Huntress

by Christine Warren, Marjorie Liu, Caitlin Kittredge, Jenna Maclaine

  Ava was gone, her clothes absent the floor and her heat vanished from the pillow next to him. Jack rolled out of the sheets and felt under the bed until he found his trousers and boots, and pulled them on.

  The hostel was a Victorian pile, and there was a terrace, too small to really stand on but big enough to smoke a fag. Jack caught the eye of the mirror and ran a hand through his hair to make it stand up.

  Just pink around the edges, the sky glowed, that unearthly glow that made normal people stay indoors. Jack lit up and blew smoke toward the heavens. Two drags in, the doorknob turned, creaking like dead bones in the old house.

  “That was fast,” Jack said. “But you didn’t need to freshen up for me, luv. I rather liked you filthy.” Hearing no reply, he half-turned. “Ava?”

  A great weight hit him from behind—hands, Jack realized, massive hands—and bounced his skull off the doorjamb before taking him to the floor. A voice curled forth, over the ringing in his skull, like a tendril of smoke through the air. “Hold his arms, Barney.”

  Jack’s face pressed into the musty Persian rug, and Barney planted a knee in his kidneys. Jack grunted. “Love you too, darling.”

  “Shut up,” Barney intoned.

  “Well,” the voice said. Scots, the thick, expansive brogue that made tourists and Americans mistake the city of Edinburgh as friendly. “Jack Winter, is it?”

  A toe reached under Jack’s chin, lifted his face. The shoe was shiny snakeskin, emerald green dotted with black. The owner of the foot in the shoe reeked of burnt paper, the grand mal scent of demons.

  “It’s your fucking mum, is what it is,” Jack snarled. He had a hangover, too much beer and sex, and too little sleep, and his mood in the mornings was uncharitable on any day.

  “Just listen,” said the voice of the shoe. Jack rolled his eyes up and saw a young git, angelic fat baby face, blond hair long enough to be fashionable in 1987 but no later, and a loud white suit that screamed gangster.

  “You want me to listen, have your villain here leave off feeling me up. My gate don’t swing that way, son.”

  Barney bashed Jack’s nose into the carpet for his trouble. Bright Lad snapped his fingers. “Barney! That’s quite enough. I’m sure Mr. Winter agrees there’s no need for violence.”

  “Mr. Winter is going to shove your blond gob straight up your arse if you don’t let him go,” Jack grunted.

  “Senseless altercations will only hurt you, Mr. Winter. Now, do I have your guarantee as a gentleman that you’ll refrain from any antics if I let you up?”

  Jack began to laugh, shaking the weight of Barney on his back. “Someone told you I was a fucking gentleman? You should pay him, mate, because that’s a hell of a story.”

  “If you’re not going to cooperate,” Bright Lad said, “I do have other ways of keeping you compliant.”

  Jack sighed. “Just let me up. This carpet smells like piss.”

  Barney retreated, and Jack climbed to his feet, rubbing his forehead in a futile attempt to ease the throbbing. “Now tell me why you broke in here before I get all sorts of cranky fuck and do you in on the spot.”

  “That would be ill-advised, Mr. Winter,” Bright Lad cooed. “Humans against demons tend to end in very small pieces.”

  “Little ’uns,” Barney agreed, like lorries colliding. “Bite-sized.”

  Opening his sight just a little, Jack took another look at Bright Lad. White hair in a sharp point over his forehead, teeth even sharper, a lipless mouth, and great, screaming black holes for eyes. You could fall into those eyes, be torn apart by the knives in his empty gaze …

  Jack shook his head and passed a hand over his eyes. The screaming faded.

  “Now that you’ve ascertained that I am, in fact, what I say I am,” said Bright Lad, “I have a simple message for you.”

  “Hardly seems fair,” Jack said. “You seem to know all about me, Tony, and I don’t even know your name.”

  Bright Lad cocked his head. “Tony?”

  “Montana. The suit? It’s a bit over the top, mate.”

  The demon pursed his lips. “My name is Nazaraphael, Jack Winter. Now may I state my business?”

  Jack picked up his leather coat, the liberty spikes pressing into his palm, reassuringly flesh and blood. He rattled around in the pockets until he found a bottle of rotgut whiskey that still had a mouthful left. He sat on the bed and swallowed it down. “Go right on ahead, Francis.”

