Night Shift jk-1

by Lilith Saintcrow

  I sat in the middle of the street with eyes that felt as wide as plates, staring like a child listening to a fairytale too horrible to be unreal.

  The sunsword sang a high keening note of agony before the fire—even the burning gasoline—flattened and died with a wump, as if starved of oxygen.

  I felt around blindly with my stinging hands, the reek of burning gas and scorched paint in my nose. Found my lost gun. My legs didn’t want to work, but I pushed myself up, shaking, as the first spatters of rain began again. More thunder caromed through the sky’s unhealthy orange cityglow. Lightning spattered between clouds.

  The sounds Cenci made as she ripped even further at decaying hellbreed flesh brought everything I’d ever thought of eating up to the back of my throat. I doubled over, heaving so hard black spots danced in front of my eyes again.

  There’s even a limit to what a hunter can stand, I thought, amazed. Shotglass-sized drops of rain dotted the cracked asphalt. Crazy loops of scorching and cracking marred the entire surface of the street. Had I done that, or had the dueling hellbreed done it? The road was a mess. I spotted two lampposts and a telephone pole down, and a couple more buildings smashed. Down the street there were lights, and I caught the distant sound of sirens.

  I’m alive. I didn’t believe it even as I thought it.

  Hands were at my shoulders. “It’s over.” Perry sounded very pleased with himself. “There now, my dearest. That wasn’t so bad, was it? One little thing left to do, and we will go home.”

  My forehead left a bloody, soot-grimed streak on his immaculate, linen-clad shoulder. Not a hair out of place. He wasn’t even bruised, or scorched.

  The sounds behind me ceased. Tension tightened between the raindrops. I jerked away from Perry, whose hands dropped back to his sides.

  Cenci stood amid the wreckage of the limousine. Ice now marred the edges of shattered steel and broken glass. I thought I caught sight of the driver’s body in there, but my gaze locked on Arkady, who was swiftly collapsing into runnels of foulness.

  They rot quick, when they’re older. It was a comfort to imagine Perry like that. More of a comfort than I liked.

  Navoshtay Siv Cenci’s eyes met mine. They were crimson, glowing, and entirely crazed, but I saw…

  No. I thought I saw…

  No. I saw. I saw comprehension in them, and devouring grief, and shattering pain. I saw agony in those eyes, and my guns dropped to my side.

  The anguish burning in her eyes was almost human.

  “Kill her,” Perry whispered, sweetly. His breath touched my cheek, hot and laden with moisture. “Kill her now, hunter. She killed your people.”

  Blackness smeared Cenci’s chin. Her clothes were smoking rags, and I wanted to look down, see if her belly was curved. I suspected not. I remembered the pool of oily viscosity in the front yard of the death house, and I thought of her crouching in the dark of night, her arms crossed over her midriff and her eyes gone crimson just as they were right now while she bit her lip so as not to make a sound, as one of her father’s filthy experiments slid out of her body and onto the mortal grass.

  She’s not human! She killed them! Kill her! Kill! My brain shrilled it at me, but my hands were limp and cold. The guns dangled.

  No. Not human. The body bags loaded with bits of her ravaged victims I’d seen screamed for vengeance. That was my function, that was my job. To put her down like a rabid animal, no matter what I’d promised.

  But I didn’t shoot. I held her eyes, and I thought of Saul. I thought of a rogue laid under spells of concealment and protection, and I thought of the trail vanishing each time.

  Because she had protected a Were whose name I now knew. Billy Ironwater.

  My muscles strained between the two urges—the urge to kill, to do my job and be the vengeance of her victims, and the small still voice of my conscience, trying to speak through the soup of rage and destruction. Trying to show me the way.

  I hesitated, on the knife-edge. Why was I not killing her? Which was the right path to take?

  Did I even care?

  Then Perry made his mistake. The mistake that put the last piece of the puzzle in place.

  “Do as I tell you!” he hissed, vibrating with rage and impatience. “Kill her, you stupid bitch! “

  I came back to myself with a jolt. Uncertainty vanished, and my conscience spoke with the voice of brass trumpets. I knew the right thing to do, and what Perry wanted me to do, and found with relief that I could still make that choice.

