by Jim Butcher
“It’s my job,” Fontaine told him.
Luca stopped breathing. Fontaine lowered him to the blood-streaked floor, gently now, and rolled him onto his belly.
2:08 a.m.
“You look like shit,” Rache said.
The windshield wipers kept up their slow, metronome thump. Cold air and mist gusted in from the broken driver’s- side window, dragging icy fingers across the rents in Fontaine’s overcoat, the tears in his flesh.
“This body’s a loaner anyway.” He threw the car into park and dug in his pocket for his phone.
“Can you still fight?”
Fair question. He rolled one shoulder, wincing when his arm stopped halfway, broken bones shifting under the skin. He’d had to tear off one of his shirtsleeves, binding it tight around his gaping belly, and one of his kneecaps threatened to turn traitor. He stank of formaldehyde and bad decisions.
“I need to make a few calls,” he said, “find out where our lucky number four is hiding. Wait here a second.”
“I’m supposed to be learning from you. Shouldn’t I be in on that?”
He shoved open the car door and swung one leg out, wincing at a fresh burst of pain.
He came back twenty minutes later and slumped heavily into the driver’s seat. Moments passed. He drummed the steering wheel with borrowed fingers. The middle one seemed to have some nerve damage from the fight. It tapped out of sync with the others and listed to the side. Rain spat onto fractured concrete outside.
“What are we doing?” Rache asked.
“Waiting. Ada’s getting a line on our last target, and Irving’s on his way.”
Rache twisted in her seat. “Shouldn’t we be, like, doing something? Why don’t we try to find the Madrigal? Don’t you want the bonus money?”
“Patience. What are you, actually twelve?”
Rache pouted at him. “I’m a hundred and eighteen.”
“Close enough.”
An SUV with an Enterprise rental sticker on the bumper rumbled alongside their car, facing the other direction. Irving leaned out the window, rain glistening on his surfer haircut.
“Here you go, boss.” He handed Fontaine a newly bought Stetson. Fontaine perched it on his head, covering his bald spot, and nodded approvingly at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
“A hat.” Rache gaped at him. “We’ve been sitting here, wasting time, so your agent could go buy you a hat.”
Fontaine gestured at the Stetson. “You saw what I was working with here, right? A thoroughly unacceptable lack of follicular grace. It was frankly injurious to my self-esteem.”
His phone rang. He answered the call, nodded, then hung up without saying a word. He fired up the Buick’s engine.
“Buckle up. Target four just left a bodega, a little south of Eight Mile. I’ve got his car make and a plate number.”
3:43 a.m.
Metal screamed as the minivan veered off the road and slammed into the overpass wall. Fontaine could barely see through the steam pouring from his Buick’s radiator, the front end crumpled from a home-run slam. The stolen car rattled and jerked to a stop.
Target four was a portly fortysomething with a bad comb-over. He threw open the minivan door and stumbled out, staggering, one pant leg soaked through with blood. Fontaine followed him, limping from his bad knee. The garrote chain dropped from his sleeve and into his pale hand.
“I’m not going back,” the man screamed over his shoulder. “I’m not going back to hell!”
Fontaine limped mechanically, fighting through his injuries. He clenched his jaw and stared straight ahead, gaining on the guy.
“Yeah, you are.”
5:49 a.m.
Irving met them at the edge of Campus Martius Park, in the shadow of a granite water wall. The fountain hadn’t been turned on yet and stood silent, still smelling faintly of running water and chlorine.
“It’s good,” Irving said. “The prince’s rep verified delivery of all four targets. Excellent work.”
“And the pay?” Fontaine asked.
Irving handed him a black velvet pouch. Fontaine tugged it open. A scattering of small stones tumbled into his palm. Rubies, sapphires, a pinpoint diamond or two.
“I already took my ten percent,” Irving told him.
“Reckon you did.” Fontaine measured the bag, choosing a few choice stones, and offered them to Rache. “Here you go. Fair pay for good work. More where that came from.”
“Better be,” she said. “What now?”
