I could wish it didn’t feel so familiar. “Then I’m burning down every fucking stick of this place, and consigning every soul in that east building to God.” I paused. “If He will take them.”
Leon had the Trader, was dragging him toward the door. Their shadows moved in the ragged rectangle of clean sunshine, and the flames dripped from my fingers, scorching the floor. The sorcerous flame hunters are trained to call on—banefire—devours all trace of hellbreed and leaves a blessing in its wake, but for this, I needed something more.
I needed pure destruction.
The hellfire made a sound like strangled children whispering. Like dead souls filling up a room with angry cricket-voices. Like the click of a bullet loaded into a magazine, over and over again, with a feedback squeal as my fury escaped my control for a single moment, a breath between thoughts.
The bookshelves burst into oddly pale orange flame. The hellfire laughed, wreathing my fingers, and I flung it in a wide arc, smashing against the beakers and shelves on the back wall like napalm. Glass screeched and exploded, and I backed toward the door, fire scouring wetly in a trail from my right hand.
The frightening thing wasn’t how easy it was to pull that sort of power through the scar, or even the agonizing plucking against every nerve running up my right arm and into my shoulder, branching channels full of magma played like dissonant violin strings.
The frightening thing was that the hellfire turned yellow, a clear pure yellow like sunlight, and I jerked my hand away from me, toward the green columns of floating dead scurf. Glass shattered and slime flooded the floor, bodies falling with wet thumps as the backdraft pushed me out the door, just in time too. I landed sprawled on the wooden ramp, hearing the Charger’s engine rouse itself just as the first explosion—of course, there were stocks of chemicals in the building, I was basically torching an ammo dump of viral weaponry—rocked the desert air and the fire took a deep, vast, hot breath. A belch of greasy black smoke rounded itself like bread dough rising and flared for the sky.
Burn, someone whispered inside my head. Burn it all. And this last voice sent me scurrying, trying to shake the yellow hellfire away from my hand like hot grease, because it was Perry’s voice, and I knew that for once I was going to do exactly what it said.
Smoke rose in a huge black smudge, a beacon underlit with bright yellow leaping flame. I shot the last mewling, crawling, burned-black thing skittering in the ashes in its approximation of a head. My gorge rose again, pointlessly, receded with a sound like a choking-dead laugh. The hangars were burning, sharp guncracks of explosions sending flaming debris arcing across the runway.
The entire place looked like a bomb had hit it, except the last building. The sun hung low in the west, a gigantic bloody eye. Someone has to have noticed this by now. A tired sound escaped my lips, sounding suspiciously like a giggle.
The only building I’d left almost untouched was the southerly new one. The Trader said the evocation was due in a week, and a glance inside the kicked-in door had shown me a fresh concrete floor with a pentagram carved deep—and it was definitely a pentagram, not a pentacle—inside a circle and square, candles ranked on fluted iron holders, and the reek of hellbreed so strong and thick it almost knocked me over despite all the varied and wonderful stenches that are a hunter’s life.
The hellfire, burning steadily on my fingertips now, running from the scar like greasepaint, had turned green at its tips. Most sorcerous flame works on a spectrum, and I shouldn’t have been able to produce more than red flame tinged at the edges with a little orange.
Instead, I was cycling up through the spectrum. I’d seen Perry produce blue hellfire once or twice, and it made me wonder. How much of this could he feel, sitting in his office in the Monde? Was he curious about what I was doing? Was I using up all my stock of preternatural power in this one futile gesture?
If I was, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. There were more immediate problems to solve. They have a backup somewhere. They would be stupid not to. Or this is a backup.
Still, the statement I was making might make any hellbreed think twice before visiting my town. Even the ones still burning in Hell’s embrace.
Even one who had killed my teacher’s teacher? Wasn’t that the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question? If they released Dream—drug, bioweapon, whatever it was—on my city as this Argoth climbed free of Hell, the massive suffering would be a huge banquet. It would feed him, and with that sort of energetic jolt he’d become a very serious proposition indeed.