  No. My lips shaped the word, without breath to make a sound. It was wrong. Just how I couldn’t say, but I knew it was wrong.

  If I killed her, I would no longer be a hunter.

  I would be as bad as Perry if I cut her down now. Worse, even.

  Had that been his game all along?

  Certainly, something deep whispered inside me. He’s been watching and waiting to trap you, and Arkady gave him a perfect opportunity. It’s just another game for him, maneuvering you into taking a life you shouldn’t. Damning you just like a Trader, and taking his payment. Then it won’t be him in the rack, screaming.

  It will be you. And he will not let you go.

  Cenci nodded. It was a slight movement, her chin dipping faintly. Then she turned, the rags of her clothing fluttering on the sudden sharp rain-laden wind, and was gone, into the black mouth of an alley. Masked as thoroughly as ever a hellbreed was.

  Perry twitched.

  I threw myself back and to the side, avoiding his clawed hand. The guns spoke as I squeezed both triggers, staggering them. Each shot hit him full in the chest. Once, twice, three times. Four. Black ichor burst out, his diamond stickpin vanishing in a mess of gore.

  He snarled, lightning etching sharp shadows into his face. They were the lines of an ancient inhuman hunger, and for a moment I saw beneath the screen of blond bland humanity and glimpsed the truth, as if I was between again.

  I saw him, and my heart stopped, sanity struggling with the flash of revealed evil before my brain mercifully shut it away, unable to remember the full horror. My breath stoppered itself in my chest, heart struggling to function.

  A clotting, cloying reek of spoiled honey and rotting sweetness boiled over me before the rain flashed through where he had been standing, and I heard retreating footsteps. Perry ran in the direction of the Monde Nuit, and I lay on the cold street as the slashing fat needles of water soaked through leather, cloth, and my scorched hair.

  My breath came back, spilling into flaccid lungs. My heartbeat kept going, the stubborn muscle not knowing when to quit.

  Thank God. Thank you, God.

  If I lay there with my face upturned to the rain, the shaking juddering sobs wouldn’t matter. I had very little time to cry, because the sirens were getting closer, and I had to find a phone.

  Chapter Thirty

  It took an hour for me to clear the scene, mostly waiting for Montaigne to get there so I could tell him to start the paperwork for a major paranormal incident. The shattered hulk of the limousine, full of the water falling from the sky, was hauled away, and I used Monty’s cell phone to reach Harp as I stood in a doorway, looking at the yellow tape and flashing red and blue lights. Monty palmed a handful of Turns while Harp’s cell phone number rang.

  “What? ” she snarled, and I cleared my throat. I felt like I’d tried to swallow tacks instead of Monty’s antacids.

  “Harp. It’s me.” I coughed, each breath a broken husk. I was soaked to the bone, and would have been shivering if I’d had the energy.

  “Jesus fucking Christ! Where the fuck have you been?” She was coming unglued.

  That meant the job was done. Billy Ironwater was dead, the hunt had been successful. “Arkady’s dead,” I husked. “Where’s the pyre?”

  “The barrio. Barazada Park. Jill—”

  “I’m on my way. Don’t start until I get there.”

  “It’s raining, Jill. Where the fuck have you been?”

  “I will explain. Later.”
It hurt to talk. I tasted blood. “Hold the fucking pyre for me, Harp. It’s necessary.”

  Silence, crackling. Thunder spilled through the clouds again, reminding us little mortals below of angels bowling and lightning striking.

  I’d been so close to falling into Perry’s trap. The idea that he’d used this to set up a snare just to catch me made me feel weak and sick.

  The idea that I’d been so close made me feel even sicker.

  What had stopped me?

  “All right. Get here soon.” Then she hung up, and I thought privately that her cell phone had probably been flung at a tree. Harp always got a little nervy after a successful hunt. She was coldly lethal during, but all the tension snapped like a rubber band afterward.

  We know someone else who functions like that, don’t we, Jill? Someone else who needs just a little push to go over the edge. Someone who almost fell right into a hellbreed’s trap.

