Night Shift

by Lilith Saintcrow

  "Of course." I tried not to sound too sarcastic. "I wouldn't be much of a hunter if I didn't know where the back doors are."

  "Guess not." Grudging, barely giving an inch. I supposed it would kill him if he admitted I knew how to do my goddamn job.

  I wondered what he'd say when I told him the back door was on the roof.

  We dropped down into a bath of crimson light and a dancing mass of Traders. I landed hard, the dance floor cracking in a radial pattern as the force of my breaking a law of physics crackled out in random spiderweb spokes.

  My aura flamed, visible suddenly in the inky etheric contamination, a sea urchin made of light. Then I came up all the way from the floor with a punch that sent one Trader flying, blood from his smashed face hanging in the air for a moment before splashing out. The knives left their sheaths, and I started weeding through them in earnest.

  Twenty seconds later, I forgot about Dustcircle. It was apparent he could take care of himself—except for when one Trader leapt for his back, and the knife left my hand with a glitter, a short wordless cry like a hunting falcon's escaping my lips. Just afterward I took a shot right in the gut from a squat bearded Trader who gibbered when I snarled at him, the silver in my hair burning and the ruby sparking at my throat, and I brought up the Glock in my free hand. The whip uncoiled, and I was just about to leap down from the dance floor into the club proper through strings of swaying glass beads when something smashed into me from the side.

  I went flying and twisted, getting my feet under me and skidding across the bar, bootsoles smoking as I kicked, another Trader going flying. Then it came after me again, so fast it almost blurred, and I recognized the veiled

  'breed who did assassinations.

  Oh, fuck. I dropped to the side, firing with both hands now, trained reflex tracking the 'breed as he leapt above the bar and sank his fingers into the concrete wall, hissing at me with bared teeth I could see through his fluttering veil.

  He was unholy quick, but I'd been trained by the best and aimed before him, knowing he would twist in midair to get leverage so he could bring his claws to bear on me. Silver-loaded bullets punched through his shell, black ichor flying, then I rolled, gaining my feet with a convulsive movement most people don't think a woman is capable of using—knees drawn in before feet flung out, back curving, feet coming under to catch, I spun in a tight half-circle and caught the next hellbreed—a female with flying black-ink hair—as she was at the apex of an arcing leap down on me. Silverjacket lead flew, the nightclub suddenly a roil of screaming chaos, and I heard the deep coughing roar of a Were in a rage.

  Hope he's all right. I was too busy to worry about him, I had troubles of my own. My eyes found the whip again, but it was too far away and the veiled 'breed thrummed in Helletöng, the curse flashing past me and slicing through a pair of Traders who had been looking to leap on my back.

  Thank God I brought it. My right hand flashed up, closed around the hilt, and I gave the sharp sideways jerk that burst the snaps on the sheath. Leather parted and the ruby at my throat flamed into bright bloody light.

  Okay, you sonofabitch. Let's tango.

  I actually had time to let go of the hilt, flip my hand while the sword was in midair, and close my fingers on it again before the veiled 'breed crashed into me yet once more. The shock tore something in my side, and my scream rose with his growl, an inhuman sound that caused no few of the Traders to drop to the floor, clapping their hands over their ears—but my aura flamed again, blocking the force of his cry, and all I heard was the horrible choking of a gallows-dropped man whose neck has not kindly snapped. I got my feet underneath me and dug my heels in, the bright blade coming up as my other hand closed on the hilt.

  Orange flame burst along the sword's long straight line. It was a two-handed broadsword, with its point on the floor the finials reached my ribs and the blade was as wide as my hand at the base. The hilt's metal claws sparked, flexing down to feed power into the blade, and a crimson gleam showed in the empty place in the hilt, echoed by the bloody gem at my throat.

  You can't use a suns word without a key, after all.

  Fighting with a broadsword isn't like knifework. It's a matter of hack and slash, and the speed that gives me such an edge when it comes to knifing is handicapped by the sheer weight of the blade and the pommel, still too absurdly big for my fragile-seeming hands. Still, the ruthlessness trained into me comes in handy. I don't hesitate to hack or slash.

  And once all that mass gets moving, the momentum gets easier to control. My speed kicks back in, becoming an asset once more.

