Angel Town

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “What?”

  “Do you pray?”

  She sounded surprised. “Well, the Order’s quite catholic, in the old sense—”

  “Good. Start praying. Maybe it will help.”

  29

  The warehouse was full of ghosts.

  It stood on the wrong side of the tracks, and from the outside it was just another dusty, decaying bit of urban infrastructure. Inside, though, it was space and light and the stamp of Saul’s presence everywhere. It looked just the same as it had the last time I’d been here.

  When I’d been preparing to go die.

  I’d left the bed tangled and some cupboards open; the huge orange Naugahyde couch with the pretty slipcover Saul had made was dirty; I’d been covered in filth, as usual. Thin blue lines of etheric protection hummed in the walls, fading until I stepped inside, gathering strength from my presence. Dust lay thick over everything, and even though Gilberto or Anya had been out to lock up and keep everything tidy, it still smelled like an abandoned house. Places start to rot very quickly, etherically and physically, once they’re uninhabited. It smelled sour and stale, and that would just about drive Saul nuts. He’d start scrubbing everything he could reach.

  My eyes blurred, hot water brimming. I blinked it away. The dogsbody padded behind me, whining softly to itself, and ignoring it wasn’t making it vanish.

  Not that I thought it would, but I didn’t have the heart to shoot the damn thing.

  Yet.

  I strode through the empty rooms of our life together and stepped into the wide, wood-floored sparring room. Mirrored tiles along one side, a ballet barre firmly bolted to them; weapons hanging on the other three. There was one empty spot—a fall of amber silk crushed on the floor, and I don’t know why I was surprised. Of course someone had taken the hunk of pre-Atlantean meteorite iron, with its dragon heads and scythelike blades.

  I had a moment’s worth of unease, wondering…but no, the weapon Mikhail had handed down to me couldn’t possibly be called la Lanza de Destino. For one thing, it was too old, and it wasn’t wooden. Anya would have taken it to store in Galina’s vaults.

  No windows, but skylights drenching everything with late-afternoon honey, dust motes dancing as the gem gave a hard piercing note, like a crystal wineglass right before it shatters.

  My guns leapt free, trained on a column of sunlight. Dust coalesced, a single spark flared white, and he was suddenly there.

  I didn’t shoot him. But it was close.

  Call-Me-Mike the caretaker regarded me mildly, his blue eyes glowing. The sun picked out fine threads of gold in his no-longer-dishwater hair, and instead of the jumpsuit he wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt. All he needed was a duck’s-ass pompadour and a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in his sleeve.

  The dogsbody whined and slumped next to me, shivering.

  “What the fuck are you?” I’ll admit it, I yelled. The words cracked, bounced back from the mirrors, set the dust swirling in tiny tornados.

  Mike shrugged, a loose easy movement. “It’s not important.”

  “It is to me.” I didn’t lower the guns. The idea that I could just start shooting every nonhuman or non-Were involved in this whole scenario was wonderfully comforting. I wondered if I had enough ammo. “Perry says hello, brother Michael. He’s planning something for tomorrow night to send the world down the drain. But you know that, don’t you. What was the point of sending me there?”

  Mike shrugged, spreading his hands. The light made him insubstantial, just another ghost here with all the dust and the memories. “It was…necessary.”

  You son of a bitch. “Was shooting myself in the head necessary too? You’re the Other Side, Perry says. We’re bleeding and dying down here, where the fuck are you? Why are you just showing up now?” My ribs heaved. I didn’t realize I was shouting until the echoes came back, the entire warehouse creaking like a tree in a high breeze. The triggers eased down a millimeter, another. Squeezing off a few rounds would just about start this conversation off right.

  Sorrow, then, darkening those blue, blue eyes. Not sterile like Perry’s, a warm summer color. But so terribly sad. “It’s not that simple. I’m bending the rules enough as it is. So much depends on you, and of course…” Another slight movement, hands spread. “Of course I wish I could do more. It…it’s painful, to see such suffering.”