  I ignored that voice in my head. The sunsword was a cold weight against my back, spent and icy. Working it free of the shattered metal and the pavement underneath had been hard for even my hellbreed-strong right arm.

  Monty’s bald spot glowed under the glaring lights. “Is it over?” He hunched his shoulders miserably under the assault of the rain.

  “It’s over.” I would have sounded relieved, if it hadn’t been for the broken glass scraping in my throat. “No more bodies, unless there’s a site we haven’t found yet. It’s done.”

  “I don’t even wanta know.” He was pale. Fishbelly pale, and the water on his skin wasn’t all from the rain. “You okay, Jill?”

  The question was so absurd I almost laughed. I didn’t only because it would have hurt too goddamn much. My ribs were tender, and I was so tired of being flung around and breaking them. The blood was washing off my face, and I was tired of losing it.

  My throat was on fire, and I was tired of talking. I was just plain tired,

  “Right as the fucking rain,” I croaked. “I need a ride to Barazada Park, on the double. Can you?”

  His tired, mournful eyes met mine. Lightning flashed, another tattoo of brightness. The bright yellow slickers of the emergency personnel wavered like fish at the bottom of a pond.

  “I can do that,” he said. Someone yelled his name and he waved fretfully over his shoulder. “Anything else you need?”

  Another laughable question. There was so much I needed, so much I would never have.

  But look at what you’ve got, Jill. A big fat pile of nothing. Isn’t that grand?

  At least I still had my soul. That, I now knew beyond a doubt. I had not fallen into a hellbreed’s trap. I might be tainted, but I wasn’t gone.

  I was not damned. And if I wasn’t now, had I ever been?

  It was enough. For now.

  “Not a thing, Monty. Thanks.” Then I shut up and let him make the arrangements for a black-and-white to break a few traffic laws getting me down into the barrio.

  There’s a corner of Barazada Park that butts up against a graveyard, the Church of Santa Esperanza sitting gloomily off to one side. Weres don’t have much use for Catholicism—and they have their reasons, the Inquisition in the New World being a big one—but they understand the symbol of the sacred as well as anyone.

  Bile and slick copper lay foul in my mouth. My throat still throbbed. My hellbreed-enhanced healing capability had other things to worry about, like replacing the few gallons of blood I’d lost lately. Little things like a sore, bruised throat were last on the list.

  I sent the black-and-white with its nervous rookie driver away, hunched my shoulders against the driving curtain of cold downpour, and plunged into the park’s pines, aiming for the back corner. I crashed through the brush without trying to move quietly—after all, they were Were. They’d hear me coming.

  I tumbled out finally on the top of a low rise, looking down into the shallow depression where a stack of brushwood lay slick and dark, a long male shape arranged atop it. Lightning flashed somewhere else, spilling light and silver shadows onto the wet grass.

  I felt them watching, from the trees. Lambent eyes and glitters of teeth. But none of them came out. Had they guessed, or was it just a courtesy they paid me? Where was Saul?

  Just as I thought it, another shape resolved out of the trees beside me, avoiding each wet clinging branch easily. Tall and broad-shouldered, two bits of silver glittering in his hair, Saul Dustcircle stopped short, staring at me.

  I heard more branches crackle and whirled, held up my hands. “Leave her alone!” My harsh crackle of a voice was a crow’s unlovely scarring on the sweet silver sound of rain and the clean roll of thunder. “Leave her alone! She’s not here for you!”

  Thank God, they retreated. A pale glimmer showed between the trees. The bone-splintering growl of threatened Weres rose under the collage of storm sounds.

  Saul moved restlessly. “Jill?”

  The growls died down. It took a while.

  “Let her be,” I managed through my swollen throat, struggling to pitch it loud enough to be heard. “I promised her.”

  He stepped away, twice. Both quick graceful movements. According to Were custom, it was his right to light the fire, since his kin had died at the hands of the rogue.

  Water dripped icy down the back of my neck. I stared at the pale glimmer in the trees, willing it closer. Finally, Cenci stepped out.

