Mikhail’s sword hung in its sheath, its clawed finials and long hilt with the open gap in the pommel reflecting golden light. The sheath glowed—worn, mellow leather—the sword drawing strength from the square of sunlight resting over it, metal vibrating with its subliminal song. The skylight above had turned fierce, an open eye letting down a blade of light.
I shuffled out of the kitchen, swiping halfheartedly at the piled dust on the counter with one hand. Across the living room and down the short hall into the bedroom, my feet making little shushing noises against hardwood. My coat hung tossed over the single chair, and my bed—two mattresses and a pile of messy blankets—beckoned.
Maybe just a short nap, so I’m fresh for tonight. The phone sat next to the bed, the answering machine blinking its deadly red eye.
I touched «Play» as I sank down on the bed, wriggling until knife-hilts didn’t poke so badly, burying my face in the pillow.
“Jill? It’s Galina. I have some more copper that might work for your wrist. Come by anytime.”
Will do. My arms and legs were heavy. So heavy. Sunlight is a hunter’s friend, it means rest and relaxation. Bad things generally don’t come out during the day. They wait for cover of darkness to sneak around and cause trouble.
“Jill. It’s Monty. I’ve buzzed you, something’s up. Come by.”
Already did, Monty. I’m on the job. I closed my eyes, breathing into my pillow. The smell of dust and my home gathered close and warm around me. I sighed.
“Kismet.” A bland, blank voice. My breath caught. “It would profit you to visit me. Come tomorrow, after dark, and bring your whip.” A soft gurgling laugh drew fingers of ice up my spine.
He said more, but I stopped listening, shivering as I burrowed into the bed, stopping my ears with the pillow. The sound of his voice faded.
Goddammit, Perry. Calling me wasn’t part of the deal. But I was tired. So bloody tired. I decided to leave it for a few hours. I’d get worked up about it when I woke up.
I tipped over the edge into sleep, the answering machine saying something else to me in a low male tone. I didn’t hear it, just slid under the edge of the world without a murmur as day walked the sky above.
Five months’ worth of training ended up with me facedown on the floor again, aching all oven battered and bruised, sweat dripping from my split ends. The blonde dye had begun to work its way out of my hair, the constant workouts made me scrawnier than ever no matter how much he fed me, and my heart pounded so hard I thought I was going to pass out.
“Get up, milaya.” Pitiless, the accent weighting his words. “Or I will hit you again.”
He meant it, I already knew him enough to know that. I gasped in deep heaving breaths, my chest afire, staring at his bare hairy feet against the canvas. My arms were bars of leaden pain, my legs wet noodles. Still, when a man told you to do something, you did it.
Didn’t you? Obedience wasn’t optional, either in the place I’d been raised or during the years hooking for Val. It was a survival mechanism. One I cursed even as it stubbornly forced me to do what Mikhail told me, one more time.
Hate you, I thought, and buried the words as soon as they drifted across my consciousness. God would surely strike me down if I ever allowed myself to truly think it, wouldn’t He?
He was a man, too.
I pushed myself up. My left arm trembled, shivers spilling through the muscle-meat, before it dumped me back facedown on the canvas-covered mat. I tried again. My arm refused to hold me, rebelling, so I pushed myself up with the other one.
“Get up.” His cane clove air, a silken swish; I didn’t flinch. I’d learned enough not to flinch, no matter what he did.
“How?” I wasn’t being fresh—I honestly didn’t know. When your body starts giving out on you, what do you do?
I was stupid, then. I didn’t know it was the mind that rules the flesh. What you truly will, the body will do. But that’s not the kind of truth you learn walking Lucado Street, you know.
CRACK.
Right across the lower back, gauging it perfectly, the thin bamboo cane would sting like hell and leave a bruise but not damage me. Unfortunately, my legs now refused to work, and I let out a dry barking sob. I wanted to do what he wanted. I needed to do what he told me to—this was my only chance, my only ticket out.
It was my road away from Lucado and my pimp’s empty eyes as he slumped choking over a coffee table, a neat hole in his chest and blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, the clock ticking, ticking, ticking on the wall.