Fontaine looked to his left. Over by the sleeping fountain, bundled up in her gray flannel hoodie, Ada waited in silence.
“Gimme a minute.”
He approached Ada and held out the pouch. Placed it in her open hand.
“It’s enough to get you clear,” he said. “Clear and far away. Get you a new name, a new face.”
“Next time you see me,” she told him, “we’ll both have different faces.”
“Will I?”
He looked her in the eye.
“Will I see you again?”
Her answer was a slow and sad smile. He reached out to touch her cheek. She flinched.
“I’m sorry, I know. I’m dressed up in a dead man’s skin.” He forced a chuckle, trying to play it off. “It’s natural for me. It isn’t for you. It never will be.”
“Fontaine, if things were different, if we were different—”
“You don’t have to say it.” He shook his head. “You don’t have to say anything.”
Ada took his hand. She held it gently as they looked into each other’s eyes. They stayed like that for a long, slow count to sixty-six.
Then she let go, and turned and walked away.
“Fly free, darlin’,” he whispered.
5:58 a.m.
Fontaine stood alone.
Rache walked up, hovering a foot behind his back. Contemplating.
“I think I’m gonna be pretty good at this,” she said.
“We’ll see. You ain’t passed the audition just yet.”
“No; thing is, I think I have a natural knack for putting things together.” Rache’s lips curled into a tiny, malicious smile. “Ada. She’s the Madrigal.”
Fontaine turned. He put his hand on his hip and cocked his head at her.
“Now, where would you get a notion like that?”
“Back at the diner, she said our targets all turned traitor. That the Madrigal was visiting each of them tonight, trying to get them to change their minds and come back to the fold.”
“Sure,” Fontaine said.
“She told us to go after Foster first, because we’d lose him otherwise, instead of laying a trap for the Madrigal. But Foster wasn’t fleeing town. He was getting drunk in a shitty bar. We could have grabbed him any time we wanted.”
“His bad luck,” Fontaine said.
“But it slowed us down just long enough for the Madrigal to visit the Russo twins. Then we waited. All this pressure, all this ‘gotta get the job done in time,’ and you delayed us for an hour so you could find a hat?”
Fontaine lightly tapped the brim of his Stetson. “It’s a mighty fine hat.”
“You were stalling while Ada made her sales pitch to the last poor schlub on our list, trying to get him to stay with the Redemption Choir. I’m guessing he said no, too. So she called you and told you exactly where to find him. We weren’t hunting the Madrigal’s agents tonight, we were her personal cleanup crew.”
Fontaine’s hand curled ever so slightly. His fingers brushed the killing chain hidden up his sleeve.
“You’re a mighty clever little thing, aren’t you?”
“I just want to know,” Rache said. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
Fontaine chuckled. He looked past her, into the distant dark. It had started misting again, ice water drifting down, kissing his upturned face.
“The prince’s agents were hot on Ada’s trail and closing in fast. She was all but burned, one hot minute from being exposed. She had to get out
of Detroit, pronto. Her four buddies wanted to stay and fight the good fight. So she risked her neck and gave them one last chance to run with her. They all said no. So, yeah. We shut her old network down for her. Cut the trail. I took this contract because Ada asked me to. Because another hunter would have nabbed her.”
His fingers closed around the garrote.
“So,” he said. “Looks like you caught me out. What now?”
“I don’t know.” Rache shrugged. “We go back to work?”
Fontaine lifted an eyebrow. “You’re not gonna turn me in?”
She laughed. “Fuck, no. I’m blackmailing you. I like this job. So you’re gonna give the Order glowing reports about what a natural talent I am.”
She stood beside him, reached up, and patted his arm.
“We’re going to make a great team, partner.”
He limped along, smiling, shaking his head, and she followed at his side.
“You’ll have to earn your keep,” he told her. “If you’re gonna have my back, we’d better teach you right.”
“Hey, as long as the money keeps flowing. So, Ada. I don’t get it. Helping a human, risking your own neck like that? Not to mention the money you could have made by selling her to the prince. All that work and you got nothing for it. Why’d you do it, anyway?”
