Hunter's Prayer

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Laughed, in fact, fit to die.

  Blackness. I floated.

  I’m dead. Any minute now I’ll see Hell again. I’ll sink into it, and they’ll start on me, every hellbreed I’ve killed, everyone I’ve laid to rest. I’ll start screaming, and it will never end, and I’ll be back on the streetcorner with the wind on the back of my legs and that car coming toward me. I will. In a moment. When I finish being dead.

  Something hard against my back. Cold hardness seeping into my skin. My nerves were on fire with pain, creeping up my arms and legs. Any minute now I would wake up to find myself in Hell. There was no reason to fight it. I was dead.

  Dead. Floating in a blackness that started to sting in all my fingers and toes, as if I was wrestling with a jellyfish.

  Belisa. The traitorous bitch.

  Did she kill me? Why? She wanted me for a diversion so she could take out this Inez bitch.

  Didn’t she?

  A nagging little idea began growing in the back of my mind. I tried to push it away, to concentrate on being dead, but it wouldn’t go away.

  The file on you is red-flagged for a reason. She had given a picture-perfect imitation of being scared to death of Perry, and she probably had been. One false move, one note out of tune, and he might have killed her before he could bring her to me. I certainly wouldn’t put it past him. But she’d had an ampoule of something. Poison, the Sorrows trademark. Poison in word, deed, and fact.

  Belisa knew too much. This was, again, Mikhail’s voice. Far too much. How she know what the redhead bitch is planning? And here is thought, milaya, is there reason why you haven’t seen zis redhead Sorrow yet? There’s such a thing as wigs.

  But that made no sense, did it? Nothing about this made much sense.

  Wake up, kitten. The tone of my conscience changed, mutated into a voice I knew as well as my own, deep and soft. Saul’s voice, whispered in my ear. At least he’d been outside when Belisa made her move. Time to wake up. Come on.

  But I was dead, and I was so tired. So goddamn tired of it all. Being a hunter is just one disgusting fight after another, and there were endlessly inventive ways people could be shot, stabbed, tortured, burned, hurt. Every hunter got tired of seeing it, even if we were luckier than the cops who only dealt with humans. A hunter had to remind himself—or herself—about why we did this. Why we put ourselves through this.

  Well, why, cream puff? This time the voice wasn’t Saul’s or Mikhail’s. It was another voice, one I knew very well, the voice of a man who had picked up a lonely shivering girl and made her feel worthwhile, made her feel loved, before he’d turned her out on the street and set her to earning her keep. Why d’ya do it at all, then?

  I didn’t want to hear Val; I’d killed him. I pushed that voice away with an effort so hard it felt physical, heard a shapeless sound. It sounded like someone was moaning, coming to, swimming up out of dark water. Metal clashed, and the fierce cold against my back and my heels ratcheted up another notch. It burned across my buttocks, my shoulders, digging into the back of my head and my neck. And the inside of my right wrist hurt, a sharp stabbing pain.

  Oh, shit. Maybe I wasn’t dead.

  Val’s voice wouldn’t go away. Why d’ya do it, babydoll? Huh? You don’t do it to save the world or any fucking shit like that. You want to know why you put yourself through this?

  I pushed that voice away again. I knew why I did it. I didn’t need to be reminded.

  Why are you a hunter, kitten? Saul’s voice, on the edge of breaking. We did fight, sometimes volcanically, and he had asked me once or twice why I seemed so determined to fling myself into the worst trouble I could find. There’s no retirement plan for hunters—none of us live that long. There’s also no Higher Authority, even though the Church trains a lot of us. If a hunter wants to quit he just quits, just disappears. You aren’t a hunter because you’re forced into it, or because you fill out an application and have to find a replacement.

  No, a hunter chooses to put his body on the line. And each hunt is another conscious choice. Nobody would blame you if you stopped, backed out, laid down the sword, and walked away. As a matter of fact, that was the sanest option—part of finding an apprentice is doing everything possible to dissuade the candidate from even thinking about taking the training.

