Angel Town

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Her left hand. A gleam of gold—wedding ring, on the third finger. Just where silver rested on my own left hand.

  “Do svidanye,” I murmured, and looked at the only other thing that’d been in Dodge’s wallet.

  It was a plain, thick, dove-gray business card. MONDE NUIT, it said, and an address out near the meatpacking district. I knew exactly where the meatpacking district was, and the location seemed…familiar.

  More than familiar.

  Wasn’t this just my lucky night.

  6

  The place looked foul. The atmosphere over it had thickened like a bruise, my left eye smarting and watering as it untangled layer after layer of rotting cheesecloth. Etheric bruising, my helpful unmemory piped up. That means it’s a haunt. You know what a haunt is, right? A place where wild animals go to feed. There’s ’breed in there, and Traders. You need silver.

  Silver. My right hand flashed up, touched my hair. That’s what should be there. Silver charms. Tied in with red thread. It was traditional.

  Doesn’t help me now, though.

  I loitered at the edge of the parking lot, sunk in shadows. There was brush here, and I crouched easily, sometimes moving to keep muscles from stiffening, sometimes utterly still and watching. The place looked familiar—a long, low building, parking lot shading to gravel at the edges, a couple of gorillas at the door and a line waiting to go in. Faint thumping bass reached me as I studied the shapes of the people in line. They moved…oddly. Scary quicksilver grace or twitching almost-stasis, and even at this distance I could see the twisting under the surface of their normal shapes. The twisting threatened to give me a headache until I figured out I could simply make a note of it and it would stop bothering me. I just had to acknowledge it.

  Someone in there knows who I am.

  But these were things like the thing I’d killed on the roof. Wrong. And very, very bad. I had no silver. Just the business card and—

  A long black limousine took a right into the parking lot, crunching on gravel before bumping inelegantly up onto cracked pavement. The line twittered and whispered with excitement. The car glowed, wet light from the tangle of red neon over the building’s front sliding over its sleek flanks. My focus narrowed and I leaned forward, coming up out of the crouch as if compelled. My body obeyed smoothly, but my right wrist twinged. I glanced down, but the gem set in the skin was the same, a colorless sparkle. The wind touched my hair, playing with the curls, cool with the flat metal tang of river water, the desert’s sand-baked exhale picking up the water and vanishing.

  The limo banked easily, like a small plane, and one of the bouncers stepped forward to open the door. I took another two steps, gravel oddly soundless underfoot. My right hand touched the gun butt, fingers running over it like they expected to read Braille.

  A pale head. He rose out of the car on the other side, and a rippling sigh of excitement went through the line. I moved forward, impelled, cutting through a line of dusty parked cars. The limousine scorched, dirt-free, the only thing in the lot that didn’t look tired or filthy. My hand curled around the gun, but I didn’t draw it yet. The ring on my left hand ran with blue light, a seashine gleam.

  They became aware of me in stages, as if I was a storm moving through from the mountains. First the eerie-graceful part of the line, with their seashell hips and liner-drenched eyes, stilled. Their heads came up, and sculpted nostrils flared. Cherry-glazed lips parted, and a collective exhale lifted from them along with a bath of nose-tingling corruption.

  They were beautiful, but under that beauty lay the twisting.

  The jerky, oddly-shaped ones were next. They hissed, lips lifting and sharp-filed teeth showing, some of them crouching. One of them, a broad wide manshape dressed in a caricature of a construction worker’s plaid shirt and Carhartts, his work boots stained with something dark and fetid, actually growled. The sound rose in a rumble like boulders grinding together, and some sure instinct made me pause, staring at him. Yellow eyes, unholy foxfire in the irises and the pupils flaring and constricting like a cobra’s head. He tensed as his knees slowly bent.

  He’s getting ready to spring.

  Movement. The pale head of hair was approaching. They cringed and fell back from him, but I didn’t look. I stared at the Trader, my fingers slowly tightening on the gun. If he jumped me I had some running room and cover in the parking lot. Maybe I could tangle them up and—

  There was a blur of motion, cream-colored linen streaking. A pale clawed hand flashed out, and the construction worker fell sideways, arterial spray blooming high and red. The drops hung in a perfect arc, and I saw each one was tinged with that tracery of black, hungrily gobbling at the fluid as it splashed.

