Night Shift

by Lilith Saintcrow

  I needed a shower.

  One thing about, being a hunter—sometimes your night doesn't work out exactly as planned. All I wanted was a few drinks to brace me before I had to go into the Monde, so I headed toward Micky's on Mayfair Hill, among the gay nightclubs and high-priced fetish boutiques. Micky's is a quiet place, an all-night restaurant where trouble never starts—because not only is it the place where the gay community comes to canoodle over blintzes, beer, and specialty pancakes, it's also staffed with Weres. Pretty much any night you can find a few nightsiders drinking, or stuffing themselves with human food, or just sitting and having a cup of coffee under the pictures of old film stars watching from the walls.

  If you're on the nightside and you're legal, you're welcome in Micky's. Even if you're not-so-legal you're welcome, as long as you pay your tab and don't start any trouble.

  I was heading up Bolivar Street to the foot of Mayfair when something brushed against my consciousness, and I put the Impala into a bootlegger's turn, headed back and around the corner onto Eighteenth. Tires smoked and screeched; a horn blared behind me, and I zagged the Impala into a halfass parking spot in an alley and was out of the car in a flash, my senses dilating.

  The reek of the thing I was hunting smashed through my nose, and I felt more than heard its footsteps like a brush against a drum. Moving fast, and moving away.

  I bolted out into the street, plunged into an alley on the other side, and scaled the side of the building by tearing my way up the outside of the fire escape. Vaulted over the side of the roof and began to run, my coat flapping behind me.

  The baked smell of daylight still simmered up from pavement and rooftop, but the stink cut right through it with a harsh serrated edge. I leapt, etheric force pulled through the suddenly blazing scar, and hit a tenement rooftop going full speed, barely rolling to shed a little momentum, glad once again that I wear leather pants. Denim can get shredded when you're going this fast.

  I don't wear leather because it makes my ass look cute, you know.

  Fuck this thing's quick, watch it Jill, cross street coming up, you can head it off if it keeps going in a straight line—

  But of course it couldn't be that easy. I landed hard in the middle of Twenty-Ninth Street, the shock slamming up through my hips and shoulders as I ended up on one knee, concrete smoking and puffing up dust under the strain of my sudden application of force. Air screamed away from my body, my coat snapping like a flag in a hard breeze. Two blocks down, an indistinct quadruped shape—the streetlight had burned out—squeezed down into the road itself.

  Oh, shit Please don't tell me it did what I think it just did. But I was already moving, and lo and behold things were about to get interesting.

  The son of a bitch had just gone down through a manhole. The manhole cover lay off to one side, dents in its surface I didn't have time to examine. I also didn't have time to drag it back so a car wouldn't break an axle in the hole. No, I just breathed an imprecation and leapt, dropping down through the hole with arms and legs pulled close, bracing myself for whatever waited at the bottom.

  And hoping I didn't hit anything on the way down.

  The resulting thud had a splash attached, liquid splattering up to paint the crumbling concrete walls, and a new and interesting smell of waste threatened to knock me off my feet. Mixed with the gagging stench of the thing I chased, it was a heady bouquet.

  Well, at least if it stinks that bad I can track it. No ambush waited for me down below. I finished sliding a knife from its sheath and noticed something strange.

  The smell of the thing was different It didn't reek of hellbreed, just purely of sickness and fur. The silver in my hair and against my throat didn't start to burn; Mikhail's apprentice-ring on my third left finger didn't prickle with heat.

  No time for questions. The water was knee-high and I splashed through, automatically noting how deep I was—it'd been a hell of a fall. Christ It couldn't fall into a nice clean department store, it had to pick a goddamn storm drain. Smells like something's dead down here too. Lovely.

  Running. Breath coming harsh and tearing, the knife held reversed along my forearm, my coat snapping and popping like a guitar riff, the liquid turning even soupier as tunnels began to branch off. I followed the worst smell, my gag reflex triggered—I didn't have time to throw up. Jesus. This is foul. Why doesn't it smell like hellbreed? My coat is never going to be the same.

  Branching tunnels. A left, a right, a soft left in an intersection of four ways—did this thing know where it was going? Was it running blind or luring me into something?

