Redemption Alley jk-3

by Lilith Saintcrow

  They’d taken my guns. But my knives were still all present and accounted for, along with my whip and everything else, even all the ammo in my pockets.

  Jesus. People this stupid shouldn’t be playing with hellbreed. The air sharpened, the swelling in my fingers going down too slowly, way too fucking slowly, and I heard them arrive.

  The air was suddenly full of hissing like laughter, the subliminal reverberation of Helletöng rubbing painfully against my ears. I eased myself off the chair, quiet, quiet, stopping when my right thigh cramped viciously. I kept my breathing soft and even. Raised my hands over my head to help my fingers drain. I would need them soon.

  My hands turned into fists. Rivers of sparkling pain ran down my arms. I eased them open, and made a fist again. It would help the edema drain. Come on. No time, Jill.

  On the other side of the wall, there was a wet crunching sound. A sudden impact, like a side of beef dropped three stories onto simmering pavement.

  Funtime’s over, kids. Everyone out of the pool.

  Irene let out a shapeless, garbled yell.

  In the ringing silence afterward, Shen An Dua spoke. “Oh, I am sorry. I was supposed to negotiate, wasn’t I.”

  There was a slobbering wet noise, and another crunch. “Dear me.” Shen giggled, a little-girl sound. “So sorry. I just keep making mistakes.”

  “You idiot.” Irene’s voice trembled. “Now you’ve killed the only person who has the formula!”

  Another chill giggle, edged with broken, freezing glass. “Oh, I haven’t killed him. He’ll heal, with the proper care—care I can provide, as your liege. Besides, now I know what is possible, and it is easy enough to find more scientists.” The hellbreed’s tone darkened. “Where is the hunter?”

  I dropped my hands. So glad I’m not tied up right now. My fingers curled around knifehilts, clumsy and aching. More copper adrenaline dumped into my blood, enough to sharpen me, not enough to blur. I’d pay for it later, when my body’s reserves finally gave out.

  I let out the soft breath, took another, my lungs crying for oxygen I couldn’t take in. No use in gasping and advertising my position and status as awake and reasonably ready to kick ass.

  “Fax?” Sounds of material moving, probably her long sequined dress. The hardness had left Irene’s voice. “Fax, hold on—Fax! Fairfax don’t you leave me!”

  She sounded like a victim. Maybe like one of her own victims. I doubted she’d see the irony if someone else pointed it out, though.

  “Oh, shut up.” Another impact, and the wall in front of me quivered imperceptibly as something human-sized was thrown up against it hard enough to crack bones. Shen let out a little satisfied sound. “Whining. Always whining.”

  I tensed all over. The scar thrummed against my wrist, a high-voltage wire.

  Shen suddenly turned all business. “Spread out. Search for the hunter. She’s close, I can smell the bitch’s shampoo.”

  Lunatic laughter bubbled up in my throat. I swallowed it. What’s wrong with my goddamn shampoo?

  “That’s the last order you’ll ever give,” Irene snarled, and I crouched reflexively as gunfire rang through the small space, echoes tearing and re-tearing at my sensitive eardrums.

  Maybe I could stay right here and let them sort it out. But something hit the other side of the wall again, bone-crunchingly hard, and I was out of my little hole and in the light of a swinging, naked electric bulb before I even noticed moving. The flap of my abused coat followed me like the smell of burning, clinging to me in tatters.

  Four of them, and all you’ve got is knives.

  Well, that wasn’t quite true. My left hand had been smarter than me, curling around the whip handle and jerking it free. I guess Irene and Fax had thought I was tied up too tight to use a whip.

  Fucking morons. They shouldn’t have been playing with hellbreed.

  Confined space, a concrete cube, the smell of blood cooking on an incandescent bulb as it swayed crazily, making the shadows dance. A slight hiss of steam echoed the longer hiss of hellbreed.

  Shen An Dua stood, incongruous in a pale-pink kimono patterned with plum blossoms, her narrow golden hands folded and her eyes running with yolk-yellow flame. Her hair was piled atop her head in a complex patterned knot, held in place by lacquered shine and chopsticks with dangling things reflecting hard darts of light. And here was my first piece of good luck. In her monumental arrogance, Shen hadn’t brought full ’breed to the party.