  Well, isn’t that big of you. “Wind me up and set me loose, right? Just throw me at the enemy. I’ve been fighting this war for years, and it never gets any better. I’ve been down in the streets trying to hold back the tide. There’s no goddamn hope at all. And you’ve been sitting up at Henderson Hill the entire fucking time, doing fucking nothing, just waiting for…for what? For Perry? Is that it? You’re in cahoots?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. He’s part of the Pattern, as you are. As I am. But…there are disturbing signs. He’s…” Another helpless shrug. “Even if I had the words, you wouldn’t understand. I can’t even offer you a dispensation. If you do this—stop Hyperion, save your fellows, and recover the Lance—you will not be rewarded. There is no glory, no recompense.”

  A harsh cawing laugh shook its way free of my chest. Well, shit, that’s par for the course. “So why should I bother, huh? Because you brought me back? Is that it?”

  “It’s part of the Pattern, but I can’t explain that either. Kismet. Did you really expect to name yourself that and not be called upon?”

  It was like talking to Mikhail in one of his vodka-soaked philosophical moods. Baffling, opaque, and frustratingly-familiar enough to drive me to the heavy bag. I searched for something that would wring an answer out of him. I’m used to dealing with hellbreed, where you question them, then you hurt them, then you question them some more.

  Something told me that would be a bad idea with this guy, whatever he was. “Perry called you his brother. You’re related?”

  Another gentle, rueful smile. “Is a mirror related to the image it holds?”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. Disgusted, I lowered the guns. I was shaking again, and all I wanted was to lie down and sleep. Next to Saul, if possible. Let the world end, it had been lurching along before I came along to be a hunter just fine.

  Focus, Jill! I blinked. A puzzle piece snapped down inside my head. “He needs me for something. La Lanza de Destino, Melendez called it; the only trouble is, there’s several of those floating around. I at least know it’s not the chunk of meteorite Mikhail left me. The important thing is, Perry can’t use it. What does he want it used on?”

  Mike nodded, the patient teacher beaming at a recalcitrant but gifted student. “Very good. But your task is simply to strike him down when he has achieved the first half of his purpose. It’s very important, Kismet.”

  “So he wants me to do something for him, and you want me to murder him but you won’t tell me exactly why.” The guns lowered slightly. “I’d do it for free, you know. That bastard has gone too far.” And so have you.

  The caretaker crouched, suddenly, a fluid movement. I twitched, stopped myself at the last moment.

  The dogsbody whined and leaned forward. It glanced up at me, colorless eyes suddenly pleading, and the sickness revolving behind my breastbone rose another notch. “Jesus Christ,” I whispered, suddenly very sure. “The hellhound was chasing him to shut him up. Perry was just cleaning up a loose end.”

  “This one has paid for what he’s done.” Michael held out a hand, just touching the edge of the sunlight. Stroking it, the finely drawn border where light met air. “And it’s fitting that he should protect you now, isn’t it?”

  God, there’s not much difference between you and a hellbreed, is there. Maybe I should start killing you both. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. What the fuck are you, and why are you here?”

  “I came to give you comfort, Kismet.” He cocked his head, glancing up at me. The dogsbody didn’t move, but its shaking slid up my leg. The gem groaned, etheric force thrumming up my arm. “And to explain, as far as I am able, w
hat Hyperion wishes to do.”

  “It’s about fucking time.” I lowered the guns, nice and slow. “I’m waiting.”

  So he told me, in plain words. And I listened. By the end of it his voice was a brass bell, stroked softly in a forgotten chapel, and I was cold all over. The dogsbody whined even louder, crouching next to me and shivering. The sunlight dimmed, and by the time he finished I was on my knees too, hugging myself, staring at him.

  “Saul,” I whispered.

  The caretaker was glowing now, his skin burnished and his eyes burning feverishly. My own blue eye ached, piercing the veil of the visible—his outline rippled, eddies and currents passing through the snarled fabric of reality. “Do it for him. Do it for love. Please, Kismet. You are the only one who can.”

  “I…” But Saul. I promised him. “I promised.”

  “If you will not do this, we are lost.” He shrugged. “The Pattern will right itself in some other way, I suppose. But there will be terrible suffering, not just among those you love. I can only ask, Kismet, Jill, whatever you want to name yourself. You are free to refuse.”