And I wasn’t a Jack Karma, capable of containing that sort of thing. Not even close. Not even with Perry’s scar on my arm—a scar that might turn into a liability if Perry was ordered by a much stronger hellbreed to Do Something About Me.
Get cracking, Jill. There’s work to do.
In the center of the pentagram the altar stood, a chunk of wood probably from a hangman’s tree under draped black satin stiff with noisome fluids. Various implements, hissing with malice, scattered over the altar’s surface. I took them all in with a glance, shaking my hand. The hellfire didn’t want to go away. It kept popping and hissing, chortling at me, drawing strength from the contagion in the air.
Each piece of silver I wore spat blue sparks. I shut my eyes, my smart eye piercing the meat of my eyelid to show me the shape of things under the surface of the world. The evocation was indeed very close to being finished. Had this continued, on some night under a dark moon the walls between the physical plane and Hell’s screaming, shifting flames would have gapped for just the tiniest moment, and something could have slipped through, not just as a bad dream or a walking shade like an arkeus, only able to coalesce into physical form when someone bargained with it and gave it a toehold.
No, something real would step through. It only took a moment, a knife’s-edge worth of time. And what would a creature like Argoth want with my town? Revenge on a hunter of Karma’s lineage? Something coincidental? A darker purpose?
Always assuming Perry was telling the truth and it was Argoth waiting to come through.
If it wasn’t that hellbreed in specific, it was probably one just as bad. And its corruption would spread until burned out, fueled by the suffering of my people. My civilians. My city.
Not in my city.
The sharp clarity of my rage was comforting, but I couldn’t stay there. It took a long while, me wrestling with the scar, a battle of wills that ended with sweat breaking out all over my body and my eyes snapping open to see that darkness had gathered in the corners. A dry lion’s cough of an explosion sounded. Did I really do all that?
I held up my right hand.
In the uncertain light, the puckered lip-print on my inner wrist was just the same. There was no mark on my skin of the power I’d pulled through it. It felt flushed, obscenely full, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
“God,” I whispered. Blue sparks hissed.
The banefire came slowly, whispering around my fingers in wisps, almost drowned by the pressure of hellbreed contamination in the ether. It tingled, like a numb limb right before the pain of waking up starts.
The prayer rose inside my head. Thou who hast… It circled the rage, came back. Thou Who hast given me to fight evil, protect me; keep me from harm. The prayer, skipped, skidded, and returned to the most important part. “O my Lord God,” I whispered, “do not forsake me when I face Hell’s legions.” My voice cracked; I licked my dry lips. From some deep place inside me the idea of calm rose, and I grabbed for it with both mental hands. The last sentence fell into a well of silence. “In Thy name and with Thy blessing, I go forth to cleanse the night.”
I opened my eyes.
Oily, pale-blue banefire wreathed my hand in living flame, whispering to itself, a cleaner sound than hellfire’s greasy chuckling. It boiled up, sheathing my skin, and I threw it at the altar with every ounce of hellbreed strength my right arm possessed.
It hit, dimmed, and roared up, a sheet of avid blue flame crawling over cursed implemen
ts and scouring the black satin. The curved knife, the twisted claw of no animal that crawled under the sun, the chalice full of noisome, clotted scum, other things that had no other purpose but to hurt and wreak havoc—all wrinkling like paper in a flame, the banefire gathering strength as I stumbled back on legs as weak and rubbery as noodles, hit my shoulder on the wrecked door, and almost went down in a heap out in the dust beyond.
Jill, you’re in bad shape.
I let out a hard jagged sound. Better shape than those… things… in the east building. If hunters were allowed to go to Confession and Communion I might have turned a priest’s hair white, sharing the horror.
It was worse because they’d been human once, and worse even than scurf because of the—
My mind reeled violently away from the thought. There are only two or three things in my life as a hunter that have that effect—memories so terrible the fabric of the brain itself refuses to hold them, human comprehension shying away.
