Night Shift

by Lilith Saintcrow

  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 walk
ed 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.

  A Were pyre is lit with the peculiar practical sorcery they use. The flames aren't crimson, or black, or any of the spectrum of hellfire, banefire, or levinbolt flame. A Were pyre burns clean and hot, and it is white, with a dancing leaping thread of joyous yellow in its heart.

  Saul Dustcircle stood beside me after lighting the wet wood. The tapering rain hissed and splatted, underlit white smoke billowing as the Weres lifted their voices in an ancient chant wishing peace to the departed. If you have ever heard it, you don't need it translated. It is the very color of grief.

  Navoshtay Siv Cenci, her white arms closed around the slumped body of a Were, made no sound as the flames crawled through her flesh.

  And I don't want to talk about that anymore.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Harp's jaw jutted tensely, and the feathers rebraided in her hair fluttered. She wasn't speaking to me.

  The platform was a chaos of noise and activity. Bright sunlight glittered on the ranked cars—Weres very rarely fly. They don't like it, so it was the train for all three of them. Harp and Dominic would drop Saul off near the Rez and use the rest of the trip to eat up a few days of recuperation time. They deserved it.

  Harp and Dom had finished the small mountain of paperwork to report an interstate major paranormal event, and I would get a lump sum from the FBI's backstairs funding. With a little bit of fudging, the official story held up; a rogue Were was put down and a meddling hellbreed toasted. Cenci wasn't mentioned except in passing. All in all, it was a neatly tied package.

  Perry still hadn't called me.

  Dominic glanced at Harp, who had drawn away down the platform. "She'll get over it," he murmured to me.

  "Thank you, Jill. I mean it."

  Same old Dominic, still smoothing things over for her. I nodded, silver shifting in my hair and my dagger earrings swinging. The bright sun was an excuse to wear wraparound shades, and I'd left the sunsword, blackened and still icy, at Galina's. If it ever recharged enough I might use it.

  Or I might not. I shuddered at the thought. My replacement black leather trench creaked slightly with the movement, and I had my next pair of boots on. I hoped I could get through a week without bleeding on them.

  Then again, the town had quieted down enormously. Maybe my reputation was finally scary enough to keep it that way. "Don't mention it, Dom. Why don't you come out some time when there's not an impending apocalypse? It'd be nice to just have a barbecue or something." My tone was far too falsely bright. I coughed into my hand, as if my throat was still troubling me.

  "Sometime." Dom grinned. "I'd better go get Harp on the train. She'll call you in a few weeks."

  I doubted it. She wasn't the forgiving type, and my putting a hellbreed on a Were pyre must have rubbed her hard the wrong way. Probably some other Weres, too.

  I don't care. It was the right thing to do.

  At least Dom agreed with me, in his own quiet way. Saul… he didn't say much one way or the other. It could have been that I was avoiding him.

  If could have been meant definitely, that is. "See you, Dom."

  He gave me a salute, sketching the motion with two fingers, and turned away. Harp had moved farther down the platform, and I saw him slide an arm over her shoulders as he hustled her onto the train. They were a beautiful couple, I saw a few admiring glances tossed their way.

  Saul stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. His eyes were on my face.

  I studied him behind the sunglasses. My heart hurt. My head hurt. The pain ran through me.

  "I guess this is goodbye," I said brightly. Blinked furiously beh
ind the shades.

  He shook his head a little, glancing across the platform behind me. The silver wheel and the twisted unrecognizable bracelet threw back sharp darts of reflected light. I tried to memorize everything about his face, storing it up like a thief.

  "Take care of yourself," I added. I babbled. Like a complete idiot.

  His jaw set, his mouth thinning. He nodded, privately, as if wrapping up a long internal conversation.

  Saul's right hand came out of his pocket, and he held up something I had to squint at to make sense of. The shades didn't help, and neither did the water in my eyes.

  It was a leather cuff, with buckles. Just wide enough for a wrist; for my wrist. He held it out, and I took it. I was helpless not to, my hand just flew up and grabbed it.

  "That should last you longer than the copper." He stuffed his hand back in his pocket and cocked his head, regarding me. The departure announcement began blaring in the background, as last goodbyes were said all around us and people hurried to file onto the train. "When it gets worn or the buckles snap, I'll make you a new one." His voice dropped, as if he had something in his throat too. I have to go home. My mother deserves to hear from me about… everything."

  "I know," I jumped in. "Don't make it worse. Just go. Get the hell out of here." Don't go. Stay. Please, stay.

  But I couldn't say it. I closed my teeth against the words. There were so many reasons why he shouldn't stay. He was Were, and I was human—tainted with hellbreed.

  Corrupted, even if I retained my soul. No matter how hard I fought it, I was going to Hell eventually. And I'd just had an object lesson on what could happen to Weres once they tangled with anything hellbreed.

  It wasn't fair. It was monstrously, hideously, absolutely unfair.

  It doesn't matter, I told myself. God, just make him go. Keep him safe.

  His eyebrows drew together, stubbornly. It just made him handsomer, the richness of his skin almost too real under the sunlight. "I have to say something."

  Oh, Christ. Don't draw this out. "Just go, will you?"

  "I'm going." His shoulders hunched. "But I'm coming back. You can't cook worth a damn."