  No, she’d brought four Traders, all male, and the whip smacked across flesh and dropped one, screaming, to the floor, clutching at his face and howling loud enough to shake the entire concrete cube.

  Shen screeched, but the knife left my hand, flickering through the dance of shadow and blood-dappled light, and I had a second piece of good luck. It buried itself up to the hilt in her right eye as the whip crackled again, catching the next Trader at the top of his leap. I moved aside, spinning on feet gone numb and scraping-slow, and my hand flicked again, coming up full of steel.

  Move move move! The screaming inside my head was no match for the noise bouncing off the walls until I tuned it out, focusing instead on the Trader closest to me, a cute little number who might have been Puerto Rican while he was human. Now he was small, brown, and unholy quick; the mirrored surfaces coming up from his cheekbones and inserting into his eyebrows gave him permanent sunglasses. He was right next to me before I realized it, but instinct saved me again—my fist, full of knifehilt, blurred forward and his trachea collapsed with a crunch.

  Guys always expect you to go for the nut-shot. They never expect a rabbit-punch to the throat. And no matter how good you are, if you can’t breathe, your fighting effectiveness is numbered in bare seconds.

  Just to be safe, I slid the knife between his ribs, high in the left side of his chest, punching with a generous share of hellbreed strength to get through the pericardium—if I was that lucky.

  Shen hit the floor, wailing, and I got a glance up her kimono skirt. If I’d eaten anything recently I would have thrown it all up, again, but the animal in me was concerned with survival first, snapping me aside with a half-skip and a clatter of steelshod bootheels to free my footing from the Trader’s spasming legs.

  Gunfire echoed again, and the third Trader—a stocky motherfucker in motorcycle leathers, his ears coming to high bristling points—collapsed, a neat hole appearing in his forehead and the back of his head vaporizing. Irene was picking her shots.

  Let’s just hope I’m not her next target, eh?

  I hit the ground, rolled, and kicked the knees of the last Trader, he went down in a heap and I fed him a few knives to keep him quiet.

  I lay there for just a second and a half too long, my sides heaving and my body suddenly failing to obey me. Wait just a minute, bitch, my muscles informed me. We’re declaring mutiny. You’ve fucked with us for too long.

  The body will do what the will dictates, yes. I learned that in my first year of training. But sometimes, even the will isn’t enough to get the body up off the floor, when you’ve forced flesh past the point of no return. Even a berserker will eventually get tired.

  Shen landed on me, tentacles swarming, thick black gore slicking her right cheek. Probing, flexible hairy pseudo-fingers bit hard, helped along by tiny vicious suckers, each rimmed with sharp cartilaginous protrusions resembling teeth. Peeked up the skirt of destiny, did we? the merry voice of impending doom snarled inside my head. About to pay for it, Jill. And pay for it big.

  Slim strong human-shaped fingers tightened around my throat, and if my cervical spine hadn’t been hellbreed-reinforced, my neck would have snapped. I kicked, my knee sinking into fleshy pulsing warmth nesting under her kimono and finding precious little bone to bounce off. My abraded wrists swarmed with tentacles, and she exhaled sicksweet foulness in my face, squeezing harder now, black ichor dripping from her pointed chin and splashing my face.

  I spat, defiant to the last, and heaved up. No dice. She had too much leverage. Judo doe
sn’t teach you how to fight off tentacles, goddammit.

  The gun roared again.

  The unwounded half of Shen’s head disintegrated. Silver grain loaded in hollowpoints will do that. Black ichor spattered my face, stinking as it rotted.

  The tentacles spasmed. Her hands bit in once more, terribly, but I wriggled free. My own fingers tore hers away, and I took in a gasping, whooping breath.

  Irene was sobbing. The Trader whose larynx I’d crushed was suffocating to death, thrashing on the floor, a knifehilt protruding from his chest. Someone else was dying in leaps and spasms. I scrabbled through the crowded space, noticing for the first time that I was bleeding. Someone had clawed me in the side, my wrists were wet and dripping, my legs ached savagely, and I was blinking away both crusted and fresh blood. Not to mention the hellbreed-stinking gore dumped all over me.

  There was the click of a half-depressed trigger, and I looked up. Ohshit.