  We all do zis for one reason, milaya. It is for to quiet ze screaming in our dreams. It is for to kill our own demons. And they call us heroes. Idiots. Mikhail, again. Why was I hearing voices? I could even smell him. Vodka metabolizing out through the skin, the smell of someone raised in a different climate, foreign darkness and the smell of his hair as he leaned over me to correct my form, the copper charms tied in his hair tinkling sweetly.

  His voice dropped to a whisper in the very center of my head. Now is time for ze waking up, milaya. Wake up.

  I didn’t want to. I wanted only to drift. But the stinging in my fingers and toes sharpened, as if they were coming back to life.

  As if I was coming back to life.

  If you do not wake up, milaya, I will hit you.

  I lunged into consciousness, fully aware and awake, because when Mikhail said that he never lied. Metal clashed as I tried to leap to my feet, springing up—and was grabbed mercilessly at wrists and ankles, my head hitting cold stone as I was yanked back. Stars slammed through my head, actual bright points of light.

  Shit. Oh shit.

  I was on my back on cold, hard stone that felt glassy, like obsidian. And I was chained, the cold cuffs closed around ankles and wrists. Stretched out like a virgin sacrifice.

  Well, if that’s what they wanted they certainly have the wrong girl. My forlorn little laugh half-choked its way out of my throat, I blinked, breathed in a long lungful of air so cold it burned, and looked around.

  I pulled against the chains first. No give, and they were orichalc-tainted titanium, just the thing to hold down a hellbreed-strong hunter. Stronger than they had any right to be, and probably with staples driven deep into the granite of the floor and concrete underneath. I pulled all four chains until I was sure I couldn’t just wriggle out. It wasn’t likely, but sometimes even Sorrows made mistakes.

  Not this Sorrow. A respectable foe, smart, accurate, canny, and unwilling to take chances. Just my luck. The chains were too tight for me to pop a shoulder out of its socket and wriggle around, too.

  Dammit.

  Vaulted ceiling, made of poured concrete, ribbed and beautiful, in perfect proportion. Hammered into the concrete were the Forms, the squiggles and sharp curves carved and filled with thick gold wire, glinting as they channeled etheric force. The place was humming, alive with sorcerous power.

  By craning my head I could see the floor was granite blocks fitted precisely together, and was also full of wrist-thick gold lines twisting; the altar was inside a square, set inside a pentacle, set inside a triple circle that held the Nine Seals, each in its prescribed place. Between the pentacle’s outer orbit and the beginning of the triple circle was another smaller altar, this one curved like a dolphin’s back without the fin. Channels were carved into this concrete curve, deep fresh channels that were already dark and crusted.

  The first sacrifices had already been performed.

  Candles burned, their flames hissing in the dimness. Candles that smelled sickish-sweet. In the trade they are called perfect-tallow.

  The layman would call them, with respectable horror, made of human fat.

  “Christ,” I whispered, and the sound bounced off the high vaulted roof. There were braziers, and heat simmered up from each of them. This little hole hadn’t come cheap, especially with all the gold. She must have funneled an amazing amount of cash into it.

  Perhaps the final indignity was that I was naked except for the leather cuff buckled securely over the scar—under the chain-cuff. My ruby was gone, and I could tell the silver ring Mikhail had given me was gone too. The silver charms in my hair, each one painstakingly braided in with red thread, were gone as well. There was no comforting weigh
t of silver in my ears either.

  Which made me feel even more naked.

  Crap. Well, I’m still alive, aren’t I? That’s one. But the sinking sensation under my breastbone just wouldn’t go away. Because if Belisa had drugged me, stripped me of my jewelry, and dragged me here, there was only one reason why.

  The deep sharp blood-channels cut into the smooth glassy surface of the altar underneath me told me just what they had planned for me.

  Saul. Did she hurt Saul? How did she get me here? I shut my eyes. Don’t panic, Jill. Don’t you fucking dare panic.

  How could I not panic? Had she hurt Saul? Had she? Or had she just dragged me out of there, content to elude him?

  The prayer rose under the surface of my mind. Thou Who hast given me strength to fight evil, protect me. Keep me from harm. Grant me strength in battle, honor in living, and a quick clean death when my time comes—

  “Fuck that,” I whispered. I didn’t want to die at all.