  “Stay away from the woman you call Ava,” said Nazaraphael. “Stay away from the underground. Leave Edinburgh today and don’t come back. She’s bringing more trouble on your head than you could imagine.”

  “Let me guess.” Jack regretfully tossed the bottle at the bin. “If I don’t, you’ll do unspeakable things to my person and soul?”

  “If you don’t, you won’t need my ministrations to regret your decision,” said Nazaraphael. “You have no friends in this city, Mr. Winter. Make the right choice.” He snapped his long fingers. “Come along, Barney.”

  Barney snarled at Jack as he passed. Jack caught a flash of black and red skin, muscle, chains anchored by hooks in weeping flesh. A berserker. He’d have to watch that one. Whatever magic Nazaraphael was using to control his attack dog, it wasn’t enough.

  Ava came back a few minutes after the demons had left. “What’s wrong, lover?” she said, handing him a paper mug from Lavazza. “You look like a man who’s just realized he’s playing The Crying Game. I’m all woman, FYI.” Low laughter, like velvet rubbing on skin. “But I think you’ve found that out.”

  Jack set the coffee aside. “I just had a visit from a right nasty member of Hell’s Fashion Victims and his mate.” He narrowed his eyes at Ava and she backed up a step, unconsciously. When the magic was up, Jack could feel the witch-fire writhing behind his gaze, giving it a glow. It was a nice trick, for scaring the piss out of someone.

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with me.” She came and straddled Jack’s lap, breath warming a spot on his neck. “Maybe you looked at him funny.”

  Jack pulled back, far as the yoke of her arms would allow. “How about you put aside the femme fatale act, and you tell me the truth?” he said.

  Ava licked her lips. “Or what?”

  “Or I might take it into my head you’re not as friendly as you first appeared, darling. And that might upset me greatly. What’s the man say? You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

  Ava rolled her eyes. “I’m not crazy about you right now, either. This inquisitive streak is less than cute.”

  “You like them dumb, eh?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Jack ducked out from under her arms, and waited until Ava climbed off his lap. Reluctant as he was to lose the firm weight of her against his fly, the expression in her eyes was frozen over, cold.

  “You’re not just human, are you?” he said.

  She sighed. “You weren’t supposed to ask questions. They told me you’d do it for money and a quick roll. No questions.”

  “They were misinformed,” Jack said. He watched Ava’s aura unfold as she got up and paced. It was almost entirely red now, and there was a hot, hard sort of magic flowing from her that he’d mistaken for lust the previous night.

  To be fair, Jack allowed, he probably would have pegged her correctly if he hadn’t been drunk off his arse.

  “What are you?” he asked softly.

  Ava threw his shredded T-shirt at him. “Put your clothes on. It’s better to talk in the open.”

  “Nazaraphael has spies everywhere,” Ava explained when they were walking in the Prince Street Gardens, the sleeping bums and early joggers the only company.

  “So you’ve had the displeasure,” said Jack. He smoked, and the cloud of blue met the mist of the rising sun and mingled, interchangeable.

  “Nazaraphael is the direct competition of Areshko, the demon I’m trying to speak with.” Ava hunched her shoulders. “He’s bad news, like we say across the pond.”

  “I s
ort of figured that bit out, him being a great bloody demon and breaking into me room and all.”

  “No, he’s more than that.” Ava rubbed her hands together, her sweater little help against the bite of the air. After a minute, Jack pulled off his coat and gave it to her, pulling the ambient pale green magic of the park around him and warming it so he wouldn’t shiver.

  “Thanks.” She wrapped the battered thing around her, sinking into it. “There are demons in Edinburgh that don’t agree with the way Nazaraphael does things. Areshko is one of them.” They stopped at a copse of bushes and Ava looked over her shoulder. There was just a bum wrapped in newspapers, mumbling to himself. Jack saw the silvery flash of a spirit hanging over his shoulder, talking back.

  There’s your future, Winter. Jack blinked the spirit out of his view. It used to be easy to shut them out. Lately, it was like someone had set an amplifier next to his head and cranked every knob to ten.