  The sword coughed, reacting to the contamination of Hell's citizens in the air. Then it burst into its true flame, golden like the noon sun dawning from hilt to tapered point.

  Howls. Screams. The veiled 'breed ran right into the slash as I stamped, driving forward with the long muscles in my legs. Preternatural flesh parted, and the 'breed gave a deathly scream, spiraling up into a falsetto squeal. I half-turned again, continuing the motion and sweeping the sword up, meeting the second wounded 'breed. What do you say God let there just be two of them, please, what do you say, give me a break—The thought was gone in an instant as ichor sizzled on hot steel, and another squeal tore the space inside the Random. Flame dripped, and the flooring smoked. It was only a matter of time before the place started to burn with sunfire.

  My side healed in a brief burst of agonizing pain as I pulled on etheric force, sweat dripping down my back. The scar on my wrist screamed with agony, but the ruby pulsed reassuringly. The sword still recognized me, and didn't burn me to a crisp. That, at least, was comforting.

  Then the world exploded into chaos. I heard Dustcircle's short yell of warning and whirled, only getting halfway before an amazing, terrific weight smashed into me from behind.

  I flew. Good thing I wore leather, my skin would have been erased as I landed, fetching up against the floor and skidding into a pile of rotting Trader bodies. It was on me again, fingers sinking into my hair and yanking my head up, before I shook the dazed noise out of my head and found myself still holding the burning sword. A pile of decomposing Traders was beginning to smoke, waves of heat spreading out in concentric shimmering-air rings.

  My hellbreed-strong right arm came up, and I used the clawed pommel to smash the side of the thing's head in.

  It tore away from me, and cloth ignited with low hissing sound. I staggered to my feet, bracing both hands around the hilt, and got a good look at him.

  He was slim and dressed in black, with dusty black eyes. When I say black eyes I mean the iris and pupil were so dark as to be indistinguishable yawning holes in his face, and that blackness spread through the whites, staining them with rage. He wore, of all things, a nice pair of Tony Lamas in plain black, and his hair was scorched on one side but appeared black and curly, his coppery skin and hooked nose giving him a vaguely Italian cast.

  The world fell away. Etheric force hummed through the scar, cycling up as his aura tightened, a black hole of swirling force.

  Oh, shit.

  The sunsword hissed, coming up and dappling the air with heat. It blocked the force of the hellbreed's eyes, and I tilted the blade, deflecting the second curse he rumbled at me in Helletöng. Still, I felt it pass me like a train rumbling past at midnight, and my knees almost buckled.

  This wasn't just a hellbreed.

  It was a monstrously powerful hellbreed, and I'd just pissed it off bigtime.

  I dug my feet into the floor, filled my lungs, and got ready for a fight I would almost certainly not win even with the sunsword's help.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Stasis. The world slowing down, stopping, as the hellbreed stared at me, force crackling over him in an egg-shaped shield. Everything hung in the air—drops of blood, shattered bits, a Trader falling from the roof where he had tried to get some height to leap down on Saul Dustcircle, who had finished rolling aside and was ready for him, a Bowie knife somehow appearing in his hand, a random dart of light
jetting from the blade.

  Goddamn Weres and their damn little camouflage tricks.

  The 'breed's eyes met mine. He was old, and I bet he'd produce hellfire in at least the green spectrum. Anything above red is seriously bad news, and anything above yellow means kiss-your-ass-goodbye-hunter-it's-time-to-die.

  Unless you have a share of hellbreed strength yourself. I drew in an endless breath, the tatters of my coat brushing out on a breeze coming from nowhere, my own aura extending, spiking with a random pattern of brightness. A hunter's aura: disciplined by the training and each exorcism I've performed, a hard shell of etheric energy that makes sure I stay in me—and nothing else gets in.

  The sunsword roared with flame, more than I'd ever seen, a tail of orange and yellow like the sun's corona spiking up to touch the ceiling, heat shimmering.

  I dared him, silently, and knew that he read it in my eyes, in the slight lift of my chin and the way my fingers grew almost soft on the hilt. You never, ever clutch a sword, it makes the strike inaccurate.

  His answer was just as slight—a shifting of weight, an infinitely small smile lifting the corners of his sculpted lips.