  Holy shit. I stared.

  He stepped out of the way, polished wingtips gleaming just like the car, and my gaze snapped to him. The gun left its holster with a whisper, and my arm was straight and braced.

  Pallid hair in a layered razor cut. Blue eyes, and the face wasn’t beautiful. He looked normal—average lips, average cheekbones, an average all-American nose. The suit was linen, sharply-creased and expensive, and the eyes were bright blue. He regarded me with pleasant, cheerful interest, and I blinked before my left eye gave a twinge and I caught a glimpse of the twisting rippling under his flawless skin. A wine-red tie, he lifted his right hand and touched the half-Windsor knot, as if it had been knocked a millimeter out of place. Taller than me, his shoulders braced and his hips narrow, my mouth suddenly filling with copper adrenaline and my pulse dropping into a low steady rhythm.

  Because this was a face I knew.

  His left hand twitched. The fingers drew up like claws, and his paleness was a shade or two darker there. Something had happened to that hand, something my brain shied away from even as it threatened to plunge through the fog and remember. A spark popped from my ring’s silver surface, photoflash blue.

  “I know you.” My lips were numb, but I simply sounded wondering. “From…” Words failed me, balked and twisted away. “From somewhere. I know you.”

  He studied me for another long moment. His smile widened.

  He actually grinned. Pearly teeth, very sharp but very normal as well. It was a television newscaster’s beaming, wide and practiced. Those blue eyes lit up, and another ripple went through the crowd.

  “Of course you know me.” Even his voice was reassuringly normal. Bland as the rest of him. “Our darling little Kismet, returned. How lovely.” He stepped forward off the curb, but the bruisers looming behind him—one with a submachine gun, the other just a pile of over-yeasted muscle—didn’t move. I almost twitched, but he made a soothing noise. A low exhale, his tongue clicking as if I was an animal to be gentled. “You look beautiful.”

  7

  I twitched outright this time, nervously, the gun tracking him. He paid no attention, heel-and-toeing it across the concrete as if we were on a dance floor. He only stopped when I took a restless step sideways, and that brought him up short. But he leaned forward, balanced on his toes, his entire body focusing on me.

  “My lovely,” he whispered. “My own. Of course I know you. What have they done to you?”

  They? Whoever it was left me in the desert. In a grave. I rotted, but I came back.

  No. That wasn’t quite right. I hadn’t come back. I’d been sent.

  “They sent me back. To…I don’t know.” It was work to whisper. My throat was suddenly dry. Queasy heat boiled through my stomach, and I was suddenly aware the entire crowd of them was too still to be human.

  If they jump you now, a clear cold voice warned me, you’re not going to have an easy time of it. You’re not even really armed. Just this gun with useless ammunition. You need silver. And lots of it.

  Well, it was a fine time to remember that. And what did this have to do with the thing on the rooftop and the flayed, opened-up body, its organs set neatly aside?

  I backed up, even more nervously. One step, two. He kept leaning forward.

  “Don’t.” His u
nwounded hand came forward. The body of the Trader behind him slumped, twitching and jerking as corruption raced through its tissues. “Don’t leave, dear one. Come inside. You look hungry.”

  What a coincidence. I was suddenly starving, an empty blowtorch-hole in my guts. I examined his face. Whatever lived underneath that skin rippled.

  It didn’t look good, and the business card in the wallet of a murderous thing was not an endorsement. But…he was familiar. Whoever he was, I knew him.

  That doesn’t mean he’s any good.

  Did I have any other option?

  My gun lowered slightly. The night exhaled around me, dangerous sharp edges and the neon glaring, the hunger suddenly all through me. My right wrist twitched, a fishhook under the skin yanking restlessly.

  “That’s it,” he crooned. “Come inside. There’s a bed, and sharp shiny things to make you feel safer. You want knives, don’t you.”

  A guilty start almost made it to the surface. I stared at him.