  Oh, fuck. “You know I can’t.” Hopeless, pale little words. “You have to know I can’t. That’s not a way out, you know I was made this way. So I can’t turn you down. God made me this way, and don’t you dare fucking tell me He didn’t.”

  “Do you believe in such a cruelty?” Michael sighed. “You’re so willing to hurt yourself.” The rippling through him was more pronounced now, bits of him wavering as if under clear, heavy water. Sunlight dimmed further, a cloud drifting between us and heaven’s eye. “Goodbye, beloved.”

  Metal clattered somewhere, but my eyes were full of light. Just like that, he was gone. The dogsbody shuddered, pressing against me, and unhealthy heat boiled from its hide. I swallowed several times, and the world spun. When I came back to myself I was hunched over, my forehead against cool hardwood and awful knowledge beating inside my brain.

  I was probably going insane. Coming back from the dead will do that to you, I guess. Or maybe this was a different version of Hell, one I’d been extra-special nominated to.

  One that felt just like my life.

  Get up, little snake. Mikhail, in my memory. Why hadn’t he ever told me about his bargain with Perry? Could he just not find the words? Did he not care enough to…but no.

  No.

  Mikhail was my teacher. He’d held the line when I made my first trip to the hellbreeds’ home, the one that turned me into a full-fledged hunter and gave me my smart eye. He’d loved me the way only a hunter can love another hunter, right down to the bones and back.

  He must have had a reason.

  I had my marching orders. Ol’ Blue Eyes had been a busy, busy boy. He was just so helpful, feeding me and giving me weapons, showing up to push me in another direction, poking and prodding.

  I made my legs straighten by the simple expedient of cursing at them, levered myself up from the floor.

  “They want a sacrificial lamb.” My voice sounded odd. The dogsbody stopped whining and made an inquisitive rrowr sound that might have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic. “Boy, are they going to get a surprise.”

  30

  Dawn found me in a cemetery.

  The northern side of Beacon Hill’s lush greenness looked out over the valley, the mountains rising in the distance and the river a bright colorless ribbon as the sky lightened. I sat on the wet grass, sprinklers going overtime in the dark to compensate for the desiccation that would hit later in the day. The water had stopped, thank God, but everything squelched underneath me.

  I put my chin on my knees.

  The dogsbody slunk closer. It settled down with a sigh, its unhealthy heat steaming in the predawn chill. Around sunrise Santa Luz always smells like metallic sand as the city inhales, filling its lungs from the wasted desert all around, mixing it with exhaust and the effluvia of thousands of people going about their lives.

  The gravestone shimmered, polished white rock. I’d dug up Mikhail’s ashes a while ago and had Galina put them in one of her vaults. Still, it was here that I felt his presence most strongly, and it was here I sometimes came to talk to him. Galina’s perfectly polite, but I don’t like having conversations with my dead teacher where other people can hear.

  Call me secretive.

  I held myself absolutely still. The sky slowly turned gray, stars winking out and a few birds warming up for their morning chorus. What a waste it was to water the ground here. In the first place, water’s a great psychic conductor, and the grief soaking this place echoed in every molecule. And in the second, why not spend some of that water on the living? They needed it more.

  The only need of the dead is to sleep unmolested.

  You’re kind of sucking at that, aren’t you, Jill. I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them. The gravestone was just the same.

  Mikhail Illich Tolstoi. Nothing else, not even the years of his tenure on earth. Why bother, when I would remember it and it was in the files? It wouldn’t matter to anyone else. Except maybe Gilberto, when he finished his training.

  I wouldn’t be around to see that, would I.

  I stirred a little, shifting to relieve muscles threatening to cramp. The dogsbody was still, its weird eyes closed and its breath softly chuffing in and out. Just like a hound, really.

  I’d never had a pet.

  Are you crazy? This thing’s dangerous. Plus, it’s basically hellbreed, even if Call-Me-Mike did…whatever he did to it. A shiver went through me.

  I was stalling.