  I realized he was grinning under his thatch of wet-dark hair, and I saw again, noticed again, his eyes were almost completely black. Infinitely black, with a pale shimmer like disoriented oil floating on the top of a deep sucking tarn. Those eyes were deadly, threatening to suck me in and drown me.

  Riptide. Grabbing, whirling, sinking, arms and legs weighted with lead, even my eyelids suddenly drowsy, heavy as a guilty conscience and just as deadening.

  Why are his eyes so deep? The thought glittered like a flung knife, like one of my knives, flying true, its load of silver along the flat of the blade—where it couldn't be sharpened off—hissing with white flame as it streaked under the 'breed's uplifted arm and socked home in his ribs. The sound, a heavy solid thunk like an axe driven into dry wood, smashed through my head as the sunsword swept down, painting a fiery streak after its edge.

  The clash—sunsword versus hellbreed—was like Mack trucks colliding. The Shockwave threw me back, clutching at the hilt, feet scraping in debris shaken down from the roof. The collision blew every bit of glass in the place, including the lightbulbs and the bottles over the bar. The 'breed screeched, no murmuring rush of Helletöng now but a wounded scream, and there was a rushing confusion.

  The sword dimmed. Darkness closed almost-absolute around me, light filtering down through the shattered roof as I gasped, my eardrums rattling and a hot wet trickle of blood sliding down from my nose, matching the hot trickles dripping out of my eyes. I collapsed to my knees, only vaguely aware of Saul Dustcircle's arm under my shoulders as I bowed over backward, fingers still loose around the pommel but other muscles tightening up, convulsing. The scar prickled, wetly, a satisfied little lick that sent revulsion spinning down through my stomach.

  Don't throw up, Jill. You're alive, you survived, don't puke. Not in front of the Were.

  "What the fuck was that?" He sounded a little less than calm. A lot less. It was the first time I've ever heard a Were actually sound frantic.

  Don't worry, country boy. Everything's under control. I wanted to reassure him, but my mouth for once didn't obey my brain.

  "You threw my knife," I whispered.

  Then I passed out.

  It was only a brief second of unconsciousness. I came to right afterward, the sunsword quenched and weighing down my hand. I heard footsteps crunching through smashed and shattered bits. The reek of dead hellbreed and crisped Trader was incredible.

  A slight sound to my left brought me fully back into myself. The scar ran with wet heat, as if hot, inhuman breath was touching the ridged skin.

  "Look at this mess." Perry finished lighting a cigarette, flame caressing his face with gold for a moment before he clicked the lighter shut. My eyes stung, then adjusted. We'd caused a hell of a lot of damage. "I am going to be hard-pressed to make amends for this, Kiss. You really do know how to complicate matters."

  Oh, Christ. Not now. I coughed and choked on the reek, wetness smearing my cheeks. Blood or tears, I couldn't tell. The sunsword keened a little, metal vibrating as it cooled. The red glimmer in its hilt didn't quite go out, but I could tell it would need several hours of direct sun to recharge it. Time to use Galina's greenhouse again.

  Am I still alive? A mental inventory returned the verdict that I was, indeed, still alive. And conscious. Plus possessing all my usual bits and pieces.

  Hallelujah.

  "Who the fuck is that?" Dustcircle jerked me upright, rising to his feet with one fluid motion and dragging me with him by default.

  "Friendly," I managed, between whooping retches. I bent over, and my stomach did its level best to rebel against the rest of me. It was declaring its own country and seceding from my union, so to speak.

  "Doesn't smell friendly," the Were muttered. "Are you all right?"

  He doesn't smell friendly because he isn't, but if you jump him it's going to get real ugly in here real quick. I got in enough air for a word. "Fine."

  "You'd better put a leash on that Were of yours," Perry remarked. He stood in a fall of orange citylight creeping through the shattered ceiling. The fires, all of them, were snuffed. And it was cold. My breath made little icy puffs as I gasped. The red eye of Perry's cigarette winked as he inhaled, the smell of burning tobacco and another darker perfume cutting through the death-reek for a moment. "Do you know what you just did?"

  Miracle of miracles, the amount of breath I could get in doubled. Enough for two words. "Fuck… you."

  "Charming. Do you think we should? It would certainly put a whole new shine on our relationship. I repeat, my dearest, do you know what you just did?"