  She looked different, without the insanity of crimson glowing in her eyes. She had been washed clean, all the black ichor and scorching sluiced off. Her rags fluttered as she walked past, head held high with a hellbreed’s pride, and stopped, staring down at the pyre.

  Her face crumpled, once. That was all. She darted me a glance, and her eyes were dark without the shine of ‘breed. Her throat swelled as she swallowed. She was taller than me by a good head, and so thin I saw the shadows of her bones.

  Finally, she spoke. “Was it quick?”

  I nodded, but it was Saul who answered for me. “Quick and painless.” His voice was tight, almost as throat-locked as mine. Another restless movement on his part, and I stepped forward, steeling myself as I came within range of her claws. I kept my hands loose and free with an effort.

  I hope I’m not being stupid.

  She shot me a look that might have qualified as amused, if not for the sheer veneer of mute madness. Her profile was classic and serene, despite her father’s nose. The damned are beautiful, all of them. Except maybe Perry, and he wasn’t ugly.

  The thought made my breath catch and my stomach go tight with stark terror. I’d shot him, and outwitted him by the barest of margins. If I’d fired on Cenci like he’d wanted me to, I probably could have killed her with a headshot. But what would have happened? Really happened?

  I could guess, but I never wanted to know. I never wanted to find out. I never wanted to be that close to the abyss again.

  Too bad, Jill This is your life.

  “I suppose you want an explanation.” Her jaw set, her eyes flicking past me. Down to the pyre, as if she couldn’t wait to get started.

  “Don’t need one.” The rasp in my voice was better. I longed for a cold beer, for a hot bath, for a decent meal and a week’s worth of sleep. “Arkady had a toy, and he had you. You did something hellbreed don’t do.”

  “I’m one of his experiments, too. He impregnated a human. A Trader.” Loathing burned through her heatless voice. The sound of thunder retreated, the storm sweeping through and relaxing. The rain would be over soon, and fall would begin treading through the desert. Which meant colder nights, and the occasional seventy-degree day, and not much else here in Santa Luz.

  The nightside doesn’t take vacations. Neither do I.

  “It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t say that I knew, that I had seen it, in the way of things I saw between. A sudden flash of comprehension, and I’d understood so much more about her. Another toy, kept for some of Arkady’s games, and a Were driven to madness after being trapped and subjected to God alone knew what.

  They
had done the impossible, both these broken creatures, and relied on each other. I didn’t know if I could call it love. I would swear on a stack of Bibles that hellbreed can’t love.

  Yet she had put herself in danger, for a Were. Protected him as best she could, moving him across the country one step ahead of Arkady’s search for them—because hellbreed do not like their toys to escape.

  She had protected the Were the only way she knew how—with her sorcerous ability, and with spilled blood. His periods of lucidity grew less and less until he no longer recognized her—had that been a particular type of torture? And when he broke from her and ran, brought to bay at last by others of his kind, what was left for her?

  Nothing but this.

  “Are you ready?” I tried to sound kind, probably failed miserably.

  “I’m ready.” But she paused. “You know about Hell, hunter.” It wasn’t a question.

  I shivered, not from the cold. Nodded. Rain peppered her skin and mine. She stared at the pyre still, her entire body leaning tensely forward, down the slope of the hill.

  “Do you think he’ll be there?” Abruptly, she sounded very young. I don’t know how I knew who she meant, unless it was the human softness in her voice.

  The rock in my throat wasn’t just the swelling from being half-strangled. “Wherever you’re going, Billy’s waiting for you, Cenci.”

  She nodded. Stepped forward, and I noticed her feet were bare and battered, bleeding sluggish black that didn’t look like hellbreed ichor. It was too thin, and though it looked black… well, blood often does, at night.

  Human blood, at least.

  Dear God, let this be the right thing to do. Let this be enough.

  Her right hand was curled into a blackened claw—and I saw it again, her holding the sunsword’s hilt, keeping her father pinned amid the gasping flames.

  I stumbled. Saul’s hand closed around my upper arm, kept me upright. The hillside was slick and treacherous as we picked our way down.