  I hate this sort of thing. The sludge started getting deeper, and the tunnel slanted downhill. I really hate this sort of thing.

  Covered in guck, stinking to high heaven—there was something dead in the water—I reached a wide, deep chamber with a cleaner smell. A faint green glow bounced off the water's oily surface and dappled the walls.

  Above, pipes tangled, and several different round openings led off in different directions.

  For the second time, maddeningly, the smell just quit between one step and the next. I skidded to a stop in thigh-high water, throwing up a sheet of it, and cast about frantically, trying to catch the thread again. A distant clang, like something sharply striking a pipe, tightened every nerve in my body.

  To top it all off, the charms in my hair shifted, tinkling, and the silver chain at my throat began to burn. Mikhail's ring heated up, too. The knife blurred back into its sheath even as my blue eye scanned under the surface of the world and found nothing.

  The smell was gone.

  Goddammit, I REALLY HATE this sort of thing.

  I backed up a step or two, and there it was again—but it was fading under the onslaught of fresh water lapping into the chamber, a cold current mouthing my thighs. Breaking a trail with running water, a trick so old even normal humans do it.

  But the ability to mask a trail so thoroughly was pure hellbreed. I didn't know of anything else that could do that so cleanly, like a scalpel slicing off a scent.

  And hellbreed meant possible nasty surprise lurking somewhere.

  This would be a really good time to get out of the water, Jill. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go but one of the pipe openings, and God alone knew what was in those.

  My guns cleared leather in both hands, and I turned in a full circle, my eyes—smart and dumb—traveling over every nook and cranny. No use. Whoever it was, they were gone.

  The heat drained from my silver. The scar on my wrist prickled, working in toward the bone, unhealthy heat spilling up my arm, jolting in my shoulder as I pulled force through it, worked into taut humming readiness.

  "Goddammit." The word couldn't carry the weight of my frustration. I searched for others. " Shit. Shit fuck.

  Mother fucking cock sucking fuck on a cheese-coated stick!" My voice bounced and rippled off the water.

  A slight sound, behind me.

  I spun, water tearing up in a sleek wave as etheric force swirled with me, both guns trained on one particular pipe, big enough for something very nasty to fit in. My pulse smoothed out, quit its hammering, and I tasted copper on my tongue through the reek of sewer coating the back of my nose.

  A glimmer, down low. Green-blue and flat, like an animal's eyes at night. My fingers tightened on the trigger even as I sensed another presence and half turned, one gun locking onto the first target, the other locking onto the second. Come out and play, shitheels, whoever you are.

  The second one spoke. "Jill?" A female voice, low and husky with a touch of purr behind it. "Don't shoot. I'm coming out with my hands loose. Dominic's with me."

  What the hell?

  Memory placed the voice. One gun lowered slightly. "Harp?"

  Harper Smith slid out of the second pipe. My pulse thundered in my ears as I twitched, amped on adrenaline and oh so close to pulling the trigger.

  She's tall—Weres usually are, even females. She moved with the fluidity and precision of a cat Were, all sli
nking graze and laziness. Long dark hair pulled back in two thick braids, wide liquid dark eyes, and a mouth that always seemed just short of merriment below an aristocratic nose and wide high cheekbones, she was beautiful in the negligent way almost all Weres are. She hung for a moment full-length from a slimmer iron pipe, then curved to land on a larger one, her booted feet placed for maximum effect. Her battered canvas jacket flapped briefly, showing her sidearm, and the feathers braided into her hair fluttered as she cocked her head, examining me.

  Her mate, Dominic, peered out of the same pipe she'd been in. "Hey, Kismet." His voice was lower, a bass purr, and his sandy-blond hair was as long as Harp's but pulled back and bound in a club with leather thongs. His eyes glittered briefly too, and I caught a flash of the straight line of his mouth before he withdrew a little, into shadow.

  "Put the iron away, willya?"

  The Terrible Two of the Martindale Squad. What the hell is the FBI doing out here? And two Weres without a hunter . . . that means a Were problem. I promptly turned my back on them, both guns pointed at the first pipe.

  "Hey, Dom. What are you guys doing out here?" My fingers tightened on the triggers. "And is that your fucking friend? If it is, you'd better speak up now before I ventilate him."

