbets of rotting flesh fell away, the wasps angrily swarming, and the train rumbled away into the distance.
Leaving me alone. In the night.
I tore at the rotting flesh cloaking me. It peeled away in noisome strips, and under it I was whole, slick with slime. I retched again, a huge tearing coming all the way up from my toes, and produced an amazing gout of that slippery egg-white stuff again.
Ectoplasm? But—The thought floated away as the pain came down on me, laid me open. Head cracked open, bones twisting, everything in me cracking and creaking and re-forming. My knees refused to give; my short-bitten nails dug through the cloak of rotting and found my own skin underneath.
I scrambled along the retaining wall. The grave yawned, leering, crawling with disturbed insect life. I fell on sand, grubbed up handfuls of it, and scrubbed at myself. I didn’t care if it stripped skin off and left me bleeding, didn’t care if it went down to bone—I just wanted the rot away.
Under the mess of decaying flesh was a torn T-shirt, rags of what had been leather pants. At least I had some clothes. I was barefoot.
I collapsed to my knees on the sand, looked up.
A full moon hung grinning in the sky, bloated cheese-yellow. The hard, clear points of stars glittered, and steam slid free of my skin.
Whole skin. Clear, unblemished, scraped in places. But not rotting.
The pain retreated abruptly. My questing fingers found filthy hair, stiff with sand and God knew what else. The wasps were sluggish—it gets cold out here at night. Everything else was burrowing.
My skull was still there. Hard curves of bone, tender at the back. I let out a sob. Held my hands out, flipped them palm-up. They shook like palsied things.
Branches. Like branches.
But the image mercifully fled as soon as it arrived. My forearms were pale under the screen of filth. On my right wrist, just above the softest part, something glittered. Hard, like a diamond. It caught the moonlight and sent back a dart of it, straight through my aching skull. The sight filled me with unsteady loathing, and I shut my eyes.
Start with the obvious first. Who am I?
The train’s rumble receded.
Who am I?
I tilted my head back and screamed, a lonely curlew cry.
Because I didn’t know.
Glossary
Arkeus: A roaming corruptor escaped from Hell.
Banefire: A cleansing sorcerous flame.
Black Mist: A roaming psychic contagion; a symbiotic parasite inhabiting the host’s nervous system and bloodstream.
Chutsharak: Chaldean obscenity, loosely translated as “oh, fuck.”
Demon: Term loosely used to designate any nonhuman predator with sorcerous ability or a connection to Hell.
Exorcism: Tearing loose a psychic parasite from its host.
Hellbreed: Blanket term for a wide array of demons, half demons, or other species escaped or sent from Hell.
Helletöng: The language of the damned.
Hellfire: The spectrum of sorcerous flame employed by hellbreed for a variety of uses.
Hunter: A trained human who keeps the balance between the nightside and regular humans; extrahuman law enforcement.
Imdarák: Shadowy former race who drove the Elder Gods from the physical plane, also called the Lords of the Trees.
Martindale Squad: The FBI division responsible for tracking nightside crime across state lines and at the federal level; mostly staffed with hunters and Weres.
Middle Way: Worshippers of Chaos, Middle Way adepts are usually sociopathic and sorcerous loners. Occasionally covens of Middle Way adepts will come together to control a territory or for a specific purpose.
OtherSight: Second sight; the ability to see sorcerous energy. Can also mean precognition.
Possessor: An insubstantial, low-class demon specializing in occupying and controlling humans; the prime reason for exorcists.
Scurf: Also called nosferatim, a semipsychic viral infection responsible for legends of blood-hungry corpses, vampires, or nosferatu. Also, someone infected by the scurf virus.
Sorrow: A worshipper of the Chaldean Elder Gods.
Sorrows House: A House inhabited by Sorrows, with a vault for invocation or evocation of Elder Gods.
Sorrows Mother: A high-ranking female of a Sorrows House.
Talyn: A hellbreed, higher in rank than an arkeus or a Possessor, usually insubstantial due to the nature of the physical world.
Trader: A human who makes a deal with a hellbreed, usually for worldly gain or power.
Utt’huruk: A bird-headed demon.
Were: Blanket term for several species who shapeshift into animal (for example, cougar, wolf, or spider) or half animal (w
ererat or khentauri) form.
Table of Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
“I don’t give guarantees to hellspawn, Rutger.
Dedication
Extras
Meet the Author
A Preview of ANGEL TOWN
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Glossary
Books by Lilith Saintcrow
Copyright
BOOKS BY LILITH SAINTCROW
JILL KISMET NOVELS
Night Shift
Hunter’s Prayer
Redemption Alley
Flesh Circus
Heaven’s Spite
DANTE VALENTINE NOVELS
Working for the Devil
Dead Man Rising
The Devil’s Right Hand
Saint City Sinners
To Hell and Back
Dark Watcher
Storm Watcher
Fire Watcher
Cloud Watcher
The Society
Hunter, Healer
Steelflower
HEAVEN’S SPITE
LILITH SAINTCROW
www.orbitbooks.net
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 Lilith Saintcrow
Excerpt from Angel Town copyright © 2010 by Lilith Saintcrow
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: November 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-12228-3
Table of Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
“I don’t give guarantees to hellspawn, Rutger.
Dedication
Extras
Meet the Author
A Preview of ANGEL TOWN
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Glossary
Books by Lilith Saintcrow
Copyright
Heaven’s Spite Page 25