“Why we goin to church, eh?” Gilberto had a 9mm out, sunlight sparking viciously off its edges. “Father Gui owe you money?”
He owes me a lot more than that. “He’s got something Perry wants!” I yelled. “Now shut up and put that thing away!”
He whooped as we smoked into a turn at the north end of Salvador Avenue, near Jordan’s headshop. I hoped to hell she was under cover. Gil’s pulse was jackhammering, but I didn’t have the breath or time to get on him to calm it. The dogsbody was flattened in the backseat, and if it was making any noise I couldn’t tell. A thundering pop and the car slewed wildly, of course we’d lost a tire, it was the way these things went. I hit another corner, floored it, ignored the grinding, wished it was a stick instead of automatic for the fiftieth time, and realized I was cursing steadily, a song of obscenities as familiar as breath. Tendons stood out on the backs of my hands as I fought the steering, forcing the car to do what I wanted as it bucked and shuddered.
We cleared the curb with a bump and soared, hit the steps and the car teetered for a long moment. “No no no no no—,” I chanted, willing it to stay upright, and we thudded back down, listing terribly. I’d bought us a few seconds. “Inside! ” I barked. “Move your ass!”
Gil was already bailing. The dogsbody wriggled out through the back window and I covered them, skipping backward up the stairs as the shadows down the street warped. Bullets chipped and plowed up the steps behind me, Gil hit the doors like a bomb and the dogsbody leapt, its claws scratching on stone. I flung myself back and Gil kicked the door again, neatest trick of the week, slamming it shut. The lock was broken, deadbolt wrenched free, I bounced up and swept the church’s interior with both guns.
Sacred space, won’t hold them for long though. Not when they’re this motivated. “Gui! ” I yelled, a harsh cawing in the sudden gloom. “Guillermo! Rosas? Ignacio?”
“Dios,” Gilberto breathed, and crossed himself. My eyes finished adjusting, and I let out a short frustrated sound. The dogsbody shivered, hunching next to me, steam drifting from its blondness.
The priests had taken refuge here, instead of the chapel attached to the school. This late in the day, maybe they’d sent the kids home. I hoped they had. Their rooms—they still called them cells, a sort of monastic joke—in the parsonage building would be empty too. Here was safest.
Only it hadn’t turned out to be safe after all. Not when the forces of Hell were this goddamn enthusiastic.
Old thin Ignacio was in the middle of a jumble of broken pews, his body contorted into an enthusiastic backbend. The new redheaded one, Father Blake, had died near the confessional, and the arterial spray had even reached the racks of candles lit for sinners and prayers. Every inch of stained glass was covered with a thick layer of soot, and the pews—all terribly jumbled and splintered—were scorched.
Fat jolly Rosas, who had never liked me, was on the steps to the altar. He’d been flung over the crucifix, his guts spread in a tangle of gray loops and whorls. The crucifix itself had been torn down and mutilated, and in its place was nailed…
Bile burned my throat.
Gilberto was whispering. “Aunque pase por el valle de sombra de muerte, no temeré mal alguno. Porque Tú estás conmigo.” He took two steps to the side, leaned over, and heaved.
“La primera Lanza was here all the time.” I sounded like I’d been punched. “For years.”
A long time ago, there had been a case involving a firestrike spear. Guillermo had lied to me then, but he’d been protecting an even bigger secret. I can’t let you break your oath, Rosas had told him, and relations between me and the boys of Sacred Grace had been decidedly chilly ever since. I never played basketball with sleek dark Guillermo anymore, and we kept the exorcisms strictly business.
The altar had been torn to bits, something wrenched from its depths. Of course, hide one of the most powerful Talismans on earth in plain sight. That had probably been Rosas’s idea. My boots slipped in the blood and foulness on the steps. The stench of a battlefield was overpowering. No matter how many times you smell death, it never gets usual. It never becomes routine.
Rosas’s face was twisted in horror. He’d died in a bad way. Not so jolly now, fat man. From the way he’d been flung, he’d probably been trying to protect Gui, buy him enough time to reach the altar and the artifact inside.
The very thing Perry was after.
It has been in my keeping all this time.