Good, you can’t remember. Which means it’s over. Which means you need to get on your fucking feet and finish the rest of this job. Monty. Theron. Carp. They’re all in danger, and it’s up to you. So quit your bitchmoaning and figure out how you’re going to get the hell back to your city.
I came back to myself on my knees in the dust with my head down, hair hanging in dark strings starred with blue-sparking silver, and the hissing of banefire behind me underlying the crackle of other flame. If anybody was giving out prizes for laying waste, I’d have won one. The entire airfield looked like a picture of an artillery attack I’d seen in an old magazine. Every hangar was a roaring shell, and the new buildings were burning merrily, mostly with orange and yellow flame.
I struggled up to my feet, taking harsh deep barking breaths. The crimson stain in the west was the sun finally dying. And the plume of black smoke stretching up into the gathering dusk was a huge fucking neon sign.
Priorities, Jill. Your city’s in danger. They could have another evocation site, and you’re stuck here without a car. What are you going to do?
Why weren’t there news helicopters circling? Someone had to have seen this from the highway. Out here in the desert, you could see forever, couldn’t you? A pillar of smoke during the day, miles from the city—
Instinct, and instinct alone, made me raise my head. I wouldn’t have heard the car’s tires over the snap and crackle of flame. Behind me, banefire exploded, and the heat of it against my back was comforting enough to make my knees sag again.
Or maybe it was the green Charger, slid into a bootlegger’s turn and sending up a great spume of dust that did it. Because the passenger door opened, and I ran for the car as if my soul depended on it. I assumed it was Leon, come back to pick me up.
That assumption was my next mistake. A muzzle flashed, and something hit me in the chest like a padded hammer, and all of a sudden it was burning, my heart was a lake of fire inside my chest.
This time, they used silver. They shot me four times, and the last thing I heard was the crunch of feet on gravelly dirt as blackness closed over me, shot through with lead and redness. And a voice that was familiar, a woman’s voice.
“We’ve got them by the balls now. Give me that rope.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Tradeoff for being a helltainted hunter: silver fucking hurts to get shot with. The wound closes slowly, not poisoning me the way it poisons a hellbreed, but at about three-quarters the usual speed. I lose blood I can’t afford, too, thick trickles of trying-to-clot claret.
I came back to consciousness slowly, in patches. Something hard was against my back, my head lolling, eyelids fluttering. My hair hung down in greasy wet strings, silver charms hanging like odd, blue-glowing fruit.
“They’ll be here. They can’t afford not to.” The woman’s voice was familiar. Slight smacking sounds—a wet, openmouthed kiss. “Relax, sweetheart.”
“You didn’t see what she did.” Male. Sounded familiar, too, and scared of his own shadow, with a whining edge that set my teeth to clenching together. “She almost shot me. And the entire place, just like a bomb hit it. Jesus.”
What the hell? Grogginess receded, and the scar prickled, a pucker of skin, still feeling full and obscenely flushed.
“I saw enough. Even Shen’s scared of her. Don’t worry so much. We have the only samples left, I saw to that. You have the formula, and we have the hunter to trade in. Everything’s going to be okay.” Another soft, wet kiss and a small moan. Someone was having a good time. “Just as long as you do what I tell you.”
The world resolved around me, my consciousness sharpening.
I was in a chair. The air pressure was still, swallowing sound, echoing, telling me I was underground. Rope crisscrossed my chest, holding me in the chair. My hands were tied behind my back, fingers swollen, my elbows tied together, my ankles lost in coils of blue and white nylon rope.
I shifted my weight a little, looking for slack in the ropes. Found some.
Whoever had tied me up had done a goddamn messy job of it. I stilled, watching the silver in my hair run with blue sparks under the smooth metal surfaces. Hellbreed contamination in the air, but not a lot of it.
I saw concrete, a crumbling wall threaded with thin trickles of dried nameless fluid. I was in the dark, but electric light played over a vertical edge, a corner with teeth where the concrete had been worn away.
My eyes fell shut again. I was so tired. Even my toes hurt. Even my hair hurt. And I was starving. I would have given about anything for a chicken-fried steak right about then. And a nice cold beer.