  But Irene stood, straddle-legged, over the Puerto Rican Trader. “Bobby,” she whispered, and pulled the trigger. I tried not to flinch. “You should have listened to me.” She let out a sound like a choked sob, and again the gun spoke.

  Silence descended. There was a smear of thick crimson beginning near the ceiling, on the wall I’d been tied up behind. It looked about the size of an adult male, as if a man-sized canvas bag of blood had been flung at the wall and slid down, sopping-wet.

  I gained my feet in a convulsive movement. The entire goddamn place was only about ten by ten, too small a space for the carnage it held. Pipes clustered at the far end. The naked, blood-spattered bulb swung in ever-decreasing arcs.

  Irene hunched over something near the wall. The gun dangled limply in her hand. “Fax,” she whispered.

  I coughed, deep and racking. Fax wasn’t going to mix any more bioweapons for anyone. Pretty much every bone in his body was broken, and the odd shape of his head meant his skull was crushed. Thin red blood, only a little tainted with hellbreed black, slicked his face and spattered his now-grimy lab coat.

  I tried to feel something other than hot nasty satisfaction. Got what you deserved. Bile whipped the back of my throat as the thought of his “subjects” crawled under the surface of my consciousness, refusing to surface fully.

  Thank God for small mercies. It wasn’t much, but I’d take it.

  I found my other guns near the ruins of what looked like a wooden chair. It had been smashed to splinters, and it looked like the chair Winchell had been beaten in.

  Shen must have thought I’d be easy to take out. My, isn’t this tying up nicely. Three guns, Irene had the fourth, and I had a bead on her even while my left hand picked up the two leftover Glocks and holstered them independently of me.

  I coughed again, tasted blood and the bitterness of exhaustion. My neck was going to be bruised.

  “Fax,” Irene whispered again. “Oh, God.”

  I checked all the other bodies. They were twitch-rotting, fast, contagion spreading through tissues and loosing a powerful stench into the air. I kept the gun trained on Irene.

  Dead and rotting meant they were no threat. But God, it smelled. If there’s anything I hate about my job, it’s the varied odors of rot and corruption.

  Not to mention almost getting killed on a regular basis. Or getting lied to so frequently I barely even trust myself anymore.

  Or how even a job that ties itself up can feel almost like a failure. I’d been caught assuming too often on this one, and how many people could have died if I hadn’t been lucky? Or if I’d been just, simply, too late and a high-class hellbreed had stepped through to sit down and have himself a feast?

  I took two steps forward, over the tangled ruin of a body. Fury worked its way up inside me, I blinked more blood out of my eyes.

  Irene didn’t move, crouched on her high heels, her knees splayed. The green tint to her skin was pronounced under the bloodspattered light.

  “What did you do to Galina?” I husked.

  “I threatened to shoot the detective unless she let me go.” Her slim fingers opened. The gun clattered, came to rest right next to Fairfax’s dead, crushed hand. “Goddammit.”

  “You’re playing out of your league.” The gun barrel met the back of her head, through that blood-colored hair. She didn’t move. “Who else is in on this? Harvill, Shen, who else?”

  “They’re mostly dead.” The words were colored with a sob, but I didn’t miss her shifting her weight slightly, very slightly. She froze when I shoved the gun against her skull again, harder. “Fax and I, we were trying to fix it, once we realized what they were planning. Bernardino killed the widow and I took care of Winchell, but we didn’t find the ledgers. We couldn’t pressure Harvill without them. Shen sold me to Bernardino to keep him quiet, he was a pile of filth. I enjoyed killing him, but he didn’t have the ledgers and it all went… Fax. He was…”

  Yeah, you were trying to fix it, and blackmail a few people in the process. A nice little nest egg, there for the taking, but Bernie had plans of his own. Enough double-crosses to make everyone dizzy, all of you little fucking rats scurrying once the lights turned on.

  It might have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic. Or if so many people hadn’t died, used like Kleenex and discarded without a thought. And now she was sniveling over her dead bioweapon-making boyfriend. I’ll bet it never even occurred to you to look in the garage, either. Even with the car you arrived in sitting in there. “What other higher-ups were involved? Who, goddammit?”