The case had also involved a wendigo and the Sorrows. Now I remembered that Perry had shown up during the hunt with the firestrike—the only weapon capable of killing the goddamn thing the Sorrows had been using to hunt me. I’d only had Perry’s word that he’d gotten the firestrike from Sacred Grace. He’d told Saul as much, and since Saul had told me I’d taken it as truth.
Perry could not have stepped on this consecrated ground, could he? No. But he had been up to his eyebrows in that case, with Melisande Belisa, and neatly misdirected me. Never assume is the rule when it came to hellbreed, and it had been only a small mistake on my part. A tiny link in the chain, but enough.
Not to mention Perry had planted distrust between me and Father Gui. Which must have warmed his cold, dead hellbreed heart all the way through. If I hadn’t assumed the firestrike was what the priests were hiding, I would have come back and torn the whole place apart until I found everything—and the Spear they had been hiding all along would have ended up in Galina’s vaults, where Perry couldn’t lay his hands on it ever, world without end, amen.
It was all so simple, now. Somehow Perry had gotten wind of the Spear, hidden out here in the middle of nowhere. The other thing he needed was a hunter to wield it. I’d assumed the firestrike had been what Sacred Grace had been hiding, and relations between me and the priests had been decidedly frosty ever since. It was a pity, because Gui probably would have eventually told me, vow of secrecy or not.
We were, after all, friends. Or we had been. Had he wanted to tell me, any of those times he tried to talk to me and I ignored him, keeping the conversation to the exorcism at hand? Had the secret been burning in him all this time?
It didn’t matter now. With the Spear right where Perry could keep an eye on it, all he had to do was wait for me to damn myself. He’d waited years.
And all that time I’d been oblivious.
Never assume, milaya. Is shortest way to get ass blown sideways.
“FUCK! ” I screamed, and the word hit the walls, richocheting back to sting me. Gilberto crossed himself again, reflexively.
Little creaks and cracklings ran through the church walls. The building groaned, etheric contamination spreading as the murder and hatred boiled. Wait. Wait just a second. Hellbreed can’t touch it, and the ground’s sanctified. So he sent Traders to open up the way and contaminate. What do you want to bet some of them are still here? “Gil. Behind me.”
He moved immediately, thank God. “You see something, bruja?”
“Listen.” I kept both guns loosely pointed down. “They’re still in the building, or at least, some of them are. Nine o’clock, there’s a door. Move toward it, nice and easy.”
The dogsbody growled and looked up, a quick inquiring movement. “Hey,” I said, and its ear flicked at me. “Go with Gil. Protect him.”
The hound shook its narrow head, then padded toward my apprentice. Well, there’s that, at least. “Gil. Get out of here, go—”
Now we hit the stubbornness, at the worst possible time. “Ain’t leavin you, profesora.”
I would have kicked his ass for it, but the choir loft exploded and the church was suddenly full of hellbreed, its walls shuddering at the violation. A century of blessing and sacred belief rose to push the intruders out, but it was damaged now. The Traders had broken it with murder and suffering, and theft.
The blessing, crackling fine lines of blue, beat ineffectually at the damned as they swarmed. They hissed, jaws distending, their beauty sliding aside, and every single one of them was ’breed instead of Trad
er. Fast, brutal, and harder to kill. There were at least a dozen of them. They didn’t look like they cared very much that Perry supposedly wanted me alive.
This is not going to end well.
33
Father Gui’s body hit the altar with a meaty thump. I followed, blood slicking my lips and the knife sinking in past a hard hellbreed shell, twisting through the suction of unholy muscle. We slid down the wall, the gem singing in my wrist as it pumped etheric force through me, every muscle cramping and my breath a harsh ratcheting as I swore, again, obscenities interweaving with a chanted prayer in bastard Latin. The ’breed exhaled foulness in my face, but he was already dying, thin cracks of dusty corruption racing through his skin as the silver’s poison spread.
Gilberto screamed, a high breaking note of rage, and fired again. The dogsbody made another one of those wrenching guttural noises, and my boots jolted down. I heaved the rotting body away, it fell on Gui’s wracked and lifeless frame with a wet splorch.