  There had to be something I could do. Even if the preliminary sacrifices had already been performed, I still had at least an hour. Or at least, I hoped I did.

  Time to think fast.

  25

  The stone was cold and my head hurt. I kept my eyes closed and my breathing steady, and the scar had turned hot. Very hot. As if a blowtorch was held against it, the skin crisping and turning black, burning down to bone but never quite getting there, burning.

  Was Perry dead? Probably. I’d shot him in the head with silver-coated ammo. If he wasn’t dead he was very unhappy—and unlikely to forgive me. He would probably peel the scar off me himself, and overload my nervous system with sick wriggling pleasure while he did it.

  If he does that, Jillian, you’ll be alive to feel it. Which will mean you’ll have escaped this. So don’t worry about it right now.

  The scar was hot. And when the first acrid scent of burning found its way to my nostrils I was elated—but not so happy my concentration slipped.

  Fire, from a hellbreed mark. Part of the bargain, even if Perry was mad at me.

  He shouldn’t have called me that. Shouldn’t have threatened to have a woman raped, even if it was a Sorrow.

  The thought disturbed my concentration, but the heat didn’t slip. I heard a rustling, and swallowed hard, opening my eyes just as the last shred of the tough battered leather charred. I couldn’t see it under the metal cuff that held my arm stretched at an awkward angle, just in the precise place that robbed me of any leverage. It was the same with my legs.

  The Sorrows are good at trussing people up.

  The soft sounds were velvet capes, brushing the floor. I heard another soft, chilling sound.

  A long drugged moan, impossible to tell if the voice was male or female. The cold air brushed my skin, and I shivered.

  The sudden wash of sensation from the scar was enough to make gooseflesh rise all over my body. I could, if I wanted to, look down and see if my nipples were hard.

  A fine time to be naked and chained to an altar, Jill. With you the fun times never end. I drew in a long soft breath, watching as they came in two by two.

  Two. Four. Six. Eight.

  I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. I had assumed that Inez was a rogue Sorrow, but that was because Belisa had told me so. For there to be more than one Sorrow here was bad, bad news. Which one of the robed bitches was the one who had killed my teacher and maneuvered me so neatly?

  Ten. Twelve; these two carrying between them a long pale shape that was a woman’s body. The shapeless moan came again, it was from her. Drugged.

  Oh, thank God, she won’t feel a thing if I can’t save her in time. Christ, how am I going to get out of this?

  They were hooded and draped in black-blue velvet, but the thirteenth entered with her hood thrown back. A sleek shock of darkish hair glowed with bloody highlights in the candlelight, and she walked to one of the brass braziers—the one nearest the curved sacrificial altar—and tossed something in. Sizzling filled the air for a moment, then sweet smoke billowed out.

  Ambergris. Amber. And clove.

  The incense of evocation. My skin chilled again. I was going to go into shock.

  Stop it, Jillian. Listen. Look. Plan.

  What plan? I was trussed up tighter than a Christmas turkey. But the stink of charred leather told me I wasn’t completely helpless.

  Think, Jill. And open your goddamn eyes.

  “It won’t help, you know.” Her voice was soft, accented with fluid French and wrapping its velvety ends around me; digging in, squeezing, looking for a way inside. She glided up to the altar on cat-soft feet, this blood-haired Sorrow.

  I found myself looking at a strong-jawed, not unpleasant face; her eyes were black from lid to lid and the bruising of her aura was deep and severe. I caught a whiff of something else, too, a fume that shimmered out from her robe in waves of olfactory scarlet and gold.

  She was far more than a Sorrows adept. That fume could only mean one thing.

  I was looking at a Grand Mother of a House of Sorrows, one of the most efficient praying mantises the world has ever seen. Just one step below a Queen Mother, a brooding termite capable of hiving off Houses and calling potential suicides to her as Sorrows Neophyms.

  In other words, I was in deep fucking shit.