  “You know, this cryptic bullshit might fly with the bell, book, and candle ponces, but not with me,” Jack said. “Still haven’t explained what your stake in this is and who you are.”

  “I’m me,” said Ava. “I didn’t lie about that. What I am …” She chewed on her lip, making it look bruised, kissed.

  “If you say ‘It’s complicated,’ I’ll fetch you a smack,” Jack warned. “Crow help me.”

  “I’m a demon hunter.” Ava stopped and stared at him, daring him to react badly. Jack laughed instead.

  “What, like you run about with a sword and a little cross, exorcising for the greater good? Americans have some bloody strange hobbies, don’t they?”

  “I’m dead serious,” Ava said. “Nazaraphael is a bastard, but Areshko is worse. I had a friend, Daniel. She killed him and picked his bones clean.”

  “You think you’re the only one in the whole of the Black had a mate come to a bad end?” Jack snorted smoke from his nose.

  “He loved me.” Ava’s face went hot, blossoms of blood coloring her pale cheeks. “The only way I’m getting close enough to take her out is on the arm of someone like you. I’m murdering the demon who murdered my friend, Jack. Now you’ve got the whole truth.”

  “And I’m rapidly walking the other way, luv,” Jack said, turning to do just that. “You think I’m going to lead a fox into a birdhouse and have any sort of life expectancy after you’ve slung your weight around?” He shook his head. “Mages live because we’re useful, because neither side claims us. Once I throw me lot, I might as well throw me person off a car park.” He snatched for his leather. “Give the jacket back.”

  “You don’t have a choice.” Ava’s voice rang over his shoulder, sharper than the cold air, after he’d gone a few yards.

  Jack flipped two fingers at her over his shoulder and kept walking.

  “STOP!”

  The spell unfolded and spread its fingers over him, loops and shackles of magic like red-hot iron, and Jack stopped with a gasp as every bit of his body lit up with flame. He couldn’t move, could barely breathe, and tasted ash in his mouth.

  Ava walked around to his front and shook her head. “That was just my safety, but you’re as stubborn as they say.”

  “What …” Jack felt sweat work down his temples, his spine, and the magic was consuming him, reaching down to his core as the spell writhed on his skin. He wanted to grab Ava, push her skirt aside, tear at the lace tops of her stockings, and lose himself in her until he was spent. The desire was wrenching, consuming. “What did you do?” he managed.

  “Relax,” Ava soothed. “It’s a geas.”

  Jack felt the tendons in his neck twitch, as he fought against the spell that kept him rooted, the desire that clenched at his core. “You didn’t cast a geas on me. You didn’t do any magic.”

  “I did,” Ava said. Her lips twitched. “Sex magic.”

  Jack’s heart plummeted to the vicinity of his boots. “Fuck off. No one practices that in this age.”

  Ava trailed her finger from his jaw down his neck and across his chest, skin-on-skin contact through the holes in his shirt. Jack let out an involuntary moan, his cock jumping painfully against his fly.

  “Don’t they?” Ava purred. “Funny. This little trick usually works pretty well.”

  “You can’t …” Jack tried to fight, pushing against the great pulsing loops of the geas with his own talent, but all that he could see was a great red blur of lust and compulsion that made his heart hammer a hole through his chest.

  “I just did.” Ava snapped her fingers. “Enough.”

  The geas retreated and Jack collapsed, his muscles aching like he’d come through a fever and gotten seven colors of shit kicked out of him in the bargain.

  “Until my business with Areshko is done, consider yourself my employee,” Ava said. “And if you cooperate, you won’t feel that again. I’d much rather have you on my side than force you there.”

  “You’d better pray you can run far and fast enough when I slip your leash, you trixy wight,” Jack panted. He managed to get up, soaked in sweat and still horny as a sailor on his first hour of leave. “Because if I catch hold of you … I’m going to make you sorry you clapped eyes on me.”

  “Talk, talk, talk,” Ava said. “Believe me, Jack, talking is not your strong suit.” She leaned and kissed him, and it quenched a little of the ache inside him. Jack felt a sort of filthy miasma slither over the exchange, like something glimpsed down a side alley in a bad neighborhood.

  She had her hooks in him. He hadn’t seen the knife behind her back, and now he was fucked.