Sorry, padre. Wish we could shoot some hoops instead. The dogsbody hunched, snarling, and I crashed into the ’breed crouching in front of my whey-faced apprentice. He was giving a good account of himself, but it was only a matter of time. The ’breed went down in a heap; I cut its throat with one swift motion and the dogsbody was on it too, jaws crunching with sickening finality. The ’breed exploded in a shower of brackish fluid, dust spilling from its veins, and I rose from the tangle, spinning the knife. “Come on!” I yelled, the knife sliding back into its sheath, and we were out the door before more of our pursuers decided to chance the inside of the church. The murder would echo here for a long time, eating further at the blessing in the walls until someone could get out here to clean it up.
I might even be the one cleaning, if I survived this.
“Need transport!” Gil yelled.
Well, at least he was thinking. “Don’t worry!” We pounded down the hall, smell of chalk and incense, vestments hung on one side and the wine cabinet locked behind gilt-edged froufrou, my coat snapping and the silver in my hair buzzing and spitting blue sparks. It was dark in here, the lights flickering and buzzing. The sharp-edged charms Perry had given me were heavy, twitching as if alive. “Gonna have to steal a car!”
“Aw, chica.” Gilberto coughed rackingly. He was keeping up so far, but soon his strength would start to flag. There was only so much healing sorcery could do, and both I and the dogsbody were moving with eerie speed. “You a real role model.”
“Bite me, kiddo.” Our footsteps sounded like one runner, until I left the ground in a leap that blew the outside door clean off its hinges. I rode it down, guns out, and swept as a howl went up.
The sun was low in the west, not setting yet but damn close, and clouds were boiling over what had been a blue vault. Greenyellow stormlight filled the alley; there was a basketball hoop bolted above the one-car garage at the dead end. The garage door was open, and I didn’t have time to remember playing horse with Father Gui as an apprentice, both of us talking smack and the priest’s three-pointers marvels of accuracy. He crossed himself after each one. Misha would be drinking a beer and watching, occasionally catcalling a point of advice that was of no earthly use whatsoever as Father Rosas sat next to him in a sagging lawn chair and glowered disapprovingly.
No, no time to think about it and feel the rage or the grief, because there was a car backed into the garage, pointed out at the alley. It was the church’s only vehicle, the ancient Cadillac Ignacio had picked up for a song and I’d rebuilt and cherried out, long ago in the dim time after Mikhail’s death. No time to remember working on it, Ignacio handing me tools and Gui asking me soft questions about what this or that part of the engine did. “Get in! ” I yelled; there were lean shapes at the alley’s mouth.
The key was in the ignition, and it reeked of Ignacio’s cigars. Gil was coughing, gone cheesy-pale in a way I didn’t like at all, and the dogsbody growled as the tools hung on pegboards chattered, the entire garage rocking like a ship in a storm as the church tolled its distress.
The shapes at the end of the alley were hellhounds, their eyes full of venomous, greenish glow. I twisted the key and was rewarded with a throbbing purr. The old girl still remembered me. “This is a car!” I barked. “This is the kind of car you steal, Gil! Good old American heavy metal!”
He slumped in the seat, but his quick brown fingers were busy reloading. “They don’ look happy, bruja.” Another cough, but I’d snapped the parking brake and dropped it into gear. I floored it and the Caddy leapt forward like it had never intended to stay still.
“Fuck them!” I yelled, and we hit the massed bodies at the end of the alley with a crunch. The Caddy snarled, the dogsbody let out a yowl, and we were through as the sky muttered with thunder.
“Where we goin’?” Gilberto grabbed for his window, rolling it up, and I had a mad desire to flick on the air-conditioning.
Shit if I know, kid. But it hit me like lightning, Melendez’s mouth shaping a spirit’s words, and understanding broke through me like water through a bombed dam. It could have been intuition, or the gem in my wrist suddenly singing in a language I understood, or just the most insane option at this point. But as soon as it occurred to me, I knew it was right.
The speedometer’s needle popped up past sixty and I stood on the brake, twisting into a bootlegger’s turn, fishtailing as hellhounds boiled out of the shadows, their hides leprous with steam in the scabbed light. They closed around us like a wave, running, their obsidian-chip teeth champing between gobbets of poisonous foam, and Gilberto let out a short miserable cry as he realized they were herding us.