  "Easy, hunter." The third voice was male, low with an edge of vibrating bass like Dominic's. "Don't make me take that gun away from you."

  Oh, you did not just say that to me. "Come and try it, cheesecake. Weres don't scare me. Who the fuck are you?"

  "Calm down, both of you!" Harp sounded annoyed. "Jill, he's one of ours. He's a tracker from out on the Brightwater Reservation. Saul, come out and introduce yourself. This is Mikhail's student."

  I kept the guns trained as the Were moved cautiously forward. He was a long rangy man, his dark hair shoulder-length and left loose, dark eyes flicking down my body to where the water lapped at my thighs and coming back up again. He had the classic Were face—high cheekbones, red-brown skin, thick eyelashes, chiseled mouth.

  He looked Native American, like most American Weres. Native American on the cover of a romance novel, that is, a really bodice-ripping one. Jeans and a hip-length leather jacket, a black T-shirt stretching over his chest. The healthy clean scent of Were mixed with the stink, and I was abruptly conscious of being dipped in fetid goo and wet almost clear through.

  "Saul." He gave his name grudgingly. "Saul Dustcircle."

  "Jill Kismet." I lowered my guns, holstered them both. Measured him for a long moment. I am not going to say it's a pleasure. Then I rounded back on Harp. "What the fuck is the Martindale Squad doing down in the sewers in my city, Harp? Without contacting me, I might add?"

  "Left you a message yesterday." Dominic eased forward a little more, crouching with easy grace inside the pipe mouth. He reached up, scratched his cheek with blunt delicate fingertips. "You been busy?"

  "That's the goddamn understatement of the year." I should have listened to messages this morning; I knew there was something I'd missed last night. I let out a long breath. "Five cops attacked out on the Drag last night.

  Montaigne called me in. Something that smells goddamn awful, and has a habit of cloaking itself. I repeat, why are you in my city?"

  I should have been a bit more polite, but my nerves were a little thinner than I liked. This disturbed me badly.

  Something that smelled that terrible should not be able to disappear like a hellbreed could. Plus, I was covered in guck, and they looked cool and imperturbable like Weres always do.

  To top it all off, I'd sensed hellbreed, I knew I had. It just kept getting better.

  "Easy, Jill." Harp spoke up, soft and calm. "We just blew into town a couple days ago, and had to wait for Saul.

  We've been trying to reach you."

  She took a deep breath, and her eyes met mine. The other male Were—Saul—made a slight scuffing sound as he moved, and I quelled the urge to twitch. He came goddamn close to getting silverjacket lead in his flesh.

  I suddenly had a very bad feeling.

  Then Harp went and said just about the worst thing she could have. "We have a rogue Were."

  Chapter Eight

  Some days the worst part of the job is cleaning up. I tossed the damp towel in the hamper, buckled my harness on, and stalked out of the bathroom. My coat was dripping in the utility room, having been hosed off thoroughly, and I suspected I was never going to be able to get my boots clean again. So I was barefoot, in a fresh pair of leather pants and a Jonathan Strange T-shirt, the weight of the harness comforting against my shoulders and back.

  I heard voices as I padded up the hall.

  "This place is a sty."

  It seemed Mr. Dustcircle didn't think much of my housekeeping. Weres are inherently domestic, and my empty fridge was probably scandalous to the country boy. If he was fresh off the Rez, he probably hadn't had much contact with hunters, either. Most Rez Weres take a dim view of humans, and hunters are only tolerated because they're good backup when the scurf start infesting again.

  I almost shuddered. At least I was fairly sure we weren't dealing with carnivorous bits of contagion. I've never faced a scurf infestation myself. God willing, I never will.

  "Don't get snitty." There was the tinkle of glass—Harp was probably getting herself a drink. "She's a good hunter.

  Mikhail Tolstoi trained her."

  My heart twisted with pain, kept on beating.

  "She stinks of hellbreed." Dustcircle didn't sound mollified. "And she's not one of us."

  It shouldn't have annoyed me, but it did. I stepped out of the hall, my fingers falling away from a knife-hilt. "Will you shut him up, Harp? That country shit is getting on my nerves."