I didn’t ever want to visit that room again. I would do anything I had to, to keep walking away, keep locking that door.
Mikhail said he would find me a job and a place, some therapy, something. But anywhere I went that room would be waiting. It was all I knew, and I’d be back on the street again sooner or later.
Probably sooner. I was a damned soul anyway. Who cared what I did?
Nobody. Nobody except the man in the long coat who had plucked me out of the snow as I lay bleeding, the.22 clutched in my scraped, bruised fist.
Mikhail didn’t want to train me, he didn’t need the trouble. But I wanted to do what he did.
I wanted to make him proud of me.
Mikhail sighed. “Get up, little snake. Don’t crawl.” Heavy, the words slid between my pounding ears. He sounded sad.
I tried again. Made it up to my knees. Red spots danced in front of my eyes, turned black. My feet hit the mat, I was upright without quite knowing how I’d gotten there. My left arm hung useless, the hand nervelessly clutching a knife, and he moved in on me again.
“Block.”
I threw my arm up just in time. Swallowed a harsh bark of pain as the cane clipped my elbow. The knife skittered away across the mats, and my eyes flew to his face, my right hand coming up instinctively, just the way he’d shown me and made me practice. Exhaustion sang in my ears and blurred my eyes, he shifted his weight and I responded, my knees flexing as I dropped into a crouch, knife lifted along my right forearm and a grimace of effort peeling my lips back.
I was too slow and too late, and I waited for the bamboo cane to descend again, braced myself for the pain. Blinked, gasping again as my lungs informed me they weren’t taking any more of this shit. My arms and legs seconded that emotion, with my heart pounding out its own agreement.
It was official. My entire corpse was in rebellion.
“Very good.”
For a moment my brain struggled with the words. I thought he’d spoken in Russian, it was so unexpected. Sunlight poured through the room, dusk coming on but the last half-hour of direct light working its way in through skylights, dust dancing in each golden column. Sweat dripped stinging into my eyes. I stared up at his beaky nose, the brackets around his thin-lipped mouth, Mikhail’s pale hair turning to layers of ice.
“Very good, milaya. Come.”
He bent down to take the knife from me, and I was so far gone I almost didn’t let him have it, shifting my weight back, bicep and triceps tensing involuntarily, preparing for the slash.
My teacher froze. Wariness crossed his blue eyes, and the world stopped.
“I—” I’m sorry, I began to say. The magic words. Sometimes they would stave off a beating if I said them quickly enough. If I was placatory enough, pliant enough.
“Very good.” A broad smile turned up the corners of his thin mouth and made him almost handsome, even if he was too old. “I think, there is more to the little snake than meets the eye, eh? Now hand me knife, milaya, and we shall find arnica for bruises. I think we go out for dinner tonight.”
I stared blankly at him for a long moment. Did he mean it, or was he going to punish me?
He made a quick movement with his blunt, callused fingers. He never hit me unless we were sparring, and he always tended the cuts and bruises gently. So far he hadn’t laid a hand on me except to correct me when I was holding a weapon, or to point out some flaw in my movements.
Or, of course, to beat my ass i
n sparring. But he was capable of more, wasn’t he? He was really able to put the hurt on someone, you could tell by the way he moved.
He was playing nice with me. For now, the hard cold survivor whispered in the back of my head. I tried to ignore her. She wasn’t a good girl.
I reversed the knife. Already the movement felt natural instead of awkward. Offered him the hilt, watching, waiting.
He took it, and the blade vanished into a sheath. He stretched, muscle moving under his red T-shirt, and held out his hand.
“Are you deaf? Come, your teacher is hungry. Hard work, training little snakes.”
My fingers closed on his, and Mikhail hauled me to my feet, then clapped me on the shoulder. I almost went down again, my legs weak as a newborn coifs.
“Go clean up. We go out for dinner.” The kindness in the words was almost as foreign as his accent. “Good work, little snake. You are worth keeping, I think.”
It was the first time anyone had ever thought so, and my heart swelled four big sizes. I made it about three steps before I passed out from the strain.