“Gonna play some baseball, Gil. It’s the World Series, and I’m on call.” My breath came in heaving gasps, and my cheeks were wet. The world was doing funny things seen through my left eye, jumping and twitching as the strings under the fleshly curtain were plucked and torn. “Listen carefully, and don’t argue.”
IV: Dies Irae
34
There was nobody on the streets. I wasn’t surprised—even numbskull civilians will stay inside when the sky looks like a ripening bruise and the air is full of scorching that feels like an ice bath. Now that we were going the way they wanted, the ’breed hung back, letting the hounds nip and harry us through the streets. I made a few attempts to shake them, just because I don’t like being chased. Mother Mary on a pogo stick, how I hate to be pursued.
But there was nothing left to do, and Gilberto did not look good. He clutched at the gun like it was a Grail, and his lips moved a little as if he was praying.
It was a good idea, but I had no time.
“You hear me?” I finished, as we hit International Way and the four lanes ribboned around us, every light turning green as we sped through, tires smoking and the hellhounds pouring around us in a steaming wave. “No heroics, Gil. You get the fuck out of here and strike for Ridgefield. Leon’ll take you in.”
Gil’s chin set stubbornly.
“Gilberto. You’re a liability, not a help. You go, or I swear to God I’ll beat the shit out of you myself.” It was a good threat. I even sounded like I meant it.
“You goin’ in there to die.” Flatly, as if he was talking about the nice weather we were having lately. “Mi hermano, he look like this, like you. Right before he got shot.”
I almost winced. His brother was not a safe subject, the past reaching out its tentacles to strangle us all. “They can’t kill me, kid.” I sounded weary even to myself. “Perry needs me for this.” A Trader can steal a Talisman, but not wield it. Not for very long, anyway—but if he’s using it to power the hellmouth…Still, I’m the Judas for the Other Side. I have to make it a little longer, right?
It was so not a comforting thought.
Gilberto’s chin set itself, stubbornly. “So I go in. Watch your back.”
“No.”
“Profesora—”
“No, Gil. You have your orders, goddammit.”
“Profesora—”
“No.”
I said it a lot more sharply than I meant to, and hit the brakes, slewing us sideways as International dove down to follow the river. The stadium was here, hulking like a giant animal over a bone, one of the places in the city where you can’t see the huge granite Jesus on top of Mercy General. Sometimes I’m pretty sure it’s an act of will that keeps that particular landmark from being visible in some pockets of urban real estate. “I’m counting on you, Gilberto. Don’t let me down.”
He mumbled something. I smashed the accelerator again, spun us into another turn, stood on the brake. “I can’t hear you, apprentice.” Snap of command.
“Si,” he said, scowling. “Si, profesora.” Just like a good soldier.
Just like me, when Mikhail would tell me what was what. Would I ever reach the point where I’d trade Gil for my own mark, sell him to Perry to buy a little more time? Or bargain him into it out of love, believing that he could do what I couldn’t and stop el rubio Diablo from spinning the wheel and landing a double zero?
I don’t want to find out. It ends here. “Good fucking deal.” We rocked to a stop, tire smoke rising in sharp-toothed shapes around us. The hellhounds flowed in a leaping circle, stormlight running wetly over their smoking hides as thunder rumbled again. “Gil…”
He stared out the window, sallow, pitted jaw working.
“You’re my apprentice,” I said, finally. “And you’re a good one. You won’t understand for a long, long time. But I love you, and I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”
I hit the latch and was outside in a hot second, leaning down to glance through the back window. “Stay with Gil,” I said, sharply, and the dogsbody settled into the backseat, whining. Every hair on my body tried to stand straight up, I heard hellhound claws skritching and scratching, and the splatter of foam from their panting mouths. The circle tightened, pressing closer, and I glanced up at the sky.
The clouds lowered, sickly greenish-black. Lightning crawled through their billows, occasionally lancing with a crack like a belt hitting naked flesh. I slammed the door, Gilberto already shimmying over into the driver’s side. The Cadillac purred, a plastic rosary swinging from the rearview—maybe it was Father Gui’s, maybe Rosa’s—and Gilberto stared through the window, his dark eyes suddenly wet.
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