  “Misha.” The word rode a breathy scree of air. “Mish, Misha-Mik, if you’re there, I could use a friendly ear.”

  Well, strictly speaking, listening was all he could do, right? He was fucking dead. Passed on. Joined the choir eternal. Had I met him, wherever I’d been after I pulled the trigger and broke my skull open like a pumpkin dropped off an overpass?

  If I rubbed under my hair, I only felt the bumps and ridges anyone’s head acquires after a few hard knocks. No shrapnel. Just a tenderness in places, like old bruising. A faint twinge.

  “Why?” I whispered, staring at his grave. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a deal with Perry and you needed me to take your place? Why didn’t you tell me about Belisa? Why didn’t you take me with you? Why did you pull me out of that snowbank in the first place? Why me? And Jesus Christ, Misha, why could I come back if you couldn’t? Or is it just that you didn’t want to?”

  I go to Valhalla, he’d told me more than once, where fight is like play. Like movie.

  I guess that was his idea of a good time.

  “Why, Misha? I would’ve done anything you asked. Hell, I would’ve given Perry a lot more to buy you free. I would…” I ran up against the wall of what I would have done, what I’d’ve given if he’d just asked me.

  Why hadn’t he?

  A while ago, I’d visited Melendez and Chango had deigned to speak to me. It had been a different case—the circus had come to town, and someone was looking for vengeance. Voodoo and hellbreed don’t mix, and I’d been looking to get the whole thing tied up and safely stowed before open warfare broke out and the Cirque was given free rein in my town.

  You meatpuppets, Chango had snorted with magnificent disdain. You always got to know why.

  “It would sure fucking help,” I muttered, and wiped at my cheeks with callused palms. Why the fuck was I crying? Another why question.

  Shit.

  “Was it worth it?” That was a new question. I sounded ridiculously young, and I stared at the white blur of the headstone. “Melisande. Belisa. Did you love her? Or were you just looking to get free? Was she worth it? You had me, Misha. Was I not enough?”

  Of course I wasn’t enough, never had been. I’d been born without some essential thing everyone else seemed to have. There was an emptiness in me, way down deep, and even if it had been the reason everyone who should have loved me couldn’t, it was what kept me alive long enough to escape. Long enough to survive and mee
t Mikhail. And even then, I hadn’t been enough.

  The only person who shouldn’t have loved me was Saul. And go figure, he did.

  At least he’s safe. But if you end up dead again, Jill, what’s that going to do? He’ll starve. He’ll get matesick, he’ll go down. Weres don’t go to Hell, and you know that’s where you’re bound. If there was a heaven you’d’ve seen it by now. Hot water flooded my eyes, trickled down my cheeks. My nose was full. I’d given up wiping my cheeks.

  “It’s not fair.” Lo and hallelujah, I was five years old again. “It’s just not fair, God damn you.”

  The eastern sky was rosy. The birds burst into song, a great swell of twittering music. It stopped, started again. The hush returned, this time threaded with liquid birdsong. It was funny how noise could be a component of early-morning silence.

  I was on my feet before I knew it, steel-shod heels sinking into wet grass and mud. “I should leave it here to rot. All of it. Everything. Including you, Misha. You lied to me.”

  By omission, yes. But still a lie. Hunters aren’t supposed to lie to each other. When you’ve been loved so hard that the love turns into a rope that pulls you free of Hell’s cold shifting borders, you can see it in another hunter’s eyes. It’s raw and bloody and it aches, but you can’t lie to someone who’s been loved like that.

  Mikhail had loved me. He’d pulled me out of Hell. What if his lie had been a mercy, instead of deceit? Why would he have done that?

  Fuck. We’re back to the whys.

  I held up one finger. “You loved me.” Another. “So you lied to save me. You couldn’t hold Perry off much longer. But you thought I could.”

  A third finger. “Mike. The caretaker. Judas to a hellbreed. He can’t interfere much more than he already has.”

  A fourth. “A Lance. And Perry planning a repeat of ’29.”

  1929, the Black Year. The year when the hellbreed had opened up multiple doors, and escaped en masse from Hell’s embrace.

  Unwilling, I glanced up.