I spent two days in bed recovering, and when I got up again, my training started in earnest.
Chapter Seven
Night rose from the alleys and bars, spreading its cloak from the east and swirling in every corner. No matter how tired I am, dusk always wakes me up like six shots of espresso and a bullet whizzing past. It’s a hunter thing, I suppose. If we aren’t night owls when we begin, training and hunting make us so before long.
I surfaced from the velvet blankness between dreams, slowly. All was as it should be, the warehouse creaking and sighing as the wind came up from the river like it does every sunset, smelling of chemical-laden water and heat. My eyes drifted open, finding a familiar patch of blank wall. A knife-hilt dug into my ribs, hard. I blinked.
Then I rolled out of bed, catching myself on toes and palms, and did the pushups. Just like every time I woke up. Press against the wooden floor, bare toes cold, shoulders burning. Up. Up. Up.
Like a wooden plank. Nice and straight. Mikhail’s voice again, so familiar I barely noticed it.
When I finished the second set, it was time for the sit-ups. Then I padded, yawning and scratching, out into the practice room. Mikhail’s sword glittered in one last random reflection, dying sunlight jetting through a skylight to touch the hole in the hilt. The glitter was gone as soon as it happened, I hung the harness that held my knives and guns up on its peg. Yawned one more time, the silver charms in my hair shifting, as I settled, my feet hip-width apart, and found my center.
The fighting art of hunters is a hodgepodge. Name any martial art, and we’ve kiped a move or two. Savate, kung fu, plenty of judo—we do a lot of wrestling on the floor, actually—escrima, karate, good old streetlight fisticuffs—which is mostly common sense and retraining the flinches out of you than anything else—t’ai chi… really, the list is endless and a hunter is always picking new things up. There’s even a style of fighting Weres train their young with, relying on quickness and evasion, that Mikhail thought was good for me. It’s like a dance, and several hunters take ballet for flexibility and balance. Every hunter accumulates a set of favorite moves that work well, but you always have to revisit even the ones you don’t like.
You never know what will save your ass.
After a half-hour of katas, I grabbed a pair of knives from the rack on the wall and really went to work. Knife fighting is close and dirty, and it’s my forte. I’m smaller than the average hunter, and even before the scar on my wrist I had quicker reflexes than most.
Women usually do.
Mikhail had to train nastiness into me, though, and the ruthless willingness to hurt. Without it, even the quickest reflexes won’t save you.
Mikhail.
Get up. My knives clove the air, whistling, spinning around my fingers, elbow-strikes, smashing the face with the knee. Get up, milaya. Or I will hit you again. Get up!
My own helpless sobs echoed in my ears, from years and miles away. My body moved easily now, gracefully, forms as strict as a dance become muscle memory, instinctive now. That wasn’t always the case. I had been gawky and helpless when he’d found me, a teenage girl more used to streetwalking than lunge-kicks. The first year of my training had been hell in more ways than one.
Step, kick, turn, take out the knee, upward slash, break the neck with a quick twist, stamp and turn. The blades gleamed in the dimness as the last light of day leached out of the skylights. Metal sang as I flung both knives, the solid tchuk as they met the scarred block of wood set across the practice room reassuring. “Not so bad,” I whispered, and then it was time for the heavy bag.
I started out easy, double and triple punches, working myself into a rhythm. I have to be careful; if you’ve got a hellbreed-strong fist, you have to hold back even when your heavy bag is reinforced. Elbow strike, knee, the rapid tattoo mixing with exhaled breath at the end of each blow.
Sweat dripped stinging into my eyes. Not because of the effort, but because I’d been dreaming again. Memory rose like a riptide, swallowing me whole.
Snow. Shivering, the cold nipping at fingers and toes, exposed knobs of my knees raw and aching. Taste of iron and slick tears at the back of my throat. The place where he’d hit me throbbed, a swallowing brand of fire, and the gun was heavy in my hand.
I’d done it. I had committed murder, and I’d taken Val’s gun. Still, the thing I worried about most was the money. The thought that he’d cut me, hurt me, maybe mark my face if he found me now, wasn’t eased in the slightest by the fact that I’d shot the motherfucker.