Fontaine cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted into the distance. An empty crosstown bus rattled past, spitting black exhaust into the frigid predawn air, the city rousing from its slumber and waiting for the morning light, still one dark hour away.
“Same reason a man does anything worth doing, Rache. Same reason anything’s ever worth doing.”
KISS
LILITH SAINTCROW
Readers of the Jill Kismet series will recognize Perry—a character whom the author has often said makes her want to scrub herself with a wire brush every time he shows up. Santa Luz’s resident hellbreed leader has a long history, and a long entanglement with Jill’s line of hunters. The hunters battle the things that go bump in the night, and Jill herself made a bargain with her own personal devil to gain the strength to bump back. What she didn’t know, of course, was just how far that bargain would take her. One suspects her teacher, and his teacher before him, didn’t either.
POWER
February 7, 1945
My kind does not often traffic with the righteous. Oh, there are plenty of churchgoers who come to us, hands clasped, begging for a Trade. We do not drive overly hard bargains; we do our best to turn none away. We are, as my un-father once remarked, charitable indeed. We ask so little, especially of those we favor.
Just a hairsbreadth. Just a tiny, tiny crack.
There are exceptions. For a sizable gift, a sizable sacrifice is required. You must agree that’s only fair. Even then, we will offer more; it’s in your nature to accept a good deal.
So I kept the appointment, passing swiftly between you sacks of flesh carrying your sweet, struggling essential sparks, trapped in a thick liquid you call time and an even thicker fog of your petty little desires. That night a thin, fine rain fell from a gunmetal sky onto cobbled and paved streets, Dresden swollen with cold and refugees fleeing the inferno in the east. The lesser inferno to the west was far preferable, but the roads were choked and the Feldgendarmerie roamed hungrily, shooting those they suspected of desertion, defeatism, or disgust.
The chaos and misery were a warm bath. A beer house beckoned; I plunged into its smoky, crowded fog and found he had arrived early.
Blue-eyed and wheat-haired, in a long leather coat probably stolen from some Schutzie, the hunter slumped in a defensible corner with a clear line to the bar and, hence, the back door. They are very careful, those righteous ones, for all they have is the stink of murder and the fume of our homeland dyeing their physical fibers.
Their nightly murders are, of course, justified by the damage certain citizens of the night cause the sacks of flesh and nerves inhabiting this little backwater.
To gain the strength to fight us, the hunters ascend to our plane, and call it Hell. The true name is unpronounceable to your strange-shaped human tongues, since it must be pronounced inwardly as well as out.
Above all, our home gives you what you expect to find. It is the grandest joke in centuries, that they think we are invaders.
Anyway, the man permitted himself a single wrinkle of his aquiline nose. I’d arrived early, too; he who chooses the battlefield first naturally takes the best position. A hush followed my entrance, swirling around me as I pulled out the chair opposite, letting him think my back to the door presumed a measure of trust.
In a crisp black tailored uniform with a silver skull or two, my back ramrod straight, I was the very picture of a Schutzie myself, platinum hair shaved at the sides and back, my eyes just as blue as a recruiting poster’s muscled paragon. A high-ranking true-blooded soldier, with an uncertain temper and a thin-lipped smile.
I suspected my appearance would irritate him. But I like to dress well, and my coloring, inherited from my quasi-father, carried certain advantages in this milieu.
“Great.” His German was flawless, his accent pure Berliner. He’d been practicing. “So much for passing unremarked.”
“Fear will keep their mouths shut.” I chose English, and his pulse, even and strong, dropped a little. They practice a fine control over their meat processes, the righteous. That is not what truly distinguishes them. There has to be an unsteady, explosive quality to them, married to an obsessive urge. He had both in spades, as they say.
I needed each, and more, for my plan.
The one before me had almost everything I required. Enough to serve, at least. He was also perilously close to deciding I was not worth negotiating with.