  My brain jittered like a rabbit; I inhaled sharply, and she smiled. Set just under her hairline, above and between her eyes, was her mark: the three circles, the black flame, and a colorless glitter that was the seal of a Grand Mother.

  I cleared my throat. “Inez Germaine, I presume.” My voice was harsh, cracked, and only human after the softness of hers. Like the cawing of a raven after a dulcet song.

  Quit it, Jill. She’s a fucking Sorrows mantis, she’ll chew you up if you’re not careful. I gave her my most winning smile. She was going to have to work harder than that to squeeze her way in through my mental defenses. I was toughened by so many exorcisms that I wasn’t even sure I could let something in if I wanted to.

  I didn’t want to test that theory, though. Not at all.

  She put one hand down, and a velvet sleeve brushed my belly as her fingers closed around my left breast. I made my face a mask, but she smiled, a very gentle smile that sat incongruously on her strong face. Her thumb moved a little. “Inez Germaine Ayasha, if you wish to be specific.” She paused, examining me thoroughly; scalp to toenails. If I’d been embarrassed by nakedness, now would have been the time to show it. But dating a Were will give you a whole new definition of naked, and having a hellbreed kiss on your wrist will too.

  But her hand let go of my breast, trailed down my ribs. I sucked in a shallow breath. No.

  Her fingertips brushed my belly, passing over old ridged scars and the furrows of abdominal muscle from hard training. I was too stringy, really, not much room for big curves when you’re fighting like hell all the time and having a hard time taking in enough protein to fuel that sort of muscle burn.

  Sometimes I wondered if Saul would have liked me a little softer. A little more feminine.

  The touch lightened as she brushed my pubic hair. “Tranquille, enfante,” she murmured. Calmly, lovingly. “I would not crack so fine a vessel.”

  Her fingers dipped, and my entire body closed. My eyes rolled up into my head, and I curled up into the quiet space inside my own head. That space was small, and dark, and smelled like a kid’s closet stuffed with shoes and plush animals. Bad things could batter at the door, men could howl outside, but inside I was safe.

  It was the space that I used to go to whenever Saul touched me. With Mikhail it had been heat and combat, but with Saul … it had been gentleness.

  He had coaxed me out with infinite patience, one night at a time, holding me when I sobbed. Stroking my hair, reassuring me, easing me along. Until I could have my body belong to me again, and like anything that belonged to me it could be shared.

  But not now. Now I didn’t want to share. I went rigid, sweating, my jaw so tight my teeth ground and
sang a thin song of agony, red and black explosions playing out behind my eyelids as she probed with first one finger, then another.

  I made a low harsh sound. Metal clashed as I struggled, hit my head against the stone altar, and suddenly knew that if she kept going I would beat my skull against the stone until one of us broke.

  And I didn’t think it would be the altar.

  She finally returned her black eyes to my face, sliding her fingers free and stroking my belly again with the flat of her palm. “You should have been born into a House, cherie.” Her tone was gentle, kind. “We would have known how to bring out the best in such a … delicate temperament as yours, without causing such regrettable side effects.”

  High praise, from a Sorrow. “Horseshit.” If you think I’m going to beg, bitch, think again. “Nice trick, sending Belisa to play the Sorrow in distress. That brother bit almost got me.”

  “Melisande’s brother was genuine. I picked both of them, ma cherie.” The smile widened. “So brave.” Her fingers stroked, came back up to cup my breast, and I could feel that my nipple was indeed hard. Hard as a chunk of rock.

  Goddammit. But six years of Perry’s scar burning on my wrist and his fiddling with my internal thermostat was now paying off in prime. My heartrate stayed the same, though my breathing was a little harsher than I liked. I felt soul-bruised, savagely stretched, and just one thin hair away from raped.

  If I belong to me, then I can share or not share, and I don’t want to share with you, you bitch.

  Besides, if she wanted to mindfuck me with just a paper file to work from, she was going to have to work for it. Perry was harder to deal with.

  No he isn’t, goddammit. Perry’s interested in seeing you remain breathing so he can break you. This bitch is going to kill you anyway; she’s calling you “dear” as if you’re her Neophym. You’re dead. Get something for your pains, Jill.