  I just cleared out the Random and almost got hooked like a fish by a 'breed with dark eyes and probably an accent.

  You know how I am for those tall dark and gruesome boys. I couldn't get in enough oxygen to say it, settled for glaring at him between retches. Silver in my hair chimed, and Saul rubbed at my back over the shredded rags of my trenchcoat.

  I didn't have the heart to tell him to stop.

  "Take it easy," he murmured. "You looked dazed."

  No shit I looked dazed, it almost had my guts for garters. "C-compulsion." My teeth chattered over the word.

  " Christ."

  Never. My brain shuddered, came back to itself. Never met anything like that before. Jesus Christ. Mikhail, why didn't you tell me about this? I could handle everything a lot better if you were here.

  The heaves stopped, and Saul steadied me until I could stand again. "Made a hell of a mess." His voice was back to calm and even, maybe even a little disdainful. "Nice trick, with the sword."

  Nice trick, hell. You saved me by throwing my own knife. Is it the one I tossed at the Trader who almost jumped you? There were more pressing questions. I held the ember-dim sunsword away from both of us, awkwardly, and shook him off. Faced Perry over the heave-cracked floor of what had been, a very short time ago, a thumping, jiving Trader nightclub.

  I sure know how to throw a party, don't I. "What the fuck are you doing here, Perry?" It came out hoarse, and my throat burned with bile even though I was forcing my stomach to stay with the program.

  "Saving your delicate skin from being peeled off in strips. Do you know who that was?" The hellbreed cocked his head. He was pristine in a pale suit, as always, and the lamps of his eyes scored a hole in the darkness. They weren't deepening to indigo yet, which was a good thing. If Perry got seriously pissed off, I was in no condition to handle it right now.

  "Some jackshit little hellbreed with a nice pair of eyes." I waved my left hand, dismissive. My apprentice-ring ran with blue threads of light, not breaking the surface of the silver yet but close. "I repeat, Pericles, what the everloving fuck are you doing here?"

  "I told you, saving you. You just committed violence against Navoshtay Niv Arkady." The faint orange light caressed his pale hair, sliding over its smoothness.r />
  I froze. Passing out again began to sound like a really good idea.

  "Who?" Saul didn't sound impressed.

  My lips were numb, so Perry answered for me.

  "The head hellbreed of New York and the accompanying territories, Were. Our little Kiss just clocked the highest-ranking 'breed on the East Coast—here on diplomatic business, I might add—over the head and gave him a sunburn. And you tossed a knife into his ribs." Perry actually, damn his eyes, sounded pleased as punch at the thought. "Oh, Jill, my pretty little Jillian, do you have any idea what you are going to owe me when this is all over?"

  Chapter Eighteen

  I held up the coat.

  My hands were still shaking.

  Blood dripped from its tattered leather edges—my claret, and the thin black fluid that passes for hellbreed blood.

  My head felt a little too big for my neck, and the ringing in my ears wasn't doing me much good either. Hunger crawled under my ribs along with a sickish feeling. The battered, comfortable knee-length Santa Luz Warriors T-shirt didn't help, nor did the idea that I wasn't alone in the warehouse.

  My washing machine finished filling and started agitating. Through the glass door, I saw the suds were deep pink.

  I'd been bleeding a lot lately, and most of the clothes I was bothering to wash were useless rags now. I was going to have to get another two or three Dies Irae T-shirts. A one-woman support for cottage industry, that's me.

  You just committed violence against Navoshtay Niv Arkady.

  Perry had hied himself off to do whatever it was hellbreed do when they aren't fucking with me. He was also going to go and do his diplomatic best with the head of New York's nightside.

  I wished him luck. Lots of luck. Of course, Perry thought I was still useful for his purposes, so he didn't want Arkady to kill me. On that count, at least, I was in total agreement, even if Perry was a hellbreed.

  My hands lowered, so did my head. Silver in my hair chimed. I'd fastened a copper cuff over my wrist, and the resultant blunting of preternatural acuity was both welcome and frightening. I could smell onions sauteing—Saul was messing around in the kitchen again. Get a Were close to death, and he does something domestic. Like cooking, or trying to do my laundry until I outright snarled at him to leave me the fuck alone.