He moved as if to leave, and my right hand came down atop his left wrist, rattling the table. The glances shot in our direction fled like skittering insects. I did not tighten my grip, despite the temptation. “Easy, Herr Karma.” I mimicked his Berliner accent, just for fun. “I have something you need, and I am disposed to be friendly.”
“Friendly is not a word I associate with der Teufel.” He showed his teeth, and the fine silver chain dipping below his shirt collar ran with a soft, inimical glow. Normally he would have copper charms tied in his hair, or silver, elemental metal that carries the charge of their . . . belief.
It is that which makes the truly righteous more than mildly irritating, into something approaching dangerous.
“It is a good thing you are simply dealing with my father’s shadow, then.” A ripple passed through me, and I let go of him, one finger at a time. No few of his fellow creatures around us were ripe for the plucking, but I was not there for pleasure. “Listen, Herr Jäger. There is an event coming, one that will make it possible to seal Argoth away.” Saying even that much of his name was a calculated risk, but one well worth taking at the moment.
“Oh?” Herr Karma’s blue eyes narrowed, their irises threaded with faint lines of lavender and gold. Muscle packed onto his deceptively lean frame; the guns and knives and other articles he carried, all the items of his trade, were not half as dangerous as a purity of purpose. They call themselves hunters, as they have from the beginning, in every language humankind is capable of mouthing.
I nodded and finished peeling my hand away. Admired the fineness of my digits in this form, tapping each well-buffed fingernail once against the dirt-and-oil-sodden surface of the table. He had not even ordered a beer, this warrior. “They will bomb this city soon.”
“And?” A faint restive movement. There would be silver loaded along the flat of every blade he carried, and a thin coating of it on his bullets, too. The charge they carried could fracture the shells of my kind, and once the crust is broken, the innards may be tainted.
It was an unpleasant thought. “He will be distracted.”
“Not enough.”
Now for a little sweetening of the bait. “There might be a weapon I can give you.”
“Might be?” One sandy eyebrow
lifted fractionally.
“Come now, Jack.” My tongue flicked out, wet my lips.
He didn’t flinch. Instead, he studied me, the thick scar along the underside of his jaw glaring white. Their healing sorcery is slow and painful, as such things go, but still practical. “What’s in it for you?”
Always the dance, with your kind. Only fools take the first offer. At least he was interested. “Perhaps I weary of this constant battle.”
Blue eyes narrowed. Leather creaked slightly as he shifted, his gaze softening as his peripheral vision took in the room over my shoulder. “Try again.”
I suppressed a certain irritation. “I want out from under my father’s thumb.”
“Why?”
“That doesn’t concern you, mein kleiner Jäger.”
“For the second time, try again.” His tone plainly shouted that I wouldn’t get a third attempt.
“I am his shadow, Karma. His placeholder. It doesn’t occur to you that I might wish to be more?”
He settled back in his chair, examining me. I half turned to flag a slim slattern-haired Fräulein in a filthy apron and a sack of a dress, my thumb and finger held high. She paled under her uneven rouge and hurried to fetch two half liters of the best this smelly zoo-place had to offer. When they arrived, they were a pleasant surprise. Nut-brown with good foam and a strong scent, a rarity in these rationed times. Perhaps the owner here was a friend of Herr Karma’s.
It might be profitable to seek a closer acquaintance myself.
I drained half of mine in long slow gulps, enjoying the taste and the envy of your kind pressing around me, a warm blanket.
“When?” the hunter said, finally, his beer sitting untouched and obedient before him.
I did not bother to hide the smile stretching my approximation of a face. “Soon, Herr Karma.” I produced a calling card, flicking it between my elegant fingers, and offered it to him. “You will need strength to fight him. The price is something I think you’ll find acceptable.”
“The fuck you say,” he muttered in English, and lunged to his feet, chair legs making a high, thin sawing sound. His coat flapped once as he left, taking the stairs two at a time in his haste. His boots were old, their tread worn almost through, hailing from the years before the war when good leather and a fine sole were a matter of course.