  “Come on,” Ava said, and the geas tugged him. The worst part was, he didn’t entirely want to disobey.

  “I figured it out when I was around fourteen.” Now that she had him on a tether, Ava was positively chatty. They left the gardens and she hailed a cab. “Train station, please. Thanks.” She put her hand on Jack’s knee, and he shrugged her off.

  “Oh, don’t be mad at me.” Ava sighed. “Live long enough and you’re bound to run into someone smarter than you. It’ll happen to me, too. Just remember that it was really incredible, wall-shaking sex that got you into this mess.”

  “Trust me,” Jack said with a grimace. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Like I was saying”—Ava leaned her forehead against the window, as the early morning furled by the misted windows of the cab—“I figured it out when this friend of my father’s came after me. He did what he did, but afterwards …” Her lip curled back. “Afterwards he was all mine. They found him hanging from his balcony.”

  “Thrilled as I am that you’re working out your daddy issues with me,” Jack said, “what do you expect me to do, hurl fireballs at whoever you aim me toward?”

  Ava snorted. “I’ll take care of Areshko. You just stand there and look pretty.”

  “I don’t suppose reiterating that you’ll literally be putting a stopwatch on my life expectancy if you make me do this will sway that icy heart, my princess?” Jack shifted, to be as far away from her as he could.

  “No.” Ava slid over, closed the distance, started nibbling at his neck. “Sorry. I’ll try to make it up to you.”

  He wanted to shove her off, tell her to keep her filthy magic paws off him, but it felt … It felt like a hunger that he’d never known he possessed was finally being sated. Jack moaned and leaned into her.

  “Train station,” said the driver, clearly glad to have the sex-crazed American and her fling out of his cab. Ava paid and took his hand.

  “I have to put a few things together before we make this attempt. I suggest you get your affairs in order and tell your band to go home before Nazaraphael decides to use them as leverage,” She stepped away from him. “And if you get an idea to break the geas, or run … don’t. I’ll find you. And no matter how cute you are, I won’t be pleasant when I do. Clear enough for you, Jack?”

  “Crystal,” said Jack. He lit a fag and sucked on it. If Ava didn’t get him, Nazaraphael would. Might as well poison his lungs while he had
lungs to poison.

  “Good boy.” Ava blew him a kiss. “Meet me right here at noon.”

  Jack returned her smile with a snakelike grin of his own. “You’re not getting out of this free and easy. Don’t think you are.”

  “That sounds like a promise.” Ava waggled her fingers at him. “Noon. Don’t be late.”

  Jack found a pub. It was the natural thing to do when you were fucked, and English.

  He stared at his pint, the bubbles slowly working their way from bottom to top.

  Ava had him over a barrel. Even if Jack could assemble the workings to break a geas in a few hours, he wasn’t sure it would work, whether it would snap back and kill him outright. Dying of lust wasn’t the worst way to kick it, but it wasn’t on his top ten list, either.

  Damn the bitch. She’d zeroed in on his weakness and his arrogance, that he was Jack fucking Winter, untouchable, and she’d slipped inside his armor as neatly as a serpent. Now she wanted him to be party to the assassination of a demon.

  “Not bloody likely,” Jack said to his pint, and drained half of it in a go. Ava wanted his help badly, that much was plain, and equally plain was that she wasn’t giving him the whole story, playing the cryptic woman who comes out of the rain into the private dick’s office, asking for help, poison on her red lips. Playing it to the hilt.

  Jack drank the rest of his pint and didn’t taste it, turned over the question some more. Could he afford to believe Ava was simply an arrogant sorcerer with an inflated sense of her own superiority on a half-cocked revenge drive? That she couldn’t dent Areshko, this boogeyman demon?

  Devious as the bint had shown herself to be, Jack doubted he’d get off that easily.

  A fresh pint banged on the wood in front of him. Rich, Gavin, and Dix joined the table, drinks in hand. “Now that you’ve kept us here far past the freshness date, what’re you banging on about staying?” Rich demanded.

  “Yeah,” said Gavin. “We’ve got a gig Thursday, mate. Sort of need our lead singer. I can’t swap—I already took the personal day.” Gavin worked in a chain record store on Oxford Street, the sort that made you wear a colored shirt and a name badge. Jack and Dix gave him endless shit about it.