  Harp stood at my breakfast bar, and Dustcircle stood in the kitchen, his hands loose at his sides. The female Were kept pouring Jack Daniels, steadily, into one of four chunky glasses. No Were strategy session is without munchies unless the situation's dire, and JD was as close to food as I possessed unless you wanted to count the science experiment in the fridge.

  "Dominic went to get some takeout." Harp's dark eyes rested on the glasses. "I wanted to ask you, Jill, could you put Saul up while he stays in town? I would, but we're at the Carlton on expense account, and the pencil-pushers in Accounting don't look kindly on such things."

  I leaned against the living-room wall, folding my arms. I couldn't see Dustcircle's face; the kitchen cabinets hanging over the breakfast bar blocked my view. "Why can't he stay in the barrio?"

  It was rude of me, but he'd just called my house a sty.

  Which it probably was, to a Were. But at least I scrub my own toilets, and there was nothing rotting in the kitchen.

  Well, except for the science experiment in the fridge.

  "Because," Harp said steadily, finishing her pouring, "he doesn't have kin in the barrio, and because I don't want to worry about you while this is going on. This neatly solves both my problems."

  Worry about me? What do you think I've been doing out here, holding hands and having bake sales? "Heaven knows I live to solve your problems, Harp. Quit fucking around. I don't take in boarders, especially ones who can't even insult me to my face. Stash him with Galina, that's what a Sanctuary's for." I restrained the urge to rub at my right wrist, wishing I'd had time to drop by Galina's and take a look at the new copper cuffs. I could smell the alcohol in the glasses, and I badly wanted a jolt.

  "What, and have a rogue battering at her front door? She won't thank me for that, and even if it doesn't matter to her it'll endanger everyone who pops by. Besides, I want this kept quiet, and everybody and their mother goes to Galina's. Come on, Jill. He'll behave, I promise." Harp scooped up two of the glasses, and stalked over the bare wooden floor to hand me one. Her skin was warm, a Were's higher metabolism bleeding heat into the air. "Let's sit down, shall we?"

  "Help yourself." I indicated my ugly-as-sin secondhand orange Naugahyde couch. "Come on, Harp. Spill. Even if it is a rogue Were, what the hell is the FBI doing in on it? Rogue W
eres are the responsibility of regional territory holders in conjunction with hunters. The Norte Luz pride should be in on this."

  Harp settled herself on the couch. I downed the respectable dollop she'd poured me, felt it burn all the way down, and stamped over to the counter to snag the bottle. Dustcircle eased around the corner of the breakfast bar, eyeing me disdainfully. He smelled faintly of cherry tobacco and cigarette smoke, and he was much larger than me, being a Were. His gaze met mine, flicked down my body again.

  I loudly ignored him.

  "Well?" I prompted, when the silence stretched a little too far. "Come on, Harp."

  "The rogue has crossed state lines." She was choosing her words with care. "And his kills are… disturbing. Very disturbing."

  You know, when you say disturbing, I bet it means something totally different than when I say it. And neither definition is very comforting. I had a bad feeling about all this. "Would it have anything to do with the way the trail keeps vanishing? Or with the hellbreed I keep smelling?"

  "You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" Dustcircle's tone was tight and furious. He didn't like being dismissed.

  "You going to muzzle him, Harp?" I settled down cross-legged on the floor near the couch. "I'm not as patient as Mikhail when it comes to dealing with little boys who bark too much."

  To give her credit, she didn't roll her eyes. "Jill made a bargain with one of the resident powers in town," Harp said quietly. "With Mikhail's support and approval, I might add. She's a good hunter, Saul. Either be a polite little kitten or shut the fuck up, will you? I would hate to have to call your mother."

  "I'm not a kit, Harp." Most of the growl left his voice. He picked up one of the drinks, paced smoothly across the room, and settled down on the floor about six feet from me, facing the couch. There was no other piece of furniture in the living room except the lamps, big antique iron things that had stood in Mikhail's bedroom, once upon a time. "I apologize, hunter. I haven't slept much, and I'm impolite."

  By Were codes of etiquette, that was a bare-throat submission. I stared at him for a good thirty seconds. The mellow shine of electric light in his hair was tinted with red. "Forgotten," I said finally. "And forgiven. Nice to meet you."