The clock was still ticking inside my head. Tick tock, tick tock.
A white Oldsmobile eased by, its windows down even in the blinding cold, and a beer bottle smashed on the pavement. They yelled, and my dry eyes barely blinked. The gun was on my right side, hidden by my thin cotton dress.
I had already killed. I had already committed the greatest sin possible, to crown all my other sins.
If the car slowed down, if they stopped, it would be the last time. The last time.
Split lip, I’d had a split lip and a damn-near dislocated shoulder, and a busted-up spleen—and those were only the lightest injuries. Mikhail told me later it was a wonder I’d been walking, he could smell the blood and hurt on me even across the street.
Punch, bag shudders, follow it up with elbow, lift the knee, move in low, the force on a punch has to come from the hip just like whip-work or it’s useless.
Useless. Like I used to be.
The purring of the Oldsmobile’s engine returned, growing louder. I stopped, head hanging, fingers tightening on the cold metal Men. All of them, men. The same type of men I’d been so close to, so many times, swallowing if I had to, spitting when I could, letting my body do things while the real part of me retreated into a little box—a box that grew smaller and smaller each time.
When it finally became too small, would I vanish?
I had already sailed off the edge of the world. Now I just had to take as many of them with me as I could before I was finally put down. I turned, eyes wide, headlights blinding me, gun lifting—and warm fingers clamped around my wrist.
No, the tall white-haired man had said, another language blurring through the words, a song of a foreign accent. Not tonight, little one.
Kick. Kick. Stamp down, both fists smacking the heavy bag. Fists blurring, low sound of effort through clenched teeth.
I struggled, but he was too strong, and I squeezed the trigger as the car eased past. The sound of the.22 was lost under a blare of the horn and catcalls, and he twisted the gun out of my hand, ignoring the car. I tried to punch him, he didn’t seem to move but the punch went wide, and I spun aside, jailing. My arm stretched, my injured shoulder screaming. He let go, and I landed in snow, my skin burning. I coughed, and a bright jet of blood smashed out through my teeth.
The last thing I felt was gentle fingers in my ragged, strawlike dyed-blonde hair. I tried to curse at hi
m, hooked my fingers and tried to take off some of his skin. My broken nails scratched only air. I tried to scream, choking on blood.
He had watched me for a few moments, weighing me.
My fists thudded into the bag. I stopped. My ribs flickered as I took in deep heaving breaths. How had he seen anything valuable in that broken girl in the snow? And the gun had vanished; he never mentioned it afterward.
Had he guessed how desperate I’d been, and what I’d done with the goddamn gun before he’d seen me? Did he care? Monty never mentioned my police record. Then again, my name was different by the time he met me. I was different, all the way down to the bone. Sometimes I wondered if my fingerprints had changed.
I gave the heavy bag one last punch, listening as it swayed on its chain. The creaking was familiar, and echoed through the warehouse. My breathing evened out, and my eyes tracked across the wall. A long slim shape under a fall of amber silk, the crossbow and hunting bow, the mace and the wooden spear with its tassels rusty and clumped together, its tip gummed with black residue.
And Mikhail’s sword, a faint glow running through the clawed finials, the empty space in the hilt watching me.
The carved ruby in the hollow of my throat warmed, responding. Air brushed my skin, the scar twitching as I noticed it again, the preternatural acuity of my senses almost normal now that I’d spent a while with it uncovered. I would have to visit the Monde Nuit early, both to gather information about whatever hellbreed was killing cops, and also to express my displeasure to Perry. He shouldn’t be calling me.
It wasn’t part of the deal.
Not tonight, little one. I had not known my teacher’s voice then. I hadn’t known it was the voice of salvation.
As if I deserved salvation, deserved to be plucked from the snow and given a new life.
I don’t want to think about this. “Mikhail,” I whispered. The whisper bounced back, taunted me. He was dead, choked on his own blood, betrayed by a viper in woman’s clothing, and I was still here. I hadn’t been able to save him.
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