Jill, wake up. My own voice, soft and urgent. Wake the fuck up. Something’s happening right in front of you.
The scar ran with wet heat. My wrists rubbed against each other, and the hunger shifted under my breastbone, turned steely and sickening. I heard nylon rubbing against a cross-beam as a body shifted below, dead fruit. You’re tied up with the same type of rope. Wake up, Jill.
It was like a bucket of cold water. I snapped into full consciousness silently, my wrists rubbing, the scar turning hot. It burrowed in toward the bone, and I wondered if it would slip my control and fill with yellow flame again.
The idea of burning expanded my chest with unsteady glee. I clamped down on it, reflexively.
Can’t afford to do that, no matter how good it feels. I blinked crusted something out of my eyes, felt the tingle along my skin as the last bullet hole in my chest closed over, the silver-coated slug pushed free and no longer hurting me. The scar hummed, the strings of the physical world thrumming like a violin touched by a master’s fingertips. Just the slightest plucking, making subtle vibrational music.
Something was about to happen.
Too late. It’s too late.
Hopelessness threatened to scour the inside of my head. Bullshit it’s too late, I answered that whining little voice. Get out of these ropes, Jill. That’s the first step. Everything else comes from that.
I rubbed my wrists together like Lady Macbeth. The skin on my entire body tautened. They hadn’t even taken my trench off, the dumb bunnies. And the rope had plenty of give in it—enough for my purposes, anyway. Etheric force tingled in my swollen fingertips, my concentration falling into itself like a rock down a bottomless well, and tough nylon frayed, parting.
It took all my waning energy to keep the state of fierce relaxation so necessary for sorcery. Strand by strand, the rope parted. Nervous silence ticked on the other side of the wall, broken only by the sound of breathing and the occasional wet kiss or moan.
“What if they don’t show?” the male said, fretfully.
“They have to show,” Irene said, with utter mad certainty. “We’re holding all the cards, Fax. Just relax.”
I wondered, for a few seconds, how she’d gotten free of Galina. Either she’d tricked the Sanctuary—hard to do, but Galina had that core of blind decency that made her able to do what she did—or there had been violence. It was vanishingly possible that she might have overwhelmed
Galina physically for long enough to escape, but treachery was more likely.
Inside a Sanctuary’s house, the owner’s will is law. It had to have been a trick. But if she’d hurt Galina, the Trader bitch was going to pay in blood.
That’s not the only thing she’s going to pay for, Jill. Get out of the rope.
My concentration slipped. Sweat trickled cold down the valley of my spine, a flabby fingertip tracing. I regained myself, felt more strands slip, fraying loose under the knife of my will.
“They’re late,” Fairfax whined.
If it hadn’t been so critical to keep quiet, I might have laughed. They’re expecting hellbreed they’ve double-crossed to be on time. Silly them.
“They usually are. Will you just relax?” Irene’s tone held less fondness and more command now. Movement in the light told me someone was pacing, sound of high heels clicking. No more kisses, and no more soft words.
The air pressure changed like a storm front moving over the city, pushing thunder in front of it. These two Trader idiots were about to get a huge surprise, either from their visitors—or from me. Copper coated my palate, adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream to sharpen me and deaden the edge of exhaustion. This is about to get real ugly real quick. Hurry, Jill.
A general rule of sorcery is that more haste equals less speed—but the rope fell loose, and I eased my shoulders out of its coils. My hands were numb and tingling, but they worked. I just couldn’t pull a trigger for a little while. Pins and needles raced up my legs, and I almost blacked out when I bent over to take care of the rope messily looped and pulled tight around my ankles.
Rule one of tying up a hunter: you’d better be damn sure she can’t wriggle out. Nylon’s useless. Hemp’s better, but it stretches too. Orichalc-tainted chains are the best, but even those are workable if the hunter’s left alone and conscious long enough.
I’ve only been chained up so bad I couldn’t get out once. That was enough for me.
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