  His smile widened just a notch. “And a gun or two. And a long, long black coat. And shining chiming things to tie in your lovely hair.” His tongue flicked out and touched his bloodless lower lip. In the uncertain ruddy light it was a startling wet cherry-red, rasping against the skin. That quick little flicker made me nervous again, and I sidled another step. That brought him forward in a rush, fluidly, his bones moving in ways a human’s shouldn’t.

  Even that was familiar. Half-disgust boiled under my breastbone. The other half was something I couldn’t name. “Perry.” I found his name. But nothing else. It was like thinking through mud. “You’re Perry.”

  His irises glowed, sterile, cold blue. Thin threads of indigo slid through the whites of his eyes, a vein-map. His pupils dilated a little. “At your service. In every conceivable way, Kiss. That’s what I call you. A pretty name for a pretty girl. Come. There’s food. And drink. And a place to rest.” His head cocked slightly. “And answers. You would like answers, wouldn’t you? Your perennial plaint: Tell me why.” A short, beckoning motion, his long, expressive fingers flicking. “You’ll be under my protection, darling one. Nothing to fear. Just come, and let me soothe you.”

  It sounded good. Better than good. For a moment something else trembled under the surface of my memory, but it retreated again. Maddening, the feeling that I should know. That I should understand, instead of pushing myself blindly forward from place to place. The ring was warm, a forgiving touch against my flesh.

  The gun twitched. My finger eased off the trigger. It lowered slightly. “First tell me something.”

  “Oh, anything.” He eased toward me again, supple and weightless as if he was simply painted on the air. “Anything you like.”

  I searched through every question I had. There were too many of them crowding me. His pupils swelled, and the roaring sound filtered into my head again. The wasps, eating and buzzing, little tiny insect feet prodding as they crawled over me again. A galvanic shudder racked me. The gun dropped even further.

  “Who am I?” I whispered. “What the hell are you?”

  The laugh was another rumble, as if a freight train was passing me by again. It came from him, a subvocal roar, plucking at the strings under the surface of the world, and his fingers closed around my arm. Everything in me cringed away from that touch, but his fingers were warm and exquisitely gentle.

  “You are my Kiss.” Very gently, experimentally, he pulled on my arm. The ring sparked again, but it was unimportant. I followed, numb, the wasp-roar filling my skull like the cotton wool of illness. “And I, my darling? I am Legion. I am unconquerable fire.” His grin was absolutely cheerful, and oddly terrifying, but all the soothing in the world was in that voice. “But don’t worry. I am also your humble host this momentous evening. You’ve arrived just in time.”

  He led me past the bouncers, the submachine gun dangling as they watched, slack faced. The crowd muttered, hissing, but he paid them no notice. The doors were open, a red velvet curtain hanging in tattered folds, and he drew me through it and into the pounding music. I could barely gasp in a breath before the noise folded over my head like wings, and his grip on my arm never faltered.

  * * *

  I had a confused impression of swirling bodies on a dance floor lit with migraine stabs of brittle light, a monstrosity of a bar with two slim male shapes handing out what could have been drinks in twisted sparkling glasses, the press of the crowd alternately feverish and cold. The whirling crowd snarled, pressing back against each other as stipples of light flashed around me. Those little sparkles weren’t from the disco ball—and who the hell has a disco ball nowadays? It was a slowly spinning planet, ponderous, a great silver fruit that pulsed with malevolence.

  No, those little sparkles were half-unseen spikes surrounding me, their tips fluorescing up into the visible. An aura.

  An exorcist’s aura. Be careful, Jill.

  I wished that voice had spoken up before. I’d killed a thing on the rooftop, a thing like these things. Now here I was in the middle of them, nowhere near as terrified as I should be.

  This was normal. And what did that say about me?

  It had something to do with him. With his hand on my arm and the thrumming growl coming through him, the noise that carried us both through the press of the crowd.

  There was an iron door behind a frayed red velvet rope, and as soon as he pulled me through and the door shut with a clang I found myself on a staircase, going up.

  So far so good. I’d been here before, several times. The gun dangled in my nerveless hand. He drew me up the stairs, and under the bass-throb attack of the music played at jet-takeoff levels I swear I heard him humming. A happy little tune, wandering along like a drunken sailor past alleys full of cold, dark eyes.