  She kept talking. Maybe she thought that if she kept going, she’d find a way out of the hole. Or maybe it didn’t matter to her now. “Just Shen. She wanted to ingratiate herself with the big guy, he wanted a way through, into this city. She thought the owner of the Monde knew and sent you to blackmail her so he could get in first.”

  Perry? Evoking Argoth? I don’t know, he likes being the biggest fish in town too much. I cleared my aching throat. “Was there a backup for the evocation?”

  “I don’t think so. Shen was always going out to the airfield, every dark moon for six months. It was the only time I was allowed to see Fax.” Her voice broke again. But the calculation was back in it, the slightest hesitation masquerading as sorrow.

  When you’ve spent a lifetime listening for that hesitation, it blares like a bullhorn.

  “You realize I have to kill you.” It didn’t hurt to say it. Cold clarity had settled over me again, the part of me that didn’t count the cost or hesitate when something had to be done.

  It wasn’t the same as the cold calculation or the ratty little gleam. It wasn’t.

  At least, I hoped it wasn’t. What else was I doing this for, if it was?

  “Just do it,” she whispered. “Do it fast.”

  My hand tensed. I struggled to think clearly. This wasn’t like taking a life in combat. This was something else.

  “Did you hurt Galina? Or Carp?” I pushed against her skull with the gun, just a little. Her head bowed, pliant. “Tell me the truth, Irene.”

  “What the fuck does it matter?” Cold weariness, now.

  “Oh, it matters.” It’s the difference between me killing you mercifully… or otherwise. The scar plucked at my arm, humming to itself. It wanted me to kick the Glock near her hand away and beat the living shit out of her personally. It’s a small step from knowing how to fight to knowing how to stretch out hurting someone.

  It’s an even smaller step between knowing how to do it and finding a reason to do it.

  She sighed. “I dumped the detective at the end of the block and ran. He was okay enough to squeeze off a few shots at me.”

  Thank you, God. I don’t have to hurt her. “You’re going to Hell.” I couldn’t sound comforting.

  “Fine.” She shrugged, pale greenish shoulders smeared with blood and other matter. An exhausted rat in a cage. “Like it’s so different from here. Just get it over with, Kismet.”

  I wanted to tell her Hell was different. That’s why they call it Hell, for Christ’s sake.r />
  But in the end, I didn’t.

  Let her find out for herself.

  Chapter Thirty

  When I surfaced on the street, I knew exactly where I was. Irene and Fairfax’s little hidey-hole turned out to be the half-basement of a shabby little deserted office building on Rosales, less than two blocks from Winchell’s murder site. Everything tying together into a neat little package. Bumbling incompetents getting themselves killed. Avarice, arrogance, and envy are the hunter’s friends; if it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t have found so many loose ends to tie up. And if not for monumental fucking arrogance, Shen would have brought hellbreed.

  And that would have been a goddamn clusterfuck.

  I stood in the shadows in the lee of the building, night wind rising off the desert brushing the street and curling down the alcove. Did it smell like burning, or did I? I swayed, my fingers catching at the wall and leaving smeared prints behind. Blood and stinking hellbreed ichor, and more blood. Forensics would have a field day with that little room, if anything was left after a night’s worth of decay. I hadn’t been able to muster up the strength to force banefire off my fingers.

  Think, Jill. Think.

  What was my next move?

  The Charger was easy enough to find, tucked into an alley across the street. One of them had topped off the tank with gas and done a passable hotwire job on it. Irene’s work, I was betting—Fax hadn’t seemed like he could tie his shoelaces, much less hotwire a car.

  But he’d been enough of a genius to engineer a weapon likely to completely bash my city out of recognition, loosing a tide of darkness and corruption that would feed a huge hellbreed. And turn people into blood-hungry fiends or… those things. And he’d done it all without asking where his “subjects” came from. Probably talked himself into thinking it was real bang-up science he was doing, too.

  I shouldn’t have felt sorry for either of them. But a few more minutes of questioning Irene before I sent her on her way meant I’d found the link between Shen and Fairfax. An intent-to-distribute conviction for mixing up designer drugs to make some cash, and the concurrent threat to a promising career, had brought Fax into Harvill’s—and Shen’s—reach. And with him, Irene, who had taken to being a Trader like a duck to water. But then, when you’re dating a mad chemist, I suppose you can get used to bargaining with Hell one slice of flesh at a time.