  Another door crouched at the top, and he pushed it open. White light flooded the stairwell, and I blinked.

  The room was white, too. An expanse of white carpet, a mirrored bar to one side, a huge swan bed swathed in bleached mosquito netting, a bank of television screens flickering at odd intervals. Some of them were dark, some fuzzed with static; others showed the club’s interior and exterior, flicking rapidly through surveillance angles. Still more held news feeds, footage of explosions and disasters shuddered soundlessly. Once the door slid shut it was eerily quiet, a faint thumping through the floor all that remained of the noise below, a dozing animal’s heartbeat.

  He led me across the room, pushed me down on the bed. I sat without demur, my feet placed side by side like good little soldiers. He finally let go of my arm, stepped back, and brushed at stray strands of my hair that had come loose.

  I didn’t flinch. I just waited for clues, my eyes fixed on the blue gleam running under the ring’s surface.

  “There.” The smile was still wide, but he looked pained. “That is…perfect. Just perfect. I’ve often thought that if I could have you sit just there, just so, all the problems would fade into insignificance.”

  “Problems?” I cradled the gun in my lap. The buzzing wouldn’t go away. Rattling, chrome wasps in a bottle.

  The thought that some of the carnivorous insects might have been left inside, maybe in my sinus cavities, nibbling at my brain, sent a rippling jolt through me. The bed made a soft shushing sound, silk sliding and netting twitching. The bottles racked above the mirrored bar were all clear glass. Some held gray smoke, shifting in screaming-face shapes. Others held jewel-glowing liquids, and the harsh white light stroked them.

  “I have no problems, darling. Now that you’re in my sight. Apple of my eye, flesh of my flesh.” He stalked to the bar, his wingtips crushing the pristine carpet. “And you must be hungry. One moment.”

  My breathing had turned shallow. The horrific buzzing rattled my skull, I hunched my shoulders and went still. The air was curiously flat in here. The bed smelled faintly of fabric softener, but that was it. There was nothing else. It was the equivalent of a blank page.

  There’s something you’re not seeing. Look deeper. Look again.<
br />
  If I could get the meat inside my head to stop sounding like an overworked lawnmower on crack, I would. The sound crested, filling my bones, shaking me like a terrier with a toy in its sharp white needle-teeth. My ribs heaved, lungs burning, as if I was chasing something across rooftops.

  The business card was crumpled, but I lifted it anyway. It still said the same thing.

  Think. A card in a wallet. Doesn’t mean much. Or it could mean everything. Which one are you betting on?

  “Et voila,” he murmured. A flicker of motion jerked my head up, and I stared.

  In the middle of the arctic expanse of carpet, a table had bloomed. Covered by a fall of snowy linen, a bloody half-closed rose in a vase like fluted ice, two places set with exquisitely simple porcelain. Forks and knives and spoons of heavy, pale golden metal. A bleached, brassy candleholder like a twisted tree held thin white tapers. Their flames were colorless, standing straight up.

  “Now.” He indicated the chair with its back to the bed, a high-backed, spine-shouldered piece of pallid metal with a cushion of faded-red velvet. “I have no violinist, and no apples. But I think we shall do very well. Come, sit.”

  The buzzing receded like a sand-gurgling wave. I crushed the business card in my fist, suddenly very sure I didn’t want the twisting under his skin to see it.

  “I.” My throat closed up. I cleared it, a harsh sound rustling the mosquito netting. “I, ah, have questions.”

  “Of course you do.” He set down two water-clear champagne flutes. “And I’m in a position to give you answers. Plenty of them, too.”

  “Then start.” My voice didn’t belong to me. There was some other woman using it, her mouth twisted half up into a pained, professional smile and her hand ready on the gun in my lap. She peered out through my eyes, taking note of everything in the room and chalking it all up on mental lists—how easy it would be to get her hands on it, how much damage it would do, what her chances were. Percentages and likelihoods, all whirring inside our shared brain like clockwork gears. “Who buried me in the desert?”